Dan Snow's History Hit - Elizabeth I's War with Ireland

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Queen Elizabeth I, Gloriana, victor over the Spanish and patron of the arts ushered in a Golden Age for England. But she was also Queen of Ireland, and her campaigns to control her Catholic subjects in the late 17th century led to some of the bloodiest battles of her reign. The Nine Years' War as it came to be known would bring the English treasury to the edge of bankruptcy, and submit Ireland's population to genocidal violence.So what was Elizabeth's claim to Ireland? How did Irish leaders respond to English incursions? And how far can we trace the roots of partition and the Troubles to this period? On this episode Dan is joined by James O'Neill, a historian of Irish history, to discuss the conflict and its legacy.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.PLEASE VOTE NOW! for Dan Snow's History Hit in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here. Every vote counts, thank you!We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

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Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Queen Elizabeth I, Gloriana, victor over the Spanish patron of the arts who ruled over a golden age for England. But on today's podcast, we're going to talk about her other kingdom. She was also Queen of Ireland, but that was contested and she fought her longest, bloodiest and most expensive conflict, not against the might of Spain, but against her own Catholic subjects. This is the story of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, of the Nine Years' War, of the massive violence that tore Ireland apart and brought the English treasury to the point of bankruptcy. I've got Jim O'Neill, he's a former archaeologist, he's now a historian specialising in the Nine Years' War in Ireland. He's going to tell me about this conflict which saw Spanish invasions, massive English defeats and victories and

genocidal violence shown towards the Catholic population of Ireland. This is certainly not the start of the English conquest of Ireland. That had been rumbling on like a tide that ebb and flows for centuries. But this is definitely a very, very important part of that story. It's the point at which large numbers of Protestant settlers are brought over from England and Scotland and settled particularly in Ulster, where their descendants remain to this day, many of them determined to remain part of the UK rather than join the Republic of Ireland. today, whether or not there'll be a border poll, whether Northern Ireland will once again join the South or remain part of the UK, the tap root of all that lies in this period at the end of the 16th century. It's a story you don't get taught in British schools, that's why I've got it on the podcast. But before you listen to the wonderful Jim O'Neill, just a quick plea, a plea from me.

We're part of the Listener's Choice at the British Podcast Awards, so please head to the British Podcast Awards website and vote for us in the listeners choice it'd be much appreciated now here's jim o'neill enjoy t-minus 10 the thomas bomb dropped on hiroshima god save the king no black white unity till there is first and black unity never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Jim, thanks very much for coming on the podcast. Not a problem.

How can we hear? What's so difficult to understand about Irish history is that the Anglo-Normans, it was Henry II that first apparently successfully invaded and conquered Ireland. And yet here we are, more than 300 years later, talking about a conquest of Ireland. What's the nature of English power over Ireland when Elizabeth comes to the throne, succeeds her big sister? Well you say you have the initial Anglo-Norman conquest, it's sort of all got rolled back over the centuries to where English power was essentially concentrated in the Peel which was the area around immediate areas around Dublin. The rest of Ireland was controlled by essentially a patchwork of lordships run by the native

Irish and the old English lords, which would have been the descendants of the Anglo-Norman invaders of the medieval period. And initially this was run by the Anglo-Norman lords from Dublin, but during Henry VIII's time, that was replaced by a lord deputy who ran a centralised control from Dublin. But of course they didn't have control of all of Ireland. So what you start to see is the imposition of plantations, saying Leish and Offaly, the rolling out of martial law. Essentially, English power in Ireland is underpinned by martial law,

which is military force, essentially. What you see is this continues to encroach upon Irish lands, which naturally provoked resistance. So Jim, until Henry VIII, if you're in Connacht or Donegal or down in Cork, there would be an English sort of presence in Dublin, but your lordships would have continued in effectively autonomous fashion.

Very much so. Once you go outside, I know this typical term, this term beyond appeal, you have Irish law. Certainly you have some of the more powerful Anglo-Irish lordships, say the Ormans, the Butlers and the Desmonds would have had English law. But once you get into Donegal and Ulster and then further Kerry and Connacht, Breton law ruled supreme there. And that was the problem for the English, that they didn't want this, that they want to have the imposition of English law and sharring. And that's where you

have the resistance. And you mentioned these Anglo families like the butlers and the Ormons they had intermarried with Irish families they'd come to look and sound far more Irish than an English lordship right? Oh very much so that was the big problem you have the new English that were coming over under Elizabeth that were seeing these old English lords they have two problems with one they've intermarried and have taken up Irish customs and have things like the Irish barge. They feed into very much Irish traditions and even taken up, in some cases, Irish dress.

But the big jarring difference for English administrators coming over is that the Old English are Catholic and they are Protestant. And here's the big divide. As much as they definitely don't trust the native Irish who are all Catholic, they very much are suspicious of the Old English Lodge. The so-called Old English. It's a very interesting expression that. So okay, so then we've got young Elizabeth in England. We remember her reign as the coming of a golden age, Gloriana. What is her policy? You've gone into it slightly there. What does she want to achieve in Ireland, first of all? And secondly, how does she go about that? I think what she wants in Ireland is

English control, English laws. She wants English sheriffs controlling these territories. And she's very insistent that the Irish are her subject. She is crown queen of England and Ireland. And Jim, why is she so ambitious? If a kind of live and let live, autonomous, rather ambiguous state has existed all through the 15th century, and Edward IV saw right with it, and Henry VII saw right with her grandeur, why did Elizabeth suddenly go, right, it's time to make Ireland English? What's the drive there? Well, for one, you have a religious element. And the last thing that Elizabeth really wants is a semi-autonomous, largely Catholic part of her kingdoms just next door. Certainly with all the problems with Catholic Spain, this is certainly seen at the time as a potential gateway for Spain

into England. But she also likes all powerful people, one thing that more powerful people want, which is more power, more control. And so she insists that the Irish are her subjects. But the problem is that she doesn't actually treat them like subjects. She treats them very much like a race or a people to be conquered. A bit like I'd mentioned in some of my articles about the enterprise of Ulster in the 1570s. You could not imagine this was essentially a state-sponsored land grab by a private organisation under the Earl of Essex to take lands in Ulster. Is this the first proper colonial effort led by the Earl of Essex here? And he chooses what is now in the north of Ireland, he chooses Ulster. He chooses Ulster. He's essentially granted lands, or he's given the green light to go and essentially confiscate lands.

Elizabeth's famously frugal. You look at those Sir Francis Drake voyages and stuff she doesn't pay for them but she might invest in them. Is this on his own dime? Is he just being given a piece of paper and then he has to find all the resources himself? Oh absolutely yeah this is done on the cheap this is a colonization on the cheap but you couldn't imagine this ever happening say Northumberland or any other part of the reign so you can't really call it a kingdom and call it somewhere to be conquered at the same time you don't get to get your cake and eat it this is precisely what they wanted Essex gets the green light to go north and essentially starts confiscating land and how he does this is he tries to provoke the Irish Lord in the response and of course they're going to have a response when they have a thousand or twelve hundred English troops on his money turn up in

their land and he says explicitly to them that this is a private operation. Then they respond and attack. Then he gets to call them traitors and then they fall under the auspice of rebellion. And when it comes to rebellion, all bets are off and you can do anything to them. And that's how they try to provoke the response. As a student of later British imperial history, the freebooting guy on the frontier who gets into fights almost deliberately so that the British flag is then besmirched and the government are forced to step in and allow there's a more formal military response. I mean that happens in North America, happens in Africa, happens in India. So you're seeing it really for

the first time here in Ireland. That's fascinating. This is what they do. You turn up with troops, force a response, call them traitors. But you can only call them traitors if you previously call them subjects. Because if they're not subjects they can't be traitors and if they're not traitors then you can't do everything and anything to them no there's any sort of customs of law go right out the window and you can gauge in any excesses to suppress rebellion which is why they call them subjects even though they don't treat them like subjects they're beyond English law

and English law is always set aside when it comes to English expansion and the removal of Irish lords. And this continues throughout the reign and in fact gets worse. It's interesting, the Irish are described alternatively as rebellious subjects but also as wild natives in need of civilising and in need of discipline. It's fascinating that they're trying to have it both ways. You get a lot of civilising come along. They sort of look at the Irish as though they need a bit of civilizing but ultimately the irish are actually shocked by the behavior of the english

certainly when it comes to warfare that the irish warfare even though they said it was endemic the amount of bloodshed was actually really quite low because the irish were more in the hostages and captives and then you had the horse trading and dealing over swapping captives this whole taking prisoners and then killing them en masse was a real shock to the Irish. And as that continues, and you have broken-faced things like, certainly, murders under trust, that continues all the way through the reign. You get it during the Massacre of Clandyboy in 1574. And then the massacres at Rathlin.

So at Rathlin, that was actually the Scottish-Berlin Massacre. And each time, they can see that English law doesn't apply. They have no protections as subjects. Let me ask about those two massacres because I think they're really important as we build up to, if you like, even more large-scale war in the late 16th century. Talk me through what the first one you mentioned, the Clandyboy, the 1574, what happens there? Clandyboy, this is all part of Essex's enterprise of Ulster. It's Brian Macfell and O'Neill, and he's coming under pressure by Essex. So therefore, he's confiscating everything, and so he decides, well, I've got to actually work with this guy.

He doesn't have the military force to withstand the force of the crown, which you can see is backing Bran. Initially, Essex invites Bran into the household to a big party, and so Bran reciprocates, and so they go to Belfast. This is basically a small tower house at the time, with some surrounding houses. He entertains him for three days, and everything's all bonhomie it's all great crack then on the third day on a signal the troops west essex are under a guy called sir john norris who's a big elizabethan military hero

at the time basically turned on them and killed over 200 people just put them to the sword there and then and then take brown and his wife to dublin then they're both quartered as traitors and the others absolutely shocks it appears in the annals we're absolutely appalled by this sort of murder under trust and then the next year he decides to double down on the brutality and again uses john norris where they go to rathlin and this is under the control of sordid boy mcdonald scott's rather than actually march through the androm glens which is actually really tough tough country for the English, and leaves them open to the Am. So we're now talking the very, very northern coast, a beautiful Antrim coast of Ireland, and people know it from the Giant's Causeway and stuff.

Oh, Giant's Causeway and Dunleish Castle is all very idyllic now. But then what happens is Essex orders Norse and Sir Francis Drake, they bring 300 troops up in ships to Rathlin, which they know has no military forces on it because they know that Sordid by Macdonald has used it to send his dependents, women, children, basically non-combatants, as a refuge. And so they land in Rathlin Bay. And after a brief siege of the castle, they take the castle. And then the histories get a bit murky that Norris actually doesn't go into detail about

it. But some of the archives record that the constable of the castle surrendered on terms to Norris and Drake. Norris and Drake say that he surrendered on terms just for himself and his wife. Everyone else in the castle is put to the sword. That's about 200 people are massacred after they surrender.

But they don't stop there. They actually spend the next couple of days scouring the entire island, which is only about three miles long. There's an estimate of about 600 people are killed on the Ruffland Island Massacre, which you'd think would be shocking enough. And they would just actually write it out of the accounts or at least minimise what's done. But Elizabeth actually writes back to Essex congratulating Norris on this great episode and how busy he would not be forgotten when he gets to court. This is the kind of thing that elizabeth is on record as condoning someone who's studied drake and even norris you know norris and drake the year after the spanish armada 1589 they actually sell south to try and follow up on the victory and they invade

effectively or raid spain and portugal i'm very embarrassed that i've actually i've actually never heard of that incident i think i'm probably typical of my english peers in that respect i mean that's crazy oh it tends not to pop up, because when you're writing about people like that, the Spanish Armada and all the rest, it looms large. You know, it almost shades out everything else. In fact, it even shades out the English Armada,

you say, the next one, which tends to get overlooked. But yeah, it continues. And then we get, what's the Nine Years' War? These massacres, these land grabs, this leads to full-scale conventional warfare on the island of Irelandireland it shouldn't have there was no eventual lead to it but what actually happens is there's this combination of events that

create this perfect tinderbox one is they have a lord deputy william fitzwilliam he's the lord deputy in dublin who is corrupt as the night is long, and is allowing English officers in Connacht and Ulster to make inroads at the expense of the Irish Lord. You also have the Spanish Armada, which is always seen as a great victory for England, but what it actually does is it plants the seeds of this war because some of the Spanish that actually survived getting washed along the coast of Ireland,

some of them end up in Dungannon, in the castle of the Earl of Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, which creates these Spanish links, these Spanish political ties, which also facilitates a conspiracy of Catholic archbishops. So you start to see these connections, these links appear. All to that tied in with the attempts to now expropriate the Irish lands. One was in 1590, you see the McMahon Lordship, and a very dubious legality, even under English law, it was a very dubious legality. They broke up the lordships and executed the Irish lords there,

the McMahons, and they see this as a pattern for what's going to happen in Fermanagh, what's going to happen in Arnhemagh, what's going to happen in Tyrone. So when they see these Spanish links start to appear and start to develop, then Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, decides, well, we're next. So they have a choice.

Do we fold or do we fight? And under these conditions, they decide to fight. And talk to me about Hugh O'Neill. He's such a remarkable figure. What were his allegiances, politics, before he was pushed into that corner? Well, he, at the very, very start, his father was killed in a dynastic dispute

and his brother was killed in a dynastic dispute. And so he's actually made a ward of the state and is brought up near Dublin. And so the English in Dublin decide they want to use him as a counterbalance to the native Irish lords in Ulster. So he's brought up in the Peel. And then 1587, he actually serves with the English troops and certainly may have served in Ulster with the Earl of Essex.

But he has actually made Earl of Tyrone in 1587 and goes to Dungannon. But the major Irish lords in Ulster, he has actually made Earl of Tyrone in 1587 and goes to Dungannon. But the major Irish lords in Ulster, he has trouble with them. But again, the crowns see him as a kind of man. They very much see him as their man. But what they didn't reckon on is Tyrone is very much his man. And he sees himself as very much an Irish lord, not some sort of English proxy.

And so when he establishes himself as Earl of Tyrone and Gannon in 1587, and he makes these ties with the Spanish in 1588-89, and sees these breakups of the Irish lordships, he decides that he is going to develop links with the other Irish lords. He creates bonds with families, the traditional enmities with things like the O'Donnells of Tercunnel, one of the major Irish families in Ulster. And he decides that if he's going to have any way of resisting English authority, he has to entirely overhaul and renovate the Irish military system for him to have any sort of chance. And that's what he does. The fascinating thing about this war is people might think about rebellions, they might think about it as a kind of insurgency thing. In fact,

Tyrone O'Neill builds huge conventional forces, very interesting tactical innovations. I'm reading about some of the worst defeats in English imperial history, like catastrophes for the English in the 1590s. Oh, what he does is he does something totally different. Before the Irish armies were traditionally gallop glass and cairn, very medieval, looking at light infantry, axe-wielding, heavily armed infantry. armed infantry he totally transforms that turns into pike and shot equipped armies primarily shot actually the vast majority of tyrone's troops are armed with firearms but rather than actually slavishly copy say the spanish he would actually train a lot of his

troops there's lots of spanish methods appearing he actually combines the pike and shot revolution of the continent with fast-paced warfare that was typical of the irish and creates like this hybrid type system that's really fast paced that could consistently outmaneuver and outpace english armies that were really traditionally pike and shot with your dense pike core and your musketeers and your lighter caliber men so tactically they had a much more fluid, much more flexible way of fighting. But operationally, he created an operational system that allowed

military operations in one part of the country to influence entirely different theatres. And the English couldn't get their head around this so they were constantly on the back foot for most of the war. You listened to Dan Snow's History. Don't forget to vote for us in the listeners choice of the British podcast awards we're talking about the nine years war on Ireland more coming up

I'm Matt Lewis and I'm Dr Alan Orjanaga and in Gone Medieval we get into the greatest mysteries the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends,

murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Talk to me about the Battle of the Yellow Forge. This is one the Brits don't learn about in school,

but it's a crushing Irish victory. Oh yeah, you don't get it. This one doesn't appear that much. Actually, for the first two years of the war, he fights a proxy war. The English didn't even know they were fighting him for two years. He doesn't come out and fight in the year 95. And he starts to actually push back English power. So that by, you're talking about 1598, there's Irish troops serving in the Midlands. Essentially half the country is under very debatable control. So in 1597, the English actually tried a very belligerent new Lord Deputy called Lord Burr plants fortification deep in Irish territory on the River Blackwater. But Burr dies and leaves this really quite isolated.

There's about 300 men in it, and they don't know what to do. The English army is really taking a battering and actually keeps, there's very little they can do. Initially, they're going to surrender the fort, but there's new reinforcement sent. They come from the continent. They're raised in England. So there's about 4,000 troops are gathered

just to relieve this garrison. And Tyrone's waiting for them. Tyrone has prepared the ground. He's got his troops ready and they know precisely what they want to do. So they actually send this force about 4,000 troops, including artillery, in the Armagh. And Tyrone destroys it utterly.

He actually has prepared the ground. He's actually got a large trench, cuts across the battlefield, and they actually have no idea what that's for because the English cross it with impunity. There's no resistance, but then the lead regiment is utterly destroyed and they find out that the whole trench was there to cut demons off from support from the English cavalry.

And the English commander, Bagnall, he's killed during the battle. The English cavalry commander is wounded. Of 4,000 that are sent, about 2,000 survive, about 300 defect. About 300 of you are actually Irish troops in English pay defect. And the army is actually, it's only actually a lack of gunpowder. There's so much gunfire that the Irish run out of gunpowder and the army eventually makes it to Armagh,

where three days later they actually negotiate a surrender on terms where they're allowed to march back to Dublin but without their arms or munitions or the cannon and also the garrison in the Blackwater Fort has to surrender as well. So that's actually another one of the things that comes in that in these things like Franz Morrison's itinerary says that the Irish killed all their prisoners. This is nonsense. It's actually Toruyn fought this war very much within the codes of conduct, you would say, a war at the time, and allows them to surrender on terms, and this happens time and time again. Much to the surprise of many English officers

who have been led to believe that the Irish killed all the captives, which is nonsense. He actually fights it very much within the customs of war. You give an impression there that the loss is suffered by the English. So we need to remember, people might have heard about Elizabeth's campaigns in Holland, helping the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish overlord. Of course, the naval campaigns against Spanish Armada and others. But this is Elizabeth's most expensive and largest war,

effectively. Pretty much. This war costs the crown. What it admits to is what it actually spent is two million pounds to try and fight this war. If you actually look at the papers, the papers, the Elizabethan papers, state papers, and say the Salisbury papers, are dominated by actions in Ireland. Even though this war, historically speaking, almost disappears from view, it swallows the reputations of some of the finest courtiers and English military officers at the time. It swallows thousands of troops.

Historically speaking, it almost vanishes from the narrative. The effect it had on England at one point where they have to debase the money here. And Mount Joe, who's the Lord Deputy by this stage, writes to Robert Cecil and says, you can't be debasing the money. And Robert Cecil writes back, if we don't, we might have rebellion here if we're forced to raise another tax. So the impact is huge. And it's not just an influence here. These are defeats and victories for the Irish that are reverberating across Europe. This is heard in Spain.

This is heard in the Vatican. The yellow forward, actually a te deum, is sung in the Vatican for that victory. And this is not something that's done in isolation. It's not some sort of little colonial war. This is something that's tied in to the power plays across Europe at the time that involves big players like Philipilip ii philip iii of spain james vi of scotland is up to his

neck in it and of course the pope's playing this part as there's a religious element that tyrone though not religious is quite happy to play whatever religious cards he needed to play to busy make progress well you mentioned philip ii of spain there probably the world's most powerful man at the time who's sending multiple unsuccessful armadas against Elizabethan England. But he does send Spanish troops. So as you say, it actually does become part of the wider European war.

Oh yeah, absolutely. He develops an armada in 1596 with over 12,000 troops. That was coming to Ireland, and then he changes his mind at the last minute and sends it to Spain, or sends it to France, and it gets destroyed in bad weather. We've heard this before. And then, of course, he actually has another one in 1597, which last minute and sends it to Spain, or sends it to France, and it gets destroyed in bad weather. We've heard this before. And then, of course, he actually has another one in 1597,

which he's going to send to Ireland and changes his mind, and again it comes out of cropper again. Eventually, and the Irish are getting actually a bit tired of this, because at the very start of this war, they were told there's going to be Spanish aid, and they send some money and they send some guns, but what Tyrone is wanting is a large Spanish landing force. And when it comes, it's not big enough and it's in the wrong place.

It comes in 1601. About 4,000 Spanish troops land in Conceal in County Cork, which is right in the other end of the island, which is promptly blockaded by Lord Deputy Macjoy and put under close siege. So the Spanish are going north. So they send dispatches north and say, you have to come and link up with the Spanish force under De La Gila. This is in the middle of winter in 1601.

Tyrone has actually been under pressure since 1600. Lord Deputy Mountjoy had actually finally decided that the Irish were an enemy worth taking seriously and actually copies a lot of Tyrone's reforms. They reformed the English infantry in Ireland. In the winter of 1601, Tyrone is forced to march the length of Ireland.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history.

We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. In the appalling, atrocious weather, they link up with the Spanish. This is actually where the story gets quite sad for me. So eventually, he makes his way to Conceal,

and the plan with De La Gila is apparently that O'Neill is going to attack from the English siege lines, and De La Gila will attack out of Conceal, and they'll catch the English army in the middle. Now, the English army is in El Gila will attack out of Kinsale and they'll catch the English army in the middle. Now the English army is in appalling state, they're in a winter siege, dozens are down in the siege trenches every night. One more week and the English army would have been fit to take the field and so we always say well why didn't they wait? Well that's a good question. They attack on Christmas Eve 1601 and O'Neill deploys his troops in this

mass formation that he has never used before. These big blocks of 2,000 troops. Almost like the Spanish Tarsiers of the continent, which is not the way the Irish fought. They traditionally fought in much smaller units. They are absolutely annihilated. The English cavalry

rout the Irish cavalry, which is no contest because the Irish cavalry, they're more for screening and scouting, not actually for like charging home in battle. They retreat through O'Neill's large pike block of 2,000 men, which disrupted the English cavalry, then penetrate that disruption and just take it apart. O'Neill's main battle just collapses and are routed. taken apart. O'Neill's main battle just collapses and they're routed. Actually, the only thing that saved them was that the English horse was in such bad condition that they couldn't pursue them off the battlefield. And O'Neill loses perhaps 1,200 men on the battlefield. But the one thing he can't do is fight a second battle with defeated troops. So the next day, O'Neill decides, right, we've shot our boat here. We're going back north. As they go back north, the Irish lords that had

previously sided with them on the way down decide that, well, we don't want to be on the losing side. So he's attacked in his retreat north, and it takes him about two weeks to get back into Ulster, where he loses perhaps another 2,000 men. But more importantly, his whole mystique of success is broken, and no one wants to be on the losing side. His military power is broken once and for all, but the war is not over by a long shot. And indeed, as more people die, the months after Conceal doesn't die than all the years previously. That's how bad this war gets.

And we should say that Spanish force surrendered after O'Neill treated it. It did indeed. It surrendered on terms. And in fact, Mountjoy was accused at one point of avoiding the Spanish out of Ireland, but he was in no condition to do anything else he made good terms and as he said that the Spanish just would surrender where they were and they would ship them out of Ireland that's precisely what

they did apart from whatever Irish that they could find there that who they basically hung in the gates of conceal because the Spanish were lawful belligerents but because the Irish were seen as in rebellion they were executed. So that was this extraordinary moment opportunity for the Irish and the Spanish linking up was lost. The years that came you know three four more years as you say lots of people killed. English do they sense advantage that they're moving in settlers aren't they Presbyterian settlers from Scotland from England pushing into again just taking land and it's, it's just a brutal local struggle, is it? A story of massacres, a story of what's going on for the last few years. The last few years, you see,

busy the nadir of Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. You see, Elizabeth won't let Tyrone surrender. Tyrone very early on realises that the war is lost, but Elizabeth won't let him surrender without losing his title and lands. So for 1602, then they let people like Sir Arthur Chichester off the leash in Ulster. They just do this scorched earth campaign. Sir Arthur Chichester's brother had been killed in Carverburg in 1597, and he is just the absolute most appalling.

In a war where there's like a pantheon of appalling characters, Sir Arthur Chichester is the worst. One of his famous quotes was, a million swords will not do them as much harm as one wind of shaman and that's what he goes for he goes for attack civilians where he can find them in one major raid across Loch Nain he has a naval force at the attack in the Terrones Hinterlands in 1601 and his letters a quote of him was that we burnt and destroyed along the loch within four miles of Dungannon where we killed man woman child horse beast and whatsoever we found then he goes on to say that we lighted upon the Irish and killed him, his wife, his sons,

daughters, servants, followers and being many burnt all to the ground. This is the kind of characters that do let loose in Ulster to bring the war to an end and in his letters he returns again and again that he wants this. I wouldn't say government policy was genocide but certainly his approach was genocidal that he would want to the irish entirely crushed and subjugated in fact one of the quotes he says that we're two mild spirits and good consciousness to be these people's masters they should be slaves and so this brought along with an agricultural collapse creates a famine that in the final phase of the war up to 60 000 people die in ulster with famine and massacres and then that famine actually ends up island-wide, entirely devastated. Brutal stuff.

Elizabeth dies in 1603, her longest, most expensive and most large-scale conflict still unresolved. When James VI of King of Scots and James I of England takes the throne, is that what helps bring the war to an end? Or is it just brought to an end by this level of destruction on the ground? To quote Tastus, you know, do the English make a desert and call it peace? Certainly in Ulster they make a desert and it didn't need to be that way because Elizabeth insisted that Tyrone not get his lands back. So he was up for compromising by the end. If Elizabeth guaranteed his land and title, he would have submitted. It would have been over much earlier, but she wouldn't have it. And by the end they know elizabeth is sick people like robert cecil and mount joy are

actually having letters saying that we have to get this done and we make a deal even if she hates it she'll agree to it but she dies on the 24th of march 1603 the treaty of meliphon is signed six days later so she never sees the end of the war but what they do is the Treaty of Meliphont is signed six days later. So she never sees the end of the war. But what they do is the Treaty of Meliphont gives Tyrone back everything. Essentially it almost goes back to no harm no foul. He gets all his land. There's minor concessions but he remains, the Earl of

Tyrone, he remains as much of his land and to be fair he would actually see James VI as quite an ally. This war couldn't have existed without James VI's connivance. He turns a blind eye to massive armed shipments coming from Glasgow and Scotland. But when the Treaty of Mellifont is signed, within months, Mountjoy and Tyrone are actually off hunting with James VI.

No. Seriously, aye? They're out at Henley, I believe it is. So Tyrone's coming over to the home counties and doing a little bit of hunting at the headwaters of the Thames. Also, while he's there, he sends a letter to Philip III of Spain saying, here, by the way, if you want this war going again, I'm your man. The neck on this guy knows no limits at all. Apparently, when they were marching from Wales with Maggio,

people came out on the roads and clawed a muck at him, furious that Tyrone should be in England because they'd lost so many men, many of their brothers and their husbands and relatives in these Irish wars. This isn't something that happened that the English didn't know about and Welsh actually, though a huge amount of Welsh died as well. This is something that even the people who know him on the roads and through clods of muck at him discussed that what they saw, such a base traitor, is he forgiven and brought to the court like everything was just fine. So what is the outcome of Elizabeth's savage war of conquest? Although Tyrone is still in possession of his lands and title, on the ground have Irish people been pushed off the farms, particularly of Ulster? Have English and Lowland Scots,

Protestants come in and replace them? How has Ireland changed after this war? We don't see any of the plantation till 1609. What happens is you see the imposition of English law. Breton law, Irish law is abolished. The law for land holding and for legal title of estates

all becomes English law and any sort of Bretons and Tanish days and all the rest of that, that's all abandoned. Which Tyrone is fine with and certainly he goes back to his normal life

with an English title as the Earl of Tyrone. But he still remains in contact with Spain because if he could get away with starting another war, he would. But what happens is there's a lot of discontent about how essentially he's got back to being the Earl of Tyrone. It only really starts to go south for him is when Arthur Chichester, this most appalling character that was fond of the old ultraviolence and ulcer, he's actually made Lord Deputy in 1606, and he conspires with Davies, who's the Attorney General in Ireland, to have him convicted of treason. They can't find the proof of it. They can't find

anyone. Even people who accuse him of some sort of conspiracy with old English Catholics in the South won't go to court against him. They even try to turn his wife, Catherine McGuinness, against him. And she says, no, she actually wasn't that fond of him by this stage, but even she wouldn't go to court against him. But they try and concoct some sort of evidence that will see him convicted, because then if he's convicted, then his lands will be as sheeted. But then because of that, that's when he ends up having the flight of the earls in 1607. The famous flight of the earls, yeah, when he and other senior Irish figures leave for the continent.

People always say, did they run away, did they go away? Personally, I always believe that they went away with every intention of coming back. That didn't happen. But when Spain makes peace with England, Spain has no reason to confirm the new war here. So when O'Neill and the other Irish lords leave for the continent,

they meant to go to Spain, but they ended up in Rome. And O'Neill's then kept essentially in an open prison. He's given a palace and places to live in Rome. And as a lot of it is a great hero, but it is essentially an open prison. He's kept there. He was dead in 1616.

But he's always trying to get back. He's always writing letters, trying to either get into the low countries where he has a stepping stone back down. But he never manages to get back and dies there in 1616. But it's interesting, the trouble being caused by the local agents.

Again, we see that pattern throughout imperial history don't we james the first in london actually quite keen to probably let the situation just calm down but the local animosity local agents local ambition on the ground at the imperial frontier always always causing trouble causing friction and in this case he had just tried to topple tyrone and that's exactly what they do and when he goes and when the Earl of Tarkon will go, they have these massive lands that then become available for plantation. Because of that, that's when you get the Ulster plantation. And again, just to be clear, plantation means colonial settlement, English people, new farms, new towns, new markets. Yeah.

There's a large amount of Irish pushed off the lands lands it's mostly all irish gentry and irish mid-levels but you still see actually when you get the plantation of ulster scots the lowland scots in english if you still see on their plantation records you'll still see a lot of irish tenants on their lands as well you don't want to muck out your own pigs buddy come on empty farms make no any money at all they still stay there you still get marginal land as well but it's not like a root and branch eviction of the irish but you do see a massive change in the land holdings yeah and then everything that comes after that so literally everything where you get for the 1640s and a huge amount even to the very day but the divisions as you'll see in the north all has its basis in

this period literally the troubles we have today is is part of a legacy granted to us by Elizabeth first cheers Elizabeth yeah well that's a good point so of course the Protestant settlement in Literally, the troubles we have today is part of a legacy granted to us by Elizabeth I. Cheers, Elizabeth. Yeah, well, that's a good point. So, of course, the Protestant settlement in Ulster, the demographics of the north of Ireland date back to this period. What about in terms of the damage done by the war? Do we have any idea of casualties and pre-war populations and the relative scale of those killed, starved?

We have some sort of estimates. People actually have an odd perception of the comparative size of england and ireland by modern standards because i think that's a huge population now compared to that of ireland but in this period england's population was about four million ireland's population was about a million and so in the north you would have had about maybe 250 300 000 estimates of people amount that died tyrone later on says there were 60,000 died in the famine in Ulster 1602, 03 and 04. Estimates would put me in the 100, 130,000 perhaps died, troops and civilians. So if you're still looking like 10, 15% of the population perhaps died and then you have a huge amount more displaced,

either the different parts of the country or actually into the continent and into England, just trying to escape these appalling ravages of war. You have to remember that the vast amount of people living on the island don't get a say. They're essentially the children of agricultural labourers that basically just survive the war as best they can. And that's going into the 17th century, which would prove to be an unimaginably bloody and turbulent century for...

It doesn't get much better, no. If anything, it gets worse by the 1640s well thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking about the side of elizabeth gloriana that occasionally gets lost in our discussions about her actually i should say how much of that is coming from her do you think you mentioned that she receives these letters she praises those low commanders who carry out atrocities this comes from the very top of the english state this comes from elizabeth herself she is very clear in how the Irish should be dealt with. At the very start of the Nine Years' War, her officers are writing to her and using the term war and peace. And

several times she writes back in very strong terms, saying this is not war. We do not make peace for these people these are subjects they're rebellious and they will come to us in submission on their knees she is very clear even though she calls them subjects but treats them like a conquered people and very much demands that the laws of rebellion be applied to these people this is not a bottom-up brutality this is a very much a top-down that she sets the tone for the officers that these people are rebels and to be treated as rebels. And any brutality, there's no mystery,

all these kinds of brutalities and massacres are in the state papers. They're not hidden away in some private trunk somewhere. These are in the state papers and in the Salisbury papers. It's all well and good. And Elizabeth is more than happy for this to happen. Well Jim and Neil thank you very much for coming on the pod. Tell everyone what's the best of your books that people can learn a bit more about this. If they want they have The Nine Years War 1593 to 1603 with four courts press. It covers pretty much the full length of the war.

There's also a book by Ruth Camming called The Old English and Early Modern Ireland and it covers the whole Catholic element of it. And then of course, there's Harry Morgan's Turban's Rebellion, which covers the whole political aspect of it. So if you want to actually find out about the Nine Years' War and the conquest of Ireland, that's a good place to start.

Don't forget, folks, there's another Nine Years' War almost exactly 100 years later at the end of the 17th century into the early 18th. So make sure you get the right Nine Years' War, people. Jim, thank you very much for coming on.

Thanks a bunch, Dan. you