The Making of Modern Ireland 1603-1923 Quotes

“the material on which government has to work is human nature, and that men who submit to force retain the will, and may acquire the ability, to resist.”
― J.C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland 1603 - 1923

“One feature of the economic revival of the early seventeenth century was the rapid exploitation of the woodlands. During the Tudor period the destruction of the woods had already begun, though mainly for military reasons: they blocked the passage of the royal armies, and afforded secure fastnesses into which the more lightly-equipped Irish troops could easily retreat. It was therefore a constant policy of the government to open up passes; and during the later Elizabethan wars this was extended to a general clearance of large areas. Fynes Moryson, who travelled extensively in Ireland at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, declared that he had ‘been deceived in the common fame that all Ireland is woody’, for in the course of a journey from Armagh to Kinsale he found, except in Offaly, no woods at all, beyond ‘some low shrubby places which they call glens’. But Moryson’s description cannot be applied to the whole country. At the beginning of the seventeenth century there were still extensive woodlands in Munster; the great wood of Glenconkeyne in Ulster was reckoned by Sir John Davies to be as big as the New Forest in Hampshire; and even beyond these areas, the country was at this time fairly heavily timbered. But the process of destruction was soon to be speeded up.”
― J.C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland 1603 - 1923