BRIDGEMAN, DE AGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGESCharles I / Britain’s civil wars
- The battle of Julianstown
29 November 1641
When a brutal ambush of government troops
signalled a Catholic Irish rebellion- The Adventurers Act 19 March 1642
When parliament determined to fund a
military campaign that would result in the
devastation of Irish CatholicismIn October 1641, after decades of political
and religious discrimination, as well as
large-scale dispossession and dislocation,
the Catholic Irish of Ulster rebelled.
On a chilly morning in late November,
a relief column of about 600 government
troops moved slowly towards the
besieged town of Drogheda, 30 miles to
the north of Dublin. Suddenly, out of the
morning mist, a significantly larger rebel
force, commanded by Philip McHugh
O’Reilly, ambushed the column and
slaughtered all the infantry. Only a handful
of cavalry managed to escape.
Although a relatively insignificant
encounter in military terms, the battle of
Julianstown marked a major turning point
in the Irish conflict. The victory convinced
the Old English Catholics of the Pale,
descendants of the original Anglo-Normancolonists of the 12th/13th centuries,
to throw in their lot with the rebels, thus
transforming a regional uprising into a
national rebellion.
Soon after, at a carefully stage-
managed meeting nearby on the Hill
of Crofty, the Ulster Irish and Old English
formally joined forces, declaring their
intention to defend the ancient liberties
of the kingdom and the prerogatives
of the king. The statement that they
belonged to “the same religion and
the same nation” was greeted with
wild applause.
This signalled the emergence of the
Catholic confederate association, which
controlled most of the island during the
1640s, the only example of sustained
self-government by the Catholic Irish prior
to the 20th century. Micheál Ó SiochrúIn March 1642, Henry Jones, dean
of Clogher and head of a government
commission charged with collecting
witness statements from those fleeing
the rebellion in Ireland, arrived in
London. He presented a report to
parliament describing a massacre of
Protestant settlers which, combined
with the sensationalist outpourings
of the newssheets, further convinced
MPs at Westminster of the need
for action.
On 19 March, King Charles I,
under intense political pressure to
take a firm line on Ireland, assented to
the Adventurers Act. The act sought
to raise money for a military campaign
in Ireland, using 2,500,000 acres of
forfeited Irish Catholic land as
collateral. Parliament alone, however,
could declare the rebellion at an end
and dispose of the forfeited land,
powers hitherto reserved only to
the monarchy.
The king’s acquiescence in this
matter precluded the possibility of a
compromise settlement to the conflictin Ireland and condemned
Irish Catholic landowners
to economic, political and
social ruin in the event of
an English parliamentary
victory, which duly occurred
12 years later.
The subsequent
Cromwellian
settlement was the
single largest transfer
of land anywhere in
early modern Europe,
some 60 per cent of the
total, and helped
establish a new
Protestant settler elite,
which dominated almost
every aspect of Irish life
until the land reforms of
the late 19th century.
Micheál Ó
SiochrúA contemporary engraving shows
Catholics killing Irish Protestants in 1641Cartographer
Willem Blaeu’s
17th-century
map of Ireland