A Nation Once Again: Celtic Trilogy, #1

By George Kearton

Initially, the Easter Uprising of 1916 was judged a failure. A glorious failure certainly - but a failure. And yet, within five years, most of Ireland was independent of British rule.

 

In this enthralling first episode of his new Celtic Trilogy, George Kearton, author of the nine-volume "House of Stuart Sequence" of alternative history, sets out how an Irish Uprising during The Great War could have succeeded.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223794257

Book preview

Foreword

George Kearton passed away in September 2022. A Nation Once Again is the last piece of his writing that Sea Lion Press will have the privilege of publishing.

I can still remember my first conversation with George. Running Sea Lion Press usually means getting to know authors by email, a perfectly fine way of doing things of course, but occasionally a bit formal for some people’s liking. George was clearly one of those people, for he asked if we could speak by phone not long after we first made contact.

As the agreed time approached, I became a little nervous - George was the very first author to approach Sea Lion Press after encountering us ‘in the wild’ rather than being part of the existing AlternateHistory.com community. Would we meet his expectations?

I needn’t have worried. As became clear within moments of the call beginning, George was warm, funny, entirely unpretentious but never at the expense of his work as an author. He wrote for the love of it, and anyone who read his work could see it. That night I also spoke with his beloved wife Norma, whose loss I know was painful to him in the extreme. Norma was equally friendly and helpful as we worked through the evening to iron out the details of agreeing George’s work for publication.

In the years since that first conversation, George and I communicated regularly as Sea Lion Press published the not three, not four, but nine volumes of his House of Stuart Sequence. Whether discussing the cover illustrations by Jack Tindale (George was always very impressed and eager to thank Jack), or going over what unfolded in each latest volume, our interactions were a joy. Inevitably, I now wish we’d had more.

The House of Stuart Sequence, of course, relates to a different path for the British crown in the 18th century and beyond. It was a subject George had long been well-versed in. But not only a great authority on Scottish and Jacobite history, George was also a formidable generalist. In addition to the British Isles, he was able to weave imaginative tales of alternate North Americas, Asias and Africas as well.

When news reached the Sea Lion Press forums of George’s death, the response spoke to what a positive impact he had made on our community. He may not have come from the various websites it was drawn from in the first place, but he became a valued member thanks to his kindness, determination to offer useful feedback to other authors, and vast general knowledge - much of it drawn from experience gained during a life substantially less ordinary. He will be sorely missed - perhaps never more than when one of the many topics he could offer insight into is now discussed without him.

A Nation Once Again is published posthumously and presented as it was submitted to Sea Lion Press. While the remaining instalments in the trilogy will sadly not be forthcoming, it seems fitting to me that George’s final publication is a story he was not finished telling – in conversation, debate or his beloved writing, he always had more to say.

Tom Black

Sea Lion Press

November 2022

Throughout history, Democracies, Dictatorships and Empires have all had their own ways of masking, or ignoring, their social inequalities.

Nowhere was this more true than in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the opening years of the twentieth century. Great Britain may have been the world’s most powerful nation and possessor of the Empire on which the sun never sets, but this Imperial pomp and grandeur hid a society of many contradictions as extreme wealth rubbed alongside abject poverty.

This was the case in all of the grandest cities of the Empire; London, Birmingham, Swansea, Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin and Glasgow had some of the worst housing and social conditions in the industrial nations of the world. In the city of Dublin, over 25,000 families lived in single rooms. Over seventy families would share the only primitive toilet in a building and the only running water was often that which trickled down the walls.

Irish Nationalist Margaret Skinnider commented about Dublin housing:

"I do not believe there is a worse street in the world than Ash Street. It lies in a hollow where sewage runs and refuse falls; it is not paved and is full of holes. One might think it had been under shell-fire. The fallen houses look like corpses, the others like cripples leaning upon crutches.

These houses are symbolic of the downfall of Ireland. They were built by rich Irishmen for their homes. Today they are tenements for the poorest Irish people – the poor among the ruins of grandeur"

SOME SOUGHT TO REMEDY this deprivation by espousing Socialism; Britain’s Labour Party was now emerging as a national political force to be reckoned with in the future and was gradually building up its support at local municipal levels, especially in Glasgow and London.

Others sought to engage nationalism as a vehicle for change. Nationalism was rife in Ireland and not without its adherents in both Scotland and Wales.

This is an alternative history; it tells of how the forces of nationalism could have changed the face of Great Britain..........

"When boyhood’s fire was in my blood,

I read of ancient freemen.

Of Greece and Rome who bravely stood,

Three hundred men and three men.

And then I prayed I yet might see

Our fetters rent in twain.

And Ireland, long a province, be

A Nation once again"

Thomas Osborn Davis

1814-45

Killala, County Mayo, Holy Week, April 1914

Cold and tired, Constance Georgine Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz, lay on the sea cliffs overlooking the village of Killala, on the west coast of Ireland. She was dressed in a green uniform of her own devising and by her side was an 1871 Model Mauser rifle, one of thousands of weapons sent with the help of a potential overseas ally in order to to assist a small band of Irish Nationalists in their plans to declare and secure independence from Great Britain. The Mausers were obsolete single shot weapons but still effective. Over 1,500 of them, together with nearly 50,000 rounds of ammunition had been smuggled into Ireland during 1913.

The Countess was a rebel; a Lieutenant in the Irish Citizen Army. Had she been arrested by the authorities she would almost certainly have been charged with high treason. If found guilty, one of two penalties would have faced her; death by hanging or death by firing squad.

She was far from her privileged upbringing; her father, Sir Henry Gore-Booth had been knighted for his services to Polar exploration and her mother Georgina was a niece of the Earl of Scarborough. In youthful rebellion against her Protestant land-owning family with its roots in County Sligo, Constance had attended art schools in London and Paris and had married a romantic Pole with a title of dubious provenance. Returning to Ireland in the early years of the century, she was swiftly swept up into the intellectual and activist frenzy of Irish Nationalism, initially through her financial support of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Though still attending official functions at Dublin Castle as late as 1904, by 1908, she had joined the women’s Nationalist organisation Inghinidhe nah Eireann (The Daughters of Ireland) and in the following year she was elected to the ruling council of Sinn Fein, a newly formed political party which was campaigning peacefully for Irish independence.

She had been accompanied to Killala by a young protegee; Scottish-born mathematics teacher Margaret Skinnider Aged only 22, Margaret had used her previous school holidays from St Agnes’ Primary School in Lambhill near Glasgow to assist the fight for Irish independence. She had made several dangerous trips to Dublin with detonators hidden in her hat and explosive fuse wire wrapped round her waist. She would later describe her experiences in 1914 as doing my bit for Ireland. Already a proficient shot with both pistol and rifle, she had acquired her skills at a British Government sponsored course designed to train women to resist any foreign invaders. These courses were commonplace at the time, especially in view of the political situation in Eastern Europe. Germany and Austria were already at war with Russia and the British government was struggling to ensure that Great Britain would not be drawn into any wider conflict.

With them on the hilltop were a small number of their fellow Nationalists from County Mayo, members of the Irish Volunteers. They had no uniforms and were drawn from the mainly agricultural communities across the county. All, however, shared the belief that, after hundreds of years it was long past time that Ireland should shake off her allegiance to Great Britain. Some had Mausers, others were armed with shotguns, a few only had antique muskets over a century old and never tested for firing, four had blacksmith-forged pikes on ash staffs, two had only pitchforks and one young man had armed himself with a hurley stick. He was probably a member of the Gaelic Athletic Association; formed in 1884, this sporting association was dedicated to reviving traditional Irish sports and frowned on Irishmen playing cricket, football or rugby. The GAA had, for many years, been a fertile recruiting ground for the Irish Nationalist cause; hurley sticks were, in the early days, so common at drill parades that they were referred to as ‘Tipperary rifles’. All those with the Countess were Catholic; the history of Irish Nationalism had, for centuries, been closely linked to the fate of the Church in this, the most Catholic of countries.

The Countess and her companions anxiously scanned the sea; they were looking for, and awaiting the arrival of, troops from a recently-recruited European ally. After long and difficult negotiations carried out with Irish envoys, this ally had prepared an impressive declaration which would shortly be made public to the world:

we would land not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy but as the forces of a Government that is inspired by good-will towards a country and people for whom we desire only a national prosperity and national freedom

They had thus promised the provision of troops to assist the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood with their plans for a national rebellion which would finally sweep the English from the shores and verdant pastures of Ireland where they had been unwelcome guests since 1167.

The Roads to Rebellion

Once William The Bastard had landed and conquered in 1066, the English only ever came to their Celtic neighbours as invaders. In the days of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, things were more peaceful in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. True, there were occasional border skirmishes on the mainland, usually over the matter of stolen livestock, but there were no organised attempts at conquest. And across the Irish Sea, the Kings, sub-Kings and chieftains of Ireland were entirely left to pursue their own varied dynastic ambitions as they saw fit.

The Normans changed all that. Especially in their earlier incarnation as Norsemen they were always land-hungry and, even in the pious atmosphere of the First Crusade, the participating Norman Knights and Nobles were just as keen to establish Kingdoms for themselves in the Levant as they were to free the Holy Land from Moslem tyranny.

By cruel paradox, the first Norman invaders came to Ireland at the invitation of an Irish sub-King. In 1167, Diarmit Mac Murchada of Leinster had been deposed by his people. Seeking trained soldiers to regain his throne, Diarmit approached Henry II of England for assistance which Henry was only too pleased to offer. The first Norman knights landed in Ireland later that year, followed by larger forces of Normans, Welsh and Flemings. Several counties were restored to the control of Diarmit, who named his son-in-law, the Norman Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke and known as Strongbow, heir to his kingdom. This troubled King Henry, who feared the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland. Accordingly, he resolved to establish his authority and, in 1170, at the Council of Oxford, declared his son Prince John to be Lord of Ireland.

With the authority of the papal bull Laudabiliter from Adrian IV, Henry landed with a large fleet at Waterford in 1171, the first King of England to set foot on Irish soil. Henry had already awarded his Irish territories to John with the title Dominus Hiberniae (Lord of Ireland) and thus, when John unexpectedly succeeded his brother Richard as King, the Lordship of Ireland fell directly under the English Crown.

By 1200, most of Ireland was under Norman control but this was to decline in the following years. By 1261 the weakening of the Normans had become manifest when Fineen MacCarthy defeated a Norman army at the Battle of Callann. The wars would continue for about 100 years, causing much destruction, especially around Dublin. In this chaotic situation, local Irish lords won back large amounts of land that their families had lost since the conquest and held onto them after the wars had ended.

The next unwelcome invader was the Black Death which had arrived in Ireland in 1348. Most of of the English and Norman inhabitants of Ireland lived in towns and villages. Thus, the plague hit them far harder than it did the native Irish, who lived in more dispersed rural settlements. After it had passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the country again. The English-controlled territory shrank to a fortified area around Dublin known as the Pale; beyond this area they had little real authority, hence the origin of the phrase beyond the Pale for an area outwith the law.

By the end of the 15th century, central English authority in Ireland had almost disappeared as England's attentions were diverted by the Wars of the Roses. The Lordship of Ireland lay in the hands of the powerful Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare. They dominated the country by means of military force and alliances with local Irish lords and clans.

Around the country, Gaelic and originally-Norman Gaelicised lords expanded their powers at the expense of the English government in Dublin but the power of the Dublin government itself was seriously curtailed by the introduction of Poynings' Law in 1494. According to this act the Irish Parliament was essentially put under the control of the Westminster Parliament.

In 1536, Henry VIII decided to conquer Ireland and bring it under direct crown control. The Fitzgerald dynasty had become unreliable allies of the Tudor monarchs. They had invited Burgundian troops into Dublin to crown the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel as King of England in 1487. In 1536, another Fitzgerald went into open rebellion against the crown. Having put down this rebellion, Henry resolved to bring Ireland under English government control so the island would not become a base for future rebellions or foreign invasions of England. In 1541, he upgraded Ireland from a lordship to a full Kingdom and was proclaimed King of Ireland at a meeting of the Irish Parliament that year. This was the first meeting of the Irish Parliament to be attended by the Gaelic Irish chieftains as well as the Hiberno-Norman aristocracy. With the institutions of government in place, the next step was to extend the control of the English Kingdom of Ireland over all of its claimed territory. This took nearly a century, with various English administrations either negotiating with, or fighting against, the independent Irish and ‘Old English’ Gaelicised lords.

The re-conquest was only completed during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I after several brutal conflicts such as the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years War. By 1603, the English authorities in Dublin had established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised government to the entire island, and successfully disarming the native lords and their followers. Many Catholic nobles and their adherents travelled across the seas into Europe at this time and the history of the Wild Geese (Irish troops in foreign service) was established. In 1614 the Catholic majority in the Irish Parliament was overthrown by the creation of numerous new boroughs which were dominated by incoming Protestant settlers. However, the English were not successful in converting the majority of Catholic Irish to the Protestant religion and the brutal methods used by crown authority (including frequent proclamations of martial law) to bring the country under total English control merely served to heighten resentment of English rule.

This is just one example of contemporary Catholic Irish feeling towards the Protestant religion:

"Don’t talk of your Protestant Minister,

Or his church without Temple or State.

The foundation stone of his religion

Was the bollocks of Henry the Eighth"

From the mid-16th to the early 17th century, British governments, both royal under James I and Parliamentarian under Oliver Cromwell, had carried out a continuing policy of land confiscation and colonisation, the programme calling for the establishment of ‘Plantations’. Scottish and English Protestant colonists were sent to the provinces of Munster and Ulster as well as the counties of Laois and Offaly. These Protestant settlers replaced the Irish Catholic landowners who were removed from their lands with the choice of going to Hell or going to Connacht. Cromwell, initially visiting Ireland with fire and sword, took these removals even further; thousands of Catholics were transported to the West Indies as indentured labourers under conditions of total barbarity. There are many reasons why Cromwell has the same cloven-foot reputation in Ireland as that enjoyed by Sir Francis Drake in Spain.

The new settlers in Ireland would, in years to come, form the ruling class of British appointed administrations. Severe Penal Laws, aimed at Catholics, Baptists and Presbyterians, were introduced to encourage conversion to the established Anglican Church of Ireland. These Penal laws made it practically impossible for Catholics to own land and totally impossible for them to vote or sit in Parliament. It would be 1829 before Catholics were allowed to sit in Parliament again and, by then, it would be a British Parliament, the Irish Parliament having been abolished after the Rebellion of 1798.

The ’98 as it is still referred to, was the first attempt by Catholics and non-conformist Protestants, naming themselves as The United Irishmen and acting in concert, to overthrow the British. There was little coordinated planning across Ireland, government spies had infiltrated the ranks of the rebels and most of their leaders were arrested before the uprising had even begun. The rebels did, however, achieve considerable local successes both in Ulster and in the south and west of Ireland. Military assistance was sent to them by Revolutionary France, then at war with Great Britain, and a French force, one thousand strong, landed in County Mayo in August of 1798 in support of The Republic of Connaught. The site of that landing was Killala; it was thus highly symbolic and hardly surprising that Roger Casement had suggested it as a possible landing place to his potential allies. It was, however, only one of nearly a dozen coastal villages and harbours in the west of Ireland where members of the Irish Volunteers would spend Holy Week looking hopefully out to sea.

The Republic of Connaught was to last for only 32 days; its French supporters were defeated by the British and eventually and ignominiously returned to France. For the Irish however, the ’98 was to bring about a sea change in attitudes towards nationalism. The Act of Union in 1801 finally signalled the demise of Irish Parliaments; henceforth, Irish Members of Parliament would sit in the British Parliament at Westminster.