27. Things Were Tense Between the English and Irish for Centuries
Ever since the English invaded and began to colonize Ireland in the twelfth, relations between the two peoples have ranged from uneasy, to tense, to outright murderous. Things went from bad to worse when King Henry VIII took England out of the Catholic fold, which added a new layer of religious tensions between the still-Catholic Irish, and the now-Protestant English. Sectarian strife, and the depredations of Oliver Cromwell in Ireland in the seventeenth century, did not improve things. Nor did English fears after Cromwell’s death, that the restored Stuart monarchs might use Irish soldiers to create a tyranny and force England back into Catholicism.
That created no end of trouble for King James II of England (reigned 1685 – 1688). From the start of his reign, resentment simmered against James II, a Catholic, as his mostly Protestant subjects decried and feared his perceived machinations to reinstate Catholicism. Public resentment was kept in check, however, because the elderly monarch had no son. The English just had to bear with him until he died, and was succeeded by his staunchly Protestant daughter Mary, and her even more staunchly Protestant husband, William of Orange. Then, in the autumn of his life, James’ wife gave birth to a baby boy.