World: 1608 and All That

UNTIL the 17th century, Ulster was one of the most Gaelic provinces of Ireland. The charm of the land, with its soft glens and mist-hung mountains, its harpers, poets, cattle raids and mythic storytelling, powerfully attracted the English settlers in Dublin and the area around it known as the Pale. Though most of the chiefs of the north had made a token submission to the English Crown, they actually ruled with little outside interference.

It was Queen Elizabeth who made the first determined effort to bring Ulster to heel. Hugh O’Neill and his Ulster ally, Red Hugh O’Donnell, rebelled against this effort, and their kerns and galloglasses (light- and heavy-armed infantry) won a succession of victories over the Earl of Essex, the Queen’s favorite. The war dragged on for nearly a decade, and was climaxed by the Battle of Kinsale, at which the English defeated a combined force of Ulstermen and Spaniards.

The Crown confiscated the rich lands of the rebels and brought in a flood of Scotch and English settlers in the famous “plantation of Ulster” in 1608. The seaport of Derry was handed over to the city of London and renamed Londonderry. Yet 30 years later the Ulster Irish were still strong enough to launch another uprising, under Owen Roe O’Neill. It grew so serious that it finally required the fire-and-sword scourging of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell.

Before the Reformation, religion had hardly been a problem, since both the Irish and the English were Roman Catholics. After it, the Church of England maintained that its members were still Catholics but refused to recognize the authority of the Pope. Both church and Crown took a dim view of the Irish Catholics, who continued their allegiance to the Pope. Both also viewed with disfavor the Scotch-Irish Protestants, considering them dissidents from the Church of England. As a result, relations between the Irish Protestants and Catholics were often surprisingly good, since both felt oppressed by England.

The final chance for the Ulster Irish to rule their own land came in 1689 with the arrival in Ireland of James II, the Pretender to the English throne, which was then occupied by the Dutchman, William of Orange. Irish Catholics supplied Catholic James with fighting men, but their hopes were crushed in two battles. Spurred by antipopery, the Ulster Protestants rallied to William and successfully withstood a 3½-month Catholic siege of Londonderry. Later, at the famous Battle of the Boyne River, the Irish Catholics were on the brink of winning—until James II panicked and fled.

Even so, the real religious bitterness in Ulster dates only from the early years of this century. As the Irish got closer to Home Rule, the Protestants of Ulster feared for their future in a largely Catholic Ireland. The outbreak of World War I put a temporary halt to the divisions in Ireland. Thousands of Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, enlisted in the British army, illustrating the traditional lament that “more Irishmen have died fighting for England than ever died fighting against her.”

At war’s end the struggle began again with the long years of the “Troubles.” The Irish Republican Army, brilliantly led by Michael Collins, fought one of the first of this century’s many guerrilla wars. The bloodletting continued until 1921, and was ended when Britain’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George offered peace on the basis of a partition of Ireland into 26 independent counties, called the Irish Free State, and six of the original nine counties of Ulster, which would remain united with Great Britain. Michael Collins accepted the offer, but diehard I.R.A. men, who wanted a united Ireland or none at all, plunged the newly independent state, later called Eire, into civil war. The internecine fighting cost Collins his life.

The Protestant majority ruling the six counties has lived ever since in exaggerated fear of a takeover by Eire, which is 96% Catholic. Even more feared than a takeover from without, however, is one from within—since the number of Ulster’s Catholics is increasing faster than that of its Protestants. Through voting restrictions and gerrymandering, the Protestants have attempted to ensure that these gains in population will not lead to increased Catholic power at the polls. The result has been the growing bitterness and clashes of recent years, exacerbated on both sides by long Irish memories.