Born Fighting (9 page)

Such conduct was not limited to the high priesthood. Nor was it isolated. Smout points out that “ecclesiastical sources abound with evidence of priests coming to the altar half drunk, of priests hardly able to read the services either in Latin or in English, and of a ‘profane lewdness of life’ in general at all levels. . . . [L]egitimations of priestly offspring were so numerous that, in mid century, when perhaps two Scotsmen in six hundred were priests, no less than two legitimised [
sic
] children in seven were the bastards of priests. In these circumstances society at large treated the church and its services with open irreverence.”
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Based on similar complaints of Church corruption as well as the perception that Church doctrine had erected structural barriers between God and Man, the Protestant Reformation had begun in Germany and spread quickly throughout Europe. By the mid-1500s, half of Europe had left the Catholic Church. “Parts of Germany and the whole of Scandinavia followed the revolutionary theology of Martin Luther, first enunciated at Wittenberg in 1517, while other parts of Germany, of the Low Countries, of France and of Switzerland followed the still more radical teaching of John Calvin of Geneva.”
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Calvin was indeed more radical; he can safely be called the founder of the modern Christian evangelical movement. Born into a well-off French family with close ties to the Catholic Church, Calvin had briefly studied to be a priest before switching over to law, and then converted to the Reformed faith in 1533 at the age of twenty-four. By 1536 he had broken with the Roman Catholic Church altogether, and from that point on until his death in 1564 he resided principally in Geneva, where he wrote, preached, and lectured on Reform theology.
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And perhaps his most determined and successful follower was the Scotsman John Knox.

Knox, himself a former priest, embodied the utter fearlessness of William Wallace. A born rebel who had defended an early Protestant leader by wielding a two-handed sword during his services and who had once served nineteen months as a galley slave for participating in a religious rebellion, he turned his energies against the hierarchy of the Church rather than the English Crown. Mary, Queen of Scots, the Catholic ruler who fled Scotland as the Reformation took hold, is reputed to have said, “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe.”
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And well she should have. Her reign had been characterized by her marriage to the Dauphin of France, who later became King Francis II, as well as by an importation of many Frenchmen to high offices. These gestures had caused ordinary Scots to fear annexation by France as their price for that country’s assistance during the time of Henry VIII’s “rough wooing.”
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Mary’s life ended when an English court later put her to death in 1587, ostensibly for plotting to assassinate her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Although her Catholicism did inspire several plots against the Protestant Elizabeth’s life, in reality this was a cold-blooded murder-by-fiat by England’s high lords. Her death was designed to quell the seemingly unending series of conspiracies in England and in Europe that were designed to put a Catholic back on the throne of England, and thus end the momentum of the Reformation throughout Europe. The conspirators knew that the childless Elizabeth would die without heirs. If Mary had survived her, under the laws of succession she would have become queen. But the earlier death of Elizabeth’s cousin would allow the throne to pass, as it did, to Mary’s son, the Protestant Scot who became James I.
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In this sense the Scottish Reformation took on international overtones in addition to its rebellion against church corruption, and it began a period of closer cooperation between England and Scotland.

The impact of all these twists and turns on the Scottish people was that the Catholics were out, the followers of John Knox had won in Scotland, and at the same time Scotland had become closer to England and estranged from France. And from that point forward, Knox and his supporters moved quickly to change the shape of religion in Scotland. Their major structural move was to destroy papal authority and replace it with the power of local religious bodies called the Kirk. Under this concept, the only head of the church was Christ, who was represented not by a pope but by local ministers elected by the church members themselves. The congregations would also elect key church leaders such as deacons and elders rather than having them foisted upon them from above. There were to be only two sacraments, baptism and Holy Communion. Every individual was to be held responsible for his own actions, and the church elders would be fierce in enforcing notions of “godly discipline.” And as a harbinger of things to come when America’s Bible Belt hit full swing, sexual misconduct of all kinds would rank high among those offenses inviting such “godly discipline.”
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Most interestingly, although they had joined together against the Catholic powers, the English and Scottish had absorbed the Protestant Reformation in characteristically different ways. As Mackie points out, “In England the Crown arrogated to itself all the power of which the Pope was deprived,” thus preserving England’s top-down religious, social, and governmental structure. In other words, the Anglican Church, also called the Episcopacy, was little more than a makeover of the Catholic Church itself, with the king replacing the pope. But Scotland “developed the Calvinistic doctrine that civil government, though regarded as a necessity, was to be recognized only when it was conducted according to the word of God.”
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This meant not only that the Kirk would have the power to organize religious activity at the local level, but also that Scots had reserved the right to judge their central government according to the standards they themselves would set from below.

This decision—that the laity at the lower levels of society would directly participate in judging their higher-ups—was a daring and astonishing concept for its times, even though it had emerged naturally from more than a thousand years of historical experience. The high Scottish nobility and religious authority had never fully penetrated beyond the clan leaders and thus had never directly controlled the people. And now the people, in concert with their local leaders acting through the Kirk, had firmly declared a measure of independence from those above them.

The lowland Scots would carry this fresh philosophy of government with them when they ventured across the narrow straits and took their place as settlers in the Ulster Plantation. As Mackie put it, “The Kirk they produced trained up a people strong in faith, patient of discipline, ready to venture, and even to die, for their beliefs.”
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These tenets as well as the embryonic strains of true democracy that propelled them would meet a stern, century-long first test in Ulster.

3

The Problem Children of Ulster
                              

AND SO WE
can imagine these families heading out from their heather-covered, denuded hills for the coastlines, where they would catch the boats that took them a few miles across the stormy North Channel of the Irish Sea and into the new world that awaited them in Ireland’s Ulster Plantation. The men would be dressed simply in the wool sweaters and plaid trousers of their day, the women in “linen skirts with a plaid draped over their heads and pinned across their bosom and falling to their knees.”
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Some would be shoeless. They would be carrying few possessions; weapons, certainly, and perhaps a few days’ supply of the ever-vital oatmeal to be mixed with milk into porridge or with water into gruel. They would be traveling not simply in families but more likely among a group of families, on their way to settle in little pockets of farmland that their lairds had marked for them.

As with all voyagers who leave behind the security of a known world in order to thrust themselves into the flurry and confusion of an unproven existence, these were the dreamers and daredevils of their lot, the ones whose veins pumped with adrenaline and who were willing to take large risks. What was it that they risked as they abandoned the admittedly infertile soil and incessantly war-torn valleys of what would soon become their pasts? Certainty, however difficult. The continuity that came from their clan relations and their communities. The end of their family’s full association with Scotland. And their lives.

Can we put a face on them? Can we imagine their banter and their spirit? We are told that the harsh disciplines of Calvinism had turned the Scots into a dour and even humorless people, and that the wars and isolations of the centuries had given them little chance to appreciate literature or the arts. But we know that they were a people who had a strong love of oratory and music, who invented many types of dancing, and who relished all forms of competition. And we also know that any community or family gathering ended up with bonfires, gaiety, and all of those other things, especially singing and games of physical challenge such as racing and wrestling. Further, the evidence is clear that despite Calvinism’s heavy hand against sexual transgressions, the lowland Scots were an openly sensual people who not only delighted in teasingly aggressive sexual banter but also married early, quite often with a child already on the way. Indeed, much of Calvinism’s harsh discipline could be attributed to the attempt by church leaders to tame this highly spirited people.

These were not monks and nuns trudging along the roadways toward the western Scottish seaports or stepping off the long boats at the Irish port of Larne. Nor were they Talmudic scholars. Most of them had little or no schooling, knew no refined trade, and had read no book except perhaps the Bible. Few would have had any idea why someone would even want to sit down in front of an easel with a dozen pots of colored oils and paint a picture of a Madonna or a bunch of flowers.

But they were strong, keen of practical intellect, and reliable. They were hard-faced, thick-palmed farmers who doubled when necessary as ferociously dedicated soldiers. They were women who married early, bore numerous children, worked alongside their men in the fields, and frequently ran things by themselves when their men were gone. They were children who grew up quickly and learned from an early age to expect hardship and physical confrontation as a way of life. They willingly served their leaders, not as serfs but as emotional and spiritual coequals. They accepted the judgments of their ministers, but prayed while standing on their feet and not bent over on their knees. And if any man, no matter how highly born, should strike or offend them, it was their credo to strike back twice as hard.

Thinking of them, I cannot help but remember a favorite uncle, a man of fearsome but unpolished intellect who in his youth was known both for an uncanny mechanical aptitude and for his ability to fight. In the ring, he fought professionally. Outside of it, despite being only five feet, seven inches tall, he became a local legend for, among other things, having fought and beaten three grown men at the same time. Another fight, over a woman, ended with a knife thrust deep into his chest, missing his heart by less than an inch. Having never gone beyond grade school, he spent his entire life working with his hands, first in the meatpacking houses of St. Joseph, Missouri, then as an electrician, then in the shipyards of Long Beach, and finally making an independent living as a TV repairman and fixing air conditioners. He was also deeply emotional. When my father shipped out for World War II, my uncle Tommy Lee Webb took a train ride nonstop from Long Beach to the Midwest, thirty-six hours each way over a single weekend, just to have a cup of coffee with him. He shook his younger brother’s hand, gave him a survival knife that had been handmade by another brother, and on Monday morning was back at work in the shipyard.

When I was in my teens, I asked Uncle Tommy what he considered to be his proudest accomplishment. He thought about it for a moment, and then he grinned.

“I never kissed the ass of any man.”

Uncle Tommy was, as my grandmother would have put it, poured white-hot, right out of the mold.

These were the kind of people you would want covering your back in a barroom brawl or protecting your flank in the next foxhole while waiting for an enemy to make a night attack. They were the kind of people who would fight like madmen, then after it was over, look down at a dead friend or relative and cry like babies. They were the kind of people who would die in place rather than retreat if they had given you their word that they would be there for you. And they were not the kind of people you would ever, ever, want to set in action against you.

They were the lowland Scots, leaving the ancient battleground of the borders, heading across the North Channel of the Irish Sea to endless fights in a beautiful, blood-soaked countryside called Ulster. If they thought they might find respite in Ireland, they were quickly dispossessed of that fantasy, for in the native Irish they found a similarly emotional and combative people. That itself was hardly an accident of nature. For who are the Irish, but their closest blood cousins?

AS THE FARMLANDS,
towns, and textile mills of the Ulster Plantation began to fill up with these new Scottish arrivals in the early and mid 1600s, the entire British Isles fell into the gravest internal crisis of its modern history. This period of chaos and disruption would continue in several different renditions for nearly a century. At stake were the shifting notions of power among the competing centers of religion, monarchy, and representative government as Great Britain evolved from monotheistic feudalism toward a modern liberal state.

The initial series of explosions was in many ways brought about by the Scots themselves. The Calvinist notion that fundamental freedom and the rights of the common individual transcended religion to the point of defining politics had a huge impact on the British government, shaking the foundations of the Parliament, the monarchy, and even the English military. Ireland became a frequent and sometimes symbolic battleground, with its continuous clashing of a wronged Catholic people against both the English government and a fresh influx of Protestant immigrants. As this chaos played itself out, it would be the Ulster Scots rather than the English or the Irish who would take stock of later English policies and decide in the greatest numbers to leave Ireland for America. Thus would start the first great Celtic migration out of Ireland, which began in the early 1700s and did not cease until the beginning of the American Revolution in 1776.

IT IS A
small irony that, after all the centuries in which England sought to bring Scotland into the fold and thereby “unite the crowns,” it was a Scot who actually did the uniting, in the process becoming the first king of Great Britain. James I, the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, was raised as a Calvinist but had no particular love for the rigors of this demanding version of Protestantism. More important, he detested and feared the democratic implications of the faith, sensing early on that its fundamental independence carried with it grave dangers to the throne. As Churchill put it, “James had had enough of the Kirk. He realized that Calvinism and monarchy would quarrel in the long run and that if men could decide for themselves about religion they could also decide for themselves on politics.”
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At the core of this century of internal conflicts was the transition of the monarchy away from the unilateralist whimsy of what had been called “the royal prerogative” toward a more representative form of government embodied in the powers of Parliament. In short, the Parliament increasingly stood up to the Crown, and as events progressed the common people learned new ways of standing up to the aristocracy. And swirling around these new concepts, never far from the center of the debates, was the part that religion played in determining individual freedoms, in conducting governmental affairs, and inevitably in the enunciation of Great Britain’s foreign policy.

In 1625, James I gave way to his son Charles I. After a series of altercations with the Parliament, Charles simply dissolved it, sending it home and beginning a period that historians have called the Personal Rule. But in attempting to rule without Parliament, Charles cut himself away from his ability to raise funds through taxation and in the process lost much of his standing army. With an alienated Parliament and not much of an army, Charles then made the—literally—fatal error of unnecessarily taking on the Scots.

In 1637 the archbishop of Canterbury convinced Charles to attempt a unification of the Protestant faiths under the Anglican Church through a common prayer book. This ignited a ferocious rebellion among the Scots, who in 1638 formed a countermovement through the mass signing of a covenant that bound the entire nation to support the Calvinist Church of Scotland. Many Scots signed the covenant using their own blood as ink. Scottish leaders then formed a General Assembly to confront the king, comprised heavily of the populist lay elders and ministers elected by the Kirk.

Charles I, irritated and perhaps naive about the extent of his moral authority, ordered the General Assembly to disband. Refusing to do so, the Scots instead took to arms, recalling from Germany thousands of hardened soldiers and officers who had fought many campaigns under the Protestant leader Gustavus Adolphus, known widely as the father of modern warfare. Within a few months Scotland had assembled the strongest military force in Great Britain. Filled with the emotional resolve of a people daring to confront the powers above them, the Scottish army marched on England and shortly was occupying the ancient Scottish territory of Northumberland and parts of Durham below it. And King Charles had little to stand in their way.

In a truly ironic twist, the Scots seized the initiative, now demanding that Charles replace the Anglican Church with their own Presbyterian system. Charles, without either a full army or funds, decided that his only hope was to recall Parliament after an eleven-year hiatus. Instead of helping him, the returning Parliament revolted, demanding greater powers. The nation became paralyzed. In 1642, Great Britain fell into civil war.

As the civil war spread, the forces aligned against Charles split between the Scots and another “dissenting” Protestant sect termed the Congregationalists, which became the dominant force in Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads, in opposition to Charles’s cavalier Royalists. The Congregationalists strongly opposed both the Anglicans and the Presbyterians. Also important, they made up a large percentage of the Roundhead army, which was led by Cromwell himself and became known as the Ironside Army. This army eventually marched on London, overthrew Charles I, and, after arranging his beheading in 1649, installed Oliver Cromwell as dictator with the title of Lord Protector.

Churchill observed that Cromwell’s ascendancy was “the triumph of some twenty thousand resolute, ruthless, disciplined, military fanatics over all that England has ever willed or ever wished. . . . Cromwell was dictator. The Royalists were crushed; Parliament was a tool; the Constitution was a figment; the Scots were rebuffed, the Welsh back in their mountains; the Fleet was reorganized, London overawed.”
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The butchering, Bible-quoting Oliver Cromwell would remain dictator for eleven bloody years until the “Lord Protector’s” sudden and unexpected death in 1658. Then, although Cromwell had attempted through his will to establish his son as the follow-on “Protector” of England, the British Parliament finally reasserted itself again and managed to recall Charles’s son from exile in 1660. Charles II, “the merry monarch,” brought a much-needed respite to a nation shell-shocked by Puritanism. He ruled with a playful, often distracted hand filled with mistresses and self-indulgence until his death in 1685. His most glaringly unfortunate legacy was in personally seeking religious tolerance but officially acceding in a series of harsh discriminatory laws against non-Anglicans, Protestants and Catholics alike.

Failing to leave any heirs, Charles II was followed in 1685 by his brother James, who ruled as James II. James dreamed of reinstating Catholicism as the national religion and immediately began appointing Catholics to numerous key positions in government and the military. In 1688 a group of English Protestant leaders drove James II into exile, bringing in William of Orange from his position as Stadtholder of Holland to rule Great Britain, justifying their action because he was the grandson of Charles I and thus formally in the “direct line of succession.” William III would rule until 1702. James II did not disappear, however. Having aligned himself in exile with the French, he attempted to reclaim the throne through a determined campaign in Ireland. He lost, famously. But he did, for a time, establish his own regency in Dublin.

The implications of all this turbulence fell hard on Irish soil, bringing conflict from the outside as well as from within. A seemingly unending series of rebellions and retaliations swept the land, affected by attempts from London to invoke a plethora of constantly changing political policies that favored certain religious groups while punishing others. Contrary to the romanticism of many modern accounts, these battles were not precisely drawn as ethnic Irish versus non-Irish. Nor were they two-sided fights between Protestant and Catholic. Rather, they usually pitted the old-line Irish, which included the long-established Anglo-Irish, against the newer Anglicans of English descent, with the predominantly Scottish Calvinists thrown in as the wild card, sometimes matched by a small percentage of English Protestants who were neither Anglican nor Presbyterian. If it sounds complicated, well, it was a complicated time.