Secrets Of Great British Castles - Season 1, Episode 6 Carrickfergus Castle
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00:00For me, a great British castle is a fortress, a palace, a home.
00:11And a symbol of power, majesty and fear.
00:16For nearly 1,000 years,
00:18castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.
00:24These magnificent buildings have been home
00:27to great heroes and villains in our national history.
00:31And many of them still stand proudly today,
00:34bursting with incredible stories of warfare, treachery, intrigue and even murder.
00:46Join me, Dan Jones, as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.
00:53This time, I'm in Carrickfergus,
00:56exploring one of the oldest and longest-serving military strongholds in Ireland.
01:04Carrickfergus Castle takes us right to the heart
01:08of the long history of violence and hatred between England and Ireland.
01:14Neighbours torn apart by wars over power, religion and national identity.
01:23MUSIC
01:34Today, Carrickfergus is a quiet town on the coast of Antrim,
01:38a short drive north of Belfast.
01:42It's part of Northern Ireland,
01:44a country joined together with Scotland, Wales and England
01:48to make up the United Kingdom.
01:50But traditionally, this British region in the north of the island
01:54overlaps with the Irish province known as Ulster.
02:02This is where Britishness meets Irishness
02:05and Protestantism meets Catholicism.
02:12Over the years, the clash of those identities has caused terrible bloodshed.
02:21The story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland
02:24goes back nearly 900 years to the Middle Ages,
02:28and it all starts here in Carrickfergus.
02:33Today, when we think of Ireland's troubled history,
02:36we tend to think of Belfast,
02:38but back in the 1100s, Belfast was just a tiny hamlet,
02:41and it was Carrickfergus which, thanks to its key geographical location,
02:46was the most important town in Ulster.
02:51And the first person to spot the major military and political potential
02:56in Carrickfergus was a maverick young knight called John de Kersey.
03:04De Kersey was the second son of a lord from Somerset in south-west England.
03:12He had no claim to the family estates,
03:15so he decided to seek his fortune elsewhere.
03:20Ireland was ripe for the taking.
03:25The English had traditionally left Ireland alone,
03:29but de Kersey was born at the right time.
03:33In the 1170s, the King of England, Henry II,
03:37was raising an army to conquer Ireland for himself.
03:42De Kersey was part of that invasion force
03:46taking key regions and towns.
03:49Whilst others captured the south and east,
03:52de Kersey set his sights on the north.
03:58He assembled a small army of 22 knights and 300 foot soldiers
04:03and marched north to the province of Ulster.
04:10He put the Irish to the sword, overthrew the native Ulster chiefs
04:14and claimed lands on the east coast.
04:20De Kersey had conquered eastern Ulster,
04:22and now he needed somewhere to make his stronghold
04:25and his principal residence in Ireland.
04:31He chose this small strip of rock overlooking the Irish Sea.
04:36It was surrounded by water on three sides, the perfect defensive site.
04:45TENSE MUSIC
04:52De Kersey built a large stone keep with a high curtain wall and gate.
05:01Within the walls, he built a great hall,
05:04where he held court as the self-appointed ruler of Ulster.
05:10If you were an ambitious, thrusting young noble like John de Kersey,
05:14this was virgin territory, really?
05:16Very much so. I think John de Kersey was very ambitious,
05:19very, very clever man and very brave.
05:22He took on... He was going basically into the wilderness
05:26to find this wealth and to fight battles in very unknown territory.
05:31So you could come here as a very poor lord or as a younger son
05:35and really make your fortune, if you were brave enough to do it.
05:43De Kersey realised it was all very well building this castle,
05:47but to really cement his power,
05:49he was going to have to make peace with the locals,
05:52which he did so effectively that contemporary documents
05:55refer to him as Princeps Lyddii, Prince of Ulster.
06:00This was a big problem for his new king back in England.
06:06By 1205, Henry II was dead.
06:09His son, King John, was on the throne.
06:14For a while, de Kersey had proved himself useful to the English crown,
06:19enforcing the law and raising taxes.
06:22Rent of half a shilling. Thank you, My Lord.
06:25But now John realised he was getting too rich and too big for his boots.
06:30And if that wasn't enough, de Kersey did something really stupid.
06:39When he was here, he started minting his own coins, is that right?
06:42He did. Yes, he did start minting his own coins.
06:45This was seen by the King John back in England
06:49as a real threat to his authority.
06:52At the time, coins were seen as a real symbol of power.
06:56The King would have minted coins
06:58to show that he controlled all the trade and commerce.
07:01So when John de Kersey decided to mint coins,
07:04he was really making a declaration of independence.
07:08He's saying, I'm the person who controls commerce,
07:11who controls power in this part of the world.
07:13Absolutely.
07:14Almost like he's the King of Ulster himself.
07:16Indeed, that's exactly what he was saying.
07:18Indeed, that's exactly what he was saying.
07:20And John was a very mean and vindictive man.
07:23He felt very insecure in his place on the throne.
07:26And he would have been absolutely outraged
07:28by such a declaration of independence from himself.
07:32It was just unfeasible that a mere knight could do this kind of thing.
07:37And can we see the coin?
07:38We can see it here in this little box.
07:41It's very, very small.
07:43It's just a tiny fragment really now, but you can still make out...
07:47It's silver, isn't it?
07:48It's silver, but there's quite a high percentage of tin in it,
07:50which makes it very brittle.
07:52It's amazing to think that out of this tiny coin
07:55arose so much trouble between King John and John de Kersey.
07:58Absolutely.
07:59He was making such a statement with this tiny coin,
08:01it was a real gesture of defiance to King John.
08:05Fascinating.
08:06It's very small, but it's a very, very powerful symbol.
08:12At first, John asked another nobleman
08:15to force de Kersey out of Carrickfergus.
08:19But eventually, he realised there was a much more effective solution.
08:25John decided to do the job properly.
08:27He came over to Ireland and took the castle into royal hands.
08:33De Kersey's armies had been defeated.
08:35He was stripped of his lands and power in Ulster
08:38and thrown out of the castle.
08:40But King John wasn't finished yet.
08:46Work began on building the castle's middle ward
08:49and four new towers.
08:51It was all surrounded by a massive new curtain wall,
08:56which strengthened the castle's defences
08:58against attacks from land and sea.
09:03To the Irish chieftains in Ulster,
09:05Carrickfergus was now an English town right in their midst.
09:11In return, King John saw Ulster as the Wild West,
09:14an uncivilised place inhabited by savages
09:17who needed to be kept firmly at arm's length.
09:21And that attitude was captured by a chronicler
09:24who visited Ireland alongside John
09:28and wrote about its conquest by the English.
09:32He writes of the Irish,
09:33they're a wild and inhospitable people.
09:36They live on beasts only and live like beasts.
09:40They have not progressed at all
09:42from the primitive habits of pastoral living.
09:45It goes on and on.
09:46He says, while man usually progresses
09:48from the woods to the fields
09:49and from the fields to settlements
09:51and communities of citizens,
09:53this people, that's the Irish,
09:55despises work on the land,
09:57has little use for the money-making of towns,
10:00condemns the rights and privileges of citizenship
10:03and desires neither to abandon nor lose respect from
10:07the life which it has been accustomed to lead
10:10in the woods and the countryside.
10:15By the time John died in 1216,
10:18Carrickfergus Castle was a menacing military presence
10:21on the coast, and it needed to be.
10:25Because across the Irish Sea,
10:27another enemy force was gathering.
10:32And their number one target was Carrickfergus.
10:41In the Middle Ages,
10:43Carrickfergus was the most important town in Ulster.
10:48And its castle was a sign of the daunting military power
10:52of the invaders who occupied it.
10:58But because of its position,
11:00this castle was also a place to play out struggles
11:04with their origins in other parts of the British Isles.
11:08In the 14th century, that's exactly what happened.
11:13Carrickfergus Castle has been besieged
11:15plenty of times over the years.
11:17It's at the heart of the story of the English conquest of Ireland,
11:21so it's the key to understanding the tumultuous relationship
11:24between those two countries.
11:26But it wasn't always the English invading.
11:29In fact, this castle was the pivotal point
11:32in a Scottish invasion of Ireland.
11:34In the early 14th century,
11:36the Scots were fighting a vicious war of independence
11:39against England.
11:41They were led by Robert the Bruce,
11:44one of the greatest military leaders in their history,
11:47who was determined to be recognised as King of Scots.
11:57For Robert, smashing the English on his home soil wasn't enough.
12:01At Carrickfergus, he was about to prove it.
12:07In 1314, Robert the Bruce won a famous victory
12:11for Scottish independence at the Battle of Bannockburn.
12:14Bruce, eager to follow up on his success,
12:17decided to open a second front against the English,
12:20here in Ireland.
12:26Robert already had a plan.
12:29Robert already had a connection with this part of the world.
12:33He was married to the daughter of the Earl of Ulster,
12:36so he knew the significance of Carrickfergus Castle all too well.
12:45When you stand here on the coast of Antrim,
12:47you really understand why Bruce thought he could invade,
12:50because just out there, very clear on the horizon,
12:53is the Mull of Kintyre.
12:55That's the coast of Scotland.
12:57It looks I'm not quite close enough to swim,
13:00but certainly only a few hours' sail on a nice clear day like today.
13:13To oversee his invasion, Robert chose another man who knew Ireland,
13:18his younger brother, Edward Bruce.
13:28Their plan was simple.
13:30The Bruces would bring together all the Gaelic peoples
13:34in one mass anti-English movement.
13:39Bruce brought 6,000 men over in boats called Berlins,
13:43which looked just like Viking longboats.
13:46It would have taken a full day's rowing to get from Scotland.
13:50When they arrived in Ireland,
13:52they set about allying with local families.
13:55Their aim was to take Carrickfergus Castle and turn Ulster Scottish.
14:08Edward and his troops landed at Larn, just north of the castle.
14:12After overrunning the town, his triumphant army was on the march.
14:20The first thing Edward did was to declare himself king of England.
14:25Then he attacked Carrickfergus Castle.
14:30Edward's army arrived in front of the castle in September 1315.
14:35Inside, the small garrison watched thousands of Scottish soldiers
14:40take up their positions outside the walls.
14:43Edward was confident of victory.
14:48But there was a problem. He didn't have any siege equipment,
14:52so instead he surrounded the place and waited.
14:57A year later, he was still waiting.
15:03The castle was stocked with decent reserves of food,
15:06but the defenders inside had also been joined by townspeople,
15:10fearful for their lives.
15:13Inevitably, after months without relief, the food started running out.
15:19The inhabitants were reduced to chewing on animal hides to survive.
15:26Edward sent messengers inside to discuss terms of surrender,
15:30but they never returned.
15:35Accounts say up to 30 captured Scottish soldiers were imprisoned in the castle,
15:40and not all of them made it out alive.
15:44As the siege progressed, it's believed that the castle's starving defenders
15:49started killing and eating the prisoners.
15:55The siege lasted a staggering 12 months,
15:58and by then, only a handful of the original occupants had survived.
16:04In the autumn of 1316, the long siege of Carrickfergus Castle was over.
16:14Edward Bruce had taken a magnificent prize,
16:17but he wouldn't hold it for very long.
16:21Ireland was in the grip of a major famine.
16:24It was increasingly difficult to feed troops in the field.
16:28Two years after capturing Carrickfergus Castle,
16:31Edward's weakened Scots-Irish army was annihilated by the English
16:36at the Battle of Fogart.
16:39Edward was killed.
16:41His body was quartered and sent to the four corners of Ireland.
16:45His head was sent to the king in England.
16:49Two months later, the castle that Edward had taken at such cost
16:53was recaptured.
16:56Carrickfergus remained the key to controlling Ulster,
17:00and now it was back in English hands.
17:02And that's how it stayed for 200 years.
17:05When the castle was the centre of a new war.
17:08This time, a war of religion.
17:17In 1558, Elizabeth I became Queen of England.
17:21She claimed to be Queen of Ireland, too.
17:26Elizabeth was a Protestant monarch,
17:28and she wanted both her realms to be Protestant as well.
17:32And to achieve her aim,
17:34she planned to get rid of the Catholic ruling classes,
17:38by whatever means necessary.
17:42But what started here at Carrickfergus Castle
17:45in the course of her reign still divides Ulster today.
17:51There were always people ready to ingratiate themselves with the Queen
17:55by seizing land for the crown in Ireland.
17:58One in particular stands out.
18:00Walter Devereaux, Earl of Essex.
18:03He came to Carrickfergus in 1573 with a force of 1,200 men
18:08and began a notoriously bloody campaign in Ulster.
18:14Essex was an ambitious, ruthless man,
18:17and he was at the centre of one of the worst atrocities
18:20in British and Irish history.
18:23Whilst in Ulster, he was a man of great ambition,
18:27whilst Elizabeth's plan was to strip the Irish of lands and power,
18:31Essex wanted to slaughter them.
18:35From his base at Carrickfergus,
18:37Essex divided the local clan chiefs and picked them off one by one.
18:43Before long, every clan leader was either dead
18:47or had sworn allegiance to the Queen,
18:50all except one.
18:53The one obstacle remaining to Essex was a Scots-Irish clan
18:57led by Sawley Boy Macdonald.
19:00The Macdonald clan were originally from Scotland,
19:03but they'd been settled in Ireland for generations.
19:06Sawley Boy had fought in dozens of battles
19:09and had absolutely no respect for Englishmen like Essex.
19:14In July 1575, Essex decided to drive Sawley Boy out of Ulster
19:19once and for all.
19:21When Sawley Boy heard that Essex was on the attack,
19:24he sent hundreds of vulnerable people,
19:26women, children, the sick, the elderly,
19:29to Rathlin Island for safety.
19:31But that didn't put Essex off.
19:33Straight away, he hired the services of John Norris
19:36and one Francis Drake
19:38to take a large fleet over to the island
19:41and flush out the vulnerable people hiding there.
19:44Norris and Drake packed ships with soldiers and firepower
19:48and set sail north from Carrickfergus towards Rathlin Island.
19:53Their orders were to kill anyone they found.
19:57Sawley Boy's supporters had taken refuge in Rathlin Castle.
20:05Drake used cannon to soften them up,
20:08then Norris ordered his men to attack.
20:11Drake used cannon to soften them up,
20:13then Norris ordered a direct assault.
20:17Even when Sawley Boy's followers surrendered,
20:20the English showed no mercy.
20:23Essex's men massacred 200 people they found hiding in the island's castle.
20:27Then they scoured the rest of the island
20:30for between 300 and 400 more
20:32who were hiding in undergrowth and caves.
20:36SCREAMING
20:43Most were women and children.
20:45Essex's men massacred them all.
20:48SCREAMING
21:03Sawley Boy's entire family was slaughtered in the massacre,
21:07something Essex later boasted about in a letter to the Queen's secretary.
21:12He said Sawley Boy had watched the massacre helplessly from the mainland
21:17and was likely to run mad for sorrow.
21:21Given the horrific nature of the Rathlin Island massacre,
21:24it's hard to believe that Queen Elizabeth
21:26would have thought of this as something to be proud of.
21:30But apparently she did,
21:32because she wrote a letter to the Earl of Essex
21:34asking him to congratulate John Norris
21:37and tell the executioner of his well-designed enterprise
21:41that she would not be unmindful of his services.
21:48A month after the massacre,
21:50Sawley Boy and his followers sought revenge.
21:53They attacked Carrickfergus,
21:55plundered the town and ransacked the castle.
21:58But it was too late.
22:00Essex was gone.
22:04Deep in debt, he'd been recalled to England
22:07and died a year later from dysentery, aged 35.
22:13The massacre was a turning point
22:15in the struggle between Protestant and Catholic communities in Ireland.
22:20It would leave a deep scar in the memories of Ireland's Catholic people.
22:25And it wasn't the end of English attempts to colonise Ulster.
22:31Once again, Carrickfergus Castle
22:34was central to a vicious conflict between the two countries.
22:39And this time, the Irish resistance sparked a rebellion
22:43which would have dramatic consequences across the rest of the British Isles.
22:59Since it was built at the end of the 12th century,
23:02Carrickfergus Castle had attracted a stream of headstrong
23:06and violent English invaders to Ireland.
23:10One of the most brutal of all arrived in 1599
23:14and took up his post as the governor of Carrickfergus.
23:18His name was Sir Arthur Chichester.
23:25Chichester was a famous soldier
23:27who'd fought against the Spanish Armada
23:29and sailed with Drake to the New World.
23:33He had a reputation for bravery and ruthless cruelty.
23:40Chichester is still in Carrickfergus today,
23:43buried just around the corner from the castle
23:46at the Church of St Nicholas.
23:51This enormous tomb is a monument to one of the most important families
23:56in the history of Carrickfergus Castle.
23:58They're the Chichesters, and we can see them here.
24:01This is Sir John Chichester.
24:03As you can see, he's lost his hands.
24:05In life, he lost his head because he fell out with the Macdonald clan.
24:09They chopped it off, and legend has it they played football with it.
24:12And that led to his brother Arthur becoming governor of the castle,
24:16and he's the really important guy.
24:18Here he is here with his wife, Letitia,
24:21and between them, their baby son, also called Arthur,
24:24who died when he was two months old.
24:26But what I love most of all is this inscription,
24:29which is the most wonderful piece of propaganda about the whole family.
24:33And it says that Arthur,
24:35having suppressed O'Doherty and other northern rebels,
24:38and settled the plantation of this province,
24:41well and happily governed this kingdom in flourishing estate.
24:46Sounds great, but actually, it wasn't as simple as all that.
24:52Chichester looks very peaceful on his tomb,
24:54but in life, he was a real hate figure for the Irish.
24:57He believed in brutal war tactics,
24:59including starvation and scorched earth.
25:04Like every Englishman before him,
25:07Chichester used his powers to harass Ulster's leading Irish chieftains.
25:14But his treatment here at Carrickfergus Castle
25:17of one powerful clan leader, Conn O'Neill,
25:20inadvertently tightened links between Ulster and the Scots.
25:26Conn was imprisoned here after his men got into a skirmish
25:29with some men of Arthur Chichester.
25:32It began over some confiscated wine,
25:35and it ended with Conn locked up in one of the castle's dungeons.
25:44Conn O'Neill was sentenced to death
25:47and thrown in this damp, dark dungeon to rot.
25:51But he wouldn't be there for very long.
25:55Chichester imprisoned Conn O'Neill in this dungeon.
25:59Conn was facing execution, so he was quite desperate.
26:03So desperate, in fact, that he made a deal through his wife
26:07with a Scotsman called Hugh Montgomery.
26:10The deal was, if Hugh could bust Conn out of prison,
26:14Conn would divvy up his lands with Montgomery.
26:19Hugh's escape plan was simple but ingenious.
26:22He hid a rope in a block of cheese and smuggled it into Conn's cell.
26:27Conn could then throw the rope through the window
26:30and escape down the castle walls to a boat waiting outside.
26:34Now, Conn stuck to his side of the deal.
26:37He divided up his lands with Hugh,
26:39who was then able to bring his relatives over from Scotland.
26:43And that started what would become the great Scots settlement of Ulster.
26:49While the resettlement of the Scots into Ireland wasn't official policy,
26:55it soon would be.
26:59When Queen Elizabeth died, her cousin, James VI of Scotland,
27:03became James I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland.
27:09Under James, a systematic policy of plantation in Ulster began.
27:19SHOUTING
27:22Plantation had been used effectively by the English in the New World.
27:28Settlers were imported to a foreign country
27:31where they took land from the natives
27:33and created English-speaking towns of their own.
27:39To impose the policy in Ireland, James turned to Sir Arthur Chichester.
27:44He was promoted from Governor of Carrickfergus
27:47to Lord Deputy of Ireland, the most powerful man in Ulster.
27:53His actions started a sectarian war that would last for another 400 years.
28:02Here, outside the town of Omer,
28:04this model plantation village shows us exactly what happened.
28:10Plantation villages like this sprung up when the Crown seized land in Ireland
28:15and colonised it with settlers from England and Scotland.
28:18Until Elizabeth's reign, it had mainly been the work of individuals,
28:22but in the 17th century, it became official policy
28:26that would divide Ireland forever.
28:31Four million acres of confiscated land in six counties west of Carrickfergus
28:37was now handed to Protestant settlers from Britain.
28:45There were strict conditions.
28:47In most cases, settlers were banned from having Irish tenants,
28:51they couldn't sell any land to the Irish
28:53and they couldn't employ any Irish labour.
28:57Today, we'd call that ethnic cleansing.
29:02But that's not how James I saw it.
29:05He saw the systematic replacement of Ireland's native Gaelic-speaking Catholics
29:10with English-speaking Protestants as a civilising enterprise.
29:19Initially, the plantation of Ulster was a mixed success,
29:22but by the 1630s, there were as many as 30,000 settlers
29:26and the population was growing rapidly because just under half of them were women.
29:31So towns like Carrickfergus were flourishing.
29:36By now, Carrickfergus Castle was unmistakably a symbol of English occupation.
29:43It defended a Protestant town full of settlers living English lives
29:48in the middle of Catholic Ulster.
29:54Before he died in 1625,
29:57Chichester ordered the building of a high wall around the town
30:01to keep the native Irish out.
30:06And to keep the British settlers in,
30:09Chichester relied on fear-mongering and propaganda.
30:18It was said that English settlers were in danger
30:21if they ventured even a mile outside the walled towns
30:24because the forests and the countryside were crawling
30:27with native Irish rebels known as Tories.
30:31The name came from the Gaelic word tory, meaning pursuer.
30:37They fought a guerrilla war against the settlers.
30:41In return, they were seen as fair game.
30:46Tory hunting was a popular blood sport
30:49that attracted many adventurers to Ulster eager to join the chase.
30:54Horrific sectarian atrocities were committed on both sides.
30:59But here, at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin,
31:03one incredible document shows how the blame for all the brutality
31:07was heaped on the Irish.
31:10So, Gillian, tell me what we've got here.
31:12This looks like the front page of a newspaper.
31:14It's a broadsheet printed in 1647, and what it is,
31:17it's a copy of a newspaper.
31:19It's a broadsheet printed in 1647, and what it is,
31:22is basically a way of telling ordinary people
31:25of the events that were supposed to have happened in Ireland in 1641.
31:29Especially in Ulster, where there were allegedly terrible massacres
31:33carried out, so this is a very gory retelling of what actually that is.
31:37Who is this addressed to?
31:39This is addressed to the general public.
31:41It's done in a way to outrage people as well.
31:43It's all about atrocity, and, of course,
31:45it's accompanied by an illustration for people who were illiterate.
31:48They could just look at this and know exactly what it's about.
31:51So it's a kind of list of really neat little examples
31:54of terrible things that have happened in Ireland.
31:56It's almost like a sort of Twitter feed of atrocity,
31:59and they say some awful things that the Irish supposedly have done.
32:02They've hung up English by the arms and then hacked them with their swords
32:06to try how many blows they would endure before they died.
32:09So the tone is quite evocative.
32:11These stress quite a lot attacks on the innocent,
32:15and it's in a... I suppose they put it in a situation
32:18of Catholic versus Protestant.
32:20In 1641, the Catholics rose up and, according to reports at the time,
32:25started slaughtering Protestants.
32:30In 1641, the countryside around Carrickfergus became a war zone
32:35when the native Irish rose in rebellion.
32:39In the space of a year,
32:41up to 12,000 English and Scottish settlers were massacred
32:45or died of starvation after being driven from their homes.
32:50The rising raged for 11 years.
32:57So when the English public at home read things like
33:00they've boiled children to death in cauldrons,
33:02they hanged a woman and her daughter in the hair of her own head,
33:06this is being presented as fact,
33:08and people who weren't in Ireland would have thought,
33:10well, that's exactly what's happening.
33:12Exactly. It's part of a tradition, really, of showing the Irish as barbaric,
33:16which really begins in around the 12th century and continues through.
33:20What adds to this, of course, is the fact that by the time this comes out in 1647,
33:24to be Irish is to be Catholic,
33:26and therefore to be an enemy of the English state.
33:30So that adds into that propaganda as well.
33:33So in a sense, the Irish doing this are in a way subhuman.
33:36They are capable of carrying out these atrocities
33:39because they are very much non-English and not loyal to the English state.
33:44And this isn't just a sort of document of horror
33:47designed to put the fear up the masses, is it?
33:49This is actually calling for political action,
33:51because it says here,
33:53recompense unto them double what they have done unto others.
33:56That's a call for full-on military attack, isn't it?
33:59Absolutely.
34:00It's estimated between 1649-53, about 20% of Ireland's population died.
34:06There was...
34:08The rules of war didn't apply to soldiers in Ireland,
34:11so you weren't allowed to give quarter to the Irish when they were here,
34:15and genocide was smiled upon because it was seen to be just.
34:19So if you put yourself in 17th-century terms,
34:22it's absolutely justifiable to behave as they did.
34:26All of this propaganda being fed back to England
34:29about the ghastly acts the Irish had committed
34:32led to the sense that the Irish had to be dealt with.
34:36But there was an argument. Who would raise the army to do it?
34:43England at the time was in chaos,
34:46and in the middle of the 17th century, King Charles I was beheaded.
34:52England was declared a republic,
34:55and at its head was one of the most feared and ruthless leaders
34:59in British history.
35:02Oliver Cromwell wanted to place Ireland firmly back under English rule.
35:07One of his first actions...
35:10..was to send troops to Carrickfergus Castle.
35:14Then Cromwell's massive army terrorised the Catholic population
35:18throughout Ireland.
35:22His military campaign scarred the Irish psyche for centuries.
35:29But he wasn't the last English ruler
35:31to leave his permanent mark at Carrickfergus.
35:36Because before long, Cromwell was dead,
35:39the English monarchy was restored,
35:41and Carrickfergus Castle was welcoming ashore another man
35:45who would change British and Irish history forever.
35:51This time, he was Dutch.
36:01At the end of the 17th century,
36:03Carrickfergus Castle became the focus of the most definitive
36:07and iconic military event in Irish history.
36:13But this battle wasn't just about who ruled Ireland.
36:16It was about who would rule England.
36:22When the Catholic king James II was chased out of England,
36:26he set about amassing a huge army,
36:29first in France and then in Ireland.
36:34The intention was to win back his crown.
36:40Because in England, a new Protestant king was on the throne.
36:45CHANTING
36:48And even today, his name is a rallying cry
36:51in tensions across Ulster's religious divide.
36:58When we think of all the famous kings of England,
37:01William III doesn't usually feature very highly.
37:05But in Ireland, William III, or William of Orange,
37:08is an icon and a hero to the Protestant population.
37:12If William invaded England in 1688 from Holland,
37:16aiming to put an end to the Catholic revival
37:19led by his father-in-law, James II,
37:22and Carrickfergus Castle would be absolutely pivotal.
37:32William's conquest of England was a relatively bloodless affair.
37:37But in Ireland, after centuries of sectarian slaughter,
37:41nothing was ever bloodless.
37:45Carrickfergus Castle was now held by forces loyal to James II,
37:50who were called Jacobites.
37:53In 1688, the castle's defences were state-of-the-art.
37:58It had been revamped to include artillery,
38:01with gun ports and abrasions for cannon installed around the walls.
38:07Soon, they would be put to the test.
38:10The next summer, the castle was under attack.
38:17When the Irish Jacobite garrison heard William's forces were on the way,
38:21they burned homes in the town
38:24and dragged Protestant hostages into the castle.
38:29William's general, Frederick Schomburg, attacked with 10,000 men
38:33and forced the Irish garrison to surrender.
38:36But it's what happened next that showed the depth of hatred
38:40between Catholic and Protestant populations.
38:46Outside the walls, local Protestants waited.
38:49The cowardly acts of the Jacobite garrison would soon be revenged.
38:56An eyewitness wrote that as the garrison left the castle,
38:59the local people stripped most part of the women
39:03and forced a great many arms from the men,
39:05and that Schomburg was forced to ride in among them
39:08with his pistol in his hand to stop the Irish from being murdered.
39:15But there was more bloodshed to follow.
39:18A year later, in 1690,
39:21William realised James II was planning to use Ireland
39:25as a launchpad for an invasion of England.
39:29He decided to cut him off.
39:35He was at the head of a 36,000-man army
39:39of English, Scottish and Dutch Protestants.
39:45William was heading for a showdown with James II,
39:48who was himself at the head of a massive Catholic army.
39:54The future of Britain and the freedom of Ireland was on the line.
40:06After landing his forces at Carrickfergus,
40:09William marched south to meet James II
40:12and his followers, known as Jacobites,
40:15and the two armies came together here
40:17to fight one of the most important battles in Irish history,
40:20the Battle of the Boyne.
40:28William's troops were professional soldiers,
40:31and equipped with the latest artillery and muskets.
40:38The Jacobite forces, on the other hand,
40:41were mainly Irish peasants,
40:43armed with little more than scythes and hay forks.
40:49The outcome was inevitable.
40:57Outmatched and outfought by William's well-drilled army,
41:00the Jacobite forces scattered in disarray.
41:09And to the disgust of his Irish supporters,
41:12James II turned and fled to France.
41:22It was a stunning victory for William,
41:24which would ensure the Protestant ascendancy over Ulster,
41:28and it's still celebrated to this day,
41:31every year on July the 12th.
41:37Just over 100 years after the Battle of the Boyne,
41:40the Orange Order was founded.
41:42When they march through towns like Carrickfergus today,
41:45they're remembering William III's victory
41:48on one of Ireland's bloodiest days.
41:54The triumph of William of Orange
41:56established a Protestant ruling class in Ulster.
42:00Over the next century or so,
42:02Carrickfergus was overtaken by Belfast
42:05as the political centre of Northern Ireland.
42:09In 1928, the British War Department
42:12transferred Carrickfergus Castle to civilian control
42:16after 750 years of continuous military occupation.
42:22There's no better symbol
42:24of the turbulent history between Britain and Ireland.
42:32From the Norman conquest to the Tudor plantation,
42:36the Cromwellian War and the triumph of William of Orange,
42:40today Carrickfergus is remembered as a great British castle
42:45that stands proudly as a monument to the victories
42:49and the victims alike.