Ireland under the Commonwealth

Above : Painting Of Oliver Cromwell

During the six years of Commonwealth rule that followed the Cromwellian Settlement, Ireland had but httle history. The religious rites of the Catholic Church were forbidden, and all priests were ordered to leave the countrv. Catholics were excluded from offices of trust, and could not administer justice keep school or become barristers or solicitors. Still, while the sufferings of the clergy, forced to take refuge in woods and swamps, were often very severe, there was not much positive persecution of the laity.

The kidnapping of Catholic children for the Plantations in America and the West Indies still continued, and was only checked when some children of English Planters were seized, and their parents made strong representations to the authorities. There were constant complaints of the over-taxation of Ireland, and of the trade restrictions ; constant petitions of individuals who regarded themselves as unjustly treated in the land settlement, and constant letters of officials on the unsatisfactory behaviour of the colonists, their non-observance of the prohibition to take Irish tenants, their absenteeism, their failure to pay their rents.

Still, on the whole, Ireland, during these years, recovered to a considerable extent form the terrible consequences of the Civil War. Population increased ; cattle and farm produce began again to be exported and some attempts were made to revive industries.
In 1652, Cromwell selected six persons, all prominent members of his own party, to attend the Parliament at Westminster as representatives of Ireland. There was not even the pretence of an election.

In 1654, the same process was practically repeated, though there seems to have been some sort of sham election, but the number of Irish members was now to be thirty. Two, three, or more of the old constituencies were, in most cases, amalgamated, and either one or two members assigned to them jointly. These men sat also in the Parliament of 1656, and, in addition, six others were summoned to Cromwell’s ” Second House,” a sort of sham House of Lords. In 1659, they attended the last Parliament of the Commonwealth. Although, as far as Ireland was concerned at least, these were not true Parliaments in any sense, they may perhaps be regarded as the first attempts at a Legislative Union between Ireland and England.