The western counties of Galway and Mayo – which contained some of the most mountainous and inhospitable land in the entire island – had never been subjected to the same degree of English settlement as the rest of Ireland, or even the rest of Connaught. In 1628 the inhabitants of Mayo were described as ‘a poor and indigent people, as barbarous in all respects as the Indians and Moors’, while in 1635 Galway was characterised by Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) as ‘a country which lies out at a corner by itself, and all the inhabitants wholly natives and papists, hardly an Englishman amongst them’. CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 128-9; Strafforde Letters, i. 444. Contemporary surveys suggest that such comments contain an element of truth: apart from a very few Protestant families (notably the Binghams at Castlebar) both counties were inhabited by the Gaelic Irish, and by such Old English families as the Bourkes, Blakes and Lynches, who dominated the local commissions and the county seats in the Irish Parliament of 1634. Survey and Distribution, ii and iii; The Strafford Inquisition of Co. Mayo ed. W. O’Sullivan (Dublin, 1958); CSP Ire. 1625-32, p. 253; 1633-47, pp. 64-5; H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ire, 1633-41 (Cambridge, 1989), 247. The power of the Bourkes, under their overlords, the earls of Clanricarde and St Albans, was a particular problem for the Dublin administration, keen to centralise authority in Ireland, and Wentworth’s scheme for setting up a plantation in Connaught in the mid-1630s was in part aimed at breaking up the regional might of the 4th earl of Clanricarde, whose influence had rendered Galway, in particular, ‘little less than a county palatine’. Strafforde Letters, i. 452; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 136; SCL, Strafford MS 3, ff. 231-2; 15(251). It was of no comfort to the government when, in the 1640 election for the Irish Parliament, counties Galway and Mayo returned three of Clanricarde’s relatives and his lawyer. McGrath, Biographical Dict.
The failure of the Connaught plantation meant that the social make-up of Galway and Mayo was the same in 1641 as it had in the sixteenth century. Politically, however, the botched attempt to establish crown titles had caused a great deal of animosity among the local gentry, who were quick to join the Irish rebellion in 1641, despite the opposition of the 5th earl of Clanricarde, whose regional influence kept County Galway loyal to the crown in the early months of the war. PJ i. 472-3. Clanricarde could not hold out for long, however, and during the Confederate wars, Galway and Mayo were occupied successively by Confederate Catholics under Thomas Preston, Ulster Scots under Robert Monro, and English Protestants led by Sir Charles Coote*. The Connaught Irish were finally defeated by Coote and his Cromwellian allies in 1652, but by then the region had been totally devastated. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 163n, 236n, 253n. In August 1652 the ‘ruin’ of County Galway caused concern in Dublin, and reports of ‘the ruinous condition of the town of Galway’ in 1657 - in contrast with its pre-1641 prosperity - suggests that there had been little improvement in the situation during the early years of the protectorate. Bodl. Firth c.5, ff. 68v-9; TSP vi. 209; Stowe 180, f. 39. The assessments imposed during the protectorate suggest that County Galway did not recover quickly: its tax burden remained stagnant, while that for County Mayo increased by nearly 50 per cent between 1654 and 1659. An Assessment for Ire. (1654, 1655, 1657, 1659); A. and O. In the meantime, the local landowners of both counties – including Clanricarde – had been dispossessed at the end of the war, and their estates re-allocated to the disenfranchised native proprietors ‘transplanted’ from elsewhere in Ireland, while other lands were given as rewards to, among others, the city of Gloucester. J. Cunningham, Conquest and Land in Ireland: the Transplantation to Connacht, 1649-1680 (Woodbridge, 2011), 2, 91-5, 130-1.
During the 1650s political power in counties Galway and Mayo seems to have been shared, somewhat uneasily, between the lord president of Connaught, Sir Charles Coote, and successive military governors of the town of Galway. As lord president, Coote had extensive civil and military responsibilities in the two counties, and he used his influence to promote his own, and his allies’ interests in the area. In 1656 two-thirds of County Mayo was reserved for the settlement of pre-1649 arrears for Old Protestant officers, including close associates of the Coote family, such as the Gores, Cuffes, Ormsbys and Jacksons. Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 565, 608; Survey and Distribution, ii. 233-8; cf. CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 188. A similar process seems to have been happening in County Galway, where lands were acquired by the St Georges, Kings, Merediths and other families with links to the Cootes. Survey and Distribution, iii. 347-57. Sir Charles Coote’s local influence was further reinforced by his close alliance with Henry Cromwell* - the effective governor of Ireland from 1655. Henry had been granted the old Clanricarde estate at Portumna in eastern Galway, and by the late 1650s Coote looked after his landed interests in the region. Henry Cromwell Corresp. 193-4; TSP vi. 400. The authority of Coote and his friends was counter-balanced by the influence of the army. The garrison of Galway was commanded first by Colonel Peter Stubbers, then (from 1655) by Colonel Thomas Sadleir*, who commanded forces commensurate with the town’s strategic importance. Galway had become a supply base for the English army shortly after the Irish surrender in 1652, and the inhabitants soon had cause to complain of the ‘heavy burdens and oppressions’ of the garrison. CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 273, 525-6; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 270-1. Further grievances were caused by the encouragement (by Sadleir, at least) of Baptists within the garrison, and the failure of grandiose schemes to settle Dutch Protestants in the town. Henry Cromwell Corresp. 281-3, 303-6.
The split in political power between the Old Protestants and the army explains the pattern of parliamentary elections in counties Galway and Mayo in this period. The army’s influence over elections was increased by the decision in 1654 to hold them in the town of Galway, under the eyes of the military; and while Coote could clearly control one seat, the second seems to have been influenced by the army. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 800. Thus, in 1654 Sir Charles Coote was returned with the army’s commissary-general, John Reynolds. The election indenture, dated 2 August, suggests that the return was tightly controlled, with only five electors being named, and four of them holding military rank, including two Old Protestants, Francis Gore and Oliver St George. C219/44, unfol. In 1656 Coote was again elected, this time with Lieutenant-colonel John Brett, who was probably supported by the governor of Galway, Colonel Sadleir; in 1659 the army again asserted its influence, and Sadleir was elected alongside Coote. By December 1659 the reluctant cooperation between the Old Protestants and the army had broken down completely, and, as part of the general seizure of strongholds across Ireland, Coote’s men captured Galway, and deposed Sadleir. Ludlow, Mems. ii. 187. In the General Convention of March 1660 the three known county MPs included two Coote clients, Sir Oliver St George and Arthur Gore. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 225, 228-9. After the Restoration, Sir Charles Coote, now earl of Mountrath, was retained as the king’s lord president of Connaught, and granted the additional powers over Galway which Clanricarde had enjoyed before 1641. CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 265-6, 481-2. The 1661 Irish Parliament saw the return of Mountrath’s brother and three of his Old Protestant clients to the county seats. CJI i. 590, 592. It would not be an exaggeration to say that, at the time of Mountrath’s death in late 1661, the Cootes had replaced the Bourkes as the dominant family in the region.
