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Munster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, in the south of Ireland. In early Ireland, the Kingdom of Munster was one of the kingdoms of Gaelic Ireland ruled by a "king of over-kings". Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into counties for administrative and judicial purposes. In later centuries, local government legislation has seen further sub-division of the historic counties.
Irish people are an ethnic group and nation native to the island of Ireland, who share a common history and culture. There have been humans in Ireland for about 33,000 years, and it has been continually inhabited for more than 10,000 years. For most of Ireland's recorded history, the Irish have been primarily a Gaelic people. From the 9th century, small numbers of Vikings settled in Ireland, becoming the Norse-Gaels. Anglo-Normans also conquered parts of Ireland in the 12th century, while England's 16th/17th century conquest and colonisation of Ireland brought many English and Lowland Scots to parts of the island, especially the north. Today, Ireland is made up of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland hold various national identities including British, Irish, Northern Irish or some combination thereof.
The Plantation of Ulster was the organised colonisation (plantation) of Ulster – a province of Ireland – by people from Great Britain during the reign of King James I. Most of the settlers came from southern Scotland and northern England; their culture differed from that of the native Irish. Small privately funded plantations by wealthy landowners began in 1606, while the official plantation began in 1609. Most of the colonised land had been confiscated from the native Gaelic chiefs, several of whom had fled Ireland for mainland Europe in 1607 following the Nine Years' War against English rule. The official plantation comprised an estimated half a million acres (2,000 km2) of arable land in counties Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal, and Londonderry. Land in counties Antrim, Down, and Monaghan was privately colonised with the king's support.
The Irish Rebellion of 1641 was a Catholic-led uprising 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 political dispute between Charles I and his opponents in England and Scotland, 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 ultimately resulted in the 1641 to 1652 Irish Confederate Wars, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, with up to 20% of the Irish population becoming casualties.
The Desmond Rebellions occurred in 1569–1573 and 1579–1583 in the Irish province of Munster. They were rebellions by the Earl of Desmond, the head of the FitzGerald dynasty in Munster, and his followers, the Geraldines and their allies, against the threat of the extension of the English government over the province. The rebellions were motivated primarily by the desire to maintain the independence of feudal lords from their monarch but also had an element of religious antagonism between Catholic Geraldines and the Protestant English state. They culminated in the destruction of the Desmond dynasty and the plantation or colonisation of Munster with English Protestant settlers. 'Desmond' is the Anglicisation of the Irish Deasmumhain, meaning 'South Munster' In addition to the Scorched Earth policy, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Warham St Leger, Perrot and later Nicholas Malby and Lord Grey and William Pelham, deliberately targeted civilians. Woman and children, the elderly or infirm or even those of diminished mental capacity. This was done regardless of whether they were pro the Desmonds or not. It was considered a good policy to terrorise the native population. The American author Richard Berleth covers it in great detail in his book the twilight Lords.
The Nine Years' War, sometimes called Tyrone's Rebellion, took place in Ireland from 1593 to 1603. It was fought between an Irish alliance—led mainly by Hugh O'Neill of Tyrone and Hugh Roe O'Donnell of Tyrconnell—against English rule in Ireland, and was a response to the ongoing Tudor conquest of Ireland. The war was fought in all parts of the country, but mainly in the northern province of Ulster. The Irish alliance won some important early victories, such as the Battle of Clontibret (1595) and the Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598), but the English won a victory against the alliance and their Spanish allies in the siege of Kinsale (1601–02). The war ended with the Treaty of Mellifont (1603). Many of the defeated northern lords left Ireland to seek support for a new uprising in the Flight of the Earls (1607), never to return. This marked the end of Gaelic Ireland and led to the Plantation of Ulster.
The Eóganachta or Eoghanachta were an Irish dynasty centred on Cashel which dominated southern Ireland from the 6/7th to the 10th centuries, and following that, in a restricted form, the Kingdom of Desmond, and its offshoot Carbery, to the late 16th century. By tradition the dynasty was founded by Conall Corc but named after his ancestor Éogan, the firstborn son of the semi-mythological 3rd-century king Ailill Aulom. This dynastic clan-name, for it was never in any sense a 'surname,' should more accurately be restricted to those branches of the royal house which descended from Conall Corc, who established Cashel as his royal seat in the late 5th century.
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."
Florence MacCarthy (1560–1640), was an Irish prince of the late 16th century and the last credible claimant to the Mac Carthaig Mór title before its suppression by English authority. Mac Carthaig's involvement in the Nine Years' War (1595–1603) led to his arrest by the Crown, and he spent the last 40 years of his life in custody in London. His lands were distributed among his relatives and English colonists.
The Tudor conquestof Ireland took place under the Tudor dynasty, which held the Kingdom of England during the 16th century. Following a failed rebellion against the crown by Silken Thomas, the Earl of Kildare, in the 1530s, Henry VIII was declared King of Ireland in 1542 by statute of the Parliament of Ireland, with the aim of restoring such central authority as had been lost throughout the country during the previous two centuries. Several people who helped establish the Plantations of Ireland also played a part later in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country men.
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.
Sir Valentine Browne, of Croft, Lincolnshire, was auditor, treasurer and victualler of Berwick-upon-Tweed. He acquired large estates in Ireland during the Plantation of Munster, in particular the seignory of Molahiffe. He lived at Ross Castle near Killarney, County Kerry. He was MP in three English and one Irish parliaments.
The Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583) was the more widespread and bloody of the two Desmond Rebellions in Ireland launched by the FitzGerald Dynasty of Desmond in Munster against English rule. The second rebellion began in July 1579 when James FitzMaurice FitzGerald landed in Ireland with a force of Papal troops, triggering an insurrection across the south of Ireland on the part of the Desmond dynasty, their allies, and others who were dissatisfied for various reasons with English government of the country. The rebellion ended with the 1583 death of Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, and the defeat of the rebels.
Donal III O'Donovan, The O'Donovan of Clancahill, born before 1584, was the son of Helena de Barry and Donal II O'Donovan, The O'Donovan of Clancahill. From the inauguration of his father in 1584 to the date of his own accession to the chiefship in 1639, the O'Donovan family had risen to become one of the most prominent Gaelic families remaining in all the province of South Munster or Desmond, from a position of semi-obscurity in the mid-16th century, although this was in part due to the misfortunes and sad decline of several once more prominent families, as happens in all ages. Donal II had also been an aggressive seizer of lands during and especially following the Nine Years' War and his son's inheritance, thought to have been approaching 100,000 acres, was colossal for a Gaelic family of the time. His father also living to a great age, Donal III is believed to have been in his late 50s or early 60s when he began his career as Lord of Clancahill. He died in 1660 at the age of 80 or greater.
Sir Henry Ughtred or Oughtred was a merchant and shipbuilder during the reign of Elizabeth I. One of his ships, the Leicester sailed with Sir Francis Drake against the Spanish Armada. He was elected MP for the seat of Marlborough in 1584 and of Great Bedwyn in 1589. A wealthy landowner, Ughtred played an active role in the Plantations of Ireland and was knighted by the Lord Deputy in 1593. He was the son of Sir Anthony Ughtred and Elizabeth Seymour, sister to Jane, the third wife of Henry VIII. Sometime after 1557 he married Elizabeth, widow of Sir William Courtenay and daughter of John Paulet, 2nd Marquess of Winchester.
Hugh Cuffe was an English-born merchant, soldier and landowner in Ireland. Along with his brother Philip Cuffe he took part in the Plantation of Munster in the 1580s that followed the defeat of the Desmond Rebellion. Cuffe was assigned lands at Kilmore in northern County Cork. Cuffe was one of the landowners who lost territory due to legal challenges from local Old English inhabitants who successfully claimed that the land belonged to them. This was a common occurrence at the time as people were able to show they had land wrongly confiscated from them although they had not taken part in the rebellion. The loss of this land led Cuffe to abandon plans to settle large numbers of Dutch settlers on part of his estate.
Sir Francis Slingsby (1569–1651) was an English-born soldier who settled in Ireland following service as an officer during the Nine Years' War.
Sir Christopher Peyton was an English lawyer known for his service in Ireland where he oversaw the Peyton Survey, a preliminary investigation in preparation for the Plantation of Munster. He was made Auditor General of Ireland, and knighted by James I for his service. He was the younger son of Christopher Peyton of St Edmundsbury; his mother, Joanna (Mildmay) Peyton, was the sister of Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Robert Payne was an English planter who settled in Munster, Ireland and became an advocate of the plantations of Munster.
Sir George Oughtred Courtenay, 1st Baronet, of Newcastle was an Irish landowner and soldier. He defended Limerick at the siege of 1642 during the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
References
- ↑ MacCarthy-Morrogh p.4-16
