1450 - 1541: The English Regain Control

The two most influential families in Ireland were the Butlers (who lived in Tipperary) and the FitzGeralds (who lived in south-west Ireland). Although they were descended from Norman settlers, they had lived in Ireland so long that they regarded themselves as Irish. The FitzGeralds hated the English more than any other family in Ireland, while the Butlers tended to support the English king. For this reason, the two families were often at war with each other. When one of the FitzGerald Earls co-operated with the English in 1463, he was seized and murdered by his relatives in 1468. After this, the English began to co-operate with the relatively weak Earl Garrett Mor of Kildare (on the western border of the Pale) in order to gain some control outside the Pale. The people who lived in the Pale had their own Parliament and because Garrett Mor supported the King, it had jurisdiction over his kingdom too. Garrett Mor became very powerful and influential in Ireland through the Dublin parliament.

In 1485, Henry 7th came to the throne in England, aided in a small way by the Butlers of Tipperary. However his coronation was opposed by many Irish Lords, including Garrett Mor despite the fact that he had supported the previous King. When Henry looked at Ireland he did not like what he saw. For one thing, his predecessor had allowed Garrett Mor of the Kildares to gain so much power that he was now becoming a threat to the English control of the Pale itself. He also decided that English control in Ireland was pathetic and resolved to restore control to the level that the Normans had enjoyed 250 years before and decided he had to take some action in Ireland.

The situation worsened in 1487, when Henry's opponent to the throne, Edward, arrived in Dublin and received the support of the Kildares, who crowned him the rightful King of England. Henry was furious and had Garrett Mor kidnapped and sent to the Tower of London for treason. He then passed a law removing the independence of the Irish parliament in the Pale, and ordered that Ireland was to be instead ruled directly from London. However, Henry soon realised that he could not hope to control the other Lords in Ireland without the influence of the Kildares, and so grudgingly reinstated Garrett Mor as his Deputy in Ireland in 1496 . He knew that if he controlled Garrett, then he would have much more chance of spreading the Pale's control all over Ireland. Garrett was succeeded by his son Garrett Og in 1513 who continued to rule the Pale in the name of the King, now Henry 8th. However his influence started to diminish, partly because Henry married Anne Boleyn, who was from the rival Butler family. His favour with Henry began to diminish too.

In 1533 Garrett Og was summoned to meet the King in London. A false rumour was started that Garrett Og had been executed, and Garrett Og's son immediately declared that he would no longer be the King's deputy in Ireland. Although the rumour may have been deliberately started to cause the mutiny, it was quickly and ruthlessly put down. The Kildares were murdered and their castle destroyed. The Pale was expanded to include the Kildare's former kingdom (today county Kildare). From then on, the Pale was ruled by Englishmen and not Irish lords. Then Henry changed tactics. With almost no loyal supporters left amongst Irish Lords, he was forced to adopt a more peaceful policy. He held talks with many Irish Lords and most signed peace treaties that recognised Henry as their King and agreed to accept English law. In return they were allowed to live free of threats from the English. Most of the Irish lords became Earls of parts of Ireland. By using this tactic, Henry managed to gain control of most of Ireland in a very short time and with practically no violence.

In 1541, Henry went against the expressed wishes of the Pope and made himself the King of Ireland as well as England. This resulted in an increase in English immigration and settlement in Ireland.

1541 - 1598: The Protestant Reformation and the Offaly &  Munster Plantations

In 1533, when Henry 8th tried to marry Anne Boleyn, the Roman Catholic church forbade him from doing so because he was already married. Henry found no way to get around this other than removing the right of the church to prevent him. So he declared that the Pope was no longer head of the Church of England, and made himself head instead. This meant that it was he, not the Pope, that had the final word on church matters in England. He was thus able to permit himself to marry Anne Boleyn. In 1536, the Church in Ireland was ordered to follow suit and recognise Henry as head of the Church. However most ordinary Irish people refused to recognise Henry as leader of the church and continued to regard the Pope as head. Some Bishops 'reformed' to Henry's church but soon became Roman Catholics again. The other thing Henry did was to dissolve the many monasteries in England and Ireland - places that had existed for over 11 centuries - by selling the land and scattering the Monks. This greatly angered the peasant population, as the Monks had often been the ones who nursed the sick and cared for the poor in the local communities.

In 1549, the Church of England was changed again, this time by King Edward 6th. Across Europe a large number of Roman Catholics, led by a German priest called Martin Luther, were protesting against the corruption in the Roman Catholic church at the time. Their protests and actions became known as the Protestant Reformation, and their followers were nicknamed 'Protestants'. King Edward became very interested in the Protestant movement. He felt that the Church of England was still too Roman Catholic and ordered that confession, processions and the doctrine of transubstantiation be removed. Thus the Church of England became much more similar to the new Protestant churches that were appearing all over Europe. Most Irish refused to accept these changes to the church, not least because the new rules were written in English whereas they could only speak Irish. Therefore Ireland remained Roman Catholic while England gradually became more and more Protestant.

When Queen Mary, a Roman Catholic, came to the throne in 1553, she repealed the anti-Rome laws and made England Catholic again. This was welcomed by the Irish, but Mary did not seem to regard her common religion as any reason to treat Ireland any more kindly than her Protestant predecessor. She sent her army into what is today counties Laois and Offaly (west of Dublin) in 1556 and forcibly removed most of the native Irish from the area and gave it to English (and mainly Catholic) settlers. For 50 years, the Irish who had been removed relentlessly attacked the settlers and it wasn't until 1600 that the attacks faded away.

In 1558 Queen Elizabeth 1st came to the English throne and made England Protestant again. Although she was funding colonies in the vast, newly discovered, land to the west across the Atlantic she still regarded Ireland as a much more convenient place to colonise, being so much closer and of similar climate to England. Her reign was dogged by rebellions in Ireland. An attack by the O'Neills of Tyrone was defeated in 1561 and two revolts by the FitzGeralds of Cork and Kerry were put down in 1575 and 1580 respectively. Elizabeth took advantage of the defeat of the FitzGeralds in Cork and began a plantation in Munster. Promising people the same kind of wealth that people were finding in the Americas, many English came and settled in what had been FitzGerald land. The land was quickly farmed, towns developed and the colony was prospering by 1587. However, the colony was devastated in 1598 by a co-ordinated Irish attack from which it never recovered, although many English remained in isolated areas.

1598 - 1629: The Defeat of Ulster and the Ulster Plantation

By 1598, Ulster was the last bastion of pure Celtic life in Ireland. The genetics and culture of most of the rest of Ireland had mingled with Viking, Norman and then English settlers and was a now hybrid containing cultural components of Celtic, Viking, Norman and English origins. Ulster was largely shielded from these changed because a) it was defended by strong clans, particularly the O'Neills in Tir Eoghain. b) it was furthest away from the Norman invasions which took place on the south coast c) it was marshy and thinly-soiled and was regarded as inferior land for conquering.

Around about this time, Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tir Eoghain decided that the increased English control of the rest of Ireland was a threat to his Celtic heritage, Brehon laws and Catholic faith. Concerned by the strength of the English, he decided to pre-empt an English attack and attack them first. The English were totally unprepared and found it hard to respond. In successive offensives, they were repelled from Ulster. Eventually the English decided to cut their losses and dug-in around the edges of Ulster. They built a series of forts around the province's southern limits, and this forced the Irish to attack the English forts rather than attack on even terms. This finally gave the English the advantage, but despite this new English tactic, it wasn't until 24 December 1601 at the battle of Kinsale that O'Neill's army was defeated. O'Neill retreated into Tir Eoghain [Tyrone] but did not surrender. Rather than invading Ulster to finish off O'Neill, the English strengthened their forts and started launching commando-raids into Ulster to destroy crops. They hoped to starve O'Neill into submission or into launching an unprepared attack. O'Neill did attack again, but was finally defeated by Lord Mountjoy at Omye [Omagh] in 1602. (Even today a townland near Omagh is called Mountjoy.) In 1603, the O'Neill and the English signed the Treaty of Mellifont which permitted O'Neill to keep his land while adopting English law and shedding his Irish title.

However, the English felt that the Treaty of Mellifont was not enough to keep control of Ulster. They knew that Catholic Spain could supply the Ulstermen with arms to launch an uprising against them. So they decided to plant Ulster with Protestant settlers. However, the lesson of previous plantations had been learned. In the Laois/Offaly plantations and particularly in Munster, the settlers had been badly affected by attacking Irish. So this time the settlers were to live in specially built fortified towns known as Plantation Towns. In 1609 the English mapped out 4,000,000 acres of land and started gaving it out in 1610. Counties Down, Monaghan and Antrim were planted privately. Counties Derry and Armagh were planted with English. Counties Tyrone and Donegal were planted with Scots. Counties Fermanagh and Cavan were planted with both Scots and English.

The vast majority of the settlers were Scottish, as it turned out, and they brought with them a new form of Christianity, Presbyterianism, which was different from both Roman Catholicism and the Church of England, although it is classified as Protestant. They also brought new farming methods and a Puritan lifestyle. This made north-east Ireland culturally very different from the rest of the island. Many native Ulstermen attacked the settlers and burned crops. Some were shipped to the continent. However many native Irish stayed and became employees of the settlers, and the Ulster Plantation became the most successful plantation to date.

1629 - 1687: The English Civil War and Cromwell

All through these events the power of the English Parliament was steadily increasing. The Parliament was an elected organisation set up by the King to manage the country as it was becoming too much work for the King. Although officially ruled by the King, Parliament was increasing its power to such an extent that by the 1600s it could no longer be relied upon to do what the King wanted. King Charles 1st first came into conflict with his Parliament in 1629 when he ordered Parliament to raise taxes and it refused. His response was to abolish Parliament and he ruled England on his own for 11 years. However, the people didn't support him and he ran so short of money that he was forced to reinstate Parliament in 1640.

However conflict broke out again in 1642 when Charles tried to arrest 5 members of Parliament who had been actively disagreeing with his policies. The MPs fled into the back streets of London but when the King went after them, the citizens expelled him angrily from their city. This was a direct violation by the people of the supreme power of the King and marked the beginning of the English Civil War.

Those English who supported the King (the Cavaliers) had support in north England and Wales and the Parliamentarians (Roundheads) had support in the rest of England. Despite the fairly even start, however, the Cavaliers were fought back and in 1646 the Roundheads forced the King to surrender. However, at the ceasefire negotiatons Charles would not agree to the Roundhead terms and after a stalemate the war erupted again in 1648. Once again the Cavaliers were defeated but this time the Roundheads did not accept a surrender and instead captured and executed Charles in 1649. Thus England found itself with no King. For the next 11 years England was a Republic of sorts. It was ruled from 1653 to 1658 by a general named Oliver Cromwell, who was was a fundamental Protestant but an extremely cruel man. He was given the title 'Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England', but he had been active in Ireland long before he undertook that role:

In 1641, just prior to the Civil War, the Irish of Ulster had begun an uprising and attacked the planters who had been settled 30 years before. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Protestant planters were murdered by the Irish at places such as Portadown. Due to the war, the English did nothing about this and the death-toll became heavily exaggerated over time. In 1649, after the Civil War had ended, Cromwell landed at Dublin with 12,000 men with the intention of punishing those who had uprisen. He first attacked Drogheda and captured it, killing over 3000 people. He then marched on Wexford town and massacred several hundred people there. The surrounding towns of Cork, Bandon, Kinsale and Youghal surrendered. Cromwell left Ireland in 1650 having dealt a severe blow to the uprising Irish.

A problem of equal concern to Cromwell after the Civil War, however, was the fact that most of the soldiers in the Roundhead army still needed paid for their time served in the Civil War, but Parliament had no money to give them. So Cromwell decided to pay them in land. He forcibly moved thousands of Irish from their homes in Munster and Leinster and resettled them in counties Clare, Galway, Mayo and Roscommon. This was by far the poorest land in Ireland and, as well as this, they were not allowed to live within 3 miles of the coast. This strip, called the 'Mile Line' was given to Cromwell’s soldiers. In 1652 the newly cleared land in Munster and Leinster was given to Protestants in what was called the 'Cromwellian Settlement'. There was now no part of Ireland where Catholics owned more than ? of the land. The main reason for this was Cromwell's belief in fundamental Protestantism and hatred of Catholicism. He claimed to be acting on God's behalf and expelled about 1000 Catholic priests from Ireland.

In 1660, Cromwell died and was buried in state in Westminster Abbey in London. However, unable to find a suitable successor as Lord Protector, Parliament reinstated the monarchy with Charles 2nd, abeit with carefully reduced powers. Although Charles relaxed the anti-Catholic laws that Cromwell had introduced, he didn't make any attempt to reverse the land confiscations that had taken place over that period in Ireland. He had Cromwell's body exhumed, hung, decapitated and the body thrown in a latrine [toilet]. His head was put on a post where it remained until a storm finally dislodged the skull over 50 years later.