Old English

The Old English comprised those whose ancestors had settled in Ireland since the twelfth century. They preserved an English lifestyle, incorporating the common law, the English language, and English political and civil institutions. Members of the community served as officials in the colonial administration and also acted as officers in local governments.

The quandary for the Old English community of Ireland originated in the late middle ages: Although very conscious of their English roots, the members were tightly enmeshed in social, political, and economic networks throughout the country. Yet their sense of themselves as separate from the rest of the island's population is symbolized by the evolution of the English Pale, a defended area with defined boundaries, consisting of the English parts of the counties around Dublin (viz. Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Houth), in the eastern counties of Ireland. For members of the community, the ascendancy of the Fitzgeralds of Kildare up until the 1530s represented the nub of their dilemma: the emphasis on self-governance was welcome, but not the compromising of English mores and identity in which the earls indulged.

The closer engagement of the English monarchy with its Irish domain after 1534 had far-reaching implications for the community of Old English. An English-born governor was not unwelcome as an impartial arbiter among the political factions, but the appointment by Thomas Cromwell of New English officials to the principal offices of state was ominous. Also unsettling were the ecclesiastical changes: while reform of religious life might be acceptable to most, the implications of the change in management from pope to king were problematic because the usual role of Old English clergy as upholders of the papal bull Laudabiliter (which gave Anglo-Norman involvement in the Irish polity and church its charter) was threatened. Royal supremacy stressed the Anglicanism (English centeredness) of the Irish church, whereas the Old English clergy saw themselves as successors of generations of reform-minded personnel who had established a characteristically Irish church. While grants of dissolved monastic lands may have assuaged lay leaders, ecclesiastics were perturbed about the future.

On the face of it, the constitutional and political initiatives of the mid-Tudor period were consonant with Old English aspirations. The declaration by Henry VIII of the kingship of Ireland in 1541 created an all-island entity in which the two long-standing communities, Gaelic and English, were to be equal partners. An acknowledgment of the de facto political position, it represented a cessation of the conquest initiated in the twelfth century. The arrangements under the "surrender and regrant" scheme—a policy whereby the principal Gaelic and gaelicized lords surrendered their lands and titles to the Crown and received new grants of those lands and titles to be held directly from the Crown—were meant to assimilate the Gaelic lordships into the institutions of the Englishry. Within this new framework the Old English would apparently have a part to play as agents of reform among the Gaelic population. It appeared that the English viceroy who presided over the program, Sir Anthony Saint Leger, was complaisant in this agenda. He also managed the ecclesiastical changes of the 1540s in an adroit manner, using persuasive—rather than coercive—methods to push ahead with monastic closures and the imposition of royal supremacy.

The removal of Saint Leger and his replacement with governors whose methods were more rigorous presaged a change in the relationship of the Old English with the state government. The alienation of Archbishop George Dowdall of Armagh, an Old English representative, by the enforcement of Protestant dogma in the early 1550s was also significant. Although Dowdall returned under the Catholic reign of Queen Mary, he and a number of local politicians were at odds with the governor, the earl of Sussex, in the later 1550s over his failure to consult with them regarding Old English interests. As the weight of administration became greater, the expenditure involved in maintaining the political and military establishment mounted. Sussex and successive governors resorted to innovative and unpopular forms of taxation, involving levying of goods, services, and money, which collectively became known among the Old English by the pejorative term cess.

The fusing of the cess campaign with the intensification of recusancy (religious dissent) created a cause to which the Old English would rally in the 1570s and 1580s. Essentially, their aim was the conservation of their old constitution whereby they were consulted in parliament, particularly in the matter of taxation, and also the preservation of the older church institutions in which they had a vested interest. The growing burden of cess and the sporadic imposition of religious penalties galvanized the community into a campaign of passive resistance and constitutional lobbying at court. This campaign was headed by leading gentlemen such as the barons of Delvin and Howth.

Not all of the Old English activists were prepared to restrict their methods to constitutional agitation in support of ancient liberties. Throughout the provinces, members of old Norman families such as the Butlers, the Fitzgeralds of Desmond, and the Burkes of Clanricard rose up in arms against the curtailment of autonomy and the threat of new English colonization of lands. In the cases of James Fitzmaurice and James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass, secular grievances merged with religious ones, and Fitzmaurice's own death and those of both his and Baltinglass's followers forged a sharper Old English consciousness of collective identity. Then, when in the 1590s Hugh O'Neill emerged as a champion of Catholic restoration as well as a defender of the political status quo, the Old English community faced an acute dilemma: Should their deep-seated loyalty to the English monarchy override the imperative to engage in militancy in order to bring about the restoration of their faith? They resolved it by sometimes siding with the forces of the state against the rebellious confederates, and by sometimes maintaining a precarious neutrality.

With the Stuart accession in 1603, a number of demonstrations in favor of a Catholic restoration took place in the Old English boroughs (excluding, notably, Dublin). The new regime made it clear that freedom of worship was not contemplated, and furthermore there were bouts of repression of recusancy, especially in 1604 to 1605 and 1611 to 1612. Thereafter, the Old English attempted to maintain the delicate balance of dual loyalty—to London in politics and to Rome in religion. The fragility of the position was demonstrated by the perceived subversion by the state of the Old English majority in parliament in 1613 to 1615, but the possibility of a Stuart marriage into the Spanish royal house revived hopes of official toleration for Catholics. Then Charles I was moved to negotiate a series of concessions to the Old English, including religious and landed rights, in return for military and monetary assistance; these concessions wre known as the "Graces." The governorship of Thomas Wentworth in the 1630s, however, succeeded in antagonizing the Old English (among others). When rebellion broke out in 1641, the Old English leadership committed itself to arms in support of its religious and political aims while claiming loyalty to the monarchy. The confederation of Kilkenny in the 1640s was the constitutional expression of its campaign for religious toleration and political recognition.

With the Cromwellian conquest in 1649 to 1650, the campaign of the Old English was irreparably damaged. After the Restoration in 1660, there was little recognition by the monarchy of the community's loyalty, and the gains of New English were consolidated. The position of the Old English in town and county was irrevocably undermined as they were replaced by a new Protestant elite. The fragile tolerance extended to Catholic activity could not now be guaranteed by Old English patronage. With the accession of James II in 1685 the expectation of Catholic restoration buoyed the hopes of the Old English as Tyrconnell, one of their number, became chief governor. But the defeat of the Jacobite campaign in Ireland marked the end of the aspiration of the Old English for recognition of their ambiguous position. Although the next ascendant elite in Ireland, the New English, soon began to feel a similar political alienation, their Protestant identity inhibited their isolation.

Old English

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