Connacht in the eighteenth century

Connacht in the eighteenth century was regarded as the most remote and the most catholic part of Ireland. These two qualities gave the region a very individual character, and the few travellers who ventured to cross the Shannon had the sensation of entering another world. This did not apply to two of the five counties—Leitrim and Sligo, which had been allotted tothe soldiers of the parliamentary army in the Cromwellian settlement and for this reason were not typical of the province. The essential Connacht lay beyond the Shannon in the counties of Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, the greater part of which had been reserved for catholic landowners in the Cromwellian settlement. The result of this arrangement was to leave the catholic gentry in a much stronger position in Connacht than in the rest of Ireland. This position remained largely unshaken by the Jacobite war, as the treaty of Limerick, the terms of the surrender of Galway, and their own solidarity protected most of the Connacht landholders from confiscation at the end of the war. When the eighteenth century began, several hundred catholic landholders were in occupation of a substantial part of Galway and Mayo and, to a lesser degree, of Roscommon. This situation was a constant source of anxiety to the authorities, who from time to time were alarmed about the prospect of a French landing in the west supported by catholic landlords and catholic peasants. It was said that catholics in Connacht outnumbered protestants by fifty to one and that in some counties there were so few protestant freeholders to serve on juries that the region could scarcely be held to acknowledge the authority of the government

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• Changing fortunes on the Aran Islands in the 1890s

  Open Access•Brian Harvey•Irish Historical Studies•1991

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