A new investigation into the 1641 Irish rebellion, contrasting its myth
with the reality.
After an evening spent drinking with Irish conspirators, an inebriated
Owen Connelly confessed to the main colonial administrators in Ireland
that a plot was afoot to root out and destroy Ireland's English and
Protestant population. Within days English colonists in Ireland believed
that a widespread massacre of Protestant settlers was taking place.
Desperate for aid, they began to canvass their colleagues in England for
help, claiming that they were surrounded by an evil popish menace bent
on destroying their community. Soon sworn statements, later called the
1641 depositions, confirmed their fears (despite little by way of
eye-witness testimony). In later years, Protestant commentators could
point to the 1641 rebellion as proof of Catholic barbarity and perfidy.
However, as the author demonstrates, despite some of the outrageous
claims made in the depositions, the myth of 1641 became more important
than the reality.
The aim of this book is to investigate how the rebellion broke out and
whether there was a meaning in the violence which ensued. It also seeks
to understand how the English administration in Ireland portrayed these
events to the wider world, and to examine whether and how far their
claims were justified. Did they deliberately construct a narrative of
death and destruction that belied what really happened? An obvious, if
overlooked, contextis that of the Atlantic world; and particular
questions asked are whether the English colonists drew upon similar
cultural frameworks to describe atrocities in the Americas; how this
shaped the portrayal of the 1641 rebellion incontemporary pamphlets; and
the effect that this had on the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms between
England, Ireland and Scotland.
EAMON DARCY is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow working at
Maynooth University, Republic of Ireland.
