The Old English in Ireland refers to the descendants of the settlers who came to Ireland from England after the twelfth century conquest of the country. Many of the Old English became assimilated into Irish society over the centuries and their nobility were effectively the ruling class in the land up to the 16th century. They were dispossessed however, in the political and religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries in Ireland, largely due to their continued adherence to the Catholic religion. The so called "New English" Protestant settlers largely replaced them as the governing class and the landowning class by 1700.

The Old English in Irish history

The Old English were originally a wave of early medieval Norman, French, Welsh, English, Breton and Flemish settlers who went to Ireland to claim territory and lands in the wake of the Norman invasion of the country in the 12th century. Though English governments expected the Old English to promote English rule in Ireland, many abandoned their English identity in the ocurse of the 14th and 15th centuries, adopted the native Irish language and religious customs and marrying the mere Irish (a medieval term meaning pure Irish), and came to be called more Irish than the Irish themselves. (See also Norman Ireland

The "Old English" community in Ireland was never monolithic. In some areas, especially in the Pale around Dublin, south county Wexford, Kilkenny, Limerick and Cork, the term referred to relatively urbanised communities, who spoke the English language (though sometimes in arcane local dialects like Yola), used English law and lived in a manner similar to that found in England. However, in much of the rest of Ireland, the term referred to a thin layer of landowners and nobility, who ruled over Gaelic Irish freeholders and tenants. In the provinces, the Old English, or gaill (foreigners) in the Irish language, were at times indistinguishable from the surrounding Gaelic lords and chieftains. One of the majr things that distinguished all of the pre-16th century inhabitants of Ireland from newer settlers was their shared alliegance to Roman Catholicism, even after the Protestant Reformation in England.

In contrast, the New English, the wave of invaders who came to Ireland from the Elizabethan era onwards during the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, kept their English identity, religious, social and cultural traditions and unlike the Normans and the Old English, remained distinct and separate from the rest of Ireland. The new settlers were self consciously English and Protestant and looked on Ireland as a conquered country that needed to be "civilised" and Protestantised. The poet Edmund Spenser was one of the chief advocates of this view. To the "New English", many of the Old English were "degenerate", having adopted Irish customs and the Catholic religion. Philosopher Edward Said has argued that the New English demonisation of he Old English as "barbarians" anticipated the later colonialist and orientalist sterotypes about non-European peoples that gained currency in the 19th century. However, most of the Old English community - especially in the Pale, continued to think of themselves as the English of Ireland, well into the 17th century. (See also Early Modern Ireland 1536-1691)

It was their exclusion from the government, on the grounds of their religious dissidence, of Ireland in the course of the 16th century that alienated the Old English from the state and eventually propelled them into a common identiy with the Gaelic Irish as Irish Catholics. Firstly, in 1609, Catholics were banned from serving in public office in Ireland. In 1613, the consicuencies of the Irish Parliament were changed so that the New English Protestants would be a majority in it. Thirdly, in the first half of the 17th century, the Old English landowning class faced the prospect of their land being confiscated by the state (see Plantations of Ireland). Such Old Enlgish writers as Geoffrey Keating were by then arguing, for example in the Irish language, Foras Feasa ar Eireann that the true identity of the Old English was Catholic and Irish, rather than English.

In 1641, many of the Old English community made adecisive break with their past as loyal subjects by joining the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Nevertheless, despite their formation of an Irish government in Confederate Ireland, the Old English identity was still an important division within the Irish Catholic community. During the Irish Confederate Wars (1641-53), the Old Englsih were often accused by the Gaelic Irish of being too reaady to sign a treaty with Charles I of England at the expense of the interests of Irish landowners and the Catholic religion. The ensuing Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649-53), saw the ultimate defeat of the Catholc cause and the dispossession of the Old English nobility. While this cause was briefly revived in the Williamite war in Ireland (1689-91), by 1700, the Protestant descendants of the New English had become the dominat class in the country.

In the course of the eighteenth century, the old distinction between Old English and Gaelic Irish Catholics faded away, as more of the country became Anglicized and social divisions were defined, against the backdrop of the Penal Laws (Ireland) almost soley in sectarian terms of Catholic and Protestant, rather than ethnic ones.

Collective identity of the Old English

Historians disagree about what to call the Old English community at different times in its existance and how to define this community's sense of collective identity.

Irish historian Owen MacLysaght makes the distinction in his Surnames of Ireland book between 'Hiberno-Norman' and 'Anglo-Norman' surnames. This sums up the fundamental difference between "Queen's English Rebels" and the Loyal Lieges. The Geraldines of Desmond, for instance, could not accurately be described as "Old English" as that was not their political and cultural world. The Butlers of Ormond on the other hand could not accurately be described as 'Hiberno-Norman' in their political outlook and alliances, especially after they married into the English royal family.

Some historians now refer to them as "Cambro-Normans", and Seán Duffy of Trinity College, Dublin invariably uses that term rather than the misleading "Anglo-Norman" (most Normans came via Wales, not England), but after many centuries here and just a century in Wales or England it seems quite odd that their entire history since 1169 is now known by a description, Old English, which only came in the late sixteenth century.

The earliest known reference to the term, "Old English" community is in the 1580s (Nicholas Canny, Irealnd, from Reformation to Restoration). The community of Norman descent prior to then used numerous epithets to describe themselves but it was only as a result of the cess crisis 1556-1583 (when the Pale commnity resisted against paying for the English army in Ireland to put down the Desmond Rebellions that they began to form into an identifiable Old English community. Some contend it is ahistorical to trace a single "Old English" community back to 1169 as the real Old English community was a product of the late sixteenth century in the Pale. Until then identity was much more fluid; it was the administration's policies which created an oppositional and clearly defined Old English community.

Brendan Bradshaw, in his study of the poetry of late sixteenth century Tír Chónaill, points out that in the Irish the Normans were not called Seanghaill ("Old Foreigners") there but rather they were called Fionnghaill and Dubhghaill. He argued in a lecture to the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute in University College, Dublin that the poets referred to those of Norman stock who were completely hibernicised thus with the purpose of granting them a longer vintage in Ireland that they had (Fionnghaill- Norwegian vikings; Dubhghaill= Danish vikings). This follows on from his earlier arguments that the term Éireannaigh as we currently know it also emerged during this period in the poetry books of the Uí Bhroin of Wicklow as a sign of unity between Gaeil and Gaill; he viewed it as a sign of an emerging Irish nationalism. Breandán Ó Buachalla essentially agreed with him, Tom Dunne and Tom Bartlett were less sure.

See also

• The Deeds of the Normans in Ireland

History of Ireland