![]() It was agreed that, in return, the Irish parliament (which was traditionally dominated by the Old English) would grant the king revenue.Ĭharles I had little knowledge of Ireland. In 1628, Charles I recognised the loyal protestations of the Old English by assuring them, in a document known as the Graces, of titles to land they had occupied undisputed for more than sixty years and by no longer requiring of heirs that they take the Oath of Supremacy, which was unacceptable to Catholics because it declared the monarch to be head of the Church of England/Ireland. ![]() And there were the New English and Scots – Protestant settlers who had come to Ireland to take up land grants offered to Protestants from land confiscated from rebellious Catholic Irish families in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These Old English, as they were known, had traditionally been loyal supporters of the English crown against the native Irish, though since the Reformation they had been considered by the English to be untrustworthy because of their religion. There were the descendants of the Anglo-Norman settlers of the twelfth century – mainly Catholic, sometimes married into Gaelic Irish families so often Gaelic-speaking, but who regarded themselves as preservers of English language, law and custom. There were the Gaelic Irish–Catholic and Gaelic-speaking, with a clan-based society cut into by Henry VIII's land reforms. There were three communities there, each of which regarded itself as culturally distinct. Ireland was a complex, multicultural society of Gaelic Irish, Old English, New English and Scots. But he quickly remarks on the uncivilised dress of the Irish from the remote parts and on the undesirable qualities of character that he attributed to their Catholicism or, rather, their adherence to the pope in preference to the government of the King of England. Rich starts by saying how similar the English, Scots and Irish were, and how superior to other races. A characteristic description is that of Barnaby Rich. ![]() Much of the writing about the country either expatiated on the quaintness of the Irish (in the hopes of encouraging English families to settle there) or on their lack of civility (providing authors with opportunities to describe Irish lasciviousness and the dirt in which they lived for the amusement of an English audience and justifying the seizure of land from rebel leaders). The government expropriated rebels’ land and instituted schemes to grant it to Protestant English and Scots settlers (planters), extending the region of Protestant settlement from the area surrounding Dublin to King's and Queen's counties (Counties Laois and Offaly), parts of the province of Munster, and substantial tracts of Ulster. Rebellions by Gaelic lords in the late sixteenth century had established in many English minds that the Catholic Irish were not to be trusted. English rulers had, since Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland in 1541, considered the place to be the haunt of barbarians. Despite its proximity to England and the familiarity of Irish people to the English, Ireland was an object of almost anthropological curiosity.
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