Ireland 1691-1801: Encyclopedia II - Ireland 1691-1801 - Irish Parliament and Politics

Ireland 1691-1801 - Irish Parliament and Politics

Ireland 1691-1801 - The Penal Laws

The Irish Parliament of this era was almost exclusively Anglican in composition. Catholics had been barred from holding office in the early 17th century, barred from sitting in Parliament by mid century and finally disenfranchised in 1727. Jacobitism, the traditional ideology of Gaelic and Catholic Ireland, had been utterly defeated in the Williamite war in Ireland which ended in 1691. The defeat of the Catholic landed classes in this war meant meant that thier lands continued to be confiscated and awarded to Protestants and that power was confined to the Anglican ruling class - known as the Protestant Ascendancy -which enforced its position by the passing of Penal Laws against members of other religions. As a result of these laws, Catholic landownership fell from around 14% in 1691 to around 5% in the course of the next century. This period of defeat and apparent hopelessness for Irish Catholics was refered to in Irish language poetry as the long briseadh - or "shipwreck".

Presbyterians, who were concentrated in the northern province of Ulster and mostly descended from Scottish settlers, also suffered from the Penal Laws. They could sit in Parliament but not hold office. Both Catholics and Presbyterians were also barred from certain professions (such as law and the military) and had restrictions on inheriting land. Catholics could not bear arms or exercise their relgion publicly.

In the early part of the 18th century, these Penal Laws were quite strictly enforced, as the Protestant elite were unsure of their position and threatened by the continued existence of Irish Catholic regiments in the French army committed to a Jacobite restoration. From time to time, these fears were exacerbated by the activities of Catholic bandits known as rapparees and by peasant secret societies such as the Whiteboys. However, after the demise of the Jacobite cause in Scotland at Culloden in 1745, the threat to the Protestant Ascendancy eased and many Penal Laws were relaxed or lightly enforced. In addition, some Catholic gentry families got around the Penal Laws by making nominal conversions to Protestantism or by getting one family member to "convert" in order to hold land for the rest of his family.

In the second half of the century, Catholics largely abandoned Jacobite plotting in favour of reform of the existing state in Ireland. Their politics were represented by the "Catholic Committee" - a moderate organisation of Catholic gentry and Clergy which advocated repeal of the Penal Laws.

Ireland 1691-1801 - Grattan's Parliament and the Volunteers

By the late eighteenth century, many of the Irish Protestant elite had come to see Ireland as their native country. A Parliamentary faction led by Henry Grattan agitated for a more favourable trading relationship with England, in particular abolition of the Navigation Acts, which enforced tariffs on Irish goods in English markets, but allowed no tarrifs for English goods in Ireland. From early in the century, Irish parliamentarians also campaigned for legislative independence for the Parliament of Ireland, especially the repeal of Poynings Law which allowed the English Parliament to legislate for Ireland. Many of their demands were met in 1782, when Free Trade was granted between Ireland and England and Poynings Law was amended. Instrumental in achieving reform was the Irish Volunteers movement, founded in Belfast in 1778. This militia, 100,000 strong, was formed to defend Ireland from foreign invasion during the American Revolutionary War, but was outside of government control and staged armed demonstrations in favour of Grattan's reforming agenda.

For the "Patriots", as Grattan's followers were known, the "Constitution of 1782" was the start of a proccess that would end sectarian discrimination and usher in an era of prosperity and Irish self-government. Many Irish Protestant liberals were sympathetic to the French Revolution of 1789, which appeared to show that Roman Catholics were not adverse to "liberty" as the Whig ideology of the Glorious Revolution had long claimed. Conservative loyalists such as John Foster, John Fitzgibbon and John Beresford, however, remained opposed to further concessions to Catholics and argued that the "Protestant Interest" could only be secured by maintaining the connection with Britian.

Ireland 1691-1801 - The United Irishmen the 1798 Rebellion and the Act of Union

However, reform in Ireland stalled over the proposals of some radicals to enfranchise Irish Catholics. When this failed, some in Ireland were attracted to the more militant example of the French revolution of 1789. In 1791 small group of Presbyterian radicals formed the Society of the United Irishmen, initially to campaign for the end to religious discrimination and the widening of the right to vote. However, the group soon radicalised its aims and sought to overthrow British rule and found a non-sectarian republic. In the words of Theobald Wolfe Tone,to "substitute the common name of Irishman for Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter" and to "break the connection with England".

The United Irishmen spread quickly throughout the country. Republicanism was particularly attractive to the Ulster Presbyterian community, who were discriminated against for their religion, and who had strong links with Scots-Irish American emigrants who had fought against Britain in the American Revolution. Many Catholics, particularly the emergent catholic middle class, were also attracted to the movement.

The United Irishmen were banned after Britain declared war on Revolutionary France in 1793 and they developed from a political movement into a military organisation preparing for armed rebellion. The Volunteer movement was also suppressed. The British Government in London, in an effort to undermine radicalism in Ireland, repealed many of the Penal Laws in 1793 and in 1795 sponsored the creation a Catholic University at Maynooth in return for the compliance of the Catholic Church in the looming rebellion. (See St Patrick's College, Maynooth).However, these measures did nothing to calm the situation in Ireland and these reforms were bitterly opposed by the "ultra-loyalist" Protestant hardliners such as John Foster. As an indication of hardening loyalist attitudes, 1795 also saw the foundation of the Orange Order.

The United Irishmen, now dedicated to armed revolution, forged links with the militant Catholic peasant society the Defenders while Wolfe Tone, the United Irish leader went to France to seek French military support. These efforts bore fruit when the French launched an expeditionary force of 15,000 troops which arrived off Bantry Bay in December 1796, but failed to land due to a combination of indecisiveness, poor seamanship and storms off the Bantry coast.

Thereafter, the government began a campaign of repression against the United Irishmen, including executions, routine use of torture, transportation to penal colonies and house burnings. As the repression began to bite, the United Irishmen decided to go ahead with an insurrection without French help. Their activity culminated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. When the central core of the plan, the taking of Dublin, failed, the rebellion then spread in an apparently random fashion firstly around Dublin, then Kildare, Meath, Carlow and Wicklow. County Wexford in the southeast then saw the most sustained fighting of the rebellion, to be briefly joined by rebels who took to the field in Antrim and Down in the north. A small French force landed in Killala Bay in Mayo leading to a last outbreak of rebellion in couties Mayo, Leitrim and Longford. The rebellion lasted just three months before it was suppressed, but claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

The Republican ideal of a non-sectarian society was greatly damaged by sectarian atrocities committed by both sides during the rebellion. Government troops and militia targeted Catholics in general and the rebels on several occasions killed Protestant loyalist civilians. In Ulster, the 1790s were marked by naked sectarian strife between Catholic Defenders and Protestant groups like the Peep O'Day Boys and the newly founded Orange Order.

Partly in response to the rebellion, Irish self-government was abolished altogether by the Act of Union on January 1, 1801. The Irish Parliament, dominated by the Anglican landed class, was persuaded to vote for its own abolition for fear of another rebellion and with the aid or bribery by Lord Cornwallis the Lord Deputy of Ireland. The Catholic Bishops, who had condemned the rebellion, supported the Union as a step on the road to Catholic Emancipation.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Irish Parliament and Politics", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki