Chapter 5 - The Early 1650s

Summary

After nine months in Ireland, Cromwell is recalled to London. Andrew Marvell writes “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return,” an ambiguous encomium. In Ireland, Cromwell’s early return to London is largely forgotten in public memory. By revising existing English-language discussions of Ireland, and incorporating its demographic variety into an emerging idea of “the Irish,” Milton contributes to reconceptualizing Ireland from pluralist variety to a new, flatter pairing, “the Irish” and “the English.” The Cromwellian conquest produces a stronger Irish Catholic identitarian response, as can be seen in the November 1649 meeting of “The Archbishops, Bishops, and other Prelates” at Clonmacnoise (and their subsequent, 1650 publication, to which Cromwell and Milton both responded). Around the same time that Certaine Actes and Declarations of the Clonmacnoise conference was published, the Council of State assigned Milton the task of responding to Defensio Regia pro Carolina I, by Salmasius. Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland is wrapped into Milton’s response, known in English as A Defence of the People of England (1651).