Cos. Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan

The three counties of Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan made up the south-western part of Ulster, bordering on the mountains of Connaught and the lowlands of Leinster and the Pale. They formed an important strategic area which was, until the end of the sixteenth century, controlled by Gaelic Irish families of McGuire or Maguire (in County Fermanagh), O’Reilly (in County Cavan) and McMahon (in County Monaghan). Despite the importance of the area to national security, attempts to control it were ineffective, and plantation schemes were patchy and incomplete: Monaghan, planted in the 1590s by the earl of Essex and others, was still considered ‘the most barbarous, poor and despicable [county] in the kingdom’ in 1641; only parts of Cavan were included in the 1609-13 Ulster plantation; and even the plantation in Fermanagh, the most comprehensive of the three, could not compare with those in Londonderry or Tyrone. CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 278. This was in part a matter of poor land quality: in the mid-seventeenth century Fermanagh was assessed at the fairly modest rate of £450 over three months, while Cavan and Monaghan together yielded little more than a third of that sum. An Assessment for Ire. (Dublin, 1654).

Despite the difficulties, by the 1630s a number of English and Scottish families had become well established in the three counties, including the Blayneys, Coles, Cootes, Culmes, Caulfields, Hamiltons and Humes, but although these planters controlled the militia, they had to share power in the civil administration with the traditional Gaelic landowners and Old English families such as the Dillons, Nugents, Talbots and Dowdalls. CSP Ire. 1615-25, pp. 222-6, 439; 1625-32, pp. 254-5. The 1634 elections for the Irish Parliament reveal an uneasy compromise: of the six county seats, the settlers secured half, with Sir William Cole and Sir John Hume representing County Fermanagh, and Sir Stephen Butler being returned for Cavan; but they had to share the honours with the Old English Lucas Dillon, who was also elected for Cavan, while both knights of the shire for Monaghan were McMahons. CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 63-5; H. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland (Cambridge, 1989), 252-3, 257-8. In the 1640 elections the McMahons had lost ground in Monaghan, where New Englishmen were returned for both seats, and newcomers also secured two of the four seats in Cavan and Fermanagh. The strength of the Gaelic families was still considerable, however: Fermanagh also elected Rory McGuire, and Cavan returned Philip McHugh O’Reilly. McGrath, Biographical Dict.

The Gaelic communities in the three counties were at the forefront of the Irish rebellion of October 1641. The original conspirators in Dublin and Ulster included the two local MPs, Philip McHugh O’Reilly and Rory McGuire. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 48n. The risings in the three counties, which followed soon afterwards, were highly organised, with McGuires, McMahons and O’Reillys working together; most of the major towns in the region were taken within days of the start of the rebellion. CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 347-8; M. Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Dublin, 1994), 216-20. In the next few years Sir William Cole managed to defend Enniskillen and to extend the Protestant-controlled areas in County Fermanagh, with the support of the Laggan forces from County Donegal. Cole sided with Parliament in 1644 and thereafter worked with Sir Charles Coote* and the Protestants of northern Connaught. C. McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh and its borders, c.1640-c.1666 (Ph.D thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2008), 206, 214-7, 237-8, 244-7, 260-66. Apart from the Enniskillen enclave, most of the region remained firmly under Irish Confederate control. In December 1646, for instance, it was said that the rebel stronghold in the north of the island was ‘in part of Cavan and Monaghan [where] many of the Irish do rest’. HMC Portland, i. 399. When the Laggan army declared for Charles II in January 1649, Cole was ejected from Enniskillen, which became the focus of royalist resistance in the region. McCoy, ‘Fermanagh’, 284-99.

With its difficult terrain and complicated allegiances, it was no surprise that the south west of Ulster proved one of the most difficult parts of Ireland for Oliver Cromwell’s* men to subdue in the early 1650s. In the spring of 1651 Sir Charles Coote led a raid into Cavan and Monaghan, and garrisoned Monaghan town, but was unable to bring the Irish to battle, and the royalists continued to hold out in Enniskillen. Mercurius Politicus no. 42 (20-7 Mar. 1651), 681 (E.626.13). Later that year the veteran English commanders Colonels John Hewson* and Robert Venables* failed to control Cavan, ‘which county is the principal fastness and harbour of the enemy in these parts’, and it was only in the spring and summer of 1652 that Monaghan, Fermanagh and the ‘fastnesses of Cavan’ were finally cleared of enemy forces. Ludlow, Mems. i. 327-8, 491; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 12, 182; Mercurius Politicus no. 109 (1-8 July 1652), 1710 (E.662.2). The continuing threat of unrest prompted the commonwealth regime to set up garrisons across the region, to push for a speedy plantation, and to amalgamate the three counties into a single precinct – centred on the County Cavan town of Belturbet – before the end of 1652. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 274; ii. 294; HMC Portland, i. 625; Ludlow, Mems. i. 327-8.

The Cromwellian victory brought the transfer of power from Catholic to Protestant which had remained incomplete in 1641. Yet on the ground the changes were less dramatic. The transplantation of the Irish, carefully planned at Dublin, does not seem to have been carried out thoroughly in the locality: in 1656, long after the deadline, the government pressed Colonel Thomas Cooper II* to remove the Irish who still remained in counties Cavan and Monaghan; and the census of 1659 showed that in County Fermanagh over three-quarters of the inhabitants were native Irish, while in County Monaghan the proportion rose to nine out of ten. Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 602; Irish Census, 1659, p. xiii. Those Irish landowners who were removed were not replaced by Cromwellian soldiers, rather by officers of the pre-1649 Ulster regiments (especially those formerly under the command of Sir Charles Coote) disbanded in the summer of 1653. Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 399. It was these Old Protestants who dominated the assessment commissions from 1654, and influenced the elections for the counties in the protectorate Parliaments. An Assessment for Ire. (Dublin, 1654, 1655, 1657); Cavan: Essays on the Hist. of an Irish County ed. R. Gillespie (Dublin, 1995), 23-5; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 676, 800.

Although the surviving indenture, from August 1654, is badly damaged, the list of electors includes Thomas White and Edward Philpott of Cavan, and William Davis and John Cheslin of Fermanagh, and this suggests that the electorate was made up of local landowners. C219/44, unfol. In all three elections, the single MP returned for the combined counties was a member of a long-established settler family: Captain Richard Blayney, brother of Lord Blayney of Monaghan, in 1654; Colonel John Cole, son of the late Sir William Cole of Enniskillen, in 1656; and Colonel Thomas Coote, brother of Sir Charles Coote and a major landowner in County Cavan, in 1659. At least two of the three MPs had seen military service under Sir Charles Coote, whose electoral influence covered much of Connaught and Ulster. The Protestant interest also dominated the elections for the General Convention of March 1660, which saw Sir John Cole, Richard Blayney and Thomas Coote returned for counties Fermanagh, Monaghan and Cavan respectively, partnered with three other members who were either Old Protestants or had married into settler families. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 182-5.

After the restoration of monarchy, the Coote family increased their landed interests on the Cavan-Monaghan border; but Charles II was equally responsive to petitions by former Old English landowners such as Lucas Dillon and Edward Dowdall, who reclaimed their lost estates to the detriment of the Old Protestants who had cashed-in on the Cromwellian settlement. CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 55, 171. The king also advanced the interests of the former royalist, Viscount Montgomery of the Ards (now earl of Mount Alexander), who was created governor of Fermanagh and Cavan in November 1660. CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 78, 442. These changes did not do much to reduce the power of the older families, however, and the elections for the 1661 Irish Parliament followed the same pattern as previous years: County Cavan returned Thomas Coote; County Fermanagh chose Sir John Cole; and County Monaghan elected Richard Blayney. CJI i. 589-90, 593.