David,
MacLysaght’s “Surnames of Ireland” says: “Crowe is MacEnchroe. Now generally Crowe (which is also an English name). All Crowes in their homeland, Thomond, are of native Irish stock. In Ulster they are mainly of English origin”.
Given that Monaghan is in Ulster and your family were almost certainly Church of Ireland, at least until the 1800s, then that points to them being of settler origins, probably from England though the name Crowe is found in Scotland too.
There were no Crowes in Monaghan in the 1630 Muster Rolls so it looks as though they arrived after that date.
Monaghan wasn’t included in the main formal Plantation but quite a number of settlers from Britain did go there throughout the 1600s. If you want to study the background of the Plantation, I recommend “The Plantation of Ulster” by Philip Robinson. You’ll get it on Amazon and the other usual outlets. Robinson explains that in the 1500s the main native Irish families in Monaghan pledged allegiance to Queen Elizabeth:
“In 1591 land tenure in Co. Monaghan had been anglicised under the Tudor policy of ‘surrender and re-grant’. This was accompanied by the transference of extensive church lands to English servitors and by the retention by the crown of part of Farney barony, which in 1575 had been granted to the Earl of Essex. Nevertheless the remaining area, which consisted of most of the county, was re-granted by Queen Elizabeth to Patrick McKenna and five leading McMahons. These Irish lords were to hold their lands under English law and pay rent to the crown, and many of the lesser in the county were to be made freeholders. This establishment of an English tenurial system in Monaghan was to survive the Elizabethan war and was the principal reason why the county was not included in the official scheme. The Irish freeholders of Monaghan were not included in the Flight of the Earls in 1607, so that their lands were neither confiscated nor surrendered.” (Robinson, Page 54).
I am certainly not going to attempt to justify or support what England did in Ireland but it is sometimes worth taking a step back and look at what had been happening before this time and what was happening elsewhere in the world. Native Irish tribes had been fighting amongst themselves endlessly for thousands of years seizing each others lands. The arrival of the English - initially invited there by the deposed King of Leinster (Dermot MacMurragh) around 1169, who wanted their help to regain his title and lands – just put a new dimension on the cruelty and fighting. King Henry’s troops were successful in putting Dermot back on his throne. Unfortunately they didn’t go home again afterwards.
In the late 1500s England had nearly been invaded by Spain ie the Spanish Armada. Through a combination of bad weather and the British Navy defeated the Spaniards, Queen Elizabeth was very concerned that Spain or France might still use Ireland as a sympathetic stepping stone to launch an attack on England. So she needed to be sure there were sufficient loyal people in Ireland to prevent that or at least to organize a defence if it did happen. Hence her wish to plant the country with folk loyal to the Crown. However many native Irish pledged allegiance too (possibly for tactical reasons but whatever the reason they did). Many native Irish landholders held on to their land as in Monaghan and overall about a third of Ireland remained in “Irish” hands. As an academic at Trinity College Dublin described things, the Crown: sought to “civilise those rude parts” whilst at the same time enriching itself by interfering in land titles. See:
https://www.1641.tcd.ie/historical_background.php
But elsewhere in Europe, Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands were all busy establishing empires and were likewise invading and dominating countries they wanted to rule in the Americas, Caribbean, Indonesia and elsewhere. Subjugating others was the norm for the time. The views of the locals were rarely taken into account and most were obliged to swear loyalty to their new hosts, and often to completely change their religious inclinations. Then in Ireland, starting in the 1700s, large numbers of people dissatisfied with conditions there, left for north America where they often repeated the same process by seizing land from native Americans and imposing treaties and other obligations on them. Plus ca change?
You ask about upheaval in Monaghan. There was certainly resistance to English (and Scottish & Welsh) settlers. The native Irish rose up in 1641 and there was a big rebellion with a lot of bloodshed. There are details of fighting in Monaghan. (If you go to the tcd 1641 site (above) and enter Monaghan in the search field it will bring up 5 pages of first hand evidence about atrocities in the county. Ultimately the uprising failed and across Ireland some land was forfeit as a consequence. I haven’t read about any land being forfeit in Monaghan though.
You ask whether many people changed denomination as a result of “pressure of religious persecution.” The short answer is no they didn’t. To this day the country remains mostly Roman Catholic. (According to a google search, the Republic of Ireland is 84% RC, and 3.5% Protestant. Northern Ireland is slightly different with 41% Catholic and 42% Protestant). The population of Monaghan in 1901 was 74,425 of which 54,180 were RC, leaving around 20,000 Protestants of assorted denominations.
No-one was compelled to change denomination. The English Government wished to “anglicise” Ireland to ensure it would support its political objectives. So the Church of Ireland (ie the Church of England in Ireland) was made the “state” church. If you were of another denomination various restrictions and obstacles were put in your way. These mostly affected Catholics but did also affect Presbyterians and other minor denominations. The worst time was the Penal Laws period (approx. 1665 to 1760, though the last laws were not repealed until about 1825). A “ragbag of laws” as one academic has described them. Power and property was to be kept in Protestant hands. So you could be fined for not attending the Church of Ireland (though I am not sure how many people ever were) and if you weren’t a member of the church of Ireland, there were restrictions or prohibitions on carrying arms, owning a good horse, having leases of over 30 years, holding public office, being a lawyer, standing for parliament and many other things. The Catholic Church wasn’t prohibited. They just made it very difficult for it. So priests couldn’t be trained in Ireland (nor could Presbyterian Ministers). So the priests were trained in France or Italy instead. The Presbyterians trained in Scotland. An Act of 1705 allowed a Catholic priest to minister to his flock but he wasn’t allowed a curate. New priests seeking entry to Ireland were to be refused entry. A Minister or Priest conducting a mixed marriage could be fined £20 or subject to a year’s imprisonment. Many priests took to conducting mass at remote places in the countryside, often by a suitable rock, and to this day there are hundreds of Mass Rocks around the country. There were some high profile cases where people were prosecuted and received dreadful punishments but for the average farm labourer it probably didn’t make any significant difference to their lives, other than not having a proper church to attend. The traditional view has been that the draconian laws victimized the entire Catholic population. A more revisionist view is that they were used fairly selectively and in many cases they were ignored or rarely enforced.
An interesting example is horse fairs. It was illegal for Catholics to own a good horse. However our IRO site has a link to information on Ireland’s many horse fairs, some of which are the oldest in Europe.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/?tab=wm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgxwChmQPtRrbMJfdCNVthxdJLBKn
So the obvious question is, if it was illegal for the vast majority of the population to own a decent horse, who exactly was attending these horse fairs and why? There are also numerous descriptions of farmers working with horses during this period too. The reality seems to be that most people carried on owning and dealing in horses without any significant difficulty all through this period.
It was also illegal for Catholics to own the freehold to property or to have a lease for more than 30 years. Cromwell had sized a massive amount of Catholic owned land in the 1660s but by 1688 22% was still in “Irish” hands. In Co Antrim the Catholic McDonnell family (Earls of Antrim) owned 25% of the county in the 1600s and early 1700s. They routinely granted their catholic tenants leases for much more than 30 years, and did so with impunity till the mid 1700s when they converted to the Church of Ireland. (They still live in Co Antrim and I think they have converted back to RC. So these things go around sometimes). So no-one was enforcing that law there. Many land owning Catholic families got around the penal laws by nominally converting to the Church of Ireland or by using trustees or protestant nominees. (Some protestant landowners were sympathetic to their catholic neighbours plight and did what they could to help). There is also evidence to suggest that many magistrates simply chose not to enforce the law either because they didn’t have the resources to do so or because they wished to keep the peace.
You ask if the settlers formed ties with the native population. Up to a point they did and there are plenty of mixed marriages to confirm that. The Presbyterian Scots had a reputation for regarding their Catholic neighbours as inferior and followers of a pagan religion. They tended to keep themselves to themselves though there were obviously exceptions. Mixed marriages did cause problems in many families and could often be a factor in a young couple’s decision to emigrate.
Yes both sides of the community came together during the United Irishmen’s uprising in 1798. It was well supported in pockets of the country where there were some bloody clashes but overall support was a bit patchy and it didn’t take too long for the uprising to be suppressed. Just how much the protestants and Catholics had in common was debatable and not helped during the uprising by the Catholic massacre of 200 Protestant women and children in a barn at Scullabogue, Co Wexford. That rather damaged the relationship. Soon after the '98 rebellion industrial changes, particularly in what is now Northern Ireland meant that the economy there started to pick up. Protestants there mainly decided that being part of the UK was to their advantage, and support within that part of the population for Irish independence dwindled, though they continued to press for other social changes including votes for all.
The film The Quiet Man is a very corny representation of Ireland with much stereotyping, and of course it’s fiction. But there is an incident in it based on a real life event. In the film the Church of Ireland Vicar tells the local priest that he’s in a bit of difficulty. He has a tiny congregation and his bishop is coming to visit shortly. There will be hardly anyone in the church, and he’s expecting to get into trouble for not having increased his congregation. The priest takes pity on him and at mass on the relevant day, tells his Catholic congregation to go up and attend the Church of Ireland service. To the vicar and the bishop’s surprise the church is overflowing with people. I can’t quote the source but apparently the real life incident caught the writers’ attention and so it went into the film. I am sure the catholic congregation were both shocked and amused at the time.
Partition of Ireland in 1922 led to a large number of people who opposed Home Rule leaving and moving to Northern Ireland, Britain or further afield. However many remained and there is still a modest Protestant population in Monaghan today including some Orange Lodges.
Ireland’s relationship with Britain could be discussed for a fortnight without pause and many books have been published on it. Whilst in most of the country there was resentment at the way they had been treated by the British, there was a degree of pragmatism as well. In Ireland there was never conscription to join the British army and tens of thousands of people freely joined it, to get a trade, a regular salary and to see the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish people went to England or Scotland to work. There isn’t a family in Ireland that doesn’t have cousins somewhere in England today. Ireland gained independence in 1922, and set up it's own army, navy etc. Today called the Irish Defence Forces. During the second world war Ireland was strictly neutral. However about one third of the Irish Defence Forces left without notice and went and joined the British Army to fight against the Germans. Technically they were deserters but their reasons for doing so were fairly noble I feel. On their return to Ireland they were treated shamefully and it was many years before reparations were made. Background in this article:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22425684
So yes Irish people largely resented the way the British treated them. Some loathed them but some benefited from them. At a personal level many got on reasonably well, and there was intermarriage. But if you utterly loathe the British, how likely are you to desert your own army and go and fight for them? It was a tricky complex relationship which is difficult to summarise fully or fairly here. You should go to Monaghan and speak to people living there today and ask for their views. Do so with some tact and discretion though.
You might get some good local material in the local studies section at the library in Clones:
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/culturenet/archives/monaghan…
If you intend visiting Monaghan, e-mail the local studies librarian a couple of months in advance of your visit and ask if they have any books or documents that describe life in and around Clones in the 1700s and 1800s. They’ll then hopefully have some recommendations ready for you. One document you might want to look at is the Ordnance Survey memoir of Monaghan 1834 – 38 (It’s in Volume 40 of the OS memoirs, counties of South Ulster) and should describe life in the area in some detail.
Your Presbyterian ancestors from Tyrone are almost certainly of Scottish origins. If you are interested in reading about their history, try Eagles Wing’s – The History of the Scotch-Irish and Ulster-Scots by Dr David Hume. It explains why they left Scotland for Ireland in the 1600s and why many left Ireland for North America in the 1700s.
