United Kingdom of Great Britain and southern Ireland

Mary I starting a successful Catholic dynasty? Although I'm not sure if Ulster has the infrastructure to be it's own country.
 
The Medieval Kingdom of England ruled over a fluctuating amount of Ireland, but English influence was weakest in Ulster (basically the part that became Northern Ireland). Ulster was the last part of Ireland to be subjugated by England, and James I secured the area by moving in large numbers of Scots Protestants, with effects that are still with us.

Its not clear why the Tudors were so interested in strengthening their hold over Ireland, but it may have been the possibility of the Spanish using it as a base. So one effect of England not going Protestant would be no Spanish threat -they were allied with the Habsburgs against France, and another would be no religious split with the Irish in the South. They just don't bother with Ulster, which eventually develops into a small kingdom.
 
Initially Ireland posed no great threat to the English but with Papal authority the early Plantagenets exerted their control - that weakened over time not helped by the declining authority of the English Crown during the 15th century.
By then the crown was relying on powerful Anglo-Irish families to exert control - the Tudor's saw the island as a basis for rebellion (largely because it was used as a base by those rebelling on behalf of Yorkist pretenders and because of the frequent rebellions by some of the powerful Irish aristocrats - it was basically a rebellious island that threatened the peace and security of the Tudor crown) hence their attempt to restore royal authority - Henry VII ensuring the Westminster Parliament was supreme to Ireland's and leading to Henry VIII's final decision to proclaim it a Kingdom and try and enforce the reformation.
English control of Ireland would take another century or so and was pretty brutal on all sides. The idea it would be used as a basis for invasion is a much less risk than the fact that it was a rebellious country that ignored royal authority to be honest.

Even if you remove the Protestant reformation from England - you still have the issue of weak royal authority leading to a reliance on the great landed aristocrats who still pose a threat to the stability of the crown. Northern Ireland will not be that different given a Catholic England is not going to attempt to "plant" people as an attempt to encourage protestantism and loyalty to the crown - anyone planted is going to be Catholic.

An independent north could perhaps emerge if the British crown weakens to the point that a powerful aristocrat can effectively establish himself as King of Ulster (perhaps one of the O Neils) - whilst the south remains loyal - after decades of conflict some agreement is mapped out turning the O Neils into some kind of vassal - eventually leading to a semi-independent Kingdom.
 
Easy option? If the Northern Irish become quite hard-line and intolerant, and the British pass a Bill of Rights that include religious freedom (crazy progressive, but could happen if the Ottomans are any example). The Northern Irish repeatedly refuse and whilst put down eventually get freedom as the British Empire collapses. Southern Ireland however isn't eager to join their Northern brethren, and stay in the UK because a British Empire that passes a Bill of Rights that progressive is unlikely to allow the freaking potato famine to wipe out their taxpayers.
 

Sulemain

Banned
Northern Ireland ending up as a Protestant Theocracy with Designs over the rest of Ireland with a Pre-1900 POD might work.
 
The simplest solution: concentrate Protestants in the South and have the North be the most Catholic part of the island, and thus independent.
 
Even if you remove the Protestant reformation from England - you still have the issue of weak royal authority leading to a reliance on the great landed aristocrats who still pose a threat to the stability of the crown. Northern Ireland will not be that different given a Catholic England is not going to attempt to "plant" people as an attempt to encourage protestantism and loyalty to the crown - anyone planted is going to be Catholic.

IIRC at least one large-scale plantation happened under Mary Tudor, so I could see them (or something similar) going ahead anyway even without a Protestant England.
 
IIRC at least one large-scale plantation happened under Mary Tudor, so I could see them (or something similar) going ahead anyway even without a Protestant England.

Mary was quite the imperialist and ironically much less inclined to conciliate the native Irish than her Protestant successor Elizabeth. A Catholic polity is no guarantee of Irish integration -just ask the Basques or Catalans in Spain
 
Mary was quite the imperialist and ironically much less inclined to conciliate the native Irish than her Protestant successor Elizabeth. A Catholic polity is no guarantee of Irish integration -just ask the Basques or Catalans in Spain

Precisely. Even without religious differences, there are still plenty of reasons for English monarchs to want to settle people in Ireland -- to bring the country into the English cultural sphere, to establish a class of freeholders loyal to the Crown rather than to the local magnates, and suchlike.
 
Well a Catholic succession would have left Scotland a separate and protestant nation so not quite. The one thing the Irish and the Plantagenets and Tudors could always agree on was the need to keep the Scots out. More likely loyal catholic peasants from Lancashire.
But in some ways that would be even worse for native Irish. The English may have (on and off) tried to persecute and suppress the Catholic Church but at least they didn't Anglicise it and appoint Englishmen to all the key posts. The English may have driven out the old aristocracy and taken control of trade in the ports but OTL the religious sphere was (persecution notwithstanding) something they could call their own and rally their separate identity around. TTL would be one where the English took over everything and the Church would have actively supported the State (and there wouldn't even have been the consolation of their being heretics).
Plus no Spanish threat and a Hapsburg alliance = French threat and a need to secure England's Western flank. A Catholic planter class but still plantations. The improvements in military and shipping technology were there and some of the old Irish aristocracy would have reacted adversely to English centralisation and been dispossessed.
 
But if the English stay Catholic, then perhaps the Irish become protestants instead, or revert to their old Irish Christianity.
That could be a plausible scenario, in terms of asserting their own identity like the Welsh deserting the Anglican rite for Methodism and Baptist and other Nonconformist faiths. But the Basques and Catalans remained Catholic in a like circumstance. Though interestingly their moves towards a separate nationalist identity/consciousness to Castilian Spain were relatively retarded in comparison to the Irish. So a religious disconnect probably helps advance nationalist feeling.
I suspect that the rapacious Scots having turned protestant would have inclined the Northern Irish at least to retain their Catholic identity. So more likely would be an internal Catholic division - the "Irish" Jansenist, the "Planters" Ultramontanist perhaps?
 
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