Cromwell Plantation
This paper will discuss the Cromwellian plantations in Ireland during the 1650s. The Cromwellian plantations, in which thousands of Irish were evicted from their land, was just one chapter in the long struggle of the Irish against English domination. The English had first begun the domination of Ireland during the 1100s, with the reign of Henry II. Prejudice against Irish Catholics increased in the 1500s, when Henry VIII established the Protestant Church of England as the official church of the state. Also in the 1500s, during the reign of Elizabeth I, the first plantations were imposed upon Irish landowners. These plantations caused the Irish to lose their lands, which were in turn sold or ...
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rebels failed in their attempt to overthrow the seat of English government located there. However, in Ulster, Irish rebels took complete control of the city and forcibly drove out the English Protestant population. In so doing, however, the rebels turned the event into a horrible massacre. Hundreds of Protestants were executed by drowning, and many more deaths occurred "in the panic-stricken flight of refugees that choked the roads to Dublin. Many died along the way from hunger and fatigue. Others succumbed to exposure in a period of intense cold" (Costigan 71). Although this event was in truth terrible, the stories which circulated in England exaggerated the guilt of the Irish rebels and caused an increase in antiCatholic sentiments throughout that country (Costigan 71).
Thus, when Oliver Cromwell came to power in 1649, he decided to seek revenge against the Irish people as a whole. His troops swept into Drogheda in September, 1649, and the town was successfully conquered ...
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English government against the Irish. Thus, whereas Elizabeth's largest plantations had involved about one half million acres of land, and the largest plantations under James I involved approximately two million acres, the Cromwellian plantations envisioned in the 1652 Act of Settlement involved "the annexation of almost eight million acres of Irish soil--about half the cultivable land in the island" (Costigan 80).
The Act of Settlement decreed that all of the lands east of the Shannon River were to be taken over by English landowners. The less fertile land of Connacht, to the west of the Shannon, was set aside for certain Irish landowners, provided they qualified by English law. As ...
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"Cromwell Plantation." Essayworld.com. June 21, 2011. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Cromwell-Plantation/99753.
"Cromwell Plantation." Essayworld.com. June 21, 2011. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Cromwell-Plantation/99753.
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