<P> The Silken Thomas Rebellion was an Irish rebellion in 1534 . The Séan Ó Néill's Rebellion occurred from 1558 to 1567, and the Desmond Rebellions occurred in 1569--1573 and 1579--1583 in the Irish province of Munster . </P> <P> Ireland entered into a continuous state of war with the rebellion of 1641, with most of the island controlled by the Irish Confederates . Increasingly threatened by the armies of the English Parliament after Charles I's arrest in 1648, the Confederates signed a treaty of alliance with the English Royalists . The joint Royalist and Confederate forces under the Duke of Ormonde attempted to eliminate the Parliamentary army holding Dublin, but their opponents routed them at the Battle of Rathmines (2 August 1649). As the former Member of Parliament Admiral Robert Blake blockaded Prince Rupert's fleet in Kinsale, Oliver Cromwell could land at Dublin on 15 August 1649 with an army to quell the Royalist alliance in Ireland . </P> <P> Cromwell's suppression of the Royalists in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong resonance for many Irish people . The siege of Drogheda and massacre of nearly 3,500 people--comprising around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and all the men in the town carrying arms, including civilians, prisoners, and Catholic priests--became one of the historical memories that has driven Irish - English and Catholic - Protestant strife during the last three centuries . However, the massacre has significance mainly as a symbol of the Irish perception of Cromwellian cruelty, as far more people died in the subsequent guerrilla warfare and scorched - earth fighting in the country than at infamous massacres such as Drogheda and Wexford . The Parliamentarian conquest of Ireland ground on for another four years until 1653, when the last Irish Confederate and Royalist troops surrendered . Historians have estimated that up to 30% of Ireland's population either died or had gone into exile by the end of the wars . The victors confiscated almost all Irish Catholic - owned land in the wake of the conquest and distributed it to the Parliament's creditors, to the Parliamentary soldiers who served in Ireland, and to English people who had settled there before the war . </P> <P> The execution of Charles I altered the dynamics of the Civil War in Scotland, which had raged between Royalists and Covenanters since 1644 . By 1649, the struggle had left the Royalists there in disarray, and their erstwhile leader, the Marquess of Montrose, had gone into exile . However, Montrose, who had raised a mercenary force in Norway, later returned but did not succeed in raising many Highland clans, and the Covenanters defeated his army at the Battle of Carbisdale in Ross - shire on 27 April 1650 . The victors captured Montrose shortly afterwards and took him to Edinburgh . On 20 May the Scottish Parliament sentenced him to death and had him hanged the next day . </P>

Explain the causes of the religious wars in the netherlands