The Insurrection Of 1641

Although they had many grievances, being, almost without exception, Catholics, the Lords of the Pale, and most of the Anglo-Irish nobility and gentry elsewhere at first hesitated to join the revolt. On their treatment by the Government authorities their future action would, to a great extent, depend. The Lord Justices, by so wording their first Proclamation as to make it appear that they considered the conspiracy as one of the ” Irish Papists ” in general; by receiving with marked coldness the professions of loyalty of some of the Palesmen, and by denying to several the arms which were absolutely necessary for the defence of their homes and families, certainly showed little discretion ; but their position was, without doubt, a difficult one.
They were aware that these men had little reason to feel attachment to the English Government; that the relatives of many of them were in actual rebellion, and they knew not whom to trust.

The determining factors which induced so many of the Anglo-Irish to throw in their lot with the insurgents were probably : first, the ruthless murders and destruction of property of which the Government troops were guilty ; secondly, the constant insults to their religion, and threats of persecution of it, uttered in the English Parliament and else¬where ; thirdly, the inclusion of the estates of many of them in the list made by the English authorities of the land to be confiscated after the repression of the rebellion (February, 1642).

In December, 1642, seven of the Pale Lords met by appointment five delegates from the insurgents, headed by Rory O’More, on the hill of Crofty near Drogheda. O’More stated the grievances which had induced them to rebel. He protested that they were not disloyal to the King, and begged the Palesmen to join with them in the cause of their country and their religion.

Above: A PICTURE OF THOMAS WENTWORTH The EARL OF STRAFFORD, 1641.

AFTER the fall of Strafford the Irish Government was administered by two Lord Justices, Parsons and Borlase. Both were supposed to be Puritanical in their sympathies, and soon they made themselves most unpopular. Both opposed the concessions to the Catholics, which Charles, anxious for the support of the latter, seemed now willing to grant. The whole country was in a state of dangerous unrest. Numbers of disbanded soldiers wandered about, without employment or means of support. The Connacht landowners knew not when the decrees which the late Viceroy had obtained against them might be put in force. Those of the other provinces felt that, when such remote Crown claims had been admitted, no Irish proprietor anywhere was secure of his estate.The generation which remembered the Ulster plantation was yet by no means extinct; plenty of old men and women remained to tell to their grandchildren the tales of their sufferings in those evil days ; to kindle in their minds the desire of vengeance, and the hope of wresting the fields which their ancestors had tilled from the hands of the stranger. Over in England the anti-Catholie feeling was growing. Seven priests had been executed in London, merely for saying Mass.

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.