EYE WITNESSES ACCOUNT OF THE IRISH UPRISING OF 1641 TO BE PUBLISHED AS A BOOK

by Yommie | October 21, 2007 at 06:22 am | 457 views | 1 comment

It ought to have been published since. It's great that it is now ben brought to light. Better late than never.

The rising was sparked off by Catholic fears of an impending invasion of Ireland by anti-Catholic forces of the English Long Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters. In turn, the rebels' association with the King of England, Scotland and Ireland, Charles I, helped to trigger the start of the English Civil War. The Irish rebellion broke out in October 1641 and was followed by several months of violent chaos in Ireland before the Irish Catholic upper classes and clergy formed the "Catholic Confederation" in the summer of 1642. The Confederation was a de facto government of Ireland, loosely aligned with the Royalist side in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The subsequent war continued in Ireland until the 1650s, when Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army decisively defeated the Irish Catholics and Royalists and re-conquered the country.

Thousands of eyewitness accounts recounting the bloodshed and violence of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 are to be made public for the first time.

More than 3,000 testimonies, which have been in storage at Trinity College, Dublin, for almost 300 years, are to be transcribed and digitised in a project to be launched on Tuesday that aims to shed light on one of the darkest moments in Ireland's past.

The Catholic uprising remains one of the bitterest controversies in Irish history, and led to centuries of sectarian hostility. Some argue that a bloodless rebellion by Catholics, who had been increasingly exploited by Protestant settlers, spiralled out of control. Others claim thousands of Protestants were deliberately massacred.