Random Precision
1st May 2009, 16:02
Here's an essay I wrote about the role of religion in the Nine Years' War/Tyrone's Rebellion in Ireland, from 1595-1603. See the Wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years_War_(Ireland)) for background. Basically a few Irish nationalist historians have characterized Hugh O'Neill, the man who lead the revolt, as a great proto-nationalist leader, and O'Neill himself claimed he fought for the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in Ireland. The aim of my essay is to investigate the latter claim.
Introduction
On first look it may seem improbable that the rebellion from 1594 to 1603 against the Tudor monarchy in Ireland could have attracted so much internal and external support, as most contemporary history focuses on the personality of its leader, Aodh Mór Ó Néill, more commonly known by his English name, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone. With the support of other Gaelic nobles in his home territory of Ulster, O’Neill waged a war on the English crown for nine years, and came close to driving the English out of Ireland altogether before the final defeat of his armies at the battle of Kinsale. O’Neill himself did little to help the historian piece together the origins of his revolt. At various times he claimed he took up arms against English Protestantism in Ireland, on behalf of the Catholic faith, saying to Pope Clement VIII that he was fighting “pro Romana et libertate patriae” (1). On the other hand, his English opponents claimed that O’Neill in rebellion was merely “Aspiring to live like a tyrant over a great number of good subjects then in Ulster” (2). This brings up the question of whether the Nine Years’ War was truly motivated by religious concerns.
A close reading of the primary sources, including O’Neill’s own war aims and private letters, combined with a careful evaluation of the political and religious situation of sixteenth-century reveals that the Nine Years’ War had more complex political origins than a crusade to sweep away heresy from the island. The conflict had its beginnings in the process of Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, which presented a direct threat to the power of the Gaelic nobility, of which O’Neill was the main representative. Despite his claims to be fighting for his faith, O’Neill took up arms to put an end to English incursion on the powers of himself and his fellow lords in Ulster, and afterwards took up the banner of Catholicism to garner support inside and outside Ireland for his cause. In the course of the struggle, his reactionary rebellion to preserve the privileges of the Gaelic Ulster nobility became a revolutionary struggle for religious and national liberty.
Political and Religious Background
Ireland was perhaps the most backward country of Western Europe, politically and economically, during the Renaissance. Far from advanced countries like the Netherlands that had begun to transition to capitalism during the same period, much of sixteenth-century Ireland remained under the clan system that had dominated the island for hundreds of years with little change. Interrelated Gaelic lordships of this system dominated the area from Ulster in the east to the Midlands and Connacht in the west (3), while Old English lords (descendants of Norman settlers in Ireland of the 12th century) who received their land grants from the English crown predominated in the south of the island. Only the English Pale of settlement around Dublin was under the direct control of the English crown.
The Gaelic lordships in Ireland struggled among themselves over territory and rights to tribute from the uirríthe, literally “under kings”. The crown did not officially sanction the Gaelic lordships, although the lords recognized the English monarch as their lord when obliged to do so. However the Gaelic lords were a thorn in the crown’s side when it came to attempts to modernize the island, as the Tudor monarchs began to do in the sixteenth century. The most important step in this process was the shiring of Gaelic lands, which would impose boundaries on the territory of Gaelic lords, establish garrisons of English troops to uphold the rights of freeholders, and introduce sheriffs loyal to the crown to govern the territory. All this had the purpose of establishing an English county-style system of landholding and inheritance (4), which would in its course break the power of the Gaelic nobility. Ulster was the strongest part of the Gaelic region, as attested by Nicholas Dawtrey, an English captain, in the early 1590s:
Ulster hath of long time been and yet is the very fostermother and example of all rebellions of Ireland… the chief power of that country is always in the command of some one or two at the most of those barbarous men’s hands, who through their greatness of command have puffed themselves up with pride to the great charge of the kings of England… (5)
Therefore, Ulster was where most of the crown’s attempts to reform and modernize Ireland under its own control took place. During the sixteenth century, the crown attempted to colonize the territory of Ulster with English settlers, including the beleaguered settlement at Carrickfergus (6), and also to impose English law. This did of course concern the lords of Ulster, including Hugh O’Neill, the lord of Tyrone, which was in the geographic center of Ulster and the strongest lordship of the region. Although before his rebellion there had been no plans to shire Tyrone, by 1586 there had been plans announced to shire Monaghan, Tyrconnel, and Fermanagh, all territories bordering Tyrone (7). Thus it is easy to see why O’Neill and the lords who rose into rebellion with him would have felt threatened by the crown’s aims in Ulster. O’Neill himself was right to fear the encroachment of crown control onto his ancestral lands in Ulster. As his rebellion broke out, the English crown demanded the following as part of its proposed settlement:
That Tyrone may be divided into two countries and two shires. …
That he disclaim all rule over any the Irish captains that be not of Tyrone. … That he suffer the Queen’s garrisons to continue in peace at Monaghan, Armagh, and the Blackwater. … (8)
Aside from the political situation that faced O’Neill and his fellow lords, it is important to look at the religious situation in Ireland as well. Due to a lack of funds and the rapid changes in its aims as the crown passed from Henry VIII to Edward VI to Mary to Elizabeth, the Reformation had a severely limited impact on Ireland. Furthermore, political unrest in Gaelic lands distracted the crown from enforcing the Elizabethan reform settlement in those areas (9). Outside the English Pale, Catholic practices carried on interrupted among Gaels and Old English. From the 1560s through the 1590s, when O’Neill made his rebellion, the relationship between the crown and its Irish Catholic subjects was one of “suspended hostility”, according to S.J. Connolly: the court in London and its local representatives tolerated Catholicism among leading Irish officials, and no systematic attempts to suppress it were made (10). Taking this background into account, O’Neill’s claims to be fighting on behalf of the Church ring somewhat hollow. Old English lords who O’Neill directed his religion-inspired appeals to found it so. One Lord Barrie told O’Neill in response to his attempt to recruit him to rebellion that “by the Law of God and his true religion I am bound to hold with her Majesty: her Highness hath never restrained me for matters of religion, and as I felt her Majesty’s indifference and clemency therein, I have not spared to relieve poor Catholics with dutiful succour…” (11).
The Rebellion
In January of 1595, O’Neill made his first demands from the crown for the settlement of the conflict:
That all persons may have free liberty of conscience.
That the Earl [O’Neill] and all the inhabitants of Tyrone may have pardon and be restored to their blood; and that all the chieftains and others who have taken the Earl’s part may have like pardon. … All these to depend on the Earl’s peace, the Earl yielding for them such rents, services, and rising-out as their ancestors have paid to her Majesty’s predecessors. … That no garrison, sheriff or any other officer shall remain in Tyrconnel, Tyrone, or any of the other inhabitants’ countries before named, excepting the Newry and Carrickfergus. The Earl, O’Donnell and the rest, if these requests be granted, will remain dutiful… (12)
O’Neill at this point aimed almost entirely at pardon for himself and his compatriots, and the guarantee of their ancestral land rights. As for religion, he confined himself to demanding “free liberty of conscience”, that is, toleration of the Catholic faith in Ireland rather than its re-establishment. This added to the considerably more attention he paid to his and other lords’ pardon and rights suggests that at least initially, the rebellion was far more concerned with preserving the positions of its leaders than with their religious conscience.
Most of the primary support for the claim that O’Neill took up arms for his religion comes from O’Neill himself. His war aims are listed in a remarkable document published in January 1599, that bears some discussion. As is fitting for a war taken up on behalf of the Catholic Church, the first seven of the 22 demands deal with the re-establishment of Catholicism in Ireland:
1. That the catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion be openly preached and taught throughout all Ireland…
2. That the Church of Ireland be wholly governed by the pope.
3. That all cathedrals and parish churches, abbeys, and all other religious houses, with all tithes and church lands, now in the hands of the English, be presently restored to the catholic churchmen.
4. That all Irish priests and religious men, now prisoners in England or Ireland, be presently set at liberty…
6. That no Englishman may be a churchman in Ireland. … (13)
As may be seen from this, by 1599 O’Neill’s aim was for nothing less than a complete dismantling of the crown-imposed Reformation in Ireland. However, he had not been nearly so ambitious at the start of the war, when he only aimed for toleration of the Catholic faith (14), and it is significant to note that he only demanded re-establishment as his military position improved. Furthermore, one must consider when examining the war aims O’Neill’s purpose in composing them. Hiram Morgan writes that he was primarily aiming his proposals, including those of religion, at the Old English nobility (15). The Old English, in contrast to more recent English settlers, had remained Catholic as the Reformation progressed. O’Neill clarified the benefits of his religious proposals to this group in his aforementioned letter to Lord Barrie:
… You might forsooth with their [his fellow Old English lords’] help… not only defend your self from the incursion and invasion of the English, but also (by God’s assistance) who miraculously and above all expectation, gave good success to the cause principally undertaken for his glory, exaltation of religion… expel them, and deliver them and us from the most miserable and cruel exaction and subjection, enjoy your religion, safety of Wife and children, life, lands and goods, which are all in hazard through your folly… (16)
O’Neill used his Catholic religion, which the Old English nobility shared, as an expedient to enlist their crucial support to his cause. This appeal to the Old English went far beyond a simple religious appeal. His war aims numbered 12 through 22 were concerned with the individual liberties of Irishmen:
15. That all statutes made against the preferment of Irishmen as well in their own country as abroad, be presently recalled.
16. That the queen nor her successors may in no sort press an Irishman to serve them against his will. …
18. That all Irishmen, of what quality they be, may freely travel in foreign countries, for their better experience, without making any of the queen’s officers acquainted withal.
19. That all Irishmen may freely travel and traffic all merchandises in England as Englishmen, paying the same rights and tributes as the English do.
20. That all Irishmen may freely traffic with all merchandises, that shall be thought necessary by the council of state of Ireland for the profit of their republic, with foreigners or in foreign countries… (17)
The Old English nobility, having the most economic power in Ireland outside the Pale, would have been the best prepared to take advantage of these clauses had they been enacted. His war aims, if implemented, meant to establish Ireland as a full kingdom. However, at that point, as in all his negotiations with the crown, he did not demand independence for Ireland. Furthermore, it is important to note that despite their revolutionary character, the war aims were still intended to preserve the position of the Gaelic nobility: the seventeenth demand is “That O’Neill, O’Donnell, the Earl of Desmond, with all their partakers may peaceable enjoy all lands and privileges that did appertain to their predecessors 200 years past” (18).
Other claims O’Neill made about the religious character of his rebellion can be similarly disposed of by considering the international situation of the time. While O’Neill attempted to keep channels open to the English crown in hope of a possible settlement throughout the early war, until about 1600 (19), eventually he committed himself to a policy that favored a Spanish intervention in Ireland to aid his rebellion. In his campaign for Spanish military aid, one again finds strong religious rhetoric. In a letter to Philip III of Spain in October of 1595, he wrote, “Our only hope of re-establishing the Catholic religion rests on your assistance. Now or never the Church must be succored” (20). He also appealed to Pope Clement VIII for indulgences for his troops and a bull of excommunication against Catholics who stayed loyal to Elizabeth through the archbishop of Armagh, Peter Lombard. This appeal likewise centered on the Catholic faith of the island (21).
Conclusion
As Tyrone’s Rebellion waned in 1601, Sir George Carew, the crown’s appointed president of Munster, wrote that
The common opinion received, and by the rebels published, to be the principal motives of their late and former rebellions since her Majesty’s reign, is supposed to be religion; but therein let no man be deceived, for ambition only is the true and undoubted cause that moves the lords and others of this Realm to take arms… The Irish lords aim at a higher mark, still retaining in memory that their ancestors have been monarchs and provincial kings of this land, and therefore to recover their former greatness, they kick at the Government and enter into rebellion… (22)
Carew’s assertion that the Irish lords, including O’Neill, had entered into rebellion to recover the independence of Ireland and the greatness of their ancestors was quite perceptive, however it only captured the aims of O’Neill as his rebellion was at its apex. The Nine Years’ War, which came close to driving English control from Ireland, was originally a reaction by the Gaelic nobility of Ulster to crown encroachment on their ancestral privileges. O’Neill then took up the cause of restoring the Catholic Church to Ireland completely in order to win the support of the Old English nobility within Ireland, and the support of Spain and the papacy outside of Ireland. Therefore, the nature of his struggle was transformed from a reactionary war to preserve his and other lords’ privileges into a crusade for religious freedom and national liberation.
Notes
1. Hiram Morgan, “Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland,” The Historical Journal 36, no. 1 (1993), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639514, 23.
2. “Royal Proclamation Against the Earl of Tyrone”, reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed., Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1923), 175.
3. Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion: The Outbreak of the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 1993), 17.
4. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland: the Incomplete Conquest (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 285.
5. Quoted in Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion, 18.
6. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland, 266.
7. Ibid, 285
8. “Conditions to be demanded of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone (September 1595)”. Reproduced in Maxwell, ed., Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 181
9. Steven G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603 (Harlow, UK: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., 1998), 232.
10. S.J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460-1630 (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2007), 199.
11. “The Lord Barrie’s Answer to Tyrone”. Reproduced in Thomas Stafford, Pacata Hibernia; or, a History of the Wars in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Taken from the Original Chronicles, vol. 1 (Dublin: Hibernia-Press Company, 1810), 38.
12. “Demands made by Tyrone (January 1595)”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 181.
13. “Hugh O’Neill’s War Aims, 1599”. Reproduced in Edmund Curtis and R.B. McDowell, eds., Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922 (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1968), 119-120.
14. Hiram Morgan, “Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland”, 29.
15. Ibid, 25-26.
16. “Tyrone’s Letter to the Lord Barrie”, in Thomas Stafford, Pacata Hibernia, vol. 1, 36-37.
17. “Hugh O’Neill’s War Aims, 1599”. Reproduced in Curtis and McDowell, Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922, 120.
18. Ibid, 120.
19. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland, 264.
20. “The Earl of Tyrone and O’Donnell to the King of Spain (5 October, 1595)”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 187.
21. Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion, 4.
22. “A Discourse of Ireland, letter to Sir Robert Cecil, 1601”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 186-187.
Introduction
On first look it may seem improbable that the rebellion from 1594 to 1603 against the Tudor monarchy in Ireland could have attracted so much internal and external support, as most contemporary history focuses on the personality of its leader, Aodh Mór Ó Néill, more commonly known by his English name, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone. With the support of other Gaelic nobles in his home territory of Ulster, O’Neill waged a war on the English crown for nine years, and came close to driving the English out of Ireland altogether before the final defeat of his armies at the battle of Kinsale. O’Neill himself did little to help the historian piece together the origins of his revolt. At various times he claimed he took up arms against English Protestantism in Ireland, on behalf of the Catholic faith, saying to Pope Clement VIII that he was fighting “pro Romana et libertate patriae” (1). On the other hand, his English opponents claimed that O’Neill in rebellion was merely “Aspiring to live like a tyrant over a great number of good subjects then in Ulster” (2). This brings up the question of whether the Nine Years’ War was truly motivated by religious concerns.
A close reading of the primary sources, including O’Neill’s own war aims and private letters, combined with a careful evaluation of the political and religious situation of sixteenth-century reveals that the Nine Years’ War had more complex political origins than a crusade to sweep away heresy from the island. The conflict had its beginnings in the process of Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, which presented a direct threat to the power of the Gaelic nobility, of which O’Neill was the main representative. Despite his claims to be fighting for his faith, O’Neill took up arms to put an end to English incursion on the powers of himself and his fellow lords in Ulster, and afterwards took up the banner of Catholicism to garner support inside and outside Ireland for his cause. In the course of the struggle, his reactionary rebellion to preserve the privileges of the Gaelic Ulster nobility became a revolutionary struggle for religious and national liberty.
Political and Religious Background
Ireland was perhaps the most backward country of Western Europe, politically and economically, during the Renaissance. Far from advanced countries like the Netherlands that had begun to transition to capitalism during the same period, much of sixteenth-century Ireland remained under the clan system that had dominated the island for hundreds of years with little change. Interrelated Gaelic lordships of this system dominated the area from Ulster in the east to the Midlands and Connacht in the west (3), while Old English lords (descendants of Norman settlers in Ireland of the 12th century) who received their land grants from the English crown predominated in the south of the island. Only the English Pale of settlement around Dublin was under the direct control of the English crown.
The Gaelic lordships in Ireland struggled among themselves over territory and rights to tribute from the uirríthe, literally “under kings”. The crown did not officially sanction the Gaelic lordships, although the lords recognized the English monarch as their lord when obliged to do so. However the Gaelic lords were a thorn in the crown’s side when it came to attempts to modernize the island, as the Tudor monarchs began to do in the sixteenth century. The most important step in this process was the shiring of Gaelic lands, which would impose boundaries on the territory of Gaelic lords, establish garrisons of English troops to uphold the rights of freeholders, and introduce sheriffs loyal to the crown to govern the territory. All this had the purpose of establishing an English county-style system of landholding and inheritance (4), which would in its course break the power of the Gaelic nobility. Ulster was the strongest part of the Gaelic region, as attested by Nicholas Dawtrey, an English captain, in the early 1590s:
Ulster hath of long time been and yet is the very fostermother and example of all rebellions of Ireland… the chief power of that country is always in the command of some one or two at the most of those barbarous men’s hands, who through their greatness of command have puffed themselves up with pride to the great charge of the kings of England… (5)
Therefore, Ulster was where most of the crown’s attempts to reform and modernize Ireland under its own control took place. During the sixteenth century, the crown attempted to colonize the territory of Ulster with English settlers, including the beleaguered settlement at Carrickfergus (6), and also to impose English law. This did of course concern the lords of Ulster, including Hugh O’Neill, the lord of Tyrone, which was in the geographic center of Ulster and the strongest lordship of the region. Although before his rebellion there had been no plans to shire Tyrone, by 1586 there had been plans announced to shire Monaghan, Tyrconnel, and Fermanagh, all territories bordering Tyrone (7). Thus it is easy to see why O’Neill and the lords who rose into rebellion with him would have felt threatened by the crown’s aims in Ulster. O’Neill himself was right to fear the encroachment of crown control onto his ancestral lands in Ulster. As his rebellion broke out, the English crown demanded the following as part of its proposed settlement:
That Tyrone may be divided into two countries and two shires. …
That he disclaim all rule over any the Irish captains that be not of Tyrone. … That he suffer the Queen’s garrisons to continue in peace at Monaghan, Armagh, and the Blackwater. … (8)
Aside from the political situation that faced O’Neill and his fellow lords, it is important to look at the religious situation in Ireland as well. Due to a lack of funds and the rapid changes in its aims as the crown passed from Henry VIII to Edward VI to Mary to Elizabeth, the Reformation had a severely limited impact on Ireland. Furthermore, political unrest in Gaelic lands distracted the crown from enforcing the Elizabethan reform settlement in those areas (9). Outside the English Pale, Catholic practices carried on interrupted among Gaels and Old English. From the 1560s through the 1590s, when O’Neill made his rebellion, the relationship between the crown and its Irish Catholic subjects was one of “suspended hostility”, according to S.J. Connolly: the court in London and its local representatives tolerated Catholicism among leading Irish officials, and no systematic attempts to suppress it were made (10). Taking this background into account, O’Neill’s claims to be fighting on behalf of the Church ring somewhat hollow. Old English lords who O’Neill directed his religion-inspired appeals to found it so. One Lord Barrie told O’Neill in response to his attempt to recruit him to rebellion that “by the Law of God and his true religion I am bound to hold with her Majesty: her Highness hath never restrained me for matters of religion, and as I felt her Majesty’s indifference and clemency therein, I have not spared to relieve poor Catholics with dutiful succour…” (11).
The Rebellion
In January of 1595, O’Neill made his first demands from the crown for the settlement of the conflict:
That all persons may have free liberty of conscience.
That the Earl [O’Neill] and all the inhabitants of Tyrone may have pardon and be restored to their blood; and that all the chieftains and others who have taken the Earl’s part may have like pardon. … All these to depend on the Earl’s peace, the Earl yielding for them such rents, services, and rising-out as their ancestors have paid to her Majesty’s predecessors. … That no garrison, sheriff or any other officer shall remain in Tyrconnel, Tyrone, or any of the other inhabitants’ countries before named, excepting the Newry and Carrickfergus. The Earl, O’Donnell and the rest, if these requests be granted, will remain dutiful… (12)
O’Neill at this point aimed almost entirely at pardon for himself and his compatriots, and the guarantee of their ancestral land rights. As for religion, he confined himself to demanding “free liberty of conscience”, that is, toleration of the Catholic faith in Ireland rather than its re-establishment. This added to the considerably more attention he paid to his and other lords’ pardon and rights suggests that at least initially, the rebellion was far more concerned with preserving the positions of its leaders than with their religious conscience.
Most of the primary support for the claim that O’Neill took up arms for his religion comes from O’Neill himself. His war aims are listed in a remarkable document published in January 1599, that bears some discussion. As is fitting for a war taken up on behalf of the Catholic Church, the first seven of the 22 demands deal with the re-establishment of Catholicism in Ireland:
1. That the catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion be openly preached and taught throughout all Ireland…
2. That the Church of Ireland be wholly governed by the pope.
3. That all cathedrals and parish churches, abbeys, and all other religious houses, with all tithes and church lands, now in the hands of the English, be presently restored to the catholic churchmen.
4. That all Irish priests and religious men, now prisoners in England or Ireland, be presently set at liberty…
6. That no Englishman may be a churchman in Ireland. … (13)
As may be seen from this, by 1599 O’Neill’s aim was for nothing less than a complete dismantling of the crown-imposed Reformation in Ireland. However, he had not been nearly so ambitious at the start of the war, when he only aimed for toleration of the Catholic faith (14), and it is significant to note that he only demanded re-establishment as his military position improved. Furthermore, one must consider when examining the war aims O’Neill’s purpose in composing them. Hiram Morgan writes that he was primarily aiming his proposals, including those of religion, at the Old English nobility (15). The Old English, in contrast to more recent English settlers, had remained Catholic as the Reformation progressed. O’Neill clarified the benefits of his religious proposals to this group in his aforementioned letter to Lord Barrie:
… You might forsooth with their [his fellow Old English lords’] help… not only defend your self from the incursion and invasion of the English, but also (by God’s assistance) who miraculously and above all expectation, gave good success to the cause principally undertaken for his glory, exaltation of religion… expel them, and deliver them and us from the most miserable and cruel exaction and subjection, enjoy your religion, safety of Wife and children, life, lands and goods, which are all in hazard through your folly… (16)
O’Neill used his Catholic religion, which the Old English nobility shared, as an expedient to enlist their crucial support to his cause. This appeal to the Old English went far beyond a simple religious appeal. His war aims numbered 12 through 22 were concerned with the individual liberties of Irishmen:
15. That all statutes made against the preferment of Irishmen as well in their own country as abroad, be presently recalled.
16. That the queen nor her successors may in no sort press an Irishman to serve them against his will. …
18. That all Irishmen, of what quality they be, may freely travel in foreign countries, for their better experience, without making any of the queen’s officers acquainted withal.
19. That all Irishmen may freely travel and traffic all merchandises in England as Englishmen, paying the same rights and tributes as the English do.
20. That all Irishmen may freely traffic with all merchandises, that shall be thought necessary by the council of state of Ireland for the profit of their republic, with foreigners or in foreign countries… (17)
The Old English nobility, having the most economic power in Ireland outside the Pale, would have been the best prepared to take advantage of these clauses had they been enacted. His war aims, if implemented, meant to establish Ireland as a full kingdom. However, at that point, as in all his negotiations with the crown, he did not demand independence for Ireland. Furthermore, it is important to note that despite their revolutionary character, the war aims were still intended to preserve the position of the Gaelic nobility: the seventeenth demand is “That O’Neill, O’Donnell, the Earl of Desmond, with all their partakers may peaceable enjoy all lands and privileges that did appertain to their predecessors 200 years past” (18).
Other claims O’Neill made about the religious character of his rebellion can be similarly disposed of by considering the international situation of the time. While O’Neill attempted to keep channels open to the English crown in hope of a possible settlement throughout the early war, until about 1600 (19), eventually he committed himself to a policy that favored a Spanish intervention in Ireland to aid his rebellion. In his campaign for Spanish military aid, one again finds strong religious rhetoric. In a letter to Philip III of Spain in October of 1595, he wrote, “Our only hope of re-establishing the Catholic religion rests on your assistance. Now or never the Church must be succored” (20). He also appealed to Pope Clement VIII for indulgences for his troops and a bull of excommunication against Catholics who stayed loyal to Elizabeth through the archbishop of Armagh, Peter Lombard. This appeal likewise centered on the Catholic faith of the island (21).
Conclusion
As Tyrone’s Rebellion waned in 1601, Sir George Carew, the crown’s appointed president of Munster, wrote that
The common opinion received, and by the rebels published, to be the principal motives of their late and former rebellions since her Majesty’s reign, is supposed to be religion; but therein let no man be deceived, for ambition only is the true and undoubted cause that moves the lords and others of this Realm to take arms… The Irish lords aim at a higher mark, still retaining in memory that their ancestors have been monarchs and provincial kings of this land, and therefore to recover their former greatness, they kick at the Government and enter into rebellion… (22)
Carew’s assertion that the Irish lords, including O’Neill, had entered into rebellion to recover the independence of Ireland and the greatness of their ancestors was quite perceptive, however it only captured the aims of O’Neill as his rebellion was at its apex. The Nine Years’ War, which came close to driving English control from Ireland, was originally a reaction by the Gaelic nobility of Ulster to crown encroachment on their ancestral privileges. O’Neill then took up the cause of restoring the Catholic Church to Ireland completely in order to win the support of the Old English nobility within Ireland, and the support of Spain and the papacy outside of Ireland. Therefore, the nature of his struggle was transformed from a reactionary war to preserve his and other lords’ privileges into a crusade for religious freedom and national liberation.
Notes
1. Hiram Morgan, “Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland,” The Historical Journal 36, no. 1 (1993), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639514, 23.
2. “Royal Proclamation Against the Earl of Tyrone”, reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed., Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1923), 175.
3. Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion: The Outbreak of the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 1993), 17.
4. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland: the Incomplete Conquest (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 285.
5. Quoted in Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion, 18.
6. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland, 266.
7. Ibid, 285
8. “Conditions to be demanded of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone (September 1595)”. Reproduced in Maxwell, ed., Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 181
9. Steven G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603 (Harlow, UK: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., 1998), 232.
10. S.J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460-1630 (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2007), 199.
11. “The Lord Barrie’s Answer to Tyrone”. Reproduced in Thomas Stafford, Pacata Hibernia; or, a History of the Wars in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Taken from the Original Chronicles, vol. 1 (Dublin: Hibernia-Press Company, 1810), 38.
12. “Demands made by Tyrone (January 1595)”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 181.
13. “Hugh O’Neill’s War Aims, 1599”. Reproduced in Edmund Curtis and R.B. McDowell, eds., Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922 (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1968), 119-120.
14. Hiram Morgan, “Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland”, 29.
15. Ibid, 25-26.
16. “Tyrone’s Letter to the Lord Barrie”, in Thomas Stafford, Pacata Hibernia, vol. 1, 36-37.
17. “Hugh O’Neill’s War Aims, 1599”. Reproduced in Curtis and McDowell, Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922, 120.
18. Ibid, 120.
19. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland, 264.
20. “The Earl of Tyrone and O’Donnell to the King of Spain (5 October, 1595)”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 187.
21. Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion, 4.
22. “A Discourse of Ireland, letter to Sir Robert Cecil, 1601”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 186-187.