6 - Ireland's Restoration Crisis

Summary

The defining issues in Irish political and social life from the Restoration to the Revolution were, essentially, the unresolved legacies of the Confederate wars and Cromwellian conquest of the 1640s and 1650s. This continuity was not lost on those who sought to use those conflicts as a benchmark by which to gauge later events. In January 1689 William of Orange was presented with an assessment of the condition of Ireland in which the catholic Irish of the later 1680s were depicted as a far more formidable enemy than their predecessors in the 1640s. For

now they have the Government, the Garrisons all the ports, and a vast Number of Men in Arms and some of them of Experience. They have the Kings Authority added to the Fury of their priests. They have Interests and Councills of France to abett them, and the Kings Authority will be now so much at the mercy of France, that in effect the King of France, will be now King of Ireland. Nor will a Popes Nuntio be long wanting thence, to unite the minds of the Clergy in this War of Religion.

It is striking that the crisis of the 1640s was still an obvious point of reference over four decades later. This analysis was provided to William as he prepared to deal conclusively with a crucial loose end of the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’: the fact that James II, despite having lost his English throne, remained king of Ireland with the support of both the catholic Irish and the French.