Why is cromwell still hated by the irish catholics today?
His measures against Irish Catholics have been characterized by some historians as genocidal or near-genocidal, and in Ireland itself he is widely hated. By the end of the Cromwellian campaign and settlement there had been extensive dispossession of landowners who were Catholic, and a huge drop in population. In the wake of the Commonwealth’s conquest, the public practice of Catholicism was banned and Catholic priests were murdered when captured. In addition, roughly 12,000 Irish people were sold into slavery under the Commonwealth. All Catholic-owned land was confiscated in the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652 and given to Scottish and English settlers, the Parliament’s financial creditors and Parliamentary soldiers. The remaining Catholic landowners were allocated poorer land in the province of Connacht – this led to the Cromwellian attributed phrase “To hell or to Connacht”. Under the Commonwealth, Catholic landownership dropped from 60% of the total to just 8%. All this is co
