What was the 1641 Rebellion?
Traditionally the rebellion was thought to be sufficiently explained as an inevitable response to the plantation in Ulster. Nowadays most scholars see that as an oversimplification and treat the immediate outbreak of rebellion as a response to political developments in all three of the Stuart kingdoms. The deterioration of the condition of Catholics under Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth’s rule, the success of the Scottish revolt and the breakdown in relations between the king and the English parliament led Catholics in Ireland who retained property and social position to fear that they were in danger of expropriation and persecution if the power of the king were to be significantly limited. In the belief that the king was seeking allies to assist him in defending his prerogative, they entered into a complex conspiracy to seize control of the Irish government on his behalf.
In the event, the enterprise lost support and the plan was carried out under the leadership of a small group of Ulster Irishmen, members of the ‘deserving Irish’ who had been treated favourably in the plantation. They failed to achieve the primary aim of seizing Dublin Castle and the revolt was initially confined to Ulster, where they relied on the support of the dispossessed Irish. The situation was ambiguous, because the leaders solicited support by claiming that they were acting under a commission from King Charles to take arms on his behalf. Before long, however, it became clear that although most of those who joined the rebellion believed that they were ‘the king’s soldiers’, they were nonetheless determined to overthrow the plantation. It was the limited and loyal aims of the rebels that made it possible for the Old English of the Pale counties, some of whom had been involved in the early stages of the conspiracy, to join with the northern army in December when the hostility of the Dublin government left them defenceless. Their lead was followed in the other provinces and the outbreak of civil war in England, followed by the alliance between the English parliament and the Scots, served to vindicate the original claim to have acted in the king’s interest. The leadership of the Confederates never sought the dispossession of the planters and forbade the re-possession of property. But there is no doubt that there was a mismatch between the aims of the leaders and the expectations of many of their followers: the ethos of the rebellion was suffused with resentments of past injustices and a determination to exact retribution.