26. When Fear of the Irish Gripped England
English Protestants’ willingness to put up with the Catholic King James II ended in 1688, when the aging monarch unexpectedly had a son. At a stroke, that removed the option of running out the clock and waiting for the king’s eventual death and replacement by a Protestant successor. The simmering resentments came to a boil, and set in motion the Glorious Revolution in 1688. It ended when James II fled England and was replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary II and her husband, William III. However, in the period between James’ flight and the enthronement of William and Mary, there were no government Fears of anarchy and lawless violence gripped the country. The greatest manifestation of such fears was a mass panic known as “The Irish Fright”. It centered around an Irish army that James II had brought from Ireland to England towards the end of his reign, to prop up his tottering throne. That army was greatly resented and feared by the English. Many recalled, and most believed, the (sometimes exaggerated) stories of widespread Irish massacres and depravities against Protestants during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, that had accompanied the English Civil War a few decades earlier. Many in England were thus primed to believe that the Irish were predisposed to savagery and capable of any atrocity.
