Irish adventurers and godly militants in the 1640s
1994; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 113 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0021121400018745
ISSN2056-4139
Autores Tópico(s)Scottish History and National Identity
ResumoThis paper will attempt to shed some additional light on the background and motives of those who were to play a leading part in the scheme for the Irish adventurers. The focus will be upon those Englishmen, and Londoners in particular, who invested from 1642 onwards in the reconquest of Ireland in return for grants of Irish land once the island had been secured again. It will be argued that militants who regarded themselves as belonging to the chosen ranks of the godly — that is the minority of mankind singled out for salvation by God, and thus constituting his elect or saints — played a leading part in the scheme and were among its most committed participants, and that they later helped to shape English policy towards Ireland. These militants were also ardent advocates of reformation in church and state in England in the 1640s, and they viewed Ireland and the successful Catholic rising in 1641 from a perspective highly coloured by antipopery. They tended to see the struggle taking place in the mid-seventeenth century in Britain, Ireland and Europe generally in black-and-white terms, as a struggle between true religion (by which was meant a thoroughly reformed Protestant church) and the Antichrist as represented by the pope and the forces believed to be ranged under him in the Catholic church.
Referência(s)