The arrival of Cromwell in 1649 was a direct consequence of the sectarian massacres of Protestants

Mary Russell’s attempt to “put some context on the 1641 rebellion” (‘The 1641 rebellion came about because of resentment by the Catholic Irish and old English at the dispossession of their lands,’ July 25) is slightly skewed and misses the central point of my letter of 24th July.

In 1641 the English Civil War had not begun, Oliver Cromwell was an obscure Cambridgeshire MP and the New Model Army four years in the future.

What united the Gael and Old English, the latter themselves descendants of earlier planters, included the adoption of the anti-Protestant sectarianism of the Thirty Years War.

The arrival of Munroe’s Covenanting Army in 1642 and Cromwell in 1649 were the direct consequences of the widespread sectarian massacres of Protestants.

The longer term consequences of the sectarian massacres were the identification of ‘Protestant’ with ‘Outsider’ and the thread of sectarianism which runs through Irish nationalism from 1641 to the present day.

We have been and are, by virtue of this a distinct and separate people, not ‘Irish’ and the Irish nation can, in truth, have no claim on us.

Robert Wallace, Portadown