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English Money and Irish Land: the “Adventurers” in the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Karl S. Bottigheimer
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Extract

Much needs yet to be learned about the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland. Statistically that event can be described as the transfer from Catholic to Protestant ownership of about seven million acres of Irish land, occurring between 1641 and 1688. The Protestant share of Ireland increased in that period from 41 to 78 per cent, from a minority interest to that of an overwhelming majority. Although 1641 and 1688 are the most convenient termini for measuring that expansion, it was substantially begun in 1652 and completed by 1660. Except by main force, little land changed hands before the Cromwellian acts; and the Restoration modified, but in no significant sense reversed, the verdict which had been brought against Catholic Ireland by the recent conquest and settlement.

Much attention has been given the cruelty of the settlement, particularly the attempt to transplant the Catholic Irish to Connaught and Clare. But the origins of the scheme, indeed the entire genesis of Parliament's policy towards Ireland, has been left in obscurity. Cromwell himself contributed to that neglect by his insistence that the settlement was merely simple justice for the crimes committed against Protestants in 1641. As a result, historical interest has focused upon the cruelty of the rebellion and the cruelty of the settlement in a vain attempt to determine whether they balanced. Irishmen, minimizing the rebellion and maximizing the settlement, tended to find that they did not. Englishmen, reversing the process, came to understandably opposite conclusions. Neither took very great interest in the important years between the two events.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , November 1967 , pp. 12 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1967

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References

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