Castles and colonists

An archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland

Eric Klingelhofer

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780719082467
• eBook ISBN: 9781847797735
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Castles and colonists is the first book to examine life in the leading province of Elizabeth I's nascent empire. Klinglehofer shows how an Ireland of colonising English farmers and displaced Irish 'savages' are ruled by an imported Protestant elite from their fortified manors and medieval castles.
Richly illustrated, it displays how a generation of English 'adventurers' including such influential intellectual and political figures as Spenser and Ralegh, tried to create a new kind of England, one that gave full opportunity to their Renaissance tastes and ambitions.
Based on decades of research, Castles and colonisers details how archaelogy had revealed the traces of a short-lived, but significant culture which has been, until now, eclipsed in ideological conflicts between Tudor queens, Hapsburg hegemony and native Irish traditions,

1

Archaeology and Elizabeth’s empire

The marvelous Priviledge of Brytish Impire … wealth and strength, foreign love and feare, and triumphant fame, the whole world over.

John Dee, 1577¹

This chapter examines the role of archaeology in the study of the Elizabethan colonization of southern Ireland. Initial foreign settlement by early modern European states, or by their authorized commercial organizations, are usefully characterized as the ‘proto-colonial phase’ of the epoch of modern colonial imperialism. For European overseas activities, the proto-colonial period may be generalized as c. 1450–1650. The ‘planting’ of English colonists in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is recognized as an important step in English colonialism and a turning point in Irish history, but twentieth-century politics and policies discouraged its study.² The colonist in Irish nationalist history was no more than a ‘predatory Protestant’.³ After recent revisionist work by historians, however, such publications as The Illustrated Archaeology of Ireland have recognized the significance of the proto-colonial or ‘Plantation’ period, and archaeological research on the Munster colony in the Irish Republic has followed the initiative of work undertaken on the Ulster colony in Northern Ireland.⁴

Proto-colonial activities

The context of colonization

Elizabethan colonization is often viewed as something outside of – separate from – the overall course of European expansion. On the east side of the Atlantic, it was once seen as an expression of the British Empire to come, implicitly a civilizing force bringing the benefits of English language, laws, and common decency. Looking at the domestic conflicts of the Stuart period, an alternate view held that Elizabeth’s overseas enterprises were spawned by a militant Protestantism defending England from a global Catholic conspiracy. On the west side of the Atlantic, colonization was believed to have stemmed from an ideological conflict between absolutism and democracy, as current assumptions about the political ideals of Pilgrim and Puritan ‘fathers’ were projected onto an earlier, Elizabethan generation.⁵

Late twentieth-century scholarship asserts that the motives and methods leading to early English colonies differed little from the forces behind French, Dutch, Spanish, or even Swedish colonization. European power was expanding, and at the same time its constituent parts, nation states and dynastic states, were in constant competition within Europe and overseas.⁶ Colonies, even more than commercial ventures, were strategic responses to perceived threats. They were part of the chess game of dynastic and proto-nationalistic competition. Like war to von Clausewitz, colonization was an extension of politics in Machiavellian late Renaissance. But poorly developed economies, a rudimentary state apparatus, and the non-stop competition among nations meant that colonization was haphazardly implemented, even when a firm policy was formulated. Limited resources led to a constant juggling of priorities.

For Tudor England, one can make three observations. First, colonization was pragmatic and was often proposed as an opportunistic response to new conditions. Voyages of discovery, new economic directions, and international politics, all could stimulate colonial ventures. Religious proselytization was often touted as a reason to colonize, but the Church establishment had little real involvement in overseas expansion. Second, all Tudor colonial enterprises were related to some degree. There may have been differences in distances involved and the types of colonization, but not among decision-making and patronage groups. These comprised the Court, military adventurers, and the commercial investors of London and other major ports, in varying combinations. Third, military considerations always played a role in colonization, if only for the immediate defence of the settlers, but often at a strategic level. As such, colonizing voyages should be considered moves in an imperial strategy, and the colonies themselves as part of an Elizabethan Empire. This proto-colonial polity was of course ephemeral, existing in theory and on paper – and occasionally in fact – as colonies appeared and disappeared. Yet the efforts to establish an English overseas empire were no less real than those that led to the British Empire. John Dee’s quote (above) assumes England’s control of Ireland and domination of Scotland as the basis for a globally expanding ‘Brytish Impire’.

The great achievement of Elizabeth’s reign was in maintaining the status quo regarding England’s possessions and security; it projected English power only momentarily. Her failure to reclaim Calais under the terms of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis was perhaps balanced by English control for twenty years of the three Dutch ‘cautionary towns’ of Flushing, Brill, and Ramekins. Her expansion of the navy and its use by the Sea Hawks to attack Spanish shipping and seaports compelled Philip to divert imperial resources in costly defensive measures. In this strategic competition, colonizing enterprises in the Arctic, Ireland, Newfoundland, Virginia, and Guiana were pieces in an essentially defensive game on the part of the queen. Certainly that is how James I acted when he permitted Raleigh to go to Guiana under such conditions that the king would succeed either by Raleigh’s acquiring for England a gold-rich territory without challenging Spain, or by his failure and execution, and the consequently improved relations with Spain. In the game of empire, a colony was as much a chess-piece as Raleigh.

The security achieved in Elizabeth’s reign, and in that of her successor James, created a new level of commercial activity and new organizations for capital formation, the chartered joint stock companies. E. P. Cheney went so far as to claim that ‘the whole advance of English discovery, commerce, and colonization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was due not to individuals but to the efforts of corporate bodies.’⁷ The Crown and the City enjoyed a symbiotic relationship; the government received revenue from granting charters, as well as enhanced power in its ability to reward its friends, and the business community received protected monopolies and, less often, direct royal investment in cash or shipping. Ireland, however, was halfway between a home market and a colonial-commercial venture. Cheney noted the close relationship between the personalities involved in Ireland and the overseas commerce and colonization, like Thomas Smith and Walter Raleigh. Furthermore, schemes for groups or ‘consorts’ of investors to carry out settlement in Elizabethan Ireland presaged the later ‘company’ colonies in Virginia, Bermuda, and Ulster.

One must recognize, then, that for the English Crown, transatlantic colonization was not the colonialism of later political philosophies, but one of many diplomatic, military, and commercial tools. Cisatlantic colonization – in Ireland – was one option among other policies to protect England by controlling the archipelago. Although the successful Jacobean planting of the northern province of Ulster was and still is a most important element in the history of the British Isles, there were several previous colonial attempts in Ireland, the greatest of which concerned Munster province in the southwest of the island.

The collapse of the Munster colony in 1598, and the ensuing years of hard conquest by Elizabeth’s generals, was due to the same errors of policy and perception that in the twentieth century would lead to a widespread rejection of English rule. Nevertheless, despite support from the Crown that was changeable at best and financial backing from commercial sources that demanded quick returns from investments, colonies in Munster and Carolina, Baffin Island and Trinidad did materialize. These serious attempts were physically undertaken, while places like Newfoundland and California were briefly visited and witnessed only the flourish of flag and drum. The universal failure or ‘loss’ of Elizabethan colonies was largely due to grossly inadequate supplies. This in turn was caused by insufficient knowledge of the localities and their inhabitants. Perhaps even more importantly, English understanding of colonization itself was poor. From lack of national experience, they sought guidance from Classical sources, Renaissance writings, and the real presence of the Spanish Empire.

Evidence for Elizabethan colonization exists: archival, pictorial, and physical. The archival survives in the written form of documents, charters, reports, and letters. Scholars such as David Quinn and Nicholas Canny have diligently sifted through the material; rarely do new items come to light. Pictorial evidence survives as a handful of drawings of colonial activities and a larger number of maps and picture maps, often in the form of prints accompanying published accounts. Again, this material has been widely published, though some individual maps may still be unrecognized or not well understood. It is the physical evidence – the standing, preserved, and buried structures and objects associated with the Elizabethan colonization – that has thus far been little touched and offers the most rewarding avenue for future research. To address Elizabethan colonial imperialism in Ireland, one must first consider its contemporary activities across the Atlantic.

America

Outside Europe, Englishmen sought and sometimes received Elizabeth’s backing in planting colonies from the Arctic to the Equator. If successful, they would have presaged by more than a century the British Empire’s domination of North America and effective presence in the Caribbean. It would have been a powerful counter-balance to Philip’s Latin America colossus. But her transatlantic empire failed to materialize; not one of her colonies succeeded. If one cannot claim that Elizabeth created them as mere pawns in her great Hapsburg war, to be sacrificed for the greater security of England, neither should one claim some overarching plan of westward colonization; all evidence indicates that each effort was opportunistic and grew out of earlier discoveries and immediate expectations.

Martin Frobisher returned in 1578 to the edge of the Arctic, to Baffin Island, which he believed was at the entrance to a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to Asia. Contemporary voyages eastward into the Russian Arctic had found a tenuous trade route south to Moscow, but little opportunity to advance further into Siberia. Members of the Muscovy Company backed Frobisher’s expeditions and were pleased to hear of the likely passage to the Orient, but were overwhelmed by the reported discovery of untouched gold deposits. The third expedition, well funded by the public, planned to exploit this ore and set up a permanent colony at the site, a frigid rock named Countess of Warwick Island, now known by its Inuit name, Kodlunarn. Despite careful planning, the expedition faced the real problems of survival in the far north. Terrifying storms scattered the fleet, sending supplies and prefabricated housing to the bottom of the sea. The sparse native population proved hostile, and the island’s only fortification comprised a trench and bank across the neck of a small, cliff-faced promontory. Unsurprisingly, many questioned the plan to stay over the winter. Though some of the hundred soldiers and miners did volunteer, thinking of the riches they would be sitting on, it is to the credit of the otherwise rash commander that he refused to leave these the men to an obvious doom. One building was constructed, out of local stone and mortar, as an experiment to see how it would survive a winter. But the English never returned to find out. The tons of rocks they mined under such hardships proved to be iron pyrites – fool’s gold. The project yielded no return at all for the investment, and Elizabeth jailed the leaders for what the public assumed was a vast swindle.⁸

In the mid-nineteenth century the American explorer Charles Francis Hall found Frobisher’s site, and in the late twentieth century, fieldwork by Canadian and US teams corroborated his findings.⁹ The foundations of the colonists’ house remained, the Inuits having removed the items left within and others presumably buried outside. Some pieces of sea-coal and fragments of Renaissance stove tile indicated how it had been heated in a land without wood. One area was identif...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Archaeology and Elizabeth’s empire
• 2 Elizabethan fortifications in Ireland
• 3 Colonial settlement
• 4 Vernacular architecture
• 5 The archaeology of Kilcolman Castle
• 6 Spenserian architecture in Ireland
• 7 Conclusions
• Select bibliography
• Index