History of Derry - Civil Wars and Sieges

Civil Wars and Sieges

The new city was slow to prosper. By the 1680s it still had only about 2,000 inhabitants; and yet it was, by far, the largest town in Ulster. Along with most parts of Britain and Ireland, the city suffered from the upheavals in the 1640s. This began with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when the Gaelic Irish insurgents made a failed attack on the city. For the next ten years of war, Derry and its environs became a stronghold for the British Protestant settlers, who raised the "Lagan army" to defend themselves from the Irish Confederates. However, the Protestants were disunited about how to respond to the events of the English Civil War, with some of them supporting the King, some the English Parliament and some the Scottish Covenanters. In 1649 the city and its garrison, which supported the republican Parliament in London, were besieged by Scottish Presbyterian forces loyal to King Charles I. The Parliamentarians besieged in Derry were relieved by a strange alliance of Roundhead troops under George Monck and the Irish Catholic general Owen Roe O'Neill. These temporary allies were soon fighting each other again however, after the landing in Ireland of the New Model Army in 1649. The war in Ulster was finally brought to an end when the Parliamentarians crushed the Irish Catholic Ulster army at the battle of Scarrifholis in nearby Donegal in 1650.

Among Derry's most famous citizens in the second half of the 17th century was George Farquhar, one of the so-called Restoration dramatists.

In 1688, Ireland became the battleground for the Glorious Revolution in England, when James II was deposed by William of Orange. Catholic Ireland strongly supported James, but many Protestants in Ulster secretly supported William. James II had his Catholic viceroy Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell take action to ensure that all strong points in Ireland were held by garrisons loyal to the Jacobite cause. By November 1688, only the walled city of Londonderry and nearby Enniskillen had a Protestant garrison. An army of around 1,200 men, mostly "Redshanks" (Highlanders), under Alexander MacDonnell, 3rd Earl of Antrim, was slowly organised (they set out on the week William of Orange landed in England). When they arrived on 7 December 1688 the gates were closed against them and the Siege of Derry began.

On April 18, 1689, while his attempts to regain his throne in what became the Williamite war in Ireland with the Jacobites got under way, King James came to the city and summoned it to surrender. The King was rebuffed and actually fired at by some of the more determined defenders; tradition has the apprentice boys closing the gates and saving the city. As a policy of 'no surrender' was confirmed, the Jacobite forces outside the city began the famous Siege of Derry. For 105 days the city suffered appalling conditions as cannonballs and mortar-bombs rained down, and famine and disease took their terrible toll. Conditions for the besiegers were no better and many thousands of people died, both inside and outside the walls. The cannon used to defend the city can be seen on the walls and at other places around the city. Finally at the end of July, a relief ship broke the barricading 'boom' which had been stretched across the river, near where the new Foyle Bridge now stands. The Siege was over but it has left its mark on the traditions of the city to the present day (see Apprentice Boys of Derry).