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Rebellion, plantation and war

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Rebellion, plantation and war

These ideas are from the Ireland Quaker team, but, apart from one section specifically devoted to Quakers, should be of equal interest to others researching genealogy in early modern Ireland.

Warning: I have chosen sources which are freely available on line and which contain genealogical information. Many of these are not the most up-to-date sources on the history of the period concerned and some are downright biased. Treat them with care and look to places like Irish History On Line to find the best history.

Note on measurements. Some of the land surveys referred to here mention the lands held by or awarded to different individuals and use units of acres, rods, poles and perches. Be warned that two different units of measure were in use throughout this period, Irish (or plantation) measure and English (or statute) measure. These units were not the same. Irish units of length like furlongs and miles were longer than English units by a ratio of 14:11; as a result, Irish units of area were larger than English units by a ratio of 196:121 (~62% more). See more on Wikipedia.

See also Early modern Irish sources and Irish Quaker sources and resources.

Please leave a comment or send me a PM if you find typos, broken links or mistakes in my history or if you know of extra sources to include.

For example profiles using these sources see Example profiles.

Contents

Introduction

The 16th to 18th centuries were turbulent times in Ireland. In many waves, Catholic landowners were dispossessed in favour of protestant arrivals from England and Scotland. Rebellion led to war financed by further dispossession.

In the introduction to her ‘Guide to Irish Quaker Records’, Olive Goodbody relates that ‘Some Quakers had an Irish background, but the majority came to Ireland during the Cromwellian period when land was cheap, and tradesmen or skilled artificers badly needed. Others had been soldiers who had left the army after the Battle of Worcester. Yet others had served in Ireland under Henry Cromwell and with a resolute courage left that avocation to join Friends, suffering severely for so doing.’

More specifically, some of the early Quakers resident in the north of Ireland are likely to have been descendants of those who settled there as part of the Plantation of Ulster. Others may have come to Ireland with Cromwell’s army, in which case they are likely to have been awarded land in lieu of pay. Still others may have been ‘adventurers’ who financed parliament’s Irish army of 1642 and were repaid with land when Cromwell won. Some may have been given land in Ireland in lieu of pay for their service in the army in England or Scotland. Most, as Olive Goodbody suggests, probably bought land from those who were granted it as above. Rather fewer would have descended from the earlier plantations outside Ulster, fought in the Jacobite/Williamite wars or been awarded land after them. All the early Quakers already in Ireland would have suffered as a result of these wars and would also have been impacted by the rebellion of 1798.

The following text discusses first Quaker sources, then sources which cut across the whole period and follows with sources relevant to the main historical events.

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Quaker sources

The best place to start in looking for the history of a specific early Quaker is the Quaker records themselves explained here. Some Quakers’ family lists explain that they or their parents served in the army or came to Ireland as Planters (a term used rather loosely probably meaning that were awarded land under one of the acts of settlement, or bought land from those to whom it had been awarded). Testimonies were written to the lives of other Quakers, particularly ministers, some of which give a brief biography. In a few cases, there are details in the sufferings of soldiers in the army in Ireland under the Commonwealth who lost their commissions after becoming Quakers.

The journals of William Edmundson, William Penn and John and Jonathan Burnyeat can also be regarded as primary sources. Some children of the earliest Quakers wrote their parents' stories and are inclued for example in 'Friends' Library'. Some of these and some of the Quaker records are reproduced in secondary sources such as Wight and Rutty, Gough and Myers which also introduce extra material, although less than one would hope for. There are links to these here. Some journal articles on early Irish Quaker history are listed here. The best secondary source is said to be Quakers in Ireland, by Isabel Grubb, although I have been unable to find a copy on line.

Once you have found what you can from Quaker sources and any genealogy of the family, look for complementary information in the sources listed below for the relevant time.

For a brief history of the Irish Quakers (with links to some profiles of early Irish Quakers making use of Quaker and other sources) see The Irish Quakers: A People's History.

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Sources relevant to the whole period

Certain sources cut across the chronological approach followed below. Relevant histories include

The Irish Manuscripts Commission has published many documents on 16th and 17th century Ireland. Some of these are available free elsewhere (State Papers, 1641 depositions, Down Survey) and are cited separately, but others are only available from the Commission or booksellers.

Also useful for finding sources are

Genealogical sources cutting across the period include

  • John O’Hart’s ‘The Irish landed gentry, when Cromwell came to Ireland’ (J Duffy, Dublin 1887)
  • John Lodges’s abstracts of Court Rolls described here
  • The register of memorials of deeds, described here. (Although the registry only opened in 1709, many of the deeds ‘recite’ earlier transactions through which the current owner came to hold the land; these can be invaluable.)
  • Calendars of state papers relating to Ireland, the papers of the Marquis of Ormonde, the papers of the Parliamentary Commissioners for Ireland under the Commonwealth and the Carew papers described and listed here.

O’Hart, which includes appendices with lists of planters, soldiers etc in a single volume, is the easiest to use and has a single name index. (Familiar names in the index which might/might not be Quaker forebears include Carleton, Carroll, Clibborn, Cooper, Cope, Cuppage, Duckett, Edmondson, Fennell, Hancock, Haughton, Hewetson, Hill, Hoare, Jacob, Jackson, Lecky, Manly, Massey, Medcalfe, Newenham, Newsome, Pearce, Penn, Pike, Randall, Richardson, Ridgway, Valentine, Wakefield, Walpole, Watson, Webb and Wylie (with numerous variations in spelling)). NB that, unlike the appendices, John O’Hart’s pedigrees are unreliable and not recommended (see John O'Hart, hero and villain). Cite as: O'Hart, J The Irish Landed Gentry, When Cromwell came to Ireland J Duffy, Dublin, 1877 Appendix [number and name] p [page no] [text] (URL : accessed [date accessed])

The court rolls, deeds register and the calendars of state papers are, however, much more complete and are the closest thing we have to the original source documents.

See also Early modern Irish sources.

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Plantations under Mary and Elizabeth

Some information on the situation in Ireland before Mary's settlements can be found in Crown surveys of lands 1540-41, with the Kildare Rental begun in 1518 published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission and made available free on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury (under ref IMC 1992/CrownSurveys).

Queen Mary instituted the policy of plantation or large-scale settlement by non-natives, in Laois and Offaly, renaming the counties and their county towns (Queen’s County, Maryborough) after herself and (King’s County, Philipstown) her husband. The plantations were not a great success and few of the planters remained.

The Calendars of State Papers for the reign of Mary starting here list the various documents in which Mary ordered (Vol 1 item 9, 1555) ‘The fort in Offaley to be committed to the Earl of Kildare, that of Leix to Ormond. Presidencies to be established at Athlone and Limerick.’ and later (19) ‘Orders for Leix. To divide each country between the English and the Irish…’ (21) lists the names of the consignees in Leix. Item 260 in volume 3 of the Carew Papers, dated 1596, is A perambulation of Leinster, Meath and Louth, of which consist the English Pale. It contains the names of the main English settlers in each barony. Other volumes of the Carew papers have more information on the early plantations, as do the Irish patent and close rolls and fiants and the Irish inquisitions post-mortem and on attainder.

A paper by Robert Dunlop (“The Plantation of Leix and Offaly.” The English Historical Review, vol. 6, no. 21, 1891, pp. 61–96) sets our the history of the Plantation and contains a map showing the original grantees of land and a table showing those holding it c 1620.

During Elizabeth’s reign, plantation extended to Munster. The plan was to settle some 500,000 acres or one seventh the area of Cork, Kerry, and Limerick confiscated from the Earl of Desmond after he rebelled. In the event, much less than this was settled and many of the settlements failed, but the plantation had a lasting effect on Cork and Limerick in particular.

Two major surveys, the Peyton/Desmond Surveys, were carried out by commissioners appointed in 1584 and 1598 to enquire into the use and value of the lands forfeited. The Desmond survey is also available on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury under ref PROI E 3/2/51/4 as is the Peyton survey (under ref NAI PRIV/M/5039).

Robert Dunlop wrote two papers on the plantation of Munster Dunlop, R., 'The Plantation of Munster 1584-1589', The English Historical Review, Vol. 3, No. 10 (Apr., 1888), pp. 250-269 (20 pages) and Robert Dunlop and Geo. O'Brien, 'An Unpublished Survey of the Plantation of Munster in 1622' The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Sixth Series, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Dec. 31, 1924), pp. 128-146 (19 pages).

Also available (to borrow) on line is "The Munster Plantation English Migration To Southern Ireland 1583-1641" by Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986.

The Carew Papers were collected by George Carew who was President of Munster from 1600 and has copious information about it. There are also various documents relating to the plantation in The Casey Collection.

There are also numerous records relating to Munster in the Irish local histories and the Irish estate papers. The former includes, for example a section in The Ancient and Present State of Cork on the Tyrone Rebellion and the Undertakers of the Plantation of Munster and the 'Council books' which provide much useful information on Munster. The latter include the papers of the Earls of Cork and a Governor of Munster along with many others. It is hard work searching through these documents, but they are often the only way to trace participants in these plantations.

O’Hart includes as an appendix, a list of ‘English and Scotch planters in Ireland temp Queen Elizabeth’.

There is a section on plantation maps in Historical Maps and Gazetteers of Ireland.

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The plantation of Ulster, Leinster & Connaught

Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, England was involved in a major conflict in Ireland, known as the Tyrone Rebellion or the Nine Years' War (1593-1603), in which Hugh O'Neill fought against the advance of the English into Ulster. The English won, but at some cost to themselves and after desolating much of Ireland. (For a history of the war, particularly in Munster, see Pacta Hibernia.)

In 1603 the new English King James made peace with O'Neill on relatively generous terms. As king of Scotland, James also encouraged settlement in Ulster from there, a settlement newly possible because he was able to promise English support. This became known as the Montgomery-Hamilton settlement of about 1606. Although it was far from the first Scots settlement in Ireland, it was the most substantial to that date and started the trend of substantial Scots involvement in Ulster.

For reasons that are not altogether clear, Hugh O'Neill and about 90 of his followers left Ireland in 1607 in an event now known as 'The Flight of the Earls'. James then attainted O'Neill, confiscated almost four million acres of his lands and launched the plantation of Ulster in 1610. The confiscated lands were parcelled out to ‘undertakers’ (who agreed to undertake the plantation of British settlers on the estates granted to them), ‘servitors’ (who had served the English or Scottish Crown as soldiers or officials), City of London Livery Companies, protestant bishops and Trinity College Dublin. The definitive account of the plantation is George Hill's ‘An historical account of the plantation in Ulster at the commencement of the seventeenth century', 1608-1620’ (M’Caw, Stevenson & Orr, Belfast, 1877). In this, Hill provides a list of grants of land and the grantees. Hill subsequently produced Ulster Plantation Papers containing a summary sketch of the great Ulster plantation in the year 1610, "Northern Whig" Office, Belfast, 1889. (See also 'The Confiscation of Ulster in the reign of James the first, commonly known as the plantation of Ulster' [2nd Edition] Thomas Mac Nevin, James Duffy, London, 1846.)

A separate set of papers from the archives of Trinity College Dublin was published as Ulster Plantation Papers by T. W. Moody, Analecta Hibernica, No. 8 (Mar., 1938), pp. 179 -297 (120 pages).

The modern expert on the plantation appears to have been Robert John (Bob) Hunter. A list of his books can be found here. There is also a web site in his memory which contains among other things some muster lists and a list of his journal publications. Some of these are available free on JSTOR. For example Towns in the Ulster Plantation and others found in this search.

A separate volume of O’Hart’s pedigrees (volume 2 in later editions) includes a chapter on the Ulster Plantation which starts with a general history and concludes with tables of undertakers and servitors.

This volume from the Commissioners of the Public Records of Ireland (mainly devoted to inquisitions post-mortem and on attainder in Ulster) also records decisions by Elizabeth’s government on dividing Ulster into counties (1585) and surveys of Monaghan (1591, Elizabeth), Fermanagh (1605, James) and Down (1618). The surveys describe the allotment of land by the crown to named freeholders. The inquisitions on attainder are also extremely relevant, although be warned: they are in Latin. The same volume concludes with appendices on the escheated lands in Ulster which led to the plantation and with instructions from James I/VI for the plantation.

Much more detail on these instructions and the government's approach to the establishment of the plantation is contained in the Calendars of Irish State Papers and in particular those for 1608-1610 and 1611-1614. The preface to the first of these volumes contains an excellent summary of them preceded by a description of previous English attempts to plant Ulster and of the state of Ulster before the plantation.

Queen's University Belfast has made available a digital set of Maps of the escheated counties of Ireland, 1609, produced by Josias Bodley before the start of the plantation proper. More information about them can be found in this QUB blog post. Those looking for more detail can see Andrews, J. H. “The Maps of the Escheated Counties of Ulster, 1609-10.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, vol. 74, 1974, pp. 133–70 on JSTOR.

PRONI has a collection of documents on the Plantations of Ulster 1600-1641 and the BBC has a potted history of it here.

For 'The Flight of the Earls' see for example The fate and fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donel, earl of Tyrconnel : their flight from Ireland, and death in exile, Rev C. P. Meehan, James Duffy, Dublin, 1868 or The flight of the earls: or, The earls' own account of the causes which compelled them to leave Ulster in the autumn of 1607, Rev G. Hill, "Northern Whig" Office, Belfast, 1878.

The Ulster settlers database, developed by Queen's University Belfast and Maynooth University, searches on many of the sources mentioned in this section - Hill's Plantation of Ulster, the Surveys of the Ulster Plantation, Robert Hunter's muster Rolls, M Perceval-Maxwell's PhD thesis on Scots Migration to Ulster etc. It does not give you much detail on the people mentioned in the results but is an excellent way to find people in a large number of sources. (Unfortunately, only samples of some of the sources listed have been loaded. For example, one of the sources shown is '1641 depositions' [see below], but this is only linked to 18 names. One hopes that these sources will be loaded completely, which would obviously make the database much more useful.)

Surveys of Ulster

Hill also prints in full Pynnar’s Survey of Ulster (1618-19) carried out as part of the plantation. (This was one of four surveys, explained here in part of Ancestry Ireland’s web site dedicated to the Plantation of Ulster.)

The first of the surveys, carried out by Sir George Carew, can be found in the Calendar of Carew Manuscripts for 1603-1623 on pages 68–9 (instructions from James I , 75–9 (survey started 29 July 1611) and 220–51 (continuation of the 29 July survey).

Another of the surveys, that of undertakers and servitors carried out by Sir Josias Bodley from Feb-April 1613, can be found in The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts' report on the Hastings manuscripts (manuscripts of the late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, Esq. of the Manor House, Ashby de la Zouch) published 1928. It can be found in volume four pages 159-82.

Probably most useful is the survey of 1622. ‘The wide-ranging commission of enquiry sent to Ireland in the Spring of 1622 investigated the political, religious and administrative state of the country. This book will be invaluable for historians of Stuart Ireland, while the extensive indices of persons and places will be a great resource for local and family historians.’ However, it was only published in 2006 and this volume will have to be bought or consulted in a library. The part of the survey relating to Armagh is the subject of two papers by TGF Patterson in The journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society 1960 and 1970, the second of which details the muster roll of the planters. The same survey is detailed in a two-part paper by Victor Treadwell 1960 covering Armagh and Tyrone .

Londonderry

In a Royal Charter of 29 March 1613 King James awarded lands forming the present county of Derry/Londonderry to The Honourable Irish Society formed by City of London Corporation. A major survey of those estates was carried out in 1639 by a Commission instituted under the Great Seal of Charles I, the results of which were compiled in 'The Great Parchment Book’. This was badly damaged in the Guildhall of London fire of 1786, but has recently been partly restored. The Great Parchment Book web site explains the book’s history and restoration and allows you to search by names of people, places and livery companies involved.

Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury has Articles of Agreement between the Crown and the City of London related to the Plantation of Ulster (under ref NAI PRIV/M/5039).

The Honourable Irish Society still exists, now largely managing fishing rights and giving charitable grants. The history of the Honourable Irish Society was written in 1842 - A concise view of the origin, constitution, and proceedings of the Honorable Society of the Governor and Assistants of London of the New Plantation in Ulster : within the realm of Ireland, commonly called the Irish Society / Printed by order of the Court ; Compiled principally from their records. London : G. Bleaden, 1842.

PRONI has digitised records of Freemen of the City of Londonderry from 1645 and made them available here.

The title of this volume from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland ‘Londonderry and the London companies, 1609-1629, being a survey and other documents submitted to King Charles I. by Sir Thomas Phillips’ is self explanatory.

The definitive work on the plantation of Londonderry is said to be 'The Londonderry plantation, 1609-41- the city of London and the plantation in Ulster' by Prof T. W Moody (publisher unknown, Channel Islands, 1939, republished by the Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 2019).

A work which is available is The County of Londonderry in Three Centuries with notices on the Ironmongers' Estate (JW Kernohan, published privately, 1911).

Scots involvement in the plantation of Ulster

Many of the settlers in Ulster came from Scotland. Scots-Irish links contains the names of many Scots settlers including undertakers in the plantation, taken from Scottish sources.

Web site 'Discover Ulster-Scots' has a section on the Hamilton-Montgomery settlement of 1606. The memoirs of the Montgomery and Hamilton families are listed in Irish estate papers.

M. Perceval-Maxwell's, The migration of Scots to Ulster during the reign of James I ( PhD thesis, Department of History, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 1966 later published by Routledge & Kegan Paul 1973, republished Taylor & Francis 2021) is said to be the best source for Scots participation in the plantation. Some of his appendices are of particular interest for genealogists

  • Appendix I The 1609 Scottish applicants p483 (his numbering) p 948 in pdf
  • Appendix II Short biographies of the chief Scottish undertakers p491 (his numbering) p 955 in pdf
  • Appendix III Short biographies of ordinary Scottish undertakers p521 (his numbering) p 985 in pdf
  • Appendix IV Scottish Servitors p 612 (his numbering) p 1077 in pdf
  • Appendix VI Scottish Ministers in Ulster 1603-1625 p621 (his numbering) p 1806 in pdf

The English Crown had long claimed Ireland as its own. English settlers in Ireland therefore needed no change in legal status, but Scots settlers often had to obtain the equivalent of English citizenship. Many Scots settlers in Ulster can therefore be found in 'Denizations and Naturalizations' Aliens in England and Ireland (William Shaw (ed), Huguenot Society of London, London, 1911). (The link is to vol 1 - 1603-1700). Many denizations for Scots settlers in Ireland can be found in the main (English) section of the book, which also has an appendix specific to denizations in Ireland.

Also of interest is The history of the Presbyterian church in Ireland by James Seaton Reid. It is certainly not a balanced history (Reid was a Presbyterian minister), but has useful genealogical information on Presbyterian planters and ministers (who were mainly Scots) in particular as well as history with an unusual slant. Vol 1 covers the start of the plantation to 1641 and vol 2 from 1642 to William of Orange's victory over James II.

Ancestry Ireland has a searchable database of Scots in Ulster.

The plantation of Leinster and Connaught

James extended the plantations to Leinster. Key to this was the ‘Commission to inquire into Defective Titles’ which required all Irish landowners to prove the title to their land. If they failed (and reasons for failure could often be found), their land was forfeit to the Crown, which sold it to raise funds. This resulted in the redistribution of land in counties Wexford, Leitrim, Longford and other areas in the Midlands between 1610 and 1620. Many proclamations on this can be found by searching James’s state papers with keyword ‘defective’.

Some details can be found in ‘The case of tenures upon the commission of defective titles, argued by all the judges of Ireland, with their resolution and the reasons of their resolution’ by James Baron Santry (chief justice of the King's Bench in Ireland), Society of Stationers, Jan 1639.

The crown was also active in Connaught during this period as detailed in ‘The Strafford Inquisition in County Mayo’ of 1635 listing each landowner by townland. Published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission, it is available on the Irish virtual records treasury under ref IMC 1958/Strafford. The Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society has also published An Extract from Strafford's Inquisition: Galway Corporation Property, in 1637 by Paul Walsh and Paul Duffy. See also The strafford papers.

A paper by Brian Mac Cuarta (“The Plantation of Leitrim, 1620-41.” Irish Historical Studies, vol. 32, no. 127, 2001, pp. 297–320.) describes the history of an attempt to extend the Plantation of Ulster across the border into Connaught.

Muster rolls

All protestant males aged 16-60 in these and other plantations were required to form militia and ‘muster’ for inspection. Muster rolls were taken at various different times and some still exist. Many of the available rolls are only summaries, with the names of the principals and the numbers of people that they were able to muster, the number of horse etc. Some of these are included in the surveys of Ulster above. One such summary for the counties of Ulster in the year 1618 appears in calendar of state papers for Ireland (1615-1625) (item 501 pp 220-226 with a following appendix), taken from a British Library manuscript.

Possibly the most important remaining muster roll, taken in 1630, comes from another British Library manuscript, in the Milles collection. The importance of this list is that it contains all the names of the individuals mustering, in total 13,147 adult males.

Extracts from this list have been published at various times.

  • The muster roll for Armagh is transcribed in this paper by TGF Patterson.
  • That for Fermanagh is listed in a chapter on that subject in The History of Enniskillen.
  • That for Monaghan in this paper by John Johnston JSTOR.
  • The rolls for Donegal and Cavan were also published in Donegal Annual and Briefne (not availalble on line)

Then a complete roll for Ulster prepared by Bob Hunter was published in 'Men and Arms: the Ulster settlers c 1630' (available to buy as a book or ebook). The lists of names from this book (but not the detail) can be searched free on the RJ Hunter collection and the Ulster settlers database.

A hotch potch of muster rolls for different times and places is available. Since most relate to Ulster, I have included them here

PRONI holds various different muster rolls for different times and has a leaflet on Muster Rolls explaining what is available. However, the rolls themselves are not available on line.

There are some muster lists in the Ormonde and Carew papers Calendars of Irish State Papers and some results in Ancestry Ireland's searchable database.

Not quite the same, but Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury also has summonsters' rolls from PRONI's Groves Collection. (Ref PRONI T808/15090.) PRONI explains 'Extracts from the Summonister rolls Co. Tyrone 1615-1638. These give lists of people fined for non-attendance at Quarter Sessions with for example an entry under Tyrone Assizes 29th March 1621 "following jury fined 5 marks each for acquiting a prisoner" there then follows a list of the jury with their addresses.'

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The rebellion of 1641 and the royal commission

In 1641 many Irish Catholics led a rebellion against the plantations and anti-Catholic discrimination. King Charles appointed the Earl of Ormond as commander of his troops in Ireland to put the rebellion down. And at the end of that year, a Commission was established under the Royal Seal

To take upon oath the several examinations of all such persons, that, having suffered by this present Rebellion, would think fit to repair unto them, as will appear by the Commission itself.

People, largely protestant, who claimed (many arguably fraudulently) to have suffered during the rebellion made depositions to the commissioners. Thirty three volumes of these depositions held by Trinity College Dublin are available in searchable form on line here. As TCD argues

This body of material is unparalleled anywhere in early modern Europe, and provides a unique source of information for the causes and events surrounding the 1641 rebellion and for the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political history of seventeenth-century Ireland, England and Scotland.’'

The depositions also provide the most systematic information on protestants (and many rebels) present in Ireland before the Cromwellian settlement.

Following the rebellion, about 2,200 Irish landowners were outlawed. The Library of the Oireachtas has the list of outlaws which is also reported in Annalecta Hibernica here. A similar list was published in volume 3 of John T Gilbert's 'History of the Irish Confederation 1641-1649'. (See Calendars of Irish State Papers - Irish Confederation.) An article in the Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society reprints a list of those executed for rebellion in Ulster. (The executions only took place after Cromwell's invasion.)

Various histories of the rebellion have been written, mostly drawing on the material contained in the depositions. If the Royal Commission itself was biased, and many of the depositions more so, some at least of the histories take the depositions as source material and add further bias to their interpretation. The first of these was The History of the Irish Rebellion, Edmund Borlaise, republished 1743. (Ask about Ireland comments: Edmund Borlase (1620-1682) was an Irish historian who was educated at Trinity College Dublin. Borlase had a Protestant upbringing and his book was criticised for being too harsh on Irish Catholics. Despite his political bias, the book remains an reasonably faithful and accurate description of the 1641 rebellion in Ireland.) Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), wrote a (generally biased) history of the 'rebellion' and civil war in England, originally in six volumes. He later added a seventh volume on Ireland. There is no reason to regard this as a reliable history, but it does include detailed and sometimes gruesome sections on massacres committed by the Irish rebels and on the Irish. These cover the period from 1641 to the end of Cromwell's campaign. The section on the rebellion of 1641 largely draws on and repeats material published by Borlaise. Also drawing on the depositions is Ireland in the seventeenth century, or, The Irish massacres of 1641-2 : their causes and results by Mary Hickson (London : Longmans, Green, 1884.) A further history of the rebellion is The Irish rebellion of 1641, with a history of the events which led up to and succeeded it, Lord Ernest Hamilton, Murray, London, 1920. Also The history of the rebellion and civil-war in Ireland by Ferdinando Warner (J Williams, Dublin, 1768). Ask about Ireland comments: 'This work not only diminishes the reputed number of Protestant victims of the Rebellion of 1641 but also attempts to remedy accounts of Catholic massacres of Protestants during the Rebellion. While not looking to absolve Catholics entirely it does also voice condemnation of the penal laws.'

The Irish Manuscripts Commission published Letters and Papers Relating to the Rebellion 1642-46 (Hogan J., Stationery Office, Dublin, 1936) which is now available to download free of charge.

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Adventurers, covenanters, confederacy and civil war

As part of the escalating conflict between the English parliament and the crown, parliament raised its own army in 1641 to suppress and punish the rebellion independently of the king. This was financed by confiscating 2,500,000 acres of land from the rebels and offering it to ‘adventurers for land’ who advanced money to Parliament. An Ordinance for the encouragement of Adventurers, to make new Subscriptions for Towns, Cities, and Lands in Ireland was issued in July 1643.

This army from the English Parliament was complemented in Ulster by an army raised by the Covenanter Parliament in Scotland.

In May 1642, a synod of the Irish Catholic Church agreed an oath of association in which Irish Catholics pledged allegiance to King Charles but also to a Council of Confederate Irish Catholics. The first confederate assembly was held in Kilkenny in October 1642, after war had broken out in England, and it met annually until 1648. It appointed a council of 24 members to act as a government of Ireland and raised its own army.

The Irish Confederate Wars (or the Eleven Years’ War) lasted until the end of Cromwell’s campaign in 1653. It involved at times four main armies, those of King Charles, the English Parliament, the Scots Covenanters and the Irish Confederates. Alliances shifted, with the English and Scots forces initially fighting the Irish rebels, the Irish Confederates and the English Royalist forces at times fighting the English and Scots Parliamentarians and after the execution of Charles VI/I everyone else fighting the English Parliamentarians.

John T Gilbert's 'History of the Irish Confederation 1641-1649' is the most complete on the Confederation itself, and has much on the war and Ireland during this period. He also wrote 'A contemporary history of affairs in Ireland, from 1641 to 1652.' with many original documents. (See Calendars of Irish State Papers - Irish Confederation.) The papers of the Marquis of Ormonde and the State Papers described in the same space are also relevant.

  • O’Hart has an appendix listing the ’49 officers who fought in Ireland for King Charles I.
  • The State Papers of the Marquis of Ormonde (vol 1) include many papers relating to the King’s army including this muster roll starting on page 161.
  • Volume 5 of Mahaffy’s Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland (Charles I – Charles II) entitled ‘Adventurers for Land 1642-1649’. consists ‘firstly of receipts given to persons who subscribed money for support of the parliamentary cause in Ireland in the years 1642, 1643 and 1647 and secondly of documents by which the heirs, executors or assigns proved their right to claim lands in Ireland in respect of such subscriptions in the years 1653 and 1654.’ The volume contains 500 pages of such documents. (Surnames in the index which might/might not be Quaker ancestors include Boate, Beale, Bewley, Cooper, Jackson, Manly, Pearce, Pim, Valentine, Watson and Webb.)
  • A separate volume of O’Hart’s pedigrees (volume 2 in later editions) includes an appendix listing the surnames of adventurers for land gleaned from various sources.
  • FamilySearch has the muster rolls of the Ulster army of 1642 which includes English and Scots forces.
  • The Rev C P Mehan wrote a history of the Confederation of Kilkenny.
  • Web site The British Civil War Project has historical and military background on the Confederate War.
  • The standard work on the Scots' Covenanters' Army appears to be Edward M. Furgol's 'A Regimental History of the Covenanting Armies, 1639–1651' (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1990), which will have to be purchased or read in a library.
  • On-line accounts of the covenanters include M Perceval-Maxwell's 'Strafford, the Ulster-Scots and the Covenanters' Irish Historical Studies, vol. 18, no. 72, 1973, pp. 524–51.
  • Kevin Forcan's 'Army List of the Ulster British Forces, 1642-1646' covers both English and Scots Covenanter forces in Ulster.
  • Some information on Scots settlers and participants in the Covenanters' army is contained in Scots-Irish links.

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Cromwell and the Act of Settlement 1652

When the King was defeated in England the Irish rebels were firmly in Cromwell’s sights, and he led the New Model Army to Ireland in 1649. This is described in 'Cromwell in Ireland, a History of Cromwell’s Irish Campaign', Rev Dennis Murphy, MH Gill & Son, Dublin 1883, which contains relatively little genealogical information. (See also British Civil War Project.) Cromwell himself left Ireland in 1650 after capturing the Confederate capital of Kilkenny, but the conflict continued until the capture of Galway in 1652.

Parliament needed money to pay for the war and to repay the merchants who had financed the adventurers of 1641. Acts of the English parliament provided for the execution of the rebels of 1641, Catholic priests, leading supporters of the king, other named persons and those who did not lay down arms. Some others were to be transported as indented labourers. All these people would forfeit their lands. Other Catholic landowners would lose either two thirds or one third of their estates. Many of the Catholic landowners not transported or executed were to be banished to Connaught (in the West of Ireland where they would pose no security threat), where those judged innocent would receive lands in compensation for those they had forfeit.

The main acts (which mention the names of many individuals involved) were

In the event, very few were executed, but essentially all who owned land were assumed to be guilty of being rebels or supporting the king unless they proved themselves innocent. Ironically, many of those whose families had led earlier plantations were dispossessed.

About half the lands confiscated in this way were distributed to the Adventurers who had financed parliament’s army in 1642; the remainder were allocated in lieu of arrears of pay to soldiers who had fought for parliament from 1642 or for Cromwell from 1649 or to suppliers to those armies who had gone unpaid. The allocations were made by lot. Left over land (usually the best) was awarded to eminent parliamentarians and in particular the regicides.

Some of these provisions were repealed following the restoration, but many were confirmed or amended, and the post-restoration records are more complete than those for this period.

John P Prendergast’s The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (PM Haverty, New York, 1868) is a history of the whole endeavour. Its part III, Adventurers and Soldiers, contains some tables showing allocation of lands to individuals. It also has a name index. (Names of families that might be Quaker forebears listed there include Barrington, Boate, Cooper, Cuppage, Ffenne (Fennel?), Garrett, Gough, Hoare, Massey, Neal, O’Carroll, Valentine.)

Prendergast explains that arrears of pay to soldiers were to be satisfied by awarding lands to the various officers, and debentures (a kind of legally secured obligation) on those lands to the soldiers under each officer's command. However, a year passed between the final surrender and the first allocation of lands. During this time, most ordinary soldiers and many officers were in distress. Many soldiers sold their debentures to their officers for amounts as small as 4s in the £. Prendergast has an appendix on the subject with a few names of the people involved, but unfortunately very few details are available for ordinary soldiers.

A table in the Nineteenth report Deputy Keeper of Public Records in Ireland (1887) displays an ‘Abstract of the Decrees of the Court of Claims for the Tryall of the Innocents’. Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury has some abstracts of decrees of innocents (under ref COA IrMss/4) which can be browsed (with text search) here.

O’Hart includes

British History On-Line has a copy of the on-line directory of Parliamentary Officers prepared by the Cromwell Association, although obviously most of them will have fought in England (or perhaps Scotland) rather than Ireland. There is doubtless more information in Firth, C., A Regimental History of Cromwell's Army, OUP, 1940.

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The Commonwealth, the Civil Survey, Down Survey and Pender census

Commissioners of Parliament for the Affairs of Ireland acted as the civilian power in Ireland during the time of the Commonwealth. Their job was to conclude the war, demobilise the army, pay its arrears, carry out the provisions of the Act of Settlement and pay off the soldiers and the adventurers for land who had financed the army raised in 1642. Links to the Commissioners’ papers and the state papers for the time of the Commonwealth can be found here.

Genealogists Philip and Francis Crossle made abstracts of the Receiver General’s accounts of payments (eg to soldiers) by the Parliamentary Commissioners. These are available on FindmyPast, eg here although they are very difficult to use.

In 1653, Commissioners for the Settling and Securing the Province of Ulster, after securing the agreement of the Parliamentary Commissioners, proposed re-setting Scots Presbyterians from Ulster to Munster and Leinster their number being at present almost equal with the English, which we judge very dangerous to be allowed (Ireland under the Commonwealth vol 2 p 339). In his ‘History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’ (vol 2 appendix, p 492) JS Reid has a list of the Presbyterians transplanted.

Two major surveys of Ireland were carried out under the Commissioners’ supervision. The Civil Survey of 1654-5 was supposed to enable the distribution of land described above. Landowner records were collated down to townland together with their value. It eventually covered the whole of Leinster, all of Munster other than Clare, all of Ulster except for one Barony in Monaghan and the County of Leitrim. Volumes of the Civil Survey for Tipperary, Donegal, Londonderry, Tyrone, Limerick, Meath, Waterford, Dublin, Kildare and Wexford are available free from the Irish Manuscripts Commission here. The volume for Waterford has appendices with similar surveys carried out in 1663-4 for the City of Waterford and the City of Cork. A further volume of Miscellany mainly dealing with boundary changes also includes the survey for the Barony of Louth in County Louth. The same volumes are available on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury. To find them, browse the treasury’s archive hierarchy to IMC CS.

Whereas the civil survey was based on landowners’ own records, The Down Survey of 1656-8 carried out by Sir William Petty was the first ever detailed, mapped land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world and produced a more accurate record. The Down survey maps are available on a website provided by TCD which also gives historical context and provides a GIS interface, eg for searching by landowners’ names and religions. The same maps can be viewed on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury. You could try this search adding a term for the location you are looking for which may or may not work. A report on the survey’s papers is available on Ask about Ireland.

Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury has made the Cromwellian surveys (the Civil and Down surveys above and the Books of Survey and Distribution described below) into one of its 'Gold Seams'.

In the 1860s, papers relating to a further survey were found among a set of Down Survey papers. This survey was almost certainly compiled by Sir William Petty while carrying out the Down survey. A compilation of survey results edited Séamus Pender (often referred to as The Pender Census) was published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 1939. It is available free here.

The ‘census’ reports the numbers of inhabitants by race (Irish, English and Scots) in each barony in about the year 1659. These totals are then broken down by parish and townland and the people in each parish/townland with some claim to land ‘tituladoes’ mentioned by name (and included in a name index). The main Irish names represented in each barony are also listed (with idiosyncratic spellings) and their number shown. The counties of Cavan, Galway, Mayo, Tyrone and Wicklow are missing as is most of Meath and some of Cork.

Some other surveys were carried out at about this time, for example the survey of Waterford and Cork mentioned above. Among these was a survey of Cavan in 1652.

Some time after compiling the Down Survey, Sir William Petty wrote a demographic treatise on the state of Ireland, which was published after his death as The Political Anatomy of Ireland, D Brown & R Rogers, London, 1691.

He also produced an Atlas of Ireland which is available on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury as A Book Containing A Generall Map of Ireland with The fower Provinces and Countyes thereof of Villanova Library as A geographicall description of ye kingdom of Ireland Collected from ye actual survey made by Sr. William Petty and a history of the Down survey itself, Petty W, History of the survey of Ireland commonly called the Down Survey (Irish Archeological Society, Dublin 1851.)

For more history, see ‘Cromwellian Ireland : English government and reform in Ireland 1649-1660’ TC Barnard (which has a section on the Quakers).

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Restoration

Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 there was a conflict between Catholics who had supported the monarchy and forfeited their lands and protestants who had acquired those lands but also supported the restoration. These problems were supposed to be resolved in the Dublin parliament’s Act of Settlement of 1662, which set up a commission to return the lands of innocent Catholics, and the Act of Explanation of 1665 passed after an inconvenient number of Catholics were found to be innocent. (Texts of the two acts here.) The latter act determined that most Cromwellian settlers had to give up one third of their lands. Most of the settlers had since sold leases on the lands granted to them, so the process was very complicated. Disputes under the Act of Settlement and the Act of Explanation were settled by the First and Second Courts of Claims respectively. A further set of grants of lands confiscated under the Acts of Settlement at the end of the reign of Charles II and the start of the reign of James II are termed grants under the ‘Commission of Grace’.

Charles II separately confiscated the lands of Regicides.

The most useful source for the grants under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation is the appendix to the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Irish Record Commission dated 1825. The appendix has seven parts

  1. Transcript of the Inrolments of Grants under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation
  2. Index to the Certificates of the Court of Claims
  3. Abstracts of the Conveyances from the Trustees of the Estates and Interests forfeited in 1688
  4. Certificates of Adventurers and Soldiers
  5. Decrees of the Innocents
  6. Connaught Certificates
  7. Roll of adjudication for 1649 officers

And a series of indices to documents on the Acts of Settlement and Explanation prepared by Rev Edward Groves.

The appendix itself clarifies that it is mainly sourced from John Lodge’s Court Rolls and from the records of the Court of Claims. It has indices by name and place and is much easier to use than Lodge’s document.

An invaluable supplement to this is in A supplement to the Eighth Report of the Irish Records Commission, for 1819 which contains a list of reports and schedules addressed to the Court of Claims in respect of the Act of Settlement. It details which claims were from Adventurers, which from soldiers etc and in some cases gives further details.

The appendix to the 15th annual report therefore tells you (among other things) the details of which land was awarded to whom, where the supplement to the eighth report clarifies why the person concerned qualified for an award (usually as an Adventurer or as a soldier.)

The papers of the Marquis of Ormonde include a more detailed table of Irish transplanted to Connaught and some tables on the officers in the Irish Army 1662-84.

Robert Simmington's ‘Transplantation to Connaught 1654-58’ (1970, Irish University Press for the Irish Manuscripts Commission) builds on and adds to the Marquis of Ormonde papers and is available on the Irish Virtual Records Treasury under ref IMC 1970/Transplantation. Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury also has Abstracts from the 'Connact Certificates' made for Sir William Betham under archive ref COA IrMss/6.

O’Hart has

Volumes 11-13 of John Lodge’s Court Rolls cover disposal of land confiscated under the Act of Settlement (1662). Part of volume eight is devoted to the ‘Act of Grace’. As usual, start with the index on FamilySearch or Ireland's virtual record treasury. However, for most purposes the copies of these records published by the Irish Records Commission are easier to use. Alternatively, browse or search the copies on the Irish virtual record treasury here vol 11, vol 12 and vol 13.

This journal article The Irish Court of Claims of 1663 L. J. Arnold Irish Historical Studies Vol. 24, No. 96 (Nov., 1985), pp. 417-430 (14 pages) mentions some of the cases heard.

A recent book, Court of Claims: submissions and evidence, 1663, Geraldine Tallon (ed.), (Irish Manuscripts Commission Dublin, 2006), doubtless has more information, but is not available free on line. Both of the above works refer to the first Court of Claims.

Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury also has Abstracts from the Decrees of Innocence, enrolled in Chancery under archive ref COA IrMss/4.

Starting on p 316, the State Papers for 1661 include a list of Royalist supporters who were pardoned by the King at the request of the Earl of Orrery.

For a history of Ireland during this period see Prendergast's Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution, 1660-1690.

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The Books of Survey and Distribution of 1680

In 1680 the Quit Rent Office (established under the Commonwealth to collect an annual charge on land and continued after the restoration) detailed the owners of land after all the distributions culminating in those under the Act of Explanation of 1665 and the decisions of the Courts of Claims and compared them with the owners detailed in the Down and Civil Surveys, adding details of the awards of land under the Act of Settlement etc. The resulting compilation was called The Books of Survey and Distribution. Various sets of books were made at different times with slightly different contents. The re-distribution documented was enormous, reducing Catholic ownership of land from 61% to 22%.

A set of the Books held by in the National Archives of Ireland covers all counties and has recently been made available on the Irish virtual record treasury and in this thematic collection. To search it use this search adding a keyword.

Books for Roscommon, Mayo, Galway and Clare from a different collection are available free at the Irish Manuscripts Commission here.

County Clare library has transcripts of the books for that county available on-line. The Journal of the Cork Historical and Archeological Society printed the volumes for some parts of that county. Much of the available data is also included on TCD’s Down Survey web site where you can search for landowners in either 1641 or 1670 by name.

Tipperary Library has digitised what it calls The Book of Distribution, 1654 for that county. If the date is correct, then this is a rare record of the distributions under the 1652 act of settlement, unamended by the changes made on the restoration of the monarchy.

The Royal Irish Academy holds a large set of the books from a further collection and explains what is available here . PRONI also has a large set and its own leaflet. PRONI’s set forms part of the Annesley collection. (Further details at PRONI's e-catalogue; search for PRONI ref ‘D1854’, without the quotes.)

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Post restoration taxes

After the restoration, hearth taxes were introduced in England and Ireland where they remained in force until 1793. The hearth money rolls were enumerated by parish with the name of the head of the household, the number of hearths and the amount of the tax levied. Most rolls were destroyed in the four courts fire, but some copies remain, the largest number in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. These are not available on line but those in the Tenison Groves collection are available at the Mormons’ Family History Centres, catalogue entry here.

Copies of hearth rolls for some different areas are available on line

Genealogist Gertrude Thrift made various abstracts of Hearth Money Rolls. They form part of her papers held by FindmyPast and can be searched here. So too did genealogists Francis and Philip Crossle. Their abstracts can also be found on FindmyPast here. Some results appear in Ancestry Ireland's searchable database.

Hearth money rolls for Armagh are set out in this article by TGF Patterson. Hearth money rolls and subsidy rolls for the barony of Dungannon (1666) are set out in this article by Diarmaid Ó Doibhlin. Some hearth money rolls for Londonderry in 1663 are shown in Londonderry in Three Centuries. Some hearth money rolls for Louth are contained in Leslie's history of Kilsaran.

Not available on-line is The Hearth Money Rolls and Poll Tax Returns for Co. Antrim 1660-69 (Trevor Carleton, PRONI, Belfast, 1991.)

Less useful than the hearth taxes are the subsidy rolls. The subsidies were taxes initiated in 1662 on wealthier members of society. Subsidy rolls contained the name, the parish, and sometimes the amount paid and the status of the person. Most of the remaining rolls relate to Ulster and are held by PRONI, but are not available on line. Bill Macafee has the rolls for Londonderry. Those for co Waterford are available here. Genealogist Gertrude Thrift made various abstracts of subsidy rolls which form part of her papers available on FindmyPast. They can be searched here. So did Francis and Philip Crossle, also available on FindmyPast here.

PRONI also has various Poll tax records from 1660 to 1698. The poll tax was levied on all individuals over the age of 12. Most of these are not available on line, but Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury has recently published the 1659/60 tax records for County Down and those for for the Parishes of Urney and Donaghheady, Co. Tyrone in the same years.

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The Irish Parliament of 1689

Fleeing the Glorious Revolution to Ireland, James II convened an Irish Parliament which repealed the Acts of Settlement. Lands lawfully held in 1641 were to be restored. Those who had purchased the lands since they had been forfeit were to be compensated. Funds for the compensation were to be raised by selling the lands of between two and three thousand people who had been disloyal to James II whose property was confiscated in the Great Act of Attainder of 1689. Of course, all this came to nothing when James lost the subsequent war.

In ‘The State of Protestants in Ireland’ (S Powell, Dublin, 1730 – a generally unreliable work) William King (late protestant archbishop of Dublin) includes the Act of Attainder (with the names of those attainted) as an appendix. It is available as a searchable facsimile on Archive.org or (perhaps easier to read) as transcription on Early English Books Online.

Other works on the parliament include Thomas Davis’s The Patriot Parliament and J G Sims’ ‘The Jacobite Parliament of 1698’ Dublin Historical Association, 1974 [not found on line].

O'Hart has Members of the Irish Parliament of King James the IInd of 1689.

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Williamite-Jacobite war and confiscations

After he and his wife Mary assumed the English crown, William of Orange led an army to Ireland to fight the exiled James II. The Williamite-Jacobite war of 1688-1691 finally ended with the treaty of Limerick signed in 1691 which gave Jacobite soldiers the option of leaving for France (chosen by 14,000) or joining the Williamite army (chosen by 1,000.) The treaty also guaranteed the rights of the surviving Catholic landowners who had supported James but who thereafter pledged allegiance to William and Mary. (The lands of those who had died or did not pledge allegiance were to be forfeit.) Over the following eight years, further confiscations of lands of Jacobite supporters were made and further pardons granted. These were adjudicated by another court of claims. The overall result was to further reduce Catholic ownership of land to 15%.

For history of the war, see for example ' The battle of the Boyne, together with an account based on French and other unpublished records of the war in Ireland' by Demetrius Charles de Kavenagh Boulger, M Secker, London, 1911. Also see A Jacobite Narrative of the War in Ireland 1688-1691 by John Gilbert.

The seminal work on the Williamite confiscations appears to be ‘The Williamite Confiscations in Ireland, 1690-1703’ John Gerald Sims, 1956 Faber, reprinted 1976 Greenwood Press. (This has not been found on line but the TCD Thesis on which it is based is available here). An article by JG Sims in Analecta Hiberica No 22 (1960) contains a list of the outlawed Irish Jacobites. The Casey collection has reprinted parts of this available on Ancestry and FamilySearch and the section for Antrim is available here.

O’Hart has

The latter part of volume nine of John Lodge's court rolls is devoted to the lands of Jacobite supporters forfeited after the Jacobite/Williamite war. As usual, start with the index. Or search volume nine in the the virtual record treasury here adding an appropriate search term.

The same information is summarised in part III of the Appendix to the Fifteenth report of the Irish Records Commission mentioned above.

Many of the forfeitures were processed by another Court of Claims the papers of which can be found in A list of the claims as they are entered with the trustees at Chichester-House on College Green Dublin, on or before the tenth of August, 1700, (Dublin, no date). Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury also has a copy of papers on this court of claims (from the Annesley Papers held by PRONI). Some details of the forfeitures are contained in the Report of the Commissioners Appointed by Parliament to Enquire into the Irish Forfeitures (1699).

The supplement to the eighth annual report of the Irish Record Commissioners includes a schedule of documents from the Foreiture Office on the Williamite confiscations of 1690-1703. The schedule contains (among other things) the names of many of those whose land was confiscated with information on the transactions in which they came to own the confiscated land.

Other sources

Wight and Rutty's Rise and progress of the people called Quakers in Ireland has a section (starting on p 145) of the sufferings of Quakers during the conflict.

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Convert rolls, protestant householders, the Elphin census and the religious census

In 1693, the Pope again recognised James as the rightful king of Ireland, provoking or providing an excuse for a series of penal anti-Catholic laws which prevailed for many years. Many Catholics, officially at least, converted to Protestantism to avoid disqualification from numerous rights. The Ireland Catholic Qualification and Convert rolls (1701-1845) are available at the National Archives of Ireland on FamilySearch, Ancestry and FindmyPast.

In 1740 the Irish House of Commons required a return of protestant householders in the north of Ireland. These can be found on the PRONI name search. PRONI also has an explanation here. Bill MacAfee also has the Ulster Protestant Householder Returns in Excel spreadsheet form.

In 1749, Edward Synge, bishop of Elphin organised a census of the diocese of Elphin which embraced most of County Roscommon, part of south-east County Sligo and part of north-east County Galway including the towns of Sligo, Roscommon, Boyle and part of Athlone. The census covered some 20,000 households. The head of each household is listed by name, togther with his religion and profession and the number of children by agegroup and religion and the number of male and female servants also by age and profession. The census is published and can be purchased from the Irish Manuscripts Commisson and can be searched by subscribers on FindmyPast.

On 5 March 1766, the Irish House of Lords approved a census via bishops and parish priests of ‘the several families in their parishes …, distinguishing which are Protestants and which are Papists, as also a list of the several reputed Popish priests and friars’ – the religious census. The National Archives of Ireland has a paper on what is available although this does not differentiate between the available returns showing totals and those listing names. Many of the available names show up in PRONI’s name search as above, and it is clear that PRONI has collected names from a large number of sources, although it does not say which. PRONI also has an explanation here. Ancestry has the extracts from the census compiled by Tenison Groves, although this is much less complete than PRONI’s search. Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury has made the census one of its ‘gold seams’ and should have more data than anywhere else. You can also view the documents there. However, it is less convenient to use than PRONI or Ancestry and there are not many extra results (compared with PRONI). To search it, use this search enter your own keyword, hit return and then delete my ‘dummy search term’. (You may find results from the hearth money rolls or the protestant householders’ returns.)

Some results also appear in Ancestry Ireland's searchable database. Genealogists Francis and Philip Crossle made various abstracts of the census returns which are available among their papers on FindmyPast here.

The penal laws imposed on Catholics also affected dissenters (such as Quakers as seen in their ‘sufferings’). Many of the Presbyterian residents of Ulster organised the dissenters’ petitions of 1775 which eventually led to the repeal of the law affecting them. The signatories to the dissenters’ petitions are also available on the PRONI name search and are explained here.

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Rebellion of 1798

A further rebellion occurred in 1798, led by the Society of United Irishmen. The background to the rebellion was the history of religious discrimination and disqualification of land described above, the successful revolutions in France and north America and the continuing conflict between Britain and France. The Society of United Irishmen was originally led by radical Presbyterians, but eventually broadened its base. In May 1798, a planned initial uprising in Dublin was thwarted, but uprisings in surrounding districts and counties took place. These were fairly quickly defeated, except for the uprising in Wexford. In June, there were also uprisings in Antrim and Down, which were also defeated after a week or so. The Wexford uprising continued until battles in June and July. Then on 22 August, 1000 French troops landed in Mayo and, with 5000 local rebels, inflicted a defeat on the British and declared the Irish Republic, before losing in September. In October, a larger French force was prevented from landing in Ireland by the British navy. Estimates of deaths during the conflict range from 10,000 to 50,000. In the aftermath of the rebellion, the Acts of Union created the United Kingdom.

Wikipedia’s history of the rebellion is here. Sir Jonah Barrington’s 'Historic Memoirs of Ireland' ‘comprise of secret records of the National Convention, the 1798 Rebellion and the Act of Union’. RR Madden wrote ‘The United Irishmen, their lives and times’ in three volumes, London, J Madden & Co, 1842-6. (2nd Ed in 4 vols Dublin, James Duffy, 1857-1860 here.) Similarly William Hamilton Madden wrote A History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798.

Other works have more personal recollections. George Taylor, a protestant loyalist who was himself a captive of the rebels, wrote A history of the rise, progress, cruelties, and suppression of the rebellion in the county of Wexford in the year 1798, initially published thirty years later in 1829. The link here is to a third edition of 1864. For a Catholic's description of the same events see History of the Irish insurrection of 1798 : giving an authentic army : and a genuine history of transactions preceding that event by Edward Hay, whose brother was executed for his leading role in the rebellion. Hay's work was originally published in 1803, but the link is to an 1842 edition. And Thomas Cloney wrote A personal narrative of those transactions in the county Wexford, in which the author was engaged, during the awful period of 1798.

Also relevant is 'The French Invasion of Ireland in ’98' by Valerian Gribayedoff (published 1890).

The National Archives of Ireland has a collection of facsimile documents relating to the rebellion.

The Quakers have two publications on it

  • Williams, Joseph 2016 Recollections of the Rebellion of 1798. Edited by Jennifer Keogh. Eye-witness account of life in Wexford by a Quaker miller. Dublin: Historical Committee Occasional Paper No. 3 12 pp. €5
  • Douglas, J. Glynn 1998. Friends and 1798, Quaker witness to non-violence in 18th Century Ireland. Extracts from contemporary records and personal recollections of the 1798 uprising by members of the Society of Friends. 95 pp, illustrated. Dublin: Historical Committee. ISBN 0 9519870 3 8, 95 pp. €10.

There are also some Quaker-specific journal articles about it here.

Thomas Hancock (1783-1849) wrote a book about the Quakers’ response to the rebellion Hancock, T. (1829). 'The principles of peace, exemplified in the conduct of the Society of Friends in Ireland, during the rebellion of the year 1798'. 2d rev. and enl. ed. Philadelphia: T. Kite.

FindmyPast has a set of data on claims on the Government as a result of losses suffered during the rebellion together with some data on rebels who surrendered to the government in or near Dublin.

Irish estate papers has some papers on this period including the McCance papers from PRONI (under ref PRONI D272). These include ‘The Black Book of the North of Ireland' which contains some 200 names of local leaders of the United Irish Party, often with particulars of their appearances and their careers in the Society. Many notable names appear in this collection ... and the Castlereagh papers (under ref PRONI D3030)– Castlereagh became Keeper of the Privy Seal with a seat on the Irish Privy Council in 1797 and was involved in suppressing the rebellion of 1798.

Ireland's virtual record treasury recently (2024) added a 'curated collection' on the rebellion, which oddly does not include papers on the rebellion held by PRONI and already available on the record treasury. It appears to be limited to papers from the National Archives of Ireland. At the time of writing (July 2024) almost all the place holders are empty, but it appears that the collection will be very extensive when completed.

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Acknowledgements

Most of what I have learnt on these subjects comes from gleaning the works of retired Australian historian Dr Peter Coutts whose extensive source citations point you in the direction of much of this material. Dr Coutts has written many books and papers on Irish Quaker history, demography and genealogy, one of which he kindly invited me to contribute to. I am indebted to him. The mistakes and omissions in the above are, however, my own.

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Categories: Ireland Genealogy Resources