The Civil War and Cromwell

1625 to 1658

Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell only spent 9 months in Ireland from August 1649 to May 1650, but his impact was to be everlasting on the island. With fierce brutality Cromwell succeed in completing the English conquest of Ireland where others had failed. Cromwell first set a course to Drogheda. 3,500 men women and children were killed over the two day battle, with the city suffering heavy bombardment. Nearby towns surrendered or evacuated. Less than a month later, Cromwell arrived at Wexford town. Here over 1500 people were slaughtered in the massacre that ensued. Cromwell rested in Youghal until the spring of 1650 and then turned his attention towards Kilkenny and the Tipperary towns of Fethard, Clonmel and Cashel. By May 1650 Ireland had been placed under British rule and Cromwell returned home. Sieges on both Limerick and Galway, the last city under Irish control to fall, ended in October and November 1650 respectively. English rule in Ireland was complete.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell only spent 9 months in Ireland from August 1649 to May 1650, but his impact was to be everlasting on the island. With fierce brutality Cromwell succeed in completing the English conquest of Ireland where others had failed. Cromwell first set a course to Drogheda. 3,500 men women and children were killed over the two day battle, with the city suffering heavy bombardment. Nearby towns surrendered or evacuated. Less than a month later, Cromwell arrived at Wexford town. Here over 1500 people were slaughtered in the massacre that ensued. Cromwell rested in Youghal until the spring of 1650 and then turned his attention towards Kilkenny and the Tipperary towns of Fethard, Clonmel and Cashel. By May 1650 Ireland had been placed under British rule and Cromwell returned home. Sieges on both Limerick and Galway, the last city under Irish control to fall, ended in October and November 1650 respectively. English rule in Ireland was complete.

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Neither the sixteenth nor the seventeenth centuries are periods of great building in Ireland. The Tudor conquest made for an unsettled state when the economy was poor and none of the old families had the resources or the security to build well. In so far as they could stay in possession of their lands their old houses and castles served them well.

The new men who had come to Ireland under James I built houses in a Scottish or English style but had to defend their property (often seeing their homes destroyed) in the general Irish revolt of 1641.
The complaints of the Irish were against the confiscation of land, the unjust treatment of native tenants, the favours shown to colonial settlers and the exclusion of Roman Catholics from office in the government. In England, Charles I had joined in a fatal struggle with the English Parliament which led to the Civil War. The revolt in Ireland and the politics of the Civil War left the country in a state of anarchy until the triumph of parliament and the execution of the king in January 1649.

In the same year Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland at the head of a successful parliamentary army. He invested and sacked both Drogheda and Wexford and set about the creation of a Puritan Irish state. To pay the Cromwellian army an Act of Settlement, passed in 1652, provided for the transplantation of the whole of the old aristocrary of Ireland with their retainers west of the Shannon to Clare and Connacht. 11 million acres were granted to the English officers and common soldiers, and the composition of Irish society was totally changed.