From Ballyboyle to Corglass... a Boyle family's story
Part 1 - Ballyboyle - our ancient ancestors
The dark 18th century
Following the collapse of the Gaelic order at the end of the 17th century, practically all of the land of Ireland was confiscated from the Irish clans and awarded to ‘loyal’ English and Scottish Protestant settlers. For the vast majority of the peasantry this meant that instead of paying tribute to their chief in the form of cattle, farm produce and military service, they now paid rent to an English landlord - maybe not much difference economically, but it sundered the sense of identity the people shared with their leaders and replaced it with a grievance that their land had been stolen from them.
The Irish 18th century saw the new landowners consolidate their power and possessions. The state was explicitly Protestant in government and religion. Some native Irish and Old English Catholics managed to retain large estates, but as leaseholders rather than owners and some advanced in business. Some families agreed that one of their number would publicly convert to the protestant Church of Ireland in order to hold on to property, while privately remaining Catholic.
But for the vast majority of the population, and especially in Ulster, the Penal Laws ensured that to be Catholic was to be politically suspect, poor and ignorant. For most of the century, continuity with the past was lost. For this period there are hardly any records of anyone but the wealthy and land-owning class.
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Without leadership and resources, there was little resistance to the status quo apart from disorganised banditry and localised agrarian disturbances by secret societies such as the ‘Defenders’. Disease and famine were common, with a particularly devastating one in 1740 which killed proportionally more of the population than the Great Famine a century later.
However, as the century progressed subtle changes were afoot. The Ascendancy class, now more confident of its position and less fearful of attack relaxed the pressure a little and some of the Penal laws fell into disuse. Though still loyal to England, some of them developed a sense of Anglo-Irishness as a distinct colony and sought a greater degree of legislative independence for the (wholly Protestant) Irish Parliament.
The Presbyterians of the north-east chafed under the restrictions they faced as dissenters and were attracted to the doctrines of the American and French revolutions. The most radical of them formed the Society of United Irishmen dedicated to the pursuit of an independent Irish Republic. Making common cause with the Catholic ‘Defenders’ culminated in the short but brutal rebellion of 1798. The British Government’s response to these separatist trends was to abolish the Irish Parliament and incorporate Ireland fully into the United Kingdom. For the next 120 years, Ireland would be ruled directly by the British parliament.