What wickedness are you referring to? I 'harkened back' to the 16th century because I maintain that you have/one has to look at the roots of a conflict to get anything resembling an objective view of it.
You harkened back to the 17th century to mention the 1641 Deposition - which are very well known, and have been digitised and made available by Trinity College Dublin, so they can be widely studied.
Their accuracy isn't 100% guaranteed, as there was great incentive to exaggerate the brutality of 'the natives', but even if only half of it was true, it was a terrible thing, and a great tragedy for those involved. Nobody is denying that.
In my case, being interested in the history doesn't mean 'justifying' any wickedness. But there's a difference between 'justifying' 'explaining' and 'excusing'. One can say that the killings in 1641 were an not unexpected uprising against the occupation and plunder of a country, which took the form of an indiscriminate attack on the occupiers. That is an explanation, not a justification.
It's not unheard-of for oppressed people to turn on their oppressors. If you look around other post-colonial situations, there have been cases of brutal reprisals against the colonists - I challenge you to find equivalence in the Irish War of Independence to the the 1955 El-Halia massacre of women and children in Algeria, for example.
When part of Ireland gained its independence, the opposite was true: both the Proclamation of Independence in 1916 and the Constitution of 1922 were very clear in stating that all religions and backgrounds were to have the same status and respect in the new Irish state. No revenge, no eye-for-an-eye for centuries of murder and oppression. As a Irish citizen of the Irish Republic, that is something I am proud of.
There are many people in Ireland - not just Northern Ireland - who have been traumatised by violence, and by the tragic loss of loved ones. Two members of my family were caught up in Loyalists bombings in Dublin, they were not physically injured, luckily.. One of them missed by minutes one of the the Ulster Volunteer Force bombs which killed over 20 innocent people in Dublin in 1974.
We did not seek an eye for an eye - there were no reprisals. There has also been no justice as the perpetrators were never caught.
You may not accept this, but it is no less painful to have a loved one killed by the British Army, or the UDF, or the RUC, or the B-Specials, or the RIR, or the UFF, or the IVF, or whoever, as it is to have a loved one killed by the IRA.
One set of victims - the ones killed by 'the other side' - are not more tragic than anybody else who was equally human and was equally mourned by their loved ones,