Religious conflict in Ireland, 1500-1660

The early modern period witnessed the establishment of deeply-entrenched rival religious confessions in Ireland, which exhibited a constant potential for sectarian conflict down to the close of the twentieth century. This process was carried to its extreme in the northern province of Ulster where early modern Protestant immigration into Ireland reached its highest point, resulting in the development of a Catholic identity which was essentially Irish in its ethnic composition, a substantially Scottish Presbyterian strand, and a politically-dominant Anglican population of largely English origin. But even in the southern provinces of Connacht, Leinster and Munster, the basis of what was to become an independent and highly Catholic state in the twentieth century, as a result of the events of the early modern period different local religious communities were forced into an uneasy co-existence. Outside Ulster, the complicating admixture of Protestant dissent and Scottish ethnicity was much reduced and few localities did not display a large Catholic majority, but the political dominance of the established church ensured at least a thin overlay of Protestants throughout the island, although in places such as parts of Connacht their numbers were extremely insignificant. Sectarian difference did not entail permanent conflict, mutual co-existence was the historical norm rather than the exception, yet the confessional identities were always at least latently antagonistic and when violence erupted it could take extraordinarily virulent forms. In this regard, the middle of the seventeenth century was arguably the period of greatest strife and loss of life, which copper-fastened the process of religious polarisation