Languish.org

I was listening to a series of lectures on modern Western political thought.  The professor begins with a brief discussion about Francis Bacon before moving on to a more serious discussion about Thomas Hobbes; but also gives an explanation of the historic context that led to the Protectorate and the formation of Hobbes's thought.  In that he described James I as "A disaster," but really didn't give any specifics as to why.  I'm curious if Languish would agree.

He made a good bible.

Define good.

Robert Cecil was an effective chief minister, his successors not so much.  James managed to steer clear of embroiling his kingdoms into war, much to their benefit.  "Disaster" seems extreme.

The professor is probably a witch.

I'd say good.

I think there's a version where a lot of the tensions and divisions that explode in the war derive from James' reign and he has a lot of similar leanings of a very liturgical/sacramental version of religion, lots of favourites, leanings towards a more absolutist political vision. But I think all of that is true but James managed to balance those tensions of two kingdoms, two churches, rising Puritan force in religion and politics against his own political direction in a way that Charles never managed but that I think was actually quite impressive.

My view is the tensions were more driven by divisions within his kingdoms over religion, politics, class etc than by his personal politics and he broadly managed to balance them against each other. In part because he was actually relatively tolerant for an early modern monarch and tolerated religious and political difference in his kingdoms to a pretty impressive degree.

Like Elizabeth he was peaceful and avoided big expensive foreign interventions beyond the resources of the crown (which is partly why he could manage those interests).

He's pretty much an unknown entity to me.  All I know is Spud played him in the Kate Blanchett movie.

He's the one who got Gloriously Revolutionized, tight?

Nope. This is James I of Engand and VI of Scotland, Charles I's dad, succeeded Elizabeth. "The wisest fool in Christendom" and probably gay.

That's James II.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 10, 2022, 04:51:01 PM
He's pretty much an unknown entity to me.  All I know is Spud played him in the Kate Blanchett movie.

He's the one who got Gloriously Revolutionized, tight?

No, that was James II; James I was the first one who was both King of Scotland  :scots: (as James VI) and England.  He's also the one for whom the King James Version of the bible and the Jacobean period are named.

Edit:  Too late

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 10, 2022, 04:26:37 PM
Like Elizabeth he was peaceful

:hmm:

But yes, describing James as "a disaster" is bewildering.

Was James I the one who had the bible translated to prove his faith, and so the church wouldn't bother him and his gay lover? Or was that a Martinus fantasy? :unsure:

He was mediocre or good; I would incline towards good for similar reasons to what others have stated. I can't see disaster at all  :hmm:

I'm curious, how did the professor describe Charles I?

Quote from: The Brain on February 10, 2022, 05:06:43 PM
I'm curious, how did the professor describe Charles I?

Oh - is he a "Charles, King and Martyr" type (:x)? A little underwhelmed by James' timid embrace of absolutism and crypto-Popery.

Quote:hmm:

But yes, describing James as "a disaster" is bewildering.

Peaceful/defensive maybe better? No desperately expensive interventions on the continent.

Quote from: Syt on February 10, 2022, 05:00:23 PM
Was James I the one who had the bible translated to prove his faith, and so the church wouldn't bother him and his gay lover? Or was that a Martinus fantasy? :unsure:

That's Marty's fantasy :lol:

He probably was gay (acknowledging the difficulty of pushing that term into the past) - he certainly had lots of favourites etc. I don't really think that really motivated his translation of the bible and I don't think the Supreme Governor of the Church has to do anything to stop them bothering him, he can just tell them to stop.

He fathered children and seemed to like young men, I would just leave it at that.

I rated him mediocre.  He did recognize that there were practical limits to his power, but he brought up his son to refuse the acknowledge that, and he didn't reform any of the institutions that needed to be reformed if he was to leave a stable legacy.

Good Enough.

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 10, 2022, 05:12:07 PM
Peaceful/defensive maybe better? No desperately expensive interventions on the continent.

Defensive and lacking in ruinous foreign adventures I'll grant, but Elizabeth didn't have the luxury of being particularly "peaceful" it seems to me. She intervened multiple times on the continent, had the massive failure of the English Armada, the conflict in Ireland, the war with Scotland, etc.

I think his rating varies a bit depending on which of his three kingdoms we are talking about. I think I could see him being anywhere from good to disastrous depending one what we are talking about.

He ultimately failed in his aims of creating a united Kingdom in England and Scotland, however that doesn't mean much as that was an incredibly ambitious scheme, but he did manage to balance things pretty well and manage forces that would ultimately be fatal to his son. In Ireland his little scheme of bringing peace, civilization, and Protestantism through the inspirational plantations of good Scots and Englishmen was both a failure in his lifetime and going forward, and managed to effectively unite the Old English and Celtic Irish against the British. It is hard not to see him as one of the more disastrous rulers of Ireland, even considering the stiff competition for that title.

But it is not like I am some expert on every detail of his reign. I could be missing something there.

What do you mean by Old English Valmy?

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 10, 2022, 09:43:22 PM
What do you mean by Old English Valmy?

The Norman lords who invaded Ireland way back in the 13th century (and later pre-Tudor immigrants). Their descendants. They had been the main pillar of the English King's attempts to rule Ireland since then but the Protestant reformation and the policies of the Tudors and the Stuarts eventually made them make common cause with the Irish. James' policies were a last straw for most of them.

Medium-OK.
A lot of his achievements were down to being succesfully born whilst his cousins didn't have kids. But he didn't make any standout errors piecing together the union of the crowns.

Quote from: The Brain on February 10, 2022, 05:06:43 PM
I'm curious, how did the professor describe Charles I?

An even bigger disaster.  In fact he said all the Stuart kings were terrible.

The course is offered as a political science, humanities or sociology course.  The professor doesn't seem that well informed about history (among other things he said that Mary Tudor stepped down so her protestant sister could inherit the throne); however I thought I might have been missing something about James I so I posed the question here.

Quote from: Valmy on February 10, 2022, 09:45:15 PMThe Norman lords who invaded Ireland way back in the 13th century (and later pre-Tudor immigrants). Their descendants. They had been the main pillar of the English King's attempts to rule Ireland since then but the Protestant reformation and the policies of the Tudors and the Stuarts eventually made them make common cause with the Irish. James' policies were a last straw for most of them.

Yeah - to the extent that any name with a "Fitz" is of Norman origin, but now clearly very Irish.

They also mingled more with the general Irish population (like the Normans elsewhere) over centuries rather than being planters and settlers.

QuoteAn even bigger disaster.  In fact he said all the Stuart kings were terrible.

Nice to know Whig history's still around :lol:

I thought the prefix Fitz meant aknowledged bastard son of.

So did these early Norman settlers come as invaders directly from Normandy?  Did they come as part of formal Norman English policy of Irish colonization?  Were they disenfranchised second and third sons looking for land?  What's the deal, what's the skinny?

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 11, 2022, 06:31:30 PM
I thought the prefix Fitz meant aknowledged bastard son of.

So did these early Norman settlers come as invaders directly from Normandy?  Did they come as part of formal Norman English policy of Irish colonization?  Were they disenfranchised second and third sons looking for land?  What's the deal, what's the skinny?

This is what wiki says:

QuoteFitz (pronounced "fits") was a patronymic indicator used in Anglo-Norman England to help distinguish individuals by identifying their immediate predecessors. Meaning "son of", it would precede the father's forename, or less commonly a title held by the father. In rare cases it formed part of a matronymic to associate the bearer with a more prominent mother. Convention among modern historians is to represent the word as fitz, but in the original Norman French documentation it appears as fiz, filz, or similar forms, deriving from the Old French noun filz, fiz (French fils), meaning "son of", and ultimately from Latin filius (son). Its use during the period of English surname adoption led to its incorporation into patronymic surnames, and at later periods this form was adopted by English kings for the surnames given some of their recognized illegitimate children, and by Irish families when anglicizing their Gaelic patronymic surnames.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 11, 2022, 06:31:30 PM
I thought the prefix Fitz meant aknowledged bastard son of.

So did these early Norman settlers come as invaders directly from Normandy?  Did they come as part of formal Norman English policy of Irish colonization?  Were they disenfranchised second and third sons looking for land?  What's the deal, what's the skinny?

Probably...sort of...maybe.

The story goes that Henry II, the guy who rid himself of troublesome priests, was constantly being harrassed to go into Ireland. Irish lords wanted to use the Normans to fight their rivals, his knights and vassals wanted adventure and some land, and the church thought the Irish monasteries were out of control and needed a good Catholic overlord. Henry was stretched thin as it was with his massive Angevin Empire in France and knew Ireland was a big mess and wanted nothing to do with it but eventually he wore down and granted permission for the Irish lords to recruit whomever wanted to go. So a bunch of Normans (I presume mostly from England but I suspect a few from France as well) invaded and took over a bunch of the towns and eventually ran out of gas and they just added to the already chaotic political situation.

Henry II first tried to work through a local Irish lord, Rory O'Connor I think is his anglicized name, to be his deputy but that was a disaster. Then he sent over his son, the ever successful John Lackland, and that was a big disaster. So after that Ireland kind of descended into a chaotic stalemate that the English Kings sort of treated with apathy and neglect. Now I presume people from England and France continued to settle there and the fortunes of the "Old English" waxed and waned. Eventually the Tudors sought to increase their control of Ireland and this, combined with the Protestant Reformation in England and Scotland, took a bad situation and somehow made it worse. And then James I came along and began to build the situation that Ireland finds itself in today by introducing these plantations of Scots and English settlers who were supposed to show the Irish advanced farming and techniques and the joys of Protestantism and civilization and turn those Irish barbarians into right proper British subjects. The "Old English" were at first glad to see the more royal involvement but being Catholics quickly realized their power was being reduced in favor of Protestants and these new comers. So at that point they began to more and more oppose the British. It is why Dublin, once the center of English rule, is now the capital of Ireland.

So anyway that is my very simplistic understanding of the situation and who these Old English were. Sheilbh might know more specifics.

Cool.  Had never even heard any of that before.

I've no idea and I think that all sounds right.

The other point which is key is that the Normans were ultimately conquering lords and they behaved like typical medieval conquering lords - they got involved in local politics, they fought among themselves, they inter-married with the grand Irish noble families like the O'Conors, O'Neills or O'Donnells. They were to a large extent assimilated into the Irish order, like Normans everywhere. In part this may have been because medieval English politics was focused on France and there's kings being deposed and civil wars. So the English crown and state is not that directly involved in Ireland and the Anglo-Normans get on with their own thing. By the 16th century they're described as "more Irish than the Irish themselves" - they move perhaps from being Anglo-Normans in Ireland to Hiberno-Normans.

This shifts with the Tudors and especially the reformation. The Tudors intend to tie Ireland into the English state and to run it - so they send over their men the New English. Plus they go Protestant while the Old English, like the Irish generally remained Catholic. The Tudors start plantations and settlements of English into Ireland as early colonisation - the plan for many early American colonies is directly taken from Derry, right down to the walls. It's not purely religious though as this is when there starts to be some quasi-racial discourse around the Irish and settlement continues under Mary just as much as the Protestant Tudors. It accelerates hugely with James I and the Stuarts, particularly with the predominately Scottish settlement of Ulster - which is why Protestantism in Ulster is Presbyterian, not Anglican and they're doing stuff to encourage the preservation of Ulster Scots.

And James I/VI wins in Ireland against revolts which is seen as the end of the Gaelic order in Ireland at least symbolically with the flight of the earls. The last great Irish landowners flee to continental Europe and the land is seized and divvied up by (generally) absentee landlords, if not settled either by private colonial companies or the crown.

Did the Norman Irish get dispossesed as well?

Many thanks all.

They broadly joined the Irish in the revolt in the 1640s (broadly the old English were often criticised by the Irish for being too keen to reach an accommodation with Charles, both were fucked by Cromwell). After that they were almost entirely dispossessed between that rebellion and various others but also just the effects of the Penal Laws.

Some may have converted to Protestantism, but after the 17th century it's the age of the Protestant Ascendancy - and the old English/Hiberno-Norman were not part of that.

With the Penal Laws though Catholics were banned from most public offices, they couldn't marry Protestants, sit in Parliament, vote, own firearms, inherit Protestant land, buy land on more than a 30 year leasehold, own a horse over a certain value etc. Plus Catholic inheritances were mandatorily equally subdivided between all the sons (unless the eldest became Protestant in which case he inherited the whole lot). It was an incredible set of laws designed precisely at destroying any local elite (inlcuding the Hiberno-Normans) who didn't become part of the Church of Ireland and dispossessing them. It affected Gaelic and Norman elites (and to a lesser extent Presbyterians) alike because it was religious in focus.

I think he was good ruler, but a bad parent... we all played CK, and we know what that means

Quote from: Valmy on February 11, 2022, 07:15:58 PM
The "Old English" were at first glad to see the more royal involvement but being Catholics quickly realized their power was being reduced in favor of Protestants and these new comers. So at that point they began to more and more oppose the British. It is why Dublin, once the center of English rule, is now the capital of Ireland.

So anyway that is my very simplistic understanding of the situation and who these Old English were. Sheilbh might know more specifics.

Good summary overall but I think on this bit you move away from the reality a bit.
Dublin was very much the power base of the Anglo Irish and the protestant ascendancy, pre-Irish independence it was one of the most unionist parts of the country.
Interestingly though it's here you got a 3rd strain of pro-independence Irish thought amongst educated people of a thoroughly protestant, new-English background. It really highlights how utterly scummy nationalists are in their attempt to paint a black and white evil English invaders trying to wipe out Irish culture narrative the Gaelic Revival and irish independence movement owing a lot to people from this group.

Quote from: Tyr on February 12, 2022, 05:10:14 AM

Quote from: Valmy on February 11, 2022, 07:15:58 PM
The "Old English" were at first glad to see the more royal involvement but being Catholics quickly realized their power was being reduced in favor of Protestants and these new comers. So at that point they began to more and more oppose the British. It is why Dublin, once the center of English rule, is now the capital of Ireland.

So anyway that is my very simplistic understanding of the situation and who these Old English were. Sheilbh might know more specifics.

Good summary overall but I think on this bit you move away from the reality a bit.
Dublin was very much the power base of the Anglo Irish and the protestant ascendancy, pre-Irish independence it was one of the most unionist parts of the country.
Interestingly though it's here you got a 3rd strain of pro-independence Irish thought amongst educated people of a thoroughly protestant, new-English background. It really highlights how utterly scummy nationalists are in their attempt to paint a black and white evil English invaders trying to wipe out Irish culture narrative the Gaelic Revival and irish independence movement owing a lot to people from this group.

Yeah I probably shouldn't have said that. I don't really know much 19th century and 20th century British history. I know the Medieval through Early Modern era stuff better.

Quote from: Valmy on February 13, 2022, 12:58:54 AM
Yeah I probably shouldn't have said that. I don't really know much 19th century and 20th century British history. I know the Medieval through Early Modern era stuff better.

My view is you're right and Tyr's wrong :P

It's absolutely the case that key cultural leaers especially were from the Protestant ascendancy like Yeats and Douglas Hyde, but even political leaders like Parnell. This is something nationalists were very aware of and part of the reason why the flag is the orange and green with white for peace in the middle.

Dublin was comparatively more unionist - but it's worth noting that in the 1918 election every Dublin seat except for Rathmines (and the university seats which are slightly different) went for Sinn Fein just like rest of Ireland, except the North. It was comparatively more pro-unionist but that was still a tiny majority.

But it reflects two key shifts - most of the Penal Laws are abolished in the course of the late 18th and early 19th century. The old Catholic/Gaelic elite had been wiped out in the 100-150 years they'd been in place but they then relax and there is more intermingling. The other key shift is the French revolution - you have Wolfe Tone's united Irishmen inspired by that but I think it also shifts from a mainly religious opposition to English rule to something more clearly and recognisably nationalist (in the modern sense), just like you had Young Italy and Hungarian or German nationalism. The combination of those two factors means there are absolutely Protestants who are from the ascendancy who become aware of and participate in an Irish identity. Though they were, by no means, the majority - most were the "West Briton" take on Irishness. 

It's still the national question in Northern Ireland - it contains a community that is Irish and a community that is British. That is more important than religion but religion's a useful short-hand and often how it's inculcated given that less than 10% of Northern Irish kids go to an integrated school.

I'm still pretty comfortable saying invasion and colonisation are in the grand scheme pretty black and white things :P

One would think the big lesson of the 1492-1970 period would be that those things are bad and we shouldn't do them :hmm:

Ah well. Humans are slow to learn.