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The Protestant Presence:
In 1534, in the middle of the Protestant Reformation sweeping through much of Europe, the English king Henry VIII signed and sealed the Act of Supremacy, making himself the head of the English Church. No more Pope. Though he did it more from pragmatism than from passion, the fighting he started in England between Catholic and Protestant wasn't done for over 200 years. In Ireland it's going on still.
Countries don't change their religion as easily as, say, their sales tax rate. Henry's daughter got her nickname-"Bloody Mary"-from her attempts while queen to reverse her Dad's unorthodoxy using means that contained little hint of Christian charity. Many of her subjects who'd followed Henry into heresy were dispatched to their reward prematurely, with hundreds burned at the stake. Mary's Protestant half-sister became Queen Elizabeth I in 1558 and turned the country around again, re-establishing official Protestantism, persecuting Catholics, and seeming to settle the issue for good.
Not quite. In 1605, with Elizabeth two years in the ground, there was a failed plot by a group of Catholics (including the much-effigized Guy Fawkes) to blow up the English Parliament
with the Protestant king, James I, inside, and at the end of the century King James II, a self-proclaimed Catholic, had to flee his throne and his country to avoid disaster from rising Protestant forces led by the Dutchman William of Orange (later King William III of England).
James' supporters and heirs fought unsuccessfully to regain a Catholic throne of England at the Boyne River in Ireland in 1690 and in the Jacobite (named for James) rebellions, one in 1715 and another, under Bonnie Prince Charlie, in 1745.
But back to Henry and Ireland. England took over Ireland in the twelfth century after the Pope, Adrian IV, obligingly told Henry II of England he could have it. It was never a happy conjunction but it was Henry VIII who poked into the Church, making it even worse, and in 1541 he became "King" instead of merely "Lord" of Ireland
The Reformation was a time of increasing fear of Catholic invasion in England and Henry wanted no problem from the Irish. He crushed what he could of the old ways and replaced them with a Protestant Church of Ireland. It didn't take hold the way it did in England and relations between England and Ireland deteriorated even further. Irish rebellions continued through the 16th century though they were harshly put down.
Under Elizabeth's successor, James I ( a Scot who succeeded the childless queen), the north of Ireland-- largely the province of Ulster-- was settled by English and Scottish Protestants, and many Irish Catholics lost their land. In the mid 17th century another Irish rebellion led to more land
confiscation's and the loss of many thousands of lives. And more Protestant landlords and settlers in the
North.
In response to Irish support for the deposed Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne, the Irish Parliament, controlled by English Protestants, stripped Irish Catholics of all power. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, only about 10 per cent of the land in Ireland was owned by
Roman Catholics.
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