Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An act for the better execution of His Majesty's gracious declaration for the Settlement of his Kingdom of Ireland, and the satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, soldiers, and other his subjects there. |
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Citation | 14 & 15 Chas. 2 Sess. 4. c. 2 (I) |
Dates | |
Repealed | 1829 |
Other legislation | |
Repealed by | Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 |
Status: Repealed |
The Act of Settlement 1662 (14 & 15 Chas. 2 Sess. 4. c. 2 (I)) was passed by the Irish Parliament in Dublin. It was a partial reversal of the Cromwellian Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652, which punished Irish Catholics and Royalists for fighting against the English Parliament in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms by the wholesale confiscation of their lands and property. The Act describes itself An act for the better execution of His Majesty's gracious declaration for the Settlement of his Kingdom of Ireland, and the satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, [lower-alpha 1] soldiers, and other his subjects there.
When the Rump Parliament in London passed the Act of Settlement 1652 after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, its purpose was two-fold. First, it was to provide for summary execution of the leaders and supporters of the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Second, it was to confiscate sufficient land in Ireland as was necessary to repay the loans advanced by the City of London under the Adventurers' Acts of the 1640s to pay for the war, and to reward the soldiers who had engaged in the war, almost all of whom sold on their interests to third parties. By 1652 the policy was achieved by the confiscation of almost all Catholic-owned land in Ireland, something that also served to punish Irish Catholics for their rebellion and war against Parliament.
The Act of 1652 said (paragraphs VI, VII VIII) that anyone who fought against the parliament in Ireland during the civil wars would lose some lands.
In practice, Protestant Royalists in Ireland could avoid confiscation by paying fines, while Catholics could not. Although some Parliamentarians talked about deporting all of the Irish to Connacht, in fact, they only ever got around to the land-owning class. The 1652 Act ordered that all confiscated lands east of the Shannon (Ulster, Leinster and Munster) be cleared and the inhabitants transplant themselves to the west (to Connacht and County Clare), to be replaced by English Puritans (who were later to be known as Dissenters). As a result of this Settlement, Irish Catholic landholding fell from 60% before the Irish Confederate Wars to 8–9% during the Cromwellian Commonwealth (mostly in Connacht).
A number of formerly Catholic landowners also saved their land by converting to the state religion.
On the Irish Restoration of the Monarchy, those (notably the Duke of Ormonde) who had taken the Royalist side pleaded with the King for the injustices to be undone. Accordingly, the Parliament of Ireland (in Dublin) passed a new Act of Settlement 1662 which ordered that the Cromwellian settlers give up a portion of their allotted land to "Old English" and "innocent Catholics", as would be determined by Commissioners.
However, the Irish Parliament was still Protestant only, until the session of 1666, as Catholics had been barred from voting or standing for election under the Commonwealth. As a result, the Parliament amended the Act of Settlement 1652 so that land could be returned to "innocent Catholics" –that is ones who had been Royalists in the civil wars and had not carried out massacres of English Protestants –but only on the condition that the Cromwellian settlers be compensated with an equal amount of land elsewhere in Ireland. Since there was simply not enough land available for this to work, only the richer or grander Catholic landowners recovered their estates under this act. These included the Viscount Dillon, [1] Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty, Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin, Luke, the heir of Christopher Plunket, 2nd Earl of Fingall and Edmund Butler, 4th Viscount Mountgarret.
A further complication arose as the buyers of confiscated land in 1652–59 were third parties who expected that their purchases for cash were legal and were protected by privity of contract. This act was passed on 30 May 1662. [2]
Also in 1662 the Irish version of the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 was enacted, that formally ended Feudalism in Ireland.
Act of Explanation 1665 | |
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Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act for the Explaning of some Doubts, Arising upon an Act Intituled, "An Act for the better Execution of His Majesty's Gracious Declaration, for the Settlement of His Kingdom of Ireland, and Satisfaction of the several Interests of Adventurers Soldiers and other His Subjects;" and for making some Alterations of, and Additions unto the said Act, for the more Speedy and Effectual Settlement of the said Kingdom. |
Citation | 17 & 18 Chas. 2. c. 2 (I) |
Territorial extent | Kingdom of Ireland |
A Court of Claims, headed by Sir Richard Raynsford, was set up to investigate who was eligible for recovery of their lands. Unfortunately, the Commissioners found that too many Catholics were "innocent" and a further Act of Explanation 1665 (17 & 18 Chas. 2. c. 2 (I)) was needed to find a workable solution. The Act of Explanation stated that Cromwellian settlers (with some named exceptions) had to give up one-third of the lands they had received after 1652 to compensate innocent Catholics. [3] This was a very complicated process, as most of the new owners had bought their land from the Cromwellian grantees, and so numerous contracts had to be unwound. Many of these buyers were not settlers but people who had already been living in Ireland before 1641.
By this measure, what has been described as a "favoured minority" of Irish Catholics – mostly Old English Royalists – recovered all or most of their pre-war estates. Examples of this include Ormonde and his relatives, and supporters like Richard Bellings or Randal MacDonnell, 1st Marquess of Antrim. The people who had been militant Irish Confederates during the wars – who had rejected an alliance with the English Royalists, or sought better terms from Charles I in return for an alliance – got little or nothing from the settlement. Many of them regarded it as a betrayal by the Stuart monarchy, which they all had fought for at some point in the Civil Wars. The Catholic poet Dáibhí Ó Bruadair concluded that the Restoration was "Purgatory" for Irish Catholics, while the former Confederate and Catholic Bishop Nicholas French wrote a pamphlet about Charles II titled, The Unkind Deserter of Loyal men and true Friends.
In 1600, Catholics had owned 90 per cent of land in Ireland, by 1641, this was 41 per cent (the fall due largely to the rise of the Plantation of Ulster) but by the time of the accession of James II in 1685, after the Cromwellian Settlement, the proportion of Irish land owned by Catholics had fallen to 22 per cent; after the restrictive Treaty of Limerick (1691), that number had been reduced to 14 per cent, and by 1800, after more restrictive anti-Catholic Penal Laws, the number fell further to just 5 per cent. [4] [5] However, many of the 95% in 1800 had been Catholic and changed religion to keep their lands, such as the Barons of Dunsany.
Many Protestants in Ireland felt that the Restoration Settlements were far too lenient towards those Irish Catholics who had rebelled against the sovereignty of King Charles in 1641 and had been justly punished for it by the loss of their property and power. They had bought their new properties at market rates, competing against other bidders, and expected that privity of contract would apply as usual. As in England and Scotland, the Irish Restoration of 1660 had occurred without bloodshed because of their approval.
Professor Ohlmeyer has found (2012) that the matter of religion was not as important as one's rank in the 1660s. Richer and grander families tended to be supported by King Charles, regardless of religion. Some Protestant landed families were crypto-Catholics. Other grantees included the King's brother James, Duke of York, who was awarded 130,000 acres in Ireland and became a Catholic. The final awards of land were not concluded by King Charles until about 1670. [6]
As neither "side" was happy with the outcome, and as the Irish gentry remained divided, the next conflict engendered much more radical proposals by each side. In 1689 James II's Patriot Parliament approved an Act of Attainder in which 2,000 (some say 3,000) of the newer landowners would be dispossessed without compensation. The Cromwellian Settlement of 1652 was repealed and all lands taken after the 1641 Rebellion would revert to the heirs of the former owners. The supporters of William III and Mary II, who won the war, proposed to indict over 3,900 of their enemies and confiscate their property, and in the ensuing "Williamite Settlement" over 2,000 lost their property to the "Commissioners of Forfeitures" which was sold on in the 1690s. [7]
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ignored (help)Lieutenant-General James FitzThomas Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, KG, PC, was an Anglo-Irish statesman and soldier, known as Earl of Ormond from 1634 to 1642 and Marquess of Ormond from 1642 to 1661. Following the failure of the senior line of the Butler family, he was the second representative of the Kilcash branch to inherit the earldom.
The Irish House of Lords was the upper house of the Parliament of Ireland that existed from medieval times until the end of 1800. It was also the final court of appeal of the Kingdom of Ireland.
Sir Hardress Waller was born in Kent and settled in Ireland during the 1630s. A first cousin of Parliamentarian general William Waller, he fought for Parliament in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, becoming a leading member of the radical element within the New Model Army. In 1649, he signed the death warrant for the Execution of Charles I, and after the Stuart Restoration in 1660 was condemned to death as a regicide.
The Irish Confederate Wars, also called the Eleven Years' War, took place in Ireland between 1641 and 1653. It was the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars in the kingdoms of Ireland, England and Scotland – all ruled by Charles I. The conflict had political, religious and ethnic aspects and was fought over governance, land ownership, religious freedom and religious discrimination. The main issues were whether Irish Catholics or British Protestants held most political power and owned most of the land, and whether Ireland would be a self-governing kingdom under Charles I or subordinate to the parliament in England. It was the most destructive conflict in Irish history and caused 200,000–600,000 deaths from fighting as well as war-related famine and disease.
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes known as the British Civil Wars, were a series of intertwined conflicts fought between 1639 and 1653 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, then separate entities united in a personal union under Charles I. They include the 1639 to 1640 Bishops' Wars, the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish War of 1650–1652. They resulted in victory for the Parliamentarian army, the execution of Charles I, the abolition of monarchy, and founding of the Commonwealth of England, a unitary state which controlled the British Isles until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.
The Irish Rebellion of 1641 was an uprising by Catholics in Ireland, whose demands included an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater Irish self-governance, and return of confiscated Catholic lands. Its timing was partially driven by the dispute between Charles I and his opponents—the English Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters—which the rebels feared would lead to an invasion and further anti-Catholic measures. Beginning as an attempted coup d'état by Catholic gentry and military officers, it developed into a widespread rebellion and ethnic conflict with English and Scottish Protestant settlers. It led to the 1641–1653 Irish Confederate Wars, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, with up to 20% of the Irish population becoming casualties.
Confederate Ireland, also referred to as the Irish Catholic Confederation, was a period of Irish Catholic self-government between 1642 and 1652, during the Eleven Years' War. Formed by Catholic aristocrats, landed gentry, clergy and military leaders after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the Confederates controlled up to two-thirds of Ireland from their base in Kilkenny; hence it is sometimes called the "Confederation of Kilkenny".
The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland or Cromwellian war in Ireland (1649–1653) was the re-conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Cromwell invaded Ireland with the New Model Army on behalf of England's Rump Parliament in August 1649.
The Act for the Setling of Ireland imposed penalties including death and land confiscation against Irish civilians and combatants after the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and subsequent unrest. British historian John Morrill wrote that the Act and associated forced movements represented "perhaps the greatest exercise in ethnic cleansing in early modern Europe."
Sir Richard Bellings (1613–1677) was a lawyer and political figure in 17th century Ireland and in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He is best known for his participation in Confederate Ireland, a short-lived independent Irish state, in which he served on the governing body called the Supreme Council. In later life, he also wrote a history of the Confederate period, which is one of the best historical sources on the Confederation.
Plantations in 16th- and 17th-century Ireland involved the confiscation of Irish-owned land by the English Crown and the colonisation of this land with settlers from Great Britain. The Crown saw the plantations as a means of controlling, anglicising and 'civilising' Gaelic Ireland. The main plantations took place from the 1550s to the 1620s, the biggest of which was the plantation of Ulster. The plantations led to the founding of many towns, massive demographic, cultural and economic changes, changes in land ownership and the landscape, and also to centuries of ethnic and sectarian conflict. They took place before and during the earliest English colonisation of the Americas, and a group known as the West Country Men were involved in both Irish and American colonization.
Ulick MacRichard Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, 5th Earl of Clanricarde, 2nd Earl of St Albans, styled Lord Dunkellin until 1635, was an Anglo-Irish nobleman who was involved in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A Catholic Royalist who had overall command of the Irish forces during the later stages of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, he was created Marquess of Clanricarde (1646).
Ireland during the period of 1536–1691 saw the first full conquest of the island by England and its colonization with mostly Protestant settlers from Great Britain. This would eventually establish two central themes in future Irish history: subordination of the country to London-based governments and sectarian animosity between Catholics and Protestants. The period saw Irish society outside of the Pale transform from a locally driven, intertribal, clan-based Gaelic structure to a centralised, monarchical, state-governed society, similar to those found elsewhere in Europe. The period is bounded by the dates 1536, when King Henry VIII deposed the FitzGerald dynasty as Lords Deputies of Ireland, and 1691, when the Catholic Jacobites surrendered at Limerick, thus confirming Protestant dominance in Ireland. This is sometimes called the early modern period.
Patriot Parliament is the name commonly used for the Irish Parliament session called by King James II during the Williamite War in Ireland which lasted from 1688 to 1691. The first since 1666, it held only one session, which lasted from 7 May 1689 to 20 July 1689. Irish nationalist historian Sir Charles Gavan Duffy first used the term Patriot Parliament in 1893.
The Adventurers' Act was an Act of the Parliament of England which specified its aim as "the speedy and effectual reducing of the rebels in His Majesty's Kingdom of Ireland".
Francis Lascelles (1612-1667), also spelt Lassels, was an English politician, soldier and businessman who fought for Parliament in the 1639-1652 Wars of the Three Kingdoms and was a Member of Parliament between 1645 and 1660.
Presented below is a chronology of the major events of the Irish Confederate Wars from 1641 to 1653. This conflict is also known as the Eleven Years War. The conflict began with the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and ended with the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–53).
The Restoration of the monarchy began in 1660. The Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland (1649–1660) resulted from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms but collapsed in 1659. Politicians such as General Monck tried to ensure a peaceful transition of government from the "Commonwealth" republic back to monarchy. From 1 May 1660 the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under King Charles II. The term Restoration may apply both to the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and to the period immediately before and after the event.
This is a timeline of events leading up to, culminating in, and resulting from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
John Ponsonby (1608–1678) was a colonel in Oliver Cromwell's army during the Irish Confederate Wars, a member of parliament for two different Irish counties following the Parliamentarian's victory and a significant landowner granted confiscated properties in Counties Donegal, Kilkenny and Limerick.