Irish Protestants

The Irish Protestants were in a tough situation once the conquest had been completed. Some, like the Duke of Ormond who led the Royalist troops, were banned for life from stepping foot in Ireland for taking arms against the Parliamentary troops . The great majority of Irish Protestants however were able to enjoy the great tracts of land that were now there’s after the transplantation of the Irish. They also had no desire for more English Protestants to arrive in Ireland to take away some of the wealth they had just begun to earn again after the long years of fighting . Vincent Gookin, one of these Irish Protestants who had grown weary of the Military’s stranglehold on Irish polices, wrote an anonymous report that he sent to the parliament entitled …show more content…
40,000 young Irishmen fled to Spain and the continent once the conflict had ended to not be subjected to the inevitable brutal subjugation of the Irish under their English masters. The odd thing was that this was not really the case. While Cromwell, Parliament and the English commoners wanted Ireland to have to pay for the supposed destruction they had unleashed upon the “innocent” Protestant settlers, the settlers in Ireland had different ideas. The military officers and Protestants who took over the lands confiscated soon realized that if they sent the Irish to Connaught then there would be no one to do the labor. The English did not conquer this land just to laboriously work it; what fun would that be? So the majority of Irish Catholic laborers remained. This also included those who had a certain trade like baker, cobbler, carpenter, etc. However at some times the government would strictly enforce the no Catholics law, only for the Catholic workers to return once the dust had settled. Parliament decreed however, that the Irish that did stay had to become more “anglicized”. This meant that they had to speak English, their children were not to be taught Irish, they had to attend Protestant services with their children being reared Protestant, they had to give up their Irish names and surnames (Padraig, Dermot, O’Reilly for instance) and lastly they had to adopt English-style homes with chimneys. The English enforced most of these except the latter two which seemed trivial to the administrators at the time . Swordsmen and the former proprietors were not given this luxury however and they were forced from their lands to Connaught. The road to Connaught and what they would find would prove to be hellish for these men and women forced to make this tragic