Kilkenny’s Confederate Model
Ireland’s emergency was inseparable from the mounting conflict across the Stuart monarchies. Charles I was king of Ireland, Scotland and England, but his authority was being disputed in each kingdom. English parliamentarians feared that the Irish rebellion might be used to strengthen royal power; Irish Catholics feared renewed dispossession, religious coercion and the punishment of all who had taken up arms. In March, the English Parliament secured royal assent to the Adventurers’ Act, which raised money for war in Ireland by promising subscribers repayment in confiscated Irish land. The measure did not determine who would eventually own those lands, but it gave a stark financial form to Catholic anxieties: military defeat might bring not only penalties but wholesale loss of estates.