The origins of the Leix-Offaly Plantation. By Dr Diarmuid Wheeler.

We welcome this week Dr Diarmuid Wheeler on an important subject for Ireland and for the midlands, being the colonial experiment known as the Leix-Offaly Plantation. For those interested in the Decade of the Centenaries, the resurgence of interest in the Irish language, 1916 and the War of Independence, knowing the roots of the conflict is essential. The fort of Philipstown would soon be adopted as the county town for the new King’s County of the 1550s. The courts of assize to display the might and power of English law continued to be held in King’s County until 1921 while the name of the county was changed only in 1920 to Offaly. The Civil War of 1922–3 would witness the burning of houses such as Ballyburly, owned by the Wakely family, who had come to Ireland as soldier settlers in the time of Elizabeth.

Dr Wheeler will give his lecture on the Leix-Offaly Plantation to Offaly History from his home in the United States on Monday night 22 March at 7.30 p.m. Email us at info@offalyhistory.com with the subject heading  ‘Zoom Wheeler’ for the access code [Ed.]

The beginnings of the midlands colonial project can be traced back to the early sixteenth century when the Tudor government, who firmly believed that Ireland rightfully belonged to the English crown and that the country’s keeping was essential to England’s overall safety, sought to restore the island to its twelfth century “conquered” state from which the crown hoped to profit. Brendan Bradshaw argues that the Tudors and the Old English of Ireland were heavily influenced by Renaissance humanism that encouraged them to bring reform to Ireland. But the administration lacked significant knowledge and experience of the country, particularly during Henry VIII’s reign and quickly realised that reforming the island would take significantly more military and financial resources than they had anticipated. By the final years of the 1530s, it was apparent that a certain degree of coercion and military force would be necessary to bring about wide scale reform. Yet the Tudors were also aware that they could not employ outright force to achieve their objectives, lacking the necessary resources to do so. Instead, the Tudor administration recognised that they would need to accommodate the natives of Ireland, at least somewhat, in order to make their aspiration a reality.

FAITHFUL IMAGES: Offaly through the eyes of artists. Fergal MacCabe

Clonmacnoise from the Harris’s edition of Ware’s Antiquities (Dublin 1739) showing the work of Blaymires and Dempsy his companion. 

It must be conceded that the unassertive landscapes of County Offaly have never been a great source of inspiration to painters, most of whom just made a quick stop at historic Clonmacnoise before dashing on to record the West of Ireland.
Yet, others took the trouble to look more closely (or were paid to do so) and found inspiration in its lush farmland, bogs and woods, slow rivers, rolling hills and ancient ruins. Happily, their numbers have grown in the recent past.

The Cotton Map
The first, and in my opinion the finest, artistic image of Offaly is the Cotton Map of 1565. Prepared to assist the Elizabethan Plantation, this is an imaginative creation more akin to Harry Potter’s ‘Marauder Map’ or Robert Louis Stevenson’s chart of Treasure Island than a realistic cartographic exercise. One wonders if its unknown compilers ever visited Offaly or were relying on travellers’ tales.

Local history: ‘gone to pot’ or some remarks on Goss Ware/crested china by John Stocks Powell

Home Rule/Rome Rule. A china mug with a portrait of Pope Pius X (1903-14) who
increased the devotionalism of the Catholic church, who promulgated the Ne Temere
decree concerning the children of mixed marriages, whose orders on the role of women in
church music (1903) was commented on by the Morkan sisters in James Joyce’s story ‘The
Dead’, and who oversaw the excommunication of Fr. George Tyrrell (1861-1909) on a
charge of heresy, whose childhood had been spent at Dangan’s Farm between
Portarlington and Mountmellick. He also enjoined the admission of children to regular
communion at the age of reason.
(Autobiography … of George Tyrrell, 2 vols. 1912, p.20-22)

We welcome a new contributor to the blog this week with this article by John Stocks Powell. Enjoy and remember we have almost 190 articles to read at http://www.offalyhistoryblog. Like to get it each week and share to your friends.

There is a hierarchy of sources for the historian, local historians and those with the wider landscapes. The principal material is the written word; evidences from the time, written archives, and later written published assessments such as county histories, church memoirs, Ph.D. studies gone to print. On-line developments have made for more in quantity, and more exciting revelations, from the checking of dates on Wikipedia, or the digitised sources such as Irish and British newspapers online, and directories. Yet we know the old cliché that history is written by the winners, and that is especially true when trying to write about the history of the losers, the poor, and the illiterate. Every source has its importance.

Terra Incognita: Offaly, Fercall and the Tullamore district of the O’Molloys in the 1550s. By Cosney Molloy

Laois Offaly in the 1560s

The 1540s and the 1550s was a turning point in what we now know as the county of Offaly. It was a time of colonising wars when the administrative county, then known as King’s County, was established by force and expropriation of the lands of the native families. It was in the time of Henry VIII of the Tudors and Wolf Hall television series fame that serious inroads began to be made into the area we now call County Offaly. The actual shiring into an administrative county of the territory of the O’Connors, O’Molloys and the other native families went on over sixty years from the 1550s to the 1610s. The O’Connors had been allies of the Kildare family of FitzGeralds, whose leaders were all killed in the 1530s, after the revolt of Lord Offaly, Silken Thomas. From then on the conquest of the midlands was the firm policy of a reinvigorated English administration under Henry V111 and the administrative expertise of Thomas Cromwell.