England had, by 1729, contrived to wreck Ireland's economy by damaging its merchant marine, its agriculture and its expanding woollen industry. Ireland did nothing to protect its domestic market by levying protective tariffs, despite the urgings of Swift when he proposed an embargo on English imports 1720. The reasons for this failure to protect their own interests lay in England�s "open door policy" to its mercantile interests in Ireland. This was make possible by the Irish merchants, such as drapers, whose greed led them to sell faulty goods; to a social class with whom �a la mode� overcame sense and in its vanity admired foreign fashions and goods as a mark of prestige, especially English things.
The Irish Parliament, influenced by the insecurity of Protestants after two major rebellions in the 17th century, passed several laws to "Prevent the Further Growth of Popery", the Penal Laws. Although mainly directed against Catholics these also contained provisions that applied to Presbyterians, they created the privileged �lite, the Protestant Ascendancy. No longer were Catholics allowed own property, not even horses, worth more than �5 , they could not practice law, nor run for elected office, nor purchase land. The Catholic educational system was outlawed and priests who did not conform could be branded on the face or castrated. They were able to operate only under greatest secrecy.
This deliberate campaign by the (protestant) British government of the time meant that by 1750 non-Irish owned some 93% of the land in Ireland and by 1770 it was 100% with the Irish population was largely tenant farmers. The catholic population of Ireland were reduced to impoverished illiteracy by 1750s. A defeated, demoralised people, the majority of the whom were unbelievably poor, living by growing and eating only potatoes and consuming home distilled whiskey, crammed into tiny one roomed mud-built dwellings called crofts.
�Twenty poor families, who never taste fresh meat, might be comfortably supplied with as much Beef and Butter has been exported to purchase a Headdress for a Lady� commented an angry Dublin journalist in 1737.
Even the Catholic Church noticed the misery across rural Ireland. In a letter to a friend in 1718 the Archbishop of Dublin wrote "the misery of the people here is very great, the beggars innumerable and increasing every day .One half of the people in Ireland eat neither bread nor flesh for one half of the year, nor wear Shoes or Stockings; your Hogs in England and Essex Calves lie and live better than they." These dreadful conditions worsened in 1729 when harvests failed, 3 years in a row, and Ireland was gripped by famine.
However Catholic and Protestant farmers were all equally poor. They were all forced onto smaller and smaller plots of land to the point where the land was barely sufficient for subsistence farming. Wealthier farmers, in order to raise more profitable cattle, forced tenants off their land. However despite this many small Protestant farmers were the firmest advocates of the Penal Laws, largely because the restrictions on Catholics freed up land for them. These Protestant farmers felt the burden of the high rents and restrictive laws just as the Catholics did however it was easier to follow the allegiance of faith, despite the similarity of their condition. Thus the religious divide sharpened and it has remained so for 300 years. That divide still exists in the 21st century, most marked in antagonism and apparently mindless prejudice in Northern Ireland.
Despite the famines and legal restrictions imposed between 1730 and 1770 there was a steady increase in Irish overseas trade in butter and beef exports. In 1699 there had been a ban on the export of manufactured woollen goods from Ireland. However woollen yarn was still produced both for domestic use and for English manufacturers. The restrictions on the woollen trade increased the importance of the linen industry. Irish linen had free of export duty from 1696 and by the end of the 18th century it accounted for about half of Ireland's total exports. In the North in Belfast in 1783, Joy & Co set up one of the first cotton spinning mills and the cotton industry began to expand in Ireland.
The bad harvests of 1726-29 led to famine with another terrible famine in 1741, and coupled with high rents and insupportable tithes were reasons enough to risk the perilous Atlantic crossing. In the north large numbers of people, mostly Protestants, left Ireland between about 1717 and 1775, to risk settling in Free America.
The background causes
When Charles II died in 1685, James II, his brother, succeeded to the throne of Britain. James took up the old autocratic style of rule that had brought the downfall of his beheaded father, Charles I, He interfered with the courts and in the government of counties and towns and revived the old ecclesiastical court of high commission. Following the crushing of the rebellion by the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II natural son, there were brutal reprisals. Judge Jeffries, the most notorious and brutal Judge of all time sat on the Bloody Assizes, travelled from place to place dispensing �Justice� throughout the country. This ruthless bloodletting increased the animosity towards his master,the autogratic Catholic, James II.
In 1687 and 1688 James issued two declarations of indulgence. He was intent on putting Roman Catholics into positions of authority and influence, and these edicts suspended laws against Catholics and dissenters. Defiance and dislike of him grew in England. This defiance brought about the trial (1688) of seven bishops who had refused to read his second declaration. The horrors of Civil War were still fresh in the mind of Englishmen and with a well-founded dislike of extremes of religious observance protest and discontent were inevitable.
Whig and Tory leaders invited the German William of Orange, (1688-1702) to take the British throne. (William III, son of William Prince of Orange and Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I and husband of Mary, daughter of James II and Anne Hyde.) The Catholic autocratic JamesII became so unpopular and had so few loyal followers that finally he fled. He was captured, and then allowed to escape to France. However, having been removed from his throne James did not go quietly and from 1689 made several attempts at restoration. With his Catholic followers James landed in Ireland in 1689 and there followed the battle of the Boyne in 1690. He was defeated there and in other attempts to regain his lost throne. Another battle was waged in Derry (Londonderry) where approximately 30,000 Protestants who were loyal to William of Orange (a German King of England who could not even speak English!) were walled up in the city while James forces laid siege. Finally on July 28th 1690 after for 105 days William�s army arrived and James' forces retreated. With the end of the siege the cause of Ireland's native Catholic population had lost its main champion in England, and the Protestant Ascendancy had secured its position in Ireland. Louis XIV, James�s supporter in France, recognized William III in the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). This was the seed of the Jacobite cause, espoused by his son and his grandson, Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender).
