The Religious Dynamic of the Cromwellian Invasion

Abstract

This chapter provides a thorough account of the Cromwellian invasion and its political background and military history, illustrating the centrality of its religious dynamic. It contextualizes the theological debates by describing the economic condition of the administration, the religious condition of the army, and the tensions between the religious needs of protestant soldiers and those of the Irish natives. It describes the reading culture of the period in the context of the Atlantic archipelago, and the competing ideas of reformation and emerging denominational networks alongside the insistent primitivism, prophetic individualism, and anticlericalism of the period.

English Poetry in Cromwellian Ireland

“…66 But the poem was certainly being advertised as intending to support an administration which in the late 1650s was moving steadily and very publicly away from the more radical sects whose ideologies had been introduced by invading Parliamentarian soldiers towards the solidly conservative network of 'Old Protestants', those Protestants whose religious communities predated the Cromwellian invasion. 67 Teate's family was, of course, increasingly prominent in representing this network, and Teate's father had been invited by Henry Cromwell to return to Ireland in spring 1657, before being appointed as a preacher in Drogheda in 1658, from which position he became a member of the ecclesiastical elite, in the year in which Henry Cromwell was formally recognised as Lord Deputy. 68 But Ter Tria's dedication also announced its intention to exalt the 'most holy, undivided and indivisible Trinity'.…”

“…Ter Tria epitomised the religious ethos of the later stages of the Henry Cromwell administration, with its decided trend in favour of theological conservatism and the 'Old Protestant' social background that the Teate family represented. 86 And it seems that the poem did successfully appeal to the Henry Cromwell administration. Teate did return to Ireland, being appointed to a clerical position in Limerick in 1659, though it is uncertain whether he ever took up the appointment.…”