The Catholic religion was tolerated to some degree during Charles II’s reign, although Catholics had to agree to recognize the Protestant king. In other ways, however, this period was one of peace and economic progress. There were restrictions on Irish trade in cattle and wool, but in other products, such as meat and butter, strong trade links with England and Europe were developed. The population grew, and while Protestants remained in control of most of the land, the government and commercial activity, there was a small but significant group of Catholic gentry, professionals (mainly lawyers) and merchants who made up a functioning Catholic upper and middle class. When Charles II died in 1685 and was succeeded by his Catholic brother James II (1633–1701), these Catholics saw some hope of having their land restored and their religion fully recognized. At first it seemed as if James would bow to Protestant pressure, and he promised to retain the Acts of Settlement. Soon, however, he appointed a Catholic viceroy, who reorganized the Irish army by dismissing many Protestants and replacing them with Catholics. Catholics were also named as judges and government officials. Plans were also laid to revise the Acts of Settlement in favour of Catholics. These changes (and similar ones in England) caused many Protestants to think of James as a political despot, and to fear for the security of their religion. In 1688 a group of English nobles invited the Dutch prince William of Orange (1650–1702) to invade England and re-establish a Protestant monarchy. James fled to France in December 1688, and sought the protection of Louis XIV. William and his wife, Mary (1662–1694), the daughter of James II, were crowned as joint monarchs of England in February 1689. In March, James attempted to regain his throne through an invasion of Ireland, which he hoped to use as a springboard for an invasion of England.
James summoned the Irish parliament and came to a series of agreements which reversed the Acts of Settlement, and offered religious equality whereby Catholics would pay tithes to their church and Protestants to theirs. James decreed, however, that the Irish parliament would remain subservient to the English parliament and crown. The war that was fought between James and William in 1689 was to settle the question of the English crown, the future of Ireland and relations between the major powers of Europe. European leaders took sides, but did not always follow their religion. The Holy Roman Emperor, the Catholic King of Spain and the Pope sided with Protestant William. Louis XIV of France sided with James. Both James and William had armies made up of soldiers from many nations. The war began in Ulster, but went badly for James there. His siege of Derry was famously broken in July 1689, and James’s army withdrew to the south. In July 1690, William himself led an army to Ireland and met James at the River Boyne near Drogheda on 1 July. William’s troops outnumbered James’s significantly and though William himself was wounded in the battle, he won. James fled again to France on 4 July. The war continued well into 1691 as James’s remaining forces in Ireland fought rearguard actions, notably at Limerick. As the rest of the country came to terms with William, James’s forces eventually signed the Treaty of Limerick with William’s commander, the Dutch general Ginkel, on 3 October 1691. Under the treaty, many of James’s soldiers were allowed to go in exile to France (they became known as the ‘wild geese’). The treaty also granted some lost property and professional rights to Catholics, but the largely Protestant Irish parliament refused to ratify it, and all the agreements that had been reached were lost. This caused a great deal of bitterness amongst Catholics, as well as almost complete mistrust of English promises or treaties.
IRELAND UNDER THE PENAL LAWS (1691–1778)
After the Treaty of Limerick debacle, Protestant Ireland was bolstered in its dominant position. The Irish parliament became completely Protestant. Although some prominent members of the Protestant order desired greater domestic freedom for Ireland, most felt themselves in need of English protection from a potentially hostile Catholic majority. Also, England had entered the War of the League of Augsburg (1689–97, also called the War of the Grand Alliance) against France. Many Irishmen were in the French army under Louis XIV. These were the famous ‘wild geese’ who had left Ireland after the Treaty of Limerick. Protestants in Ireland were, therefore, afraid of a French invasion which might be bolstered by native Irish Catholic support. This was the background to the Penal Laws.
Between 1695 and 1728, a series of measures was passed to restrict Catholic worship, bar Catholics from the Irish parliament and government office and to prevent them from voting or becoming lawyers or officers in the army and navy. The laws of exclusion were enforced by the creation of an oath for all government and professional positions which denied ‘the transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ’ at the last supper, and declared that the ‘adoration of the virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous’. These things were central to Catholic beliefs. Catholics could never swear to such an oath if they wished to remain true to their faith, and therefore could not hold these offices or professions. The Penal Laws never really worked, however, because they were not universally applied. The restrictions on Catholic worship were gradually ignored from the 1720s onwards, but the political and professional bans continued until 1829. The Penal Laws did not prevent Catholics from entering trade and industry, but Catholic progress in these areas was stunted by restrictions on their ownership ofland. Acts were passed in 1704 and 1709 which prevented Catholics from buying any land and from taking leases longer than thirty-one years. These restrictions eventually meant that, by 1778, Catholics only owned five percent of the land in Ireland. Many prominent Catholic landowners converted to the Anglican Church of Ireland in order to retain their land and positions.
Social conditions were also not very good for the majority of the people. A rising population and a stagnant economy made pressure on the land intense, and trade restrictions imposed by the crown meant that there was little opportunity for employment in the nonagricultural economy. There was a terrible famine in 1741, and rural life consisted of living on the margins of survival, although local artistic and musical culture seems to have flourished during this period. The Catholic Church survived the banishment act of 1697, which sent many hundreds of clergy into exile in Europe, although about a thousand were allowed to stay in Ireland. By the early decades of the 1700s, however, it was clear that the Penal Laws against religious practice were never going to destroy the Catholic Church, and it was allowed to reorganize and reform itself. For most of the eighteenth century, the Catholic religion was practised openly and without much attention from the government. The government’s toleration of Catholic practices was based on their insistence that the church preach respect for private property and English rule. The entire Irish population, regardless of religious affiliation, however, had to continue to pay tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland until 1833. When England was at war with France (1793–1815), however, British fears of an Irish-French Catholic connection forced some cautious Irish priests to hold mass in private or to suspend regular worship.
Meanwhile, a small group of Catholics sought to re-establish a sense of Catholic and Gaelic identity in Ireland. They founded the Catholic Committee in 1760. In their books and pamphlets, they tried to counter the then popular idea that Gaelic Ireland had been a barbaric place and that Irish Catholics were constantly plotting to overthrow English rule in Ireland. They tried to act as a go-between for Catholics and the government, to convince the latter that Catholics were loyal to the English crown and that their Catholicism did not prevent this. Many Catholics throughout the country professed loyalty to the crown during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) between England and a Catholic alliance of France, Austria and Spain. A radical group of discontented rural Catholics, called the Whiteboys, led an outbreak of agricultural violence in Munster which lasted until 1765 and flared up again in Leinster between 1769 and 1795. The government reacted by passing a series of acts that made violent protest a capital offe
nce. These did not work very well, and only engendered bitterness amongst many Catholics. After Whiteboy violence had died down, and there seemed less need for coercion, a group of members of the Irish parliament began to call for a relaxation in the Penal Laws and a reduction in the influence of the British government in Irish affairs. They were not able to get these proposals passed, but the coming of the American War of Independence (1775–83) changed the situation greatly. This time, some relief for Catholics came directly from the British government, bypassing the Irish parliament. As an ally of the American colonists, France had declared war on Britain in 1778. The government feared that a suppressed Catholic majority in Ireland would welcome and aid a French invading force, and so passed the Catholic Relief Acts between 1774 and 1793. These allowed Catholics some freedom in buying and inheriting land and granted some political rights.
IRELAND 1775–1800
One of the other effects of the coming of the American War of Independence and the potential of French invasion was the rising of a massive volunteer movement to defend the country. These Volunteers were mainly middle- and upper-class Protestants, and between 1778 and 1779 they formed into corps based on their locality or professional connections. They armed themselves, gave themselves uniforms and held parades and reviews of troops. This organized middle- and upper-class Ireland as never before. For the first time, there was an armed force that was not directly under government control, and for the first time politically minded people were able to use the common bond of volunteering to discuss other pressing matters. Gradually, as the immediate threat of French invasion passed, the Volunteers began to discuss the economic and political problems facing the country. The most serious of these was the effect of the war on the Irish economy. Already hampered by trade restrictions imposed by Britain, the war cut off most of Ireland’s trade with the European continent. This caused much discontent, and the Volunteers began to demand free trade, and demonstrated for it while displaying their weaponry and cannons. The government decided eventually to repeal trade restrictions on Ireland in 1779, but by then the Volunteers had moved on to the broader issue of the degree of control that the British government had over the Irish parliament. They agitated for the repeal of Poynings’ Law, which had limited the powers of the Irish parliament, and against the Declaratory Act of 1720 which had given the British parliament the right to legislate for Ireland. The leader of this movement was Henry Grattan (1746–1820), a member of the Irish parliament, who was an eloquent orator. Grattan demanded independence for Ireland, but the retention of the British monarch as monarch of Ireland as well. In response to this agitation, the Declaratory Act was repealed in 1782 and Poynings’ Law severely watered down. The British parliament now only had the right of veto over the Irish parliament.
The economy improved somewhat during this period, and some Irish industries, such as the linen industry in Belfast, expanded. But there was still a problem. British power in Ireland was retained through the office of the lord lieutenant, the king’s representative in Dublin. Through the lord lieutenant, the British government controlled the Irish executive and distributed government patronage, which heavily influenced many members of the Irish parliament (who sought government jobs for themselves and others). So the British government was still largely in control of Irish politics. The only way to solve this problem, reformers argued, was to change the nature of the Irish parliament so that it more adequately reflected the Irish population and Irish opinion. The Volunteers held a national convention in November 1783, and presented their ideas for reform to the Irish parliament. It rejected them immediately. The Volunteers had thought that the obvious force of public opinion would mean that the Parliament would agree to reform itself, but they had not realized how strongly the members of the Irish parliament wished to retain their positions under the existing system. Apart from one further attempt at a reform convention, this movement started to fade during the rest of the 1780s. But events in France would revive it.
The political excitement surrounding the French Revolution (1789–99) was felt in Ireland as well as in Britain. Long-standing Irish links with France meant that the events of the Revolution were heavily reported in Ireland. But another crisis occupied politics in Britain and Ireland. The English king, George III (1738–1820), became mentally incapacitated in November 1788. The British parliament debated making his son, the Prince of Wales (1762–1830, the future George IV), regent of Britain and Ireland. There was fierce controversy in the Irish parliament over the regency issue. Grattan and other reformers thought that the prince should not become regent of Ireland automatically. George III recovered in March 1789 and the regency debate was put on hold. The issue symbolized the question of who should rule Ireland. It united the Irish reformers, and they began to turn their attention to what they called the ‘purification’ of Irish government. They wanted the number of crown-appointed members of the Irish parliament reduced in an attempt to clean up what they saw as deep-seated corruption between the Irish executive and the Irish parliament. In the meantime (June–July 1789), there was tension between England and Spain over an attack on British fishing vessels off the western Canadian coast. In Ireland, Grattan and his party pledged support for the king, saying that, in most external affairs, English and Irish interests were the same. Other reformers outside parliament, including a young Protestant lawyer in Dublin named Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–98), argued that Ireland had no quarrel with Spain and no responsibility to aid the British Empire. In his pamphlet, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland Tone said that the Irish parliament must be reformed to rid itself of British control, and that the only way this could be achieved was for Protestants and Catholics to agree on their common political interests and fight for reform. The pamphlet was widely read, and a number of reformers founded the United Irishmen in Belfast and Dublin in late 1791 to push for political changes. The United Irishmen were initially a debating society, but their ideas caught the attention of a few Volunteers and other reform-minded people. Also, in December 1791, a group of militant Catholics took over the Catholic Committee and pressed for changes in the few laws that still restricted Catholics from participation in politics, especially the right to vote in parliamentary elections. They enlisted Tone as their secretary and held a convention in December 1792. They sent Tone with a delegation to London to appeal for these reforms. Desperate to avoid any potential problems in Ireland, especially given that a war with revolutionary France loomed, the British government agreed to a limited number of political reforms in April 1793. These included granting Catholics the right to vote, but still preventing them from sitting in the Irish parliament, from the judiciary and from the offices of state. The government also wished to strengthen its control in Ireland, so it formed a state militia (and suppressed the Volunteers at the same time). In August the government also passed the Convention Act, which said that no groups could assemble in Ireland except for the Irish parliament. This meant that political organizations like the United Irishmen could not meet.
In Ulster, the relaxation of many of the Penal Laws, and an increase in Catholic employment in the linen trade, caused a group of discontented Protestants called the Peep O’Day Boys to attack Catholics in County Armagh, starting in 1784. A Catholic group called the Defenders tried to counteract the Peep O’Day Boys, and violent confrontations lasted until 1795. An offshoot of the Peep O’Day Boys, called the Orange Boys (after the Protestant William of Orange, later William III, who defeated the Catholic James II), overcame the Defenders at the battle of the Diamond on 21 September 1795. This led to the founding of the Orange Order, a Protestant defence society which would continue to play an important role in Irish history.
In London, the British government briefly toyed with the idea of further concessions to Catholics, including the right to sit in parliament (which came to be known as Catholic Emancipation). But they ultimately rejected it as too dangerous. This caused Irish reformers such as Tone to consider the option of allia
nce with France as a way to gain further political rights in Ireland. The British government soon found out about these plans. Rather than execute Tone for treason, they allowed him to emigrate to America in June 1795 because the legal evidence they had against him was slender. Early the next year, Tone left America for Paris and began negotiations for a French invasion of Ireland. He made a convincing case and in December 1796, a French fleet of forty-three ships sailed for Ireland. The British defensive fleet was somewhat disorganized and the French expedition might have succeeded except for a bad storm. Thirty-six French ships eventually arrived at Bantry Bay in County Cork, but did not attempt to land there, and returned to France.
The British government reacted to this stalled invasion by forming its own corps of volunteers in Ireland, imposing a curfew in many places, and trying to disarm the United Irishmen and other militant reformers. The United Irishmen went underground and created an extensive network of secret societies dedicated to securing Catholic emancipation and reform of the Irish parliament and executive in Dublin. But the British government started to infiltrate them in early 1797. In March 1798, a meeting of the Leinster United Irishmen was raided and its members arrested. This led to a general rising by the United Irishmen, with flashpoints in the counties around Dublin, and in Wexford and Waterford. Initially, the Wexford and Waterford United Irishmen were successful, but when they tried to push north and west they were defeated at Vinegar Hill near Enniscorty in County Wexford in June 1798. The United Irishmen rebellion in Ulster was also swiftly put down. In August, a small French force landed at Killala in County Mayo and defeated the militia at Castlebar, but they were surrounded by Lord Cornwallis and his troops at Ballinamuck in County Longford and were forced to surrender on 8 September 1798. Another French force carrying Tone then sailed for Ireland and engaged the British fleet off Lough Swilly in County Donegal in mid-October. The superior British fleet was victorious. Tone was captured, court martialled in Dublin, found guilty of treason and sentenced to be executed. Rather than face death at British hands, Tone cut his own throat and died on 19 November 1798.
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