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01-029 Cromwell and Drogheda - I
Vol. 01- No. 29
1995
Lead: In the fall of 1649, Ireland was in full rebellion against England. Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts. Content: Though King Charles I had been beheaded by Parliament in January of 1649, sympathy for his cause and that of his son, Charles II, was very strong in Ireland. A force under the Earl of Ormonde had raised the king's flag and, except for pockets of resistance in and around Dublin, Ireland was under the control of the royalists. Already Scotland had declared the young Charles II its king, but it was in Ireland that the greatest menace to the new English Republic seemed to come. In this period there was little love between the English and the Irish. The English considered the Irish as little more than barbarians, and from the time of Elizabeth I they imported Protestant settlers and gave them Irish land in an attempt to change the religious and ethnic make-up of the island. The Irish naturally resented this early form of ethnic cleansing, and remained bitterly resistant to English rule and staunchly Roman Catholic. To nip this bud of Irish rebellion, the English Parliament appointed General Oliver Cromwell to retake the Emerald Isle, and in August he landed near Dublin with thousands of troops and a hundred-ship invasion fleet. He would leave Ireland within months, having achieved a bloody victory and stoking deep Irish hatred for an act of cruelty so severe as to blacken his reputation forever. For all time the name Oliver Cromwell would be associated with the small Irish town of Drogheda. North along the Irish coast, about 30 miles from Dublin, Drogheda was strategically situated at the mouth of the Boyne River. If Ormonde was to stop Cromwell he had to do it at Drogheda. The Royalist leader placed Sir Arthur Aston and 2000 troops in the town and told them to hold it at all costs. The town was surrounded by a 20-foot high wall and protected to the south by a large hillside fort. Cromwell set up his siege guns on the 10th of September and began to batter away at the fort. Next time: the bloody siege of Drogheda. The producer of A Moment In Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. Resources Fraser, Antonia. Cromwell, the Lord Protector. New York: Knopf Publishing Company, 1973. Gardiner, Samuel Rawson. Oliver Cromwell. Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions, 1978. Hill, Christopher. God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. New York, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1972. Copyright 2007 by Broadcast Partners, LLC LAC052107
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