NORTHERN IRELAND / In the Shadow of the Gunmen

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The root cause was England's historical lust to subjugate the Emerald Isle. Ironically, that ambition was sanctioned in 1155, when Pope Adrian IV gave sovereignty over Ireland to England's King Henry II. During the next centuries, the English made sporadic and mostly unsuccessful efforts to conquer the island. Hegemony was finally established during the Reformation, when Queen Elizabeth's army beat the last of Ulster's great Celtic earls, Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell, at the battle of Kinsale in 1601. The vast lands of these Catholic noblemen were forfeited to English and Scottish "undertakers," who were pledged to "implant" them with farmers of Protestant faith and British race.

Hope flickered briefly for Ireland's Catholics in 1689, when deposed King James II of England, a convert to Rome, landed in Ireland to organize a war to reclaim his throne. On July 12, 1690, James was defeated in the Battle of the Boyne by his Protestant successor, William of Orange—the beloved "King Billy" of Ulster Unionists (those favoring union with Britain).

Fiery Words. By 1700, Irish Catholics owned only one-seventh of the land. The Penal Laws—enacted by a Protestant Parliament in Dublin —turned the warrior race into virtual slaves. Catholics were excluded from political life, forbidden to have their own schools and could not buy back land from Protestants, some of whom were sympathetic to their plight. In 1791, Wolfe Tone, a Dublin Protestant, formed a Society of United Irishmen, whose members swore "never to desist in our efforts until we have subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted our independence." His movement failed, and he died in its cause.

In 1800, the Act of Union abolished the Irish Parliament and made Ireland an integral province of the United Kingdom. During the 19th century, Irish nationalists fought the enforced union, mostly with the fiery words of such famed parliamentary orators as Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell.

The cause was also pushed along by the nationalist zeal of the romantic, rambunctious Fenians, who eventually fathered the I.R.A. Their principal organization was the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was founded on St. Patrick's Day, 1858, to carry on Wolfe Tone's dream of independence. Vaguely socialist in doctrine, the Brotherhood specialized in random bombings and produced its share of patriotic heroes for Ireland to keen over. Among the most famous—although hardly the most successful—were "the Manchester Martyrs," Michael Larkin, William Allen and Michael O'Brien, who were hanged in Manchester in 1867 for shooting an English constable while they tried to rescue a fellow Fenian from a police van.