Context and Development of Irish Literature:
History, Poetry, Landscape
The Period of Conquest and Rebellion, page 2
This "class" division between the elite Anglo-Irish and the
native Irish became a stark religious division with
the Reformation and the declaration by Henry VIII in
1534 that England would no longer acknowledge the Catholic
Church. This led to the establishing of the Church of England or Anglican
Church, thereby making England a Protestant nation. The native
Irish, and many of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, refused to
follow this split from Rome, and so the division between Irish
became also a division between Catholic and Protestant.
This split created turmoil in both English and Irish
politics throughout the 16th and 17th
centuries, as Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) restored Catholicism, and
Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) then restored Protestantism.
(For the major English monarchs during the 16th-18th
centuries, see "English
Kings and Queens.") Under
Elizabeth’s rule, the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were
passed, making the Anglican Church the "official"
Irish Church (now called "the Church of Ireland"),
enforcing strict Anglican rule, and suppressing the rights and
privileges of Catholics.
Such policies resulted in several rebellions in the late
16th century by great Irish and Anglo-Irish
aristocratic families: the Desmond Rebellion from
1579-1583, which resulted in the destruction of the
Fitzgerald earldom and the "repeopling" of nearly 575,000
acres of land in Munster by English settlers; and most prominently the
rebellion of the O’Neills of Ulster, who won a
great victory over the English at the Battle of the Yellow
Ford in 1598, but were decisively defeated at the Battle of
Kinsale in 1601. Finally in
1607 the Earls of Tyrone (Hugh O'Neill) and Tyrconnell (Rory
O'Donnell), the last of the native Irish aristocracy--still Catholic and
tied to the Irish people--fled the country for the continent.
This "Flight of the Earls" or "Flight of the
Irish Princes" becomes a paradigm in
Irish thought for the abandonment of the country by the very
leaders who needed to save it. But always there would linger a
hope that Ireland’s departed sons would return to defeat the
invader and restore Ireland to her greatness.
Read the 17th-century lament, "After
the Flight of the Earls" (New Oxford Book of Irish