City of Dublin

Dublin was the most important economic centre in Ireland, as well as being the seat of government and the home of the law courts, two cathedrals and Ireland’s only university. In the first four decades of the seventeenth century Dublin’s population grew four-fold, reaching perhaps 20,000 by the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1641. At the same time, the city’s trade was booming, raising 41 per cent of the national customs revenue in 1634-40.1 M. Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Belfast, 1994), 31, 35. Such prosperity increased the importance of the Dublin corporation, controlled by a mayor and 12 aldermen, which enjoyed a degree of influence over the government based in Dublin Castle. Such links were reinforced by the social make-up of the corporation. Unlike Cork, Galway and Limerick, before 1641 Dublin was controlled by Protestant New Englishmen, many of whom had official posts or had married into administrative dynasties. This was reflected in the elections for the Irish Parliament of 1634, which saw the return of two government nominees, Nathaniel Catelin and Alderman Richard Barry; in 1640 Barry was joined by the city’s recorder, John Bysse*.2 H. Kearney, Strafford in Ire. (Cambridge 1989), 229; McGrath, Biographical Dict.

The outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641 drew the government and the city authorities still closer together. Dublin was crucial as a government stronghold and a rich source of loans which became vital to the survival of the Protestant interest. In the early 1640s Dublin hosted five regiments of foot and as many as seven troops of horse – over 6,000 men in all.3 SP17/H/7, ff. 87-8; HMC Ormonde, n.s. i. 65-7. In return, the citizens hoped to benefit from physical protection against the Catholic insurgents, and, in the early 1640s at least, the merchants could make easy profits from the increased imports and loans necessitated by the war. The numbers of soldiers reduced considerably after the cessation of arms of September 1643, and while the truce held there was a return to a semblance of normality, as seen in the financial and religious recovery of the city’s cathedrals.4 Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin: a Hist. ed. K. Milne (Dublin, 2000), 205-6. The breakdown of attempts to forge a peace treaty between the royalists and the Confederate Catholics in the summer of 1646 led to a siege of Dublin, and this, with the parliamentarian blockade of the harbour, put enormous strain on the city. The decision of the king’s lord lieutenant, the marquess of Ormond, to surrender the city to Parliament in June 1647, and the success of the new governor, Colonel Michael Jones, in defeating the Confederates at Dungan’s Hill in August, relieved the pressure on Dublin, at least for the time being.

Michael Jones was an Old Protestant by birth, and his approach to ruling Dublin was relatively benign. He was willing to work with senior aldermen, and by September 1647 it was said that ‘all is done as Colonel Jones, the Recorder Bysse and Thomas Tallis advise’; former royalists were tolerated unless suspected of disloyalty; and although the Prayer Book had been officially banned, the Church of Ireland ministers continued to serve without molestation.5 Bodl. Carte 21, ff. 453, 454v, 460; St J.D. Seymour, Puritans in Ire. (Oxford, 1921), 7-8. Jones’s position was made difficult by pressure from the Confederate forces and the failure of the Long Parliament to live up to promises of supplies and reinforcements. As early as September 1647 Jones voiced his concerns at the lack of money and corn, and he soon resorted to punitive measures to keep the garrison from mutiny: by the beginning of 1648 he had established a compulsory loan from the city of £433 every week, and although the rate was later reduced, he complained of ‘living at present on borrowing’.6 TCD, MS 844, ff. 15, 18, 26v, 32. In later months he also resorted to ‘looking into all private stores’ of grain held by the citizens, to keep the army fed.7 TCD, MS 844, f. 77. ‘The low condition of the inhabitants, so much exhausted’, soon led to plots against Jones, who retaliated with the expulsion of the three remaining Catholic aldermen in January 1648.8 TCD, MS 844, ff. 26v, 32. When the city was besieged by Ormond’s forces in June 1649, Jones was alarmed by ‘daily discoveries of treacherous spirits within us’.9 TCD, MS 844, f. 77.

Jones’s victory over Ormond at Rathmines in August 1649, and the arrival of the army of Oliver Cromwell* shortly afterwards, brought Dublin’s deprivations to end, but the presence of large numbers of soldiers caused new difficulties, not least an outbreak of plague in the following year, which, at its height, was killing 1,300 people every week. In 1651 Dublin was described as ‘exceedingly depopulated’ with as many as half the houses lying in ruins, and even in the mid-1650s the assessment levied on the city, amounting £690 a month, was far less than might have been expected.10 Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 78; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 39, 58, 241, 245; An Assessment for Ire. (Dublin, 1654, 1655). In the meantime the corporation was taken over by a group of merchants sympathetic to the commonwealth regime, led by Daniel Hutchinson*, Richard Tighe*, Thomas Hooke and John Preston, who had been excluded from the city elite (notably the influential merchant guild) in earlier years. This group, which monopolized the mayoralty from 1651 until 1656, was closely connected with Samuel Winter’s Independent congregation, and supported by the military governor of Dublin, John Hewson*, and successive lord deputies, Henry Ireton* and Charles Fleetwood*.11 Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV ed. J.T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1894), 9, 33, 51, 69, 82.

The strength of the Independent clique was demonstrated by the election of Daniel Hutchinson as MP for Dublin on 2 August 1654.12 HMC Egmont, i. 553. Their hegemony was, however, challenged by the arrival of Henry Cromwell* as acting governor of Ireland in July 1655. Although Henry Cromwell was initially happy to work with the Independent churches, he also fostered the Presbyterians and former royalists within the city, encouraging the return to power of the merchant guild, and from 1656 the older families were once again able to secure the most important offices in the corporation.13 Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 84; Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 103, 124, 146, 167, 194. The Independents were still an important factor in the elections for the second protectorate Parliament in August 1656, when Richard Tighe was returned, having been ‘recommended to that employment more especially by the most eminent persons of Dr Winter’s congregation’; but Tighe was a more moderate figure than Hutchinson, and his success at the polls may have been due to broader support within the corporation, which agreed to pay his expenses at Westminster.14 TSP v. 477; Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 103.

The power of the Dublin Independents had broken down by 1658, when Winter and others rejected Henry Cromwell’s calls for religious unity. The elections for the 1659 Parliament marked a radical change of direction, with the return of the closet royalist, Arthur Annesley, subverting the usual convention of electing a member of the corporation. Annesley, who had leased property in the borough since 1657, seems to have been a popular, as well as a politic, choice: in December 1658, shortly after his return, the ‘commons’ of Dublin petitioned the corporation to pay £100 to cover Annesley’s costs at Westminster, and this was agreed by the corporation.15 Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 121, 126, 153. In the summer of 1659, after the fall of the protectorate, Annesley was sent to England as an Old Protestant agent, paid for by a number of donations, including £20 from the city.16 Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 193. The citizens stood by during the military coup of December 1659, which brought Dublin under Old Protestant control, and in the elections for the General Convention in early 1660 the city proved very conservative, returning its recorder, John Bysse, and a member of the old ruling elite, Alderman William Smith.17 Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 199-201. The restoration of Charles II was broadly welcomed in Dublin, which responded in the elections to the Irish Parliament in 1661 by returning Smith and their new recorder, William Davies – neither of whom were tainted with parliamentarian sympathies.18 CJI i. 589. Aided by such shows of loyalty, in the later seventeenth century Dublin was able to increase its dominance as a trading and administrative centre; but, in what was perhaps the most enduring legacy of Cromwellian rule, the city also became known for its strong dissenting tradition.19 Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 88.