Harry Clarke’s Modernist Gaze

The transplanters' certificates and the historiography of Cromwellian Ireland

“…However, when the main conclusions that emerged from those subjective readings are tested against the surviving evidence, it becomes clear that the transplanters' certificates were not what historians such as Hickson, Hardinge and Prendergast variously assumed or willed them to be: a warning against subversive behaviour; the basis for a benevolent system of peasant proprietorship; the record of 'a stream of hapless fugitive-prisoners … plodding wearily to their dungeon and grave'. 106 While the evidence from the certificates remains useful as an indicator of the degree to which Catholics engaged with the earliest stages of the government's scheme, it should be used only with caution in any effort to gauge the extent and character of the transplantation thereafter. This is not to dismiss the reality that the transplantation must have been a harrowing experience.…”