A gravestone from 1640.
In 1601, Sir Arthur Chicester, Viceroy of Ireland, ordered the Protestant bishop of Tuam to evict the friars from Ross Errily. Bishop William O'Donnell obeyed the order of a sort. He tipped off the friars in advance so that the friary was empty when the soldiers arrived, probably saving the lives of the Franciscans [the same bishop translated the Book of Common Prayer into Irish, and with the help of Miles MacBrody and Daniel Ingin, also translated the New Testament from Greek to Irish].
In 1640, Ireland was on the verge of rebellion, and, as usual, religion was at the root of it. It exploded the following year. Catholics in Ireland were recusants - citizens who refused to acknowledge the Crown's supremacy over the the Pope. In 1641, the Puritan Parliament of England decreed the absolute suppression of the Catholic religion in Ireland. For the remaining Catholic landowners, as well as the general population, this was the last straw. The rebellion resulted in much slaughter. In Ulster, displaced Catholics killed about 12,000 Protestant settlers (out of a total of about 40,000)[1]. In Shrule, Co. Mayo (five miles north of Headford), one hundred Protestants were killed. However, Bishop O'Donnell's earlier kindness was not forgotten, and the then head friar of Ross Errily, Fr. Brian Kilkelly (Spellissey identifies him as Fr. Bryan Kennedy) hurried to the scene and rescued some of the survivors, including the wife and children of the Protestant Bishop of Killala.
The Crown's retribution was severe and long-lasting, the worst of which occurred when Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland. In the eleven years after the 1641 rebellion, one-third of all Catholics were killed, and many more deported to the colonies as slaves [2]. Of those who survived, Catholic landowners were given a simple choice - to hell or to Connacht. Almost all Catholic land east of the Shannon was siezed - Catholic landowners who did not rebel were given land west of the Shannon (presumably displacing other Catholics in the process) and were replaced by Protestant settlers, many of whom were members of Cromwell's New Model army.
The killings, and the subsequent plantations (i.e. ethnic cleansing) set the scene for almost all subsequent conflict in Ireland, and coloured the attitudes and actions of people in the following years. In the minds of Protestants, particularly in Ulster, the fear that Catholics would kill them and seize their land if given a chance was pased from generation to generation - every Protestant leader since resolved never to give them that chance. For Catholics, Protestant rule was forever associated with English (and later British) dispossession and oppression.
[1] The Green Flag, Robert Kee, p. 15. However, Niall Ferguson's Empire - How Britain made the modern world gives the number of
Protestant deaths as 2,000
[2] The Green Flag, Robert Kee, p. 16.
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