5. Evaluate the impact the plantations had on Ireland under the following headings: (a) Physical changes in the landscape – e.g. castles or towns (b) Language (c) Political changes (d) Religious changes
6. Evaluate the success of the plantations of Ireland using the following headings: (a) Spreading English laws and customs (b) Spreading the Protestant religion (c) Establishing the power of the English Crown across all of Ireland
FURTHER RESEARCH
7. The plantations had an impact on many places in Ireland. Newtowns, churches and castleswere built and new family names were introduced into Ireland. Research if and how the plantations impacted the community in which you live or any other community you are familiar with.
HISTORICAL FIGURES
8. Choose an important personality from this period and create a project about him or her. Examples could be l Queen Elizabeth I l Queen Mary l Hugh O’Neill
l Red Hugh O’Donnell l Oliver Cromwell
VIEWPOINTS AND OBJECTIVITY
A. The 1641 Rebellion has been a source of debate for centuries. Here are a few areas in which there is debate:
l The numbers: The numbers given for those who were killed during the 1641 Rebellion have been strongly contested. In 1646, John Temple believed 300,000 people had been slaughtered. This was three times more than the total population of Protestants in Ireland at that time. Other estimates have ranged from ‘a few thousand’ to 4,028 to 154,000. In 1878, the historian W.H. Lecky wrote ‘the Irish massacres of 1641 seems to me one of the great fictions of history, though a great number of murders were committed. The consensus of modern English historians, however, about it is so great that it is hardly possible to shake the belief in the English mind’.
l The use of images: Examine the images shown here of English protestants being killed by Irish Catholics.