No Surrender (1607-1691)

With the flight of the last of the Gaelic earls from Ulster at the beginning of the 17th century, thousands of English and Scottish Protestants settled on land that had belonged to the Catholic Irish. The events that followed are remembered to this day by Catholics and Protestants alike: Cromwell at Drogheda; the massacre of Protestants by Catholics in 1641; the siege of Derry by King James II's Catholic army, when the cry of 'No surrender' was first heard. By the end of the century and the victory of William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne, the seeds of sectarian division had been planted.