To Hell or to Connacht

1652 - 1657 — After the conquest came the confiscation: Catholic landowners were ordered west of the Shannon, in one of the largest transfers of land in European history.

Cromwell's military victory was followed by a settlement designed to break Catholic Ireland for good. Under the Act for the Settlement of Ireland (1652), Catholic landowners judged to have taken part in the rebellion faced execution or the loss of their estates. Thousands were ordered to give up their fertile lands in the east and south and move west of the River Shannon — to the poorer ground of Connacht and County Clare — while their old lands were handed to Cromwell's soldiers and to the "adventurers" who had funded the war.

The phrase remembered ever after was the grim choice offered: "to Hell or to Connacht." By the time the dust settled, Catholic ownership of Irish land had collapsed from around 60% to a fraction of that — a wound that shaped Irish grievance for centuries.