Painted by James Northcote, this portrait now resides in the Houses of Parliament Art Collection, Westminster. It depicts the Bill of Rights being given Royal Assent by William III and Mary II on 16th December 1689. The Bill of Rights firmly established the principles of frequent parliaments, free elections and freedom of speech within Parliament – known today as Parliamentary Privilege. It also includes: no right of taxation without Parliamentary agreement; freedom from government interference; the right of petition; and just treatment by the courts. The main principles of the Bill of Rights are still in force today and cited in legal cases. They were used as a model for the US Bill of Rights, and partially influenced both the 'UN Declaration of Human Rights' and the 'European Convention on Human Rights'.
Our Protestant History
Ulster’s original inhabitants were the Cruthin. During the 5th century AD, they came under consistent attack from the Celts of southern Ireland and were eventually driven out. The Cruthin therefore fled east and settled in Scotland.
Serious English involvement in Ireland did not begin until the 1100s. For centuries there had been much dispute between the Roman Catholic Church (which held sway throughout Europe) and Ireland’s own Celtic Church. The Celtic Church was a strong, evangelical church and it was completely separate from the Church of Rome. It was famous for producing great Christian leaders like St. Patrick, St. Columba and Bishop Degen. It was, like the Waldensian Churches of Southern Europe, "a Protestant church that existed long before the times of the Protestant Reformation". Pope Hadrian IV disliked the Celtic Church, especially its refusal to submit to Roman Catholicism. Therefore he issued a special decree (called a 'papal bull'), giving King Henry II of England the right to occupy Ireland in order to bring it under the power of the pope. In the 1170s, Henry carried out the pope’s instructions, occupied Ireland, crushed the Celtic Church and forced the Irish people to become Roman Catholics.
For a number of centuries thereafter, English rule in Ireland was haphazard and superficial, largely because England was so far away and, at any given moment, her kings frequently had more pressing concerns nearer home. Ulster was thus barely touched and remained Ireland’s most unruly province.
All of this changed during the Reformation however. Whilst England converted to Protestantism, sadly Ireland did not. This fact was not lost on England’s enemies and, in the early days of the 17th century, Spain attempted to use Ireland as a base from which to attack England, landing at Kinsale in 1603. The Irish Roman Catholic rulers of Ulster (the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell) joined forces with the Spanish army in its fight against Protestant Britain. They were defeated however and, shortly afterwards, fled Ulster (along with other Ulster-based Roman Catholic landowners) for the continent – never to return.
Due to the fact that the Earls and their followers had previously pledged loyalty to the English crown, only to turn against it when they got the chance – their lands (i.e. vast swathes of the province of Ulster) were rightly declared forfeit. Faced with this golden opportunity, England seized her chance to subdue Ulster and settled part of it with loyal Protestants from England and the Scottish Lowlands. This happened in 1606 - and would be forever known in history as ‘The Ulster Plantation’.
The Scottish settlers who took part in the Ulster Plantation came from the exact same Lowlands area to which the Cruthin (i.e. Ulster’s original people) had fled and settled 1000 years previously. Due to the feudal nature of society at that time (it being a pre-Reformation era), the Cruthin and their descendants had not moved from the area to which they had been driven by the Celts. Therefore, the Scottish part of the Ulster Plantation was not 'an invasion’ or 'an occupation’, it was ‘a homecoming’ - composed of the direct descendants of the Cruthin (i.e. Ulster’s original, pre-Celtic inhabitants).
At the same time as the Ulster Plantation, two wealthy Scottish business magnates (Hamilton and Montgomery) bought up vast amounts of land in Counties Antrim and Down. Thanks to this private business venture, a numerically extended and much stronger Plantation presence was established in these specific areas. And the lasting effects of this venture, based upon the private purchase of land, are still with us to this very day – because it is these particular areas of Ulster that have (numerically speaking) remained the most Protestant, evangelical, conservative, loyalist and prosperous parts of the province.
In the decades following 1606; our devout, hardworking plantation forefathers began to put down roots and transform the hitherto relatively uncivilised land of Ulster into a veritable hothouse of thrift, industry, progress, order and missionary activity.
In 1641 however, that all ended and their worst nightmare came true. At a time of great political instability in England and Scotland, Irish Roman Catholics took their chance and staged a vicious rebellion aimed at eradicating every single Protestant on the island. This holocaust led to the slow, cruel and painful deaths of well over 100,000 men, women and children (even Roman Catholic sources admit that this figure is probably too low). No mercy whatsoever was shown to women, the young or the elderly. Those very Roman Catholics who led the massacre and sanctioned the worst of its excesses were previously regarded by the Ulster Protestants as being ‘friendly’ and ‘moderate’. The priests of the Roman Catholic church were, not for the last time in Irish history, leading and urging on this orgy of rape and slaughter, assuring the Roman Catholics that their genocidal conduct was ‘murder without sin’. Like Irish republicans in the early 20th century, they believed that "England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity".
In laying out the aims and objectives of their rebellion, Sir Phelim O'Neill (leader of the Irish RCs) said that he would "never leave off the work he had begun until Mass was said in every church in Ireland, and that a Protestant should not live in the land, be he of what nation he would".
In the minds of many historians, the ‘Ulster Holocaust’ of 1641 gave meaning to the words of prominent Roman Catholic thinker, Louis Veuillot, when he said: “When you Protestants are in a majority, we ask for religious liberty in the name of your principles. When we are in a majority, we refuse it to you in the name of ours.”
The events of 1641 burned a very severe impression deep into the hearts of Protestant people and the pages of Protestant history. Great works of historical martyrology, like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, ensured that the plight of Ulster’s slaughtered Protestant population would not be forgotten. Thousands of documents detailing the events of 1641 are preserved to this very day in the archives of Trinity College Dublin.
Emerging out of the turbulent decade of the 1640s, with whole swathes of Ireland completely devoid of many hitherto thriving (but defenceless and therefore vulnerable) local Protestant populations - Ulster Protestants learned their painful lesson well and took note of the words of leading Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas, who said: "Though heretics (i.e. Protestants) must not be tolerated because they deserve it, we must bear with them till, by the second admonition, they may be brought back to the faith of the church...those who, after a second admonition, remain obstinate to their errors, must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular power to be exterminated."
The Ulster Holocaust of 1641 became known in history as ‘The 1641 Massacre’. It finally ended in 1649 when the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, came over to Ireland, decisively crushed the Roman Catholic rebels and restored order. After his conduct at the Siege of Drogheda in 1649, the entire Irish Roman Catholic population realised that the game was up and Cromwell meant business - this, and this alone, ensured that their latest attempted holocaust of Ulster's Protestant population came to an end.
After this defeat at the hands of Cromwell, the priests of Rome and their followers went to ground – patiently biding their time, waiting for the next big opportunity to try and eradicate the unsuspecting Protestant population of Ulster.
In 1688, James II (the Roman Catholic king of England) was deposed by the great Protestant hero, King William III (Prince of Orange). In an attempt to regain his throne, James came to Ireland and was immediately welcomed by the Irish Roman Catholic population. It was his plan to conquer Ireland, then invade Scotland, and then (when Scotland was conquered) invade England, conquer it and re-take the throne.
James and his followers set out to eradicate every single Protestant on the island of Ireland. Faced with this naked Roman Catholic aggression, the Protestants of Ulster refused to give in. They stood firm and courageously rallied to the cause of King William. Sensing the doom that was planned for them, they fled from all over Ireland to make their ‘last stand’ at Londonderry and Enniskillen. With virtually every still-living Protestant hemmed in and concentrated into these two areas, the Roman Catholic troops loyal to James intended to butcher and starve our ancestors to death. The Roman Catholic Holocaust that had failed in 1641 now looked like it was going to succeed in 1688 – all they needed in order for it to succeed was for the Protestants to lower their guard, go soft, lose heart, give up the fight, compromise and surrender.
Fortunately for us however, our Protestant ancestors saw through Rome's agenda and brushed aside the pleas of weak leaders like Colonel Lundy. As a result, they stood firm at Enniskillen and Londonderry, and issued the defiant battle cry of ‘No Surrender’. Those who made their stand within the walls of Londonderry (30,000 initially - 20,000 by the end of April 1689) suffered extreme hardship during a 105 day siege. James’ defeat at the Siege of Londonderry ensured that the tide of history had now turned decisively against him. Whether James and his followers realised it or not, all hope of them successfully defeating King William and re-taking the throne was gone and buried at the Ferryquay Gate of Londonderry when - on the 18th December 1688 - 13 brave, young apprentice boys closed the city gate against his Roman Catholic army.
The names of the 13 apprentice boys are as follows: Henry Campsie, Robert Morrison, James Steward, Alex Cunningham, Alexander Irwin, James Spike, John Conningham, Robert Sherrard, Daniel Sherrard, William Cairns, Samuel Hunt, William Crookshanks and Samuel Harvy.
The Siege of Londonderry was the longest and bloodiest siege in British military history. It started on Saturday 18th December 1688. On Monday 18th April 1689, a sustained heavy bombardment of the city began and a relentless military assault was unleashed against its Protestant population. 105 days later, on Thursday 28th July 1689, with one third of its population (i.e. 6,600 people) dead and the other two thirds either starving to death or sick and dying – the hand of Almighty God moved in the affairs of world history, their enemies were defeated and the city was relieved. God had answered their prayers, and the great victory for which they had longed finally came.
John Hunter, one of those who survived the siege, wrote the following account in his diary: "The famine was so great that many a man, woman, and child died from want of food. I myself was so weak from hunger, that I fell under my musket one morning as I was going to the walls; yet God gave me strength to continue all night at my post there, and enabled me to act the part of a soldier as if I had been as strong as ever...yet my face was blackened with hunger...I had hardly any heart to speak or walk; and, yet when the enemy was coming, as many a time they did to storm the walls, then...my former strength returned to me. I am sure it was the Lord who kept the city, and none else; for there were many of us that could hardly stand on our feet before the enemy attacked ...Indeed, it was never the poor, starved men that were in Derry that kept it, but the mighty God of Jacob, to whom be praise forever and ever."
Within a year of lifting the great siege of Londonderry, King William III landed with his army at Carrickfergus. Seeing this, James and his weakened army retreated south towards Dublin and made their last stand at the Battle of Boyne, where they were defeated. More defeats followed at Aughrim, Limerick, Cork and Kinsale.
Realising that his cause was lost, James fled to France where he died in exile.
The Irish Roman Catholic population, who gave such loyalty to James and sacrificed so much for him, felt deeply hurt and betrayed by his decision to flee. For that reason, many Irish Roman Catholics came to refer to Londonderry as "James' Graveyard", and James himself as "Séamus an Chaca" (a derogatory phrase which, for reasons of taste, will remain untranslated).
With James now defeated - King William’s Glorious Revolution, its historic Bill of Rights and the Williamite Settlement were now secure. The Protestant succession was in place, civil liberty was enshrined and a decidedly constitutional form of government (with solid checks and balances) was established. From this position of divine blessing, military prowess, societal freedom and clearly defined national sovereignty, Britain sailed forward into a bright future of Empire, deepened spirituality, territorial expansion, increased prosperity, intellectual advance, social progress, moral development and enlightened global leadership.
Serious English involvement in Ireland did not begin until the 1100s. For centuries there had been much dispute between the Roman Catholic Church (which held sway throughout Europe) and Ireland’s own Celtic Church. The Celtic Church was a strong, evangelical church and it was completely separate from the Church of Rome. It was famous for producing great Christian leaders like St. Patrick, St. Columba and Bishop Degen. It was, like the Waldensian Churches of Southern Europe, "a Protestant church that existed long before the times of the Protestant Reformation". Pope Hadrian IV disliked the Celtic Church, especially its refusal to submit to Roman Catholicism. Therefore he issued a special decree (called a 'papal bull'), giving King Henry II of England the right to occupy Ireland in order to bring it under the power of the pope. In the 1170s, Henry carried out the pope’s instructions, occupied Ireland, crushed the Celtic Church and forced the Irish people to become Roman Catholics.
For a number of centuries thereafter, English rule in Ireland was haphazard and superficial, largely because England was so far away and, at any given moment, her kings frequently had more pressing concerns nearer home. Ulster was thus barely touched and remained Ireland’s most unruly province.
All of this changed during the Reformation however. Whilst England converted to Protestantism, sadly Ireland did not. This fact was not lost on England’s enemies and, in the early days of the 17th century, Spain attempted to use Ireland as a base from which to attack England, landing at Kinsale in 1603. The Irish Roman Catholic rulers of Ulster (the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell) joined forces with the Spanish army in its fight against Protestant Britain. They were defeated however and, shortly afterwards, fled Ulster (along with other Ulster-based Roman Catholic landowners) for the continent – never to return.
Due to the fact that the Earls and their followers had previously pledged loyalty to the English crown, only to turn against it when they got the chance – their lands (i.e. vast swathes of the province of Ulster) were rightly declared forfeit. Faced with this golden opportunity, England seized her chance to subdue Ulster and settled part of it with loyal Protestants from England and the Scottish Lowlands. This happened in 1606 - and would be forever known in history as ‘The Ulster Plantation’.
The Scottish settlers who took part in the Ulster Plantation came from the exact same Lowlands area to which the Cruthin (i.e. Ulster’s original people) had fled and settled 1000 years previously. Due to the feudal nature of society at that time (it being a pre-Reformation era), the Cruthin and their descendants had not moved from the area to which they had been driven by the Celts. Therefore, the Scottish part of the Ulster Plantation was not 'an invasion’ or 'an occupation’, it was ‘a homecoming’ - composed of the direct descendants of the Cruthin (i.e. Ulster’s original, pre-Celtic inhabitants).
At the same time as the Ulster Plantation, two wealthy Scottish business magnates (Hamilton and Montgomery) bought up vast amounts of land in Counties Antrim and Down. Thanks to this private business venture, a numerically extended and much stronger Plantation presence was established in these specific areas. And the lasting effects of this venture, based upon the private purchase of land, are still with us to this very day – because it is these particular areas of Ulster that have (numerically speaking) remained the most Protestant, evangelical, conservative, loyalist and prosperous parts of the province.
In the decades following 1606; our devout, hardworking plantation forefathers began to put down roots and transform the hitherto relatively uncivilised land of Ulster into a veritable hothouse of thrift, industry, progress, order and missionary activity.
In 1641 however, that all ended and their worst nightmare came true. At a time of great political instability in England and Scotland, Irish Roman Catholics took their chance and staged a vicious rebellion aimed at eradicating every single Protestant on the island. This holocaust led to the slow, cruel and painful deaths of well over 100,000 men, women and children (even Roman Catholic sources admit that this figure is probably too low). No mercy whatsoever was shown to women, the young or the elderly. Those very Roman Catholics who led the massacre and sanctioned the worst of its excesses were previously regarded by the Ulster Protestants as being ‘friendly’ and ‘moderate’. The priests of the Roman Catholic church were, not for the last time in Irish history, leading and urging on this orgy of rape and slaughter, assuring the Roman Catholics that their genocidal conduct was ‘murder without sin’. Like Irish republicans in the early 20th century, they believed that "England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity".
In laying out the aims and objectives of their rebellion, Sir Phelim O'Neill (leader of the Irish RCs) said that he would "never leave off the work he had begun until Mass was said in every church in Ireland, and that a Protestant should not live in the land, be he of what nation he would".
In the minds of many historians, the ‘Ulster Holocaust’ of 1641 gave meaning to the words of prominent Roman Catholic thinker, Louis Veuillot, when he said: “When you Protestants are in a majority, we ask for religious liberty in the name of your principles. When we are in a majority, we refuse it to you in the name of ours.”
The events of 1641 burned a very severe impression deep into the hearts of Protestant people and the pages of Protestant history. Great works of historical martyrology, like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, ensured that the plight of Ulster’s slaughtered Protestant population would not be forgotten. Thousands of documents detailing the events of 1641 are preserved to this very day in the archives of Trinity College Dublin.
Emerging out of the turbulent decade of the 1640s, with whole swathes of Ireland completely devoid of many hitherto thriving (but defenceless and therefore vulnerable) local Protestant populations - Ulster Protestants learned their painful lesson well and took note of the words of leading Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas, who said: "Though heretics (i.e. Protestants) must not be tolerated because they deserve it, we must bear with them till, by the second admonition, they may be brought back to the faith of the church...those who, after a second admonition, remain obstinate to their errors, must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular power to be exterminated."
The Ulster Holocaust of 1641 became known in history as ‘The 1641 Massacre’. It finally ended in 1649 when the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, came over to Ireland, decisively crushed the Roman Catholic rebels and restored order. After his conduct at the Siege of Drogheda in 1649, the entire Irish Roman Catholic population realised that the game was up and Cromwell meant business - this, and this alone, ensured that their latest attempted holocaust of Ulster's Protestant population came to an end.
After this defeat at the hands of Cromwell, the priests of Rome and their followers went to ground – patiently biding their time, waiting for the next big opportunity to try and eradicate the unsuspecting Protestant population of Ulster.
In 1688, James II (the Roman Catholic king of England) was deposed by the great Protestant hero, King William III (Prince of Orange). In an attempt to regain his throne, James came to Ireland and was immediately welcomed by the Irish Roman Catholic population. It was his plan to conquer Ireland, then invade Scotland, and then (when Scotland was conquered) invade England, conquer it and re-take the throne.
James and his followers set out to eradicate every single Protestant on the island of Ireland. Faced with this naked Roman Catholic aggression, the Protestants of Ulster refused to give in. They stood firm and courageously rallied to the cause of King William. Sensing the doom that was planned for them, they fled from all over Ireland to make their ‘last stand’ at Londonderry and Enniskillen. With virtually every still-living Protestant hemmed in and concentrated into these two areas, the Roman Catholic troops loyal to James intended to butcher and starve our ancestors to death. The Roman Catholic Holocaust that had failed in 1641 now looked like it was going to succeed in 1688 – all they needed in order for it to succeed was for the Protestants to lower their guard, go soft, lose heart, give up the fight, compromise and surrender.
Fortunately for us however, our Protestant ancestors saw through Rome's agenda and brushed aside the pleas of weak leaders like Colonel Lundy. As a result, they stood firm at Enniskillen and Londonderry, and issued the defiant battle cry of ‘No Surrender’. Those who made their stand within the walls of Londonderry (30,000 initially - 20,000 by the end of April 1689) suffered extreme hardship during a 105 day siege. James’ defeat at the Siege of Londonderry ensured that the tide of history had now turned decisively against him. Whether James and his followers realised it or not, all hope of them successfully defeating King William and re-taking the throne was gone and buried at the Ferryquay Gate of Londonderry when - on the 18th December 1688 - 13 brave, young apprentice boys closed the city gate against his Roman Catholic army.
The names of the 13 apprentice boys are as follows: Henry Campsie, Robert Morrison, James Steward, Alex Cunningham, Alexander Irwin, James Spike, John Conningham, Robert Sherrard, Daniel Sherrard, William Cairns, Samuel Hunt, William Crookshanks and Samuel Harvy.
The Siege of Londonderry was the longest and bloodiest siege in British military history. It started on Saturday 18th December 1688. On Monday 18th April 1689, a sustained heavy bombardment of the city began and a relentless military assault was unleashed against its Protestant population. 105 days later, on Thursday 28th July 1689, with one third of its population (i.e. 6,600 people) dead and the other two thirds either starving to death or sick and dying – the hand of Almighty God moved in the affairs of world history, their enemies were defeated and the city was relieved. God had answered their prayers, and the great victory for which they had longed finally came.
John Hunter, one of those who survived the siege, wrote the following account in his diary: "The famine was so great that many a man, woman, and child died from want of food. I myself was so weak from hunger, that I fell under my musket one morning as I was going to the walls; yet God gave me strength to continue all night at my post there, and enabled me to act the part of a soldier as if I had been as strong as ever...yet my face was blackened with hunger...I had hardly any heart to speak or walk; and, yet when the enemy was coming, as many a time they did to storm the walls, then...my former strength returned to me. I am sure it was the Lord who kept the city, and none else; for there were many of us that could hardly stand on our feet before the enemy attacked ...Indeed, it was never the poor, starved men that were in Derry that kept it, but the mighty God of Jacob, to whom be praise forever and ever."
Within a year of lifting the great siege of Londonderry, King William III landed with his army at Carrickfergus. Seeing this, James and his weakened army retreated south towards Dublin and made their last stand at the Battle of Boyne, where they were defeated. More defeats followed at Aughrim, Limerick, Cork and Kinsale.
Realising that his cause was lost, James fled to France where he died in exile.
The Irish Roman Catholic population, who gave such loyalty to James and sacrificed so much for him, felt deeply hurt and betrayed by his decision to flee. For that reason, many Irish Roman Catholics came to refer to Londonderry as "James' Graveyard", and James himself as "Séamus an Chaca" (a derogatory phrase which, for reasons of taste, will remain untranslated).
With James now defeated - King William’s Glorious Revolution, its historic Bill of Rights and the Williamite Settlement were now secure. The Protestant succession was in place, civil liberty was enshrined and a decidedly constitutional form of government (with solid checks and balances) was established. From this position of divine blessing, military prowess, societal freedom and clearly defined national sovereignty, Britain sailed forward into a bright future of Empire, deepened spirituality, territorial expansion, increased prosperity, intellectual advance, social progress, moral development and enlightened global leadership.