that the government simply did not have the resources to pursue Catholicism...

One reason for the endurance of Catholicism was that the laws against the faith were not always rigorously applied. Part of the problem here was the government simply did not have the resources to pursue Catholicism in the way that it otherwise would have wished. One of the civilising aspects of the Plantation, so far as government was concerned, was to bring Ulster Catholics under the influence of Protestant overseers.

The settlers had mixed attitudes to Ulster Catholics and Catholicism. The Early stages of the Plantation could not have been successful without co-operation from the native Catholics. Many settlers, and indeed even government officials, tended to a pragmatic acceptance of the practice of the old religion. Indeed some historians have argued that the religious element was not a source of division among settlers in the Early stages of the Plantation. Much depended on the quality and attitude of local officials.

laws against Catholics and Catholic priests were enforced...

It was, perhaps, the issue of local loyalty that was most significant in the failure of government to implement a consistent religious policy. However, where it was practicable laws against Catholics and Catholic priests were enforced. Thus for example in March 1621, John McGillen the parish priest of Ballynascreen County Londonderry was sentenced to life-long imprisonment for exercising the Catholic priesthood in defiance of the law. Equally we have many instances where local Protestants would refuse to convict Recusant Catholics despite the evidence against them.

In the Early 1620s the Church of Ireland bishop of Derry, George Downham, complained about the negligence of government officers in refusing to arrest Catholic priests operating in Derry, Donegal and Tyrone. He also observed that if priests were arrested local corruption often sufficed to secure their release. By 1632 we find in the Londonderry Plantations that 24 priests operated in 29 parishes under the direction of the Vicar General Turlough O’Kelly. Some of these priests were actually tenants of the London Companies responsible for the Derry Plantations. By that stage the London Companies had erected nine ‘mass-houses’ for their Catholic tenants.

Fr Tirlough McCrudden spent some time in May 1613 stirring up passions ...

In some instances the Catholic priests were regarded by the settlers as valuable and important members of the local community, who at the very least helped to keep order among an otherwise refractory population. In return they received a degree of succour even from the vicissitudes of their own flock. We know of cases in Derry and Limavady of priests successfully suing their parishioners in the Sheriffs Court for stipends due to them for performing the sacraments. In other parts of Ulster Catholicism was practised quite openly. By 1630 the population of Downpatrick Co. Down was some 8000 souls, and was almost wholly Catholic. Priests from religious orders and the diocesan priests both ministered in that part of Down.

These instances of acceptance and toleration ought not, however, to blind us to a less harmonious picture of the relationship between the Catholic and settler communities in Ulster in the 17th century. The whole period 1609-41 was one in which many settlers lived in a state of alarm concerning the intentions of Ulster Catholics in their regard. In particular, the attitude of the Catholic clergy could, at times, be decisive. Fr Tirlough McCrudden spent some time in May 1613 stirring up passions in mid-Ulster urging congregations to resist the State Church, and inciting Catholics to rebellion. He lambasted the Church of Ireland communion service as ‘sediment of the devil’, and assured his hearers that O’Neill would soon return to Ulster at the head of a Spanish army. Similarly Bishop John Cullenan of Raphoe used some of his energies in 1625 in trying to persuade Spain to invade Ireland.