Ruling Ireland, 1685-1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties (Irish Historical Monographs)

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RULING IRELAND, 1685–1742

Irish Historical Monographs Series Series editors: Marie Therese Flanagan, Queen’s University, Belfast Eunan O’Halpin, Trinity College, Dublin David Hayton, Queen’s University, Belfast ISSN 1740–1097

RULING IRELAND, 1685–1742 Politics, Politicians and Parties

D. W. Hayton

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© D. W. Hayton 2004 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2004 Published by The Boydell Press An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN 1 84383 058 2 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hayton, David, 1949Ruling Ireland, 1685-1742 : politics, politicians and parties / D.W. Hayton. p. cm. — (Irish historical monographs series, ISSN 1740-1097) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-84383-058-2 (Hardback : alk. paper) 1. Ireland—Politics and government—18th century. 2. Political parties—Ireland —History—18th century. 3. Political parties—Ireland—History—17th century. 4. Ireland—Politics and government—17th century. 5. British—Ireland—History —18th century. 6. British—Ireland—History—17th century. I. Title. II. Series. DA947.H39 2004 941.507—dc22 2003026162

Typeset by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Limited, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Contents Preface Editorial note List of principal abbreviations

vii ix xi

Introduction

1

1 Two revolutions: jacobite and Williamite 2 Anglo-Irish politics, 1692–1704: the rise of party

8 35

3 The beginnings of the ‘undertaker system’

106

4 High churchmen in the Irish convocation

131

5 The crisis in Ireland and the disintegration of Queen Anne’s last ministry

159

6 Exclusion, conformity and parliamentary representation: the impact of the sacramental test on Irish dissenting politics

186

7 British whig ministers and the Irish question, 1714–25

209

8 ‘A remote part of the king’s dominions’: Sir Robert Walpole’s administration and the government of Ireland, c. 1725–42

237

Conclusion

276

Manuscript sources cited Index

282 291

v

For Deirdre

Preface With two exceptions, the pieces in this collection have been published before, though none exactly in its present form. One appears in print for the first time; another has been so extensively reconstructed and rewritten that it is in effect a new work. The remainder have all been revised, with some new material added and references to the secondary literature brought up to date. I am grateful to the editors and publishers of the various books and journals in which earlier versions of these essays appeared, for permission to reproduce the substance of the originals here. Although written for different purposes, the intention is that they should coalesce into something approaching a coherent account of political developments in Ireland between the accession of King James II and the fall of Sir Robert Walpole. Access to collections of papers and other original materials in private ownership, and permission to make use of them, was graciously afforded by the duke of Abercorn; the duke of Devonshire and the trustees of the Chatsworth settlement; the marquess of Bath; the earl of March; the earl of Roden; the earl of Shannon; the Viscount Massereene and Ferrard; the Viscount Midleton; the Lord Bolton; the Lord De L’Isle; the Lord Hampton; Lady Ravensdale; the Lord Rossmore; the late Lord Walpole; his grace the archbishop of Armagh; Sir Hugh Blackett, Bt; Mr C. H. Bagot; Lieutenant-Commander H. W. Drax; Dr A. P. W. Malcomson; Lionel Stopford Sackville; and the Lamport Hall Trust. I am also obliged to the following institutions and official custodians of manuscripts for allowing me to consult and make reference to documents in their care: the Beinecke Library, Yale University; Berkshire Record Office; the keeper of western manuscripts, the Bodleian Library; the British Library Board; the Department of Prints and Drawings, the British Museum; Cambridge University Library; Cambridgeshire Record Office; Carrickfergus Borough Council; the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford; Churchill College, Cambridge; the deputy keeper of the records of Northern Ireland; the librarian, Dr Williams’s Library; Dorset Record Office; the Folger Shakespeare Library; the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery; the comptroller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office; Hereford and Worcestershire Record Office; Hertfordshire Record Office; the Irish Architectural Archive; the John Rylands University Library of Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone; Lambeth Palace Library; the Record Offices for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland; the keeper, Marsh’s Library; the National Archives of Ireland; the vii


director, the National Library of Ireland; the National Library of Wales; Norfolk Record Office; Nottingham University Library; Oxfordshire Record Office; the Royal Irish Academy; Somerset Record Office; Staffordshire Record Office; Suffolk Record Office; Surrey History Centre; the Board of Trinity College, Dublin; the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. Almost without exception, staff in the many libraries and archives in which I have worked have been extraordinarily hospitable and helpful. It should not therefore be seen as a reflection on any person or institution if I take advantage of this opportunity to express my particular indebtedness to Mr S. R. Tomlinson of the Bodleian Library; Dr Frances Harris and Dr C. J. Wright of the British Library; Mr John Wing, formerly of the library of Christ Church, Oxford; Mr David Griffin of the Irish Architectural Archive; Mr Robert Lyons and Dr Clyve Jones of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London; Mrs Muriel McCarthy of Marsh’s Library; Dr Noel Kissane and Mr Tom Desmond of the National Library of Ireland; Dr A. P. W. Malcomson, formerly of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland; Mr Michael Smallman of the library of the Queen’s University of Belfast; Mr Michael Page of the Surrey History Centre; and the late Mr William O’Sullivan of Trinity College, Dublin. Among the many historians of late seventeenth- and early eighteenthcentury Ireland on whose friendship and advice I have drawn frequently over a long period of time, I would wish to thank in particular Dr T. C. Barnard, Professor S. J. Connolly, Professor D. J. Dickson, Professor Jacqueline Hill, Dr Edward McParland, and Mr J. I. McGuire. I have learned a very great deal, on matters both technical and scholarly, from close editorial collaboration with Mr C. H. Croker. From an English viewpoint, Dr Clyve Jones and Dr Stephen Taylor have discussed with me some of the issues dealt with in these pages, and both have materially assisted my work in numerous other ways. I have also been fortunate in my publisher, and am very grateful to the staff at Boydell, in particular Peter Sowden, Sarah Pearsall and Ann King, for the care they have devoted to this project. My research pupils, Alan Black, Anne Creighton, Andrew Holmes, Peter McDowell, Ivan Nelson and Rosemary Richey, have contributed far more than they will have realised, not least in pointing me towards sources I might otherwise have missed; while successive classes of undergraduates have performed the equally vital function of obliging me to attempt to make specific research findings intelligible in a broader perspective. D.W.H. Belfast, April 2003

viii

Editorial note Unless otherwise stated, all dates are given in Old Style, although the year is taken to begin on 1 January, rather than 25 March, which in this period was still the formal convention. In quotations from contemporary sources, spelling has been modernised, and punctuation and capitalisation standardised, except in cases where the meaning of the original is ambiguous or unclear. In other respects, the text attempts to follow, as far as possible, the editorial rules prescribed for Irish Historical Studies.

ix

List of principal abbreviations The following abbreviations are used throughout this volume, without further explanation. Addison letters

The letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Walter Graham (Oxford, 1941)

As by law established

Alan Ford, James McGuire and Kenneth Milne (eds), As by law established: the Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995)

Ball, Judges

F. E. Ball, The judges in Ireland, 1221–1921 (2 vols, London, 1926)

Bartlett & Hayton, Penal Era

Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (eds), Penal era and golden age: essays in Irish history 1690–1800 (Belfast, 1979)

Beckett, Dissent

J. C. Beckett, Protestant dissent in Ireland 1687–1780 (London, 1948)

B.L.

British Library

Bodl.

Bodleian Library

Boulter letters

Letters written by his excellency Hugh Boulter . . . to several ministers of state . . . (2 vols, Dublin, 1770)

Burnet

Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s history of his own time [ed. M. J. Routh] (2nd ed., 6 vols, Oxford, 1833)

Burns, Politics

R. E. Burns, Irish parliamentary politics in the eighteenth century (2 vols, Washington, D.C., 1989–90)

C.J.

The journals of the house of commons (Westminster)

C.J.I.

The journals of the house of commons of the kingdom of Ireland (unless otherwise stated, 2nd ed., 19 vols, Dublin, 1753–76)

Cobbett

William Cobbett, The parliamentary history of England (36 vols, London, 1806–20) xi


Commons 1690–1715 Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton (eds), The house of commons 1690–1715 (5 vols, Cambridge, 2002) Connolly, Religion

S. J. Connolly, Religion, law and power: the making of protestant Ireland 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992)

Coxe, Walpole

William Coxe, Memoirs of the life and administration of Sir Robert Walpole . . . (2 vols, London, 1798)

C.S.P. dom.

Calendar of State Papers, domestic series

D.N.B.

Dictionary of national biography

E.H.R.

English Historical Review

General Synod recs

Records of the General Synod of Ulster from 1691 to 1820 (3 vols, Belfast, 1890–8)

Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’

D. W. Hayton, ‘Ireland and the English ministers, 1707–16’(unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1975)

Hist. Ir. parl.

E. M. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish parliament 1692–1800 (6 vols, Belfast, 2002)

H.L.Q.

Huntington Library Quarterly

H.M.C.

Historical Manuscripts Commission (reports)

I.H.S.

Irish Historical Studies

Inchiquin MSS

The Inchiquin manuscripts, ed. J. F. Ainsworth (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1961)

James, Empire

F. G. James, Ireland in the empire, 1688–1770: a history of Ireland from the Williamite wars to the eve of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)

Japikse

Nicolaas Japikse (ed.), Correspondentie van Willem III en van Hans Willem Bentinck, eersten graf van Portland (5 vols, The Hague, 1927–37)

Levinge jottings

Sir Richard G. A. Levinge, Jottings of the Levinge Family (Dublin, 1877)

L.J.

Journals of the house of lords (Westminster)

L.J.I.

Journals of the house of lords [of Ireland] (8 vols, Dublin, 1779–1800)

Luttrell, Brief relation

Narcissus Luttrell, A brief historical relation of state affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (6 vols, Oxford, 1857) xii

PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS

Mant

Richard Mant, History of the Church of Ireland, from the revolution to the union of the Churches of England and Ireland (London, 1840)

McGrath, Constitution C. I. McGrath, The making of the eighteenth-century Irish constitution, 1692–1714 (Dublin, 2000) McNally, Undertakers Patrick McNally, Parties, patriots and undertakers: parliamentary politics in early Hanoverian Ireland (Dublin, 1997) N.A.I.

National Archives of Ireland

N.L.I.

National Library of Ireland

O’Regan, King

Philip O’Regan, Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650–1729) and the constitution in church and state (Dublin, 2000)

P.R.O.

Public Record Office

P.R.O.N.I.

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Reid

J. S. Reid, History of the presbyterian church in Ireland, ed. W. D. Killen (3 vols, Belfast, 1867)

R.I.A.

Royal Irish Academy

R.O.

Record Office

S.H.C.

Surrey History Centre

Simms, War & politics J. G. Simms, War and politics in Ireland, 1649–1730, ed. D. W. Hayton and Gerard O’Brien (London, 1986) Swift corresp.

The correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (5 vols, Oxford, 1963–5)

T.C.D.

Trinity College Dublin

Troost, ‘William III’

Wouter Troost, ‘William III and the treaty of Limerick (1691–1697): a study of his Irish policy’ (Ph.D. thesis, Leiden University, 1983)

xiii

Introduction

During the past twenty years a transformation has occurred in our knowledge and understanding of the history of Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century. Once badly neglected, the period now attracts considerable and continuing scholarly interest. New fields of research have been opened up; traditional assumptions challenged; ‘revisionist’ interpretations advanced. Yet in one important area – politics and government – a great deal is still unknown and unexplained. This book represents the summation of three decades of research into political thought and practice in Ireland, and the development of English policy, between the reign of James II and the fall of Sir Robert Walpole. It proposes answers to basic questions relating to the way in which Ireland was governed in the early years of protestant ‘ascendancy’. What was the nature of English rule in Ireland? How did the members of the Irish propertied elite think and act together, in parliament and other arenas of political conflict, such as borough corporations or the convocation of the Church of Ireland? To what extent did they experience a political culture distinct from that of England? How did English policy, and Irish responses, change, if at all, during this period? When I began research, over thirty years ago, this period was largely terra incognita as far as Irish historians were concerned. From a catholic or nationalist perspective it was first and foremost the era of the imposition and elaboration of the penal laws. The effects of this ‘code’, on the catholic church and the catholic landed and commercial communities, had been investigated in some depth,1 although little had been written about the parliament by which the laws themselves had been enacted. In the history of protestant Ireland the first half of the eighteenth century was seen either as a dull prelude to the more exciting political events of the age of reform and revolution, or, in a different way, and principally by literary historians, as a backdrop to the writings of Jonathan Swift. Little seemed to be happening in Dublin Castle or in the Irish parliament that was of lasting impact and interest, the fetid waters of ‘ascendancy’ politics stirred only occasionally by some ineffectual declaration of protestant patriotism, such as William Molyneux’s Case of

1 Especially by the late Maureen Wall: see Catholic Ireland in the eighteenth century: collected essays of Maureen Wall, ed. Gerard O’Brien (Dublin, 1989).

1


Ireland . . . stated in 1698, and Swift’s various writings of the 1720s and 1730s. Indeed, ‘The age of Molyneux and Swift’ was how the period was sometimes described. Outside the circle of Swift scholars the only historical writing to have dealt with protestant Ireland in the early eighteenth century in any systematic way had come from three distinguished scholars of an older generation: J. C. Beckett, then professor of Irish history at Queen’s University, Belfast, J. G. Simms, fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and J. L. McCracken, professor of history at the New University of Ulster. The subject of Beckett’s earliest research had been the working of the penal laws against protestant dissenters between 1687 and the repeal of the sacramental test in 1780, with a strong focus on the period 1704–35.2 He had also begun to investigate the administration and politics of the Church of Ireland episcopate, in two path-breaking articles,3 before moving away into more general histories of Ireland and the Anglo-Irish. Simms had written a detailed analysis of the Williamite land settlement, an authoritative account of King James’s reign and the ensuing war, and a number of articles and essays which had opened up the political history of the post-revolution period as a subject for serious study.4 McCracken had pioneered research into the eighteenth-century parliament and its relations with government, in an unpublished thesis, from which he had quarried several articles.5 A great deal of work remained to be done, however, especially in the realm of political history. Existing research had only begun to elucidate the operation of the Irish parliament and electoral system; the nature of associations within parliament (what Sir Lewis Namier long ago termed ‘political structure’); the methods employed to manage parliament; the policies of viceroys and English administrations; and the interactions between English and Irish politics. My own doctoral research tried to answer some of these questions for a very narrow period, essentially the second half of the reign of Queen Anne and the immediate aftermath of the Hanoverian succession, and dealt in particular with the emergence of ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ parties in Ireland, and the effects of this integration of Irish and English political ‘structures’ on the

2

Published as J. C. Beckett, Protestant dissent in Ireland 1687–1780 (London, 1948). Idem, ‘The government of the Church of Ireland under William III and Anne’ in I.H.S., ii (1940–1), pp. 280–302; idem, ‘William King’s administration of the diocese of Derry, 1691–1703’ in ibid., iv (1944–5), pp. 164–80. 4 J. G. Simms, The Williamite confiscation in Ireland 1690–1703 (London, 1956); idem, Jacobite Ireland 1685–91 (London, 1969); idem, War and politics in Ireland, 1649–1730, ed. D. W. Hayton and Gerard O’Brien (London, 1986). 5 J. L. McCracken, ‘The undertakers in Ireland and their relations with the lords lieutenant, 1724–1771’ (unpublished MA thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1941); idem, ‘The struggle between the Irish administration and parliament, 1753–6’ in I.H.S., iii (1942–3), pp. 159–79; idem, ‘Irish parliamentary elections, 1727–68’ in ibid., v (1946–7), pp. 209–30. 3

2

INTRODUCTION

operation of government policy.6 The resulting thesis was never published, though parts found their way into print, in some of the papers included in this volume. In the intervening years the historiographical landscape of early eighteenthcentury Ireland has changed dramatically. Thanks to historians such as T. C. Barnard, S. J. Connolly, L. M. Cullen, David Dickson and Edward McParland we now know very much more about the development of protestant Irish society in all its aspects: agriculture, manufacture, trade and commerce; religious belief and practice; private and public building, estate management and improvement; the creation and consumption of material goods; habits of reading, patterns of thinking, the world of print and of ideas, and of ‘sociability’ in general. Perhaps the most remarkable achievement has been Dr Barnard’s, whose many published contributions have explored a vast range of subjects, from gardening to literacy, from the movement for the reformation of manners to the money to be made from profession of the law.7 Exploiting a wealth of unused manuscript material, he has reconstructed a world lost to Irish historians, and not merely the milieu of the wealthier representatives of the ‘protestant ascendancy’ but also the humbler denizens of provincial society. A different, but equally important contribution has been that of Professor Connolly, whose monograph Religion, law and power: the making of protestant Ireland 1660–1760 brought a new level of conceptual rigour to the analysis of social relations in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Ireland, and did much to revive general historical interest in the period by advancing what some would see as a ‘revisionist’ interpretation of eighteenth-century Irish society, arguing for the relative ‘normality’ of the country in the context of the aristocratic and corporatist-dominated polities of ancien régime Europe.8 Professor Connolly described a political system dominated by standard notions of property-based civil rights, and social relations that were as likely to be characterised by acquiescence and deference as by sectarian hostility. Naturally enough, this interpretation has not been accepted in every quarter of the Irish historical profession, not least because of its subversive implications, for example, in our understanding of the intention and function of the penal laws, which, when seen in the context of the contemporary European confessional state, appear less peculiar (and unreasonable) than Irish historians were wont to make them appear. 6 D. W. Hayton, ‘Ireland and the English ministers, 1707–16’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1975). 7 Some of these articles are collected in T. C. Barnard, Irish protestant ascents and descents, 1641–1779 (Dublin, forthcoming, 2003). See also his A new anatomy of Ireland: the Irish protestants, 1649–1770 (New Haven and London, 2003), which unfortunately appeared too late to be taken into account in the preparation of the present volume. 8 S. J. Connolly, Religion, law and power: the making of protestant Ireland 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992).

3


These advances in knowledge of social, economic, cultural and ideological developments are a great help to understanding the way in which Ireland was governed, but until quite recently political history per se has not attracted the same level of attention. Apart from the occasional dissertation with a parliamentary theme,9 and some useful studies of localities,10 the principal works on the political history of the period to appear since McCracken had come from two American historians: F. G. James and R. E. Burns. Both suffered to some extent from self-imposed limitations. Professor James’s study of Ireland in the empire, 1688–177011 was concerned to elucidate Ireland’s position in the British imperial system; Professor Burns’s two-volume magnum opus, Irish parliamentary politics in the eighteenth century,12 was in effect an extended commentary on successive viceregal administrations in the reigns of the first two Georges. Within the past five years, however, progress has been significantly faster, with the appearance of Patrick McNally’s study of political culture in early Hanoverian Ireland;13 of C. I. McGrath’s analysis of the development of fiscal legislation;14 of a number of important essays on Irish political thought; 15 and of Philip O’Regan’s political biography of Archbishop King of Dublin, a central figure in Irish government from the Glorious Revolution until his death in 1729.16 The most recent, and potentially the most spectacular, addition to the literature is the appearance in 2001 of Professor Edith Mary 9

Joseph Griffin, ‘Parliamentary politics in Ireland during the reign of George I’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1977); Wouter Troost, ‘William III and the Treaty of Limerick (1691–1697): a study of his Irish policy’ (Ph.D. thesis, Leiden University, 1983); Thomas Doyle, ‘Parliament and politics in Williamite Ireland 1690–1703’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1992); idem, ‘The politics of protestant ascendancy: politics, religion and society in protestant Ireland, 1700–1710’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University College Dublin, 1996). 10 See, for example, J. R. Hill, From patriots to unionists: Dublin civic politics and Irish protestant patriotism, 1660–1840 (Oxford, 1997); James Kelly, ‘The politics of the “protestant ascendancy”: County Galway 1650–1832’ in Gerard Moran (ed.), Galway: history and society (Dublin, 1996), pp. 229–70. 11 F. G. James, Ireland in the empire, 1688–1770: a history of Ireland from the Williamite wars to the eve of the American Revolution (Harvard Historical Monographs, lxviii, Cambridge, Mass., 1973). 12 R. E. Burns, Irish parliamentary politics in the eighteenth century (2 vols, Washington, D.C., 1989–90). 13 Patrick McNally, Parties, patriots and undertakers: parliamentary politics in early Hanoverian Ireland (Dublin, 1997). 14 C. I. McGrath, The making of the eighteenth-century Irish constitution: government, parliament and the revenue, 1692–1714 (Dublin, 2000). 15 S. J. Connolly (ed.), Political ideas in eighteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2000); D. G. Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds), Political discourse in seventeenthand eighteenth-century England (Basingstoke, 2001). 16 Philip O’ Regan, Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650–1729) and the constitution in church and state (Dublin, 2000). 4

INTRODUCTION

Johnston-Liik’s monumental History of the Irish parliament 1692–1800, a reference work founded on Namierite principles and organised on Namierite lines, which contains biographical entries for all the members elected to the Irish house of commons in the eighteenth century and will undoubtedly act both as an aid and a stimulus to future research.17 The present volume, drawing together work which has appeared sporadically over the past twenty years, focuses on the essential problem of governing Ireland in this period: the relationship between English ministers and the Irish political elite. Some of the essays explore the changing political culture of protestant Ireland, beginning with the impact of the jacobite regime in 1687–9 and the traumatic events of the ensuing war, and tracing the emergence in the reigns of King William III and Queen Anne of a distinctive ‘high church’ or ‘tory’ political faction and ideology among Church of Ireland protestants. Others explore the working of English policy, at first in the heyday of ‘party’ conflict, when religious issues dominated the parliamentary agenda, and then in the very different circumstances of the long whig ascendancy after 1715, which saw both a consolidation of oligarchy and a growth in Irish protestant ‘patriotism’. Although much of the material has appeared before, there is, I hope, something to be gained in drawing it together, since the particular arguments put forward in each case – about the working of the ‘party system’, for example, the relationships between viceroys and their parliamentary managers, or the limitations of ministerial thinking on Irish questions – reflect a general interpretation of the nature of Irish politics and English government in the period. One common thread is the emphasis placed on the intimate connexions between Irish and English politics. The alternative, to study the activities and the rhetoric of Irish politicians without any broader frame of reference, is obviously inappropriate, since the Irish protestant elite was not cut off from outside (more particularly English) influences; far from it. A great many Irish protestants had English relations, connexions and friends, English property, and English interests. The barristers among them had all been educated at an English inn of court. Many others were regular visitors to the flesh-pots of London or Bath. Even those who never ventured across the Irish Sea would take at least some of their fashions from England – in clothes, furniture, painting, food, architecture and gardening – and some of their ideas. An educated Irishman’s library might well contain volumes of which an Englishman would be ignorant, relating to the history and topography of his native land; but at the same time the Irish gentleman would certainly share the literary heritage of his English counterpart: in the culture and writings of classical antiquity, in medieval and more recent history, in political thought, and, above all perhaps, in religion.

17

E. M. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish parliament 1692–1800 (6 vols, Belfast, 2002). 5


An appreciation of the Anglo-Irish context is essential to any understanding of the development of English policy towards Ireland, and of the interaction of the two political systems. For earlier periods it might be possible to understand the development of styles and strategies of government in Ireland by looking only at the careers and thought-processes of successive viceroys and their officials, but this form of explanation simply will not work for the eighteenth century. In Elizabethan Ireland, or under the early Stuarts, when a viceroy was responsible directly to the monarch and to no one else, he might put forward his own programme of government. In an age of limited monarchy and, increasingly, cabinet responsibility, viceroys were obliged to take their instructions from Whitehall and to report to the English secretary of state. On several occasions after 1689 we find lords lieutenant prescribed objectives by the English administration that anyone with a knowledge of Ireland would have recognised as impossible. True, there were occasional viceroys, such as Capel in 1695–6, Wharton in 1709–10 and Carteret in 1724–30, who had the strength of character, ability and personal prestige to put an individual stamp on the development of policy. Even then each was closely monitored by ministerial colleagues in Whitehall, sometimes rebuffed, and even on occasion subverted by decisions taken against their own express advice. The simple, and obvious, truth is that it is impossible to understand the way Ireland was governed in the first half of the eighteenth century without an appreciation of the nature of English political development. The two have to be considered together. These essays therefore take a perspective and an approach similar to the concerns of what in recent years has come to be spoken of as the ‘new British history’, a self-conscious attempt, generally (though not exclusively) on the part of English historians, to write the history of the different kingdoms of the British Isles (or ‘these islands’ or ‘the east Atlantic archipelago’, or whatever other circumlocution might be supposed to spare Irish amour propre) in conjunction with each other.18 The objective is of course a laudable one, though the results have been erratic. Written too hastily, this ‘new British history’ (or ‘three kingdoms history’, as it is sometimes called) can easily end up as little more than a superficial dressing on what is still essentially old-fashioned English history, adding a sprig of heather, or a bunch of shamrock, so to speak, to the traditional costume. When it is done well, it can provide important new perspectives on the political relationships of the ‘three kingdoms’, and a deeper understanding of episodes in which the English, Scots and Irish were all involved; most obviously in what used to be known as the English Civil War, about which some of the most convincing examples of the ‘new British history’ have been written.19 18

Glenn Burgess, The new British history: founding a modern state 1603–1715 (London, 1999), gathers together some useful reflections on this subject. 19 Conrad Russell, The fall of the British monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991); J. H. 6

INTRODUCTION

The central point to be made about the self-proclaimed ‘new British history’ is that it is not really new. Long before this particular bandwagon was set in motion individual scholars were seeking to write Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Scottish political history as a properly bilateral exercise. This is not an easy thing to do, and was therefore not attempted very often. But there have been some distinguished practitioners, notably my own undergraduate tutor, the late Patrick Riley, whose studies of post-revolution Scottish politics are distinguished by an understanding of, and sensitivity to, developments on both sides of the border. Thus in attempting to understand Irish politics and governance in this period in relation to developments in English politics, I have neither been anticipating nor collaborating in the enterprise of the ‘new British historians’, but following in a longer historiographical tradition.20 In fact, the contexts for this kind of study stretch far beyond the ‘east Atlantic archipelago’ itself. As F. G. James argued thirty years ago, the way in which British ministers governed Ireland may shed light on the development of the eighteenth-century imperial system, in which Ireland occupied a significant, if anomalous, position. It can also offer parallels to the relationships elsewhere in ancien régime Europe between central and peripheral territories in the composite states which were such a feature of the period. The ministers of the English crown were not alone in having to control provincial or subordinate legislatures, and to balance the different needs of the component parts of a multiple or imperial monarchy. The Habsburg emperors of Austria faced similar problems in Hungary and in the Netherlands; the Bourbon kings of Spain in Sicily. The implications of the Irish example, therefore, are of potentially very wide interest, however emphatically local some of its more peculiar manifestations may be.

Ohlmeyer, Civil war and restoration in the three Stuart kingdoms: the career of Randal MacDonnell, marquis of Antrim, 1609–1683 (Cambridge, 1993); Michael PercevalMaxwell, The outbreak of the Irish rebellion of 1641 (Dublin, 1994). 20 P. W. J. Riley, The English ministers and Scotland 1707–1727 (London, 1964); idem, The union of England and Scotland: a study in Anglo-Scottish politics of the eighteenth century (Manchester, 1978); idem, King William and the Scottish politicians (Edinburgh, 1979). 7

1

Two revolutions: jacobite and Williamite* I The traditional whig interpretation of English constitutional history depicted the Glorious Revolution as a reassertion of the liberties of the individual against the encroachments of arbitrary monarchy. However, these heroic simplicities have tended to dissolve on close examination of the evidence. Modern scholarship has enabled ‘revisionist’ historians of various kinds to reassemble the picture in different ways. Some, indeed, have gone so far in their enthusiasm as to turn the old image upside down. The most radical revision, in effect an anti-history of the revolution, casts King James II in the role of proto-liberal and William III as the would-be tyrant.1 This is not a particularly persuasive case, since it depends upon isolating James’s commitment to religious toleration from other, more authoritarian, aspects of his rule, while at the same time emphasising the less attractive elements of William’s kingship. But although the pro-jacobites have tended to spoil their argument by exaggeration, they have performed a valuable service in drawing attention to aspects of the revolution that whig historians preferred to ignore, and which other recent authors, less committed to the rehabilitation of King James, have also observed, namely the calculations of Realpolitik that lay behind William’s invasion, and, more significant still, the extent to which his accession ushered in a period of rapid growth in the resources and institutions of government. Whether or not the revolution itself marked a crucial defeat for monarchy and the restitution of the liberties of the subject, it was also true that the long-term

*

First published as ‘The Williamite revolution in Ireland, 1688–91’ in J. I. Israel (ed.), The Anglo–Dutch moment: essays on the background and world impact of the British revolutions of 1688–9 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 185–213. 1 This interpretation was adumbrated in Eveline Cruickshanks, ‘Religion and royal succession: the rage of party’ in Clyve Jones (ed.), Britain in the first age of party 1680–1750 (London, 1987), pp. 22, 26–7, and was intended to be set forth (though not in practice followed in all the various contributions) in the collection of essays edited by the same author from the proceedings of a colloquium sponsored by the Royal Stuart Society, By force or by default? The revolution of 1688 (Edinburgh, 1989). It has since been explicitly developed in Eveline Cruickshanks, The Glorious Revolution (Basingstoke and London, 2000). 8

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consequence was an increase rather than a decrease in the power of the state.2 This point takes on even more weight when the Glorious Revolution is viewed in its wider, British context. In both Ireland and Scotland the Williamite victory may be regarded as representing a gain for the centre at the expense of the periphery: a critical moment in the expansion of English control over the other parts of the British Isles, and thus a milestone in the development of empire. The whig interpretation of the Glorious Revolution did of course apply in Ireland too, where King William’s triumph was celebrated as preserving protestantism and liberty from popery and arbitrary power. This was the message of Williamite polemic on both sides of the Irish Sea. As time passed it proved more difficult for English whigs to sustain, as their party took up the cause of catholic emancipation. Certain indigestible facts stuck in the craw, especially the way in which early eighteenth-century whiggism had denied political and civil rights to the majority catholic population in Ireland, through the enactment by the exclusively protestant Irish parliament of a battery of discriminatory legislation. There was also the embarrassing fact that the adjective ‘bloodless’, so proudly attached to the revolution in England, immediately appeared absurd as soon as the Irish war was taken into consideration. Gradually Williamite rhetoric, and the very image of King William, ‘the deliverer’, came to be left to committed unionists. Modern English historians have tended to regard the revolution settlement in Ireland either as a regrettable lapse from constitutional progressivism or as proof of the expansionist nature of the English state. In this they have swum with the mainstream of modern Irish historiography, where the nationalist interpretation of the jacobite period, as a last bid for independence against a tightening colonial grip, has been modified but not overthrown. Even ‘revisionist’ historians, although emphasising the limited political objectives of Irish catholics in 1688–91, and the divisions that were to be found on both sides, have presented the revolution as in essence a struggle for supremacy between ‘English’ and ‘Irish’ interests, Williamites and jacobites contesting for possession of the apparatus of state power, rather than striving for the liberty of the subject against arbitrary rule.3

2

There is agreement on this point from two contrasting works: J. C. D. Clark, Revolution and rebellion: state and society in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Cambridge, 1986); and John Brewer, The sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688–1783 (London, 1989). 3 Aside from the work of J. G. Simms, especially his Jacobite Ireland 1685–91 (London, 1969), still by far the best account of this period, and the series of articles he published on particular (especially local) aspects of the conflict, gathered together in Simms, War & politics, ed. D. W. Hayton and Gerard O’Brien (London, 1986), relatively few scholars had chosen to confront the contentious events of the Glorious Revolution and its aftermath in Ireland, until the 1990s. Then the tercentenary (or rather the sequence of tercentenaries) of the revolution produced, among a plethora of commemorative 9


Such an interpretation seems to accord with what we know to have been the major issues at stake. Both Williamites and jacobites claimed to be fighting for constitutional principles. Magna Carta and the cap of liberty featured prominently on Orangist medals; and William himself told Dublin protestants in 1690 that he had come ‘to save you from . . . tyranny . . . and to restore your liberties and properties’.4 For James and his followers, the principle to be vindicated was the divine hereditary right of the anointed monarch against the impious violence of an usurper and the treachery of rebels.5 Yet, both sets of protagonists also saw themselves as engaged in a war of religion, the climax of the Reformation and of the long struggle for supremacy in Ireland between protestant and catholic. Religious zeal was blended with political, social and economic rivalry. However much King James may have prized the ideal of religious toleration, his Irish adherents hoped to obtain for themselves and their church a dominant position in Irish society. Landed proprietors deprived by the Cromwellian confiscations looked for the recovery of estates and political influence; merchants for readmission to lost privileges; poets for the revival of the native language and the aristocratic social order from which they had formerly obtained patronage; while laymen from all walks of life, no

publications, two concerned directly with Ireland: W. A. Maguire (ed.), Kings in conflict: the revolutionary war in Ireland and its aftermath 1689–1750 (Belfast, 1990), and Bernadette Whelan (ed.), The last of the great wars: essays on the war of the three kings in Ireland 1688–91 (Limerick, 1995). Besides the present essay, further pièces d’occasion were provided in more general collections by Karl Bottigheimer (‘The Glorious Revolution and Ireland’ in L. G. Schwoerer (ed.), The revolution of 1688–1689: changing perspectives (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 234–43); Patrick Kelly (‘Ireland and the Glorious Revolution: from kingdom to colony’ in Robert Beddard (ed.), The revolutions of 1688 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 163–90; and Wouter Troost (‘William III and Ireland’ in Paul Hoftijzer and C. C. Barfoot (eds), Fabrics and fabrications: the myth and making of William and Mary (DQR Studies in Literature, no. 6, Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 225–58). In addition, Piers Wauchope has published a separate study of Patrick Sarsfield and the Williamite war (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1992); John Childs has contributed an essay on ‘The Williamite war, 1689–1691’ to Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 188–210; and Harman Murtagh has followed in Simms’s footsteps with a study of the experience of King’s County, ‘Jacobite Offaly, 1689–96’ in William Nolan and T. P. O’Neill (eds), Offaly: history and society (Dublin, 1998), pp. 319–38. There has also been a direct challenge to the enduring primacy of Simms’s narrative in Richard Doherty, The Williamite war in Ireland, 1688–1691 (Dublin, 1998), which, though obviously more up to date, still falls some way short of its distinguished predecessor. 4 Edward Hawkins, Medallic illustrations of the history of Great Britain and Ireland to the death of George II, ed. A. W. Franks and H. A. Grieber (2 vols, London, 1885), i, pp. 634–5, 638, 641, 669, 673; The speech of the right reverend . . . Anthony, bishop of Meath, when the clergy waited on his majesty at his camp near Dublin, July 7, 1690 (London, 1690). 5 P. K. Monod, ‘For the king to enjoy his own again: jacobite political culture in England, 1688–1788’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1985), pp. 89–116; idem, Jacobitism and the English people, 1688–1788 (Cambridge, 1989), ch. 1. 10

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less than the clergy, aspired to the re-establishment of the catholic faith and the restoration of the religious orders. On the other side, protestant planters and parsons were bent on maintaining their social and political ascendancy in the face of yet another native insurrection against the English interest. A predominance in landownership, a protestant church establishment and a monopoly of political power were the bulwarks to be defended. The sermons, speeches and pamphlets in which protestants were exhorted to stand fast spoke either in biblical terms of the war between true religion and the Antichrist, or in national-cum-ethnic terms of the maintenance of English authority, and indeed the English presence, in Ireland. The opposing ambitions of Williamites and jacobites, and the language in which those ambitions were expressed, tell us what contemporaries thought the revolution and the ensuing war were about. Indeed, in the long view, the history of early modern Ireland is understood most easily as a pattern of English conquest and colonisation. The process of political incorporation, which began in 1541 with the assumption by Henry VIII of the title of king (rather than lord) of Ireland, and ended with the act of union of 1801, was accompanied by an attempt at social and economic integration and the cultural assimilation of the Gaelic Irish to English language, law and customs. Those who ruled England were afraid that a weak position in Ireland would render them vulnerable to attack in the rear by a foreign enemy. Some also coveted the treasure in taxes and military recruits that a compliant Ireland might offer, or saw an easy method of rewarding the more adventurous among their subjects with Irish lands. The Reformation acted as a catalyst. As English patriotism came increasingly to be identified with the reformed religion, catholics in Ireland were regarded with suspicion, even those of AngloNorman, or ‘Old English’, descent. From the mid-sixteenth century onwards successive plantations introduced into Ireland contingents of ‘New English’ protestant settlers, who, in order to safeguard their own position and prise concessions from government, acted as a permanent pressure-group demanding aggressive policies against papists. The process of conquest and Anglicisation went on by fits and starts. Periods of intense activity were followed by spells of administrative languor; Irish catholics alternately coerced and conciliated. The pressure of war with Spain and rebellion in Ireland sharpened Elizabeth I’s resolve to complete the subjugation of the country and induced her successor to embark upon a systematic scheme of plantation of the most troublesome province, Ulster. In a different political context, Charles I’s desperate need for money resulted during the 1620s in the auctioning of royal favour to catholics as well as to protestants. The Civil War and its aftermath inevitably intensified English interventionism, resulting in violent reconquest, wholesale land redistribution, and eventually schemes for Anglo–Irish political union.

11


II The restoration of Charles II marked a return to pragmatism in the governance of Ireland. Henceforth royal policy swung like a weathervane. Favouritism and factionalism at court made and unmade viceroys, and initiatives begun by one ministry were abandoned or reversed by the next. Beneath the tergiversation, however, lay a fundamental principle. The king’s objective, consistently held if not consistently pursued, was the mobilisation of Irish resources for the aggrandisement of the monarchy. Few impediments stood in the way. ‘Here the king may be obeyed if he will’, wrote the duke of Ormond, the leading Anglo-Irish magnate, and lord lieutenant for much of the reign.6 Ireland was to provide Charles with money and troops, in that order, and without the inconvenience of an Irish parliament to rehearse grievances and obstruct subsidies. After 1666 the parliament in Dublin was no longer summoned. Charles tried farming the Irish revenues, but eventually fell back on the usual method of direct management of the hereditary customs duties. As in England, a trading boom in the 1670s multiplied the yield, and enabled the Irish treasury to remit surpluses to Whitehall.7 Some contemporary wisdom attributed this commercial success in part to the enterprise of catholic and protestant dissenting merchants, which confirmed the king’s personal preference for a more relaxed regime in Ireland, against the wishes of determined Anglicans on both sides of the Irish Sea.8 In Charles’s reign Irish catholic interests experienced some moderate advancement, economically if not politically; and not so much at the Restoration itself, when protestants’ claims to land were largely confirmed, but subsequently. In particular, the commercial and professional classes, the ‘townsmen’ and ‘gownsmen’ (lawyers), prospered, and some began to dabble in the land market. Briefly the furore over the Popish Plot obliged Dublin Castle to return to the ways of persecution, but despite some notorious cases, in particular the execution of the catholic primate, Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, on a trumped-up charge, the law was still not imposed in its full rigour.9 Protestant dissent was also reinforced, especially the ‘Scotch colony’ in Ulster, which, by means of

6 Thomas Carte, The life of James, duke of Ormonde . . . (2nd edn, 6 vols, Oxford, 1851), v, pp. 162–3. 7 On Irish finance in the Restoration period, see T. J. Kiernan, History of the financial administration of Ireland to 1817 (London, 1930), ch. 4; and Sean Egan, ‘Finance and the government of Ireland, 1660–85’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1983). 8 For a local example of the association of reviving prosperity with the return of catholic merchants to the towns, see James Hardiman, The history of the town and county of . . . Galway (Dublin, 1820), pp. 149–51. 9 Benignus Millett, ‘Survival and reorganisation, 1650–95’ in P. J. Corish (ed.), A history of Irish catholicism (26 fascicles, Dublin, 1967– ), iii, ch. 7; P. J. Corish, The catholic community in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dublin, 1981), pp. 52–72; M. Anne

12

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immigration in the 1650s and 1660s, recovered ground lost by the failure of the Jacobean plantation.10 Dissenters, like catholics, suffered some repression during the Anglican loyalist reaction of 1681–5, though this was not inspired by government so much as by the local representatives of the Anglican ascendancy. Indeed, the crown stood to gain, politically as well as economically, from the dissenters’ reliance on royal protection. Appreciation of this fact had been given financial expression in Charles’s grant to Irish presbyterian ministers of a pension of £600 a year, the regium donum.11 James II’s approach to the question of Irish policy was determined by the same considerations as his brother’s had been, with one important and obvious exception: that the new king was an avowed catholic. Like Charles, James appreciated the contribution the Irish treasury and army could make towards strengthening his position as king of England. It would have been surprising if his own experiences as royal commissioner in Scotland had not opened his eyes to the advantages to be obtained for the crown by the effective management of his subordinate kingdoms. We may therefore interpret the king’s first move in Ireland, the replacement as viceroy of the ageing and now less than dynamic Ormond by James’s own brother-in-law, the earl of Clarendon, as an effort to tighten up the administration in Dublin, and perhaps also to integrate it more effectively with government departments at home, where Clarendon’s brother, Lord Rochester (who had himself been designated previously by King Charles as Ormond’s successor), was proving a competent treasury minister. But Clarendon was not only a devoted royal servant; he was an Englishman and a staunch Anglican, and his appointment carried more than one message. What Irish catholics were meant to read into it was made clear by James, who, according to Clarendon, declared his intention to support the English interest . . . which was one reason of his sending me . . . that the world might see he would do so; that though he would have the Irish see, that they had a king of their own religion, and that they should enjoy all the freedom thereof; yet he would have them see too, that he looked upon them as a conquered people; and that he would support the settlements inviolably, but I must endeavour to find out some way to help him to relieve some of the Irish, who had deserved well.12

Creighton, ‘The Catholic interest in Irish politics in the reign of Charles II’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2000), chs 6–8. 10 L. M. Cullen, ‘Population trends in seventeenth-century Ireland’ in Economic and Social Review, vi (1975), pp. 149–65; William Macafee and Valerie Morgan, ‘Population in Ulster, 1660–1760’ in Peter Roebuck (ed.), Plantation to partition: essays in Ulster history in honour of J. L. McCracken (Belfast, 1981), pp. 46–63; P. S. Robinson, The plantation of Ulster: British settlement in an Irish landscape, 1600–1670 (Dublin, 1984), esp. ch. 4; Connolly, Religion, pp. 159–62. 11 Reid, ii, pp. 306–72. 12 The correspondence of Henry Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and of his brother Laurence Hyde, earl 13


Here was the basic dilemma upon which the king’s Irish policy was impaled. On the one hand, James was an English monarch who wished above all to exploit Ireland to strengthen his hand at home; on the other, his own religious affiliation and the exceptional value he placed on personal loyalty disposed him to do whatever he could to relieve at least some of his Irish catholic subjects from their disabilities and even to reward them. The most thoughtful modern analysis of James’s handling of Irish affairs presents the king as faced with a choice between an ‘English’ and an ‘Irish’ policy; either the maintenance of protestant supremacy in Ireland and the constitutional and economic subordination of Ireland to England, or the advancement of the Irish catholic interest, which would require as a corollary some weakening of the Anglo–Irish political nexus and a recognition of the distinctive needs of Irish agriculture, manufactures and trade.13 This is perhaps unduly reductionist. What confronted James was not so much a choice between policies as a conflict between mutually irreconcilable objectives. Some of his aims might be put at risk by radical change; for example, the commercial prosperity upon which a full Irish treasury depended. He was also wary of inflaming English public opinion, which regarded Irish catholics with deep suspicion, if not hostility. Perhaps above all he cherished his own authority too much to indulge the Irish administration or parliament in any significant measure of independence. Like his father and brother, James was a centraliser. He had not come to terms with all potential strategies for governing a composite state to the best advantage of the monarch, but persisted in identifying his own interests as king with those of the kingdom of England. At the same time he knew that Irish catholics would give him well-nigh unconditional loyalty – ‘his Majesty had reason to place greater confidence in their fidelity and adherence to him, as having the greatest interest in his support’;14 recognised their numerical strength and that they could offer military recruits in abundance; and realised too that the emancipation he hoped to achieve in England could scarcely coexist with continuing repression of catholics in Ireland, especially when Irish protestants were, in his eyes, even more susceptible to the attractions of political ‘republicanism’ (of a Roundhead variety) than were their English counterparts. Between 1686 and 1688 James was gradually persuaded to advance the interests of Irish catholics beyond anything he attempted on behalf of catholics in England, granting them not only freedom of worship and the right to hold office but eventually a predominance in national and local government. By

of Rochester, with the diary of Lord Clarendon from 1687 to 1690, ed. S. W. Singer (2 vols, London, 1828), ii, p. 25. 13 John Miller, ‘The earl of Tyrconnel and James II’s Irish policy, 1685–1688’ in Historical Journal, xx (1977), pp. 808–10. See also idem, James II: a study in kingship (Hove, 1978), pp. 216–18. 14 The life of James the second . . . , ed. J. S. Clarke (2 vols, London, 1816), ii, pp. 59–60. 14

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November 1688 the central administration in Dublin Castle, together with the judiciary, the army, county commissions of the peace and borough corporations, were all under catholic control. Clearly the king had been persuaded that the benefits of entrusting power to these ultra-loyalists outweighed any dangers; he became less mindful of English opinion, and less apprehensive of the impact his policies might have on the development of trade. But he was not allowed to forget such considerations altogether. His political strategy in England, whether he was appealing to high church Anglicans or to protestant dissenters, required at least a pretence of concern for protestant interests in Ireland, while his courtiers were never slow to remind him of the threat to his own revenues implicit in the adoption of extreme measures. James insisted repeatedly on fair treatment for his Irish protestant subjects, declaring that no one should be deprived of office in Ireland merely on account of religion, refusing to order the disarming of Ulster presbyterians (a reflection of his lingering belief in the possibility of creating an anti-establishment alliance of catholics and dissenters), and prevaricating over what to do about the Restoration land settlement. Significantly, he was at his sharpest in demanding from the Irish the proper enforcement of the English navigation acts.15 The catholic revolution in Ireland was, therefore, less the king’s own work than that of his Irish lord deputy, Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell. Dr Miller has shown how Tyrconnell achieved a personal ascendancy in Irish policy, first remodelling the Irish army in the capacity of a special adviser, then intriguing against Clarendon to obtain the lord deputyship, and finally convincing the king in a personal interview of the absolute necessity of endorsing a major reconstruction of the Irish administration. Tyrconnell, for all his propensity to bluster and bully, could be ‘a cunning, dissembling, courtier’ when occasion demanded, and indeed had spent much of his career doing just that. His relationship with James went back a very long way, and it was easy for him to play on the king’s religious bigotry and rather one-dimensional view of human nature to undermine the warnings of English ministers.16

III Given that James’s Irish policies came to originate increasingly in Ireland rather than at court, it follows that they can only be properly understood if some attempt is made to trace the political configurations of the Irish catholic community. This is no easy task. Source materials are scarce, especially for the viewpoint of the Gaelic Irish, and those that do survive (for example, the poetry on which much critical attention has been lavished) present peculiar

15 16

Miller, ‘Tyrconnel and James II’s Irish policy’, pp. 808–9. Ibid., pp. 805–16. 15


problems of interpretation. Another objection is that a great deal of nearcontemporary discussion of political differences between catholics was retrospective, and influenced by developments during and after the revolutionary war. The conduct of the war, and more particularly the question of when to sue for peace, gave rise to conflict between militants and moderates on the jacobite side; that is to say between those determined to fight to the end whatever the cost, and those anxious to secure concessions from a peace treaty. When the fighting ended, the bitterness of defeat and exile wrought upon members of the ‘war party’ until they believed their cause had been betrayed, and that all along there had been a fundamental opposition between themselves and the moderates, or ‘peace party’, some of whom succeeded in retaining lands, if not political influence, under the Williamite regime. Diehards interpreted moderation as a cover for the vested interest of the ‘new purchasers’, those arriviste merchants and professional men who had acquired lands since the Restoration settlement. Often these militants represented divisions between catholics in ethnic terms, as yet another manifestation of the underlying hostility of the pre-Reformation settlers, the ‘Old English’, towards the native Irish, which had bedevilled the Catholic Confederacy in the 1640s. Colonel Charles O’Kelly ascribed the moderates’ hunger for peace at any price to the ‘inveterate hatred’ harboured by the Old English for ‘the old Irish race, lest they [the Gaelic Irish] might be restored by the recovery of Ireland to their ancient grandeur’. Another soldier of Gaelic Irish descent, Hugh ‘Balldearg’ O’Donnell, offered an even more regressive interpretation, not only distinguishing between Old English and Gaelic Irish political interests, but identifying the latter with his own native province of Ulster, which he saw leading the national cause once more, as it had done in 1641.17 In fact the divergence in outlook between Old English and Gaelic Irish, while it undoubtedly existed, was far less pronounced than O’Kelly or O’Donnell believed, especially in the early stages of the revolution and the ensuing war, when King James and his supporters were still on top. There was tension, and an occasional flash of animosity, as when two of Tyrconnell’s henchmen, Old English noblemen, were heard disparaging the ‘Os’ and ‘Macs’ whom they hoped to exclude from any remodelled Irish catholic army.18 But since the leading lights in the war party included army officers of at least partly Old English descent, such as Patrick Sarsfield, a simple equa17

Charles O’Kelly, Macariae excidium, or The destruction of Cyprus . . . , ed. J. C. O’Callaghan (Irish Archaeological Society, Dublin, 1850), p. 104; A jacobite narrative of the war in Ireland, 1688–1691 . . . , ed. J. T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1892), pp. 267–72. Biographical notices of both O’Kelly and O’Donnell may be found in John D’Alton, Illustrations . . . of King James’s Irish army list 1689 (Dublin, 1855), pp. 118, 549–50. For a discussion of the best-known statement of post-war Old English attitudes, see Patrick Kelly, ‘“A light to the blind”: the voice of the dispossessed elite in the generation after the defeat at Limerick’ in I.H.S., xxiv (1984–5), pp. 431–62. 18 Thomas Sheridan’s ‘Historical account . . .’ (H.M.C., Stuart, vi, p. 6). 16

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tion of the two main political tendencies, as they emerged during the war, with ethnic groupings, will not work. Indeed, it is by no means clear that these ethnic distinctions themselves always had much meaning. For one thing, there was a significant degree of intermarriage between Old English and Gaelic Irish landed families, so the identification of individuals by patronymic alone can be misleading. Moreover, the contemporary perception of a division within the catholic interest was not consistently sharp. Gaelic poets, especially those from Munster, such as Dáibhi Ó Bruadair, who enjoyed the patronage of Old English families (in his case various branches of the Fitzgeralds), did sometimes refer to their ‘foreign protectors’, but more often ignored questions of descent and blurred differences of background in praising anyone who would champion the catholic cause.19 In practice the Gaelic Irish and Old English elites shared much of the same culture and many of the same political beliefs. The jacobite general Justin MacCarthy, Gaelic Irish by surname, had the same kind of cosmopolitan experience, and courtly connexions, as the Old English Talbots.20 Equal if not greater importance could be attached to other kinds of division between catholics: regional and factional rivalries; antagonism between ‘old proprietors’ who had lost their lands under Cromwell, and ‘new purchasers’; between the landed and the landless, squires and merchants, or laity and clergy. Many of these lines of division would have cut across each other. Not the least significant, in terms of strategy, was the contrast in attitude between those who had lived away from Ireland since the 1640s and those who had stayed at home. Prolonged residence abroad isolated émigrés from the changes that were taking place in Irish society and politics, and indeed might well have encouraged a more uncompromising political stance, through exposure to the influence of Counter-Reformation catholicism on the continent. Equally, time spent at Charles II’s court might well have induced an ambitious man, such as Tyrconnell, to identify himself primarily with the monarch whom he served. Potentially, therefore, the political ‘structure’ of catholic Ireland was complex, and, as the catholic interest came under increasing strain during the war, cracks appeared. This being said, it must be emphasised that, as far as our sources indicate, the situation in 1688–9 was still relatively simple. There were a few Irish catholics who told the king that they were unhappy at Tyrconnell’s advancement, and warned James of the perils of extremism. On the other side we 19

The poems of David O Bruadair, ed. J. C. MacErlean (3 parts, Irish Texts Society, xi, xiii, xviii, London, 1910, 1913, 1917), pt 3, pp. 135, 137, 139, 153. See also The poems of Egan O’Rahilly, ed. P. S. Dineen and Tadhg O’Donoghue (2nd edn, Irish Texts Society, iii, London, 1911), pp. 11, 51, 57, 151. 20 J. A. Murphy, Justin MacCarthy, Lord Mountcashel . . . (Cork, 1959), pp. 4–11; P. W. Sergeant, Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot: a life of the duke and duchess of Tyrconnel (2 vols, London, 1913); Sir Charles Petrie, The great Tyrconnel: a chapter in Anglo-Irish relations (Cork, 1972), chs 3–6. 17


hear of some, probably among the catholic clergy, who wanted James and his deputy to move faster, especially in breaking the land settlement and freeing Irish trade from English restrictions.21 But on the whole there was unanimity and enthusiasm for Tyrconnell’s reforms. Catholics were united by religion, and by gratitude at the chance to turn the tables on their oppressors. The evidence of the poetry suggests that it was the disarming of the protestants and the recruitment of catholic troops that gave the greatest satisfaction. The hue and cry after traitors at the time of the Popish Plot, and the execution of scapegoats, had induced Irish catholics to fear for their lives. They now rejoiced at the opportunity to protect themselves and perhaps enjoy some reprisals of their own.22

IV The revolution and King James’s flight from England changed the picture in several important ways. For one thing, James now ‘wholly depended’ on his Irish catholic supporters, as he himself was to put it. 23 In practice, he also relied on French military help to recover his throne in England, but the Irish catholic interest certainly represented his most numerous popular following and Ireland afforded him a power-base. By 1689 Tyrconnell had established a firm grip over most of the country, except for the areas controlled by the voluntary associations of protestants in Ulster. When, under French pressure, James agreed to sail for Ireland to take personal charge of affairs, he was putting himself in the hands of his Irish adherents. At this stage, the French sent only a small force, consisting almost entirely of officers.24 After disembarkation James enjoyed a majestic progress towards Dublin, but the harsh realities of his position soon became apparent. His first thought, in which he was encouraged by English and Scottish advisers, was to cross quickly to Scotland, to link up with Viscount Dundee. The strategic disadvantages of becoming bogged down in Ireland were obvious. After all, James’s objective was to regain the English crown, not make himself king of an independent Ireland, and even if he were to defeat the army of the prince of Orange on Irish soil he would still have to follow up this success with another invasion. But the French ambassador d’Avaux, whose voice carried the weight of a paymaster’s, argued that James should first consolidate his position in Ireland and mop up Williamite resistance in the north, in particular where the port

21 Life of James II, ed. Clarke, ii, p. 61; Correspondence of Clarendon, ed. Singer, ii, p. 67; William King, The state of the protestants of Ireland under the late King James’s government . . . (London, 1691), pp. 360–73. 22 For example, Poems of O Bruadair, ed. MacErlean, pt 3, pp. 117–21, 127–41. 23 Life of James II, ed. Clarke, ii, pp. 360–1. For James’s travails in Ireland, see Simms, Jacobite Ireland, chs 4–8; and Miller, James II, ch. 15. 24 Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 58–62.

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of Derry held out against jacobite besiegers.25 From the French viewpoint, a prolonged stay in Ireland, whatever the final outcome, was preferable to a swift defeat in the Highlands. The longer William’s attention could be occupied in Ireland, away from the principal theatre of the war on the continent, the better for King Louis. Next it was the Irish who raised difficulties. James’s arrival encouraged them to make their political demands explicit. Of course, attention focused on the land settlement, and despite differences between unrestored ‘old proprietors’ and ‘new purchasers’, the current of opinion among catholics ran strongly for repeal. Besides its obvious practical implications in determining the balance of economic and political power, the land question had an enormous symbolic importance as the most tangible expression of catholic degradation at the hands of the Cromwellians. For James, however, always conscious of the propagandist implications in England, this turn of the screw presented itself as yet another obstacle to the ultimate recovery of his English crown. The deepening determination of Irish catholic opinion found expression in the debates of the Irish parliament which James’s financial necessities obliged him to summon in May 1689. Unlike the parliaments that had met in Dublin in the early 1660s, which had been dominated by protestants, this was an assembly with an overwhelming catholic majority. The election of catholics to commons’ seats had been facilitated by the flight of so many protestants to England. It was further assured by the preparations Tyrconnell had been making since 1687 to pack parliament by remodelling borough corporations, recalling and reissuing charters in order to bring corporations more closely under government control and purge their membership of disloyal elements.26 It was also alleged by critics of the lord deputy that he interfered directly with the elections in 1689, by enclosing recommendations of his own with the election writs. The result was a house of commons in which less than a dozen of the 230 M.P.s returned were protestants. (The county constituencies of Donegal, Fermanagh and Londonderry made no returns, and neither did a number of Ulster boroughs.) The lords, too, at least the temporal lords, were almost all catholic. James caused resentment among his supporters by summoning the Church of Ireland bishops rather than their catholic counterparts. His motive was probably the encouragement of sympathetic protestant opinion in Britain (the jacobite, nonjuring tendency in the Church of England and episcopalians in Scotland), and to the same end he sought to procure loyal addresses from the Anglican clergy in Dublin and from Trinity College. He may also have viewed the protestant bishops as a possible counterweight in parliament to the catholic peers (both Gaelic Irish and Old English), who 25

Négotiations de M. le comte d’Avaux en Irlande 1689–90, ed. James Hogan (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1934), pp. 59–63. 26 Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 35–6; idem, ‘The jacobite parliament of 1689’, repr. in idem, War & politics, pp. 66–7. 19


would support Irish interests and in some cases might even lean towards a degree of independence for Ireland if the kingdom’s constitutional and economic subordination came into question. In the event, however, only four Anglican bishops attended.27 The history of the jacobite parliament is only partly known. The main sources, namely pro-Williamite pamphlets, are neither comprehensive nor unbiased. We know the composition of the parliament and the measures passed, but otherwise comparatively little. The degree to which there was any management by the king and his servants remains obscure. Certainly the presence of numerous office-holders, military and civilian, provided the nucleus of a formidable court party, especially if augmented by members owing their election to the influence of the lord deputy, although it may be that King James himself did not care to purchase the votes of parliament-men, and considered it more honourable to rely on disinterested loyalty.28 Matters may also have been complicated by faction. Tyrconnell probably enjoyed the support of a substantial personal connexion, since many of his kinsmen and clients had been elected M.P.s, and the same could be said of other prominent figures such as Justin MacCarthy (ennobled during the lifetime of the parliament as Lord Mountcashell). Such magnates may well have had their own agendas. For all his professions of loyalty, Tyrconnell did not share the views of the king, or his English and Scottish councillors, on a range of issues: for example, he was determined to encompass the dismantling of the protestant ecclesiastical establishment. Whatever the reasons, it appears that James could count less on the commons than on the lords, and tried to use the upper house as a longstop to thwart objectionable proposals emanating from below. The king’s travails may be observed through d’Avaux’s correspondence.29 The stiffest battle occurred over the repeal of the land settlement. James had a personal interest here, having been granted a vast estate by his brother out of lands once held by regicides. He received encouragement in attempts to moderate the scale of the changes both from the ‘new purchasers’ and from Tyrconnell, himself a beneficiary of the Restoration settlement. But in the lords only a handful of protestant peers and bishops spoke openly against repeal, and after a short delaying action James was obliged to accede to an arrangement under which the ‘new purchasers’ and the king himself received compensation, but the protestant beneficiaries of the original settlement, including those who had remained loyal to James in 1688/9, were uniformly

27 Simms, ‘Jacobite parliament’, pp. 67–9; O’Kelly, Macariae excidium, pp. 34–6; King, State of the protestants, pp. 150–2; [Charles Leslie,] An answer to a book intituled, The state of the protestants in Ireland under the late King James’s government . . . (London, 1692), pp. 111–12; James Bonnell to [John Strype], April 1689 (B.L., Stowe MS 746, f. 111). 28 J. R. Jones, ‘James II’s revolution: royal policies, 1686–92’ in Israel (ed.), Anglo-Dutch moment, p. 50. 29 Négotiations de M. le comte d’Avaux, ed. Hogan, pp. 185, 194, 199, 215–18, 225–6, 237, 242, 255, 340–2.

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losers. A subsequent act of attainder completed the means for destroying the protestant interest in Ireland by outlawing those who had fled to England or joined voluntary associations in the north. James’s response was a fit of anger so strong as to make his nose bleed. He was almost equally affronted by the passage of the so-called declaratory act, which reduced the Irish parliament’s dependence on Westminster and denied the claim, frequently asserted by the English, that their own legislation could apply to Ireland. Again, the king had to acquiesce. But he did refuse his assent to the repeal of Poynings’ Law, which would have weakened royal influence over Irish parliamentary procedure, and was able to frustrate the schemes of his French allies to secure for themselves the same kind of favoured position vis-à-vis the Irish economy that the English had previously enjoyed. D’Avaux wrote of the king: ‘he has a heart too English to take any step that would vex the English.’ Even in relation to the religious settlement, the subject nearest his own heart, James showed concern for English opinion, in that he did not take an extreme Romanist position and seek to alter the establishment. Contrary to the aspirations of his house of commons, the act for liberty of conscience did not repeal the Elizabethan act of uniformity. James provided freedom of worship for his catholic subjects, and alleviated their grievances over tithes, but to the disappointment of the catholic clergy and many laymen he was not prepared to institute a catholic established church in Ireland in place of a protestant one.30 Despite James’s pious optimism, and sometimes strenuous political efforts, he had not succeeded in relieving the fear and distress experienced by his protestant subjects in Ireland under catholic rule; nor, it goes without saying, had he quietened the minds of English protestants, even those sympathisers who were most deeply committed to the principles of divine right monarchy and unhappy at the train of events in England that had followed the arrival of the prince and princess of Orange. Williamite propaganda, some of it officially inspired, reported atrocities committed against protestants in Ireland by Irish and French troops: arbitrary imprisonment and even executions, some of them supposedly at James’s own behest.31 Rumour added further embellish-

30

Simms, ‘Jacobite parliament’, pp. 69–81; idem, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 77–94; Life of James II, ed. Clarke, ii, p. 353; O’Kelly, Macariae excidium, pp. 34–6. 31 See, for example, An account of a late, horrid and bloody massacre in Ireland, of several thousands of protestants . . . (London, 1688); A relation of the bloody massacre in Ireland, acted by the instigation of the Jesuits, priests and friars . . . (London, 1689); A short view of the methods made use of in Ireland for the subversion and destruction of the protestant religion and interest . . . (London, 1689); A true discovery of Lord Tyrconnel’s design to surprise and massacre all the protestants in Ireland . . . (London, 1689); The sad estate and condition of Ireland . . . (London, 1689); ‘An apology for the protestants of Ireland’ (1689), repr. in A collection of scarce and valuable tracts . . . (2nd edn, rev. Sir Walter Scott, 13 vols, London, 1809–15), xi, pp. 416–17; and A true narrative of the murders, cruelties and oppressions perpetrated on the protestants in Ireland by the late King James’s agents . . . (London, 1690). 21


ment.32 Whatever answers or excuses English jacobites may have tried to make were effectively undermined by the news of the passage of the acts of the ‘pretended Irish parliament’ for repealing the Restoration land settlement and for attainting rebels. For the exiled Irish protestants too, these events marked a point of no return. Convinced that their estates had been seized by jacobites or laid waste, and that their co-religionists in Ireland were threatened with imminent massacre, they sought to persuade King William to take personal charge of the Irish war. The situation for those protestants remaining in Ireland was more complicated. In the north were the voluntary associations, staunchly resisting King James. Elsewhere, protestant landowners isolated in areas controlled by the jacobite forces, and looking for protection from lawless or undisciplined elements on the catholic side, were hoping to appear inconspicuous, or neutral, or both.33 A small minority of protestants actively supported the jacobite cause; nonjuring clergy, complaisant office-holders, a few high-flying Anglican squires in the cavalier tradition, and others who were only recent converts from popery and retained not only catholic family connexions but also their traditional political attitudes.34 In the beginning James had hoped to win over protestant dissenters to his cause, and had cultivated the earl of Granard as an intermediary between his government and the Ulster presbyterians. Dissenters had of course benefited in some degree from the policy of religious toleration, and a few had been included in Tyrconnell’s remodelled borough corporations. But except for elements of the Quaker community, and a few isolated individuals from other denominations, this strategy failed to win over a substantial body of support, since protestant dissenters were even more virulently anti-catholic than were Anglicans. 35 32

See, for example, [earl of Derby] to Roger Kenyon, 4 July [?1689] (H.M.C., Kenyon, p. 224); Roger Morrice’s ent’ring book, 28 November, 14 December 1689 (Dr Williams’s Library, London, Morrice MS R, pp. 19–20, 34); Luttrell, Brief relation, i, p. 609. 33 Alexander Macdonnell to Henry Dillon, 26 February 1688[/9] (Oxfordshire R.O., Dillon papers, DIL XXII/C/1b); Henry Dillon to Kean O’Hara, 24 September 1690 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2812/4/7); Connor O’Donnell to same, 10 October 1690 (ibid., T/2812/4/9); Lord Galmoy to same, [10] January 1690/1 (ibid., T/2812/4/15); Inchiquin MSS, pp. viii, 16–33, 39–40, 628–9; petition of David Crosbie to forfeiture commissioners [c. 1699] (T.C.D., MS 3821/298); Lord Longford to [John Ellis], 11 November 1690 (B.L., Add. MS 28876, ff. 251–2); and in general, Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Irish protestants and James II, 1688–90’ in I.H.S., xxviii (1992–3), pp. 129–30. 34 [Leslie], An answer, pp. 111–12; Morrice’s ent’ring bk, 26 November 1690 (Dr Williams’s Library, Morrice MS R, p. 221); lord justices to [?Lord Sidney], n.d. (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/26); J. I. McGuire, ‘The Church of Ireland and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688’ in Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (eds), Studies in Irish history presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp. 147–9. 35 Reid, ii, pp. 342–54; Beckett, Dissent, pp. 20–6; King, State of the protestants, p. 204. For Granard, see D.N.B. and Admiral the Hon. John Forbes, Memoirs of the earls of Granard, ed. earl of Granard (London, 1868), esp. pp. 72–9. 22

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What happened in the Irish parliament in 1689 put an end to any remnants of loyalty. A further polarisation had thus occurred in Irish politics, confirming the associating protestant volunteers in their determination to resist, and causing temporary ‘collaborators’ (if one may use such a pejorative term) to rethink their position and to settle themselves on the Williamite side.36

V The events of 1688–9 were crucially important in what may be seen as a reaffirmation, or even in some respects a reformulation, of Irish protestant political ideology during the period of the revolution. The ease with which Tyrconnell had created a catholic army and bureaucracy; the speed with which the catholic clergy, seculars and regulars, had been able to re-establish themselves; the size of the catholic professional and commercial classes swarming to take advantage of new opportunities: all testified to what David Dickson has called the ‘remarkable regenerative potency’ of catholic Ireland, despite more than a century of confiscation, plantation and repression.37 On its own, this revelation was probably enough to account for the severity with which the protestant elite regarded catholics after the revolution, but the eighteenth-century penal laws were also a conscious response to what was perceived as the jacobite parliament’s attempt in 1689 to eradicate the protestant landed interest. Furthermore, despite the best efforts of King James’s administration to preserve order and defend law-abiding protestants, it was inevitable that some old scores would be paid off. Throughout the prolonged civil war the maintenance of public order proved an insuperable problem for both governments, jacobite and Williamite, and the ‘rapparees’ or ‘tories’, rural brigands who had thrived even in the more settled conditions before 1688, enjoyed a heyday of plunder. They attacked catholics as well as protestants, but as they were themselves for the most part of native Irish stock, their activities were interpreted as a systematic anti-protestant terror.38 This was certainly what protestants in exile in England were persuaded to believe, accepting the assertions of Williamite propaganda that the horrors of the 1641 rising were being re-enacted. The ad hoc committee formed in

36

Lord Granard, to give only one example. David Dickson, New foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (2nd edn, Dublin, 2000), p. 45. 38 Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 198–200; Henry Boyle to the dowager countess of Orrery, 14 February 1688/9 (Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery papers (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1941), pp. 369–70); The journal of John Stevens, containing a brief account of the war in Ireland 1689–91, ed. R. H. Murray (Oxford, 1912), pp. 61–2; Poems of O Bruadair, ed. MacErlean, pt 3, pp. 169–71; Elizabeth Freke’s ‘remembrances’, 4 March 1690 (The remembrances of Elizabeth Freke, 1671–1714, ed. R. A. Anselment (Camden 5th ser., xviii, Cambridge, 2001), pp. 58, 227; King, State of the protestants, p. 91. 37

23


London to co-ordinate lobbying activities included a number of future Irish M.P.s who would be among the most vigorous advocates of hard-line anticatholic policies.39 At the same time as their fear of popery and papists was being confirmed, and even enhanced, Irish protestants began to experience an alteration in their attitudes towards England and the Anglo–Irish political connexion. They became more self-aware, and in some respects more self-reliant. It would be foolish to exaggerate, but one may perhaps detect in this period a growing sense of separateness from England and awareness that their own best interests might not coincide with the intentions of the English government and parliament. The betrayal of protestantism by King James had sown the seed. But the behaviour of King William’s ministers and generals, and the English convention parliament, had also fostered suspicion. By passing the navigation and cattle acts, English M.P.s had previously shown that they were willing to sacrifice Irish economic interests to the demands of domestic pressure-groups. Now it proved difficult to elicit a response at Whitehall to pleas for succour to the protestant cause in Ireland. The king was advised by self-appointed ‘experts’ on Irish affairs, who appeared often to be selfinterested as well.40 Even when a force was sent by sea to relieve Derry, its commander, Percy Kirke, a late defector from King James, preferred to keep his ships in safety off the coast, and succeeded only in antagonising local protestants, who interpreted his dithering as studied incompetence in his former master’s interest.41 Moreover, to listen to the parliamentary debates on the condition of Ireland in 1689–90 was to be regaled with tales of dilatoriness and corruption in the administration of the war, and then to be confronted with English arrogance and selfishness, of the ‘let us keep England, whatever becomes of Ireland’ variety.42 Of course, William did eventually take personal command of his forces in Ireland, and with his great victory at the Boyne in 1690 became the protestants’ hero. Before then, in 1689, he had sent over Marshal Schomberg, with more than twenty regiments, including Dutch and Huguenot infantry, to relieve the associations in Ulster. Schomberg achieved a reputation of sorts, albeit for no more than ‘masterly inactivity’ in refusing battle. But although

39

See below, pp. 37–8, 40–1. Correspondence of Clarendon, ed. Singer, ii, pp. 238–41, 265; Oliver St John to Francis St John, 11 March 1688[/9] (Cambridgeshire R.O. (Huntingdon), Manchester papers, ddM52/1). 41 Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 105–11; Ian McBride, The siege of Derry in Ulster protestant mythology (Dublin, 1997), pp. 18–20; ‘The queries against Kirke’ [1689] (John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Bagshawe muniments, 3/2/38–9); ‘A memorial of the case of Sir James Caldwell Bt’ (ibid., 3/2/40). 42 Anchitell Grey, Debates of the house of commons from the year 1667 to the year 1694 (10 vols, London, 1769), ix, pp. 276–80, 347–9, 355–6, 388–94, 404–6, 422–3, 447–57, 461–73, 480–90, 534–6; ibid., x, 36–40, 93–4, 99–101, 128–9, 131–2. 40

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in the long run Irish protestants owed their deliverance to William and the crack foreign troops provided for him by the English taxpayer, they did not fully acknowledge the fact of their dependence, believing, with some justification, that the heroics of the volunteers in the north had played a crucial part in facilitating William’s triumph, by preserving a foothold for him on the island in the dark days of 1689. At the walls of Derry King James had been defied to his face, and the inhabitants of the city had endured dreadful privations before William’s navy finally broke the boom across the lough and raised the siege; while at Newtownbutler in County Fermanagh jacobite forces under Justin MacCarthy had suffered a stunning reverse, with the general himself taken prisoner. To this sense of moral victory in having through their own efforts kept part of Ireland free from jacobite control, was added the assumption that the reformed religion, and its devotees, were protected by divine providence.43 William was God’s instrument, and even without English taxes and soldiers Irish protestants might still have counted on providential assistance.

VI By the winter of 1689–90 not only had catholics and protestants in Ireland become even more deeply alienated from one another, but each community was more sharply aware of its own discrete interests, separate from the monarch and the English parliament. Of course, there were different degrees of militancy on each side. Nor, it must be said, did either protestant or catholic political activists envisage an independent Ireland, removed from the sovereignty of the English crown. Protestants would not be in a position to contemplate such political autonomy for another century, while for catholics allegiance to James as the rightful, divinely anointed monarch remained the basis of their actions, even those whose hopes of radical reform he had obstructed, who resented the ascendancy of his foreign advisers, or who had formed an unfavourable opinion of his political and martial talents. 44 It is possible that before the birth of the prince of Wales in 1688 Tyrconnell had conceived the idea that Ireland might become a French protectorate were

43 Thomas Bartlett, ‘“This famous island set in a Virginian sea”: Ireland in the British empire, 1690–1801’ in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Oxford history of the British empire, ii: The eighteenth century (Oxford, 1998), pp. 259–60. For some instances, see John Vesey, A sermon preach’d to the protestants of Ireland in and about the city of London . . . October 23. 1689 (London, 1689), p. 8; The speech of the . . . bishop of Meath . . . July 7, 1690; Nicholas Brady, A sermon preach’d . . . the thanksgiving day for the preservation of the king and the reduction of Ireland, 26 November 1691 (London, 1692), pp. 2, 4, 15–17, 23–4. 44 Breandán Ó Buachalla, ‘James our true king: the ideology of Irish royalism in the seventeenth century’ in D. G. Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds), Political thought in Ireland since the seventeenth century (London, 1993), pp. 7–35.

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James to die without a catholic heir.45 The evidence, however, is far from convincing. The two kings themselves had each demonstrated a lack of interest in Ireland per se. James had always been concerned to trim his policies so as to give as little offence as possible to the English. His attitude towards his Irish parliament of 1689 confirmed that he wished to maintain the constitutional and economic subordination of the kingdom. Moreover, for strategic reasons he could scarcely wait to be out of the country, and about the business of invading the British mainland. His military failures in 1689, and the probability that William would soon arrive in person, rendered the situation critical. During the following winter and spring Tyrconnell wrote time and again to James’s queen, Mary of Modena, providing her with arguments to lay before the French in favour of sending ships and money to enable a ‘descent’ to be made on England or Scotland. To fight a war on Irish soil would invite disaster. William would come over in due course, with a superior force, and bring a rapid end to the jacobite cause. The best plan would be for Tyrconnell himself to keep William occupied in Ireland while James slipped over to England. ‘I leave your majesty to judge’, he remarked, whether the king’s struggling to keep this poor kingdom with so much trouble to himself and his people be worth his pains, if thereby he did not hope to be master of England in some reasonable time, which if not done this year, I fear his friends there will despair of it, and consequently secure themselves.46

Not surprisingly, the French preferred James to remain where he was. What Tyrconnell was asking involved too great an expenditure in resources on their part, and they trusted neither James’s judgement nor the reliability of his English supporters. Instead, they sent 7,000 French troops to Ireland, but only in exchange for the same number of Irish soldiers, under the command of Justin MacCarthy (whom Tyrconnell, regarding MacCarthy as a dangerous rival, was glad to be rid of). It is hard to imagine that Louis XIV believed he would be the loser by the bargain. William was even less interested in Ireland. His prime objective was to wage war against France on the continent, but he could not afford to leave his father-in-law poised with a large force behind him. After an abortive attempt to negotiate with Tyrconnell early in 1689,47 William had hoped that Schomberg’s expeditionary force might achieve a breakthrough. Now he had to suffer the ‘terrible mortification’ of going to Ireland himself, and

45

Miller, ‘Tyrconnel and James II’s Irish policy’, p. 821. ‘Letter-book of Richard Talbot’, ed. Lilian Tate in Analecta Hibernica, iv (1932), p. 127. 47 Burnet, iii, pp. 368–73. Cf. H. C. Foxcroft, The life and letters of Sir George Savile, bart., first marquis of Halifax (2 vols, London, 1898), ii, pp. 77–9. 46

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being for a whole campaigning season ‘as it were out of knowledge of the world’.48 In order to finish the job as quickly as possible he took great care over preparations, and landed near Carrickfergus in June 1690 with an additional 15,000 troops and an artillery train, both outnumbering and outgunning his enemies, just as Tyrconnell had predicted. Thus it was that two kings, neither of whom was especially concerned about the ultimate destiny of Ireland, came to fight what in retrospect has come to be seen as their decisive battle at the Boyne water on 12 July 1690, New Style. William’s victory owed much to his courage and superior generalship. The result of the battle opened the way to Dublin and effectively gave William control of the province of Leinster. The jacobite army retreated westwards beyond the River Shannon, making its headquarters in Limerick. William followed, but his progress was hampered by the operations of a jacobite flying column skilfully led by Patrick Sarsfield, who was emerging as catholic Ireland’s best military hope. As a consequence William eventually arrived at Limerick too late in the season to reduce the city before winter fell, and departed for England having, as he thought, broken the back of jacobite resistance although without achieving a complete victory.49 James evidently shared his son-in-law’s view (which in fact was somewhat premature), since he promptly reassessed his own position and decided to cut and run. The reason given was that he saw the opportunity to pass behind William and reach England, with French help of course, which as usual was not forthcoming.50 Rather than dispatch good money after bad, the French withdrew their troops from Limerick, leaving the Irish catholics to their own devices. Tyrconnell went with them. Despite his personal inadequacies, James’s departure deprived the jacobite cause in Ireland of much of its cohesion and purpose, and divisions began to open up.51 In the autumn and winter of 1690–1 there was conflict between a ‘peace party’, willing to accept such terms as the Williamites might offer, and a ‘war party’, which drew comfort from William’s failure at Limerick, and believed the war could still be won, or at least prolonged until the French came to the rescue. After all, it was conceivable that William’s armies would be beaten in Europe and that he would be forced to make concessions over Ireland as part of a general settlement.52 The ‘peace party’ comprised Old English noblemen and gentry, together with lawyers and other ‘new purchasers’, that is to say those who would not have suffered too much by a return to the status quo before 1685. The ‘war party’ was made up of younger army

48

Japikse, iii, p. 158. Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 155–73; Wauchope, Patrick Sarsfield, chs 9–11. 50 Life of James II, ed. Clarke, ii, pp. 407–8. Cf. Miller, James II, pp. 232–3. 51 For what follows, see Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 185–97; Wauchope, Patrick Sarsfield, chs 13, 15–19; and O’Kelly, Macariae excidium, pp. 71–113. 52 Murphy, Justin MacCarthy, p. 37. 49

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officers, contemptuous of the pusillanimity of the politicians, especially the absentee Tyrconnell, whose residual influence over the jacobite administration in Ireland they were eager to break. The catholic bishops, not surprisingly, seem to have joined in urging continuance of the war, for their prospects were bleak under a Williamite regime. The war party made the running. Aware that the real power to determine strategy lay with Louis XIV, they appealed directly to the French, sending a deputation to request the removal from office of Tyrconnell and the duke of Berwick, James’s bastard son, who had been left by his father in command of the jacobite armies and was regarded as Tyrconnell’s puppet. Sarsfield was the favoured replacement. At the same time, Hugh Balldearg O’Donnell, engaged in what had now become almost a private war for the liberation of Gaelic Ulster, denounced the pernicious influence of the Old English and pledged to continue his own efforts come what may.53 The French response was hardly encouraging, for they sent only a single soldier, General St Ruth, but there was a concession to the war party in the fact that St Ruth was to take over from Berwick in command of the jacobite forces. Certainly Tyrconnell read the message, since he was sufficiently concerned at this French response to return to Ireland himself and make efforts to conciliate Sarsfield’s faction. An early indication that he was repositioning himself came when the peace party obtained from the Williamites in December 1690 an offer of a settlement. At this point Tyrconnell was still in France, but it was presumably with his approval that Berwick complied with Sarsfield’s demand and arrested the peace party leaders, including Lord Riverston, the jacobite secretary of state, and the judge Denis Daly, the principal spokesman for the ‘new purchasers’. The events of 1691 turned this success of the war party into a decidedly Pyrrhic victory, as the campaigning season ended with the final capitulation of the jacobite army. The fateful battle took place at Aughrim, in County Galway, on 12 July, Old Style, after Williamite troops had breached the line of the Shannon by forcing a crossing of the river at Athlone. In fact, Aughrim was a close-run thing, and the advantage had at first seemed to lie with the jacobites, until St Ruth fell, decapitated by a cannon-ball, whereupon the forces he had led lost direction and allowed their opponents to sweep the field. There were 7,000 jacobite losses, and the war was effectively over. The Williamite commander, the Dutchman Godard van Reede, Baron Ginkel, proceeded to Galway, where the townsmen, already inclined towards peace, were soon brought to terms, thereby earning the contempt of the war party. The main jacobite army was now at Limerick, which, like Derry, had proved itself to be a natural citadel. French opinion, with which Tyrconnell was now perfectly happy to concur, favoured trying to holding out, simply in order

53 Gilbert (ed.), A jacobite narrative, pp. 267–72; J. G. Simms, ‘County Donegal in the jacobite war, 1689–91’, repr. in idem, War & politics, pp. 145–6; idem, ‘Sligo in the jacobite war, 1689–91’ in ibid., pp. 177–8.

28

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to occupy William’s troops for as long as possible. Tyrconnell’s death, and Ginkel’s bold stroke in cutting off the city from its hinterland, paved the way for the peace treaty the Williamite administration wanted. Sarsfield, commander of the jacobite garrison, was at last obliged to admit defeat. A negotiated settlement had been King William’s aim ever since the rebuff at Limerick the previous year. His principal concern was to release as much as possible of the military investment in Ireland for use on the continent. For his English ministers, the mainspring was finance. The Irish war was expensive, and the longer it dragged on the more damage would be done to an economy already ravaged by the armies of both sides. Instead of remitting surplus funds to Whitehall, as had been the case before 1685, post-war Ireland seemed likely to become a drain on English government. William’s administration in Ireland, both military and civil, shared this anxiety for a quick peace. Ginkel would have preferred not to fight in 1691 at all, and certainly wished for a rapid end to the war after Aughrim. By the time he reached Limerick, supplies were running low, and the campaigning season was nearly over.54 The Dublin government was struggling to suppress violence in the Irish countryside, perpetrated not only by rapparees, their ranks swollen by disbanded and deserting soldiers (Williamite as well as jacobite), but by the ill-disciplined and sectarian militia mobilised to catch them.55 Moreover, the senior lord justice, Lord Sidney, believed that the Irish catholics could be won over by a policy of conciliation.56 With the backing of senior officials in Dublin Castle, Ginkel had tried vainly in the preceding winter to negotiate a settlement, when he had unwittingly precipitated the downfall of the jacobite peace party. At that time, besides the hostility of Sarsfield and the war party to his proposals, he was hamstrung by the restricted nature of the terms he was able to offer. William himself was not disposed to liberality in granting pardons or assurances of the preservation of landed property. He wished to have something left over to reward friends, courtiers and servants, and 54 Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 189–91, 248; idem, ‘Williamite peace tactics, 1690–1’ repr. in idem, War & politics, pp. 185–8, 190–6. 55 John Davis to Lord Blayney, 30 June 1691 (B.L., Add. MS 30149, f. 20); same to Sir Robert Colvill, 27 August 1691 (ibid., f. 61); lords justices to James Mutlow [September 1691] (ibid., f. 71); same to collectors and port officers, 1 October 1691 (ibid., f. 73); same to Sir Robert Colvill, 14 October 1691 (ibid., f. 76); same to sheriffs of Ulster and Munster [November 1691] (ibid., ff. 80–1); Morrice’s ent’ring bk, 29 November 1690 (Dr Williams’s Library, Morrice MS R, p. 221); ‘Bishop [of] M[eath]’s memorandum’ [1691] (C.S.P. dom., 1691–2, p. 56). The depredations made by units of the Williamite army were also a cause of much distress to innocent civilians. See, for example, the complaints of the inhabitants of Youghal, Co. Cork, that they had been robbed by the contingent of Danish troops stationed in the town: Richard Caulfield (ed.), The council book of the corporation of Youghal . . . (Guildford, 1878), p. 387; Lord Orrery to Sir Robert Southwell, 26 August 1690 (B.L., Add. MS 38847, f. 274). 56 Sidney to Lord Coningsby, 4 June 1692 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/14/49). See also Simms, ‘Williamite peace tactics’, p. 196.

29


the estates of Irish rebels were the most obvious and cheapest gift. There were political considerations too: the Westminster parliament coveted Irish forfeited lands, to compensate the English public purse for the heavy expenditure on the war, while opposition M.P.s scented, in the possibility of generous peace terms to the catholics, a promising scandal. For the king, these considerations did not extend to a denial of catholics’ civil rights. William seems to have been prepared to allow religious toleration in Ireland, partly from principle, and partly from the standard political argument (reinforced by his own experience as a European ruler) that such a policy would give his government a broader base of support and encourage economic development. To some degree, the eventual peace conditions reflected these royal preferences. Freedom of worship was promised to all catholics in Ireland, though only as it had obtained in Charles II’s reign (a provision vague enough to satisfy all but the most hard-line protestant). An indemnity from prosecution and a guarantee of property rights was permitted to a restricted number, namely the inhabitants of Galway and Limerick, and those outside the two cities who were under the protection of the jacobite army when the articles of surrender had been signed, provided that they remained in Ireland and swore allegiance to William and Mary. The alternative – transport to France to fight for King Louis – was in fact preferred by as many as 12,000 out of the 15,000 men still in arms under Sarsfield, doubtless fearing reprisals if they stayed behind. They duly left Ireland with their general in what has come to be known as the flight of the ‘wild geese’.57

VII The terms of the treaty of Limerick, and the relative speed with which the military conflict in Ireland had ended, were satisfactory to William, although he may have regretted the loss of so many proven soldiers to the army of his enemy. However, the treaty was much less acceptable to Irish protestants, especially the fiercer among them. Disgust at what was considered to be unnecessary leniency was compounded by suspicion of the character and motives of William’s Irish ministers, who were attacked for corruption, and for favouring catholics and dubious protestants who had ‘collaborated’ with the jacobite regime. ‘The Irish flatter so well’, one alarmist observed, ‘that they will still be courtiers. I hear the castle is almost as crowded now with them as in Tyrconnell’s time.’58 When William’s financial needs, and desire to

57

Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 254–60; idem, ‘The treaty of Limerick’, repr. in idem, War & politics, pp. 203–24; Wauchope, Patrick Sarsfield, chs 20–1. 58 Thomas, Lord Macaulay, The history of England from the accession of King James the second, ed. C. H. Firth (6 vols, London, 1913–15), v, pp. 2309–12; Lord Ranelagh to Coningsby, 27 October 1690 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/6/8); Ginkel to same, 22 December 1691 (ibid., D/638/12.65); Sidney to same, 8, 19 March, 4 April 1692 (ibid., D/638/14/34, 38, 43); 30

TWO REVOLUTIONS

establish his regime on a basis of unquestionable constitutional legality, induced the summoning of an Irish parliament in 1692, the members proved unmanageable.59 The parliament was quickly dissolved, and William ruled without parliament, and in mounting financial difficulties, for three more years. The eventual resolution of the crisis came with the appointment of an English whig lord deputy, Lord Capel, in 1695. Capel sympathised with the fears and prejudices of the ultra-protestants, some of whom he took into office. There they began to chip away at the catholic civil rights the treaty of Limerick had supposedly guaranteed, procuring the passage in 1695 of acts to prohibit the sending of children abroad to be educated, and for the disarming of catholics.60 In the following year catholic bishops and regular clergy were banished.61 Such infringements of the Limerick articles (in the spirit if not precisely in the letter, given the vagueness of the wording of the clause in the treaty providing for freedom of religion) were possible because the Irish parliament had not yet been asked to approve the treaty. In 1697 English ministers decided to press for parliamentary ratification, primarily in order to settle the legality of the king’s grants of Irish forfeited estates. William himself, under pressure from his ally the Habsburg emperor to establish a toleration for Irish catholics, may have hoped to prevent the passage of further penal laws. What happened was the reverse. Irish M.P.s grasped the opportunity to amend the articles of Limerick to suit their own purposes: the clause promising toleration was omitted entirely, and the indemnity and guarantee of property rights were confined to catholics actually in arms at the time of the capitulation of Galway and Limerick. Those who had been ‘under the protection’ of the jacobite army were excluded, an alteration which enabled further outlawries and forfeitures.62 Thus the more militant Irish protestants achieved the settlement they wanted, rather than the more conciliatory terms the king had preferred. The outcome of the Williamite revolution in Ireland was the destruction of the Irish catholic interest as a political force. Although most catholic property had passed into protestant hands prior to 1685, the defeat of the jacobite revolution and a further round of confiscations reduced catholic proprietorship to a mere 14 per cent of the freehold land in Ireland (according to the most authoritative of modern estimates), and thus completed the work of the Cromwellian land reforms.63 Admittedly, in many areas the scarcity

Longford to Ellis, 11 November 1690 (B.L., Add. MS 28876, ff. 251–2); Bp King to James Bonnell, 4 December 1691(T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/190). 59 For what follows, see below, pp. 44–66. 60 C. I. McGrath, ‘Securing the protestant interest: the origins and purpose of the penal laws of 1695’ in I.H.S., xxx (1996–7), pp. 25–46. 61 Troost, ‘William III’, chs 3–6; J. G. Simms, ‘The Bishops’ Banishment Act of 1697 (9 Will. III, c. 1)’, repr. in idem, War & politics, pp. 235–49. 62 Simms, ‘Treaty of Limerick’, pp. 212–17; Troost, ‘William III’, pp. 182–3. 63 J. G. Simms, The Williamite confiscation in Ireland 1690–1703 (London, 1956). 31


of available protestant tenants obliged the new landowners to let to catholics, some of whom were former chief tenants or even former owners, and who were thus able to recover social standing by acting as middlemen and subletting to catholic under-tenants.64 By various devices and expedients, some catholic landowners were able to retain their property, even under the proliferating penal laws of the eighteenth century, but only by abandoning political activity. Others dropped by the wayside, either converting to protestantism in order to save their estates, or subsiding into a morass of debt. A similar fate befell catholics in the professions, especially the lawyers who had helped to staff Tyrconnell’s bureaucracy, although those in trade and commerce seem to have survived the vagaries of punitive legislation rather better.65 The loss of so many of the catholic nobility and gentry, either killed in the war or exiled immediately afterwards, rendered catholics politically impotent. Irish jacobitism has been aptly described as one the ‘dogs that did not bark in the night’ in the eighteenth century, and the lack of any serious jacobite activity at the time of the Fifteen or the Forty-Five, or at any point in between, cannot simply be explained as the product of successful repression. It is testimony to the emasculation of the catholic cause.66 On the whole the more influential

64

David Dickson, ‘Middlemen’ in Bartlett and Hayton, Penal era, pp. 171–2; L. M. Cullen, The emergence of modern Ireland, 1600–1900 (London, 1981), p. 33; Kevin Whelan, ‘An underground gentry? Catholic middlemen in eighteenth-century Ireland’, repr. in idem, The tree of liberty: radicalism, catholicism and the construction of Irish identity 1760–1830 (Cork, 1996), pp. 3–56 (but cf. T. C. Barnard, ‘The gentrification of eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xii (1997), pp. 137–55). 65 Catholic Ireland in the eighteenth century: collected essays of Maureen Wall, ed. Gerard O’Brien (Dublin, 1989), pp. 1–101; L. M. Cullen, ‘Catholics under the penal laws’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, i (1986), pp. 23–36; T. P. Power and Kevin Whelan (eds), Endurance and emergence: catholics in Ireland in the eighteenth century (Dublin, 1990); Charles Chenevix Trench, Grace’s card: Irish catholic landlords 1690–1800 (Cork, 1997); Patrick Fagan, Catholics in a protestant country: the papist constituency in eighteenth-century Dublin (Dublin, 1998); Karen Harvey, The Bellews of Mount Bellew: a catholic gentry family in eighteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 1998). 66 A more positive view of Irish jacobitism in the period 1692 to c.1760 has been asserted in F. J. McLynn, ‘Ireland and the jacobite rising of 1745’ in Irish Sword, xiii (1977–9), pp. 339–52; idem, ‘ “Good behaviour”: Irish catholics and the jacobite rising of 1745’ in Éire-Ireland, xvi (1981), pp. 43–58; Cullen, Emergence of modern Ireland, pp. 198–200; Breandán Ó Buachalla, ‘Irish jacobitism in official documents’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, viii (1993), pp. 128–38; and idem, Aisling Ghéar Na Stíobhartaigh agus an tAos Léinn 1603–1788 (Dublin, 1996) (reviewed in English by Mícheál Mac Craith in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xiii (1998), pp. 166–71); and, most recently, Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the jacobite cause, 1685–1766: a fatal attachment (Dublin, 2002). On the other hand, the evidence assembled in Patrick Fagan (ed.), Ireland in the Stuart papers: correspondence and documents of Irish interest from the Stuart papers in the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle (2 vols, Dublin, 1995), does not dispel the impression conveyed by other primary sources that members of the jacobite court-in-exile themselves paid little attention to Ireland and to the possibility of raising opposition there to the Hanoverians. 32

TWO REVOLUTIONS

Irish catholics, that is to say those who had retained landed property or who were amassing profits through trade, preferred a quiet life, and while many continued to idealise the exiled Stuarts, a few reflected sourly on King James himself as the careless instigator of all their misfortunes. As a general conclusion, it would be reasonable to argue that the Williamite revolution resulted in the preservation and reinforcement of English control over Ireland. The constitutional relationship remained as it had been prior to 1685. Poynings’ Law was still in place, and the act of the jacobite parliament to prevent Westminster from legislating for Ireland had been declared null and void. Within Ireland the protestant landowning interest had been strengthened, and was being afforded a virtual monopoly of political power and government office. William was able to make use of Ireland’s resources for his own purposes, despite the poverty of the kingdom in the wake of a ruinous civil war. The large military force stationed in Ireland after 1697 allowed him to keep a standing army in spite of the objections of English M.P.s. Two important qualifications would have to be entered, however. The most obvious is that neither of the contending parties viewed the ‘war of the two kings’ as a conflict between England and Ireland, or between core and periphery within an English-dominated composite state. For William, the presence of his rival in Dublin presented a strategic problem. The continental war took priority, and he resented having to waste his time in attending to the second front that the meddlesome French had opened behind him. Equally, James never made Ireland his main concern. Before the Glorious Revolution he had regarded the country as a useful resource to be exploited for the benefit of the monarchy. Throughout his stay on Irish soil he seems to have been impatient to leave for his real work elsewhere. He resisted constitutional change to make Ireland less dependent on England, and sought to maintain – and if possible to strengthen – the power of the English crown in Ireland. Even the Irish catholics, with whom demands for greater independence originated, were politically divided and rather more interested in land redistribution and the reversal of the Reformation than in legislative devolution. In the long run, it seems that the very completeness of the catholics’ political defeat encouraged Irish protestants to assert themselves in defence of their political and economic interests. It would not do to make too much of early instances of independent-mindedness, for the relaxed confidence which characterised some protestant attitudes to popery after 1691 could still be exploded by reports of agrarian disturbances or of jacobite activity, especially if strengthened by rumours of French naval manoeuvres. Probably of greater importance was the underlying reality of the Anglo–Irish political relationship: that as a consequence of the Williamite settlement the English government and the Irish protestant elite were bound together. The exclusively protestant character of the monarchy, confirmed by the English act of settlement of 1701, rendered inconceivable a return to James II’s policy of relying on the catholic rather than the protestant interest in Ireland; 33


nor, without at least a potentially strong catholic interest, would it have been feasible for any English monarch to have tried to play one religious group in Ireland off against the other. In this respect the role formerly played by the catholics may conceivably have been filled by the Ulster Scots, had it not been for the fact that, as presbyterians of a rigidly orthodox bent, their loyalty to the crown, even beyond the Union of 1707, seemed equally doubtful. Of necessity, therefore, William and Mary, and their successors, depended upon the Anglican minority. Should any dispute arise, the English government could in the last resort enforce its will, but monarchs and ministers usually avoided confrontation, and Irish politicians were often able to get their own way, as the final shape of the ratified treaty of Limerick bears witness; unless, that is, they were opposed by vested interests in the English parliament, which rarely allowed itself to be restrained on Irish matters. In the long run, an awareness of the altered balance of the Anglo–Irish relationship, alongside the persistence of a belief in the providential destiny of Irish protestantism, encouraged the eighteenth-century Anglican ‘ascendancy’ in Ireland to develop notions of Irish ‘patriotism’ and a desire for legislative autonomy. Thus, ironically, the defeat of one form of separatism, as expressed in the abortive catholic revolution of 1689, would eventually come to represent an important stage in the evolution of another.

34

2

Anglo-Irish politics, 1692–1704: the rise of party Throughout the seventeenth century the protestant landowning elites of England and Ireland remained not only very much alike in composition and outlook, but closely interlinked. Their common cultural inheritance was reflected in similar attitudes and prejudices, while connexions between individuals and families were maintained and extended by marriage, friendship and shared experience. A few ‘Anglo-Irish’ dynasties possessed estates and interests on both sides of the Irish Sea, and participated in the social and political life of both kingdoms. But for all this, English and Irish politics, even when developing in the same general direction, seldom followed precisely parallel lines. The issues at stake might be broadly comparable, but particular local applications would be different, so that factional divisions in Ireland never entirely conformed to the English pattern. It was perfectly possible for leading players on the Irish scene to pursue different political strategies at Westminster; until, that is, the appearance of whig and tory parties in Ireland in the reign of Queen Anne, when for a brief period English and Irish politicians found themselves operating with precisely the same points of reference. The two political worlds effectively became one. Not only in nomenclature, but also in their organisation and governing principles, the Irish parties were indistinguishable from their English counterparts. The emergence of English-style ‘party’ politics in Ireland in the years after the Glorious Revolution has never been fully explained. Emphasis has been laid on the social context; that is to say the sectarian tensions which underlay party divisions, as fear of popery on the one hand, and protestant dissent on the other, prompted some members of the Irish propertied classes to espouse whig principles in defence of liberty and the reformed religion, and others tory principles in order to preserve the establishment in church and state.1 But these social and religious factors did not produce a party system fully formed at the conclusion of the Williamite war. It would take at least another decade before the Irish parliament became divided into self-consciously ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ interests. Despite the recent publication of several detailed accounts of Irish political history during this period, there is no agreed explanation

1

Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, ch. 5; Connolly, Religion, ch. 3. 35


of the way in which this development occurred.2 We still do not know how the factions that arose in the immediate aftermath of the Limerick settlement, and were visible in the short-lived Irish parliament of 1692, shifted and rearranged themselves, allying with different political groupings in England, until eventually coalescing into a two-party pattern. The political history of England in the late seventeenth century is complex and difficult, the waters muddied by cross-currents, notably the persistence of conflict between ‘court’ and ‘country’, and the presence of magnate- or family-based ‘connexions’.3 Similar difficulties attend the elucidation of developments in Ireland, exacerbated by the fact that the Dublin parliament met far less regularly than its Westminster equivalent. In 1692 only a few members had any parliamentary experience. If we ignore the jacobite parliament of 1689, attended chiefly by catholics, there had been no session since 1666. Little could be learned in 1692 either, since this parliament perished in infancy. Within a month it had been hastily prorogued and was dissolved without reconvening. Three years later a new parliament assembled, and met regularly until January 1699, but a second lengthy hiatus ensued before Queen Anne’s first Irish general election, in 1703. This fractured history did much to retard the development of recognisable political parties in Ireland, alongside other important factors: the absence of any prior history of ‘party’ conflict, such as had obtained in England in the 1670s and 1680s; a strong ‘patriotic’ dimension to Irish politics, sharpened by economic anxieties; the gravitational force of magnate interests; and interference by English politicians. Little wonder, then, that the story is confused.

I The natural political inclination of most Irish protestants in 1692 was whiggish; indeed, some English observers were surprised to find exceptions to this rule even in the heyday of party warfare.4 Naturally there was a strong vested interest in supporting the Williamite revolution, which was

2

Troost, ‘William III’; Thomas Doyle, ‘Parliament and politics in Williamite Ireland 1690–1703’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1992); idem, ‘The politics of protestant ascendancy: politics, religion and society in protestant Ireland, 1700–1710’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University College Dublin, 1996); McGrath, Constitution; O’Regan, King. 3 The principal contributions to the literature are Dennis Rubini, Court and country 1688–1702 (London, 1967); and Henry Horwitz, Parliament, policy and politics in the reign of William III (Manchester, 1977). For a summary of the points at issue, see Commons 1690–1715, i, pp. 28–30, 434–54. 4 George Dodington to the earl of Sunderland, 14 August 1707 (P.R.O., SP 63/366/3–4, quoted in J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the eighteenth century (new edn, 3 vols, London, 1906), i, pp. 358–9). 36

ANGLO-IRISH POLITICS

one important definition of a whig. Furthermore, in striking contrast to England, there was only a slender ‘cavalier’ tradition in Ireland on which late seventeenth-century toryism might be grafted. The royalist party of the 1640s had been the creation of the first duke of Ormond. After 1688 Ormond’s family remained the magnetic pole around which a cavalier interest might cluster, but the old duke’s grandson and successor was not at first inclined to take up the cause. A hearty Orangist at the revolution, he had been rewarded by King William with military promotion, and a sheaf of honorific public appointments. Moreover, he was in no position to exert his influence as a local magnate. The resources of the Ormond estate had been seriously depleted by extravagance and poor management, so that, despite possessing considerable opportunities for patronage, and potential electoral influence across at least two Irish counties, the second duke could count less than half a dozen clients in the Irish house of commons elected in 1692.5 Beyond the Ormond connexion, it was possible to find occasional Irish protestant gentlemen who were already tories by inclination, in that they were unsympathetic to the Williamite regime, and had either opposed the revolution or been unable to accept its implications: formerly active jacobites like Sir Donough O’Brien or the Hon. Thomas Fitzmaurice; a few, such as the Gaelic scholar and manuscript collector Arthur Brownlow of Lurgan, compromised by their election to the jacobite parliament in 1689; or men of the stamp of Robert Saunderson, M.P. for County Cavan, who refused to sign the parliamentary association of 1696 for the defence of King William.6 To begin with, however, these were merely assorted individuals rather than the representatives of a distinct and substantial political interest. Although in the immediate aftermath of the Williamite war Irish protestants were generally predisposed towards a whiggish view of their recent past and preferred future, they were even then far from constituting a homogeneous political entity, and were divided in several ways: by geographical, family and personal allegiances; and also in their opinions – if not at odds over fundamental principles, at least over different sets of priorities. In the first place, it is clear that there were distinct regional groupings in parliament: for example, a forcefully radical faction based in north-east Ulster, under the leadership of three County Down squires: James Hamilton of Tollymore, his cousin and namesake of Bangor, and Sir Arthur Rawdon of Moira; and another strongly anti-catholic group located in south Munster, centred in the over-represented county of Cork but extending westwards to Limerick

5

D. W. Hayton, ‘Dependence, clientage and affinity: the political following of the second duke of Ormonde’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds), The dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 213–41. 6 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 136. Hist. Ir. Parl., iii, pp. 291–2, 445–6; v, pp. 307–8; vi, pp. 246–7; Capel to Portland, 26 October 1695 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 251). 37


and Kerry and east into Waterford. The north-east Ulster faction (perhaps alongside a similar grouping in the north-west) may have originated in cooperation in the volunteer Williamite corps of 1688–9;7 while the sense of collective purpose among Munster protestants was bolstered by recent experiences of exile and jacobite depredations. Entrenched rivalry between landed families was also a feature of Irish political life. Some of these feuds were of long standing, and recalled a history of competition for ascendancy in a particular region, as was the case with the Boyles and Butlers along the border between County Tipperary and Counties Cork and Waterford.8 In other cases, the fault-line in county society ran between the ‘old protestants’ who had settled in Ireland before the civil war, and the more recent arrivals,9 although in County Galway, for example, the deadliest enmity arose between two sets of relative newcomers, the Eyres and St Georges.10 Ideological fissures within Irish whiggism are harder to delineate; indeed, in general the development of political ideas in Ireland during the late seventeenth century is a subject whose principal features have been proposed rather than established.11 It is not even clear that the phrase ‘Irish whiggism’ means anything; whether there was a separate ‘Irish whig tradition’, as some have argued,12 or merely English whiggism relocated into an Irish setting. The question turns on two points: first, whether arguments used to justify the liberties of Irishmen were based on a native constitutional tradition, or on abstract notions of contract and rights, as propounded by Algernon Sidney or John Locke; and second, the extent to which Irish whigs insisted on

7

Revd George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery manuscripts . . . (Belfast, 1869), pp. 271–84; cf. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Irish protestants and James II, 1688–90’ in I.H.S., xxviii (1992–3), p. 125. 8 For a later example of this perennial struggle, see T. P. Power, Land, politics and society in eighteenth-century Tipperary (Oxford, 1993), pp. 223–5. 9 This is suggested, for example, in D. M. Beaumont’s study of King’s and Queen’s Counties: ‘The gentry of the King’s and Queen’s Counties: protestant landed society, 1690–1760’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 2 vols, T.C.D., 1999), ii, p. 148. 10 Ida Gantz, Signpost to Eyrecourt . . . (Bath, 1975), chs 12–18; James Kelly, ‘The politics of the “protestant ascendancy”: County Galway 1650–1832’ in Gerard Moran (ed.), Galway: history and society (Dublin, 1996), pp. 238–43. 11 A beginning has been made in J. H. Ohlmeyer (ed.), Political thought in seventeenthcentury Ireland: kingdom or colony? (Cambridge, 2000). Promising lines of enquiry are also suggested in the companion volume for the eighteenth century (both books having originated in symposia sponsored by the Center for the History of British Political Thought at the Folger Institute, Washington D.C.): S. J. Connolly (ed.), Political ideas in eighteenthcentury Ireland (Dublin, 2000). 12 Caroline Robbins, The eighteenth-century commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, commerce and history: essays on political thought and history, chiefly in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 11; Hugh Mayo, ‘Robert Molesworth’s Account of Denmark: its roots and its impact’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Syddansk Universitet, Odense, 2000). 38


maintaining a separate Irish parliament or would have embraced union with England and absorption into a larger body politic in which parliamentary government was underpinned by acceptance of common whig principles. 13 The evidence is inconclusive. Some Irish whigs, notably William Molyneux in his Case of Ireland . . . stated (1698), pressed the claim for Irish parliamentary independence on grounds of historical precedent; others argued for constitutional innovations like a bill of rights, habeas corpus, place legislation, or electoral reform, in terms directly imported from England. It is even possible that the contrast may be a false dichotomy, since Molyneux himself, the supposed arch-priest of separatism, conceded at one point that union was preferable to an independent legislature.14 Important though such refinements may be to the historian of political theory, they do not offer much illumination to the historian of political practice. Irish protestants were not deeply divided over these issues. In fact, they seem to have been in broad agreement over a set of political principles that were recognisably whiggish, comprising the preservation of the powers of parliament and the liberties of the subject, the rejection of administrative corruption, concern for the prosperity of Ireland, and fear of the revival of catholic power and the undermining of their establishment.15 Where they disagreed was over the priority to be given to these different elements. In William’s first parliament in 1692, various concerns were blended in a campaign against the lord lieutenant, Lord Sidney. Subsequently, in the parliamentary sessions of 1695–9, Sidney’s whig successors attempted to draw the teeth of opposition by conceding some degree of legislative initiative to the Irish house of commons and proposing laws to buttress the protestant interest. Unfortunately for them, other constitutional issues arose, concerning the Anglo–Irish relationship; economic problems multiplied; and libertarian whigs found new grievances. Most importantly, the real Achilles’ heel of whiggery became evident, as government-inspired legislation on religious matters encountered opposition; less from squeamishness at penalising catholics than from revulsion at indulging protestant dissent. 13

Jim Smyth, ‘“No remedy more proper”: Anglo–Irish unionism before 1707’ in Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts (eds), British consciousness and identity: the making of Britain, 1533–1707 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 301–20; James Kelly, ‘Public and political opinion in Ireland and the idea of an Anglo–Irish union, 1650–1800’ in D. G. Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds), Political discourse in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Ireland (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 110–41; D. W. Hayton, ‘Ideas of union in Anglo–Irish political discourse, 1692–1720: meaning and use’ in ibid., pp. 142–68. 14 J. R. Hill, ‘Ireland without union: Molyneux and his legacy’ in John Robertson (ed.), A union for empire: political thought and the British union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 277, 286–7. Cf. Hayton, ‘Ideas of union’, pp. 148–50. 15 The evidence of pamphlets, parliamentary addresses and occasional snippets of correspondence has been taken by some historians to suggest a consensus of Irish protestant opinion in favour of union in the period c. 1692–1707 (see the articles by Kelly and Smyth cited above, n.13). The value of this evidence is questioned in Hayton, ‘Ideas of union’. 39


If we are to distinguish between Irish and English versions of whiggism, the obvious place to focus would be on the issue of protestant dissent and the challenge posed to the jurisdiction of the established church. In England nonconformity was integrated into party politics. Dissenters had provided the backbone of Shaftesbury’s exclusionist movement, and after the revolution continued to give loyal electoral support to whigs, especially in borough constituencies. It was thus strategically essential for English whig politicians to defend dissenters’ interests. More to the point, this identification with the dissenting cause was not problematic. The situation in Ireland was very different. Although dissenters formed a substantial minority of the population, their concentration in Ulster made them far less important electorally. Only a few country gentlemen were themselves nonconformists, as compared with the still substantial presbyterian element among the English political classes in 1689. And finally, the Scottish origin of the vast majority of presbyterians in the north gave them a separate character, and put them at odds with the distinctively ‘English’ protestant propertied elite. The religious allegiance that was at the heart of Irish protestant identity in the 1680s and 1690s, and which made Irish country gentlemen so fiercely anti-papist and pro-Williamite, was specifically an allegiance to the Church of Ireland. It did not extend automatically to nonconformity, and indeed many of the more vigorous supporters of the revolution were actively hostile to Ulster presbyterianism. This applied not only to landowners with estates in presbyterian-dominated districts but also to families such as the Brodricks in far away County Cork.16 Thus at first there could be no simple identification between protestant Irishmen and English whigs. The Ulster and Munster factions, however strongly committed to the revolution settlement, had not identified with the whig party at Westminster to the exclusion of other political interests during the years of war in 1688–91. In the long run, the issue of dissent would prove to be the lever that would prise open the whiggish consensus in Ireland, and encourage the formation of something quite new: an Irish tory party.

II The bitter resentment against government shown by Irish protestants in the short-lived parliament of October to November 1692 had been brewing for some time. As we have seen in the previous chapter,17 the origins of the opposition of 1692 may well lie in the co-ordinated agitation undertaken by Irish protestant exiles in London in the autumn of 1689, as they struggled to make the sufferings of Ireland a prime concern of the English ministers and

16 See, for example, Sir St John Brodrick to Arthur Charlett, 8 February 1689[/90] (Bodl., MS Ballard 11, f. 185). 17 See above, p. 23.

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parliament. The ad hoc ‘committee’ chosen by ‘the gentlemen of Ireland’, to ‘address the king in parliament and make proposals for the settlement’ of the kingdom, included several who three years later would be among the leading critics of Sidney’s administration: John Osborne, displaced as prime serjeant by Tyrconnell in 1687 and soon to be restored; Sir St John Brodrick and his son Alan; and two future speakers of the Irish house of commons, Robert Rochfort and William Conolly.18 Their anger, fuelled by a desperate concern for the safety of families, friends and estates, was directed at those considered to be lukewarm in the protestant cause, or positively traiterous: dilatory and sometimes corrupt officials, such as the commissary-general John Shales (who compounded his inefficiency with doubtful political loyalties, having served James II right up to the revolution); and worse, those spineless Irish protestants who had made terms with the jacobite administration. Bitterness did not disappear with the military triumphs of 1690. Even after he was restored to office himself, Osborne attempted to charge with high treason all protestants who had remained in government employment in Ireland following the transfer of the crown to William and Mary.19 The conclusion of the treaty of Limerick caused further alienation. As far as the hotter protestants were concerned, the concessions made in order to end the war quickly were unnecessary and even dangerous. Bishop Dopping of Meath preached to that effect within a week of the conclusion of the treaty, while in the privy council Osborne and Alan Brodrick (newly appointed third serjeant) led a rearguard action to delay the restoration of catholic proprietors under the terms of the articles.20 This opposition was carried over into the parliament of 1692 and beyond, resulting in a lengthy delay before the king could finally obtain, in 1697, parliamentary ratification of an amended version of the treaty. The Dutch historian Wouter Troost has argued that opposing attitudes to the treaty must have constituted the main dividing line in Irish politics during this period.21 This conclusion is suggested by the importance of the treaty to the relationship between protestant and catholic in Ireland, and by the often violent opposition to the original terms both inside and outside parliament. Dr Troost views political developments in Ireland between 1691 and 1697 as marked by a strong continuity, with parliament split into two opposing parties, ‘pro-’ and ‘anti-treaty’. In a longer perspective his ‘pro-treaty party’ may be 18

Journal of the very rev. Rowland Davies, LL. D. dean of Ross . . . , ed. Richard Caulfield (Camden Society, lxviii, London, 1857), pp. 59–62. 19 J. I. McGuire, ‘The Irish parliament of 1692’ in Bartlett and Hayton, Penal era, p. 13. 20 Simms, War & politics, p. 212; Troost, ‘William III’, p. 38; Alan to St John Brodrick, 11 November 1691 (S.H.C., 1248/1, ff. 255–6). 21 Troost, ‘William III’, the conclusions of which are summarised in idem, ‘William III and Ireland’ in Paul Hoftijzer and C. C. Barfoot (eds), Fabrics and fabrications: the myth and making of William and Mary (DQR Studies in Literature, no. 6, Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 225–58. 41


seen as the precursor of the tories; the ‘anti-treaty party’ as the precursor of the whigs. Here are two separate arguments, neither of which is really convincing: an assumption that a two-party system appeared as early as 1692 and remained in existence thereafter, and an emphasis on the central importance of the treaty in determining allegiance.22 The notion of continuity is asserted rather than demonstrated, and is not supported by, for example, a detailed analysis of parliamentary voting. The second point, that political divisions were determined by responses to the treaty, is at first glance attractive but ultimately fails to persuade. Undoubtedly, many of the M.P.s who attacked Sidney’s administration in 1692 were angry at what they thought was a betrayal of protestant interests at Limerick, but they had other grounds for opposition; and if a monocausal explanation is insufficient for the parliament of 1692, when the treaty was fresh in the public mind, it will certainly not work for the crowded years that followed. As far as the government’s critics were concerned, the generous treatment of the defeated jacobite forces was only one among many grievances. The treaty had a symbolic significance, but it was not so much the articles themselves that were alarming as the way in which they might be interpreted and applied by ministers. The most important aspect is often assumed to have been the promise of liberty of conscience to catholics; however, to contemporaries the key issue was land. This had two aspects: on the one hand, Irish protestants’ concern for the integrity of the Restoration settlement and fear of the recuperative power of the catholic interest; and, on the other, a desire to exploit for their own advantage the opportunities offered by the forfeiture of jacobites’ estates.23 Anxiety over a possible catholic resurgence had stiffened resistance to government proposals in the council in 1691; resentment at the way in which the forfeitures were being administered lay behind a complaint to the English house of commons in February 1692, that jacobite estates were being disposed of sub rosa by the revenue commissioners and not openly in the exchequer.24 What made the situation explosive in 1691–2 was a failure of trust between the protestant landed community in Ireland and the English officials who ruled in Dublin, in particular the lords justices Coningsby and Porter, who had concluded the treaty, and the revenue commissioner William Culliford. 22

Note the reservations expressed by Patrick Kelly in I.H.S., xxiv (1984–5), pp. 105–7. See, for example, [Sir Richard Bulkeley], The proposal for sending back the nobility and gentry of Ireland . . . (London, 1690 [recte 1689]), pp. 8–9; Sir St John Brodrick’s vindication of himself, from aspersions cast on him, in a pamphlet . . . entituled The proposal for sending back the nobility and gentry of Ireland . . . ([London,] 1689), p. 7. 24 Minutes of commissioners of accounts, 10 October 1691 (H.M.C., Portland, iii, pp. 476–7): The parliamentary diary of Narcissus Luttrell 1691–1693, ed. Henry Horwitz (Oxford, 1972), pp. 101–2, 166–7, 191; John Pulteney to Coningsby, 13 February 1691/2 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/13/112). 23

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Coningsby and Culliford were regarded, probably with some justice, as corrupt and self-serving; Porter, unfairly, as a crypto-jacobite. All were assumed to be, in their different ways, fundamentally untrustworthy. There were rumours of private deals being concluded over forfeited estates, especially by Culliford, who had been the principal target of the parliamentary complaints of February 1692, and of favour being shown to former jacobites. Whether the guilty men were feathering their own nests or protecting papists the end result seemed to be the same: the protestant interest was being jeopardised.25 The concerns of Irish protestants were therefore concentrated on the personalities of Coningsby, Porter and Culliford. Inevitably, because these were Englishmen, their presence in Dublin imparted something of a party colouring to Irish protests. However, at this time the political orientation of the administration, both in Whitehall and in Dublin, was not entirely clear. There was a tory preponderance in both administrations, but the king’s own preference was for a ‘mixture’.26 In 1692 the chief ministers in England were both tories: the marquess of Carmarthen (the former Danby) as lord president of the council and the earl of Nottingham as secretary of state. They collaborated uneasily, and occasionally intrigued against one another.27 Other tory interests were also represented, including the friends and followers of Lord Rochester, James II’s brother-in-law, who during the early 1680s had led a ‘Yorkist’ faction of high church loyalists centred around James, then duke of York. A few whigs also remained, most of them in minor offices. This complex situation was reflected in the composition of the Irish ministry. Porter, the lord chancellor, was a tory, who had begun his career as solicitor to the duke of York, and had originally been given the seals in Ireland in 1686 when Rochester’s brother, Lord Clarendon, was viceroy.28 Culliford was a professional placeman, with a long career in the customs service. He had been appointed to the Irish revenue commission in 1684, at a time of tory ascendancy in government, and had held office even under Tyrconnell, which automatically made him suspect.29 Coningsby, although a strong whig, was an archetypal courtier, willing to trim his sails to the prevailing breeze.30 Porter and Coningsby had been joined as lords justices in December 1690 by

25

See, for example, R[ichard] P[yne] to John Ellis, 13 October 1691 (B.L., Add. MS 28876, f. 123); ‘A state of Ireland in a letter 1692/3’ (ibid., Add. MS 70017, ff. 36–7); Culliford’s answers to charges against him of misappropriation of public funds (Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, U1475/O129/1, 2). 26 For what follows, see Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, chs 3–4. 27 Andrew Browning, Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby and duke of Leeds, 1632–1712 (3 vols, Glasgow, 1944–51), i, pp. 498–9. 28 B. D. Henning, The house of commons 1660–1690 (3 vols, London, 1983), iii, pp. 264–5. See also Burnet, iii, p. 73. 29 G. E. Aylmer, The crown’s servants: government and civil service under Charles II, 1660–1685 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 211–13; Commons 1690–1715, iii, pp. 800–1. 30 Commons 1690–1715, iii, pp. 671–4. 43


Sidney, a loyal Williamite and a patrician whose quintessentially moderate politics reflected a somewhat selfish indolence.31 Even after Sidney had been elevated to the viceroyalty in February 1692 he remained largely a figurehead, and was absent from Ireland until returning to preside over parliament. It seems likely that the public reputation of the Irish government was determined not by his and Coningsby’s residual whiggism, but by the tory associations of Porter and Culliford, a point emphasised by the fact that Porter and Culliford were assertive, not to say domineering, personalities, and each by virtue of his office could influence extensive areas of official policy and patronage. The long-awaited meeting of parliament in Dublin in October 1692 gave an opportunity to those, like Osborne and Alan Brodrick, who had been opposing Porter and Culliford from within the government, and those who had been smouldering in impotence outside, to vent their disgust. The opposition in the commons rehearsed a number of grievances.32 The land question featured strongly, in the rejection of bills of attainder and indemnity that the Irish council had prepared; fear of a jacobite recovery was evident in resolutions against admitting catholics to office and permitting them to bear arms; while enquiries into corruption resulted in charges against Culliford over the embezzlement of forfeited estates and public funds, and the pursuit of investigations against other alleged miscreants, including Coningsby. This opposition also made proposals on constitutional matters that were very much in the mode of English whiggism, playing on the libertarian and patriotic sentiments of members. The best known is the insistence on the ‘sole right’ of the commons to prepare supply bills, which some commentators have assumed to be the reason for Sidney’s precipitate prorogation. To proclaim the ‘sole right’ was a way of loosening the restraints of Poynings’ Law in the most vital area of legislation. The requirement that Irish bills be prepared by the Irish council, approved by its English equivalent and returned to the Irish parliament to be accepted or rejected without the possibility of amendment, had been circumvented during the seventeenth century by a procedure known as ‘heads of bills’, essentially the production by parliament of draft bills (‘heads’) which were then sent to the council to be turned into form. This system could not operate at the beginning of a new parliament, since Poynings’ Law ordained that some bills had to be ready before a parliament was called. The commons objected to the inclusion of a money bill in the

31

Henning, House of commons 1660–1690, iii, pp. 433–5; Spring Macky (ed.), Memoirs of the secret services of John Macky . . . (London, 1733), pp. 33–4; The prose works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and Irvin Ehrenpreis (14 vols, Oxford, 1941–68), v, p. 219. 32 For the history of this parliament, see in general McGuire, ‘Parliament of 1692’; Troost, ‘William III’, ch. 2; McGrath, Constitution, pp. 74–90; and, from a contemporary viewpoint, hostile to administration, An account of the sessions of parliament in Ireland, 1692 (London, 1693). 44


council’s list. The so-called ‘right’ of M.P.s to decide how much money was to be voted to the crown, and by what means, was developed into a point of principle, on which a majority of M.P.s felt deeply enough to reject one of the money bills offered to them.33 At the same time as the ‘sole right’ was being asserted, ‘heads’ were being prepared for the introduction into Ireland of habeas corpus. Sidney regarded these as ‘extravagant’ demands, and their proposers to be ‘a company of madmen’, but he may have been paying more attention to rhetoric than small print when he wrote that members of the commons ‘talk of freeing themselves from the yoke of England and of taking away Poynings’ Law’.34 The conservative John Hely, chief baron of the Irish exchequer, held the same exaggerated view, writing to his brother-in-law Coningsby a few months later that ‘the inclinations of the people are wholly bent on gaining new liberties and establishing their parliament here as absolute and free as that in England’.35 The agenda of the Irish parliamentary opposition in 1692 was entirely compatible with a whiggish approach to politics, since its principal elements were fear of the recrudescence of jacobitism and popery; and a desire to copperfasten the revolution settlement. There were other elements, in particular the purging of corruption and the limiting of executive power, that in England had ceased to be the preserve of whigs and were now characteristic of that back-bench consensus to which contemporaries gave the name ‘country’, in contradistinction to ‘court’. One English observer did indeed describe the two sides in the Dublin parliament of 1692 as ‘court and country’,36 and it has been argued that this would be the most appropriate terminology for historians to adopt.37 But in England the use of the term ‘country party’ implied a coalition of ‘country whigs’ and ‘country tories’, putting aside party differences in a common cause. This was not the case in Ireland. Whereas the ‘country’ consensus in England was very broad, and embodied simple nostrums that no rational person could oppose – honest administration, accountability, good husbandry with public funds, an end to arbitrary government – the programme endorsed by the majority of Irish M.P.s in 1692 was concerned more specifically with the maintenance of the revolution settlement and a protestant establishment. Thus although there was as yet no whig party as such in Ireland, the consensus of political opinion, especially in the house of commons, was distinctively whiggish.38

33

McGrath, Constitution, pp. 80–7. Sidney to Nottingham, 17 October 1692 (C.S.P. dom., 1695 & addenda, p. 213). 35 Hely to Coningsby, 13 February 1693 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/1/4). 36 George Tollet to Bp King, 18 October 1692 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/240). 37 McGuire, ‘Parliament of 1692’, p. 15. 38 It was undoubtedly helpful in this regard that the issue of a legal toleration for protestant dissenters had been raised in this session in the Irish house of lords rather than the commons: Mant, pp. 56–7; O’Regan, King, pp. 68–9. 34

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This point can be underlined by a brief consideration of the composition of the two parties. We have no division list from this parliament for either house,39 but from the evidence of correspondence, and the subsequent activities of some of the opposition members in attempting to carry their grievances to Westminster, it is possible to identify the more prominent individuals. The court party is the more obscure. It included a few recognisable tories, or at least men of a tory disposition, including Sidney’s successful nominee for speaker, the Englishman Sir Richard Levinge. The appearance in support of government of such men as Joseph Coghlan, one of the members for Trinity College, and the Tipperary lawyer Sir John Meade, both of whom had enjoyed a long association with the Ormond family, and in Coghlan’s case had sat in James II’s Irish parliament in 1689, even suggested to the more excitable members of the opposition that this was a jacobite interest.40 Otherwise, the more prominent courtiers, as one might expect, were officeholders, such as Charles Dering, the deputy auditor-general, or Philip Savage, who had recently purchased a patent as chancellor of the Irish exchequer, together with personal friends of the leading ministers.41 It was an ad hoc grouping rather than a settled faction. It also represented a minority of the house of commons. Enough moderate men had joined with the diehard courtiers to guarantee Levinge’s unopposed election to the chair, but afterwards they deserted in droves, and on the main issues – corruption, the security of estates, the treatment of catholics and the limitation of the power of government – the court was consistently defeated. The nature of the opposition is a little clearer. Sidney identified his most vociferous critics as lawyers, predictably enough, given their professional skills.42 Three in particular held legal office, albeit in a junior capacity: Osborne, the prime serjeant, Alan Brodrick, the third serjeant (and recorder of Cork) and Robert Rochfort, a commissioner of the great seal.43 All had been members of the exiles’ committee in 1689, and had previously denounced corruption in the administration. Osborne seems to have been the principal,

39

Cf. below, pp. 58, 96–105. Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 445–6; v, pp. 235–6; Robert Hamilton to Henry Gascoigne, 3 May 1687 (N.L.I., MS 2453, f. 87); ‘Officers in the liberty courts . . .’, 8 August 1688 (ibid., MS 1044/251); Lord Longford to Ormond, 14 November 1691 (Patrick Melvin (ed.), ‘Letters of Lord Longford and others on Irish affairs, 1689–1702’ in Analecta Hibernica, xxxii (1985), p. 76); Hayton, ‘Dependence, clientage & affinity’, pp. 223–5, 240–1; ‘A state of Ireland in a letter 1692/3’ (B.L., Add. MS 70017, ff. 36–7). 41 Hist. Ir. parl., iv, pp. 51–2; vi, pp. 249–50; Sidney to Nottingham, 12 October, 18 November 1692 (C.S.P. dom, 1695 & addenda, pp. 213, 220). 42 Sidney to Nottingham, 17 October 1692 (C.S.P. dom, 1695 & addenda, p. 213). 43 Porter also denounced Osborne: Porter to Coningsby, 18 November 1692 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/18/2). Allegedly it was Rochfort, in a parliamentary debate, who had first dignified the right of the commons to initiate supply legislation with the adjective ‘sole’: Alan to St John Brodrick, 5 June 1703 (S.H.C., 1248/2, f. 98). 40

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but he died suddenly in November 1690. Several independent country gentlemen were also prominent: the old presbyterian Sir Robert King of County Roscommon, and Sir Francis Blundell of King’s County. But the most interesting group were from the north-east: the County Down landowners Hamilton of Bangor, Hamilton of Tollymore, Sir Arthur Rawdon and Sir John Magill, together with the lawyers Francis Annesley and James Sloane (brother of the physician and collector Sir Hans). Sir Arthur Langford, another Ulsterman (although residing in County Meath), may well have been associated with them. These northern gentlemen seem to have acted together both inside and outside parliament, and were to play an important role afterwards in taking the fight across to Westminster.44 Predictably, Sidney explained away opposition as motivated by malice or perverted ambition. He wrote of ‘several persons . . . sent out of England purposely to obstruct everything in this parliament’, and named Sir Francis Brewster, Sloane and one of the James Hamiltons.45 All had important connexions in England: Brewster was a confidant of Lord Carmarthen;46 Sloane had lived in England for some time and acquired various patrons, notably the former secretary of state Sir Joseph Williamson;47 while both Hamilton of Bangor and Hamilton of Tollymore had married daughters of the first Viscount Mordaunt and were brothers-in-law to Charles Mordaunt, first earl of Monmouth. Each of these connexions would have provided inspiration for mischief-making. Carmarthen was becoming increasingly isolated within the English ministry and may well have taken pleasure in Sidney’s discomfiture, since he was not on good terms with the viceroy.48 Williamson, although a tory, and a dependable supporter of the court party in the English house of commons, had not been restored to a position in government and was restive. He also had an interest in Irish property through his wife, who from her previous marriage had come into possession of Irish estates.49 Monmouth, a violent and headstrong whig, had lost office in 1691, and was an out-and-out opponent of the court.50 There were of course many other Irish M.P.s with friends at Westminster. The Brodrick family, to give only one example, were English as well as Irish

44 See, for example, James Hamilton of Tollymore to Sir Arthur Rawdon, 28 March 1691 (Edward Berwick (ed.), Rawdon papers . . . (London, 1819), pp. 339–43); Francis Annesley to same, 29 May 1692 (ibid., pp. 369–71). 45 Sidney to Nottingham, 6, 22 October 1692 (C.S.P. dom., 1695 & addenda, pp. 209, 215). See also Brewster’s account of the state of Ireland, [?1693] (N.L.I., MS 8094). 46 Minute book of syndicate of interloping East India merchants, 17 October 1691 (Bodl., MS Rawl. C. 449 (unfol.)); John Evelyn to his father, 18 June 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 78301); [?Brewster] to William III, [1696] (B.L., Add. MS 21136, f. 13). 47 Commons 1690–1715, v, pp. 491–3. 48 Browning, Danby, i, pp. 499–503. 49 Commons 1690–1715, v, pp. 876–7. 50 Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, pp. 67, 108, 110, 115.

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proprietors, with a seat at Wandsworth in Surrey, and Alan and his two brothers, all of them Irish M.P.s, had attended an inn of court in London alongside members of the English parliament. But the train of events following the 1692 parliamentary session makes it clear that at this stage the prime movers on the Irish side were the Ulstermen. Immediately after the prorogation Rawdon, Langford and Annesley, accompanied by Sir Robert King, presented Sidney with a petition for permission to go to England ‘to solicit for the protestant and English interest’.51 The lord lieutenant’s angry refusal, and threats to have the petitioners prosecuted, proved of no avail. In January 1693 it was reported from London that ‘Sloane, Brewster and three or more insignificant fops’, lately arrived from Dublin, were pressing English M.P.s to take up their cause. Soon afterwards a petition ‘from certain loyal protestant subjects’ of Ireland was presented to the commons, and passed to the committee on the forfeitures bill. It drew attention to the risk that former catholic proprietors might recover their estates from protestant grantees, and closed with a request ‘that such methods may be taken for the security of the protestant interest of that kingdom, as in your wisdom shall be thought fit’. The eight signatories included the two James Hamiltons, their kinsman Hans Hamilton, and Sloane and Annesley.52 The agitation culminated in the hearing by both houses of evidence from a gallery of Irish witnesses with complaints against the Dublin administration. Again, the Ulster representation was strong. Those called before the lords included Sloane, Annesley, Sir John Magill, Colonel Frederick Hamilton of County Londonderry, Edmond Francis Stafford (M.P. in 1692 for Randalstown, County Antrim), Bishop Dopping of Meath, and Elizabeth, Countess of Ardglass, the sister of Hamilton of Tollymore.53 Sloane, Magill and Stafford also appeared before the commons, together with David Cairnes, recorder of Derry and M.P. for the city in 1692.54 Finally, during the ensuing summer, as preparations were made to pursue Porter and Coningsby by impeachment at Westminster, the familiar 51

Sidney to Nottingham, 9 November 1692 (C.S.P. dom., 1695 & addenda, p. 219); Lord Longford to Ellis, 9 November 1692 (Melvin (ed.), ‘Letters of Lord Longford’, p. 107); C.J., x, p. 832; ‘A state of Ireland in letter 1692/3’ (BL, Add. MS 70017, ff. 36–7). 52 Berwick (ed.), Rawdon pprs, pp. 371–4. 53 L.J., xv, pp. 247, 249, 255, 271; H.M.C., House of Lords, iv, pp. 369–73; Lord Bridgwater’s notes on evidence taken before the lords (Huntington Library, EL 9930a). See also below, n. 54. For the close connexion of the countess of Ardglass with both James Hamiltons, see T. K. Lowry (ed.), The Hamilton manuscripts . . . (Belfast, [1867]) p. lxxix; Mark Hodges to James Hamilton of Tollymore, 17 May 1693 (P.R.O.N.I., Mic/147/8, xvi, nos 106–7). 54 C.J., x, pp. 823, 826–33; Luttrell parliamentary diary, ed. Horwitz, pp. 436–43. Some anonymous notes in the Bridgwater papers at the Huntington Library (MS EL 9918), which may relate to this episode since they evidently date from February 1693 and include references to ‘Mr Kirne [Cairnes]’, seem to indicate that there had also been contributions from among others, ‘Hambleton [Hamilton]’ and ‘Anseley [Annesley]’. It is possible, however, that these are a second set of Bridgwater’s notes on the lords’ hearings. 48


figure of Hamilton of Tollymore reappeared at the centre of a campaign to forestall any pre-emptive pardon by the English privy council.55 The charges being brought against the Irish administration were potentially very damaging, involving not only corruption and abuse of power, but implications of jacobitism. It is no surprise to find that Sidney, facing a wave of popular accusations that he had ‘encouraged the papists only and had disobliged all the protestants of Ireland’, should have tried to steer the debate into a different channel, and concentrate his own defence on the issue of the ‘sole right’ and the supposed enthusiasm of Irish protestants for independence, in the hope of arousing English indignation. However, although successful in explaining himself to the king, he did not defuse the outrage expressed by English members of parliament at the evidence of the Irish witnesses, and both houses addressed against what the lords called ‘exorbitant abuses, great mismanagements and many arbitrary and illegal proceedings’.56 In February 1693 the cause of Irish protestants appealed to all the elements in the English parliamentary opposition, for different reasons. Leaving aside the individualists, like Lord Monmouth, the forces ranged against the declining tory ministry at this point may be approximately divided into three separate groups. The main body of the whig opposition consisted of wouldbe ministerialists, whose aim was to replace Carmarthen and Nottingham. These were sometimes called the ‘new whigs’, a reference to the comparative youthfulness of their leaders: the future whig junto of Charles Montagu, Admiral Edward Russell, Sir John Somers and Thomas Wharton represented a rising generation with a different, executive-oriented, political outlook. There was also a smaller group of ‘country’ whigs, some of them veterans of the struggles over exclusion, and headed by two Herefordshire squires, Paul Foley, a humourless moralist with the nickname ‘heavy Paul’, and his nephew by marriage, the altogether more supple apprentice politician Robert Harley. A third, much larger, faction of irreconcilable ‘country tories’, led by Sir Thomas Clarges and Sir Christopher Musgrave, co-operated closely with Harley and Foley while retaining a distinct identity. Each of these groups seized on the failures of the government in Dublin. Two of the ‘new whigs’ had a particular interest in Irish affairs: Henry, Lord Capel, who had been associated with his brother the earl of Essex’s Irish lord lieutenancy in 1672–7 and who cherished ambitions to occupy the viceregal throne himself,57 and Thomas Wharton, who had recently married the 55

Robert Harley to Sir Edward Harley, 24 June 1693 (H.M.C., Portland, iii, p. 534); P.R.O.N.I., D/638/18/12. 56 John Richards to Sir Cyril Wyche, 8 January 1692/3 (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/65); L.J., xv, p. 274; C.J., x, pp. 842–3. 57 See the letters from Capel to his brother in Letters written by his excellency Arthur Capel, earl of Essex, lord lieutenant of Ireland, in the year 1675 . . . (Dublin, 1770), and B.L., Stowe MSS 207–12; John Richards to Sir Cyril Wyche, 8 January 1692/3 (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/65); John Evelyn to his father, 14 January 1692/3 (B.L., Add. MS 78301). 49


daughter of an Irish peer, Lord Lisburne, and seems also to have made Dublin Castle the focus of his political ambitions. Wharton’s brother Goodwin played a prominent role in pressing the Irish protestants’ case in the commons, and their father Philip was active in the lords.58 Members of the ‘country’ persuasion, whether whig or tory, were more concerned with the exposure of wrongdoing for its own sake, and through the investigations of the commission of accounts had already shown a willingness to probe for evidence of malpractice in Ireland.59 But they too had their own priorities. Tories were determined to fasten their teeth into the whig malefactors Sidney and Coningsby, and were less exercised about the sins of their fellow high churchman Porter.60 The country whigs, Foley and Harley, had close personal associations with Ireland and seem to have shared the political attitudes of the aggrieved Irish protestants. Foley was kept abreast of developments in Dublin by his brother Samuel, fellow of Trinity College, and dean of Achonry.61 Harley had his own informants, notably the accountant-general James Bonnell, and Henry Boyle, grandson of the second earl of Cork, who had served as chairman of the supply committee in the Irish parliament of 1692 and was also an M.P. at Westminster.62 In addition, Harley had a special reason for wishing to see Coningsby disgraced, since the Irish lord justice was his family’s enemy in Herefordshire elections.63 The coincidence of purpose between ‘new whigs’, ‘country whigs’ and ‘country tories’ was a temporary phenomenon, and soon dissolved. The reason lay in the changes that overtook the English political scene in 1693–4. The king decided upon a reconstruction of his ministry. Acting under the advice of the second earl of Sunderland, the devious former minister of James II who was now operating behind the scenes as an unacknowledged royal counsellor, and of the Dutch royal favourite, the earl of Portland, he tacked towards the whigs.64 Somers was made lord keeper, Montagu chancellor of the exchequer, and two other whigs, Sir John Trenchard and the duke of Shrewsbury, secretaries of state. With the exception of Carmarthen and a handful of his 58

C.J., x, pp. 833–4, L.J., xv, p. 274; Luttrell parliamentary diary, ed. Horwitz, pp. 438, 448; Francis Annesley to Sir Arthur Rawdon, 24 February 1693 (Berwick (ed.) Rawdon pprs, p. 373); Henry Guy to Portland, 12/22 July 1693 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 508). 59 Sir Peter Colleton’s diary of the accounts commission, 1691–2 (B.L., Harl. MS 6837, f. 192). 60 Robert Price to the duke of Beaufort, 25 February 1692[/3] (Bodl., MS Carte 130, f. 345). 61 Fellow of T.C.D., chancellor of St Patrick’s, Dublin, 1689, dean of Achonry 1691, bishop of Down and Connor 1694. See Samuel to Philip Foley, 20 December 1689, 23 May 1692 (Hereford and Worcestershire R.O., Hereford, Foley papers, E12/F/IV/BE/178, 227); Sir William Trumbull to William Blathwayt, 9 July 1697 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, p. 751). 62 See, for example, H.M.C., Portland, iii, pp. 476, 479–81, 505, 542–3. 63 Commons 1690–1715, ii, pp. 258–9, 263, 267. 64 For what follows see J. P. Kenyon, Robert Spencer earl of Sunderland 1641–1702 (London, 1958), pp. 256–63; Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, ch. 6. 50


followers, who clung to office, former court tories were pushed out and forcibly reunited with their ‘country’ brethren. Foley, Harley and the ‘country whigs’ thus found themselves in a difficult position. They were not prepared to be submerged by the tories, but neither could they make terms with the junto, whom they despised on moral as well as political grounds. Their ideal was honest and frugal government, and between 1694 and 1696, when the war was going badly and England suffering a financial crisis, they entertained hopes that William would turn away from his ministers and instead place himself in their hands. So for a time they set a course of constructive, non-partisan opposition. The effect of this political reshuffling on the pursuit of inquiries into maladministration in Ireland was visible in the next English parliamentary session, when articles of impeachment were brought in against Coningsby and Porter. As far as the junto were concerned, Sidney and Coningsby were now ministerial colleagues, though they were not much liked or trusted. They would have been glad to see Porter convicted if this could have been done without fuss, but at the same time felt obliged to protect Coningsby, and by implication Sidney as well. The tories similarly retreated into partisanship. They wanted a conviction against Coningsby but needed to protect Porter. Only the Foley/Harley faction persisted in wholehearted support for both prongs of the impeachment process. During the summer of 1693 Harley gave advice and assistance to Hamilton of Tollymore and the disgruntled Irish whig Lord Bellomont, in a petition to prevent the council from indemnifying Coningsby and Porter in advance of the expected impeachment.65 On one occasion Harley dined with Bellomont, James Sloane and Hamilton of Tollymore to discuss tactics.66 When the impeachment was finally begun, in December 1693, Bellomont, M.P. for Droitwich, presented the indictment and led for the prosecution; Harley was at work behind the scenes.67 A few Irish witnesses were called, among them Francis Annesley.68 However, without a broader base of support in England, failure was inevitable.69 65 Sir Edward to Robert Harley, 4 July 1693 (B.L., Add. MS 70235); letters of Bellomont to same, n.d. [1693] (ibid., Add. MS 70282); petition of Bellomont and James Hamilton to the Queen, 22 June 1693 (H.M.C., Portland, viii, pp. 35–6); Robert to Sir Edward Harley, 24 June, 3 August 1693 (ibid., iii, pp. 534, 539); memorial of Bellomont and Hamilton to the privy council, 17 August 1693 (ibid., viii, p. 37); drafts of the same (B.L., Add. MSS 70062, 70264, 70278); Bellomont to Robert Harley, 1 September 1693 (H.M.C. Portland, iii, p. 542). For Bellomont’s motives, see Sir Christopher Musgrave to Robert Harley, 8 July 1693 (ibid., iii, p. 535); Abel Boyer, The history of King William III (3 vols, London, 1702–3), ii, p. 375. 66 Bellomont to Robert Harley, ‘Wednesday morning’ [1693] (B.L., Add. MS 70219). 67 C.J., xi, pp. 33–4; articles of impeachment against Coningsby and Porter, 16 December 1693 (C.S.P. dom. 1695 & addenda, pp. 228–9); ‘Proceedings on Impeachmts Ireland &c’ (B.L., Add. MS 70306). 68 C.J., xi, pp. 33–4. 69 Ibid., p. 73.

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III As part of this change in the political direction of government, Sidney was replaced as lord lieutenant of Ireland in June 1693 by a commission of lords justices that included Capel alongside the moderate whig William Duncombe, and the former secretary to the lords justices in 1690–2, the longserving bureaucrat Sir Cyril Wyche. Capel saw himself as the senior partner on the commission, and constantly intrigued to be made lord lieutenant, exploiting his personal friendship with Portland, and with Trenchard, with both of whom he was in private communication. There were difficulties, however. Capel’s health was fragile.70 His judgement was also open to question: his opinions were flagrantly partisan; he was easily convinced by those whose prejudices he shared; and he was sanguine to the point of overconfidence. Underlying everything else was the fact that he was not the junto’s first choice for the chief governorship. Wharton had not abandoned his ambition to preside at Dublin Castle. Conscious of a reluctance on the part of Portland and ministerial colleagues to give him what he wanted, Capel took the initiative and sought to make himself appear indispensable. The opportunity came over the vexed question of whether to call a new parliament. English ministers, faced with an empty treasury in Ireland, and anxious to complete the settlement of the kingdom, were in favour. Capel agreed, but Duncombe and Wyche, the embodiment of caution, were against.71 Capel saw his chance. During the summer and early autumn of 1694 he unilaterally opened negotiations with former opponents of Sidney’s administration, who, he reported, were perfectly willing to support his own government, provided that certain conditions were met. He might even persuade them to abandon claims over the ‘sole right’. This was certainly much more than Duncombe and Wyche could offer, since their only advice was negative. Capel had also acquired powerful supporters at court, including Shrewsbury and, even more important, Sunderland, through whom he could reach the king. It may well be that Sunderland was attracted to Capel’s scheme as a means to spite Wharton, but Capel was forced to wait. Negotiations dragged on during the autumn of 1694 and in December, in a private letter to Shrewsbury, he was obliged to play his trump card. If he was not made viceroy his Irish friends would not comply: the projected deal would be off, and the ‘sole right’ asserted once again. This did force the 70 Capel’s letters to Portland may be found in Nottingham University Library, Portland (Bentinck) papers; his letters to Trenchard in Dorset R.O., Lane papers. There are comments on his health in, for example, Trenchard to Portland, 25 May 1694 (Nottingham University Library, PwA1420), John Evelyn to his father, 5 May 1694 (B.L., Add. MS 78301); same to his mother, 31 July 1694 (ibid., Add. MS 78432). 71 Capel to Shrewsbury, 29 April, 3, 17 July 1694 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 63, 94–5, 103); copies of letters from Duncombe and Wyche to Sir John Trenchard, and Capel to same, 14 July 1694 (B.L., Add. MS 21136, ff. 25–8).

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ministry’s hand, though still there was delay. Only in March of the following year was Capel told privately that he would be chief governor, and only in May was he publicly declared.72 The junto probably objected to him on personal grounds. It was even suggested by one observer that a joint commission with Wharton had been intended until Portland had intervened.73 The fact that Capel was appointed lord deputy and not lord lieutenant certainly hints at unresolved resentment. Capel’s own opinions and connexions, and the strategy he adopted to advance himself into the chief governor’s place, did much to shape the political configurations that would be evident in the Irish parliament over which he presided in 1695. By choosing to confide in, and effectively to negotiate with, the former opposition, he ensured that the groupings and alliances obtaining in 1692 would remain largely intact. At the same time, the fact that he was himself a strong whig imparted to Irish political divisions a more distinctively English flavour. He was not wholly responsible for these developments, however. Long before Capel’s arrival in Ireland, Lord Sidney’s peevish reaction to the débâcle of the 1692 session, in dismissing Osborne and Alan Brodrick, had given grave offence.74 Such vindictiveness may have been common practice in England, but was unheard of in Ireland.75 An important consequence of the dismissals was to reinforce a sense of solidarity among the victims and their connexions. As for the members of the former court party, although less coherent ideologically they too seem to have preserved a degree of unity after 1692, for the fragmentary evidence which survives of discussions between Irish politicians in 1693–4 over the possibility of a new parliament indicates that those who had been Lord Sidney’s ‘friends’ were preparing actively to take up the issue of the ‘sole right’ should a new set of commons managers agree to give it up.76 The ex-ministerialists were doubtless encouraged by the conflict between the lords justices, and by the presence on the commission of Sir Cyril Wyche, who provided a link with the previous administration. The crucial factor was personality. In the last resort Capel’s whig loyalties made it impossible for him to trust men he regarded, rightly or wrongly, as tories. These included prominent parliamentary supporters of the old regime, such as the solicitor-general and former speaker, Levinge, who was certainly a tory in England. Capel was thus predisposed to favour the former opposition, whom he considered to be men of the same principles as himself. His

72

Portland to Capel, 7 March 1695 (Japikse, ii, p. 46). [Sir Richard Cox] to [?Edward Southwell], [July 1695] (B.L., Add MS 38153, ff. 12–13). 74 McGuire, ‘Irish parliament of 1692’, p. 28; Robert Yard to Sir William Dutton Colt, 11 November 1692 (B.L., Add. MS 34096, f. 210). 75 [Alan] to [St John Brodrick], 6 May 1693 (S.H.C., 1248/1, ff. 259–60). 76 John Reading to Sir Arthur Rawdon, 13 October 1694 (Berwick (ed.), Rawdon pprs, p. 381). 73

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particular bête noire was Porter; and very soon the two men were at daggers drawn. The first time Capel had differed openly from his fellow lords justices on an important political matter had been in the winter of 1693–4 over the choice of a new archbishop of Dublin. Duncombe and Wyche had recommended a roaring tory, Bishop Moreton of Kildare; Capel the more moderate (and in his view more reliably Williamite) John Vesey, archbishop of Tuam.77 Behind the nomination of Moreton, Capel detected the hand of the lord chancellor. Moreover, in his correspondence with Secretary Trenchard he referred to Moreton as the favourite of Porter’s ‘party’.78 In the end, a compromise candidate emerged, the scholarly archbishop of Cashel, Narcissus Marsh, a former provost of Trinity. But even here Capel sensed Porter’s machinations, for the king’s first choice had been Thomas Tenison, the bishop of Lincoln (and future archbishop of Canterbury), an English ‘low churchman’ whom Capel would have preferred, and Porter was blamed for persuading Tenison to turn down the opportunity.79 Capel’s perception that the lord chancellor stood at the head of a tory faction in Ireland was not necessarily accurate, but it is the first indication of the way in which the personal antagonism between the two men was to polarise political loyalties. Porter was certainly acting as the focus of resistance to Capel’s policies, a leader behind whom the old court party could regroup, while the chancellor’s own party affiliation gave his followers something of the character of a tory interest.80 These developments were brought to completion by the reconstruction of the Irish ministry in 1695, before Capel’s parliament met, which was part of the price the new lord deputy persuaded his junto colleagues to pay in return for what he hoped would be a successful session. The terms of the arrangement had already been spelled out. As early as August 1694, Capel had been informed by one of the Brodricks that in a new parliament ‘our party’ would prove to be ‘entire as ever men were, and every one of them as faithful to the king’s interest and as truly devoted to your lordship’s service, as ever were yet known in this or any other kingdom’. But ‘they are desirous of having the previous things done before the meeting of a parliament, which I mentioned to your lordship’.81 In turn Capel made a number of recommendations to Shrewsbury. They amounted to a purge of the higher echelons of the judiciary: Porter had to go, of course, and with him Chief Baron Hely, Sir Richard Reynell, the lord chief justice of King’s Bench, and two justices

77

Troost, ‘William III’, pp. 87–90. Capel to Trenchard, 21 November [1693], n.d. [1693/4] (ibid., D60/X20); same to Shrewsbury, 12 April [1694] (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 62). 79 Capel to Shrewsbury, 12 April 1694 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 62); Shrewsbury to Capel, 29 April 1693 (ibid., p. 63). 80 Burnet, History of his own time, iv, p. 285. See also Capel to Trenchard, 4 November 1693 (Dorset RO, D60/X20); Porter to Coningsby, 1 February 1694/5 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/18/39). 81 [St John] Brodrick to Capel, 5 August 1694 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 110–11). 78

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of common pleas, Sir Richard Cox and John Jeffreyson. The attorney-general, John Temple, and the solicitor-general, Levinge, should also be dismissed. Since these men were all privy councillors, their removal from office would result in a remodelling of the council. As to replacements, Capel made a number of suggestions, including Alan Brodrick, Robert Rochfort, Sir Robert King, and another prominent ‘sole right man’, Sir Christopher Wandesford, whose qualifications were certainly not diminished by his marriage to Charles Montagu’s sister.82 Capel did not get all he wanted: Porter remained in office, which was the biggest disappointment; Hely was moved sideways to common pleas; and Cox and Jeffreyson lost their places on the council but remained on the bench. More positively, at least as far as the new lord deputy was concerned, was the acceptance of two of his recommendations to the judiciary, Nehemiah Donnellan and Robert Doyne, the appointment of Rochfort and Alan Brodrick, respectively, to replace Temple and Levinge, and the inclusion in the privy council of Wandesford, King and Thomas Brodrick. Of the other prominent oppositionists from 1692–3, only Sir Arthur Rawdon was made a privy councillor, speculation of similar advancement for Sir Francis Brewster and James Hamilton of Tollymore proving unfounded.83 Capel’s new court party, headed in the Irish house of commons by Rochfort and the Brodricks, was armed with popular policies. Capel told Shrewsbury that the ‘gentlemen’ with whom he had discussed political strategy had told him that ‘though they were contented to waive the sole right, yet did it in hopes of a lasting settlement and good laws, which they expected from me in whom they had confidence’.84 The political reality was that ‘good laws’ were popular laws, and the most popular were those penalising catholics. So at the opening of the parliament the council produced two measures which in retrospect may be seen to have inaugurated the eighteenth-century penal code: first, to prevent catholics from bearing arms and owning horses of sufficient quality to serve for cavalry mounts; and second, to make it illegal for catholics to keep schools themselves or send their children to be educated abroad.85 Porter observed that these two bills were unstoppable, ‘the majority of the commons being earnest for them’ and Capel ‘co-operating therein as if it had been part of the bargain upon which the new measures are taken’.86

82

Capel to Shrewsbury, 15 November [1694] (ibid., pp. 159–61). Troost, ‘William III’, pp. 99–101; list of changes in Ireland, 10 May 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 21136, f. 29); John Evelyn to his father, 18 June 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 78301). Capel himself was to attribute the success of his management of the house of commons in 1695 to the support of the Brodrick brothers, Robert Rochfort, and ‘some in the north, who could bring in many voices’: Capel to Portland, 6 November 1695 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 252). 84 Capel to Shrewsbury, [December 1694] (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 168–9). 85 Connolly, Religion, pp. 267–8; C. I. McGrath, ‘Securing the protestant interest: the origins and purpose of the penal laws of 1695’ in I.H.S., xxx (1996–7), pp. 25–46. 86 Porter to Sir William Trumbull, 3 July 1695 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, p. 493). 83

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So enthusiastic did rank-and-file parliamentarians become that both houses brought in further measures of their own, lords and commons each proposing ‘heads’ to banish catholic regular clergy and those secular priests claiming to exercise spiritual jurisdiction, and the commons adding another set, to deter intermarriage between protestants and catholics. This was going too far for the king and his English ministers, who had to balance successful management of the Irish parliament with the retention of the goodwill of the Habsburg Emperor and other catholic allies. They did, however, permit the Irish council to suppress Porter’s proposal for the legislative ratification of the treaty of Limerick (advocated by the chancellor on practical grounds), and allowed a bill to make void the acts of attainder passed by the jacobite parliament of 1689.87 The reconstruction of the Irish administration and the ‘good laws’ prepared by the Irish council produced the desired result in the parliamentary session of August to December 1695. When the new house of commons met, Robert Rochfort was chosen speaker. Potential controversy over the ‘sole right’ was then defused by a compromise agreed in advance between Capel and his new managers, by which the council prepared a ‘short’ money bill, granting only the inland additional excise for a period of one year, in order to abide by the letter of Poynings’ Law and preserve the conciliar (and therefore royal) prerogative, while allowing the remainder of the supply to be decided by the commons. In his speech from the throne Capel appealed to the members of the lower house to consider ‘ways and means’ of raising money and to prepare ‘heads of bills’ to that end, thus acknowledging implicitly their right to do so. Despite grumbling by diehard ‘patriots’, the government’s money bill was accepted, and in subsequent supply debates the court party was able to procure for Capel more or less everything he wanted, despite sniping from the opposition benches over the amount to be granted (the ‘quantum’), and the accounts of expenditure reported.88 Not everything in the garden was rosy, however. As far as the Irish parliament was concerned, the ideal of every viceroy was a session that was both productive, in terms of subsidies (and perhaps also some other necessary legislation), and undisturbed. Sidney’s parliament of 1692 had been neither. In 1695 Capel achieved the first but not the second, for the tranquillity of the session was broken by two attempts at impeachment, the first directed against Porter, initiated by the court managers, especially Rochfort and the Brodricks,89 and the second against Capel’s chief secretary, Richard Aldworth, 87 Troost, ‘William III’, pp. 115–20; Capel to Shrewsbury, 15 August, 17 November 1695 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 215–16, 258); James Vernon to same, 28/9 September 1696 (G. P. R. James (ed.), Letters illustrative of the reign of William III, from 1696 to 1708 . . . (3 vols, London, 1841), i, pp. 8–9). 88 McGrath, Constitution, pp. 93–105. 89 Porter to Capel, 22 September 1695 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/18/51); J.F. to Ellis, 28 September 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 28879, f. 157).

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which was a counter-attack by the lord chancellor’s friends. Dr Troost has interpreted these parliamentary battles as a further round in the conflict between ‘pro-’ and ‘anti-treaty’ parties. His argument is superficially attractive, since the terms of the treaty were still a matter of debate, and Porter was publicly identified both with the original negotiations and the recent pressure for ratification. But by this time the events of 1691–2 had been overtaken by a factional conflict that embraced many other issues. The treaty of Limerick, and allegations concerning Porter’s subsequent conduct in government, formed the matter of his impeachment rather than its cause. In fact, the precise reason why the chancellor came under renewed attack at this time is unclear. The impeachment may or may not have been at Capel’s instigation. The Brodricks did what they could to absolve the lord deputy of responsibility, and he denied it himself.90 It would certainly have done him no good at Whitehall to be thought of as wilfully stirring up trouble. At the same time, he cannot have been displeased that a man he had struggled against for two years, and for whose dismissal he had pressed so hard, should now be in the dock.91 However, Capel’s commons managers had a much stronger tactical motive. By focusing attention back on the chancellor and his supposed misdeeds they could divert any resentment at their own betrayal of former principles, and perhaps even reconstruct the whiggish coalition that had proved so successful in obstructing Sidney’s government three years earlier. If this was their aim, they cannot really be said to have succeeded to any substantial degree. Both impeachments were defeated, the articles against Porter being thrown out by a majority of forty-four on a division after many hours’ debate.92 Some former allies of Rochfort and the Brodricks who had been wavering in their political allegiance over the ‘sole right’ issue returned to support them but others did not. Although the fact that the impeachment was brought in at all does indicate a degree of continuity with parliamentary divisions in the preceding session, its failure also demonstrates that political allegiances in the Irish house of commons cannot yet be characterised in rigid two-party terms. 90

[Capel] to [Shrewsbury], 7 October 1695 (S.H.C., Somers papers, 371/14/F/13); same to the king, 26 October 1695 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 251); same to James Vernon, 23 November 1695 (C.S.P. dom., 1695 & addenda, p. 109); same to Shrewsbury, November 1695 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 268); same to Portland, 11 January 1696 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 267). 91 Capel’s failure to ‘concern himself’ for Porter was certainly obvious, and remarked upon: John Freke to Edward Clarke, 8 October 1695 (Somerset R.O., DD/SF 3902); H.M.C., Portland, iii, p. 570). One hostile witness went so far as to speak of ‘open war between the lord deputy and lord chancellor’: John Evelyn to his father, 30 December 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 78301). For Capel’s personal opinion of Porter see his letters to Somers and Shrewsbury, 6/7 October 1695 (S.H.C., 371/14/F/11, 13). Porter’s opinion of Capel is given in his letter to Trumbull, 31 October 1695 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, p. 576). 92 C.J.I., ii, pp. 750–1; Porter to Coningsby, 26 October 1695 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/18/55); same to Trumbull (H.M.C., Downshire, i, pp. 574–7). 57


Two items of evidence may be adduced in support of this conclusion. The first is a division-list, or, rather, the nearest we have to a division-list, over the impeachments; actually, a contemporary marked list of the commons, dividing members into supporters and opponents of Porter (with only a handful of names left without annotation and therefore not a record of the crucial vote). Those against the impeachment were described as ‘friends to the ld chancellor and late governments’, an assumption that in broad terms was probably correct.93 However, even without a comparable list from the preceding session we can see that there were at least some notable exceptions to the rule, since a few members appear on Porter’s side who had previously been prominent opponents of Sidney’s administration, men such as Maurice Annesley, Sir Robert Colvill, James Hamilton, Sir Robert King and James Sloane. The same applies if we look forward a decade and compare the 1695 list with the next batch of house of commons’ lists, from the period 1706–13, the heyday of ‘party’ conflict. This shows a substantial but still incomplete correlation between the court party of 1695 and the whigs of Queen Anne’s reign, and between the supporters of the lord chancellor in 1695 and the later tories. Of the M.P.s listed in 1695 who were to be re-elected in Anne’s reign, forty-one of those voting for the impeachment would later turn out to be whigs, and forty-nine of those against the impeachment would turn out to be tories, making together a total of 90 out of 128, or 70 per cent.94 How these figures are interpreted will depend on where one wishes to place the emphasis: on the approximately two-thirds who retained their putative ‘party’ affiliation between 1695 and 1706–13, or on the one-third who changed sides. In any case the most that can be argued on this basis is that there was an ‘incipient party system’; not a party system in full maturity.95 The second item of evidence is a letter in the Brodrick papers, from Alan to his absent brother St John, which gives an account of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition, in particular on the question of the impeachments.96 Perhaps for reasons of his own, Brodrick’s analysis brought out the incoherence of Porter’s party, suggesting that it was made up of a number of factions. Some were clearly tories by principle; as Brodrick put it, men who are ‘supposed not much disaffected to the Irish or jacobitism’, and among these he named Sir Donough O’Brien, Joseph Coghlan (who had brought in the impeachment of Aldworth and been censured for it by the house), and Sir John Meade.97 But he added that, on a more mundane level, the lord

93

T.C.D., MS 1179, pp. 37–9. Emphasis added. See appendix below, pp. 96–105. 95 D. W. Hayton, ‘The beginnings of the “undertaker system”’ in Bartlett and Hayton, Penal era, p. 44. 96 Alan to St John Brodrick, 17 December 1695 (S.H.C., 1248/1, ff. 278–9). 97 Capel himself claimed that all the ‘jacobites’ in the commons had defended Porter: Capel to Portland, 28 September 1695 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 246). 94

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chancellor’s supporters included ‘trenche[r] friends (for he kept a very good table, and is a courteous well bred man, and a very boon companion) . . . persons having causes depending before him . . . clerks of chancery and lawyers’.98 Naturally, one might also find ‘the friends of those who were lately displaced’, including various political associates of Sir Richard Levinge, who although not himself a member of this parliament was able to exercise some influence over its proceedings. Finally, Brodrick catalogued the various English politicians who were interfering, either directly or through local spokesmen: Sidney (now Lord Romney) and Coningsby were perhaps the most predictable, the former working through Charles Dering and the latter through his son-in-law apparent Sir Thomas Southwell; but as well there was Sir Joseph Williamson, attending in person and putting himself ‘at the head of the chancellor’s party’;99 Lord Clifford, representing the interests of the Boyle family; and most surprisingly perhaps, Lord Wharton, whose most vociferous agents in the Dublin parliament were Philip Savage and James Sloane. Given that the pattern of English parliamentary politics was at last beginning to resolve itself into a simple binary model – the whig junto predominating in the court party at Westminster and the tories now constituting the overwhelming majority of the opposition – it may be tempting to assume that any involvement by English politicians would have shaped Irish politics along the same lines. In fact the various principals each had their own personal axes to grind: Romney and Coningsby were concerned to safeguard themselves in case the impeachments widened in scope, and Romney may also have indulged in a little Schadenfreude at his successor’s expense; Williamson was probably trying to force himself back into office; and Wharton, or so Brodrick alleged, had his eye on Capel’s place: ‘Mr Savage was the head of Wharton’s friends,’ he wrote, ‘and I believe he thought whatever tended to the removing of Lord Capel (as an abrupt breaking up of the parliament must have done) put Mr Wharton nearer and next to the possession of his wishes.’ More interesting, perhaps, for the long-term development of Irish politics are the several signs in this parliament of a fracturing of the coalition of ‘whig’ interests in Ireland that had opposed Sidney’s administration, with a splinter group of ‘country’ whigs, as we might perhaps call them, moving into opposition. At the very beginning of the session there were difficulties over the ‘sole right’, with a number of the Brodricks’ former allies refusing to accept the 98

Capel’s description of ‘My lord chancellor’s party’ was strikingly similar: ‘lawyers, attorneys and solicitors that make a considerable part of the house; the com[missione]rs of the revenue and collectors . . . many gentlemen likewise that have suits depending in his court, and all the Irish and jacobite interest’ ([Capel] to [Shrewsbury], 7 October 1695 (S.H.C., 371/14/F/13)). One of the three ‘chancery lawyers’ in the commons, Richard Warburton, reported that he and two colleagues had defended Porter: to [Ellis], 9 October 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 28879, ff. 190–1). 99 On this point see also Capel to Shrewsbury, 28 August 1695 (S.H.C., 371/14/F/5). 59


validity of the negotiated compromise: James Sloane (for reasons of his own), Francis Annesley, Maurice Annesley, and another north-easterner, Randal Brice.100 They were joined by Robert Molesworth, a major Anglo-Irish figure with a seat in both Irish and English parliaments, whose credentials as a ‘commonwealth whig’ had been established by his authorship of the bestselling Account of Denmark.101 These ‘country whigs’, aided and abetted by friends in the house of lords, seem to have pushed a constitutional agenda which Capel disliked and his managers found embarrassing: heads of a bill of rights, originally put forward in the upper house, and measures from the commons to regulate the privy council, and to establish habeas corpus in Ireland, were all passed by parliament but subsequently suppressed.102 Eventually Francis Annesley and Molesworth, and perhaps some others of a similar ‘country’ disposition, were drawn back into the ministerial fold by the impeachment of Porter. Both voted for it, and Molesworth was a teller with Alan Brodrick in the vital division.103 This may well have been one of the motives behind the impeachment. However, the adoption by the Brodricks of a ministerial ethos akin to the ‘new whiggism’ of the junto had shown how the whig consensus in protestant Ireland might be broken, and where ideological divisions might arise. The anti-catholic policies promoted by the new administration were almost universally popular among M.P.s, but in other respects it was not easy for these government whigs to remain true to their libertarian traditions, and in the pursuit of ‘corrupt’ officials they stopped short at members of their own party. Thus in 1695 Porter was impeached but Coningsby was left untouched. Meanwhile in the background, and increasingly dangerous as far as Irish whigs were concerned, was the problem

100 Porter to Trumbull, 15 July 1695 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, pp. 497–8); [J.F.] to Ellis, 6 September 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 28879, f. 104). For Brice, see Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 263–4. Brice was also supposedly influenced by a powerful patron, in his case the absentee landlord the marquess of Normanby (alias ‘the marquis of Marribone [Marylebone]’), whose agent he was: [J.F.] to Ellis, 6 September 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 28879, f. 104); Lord Winchester to Shrewsbury, 9 September 1697 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 553). 101 Hist. Ir. parl., v, pp. 259–61; Commons 1690–1715, iv, pp. 826–35. 102 Capel to Shrewsbury, 6, 10 September 1695 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 223–5); same to Portland, 1, 26 October 1695 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 247, 251); McGrath, Constitution, pp. 101–11; W.N. Osborough, ‘The failure to enact an Irish bill of rights: a gap in Irish constitutional history’ in Irish Jurist, xxiii (1998), pp. 394–9. 103 On the other hand, Bishop Moreton of Kildare claimed that Porter had been saved by ‘the steadiness of the country gentlemen . . . upon the experience they had of his goodness’: Moreton to Wyche, 29 October 1695 (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/138). Our knowledge of Francis Annesley’s conduct in this parliament is complicated by the presence in the house of commons of his namesake Maurice. Either could be the ‘Mr Anslow’ denounced by Capel as one of the ‘great promoters in the house of commons of all things that diminished the prerogatives of the crown and abated the king’s revenue’, although the evidence of the parliamentary list suggests that this was probably Maurice rather than Francis. Capel to Portland, 7 March 1696 (Nottingham University Library, MS PwA 267).

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of protestant dissent. This was the one issue from which a ‘tory’ interest in Ireland could derive political capital, and its impact was heightened by the wholesale immigration of Scottish presbyterians into Ulster from about 1694 onwards.104 Clerical politicians were quick to impute a connexion between Capel’s court party and the presbyterians, one bishop writing in December 1696 that in the previous session ‘the dissenters’ interest’ in the commons had been ‘joined with the lord deputy’s, the speaker of the house of commons and all his adherents’.105 However, despite being instructed from Whitehall to offer proposals to relieve dissenters from legal disabilities, Capel did not make a strenuous effort in this regard, and watched from the sidelines as an attempt by Lord Drogheda to introduce a toleration bill into the house of lords was destroyed by the bishops.106 The establishment of a whiggish administration in Ireland in 1695 was not, therefore, simply a replacement of one party by another in government – the ‘anti-treaty’ group taking over from the ‘pro-treaty’ group, in Dr Troost’s formulation, or proto-whigs taking over from proto-tories – but a stage in the development of a two-party system. The new court interest included only some elements in the opposition coalition of 1692, which naturally offended those who were left outside. From the first, a good deal of resentment was directed at the Brodricks, whose personal ambitions were made flagrantly obvious when Thomas Brodrick put up, unsuccessfully, against Rochfort for the speakership.107 The impeachment of Porter was even interpreted in some quarters as a move towards procuring Thomas the lord chancellorship.108 The persistence of this hostility was amply demonstrated during the conflicts in the council following Capel’s death in May 1696. Not only were Porter and his cronies at odds with the majority of councillors, but open hostility was also displayed towards the Brodricks and their allies, Lord Mountrath and General William Wolseley (Capel’s first replacements as lords justices), by whig magnates like Drogheda.109 Furthermore, the limitations of the political appeal of this new court interest had been exposed, as depending almost exclusively on anti-jacobite and anti-catholic rhetoric, at the expense of

104 Reid, ii, pp. 427–9; Tobias Pullein, An answer to a paper, entitled, The case of the protestant dissenters of Ireland . . . (Dublin, 1695); [Anthony Dopping,] The case of the dissenters of Ireland, considered . . . ([Dublin,] 1695). 105 Bp King to Bp Wood, 13 December 1696 (T.C.D., MS 750/1, pp. 48–9). 106 Reid, ii, pp. 423–5; Mant, p. 63. 107 J.F. to Ellis, 18, 28 August 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 28879, ff. 88, 98); William Burgh to same, 27 August 1695 (ibid., f. 96). 108 Arthur Bushe to [same], 5 October 1695 (ibid., f. 184). 109 Troost, ‘William III’, pp. 140–6; Shrewsbury to the king, 23 June/3 July 1696 (William Coxe, Private and original correspondence of Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury . . . (London, 1821), pp. 125–6); Porter to Coningsby, 30 July 1696 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/18/75); Drogheda to Arthur Moore, 18 August 1696 (University of Kansas, Spencer Research Library, MS 143/Cz).

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other, equally important whig principles. Capel’s political ‘revolution’ of 1695 had thus succeeded in constructing a whig faction in Ireland that closely resembled the junto, both in its ministerial ethos and in the narrowness of its ideological appeal.

IV The continuance of successful political management in Ireland after 1695 required a broadening in the basis of the court’s support. ‘The present governors of the present governor’, as one commentator described them, did not even include Speaker Rochfort, who may have been regarded by the Brodricks as too powerful a rival. Besides Alan and Thomas Brodrick, the inner circle around Capel comprised Wolseley, Chief Secretary Richard Aldworth, and the mercurial Sir Francis Brewster.110 This was altogether too exclusive a group to be able to construct and maintain a commons majority. Whether by luck or judgement, the English ministry did succeed in finding a satisfactory managerial strategy for Ireland, at least in the short term. They were assisted by the sudden death of Porter in December 1696, which removed one destabilising factor and enabled the appointment of a lord chancellor who would be more acceptable to protestant opinion in Ireland and more congenial to the ministry in Whitehall. The choice was an interesting one. John Methuen was an English barrister with a background in chancery law, in that he had purchased a life patent for the office of master in the English chancery in 1685.111 However, since 1691 he had been employed in a diplomatic posting, as envoy to Portugal, and his prime qualifications for the post were political. He was a staunch whig but not a junto hack. Despite a career in office he had not lost his ‘country whig’ principles, and moved in the same circles as the ‘commonwealthman’ Molesworth. This suggested that he might be broadly acceptable in Ireland. At court his closest connexions were with Sunderland and Secretary Shrewsbury. Sunderland had always operated at a distance from the junto, with whom he had never been at ease, and Shrewsbury, though a less formidable politician, nonetheless regarded himself as an important figure and sometimes took an independent line. Neither were willing to see the junto seize control of the Irish administration, Sunderland for reasons of political strategy, Shrewsbury because he entertained ambitions of becoming viceroy himself.112 Methuen quickly became their candidate for the vacancy, and with Portland’s help they forced him 110

J.F. to Ellis, 28 September 1695 (B.L., Add. MS 28879, f. 157); Porter to Coningsby, 8 October 1695 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/18/52); Christopher Carleton to Ellis, 12 March 1695/6 (B.L., Add. MS 28880, ff. 86–7). 111 For Methuen see Commons 1690–1715, iv, pp. 798–812. 112 Kenyon, Sunderland, pp. 287–91; D. H. Somerville, The king of hearts: Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury (London, 1962), pp. 195–6, 197–8; Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, pp. 192–3. 62


past Somers’s objections.113 To underline the fact that the new Irish administration, while remaining basically whiggish, would be less exclusive than Capel’s, there was to be no single lord lieutenant or lord deputy. Instead, in May 1697 a commission of three lords justices was appointed, comprising Lord Winchester, heir apparent to the duke of Bolton; the courtier Edward, Lord Villiers, whose sister, Lady Orkney, was reputed to have been King William’s mistress; and the Huguenot soldier Lord Galway. The appointments achieved a political balance: Winchester was a junto man, nominated by Somers, Galway a more independent whig, and Villiers a tory by inclination but personally loyal to the king.114 Since neither Winchester nor Villiers was particularly bright, leadership was expected to fall to Galway. In fact it was Methuen rather than the lord justices who played the critical role when Capel’s parliament was recalled in July 1697. Galway’s commendation of the chancellor’s ‘great industry and prudence’ was no mere compliment.115 In the first place Methuen induced Molesworth and other ‘commonwealth whigs’ into a combination with the Brodrick interest, which widened the appeal of the court party.116 Second, he smoothed over what threatened to be a serious rift between the Brodricks and Lord Winchester, engineered by Philip Savage, the scheming chancellor of the exchequer. At the outset of the session Savage made a bid for power himself, encouraged, or so it would seem, by Winchester, but an attack in the Irish house of commons on the absent Alan Brodrick backfired and Savage was obliged by the lords justices to make a public apology. Galway took the lead in insisting that Savage apologise, but Methuen seems to have been the moving spirit.117 Savage and Winchester remained close, to the extent that Savage was prepared to abandoned his erstwhile supporters half-way through the session

113

James Vernon to Shrewsbury, 2, 26, 29 December 1696, 9 January, 9 February 1696/7 (James (ed.), Letters illustrative . . . i, pp. 101–2, 146–8, 152, 160–1, 202); same to same, 18 January 1696[/7] (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 46/54); Kenyon, Sunderland, pp. 287, 303. 114 Commons 1690–1715, v, pp. 185–8; Somers to Shrewsbury, 14/24 April 1697 (Coxe, Corresp. of Shrewsbury, pp. 477–8); Memoirs of . . . John Macky, p. 28. 115 Shrewsbury to Methuen, 14 August 1697 (C.S.P. dom., 1697, p. 312). 116 See Methuen to [Vernon], 20, 29 July 1697 (ibid., pp. 259, 275); Thomas Brodrick to Trumbull, 15 August 1697 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, p. 758); Methuen to Shrewsbury, 3, 15 August 1697 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 518, 534); Shrewsbury to Methuen, 20 October 1697 (ibid., p. 567). 117 Methuen to [Vernon], 29 July, 3 August, 27 September 1697 (C.S.P. dom., 1697, pp. 259, 175, 401; Sir Thomas Southwell to Coningsby, 5 August 1697 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/30/3); Vernon to Sir Joseph Williamson, 6, 13, 24 August 1697 ((C.S.P. dom., 1697, pp. 286, 307, 325); Thomas Brodrick to Trumbull, 15 August 1697 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, pp. 757–60; Vernon to Shrewsbury, 17 August 1697 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 46/127); Winchester to Shrewsbury, 31 August 1697 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 545–6); Galway to Shrewsbury, 9 September 1697 (ibid., pp. 551–2). 63


in the vain hope that Winchester might be able to get him the revenue commissionership he craved.118 Nevertheless, the alienation of the Brodricks, the castle’s chief parliamentary managers, was avoided, and Methuen took care to work closely with them until the prorogation. The events of the 1697 session and the political configurations they produced struck contemporaries as odd. It was impossible, declared one Irishman, ‘to give an account of our parties now in respect as they stood’.119 Other observers wrote rather more confidently of the court and opposition parties as being identical with the critics and defenders of Porter in 1695.120 True enough, continuity of leadership was apparent, with the Brodricks on one side, assisted by cronies like William Neave, for whom they had obtained the office of second serjeant in 1696, and on the other, Savage, Williamson, Coghlan and Meade.121 However, Savage’s intrigues with Winchester confused the pattern. Moreover, the connexions between political interests in England and Ireland were no more straightforward than they had been in 1695. It was not clear who the junto’s principal Irish allies were. Savage may still have been associated with Wharton (though his political contacts in England were various): this would be the easiest explanation for his having obtained Winchester’s confidence.122 But at the same time the Brodricks were working to improve their own connexions in England, Thomas taking on the management of forfeited estates for several grantees, including Lady Orkney, William’s Dutch favourite Albemarle, and Charles Montagu.123 To complicate matters further, Methuen was always Sunderland’s man rather than the junto’s; and another English court whig, Lord Coningsby, kept 118 Vernon to Shrewsbury, 17 August 1697 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 46/131); Sir Richard Cox to [—], 31 August 1697 (H.M.C. Portland, iii, p. 586); Methuen to Shrewsbury, 8 October 1697, 3 February 1698 ((H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 561, 601); Galway to same, 9 October, 18 November, 13 December 1697 (ibid., pp. 563, 575, 588); Shrewsbury to Methuen, 20 October 1697 (ibid., p. 567). 119 Cox to [—], 31 August 1697 (H.M.C., Portland, iii, p. 586). 120 Methuen to [Somers], 26 June 1697 (S.H.C., 37/14/F2). 121 Capel to Shrewsbury, 17 December 1695 (C.S.P. dom., 1695 & addenda, p. 129); Methuen to [Coningsby], 3 August 1697 (B.L., Add. MS 57861, f. 34); H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 288–9; Thomas Brodrick to Trumbull, 15 August 1697 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, p. 758); John South to Ellis, 20 August 1697 (B.L., Add. MS 28881, f. 428); John Hely to Coningsby, 23 October 1697 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/1/19). For Neave, see Porter to Coningsby, 21 November 1695 (ibid., D/638/18/58). 122 Shrewsbury to Winchester, 30 August 1697 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 545); Winchester to Shrewsbury, 31 August, 4, 9 September 1697 (ibid., pp. 545–6, 549, 553); Savage to Wyche, 9 January 1693[/4] (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/101); George Granville to same, 11 July 1702 (ibid., 1/1/255). 123 William Robinson to Coningsby, 22 October 1697 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/166/20); John South to Charles Montagu, 2 January 1698/9 (B.L., Egerton MS 929, ff. 28–9); [Alan] to St John Brodrick, 29 January 1699[/1700] (S.H.C., 1248/1, ff. 309–10); Bartholomew Van Homrigh to the earl of Athlone, 27 August 1700 (‘Letters from Bartholomew Van Homrigh to General Ginkel, earl of Athlone, 1692 to 1700 . . .’, ed. Wouter Troost, in Analecta Hibernica, xxxiii (1986), p. 128).

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watch over his own interests in Ireland through his son-in-law Sir Thomas Southwell, who happened to act with the Irish opposition. The one English political interest that was not interfering in Ireland in 1697 was the tory-dominated ‘new country party’, to which Harley and Foley and a small remnant of their ex-whig followers were now firmly joined. This self-denial is not easily explained. Both the English tories and the Harley– Foley group had their friends among Irish M.P.s, some of whom – including Francis Annesley124 – were active in the Dublin parliament in opposition to the castle. The duke of Ormond was also re-emerging as a force in Irish politics, which gave encouragement to tories in both kingdoms. Released from his military duties at the conclusion of the war of the League of Augsburg, Ormond visited Ireland in the autumn of 1697. Although loyalty to King William, and fear for the loss of his other offices, deterred him from an open break with the ministry, he was not averse to making his presence felt in an unhelpful way, if for no other reason than to demonstrate his own qualifications for the viceroyalty.125 The English under-secretary, James Vernon, reported to his master, Shrewsbury, that Ormond ‘takes a pride in the influence he has there [in Ireland]’.126 Yet, despite the inspiration of the Ormond name, and despite evidence of widespread concern, especially among the clergy, at the growing strength of the presbyterian church and community in Ulster, there does not seem to have been any serious attempt by opposition members in either house in this session to play a ‘high church’ card. The lords justices and their parliamentary managers were careful not to allow much opportunity. No toleration bill was introduced, nor any other measure to benefit dissenters. In fact, there were only two occasions on which Anglican prejudices were exercised in the commons. The first was at the hearing of the petition for the disputed by-election for County Londonderry, where the presbyterian sitting member, the Derry alderman James Lenox, was challenged by a churchman and the house divided between court and opposition, with the Brodricks backing ‘the Scotch man’ Lenox.127 The second came when the Irish radical and reputed deist John Toland, on a brief visit to his native 124

Winchester to Shrewsbury, 5 August 1697 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 522); same to Portland, 10 August 1697 (Nottingham University Library, PwA 1012a); same to Vernon, 31 August 1697 (C.S.P. dom., 1697, p. 342). 125 Ellis to [—], 22 October 1697 (B.L., Add. MS 28881, f. 512); Methuen to Vernon, 6, 17 November 1697 (C.S.P. dom., 1697, pp. 460, 475); Vernon to Williamson, 19 November 1697 (ibid., p. 478); newsletter, 19 November 1697 (ibid., pp. 479–80); South to Ellis, 20 November 1697 (B.L., Add. MS 28881, f. 534); Winchester to Shrewsbury, 27 November 1697 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 583); Hely to Coningsby (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/1/20); Drogheda to same, 2 December 1697 (ibid., D/638/167/13). 126 Vernon to Shrewsbury, 26 October 1697 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 46/153). 127 Sir Thomas Southwell to Coningsby, 18 August 1697 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/30/4). A copy of the poll, at P.R.O.N.I., T/3161/1/4, includes a significant number of clerical voters on Jackson’s side. 65


country, was denounced in parliament, presumably as a means of embarrassing Methuen, who was known to be Toland’s friend. This time the castle’s managers took the discreet part, and let righteous indignation have its way.128 Otherwise, debate concentrated on the safer issue of anti-popery, with a further extension of the penal laws, in the shape of the bishops’ banishment act, and the final ratification, in mutilated form, of the Limerick treaty.129 So firmly established did the Irish administration appear at this point, and so popular were its anti-catholic policies, that in the summer of 1697 English ministers seem to have been thinking in terms of a possible Anglo–Irish union.130 Arguably union would have been of benefit to the security and trade of both kingdoms. More to the point, it would also have enabled the English ministry to capitalise on what appeared, from a distance, to be the naturally whiggish inclination of the Irish propertied elite. Leaving aside the failure of the impeachment against Porter in 1695 (the secrets of which would certainly have been known to Wharton), a glance at recent history may well have suggested that Irish M.P.s coming to Westminster would constitute an addition to the whig interest. Any such supposition would, however, have been a misreading both of the nature of Irish whiggism – which was only partly compatible with the governing principles of the junto – and of Irish protestant opinion in general, since it ignored the divisive potential of other political issues, especially the increasing hostility between Anglicans and dissenters, and the uncertain place occupied by Ireland in the Williamite ‘imperial’ system.

V In any case English complacency was soon undermined by the eruption of a serious crisis in Anglo–Irish relations, which awakened members of the English government to the fact that they could not rely for ever on fear of a jacobite restoration to keep Irish protestants in check, and that on such vital matters as the security of land tenure, and the prosperity of the Irish economy, a rampaging English parliament could appear just as threatening to the ruling elite in Ireland as King James II. Matters were brought sharply into focus by two developments at Westminster in the winter of 1697–8: an appeal by the Irish Society of London to the English house of lords to overturn a decision by the Irish lords in the society’s legal case against Bishop King of Derry over land, and fishing rights in the River Foyle;131 and a renewed attempt by 128

Simms, War & politics, pp. 37–8. Ibid., pp. 212–15, 235–49; Troost, ‘William III’, pp. 168–86; P. H. Kelly, ‘Lord Galway and the penal laws’ in C. E. J. Caldicott et al. (eds), The Huguenots and Ireland: anatomy of an emigration (Dun Laoghaire, 1987), pp. 239–54. 130 Bp King to Sir Robert Southwell, 19 July 1697 (T.C.D., MS750/1, p.79); Abp Vesey to Agmondisham Vesey, 13 July 1698 (N.A.I., Sarsfield–Vesey correspondence, p. 34). 131 O’Regan, King, pp. 99–111. 129

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English woollen manufacturers to introduce legislation at Westminster to restrain competition from Irish woollen manufactures. 132 Doubts over the appellate jurisdiction placed in jeopardy all titles to Irish land, since any legal challenge to property rights might be appealed out of the kingdom. The woollen act threatened to destroy the fastest growing Irish domestic manufacture, which in parts of rural Ireland, especially in Munster, had already begun to repair the economic damage done by the Williamite war. By implication, both actions cast into doubt the authority of the Irish parliament. This was not a new development: the transfer of the crown of Ireland had been accomplished by the English parliament in 1689 without reference to the Irish themselves; since 1689 a succession of unsuccessful bills had been introduced at Westminster relating to the disposal of Irish forfeited estates; and in 1696 a measure had been passed to reinforce the earlier navigation acts. But for whatever reason – perhaps their coincidence, perhaps because of the nature of the cases themselves and the identity of those involved, perhaps because of the publication of intemperate English denunciations of the idea of Irish legislative autonomy – the bishop of Derry’s case, and the attempt to discriminate against Irish woollens, which was eventually brought to fruition in the following English parliamentary session, aroused a violent reaction in Ireland, and brought the nature of the Anglo–Irish constitutional relationship into public debate. At first, this national quarrel cut across party lines. There was nothing distinctively ‘whig’ or ‘tory’ in the patriotism of Irish protestants, nor in the Hibernophobia of the English. On both sides of the Irish Sea, members of different political factions stood together in defence of their country’s interests. Propertied Irishmen agreed in deploring English parliamentary arrogance, and pamphlets were published in defence of the rights of the Irish legislature by political figures as diverse as Francis Annesley (writing on behalf of his legal client Bishop King), and, more famously, the ‘commonwealth’ whig and friend of Locke, William Molyneux.133 Not to be outflanked, Methuen and his colleagues did their best to defuse tension, opposing the passage of discriminatory legislation at Westminster while bringing forward measures in the Dublin parliament to promote the local linen industry, by way of compensation for any economic damage inflicted by a woollen act. In doing so, they were able to mobilise almost the entire Irish political community in London, and even Englishmen with Irish interests, such as Coningsby.134 132

Patrick Kelly, ‘The Irish woollen export prohibition act of 1699: Kearney revisited’, in Irish Economic and Social History, vii (1980), pp. 33–9. 133 Annesley acted as King’s legal agent, assisted by James Sloane: T. W. Moody and J. G. Simms (eds), The bishopric of Derry and the Irish Society of London, 1602–1705 (2 vols, Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1968–83), ii, pp. 212, 214–15, 217, 234); O’Regan, King, p. 104. For Molyneux, see J. G. Simms, William Molyneux of Dublin 1656–1698, ed. P. H. Kelly (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1982). 134 Henry Petty to James Waller, 9 June 1697 (B.L., Add. MS 72092). 67


There was also unanimity among English politicians, at least on the surface, in their determination to suppress Irish constitutional pretensions. All assumed that Ireland was a dependency over which the English parliament possessed untrammelled authority. The response of the commons in May 1698 to the publication of Molyneux’s Case of Ireland . . . stated was unanimous outrage. Even though some of the arguments were grounded on Lockeian principles, whig M.P.s (including Molyneux’s friends) vied with tories in the vehemence of their denunciations.135 Among members of both parties, English patriotism was accentuated by economic interest. The spearhead of the English woollen lobby was formed by the trading boroughs of Devon and Somerset, whose parliamentary representatives included the high tory chieftain Sir Edward Seymour, M.P. for Exeter and one of the moving spirits behind the woollen bill, and the junto henchman Edward Clarke, M.P. for Taunton, who led the hue and cry after Molyneux’s Case.136 As for the Irish Society, authors of the appeal that had called into question the jurisdiction of the Irish house of lords, this was an enterprise headed by City financiers of various party colourings, from the staunch whig Sir Robert Clayton to the tory Sir William Withers.137 If the cause of Ireland was to be espoused by one party rather than another, it looked more likely to be the tories rather than the whigs, despite the commitment of Irish protestants to the revolution and to ‘revolution principles’. More recent events, and in particular the reinforcement of the Scottish population in Ulster, suggested a potential alignment between protestant ‘patriotism’ and a high church or tory political outlook. This connexion hinged on the definition of the ‘English interest’ in Ireland. Sir Francis Brewster’s published appeal to the Westminster parliament during the session of 1697–8, A discourse concerning Ireland . . . , argued that legislation prejudicial to the Irish woollen industry would harm the ‘English’ establishment in the kingdom, which Brewster, now lurching tory-wards in his politics, considered to be already endangered, not only by Irish catholics but even more seriously by the influx of Scottish presbyterians into Ulster.138

135 L’Hermitage’s despatch, 24 May/3 June 1698 (B.L., Add. MS 17677 SS, f. 273); Bonet’s despatch, 3/13 June 1698 (ibid., Add. MS 30000 B, f. 129). For reports of similar unanimity in the lords over the question of the appellate jurisdiction, see Sir Robert Southwell to Bp King, 28 March 1698 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/567). 136 Kelly, ‘Irish woollen prohibition act’, pp. 33–5; Methuen to Galway, 15 January 1697[/8] (B.L., Add. MS 61653, ff. 37–8); Vernon to Shrewsbury, 21 May, 2 June 1698 (James (ed.), Letters illustrative . . . ii, pp. 83, 93); ‘notes on the report’ (Somerset R.O., SF 2909); ‘the Irish pamphlet’ (ibid., SF 3166); Simms, Molyneux, pp. 111–12. 137 H.M.C., House of Lords, new ser., iii, pp. 16–24; Commons 1690–1715, iii, pp. 606–12; v, pp. 907–10. 138 [Sir Francis Brewster,] A discourse concerning Ireland and the different interests thereof in answer to the Exon and Barnstaple petitions (London, 1697/8). For a similar approach to the problem, see Bp King to Francis Annesley, 10 March 1698 (T.C.D., MS 750/1, pp. 192–3).

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A reduced woollen industry would impoverish the existing English protestant community, rather than these Scottish immigrants, and, to make matters worse, any compensatory encouragement to the development of linen manufacture would almost certainly benefit Scots rather than English, since linen-making was native to Scotland and beginning to appear in presbyterian Ulster.139 The issue of the appellate jurisdiction, too, involved a conflict of interests between church and dissent, at least in the bishop of Derry’s case, for at local level this resolved itself into a tussle between Bishop King and a group of presbyterian Derry aldermen, who were promoting the Irish Society’s suit.140 Coincidentally, during the 1697–8 parliamentary session at Westminster it was also possible to detect a clearer and stronger commitment on the part of whigs than tories to the assertion of legislative authority over Ireland. Sir Edward Seymour and his Devonshire friends may have spoken for the woollen lobby in the commons, but according to John Methuen the real instigator was the junto lord chancellor, Somers. Not only did Somers and his cronies push the woollen bill, they also laboured in the lords and privy council to undermine Methuen’s efforts on behalf of Irish linens. Somers and Charles Montagu were also alleged to have employed their clients in the commons to

The line of argument followed by Brewster in this pamphlet was very different from his previous pamphlet on Anglo–Irish trading issues, Essays on trade and navigation . . . the first part (London, 1695), which made no distinction between English and Scots protestants, emphasising instead the need for England to support the ‘British’ interest in Ireland, and even proposed some restriction on the woollen industry in Ireland and a corresponding encouragement of linen manufacture (see esp. pp. 11–18, 27–8). Brewster himself seems to have wavered in his politics after 1696. At first, driven possibly by antagonism to the Brodricks, he gave out that ‘he will be of no party’ and allowed himself to be courted by the ‘country’ opposition, ‘that have nothing to do with the government’: Brewster to Trumbull, 24 November 1696 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, p. 711). Then in 1697, brought round by Shrewsbury and Methuen, and by the fact that he could not stand Philip Savage, he shifted to supporting the court in the Irish parliamentary session of 1697: Methuen to [Somers], 6 October 1697 (S.H.C., 371/14/F/22); Shrewsbury to Methuen, 20 October 1697 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 567); Galway to Shrewsbury, 9 October, 8 November 1697 (ibid., pp. 563–4, 571–2); Shrewsbury to Galway, 20 October 1697 (ibid., p. 565). By early 1698, he seems to have been moving towards the tories, but in the summer, during the English general election, he wrote to John Ellis of the likely results in Norfolk constituencies in terms that would suggest an affinity with the court whigs (Brewster to Ellis, 15 July 1698 (B.L., Add. MS 28883, f. 55)), and he was still being consulted by Secretary Vernon in the following October (Vernon to Shrewsbury, 11 October 1698 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 47/96)). Personal ambition and animosity seem to have been the moving forces in his mercurial personality. 139 David Dickson, New foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (2nd edn, Dublin, 2000), pp. 49–52. 140 O’Regan, King, pp. 99–102, 116–22; Bp King to Francis Annesley, 28 October 1697 (T.C.D., MS 750/1, pp. 115–16); James Bonnell to [John Strype], 25 January 1698 (Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 1, f. 127). 69


press home the complaints against Molyneux.141 Their motives, however, were probably tactical rather than ideological: to make trouble for Galway, who blocked the way to the appointment of one of their own number as viceroy, and for Methuen, who in this respect stood proxy for his patron, Sunderland, with whom the junto had become exasperated.142 By the summer of 1698 it seemed as if Irish ‘patriotism’ might take on a distinctively tory tinge. Tory politicians in England, though unwilling to appear publicly in defence of Irish concerns, and by implication against their own country, made private approaches to Methuen with promises of support for a linen bill.143 When the two parliaments resumed (at more or less the same time) in the autumn, the potential alliance between Irish patriots and English tories began to take a firmer shape. The court’s critics in the Irish parliament adopted a ‘country party’ programme, and even the title of ‘country party’ (or ‘the country gentlemen’).144 Tories like Sir Richard Levinge (recently re-elected as an Irish M.P.) came to the fore in the commons, while Ormond, who was on the point of resigning ‘all his offices and employments’, attended the lords and put himself at the head of the parliamentary opposition.145 The direction of the ‘country party’ attack also implied a degree of Anglo–Irish co-operation. In the previous session of the Westminster parliament the ‘new country party’ had complained strenuously about the

141

Kelly, ‘Irish woollen export prohibition act’, p. 137; Methuen to Galway, 14 April, 3, 21, 31 May, 2 June 1698 (B.L., Add. MS 61653, ff. 60–1, 70–1, 76–7, 79, 81–2). Somers also argued firmly against the jurisdiction of the Irish house of lords in relation to the Irish Society’s appeal: W. L. Sachse, Lord Somers: a political portrait (Manchester, 1975), p. 77. 142 Kenyon, Sunderland, pp. 297–307; Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, pp. 227–8, 230–1; Methuen to Galway, 28 December 1697, 1, 8, 15 January 1697[/8] (B.L., Add. MS 61653, ff. 26–7, 30–1, 34, 37–8); Ben. Overton to Lord Winchester, 3 May 1698 (Bolton papers, D1/16). 143 Methuen to Galway, 6 May, 4 June 1698 (B.L., Add. MS 61653, ff. 72, 82–3). Two tory barristers, Sir Thomas Powys and the future lord keeper Sir Nathan Wright, appeared before the lords on behalf of Bishop King and then as counsel against the woollen bill: H.M.C., House of Lords, new ser., iii, pp. 16–24, 107–11; Richard Thomas to Abp Vesey, 31 March 1698 (N.L.I., T/3738/G/7A(DH)). In an additional complication, they were opposed in each instance by another tory, Sir Bartholomew Shower. Shower hailed from Exeter, however, and in the general election in the following summer was returned as one of the M.P.s for that city. 144 William Palmer to Ellis, 4, 15, 18, 29 October, 24 December 1698 (B.L., Add. MS 28883, ff. 209, 221, 213, 236, 321); Robert Yard to William Blathwayt, 14 October 1698 (Yale University, Beinecke Library, Osborn collection, Blathwayt papers, box 21); same to same, 18 November 1698 (ibid., box 20); Palmer to Vernon, 3 January 1699 (C.S.P. dom., 1699, pp. 3–4). 145 Winchester to Shrewsbury, 27 October 1698 ((H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 617); Ellis to Williamson, 1 November 1698 (C.S.P. dom., 1698, p. 411); Thomas Crawford to Ellis, 2 November 1698 (B.L., Add. MS 28883, f. 241); Vernon to Shrewsbury, 5 November 1698 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 47/107); Christopher Hatton to Lord Hatton, 13 April 1699 (B.L., Add. MS 29575, f. 457). 70


retention of a standing army after the peace of Rijswijk, but had been unable to prevent the king from maintaining about 15,000 troops in arms in England, together with a similar number on the Irish establishment, many of the latter exiled Huguenots. They were now intent on bringing in a disbanding bill to reduce the forces in England to a bare minimum. If this proved irresistible, it was likely that the government would try to transfer more troops to Ireland. The Irish opposition therefore mounted a raid on the Irish military establishment, designed to close down this loophole.146 Although proposals to reduce expenditure were part and parcel of any Irish opposition agenda, the tactical implications of targeting the army in this way were obvious. Furthermore, the prominence of French protestant refugees in the Irish regiments, besides making the protest against them a personal insult to Lord Galway, also imparted a ‘tory’ flavour to opposition rhetoric, since the Huguenots, with their tendency towards nonconformity, were obnoxious to Irish Anglicans of a high church disposition.147 As the English parliamentary session proceeded, however, a remarkable transformation took place, amounting to a simultaneous volte-face on the part of both English parties. The ‘country party’ finally gained the upper hand in the commons and were able to inflict a series of damaging defeats on the court. Two of their pet projects affected Irish protestants directly, and very negatively, so that suddenly the English tories rather than the whigs came to be perceived as the real enemies of Ireland. First, Seymour’s west country clothing lobby succeeded in passing a reintroduced woollen bill, which prevented the export of Irish woollens to England or to the plantations, and at the same time insisted that Irish woollen yarn be exported only to England, thus subordinating the Irish woollen manufacture entirely to the interests of the English economy.148 Reaction in Ireland was bitter; and the fact that there was still no compensating linen act made matters worse.149 Second, tory activists managed to ‘tack’ to the land tax bill a clause setting

146 Methuen referred to the Irish opposition in this session as ‘a party headed and influenced from England’: Methuen to Sir William Simpson, 10 December 1698 (University of Kansas, Spencer Research Library, MS E 82, no. 2). 147 A representation of the present state of religion . . . drawn up and agreed by both houses of convocation in Ireland . . . (Dublin, 1712), pp. 14–15; Jean-Paul Pittion, ‘The question of religious conformity and non-conformity in the Irish refuge’ in Caldicott et al. (eds), Huguenots & Ireland, pp. 289–91; Connolly, Religion, pp. 302–3. Conversely, Irish whigs made the encouragement of Huguenot settlement a priority: see e.g. The true way to render Ireland happy and secure . . . in a letter to the Right Honourable Robert Molesworth . . . (Dublin, 1697). 148 Kelly, ‘Irish woollen export prohibition act’, pp. 40–2; Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, p. 256; Somers to the lords justices, 17/18 December 1698 (B.L., Add. 61653, ff. 5–6). 149 Sir Thomas Southwell to Coningsby, 6 August 1699 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/30/9); [George] Crofts to [—], 2 June 1699 (B.L., Add. MS 21133, f. 39).

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up a commission to report on the extent of the forfeited jacobite estates in Ireland, as a preliminary to a resumption of those lands by the English parliament.150 The forfeitures bill was an even greater offence to Irish opinion than the woollen act. Woollen production was in any case largely concentrated in Munster, the political stronghold of the Brodricks, who were disinclined to compromise themselves by protesting loudly in a hopeless cause. There was little chance of persuading the English parliament to change its mind on a subject that could only be presented in terms of conflicting national interests. The inquiry into the forfeited estates was another matter. The planned resumption was certainly a popular measure in England, since it was directed against the grantees as individuals, who represented a mixed bag of pantomime villains – courtiers, royal favourites, army generals, foreigners and whig politicians – and was ostensibly undertaken for the benefit of the English public purse, to recompense hard-pressed taxpayers for the ‘blood and treasure’ expended on the reconquest of Ireland. In reality, however, those hit hardest would be Irish protestants who had bought or leased property from the grantees. These included not only prominent ministerial whigs such as the Brodricks, and the nouveau riche attorney William Conolly, whose mushroom fortune was thought to have its origin in trafficking in forfeited estates, but politicians and M.P.s of all shades of opinion, and a host of landowners, lawyers and merchants outside parliament.151 The project to recover and resell the forfeited estates was to be of considerable importance in the development of ‘party’ identity in Ireland. In the first place it clarified the relationship between the junto and the various whig interests in Dublin, and indeed the junto’s approach to Irish affairs more generally. Where previously Wharton, Somers and their friends seem to have acted opportunistically, with the objective either of securing control of the viceroyalty for themselves or of embarrassing their rivals, they now took a more systematic view of Irish policy, identifying a particular Irish faction as their principal allies – essentially the political grouping headed by the Brodricks – and a particular ideological position for themselves – the defence of the protestant establishment against jacobite and catholic conspiracy – which not only pared down whiggism to bare essentials, but had a brutal logic that was difficult for opponents to challenge. The forfeitures resumption offered a perfect opportunity to counter-attack the English ‘country party’

150 J. G. Simms, The Williamite confiscation in Ireland 1690–1703 (London, 1956), pp. 96–8; Rubini, Court & country, pp. 159–60; Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, pp. 255–6. The committee appointed on 15 December 1699 to prepare the original resumption bill had included eight tories and only one country whig (C.J., xiii, pp. 65–6). Evidence of party affiliation has been taken from Commons 1690–1715. 151 Simms, Williamite confiscation, pp. 125–6; ‘Mr Brodrick’s case’ (B.L., Portland papers, formerly Loan 29/35 (2)).

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opposition. Unlike the woollen act, English interests were only indirectly affected, in that the resale of estates would provide extra funds for the treasury. By preserving the existing arrangements the junto could present themselves as defending the protestant interest in Ireland. (At the same time, of course, they were further ingratiating themselves with the king.) Similar considerations affected the Brodricks and other court whigs in Ireland. In opposing the resumption they could make themselves popular at home without losing credibility with the English government, since King William and his friends were the first casualties of the exercise. Better still, their opposition served the personal interests of leading courtiers and whig politicians, something they could easily improve to their own advantage. Despite its unpopularity in Ireland, the resumption scheme also cemented the developing alliance between English tories and the Irish opposition, including some whose politics had hitherto been rather more ‘country’ than tory, and even to some degree whiggish. Six out of the seven commissioners appointed under the 1699 act were Irishmen. The inclusion of Sir Richard Levinge and Sir Francis Brewster was not surprising, since Levinge was not only a tory but was anxious to be on the winning side, and Brewster’s stance over the woollen bill of 1697–8 had indicated a strongly anti-presbyterian cast of mind.152 The others were less obvious. Two were certainly whigs: the still disgruntled Lord Drogheda, whose enmity to the Brodricks was his guiding light; and John Trenchard, the only Englishman of the seven (though one who had been educated at Trinity), a ‘commonwealthman’ and author of a notable pamphlet against a standing army.153 Finally, and most interesting, were three Ulstermen who had previously shown themselves to be strong supporters of the protestant interest, and might still have been regarded as whigs, albeit of a general rather than specific variety: Francis Annesley, James Hamilton of Tollymore, and Henry Langford, brother of Sir Arthur (one of Sidney’s foremost critics of in 1692), and himself recorded as a member of Capel’s court party in 1695.154 Hitherto Annesley, the most prominent of the three, had been unwilling to break his connexions with English whigs like James Vernon even while acting with the opposition in the Irish house

152

For Brewster, see above, n. 138. For Drogheda, see Sir William Robinson to Coningsby (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/ 166/15A–B); Drogheda to same, 11 October 1697 (ibid., D/638/167). For Trenchard, Romney Sedgwick, The house of commons 1715–1754 (2 vols, London, 1970), ii, p. 481; Robbins, Eighteenth-century commonwealthman, pp. 112–25. 154 Simms’s classification of the commissioners by party – Lord Drogheda, Annesley, Levinge and Langford as tories; Brewster, Hamilton and Trenchard as whigs – though largely accurate in terms of the party struggles of Anne’s reign, is nonetheless a little premature (Williamite confiscation, pp. 98–9). A suggestion that Ulster M.P.s of a ‘country’ persuasion had turned against government in the 1697 session of the Irish parliament is made in an obscure passage in a letter from Methuen to Shrewsbury, 3 February 1698 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, p. 601). 153

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of commons.155 We cannot be sure why he and the others should have thrown in their lot with the English tories on this issue while other ‘country whigs’ like Molesworth did not. It cannot have been that they had any greater detestation for the junto, for no one could have been more acerbic on that theme than Molesworth.156 Possibly, if we take Lord Drogheda as a pointer, the answer may lie in the dynamics of Irish politics: a loathing for the Brodricks, who were now seen as the junto’s Irish representatives, or for other leading court whigs such as Conolly, against whom Annesley was said to have ‘an old pique’.157 It may also be significant that Annesley, Hamilton and Langford were all Ulstermen, increasingly preoccupied with the rise of presbyterianism in their midst. When the commissioners of inquiry reported in December 1699, they had, predictably enough, found enough available land (over 600,000 Irish acres) which might be appropriated and resold to justify all but the most speculative and exaggerated claims of earlier projectors.158 There had, however, been differences among them, the most important being over the decision to include the ‘private estate’ of King James II (in County Cork). Legal scruples could be raised over the question of whether this was properly speaking a forfeiture, but more important were the political implications, since King William had granted the property to Lady Orkney, and to re-sequester it would be ‘to fly in the king’s face’.159 Three commissioners took the moderate line and voted to exclude the private estate: Drogheda, probably on principle, and Levinge and Brewster (both of whom were notoriously shifty), probably from calculation.160 So strongly did they hold this opinion that even though overruled by the other four commissioners they refused to back down and prepared a minority report.161 Ironically, this left the four country whigs (or

155

Vernon to Shrewsbury, 3 November 1698 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 47/106). 156 Molesworth to Sir Godfrey Copley, 19 April 1701 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, DD38, box B–C). 157 Henry Maxwell to James Stanhope, 23 November 1703 (Centre for Kentish Studies, U1590/O141/11). 158 The report made to the honourable house of commons, December. 15 1699. By the commissioners appointed to enquire into the forfeited estates of Ireland (London, 1700); Simms, Williamite confiscation, pp. 105–9, 174–6. 159 Simms, Williamite confiscation, pp. 102–5. 160 [Alan] to St John Brodrick, 29 January 1699[/1700] (S.H.C., 1248/1, ff. 309–10); same to [Thomas Brodrick], 17 March 1699[/1700] (ibid., ff. 313–14). For Levinge, see also below, p. 172. A complicating factor was that he had also purchased forfeited property, in his case from Lord Romney’s grant (Simms, War & politics, p. 167). Brewster’s political allegiances remain difficult to determine (see above, n. 138). 161 ‘The memorial of the earl of Drogheda, Sir Francis Brewster, and Sir Richard Leving . . .’ in A collection of state tracts, publish’d on occasion of the late revolution in 1688, and during the reign of William III . . . (3 vols, London, 1705–7), ii, pp. 709–22; Simms, Williamite confiscation, pp. 98–109; Drogheda to [Vernon], 10, 30 November 1699 (C.S.P. dom., 74


country independents) – Trenchard, Annesley, Hamilton and Langford – as the greater extremists, and not only on this specific question, for their report turned into a general denunciation of the conduct of government in Ireland over the preceding decade, a catalogue (as one modern historian has described it) of ‘neglect, corruption, favouritism and partiality to papists’.162 When the report was made, the tory majority in the English house of commons refused to hear the views of the more moderate commissioners, but in debate the junto whigs uncovered evidence that Trenchard and Annesley had been in close communication with English tories. Charles Montagu’s cross-examination of Levinge revealed that the tory lawyers Simon Harcourt and Arthur Moore, both associates of Robert Harley, had been sending letters to urge that the ‘private estate’ be included in the report, and that Annesley’s friend James Sloane, who had long since severed his connexions with Wharton and was now entirely dependent on Sir Joseph Williamson, had been adding his encouragement.163 The extent to which the resumption was now a tory undertaking became still more apparent when, following the acceptance of the commissioners’ report, the English parliament passed a bill (tacked again to a supply measure) to complete the project by appointing a body of thirteen trustees to oversee the recovery and resale of the estates.164 The four authors of the majority report were re-elected, together with their secretary, James Hooper, who had also been implicated in intrigues with English tories. The three moderates – Lord Drogheda, Brewster and Levinge – were omitted. 165 The remaining 1699–1700, pp. 287, 305–6). Drogheda called the report of the majority ‘more like a libel’ (Vernon to Shrewsbury, [1699] (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 47/244)). 162 Simms, Williamite confiscation, p. 99. 163 Cobbett, iii, cols 113–25; Francis Annesley to [Arthur Moore], 5 August 1699 (University of Kansas, Spencer Research Library, MS 143/Cz/3); Vernon to Shrewsbury, 16 January 1700 (James (ed.), Letters illustrative . . . ii, pp. 409–11); Sir William Cook to Thornhagh Gurdon, 18 January 1699[/1700] (Suffolk R.O., Ipswich, M 142 (1), ii, p. 93); Christopher Hatton to [Lord Hatton], 29 January 1699/1700 (B.L., Add. MS 29576, ff. 11–12). For Annesley’s friendship with the Sloane family, see E. St J. Brooks, Sir Hans Sloane: the great collector and his circle (London, 1954), pp. 151, 215. As a barrister he worked frequently with Sloane: see, for example, H.M.C., House of Lords, new ser., iv, pp. 62, 65, 206. For the continuing connexion between Sloane and the Hamiltons, see Robert Hamilton to James Hamilton (of Bangor), 15 October 1702 (P.R.O.N.I., Mic/147/3, xviii, pp. 3–4). 164 Rubini, Court & country, pp. 162–8; Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, pp. 263–7. The commons committee appointed to supervise the ballot comprised seven country whigs and twenty-seven tories (C.J., xiii, p. 305). 165 There had originally been a difference of opinion among tory M.P.s as to whether any of the original commissioners of inquiry should be reappointed, with Sir Bartholomew Shower and Jack Howe in favour, Robert Harley, Sir Christopher Musgrave and Sir Edward Seymour against (though for technical, rather than personal or factional, reasons): Vernon to Shrewsbury, 16 , 26, 28 March 1700 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 48/46, 50, 51). 75


eight included two radical whigs – John Cary, a Bristol merchant who had previously written in favour of restrictive legislation against Irish woollens and was known to take a firm line in favour of English constitutional supremacy, and Thomas Rawlins, a Herefordshire squire who belonged to the circle of ‘commonwealthmen’ – including Trenchard – who met at London’s Grecian Tavern.166 The rest were all tories: Sir Cyril Wyche, making a final reappearance on the Irish political stage;167 Sir Henry Sheres, the naval engineer, who since the Revolution had twice been arrested as a suspected jacobite;168 John Isham, brother of the tory M.P. for Northamptonshire, and his brother-in-law John Baggs;169 the former M.P. Thomas Harrison;170 and the barrister William Fellows, nephew and protégé of Thomas Coulson, Sir Edward Seymour’s parliamentary henchman.171 The predominantly tory complexion of the trust was presumably reflected in the appointment of its extensive administrative staff, since the trustees themselves were given a free hand in appointments.172 The establishment was very substantial indeed, so that the whole affair took on the appearance of an enormous political ‘job’. At the headquarters in Dublin there was a bureaucracy with at least thirty principal officers, together with twentyfour clerks, four under-clerks, a further fifteen clerical assistants employed

166

For Cary, see D.N.B.; Kelly, ‘Irish woollen prohibition act’, pp. 26–8; John Cary, A discourse concerning the trade of Ireland and Scotland . . . (Bristol, 1695); and idem, A vindication of the parliament of England . . . (London, 1698). For Rawlins, see Vernon to Shrewsbury, 30 March 1700 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 48/52); Charles to Henry Davenant, 18 January 1705/6 (B.L., Add. MS 4291, f. 40); The miscellaneous works of John Toland . . . (2 vols, London, 1747), i, p. lx; J. A. Downie, ‘William Stephens and the Letter to the author of the Memorial of the state of England reconsidered’ in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, l (1977), pp. 253–9. 167 According to Vernon, the slate of candidates prepared by Robert Harley, Musgrave and Seymour had had Wyche at its head: Vernon to Shrewsbury, 28 March 1700 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 48/51). 168 D.N.B. See also Sheres to Trumbull, 25 February [1695/6], 14 July 1705, 11 January 1708/9, 7 November 1709 (H.M.C., Downshire, i, pp. 627, 840, 868, 882). 169 See letters from John Isham and John Baggs to Sir Justinian Isham (Northants. R.O., Isham papers). 170 Commons 1690–1715, iv, p. 288. 171 Richard Polwhele, The history of Devonshire (3 vols, London, 1793–1806), iii, p. 388; John and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses . . . (10 vols, Cambridge, 1922–54), pt 1, ii, p. 129; W. P. Baildon and J. D. Walker (eds), The records of the honorable society of Lincoln’s Inn: the black books (6 vols, London, 1897–1968), iii, pp. 157, 233; Vernon to Shrewsbury, 30 March 1700 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 48/52); P.R.O., Prob. 11/595, ff. 232–6. A whig election squib, The candidates try’d, or a certain way how to avoid mistakes in choosing members for the ensuing parliament (1701), p. 4, referred punningly to the election of three ‘trusty friends’ of the tory party, as ‘Sir H. S–s, A–y, and F–s’. 172 In the case of the clerks, individual trustees each made a nomination; otherwise the board seems to have appointed as a body. Trustees’ minute book, June 1700 to July 1701, pp. 3, 6, 29 (P.R.O.N.I., Annesley MSS, D/1854/2/2). 76


on a weekly basis, and four household servants. Around the countryside were deployed over fifty surveyors, and twenty-four ‘receivers’ of funds.173 Seneschals and other manorial officers were appointed temporarily for estates which fell under the trustees’ control.174 Many of these nominees (all of them listed in the surviving minutes) are too obscure to enable definite conclusions to be reached about the general political complexion of the administration, but some familiar names appear. A few were whigs: John Trenchard secured the secretaryship (worth £400 a year) for his brother William,175 the post of ‘master of the references’ went to a ‘favourite’ of the old Cromwellian Sir Henry Hatsell, himself recently promoted by the Junto to the English exchequer bench,176 and one of the cashier’s places was taken by the presbyterian banker William Cairnes (with William Conolly, no less, as his security).177 However, most of the recognisable figures had a tory background of one kind or another. The most striking was probably the Englishman Richard Nutley, one of the standing counsel, an extreme high churchman who was very well connected in the tory party and went on to become an Irish judge.178 His legal colleagues were Roscarrick Dunkin, who became tory M.P. for Knocktopher, County Kilkenny in 1713, having previously been appointed by Ormond’s second administration in Dublin as a Q.C. and counsel to the barrack commissioners;179 and Thomas Burgh, possibly the son of Bishop Ulysses Burgh, who became a noted architect and surveyor-general, and who was also elected to the Irish parliament on the tory interest in 1713.180 A Ulysses Burgh, who may well have come from

173

Ibid., pp. 2–3, 67, 73–5, 79, 161; ‘book of securities’ for receivers (ibid., D/1854/2/30 (unpaginated)). 174 See, for example, the employment of Henry Luther, the town clerk of Youghal, as seneschal for the barony of Muskerry in June 1700: trustees’ minute book, 1700–1, p. 22 (ibid., D/1854/2/2). 175 Sir Christopher Musgrave to Robert Harley, 25 April 1700 (H.M.C., Portland, iv, p. 1); Luttrell, Brief relation, iv, p. 636. 176 William Spry(e), who was the subject of an investigation for corruption, having allegedly taken bribes to use his influence with Hatsell to facilitate the acquittal of three men charged with felony: James Vernon to Sir Nathan Wright, 18 July 1700 (C.S.P. dom., 1700–2, p. 398). 177 For Cairnes, see Jean Agnew, Belfast merchant families in the seventeenth century (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1996), pp. 26, 46, 174 186; and Hist. Ir. parl., iii, p. 359. 178 For Nutley, see Ball, Judges, ii, pp. 39, 72; The poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (3 vols, Oxford, 1937), iii, pp. 1077–8; J. T. Gilbert, A history of the city of Dublin (3 vols, Dublin, 1854–9), ii, pp. 12–13; John Isham to Sir Justinian Isham, 15 February 1702[/3] (Northants. R.O., Isham papers, IC2198); John Granville to [Ormond], 15 June 1703 (Yale University, Beinecke Library, Osborn collection, Southwell papers, box 1). 179 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 324. 180 Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 305–7; Edward McParland, Public architecture in Ireland 1680–1760 (New Haven and London, 2001), pp. 145–7. The Thomas Burgh admitted to the King’s Inns in Dublin in 1704 has been identified with the surveyor-general (King’s Inns admissions 77


the same family, served as the trustees’ accountant-general.181 The solicitor, Burdett Jodrell, a young Englishman, was a friend of the prominent tory M.P. Thomas Coke, and was connected by marriage with Anthony Hammond, another tory on the fringes of the ‘Grecian Tavern’ set.182 Hammond’s cousin John also found employment under the trustees, as supervisor of clerks.183 Lower down the scale, the clerk Daniel Combes acknowledged his preferment as owing to Robert Harley’s recommendation, while the tory grandee Lord Dartmouth had been approached for his influence with Sir Henry Sheres for a surveyor’s place.184 Among the receivers, who were all Irishmen, there was more of a political balance: on one side stood the M.P.s Maurice Annesley, Anthony Suxbury (who had voted against Porter’s impeachment in 1695) and Edward Eyre, a leading Galway tory; on the other, two associates of the Brodricks, Alderman George Rogers of Cork and John Blenerhassett of Ballyseedy, County Kerry, together with George Roche, later whig M.P. for Limerick.185 The broad identification of the resumption project with the cause of the tory party in England is borne out by the surviving correspondence. There was sometimes friction between individual trustees, which may have originated in ideological differences, but all the members of the commission, whatever the calibration of their political principles, looked for support to the tory party in England.186 Robert Harley’s voluminous private archive includes letters papers, 1607–1867, ed. Edward Keane et al. (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1982), p. 61), but it should be noted that the only Thomas Burgh whose name may be found in a published register of one of the English inns of court, as admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1687, was the son of Thomas Burgh, bencher of Gray’s Inn (who in turn hailed from an Essex family) (Joseph Foster, The register of admissions to Gray’s Inn, 1521–1889 . . . (2 vols, London, 1889) i, pp. 293, 338). There was another Thomas Burgh in Dublin in the early eighteenth century, besides the surveyor-general, one whose will was proved in 1711 (Sir Arthur Vicars (ed.), Index to the prerogative wills of Ireland, 1536–1810 (Dublin, 1897), p. 63). 181 No such person is mentioned in the standard pedigrees of the bishop’s family, but the coincidence of the christian name is highly suggestive, to say the least: see Burke’s Irish family records (5th edn, London, 1976), p. 338. 182 Jodrell to Coke, 7 January, 24 February 1702 (H.M.C., Cowper, ii, pp. 448, 455); same to same, 27 October 1702, 6 March 1702/3 (B.L., Add. MS 69947, ff. 83–4, 118–19); Frank Hopegood to same, 22 May 1703 (ibid., f. 144); George Ormerod, The history of the county palatine and city of Chester . . . (2nd edn, 3 vols, London, 1882), iii, p. 787. 183 Jodrell to Coke, 6 March 1702/3 (B.L., Add. MS 69947, ff. 118–19). 184 Daniel Combes to Robert Harley, 17 June 1701 (B.L., Add. MS 70218); R. Ayleway to [Lord Dartmouth], 4 May 1700 (Staffordshire R.O., D.1778/I.ii/18). See also Arthur Bushe to Ellis, 24 September 1702 (B.L., Add. MS 28888, f. 188). 185 Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 98–9, 208; iv, pp. 123–4; vi, pp. 172, 185–6, 370; Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 317, 325, 339. 186 Methuen to Vernon, 12 October 1700, 2 January 1701 (C.S.P. dom., 1700–2, pp. 132–3, 189). See also Jodrell to Coke, 27 October 1702 (B.L., Add. MS 69947, ff. 118–19). 78


from tory trustees187 and from the ‘country whigs’, who still regarded him as at bottom one of their own, in particular Cary and Trenchard (with whom Harley had been closely associated in 1698 in preparing the opposition onslaught over the standing army).188 Other English politicians taking a close interest in the trustees’ work were the high churchman Lord Weymouth, himself an absentee Irish landlord (in County Monaghan), and Sir Edward Seymour, whose son had recently acquired by marriage the Conway estate at Lisburn, County Antrim, and who undertook a tour of inspection of this property in the summer of 1700, during which he came to see the trustees in action in their court and in characteristically patronising vein gave them unsolicited advice.189 The leading figure among the trustees was Francis Annesley,190 who was now firmly in the tory camp, corresponding with several prominent high churchmen191 and associated particularly with Harcourt and Lord Rochester, through involvement with them in the management of Ormond’s estates.192 The passage of the resumption act and the appointment of the trust unleashed a torrent of invective on both sides. At first the promoters of the resumption enjoyed the better of the argument. Charles Davenant, the most effective of the country party’s writers, focused on the doubtful moral character of the grantees and the entitlement of the English taxpayer to a return for the investment of public funds in King William’s reconquest of Ireland.193 The answer from the court side in England was a justification of the monarch’s prerogative to dispose of the forfeited estates as he thought fit: a sound enough case in legal terms though scarcely popular.194 But Irish protestants raised another, more serious objection, denouncing the resumption as undermining the Williamite interest in Ireland, both directly, in that protestant purchasers would be deprived of their property, and indirectly, in that the resumption act set a precedent for English interference with Irish 187

Sheres to [Robert Harley], 25 September [?1701] (B.L., Add. MS 70257); same to same, 17 January [?1702] (ibid., Add. MS 70206). 188 Cary to Harley, 22 February, 29 March 1701 (B.L., Add. MS 70215); Trenchard to same, n.d. (ibid., Add. MS 70167); J.A. Downie, Robert Harley and the press: propaganda and public opinion in the age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 32–3. 189 Sheres to Weymouth, 28 August [1700] (Thynne papers, xxvi, f. 460). 190 One observer called him ‘the life of that board’: Terence McDonogh to Kean O’Hara, 11 February 1700[/1] (P.R.O.N.I., T/2812/5/13). 191 See, for example, Annesley to [Weymouth], 10 December 1702 (Thynne papers, xxv, ff. 104–5). 192 Rochester to Thomas Keightley, 6 March 1700[/1] (N.L.I., Inchiquin papers, 2597); Annesley to Harcourt, 25 August 1701 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 153–7); William Worth et al. to Ormond, 26 August 1701 (ibid., p. 161). 193 Charles Davenant, A discourse upon grants and resumptions . . . (2nd edn, London, 1700). 194 [Lord Somers,] Jus regium: or, The king’s right to grant forfeitures, and other revenues of the crown . . . (London, 1701). 79


land rights.195 This line of attack was much more effective, especially when taken up by English commentators,196 and elicited a sharp response from several authors, including Trenchard, who interpreted the Irish protests as an extension of previous objections to the woollen act and, more important, the claim to legislative autonomy articulated by Molyneux. Irish protestants, he alleged, were aiming at independence; a charge that was quickly denied.197 So offensive to the trustees, and to the whig Trenchard in particular, was any imputation that they were damaging the protestant interest in Ireland (and, in Trenchard’s case, that he was aiding and abetting the tory and by extension the jacobite cause),198 that the tone of the debate took a sharp downward turn, with sneering remarks about the incapacity of Irish understandings (‘it is a poor task to criticise an Irish address’), and the application to ‘English protestants’ in Ireland of the style of verbal caricature reserved hitherto for native catholics.199 Coming so soon after the revolution, and in the context of what was in effect an assault on protestant landownership, this was particularly offensive, and redoubled Irish hostility to the act. Matters were not improved by the conduct of the trustees in Dublin. They went about their business in an officious and sometimes high-handed fashion, setting themselves up in the parliament house in College Green and hearing petitions and evidence from ex-proprietors and new purchasers in a way that recalled the activities of the restoration court of claims. Their jurisdiction was rigorously, even ‘violently’ enforced, to the extent of committing the under-sheriff of Dublin into custody for contempt. When he was released on an order from king’s bench, the trustees promptly had him arrested again

195 See, for example, The case of the forfeitures in Ireland fairly stated, with the reasons that induced the protestants there to purchase them (London, 1700); Some remarks upon a pamphlet intitul’d, A letter from a soldier to the commons of England . . . (1702); Collected poems of Thomas Parnell, ed. Claude Rawson and F. P. Lock (Newark, N.J., 1989), pp. 351–2, 355. 196 See e.g. The candidates try’d . . . , p. 4. 197 [John Trenchard,] A letter from a souldier to the commons of England, occasioned by an address now carrying on by the protestants in Ireland . . . (London, 1702), esp. pp. 4–5; The several addresses of some Irish folkes to the king and the house of commons [?1702]; The secret history of the trust; with some reflections upon the Letter from a souldier . . . (London, 1702); Remarks upon a late scurrilous pamphlet, intituled, An address of some Irish-folks to the house of commons (London, 1702); A letter from a soldier, being some remarks upon a late scandalous pamphlet; entituled, An address of some Irish-folks to the house of commons (1702), esp. p. 5. 198 The whigs thirty two queries, and as many of the tories in answer to them . . . (London, 1701), p. 8; The secret history of the trust; with some reflections upon the Letter from a soldier . . . (London, 1702), p. 4. 199 Trenchard, A letter from a souldier . . . , pp. 16, 20; The several addresses of some Irish folkes . . . , pp. 4–5; The subjects case: or Advice to all Englishmen, who have the right of electing members to serve their country in the next parliament . . . (London, 1701), p. 14; D. W. Hayton, ‘From barbarian to burlesque: English images of the Irish c.1660–1750’ in Irish Economic and Social History, xv (1988), pp. 24–5.

80


and only discharged him after a formal apology.200 What made it worse was that so many protestant landowners were affected: ‘every gentleman almost in Ireland’, complained Methuen, ‘is forced to come about some claim’.201 Alan Brodrick, whose family were directly affected and who was personally aggrieved at being excluded from appearing before the trustees in a legal capacity, was virtually incandescent. ‘If they are sent over again among us without increase of powers,’ he wrote to his brother in May 1701, We must be used with more insolence and arbitrariness than we have met hitherto: if their powers are increased, no honest man in the kingdom can say he is master of a foot of estate or of his reputation: knaves that will be supple, and flatter them may pass their times as easily as such slaves deserve or desist to do; but whoever shows an aversion to their tyranny shall one way or another smart bitterly under them. . . . Nothing but the terror people lie under hinders me from giving such instances of oppression and wrong as are not to be paralleled.202

This was strong stuff, but by no means unique. Sir Francis Blundell wrote of the trustees’ ‘arbitrary and expensive manner of proceeding and the vast expense they have put this kingdom to by summoning persons to a perpetual and expensive attendance on slight occasions’, while the very word used by Brodrick to describe the trustees – ‘vipers’ – was echoed by a newly arrived English clergyman, who called them ‘the vipers that are gnawing the vitals of Ireland’.203 Even those who were not themselves affected by the loss of purchased or rented property became obsessed with the notion that the trustees were favouring catholics and undermining the protestant interest – showing ‘great severity’ to the ‘English’, as Methuen put it.204 The justice of the accusation is well-nigh impossible to determine at this distance, but it is easy to see how it was believed, since most if not all of the applications for exemption came from former catholic proprietors or their heirs, and, naturally enough, a proportion were justified in law and thus accepted.205 At any event the assumption was so widespread that it was actually stated at the privy 200

Methuen to Vernon, 23 November 1700 (C.S.P. dom., 1700–2, pp. 150–1); Simms, Williamite confiscation, pp. 122–3. 201 Methuen to Vernon, 2 January 1701 (C.S.P. dom., 1700–2, p. 190. 202 [Alan] to Thomas Brodrick, 13 May 1701 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 20–1). See also [same] to [St John Brodrick], 11 October 1701 (ibid., ff. 31–2). 203 Blundell to Ellis, 24 December 1701 (B.L., Add. MS 28887, f. 419); William Perceval to Arthur Charlett, 13 December 1701 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 26). 204 Methuen to Vernon, 31 August/1 September 1700 (C.S.P. dom., 1700–2, p. 114). 205 Intriguingly, a number of the surveyors employed by the trustees in the countryside had names which at first glance suggest a catholic origin: Francis Baggot, Richard Carroll, Patrick Donnellan, Henry Donnelly, Augustine Dowdall, Garret Hogan, Edward Naughton and Cornelius Reynolds. Trustees’ minute book, 1700–1, pp. 67, 79 (P.R.O.N.I., D/1854/2/2). The Irish house of commons also alleged subsequently that ‘Irish papists’ had been employed as receivers (C.J.I., ii, p. 469). 81


council, in the presence of the chief governor, in December 1701, by Lord Chief Justice Pyne and Lord Blessington, Pyne declaring that ‘the act by which they had such a power delegated to them was the Magna Carta to confirm the Irish and popish interest in this country’.206 Both Pyne and Blessington were old associates of the Brodricks. It was this political interest, essentially the castle’s parliamentary managers of 1695–9 and their followers, that inspired and co-ordinated opposition to the trust. Also prominent, for the first time on the Irish political stage, was William Conolly, selected for special treatment by one English tory pamphlet, which highlighted his meteoric rise to in a pejorative ‘account of Prince Conolly’.207 Together with Brodrick, and Lords Abercorn, Inchiquin and Meath, Conolly organised the so-called ‘national remonstrance’ in December 1701, a series of addresses to the king intended to be sent up from each Irish county, to represent the grievances of loyal protestant subjects against a misconceived parliamentary act and its arbitrary and oppressive execution. The emphasis would be on the threat to the protestant interest, though without attacking the English parliament directly; the act was presented as misguided rather than malicious. Conolly and forty associates signed a circular letter that was sent to sympathisers in the counties together with a draft address as a pattern.208 The response was remarkably good, with at least twenty counties and five boroughs returning addresses.209 They included Cork, of course, together with Clare, Kerry and Waterford (county and city), all of which felt the pull of the Brodricks’ influence, but surprisingly also both Counties Kilkenny and Tipperary, where Ormond power was centred. Dublin, which had a whiggish tradition, contributed addresses from both county and city. Brodrick reported predictable opposition from individuals and factions who had previously fought against him in parliament: Maurice Annesley in County Kildare, and unnamed individuals in Counties Westmeath and Louth who were almost

206

Perceval to Charlett, 13 December 1701 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 26); [Alan] to St John Brodrick, 15 December 1701 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 43–4). For a careful analysis, see Simms, Williamite confiscation, ch. 12. 207 The several addresses of some Irish folkes . . . , quoted in Simms, Williamite confiscation, p. 126. 208 Simms, Williamite confiscation, pp. 125–6; B.L., Egerton MS 917, f. 179; C.J., xiii, p. 718. The idea for ‘an address or petition from each county, city and borough in the kingdom directly to his Majesty’ had been aired by Alan Brodrick in a letter to his brother St John of 15 December 1701 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 43–4). 209 Eleven addresses were laid before the house of commons on 14 February 1702, namely those from counties Cavan, Clare, Cork, Dublin, Kilkenny, Meath, Roscommon, Tipperary, Queen’s County, and from the boroughs of Dublin and Galway. The originals of a further twelve are to be found at B.L., Add. Ch. 19526–8 and 19530–8: from Counties Antrim, Armagh, Carlow, Donegal, Down, Galway, Kerry, Longford, Monaghan, Tyrone, Waterford, the county and city of Londonderry, and the borough of Waterford. 82


certainly Sir Richard Levinge and Stephen Ludlow. Nor was he surprised by the general unwillingness of the clergy to participate.210 In part this may be ascribed to a natural caution among men with a great deal to lose in terms of career opportunities if they put their heads above the parapet.211 But ever since 1697, and possibly even earlier, there had been an undercurrent of religious animosity in the parliamentary opposition to the castle. This was partly visible in the patchy response to the campaign in Ulster counties, where sectarian tensions between Anglican and presbyterian were at their highest. That Donegal and Tyrone both addressed may be ascribed to the influence of Lord Abercorn, as well as to the survival of a strong Williamite interest among the gentry dating back to the days of James II. On the other hand, there was resistance to the address in County Londonderry, despite the presence of William Conolly, who had recently acquired an estate there; no trace survives of any response from Fermanagh; while the Armagh address, signed by nearly 120 names, merely expressed loyal resentment at Louis XIV’s recognition of the jacobite pretender and ignored the issue of the trust.212 In both Antrim and Down the situation was more complicated: nearly all the identifiable presbyterian landed proprietors signed, and some prominent churchmen did not – most obviously, and most predictably, Francis Annesley. But there was still a fair representation of Anglican landlords, headed by Lord Massereene (who signed in at least four counties),213 and including various Colvills, Magills, at least one James Hamilton, and future tories such as the Davyses of Carrickfergus; enough to indicate that the rising tension between church and dissent had by no means turned every ‘country’ whig in Ulster into a tory.214 When the English parliament met in the winter of 1701–2 these issues were thoroughly ventilated. By this time William had reshuffled his ministers twice.215 In the winter of 1700–1 he dismissed the junto whigs and admitted some tories, in particular the moderates Godolphin and Robert Harley, who effectively controlled the government. (The tory leader, Rochester, was given the Irish lord lieutenancy and effectively sidelined.) This experiment proved to be only a partial success. The new ministry secured a supply and settled the succession, but at a considerable cost as back-bench tory extremists pursued vendettas against the whigs, impeached former ministers, and exposed embarrassing royal secrets about the partition treaties. The king, taking whig 210

Alan to St John Brodrick, 20 January 1701/2 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 51–2); same to Thomas Brodrick (ibid., ff. 59–60). 211 See, for example, Bp Ashe to Bp King, 7 February 1701/2 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/874). 212 John Bolton to Bp King, 25 January 1701[/2] (ibid., MS 1995–2008/870); B.L. Add. Ch. 19529, 19533. 213 Antrim, Down, Londonderry and Monaghan: B.L., Add. Ch. 19533–4, 19537–8. 214 Ibid., Add. Ch. 19534, 19537. 215 For what follows, see Horwitz, Parliament, policy & politics, ch. 12. 83


advice, then dissolved his English parliament. However, he did not bring back the junto, being unsure of their political strength, and the general election of November to December 1700, though it produced some whig gains, left a balance of power. Each party was now intent on proving to the king that it was the stronger. Thus early in 1702, when the trustees reported, and the ‘national remonstrance’ was brought to parliament’s attention, the atmosphere at Westminster was dominated by the party struggle, with everything interpreted in the light of the conflict of whig and tory. In these circumstances, English M.P.s naturally took sides on the Irish question. Tories reaffirmed their support for the resumption, working closely with the two representatives of the trust then in London, Francis Annesley and James Hooper. Annesley kept company with leading tories, and referred to the party collectively as ‘our friends’.216 It was through his agency that details of the ‘remonstrance’ were laid before the commons, enabling tories to condemn it out of hand.217 After a heated debate the arguments of the addresses were declared to be ‘scandalous and false’ and the promoters ‘guilty of an high crime and misdemeanour’.218 The identity of those who spoke in defence of the remonstrance remains unknown, except for one M.P., John Smith, who was a whig.219 Smith also figured in subsequent debates, expounding the rights of the ‘poor protestant purchasers’ and once being so bold as to criticise the entire resumption.220 While it is not easy to discover a pattern in the identities of those who supported and opposed individual petitions, with which parliament was soon inundated, since each petitioner would try and gather support from wherever he or she could find it,221 there are some suggestive fragments of evidence. The case of the earl of Athlone’s grant, for example, which was especially controversial, was taken up by the Yorkshire whig Sir William Hustler, and generally supported by his party colleagues.222 Another whig, Sir Thomas Littleton, intervened on behalf of those who had acquired property from Lords Romney and Albemarle;223 while a general bill for the relief of protestant purchasers enjoyed widespread support from whigs, who had, it would seem, adopted this cause as their own. 216

James Brydges’s diary, 19 October 1701 (Huntington Library, MS Stowe 26 (2)); Annesley to Wyche, 19 March 1701[/2] (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/248). 217 The parliamentary diary of Sir Richard Cocks, 1698–1702, ed. D. W. Hayton (Oxford, 1996), pp. 200–1, 214–16; Bp Ashe to Bp King, 17 February 1701/2 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/879). 218 James Ralph, The history of England . . . (2 vols, London, 1744–6), ii, p. 105; C.J., xiii, p. 746. 219 Cocks diary, ed. Hayton, p. 215. 220 Ibid., pp. 264, 269. 221 In the case of Lady Tyrconnell, who occupied the interesting position of sister-in-law to the earl of Marlborough, whigs and tories competed with each other to be of service: Bp Ashe to Bp King, 2 April 1702 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/901). 222 Cocks diary, ed. Hayton, pp. 216, 271; ‘Letters from Van Homrigh to Ginkel’, ed. Troost, p. 63; Annesley to Wyche, 19 March 1701[/2] (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/248). 223 Cocks diary, ed. Hayton, p. 285. 84


VI In the meantime, Rochester had been ensconced as viceroy. He may have expected a post rather closer to the centre of affairs, and would have been justified in resenting an Irish exile, but he seems to have accepted the job with equanimity, partly because it afforded him a seat in the cabinet. He even came over to Dublin for a spell in the autumn and winter of 1701, though without summoning parliament, which in the circumstances was thought the wisest thing to do.224 Popular hostility to the English parliament had been intensified by a slump in the Irish economy. A general sluggishness in trade was accompanied by a currency crisis, which left money in short supply, and, with rents slow to come in, many landowners were feeling the pinch. The ‘national remonstrance’, in dividing county communities, only made matters worse. But without having to manage parliament Rochester did not find himself personally embarrassed, and he was able to retain the viceroyalty through to William’s death in March 1702, and the accession of the stoutly Anglican Queen Anne, which ushered in a new political world. The queen trusted government to her long-term favourites Marlborough and Godolphin, and the administration over which Godolphin presided was dominated by tories, so that Rochester continued as lord lieutenant. Some contemporary observers blamed Rochester for introducing party divisions into Ireland.225 In fact it is difficult to find evidence to support this accusation, which seems little more than a presumption based on the lord lieutenant’s reputation as one of the staunchest of party men. True enough, on his appointment Rochester named a tory chief secretary, the prominent English M.P. Francis Gwyn;226 he subsequently recommended his high church chaplain, Charles Hickman, to a bishopric,227 and tinkered with minor offices to advance men of a similar disposition. On the whole however, these were personal matters – rewarding clients and dependants – rather than symptoms of a systematic political strategy. As incoming viceroy he was either unable or unwilling to make significant changes to the administration at Dublin Castle. There was no remodelling of the privy council, to which in due course

224 Perceval to Charlett, 10 December 1701 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 19); Francis Annesley to Wyche, 19 March 1701/2 (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/248); Rochester to Keightley, 23 May 1702 (N.L.I., Inchiquin papers, 2599). 225 See, for example, Henry Maxwell to James Stanhope, 6 December 1713 [recte January 1714] (Centre for Kentish Studies, U1590/O141/11). 226 For Gwyn see Commons 1690–1715, iv, pp. 134–42. 227 Rochester to Vernon, 25 September 1701 (B.L., Add. MS 40775, f. 193). Hickman did not get the diocese Rochester had at first intended for him, Raphoe, but in February 1703 was nominated to the more lucrative see of Derry: Francis Atterbury to Bp Trelawny, 20 February 1702/3 (The epistolary correspondence . . . of Francis Atterbury (4 vols, London, 1783–7), iv, p. 374).

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he actually added the volatile Lord Abercorn, one of the strongest critics of the forfeitures trust and an organiser of the remonstrance.228 Two tories were advanced in the Irish judiciary – Ormond’s client Sir Richard Cox and the Englishman Gilbert Dolben – but these were balanced by the preferment of a Belfast whig, James Macartney.229 The men on whom Rochester relied most, and who were left as lord justices after his visit to Dublin, were Major-General Thomas Erle, a whig from Dorset who served as commander-in-chief of the Irish army; the master of the ordnance Lord Mountalexander, an Ulster peer who had been an associate of the Hamilton–Rawdon–Annesley group in the early 1690s; and the viceroy’s own brother-in-law, the revenue commissioner Thomas Keightley, a convinced tory, but by no means an assertive personality.230 Brodrick was retained as solicitor-general: his family had enjoyed a long connexion with the Hydes through the friendship of his uncle and namesake (a royalist conspirator during the Interregnum) with Rochester’s father, Lord Chancellor Clarendon. It could not be said that Brodrick was ever close to the viceroy, but for a time the two men established a superficially cordial relationship. Indeed, the only fly in the ointment as far as Rochester was concerned was Methuen’s continuance as lord chancellor, and more particularly the fact that Methuen was admitted regularly into the king’s closet to give advice on Irish affairs, but even this he learned to bear with patience.231 Apart from the agitation over the resumption, there was little surface movement in Irish politics during the first stage of Rochester’s viceroyalty, until the accession of Queen Anne. His visit to Dublin was almost a nonevent. There were reports that the interests behind the ‘remonstrance’ were hostile to him,232 but he did not exploit his authority to suppress the addresses, which were transmitted to the king. Nor did he encourage high churchmen within the ecclesiastical establishment in their determination to bring prosecutions against presbyterian ministers and congregations, for ‘clandestine’

228

Rochester to Vernon, 23 October 1701 (B.L., Add. MS 40775, ff. 302–3). Ball, Judges, ii, pp. 53–6, 65–6. For Cox, see also The autobiography of the Rt Hon. Sir Richard Cox . . . , ed. Richard Caulfield (Cork, 1860); T. C. Barnard, ‘The political, material and mental culture of the Cork settlers, c. 1650–1700’ in Patrick O’Flanagan and C. G. Buttimer (eds), Cork: history and society (Dublin, 1993), p. 343; Hayton, ‘dependence, clientage & affinity’, pp. 216–17. For Dolben, see Commons 1690–1715, iii, pp. 890–6; and for Macartney, Agnew, Belfast merchant families, pp. 25, 57, 89, 93–4; and Hist. Ir. parl., v, pp. 156–8. 230 Commons 1690–1715, iii, pp. 978–81; Rochester to Vernon, 5 December 1701 (B.L., Add. MS 40775, f. 341). 231 S. B. Baxter, William III (London, 1966), p. 384. 232 Francis Annesley to Wyche, 19 March 1701/2 (N.A.I., Wyche papers, 1/1/248). Those responsible for co-ordinating the addresses seem to have delayed the preparation and presentation until Rochester’s return to England at the end of 1701, presumably to make it more difficult for the viceroy to interfere. 229

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marriages and other technical infringements of the law, stating quite explicitly in a letter to Secretary Vernon that in these matters he had ‘no thought of party’.233 Later Rochester began to look a little more like a party man. The establishment of a more strongly tory ministry in England in 1702 enabled him to flex his muscles, resisting proposals for the promotion of William Neave to a vacant judgeship, and asking Keightley, in the strictest confidence, to prepare a list of office-holders whose patents had determined with the death of the king, with advice as to who did and who did not merit reappointment, and likely candidates for vacancies.234 He also declared himself willing to make provision for Levinge.235 Some vexed questions of ecclesiastical preferment were also dealt with. Armagh went to the scholarly moderate Narcissus Marsh, whose archbishopric of Dublin was given in turn to William King, while Rochester’s protégé Hickman came into King’s old diocese of Derry. King’s record as an enemy of dissent would certainly have made his nomination acceptable to high churchmen, even though the new archbishop would soon show himself to be a whig in state affairs. At the same time there was no public alteration in the ministry. The privy council was reappointed in toto on the queen’s accession, and the most important whig in government, Alan Brodrick, was neither replaced, nor excluded from high-level discussions over policy.236 When Rochester eventually left office in the spring of 1703 as a result of political changes in England, the administration he left behind in Dublin was still in essence a ‘mixed’ ministry. What had changed, however, was the broader context. The turbulent events at Westminster in 1701–2 – three general elections in eighteen months, the attempted impeachments of the junto ministers, the resumption of war with France and the sudden ascendancy of the tories at court – had raised the political temperature in England, to the extent that some English historians have viewed this crisis as the real beginning of the ‘age of party’. This more feverish atmosphere was almost certain to have an effect in Ireland, the more so since the forfeitures resumption had cemented links between the Irish ‘remonstrants’ and the junto whigs in England. The first hint of a knockon effect came during discussions among leading office-holders in Dublin in January 1703, in response to a direction from Rochester that they consider when parliament might be called, and what bills should be prepared. As well as the lords justices – Mountalexander and Keightley – and the chief judges, views were sought from the attorney-general Rochfort, the solicitorgeneral Brodrick and the chancellor of the exchequer Savage. There was general agreement that the calling of parliament should be deferred as long 233 Rochester to Vernon, 4 October 1701 (B.L., Add. MS 40775, f . 245). See also same to Keightley, 26 December 1702 (N.L.I., Inchiquin papers, 2601). 234 Rochester to Keightley, 28 May, 16, 23 June 1702 (N.L.I., Inchiquin papers, 2599). 235 Same to same, 26 December 1702 (ibid., 2601). 236 Same to same, 23 June, 29 December1702 (ibid., 2599, 2601).

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as possible, and about the appropriate bills. Only Brodrick made difficulties. He had already been reported to be in an ‘ill temper’, and Rochester had advised Thomas Keightley to take particular care with ‘the guiding, and influencing and managing of him’, using, if necessary, veiled threats of viceregal displeasure.237 This approach had not been followed, however, and Brodrick felt free to speak his mind, resurrecting the question of the ‘sole right’, which became an issue again because this would have to be a new parliament, and recommending strongly that no money bill be prepared by the council. Neither the lords justices nor Rochester would countenance this. Indeed, it was assumed that Brodrick had only raised the subject as a preliminary to espousing the cause of the ‘sole right’ in the parliament. 238 There was also a strong suspicion that he was looking across the water for a ministerial alteration that would bring him advantage. If this was so, he was sadly disappointed. The appointment of Ormond in place of Rochester in May 1703 appalled many Irish whigs, and in retrospect may seem to have guaranteed that Irish politics would take on a strongly partisan character. As one of the duke’s supporters observed, because the new viceroy was ‘a tory, the whiggish party [in Ireland] would oppose him in everything’.239 Ormond was not only a tory; he had behaved in the 1697 and 1698–9 sessions of the Irish parliament as if he were the leader of the Irish tories. Many of those who had opposed the castle party in 1695–9, or, in the case of Robert Rochfort, had since become estranged from the Brodricks, had close connexions with him.240 As an Irishman himself, Ormond was much more concerned than his predecessor about the direction of government policy in Ireland, and much more committed to supporting the Church of Ireland than Rochester had been. He was also much less intelligent than Rochester, and less aware of the dangers of partisanship. From the outset there could be no doubt of his cast of mind. Having accepted the viceroyalty with an assurance that he could have Methuen replaced whenever he wished, he wasted no time in securing the promotion of Sir Richard Cox to the lord chancellorship,241 a clear signal of intent, made even clearer by the 237

Same to same, 29 December 1702, 28 January 1702[/3] (ibid., 2601, 2602). Cf. [Alan] to St John Brodrick, 29 November 1702 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 73–5). 238 Keightley and Mountalexander to Rochester, 30 January 1702/3 (C.S.P. dom., 1702–3, pp. 563–4); Keightley same, 30 January 1702[/3] (N.L.I., Inchiquin papers, 2602); [Alan] to St John Brodrick, 4 June 1703 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 98–9). 239 Robert Echlin to [Edward Southwell], 23 November 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 9712, f. 51). 240 For Rochfort’s long-standing professional and personal association with Ormond, see, for example, Lord Longford to Charles Gosling, 8 December 1692 (N.L.I., MS 2456, p. 179); Rochfort to Ormond, 10 January 1695[/6] (ibid., p. 247); same to same, 13 February 1702/3 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, p. 45). 241 Vernon to Shrewsbury, 28 May 1703 (Northants. R.O., Montagu (Boughton) papers, 48/151); Edward Southwell to Nottingham, 5 June 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 29588, f. 478); Nottingham to Southwell, 13 July 1703 (ibid., Add. MS 29595, f. 236). 88


presumptuous behaviour of the beneficiary, who even before his appointment was said to have ‘visibly taken on him to be acting minister’.242 What Ormond did try to prevent was an open clash with Brodrick. There was some awkwardness between the two men,243 but the lord lieutenant was anxious not to alienate so potentially powerful an opponent. Brodrick was kept on as solicitor-general, perhaps in the belief that the occupation of high office would deter him from making trouble in the parliament which was now to be summoned. Nor did Ormond make any attempt to thwart Brodrick’s ambitions for the speakership, in which his chief rival was Rochfort. At first Ormond simply declared he would not interfere; then he changed his mind and decided to endorse Brodrick’s candidacy in return for ‘assurances of promoting her Majesty’s affairs and carrying all with moderation and temper’.244 Although partly a matter of bowing to the inevitable, this decision was of a piece with the careful preparations for the parliament. Cox’s appointment revealed the viceroy’s party colours, but at the same time Ormond did try to damp down inflammable issues: individual M.P.s were closeted about the ‘sole right’;245 Lord Meath, who was involved in a lawsuit that threatened to reopen the question of the appellate jurisdiction, was persuaded to hold his fire; and in general, according to Cox, the viceroy behaved with moderation and tact.246 Ormond was doing his best to avoid disturbance; or, to put it another way, to give Brodrick no opportunity to misbehave. No excuse was needed, however. Scarcely had Brodrick been elected speaker, having been proposed by the chief secretary, Edward Southwell,247 than he broke his promise in the most flagrant fashion, and, with his followers, began a concerted campaign of opposition.248 He was assisted principally by those who had fought alongside him in previous sessions: his brother Thomas, brother-in-law Lawrence Clayton, the lawyers William Neave, William Whitshed and John Forster (recently elected as recorder of Dublin), William Conolly, Brigadier Henry Conyngham, and families such as the Allens, Moores and St Georges.249 These ‘Brodericians’, as they were described in government correspondence, made constant difficulties over money. They

242

[Alan] to St John Brodrick, 4 June 1703 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 98–9). Unsigned letter from Dublin, 2 September 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 29589, ff. 127–8). 244 [Alan] to Thomas Brodrick, 14 August 1703 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 105–6); Southwell to Nottingham, 19 August 1703 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, pp. 91–2); McGrath, Constitution, pp. 160–1. 245 Ormond to Nottingham, 15 July 1703 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 81–2). 246 Cox to same, 23 October 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 29589, ff. 294–5). 247 Southwell to same, 25 September 1703 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 129–34). 248 For what follows, see the set of observations on Brodrick’s behaviour in H.M.C., Portland, viii, pp. 121–2; and in general McGrath, Constitution, pp. 162–79. 249 Southwell to Nottingham, 9 October 1703 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, pp. 149–50); same to same, 6 November 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 29589, ff. 306–7); [Alan] to Thomas Brodrick, 10/11 February 1703/4 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 123–4). 243

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slowed down the proceedings of the committee of supply, with the speaker himself arguing against the level of subsidy the court was requesting.250 Moreover, they were unwilling to oblige Ormond by voting additional duties for two years; instead, at a private meeting with the chief secretary and other viceregal representatives, Brodrick announced that he would not vote for more than twelve months.251 He also obtained control over the influential accounts committee, which, with Clayton in the chair, hunted through the establishments for any trace of scandal. These enquiries culminated in a campaign – in which Brodrick again took the lead – against the deputy vicetreasurer Sir William Robinson, a close associate (and indeed a personal employee) of Ormond, who was declared to have misrepresented the size of the public debt, was committed into custody, and declared unfit to hold office.252 Inevitably, the subject of the forfeitures trust was raised, in a manner calculated to offend the lord lieutenant but without giving English tories any grounds to say that the Irish were aiming at a form of independence. A resolution was passed, orchestrated by the Brodrick interest, denouncing a passage in the original report of the inquiry commissioners, which had ‘scandalously and maliciously traduced the protestant freeholders of this kingdom’. Francis Annesley, as one of the authors of the report, was expelled from the house.253 In the same way, the speaker and his allies concocted a ‘representation’ on ‘the state of the nation’, which rehearsed a variety of grievances, of which the forfeitures resumption was one, and blamed the current economic ills of Ireland on the failure to call frequent parliaments – by implication a criticism of successive governments – before concluding with a humble request either for restoration of ‘a full enjoyment of our constitution’ or for an Anglo–Irish union.254 In many respects the line of attack developed by the opposition was classically that of a ‘country party’: uncovering corruption, demanding frugality in government expenditure, and calling for parliamentary accountability through regular sessions. In a specifically Irish context, it was also a ‘patriot’ programme: the particular economic problems of Ireland were

250

Southwell to Nottingham, 30 September, 9, 15 October, 4 November 1703 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 135–48, 164–71); same to Ellis, 12 October 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 28891, ff. 129–30); Benjamin Chetwode to same, 17 October 1703 (ibid., f. 139); William Steuart to same, 9, 27 November 1703 (ibid., ff. 185, 218). 251 Southwell to Nottingham, 9 October 1703 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 139–42). 252 C.J.I., iii, p. 56; Southwell to Nottingham, 15 October 1703 (C.S.P. dom. 1703–4, pp. 157–8); Robinson to Arthur Moore, 5 November 1703 (University of Kansas, Spencer Research Library, MS 143/Ci). 253 C.J.I., iii, p. 23; Southwell to Nottingham, 25, 30 September 1703 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 129–38); same to Ellis, 2 October 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 28891, ff. 104–5). 254 C.J.I., iii, pp. 65–7; Southwell to Nottingham, 30 September, 23 October 1703 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 135–8, 154–6); same to same, 9, 15, 25 October 1703 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, pp. 149, 156, 174); Hayton, ‘ideas of union’, pp. 159–60. 90


highlighted, and traced to their origin in the nature of the Anglo–Irish constitutional relationship; there was a strong insinuation of English misrule, and misguided or mischievous legislative intervention in Irish affairs; scrutiny of the civil list was used to expose the problem of absentee pensioners. The purpose was to seize upon popular issues as a means of maximising support, and in particular to recapture the allegiance of independent or ‘country’ M.P.s. To some extent this proved successful. Certainly the language of contemporary political commentators, of all sides, reflected the way in which the opposition wished to characterise the parliamentary struggle: the tory clergyman Toby Caulfield, for example, wrote that the distinction between ‘a courtier’ and ‘a country gentleman’ was ‘the fountain from which all our present buzz and tattle flows’.255 There is also evidence of some individuals being drawn in. Robert Molesworth, the archetypal Irish country whig, who had returned to Dublin for the session, chaired the committee that produced the representation on the state of the nation;256 while on the back benches one can find independent whig members such as Samuel Dopping, who was recorded as speaking in favour of the representation on the state of the nation;257 and Edward Wingfield, knight of the shire for Sligo, who voted against the court over a range of issues, and described Robinson’s behaviour, for example, as ‘damnable’.258 Not all ‘country’ members were persuaded, however, and although the opposition scored some successes, notably over the expulsion of Annesley and the approval of the ‘representation’, the viceroy was able to get his way over the crucial issue of money.259 One former ‘country’ M.P., Wingfield’s colleague in the parliamentary representation of Sligo, Hugh Morgan, ‘was observed to follow the court’ over supply, ‘for which some or many of his friends censure him severely’.260 Morgan’s motivation is unclear, but a personal attachment to the lord lieutenant (he was an army officer and held a commission in Ormond’s regiment),261 seems the most likely explanation. Another example would be William Ponsonby, a ‘country gentleman’ who had previously acted in parliament with the Brodricks but was now to be found

255 Caulfield to Kean O’Hara, 2 November 1703 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2812/9/34). See also Southwell to Ellis, 12 October 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 28891, ff. 129–30). 256 Southwell to Nottingham, 9, 15, 23 October 1703 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, pp. 150, 156, 170). 257 [Alan] to Thomas Brodrick, 10/11 February 1703/4 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 123–4). See also Joseph Addison to Lord Godolphin, 7 May, 2 August 1709 (Addison letters, pp. 136–7, 169). 258 Wingfield to Kean O’Hara, 25 September, 2 [November], 2 [October], 16 October 1703 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2812/5/104, 110–12). 259 Edward Southwell observed towards the end of October that ‘the speaker’s faction seems to sink much’: Southwell to Nottingham, 21 October 1703 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, p. 164). 260 Toby Caulfield to Kean O’Hara, 9 October 1703 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2812/9/32). 261 Hayton, ‘Dependence, clientage & affinity’, pp. 233, 241.

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proposing the two-year supply. The fact that he resided in County Kilkenny may have helped him to make up his mind.262 Clearly, the strength of the court party owed a great deal to Ormond’s personal influence. The inner circle of parliamentary managers included several who were clients, dependants or even employees of the duke: Lord Chancellor Cox, the M.P.s Francis Bernard and Robert Fitzgerald, and the baron of the exchequer Robert Johnson.263 Of course, there were also those who had long been political enemies of the Brodricks – for example, Philip Savage, Charles Dering and the more recently estranged Robert Rochfort264 – but these too were coming to identify very specifically with the Ormond interest. And there were others who had grown accustomed since 1697 to look to Ormond as the leader of what may only be described as a ‘tory’ tendency in Irish politics: Francis Annesley’s cousin Arthur, cutting his political teeth in the Irish house of commons before embarking on what would be a glittering career as a high tory member of the Westminster parliament, the lawyers Anderson Saunders and Stephen Ludlow, who had both been identified by Brodrick as opponents of the national remonstrance, the revenue commissioner Henry Tenison, the old soldier General William Steuart, and Lord Mountjoy’s younger son, Hon. Richard Stewart, the M.P. for County Tyrone. This tory or high church element in the court party grew in numbers as the session progressed. In what was really a new departure in post-revolution Irish politics the issue of protestant dissent and the security of the Church of Ireland became a matter of central importance in parliamentary debates. This was partly the outcome of events that were taking place outside parliament. Especially important was the recall of the Irish convocation, which gave highflying clergymen a public platform from which they could publish extreme anti-presbyterian views. But there was similar pressure within parliament. Early in the session, in a debate in the committee of supply on the pension list, tory M.P.s mounted a systematic offensive against the regium donum, the sum given every year to the General Synod of Ulster for distribution among presbyterian ministers. Led by Arthur Annesley, a succession of court spokesmen – including Levinge, Tenison and Savage – declaimed against the iniquities of the presbyterians, their disloyalty to the crown, their expansionist ambitions,

262 [Alan] to Thomas Brodrick, 10/11 February1703/4 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 123–4); Southwell to Nottingham, 23 October 1703 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 152–3). Ponsonby had previously borrowed money from Alan Brodrick, and been on close terms with the family; presumably he now saw greater advantages elsewhere: marriage settlement of Alan Brodrick and Lucy Courthope, 23 February 1710 (S.H.C., G145/box 95/1); Ponsonby to Alan Brodrick, 3 March 1702 (ibid., 1248/2, ff. 56i–k). 263 [Southwell] to Ormond, 21, 30 December 1703 (N.L.I., MS 2547, pp. 201, 206); Ormond to Nottingham, 7 December 1703 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, p. 225); Johnson to same, 29 April 1704 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 67–8); Hayton, ‘Dependence, clientage & affinity’, pp. 218–19, 221, 230, 234. 264 Southwell to Nottingham, 27 June 1703 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, p. 27).

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and their presumption in the matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.265 The committee voted the regium donum to be unnecessary. This, however, was a minor skirmish in comparison with the onslaught that followed the return from England in January 1704 of the bill to prevent the further growth of popery. The English privy council, probably on the initiative of the earl of Nottingham and other tory cabinet ministers, had added a clause imposing a sacramental test on all crown and municipal office-holders, a move that played into the hands of Irish tories, and may well have been prompted by them: Arthur Annesley for one, was close to Nottingham, and the presence of Gilbert Dolben in London while the Irish bills were being processed suggests a very obvious line of communication.266 The issue of the ‘Church in danger’ proved a vote-winner. Few if any M.P.s in the Irish commons were prepared to oppose the test clause, and the Brodricks offered only a token protest.267 The extent to which this Anglican flag-waving was responsible for the reinforcement of Ormond’s court party in the latter stages of the session is uncertain; after all, despite the success the Brodricks had enjoyed with their ‘patriotic’ initiatives, their opposition had already failed over the supply. More important in the long term was that by this means the court party acquired a distinct identity as ‘churchmen’ and a catchcry that was as popular as patriotism, or anti-popery. It could even attract some of the ‘country’ whigs, especially from Ulster. In the debate over the regium donum Samuel Dopping (M.P. for Armagh) and his fellow whig Henry Maxwell (M.P. for Bangor) both expressed strongly anti-presbyterian sentiments. They would repeat these views four years later, when an attempt was made to repeal the test. Not surprisingly, therefore, by the time the Irish parliament met again under Ormond in 1705 – following a purge of officeholders that included, among others, Alan Brodrick – the viceroy’s followers were defining themselves as the ‘church party’ and emphasising their antipresbyterian credentials.

VII Those contemporaries who lamented the appearance of ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ parties in Ireland, as an ‘unnatural’ source of intestine animosities and a weakening of the protestant interest, were inclined to blame outside forces 265 D. W. Hayton, ‘A debate in the Irish house of commons in 1703: a whiff of tory grapeshot’, in Parliamentary History, x (1991), pp. 151–63. 266 Simms, War & politics, pp. 269–73; Commons 1690–1715, iii, p. 28. Some surviving notes in Nottingham’s hand concerning the problem of nonconformity in Ireland (Leicestershire R.O., Finch papers, Political Papers D, PP 151) may relate to arguments in favour of the introduction of the test. 267 Southwell to Nottingham, 19 February 1704 (C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, p. 537); same to same, 26 February 1703/4 (N.L.I., MS 991, pp. 240–5).

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and malicious designs. But party did not emerge suddenly in Ireland in 1703–4 as a result of the intrigues of Ormond and Nottingham, nor even in 1701 as a result of the fleeting appearance of Lord Rochester on the Irish political stage. In following the tortuous course of Irish politics since 1692 it is possible to detect a two-party system in embryo in the parliaments presided over by Capel and his immediate successors. On the other hand, the process of polarisation into whig and tory interests was neither incremental nor inexorable; instead it was marked by discontinuities, and helped forward at crucial stages by particular contingencies, most notably, perhaps, the emergence of the Brodrick brothers at the head of a ministerial whig interest in 1695–6, the passage at Westminster in 1698–9 of the woollen act and forfeitures resumption act, which facilitated the development of Anglo-Irish political alliances, and the events of the first parliamentary session of Ormond’s viceroyalty, which gave a particular identity and character to Irish ‘tories’. The gravitational influence of English politics must have been an important factor in the growth of a party system in Ireland but it was not the only factor. Irishmen did not always take their cue from what was happening across the water. The fact that Capel was a strong whig did not mean that all Irish M.P.s of a whiggish cast of mind supported him in 1695, or that all his opponents identified themselves as tories. In this period it was perfectly possible for Irish politicians like Savage or Rochfort to shift between court and opposition without any suspicion that they were compromising their principles. Nor was it accepted practice for the personnel of the Irish administration to be transformed with the arrival of a new viceroy who was of a different political hue from his predecessor. In 1695 Capel carried out a major reconstruction at the top, but did not purge lesser officials, and those who had served him went on to work for Galway and Winchester, and even for Rochester. Perhaps things were beginning to change in the few months before Ormond’s appointment, with Brodrick becoming restive and difficult in Rochester’s privy council despite being retained in post. The subsequent history of Ormond’s first parliamentary session certainly seems to have borne out the predictions of some observers that members of the ‘whiggish party’ in Ireland, even those with employments, would give the duke all the opposition they could. Here again, though, we must look at the Irish antecedents of Irish parliamentary conflict; in particular the effects of the political struggles surrounding the ‘national remonstrance’ and the episode of the forfeitures trust. It was not a simple matter of Irishmen following an English lead, but a complex interaction between two political worlds. In ideological terms, the story is a simpler one: the development in Ireland of a distinctively tory or high church interest. Some tory elements were present even in the 1692 parliament; and whenever the issue of protestant dissent cropped up in parliamentary debates we can catch a glimpse of Irish toryism in the making. Although for some years after the revolution Irish protestants could in general be identified as whiggish, it was a whiggism with important reservations. Many did not accept the tolerationist side of whig94


gism, for the simple reason that in Ireland protestant dissent meant something very different. Williamites in Ireland were committed to the liberty of the individual, but in the context of upholding the protestant establishment which had been rescued and re-established by the revolution. This made it relatively easy for Irish whiggism to be redefined in line with ‘new whiggism’ of the junto in England, as an ideology of executive government, committed to defending the revolution settlement against papists and jacobites. In this process the ‘country’ elements had to be sacrificed. Just as in England, where the Foley/Harley connexion detached itself from the English whig party, joined a ‘country’ alliance and eventually became indistinguishable from the tories, so Irish ‘country whigs’ like Francis Annesley or Hamilton of Tollymore detached themselves from the ‘new whiggism’ of the Brodricks, and eventually merged into an Irish tory interest headed by the re-emergent power of the Ormond dynasty. The fact that a significant number of these ‘country whigs’ hailed from Ulster, and were perforce more sensitive to the size of the presbyterian presence in the kingdom, facilitated their movement into what was becoming by 1704 a recognisable ‘church party’. Of course, not all the ex-whigs who became tories were men of principle: any narrative of Irish politics in this period would be complicated by the activities of restless individuals such as Levinge, Savage, Brewster and Rochfort, who moved hither and thither from opportunism, ambition or pique. Nonetheless a distinct geological shift may be detected in the years after 1695, which reached its natural conclusion in 1704. From this observation, one might still argue the case that the root cause of the rise of party was the underlying tension between catholic and protestant, churchman and dissenter; in other words, that the social context was decisive. The massive influx of presbyterians from Scotland into east Ulster in the mid1690s posed problems to which different political groups would give different answers. In broad terms this conclusion may well be valid, but it is equally important to take cognisance of the details of the process itself, the twists and turns of the narrative. Personality remains the nub, since the factions out of which the whig and tory parties grew had initially derived their identity from leaders rather than ideologies. A two-party system would not have developed in Ireland without the emergence of the Brodricks as the governing political faction under Capel, their eclipse of the north-eastern group which had previously made the running in the opposition to Sidney’s ministry, and their subsequent victories over potential rivals like Savage and Rochfort. However, so complex was the interplay between politics in the two kingdoms that even then alternative scenarios were conceivable. The broad changes occurring within Irish society in the decade after the Glorious Revolution – a perceived weakening of the catholic interest and corresponding growth of presbyterian power in Ulster – were reflected in the division of parliament and the electorate into whigs and tories, but in no way predetermined the rise of ‘party’. The story was a great deal more complicated than that.

95


Appendix: The Irish house of commons in 1695 Members of the Irish house of commons in 1695, divided into supporters and opponents of Lord Chancellor Porter, according to the annotations on a contemporary printed list (T.C.D., MS 1179, pp. 37–9). ‘P’ indicates a supporter of the lord chancellor, ‘C’ an opponent, i.e. one who favoured the impeachment, and presumably also belonged to the ‘castle faction’ loyal to Lord Deputy Capel. Where available, the member’s voting record for the period 1706–13 has been added, with evidence tabulated from the following lists: 1 Those supporting Ormond’s government (tory) and those in opposition (whig), 1706; a managerial list in the hand of Robert Johnson, baron of the exchequer (B.L., Add. MS 9715, ff. 150–1). 2 Tory M.P.s meeting at the Fleece tavern, Dublin, 8 July 1707 (ibid., f. 34). 3 Principal speakers for (whig) and against (tory) the additional duties bill, [12] August 1709, with a list of those voting against (B.L., Add. MS 34777, f. 67). 4 Tory M.P.s meeting at the Fleece tavern, 3 October 1711 (ibid., f. 70). 5 Those voting on the government side (tory) against addressing about the proceedings concerning borough corporations, 29 October 1711 (ibid., f. 71). 6 Those voting for (tory) and against (whig) the government in an unspecified division (ibid., ff. 72–3). 7 Printed list of the house of commons, 25 November 1713, marked to indicate supporters (tory) and opponents (whig) of the government (ibid., ff. 46–7). 8 Those voting (tory) in favour of Sir Richard Levinge in the division on the speaker, 25 November 1713 (ibid., ff. 90–1). 9 Those voting (tory) in favour of Anderson Saunders in the division over the chairman of the committee of privileges and elections, 1 December 1713 (ibid.).

96


The names of those members whose political allegiances seem from this evidence to have remained consistent since 1695 are given in italics. Name and constituency

C[apel] or P[orter] in 1695

Voting record 1706–13

Acheson, Sir Nicholas, 4th Bt (Co. Armagh) Aldworth, Richard (T.C.D.) Allen, John (Co. Carlow) Annesley, Francis (Downpatrick) Annesley, Francis (New Ross) Annesley, Maurice (Clonmines)268 Ashe, Thomas (Cavan) Ashe, Thomas (Swords) Auchmuty, John (St Johnstown) Aylway, Robert (Dunleer) Barry, James (Naas) Barry, James (Rathcormack) Barry, Hon. Richard (Enniscorthy) Barton, William (Co. Monaghan) Beecher, Thomas (Baltimore) Bellingham, Thomas (Co. Louth) Beresford, Sir Tristram, 3rd Bt (Co. Londonderry) Bernard, Francis (Bandon) Bingham, Sir Henry, 3rd Bt (Co. Mayo) Bingham, John (Co. Mayo) Blennerhassett, John (Dingle) Blennerhassett, Robert (Clonmel) Bligh, Thomas (Co. Meath) Blundell, Sir Francis, 3rd Bt (King’s Co.) Booth, Samuel (Callan) Bourchier, Charles (Dungarvan)269 Boyle, Hon. Charles (Charleville) Boyle, Henry (Youghal) Boyle, Richard (Old Leighlin) Boyse, Nathaniel (Bannow) Brasier, Kilner (Dundalk)

C

–

C P C C P P P C P P C C P C P P

– 4W 1T – – 3T 3T 4T – – 4W 1T? 2W 1T 2W –

P C C C P C P P P – C P P C

9T 7T – 1W 5T 2T – – – – – – 4T1W 2W

268

See above, pp. 60, 78, 82. A revenue official, who had allegedly supported the tory candidates in the parliamentary election for Dublin in 1713: William Berry to Lord Sunderland, 29 February 1714/15 (B.L., Add. MS 61639, f. 118). 269

97


Name and constituency



Brewster, Sir Francis (Tuam) Brice, Randal (Lisburn) Brodrick, Alan (Cork) Brodrick, St John (Co. Cork)270 Brodrick, Thomas (Co. Cork) Brooke, Thomas (Antrim) Brownlow, Arthur (Co. Armagh) Buckner, William (Dungarvan) Bulkeley, Sir Richard, 2nd Bt (Fethard, Co. Wexford) Burt, John (Tallow) Burton, Francis (Ennis) Bushe, Arthur (Thomastown) Butler, Francis (Belturbet) Butler, Sir Thomas, 3rd Bt (Co. Carlow) Cairnes, David (Derry) Campbell, Charles (Newtownards) Campbell, David (Bangor) Carter, Thomas (Fethard, Co. Tipperary) Caulfeild, William (Tulsk) Chichester, Hon. Charles (Belfast) Chichester, Hon. John Itchingham (Gorey) Christmas, Richard (Waterford) Clayton, Laurence (Mallow) Cliffe, John (Bannow) Coghill, Marmaduke (Armagh) Coghlan, Joseph (Limerick) Cole, Sir Arthur, 2nd Bt (Roscommon) Cole, Sir Michael (Enniskillen) Colvill, Sir Robert (Co. Antrim) Connell, Richard (St Canice) Conolly, William (Donegal) Conyngham, Henry (Co. Donegal)

C C C C C C P P C

– – 2W – 3W – – – –

P C P P P C P C P P P P P C P P P C – P P C C

– 2W 7T – – – 3W1T – 2W 2W – 3T 1T 2W 7T 2W4T – – – – 4T 4W –271

270

See his correspondence with his brother Alan in S.H.C., 1248/1–2. Killed in action in Spain in 1706 but reported two years earlier to have lost his regiment ‘by reason of some difference which happened in parliament by his standing up for the interest of his country (as is alleged) in opposition to the duke of Ormond’ (Thomas Knox to Alexander Murray, 6 June 1704 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2860/4/10)). See also above, p. 89; and Sir William Robinson to Arthur Moore, 5 November 1703 (University of Kansas, Spencer Research Library, MS 143/Ci).

271

98





Coote, Chidley (Kilmallock) Corker, Edward (Ratoath) Corry, James (Co. Fermanagh) Crawford, Thomas (New Ross) Creighton, Abraham (Enniskillen) Creighton, David (Augher) Crofton, Sir Edward, 2nd Bt (Boyle) Cuffe, Agmondisham (Co. Kilkenny) Curtis, Robert (Carlow) Davis (Davys), Henry (Carrickfergus) Davis (Davys), Hercules (Carrickfergus) Dawson, Thomas (Antrim) Deane, Edward (Co. Dublin) Delaune, Gideon (Blessington) Denny, Edward (Doneraile) Denny, Edward (Co. Kerry) Dering, Charles (Monaghan) Dillon, Sir John (Co. Meath) Dopping, Samuel (Armagh) Dun, Dr Patrick (Mullingar) Echlin, Robert (Monaghan) Edgeworth, Sir John (St Johnstown) Edwards, Richard (Co.Wicklow) Eustace, Sir Maurice (Harristown) Evans, George (Askeaton) Eyre, John (Co. Galway) Feilding, Hon. Sir Charles (Duleek) Fitzgerald, George (Co. Kildare) Fitzgerald, Hon. Robert (Co. Kildare) Fitzgerald, Robert (Youghal) Fitzmaurice, Hon. Thomas (Co. Kerry) Fitzmaurice, Hon. William (Dingle) Folliott, Francis (Ballyshannon) Folliott, Hon. Henry (Ballyshannon)

P P P P C C C P P C C C C P C C C? P C P – P C –273 P P – C – P P P C P

– – 6T – – –272 3W – 1T 1T – – 3W – – – 4T 1W 1W7T 3T 3T – 4T – 1T1W 2T – – – 1T1W – 1W – –

272

As a professional soldier he was not a regular attender in parliament, but in 1715 the Irish lords justices reported that he had suffered ‘because of his whig principles’ in being demoted, out of turn, to half-pay in 1713: lords justices to Sunderland, 8 February 1714/15 (B.L., Add. MS 61635, f. 111). 273 Expelled for non-attendance in December 1695. 99





Forde, Mathew (Co. Wexford) Foulke, Robert (Rathcormack) Freke, Percy (Clonakilty) French, John (Carrick-on-Shannon) Gardiner, Richard (Lanesborough) Gethin, Percy (Sligo) Giffard, Duke (Philipstown) Gilbert, St Leger (Maryborough) Gore, Francis (Ennis) Gore, William (Donegal) Graydon, Robert (Harristown) Green, Samuel (Cashel) Hamill, Hugh (Lifford) Hamilton, Charles (Killybegs) Hamilton, Sir Francis, 3rd Bt (Co. Cavan) Hamilton, Gustavus (Co. Donegal) Hamilton, Hans (Killyleagh) Hamilton, James (Bangor) Hamilton, James (Co. Down) Hamilton, James (Co. Tyrone) Handcock, Thomas (Lanesborough) Handcock, William (Athlone) Handcock, William (Dublin) Hanmer, Sir John, 3rd Bt (Carlingford) Harman, Wentworth (Co. Longford) Harrison, Edward (Lisburn) Hartstonge, Standish (Kilkenny) Hartstonge, (Sir) Standish (2nd Bt) (Kilmallock) Harvey, John (Wexford) Hayes, John (Doneraile) Hewetson, Christopher (Thomastown) Hill, Michael (Hillsborough) Hoey, William (Carysfort) Ingoldsby, Sir Henry, 1st Bt (Co. Clare) Irwin, Dr Christopher (Co. Fermanagh)

P C P P C C P P C C P P C C P C C P C C C P P C P P P

2T 3T 1T 2W – 1W – 6T 1W274 3W – – 1T 1W 6T 3W 6T – – – – – – – 6T – –275

P P – P P P P C

5T – – – – – – 1W

274

Although not listed, voted for Brodrick in the speakership election of 1713 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 138). 275 Hayton, ‘Dependence, clientage & affinity’, p. 241. 100





Jackson, Samuel (Coleraine) Jacob, Matthew (Fethard, Co. Tipperary) Jephson, William (Mallow) Jones, Edmond (Carlow) Jones, Edward (Old Leighlin) Jones, Theophilus (Co. Leitrim) Keating, Maurice (Athy) Keightley, Thomas (Inistioge) King, (Sir) John (1st Bt) (Boyle) King, Nathaniel (Wicklow) King, Sir Robert, 1st Bt (Co. Roscommon) King, Sir William (Co. Limerick) Lambart, Charles (Kilbeggan) Lambart, Hon. Oliver (Kilbeggan) Langford, Sir Arthur, 2nd Bt (Coleraine) Langford, Henry (St Johnston) Lestrange, Thomas (Banagher) Lightbourne, Stafford (Trim) Locke, Richard (Athy) Loftus, Henry (Clonmines) Loftus, Sir Nicholas (Fethard, Co. Wexford) Ludlow, Stephen (Charlemont) Macartney, James (Belfast) Magill, Sir John, 1st Bt (Downpatrick) Mahon, John (Jamestown) Mason, (Sir) John (Co. Waterford) Massey, Sir Edward (Ballinakill) Maude, Anthony (Cashel) May, Edward (Gowran) May, Humphrey (St Johnston) Maynard, Samuel (Tallow) McCausland, Oliver (Strabane) Meade, Sir John (1st Bt) (Co. Tipperary) Medlycott, Thomas (Kildare) Melville, Charles (Killybegs) Meredyth, Arthur (Navan) Meredyth, Charles (Kells) Mervyn, Audley (Strabane) Mervyn, Henry (Co. Tyrone) Molesworth, Robert (Co. Dublin)

P P C P P P P P – P? P P P P C C P P P P

– 2W – – – 2W 7T 6T1W 1W1T – 1T – 3W – 2W – 3T – 9T –

P P P C C P P P C C C C P C C C P C C C

– 9T – – 1W 6T – – – – 1W 3W – 4T 6T 1W 1W 3W – 3W

101



Molyneux, Dr (Sir) Thomas (1st Bt) (Ratoath) Molyneux, William (T.C.D.) Montgomery, John (Lifford) Moore, Brabazon (Ardee) Moore, Hon. Charles (Ld Moore) (Drogheda) Moore, Richard (Clonmel) Moore, Roger (Mullingar) Moore, Stephen (Co. Tipperary) Morgan, Hugh (Co. Sligo) Morris, Samuel (Castlemartyr) Mullins, Frederick William (Tralee) Muschamp, Denny (Blessington) Napper, James (Athboy) Napper, William (Trim) Neave, William (Tulsk) Nevil, Richard (Naas) Newcomen, Sir Robert, 6th Bt (Co. Longford) Nicholls, John (Longford) O’Brien, Sir Donough, 1st Bt (Co. Clare) O’Neill, Henry (Randalstown) Ormsby, Gilbert (Tuam) Ormsby, John (Athenry) Ormsby, John (Charleville) Ormsby, Robert (Galway) Osborne, Francis (Navan) Pakenham, Sir Thomas (Augher) Palmer, William (Castlebar) Parsons, (Sir) William (2nd Bt) (King’s Co.) Peppard, Robert (Philipstown) Perceval, John (Granard) Perceval, Thomas (Dundalk) Petty, Hon. Henry (Co. Waterford) Peyton, George (Co. Westmeath) Philips, George (Co. Londonderry) Plunket, Sir Walter (Granard) Poley, Robert (Castlemartyr) Poley, Thomas (Newcastle) 102



P C C P

– – – –

P C P P P C P P P P C P

1W – – – 8T 1T1W – – – 1T 3W –

P P P P C P C C C P P

1W3T – 5T – 1W 3W 2W – – – 1T

C P C P P P P P P P

5T – 1W – – – – – – –





Pollard, Walter (Fore) Ponsonby, William (Co. Kilkenny) Porter, Frederick (Newry) Porter, William (Limavady) Price, John (Co.Wicklow) Purcell, Theobald (Ardfert) Ram, Abel (Gorey) Ram, Andrew (Duleek) Rawdon, Sir Arthur, 2nd Bt (Co. Down) Reading, John (Swords) Reynell, Edmund (Jamestown) Reynolds, John (Co. Leitrim) Richardson, Edward (Baltimore) Riggs, Edward (Bandon) Riley (Reilly), Edward (Charlemont) Robinson, (Sir) William (Wicklow) Rochfort, Robert (Co. Westmeath) Rogers, George (Lismore) Rogers, Robert (Cork) Rogerson, Sir John (Dublin) St George, Arthur (Athlone) St George, Sir George, (Co. Galway) St George, (Sir) George (2nd Bt) (Co. Roscommon) St George, Richard (Galway) St Leger, John (Tralee) Sandford, Blayney (Knocktopher) Sandford, Henry (Roscommon) Saunders, Anderson (Taghmon) Saunders, Robert (Cavan) Saunderson, Robert (Co. Cavan) Savage, Philip (Co. Wexford) Sedgwick, Zaccheus (Carlingford) Seymour, John (Enniscorthy)

P C P P P P P P –276

1W 6T2W – – – – 2W – –

C P P P C P P C C C P P C C

– – – – – – –277 1T –278 – – – 2W 3W

C P C C P P C P –279 C

– – – 3W 8T 1T 3T 9T – –

276 277 278 279

Died on 17 October 1695. See above, p. 90. See above, p. 78. Died in August 1695. 103





Shaen, (Sir) Arthur (2nd Bt) (Lismore) Shaen, Sir James, 1st Bt (Baltinglass) Shaw, William (Hillsborough) Singleton, Edward (Drogheda) Sloane, James (Killyleagh) Smith, Roger (Sligo) Smyth (Smith), Thomas (Fore) Southwell, Edward (Kinsale) Southwell, Sir Thomas, Bt (Co. Limerick) Sprigge, William (Banagher) Stafford, Edmond F. (formerly Echlin) (Randalstown) Stepney, Joseph (Gowran) Stone, Richard (Limavady) Stopford, Robert (Inistioge) Stratford, Edward (Carysfort) Suxbury, Anthony (Waterford) Taylor, Robert (Askeaton) Taylor (Taylour), (Sir) Thomas (1st Bt) (Kells) Tench, John (Newcastle) Tenison, Henry (Clogher) Thompson, Richard (Baltinglass) Tichborne, Sir Henry (1st Bt) (Co. Louth) Tisdall, James (Ardee) Townley, Blayney (Dunleer) Townsend, Bryan (Clonakilty) Trevor, Sir John (Newry) Upton, Arthur (Co. Antrim) Upton, Clotworthy (Newtownards) Van Homrigh, Bartholomew (Derry) Waller, James (Kinsale) Wandesford, Sir Christopher, 2nd Bt (St Canice)

C –280 C P P C C P P C

3W – – 1T – – 1W 5T 1T –

P P C P C P C

3W – – – 2W –281 –

P P P P C P C C –282 C C P P C

5T1W 5T 2T 3T 1W 3T2W 5W – – –283 4W – – –284

280

Died on 13 December 1695. See above, p. 78. 282 Expelled for non-attendance in December 1695. 283 Reid, iii, p. 31; James Kirkpatrick, An essay by way of elegy on the Hond. [sic] Arthur Upton esq. (Belfast, 1707). 284 Commons 1690–1715, v, pp. 790–1. 281

104





Warburton, John (Belturbet) Warburton, Richard (Portarlington) Warneford, Robert (Queen’s Co.) Warren, Ebenezer (Kilkenny) Weaver, John (Maryborough) Weaver, John (Queen’s Co.) Weldon, Walter (Ballinakill) Wemys (Weymes), Sir Henry (Callan) Wesley, Garrett (Gerald) (Athboy) Whaley, Richard (Athenry) Williamson, Sir Joseph (Limerick and Portarlington) Wingfield, Edward (Co. Sligo) Wolseley, Robert (Taghmon) Wolseley, William (Longford) Worth, Edward (Knocktopher) Wybrants, Daniel (Wexford) Young, Andrew (Ardfert)

P P P P P P P P P P

– 2W – – – 2W – 7T 2T1W 3W

P C C C P P P

– 1W 4T – – 4T – 5T

105

3

The beginnings of the ‘undertaker system’*

I By 1714 the Irish parliament had become firmly established as an indispensable institution of government: a development of such importance that it might even qualify for the title of a ‘constitutional revolution’.1 One consequence was that parliamentary management became a prime concern of the administration in Dublin Castle. To rule Ireland successfully required the achievement of cohesion between the English-appointed executive and the Irish propertied elite, and for successive viceroys and their immediate advisers this problem was expressed most frequently and most urgently within a parliamentary context. In 1692, as we have seen, ministers and M.P.s were hopelessly out of step. The first session of parliament held after the revolution was stormy and brief; abruptly prorogued and then dissolved by the lord lieutenant, Lord Sidney, without answering the needs, financial or constitutional, for which it had been called.2 It was not long, however, before a solution had been found to the problem of management, and a ‘system’ put in place which ensured that government would receive regular grants of supply and be preserved from any repetition of the squalls which had capsized Sidney’s administration. This solution was for the task of managing the Irish parliament to be given over to Irish politicians – men known as ‘undertakers’ because, without necessarily entering into an explicit arrangement, they engaged in what was in effect an ‘undertaking’: to provide the government with a parliamentary majority in return for a voice in policy-making and a substantial portion of official patronage for themselves and their dependants. The so-called ‘undertaker system’ subsisted until the 1770s. Its early history forms the subject of this chapter. Traditional accounts of Irish political development in the first half of the eighteenth century posited a sharp change of direction in ministerial strategy

* First published in Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (eds), Penal era and golden age: essays in Irish history 1690–1800 (Belfast, 1979), pp. 32–54. 1 A process that can now be followed in McGrath, Constitution. 2 See above, pp. 44–5.

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THE ‘UNDERTAKER SYSTEM’

in the mid-1720s, in response to failures in government and a crisis in Anglo–Irish relations. According to this interpretation, advanced most firmly in the pioneering studies of J. L. McCracken,3 the management of the Irish parliament had at first been the personal responsibility of the viceroy himself, who was expected to use his powers of persuasion and patronage to construct a court party – in Irish terms a ‘castle party’4 – under his own leadership. This arrangement was thought to have lasted until about 1724, and the explosion of Irish popular unrest against ‘Wood’s halfpence’. The failure of the then viceroy, the duke of Grafton, to quieten the agitation against the halfpence supposedly prompted the English ministers to look for other and better ways of coping with the fractious Irish parliament. The outcome was a new ‘system’, under which responsibility for management was devolved from the viceroy himself to Irish ‘undertakers’, in the first place to the speaker of George I’s Irish house of commons, William Conolly, and eventually to his successor, Henry Boyle. Thus the ‘undertaker system’ was the fruit of a reform devised and imposed from without. This view assumed that there was a conscious alteration in English government policy, but in fact no evidence survives, either in official correspondence or in the surviving private papers of the chief ministers, to prove that the employment of ‘undertakers’ as such was ever advocated at Whitehall.5 In fact, it is quite possible to account for their appearance without resorting to unfounded suspicions about English policy, and this chapter sets out an alternative interpretation. If we examine the political history of Ireland before the Wood’s halfpence dispute, it becomes apparent that parliamentary management in Ireland was of necessity always in the hands of ‘undertakers’ of one kind or another; that between 1715 and 1725 a subtle change took place in the type of ‘undertaker system’ which prevailed; and that this change was engendered by conditions and events in Ireland. Special attention will be paid to the way in which members of the Irish parliament organised

3 J. L. McCracken, ‘The undertakers in Ireland and the relations with the lord lieutenant, 1724–1771’ (unpublished MA thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1941), chs 2–3, esp. pp. 52–4; idem, ‘The political structure, 1714–60’ in T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds), A new history of Ireland: iv, Eighteenth-century Ireland (Oxford, 1986), pp. 61–3. For some general comments on the historiography of this subject, see Burns, Politics, ii, pp. 325–37. The publication of McNally, Undertakers, offers a more detailed consideration of political development, and a more closely informed analysis of the relationship between viceroys and undertakers in the 1720s (ch. 6). 4 ‘We of the court (called here the castle)’: M. Broughton to the duke of Richmond, 21 November 1724 (Goodwood papers, 103). I owe this reference to Dr Clyve Jones. 5 The correspondence between Dublin Castle and the English ministry for the years 1723–5 is to be found in P.R.O., SP 63/380–6, 67/7–8. Of the major figures in the English administration, Lord Townshend’s papers were consulted at Raynham Hall, Norfolk; Sir Robert Walpole’s in Cambridge University Library, Cholmondeley (Houghton) MSS, C(H) 997–1187, and the duke of Newcastle’s at B.L., Add. MSS 32686–7.

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themselves into parties and factions, since an important cause of the change in the system of management after 1715 was a shift in the pattern of parliamentary allegiances.

II In early eighteenth-century Ireland parliamentary management focused on the members of the house of commons. This is not to say that the house of lords was unimportant. It was always possible for the castle party to run into trouble there, and in the early years of George I’s reign managerial influence was at best intermittent and sometimes wholly ineffective.6 But even in this period, the lower house remained the centre of attention. It was where the more important business was transacted, especially the preparation of supply bills. In order to circumvent the constitutional requirement of Poynings’ Law that bills be framed by the Irish privy council and approved by the council in England before being presented to the Irish parliament for acceptance or rejection, with no possibility of amendment, it had become a convention that draft bills or ‘heads of bills’ would be prepared by the Irish parliament and sent to the council to be engrossed. The significance of this procedure, as far as the relative importance of lords and commons was concerned, lay in the fact that ‘heads’ were discussed only in one of the two houses, whereas fully fledged bills had to be passed by both. In the vast majority of cases it would be the commons rather than the lords which brought forward and discussed heads, and it was always in the commons that supply legislation arose. Since it was almost unheard-of for parliament to reject a money bill returned from England, opposition members concentrated their energies on trying to ensure that the amount of money voted was less than the viceroy required. As far as the castle was concerned, the crucial stage in each session came when the heads of supply bills were being debated.7 In contrast, members of the house of lords spent much of their time discussing matters with which government was not directly concerned: private bills, judicial cases, even questions of procedure. Often the English ministers could safely be left in ignorance of the

6

See James, Empire, ch. 4; Isolde Victory, ‘The making of the 1720 declaratory act’ in Gerard O’Brien (ed.), Parliament, politics and people: essays in eighteenth-century Irish history (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1989), pp. 9–29; Patrick McNally, ‘ “Irish and English interests”: national conflict within the Church of Ireland episcopate in the reign of George I’ in I.H.S., xxix (1994–5), pp. 295–314; and below, pp. 221–3. 7 One of the more prominent members of the castle party, Marmaduke Coghill, reported with satisfaction in January 1728: ‘this afternoon the accounts were agreed to without opposition, and everything else done with unanimity both yesterday in the committee, and this day on the report, so that the business of the session is over, and we have nothing to do but prepare bills and hear controverted elections’ (Coghill to Edward Southwell, 12 January 1727[/8] (B.L., Add. MS 21122, f. 47)). 108


lords’ proceedings. One chief secretary wrote to an English secretary of state in 1705, ‘I never trouble you with what the house of lords do, because in truth they have hardly any business before them’.8 For most of the time, the lords’ house was also the more easily managed.9 The problems encountered by administration in 1715–19 were exceptional, and arose from a conflict over jurisdiction with the Westminster parliament, exacerbated by party-political tensions: tory bishops combined with outraged whig ‘patriots’, their passions inflamed in defence of Irish constitutional rights, to challenge the inbuilt ministerial majority. At other times the viceroy’s agents did not have to exert themselves to maintain control. For one thing, attendances were much smaller than in the commons: an average of less than thirty in Anne’s reign, which did not rise much higher under the Georges.10 Moreover, those present usually included a substantial number of lords spiritual, who according to conventional wisdom were generally influenced by hopes of preferment. Almost half the average attendance in the upper house during the 1713 parliament was episcopal (twelve out of twenty-eight), and in the division of 1719 on the great issue of the appellate jurisdiction, which presumably attracted a larger attendance than usual, bishops still constituted over a quarter of those present (thirteen out of forty).11 Among the temporal lords, a significant number were too penurious to be truly independent. In Anne’s reign we hear of Lord Inchiquin with his lands and fortune ‘absolutely encumbered’; the earls of Granard and Roscommon relying entirely on the income from their pensions; and Lord Blayney reduced to petitioning parliament for relief from his poverty.12 In normal circumstances the viceroy and his staff would not have to expend much effort in constructing a working majority in the lords. Instead, their energies would be taken up with the vitally necessary and altogether more arduous task of managing the commons. Naturally, it was in the commons that ‘undertakers’ appeared. It was part of the standard view of the eighteenth-century political system that before the mid-1720s the viceroy took the leading role in parliamentary management. There seems to be some support for this contention in

8

Edward Southwell to Sir Charles Hedges, 1 March 1705 (P.R.O., SP 63/365/10). For what follows, see James, Empire, pp. 95–7; idem, Lords of the ascendancy: the Irish house of lords and its members, 1600–1800 (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1995), ch. 5; and Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 100–2. 10 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 100; F.G. James, ‘The active Irish peers in the early eighteenth century’ in Journal of British Studies, xviii (1979), p. 65. 11 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 100; James, ‘Active Irish peers’, pp. 64–5. 12 Lord Inchiquin to Lord Coningsby, 3 March 1709 (P.R.O.N.I., D/638/25/2); petition of the earl of Roscommon to Queen Anne [?1714] (P.R.O., SP 63/370/105); H.M.C., Portland, x, pp. 480–1; Admiral the Hon. John Forbes, Memoirs of the earls of Granard, ed. earl of Granard (London, 1868), pp. 68–83; C.J.I. (3rd edn, 20 vols, Dublin, 1796–1800), ii, app., p. xxxviii. 9

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contemporary correspondence, where the castle party is sometimes referred to as ‘the lord lieutenant’s friends’, and we can find reports of particular viceroys soliciting votes. But a collage assembled from these snippets of evidence would give a distorted representation of the viceroy’s role. The term ‘lord lieutenant’s friends’ was simply another means of denoting the supporters of the ministry, not a parliamentary grouping personally attached to the lord lieutenant. As for the numerous attested examples of viceregal canvassing, although it cannot be denied that ‘good words, burgundy and closeting’ formed part of the viceregal routine, this supplemented rather than supplanted the work of parliamentary managers. The duke of Ormond’s dining book during his second term as lord lieutenant, in 1711, shows that his preferred company at table consisted of personal friends, including the occasional individual politician, and that he did not exploit the kitchens and wine-cellars of Dublin Castle in any systematic way to secure parliamentary goodwill. He held only two large dinners for M.P.s, both in October, one on the 23rd and the second a week later, and these may well have been connected with the commemorations of the anniversary of the 1641 rising, which was always marked with a public sermon on the 23rd.13 Of course, much depended on the personality of the individual viceroy. Some were enthusiastic practitioners of the baser arts of politics. Lord Wharton, for example, who held office in 1709 and 1710, was a prime example of a viceroy who enjoyed getting his hands dirty. On his first arrival in Dublin in May 1709, according to his admiring chief secretary, he ‘addressed himself to all sorts of men . . . with unspeakable application’ and ‘spared no pains in quieting the minds of people’.14 Later, threatened with vigorous opposition in 1709 to a returned money bill on the grounds that it had been tampered with by the English privy council, he again took up the cudgels himself in order to baffle the opposition and wrest an unlikely victory from the jaws of defeat.15 It may well have been this occasion that Swift (an inveterate personal enemy) had in mind when he wrote in the ‘Drapier’s’ Letter to the whole people of Ireland: ‘It is true indeed, that within the memory of man, there have been governors of so much dexterity, as to carry points of terrible consequence to this kingdom by their power with those who were in office, and by their arts in managing or deluding others with oaths, affability, and

13 ‘Bills of fare for his grace James, duke of Ormond, 1711’ (B.L., Loan 37/8); T. C. Barnard, ‘The uses of 23 October 1641 and Irish protestant celebrations’ in E.H.R., cvi (1991), pp. 889–920. 14 Joseph Addison to Lord Halifax, 7 May 1709 (Addison letters, p. 134); same to [?Lord Somers], [7 May 1709] (ibid., p. 135). For Wharton’s career in general, see Christopher Robbins, The earl of Wharton and whig party politics, 1679–1715 (Lewiston, Maine, 1991); and for his Irish viceroyalty, L. A. Dralle, ‘Kingdom in reversion: the Irish viceroyalty of the earl of Wharton, 1708–10’ in H.L.Q., 15 (1951–2), pp. 393–431. 15 See, for example, Addison to Lord Sunderland, 9 August 1709 (Addison letters, p. 173); same to Lord Godolphin, 10 August 1709 (ibid., p. 175).

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even with dinners.’16 Even more active, though for somewhat different reasons, was Lord Carteret, who in 1724–5 adopted a personal style of leadership and management primarily as a means of coping with divisions within the castle party that he had inherited from his predecessors.17 But there were drawbacks to this kind of personal effort. Wharton’s informality sacrificed the customary deference which a lord lieutenant might expect, and encouraged satirical jibes, while Carteret was tempted to make too many promises, which he was unable to keep. It was on the whole more satisfactory for a lord lieutenant to enter the fray only as a last resort, and for the most part to rely on ‘friends and well-wishers’, as they were styled in Wharton’s case, to fight his parliamentary battles for him.18 Although the duke of Dorset was praised to English ministers in 1731 for having supposedly exerted ‘the utmost of his skill’ to fend off an unwelcome resolution in the commons, in practice the hard work had been done by his principal parliamentary manager, who had met the movers of the resolution and persuaded them into a different course of action.19 The hard fact was that any and every chief governor would have to make use of Irish politicians to manage business in the house of commons. The viceroy could not of course attend meetings of the house himself, and the members of his household, the secretaries and aides-de-camp, were usually too inexperienced to be able to deputise for him successfully; even the chief secretary, who always held a seat in the commons and acted as the administration’s official spokesman there, communicating messages and papers. Usually both viceroy and chief secretary would be strangers to Ireland, unfamiliar with the talents, character and dispositions of Irish M.P.s and, naturally enough, lacking the ‘interest’ which derived from frequent personal contact. The fact that the viceroy did not reside in Dublin permanently made it difficult for him to repair his ignorance in the short time allowed him in the office (two or three parliamentary sessions at the most). As J. C. Beckett put it, ‘coming over, as he did, only for sessions of parliament, [the viceroy] lacked both the knowledge and the personal connexions which he would have needed if he were to manage the house himself.’20 The same applied to the chief secretary, who in addition usually lacked political weight and might even have had

16

Jonathan Swift, The Drapier’s letters to the whole people of Ireland against receiving Wood’s halfpence, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1935), pp. 75–6. 17 Coghill to Southwell, 31 October 1724 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 20–1); same to same, 10 June 1725 (B.L., Add. MS 9713, ff. 38–9); Patrick McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence, Carteret, and the government of Ireland, 1723–6’ in I.H.S., xxx (1996–7), p. 364; and below, p. 247. 18 Addison to Godolphin, 12 August 1709 (Addison letters, p. 177). 19 Henry Boyle to Lord Burlington, 10 November 1731 (B.L., Add. MS 75358); Burns, Politics, ii, p. 9. 20 J. C. Beckett, The making of modern Ireland 1603–1923 (2nd edn, London, 1971), p. 190. 111


little parliamentary experience.21 Chief secretaries were either apprentice politicians grasping the first rung of preferment (for example, George Dodington (1707), Martin Bladen (1715–16) or Thomas Clutterbuck (1724–9)), glorified bureaucrats (for example, Joseph Addison (1709–10), Charles Delafaye (1715–16), or Edward Webster (1717–19)), and occasionally quite obscure personal clients of the viceroy, like the hapless duke of Shrewsbury’s ineffectual chief secretary Sir John Stanley (1713–14). At most a chief secretary might be able to act alongside the managers but would rarely be their equal and never be dominant. The two most effective in this period were probably Edward Southwell, who served Ormond twice – in 1703–7 and 1710–13 – and Martin Bladen, who effectively shared the post with Charles Delafaye under the joint chief governorship of Lord Justices Grafton and Galway in 1715–16. As the only occupant of the office who was himself an Irishman, Southwell enjoyed peculiar advantages, but he was by nature an administrator rather than a politician: he tended to work with Ormond’s ‘friends’ and take their advice, rather than seeking to direct them,22 and in vital debates in the commons was noticeable by his absence.23 Bladen was more assertive, and a more frequent speaker,24 but was not regarded as the leader of the castle party, nor even so much as primus inter pares among the managers, an honour which clearly went to an Irish politician, William Conolly. During the parliamentary session Bladen’s colleague, Charles Delafaye, wrote that ‘we were forced to meet every night with the chief of our friends to provide against the next day’s battle’. The significant words in this quotation are ‘with the chief of our friends’: earlier Delafaye had acknowledged that Conolly, as speaker of the commons, was the person ‘to whose single interest the king is more obliged than to all Ireland besides for the good we have had this session’.25 The necessity of employing Irish politicians to manage the commons did not by itself weaken a lord lieutenant’s position. Rather, the root of the problem lay in the nature of the political influence enjoyed by the managers, and their relationship to government. Successive viceroys may well have been able to keep the castle party in stricter subordination had it not been for the type of Irish politician on whom they were obliged to rely. Despite claims

21

Of the duke of Bolton’s chief secretary, Edward Webster, it was said that he ‘is not equall to his employment and will not be able in any degree to manage our g[?reat] assembly’: Bp Evans to [Abp Wake], 24 June [1717] (Christ Church, Oxford, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xii (unfoliated)). 22 See, for example, his account of a pre-sessional meeting in January 1705: Southwell to Ormond, 12 January 1704[/5] (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 133–4). 23 For example, the debate of February 1704 on the commons representation on the state of the nation (Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 10 February 1703/4 (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 123–4)). 24 See, for example, Lord Brodrick to Thomas Brodrick, 1 March 1715[/16] (ibid., 1248/3, ff. 316–17). 25 Delafaye to [?James Stanhope], 14, 17 December 1715 (P.R.O., SP 63/373/306, 336). 112


they might make in their own correspondence, few of the leading men in the commons were government supporters out of conviction, willing to assist the crown’s representatives at every turn, and content with subservience. The more prominent Irish politicians were by nature hard-headed jobbers, concerned to advance their own careers and get the better of their rivals. When opposition to government seemed politically advantageous they did not hesitate to oppose.26 Examples abound of high-ranking officials making trouble for the crown in parliament, from motives of opportunism, pique or disappointed ambition. Politicians were encouraged in such independence by the fact that their parliamentary influence would be derived from a variety of sources: the possession of office was only one part of the equation. A parliamentary following was made up of kinsmen, friends and admirers, and clients who were paid with currency other than viceregal favour, such as the provision of seats in parliament. The importance of family can be seen in the way in which the Gores and St Georges, for example, flocked together, while in 1727 a shrewd political commentator recommended that government pay court to General Owen Wynne, ‘who has a numerous clan of relations that follow him’.27 Electoral empires were scarce in Ireland during this period, but William Conolly could command the votes of a substantial body of members from Ulster constituencies through his influence over parliamentary seats in counties Londonderry and Donegal; while one of his successors in the commons chair, Henry Boyle, as the resident representative of the largest planter family in the south-west, and the political heir of the Brodricks in County Cork, was said to stand at the head of a ‘Munster squadron’.28 Shared principle, or prejudice, also carried weight with back-benchers, sometimes overriding other considerations and elevating the skilful orator (or in the case of Henry Boyle the politician who could best persuade fellow M.P.s of his integrity and reliability) into a man of influence. The viceroy had therefore to treat with political magnates who were almost as powerful out of office as in. Even the greatest weapon in the administration’s armoury, its patronage, often served to enhance the personal authority of the politicians at whose behest it was dispensed. In the early eighteenth century the political dividends arising from the fund of places and pensions at the disposal of government did not always

26

For a less cynical view, see Connolly, Religion, pp. 89–94. Coghill to Southwell, 30 December 1727 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, f. 37). See also a squib on the Irish house of commons, c. 1736 (ibid., Add. MS 38671, f. 68). I owe the latter reference to Professor James Woolley. 28 Burns, Politics, i, pp. 31–3; Thomas Carter to Boyle, 7 October 1727 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/25); Coghill to Edward Southwell, jr., 4 December 1732 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 11–15). 27

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return to the castle.29 Insofar as the viceroy was obliged to allow his managers a say in the bestowal of offices, patronage would in practice be expropriated. A successful candidate for appointment or promotion would be as likely to regard his advancement as owing to the interposition of his patron as the spontaneous benevolence of the viceroy. In the case of appointments in the expanding revenue service, administrative organisation combined with political necessity to weaken the authority of the lord lieutenant. The Irish politicians who sat on the revenue commission in Dublin were responsible to the English treasury and not to the castle. Although they responded politely to whatever the lord lieutenant had to say, they were not compelled to obey him and sometimes found plausible reasons for resisting his recommendations.30 In these circumstances office-holders might see their primary obligation as being owed to patron rather than to employer,31 and any politician who quarrelled with the viceroy would be able to count on many of his followers accompanying him into opposition, whether or not they still held employments themselves. A mass defection of placemen in 1709 moved one visitor to Dublin to comment, ‘upon the whole, from what I have been able to make of the people here, they are all politicians and deeply engaged on one side or the other, though the men of interest seem much superior in number to the men of conscience’.32 Staunch and unswerving ‘king’s friends’ never amounted to more than a fraction of the membership of the commons. In correspondence prior to 1720 such men are rarely if ever mentioned as constituting a separate interest in the house; later, when spoken of more frequently, they appear as no more than one element in the compound that made up the castle party. The lord lieutenant thus relied on his managers not just to provide local knowledge, parliamentary expertise and political leadership, but also to produce the votes that would ensure a continuing majority for his administration. The relationship between viceroy and managers, therefore, could not be one of master and servants. The managers were courted, and one of the first duties of any viceroy on his arrival in Dublin would be to seek their advice. When the duke of Bolton landed in 1719, charged by the English ministers with the almost impossible task of forcing through the Irish parliament

29

On this point, see in general Patrick McNally, ‘Patronage and politics in Ireland, 1714–1727’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1993); and idem, Undertakers, ch. 5. 30 For examples, see revenue commissioners to Sunderland, 13 January 1714/15 (N.L.I., MS 16007, pp. 6–9); Conolly to Grafton, 16 December 1720 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2825/A/1/9); same to Thomas Clutterbuck, 18 July 1726 (ibid., T/2825/A/1/27). 31 As Lord Brodrick wrote contemptuously in 1717 of the future speaker, Sir Ralph Gore, he was ‘a creature’ of William Conolly, and one who ‘hath a spirit low enough not to disdain being thought a dependant’(Lord Brodrick to Thomas Brodrick, 14 June 1717, quoted in McNally, Undertakers, p. 107). 32 Charles Robins to [Hugh] Howard, 13 August 1709 (N.L.I., P.C. 226). 114


a repeal of the sacramental test, the first thing he did was to talk privately with ‘those I could best confide in and whose judgments may be depended on’, that is to say his likely parliamentary managers. (Their response left him in no doubt that in this matter he would be on his own.)33 Advice continued to be taken throughout the parliamentary session: Capel, as we have seen, was said to be ‘governed’ by a small clique;34 Grafton, in 1721, established a ‘secret council’, headed by Speaker Conolly and the chief secretary, Edward Hopkins, together with Lord Chief Justice Whitshed, Lord Fitzwilliam, the M.P. Benjamin Parry and the commander of the Irish army, Lord Shannon.35 Carteret, despite early attempts to preserve a neutrality between the rival politicians at the castle, eventually came to rely on Conolly’s advice, and paid frequent visits to the speaker’s newly built mansion at Castletown, County Kildare – one of the architectural wonders of the age and the scene of political house-parties which were the Irish equivalent of Walpole’s ‘Norfolk congresses’.36 In this way the managers enjoyed a direct influence on policy: in 1717 the nomination of lords justices was allegedly determined during a private consultation between Bolton and Conolly.37 However, the fact that a politician had the ear of the viceroy did not by itself qualify him for the title of ‘undertaker’. Carteret, at the outset of his viceroyalty, created an informal ‘kitchen cabinet’ containing only one M.P. (the commander of the army), while in 1731 Dorset made ‘great favourites’ of Colonel William Flower and Lord Allen, both second-ranking figures.38 The word ‘undertaker’ has a precise meaning in the context of the eighteenth-century Irish parliament; that is, one who ‘undertook’ to secure the passage of government business in return for concessions. What must be looked for is evidence of some sort of contractual arrangement between the lord lieutenant and the leader or leaders of the castle party. The principal difficulty in identifying the parliamentary managers of the early eighteenth century as ‘undertakers’ is that the expression was seldom used. As a term of abuse for presumptuous court managers it had a long history in both England and Ireland.39 Politicians were wary of taking it upon

33

Bolton to [?James Craggs], 27 June 1719 (P.R.O., SP 63/377/235). See above, p. 62. 35 Sir Richard Levinge to Edward Southwell, 17 October 1721 (Levinge jottings, pp. 65–6). 36 Owen Gallagher to Oliver St George, 21 August 1725 (P.R.O., C 110/46/387); Coghill to Southwell, 21 September 1727 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 31–3); Mary Jones to Jane Bonnell, 13 January [—] (N.L.I., P.C. 435). 37 Conolly to Charles Delafaye, 3 November 1717 (P.R.O., SP 63/375/214). Cf. Lord Midleton (the former Lord Brodrick) to Thomas Brodrick, 7 November 1717 (S.H.C., 1248/4, ff. 90–1). 38 Owen Gallagher to Oliver St George, 9 January 1724[/5] (P.R.O., C 110/46/313); Henry Rose to Sir Maurice Crosbie, 21 September 1731 (N.L.I., P.C. 188). 39 See Clayton Roberts, Schemes and undertakings: a study of English politics in the seventeenth century (Columbus, Ohio, 1985), esp. pp. 25–8, 59–60, 188. The English parliamentary 34

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themselves or of giving their enemies a pretext to use it. There was a powerful suspicion among M.P.s that ‘undertakers’ were only needed to assist a legislative programme that could not succeed on its own merits. In 1714 a gang of parliamentary ‘malcontents’ fomented opposition to the court by spreading a rumour that the government’s managers had ‘undertaken for a land tax’, a measure deeply disliked by the Irish landed gentry, and five years later William Conolly was said to have suffered serious damage to his parliamentary reputation ‘by a report that he had, by letters to England, undertaken for a repeal of the sa[cramental] test’.40 In any case, the gentlemen in the commons resented the assumption that their support could be counted on and even promised in advance. Although in reality many M.P.s were lobby fodder, their votes taken for granted and used as currency in political bargaining, the fiction of independence had to be kept up. When the absentee viceroy Lord Sunderland wished to sound out his putative parliamentary managers in Dublin on legislative proposals, he was informed by his go-between that ‘it is not easy to get men to say what parliament will do, or to get them to give an opinion, for there is such jealousy of undertakers that the very suspicion may harm themselves as well as disappoint the business’,41 while one of the politicians concerned wrote to the lord lieutenant in some distress: Nothing will be of worse consequence than to have it known that opinions have been asked and given of what a parliament will probably do when they meet, the persons advised with are branded with the name of undertakers . . . and I am persuaded your excellency will not subject us to that character by taking notice, or letting a secretary know you have done us the honour to ask our opinions.42

Obviously we cannot expect to find hard evidence of political agreements between viceroys and their managers when the latter were so reluctant to see the terms of any arrangement spelled out, let alone committed to paper. Occasionally, private correspondence affords glimpses of the underlying reality. When Alan Brodrick, then solicitor-general, insisted during ministerial discussions in the winter of 1702–3 over the preparations for the forthcoming parliament that the privy council give up its legal right to prepare

diarist Sir Richard Cocks wrote in 1700 that ‘I have heard gent[lemen] deservedly speak against undertaking for parliaments’ (The parliamentary diary of Sir Richard Cocks, 1698–1702, ed. D. W. Hayton (Oxford, 1996), p. 49). 40 [Alan] to [Thomas Brodrick], 14 December 1714 (S.H.C., 1248/3, ff. 205–6); Clotworthy Upton to [?John Barrington], 30 July 1719 (Bolton papers, D/73). See also [Alan] to [Thomas Brodrick], 18 December 1715 (S.H.C., 1248/3, ff. 280–5). 41 Lord Tyrawley to [Sunderland], 12 March 1714/15 (B.L., Add. MS 61636, f. 21). 42 Alan Brodrick to Sunderland, 25 January 1715, quoted in McNally, Undertakers, p. 122. See also Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 7 November 1724 (Coxe, Walpole, ii, pp. 400–2); Marmaduke Coghill to Lord Perceval, 1 May 1731 (B.L., Add. MS 47033, f. 89). 116


and offer a money bill, the tory lord justice Thomas Keightley found his change of mind inexplicable, since, as Keightley pointed out, this conciliar prerogative was something that Brodrick had been ‘before but an undertaker for on the side of the crown’ in 1695.43 William Conolly was even prepared to admit his own role on one occasion, writing to Grafton to endorse a proposed sequence of appointments and promotions as a necessary preliminary to the next parliamentary session, and prefacing what was in effect a personal pledge of support with the self-deprecating observation, ‘I am a very unfit undertaker’.44 Moreover, if the practical relationship between the two sides is examined, it becomes clear that there generally existed some sort of contract, whether explicit or implicit. The viceroy fulfilled his obligation by endorsing requests for patronage and making concessions in matters of policy, and in return the managers backed his administration in parliament, even though this might involve them in work they did not relish. An episode from the session of 1707 serves to illustrate the nature of the relationship.45 The leaders of the opposition had been brought over to support the new lord lieutenant, Pembroke, by the appointment of one of the number as attorney-general. They were placed in a dilemma when Pembroke requested that the supply to be voted by the commons should be for two years, something his new managers had consistently opposed in the past on the grounds that a oneyear grant was necessary to safeguard the fundamental right of Irishmen to hold annual sessions of their own parliament. Both viceroy and managers knew that what was being offered was an ‘undertaking’. They may have avoided the expression, but others did not share their delicacy of feeling. It was said at one point by an opponent that the managers had ‘undertaken for a year and a half’, while to a similarly disapproving eye their final proposal had the disagreeable appearance of an ultimatum: ‘three politicos were sent . . . with a resolution not to give the duty to support the government but for a year and three quarters . . . and in that case they offer to close with the government.’46 In two other episodes, both well documented, the aims of the negotiations and the nature of the offers and stipulations made were quite explicit. Opposition politicians may be observed treating with the government and presenting demands for office and power as the price of their support. Before the session of 1713 the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury, entered into discussions with the whig party chieftain, Alan Brodrick, who had organised the

43

Keightley to Lord Rochester, 30 January 1702[/3] (N.L.I., Inchiquin papers, 2602). Conolly to Grafton, 29 August 1720 (Irish Architectural Archive, Castletown papers, box 53). 45 For what follows, see McGrath, Constitution, pp. 194–210. 46 [Abp Vesey] to Major Theodore Vesey, 22 July 1707 (N.L.I., MS 2472, pp. 243–4); Anderson Saunders to [Edward Southwell], 10 July 1707 (B.L., Add. MS 9715, ff. 174–5). 44

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parliamentary opposition to the previous viceroy, Ormond. Brodrick made it a basic condition that Shrewsbury change his Irish ministry. In particular, he urged the removal of the tory party’s champion, the lord chancellor, Sir Constantine Phipps. This was not a demand the viceroy could grant, and the talks quickly came to an end.47 However, after the parliamentary session had taken place, and the ministry’s forces in the commons had suffered defeat after defeat, culminating in the refusal of the house to vote a supply beyond Christmas 1713, contact was renewed. Early in the following year Shrewsbury invited the leading opponents of his administration – ‘the chief managers of the commons’ – to a conference at Dublin Castle. He began by paying tribute to the ‘discernment’ and ‘interest’ of his guests, and then asked them if they were willing to ‘proceed with temper in carrying on the public business and the supply’. The answer was that, until the queen removed Phipps from office, they would stay in opposition. As one of them remarked, ‘my lord chancellor’s continuing to be in that station’ was ‘such a grievance, as was intolerable’; and as long as he remained no vote of supply could be expected.48 This was what happened: the chancellor kept his place; the composition of the ministry did not alter; and the opposition continued to oppose. It is worth noting, however, that even here, with the viceroy making a direct appeal for support and the politicians laying down conditions, the verbal proprieties were observed, Shrewsbury taking care to say that ‘he knew very well that in such assemblies [i.e. parliament] no wise man would undertake for more than himself ’. His guests, however, ‘could not forbear wresting some of the expressions, to have an opportunity of carping at the unreasonableness, of putting them upon being undertakers’.49 In the other episode, the demands of the would-be managers were conceded. This was perhaps the most blatant example of an ‘undertaking’ in the entire period 1692–1725. It was what was in Keightley’s mind when he commented in 1703 that Brodrick ‘had been an undertaker’ for Lord Deputy Capel. In preparing for a meeting of parliament in 1695, Capel had negotiated to bring over at least some of the parliamentary ‘troublemakers’ who had led the opposition in the previous session. These were men who shared his own whiggish proclivities; more to the point, they were powerful enough, or so he argued, to guarantee the fulfilment of any promises they made. They pledged him loyalty, but on the understanding that certain ‘things’ were ‘done before the meeting of a parliament’.50 What these ‘things’ were is clear from Capel’s letters to the English government, proposing alterations in judicial and governmental appointments. Most of the changes were carried out, and when

47

[Alan] to Thomas Brodrick, 11 October 1713 (S.H.C., 1248/2, f.125). Lord Abercorn to [Edward Southwell], 5 January 1713/14 (P.R.O.N.I., D/623/A/3/12). 49 Ibid. 50 [St John Brodrick] to Capel, 5 August 1694 (H.M.C., Buccleuch, ii, pp. 110–11). For this episode, see above, pp. 52–5. 48

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parliament met the faction with which the lord deputy had negotiated duly gave him their support.51 Even at this early stage in the history of the postrevolution Irish parliament ‘undertakers’ were in business.

III In order to understand how the ‘undertakers’ of the early eighteenth century differed in their situation from Speaker Boyle in the 1730s and 1740s, it is necessary to know something of the political ‘structure’ of the Irish house of commons: how the members organised themselves into parties and factions in the reigns of King William III and Queen Anne, and what changes occurred subsequently. The subject is a large one, but for our immediate purposes a brief outline will suffice. As we have seen in the previous chapter, there evolved in the two decades after the revolution a pattern of political allegiances similar to that obtaining in England, with parliament divided into two warring parties, whigs and tories. This development reached maturity in the second half of the reign of Anne, when the struggle between the two parties submerged all other considerations. With the accession of George I the war was over; the whigs triumphant. Tories were under an anathema at court, owing to the association of some tories with the cause of the Stuart pretender, and most men assumed there would never again be a tory ministry in England or Ireland. Consequently the tory party in Ireland, and with it the two-party system, began to disintegrate. By 1727, and the beginning of the next reign, the Irish house of commons had come to assume a quite different appearance, similar to that of the English house of commons in the early 1760s as described in the works of Sir Lewis Namier. Gone were the armies of whigs and tories, to be replaced by a nest of smaller factions, some centred on individual politicians or families, with a group of ‘king’s friends’ rather more numerous than before and a body of independent-minded ‘patriots’ (mainly, but not exclusively, country gentlemen), usually to be found in opposition. The key to the changing pattern of parliamentary politics is the concept of ‘party’.52 At its simplest the story is of the rise, temporary ascendancy and then decline of ‘party’ as a force in political life. Like much else in early eighteenth-century Ireland, the party division was imported from England, where the terms ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ had been in use since the Exclusion Crisis. The English parties were divided on fundamentals, holding opposing views on the constitution and the function of government. Tories cherished an alliance between church and crown, enforcing obedience to both and denying the subject any right to resist, a right which the whigs by contrast

51

See above, pp. 55–6. For what follows, see Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, ch. 5; Connolly, Religion, ch. 3, pt 1; and McNally, Undertakers, chs 3–4.

52

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upheld, whether it was exercised in defence of civil or religious liberty. In practice the conflict focused on two issues: the extent to which protestant dissenters were to be allowed freedom of worship and access to political power; and whether tory principles of non-resistance and passive obedience were compatible with the revolution effected by King William. When Irishmen started to call themselves whigs and tories, they inherited the principles and prejudices of their English counterparts, and the issues over which the clash of principles had crystallised. Because of circumstances peculiar to Ireland, the debate about non-resistance and passive obedience was slower to begin than it had been in England. Irish protestants were too well aware that their estates, and perhaps their lives, depended on the maintenance of the revolution settlement, and were loath to call that settlement into doubt. The furthest most Irish tories would go, as one M.P. expressed it in the commons, was to admit that resistance to King James had been necessary but to hope that nothing similar would be called for again.53 None the less, there was a difference between the two parties in their attitudes to the revolution.54 Whigs, as the more earnest Williamites, pressed for draconian penalties to be exacted on the defeated catholics, who in their view constituted a vast jacobite ‘fifth column’. Tories, while sharing the general anti-catholic sentiment of the Irish protestant elite, argued that there were enough penal laws on the statute book once the most wide-ranging popery act had been passed in 1704, and that to add more was vindictive. During King William’s reign the three issues on which there were distinctive whig and tory positions – the legislative treatment of protestant dissenters, the validity of the revolution and the necessity for penal laws against catholics and catholicism – were relegated to the background by the issues raised in debates between ‘court’ and ‘country’ parties in parliament.55 As in England, a ‘country party’ was in essence an opposition grouping which sought to embarrass the administration and gain popularity by raising ‘national’ grievances and appealing to the patriotism of back-benchers. The programme of the Irish country party blended suspicion of the executive (a characteristic ‘country’ attitude on both sides of the Irish Sea) with a specifically Irish ‘patriotism’, manifested in a concern for the economic welfare of the kingdom and a determination to defend the rights of the Irish parliament. In 1692 the opposition had claimed that the Irish house of commons had a ‘sole right’ to initiate money bills, and during the next few years this became one of the most controversial issues in Irish politics. Then in 1699 and 1700 acts were passed in England to restrict the export of Irish woollen cloth and to resume royal

53

Newsletter, 10 November 1711 (P.R.O., SP 63/367/264). On this point, see also Thomas Doyle, ‘Jacobitism, catholicism and the Irish protestant elite, 1700–1710’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xii (1997), pp. 28–59. 55 For what follows, see Troost, ‘William III’; Connolly, Religion, pp. 74–9; and McGrath, Constitution, chs 3–5. 54

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grants of Irish forfeitures, which on the one hand awakened fears of economic exploitation and on the other brought into question Irish property rights. These accumulated provocations sparked off further agitation in the Irish parliament, in the press, and in the country at large. Such patriotic preoccupations encouraged the use of terms such as ‘court’ and ‘country’ rather than ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ to denote the two sides in parliament. Under Queen Anne the political language of ‘court and country’ slowly disappeared from the Irish parliamentary scene.56 The earliest known instances of the use of the terms ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ to refer to parties in parliament dates from the first session of the new reign, in 1703–4.57 Even then it was more common for the two sides to be labelled ‘court’ and ‘country’.58 Opposition members presented themselves as patriots, complaining of the condition of the economy and protesting at damage done by English legislation. However, a change in the framework of parliamentary debate was imminent. The imposition in 1704 of a compulsory sacramental test to be taken by all holders of crown and municipal office raised to prominence the question of protestant dissenters and their place in the state. A flood of Scottish presbyterian immigrants into Ulster in the 1690s had alarmed the Anglican squirearchy, and some churchmen were even apprehensive of a presbyterian coup d’état. Tories praised the test as a necessary bulwark against the expansionism of presbyterians in the north, and busied themselves in looking for ways to reinforce the defences. The recall in the same year of the convocation of the Church of Ireland provided an additional platform for tory views. Parsons now took to politics in defence of the ecclesiastical establishment, exploiting pulpit, press and convocation to attack the twin targets of presbyterianism and whiggery. In due course some immoderately partisan clergymen began to expound the high tory doctrines of non-resistance, passive obedience and hereditary right, and for the first time the Glorious Revolution and ‘revolution principles’ began to divide Irish protestants. By 1707 debates in the Irish parliament took the form of a running battle between two parties, who referred to themselves respectively as ‘the church party’ and ‘the honest gentlemen’ (‘honest’ in the sense of not being concealed jacobites) and were known to one another, and everyone else, as tories and whigs. The English tory judge Sir Gilbert Dolben reported from Dublin in 1707 that political discourse was dominated by the spirit of party, ‘in which almost every person of condition appears to be engaged’; while two years later Lord Wharton characterised Irish M.P.s as a body of men ‘that hate one another as heartily as ’tis possible to imagine, and . . . are pretty equally

56

Though not entirely; see, for example, D. W. Hayton (ed.), ‘An Irish parliamentary diary from the reign of Queen Anne’ in Analecta Hibernica, xxx (1982), pp. 115, 127, 139. 57 Robert Echlin to [Edward] Southwell, 23 November 1703 (B.L., Add. MS 9712, f. 51). 58 For what follows, see above, pp. 89–93. 121


divided’.59 It was next to impossible to avoid being attached to one party or the other, and very difficult to change sides once party allegiance had been established. Even that quintessential ‘civil servant’, Joshua Dawson, who preserved his political neutrality in serving every administration since 1700, whig or tory, as under-secretary, joined in the tory government’s energetic and partisan campaign in the general election of 1713, contesting County Londonderry against a leading whig, and consequently was dismissed when the whigs came to power in the following year.60 The ‘rage of party’ had only a short life in Ireland, however, and after Anne’s death the political dichotomy soon dissolved. Tories had become too closely identified with jacobitism in the public mind, and, more important, in the mind of King George I, to count any longer as serious candidates for power. As far as Irish tories were concerned, the defection to the Stuart camp of the duke of Ormond, the leading tory in the kingdom, was an especially damaging blow. Although tories did not suffer catastrophic losses in the Irish general election of 1715, despondency soon enveloped them and when parliament met they were beaten down by the relentless pressure of the whigs. After a few months only a handful of tories in the commons were prepared to defend the previous administration from charges of ‘arbitrary behaviour’ and disloyalty to Hanover.61 Tory politicians, anxious to be considered again for government appointments, began to desert, and before long many had gone over to the whigs. Only the diehards remained. The tory party seems to have lasted as a separate entity until at least 1727, for in that year Lord Anglesey addressed a gathering of tories on their future political strategy, but what was left was a rump.62 Since 1714 there had been a steady decline in the number of those who professed themselves ‘churchmen’ in their politics. When an issue arose, such as a projected repeal of the test, which was seen as endangering the Church of Ireland, tories would come together and make a show of strength.63 This did not often happen, however, for whig ministers took care not to appear to threaten the interests of the church. Since the government also refused to allow the Irish convocation to meet after 1714, the hot-blooded clerics who had done so much to raise the political temperature in Anne’s reign were left with little to declaim against, and less opportunity to make themselves heard when they did raise their voices.

59 Dolben to [Pembroke], [c. April 1707] (Bodl., MS Eng. lett. e. 6, f. 12); Wharton to [Sunderland], 5 May 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 61634, f. 43). 60 W. E. H. Lecky, A history of Ireland in the eighteenth century (2nd edn, 5 vols, London, 1892), i, p. 314. 61 C.J.I., iii, pp. 66, 102. 62 [Thomas Tickell] to Carteret, 23 June 1727 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2774). See also Abp Boulter to same, 29 June 1727 (Boulter letters, i, p. 139); Bp Bolton to [same], 16 July 1728 (P.R.O., D/562/92). 63 In 1719 Speaker Conolly listed seventy-three tories, presumably those likely to oppose the projected repeal of the sacramental test (P.R.O.N.I., T/2825/A/1/1B).

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With the collapse of the tory party inside and outside parliament, and the rapid decline of toryism as a significant ideological force, political debate and parliamentary manoeuvring began once again to be conducted on a theme of ‘court’ against ‘country’. The issues which came most readily to hand for the opposition were the standard complaints of any Irish ‘country’ or ‘patriot’ party: the pitiful state of the economy and the imperilled rights of the Irish parliament, in particular the right of the house of lords to act as the final court of appeal for cases within Ireland, a claim disputed by the British house of lords and legislated against at Westminster in 1720. In fact, the title of ‘country party’ was the only one this new opposition could adopt, since its members included both tories and whigs. Irish whigs had been squabbling among themselves even before George I landed in England, and in the session of 1715–16 a section of the party, which resented the way in which the spoils of victory had been parcelled out, flirted with the opposition in the hope of bringing about a redistribution.64 In the following sessions opposition continued to come from a coalition of tories and discontented whigs, and to maintain unity the leaders tried to avoid questions which would revive memories of the days of ‘party’ strife. In Anne’s reign the conflict of whigs and tories tended to swamp all other considerations governing political behaviour. Ties of kinship or patronage counted for little against the gravitational pull of party. With the disintegration of the two-party system these other factors became more important. Party allegiance no longer exercised the most powerful influence on men’s conduct. The leading politicians seem to have been devotees of ‘court’ or ‘country’ largely out of convenience; quite happy to take office if the opportunity arose and to withdraw support when expedient. Among the rank and file some were undoubtedly courtiers out of loyalty to government, or patriots out of loyalty to what they perceived as national interests, but these were probably a minority.65 The rest followed their leaders willy-nilly, in or out of office. One back-bencher, for example, wrote to a country party leader in 1731 to wish him ‘everything you desire to strengthen your interest, which I am satisfied, let it go by what denomination it will, country or court, is and must be designed and intended for the good of this kingdom’.66 The main components of the court and country parties were ‘connexions’, groups of members attached to individual politicians, patrons, or heads of families. Archbishop Boulter of Armagh referred in 1729 to ‘the several clans’ which

64

[Alan] to [Thomas Brodrick], 14 December 1714 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 205); Charles Dering to Lord Perceval, 1 June 1716 (B.L., Add. MS 47088, f. 60). 65 The argument is not that Irish politicians always acted from self-interest, but the more limited proposition that common interest rather than community of principle caused politicians to act together, whether devotees of court or country. For a different emphasis, see Connolly, Religion, pp. 87–94. 66 Jonathan Bruce to Henry Boyle, 9 November 1731 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/86). 123


made up the court side, while in the previous year another member of the government had written of the necessity of having a man of sufficient personal authority at the head of the castle party; otherwise ‘people will either wander as sheep without a shepherd, or will get into factions that may render the administration here uneasy’.67 The pattern of parliamentary politics had become almost kaleidoscopic, with new combinations forming and dissolving in the space of a session. It was a far cry from the days of party strife when the young members elected to parliament for the first time in 1727 could decide ‘(for the good of their country) to act in a body . . . distinguished by the name of toopees, which is not more than a particular kind of foretop which they have to their wigs, which they fancy denotes youth and smartness’.68

IV One of the most important effects produced by this change in ‘political structure’ on the government’s method of parliamentary management was simply to decrease the number of managers or ‘undertakers’ involved. The whig and tory parties had each been directed by a caucus of politicians, and any negotiations with the viceroy were conducted by the parliamentary leaders as a group. Shrewsbury had to summon eight whig managers in 1714, while in 1707 Pembroke invited seven tories for discussions in order to find out the party’s views. The replacement of whig and tory parties by smaller factions narrowed the circle of political leadership and, from witnessing a war between two large armies, the Irish parliament became the battleground of condottieri. Instead of having to parley with each party’s general staff, the viceroy negotiated with a few magnates. There were two or three principal managers at most to see that the government’s business was transacted, and usually one would be pre-eminent. The existence of this presiding individual was the most notable characteristic of the ‘undertaker system’ of the mideighteenth century, and had appeared before the end of George I’s reign. In 1729, when the head of the court party, William Conolly, was forced by ill-health to retire from politics, it was reported that the government’s forces collapsed into disarray, ‘the people who had served under him, not caring immediately to list under a new leader’.69 The practice of having one politician permanently in charge of the castle’s parliamentary forces was one consequence of the emergence of a political world in which personality and personal relationships counted at least as much as issues. It was also the result of a number of developments after 1714 which concentrated political

67

Abp Boulter to duke of Newcastle, 23 October 1729 (Boulter letters, i, p. 265); Coghill to [Southwell], 13 June 1728 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2534/2). 68 Edward Cooke to [Sir Richard Cox], 22 February 1727[/8] (N.L.I., MS 8802/11). 69 Thomas Clutterbuck to Charles Delafaye, 20 November 1729 (P.R.O., SP 63/391/236). 124


power in the hands of one man, who proved so successful as an ‘undertaker’ that when he left the scene the government’s only thought was to find someone to take his place.70 The politician whose career marks the inception of a new ‘system’ of management was William Conolly. Like his eventual successor, Henry Boyle, Conolly possessed considerable personal influence in the commons, where his wealth and interest guaranteed him ‘numerous dependants’.71 He achieved pre-eminence as a parliamentary manager through holding three important offices, never before held simultaneously by one man. From 1715 he was speaker of the commons, a lord justice (in the absences of the lord lieutenant) and commissioner of the revenue, indeed in practical terms ‘chief’ commissioner (though in theory all the commissioners were equal). The speakership enabled him to influence the course of parliamentary proceedings, and thus it became vitally necessary for government to retain his goodwill. If the occupant of the chair favoured the ministry, he could make things go smoothly; if not, there was certain to be trouble. The office of lord justice was coveted for the prestige it conferred and the opportunities it offered to influence policy: it carried no right of nomination to specific appointments (though the lords justices were consulted by the English government before the nomination of judges and bishops), but Conolly’s inclusion demonstrated that he enjoyed the trust of the ministry. His predominant role in the revenue commission was in some respects the most important, since the commissioners had at their disposal a vast quantity of patronage which, it was claimed, Conolly was able to deploy much as he liked.72 Just how valuable this patronage was as an engine of political power may be deduced from the fact that the revenue service was the fastest-growing department of state in Ireland, with several hundred officers in its employ (the majority appointed directly by the commissioners themselves) and an expenditure on salaries of £50,000 a year.73 The concentration of these offices in Conolly’s hands owed something to chance. Good fortune helped bring him the opportunity of the chair. At Queen Anne’s death in 1714 he had been only one among several prominent whigs in the commons, and not always the most important, but by the time the first Hanoverian parliament met the other party leaders had all left the lower house, having been ennobled or appointed as judges. Conolly was the obvious choice to be speaker, and his only rivals in the commons were younger men, such as St John Brodrick, the son of the lord chancellor. St John quickly proved that he could be an effective trouble-maker, but by the time he had

70

Coghill to [Southwell], 13 June 1728 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2534/2). [Tickell] to Carteret, 23 June 1727 (ibid., T/2774). 72 Bp Evans to Abp Wake, 24 June, 14 November [1717], 28 May [1718] (Christ Church, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist, xii). See also McNally, Undertakers, pp. 106–7. 73 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 51–3; McNally, ‘Patronage & politics’, ch. 3. 71

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gained enough experience to be considered a potential government manager Conolly was firmly established in that position. Conolly became the first speaker to act as a lord justice as a consequence of his rivalry with Lord Chancellor Midleton, which, as we shall see, was a feature of Irish politics from 1715 until 1727. Conolly had been included on the commission of lords justices after the session of 1715–16, to show that he was held in as high regard as the chancellor, and it became essential to keep him there to prevent it being thought that he had lost favour. It was partly by accident, too, that he was able to make so much of his place in the revenue. Conolly got his own way at the board partly because of his parliamentary eminence, partly because he was almost the only commissioner who attended regularly. His long-suffering wife complained that ‘he is every day at least six hours at the custom house . . . I wish some of the commissioners were ordered to their business, for I think it is hard he should always have the labouring’.74 Finally, the wholesale dismissal of tory officers from the revenue service after Queen Anne’s death gave the new whig commissioners more vacancies to fill than they would otherwise have had, and temporarily increased the patronage at their disposal.75 Conolly established his position as the leading government manager in the commons as early as 1715, but had to wait until 1725 before he became the principal and unrivalled ‘undertaker’. This was because of the continued presence in the government of Lord Midleton, the former Alan Brodrick, who had been raised to the office of lord chancellor of Ireland in 1714. Midleton bitterly resented Conolly’s advancement, and for the next ten years, the two men were engaged in a prolonged struggle for power.76 In general, Conolly’s strategy was to ingratiate himself with whomever was viceroy, even when his opponent appeared to be the favourite; Midleton’s approach, by contrast, appears to have been to make as much mischief as possible, often through the agency of his son St John in the commons, who he said – rightly or wrongly – was a headstrong young man, beyond parental control.77 Midleton kept his place for so long because of the English ministers’ reluctance to divide the Irish whigs any further by dismissing him, and because there was uncertainty as to which of the two rivals had the larger following. The duke of Grafton, lord lieutenant from 1720 to 1724 and a man whose initial dislike of Midleton grew into detestation, found his demands for the chancellor’s removal frustrated by the caution of English ministerial colleagues. In the spring of 1721, for example, Grafton held a ‘conference’

74

Mrs Conolly to [Charles Delafaye], 17 June 1729 (P.R.O., SP 63/391/71). Sunderland to the Irish revenue commissioners, 28 July 1715 (N.L.I., MS 16007, p. 10). 76 For what follows, see below, pp. 217–35. 77 Conolly to Charles Delafaye, 3 October 1717 (P.R.O., SP 63/375/204–5); Grafton to Robert Walpole, 23 September 1723 (Suffolk R.O., Bury St Edmunds, 423/881). 75

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with ‘two of the chief ministers’, at which was aired ‘their proposal of continuing [the] lord chancellor, grounded upon difficulties of finding a successor and the disturbances the threat might give to the measures in parliament’. At this time even Conolly agreed. Although Midleton’s remaining in office might be taken as a sign ‘that his merit is so great that he could not be removed, nor could the king’s affairs be carried on without him’, the speaker resigned himself to it: ‘that and more’, he wrote, ‘must be borne’.78 Even after Midleton had refused to condemn the public agitation against Wood’s halfpence, the English ministers were still not prepared to take the step of getting rid of him. Instead, they replaced Grafton with Carteret and left the new chief governor to decide what to do, Sir Robert Walpole remarking that Carteret would have to ‘take his party betwixt the two great men there’.79 Midleton forced the issue when his faction pressed the viceroy to treat exclusively with them. On Carteret’s refusal, the chancellor resigned in a huff and at last left the field clear for his rival.80 Although the creation of the ‘system’ operated by Conolly had been unplanned, the ministers naturally became aware of its advantages, and, when the speaker fell fatally ill in 1729, they tried to keep power and influence concentrated in one pair of hands. Unfortunately, there was no one in Conolly’s old party who had nearly as much ‘interest’ in the commons, or managerial expertise, and a compromise was reached by which two ‘undertakers’ were employed: Sir Ralph Gore and Marmaduke Coghill. Gore was the senior, succeeding Conolly as speaker and de facto leader of the castle party. He would not agree to become ‘first commissioner’ of the revenue, preferring to retain the more lucrative office of chancellor of the Irish exchequer, so that Conolly’s place on the revenue board went to the secondin-command, Coghill.81 The partnership was reasonably successful, but brief. Gore died in 1732 and a new manager had then to be sought from outside the ranks of the Conollyite old corps. Coghill’s influence on its own was insufficient and no one among his lieutenants was capable of taking the place of Gore. The government was thus obliged to turn to the leader of the opposition, one of Midleton’s old lieutenants, Henry Boyle, who, like Conolly, was a skilful parliamentarian and a man with extensive personal ‘interest’ in the commons. Boyle’s election as speaker was supported from the castle, and he was eventually installed in the two offices which Conolly had enjoyed, namely lord justice and ‘first commissioner’ of the revenue. He was originally named 78

Conolly to Grafton, 11 May 1721 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2825/A/1/17). Walpole to [Newcastle], 1 September 1724 (B.L., Add. MS 32687, ff. 54–5). 80 McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence, Carteret, & the government of Ireland’, pp. 364–5. 81 James Tynte to Henry Boyle, 1 October 1729 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/49); Thomas Carter to same, 2 October 1729 (ibid., D/2707/A/1/2/50); Abp Boulter to Newcastle, 30 October 1729 (Boulter letters, i, p. 267). Gore had been recognised as Conolly’s political heir presumptive as early as 1720 (Henry Rose to Sir Maurice Crosbie, 25 June 1720 (N.L.I., P.C. 188)). 79

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as Gore’s successor at the exchequer, but soon switched offices with Coghill, to the benefit of the administration and its parliamentary management.82 The other important difference between this ‘system’ of management and what had prevailed before was that the viceroy now had more freedom of manoeuvre. In the earlier period, when political allegiances had been hard and fast, most viceroys had little choice as to whom they engaged as their managers. There were only two groups of politicians from which to choose. It was virtually impossible to create a ‘mixed’ ministry that would succeed in carrying business, and extraordinarily difficult even to detach one or two party politicians from their friends. The two viceroys who did try to form ‘mixed’ administrations – Pembroke (in 1707) and Shrewsbury (in 1713) – each had a difficult time, and Shrewsbury’s viceroyalty ended in fiasco. When the lord lieutenant was himself a party man he would have no choice as to his servants. Lord Wharton, a notorious whig, came to Ireland in 1709 to find a ministry still almost wholly tory in complexion. Although he did nothing at first to alter this situation, the tories opposed him to a man while the whigs stood by him, forcing a change in the ministry regardless of the wishes of the viceroy, or at any rate without the viceroy needing to express a preference.83 When Wharton was replaced in 1710 by Ormond, a tory, Irish politicians immediately assumed that the ministry would return to its old party colouring, and accordingly the tories once again became the court party while the whigs went back into opposition, many still holding office.84 The fact that the viceroy had no choice as to which party was enlisted under the court’s banner seriously restricted his freedom in deciding upon policy. There was considerable pressure on him to follow the logic of party conflict and bow to the demands and prejudices of his managers – to pursue their enemies and to endorse measures which would benefit their friends: thus whig ministries produced legislation to penalise catholics, while tory ministries gave more attention to restricting the activities of protestant dissenters; and, as regards patronage, it became more and more difficult to keep in office men who adhered to the other party. Every swing of the pendulum after 1700, from whig to tory, to whig, back to tory and finally to whig again, was accompanied by a purge of office-holders progressively more extensive, until in 1714 and 1715 almost every tory placeman was turned out.85 After the two-party system had broken down, the lord lieutenant was somewhat more happily placed. He had more say in the choice of his 82

Coghill to [Edward Southwell, jr.], 25 February 1735 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, f. 96). See below, p. 263. 83 Dolben to Rochester, 30 April 1709 (Bodl., MS Eng. lett. e. 6, f. 25); Addison to Halifax, 7 May 1709 (Addison letters, p. 134); Sir John Perceval to Edward Southwell, 26 May 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, f. 121); Wharton to [Sunderland], 20 June 1709 (ibid., Add. MS 61634, f. 87). 84 Abp King to Edward Southwell, 13 March 1711 (T.C.D., MS 2531, p. 322). 85 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, ch. 9. 128


managers, and thus more freedom in making policy. In the commons, the nature of the castle party also underwent a change. The political obligations contingent on taking office were appreciated more keenly by the placemen in the commons now that they were no longer subjected to the overpowering demands of party loyalty, and in due course an office-holding interest began to emerge (the Irish equivalent of the ‘king’s friends’ at Westminster). Moreover, the appointment of two Englishmen in 1724/5, to the great offices of primate and lord chancellor respectively, meant that the viceroy could henceforth have the assistance of loyal and expert advisers stationed permanently in Ireland.86 As a result, the balance in the relationship between the viceroy and his managers was weighted less heavily in favour of the latter. Government policy was no longer prescribed in advance by the prejudices of political parties, and on specific questions of patronage the viceroy found himself able to act more often according to his own wishes or to please persons other than his supporters in parliament. However, the viceroy could still not dominate his manager or managers, and the parliamentary session of 1733–4 provides evidence of the practical limitations on his power.87 The lord lieutenant, Dorset, having backed Henry Boyle’s election to the chair, proceeded to withhold his confidence from the new speaker. Boyle was moved to protest at ‘my lord lieutenant’s private and reserved behaviour, his not communicating his pleasure to any, and keeping those who are most ready to serve him at a distance from his councils’.88 Dorset’s aim of putting the viceroyalty above factional politics proved a failure. Boyle was powerful enough to cause difficulties for government if slighted, and in any case it was a first principle of good management that M.P.s had to appreciate the direction of viceregal favour if they were to vote as the viceroy desired. A straightforward approach was necessary: it was useless to countenance simultaneously rival politicians or representatives of distinct and even opposing factions. After enduring the vexations and disappointments of a troublesome session, Dorset wisely changed course. He decided that Boyle was to be supported. The speaker was made a lord justice; his requests for patronage given viceregal endorsement. It was obvious that he had now become the chief ‘undertaker’.89

86

See below, pp. 240–1. For what follows, see below, pp. 260–3. 88 Henry Boyle to Lord Burlington, 17 August 1731 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/13); H.M.C., Egmont diary, i, pp. 450, 462–3; ii, p. 2; Dorset to George Dodington, 10 January 1734 (ibid., Stopford-Sackville, i, p. 149). 89 In the event, this state of affairs did not last long, with the replacement of Dorset in 1737 by the duke of Devonshire, and the advancement of Devonshire’s connexions the Ponsonbys as rivals to Boyle within the administration, but Dorset’s decision at this point does at least mark a realisation on his part that he could not be his own ‘undertaker’. 87

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V The inherent weaknesses of the viceregal system in relation to parliamentary management thus made the employment of Irish politicians necessary throughout the early eighteenth century. In practice, these politicians always acted as ‘undertakers’, even though they disliked the word and did everything they could to prevent its use, fearing that too public an acknowledgement of their position would jeopardise their influence over their own followers. With the breakup of the whig and tory parties after the death of Queen Anne, the ‘undertaker system’ changed its character: there was now a much stronger personal element in the direction of court management, and the number of ‘undertakers’ was sharply reduced: often there appeared a single dominant figure. In this way the career of William Conolly set a pattern, paving the way for Gore and Boyle. As the ‘system’ changed, lords lieutenant actually found themselves in a stronger position: no longer prisoners of one or other of the parties, but free to negotiate with their managers. Some viceroys, such as Carteret, or, in a different way Dorset, attempted to exploit this new situation to involve themselves more directly in parliamentary business; even to the extent of a viceroy acting as his own ‘undertaker’. But Dorset’s unhappy experience highlighted the continuing limitations of the viceroyalty and the impossibility of relegating commons managers to subservience. When an ‘undertaker’ wrote to a lord lieutenant, as Conolly wrote to Grafton in 1720, that without a certain appointment being made ‘I dread the consequences of it to his Majesty’s affairs and the ease of your grace’s administration’, the message was clear despite being encoded in the conventional language of deferential subordination.90 It was to be many years before a lord lieutenant could even contemplate a campaign to ‘bring administration back to the castle’. During the middle years of the eighteenth century the ‘undertakers’ remained politically powerful, essentially independent, men, who worked for government largely on their own terms, and whose expectations and desires a viceroy slighted at his peril.

90

Conolly to Grafton, 18 October 1720 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2825/A/1/7). 130

4

High churchmen in the Irish convocation*

I Until comparatively recently, historical writing on the Church of Ireland in the eighteenth century concentrated on the problems – material, cultural and intellectual – with which churchmen were beset: lack of resources, in terms of personnel, finance, land and buildings; the corrosive effects of patronage in undermining the commitment of the clergy to pastoral duties; the hostility of catholics towards the established church, and the mutual incomprehension of settler and native, which defeated attempts at conversion. Consequently, the clergymen who attracted historians and biographers were the minority of aspiring problem-solvers: ecclesiastical ‘reformers’, among whom the formidable figure of William King, successively bishop of Derry and archbishop of Dublin, stands as the archetype.1 In contrast, little was written about the majority of clergy, conservative ‘high churchmen’ conventionally represented in the literature in an unflattering light, as lacking the exalted ambitions of their ‘reforming’ brethren, and concerned not so much to extend their reach as to keep what lay within their grasp; at best complacent and at worst corrupt.2 This emphasis has not been altered during the transformation effected in the historiography of the eighteenth-century Church of Ireland in the last two decades by scholars presenting a more balanced picture of its strengths and weaknesses; most directly by Professor S. J. Connolly, in a structural analysis of the role of the established church in a country which he sees as having much in common with other states of ancien régime Europe; and less confrontationally by Dr T. C. Barnard, in a series of essays – on protestant mentalities,

* First published as ‘The High Church party in the Irish convocation, 1703–1713’ in Hermann Josef Real and Helgard Stöver-Leidig (eds), Reading Swift: papers from the third Münster symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich, 1998), pp. 117–40. 1 J. C. Beckett, ‘William King’s administration of the diocese of Derry, 1691–1703’ in I.H.S., iv (1944–5), pp. 164–80; O’Regan, King; A. R. Winnett, Peter Browne: provost, bishop, metaphysician (London, 1974); F. G. James, North country bishop: a biography of William Nicolson (New Haven, 1956). 2 An exception is S. J. Connolly, ‘Reformers and highflyers: the post-revolution church’ in As by law established, pp. 152–65. Although sharing some of the concerns of the present chapter, Professor Connolly’s work differs from it in scope and argument. 131


on the movement for the ‘reformation of manners’, and on educational and proselytising initiatives.3 The effect of this research, recovering achievements as well as failings, has been to rescue a number of pious and diligent churchmen from the undeserved censure of posterity. It is not only ‘reformers’ whose reputations have been salvaged. Nevertheless, such ‘progressive’ clergymen as King, his predecessor at Dublin, Narcissus Marsh, Nathaniel Foy of Waterford, or Edward Wetenhall of Kilmore, remain the centre of attention, as men responding proactively rather than reactively to the church’s problems of ministry and mission. A ready explanation for this imbalance in historical interest may be found in the bias of the surviving documentation. That we know so much about the ideas and achievements of reformers in the church is owing to the riches contained in two major clerical archives: the letters of Archbishop King;4 and the papers of William Wake, George I’s archbishop of Canterbury, who was in regular correspondence with many episcopal colleagues in Ireland, invariably those whose political preferences were ‘low church’ or whiggish.5 On the opposing side, among the ‘high churchmen’ or tories, the only personal collection of substance belongs to the Veseys, Archbishop John of Tuam and his son Sir Thomas, successively bishop of Killaloe and Ossory, but their family archive is a comparatively recent discovery.6 To describe these ‘high churchmen’ as a ‘silent majority’ would doubtless have seemed absurd to contemporaries, for in pursuit of factional ends in ecclesiastical and secular politics they were not only vociferous but positively shrill. Nonetheless, they remain for the most part an undocumented majority. Not only have they left few private papers, there is little printed evidence of their ideas, at least in comparison with their ‘low church’ rivals, who wrote and preached for publication more extensively. As a group, high churchmen tended to conserve their energies for the business of church politics and government rather

3

Connolly, Religion, esp. ch. 5; Connolly, ‘Reformers and highflyers’; T. C. Barnard, ‘Reforming Irish manners: the religious societies in Dublin during the 1690s’ in Historical Journal, xxxv (1992), pp. 802–38; idem, ‘Protestants and the Irish language, c. 1675–1725’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xliv (1993), pp. 243–72; idem, ‘Improving clergymen, 1660–1760’ in As by law established, pp. 136–51. See also M. E. Gilmore, ‘Anthony Dopping and the Church of Ireland’ (unpublished MA thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1988). 4 King’s out-letter books are T.C.D., MSS 750/1–8 (originals), 2531–7 (transcripts); the letters he received are preserved in the Lyons collection, T.C.D., MSS 1995–2008. Significant extracts are printed in H.M.C., 2nd Rept, app., pp. 231–56; and in Sir Charles S. King, A great archbishop of Dublin, William King, D.D. (London, 1906), pp. 57–267. Letters to and from Swift also appear in Swift corresp. 5 Wake’s papers are in Christ Church, Oxford. There are also two volumes of letters in Dublin City Library, Gilbert collection, MSS 28–9. 6 The bulk of this collection is to be found in Lord De Vesci’s papers, now N.L.I., T/3738. A smaller quantity of Vesey material survives in N.A.I., Sarsfield–Vesey correspondence. The correspondence of Arthur Charlett, master of University College, Oxford (Bodl., MSS Ballard 8, 36) also contains letters from Irish ‘high churchmen’. 132

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than pious contemplation or theological controversy, and few of them wrote controversial or devotional tracts, or published sermons as exemplars to colleagues. Furthermore, it was only when the tory duke of Ormond was viceroy, in 1703–7 and 1710–13, that they were afforded opportunities to preach the great public sermons on state occasions, for which printers and booksellers anticipated a market. It is this scarcity of evidence that invests with a peculiar importance the well-documented activities of the convocation of the Church of Ireland, which met alongside the Irish parliament from 1704 until 1713. Here was an assembly that represented the generality of clerical opinion, consisting of an upper house of bishops, and a lower house containing the dean and archdeacon of each diocese, and proctors elected by cathedral chapters and parochial clergy. Surviving journals and minute books record the proceedings in both houses;7 and in 1711 the convocation prepared and published a Representation of the present state of religion . . . in Ireland, in which the manifold difficulties facing the church were anatomised.8 Supplementing official records we have a few private accounts of debates, compiled for government officials and other interested parties (such as absentee bishops or Oxbridge heads of house). In this way it is possible to discover the views of the clerical estate as a whole, expressed in a public context, in contrast to the private sentiments of a handful of individuals, albeit influential individuals like Archbishop King.

II Ironically, the first demands for the recall of convocation, after an interval of forty years, came from the very cohort of ‘reforming’ bishops – especially King and Marsh, now archbishop of Armagh – who, as leaders of the low church or whiggish minority, were to expend much time and effort to frustrate the factional designs of the high churchmen.9 The ‘reformers’ had seen in

7

Journals of the upper house, 1704–11 (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/10/3/2–3); journals of the upper house, 1707 (T.C.D., MS 556), list of members of the lower house, and committee minutes, 1704 (ibid., 668/1), minutes of proceedings in the lower house, 1704–12 (ibid., 668/2) and acts of the lower house, 1704 (ibid., 668/3). There is another copy of the journals of the lower house in the Robinson Library, Armagh; and a printed list of the members elected in 1703 in Sir James Ware, The antiquities and history of Ireland (2 vols, London, 1705), i, pp. 163–4. 8 A representation of the present state of religion, with regard to infidelity, heresy, impiety, and popery: drawn up and agreed to by both houses of convocation in Ireland, pursuant to her Majesty’s command in her royal licence (Dublin, 1712). 9 The ideals and activities of these ‘reforming’ bishops are covered in some depth in a range of works: see W. A. Phillips (ed.), History of the Church of Ireland from the earliest times to the present day (3 vols, Oxford, 1933), iii, pp. 162–8, 181–4; Beckett, ‘William King’s 133


convocation a means to develop and put into effect a detailed programme for the reinvigoration of the church. They hoped that abuses such as pluralism might be extinguished; incumbents be obliged to reside and preach in their parishes, and fulfil the other responsibility of the parish clergyman, namely catechising the young; and that a beginning might be made, through the revival of the church courts, to combat the general decline in public morality and religious observance which seemed to threaten the existence of the protestant establishment.10 It was largely in response to pressure from the two archbishops, Marsh and King, assisted by the newly appointed viceroy, Ormond, that Queen Anne was prevailed upon to issue writs for calling an Irish convocation alongside parliament in 1703.11 Unfortunately for the ‘reformers’, just as the agitation for the recall of convocation came within sight of success, it was hijacked by men of a different stamp. Several other bishops added their weight to the campaign: Thomas Lindsay of Killaloe, William Moreton of Kildare, and Edward Smyth of Down and Connor, who were known to harbour strongly tory sympathies. Lindsay in particular cherished a very different agenda from the reforms envisaged by Marsh and King. A cousin of the English clerical firebrand Francis Atterbury, and himself a former college fellow at Oxford, he was able to bring his colleagues into close contact with the leaders of the ‘high church’ movement in England. To Atterbury the Irish situation offered obvious opportunities: in the first instance to use Irish precedents to further juridical claims for the convocation of Canterbury; and in the long run to secure a public platform in Ireland for the expression of grievances and prejudices which he rightly assumed would echo those of English high churchmen.12 Atterbury threw his considerable political talents into the campaign to lobby ministers over the

administration of the diocese of Derry’; idem, ‘The government and the Church of Ireland under William III and Anne’ in I.H.S., ii (1940–1), repr. in idem, Confrontations: studies in Irish history (London, 1972), pp. 87–110; Barnard, ‘Reforming Irish manners’; idem, ‘Protestants and the Irish language’; Connolly, ‘Reformers and highflyers’. 10 Beckett, Confrontations, pp. 98–100. 11 C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, pp. 49–51, 155; The epistolary correspondence . . . of Francis Atterbury (4 vols, London, 1783–7), iii, pp. 120–2; Edward Southwell to Abp King, 4 July 1703, and Abp Marsh et al. to Ormond, 10 August 1703 (T.C.D., MS 668/3); Beckett, Confrontations, pp. 100–1. 12 Atterbury corresp, ed. Nichols, iii, pp. 104–6, 110–11, 122, 129–31. For Lindsay’s toryism, see ‘Character of the primate and earl of Anglesea’ by Sir John Perceval (B.L., Add. MS 47087, f. 57); for Moreton’s, see Moreton to Ormond, 28 August 1705, 1 January 1705/6 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 179–80, 206–7); Maurice Wheeler to Bp Wake, 28 September 1706 (Christ Church, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xxiii, no. 161); William Perceval to [Arthur Charlett], 1 December 1715 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 96); and for Smyth’s, Smyth to Ormond, 14 June 1704 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 85–6); Abp Lindsay to [Abp Wake], 29 March 1716 (Christ Church, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xiii (unfol.)); and [Henry Joy,] Historical collections relative to the town of Belfast (Belfast, 1817), pp. 85–8. 134

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Irish convocation, while at the same time encouraging Lindsay and other likeminded clerics in Ireland to press their own case. He found another willing agent in the newly appointed archdeacon of Cashel, William Perceval, like Atterbury a product of that citadel of Oxonian toryism, Christ Church. 13 Fired with enthusiasm, self-appointed representatives of the lower clergy in Ireland now took up the struggle and advanced their own petitions. The more timid officials in Dublin Castle, frightened by the emergence of this new political force, began to counsel caution, but were overtaken by events. The tory ministry in England naturally lent a sympathetic ear to requests from the clergy of the established church, and the weight of clerical opinion in Ireland had moved decisively in favour of convocation’s recall. The expedient proposed (somewhat optimistically) at the castle, that elections be held but the actual meeting of convocation be postponed, proved quite impractical, since the expectation created by the issue of writs generated an unstoppable political momentum.14 Once proctors had been chosen, and members of convocation began to gather, government had no choice but to let them meet. When convocation eventually began its business, in January 1704, the worst fears of moderates were realised. Looking back a decade later, Archbishop King recalled how I . . . frequently admonished my brethren both of the upper and lower house to be very quiet and modest . . . and this prevailed for some time, but not for long, for present lord primate [Lindsay, promoted to the diocese of Armagh in 1714], the late bishop of Raphoe, Dr [John] Pooley, and the late archbishop of Tuam [John Vesey] among the bishops, and Mr [William] Perceval, Mr [Francis] Higgins, and Mr [John] Dogherty got the management of the clergy and convocation into their hands . . . and, being pretty violent in their tempers, and entirely in with and guided by Dr Atterbury and his party in England, they run us into many inconveniencies.15

The unhappy effects of faction were first apparent in the upper house, where King, Marsh and their friends were opposed by a phalanx of high churchmen: besides Lindsay, Pooley and Archbishop Vesey, these included Edward Smyth, Thomas Smyth of Limerick, and an old client of the Ormond family, John Hartstonge of Ossory. To the embarrassment of the ‘reforming’ bishops

13

See Perceval to Henry Dodwell, 19 October 1697 (Bodl., MS Eng. lett. c. 28, f. 34); same to Arthur Charlett, 10 December 1701 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 22); Abp Palliser to Perceval, 22 August 1702 (P.R.O.N.I., D/906/62); Henry Cotton, Fasti ecclesiae hibernicae: the succession of the prelates and the members of the cathedral bodies in Ireland (5 vols, Dublin, 1851–60), i, pp. 125, 156. 14 Address of lower clergy to archbishops and bishops of the Church of Ireland, 10 August 1703 (T.C.D., MS 668/3); C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, pp. 155, 190, 210. 15 Abp King to Abp Wake, 12 September 1717 (Christ Church, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xii (unfol.)). 135


(and quite unlike the situation in England, where a predominantly whiggish episcopate was at odds with the toryism of the lower clergy), it was episcopal squabbling rather than the partisanship of the lower house that obstructed business.16 In fact, the lower house had begun promisingly, choosing as its prolocutor (speaker) a well-respected moderate, Dean Samuel Synge of Kildare, and appointing ‘standing committees’ on such subjects as ‘the inspection of canons’ and ‘the reformation of manners and promoting public works of piety and charity’, as well as for ‘grievances’, ‘rights and privileges’, and the inspection of objectionable books. What is more, members passed a number of positive resolutions, calling for the consolidation of thinly populated or impoverished parishes, improvements in the collection of parish rates and the functioning of ecclesiastical courts, and the enforcement of attendance at Sunday worship.17 It is even possible that at this stage supporters of the ‘reforming’ bishops enjoyed a working majority. In the first session William Perceval was twice selected to preach public sermons, but so too was a ‘low churchman’, Ralph Lambert, proctor for the chapter of Down. Furthermore, when Marsh’s chaplain, William Tisdall, was accused of publicly denouncing, by his master’s order, Bishops Hartstonge, Lindsay and Thomas Smyth as ‘the incendiaries of the upper house’, high churchmen found it impossible to secure a vote of censure against him.18 The honeymoon would soon be over, however; and this petty dispute, over the precise form of words Tisdall had used, and at whose bidding, was an early indication of the morass into which convocation would stumble. In the next session, in 1705, members of the lower house were diverted from the discussion of constructive measures into more exciting but ultimately futile manifestations of factional strife: allegations of libel; witch-hunts after authors and printers; protests, addresses and counter-addresses; delegations from one house to the other, to Dublin Castle, even to Whitehall. Succeeding sessions witnessed disputes between the two houses of convocation, and between convocation and parliament, over privileges and jurisdiction;19 quarrels over the wording of addresses, as in 1705 when high-flyers followed the pattern established by tories in England, and sought to equate the naval actions of the tory, Admiral Rooke, with the victories of the duke of Marlborough; and vindictive personal attacks of the kind levelled at Primate Marsh in 1707

16

See King to Bp Ashe, 28 April 1705 (T.C.D., MS 750/3/1, p. 151). King to Samuel Synge, 16 January 1704[/5] (T.C.D., MS 750/3/1, p. 68); Synge to King, 22 February 1704[/5] (ibid., MS 1995–2008/1141); cttee mins of lower house of convocation, 1704 (ibid., MS 668/1, ff. 1, 4, 13–15, 19, 27–8, 35, 43); mins of procs of lower house, 4 March 1704 (ibid., MS 668/2). 18 Mins of procs of lower house, 2, 4, 17, 24, 28 February 1704 (T.C.D., MS 668/2); acts of lower house, 26 February 1704 (ibid., MS 668/3). 19 Mins of procs of lower house, 2, 8, 12, 17, 23–4 February 1704, 22 February, 5, 10, 13–15, 19–21 March 1705 (T.C.D., MS 668/2); jnls of upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/10/3/2, pp. 261–2, 432); Phillips (ed.), Hist. Church of Ire., iii, p. 184. 17

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when members of the lower house took exception to the parliamentary bill establishing his library as a public institution.20 ‘’Tis an uncomfortable thing,’ lamented Archbishop King in 1705, ‘that all assemblies of men come to some conclusion and agreement, only clergymen: that all that have controversies can write with temper and humanity, only they treat one another with passion and bitterness.’21 The malign influence which party politics came to exert over the proceedings of convocation was vividly illustrated by the disastrous events of the session of 1709. High churchmen had been on tenterhooks ever since the appointment as lord lieutenant the previous autumn of the whig Lord Wharton, for Wharton was not only a whig but a notorious rake, with a reputation for anticlerical irreverence, and an avowed sympathiser with the cause of protestant dissenters. He seemed to embody all that the high-flyers feared and detested, and when he chose as his chaplain one of the most prominent low churchmen in the lower house, Ralph Lambert, he provided the opposition in convocation with an obvious target. Lambert had recently trampled on high church sensitivities when he had involved himself in an English ecclesiastical controversy, over the constitution of the convocation of Canterbury.22 Atterbury’s party had repeatedly denied the claim of the English bishops to adjourn sittings of the lower house. William Perceval and another Irish high churchman, Francis Higgins, provided Atterbury with an account of practice in Dublin to bear out this assertion, which Lambert promptly contradicted in an anonymous (but easily attributable) letter included in a whig pamphlet, Partiality detected. When Perceval and his allies established a committee of the lower house of the Irish convocation to investigate the pamphlet, Wharton intervened to protect his chaplain. Under viceregal pressure, the committee chairman, Peter Browne, provost of Trinity, postponed hearing the report, only to find himself forced to give way, and worse still, to reveal the extent of the viceroy’s involvement. An attempt to censure Browne was defeated by what one observer described as ‘the archbishop of Dublin’s and my lord lieutenant’s party’, but the matter was not laid to rest, and thirteen proctors, led by Perceval, entered protests. Wharton now poured petrol on the flames by preparing to prosecute the protesters. As rumours

20

Jnls of upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/10/3/2. pp 164, 173); B.L., Add. MS 32096, ff. 67–9; Perceval to Henry Dodwell, 26 February 1704/5 (Bodl., MS St Edmund Hall 9, pp. 138–43); same to Arthur Charlett, 1 March 1704/5 (ibid., MS Ballard 36, ff. 27–34); same to same, 18 December 1707 (ibid., MS Ballard 36, ff. 43–51); Abp Marsh to Thomas Smith, 13 December 1707 (ibid., MS Eng. misc. 23, ff. 166–7); Mant, pp. 115–17. 21 Quoted in Mant, p. 179. 22 For what follows, see jnls of upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/10/3/3, pp. 65–71, 81–3, 96–7); ‘A narrative of some late proceedings in the lower house of convocation in Dublin’, 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 61634, ff. 106–13); Winnett, Peter Browne, pp. 37–47; L. A. Dralle, ‘Kingdom in reversion: the Irish viceroyalty of the earl of Wharton, 1708–10’ in H.L.Q., xv (1951–2), pp. 412–14; Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 162–5; O’Regan, King, pp. 169–72. 137


spread, enraged high churchmen who had hitherto stayed away from Dublin raced to the capital intent on confrontation. Even the bishops’ house ignored an official request to adjourn and made its own protest. Wharton could do nothing but prorogue convocation. It did not meet again during his term in office. So politicised had ecclesiastical politics in Ireland become that not even in the favourable circumstances of 1711, with a tory ministry in England and Ormond once again installed as viceroy, was convocation able to achieve anything substantial for the benefit of the church. Instead, in that session the energies of members of the lower house were channelled into the composition of the Representation, a comprehensive denunciation of speculative theology, sceptical freethinking, aggressive presbyterianism, moral dereliction, and the perennial danger of ‘popery’, in that order.23 Two years later came the nadir: a short-lived and fruitless session to accompany the brief and bitter Irish parliament of 1713, with convocation acting as nothing more than an auxiliary of the tory party, passing resolutions in direct contradiction to the votes of the whig majority in the Irish house of commons.24 Naturally enough, when the whigs came to power after the Hanoverian succession, the Irish convocation (just like its equivalent in England) was no longer permitted to sit. Time and again, the obsession with party-political posturing and personal vendettas had prevented the discussion of constructive proposals for church reform. In almost a decade of existence convocation’s only practical achievements had been a few additional canons agreed at the same time as the drafting of the Representation in 1711, relating to the routine working of the ecclesiastical courts, and some new forms of prayer to be used by clergy when admitting converts or visiting prisoners.25

III With only a few recorded divisions, and no division lists, it is impossible to arrive at an accurate calculation of the relative strength of the developing parties in convocation, but some general observations may be attempted.

23

See jnls of upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/10/3/3, pp. 96–7, 106–8, 113–16, 155–7, 204, 222–39, 241–51, 257–8, 271–3, 276); Representation of state of religion. 24 L.J.I., ii, pp. 41–2; D. W. Hayton (ed.), ‘An Irish parliamentary diary from the reign of Queen Anne’ in Analecta Hibernica, xxx (1982), p. 138; King to Bp Nicolson, 24 March 1714[/15] (T.C.D., MS 2536, pp. 222–3); same to Wake (ibid., p. 228); Bp Stearne to King, 21 September 1715 (ibid., MS 1995–2008/1728). 25 Forms for admitting converts from the Church of Rome . . . agreed on by convocation in 1711 (P.R.O., SP 63/368/1); constitutions and canons ecclesiastical treated on and agreed by convocation, 1711 (ibid., SP 63/368/2, printed in Constitutions and canons ecclesiastical, treated upon by the archbishops and bishops, and the rest of the clergy of Ireland (Dublin, 1864), pp. 60–4). 138

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In the upper house, the substantial tory presence seems if anything to have increased over the years, despite (or even perhaps because of) the overbearing personality of Archbishop King. An assessment of party strengths in the Irish house of lords in 1713 listed only three bishops on the opposition, that is to say the whig, side (King and his cronies, St George Ashe of Clogher and John Stearne of Dromore), and no less than seventeen on the government, or tory, side (Archbishops Palliser of Cashel and Vesey of Tuam, and the bishops of Clonfert, Cloyne, Cork, Derry, Down, Elphin, Ferns, Kildare, Killala, Killaloe, Limerick, Meath, Ossory, Raphoe and Waterford).26 In the lower house of convocation there was a sharp movement in the balance of opinion towards the high church position after the first session. In 1705 the high-flyers’ demand for the inclusion of Rooke’s name in their loyal address released a surge of tory emotion, and, according to Perceval, the motion was passed ‘by so great a majority, that the other party were ashamed to divide with us’.27 Similarly, in 1707 high churchmen carried their point against Marsh’s library bill even though their arguments were tainted by obvious personal spite. When Wharton arrived as viceroy, whig fortunes temporarily improved: the scholarly low churchman John Stearne, a protégé of King, was elected prolocutor in place of the deceased Dean Synge, possibly as a compromise candidate, and Perceval and a dozen of his followers were left in a minority in their determination to censure Provost Browne.28 But this change of scene was an illusion; many high churchmen, dejected at the turn of events in English politics, had not bothered to attend at the beginning of this session. Wharton’s high-handedness breathed new life into the party, so that Perceval was able to report ‘a very full house, and on a division about proceeding anew against [Lambert’s] letter we carried by 72 against 9’.29 In 1711, and again in 1713, when Perceval was borne to the prolocutor’s chair unchallenged, there was no questioning the high church ascendancy.30 As to how and why the high churchmen became so dominant in the lower house after such an inauspicious beginning, two possible lines of explanation 26 List of the Irish house of lords [1714/15] (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 29–30). See also marked printed list of the Irish parliament of 1713 (ibid., Add. MS 34777, f. 68); ‘A list of the privy council of Ireland’ [1713/14] (ibid., Add. MS 61636, f. 99); Joseph Addison to Lord Treasurer Godolphin, 26 August 1709 (Addison letters, p. 183); Lord Brodrick to Thomas Brodrick, 18 December 1715 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 283). 27 Perceval to Henry Dodwell, 26 February 1704/5 (Bodl., MS St Edmund Hall 9, pp. 138–43). 28 Sir John to Philip Perceval, 30 June 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, ff. 123–4); jnls of upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/10/3/3, pp. 1–3); ‘The case of the protesters in the lower house of convocation’ [June 1709] (B.L., Add. MS 21132, ff. 35–6); King to Wake, 8 May 1716 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii); Bp Evans to [same], 21 January [1718] (ibid.). 29 Jnls of upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/10/3/3, pp. 53–4); William to Sir John Perceval, 4 August 1709 (H.M.C., Egmont, ii, 238); same to Arthur Charlett, 3 September 1709 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, ff. 55–6). 30 Stearne to King, 27 September 1715 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1728).

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suggest themselves. One approach would be to look at the changes in membership after 1704 (through death, promotion, and the ensuing appointments and by-elections), and the conversion of individuals from one party to another. There is certainly evidence of a turnover in personnel, but except for the new elections in 1713 the scale of the change must have been modest, and insufficient by itself to account for the development of a large high church majority. Shifts in the standpoint of some individuals may also be documented. William Tisdall, for instance, Marsh’s chaplain and vicar of Belfast, had effectively ‘crossed the floor’ of the lower house by 1709, when he published the first of his intemperate pamphlet attacks on the presbyterians of Ulster, A sample of trew-blue presbyterian loyalty. Clearly, the attractions of archiepiscopal patronage were becoming outweighed by growing anxiety at the power of presbyterian economic and political interests in his own parish.31 Peter Browne was another who changed sides, in his case more than once. Originally something of a ‘reformer’, he aligned himself in early 1709 with those who condemned Lambert’s letter about the bishops’ right of adjournment, but then allowed himself to be talked round by Wharton and King, and was rewarded with preferment to the bishopric of Cork. At last, having put on lawn sleeves, he altered his political alignment once more, and mutated into a tory.32 Such examples are interesting, but they are nowhere near enough by themselves to account for what seems to be a broad shift in opinion in the lower house; nor do they necessarily indicate that any of those concerned had experienced a fundamental conversion in outlook. Tisdall and Browne may not have abandoned former principles, so much as altered the priority they gave to particular issues: in other words, the threat from presbyterianism, and from whiggery in general, began to take precedence. This is a roundabout way of coming to the second possible line of explanation: that what was happening between 1703 and 1709 may not have been a whole-

31 William Perceval to Dodwell, 2 September 1704, 26 February 1704/5 (Bodl., MS St Edmund Hall 9, pp. 95–110, 138–43); [Joy,] Historical collections, pp. 84–5; William Tisdall, A sample of true-blew presbyterian loyalty, in all changes and turns of government (Dublin, 1709); idem, The conduct of the dissenters in Ireland, with respect both to church and state (Dublin, 1712); idem, A seasonable inquiry into that most dangerous political principle of the kirk in power (Dublin, 1713); idem, The nature and tendency of popular phrases in general (Dublin 1714); idem, The case of the sacramental test, stated and argued (Dublin, 1715). The tensions, and occasional conflicts, between church and presbytery in Belfast are covered in J. H. Agnew, ‘The merchant community of Belfast, 1660–1707’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1994); and idem, Belfast merchant families in the seventeenth century (Dublin, 1996), esp. ch. 3. 32 Besides the biography by Winnett (cited above, n. 1), see Thomas Lindsay to [Arthur Charlett], 20 March 1694/5 (Bodl., MS Ballard 8, f. 68); William Perceval to [same], 3 September 1709 (ibid., MS Ballard 36, f. 55); [Perceval] to Francis Gastrell, 17 November 1711 (H.M.C. Portland, v, 113); King to Stearne, 3 May 1715 (T.C.D., MS 2536, p. 263); Enoch Sterne to Lord Sunderland, 21 January 1715/16 (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 78–9); Mant, pp. 193–5.

140

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sale change of personnel, or of heart, among members of the lower house, but a shift in the focus of debate; that when wider issues were raised than ecclesiastical reform, relating to the role of the church in Irish society, and in the political system, the majority of clergy naturally gravitated to a position most accurately defined as high church, or tory.

IV Thus we arrive, albeit somewhat belatedly, at the central question posed by this chapter, namely how best to characterise the opposing parties, or positions, within convocation and indeed in the church at large. A useful place to start would be in England, since the participants in the factional strife in the Irish convocation tended to adopt the terminology of English ecclesiastical politics: Lindsay, Perceval and their friends saw themselves as ‘high churchmen’, or occasionally even as ‘Atterburians’; Archbishop King and his adherents were ‘low churchmen’. The classic account of the origin of these terms is that of the late G. V. Bennett, whose analysis of the divisions within the Church of England was developed in magisterial biographies of Bishop White Kennett and Atterbury himself.33 In contrast to his predecessors among church historians, who had traced a ‘high church’ tradition in Anglicanism back to the liturgical and ecclesiological reaction under Archbishop Laud,34 Bennett rooted his interpretation firmly in social, economic, and above all political, realities. He set out to ‘penetrate beneath the slogans of “high” and “low” church, to discover what was the nature of the great Anglican crisis after 1688’,35 and in doing so was quick to dispose of the assumption that

33

G. V. Bennett, White Kennett, 1660–1728: bishop of Peterborough (London, 1957); idem, ‘Conflict in the church’ in Geoffrey Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714 (London, 1969), pp. 155–75; idem, ‘The convocation of 1710: an Anglican attempt at counter-revolution’ in G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker (eds), Studies in church history, vii: Councils and assemblies (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 311–19; idem, The tory crisis in church and state, 1688–1730: the career of Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975). 34 See esp. George Every, The high church party, 1688–1718 (London, 1956). On the English ‘Laudian’ tradition, see Julian Davies, The Caroline captivity of the church: Charles I and the remoulding of Anglicanism, 1625–1641 (Oxford, 1992); Peter Lake, ‘The Laudian style: order, uniformity and the pursuit of the beauty of holiness in the 1630s’ in Kenneth Fincham (ed.), The early Stuart church, 1603–1642 (London, 1993), pp. 161–85. The lack of continuity between the Laudians and the ‘high church’ party of the 1690s and early 1700s is emphasised in John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, 1991), p. 380. 35 Bennett, ‘Conflict’, p. 155. For a different interpretation of one aspect of the English ‘high church’ movement, see Mark Goldie, ‘The nonjurors, episcopacy, and the origins of the convocation controversy’ in Eveline Cruickshanks (ed.), Ideology and conspiracy: aspects of jacobitism, 1689–1759 (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 15–35. 141


these deep divisions between clergymen were matters of theological belief; nor was he much impressed by those who stressed the high church party’s commitment to recovering the independence of the church from lay control and restoring the dignity of the clerical estate, in contrast to the supposed Erastianism of their low church opponents, though he recognised that such ideas, and high-flying political theories of divine hereditary right, passive obedience and non-resistance, were a frequent accompaniment to the central message of high church polemic. Instead, Bennett located the origin of high church reaction in the desperate crisis that gripped the Church of England after the Glorious Revolution, and in particular the passage in 1689 of a statutory religious toleration for protestant dissenters. In the minds of loyal churchmen, the disastrous chain of events in James II’s reign and its unhappy aftermath had shattered that promising alliance of mitre and crown which in the 1670s and 1680s had been able to impose on the English people a remarkable uniformity of worship.36 Under the leadership of Archbishop Sancroft of Canterbury, and backed up by the determined efforts of lay magistrates, the Church of England had suppressed many manifestations of religious dissent and pushed numbers of Easter communicants up to what must have seemed stratospheric heights. But with King James’s declaration of indulgence in 1687, and the subsequent enactment of a legal toleration by the convention parliament of 1689, this policy had been abandoned. Dissenting meeting-houses multiplied; attendance at parish churches dropped; there was renewed resistance to the collection of tithe. Clergymen everywhere were forced to come to terms with sparser congregations and shrinking incomes. Finally, the expiry of the press licensing act in 1695 released a spate of freethinking literature to challenge not only Anglican orthodoxy but also the basic tenets of the Christian faith.37 Moreover, for high-flying parsons, painful recollection of the constitutional trauma of the Glorious Revolution was aggravated by the sight of their whig enemies in power: men who not only protected and promoted protestant dissent but were also notorious in tory propaganda as men of doubtful moral probity and, what was worse, openly scornful of the established church and clergy. Whatever the personal merits of ‘low church’ bishops, the open alliance of many on the episcopal bench with whig politicians enraged the lower clergy and rallied them behind fiery clerical tribunes such as Atterbury, whose vigorous party rhetoric embodied their grievances. To transpose Bennett’s analysis directly into the Irish situation has superficial attractions. After all, several of the most prominent high churchmen 36

In this respect the picture drawn by Bennett may be filled out by R. A. Beddard, ‘The Restoration church’ in J. R. Jones (ed.), The restored monarchy, 1660–1688 (London, 1979), pp. 155–75; and Spurr, Restoration Church of England, ch. 2. 37 John Redwood, Reason, ridicule and religion: the age of enlightenment in England, 1660–1750 (London, 1976); J. A. I. Champion, The pillars of priestcraft shaken: the Church of England and its enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992). 142

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in Ireland were Englishmen, who had been educated at English universities (usually Oxford) and begun their ecclesiastical careers in England. William Perceval, the student of Christ Church drafted into the chapter of Cashel, would be one obvious example; and he was not the only newcomer to disturb the political waters in Ireland. Two of the most formidable high churchmen among the bishops, Lindsay and Charles Hickman, had also come from Oxford. Lindsay first appeared in Dublin in 1694 as a chaplain to Lord Deputy Capel, who advanced him to the diocese of Killaloe.38 Hickman was an even more recent recruit, a client of the tory viceroy Lord Rochester, who in 1703 secured for him the bishopric of Derry. In return, according to one hostile commentator, Hickman worked to sow ‘the seeds of toryism’ among clergy in his diocese.39 However, despite the impact made by these individuals, and the extensive contacts between Irish clerics and their English counterparts, it would be misleading to follow contemporary whig critics in representing the high church movement in Ireland as an infection brought into the country by English immigrants. For one thing, a great many high churchmen in Ireland, especially in the lower house of convocation, were native-born, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin: men like Francis Higgins, the so-called ‘Irish Sacheverell’, who hailed from Limerick, where his brother was a tory alderman active in the politics of the borough;40 John Dogherty, precentor of Cashel, whose intemperate partisanship was condemned by Archbishop King;41 Archdeacon Benjamin Neale of Ferns, who, according to one source, was satirised alongside Perceval and Higgins as a member of an extreme tory dining club meeting at the Swan tavern in Dublin in 1705;42 John Travers,

38 In retrospect, the first Lord Egmont was to explain Lindsay’s early association with such a strong whig as Capel by asserting that the future tory bishop had ‘set out in the world a whig, then turned high churchman, and at last died a jacobite’ (B.L., Add. MS 47025, f. 118). For a different view, see the obituary printed in Abel Boyer, The political state of Great Britain (60 vols, London, 1711–40), xxviii, pp. 103–5. 39 William Perceval to Charlett, 7, 10 November 1701 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, ff. 15, 19); Atterbury corresp., iv, pp. 359, 374; Isaac Manley to [Wake], 1 March 1717/18 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii). 40 Higgins has an entry in the D.N.B. Details of his career are conveniently summarised in a memorial he submitted in [?1712] in support of a claim for preferment (Bodl., MS North a. 3, ff. 237–8). See also Cotton, Fasti, ii, pp. 66–8; and J. B. Leslie, Ossory clergy and parishes . . . (Enniskillen, 1937), pp. 268–70. On his family background, see Maurice Lenihan, Limerick; its history and antiquities . . . (Dublin, 1866), pp. 310–12, 317–18; T. C. Barnard, ‘Athlone, 1685, Limerick 1710: religious riots or charivaris’ in Studia Hibernica, xxvii (1993), p. 73; and idem, The abduction of a Limerick heiress: social and political relations in mid-eighteenth century Ireland (Dublin, 1998), p. 18. 41 See King to Wake, 12 September 1717 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii); Cotton, Fasti, i, pp. 111–12, 170. 42 The Swan-Tripe Club: a satyr on the high-flyers, in the year 1705 (London, 1710); John Barrett, An essay on the earlier part of the life of Swift (London, 1805), pp. 107–23; F. E.

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one of the most vocal of a skein of high-flying canons of Christ Church, Dublin, and chosen to preach in 1713 on a notable occasion for the high church party, the consecration (by Archbishop Palliser) of Sir Thomas Vesey as Lindsay’s successor at Killaloe;43 and John Hinton, the archdeacon of Ossory (born in England but the son of the master of Kilkenny school), who in 1713 was tipped, together with Higgins, for promotion to a deanery.44 Moreover, in practice there was little difference between such indigenous Irishmen and those Englishmen, such as Archbishop Vesey, Bishops Hartstonge, Moreton, or Pooley, and Dean John Francis of Leighlin, who had been resident in Ireland for many years and had come to identify themselves with their adopted country and its established church.45

V Even for imported exotics like Perceval or Hickman the peculiar history and circumstances of the Church of Ireland would presumably have modified the ideological preconceptions of English high churchmanship. In matters of doctrine and liturgy Irish protestantism had always tended towards consensus at the ‘lower’ end of the scale. The Caroline tradition of sacramentalism and elaborate ceremonial was much thinner in Ireland than in England and thus even less important as a source of division.46 There was some potential for conflict if low churchmen could be represented as slipping too

Ball, Swift’s verse (London, 1929), p. 59; The poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (2nd edn, 3 vols, Oxford, 1958), iii, pp. 1077–8; J. B. Leslie, Ferns clergy and parishes . . . (Dublin, 1936), p. 39; Cotton, Fasti, ii, pp. 356, 359, 364, 398. 43 Stearne to King, 14 July 1713 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1465). For Travers, see also Sir John to Philip Perceval, 30 June 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, ff. 123–4); John Travers, A sermon preach’d at Christ-Church in Dublin, before his grace James duke of Ormonde, lord lieutenant of Ireland: on Monday the fifth of November, 1711 (Dublin, 1711); and Cotton, Fasti, ii, p. 58. The generally ‘high church’ or tory complexion of the Christ Church canons is noted in King to Bp Crowe, 14 August 1714 (T.C.D., MS 2536, pp. 19–20). In 1705 they had filled two vacancies in their chapter by electing John Francis and Francis Higgins: Stearne to King, 14 July 1705 (ibid., MS 1995–2008/1169); Bp Moreton to Ormond, 1 January 1705/6 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 206–7). 44 Alan to St John Brodrick, 1 December 1705 (S.H.C., 1248/2, f. 234); John Waite to Richard Musgrave and Thomas Baker, 9 January 1713/14 (N.L.I., MS 13242/9). Leslie, Ossory clergy, pp. 106, 381; Cotton, Fasti, ii, pp. 172, 306; iv, p. 22. Hinton, like William Tisdall, seems to have begun his career as a chaplain to Archbishop Marsh: Marsh to Thomas Smith, 25 May 1697 (Bodl., MS Smith 52, p. 59). 45 For Francis, see Alan to Thomas Brodrick, [October 1705] (S.H.C., 1248/2, ff. 225–6); Sir John to Philip Perceval, 30 June 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, ff. 123–4); King to Wake, 11 March 1717[/18] Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii); Evans to same, 14 March [1718] (ibid.). 46 See F. R. Bolton, The Caroline tradition of the Church of Ireland (London, 1958). 144

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far in the direction of the practices of presbyterians, but ultimately consensus would reassert itself. In the autumn of 1714 rumour-mongers tried to stir up animosity towards the new whig bishop of Raphoe, Edward Synge, with tales of alleged neo-puritan tendencies. ‘They say he spoke slightly of the ring in marriage, cross in baptism, surplice, and kneeling at the sacrament’, reported a displaced tory judge, Sir Richard Cox. But when the relevant sermon appeared in print, Cox was forced to admit that not only was the previous report a fabrication, but that Synge’s doctrinal exposition had in fact been ‘very good’.47 Political and social realities also dictated a more consensual approach to those sensitive questions of constitutional principle over which clergymen elsewhere stumbled so frequently, and so disastrously. While high-flying parsons in England could afford the exercise of conscience involved in refusing the oaths to William and Mary, the luxury of denouncing ‘revolution principles’ from the pulpit, and even an occasional fit of jacobitism, their Irish counterparts had every reason to move with circumspection. The history of the Reformation in Ireland, its dependence on English conquest, and, more recently, the providential intervention of William III to save the protestant interest, constituted a powerful inhibition on the excesses of divine-right monarchism. Thus the revolution exposed only a handful of nonjurors in the Church of Ireland, of whom the most prominent, Charles Leslie, went on to pursue a career in England.48 Although the increasing bitterness of party strife in Anne’s reign eventually provoked some Irish clergymen into indiscretions that their opponents interpreted as demonstrating disloyalty to the revolution settlement, it is hard to find concrete evidence of jacobitism, or even a conscious disapproval of the events of 1688–91. If we look closely at what Irish ‘jacobites’ are supposed to have said, their extremism almost invariably took the form of extravagant denunciations of enemies as would-be republicans and regicides.49 Tories in Ireland certainly subscribed in droves to the martyrology of Charles I, but even the most vehement invective against the king’s ‘murderers’ was careful to distinguish between the events of the civil war and the recent ‘happy revolution’, and to skate around the difficult question of what had actually happened in 1688.50 A personal regard for the nonjuror

47

Sir Richard Cox to Edward Southwell, 9, 12 October 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, ff. 133–4). 48 J. I. McGuire, ‘The Church of Ireland and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688’ in Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (eds), Studies in Irish history: presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp. 137–49. 49 See, for example, George Smalridge to Arthur Charlett, 1 March 1706/7 (Bodl., MS Ballard 7, f. 7); Francis Higgins’ printed vindication of his conduct, [1707] (ibid., f. 9); Edmund Curtis, J. C. Beckett and J. B. Leslie (eds), ‘Address of the bishop and clergy of Cloyne to the queen, 1711’ in Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, xlvi (1941), pp. 138–42. 50 See, for example, Dillon Ashe, A sermon preach’d before the honourable house of commons, 145


Henry Dodwell did not prevent Archbishop Palliser from disagreeing with Dodwell’s constitutional and ecclesiastical purism,51 while William Perceval, another of Dodwell’s friends, after defending him from censure in the Irish convocation (for the publication of his Paraenesis), concluded his report of the episode in the following terms: For the little share I have had in this controversy I have been severely aspersed and branded a jacobite, which is a title I am not fond of, and which you will know I have no ways deserved. But it is the way with the low, moderate, lukewarm churchmen to cast any character that they think most odious upon those who espouse better principles than themselves. I freely own to you (whom I know to be otherwise) that I am none of the well-wishers to the prince of Wales, but on the other hand am heartily for maintaining the succession [as] it now stands limited and established by law, and this I hope I may be without abandoning my church principles.52

Undoubtedly the most significant distinguishing characteristic of the Church of Ireland was its numerical inferiority. In the south of the country, with the exception of Dublin, Cork and the other substantial port towns, members of the established church constituted only a small minority of the population. Even in Ulster, where protestants were more heavily concentrated, churchmen were often outnumbered by Scottish presbyterians.53 In these circumstances, the clergy would approach their duties at best pragmatically, at worst with a resignation born of low expectations. If Bennett is right, and English parsons harked back to a departed ‘golden age’ of Sancroftian authoritarianism, which many could actually remember, this was not the kind of nostalgia their Irish counterparts could share, for the simple reason that such high standards of church attendance had never been achieved in Ireland. Admittedly, the lower house of convocation, at one of its very earliest meetings in 1704, did resolve to ask the lord lieutenant to proclaim the strict execution of the law against those who failed to attend a Sunday service, and to press the bishops to charge churchwardens with

at St Andrew’s church, Dublin, January the 31st, 1703/4 (Dublin, 1704). On this point, see Robert Eccleshall, ‘Anglican political thought in the century after the revolution of 1688’ in D. G. Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds), Political thought in Ireland since the seventeenth century (London, 1993), pp. 36–72; and S. J. Connolly, ‘The Glorious Revolution in Irish protestant political thinking’ in idem (ed.), Political ideas in eighteenthcentury Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 27–63. 51 Palliser to Dodwell, 19 October 1697 (Bodl., MS Eng. lett. c. 28, f. 34). 52 Perceval to same, 2 September 1704 (ibid., MS St Edmund Hall 9, p. 110). See also same to Charlett, 15 January 1705/6 (ibid., MS Ballard 36, ff. 37–8), and, for a more formal refutation of the charge of jacobitism, by the upper house of convocation, journals of the upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/1/10/3/2, pp. 288–9). 53 Connolly, Religion, pp. 144–9, 159–62. 146

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presenting the offenders.54 But in this case the perceived enemy was not error and schism so much as irreligion and indifference. The population were to be coerced into observing the requirements of the Sabbath at whatever place of worship they preferred to attend – even a nonconformist meeting- or catholic mass-house – rather than attending their parish church. It was another aspect of the concern with moral backsliding that inspired campaigns for the reformation of manners and the foundation of charity schools. That there were attempts at the coercion of non-Anglicans into the established church cannot be denied. What we have to be clear about is their extent, and whether churchmen differed seriously over their justification and utility. The first point to be made is that when legal duress was resorted to at local level the victims were always protestant dissenters: Quakers, Huguenot refugees, and above all Ulster presbyterians.55 The incidence of prosecutions, however, depended very much on the vigour with which the clergy and magistrates on the spot, and even more the diocesan authorities, pursued a coercive policy. Some bishops – Edward Smyth would be one – were active, while others did little, and not even at the zenith of tory reaction, in 1711–14, was there anything approaching a consistent or co-ordinated campaign.56 Certainly, convocation did not follow up its first call for action. But can we see a difference in attitude between groups of clergymen rather than individuals? In his pioneering study of Archbishop King’s early episcopal career in Derry, J. C. Beckett argued that King favoured a strategy of ‘persuasion rather than compulsion’ in dealings with local dissenters.57 There would be an obvious contrast here with the more vigorous approach adopted, for example, by the high churchman Smyth in Down and Connor. More recently, this roseate picture of King as a liberal reformer has been challenged by S. J. Connolly, who has highlighted not only the opposition given by King and his cronies to the repeal of the ‘test clause’ of 1704, and even to the modest concessions contained in the 1719 toleration bill, but the apparent determination shown by King in Derry to impose moral discipline by judicial means.58 At close quarters, it becomes difficult to distinguish low churchmen from high churchmen on this issue; and in any case one would have to proceed with particular care in dealing with clerical policy towards protestant dissent, owing to the complicating cross-currents of party politics. It was in the nature of whiggism – and King was certainly regarded as a ‘state whig’ by contemporaries59 – to advocate ‘unanimity’ among protestants against the

54 Committee mins of lower house, 1704 (T.C.D., MS 668/1, f. 28); mins of procs of lower house, 4 March 1704 (ibid., MS 668/2). 55 Connolly, Religion, pp. 174–5. 56 See deposition of James Bell, [?1717] (Marsh’s Library, MS Z.3.1.1, no. xxiii). 57 Beckett, ‘William King’s administration of the diocese of Derry’, pp. 171–2. 58 Connolly, Religion, pp. 174–5. 59 King, A great abp, p. 275. On this point, see in general O’Regan, King.

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greater threat of a catholic universal monarchy, just as it was in the nature of toryism to focus attention on the primacy of the danger posed to the establishment in church and state by the ‘old leaven’ of presbyterian republicans. It is still possible that the distinction between high and low churchmen, as advocates of contrasting policies of coercion and persuasion, might work in another context, if applied to evangelism among catholics rather than dissenters, and there is some evidence to support this view. The opposition of high churchmen in both houses of convocation in 1711 to the project advanced by John Richardson, rector of Belturbet in County Cavan, for the publication and distribution of Irish-language translations of the New Testament, book of common prayer and church catechism, has been taken to demonstrate a party difference over the issue of proselytism, ‘in which tories looked to a restoration of the church’s legal monopolies and coercive authority, while missionary efforts tended to be associated with whiggery’.60 The first objection to this generalisation would be that tories and high churchmen were not unanimous in disliking Richardson’s scheme. Lord Anglesey, ‘the darling of the church party’, and Edward Wetenhall, the high church bishop of Kilmore, were among its supporters.61 Even allowing for the fact that it was Perceval who led the opposition in the lower house, and the high church majority among the bishops who finally rejected the proposal, it would not be true to say that they had acted out of any disregard for proselytism as such.62 What was happening was a conflict, not over whether to coerce or persuade, but over the respective merits of different means of persuasion. On the one side were the enthusiasts for preaching and teaching in Irish; on the other those who advocated the establishment of charity schools to teach the natives through the English language.63 There were no hard and fast party distinctions here, either. Some high churchmen, for example, Lindsay or Bishop Vigors of Ferns, were apathetic towards the vernacular translations and charity schools alike, while others, notably Archbishop Vesey, and even Perceval himself, were keen supporters of popular education through English.

60

Connolly, Religion, pp. 299–301. There appears to be some qualification of this view in the account given of coercive ecclesiastical policies in idem, ‘Reformers and highflyers’, pp. 161–4. On Richardson and his project, see also Barnard, ‘Protestants and the Irish language’, pp. 254–60. 61 King, A great abp, pp. 296–8. For Anglesey, see below, pp. 167–8; and for Wetenhall, James Bonnell to John Strype, 10 November 1690 (Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 1, f. 84). 62 William Perceval to Gastrell, 1 November 1711 (H.M.C., Portland, v, pp. 105–6); same to Charlett, 14 May 1713 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, ff. 82–3); journals of the upper house (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/1/10/3/3, pp. 215–17, 253–4). 63 Barnard, ‘Protestants and the Irish language’, pp. 261–3; D. W. Hayton, ‘Did protestantism fail in eighteenth-century Ireland? Charity schools and the enterprise of religious and social reformation, c. 1690–1730’ in As by law established, pp. 173–4. 148

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Among the low church party, King promoted the use of the Irish language but was strongly suspicious of the charity school movement, as of all private intrusions into ecclesiastical preserves, while Bishop Foy of Waterford and Edward Synge both preached for subscriptions to schools, and in Foy’s case founded one himself.64 The determining factor in convocation’s vote was probably personal. Richardson enjoyed the public patronage of Archbishop King, which in the febrile political atmosphere of 1711 was reason enough for high churchmen to throw out his project.65 Similar negative answers await if we look beyond the question of proselytism to wider issues of ecclesiastical policy. The presumption that high churchmen longed for a separation of church from state, while their opponents limply acquiesced in subordination to the secular power, an idea which would find little encouragement in Bennett’s analysis of the divisions within the Church of England, has been dismissed by Connolly, who has suggested that there was a consensus in favour of the high church demand for clerical independence. In fact, low churchmen such as Archbishop King could be as determined as their political opponents to establish convocation’s constitutional rights as against those of the Irish parliament (even to the extent of separate taxation of the clergy), and to recover impropriate advowsons, tithe and glebe.66 By the same token, we should be wary of accepting at face value the criticisms advanced by ‘reformers’ against their adversaries, which imply that the high church party as a whole did not share a commitment to build up the material resources of the church and improve the standard of pastoral provision. King derided his fellow archbishop, Palliser of Cashel, as a chronic absentee, while John Vesey of Tuam was held up as a prime exponent of nepotism, and dismissed by his successor, Edward Synge, as a man who had done little by way of reconstruction during his long tenure of the see.67 These snap judgements were at best one-sided. Palliser’s surviving correspondence reveals a man of refinement and dedication with a serious interest in theology, while the charge of absenteeism against him was

64 Perceval to Charlett, 14 May 1713 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, ff. 82–3); King, A great abp, pp. 294–5; Barnard, ‘Protestants and the Irish language’, pp. 252, 256, 258; Hayton, ‘Did protestantism fail?’, pp. 168–9, 171, 178–9, 270. 65 Perceval to Charlett, 12 May 1712 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, ff. 76–7); Hayton, ‘Did protestantism fail?’, pp. 173–4. 66 Connolly, Religion, pp. 173–4; a point developed in idem, ‘Reformers and highflyers’, p. 161. There is further supporting evidence in Bp Ashe to Dodwell, 30 April 1703 (Bodl., MS Eng. lett. c. 29, f. 33); and King to Wake, 12 September 1717 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii). 67 Perceval to Charlett, 27 August 1713 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 87); Bonnell to Strype, 13 February 1691 (Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 1, f. 89); Abp Synge to Wake, 27 September 1717 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii). See also Phillips (ed.), Hist. Church of Ire., iii, p. 182.

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forcefully denied by his friends.68 As for Vesey, the intensity of his personal piety was never in doubt: he patronised the societies for the reformation of manners, and took a keen interest in charity schools.69 Indeed, a case could be made for ranking him among the more prominent ecclesiastical reformers of the period, together with other high churchmen such as Edward Smyth and Edward Wetenhall, who in the 1690s laboured alongside Marsh and King on the episcopal bench;70 and Peter Browne, who as provost of Trinity actively promoted ‘moral reformation’ in his sermons.71 It is also worth noting that Vesey’s arch-critic, the priggish Edward Synge, before gravitating into the orbit of Archbishop King, had acted in convocation as a member of the high church faction.72

68 King, A great abp, p. 85; King to Palliser, 30 April 1707 (T.C.D., MS 750/3, pp. 105–9). William Perceval pointed out that Palliser’s absence in England in 1713 had been for an entirely proper purpose, namely to oversee the education of his (only) son, whereas his accuser, Archbishop King, had himself been over in England at the same time in order to buy horses: Perceval to Charlett, 27 August 1713 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 87). Some clearer examples of absenteeism on the part of ‘high churchmen’ can be documented. John Hartstonge was given leave of absence by the crown for periods amounting to nearly four years between 1706 and 1713; Charles Hickman, leave for two and half years in toto between 1704 and 1713; and William Moreton, continuous leave for eighteen months from the summer of 1706 until early 1708: extracts from the hanaper, 1639–1733 (R.I.A., MS 3.A.54, pp. 135, 139–41, 146, 154–8). But on the other side we should note that King’s crony St George Ashe, bishop of Clogher, spent a year in England from June 1712, and went over again for the first half of 1714 (ibid., pp. 155, 167). A fellow bishop, John Evans of Meath, who clearly disliked Ashe on personal as well as political grounds (although a whig, he voted on the opposite side to Ashe and King in the Irish parliament of George I), later declared him unfit for promotion on the grounds that he ‘would not reside, and [would] prefer none but his own kindred’: Evans to [Wake], 18 January [?1718] (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii). 69 An account of the societies for the reformation of manners in England and Ireland (3rd edn, London, 1700), list of subscribers; Hayton, ‘Did protestantism fail?’, pp. 178–9. See also Vesey to Abp King, 11 January 1704[/5] (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1128), expressing a vision of the regeneration of the church through the application of the remitted firstfruits and tenths. 70 Inchiquin MSS, p. 754; John Campbell to Lord Massereene, 6 June 1701 (P.R.O.N.I., D/562/23); Bonnell to Strype, 10 November 1690, 6 May 1695 (Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 1, ff. 84, 117–18); Edward Wetenhall, Be ye also ready: a method and order of practice (London, 1694); idem, The frequency of the Lord’s Supper: stated and proved from Holy Scripture (London, 1703); Phillips (ed.), Hist. Church of Ire., iii, pp. 173–4, 182; Barnard, ‘Reforming Irish manners’, p. 809. 71 Peter Browne, A sermon preach’d at St Bride’s church, Dublin, April 17 1698 (Dublin, 1698); idem, A sermon preach’d at the parish church of St Andrew’s, in Dublin, on Sunday, the 15th April 1716, for the benefit of the charity school for boys in that parish [?1716]. 72 Synge to Wake, 20 August 1703 (Christ Church, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xvii, f. 148); Perceval to Charlett, 12 May 1712 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 76). Perceval claimed that Synge had deserted his ‘old friends’ in 1709 because he saw in whiggism ‘the high road to preferment’: Perceval to Charlett, 26 April 1711 (ibid., f. 97). Archbishop King was

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There was one way in which the movement for ecclesiastical reform, in spite of its essentially non-partisan character, might have created divisions within the church, for the programme adopted by the more vigorous bishops intruded significantly upon the lives of country parsons, compelling them to exertions they may not have considered reasonable or appropriate, and sharpening general feelings of grievance. As Beckett and others have shown, King and like-minded colleagues were seeking to force their diocesan clergy to harder work and higher standards. Visitations highlighted non-residence, and, by obliging incumbents to maintain parish schools (as the law required), meant to deprive absentees of the opportunity of employing putative schoolmasters as, in practice, low-paid curates.73 Nothing could have been more finely calculated to arouse the resentment of parsons struggling on inadequate endowments, and although other reforming schemes aimed at improving the economic position of the clergy, through uniting parishes or increasing the allotment of glebe, the interference of an overbearing bishop (and King was the very model of an overbearing bishop) would rarely be welcome. It is possible to find examples of notable high churchmen at odds with episcopal superiors over questions of privilege and discipline, as the entire chapter of Christchurch, that nest of high-flying clergy, was united in resisting what the canons regarded as the unjustified assertions of authority made by King as archbishop of Dublin.74 There were others whose finances were embarrassed, despite the possession of a multiplicity of cures – Francis Higgins, John Francis and Benjamin Neale among them75 – and who would obviously not have welcomed a demand that they relinquish any preferment or perform the impossible task of attending in person to all their manifold

recommending him for the vacant deanery of Down as early as February of that year: King to Edward Southwell, 16 February 1708[/9] (T.C.D., MS 2531, pp. 61–2). 73 King, A great abp, p. 106; state of the dioceses of Meath, Derry and Armagh, 1693 (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/28/2/1); Philippe Loupès, ‘Bishop Dopping’s visitation of the diocese of Meath, 1693’ in Studia Hibernica, xxiv (1984–8), pp. 127–51; John Ker to Bp Smyth of Kilmore, 14 October 1693 (N.L.I., P.C. 436); The charge given by Narcissus, lord archbishop of Dublin, to the clergy of the province of Leinster, at his primary visitation, anno dom. 1694 (Dublin, 1694); Moreton to Ormond, 30 October 1705 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, p. 190). 74 Perceval to Charlett, [October 1703] (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 34); state of the bp of Kildare’s case (ibid., ff. 128–9); C.S.P. dom., 1703–4, p. 38; Lady Dun to Abp King, 10 January 1705[/6] (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1188); Moreton to Ormond, 27 June, 5, 29 August, 14 September 1704, 28 August 1705, 1 January 1705/6 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 91, 105, 110, 113–14, 179–80, 206–7); King, A great abp, pp. 108, 210, 245–7; Mant, pp. 168–73; O’Regan, King, p. 134. 75 Higgins to King, 9 July 1704 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/100); Higgins’ memorial (Bodl., MS North a.3, ff. 237–8); King, A great abp, pp. 208–9; William Perceval to his sister, 31 July 1733 (P.R.O.N.I., D/906/80a). For another detailed illustration of the fragility of clerical incomes in this period, see the memorial by Robert Mossom on the deanery of Ossory (ibid., DIO/4/5/3/67). 151


responsibilities.76 Yet however powerful a factor it might have been in individual cases, resentment at the imposition of more exacting conditions of employment in a time of economic hardship is not likely to have been solely responsible for the appearance of a high church party in Ireland. There was no widespread campaign of resistance to episcopal reform; indeed, the lower house of convocation voluntarily adopted some of its elements, producing proposals to oblige the performance of pastoral duties, and to revive the parochial school system, though with an accompanying request that diocesan officials treat the clergy ‘tenderly’ in extracting fees.77 If the poverty of the lower clergy helped to raise political consciousness, it was at best only a catalyst.

VI Assuming the two parties within the church were not seriously divided on questions of doctrine, liturgical practice, the relationship of church and state, evangelical strategies, or the campaign for ecclesiastical reform, the question remains as to what did separate them. A case might be made, along Namierite lines, for the effects of personality and patronage. Perceval frequently described his opponents in the lower house as the followers, even the ‘dependants’ of Archbishops Marsh and King. In explaining the behaviour of William Tisdall during the debates in the first two sessions, in 1704–5, Perceval deemed it sufficient to allude to Tisdall’s position as Marsh’s chaplain. Later, once King had taken over from Marsh as leader of the low churchmen, the defenders of Ralph Lambert in 1709 were described as ‘my lord lieutenant’s and the archbishop of Dublin’s party’.78 The outline of King’s clerical affinity may easily be traced through his own voluminous correspondence, not only with fellow bishops such as Ashe of Clogher and Stearne of Dromore (prolocutor of the lower house in 1709), but with many of the lower clergy, whom he recommended for preferment to the incoming whig ministry in 1714: men such as Edward Synge, Theophilus Bolton, Andrew Hamilton, George Story and Charles Whittingham.79 Without a similar personal archive on the high church side, one can only speculate on other patronage networks. The clustering of activists in particular dioceses is certainly suggestive: the entire chapter at Christchurch, where the tories William

76 Higgins was charged by the Dublin diocesan authorities in 1714 with failure to attend his parochial duties, in what may well have been an exemplary proceeding: King to Bp Crowe, 14 August 1714 (T.C.D., MS 2536, p. 20). 77 Acts of the lower house of convocation, 4 March 1704 (ibid., MS 668/3). 78 William to Sir John Perceval, 7 July 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, f. 126). 79 King to Abp Tenison, 30 September 1714 (T.C.D., MS 2536, ff. 82–5); Evans to Wake, 1 February [1717] (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii).

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Moreton and Welbore Ellis (in their capacity as bishops of Kildare) presided successively as deans; Francis Higgins and John Hinton in Ossory under Bishop Hartstonge; John Francis and Benjamin Neale together in Leighlin. As the most senior of the tory bishops, John Vesey seems to have enjoyed a far-flung clientage beyond his own province of Tuam, where his ‘cousin’ Fielding Shaw was registrar, and one of Perceval’s dozen supporters in the protest of 1709, Theodore Maurice, was archdeacon;80 and one is also inclined to suspect, from the presence of Perceval, Dogherty, and others of a similar kidney in the cathedral chapter of Cashel, that the relatively undocumented obscurity surrounding Archbishop Palliser cloaks a figure of greater influence than historians have realised.81 Important as personal relationships may have been in cementing political groupings among the clergy, the divisions in convocation cannot simply have been a matter of rivalry between different episcopal ‘connexions’, so deep were the passions expressed in debate, so violent the animosities. In this respect, there are analogies to be drawn with the situation in England, even though the religious history of the two kingdoms is sufficiently divergent to preclude a direct parallel. We must return to Bennett’s explanation of the conflict between ‘high’ and ‘low church’ in England, as originating in different responses to a crisis in the affairs of the church after the Glorious Revolution. The clergy of the Church of Ireland were equally convinced of the existence of a crisis in their own affairs. As in England, the established church seemed beset by dangers. There was a general belief that public morals, especially among the protestant community, had declined so far as to provoke providential judgement; hence the emphasis on reforming manners and providing a moral education for children of the protestant poor.82 The clergy also feared the spread of freethinking: the brief return to his native Ireland of the gadfly publicist John Toland in 1697 had provoked a flurry of public denunciations of his pseudo-deist philosophising, and not long afterwards a conflict had broken out in Irish presbyterian circles over the doctrine of the trinity,

80

For Shaw, see N.L.I., T/3738/G/5, p. 30; letters from Shaw to Abp Vesey, 1702–16 (ibid., T/3738/G/10A). For Maurice, see Vesey to [Agmondesham Vesey], 8 August 1703 (N.A.I., Sarsfield–Vesey corresp., 53); Sir John to Philip Perceval, 30 June 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, ff. 123–4). 81 One might add to this number the dean of Cashel, Henry Price, and the proctors for the clergy of the diocese, Anthony Irby and Richard Leake, all absentees who left their proxies with William Perceval: mins of procs of lower house (T.C.D., MS 668/2). It is worth noting, however, that Perceval, while undoubtedly obliged for his preferment to his ‘relation’ Archbishop Palliser (Palliser to Dodwell, 19 October 1697 (Bodl., MS Eng. lett. c. 28, f. 34); same to Perceval, 8 February 1700 (P.R.O.N.I., D/906/58)), was also a longstanding friend of the Veseys, for evidence of which see his letters to (Sir) Thomas Vesey, 1697–1720 (N.L.I., , T/3738/J/3A (DH)). 82 Barnard, ‘Reforming Irish manners’, pp. 805–8, 835–7; Hayton, ‘Did protestantism fail?’, pp. 168–75. 153


which had resulted in the imprisonment of the Arian Thomas Emlyn.83 But above all, Anglicans were acutely conscious of the threats still posed by their traditional enemies, papists and dissenters. This was where the predicament of the Church of Ireland differed most clearly from that of the Church of England. On the one hand were the vast numbers of Irish catholics, politically defeated but still loyal to the old faith despite the imposition of the ‘penal laws’, and fortified by the dream of a jacobite invasion underwritten by the military power of France; on the other, and in some respects even more ominous, was the rapidly increasing strength of protestant dissent, especially in Ulster, where the Scottish presbyterian presence had been massively reinforced by immigration from Scotland in the so-called ‘lean years’ of the 1690s. The establishment of a ‘General Synod’ of the presbyterian church in Ulster (and at a time when convocation was not permitted to meet) had given an institutional expression to the new self-confidence experienced by presbyterians. In the eyes of their Anglican critics, they seemed to be setting themselves up as a rival establishment, their ministers marrying and burying members of their flock, and their sessions, presbyteries and synod usurping the disciplinary functions of the church courts. Finally came a series of well-publicised incidents in which new presbyterian congregations were established in ‘frontier’ areas on the borders of the province of Ulster, at Drogheda in County Louth and Belturbet in County Cavan. Many Church of Ireland clergymen convinced themselves that a co-ordinated campaign was afoot to subvert the position of the established church and set up a presbyterian system in its stead.84 In secular politics, it was the relative importance accorded by each party to the threats posed to the establishment by catholics and presbyterians which formed the basis of the divisions between whig and tory in Ireland. Indeed, some tories went further than their party’s customary dismissal of ‘no popery’ as an empty shibboleth, a distraction from the real business of combating the aspirations of the General Synod of Ulster, and, presumably on the argument that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, took a sufficiently charitable view of Irish catholics to oppose the strengthening of the penal laws, and to welcome electoral support from crypto-catholic conversos.85 This tendency rubbed off on some clerical politicians. High church rant occasionally declared that a papist was preferable to a presbyterian. As one proctor in the lower house of convocation put it in 1705,

83 Connolly, Religion, p. 175; Simms, War & politics, pp. 35–8; Peter Brooke, Ulster presbyterianism: the historical perspective, 1610–1970 (2nd edn, Belfast, 1994), pp. 72–3. See also jnls of upper house of convocation (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/1/10/3/3, p. 228); Representation of state of religion, pp. 3–7. 84 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, ch. 5; Connolly, Religion, pp. 159–71. 85 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 132–54; Thomas Doyle, ‘Jacobitism, catholicism and the Irish protestant elite’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xii (1997), pp. 28–59.

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if he must be under a necessity of ranking himself with one or the other of them two parties [presbyterians or catholics] he had much rather side with the latter than with the former, for that they were Christians, though bad ones, whereas the others were such a medley of men, such a mixture of ill principles, such a herd – that he wanted words bad enough to describe them with.86

Other high churchmen put these preferences into practice, as they openly consorted with converts from Rome, such as the ex-priest (turned Anglican curate) and informer Dominic Langton, who in 1711 produced fantastic tales of a whig conspiracy against government which were then taken up by Bishop Hartstonge and Francis Higgins in order to harass their political opponents.87 These were extreme cases, however. It would be profoundly misleading to suggest on the basis of some extravagant party-political posturing that high churchmen were indifferent to the progress of the Reformation, or for that matter that low churchmen were blithely unconcerned at protestant schism. In general, the ‘softness’ of lay tories on the catholic question was not matched by their clerical counterparts, for whom the winning of proselytes from popery was still a major concern; nor were whiggish clergymen apathetic about the problem of dissent, as King had amply demonstrated when bishop of Derry.88 It is true that high churchmen developed a fixation with the apparently inexorable growth of presbyterianism in Ulster, but again one must be careful not to over-emphasise this obvious point. Tisdall’s struggles with the presbyterian minister and congregation in Belfast certainly appear to have turned him into a tory, but firsthand experience of presbyterian expansionism did not invariably make a high-flyer, and against the high churchmen who held sees in Ulster (Edward Smyth in Down and Connor, John Pooley in Raphoe) or lesser ecclesiastical dignities (the 1709 protest in the lower house was signed by Deans Drelincourt of Armagh and Leslie of Down, and two proctors from the province),89 one might set the bishops of Clogher (Ashe) and Dromore (Stearne), the deans of Derry (John Bolton), Down (Ralph Lambert) and Connor (George Story), and the archdeacons of Armagh (William Hamilton) and Raphoe (Andrew Hamilton), all of whom belonged to the ‘low church’ party. A clear difference is visible, however, between high and low churchmen in the context in which each side placed the local difficulties with which they, and the church as a whole, were confronted. The distinguishing mark of high

86

Perceval to Dodwell, 26 February 1704/5 (Bodl., MS St Edmund Hall 9, pp. 140–2). Boyer, Pol. state, ii, pp. 346–66; Edward Pearson to [Lord Treasurer Oxford], 24 June 1711 (H.M.C., Portland, v, p. 20); Swift corresp., i, pp. 199–200, 250, 264, 270; J[osiah] H[ort] to Bp Wake, 12 October 1711 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii). In 1709 Thomas Lindsay observed that opposition in the commons to catholics voting at parliamentary elections ‘was levelled at the church’: Inchiquin MSS, p. 99. 88 Beckett, ‘William King’s administration of the diocese of Derry’, pp. 171–6. 89 Sir John to Philip Perceval, 30 June 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, ff. 123–4). 87

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churchmen was a more intense involvement in secular politics, as evinced by the determination with which the cause of Admiral Rooke was argued in the session of 1705, or the campaign against the viceregal management of Lord Wharton was waged in 1709. This might be regarded as exemplifying a narrowness of vision, yet in one sense it represents the opposite: a willingness to see the mission of high churchmen in Ireland as part of a broader crusade, across all of Queen Anne’s dominions, against the forces of irreligion, whiggism and presbytery. The terms in which convocation framed its Representation in 1711 did not reflect the peculiar difficulties faced by the Church of Ireland so much as the general concerns of tories in all three kingdoms. ‘Infidelity’, ‘heresy’ and ‘impiety’ were given a higher priority than the advances being made by Ulster presbyterianism, or the persistence of popery, and anxiety was expressed over the growth in ‘occasional conformity’ on the part of protestant dissenters, even though this was a phenomenon of English rather than Irish politics.90 Making the identification explicit, a sermon preached before the duke of Ormond in 1711 by John Travers, on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, recalled the ‘remarkable deliverances of our church’, in the singular, ‘and nations’, in the plural, and cited, as proof ‘that the church is countenanced and encouraged; that religion, and the good of souls, and the glory of God, are taken care of and promoted, to the discouragement of heresy, schism, and irreligion’, the building of the fifty new churches in London, ‘the great metropolis’.91 This sense of common purpose between tories on both sides of the Irish Sea helps to account for the remarkable degree of attention paid by so many Irish high churchmen to cultivating the good opinion of English tory politicians as they sought to acquire patronage through professing devotion to a unitary party cause. The most aggressive tuft-hunter was undoubtedly Francis Higgins, whose foray into England in 1707, distinguished by a much-publicised disputation with Archbishop Tenison, and an intemperate, whig-bashing sermon in London, for which he was almost prosecuted, resulted in the attraction of a flock of influential admirers, who in 1713/14 tried Lord Treasurer Oxford’s patience with demands for an Irish bishopric for their hero.92 Lindsay and Perceval, too, could boast similar racks of well-placed patrons; Mossom Wye, proctor for the chapter of Raphoe, attached himself to Secretary of State

90 Jnls of upper house of convocation (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/1/10/3/3, pp. 228–39, 241–51, 257–8); Representation of state of religion, pp. 3–9, 18. 91 Travers, Sermon preach’d at Christ-Church, pp. 19–20. 92 George Smalridge to Charlett, 1 March 1706/7 (Bodl., MS Ballard 7, f. 7); Higgins’ printed vindication, [1707] (ibid., f. 9); [Francis Annesley] to King, [?January 1708](T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1249); ‘Notes of Mr Higgins’ conference with Abp. Cant. 1707’ (ibid., MS 1995–2008/1282a); Robert Johnson to Ormond, 29 July 1707 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, p. 302); Sir Thomas Hanmer to same, 25 November 1712 (ibid., pp. 333–4); Lord Keeper Harcourt to [Lord Treasurer Oxford], 17 June 1711 (H.M.C., Portland, v, pp. 11–12).

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HIGH CHURCHMEN

Dartmouth; Sir Thomas Vesey applied to Anglesey and to the speaker of the British house of commons in 1714, Sir Thomas Hanmer; while John Francis, himself a transplanted Englishman, nurtured friendships with a string of Lancashire and Cheshire squires, who advocated his claims to promotion.93

VII The high churchmen were primarily party-political animals, and in the event this proved to be their undoing, for they were left hopelessly stranded by the events of 1714. The long whig ascendancy under the Hanoverians proved deeply uncongenial to the brand of churchmanship which had flourished briefly under Queen Anne. Those high churchmen who had already reached the episcopal bench were bluntly ignored by successive whig viceroys, even Lindsay, who in 1714, on the death of Narcissus Marsh, had secured for himself the archbishopric of Armagh but was destined to spend his years as primate in political isolation. The minor players remained camped in the foothills of preferment: Francis Higgins in a ‘little vicarage’ outside Dublin, apologising to English correspondents for the ‘coarseness’ of the only writing paper he could obtain ‘in our village’; William Perceval soldiering on as dean of Emly, and lamenting, perhaps a trifle archly, of his humdrum existence ‘in a little refined country parsonage, where I hear what passes, and can only grieve at the affliction of Joseph’.94 Such an attitude of mute resignation only re-emphasises the essentially political nature of the high church movement. For the Church of Ireland did not sail into safer waters after 1714. While the danger of a presbyterian coup became much less credible, with the demographic change-over to a net emigration from the Ulster-Scot community, and the preoccupation of the General Synod with the subscription controversy, in its place arose other, and in some respects greater, perils: the seemingly inexorable progress of heterodoxy and rationalism, even within the Irish episcopate, and the unashamed anticlericalism of many whig parliamentarians. At the same time, the complacency which had characterised some early eighteenth-century attitudes towards catholics was dispelled in the 1720s and 1730s by a growing realisation that the penal laws had failed to extirpate popery from the island. The church itself was no better equipped to meet the challenge than it had

93 Sir John to Philip Perceval, 30 June 1709 (B.L., Add. MS 47025, ff. 123–4); Mossom Wye to Lord Dartmouth, 13 January 1710[/11] (P.R.O., SP 54/4/3); Lord Anglesey to Abp Vesey, 1713 (N.L.I., T/3738/G/6 (DH)); Sir Thomas Hanmer to same, 8/19 May 1712, 11 May 1713 (ibid., T/3738/J/9). 94 Higgins to Sir John Pakington, 29 September 1719 (Hereford and Worcester R.O., St Helen’s Worcester, Hampton papers, Ref. b705: 349, B.A. 4657/(v), f. 6); Perceval to Charlett, 18 April 1717 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, ff. 102–3).

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been in 1703, despite the efforts of a generation of episcopal improvers. This rather different crisis in the affairs of the Church of Ireland failed to produce a renaissance of Augustan high churchmanship. Instead, the most important responses came from whiggish bishops such as Edward Synge and Theophilus Bolton, who had cut their political teeth in Archbishop King’s low church party, while the remnants of the high-flying tradition remained for most part silent in their rustication. Of course, Irish clergymen as a body did not cease to be politically aware after the demise of convocation, and many continued to involve themselves in elections, parliamentary proceedings, and indeed government, long after 1714. However, in order to flourish in Hanoverian Ireland, it was necessary to sing a very different tune to the tantivy chorus which high churchmen had been accustomed to bellow.

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5

The crisis in Ireland and the disintegration of Queen Anne’s last ministry*

I During the winter of 1713–14 the tory ministry in England began to disintegrate. Despite a massive tory victory at the English general election of 1713, the new parliament which met at Westminster in the following spring did not furnish the court with a reliable majority in either house. The tory party had fallen into disarray. Queen Anne’s deteriorating health was the root cause, giving rise to panic among tories. It was clear that there was little hope for them at Hanover, where Prince George, angry at the peace of Utrecht, was committed to the whigs. Some tories actively considered declaring for the Pretender. Others, more afraid of a jacobite restoration than the accession of a whiggish but protestant king, identified themselves as Hanoverians and voted against the ministry in parliament. The vast majority, whether jacobite or Hanoverian, were agreed on the necessity of taking decisive measures, to entrench themselves in power against the fateful day when the queen should die. More than ever they were impatient of the leadership of Lord Treasurer Oxford, the former Robert Harley, the essence of whose political management seemed to be duplicity and procrastination. Oxford’s ruling passion was an aversion to party extremists. He was determined that government should be kept out of their hands, and throughout his period in office used his great political skill in trying to retain a ‘moderate’ or court-centred element in his administration. By early 1714 many tories felt that he stood in the way of the thoroughgoing policies that were vital to the party’s survival. The differences over the succession, and growing dissatisfaction with the lord treasurer, would be exploited by the most ambitious and ablest of Oxford’s ministerial colleagues, Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, to launch a desperate bid for power. For the last few months of the queen’s reign Oxford and Bolingbroke carried on a running battle, while around them the administration sank into an anarchy of intrigue and recrimination. The story of the crumbling of the ministry and the struggle between Oxford and Bolingbroke has often been told. The attraction lies not only in the twists *

First published in Irish Historical Studies, xxii (1980–1), pp. 193–215. 159


and turns of the plot, but in the historically important consequences of the tories’ failure to maintain unity at this critical time. Divided, demoralised and bereft of firm leadership, they presented themselves in the aftermath of the queen’s death in August 1714 as an easy prey for the whigs. In this chapter the story will be recounted once more, but from an Irish perspective. Ireland too staged a political crisis in 1713–14, with the calamitous parliamentary session of November to December 1713 as its centre-piece, a crisis with drama enough of its own to fill the pages of the London newspapers, and which touched upon the concurrent events in England at several points.1 The news from Dublin in 1713–14 of the triumphs of the Irish opposition gave a jolt to English politics, at the very time the ministry was beginning to break up. Whigs were encouraged by what they heard; tories infuriated; the lord treasurer nonplussed. For Oxford the failure of his Irish policy was a serious blow; for Bolingbroke it represented the dawning of his great opportunity.

II The Oxford ministry’s management of Irish politics had never been very successful. The hard fact was that by 1710, when the ministry had been brought into being, the tory interest in Ireland was losing ground, and thereafter was not really strong enough to support a tory lord lieutenancy, which was the only kind of Irish administration that English political realities would allow. There was an overwhelming tory majority in the British house of commons after the 1710 general election, but in Ireland there had been no new election and in the Irish house of commons the parties were very differently balanced. Under the viceroyalty of the whig Lord Wharton (1708–10), the previous tory ascendancy in the commons had been undermined, and neither the ministerial revolution of 1710 nor the reappointment of the tory duke of Ormond as lord lieutenant could restore the tories to their former position. The next parliamentary session in Ireland, in 1711, began well enough for Ormond, but by the end the whig opposition were running the court party neck and neck in commons votes, and had succeeded in provoking a dispute over privilege between the two houses serious enough for the chief secretary to recommend calling a new parliament whenever a further supply should become due, in order to forestall a resumption of the quarrel and the disruption of business.2 1

When the first version of this chapter was written, the only Irish historian to have considered this episode in any detail was the late J. G. Simms (‘The Irish parliament of 1713’ in G. A. Hayes-McCoy (ed.), Historical studies, iv (London, 1963), pp. 82–92); and the only English historian to have paid it any attention was Sir Keith Feiling (A history of the tory party, 1640–1714 (Oxford, 1924), pp. 461–3, 469). More recently, useful accounts have appeared in McGrath, Constitution, pp. 264–83; and O’Regan, King, pp. 184–200. 2 James, Empire, pp. 74–5; McGrath, Constitution, pp. 248–64; Edward Southwell to Lord Dartmouth, 20 November 1711 (P.R.O., SP 63/367/262). 160

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The decline in the fortunes of the Irish tories stemmed from their vulnerability on the all-important issue of the succession. For obvious reasons, most Irish protestants were terrified at the thought that the Hanoverian line might be set aside. ‘The great thing that frightens all the gentlemen of Ireland,’ wrote Archbishop King of Dublin in 1711, ‘is . . . the pretender.’3 Irish whigs hammered home the message that the succession was in grave danger. In a commons debate on the money bill in 1710, for instance, ‘the speeches ran altogether against the pretender’.4 Every jacobite indiscretion, every informer’s tale, was given the maximum publicity.5 Always it was insinuated that tories could not be trusted on this essential point. Much of the supporting evidence came from England and Scotland, where active jacobites were much more common, but even in Ireland one could find high-flying clergymen preaching the doctrine of hereditary right; rash young gentlemen of Trinity College insulting the memory of King William; and a few country squires of jacobite sympathies such as Sir Donough O’Brien of Dromoland, County Clare, who in the revolution, as a Williamite friend delicately put it, ‘had the misfortune to choose the wrong side’.6 Moreover, Irish tories, like their counterparts in England and Scotland, were uneasy over the implications of the events of 1688–9. The removal of King James was regarded in some quarters as having been a regrettable necessity; a rare exception to the general rule of non-resistance.7 ‘Revolution principles’ might be sharply disavowed. Nor did tories share the whigs’ obsession with eradicating popery. After the passage of the popery act of 1704 many felt that the penal code was severe enough, and further bills in 1707 and 1709 encountered tory opposition.8 This softer approach brought some catholic support: from the minority of catholic freeholders admitted to poll at elections, and the handful of

3

Abp King to David Jenkins, 17 February 1711 (T.C.D., MS 2531, p. 316). Henry Rose to David Crosbie, 6 June 1710 (N.L.I., P.C. 188). 5 A correspondent of the chief secretary wrote in 1712 that in Ireland the catholics and the whigs seemed to be ‘playing into each other’s hand, the one by their insolence giving a handle to reflect on the government, and the others taking occasion to improve it into thousand stories’: William Wogan to Edward Southwell, 30 September 1712 (B.L., Add. MS 37674, f. 58). On this point, see also Connolly, Religion, pp. 249–62; and Thomas Doyle, ‘Jacobitism, catholicism and the Irish protestant elite, 1700–1710’ in EighteenthCentury Ireland, xii (1997), pp. 43–51. 6 Sir Walter Clarges to George Clarke, 12 September 1691 (T.C.D., MS 749/11/1131); Inchiquin MSS, pp. vii, 17–33, 39–40, 226–71, 626, 628–31; ‘A list of the privy council of Ireland’ [1714/15] (B.L., Add. MS 61636, f. 99). See also Connolly, Religion, pp. 80–4; idem, ‘Reformers and highflyers: the post-revolution church’ in As by law established, pp. 158–60; Doyle, ‘Jacobitism’, pp. 29–36; and Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the jacobite cause, 1685–1766: a fatal attachment (Dublin, 2002), pp. 164–76. 7 S. J. Connolly, ‘The Glorious Revolution in Irish protestant political thinking’ in idem (ed.), Political ideas in eighteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 27–63. 8 George Dodington to Lord Sunderland, 1 September 1707 (P.R.O., SP 63/366/89); Addison letters, pp. 182–3; Connolly, Religion, pp. 79–80, 264–78. 4

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recent converts from popery who sat in parliament; all of which provided more ammunition for the whigs.9 Suspicion of the tories’ loyalty to Hanover was greatly strengthened by the imprudent and arrogant behaviour of the Irish administration established in 1710. Oxford’s choice of ministers was largely to blame. Admittedly, Ormond, the new viceroy, was a nobleman greatly respected in England and in Ireland, enjoying something of his grandfather’s prestige among Irish protestants, but he was indolent and relied too much on the advice of others, ‘hating business’ himself, and was at the same time inflexible in his politics, with the result that he was easily persuaded into adopting extreme courses, to which he afterwards clung.10 To make matters worse, Oxford also placed in high office in Dublin an English tory as rigid as Ormond but possessing the determination and force of personality the viceroy lacked. Sir Constantine Phipps was an English barrister with jacobite connexions and sympathies, who had recently made his name as one of the defence counsel at the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell.11 His appointment as lord chancellor of Ireland in 1710 had probably been intended as a sop to tories in England. In Irish terms it proved a highly expensive mistake. Pugnacious, hot-tempered and impatient of opposition, Phipps plunged into the party battle in Ireland, assuming the mantle of the tory champion. His authority as lord chancellor and as a lord justice (in Ormond’s absence between 1711 and 1713) was put at the disposal of anyone ‘that set up for a churchman’, and he influenced the viceroy and his colleagues on the Irish privy council to adopt the same uncompromisingly partisan attitudes.12 Inevitably Phipps became a controversial figure, admired, even idolised, by many tories, feared and hated by the whigs as ‘that devil the chancellor’, his very presence polarising political opinion to such an extent that it was possible for whig pamphleteers to write in 1714 (incorrectly, of course) that Phipps more than any other individual had been responsible for importing into Ireland the pernicious ‘distinctions of whig and tory’.13 9

Simms, ‘Irish parliament of 1713’, pp. 84–5; Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 132–4. D. W. Hayton, ‘Dependence, clientage and affinity: the political following of the second duke of Ormonde’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds), The dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 225–6, 236–9; Memoirs of the life of his grace James, late duke of Ormond . . . (London, 1738); Spring Macky (ed.), Memoirs of the secret services of John Macky . . . (London, 1733), p. 10. 11 H. R. Phipps, Notes on Phipps and Phip families of England, Ireland, the West Indies and New England, pt 1: Phipps of Nottingham and Reading 1570 to 1700 . . . (Lahore, 1911), pp. 3–17; H. R. Phipps, ‘History of a Phipps family’ (2 vols, 1936, typescript in B.L., dept. of printed books, 9907. gg. 14), i, pp. 70–89; Remarks and collections of Thomas Hearne . . . , ed. C. E. Doble et al. (11 vols, Oxford Historical Society, Oxford, 1885–1921), iii, pp. 111, 118; Geoffrey Holmes, The trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London, 1973), pp. 187, 193, 195. 12 Swift corresp., i, p. 233. 13 The conduct of the purse of Ireland (London, 1714), pp. 19–21; The resolutions of the house of commons in Ireland, relating to the lord-chancellor Phips examined (London, 1714), pp. 14–15. 10

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Whether or not Phipps was a jacobite during his term of office in Ireland (and there is evidence that he made an approach to the pretender in 1713),14 he gave every impression of jacobite leanings. Among other things, he was accused of surrounding himself with ‘new converts’, two of whom were made queen’s counsel; of deliberately neglecting the militia; and, probably unjustly, of laxity in supervising the enforcement of the penal laws.15 The most telling charge concerned a recommendation for clemency made in May 1713 on behalf of a notorious Dublin jacobite, Edward Lloyd, who had advertised for subscriptions to reprint an overtly jacobite pamphlet, the Memoirs of the Chevalier de St George (that is to say, the pretender).16 A committee of the Irish privy council reported that the book contained ‘seditious and treasonable matter’, and Lloyd was ordered to be prosecuted, but Phipps and nine other councillors declared him to be ‘a fit object’ of mercy, and moreover that ‘he had no evil intention or design’, so that the prosecution was stopped.17 This caused a great outcry. Only the more extreme tories shared the councillors’ confidence in Lloyd’s honesty, the general opinion being that he was ‘a rascal’, and whigs were loud in their denunciations of the ministry for assisting ‘a villain who would call into question the queen’s title to the throne, the justifiableness of the late revolution, the protestant religion and cause’.18 The government’s indulgence of a professed jacobite contrasted with their severity towards ‘honest’ whigs who fell foul of the law. Critics of the ministry who spoke too freely found themselves arrested: St John Brodrick, the son of the leader of the Irish whigs, Alan Brodrick, was taken up for remarks made in the heat of the moment in a Dublin coffee-house; another whig was prosecuted for having ‘treated her majesty in a public company with great disrespect’.19 Particularly controversial was the prosecution of a young army officer, Dudley Moore, brother of a whig M.P., for his part in a commotion in a Dublin theatre on King William’s birthday, 4 November 1712. In honour of the occasion, a performance had been arranged of a favourite whig play, 14 James Macpherson, Original papers; containing the secret history of Great Britain, from the Restoration to the accession of the house of Hanover (2 vols, London, 1775), ii, p. 429. 15 Simms, ‘Irish parliament of 1713’, pp. 83–4; memo by Alan Brodrick, 19 March 1714[/15] (B.L., Add. MS 61636, ff. 146–8); The resolutions of the house of commons in Ireland . . . examined, pp. 19–22. 16 Robert Munter, The history of the Irish newspaper, 1685–1760 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 126–9; idem, A dictionary of the print trade in Ireland 1550–1775 (New York, 1988), p. 168. 17 Report of the committee of the privy council (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/5/3); lords justices and privy council to Ormond, 23 May 1713 (ibid.); Ormond to lords justices, 18 June 1713 (Bodl., MS Eng. hist. c. 42, p. 63). 18 D. W. Hayton (ed.), ‘An Irish parliamentary diary from the reign of Queen Anne’ in Analecta Hibernica, xxx (1982), p. 135. 19 St John Brodrick to Thomas Brodrick, 12 January 1712 (S.H.C., 1248/3, ff. 60–1); William Perceval to Clayton Milborne, 20 January 1712 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, ff. 72–3); lords justices to Ormond, 13 November 1712 (N.A.I., M/2447, p. 138).

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Rowe’s Tamerlane, and whigs in the audience also insisted on hearing Samuel Garth’s topical prologue (which included a strong attack on the peace negotiations at Utrecht), despite a ban somewhat high-handedly imposed by the lords justices.20 Moore, a member of the audience, mounted the stage and read the prologue himself. He was then indicted, with others, for riot. The indictment having been dismissed, the government filed an information against Moore alone, a step which smacked of victimisation. Phipps laid himself open to the accusation of having attempted to prejudice the jury by commenting on the case in a well-publicised speech, and the administration blundered again when the attorney-general requested that, ‘to avoid the partiality of sheriffs’, the clerk of the crown be empowered to strike the jury, according to the English system. Moore’s legal counsel, who included several prominent Irish whig politicians, protested at such an infringement of the liberties of the subject.21 The hearing developed into a show-piece constitutional debate, and before the attorney-general’s request could be granted Moore jumped bail and fled to England, to escape what whigs spoke of as a ‘persecution’.22 The complaint most frequently levelled against Phipps, and his colleagues, was of ‘arbitrary government’, on King James’s and the French model. This was reflected in their vindictive pursuit of Moore, St John Brodrick and other whigs, and even more so, perhaps, in the privy council’s systematic interference in the government of municipal corporations. By the ‘new rules’ of 1672 elections of chief magistrates and other officials in twenty named boroughs needed the approval of the chief governor and council. This power had been used quite frequently in recent years, but not since Tyrconnell’s lord deputyship had there been anything to compare in scale with the systematic campaign waged by the council from 1711 onwards, to disapprove whig candidates in order to benefit local tories in municipal politics and by extension parliamentary elections (since almost all the boroughs concerned were enfranchised). The parallel with Tyrconnell’s efforts to ‘pack’ parliament was of course promptly drawn.23 The focus of the struggle was in Dublin, where the council seemed determined to foist a tory lord mayor on the whigdominated court of aldermen.24 In 1711, with Ormond present at Dublin

20

Munter, Irish newspaper, pp. 127–8; St John to Thomas Brodrick, 6 November 1712 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 93). 21 Notebook of Chief Justice Sir Richard Cox, 28 November 1712 to June 1713 (N.L.I., MS 4245, pp. 37–9, 51–68 et seq.); Cox to Edward Southwell, 16 June 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 3); John Parnell to Abp King, 18 June 1713 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1457). 22 Robert Molesworth to Marlborough, 10 February 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 61368, f. 107). 23 Sir John Perceval’s journal, August 1711 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, ff. 2–4); petition of the lord mayor and aldermen of Dublin, September 1711 (P.R.O., SP 63/367/204–5). 24 For what follows, see Sean Murphy, ‘The corporation of Dublin, 1660–1760’ in Dublin Historical Record, xxxviii (1984), pp. 22–35; C. M. Flanagan, ‘“A merely local dispute?” Partisan politics and the Dublin mayoral dispute of 1709–1715’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 164


Castle, there were no less than seven successive disapprobations, the council insisting on the prior claim of a tory, Robert Constantine, and the dispute was only ended when British ministers intervened to achieve a compromise. The following year the council, led by Phipps in the absence of the viceroy, again refused the corporation’s first choice, though they eventually accepted a second. In 1713 the two sides reached a stalemate. The aldermen elected a whig, who was disapproved, whereupon the incumbent lord mayor, whose privilege it was to nominate the three candidates, put up three tories. Seventeen aldermen refused to accept this nomination and proceeded to elect one of their own number instead, without the participation of the lord mayor, an election that was inevitably disapproved. Neither side would back down, and ‘the city affair’ became a major political issue. Whigs focused their animosity on the chancellor, the inspiration behind the council’s obstinacy. Phipps was said to be ‘running about like a roaring lion . . . devouring the liberties and privileges of the city’.25 By the summer of 1713, when the time was approaching for the renewal of the parliamentary duties granted in 1711, the Irish political world was in turmoil. The whigs had come to believe, and were persuading others, that ‘a popish prince’ was in view. That Phipps and his ministerial colleagues favoured the pretender seemed to be confirmed by their actions, which recalled the policies of Tyrconnell and King James: the intrusion into office of crypto-catholics; the neglect of the militia in favour of the regular army; the ‘arbitrary’ use of executive power; and especially the tampering with borough corporations. The widespread belief that ‘the government had formed a design to garble corporations, and hurt their charters’ had done much to make the 1711 session difficult for Ormond.26 Now fears ran even higher. In this atmosphere there could be little hope for a successful session under the same viceroy. Ormond had been blamed by Oxford and St John in 1711 for allowing the Dublin mayoral dispute to get out of hand;27 and during his subsequent absence from Ireland he had made little or no effort to restrain his Irish ministers. It was hardly to be expected that he would be able, or indeed willing, to do so when he returned. ‘No likelihood of a new parliament . . . nor of the meeting of this’, wrote a despondent Irish whig in April 1713. ‘The truth is, they dare not let an Irish parliament meet.’28

University of Notre Dame, 1983); and J. R. Hill, From patriots to unionists: Dublin civic politics and Irish protestant patriotism, 1660–1840 (Oxford, 1997), ch. 2. 25 H.M.C., Various, viii, p. 262. 26 Perceval’s jnl, August 1711 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, f. 2). 27 The prose works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and Irvin Ehrenpreis (16 vols, Oxford, 1941–68), xv, p. 364. It is indicative of British ministerial thinking that Secretary Dartmouth twice referred to the Dublin affair as ‘the dispute between the city . . . and the lord lieutenant’: cabinet minute, 26 September 1711 (Staffordshire R.O., D/742/VI/2); Dartmouth to the queen, 26 September 1711 (ibid., D/1778/I.ii/282). 28 H.M.C., Various, viii, p. 262. 165


III Oxford had long been aware of the desirability of a change of direction in Irish policy. He had probably decided on a new lord lieutenant by the end of the 1711 session, for when Ormond replaced Marlborough as captain-general in January 1712 the viceroyalty was immediately offered to someone else.29 This was Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury, Ormond’s eventual successor in 1713, a former whig secretary of state whose support had been of great value to Oxford in the construction of his ministry in 1710. Shrewsbury’s qualifications were unique, and appeared exactly right for the lord lieutenancy at this difficult time. His whig past, and present attachment to the tory administration, would, it was hoped, reassure both parties in Ireland of his good intentions. Shrewsbury was also just the type of man with whom Oxford himself preferred to work, one whose first loyalty was to the queen and not to a party; a nobleman who would bring prestige and political weight to the ministry without commitments to particular measures or a particular set of friends.30 But when the viceroyalty was first proposed to him in 1712 Shrewsbury turned it down. The reason he gave to Oxford is instructive, indicating both the purpose behind the offer and the principal objection to it on practical grounds, namely the reaction of the hotter tories, already impatient with the lord treasurer, at the appointment of a whig. I hear it is one of the grievances of those angry gentlemen, who are labouring a separation among their own friends, that I am to be sent to Ireland to revive the whiggish party there; now, as I am convinced that it is for her majesty’s interest to unite that kingdom, and that whoever serves her well must act with such moderation that the whigs may hope for protection, and some of those who shall most contribute to appease the present heats may expect favour; though I am satisfied this is the most equitable and prudent scheme for that country, yet I am convinced that it will be impracticable for me to act according to it without occasioning much jealousy, and that others, in whom the tory party have a more entire confidence, might effect that with ease, which, if I attempted, would give great offence not only against me, but perhaps against your lordship too.31

Oxford’s fondness for ‘moderation’, manifested in his failure to eject every whig from office, had created much discontent among rank-and-file tories at Westminster.32 During the very first session of parliament after the general 29

Luttrell, Brief relation, vi, p. 710. Angus McInnes, ‘The political ideas of Robert Harley’ in History, l (1965), pp. 309–22. The only full-length study of Shrewsbury’s career is D. H. Somerville, The king of hearts: Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury (London, 1962). 31 Shrewsbury to Oxford, 4 April 1712 (B.L., Add. MS 70260). 32 For what follows, see Geoffrey Holmes, ‘Harley, St John and the death of the tory party’ in idem (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution 1689–1714 (London, 1969), pp. 217–25; and Sheila Biddle, Bolingbroke and Harley (London, 1975), ch. 6. 30

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election of 1710 tory extremists had formed an influential back-bench pressure-group, the October Club, whose protests were taken up by some of those in the forefront of the party, especially Henry St John, who, having quarrelled with Oxford in 1711, was alert to every opportunity to further his ambitions. Some ministerial changes were made in the summer of 1711, but not enough to quench tory anger. A second round of dismissals a year later also proved insufficient. Thus throughout 1712, and the first half of 1713, despite persistent rumours that Shrewsbury would have the viceroyalty, Oxford felt that he could do nothing.33 Ormond continued to hold the office in conjunction with his army command. After the dissolution of the Irish parliament in May 1713 there was even some talk that he might return to Dublin, in the hope that a general election in Ireland would produce a more compliant house of commons.34 By now Oxford was in very serious difficulties at home. Increased tory disaffection had reduced to tatters his parliamentary majority at Westminster, a new element being the opposition of ‘whimsicals’, possibly pro-Hanoverian elements, in both houses. In June 1713 these ‘whimsicals’ combined with the whigs to defeat the ministry over the bill to ratify the treaty of commerce with France. Although at least some of them were concerned for the security of the protestant succession, they were not to be won over by such an appointment as Shrewsbury’s to Ireland, for they were also critical of Oxford’s ‘moderation’.35 Furthermore, they had their own candidate for the viceroyalty in Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, the ‘whimsical’ leader in the lords, who was himself an Irish peer and an important figure in Irish politics. An able man, ‘homme d’un esprit élevé’ in the words of a French diplomat, Anglesey was an aggressive and outspoken high church tory, driven by a hatred of protestant dissenters in general and Ulster presbyterians in particular.36 He had been an active member of both the Westminster and Dublin parliaments since the beginning of Anne’s reign, and in November 1711 had been described as ‘the darling of the church party’ in Ireland.37 His ambitions were fixed on the viceroyalty, and his loudly trumpeted pro-Hanoverianism may have been as much as anything else a means to this end.38 Cynical observers did not doubt that he could be bought off, and Oxford spoke to

33

Abp King to Francis Annesley, 3 June 1712 (T.C.D., MS 2532, p. 31); Swift, Prose works, ed. Davis and Ehrenpreis, xvi, pp. 558, 569; L’Hermitage’s despatch, 25 November 1712 (B.L., Add. MS 17677 FFF, f. 427). 34 Cox to Southwell, 23 June 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 5). 35 See, for example, William Bishop to Arthur Charlett, 20 June 1713 (Bodl., MS Ballard 31, f. 104); Macpherson, Original pprs, ii, pp. 417–18. 36 D’Aumont’s despatch, 5 July 1713 (P.R.O., PRO 31/3/201/58); Perceval’s jnl, January 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, f. 57); G. de F. Lord et al. (eds), Poems on affairs of state . . . (7 vols, New Haven, 1963–75), vii, p. 115. 37 Perceval to Charlett, 1 November 1711 (Bodl., MS Ballard 36, f. 70). 38 Geoffrey Holmes, British politics in the age of Anne (London, 1967), pp. 278–9. 167


him in July 1713, just before the end of the British parliamentary session, in circumstances that strongly suggested a deal of some kind was afoot. 39 The difficulty was that, for all his speeches at Westminster against the peace and in support of the Hanoverian succession, in Ireland Anglesey was as hot a tory as Ormond, indeed perceived as even more dangerous by his whig opponents, while at the same time he lacked the duke’s enormous personal and family prestige. Understandably, in Oxford’s eyes Shrewsbury appeared as the only positively attractive candidate for the position, yet he could not be appointed without completing the alienation of the tory party. The treasurer created for himself a means of escape from this trap with the last great coup of his political career.40 In August 1713 he counter-attacked against the challenge of St John, now Viscount Bolingbroke, by a further reconstruction of the administration on more tory lines, but in such a way as to preserve his own ascendancy. One or two of Bolingbroke’s friends were advanced, but in the main it was Oxford’s own followers who benefited. Bolingbroke himself changed secretaryships, taking over the southern department from the moderate tory Dartmouth, his successor as northern secretary being the former speaker of the commons, William Bromley, a much-respected (if rather dull) high churchman who in political terms was close to the treasurer. The significance of Bolingbroke’s move sideways was that he no longer had any administrative responsibility for Scottish affairs; as northern secretary, he had been meddling in Scottish business partly in order to extend his own power, and partly to develop a personal following among Scottish tories. To complete his isolation, the office of secretary of state for Scotland was revived and given to Lord Mar.41 When these various changes were announced the treasurer’s friends were jubilant; Bolingbroke ‘stared’. Now Shrewsbury finally agreed to accept the viceroyalty.42 There were no tory protests. It is also significant that when on 21 September the question of the disputed Dublin mayoralty was discussed in cabinet the decision went against a recommendation from the Irish lords justices and council.43 Not all of Oxford’s problems had been solved, however. There was little in the ministerial reshuffle that appealed directly to the ‘whimsical’ tories, and Anglesey in particular had been disappointed by the choice of Shrewsbury

39

The Wentworth papers, 1705–39, ed. J. J. Cartwright (London, 1883), pp. 331, 337; Thomas Edwards to Lord North and Grey, 22 June 1713 (Bodl., MS North c. 9, f. 5); Bishop to Charlett, 30 June 1713 (Bodl., MS Ballard 31, f. 106). 40 H. T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (London, 1970), p. 113; Biddle, Bolingbroke and Harley, pp. 254–5; G .V. Bennett, The tory crisis in church and state 1688–1730: the career of Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975), pp. 172–3. 41 P. W. J. Riley, The English ministers and Scotland, 1707–27 (London, 1964), pp. 243–9. 42 Shrewsbury was declared lord lieutenant on 13 September 1713, the same day that Mar was appointed secretary of state for Scotland (P.R.O., PC 2/84, p. 234). 43 Bolingbroke to Oxford, 21 September 1713 (H.M.C., Portland, v, p. 339); same to lords justices, 21 September 1713 (P.R.O., SP 67/4, ff. 86–7). 168


as Ormond’s successor. The treasurer recognised this, but was prepared to do no more than promise Anglesey to ‘study to preserve your friendship by every way in my power’.44 Second, by transferring Bolingbroke to the southern department, through which Irish business was transacted, Oxford gave his rival an opening to meddle in Irish affairs. Bolingbroke lost no time in settling a private correspondence with Phipps, which he used to encourage the chancellor in ‘a steady pursuit of the principles you now act upon’.45 Shrewsbury’s strategy was to be an elaboration of the approach he had outlined when first offered the viceroyalty, a typically Harleian ‘project of comprehension’. Such ‘moderating schemes’, coalitions of men of goodwill from both parties (and none), represented Oxford’s pet solution to the problems caused by factional strife. In Ireland the evident weakness of the tory interest made such a plan doubly attractive. Shrewsbury’s intention was, as he himself had said, to ‘act with such moderation that the whigs may hope for protection’, while refraining from major alterations to his Irish ministry, which would awaken the hostility of English tories. To this end he sought a conference with Alan Brodrick, who happened to be in London at the time the viceregal appointment was announced. By a mischance the two men did not meet before each left for Dublin, but Brodrick was able to ‘speak his mind plainly’ to a representative of the new viceroy. Ominously he warned that ‘people that had been injured would complain, especially since they saw the person whom they looked on as the chief cause of their uneasiness [Phipps] was to remain’.46 However, while a new chancellor was out of the question, Shrewsbury hoped that his own whig past, and continuing whig associations, would help pacify the opposition and attract support. As chief secretary he chose his former private secretary Sir John Stanley, a man who was not only ‘a strong whig’ himself but was said by an Irish tory to be ‘related to most of the great whigs of this country’.47 The viceregal household included several other junior whigs, and a chaplain, Matthew French, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, who in university politics was said to have ‘eminently distinguished himself that way’.48 These appointments apart – in which, it

44 Sunderland to Nottingham, 14 September 1713 (Leicestershire R.O., Finch papers, box 490, bdle 24); Oxford to Anglesey, 10 November 1713 (Nottingham University Library, Pw2 Hy 1475). 45 Letters and correspondence . . . of Henry St John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, ed. Gilbert Parke (4 vols, London, 1798), iv, pp. 278–9, 316–17. 46 Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 11 October 1713 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 125). 47 Bp Hartstonge to Abp Vesey, 3 April 1712 (N.L.I., T/3738/G/6); Bp Lindsay to Charlett, 10 April 1712 (Bodl. MS Ballard 8, f. 105). Stanley’s whig connexions included John Forster, Robert Molesworth, the Evanses (later Lords Carbery), Moncks and Tichbornes. 48 Perceval’s jnl, November 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, f. 41); A long history of a short session of a certain parliament in a certain kingdom ([Dublin], 1714), pp. 5–6; journal of Matthew French, 11 November 1713–15 February 1714 (T.C.D., MS 2215).

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must be said, there was a strong element of family connexion and personal friendship – Shrewsbury made sure that on coming to Ireland he displayed ‘no distinction in his favours’. He seemed to be trying to put the lord lieutenancy above party, and to have ‘formed a scheme for making both parties easy under his government’.49 In this he was to fail completely.

IV There were few ‘moderate men’ in either party in Ireland in 1713. According to Archbishop King the country was ‘in a high ferment, higher than ever I saw it except when in actual war’.50 Confidence in the outcome of the elections in Ireland stiffened the tories’ resolution. After all, the recent general election in Great Britain had shown that public opinion there was strongly in favour of peace and thus against the whigs. Furthermore, the ‘closeness’ of the Irish electoral system, the fact that many constituencies were controlled by powerful proprietorial interests, gave considerable scope to Dublin Castle to influence election results. Before the change of viceroy Ormond’s supporters had prepared preliminary calculations, in which borough after borough was assigned to a single patron, or a combination of interests.51 In the election itself, which began before Shrewsbury left London, all the resources available to government were exploited. Each county was provided with a tory sheriff (who would act as returning officer in the shire election, and transmit the writs and returns to and from the boroughs); borough patrons who were in any way dependent on the court were required to nominate tories; bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries were persuaded to exercise their electoral influence; revenue men and other government officials were pressed into service as candidates.52 Leading tories were certain that there would be a decisive majority for ‘the church’. In addition, Phipps and Anglesey each had a reason of their own to oppose compromise: Phipps was aware that nothing short of his own removal would satisfy the whigs; Anglesey was determined from motives of personal ambition that Shrewsbury should fail. Between them they took the lead in persuading the Irish privy council to reject a solution to the Dublin mayoral dispute which the lord lieutenant had recommended, and the aldermen had accepted. In so doing, the councillors were not only defying the viceroy but also the express wish of the queen. Shrewsbury was disgusted, and spoke of ‘persons . . . who had designs

49

Perceval’s jnl, November 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, f. 41); Erasmus Lewis to Lord Dartmouth, 26 September 1713 (H.M.C. Dartmouth, i, p. 318). 50 Abp King to Francis Annesley, 14 November 1713 (T.C.D., MS 2532, pp. 222–3). 51 B.L., Add. MS 34777, ff. 20–44. 52 James, Empire, pp. 76–8; Simms, ‘Irish parliament of 1713’, pp. 85–6; Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 294–5. 170


of their own in view’. This was clear enough to the moderate tory Sir John Perceval: ‘I guessed he meant . . . Lord Anglesey.’53 Shrewsbury was to look back on his failure to resolve ‘the city affair’ before parliament met as the turning point of his viceroyalty. It was an issue on which the attention of the entire political nation in Ireland was concentrated, and it presented a public test of the viceroy’s policy, and his authority. ‘If this point only could have been settled,’ he wrote, ‘many of the whigs promised their vote for the speaker, which would have been a good beginning to the session, and [would have] showed them I had some interest to protect them.’54 The whigs did indeed hold it as a principal grievance that the dispute had not been settled, and drew the conclusion that, while the viceroy might preside at the castle, others ruled. But they too were predisposed against compromise. Brodrick’s response to Shrewsbury’s early overtures had shown as much. Subsequently whig resentment and fear had been accentuated by the events surrounding the election, which had been fiercely contested. It is impossible to say how many contests there were, only that the number was unusually high, especially in the counties and the more open boroughs. No doubt tories suffered as much as whigs in terms of increased expenditure and the undermining of established patterns of deference, and they would of course have been equally outraged by sharp practice on the part of their opponents, but for the whigs the active involvement of the castle was particularly provocative, and the apparently widespread participation of catholics a cause of consternation. From all quarters came complaints of catholics being permitted to vote, or of catholics involved in election riots, the worst example of violence being in the Dublin city election, where a tory mob, alleged by the whigs to be mostly catholic, was fired on by troops called out from the garrison, and a man was killed.55 Perhaps even more sinister, in whig eyes, was the appearance as candidates of a number of ‘new converts’, at least nine of whom were returned, and all on the tory side.56 The impact on whig sensibilities is well illustrated by the comment of a defeated candidate in Fethard, County Tipperary, who justified his petition against the ‘new convert’ (and later jacobite) Sir Redmond Everard, in the following terms: ‘his adversary being set up by a popish interest, he cannot lie couchant under it till the knife comes to his throat, or he be led to the stake.’57 53

Perceval’s jnl, 14 January 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, ff. 55–6). Shrewsbury to Oxford, 3 November 1713, 2 February 1713/14 (H.M.C., Bath, i, pp. 242, 245). 55 J.G. Simms, ‘Irish catholics and the parliamentary franchise, 1692–1728’ in I.H.S., xii (1960–1), pp. 34–5; idem, ‘Irish parliament of 1713’, pp. 85–6. 56 Simms, ‘Irish parliament of 1713’, p. 84. To Simms’s list of nine ‘new convert’ M.P.s (all of them voting in the tory interest) we may perhaps add three more (again all tories): Thomas Bellew (Mullingar), Theobald Bourke (Naas) and John Staunton (Galway city). Three ‘new converts’ also took their seats in the upper house: Lords Athenry, Dunkellin and Mayo. 57 Cox to Southwell, 24 December 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 41). 54

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When parliament assembled the two parties were at battle stations. Shrewsbury had failed to persuade M.P.s to put aside party differences, even temporarily, to join in carrying essential business. For some time the whigs had declared themselves to be intent on rescuing the protestant succession from the machinations of ‘designing men’ in government; and since the administration remained unchanged, apart from the lord lieutenant himself and his immediate entourage, whigs were unanimous in opposition. The only moderate men were to be found on the tory benches, and they were mostly ‘Hanoverian’ tories of a kind, whose moderation manifested itself in voting, either occasionally or systematically, with the whigs and against the government. There was no real middle ground. Yet Shrewsbury persisted with his strategy, first delaying the announcement of his recommendation for the speakership and then belatedly putting up the attorney-general, Sir Richard Levinge, who was that very rare bird, the genuine moderate. The consequences were deeply unfortunate. The whigs were given a head start in canvassing for their man, Alan Brodrick, and, by the time Levinge had declared, a number of tory votes had already been pledged to his opponent.58 Other tories stayed at home, dismayed both by Shrewsbury’s initial silence and his eventual choice of Levinge, whose moderation was generally construed, and despised, in Ireland as time-serving.59 Although the election itself had given the tories a majority on paper, Brodrick was chosen speaker by 131 votes to 127 when parliament opened on 25 November.60 Despite the narrowness of the majority this turned out to be a decisive victory, establishing whig dominance over the house. Tory leaders blamed their own party’s lack of discipline, the fact that there had been a substantial number of tory absentees while the whigs had attended ‘to a man’. They also pointed to examples of disloyal placemen, in particular half-pay army officers, and complained of the feebleness and equivocation shown by the viceroy. While there was some force in all of these arguments, the most important reason for Brodrick’s success had been that a squadron of tories, estimated at around twenty, had broken ranks and voted for him.61 One or two were 58

Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 10 November 1713 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 133); Hayton (ed.), ‘Irish parliamentary diary’, pp. 125–6; Cox to Southwell, 26 November 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 27). 59 Perceval’s jnl, 18 March 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, ff. 17–18); Henry Rose to David Crosbie, 21 November 1713 (N.L.I., P.C. 188). 60 C.J.I. (3rd edn, 20 vols, Dublin, 1796–1800), ii, p. 743. The tories had expected a majority of between forty and sixty in the new house of commons: Bp Lindsay to Charlett, 5 November 1713 (Bodl., MS Ballard 8, f. 65); Cox to Southwell, 7 November 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 21); Swift corresp., i, p. 403. My own estimate of the overall election result, based on a contemporary analysis of the returns (B.L., Add. MS 34777, ff. 46–7), would put their winning margin at nearer twenty-five. 61 Cox to Southwell, 26 November, 1 December 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, ff. 27, 29); ‘list of votes for Sir R. Levinge . . .’ (B.L., Add. MS 34777, ff. 90–1); [the earl of Abercorn] to Edward Southwell, 5 January 1713/14 (P.R.O.N.I., D/623/A/3/12). 172


half-pay officers, naturally embittered against a ministry that had made peace and reduced their salaries. Some others were ‘personally obliged . . . to Mr Brodrick’.62 The remainder may have been genuinely afraid for the succession. Six days later the whigs followed up this success with another, almost equally valuable. To have a whig speaker conferred considerable tactical advantages at a time when the occupant of the chair made no sustained pretence at impartiality. The chairman of the ‘grand’ committee of elections and privileges (where election petitions were considered) enjoyed a similar influence over the hearing of disputed elections. The whig John Forster carried the division against a tory by 127 to 121.63 As tories gloomily forecast, the committee’s judgements proved consistently favourable to the whigs, and, when endorsed by the house, produced a net gain of some ten votes.64 At the same time, tory defectors continued to be encouraged, as the opposition began to style itself as a ‘country party’, acting not from narrow factional motives but in defence of the true interests of the kingdom against the machinations of treacherous ministers.65 The tenor of the whigs’ parliamentary campaign was propagandist. They viewed parliament as ‘the grand inquest of the nation’, where ‘discoveries’ might be made of the villainies perpetrated by those in power. Thus a committee was established, under the chairmanship of St John Brodrick, to investigate the judicial proceedings against Lloyd and Moore; an inquiry was set in train into the decisions of the privy council over the Dublin mayoralty; suspicious circumstances surrounding disputed election returns were thoroughly probed. There was a rich harvest. The commons had already been informed of gross illegalities in borough corporations, and a failure to arrest jacobites returning from abroad without licence, when the first great debate of the session took place, on the riotous parliamentary election for Dublin city, which had given rise to a petition from the defeated tory candidates.66 The hearing was held at the bar of the house, and in an atmosphere of panic. Catholics were forbidden the galleries, and nearby householders warned to allow no one on to the roofs of their properties while the house was in session.67 After several evenings of heated debate the petition was

62 Cox to Southwell, 26 November 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 27). For individual examples see Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 9 December 1713 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 138); Rose to Crosbie, 21 November, 8 December 1713 (N.L.I., P.C. 188). 63 Newsletter, 1 December 1713 (P.R.O., SP 63/369/15). 64 Cox to Southwell, 8 December 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 31). The figure of ten votes gained is my own calculation from the evidence in C.J.I. 65 Daily Courant, 26 November 1713; Hayton (ed.), ‘Irish parliamentary diary’, pp. 127, 139; Sir John Stanley to Bolingbroke, 10 December 1713 (T.C.D., MS 2021, p. 34). 66 C.J.I. (3rd edn), ii, pp. 754, 758–64; Hayton (ed.), ‘Irish parliamentary diary’, pp. 130–2. 67 C.J.I. (3rd edn), ii, pp. 762, 764. The chamber itself had five skylights (J. T. Gilbert, The parliament house, Dublin (Dublin, 1896), p. 19).

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dismissed. The commons reported ‘a dangerous design’ to intimidate voters, on the part of a catholic mob, and Phipps himself was implicated, through a servant, who was declared to have been a ‘chief fomentor’ of the riot.68 The climax of the session came a few days later, on 18 December, when St John Brodrick’s committee reported. ‘On this occasion,’ noted a parliamentary diarist, ‘there was a vast deal of warmth.’69 The nolle prosequi that had been entered in favour of Lloyd was well-nigh impossible to justify. Levinge for one did not try, explaining that it was ‘against the sense of the house, even those of our own party’.70 In the small hours of the following morning a resolution that Phipps had acted in this matter ‘contrary to his duty and contrary to the protestant interest of this kingdom’ was agreed by twenty-six votes. Some twenty tories withdrew, and the next resolution, that the chancellor had attempted to prejudice the jury in the Moore case, was passed by forty-six. The opposition was then able to carry without a division a motion to address the queen for Phipps’s dismissal.71 The address was agreed the following day. Whigs were now cock-a-hoop, and in the few days left before the Christmas recess set in motion further investigations and came to some trenchant resolutions on the Dublin mayoral affair, alleging that ‘for some years . . . there has been a design . . . carried on, to subvert the constitution, and alter the government of the city’, a conspiracy of which, once again, Phipps had been ‘the chief cause and promoter’.72 Shrewsbury was in an impossible position. Clearly, the session could not be resumed after Christmas without a statement of some kind on the future of the chancellor. Although Speaker Brodrick in his closing speech before the adjournment had expressed regret that so little had been achieved in the matter of supply, beyond passing the ‘short money bill’ which extended the additional duties for three months, and had promised that progress would be made in due course, it was assumed that this would be conditional on action being taken against Phipps. In private Brodrick said as much.73 With their comfortable working majority in the commons, the whigs held the whiphand. The viceroy, who could see no hope for a change in the parliamentary situation, made a final attempt at securing a compromise. After proroguing parliament for a fortnight, he invited the whig leaders to the castle on 4 January to enquire of them, as Brodrick recorded, ‘whether he might be encouraged to give the queen assurances that if she suffered us to meet again, we would do the queen’s business, and lay aside heats’. What followed was an 68

C.J.I. (3rd edn), ii, pp. 764–7; Hayton (ed.), ‘Irish parliamentary diary’, pp. 131–3; Stanley to Bolingbroke, 17 December 1713 (P.R.O., SP 63/369/57–8). 69 Hayton (ed.), ‘Irish parliamentary diary’, pp. 135, 140–1. 70 Levinge to Edward Southwell, 19 January 1713/14 (Levinge jottings, p. 54). 71 Stanley to Bolingbroke, 19 December 1713 (P.R.O., SP 63/369/47–50). 72 C.J.I. (3rd edn), ii, pp. 770–6. 73 Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 26 December 1713 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 149); McGrath, Constitution, pp. 268–79. 174


eloquent demonstration of the futility of the exercise. Brodrick wrote that ‘there was a deep silence for more than a quarter of an hour’. To a tory witness, Lord Abercorn, the scene bore all the appearances of ‘one of the sorts of quakers’ meetings, whence they depart without uttering any part of their meaning than what may be conjectured from sighs’. At last one of the whigs ‘adventured, not to dissolve the charm, but to disclose how indissoluble it was’; quite simply, until Phipps was removed the whigs would not join in a further vote of supply. His colleagues concurred.74 A further prorogation was Shrewsbury’s only alternative. The viceroy fell into despair. ‘I am incapable of doing any service’, he told Oxford.75 Ill-health kept him away from Dublin for most of the time, and when he did attend to business at the castle he was quite ineffectual. He might complain to the lord treasurer of Phipps’s intrigues, but with his original scheme in ruins it was to Phipps himself and to Anglesey that Shrewsbury turned for day-to-day advice.76 Sadly he admitted, ‘I have made the figure rather of a viceroy in a play than of one who had the honour of her majesty’s patent.’77 The collapse of the lord lieutenant as an independent force meant that the court and tory interests were once more united, and among the tories the influence of the hotter men was paramount. Most Irish tories were outraged at the address against Phipps, and even those who had little personal sympathy for the chancellor were resolved that he must be defended. Chief Justice Sir Richard Cox, pro-Hanoverian but also fiercely anti-whig, was convinced that ‘there will be no living if Brodrick and the whigs prevail’.78 From all parts of the kingdom came county addresses in support of Phipps, not necessarily representative of local opinion, but certainly representative of tory opinion.79 What is more, tories had persuaded themselves that the chancellor could be effectively defended. Whatever the situation in the commons, there was a substantial tory majority in the lords, which had to be of some use even if not in the matter of supply, a majority which had already carried a counteraddress supporting Phipps and demanding his retention; high churchmen were utterly dominant in convocation; and there appeared to be widespread popular backing across the country.80 If it had not been for the pusillanimity

74

Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 5 January 1714 (S.H.C., 1248/3, ff. 151–2); Abercorn to Southwell, 5 January 1713/14 (P.R.O.N.I., D/623/A/3/12). 75 Shrewsbury to Oxford, 2 February 1713/14 (H.M.C., Bath, i, p. 245). 76 Same to Bolingbroke, 22 December 1713, 29 January, 2 February 1714 (P.R.O., SP 63/369/44; 63/370/269, 267). 77 Same to Oxford, 22 December 1713 (H.M.C., Bath, i, p. 244). 78 Cox to Southwell, 19 December 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 38157, f. 36). 79 D. W. Hayton, ‘Tories and whigs in County Cork, 1714’ in Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 2nd ser., lxxx (1975), pp. 84–8. 80 Newsletter, 31 December 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 70070); Post Boy, 31 December 1713– 2 January 1714; above, p. 138. 175


of the viceroy, it was argued, there would have been a tory majority in the commons too. With more efficient party organisation, firmer discipline over office-holders, perhaps even a new election, and above all, with unambiguous and unwavering leadership instead of Shrewsbury’s hopeless vacillation, the tables would be turned.81 In truth, there was more faith than reason in these arguments, but few tories would have admitted as much, for this seemed to them the only feasible strategy for a tory administration to adopt.

V These goings-on in Ireland attracted great interest in England. Resident Irishmen in London found themselves called upon to explain the latest developments, and letters from Dublin enjoyed a wide circulation. Those without Irish connexions might read in newspapers and newsletters accounts of the remarkable proceedings in the Irish parliament. Along with the queen’s failing health, Irish politics became, for a time, a principal topic of conversation. The tory Examiner and Steele’s Englishman debated in print the rights and wrongs of the attacks on Phipps.82 The Dutch agent in England, L’Hermitage, sent his masters copies of the various Irish parliamentary resolutions, while in the depths of the English countryside a country parson in Northamptonshire could not forbear to register in his correspondence his astonishment at the latest stories from Dublin.83 The arrival in London of a number of Irish M.P.s kept the pot bubbling.84 This preoccupation with Irish news was unusual, and may be accounted for in part by a temporary lull in the pace of events in England and elsewhere. As Swift remarked, ‘it is but true . . . we do not care to be troubled with the affairs of Ireland, but, there being no war, nor meeting of parliament, we have leisure at present.’ The British parliament elected in 1713 was not to meet until February 1714. There were, however, other good reasons why Irish affairs should have preoccupied English politicians, and again Swift put them succinctly. He was, it should be remembered, an intimate friend of both Oxford and Bolingbroke, and was acquainted with several other ministers. He wrote: We look upon ourselves as touched in the tenderest part. We know the whig party are preparing to attack us next sessions, and their prevailing in Ireland would, we 81

See, for example, Mathew Forde to Edward Southwell, 19 December 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 60583, f. 6). 82 Abel Boyer, The political state of Great Britain (60 vols, London, 1711–40), vii, pp. 33–8. 83 L’Hermitage’s despatch, 12 January 1714 N.S. (B.L., Add. MS 17677 HHH, f. 17); Maurice Wheeler to Bp Wake, 2 March 1714 (Christ Church, Oxford, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xxiii, no. 269). 84 Stanley to Bolingbroke, 20 February 1714 (T.C.D., MS 2021, p. 88); Robert Molesworth to his wife, 25 February 1714 (N.L.I., mic. P. 3753); Phipps to Edward Southwell, 5 March 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 21553, f. 74). 176


think, be a great strength and encouragement to them here. Besides, our remissness would dishearten our friends, and make them think we acted a trimming game.85

The successes enjoyed by the opposition in the Irish house of commons undoubtedly gave a fillip to the morale of whigs in England. They also provided a battery of arguments which might be used against the ministry, until, that is, events in Ireland were overshadowed by developments nearer home. The initial impact of the reports from Dublin was enhanced by the news at Christmas 1713 that the queen had fallen seriously ill. The succession was now in the forefront of everyone’s mind, and Irish whigs seemed to have uncovered damaging evidence of the pro-jacobite disposition of the tories. A whig pamphlet, The resolutions of the house of commons in Ireland . . . examined, published in London after the prorogation of the Irish parliament, set out this evidence at length. That English whigs had frequent recourse to Phipps’s name when asserting the Hanoverian succession to be in danger is shown by the fact that the author of a tory reply, disparaging these alarmist innuendoes, felt it necessary to devote part of his dialogue between the whig ‘Lord Panic’ and the tory ‘George Steady’ to a detailed discussion of ‘the proceedings in Ireland’.86 Fascination with all things Irish lasted for the first month or so of the British parliamentary session. Because Speaker Brodrick had publicly declared the willingness of the Irish house of commons to resume the matter of supply, and because the whigs’ negotiations with Shrewsbury in January, though common knowledge, had been unofficial (and technically confidential), it was possible to argue that the responsibility for the premature curtailment of the Irish parliamentary session rested entirely with the viceroy. Accordingly, Shrewsbury’s motives became a subject for speculation. Robert Walpole, in a commons speech, denounced the prorogation as a device to halt the pursuit of the jacobite, Phipps, and to forestall the passage of a bill to attaint the pretender.87 However, as time went by, and the Irish parliament was neither recalled nor dissolved, the issue faded away. Whig propaganda continued to have something of an Irish flavour: recruitment in Ireland by French army agents caused a flutter at Westminster, and Phipps himself remained a prime target of whig pamphleteers. But other topics came to dominate the parliamentary and pamphlet debate. The reaction of English tories to the failure of Irish parliamentary management was perhaps of greater significance to the ministry in the long term. High 85

Swift corresp., i, pp. 424–6. Hannibal not at our gates . . . (London, 1714), pp. 21–3. 87 L’Hermitage’s despatch, 6 April 1714 N.S. (B.L., Add. MS 17677HHH, ff. 148–9); Oley Douglas’s parliamentary diary, 15 April 1714 (History of Parliament Trust, Blackett of Matfen papers). ‘If you do remember Ireland’, wrote the Irish whig Henry Maxwell to his English friend James Stanhope, ‘remember our bill of attainder’ (Maxwell to Stanhope, 6 December 1713 [recte January 1714] (Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, U1590/O141/11)). 86

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churchmen were indignant at what they had heard, and unanimous in their concern to see Phipps supported to the hilt, and his enemies punished for their insolence. Abel Boyer, the whig journalist, reported that the chancellor ‘had vast numbers of champions in Great Britain, every tory thinking himself obliged to vindicate him upon account of his zealous adhering to the church’s cause’.88 Echoing the opinion prevailing among Irish tories, they pronounced that the only solution lay in the adoption of firm measures. This of course had wider implications, for it was easy to view the Irish débâcle as the symptom of a general malaise. The ‘moderation’ of the lord treasurer began to be remarked upon once more, and a thorough reformation of the ministry to be called for.89 The change of mood was not confined to the rank and file. A new urgency coloured the thinking of most leading tories, arising at first from the situation in Ireland but affecting their whole political outlook. Cabinet ministers, plied by correspondents in Ireland with over-optimistic forecasts of what might be achieved by a strong hand, advocated a tougher approach to Irish management. Over the Dublin mayoral dispute, for example, the English government turned about face and now declared its hearty approval of the actions of the Irish privy council.90 Probably the most important convert to this policy of ‘thorough’ was the new secretary of state, William Bromley. His appointment the previous summer had been a cornerstone of Oxford’s ministerial reconstruction. The personal influence he could exert among high churchmen was intended to be a counterweight to Bolingbroke. But Bromley, though no friend of Bolingbroke, was equally zealous in the tory cause, and, primed by Phipps and Anglesey, was one of the first to press Oxford for a forceful reply to the impertinences of the Irish whigs. ‘Your lordship is so sensible of the necessity of giving a speedy countenance from hence, to the same interest in Ireland, which you have restored, and do protect and support here, that I need only add my hearty wishes of success’; sentiments which were skilfully played upon by Bolingbroke, who missed no opportunity to foster dissatisfaction with the policies of the treasurer.91 Bolingbroke relished the situation. Whether or not he was scheming to take Oxford’s place at the head of the ministry, or was as yet concerned only to force the treasurer to change his ways, he certainly welcomed the whig challenge in Ireland. ‘The violent measures into which the house of commons in Ireland have run,’ he wrote, ‘happened in one respect very opportunely. The necessity of acting on those principles, and with that vigour, which I have 88

Boyer, Pol. state, vi, p. 364. See, for example, Lord Weymouth to James Grahme, 5 January 1714 (Bagot papers); D’Iberville’s despatch, 8 January 1714 (P.R.O., PRO 31/3/202/9). 90 Perceval’s jnl, 5 January 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, ff. 52–3); Shrewsbury to Oxford, 2 February 1713/14 (H.M.C. Bath, i, p. 245). 91 Phipps to Bromley, 5 December 1713 (H.M.C., Portland, v, pp. 370–1); Bolingbroke corresp., ed. Parke, iv, p. 444; Bromley to Oxford, ‘Monday morning’ (B.L., Add. MS 70287); Bolingbroke to Bromley, 15 December 1713 (P.R.O., SP 34/22/114). 89

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always . . . pressed for, was become . . . apparent.’92 As soon as things began to go wrong in Dublin he resumed his energetic opposition to conciliatory policies. His letters to Chief Secretary Stanley took on an impatient and hectoring tone. Hearing that numerous placemen, including army and navy officers, had voted with the whigs, he expressed himself to be ‘extremely tired of that lenity, which suffers a fleet and army to declare for a faction against the crown’.93 His blustering commentary was sometimes self-contradictory. On the one hand, he professed great confidence in the pliability of the Irish parliament: the whigs’ majority in the commons was ‘so slight, that an open declaration of the queen, or the united endeavours of her servants against them, would turn the scale’.94 On the other, he toyed with the idea of taxing Ireland directly from Westminster, which (quite rightly) horrified Shrewsbury.95 But the recurring theme was the potential strength of the government’s position. If only the proper measures were taken, all would soon be well. The political initiative had thus passed back to the secretary, and the treasurer’s successes of the previous summer had been undone. Oxford’s personal fortunes were already at a low ebb. The death of his favourite daughter had left him grief-stricken and sunk in depression, and through carelessness he had offended the queen and alienated the royal favourite, Lady Masham, his former ally.96 The effect of the events in Ireland was to hem him in politically. Bolingbroke’s demands for an end to ‘moderate’ policies were impossible to deny or ignore given the obvious failure of such policies in Ireland and the renewed state of agitation in the tory party at home. Some immediate moves to strengthen the tory interest in Ireland were unavoidable. In December 1713 Oxford was being badgered to do something, by Bolingbroke, Bromley, even by Jonathan Swift, who delivered two ‘memorials’ of possible changes in the Irish privy council and promotions in the church. The dismissal of at least four whig councillors was recommended, and for the vacant Irish bishoprics Swift relayed a complicated scheme designed to secure the advancement of the maximum number of high churchmen.97 As early as 15 December Oxford agreed to make some concessions.98 The councillor whose removal was sought the most earnestly, Robert Molesworth, was to go. Convocation in Dublin had complained of his behaviour at a viceregal levee,

92

Bolingbroke corresp., ed. Parke, iv, pp. 440–1. Ibid., p. 382. 94 Ibid., pp. 390, 406–7. 95 Ibid., pp. 404, 430; Shrewsbury to Bolingbroke, 2 February 1713/14 (H.M.C., Bath, i, p. 245). 96 Biddle, Bolingbroke and Harley, pp. 255–8. 97 Observations on the privy council, 19 December 1713 (B.L., Add. MS 70267); G. P. Mayhew, ‘Jonathan Swift’s “Prefermts of Ireland”, 1713–14’ in H.L.Q., xxx (1966–7), pp. 297–305. 98 Bolingbroke to Bromley, 15 December 1713 (P.R.O., SP 34/22/114); Bolingbroke corresp., ed. Parke, iv, pp. 400–1, 404–5. 93

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when he had insulted their representatives, and had accused him of blasphemy in making use of a quotation from scripture for this purpose.99 In one of Swift’s memorials he appeared as ‘the worst’ of the ‘very bad’. The most important of the empty sees, the newly vacant primacy, was also to be filled, and by a high churchman. There was some delay here, since the queen disliked promoting clerical extremists, but at the beginning of January the translation of Bishop Lindsay from Raphoe was announced. Simultaneously Molesworth was removed from the privy council and replaced by Lord Barrymore, a crony of Anglesey.100 Tories in Dublin were overjoyed, while the viceroy, who had opposed the appointment of Lindsay and had urged instead that ‘one should be sent from England’, was mortified. Shrewsbury claimed that all Dublin society had heard the news of these changes before he had himself been officially informed, and regarded this as a fatal blow to his credit and reputation. The ministry, he concluded, had abandoned him.101 Having taken the first step, however, Oxford stopped short. He was not prepared to carry through in full the programme that most tories had in mind, being by temperament averse to any kind of decisive action, and abhorring party ‘violence’ especially. Concern over the succession was probably also a factor. Despite his secret contacts with the pretender, which served as a kind of insurance policy, it seems unlikely that Oxford ever seriously contemplated throwing over the Hanoverians. The refusal of the pretender in March 1714 to become a protestant in order to regain the throne would certainly have convinced him. Lacking a credible and constructive alternative to his rival’s policy of ‘thorough’, Oxford therefore set himself to be ‘the “drag anchor” on Bolingbroke’s ambitions’.102 As far as Ireland was concerned, this resulted in a policy of inactivity. There was no dissolution, even though everyone realised that the old parliament could not meet again. Meanwhile, something had to be done to tackle the problems caused by the interruption to the supply. Oxford’s solution here was retrenchment of expenditure. Discussions took place at the treasury with the appropriate officers in February and March, and a few economies were made, including the suspension of the regium donum, which also represented a concession to tory sentiment in Ireland.103 As for Shrewsbury, he simply stayed where he was, being kept on in Dublin until June.

99

L.J.I., ii, pp. 441–2. Bolingbroke to Stanley, 5 January 1714 (T.C.D., MS 2021, pp. 69–71); P.R.O., SP 63/362/10–11, 69; Bromley to Oxford, 4 September [1713] (B.L., Add. MS 70287). 101 Anderson Saunders to Edward Southwell, 2 January 1713[/14] (N.A.I., M/3036, f. 85); Shrewsbury to Oxford, 2 February 1713/14 (H.M.C., Bath, i, p. 245). 102 B. W. Hill, ‘The career of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, from 1702 to 1714’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1961), p. 332. 103 Shrewsbury to Oxford, 10 February 1714 (T.C.D., MS 2022, pp. 107–50); Cal. treas. bks, xxviii, pp. 22–3, 44, 135, 252; Cal. treas. pprs, 1708–14, pp. 537, 550; Beckett, Dissent, pp. 59–60. 100

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In the beginning Bolingbroke had convinced himself that the treasurer had finally been shaken out of his moderate-minded complacency. ‘For the future during her majesty’s reign,’ Bolingbroke had written brightly, ‘the church interest and the court interest will . . . be synonymous terms.’ In Ireland in particular the ministry would ‘no longer palliate a distemper, which, like other virulent infections, will soon gather strength from the least remaining particle’.104 However, when it became clear that these hopes were not going to be fulfilled he lost all patience. In scathing language he denounced the ‘lethargy’ which seemed to have settled on the ministry in every facet of its work, and, addressing a gathering of back-benchers, declared his intention that by the end of the British parliamentary session ‘there should not be a whig left in employ’.105 He made a special effort to identify himself with the extreme tories in Ireland. When Shrewsbury returned at last to England, Bolingbroke, departing from precedent, sent his Irish correspondence from the secretary’s office directly to the lords justices, Phipps, Primate Lindsay and Archbishop Vesey of Tuam, rather than to the viceroy in the first instance, which would have been the usual administrative courtesy.106 That Ireland still loomed large in his political calculations was owing to the importance at Westminster of Anglesey, more than ever a key figure in tory intrigues. Anglesey too had at first accepted the promotion of Lindsay and the changes to the Irish privy council as harbingers of better times. Bolingbroke had reassured him in January that the treasurer was ‘determined to submit his own schemes to the opinion of his friends’.107 Presumably in consequence, Anglesey’s demeanour on his return to England was a considerable disappointment to the Hanoverian envoy, Schütz, who reported, ‘those who have seen Lord Anglesey, and are his friends, acknowledge that he is a great deal more cool than he was before he went to Ireland, and he declines to enter into what our friends propose to him’.108 Anglesey’s hope was for a radical change in the ministry’s Irish policy, and above all for a new lord lieutenant, preferably himself. The nomination of two more tory bishops for Ireland brought him in March to the point of promising to support the lord treasurer in the British parliament, though he continued to urge that all the remaining episcopal vacancies be filled.109 When Oxford made no further move he went back to his old game. Ever since Anglesey’s arrival in London the whigs had been trying to persuade him ‘to concur with them in the affair of the succession’. At length he agreed to ‘live in friendship with the whigs and to concert

104

Bolingbroke corresp., ed. Parke, iv, p. 441. A. N. Newman (ed.), ‘Proceedings in the house of commons, March–June 1714’ in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxiv (1961), pp. 213, 215. 106 See P.R.O., SP 63/370, 67/4; and Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, ch. 7, esp. pp. 203–5. 107 Swift corresp., ii, pp. 8–9; Bolingbroke corresp., iv, pp. 440–5. 108 Macpherson, Original pprs, ii, p. 574. 109 Bromley to [Oxford], 21 March 1713/14 (H.M.C., Portland, v, p. 403). 105

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with them what must be done to secure the protestant succession’.110 On 5 April 1714 he intervened in a house of lords debate in support of the whigs’ claim that the Hanoverian succession was in danger under the present ministry, with a speech which ‘ripped up the peace’.111 However, his subsequent course was erratic. During the next fortnight he ‘returned to the court’, went off again, and, in a further debate on the peace, maintained an enigmatic silence.112 One tory wrote that ‘people know not what to make of Lord Anglesey’s wavering’.113 The truth was that he was being wooed simultaneously by Oxford, Bolingbroke and the whigs, and was turning hither and thither as first one and then another seemed to have the advantage. By April the conflict between the treasurer and secretary had become indisputably a struggle for power, and in this struggle Anglesey, with his strong personal following in both lords and commons, may well have been able to play a crucial role.114 Until late in June Oxford was successful in keeping him out of Bolingbroke’s camp. The balance tipped when Bolingbroke at last began to make real progress at court, and when it became clear to Anglesey that Oxford would never recommend him for the viceroyalty, nor take measures to support the ‘church interest’ in Ireland. Bolingbroke’s willingness to help the Irish tories stood out in contrast, and in June the secretary had two excellent opportunities to prove his good intentions. First he sponsored the schism bill, intended primarily to suppress dissenting academies in England, and backed Anglesey’s initiative in adding a clause to extend the provisions to Ireland, a clause that Shrewsbury arrived in Westminster only just in time to argue against.115 Second, he did everything he could to assist the tory side in the long-running dispute over the Dublin mayoralty. Oxford, for his part, gave only a sulky acquiescence to the schism bill, endeavouring to draw its sharpest teeth by a calculated policy of amendments.116 His attitude over the Dublin case was probably equally obstructive. The ministry was certainly divided on the issue. Bolingbroke was doing all he could to forward the claims of the tory lord mayor and the Irish privy council, against stiff opposition led by Lord Chancellor Harcourt. It was an uphill struggle: the secretary was unable to overcome the delaying tactics of his opponents, and in July he was to suffer an important defeat when the cabinet decided to allow the agent of the whig aldermen access to a confidential report from

110

Macpherson, Original pprs, ii, pp. 572, 586–9. Sir John to Philip Perceval, 8 April 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, ff. 64–5). 112 Wentworth pprs, pp. 366–8; H.M.C., House of Lords, new ser., x, pp. 278–9; Sir John to Philip Perceval, 15 April 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, f. 68); Dean Story to Abp King, 17 April 1714 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1485). 113 Wentworth pprs, ed. Cartwright, p. 371. 114 Holmes, British politics, pp. 280–3. 115 Bennett, Tory crisis, p. 178; Cobbett, vi, cols 1351–5; H.M.C., House of Lords, new ser., x, pp. 345–6. 116 Angus McInnes, Robert Harley, puritan politician (London, 1970), pp. 164–5. 111

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the Irish judges.117 We may deduce something about the composition of the group supporting the aldermen from the evidence of the views of the English queen’s counsel, who had also been commanded to make a report, and who had split into two opposing factions: those in favour of the aldermen included the attorney- and solicitor-general, both Harleyites; those for the mayor included two high tories and a ‘Hanoverian’ tory. The agent for the aldermen claimed that Bolingbroke ‘had no tie on the Lord Anglesey, than to give way to him on the city case’.118 This support, and in all probability a promise to Anglesey of the viceroyalty, seems to have brought about a conjunction between the two men late in June. Although he could not go back on his previous public statements about the succession, Anglesey did begin to speak up for administration on other issues, and on 2 July stood by Bolingbroke in the lords when the secretary was attacked over the recent treaty of commerce with Spain.119 But time was running out for Bolingbroke. With the queen’s life ebbing away, Oxford was still hanging grimly to office while Bolingbroke tried in vain to put together an alternative ministry.120 When the expected viceregal appointment failed to materialise, Anglesey again grew restive. Bolingbroke’s constant searching for friends had now led him to Ormond, who entertained ambitions of returning to Dublin Castle.121 Finally, on 27 July, Oxford was dismissed. Two days before, Anglesey had been given a commission to remodel the army in Ireland in order to purge it of whigs, a token, presumably, of some greater reward to come.122 He set out for Dublin on the day that Oxford gave back the white staff, but by a cruel turn of fate was denied the opportunity to put into practice the policies he had advocated for so long. By the time he landed at Ringsend Queen Anne was already dead, and he was obliged to return to London immediately, to take his place on the council of regency for the new king, George I.123 Anne’s last act of state, on the advice of Harcourt and other privy councillors, had been to appoint Shrewsbury as her lord 117

John Forster to Abp King, 15 July 1714 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1496); Swift corresp., ii, p. 73; Bolingbroke corresp., ed. Parke, iv, p. 572; Shrewsbury to Bolingbroke, 17 July 1714 (P.R.O., SP 63/370/52). 118 Sir Edward Northey to Bolingbroke, 10 June 1714 (P.R.O., SP 63/370/46); Forster to King, 15 July 1714 (T.C.D. MS 1995–2008/1496); newsletter, 29 July 1714 (H.M.C., Portland, v, p. 473). 119 William Stratford to [Edward, Lord Harley], 26 June 1714 (H.M.C., Portland, vii, p. 191); newsletter, 22 June 1714 (Folger Shakespeare Library, Newdigate newsletters); Macpherson, Original pprs, ii, pp. 630–1, 633–5; Wentworth pprs, ed. Cartwright, pp. 402–4; Swift corresp., ii, pp. 51–2. 120 Dickinson, Bolingbroke, p. 93. 121 The diary of Sir David Hamilton, 1709–14, ed. Philip Roberts (Oxford, 1975), p. 63; Sir John Perceval to Daniel Dering, 10 July 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 47087, f. 79); Stratford to [Lord Harley], 1 July 1714 (H.M.C., Portland, vii, p. 192). 122 Queen Anne to lords justices, 23 July 1714 (Marsh’s Library, MS Z.3.1.1, no. 10). 123 Dublin Gazette, 31 July–3 August, 3–7 August 1714. 183


treasurer in succession to Oxford. Whatever plans Bolingbroke had were ruined.124

VI It is difficult to see what Bolingbroke and Anglesey could have achieved even if the queen had lived longer. The whigs of course accused Bolingbroke of plotting to bring in the pretender, and even Anglesey, though his frequent speeches in favour of the protestant succession had generally convinced English and Hanoverian observers of his ‘honesty’, was tarred with the same brush by one whig newspaper. The Flying Post divulged the purpose of his mysterious last-minute expedition to Dublin, ‘to new model the forces there, and particularly to break no less than seventy of the honest officers of the army, and fill up their places with . . . such a rabble of cutthroats as were fit for the work they had for them to do’.125 That this commission had actually been part of a jacobite conspiracy must be extremely unlikely. For one thing, Bolingbroke had already lost his nerve, having meekly agreed to the privy council’s recommendation of Shrewsbury as lord treasurer, and even made tentative overtures to the whigs.126 Anglesey is also an improbable conspirator: like all Irish protestant landowners, he had too much to lose.127 The most convincing explanation of his commission would be that it was a belated move in the direction of a policy which had often been mooted by English tories, and may well have been in Bolingbroke’s mind, of tightening the tories’ grip on the institutions of government and the armed forces, so that the party’s leaders would be able to negotiate with the Hanoverian court from a position of strength in the interim between the queen’s death and her successor’s arrival. Had this been a practicable proposition, Bolingbroke’s failure to take control of the ministry in time to enact the first stage of the scheme might indeed be regarded as having dealt a crucial blow to the tories’ long-term prospects. However, given the deep-seated prejudices of George I and his courtiers, the power of the whig magnates in the country at large, and the

124

H. L. Snyder, ‘The last days of Queen Anne: the account of Sir John Evelyn examined’ in H.L.Q., xxxiv (1970–1), pp. 268–74; Dickinson, Bolingbroke, p. 131; Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (London, 1980), pp. 392–3. 125 Reprinted in Boyer, Political state, viii, pp. 132–3. 126 Dickinson, Bolingbroke, pp. 130–1. 127 A point admitted even by those in England who persisted in regarding him as a jacobite. The duchess of Marlborough, for example, when discussing the part played by Anglesey in the Irish parliament of 1713, wrote, ‘if my Lord Ang[lesey] is not a concealed papist . . . I suppose he is to have an English estate given him instead of that in Ireland, which must go to the Roman Catholics when the p[rince] of W[ales] is upon the throne, and he is not such a fool as not to know that’ (duchess of Marlborough to Mrs Boscawen, 17 January 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 78530)). 184


depth of feeling displayed by some elements of the English tory party in favour of Hanover, it scarcely seems realistic. As far as the immediate future of the tories was concerned, more important than Bolingbroke’s failure to attain power before the queen’s death was the earlier collapse of Oxford’s leadership in the winter of 1713–14. Unlike Bolingbroke, Oxford was a man who could inspire confidence. Had the treasurer been able to maintain the ascendancy established by his reconstruction of the ministry in the previous summer, it is possible that he might have succeeded in minimising tory divisions and in carrying the party safely over into the new reign. That he faltered was due at least in part to the repercussions of the Irish parliamentary session of 1713, which refocused attention on to the great theme of his political management and the issue on which he was most vulnerable to Bolingbroke’s criticisms, namely his chronic reluctance to adopt ‘a clear tory scheme’. What happened to the unfortunate Shrewsbury threw into relief the difficulties and disadvantages of persisting with a ‘moderate’ policy, not only in Ireland but in general. The obvious conclusion for tories to draw from the Irish catastrophe was that the whigs were intractable, and that far from responding to conciliation would exploit any concession as an admission of weakness. Half-measures were therefore of no use. It did not matter that in Ireland ‘a clear tory scheme’ was unworkable; that the greater immediacy of the succession issue for Irish protestants cancelled out whatever benefits might accrue to the tories there from being the party of the court. The integration of the English and Irish party systems made it ‘impossible for the two kingdoms to proceed long upon a different scheme of politics’.128

128

Swift corresp., i, p. 424. 185

6

Exclusion, conformity and parliamentary representation: the impact of the sacramental test on Irish dissenting politics* Various political issues were raised by the presence in early eighteenth-century Ireland of substantial numbers of protestant dissenters, but the most persistently and vigorously debated was the propriety of maintaining the ‘test clause’ imposed by the Irish popery act of 1704, which required all holders of civil and military office under the crown to receive holy communion once a year in the established church. Such were the perceived effects, on employment opportunities for dissenters and on the composition of borough corporations (which also came within the scope of the act), that very soon the test came to be regarded by defenders and opponents alike as essential to the political ‘ascendancy’ of the Church of Ireland interest. A die-hard churchman in the Irish house of commons could declare ‘that he would sooner part with his right hand’.1 For more than three decades, dissenting interests would seek the repeal of the test, appealing to public opinion on both sides of the Irish Sea, to their friends in the Irish parliament, and to the English government, but every time the issue was taken up by means of a parliamentary motion, repealers suffered a humiliating defeat. Curiosity as to why such an apparently desperate quest should have been pursued for so long, despite successive rebuffs and disappointments, forms a starting point for this chapter. Part of the explanation as to why dissenters should have been so determined on repeal must lie in the effects of the imposition of the test in 1704: what exactly had the dissenters lost that they now hoped to regain? This basic question needs to be answered, as precisely as possible, before the significance of the test as a political issue can be explained.

* First published in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The politics of Irish dissent, 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1997), pp. 52–73. 1 Sir Richard Cox to [Edward Southwell], 10 July 1707 (Leicestershire R.O., Finch papers, box 4950, bdle 22). 186

THE SACRAMENTAL TEST AND IRISH POLITICS

I The Church of Ireland establishment had been suspicious of, and hostile towards, protestant dissenters ever since the Restoration, but the events of the Glorious Revolution and its aftermath added a new dimension to the ‘dissenting question’ in Irish politics, and focused attention on the problems created by a large and expanding presbyterian population in Ulster. Fearful of the precedent set by the presbyterian seizure of power in Scotland in 1689, Church of Ireland clergymen interpreted the consolidation of the five Ulster presbyteries into a ‘General Synod’ in 1691 as evidence of similar jurisdictional ambitions. Soon afterwards a new wave of Scottish immigration, driven by economic depression and bad harvests, turned Anglican anxiety into near-paranoia. Bishops and parsons thundered denunciations of the errors of presbyterian theology, the inadequacy of presbyterian liturgy and the incapacity of presbyterian orders. Some questioned presbyterians’ loyalty to the monarchy and constitution, recounting the past involvement of Scottish covenanters and English puritans in rebellion, republicanism and regicide. Then, as Irish parliamentary struggles took on the form and rhetoric of English ‘party’ politics, the conflict between church and dissent was made into the very stuff of parliamentary debate. In commons and lords, Irish tories condemned the Ulster presbyterians, and indeed protestant dissenting communities in general, south and north, as enemies of the establishment.2 The situation in which dissenters found themselves was peculiarly difficult. Not until 1719 did they enjoy even a limited measure of statutory toleration, and without legal protection they were technically liable to the full rigours of the Elizabethan and Restoration acts of uniformity. In practice, of course, the laws demanding that the entire population of Ireland attend divine worship in the established church had long proved unworkable, and dissenters absenting themselves from the parish church on Sunday would rarely face prosecution. However, there were other ways in which the law interfered with presbyterians in the exercise of their religion: from the mid-1690s onwards concerted efforts seem to have been made to prevent presbyterian ministers in Ulster from conducting marriages; church authorities exploited statutory powers to prevent the General Synod from setting up what were regarded as ‘new’ congregations; and, in a well-publicised episode, in which freedom of conscience rather than freedom of worship was at stake, the County Antrim grand jury presented, and zealous magistrates sought to imprison, three

2

Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, chs 1, 5, 9–10; Raymond Gillespie, ‘The presbyterian revolution in Ulster, 1660–1690’ in W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood (eds), Studies in church history, xxv: The churches, Ireland, and the Irish (Oxford, 1989), pp. 168–70; Connolly, Religion, pp. 79–80, 159–71; idem, ‘Reformers and highflyers: the post-revolution church’ in As by law established, pp. 152–65; Phil Kilroy, Protestant dissent and controversy in Ireland 1660–1714 (Cork, 1994), chs 7–8. 187


presbyterian ministers who scrupled to take the oath of abjuration according to the English act of 1703. The presbyterian laity also bore their share of grievances: unable to send their children to teachers of their own persuasion; charged in ecclesiastical courts with fornication if they were married by their own minister; obliged to bury their dead according to the liturgy of the Church of Ireland, and to pay for the privilege; drafted in to serve as churchwardens or sidesmen on their parish vestry; even denied the opportunity by bigoted land agents to bid for leases on church or college land. Moreover, always lurking in the background, if seldom articulated in the early eighteenth century, was the frustration at having to pay a tithe to the Church of Ireland parson as well as the pecuniary ‘encouragement’ owed to their own minister.3 On the positive side, while there was no equivalent of the English toleration act in Ireland, there was also no equivalent of the test and corporation acts. In 1692 dissenters could still take civil and military employments without hindrance, serve on the commission of the peace and other instruments of local government, hold office in borough corporations, and vote in municipal and parliamentary elections. However, it soon became clear that their right to participate in public life would come into question. High churchmen in England were already consoling themselves for the statutory religious toleration of 1689 by cherishing the maintenance of the Anglican monopoly over public office, which, they argued, guaranteed the security of their establishment; and as early as 1692 some bishops in the Church of Ireland could be found expressing a similar view. When it was proposed in the Irish house of lords to extend to Ireland the English toleration act, episcopal votes pushed through a resolution calling for the extension of the test act to Ireland as well.4 The same response was made three years later to a renewed proposal for a toleration. ‘I fear we shall be drowned with court holy water,’ wrote the Belfast presbyterian minister John McBride, ‘as our act is not like to pass unless the sacramental test come along with it.’5 In fact, what the clerical lobby eventually obtained was the best of both worlds: the withholding of a toleration act and the imposition of a sacramental test. During the winter of 1703–4 the continued exclusion of protestant dissenters from crown and municipal office in England was high on the political agenda at Westminster, following the failure of a second attempt by English tories to outlaw the practice of ‘occasional conformity’. The introduction of the first abortive bill for this purpose, in 1702, had been interpreted by some Ulster presbyterians as the harbinger of an Anglican clampdown on dissenting political interests

3

Reid, ii, pp. 469–524; iii, pp. 1–56; Beckett, Dissent, chs 3, 5–6, 11; Connolly, Religion, pp. 162–4. 4 James Bonnell to John Strype, 18 October 1692 (Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 1, f. 104). 5 John McBride to William Hamilton, 7 September 1695 (T. K. Lowry (ed.) The Hamilton manuscripts . . . (Belfast, [1867]) p. 152). 188


in Ireland.6 Now tories on the English privy council, probably led by the secretary of state, Lord Nottingham, took the initiative and inserted the ‘test clause’ into the Irish bill ‘to prevent the further growth of popery’, reasoning (correctly) that whig members of the Irish house of commons would still join with tories in voting to pass the bill, as they would be loath to reject a penal law against catholics, even at the price of betraying their allies among the dissenters.7

II Immediately after the passage of the amended bill, dissenting interests in Ireland began to lobby hard for the removal of the ‘test clause’, but the Irish parliament remained obdurate, even when the English and Irish governments interceded on the dissenters’ behalf. In 1707 the English ministry made the first of several unsuccessful attempts to help. Lord Treasurer Godolphin, having changed the direction of his administration’s Irish policy as a concession to the whig junto by appointing a ‘moderate’, Lord Pembroke, submitted to a further proof of his good intentions by requesting Pembroke to endeavour a repeal of the test. The rapid rejection of the proposal, after a set-piece debate in which two-thirds of the members present in the Irish house of commons voted against, set the pattern for the future.8 Two years later a whig lord lieutenant, Lord Wharton, schemed to secure repeal in the same way that the test had been introduced, by having an appropriate clause added in England to another Irish popery bill, only to be foiled by his cabinet colleagues, who forgot their promises and left his draft bill untouched.9 The dissenters’ ‘sufferings’ did not even come to an end after the whig triumph at the Hanoverian succession. In 1715/16 a timorous whig administration put forward a limited measure of relief to exempt army and militia officers from the effects of the test clause, but the strength of feeling in the Irish parliament persuaded the English privy council to suppress it.10 Another failure in 1719, when the duke of Bolton, as lord lieutenant, could obtain no more than 6

John Bolton to Abp King, 24 November 1702 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/962). Simms, War & politics, pp. 270–6. 8 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 178–9, 233–5; Reid, ii, pp. 525–7; Francis Annesley to King, 11 February 1706[/7] (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1241); Anderson Saunders to Edward Southwell, 10 June, 1, 5 July 1707 (B.L., Add. MS 9715, ff. 163, 168, 170); same to [same], 10 July 1707 (Leics. RO, Finch papers, box 4950, bdle 22); Joshua Dawson to Ormond, 1 August 1707 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 303–4); Robert Johnson to same (ibid., p. 305). 9 D. W. Hayton, ‘Divisions in the whig junto in 1708–9: some Irish evidence’ in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, lv (1982), pp. 206–14. 10 Reid, iii, pp. 66–79; Beckett, Dissent, pp. 71–4; Connolly, Religion, p. 165; Bp Godwin to Abp Wake, 27 February 1715/16, 3 May, 9 June 1716 (Christ Church, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xii). 7

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a restricted toleration act and a short-term indemnity, quietened agitation for a time.11 Then in the early 1730s, when presbyterian emigration from Ulster to north America was causing the authorities grave concern, Sir Robert Walpole ordered the then viceroy, the duke of Dorset, to try again. Two attempts modelled on Wharton’s plan, to add a repeal clause in England to a penal law originating in Ireland, were dropped because of threats of opposition in the Irish parliament, the second when the administration’s chief parliamentary ‘undertaker’, Henry Boyle, led a managerial retreat from what he saw as a futile, and possibly counter-productive, gesture.12 Despite their many other grievances against the Anglican establishment, dissenters concentrated their parliamentary efforts on securing a repeal of the test. As Bishop Godwin of Kilmore reported in 1717, ‘nothing less will satisfy [them]’.13 Statutory protection, through a toleration act, would certainly have offered a solution to some of their problems, but there would have been complications. The English act of 1689 had set a bad precedent, since it required subscription to articles of doctrine to which some Ulster presbyterians would object. It was also felt to leave too much discretion to magistrates. In 1692 the offer of a toleration at the price of the introduction of the test had been ‘rejected with scorn, and said to be “a giving them a stone instead of bread, and a serpent instead of fish” ’.14 The act of 1719, which left several important grievances unredressed, was a consolation prize, neither spurned nor acclaimed. Indeed, the General Synod’s immediate response was to seek support in England for a possible repeal of the test at Westminster.15 In putting the case for repeal, dissenters were petitioning for the restoration of their ‘civil rights’ as loyal protestants. They took care not to give the impression that they were seeking political power. Considering the devotion they had shown to the protestant establishment, to deny them ‘the common rights of subjects’, as the presbyterian minister, John Abernethy, wrote in 1732, was ‘unkind treatment . . . so little deserved’. More insulting still, the plain political meaning was to ‘rank them with papists’. All that Abernethy and other dissenting apologists claimed was the right to ‘perform service to the public’, to assist in the defence of the state, to which dissenters continued to show unwavering allegiance.16 The most harmful effects of the test, dissenting spokesmen observed, were felt in local government, where the absence of magistrates of their own persuasion hampered ‘the free course of justice’; in other words, 11

Reid, iii, pp. 66–79; Beckett, Dissent, pp. 71–4; Connolly, Religion, p. 165. Beckett, Dissent, ch. 8; Connolly, Religion, pp. 166, 169; see below, pp. 259–62. 13 Bp Godwin to Wake, 13 April 1717 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii). 14 A representation of the present state of religion, with regard to infidelity, heresy, impiety, and popery . . . (Dublin, 1712), p. 13. 15 Clotworthy Upton to [?John Barrington], 30 July 1719 (Bolton papers, D/73); Capt. John Henderson to Sir Alexander Cairnes, 31 October 1719 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2929/2/48); D. W. Hayton, ‘The Stanhope/Sunderland ministry and the repudiation of Irish parliamentary independence’ in E.H.R., cxiii (1998), pp. 632–5. 16 John Abernethy, The nature and consequences of the sacramental test considered . . . 12

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denied protection to ministers and congregations from persecution by high churchmen.17 (They were less happy to claim that dissenters had been dissuaded from taking commissions in the militia, since this might lay them open to insinuations of disloyalty. Indeed, the extent to which nonconformists had, or had not, volunteered for militia service at times of threatened jacobite invasion became a point at issue with their Anglican opponents.)18 For tactical reasons, therefore, dissenters rarely demonstrated an enthusiasm to participate in politics, at borough or parliamentary level, but they could not avoid the issue, for this was the favourite territory of high church polemic. It was a stock argument of the pamphlet and manuscript memorials in defence of the test, which appeared whenever the subject was raised in parliament, that repeal would make no significant difference to the county magistracy, even in north-east Ulster, since no more than a dozen J.P.s had been excluded by the enactment of the test in 1704, and there were few dissenting landlords with sufficient income to be candidates for reappointment.19 Instead, from an Anglican point of view, the danger in relaxing the restriction on local office-holding would be concentrated in towns, especially the borough corporations of Ulster, where, according to polemicists like the vicar of Belfast, William Tisdall, self-serving cliques of presbyterian merchants would regain control of municipal and parliamentary elections, and would renew their manipulation of local politics in a sinister sectarian conspiracy to monopolise wealth and power to the detriment of honest churchmen. Here was the real battleground on which the debate over the test was fought. Tisdall and others of his kidney saw the activities of dissenting interests in parliamentary boroughs, and the presence of dissenters in the house of commons, as a threat to the establishment. It was this immediate political danger that the test had been intended to forestall.20 Dissenters themselves, though steering clear of the issue in their own propaganda, were nevertheless (Dublin, 1732), reprinted in idem, Scarce and valuable tracts and sermons, occasionally published (Dublin, 1751), pp. 84, 94, 104, 128. See also [James Kirkpatrick], An historical essay upon the loyalty of presbyterians in Great-Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to this present year . . . ([Belfast,] 1713), pp. 563–4; and, in general, Ian McBride, ‘Presbyterians in the penal era’ in Bullán, i, no. 2 (1994), pp. 80–1. 17 ‘Reasons against the test in Ireland’ (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 66–7). 18 For example, William Tisdall, A seasonable inquiry into that most dangerous political principle of the kirk in power . . . (Dublin, 1713), pp. 24–6. According to one of the lords justices, Archbishop King, who as a former bishop of Derry was an old antagonist of the Ulster presbyterians and thus not without his prejudices, only forty-two nonconformists were put forward from the northern counties to take militia commissions in 1715, and several of these did not possess a substantial landed estate: King to Bp Ashe, 8 February 1715[/16] (T.C.D., MS 2533, pp. 133–4). 19 Tory interests seem to have argued from this kind of statistical evidence whenever repeal of the test appeared on the political agenda: see ‘The case of the sacramental test . . .’ (Leics. R.O., Finch papers, box 4950, Ire. 9); H.M.C., Egmont diary, i, p. 439. 20 William Tisdall, The conduct of the dissenters of Ireland, with respect both to church and state (Dublin, 1712), pp. 18–22, 34, 100. 191


sensitive to its importance. For nonconformist merchants individually, the dignity of civic office conferred public recognition of status, as well as a share in urban government, which might be exerted to their own advantage and the benefit of their co-religionists. For dissenters in general, unrestricted access to parliamentary representation was a guarantee that their voice would be heard by government, and thus that the many grievances under which they laboured would be considered.

III In absolute terms the representation of dissenters in the Irish house of commons was always minuscule; a situation which could scarcely have improved without radical reform of the electoral system. Not only were dissenters concentrated in the province of Ulster (dissenting freemen in Dublin city formed a substantial but usually ineffective minority of the electorate);21 they were also excluded from meaningful political activity in all but a handful of parliamentary boroughs. At no general election between 1692 and 1727 were more than nine dissenters returned to the Irish parliament, in a house of commons comprising 300 members. Interestingly, that peak was reached in 1703, the year before the imposition of the test.22 At the next general election, in 1713, the total fell to five, at least in part as a result of the determined efforts made by tories and high churchmen within the Dublin administration against the return of whiggish and dissenting candidates.23 In the more favourable political climate of 1715 the number rose to seven or eight (one identification is uncertain),24 but by 1727 it had dropped again, to five or even four.25 21

J. R. Hill, ‘Dublin corporation, protestant dissent, and politics, 1660–1800’ in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The politics of protestant dissent 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1997), pp. 28–34. 22 Thomas Bell (Antrim town), Edward Brice (Dungannon), William Cairnes (Belfast), William Craford (Belfast), Hugh Hamill (Lifford), Sir Arthur Langford (Coleraine), James Lenox (Derry), Hans Stevenson (Killyleagh) and Clotworthy Upton (Co. Antrim). Identification of these and other dissenting M.P.s is based on my own researches, supplemented by the genealogical information presented in J. H. Agnew, ‘The merchant community of Belfast, 1660–1707’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1994), apps A–B; and Hist. Ir. parl. 23 Sir Alexander Cairnes (Co. Monaghan), Hugh Henry (Antrim town), James Stevenson (Killyleagh), Clotworthy Upton (Co. Antrim) and Thomas Upton (Antrim town). On the 1713 election, see J. G. Simms, ‘The Irish parliament of 1713’ in G. A. Hayes-McCoy (ed.), Historical studies IV (London, 1963), pp. 83–6. 24 Sir Alexander Cairnes (Co. Monaghan), Alexander Dalway (Carrickfergus), Archibald Edmonstone (Carrickfergus), Hugh Henry (Co. Antrim), Sir Arthur Langford (Co. Antrim), James Stevenson (Randalstown), Clotworthy Upton (Co. Antrim), and possibly John McMullan (Antrim town). 25 Sir Alexander Cairnes (Monaghan town), Hugh Henry (Antrim), James Stevenson, snr (Killyleagh), James Stevenson, jnr (Killyleagh), and possibly Thomas Upton (Derry). 192


Viewed as a proportion of the entire commons membership, this decline would be statistically trivial; down from three to 1.3 per cent overall. However, there are other ways of looking at the evidence, which would render it more significant. The first would be to calculate the number of dissenting M.P.s in 1727 as a proportion of the representation in 1703, which would show a more dramatic fall of at least 55 per cent. Another would be to consider the types of constituency for which dissenters were elected (all of them in Ulster). Most were returned for ‘closed’ boroughs, controlled by patrons. For our purposes, county elections may be largely ignored, since the passage of the test clause did not affect entitlement to the freeholder franchise, and in any case presbyterian voters seem to have been a force only in County Antrim, where the Uptons of Castle Upton held one seat from 1695 until 1713 and took both in 1715, and in County Monaghan, where Sir Alexander Cairnes was elected in 1713 and in 1715.26 Two of the boroughs in which dissenting candidates were successful possessed a potwalloper franchise – Antrim town and Randalstown – and naturally deferred to proprietorial influence. Seven were corporation boroughs, but five of these were ‘closed’: Donegal town, Dungannon, Killyleagh, Lifford and Limavady.27 As ‘open’, or potentially ‘open’ constituencies, we can count only the more lively corporation boroughs of Belfast and Coleraine, where patrons might be challenged by the internal civic oligarchy; the single freeman borough in Ulster, Derry; and the county borough of Carrickfergus, whose 2,000-strong electorate combined corporators, freemen and freeholders: the very constituencies on which Tisdall focused his attention in the most vigorous of his contributions to the ‘paper war’ over the test, The conduct of the dissenters of Ireland, with respect both to church and state (1712). Of the nine M.P.s returned in 1703, one represented County Antrim and only three sat for boroughs under the control of presbyterian, or sympathetic Anglican, landlords. In 1713, after the imposition of the test, no dissenting M.P. sat for an ‘open’ borough: two represented counties (Sir Alexander Cairnes in Monaghan and Clotworthy Upton in Antrim), with the other three nominated for ‘closed’ boroughs. The increase in numbers in 1715 brought, in addition to three county members, two dissenters returned for Carrickfergus. But this was a short-lived reversal of a clear underlying trend, and after 1727 all four nonconformist members sat for pocket boroughs, 26

For County Antrim see William Tisdall, The case of the sacramental test stated and argued (Dublin, 1715), pp. 48–9, which alleged that in the 1715 election presbyterian freeholders in that county were ‘spirited up’ by their ‘teachers and elders’ to resist their landlords’ direction, ‘however precarious their tenures were, or whatever obligation they lay under’. For County Monaghan, see William Thomson’s ‘narrative’ (Bodl., MS Eng. hist. d. 155, pp. 22–3) (a reference I owe to Dr Raymond Gillespie). 27 The best guide to electoral interests in this period is the annotated lists of constituencies prepared for the tory administration in Dublin Castle prior to the 1713 election, and preserved in the Southwell papers in the B.L. (Add. MSS 34777, ff. 20–32, 42–4). 193


including Cairnes, the former shire knight who now took refuge in the borough constituency of Monaghan. Thus it would seem that dissenting involvement in electoral politics did indeed decline sharply in the three decades after the imposition of the test, albeit from a low base. By the 1730s the number of dissenters in the Irish house of commons had fallen by more than half, and those who were able to scramble their way to a commons seat owed their election either to their own proprietorial interest or to the recommendation of a sympathetic boroughmonger. But how much of the decline was specifically owing to the test? To answer this question involves looking more closely at the four ‘open’ (or potentially ‘open’) boroughs in Ulster, where, according to Tisdall, presbyterian inhabitants, in particular the wealthy commercial elites, had, in varying degrees, exercised political influence before 1704: Belfast, Carrickfergus, Coleraine and Derry. In the corporation boroughs, Belfast and Coleraine, the application of the test would have had a direct impact on parliamentary elections in disqualifying voters; and a powerful impact too, since corporation electorates were so small. In the case of a borough with a wholly or partly freeman franchise, the effect would have been indirect, though it might still have proved decisive in bringing about a shift in the balance of power within the corporation, because a municipal authority was usually empowered to admit freemen by grace, and thus could flood the constituency with new, nonresident electors. From 1692 until 1704 these four boroughs were between them able to guarantee a dissenting parliamentary presence at each general election. The presbyterian merchant, David Cairnes, sat for Derry in 1692 and 1695, being joined in the second Williamite parliament by Alderman James Lenox, while at the same time Sir Arthur Langford, of Summerhill, County Meath, captured a seat at Coleraine. In 1703 as many as four nonconformist members were elected from the ‘open’ boroughs, with Lenox and Langford accompanied to the commons by William Cairnes and William Craford, both of whom had been elected for Belfast. After the 1703 election, on the other hand, the only dissenters chosen were Alexander Dalway and Archibald Edmonstone, for Carrickfergus in 1715, and both were unseated at the following general election, in 1727. The simple aggregate of this evidence would suggest a firm conclusion, namely that presbyterians were driven off the commanding heights of municipal politics in Ulster by the test, and in these four crucial constituencies lost the capacity to return M.P.s of their own persuasion. In each case, however, the detailed story was more complicated. Let us begin in Derry, where presbyterians suffered their sharpest setback. By refusing to qualify themselves, no less than nine out of the twelve aldermen and fourteen of the twenty-four burgesses gave up their places on the common council, winning for themselves an imperishable glory, insofar as their names were inscribed on a commemorative tablet on the wall of the first presbyterian church in the city, but effectively handing over the government of the city 194


to a Church of Ireland interest.28 Within a fortnight of the mass resignation of the ‘dissenting members of the corporation’, a full court of aldermen had been reconstituted, and all but five of the vacant burgess-ships filled.29 At the next parliamentary election the seat held by the now disqualified presbyterian alderman, James Lenox, went to a tory army officer who had been admitted to the corporation in 1704, Colonel John Newton. In a narrow sense this was indeed a defeat for presbyterian political interests. It was the culmination of a power-struggle waged between the representatives of church and presbytery ever since the jacobite siege of the city, when death and exile had reduced the common council to a mere four members, and cleared the way for a presbyterian faction to take control of the corporation.30 Thereafter, as churchmen observed, vacancies on the court of aldermen were almost always supplied by presbyterian burgesses, and in nearly every case recruits to the burgess-ship also came from the presbyterian mercantile community; facts that the aldermen did not dispute, although they vigorously denied any sectarian motivation.31 Encouraged by the local Church of Ireland establishment, especially Bishop William King (until his translation to Dublin in 1703), the Anglican minority on the common council made repeated efforts to turn back the tide, exploiting the influence their friends enjoyed in Dublin Castle. In 1691 and 1692 the Irish privy council refused to approve the re-election to the mayoralty of Derry of a presbyterian incumbent, on the grounds that it was illegal to ‘hold over’ in the office, but made no attempt to impose an Anglican alternative.32 A similar situation arose in 1698, when two presbyterian candidates were disapproved in quick succession, both recent appointments to the court of aldermen. This time the actions of privy councillors were unquestionably determined by religio-political prejudice, since they were responding to the protests of a rejected Anglican candidate for the mayoralty, Alderman Thomas Moncrieffe, who had complained of being repeatedly overlooked and had alleged a sectarian conspiracy to exclude all churchmen from high municipal office in Derry.33 Eventually 28

Reid, ii, p. 511; Thomas Witherow, Derry and Enniskillen in the year 1689 . . . (Belfast, 1873), pp. 307–8. 29 Samuel Leeson to King, 13 August 1704 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1106). 30 Bp Nicolson to [Wake], 1 August 1718 (Christ Church, Arch W. Epist. xii); [Kirkpatrick], Historical essay . . . , pp. 425–9; Sir Charles S. King, A great archbishop of Dublin William King, D.D. . . . (London, 1906), p. 36; Ian McBride, The siege of Derry in Ulster protestant mythology (Dublin, 1997), pp. 20–32. 31 Derry corporation minute book, 12 January 1698 (P.R.O.N.I., LA/79/28/2). 32 [Kirkpatrick], Historical essay . . . , pp. 427–8; King, A great abp, p. 36; J. C. Beckett, ‘William King’s administration of the diocese of Derry, 1691–1703’ in I.H.S., iv (1944–5), pp. 164–80; Derry corp. min. bk, 2 November 1691, 2 January 1691/2, 29 November 1692 (P.R.O.N.I., LA/79/28/2); William Conolly to James Lenox, 11 November 1693 (ibid., T/3161/1/3). 33 Reid, ii, p. 572; Derry corp. min. bk, 12 January, 2, 23 November 1698 (P.R.O.N.I., LA/79/28/2); affidavit signed by George Squire and other aldermen and burgesses of Derry, 24 November 1698 (ibid., D/1449/12/19). 195


the privy council was prevailed upon to accept a representative of one of the longer-established presbyterian aldermanic families in what appears to have been a compromise settlement, and for several years presbyterians and Anglicans alternated in the mayoralty. Moncrieffe continued to be excluded, while presbyterian corporators agreed to behave with discretion, and not to parade the civic regalia at their religious meetings.34 In the winter of 1703–4 trouble flared again. The common council’s choice of a recently admitted presbyterian alderman to succeed the outgoing mayor, Samuel Leeson, was ignored by the Irish privy council, presumably acting under the direction, or at least the influence, of the new tory viceroy, the duke of Ormond. Without waiting for official disapproval, the Derry common councillors proceeded to a second election. This was explicitly disapproved, as was a third, and no mayor could be installed until the privy council reversed its earlier judgements on the principle of re-election, and permitted the churchman Leeson to hold over.35 The dramatic events which followed the enactment of the test may thus be viewed as bringing to an end more than a decade of conflict within the corporation, and forcing a victory for the church interest. However, if we look more closely at the effects on parliamentary representation, the picture changes. Presbyterians in the city had in fact never attempted to reserve both seats for their own brethren, being aware of the importance of having effective parliamentary representation, and seeking to return members whose voices would carry weight in the commons and with government. In the 1690s they had elected the Dutch merchant Bartholomew Van Homrigh, a revenue commissioner in Dublin and the resident agent for Lord Athlone’s Irish estates, together with their own burgess David Cairnes; and in 1703 the presbyterian James Lenox had been joined as M.P. by an Anglican alderman, Charles Norman, even though Norman was Bishop King’s most important ally (and most frequent correspondent) within the corporation, and one of the leaders of the faction that had promoted Moncrieffe’s petitions.36 Norman is also a significant figure in another respect: although a churchman, he was no high-flyer, and, indeed, voted with the whigs in parliament, a party which publicly espoused, even if it did not always effectively promote, the interests of dissenters.37 It would be wrong to assume that the Anglican faction in the common council was necessarily tory in its ‘party’ orientation. One of the new 34 Derry corp. min bk, 26 December 1698, 2 November 1699, 2 November 1700, 3, 29 November 1701, 2 November 1702 (P.R.O.N.I., LA/79/28/2); Robert Rochfort to Lenox, 6 December 1701 (ibid., T/3161/1/6); John Bolton (dean of Derry) to King, 24 February 1701[/2], 24 January 1702[/3] (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/882, 983). 35 Derry corp. min. bk, 2, 23 November, 7, 21 December 1703 (P.R.O.N.I., LA/79/28/2). 36 King to Charles Norman, 13 November 1697 (T.C.D., MS 750/1, p. 126); O’Regan, King, p. 117. 37 John Bolton to King, 24 January 1702[/3] (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/983); King to Norman, 6 November 1708 (ibid., MS 2531, p. 14); same to Bolton, 6 December 1708 (ibid., p. 29); Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 335. For Norman, see Hist. Ir. parl., v, p. 359.

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aldermen chosen in 1704 was William Conolly, a prominent whig who consistently supported the repeal of the test in parliament. Conolly had acted as adviser to, and agent for, the corporation of Derry during the political ascendancy of the presbyterian interest between 1689/90 and 1704, and continued in the corporation’s employ long afterwards.38 Of course there were tories to be found among the new corporators. As early as 1707 the reconstructed common council seems to have been divided over a mayoral election, with another petition to the privy council averted only by a timely intervention from the former bishop, King; and in the strained political atmosphere of 1713 the tory John Newton was elected to parliament alongside Charles Norman.39 However, after the Hanoverian succession the whigs recovered control, taking both seats in the general elections of 1715 and 1727, one of the successful candidates on the second occasion being Thomas Upton of Castle Upton, whose family had been active for many years in the presbyterian cause at national as well as local level, even if in 1727 they were in the process of conforming. In Belfast corporation presbyterians had also made considerable political progress in the decade following the revolution, and although by 1704 their position still fell some way short of the ascendancy enjoyed by their coreligionists in Derry, it was undoubtedly very strong. In her admirable study of the Belfast commercial elite during this period, Jean Agnew has calculated that as many as three-quarters of the burgesses elected between 1689 and 1704 were presbyterians. Just as in Derry, the early 1690s had marked a crucial stage in their advancement, with the deaths of five Anglican burgesses and their replacement by presbyterians (all elected unanimously). 40 There was still no more than the narrowest majority for the presbyterian interest, for, of the fifteen burgesses who made up the corporation in 1704, only eight were nonconformists.41 But the consistent support given to the presbyterian faction by two conforming burgesses, the brothers George and James Macartney, whig members for the borough in the 1692 parliament, who belonged to an extended 38 See e.g. Conolly to John Harvey, 9 September, 1699, 29 April 1701, 15 October 1703 (P.R.O.N.I., D/1449/12/23, 31, 37); same to John Deering, 12 November 1707 (ibid., D/1449/12/38); same to the mayor of Derry, 1 October 1709 (ibid., D/1449/12/41); same to Frederick Conyngham, 19 November 1709 (ibid., D/1449/12/42). For Conolly, see Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 474–9. 39 King to Norman, 6 November 1708 (T.C.D., MS 2531, p. 14); Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 335. 40 Agnew, ‘Merchant community of Belfast’, pp. 127–8; idem, Belfast merchant families in the seventeenth century (Dublin, 1996), pp. 91–4. 41 The names of the burgesses, and the dates on which they were elected and replaced, are given in R. M. Young (ed.), The town book of the corporation of Belfast 1613–1816 . . . (Belfast, 1892), pp. 235–7. Presbyterians are identified in [Kirkpatrick], Historical essay . . . , p. 421. By the terms of the borough charter (Young (ed.), Town book of Belfast, p. 233) there should have been only thirteen (twelve, plus the sovereign), but it is clear that the two constables of the castle, both Lord Donegall’s appointees, were added to this number,

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family with several presbyterian branches, made the margin more comfortable. Moreover, the earl of Donegall, the ground landlord, showed no aversion to the recruitment of presbyterian burgesses and the repeated election of presbyterians to the office of sovereign (chief magistrate). According to Dr Agnew eight out of the fourteen sovereigns elected between 1691 and 1704 were nonconformists, one of whom, the merchant David Butle, was in office at the time of the enactment of the test clause.42 The parliamentary representation had also come to reflect this presbyterian predominance. In the 1695 election Donegall’s brother, Hon. Charles Chichester, had been returned alongside George Macartney, but in 1703 the M.P.s chosen, presumably with Lord Donegall’s blessing, were Cairnes and Craford, both local presbyterian merchants. Unlike their counterparts in Derry, the presbyterian burgesses of Belfast did not resign en masse in 1704. In fact, they did not resign at all. To begin with, the only effect of the enactment of the test was that Butle stepped down as sovereign, to be replaced by George Macartney, who was then re-elected, with presbyterian support.43 Things went on in this way for three more years, with the presbyterian burgesses acting as ‘sleeping partners’, so to speak, in corporation business. It was not that the letter of the law was being evaded through ‘occasional conformity’, as happened in England (and for that matter in Dublin); rather, it was simply ignored. There was some minor erosion of the nonconformist interest through a process of natural selection. Two presbyterian burgesses died, Captain David Smyth and Arthur Macartney (a half-brother of George and James), and in each case the replacement was a nominee of the Donegalls.44 Previously this fact would not have been politically significant. However, it would seem that, with the unexpected death of the third Lord Donegall in 1705, and the succession of his young son under the guardianship of the dowager countess, factional rivalry had begun to trouble the corporation. Whether, as some contemporaries believed, George Macartney took advantage of the Donegall minority to assert his own interest; or whether, in the gathering excitement of party conflict in parliament, the Chichesters were becoming more pronouncedly tory in their sympathies, is difficult to say.45 Certainly, if Lady Donegall was anxious to promote a tory interest, she chose an eccentric method of doing so.

possibly under some ex-officio arrangement. The standard local history (George Benn, A history of the town of Belfast (Belfast, 1877)) would in any case be mistaken in stating that there were only twelve (p. 570). 42 Agnew, ‘Merchant community of Belfast’, pp. 128–30. 43 Young (ed.), Town book of Belfast, pp. 194–5. 44 Ibid., pp. 235–7; Agnew, ‘Merchant community of Belfast’, pp. 132–4; app., p. 47. 45 Robert Johnson to Ormond, 18 October 1707 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 312–13); Agnew, ‘Merchant community of Belfast’, pp. 134–9; idem, Belfast merchant families, pp. 96–7; Peter Roebuck, ‘The early years, 1737–64’ in idem (ed.), Macartney of Lissanoure, 1737–1806: essays in biography (Belfast, 1983), pp. 4–5. 198


Open conflict broke out in 1707, at a parliamentary by-election necessitated by the death of William Cairnes. Lady Donegall and George Macartney each put forward a candidate. Both nominees were presbyterians: Lady Donegall recommended Cairnes’s brother, Sir Alexander, the wealthy London financier who was later to sit as knight of the shire for Monaghan; Macartney recommended an English nonconformist, Samuel Ogle. Admittedly, Sir Alexander Cairnes was a man of discretion, a political moderate, who after 1710 was able to co-operate with the tory administration in Whitehall, while Ogle made no secret of his sectarian affiliations: he often acted as a political spokesman for nonconformist interests, and only a few years previously had been employed as an agent by the General Synod of Ulster to make representations to the English government.46 At the election the presbyterian burgesses did not cast their votes. They may have been confused by the presence of two candidates of their own persuasion, or respectful of the dignity of property and mindful of the previous complacency of the Donegall family. Perhaps they were unwilling to draw attention to themselves. However, one of them, Isaac Macartney, a connexion of the sovereign, made what seems to have been a tactical resignation of his burgess-ship in order to enable the admission of a replacement who would have no problem in appearing at the poll: John Haltridge, M.P. for Killyleagh, the conforming son of a presbyterian minister. Haltridge’s presence was to be of crucial importance, since his vote meant that there were now three electors on each side. With the poll tied, George Macartney arrogated to himself a casting vote as sovereign, and declared Ogle elected.47 George Macartney’s presumption was to prove fatal to the presbyterian interest on the corporation, though the train of events was neither straightforward nor without irony. Cairnes promptly petitioned against the return, his arguments focusing on the technical issue of whether the sovereign could be allowed a second vote in the event of a tie at the poll. As the case developed, however, the presence of an unqualified burgess among his own voters (in fact, not someone who had refused the test but an otherwise unqualified churchman) not only determined judgement against him but also drew the attention of the commons to the composition of the corporate body and to the fact that the test clause was being flouted. It was only a few months since

46

Agnew, Belfast merchant families, pp. 98–9; John Toland to [Lord Oxford], [c. 1712] (H.M.C., Portland, v, p. 259); Ogle to [Robert Harley], 29 April 1704 (ibid., iv, p. 82). Cairnes had strong connexions with Belfast, and may have been called upon to represent the interests of the town’s presbyterians a few years earlier in a dispute with William Tisdall: David Butle to [?Cairnes], 6 November 1703 (P.R.O.N.I., D/1449/13/1, ff. 67–8). For Cairnes, see Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 357–8; for Ogle, ibid., v, pp. 6–9. 47 Reid, ii, pp. 528–9; Agnew, ‘Merchant community of Belfast’, pp. 135–6; idem, Belfast merchant families, p. 99; C.J.I., iii, pp. 521–2; Johnson to Ormond, 18 October 1707 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 312–13); George Dodington to [?Sunderland], 2 November 1707 (P.R.O., SP 63/366/252). 199


M.P.s had rejected by a stunning majority Pembroke’s cautious overtures towards repeal of the test. They now resolved that the Belfast burgesses could no longer dispense themselves from compliance with the law.48 Despite being pressed to conform by Pembroke’s ultra-whig chief secretary, George Dodington, the rump of five presbyterian burgesses, including Butle, Craford and Edward Brice (who also sat in the commons, for Dungannon), at last resigned their places.49 Again occasional conformity was not considered as an option. When the test clause was enforced, presbyterian corporators excluded themselves, and gave way to churchmen. As in Derry, the long-term effects on parliamentary representation were less decisive than might appear at first glance. The Donegalls certainly derived some benefit from the removal of the presbyterian element from the corporation, and in succeeding general elections re-established their interest, but only as far as to be able to share the representation with the Macartneys. In 1713 the fourth earl’s candidate, Anthony Atkinson, defeated a presbyterian, James Stevenson, to secure the second seat behind Robert Moore. Circumstantial evidence indicates that Moore must have stood on a separate interest, presumably George Macartney’s. For one thing Atkinson was a strong tory, and Moore, a younger son of the third earl of Drogheda, was a whig. The Donegalls were expected to favour the high churchmen in this election, having cast aside their former even-handedness, while the Macartneys were described by the tory government’s electoral experts as ‘v[ery] b[ad]’. In 1715 John Chichester, the Donegall family candidate, was returned only after petitioning against Robert Moore’s brother Capel.50 This division of the spoils lasted beyond 1727, when the two members elected were Hon. David John Barry, presumably on the Donegall interest, and George Macartney junior, son and heir of the sovereign of 1707.51 Whether the Chichesters were still adhering to the toryism they had espoused in the later years of Anne’s reign is unclear, but the Macartneys would doubtless still have called themselves whigs. Thus, if we take a long view, we find a similar outcome in Belfast to that in Derry: presbyterians driven out of the corporation, and in consequence excluded from the commons, but whig candidates, ostensibly sympathetic to nonconformist aspirations, continuing to hold at least one of the seats.

48

C.J.I., iii, pp. 521–2, 545–6; Anderson Saunders to Edward Southwell, 1 October 1707 (B.L., Add. MS 9715, f. 189); Johnson to Ormond, 18 October 1707 (H.M.C., Ormonde, new ser., viii, pp. 312–13). 49 Dodington to [?Sunderland], 2 November 1707 (P.R.O., SP 63/366/252); Agnew, Belfast merchant families, pp. 99–104. 50 B.L., Add. MS 34777, ff. 26, 30, 42; C.J.I., iii, pp. 949, 954, 985; Irish revenue commissioners to British treasury commissioners, 19 October 1717 (N.L.I., MS 16007, pp. 28–30); Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 315, 334. 51 R. M. Young (ed.), Historical notices of old Belfast and its vicinity (Belfast, 1896), pp. 165–7, claims that the Donegall family had regained control of the borough by the mid-1720s. 200


Presbyterian corporators in Coleraine seem to have taken their cue from their counterparts in Derry rather than Belfast, leaving office in a body. At any rate, whether they resigned or were deprived, their replacements were elected at one fell swoop in November 1704.52 However, for all that the borough had returned a presbyterian M.P. in 1695 and 1703 in the person of Sir Arthur Langford, the nonconforming interest on the corporation had been relatively slim: only two out of twelve aldermen and five out of twenty-four burgesses. Langford had presumably secured his return through the proprietorial influence of his nephew and former ward, Hercules Rowley of Castleroe, and the backing of other important landed interests, in particular the Beresfords, who in political terms were effectively the patrons of the borough.53 Even though Sir Tristram Beresford, the then head of the family, had supported a churchman in the county by-election in 1697 against Alderman Lenox of Derry, there is no reason to suppose that he brought the same sectarian belligerence into borough politics.54 From this premise, one would expect the events of 1704 in the corporation to have had little or no effect on parliamentary elections. Not so: the disqualifications that followed the test opened the way for a rival interest to challenge the supremacy of the Beresfords. As in Belfast, where a minority in the Donegall family encouraged George Macartney to attempt a takeover, the succession of 5-year-old Marcus Beresford on the death of his father in 1701 created a power-vacuum which another local landowner, Captain William Jackson, was anxious to fill. The opportunity offered by the seven vacancies on the corporation (eight when we add in the failure of an elder Beresford to take the trouble to qualify himself) was quickly grasped. Jackson and his allies drafted in their own supporters and seized the mayoralty for one of their number, Arthur Cary, a coup which initiated a lengthy struggle for control with the Beresfords.55 Insofar as Jackson and Cary embraced tory principles, this factional rivalry took on a partisan aspect which had an obvious relevance to the political interests of dissenters, and the victories of Beresford candidates in 1713 and 1715 brought into the commons two more whig members, one of whom, Lieutenant-General Frederick Hamilton of Walworth House, enjoyed some national standing in the party. Again, the figure of William Conolly, who possessed a local landed interest as owner of the former Philips estate at Limavady, can be detected behind the scenes.56 52 Coleraine common council book, 7 November 1704 (P.R.O.N.I., LA/25/2AA/1A, p. 227); T. H. Mullin, Coleraine in by-gone centuries (Belfast, 1976), p. 160. 53 Mullin, Coleraine in by-gone centuries, pp. 137–9. Compare the reality with the alarmist exaggeration in Tisdall, Conduct of the dissenters, p. 19. 54 Poll for Co. Londonderry, 22–26 April 1697 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3161/1/4). 55 Mullin, Coleraine in by-gone centuries, ch. 10. See also P.R.O.N.I., T/974/2, transcripts from records of the Irish privy council (since lost) regarding the election of magistrates for Coleraine. 56 Gen. Frederick Hamilton to King, 27 January 1714[/15], 14, 28 April 1715 (T.C.D., MS 1995–2008/1572, 1622, 1627); Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 328.

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Finally, we come to Carrickfergus, where quite a different situation obtained. Here, without surviving assembly books for the period, it is impossible to say for certain whether any nonconformists were disqualified from among the seventeen aldermen and twenty-four burgesses who made up the corporation. Such evidence as we have, largely from selected transcripts of borough records made by eighteenth-century antiquarians, suggests that no significant change occurred.57 However, William Tisdall, whose acquaintance with the affairs of Carrickfergus extended to ownership of property there, claimed in his Conduct of the dissenters that by 1712 the borough had come to be dominated by a quartet of occasionally conforming or outright nonconforming aldermen, supported by a ‘vast’ presbyterian majority among the freemen, including a host of ‘outlyers’ from Belfast imported for the very purpose.58 In this instance there is at least some circumstantial evidence to suggest a connexion between Tisdall’s conspiracy theory and political reality. Evidently municipal and parliamentary elections in Carrickfergus were being contested between two factions: one headed by Alderman Samuel Davys, who was a loyal enough Anglican to bestow a gift of plate and other benefactions on his parish church in 1714,59 and whose party loyalties were clearly tory; and a more whiggish interest headed by Alderman Edward Clements. In 1711 Davys protested to the privy council against Clements’ re-election as mayor. His petition, and Clements’ response, make it clear that the whig group comprised four aldermen, as Tisdall had reported, and two-thirds of the freemen.60 Aided by tories in the government, Davys secured the mayoralty for himself in 1712 and 1713, and two of his own family were returned as M.P.s in the 1713 election. Both voted with the tories in the commons.61 By 1715, with George I on the throne and a whig administration in Dublin Castle, Clements had resumed sway, and two whig M.P.s were elected, Alexander

57

Samuel M’Skimin, The history and antiquities of the county of the town of Carrickfergus, from the earliest records, to the present time (Belfast, 1811); P.R.O.N.I., T/2707, extracts by Dean Richard Dobbs from Carrickfergus corporation records, 1785. The calendar to T/2707 takes the form of a complete typescript of the original volume. On p. 162 there is a list of aldermen and burgesses from 1681, to which further names have been added, without accompanying dates. By kind permission of Carrickfergus Borough Council, and through the good offices of Mrs Helen Rankin, I was able to make a supplementary search through such original corporation records as have survived. 58 Tisdall, Conduct of the dissenters, pp. 21–2. Details of his Carrickfergus property are to be found in Carrickfergus corporation records, ix, p. 24. There was of course a strong presbyterian element in the resident population of the town: see the comments of the duke of Schomberg in 1690 (C.S.P. dom., 1689–90, p. 220). 59 M’Skimin, Hist. Carrickfergus, p. 48. 60 Petition of Samuel Davys to lords justices and privy council, 1711 (Marsh’s Library, MS Z.3.2.6, no. 28). See also the calendar of Dobbs’s extracts from Carrickfergus corporation records (P.R.O.N.I., T/2707, pp. 173–4). 61 M’Skimin, Hist. Carrickfergus, p. 166; ibid., ed. E.J. M’Crum (2nd edn, Belfast, 1909), p. 473; Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, p. 323. 202


Dalway and Archibald Edmonstone. Significantly, these were not only local men; they were also presbyterians, but their election cannot necessarily be taken to clinch the argument for believing Tisdall’s allegations. For one thing, neither Dalway nor Edmonstone appear to have been members of the corporation. For another, it would be strange if presbyterians in Carrickfergus should have been able to retain their places while those in Belfast could not, or, alone among Ulster dissenters, should have been prepared to conform occasionally to preserve their civic dignity. It would seem more reasonable to describe the Clements faction as sympathetic to presbyterianism rather than as presbyterian itself, or even crypto-presbyterian; in other words, it was a whig faction, like those in Derry, Belfast and Coleraine. What made Carrickfergus different was that, while the other ‘open’ boroughs all returned churchmen after 1704, the partly presbyterian electorate which Clements and his fellow whigs in the assembly had helped to create enabled a successful presbyterian candidacy in 1715. This was a short-lived triumph, however, as over the next twenty years more powerful proprietorial interests asserted themselves in the borough, and intruded non-resident freemen of a rather different complexion. Pre-eminent among these patrons was Lord Conway, the governor of Carrickfergus Castle, whose protégé, Arthur Dobbs, was chosen in 1727 in a more characteristic eighteenth-century election, at a cost of some £1,000.62 The general conclusion to these detailed studies must be that only in Derry and Belfast did the imposition of the test have a direct impact on presbyterian parliamentary representation. Sir Arthur Langford’s seat at Coleraine had not been obtained through the efforts of a sectarian interest in the corporation; while the election of two presbyterian members for Carrickfergus in 1715 was, if anything, a by-product of a conflict between factions. By themselves, the two other borough constituencies where indigenous presbyterian interests were a powerful force prior to 1704 had only accounted for the return of a single dissenting M.P. in 1692 and in 1695, and three in 1703. One lesson may be that if we are to search for the reasons for the long-term decline in the number of nonconformists returned to parliament after 1704 we must look elsewhere, to the ‘closed’ boroughs and the counties in Ulster, constituencies in which all that mattered was the personal preference of the individual landlords who wielded political influence. It was indeed precisely in this area that the most damaging blows were delivered to the dissenting political interest in the early eighteenth century, more particularly in the sharp decline in the number of presbyterian proprietors able to put up for knight of the shire, to nominate to their own boroughs, or persuade patrons to recommend them to other constituencies.

62

M’Skimin, Hist. Carrickfergus (1st edn), pp. 78, 166; (2nd edn), p. 462; memorial to lords justices and privy council, 27 June 1732 (Carrickfergus corporation records, ix, p. 3); Desmond Clarke, Arthur Dobbs esquire 1689–1765 . . . (Chapel Hill, NC, 1957), pp. 24–5. 203


IV In the first three decades of the eighteenth century the presbyterian element within the Ulster landed elite suffered a progressive and seemingly inexorable decline. In about 1720 the compiler of a list of the ‘gentlemen’ of County Antrim, a social category defined by the possession of a landed income of at least £100 a year, found less than twenty dissenters and three times as many Anglicans, of whom eight were the sons of dissenters; this in the county where the presbyterian presence was longest established and most numerous.63 In another, similar exercise, this time covering the entire province of Ulster, and drawn up about a decade later, almost certainly as part of a propaganda campaign against repeal of the test, the number of dissenters was given as eight, one of whom had a ‘churchman’ as his heir.64 According to this second list, the proportion of churchmen to presbyterians within the nine counties was now over twelve to one. What is more, the outlook for nonconformity appeared to its Anglican author to be gratifyingly bleak: In this list of dissenters, there are several whose apparent heirs are churchmen, but not one churchman whose apparent heir is a dissenter, so that in a few years, in all likelihood, the disproportion will greatly increase, it having been observed that a great many dissenters of considerable estates have of late years come over to the church.

Presbyterian writers who countered such analyses with more optimistic figures seem to have been whistling in the wind.65 Presbyterian gentlemen were a visibly diminishing presence not only at elections and in parliament, but in meetings of the General Synod of Ulster, where after 1715 the number of lay elders began to decrease, and, more to the point, substantial landed proprietors occupying positions of responsibility became fewer and fewer. It

63 List of the gentlemen of Co. Down and Co. Antrim in 1720 (R.I.A., MS 24.K.19, no. 1). See also T. C. Barnard, ‘Identities, ethnicity and tradition among Irish dissenters c. 1650–1750’ in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The Irish dissenting tradition 1650–1750 (Dublin, 1995), pp. 34–5. 64 ‘A list of the nobility and gentry who are generally esteem’d to have one hundred pounds a year and upwards in the province of Ulster’ [c. 1731] (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1742, ff. 49–56). See also draft by Abp Theophilus Bolton of a pamphlet against the repeal of the test [c. 1731–3] (P.R.O.N.I., D/207/3/8, pp. 1–2): ‘As the property and government of this kingdom is now in the hands of those who profess the established religion, it will appear strange that any proposal to divest them of that government should meet with a favourable reception in either house of parliament, in one of which there is not one dissenter, and in the other scarce above one in a hundred.’ 65 John Abernethy, in Reasons for the repeal of the sacramental test (Dublin, 1733), repr. in idem, Scarce and valuable tracts and sermons, p. 61, claimed that in three counties of Ulster ‘there are above sixty dissenting gentlemen, who possess estates from £200 per annum to £1400’.

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had not always been so. In 1706 the Synod had been able to institute a scheme to encourage donations from ‘public spirited gentlemen of our persuasion’ to finance new congregations, appointing twenty-two such ‘gentlemen’ from the nine presbyteries to promote the subscription, including six present or future M.P.s.66 But no similar appeal to the landed interest can be traced thereafter, as the number of presbyterian squires dwindled. By the 1730s even the new squire of Castle Upton was a churchman. John Upton had succeeded his brother Clotworthy, who for many years had been the most visible presbyterian landlord in Ulster, the only one with enough influence to challenge consistently, and successfully, for a county seat in parliament, and the only dissenting gentleman appointed as deputy governor of a county in 1714. Clotworthy Upton’s death in 1725 would have been a major setback to the presbyterian cause without the additional misfortune of his successor being an Anglican, however well-intentioned towards presbyterians the new squire professed himself to be.67 The importance of the test in initiating or accelerating the trend towards conformity may only be surmised. The absence of proven examples of ‘occasional conformity’ might be taken to suggest that few propertied dissenters responded pragmatically to the requirements of the law, though on the other side one could point to a number of conforming presbyterian proprietors who maintained links with their past life. We have seen, for example, how John Haltridge of Dromore, conforming son of a Scottish presbyterian merchant and nephew of two presbyterian ministers, was brought in as a burgess of Belfast in 1707 to replace Isaac Macartney and vote in the parliamentary byelection in which most nonconformist burgesses abstained. The Rosses of Rostrevor, County Down, may have been another outwardly conforming family still identifying at local level with the interests of their presbyterian tenantry.68 What can be argued, however, is that even the most tentative conformists seem ultimately to have progressed from pragmatism to conviction; and within a few generations to full identification with the established church. Historians have still to investigate whether this phenomenon was confined to the landed elite, or extended to those prosperous commercial dynasties, especially in Belfast, for whom the enforcement of the test meant the wrecking of civic ambitions. Clearly conformity was not induced immediately among the merchants of Derry or Belfast, but in the long term the descendants of the martyrs of 1704 and 1707 may have been able to relocate themselves within the Anglican establishment. 66

General Synod recs, i, pp. 115–16. List of governors and deputy governors of Irish counties, 1714 (P.R.O., SP 63/371/66); Thomas Witherow, Historical and literary memorials of presbyterianism in Ireland (1623–1731) (London, 1879), pp. 207–8. 68 ‘A list of the nobility and gentry . . . in the province of Ulster’ [c. 1731] (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1742, f. 50); John Stevenson, Two centuries of life in Down (Belfast, 1920), pp. 149–51. 67

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Besides raising the issue of conformity, and its long-term significance, an examination of the history of dissenting parliamentary representation also points up the heightened importance after 1704 of what one might call in this context the ‘virtual representation’ of dissenters, that is to say the legislative and political assistance which might be afforded them by sympathetic churchmen, or, to employ an entirely anachronistic terminology, ‘liberal Anglicans’. These ‘virtual representatives’ would include the whigs returned for counties and boroughs in Ulster which previously had elected presbyterian members: men such as Charles Norman in Derry, the Macartneys in Belfast and General Hamilton in Coleraine. At their head, as we have already seen, was William Conolly, one of the great political manipulators of the period, whose informal electoral empire took in not only these more ‘open’ boroughs but also a raft of smaller, ‘closed’ constituencies, in counties Londonderry and Donegal, and whose ‘Ultonian’ connexion helped propel him to the forefront of early Hanoverian parliamentary management. As speaker of the Irish house of commons after 1715 Conolly seems to have taken upon himself the role of parliamentary patron of the dissenting cause, and to have made not only promises about the repeal of the test in 1716 and 1719, but even some attempts to fulfil them.69 In retrospect the limits of such ‘liberal Anglicanism’ in this period are plain to see, but the eyes of early eighteenth-century presbyterians were covered with a film of optimism, engendered by the nature of political divisions in Ireland in the reign of Anne. The opposition of whigs to tories hinged on a fundamentally different approach to religious policy and the defence of the protestant establishment: whigs had proclaimed the need to foster unity among protestants, conformist and nonconformist, in order to withstand the expected onslaught of the jacobites. While the ‘rage of party’ persisted, the repeated failure of whig M.P.s to match words with deeds did not seem to matter: party rhetoric, on both sides, reinforced the image of the whigs as defenders of nonconformist interests. It was easier to believe the excuses of whig ministers when the alternative, a tory administration, was so much worse; but once the tories seemed to have been defeated for good, dissenters expected to share in the victory of the ‘honest party’. Pressing their case to the incoming George I, presbyterians reminded the king that they had not opposed the test at its introduction, ‘by themselves or their friends in the house [of commons], by a promise made [by] several leading members that they would take the first occasion that offered to repeal that clause, and this promise the protestant dissenters think they have good reason to expect the performance of’.70 It was the dashing of their hopes by a predominantly whig

69

‘Paper relating to the Irish clauses’ [1716] (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 95–6); Bolton to James Craggs, 27 June, 8 July 1719 (P.R.O., SP 63/377/235, 167); Clotworthy Upton to [?John Barrington], 30 July 1719 (Bolton papers, D/73). 70 ‘Reasons against the test in Ireland’ [c. 1715/16] (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 66–7). 206


house of commons – in 1716, 1719 and 1731–3 – that seems eventually to have convinced presbyterians of the inadequacy of their ‘virtual representation’, on this issue and more generally. In 1719 Clotworthy Upton made all kinds of excuses to explain the hostility of elements within the court party who might have been expected to support repeal – pique, ambition, the influence of ‘great men’ – but was finally obliged to admit that many had acted ‘from principle’. Writing to a correspondent in England, he belatedly echoed a comment made by Pembroke’s chief secretary a dozen years before, that ‘the generality of the gentlemen of this country’, although ‘state whigs’, were ‘bigoted church tories’, a vein of sentiment to be found even among some of Speaker Conolly’s ‘Ultonians’.71 When a whig like Henry Maxwell of Finnebrogue, County Down, a political client who followed Conolly so closely in the Irish house of commons as to gain the nickname ‘the speaker’s echo’, reaffirmed his own personal commitment to the retention of the test at the very time that his patron was ‘appearing openly’ for repeal, the conclusion was inescapable, that even if the goodwill of a man like Conolly might be relied upon, his capacity to help would be strictly limited.72

V If we wish to weigh the real effects of the test clause on the political interest of protestant dissent in Ireland, we must look beyond those borough corporations from which nonconforming aldermen and burgesses were so publicly excluded after 1704. Only in Derry and Belfast did this process of group disfranchisement make a difference to the balance of electoral power. Instead, the Ulster presbyterian community lost much of its already meagre resources of direct parliamentary representation as a result of creeping conformity among the landed, and to a lesser extent the mercantile, classes who provided the parliamentary candidates, and the effective electorate, in pocket boroughs.

71

George Dodington to [Thomas] Hopkins, 28 August 1707 (P.R.O., SP 63/366/87–8); Upton to [?Barrington], 30 July 1719 (Bolton papers, D/73); Marmaduke Coghill to Edward Southwell, jr., 15 November 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 78–9). 72 ‘Paper relating to the Irish clauses’ [1716] (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 95–6); Lord Brodrick to Thomas Brodrick, 10 June 1716 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 386). For Maxwell, see Caroline Robbins, The eighteenth-century commonwealthman (Cambridge, MA, 1959), pp. 6, 147–9, 416–17; Jim Smyth, ‘Anglo–Irish unionist discourse, c. 1656–1707: from Harrington to Fletcher’ in Bullán, ii, no. 1 (1995), pp. 26–30; and Hist. Ir. parl. v, pp. 222–3. He was a brother-in-law of the presbyterian M.P. Edward Brice, but was descended from clerical stock, and in a debate in the Irish house of commons in 1703, when he argued strongly against the regium donum, the annual pension given to the General Synod of Ulster for the support of presbyterian ministers, declared himself to be ‘alway[s] a churchman’: D. W. Hayton, ‘A debate in the Irish house of commons in 1703: a whiff of tory grapeshot’ in Parliamentary History, x (1991), p. 161. 207


This loss of ‘direct representation’ could have been offset to some degree by the ‘virtual representation’ provided by supposedly sympathetic churchmen, ostensibly whiggish in their politics, a significant number of whom were followers of Speaker Conolly in the reign of George I. But the repeated failure of ‘liberal Anglicans’ in general, and Conolly’s court party in particular, adequately to support dissenters’ interests in the Irish parliament, served to emphasise, and indeed to magnify, the damage the test had wrought.

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7

British whig ministers and the Irish question, 1714–25* Such discussion as there has been of the development of British policy towards Ireland in the early eighteenth century1 has tended to focus upon the extraordinary events surrounding the coinage of ‘Wood’s halfpence’ in 1722–5: the bitter opposition of Irish ‘patriots’; the rage of public opinion, inspired by Swift’s Drapier’s letters; the parliamentary difficulties encountered by administration; and the démarche signalled by the appointment of Lord Carteret as viceroy in 1724. Despite differences of interpretation, there is agreement that the affair provoked British ministers into a reappraisal of their Irish policy. The traditional view held that the failure of Dublin Castle to secure acceptance of the halfpence brought about the adoption of the so-called ‘undertaker system’, whereby the viceroy, instead of seeking to manage parliament himself, contracted out the responsibility to Irish politicians. 2 More recent studies, including an essay republished in this collection, have suggested that parliamentary management was already devolved to local managers, and that the rejection of the halfpence, far from precipitating the inauguration of an ‘undertaker system’, actually led ministers (and Robert Walpole in particular) to reconsider the viability of this approach, and to build up a selfconsciously ‘English interest’ in the Dublin administration, through the appointment of Englishmen to the judicial bench, the episcopate and the Irish privy council.3 There is, however, a danger in excessive concentration on the episode of Wood’s halfpence, that by passing too quickly over the preceding sessions we may miss important clues to the evolution of ministerial thinking on Ireland. The adoption of a longer perspective not only exposes the existence of ‘undertakers’ long before 1724, but also reveals other stages

* First published in Stephen Taylor, Richard Connors and Clyve Jones (eds), Hanoverian Britain and empire: essays in memory of Philip Lawson (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 37–65. 1 For the period covered by this chapter, see J. L. McCracken, ‘The undertakers in Ireland and their relations with the lords lieutenant, 1724–1771’ (unpublished MA thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1941); James, Empire; Joseph Griffin, ‘Parliamentary politics in Ireland during the reign of George I’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1977); D. W. Hayton, ‘Walpole and Ireland’ in Jeremy Black (ed.), Britain in the age of Walpole (London, 1984), pp. 95–119; Burns, Politics; McNally, Undertakers. 2 McCracken, ‘Undertakers’, chs 2–3. 3 See above, pp. 106–30; Hayton, ‘Walpole and Ireland’. 209


in the development of policy, and enables us to see that an earlier crisis occurred in the Irish parliamentary session of 1719, after which ministers considered and rejected a radically different, integrationist approach in favour of muddling through, until a second set of difficulties, over the halfpence, prompted changes that were readjustments rather than fundamental reforms.

I In discharging their responsibilities for the government of Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century British ministers generally opted for pragmatism over principle. This was understandable, since their limited objectives rarely necessitated a bold stroke of policy. The essential requirements of the crown had scarcely changed since Tudor times, despite the intervening rebellions, conquests, plantation and mass immigration which had so greatly expanded the British presence on the island. These requirements were the maintenance of order, the security of Ireland (and by extension the British mainland) from foreign invasion or foreign-inspired insurgency, and the preservation of political stability, so that the Irish ‘political nation’ remained free of factional conflicts which might reverberate at Westminster. Determining everything was the financial imperative. The Irish treasury had to collect enough money to support the civil and military power without subvention from Whitehall, and without putting at risk national defences (by weakening the army), social order (by pressing intolerably on the populace), or political stability (by overtaxing the propertied élite). In the eighteenth century, to sustain an adequate level of taxation necessitated parliamentary subsidies. The ‘hereditary revenues’ of the Irish crown were not enough by themselves to pay for the large army which the post-revolution monarchy wished to station on Irish soil, and members of King William’s Irish parliaments, unlike their predecessors at the Restoration, had not been prepared to grant their ‘deliverer’ any further powers of taxation in perpetuity but had held on to the power of the purse, granting instead a fixed-term ‘additional’ supply. By the Hanoverian accession the Irish treasury was running a deficit, and the Irish parliament had settled into a practice of granting ‘additional duties’ for only two years at a time.4 Regular sessions of parliament strengthened the necessity for the maintenance of political stability. Parliamentary management became one of the most important duties of government. In every sphere of responsibility what viceroys and their cabinet colleagues wanted, more than anything else, was a quiet life. The exceptions to this rule were the party politicians of the reign of Anne. The appearance in Ireland of recognisable whig and tory parties on the English model presented a viceroy with opportunities or problems, depending

4

McGrath, Constitution. 210

BRITISH MINISTERS AND THE IRISH QUESTION

on his point of view. A committed partisan, such as the tory duke of Ormond (lord lieutenant 1703–7, 1710–13) or the whig earl of Wharton (1708–10), would wish to advance the interests of fellow tories or whigs in Ireland, altering the composition of the Dublin administration to give power to supporters, and purging undesirable elements from central and local government. A self-consciously ‘moderate’ or neutral viceroy, such as the earl of Pembroke (1707–8) or the duke of Shrewsbury (1713–14), might attempt to construct a ‘mixed’ ministry and steer a course between the ‘hotter’ elements in both factions.5 But party politics involved more than the dispensing of offices and influence. Each side held ideological commitments, or, more accurately, prejudices, which affected the practice of government in the enforcement of the ecclesiastical settlement. Irish whigs took a strong line in defence of the ‘protestant interest’ in general, against what they saw as the international conspiracies of the pope, the king of France and the jacobite pretender. Tories argued more narrowly in defence of the established church, against what they perceived to be the political ambitions of the increasingly powerful Scottish presbyterian community in Ulster. Thus whigs urged ever more severe penal legislation against catholics, while tories demanded action to reinvigorate the Church of Ireland and halt the spread of dissent.6 The conflict began to focus on the issue of dissenters’ access to political power, restricted by the imposition in 1704 of a sacramental test on crown and municipal office-holders.7 Even though a clear majority of Irish M.P.s firmly supported the continuance of the test, British whig ministers were determined on its repeal, to promote unity among protestants, which alone, in their view, would deter the designs of the jacobites. In 1707 Pembroke raised the issue, at the behest of the whig junto, only to be rebuffed by the Irish house of commons, while his successor, Wharton, having entered on his government of Ireland with a resolve to force repeal, was equally unsuccessful.8 The rapid breakup of the tory party in the Irish parliament following the death of Queen Anne transformed the political landscape in Ireland, and returned ministerial policy to its previous reactive, or managerial, mode. Of course, the mass of Irish tories did not suddenly abandon their beliefs; indeed, it was possible to identify a ‘tory’ interest in many localities, and even in the commons, a decade later, but tories became far less numerous and important, and parliamentary politics in Ireland ceased to be dominated by a conflict of parties.9 The Irish electoral system, so much less ‘open’ than its English 5

L. A. Dralle, ‘Kingdom in reversion: the Irish viceroyalty of the earl of Wharton, 1708–10’ in H.L.Q., xv (1951–2), pp. 393–431; Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 159–60, 168–9, 177–82; above, pp. 117, 166–76; McGrath, Constitution, chs 5–6. 6 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, ch. 5; Connolly, Religion, pp. 74–84. 7 See above, pp. 186–208. 8 See above, p. 189; D. W. Hayton, ‘Divisions in the whig junto in 1709: some Irish evidence’ in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, lv (1982), pp. 209–12. 9 See above, pp. 119–24. 211


counterpart, could not sustain a ‘popular’ opposition, and tories suffered grievous losses at the polls in 1715. Committed ‘Hanoverian’ tories, of whom there were a substantial number, and careerist politicians like the former attorneyand solicitor-general, Sir Richard Levinge and Francis Bernard, crossed over.10 A predominantly whig court party now faced a mixed parliamentary opposition, which coalesced around issues of general public concern – ‘corruption’, economic distress, absenteeism, British parliamentary interference in Irish affairs – and characterised itself as a ‘country party’ or, increasingly as time went by, as ‘patriots’.11 In consequence, viceroys no longer landed in Ireland with a prearranged partisan agenda, determined to reconstruct the Dublin administration along party lines or to pursue a distinctive programme of legislation. The fact that in England, by contrast, party divisions and issues had retained much of their importance, and that in an English context the viceroys themselves would all have professed a whig allegiance and a whig ideology, seems to have made relatively little difference to the conduct of government in Ireland. Presbyterian agents who still expected whig ministers after 1714 to press for repeal of the test were disappointed. Fair words were forthcoming, but no decisive action. A limited scheme of relief in the 1715–16 parliamentary session was soon abandoned; and presbyterian representations in 1717 were ignored.12 When Lords Stanhope and Sunderland picked up the issue again in 1719 it was, as we shall see, with English political interests uppermost in their minds. In short, the whig government of Ireland under the early Hanoverians was essentially conservative, aiming at efficient administration and successful management rather than reform. Naturally, this was easier said than done. In particular, ministers found stable parliamentary management an elusive commodity, and without readily compliant parliaments the chronic defects in the Irish public revenue were hard to repair. The basic objectives of government, that is to say the preservation of public order and national security, were not in themselves problematic. Military defeat, exile and expropriation, followed by legislative restrictions on surviving landed and professional families, had intimidated the catholic interest; the jacobites were frankly uninterested in Ireland as a possible theatre of rebellion; and in any case large detachments of British soldiers were garrisoned in the kingdom, a ‘standing army’ beyond the objections of Westminster back-benchers.13 But troops, and their supporting bureaucracy, cost money. Irish government expenditure had swollen since the revolution. In 1692 the combined civil and military establishments totalled some £309,000, while by 10

E. M. Johnston, Great Britain and Ireland 1760–1800 (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 120–78; Patrick McNally, ‘The Hanoverian succession and the tory party in Ireland’ in Parliamentary History, xiv (1995), pp. 275–6, 280–1; idem, Undertakers, ch. 4. 11 See above, p. 123; Connolly, Religion, pp. 85–7; McNally, Undertakers, ch. 4. 12 General Synod recs, i, p. 365; The correspondence of Robert Wodrow, ed. Thomas M’Crie (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1842–3), ii, p. 48; Reid, iii, p. 666–79; Beckett, Dissent, pp. 71–4. 13 Connolly, Religion, pp. 233–49. 212


1715 this figure had risen to over £408,000, an increase of around 33 per cent. Most of the new expense was military in origin. In 1704, during the war, there had been twenty-one regiments on the Irish establishment; in 1715, in peacetime, there were twenty-eight; in 1717, as many as thirty.14 Moreover, the ways and means taken by successive Irish parliaments to cope with enlarged government expenditure proved consistently inadequate. Arrears accumulated steadily after the treaty of Limerick, until in 1707 they had reached £130,000, and, even though some efforts were made to cut the deficit (facilitated by the slowing down of the continental war effort on the part of the tory ministry before the treaty of Utrecht), the failure of the short-lived Irish parliament of 1713 to vote ‘additional duties’ for more than three months, and the dumping of extra regiments on the Irish establishment, combined to produce a further deterioration. In 1715 the Irish treasury initiated a ‘national debt’, running at first at a little over £16,000. This multiplied rapidly. The temporary disappearance of ‘additional duties’ in 1713 had a disastrous long-term effect. Merchants took advantage to stock up with tobacco and other imported excisable goods. As a result, when the duties were reimposed by the 1715 parliament their yield failed to reach expectations. By 1717 arrears on payments had jumped to nearly £250,000, while the ‘national debt’ was almost £80,000.15 It was far from clear how this money could be raised. Irish M.P.s resisted increased taxation no less vigorously than representatives of every other propertied class in eighteenth-century Europe. In this respect they may even have been less tractable than British M.P.s, for they did not succumb to a land tax, and in 1710 a substantial contingent flatly opposed granting any ‘additional’ subsidy whatsoever.16 In 1717 there was serious talk of a land tax, or a poll tax, the outgoing viceroy, Lord Townshend (who never set foot in Ireland), having failed in his ‘utmost endeavours’ at retrenchment.17 Such was the popular reaction, however, that government eventually settled for the continuing escalation of arrears and debt. It is against this background of fiscal pressure that the development of policy has to be understood. Of course, in comparison with Britain the levels of expenditure and debt were minuscule. The Nine Years’ War, which ended in 1697, left the English government some £16,700,000 in debt; by 1720 this amount had become an astronomical £50,000,000.18 But such comparisons blur the issue. Ireland was economically backward, with little industrial development and primitive banking facilities; a predominantly agrarian economy with at best uneven growth, and still suffering periodic crises of 14

Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 49, 90, 92; P.R.O., SP 63/362. Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 90–3; McGrath, Constitution, ch. 2. 16 Alan Brodrick to Thomas Brodrick, 16 March 1709[/10] (S.H.C., 1248/2, f. 380). 17 Martin Bladen to Charles Delafaye, 23 March 1716/17 (P.R.O., SP 63/375/59); William Conolly to same, 13 August 1717 (ibid., 63/375/162–3). 18 John Brewer, The sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688–1783 (London, 1989), p. 114. 15

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production. There was a chronic shortage of coin; rents were slow; trade erratic and fragile. The depth of the bitterness engendered by the controversial proposal for a national bank in 1721, and by Wood’s halfpence a year later, showed the potential for popular unrest, and the need for government to proceed in fiscal matters with caution and on the basis of consensus. There was no real alternative: the possibility of bailing out the Irish treasury using British funds was not considered; nor does it seem that ministers ever contemplated taxing Ireland from Westminster. Besides the likely outcry in Ireland, this would have meant subjecting Irish policy to the scrutiny of the British house of commons (as had happened once before, in 1693),19 offering additional opportunities for the British parliamentary opposition to make trouble.

II Soothing the Irish parliament, therefore, became the central purpose of policy after 1714. At the outset, the omens seemed favourable. The crisis over the succession had shown the strength of pro-Hanoverian sentiment in Ireland, and in particular the turbulent parliamentary session of 1713 seemed to indicate the presence of a natural majority for the whig interest among the protestant propertied élite. Despite the strenuous efforts of Lord Chancellor Phipps and other high tories in the Irish administration, and their unscrupulous exploitation of government influence, the 1713 general election had returned only a narrow tory majority in the commons, and this was quickly overturned by the abstention and cross-voting of a squadron of moderate or ‘Hanoverian’ tories. The whig leader Alan Brodrick was elected to the chair and enquiries set in train into the alleged ‘oppressions’ perpetrated by Phipps and his colleagues in the Irish privy council, until eventually the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury, was obliged to adjourn and then prorogue the session without a long-term grant of supply. The tories had succeeded in maintaining their superiority in the lords, but this was of less value to government, since it was in the commons that supply was decided.20 What appeared to be the naturally pro-Hanoverian bent of Irish protestant opinion was confirmed by the 1715 election, which resulted in a thumping whig majority, and before the new parliament met the ministry took care to doctor the composition of the upper house, through a raft of new peerage creations (from the front rank of the commons opposition of 1713), appointments to Irish bishoprics (a mixture of Irish and English nominees), and the advancement of Brodrick to the lord chancellorship.21 19

See above, pp. 48–50. See above, pp. 171–4. 21 McNally, ‘Hanoverian succession and the tory party’, pp. 274–5; idem, ‘“Irish and English interests”: national conflict within the Church of Ireland episcopate in the reign of George I’ in I.H.S., xxix (1994–5), pp. 296–7; idem, Undertakers, pp. 75–6. 20

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In fact neither house of the new parliament proved as amenable as ministers had hoped. The changing nature of parliamentary politics, from a conflict between whigs and tories to one of ‘court’ and ‘country’, meant that instead of being able to capitalise on the loyalty of a whig majority in each house, successive viceroys found themselves defending what were perceived to be Anglocentric policy decisions against a hostile coalition of self-appointed ‘patriots’. The government’s difficulties became so acute in 1720 as to induce a fundamental re-evaluation of the system of management, in which serious thought was given to the idea of abandoning the Irish parliament altogether, though without a clear idea of how money was to be raised without it. Although this particular crisis was overcome, the Walpole/Townshend ministry stumbled into further difficulties in 1722–4 over Wood’s halfpence, which necessitated a humiliating climb-down over the coinage itself, and eventually a change of direction in management, less drastic than the proposals of 1720, that was effective enough in its own way, but involved some compromising of ministerial authority. There were two structural weaknesses in parliamentary management after 1714. Difficulties in the commons arose from the prolonged confusion between rival managers or ‘undertakers’, and the indecisiveness of viceroys in choosing between them; while management in the lords was bedevilled by the emergence of a ‘patriot’ interest among bishops and peers, seemingly immune to the influence of patronage. It was in the nature of the Irish political system that viceroys required assistance from influential local politicians. With the exception of Ormond under Queen Anne, the viceroys themselves were always Englishmen (or, in the case of Lord Galway, a lord justice in 1715–16, a Frenchman). In general they had little prior acquaintance with the kingdom, although several attempts were made to remedy this defect by reappointing previous chief governors: Galway, who served as lord justice with Grafton between 1715 and 1717, had held the same post before, from 1697 to 1700, with the duke of Bolton, subsequently lord lieutenant from 1717 to 1720, as one of his former colleagues. Grafton was himself reappointed lord lieutenant in 1720. More to the point, perhaps, was the fact that these men were not chosen for their abilities but for their personal wealth, and their rank in the peerage. Both Bolton and Grafton were second-rate, the former henpecked and easily led, perpetually casting about for advice, the latter permanently immature, so obviously out of his depth that he was derided by the duke of Newcastle as ‘the child’.22 Able men were occasionally given the viceroyalty, but usually as an insult or a penance. Neither Sunderland (1714–15) nor Townshend (1717) ever entertained the slightest intention of travelling to Ireland, and each resigned rather than do so. Carteret (1724–30) did take up his post, but he

22

Burns, Politics, i, p. 69; Newcastle to Walpole, 28 October 1723 (B.L., Add. MS 32686, f. 372). 215


was an exception, sent to Dublin by Walpole and Townshend as a species of internal exile and seizing the opportunity of a difficult posting to redeem his reputation. As a stranger to Ireland, and to the configurations of Irish politics, a viceroy naturally required informed advice. This would be unlikely to come from his chief secretary – almost always a junior political appointee – for whom the office would be a first step on the ladder of preferment. Galway’s chief secretary, Martin Bladen, was one of the few chief secretaries to make himself a force to be reckoned with on the Dublin scene. Nor could the secretariat at Dublin Castle fill the gap: there were a few permanent ‘civil servants’ (of whom the most important were the under-secretary, deputy vice-treasurer and accountant-general), but they were regarded as possessing insufficient political weight to give reliable counsel, so the viceroy would naturally turn to men with practical experience of Irish politics. Grafton trusted in a kitchen cabinet comprising his chief secretary, Speaker Conolly, and Lord Chief Justice Whitshed, supplemented by various drinking cronies, ‘Lord Fitzwilliam, Ben. Parry, Lord Shannon (when well), and now and then Lord Tullamore, and now and then Lord Shelburne’.23 Some of these advisers would also act as parliamentary managers, and indeed came to be known as ‘undertakers’, a pejorative term rarely employed by contemporaries until the political crises of the mid-eighteenth century, when the managers became the subject simultaneously of popular resentment and ministerial opprobrium. In practice, ‘undertakers’ of one kind or another had operated, as we have seen, since the 1690s; they guaranteed (or ‘undertook’) to provide a majority in the commons in return for a voice in policy-making and a share of official patronage.24 The degree of influence an ‘undertaker’ enjoyed, his functions and duties, and his relationship with the viceroy (and chief secretary) would vary considerably according to personality and circumstances. But the essential point common to all who held or aspired to this position was that they were men whose influence in parliament was independent of office, who could command votes by virtue of kinship, friendship, clientage, electoral patronage, the power of oratory, even character, and who put that influence at the service (rather than at the disposal) of government. In order for this kind of delegated management to work, two things were required: a manager or ‘undertaker’ with enough influence to carry out what he had promised; and a firm understanding between viceroy and undertaker(s), publicly acknowledged and publicly demonstrated. Any sign of disharmony or distrust risked bringing management to collapse. During the heyday of ‘party’ politics, viceroys and their parliamentary managers for the most part worked in harmony. Only the self-consciously ‘moderate’ admin-

23

Sir Richard Levinge to Edward Southwell, 17 October 1721 (Levinge jottings, pp. 65–6). See above, pp. 106–30. McNally, Undertakers, ch. 6, offers a more qualified interpretation. 24

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istrations of Lords Pembroke and Shrewsbury departed from the principle: Pembroke’s version of a ‘moderating scheme’ in 1707 benefited from an unusual and fortuitous combination of circumstances, which brought the parties to vie with each other in loyalty to the crown and willingness to vote supply; something nearer Shrewsbury’s abject failure in 1713 was perhaps the more likelier outcome, when the direction of viceregal favour was not clearly established, and the government’s forces appeared to be divided.

III The problem facing ministers after 1714 was that, despite the unprecedented purge of office-holders which took place after the death of Queen Anne, and the widespread dispersal of patronage to the different family- and regionallybased interest groups which made up the whig party in Ireland, resentments and rivalries soon came to the surface. Within a few months there were rumblings from a handful of malcontents who, not having been given office, considered themselves defrauded of their just deserts; ‘a small party that for some time gave themselves airs’, as Alan Brodrick put it.25 More important was the fact that the unity of the court whigs was broken, as two competing factions emerged within the Irish administration, each seeking a privileged access to power. Brodrick himself was the key figure. At first his acceptance of a peerage and the place of lord chancellor had seemed to bring him to the very top of the greasy pole, but then the drawbacks of his new position became apparent. The patronage directly at his disposal as lord chancellor, pricking sheriffs, and issuing new commissions of the peace and militia, was in reality no great asset, since in many counties there were few enough protestants to make it practicable to distinguish between them. To make matters worse, Brodrick’s eminence meant that he was no longer involved in the day-to-day business of the commons, where a manager could make himself most useful to government, in arranging for generous grants of supply. The necessity in 1714–15 of filling the judicial bench with reliable whigs, and reinforcing the court party in the lords, had resulted in almost all of the party’s leaders being taken out of the lower house, with one important exception: William Conolly, the nouveau-riche Ulsterman who had been a commissioner of the revenue under Wharton in 1709–10 and regained that extremely useful position under the new administration. Conolly was the obvious choice for the chair of the commons in 1715, and this automatically put him at the head of the court party there. (In Ireland the speakership was a much more overtly political office than at Westminster.)26 Moreover, a

25

Alan Brodrick to [Sunderland], 29 December 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 61636, ff. 121–2). A. P. W. Malcomson, ‘John Foster and the speakership of the Irish house of commons’ in R.I.A. Proceedings, lxxii (1972), sect. C, pp. 271–7. 26

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commissionership in the revenue afforded much greater opportunities for exercising patronage than Brodrick enjoyed. The expansion of the revenue service was one of the most striking features of Irish administrative development in the decades after the revolution; and the commissioners’ independence of the castle, being directly responsible to the English treasury rather than the viceroy, left them considerable freedom of manoeuvre. The commissioners themselves determined appointments up to the most senior level, and Conolly, owing to his parliamentary standing and strength of personality, could often exercise a decisive influence.27 He certainly made the most of these advantages, and some observers claimed that within a few years he had transformed the revenue into his own personal preserve, and the engine of a powerful political machine.28 Ironically, Brodrick himself had recommended Conolly to Lord Sunderland for a revenue place, expressing the hope that this office might not be seen as incompatible with the commons’ chair.29 He soon realised his error. By Christmas 1715 he was writing to his brother in England (in a characteristically allusive style):30 Let me assure you I am credibly informed [that] while I am spending my lungs and impairing my health in endeavouring nothing may go wrong in the house where I sit, some people (and I think the triumvirate is your friend, the speaker, and one who fancies he could well fill the seat in which the king has placed me) are endeavouring to possess of the [lords] justices as if I had an intention to distress or break their government, and I am told one of the justices was so frank to say it must not be wondered at, if they endeavoured to break him who aimed at breaking them.

In Brodrick’s view, Conolly was the aggressor, aided and abetted by Chief Secretary Bladen, whom other commentators agreed was ‘entirely with’ the speaker, while ‘bearing a most implacable hatred to the chancellor’. Brodrick detected an ambition in his rival to demonstrate a superior interest in the commons, and a greater willingness to serve the crown, by offering to ‘increase the supply’ and also to secure relief for protestant dissenters.31 Conflict between the two factions did indeed break out in the Irish house of commons over these two issues. Brodrick’s eldest son St John, at the head of the

27 Hayton, ‘Eng. ministers’, pp. 51–3; Patrick McNally, ‘Patronage and politics in Ireland, 1714–1727’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1993), ch. 3. 28 McNally, Undertakers, pp. 106–7. Bishop Evans of Meath, a stalwart of the ‘English interest’, complained in 1718 that Conolly ‘puts into places his own dependants etc. so that among them an E[nglish]man can’t get bread’: Evans to [Wake], 20 May [1718] (Christ Church, Oxford, Wake papers, Arch. W. Epist. xii (unfoliated)). 29 Brodrick to [Sunderland], October 1714 (B.L., Add. MS 61636, f. 114). 30 Same to Thomas Brodrick, 18 December 1715 (S.H.C., 1248/3, ff. 283–4). 31 Same to same, 18, 27, 30 December 1715 (ibid., 1248/3, ff. 280, 289, 293); Charles Dering to Lord Perceval, 12 June 1716 (B.L., Add. MS 47028, ff. 156–7).

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chancellor’s friends, kinsmen and followers, obstructed both schemes, once clashing publicly with Bladen in debate.32 The strategy was cleverly calculated. The Brodrick ‘squadron’ did not oppose administration openly and consistently, as did the permanently malcontent whigs of the ‘country party’ (under the leadership of Colonel John Allen).33 Rather, they chose the moment to add their weight to opposition in a popular cause. Moreover, Alan Brodrick did not involve himself directly but left any trouble-making to his son St John, who, he claimed, was a headstrong young man beyond parental control. It was an approach that worked well enough to be employed repeatedly in succeeding sessions. The replacement of Galway and Grafton, first by the absentee Townshend, and then by the duke of Bolton, offered the possibility of reconciling the two factions sufficiently for them to be able to work together in parliament, however much they distrusted and disliked each other. Not only was the partisan Bladen replaced by a more even-handed chief secretary, the eventual appointment of Bolton was regarded as having pushed the pendulum of court favour back towards Brodrick, who was connected to the new viceroy by marriage. Conolly expected the worst, but in fact was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Brodrick, elevated in the peerage as Viscount Midleton, may indeed have been able to establish himself as the principal viceregal confidant, but Bolton had sense enough not to antagonise the speaker. ‘His grace is very civil to me,’ wrote Conolly, ‘and as I am not nor do I desire or expect to be in the first rank of his favour I cannot say that I am in the last . . . the only favour I begged of his grace was that he would take no representation of me but from myself and my actions.’34 The session of 1717 passed off without the two factions coming to blows. There was talk of a trial of strength over the chair of the committee of accounts, before Conolly’s candidate withdrew; and talk of opposition, or at least obstruction, by the speaker’s followers in debates on supply, which also came to nothing (much to Midleton’s chagrin, if we are to believe Conolly’s comments).35 The uneasy peace could not last. Midleton wanted a decisive public statement in his favour and expected it to be made when the ministry announced the appointment of the commission of lords justices, who would govern the country once the viceroy returned to England. After he and Bolton had spent ‘several hours’ closeted together one Sunday evening at the castle it was assumed that he had prevailed, and that Conolly would be omitted.36 But 32 Burns, Politics, i, pp. 57–66; McNally, Undertakers, pp. 120–1; Dering to Perceval, 10 December 1715 (B.L., Add. MS 47028, ff. 109–11). 33 Abp King to Robert Molesworth, 12 January 1714[/15] (T.C.D., MS 2536, pp. 168–70); Dering to Perceval, 1 June 1716 (B.L., Add. MS 47028, ff. 154–5); Burns, Politics, i, p. 65. 34 Conolly to Delafaye, 5 May, 13 August 1717 (P.R.O., SP 63/375/99, 162–3). 35 Same to same, 8 August, 21 September, 3 October 1717 (ibid., SP 63/375/152, 188, 204–5). 36 Same to same, 3 November 1717 (ibid., SP 63/375/214).

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the speaker had been intriguing with his English friends, especially Bladen and another former chief secretary Charles Delafaye, who had the ear of Lord Sunderland, with the result that Bolton received instructions from Whitehall to reappoint the previous lords justices, Midleton, Conolly and Archbishop King.37 The chancellor was furious. Political rivalry and snobbery combined to render his rival’s appointment unbearable. Midleton could not understand why the English ministers should ‘support the interest of C., who even after this session of parliament, and the very different parts he and I have taken . . . can still be kept on a level with me’; and he abhorred the fact that the speaker had been ‘made my equal, and an office of the greatest honour and trust in the kingdom to be executed in a great measure by one of his birth and education’.38 Midleton blamed Sunderland for this insult, and seems to have determined upon revenge. The course he took in pursuit of this vendetta is at first difficult to follow, for although he joined his brother in the British house of commons early in the following year and seems to have attended regularly, no reports of his speeches have survived. It may be that he paid some attention to the schismatic whig faction headed by Townshend and Walpole, with whom the Brodricks were indeed subsequently linked, but the family correspondence fails on this point. What we do know is that by the spring of 1718 rumours were circulating in Dublin that Midleton was about to resign, and that later in the year experienced political observers in England were predicting his imminent dismissal.39 He broke openly with the ministry in the spring of 1719, refusing to support the peerage bill, ‘though told by my Lord S[underland] and the duke of B[olton] what the consequences of my doing so would be, almost in express terms’. He claimed to disapprove of the measure in principle, as did a number of otherwise loyal whigs, and, in the face of personal representations from Sunderland, declared himself determined to vote ‘with my judgement’ unless given leave to return to Ireland before the bill came to be debated. In the end, Sunderland had to give way, with a bad grace, and allow him to depart. A carefully prepared account of this episode survives in Midleton’s private papers, expounding the chancellor’s principled resistance to ministerial pressure.40 Intended to be shown to friends and allies, it may also have been written with an eye to the opinion of posterity. Some historians

37

Same to same, 7, 30 November 1717 (ibid., SP 63/375/216, 220). See also Conolly to [Sunderland], 25 November 1717 (B.L., Add. MS 78499). I am indebted for this latter reference to Dr Clyve Jones. 38 Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 7 November 1717 (S.H.C., 1248/4, ff. 90–1). See also Sir John St Leger to [Lord Chief Justice Parker], 21 February 1716/17 (BL, Stowe MS 750, f. 244). 39 Dering to Perceval, 23 April 1718 (B.L., Add. MS 47028, f. 229); newsletter, 14 November [1718] (H.M.C., Portland, v, p. 571). 40 ‘Conversation between Lord Sunderland and me about the peerage bill’ [1719] (Coxe, Walpole, ii, pp. 170–5). 220


have accepted its evidence at face value,41 but the animosity that already existed between Midleton and Sunderland would permit a little cynicism: this was, after all, a critical moment for the ministry, and Midleton would have seen attractions in a well-timed desertion, either to exact revenge or serve as a reminder of his importance. The effect seems to have been to confirm Sunderland and cabinet colleagues in their determination to have a new lord chancellor, though they held back from delivering the decisive blow.42 The next Irish parliamentary session was imminent, and it was by no means clear that Conolly would be able to deliver a commons majority on his own, especially with the Brodricks in open opposition. Prospects were even more uncertain due to the deteriorating situation in the house of lords. Here was the second chronic problem of management: how to restrain the enthusiasm of a vociferous ‘patriot’ lobby in the upper house? Despite packing the lords with newly created whig peers and newly preferred whig bishops, the ministry had not acquired a solid majority immediately. Forecasts, suggesting a three-to-two preponderance for government over opposition, had proved hopelessly wide of the mark. In the most significant division of the first session of the Hanoverian parliament, in 1716, on a tory motion to admit into the house the catholic convert peer Lord Mountgarrett, the court got its way by only twenty-six votes to twenty-one.43 The tories had held together well, under the formidable dual leadership of Lord Anglesey and Primate Lindsay, and on the issue of relief for dissenters, in which they were joined by whig bishops and some whig peers, had carried the day. After the commons had passed heads of a bill offering a measure of toleration and a temporary indemnity for militia and army officers who failed to take the sacramental test, the lords, to show absolute opposition to any tampering with the test, had produced a draft of their own, identical except for the indemnity clause, in a show of political strength that persuaded the British privy council to drop the entire measure.44 In retrospect, this episode was ominous as far as ministers were concerned, for it showed their vulnerability in the lords, and in particular how important it was to retain the loyalty of the whig bishops. On religious questions episcopal recalcitrance could be frustrating, although it was unlikely to bring down the ministry, but the same bishops could also be provoked by other issues. They were especially susceptible to appeals to ‘patriotism’, and sensitive to any slight offered to Irish interests, the more so, perhaps, when ministers reverted to earlier practice and brought in outsiders to the more lucrative

41

See e.g. Connolly, Religion, pp. 90–1. James Craggs to Bolton, 14 April 1719 (Bolton papers, D/54). 43 Analysis of the membership of the Irish house of lords [1715] (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 31–2); Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 18 December 1715 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 283). 44 Reid, iii, pp. 66–79; Beckett, Dissent, pp. 71–4; ‘Papers relating to the Irish clauses’ [1716] (B.L., Add. MS 61640, ff. 95–6). 42

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Irish sees. The nomination in 1715 of the Welshman John Evans to Meath, and two years later of the Englishman William Nicolson to Derry, two patronage plums, aroused perhaps the greatest resentment. Protests were inspired and orchestrated by Archbishop King, previously the leader of the whig faction within the ecclesiastical hierarchy during the party struggles of Anne’s reign. King’s friends and protégés (most notably Archbishop Synge of Tuam, and Bishops Ashe and Stearne) formed the nucleus of an ‘Irish party’ in the episcopate, spearheading ‘patriot’ agitation over a range of grievances: constitutional, political and economic.45 One issue in particular galvanised the ‘patriot’ opposition and drew widespread support, not only from opportunist tories and eccentric individualists, but even from some whigs with coronation peerages: the protection of the rights and privileges of the house of lords, and by extension the Irish parliament as a whole, against encroachments from Westminster. The cause was a dispute over jurisdiction. Was the Irish parliament the final court of appeal for legal cases originating in Ireland, or could Irish litigants appeal decisions to the British house of lords? This was a long-running controversy. In 1698 the chancery case of the bishop of Derry v. the Irish Society (the company which had planted County Londonderry) was appealed first to the Irish house of lords, by the bishop, and then to Westminster, by the society, where the English lords declared themselves to be the proper judges in appeals from chancery in Ireland and the Irish lords to be coram non judice.46 At first denied the opportunity to respond directly, by the prorogation of their own parliament, the Irish lords took their chance when a similar case arose in 1703, namely Edward Ward et al. v. the earl of Meath. This time they reaffirmed their original judgement in favour of Lord Meath, against an English decision for the plaintiff, and went so far as to pass a series of resolutions vindicating their right of jurisdiction. A viceregal intervention was required to settle differences between the litigants, and to prevent the inter-parliamentary conflict from escalating.47 But the issue had been postponed rather than resolved, and almost inevitably came to a head in a third cause célèbre, that of Annesley v. Sherlock. Hester Sherlock’s suit against Maurice Annesley, over Annesley’s trusteeship of the Sherlock family estates, differed from the preceding cases only insofar as it had begun in the Irish court of exchequer. After an unfavourable judgment, Mrs Sherlock appealed to the Irish house of lords, who in 1716

45 James, Empire, pp. 94–9; McNally, ‘“Irish and English interests”’, pp. 296–304; O’Regan, King, esp. ch. 7. 46 James, Empire, pp. 99–100; Isolde Victory, ‘The making of the declaratory act of 1720’ in Gerard O’Brien (ed.), Parliament, politics and people: essays in eighteenth-century Irish history (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1989), pp. 10–12. See above, p. 66. 47 James, Empire, pp. 100–1; Victory, ‘Making of the declaratory act’, pp. 12–13; H.M.C., House of Lords, new ser., iii, pp. 31, 297–9; Cal. S.P. dom., 1703–4, pp. 226–7, 491–3.

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reversed the original decree. Annesley in his turn appealed to the British house of lords and received an order in his favour, whereupon Mrs Sherlock petitioned the Irish lords in September 1717 for restitution of her property in accordance with their earlier decision. A critical moment had arrived. Despite Bolton’s strenuous efforts, and some powerful contributions in debate from Lord Midleton, repeatedly arguing for compromise, the issue was framed in terms of the relationship between the two parliaments, and eventually an overwhelming majority of the lords insisted upon the right of their house to be the ‘dernier resort’ in all appeals cases originating in Ireland.48 During the debates the political temperature climbed sharply. One English resident observed:49 We are apt to think that feuds and divisions in England run very high . . . but alas, when compared with Ireland they are like little skirmishes and brangles. To preserve any temper or moderation is an intolerable crime. . . . The prodigious partiality and injustice that is daily practised doth perfectly astonish me, and put it beyond all doubt that there is no continuing upon this blessed spot of earth but upon such certain terms and conditions as cannot but be hateful and detestable.

Ominously, divisions within the lords followed ‘national’ lines. In the first vote, on 9 September, to defer a decision, six of the twelve on the court side were Englishmen (Lords Strangford and Wharton, and the bishops of Kildare, Killala, Kilmore and Meath).50 A fortnight later, when the house agreed, this time without a division, to support its ‘honour, jurisdiction, and privileges’, and to grant Mrs Sherlock possession, only the English lords and the lord chancellor dissented.51 This exposed the English bishops in particular to uncomfortable recriminations, and, not surprisingly, their letters home emphasised what they regarded as the unreasonable and bigoted national prejudice of the ‘patriots’, an impression which can only have increased the ministry’s alarm, and the determination of the British house of lords to pursue its own claim, resulting in 1718 in further resolutions at Westminster to restore Annesley.52

IV The twin problems of parliamentary management, namely how to accommodate, or resolve, the rivalry between Conolly and the Brodricks in the 48

Victory, ‘Making of the declaratory act’, pp. 14–16. Thomas Weedon to Bp Ottley, 19 September 1717 (National Library of Wales, Ottley papers, 1715). I owe this reference to Dr Stephen Taylor. 50 Bolton to Lord Cowper, 9 September 1717 (Hertfordshire R.O., D/EP F56, f. 24); Bp Godwin to [Wake], 10 September 1717 (Christ Church, Arch. W. Epist. xii). 51 Bp Evans to [Wake], 23 September 1717 (Christ Church, Arch. W. Epist. xii). 52 Victory, ‘Making of the declaratory act’, p. 16. 49

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commons, and how to subdue the patriotic enthusiasm in the lords, both came to a head in Bolton’s second parliamentary session in 1719. It is indicative of the absence of any strategic planning on the part of ministers that nothing was done to tackle either of these deep-seated difficulties in advance. Everything was left to the viceroy. Sunderland and his colleagues would have liked to be rid of Midleton, but passed responsibility for the decision to the man on the spot.53 Nor were any suggestions made as to how Bolton might handle the ramifications of the Annesley v. Sherlock case, and the viceroy was reduced to seeking the advice of his old friend Lord Cowper, who himself had resigned as lord chancellor of Great Britain the year before and was now in opposition. In vain Cowper warned Bolton to obtain explicit instructions before committing himself to any course of action, in order to avoid being made a scapegoat if things went wrong.54 Sunderland’s only positive recommendation to the viceroy, ironically enough, was not on the jurisdictional controversy but on another issue altogether, and one which, from the viceroy’s point of view, would have been far better avoided: legislative relief for dissenters. Here Sunderland contrived to throw yet another spanner into the works, by raising again the issue of the test, and insisting that Bolton attempt repeal. Indeed, the viceroy was presented with a draft bill for that very purpose. 55 As religious toleration (for protestants) was a central whig principle, and the fostering of unity among protestants an important element in the whig strategy for maintaining the Hanoverian succession, one might regard this resurrection of the repeal scheme as evidence of a proactive, reforming approach to Irish government. In reality, it had far more to do with the political situation at Westminster. Sunderland had not previously shown much interest in improving the condition of Irish dissenters as an end in itself, but was concerned to convince English dissenters of his goodwill, and possibly had an eye to the opinion of some Scottish presbyterians. Changing the religious settlement, and reducing the bounds of the confessional state, was also part of a wider political strategy: he was looking for a means to unify the rank and file of the whig party, and especially to attract the support of some radical or ‘country’ whigs, who, among other things, were loudly critical of the powers of the established church.56 The removal of the test in Ireland would build on the ministerial success of the previous winter, in repealing the English occasional conformity and schism acts to the gratification of these country 53

Craggs to Bolton, 14 April 1719 (Bolton papers, D/54). Bolton to Cowper, 13 June 1719 (Herts. R.O., D/EP F56, f. 33); Cowper to Bolton, 21 June 1719 (ibid., f. 35). 55 Bolton to [Craggs], 27 June 1719 (P.R.O., SP 63/377/234–5); ‘A paragraph in my [Bolton] letter to Mr Craggs about the bill in easie [sic] to dissenters’ [1719] (Bolton papers, D/64b). 56 G. M. Townend, ‘Religious radicalism and conservatism in the whig party under George I: the repeal of the occasional conformity and schism acts’ in Parliamentary History, vii (1988), pp. 24–44. 54

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whigs, and would do so relatively cheaply in political terms, since it would not put at risk parliamentary management at Westminster. Sunderland had not, of course, taken into consideration the political situation in Ireland. Previous experience had shown that a strong majority in both houses of the Irish parliament, whigs as well as tories, and court whigs as well as malcontents, would oppose repeal, and would probably even balk at a generous toleration act. In the lords the bishops who were at the forefront of ‘patriotic’ agitation over the question of the appellate jurisdiction would be further alienated by this attack on the church; in the commons the scheme would gratuitously offer the Brodrick faction an additional opportunity to make mischief. Bolton had already warned against taking this step before he left England. He repeated his warnings in letters after his arrival in Dublin in June 1719, when he had consulted Midleton and Conolly. Both men had counselled caution. In private Midleton had always been ambivalent on this question, though he had made various professions of service to dissenters. Conolly was undoubtedly more genuine in his concern for their cause: as Bolton reported, the speaker ‘strongly espouses the dissenters’ interest’, and was the man ‘in whom they entirely rely’. But even Conolly was against proceeding directly to repeal, and advised the viceroy to leave matters to the discretion of the house of commons.57 At this point the two rivals were adopting contrasting political strategies. Conolly pinned his hopes on his English connexions – to whom he would show himself to be helpful and constructive – on such issues as supply and the test, though without putting at risk his standing in the commons. Midleton, by contrast, relied on backstairs influence with the viceroy, whom he endeavoured to assist in the ramifying difficulties over Annesley v. Sherlock, but at the same time seems to have been prepared to obstruct other ministerial ambitions, especially over the welfare of dissenters. There is some uncertainty here, because once again it was not Midleton himself who dabbled in opposition but his son St John. As before, the chancellor tried to distance himself from his unruly offspring, a protestation of innocence that Bolton himself endorsed.58 The evidence of Midleton’s private correspondence would seem to bear out this charitable interpretation, were it not for the possibility that the chancellor may have expected his letters to be opened by the postmaster-general, Conolly’s crony Isaac Manley, and thus have consciously avoided self-incrimination.59 Certainly the British ministers did not believe

57 Bolton to [Craggs], 27 June 1719 (P.R.O., SP 63/377/234–5). Midleton’s ambivalence on this issue is noted in Connolly, Religion, pp. 164, 168. 58 Connolly, Religion, p. 165. 59 For Manley’s dependence on the speaker, see Alan to Thomas Brodrick, 16 April 1716 (S.H.C., 1248/3, f. 365); Jane Bulkeley to Mrs Jane Bonnell, 9 December [?1721] (N.L.I., P.C. 435); and for Swift’s belief that the postmaster interfered with the mails, Swift corresp., ii, p. 435.

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him, and the chief parliamentary spokesman for Irish dissenters, Clotworthy Upton, reported the outcome of the commons debates with what may well have been a sardonic emphasis: ‘my lord chancellor at last seemed pretty warm for us, but I fear too late; he was so unfortunate as not to be able to prevail on his son, brother, or any one of his friends, or those he formerly has had influence on.’60 The end result was a serious disappointment for Sunderland. Bolton took the path of discretion and, instead of proposing repeal, settled for a modest relief bill, which would have exempted from the provisions of the ‘test clause’ justices of the peace and holders of other specified civil and military offices. Even then, the Irish parliament insisted on further dilution. After much ‘caballing’ between the Brodrick faction and the tories, the commons preempted the viceroy’s bill by introducing an even more limited measure, a toleration bill which did no more than repeal the unenforceable provisions of the acts of uniformity penalising recusancy. Efforts to widen the scope of this measure were defeated by huge majorities, which served to underline the strength of opinion and induced the ministry to drop its own proposals, in return for the addition of a short-term act of indemnity in favour of those who had recently taken militia commissions during the Anglo–Spanish crisis. For many dissenters this minimal relief was almost worse than no relief at all, and the General Synod of Ulster asked sympathisers in England to do what they could to pressurise ministers for more radical change.61 At the same time, the dispute over the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish house of lords exploded. Although Bolton’s behind-the-scenes diplomacy brought about a financial settlement satisfactory to both parties in the original lawsuit, the quarrel between the two parliaments could not be patched up. At the centre of the storm was the sheriff of County Kildare, who had executed the judgment of the Irish house of lords in 1717 but had refused to acknowledge the countermanding orders of the British house of lords a year later, and had been fined for this disobedience by the barons of the Irish exchequer. On his behalf the Irish lords now pursued the matter. It did not help that two of the exchequer barons, Jeffrey Gilbert and John Pocklington, were Englishmen who proclaimed a forthright, Anglocentric view of the constitutional issue, even during interrogation by a committee of the Irish house of lords. In a dramatic move, all three barons were ordered into custody as ‘betrayers of his majesty’s prerogative and the undoubted ancient rights and privileges of this house and the rights and liberties of the subjects of this kingdom’.62

60

Upton to [?John Barrington], 30 July 1719 (Bolton papers, D/73). Bolton to Craggs, 8 July 1719 (P.R.O., SP 63/377/167); Reid, iii, pp. 92–109; Beckett, Dissent, pp. 75–81; Connolly, Religion, p. 165; General Synod recs, i, pp. 508–10; John Henderson to Sir Alexander Cairnes, 31 October 1719 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2929/2/48). 62 Victory, ‘Making of the declaratory act’, pp. 16–22. 61

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V Matters had come to such a pass that direct English intervention was necessary. As Cowper had predicted, Sunderland and his colleagues blamed Bolton for the débâcle over the appellate jurisdiction.63 They had also had their fill of Midleton. Although he was retained as a lord justice in the immediate aftermath of the parliamentary session, the ministry had determined on his removal from the lord chancellorship, and in February 1720 the seals were offered to an English lawyer, John Willes.64 Indeed, there seems to have been a general feeling in ministerial circles that a more effective English presence was now required in Dublin. It had long been an idée fixe among English politicians that Irish protestants would ‘aim at independency’ if they could, and, by implication at least, the arguments of the Irish lords about jurisdiction hinted at an assumption of legislative autonomy.65 This anxiety was fuelled by the alarmism of the English-born bishops and judges in Ireland, whose letters exaggerated the intensity of ‘patriotic’ enthusiasm inside and outside the Irish parliament. ‘There seems . . . a resolution to employ more Englishmen in the high offices of trust there,’ wrote one observer, ‘since they grow headstrong in that country and forget their mother.’66 The one bright spot was the fact that in 1719 the Irish parliament had granted an ample subsidy. The commons had made little or no difficulty about supply or ways and means, despite some early mutterings of discontent with further increases in the Irish army and in the pension list. Provision had been made for payment of the civil and military establishment over the full two years, and, for the first time, parliament had voted taxes towards the discharge of the debt.67 The significance of this success was not lost on the ministry, although overshadowed by the failure to repeal the test and the further embroiling of the two parliaments in their quarrel over jurisdiction. In a private letter to Bolton, Secretary James Craggs had commented: ‘when you have two years beforehand, it is good elbow room.’68

63

Edward Southwell to [Lord Nottingham], 17 November 1719 (Leicestershire R.O., Finch papers, D97, box 4951, bdle 26). Again, I owe this reference to Dr Clyve Jones. 64 Willes to [Sunderland], 2 July 1719 (B.L., Add. MS 61640, f. 194). 65 In their representation of their case the Irish house of lords explicitly denied aiming at legislative independence (L.J.I., ii, pp. 655–60, published separately as The humble representation made to the king’s majesty by the lords spiritual and temporal, in parliament assembled (Dublin, 1719)). Nevertheless, their insistence that matters ‘wholly’ or ‘only relating to this kingdom’ should be finally determined by an Irish parliament (L.J.I., ii, pp. 655, 659) had wide-ranging constitutional implications. 66 Southwell to [Nottingham], 17 November 1719 (Leics. R.O., Finch papers, D97, box 4951, bdle 26). 67 Bolton to Craggs, 25, 30 July 1719 (P.R.O., SP 63/377/121–2, 103); Edward Webster to Charles Delafaye, 31 July, 6 August 1719 (ibid., SP 63/377/103, 91). 68 Craggs to Bolton, 25 July 1719 (Bolton papers, D/72). 227


At the very least, this generous supply afforded a long breathing space. It also tempted some ministers to contemplate a radical departure in Irish policy: the possibility that, for the future, the Irish parliament might be overridden or bypassed. Such drastic action would certainly have reflected Sunderland’s own impetuosity and audacity, and would have been of a piece with his political tactics at Westminster. To curtail the powers and independence of the Irish parliament might have implied a betrayal of ‘revolution principles’, and a break with the traditional whig emphasis on the validity of legislative assemblies in colonial or dependent territories, but this was no real obstacle. Since 1714 whig administrations had displayed a ruthless intolerance of minor representative institutions which in any way obstructed or embarrassed them: although elections were still held for the convocation of Canterbury and the convocation of the Church of Ireland neither assembly was allowed to meet; and a similar fate befell the convocation of the stannaries in Cornwall, the so-called ‘parliament of tinners’.69 In practice whiggery was becoming associated with oligarchy, and the occlusion of parliamentary liberties, as successive administrations justified the existence of a standing army, extended the lifetime of the Westminster parliament through the septennial act, and opposed place and pension bills. The repression of Irish parliamentary ambitions would have been perfectly compatible with this general expansion of executive power. We cannot say for certain what were the intentions of the ministry; and it may well be that Sunderland and his colleagues had not really thought through any change in policy, but the indications suggest a casting around for an alternative, non-parliamentary form of political management. The first move was the introduction into the British house of lords in January 1720 of a bill, drafted by the English judges, ‘for the better securing the dependency of Ireland upon the crown of Great Britain’. Passed into law the following April (as 6 Geo. I, c. 5), the declaratory act had only two provisions: the first clause, declaring the right of the British house of lords to hear causes on appeal from Ireland; and the second, affirming that statutes passed at Westminster were binding in Ireland. Clearly the first clause was intended as the final and indisputable pronouncement on the issue of jurisdiction. The purpose of the second clause, however, is unclear.70 It may be interpreted as a simple tying up of loose ends, settling a point which was a matter of long-standing dispute between the two parliaments, and had been at least implicit (though

69

J. C. D. Clark, Revolution and rebellion: state and society in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 129–30; Clyve Jones, ‘“Venice preserv’d; or, A plot discovered”: the political and social context of the peerage bill of 1719’ in idem (ed.), A pillar of the constitution: the house of lords in British politics, 1640–1784 (London, 1989), p. 105. 70 D. W. Hayton, ‘The Stanhope/Sunderland ministry and the repudiation of Irish parliamentary independence’ in E.H.R., cxiii (1998), pp. 610–36. 228


rarely explicit) in the parliamentary and pamphlet debates over appeals. Alternatively, it may have been included for tactical reasons, as some Irish pundits opined: a (successful) attempt to deflect potential opposition in the British house of commons, from members who resented any increase in the authority of the upper house, by raising an issue (the legislative pretensions of the Irish parliament) on which all but a handful of Westminster backbenchers would agree. Neither explanation would be plausible, however, if it had been intended that the Irish parliament should meet again in the short term. Given the uncertainties of parliamentary management in Ireland, offence to Irish public opinion was obviously something to be avoided. In bringing forward the declaratory bill, Sunderland was signalling his intention to subsist, at least for a time, without another Irish parliamentary session. The second clause offered one means of constitutional circumvention: to legislate for Ireland at Westminster. If Sunderland had thought of taxing the Irish in this way it would have been a remarkable presumption, unprecedented and fraught with political dangers in the domestic sphere as well as in Ireland. But there were other possibilities, and the involvement of some radical or ‘country’ whigs in the passage of the declaratory bill, notably the chairman of the second-reading committee, Grey Neville (a presbyterian himself and a spokesman for the dissenting interest in England), suggests that Sunderland may have hoped to buy support by promising to make use of the power enshrined in the second clause to repeal the Irish test. Presbyterians in Ulster had themselves proposed such a stratagem, and Bolton went some way towards endorsing it, in recommending that action be taken at Westminster to relieve Irish dissenters of some of their disabilities. Whatever had been in Sunderland’s mind during the passage of the bill was, however, obscured in April 1720 by a political revolution at the English court. The reconciliation between the king and the prince of Wales, and between the ministry and its whig opponents (led by Townshend and Robert Walpole), changed the face of English politics. Sunderland no longer had a free hand in policy-making. Walpole in particular seems to have acted as a dead weight on the progress of the ministry’s Irish strategy. The appointment of his and Townshend’s close ally, the duke of Grafton, as lord lieutenant in June 1720, with Walpole’s own brother, Horatio, as chief secretary, showed where influence lay. On the whole, Walpole took a view of parliamentary prospects in Ireland that was simultaneously more sanguine than Sunderland’s and more cautious. On the one hand, he seems to have believed that the Irish parliament could be managed successfully despite the passage of the declaratory act and other English provocations (possibly encouraged in this optimism by his own connexions with Midleton, and Grafton’s influence with Conolly); on the other, he counselled against any dramatic and injudicious experiment. After a summer of dithering, Sunderland brought matters to a decision. Chief Baron Gilbert was now his choice to replace Midleton as lord chancellor (in a calculated snub to Irish ‘patriots’), and Sunderland persuaded the king 229


to allow officials to explore ways in which the necessity of recalling the Irish parliament in the following year might be avoided. Craggs was officially informed that His majesty, having considered the present discontents and dispositions in Ireland to become independent of the crown of Great Britain, and that it may be for his service to have the administration and government there put upon the ancient foot, that the country may be eased of the additional duties, his majesty not be under the necessity of calling a parliament every two years, and by that means the late differences between the two nations be prevented from coming to extremities, is desirous that some measures should be taken to make his hereditary revenue defray the charges of his government in that kingdom.71

Various proposals were discussed by a small ad hoc committee, to bring Irish expenditure within the compass of the hereditary revenues. The committee met at Grafton’s house, but did not include either Walpole or Townshend. Sunderland was the prime mover.72 Two broad strategies were considered: on the one hand, to maximise the yield of the hereditary revenues by ‘frugal management’, or even by tax farming, supplemented perhaps from income generated by chartering a national bank; on the other, to reduce spending by transferring regiments to the West Indies.73 It soon became clear that the reduction of the military establishment was the only practicable expedient, and in September 1720 the king signed orders to this effect. At the same time, Grafton was informed of important changes to be made in the Irish judiciary, beginning with the replacement of Midleton by Chief Baron Gilbert.74 In fact it had all come too late. The lord lieutenant objected to the political risk involved, and was strongly supported by Walpole, who produced a clinching argument: the proposed retrenchment could not take effect for several months, which meant that the Irish parliament would have to be recalled after all.75 Delay had obviated any possibility of the decisive action Sunderland had envisaged. Given that another parliamentary session was inevitable, it made sense to postpone the reshuffle of the Irish judiciary. In letters to Sunderland

71

Sunderland and Stanhope to Craggs [n.d.] (draft) (B.L., Add. MS 74066). ‘Minutes about Ireland, 20/21 June 1720’ (ibid.). 73 ‘Memorial relating to schemes proposed for making savings upon the military part of the establishment of Ireland’ (endorsed ‘In E[arl] Stanhope’s no. 1 of 22 September 1720’) (P.R.O., SP 63/379/61–72); ‘Memorial relating to schemes for making such savings upon the military establishment of Ireland as may bring the charges of the government there within the produce of the hereditary revenue’ (B.L., Add. MS 74066). 74 Sunderland to Robert Walpole, 21 September 1720 (B.L., Add. MS 74066); Craggs to Grafton, 4 October 1720 (P.R.O., SP 67/7/81). 75 Grafton to Craggs, 17 October 1720 (draft) (B.L., Add. MS 74066); Robert Walpole to Sunderland, 11 October 1720 (ibid.). 72

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both Grafton and Walpole took this line. The viceroy’s resolve was stiffened by the receipt of a protest from Conolly, pointing out that the appointment of Gilbert would have ‘dread consequences to his majesty’s affairs and the ease of your grace’s administration’. The general revulsion would make parliament unmanageable.76 Walpole took a slightly different tack. He agreed that Gilbert would be an unwise appointment, but appeared more concerned at the effect on the outgoing lord chancellor. The aggrieved Midleton might put himself at the head of the ‘patriot’ interest, ‘of which your lordship knows what may be the consequence in parliamentary proceedings’.77 Sunderland gave way on this second point, and in December Midleton received a report from England that the decision to replace him with Gilbert had been rescinded.78 In all probability neither Conolly nor Walpole were offering entirely disinterested advice. Conolly had his own candidates for promotion to the bench, and was unhappy that Sunderland’s scheme had left them on the sidelines,79 while Walpole may have been acting out of concern for his former ally Midleton, and may have viewed the political consequences in the light of his own jockeying for position within the British ministry. Behind both sets of arguments, however, lay an important reality. It was still far from clear which of ‘the two great men’ in Ireland was the stronger in parliamentary terms. The speaker had been able to carry votes of supply in 1717 and again in 1719, but the outcome of the debates over the relief of dissenters had shown the dangerous potential of the Brodrick connexion in combination with ‘patriots’ and tories. If the Irish parliament had to meet again it might be better to do nothing, to trust that the two rivals, each of whom had their own contacts at court, would compete in demonstrating loyalty (as they had in 1717) rather than making mischief, and that the resentment of the lords – and of public opinion generally – against the declaratory act would burn itself out without inflicting permanent damage.

VI As things transpired, this was exactly what happened in the next session, though it was probably as much the result of good fortune as of design. Certainly Grafton prepared the ground carefully. First he invited Midleton’s brother to call on him in London, and took pains to create a favourable impression. Then he arranged, ‘in a handsome and obliging manner’, for the

76 Conolly to Grafton (P.R.O.N.I., T/2825/A/15); same to Delafaye, 27 December 1720 (P.R.O., SP 63/379/87). 77 Robert Walpole to Sunderland, 11 October 1720 (B.L., Add. MS 74066). 78 Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 22 December 1720 (S.H.C., 1248/4, f. 377). 79 Conolly to Grafton, 2 July 1720 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2825/A/11); same to same, 5 July 1720 (ibid., T/2825/A/12); memo on judicial promotions [c. 5 July 1720] (ibid., T/2825/A/13).

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chancellor’s purse-bearer, James Barry, to have an army commission. Finally he wrote to Midleton himself. Expecting dismissal, Midleton was flattered to be asked instead for his co-operation.80 When Grafton arrived in Dublin the chancellor was seen to have ‘favour and credit’, of which he boasted ‘to everyone’.81 As a result, the session began well. The ‘patriots’’ bluff seemed to have been called, and the declaratory act was not mentioned in either house. Supply was voted without difficulty. Unfortunately, Grafton was not clever enough to be able to steer a course for very long between the rivals, and Midleton was in any case nervous of his own position and easily startled. It soon became clear that the real power behind the viceregal throne belonged to the speaker, ‘a certain little fellow’, as Midleton commented bitterly, ‘who among our great men is believed to carry everything before him by his own interest’.82 Factional conflict inevitably broke out again. However, this time it did not create intolerable embarrassment for government. The central issue was the proposed national bank, which the ministry had agreed to support, in hopes of an infusion of cash from the projectors. A ‘patriotic’ opposition quickly formed, in which Midleton joined, ostensibly alarmed by the economic and political implications of the scheme. Conolly too, sensing the public mood, dropped his original commitment to the bank, and Grafton, left alone, could do no more than limit the damage as the proposal fell through. However, this time there were no embarrassing criticisms of government; no unwelcome expressions of anti-English sentiment.83 The loss of an expected financial windfall was a small price to pay for what was in other respects a relatively comfortable session. Nevertheless, the fact that at the next time of asking, two years later, Irish political management once again fell apart, reveals the underlying frailty of the ministry’s position. Grafton’s initial success had been adventitious, and was unlikely to be repeated. In 1721–2 the two chronic problems of parliamentary management had been masked rather than solved. Minor skirmishes in the commons had shown the continuing capacity of the Brodricks to cause trouble, while in the lords the ‘patriots’ were only temporarily cowed. Archbishop King and his allies seem almost to have shocked themselves by the lengths to which they had been prepared to go in 1719. The passage of the declaratory act forced them to confront the implications of the ‘patriot’ position. No longer could they hide behind claims that they were concerned only with the narrow question of jurisdiction, since the debate had been taken 80 Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 22 January, 30 May, 5, 6 June, 6 July 1721 (S.H.C., 1248/4, f. 401; 1248/5, ff. 35, 39, 43, 55). 81 Sir Richard Levinge to Edward Southwell, 17 October 1721 (Levinge jottings, p. 65). 82 Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 17 November 1721 (S.H.C., 1248/5, f. 122). 83 Michael Ryder, ‘The Bank of Ireland, 1721: land, credit, and dependency’ in Historical Journal, xxv (1982), pp. 557–82; Burns, Politics, i, pp. 113–33. Cf. Isolde Victory, ‘Colonial nationalism in Ireland, 1692–1725: from common law to natural right’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, T.C.D., 1984), pp. 162–3, 182–7.

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to a higher plane, involving the issue of legislative autonomy, and as yet few Irish protestants were willing to press their claims that far. But if the ‘patriots’ could find a more appropriate subject for their passions, they might still be able to command a majority in the upper house. The defeat of the bank project, against which Midleton had mobilised ‘patriot’ peers and bishops, had demonstrated this amply enough. It was in the agitation over Wood’s halfpence that the government’s problems reappeared, in an even sharper form. The details of this notorious episode in Anglo–Irish relations need not concern us here, so much as the causes of the government’s difficulties and the measures taken to put matters right. By the time Grafton returned to Dublin in 1723 Midleton was thoroughly alienated, not only from the viceroy himself but also from Walpole and Townshend, who now dominated the British administration following the deaths of Stanhope and Sunderland. He had even begun an intrigue with their principal ministerial rival, Lord Carteret.84 Thus when popular resentment at the imposition of the halfpence reached unprecedented proportions, Midleton grasped the opportunity to press this political embarrassment home, beyond the viceroy himself and as far as Whitehall and the royal court. The involvement in the affair of George I’s mistress, the duchess of Kendal, who had been the original recipient of the patent for the coinage and who had sold her stake to Wood for £10,000, made the issue a highly sensitive one in English as well as in Irish terms. In the Irish house of commons there was now open warfare between the two ‘parties’: ‘the contest . . . was between [the speaker] and Mr [St John] Brodrick, which one should guide the house.’85 Grafton sided openly with Conolly. In the lords the viceroy watched passively as his crony Lord Fitzwilliam led an attempt to censure the chancellor for neglect of duty; and privately he begged ministers to dismiss Midleton.86 But not even the revelation that St John Brodrick had threatened to move for the impeachment of Walpole proved sufficiently persuasive.87 Walpole was still uncertain of Conolly’s capacity to ‘undertake’ alone, the more so because of the strength of feeling over the halfpence, against which the speaker seemed impotent. Indeed, Conolly’s reticence on the issue, which extended to

84

Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 19 January 1722, 23 July 1723 (S.H.C., 1248/5, ff. 174, 285); ‘Extract of Ld. T[ownshend]’, 2 October N.S. [1723] (B.L., Add. MS 32686, f. 337); Newcastle to Walpole, 22 October 1723 (ibid., f. 357); Walpole to Newcastle, 24 October 1723 (ibid., f. 362); Grafton to Townshend, 20 November 1723 (P.R.O., SP 63/382/17). 85 Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 21 October 1723 (S.H.C., 1248/5, f. 323); Hayton, ‘Walpole and Ireland’, pp. 103–5; Burns, Politics, i, pp. 138–43; D. W. Hayton, ‘Two ballads on the County Westmeath by-election of 1723’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, iv (1989), pp. 7–30. 86 Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 19 January 1723/4 (S.H.C., 1248/5, ff. 362–6); Grafton to Walpole, 26 December 1723 (P.R.O., SP 63/382/96). 87 Walpole to Townshend, 1/12 October 1723 (Coxe, Walpole, ii, pp. 277–8); Townshend to Walpole, 25 October 1723 [N.S.] (ibid., pp. 281–2). 233


an official resistance on the part of the revenue commissioners to enforce acceptance of the new coin, enraged Walpole as much as Midleton’s intrigues and outright opposition to the patent.88 He began to doubt whether any Irish political manager could be trusted to stand firm. Walpole’s eventual solution was a tactical master-stroke. Unlike Sunderland’s response to the crisis of 1719 it involved no fundamental reconsideration of the method of government. It was, instead, a high-political manoeuvre: the hapless Grafton was removed from the viceroyalty and replaced by the conspirator, Carteret. Responsibility for settling the disturbed state of Irish politics was left to the new lord lieutenant. Whatever happened, Walpole stood to gain: either Carteret would resolve the impasse over the halfpence, decide between Conolly and Midleton, and recover a workable scheme of management; or he would sink in the mire in which Grafton had floundered, and destroy his own reputation with the king.89 In retrospect, Carteret’s viceroyalty may be seen as a remarkable success.90 He stands out from the previous run of weak and incompetent viceroys as a man prepared to take responsibility, and to tackle problems rather than defer them. Moreover, he could claim to have quietened the furore against the halfpence and to have stabilised parliamentary management. But he did so by surrendering the political initiative rather than by imposing his own will. On his advice the coinage was withdrawn and the patent rescinded, though Walpole was reluctant to concede and only did so under protest. Deprived of this major grievance, ‘patriot’ anger began to subside. The settlement of factional rivalry in the commons was more difficult. At first Carteret avoided a decision, following the line of non-partisanship which had sometimes worked in the past, having brought Pembroke success in 1707, Bolton a brief honeymoon in 1717, and Grafton temporary relief at the beginning of the 1721–2 session. However, Carteret’s experiment, in acting as his own ‘chief minister’ in 1724–5, and hoping to secure the goodwill of all factions, did not last, foundering on the mutual hostility of speaker and chancellor.91 Midleton interpreted the viceroy’s studied neutrality as a rejection of himself, and resigned.92 Even then Carteret did not hand over leadership of the court

88

Albert Goodwin, ‘Wood’s halfpence’ repr. in Rosalind Mitchison (arr.), Essays in eighteenth-century history (London, 1966), pp. 122–3; Walpole to Grafton, 24 September 1723 (P.R.O., SP 63/381/141); Walpole to Townshend, 26 October/6 November 1723 (Coxe, Walpole, ii, p. 286). 89 Hayton, ‘Walpole and Ireland’, p. 107. 90 This is the view presented, for example, in Burns, Politics, i, pp. 161–74, and ch. 4; and Hayton, ‘Walpole & Ireland’, pp. 107–12. For a reassessment, see Patrick McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence, Carteret, and the government of Ireland, 1723–6’ in I.H.S., xxx (1996–7), pp. 354–76. 91 Griffin, ‘Parliamentary politics’, pp. 165–74; McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, pp. 361–8. 92 Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 12 March, 29 April 1725 (S.H.C., 1248/6, ff. 165–6, 213); McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, pp. 364–5. 234


party to Conolly, but his belief in the capacity of a viceroy to act as his own ‘undertaker’ was misplaced, and during his first parliamentary session he was obliged to come to an accommodation with the speaker.

VII Carteret’s settlement with Conolly ended a lengthy period of confusion. Since 1715 the British and Irish governments had failed to speak clearly and with one voice as to which among the competing groups of Irish whig politicians enjoyed the favour of the crown and its ministers. A glance at the course of events which followed Conolly’s triumph might suggest that this alone restored stability to Irish political management. The following parliamentary sessions were much less troublesome. However, there were other contributory factors to the establishment of political stability in Ireland, not least the deaths in rapid succession of St John Brodrick and Lord Midleton, which robbed the opposition of leadership and coherence. As far as the house of lords was concerned, the passing of the generations and the long-term effects of the systematic dispensation of ecclesiastical patronage produced a slow attenuation of the tory interest among both temporal and spiritual lords, and the gradual construction of a more powerful and compliant court party. The muted reaction to the declaratory act had in any case established the limits of protestant constitutional ambitions, and without a popular grievance such as Wood’s halfpence the ‘patriot’ opposition was not hard to bridle. Circumstances thus conspired to promote the success of what had been a series of pragmatic and piecemeal changes. During this period British whig ministers had shown no considered or consistent policy towards Ireland. They retained a theoretical commitment to the strengthening of the protestant interest through the conciliation of dissenters, but paid no more than lip-service to this principle unless they themselves stood to gain from it in the sphere of British domestic politics. Otherwise, changes in policy derived from short-term thinking focused on securing political stability in Ireland, suppressing parliamentary factionalism and notions of ‘independency’, and obtaining an adequate supply of ‘additional’ taxation. Viewed objectively and with hindsight, the problems that arose in the decade after 1714 seem to have been neither very serious nor all that difficult to solve. That Irish protestants hankered after ‘independency’ was a myth; the complaints of ‘patriots’ could be faced down by a determined viceroy. In the house of lords a combination of tact and the careful deployment of ecclesiastical patronage would in any case have produced in time a settled majority; in the commons what was required was a clear expression of viceregal support for one political manager, or set of managers. Unfortunately, British cabinets tended to formulate their Irish policy as crisis management: they sought to limit the adverse consequences of political failures rather than planning in advance for political success. Only once, after the setbacks of the 235


1719 parliament, did a chief minister, Sunderland, seek to get to the root of the trouble. But his radical proposals were half-baked, and it was probably just as well for government that they were never implemented. Ironically, when ministers did find an answer to their Irish question it was as a consequence of a high-political manoeuvre, contrived with a view to achieving an immediate advantage at court, and representing as much a recognition of the limitations of British government influence in Ireland as an exploitation of its potential strength.

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8

‘A remote part of the king’s dominions’: Sir Robert Walpole’s administration and the government of Ireland, c. 1725–42* Sir Robert Walpole, in common with most other English politicians in the first half of the eighteenth century, usually accorded Irish business a low priority. Even at the height of the gravest crisis in Anglo–Irish relations during his period in office, namely the affair of ‘Wood’s halfpence’, he displayed the superciliousness that characterised the fashionable Englishman’s attitude to all things Hibernian. ‘I have weathered great storms before now,’ he wrote, ‘and I hope I shall not be lost at last in an Irish hurricane.’1 Once the agitation against the halfpence had been defused, he became complacent in his confidence that Irish blustering could do no real harm to his administration. Indeed, he and his cabinet colleagues seem to have convinced themselves that the settlement reached in 1725 had solved their ‘Irish question’. Patriotic anger had been appeased, parliamentary management clarified, Anglo–Irish intrigues scotched, and a scheme of government devised that would check both overmighty viceroys and overmighty ‘undertakers’. In his biography of Walpole, Archdeacon Coxe quoted the great man as having written in 1725, ‘I think we have once more got Scotland and Ireland quiet, if we take care to keep them so.’2 Indeed, from that point on Irish affairs ceased to figure in Coxe’s narrative. In dismissing the kingdom from his consideration the archdeacon may well have taken his cue from Walpole’s own son, Horace, whose memoirs of the reign of George II did not even mention Ireland until the 1750s, when Horace introduced his account of the ‘money bill’ crisis with the following preamble: ‘While the king was absent, a scene was opened in a remote part of his dominions, which had not been accustomed to figure on the theatre of politics.’3 * Sections of this chapter have been adapted from an earlier paper, published as ‘Walpole and Ireland’ in Jeremy Black (ed.), Britain in the age of Walpole (London, 1984), pp. 95–119, 235–9. 1 Robert Walpole to the duke of Grafton, 3 October 1723, quoted in Albert Goodwin, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, repr. in Rosalind Mitchison (arr.), Essays in eighteenth-century history (London, 1966), p. 126. 2 Coxe, Walpole, i, p. 236. 3 Horace Walpole, Memoirs of King George II, ed. John Brooke (3 vols, New Haven & London, 1985), i, p. 189. 237


As we shall see, this dismissal of any suspicion of serious ministerial concern with Ireland was founded on a mistaken impression. Irish politics did not become moribund after the Wood’s halfpence controversy, and during the following two decades there was ample evidence that Irish issues could still unsettle government. What cannot be disputed, however, is that after 1725 Walpole was never forced into a position where he had to rethink the basis of his Irish policy: he tinkered, interfered, occasionally puzzled over specific problems, but he did not seriously modify the ‘system’ he had constructed in the mid-1720s. The reasons were twofold: first, under this ‘system’ Irish political management proved sufficiently effective that parliamentary disputes were never allowed to get out of hand, and the flow of ‘additional’ taxes was never interrupted; and second, it would appear that Walpole had himself been so deeply affected by the affair of the halfpence that the lessons he learned determined his thinking on Irish matters for the remainder of his career.

I The anxiety induced in English ministerial circles by the furious opposition in Ireland to Wood’s coinage had been exacerbated by the fact that this unpleasant episode followed closely on the heels of similar experiences endured by English ministers over the Annesley v. Sherlock case, the failure to secure a repeal of the sacramental test in 1719, and the crisis surrounding the declaratory act. Despite the indifference with which he seemed to shrug off the most vicious Grub Street attacks on his ‘Robinocracy’, Walpole was in fact morbidly sensitive to public opinion, and spent much effort in encouraging press campaigns in England in support of his administration. His experiences during and after the Sacheverell trial had taught him to fear not only the violence of the mob, but the force of popular opinion in the country at large. He had seen the whig party buried under a tory landslide in the British general election of 1710, when he himself had suffered rejection (and physical abuse) at the hands of freeholders in his own county of Norfolk. Arguably, this humiliation had instilled in him a determination not to repeat the mistakes of his former junto masters, and profoundly influenced his conduct as prime minister, in both foreign and domestic affairs. The intemperate defence by Irish ‘patriots’ of the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish house of lords in 1717–19, the intransigence of both houses of the Irish parliament over the sacramental test, and then, after a brief respite in the immediate aftermath of the declaratory act, a further and even more dangerous outbreak of patriotic fever in 1723–4, seems to have produced a similar effect on Walpole’s understanding of Irish politics. It was not only the campaigns in the Dublin press that alarmed him, but the cascade of addresses from county grand juries and borough corporations, and the involvement of the populace, with Wood hanged in effigy in public demonstrations, serious reports of threats against 238

WALPOLE’S ADMINISTRATION

ships landing the hated halfpence, and what one English-born judge reported as ‘extravagant behaviour’ likely to end in the ‘burning of shops, pulling down houses, and tearing in pieces the persons of such as should import, receive or conceal any of this coin’.4 Walpole’s immediate reaction had been compounded of surprise and outrage, as well as alarm. Although the patent had not been of his devising, his first instinct had been to support it, in the words of one historian, partly from ‘his concern for the royal prerogative’, and partly from ‘his conviction that a sound economic proposal was being wrecked by interested politicians and fanatical demagogues’.5 He believed in the merits of the coinage and the honesty of Wood himself, especially after the master of the royal mint, Sir Isaac Newton, no less, had assayed samples. The first printed attack on the halfpence, Ireland’s consternation, Walpole dismissed as ‘the most arrant Grub Street paper I ever read in my life’; the ‘chief objections’ sent over by the Irish government he regarded as ‘frivolous’; the outcry in the country manufactured rather than spontaneous.6 But at the same time he was wounded by public criticism, insulted by rumours that he himself might be impeached over the affair; and deeply embarrassed by the involvement of the king’s mistress, the duchess of Kendal, the original recipient of the patent. Although he professed disdain for Irish critics, he still felt the sting of their attacks long after the venom had been drawn. Walpole and his fellow cabinet ministers, including Lord Townshend, his closest colleague until 1730, and the other secretary of state, Newcastle, seem to have drawn several lessons from the troubled political history of Ireland in the decade from the Hanoverian succession to the crisis over the halfpence. The most important, and the most mistaken, was the belief that almost the entire Irish population , ‘both friend and foe’, protestant as well as catholic, was determined to ‘shake off’ the kingdom’s constitutional ‘dependency’ on England.7 This was a cliché of English policy, the standard ministerial response to any articulation of Irish grievances, though admittedly reinforced in recent years by the correspondence of English bishops and office-holders, reacting to expressions of Anglophobia not only in parliament and the press but in the drawing-rooms and streets of Dublin, and advising their correspondents in Whitehall of the necessity of a firm response.8 Walpole also drew his own conclusions from what he saw as the spinelessness, if not outright treachery, of government managers in Dublin, namely that Irish ‘undertakers’

4

Bernard Hale to Devonshire, 10 September 1724 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/8). Goodwin, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, p. 126. 6 Walpole to Grafton, 24 September 1723 (P.R.O., SP 63/381/141–3). 7 Newcastle to Townshend, 1 November 1723 (Coxe, Walpole, ii, p. 350). 8 It was also reinforced to some extent by the furore against Wood’s halfpence and some of the arguments publicly advanced by Swift in his Drapier’s letters: see the comment by Bishop Downes on the fourth letter, where the drapier ‘asserts the independency’ of 5

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could not be trusted to uphold English policy should there be any perceived conflict between ministerial requirements and the ‘patriotic’ interests of Ireland. In future these men were to be kept in a knowledge of their own subordination; no viceroy should depend on an Irish politician to the extent that the hapless Grafton had evidently depended on William Conolly. Thus Walpole set about building up what he and his henchmen in Dublin considered to be the ‘English interest’ in the Dublin administration and parliament. This was achieved principally through placing loyal Englishmen in high office in Ireland, in both church and state. The advantages of appointing Englishmen had been urged for some years by the English-born bishops and judges already resident. Even Grafton, in his anxiety to be rid of Lord Midleton, had occasionally taken this line.9 Walpole and his colleagues were fortunate that a prime opportunity to put the accepted wisdom into practice presented itself as early as the summer of 1724, when the Church of Ireland primate, Thomas Lindsay, succumbed to a long illness. Hugh Boulter, bishop of Bristol, found himself translated to Armagh on Townshend’s recommendation.10 Boulter’s advancement instead of the veteran Archbishop King, whose credentials as a ‘patriot’ were well known on both sides of the Irish Sea, and whose advancement had been canvassed by local politicians, including William Conolly, was a slap in the face for the ‘Irish interest’.11 As a statement of intent it could not have been clearer, since episcopal promotions were a sore point among Irish ‘patriots’. The frequency with which English clergymen had been appointed to bishoprics since 1715 was a major grievance, and Irish resentment was exacerbated when incoming bishops openly espoused the ‘English interest’ in the house of lords.12 To reinforce the message, the English lawyer Thomas Wyndham (a cousin of Walpole’s fellow Norfolk M.P., Ashe Windham) was preferred at about the same time to the vacant post of chief justice of common pleas in Ireland.13 Then in the following year, after Midleton’s dismissal, the lord chancellorship was given to another Englishman, Richard West, M.P. for Bodmin, raised to the Irish woolsack from the relatively lowly station of counsel to the board of trade in London.14 When Ireland, ‘notwithstanding the late act and says we are no more dependent upon England than England is upon us’: Downes to Bp Nicolson, 22 October 1724 (B.L., Add. MS 34265, f. 226). 9 Grafton to Robert Walpole, 19 December 1723 (Coxe, Walpole, ii, p. 356). 10 Boulter to Townshend, 29 April 1725 (Boulter letters i, p. 17). 11 O’Regan, King, pp. 310–13. 12 Patrick McNally, ‘“Irish and English interests”: national conflict within the Church of Ireland episcopate in the reign of George I’ in I.H.S., xxxix (1994–5), pp. 294–311. 13 Ball, Judges, ii, pp. 197–8; Wyndham to Ashe Windham, 15 September 1725 (Norfolk R.O., WKC 7/34). 14 Romney Sedgwick, The house of commons 1715–1754 (2 vols, London, 1970), ii, p. 531; Ball, Judges, ii, p. 198. It had been rumoured earlier that another Walpole loyalist, Sir William Thompson, the former solicitor-general, would be given the post: Thomas Brodrick to Lord Midleton, 9, 18 March 1724/5 (S.H.C., 1248/6, ff. 159–60, 399–400). 240


West died after only eighteen months in office Wyndham was quickly named as his successor. Traditionally the primate and chancellor were key figures in the government of Ireland. Indeed, it was usual for both to be included, more or less ex officio, as lords justices, to head the administration in the absence of the viceroy, a custom that had only been broken since 1714 because Lindsay had been such a strong tory, and was then resumed at the first opportunity after Boulter’s consecration. Both primate and chancellor were members of the privy council, and both enjoyed an influential position in the house of lords, where the chancellor served as speaker, and an active primate might assume leadership of the episcopal contingent. For the two offices to be held simultaneously by Englishmen was unusual: it had happened only twice before since the revolution, between 1706 and 1714, when Narcissus Marsh was primate and Richard Freeman and Sir Constantine Phipps were successively lord chancellor, but even then Marsh was not so uncompromisingly English in his national allegiance as Boulter, having lived in Ireland for many years and graduated to the primacy by way of the provostship of Trinity and the dioceses of Cashel and Dublin. Boulter, West and Wyndham were all new arrivals, and in Boulter’s case at least, shared the belief of ministers in Whitehall that in governing Ireland, and especially in making appointments, ‘a strict regard may be had to the English interest’.15 That the appointment of Boulter and West signalled a conscious shift in British ministerial policy was assumed by contemporaries (especially Irish ‘patriots’) and has been accepted by historians, even without direct proof, since the circumstantial evidence is compelling.16 Boulter’s keenness to recommend an English candidate whenever an important vacancy occurred in the church or in the law suggests strongly that he was carrying out what he felt to be his political duty.17 Indeed, he wrote expressly to Newcastle in June 1725, in relation to a likely replacement for the chief baron of the exchequer: Your grace and the rest of the ministry were sufficiently sensible (when I left England) of the necessity of filling the great posts here with English; and if the same measures be not followed, we that are here shall have a bad time of it, and it must prove of great prejudice to his majesty’s service.18

It may also be significant that in the aftermath of the Wood’s halfpence crisis the ministry offered even quite junior legal preferments to Englishmen. In 1726 Robert Jocelyn, an established English practitioner at the Irish bar who 15 Boulter to Townshend, 29 April 1725 (Boulter letters, i, p. 18); same to Newcastle, 29 April 1725 (ibid., p. 19). 16 See, for example, Burns, Politics, i, pp. 167–9, 200–1. 17 See, for example, Boulter to Newcastle, 1 May 1725 (Boulter letters, i, pp. 19–20). 18 Same to same, 3 June 1725 (ibid., p. 26).

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had originally been drawn to try his professional luck in Ireland by marrying a connexion of Bishop Godwin of Kilmore, was made third serjeant, and a year later solicitor-general, probably through the influence of his friend Philip Yorke.19 Jocelyn’s successor as third serjeant was another resident Englishman, though a more recent arrival: John Bowes (a client of the deceased Lord Chancellor West), who himself had been in Ireland for under two years.20 The political purpose behind the intrusion of Englishmen into the Irish church and judiciary, and by extension into the privy council, went deeper than intimidating Irish protestants out of their supposed enthusiasm for ‘independency’, and securing a compliant and reliable governing authority in Dublin which would take decisive action to suppress popular manifestations of Anglophobia. To begin with, at least, Walpole and his colleagues seemed to set up the representatives of the ‘English interest’ at the castle, especially the new primate and chancellor, as an alternative channel of information and influence, and thus an alternative centre of power, against the native ‘undertakers’, and indeed, where necessary, against the viceroy. Walpole would have been aware that for the ministry to rubber-stamp viceregal nominations risked relinquishing control over Irish patronage, which might have dangerous implications for the maintenance of ministerial authority: an ambitious lord lieutenant, like Carteret, who succeeded Grafton in 1724, might use his position to build up a personal interest among Anglo-Irish families; a weak incumbent, like Carteret’s replacement, the duke of Dorset, might be manipulated by his Irish managers, so that the credit for appointments would fall to the ‘undertakers’.21 The Irish political élite had to be reminded that there were other avenues to preferment. Thus when places fell vacant in Ireland the ministry sought advice from Boulter and the lord chancellor, and often acted on their recommendations rather than those of Carteret or his parliamentary managers. There were certain obvious flaws in this scheme; or rather, flaws that should have been obvious. In the first place, experience should have warned Walpole and his colleagues of the dangers of dividing the government interest in Dublin, and not supporting the viceroy of the day to the fullest extent: Irish politicians were quick to sense, and to exploit, viceregal weakness. Second, this strategy was founded on an exaggerated opinion of the potential strength of the court interest in Irish politics and a corresponding underestimate of the independent influence that Irish politicians might exert. In this respect it seems strange that there was no systematic campaign to bring revenue patronage more directly under English control, especially since Walpole himself, as first lord of the treasury, had personal experience of the

19

For Jocelyn, see Ball, Judges, ii, pp. 203–4; Hist. Ir. parl., iv, pp. 488–90. For Bowes see Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 231–2. 21 Moreover, neither Carteret, nor Dorset were men whom Walpole trusted, their appointments being determined by considerations of English rather than Irish politics. 20

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capacity of the Irish revenue commissioners to evade treasury instructions. No effort was made to undermine William Conolly’s personal ascendancy over the revenue board, said by his enemies to be a principal source of his political strength, and even after his death the extensive patronage of the revenue remained in the hands of Irish political managers. Englishmen were included among the commissioners, but were not required to attend regularly, and were often absentees, one of the worst offenders in this regard being the most senior political figure among the English appointees, Giles Earle, one of Walpole’s parliamentary lieutenants at Westminster and a man with an obvious potential for leadership had he chosen to exert himself.22 Walpole thus contrived to miss the main point. The most important lesson of the political troubles of 1715–25 was that division and conflict within the Irish administration made it impossible to guarantee successful management. With hindsight we can see that at the root of the difficulties endured by Bolton and Grafton lay the unresolved rivalry between Speaker Conolly and Lord Chancellor Midleton for leadership of the court party. Of course contemporaries could not fail to appreciate that competition for power in Dublin would have unpleasant consequences. Midleton’s intrigues with Carteret during the Wood’s halfpence episode were only the latest in a long line of misdeeds imputed to the chancellor. Walpole may himself have been involved in the factional schemes of the Brodrick family in 1717–20, which would have alerted him to their disruptive potential, and his observation that Carteret, on coming to Dublin as viceroy in 1724, would have to ‘take his party betwixt the two great men there’, shows an awareness of Irish political realities. Yet he did not see this decision as central to the success of his ministry’s Irish policy. For one thing, he was prepared to perpetuate divisions at the castle by encouraging an ‘English interest’. More than that, however, he seems almost to have regarded as irrelevant the identity of the Irish political managers employed by the viceroy, since their influence was to be downgraded. After a false start, Carteret came to appreciate realities and made use of a single political interest to manage the Irish house of commons, that of Speaker Conolly. But Walpole still permitted Carteret’s successors, Dorset and Devonshire, to experiment with the ‘undertaker’ system, Dorset beginning without any particular undertaker and gathering a coalition of smaller factions, and Devonshire operating a policy of ‘divide and rule’, with two competing ‘interests’, those of Henry Boyle and Brabazon Ponsonby, whose rivalry in 1737–42 was reminiscent of the conflict between Conolly and Midleton two decades earlier. These fundamental strategic errors were exacerbated by the Anglocentrism that was characteristic of Walpole’s approach to Irish affairs. The assumption that Irish protestants could be easily governed by a firm hand encouraged indifference to the detail of Irish affairs. Little evidence of sustained interest in the business of Irish government survives in the prime minister’s papers, 22

For Earle, see Sedgwick, Commons 1715–54, ii, pp. 1–2. 243


or for that matter in the papers of his principal colleagues, Newcastle and Hardwicke. Irish issues suddenly became important if they impinged directly on English politics, as, for example, when English clothing interests, in the over-represented west country, in Yorkshire and in Walpole’s native East Anglia, complained to parliament of the smuggling of Irish wool and woollens to the Continent. Both Newcastle and Hardwicke had their own correspondents in Dublin, but neither intervened in Irish affairs more than the duties of his office strictly required. If the administration had a self-styled Irish specialist, it was the prime minister’s brother Horatio, ‘old Horace’, whose qualifications were actually rather slender: he had briefly held the office of chief secretary under Grafton, in 1720–1, but had never set foot on Irish soil.23 Otherwise Sir Robert allowed himself to be advised by absentee Irish landlords such as the first earl of Egmont, a leading member of the ‘Irish lobby’ at Westminster, but did not necessarily take much notice of what Egmont said, especially if this conflicted with his own political objectives.24 Egmont’s real importance to Walpole was not as an Irish lobbyist, but as one of a number of prominent back-bench ‘independent’ whigs at Westminster whose principled opposition to the ministry on a range of English issues during the 1727–34 parliament endangered the court’s majority.25 Walpole made a show of listening to Egmont’s presentation of Irish grievances, and sometimes promised concessions, but only on issues involving English interests, such as the vexed question of wool smuggling. Symptomatic of Walpole’s attitude was the reception he accorded the Irish revenue commissioner, Marmaduke Coghill, a prominent member of the ‘castle party’ in Dublin and a man whose briefing letters to Egmont were passed on to cabinet ministers. On a rare visit to London in 1735, Coghill was accorded an audience with Walpole. Here was a rare opportunity for the prime minister to hear a firsthand account from someone whose connexion with Dublin Castle went back two decades. However, instead of quizzing his guest on the intricacies of the Irish scene, Walpole was content to pass a pleasant quarter of an hour talking mainly about himself.26 23

For old Horace, see ibid., ii, pp. 509–10; and for examples of his meddling, Horatio Walpole to Boulter, 7 February 1735/6 (B.L., Add. MS 74053); same to Dorset, 7 February 1735/6 (ibid.). 24 See, for example, the evidence of Egmont’s own journals (H.M.C., Egmont diary, i–ii, passim). Another of Walpole’s sources of information was the economic writer and Irish M.P. Arthur Dobbs, who corresponded with him on matters relating to trade and manufacture, and was ‘much in his esteem’. Walpole was reported to have said that ‘there was not a man in either kingdom who understood trade better, or was fitter to advise with on schemes relating thereto’ (Lord Perceval to his son, 16 March 1731/2 (B.L., Add. MS 47013A, f. 1)). 25 A. A. Hanham, ‘Whig opposition to Sir Robert Walpole in the house of commons, 1727–1734’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Leicester University, 1992). 26 Marmaduke Coghill to Edward Southwell, jr., 4 September 1735 (N.L.I., MS 875). For Coghill, see Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 442–5. 244


This mixture of misunderstanding, misplaced decisiveness, nonchalance and neglect meant that Walpole’s record in Irish affairs was decidedly mixed. The basic criteria for successful government were met. There were no further embarrassments on the scale of the forced withdrawal of Wood’s halfpence; effusions of Irish ‘patriotism’ were confined to parliament, and did not involve ‘the people outdoors’ in any major popular agitation; sufficient funds were granted on a regular basis to maintain necessary expenditure. On the other hand, Walpole failed to achieve the two most important secondary objectives that he seems to have set himself in Irish affairs, both dictated by the requirements of English rather than Irish domestic politics: to find a means of clamping down effectively on the clandestine trade in wool and woollens; and to secure legislative relief for protestant dissenters in Ireland, as a sop to the dissenting interest at home, and possibly a precedent for similar action at Westminster. In purely Irish terms, the absence of consistency from parliamentary management, and the perpetuation of divisions within the castle party, made the work of successive viceroys much harder than it would otherwise have been.

II Carteret’s viceroyalty may serve as a demonstration of the misapprehensions of English policy, and the hard realities of Irish parliamentary politics.27 For Carteret came to Ireland seeming to share the outlook of cabinet colleagues, insofar as he displayed a determination to avoid putting himself under obligation to a particular set of Irish managers. But Carteret was an able man with a deft political touch, and close exposure to the working of the Irish parliament persuaded him of the wisdom of resuming a system of management by ‘undertaker’. Carteret took up his post in peculiarly difficult circumstances. The problems which Walpole had gleefully set him were twofold: how to settle the controversy over the halfpence and resolve the conflict within the administration between Midleton and Conolly. They were interconnected, since whichever of the two factions was excluded from power would inevitably seek to make political capital from the unpopularity of Wood’s patent. Not even the withdrawal of the hated coinage, which Carteret soon advised, would be enough to drain the infection of popular discontent, as the events of the next parliamentary session were to demonstrate, with heated debates in the lords over the wording of the address of thanks. Carteret had to be sure that if he were to ‘take his party betwixt the two great men’, as Walpole expected him to do, he should choose the right one, and not end up with a weakened court party unable to get business done. 27

For what follows, see Patrick McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence, Carteret, and the government of Ireland, 1723–6’ in I.H.S., xxx (1996–7), pp. 361–76. 245


The process by which Carteret cut the Gordian knot has been studied by several historians.28 The general outline is clear. The new lord lieutenant, who arrived in Ireland in September 1724 almost a year before parliament was scheduled to meet, began by steering a course between the factions. One of his first decisions on appointment was to name both Brodrick and Conolly as lords justices, together with Lord Shannon.29 Moreover, in his dealings with Irish politicians he seems to have cultivated a lofty neutrality. This was less a reflection of his own character – which was the very reverse of remote and unsociable – than of political necessity. His previous intrigues with the Brodricks had the potential to compromise his viceroyalty from the outset. Midleton must originally have expected that Carteret would trust everything to him. Even when informed by his brother that Carteret had announced an intention to be ‘chief governor in the strictest sense’, the lord chancellor cannot have grasped the implications.30 However, the truth was borne in on him during the following winter. Observers on all sides noted that the lord lieutenant carried out all important business himself, and did not confide in any of the more prominent Irish politicians: he ‘giveth himself up to no party’.31 Neither Midleton nor Conolly can have been happy with this, but almost inevitably, given their differences in character, and probably also differences in expectation, it was Midleton who cracked. In the spring of 1725 he resigned the seals. He himself claimed that he took the decision on a point of principle; in response to an unreasonable demand from Carteret that he help to defend the halfpence. This may have been true, but it seems more likely that the rupture in relations between the two men was a reflection of Midleton’s disappointment. It may also have been intended as a ploy to force Carteret’s hand, since before the session opened in September 1725 the Brodricks made a bid to engross viceregal favour. According to Carteret, the leaders of the Brodrick faction approached him and ‘offered to conduct every thing to his satisfaction if he would put himself into their hands’. The reply was a masterpiece of self-righteousness: He told them he had nothing to ask or do, but what was just and honest, and every honest man would comply with what appeared to be so, that he was not to be put in leading strings, and that he could not lay aside the king’s officers, for then he 28

Joseph Griffin, ‘Parliamentary politics in Ireland during the reign of George I’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1977), ch. 6; Burns, Politics, i, pp. 161–216; McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, pp. 361–74. 29 Thomas Brodrick to Lord Midleton, 4 April 1724 (S.H.C., 1248/6, ff. 1–2). 30 Ibid. 31 Owen Gallagher to Oliver St George, 22 December 1724, 9 January 1724[/5] (P.R.O., C 110/46/352, 313); Abp King to Francis Annesley, 28 January 1725 (T.C.D., MS 2537, pp. 208–9); Bp Godwin to Abp Wake, 18 May 1725 (Christ Church, Oxford, Wake papers, Arch W. Epist. xiv, f. 63); Coghill to Edward Southwell, sr., 10 June 1725 (B.L., Add. MS 9713, ff. 38–9); Philip Perceval to Lord Perceval, 1 February 1725/6 (B.L., Add. MS 47031, ff. 93–4). 246


must be blamed if any miscarriage happened by putting the management of the session into any other hands.32

It looks very much as if Carteret had expected Midleton to exercise his amour propre. This had after all been the way of things since 1715, Midleton and his family making trouble if events did not go their own way, while Conolly, though not entirely immune from displays of resentment and threats of opposition, proved generally more compliant. Thus, long before Midleton’s resignation, Carteret had been making preparations. In particular he had been courting the surviving tory interest in Ireland, which had joined with the Brodricks in opposition in 1717–19 and again in 1723–4. The viceroy’s own tory background and connexions were of assistance in this respect. The appointment of the former Hanoverian tory Francis Bernard as prime serjeant in the summer of 1724 was a straw in the wind.33 Later he seems also to have drawn over Henry Singleton, who joined the castle in the 1725–6 session and subsequently succeeded Bernard as prime serjeant. Other potentially troublesome individuals were approached, including Thomas Carter, the master of the rolls, and Theophilus Bolton, the ‘patriot’ bishop of Elphin. Finally, Carteret instituted a programme of inquiries into corruption within the administration, possibly in order to demonstrate his own political virtue and win the trust of the independent-minded gentlemen who formed the backbone of ‘country’ agitations in the commons. The adoption of these tactics may suggest that Carteret intended at first to set up as his own ‘undertaker’, a deduction supported by the way in which he kept Conolly at a diplomatic distance throughout the summer of 1725.34 He may have regarded Conolly’s interest as equivalent to a body of placemen (‘the king’s officers’) who would naturally form the nucleus of the castle party, and were to be supplemented by those whom he himself placed under a personal obligation – by tories who would regard the viceroy as one of their own, and by ‘independent country gentlemen’ who approved of the moral tone of his administration. If this was indeed the case, the course of the 1725–6 session soon opened Carteret’s eyes. Not only did the Brodricks move quickly into open opposition, they brought with them all their former allies, including Thomas Carter, and, 32

Coghill to Southwell, sr., 23 December 1725 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 27–8). Coghill did not name the Brodricks, but used the phrase ‘the gentlemen who appeared so zealous against him [Carteret]’ in the 1725–6 session, which must refer to St John Brodrick, Thomas Carter and their friends. 33 Bernard to [Edward Southwell], 25 August 1724 (B.L., Add. MS 60583). For Bernard, see Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 173–4. 34 By May 1725 Carteret had still not visited Castletown, Conolly’s country house in County Kildare (Gallagher to St George, 22 May 1725 (P.R.O., C 110/46/367)). In August the lord lieutenant’s ‘chief butler’ paid a visit, but ‘by some accident fell off . . . [the] house and was kill’d’ (same to same, 21 August 1725 (ibid., C 110/46/387)). Later, when relations between the two men were on a sounder footing, Carteret was a regular visitor (Coghill to Southwell, sr., 30 December 1727 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, f. 37)). 247


more shatteringly, the bulk of the tories, who had been confidently expected to follow the court.35 Furthermore, in the commons this self-styled ‘country party’, under the vigorous leadership of St John Brodrick, exploited the inquiries into financial irregularities for their own ends, channelling the anger aroused by the exposure of corrupt practices into a refusal to grant any increase in the level of subsidies. Votes in the supply debates against ministerially inspired proposals for higher taxes to reduce the national debt concentrated Carteret’s mind and forced him to change direction.36 He might of course have drawn a different conclusion, and interpreted this failure of management as proof that the Brodricks, after all, carried more political weight than the speaker. But the margin of defeat in the crucial divisions had been narrow, and there had been significant indications of half-heartedness on the part of some of the ‘Castilians’ (as Midleton called Conolly’s friends) in their defence of government. Carteret concluded that he would have to come to terms with Conolly. It was so obvious a conclusion that it had even occurred to English ministers, the duke of Newcastle observing that ‘the conduct of affairs . . . was not time enough put into the hands of the speaker and his friends’; and it worked.37 After the recess the rejuvenated castle party regained control of the commons, securing among other things a resolution which pledged parliament to provide further financial support for the army should this prove necessary, and went some way towards undoing the damage inflicted in the earlier debates on supply.38 Carteret absorbed these lessons. Henceforth he supported his commons undertaker firmly, taking Conolly into his confidence and, more importantly, broadcasting this fact to the political classes in Dublin. He also endorsed Conolly’s recommendations on contentious questions of patronage. The new understanding did not mean that the viceroy withdrew from the political arena and left the routine of management – organising, canvassing, promising and cajoling – entirely to the speaker. This was the very thing that Carteret was good at, and the viceroy’s talent for persuasion was too valuable a political weapon to be left rusting.39 But it was used to back up the ‘interest’ of the managers, not to supersede them. 35

McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, p. 370; Coghill to Southwell, sr., 9 October, 30 November 1725, 27 January 1725[/6] (B.L., Add. MS 9713, ff. 65–7, 73–5, 88–9); same to same, 30 October, 23 December 1725, 26 February 1725[/6] (ibid., Add. MS 21122, ff. 24–6, 27–8, 29); Gallagher to St George, 5 March 1725[/6] (P.R.O., C. 110/46/358). 36 Griffin, ‘Parliamentary politics’, pp. 157–61; Burns, Politics, pp. 205–11; William Stratford to Lord Harley, 30 November 1725 (H.M.C., Portland, vii, pp. 404–5). 37 Newcastle to Townshend, 5 November 1725 (B.L., Add. MS 32687, f. 178, quoted in McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, p. 372). 38 Carteret to Southwell, sr., 1 March 1725/6 (B.L., Add. MS 38016, f. 7); Burns, Politics, i, pp. 214–15; McNally, ‘Wood’s halfpence’, pp. 372–4. 39 Even those who took a sour view of Carteret had to acknowledge his charm: Lord Hervey to Stephen Fox, 22 June 1728 (the earl of Ilchester (ed.), Lord Hervey and his friends 1726–38 (London, 1950), p. 30). 248


The one remaining difficulty was the tension between the ‘undertaker’ and the representatives of the ‘English interest’ in government, especially Boulter. Each significant vacancy in the church or the law became a battleground, as Conolly’s nominees, almost always supported by Carteret, came into conflict with alternative recommendations from the primate and lord chancellor. At first the ministers seemed determined to humiliate the viceroy, who was not even consulted on the nomination in July 1726 of a new bishop of Cloyne, and suffered an even more startling snub the following December, when his specific request to defer a decision on a new lord chancellor to replace West was ignored, and Boulter’s advice accepted.40 This same story continued the following spring, with the naming of the new archbishop of Cashel. Not only was Conolly’s recommendation of Bolton of Elphin rejected in favour of the primate’s candidate, but ministers also adopted the entire scheme of secondary appointments devised by Boulter.41 The effect of these decisions was not necessarily to increase the proportion of Englishmen in the government of church and state in Ireland, since Boulter did not invariably propose importations at all levels. As far as he was concerned, the main point was to strengthen English influence at the apex of government and make Irishmen see that they had to look beyond their own political leaders for preferment. The same reasoning presumably determined the decisions made by Walpole, Newcastle and the other ministers, though perhaps with the additional spice of turning the screw on Carteret. Naturally enough, the viceroy’s standing was undermined, as informed Irish observers deduced that he did not enjoy the confidence of his cabinet colleagues.42 But in practice, provided that lord lieutenant and ‘undertaker’ were on good terms and known to be so, parliamentary management was not seriously affected. Conolly’s standing would certainly have suffered to some degree if the rejection of his recommendations to judgeships and bishoprics had become public knowledge, but these slights would have been offset by the continued nomination of the speaker to the commission of lords justices, which was a practice the ministers pondered but evidently had not the stomach to change.43 In any case Conolly could always rely on the separate fund of patronage available to him through the revenue commission to compensate for losses elsewhere. 40

Newcastle to Boulter, 9 July 1726 (P.R.O., SP 63/387/224); Carteret to Newcastle, 10 December 1726 (ibid., SP 63/388/101); Newcastle to Boulter, 13 December 1726 (ibid., SP 63/388/103). Griffin, ‘‘Parliamentary politics’, pp. 168–9. 41 Boulter to Newcastle, 1 January, 18 February 1726[/7] (Boulter letters, i, pp. 94, 110–11); same to Bp Gibson, 11 [recte 21] February 1726[/7] (ibid., pp. 114–16); Conolly to Clutterbuck, 18 February 1726 [/7] (P.R.O.N.I., T/2825/A/1/35); Burns, Politics, i, pp. 225–7. 42 See, for example, Hugh Howard to Bp Howard, 5 February 1726 (N.L.I., P.C. 226); Abp King to Carteret, 17 July 1727 (T.C.D., MS 750/8, p. 237). 43 Evidently ministers considered excluding the speaker from the commission after Conolly’s death, and again after Gore’s, but failed to carry through their intention: Boulter to Newcastle, 24 February 1730 [recte 1732/3] (Boulter letters, i, p. 73). 249


Thus, despite the snubs delivered to Carteret and Conolly at court and in cabinet, the next parliamentary session, in 1727–8, saw a smooth and successful dispatch of business. The general election necessitated by the death of George I did not disturb the balance of the commons. A covey of new, young members were elected, who briefly threatened to invigorate the opposition with an infusion of energy and idealism.44 But their enthusiasm quickly dissipated. Conolly was re-elected as speaker without opposition, when St Brodrick found that he could not summon up sufficient votes to mount a challenge,45 and Carteret’s confident prediction, namely that there would be ‘no reason to apprehend difficulties’, was triumphantly vindicated.46 ‘Everything has gone smoothly’, reported Conolly’s parliamentary lieutenant, the chancellor of exchequer Sir Ralph Gore, while Robert Jocelyn commented that ‘there never was a session that ended with so much satisfaction on all sides’.47 Different conclusions could be drawn from this outcome. The viceroy would almost certainly have been confirmed in the decision he had taken during the previous session of relying on a single ‘undertaker’ to manage business in the commons. Boulter of course took a different view, emphasising his own direction of the castle interest in the upper house, and the influence on political opinion of recent key appointments. His letters to England gave a glowing account of his own victories in the lords, at the head of the loyal bishops, against the ‘Irish interest’ led by Midleton and Bishop Bolton.48 In fact, neither of these interpretations told the whole story. Boulter’s narrative left out the part played by Conolly, which the primate acknowledged only after Conolly departed the political stage in 1729. He also ignored any detrimental effects caused by the ministers having refused Conolly’s requests for patronage. At the same time, to assume that the expedient of entrusting management of the commons to a single faction had in itself guaranteed a trouble-free session would be naive and simplistic, since it does not take account of the peculiar political circumstances of 1727–8, especially the disarray into which the parliamentary opposition was plunged by the sudden death in February of St John Brodrick. Within six months St John’s elderly father had followed him to the grave, a stunning double blow that effectively decapitated the ‘patriots’ in both commons and lords. What is more, there was

44

Edward Cooke to [Sir Richard Cox], 22 February 1727[/8] (N.L.I., MS 8802/11). Thomas Tickell to Carteret, 23 June 1727 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2774); Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 27 July 1727 (S.H.C., 1248/7, ff. 87–8); Coghill to Southwell, sr., 8 December 1727 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 35–6); Burns, Politics, i, pp. 228–30. 46 Carteret to Newcastle, 30 November 1727 (P.R.O., SP 63/389/95); Coghill to Southwell, sr., 8 December 1727 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 35–6). 47 Gore to Dean Carleton, 16 April 1728 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2954/2/8); Robert Jocelyn to Sir Philip Yorke, 3 June 1728 (B.L., Add. MS 35585, f. 91). 48 See, for example, Boulter to Newcastle, 30 April 1728 (Boulter letters, i, pp. 190–1); same to Townshend, 9 May 1728 (ibid., p. 192). 45

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no obvious successor.49 Midleton’s younger son, Alan, was not made of the same stuff as his father and elder half-brother. The leadership of the opposition in the upper house fell to Bishop Bolton, who was a formidable debater but not a political magnate, like Midleton, with a personal following of clients and dependants. In the commons the most prominent speakers on the patriot side were Thomas Carter, a man of great oratorical power though detested for his overbearing manner, and the recorder of Dublin, Eaton Stannard, a long-winded bore, neither of whom could lay claim to much ‘interest’ of their own; and the Hon. Richard Stewart, a die-hard tory, and as such unacceptable to the majority of M.P.s.50 The really influential figure on the opposition benches, and heir presumptive to the Brodricks’ Munster interest, was Henry Boyle, scion of arguably the most powerful of the Anglo-Irish planter families and a local power-broker with a large parliamentary following, partly acquired through his management of his absentee kinsman Lord Burlington’s electoral empire.51 Boyle was an astute politician and a popular man, but a poor speaker.52 He would later display the mettle of a parliamentary ‘undertaker’ but was not yet quite ready for the role. What this meant, in practical terms, was that neither Carteret nor Conolly, nor indeed the busy primate, could rest on their laurels. The disarray into which the ‘country party’ had fallen in 1728 was a temporary phenomenon. Opposition was certain to revive, the more so because the Irish economy was lurching towards crisis.53 A succession of bad harvests, beginning in 1727, resulted in a sharp rise in prices, and localised famine. In some parts of the south-west there were food riots, and in Ulster a recurrence of large-scale transatlantic emigration (mainly by presbyterian tenants and labourers and

49

Bp Bolton to [Carteret], 16 July 1728 (P.R.O.N.I., D/562/92). Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 377–81; vi, pp. 319–21, 344. See also Walpole, Memoirs of George II, ed. Brooke, i, p. 192; Coghill to Southwell, jr., 5 April, 18 October 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 32–4, 58–61). 51 Thomas Carter to Henry Boyle, 20 June, 7 October, 16 November 1727 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/10, 25, 29); Tickell to Carteret, 23 June 1727 (ibid., T/2774); Burlington to Boyle, 13 July [1727] (ibid., D/2707/A/1/2/18); Andrew Crotty to same, 20 June, 13 July 1727 (ibid., D/2707/A/1/2/11, 17A). Boyle also enjoyed the nomination to parliamentary seats controlled by another absentee magnate of the Boyle clan, Lord Orrery: see Orrery to Brettridge Badham, 21 November 1724 (N.L.I., MS 4177, f. 39); Charles Smyth to Boyle, 23 September 1731 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/77); Coghill to Southwell, jr., 7 July 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 43–4). For Boyle, see Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 241–6. 52 Andrew Crotty to Boyle, 10 June 1727, 15 August 1729 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A1/1/11, 21A); same to same, 30 May 1729 (ibid., D/2707/A1/2/44); Thomas Carter to same, 8 August 1727 (ibid., D/2707/A1/2/21); Anne Donnellan to Lady Strafford, 13 October 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 22228, f. 322); Coghill to Southwell, jr., 15 March 1732[/3], 5 April 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 26, 32); Burns, Politics, i, pp. 238–9. 53 For what follows, see Burns, Politics, i, pp. 233–5; Bp Howard to Hugh Howard, 2, 27 November, 24 December 1728 (N.L.I., , P.C. 226); Boulter to Newcastle, 23 November 1728, 13 March 1728[/9] (Boulter letters, i, pp. 209–11, 229–31). 50

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their families). Attention became focused on Ireland’s economic difficulties, which were many and various: low agricultural production, declining manufactures, the stagnation of trade, and the absence of capital, manifested in the visible weakness of the currency and scarcity of coin. Inevitably in these circumstances, members of parliament became alarmed. A mass-emigration of protestants, even if they were northern presbyterians, gave out danger signals to a political élite obsessed with demography, and provoked a renewed fear for the maintenance of the protestant establishment. Just as inevitably, the loss of economic confidence focused attention once more on the perennial grievances of Irish ‘patriots’: the drainage of Irish currency to England, and the damage done to the economy by English discriminatory legislation, in particular the woollen act of 1699 and the various statutes, some of them recent, restricting Irish transatlantic trade. To make matters worse, Walpole was coming under pressure from English manufacturers to stop the smuggling of Irish wool to the continent, which was enabling the French to undercut English goods. He wanted some action in the Irish parliament to tackle the problem, but as far as Irish M.P.s were concerned the clandestine trade in wool was one of the few growth areas in the economy, and the laws being broken were oppressive, unfair and a constitutional affront to the people of Ireland. Just as the economic climate became chillier, the Irish administration suffered a political blow that would test the capacity of Carteret’s ‘undertaker system’. William Conolly fell seriously ill, and, having been forced to withdraw from the commons chair at the beginning of the parliamentary session in September 1729, died a month later. This was an enormous loss. Conolly could deliver more votes in the commons than anyone else: personal wealth, electoral influence, and the use he had made of patronage to develop and cement connexions, had enabled him to construct an extensive personal following.54 His long experience as speaker obviously conveyed its own advantages. Moreover, in conciliating a desperate public opinion his reputation as an Irishman devoted to the interests of his native country (consolidated by his widow when she arranged for the provision of hundreds of Irish linen scarves for the mourners at his funeral),55 would have been a great advantage.56 The obvious heir was the man who had been for some years Conolly’s second-in-command in the commons, and the chairman of the committees of supply and ways and means, Sir Ralph Gore.57 While Gore was able and

54 For contemporary tributes, see Boulter to Newcastle, 23 October 1729 (Boulter letters, i, p. 265); Coghill to [Southwell, sr.], 13 June 1728 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2534/2). 55 Coghill to Southwell, sr., 8 November 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 91–3); Lena Boylan, ‘The Conollys of Castletown: a family history’ in Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, xi, no. 4 (October to December 1968), p. 11. 56 Coghill to Southwell, sr., 11 June 1728 (Huntington Library, MS HM 28674); same to same, 13 June 1728 (P.R.O.N.I., T/2534/2). 57 Same to same, 27 September 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, f. 84); Carter to Boyle, 2 October 1729 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/50).

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conscientious, he was a shadow of his old leader. Friends and enemies respected his competence, but like many another devoted lieutenant he was thought (wrongly as it turned out) to lack independence of mind; indeed in some circles his loyalty to the upstart Conolly was derided as a disgraceful servility.58 Of the other leading members of Conolly’s political entourage, the prime serjeant, Henry Singleton, was insufferably arrogant, and could never entirely live down his background as a staunch tory in Anne’s reign; the civil lawyer Marmaduke Coghill, although widely respected, was peevish, indecisive and racked with gout.59 So Gore it had to be; and with the approval of the viceroy, he was rapidly installed as speaker. However, he did not care to exchange the lucrative chancellorship of the exchequer for Conolly’s place on the revenue commission, and this was offered to Coghill instead, on the advice of Boulter and Wyndham, and in recognition of the preference of the court party in the commons, who had already elevated Coghill to the chair of the committee of supply.60 To most observers, even the duke of Newcastle, the new arrangement had the appearance of a joint undertaking, although there was no doubt that Gore was the senior partner, as evinced by his nomination as a lord justice alongside the primate and lord chancellor, when Carteret eventually returned to England.61 The old court party, under new management, faced a difficult session in 1729–30. As Boulter put it, the king’s business ‘met with great rubs and delays’ and was ‘done with an ill grace’.62 The ‘patriots’ proposed a tax on pensions and salaries paid to absentees, which they managed to force through despite viceregal disapproval.63 At the same time Carteret’s second attempt to secure a long-term grant of funds to reduce the national debt ran into opposition in ways and means and suffered significant modifications. The crisis came in December, when the two money bills were returned from the British privy council. Almost incredibly, given the sensitivity of Irish parliamentary 58

See, for example, Lord Midleton to Thomas Brodrick, 14 June 1717, quoted in McNally, Undertakers, p. 107. 59 Arthur Hill to Boyle, 15 April 1729 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/39); Coghill to Southwell, jr., 5 April 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 32–4). For Singleton, see Hist. Ir. parl., vi, pp. 276–7. 60 James Tynte to Boyle, 1 October 1729 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/49); Boulter to Newcastle, 30 October 1729 (Boulter letters, i, p. 267); Coghill to Southwell, sr., 30 October 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, f. 90); Carteret to Newcastle, 31 October 1729 (P.R.O., SP 63/391/190–1). 61 [Newcastle] to Boulter, 11 November 1729 (P.R.O., SP 63/391/200); Boulter to Newcastle, 22 November 1729 (ibid., SP 63/391/238–9); Bp Clayton to Lady Sundon, [c. May 1730] (Katherine Thomson, Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon (2 vols, London, 1847), ii, pp. 25–7). 62 Boulter to Newcastle, 22 November 1729 (Boulter letters, i, p. 269). 63 Bp Howard to [Hugh Howard], 30 October 1729 (N.L.I., P.C. 226); Carteret to Southwell, sr., 30 November 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 38016, ff. 9–10); Burns, Politics, i, pp. 255–6. 253


opinion on this point, the council had made changes to the wording of the bills. The ‘patriots’ mustered their forces for an assault on what they regarded as a serious infraction of Irish constitutional rights. Carteret could scarcely understand why this had happened; and certainly, if sabotage had been intended, as had been alleged in 1709, in a previous case of conciliar interference in supply legislation, it would be evidence of the most extraordinarily cynical attitude towards Irish affairs on the part of the British cabinet.64 But it seems likely that this time carelessness rather than conspiracy was to blame. In the end, things turned out well, and the defeat of the ‘patriots’ in the crucial debate proved the turning point of the session. Having failed to convert this open goal, Boyle and his cohorts lost face. They blamed each other, and eventually settled on Carter as the scapegoat. Long before the end of the session Coghill could claim that the Munster faction was ‘broke to pieces’.65 The court’s triumph had been owing to the combined efforts of viceroy and ‘undertakers’. In preparation for the debate, Carteret had interviewed many M.P.s individually, and Coghill’s report of the debate (the only detailed account we have) reveals how a number of influential back-benchers, who had previously supported the ‘patriots’, were drawn over to the court side.66 They included young squires such as Charles Coote (M.P. Co. Cavan), Robert French (Jamestown), and Arthur Hill (Co. Down), whose ‘patriotism’ was of a constructive, ‘improving’ kind, and whose first concern was Irish economic growth, to be achieved by the modernisation of agricultural techniques, exploitation of natural resources and promotion of new manufactures.67 These ‘improvers’ were gratified by the introduction of several items of legislation, including the navigation or ‘bog’ bill, designed to develop inland communications and bring unproductive land into cultivation.68 The support given to

64

Carteret to Townshend, 14 December 1729 (P.R.O., SP 63/391/254–5); Thomas Clutterbuck to Charles Delafaye, 14 December 1729 (ibid.., SP 63/391/260–1); D. W. Hayton, ‘Divisions in the whig junto in 1709: some Irish evidence’ in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, lv (1982), pp. 212–13. Bishop Howard observed that if the altered money bill had been rejected, ‘I believe ld lt and all his schemes had been blown up’ (to [Hugh Howard], 3 January 1729[/30] (N.L.I., P.C. 226). 65 Coghill to Southwell, sr., 25 December 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 101–2). 66 Carteret to Newcastle, 14 December 1729 (P.R.O., SP 63/391/254); Coghill to Southwell, sr., 20 December 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, ff. 97–100); Carteret to same, 26 December 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 38016, f. 17). 67 Coote to Boyle, 16 April 1729 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/40); Coghill to Southwell, sr., 27 September 1729 (B.L., Add. MS 21122, f. 84); Hill to Boyle, 15 April 1729 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/39); Dublin Society register, 22 September, 4 December 1731 (Royal Dublin Society, min. bk 1, ff. 3, 23); Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 494–5; iv, pp. 248–9, 417–18. See Edward Maurice to Bp Vesey, 20 September 1727 (N.L.I., T/3738/J/1) for evidence that the election of Coote and Hill in 1727 was seen as advantageous to the ‘patriot’ interest. 68 Carteret to Southwell, sr., 8 January, 9 February 1729/30 (B.L., Add. MS 38016, ff. 19, 23). 254


such measures by the castle party suggests that the viceroy (or his advisers) may have been trying to steal some of the ‘patriots’’ clothes by pursuing Irish interests through constructive reform.69 In some respects they were being pushed in this direction by the British ministry, which hoped to solve the problem of wool smuggling through combined legislative action in both parliaments. One of the plans being discussed was the encouragement of legitimate Irish wool and yarn exports to Britain, which the Westminster parliament would facilitate by removing the current prohibitive duty. To prepare the way, the Irish parliament was persuaded to remove its own duties on exports, and it may be significant that this provision was included in the ‘bog bill’.70 Coghill was at the centre of these efforts to encourage economic growth, doing what he could to influence English policy towards Irish trade and manufactures through supplying information and arguments to his friends the Southwells and Lord Egmont at Westminster (and through Egmont to British cabinet ministers). We know less about Gore’s activities, since few of his letters have survived, but it may be significant that he clashed repeatedly with his fellow lord justice Boulter over projects that Gore felt would damage the Irish economy. Both he and Coghill were regarded by a disgruntled primate as being in their own way too determinedly ‘national’. Whatever the details of the political strategy the new ‘undertakers’ had adopted, it did in the short term prove equal to the dual challenge of economic dislocation and ‘patriot’ rhetoric; equal, that is, when backed up by a vigorous and persuasive viceroy who now seemed entirely comfortable in his role. In many respects Carteret could look back on this session as a personal triumph. Robert Clayton, an Englishman recently translated to the bishopric of Killala, encountered the viceroy returning to London and observed him to be ‘in high spirits and well pleased with his success’.71

III It was typical of Walpole’s approach to Irish policy that Carteret was dismissed on his return to England in 1730, and replaced by an inferior politician with no experience of Ireland or connexions there. Nothing could illustrate better the use of the viceroyalty as a counter in the power-game at Westminster, with little heed for the consequences in Dublin. The duke of Dorset, Carteret’s successor, was a man of ‘mediocre abilities’. His nomination as viceroy, an aspect of the broader ministerial reshuffle of 1730 following the exclusion of Walpole’s former ally Lord Townshend, may in part have

69

Same to same, 9 December 1729 (ibid., ff. 211–16). Coghill to Lord Perceval, 23 April 1730 (B.L., Add. MS 47032, ff. 170–2). 71 Clayton to Lady Sundon, 30 April 1730 (Thomson, Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, ii, p. 12). 70

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been intended as a means of putting him out of harm’s way.72 Dorset was a close associate of Lord Wilmington, who had briefly replaced Walpole as prime minister on the accession of George II, and who still resented his humiliating defeat on that occasion. In Irish terms Dorset’s appointment was a highly risky move, given the recent upheavals in the court party in Dublin and the prevailing pessimism about the Irish economy, which had necessitated Carteret’s intensive personal involvement in management during the previous session. This kind of active solicitation was not in Dorset’s character. ‘He appears very steady’, was the reaction in Dublin at his first appearance, ‘and not so loquacious as Lord Carteret, nor so intriguing’;73 or, as Bishop Clayton put it, ‘his tongue is not so lavish of promises, nor his hand so full of squeezes, as the late lord lieutenant’.74 The effects of Dorset’s unfamiliarity with Irish politics were soon visible. Although he had inherited an ‘undertaker’ in the person of Sir Ralph Gore, and a ready-made castle party, he behaved as if there were no need for any such arrangement. True, he made confidants of Lord Allen and Colonel William Flower, both men of substance in parliament, but however much they might boast of their intimacy with the viceroy they were not entrusted with responsibility for management.75 Instead, Dorset seemed to hope for the support of all men of goodwill, an approach founded on naive assumptions about human psychology, and an archaic view of the workings of the Irish parliamentary system. ‘He hath a civil, genteel way of looking, but speaks very little to anybody, so that he doth not give offence by distinguishing persons.’76 This ostentatious impartiality was supplemented by a conscious effort to play up the importance of the viceroyalty itself. Dorset’s equipage was extravagant; his social calendar a whirlwind of banquets and balls, routs and ridottos. Viceregal levees and public dinners attracted the cream of Dublin society. There were also forays into the provinces, to Kilkenny, with a ‘great retinue’, and to Drogheda, to receive the freedom of the city in a gold box.77 This 72 J. B. Owen, The rise of the Pelhams (London, 1957), pp. 12–14, 100; A. S. Foord, His majesty’s opposition 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964), pp. 122–3. 73 Bp Howard to Hugh Howard, 12 October 1731 (N.L.I., P.C. 226). 74 Clayton to Lady Sundon, 28 September 1731 (Thomson, Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, ii, pp. 83–4). For similar comparisons, see Boyle to Lord Burlington, 10 November 1731 (B.L., Add. MS 75358); Bp Howard to Hugh Howard. 22 April 1732 (N.L.I., P.C. 226). 75 Lord Palmerston to Flower, 30 April 1730 (N.L.I., MS 11478/2); Carter to Boyle, 15 June 1731 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/62); Boyle to Burlington, 17 August 1731 (ibid., T/3158/13); Henry Rose to Sir Maurice Crosbie, 21 September 1731 (N.L.I., P.C. 188); Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 86–7; iv, p. 194. 76 Bp Howard to Hugh Howard, 12 October 1731 (N.L.I., P.C. 226). See also same to same, 23 December 1731 (ibid.). Horace Walpole, Sir Robert’s son, observed that Dorset always exhibited ‘the greatest dignity in his appearance’ (Walpole, Memoirs of George II, ed. Brooke, i, p. 67). 77 Pue’s Occurrences, 14 September, 2, 20, 23 November, 11 December 1731, 4 January, 5 February, 25 March 1732; Bp Clayton to Lady Sundon, 9 November 1731 (Thomson,

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behaviour came naturally to Dorset; indeed the waspish Lord Hervey had forecast that he would relish presiding over a viceregal court. On hearing of Dorset’s appointment Hervey had written, ‘I am sure he will be happier in that Drury Lane employment than any man upon earth’.78 Even so, one may detect a conscious political strategy behind the endless feastings and entertainments. They enabled Dorset to cast the sunshine of his viceregal favour over the entire Irish political élite rather than a select few. There was a great deal more to parliamentary management, however, than pomp and circumstance, and many of Dorset’s parsnips were destined to remain unbuttered. His remoteness from the real political duty of his office made an unfavourable contrast with his predecessor. ‘Our present vice-king is so majestical’, wrote one Irish ‘patriot’ with unconcealed satisfaction, ‘ that he cannot afford so much as a good look, and thrives accordingly’;79 while from the opposite side of the political divide, Bishop Clayton reported testily on yet another grand evening at the castle: ‘All this is very well, but it does no business. Men who are to do a service must be gained by something particular; no one thinks it an obligation to be lumped with a crowd.’80 By failing to identify clearly the recipients of his favour, Dorset had broken a cardinal rule of Irish parliamentary management. To make matters worse, Dorset’s chief secretary, Walter Cary (who may have been foisted on him by Wilmington), proved a serious liability.81 A callow young man, Cary displayed ignorance and arrogance in a deadly combination. According to Bishop Clayton, whose letters were unremittingly hostile, Cary ‘put on high airs . . . the creature I suppose is intoxicated with the name of a secretary, and was imprudent enough one day when he was talking to me to call it his administration’.82 Cary could not be bothered to find out the names of members before parliament opened, let alone talk to them, flatter them and make sure of their votes.83 Once the session was under

Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, ii, pp. 155–60); Edward McParland, Public architecture in Ireland 1680–1760 (New Haven and London, 2001), pp. 100–1; Thomas Gogarty (ed.), Council book of the corporation of Drogheda, vol. I; from the year 1649 to 1734 (Drogheda, 1915), p. 407. 78 Hervey to Stephen Fox, 14 August 1731 (Ilchester (ed.), Lord Hervey & his friends, p. 76). 79 ‘Extract of a letter from Dublin’, n.d. [1731/2] (B.L., Add. MS 42593, f. 143). 80 Bp Clayton to Lady Sundon, 9 November 1731 (Thomson, Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, ii, pp. 155–60). 81 See Sedgwick, Commons 1715–54, i, pp. 529–30; Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 368–9. Egmont described him as Wilmington’s ‘creature’ (quoted in Sedgwick, Commons 1715–54, i, p. 529). 82 Clayton to Lady Sundon, 2 January 1731[/2] (B.L., Add. MS 20102, ff. 158–60, partly printed in Thomson, Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, ii, p. 23). For a similar opinion, see Bp Howard to [Hugh Howard], 13 November 1731 (N.L.I., P.C. 226). 83 For this and what follows, see Bp Clayton to Lady Sundon, 2 Jan. 1731[/2], 15, 19 November 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 20102, ff. 158–60, 182–4, 118–20). 257


way he took it upon himself to assume the lead for the castle, compounding his presumption by incompetence. Time and again he proved that, as far as the niceties of parliamentary behaviour were concerned, he had a tin ear. Invoking what he claimed was the lord lieutenant’s opinion in order to overawe his audience in the commons only antagonised back-benchers; soliciting support openly during debates offended those who were prepared to support the court (‘people don’t love to have all the world know that they are directed’); and above all his constant shifting between factions, voting first with Gore’s followers, then with Henry Boyle’s reconstructed ‘Munster squadron’84 in an effort to placate both, resulted in forfeiting the trust of all. The combination of Dorset’s Olympian detachment, and his chief secretary’s crass presumption, created a vacuum in political leadership. A sharper-witted viceroy would have realised that it was necessary to choose between the existing undertaker, Gore, and the man who had led the opposition in the previous session, Henry Boyle. Dorset’s unrealistic expectation was to be able to secure the support of both. Although Boyle occasionally complied with the lord lieutenant’s wishes, alienating some of the more extreme ‘patriots’ in the process, he seems to have chosen such moments carefully, so that his lapses from patriotic virtue did not result in a government majority on any significant division. He was thus able to say that in general he ‘had not often concurred in opinion with the court’.85 Had Gore behaved in the same way, the session would have ended disastrously. Dorset was fortunate that the speaker possessed a thick skin and a loyal disposition, and was willing to intervene, unbidden, when a crisis threatened, so that the viceroy escaped some of the embarrassments planned by the ‘patriots’, and the customary short-term supply was granted ‘with great unanimity’.86 There were still significant defeats, however, most notably when Dorset’s request for a long-term grant of duties to pay the interest on the national debt was refused, and by the end of the session the general feeling even among the viceroy’s close friends was of disappointment, some speculating that he might not return to Dublin a second time.87 Walpole’s sentiments in relation to the new viceroy are not easy to gauge, but we may presume that he took a grim pleasure in the discomfiture of a man whom he suspected of intriguing against him. (The parallel with Carteret’s situation in 1725–6 is instructive, and hints at Walpole’s general attitude to the viceroyalty as a sort of penal colony to which those who had offended him could be dispatched.) The prime minister is not known to have 84

The phrase was Thomas Carter’s: Carter to Boyle, 7 October 1727 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/A/1/2/25). 85 Boyle to Burlington, 5 November 1731 (B.L., Add. MS 75358). 86 Bp Clayton to Lady Sundon, 1 December 1731 (Thomson, Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, ii, pp. 161–2). 87 Boyle to Burlington, 5, 10 November 1731 (B.L., Add. MS 75358); Lord Palmerston to William Flower, 3 March 1732 (N.L.I., , MS 11478). 258


made any comment on the reports which filtered back to him of the general unsoundness of Dorset’s management, but more eloquent than this silence is his needless interference in Irish business during the session by proposing a repeal of the test. Almost certainly, his principal objective was not the straightforward one of providing legislative relief for dissenters, though his attention had been drawn to the issue by a deputation of presbyterian ministers, who had made the dubious case that the recent wave of emigration from Ulster had been caused by political oppression (and not the more obvious factor of economic distress). Instead, Walpole had his eyes on English dissenters, whose electoral support was of much greater importance to him, and to whom he hoped to give cheap reassurance of his goodwill without frightening the Church of England.88 At the same time, he may well have relished the difficulties he was making for Dorset. What he proposed was to get rid of the test in the same way it had been imposed, by adding a repeal clause to a bill sent over from Ireland tightening up penal laws against Catholics. When news of this reached Dublin, the protestant political classes were thrown into confusion. Bishops and clergy were galvanised into activity; M.P.s who had gone to the country for the recess galloped back to town in case supporters of repeal should try to surprise them with a snap vote.89 Walpole, who had improvised his scheme on the spur of the moment, did have the decency to ask Dorset’s opinion before the British privy council made any alteration to the bill, though his letter had a nonchalant tone that the viceroy must have found unsettling. ‘I do not see,’ he remarked airily, ‘how a clause of this kind can embarrass your affairs.’90 If this had been true, his memory must have been surprisingly short. Dorset replied as forcefully as he could, and managed to prevent what would have been a calamity for his government, although it was probably the supporting letters sent by Boulter and Wyndham that convinced the cabinet to let the project drop, at least for the time being.91 Walpole, however, does not seem to have been entirely convinced; either that, or he had fastened on to repeal as an excellent way of torturing the viceroy,92 and he was to raise the subject again when Dorset returned to Dublin in 1733.

88 Beckett, Dissent, p. 91; N. C. Hunt, Two early political associations: the Quakers and the dissenting deputies in the age of Sir Robert Walpole (Oxford, 1961), chs 7–8, esp. pp. 118, 122, 125–8; T. F. J. Kendrick, ‘Sir Robert Walpole, the old whigs and the bishops, 1733–1736: a study in eighteenth-century parliamentary politics’ in Historical Journal, xi (1968), pp. 421–45. 89 Lord Barrymore to Francis Price, 29 January 1731[/2] (National Library of Wales, Add. MS 3582D). 90 Walpole to Dorset, 30 December 1731 (H.M.C., Stopford-Sackville, i, p. 147). 91 Boulter to Newcastle, 15 January 1731/2 (P.R.O., SP 63/395/3); Wyndham to Yorke, 19 January 1731/2 (B.L., Add. MS 35585, ff. 149–50). 92 This was certainly Wilmington’s view: see H.M.C., Egmont diary, ii, p. 443.

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The situation facing Dorset on his second appearance in Dublin was ominous. In the first place, his relationship with Walpole had deteriorated further, since he had compounded previous political sins by voting at Westminster against the government on the crucial issue of the excise.93 He was thus in no position to dissuade the prime minister from a determination to raise again the issue of the test. Walpole faced an imminent general election in Britain, in which the support of dissenting interests would be crucial, and he was keen to show evidence of his adherence to the ‘old whig’ principle of religious toleration. This could be done most cheaply, in political terms, by throwing a sop towards dissenters in Ireland. If in the process his politically unreliable viceroy was embarrassed, so much the better. Walpole briskly dismissed Egmont’s protestations about the popularity of the test among Irish M.P.s: ‘he thought it reasonable to repeal it, though the duke of Dorset was much against it.’94 So the viceroy travelled from London carrying express instructions to attempt a repeal. When he arrived, he found Dublin in turmoil. The dependable Sir Ralph Gore had died in February 1733, and it seemed that his replacement would have to come from the ranks of the former opposition. Gore’s parliamentary coadjutor, Coghill, ruled himself out because of ill-health. Among the remnant of the old gang at the castle, the only feasible candidate was Henry Singleton, but he seemed to be disqualified by personal unpopularity and also by his tory past. On the other side there were just two possibilities: Thomas Carter and Henry Boyle. The thought of Carter was unbearable to many, including Boulter, and indeed the master of the rolls seems to have acknowledged his own deep unpopularity and used what influence he possessed to advance the claims of Boyle.95 However, there was no certainty in Boyle. He was relatively inexperienced, and his shifty behaviour in the previous session had aroused the suspicions of die-hard ‘patriots’. Any arrangement with him would be risky. Inevitably, Dorset, who was indecisive by nature, dithered before allowing himself to be persuaded by the primate, and by his chief secretary, into endorsing Boyle’s candidature.96 The unopposed election of a new speaker in whom the castle had declared its confidence should immediately have produced beneficial results. That the session proved instead to be uncomfortable for government was not entirely Dorset’s fault, though he did little to help himself. Evidently he still believed

93 John, Lord Hervey, Some materials towards memoirs of the reign of King George II, ed. Romney Sedgwick (3 vols, London, 1931), i, pp. 173–4; J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole, ii: The king’s minister (London, 1960), p. 272. 94 H.M.C., Egmont diary, i, p. 439. 95 Bp Clayton to Lady Sundon, 14 February 1732[/3] (B.L., Add. MS 20102, ff. 174–5); Coghill to Southwell, jr., 8 March 1732[/3], 5 April, 21 June 1733 (ibid., Add. MS 21123, ff. 24, 32–4, 41–2); McNally, Undertakers, p. 143. 96 Boulter to Newcastle, 15 March 1732[/3] (Boulter letters, ii, pp. 76–8); Coghill to Southwell, jr., 5, 19 April, 26 May, 21 June, 7, 27 July, 21 August, 20, 26 September 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 32–4, 36–7, 40–4, 47–8, 51–3).

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that a lord lieutenant could put himself above faction, and adopted the same Olympian attitude that had failed him in the previous session. Boyle complained bitterly of ‘my lord lieutenant’s private and reserved behaviour, his not communicating his pleasure to any, and keeping those who are most ready to serve him at a distance from his councils’.97 Dorset’s continued reliance on the bumptious Cary was equally misplaced, and was compounded by the further blunder of taking Thomas Carter into his confidence. However, in all probability the viceroy could have done little to change the outcome of the session. Boyle himself had his back to the wall. His control over the Brodricks’ former ‘Munster squadron’ was by no means secure, and those ‘patriots’ who were already doubting his integrity were looking for proof that he had sold out. Although Dorset offered him the chancellorship of the exchequer before the session began, nothing could be made public until the new scheme of management was established. Even so, Boyle found that he could count on few of his old colleagues from the opposition benches to follow the rather different lead he was now giving. Reporting to an English correspondent in November 1733, Coghill had a miserable tale to tell: Our parliamentary affairs go on very much to the dissatisfaction of the court, there is no concert with anybody, and nobody knows who are in the confidence of the government, the servants of the crown make but a sorry figure in all the divisions for they are almost left to stand by themselves. Mr Boyle instead of bringing any strength to the court, seems to have lost several who are gone from it, and all I can hear adhere to him, who were on the other side is the recorder of Cork [Hugh Dickson] and Mr John Bourke, whom I can’t call a convert for he formerly voted with us.

The viceroy’s instructions to press for repeal of the test were a complication. The Brodrick faction, which Boyle had inherited, had consistently opposed repeal since 1719, partly because of the importance of maintaining a tactical alliance with the tories, and partly, it would appear, because of an ingrained suspicion of Ulster presbyterians (which was certainly to be found within the Brodrick family itself).98 If Boyle was required to force the issue, it could complete his alienation from his natural constituency.99 What discussions the viceroy and the speaker may have had on this issue remain unknown to us; quite possibly Dorset was too tentative to talk about it at all. But the course of events in December 1733 is highly suggestive. Despite Coghill’s disparaging remarks about the weakness of the castle party, the speaker’s parliamentary ‘interest’ seems to have remained intact, to judge by 97

H.M.C., Egmont diary, i, p. 463. [Alan] to Thomas Brodrick, 13 January 1708/9 (S.H.C., 1248/2/350–1). 99 See, for example, the comments of James Tynte, one of the M.P.s for Youghal, at the prospect of repeal being moved the year before; Tynte to Boyle, 5 Feb 1731[/2] (P.R.O.N.I., D/1707/A1/2/90). 98

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the evidence of a division over the Clonmel election, in which Boyle had allowed himself to become involved.100 The behaviour of the ‘Munster squadron’ had clearly to be explained in other ways, and the most important clue came on 4 December, when Coghill reported a sharp confrontation between Boyle and Cary after an evening’s heavy drinking (a frequent prelude to the speaker’s more important political pronouncements): Mr Cary reproached Mr Boyle that he had not kept his Munster squadron in better order and more attached to the interest of the court. The speaker told him his friends were men of honour, and would support him on all occasions; he had no obligations to the court for he set up on the foot of the country party, and the court when they found they could not hinder him, they concurred to make him speaker; but whatever the court suffered was by their own mismanagement, having no confidence or intimacy with any body, and by throwing amongst us a bone of contention about the test, which had raised animosities and divisions not easily to be quieted.101

A few days later one of Boyle’s followers, Sir Richard Meade (M.P. for Kinsale), in order to forestall the expected attempt at ‘tacking’ a repeal clause to a popery bill, proposed that the commons set a deadline after which no such legislation might be introduced. This was so popular that ‘they would not hear anybody speak against it, and it was carried without a division’.102 The failure of the repeal project was of course an embarrassment for Dorset, who was obliged to explain his conduct in his ministerial correspondence; indeed, he seems to have persuaded Boulter to write as well, to back him up.103 But the scale of the commons defeat afforded him a strong mitigating argument, the more so since he had followed this with a formal consultation at the castle at which the senior members of the administration had unanimously recommended that no further attempt be made.104 In a sense, therefore, he had cause to be thankful to the speaker for helping bring matters to a head. It would be fanciful, however, to explain Dorset’s subsequent 100 William Taylor to [the earl of Egmont], 11 December 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 46984, pp. 214–15). 101 Coghill to Southwell, jr., 4 December 1732 [recte 1733] (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 11–15). For examples of Boyle soliciting votes before he had received Dorset’s backing, see Boyle to John King, 18 March 1732/3 (N.L.I., MS 8645/3); lords justices to Dorset, 9 April 1733 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3019/121); William Moore to Boyle, 19 June 1733 (ibid., D/2707/A/1/2/106); calendar of Meath papers (ibid., T/3224/J/9). 102 Coghill to Southwell, jr., 13 December 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 76–7). See also John Wainwright to George Dodington, 2 January 1733[/4] (H.M.C., Various, vi, p. 57). 103 Dorset to Newcastle, 14 December 1733 (P.R.O., SP 63/396/121–3); Boulter to Newcastle, 18 December 1733 (Boulter letters, ii, pp. 85–8); same to Bp Gibson, 20 December 1733 (ibid., pp. 89–90). 104 Boulter to Newcastle, 18 December 1733 (Boulter letters, ii, p. 87); same to Bp Gibson, 20 December 1733 (ibid., p. 89).

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rapprochement with Boyle as the effect of gratitude for providing an excuse for his failure to carry out Walpole’s instructions. More than likely it was brought about by a belated appreciation of the realities of Irish parliamentary management – the same kind of epiphany that Carteret had experienced in the winter of 1725–6 – a process for which the debate over the test had provided clinching evidence. The private advice of Thomas Carter may also have been important. At any rate, Dorset showed a rather different attitude in January 1734, when he allowed Boyle’s faction to solve a knotty parliamentary problem for him, frustrating a scheme promoted by back-bench ‘patriots’ to modify the legislative process by insisting that ‘heads of bills’ pass through both houses before being sent to the Irish privy council, a proposal that had alarmed the ministers when they had first heard of it.105 The speaker and his friends passed this test with flying colours, and when Dorset prepared to leave Dublin a month later, he sent a hearty recommendation to Whitehall in favour of Boyle’s inclusion on the commission of lords justices. Acknowledging that the appointment of the speaker would go directly against his earlier advice on this subject, he was forced to concede that recent events had changed his mind, adding that in his opinion ‘the whigs’ in Ireland were now more united than they had been since Conolly’s departure, and that ‘the leaving of Mr Boyle in the government may contribute to keep them so’.106 Dorset seems also to have worked to persuade Boyle to take up the place that Conolly and Gore had previously held on the revenue commission, although this took some time, as the speaker was unwilling to forgo the substantial personal advantages, in terms of remuneration and leisure, afforded by the chancellorship of the exchequer, for a position that offered extensive political influence at the cost of regular attendance on business.107 The fact that viceroy and ‘undertaker’ had come to an understanding did not put an immediate end to all of Dorset’s difficulties, however, for he still had Walpole to contend with. During Carteret’s viceroyalty the prime minister had intervened, with Boulter’s assistance, to frustrate Conolly’s exploitation of government patronage; now he did the same to Boyle, albeit more directly. The casus belli was the nomination to a valuable place in the revenue, the collectorship of Cork, which Boyle coveted for one of his political associates, Hugh Dickson, M.P. and recorder for the city.108 The 105

Dorset to George Dodington, 10 January 1733/4 (H.M.C., Stopford-Sackville, i, p. 149); Dodington to Dorset (ibid., p. 152); Lady Betty Germain to same, [January/February 1734] (ibid., p. 156); Burns, Politics, ii, pp. 20–2. 106 Dorset to Newcastle, 22 February 1733/4 (P.R.O., SP 63/397/53–4). 107 Coghill to Southwell, jr., 22 February, 8 March 1732[/3], 31 March 1732 [recte 1733], 18 October 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 20, 24, 30–1, 58–61); same to same, 24 April, 21 May, 7 June, 26 August, 4, 27 September 1735 (N.L.I., MS 875). 108 For their connexion, see, for example, Andrew Crotty to Boyle, 13 July 1727 (P.R.O.N.I., D/2707/ A/1/2/17A); Dickson to same, 1 May 1731 (ibid., D/2707/A/1/2/61); same to same, 26 December 1732 (N.L.I., , MS 13297/33). For Dickson, see Hist. Ir. parl., iv, p. 63. 263


appointment was crucial to Boyle for a number of reasons, not merely as a necessary proof that he enjoyed ministerial favour, but in the local context. His reputation in Munster, the heartland of his political influence, was by no means secure. He could rely on the support of the M.P.s he himself had returned, both for his own and Lord Burlington’s boroughs, but the independent-minded country gentlemen, and the mercantile élites in the more popular boroughs, of which Cork city was one, were less reliable. The fragility of the local economy was making them restless, and Boyle had lost some standing by what was perceived as truckling to government in previous sessions. His earlier determination to fight the case of the Clonmel election had arisen from the fact that he was being challenged in his own backyard by the rival Ponsonby interest. In County Cork itself there was a possibility that his ascendancy might be contested by prominent ‘patriots’ such as Richard Bettesworth or the young Sir Richard Cox.109 The corporation of Cork witnessed factional infighting, in which Dickson was intimately involved, and perhaps also, by extension, Boyle himself. Dickson had been defeated in the recordership election in 1728 by his fellow ‘patriot’, Eaton Stannard, but had secured the position after appealing to the privy council.110 The background to this episode remains obscure, but it is obvious that in such circumstances Dickson’s installation as customs collector, on Boyle’s ‘interest’, would have made a considerable impact on politics in the city, and in the region. The vacancy had occurred in the spring of 1734, before Boyle became a revenue commissioner, so that he himself was not consulted in any official capacity. Confident in his newly assumed role of court ‘undertaker’, he put Dickson’s name forward to the lord lieutenant, who in turn spoke to the revenue commissioners. Unfortunately, the English treasury lords had also taken an interest in this particular post. Walpole wished to promote the collector of Mallow, John Love, and even though the commissioners had at first accepted Dorset’s nomination, they were obliged to overrule themselves when Love appeared in Dublin bearing a treasury warrant.111 Boyle was furious. When the commissioners were summoned to the castle to be crossexamined by the lords justices, the speaker ‘fell into a most violent rage, scarce to be imagined, setting forth the disquiet it would give in the country if Mr Dickson should be superseded’.112 In a memorable letter to an English correspondent, Boyle made plain the nature of his ‘resentments’: 109

Hist. Ir. parl., iii, pp. 179–80, 524–7. Richard Caulfield (ed.), The council book of the corporation of Cork, from 1609 to . . . 1800 (Guildford, 1876), pp. 477–8, 493, 496. 111 Revenue commissioners’ min. bk, 5, 8 April, 13, 27 May, 6 June 1734 (P.R.O., CUST 1/26, pp 17, 18, 48, 64, 74). Love had previously been appointed to Mallow in September 1729 on the recommendation of Sir Robert Walpole (min. bk, 16 September 1729 (ibid., CUST 1/21, p. 253)). 112 William Harrison to Dodington, 22 May 1734 (H.M.C., Various, vi, p. 62); Burns, Politics, ii, pp. 25–6. 110

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Where’s my credit, where’s my influence, or what business have I here, when I can no longer be of use or service to His Majesty’s affairs. . . . You, sir, very well know the difficulties I laboured under at my first setting out . . . to persuade my troops to fight in a cause foreign to their own principles or natural inclinations; and now, just as they are brought into good discipline, I can expect no less than a revolt, if they find their endeavours to support me have proved altogether ineffectual.113

There ensued a protracted negotiation, undertaken on Boyle’s behalf by the lord lieutenant, in which Walpole was pressed to reinstate Dickson on political grounds, while the prime minister continued to insist, for reasons of administrative efficiency, on the retention of Love.114 At bottom, however, what was at issue was the nature of English government in Ireland. The dispute over the collectorship was yet another round in Walpole’s rearguard action against the adoption of an ‘undertaker system’. As previously, he seemed determined to restrict the independent influence of the ‘undertaker’, but interference with revenue patronage was carrying this too far, and ended in concession. In the autumn of 1734 an alternative preferment was found for Love, and Dickson was installed in the collector’s office.115 The effects of the political settlement of 1734 were visible in the following parliamentary session, during the winter of 1735–6. For once Dorset encountered few obstacles or embarrassments. The supply was granted without fuss; and since the lord lieutenant was no longer obliged to attempt the impossible in relation to a repeal of the test, he did not fall foul of parliamentary opinion. As one observer noted, ‘our session is very quiet . . . the lord lieutenant much at his ease’.116 The only point of potential difficulty was that Boyle had not been able to bring all his friends into office with him. What had happened was not a ministerial reshuffle, as would have been the case in England, but the adoption of Boyle as the leader of the castle party. Further developments would occur piecemeal. The fact that Coghill and other members of the old Conolly faction remained in office alongside the speaker inevitably produced friction, manifest in one attempt on the part of Carter and others of Boyle’s party to pass a motion of censure against the revenue commissioners, both present and past.117 There was no open warfare, however. What Boulter called the viceroy’s ‘mild and prudent behaviour’, and especially his endorsement of the speaker’s suggestions in patronage matters, ensured that Dorset was able to take ship for England in May 1736 thoroughly pleased with himself.118

113

Boyle to Dodington, 21 May 1734 (H.M.C., Various, vi, pp. 61–2). Burns, Politics, ii, pp. 26–7. 115 Lords of the treasury to Irish revenue commrs, 24 October 1734 (P.R.O., T 14/12, f. 23); revenue commrs min. bk, 6 November, 14 December 1734 (ibid., CUST 1/26, p. 268). 116 Bp Howard to [Hugh Howard], 20 November 1736 (N.L.I., P.C. 226). 117 Coghill to Southwell, jr., 22 November, 2 December 1735 (N.L.I., MS 875). 118 Burns, Politics, ii, pp. 33–4. 114

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IV Yet Walpole could not let this particular sleeping dog lie. He had determined to get rid of Dorset not long after the resolution of the power-struggle over the Cork collectorship, but his decision almost certainly had little to do with this incident and everything to do with English politics. During his last session as viceroy Dorset had been living on borrowed time, for Walpole had persuaded the king and queen to consent to a change in the lord lieutenancy when visiting Hanover in the spring of 1735.119 Indeed, members of the prime minister’s inner circle had expected Dorset’s removal some time before that.120 When Dorset was eventually dismissed, in 1737, his departing interview with Walpole was marked by recriminations about ‘underhand dealings’ with Wilmington, which Dorset hotly denied, rather than any failures in his Irish government.121 His replacement, the duke of Devonshire, resembled him in two respects, having immense social prestige and moderate abilities. Lord Hervey, reporting a dinner at Devonshire House, described its owner as ‘a clown’; Lord Perceval, on seeing him kiss hands as lord privy seal in 1731, was reminded of Caligula making his horse a consul.122 Devonshire was, however, the opposite of his predecessor in one important respect: loyalty. Unlike Dorset, he had stood by the administration in every crisis. Walpole trusted him implicitly – perhaps because Devonshire was not of the first flight intellectually – and regarded him as a valuable ally.123 Devonshire’s nomination as viceroy was followed by the announcement that his chief secretary was to be none other than Walpole’s younger son Edward. Two years later Edward Walpole was in turn replaced by his father’s former private secretary, Henry Bilson Legge. All this might suggest a general intention on Walpole’s part to tighten his grip on Irish affairs; understandable, given his deep-seated suspicion of any settled relationship between viceroy and ‘undertaker’ of the kind that had come to exist between Dorset and Boyle, and his concern to do something about the perennial problem of the smuggling of Irish woollens, especially in the context of the worsening diplomatic situation in Europe, which brought uncertainty over trade and a loss of confidence among commercial and financial interests. No longer

119

Hervey, Memoirs, ed. Sedgwick, ii, p. 454. Hervey to Henry Fox, 11 May 1734 (Ilchester (ed.), Lord Hervey & his friends, p. 198). 121 Wilmington to Lady Sundon, 15 February 1735/6 (Victoria and Albert Museum, MS 48.E.14); Hervey, Memoirs, ed. Sedgwick, iii, pp. 653–4. 122 Hervey to Stephen Fox, 15 October 1731 (Ilchester (ed.), Lord Hervey & his friends, p. 103); H.M.C., Egmont diary, i, p. 192. 123 He wrote to Devonshire after resigning office that ‘one of the greatest prides and pleasures of my life is that I have the honour to call you friend’: Walpole to Devonshire, 3 February 1741/2 (quoted in Sedgwick, Commons 1715–54, i, p. 538). Cf. Walpole, Memoirs of George II, ed. Brooke, i, p. 130, whose description of Devonshire’s whiggery as ‘bigoted’ implied that the duke possessed no great subtlety of mind. 120

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could he rely on Boulter and Wyndham to do his work for him. The more time Boulter had spent in Ireland the more sympathetic he had become to the economic concerns of the Irish protestant community; and after his failure to assist in the repeal of the test he was no longer in the ministers’ full confidence.124 Wyndham was racked by ill-health. For private information, ministers now relied on such second-rate figures as the baron of the exchequer, John Wainwright.125 Thus the appointment of a small knot of Walpolean loyalists to the central places in the castle administration must to some extent have represented a reassertion of prime ministerial, or cabinet, control. It was followed not long afterwards by two other key appointments. On Wyndham’s resignation in 1739 the lord chancellorship was given to Robert Jocelyn, who was not only English by birth and upbringing but a close friend and intimate correspondent of Lord Hardwicke. A year later Walpole made what was his only significant innovation in relation to the government of Ireland, namely the appointment of Sir Robert Wilmot as the viceroy’s resident English secretary. Wilmot’s permanence, and his position at the centre of affairs as the link between cabinet and viceroy, or, when the viceroy was in England, cabinet and lords justices, made him a crucial figure.126 With Wilmot’s appointment, Jocelyn’s promotion and the advancement of Devonshire, Walpole was able to keep a much closer eye on Irish affairs in the last few years of his premiership than ever before. Almost inevitably, the effects on parliamentary management in Ireland of this ministerial reconstruction were detrimental. In this respect what was most significant about Devonshire’s appointment was not his closeness to Walpole but his friendship with an Irish politician, Brabazon Ponsonby, Lord Duncannon.127 As one of Conolly’s lieutenants in the 1720s, Ponsonby had inherited a bitter antagonism towards Boyle, which he had no intention of burying. The physical decline of Marmaduke Coghill, the departure of another of Conolly’s henchmen, Thomas Marlay, to the judicial bench, and the chronic personal unpopularity of Henry Singleton, meant that by 1737

124

This would seem to be demonstrated by the disingenuous explanation of Dorset’s removal that Newcastle thought fit to send him: that the ministers appreciated the extent to which Dorset ‘had acted in everything, so much for his majesty’s service, his own honour, and to the universal satisfaction of the kingdom’, but that ‘the constant course and practice had made a change in the government of Ireland necessary, after the duke of Dorset had had it for so many years’ (Newcastle to Boulter, 9 June 1737 (B.L., Add. MS 32690, ff. 297–8)). 125 See Newcastle to Devonshire, 13 September 1737 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/30); Wainwright to Newcastle, 5 April 1733, 18 April 1736, 22 October 1739 (B.L., Add. MSS 32688, f. 1; 32690, ff. 121–2; 32691, f. 356). 126 James Walton (ed.), The king’s business: letters on the administration of Ireland 1740–1761, from the papers of Sir Robert Wilmot (New York [1996]); Eoin Magennis, The Irish political system 1740–1765 (Dublin, 2000), p. 42. 127 For Ponsonby, see Hist. Ir. parl., vi, pp. 79–81. 267


Ponsonby was the undisputed leader of the Conollyite old corps, and the obvious challenger to Boyle’s parliamentary pre-eminence. Moreover, the two men were to some extent local rivals. The Ponsonbys, who at the turn of the century had been substantial but modest country squires, had not only developed their landholdings to near-magnate proportions by purchases from the ruins of the Ormond estate in Counties Kilkenny and Tipperary, but had evidently set out to fill the gap in local politics left by the sudden demise of the house of Ormond following the second duke’s jacobite exile and attainder.128 Inevitably their interests came into conflict with the speaker’s in parts of the country in which supremacy had traditionally been contested between the Ormonds and their Munster rivals. The Clonmel election of 1733, in which Duncannon and Boyle supported rival candidates in a test of parliamentary as well as regional supremacy, was a case in point.129 What made matters worse for Boyle was that he was already on the defensive. He faced a recrudescence of the personal opposition he had encountered in the early 1730s when his first movements in the direction of the court had provoked ‘patriot’ suspicions. Once again, the underlying cause was a rise in the political temperature as a result of economic hardship, the effects of which seemed to be felt with particular intensity in Munster, and especially in the city of Cork, whose aldermen took the lead in bringing their grievances on to the parliamentary stage. In 1737 Cork corporation, much exercised about the collapse of trade and resenting measures taken by the lords justices and privy council to stabilise the Irish coinage, instructed its M.P.s to try to prevent the granting of subsidies ‘till the proclamation about the gold should be suspended’.130 They subsequently petitioned the commons to the same effect, and although their request was rejected, ‘some of the members about Cork’ were drawn to speak and vote for it. 131 This placed the speaker in a cruel dilemma, since he could scarcely denounce a governmental decision to which he himself had been a party; nor could he afford to countenance a protest that Boulter represented to the English cabinet as an attack on the powers of the privy council and indeed on the continuance of English rule in Ireland.132 He was, as Dorset’s son observed,

128 Leases, grants and indentures between William Ponsonby and the second duke of Ormond, c. 1702 (P.R.O., FEC 1/837–8, 955–6, 970, 1039–41); D. W. Hayton, ‘Dependence, clientage and affinity: the political following of the second duke of Ormonde’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds), The dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, 2000), p. 223. 129 William Taylor to [Egmont], 11 December 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 46984, pp. 214–15). 130 Devonshire to Newcastle, 5 October 1737 (B.L., Add. MS 32690, f. 388); Caulfield (ed.), Cork council bk, pp. 567, 569, 571. See also ibid., pp. 587, 593–4; Lord George Sackville to Dorset, 6 October 1737 (H.M.C., Stopford-Sackville, i, pp. 166–7). 131 Sackville to Dorset,. 20 October 1737 (H.M.C., Stopford-Sackville, i, p. 167); Devonshire to Newcastle, 28 October 1737 (B.L., Add. MS 32690, ff. 400–1). 132 Boulter to Newcastle, 29 September 1737 (P.R.O., SP 63/400/8).

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‘in an ugly situation between the castle and his Cork interest’.133 While Boyle himself took a ‘moderate course’ (which involved doing almost nothing himself), his adherents did their best to suppress the petition in the commons and clashed openly with supporters of what was being described as ‘the country party’.134 There followed an extraordinary incident, which demonstrated the pressure the speaker was under, and the his concern at his loss of influence over some of the more vocal of the Munster ‘patriots’. He confided to Robert Clayton, now bishop of Cork, his concern at the behaviour of certain individuals, in particular the two most prominent of the ‘patriot’ orators, Sir Richard Cox and Anthony Malone,135 and their mentor, Eaton Stannard. In particular he suggested that Cox, his fellow Corkonian, had offered to spy on the other two on Boyle’s behalf. Clayton duly spread this gossip, as doubtless he was supposed to do. Inevitably his letters describing the affair came to Cox’s notice, who protested to Boyle, not only at his breach of confidence in divulging details of a private conversation, but at what he regarded as the misleading construction Boyle had placed on his words.136 Possibly this had been the speaker’s intention all along, and the whole episode a piece of black propaganda designed to sow dissension among the opposition, but the publicity could only have damaged his reputation as a man of probity, whom country gentlemen could trust. Conflict between Boyle and the Ponsonbys had simmered below the surface during Devonshire’s first parliamentary session.137 In the next session, during the winter of 1739–40, it came into the open. A decisive moment had occurred during the preceding summer, when, in an extraordinary coup, Brabazon Ponsonby secured the marriage of his eldest son, William, to one of the viceroy’s daughters. Afterwards Brabazon himself was raised to the earldom of Bessborough while William took the courtesy title Lord Duncannon. Even more alarming, as far as Boyle was concerned, was the news that both men had been brought into government, Bessborough as a revenue commissioner and Duncannon as assistant to the chief secretary, an appointment which meant that as far as parliamentary affairs were concerned he was de facto chief secretary, since the titular holder of the office, Legge, was

133

Sackville to Dorset, 20 October 1737 (H.M.C., Stopford-Sackville, i, p. 167). William Taylor to Egmont, 12 November 1737 (B.L., Add. MS 46997, ff. 154–5); Sir Richard Cox, ‘Irish politics displayed’ [c. 1738], p. 1 (P.R.O.N.I., DIO/4/5/8). 135 See Hist. Ir. parl., v, pp. 183–7. 136 Cox to Boyle, 3, 28 April, 18 May 1738, Boyle to Cox, 11 April, 3 May 1738, Clayton to Cox, 7 April 1738 (BL, Add MS 21138, ff. 77–8, 82–3). There are further copies of this correspondence in R.I.A., MS 12.W.35, and Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, U269/O124/3 (summarised in Eighteenth-century Irish official papers in Great Britain, private collections (2 vols, P.R.O.N.I., Belfast, 1973–90), i, pp. 33–4. 137 Sackville to Dorset, 20 November 1737 (H.M.C., Stopford-Sackville, i, p. 168); — to Richard Ward, 14 April 1738 (B.L., Add. MS 46399B, ff. 107–8). 134

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an absentee. Duncannon could now act as an alternative leader of the court party in the commons, while his father could do the same in the lords. Management was once more divided, as it had been in 1723–4. Egmont was told of an early clash over the Waterford election, after which ‘the speaker and Lord Bessborough’ were reported to be ‘all to pieces’.138 Soon every issue was turned into ‘a party affair’.139 The intimate connexion between Devonshire and two Ponsonbys effectively institutionalised this factionalism, so that in the following session Devonshire was still having to report to Whitehall that there were ‘great animosities’ between those whom he described as members of the government ‘interest’.140 In silly-clever fashion, Devonshire actually bragged to Newcastle of his strategy of ‘divide and rule’ in terms which ought to have exasperated any English cabinet minister who could cast his mind back to Grafton’s viceroyalty, or even to Dorset’s first session in 1731–2. In my last I said, what may seem a little paradoxical to those who are unacquainted with this country, that I had a great deal of trouble to manage matters tho’ I had reason to hope for an easy session. What I have always aimed at has been to extend the government interest in Parliament as far as I could that I might not be in the power of any particular set, so there are great divisions among those who compose the government interest; each is for appearing to have the principal share in what is done; this makes it difficult sometimes to settle the method in which any thing is to be managed as what comes from one is frequently objected to by those who dislike the proposer.141

In one respect Devonshire’s analysis was an echo of Walpole’s own response to the Wood’s halfpence débâcle: the determination not to be ‘in the power of any particular set’. But there were better ways to do this than to set rival ‘undertakers’ at each other’s throats. As it was, Devonshire was forced to intervene on several occasions to suppress ‘intrigues’ between disaffected courtiers and the ‘patriot’ opposition. We should be careful not to exaggerate these difficulties. Devonshire did prevent the essential business of the parliament from being compromised, partly by keeping some patronage for Boyle. In November 1741, for example, he recommended Boyle’s brother-in-law, Michael O’Brien Dilkes, to a vacant colonelcy with unusual promptness.142 Supply bills passed without a hitch, and there were no embarrassments over enquiries into accounts. Given the depression into which the Irish economy was lurching, and the developing 138 Richard Purcell to Egmont, 20 November 1739 (B.L., Add. MS 47001A, f. 25); William Taylor to same, 23 November 1739 (ibid., Add. MS 47008A, f. 33). 139 Taylor to Egmont, 2 November 1739 (B.L., Add. MS 46997, f. 128). 140 Devonshire to Newcastle, 24 November 1741 (P.R.O., SP 63/404/240). 141 Same to [same], 17 November 1741 (ibid., SP 63/404/223–4). 142 Same to [same], 24 November 1741 (ibid., SP 63/404/240).

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political crisis at Westminster, which culminated in Walpole’s fall from power in February 1742 (while Devonshire was still in Ireland), this was a remarkable achievement, and perhaps excuses a little smugness on Devonshire’s part. However, the viceroy himself would have been mistaken in drawing too much comfort from the outcome of these parliamentary sessions. In the first place, from the point of view of the ministers at Whitehall, and the prime minister in particular, Devonshire had achieved only the fundamentals required of any Irish administration – the maintenance of security and financial stability, and the avoidance of serious political embarrassment. Walpole’s more specific objective had not been met: the passage of legislative measures in Ireland to curtail the smuggling of wool and woollen yarn. This had been a constant thorn in Walpole’s side throughout his premiership. In 1730/1 he had come close to making progress. His strategy on that occasion had been to encourage the Irish to send their products legally to England. Carteret had persuaded the Irish parliament to repeal the export duties on wool and yarn sent to England as a pledge of good faith, and in return Walpole had attempted in the following session of the Westminster parliament to secure the removal of duties on Irish imports. However, he had been frustrated by the intransigence of M.P.s from English clothing districts, including members of his own cabinet, and by the unwillingness of the Irish lobby in England, under the leadership of Lord Perceval (later earl of Egmont) to countenance proposals for establishing a registry of wool exports in Ireland, as some English M.P.s had demanded.143 Pressure from the treasury on the Irish revenue commissioners to investigate local officials produced a purge of the more inefficient or corrupt, but no substantial improvement in seizure rates.144 Further efforts to remove the English duties failed, and in 1739, prompted by Walpole himself, Devonshire raised the question again in Ireland.145 After a conference at the castle his principal parliamentary managers, including both Boyle and Ponsonby, promised to do what they could to assist.146 Various solutions were aired and

143 Sedgwick, Commons 1715–54, i, pp. 157–8; James, Empire, pp. 156–8; Lord Perceval’s reports of debates in the British house of commons, 2, 8, 12, 26 April 1731 (B.L., Add. MS 47033, ff. 53–8, 65–9, 73–80, 84–6); Perceval to Coghill, 6 May 1731 (ibid., ff. 98–9). 144 Lords of the treasury to the Irish revenue commrs, 26 October 1732, 10 May 1733 (P.R.O., T 14/11, ff. 219, 224); revenue commrs min. bk, 18 July 1734 (ibid., CUST 1/26, p. 121). 145 William Hay’s parliamentary journal, 12 February 1734, 21 April 1735 (Stephen Taylor and Clyve Jones (eds), Tory and whig: the parliamentary papers of Edward Harley, third earl of Oxford, and William Hay, M.P. for Seaford, 1716–1753 (Parliamentary History Record Series i, Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 94–5, 116–19). H.M.C., Egmont diary, ii, pp. 26–9, 162–4, 171; Walpole to Devonshire, 1 October 1739 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/11); H. B. Legge to same, 31 January 1739/40 (ibid., T/3158/134). For what follows see also Burns, Politics, ii, p. 49; Magennis, Irish political system, pp. 33–4. 146 Potter to Legge, 1 December 1739 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3019/210).

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eventually the commons agreed to proceed to a bill to impose a licensing system. ‘The speaker and his friends’ seemed to give it their support.147 When a draft bill was produced and debated, however, Boyle’s followers either spoke against or remained silent.148 The implications for the Munster economy of any attempt to restrict smuggling were such that Boyle could not really have afforded to assist the viceroy on this point, but it seems possible that he was also availing himself of the opportunity to make short-term political capital.149 Second, Devonshire’s strategy of spreading patronage and influence between two ‘undertakers’ meant that one of the principles of Walpole’s Irish ‘system’ – the policy of building up the ‘English’ interest in Ireland and weakening dependence on native political interests– was weakened. Walpole himself had not abandoned it, and on Wyndham’s resignation as lord chancellor in 1739 he expressed the hope that an Englishman would be selected.150 However, although he got his wish, the appointment did not send the same kind of message that West’s and Wyndham’s had done, for the new lord chancellor was Robert Jocelyn, promoted from within the Irish administration, and on the recommendation of Bessborough, even if backed up by the influence of Hardwicke. There had been an alternative candidate, also an Englishman, promoted by Archbishop Boulter and by the speaker, so that Jocelyn’s nomination appeared as much a victory for the Ponsonby interest as a reminder of English supremacy.151 Moreover, when it came to filling any vacancies in the chain of employments released by Jocelyn’s preferment, Walpole and his advisers failed to produce a single English nominee.152 Subsequently Jocelyn himself proved less relentless in his pursuit of English interests than his predecessor had been. In 1740, amid rumours of a vacancy on the bench, the lord chancellor joined Devonshire and various other unnamed persons (almost certainly including Bessborough), to recommend the long-serving prime serjeant, Henry Singleton.153 Even though Hardwicke was asked by the king to recommend an English barrister to succeed Wainwright in the exchequer in 1741,154 a further round of legal 147

Same to same, 2 February 1739/40 (ibid., T/3019/226). Same to same, 6, 14 February 1739/40 (ibid., T/3019/228, 232). 149 Devonshire to Newcastle, 18 March 1739/40 (P.R.O., SP 63/403/61–2). 150 Thomas Townshend to Devonshire, 7 August 1739 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/95). It may be significant that Walpole’s brother Horace and close ally Bishop Gibson of London had both previously recommended Henry Singleton, which seems to indicate that the wisdom of appointing Englishmen was not now so widely accepted: William Richardson to Bp Howard, 4 January 1738[/9], 6 September 1739 (N.L.I., PC 227). 151 Boulter to Devonshire, 7 August 1739 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/97); Boyle to same, 7 August 1739 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/98); Jocelyn to Hardwicke, 21 August, 5 September 1739 (B.L., Add. MS 35586, ff. 174–5, 182–3); Devonshire to same, 28 August 1739 (ibid., f. 178); Hardwicke to Devonshire, 28 August 1739 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/101). 152 Newcastle to Devonshire, 22 September 1739 (P.R.O.N.I., T/3158/107). 153 Jocelyn to Hardwicke, 5 April 1740 (B.L., Add. MS 35586, ff. 227–8). 154 Wilmot to Devonshire, 20 June 1741 (P.R.O., SP 63/403/47). 148

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appointments that year showed that in the Dublin administration little attention was being paid to ‘national’ considerations in the distribution of judicial patronage: Devonshire recommended moving the old Conollyite Thomas Marlay from exchequer to king’s bench, filling his place with attorney-general Bowes (an Englishman but one long resident in Ireland), promoting one Irish lawyer, St George Caulfield, from solicitor-general to take Bowes’s place, and another, Warden Flood, to succeed Caulfield.155

V On a superficial assessment, Walpole and his cabinet colleagues could claim to have ruled Ireland successfully. In 1742 the kingdom was secure (as was to be amply demonstrated three years later when a jacobite army invaded Scotland, and Ireland remained relatively undisturbed);156 and there was enough money in the Irish treasury to pay the cost of the civil and military establishments. Despite the heartiest efforts of ‘patriot’ M.P.s to stir up opinion on a variety of issues, additional taxes had been voted and the debt serviced. It had even proved possible to provide for royal mistresses and other dependants out of the Irish pension list without raising howls of protest from opposition benches. Moreover, having ridden out the severe economic recession of the late 1720s, the Irish government was unaffected politically by the even more bitter climatic conditions of the early 1740s, which were to produce a famine of epic proportions.157 As Horace Walpole observed, once the Wood’s halfpence affair was over, Ireland had not posed any really searching questions of his father’s premiership. However, this was not necessarily the result of prime ministerial strategy so much as the natural circumstances of the Anglo–Irish political connexion, and especially the essentially limited ‘patriotic’ aspirations of the Irish protestant propertied élite in Ireland. Yet in terms of what Walpole himself set out to achieve, his Irish policy could scarcely be described as successful. His diagnosis in 1724 had highlighted the dangers of overmighty undertakers who could not be trusted to stand against the ‘patriotic’ tide, and of overmighty viceroys who, so to speak, went native and espoused Irish interests against those of Britain. If the political strategy he subsequently adopted was intended to subordinate undertakers to government and to return parliamentary management to the 155

Devonshire to Newcastle, 24 November 1741 (P.R.O., SP 63/404/237). Notwithstanding arguments to the contrary in L. M. Cullen, The emergence of modern Ireland 1600–1900 (London, 1981); F. J. McLynn, ‘“Good behaviour”: Irish catholics and the jacobite rising of 1745’ in Éire-Ireland, xvi (1981), pp. 43–58; idem, ‘Ireland and the jacobite rising of 1745’ in Irish Sword, xiii (1977–9), pp. 339–53; and Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the jacobite cause, 1685–1766: a fatal attachment (Dublin, 2002), ch. 6. 157 David Dickson, Arctic Ireland: the extraordinary story of the great frost and forgotten famine of 1740–41 (Dundonald, 1997). 156

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castle, it failed. At crucial stages, in 1725–6 and in 1733–4, the ‘undertaker system’ had reasserted itself; while on the central issue of parliamentary management, namely the avoidance of divisions among the supporters of the court, the situation was as bad in 1742 as it had been in 1723, with Boyle and Bessborough now occupying the rival corners that had formerly been held by Midleton and Conolly. On two occasions Walpole had intervened to prevent the emergence of an overmighty viceroy, replacing first Carteret and then Dorset when they were well established. In terms of the immediate effects on parliamentary management both decisions were counterproductive, and at least part of the problem lay in the fact that the viceroyalty was being used as a dumping ground for political opponents. Devonshire proved a better bet in terms of loyalty if not intelligence, but even he did not always do as his cabinet colleagues expected. By 1741, while protesting that he was still committed to maintaining the ‘dependency’ of Ireland, he was warning Walpole against pushing Irish protestants too far by discriminatory legislation: wisdom dictated that English governments ‘should not make it difficult for the better sort in Ireland to withstand that spirit of licence and lawlessness which is apt to grow under the colour of liberty’.158 Walpole’s efforts at building up an ‘English’ interest in Ireland were equally flawed. For a time Boulter and Wyndham had acted as his agents at Dublin Castle, although the extent to which it was practicable to maintain any such channel of influence separate from viceroy and ‘undertaker’ always depended on the general requirements of parliamentary management. Eventually both the primate and the lord chancellor departed from their original brief. Long residence in Ireland affected them no less than any other acculturated English officials, and like their predecessors they came to espouse the economic interests of their adopted country, and to articulate its grievances. Occasionally, they were also to be found recommending Irishmen for preferment. Neither had forgotten the desirability of maintaining a strong English presence in the judiciary and episcopate but Boulter was prepared to make exceptions for people he liked, or in cases where he could balance an English with an Irish nominee,159 and Wyndham came to believe that Irish appointees were perfectly acceptable provided that it was he who had made the recommendation and not some Irish politician.160 In any case, since the mid-1720s the policy of ‘English-first’ had scarcely ever been applied to appointments below the highest rank. The key figures in the Irish administration – those who did the work – such as the deputy vice-treasurer (the

158

Devonshire to Newcastle, 24 November 1741 (P.R.O., SP 63/494/239–40). See, for example, Boulter to Newcastle, 13 December 1729 (recommending Arthur Price to the diocese of Cashel), 3 January 1729[/30] (recommending Edward Synge to Clonfert) (Boulter letters, i, pp. 271, 278). 160 Wyndham to King, 25 July 1730 (Bodl., MS Locke c. 38, ff. 27–8). Cf. same to Sir Philip Yorke, 5 September 1730 (B.L., Add. MS 35585, f. 136). 159

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most important active official in the treasury) or the principal resident revenue commissioner, were always native-born Irishmen. The revenue perhaps offered the best opportunity for English interference, and there is evidence that from time to time Walpole and the other treasury lords did try to influence the conduct of the board through the agency of a compliant English commissioner. Ultimately, however, residence and application proved the crucial factors, so that in practice the leadership of the commission fell into the hands of successive Irish politicians: Conolly, Coghill, Boyle, and ultimately Lord Bessborough. Finally, in those few areas of policy where Walpole could be seen to have entertained some more specific objective, he was denied any real satisfaction. The two attempts to repeal the test – assuming he wished to do more on this subject than merely tease the duke of Dorset – were sunk by the determined opposition of a majority of the Irish parliament; while his repeated efforts to suppress Irish wool smuggling failed for more complex reasons: the incapacity of the Irish administration to put its own existing laws into effect, and the inability of ministers on either side of the Irish Sea to devise a further legislative expedient which would appeal to both Irish producers and English manufacturers. However, in each instance the government’s cause was also hindered by inadequacies in the prevailing scheme of parliamentary management. Dorset’s faint hopes of repealing the test were entirely dashed by Boyle’s tactical refusal to co-operate with him, while Devonshire’s advocacy of a woollen export licensing bill fell foul of the speaker’s resentment at the promotion of Lord Bessborough. The best that may be said for Walpole’s government of Ireland was that having survived the ‘hurricane’ of Wood’s halfpence the prime minister avoided similar squalls during the remainder of his premiership. But this was not really his own doing. Indeed, he often put unnecessary difficulties in the way of the Dublin administration. His unwillingness to trust Irish politicians may have been justified initially by the experience of 1723–4, but there is little to suggest that the subsequent appointment of Englishmen to key positions had much effect. By 1742 political management in Ireland was no more secure than it had been two decades earlier. The rivalry between Boyle and Bessborough weakened the capacity of the castle to respond to any serious ‘patriot’ agitation. When open warfare did eventually break out, over the ‘money bill’ dispute in the 1750s, the English management of Irish politics was brought to the edge of collapse. According to the young Horace Walpole it was only then that Ireland entered fully into ‘the theatre of politics’. The truth was, however, that long before the curtain went up on that particular drama, Sir Robert’s policies had ensured that the principal actors had been thoroughly rehearsed in the parts they were to play.

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Conclusion

The most noticeable characteristic of Anglo–Irish relations in the halfcentury following the treaty of Limerick is their underlying stability: certainly in comparison with what had gone before, and what was to come after. Conflict between protestant and catholic political interests had been resolved beyond the prospect of reversal. At the same time the protestant propertied élite, confirmed in its control of land, government and representative institutions, was not yet sufficiently confident as to assert a claim to a separate and substantially independent political existence. The religious and ethnic wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were over; the sustained ‘patriot’ challenge to British authority, which culminated in an attempted separatist revolution, was yet to begin. The period after the Williamite revolution was not without excitement. In particular the popular resistance to ‘Wood’s halfpence’ created tremors powerful enough to be noticed even in those histories of Ireland in which the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century are generally presented as devoid of incident. The important point, however, is that the context for political action seems to have been settled: that is to say, the relationships between social classes in Ireland, and between the Irish political nation and the English (after 1707 British) state. On the other hand, the absence of radical change does not necessarily mean stagnation, and the chapters collected in this volume suggest a period characterised by shifts and adaptations within that fixed general framework. The power of the ‘protestant ascendancy’ over Irish society may not have been challenged between 1691 and about 1740; nor was the Anglo–Irish constitutional relationship modified. Nonetheless, significant developments were taking place in Irish political life that influenced the way in which the country was governed. The most dramatic was the rapid emergence after 1691 of a form of ‘party’ politics in Ireland along English lines. One cause of the rise of ‘party’ must have been the natural gravitational force exerted by English politics, but it would be wrong to see ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ divisions as a mere importation, since the appearance of a ‘high church’ interest among both clergy and laity, in many respects the key to the development of a two-party system, undoubtedly reflected social and political realities in Ireland: on the one hand, the growing strength of the Ulster presbyterian community as a result of the surge of Scottish immigration in the mid-1690s; and on the other the political prostration of the catholic community, which some Anglicans were prepared 276

CONCLUSION

to view as a permanent condition. The fact that other protestants were not so willing to dismiss the possibility of a catholic and jacobite revanche accounts for the continued vigour of Irish whiggism, in opposition to this ‘high church’ interest, and also for the ultimate decline of the tory party, and of party politics in general, as a result of the crisis over the succession in 1713–15. Even if the existence of a two-party political ‘system’ in Ireland was brief, its impact was considerable. Between about 1704 and 1715 the ‘rage of party’ dominated the proceedings of both houses of the Irish parliament, and spread into the constituencies, where it divided gentry communities in the counties, created or at least intensified factional conflict in borough corporations, animated what might otherwise have been a relatively lifeless electoral system, and even stimulated the unenfranchised into displays of sectarian violence. Moreover, the inclusion of the sacramental test clause in the popery act of 1704 focused ‘party’ enthusiasms in Ireland on an issue that, although it resonated in England, was nonetheless specifically Irish. Toryism was thus able to develop some surprisingly tenacious roots in Ireland, so that despite the freezing political climate after 1715, it did not immediately die off. Some individual tories retained their identity as ‘churchmen’ well beyond the Hanoverian succession, even if others were keen to make their peace with the new regime in the hope of preferment. In towns like Youghal or Galway, hotbeds of violent partisan strife in Anne’s reign, conflict continued for a decade or more, the local factions sometimes adopting different nomenclature but exhibiting a continuity of personnel.1 In parliament, the presence of a squadron of tory M.P.s was noted as late as 1727,2 and indeed, six years later party loyalties were evidently still important, for when Henry Singleton was considered as a candidate for the speakership his tory past was held against him, to the surprise of the revenue commissioner Marmaduke Coghill, who had ‘thought these names were pretty well over, and forgotten amongst us’.3 In general, the rhetoric of ‘party’ had by this time been superseded as the common currency of parliamentary and political debate by the rhetoric of ‘patriotism’. This is not to say that religion ceased to be a matter of controversy: the noisy reaction in parliament and the press in 1731–3 to the Walpole ministry’s scheme to repeal the test shows that Anglican hostility towards Ulster presbyterians had not diminished; while the alarm caused by occasional

1

Richard Caulfield (ed.), The council book of the corporation of Youghal, from 1610 to . . . 1800 (Guildford, 1878); Galway corporation minute books E–F (National University of Ireland, Galway, Hardiman Library, Galway corporation papers); T. C. Barnard, ‘Considering the inconsiderable: electors, patrons and Irish elections 1659–1761’ in D. W. Hayton (ed.), The Irish parliament in the eighteenth century: the long apprenticeship (Parliamentary History, xx, no. 1, Edinburgh, 2001), pp. 117–20; James Kelly, ‘The politics of the “protestant ascendancy”: County Galway 1650–1832’ in Gerard Moran (ed.), Galway: history and society (Dublin, 1996), pp. 239–45. 2 See above, p. 122. 3 Coghill to Edward Southwell, jr., 5 April 1733 (B.L., Add. MS 21123, ff. 32–4). 277


reports of French agents in Ireland recruiting catholics for the pretender’s cause, or by the legal case brought in England by the catholic Lord Clancarty in 1735 for restitution to his ancestral estates in County Cork, amply demonstrates the continuing fear of popery.4 But sectarian divisions no longer dominated Irish politics. The government’s parliamentary managers and their critics were now competing in professions of devotion to the interests of Ireland, rather than putting forward rival versions of the confessional state. More often than not the opposition in the house of commons called itself the ‘country party’ rather than ‘patriots’. ‘Country party’ was a term taken directly from English politics, where it was traditionally juxtaposed with ‘the court’. The stock-in-trade of ‘country’ oppositions in England was the exposure of corruption, and the pursuit of ‘courtiers’ and ‘placemen’ who were said to be exploiting the resources of the state for private rather than public advantage. This line of attack was taken up by successive ‘country’ oppositions in Ireland. Inevitably, though, it became entangled with the national question, as the public interest was identified with Ireland’s interest. For example, attacks on abuses in the pension list became focused on absentee pensioners, who were not only drawing large sums from the public purse but siphoning wealth out of the country. The ‘patriotic’ thrust of this kind of parliamentary opposition was emphasised by a growing concentration on economic issues, and on the apparently Sisyphean task of fostering the ‘improvement’ of Irish trade and industry. The chronic deficiencies in the Irish economy – uneven agricultural production, lack of capital, weak currency and inadequate transport infrastructure – were not necessarily attributable to English misrule, nor were they necessarily within the power of English government to put right. It was indisputable, however, that the condition of Ireland had worsened as a consequence of the actions of the English parliament, in seeking to exclude Irishmen from the transatlantic plantation trade and preventing the export of Irish goods to England, where they could compete on level terms with English manufactures. The English colonial system (as established by the navigation acts) and the Woollen Act of 1699 provided the background to Irish parliamentary debates over economic issues, which assumed inevitable competition between England and Ireland in the economic sphere and almost always carried a sense of grievance against English discrimination. Although ‘patriotic’ parliamentary campaigns were not confined to economic issues – the ‘national remonstrance’ of 1701–2 against the English forfeitures resumption act would be one obvious example of a different sort of grievance, the jurisdictional dispute between the British and Irish house of lords another – they acquired a sharper edge when applied to questions of trade and manufactures, as with the reaction to the Woollen Act in 1699, for

4 Burns, Politics, ii, p. 30; Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the jacobite cause, 1685–1766: a fatal attachment (Dublin, 2002), pp. 203–6, 252–8.

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CONCLUSION

example, or Wood’s halfpence in 1723–4, and the campaign over the currency in 1737–8. Furthermore, spasms of the most fervid popular patriotism tended to coincide with times of acute economic depression: the agitation against the forfeitures resumption was undoubtedly sharpened by the prevailing shortage of coin that deprived many landlords of rental income, while the difficulties encountered by Lord Carteret’s administration over the altered money bill in the parliamentary session of 1729–30 were made worse by catastrophic harvests and renewed protestant emigration to north America. In Ireland the period from 1691 to about 1740 was marked by a painfully slow economic recovery from the devastation caused by the Williamite war, punctuated by periodic crises. Considerable efforts were made to generate agricultural and industrial ‘improvement’, by means of enabling legislation in parliament or through such voluntary organisations as the Dublin Society, and economic historians have detected by the 1740s the beginnings of the expansion that was to transform many sectors of the Irish economy in the middle decades of the century. However, this ‘take-off’ was not necessarily apparent to contemporaries.5 Indeed, the period ends in 1740–1 with one of the worst recorded famines in Irish history.6 Ireland’s difficulties doubtless appeared all the more frustrating when merchants and country gentlemen observed the enlargement of the British empire and the multiplication of trading opportunities for English and Scottish merchants. Politically, frustration at Ireland’s failure to keep pace seems to have produced two main consequences: an increasing concentration in parliamentary debate on fiscal and economic issues, and a focusing of ‘patriotic’ concern on the nature of the Anglo–Irish relationship. It is important not to exaggerate the Anglophobic nature of parliamentary ‘patriotism’ in the first half of the eighteenth century. Ministerial assumptions about the extent to which Irish protestants harboured notions of legislative independence had always been distorted. Neither Molyneux’s Case of Ireland . . . stated in 1698, nor some of the more extreme statements in Swift’s Drapier’s letters had been endorsed by the Irish parliament. Moreover, historians have identified a strand of ‘patriot’ ideology that accepted the realities of the Anglo–Irish political connexion and set itself to work within a framework of constitutional dependence.7 Nonetheless, the parliamentary debates of the 1730s and 1740s increasingly raised issues of an economic nature that involved assertion of the rights of Ireland as a separate kingdom: absenteeism among pensioners and office-holders, the working of the navigation and woollen acts, the regulation of the coinage, and the right to 5 David Dickson, New foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (2nd edn, Dublin, 2000), ch. 4, esp. pp. 115–16. 6 Idem, Arctic Ireland: the extraordinary story of the great frost and forgotten famine of 1740–41 (Dundonald, 1997). 7 Gerard McCoy, ‘Local political culture in the Hanoverian empire: the case of Ireland 1714–60’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1994).

279


dispose of surplus revenue accruing from taxation granted by the Irish parliament. Coincidentally, an important shift was occurring in Irish protestants’ sense of their national identity, as many came to accept, and even to take pride in, their own Irishness. During the Williamite war the term ‘the Irish’ had been used to denote the catholic supporters of King James, whatever their ethnic origin. In the aftermath of the Limerick treaty Irish protestants’ understanding of their national identity was both ambivalent and ambiguous: sometimes they were ‘the English’; sometimes ‘the English of Ireland’; sometimes ‘the King’s protestant subjects of Ireland’; and occasionally ‘the Irish’. By the mid-eighteenth century a clearer notion of their Irish national identity is evident.8 The relationship of this growing sense of national identity to political ideology or practice is unclear. It certainly did not turn all ‘patriots’ into legislative separatists.9 Nevertheless, it did mark an important stage in the evolution of a political culture which was distinctively patriotic, and even national, in tone. These changes in the political thought and practice of Irish protestants were not matched by any shift in the attitudes of the English governing class to the problems of ruling Ireland. Here, by contrast, there is a clear impression of continuity, even immobility. Unlike their sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury predecessors, ministers from Danby in 1691 to Walpole in 1742 entertained no ambitions to reform Irish society; nor, unlike some of their successors, did they devise schemes to integrate the government of Ireland into a comprehensive imperial strategy. In general their requirements were simple: the maintenance of public order and political stability, and sufficient parliamentary subsidies to prevent the Irish treasury from running into debt to pay for troops stationed on the Irish establishment. The only departure from this agenda came when English political considerations supervened, and a viceroy was required to undertake some task that had been conceived with a view to assisting the ministry at home, as was the case with Bolton in 1719 or Dorset in 1733, both ordered against the better judgement of their Irish advisers to attempt a repeal of the test. The selection of viceroys is further evidence of the subordinate role the government of Ireland occupied in English ministerial calculations. The general rule seems to have been to appoint a nobleman of high social status but not necessarily of any great intellectual capacity. Walpole certainly followed this precept consistently, except in the appointment of Carteret, which occurred at a rare moment of crisis in Anglo–Irish government. 8

D. W. Hayton, ‘Anglo–Irish attitudes: changing perceptions of national identity among the protestant ascendancy in Ireland, c. 1690–1750’ in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, xvii (1987), pp. 145–57; Jim Smyth, ‘“Like amphibious animals”: Irish protestants, ancient Britons, 1691–1707’ in Historical Journal, xxxvi (1993), pp. 785–97. 9 For some wise words on this point, see T. C. Barnard, ‘Crises of identity among Irish protestants 1641–1685’ in Past & Present, 127 (1990), pp. 39–41. 280

CONCLUSION

To each of these generalisations one might find an exception in the period of party conflict in Anne’s reign: viceroys appointed, like Pembroke in 1707, with a particular programme of government in view – in his case one imposed on him by the whig junto – that involved advancing a party interest in Ireland;10 politicians of the first rank, like Wharton in 1709, given the viceroyalty as a reward rather than as a punishment or a penance, or in the case of Ormond in 1703 and 1710 because of a particular interest in Irish affairs and what were perceived as the particular abilities and strengths he might bring to the office. In many ways this was a natural consequence of the integration of English and Irish political structures. However, with the collapse of the two-party system in Ireland after the Hanoverian succession, Irish affairs no longer held any special claim on ministerial attention. It would be easy to criticise successive English administrations after 1715 for the rigidity of their approach to Irish policy and for failing to exert themselves to govern Ireland well, or even fairly. Most assumed that the Williamite victory in 1691 had made the kingdom secure and that relatively little needed to be done to keep it so. For the most part, British rule in Ireland could be maintained without any great expenditure of men, money or mental effort. This, combined with the common assumption among the political classes in England, that the Westminster parliament could do with Ireland whatsoever it thought fit, encouraged a kind of sclerosis. Given the other demands made on their time by domestic and foreign concerns, one could scarcely have expected the ministers of the first two Georges to have been more proactive in an area of government with which neither their royal masters nor English public opinion were greatly concerned. It would not be long, however, before the changing requirements of empire, and of Ireland, would compel the British ministers of King George III into just such a radical reappraisal of policy, putting an end to decades of political stability and inaugurating a new and ultimately much more dangerous era in Anglo–Irish relations.

10 H. L. Snyder (ed.), ‘The formulation of foreign and domestic policy in the reign of Queen Anne: memoranda by Lord Chancellor Cowper of conversations with Lord Treasurer Godolphin’ in Historical Journal, xi (1968), pp. 157, 160.

281

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MSS in private hands Bagot papers (Mr C. H. Bagot, Levens Hall, Westmorland) Bolton papers (the Lord Bolton, Bolton Hall, Wensley, Yorkshire) Goodwood papers (the earl of March, Goodwood House, West Sussex) Thynne papers (the marquess of Bath, Longleat House, Warminster, Wiltshire)

MSS in public repositories Aberystwyth National Library of Wales Ottley papers Puleston papers (Add. MS 3582D) Belfast Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Abercorn papers (D/623) Annesley papers (D/1854) Armagh diocesan registry papers (DIO/4) Boyd papers (T/974) Bruce papers (T/3041) Chatsworth papers (T/3158) Coleraine corporation records (LA/25) Castletown papers (T/2825)1 De Ros papers (D/638) Derry corporation records (LA/79) Dobbs transcripts (T/2707) Foster-Massereene papers (D/207, 562) Lenox-Conyngham papers (D/1449, T/3161) 1

Originals at Irish Architectural Archive (cited below). 282

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES CITED

Malcomson papers (T/2534) Meath papers, calendar (T/3224) Murray of Broughton papers (D/2860) O’Hara papers (T/2812) Perceval papers (D/906) Pomeroy papers (T/2954) Roden papers (Mic./147) Rossmore papers (T/2929) Shannon papers (D/2707) Tickell papers (T/2774) Wilmot papers (T/3019)

Bury St Edmunds Suffolk Record Office Grafton papers (423)

Cambridge Cambridge University Library Strype papers (Add. MS 1)

Carrickfergus Carrickfergus Borough Council Carrickfergus corporation records

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Dublin Irish Architectural Archive Castletown papers Marsh’s Library MSS Z.3.1.1, Z. 3.2.6 283


National Archives of Ireland Ormond papers (M/2447) Sarsfield–Vesey correspondence Southwell papers (M/3036) Wyche papers National Library of Ireland Sir Francis Brewster’s ‘account’ (MS 8094) Castle Durrow papers (MS 11478) Clements papers (microfilm, P. 3753) Cox notebook (MS 4245) De Vesci papers (T/3738) Forth letterbook (MS 16007) Fownes papers (MS 8802) Inchiquin papers Lane papers (MS 8645) Lismore papers (MS 13242) Ormond papers (MSS 991, 1044, 2453, 2456–7, 2472) Orrery papers (MS 4177) Shannon papers (MS 13297) Smythe of Barbavilla papers (P.C. 435) Southwell papers (MS 845) Talbot–Crosbie papers (P.C. 188) Wicklow papers (P.C. 226–7) Royal Dublin Society Dublin Society minute books Royal Irish Academy MSS 3. A. 54, 12. W. 35, 24. K. 19 Trinity College library Clarke papers (MS 749) Convocation of the Church of Ireland records (MSS 556, 668) Crosbie papers (MS 3821) Matthew French’s journal (MS 2215) Archbishop King’s letterbooks (MSS 750/1, 750/3, 750/5, 750/8, 2531–3, 2536–7) Lyons (King) collection (MSS 1995–2008) Shrewsbury papers (MSS 2021–2) Southwell papers (MS 1179)

284


Galway National University of Ireland, Galway, Hardiman Library Galway corporation papers Hereford Hereford and Worcester Record Office Foley papers Hertford Hertfordshire Record Office Panshanger papers (D/EP) Huntingdon Cambridgeshire Record Office Manchester papers Ipswich Suffolk Record Office Gurdon papers (M142) Kew Public Record Office Baschet transcripts (PRO 31) Chancery masters’ exhibits (C 110) Customs records (CUST 1) Forfeited Estates Commission records (FEC 1) Prerogative Court of Canterbury, probate records (Prob. 11) Privy Council records (PC) State Papers, domestic (SP 34, 54) State Papers, Ireland (SP 63, 67) Treasury papers (T)

285


Lawrence, Kansas Kenneth R. Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Methuen–Simpson correspondence (MS E 82) Moore papers (MS 143) Leeds Yorkshire Archaeological Society Copley papers (DD38) Leicester Leicestershire Record Office Finch papers London British Library Althorp papers (Add. MS 75358) Blenheim papers (Add. MSS 61368, 61634–6, 61639–40, 61653) Brockman papers (Add. MS 42593) Sir Peter Colleton’s minute book (Harl. MS 6837) Coningsby papers (Add. MS 57861) Davenant papers (Add. MS 4291) Dutch transcripts (Add. MSS 17677) Egmont papers (Add. MSS 46399B, 46984, 46997, 47001A, 47008A, 47013A, 47025, 47028, 47031–3, 47087–8) Ellis papers (Add. MS 28876–7, 28879–81, 28883, 28887–8, 28891; Add. Ch. 19526–8, 19530–4, 19537–8) Essex papers (Stowe MSS 207–12) Evelyn papers (Add. MSS 78301, 78432, 78530) Hardwicke papers (Add. MS 35585–6) Hatton-Finch papers (Add. MSS 29575–6, 29588–9, 29595) Lords justices’ letterbook 1691–2 (Add. MS 30149) Lothian papers (Add. MS 69947) Macclesfield papers (Stowe MS 750) H.C. Malsen papers (Add. MS. 38617) Newcastle papers (Add. MS 32686–7, 32690, 32692) Nicolson papers (Add. MS 34265) Official newsletters (Add. MS 34096) Petty papers (Add. MS 72092) 286


Portland papers (Add. MSS 70017, 70036, 70062, 70064, 70070, 70167, 70206, 70215, 70218–19, 70235, 70257, 70260, 70278, 70282, 70287, 70306) Prussian transcripts (Add. MSS 30000) Southwell papers (Add. MSS 9712–13, 9715, 21122–3, 21132–3, 21136, 21138, 21553, 34777, 37674, 38016, 38153, 38157, 38847, 60583; Egerton MSS 917, 929) Strafford papers (Add. MS 22228) Sundon papers (Add. MS 20102) Vernon papers (Add. MS 40775) Walpole papers (Add. MS 74053, 74066) Dr Williams’s Library Roger Morrice’s ent’ring book (Morrice MS R) History of Parliament Trust, 15 Woburn Square, W.C.1 Blackett of Matfen papers (photocopies) Lambeth Palace Library MS 1742 Victoria and Albert Museum Forster collection (MS 48. E. 14) Maidstone Centre for Kentish Studies De L’Isle papers (U1475) Stanhope papers (U1590) Manchester John Rylands University Library Bagshawe muniments New Haven, Connecticut Beinecke Library, Yale University Osborn collection (Blathwayt papers, Southwell papers)

287


Northampton Northamptonshire Record Office Isham papers Montagu (Boughton) papers Norwich Norfolk Record Office Ketton–Cremer papers (WKC) Nottingham Nottingham University Library Portland (Bentinck) papers (PwA) Portland (Harley) papers (Pw2 Hy) Oxford Bodleian Library Ballard MSS 7–8, 11, 31, 36 Carte MS 130 Eng. hist. MSS c. 42, d. 155 Eng. lett. MSS c. 28, e. 6 Eng. misc. MSS 23 Locke MS c. 38 North MSS a. 3, c. 9 Rawlinson MSS C. 449 St Edmund Hall MS 9 Christ Church Library Wake papers Oxfordshire Record Office Dillon papers San Marino, California Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery Ellesmere MSS (EL) Huntington MSS (HM) Stowe MSS (ST) 288


Stafford Staffordshire Record Office Dartmouth papers (D. 742, 1778) Taunton Somerset Record Office Sanford papers (DD SF) Washington, D.C. Folger Shakespeare Library Newdigate newsletters Woking Surrey History Centre Midleton family and estate papers (1248/1–7, G145) Somers papers (371) Worcester Hereford and Worcester Record Office (St Helen’s branch) Hampton papers

289

Index Abercorn, 6th earl of, see Hamilton, James Abernethy, John 190 abjuration, oath of 188 absentees 278 Acheson, Sir Nicholas 97 Addison, Joseph 112 Agnew, Jean, historian 197 Albemarle, 1st earl of, see Keppel, Arnold Joost van Aldworth, Richard 56–7, 62, 97 Allen, family of 89 Allen, John, 1st Viscount Allen 97, 115, 219, 256 Anglesey, 7th earl of, see Annesley, Arthur Anne, queen of England, Scotland and Ireland 85, 134, 159, 176, 179, 183–4 Annesley, Arthur, 7th earl of Anglesey 92, 93, 122, 149, 157, 167–8, 169, 170, 171, 175, 178, 181–4, 221 Annesley, Francis (M.P. Downpatrick 1695) 47, 48, 51, 59–60, 65, 67, 73–4, 75, 79, 83, 84, 90, 95, 97 Annesley, Francis (M.P. New Ross 1695) 97 Annesley, Maurice 58, 59–60, 78, 82, 97, 222 Annesley v. Sherlock 222–3, 224, 225, 226 Antrim 193 Antrim, County 82n, 187, 193, 204 Ardglass, Elizabeth, styled countess of, see Cromwell, Elizabeth Armagh, archbishopric of 87, 240, 241 Armagh, County 82n, 83 Ashe, Bishop St George 139, 150n, 152, 155, 222 Ashe, Thomas (M.P. Cavan 1695) 97 Ashe, Thomas (M.P. Swords 1695) 97 Athenry, 14th Lord, see Bermingham, Francis Athlone, 1st earl of, see Ginkel, Godard van Atkinson, Anthony 200 Atterbury, Bishop Francis 134–5, 142

Auchmuty, John 97 Aughrim, battle of 28 Avaux, Jean-Antoine, de Mesmes, comte d’ 18, 20–1 Aylway, Robert 97 Baggot, Francis 81n Baggs, John 76 Barnard, T. C., historian 3, 131–2 Barry, David John 200 Barry, James (M.P. Naas 1695) 97 Barry, James (M.P. Rathcormack 1695) 97 Barry, James (purse-bearer to lord chancellor of Ireland) 231 Barry, James, 4th earl of Barrymore 180 Barry, Hon. Richard 97 Barrymore, 4th earl of, see Barry, James Barton, William 97 Bath 5 Beckett, J. C., historian 2, 111, 147, 151 Beecher, Thomas 97 Belfast 140, 193, 194, 197–200, 202, 205 Bell, Thomas 192n Bellew, Thomas 171n Bellingham, Thomas 97 Bellomont, 1st earl of, see Coote, Richard Belturbet 148, 154 Bennett, G. V., historian 141–2, 153 Bentinck, Hans Willem, 1st earl of Portland 50, 52, 53, 62–3 Beresford, family of 201 Beresford, Marcus 201 Beresford, Sir Tristram 97, 201 Bermingham, Francis, 14th Lord Athenry 171n Bernard, Francis 92, 97, 212, 247 Berwick, 1st duke of, see James Fitzjames Bessborough, 1st earl of, see Ponsonby, Brabazon Bettesworth, Richard 264 Bingham, Sir Henry 97 Bingham, John 97 Bladen, Martin 112, 216, 218, 219 Blayney, Cadwallader, 7th Lord Blayney 109

291

INDEX Blenerhassett, John 78, 97 Blenerhassett, Robert 97 Blessington, 1st Viscount, see Boyle, Murrough Bligh, Thomas 97 Blundell, Sir Francis 47, 81, 97 Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount, see St John, Henry Bolton, Rev. John 155 Bolton, Archbishop Theophilus 152, 158, 247, 250, 251 Bolton, 2nd duke of, see Powlett, Charles Bonnell, James 50 Booth, Samuel 97 Boulter, Archbishop Hugh 240, 241, 242, 249, 250, 253, 255, 259, 260, 267, 272, 274 Bourchier, Charles 97 Bourke, John 261 Bourke, Michael, styled Lord Dunkellin 171n Bourke, Theobald (M.P. Naas 1713) 171 Bourke, Theobald, 6th Viscount Mayo 171n Bowes, John 242, 273 Boyer, Abel 178 Boyle, Charles, 3rd Baron Clifford 59 Boyle, Charles, 4th earl of Orrery 97, 251n Boyle, family 38 Boyle, Hon. Henry (later 1st Lord Carleton) 50 Boyle, Henry (later 1st earl of Shannon) 251, 254, 258, 260, 261, 262, 271, 272 and 1st duke of Dorset 260–5 and 3rd duke of Devonshire 268–72 political interest in Munster 113, 251, 258, 261, 262, 263–4, 268–9, 272 as revenue commissioner 263–5 rivalry with Brabazon Ponsonby (q.v.) 243, 267, 269–70 as speaker 260–3 as ‘undertaker’ 107, 113, 127–8, 129, 190, 263–5 Boyle, Henry (M.P. Youghal 1695) 97 Boyle, Murrough, 1st Viscount Blessington 82 Boyle, Richard 97 Boyle, Richard, 2nd Viscount Shannon 115, 216 Boyne, battle of 24, 27 Boyse, Nathaniel 97 Brabazon, Edward, 4th earl of Meath 82, 89; see also Ward, Edward

Brasier, Kilner 9 Brewster, Sir Francis 47, 48, 55, 62, 68–9, 73, 74, 75, 95, 98 Discourse concerning Ireland . . . (1697/8) 68–9 Essays on trade and navigation . . . (1695) 69n Brice, Edward 192n, 200, 207n Brice, Randal 59–60, 98 Brodrick, Alan, 1st Viscount Midleton 41, 46, 48, 53, 58–9, 81, 82–3, 92n, 98, 116–18, 169, 172, 174, 214, 219, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 243, 250 and 2nd Baron Carteret (q.v.) 233, 234, 243, 246 in British house of commons 220 as court manager 1694–9 55, 62, 63, 117 death 235, 250 and 2nd duke of Bolton (q.v.) 219–21, 224, 225 and 2nd duke of Grafton (q.v.) 126, 218–19, 231–3 and 2nd duke of Ormond (q.v.) 89–90, 91n and 1st earl of Rochester (q.v.) 86, 87–8, 94 as lord chancellor 211, 214, 223, 227, 229, 230, 231 as lord justice 220, 227, 246 and national bank 232 and protestant dissenters 225, 261 resignation 234, 246 rivalry with William Conolly (q.v.) 126–7, 217–22, 225, 231–5, 243, 246–8 and Sir Robert Walpole (q.v.) 220, 229, 231, 243 and Wood’s Halfpence 233, 234 Brodrick, Alan, jr. 251 Brodrick, Sir Allen 86 Brodrick, family and political faction 40, 47–8, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 72, 73, 82, 93, 95, 219, 225, 246, 247, 251 Brodrick, Sir St John 41 Brodrick, St John (brother of 1st Viscount Midleton) 48, 58, 98 Brodrick, St John, jr. (son of 1st Viscount Midleton) 125–6, 163, 173, 218–19, 225, 233, 235, 248, 250 Brodrick, Thomas 48, 55, 61, 62, 64, 98, 231, 246 Bromley, William 168, 178, 179 Brooke, Thomas 59, 98

292

INDEX Browne, Bishop Peter 137, 139, 140, 150 Brownlow, Arthur 37, 98 Buckner, William 98 Bulkeley, Sir Richard 98 Burgh, Thomas 77–8 Burgh, Ulysses 77–8 Burns, R. E., historian 4 Burt, John 98 Burton, Francis 98 Bushe, Arthur 98 Butle, David 198, 200 Butler, Edmund, 6th Viscount Mountgarrett 221 Butler, family 38, 268 Butler, Francis 98 Butler, James, 1st duke of Ormond 12, 13, 37 Butler, James, 2nd duke of Ormond 37, 65, 70, 122, 166, 183, 268 as lord lieutenant 88–92, 110, 128, 160, 162, 165, 196, 211, 215, 281 Butler, Sir Thomas 98 Cairnes, Sir Alexander 192n, 193, 194, 199 Cairnes, David 48, 98, 194, 196 Cairnes, William 77, 192n, 194, 198 Campbell, Charles 98 Campbell, David 98 Capel, Hon. Henry, 1st Baron Capel 49, 52–3 as lord deputy 6, 31, 53–7, 58–9, 60–1, 94, 115, 118–19 Carlow, County 82n Carmarthen, 1st marquess of, see Osborne, Thomas Carrickfergus 26, 193, 194, 202–3 Carroll, Richard 81n Carter, Thomas (M.P. Fethard, Co. Tipperary 1695) 98 Carter, Thomas (master of the rolls) 247, 251, 254, 260, 261, 263, 265 Carteret, John, 1st Baron 245, 248 as lord lieutenant 6, 111, 115, 127, 215–16, 234–5, 242, 243, 245–55 Cary, Arthur 201 Cary, John 76, 79 Cary, Walter 257, 261, 262 Cashel, archbishopric of 249 Cashel, cathedral chapter of 143, 153 Castletown House (Co. Kildare) 115, 247n Caulfield, St George 273 Caulfield, Rev. Toby 91

Caulfield, William 98 Cavan, County 82n, 83 Cavendish, William, 3rd duke of Devonshire 266 as lord lieutenant 243, 266–7, 269–73, 274 Chalmont, Charles, marquis de St Ruth 28 charity schools 147, 148–9 Charles II, king of England, Scotland and Ireland 12, 14 Chichester, Arthur, 3rd earl of Donegall 198 Chichester, Arthur, 4th earl of Donegall 198, 200 Chichester, Catherine, countess of Donegall 198, 199 Chichester, Hon. Charles 98, 198 Chichester, Hon. John Itchingham 98, 200 Christ Church (Oxford University) 135, 143 Christchurch cathedral (Dublin) 144, 151, 152 Christmas, Richard 98 Church of England 142 clergy 136, 142, 179, 188 convocation of Canterbury 13, 228 parties in 134, 142, 153 Church of Ireland 144, 187–8 bishops 19–20, 109, 131, 151, 181, 209, 214, 221–2, 223, 240, 241, 249 clergy, lower 11, 19, 83, 131–58, 187 convocation 92, 121, 122, 131–58, 179–80, 228 ecclesiastical courts 136, 138, 154, 188 ‘high churchmen’ 71, 86–7, 92, 131–58, 191 ‘low churchmen’ 132, 133, 137, 141, 144–5, 147, 149, 155 parish administration 136, 146–7 schools 151 tithe 188 Churchill, John, 1st duke of Marlborough 85, 136, 166 Churchill, Sarah, duchess of Marlborough 184n Clancarty, 11th earl of, see MacCarthy, Donogh Clare, County 82 Clarendon, 2nd earl of, see Hyde, Henry Clarges, Sir Thomas 49 Clarke, Edward 68 Clayton, Laurence 89, 90, 98 Clayton, Bishop Robert 257, 269

293

INDEX Clayton, Sir Robert 68 Clements, Edward 202, 203 Cliffe, John 98 Clifford, 3rd Baron, see Boyle, Charles Clonmel 262, 264, 268 Cloyne, bishopric of 249 Clutterbuck, Thomas 112 Coghill, Marmaduke 98, 108n, 127–8, 244, 253, 255, 260, 261, 265, 267, 277 Coghlan, Joseph 46, 58, 64, 98 Coke, Thomas 78 Cole, Sir Arthur 98 Cole, Sir Michael 98 Coleraine 193, 194, 201 Colvill, Sir Robert 58, 98 Combes, Daniel 78 Compton, Spencer, 1st earl of Wilmington 256, 257n, 266 Coningsby, Thomas, 1st Baron Coningsby 42–3, 48, 50, 51, 59, 60, 64–5 Connell, Richard 98 Connolly, S. J., historian 3, 131, 147 Conolly, Katherine 252 Conolly, William 41, 74, 82, 83, 89, 98, 113, 197, 201, 206, 207, 216, 217, 229, 231, 240, 252 background 220, 253 and 1st Baron Carteret 115, 234–5, 247, 248 and 2nd duke of Grafton 230–1, 233, 240 and forfeited estates 72, 77, 82 illness and death 252 as lord justice 126, 219–20 and the national bank 232 his party 252, 253, 260, 265, 268 and presbyterians 197, 206 as revenue commissioner 126, 217–18, 243 rivalry with Alan Brodrick (q.v.) 126–7, 217–22, 225, 231–5, 243, 246–8 as speaker 125–6, 206, 217, 250 as ‘undertaker’ 107, 112, 115, 116, 117, 124, 125–7, 130, 232, 233, 248–9, 250 and Wood’s halfpence 233–4 Constantine, Robert 165 Conway, Francis Seymour, 1st Baron Conway 203 Conyngham, Henry 89, 98 Coote, Charles 254 Coote, Charles, 3rd earl of Mountrath 61

Coote, Chidley 99 Coote, Richard, 1st earl of Bellomont 51 Cork 78, 146, 264, 268 Cork, bishopric of 140 Cork, County 37, 38, 74, 82, 264, 278 Cork, customs collectorship 263–5 Corker, Edward 99 Cornwall, convocation of stannaries in 228 Corry, James 99 Coulson, Thomas 76 Cowper, William, 1st earl 224 Cox, Sir Richard, 1st Bt 54–5, 86, 88–9, 92, 145, 175 Cox, Sir Richard, 2nd Bt 264, 269 Craford, William 192n, 194, 198, 200 Craggs, James 227 Crawford, Thomas 99 Creighton, Abraham 99 Creighton, David 99 Crofton, Sir Edward 99 Cromwell, Elizabeth, styled countess of Ardglass and Baroness Cromwell 48 Crow, Charles (bishop of Cloyne) 139 Cruickshanks, Eveline, historian 8 Cuffe, Agmondisham 99 Cullen, L. M., historian 3 Culliford, William 42–3, 44 Curtis, Robert 99 Dalway, Alexander 192n, 194, 202–3 Daly, Dennis 28 Dartmouth, 1st earl of, see Legge, William Davenant, Charles 79 Davis (Davys), Henry 99 Davis (Davys), Hercules 99 Davys, family 83 Davys, Samuel 202 Dawson, Joshua 122 Dawson, Thomas 99 Deane, Edward 99 Delafaye, Charles 112, 220 Delaune, Gideon 99 Denny, Edward (M.P. Doneraile 1695) 99 Denny, Edward, (M.P. Co. Kerry 1695) 99 Dering, Charles 46, 59, 92, 99 Derry (Londonderry) 18, 24, 25, 69, 82n, 193, 194–6, 205 Derry, bishopric of 66–7, 85n, 87, 143, 147, 155 Devonshire, 3rd duke of, see Cavendish, William Dickson, David, historian 3, 23 Dickson, Hugh 261, 263–5 294

INDEX Digby, Simon (bishop of Elphin) 139 Dilkes, Michael O’Brien 270 Dillon, Sir John 99 Dillon, Robert, 6th earl of Roscommon 109 dissenters, see protestant dissenters Dobbs, Arthur 203, 244n Dodington, George 112, 200 Dodwell, Henry 145–6 Paranaesis (1704) 146 Dogherty, Rev. John 135, 143, 153 Dolben, Gilbert 86, 93, 121 Donegal 193 Donegal, County 19, 82n, 83, 113, 206 Donegall, countess of, see Chichester, Catherine Donegall, 3rd earl of, see Chichester, Arthur Donegall, 4th earl of, see Chichester, Arthur Donnellan, Nehemiah 55 Donnellan, Patrick 81n Donnelly, Henry 81n Dopping, Bishop Anthony 41, 48 Dopping, Samuel 91, 93, 99 Dorset, 1st duke of, see Sackville, Lionel Dowdall, Augustine 81n Down, County 82n, 83 Down and Connor, diocese of 147 Downes, Bishop Henry 223 Doyne, Robert 55 Drelincourt, Rev. Peter 155 Drogheda 154, 156 Drogheda, 3rd earl of, see HamiltonMoore, Henry Dublin 19, 82, 146 corporation 164–5, 168, 170, 173, 174, 178, 182–3, 198 parliamentary election for, 1713 97n, 171, 173–4 see also Christchurch cathedral; Fleece Tavern; Swan Tavern Dublin, archbishopric of 87 Dublin, County 82 under-sheriff of 80–1 Dublin, University of (Trinity College) 19, 143, 161 Dublin Society 279 Dun, Dr (Sir) Patrick 99 Duncannon, Lord, see Ponsonby, William Duncombe, William 52 Dundee, Viscount, see Graham, John Dungannon 193 Dunkellin, Lord, see Bourke, Michael

Dunkin, Roscarrick 77 Earle, Giles 243 Echlin, Robert 99 Edgeworth, Sir John 99 Edmonstone, Archibald 192n, 194, 203 education, see charity schools; Church of Ireland, schools Edwards, Richard 99 Egmont, 1st earl of, see Perceval, Sir John Elizabeth I, queen of England and Ireland 11 Ellis, Bishop Welbore 139, 153, 223 Emlyn, Thomas 154 England, government ministers 43, 56, 115, 135, 159–60, 168–98, 183–4 policy towards Ireland 160, 162, 166, 169, 180, 181, 185, 189, 209–14, 217, 220–1, 223–4, 227–31, 233–6, 237–75, 280–1 England, parliament (after 1707, parliament of Great Britain) 24, 48–51, 66–8, 69–73, 75–6, 83–4, 177, 224 elections to 159, 170, 260 house of commons 48, 68, 75, 84, 220, 229 house of lords 48, 49, 182, 222–3, 226, 228, 278 legislating for Ireland 15, 24, 66–87, 71–3, 84, 120, 179, 214, 228–9, 252, 271, 278–9 legislation in 15, 24, 33, 66–7, 68, 70, 71–3, 75–6, 84, 120, 123, 142, 188, 190, 220, 228–9, 232, 235, 252, 271, 278–9 political parties in 36, 45, 65 England, privy council 93, 110, 168, 189, 253–4, 259 England, treasury 264, 271, 275 England, woollen manufacture in 68, 244, 252, 271 Erle, Thomas 86 Erskine, John, 6th earl of Mar 168 estates, forfeited in Ireland 31, 71–84 commission of inquiry into 71–5, 90 resumption trust 75–84, 90 ‘national remonstrance’ 82–3, 84, 85, 96, 278 Eustace, Sir Maurice 99 Evans, family 169n Evans, George 99 Evans, Bishop John 150n, 221, 223 Everard, Sir Redmond 171 295

INDEX Examiner, The 176 Eyre, Edward 78 Eyre, family 38 Eyre, John 99 Feilding, Hon. Sir Charles 99 Fellows, William 76 Fermanagh, County 19, 83 Fethard (Co. Tipperary) 171 Finch, Daniel, 2nd earl of Nottingham 43, 93, 189 Fitzgerald, family 17 Fitzgerald, George 99 Fitzgerald, Hon. Robert (M.P. Co. Kildare 1695) 99 Fitzgerald, Robert (M.P. Youghal 1695) 92, 99 Fitzgerald, William (bishop of Clonfert) 139 Fitzjames, James, duke of Berwick 28 Fitzmaurice, Hon. Thomas 37, 99 Fitzmaurice, Hon. William 99 Fitzroy, Charles, 2nd duke of Grafton 107, 115, 126–7, 215, 216, 229, 230–4, 240 Fitzwilliam, Richard, 8th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion 115, 216, 233 Fleece Tavern (Dublin) 96 Flood, Warden 273 Flower, William 115, 276 Flying Post 184 Foley, Paul 49, 50, 65 Foley, Rev. Samuel 50 Folliott, Francis 99 Folliott, Hon. Henry 100 Forbes, Arthur, 2nd earl of Granard 22, 23 Forbes, Arthur, 3rd earl of Granard 109 Forde, Mathew 100 Forster, John 89, 169n, 173 Foulke, Robert 100 Foy, Bishop Nathaniel 132, 149 Foyle, River 66 France, policy towards Ireland 18, 26 France, troops in Ireland 177, 278; see also Ireland, catholics in Francis, Rev. John 144, 151, 153, 157 Freeman, Richard 241 Freke, Percy 100 French, John 100 French, Matthew (F.T.C.D.) 169 French, Robert 254 Gaelic Irish 11, 16–17 poetry 10, 15, 17

Galway 30, 82n Galway, County 38, 78, 82n Galway, earl of, see Ruvigny, Henri, marquis de Gardiner, Richard 100 Garth, Sir Samuel 164 George I, king of Great Britain and Ireland 159, 184, 206, 233 Gethin, Percy 100 Gibson, Bishop Edmund 272n Giffard, Duke 100 Gilbert, Jeffrey 226, 229, 230, 231 Gilbert, St Leger 100 Ginkel, Godard van, baron van Reede, 1st earl of Athlone 28, 29, 84, 196 ‘Glorious Revolution’ in England 8–9, 145, 161 Godolphin, Sidney, 1st earl of Godolphin 83, 85, 189 Godwin, Bishop Timothy 190, 223, 242 Gore, family 113 Gore, Francis 100 Gore, Sir Ralph 114n, 127, 252–3, 255, 256, 258, 260 Gore, William 100 Grafton, 2nd duke of, see Fitzroy, Charles Graham, John of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee 18 Granard, 2nd earl of, see Forbes, Arthur Granard, 3rd earl of, see Forbes, Arthur Graydon, Robert 100 Great Britain, see England Grecian Tavern (London) 76, 78 Green, Samuel 100 Gwyn, Francis 85 Haltridge, John 199, 205 Hamill, Hugh 100, 192n Hamilton, Rev. Andrew 152, 155 Hamilton, Charles 100 Hamilton, Sir Francis 100 Hamilton, Frederick 48, 201, 206 Hamilton, Gustavus 100 Hamilton, Hans 48, 100 Hamilton, James, 6th earl of Abercorn (M.P. Co. Tyrone 1695) 82, 83, 86, 100, 175 Hamilton, James (of Bangor, M.P. Bangor 1695) 37, 47, 48, 100 Hamilton, James (of Tollymore, M.P. Co. Down 1695) 37, 47, 48, 49, 51, 55, 58, 73, 75, 95, 100 Hamilton, Rev. William 155 296

INDEX Hamilton-Moore, Henry, 3rd earl of Drogheda 61, 73, 74, 75 Hammond, Anthony 78 Hammond, John 78 Handcock, Thomas 100 Handcock, William (M.P. Athlone 1695) 100 Handcock, William (M.P. Dublin 1695) 100 Hanmer, Sir John 100 Hanmer, Sir Thomas 157 Harcourt, Simon 75, 79, 182, 183 Hardwicke, 1st earl of, see Yorke, Philip Harley, Robert, 1st earl of Oxford 49, 50, 51, 65, 75n, 76n, 78–9, 83 as lord treasurer 159–60, 162, 165, 166–8, 176, 178–83, 185 Harman, Wentworth 100 Harrison, Edward 100 Harrison, Thomas 76 Hartstonge, Bishop John 135, 136, 139, 144, 150n, 153, 155 Hartstonge, Standish 100 Hartstonge, Sir Standish 100 Harvey, John 100 Hatsell, Sir Henry 77 Hayes, John 100 Hely, John 45, 54, 55 Henry, Hugh 192 Herbert, Thomas, 8th earl of Pembroke 117, 128, 189, 211, 216–17, 281 Hervey, John, Lord Hervey 257, 266 Hewetson, Christopher 100 Hickman, Bishop Charles 85, 87, 139, 143, 150n Higgins, Rev. Francis 135, 137, 143, 144, 151, 152n, 153, 155 Hill, Arthur 254 Hill, Michael 100 Hinton, Rev. John 144, 153 Hoey, William 100 Hogan, Garret 81n Hooper, James 75, 84 Hopkins, Edward 115 Howe, John Grobham (‘Jack’) 75n Huguenots 71, 77 Hustler, Sir William 84 Hyde, Henry, 2nd earl of Clarendon 13, 15 Hyde, Laurence, 1st earl of Rochester 13, 43, 79, 83, 85–8, 143 Inchiquin, 3rd earl of, see O’Brien, William

Ingoldsby, Sir Henry 100 Irby, Rev. Anthony 135n Ireland, army in 183, 184, 189, 212–13, 227, 230 Ireland, borough corporations in 14–15, 19, 22, 164–5, 191, 192, 193, 194–203, 207 Ireland, catholic church in 10–11, 17–18 Ireland, catholics in 12, 14–18, 19, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 154, 161, 171, 173, 212, 276–7 converts to protestantism 32, 155, 162, 163, 171, 221 recruits to French armed forces 177, 278 Ireland, Church of, see Church of Ireland Ireland, coinage 85, 214, 252, 268, 278, 279 Ireland, court of exchequer 226 chancellorship of 253, 263 Ireland, economy 85, 90, 123, 213–14, 251–2, 268, 270, 273, 278 improvement of 178–9, 254–5 Ireland, ‘English interest’ in 240–2, 249, 272–3, 274–5 Ireland, forfeited estates in, see estates Ireland, government of 14–15, 192, 216 chief secretary 112–13, 216 clerk of the crown 164 deputy vice-treasurer 274–5 Englishmen appointed to 240–2, 272–3 judiciary 14–15, 209 lord chancellor 241 lord lieutenant, see Ireland, government, viceroyalty lords justices 219, 241, 249n, 253, 263 patronage 113–14, 216, 242–3, 248, 274–5 privy council 56, 85–6, 163, 173, 179–80, 209, 214, 241; and boroughs 164–5, 170, 173, 195, 196, 197, 202; and legislation 87, 108, 116–17 public revenue 116, 210, 212–13, 227, 230, 253, 258, 263, 273 resident English secretary 267 revenue commission 114, 127, 217–18, 242–3, 253, 263, 271, 275 treasury 12, 52, 210 viceroyalty 6, 109–12, 210, 216, 242, 257, 281 Ireland, land settlements in 19, 20, 31–2, 42, 48, 71–83; see also estates Ireland, legal profession in 16, 27, 32 Ireland, linen manufacture in 67, 69, 70 297

INDEX Ireland, local government 14–15, 190–1, 217 Ireland, merchants in 10, 12, 16, 192, 205, 264 Ireland, militia 165, 189, 191, 217, 226 Ireland, national bank 214, 232, 233 Ireland, parliament of 149, 228, 229–30 Charles II’s (1661–6) 12 James II’s (1689) 19–23, 33 William III’s (1692–3, 1695–9) 30, 36, 39, 40–8, 55–62, 63–6, 67, 70, 87, 89–93, 118–19 Queen Anne’s (1703–13, 1713–14) 117–18, 136, 138, 160–1, 172–4, 214 George I’s (1715–27) 215, 218–19, 221–4, 226–7, 231–5, 245 George II’s (1727–60) 250, 253–5, 257–63, 265, 267–72 elections to 122, 161, 170, 171, 172n, 192–203, 207, 211–12, 214, 250 house of commons 89–93, 108, 109–12, 114, 116, 118, 191–2, 194, 215; committee of accounts 90, 219, 270; committee of privileges and elections 173; committee of supply 253; ‘independent country gentlemen’ in 247; placemen in 46, 114, 119, 120, 172–3, 179, 216, 247; ‘sole right’ to initiate supply legislation 44–5, 52, 56, 57, 63, 88, 89, 120; speakership 56, 61, 89, 125, 126, 127, 129, 172, 173, 217, 218, 249n, 250, 252–3, 260–1, 263 house of lords 108–9, 123, 214, 215, 221–3, 226, 227n, 235, 241, 250, 251, 278 legislation in 11, 20, 21, 22, 31, 44, 45, 55, 56, 61, 73, 108, 137, 139, 161, 186–90, 212, 221, 226, 254, 255, 263, 272; supply bills 44–5, 56, 108, 110, 117, 118, 161, 174, 227, 232, 248, 253–4, 258, 265, 270; see also Poynings’ Law ‘patriots’ in 67, 70, 90–1, 109, 120–1, 123, 173, 212, 221–2, 227, 232–3, 235, 241, 248, 251, 252, 253–5, 258, 263, 264, 269, 277–80 political parties in 41–2, 45–6, 55, 57–62, 64, 70, 71n, 72–4, 85, 90–1, 92–5, 107, 119–24, 128–9, 154, 206–7, 210–11, 217, 235, 242, 276–7 Ireland, pensions in 227, 253, 273, 278 Ireland, protestants in 5, 11, 14, 21–3, 24–5, 33, 34, 80, 276

and independence 80, 227, 235, 239, 242, 279–80 sense of Irishness 280 Ireland, trade in 12, 213–14, 252, 268, 278 Ireland, woollen manufacture in 67, 71, 72, 244 registry, proposed 271 smuggling 244, 252, 255, 266, 271, 275 Ireland’s consternation 239 Irish language, translations into 148–9 Irish lobby, in England 67, 244, 271 Irish Society of London 66, 68, 222; see also King, William Irwin, Dr Christopher 101 Isham, John 76 Jackson, Samuel 101 Jackson, William 201 Jacob, Matthew 101 Jacobites 10, 22, 32, 58n, 59n, 145, 163, 212 James II and VII, king of England, Scotland and Ireland 8, 15, 20–1, 25, 43, 142 Irish estate 74 Irish policy 13–15, 19, 25–6, 33 James Francis Edward Stuart, ‘the old pretender’ 161, 180, 278 James, F. G., historian 4, 7 Jeffreyson, John 54–5 Jephson, William 101 Jersey, 1st earl of, see Villiers, Edward Jocelyn, Robert 241–2, 267, 272 Jodrell, Burdett 78 Johnson, Robert 92, 96 Johnston-Liik, Edith Mary, historian 4–5 Jones, Edmond 101 Jones, Edward 101 Jones, Theophilus 101 junto, see whig junto Keating, Maurice 101 Keightley, Thomas 86, 87, 88, 101, 117 Kendal, duchess of, see Schulenberg, Melusine von der Keppel, Arnold Joost van, 1st earl of Albemarle 64, 84 Kerry, County 38, 82 Kildare, County, sheriff of 226 Kilkenny 256 Kilkenny, County 82, 268 Kilkenny School 144 Killaloe, diocese of 143 Killyleagh, Co. Down 193

298

INDEX King, Sir John 101 King, Nathaniel 101 King, Sir Robert 47, 48, 55, 58, 101 King, Archbishop William 4, 131, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 143, 150, 152, 240 as bishop 87, 133–4, 135, 147, 149, 151, 152, 155, 191, 195, 222 lawsuit v. the Irish Society 66–7, 69, 222 as politician 196, 197, 220, 222, 232, 240 King, Sir William 101 Kirke, Percy 24 Lambart, Hon. Charles 101 Lambart, Hon. Oliver 101 Lambert, Rev. Ralph 136, 137, 155 Langford, Sir Arthur 47, 48, 101, 192n, 194, 201 Langford, Henry 73, 75, 101 Langton, Rev. Dominic 155 Leake, Rev. Richard 153 Leeds, 1st duke of, see Osborne, Thomas Leeson, Samuel 196 Legge, Henry Bilson 266, 269–70 Legge, William, 1st earl of Dartmouth 78, 156–7, 168 Leighlin, diocese of 153 Lenox, James 65, 192n, 194, 195, 201 Leopold I, hereditary ruler of Habsburg lands and Holy Roman Emperor 7, 31, 56 Leslie, Charles 145 Leslie, Rev. Henry 155 Lestrange, Thomas 101 Levinge, Sir Richard 46, 53, 55, 59, 70, 73, 74, 75, 83, 87, 92, 95, 96, 172, 212 Lifford, Co. Donegal 193 Lightbourne, Stafford 101 Limavady 193, 201 Limerick 27, 28, 29, 30, 143 Limerick, County 37 Limerick, Treaty of 30–1, 41–2, 57 Lindsay, Archbishop Thomas 134, 135, 136, 139, 141, 143, 148, 156, 157, 180, 181, 221, 240, 241 Lisburn 79 Littleton, Sir Thomas 84 Lloyd, Edward 163 Lloyd, Bishop William 139 Locke, Richard 101 Loftus, Henry 101

Loftus, Sir Nicholas 101 London 5, 156 Londonderry, see Derry Londonderry, County 19, 65, 82n, 83, 113, 122 Longford, County 82n Love, John 264–5 Ludlow, Stephen 83, 92, 101 Luther, Henry 77n Macartney, Arthur 198 Macartney, family 197–8, 206 Macartney, George 197, 198, 199, 200 Macartney, George, jr. 200 Macartney, Isaac 199 Macartney, James 86, 101, 197 McBride, John 188 MacCarthy, Donogh, 11th earl of Clancarty 278 MacCarthy, Justin, Viscount Mountcashell 17, 20, 25, 26 McCausland, Oliver 101 McCracken, J. L., historian 2, 107 McGrath, C. I., historian 4 McMullan, John 192n McNally, Patrick, historian 4 McParland, Edward, historian 3 Magill, Sir John 47, 48, 101 Mahon, John 101 Mallow, customs collectorship of 264 Malone, Anthony 269 Manley, Isaac 22 Mar, 6th earl of, see Erskine, John Marlay, Thomas 267, 273 Marlborough, 1st duke of, see Churchill, John Marlborough, duchess of, see Churchill, Sarah Marsh, Archbishop Narcissus 87, 132, 133–4, 135, 136–7, 144n, 150, 152, 157, 241 his library 137, 139 Mary of Modena, queen to James II 26 Masham, Abigail, Lady 179 Mason, Sir John 101 Massey, Sir Edward 101 Maude, Anthony 101 Maurice, Rev. Theodore 153 Maxwell, Henry 93, 177n, 207 May, Edward 101 May, Humphrey 101 Maynard, Samuel 101 Mayo, 6th Viscount, see Bourke, Theobald

299

INDEX Meade, Sir John 46, 58, 64, 101 Meade, Sir Richard 262 Meath, County 82n Meath, 4th earl of, see Brabazon, Edward Medlycott, Thomas 101 Melvill(e), Charles 101 Memoirs of the chevalier de St George (1712) 163 Meredyth, Arthur 101 Meredyth, Charles 101 Mervyn, Audley 101 Mervyn, Henry 101 Methuen, John 62–4, 66, 67, 69n, 70, 78, 88 Miller, John L., historian 14–15 Milles, Bishop Thomas 139 Molesworth, Robert, 1st Viscount Molesworth 60, 62, 63, 74, 91, 102, 169n, 179–80 Molyneux, Dr Thomas 102 Molyneux, William 39, 67, 68, 102 Case of Ireland . . . stated (1698) 39, 67, 68, 279 Monaghan, County 79, 82n, 193 Monck, family 169n Moncrieffe, Thomas 195, 196 Monmouth, 1st earl, see Mordaunt, Charles Montagu, Charles 64, 69–70, 75 Montgomery, Hugh, 2nd earl of Mountalexander 86, 87 Montgomery, John 102 Moore, Arthur 75 Moore, Brabazon 102 Moore, Hon. Capel 200 Moore, Hon. Charles 102 Moore, Dudley 163–4 Moore, family 89 Moore, John, 1st Baron Moore of Tullamore 216 Moore, Richard 102 Moore, Robert 102 Moore, Roger 102 Moore, Stephen 102 Mordaunt, Charles, 1st earl of Monmouth 47 Moreton, Bishop William 60n, 134, 139, 144, 150n, 152–3 Morgan, Hugh 91, 102 Morris, Samuel 102 Mountalexander, 2nd earl of, see Montgomery, Hugh Mountcashell, Viscount, see MacCarthy, Justin

Mountgarrett, 6th Viscount, see Butler, Edmund Mountrath, 3rd earl of, see Coote, Charles Mullins, Frederick William 102 Munster 38, 113, 251, 258, 261, 262, 263–4, 268–9, 272 Muschamp, Denny 102 Musgrave, Sir Christopher 49, 75n, 76n Napper, James 102 Napper, William 102 Naughton, Edward 81n Neale, Rev. Benjamin 143, 151, 153 Neave, William 64, 87, 89, 102 Nevil, Richard 102 Neville, Grey 229 Newcastle, 2nd duke of, see Pelham-Holles, Thomas Newcomen, Sir Robert 102 Newton, Sir Isaac 239 Newton, John 195, 197 Newtownbutler 25 Nicholls, John 102 Nicolson, Bishop William 221 nonjurors 145, 188 Norman, Charles 196, 197, 206 Normanby, 1st marquess of, see Sheffield, John Northey, Sir Edward (British attorney-general) 163 Nottingham, 2nd earl of, see Finch, Daniel Nugent, Thomas, Baron Nugent of Riverston, Lord 28 Nutley, Richard 77 O’Brien, Sir Donough 37, 58, 102, 161 O’Brien, William, 3rd earl of Inchiquin 82, 109 Ó Bruadair, Dáibhi 17 O’Donnell, Hugh ‘Balldearg’ 16, 28 O’Kelly, Charles 16 O’Neill, Henry 102 O’Regan, Philip, historian 4 ‘occasional conformity’ 198, 200, 203, 205 October Club 167 Ogle, Samuel 199 ‘Old English’ in Ireland 11, 16–17, 27, 28 Orkney, Lady, see Villiers, Elizabeth Ormond, 1st and 2nd dukes of, see Butler Ormsby, Gilbert 102 Ormsby, John (M.P. Athenry 1695) 102 Ormsby, John (M.P. Charleville 1695) 102 Ormsby, Robert 102

300

INDEX Orrery, 4th earl of, see Boyle, Charles Osborne, Francis 102 Osborne, John 41, 46–7, 53 Osborne, Thomas, 1st marquess of Carmarthen and 1st duke of Leeds 43, 47, 50–1 Ossory, deanery of 151n Oxford, 1st earl of, see Harley, Robert Oxford, University of 143; see also Christ Church Pakenham, Sir Thomas 102 Palliser, Archbishop William 139, 144, 146, 149–50, 153 Palmer, William 102 Parry, Benjamin 115, 216 Parsons William 102 Partiality detected . . . (1707) 137 Pelham-Holles, Thomas, 2nd duke of Newcastle 215, 239, 244, 249, 253, 267n Pembroke, 8th earl of, see Herbert, Thomas penal laws 23, 55, 157, 161, 189–90 Peppard, Robert 102 Perceval, John 102 Perceval, Sir John, 1st earl of Egmont 244, 255, 266, 271 Perceval, Thomas 102 Perceval, Rev. William 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 146, 148, 152, 153, 156, 157 Petty, Henry, 1st earl of Shelburne 102, 216 Peyton, George 102 Philips, George 102, 201 Phipps, Sir Constantine 118, 162, 163, 164, 165, 169, 170, 174, 175, 177, 178, 181, 214, 241 Plunket, Sir Walter 102 Plunkett, Archbishop (St Oliver Plunkett) 12 Pocklington, John 226 Poley, Robert 102 Poley, Thomas 103 Pollard, Walter 103 Ponsonby, Brabazon, 1st earl of Bessborough 267–9, 272 and 3rd duke of Devonshire 267, 269–70 rivalry with Henry Boyle (q.v.) 243, 267, 270 Ponsonby, family 129n, 264 Ponsonby, William 91–2, 103

Ponsonby, William, Lord Duncannon 269–70 Pooley, Bishop John 135, 139, 144, 155 Porter, Sir Charles 42–3, 44, 48, 51, 53–5, 56–9, 60, 61, 62 Porter, Frederick 103 Porter, William 103 Portland, 1st earl of, see Bentinck, Hans Willem Powlett, Charles, Lord Winchester and 2nd duke of Bolton 63–4, 114–15, 189–90, 215, 219, 220, 222, 224–7, 229 Powys, Sir Thomas 70n Poynings’ Law 21, 33, 44–5, 56 presbyterians, in Ireland 13, 15, 22, 33, 40, 61, 86–7, 92–3, 95, 140, 146, 147, 154, 157, 186–208, 229, 276 emigration to north America 157, 190, 251–2, 259, 279 General Synod of Ulster 154, 157, 187, 190, 199, 204–5, 211, 212, 226 ministers 193, 259 social composition 204–5, 207–8 presbyterians, in Scotland 187, 224 Price, Bishop Arthur 274n Price, Rev. Henry 153n Price, John 103 protestant dissenters in England 40, 142, 198, 259, 260 in Ireland 12–13, 22, 40, 60–1, 186–208, 224, 226; see also presbyterians Purcell, Theobald 103 Pyne, Sir Richard 82 Quakers, in Ireland 147 Queen’s County 82n Ram, Abel 103 Ram, Andrew 103 Randalstown, Co. Antrim 193 Raphoe, diocese of 85n ‘rapparees’ (or ‘tories’) 23, 29 Rawdon, Sir Arthur 37, 47, 48, 55, 103 Rawlins, Thomas 76 Raymond, Sir Robert (British solicitor-general) 183 Reading, John 103 reformation of manners, movement for 147, 153 regium donum 13, 93, 180, 207n Reilly, see Riley

301

INDEX religious toleration 8, 10, 224 in Ireland 21, 30, 45, 61, 187, 225 Representation of the present state of religion . . . (1712) 133, 138, 156 Resolutions of the house of commons in Ireland . . . examined (1714) 177 Reynell, Edmund 103 Reynell, Sir Richard 54 Reynolds, Cornelius 81n Reynolds, John 103 Richardson, Edward 103 Richardson, Rev. John 148–9 Riggs, Edward 103 Riley (Reilly) Edward 103 Riley, Patrick (P. W. J.), historian 7 Robinson, Sir William 90, 103 Roche, George 78 Rochester, 1st earl of, see Hyde, Laurence Rochfort, Robert 41, 46, 55, 56, 61, 87, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95, 102 Rogers, George 78, 103 Rogers, Robert 103 Rogerson, Sir John 103 Romney, 1st earl of, see Sidney, Henry Rooke, Admiral Sir George 136 Roscommon, County 82n Roscommon, 6th earl of, see Dillon, Robert Ross, family 205 Rowley, Hercules 201 Ruvigny, Henri, marquis de, earl of Galway 63, 70, 71, 215 Sackville, Lionel, 1st duke of Dorset 255–6, 260, 266 as lord lieutenant 111, 115, 129, 190, 242, 243, 255–66, 267n sacramental test 93, 121, 186–208, 211, 221, 226, attempted repeal 114–15, 116, 189–91, 211, 212, 224, 225–6, 229, 259, 260, 261–3, 275 St George, Arthur 103 St George, family 38, 89, 113 St George, Sir George (M.P. Co. Galway 1695) 103 St George, George (M.P. Co. Roscommon 1695) 103 St George, Richard 103 St John, Henry, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke 159–60, 165, 168, 176, 178–85 St Leger, John 103 St Ruth, marquis de, see Chalmont, Charles

Sancroft, Archbishop William 142 Sandford, Blayney 103 Sandford, Henry 103 Sarsfield, Patrick 16, 27, 28, 29 Saunders, Anderson 92, 96, 103 Saunders, Robert 103 Saunderson, Robert 37, 103 Savage, Philip 46, 59, 63–4, 87, 92, 94, 95, 103 Schomberg, Meinhard von, 2nd duke of Schomberg 24 Schulenberg, Melusine von der, duchess of Kendal 233, 239 Schütz, Ludwig Justus Sinold 181 Scotland 13, 168, 187 Sedgwick, Zaccheus 103 Seymour, Sir Edward 68, 71, 75n, 76n, 79 Seymour, John 104 Shaen, Arthur 104 Shaen, Sir James 104 Shales, John 41 Shannon, 2nd Viscount, see Boyle, Richard Shaw, Rev. Fielding 153 Shaw, William 104 Sheffield, John, 1st marquess of Normanby 60n Shelburne, 1st earl of, see Petty, Henry Sheres, Sir Henry 76 Sherlock, Hester 222–3; see also Annesley v. Sherlock Shower, Bartholomew 70n, 75n Shrewsbury, 1st duke of, see Talbot, Charles Sidney, Henry, 1st Viscount Sidney and 1st earl of Romney 29, 43–4, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 59, 84 Simms, J. G., historian 2, 9n Singleton, Edward 104 Singleton, Henry 247, 253, 260, 267, 272, 277 Sloane, James 47, 48, 51, 58, 59–60, 67n, 75, 104 Smith, John 84 Smith, Roger 104 Smith, Thomas, see Smyth Smyth, David 198 Smyth, Bishop Edward 134, 135, 139, 147, 150, 155 Smyth (Smith) Thomas (M.P. Fore 1695) 104 Smyth, Bishop Thomas 135, 136, 139 Smythe, Endymion, 3rd Viscount Strangford 223 302

INDEX Somers, John, 1st Baron Somers 50, 63, 69–70 Southwell, Edward 89, 104, 112 Southwell, family 255 Southwell, Sir Thomas 59, 65, 104 Spencer, Charles, 3rd earl of Sunderland 116, 212, 215, 220, 224–6, 227, 228, 230, 231, 236 Spencer, Robert, 2nd earl of Sunderland 50, 52, 62, 64, 70 Sprigge, William 104 Spry(e), William 77n Stafford, Edmond Francis 48, 104 Stanhope, James, 1st Earl Stanhope 212 Stanley, Sir John 112, 169 Stannard, Eaton 251, 264, 269 Staunton, John 171n Stearne, Bishop John 139, 152, 155, 222 Steele, Richard 176 The Englishman 176 Stepney, Joseph 104 Steuart, William 92 Stevenson, Hans 192n Stevenson, James, sr. 192n, 200 Stevenson, James, jr. 192n Stewart, Hon. Richard 92, 251 Stone, Richard 104 Stopford, Robert 104 Story, Rev. George 152, 155 Strangford, 3rd Viscount, see Smythe, Endymion Stratford, Edward 104 Sunderland, 2nd earl of, see Spencer, Robert Sunderland, 3rd earl of, see Spencer, Charles Suxbury, Anthony 78, 104 Swan Tavern (Dublin) 143 Swift, Rev. Jonathan 110, 176–7, 179 Drapier’s Letters 110, 209, 239n, 279 Synge, Archbishop Edward 145, 149, 150–1, 152, 158, 222 Synge, Edward, jr. (bishop of Clonfert) 274n Synge, Rev. Samuel 136, 139 Talbot, Charles, 1st duke of Shrewsbury 166, 183–4 as lord lieutenant 117–18, 128, 168–72, 174–6, 179, 180, 181, 211, 214, 216–17 as secretary of state 50, 52, 62, 69n Talbot, family 17 Talbot, Frances, Lady Tyrconnell 84n

Talbot, Richard, earl of Tyrconnell 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28 Tamerlane (Nicholas Rowe, 1702) 164 Taylor, Robert 104 Taylor (Taylour) Thomas 104 Temple, John 55 Tench, John 104 Ten(n)ison, Henry 92, 104 Tenison, Archbishop Thomas 156 Thompson, Richard 104 Thompson, Sir William 240 Thynne, Thomas, 1st Viscount Weymouth 79 Tichborne, family 169n Tichborne, Sir Henry 104 Tipperary, County 38, 82, 268 Tisdall, James 104 Tisdall, Rev. William 136, 140, 152, 191, 199n, 202 A sample of trew-blue presbyterian loyalty (1709) 140 The conduct of the dissenters of Ireland . . . (1712) 193, 202 tithe, see Church of Ireland Toland, John 65–6, 153 ‘toopees’ 124 tories, see rapparees tories, toryism (political party), in England 49, 50, 51, 59, 65, 68, 70, 71–2, 76–9, 83–4, 119–20, 136, 159–60, 166–7, 177, 184–5 tories, toryism (political party), in Ireland 37, 58, 92–3, 94, 119, 120, 121, 122, 145, 147, 160–2, 172, 175–6, 211, 212, 235, 247, 248, 261, 277 Townley, Blayney 104 Townsend, Bryan 104 Townshend, Charles, 2nd Viscount 213, 215, 219, 229, 230, 233, 239, 255 Travers, Rev. John 143–4, 156 Trenchard, John 73, 75, 77, 79, 80 Trenchard, Sir John 50, 52 Trenchard, William 77 Trevor, Sir John 104 Trinity College Dublin, see Dublin, University of Troost, Wouter, historian 41–2, 57 Tuam, diocese of 153 Tyrconnell, earl of, see Talbot, Richard Tyrconnell, Lady, see Talbot, Frances Tyrone, County 82n, 83 Ulster 37–8, 61, 68–9, 93, 95, 121, 140, 303

INDEX 146, 147, 154, 186–208, 211, 229, 251–2, 259, 276 voluntary associations in (1689) 18, 24–5, 38 ‘undertakers’, ‘undertaker system’ 106–30, 209, 215–16, 239–40, 242, 249, 253, 256, 265, 266, 273–4 Union, Anglo-Irish 66 Upton, Arthur 104 Upton, Clotworthy 104, 192n, 193, 205, 207, 225–6 Upton, family 193 Upton, John 205 Upton, Thomas 192n, 197 Vanhomrigh, Bartholomew 104, 196 Vesey, Archbishop John 132, 135, 139, 144, 148, 149–50, 153, 181 Vesey, Bishop Sir Thomas 132, 144, 157 Vigors, Bishop Bartholomew 139, 148 Villiers, Edward, 1st earl of Jersey 63 Villiers, Elizabeth, Lady Orkney 63, 64, 74 Wainwright, John 267, 272 Wake, Archbishop William 132 Waller, James 104 Walpole, Edward 266 Walpole, Horace, jr. 237 Walpole, Horatio (‘old Horace’) 229, 244, 272n Walpole, Sir Robert 127, 177, 229, 233, 238, 271 Irish policy 127, 190, 229, 230, 231, 233–4, 237–75 Wandesford, Sir Christopher 55, 104 Warburton, John 105 Warburton, Richard 59n, 105 Ward, Edward, lawsuit v. Earl of Meath 89, 222 Warneford, Robert 105 Warren, Ebenezer 105 Waterford 82n, 270 Waterford, County 38, 82 Weaver, John 105 Webster, Edward 112, 216 Weldon, Walter 105 Wemys (Weymes), Sir Henry 105 Wesley, Garret 105 West, Richard 240–1 Wetenhall, Bishop Edward 132, 148, 150

Weymes, see Wemys Weymouth, 1st Viscount, see Thynne, Thomas Whaley, Richard 105 Wharton, Hon. Goodwin 50 Wharton, Philip, 4th Baron 50 Wharton, Philip, 1st duke of 223 Wharton, Thomas, 5th Baron and 1st earl of Wharton 49–50, 52, 59, 64, 121–2 as lord lieutenant 6, 110, 128, 137–8, 139, 140, 160, 189, 211, 281 whig junto 49, 51, 53, 59, 72, 84, 87, 238 whigs, whiggism, in England 40, 50, 51, 69–70, 83–4, 142, 177, 224, 228, 229, 260 whigs, whiggism, in Ireland 38–40, 45, 58, 66, 72, 73, 88, 94–5, 120, 147, 172, 189, 196, 206–7, 211, 277 Whitshed, William 89, 115, 216 Whittingham, Rev. Charles 152 Willes, John 227 William III, king of England, Scotland and Ireland 8, 9, 27, 74 and forfeited estates in Ireland 29 Irish policy 24, 26, 30–1, 33 Williamson, Sir Joseph 47, 59, 64, 105 Wilmington, 1st earl of, see Compton, Spencer Wilmot, Sir Robert 267 Winchester, Lord, see Powlett, Charles Wingfield, Edward 91, 105 Withers, Sir William 68 Wolseley, Robert 105 Wolseley, William 61, 62, 105 Wood, William 233, 239 ‘Wood’s halfpence’ 107, 209, 215, 233, 234, 238–9, 279 Worth, Edward 105 Wright, Sir Nathan 70n Wybrants, Daniel 105 Wyche, Sir Cyril 52, 53, 76 Wye, Rev. Mossom 156 Wyndham, Thomas 240–1, 242, 253, 259, 267, 272, 274 Wynne, Owen 113 Youghal 29, 277 Young, Andrew 105 Yorke, Philip, 1st earl of Hardwicke 242, 244, 267, 272

304

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