Violence against Catholics by hte English! look no farther than Ireland! i wrote a paper on the conflict last year - learned so many things that just seemed to conventiently slip through the minds of my teachers for the past eleven years. here we go
Following a policy known as ‘plantation’, traditionally believed to have been begun by Queen Elizabeth I, the Crowns of England confiscated hundreds of acres of land, forcing off the Irish who refused to convert, and giving the land to the English Protestants. The vast majority of this land is in the northeastern portion of Ireland.
The first bloody uprising occurred during the reign of Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I in 1579. The Irish found the English Book of Common Prayer and the English language being forced into their lives in response to their support for the Catholic Queen Mary, whom Elizabeth had succeeded. Elizabeth, whose strong navy would defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588, easily crushed the rebellious Irish and brutally massacred the troops. The queen also ordered the confiscation of 200,000 acres of Catholic owned land in the southeast and gave it to English Protestants
Oliver Cromwell landed in Ireland with his troops on August 15, 1649. With his advanced warfare and superior army, the Irish have no chance, but Cromwell does not rest with simply victory. The strict Puritan, believing that God approved of his actions, continued to slaughter nearly the entire population of the coastal town of Droghede, killing nearly 3,000 including civilian men, women and children. He then proceeded up the Irish coast, forcing all the Irish into submission. Throughout his expedition, to limit the Irish population, Cromwell kidnapped and sold into slavery thousands of Irish women and children to the West Indies. In the few years that Cromwell was in power in England, he reduced the population of the native Irish from 1,466,000 to 616,000
Only three years after his malicious campaign in Ireland, Cromwell issued the Act of Settlement of 1652. By this act, two thirds of Irish land were taken and given to Protestants. Any Irish person who refused to convert were forced off their lands, to the rocky Irish coast where farming was poor. Many of Cromwells’s horrific laws, such as offering £5 for the head of a Catholic priest were not repealed until the more lenient Charles II came to the throne.
In 1703 the Penal Laws were enacted, which reduced all Catholics to poverty with no rights of citizenship. They were forbidden to vote, hold office, were barred from military of civil service, the legal profession, teaching, no Catholic schools were allowed, and they could not own a horse valued for more that £5. The Catholic masses had to be held in secret, their religious rights were restricted, and a father was forced to leave his farm divided equally between all of his sons, resulting in eventually the farm being too small to support any family. These laws were not retracted entirely until 1829 (McCarthy 48)
While the English appeared to be eager for more control over Ireland, they proved pitiful when disaster struck with the Irish potato famine. The majority of the victims were the working class Catholics, and many outraged survivors and historians have claimed that the British purposely did not try to help until to late. During the famine nearly three million were lost through either starvation or emigration, especially to the newly progressing United States. Many Irish farmers were forced to continue to pay their steep rents on their homes, even if this required the family going hungary. To many, the British did not care about the plight of the Irishmen.
sadly - there are even more examples that continue into today. hope this helps!!
