In the winter of 1641, as the British settlement in Ireland collapsed before a Catholic rebellion, a priest named James O'Halligan read a letter at mass in Armagh that had supposedly been sent by the Catholic archbishop of Dublin. According to an English witness, O'Halligan warned his parishioners that any that ‘did harbour or relieve any Englishe, Scotte or Walshe or give them any almes at all at their howses should be excommunicated’. O'Halligan highlighted something missing from most histories of early modern Ireland: that the colonial presence was made up of three distinct peoples. Such differences have been rendered largely invisible by the label ‘New English’ and the dominant narrative, which focuses on the opposition between English and Irish.

This book does not advocate abandoning the ‘New English’ label. Much united those who arrived in Ireland during this period, including a Protestant faith and a sense of superiority over the native Irish and Old English. The majority of the Welsh who went to Ireland shared these traits. The recognition of sometimes quite profound fissures within the ‘New English’ community does not damage its potential usefulness as a category for historical study, but does encourage a more complex understanding of its constituent parts. As Willy Maley has noted with reference to the Scots, the colonial presence in Ireland was made up of a range of ‘identities, traditions, histories and ethnicities’.