The city of Cork and the town of Youghal occupied similar harbour sites accessible to the south coast of co. Cork, some 30 miles apart. With a population of about 5,500 in 1641, Cork was five times larger than its neighbour, but size did not necessarily equate with economic importance. M.
Westmeath, Longford and King’s Counties formed the north-western part of the province of Leinster, separated from Connaught by the River Shannon. Low-lying and poorly drained, the land in all three counties was of mixed quality, with good arable and pasture existing between large areas of bog. Commentators differed as to the agricultural worth of the area.
Counties Kildare and Wicklow, to the east and south of Dublin, were very different in geographical and social character. Kildare was a fertile, low-lying county, watered by the upper reaches of the River Barrow, and had long been an integral part of the English Pale. The Fitzgerald family, seated at Maynooth, had dominated the county until the attainder of the 9th earl of Kildare following his rebellion of 1534; thereafter, the Old English gentry had extended their influence, with the Eustaces, Sherlocks and Berminghams becoming prominent. Description of Ireland, 1598 ed. E.
Counties Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon, which formed the northern and eastern part of the province of Connaught, stretching from the River Shannon to the Atlantic, were geographically remote and economically backward in the early modern period. Much of Roscommon was inhospitable - projectors earlier in the century found that even Scottish settlers refused to rent land in some parts of the county. CSP Ire. 1606-8, pp. 9, 131, 146. The surveyors of the mid-1650s dismissed large areas of Sligo and Leitrim as ‘in general coarse and wet’. Civil Survey, x.
Although situated in separate counties, and differing considerably in size and economic importance, in the early seventeenth century the city of Waterford and the town of Clonmel had much in common. They were both on the River Suir, and the bulk of Clonmel’s trade was conducted via the port of Waterford and its deep-water harbour.
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. M.
The Nominated Assembly was the first interregnum Parliament to include Members from Ireland, in an attempt to represent the ‘commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland’ as a whole. Ludlow, Mems. i.
The County Cork towns of Bandon and Kinsale were linked geographically and economically by the River Bandon. At the mouth of the river lay Kinsale, an ancient fishing town made strategically important by its narrow natural harbour. Although of secondary trading importance to Cork and Youghal, Kinsale’s prosperity increased in the mid-1630s when Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) chose the port as his naval base on the south coast of Ireland. CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 83-4; Strafforde Lttrs. i.
The western counties of Galway and Mayo – which contained some of the most mountainous and inhospitable land in the entire island – had never been subjected to the same degree of English settlement as the rest of Ireland, or even the rest of Connaught.
The three counties of Londonderry, Donegal and Tyrone, in the north west of Ulster, included some of the most remote and inhospitable country in Ireland. Donegal, in the west, contained some good land, but also considerable areas of ‘mountain, bog and unprofitable ground’; in the sixteenth century it had been dominated by the O’Donnells, captains of Tyrconnell, who ruled the area from Donegal Castle until their demise in 1607. Description of Ire. Anno 1598 ed. E. Hogan (1878), 29-31; Civil Survey, iii.
