A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

• Catholics could worship freely, but their churches could not have steeples or display crosses. Priests were not to wear clerical garb or holy emblems in public; they had to register with the government and take an oath of loyalty. Archbishops, bishops, Jesuits and other regular clergy (monks and friars) had to leave the country.

  • Catholic pilgrimages, especially the one at Lough Derg in Co. Donegal, were forbidden.

  All legislation put forward in the Irish parliament had to have the approval of the English Privy Council. Much enthusiastic fine-tuning went on between Dublin and London. One letter from the Irish Privy Council to London explained:

  The Commons proposed the marking of every priest who shall be convicted of being an unregistered priest ... remaining in this kingdom after 1st May 1720 with a large ‘P’ to be made with a red hot iron on the cheek. The council generally disliked that punishment, and have altered it into that of castration, which they are persuaded will be the most effectual remedy.

  Actually the English Privy Council ruled out both suggested punishments as being too barbaric. It soon transpired that many of these Penal Laws were impossible to enforce. But the laws concerned with political rights, jobs and landed property were rigidly imposed, with long-term consequences. They created what became known as the ‘Protestant Ascendancy’.

  Episode 117

  ‘THE MINORITY PREVAILING OVER THE MAJORITY’

  What is often forgotten is that some of the Penal Laws passed in the 1690s and in the early eighteenth century applied not only to Catholics but also to Presbyterians—indeed, to all ‘Dissenters’ (the term generally applied to those Protestants who were not members of the Church of Ireland). Presbyterians could not be married legally except in a Church of Ireland church and in a ceremony performed by a Church of Ireland clergyman. In 1701 the Presbyterians of Belfast sent a petition to the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin demanding the repeal of this law which obliged ‘persons so married publickly to confess themselves guilty of the damnable sin of fornication ... their children ... being bastards’.

  Then in 1704 the English Privy Council added a clause to the ‘Bill to prevent the further growth of popery’. It stated that any person holding public office must produce a certificate proving that he had received communion in a Church of Ireland church. Since Catholics were already disqualified by previous penal laws, this sacramental test was really directed at Presbyterians. When the bill became law, Dissenters could no longer be members of municipal corporations—that is, town councils—and they could not serve as officers in the army or the militia.

  Ulster Presbyterians were outraged by this ‘test’, but at the same time they were among the most eager supporters of the 1704 Popery Bill. They kept their complaints reasonably polite. It was an English Dissenter, Daniel Defoe, who from his cell in Newgate Prison launched a fierce attack on the test. He declared that since the end of King William’s war in 1691 Ulster Presbyterians

  instead of being remembered to their honour ... have been ranked amongst the worst enemies of the church, and chained to a bill to prevent the further growth of popery.... Will any man in the world tell us that to divide the Protestants is a way to prevent the further growth of popery, when their united force is little enough to keep it down? This is like sinking the ship to drown the rats, or cutting off the foot to cure the corns.

  Those with fond memories of reading Robinson Crusoe might be a little startled to discover that its author was so very keen on the suppression of Catholics. And Catholics were those who suffered most acutely: the Penal Laws were overwhelmingly directed at them. As one Chief Justice put it very bluntly, ‘The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic.’

  Defoe’s standpoint was typical of his time. Only a few eccentric Quakers and retired Dutch soldiers thought that religious toleration had anything to recommend it. William King, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, wrote a book justifying laws depriving Catholics of their rights. He declared:

  Upon the whole, the Irish may justly blame themselves ... for whatever they have, or shall suffer in the issue of this matter, since it is apparent that the necessity was brought about by them, that either they or we must be ruined.

  Similar penal laws were imposed on Huguenots in France and Protestants in Silesia. But the difference was that in Ireland the Penal Code was applied by a minority to a majority. As the eighteenth century wore on, and more enlightened views gained acceptance, this wholesale legal suppression of Catholics attracted growing critical comment. The situation inspired a terse observation from the writer Samuel Johnson:

  The Irish are in a most unnatural state, for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no instance even in the Ten Persecutions, of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholics.

  Edmund Burke, the Irishman who became a leading politician at Westminster in the late eighteenth century, described the Penal Laws as

  a machine of wise and deliberate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.

  The Penal Laws were directed principally at Catholics of education and property. The aim was the disarming and ‘dismounting’ of Catholic gentlemen so that they could never again organise and conduct a rebellion. The most effective legislation deprived the Catholic elite of political and economic power. Humble Catholic farmers and labourers, humiliated though they might be, were not so severely affected, for the Penal Laws were not really concerned with the Catholic lower orders. Defeat in previous wars and rebellions had already shattered the Gaelic nobility. Now the Old English gentry—Catholic descendants of the original Norman colonists, for the most part—lost almost everything.

  Those who gained from the ruin of the Catholic gentry were Protestant landowners and their relatives—those who would eventually become known as the ‘Protestant Ascendancy’.

  Episode 118

  THE PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY

  William of Orange had done his best to keep the terms of the Treaty of Limerick—the signed agreement in 1691 which ended his war with the Jacobites. He had kept his word and, at his own expense, transported thousands of Irish soldiers to France. Out of 1,300 Catholics who registered claims to keep their property under the terms of the treaty, only sixteen had been refused.

  But the Protestant gentlemen of the Irish parliament, warmly supported by Westminster, hated the terms of the treaty. When they finally got round to approving the treaty six years after it had been signed, it had been mutilated beyond recognition. The key clause allowing Catholics religious toleration had been dropped altogether. So too had the clause which protected civilians from confiscation of their property in specified areas of the west of Ireland.

  King William’s war in Ireland had cost over £6 million sterling. At least some of this vast debt could be met by taking away yet more land still held by Catholics. Close to a million acres of land were confiscated. First the government seized the estates of those Jacobites who had been killed or captured in the war. Then officers of the crown took possession of the lands of Jacobites who had chosen to go into exile in France. Estates of Catholics who stayed in Ireland and who had backed King James in any way were also duly forfeited.

  The Treaty of Limerick specifically protected the property of Catholic civilians in much of the west of Ireland. The Irish parliament refused to accept that clause. So the estates of most of those Catholics were also confiscated. Even after lavish grants had been made to those who had served the crown well, there was an extraordinary amount of land suddenly made available for sale.

  The result was that the bottom dropped out of the Irish land market. After all, of course, only Protestants were allowed to buy. A consortium of London merchants, adopting the curious title of ‘The Company for Making Hollow Sword-Blades in England’, was able to buy a great deal of confiscated land at a knockdown price.
The lawyer William Conolly was one of those with ready cash and a good business head who made a fortune from dealing in land. The son of a native Irish innkeeper from Ballyshannon, he became a Protestant, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and the richest man in Ireland.

  In 1688 Catholics held 22 per cent of the land of Ireland. By the time that Queen Anne died in 1714 only 14 per cent was left to them. By 1780 the proportion of land owned by Catholics—three-quarters of the population—had dropped to an all-time low of 5 per cent. How can this be explained?

  For a start, the Penal Laws prevented Catholics from buying land. In addition, when the head of a Catholic family died, his estate had to be divided equally among his sons. Many of those farms, when split up in this way, were no longer commercially viable. Furthermore, if one son became a Protestant, he could inherit the entire estate.

  Only 5,500 Catholics officially converted to the Established Church—that is, the Church of Ireland—between 1703 and 1789. However, these converts were drawn almost exclusively from the Catholic gentry eager to avoid subdivision of their estates and to find careers for younger sons in the legal profession, which was, of course, open only to Protestants. These high-profile conversions significantly reduced the percentage of land held by Catholics. Virtually no Catholic estate of any significance was left in the entire province of Ulster when Alexander MacDonnell, the fifth Earl of Antrim, ‘turned’ when he reached the age of twenty-one in 1734.

  The term ‘Protestant Ascendancy’ only appeared for the first time during debates in the Irish parliament in the 1790s. But it very neatly describes the charmed circle of Anglican (that is Church of Ireland) aristocrats, landlords, clergy and prosperous lawyers, along with their relatives, which formed Ireland’s highly privileged elite in the eighteenth century.

  Members of the Ascendancy showed no enthusiasm for schemes to convert the popish natives. After all, they had no interest in seeing their privileged and exclusive community expanded too much. Their view was stated with brutal clarity by Lord Drogheda:

  I shall be very glad to see the Protestant religion strengthened; but what will we do for hewers of wood and drawers of water, for labouring men to plough our lands, thresh our corn, etc?

  Meanwhile the island was entering a century of peace—the longest peace that modern Ireland has enjoyed. Certainly John Dunton, an English bookseller, did not witness a single act of violence during his tour across Ireland in 1698.

  Episode 119

  JOHN DUNTON EATS AND SLEEPS IN CONNEMARA

  John Dunton, a London bookseller, arrived in Dublin in April 1698 and, keen to visit the wildest part of Ireland, headed westwards to Galway and on to Connemara. He was particularly glad that he had brought with him a plentiful supply of tobacco, for he found it ensured a welcome wherever he went:

  My guide was a gentleman descended from one who had been a master of some estate, but the sins of his father in rebellion fell upon him ... he had been a soldier in the late war.... I had with me a pocket bottle of usque bagh or aqua vitae, a dram of which and a pipe of tobacco regaled him sufficiently, and with this treatment he was soe well satisfied that he never complain’d.

  This gentleman, as a mark of his standing in society, had a greyhound with him, which managed to run down and kill a hare—which was just as well, since they had run out of food.

  In the evening we came to a place where one of my guide’s relations dwelt.... At the place we alighted the people of the house swept it immediately, and gave us a reception fuller of humanity than I could hope for from appearing so barbarous; some of them brought in back-burdens of rushes, green and fresh cutt, with which they made a long thing like a bed to repose my selfe on; I distributed some tobacco among them which highly obliged them.

  I layd me down upon my couch of rushes to repose my selfe and desir’d the hare might be gotten ready for supper; I soe much doubted their cookerie that I prayed them to spare them selves the trouble of roasting it; and to let me have it boyled; presently the wife of the house, who was a woman of middle age, well flesht and ruddy complexiond, only a little colour’d with the sun ... presently tooke out an olde horse’s hide and layd it on the floore, upon which she placed her querns or hand mill stones betwixt her legs which were naked, and stripping up her clothes to the bottom of her belly which exposed her thighs bare as her face, she opened a small bagg of about three pecks of dried oates and fell to grinding verie lustily.…

  When she had ground her oates ... with a little water she made a triangular cake against a little wodden stool like a tripod, the bakeing of which was committed to the care of her mother, an old woman who was all the while either cramming, sneezeing into her nose wipeing away the snivell with the same hands that she turn’d my oaten cake, which made my gutts wamble.... Well, the oaten cake was sett next to me, at the lower end of our stoole or table was placed a great roll of fresh butter of three pound at least, and a wodden vessel full of milk and water. Then enters the landlady’s daughter with her haire finely plaited ... in her hand she brought the hare swimming in a wodden boul full of oyl of butter.... I pretended weariness and desired an egg which the daughter presently gott ready. I envited the family to sitt down with my guide.... Thus they devour’d the hare and I my egg which was the only thing I could eate after the sluttish preparations I had been witness of; well, drink I must, tho what I had seen made me nauseate everie vessel. I shut my eyes ... but for feare of making any ungratefull discoveries in my liquor, which I powr’d down eagerly enough that I might be the sooner ridd of it.…

  Thus supper ended and I made a dole of my tobacco to everyone againe, which they received with all the expressions of gratitude they could shew.... I had just compos’d my selfe to sleep when I was strangely surprised to heare the cows and sheep all comeing into my bed chamber. I enquired the meaning and was told it was to preserve them from the wolfe which everie night was rambling about for prey. I found the beasts lay down soone after they had enter’d ... and truly if the nastiness of theire excrements did not cause an aversion hereto, the sweetness of theire breath which I was not sensible of before, and the pleaseing noise they made in ruminating or chawing the cudd, would lull a body to sleep as soon as the noys of a murmuring brook and the fragrancy of a bed of roses.

  When he returned to Dublin, Dunton was able to sell all ten tons of books he had brought from London. It was striking evidence that Dublin was fast becoming the second city of the British Empire.

  Episode 120

  WOOD’S HALFPENCE AND THE DRAPIER

  In the early eighteenth century Dublin was thriving. The Protestant nobility and gentry built mansions and rented houses in elegant Georgian squares. The ‘quality’, as Dubliners called them, wanted to be in the capital not only for the winter social season, but also for the duration of the parliamentary sessions.

  The Irish parliament only represented the Protestant Ascendancy, the country’s landed elite. Protestant bishops, archbishops and nobles sat in the Lords, and seats in the Commons were for the most part owned or controlled by them. MPs tended to be younger brothers, sons or nominees of the nobility. There was never more than a handful of Presbyterian MPs, and, of course, Catholics could neither vote nor be members of parliament.

  Yet it was in this privileged, unrepresentative parliament that the origins of modern Irish nationalism can be found. Bills put forward in the Irish Commons had to have London’s approval, and, when passed, they could be amended or, indeed, suppressed by the English Privy Council. In addition, the Westminster parliament could pass laws for Ireland. It often did so. In 1698 one Irish MP, William Molyneux, denounced these powers in a pamphlet entitled The Case of Ireland’s being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England Stated. Undaunted, Westminster passed a Woollen Act in 1699 forbidding the export of Irish woollen goods in order to protect the interests of English producers. This drastic legislation, which killed off a thriving trade, caused an outrage which united Protestants and Catholics alike.

  Born in Dublin and n
ow Dean of St Patrick’s, Jonathan Swift lived among the poor weavers of the Coombe, a congested warren of streets close to the cathedral. His concern for their welfare led him in 1720 to write, anonymously, an angry pamphlet entitled A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture ... utterly Rejecting and Renouncing Everything Wearable that comes from England. His argument was summed up in vivid and forceful language:

  Upon the whole, and to crown all the rest, let a firm Resolution be taken, by Male and Female, never to appear with one single Shred that comes from England; and let all the People say, AMEN.... I could wish our Shopkeepers would immediately think on this Proposal.... I think it needless to exhort the Clergy to follow this good Example [and] will think themselves abundantly happy when they can afford Irish Crape, and an Athlone Hat.

  Then in 1722 the English government gave William Wood, a Wolverhampton ironmaster, a patent for the minting of a great quantity of halfpennies and farthings for Ireland. Wood had given King George I’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, £10,000 in return for using her influence, so clearly he was expecting to make a handsome profit. The Irish were certain they were going to be ruined by having debased coinage foisted on them. Once again Swift joined the fray, even though he was in the middle of writing his masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels:

  But Mr WOOD made his HALF-PENCE of such Base Metal, and so much smaller than the English ones, that the Brazier would hardly give you above a Penny of good Money for a Shilling of his; so that this sum of £108,000 in good Gold and Silver, must be given for TRASH that will not be worth above Eight or Nine Thousand Pounds real Value.... But this same Mr WOOD was able to attend constantly for his own Interest; he is an ENGLISHMAN and had great FRIENDS, and it seems knew very well where to give Money, to those that speak to OTHERS that could speak to the KING, and would tell a FAIR STORY.