Old English
Old English , in Irish Seanghaill, is the name given afterwards to the descendants of the colonists who arrived in Ireland, after the conquest of the country at the 12th century, coming from the Wales, Normandy and England. This name was created at the end it 16th century to indicate the part of this community which lived in the Blade, in the middle of the area dominated by the English.
During centuries, much of Old English were integrated into the Irish company, and their aristocracy became the true dominant class of the country until the 16th century. They however were dispossessed of their grounds at the time of the political and religious conflicts, which took place in Ireland at 16th and the 17th century, mainly because of their indéfectible adhesion to the Catholic religion. As from 1700, they almost all were driven out of the classes leading and having, and were replaced by the Protestant colonists, called “New English”.
The Old English in the Irish history
In medieval Ireland
The term “Old English” was applied as from years 1580 to the Irishmen who went down by their fathers from vagueness from colonists Normands, French, Welsh, English, Breton and Flemish, which arrived to Ireland at the end of the Moyen-âge, claiming territory and grounds, following the English conquest of the country to the 12th century. The English governments waited of the Old English that they promoted the English domination by the use of the English language, of the common law and the methods of tenant farming. The achievement of this objective was more advanced in the Blade and the cities strengthened that in the remainder of the country.The community “Old man English” was never monolithic. In some areas, particularly in the Blade around Dublin, in the south of the County of Wexford, in the counties of Kilkenny, Limerick and Cork, the term referred to the relatively urbanized communities, which spoke English, transformed sometimes into obscure local dialects, like the Yola, who used the English law, and lived in a way similar to that which one found in England. However, in the major part of the remainder of Ireland, the term made to reference to a mean fringe of the population, made up landowners and the noble ones, which reigned on free farmers and gaelic sharecroppers .
In the provinces, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the Old English, or the “Gaills” (foreign in Irish language), of the surrounding lords and chiefs gaelic. Dynasties, such those of Fitzgeralds, Butlers and Burkes adopted the Irish language autochtones, the legal system Irish and other habits, like the usual adoption, the mixed marriages with of Gaéliques, and the patronage of poetry and the music Irish. Thus some of these people were regarded as “Irish than the Irishmen themselves”. The word undoubtedly most precise to indicate this community at the end of the Middle Ages would be Hiberno-Norman, since it seizes by this association of terms the particular culture developed by this community. In an effort to put to a brake at the Gaélicisation of the community “English Old man”, the Parlement of Ireland voted into 1367 the Lois of Kilkenny, which, inter alia, prohibited the use of the Irish language, the wearing of Irish clothing, and the stay of the Irishmen gaelic inside the strengthened cities.
There were however no religious divisions in medieval Ireland; all the inhabitants shared the allegiance with the Roman Catholicisme, even after the installation of the Protestant Réforme in England.
Crises of 16th and 17th centuries
By opposition, the “New English”, the wave of colonists who arrived to Ireland starting from the era élisabéthaine during the Reconquête of Ireland by Tudor, preserved their identity English, religious, social and cultural, and, unlike the Norman ones and of the Old English, they did not amalgamate with the remainder of the country. The new colonists felt fully English and Protestant, and regarded Ireland as a conquered country, which needed to be civilized and converted with the Protestantisme. The poet Edmund Spenser was one of principal lawyers of this idea. He supported in “an opinion on the actual position of Ireland” (“View there is the Present State off Ireland”) (1595), that the failure of the total conquest of Ireland had brought the corruption of the preceding generations of English colonists by the Irish culture. For the “New English”, much of the Old English “had degenerated”, by adopting the Irish habits and the Catholic religion. The philosopher Edward Said affirmed that the New English, by diabolisant the Old cruel English in Others, and by building their own identity as “civilized” people, the later stereotypes, the Colonialisme and the Orientalisme announced, which were applied to the non-European people during the 19th century. However, the majority of the communities “English Old man”, in particular in the Blade, continued to be regarded as the English of Ireland until the 17th century.It was, during the 16th century, their exclusion of the government of Ireland because of their religious divergence, which alienated them and pushed them towards a common catholic Irishman identity with the Irishmen gaelic. The first confrontation between the Old English and the English government in Ireland took place at the time of the problems of taxes of the years 1556-1583. For this period, the community of the Blade refused to pay the English army in Ireland so that it repressed a series of revolts which was completed by the Rébellions of Desmond (1569-73 and 1579-83). The term “Old English” was invented at that time, when the community of the Blade insisted on its English identity, while refusing to yield with the desires of the Lord lieutenant d' Irlande. In the beginning, it was about an internal disagreement, the inhabitants of the Blade refusing to pay new taxes which they had not beforehand approved with the Parlement of Ireland. The conflict especially took also a religious dimension as from 1571, when Elisabeth Ire was excommunicated by the pope. Rebels, like James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, pertaining to the dynasty hiberno-Norman of Desmond, presented their revolt like a “holy war”, indeed receiving money and troops of Papacy. During the second rebellion of Desmond (1579-83), an eminent Lord of the Blade, James Eustace, Viscount of Baltinglass, united with the rebels for religious reasons. Before the rebellion was not finished, several hundreds of Old English of the Blade were hung, either for rebellion, or because of their religion. This episode marked an important fracture between the English Blade and government, between the Old men and the New English.
However, during the Last nine Year old War which followed (1594-1603), the Blade and the cities held by the Old English remained faithful to the English Crown at the time of a new rebellion inspired by the Catholics. It was the Protestant reorganization of the English government in Ireland at the beginning of the 17th century, which completed to cut the bonds between the Old English and England itself. First of all, in 1609, it was interdict with the Catholics to hold of the public offices in Ireland. In 1613, the electoral constituencies of the Parlement of Ireland were modified so that the New Protestant English obtained the majority. Lastly, in first half of the 17th century, the landowners English Vieux transfer themselves confronted with the threat of the confiscation of their grounds by the State (see the Plantations in Ireland). The political answer of this old community was to call directly upon king d' Angleterre, first of all with Jacques Ier, then with Charles Ier for a whole of reforms, which included the religious tolerance and the equality of the Catholics in front of the law, in exchange of an increase in taxes. If, on multiple occasions in the years 1620 and 1630, they agreed to pay these higher taxes, the monarch gave each time to later any concession. Writers “Old English”, like Geoffrey Keating, affirmed whereas the true identity of the Old English was Irish and catholic rather than English.
Expropriation and demolished
In 1641, much of Old English broke in a decisive way with their past of honest subjects while uniting with the Irish Rébellion of 1641. Several factors influenced their decision, among which fear of the rebels and the fear of governmental reprisals against all the Catholics. However the primary reason was their desire to reverse the anticatholic policy which had been practiced by the English authorities during the forty previous years in Ireland. Nevertheless, in spite of the formation of an Irish government, the Irish Confederation, the identity “Old man English” created an important division within the catholic Irish community. During the Irish confederated Wars (1641-53), the Old English were often shown by the Irishmen gaelic to be ready to sign a treaty with Charles Ier at the expense of the interests of the Irish owners and the Catholic religion. The Conquête cromwellienne of Ireland, which followed in 1649-1653, saw the final defeat of the catholic cause and the expropriation of the nobility “English Old man”. Although this cause was briefly revived during the Guerre williamite in Ireland (1689-91), the Protestant descendants of the New English became, as from 1700, the dominant class of the country.During the 18th century, the old distinction between the Old English and the Irishmen gaelic grew blurred, because most of the country was anglicized and that, consequently Criminal laws, social divisions were defined almost exclusively in religious terms, catholic and Protestant, rather than in ethnic terms.
Collective identity of the Old English
The historians are not agreement on the way of naming the community “Old man English” at the various periods of its existence, nor on the way of defining its identity feeling.In his book Family names of Ireland ( Surnames off Ireland ), the historian Edward MacLysaght makes the distinction between the names Hiberno-Norman S and the names Anglo-Normands. This summarizes well the difference between the “English Rebels of the queen” and the honest liege men. Geraldines of the County of Desmond or Burkes of the Connacht, for example, could not be correctly described by the term “Old English”, because that did not correspond to their political circle and cultural. On another side, Butlers d' Ormonde were not correctly described by the term Hiberno-Norman, because of their political alliances and designs, particularly after their marriages within the English royal family.
Now certain historians call them Cambro-Norman S, and Seán Duffy of the Trinity College of Dublin almost always uses this word rather than the ambiguity “Anglo-Normans”, the majority of Norman arrived to Ireland having come from the Wales and not of England. After several centuries in Ireland and right one century in Wales or in England, it can seem odd that their whole history since 1169 is summarized by name “English Old man”, who was given to them only at the end of the 16th century.
The oldest reference known at the end “Old English” goes back to the years 1580. Before that, the descendants of Norman used several epithets to be defined, and they were only the political crises of the years 1580 which made emerge this community. Some rétorquent that does not have a historical direction to want to make go up a single community “Old man English” until 1169, since the real community will matura at the 16th century in the Blade. Up to that point this identity was much more unspecified, and it was the policy of the administration which created this community, protestor and clearly definite.
In its study of the poetry of the end of the 16th century Tír Chónaill , Brendon Bradshaw announces that in Irish the Norman ones were not called Seanghaill ( Vieux Foreigners ), but rather Fionnghaill (Norwegian Vikings) and Dubhghaill (Danish Vikings). It results from its first reasoning that the term Éireannaigh , such as we know it now, also appeared for this period in the books of poetry of Uí Bhroin de Wicklow like a sign of unit between Gaeil and Ghaill. He regards that as the emergence of a Irish nationalism. Breandán Ó Buachalla is of agreement with him essentially, while Tom Dunne and Tom Bartlett are less certain.
See too