Latest / The History of Ireland: Rebellion, Empire, and Independence — Fexingo History / The Burning of Wildwood: Tudor Plantations Before Ulster
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've covered a lot of ground in this series — the great battles, the famines, the rebellions. But there's a chapter that often gets skipped over, and it's the one that really sets the pattern for everything that followed: the Tudor plantations in the midlands, before Ulster was even a twinkle in London's eye. Luna: Wait — you mean before the Plantation of Ulster in the 1600s, they'd already tried this? Lucas: Exactly. In the 1550s, under Queen Mary I, the English crown decided that if they couldn't control the Gaelic lords through treaties, they'd just take their land and fill it with loyal settlers. The target was the region known as Leix and Offaly — roughly where counties Laois and Offaly are today, right in the Irish midlands. Lucas: The local clans were the O'Mores and the O'Connors, and they'd been a thorn in the side of the Dublin administration for generations. They raided the Pale, they refused to pay taxes, they ignored English law. So the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Sussex, got the go-ahead to teach them a lesson. Luna: What was the Earl of Sussex like? Was he a typical Tudor hard man? Lucas: Thomas Radclyffe — that's his name — was exactly that. A veteran soldier, as ruthless as they come. He'd already served in Ireland before, and he understood that the Gaelic lords respected only one thing: force. So in 1556, he marched into Laois and Offaly with an army, burning crops, slaughtering livestock, and destroying strongholds. Lucas: It was scorched earth, pure and simple. The idea was to make the land uninhabitable for the Irish and then parcel it out to English settlers. And to make the point permanent, Mary I issued a decree: Leix and Offaly were to be renamed King's County and Queen's County, after her and her husband Philip. The main fort became Maryborough — that's Port Laoise today. Luna: So they literally erased the place names. That's pretty brutal. Lucas: It was. And the names stuck for centuries — King's County only became Offaly again in 1920, and Queen's County was renamed Laoighis — Laois — around the same time. But back in the 1550s, the plantation was a disaster. The English couldn't attract enough settlers, and the O'Mores and O'Connors didn't just disappear. Lucas: They fought back. The leader of the O'Mores was a man named Rory O'More — an incredibly determined guerrilla fighter. He'd been displaced from his ancestral lands, but he knew every bog and woodland in the region. He launched a series of raids that made life hell for the new settlers. Luna: I've heard of Rory O'More — he's a bit of a folk hero, isn't he? Lucas: He is. And with good reason. In 1557, he ambushed a English force at the Battle of Glenmalure — well, that was later, in 1580, but he was active long before. He managed to burn Maryborough itself at one point, and he kept the whole region in a state of low-grade warfare for years. Lucas: The English response was to double down. They introduced something called 'sorning' — a policy where English soldiers would be billeted in Irish households, eating the family's food and terrorising them. It was meant to break the will of the people, but mostly it just fuelled more hatred. Luna: Sorning — that's a weird word. Where does it come from? Lucas: It's from an old Irish word, 'sórn' — meaning a free quarter or billeting. But the practice was deeply resented. It was one of the grievances that drove the O'Mores and O'Connors to keep fighting. And it became a model for what would later happen in Ulster: you seize the land, you plant settlers, and you use the military to keep the natives down. Lucas: But here's the thing — the midlands plantation never really worked. The numbers of English settlers were too small, and the resistance was too fierce. By the 1570s, much of the land had fallen back into Irish hands, and the O'Mores were still in control of large areas. Luna: So was it a total failure? Or did it set a precedent? Lucas: It set a crucial precedent. The English learned from their mistakes. They realised you needed to dispossess the native lords completely, not just partially, and you needed a much bigger influx of settlers. That lesson was applied in Munster in the 1580s, and then on a massive scale in Ulster after the Flight of the Earls. Lucas: But the midlands plantation also left a bitter legacy. The O'Mores and O'Connors were crushed eventually — Rory O'More was killed in 1578, his head displayed on the gates of Dublin Castle. But the memory of the burned homesteads and the stolen land fed into the wider Irish sense of grievance that would explode in the 1641 Rebellion. Luna: It's strange to think of Laois and Offaly as colonised territory. They seem so central, so Irish. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why this story matters. It shows that the Tudor conquest of Ireland wasn't just about the big set-pieces like Kinsale or the Boyne. It was a grinding, brutal process of land theft and cultural erasure that started in the midlands and spread outward. And the people who lived there — the O'Mores, the O'Connors — they fought back with everything they had. Luna: It makes you think about how much of Ireland's landscape is layered with these stories. Every county has its own hidden history. Lucas: Absolutely. And speaking of hidden histories — if you've been walking through this landscape of Irish history with us, step by step, you'll know that shows like this take a lot of research and time to put together. A couple of dollars a month on buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo genuinely keeps these episodes coming. It's how we stay ad-free and focused on the stories that matter. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a real difference. We really appreciate everyone who's chipped in. Lucas: So back to the midlands — one last detail. There's a ruined castle near Port Laoise called Dunamase, which was a key O'More stronghold. The English captured it in the 1550s and used it as a garrison. Today, it's a stunning ruin, perched on a rock. If you ever visit, you can stand there and look out over the land that was once the Wildwood — and feel the weight of history. Luna: I'd love to see that. It sounds like a place where the past is still very present. Lucas: It is. And that's the thing about Irish history — you can't escape it. It's written into the very ground. Next time, we'll head north, to the real big one: the Plantation of Ulster, and how it reshaped the entire island.