History

The Anglo-Norman conquests...	In 1171 Henry, with a large army, visited Ireland, received homage from the principal Norman leaders and from the Irish High King, Rory O’Connor, and granted charters to the Normans authorizing them, as his subjects, to take possession of portions of the island. The chief Anglo-Norman adventurers, however, encountered formidable opposition before they succeeded in establishing themselves on the lands that they claimed. The government was entrusted to a viceroy, and the Norman legal system was introduced into such parts of the island as were reduced to obedience to England. During the 13th century various Anglo-Norman adventurers succeeded in firmly establishing themselves in Ireland. The descendants of the most powerful Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland gradually became identified with the native Irish, whose language, habits, and laws they adopted to an increasing extent. To counteract this, the Anglo-Irish Parliament passed, in 1366-1367, the Statutes of Kilkenny, decreeing excommunication and heavy penalties against all those who followed the custom of, or allied themselves with, the native Irish. This statute, however, remained inoperative; and although Richard II later in the 14th century made expeditions into Ireland with large forces, he failed to achieve any practical result. The power and influence of the natives increased so much at the time of the Wars of the Roses that the authority of the English Crown became limited to the area known as the English Pale, a small coastal district around Dublin and the port of Drogheda. In the Wars of the Roses, the struggle in England between the houses of York and Lancaster, Ireland supported the ultimate loser—the House of York.
English domination...	This situation changed when Henry VII became king of England and sent an army to Ireland under the command of Sir Edward Poxnings. English law was declared to hold for the Pale. Most important of all was the so-called Poynings Law, which made the Irish Parliament dependent on the English king by providing that all proposed legislation should first be announced to the king and meet with his approval, after which he would issue the licence to hold Parliament. This law determined the relationship between the two nations until the Union in 1800. [Back to top of page]
Complete conquest by Henry VIII...	After Kildare’s death in 1513, the power of the Geraldine family steadily declined, as his successor, his son Gerald Fitzgerald (known as Garret Óg), spent much of his time under careful scrutiny at the court of Henry VIII. Rumours of the earl’s death in 1534 precipitated a revolt by his son Thomas Fitzgerald, known as Silken Thomas. The rebellion was soon quashed and Thomas’s execution in 1537 marked the end of the Kildare ascendancy. It was Henry's policy to conciliate the Irish and to leave them under their own laws. An English commission held courts throughout the island, but Irish right was respected, and the country remained peaceful. In the Parliament of 1541, attended for the first time by native chieftains as well as by the lords of the Pale, Henry's title of Lord of Ireland, which had been conferred by the papacy, was changed to King of Ireland.
Religious wars...	The religious wars of Elizabeth were attended by rebellions of the Irish Roman Catholics. James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, a member of the great House of Geraldine that ruled over the larger part of Munster, landed at Dingle Bay in 1579 with a papal army poised to restore Roman Catholicism in Ireland. When he was killed soon after, leadership of the revolt passed to his cousin Gerald Fitzgerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, who was finally defeated in 1580 after a bloody struggle. The defeat of the Desmond rebellion paved the way for a plantation scheme in Munster, as much of their lands were confiscated and allocated to private English settlers. In spite of the colony’s temporary overturn during the O’Neill wars of the late 1590s, the plantation established a wealthy and influential Protestant minority in Munster. From 1594 to 1603 Ireland was engulfed in the Nine Years’ War, also known as Tyrone’s Rebellion. During the war the greatest cruelty and treachery were practised on both sides. In order to destroy Irish resistance, the English devastated villages, crops, and cattle, putting many people to death. The greater part of Munster and Ulster was laid desolate, and more inhabitants died from hunger than from war.
"Flight of the Earls" and the Ulster Plantation...	During the reign of James I English law was pronounced the sole law of the land. No longer able to act independently, the Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnel, with some 100 other chieftains, fled in 1607 to Rome. After the so-called "Flight of the Earls", the land in six counties of northern Ulster was confiscated and became the basis for the subsequent Ulster Plantation. The last vestiges of the independence of the Irish parliament were destroyed by the creation of 40 boroughs out of small hamlets, a political manoeuvre that secured a permanent majority to the English Crown. [Back to top of page]
Further dispossession under from 1649 under Oliver Cromwell...	In 1649 the English soldier and statesman Oliver Cromwell landed at Dublin, which the Roman Catholic lords had been unable to take. Seeing themselves as Protestant avengers of the 1641 uprising as well as Parliamentarians fighting against the Royalists, the 10,000-strong force of the New Model Army stormed Drogheda and put its garrison of 2,000 men to the sword (see Drogheda, Siege of). The attack on Wexford led to a similar outcome. Cromwell's successors, the English soldiers and regicides Henry Ireton and Edmund Ludlow, successfully concluded the war, and a great part of the best land of Munster, Leinster, and Ulster was confiscated and divided among the soldiers of the Parliamentary army. The Roman Catholics and Royalist landowners were banished to Connaught. A portion of the land confiscated at this time was later restored under Charles II, but at least two thirds of the land in Ireland remained in the hands of the Protestants.
James II and the Battle of the Boyne...	The entire Roman Catholic population sided with James II in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688. Thus, in 1689, when James landed at Dublin with his French officers, Talbot had an Irish army ready to assist him. The Protestant settlers were driven from their homes and found refuge in the towns of Enniskillen and Londonderry, which James attempted to capture. He was hampered by his lack of artillery, however, and the latter was relieved by sea. His parliament of 1689 restored all lands confiscated since 1641 and passed an act of attainder against the partisans of William III. In the following year William landed in Ireland and, in July 1690, in the Battle of the Boyne, he defeated the Irish forces. He failed, however, to capture the town of Limerick, which was bravely defended. The next year, William's generals defeated the Irish army at the town of Aughrim, and Limerick was forced to capitulate. By the terms of the Treaty of Limerick (1691), Roman Catholics were permitted a certain amount of religious freedom, and the lands that Roman Catholics had possessed under Charles II were to be restored to them.
Union with Great Britain...	The principles of the French Revolution found their most powerful expression in Ireland in the Society of United Irishmen, led by Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, which instigated the rebellion of 1798. The peasantry rose in Wexford and, although insufficiently armed, made a brave fight. At one time Dublin was in danger, but the insurgents were defeated by the regular forces at Vinegar Hill. A French force of 1,100 landed in Killala Bay in Mayo but was too late to render effective assistance. The British prime minister, William Pitt, the Younger, thought that the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland together with Roman Catholic emancipation was the only remedy for Roman Catholic rebellion and Protestant tyranny in Ireland. By a lavish use of money and distribution of patronage, he induced the Irish parliament to pass the Act of Union, and on January 1, 1801, the union was formally proclaimed. Owing to the opposition of George III, however, Pitt was unable to make good his promise of emancipation for Roman Catholics. [Back to top of page]
Catholic emancipation...	The political situation was to change dramatically during the 19th century. In 1828 Roman Catholics were permitted to hold local office, and after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 they were allowed to sit in Parliament. From 1845 to 1849 rent-racked Ireland suffered a disastrous famine resulting from the failure of the potato crop. The government, influenced by laissez-faire ideology, failed to provide adequate relief, and widespread tenant evictions compounded the problem. It has been estimated that 1 million died, mostly as a result of diseases caused by severe malnutrition; the west of the country was worst affected. Concurrently, over 1 million people emigrated, especially to America and Canada. And it was these emigrants and the generations to follow that would play a large role in fight to independence.
Fight for home rule...	From the 1870s the goal of Home Rule assumed a leading place in Irish politics. In England, Gladstone attempted to resolve the Irish question with a Home Rule Bill, which he formally introduced in 1886. Following the defeat of Gladstone’s second bill, the impetus for Home Rule faded. Throughout the 1890s and 1900s a new cultural nationalism emerged. In 1902 the Irish political leader and journalist Arthur Griffith formed the nucleus of Sinn Fein, which became a political party in 1905. Griffith’s original aspiration was for Ireland to become an equal partner with Britain in a dual monarchy, with emphasis on the importance of economic and cultural self-reliance (the name translating from Irish roughly as “ourselves alone”). By 1918, however, Sinn Fein had absorbed a more radical set of nationalist republicans, and had eclipsed the Irish Parliamentary Party as the most important nationalist party in the country.
The Easter Rising...	Soon after the outbreak of war, the remaining Volunteers together with the trade-unionist Irish Citizen Army were directed by the IRB in the Easter Rising that took place in Dublin in 1916. The rising lasted five days and caused over 200 civilian deaths and enormous destruction of property. Although it was unpopular at the time, the execution of 15 of its leaders afterwards engendered widespread sympathy and evoked strong nationalist feeling throughout the country. In the general election of November 1918 Sinn Fein, although it had not been directly involved, was popularly associated with the rising and largely as a result won 73 out of 80 nationalist seats. Throughout the year efforts by the British administration to reinforce its authority on the island were met with a sustained campaign of guerrilla activity by the Volunteers, which, under the able leadership of Michael Collins, increasingly became known as the Irish Republican Army. The Anglo-Irish War, or War of Independence, carried on until July 1921, when a ceasefire was called. After some preliminary negotiations between De Valera and Lloyd George, Collins and Griffith headed a delegation to London to discuss the terms of an Anglo-Irish Treaty, marking the culmination of the Irish Revolution.
Foundation of the Irish Free State...	In December 1920, the British coalition government under the premiership of David Lloyd George passed the Government of Ireland Act, which established two Home Rule parliaments: one for six of the nine counties of Ulster—which became a separate political division of the United Kingdom—and the other for the remainder of the island. The new parliament of Northern Ireland was opened by King George V in June 1921, confirming in effect the partition of Ireland. In the south, the continuing hostilities delayed the official implementation of the Act until December 1922.