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"Marylando-Hibernus": Charles Carroll the Settler, 1660-1720

1988; Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture; Volume: 45; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1922325

1933-7698

Ronald Hoffman,

American Environmental and Regional History

T THE Slieve Bloom Mountains meander for a distance of some fifteen miles along the southeastern border of County Offaly in the Irish midlands. West of the range the land is remote and sparsely populated, separated by the line of hills from the more populous and prosperous Dublin hinterland. The scrubby forests that once covered the mountains have been gone for centuries, but the ubiquitous peat still gives the ground a dark and somber hue. The terrain that is not bog is more suitable for pasture than for cultivation, and widely scattered herds of sheep and cattle graze peacefully on the hillsides. Yet the present-day tranquillity of this nearly deserted landscape belies its history, for from Tudor times until the beginning of the eighteenth century the Slieve Bloom Mountains were a battleground in the desperate struggle between the Gaelic Irish and the English for control of the destiny of Ireland. And it was in the hills and valleys of the Slieve Bloom, in the midst of that bitter conflict, that the story of the Maryland Carrolls-the family destined to produce Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence began. When the first Carroll-the grandfather of Carroll of Carrollton-came to Maryland in i688 at the age of twenty-eight, he brought a fierce determination to reverse the fate that had befallen his Irish kin at the hands of the English. Given the sobriquet Charles Carroll the Settler by historians, the young man carried with him the burden of Protestant England's suppression of Catholic Ireland, and that burden shaped not only his personal history and his family's but also the history of Maryland in the first decades of the eighteenth century. During the years after his arrival in Maryland, Carroll was fully aware of the further decline of the relatives he had left behind in Ireland. Already reduced by the