The conspiracy of 1641
The insurrection as well as the conspiracy and civil war that followed it, suffered from the first from the great diversity of aims of those who took part in it. Many sought no more than a free Parliament, complete toleration for the Catholic religion, a rescinding of the land confiscations and fixity of tenure in future. Others looked to the more or less complete overthrow of the English power in Ireland, or at least to the reducing of it to a mere almost nominal, suzerainty.
Numbers merely desired to take revenge for the oppression of their religion, and the many other injustices which they had suffered. The seizure of Dublin Castle was to be the first move, and immediately afterwards there were to be risings in various parts of the country. The secret was revealed by what might be called an accident. On October 22nd, 1641,8 man named Owen Connolly sought an interview with the Lord Justice Parsons, and revealed to him the whole plot, or at least its outline.
He had been told of it, he declared, by Colonel Hugh Og Mac Mahon, with whom he had been drinking. Mac M.hon and Lord Maguire were at once arrested, the Castle garrison strengthened, all strangers ordered to depart from the city, and the gates shut. Thus, the plan of the rising was frustrated as far as Dublin was concerned, but it broke out elsewhere, according to the arrangement which had been made by the leaders.
The outbreak found the Irish Government absolutely unprepared. The army was inadequate, ill-disciplined and scattered ; the soldiers discontented, clamouring constantly for food, clothing and pay. The Lord Justices kept writing frantically to England for assistance. The authorities across the Channel had, however, their own domestic problems encouraging for the English officials. Sir Phelim O’Neill had overrun Ulster with very little opposition, and, with the exception of a few towns and the parts of the north-east inhabited by the Scotch, the whole province was in his hands.
In the other provinces there had been important risings, and every day brought news of the defection to the rebel ranks of some extensive landowner and his followers. The Protestant Planters were everywhere expelled, and even those of lower rank, tenants and townsfolk, were in a great many instances robbed of their possessions and ill-treated. What number actually perished, either murdered by the rebels or in consequence of the treatment which they received, is a question which has been often debated, and on which no certain decision can be arrived at.
The first reports, widely circulated and generally believed, gave the figures as 300,000, 200,000, 150,000 or 100,000. These were, however, gross exaggerations. There were not, in point of fact, 300,000 Protestants at that time in Ireland, and it cannot be denied that so many survived that the subsequent history of the war does not reveal any serious diminution in their numbers. The best authorities, after careful investigation of the extant evidence, have arrived at a total of about 4,000 actually slain—otherwise, of course, than in battle—and perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 who’ lost their lives by cold and hunger. They consider that, straining all points, these figures are the highest that can possibly be maintained.
This record, deplorable as it is, must not be regarded as convicting the Catholics of bigotry and intolerance. From any desire to persecute persons of other creeds for their religious beliefs the Catholics of Ireland have always been singularly free. On the other hand, nothing seems to so rouse a desire for revenge in the breast of the Irishman as the seizure and alienation of the land which he regards as his own, especially if that land had been possessed by generations of his ancestors. It was from agrarian motives of this kind that the murders mostly originated.
The victims of 1641, with few exceptions, suffered not as Protestants, but as Planters, or the kin of Planters. Almost all the acts of violence against life and property of which we hear took place in the first months of the insurrection. As soon as it was organised and controlled by responsible leaders, they practically ceased—on the Irish side.
The assertion was made by the insurgents in their proclamations that they had not risen against the authority of the King, but merely to obtain redress of their grievances. This was, of course, ignored by the Irish authorities, and cannot, indeed, be said to have deserved much attention.
