Ireland (11 page)

This alarmed Hugh O’Neill. He suspected that eventually the English would try to seize his lands too. He decided to join the rebellion of the Maguires and drive the English out of Ulster. He persuaded the O’Donnells of Donegal to help him and in August 1594 he attacked an English force bringing food and munitions to Enniskillen. The English soldiers were routed and they left so much food behind that the site of the battle became known as ‘The Ford of the Biscuits’. This battle was to be the first in a war that is known as ‘the Nine Years’ War’. It began with great success but led to one of the saddest events in Irish history – the Flight of the Earls.

O
’Neill’s greatest ally in the Nine Years’ War was Red Hugh O’Donnell. As a youth, Red Hugh had been lured into a trap by the English who imprisoned him in Dublin Castle. Now, if the O’Donnells rebelled, Red Hugh would be killed. Locked up in a prison cell and missing the hills of his beloved Donegal, he dreamed of escape. He did escape in 1591, but was betrayed and recaptured. Returned to prison, he languished in a dungeon for another year.

Then, on Christmas night 1592, he and two companions made a daring escape through a sewer. It was snowing and bitterly cold, but the three made their way to Wicklow. Here, Hugh’s companions fell down exhausted and he went to get help. When he returned, his companions had died of cold and exhaustion. Hugh made his way home to Donegal and the following year, at twenty years of age, he became chief of the O’Donnells. After his imprisonment, he had good reason to dislike the English, and was ready to join Hugh O’Neill in rebellion.

The rebellion began successfully in 1595 when the rebels captured Blackwater Fort in County Armagh and won another battle at Clontibret in County Monaghan. O’Neill knew he couldn’t defeat the English without help, and asked Philip III, who was now king of Spain, for soldiers. Spain was still at war with England, and Philip sent two Armadas to Ireland, but both were wrecked by fierce storms, leaving the rebels to fight on alone.

In 1598, Sir Henry Bagenal, the English commander, marched north with a large force, intent on crushing the rebellion. O’Neill and O’Donnell laid a trap for him. They dug a ditch in boggy ground at a place called the Yellow Ford, and lured Bagenal’s forces there. When a cannon got stuck in the bog, Bagenal tried to pull it out. During the attempt he was shot dead and this demoralised his forces. The Irish routed the English in one of the greatest victories ever by the Irish over their enemy.

This victory, and others which followed, alarmed Queen Elizabeth. She sent her favourite Englishman, the Earl of Essex, to Ireland with 20,000 men. But he was no great leader and tried to make peace. Elizabeth summoned him back to England and, after being accused of plotting against her, he was beheaded. Elizabeth next sent Lord Mountjoy to Ireland to subdue the rebels. He was utterly ruthless and ravaged the country, slaughtering and burning and terrorising the people so that those who were not killed died of starvation and disease.

O’Neill again asked the Spanish for help and another Armada with 6,000 men set out for Ireland. Once more storms intervened and about 4,000 eventually reached Ireland. Instead of landing in the north, where the rebels were strongest, the Spaniards landed at Kinsale, County Cork, in October 1601.

Lord Mountjoy marched to Kinsale and surrounded the Spaniards. Meanwhile, O’Neill and O’Donnell set out to march nearly 500 kilometres south to support the Spanish. It was wintertime and bitterly cold, and much of the country had already been ravaged by Mountjoy. There was little food or shelter to be had, and the rebels could only struggle on day after day.

Just before Christmas 1601, they reached Kinsale and surrounded Mountjoy and his forces, trapping him between themselves and the Spanish. They could now have waited until Mountjoy ran out of food and was forced to surrender. Had this happened, it would have been a great victory for the Irish, and could have ended English rule in the country.

But instead of waiting, the Irish attacked. It was a disastrous decision. The ground was not suited to the way the Irish fought, but was perfectly suited to a well-trained English army. The Irish were still recovering from their long march and, to make matters worse, their plans were betrayed to Mountjoy by an informer. Signals to the Spanish to attack were never given, or were misunderstood. The night was dark and wet and this caused more confusion.

When the Irish attacked on Christmas Eve 1601, Lord Mountjoy was well prepared. A fierce, bloody battle raged in which the Irish were routed. O’Neill retreated north with the remnants of his army while O’Donnell managed to escape with the Spanish who had survived. He then travelled to Spain seeking further help. The English sent a spy named Blake to Spain to kill O’Donnell. Blake succeeded in poisoning O’Donnell’s food and the great Red Hugh died in September 1602. He was then only twenty-nine years old.

Also in 1602 the English attacked the castle of O’Sullivan Beare, chieftain of the O’Sullivans of Beara and Bantry in west Cork. They destroyed his castle and took his land. With no land and no home, he with his family and followers set out to march hundreds of kilometres to the home of their relatives, the O’Rourkes of Breifne. The winter was still bitterly cold with heavy snow, and the marchers had little food and hardly any shelter. Everywhere they went they were attacked by both English and Irish enemies and many of them were killed. Others died of hunger and cold and disease. At one point they had to cross the Shannon, but there was no bridge, and they had no boats. They killed some of their horses, kept the flesh for food, and used the skins, along with branches cut from trees, to build makeshift boats. With these they eventually crossed the river and continued their march.

After marching for over two weeks they reached O’Rourke’s castle, where they were warmly welcomed. About 1,000 men, women and children set out on the march, but only thirty-four survived to enter the castle, though a few stragglers did arrive in the following days.

With the rebellion at an end, the English soldiers again ravaged parts of the country, leaving it unfit for humans or animals to live there. It was a policy that the English forces would employ numerous times in their coming wars against the Irish, a policy by which it was intended to rule Ireland by terror and brute force if necessary.

Hugh O’Neill reached Ulster but his days were numbered, and he surrendered in 1603. Surprisingly, he was not executed, but was allowed to return to his home in Tyrone. However, he did not feel safe there, not even when Elizabeth died in 1603. So great was O’Neill’s fear for his life, and that of his family, that he decided to flee Ireland. The O’Donnells, Maguires and other Ulster families joined him.

These old Gaelic families, whose origins stretched back some 2,000 years, men women and children, sailed from Rathmullen, County Donegal, on 4 September 1607, an event known as the ‘Flight of the Earls’. Many of them stood on deck as the ship, with sails billowing in the wind, put out to sea. There was much crying among the women and children as they realised they were leaving their homes and their homeland forever. The men’s faces seemed carved from stone, but inside they, too, felt desolate. They had fought long and bravely, but eventually had been defeated by a stronger and more ruthless foe.

Hugh O’Neill never saw Ireland again. He died in Rome in 1616 far from his beloved land, the last of the great Irish chieftains. The other families were scattered throughout Europe, many of the men joining the armies of France and Spain where they excelled themselves. Today, the names of some of those Gaelic families can still be found in European countries.

That date – 4 September 1607 – is one of the saddest in Irish history. It signalled the beginning of the end of the old Gaelic Ireland, which had existed from the time of the Celts some 2,000 years before. This old Gaelic Ireland had experienced the coming of Christianity, the Golden Age of peace and learning, the invasion and eventual defeat of the Vikings and the arrival of the Normans, who became as Irish as the old Gaelic families themselves. Now the Gaelic people who remained in Ireland were to become strangers in their own country, and were to suffer even greater hardships than those who had gone before them.

The English were now determined that the Irish should never again rebel and resorted to ruthless plantation as a means of achieving this. They confiscated the lands of the earls who had fled and gave them to English and Scottish settlers. Part of what was County Derry was given to a company from London, and they renamed the area Londonderry. These new settlers were Protestants, and the Catholic Irish who still remained in Ulster now found themselves as tenants or labourers on their own land. The Protestant settlers did not treat their Catholic tenants or labourers very well, and this led to much resentment.

Though the English succeeded in taking much of the Irish land, their other objective, which was to enforce the Protestant religion on the Irish people, failed: they remained Catholic. Land and power and religion now divided the people who lived in Ireland. On one side were the Irish and Norman Catholic people who had been dispossessed, and on the other side the English and Scottish Protestant settlers who had taken their land. This situation bred bitterness and a desire for revenge, and led to one of the most brutal of all Irish rebellions. Before it took place there was a bloody war in England. Like the Wars of the Roses, it was fought over the question of who should rule. However, it wasn’t fought between rival kings, but between King Charles II and the English Parliament. Charles lost and was beheaded. The man who defeated him was Oliver Cromwell, and he was destined to become the most feared and hated Englishman ever to bring an army to Ireland. What occurred while he was here with his army is still known as ‘the curse of Cromwell’.

B
efore I tell you about ‘the curse of Cromwell’, we must return to the history of England. When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, she left no heir to the throne. She was the last of the Tudors, a monarchy that began, you remember, with Henry VII, the victor in the War of the Roses. The next in line to succeed Elizabeth was James Stuart, who was then king of Scotland. He was a nephew of Henry VIII, and Elizabeth’s nearest relative.

James was crowned James I in 1603, the first of the Stuart kings of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Now, for the very first time, the English king could claim to rule all four countries. Since the time of Edward I, English monarchs had wanted to rule Scotland. Ironically, under a Scottish king, this had come to pass.

James was a Protestant, and did not treat his Catholic subjects very well. This angered them, and some of them plotted to kill him. The date set for carrying out this plot was 5 November 1603 when the king attended the official opening of parliament in London.

The leader of the plotters was Guy Fawkes. He and his supporters hid barrels of gunpowder in the cellars beneath the Houses of Parliament. Their plan was to blow up the building, killing the king and his followers. However, the king learned of this plot and Guy Fawkes was arrested on 4 November along with most of his supporters. All of them were later executed.

Did you know that the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up parliament is still celebrated in England with bonfires and fireworks on the 5 November? At almost all the bonfires they also burn an effigy, which is called ‘The Guy’. This effigy is actually an effigy of Guy Fawkes, which is why it’s burned and why it’s called ‘The Guy’.

James I ruled until his death in 1625. He had wanted to have all the power for himself and dismissed parliament for a number of years. During his reign, English and Scottish settlers continued to arrive in Ireland to take over land, or to rent land from English landlords. With the departure of the great chieftains of Ulster, there were few left in Ireland to offer opposition, and any hint of rebellion was ruthlessly put down. The Irish people continued to suffer greatly from hunger and disease, but no major rebellions broke out. War, however, broke out in England.

There were two main reasons for this war. The first had its origins in religion. During the reign of James I, many Protestants thought that the Church of England should be plain and without ornament. They also didn’t want to use the official prayer book, the Book of Common Prayer, in their services. Many of these Protestants also believed that it was a sin to wear brightly coloured clothes, or have any fun. Because of this attitude, they were called Puritans.

They were persecuted for their beliefs and about 100 of them fled England and went to America on a famous ship, the
Mayflower.
They are known as the Pilgrim Fathers, and they called the place where they landed in America, Plymouth, which was the port in England from which they sailed. The area where they settled they called New England. However, many Puritans still remained in England. They hated the king and his supporters because they seemed to spend their time hunting and feasting and drinking.

When the much-disliked James I died, his son, Charles, became King Charles I. He was much like his father and he, too, quarrelled with parliament. He also tried to force the Scots to use the Book of Common Prayer in their churches. But the Scottish Protestants were proud of their own religion, which was known as Presbyterianism. They held views similar to those of the Puritans. They rebelled against Charles and a Scottish army marched into England. The English Puritans supported them and Charles was forced to allow the Scots to practise their own type of Protestantism.