Irish History Timeline

Contents

Early Ireland: 8000 BC - fourth century AD
Early Christianity to the Arrival of the Vikings
The Viking Age
The Normans in Ireland
Erosion of English Power in Ireland
The Tudor Era
The Plantation of Ulster
Cromwell and the Restoration
Into the Eighteenth Century
Growth of Political Unrest in the Later Eighteenth Century
The Act of Union and its Consequences
Daniel O'Connell and the Catholic Association
The Great Famine
The Revolt of the Young Irelanders
The Rise of Fenianism
Charles Stuart Parnell and Land Reform
The Gaelic Cultural Movement
The Ulster Covenant
The Easter Rising
The War of Independence
The Civil War
The Rise of Fianna Fáil
Ireland in the 1940s
Ireland in the 1950s and early 1960s
The Troubles
Ireland in the Twenty-First Century
Latest Events

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Early Ireland: 8000 BC - fourth century AD

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8000 BC	Around this time the first men arrived in Scotland. Ireland was not originally Celtic but Neolithic. The Celts were to arrive during the of the millennium BC, and absorbed much of Neolithic culture. Estimates as to when the Gaels arrived range from 4000 BC to the first few centuries BC.
3000 BC	Tombs from this period have been found in passage-graves in the Boyne valley. At this time, Ireland was a simple agricultural society. Irish art had begun to develop. The people had come as invaders, and more invaders followed from Britain, France and Spain. Ornaments, coins and weaponry from the Bronze and Iron Age have been uncovered by archaeologists. The Romans never conquered Ireland, although it is a matter of controversy whether they actually set foot on the island. Ireland was a society of independent tribal kingdoms who lived by agriculture, raiding and fighting with continuous shifts in alliances. The early pagan Gaels’ High Kings have left behind raths (ring forts) on the Hill of Tara. They claimed to be rulers of all Ireland but weren’t so in a modern way. Rather, they spend time defending their symbolic title against other king s. Despite tribal groupings, the people shared the Brehon Law, a common history, oral poetry, music and language. They referred to themselves as ‘men of Ireland’ and shared a cultural identity which could be thought of as a form of nationhood. Celtic culture involved druids, bardic praise-poetry and clientship. The Irish language was heavily influenced by pre-Celtic tongues. Cults and occupations were carried over from Neolithic times. Some tribes such as the Brigante s lived in both Britain and Ireland. Britain and Ireland shared languages, dominant aristocracies and populations (like the Cruithin/Picti).
4th Century	Rome influenced Ireland more in the fourth century and after. As the Romans lost their grip on Britain, the Irish and Picts began to invade.
367 AD	The Irish, Picts and Saxons launched a concerted raid on Britain.

Early Christianity to the Arrival of the Vikings

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Late 4th / Early 5th C	Christian missionaries arrived, probably from Gaul. Irish settlements began in the west of Britain. North and south-west Wales, Cornwell and Devon were colonised. The most successful colony was the Dál-Riata in Scotland. Colonisation and raids on Britain influenced Irish culture. Romanisation began in the fifth century, derived from the Romano-British culture of western Britain. The Ogham alphabet clearly came from Latin.
431 AD	Palladius went as bishop to ‘the Irish who believe in Christ’. This was to oppose the Pelagian heresy.
432 AD	St Patrick arrived to convert the kings. Conversion was slow, although St Patrick was not the only missionary. A Gaelic-Christian golden age was to follow. St Patrick was a Romano-Briton who had been enslaved by Irish raiders, before escaping and turning to religion. He drove out traditional pagan rites, leading to a fusion of Gaelic culture with Christianity. Irish Christianity ‘shone like a beacon in Europe’ after the fall of Rome. The seventh and eighth centuries saw a Gaelic golden age when Irish history was documented and great works of art were fashioned.
500s	Christianity matured slowly in a stable society. The king of Tara in the middle of the sixth century was still pagan. Monasticism made strides during this century, influenced by the British church. Monasteries were originally strict retreats from the world, but became wealthy and influential, bearing a rich literary and artistic culture. As time passed the monasteries grew into little cities with a variety of inhabitants. Provincial kings lived in some of them. Several monasteries owned huge tracts of land and were ruled by worldly and wealthy abbots. Irish schools in the late sixth and seventh centuries achieved great scholarship, and many poets and lawyers were also clerics. Laws were created for church and secular society. The problem of inherited non-Christian customs, ‘fenechas’, was resolved by regarding it as the Old Testament of their race, cleansed by St Patrick. New laws were influenced by the Biblical Old Testament.
600s	During this time, the cult of St Patrick spread. A prehistory of the Irish race was written to unite all the people of Ireland. All people were supposed to be descended from the same ancestors, and Irish was constructed from the best elements of the Tower of Babel.The concept of a kingship of Ireland first appeared and the Uí Neíll claimed kingship over all Ireland, over all provincial kings, although they never achieved their goal. Numerous shifts in power and boundary changes occurred. Another powerful tribe to fight against the Uí Neíll were the Eóganacht.
600s – 800s	The arts (metal-work, illumination, calligraphy) flowered in the monasteries. Iona and Armagh were the greatest ecclesiastical power-centres. Iona was founded by Columba and Armagh by Patrick. The church’s power structure was complex, with individual churches being highly independent. Some were free while others were owned by aristocrats or monasteries. Churches could be tiny or vast monasteries. Bishops were appointed to oversee the clergy. The relationship between church and people was a contract with mutual obligations. The church supplied religious services while the people paid dues. Three social classes existed during this age – kings, lords and commoners. Lords were wealthy and had clients (bondsmen). Commoners were freemen with full legal rights and their own land. Some were well off (the bóaire). There were also landless men and hereditary serfs. Status was important in the legal system – rights and legal compensations depended on it. Under clientship, lords granted the client a fief (goods) and protection; the client made payments to the lord. There was free and base clientship – free clients were often nobles, and took a share in their lord’s plunder. Base clientship was like a loan, from which the lord came out best. Slavery was extensive. The family, not the individual, was the legal unit – extended family, not conjugal family, which meant the male-line descendants of a great-grandfather. Divorce and polygamy were common, going back to the pre-Augustinian attitudes to marriage. Polygamy remained until the end of the Middle Ages. With nobles having many children, these slipped socially downwards and displaced the commoners. The population was between half and one million. Much of the land was wilderness and uninhabited. The more powerful – any farmers with land – owned ringforts to protect their farms. Land was farmed in strips; milk and dairy was important. The upper classes ate a lot of meat, which formed a normal part of clients’ payments. Grain was also vital – oat for porridge, barley for ale and bread. Vegetables were grown on a small scale and wild fruit and nuts were important in people’s diet. Famine was common, coupled with disease, social disorder and internal migration. Epidemics occurred repeatedly. Kings played a key role. In their sagas, they are semi-sacred. There were three grades of king. The lowest grade were on their way out in the 700s. The church backed the kings of provinces in their dynastic struggles, and the kings defended the church. The churchmen developed the idea of the ordained and consecrated king; they wrote that the king should be obeyed and respected, but should not tax too much.

The Viking Age

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793	Lindisfarne attacked by Vikings.
795	The first Vikings arrived in Ireland, pirates led by aristocrats. Their first targets included Rathlin and Iona. They harassed Irish homesteads and monasteries for more than a century, meeting no organised national resistance.
798	St Patrick’s Island monastery was smashed.
800s	By the middle of this century, the Dál Riata had control of all Pictland, uniting Scotland under Kenneth mac Alpine. Viking traders brought slaves into Ireland from now until the 1000s.
802	Burning of Iona.
806	Another massacre at Iona, in which 68 monks died. More attacks followed. The Irish had some successes in striking back.
830s	Viking raids became more intense.
836	The first known inland raid took place.
840	Vikings began setting up defended bases and their attacks became so intense that it seemed the country was about to be conquered. The Irish kings and abbots counter-attacked with growing success.
842	First Viking-Irish alliance. These alliances became common.
Mid 9th C	Dublin became the most important Viking city.
860s	The Vikings turned to England.
914 – 930s	Second Viking period. After beating the Uí Neílls, the Dublin Vikings were powerful for a while. No great monasteries were ever destroyed, even in Dublin. The Vikings didn’t cause the passing of the ‘old order’ and weren’t actually responsible for the abuses of the church they have been blamed for, such as married clergy. The monasteries, through their associations with aristocratic families, were often involved in battle already. Churches were also attacked for their supplies during famines.
928	Viking massacre at Dunmore Cave, Kilkenny.
940s – 960s	Dublin boomed as a great European trading city. While in Scotland the incomers were farmers and fishermen, in Ireland they were merchants and seamen. The Uí Neíll clan was locked in an internal power struggle during this time.
956 - 980	Domnall ua Néill was King of Tara, High King of Ireland.
976	Brian Boru became king of the Dal Cais, becoming a serious rival to the Uí Neílls. Supported by the Ostmen, he conquered Dublin and Leinster, and then the whole country.
1002	Boru demanded that Mael Sechnaill recognise him as King of Ireland.
1005	Brian Boru was declared Emperor of the Irish at Armagh.
1014	Brian Boru defeated the Vikings at Clontarf. The army he fought contained both Norsemen from Dublin and Leinster Irishmen. Boru was not supported by the other great kings, and he himself was killed by a Danish king named Brodar.
	Gradually the Norsemen became part of Ireland. They build the first Irish towns such as Arklow and Wexford, intermarried with Gaelic Irish and settled into a Gaelic pattern of warring kings.
11^th/12^th C	The Irish church was beginning to look old-fashioned. The abbots, usually laymen, were too powerful. The laity attitude to marriage was also criticised. A general reorganisation took place, giving the church its current diocesan organisation. A national church under Armagh was created. Foreign orders, especially the Cistercians, took over the monasteries. Irish literature, culture and learning suffered. The church scholars moved out and clerical lawyers became secularised.
1014 – 1022	Mael Sechnaill II acted as ‘high king’ of Ireland. Provincial kings were growing more powerful; warfare increased. More administrators were needed to mind kingdoms in the king’s absence. Kings were granting away large territories and carving them up between their supporters. They also made laws and imposed taxes. They granted land in return for homage and military service.
1086 – 1114	Ireland's most powerful king was Muirchertach O’Brien.
(Late 11^th C)	Trade began to focus on Anglo-Norman Britain and on France. Chester and Bristol traded with Dublin. The rest of Ireland followed, and the resultant economic dependence meant that the Irish kings showed devotion to Henry I. Dublin was also a recruiting ground for Norse warriors who would help any side in the competition for supreme power.
1140	Turlough O’Connor (Toirdelbach Ua Conchobair), king of Connacht, was the greatest Irish warrior king of this century. From 1140 he devoted his energies to becoming supreme king.
1152	Dublin became a metropolitan archbishopric. Previously it had been a diocese subject to Canterbury while the rest of the church was dominated by hereditary lay abbots.

The Normans In Ireland

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1156	Rory O’Connor, son of Turlough O'Connor, succeeded to high king of Ireland.
1161	King Dermot’s brother-in-law, Lawrence O'Tool or Lorcán Ó Tuathail, was appointed archbishop. The Dubliners themselves had killed Dermot’s father and preferred O’Connor to MacMurrough. O’Connor joined forces with Tiernan O’Rourke and MacMurrough was dethroned.
	The English had occasionally considered invading Ireland. Canterbury may have raised the subject after losing metropolitan rights over the see of Dublin in 1152. The pope invested Henry II with the right to rule Ireland, but Henry’s grip on England was still insecure.
1166	Rory O’Connor had himself inaugurated king at Dublin. However, Dublin was suited to act as capital to Leinster, ruled by Dermot MacMurrough. MacMurrough approached Henry for help. Henry authorised his subjects to aid him. MacMurrough promised his Cambro-Norman supporters land and his daughter in marriage.
1169 – 71	The Cambro-Normans re-conquered all Leinster. Henry II withdrew consent when he saw how successful his invasion was, but Strongbow (earl of Pembroke) made himself lord of Leinster.
1170	(May 1st) A small party of Normans, Strongbow's soldiers, landed at Baginbun at the invitation of Dermot MacMurrough. They built a vast rampart that survives today. At the time the Irish fought with slings and stones, while the Normans had knights, archers and other technology.
	Strongbow captured Dublin, married Macmurrough’s daughter and ultimately became king of Leinster. Henry II then arrived to subdue Strongbow, which soon meant conquering the Irish as well.
	The Norman adventurers who followed Strongbow into Ireland formed alliances with some chieftains in order to attack others, building great castles. They spread all over Ireland apart from western and central Ulster. Their allegiance to Henry was only nominal and they eventually intermarried with the Irish, adopting their ways, laws and language. They English kings tried to stop this assimilation.
1171	(17^th Oct). Henry II went over to stifle this new Norman kingdom. Strongbow submitted and was allowed to keep Leinster as a fief. Henry reserved Dublin for himself and received submission from various Irish kings. Becket had just been murdered, so Henry couldn’t press his papal grant at once.
1171/2	A great national synod of Irish church was convened, intended to bring Irish church into step with the English. After Henry was reconciled with the new pope, the Irish prelates inundated the pope with letters commending Henry. The Irish kings and bishops hoped for Henry’s protection against Strongbow; they saw it as exchanging the rule of O’Connor for a more prestigious king.
1175	By now Strongbow and Hugh de Lacy – a follower of Henry’s – had subdued their vast territories. The Treaty of Windsor was signed between Rory O’Connor and Henry II. Rory was recognised as high-king of Ireland outside Leinster, Meath and Waterford, but these kings had to pay tribute to Henry, and he had to force Irishmen fleeing the conquered areas to return.
1176	Rebellions took place against both O’Connor and the English.
	Strongbow died, transferring Leinster to Henry. By then he had a greater financial stake in the conquest.
1177	John de Courcy exceeded instructions by conquering Ulaid (Ulster).
	Henry gave his rights as Lord of Ireland to his son John. Cork and Limerick were granted away, although Limerick’s new owners failed to west any land from O’Brien.
1183	O’Connor retired to an abbey; Henry petitioned the pope to crown John king of Ireland. However, the Irish were growing disenchanted with Plantagenet lordship. Even Gerald of Wales though the English were breaking their original agreement.
1185	Prince John mocked Irish chieftains who greeted him in Waterford, and after that there were no more submissions.
	The Prince was suspicious of men like De Lacy. He handed out smaller grants to a greater number of tenants-in-chief, resulting in important Anglo-Irish dynasties being founded. Some English lords expanded their territory by marrying Irish aristocrats. They also fought amongst themselves.
1186	De Lacy was assassinated, and Meath passed to administrators. The English strategy was gradually changing to colonisation. A European population explosion had begun, meaning land in Ireland was tempting. Many private individuals were involved in colonisation. Fortified castles and mottes were built. New towns were founded and tenants imported. These Anglo-Norman towns were laid out in a grid pattern.
1200	By now, new citizens were immigrating from England, Wales, France and Flanders. All incomers were regarded as free, but the native Irish tenantry, ‘betaghs’, were serfs. Only one Irish family was assimilated into the colony’s feudal aristocracy; the rest were confined to uncolonised districts.
	The English language began to take root, while Norman French became the upper class literary language. Architecture changed with churches built in Early English Gothic style, using English stone. The east changed from a subsistence to a market economy.
1200s	Irish bardic poets viewed themselves as part of the European cultural community, but the French and English didn’t see them as such. Gerald of Wales argued that the marcher lords of Ireland were part of this culture, but the native Irish were not.
	In the eleventh century most clergy still supported marriage, concubinage, hereditary office-holding etc. This lent credibility to colonial legislation against Irish clergy. Franciscan and Dominican friars were responsible for more preaching and pastoral work.
	Popular opinion was more strongly against the invasion than that of the chieftains, and prophecies circulated against the Normans.
	Bands of mercenaries fought for both the Irish kings and English barons, swapping sides for money. Scottish warriors (gallowglass) began to come over. Within the Gaelic territories, power began to centre on every minor chief who could command a war-band. Elsewhere in Europe, there was a trend towards mercenary armies. In Ireland, they were allowed to take their own wages from husbandsmen, dissipating the agricultural surplus.
1210	King John intervened to take back lands from his nobles, and twenty Irish kings did homage to him. He expanded his King’s Council in Ireland, which evolved into parliamentary sessions.
1216	King John was succeeded by his young son Henry III.
1217	First Treasurer of Ireland promoted. The government in England issued an order that no Irishman should be promoted to high ecclesiastical office. Henry de Londres, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Justice of Ireland, convened a synod at which canonical singing was discussed.
1226	Until the mid thirteenth century, the provincial Irish kings co-operated with the English and so retained their lands. However, these were not given security of succession; Connacht was declared forfeit in this year, resulting in a nine year war.
1248	King’s Bench in Dublin instituted (today contained within the Four Courts).
	The liberties were gradually phased out and an elaborate system of government came in. Administrators from the English church were brought in. There was a campaign to ensure that all dioceses under royal control had Anglo-Norman bishops.
1254	Edward I was granted lordship of Ireland. He used the country to provision his campaigns in Scotland, France and Wales. Edward II was to continue this policy. Local rule by Irish chieftains was cheaper.
1260	Brian O'Neill, who declared himself king of Ireland, was killed in battle by colonists. There was a series of revolts which has been seen as the beginning of a Gaelic recovery, but the colony was still expanding. Soon Irish kings had to co-operate with the barons themselves.
1277	First salaried barons of the exchequer. A separate royal seal for Ireland was made under Henry III. King John also instituted sheriffs, shires, county courts and itinerant justices.
Late 13^th C	Those settlers in the east expanded into the west. English peasantry were not introduced to the west; the tenants were almost all Irish, governed by native rulers who answered to the English.

Erosion of English Power in Ireland

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14th Century	By the beginning of this century, all native rulers were legally subject to some Anglo-Norman baron or earl, or the English king. The expansion of the colonisers continued. The Anglo-Norman magnates often fought one another.
1303	The Armagh succession passed to a series of Anglo-Irish prelates.
1315 – 18	Edward and Robert Bruce attempted to gain Irish support for the Scottish war, but alienated the colonists. Their three year campaign devastated much land, while the population were also affected by the famine sweeping Europe. There were rebellions. Edward was killed in 1318.
1327	The agricultural boom in Europe was levelling off and the barons had become more interested in their more profitable English holdings. By this year, almost half of colonised land belonged to absentees. The resident Anglo-Irish nobility accused them of endangering the colonies through neglect.
1348/49	The Black Death struck during this time. This and bad harvests were leading to the migration of colonists of all classes back to England.
1366	Statutes of Kilkenny, aimed at preventing settlers becoming too Irish. The ‘English born in Ireland’ were forbidden to adopt Irish clothing and customs. The Statutes also forbade intermarriage and the use of March/Brehon law. They proved ineffective, leading to the Anglo-Irish becoming known as the ‘degenerate English’. Even the Norman-Irish barons acting as deputies for the English king became independent. Royal government grew feeble and beleaguered.
	Edward III and then Richard II attempted to restore the colony’s prosperity. Initially Edward announced that the Irish administrators would be replaced by Englishmen, but this caused such outrage that he decided to reinforce royal control and invest men and money. The colonists were genuinely fearful for their survival. They feared a reoccupation by the Irish, and there was a perception that uncolonised areas were in the hands of the ‘wild Irish’. Native rulers were gradually gaining liberty from the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. There was fighting between Irish chieftains because the magnates had previously followed a policy of ‘divide and rule’. Meanwhile, a cultural revival was taking place. Bardic verse was intended to increase the prestige of patrons, and it came back into fashion despite Irish minstrels being banned in 1366 until the seventeenth century. The scribes and traditional historians also enjoyed enthusiastic patronage, and great manuscripts were written which recalled pre-Norman lineages, borders and culture.
	The colonists were unwilling to make large contributions towards reconquest, and absentee landlords preferred to sell their estates to residents of Ireland rather than return. The Irish meanwhile hoped to accumulate sufficient power to challenge the earls by recreating provincial kingships. Various chiefs were styling themselves as the kings of provinces. The Great O’Neill father and son declared themselves Prince and Governor of Ulster despite the earl of Ulster Roger Mortimer. Richard II offered to arbitrate, but made Mortimer governor of Ireland, and war followed.
1394/5	Richard came over to resolve the newly recognised ‘Irish problem’. This meant that government in Ireland was once again centralised, but England’s attention was caught by the Hundred Year’s War. Ireland had become a financial drain.
1399	Second visit by Richard. War broke out as soon as he departed, and his viceroy was murdered.
15^th C	The Anglo-Irish magnates were more successful during this period than the Irish or the Crown, whose control shrank to four counties including Dublin. This was enclosed by an earthen rampart known as the Pale.
	The Irish, particularly those of Ulster, began to unite and attack the colonists, and some of the colonists began paying black-rent or protection money to the Irish chieftains. However, the Anglo-Irish lords held sway over the more profitable and populous areas. These lords tried to gain control of royal lands for themselves. After Edward IV made an ill-judged attempt to recover control, the earls of Kildare were left the only surviving Anglo-Irish magnates still eligible for high office; and Kildare imposed its will on the Pale. A period of relative stability and economic growth followed. Many new religious houses went up, almost all founded by Gaelic patrons. Monastic houses in the Pale were decaying while Gaelic Ireland was influenced by a more dynamic European spirituality.
	A growing similarity developed between the Irish chieftains and the Anglo-Irish lords. The lords employed Irish historians to justify their status, based on the idea that they were the last in a long line of invaders, and that they had some Irish blood through intermarriage.

The Tudor Era

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1459	Richard, Duke of York, was convicted of treason against King Henry VI and lost his title of Lieutenant of Ireland. Even so, the Anglo-Irish parliament confirmed him as leader and declared Ireland independent of English law. There had long been tension between the English of Ireland and of England. It was more the magnates than the commons who were interested in autonomy.
1494	The Tudors reinstated English royal dominance. An attempt was made to dismiss the Great Earl of Kildare from his title of Lord Deputy, but he was reinstated after raids by his Irish allies.
1496	By this time the line of ‘the Pale’ was at Clongowes. The boundary was continuing to shrink.
1500	The Dublin government was feeble by this time, but 200 years later it would be all-embracing. Its landowners were descendants of the Anglo-Normans, the ‘Old English’. They were firmly attached to English law and its Crown. There was always still a threat of Gaelic assault. The chieftains continued to attack the settlers, convincing the Old English that they were defending civil standards against barbarism. Fear of attack caused the Old English community to militarise, and their primary allegiance was to their lords rather than the king; some lords maintained castles and armies. The two great families were the Fitzgeralds and Butlers, who became rivals; the English kings made the Fitzgeralds their representatives. They were not interested in Ireland.
	By this time most of Ireland was ruled by Gaelic or Gaelicised lords, who rejected the English Crown. The church in these areas was very different to the English one.
1515	Sixty counties were ‘inhabited by the King’s Irish enemies’. There were 60 Irish chieftains who gave themselves various titles and 30 English doing the same, all warring against one another without input from the King.
	There was criticism that the aristocracy were becoming Gaelic and 'degenerating from English civility'. Irish society was fragmenting into lordships, some lords being Anglo-Norman and others Gaelic. They sought to monopolise their power. The grip of the Crown grew weaker.
	Through this century, the hiring of soldiers and manufacture of weapons became more costly. The farming population bore the cost. Pastoral (rather than arable) farming dominated. Agricultural practice was more advanced where the Old English population was predominant. Meanwhile, political disruption kept the population down while the number of people in the rest of Europe doubled throughout the century.
	Minor overseas trade was conducted by the Old English, but merchants found themselves being forestalled in Old English lords’ territories.
	Priesthood had become hereditary in the Gaelic lordships, and priests were clients of the local lord, with bishops often being part of the ruling family. The same trend (appointing aristocrats to important church positions) was followed in anglicised areas.
1534	Kildare rebellion took place against Henry VIII. The earls of Kildare, the House of Fitzgerald, who were meant to represent royal authority, rebelled against the Crown. Thomas, Lord Offaly, son of the ninth earl of Kildare, led a symbolic revolt to show that the power of the Kildares must remain. Henry VIII sent an army of 2300 and had all male members of the FitzGerald family executed. This harshness may have been because FitzGerald backed the pope, and because Henry needed to draw up an Irish parliament to confirm him head of the church. Henry ordered that all Irish lands were to be surrendered to the Crown and then regranted. To the Old English this was a reinforcement of their relationship to the King, but for the Gaelic chieftains the change was huge. They once held their land according to Gaelic law and tradition; now it was according to the King’s goodwill. This was the end of Gaelic Ireland.
	The submitted lords were expected to exact revenues, assist the extension of English legal administration and have their heirs raised in English households. In enforcing this, the cost of governing Ireland shot up, but the profits from rent and confiscated lands were being filched by the Pale.
1536/7	After the parliament of these years, monastic property was declared forfeit to the Crown and some of it given to the secular landowners in anglicised Ireland. However, there was no major drive to convert the population of anglicised Ireland because the English governors, officials and clergy were distracted by political crises. With the FitzGeralds gone, the Gaelic lords under their control began to attack the Pale, forcing the government to send in military expeditions. As this was expensive, the surviving FitzGerald heir was reinstated and the discontented Gaelic lords dispossessed until they submitted.
1541	English monarchs were styled kings of Ireland.
	English intervention in Ireland was reluctant, deriving from a concern to honour their obligation to defend their inheritance and to prevent foreign intruders invading Ireland. The English also took counsel from both Irish and Old English noblemen who gave conflicting advice, leaving the English paralysed. This lack of intervention meant that the Catholic reformers were able to mould Irish society. The first reformers were the Observant friars. These became opponents of the Crown after the English Reformation began. When the FitzGeralds of Kildare revolted against the Crown, it was depicted as a religious crusade and received extensive support from the Gaelic lords. Meanwhile, many Old English officials and lawyers took their sons out of English universities to stop them being corrupted by Protestantism, sending them to European universities where they learnt Counter-Reformation Catholicism.
1556-1579	Opposing aristocrats, Sussex and Sir Henry Sidney, competed for the position of governor of Ireland. Both devised schemes for Irish government, but their experience was so bad that senior politicians were subsequently reluctant to accept service in Ireland. Sussex supported military settlement in the Gaelic midland area, and continuing with the surrender and regrant policy. Councils would be set up in Anglo-Norman lordships that had 'lapsed' from English civility. He was however side-tracked by the lord of Tyrone, Shane O’Neill, who ignored the surrender and regrant arrangement. Sussex decided to oust him and raised money from the Pale, but the campaign dragged for four years without result until the Palesmen complained to Elizabeth and Sussex was withdrawn.
1562+	Elizabethan wars took place in Ireland. The English believed that the Irish were barbarians. There was a sense of missionary licence to civilise. It was believed that the Irish could only be civilised by force; Elizabeth I sanctioned shedding blood as a last resort. Her deputies were Englishmen and the Crown’s army was composed of English soldiers. Force was used against both the Old English and Gaelic Irish. The Old English themselves rebelled six times against the new order. Gaelic chieftains fought on either side. The ordinary Gaelic Irish population suffered. One deputy, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, displayed the heads of his victims at his camp. Some of Elizabeth’s officials condemned his cruelty and the murder of civilians. However most, including Leicester, believed it the only way to deal with savages. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Ireland was for the first time under effective English control; but the foundations of Irish hatred for governing Englishmen had been laid. Meanwhile the Old English and Gaelic Irish moved closer together.
	The Reformation of the Church in England failed to take effect in Ireland. This was mainly because communication was extremely difficult in Ireland; it had a scattered population of a million and almost no roads. The Irish Church, meanwhile, used the Irish language and was uninterested in Lutheran ideas. The only place where Protestantism was found was Dublin. Elizabeth was afraid that Irish Catholics might make a religious appeal to Catholic powers like Spain.
	Once the Reformation was established in Ireland, all churches were given to the Protestants.
1565	Sidney became governor. His policy was to dispossess those who attacked the Crown or occupied its land. English settlers would be brought in to live on these dispossessed areas, introducing English law and civility. Ancient titles were revived and bestowed on English adventurers.
1569	James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald launched a rebellion against the English, to be defeated by the combined forces of Thomas Butler (the Earl of Ormonde) and the English under Henry Sidney and Humphrey Gilbert.
1570s/80s	Some of the generation of students who had been trained up in the Counter Reformation were now suggesting withdrawing allegiance from the Crown, while others proposed only refusing to attend the state church. This meant that they could no longer fill positions in the Dublin administration, and were replaced by English-born Protestants. Meanwhile lawyers within the Old English community advised acknowledging supremacy of the Crown in temporal but not in spiritual matters. Even so, most English rulers bar Cromwell received delegations from the Old English community. These delegations usually criticised the English Protestant officials. Some of those officials wanted punitive measures against Catholics; the officials argued that they wanted to stir up revolt for their own ends. Consequently, successive monarchs (Tudor and Stuart) put restraints on Irish reform programmes.
	The influx of adventurers aroused hostility from the Irish, especially when some adventurers brought in private armies. Sidney welcomed the subsequent insurrections as a pretext to extend his plantation schemes, although Elizabeth did not approve, and forced Sidney to become more moderate. The scheme of private colonization (by adventurers) ended, but the English Protestant officials continued to cause tension by criticising Irish society.
1579	James FitzMaurice FitzGerald returned from the Continent preaching a crusade. He received such support from Munster and even the Pale that Elizabeth was forced to put up an army of 8000. Retribution was harsh – such destruction of property and systematic slaughter had never been witnessed before. The Crown attempted to introduce a settlement of 20,000 people on the lands of the earl of Desmond. This resulted in a massive transfer of property from Irish to English ownership.
1585	Hugh O’Neill became Earl Of Tyrone.
1588-94	Sir William Fitzwilliam was the governor at this time. He approved some piecemeal settlements. It was planned that the province of the O’Neill family should be broken up, with some going to English settlers and some going to Hugh O’Neill, an experienced client of various English adventurers and claimant to the earldom of Tyrone.
1590s	Catholic reformers had succeeded in securing the allegiance of even the most remote Old English outposts.
	By the mid 1590s, 4000 people had been settled at Munster. By then, the Protestant officials were attempting to impose penalties on Catholic landowners, but Elizabeth was reluctant to stir up the Irish situation while engaged in war with Spain. Her officials in the Irish provinces meanwhile attempted to possess more property, some hoping to force an insurrection that would push the government into another plantation scheme.
1593	Hugh Roe O'Donnell began his rebellion against the English.
1594 – 1603	Nine Years War.
1595	Rebellion of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone. Tyrone had been helped for years by Elizabeth in his disputes with other branches of the Ulster O’Neills. He had spent eight years in England. However, he also felt himself to be descended form the Ui Nialls who had been High Kings of Ireland for centuries. He wanted Elizabeth’s favour, but also independence. Eventually he decided to rebel and joined with his Ulster neighbour, Hugh O’Donnell. Once he had fought for Elizabeth at Munster; now he opposed her at Ulster.
	Hugh O’Neill wished to reclaim the entire lordship. A conflict of wills with minor officials ended in a clash with the Lord Deputy. His army was successful at first, and he solicited aid from other lords and promoted himself as a champion of the Counter-Reformation.
1598	Victory for O’Neill at Yellow Ford, Ulster.
	Elizabeth made reference to ‘vile rebels’ oppressing her subjects.
1601	(Sept). A great Spanish fleet set sail for Ireland to help Tyrone, 4000 men sent by Philip III, but O’Neill and O’Donnell were miles away in Ulster. The British deputy Mountjoy, leading 2000 men, besieged the Spaniards, but Tyrone and O’Donnell marched south and besieged Mountjoy. This was the final battle for Gaelic Ireland. Tyrone lost against Mountjoy at Kinsale. He managed to obtain pardon after submitting humbly to him. The fact that the most serious threat to date had been narrowly averted pushed on the process of settlement.

The Plantation of Ulster

See A Jacobean Journal for more detail on the years 1603 - 1606.

Click here for web links about Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster

1603	James I enforced English law, especially in Ulster. James agreed with the repossession of property belonging to the Crown and intolerance towards rebellious landowners. Only loyal landowners with a legitimate claim to their lands could keep them. These were mostly Old English. From then on plantations were set up, particularly in the Ulster region, largely opposed by the Old English. The presence of the settlements strengthened the position of Protestant officials.
1606	Scottish Protestants Montgomery and Hamilton founded a private settlement in Ulster, which was to prosper rapidly. For a century it attracted flocks of Scottish settlers. They spread outward and into Belfast, over the whole of Antrim and Down and right across Ulster. The pattern of Protestants and Catholics in Ulster today still reflects the two separate settlements.
1607	(14^th Sept) Rathmullan: O’Neill and O’Donnell fled – the ‘flight of the earls’. The settlement of Derry began. Since submitting to the Crown in 1603 Tyrone had kept possession of his lands, despite the resentment of those who had fought him. He had been harassed by English officials who had fined him for practising Catholicism and were asserting English law. Some were making claims that he was involved in a plot with Spain. After the Flight, the territory of the earls – Donegal, Tyrone, Derry and Armagh – was subject to a systematic attempt to settle in strangers from England and Scotland.
	Officials argued that potential rebels should no longer have control over large numbers of people. English common law was made universal and Jesuits legislated against. The expropriation of land belonging to all Catholic landowners was also recommended.
1608 – 1610	The English Government planned a 'Plantation of Ulster'. Queen Mary had already tried it in the 1550s, it had been attempted in Munster in the 1560s and 1580s and in Ulster in the 1570s. These colonies had either collapsed due to a lack of resources or wiped out by rebellion. The 1610 plantation in Ulster was on a grander scale and was funded by City of London companies. The ‘Irish Society’ composed functionaries of the City of London who were responsible for ‘civilising’ (colonising) Derry. The companies (drapers, salters etc) divided the land. This land was supposed to go to Scottish and English settlers who would not be allowed Irish tenants. The native Irish were pushed out in the less fertile lands, making up only 10% of the new population, and would pay double rent. Only former soldiers were allowed Irish tenants. In practice, more Irish stayed on as labourers or rent-paying tenants.
	English and Scottish newcomers were obliged to construct defensible buildings and introduce ten British Protestant families. Land was also allocated to loyal natives. ‘Servitors’, English who had served the Crown, were given most of the land. In fact, most land went to servitors and natives rather than English and Scottish grantees. The servitors had native tenants because this gave them an immediate income, but later they evicted those tenants and took on settlers at low rents. There were also great profits to be had from timber and cattle. The settlers introduced advanced cultivation methods to Ireland. These settlers, especially the English, acquired further Irish property by claiming Crown title or showing weaknesses in the titles of the natives. The most progress was made in Munster. Meanwhile the natives tried to prove loyalty to the Crown by adopting the English language, modifying their houses in the English style and supporting the spread of English law. They also displayed their ‘Englishness’ with their tombs, funerals and carriages. To meet the cost of all this, they took in British tenants at low rents; all such tenants were obliged to improve their properties. They also paid high fines for entry. At least 100,000 people migrated before 1641. The settlers headed for fertile areas, places with access to the sea of near natural resources. The arrival of so many people – including farmers and craftworkers – massively boosted the country’s productivity. However, the Protestant religion failed to spread. James I and Charles I didn’t want to damage relations with foreign governments by too much religious zeal in Ireland. Laws against Catholics were relaxed. The Catholic Church was tacitly tolerated. The clergy focused on missionary work, which annoyed the Protestant officials who were themselves ready to begin missionary work. The Protestants were forced to realise that they would not be able to start a reform yet, and the small size of their churches reflected that.
1622	By now there were 13,000 settlers, but they did not totally colonise the forfeited counties. The Protestants felt insecure and the Catholic Gaelic Irish were resentful. The settlers were afraid, not only of the original inhabitants but also of the 5000 former swordsmen of the earls.
	The vast majority of Ulster settlers were Scots. They were Presbyterian, not Anglican, which brought them into conflict with English law. This fostered an independence of spirit which has continued to this day.
1628	Having succeeded James I in 1625, Charles I introduced 'the Graces', a scheme by which Catholics could obtain religious concessions in return for monetary payment.
1633-41	Thomas Wentworth was governor of Ireland during this time. He caused different religions to unite against him in his efforts to extract money. Wentworth began a wave of confiscation.
1641	(23^rd Sept) Great Catholic-Gaelic rebellion. The rebels declared their loyalty to the Crown but assaulted the settlers. Terrible atrocities were reported. On Portadown Bridge, 100 Protestants were stripped, thrown into the water and murdered. The rebels were reported to be horribly injuring women and children and leaving them to die slowly. Some people were buried alive. It seems the atrocities were the result of wild indiscipline, not policy. In total there were around 12,000 deaths. The effect on the Northern Protestant subconscious was profound.
	The rebellion had been led by Ulster Catholic landowners under Phelim O'Neill who had resorted to arms, possibly in imitation of the Scottish Covenanters who achieved special recognition for Presbyterianism in Scotland. Their inferiors however were overcome with bitterness and they turned on the Protestants, killing 2000 and driving tens of thousands away, stripped of everything. Beginning at Ulster, the revolt spread. The atrocities were exaggerated back on the mainland, and the people there demanded revenge. The English Civil War might have given the Irish Catholics chance to press their advantage, but they were divided. The Old English hoped for mercy by the king and would not concede leadership to Owen Roe, the nephew of Hugh O’Neill. They did not support him in his confrontations with the Scottish Covenanter army at Ulster. The Leinster lords meanwhile were unable to get government forces out of Leinster. In the period from 1641 until the Cromwellian invasion of 1649, two thirds of Ireland were ruled by the Irish Catholic Confedaration, (the 'Confederation of Kilkenny'), while Protestant areas of Ulster remained variously under the control of royalists, Scottish Covenanters and parliamentarians.
	Between now and 1688, the amount of land held by Catholics would drop from 59% to 22%. The Old English and Gaelic Irish were Catholic, but the English parliament was becoming more puritan and anti-Catholic. All Irish Catholics became anxious that their religion would prejudice their rights to land. The interests of the Irish and Old English were increasingly coinciding. Atrocities on both sides were slowly hammering the people into two camps – Catholic and Protestant.

Cromwell and the Restoration

See A Memoir of Ireland Native and Saxon for Daniel O'Connell's account of Ireland in the1640s.

Click here for web links about Ireland during the second half of the seventeenth century

1649	Oliver Cromwell had defeated King Charles I in England, but there were still strong Royalist armies allied with Irish Catholic rebels in Ireland. In 1649 Cromwell came to Ireland, striking first at Drogheda. Drogheda is seen in Irish nationalist legend as anti-Irish racism, but the garrison there was commanded by an English Catholic and largely under English officers, Royalists. Inflamed by an initial setback, Cromwell showed little mercy to the soldiers and priests, killing 2000 of them and having more shipped to Barbados. Cromwell may have believed he was taking revenge for 1641, although Drogheda had not been involved – it was within the English Pale.
	Government policy was to crush the Catholic people. Cromwell marched south. Some surrendering garrisons were treated well, but Wexford suffered 2000 casualties including 200 women and children in the marketplace. Cromwell dispossessed landowning Irish Catholics and shared their land amongst his soldiers and financiers. The transportation of those landowners to a barren province was known as ‘the curse of Cromwell’. Those left behind, tenants and labourers, still felt humiliated.
	(August). Cromwell launched a programme aimed at evangelisation, the removal of rebellious priests and landowners and the crushing of resistance. These ideas had been mooted before, but 1641 showed their urgency. Cromwell brought 20,000 fighters to Ireland, the best army in Europe, and resistance was crushed with much brutality. Such religious zeal was involved that the Catholic church was swept aside. All Catholic estates were confiscated and their owners relocated, if they could prove they had not rebelled. William Petty carried out a detailed land survey of Ireland. Vacated estates were given to Cromwell’s soldiers and financiers, while the former proprietors were left to scramble for land west of the Shannon. Protestant clergymen and schoolmasters were sent over, and there were strenuous efforts to get the Irish into Protestant churches, although language was a barrier. However, many Protestant churchmen already in Ireland were reluctant to work within Cromwell’s framework. Cromwell’s regime did not last long, and more moderate people (including his son Henry) came to the fore.
	Protestants who had been in Ireland pre 1641 bought land from the Cromwellian grantees. The settlers pre and post 1649 bonded together with the concern of maintaining a political order.
1660	Charles II was restored to the throne but did not want to upset the Protestants who had helped him regain power. His faithful followers were rewarded by having their Irish lands returned; however, the disposed Catholic landowners, including Old English, were to be generally disappointed.
	Religious persecution faded. Catholic clergy returned from the Continent. The government didn’t officially tolerate Catholicism but was focusing on re-establishing an Episcopal Protestant church. There were occasional acts of persecution like the execution of Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh, but the breathing space from 1660 to 1690 helped Catholicism re-establish itself. The Catholics themselves however felt defeated.
1685	James II became a Catholic king of England and this created temporary joy. Richard Talbot, a favourite of James II, became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. He began restoring public office to Catholics and to mobilise a Catholic army. He planned a primarily Catholic parliament at Dublin. Protestants in Britain and Ireland were alarmed.
1687	At this time, the Irish population was around 1,300,000.
1688	Charles’ Catholic brother James determined to support the Irish Catholics. A Catholic-dominated Irish parliament revoked the Cromwellian land settlement, but the succession of William of Orange, who usurped the crown from James together with his wife Mary, was to trigger a split in Ireland.
	James sought support from the Irish; the French came to Ireland to help. Catholics in Ireland responded to the call, frightening the Protestants. Derry and Enniskillen, Protestant towns, denied James’ authority.
	Late in the autumn of 1688, rumours began to spread that Irish Catholics loyal to James II were massacring Protestants. News came that a Catholic regiment was to be sent to Londonderry to relieve the old garrison. The people of Londonderry thought it unwise to have Catholic troops protect them. However, establishment figures demanded that the troops be let in, but thirteen apprentice boys locked the door against King James’ troops on 7th December 1688.
1689	(April). The siege began, reaching its full intensity for six weeks in the summer. The Protestant soldier in command of the garrison, Robert Lundy (‘Lundy’ now means a weak Protestant), wanted to surrender, but the citizens opposed him and he was forced to flee. William of Orange’s ships arrived to relieve the city but withdrew.
	(May). William’s ships reappeared. James’ men had put a wooden boom across the river Foyle and the relief ships decided not to proceed. 30,000 Protestants were stuck in Derry, starving and plagued by mortar fire. Thousands died of starvation and disease. The besieging army were ill-trained and badly equipped; there was only one attempt to breach the walls. Eventually 10,000 non-combatants were let out. Once, the besieging commander tried to break the siege by rounding up local Protestants and threatening to let them starve to death in the open. The Derry citizens erected gallows and threatened to execute Catholic prisoners, forcing the release of the Protestant prisoners. The inhabitants of Derry responded to a demand to surrender with ‘No Surrender!’ which has been their watchword since.
	(28^th July). British ships in the Foyle broke the boom and relieved Derry. Their previous hesitation had left the northern Protestants with the awareness that they were on their own.
	By 1695, the amount of land held by Catholics was to drop from 22% to 14%.
1690	William of Orange landed in Ireland and defeated James II at the Boyne on July 1st. The Battle of the Boyne is now marked by Protestants on July 12th every year.
	(July). William's army moved towards Dublin, pushing James' forces onto the defensive. There was stern resistance to the Williamite army, but it ended in in defeat at Aughrim on 12th July.
	All Catholic armies surrendered at Limerick under Patrick Sarsfield. His troops were exiled to serve Louis XIV and were known as ‘Wild Geese’. William III is still a hero to the Northern Irish Protestants, who refer to their enemies as ‘Papists’.
	After Catholic surrender there was more confiscation of their property and a rigid anti-Catholic penal code was introduced. The Treaty of Limerick supposedly ensured some tolerance for the Catholics, but this wasn’t carried out. The Protestants were feeling insecure after the recent dramatic Catholicisation of the army and law.
	Following William III’s victory, the ‘penal laws’ regulated against Catholics, denying them the right to vote, buy land, be a lawyer, join the army or navy or hold any office of state. A Catholic landlord had to bequeath his inheritance equally to his children unless one turned Protestant, in which case he got the lot. Parish priests could still practise, but friars, bishops and archbishops could not. However, the laws were applied loosely enough to allow bishops etc to exist furtively, and so new priests could be ordained. This laxness was because the vast majority were Catholic; it was easier not to suppress them. Sometimes, as in Galway, the friars would bribe the authorities who had been ordered to crack down on them.

Into the Eighteenth Century

Click here for web links about Ireland in the early eighteenth century

1700	By the end of the seventeenth century, all land that could be put to profitable use had been converted into farms. Ireland entered the eighteenth century with a European structure. It was relatively populous, with most people living on the land. The principle exports were textiles and meat. Powerful landlords and the church owned most of the land. Huge homes were built.
	From the 1690s, the fundamental question over the Irish parliament was whether the Dublin assembly could originate legislation without it being adapted in London. This was sharpened by British attempts to restrict the Irish wool trade. The ‘Patriots’, who were nonetheless Protestants and committed to the British connection, didn’t want their parliament to be subordinate to London. The ‘Protestant Ascendancy’, who had been established by seventeenth century land redistributions, came to dominate. They were insecure, having survived a threat to the property settlement in 1689. Protestants looked back in bitterness to 1641 and 1685-89; the Catholics to the Treaty of Limerick.
	The Church of Ireland at this time was undermanned but backed by huge reserves of landed property.
	From the 1690s, Irish MPs took an oath denying Catholic beliefs.
	Dublin (the Castle) became the political centre and grew in importance. By 1700 Dublin had a population of 50,000. It boasted two ancient cathedrals and various learned societies. There was an affluent leisured class and a wide trading network. The country was being integrated into a single coherent unit with interrelated local economies and a common law. There was also a chain of garrison towns for maintaining a standing army. The principle landed families frequently intermarried.
	Dublin had a viceroy – most English rulers never visited it. It had inferior constitutional status to England. Although members of the Irish political nation were not content with this, they were still swayed by English fashion, having their sons educated in England when they could afford it. The wealthiest married into English families, but Ireland as a whole was dogged by comparative poverty and a lack of cultural development. Landowners relied on rent alone instead of diversifying into commerce. Income from rent depended on exports, and these were unreliable. There was a growing dependence on British overseas markets. Ireland was becoming more of a subsistence economy with its growing population. While continuous economic expansion created prosperity in England, Europe as a whole was blighted by a general recession which led to poverty. All classes suffered. Ireland's striking difference to the rest of Europe lay in the fact that most landowners and senior officials were of a different race and religion to the general population. Around 1700, most of the social elite were first generation English settlers or descendants of English people who had come over in the last couple of centuries. There were also many landowners of Old English or Gaelic origin. They were all Protestants and all believed in the advantages of the English way of life. However, there was no strategy for converting the Catholic, mainly Gaelic population to Protestantism. The most extreme divisions were to be seen in Connacht, where the land was less fertile. In more fertile lands, landlords took on tenants similar to themselves. The Irish language continued; many natives were becoming bilingual. There was a strong consciousness of being wrongfully dispossessed, although in fact the land had never actually belonged to the peasants but to ruling kinship groups. It was the previously privileged groups like priests and poets who had lost status, and who now fostered a myth of a lost golden age. The sharp loss of continuity with Ireland’s past was what set it apart from other European societies.
1703-4	The Popery Bills were passed on inheritance rights and leases.
1709	More restrictions came into force, such as that Catholics could not bear arms or own a horse worth more than £5.
1714	George I ascended to the throne. By this time, only 7% of land in Ireland was held by Catholics, despite the fact that Catholics constituted 75% of the population.
	Votes were determined by land ownership. A comparatively small number of landowners could control many seats. The College Green Parliament reflected their needs, except briefly under Queen Anne.
	After 1714 family connections became the cement of politics. The ‘undertaker’ system involved Ascendancy families managing parliamentary factions.
1720	The Sixth of George I Act declared the constitutional status of Irish legislature to be subordinate. Poynings Law already limited parliament’s rights. Both officials and polemicists resented this.
	Irish Toryism differed from English; it was hard-line Protestant and anti-English. Irish Whiggery was seen as too pro-English and soft on Catholics. The ‘Patriot’ tradition was expressed by Charles Lucas, a radical, Jonathan Swift and William Molyneux. Patriots supported the priorities of landed Protestants which included placing constraints on Catholics and implementing cheap government. Protestant insecurity was such that they kept a huge army for their protection against foreign invasion and native insurrection, especially through the agrarian secret societies. They often resented the English influence.
1729	Catholic freeholders formally lost the vote. Anti-Catholic legislation was being pushed more by Irish Protestants than by the English, although some Protestants did aid Catholic gentry to retain their lands. Catholics continued to practise their faith and their rights were gradually returned to them.
1720s-30s	Bad harvests saw rural destitution, but afterwards both the population and economy expanded. The east and south became more Anglicised and commercialised. A prosperous farming class developed. Modern historians do not agree on the extent of poverty during this time.
	Despite the English tariff on Irish woollens after the boom of the 1690s, the industry diversified and the Ulster linen industry was born. Colonial restrictions caused few problems. Trading networks expanded as transport improved. Many towns prospered; the cattle-market was an important source of prosperity. Textiles and agricultural exports mainly went to England. Linen became a huge domestic industry, dominated by Protestants. Cotton villages began to appear. Where there was no varied local economy, small farmers and cottiers became dependent on pigs and potatoes. Holdings tended to be let out and multiplied rather than farmed in large units.

Political Unrest in the Later Eighteenth Century

Click here for web links about Ireland in the later eighteenth century, including the 1798 Rebellion

(Second half 18^th C)	In the absence of political rights, a network of agrarian secret societies emerged, known as the ‘Whiteboys’. The Whiteboys were frequently violent, often in reaction to taxes or the spread of the dairy economy. They protected the peasants from rack-renting landlords. They were only interested in local affairs, not national politics. The Irish people lived in extreme poverty but reserved their loyalties for the church and secret societies. Middle-class Catholics, who were still allowed to trade, emphasized their loyalty to the Crown. There was much violence between Protestant small farmers and upwardly mobile Catholics, particularly as incomes began to level off at the end of the century.
	The first people to talk of an Irish nation were recent Protestant settlers and converts to Protestantism. They were known as the Protestant Ascendancy and they were highly aspirational. Their culture included the literature of Swift, Sheridan, Burke and others. They wanted to be treated by Britain as an equal nation. Jonathan Swift, Protestant dean of St Patrick’s in Dublin, argued that the English parliament had no right to legislate for Ireland. However, the Irish parliament had little significance. English restrictions on Irish trade stirred up the Irish colonists’ political restlessness, and they were inspired by the example of colonists in America, whose 1770s rebellion was an important event for Ireland. At that time, the Protestant nation formed companies of armed ‘Volunteers’ under the pretext of defending Ireland in the absence of British regiments.
1760	George III ascended to the throne and the tempo of Patriotism increased.
1770s	Unrest in America focused ‘Patriotic’ Irish politicians on their own position. Whigs at Westminster opportunistically made the same links. There were also strong connections between Ulster and America forged from generations of emigration.
1778	From this year there was a powerful campaign to allow Ireland unrestricted access to world trade. ‘Patriotic’ and other discontents joined a military volunteering movement, which the government reluctantly recognised. Pressure from these Volunteers and ‘patriot’ rhetoricians as well as threats of non-cooperation from the Irish House of Commons helped repeal commerce restrictions and then make constitutional concessions in 1782. The British government relaxed penal laws against Catholics in order to secure the support of the majority and allow Catholics to join the army
1780	(June). Lord George Gordon led riots in England against Catholic emancipation.
1782	Henry Grattan’s ‘Patriot Party’ won a Declaration of [Legislative] Independence for the Irish Parliament. Britain and Ireland were to be two sovereign independent kingdoms linked by a common Crown. The Sixth of George I was repealed. The new empowered parliament was called ‘Grattan’s Parliament’. But its authority was still inconclusive, with the Privy Council having power over Irish legislation. Ascendancy figures still wielded much influence. John Fitzgibbon of Clare, for example, blocked concessions to Catholics as he feared sectarian tension. Political reform and emancipation of the Catholics were needed to make Ireland a ‘Nation’, and the Protestant Irish weren’t unanimous on this.
1789	The French Revolution took place, overthrowing the ruling powers in France. This conveyed the message that the will of the people was enough to effect change. Belfast Presbyterians formed the Society of United Irishmen, which promoted unifying the Catholic and Protestant nations into one. Wolfe Tone, a Dublin Protestant, was a member. They had limited success.
1790s	This decade was prosperous and began in apparently stability. Architecture, artefacts like jewellery and furniture and decorative art bear witness to this. Dublin represented the apex of architectural achievement. Belfast was shaping up to become an industrial boom city, becoming the chief export centre for textiles. There was slight tension between Dublin and Belfast.
1791	The United Irishmen had begun as a debating society, French-influenced, middle class and Presbyterian. William Drennan, an ‘aristocratic democrat’, wrote their prospectus. The most famous United Irishman was Kildare Protestant Theobald Wolfe Tone, a pro-Catholic campaigner. It was he who steered the United Irishmen into a ‘French Revolutionary’ movement with links to the Defenders.
1793	Catholics gained the vote and civil rights. The liberalisation of land laws only heightened tensions with the secretive ‘Defenders’ becoming more openly political. Politicians split on Catholic emancipation (their right to sit in parliament or hold high office).
1794	(May). The government tried to crack down on radical activity but only succeeded in exacerbating the situation. Farmers and the lower middle/skilled working class joined, although the leadership continued as middle class. Sectarianism was rife lower down in the movement. Protestant morale sank following a succession of Catholic Relief Acts.
1795	The Orange Society was founded, taking its name from William of Orange. They were a reorganisation of an agrarian/working class secret society called the ‘Peep O’Day Boys’, who terrorised Catholics. The first Orange lodges appeared; their role was to oppose the Defenders. Defender ideology spread, encouraged by resistance to tax.
	Earl Fitzwilliam as viceroy attempted to offer total Catholic emancipation and was repudiated by the government. The British government were however becoming worried.
	Maynooth seminary for Catholics opened. It was hoped that this would encourage an Anglicised Catholic church. It meant priests would not be trained abroad or drawn from the peasantry.
	Catholic merchants were still important, despite their exclusion from guilds. Dissenters (non-conformists) were also discriminated against, helping to form the Presbyterian political culture of Ulster.
	France provided a revolutionary spur, particularly amongst the Presbyterian bourgeoisie in Belfast. Rumours of rebellions abounded even before Britain and France went to war.
1796	The United Irishmen had become a secret society who preached violence. Wolfe Tone persuaded the French to send a fleet to Ireland in December to help found an Irish Republic. The fleet was battered by harsh weather. There was a handful of militia waiting to oppose them and a local landlord organised the yeomanry, but it was the weather that drove the ships away. A further fleet was prepared, but by now the government was awake to the threat and cracked down effectively on the secret society. Another factor in ruining the society was the formation of the sectarian Orange Society which attracted Protestants.
1797-8	With the United Irishmen around, the authorities saw the usefulness of the Orangemen in exploiting sectarian prejudice.
1798	A Dublin aristocrat, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, tried to organise a national rebellion led by the United Irishmen and incorporating the peasant agrarian secret society network, particularly the Defenders who had their own vague nationalist politics. However, informers betrayed the United Irish Society. Alarmed by the scale of events, the government unleashed repression on the Midland counties, including brutal floggings to elicit information. Other brutal torture methods like pitch-capping were carried out. Thousands of arrests were made and arms were uncovered. The eventual rebellion was confused, and the peasants were slaughtered.
	In Wexford, the Protestants – who were sectarian-minded – were given the job of searching for arms and information after the port of Wexford was named as a possible site for French landing. The local population were terrified, and to make things worse the North Cork militia turned up and began flogging people. The Wexford rebellion seems to have been a panicky response to the torture. Father John Murphy became a peasants’ leader in the revolt. This was not really a nationalist rebellion; the North Cork militia prisoners begged for mercy in Irish but the peasants didn’t understand it. The events in Wexford were probably driven more by land hunger, economic crisis and anger at taxes than by nationalism. After a victory at Oulart Hill, the rebels camped on Vinegar Hill. This was more a bundle of refugees from the troops than a military camp. They had no strategy, except revenge; they began by murdering Protestant prisoners. A barn containing Protestant men, women and children was set on fire at Scullabogue, with any survivors being brutally killed – 200 in all. This did the rebel cause no good. A Protestant landlord, Bagenal Harvey, a member of the UIS, took command of the campaign. He was ineffective in curbing the lust for revenge, or defining a strategy. The rebels had gone south, capturing Wexford but forgoing the chance to join with other rebel groups. This gave the government time, and they began to suffer defeats. They were eventually viciously slaughtered on Vinegar Hill. 50,000 people died in the rebellion.
	An uprising in Ulster failed. Rumours of southern atrocities were fuelling sectarianism. By the time the French landed in Ireland it was too late. Wolfe Tone was captured and committed suicide. Consequently, Protestants began to think in terms of an Irish ascendancy class whose interests would be protected by the English. Meanwhile, the rebellion proved to Catholics that they needed political leadership.
	The reality of 1798 has become distorted into an expression of the ‘separatist idea’, tainted by British treachery.
1799	William Pitt accused the Irish of ignorance and bigotry.
	By now barely 5% of Irish land was owned by Catholics.

The Act of Union and Its Consequences

Click here for web links about the Act of Union and Robert Emmet Rebellion

1800	(2nd July) the Act of Union passed, abolishing the Irish Parliament. It became law on the 1st January 1801. Initially the Protestants opposed it on Irish patriotic grounds while the Catholics favoured it because the English would protect their interests better than the Protestant Ascendancy would. These opinions were soon reversed. Irish Catholics came to adopt Irish nationalism. Some individual Protestants, who still believed in common Irish patriotism between the two nations, supported them. Despite this, it quickly became a Catholic cause.
	The passing of the Act of Union occurred with the usual patronage and bribery. Nationalist mythology tends to put the blame on the British for this, forgetting that it was typical of Ascendancy politics. Although Prime Minister William Pitt had promised Catholic emancipation along with the Union, King George III opposed it on the grounds that his Coronation Oath committed him to uphold the Anglican Church. Pitt subsequently resigned.
	With the Act of Union, the Ascendancy declined. Many went to Westminster and began to support the Union in the face of growing Catholic pressure for democratic rights. Only the more liberal country gentry still opposed the Union. Agrarian societies continued, often along sectarian lines (demanding justice for Catholics and the extirpation of Protestants). After 1800 the Dublin castle system continued. Ireland had 100 seats out of 658 in the Commons. The Union brought free trade with Britain, giving it some support from the Catholic bourgeoisie. However, British industrialisation meant that free trade was not to Ireland’s advantage. Nationalist rhetoric denounced the exploitation of Ireland, calling the Union a failed marriage. Anglophobia became part of opposition to the Union.
	By 1800 the population had doubled to 5 million, with most growth amongst the poorer classes. Many farmers re-let tenanted land to make money. Some old Gaelic landowning families continued as prosperous subtenants. These were often the ‘middlemen’ who let and re-let land.
1801	(1^st Jan). The two kingdoms were united ‘forever’. The Act of Union abolished the Irish parliament, which had met at the grand Parliament House at College Green - still a potent image of Irish achievements. However, its powers were always uncertain. The Irish administration could not compete with the presence of British barracks and police. Protestant monopolies continued blatantly in law, government and the civil service.
1803	(July 23rd). Robert Emmet’s Rising. His plan had been to seize Dublin Castle to encourage the rest of the country to rebel. His followers murdered the Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, and Emmet fled. He is famous for his speech in the dock after his capture, in which he said his epitaph should not be written until Ireland was a free nation. He was executed on September 20th.
	During the next years, Belfast industrialised rapidly. Linen and brewing prospered, while other trades struggled in the free market. Belfast's expansion lead to the influx of a Catholic proletariat, stimulating debate amongst the Ulster Presbyterians – pro-emancipation liberals versus fundamentalists, who were led by Henry Cooke. The Ulster Protestants were egalitarian in some ways but believed in their political and religious rightness. Catholicism meanwhile had its own political dimension because of its informal power, its Gaelic strain, its Roman links and its role in symbolising Irish identity. Catholic churches began to spring up after the Union even while architecture in general was declining. In the North East, the population was divided into Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Catholic. Orange lodges were founded. There was also Protestant political activity in towns like Cork.
1815	Agricultural prices collapsed and with the population expanding, rural tensions grew and violence was common. Landlords complained that the population were uncivilised and habituated to being kept down by force. Agrarian societies were anti-modern and often anti-Protestant, but more localised than nationalist. The Ribbonmen were Catholic with connections to Defenderism, who drew from both rural and working class neighbourhoods.
1817	A severe famine took place.

Daniel O'Connell and the Catholic Association

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1823	The Catholic Association was formed by Daniel O’Connell. It was financed by the ‘Catholic Rent’. The proposed government veto on appointing priests helped create a split with the aristocratic leadership, but it was O’Connell and his elite of Catholic lawyers who mobilised mass politics. They wanted rights, not concessions. There were mass demonstrations and an ‘alternative parliament’ in Dublin.
1826	A Protestant Catholic Association candidate beat the local aristocrat’s choice in the Waterford election. The tenants voted in droves against their landlords.
1828	Daniel O’Connell stood at Clare. He was to become known as the Liberator because he liberated the Irish majority from their political obscurity. His achievements were to allow Catholics to sit in Parliament and to campaign against the Union. As part of his first campaign for Catholic Emancipation he built up a mass organisation including Catholic clergy and middle-class supporters. People could join his Catholic Association for a penny a month, and it soon attracted large sums. O’Connell had a horror of popular violence, but he stressed the physical power that lay in the mass support behind him.
	O’Connell won at Clare but was not allowed to take his seat until he scored a second victory. The government were worried by the menacing discipline of his followers, who marched in columns. For the first time, Irish popular opinion was a force in British politics.
1829	Catholic Emancipation passed. Catholics were allowed to sit in parliament and hold most high offices, but the franchise was raised to £10, losing them many voters.
1831 - 1836	Violent resistance to the collection of church tithes.
1830s	The Orange Society was banned over a political plot to put the Duke of Cumberland on the throne. Respectable Irish opinion towards the Orangemen was ambivalent.
	The Young Ireland movement of this decade was led by Protestant nationalists who were often anti-English. The Young Irelanders published an extreme Repealer newspaper, The Nation, which used Irish history to argue that Ireland could become ‘a nation once again’. A cult of ‘dying for Ireland’ emerged, with an emphasis on rebellion. The Protestant establishment as well as the British government were threatened.
	O’Connell spent this decade at Westminster allying with Whigs and Radicals, during which time he got tithes to the Church of Ireland abolished and improvements in Irish government, education and health care. Elective councils were introduced in urban areas, and a Poor Law Act was passed. The Ascendancy felt itself under attack.
	The British state attempted some modernising initiatives. O’Connell backed some and opposed others, such as secular primary education. He supported policies to whittle down the powers of local gentry.
1836	The police force was centralised and professionalized as the Royal Irish Constabulary. They were largely Protestant but fairly impartial.
1838	A Temperance movement began.
1841	Daniel O’Connell of the Catholic Association held Monster Meetings for the Repeal of the Union and the restoration of the Irish Parliament which would be dominated by the Catholic majority. The two kingdoms would be close partners but with independent legislations, sharing a monarch. O’Connell hoped to convert English opinion by arguing that recognition of Ireland’s claim to be a nation would undermine all call for separation. His Monster Meetings attracted huge, well-disciplined crowds. He began his Repeal campaign after the fall of the White government in 1841.
1842	By now, 5 million people had pledged abstinence. The church was trying to stamp out more subversive pastimes like ‘patterns’ and wakes. The movement was marked by an atmosphere of ‘improvement’.
	Peel’s government made legislation to favour the Catholic church – the Charitable Bequests Act and Maynooth Grant. The Church was rationalising its structure and broadening its social control. There were too many clergy in comparison to populace.
1843	(15^th Aug) The greatest Monster Meeting, on the Royal Hill of Tara, involving at least 750,000 people. In O’Connell’s speech he said the size of the crowd would inspire pride and fear, and they were approaching Repeal with the strides of a giant. However, the government banned one meeting at Clontarf and sentenced O’Connell to jail for conspiracy, although the Lords reversed this. Clontarf had been chosen because of its association with Brian Boru’s confrontation with the Norsemen in 1014. By this time, the eighteenth century Ascendancy fashion for antiquities and history had become bound up with politics. Ideas of national character and the ‘folk’ were growing in Europe. Many histories intended either to validate or invalidate the Union were written. Thomas Moore and Lady Morgan were nationalist writers, and the harp was adopted as a symbol of nationalism. There was an idea of an apostolic succession of national martyrs.
	O’Connell’s great achievement was to build up a store of national strength. He successfully channelled the Church’s bond with the people into politics. Catholicism and Irish consciousness were firmly linked.
	Around this time, the Orange Order was reconstituted when O’Connell’s campaign for Repeal of the Union became a threat. A royal commission at the time commented that they were emotional and uneducated, and regarded the Catholics as inferior.

The Great Famine

Click here for the web links about the Great Famine
A more detailed timeline of the famine is available here

1845 – 49	The years of the Irish famine. The famine has deeply affected Irish consciousness and it has been thought that the English were deliberately committing genocide. The exact race of Ireland's rulers however was not clear-cut; they consisted of a mixture of both English and Gaelic. Britain and Ireland had been connected so long politically and administratively that they were no longer clearly two separate countries. Even so, because of the geographical and cultural gulf (half of the population spoke Irish before English) the British government cared less about the Irish people than the English and Welsh or Scots. Most Irish, apart from those in the north east, were dependent for survival on the potato crop. The poorest peasants were forced to sell most of their cereal crops to pay rent. As the population exploded, going from 4.5 million in 1800 to 8 million in 1841, the situation grew precarious. Land was being subdivided in ever smaller plots and more people were dependent on potatoes. The crop had already failed a couple of times, with a severe famine in 1817. The government knew disaster was looming.
	Agricultural problems and subsistence standards in the west climaxed in the famine. The economy was largely unindustrialised but was supplying the industrialised British market. A rapidly expanding population caused huge strain. When the potato crop failed, the free market economists of the time, like Lord John Russell, tried to place the burden on Irish property and did very little to help. Some landlords bankrupted themselves to help their tenants, while others were harsh. Many people died or emigrated.
1845	(11^th Sept) First report of disease in the potato crop. It was caused by a fungus. England was also affected, but people were not dependent on potatoes there.
	(First week of Oct). The situation was beginning to look desparate. The worst threat at first was in County Mayo, where 90% survived off potatoes. Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister, remarked that the Irish tended to exaggerate, but he appointed a commission of enquiry. This recommended some worthless measures for protecting the potatoes.
	(Nov). Special mass was held in all Catholic churches.
1846	(Feb). Every county was now affected and ¾ of the country’s potato crop had been destroyed. Typhus was soon registered in 25 counties out of 32. Peel ordered American maize to be shipped to Ireland. He organised a relief commission in Dublin which would organise committees of the wealthier people to supply cheap food and employment through public works. The Board of Works collaborated on this. Meanwhile, all protectionist duties on grain imported into the UK were removed – the so-called ‘Corn Laws’. The price of bread fell, but about a third of the Irish couldn’t afford bread anyway. ‘Political economy’ ruled – the market should not be interfered with. Therefore people could not be given food as this would undermine market prices and might make merchants withhold food from the market. Charles Trevelyan was chief official in charge of relief measures, and a strong believer in political economy. The corn from America was not to be handed out immediately, but to be used as an economic lever; when food prices rose too much, it could be sold.
	(May). General opening of grain depots. By this time the poor were desperate. Crimes were being committed for food. Respectable British opinion sometimes seemed more concerned with the threat to property than of starvation, and a ‘Coercion Bill' was brought before Commons proposing a curfew and tough punishments. Unfortunately the relief commission’s subsidizing of local committees was proceeding slowly, and the lack of employment only encouraged crime. Sir Robert Peel complained that there was violence, including murder, being inflicted on the supporters of the Queen. At this time, plenty of food was available, both leaving and entering the country; it was just not given to the hungry. Trevelyan decided to close down the grain depots because they could not cope with demand.
	The government expected a good harvest in 1846. Trevelyan began to wind up the scheme of public works. In June, he rejected a cargo of Indian corn. Even as signs began appearing that the new harvest was blighted, Trevelyan ceased all relief operations. He believed that this was the only way to prevent habitual dependency. He was concerned that private enterprise would be paralysed and Ireland would be ‘on’ Britain. The potato failures because obvious, but Russell announced that food provision would be left to market forces. Trevelyan decided to reorganise the public works scheme, compelling landlords to share the burden; the government would loan them money, giving grants only in the most desperate areas. The public works projects, which included road construction, lowering hills and filling in holes, took weeks to organise, and parties of hundreds of men were going around pleading for work. There were food riots, and workhouses were mobbed. By this time many were too weak to work. Trevelyan began to purchase cheap ‘Indian’ (American) corn, but the first starvation deaths were being reported.
	(July). Lord John Russell became Prime Minister.
	(Aug).By this time 140,000 were employed on public works. This fed in total 700,000 people. The workhouses, with a capacity of 100,000, were filling rapidly. 1.5 million were still starving. The government felt that the Irish landlords should be responsible for the people. Some of them were active, cancelling rents, starting employment schemes, even distributing food. Some however were cruel, even evicting tenants.
	Trevelyan ordered that no landlord should profit from the public works schemes, and so no agricultural improvements or cultivation of other crops occurred. The work done was often worthless, even destructive. Wages on public works had to be lower than those on the ordinary labour market so as not to undercut it, despite the fact that ordinary labour was almost extinct. Wages were often not paid for long periods because of bureaucracy. Some men starved to death at work.
	The Times newspaper accused the Irish of indolence and thoughtlessness for complaining.
	(Oct) 5000 people attacked the workhouse at Listowel shouting ‘bread or blood’.
	(Late Dec). By this time 400,000 people were employed on public works, but there were many left unemployed. Even those who had work had a long wait for the corn to arrive. Some relief officers, who had been selling last year’s corn, were reprimanded for undermining market forces. There was an official feeling that people weren’t making enough effort to get food. Some people in England maintained that the Irish were exaggerating. Meanwhile, the death rate soared. There were not enough coffins; some of the poor were buried in pits.
1847	Death of Daniel O’Connell.
	An epidemic of typhus and relapsing fever raged across Ireland, even in relatively well-fed towns like Belfast and Dublin. It was carried by people fleeing from the west. Priests and doctors began to die of the fever.
	British consciences were disturbed, and two major charitable projects began dispensing free food from soup kitchens and funding local committees. The Quakers and the British Association were involved, the Association attracting large donations. The government was less compassionate. Much support was also received from America.
	(March) By this time, 728,000 were employed on public works. Thousands of people died on them, especially the old. The harshness of winter killed many. The government finally decided to distribute free food. A Soup Kitchen Act allocated public funds. The relief works were wound up rapidly while the Soup Kitchens were slow in appearing. There was a sharp rise in deaths.
	(May) By this time, about 100,000 Irish had emigrated to Liverpool.
	(Mid-July). By now 3 million Irish adults and children were receiving relief. The Treasury accused the Poor Law Unions of supporting those who didn’t need it.
	The potato harvest was good, but small, and the Soup Kitchen Act was discontinued. New Poor Law legislation was to be enacted, allowing workhouses to provide outdoor relief. New Poor Law rates would cover this. Anyone who owned more than a quarter of an acre of land was not eligible, forcing many to give up their land.
	(End Sept). By now, two million of those who had been on relief were now reliant on workhouses and local rates. The Irish papers predicted that the rate payers would not be able to support the influx of rural poor, and they were right. Despite this, the British government provided no more help. Many landlords were bankrupted, farmers were ruined. Trevelyan said Ireland must be left to ‘the operation of natural causes’. He believed too much had been done for the people and it had made them worse.
	In 1847, a quarter of a million of Irish emigrated. The rate continued at that level for four more years. Most, 75%, went to America. Conditions on board the emigrant ships were sometimes appalling – they were unsanitary and overcrowded, with little food and water available and fever rampant. The worst conditions were experienced on route to Canada. Many died on the ship, or left it with fever. At Quebec, immigrants were thrown onto the beach where they crawled to dry land.
	By 1847, ¼ million were emigrating annually, often the young people. Agricultural labourers began to disappear. The Irish language waned. Smaller holdings declined and many huge estates collapsed.
	1847/8 (winter) Evictions increased and corpses lay unburied.

The Revolt of the Young Irelanders

Click here for web links about the 1848 Rebellion

1848	Ballingarry, County Tipperary: beginning of violent action with the Battle of the Widow MacCormack’s Cabbage Garden. It was led by William Smith O’Brien, a Harrow-educated Protestant, descended from the great Gaelic High King Brian Boru. He had originally been a member of O’Connell’s peaceful campaign for the Repeal of the Union, but during the famine he had gravitated towards a sub-group known as ‘Young Ireland’. They preached a common nationality embracing Catholics and Protestants. The members of O’Connell’s movement grew wilder as the famine went on. John Mitchel, the son of an Ulster Presbyterian Minister, founded a newspaper called ‘The United Irishmen’, preaching republicanism and rebellion. After Mitchel’s arrest, Smith O’Brien became the militant leader despite his unsuitability. He began inciting Tipperary to revolt. A warrant was issued for his arrest. A party of the Irish constabulary moved on Ballingarry but found barricades and many people, some armed. The constables took refuge in Widow MacCormack’s house – her five children were at home. The police started smashing furniture to make a barricade and, after shots from the mob, fired out of the house killing two people before more police arrived. This was known as ‘the battle of Widow MacCormack’s cabbage garden’, but in 1916 Patrick Pearse was to list it amongst the six rebellions.
	James Stephens, a lieutenant of O’Brien, escaped to France where he took part in resistance to Louis Napoleon. With his experience, Stephens was to begin thinking of forming a new professional modern secret society to help establish an Irish Republic.
	The Young Ireland movement faded after the failed Rising, but its ideas remained, exported to America. Future Irish politics would owe more to the church and agrarian secret societies than to the class-oriented politics of more industrialised societies.
	(Autumn). The new potato crop was blighted again.
1849	The most terrible famine year of all. Yet at the same time good food was being exported from Ireland. The wealthy were still holding dances.
	(May) Despite being informed of the continuing tragedy, John Russell announced that the state was incapable of helping. He didn’t feel justified in asking the house for the £100,000 necessary to prevent starvation. Trevelyan was busy writing a history of the Famine, which he claimed ended in August 1847.
	For decades afterwards the Irish were plagued with the question of why the British government hadn’t done more. Their conclusion was that Ireland should run its own affairs. The population had shrunk from 8,175,124 in 1841 to 6,552,385 in 1851. 1.5 had emigrated; 800,000 had died.
(Mid 19^th C)	By this time, Catholic churches were being built again. Until then, Catholics had had to celebrate mass in the open or in ruined churches.

The Rise of Fenianism

Click here for web links about Fenianism

1850s	In this decade, the word ‘Fenian’ was first used for an Irish Republican organisation. It came from ‘Fianna’, legendary warrior heroes.
	The Reform Act of 1832 had increased the electorate and based the franchise on occupation rather than property-owning. It helped create a new political nation, Catholic and rural, which admitted the church to political leadership. Archbishop Paul Cullen was ready to comment on any political question with a bearing on faith and morals.
	The 1850s saw a wave of evangelical Protestant revivalism, especially in Ulster. Belfast became more organised on sectarian lines. Although officially dissolved in 1836, the Orange Order lodges still had their potency. The ‘Unionist’ culture was beginning to appear.
	Fenianism also emerged. ‘Fenian’ was the name for the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret society emerging in the late 1850s. It had many strands, including Irish-American exiles and agrarian secret societies. It represented clerks and journalists of the new lower middle class. It was conspiratorial, Anglophobic and keen to make sacrificial gestures. Young Irelander John Mitchel had written an Irish history based on 800 years of national struggle, culminating in deliberate genocide. The church was uneasy towards this brand of nationalism, which resembled a secular religion.
	From the late 1840s tenant societies had formed, representing well-off farmers; this managed briefly to form a national organisation in the 1850s.
1856	James Stephens made a 3000 mile tour of Ireland, mostly on foot, to gauge the potential for revolution. He found plenty of dissatisfaction but little evidence of planned revolt.
1858	(17^th March). James Stephens formed what would become the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He and his fellow conspirators swore an oath to fight for Ireland as an Independent Democratic Republic.
	Stephens received encouragement from America – embittered emigrants promised to provide material help. A comrade from 1848, John O’Mahony, went to America where he and Stephens formed the Fenian Brotherhood. Strong precautions were taken against informers. The society was divided into closed ‘circles’ with limited contact. When one circle was caught in Dublin, they passed themselves off as a small bunch of foolish young nationalists, the ‘Phoenix Society’. They were led by Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.
	Stephens organised a spectacular funeral in Ireland for the American Fenian Terence Bellew MacManus. The Church officially disapproved of Fenianism, but they employed a dissident radical priest. Stephens then exploited the publicity to tour Ireland and start a newspaper. The Irish People reminded people about the Fenian Brotherhood. Stephens felt that the American Fenians were too jolly, (‘Irish tinsel patriots’), and in fact their contribution had been limited. The Irish emigrants were settling into America and although bitter, felt no practical need to support nationalism.
1865	John Devoy, Stephens’ aid in Ireland, had been undermining British soldiers with a new secret oath and by drilling civilians in secrecy. He had 85,000 men in Ireland, and trained soldiers were beginning to return from America. After a betrayal by a spy, the staff of the Irish People were arrested, Stephens two months after the rest. People relaxed after the fear of rebellion, but with insider help Stephens escaped. Tension rose again, but in reality Stephens’ 85,000 men were not well armed or controlled. Stephens persuaded his Irish-American comrades to postpone the rebellion.
1866	Stephens declared that this was ‘the year’ before postponing again, possibly because his arrest had shaken him. He was deposed by the American Fenians and replaced by Colonel Kelly. A French soldier named Cluseret took over the military side. Their headquarters were in London. The rebellion was to involve cutting rail and telegraph communications and attacking police until aid could come from America. There was no plan for pitched battles. On June 2nd, American Fenians clashed with Canadian militia at Ridgeway.
1867	(11^th Feb). An attempted attack on Chester Castle had to be called off when an informer betrayed it – not before many armed Irishmen had arrived in Chester.
	(5^th March). A second attempt on Chester was betrayed by the same informer. In Ireland itself, the Fenians scored a couple of successes, taking the police barracks at Ballyknockane and the coastguard station at Knockadown, but eventually the Fenians were forced to flee for the hills. The entire rising was a disaster, but it has still been celebrated since as heroism.
	(Sept) Colonel Thomas Kelly and another man, Captain Timothy Deasy, were arrested; thirty Fenians surrounded the prison van, killing a police officer and rescuing Kelly and Keasy. Three men were executed for the attack, later known as the ‘Manchester Martyrs’.
	At this time a Fenian leader, Richard O’Sullivan Burke, was being held at Clerkenwell. His comrades tried to rescue him by blowing up the wall, but they flattened several houses, killing twelve people. This atrocity brought the Irish quest to public attention. Gladstone was induced to start reforming the Irish land system which was the main grievance of the Irish. He eventually committed himself to Home Rule. The promise of Home Rule meant that Ireland quietened down.
	The failed rising convinced many ‘physical-force men’ of the benefits of parliamentary agitation.

Charles Stewart Parnell and Land Reform

See also:
'Gladstone and the Irish Revolution' by John Morley.
'Parnell and the First Home Rule Bill' by St John Ervine.

Click here for web links about Parnell and Land Reform

1869	The Protestant Church in Ireland was disestablished. Protestants responded by splitting between moderates and extremists. The vitality of the movement to defend Protestant interests came from the Orange Lodges. One Grand Master was jailed for leading a 20,000 strong Orange march.
	Charles Stewart Parnell, a Protestant landowner from County Meath, became active in politics. He came from the tradition of pre-Union Protestant independence. His great-grandfather had opposed the Union. His maternal grandfather had fought the British in 1812; his grandmother was American. At Cambridge he had been fined and expelled for fighting, and he developed a reputation for aggressiveness when he entered the Commons. He was soon known as an extremist amongst the otherwise gentlemanly supporters of Home Rule. Davitt described him as ‘an Englishman of the strongest sort moulded for an Irish purpose’.
	Novelist William Carleton predicted a land war. By the late 1860s, threats were being made against landsharks who took the property of evicted tenants, and landlords who evicted tenants over grazing. People wanted land, expecting a new Land Act. The landlords themselves, who identified the Tenant Right Movement as ‘socialistic’, were from a wide strata of society. Landlords still had influence at local elections but were challenged by farmers and clerics. In 1860s Mayo, the dominant class were strong farmers, shop keepers, merchants and traders.
1870	A Land Act gave evicted tenants compensation for expenditure on their holdings. This symbolically implied the end of the Protestant Ascendancy. The land market had virtually closed after the Famine. In the new system, tenants and leaseholders chose their own successors. The Land Act gave this strength.
	By now, Ireland had economic, social and political stability. The Poor Law system was coping, unemployment was ameliorated by emigration and the rural population were prosperous. The Catholic church and middle class had attained new respectability; Ulster Protestants were enjoying Victorian ‘progress’. Many looked forward to Ireland becoming a modern industrialised society. The uprising of 1867 was ignored. However, this stability depended on emigration. Nearly half as many Irish natives lived overseas as at home. All classes emigrated, but especially the poor. Some migration was seasonal. The American recession of the 1870s resulted in population congestion as would the First World War, contributing to social unrest. The average family had six children, reared for emigration in the hope that they would support their families from abroad. Property control became smoother, with the acquisition of spouse and farm being almost inseparable. Urbanisation and agricultural modernisation were slow. Industrial expansion was concentrated around Belfast. The linen industry did not begin to decline until World War One, and the shipbuilding industry was strong. Dublin did not markedly industrialise. Most people worked on the land. Ireland didn’t attract investors as it was seen as lawless.
	Pasturage was more attractive than tillage due to diversification of diet and depopulation. New technology was slow to come in, partly due to the indebtedness of tenant farmers and reluctance of landlords to invest.
	Isaac Butt, a Protestant, had initiated the Home Government Association. By now, the nationalists were allied with the Liberals, but this alienated the Protestants. The ‘Ascendancy’ campaigned against land reform, Home Rule and church disestablishment. The Ulster Protestants put up the most resistance. The workers of Belfast promoted their interests through factional conflict. The unionists were to oppose the Home Rule initiatives of 1886, 1893 and 1912. Protestant and Catholic Ulstermen formed their own fraternities. Some evangelist Protestant crusades militated against Home Rule.
1871 – 1911	During this time, Protestant workers helped edge Catholics out of the better jobs.
1873	Isaac Butt initiated the Home Rule League.
	The IRB’s constitution bound Fenians to peaceful protest. War against Britain would only be justified by majority vote. Parnell accommodated ex-Fenians. He also mobilised the Catholic church for Home Rule. Paul Cullen’s church had not been helpful, but Parnell was so successful in getting united popular support that the church could either withdraw from politics or co-operate.
1876	Parnell stated in Parliament that he believed there was no murder in Manchester.
	Competitive exams were introduced for the civil service.
1879	Famine loomed, but a massive charitable operation staved it off. Since the beginning of the first famine, two million people had emigrated. This in some ways improved the agricultural situation, but many peasants were still dependent on potatoes. The 1870s had been relatively prosperous, but the later part of the decade saw cheap grain flooding in from America, hitting farm prices, and the potato crop began to fail. There were evictions.
	Michael Davitt, an ex-Fenian newly released from prison, campaigned for a reduction in rates, an end to evictions and an eventual transfer of ownership from landlord to tenant. He created the Land League, and Parnell became its president. It consisted of Fenian and radical elements together with tenant associations, and aimed to protect tenants from eviction. The League lost support when it radicalised. The land campaign involved violence not just against landlords but also tenants who disobeyed Land League orders, such as by taking land cleared by eviction. The League’s leaders publicly disapproved of this, but the rank and file included both former Fenians at the top level and members of agrarian secret societies. The ex-Fenians believed they were laying foundations for positive Irish national thinking amongst farmers and peasants. Parnell was careful not to get involved in the violent, extremist side, although he knew about it. Instead, he invented the idea of ‘boycotting’, named after its first victim. The victim would be ignored.
	Parnell became leader of the Irish Party after the death of the more moderate Isaac Butt. Gladstone was sympathetic to Irish problems, but brought in a Coercion Bill to halt the land war, giving the police and army special powers and suspending some civil liberties such as Habeas Corpus. Parnell forced the Commons into a continuous 41 hour session in resistance, after which Parnell and 35 of his MPs were escorted out. Gladstone introduced a bill to reform the Irish land system, but Parnell was temporarily a prisoner of his more extreme supporters and felt obliged to oppose the bill for being too moderate. The bill included Land Courts to set fair rents and guaranteed rent payers fixity of tenure, as well as granting tenants the right to sell their holdings. The bill became law but Parnell grew increasingly belligerent. In his speeches in Ireland, he denounced the British government.
1880	Parnell visited America and gave speeches about Irish nationalism. In the same year, he began an adulterous affair with Katherine O’Shea, wife of an Irish member of parliament.
	By now the Land League had taken on a Home Rule aspect. Until then, the Home Rule body had been very loosely organised.
1881	Parnell declared he wanted the Crown to be the only link to Ireland. Gladstone began to attack Parnell in his speeches; he accused him of ambivalence to the Crown. Parnell responded with harsh words. He was arrested and lodged at Kilmainham jail. It meant he was a martyr for the extremists while not having to take responsibility for their actions. The new Land Act was actually working well, and Parnell could afford to turn to a more nationalist campaign. The activists were trying to get the tenants to pay no rent, but the tenants were happy with the land courts’ decisions. Parnell, still in jail, felt the need to make a deal with Gladstone. He offered to calm the Irish situation if Gladstone would look at Ireland’s national aspirations. The O’Sheas represented him while he was in jail.
1882	(May). Parnell was released under the unwritten Kilmainham Treaty, under which he agreed to co-operate with Gladstone.
	The new Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, was murdered along with his Under-Secretary in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Their murderers were former IRB members now called the ‘Invincibles’. They had acted with the support of the Land League of Great Britain. The murder was disastrous for Parnell. Distrust amongst the Liberals about whether Home Rule could mean increased.
1884	Gaelic Athletic Association formed.
1885	Parnell’s party increased in the General Election as agricultural labourers had the vote. He gained 80% of Irish representation. The Irish Party now had the balance between Liberals and Conservatives. Gladstone eventually came round to endorsing Home Rule.
1886	The First Home Rule bill failed to pass through Commons. Parnell had made a speech appearing to sincerely accept the Home Rule Bill as the final settlement of the Irish Question. Strongest opposition to the bill came from the Protestants of Northern Ireland. In the Commons, the Conservatives ‘played the Orange card’. Both moderates and extremist Protestants were united against Home Rule. Everyone knew the bill would not get through the Lords. Gladstone was not sympathetic to Ulster, pointing out that they were in the minority. Parnell was more placatory, saying that the Protestants would exercise a ‘moderating influence’ on making laws and welcoming all creeds and classes to Ireland. The bill was ultimately defeated due to Liberal defection, but the fact that it had been raised at all was a triumph. At this time, Parnell’s party held the balance of power in the Commons by helping the Tories eradicate Gladstone’s majority.
	There were threats of civil war from Ulster even before the Home Rule Bill was introduced. Men were arming themselves and drilling. After the Bill was defeated, there were celebratory riots in Belfast and people were killed.
	The Catholic church endorsed Home Rule. In return, Parnell supported such issues as denominational education. This alliance between the church and nationalism alienated Protestants.
	Meanwhile, Mr O’Shea was trying to get his wife back from Parnell. He would not divorce her because she was due to come in for a large inheritance.
1886-9	‘Plan of Campaign’ took place – Land League agitations.
1887	Parnell was falsely accused of writing letters that appeared to justify and even instigate the Phoenix Park murders. He was sensationally cleared and won sympathy from the British public.
1889	Mrs O’Shea came into her inheritance, and her husband filed for divorce. The divorce case was to ruin Parnell’s reputation. He and Mrs O’Shea did not defend themselves in court, and embarrassing charges were made. Catholic Ireland and English Nonconformists – the backbone of Liberal support – were shocked. Gladstone was amongst those calling for his resignation. He threatened to resign unless Parnell did. The need for Gladstone’s support contributed to the Party’s eventual decision to get rid of Parnell. Parnell had also been a brutal disciplinarian and had ignored local issues.
1890	(Dec). A stormy meeting of the Party took place, after which the party voted to depose Parnell. It then split into those who were for and who against Parnell. The Church was against him. Parnell became desperate, turning to the Fenians for support. He lost three by-elections in a row, campaigning furiously despite deteriorating health. He was to die of a heart attack aged 45.
	The Conservatives, needing an effective identity, decided to oppose Home Rule on behalf of the Ulster Protestants. The Liberal-Nationalist alliance survived even despite non-conformist hostility to Catholic causes and the splintering of the Irish Party in this year.
	It was Conservatives who brought in the most lasting initiatives. They helped create a ‘peasant proprietary’ and to modernise agriculture. The nationalists however preferred a rhetorical alliance with Liberalism to the more substantive reforms of ‘constructive unionism’. Reform could have made Irish Catholics uninterested in national freedom. The Tories were ‘killing Home Rule by kindness’.
1891	(Oct). Death of Parnell. The Irish Party split into warring fragments. Parnellism attracted those who were worried by clerical interference in politics. Fenians formed a cult around Parnell, including many intellectuals and cultural revivalists. Yeats was one of these. This new cult was heavily faction-ridden.
1892	Liberals carried a Home Rule Bill through the Commons. The Ulster Unionists had already held a convention with 12,000 delegates where violence was urged to save the country. The idea of a Dublin parliament was denounced. They also spoke of spilling blood when in Parliament. The Irish nationalists and their Liberal supporters dismissed this as a bluff. There was a truth in this in the sense that the Lords would have vetoed the bill so violence would not have been necessary.

The Gaelic Cultural Movement

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1893	Second Home Rule Bill passed Commons but rejected by the Lords.
	Gladstone called the Irish question ‘the curse of this House’.
	A ‘Gaelic League’ was founded to encourage every aspect of Gaelic culture that would distinguish Irishness from Englishness. There was a Gaelic Athletic Association for Irish games. Yeats became part of the Irish literary movement. The Gaelic movement was largely middle-class and a certain Irish snobbishness developed. Some political nationalists took part in the movement in the awareness that it might one day achieve political force. The League was factionalised, and most of its Protestant leaders (including ‘George Birmingham’) were forced out of office.
	The main impact of the Irish-Ireland movement was the training and ideology it gave to a small knot of enthusiasts. Militant labour distrusted cultural nationalism.
1894	Irish Trades Union Congress formed.
1898	The franchise was widened, making possible nationalist control of local government.
	The United Irish League was formed.
1900	Queen Victoria visited Ireland and was greeted loyally.
	Parnellite John Redmond reunited the Irish Party. Parliamentary selection was localised (de-centralised). The United Irish League became its chief instrument. Labour, Irish-Ireland bodies and nationalist fraternities got involved. Sectarian conflict intensified, resulting in the Catholic Ancient Order of Hibernians becoming the Party’s vehicle for popular mobilisation. The vagueness of ‘Home Rule’ attracted groups with disparate aims.
1903	King Edward visited Ireland.
	Land Purchase Act (Wyndham’s Act) became law, aimed at forcing landlords to sell land and allow tenants to buy it at low prices. Security of tenure prevented the consolidation of uneconomic farms, increased indebtedness and discouraged innovation.
1904	Sinn Féin was formed by Arthur Griffith, an ex-Fenian, in order to exploit local authorities (ignoring other state institutions) rather than seek revolution or legislative reform. Before the First World War it failed to win any seats. Griffith, contributor to the newspapers The United Irishmen and Sinn Féin (‘Ourselves Alone’), had previously encouraged the setting up of an Irish Parliament.
1905	Ulster Unionist Council was formed.
1906	Liberals won the election with a big majority, leaving them no motive to offer Home Rule to Irish Party.
1906 – 10	The United Irish League targeted graziers (‘ranchers’).
1907-16	Augustine Birrell acted as Chief Secretary. He carried out wide reforms and directed much state funding to Ireland.
1908	Sinn Féin lost a by-election and it lacked support until 1917.
	Old Age Pensions Act.
	The Irish Universities Act gave university status to Queen’s, Belfast and colleges under the Catholic National University of Ireland.
	Patrick Pearse, a poet and teacher, founded St Enda’s school at Rathfarnham to teach the Irish-Ireland spirit. Many of its pupils were to join the IRB.
1909	Second Land Purchase Act. These Acts made the national question seem less important.
	The Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union was formed, led by Jim Larkin and James Connolly.
1910	The Irish Party held the balance between Liberals and Conservatives. Asquith depended on the Irish Parliamentary Party to retain power.
	William O’Brien formed the anti-sectarian All-For-Ireland League to win over Protestant support. The Home Rule Party disguised its internal conflicts in order to present itself as representative of all Catholics.
	Tom Clarke, who had been imprisoned for Fenianism, reopened the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

The Ulster Covenant

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1911	The Lords were denied their veto and the Third Home Rule Bill passed Commons.
	(Sept). The leader of the Ulster Unionist Council, Sir Edward Carson, addressed a meeting of 50,000 Orangemen and Unionists, saying that if Home Rule were to pass they must set up their own government in Ulster.
	National Insurance Act. Employers, workers and the state were to contribute towards sickness and unemployment benefits.
	By this year, 25% of 50 year olds had never married.
1912	Asquith introduced a Government of Ireland bill against intense opposition from the unionists. It allowed for Home Rule and did not permit control of the Royal Irish Constabulary for six years. In the face of marching and drilling by Unionists in Ulster, the alternative of having an exemption for Ulster emerged. Both the Irish Party and the Unionists discussed this in private. Partition was not discussed.
	(6^th April). 100, 000 men marched at Balmoral, Belfast, in front of a giant Union Jack. Bonar Law, head of the English Conservatives, pledged assistance in ‘battle’.
	(28th Sept). Nearly half a million Protestants signed the Ulster Covenant in opposition to the Home Rule Bill. It was believed that many people had signed in blood, although the only provable instance of this was Major Fred Crawford. They accepted they that couldn't block Home Rule for most of Ireland, but they wanted to retain Ulster within the Union. The minimum demand included the exclusion of six counties. An Ulster Volunteer Force of 100,000 men was formed through the Orange Lodges. A former English General of the Indian Army took charge of it; there was no doubt on whose side the English Establishment was. The police assisted them to import arms. Liberal nerve began to fail. Asquith looked at the exclusion of the Ulster counties as a compromise. The Irish Nationalist Party became alarmed, and announced that Ireland was a single unit. Home Rulers in the south flocked to join a counter-movement in to the UVF, the ‘Irish National Volunteers’, which had been formed by IRB members. The majority of Irish Volunteers however were only interested in Home Rule without the Ulster clause.
1913	The Irish Transport Union launched a six-month strike which ended without gain for the workers. At this time, the slums in Dublin were the worst in Europe. The slum owners and the major employer, William Martin Murphy, were supporters of Home Rule, which implied that this Home Rule was insufficient for the workers.
1914	Between this year and 1881, a social revolution had taken place. The British presence in Ireland came to be tolerated as a source of material benefit.
	Redmond was prepared to offer Ulster six years of independence. At the last moment he made a further concession, dropping the time limit. The Conservatives and Ulster Unionist Council demanded the permanent exclusion of six counties – Down, Derry, Antrim, Tyrone, north Fermanagh, and north Armagh – but Tyrone had a substantial nationalist population.
	(June) John Redmond assumed control of the Irish Volunteers. He had been surprised by the depth of feeling. By this time the UVF were formidable and much better armed, as a result of gun-running. 40,000 rifles were made available.
	(July). More of an effort was made to prevent arms being smuggled in to the Volunteers than to the UVF, but in this month they imported some successfully. Three civilians were killed on the day the Volunteers received arms at Howth near Dublin.
	Around this time, an ‘Ulster Provisional Government’ was formed. Meanwhile the Director of Military Operations at the War Office, Sir Henry Wilson, opposed Irish nationalism and intrigued to stop the government using the army to enforce Home Rule. In Ireland, fifty-eight officers announced that they would not move against the UVF – this was the ‘Curragh Mutiny’, which took place on July 20th.
	(Aug 4th) Outbreak of World War One – most of the Irish supported Britain.
	(Sept). With the outbreak of war, Home Rule was postponed. An Amending Bill was to be introduced for Ulster. Redmond encouraged the Volunteers to join the war effort in the hope of being rewarded with Home Rule. The Volunteers split; the extremists keeping the name ‘Irish Volunteers’ while the majority, 167,000, became the ‘Nationalist Volunteers’. Many nationalists offered to serve in the war to prove their fitness and conciliate the unionists. However, they weren’t allowed their own divisions, while the Unionists were. The British authorities in Dublin had not taken the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army seriously because they didn’t appear at all representative of the Irish people. They were treated as a joke and even allowed to march with arms, so they would not become martyrs. Southern Ireland seemed more loyal to the Crown than ever before, because Home Rule had passed into law just before the war broke out. Thousands of Irish were flocking to join the war, and Irish nationalists were proud of the fact. However, there was a minority of radicals such as Tom Clarke, once jailed for plotting to bomb Britain, who owned a shop in Dublin where extremists met. He was reviving the IRB. This group took the decision after war broke out to take violent advantage of Britain’s difficulties. Patrick Pearse was obsessed with making a blood sacrifice for Ireland. James Connolly, a Trade Union organiser, was most impatient of all. They set up or reactivated front organisations, such as the ‘Wolfe Tone Memorial Committee’ which organised the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa.
	There were plans, with American support, to get Irish POWs from Germany and transport German arms to Ireland. In October, Roger Casement sailed for Germany via the United States in order to recruit the Germans as allies. However, military recruitment and prosperity had strengthened Irish ties to Britain. Despite popular contempt, a small minority of activists continued to plot revolt. This was the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Birrell’s Irish administration used ridicule rather than coercion to undermine the conspiracy. Dublin Castle acted as a caretaker administration pending Home Rule. Birrell’s relations with the Unionists were less good.
	The Irish Trades Union Congress nominally converted into a Labour Party. Unity was difficult when Catholics and Protestants formed conflicting affiliations. Many trades unionists were also attached to British-based bodies. Most workers gave allegiance to nationalist or unionist bodies. Militant labour’s significance was grossly inflated by Connolly’s involvement in 1916.
	By this year, the Home Rule party was huge. It was respected by the church and the Liberals.

The Easter Rising

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1915	Death of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. His body was returned to Ireland by neo-Fenians and given a great funeral to awaken public memories of the Fenians. Pearse said of him, ‘they have left us our Fenian dead’. Few would have viewed this as anything more than a celebration of a historic patriot; even the rank-and-file Volunteers didn’t know what was planned.
	The founder of the Gaelic League Douglas Hyde was forced out by Fenians. Fenians also controlled the GAA.
1916	Before this year, the Irish made up 3.7% of total recruitment in the UK, a low number because of the high agricultural population. Conscription was never introduced in Ireland. Protestants were overrepresented amongst volunteers, because of the recruitment of unemployed Ulster workers. At home, unemployment fell; but while farmers profited, the proletariat had to endure inflation.
	(March 17^th). The minority Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army paraded around Dublin.
	The plan for the Rising was to take over strong-points in Dublin centre in order to command the site of army barracks and approach routes into the city. Arms were being shipped from Germany, accompanied by Sir Roger Casement, former British Consulate figure and Irish Nationalist. He was immediately arrested (April 21^st).
	Eoin MacNeill, head of the Irish Volunteers and co-founder of the Gaelic League, was not in favour of armed action except in defence and had not been told until the last moment about the rebellion. He was appalled, but reluctantly agreed at first; when the arms ship was intercepted, he attempted to cancel the rebellions with a newspaper notice. MacNeill cancelled exercises of the (nationalist) Irish Volunteers and rebellion seemed inconceivable. However, the rebels went ahead despite the certainty of defeat, believing bloodshed was a ‘cleansing and a sanctifying thing’. Connolly and Pearse hastily rescheduled, but the number who turned out (1,000, later joined by 800) was lower than it would have been. The British had discovered that a rebellion was on the cards, and issued orders to disarm the Volunteers and Citizen Army and arrest their leaders. After MacNeill’s newspaper announcement, the authorities postponed the arrests until after Easter Monday. But that morning, April 24^th, the rebels began to gather at the rallying points. One group hijacked a tram. Youths (the Fianna) and a women’s organisation, Cumann na Mban, were amongst those who gathered at Liberty Hall. Some of the boys were armed only with pikes. Some of those involved were taken by surprise; they had not expected to be taking part in a rebellion.
	The General Post Office was chosen as the Rising’s headquarters. The public were turned out, and Patrick Pearse proclaimed the Republic. The first casualties were a party of Lancers, taken wholly by surprise; four were killed. Jacob’s Biscuit Factory was also taken over, but a jeering crowd heckled and swore at them; one got shot in the leg. The policeman guarding Dublin Castle was shot dead, but the Volunteers didn’t press home the attack. A group of elderly part time soldiers were massacred as they marched back unarmed from the mountains. In central Dublin, there was mass looting by civilians.
	The 2500 British troops in Dublin were not prepared; many had gone to the races. Once they woke up to the threat, the few hundred left in barracks that day were sent to secure the Castle and reinforcements were called for. The centre of Dublin was cordoned off. A well-known pacifist writer, Sheehy Skeffington, was arrested alongside two civilians and executed by a ‘mad’ British officer. This day saw the heaviest fighting. Arriving British troops were showered with gifts of food and drinks from friendly Irish women. One column of the Sherwood Foresters were shot at by snipers from a house at Mount Street Bridge. British casualties there amounted to more than half the casualties of the entire Rising. In Dublin, troops faced sniping and barricades. They killed twelve civilians in their houses. Some rebel garrisons saw little action; most of the rebels’ time was spent listening to rumours. There was temporary elation when they believed the Germans had landed, and there were rumours of a general uprising, although very little happened outside Dublin. The British were using clumsy armoured cars and slowly tightening the cordon round the rebels. Heavy artillery fire pounded the city centre. By Friday evening the Post Office was uncontrollably on fire. The rebels were forced to flee it. Pearse, Connolly and Clarke broke into houses to form new headquarters, while Michael O’Rahilly – who had originally opposed the Rising, but as a founder of the Volunteers felt obliged to join in – made a counter-charge and was killed. Pearse surrendered because he was appalled by the slaughter of civilians. The garrisons began reluctantly to surrender. Eamon de Valera, a little-known maths teacher, had been leading the garrison at Boland’s Mill. Many prisoners were taken to open ground outside Rotunda Hospital, where they were rudely treated by a British Captain, Lee Wilson, who was consequently murdered by the IRA in 1920. When the prisoners were marched through the streets, they were abused by Dublin citizens and needed the protection of their escorts. The boy prisoners were treated leniently and sent home. In fact, only a small number were court-martialled; the majority were interned in Britain.
	Casualties included 318 civilians, 60 rebels and 130 British troops. 2217 people were injured. The rebellion had lasted nearly a week. Despite popular contempt, people looked back on the long history of Irish rebellion and began to feel some pride.
	Pearse, Clarke and a poet, Thomas MacDonagh, were executed. If these had been the only executions, matters might have been different, but they carried on. The Irish Home Rule Party condemned both the Rising and the executions. As the executions continued, public sympathy turned towards the rebels, as some had warned it would. James Connolly was the last to die, sitting in a chair because he was wounded. The newspapers and public called it the Sinn Féin rebellion because nothing was known of the real organisers. Pearse had seen the rebellion as an almost Christ-like blood sacrifice; Easter was chosen for a reason. Tom Clarke said they had struck the first blow for Ireland’s freedom.
	The location of the buildings taken (parks, factories, public buildings and the GPO) served for maximum casualties and were difficult to defend. Popular response was fury and disgust. However, Asquith’s government overreacted; there was martial law, and 3500 people were arrested. This overreaction was a result of the war – dissidents became traitors. Although it didn’t last long, the effect on public opinion was severe. Jailed republicans discovered common cause, learnt Irish and played Gaelic games. A cult of veneration for the rebels developed. Asquith gave Lloyd George the task of putting through an amended Home Rule settlement. Lloyd George almost managed to negotiate a compromise under which six Ulster counties would be excluded until the end of the war. The nationalists and unionists accepted this, but it was sabotaged by southern unionist magnates. The Irish Party were execrated for acquiescing in ‘partition’. The rebels themselves wanted more bloodshed to bring on more repression and inflame popular spirit. Eamon de Valera encouraged mass political participation in republicanism and argued against another rising.
	Michael Collins, born in 1890, had been working for the Post Office in London. As a member of the IRB he returned to Ireland to participate in the Rising. Afterwards he was interned at Frongoch in Wales. There, he set up an IRB network and organised classes, some in guerrilla warfare. He obtained information about friendly members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and made contacts from all over Ireland. A skeleton network of Volunteers had survived under bogus branches of the Gaelic League, and when the British released the internees at Christmas as a gesture of goodwill, they were able to take over this network. Their first task was to work on public opinion. There was already growing sympathy after the executions and the failure of the government to implement Home Rule without excluding Ulster.
1917 – 1919	The rebels’ plan was to get popular support for republicanism in order to win American backing for Irish representation at the peace conference. Electoral contests were to be used to demonstrate republican popularity, although candidates would ‘abstain’ from taking up their seats. They had most success in the south.
1917	The Parliamentary Party under John Redmond and John Dillon was still dominant. Collins formed a group with the non-violent pre-war Sinn Féin of Arthur Griffith and put up the father of Rising martyr Joseph Plunkett in a by-election, to a resounding victory. Then, using his effective campaigning machine, he scored another victory. Public mood was changing; when the final political prisoners were released in July, they were greeted as heroes. Eamon de Valera was one of these, and Collin’s organisation, helped by new support from the church, got him elected. De Valera became the leader of the new Sinn Féin. They demanded a Republic, but how they would go about this was not clear. There was talk of appealing to the International Peace Conference or the Americans.
	(Sept). A Volunteer died through force-feeding while on hungerstrike. Collins organised a grandiose military funeral.
	(Oct). Until this month there was no unified nationalist party. Sinn Féin claimed 100,000 members. The republican elite regrouped itself into the IRB, Irish volunteers and the Cumann na mBan for women. Michael Collins, a London clerk, came to lead the IRB. The Volunteers exuded menace, claiming political status in prisons, ‘protecting’ republican politicians and drilling in public.
	Many constitutional nationalists remained loyal to Redmond because they feared violence and were put off by the imprecision of Sinn Féin’s policy. Redmond’s son beat a Sinn Féin candidate in a by-election in which he wore the British army uniform.
	When the British government began to consider conscription, the nationalists resisted with vast meetings and an anti-conscription pledge. Plans for a draft were dropped.
	The Sinn Féin leaders were arrested after the British believed they were plotting with the Germans; Collins, who had caught advanced wind of this, avoided arrest and consequently had more power over the movement.
1918	(18^th April). The various republican parties met and won the support of the Catholic church in opposing conscription. Peaceful protest followed, although there were plans for ‘ruthless warfare’. However, the draft was avoided, and consequently support for the republican parties grew. The case for direct military action weakened.
	By now, the election register had trebled since 1910. The Parliamentary Party was struggling and losing members to Sinn Féin. Meanwhile, their core voters – Irish soldiers in the British army - never received ballot papers. Sinn Féin were aided both by the vagueness of their agenda and by vote-rigging. They also denounced violence during the election. Consequently, they won the 1918 election overwhelmingly, gaining nearly three quarters of seats or 48% of the vote. Unionists obtained 29% and constitutionalists 23%. Many elected were still in jail. The rest met as the Dáil Eireann, the Irish Parliament, and declared a Republic. The British let them, calling their bluff. The nationalists’ hopes rested with America; but in fact Woodrow Wilson had no desire to quarrel with Lloyd George.
	The unionist-dominated post-war coalition did not follow up Asquith’s promise of Home Rule.
1918-20	Class conflict became a problem. Low unemployment was a boost for collective action, and there were strikes everywhere.

The War of Independence

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1919	(Jan). Young Volunteers Dan Breen and Sean Treacy murdered two police men without orders from anyone at Tipperary. Soon afterwards, Collins announced to Sinn Féin that