Peacemaking in Ireland and England, 1642–1646  

Abstract England in the 1640s faced not a war ‘against Men of another Religion, of another Nation’ such as that then being fought out in Ireland, but a war of ‘Protestant against Protestant, Englishman against Englishman, Brother against Brother’. Yet it was in Ireland that efforts at peacemaking came closer to fruition. Approaching this conundrum comparatively requires taking account not only of the mechanics of negotiation, but more especially of the ways in which it proved possible to reach some reconciliation between the narratives which competing causes used to justify their actions, sustain support and locate themselves in history. In both regards, the very institutional robustness of the English Parliament, and the centrality its adherents accorded it as constitutional arbiter and historical actor, proved a constraint. In Ireland, a more inchoate polity, a more contested history and the more provisional institutions created by the Confederate Catholic movement allowed more fluidity in negotiation. It also enabled a convergence with royalist narratives, not least in mapping out a shared geography of ‘malignancy’ threatening them both. If Ireland offered the possibility of a settlement on issues between Crown and national community which baffled progress in England, the breakdown came on matters religious, where the ambiguities inherent in peacemaking proved not fruitful but fatal.