Confederate Ireland

Confederate Ireland, also called the Irish Catholic Confederation or the Confederation of Kilkenny, was a period of Catholic self-government in Ireland between 1642 and 1652. It arose after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when Catholic aristocrats, gentry, clergy and military leaders combined to defend their religion and lands against the Protestant administration in Dublin. The Confederates controlled up to two-thirds of the island from their base at Kilkenny, where a General Assembly, a Supreme Council and a military organisation governed in the name of Charles I. They minted coins, levied taxes, ran a printing press and sent ambassadors to France, Spain and the Papal States, from whom they received money and weapons. Their aims ranged from an end to anti-Catholic discrimination and greater Irish self-government to the reversal of the plantations. Internal divisions between Gaelic Irish and Old English, and between those who sought a deal with the king and those who did not, weakened the confederation. After Cromwell's invasion in 1649 the Confederates were defeated, and by 1652 the movement had collapsed.