In Our Time - The Treaty of Limerick

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1691 peace treaty that ended the Williamite War in Ireland, between supporters of the deposed King James II and the forces of William III and his allies. It followed the battles at Aughrim and the Boyne and sieges at Limerick, and led to the disbanding of the Jacobite army in Ireland, with troops free to follow James to France for his Irish Brigade. The Catholic landed gentry were guaranteed rights on condition of swearing loyalty to William and Mary yet, while some Protestants thought the terms too lenient, it was said the victors broke those terms before the ink was dry.The image above is from British Battles on Land and Sea, Vol. I, by James Grant, 1880, and is meant to show Irish troops leaving Limerick as part of The Flight of the Wild Geese - a term used for soldiers joining continental European armies from C16th-C18th.With Jane Ohlmeyer Chair of the Irish Research Council and Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History at Trinity College DublinDr Clare Jackson Senior Tutor, Trinity Hall, and Faculty of History, University of Cambridgeand Thomas O'Connor Professor of History at Maynooth UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, in 1691, the Treaty of Limerick ended the war in Ireland between supporters of James II, a Catholic, on one side, and William and Mary Protestants on the other.

A Dutch general led the Williamites, and two French generals led the Jacobites. For the war that had seen the Battle of the Boyne of Orchrim and the siege of Derry, was part of a wider conflict between Louis XIV to France and William of Orange. In Ireland, the treaty shifted more power to the Protestants. The Catholic landowners lost status and rights that they'd won back since Cromwell's Day, and they lost land. And about 14,000 Irish troops and their families left Ireland forever

in what became known as the flight of the wild geese. With me to discuss the Treaty of Limerick are Jane Olmeyer, Chair of the Irish Research Council and Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin Thomas O'Connor, Professor of History at Maynooth University and Claire Jackson, a member of the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge

and senior tutor of Trinity Hall. Claire Jackson, why had William and Mary replaced James as the rulers on the throne of England? Well, in 1688 is often seen as a key moment in English history when James II is replaced as king by his eldest daughter Mary and her Dutch son-in-law. There's a well-established Whigish narrative that describes this as the glorious revolution

and other adjectives are used like sensible or moderate or consensual. It's when Protestantism is established as the state religion, the rights of parliament are preserved and the rule of law and the liberties of the English subjects. But as we'll see, it looks very different when you look at it from Ireland. It suddenly doesn't look so glorious. So what reason was given for inviting William and Mary in and for causing James to flee the country?

Well, James had always been controversial. There had been debates about whether or not he should succeed to the throne as a Catholic in the late 1670s and early 1680s. That had led to the creation of Weeks and Tories. The Tories had stanchly defended his right to succeed his brother, Charles II, who didn't have any heirs. Weeks had said there was no way that a Protestant church could survive the accession of an openly Catholic monarch.

In the end, when Charles died in February 1685, his accession was relatively peaceful. He made lots of statements saying that he would respect the rights of the Church of England and Parliament. And quite a lot of people hoped that this would just be a little Catholic interlude. He was due to be succeeded by his daughters, Mary and Anne. They were both staunched Protestants. But as things turned out, he seemed like a king in a hurry who had a very clear pro-Catholacization agenda, wanted to make the status of his Catholic co-religionists to improve. them. And he had a boy child which meant that there could be a dynasty.

Well that transformed everything. People were quite prepared to sort of sit and wait for it while they would sort of wait for Mary and Anne to succeed. But in June 1688, James's Queen Mary of Medina gives birth to this son and suddenly, as you say, that ushers in the prospect of an eternal Catholic dynasty. Is it possible of you to give us thumbnail sketches of James and William and Mary? James is by this stage over 50 by the time he comes to the throne. That's why again and people think this might be a relatively brief reign. One of the things that haunts James,

and I think sort of explains some of the ways he reacts to his son-in-law's invasion, is that he remembers what had happened to his own father 40 years earlier when he was confronted by a hostile populace and a hostile parliament. His father had been put on trial and executed. He'd spent many years in exile during the Cromwellian Republic. He'd served in the French army.

So he had a military background. He then became a Catholic convert and really was far more. authoritarian in his approach and had all the kind of zeal of a Catholic convert as well, really believed that it was penal laws and other restrictions that were holding people back from embracing the Catholic faith. And William and Mary, they're put together as one name, aren't they usually? William and Mary. Mary was James's daughter, which gives it an expert twist.

And William of Orange, can we talk just a bit about him, William of Orange? So William of Orange was both James's nephew and his son-in-law. He was the Dutch Stadtholder, which was the sort of civil and military leader in a Republican structure. Staunch Calvinist himself, but believed in religious toleration. And Mary was a devout Anglican as well. It's an interesting and very new experiment of joint monarchy. She seems to be in a very firm character, though. I mean, you don't rule equally unless you have a firm saying, who rules?

Absolutely. And she also gave a kind of fig leaf of legitimacy to the project. It was easier for people to transfer their allegiance from James to William and Mary because of that legitimate claim. It became slightly harder after she died in 1694. And most of the serious Jacobite conspiracies happened after that. And the background of this is that Louis XIV of France was wanting to push the claim to Françu, well, more or less everything. And he was part of the fray.

James, this series had taken refuge with him. He saw Ireland as a way to get at England. Well, there's a prehistory of a long-running war between France and the Dutch Republic. I mean, France is the big continental superpower by this stage ruled by Louis XIV, supremely self-confident with a very aggressive expansionist foreign policy. His foe is the Dutch Republic, a relatively new country that had achieved independence from Spain in the late 16th century, but it had become the kind of envy of the world through its commercial prosperity

and its overseas colonialism. But back home in Europe, the low-lying sort of united provinces, as they were called, were quite easy prey for foreign invaders. And in 1672, Louis' armies, together with, in an English alliance, had nearly annihilated the whole country. In Dutch history, it's known as the Year of Disaster. And from that moment on, William just made it his lifelong mission to resist any French incursions or French enslavement.

So that's, as it were, might even call it the background music to what's going on here. Jane Olmeyer, it's already been a tumultuous century for Ireland. The Catholics in Ireland regained a lot of authority. And then there was Cromwell who smashed as much as you see you could smash in the island. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, let me take you back to 1603 in the Union of the Crowns, when the Stuart King, King James I of Scotland became king of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. This is very much a period of expansionism.

and Ireland was of course England's first colony. And under the Stuarts, James leads a very intense period of colonisation and plantation. But he also sets out to make Ireland English, culturally, socially, commercially and of course religiously and introduced Protestantism to a predominantly Catholic country. The Indigenous people of Ireland who were, as I say, mostly Catholic, weren't happy. and there was a major rebellion that broke out in October 1641 that then triggered this decade of civil war during which Ireland saw ethnic cleansing, intense violence.

It was one of the darkest moments in Irish history. And then, of course, in 1649, Oliver Cromwell comes along and reconquers Ireland for England. So if you want that's part one. what we're seeing after 1688 is part two of this attempt by the Catholic population of Ireland to re-establish their political control, but also to reclaim land that has been lost during the 1650s. Well, expropriation, I think, is the word to use here. I'll take it, I'd be polite.

Two and a half million acres were confiscated by Cromwell and then were redistributed to basically his soldiers. And just to pop in an eye good useful statistic, 75% of the population were Catholic. At least, yes. It was probably higher than that, actually. It's a very, very significant majority. Yes. How did the conflict begin, the Williamite conflict,

and who were the parties to it? Well, Claire has mentioned how the birth of the young prince through a cat amongst the pigeons in England. Well, in Ireland, we've had, a man called Richard Talbot the Earl of Terconell, who was really from 1685 re-Catholicising Ireland and actively trying to put the Catholic aristocracy and landholders if you want back in charge.

However, as things started to go awry in England, then Ireland, of course, became that backdoor for James II to regain his English throne. So what we have in Ireland are the Williamite, forces and the Jacobite forces. And it's one of those stories that James II, backed by Louis XIV,

comes to Ireland in person, albeit very reluctantly, and tries to regain Ulsterbegates very bogged down with the sieges of Darien in the Skilling. And then, of course, William himself comes over. And we have the victory at the Battle of the Boeing on 12th of July 1690. So how did they get to the Battle of the Boyne? Was this James saying, well, we will take you on?

He had some French troops, he had Scottish troops, he had Welsh troops, some English troops. We will take you on. And did he go there and say, and it was a straightforward old-fashioned clash battle? It really was, but of course strategically very important because the Boyne commands strategically Dublin as well. It was one of those battles where the Williamite troops

outnumbered the Jacobite forces, but it was a clear military victory for the Williamites. And then not only does the capital, Dublin, fall to the Williamites, but James and the Jacobite forces retreat back across the Shannon and go to Limerick, actually. Yes. And James leaves the country never to return. He leaves the country never to return. Did that have a big effect?

Well, I think probably psychologically it does. Of course it has a big effect. although he's not a very competent military leader. So from that respect, but here you have the king gone. So we had the Battle of the Boyne now much remembered and an important battle, but there was an even more slaughterous battle. It was a few months after it. Okrim, can you tell us about that?

Yeah, Akram... Thomas O'Connor. This was the second great battle in the conflict, the Williamite Wars and Ireland. Now, Jane said that the Battle of the Boin was a clear victory. It was, but it wasn't. a complete defeat for the Jacobites and

they regrouped quite successfully falling back into Connacht in the west of Ireland and along the Shannon and at the same time then the French had a victory at Beechy Head which was a little bit of a dent in the Williamite image and at the same time then an attempt

to take Limerick from the Catholics and from the Jacobites had failed so it was a little bit more confidence than you might expect and there was some idea that perhaps there could be another engagement. And the French certainly were not, I won't say gung-ho, but we're confident that this could at least continue the conflict in Ireland.

In other words, Ireland could continue to function as a distraction for the European conflict, which of course is what William and Louis were really interested in. I think it's important to remember that the European context really set the Irish agenda, but that didn't take from the fact that a second battle occurred at Ockram. And again, it was quite evenly matched at the beginning. Tactically, the Irish did, or the Catholics or the Jacobites, whatever you like to call them, did quite well. But at a key moment, they were overawed and it was a complete route. The key moment was a manoeuvre which permitted James's cavalry to overtake on one side.

And the Jacobites had been weakened by being duped into moving their forces slightly in the other direction, and they were weakened there, and that was a decisive moment in the battle. And massive loss, I'm read about at least 4,000 of the flower of the Catholic military. At least, she was slaughtered. It was shocking. I mean, the boine was terrible, but the Okram, I think, was even worse. And I mean, in Ireland you say that that's where Okram was lost. It's like he's met his Walter Liu,

except with a tragic undertone to it. It really is a decisive defeat and after that then it really is a matter of time and really truth to tell it's quite extraordinary that terms could be concluded at limerick so soon afterwards in circumstances

of almost complete defeat and it bears testimony I suppose to Patrick Sarasfield who was leading the Irish at that stage or at the Jacobites and of course he was very anxious to get the army intact out of Ireland and of course

William was very anxious to conclude the conflict as well Before we get to what happened to the treaty itself what brought them to the point of the treaty when did, who said we've had enough of this let's have a treaty Well and Limerick was besieged

There was a considerable Jacobite army still intact They had battlefield credentials They were certainly going to be at least extremely troublesome The French certainly hadn't given up the game either. So there was the possibility

that the conflict in Ireland could continue indefinitely. Now remember, William had already gone back to England and back to Europe. He had left Ginkel as his general in Ireland as the commander of the Williamite forces. Gingle was a soldier.

He knew what the European imperatives were for the larger conflict, so he was anxious to get on with things there. The best thing to do was to conclude a soldier's agreement. in Ireland. And that was the situation which brought Ginkl to the table with Sarcefield and the negotiations began.

After two seizures of the Limerick, the second of which could be said to have succeeded and that's where the treaty took place. Exactly. Claire, Jackson, what were William and Mary William's priorities in this quite, it's extraordinary treaty in a lot of ways, this two arms, military and civil? But what were his priorities to saw with?

His priorities, I think, was simply to end this. It's often described as a sort of exasperating sideshow. I mean, William just wants to be fighting in the continent. And I think actually one thing... Fighting against Louis. Fighting against Louis XIV, back on the continent, not being distracted out in Ireland. So it's one of the sort of ironies of the situation

that both of the kings have different priorities from the majority of their supporters in Ireland. So William simply wants... He doesn't really want to go there in the first place. Schomburg doesn't manage to suppress Jacobite resistance. so eventually William sort of decides in the spring of 1690, I'm going to have to go myself and writes to one of his allies. You know, there was a terrible mortification to me to leave

and go to Ireland where I should be out of knowledge of all of the world, but, you know, if I can achieve the reduction of Ireland, I mean, this is how he sees it, the reduction, not a revolution, the reduction of Ireland, then my hands will be free to focus with all the more energy on the common enemy. Did he understand the religious tensions he was walking into? Not in the same way, because he's coming, although a staunch Calvinist, He's coming from a country that has granted liberty of conscience to people.

So I think in terms of his agenda, he wants to finish the war, but he also wants to be realistic about that. He needs to offer sufficiently generous terms. He also, as has been mentioned, he's part of a big anti-French international coalition, and that coalition has Catholic partners in it. So he doesn't want to come across as some giant persecutor of Catholics, because that would simply alienate some of his Catholic allies.

I was going to say, sorry, the problem is, that a lot of the Protestants who support him in Ireland can't understand why you would be extending generous terms to people who are obviously, well, they would see it, rebels, have lost the war and only want to perpetuate the war on another front. So this comes to treaty itself. It's divided into a, let's divide it,

or it is divided in the notes. I've got into a military settlement and a civil settlement. Jane, it was thought, what's that with the second end? It was thought by many Protestants that the civil settlement was too leased. on the losers, i.e. the Catholics.

Yeah. So basically, the Protestant ascendancy that would have been governing Ireland felt that the treaty was too lenient. However, I think when we go back... In what way? What was that case? Because just in a nutshell, there are 13 articles as part of the civil treaty. And they really related to property and to religion.

So they guaranteed that those who were surrendering, would be allowed to keep their property. In other words, we wouldn't have the mass expropriation that we'd had under Cromwell. But above all, they guaranteed that they would be able to continue to practice their Catholicism. And to bear arms.

Providing it took an oath of loyalty to the Crown. And really, that's what stuck in their crawl. But as long as William of Orange had papal support, which he did, as part of this anti-French coalition, as long as he had Catholic allies, which of course he did in the form of Austria and Spain and Savoy, he really wasn't in a position to deny that freedom of religion.

So, of course, that comes later in terms of the penal legislation that's introduced against the Catholics in Ireland. Well, let's have it now, not later, because these terms seem to be far, far too, lenient and it was known as the broken treaty in about ten minutes after it had been signed. Well it was, but actually it was slightly later that the penal

legislation was introduced. But already the Protestant, you tell me, already the Protestants were deeply dissatisfied with it and were intent on breaking it. Absolutely. But what you have here is the pragmatism of military men who want to have a solution as quickly as

they possibly can. Because their priority is to clear Ireland of the Jacob Army and that's why the military articles... I want to go across to, yeah, I want to go... Okay, well, I want to just go across the... Across the table for this. All right, we'll go across the table for the penal laws

and we'll come back to the military articles. I'm going to go across for the military. Oh, I see. I'm making it far as. The civil laws, it is regarded as an over-generous statement. You've mentioned the reasons why these are defeated army section of the population. You can keep your own line. This isn't

going to be confiscated. They can bear arms. and so on. So that is not everything, but it's... Okay. The military settlement was honoured, I read, from what you say. What was that? Well, the military settlement is a key part

of the whole arrangement. I mean, Patrick Sarsfield, who was commander of the Irish forces, the Jacobite forces, the Catholic forces, whatever you like to call them, at this stage, wanted to get the army out of Ireland intact. Now, that meant that Patrick

Sarsfield was thinking of the future. And the military future from Patrick Sarsfield's point of view was to continue this struggle. So that meant it was a huge problem for the Protestant establishment in Ireland and, of course, in England as well. So that was agreed to get the war finished and honoured is quite extraordinary. And I think it bears testimony to William as a soldier who is keeping a soldier's agreement. And it's understandable in those military terms. And the agreement simply was? The agreement, as it worked out, was that the army of James II

would be transported to France intact. Baring arms. Bering arms. And they would serve under James II, paid by Louis XIV, but under James II. They remained under his command for some years. So that was number one. About 14,000. About 14,000.

About 1,000 of them joined the William. army and about two and a half thousand went home. Now, this was a red rag as a red rag to a bull for the Protestant establishment because here you had people of questionable loyalty becoming part of the military establishment in Ireland. They couldn't accept this. And then of course there were the two and a half thousand who had gone home. Well, what were they going to do? They had a grievance.

They were armed and goodness knows what they were going to get up to. So the established Protestant interest in Ireland was deeply dissatisfied with that arrangement. But it was honoured by William, as were many of the other articles of the Treaty with regard to the people who took the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Sorry, sorry, please finish. So that was, I think, the crux of the issue

because for Protestant Ireland, there had been a rebellion. For Protestant Ireland, there were landings, titles which had been recently established and there was a delicacy about them and there was a depth of grievance among the Catholics for what had happened under Cromwell. All that there is festering away and at the same time you have an

army going to Europe. So the war in Ireland was over but the war in Europe was not over. When would an opportunity arise again for the French to interfere in Ireland? That was the problem. So can we just, we didn't quite nail when this was felt to be broken

So, Claire, can we just talk about that? The treaty, we told the ink was barely dry in the paper, so I said in a couple of it, was broken, the military treaty, the civil treaty. How was it broken and what were the consequences? It's a trope that's often used about politics in the 17th century. People are always saying scarcely was the ink dry before this happened. But I think thinking about it the way that Tom's described as a sort of soldiers' agreement,

I mean, you know, we now look at it as this kind of iconic document that ended the war, much the same way almost as the English Bill of Rights or the Scottish claim of right. I mean, at the time, as Tom's described, these were sort of pragmatic articles of surrender that had to be sufficiently acceptable to people on both sides. I don't think, I mean, even the language we use, we call it the Treaty of Limerick,

but it's not a treaty being negotiated by plenipotenture as formally with everybody imagining that this is going to set out the sort of post-war settlement. It is, as Tom has described, you know, enough for both sides to be able to feel that they could clear our, But it is, as Tom described, really quite remarkable that this could be envisaged in terms of allowing a sizable force to just carry on this war on another front. Now, can you pick up where you left off?

Well, just in two respects, Melvin. First is a broken treaty in the sense the promises around land. So in other words, having guaranteed that signatories to the treaty and those who took the oath would not be forfeited. In fact, many of them did lose their estates. And when we look at landholding over the course of the 17th century, in 1641 Catholics held half of the country,

50% of the land in Ireland. By the end of Cromwell's time, so by the late 1650s, that had been reduced to 14% of the land in Ireland, was held by Catholics, and most of that would have been in Connacht or in the West.

Post-William, that figure has fallen to 5% of the land. So that is huge because, remember, land equals political power equals wealth. So in that sense, the treaty was broken. But also in terms of the legislation that was put on the statutes, really from the late 1690s, right through into the early 18th centuries, prescribing all sorts of things. So in other words, Catholic landholding, the right to, Tom will come in here as well, education, inheritance.

You know, there was a whole raft of anti-Catholic legislation that went through the Irish Parliament that really bolstered the Protestant ascendancy. And from the Protestant perspective, the Catholics in their place one last time. They were never going to rebel again. I mean, I think it's also interesting to sort of think of these articles being negotiated in the context of war and then being obviously sent to William for ratification, but then being given parliamentary legislation. And that's quite a long process. And it's one thing to sort of agree something in the heat of war to try and clear a battlefield. but then for William then to try and convince a Dublin Parliament. And if one thinks into the mindset of that Protestant political nation,

I mean, this is the same class that had felt that they were about to be annihilated or lose all of their political privileges under James's revolution. So, you know, trying to translate that spirit of generosity into a parliament was always going to be quite a big ask. And that's why it takes until 1697 for the articles to even get a partial and revised legislative enforcement. Thomas O'Connor. Yeah, I think it's important to remember, too, that while James was in Ireland in 1689,

there had been a parliament in Dublin and called the so-called Patriot Parliament. And when it assembled, it had just six Protestant members in the Commons. It had four peers, I think, and four very brave Church of Ireland bishops, including Anthony Dopping, who was sort of the spokesman for the opposition in Dublin for that parliament. But the Parliament did one thing which really sealed the fate of the Jacobite cause. at least for Protestant Ireland, and that was it repealed the Cromwellian acts

of confiscation of 1652, the famous act of settlement. In the Civil War, during the wars of the Confederate Catholics, which was part of the Civil War here in Britain, the English government needed finance to fight the war. And the way they raised, they raised money was they promised the adventurers, in other words, the people who were giving them money,

that they would be repaid in land. That was the Adventurers Act. And 1652 then was the legal recognition and establishment of that and the confiscations that Jane has mentioned already, this huge transfer, A of land, B of people, landowners, and not just to con it, but out of the country entirely. So it was a hecatom for Catholic Ireland. It really was the end of the line.

Now, what the Parliament does, the Patriot Parliament in 1689, is it repeals that act. So this is absolutely the end for Protestant Ireland, if it is successful. So that raised the stakes in all the side. Now, there was no transfer of property. There wasn't time to do that because the war was on, but the writing was on the wall from then on.

And that was a crucial part, I think, in understanding the Protestant mentality in Ireland with regard to what the Jacobite wars had meant and then the deep Catholic disappointment at what had happened. And William and Ginkill and Patrick Sarsfield in negotiating or agreeing the articles of Limerick, they weren't talking about that. They were talking about a military situation,

but the political and land situation that remained active and fervid afterwards. Thank you. Claire, what was happening in the London Parliament? Were they looking and saying, we've sold that, we're going to turn to Europe and get on with it? Or were they thinking, hmm, there's quite a lot that might still go on there. Did they think it was done and dusted? I think, I mean, England just changes so rapidly in this period.

I mean, William's main objective in invading in the first place, and we've sort of skipped over the fact that he did actually launch this really daring strategic invasion in 1688. But that then unleashes a really serious financial and other forms of revolution to try and harness all of the resources of the English state, its army, its navy, all of the new initiatives of deficit financing and the Bank of England and expanding taxes. So, I mean, the English are quite reluctant to let William go to Ireland. There's this great fear. I mean, war is dangerous.

One doesn't often do counterfactuals, but William gets injured just before the boy. I mean, he ends up with a bit of Jacobite cannon shot. That becomes a sort of superficial wound, but a few inches difference. And, you know, that would have been somebody who had only recently just been offered the crown of England was the sort of chief architect

of this pan-European coalition against France. And things could have all ended up very differently. So one can understand why the English were nervous. But William is really for the English, the last military monarch that we have. He's not the last monarch to appear on a battlefield, but I mean even after he becomes king, he spends a majority of time fighting in the continental campaigns. This war against France doesn't end until 1697.

Can we come back to you, June? First of all, the Jacobites, when James II got it together when he went there, he brought in the Scots and Wales. How did this affect the Jacobites in Scotland? Yeah. Well, I think the first thing to say is the important relationship between Ireland and Scotland in this period, especially the Catholic world of gaildom and those relationships go way, way back to the Middle Ages. Then in the 17th century, we've seen if you want,

a more Presbyterian alliance with Scotland. But it's really the world of gaildom and the world of Jacobitism that come together in this period. Claire mentioned a glorious revolution. Well, it may have been a glorious revolution in England, but it certainly wasn't a glorious revolution in Ireland or Scotland where there are many, many deaths. We've already heard about the bloodletting in Ireland.

But that was also true in Scotland, which had its own Jacobite rebellions. We know about Viscount Dundee and Kille Cranky and his victory in July 1689. But then the next month, the Scottish Jacobites, were defeated. But it was in Scotland that we see the later Jacobite rebellions, especially in 1715 and 1745. And they would have looked to Ireland for support.

And there's an awful lot of plotting that goes on amongst the Irish and Scottish Jacobites, especially those in exile in France. But actually the Treaty of Limerick really ended once and for all the military and financial support that Ireland could give to Jacobitism. So can you just clarify and reemphasise the importance of the Treaty of Limerick for our listeners? Well, I think it ends the Williamite wars in Ireland, and that is hugely important because that has been a diversion from the Continental Theatre of War for about three years. So it allows William to re-engage. And I just want to emphasise the carnage that happens in Ireland, because William probably had about 44,000 troops engaged in that war. That's a lot of men to pay. Over 50% of them died in Ireland. So that's

It's a huge cost in terms of men, but also the financial costs. So it relieves England of that burden. But also Ireland is secured militarily. Ireland's always the back door into England. So once and for all now, Ireland is secure. And the share cost of it. I mean, when you think, I mean, one of the reasons that Ginkl and William are so keen to conclude this treaty is they know that one more months campaigning is more than the cost of all of the forfeited estates put together or something.

So, you know, for cost-benefit analysis, it's phenomenally expensive. Tom's for Conner, is this the beginning of the embedded dominance of the Protestants, the Treaty of Limerary? I wouldn't say it's the beginning. It takes a confirmation. The beginning, I mean the beginning. When was the beginning? Reformation, I suppose. But, I mean, it is interesting that the first plantation in Ireland was organized by Mary Tudor. And I remember someone saying to me, when I was studying history in Manutea years ago, that had Mary lived as long as her sister

and had the Tudor conquest of Ireland being a Catholic Tudor conquest, that all the Irish would have been roaring Presbyterians, you know, just to be difficult. But it did start back then, and there's no doubt about it, that the Cromwellian moment was the decisive moment for Protestant Ireland.

The Williamite moment, confirmed it and it is testimony. So Cromwell went in the 50s just to reiterate, he went across in the 50s and ravaged and raised Ireland. We still see the ruined castles all over. Yes, yes, yes. And left a psychological and grievance legacy as well

which is even deeper, I'd say, than the physical ruins. And that was absolutely decisive. in what you call the political and the religious imagination of Catholic Ireland and later of Jacobite Ireland. Plah, could the Limerick Treaty have been better? Oh, hindsight's always a wonderful thing. Well, let's enjoy ourselves. Yeah, I mean, as I said before, I don't really think it's,

if it was entered into as a formal treaty to determine the post-war settlement of Ireland and to really review land ownership and religious provisions, then sure, it could have been better. I mean, one of the problems that we talked about the sort of betrayals, I mean, one of the problems is that some of the – the first article that says that, you know, Catholics should be able to enjoy the free exercise of their religion as they had done under the Charles II is very hard to sort of make – give any statutory endorsement to because, I mean, the fact that the Catholics had enjoyed free exercise of their religion under Charles II

had really been government restraint rather than any particular legislative provision. So sure, it could have been a much tighter, much clearer set of articles. Can we come to the business of the entrenched interests, how they played out from then on? Yeah. So obviously, Tom's alluded to it, the psychological impact. and the way that the Treaty of Limerick, but of course the Williamite wars and particularly events like the siege of dairy and the Battle of Boin and the Battle of Ockram

influenced if you want the Irish psyche. So Ochram was a huge disaster if you want for Catholic Ireland. But as a disaster for Catholic Ireland, then it was a victory for Protestant Ireland. And it's the way then if a Protestant identity and particularly loyalist Protestant and Protestant identity looked to these great moments from their perspective and commemorated them annually. And to this day, obviously, the Battle of the Boyne is commemorated on the 12th of July,

even though it didn't actually happen on the 12th of July. As is the siege of dairy, the apprentice boys will commemorate the first attempt to take dairy in December. Then there was the siege of dairy that followed, which was 105 days. And the then governor of Derry was a man called Robert Lundy, and he actually suggested actually surrendering. But again, there was an internal revolt. Lundy was removed, and the Reverend George Walker took command,

and the siege then lasted for 105 days. And about half of the population actually died in the course of the siege. It could be as many as 4,000 people. But again, that's commemorated in August. So when we talk about the marching season in July and August in Ireland, it's still a feature of the landscape today. And I think that's a real difference between Ireland and England

where we began. I mean, you said sort of what happened in 1688 and I think, you know, I don't share this view of a glorious revolution, but it's much easier to congregate around an idea of a revolution that later stands for all sorts of things. Whereas in Ireland, it's a war. And I think wars are remembered very differently from revolutions because they have victors and they have the defeated.

And it's always going to be more of a kind of. kind of binary. I come to you, Thomas. You still have a mass of the population in a Catholic, and they're in a very poor state now. They're bound to resent it. Is there a great surge of emigration?

Well, I mean, there is the military emigration. And that's in a long tradition, which had begun already in the 16th century. The Irish were always fighting for English kings, for Henry the 8th to begin with. And then, of course, with the religious change,

They began to be a little bit more religiously promiscuous with regard to the kings they fought for and there were possibilities on the continent for military exiles. Now, the military career is awful. I mean, if you could possibly get something better to do, you will. So it is really a career of last resort. So that's one possibility for the defeated Jacobites and the defeated Catholics.

And it's an option which is followed when there are no other options available. But they were a very a very well- educated people, very many of them. So they go into other occupations which bring them abroad

as merchants, people who are in commerce, obviously as students. And of course, very, very importantly, the maintenance of what we would call a reduced Catholic establishment in Ireland under Protestant dominance requires a very, very

important continental component for the education of priests, for instance, which is forbidden in Ireland, but which continues in the colleges, for instance, on the continent. So there is a migration. We're talking about perhaps a thousand a year over the 18th century, quickening at times of difficulty and going to different destinations. But France and Spain are hugely important as destinations, the low countries as well, and it's hugely important to remember, and it's often forgotten, I think, that Irish migration during this period

was also to the new world and to the Americas, North America in particular, and that of course becomes the pattern for Irish migration later as the North Atlantic economy develops and takes off. Jane, how has the treaty, or has it, how has the Treaty of Limerick resurfaced? It's interesting because actually, apart from in Limerick itself,

I'm not sure there are many people even in Ireland today would really know what the Treaty of Limerick is all about. If you want to go and see the Treaty Stone, it's there on Thoman Bridge in Limerick. And where we do see it remembered is in the context of commemorations around these other anniversaries. But I'd like to say something a little bit positive here

because by and large, commemorating war is highly problematic. But there is a new visitor's centre at the site of the Battle of the Boein in Old Bridge, which actually is an exemplar of how to take a very divisive and sectarian moment in history and actually repurpose it

in a very thoughtful and inclusive way. And the Visitors Centre, which is on the site of the Boin, explains the battle, it explains the Williamite Wars, it puts it in this continental context. It was opened in 2008 by Artichik, our Pradesh,

our Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and the Reverend Ian Paisley. So what we saw were the two traditions coming together to recognise that, of course, we must bow to the past, but we mustn't be bound by it. And we need to find ways of actually using these moments to bring the community together. Claire, does this suggest that views on the Treaty of Limerick are changing? I think views on the whole sort of 17th century.

I mean, I began with this sort of very stereotyped, wiggish, You know, this is the sort of stepping stone to sort of palladium of liberties and things. I think, I mean, I think in reality, the 17th century is a much more contingent, fraught and international century for British politics than, you know, perhaps British historians have tended to think. You know, British, I mean, the Treaty of Limerick shows, and the armies that fought in Ireland and 1689 to 91, you know, were international armies, and these were international strategic concerns. They also show that the enduring power of religion, too, as well.

I mean, it doesn't lend itself to a sort of. secularism narrative. I mean, both sides felt they were engaged in some long tussle for supremacy in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants. Well, thank you very much, Claire Jackson, Jane O'Meier and Thomas O'Connor. Next week, it's Dostoeuskis Crime and Punishment, one of the great novels. Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. And now you, you are... We're just warming up. Absolutely. Well, that's what we want. Another hour.

No, you're invited to continue to the podcast, which is now something else. Do you know, can I kick it? It's gone back to Tom's point, actually, about how, if you want, Irish immigration and the diaspora. And it's not just about wild geese. It's actually much broader than this. And many families will go with these military migrants, and they're tapping. into very well-established mercantile networks, educational networks,

and how you see these communities then prosper across France, Spain, but right through east of the Elbe into places like Prague, and then how the Irish become very, if you want, preeminent in the global Atlantic empires of the French, of the Spaniards, even of the Portuguese. So ironically, the adversity opens up all raft of opportunity. And actually that's also true of the Scots. It's not just the Irish.

So there's a silver lining to call it that. And I think like the Catalans, like the Basques, like the Scots, I mean, the Irish are great imperial tailcoteers. So they tailcote into the French network, into the Spanish, to the Portuguese and into the British one. I mean, they are members of the same families, members of the same network. So we're going in all these different directions. I mean, when we talk about the diaspora, we often talk about the European diaspora for the Irish. Actually, it's a global diaspora and it's in the Americas, I mean, by the end of the 16th century. But I do think it's very, very important to keep those two sides together.

Because sometimes academically at least, somebody does the Irish in the English-speaking world and then somebody does the Irish everywhere else. And I do think it's an artificial distinction and one we should get over and start integrating these people into the network they actually operated in, rather than the ones historic. are telling us they operated. Not everyone's leaving Ireland as well. I mean, you know, one tends to think, oh, you know, Ireland must have been a kind of devastated by this war.

But, I mean, Scotland in the 1690s goes through seven failed harvests. And that prompts mass emigration out of Scotland, Presbyterians, into Ulster, much to the alarm of the minority Episcopalian Church of England population there. So, you know, I think we shouldn't imagine post-191 that Ireland, you know, somewhere from which you're going to flee. There are plenty people who see it in a sort of sense of projectors and schemes. It becomes the kind of canvas onto which you can project all of your schemes for economic self-sufficiency. But that statistic you gave about landholding going from 50% to 5%,

did that have an effect on the way Catholics were regarding or regarding themselves their local... Of course it did. Of course it did, yes. But why like to know what effect? You tell me. Tom's time to get in here and then. Nobody's starting to carry on. It's really interesting because, I mean,

when Cromwell did his thing in Ireland, obviously there was a huge change in ownership. However, the owners might have changed, but somebody had to work the land. So although landowners were moved, lots of Catholics, I mean, the majority of Catholics still remained in place. So there was a very complicated modus Vivendi

worked out between the new owners and then very often the former owners who became chief tenants on the lands they had once held. Now, they maintained status with the other tenants because they were the people who had owned the land prior to the arrival of the Cromwellian

carpetbaggers as they would have been regarded by them. But because they were former landowners, the new landowners very often held them in very high esteem. So it's not true that the relationship between the dispossessed and the new possessors were universally bad. Of course they were tense

around the 12th of July. get very tense indeed. But it was a seasonal sort of attention and people have to live together and people have to get on. So there is that part of it which is very, very important that these people

suffered a terrible blow to their status. There's no doubt about that. And I think you mentioned, you asked Claire there earlier on, could Limerick have been a better treaty? And I suppose if Limerick could have done one thing which was really important which couldn't do at the time

was if it had negotiated mechanisms which would have permitted Catholics in Ireland to maintain some sort of role in the state, their stake in the state. Because remember, these were people who were from a very sophisticated political background. They were lawyers, there were people who were used to running the country.

And their exclusion from that really was, I think, a terrible loss to the country. and had Limerick been able, I mean it's probably too much to ask, Claire, isn't it? But had it been able to include them in some way? Obviously, they're going to be in a subordinate position, but it was too subordinate. But don't you think that part of what they were trying to negotiate there was not a final outcome? I mean, there was no point going to the continent to relaunch this far. So, I mean, you know, the time for all of those decisions in many Jacobite minds would be several years once the war had been won.

Not now when you're up against. trying to get the best out of this. But absolutely, but what happened then, of course, was that Protestant Ireland was extraordinarily energized by the victory. And remember, prerogative law was out, statute law was in, there was a sole rights controversy in the Irish

Parliament, you know, who has the right to initiate a legislation in the Dublin Parliament? James, William, everybody said, for God's sake, that's London, the Irish Parliament is subordinate to the English Parliament. But the Protestants in Dublin were beginning to think a little bit otherwise. This was going to have a long, long future. But,

But decisively, the penal legislation, which came in after 1695, really was a nail in the coffin of any efforts to include this subjected minority. So they really, I think, were extraordinarily negative from that point of view of a longer term peace in Ireland. And just on the longer term peace, can I introduce something here as the human cost of war? We talked a little bit about the decimation that the army suffered, you know, up to 50% of the, these armies died over the course of the conflict. But if we look at the course of the 17th century, between up to a third of the Irish population was impacted by war,

either direct engagement with the conflict, disease, famine, and then you have emigration on top of it. So it was a very grueling century for Ireland, obviously particularly the mid-century. But this, again, I think, you know, the human cost, also the sheer destruction to property to the farms, the infrastructure.

And obviously that moment was such a dark century when we look at it in our history. And we should never forget that. And I think the generosity of some of the initial aspirations, where Williams coming from in terms of permitting free exercise of your religion and everything, I mean, had that been preserved, as Tom said, there could have been a more capacious civil society that emerged.

part of the difference with the difficulty with the penal laws is it's liable to render men hypocrites that you will get selective conversions of a single member of a family who will want to hang on to their estate and will have to go through an intensely traumatic experience of deciding to make a selective conversion. Absolutely, and when you look at the archives of some of these Catholic families...

What do you mean by selective conversion? Well, one, you know, to a while, I mean, Tom can probably explain it better than me, but... Yeah, well, I mean, one of the penal provisions was that succession for Catholic landowners would be partable rather than primogeniture. So it's gavel kind,

which meant that a Catholic would have to split his estate among all his sons, which meant that these estates then were in danger of fragmentation and really social status falling still further. So this meant that Catholic families

had to indulge in all sorts of connivans and underhand activities to ensure that the state was handed on hold to the next generation. And the penal laws, I mean, there was something petty about them because, for instance, in 17009, along with

the laws against Catholics being able to buy land, along with the obligation for part of the inheritance, there was also this I mean, notorious device of the discoverer. And this was someone could enter a case

in chancery against a Catholic who had not obeyed the penal legislation with regard to inheritance. And even for some Protestants think this was too much because it meant that here was an intrusion by the state into the family, the very heart of the family, you know, property being handed on, the relationship between father, son, father and children.

And it was petty and it was bitter. And on occasion it really created and deepened even that sense of grievance, which had already been established during the wartime. So it really postponed the inclusion of the Catholic-Nus, nation in the nation for nearly a century until the repeal of the penal laws and of course Catholic emancipation which didn't come until 1829. Yeah. Well, thank you all very much indeed. I think you're being presented with a terrific choice that I produced as Simon makes. Would anyone like tea or coffee?

Love a tea. Tea will be wonderful. I'm all said. Thank you very much. Tea please. Thank you very much. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Here's a question. A man escapes from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. He's risked everything to do it. But once he's free, he digs a hole and he tunnels straight back in again. Why? Find out in Tunnel 29, a new 10-part podcast series from BBC Radio 4 with me, Helena Merriman.

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