2Y: The Cromwellian Plantation Flashcards
When was the Cromwellian Plantation?
The Cromwellian Plantation was in 1652 and this was Ireland’s last Plantation.
Who carried out the Cromwellian Plantation?
- It was carried out by Oliver Cromwell, who had become ruler or Lord Protector of England following a bitter civil war in which he defeated King Charles I.
- Cromwell and his army conquered Ireland in a brutal campaign.
- He ordered a campaign to remove Catholic landowners in most parts of Ireland.
What were the reason for the Cromwellian Plantation? (4)
- In 1641 there was a Catholic rebellion in Ulster and other parts of Ireland. False reports reached England of over 100,000 Ulster Protestant planters being killed. Cromwell believed these reports.
- He had extreme religious views and hated ‘Papists’ (Catholics).
- Many Irish Catholics had supported King Charles in the civil war.
- Cromwell needed land to pay soldiers and pay wealthy ‘adventurers’ who had ‘ventured’ (loaned) him money to carry out his military campaigns.
What was the Act of Settlement 1652?
- Act of Settlement 1652 – Catholic landowners opposed to Cromwell in the Civil War were to lose their lands.
- They were told ‘To Hell or the Connacht’.
- Under the threat of death, Catholics had to leave their lands and move across the river Shannon, where they were given new, smaller estates.
- The land vacated by the Catholics was then given to Protestant Cromwellian soldiers and adventurers.
What were the results of the Cromwellian Plantation? (7)
The Plantation did not work out as well as Cromwell hoped.
- Many ‘Adventurers’ sold their lands and never even came to Ireland.
- Many Soldier-settlers who stayed in Ireland married Catholics and raised their children as Catholics.
- Only Catholic landowners had to move to Connacht, not labourers or other working people. They were allowed stay and worked for the new landowners.
- The biggest result of Cromwell’s plantation was that much Irish land passed into Protestant hands.
- Some Protestant landowners were absentees, where they owned land in Ireland but continued to live in England.
- From 1660s on, Catholics owned less than 10% of the land in Ireland.
What were some overall results of the Plantations? (3)
- Land ownership changed greatly. Before the plantation, only the Pale was under English control. After the Plantations, most land in Ireland was under English and Scottish control. From 1660s on, Catholics owned less than 10% of the land in Ireland.
- Some Planters became known as the ‘Protestant Ascendency’. This was the rich ruling class that controlled Ireland for more than 200 years.
- Members of the Ascendency encouraged the Government to pass the Penal Laws against the Catholics.
Provide some examples of Penal Laws? (6)
- Catholics could not buy land.
- Catholics could not become teachers.
- Children could not attend Catholic schools.
- Only Protestants could adopt Catholic orphans.
- Priests could not say mass.
- If a Catholic owned a horse and a Protestant offered £5, no matter what the horse was worth the Catholic had to accept.
How did Cromwell become leader of England in the 1650s?
- Oliver Cromwell helped to overthrow England’s King Charles I. Cromwell was one of the members of Parliament who disapproved of the way Charles ruled the country. The conflict between Parliament and the king led to the English Civil War in 1642.
- With no military experience, Cromwell created and led a powerful force of cavalry soldiers, nicknamed “The Ironsides.” He persuaded Parliament to establish a professional army—the New Model Army—which won an important victory over the king’s men at Naseby in 1645.
- By 1648 the Parliamentary forces had defeated the king. After much deliberation, Cromwell finally signed the paper that declared Charles a traitor (someone who has betrayed their country). The king was executed in 1649.
- England was declared a commonwealth under the rule of Parliament.
Explain one way the reports from Ireland were exaggerated by the
time they reached England.
in 1641 the Ulster Irish rebelled against oppression of their national religion and relentless plantations when Sir Phelim O’Neill issued a proclamation declaring the defence of Irish liberty.
Because of anti-Irish propaganda the perception in England was that hundreds of thousands of English Protestants had been slaughtered by the Irish Catholics. The fact is that there were only about 40,000 Protestants in Ireland at this time and only about 5,000 are now estimated to have lost their lives in this war.
Was Cromwell a War Criminal?
Cromwell – who thought Catholic beliefs were wrong – went to do “a great work against the barbarous and blood thirsty Irish”.
Cromwell spent just nine months in Ireland:
- He captured the town of Drogheda in Ireland in September 1649. His troops massacred nearly 3,500 people, including 2,700 royalist soldiers, all the men in the town with weapons and probably also some civilians, prisoners and priests.
- At the siege of Wexford in October 1649, 2,000 Irish soldiers and perhaps 1,500 civilians were killed.
Many historians accuse Cromwell of:
- slaughtering civilians as well as soldiers.
- transporting many Irish Catholics as slaves to the West Indies.
- giving Catholics’ land to Protestant settlers and exiling the Irish to poor land in Connacht in the west of Ireland.
Other historians point out that:
- Cromwell ordered his men not to kill civilians and hanged those who did.
- Cromwell refused to show mercy to the people of Drogheda, as the laws of war allowed at the time, because they had refused to surrender. He wrote later that he gave the order only to stop bloodshed in the long run.
- There is little evidence that he ever sent Irish slaves.
- Cromwell left Ireland two years before the Act for the Settlement of Ireland (1652) which confiscated Catholics’ lands.
