The Use

of the

Irish Language

in the

1641 Depositions

BY

Chris

Beausang

Student Number

10346761

Course:

Digital Humanities and Culture

Module:

The 1641 Depositions:

Digital Humanities in Action

This essay takes the Irish language in Tudor and Stuart Ireland as its subject. It will

use a range of primary and secondary materials to construct a historical, political and

sociological context surrounding Irish before using instances of the language in the 1641

depositions as case studies. This choice of topic comes with its procedural difficulties, as

does engaging with the depositions as a historical resource. One must be alert to the

shortcomings of the depositions, especially when the topic of voice is under discussion. The

depositions come to contemporary readers through several layers of mediation. They are in

some ways unreliable documents, as they depend on the memory of the individual

deponents, sometimes years after the events that they describe. They are also ideologically

inflected; the deponents’ accounts are unlikely to be immune from prejudice. There are also

more pragmatic concerns to be aware of, such as the clerks who transcribed deponents’

testimonies’ being unable to understand Irish. It is impossible, therefore, to claim that the

depositions allow us authentic access to the voice of the native Irish. Furthermore, Aidan

Clarke has written that a convincing account of everyday life for people in Ireland during the

Tudor and Stuart period is yet to be written.1 As such, this essay does not come to any

conclusive proposition on the topic. Instead, it will provide a survey of the context

surrounding both Irish and English before proceeding to use instances of Irish in the

depositions in order to unravel certain generalisations that have accrued to our image of

early modern Irish society which could distort our understanding of the time. This mode of

analysis will allow us to move beyond what Dr. Marc Caball has called ‘the three essentialist

categories’ of Old English, New English and Native Irish.2 As this essay will make clear, Irish

1 Clarke, Aidan, ‘The Irish Economy 1600-60,’ Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X., and Byrne, F.J. (Editors), A New History of Ireland III: Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691 (Oxford University Press: 1978)2 Caball, Marc, Cultural Mixing in Early Modern Ireland (Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference 2012: 2012) https://soundcloud.com/history-hub/sets/tudor-and-stuart-ireland-2012

was not a mode of communication unique to the Native Irish, Old English living outside the

Pale or English officials seeking to bypass the use of a potentially unreliable translator.

Instead, in both the depositions and state papers from the time, we can see that the

language is contested and that uses of Irish span all three of these allegedly distinct groups.

Therefore, instances of Irish in the depositions coupled with other documentary evidence

can help to provide us with a picture of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Irish society as

culturally diffuse and heterogeneous.

For many Protestants, Catholicism represented “a proven tyrannical force.”3 This

notion was deeply culturally embedded and justified, not only by the disturbances in Ireland

that would periodically erupt throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also

events in a wider European context, such as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572.

Many historians have argued that these popular ideas about Roman Catholicism and the

‘the wild Irish’ is what determined the structure of the plantation projects. Though it is

difficult to generalise along these lines, for the purposes of this essay, the plantations can be

described as operating within a top-down separatist schema. This was done, again, generally

speaking, in order to facilitate the imposition of ‘civilising’ Protestant values upon the

‘uncivilised’ Irish Catholic population. However, framing the operation of the plantations in

such monolithic terms is problematised by evidence that would contradict such simplistic

analyses. As T.W. Moody argues: “The Tudor conquest was a complex, piecemeal, and

spasmodic movement, a series of responses to immediate circumstances rather than the

execution of any coherent plan.”4 However, one can argue that the plantation schemes

3 Canny, Nicholas, Making Ireland British 1580-1650, p.4 (Oxford University Press: 2003)4Moody, T.W., ‘Early Modern Ireland: Introduction,’ Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X., and Byrne, F.J. (Editors), A New History of Ireland III: Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691 (Oxford University

were in general envisioned in order to prevent cultural mixing, along the lines of

communication, inter-marriage or cross-cultural co-operation. Introducing such a polarising

social system to Ireland was done with the intention of bringing two different social systems

into conflict with one another. The ultimate aim of this was to defeat the Irish paradigm

with a ‘superior’ English one.5 Each plantation aimed to create a microcosm of English

society that the natives would then be forced to imitate. In his study, Making Ireland British

1580-1650, Nicholas Canny provides an account of this attempted cultural segregation in

the early stages of each plantation. While shaping the Munster plantation, for instance,

Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, worked against granting land to those he believed to

be not up to the work that plantations require in order to ensure their functionality in the

long term. Land was, at first, not granted solely to those who remained loyal to the crown

during the Baltinglass Revolt (1579-83). Instead, wealthy English settlers’ claims were

prioritised. The Munster Plantation was to be strictly hierarchical and it was in intended that

it be an entirely English plantation. As the process of plantation continued, rather than

drawing in the influx of English tradesman that was anticipated, it became more militaristic.

This hindered its development into a self-sustaining entity. Sir William Herbert’s testimony

may be used to underline this point, according to him, the planters sought “to tyrannise, to

extort, to make the estate of things turbulent, to live by prey and by pay.”6 In cases such as

these, London companies kept Irish tenants contrary to the theorised policy and charged

them high rent for short term gain. In many cases, short-term private interests outweighed

this process of cultural distancing and cultural interchange was the norm, rather than the

exception.

Press: 1978) p. xi5 Clarke, Aidan, ‘Pacification, Plantation and the Catholic Question, 1603-1623,’ Ibid, p.1876 Canny, Nicholas, Making Ireland British 1580-1650, p.144

The assumption that English and Irish speakers would be separated by an

impermeable linguistic and cultural barrier emerges from the ways in which the era has

been framed by retrospective historical discourse. As a result of this focus on religious

beliefs and cultural factors, historians in the past tended to dismiss the likelihood of settlers

communicating with the native Irish. One religious belief used to justify this theory is

predestination. Alan Ford has written on the nonconformist basis of the Irish Protestant

missionary movement. A prevalence of nonconformist bias among Protestants living in

Ireland, coupled with general beliefs about the Irish national character which comes from

the writings of commentators such as Edmund Spenser, contributes to a simplified historical

notion of Irish early modern society as being inherently polarised, a society in which settlers

would have been uninterested in and rarely interacted with the native population. This idea

does not stand up to scrutiny. The actual structure of the settlements meant that the

natives lived side by side with the settlers and established communal relations based, not on

the lofty goals of cultural segregation, but pragmatism. As Canny writes:

people of different loyalties came to recognise the advantages of learning each other’s language and co-operating in the interest of their individual profit and of communal solidarity.7

This is underlined further by the level of interaction both English settlers and native Irish

would have had with people from the European continent. Professor Marian Lyons, in her

2011 paper ‘The Variegated Irishness of the Irish in seventeenth-century Ireland’ outlines

how definitions of ‘Irishness’ were open to European influences. Chief among the reasons

7Ibid, p.454

for the establishment of the plantations in the first instance was in order to spread

Protestantism further without the costly endeavour of military conquest. Canny argues the

following along similar lines in a different context:

the concern of senior Protestant clergy to couch their theological treatises and sermons in the format of controversy with Catholics would also indicate that they kept themselves informed on which doctrines were being advanced in Irish by their Catholic adversaries.8

In order for this conversion process to be successful, communication in Irish would be

inevitable. During Elizabeth’s reign in fact, use of Irish to aid conversion was encouraged, to

the extent that she recommended a translation of the Bible into Irish. After a number of

delays, this was eventually produced and also resulted in the production of a Protestant

catechism in Irish. Brian Ó Cuív points to the fact that she expressed a wish to understand

the language herself. To this end the ninth baron of Delvin Sir Christopher Nugent prepared

an Irish primer for her.9 This is why Canny contends that Irish speaking settlers are not

unique. The following quotation from contemporary observer John Temple help illuminate

the ways in which cross-cultural co-operation and communal interaction were more

representative of the era, and how the insurrection of 1641 was an egregious limit-case,

rather than the defining event through which life in Ireland at the time should be

understood:

8Ibid, p. ???9 Ó Cuív, Brian, ‘The Irish Language in the Early Modern Period,’ Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X., and Byrne, F.J. (Editors), A New History of Ireland III: Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691, p.512

These people of late times were so much civilised by their cohabitation with the English as that the ancient animosities and hatred which the Irish had ever been observed to bear upon the English nation seemed now to be quite deposited and buried in a firm conglutination of their affection and national obligations passed between them. The two nations had now lived together forty years in peace with great security and comfort, which had in a manner consolidated them into one body…compacted together with all those bonds and ligatures of friendship, alliance and consanguinity…Their intermarriages were frequent…they had made…a kind of mutual transmigration into each other’s manners…10

R.F. Foster writes that the comments are retrospective and look back somewhat

nostalgically on a time before 1641. It is therefore to be taken as somewhat unreliable, but

Foster concedes that it contains an element of truth.11

Before making citing examples from the depositions, this essay will give a brief account of

attempts to make English the primary means of expression for the Irish. Efforts to spread

the English language to the natives living outside the Pale and beyond Leinster were largely

unsuccessful. Instead, a more reciprocal dynamic can be seen, when new English

immigrants, even those belonging to a higher social class, began to speak Irish. A well known

complaint about this state of affairs from 1515 can attest to this: “more than 30 greate

captaines of theEnglyshe noble…folowyth the same Iryshe ordre.”12 Among these members

of the English nobility were Lord Roche, the Powers of Waterford, the earl of Desmond and

many others. Lord Chancellor William Gerrard wrote in 1578 that many officials took great

pride and even enjoyed speaking the language of the natives: “all English, and for the most

10 Foster, R.F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (Penguin Books: 1989), p.7111 Ibid.12Brian Ó Cuív, ‘The Irish Language in the Early Modern Period,’ Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X., and Byrne, F.J. (Editors), A New History of Ireland III: Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691, p.509

part with delight, even in Dublin, speak Irish.”13 Even up to five years after ‘An act for the

English order, habite and language’ was passed in 1537, bills were presented to parliament

in Irish, with the earl of Ormond acting as an interpreter for the benefit of the lords who did

not know Irish.14 Despite this use and apparent appreciation of Irish for many government

officials, the legislature’s attitude was more coercive and clamped down on uses of the

language to the extent that poets, harpers and other such minstrels were banned from

performing in Irish for fear that their ballads would glorify opposition to the English or

mobilise rebellion. With the possible exception of a more liberal environment during the

Elizabethan era, the use of Irish was generally associated with political dissent and a pride in

an Irish national identity that was identified as harmful. The language that one spoke also

had a role to play in religious discourse of the time. On this subject Alan Bliss writes the

following:

The reformation had brought about a unity of purpose between the Irish and the Old English, and the Irish language became a symbol of the Catholic religion; the English settlers, who for a long time had been bilingual, now began consciously to reject the English language in favour of Irish.15

Just as the use of Irish came to be associated with political resistance in the eyes of the

English establishment, uses of English among the native Irish was a sign of shifting one’s

allegiance to the colonial apparatus and was frowned upon in the work of many poets and

balladeers of the time. One contemporary but anonymous poet decries Gaelic lords who

pledged their allegiance to the monarchy, the implication being that by doing so, they have

abandoned their heritage. Merchadh O’Briain is mentioned in one such text, who accepted

13 Ibid, p.51214 Ibid, p.51015 Bliss, Alan, ‘The English Language in Early Modern Ireland,’ Ibid, p.546

the title the Earl of Thomond. Of course, this is not an example of a binary opposition,

where Irish speaking Catholics and English speaking Protestants bear mutual aggression

towards one another. Commentators such as Richard Stanihurst who one would think would

appreciate the process of Anglicisation throughout the nation lamented the displacement of

Irish entirely by English, seeing no reason why “theyr [the Native Irish’s] owne auncient

natiue tongue shal be shrowded in oblivion.”16 From these various anecdotes and examples

of how both English and Irish were viewed from both sides of the cultural divide, one can

see that attitudes to Irish were plural and diffuse even among government officials and

those of the colonial bureaucracy, which will be used and unpicked productively in the

following readings of the depositions.

In the depositions we see varying levels of bilingual competence on both sides of the

cultural divide. This could account for instances where new English settlers can outline and

describe exchanges between their assailants. Elizabeth Price from Armagh is obviously very

much a part of the new English, primarily Protestant settler community. In her deposition,

she attests to the names of a number of families who are killed by Sir Phelim O’Neill, the

man who her husband, and presumably many other Protestants who are killed in this

occurrence, bought his land from. Price gives the names of six different families and she also

knows the first names of many of them. She also describes the death of “threescore &

fifteen more protestants…from other places within the parrishes of Armagh and Loghall.”17

Whether Price knows them through communal familiarity or if she realises this in the course

16 Ibid.17 TCD, 1641 Depositions Project, Deposition of Elizabeth Price, MS 836, fol. 101v http://1641.tcd.ie/deposition.php?depID<?php echo 836101r054?>

of her ordeal or after the event is unclear. Price also reports in her deposition that she

understands what information passes between a group of the rebels. Price has good

knowledge of exchanges between the senior Gaelic lords and is able to describe Sir Phelim

O’Neill’s response to protests on the kind of behaviour that he is visiting upon the victims of

his reprisals. Price says that “hee plainly tould them…that they ought to suffer and indure

the like torments and deaths that they hadd forced”18 on a conversation between

protestants and Owen Roe O’Neill The fact that she prefers to them as being of “the

common sort”19 means that we can infer that they expressed themselves in Irish. Thomas

Greene from Drumcree, also in Armagh, “heard the Rebells in their songs & discourse

expresse that the English were meate for the Doggs.”20

John Goldsmith’s testament is also relevant in this context. Goldsmith was a parson

in Barrishoole in Co. Mayo. He was initially a Catholic priest who converted to Protestantism

and was therefore regarded with suspicion by both Protestant and Catholic segments of the

population. This occurred to the extent that Sir Henry Bingham refused to provide him with

refuge as it would have been unsafe for him to do so. Though culturally regarded with

suspicion, his deposition displays just how engrained he is in the fabric of the local society.

Canny comments on the unusual nature of a pastor who is neither preaching from a position

of power, nor making overt use of the law to compel others to attend mass. Instead, his

motivation seems to be a sincere desire to educate others into an understanding of what he

regarded to be the one true religion, through making use of “all the faire gentle & prevalent

18 Ibid, fol. 102v19 Ibid, fol. 104v20 TCD, 1641 Depositions Project, Deposition of Thomas Greene and Elizabeth Greene, MS 836, fol. 094v, http://1641.tcd.ie/deposition.php?depID<?php echo 836094r049?>

perswasions & arguments he could.”21 This takes the form of interacting with and educating

local children in the catechism, which has the effect of endearing their parents to him,

despite the fact that they are of the Catholic religion. Goldsmith notes that their parents:

would be present and approve of his labours with their sonns, and say there is nothing amisse in this that yow teach them: wishing that their preist would doe as much…22

He also describes his willingness to provide material assistance to the poorest in Westmeath

and Mayo on the condition that he be allowed to educate their children in this way:

And for the poorer sort this deponent…gave the parents of the children seuerall sumes of some money and Lent them divers Cowes freely somtymes…23

Goldsmith’s deposition makes no specific mention of the use of Irish, but it would be

impossible to imagine him not carrying out the activities that he does without a good grasp

of the language, particularly as he seems to be in close contact with the poorest in his area.

Goldsmith describes those who robbed and stripped his family as “vngratefull and

Rebellious neighbours,”24 suggesting he recognises many of his assailants and that many of

them would have been among those that he helped in his role as a pastor and benefactor.

We see in Goldsmith’s example how cross-cultural social relations are not solely dictated by

21TCD, 1641 Depositions Project, Deposition of John Gouldsmith, MS 831, fols 196v, http://1641.tcd.ie/deposition.php?depID<?php echo 831192r145a?>22Ibid, fol. 196v23Ibid.24Ibid, fol. 197r

cultural factors, but that pragmatic concerns have a strong influence and merit attention in

our analysis also. On a possible tangentially related point, it is difficult to imagine how

Goldsmith can attest to his ability to help the needy in communities in counties both where

he is a resident, Mayo and in a county as far away as Westmeath is. If one is to take

Goldsmith’s deposition seriously, Goldsmith’s evidence can serve as a means of

demonstrating just how communal relations were not only culturally heterogenous, but also

spatially, if Goldsmith’s level of mobility is anything to go by. This is particularly important in

a country such as Ireland with a transport network as underdeveloped as it is, and in many

cases, dangerous to traverse, as Anthony Hughes has demonstrated in his paper written on

the role of the post office in Stuart Ireland.25

The extent to which communal relations depended on trade should not be neglected

in this discussion. In Leinster there was a large proportion of Catholics that owed money to

Protestants, and those of the settler community benefited Dublin through their operation:

broadening commercial reach of the capital and bringing it into closer association with enterprises that were bring promoted where plantation was underway.26

This all lends credence to the idea of the insurrection as being a spontaneous act, and not

the result of an ongoing Catholic conspiracy against Protestantism. In his deposition, James

25 Hughes, Anthony, The Stuart Post Office: Not Just for Delivering Letters (The Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference 2012: 2012) https://soundcloud.com/history-hub/anthony-hughes-stuart-post-office-ireland26Canny, Nicholas, Making Ireland British 1580-1650, p.369

Dowdall lends credence to this point, saying that before the uprising: “both the English &

irish Liued Like Louinge neighbours &wee the English mistrusted them not.”27

people of different religious, linguistic and national background, who found themselves thrown together within the same localities, quickly came to recognise the advantages of learning each other’s language and co-operating in the interest of their individual profit and of communal society.28

In the depositions themselves we see that the microeconomic interactions of society

were not defined in such monolithic English-speaking/Irish-speaking terms. There are a

number of instances of settlers documenting their losses and atrocities understanding Irish

conversation among their assailants just as there are many who don’t. This is not to say that

the development of two separate, competing religious entities in Ireland did not create

sectarian tension, and changed societal relationships, but Canny contends that the church’s

attempts to keep the two communities separate ultimately failed: By using cultural

preoccupations as the sole reason for the eruption of violence in 1641 ignores more

material factors which are also significant. Firstly, the relative distance of Ulster from the

Crown bureaucracy often made it easy for corruption to fester. Unsupervised officials and

officers would enrich themselves at the expense of the natives, providing ample cause for

uprisings as was the case in 1641. For those seeking to deflect attention from the societal

factors behind such demonstrations of native frustration, indicating the pervasive

stereotype of the barbaric Irish Catholics served them well. Canny provides the following

example of this in a correspondence that reveals one instance of said deflection:

27

28Canny, Nicholas, Making Ireland British 1580-1650, p.456

not the hard dealing of the government that hath moved this insolent people to rebel against her Majesty, but only a cankerred heart against God’s true religion…29

As such, those in high places in the government bureaucracy would often benefit from these

entrenched caricatures.

29Canny, Nicholas, Making Ireland British 1580-1650, p. 93

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Depositions

TCD, 1641 Depositions Project, Deposition of John Gouldsmith, MS 831, fols 192r-

197v

TCD, 1641 Depositions Project, Deposition of Thomas Greene and Elizabeth Greene,

MS 836, fols 094r-094v

TCD, 1641 Depositions Project, Deposition of Elizabeth Price, MS 836, fols 101r-105v,

http://1641.tcd.ie/deposition.php?depID<?php echo 836101r054?>

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