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

  In the present great aera of reform, when unjust governments are falling in every quarter of Europe ... when all government is acknowledged to originate from the people ... we think it our duty, as Irishmen, to come forward, and state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual remedy.

  WE HAVE NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT—we are ruled by Englishmen, and the servants of Englishmen.... Such an extrinsic power ... can be resisted with effect solely by unanimity, decision, and spirit in the people,—qualities which may be most exerted most legally, constitutionally, and efficaciously, by that great measure essential to the prosperity and freedom of Ireland—AN EQUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN PARLIAMENT.…

  Impressed by these sentiments, we have agreed to form an association, to be called THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN; and we do pledge ourselves to our country, and mutually to each other, that we will steadily support, and endeavour by all due means to carry into effect the following Resolutions—

  First, resolved.—that the weight of English influence in the government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland....

  Second.—that the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed, is by a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament.

  Third.—that no reform is practicable, efficacious, or just, which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.

  All the founder members were Protestants. Dr William Drennan, an obstetrician who first planned the society, was the son of a Presbyterian minister in Rosemary Street; the secretary, Roberts Simms, owned a papermill in Ballyclare; Thomas McCabe was a watch and clock maker in Belfast; Samuel Neilson had a woollen warehouse in Bridge Street; Samuel McTier, married to Drennan’s sister Martha, was an unsuccessful businessman; and Henry Joy McCracken, son of a Rosemary Street sea captain, was a commercial traveller in cotton. These men were not revolutionaries—at least, not yet. They passionately believed that they would win the day by argument, by the force of reason.

  The Society rapidly spread to towns close to Belfast, among Presbyterian farmers in Antrim and Down, to Dublin and beyond. To promote the radical cause, in 1792 the United Irishmen launched the Northern Star, with Samuel Neilson as editor; it soon became the most widely read newspaper in Ireland.

  Wolfe Tone found these Belfast reformers remarkably ignorant of their Catholic fellow-countrymen; yet what drove them forward was a fervent determination to win political rights for Catholics. In addition, Belfast Protestants knew little enough about the culture of the Irish-speaking people of the countryside. It was a new-found fascination with this mysterious indigenous culture that led them to organise a uniquely important event—the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792.

  Episode 144

  THE BELFAST HARP FESTIVAL OF 1792

  Shortly before he died in 1774 the poet Oliver Goldsmith wrote this memoir on the most celebrated of the Irish harpists:

  Of all the bards this country ever produced, the last and the greatest was CAROLAN THE BLIND. He was at once a poet, a musician, a composer, and sung his own verses to his harp. The original natives never mention his name without rapture.... He was possessed of an astonishing memory.... Being once at the house of an Irish nobleman, where there was a musician present who was eminent in the profession, Carolan immediately challenged him to a trial of skill.... The musician accordingly played over on his fiddle the fifth concerto of Vivaldi. Carolan, immediately taking his harp, played over the whole piece after him without missing a note ... but their astonishment increased when he assured them he could make a concerto in the same taste himself, which he instantly composed, and that with such spirit and elegance that it may compare (for we have it still) with the finest compositions of Italy.

  The Italian musician was Geminiani, and the harpist’s composition is known to us today as ‘Carolan’s Concerto’. Turlough O’Carolan died in 1738, and thereafter the possibility loomed that an ancient art would be lost altogether.

  Dr James McDonnell, Belfast’s leading physician, was determined to do what he could to preserve the harping tradition. Though a Protestant, he had been born a Catholic near Cushendall, Co. Antrim, and his early education was a distinctly Gaelic one. He had been taught to play the harp by the renowned blind harpist Arthur O’Neill. McDonnell never lost his love of music, and in 1791 he threw himself into a project to hold a harp festival in Belfast in the following year. Performers had to assemble in Belfast on 10 July 1792, and the newspaper advertisements promised what were called ‘premiums’ to cover their expenses. McDonnell wrote to his former teacher, Arthur O’Neill, begging him to be present.

  O’Neill received McDonnell’s letter while he was staying with the O’Reillys of Cavan. At first he refused the invitation, as he recorded himself:

  In consequence of my rheumatism I felt my own incapacity, as I had not the use of the two principal fingers of my left hand.... Mr O’Reilly would take no excuse, and swore vehemently that if I did not go freely, he would tie me on a car, and have me conducted to assist in performing what was required in the advertisement before mentioned.

  All but three of the ten harpists who came to Belfast were blind, including the only woman, Rose Mooney. Except for the fifteen-year-old Willian Carr, all were elderly—the most senior, Denis Hempson, was almost a hundred years old. The festival had been arranged to coincide with the third anniversary of the fall of the Bastille when great numbers of Volunteers were expected to be present in the town to celebrate the French Revolution.

  At one end of the Assembly Room in the Exchange a platform had been erected, and the appearance of the somewhat decrepit and largely unkempt performers with their attendants must have seemed strange to the audience which, we are assured, was composed of ‘Ladies and Gentlemen of the first fashion in Belfast and its vicinity’.

  Wolfe Tone, one of the founder members of the United Irishmen, was on a visit from Dublin and went to hear the harpists. His journal indicates that he was not impressed:

  July 11th ... All go to the Harpers at one; poor enough; ten performers; seven execrable, three good, one of them, Fanning, far the best. No new musical discovery; believe all the good Irish airs are already written....

  July 12th ... Lounge to the Harpers....

  July 13th ... The Harpers again. Strum. Strum and be hanged.

  Unlike Wolfe Tone, the nineteen-year-old Edward Bunting, assistant organist at St Anne’s Church, had been deeply moved by the experience. Bunting travelled back with the aged harpist Denis Hempson to his home in Magilligan, and there he began his life’s work of transcribing Irish airs and songs. In 1796 Bunting published his first collection of Irish harp music, including sixty-six airs never before printed. It was an incalculable service to Irish culture. The book caused a sensation. Mrs Martha McTier, from her home at Cabin Hill in east Belfast, wrote to her brother Dr William Drennan, then in Dublin:

  Have you got the Irish music—it is the rage here.... It would be worth your while to try if you could hear him play his Irish music—sugar plumbs or sweetys is his greatest temptation, for he despises both money and praise, and is thought a good hearted original.

  Thomas Moore later drew on Bunting’s pioneering work, adding matchless words to the collected airs in his immensely popular Irish Melodies.

  In the same year as the Harp Festival, 1792, revolutionary France declared war on kings and aristocrats. The shock-waves were soon felt in Ireland.

  Episode 145

  AT WAR WITH FRANCE

  Allons enfants de la patrie,

  Le jour de gloire est arrivé;

  Contre nous de la tyrannie

  L’étandard sanglant est levé.

  It is April 1792. Revolutionary France has declared war on Austria and Prussia. For the French, this is an ideological war, a war to bring an end to the inherited privileges of kings and aristocrats and the tyranny of the clergy. For the Irishman Edmund Burke, on the other hand, t
he French now threaten all Europe with terror and the tyranny of the ‘swinish multitude’.

  Burke’s predictions become true. The mob rules. Priests and suspects are massacred in their hundreds in the prisons of Paris. Daniel O’Connell, a young Catholic Irishman who witnesses the slaughter, concludes: ‘Liberty is not worth the shedding of a single drop of blood.’ This sentiment will remain his guiding principle for the rest of his life.

  The Reign of Terror has begun. The men of Marseilles are on the march:

  Aux armes citoyens!

  Formez vos bataillons!

  Marchons! Marchons!

  Qu’un sang impur

  Abreuve nos sillons.

  Early in 1793 King Louis XVI is on trial for his life. On 21 January, before an immense crowd in Paris, he is guillotined. In Belfast, reading of these bloody events, Martha McTier writes: ‘I am turned, quite turned against the French.’

  Many members of the United Irishmen, the radical society that had been inspired by the early achievements of the French Revolution, agree with Mrs McTier. Others do not agree with her: they are excited by news of French victories as the revolutionary armies sweep the Prussians and Austrians back over the frontiers and surge north towards Holland. The French are now offering to help all those seeking to throw off the yoke of kings and aristocrats. Is there a possibility that revolutionary France could help the Irish to win their freedom?

  William Pitt the Younger has been Prime Minister of Britain since 1783. Since he brought Britain into the war in February 1793 his armies have faced one humiliating defeat after another. As one by one Britain’s allies are knocked out of the war, Pitt becomes ever more anxious about his vulnerable western flank—Ireland. He must do everything to prevent discontented Irishmen turning to France for help. He must win the sympathy of Irish Catholics, and to do that he needs the help of the Irish parliament.

  Ever since ‘legislative independence’ had been won in 1782 Westminster can no longer pass laws for Ireland. But Pitt has made sure that the parliament in Dublin has less power than it thinks it has. The British government of the day still appoints the Lord Lieutenant and other government ministers in Dublin Castle. Only the king—advised, of course by Pitt—can create peerages, make appointments and award pensions. Irish MPs are not slow to look for comfortable jobs and titles for themselves, their sons and their relatives. In this way Pitt has effectively bought himself a secure majority in the Irish House of Commons. He now uses this power to help Irish Catholics.

  On 2 January 1793 at St James’s Palace King George III receives members of the Catholic Committee from Ireland. William Pitt, Edmund Burke and the Irish ‘Patriot’ leader Henry Grattan have all spoken persuasively to His Majesty, who is not usually noted for his tolerance of Catholics. The king seems in the best of humour, however, as John Keogh hands him a petition seeking a redress of Catholic grievances. The committee’s paid secretary, the United Irishman Wolfe Tone, is delighted:

  Their appearance was splendid and they met with ... a most gracious reception.... His Majesty was pleased to say a few words to each of the delegates in his turn.... With the manner of the Sovereign the delegates had every reason to be content....

  Keogh ... was prodigiously fine; he wore silk stockings and a round sharp-buckled tie-wig, with two rows of hard curls that were extremely well powdered.

  Back in Ireland the members of the Protestant Ascendancy are horrified. Hearing rumours of concessions to Catholics, Dublin Corporation issues its definition of what it thinks is best for Ireland:

  A Protestant King of Ireland; a Protestant Parliament; a Protestant hierarchy; Protestant electors and Government; the Benches of Justice, the Army and the Revenue, through all their branches and details, Protestant; and the system supported by a connexion with the Protestant realm of England.

  But Pitt is determined. On 10 January the Lord Lieutenant announces to the Irish parliament:

  His Majesty trusts that the situation of His Majesty’s Catholic subjects will engage your serious attention and in the consideration of this subject relies on the wisdom and liberality of his Parliament.

  That parliament, entirely Protestant, duly enacts legislation to give Catholics the vote in parliamentary elections. All the Penal Laws passed against Catholics nearly a century ago have been removed—except for one important one: Catholics still cannot sit as members of parliament. Will the Catholics ever be fully emancipated?

  Episode 146

  EARL FITZWILLIAM’S FAILURE

  There cannot be a permanency in the Constitution of Ireland unless the Protestants of Ireland will lay aside their prejudices, forgo their exclusive pre-eminence, and gradually open their arms to the Roman Catholics.

  This was the view of Henry Dundas, Minister of War and right-hand-man of the British Prime Minister, William Pitt. It was an opinion certainly shared by William, Earl Fitzwilliam, who arrived in Dublin as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on 4 January 1795. Fitzwilliam gave every encouragement to Henry Grattan, the ‘Patriot’ leader, to bring forward a bill to repeal the last of the Penal Laws, that which prevented Catholics being elected as members of parliament. Fitzwilliam wrote back to London: ‘I have little doubt the Catholic business will be carried easily.’

  Fitzwilliam’s confidence proved to be unfounded. Leading members of the Irish government made loud protests, and, above all, King George III declared that he would regard anyone who supported Catholic Emancipation as his personal enemy. Pitt, who was privately in favour of Emancipation but had no wish to be put out of power, firmly refused Fitzwilliam permission to back Grattan’s bill. Fitzwilliam was so furious that he published his private correspondence on the issue, stating that ‘I am at a loss to conjecture what benefits will accrue to the British Empire by deferring consideration of this question.’

  For his defiance, Fitzwilliam paid the penalty: he was swiftly removed as viceroy of Ireland. Thomas Hussey, Catholic Bishop of Lismore, noted grimly: ‘The disastrous news of Earl Fitzwilliam’s recall is come, and Ireland is now on the brink of civil war.’ Huge crowds of Dubliners lined the Liffey quays as far as Ringsend to bid Fitzwilliam farewell, as the Belfast News-Letter reported:

  At length the trying hour of separation arrived. Every sensation that could wring the heart, was experienced by all ranks and conditions. The multitude saw the yacht ride proudly before them, ready to take away with her their darling, and the hopes and prospects of Ireland.... They saw his Lordship, ashamed to betray the most amiable weakness, and with his handkerchief, endeavouring to conceal pure tears springing from an undefiled heart ...

  Grattan put forward his Emancipation bill, and in support, George Knox, the Dungannon MP, warned the Irish Commons:

  Much of the real, and no small share of the personal, property of the country is in Catholic hands.... If we drive the rich Catholic from the Legislature and from our own society, we force him to attach himself to the needy and disaffected.... Take, then, your choice; re-enact your penal laws, risk a rebellion, a separation or an Union, or pass this Bill.

  Without government support, however, the bill was easily defeated. Disgusted and disillusioned, members of the Society of United Irishmen abandoned peaceful methods and began to plan a rebellion. They were joined in this endeavour by members of the Catholic Committee. Their only hope of success was to persuade revolutionary France to send them military aid. Wolfe Tone, one of the United Irish leaders, had already decided that this was the only option. But he was caught talking to a French spy in a coffee-house in Dublin. Tone was fortunate not to be hanged. However, he had relatives in high places, and instead he was allowed to go into exile in America. In May 1795 he took his family to Belfast, and while waiting for his ship he was lavishly entertained by his Presbyterian supporters:

  But, if our friends in Dublin were kind and affectionate, those in Belfast, if possible, were still more so.... Parties and excursions were planned for our amusement; and certainly the whole of our deportment and reception at Belfast very little res
embled those of a man who escaped with his life only by a miracle.... I remember particularly two days that we passed on the Cave Hill. On the first Russell, Neilson, Simms, McCracken, and one or to more of us, on the summit of McArt’s fort took a solemn obligation ... never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted her independence.

  On 13 June Tone embarked on board the Cincinnatus and sailed to America. His Belfast friends had raised enough money for him to buy a tobacco farm in New Jersey. But they continued to send him further supplies of money to enable him to seek French help. Early in 1796 he set out for France and landed at Le Havre on 1 February. By December Wolfe Tone would be an adjutant-general in the French army, ready to sail to Ireland with a great invasion fleet.

  Meanwhile the outbreak of bloody sectarian warfare in Co. Armagh ensured that the middle-class businessmen and intellectuals of the United Irishmen would acquire the field army of infuriated peasants they would need to launch their rebellion.

  Episode 147

  PEEP O’ DAY BOYS AND DEFENDERS

  In the late eighteenth century Co. Armagh was certainly the most densely populated rural area in Ireland. Here the linen industry flourished, and competition to rent land became fierce in the vicinity of market towns, bleach-greens and the water-powered wash-mills, dye-works and beetling mills. Few Catholics were drapers, but many were handloom weavers, competing with their Protestant neighbours. Trade rivalry easily became sectarian rivalry. Rents for the tiny farms here were the highest in Ireland, and Protestants, living on oatmeal, perhaps supplemented with bacon once a week, often felt that Catholics, able to survive on potatoes and buttermilk, could unfairly outbid them by paying higher rents.