Great Britain is no longer great

King Charles III was crowned 333 years after the death of the second King Charles, who on his death bed proclaimed himself to be a Catholic. Charles II was crowned King of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1660 after the death of Cromwell and the subsequent disintegration of the Commonwealth. The Protestant settlers living in the fortress town of Athy were alarmed following Charles II’s coronation. Their concern arose from the prospect of a Catholic resurgence following years of religious repression. They had witnessed the accession to the English throne of Charles I in 1625 in succession to his father James I. James was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and was brought up as a Protestant. He was not a popular King as he incurred the opposition of Catholics and Protestants alike, especially Presbyterians. He initially sought to encourage religious tolerance, but the Parliamentarians forced him in the opposite direction. He then attempted to strengthen anti-Catholic measures by replacing the Catholic majority in the Irish House of Commons and limiting the power of elections to Boro Councils which historically were exclusively Protestant. Athy had achieved Boro status in 1515 and by virtue of the 1613 Boro legislation passed during the reign of James I it became a closed Boro with 12 burgesses of the town having exclusive rights to elect two Members of Parliament. Charles I was 16 years old when the Rising of 1641 started in Ulster. The Rising which spread southwards saw attacks by Catholics on Protestants and reprisals by Protestants on Catholics resulting in widespread sectarian massacres. The 1641 Depositions for County Kildare include many accounts of atrocities in and around Athy. James Pearse, a cooper from Athy, recounted how the Irish rebels attacked the town of Athy and how he and his Protestant neighbours were required to set fire to their own homes near the castle of Athy ‘to prevent the rebels’. The following year the Irish rebels returned to Athy and destroyed much of the town. The crown forces of Colonel Crafford’s Regiment eventually captured many rebels who were hanged, as was Athy’s Sovereign George Walker who was believed to have helped the rebels. The Confederate War continued until 1649 and saw several military actions in and around Athy involving Royalist troops, Parliamentary troops and Irish rebels under the command of Owen Roe O’Neill. The Royalists and the Irish rebels fought on the side of King Charles I in the monarch’s war with the English Parliamentarians who were led by Oliver Cromwell. King Charles I was beheaded in London on 10th January 1649 for treason and within weeks the English monarchy was abolished. Some months later Oliver Cromwell landed in Ireland. By the summer of 1652 the English Parliamentarians had control over most of Ireland. Athy was nominated as one of 14 Revenue Precincts to collect taxes and administer justice and as such was the administrative centre for counties Kildare, Carlow and parts of the Queen’s County. The Commonwealth would end with the restoration of the monarchy when in 1660 Charles II was crowned King of England, Scotland and Ireland. He had in fact been proclaimed King of Ireland 11 years earlier during the final years of the Confederate wars. One year before Charles II’s coronation the population of Athy was 565, of which 85 were English and 480 Irish. Athy was then a larger settlement than either Naas or Carlow. In 1662 William Weldon, MP for Athy, claimed that two priests named Fitzgerald and Carroll daily frequented the town and ‘said Mass in the middle of the town several times’. The two priests on being arrested were rescued by the local people, but were soon retaken prisoner. It’s not known what happened to them. It was also during the reign of Charles II that Fr. Raymond Moore, Prior of the Dominican Friary in Athy on two occasions, was arrested and imprisoned in Dublin where he died in 1655. In 1669 Charles II was petitioned to grant two additional fairs to Athy. The petition from the Boro Sovereign and other town officials, claimed that Athy ‘is an ancient and loyal corporation and seated in the heart of a plentiful country both for corn and cattle’. The petitioners stressed that many of the inhabitants of Athy were English tradesmen and that they had suffered much, both by the recent rebellion and by the two fires ‘which lately destroyed most of their houses’. Continuing the petitioners stressed that as a garrison town it would be to the advantage of Athy and the neighbouring countryside to have fairs on May 29th and November 30th, each to last for three days. King Charles II granted the petition and issued the letter patent on 14th January 1670. The Protestant settlers alarmed at a perceived Catholic resurgence under Charles II and the Titus Oates plot of 1678, pressed to have the anti-Catholic legislation enforced more rigorously than before. The Council of State wrote to Athy’s Town Sovereign on 2nd December 1678 following a complaint that about 1,300 persons assembled in or near the town to hear Mass. The Council wrote again seven days later enquiring as to the names of the priests in the area who had not obeyed the Proclamation banishing priests from Ireland. The Town Sovereign was directed to ensure that ‘no popish service be publicly celebrated within the town’. In 1680 a defrocked Franciscan, James Geoghegan, was sent to Ireland to seek out priests. He arrested Fr. Thomas Archibold in Athy who was later released when Thomas Fitzgerald of Maddenstown entered into a bond on his behalf. Five years later Charles II died and is reported to have proclaimed himself a Catholic on his deathbed. What I wonder might we expect to happen during the reign of Charles III. Another Civil War is unlikely, while hunting Catholic priests is no longer appropriate, even if Charles III still swore in his Coronation oath ‘that I am a fateful Protestant’ and pledged to ‘uphold and maintain the Protestant accession to the Throne’. Charles III’s reign starts with great industrial unrest in Great Britain involving unions led by Union leaders of Irish parentage. Current rail strikes are being led by sons of Irish emigrants Mick Lynch of RMT and Mick Whelan of ASLEF. Both men lead the two sister rail unions, while the female union leader Pat Cullen from the north of Ireland leads the strike by NHS nursing staff. Are the Kings subjects, like those of the earlier Charles I and II, in rebellion? Great Britain is no longer great, it’s a country deeply divided. Would it be too much to expect that with the decline and death of the British empire the former colonial power would acknowledge its wrongs of the past, not only in relation to slavery and religious discrimination but also in relation to the partitioning of our country.