The Eighteenth-Century Composite State: Representative Institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689-1800

The Eighteenth-Century Composite State Also by D. W. Hayton: HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT 1690–1715: Introductory Survey RUL...

Author: John Bergin | D.W Hayton | David Hayton | James P. Kelly

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The Eighteenth-Century Composite State

Also by D. W. Hayton: HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT 1690–1715: Introductory Survey RULING IRELAND, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties Also by James Kelly: HENRY FLOOD: Patriots and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Ireland POYNINGS’ LAW AND THE MAKING OF LAW IN IRELAND, 1660–1800 PRELUDE TO UNION: Anglo-Irish Politics in the 1780s SIR EDWARD NEWENHAM, 1734–1814: Defender of the Protestant Constitution SIR RICHARD MUSGRAVE, 1746–1818: Ultra-Protestant Ideologue THAT DAMN’D THING CALLED HONOUR: Duelling in Ireland, 1570–1860

The Eighteenth-Century Composite State Representative Institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689–1800 Edited by

D. W. Hayton Professor of Early Modern Irish and British History, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

James Kelly Cregan Professor of History, St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University, Ireland and

John Bergin Research Fellow, School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

Editorial matter and selection © D. W. Hayton, James Kelly and John Bergin 2010 All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978–0–230–23159–7

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Bill Doyle and Jack Greene, who pointed the way

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Contents List of Figures, Tables and Maps

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Abbreviations

xiii

List of Contributors

xv

Editorial Note

xvii

Introduction The Irish Parliament in European Context: A Representative Institution in a Composite State D. W. Hayton and James Kelly

3

Part I Ireland 1

2

Money, Politics and Power: The Financial Legislation of the Irish Parliament Charles Ivar McGrath

21

Sustaining a Confessional State: The Irish Parliament and Catholicism James Kelly

44

3

Parliament and the Established Church: Reform and Reaction D. W. Hayton

4

Defending the Kingdom and Preserving the Constitution: Irish Militia Legislation 1692–1793 Neal Garnham

107

Legislating for Economic Development: Irish Fisheries as a Case Study in the Limitations of ‘Improvement’ Andrew Sneddon

136

5

78

Part II Europe 6

7

8

‘Le roi demande, les états consente’: Royal Council, Provincial Estates and Parlements in Eighteenth-Century Burgundy Julian Swann

163

The Estates of Languedoc in Eighteenth-Century France: Administrative Expansion and Feudal Revitalisation Stephen J. Miller

183

Managing a Composite Monarchy: The Hungarian Diet and the Habsburgs in the Eighteenth Century Orsolya Szakály

205

vii

viii

Contents

9

Lawmaking in a Post-Composite State? The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century Richard Butterwick

221

Conclusion D. W. Hayton and James Kelly

244

Index

254

List of Figures, Tables and Maps Figures 5.1 Irish Legislation, 1692–1800

141

5.2 Fishery bills, 1692–1800

142

5.3 All bills, by initiating house, 1692–1800

142

5.4 Fishery bills, by initiating house, 1692–1800

143

5.5 Bills rejected by the English/British Privy Council, 1692–1800

144

5.6 Bills rejected by the Irish Privy Council, 1692–1800

144

5.7 Bills amended by the English/British Privy Council, 1692–1800

145

5.8 Fishery bills and Privy Councils, 1692–1800

145

Tables 1.1 Short-term supply legislation in the Irish parliament, 1692–1714

26

1.2 Short-term supply legislation in the Irish parliament, 1715–60

28

1.3 Public creditors and potential creditors, 1716–29

32

Maps 1 The major European states, c. 1760 2 Ireland in the eighteenth century

1 17

3 France before the Revolution

160

4 Central and eastern Europe, c. 1760

204

ix

Acknowledgements This collection derives from a Wiles Colloquium held at Queen’s University, Belfast on 14–15 September 2007. As the title of the colloquium suggests – ‘Lawmaking in periphery and centre: Constitutional relations in composite states, 1690–1800’ – the intention was, through the process of examining the making of law, to explore the relationship of central government with its subordinate parliaments and estates within the composite monarchies that existed in eighteenth-century Europe. This idea was prompted by an award of funding in 2004 by the Leverhulme Trust to Professors Hayton and Kelly to facilitate the preparation of a database of the legislation presented to the Irish parliament between 1692 and 1800. The resulting Irish Legislation Database, which can be accessed at www.qub.ac.uk/ild/, contains information relating to all legislative proposals, numbering more than 4000, that arose in the Irish parliament and Irish Privy Council and were scrutinised at the English/British council between 1692 and 1800. It is to be hoped that the availability of the database will encourage scrutiny of the nature and operation of the Irish legislature, the legislative output of the Irish parliament, the interaction of the Irish parliament and Irish Privy Council with the English/British Privy Council, and, by extension and implication, the Anglo-Irish constitutional nexus. Although Ireland and England/Great Britain were separate kingdoms, they shared a long and complex history, the same monarch, and, as the Irish statute books attests, common patterns and practices of lawmaking. Some of these links were discussed at the colloquium, but the deliberations moved beyond the Anglo-Irish context in which Irish parliamentary history is conventionally located and sought to place the Irish parliament in its wider European and Atlantic setting. To this end, the participants engaged with the relationship of the metropolitan and provincial estates in France and the Habsburg empire, and the discussions ranged even more widely – a necessary perspective on the relationship of Britain with its transatlantic dependencies in the West Indies and North America being provided by the comments of Jack Greene. The European dimension has been amplified in this collection by the addition of further chapters on Languedoc and Poland-Lithuania. As with any undertaking of this nature, the intellectual, personal, organisational and institutional debts of the organisers/editors are many. We wish, first, to thank the Leverhulme Trust for the funding that allowed an idea to become a reality, and to permit the recruitment of two exceptional research fellows, John Bergin and Andrew Sneddon, who were responsible for transforming the data in its raw state from the Journals of the Irish Houses of Lords x

Acknowledgements

xi

and Commons to an electronic form that has allowed it to be configured in a manner appropriate to the world wide web, and thus to general access. For guidance, assistance and the many hours of effort that this involved, we wish to express our deep gratitude to Ricky Rankin and Gavin Mitchell of Information Services at Queen’s University. We wish also to thank Dr Gerry Slater, then Director of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and Deputy Keeper of the Records of Northern Ireland, for lending the project the Record Office’s set of the Journals of the Irish House of Commons, and Ms Deirdre Wildy of Queen’s University Library for general support and bibliographical assistance. In respect of the project, thanks are also due to Professor Julian Hoppit, the late Professor Edith Mary Johnston-Liik, Dr Clyve Jones, the late Professor Peter Jupp, Dr Andrew Lyall, Dr Anthony Malcomson, Mr James McGuire, Dr Ian Montgomery, Professor Nial Osborough and Professor Mary O’Dowd. The colloquium that marked the formal conclusion of the research phase of the project, and that gave rise to this collection, was made possible by the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust and the Wiles Trust, the support of the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s, and the organisational skills of Ms Catherine Boone. We are also very grateful to the chairpersons of the sessions and individual commentators – Dr Toby Barnard, Dr Allan Blackstock, Professor Sean Connolly, Professor William Doyle, Professor Robert Evans, Dr Natasha Glaisyer, Professor Peter Gray, Professor Jack Greene, Ms Joanna Innes, Dr Eoin Magennis, and Dr Stephen Taylor – along with the other participants, whose thoughtful and sometimes forcefully articulated observations on the circulated chapters provided the inspiration as well as the incentive to the editors and contributors to press on with the task of bringing the collection to completion. For permission to consult and to make use of manuscripts in private possession, the editors and contributors are grateful to the Duke of Abercorn; the Marquess of Anglesey; the Earl of Normanton; the Earl of Roden; the Earl of Shannon; the Lord Hotham; the National Trust; the trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement; and His Grace the Archbishop of Armagh. We also thank the various archivists, librarians, trustees, custodians and copyright holders of collections held in institutional repositories: the Archives Départmentales de l’Aude; the Archives Départmentales de la Côte d’Or; the Archives Départmentales du Gard; the Archives Départmentales de l’Hérault; the Archives Départmentales de la Haute-Garonne; the Archives Nationales, Paris; the Beinecke Library, Yale University; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Keeper of Western Manuscripts, the Bodleian Library; the British Library Board; the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford; the Derbyshire Record Office; the Dublin City Library and Archive; the Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office; the Hungarian National Archives; the Irish Architectural Archive; the National Archives of Ireland; the Director, National Library of Ireland; the National Library of Scotland;

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Acknowledgements

the Deputy Keeper of the Records, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland; the Royal Dublin Society; the Royal Irish Academy; Suffolk Record Office; Surrey History Centre; the Board of Trinity College Dublin and the Warwickshire County Record Office. It is our hope that the completion of the Irish Legislation Database will renew interest in the work of the eighteenth-century Irish parliament, and that this volume in particular will locate Irish parliamentary history in the wider context of the history of representative institutions in eighteenthcentury Europe and in the imperial and colonial possessions of European states. In making the attempt we are aware that we are following in the steps of two distinguished predecessors, who in their different ways pioneered the comparative study of parliaments, estates and assemblies in this period. Jack Greene’s work on the constitutional and political relationship of the peripheral territories of Britain’s transatlantic empire with its metropolitan core provided one important model for the kind of study attempted here; while Bill Doyle’s contribution to what he has himself called ‘the new constitutional history’ of eighteenth-century France, and Europe more generally, has not only inspired several of the contributors to this book but has also paved the way for the study of pre-Union Ireland in the comparative perspective of the composite states of the ancien régime. We were honoured by their presence at the colloquium, and on behalf of all the contributors wish to take the opportunity to return the compliment by dedicating this work to them.

Abbreviations ADA

Archives Départmentales de l’Aude

ADCO

Archives Départmentales de la Côte d’Or

ADG

Archives Départmentales du Gard

ADH

Archives Départmentales de l’Hérault

ADHG

Archives Départmentales de la Haute-Garonne

AN

Archives Nationales

Add. MS

Additional Manuscript

BL

British Library

BN

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

BNL

Belfast Newsletter

Bodl.

Bodleian Library

Cal. HO Papers

Calendar of Home Office Papers

Cal. SP, Dom

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series

CJI

Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland (1st–4th edn)

EHR

English Historical Review

FHS

French Historical Studies

Hist. Ir. Parl.

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

HJ

Historical Journal

HMC

Historical Manuscripts Commission

IHS

Irish Historical Studies

Irish Statutes

The Statutes at Large Passed in the Parliaments Held in Ireland, 1310–1800 (20 vols, Dublin, 1789–1800)

LJI

Journals of the House of Lords of the Kingdom of Ireland (8 vols, Dublin, 1782–1800)

NAI

National Archives of Ireland

NLI

National Library of Ireland

NUI

National University of Ireland

Oxford DNB

H. C. G. Matthew et al. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 vols, Oxford, 2004) xiii

xiv

Abbreviations

Parl. Reg Ire.

The Parliamentary Register, or History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons of Ireland (17 vols, Dublin, 1782–1801)

PRO

Public Record Office

PRONI

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

QUB

Queen’s University Belfast

RIA

Royal Irish Academy

RIA Proc.

Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy

RO

Record Office

RSAI Jnl Ireland

Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland

SHC

Surrey History Centre, Woking

TCD

Trinity College Dublin

TNA

The National Archives [of the UK]

TRHS

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

UCD

University College Dublin

List of Contributors John Bergin was employed as Senior Research Fellow with the Irish Legislation Project and is the author of several articles on the making of law in eighteenth-century Ireland. He currently holds the post of research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast on an AHRC-funded research project investigating ‘Marriage in Ireland, 1660–1925’. Richard Butterwick is Senior Lecturer in Modern Polish History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He is the author of Poland’s Last King and English Culture: Stanisław August Poniatowski 1732–1798 (1998) and of many articles and essays on the monarchy, parliament, Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment in PolandLithuania. He edited The Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy in European Context, c. 1500–1795 (2001), the proceedings of an earlier Wiles Colloquium, co-edited Peripheries of the Enlightenment (2008), and is now preparing a monograph on the Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788–92. Neal Garnham is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Ulster at Coleraine, and President of the Irish Economic and Social History Society. He is the author of numerous articles and essays on eighteenth-century Irish history, and of The Courts, Crime and the Criminal Law in Ireland, 1692–1760 (1996). He is currently working on a full-length study of the Irish militia in the period 1691–1793. D. W. Hayton, MRIA, is Professor of Early Modern Irish and British History and Head of the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast. He wrote the Introductory Survey for the 1690–1715 volumes of the History of Parliament, and a collection of his papers on Irish political history appeared in 2004, entitled Ruling Ireland, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties. James Kelly, MRIA, is Head of the History Department at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University. His publications include Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (2007); The Proceedings of the Irish House of Lords (3 vols, 2008) and Sir Richard Musgrave, 1746–1818: UltraProtestant Ideologue (2009). Charles Ivar McGrath is a Lecturer in the School of History and Archives at University College Dublin. He is the author of The Making of the EighteenthCentury Irish Constitution: Government, Parliament and the Revenue, 1692–1714 (2000), and co-editor of Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650–1850 (2005) and Money, Power, and Print: Interdisciplinary Studies on the Financial Revolution in the British Isles (2008). xv

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List of Contributors

Stephen J. Miller is Associate Professor in History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2008 he published State and Society in EighteenthCentury France: A Study of Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc. His next project, for which he has received a grant from the American Philosophical Society, will analyse the French monarchy’s efforts to reform its institutions by creating provincial assemblies of landowners in the 1770s and 1780s. Andrew Sneddon is a Lecturer in History at the University of Ulster. He held a fellowship in the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast in 2007–8, and was previously Research Fellow on the Irish Legislation Project. His monograph, Witchcraft and Whigs: The Life of Bishop Francis Hutchinson, 1660–1739 was published in 2008. Julian Swann is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of Politics and the Parlement of Paris, 1754–1774 (1995) and Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661–1790 (2003), and co-editor of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution (2004). Orsolya Szakály is a Subject Lecturer in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and also teaches at the London School of Economics. Her doctoral thesis (Budapest, 2003) was on the Hungarian aristocratic ‘improver’, Miklos, Baron Vay.

Editorial Note In the transcription of extracts from original sources, capitalisation and punctuation have been silently modernised, thorns and other orthographical archaisms replaced, and material in foreign languages translated. Editorial interpolations are indicated by square brackets and italics. Before 1752 the Julian calendar continued to operate in Britain and Ireland, and dates in that period are therefore presented in Old Style, though with the year taken to begin on 1 January. In continental Europe the Gregorian calendar was in use throughout the period, and dates are always given in New Style. All parliamentary statutes and government proclamations are assumed to be Irish unless otherwise stated. Finally, information on bills and heads of bills in the Irish parliament has been taken from the Irish Legislation Database (ILD) (available at http://www.qub.ac.uk/ild).

xvii


Map 1

The major European states, c. 1760


Introduction The Irish Parliament in European Context: A Representative Institution in a Composite State D. W. Hayton and James Kelly

The term ‘composite state’ was coined by H. G. Koenigsberger in 1975 in a published lecture which argued that in Europe in the early modern period ‘most states … were composite states’; that is to say territorial agglomerations whose unity was dynastic rather than national, defined as ‘more than one country under the sovereignty of one ruler’.1 The chronological focus of Koenigsberger’s lecture, and of those who followed him in discussing the phenomenon of ‘composite states’2 (or ‘multiple monarchies’, to use another similar formulation3) was the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In some cases the expansion of state power during the eighteenth century forced a process of integration, but the European ancien régime that survived until the French Revolution was still marked by relatively few recognisable nation states. The most extensive dynastic accumulation belonged to the Habsburgs, whose principal possessions were the lands of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, and whose outlying territories extended from the Netherlands to the Balkans. To the east of the Habsburg dominions could be found the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with its Saxon kings; to the north, Brandenburg–Prussia and its various German properties, the union of Denmark with Norway, and of Sweden with Finland; to the south the Savoyard state of Piedmont-Sardinia, and the joint kingdom of Naples and Sicily; and to the west the multiple monarchy of the Hanoverian rulers of Great Britain and Ireland. The legislative union of England and Scotland in 1707 had gone some way towards integrating the kingdoms of the Stuarts, but the process was incomplete, and the accession of the House of Hanover in 1714 had added a further complication by uniting the British and Irish Crowns to a German electorate.4 In particular, the governance of the kingdom of Ireland remained separate in many, though not all, important respects. As was the case with Scotland under the Union, Ireland retained its own church establishment and legal system, both of which followed English models and were staffed in part by Englishmen, who could be transferred across without the need to learn new forms and practices. Unlike the Scots, the Irish also retained intact 3

4 Introduction

their own administrative institutions, again on an English pattern and with some English appointees. The viceroy (usually holding the formal title of lord lieutenant) and those who substituted for him (lords justices) were assisted by a Privy Council and supported by a range of offices – the council secretariat, the various branches of the army establishment, the treasury and exchequer, and the revenue commission – only one of which – the revenue commission – was responsible directly to government at Whitehall. Finally, and most important, a separate Irish parliament not only remained in being until the British–Irish Union of 1800, but actually became more powerful and more effective during the eighteenth century. The continued existence of such representative institutions was a key element in the form of non-integrative union which produced the typical early modern ‘composite state’, the union aeque principaliter. According to J. H. Elliott: The greatest advantage of union aeque principaliter was that by ensuring the survival of their customary laws and institutions it made more palatable to the inhabitants the kind of transfer of territory that was inherent in the international dynastic game. No doubt they often felt considerable initial resentment at finding themselves subordinated to a ‘foreign’ ruler. But a promise to observe traditional laws, customs and practices could mitigate the pains of these dynastic transactions, and help reconcile élites to the change of masters. The observance of traditional laws and customs involved in particular the perpetuation of estates and representative institutions.5 Where this occurred – and it must be said that respect for local institutions was by no means universal among the ‘new monarchies’ of early modern Europe – the preservation of representative assemblies by rulers of composite states in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been motivated at least as much by political self-interest as by an inherent respect for constitutional traditions. Much would have depended on the size of the contribution expected from a particular territory to the central needs of the monarchy and the likely disposition of the relevant local assemblies. As Koenigsberger pointed out, where the potential gain from abolishing historic diets or estates in the interests of increased uniformity and efficiency of taxation was relatively small, a simple cost–benefit analysis could convince even the most dynamic monarchies that this was not worth the concomitant risk of alienating a local ruling élite.6 The balance seems to have shifted, however, in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the rise of the so-called fiscal-military state, of which much has been made in recent historical literature.7 The consolidation of state power through the expansion and professionalisation of armies, the systematising of state finances to support this growing military force, and

D. W. Hayton and James Kelly

5

the development of an effective civil administrative apparatus to ensure the collection of the revenue needed to pay for both, had inevitable consequences in strengthening the resolve of rulers to limit the powers of representative institutions or to dispense with them entirely, as was the fate of the cortes of Catalonia and Aragon under the Bourbons, and the parliaments of Sardinia and Piedmont under the Savoyard monarchy.8 Yet despite the vaunted muscularity of these fiscal-military states, many representative institutions did survive into the era of ‘enlightened absolutism’.9 Admittedly some lingered in poor health and were left untouched for the very reason that they were sickly and generally spineless – the Bohemian diet, for example, or the parliament of Sicily (once dubbed the ‘ice-cream parliament’ because its members were preoccupied with consumption of this confectionery delight at the expense of their proper business): both readily granted subsidies as long as aristocratic privileges were sustained.10 The Polish-Lithuanian sejm became paralysed in the early eighteenth century, though the Saxon monarchy was unable to take advantage of its weakness, and later, as Richard Butterwick’s chapter shows, it was revitalised in partnership with the monarchy. A few representative assemblies showed greater vigour. After the death of Charles XII, the Swedish riksdag effectively governed without royal interference until party factionalism drove Gustavus III to impose a new constitution in 1772 that divided power over legislation and taxation between the riksdag and the king.11 The provocative refusal of the Hungarian diet in 1765 to increase taxation, as Dr Szakály describes in her chapter, frustrated the Habsburgs sufficiently for it to be prorogued indefinitely. And in the final quarter of the century, in response to a continent-wide political crisis, discontented local élites sought to exploit the powers of regional or provincial assemblies as a means of resisting the centralising powers of the monarchy. Even in Sicily the ‘ice-cream parliament’ proved capable in 1783 of preventing the Marquis Domenico Caracciolo, a viceroy determined on reform, from forcing through changes in the assessment of the subsidy (donativo).12 Sometimes, however, parliaments overreached themselves, with disastrous results; the opposition of the estates of Brabant to the reforms of Emperor Joseph II resulted in his abrupt annulment in 1789 of all provincial privileges.13 In respect of the concept of the ‘composite state’, perhaps the most interesting example of the development of representative institutions is offered by France, at first glance the only major power that does not qualify under Koenigsberger’s definition and indeed for some historians the only identifiable unitary ‘nation state’ in eighteenth-century Europe. But as Bill Doyle, Julian Swann and others have established, local particularism was an important feature of political culture, especially of the nobility. In the pays d’états, the provinces in which traditional estates survived – such as Brittany, Burgundy (described here by Julian Swann) or Languedoc (the subject of Stephen Miller’s

6 Introduction

chapter) – these estates negotiated with the king over levels of taxation in the same way as the Hungarian or Bohemian estates negotiated with the emperor.14 As formerly independent entities annexed to France, the pays d’états could claim the same kind of distinctive origins as the territories of more obviously ‘composite states’. Professor Swann observes in his chapter that the inhabitants of the province of Burgundy ‘had maintained strong local traditions of self-rule and of cultural and institutional independence from the centre’. This sense of difference might grow into a form of provincial ‘patriotism’, seen at its most extreme in the construction by antiquarians of the idea of a separate ‘Burgundian nation’. Similar sentiments could even be detected in the political communities of the pays d’élection, those provinces which formed the core of the historic kingdom of France and did not possess recognisable independent traditions. In Normandy (1759), Dauphiné (1776), Aquitaine (1779), and Franche-Comté (1782) the local judicial bodies, the parlements, agitated for the revival of long-defunct and long-forgotten representative institutions, or for the creation of new estates where no historical precedent existed.15 In seeking to find a place for the Irish parliament in this complex comparative framework, we have first to answer the question of whether Ireland can indeed properly be viewed in the same light as the aristocratic polities of continental Europe. Debate on this point has been prompted by the application to Irish history of the iconoclastic approach and selfconsciously radical interpretation of J. C. D. Clark, whose analysis of English society in the ‘long eighteenth century’ between the Restoration and the Great Reform Act of 1832 deliberately emphasised those elements in English social and political organisation that most closely resembled the European ancien régime, arguing that they remained of primary importance until the English ancien régime dissolved rapidly in the 1820s in a ‘high political’ crisis over Catholic emancipation and electoral reform.16 Instead of a triumphalist Whig history, in which inexorable progress towards parliamentary democracy was underpinned by industrial revolution and the rise of the middle class to political power, Clark depicted a society in which, even at the end of the eighteenth century, the monarchy remained the focus of authority, political and social leadership resided with the aristocracy, and the established church continued to exercise cultural hegemony. Clark’s ‘revisionism’ provoked strong reactions among historians of England, not least because of the polemical style of his work and the sharpness of his tone.17 Although the appearance of such a profound reinterpretation has prompted others to pursue some of its themes, notably in relation to the continuing sacerdotal power and social influence of the monarchy,18 and the importance of debates over religion and the authority of the established church in the history of political thought,19 the lasting effect seems to have been to produce a reaffirmation of the exceptionalism of English historical development in this period.20 Among


7

Irish historians Clark’s arguments also produced a range of highly charged responses, both positive and negative. Viewing eighteenth-century Ireland as an ancien régime state, more particularly as part of an ancien régime ‘composite state’, gave a novel slant to some of the principal features of its history, notably the confessional nature of social and political divisions, and the relationship of the Irish landed élite to metropolitan society and the metropolitan power. Some of these possibilities have been explored; most notably, perhaps, in S. J. Connolly’s powerful revision of orthodox interpretations of the anti-Catholic ‘penal laws’. In contrast to previous historians who, taking their cue from Burke, had argued that the Irish ‘penal code’ was exceptional in its comprehensiveness and severity, Connolly argued that, in this respect at least, eighteenth-century Ireland was not unusual: in most European states of the period the principle was accepted that political rights should be restricted to those professing the established religion. Moreover, the notion that propertyless Catholics were peculiarly disadvantaged by their exclusion from political society ignored the common practice of European states in restricting power to the propertied.21 In a slightly different way Jacqueline Hill took up some of Clark’s arguments to underscore the importance of corporate rights and corporate values in eighteenth-century Ireland.22 Protestant determination to uphold the legal authority of the established church in spite of the fact that it commanded the allegiance of only a small minority of the population could now be located in a familiar European setting, as an example of the organised defence of corporate privilege. Equally, the continued exclusion of Catholics from municipal governance, explained by hostile critics as the simple effect of religious bigotry, might now be understood as contemporaries would have understood it, as maintaining the chartered rights of borough corporations. Like Clark’s own formulation, these ‘revisionist’ statements, especially the full-scale reinterpretation of Irish social and political development attempted in Professor Connolly’s Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660–1760 (1992) aroused strong reactions. Attention focused less on the nature of the eighteenth-century Irish state, which is the principal concern of this book, than on the nature of Irish society in the period. Some historians were unable to accept the depiction of an ancien régime Ireland in which the ascendancy of the Protestant landed gentry was accepted by a deferential populace as part of the natural order of things, the privilege of the established church was a pillar of the constitution, and confessional discrimination no more than an expression of economic realities; they chose to re-emphasise what they saw as the essentially colonial nature of Irish society.23 The comparative approach thus came to be associated with supposed attempts to deny the brutality and injustice associated with English conquest and land confiscation, and what was taken to be the uniquely vicious nature of the penal laws. The idea of Ireland as an ancien

8 Introduction

régime society challenged a nationalist narrative of Anglo-Irish relations founded on a belief in natural and irreconcilable antipathies between Irish and English, native and colonist. To self-styled ‘post-revisionists’ the comparative aspect of the ‘revisionist’ agenda denied Irish exceptionalism and failed to explain both the sectarian conflict that erupted at the end of the century and the emergence of a movement for constitutional separatism. For all its intrinsic interest, however, this debate over the nature of Irish society in the eighteenth century – whether more characteristic of an ancien régime or a colony – is not immediately relevant to our present purposes. It is indeed a red herring, drawing attention away from the questions that need to be asked about the nature of the Irish state, and frustrating rather than advancing possibilities for a productive comparison of Ireland with similar component elements of European ‘composite’ monarchies, in particular the comparison of the Irish parliament with local or regional estates occupying a similar position at the periphery of complex constitutional systems. Such a comparison is neither easy nor straightforward, given the unusual nature of governance in the ‘composite state’ in which Ireland found itself. The peculiar development of the British constitution had made its parliament a partner rather than an instrument of the monarchy. While surviving representative institutions in similar European territories had only to concern themselves with government in the person of the king or a viceroy, the Irish parliament had also to negotiate with, or to circumvent, its counterpart at Westminster, which was able to press interests, especially in economic matters, that were separate from, and might indeed stand in opposition to, the wishes of the Crown and its servants. The best example would be the repeated insistence of the British House of Commons – at the behest of powerful English woollen manufacturing interests – that Irish competition had to be sharply checked, if not destroyed altogether, however eloquently officials might put the case for indulgence to the Irish on grounds of political expediency. Nor was the Anglo-Irish relationship analogous to the situation in countries with multiple tiers of representative institutions, such as Poland, Hungary or France, where smaller, provincial estates could be overruled by a national convocation or Estates-General. In this respect the position of the Irish parliament was closer to that of a colonial assembly, confronted by a parliament representing the metropolitan power, in which it had no formal representation, but which could legislate for Ireland in matters affecting both kingdoms. The proximity of the Westminster parliament also provided the Irish with a standard of political representation strikingly different from almost all the parliaments of continental Europe. England’s ‘mixed’ constitution was much commented on by contemporaries, whether self-satisfied purveyors of an English ‘vulgar Whiggism’, or philosophic critics of European absolutism casting envious eyes across the Channel. The essential paradox conveyed in John Brewer’s influential The Sinews of Power (1989), the work which


9

popularised the term ‘fiscal-military state’, was that the strengthening of the British state in the eighteenth century – its rise to international greatness and acquisition of a global empire – occurred alongside the erosion of monarchical sovereignty by a representative assembly which became the most powerful institution of its kind in Europe. The British parliament’s control over the financial basis of government institutionalised its presence and enabled an extension of the province of parliamentary legislation to encompass all aspects of social and economic regulation, to an extent unique among contemporary representative assemblies.24 The Irish parliament never attained this level of political authority or legislative range, but during its ‘long apprenticeship’ in the eighteenth century25 it developed powers and interests beyond those of even the liveliest of European provincial estates. This was a remarkable advance on the situation obtaining before the Glorious Revolution, when there had been no meeting of the Irish parliament since 1666. To adopt Conrad Russell’s well-worn phrase, the Irish parliaments called by James I, his son and grandsons, had been ‘events’: the parliaments summoned by William III and his successors became an ‘institution’.26 As in England, what lay at the root of this fundamental change (which probably deserves to be called a ‘constitutional revolution’) was money. The Restoration monarchy had benefited from a lifetime grant of ‘additional’ taxes to supplement the Crown’s hereditary revenue, and through a combination of parsimony and good luck (manifested in an upturn in customs revenues as a consequence of a minor trading boom), had been able to live ‘of its own’.27 King William, however, faced a more difficult economic situation, higher expenditure, and an Irish parliament unwilling to write itself out of existence by giving long-term subsidies. Dr McGrath’s chapter in this volume describes how, in due course, parliament settled into a pattern of biennial grants of taxation, and how the Crown’s dependence on this ‘additional’ revenue was copper-fastened by the growth of a national debt, minuscule in comparison with Britain’s but enough to ensure that no matter how troublesome Irish parliaments might prove, they were indispensable.28 Of course, British governments could have chosen more radical options – slashing expenditure on the Irish contribution to imperial defence, for example, or even taxing Ireland from Westminster – but the same political calculus operated that Koenigsberger identified as having determined in previous centuries the continuance of local representative institutions in newly formed composite states: the risk of alienating the local political élite was greater than the fiscal advantages to be gained from centralisation. Having emulated Westminster in this respect, the eighteenth-century Irish parliament went on to expand its legislative capacity, in both volume and scope, exploiting the ‘heads of bills’ procedure already established in the Restoration parliament to circumvent the limitations imposed by the Irish Act of 1494 known as Poynings’ Law.29 As far as legislation was

10

Introduction

concerned the critical clause of Poynings’ Law was its insistence that bills be prepared not by parliament but by the Irish council. Moreover, before these bills could be presented to the Irish parliament, which would only be able to accept or reject them, without alteration, they were to be inspected at the English (after 1707 British) council, where they might be amended or suppressed. This provision remained in force until the constitutional reforms of 1782, which removed the Irish council from the process of legislation. But it was customarily avoided, in the vast majority of cases, by the practice of preparing in either the Irish House of Lords or Commons (after 1700 increasingly the Commons) ‘heads’ of bills, identical in every respect to bills proper except for the wording of the preamble. These ‘heads’ would be discussed in the originating house in the same manner as bills introduced into the British parliament, and sent to the Privy Council to be transformed into bills. Thus Irish MPs were permitted a degree of initiative that ensured legislation would reflect the concerns of the ‘political nation’ in Ireland rather than the priorities of government. The downside was the cumbersome nature of the process, which, coupled with the fact that Irish parliamentary sessions were biennial rather than annual, as was the case at Westminster, slowed the production rate of statutes to a fraction of that achieved by the British parliament. A decade-by-decade comparison of acts passed at Westminster and Dublin shows that the best the Irish parliament could do, in the 1780s, was to pass 30.2 per cent of the equivalent number of acts passed in Britain; the worst, 8.5 per cent in the 1750s.30 Nonetheless, while the comparative figures may be disappointing, this is a comparison with a parliament whose output was far ahead of any other in Europe at the time; and in absolute terms – or in comparison with other legislative bodies – the Irish parliament’s record was much more impressive. A total of more than 4000 bills or heads of bills were initiated between 1692 and 1800, of which more than 2000 became law. The fact that Dr Sneddon’s chapter can identify approximately 1200 measures in the eighteenth century directed towards economic ‘improvement’, whether in relation to manufacturing, trade, industry, or infrastructure, and as many as 66 dealing with a single industry – the fisheries – is a sufficient demonstration of the parliament’s vitality. Its legislative record, therefore, brought the Irish parliament increasingly close to the British pattern and set both apart from other representative institutions in ancien régime Europe. In a different way, the British Privy Council’s supervisory role over Irish bills, which continued even after the partial repeal of Poynings’ Law in 1782, and the right asserted (even if rarely exercised) by the Westminster parliament to legislate on Irish affairs, implied a constitutional status similar in essentials to the colonial assemblies of continental North America and the Caribbean islands. However, in other respects – most notably in its essential function of representing the interests of the local


11

political élite – the Irish parliament did resemble peripheral or subordinate assemblies in European composite states. Just as the attempted application to Ireland of some of the defining characteristics of ancien régime polities has brought a new understanding of forms of social structure and social conventions, so the comparison of its parliament with other assemblies offers a different perspective on its activities by placing these in a broader context of political and national relationships.31 It would be a mistake to expect a direct parallel, since local or provincial parliaments in European ‘composite states’ themselves varied so much in form and function. Many were not representative in the sense that the parliaments of the British Isles had been representative since the late medieval period, in that they did not require any form of election. The leading nobility and the leading clerical office-holders would automatically be summoned to represent their respective estates. Even those assemblies which included representation for the ‘Third Estate’, or separately for town-dwellers and peasantry, did not always require a form of election. As for function, only a few were involved in lawmaking, such as the estates of the Austrian Netherlands, the parliament of Sicily, or the Polish sejm. Some met for the principal – sometimes the only – purpose of defending corporate privileges against interference from central government; in other words, not to take action, but to prevent action being taken – in practice, as a forum in which proposals that would have entrenched on local privileges could be negotiated, moderated, and refined. In the Austrian lands, the estates existed to provide a particular level of bureaucracy, mainly in relation to tax-gathering: they, rather than the imperial chancery, appointed and monitored key local officials.32 A final point of differentiation related to the authority enjoyed by particular assemblies and their relationship to other, similar, institutions within the same state. Some were autonomous, representing their own region or province and dealing directly with central government; others, such as the Hungarian dietines or the Polish sejmiks, had to negotiate relationships with national institutions, or such as the French estates, were circumscribed by the potential convocation of an estates-general for the entire country. But despite this immense degree of variation in their composition, their powers and the business they undertook, these local estates did share certain essential characteristics, and certain broad responsibilities. All, or almost all, had a prime concern with finance: they fixed, and in many cases collected, local taxation – the contributio in Hungary, the donativo in Sicily. They supervised, scrutinised and occasionally challenged the work of local administrators. Some sought to act as a moderating influence on the designs of assertive rulers; others, with greater resolution, resisted attempts to impose reforms that would have eradicated local rights and privileges. Some worked to promote the economic welfare of their region. Above all they represented local communities – the noble and clerical estates, the corporate towns, and sometimes the peasantry – in negotiations and confrontations

12

Introduction

with central government, and as traditional institutions served as a focus for local particularism and indeed for a kind of local patriotism. Anchored in a national past, they were able to represent the historic identity of those countries which had historically been added to but not absorbed by the larger composite states of which they now formed a part. All this was true of the Irish parliament, which also represented the principal orders of society: the aristocracy and the leaders of the established church sitting in the House of Lords; the landed gentry and some urban merchants and professional men in the Commons. The Irish Privy Council, before losing its powers over legislation in 1782, may also be regarded as a government-appointed third house of parliament, similar to those found in some European estates. Interestingly, the Irish House of Commons was probably less representative of the ‘Third Estate’ than was the British: by the second half of the century a tightening of patronal influence over parliamentary borough constituencies had transformed many into a species of property.33 In terms of function, provided we ignore the greater legislative productivity of the Irish parliament, it is possible to see significant resemblances between the activities of Irish MPs and their equivalents in continental assemblies. Both assessed the government’s financial need and provided for the granting and collection of taxes; scrutinised governmental accounts, and investigated the corruption of office-holders; sought to provide for the defence of the country; modified or thwarted the plans of reforming viceroys; engaged with issues of corporate privilege, especially in relation to the largest corporation of all, the established church; and promoted economic development. Parliament’s continuing role in local government in Ireland – granting funds for particular economic purposes, and establishing, through statute, bodies to oversee particular industries or areas of economic activity, funded by taxation – was comparable to that of the estates in, say, Austria or France. And in due course Irish Protestants came to develop a form of ‘patriotism’ in which parliament was regarded as not only representing but almost embodying a national will. Despite a foundation in English colonial settlement, the members of Ireland’s Protestant propertied élite maintained, and even enhanced during the eighteenth century, a sense that they had inherited the tradition of the separate medieval lordship of Ireland.34 The comparisons with Hungarian or Polish ‘patriotism’ are obvious, and even to the tentative ‘patriotism’ observed by Julian Swann in Burgundy. This broader contextualisation offers a new perspective on Irish parliamentary development in the period from the Williamite settlement to the Act of Union. Until relatively recently, studies of the Irish parliament in this period concentrated on two aspects of its history: first, the rise of an ideology of Irish ‘patriotism’, which focused on great issues of Anglo-Irish governance and constitutional reform, discovered through speeches in set-piece debates in Commons or Lords and, second, the working out of factional conflict between politicians for whom parliament was a vehicle for obtaining and


13

retaining power. Of course, both the analysis of public oratory as a means of articulating political ideas, and the reconstruction of ‘high-political’ crises as an explanation for changes in the distribution of power in government and society, have an important place in parliamentary history. But a focus on major issues and events is far from providing the full picture, and in the Irish case ignores the fact that the Dublin parliament was, within the constitutional limitations under which it toiled, a busy and generally effective institution. The chapters in this book that focus on the Irish parliament are concerned with the business that was done within its walls – granting taxes, providing for the defence of the kingdom, securing the Protestant élite against the Catholic majority, reconciling the corporate privilege of the established church with perceived priorities of national development, and attempting to promote particular industrial enterprises – which also happen to be the areas in which its activities most closely resembled the output of other representative institutions in continental Europe. But the process of comparison is reciprocal. On the one hand, adopting a European perspective should deepen our understanding of the nature and functions of the eighteenthcentury Irish parliament. On the other, as is demonstrated by those chapters which examine important European case studies of local institutions, the experience should also have something to offer historians of representative assemblies in continental monarchies. At least it is to be hoped that this will be the case if the kingdom of Ireland is no longer treated as a form of polity sui generis, but rather as a local variant, albeit unusual, of that more familiar entity: a component of an ancien régime ‘composite state’.35

Notes 1. H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘Dominium regale or dominium politicum et regale’, repr. in idem, Politicians and Virtuosi: Essays in Early Modern History (London, 1986), pp. 1–25. See also idem, ‘Composite States, Representative Institutions and the American Revolution’ in Historical Research, lxii (2007), pp. 135–53. 2. Mark Greengrass (ed.), Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe (London, 1991); J. H. Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’ in Past and Present, no. 137 (1992), pp. 48–71; John Robertson, ‘Empire and Union: Two Concepts of Early Modern European Political Order’ in idem (ed.), A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 3–36; Jeremy Black, Kings, Nobles and Commoners: States and Societies in Early Modern Europe. A Revisionist History (London, 2004), ch. 2. 3. See especially Conrad Russell in The Causes of the English Civil War … (Oxford, 1990), and The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991); also Michael Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Ireland and the Monarchy in the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom’ in Historical Journal, xxxiv (1991), pp. 279–95; J. H. Ohlmeyer, ‘Introduction: A Failed Revolution?’ in eadem (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–2; Glenn Burgess, ‘Introduction: The new British History’ in idem (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State 1603–1715 (London, 1999), pp. 7–11.

14

Introduction

4. For comments on Britain and Ireland as a composite state see Conrad Russell, ‘Composite Monarchies in Early Modern Europe: The British and Irish Example’ in Alexander Grant and K. J. Stringer (eds), Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London, 1995), pp. 133–46; Robertson, ‘Empire and Union’; Burgess, ‘Introduction’; David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 26–8. 5. Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, pp. 53–4. 6. H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘The Italian Parliaments from their Origins to the End of the Eighteenth Century’, repr. in idem, Politicians and Virtuosi, pp. 43–4. See also Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, pp. 53–6. 7. John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London, 1989); Lawrence Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689 to 1815 (London, 1993); Philip Harling and Peter Mandler, ‘From “Fiscal-Military” State to Laissez-Faire State, 1760–1850’ in Journal of British Studies, xxxii (1993), pp. 44–70; Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660 (London, 2002); M. J. Daunton, ‘The Fiscal-Military State and the Napoleonic Wars: Britain and France Compared’ in David Cannadine (ed.), Trafalgar in History: A Battle and its Afterlife (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 18–43; Christopher Storrs (ed.), The Fiscal-Military State in EighteenthCentury Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson (Aldershot, 2009). 8. Koenigsberger, ‘Italian Parliaments’, pp. 51, 59. 9. William Doyle, ‘The Union in a European Context’ in TRHS, ser. 6, x (2000), pp. 167–9. An example of the failure of the ‘fiscal-military state’ to centralise at the expense of local institutions may be seen in the inability of the Austrian minister Haugwitz to impose reform on the estates of Carinthia and Carniola (P. G. M. Dickson, Finance and Government under Maria Theresia 1740–1780 (2 vols, Oxford, 1987), i, 265–7). A general survey of eighteenth-century representative assemblies across Europe, albeit somewhat dated, is provided in R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 (2 vols, Princeton, 1959–64), i, ch. 2. 10. For Bohemia, see R. J. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1932); Dickson, Finance and Government, i, ch. 11; ii, ch. 6; for Sicily, Denis Mack Smith, A History of Sicily: Modern Sicily after 1713 (London, 1968), ch. 27; Koenigsberger, ‘Italian Parliaments’, p. 59. 11. Michael Roberts, ‘The Swedish Aristocracy in the Eighteenth Century’ in idem, Essays in Swedish History (London, 1967), pp. 269–85. 12. Mack Smith, Modern Sicily, pp. 323–4; Koenigsberger, ‘Italian Parliaments’, p. 60. 13. W. W. Davis, Joseph II: An Imperial Reformer for the Austrian Netherlands (The Hague, 1974); J. L. Polasky, Revolution in Brussels, 1787–1793 (London, 1987). 14. See below, pp. 163–203; J. B. Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Brittany (Cambridge, 1994); Julian Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661–1790 (Cambridge, 2003); William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge, 1985); Stephen Miller, State and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: A Study of Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc (Washington, DC, 2008). 15. William Doyle, ‘The Parlements of France’ repr. in idem, Officers, Nobles and Revolutionaries: Essays on Eighteenth-Century France (London, 1995), pp. 37–8. 16. J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Régime (Cambridge, 1985); the second, revised edition was


17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

15

published as English Society 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Régime (Cambridge, 2000). Cf. Doyle, ‘Union in a European Context’, pp. 169–70. A point vividly illustrated by H. T. Dickinson’s review in EHR, cii (1987), pp. 684–7. For a measured assessment see Joanna Innes, ‘Jonathan Clark, Social History and England’s “Ancien Régime”’ in Past and Present, no.115 (1987), pp. 165–200. P. K. Monod, The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe 1589–1715 (New Haven, 1999); Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, 2006). Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England, 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989); G. M. Ditchfield, ‘Religion, “Enlightenment” and Progress in EighteenthCentury England’ in HJ, xxxv (1992), pp. 681–7; idem, ‘Church, Parliament and National Identity, c. 1770–c. 1830’ in Julian Hoppit (ed.), Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850 (Manchester, 2003), pp. 64–82. Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989); idem, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991); John Rule, Albion’s People: English Society, 1714–1815 (London, 1992); Douglas Hay and Nicholas Rogers, Eighteenth-Century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (Oxford, 1997); Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England, 1689–1727 (Oxford, 2000). S. J. Connolly, ‘The Penal Laws’ in W. A. Maguire (ed.), Kings in Conflict: The Revolutionary War in Ireland and its Aftermath, 1689–1750 (Belfast, 1990), pp. 157–72; idem, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992); idem, ‘Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in D. G. Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (London, 1996), pp. 15–33. J. R. Hill, ‘The Politics of Dublin Corporation, 1760–1792’ in David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin, 1993), pp. 88–101; eadem, From Patriots to Unionists: Dublin Civic Politics and Irish Protestant Patriotism 1660–1840 (Oxford, 1997); eadem, ‘Corporatist Ideology and Practice in Ireland, 1660–1800’ in S. J. Connolly (ed.), Political Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 64–82. See for example, Kevin Whelan, ‘The Tree of Liberty’: Radicalism, Catholicism, and the Construction of Irish Identity 1760–1830 (Cork, 1996); Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685–1766: A Fatal Attachment (Dublin, 2002); Vincent Morley, Irish Opinion and the American Revolution, 1760–1783 (Cambridge, 2002). See above, n. 7. As well as the Irish parliament, whose legislative output is discussed below, the Polish-Lithuanian sejm also had the power to issue social and economic regulations, but did so far less often than the parliaments in Westminster and Dublin. The phrase is taken from D. W. Hayton (ed.), The Irish Parliament in the Eighteenth Century: The Long Apprenticeship (Edinburgh, 2001). The distinction first appeared in Russell’s seminal article, ‘Parliamentary History in Perspective, 1604–1629’ in History, lxi (1976), pp. 1–27. Seán Egan, ‘Finance and the Government of Ireland, 1660–85’ (PhD thesis, TCD, 2 vols, 1983); below, pp. 22–4. C. I. McGrath, The Making of the Eighteenth-Century Irish Constitution: Government, Parliament and the Revenue, 1692–1714 (Dublin, 2000); idem, ‘Parliamentary Additional Supply: The Development and Use of Regular Short-Term Taxation, 1692–1716’ in Hayton (ed.), Long Apprenticeship, pp. 27–54; below, pp. 21–43. For what follows, see James Kelly, Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (Dublin, 2007).

16

Introduction

30. D. W. Hayton, ‘Introduction: The Long Apprenticeship’ in idem (ed.), Long Apprenticeship, p. 13. 31. On this point and for what follows, see the brief but highly suggestive commentary in Doyle, ‘Union in a European Context’, pp. 170–2. 32. Dickson, Finance and Government, i, 296–305. 33. A. P. W. Malcomson, ‘The Parliamentary Traffic of this Country’ in Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (eds), Penal Era and Golden Age: Essays in Irish History, 1690–1800 (Belfast, 1979), pp. 137–61. 34. Seen most obviously in the arguments presented in 1698 in William Molyneux’s Case of Ireland … stated: J. G. Simms, William Molyneux of Dublin: 1656–1698, ed. P. H. Kelly (Dublin, 1982). More generally, for this aspect of eighteenth-century Irish Protestant thinking see J. T. Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression Prior to the Nineteenth Century (Cork, 1996). 35. We are indebted to Dr Richard Butterwick and Dr Orsolya Szakály for helpful comments on a draft of this introduction. They are not, however, responsible for its contents.

Map 2

Ireland in the eighteenth century


Part I Ireland


1 Money, Politics and Power: The Financial Legislation of the Irish Parliament Charles Ivar McGrath

In the composite monarchies of the ancien régime raising money was the core business of provincial estates, which usually assessed and sometimes collected the financial contribution made by their region to the metropolitan power. Some estates acted as representatives of their locality against the interests of the centre, frustrating demands for excessive subsidy in order to protect the local economy or safeguard the tax exemptions of the privileged élite; others did the business of the state, ensuring the return of sufficient funds for the operating needs of central government. It was the great paradox of the British ‘fiscal-military state’ that its parliament, held by admirers in continental Europe as a model to which they should aspire, greatly increased the burden of taxation on those it represented, raising what were, by seventeenth-century standards, colossal sums to finance the country’s rise to the position of a major European power.1 The most important of the fiscal expedients that provided William III with resources to undertake a major continental war in 1689–97 was the practice of ‘deficit financing’, whereby the Crown borrowed money on the guarantee of future grants of parliamentary subsidy. The secret to the paradox was a balance of advantages. On the one hand, parliament committed its successors to stand security for the government’s borrowings, a requirement eventually consolidated into an ongoing national debt; on the other, the monarchy was committed to calling parliaments on a regular basis, rendering impossible the lengthy periods of ‘personal rule’ in which earlier Stuart kings had indulged. In addition, MPs could not now be prevented from carrying out a close inspection of government estimates and accounts, or from debating areas of policy that were once a royal prerogative. Thus the ‘revolution’ that made British public finance the envy of European absolutist monarchs was achieved through engaging the political nation in the central activity of raising money, in a way that also shifted the balance of power in the relationship of Crown and parliament in the direction of the latter.2 The Irish parliament, no less than other local representative institutions across Europe, experienced a tension between protecting the interests of Irish 21

22 Money, Politics and Power

taxpayers and contributing to the maintenance of effective government. In Ireland, however, the position was further complicated, by the intimate connexion binding the Irish to a British parliamentary system that had adopted a unique (as well as uniquely successful) solution to the chronic European-wide problem of public finance, and by the place occupied by Ireland in the British imperial or ‘composite state’. The attitude of Irish MPs, and of the Irish ‘political nation’ as a whole, towards the fiscal demands of government was determined in part by local considerations, namely the constitutional balance between government and parliament in Dublin, and in part by the broader context of Anglo-Irish relations and Ireland’s position within the empire. In the internal Irish context the question was how an English-appointed government could be rendered accountable to the Irish propertied élite: how the continued existence of the Irish parliament could be safeguarded (after a long period of nonparliamentary government between 1666 and 1692), and its constitutional role enhanced to something approaching that of its Westminster counterpart. In an imperial context the question was one of calculating the profit and loss from the Anglo-Irish nexus. The most obvious benefit to Irish Protestants was security from Catholic uprising and Jacobite invasion, but this was not always keenly appreciated, and on the other side of the account Ireland’s exclusion from the economic opportunities of empire, through English-imposed restrictions on trade, was a major grievance. The debate crystallised over issues of public expenditure: principally whether revenue raised in Ireland should be spent only on the domestic needs identified by the Irish parliament, and not, for example, to provide sinecures and pensions for English courtiers, or, more controversially, for the army regiments maintained on the Irish establishment whose principal function was imperial, rather than Irish, defence. Significantly, though ‘country’ MPs ritually and routinely resisted tax increases, they did not sustain committed opposition to paying for a bloated Irish army establishment, which constituted Ireland’s major contribution to the fiscal-military state in which it was joined with Britain. Financial legislation was thus not only one of the principal functions of the Irish parliament; it also offers an important key to understanding the changes that occurred in the nature of government, politics and parliament in Ireland after the Glorious Revolution. This chapter examines the legislative basis of taxation and the eventual provision of an Irish ‘national debt’, while highlighting the extent to which political and financial considerations were influenced by the British and imperial context. First, however, in order fully to understand the changes that occurred from 1692 onwards, it is necessary to review what had gone before.

The Restoration experience In financial terms, the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 marked both a return to the past and a new beginning. The sole source of public income

Charles Ivar McGrath

23

in Ireland in 1660 was the Crown’s ‘hereditary revenues’, many medieval in origin, to which the monarch was entitled in perpetuity without the need for parliamentary consent. They comprised tonnage and poundage, Crown and composition rents, ale and aqua-vitae licences, prizage, lighthouse duties, alnage duties and other casual revenues that, taken together, yielded between £35,000 and £70,000 annually.3 Such a relatively small income could not realistically finance the restored monarchy. It therefore fell to the Irish parliament, which sat between 1661 and 1666, to come up with a solution which, in many respects, took its example from the financial innovations introduced during the interregnum of the 1640s and 1650s. In the lead-up to the Restoration, the Irish convention parliament of 1660 put in place a number of interim measures, including a poll tax, which helped to produce a net income of £116,887 for the year ending March 1661. This sum was still insufficient for government purposes and, as had happened with great regularity in the past, a further subvention of £39,000 was required from England.4 Interim measures and English subventions were not acceptable long-term answers to the problem, however, and it remained for the Irish parliament to devise a more substantial financial provision. The Irish parliament of 1661–6 voted a financial settlement for the monarchy that led in time to a more than sufficient annual income, which peaked in 1686 at £256,994.5 This parliamentary settlement expanded the old hereditary revenues to include quit-rents, import and inland excise, hearth tax, and consolidated, extended, and increased customs and alcohol licences.6 The two most important branches of the new revenues were the customs and excise duties. Customs duties had long existed in Ireland, but by an act of 1662 they too were consolidated and extended to include a much wider range of import and export duties. More important, the authority for their collection was placed solely with parliament.7 Excises, on the other hand, had only been introduced into Ireland in 1643, following their imposition in England by both sides during the Civil War.8 By an act of 1662 a permanent and perpetual import and inland excise was established in Ireland.9 From the perspective of the Irish parliament, the downside to the settlement was that the new hereditary revenues provided a greater annual yield than the government required. While achieving the desired end to English treasury subventions, this financial surplus meant that some Irish public income was siphoned off to England, in particular to support the upkeep of the navy and the Tangiers garrison. More significantly, there was, after 1666, no pressing need to summon the Irish parliament, and in consequence no parliament met in Dublin until the Jacobite parliament in 1689.10 But the Stuart propensity to avoid convening parliament whenever possible was only achievable if income remained above expenditure. Although by voting such a substantial hereditary income the Irish parliament appeared to have surrendered ‘its duty to itself and its successors’,11 the 1662 Customs


and Excise Act actually established the foundation for a highly significant innovation in parliamentary taxation: the short-term additional excise or customs duty. When government expenditure once again exceeded income and parliament had to be reconvened to provide for the excess, the 1662 acts would provide the basis for the imposition of short-term additional rates of taxes on selected items from the larger schedule of customs and excise duties listed in the 1662 books of rates.12 The war of 1689–91 created just such a situation, as thereafter the Williamite victors looked to maintain an expanded military establishment in Ireland.13

The introduction of regular short-term supply legislation, 1692–1714 The key development in financial legislation in the period 1692–1714 was the advent of regular short-term supply acts and the end of perpetual or hereditary parliamentary grants. From the introduction by government of the first short-term additional supply bill in 1692, 21 supply acts were passed during 11 sessions of parliament. However, while the policy of enacting only shortterm supply measures was new to Williamite Ireland, certain antecedents can be identified. Proposals for short-term additional duties were made in the 1670s during the lord lieutenancy of the Earl of Essex, though they came to nothing as the mooted Irish parliament was not summoned. More concrete examples exist in the legislation of the English Restoration parliament and its Williamite successor.14 The income from parliamentary taxation in 1692–1714 derived from a mix of direct and indirect impositions of short duration, though indirect taxes, in the form of excise duties in particular, quickly grew to be the main type of tax and the main producer of revenue, a pattern which would continue throughout the eighteenth century. In 1692, additional inland excise duties were levied on beer, ale and other liquors. These duties were imposed again in 1695, along with import excise duties on tobacco, linen, calicoes, muslin, drapery and wine and a direct levy in the form of a poll tax. All were continued in 1697, along with a further increase in the duty on tobacco. In 1698–9 the tobacco duty was increased again, while a direct two-year land tax was introduced in place of the poll tax and alongside indirect duties on woollen manufactures. Between 1703 and 1713 the schedule of duties on beer, ale and other liquors, tobacco, linen, muslin, and calicoes (an increased rate from 1703) were continued in each session with the addition of molasses in 1703 and silk in 1705, while one-off taxes were introduced on pensions and grants in 1703 and rock salt in 1709. It is unclear whether the Irish government recognised the significance of what the council unleashed when it presented two short-term additional duties bills to the Irish parliament in October 1692. Ostensibly, the justification was that Ireland’s economic situation rendered lengthier impositions


25

unfeasible, which in itself implied that for wholly practical reasons another Irish parliament would have to be convened sooner rather than later to pass further supply acts.15 Whether or not they accepted that such a course of action would result in regular parliaments is not apparent. In the 1670s Essex expressed the view that no future Irish parliament would agree to further perpetual or hereditary taxes or duties for the very reason that to do so would prevent regular sessions, and this perception may well have held sway in 1692.16 The presentation in the House of Commons in 1692 of the government’s two short-term additional duty bills sparked a political crisis known as the ‘sole right’ dispute. While agreeing to pass one of the bills, owing to the financial crisis the country was facing, MPs resolved that their action was not be taken as a precedent and proceeded to reject the second bill. Their grounds for doing so were that it had not taken its rise in the Commons, which, it was asserted, had a ‘sole right’ to initiate supply bills. This assertion shocked government, and created an immediate political crisis owing to the fact that it challenged both the Crown’s prerogative right to initiate legislation and Poynings’ Law, the foundation stone of the constitutional relationship between the Irish parliament and the Irish and English governments.17 Yet the antecedents could be seen in the actions of the Irish Commons in the 1660s when MPs had looked to define more clearly a legislative role for themselves consistent with Poynings’ Law, through the ‘heads of bills’ procedure, particularly in relation to supply.18 There was also the example set by the English Commons in 1678 when making a similar claim;19 and, more generally perhaps, the experiences of Irish Protestants in exile in London during 1689–91 when they had observed the Westminster parliament re-establish its constitutional position after the Glorious Revolution.20 The abrupt prorogation of the Irish parliament of 1692 added to a sense of crisis. It was not until mid-1693, following a change in the English ministry and the Irish executive, that the first steps were taken towards a resolution, and by 1695 a compromise had been reached.21 In return for receiving a token government supply bill, the Commons were allowed to prepare the remaining necessary supply bills by means of the heads of bill procedure. The receiving of the government bill was deemed sufficient to uphold both the Crown’s prerogative and Poynings’ Law, while the Commons in return obtained official recognition for their procedure for introducing legislation.22 Consistent with the compromise, the Commons passed the government’s one-year additional inland excise bill, and drafted further bills for shortterm additional duties and a poll tax of varying durations. Although the ‘sole right’ claim had formally been dropped, the reality was that from 1695 onwards the vast majority of supply legislation began in the Commons. The same understanding was soon applied to all other legislative needs. A combination of practical politics and legislative process resulted in a significant re-adjustment of the interpretation of Poynings’ Law in parliament’s


favour. The number of government bills presented at the opening of each new parliament quickly diminished, while the presentation of government bills to second and subsequent sessions of parliament ceased completely by 1709. The corollary was that the number of bills taking their rise in either house of parliament increased dramatically.23 The passage of short-term taxes in 1695 ensured that parliament was convened again before their termination. Further sessions in 1697 and 1698–9 enacted more supply legislation on the basis of the 1695 compromise with varying short-term durations. However, the taxes voted between 1695 and 1699 not only enabled the government to bring its finances back under control, but also, owing to their varied durations, proved too generous, as the income deriving from them allowed government to function without parliament until 1703.24 Such a situation would not occur again in the eighteenth century, as the Commons refined and perfected the supply process. The formative period was the reign of Queen Anne. Between 1703 and 1713 seven parliamentary sessions in Ireland resulted in 11 supply acts with varying durations of one to seven years (see Table 1.1). Within that experimentation, the emerging preference was for the imposition of taxes for two years, which ensured that parliament would meet biennially. Table 1.1

Short-term supply legislation in the Irish parliament, 1692–1714

Session

Acts

Origin

Duration

1692 1695

4 Will. III, c. 3 7 Will. III, c. 1 7 Will. III, c. 16 7 Will. III, c. 15 7 Will. III, c. 23 9 Will. III, c. 4 9 Will. III, c. 8 10 Will. III, c. 3 10 Will. III, c. 4 10 Will. III, c. 5 2 Anne, c. 1 2 Anne, c. 4 4 Anne, c. 1

government government parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament government government parliament parliament

6 Anne, c. 1 8 Anne, c. 1 8 Anne, c. 2 9 Anne, c. 1 9 Anne, c. 2 9 Anne, c. 3 11 Anne, c. 1 13 Anne25

parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament government

1 year 1 year 4 years 1 year 2 years 2 months varied: 3 and 4 years 2 years 2 years 6 months 3 years 1 year varied: 1, 2 and 7 years varied: 1 year 10 months, and 2 years 1 year 9 months session 1 year session 1 year 6 months 7 years varied: 2 and 7 years 3 months

1697 ` 1698–9

1703–4 1705 1707 1709 1710

1711 1713–14

Source: Irish Statutes.


27

The establishment of regular parliaments through the emerging pattern of acts for short-term additional taxation altered the balance of power between executive and legislature. Although the hereditary revenues, which government continued to receive without the need for parliamentary approval, accounted for as much as three-quarters of its required annual income, parliament’s control over the essential extra quarter proved a very powerful bargaining tool. As in the early 1690s, a shortfall of a quarter in one year would become half in two years, and soon the deficit of payments would be greater than the annual cost of government.26 The compromise of 1695 also provided for a greater transparency in government financial accounting in order to facilitate the Commons’ calculations of the quantum to be voted. This meant that corruption or embezzlement was more likely to be uncovered, and led to the creation of one of the most powerful bodies in Irish parliamentary history, the committee of public accounts. Following its first appearance in 1695, this committee took command of the supply process to such an extent that in 1713 the Whig opposition was able to use its control of the accounts committee to bring parliamentary business to a halt.27

The creation and maintenance of an Irish national debt, 1716–46 The provision of short-term parliamentary additional duties on a biennial basis settled into a regular pattern following the Hanoverian succession. From 1715 onwards, parliamentary sessions occurred every two years, with the length of each sitting extending to about six months, including the mid-session recess. The number of supply acts also settled into a regular pattern. In the six sessions in the reign of George I, nine supply acts were passed. Apart from the inclusion of new duties and taxes, the most striking feature of the legislative pattern was the consolidation of all taxes into one supply act, with a duration of two years. From 1721 onwards, this pattern was set (see Table 1.2). During the years 1715–46 the government’s annual income continued to increase, primarily through the introduction of new rates on existing additional duties and the addition of new commodities to the schedule of goods liable for such duties.28 In 1715–16 additional inland excise duties on beer, ale, and liquors, and import excise duties on tobacco, muslin, silk, wine, and liquors were imposed along with a direct tax on government salaries, profits of employments, fees, and pensions paid to individuals not resident in Ireland. All these taxes were continued every session thereafter, with further additions, which are described below. In 1717 further import excise duties on liquors and inland excise duties on beer, ale, and liquors were sanctioned, while new import excise duties were imposed in 1719 on molasses, treacle, tea, coffee, chocolate and cocoa-nuts. In the three sessions between 1725 and 1730 additional import excise duties were imposed on various

28 Money, Politics and Power Table 1.2

Short-term supply legislation in the Irish parliament, 1715–60

Session

Act

Origin

Duration

1715–16

2 Geo. I, c.1 2 Geo. I, c.3 2 Geo. I, c.7 4 Geo. I, c.1 4 Geo. I, c.2 6 Geo. I, c.4 8 Geo. I, c.1 10 Geo. I, c.1 12 Geo. I, c.1 1 Geo. II, c. 1 1 Geo. II, c. 4 3 Geo. II, c. 1 3 Geo. II, c. 2 5 Geo. II, c. 1 5 Geo. II, c. 2 7 Geo. II, c. 1 7 Geo. II, c. 2 9 Geo. II, c. 1 9 Geo. II, c. 2 11 Geo. II, c. 1 11 Geo. II, c. 2 13 Geo. II, c. 1 13 Geo. II, c. 2 15 Geo. II, c. 1 15 Geo. II, c. 2 17 Geo. II, c. 1 17 Geo. II, c. 2 19 Geo. II, c. 2 19 Geo. II, c. 3 21 Geo. II, c. 1 21 Geo. II, c. 2 23 Geo. II, c. 1 23 Geo. II, c. 2 25 Geo. II, c. 1 25 Geo. II, c. 2 27 Geo. II, c. 1 29 Geo. II, c. 1 31 Geo. II, c. 1 33 Geo. II, c. 1 33 Geo. II, c. 2

government parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament government parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament parliament

6 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

1717 1719 1721–2 1723–4 1725–6 1727–8 1729–30 1731–2 1733–4 1735–6 1737–8 1739–40 1741–2 1743–4 1745–6 1747–8 1749–50 1751–2 1753–4 1755–6 1757–8 1759–60

months year 10 months year 6 months years years years 1 month 4 days years years years months year 9 months years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years

Source: Irish Statutes.

liquors, while in 1730 further import excise duties were placed on silk goods. In 1731–2 the duty on imported liquors was allowed to lapse, though new import excise duties were placed on wine, hops, china, earthen, japanned


29

or lacquered ware, and vinegar. In 1737–8 new import excise duties were imposed on romals, cotton goods, cotton and linen goods, and cambrics. Additional export customs duties were imposed on hides in 1743–4, while the import excise on cambrics and lawns and the import excise on wine, velvet and silk goods were increased in 1745–6.29 However, the real innovation in supply legislation from 1716 onwards was a result of the creation of an Irish national debt. Until 1727 the debt legislation was included in the main supply act; from 1729 onwards a separate, second act was passed in each session for this purpose. The introduction of a parliament-sanctioned national debt in Ireland in 1716 was a new departure for the Irish executive, parliament, and the political and financial community in general. While acknowledged as a unique occurrence at the time for a country without a national bank or joint-stock company such as the East India Company to facilitate loans,30 it was not out of step with developments in England. The emergence of institutions of public credit, epitomised by the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694, was an essential support for the system of deficit financing with which King William’s continental campaigns, and those of his successors, were financed. That ‘financial revolution’ was not replicated in Ireland in extenso, but some elements appeared over time, not least the preference for short-term taxation. The most notable imitation, however, was the creation and maintenance of a national debt.31 As in England, the initial spur to the creation of a national debt was a threat to security. Fear that the Jacobite rising in Scotland in 1715 would spill over into Ireland intensified late in that year in response to the transfer of regiments from the Irish establishment to England and Scotland.32 In January 1716 rumours of a possible Jacobite landing in Ireland prompted the government to request assistance from parliament, which resulted in an unlimited vote of credit to the government to borrow immediately whatever amount was necessary to raise new regiments for Irish security purposes. While the government set about securing a loan of £50,000 to raise 13 regiments, the Commons drafted clauses for inclusion in their second heads of a supply bill promising that parliament would provide for the payment of interest and the repayment of the principal to the public creditors.33 By so doing, they secured the new debt on the credit of the nation, as represented by parliament. In its first stage, the parliament-sanctioned debt of £50,000 plus interest was treated in legislative terms in a straightforward manner. The act of 1716 was a regular supply act, imposing additional duties on beer, ale, liquors, tobacco, muslins, and silks for 18 months, with three clauses added on for the debt. These clauses sanctioned the loan, made a general commitment to repaying the principal sum and the interest, and specified that the latter be paid every six months from the date of the initial loan out of the general body of supplies granted in 1715–16 and from future supplies until both the interest and


principal had been repaid. The act therefore secured the interest payments upon the 1715–16 additional supplies in general, without appropriation of a specific fund, and offered a general undertaking to repay the principal.34 The only definite provision for payment related to the interest alone, with a terminal date of 18 months later. The absence of a specific appropriated fund also reduced the security attached to the provisions for servicing the debt. In both cases, maintaining public credit required that these issues be addressed. It was not until 1729 that a second loan to government was sanctioned by parliament. In the interim, the basic provision for payment of interest and repayment of the principal, with some minor adjustments, was continued in successive supply acts.35 However, a significant increase in army pay arrears during the 1720s provided the justification for a second loan. The amount of the loan sanctioned in 1729 was limited to £150,000, all of which was borrowed by the government. It resulted in the introduction of a separate Debt Act, with a separate schedule of additional import excise duties on wine, brandy, spirits and silk goods and a tax on non-resident government salaries, profits of employments, fees and pensions appropriated solely for the purposes of paying the interest and principal, thus providing the basis for a sinking fund for the debt from any surplus left after payment of the interest, though the mechanism for such principal repayment remained undecided.36 Unlike the first loan in 1716, the second loan sparked a parliamentary debate. The key areas of contention were the introduction of a separate Debt Act and the duration of the supplies appropriated for repayment, rather than the sanctioning of the loan itself. The government pressed for one grand supply act encompassing all taxes, including those to be appropriated for the debt, but the Commons rejected this for fear that the appropriating clause would be thrown out in England, which would leave the onus on the Irish parliament to pass an amended bill, or accept the calamitous situation of having no supply voted. In the event of an amended bill being passed, government would not be obliged to spend the extra income on the debt, and might be tempted to put it to other, less acceptable, uses.37 The government was also defeated in its attempts to have the duration of the appropriated supplies left open-ended, to terminate only when the debt was fully repaid. Instead, the Commons stuck to the tried and trusted policy of a two-year duration for all taxes, appropriated or otherwise. The sanctioning and borrowing of a new loan of £100,000 in 1731 followed similar lines to that of 1729. The purpose was to clear military pay arrears, and the government’s desire for a longer duration for the appropriated taxes, on this occasion 21 years, was successfully resisted.38 With a two-year duration for the appropriated import excise duties on wine, silk goods, hops, china, earthen, japanned or lacquered ware, and vinegar, and the tax on non-resident government salaries, profits of employments, fees and pensions, the 1731 Loan Act resulted in the principal of the debt, none of which had yet been


31

repaid, rising to £300,000, as there was no shortage of public creditors ready and willing to lend. Their willingness was presumably assisted by the fact that the 1731 Act also introduced a practical method for using the sinking fund to clear the principal debt, namely a lottery, thereby further developing the mechanisms for successfully managing a national debt.39 That is not to say that the national debt was created and maintained without opposition. In the lead-up to the sanctioning of the 1731 loan a forceful case was presented in an anonymous pamphlet, Reflections on the National Debt … (1731), which argued that Ireland already owed too much and, more contentiously, that the primary purpose of the national debt was to serve Walpole’s British administration by placing Ireland under ‘the severest bonds’. The pamphlet also asserted that the majority of the public creditors were MPs, which made them little more than ‘pensioners of the court’, obliged to agree to all future requests for fear of losing their investment.40 More pertinently, the author also advocated the reduction of interest on all loans, from seven to six per cent, as a fillip for private lending. Another anonymous pamphlet provided a different perspective, proposing instead that the interest on the national debt, currently six per cent, be set at the same level as all other loans, on the grounds that if debentures for the debt commanded interest payments at the same level as other legal loans they would yield a higher premium on transfer than other stock because the debt was secured on ‘the public faith, and the interest of it well paid’.41 Such public engagement with the national debt – both positive and negative – highlighted key aspects of the new reality in Irish finances. It was true that a significant number of Irish MPs were public creditors. The attractiveness of the secure and regular payment of interest, guaranteed as it was by parliamentary legislation, caused more MPs to apply to subscribe to the loans in 1729 and 1731 than the government could accommodate or gratify.42 In total, 18 out of 63 subscribers to the 1716 loan and 50 out of 163 subscribers to that of 1729 were MPs; this was the single largest identifiable grouping in both instances, but as a proportion of the 300 members of the Irish parliament or of the total number of public creditors it was not quite the dominance suggested by Reflections on the National Debt (see Table 1.3). The question of the interest rate was also salient. Interest for the 1716 loan had been set at eight per cent in accordance with the legal interest rate in the country for any loans, private or public. In the early 1720s the legal interest rate – and that on the national debt – was reduced to seven per cent on account of a significant drop in prices for goods and merchandise which had resulted in an increase in debt default.43 The recognition of the attractiveness of debentures for the national debt had resulted in the interest rate being lowered in 1729 to six per cent while the national rate for all other lending remained at seven per cent.44 The reduction did not dissuade people from subscribing and the 1729 loan was soon filled, with many other

32 Money, Politics and Power Table 1.3

Public creditors and potential creditors, 1716–29 1716

1720–145

1729

Peers Bishops Judges Current MPs Past or future MPs Women Clergy Merchants Bankers Merchants/bankers Goldsmiths Military officers Corporators Other

6 3 3 18 4 4 3 – – – – – 2 20

16 4 1 117 30 18 11 51 2 3 1 23 5 206

2 2 2 50 3 15 4 – 1 – – 49 – 35

Totals

63

488

163

Subscribers

Source: CJI (3rd edn), iii, Appendix, pp. cxiii–cxiv, cccxcvi–cccxcviii; NLI, MS 2256, pp. 27–8, 31–3, 39, 41, 63–5, 67–9; F. G. Hall, The Bank of Ireland, 1783–1946 (Dublin, 1949), pp. 23–4.

potential creditors excluded.46 The same outcome occurred in 1731 when the interest rate was lowered to five per cent while the national rate dropped to six per cent.47 In 1741 the rate dropped to four per cent on any new lending to the government.48 Evidently, people were happy to receive smaller interest payment in exchange for greater security. It may therefore have been the case that the real concern being expressed by the author of Reflections on the National Debt was that the attractiveness of lending to the government was reducing the availability of credit to the private business sector. For the remainder of the 1730s parliament continued to legislate every two years in its secondary supply bill for servicing the national debt.49 The government also complied with the mechanisms put in place by parliament for managing the debt, making significant repayments of the principal from the sinking fund, so that by March 1741 the principal had been reduced from £300,000 to £227,000.50 Although the commencement of those repayments required the intervention of the Commons in 1733, the delay stemmed from bureaucratic inefficiency rather than any intention on the part of the government to use the sinking fund for other purposes.51 The build-up of a surplus sufficient to provide a viable sinking fund in the 1730s also demonstrated the extent to which the legislative provision for the national debt was realistic and practical. The pattern of repayments that developed between 1733 and 1741 suggested that in time the national debt would be cleared. However, despite the fact that the 1729 and 1731 loans allowed for the substantial reduction


33

of the military pay arrears, the later 1730s saw arrears creep up again.52 The return to war in 1739 provided the justification for another parliamentsanctioned loan in 1741 of £125,000. As in 1729 and 1731, the intent was to reduce army arrears, to which end the act imposed the same schedule of duties contained in the 1731 act and continued every two years thereafter.53 It appeared that government had learnt the lessons of 1729 and 1731, as there was no attempt to get the appropriated duties extended beyond the now traditional two-year period.54 The new loan resulted in the principal of the national debt rising to £352,000 by early 1742. Continuing surpluses from appropriated duties then permitted its reduction to £340,700 by the end of 1743.55 The ongoing war, combined with anxiety over the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland in 1745, resulted in the authorisation of another loan during the 1745–6 session. As in 1741, this loan act did not encounter any problems.56 It allowed for the borrowing of £70,000, continued the schedule of appropriated duties and added new import excise levies on wine, velvet and silk goods, and complied with all previous loan legislation since 1729, apart from one significant fact – the reason given for its enactment. Instead of providing for payment of army arrears, the money was to be spent on arms for the militia in Ireland and fortifications for Cork.57 While still prepared to sanction government borrowing for necessary purposes, the Commons concluded that, after 30 years, there was no need to provide for military pay arrears because the treasury already had sufficient funds for that purpose.58 The reason was a significant improvement in the economy and unexpected savings in expenditure.59 While not yet apparent, this new-found buoyancy in public finances was the precursor to the outbreak of a political crisis over money the like of which had not been seen in Ireland since 1692.60 The creation and maintenance of the national debt in the years 1716 to 1746 further increased the government’s reliance upon regular sessions by giving parliament control of another section of the public finances. From 1716 to 1729, the Commons had simply incorporated debt legislation into the normal biennial supply bills, ensuring that the servicing of the government’s increased commitment was dependent upon the same factors that had applied since the 1690s. Thereafter, with the introduction of a separate Debt Act, government attempts to extend the duration of the supplies for servicing the debt were successfully resisted. The association between biennial sessions and two-year supply acts had become so deeply rooted in the political community that parliament would not countenance any suggestion of a possible variation in a subsidiary part of the supply, even if it did not really threaten the continuance of biennial sessions.61 There were other, more fundamental, reasons for the government’s increased reliance on parliament because of the national debt. People lent money to government because they were confident of getting it back, along with good interest. Through legislation, parliament offered the most


secure and certain means for creditors to invest successfully. There was little or no chance of the government defaulting on its loans when the means for paying the interest and the principal were provided by statute. For a government to risk regular parliamentary supply by not adhering to the letter of the law in relation to the debt would have been foolhardy in the extreme. At the same time, the national debt increased loyalty to the establishment among Irish Protestants in general, and the business and commercial communities (which probably included Catholic creditors) in particular. The great fear for public creditors was any sort of upheaval or revolt that might overthrow government and monarchy, and sweep away their investments.

Debt repayment and political power, 1747–60 The Irish national debt, its legislative foundation, and the associated attitudes of both government and parliament entered a new phase in the mid-1740s as a result of a significant improvement in the public finances. Increased revenue returns arising from an upturn in the economy were complemented by unexpected savings in expenditure, owing to the large number of Irish regiments transferred to the British military establishment during the 1739–48 war. The end of the war brought even greater prosperity, which resulted in the build-up of a substantial surplus in the Irish treasury in the late 1740s.62 The existence of a growing surplus raised a number of questions relating to the debt and its repayment. Was the surplus derived from hereditary or parliamentary sources of revenue, including the appropriated duties? And should, or could, that surplus, if derived from sources other than the appropriated duties, be used to repay the debt? The different perspectives taken by government and parliament resulted in a major conflict in the 1750s over control of expenditure. The Irish parliament clearly believed that the surplus could and should be used for clearing the debt. Having provided in the now traditional manner for servicing the debt for a further two years in its secondary supply bill in 1747,63 the Commons in 1749 took the unprecedented step of drafting heads of a bill for the appropriation of £128,500 of the general surplus in the treasury to clear that amount of the debt. The problem was that the sinking fund of the 1730s and 1740s had always arisen from the appropriated duties, and even though the 1749 bill was to renew those duties for another two years it was also to appropriate from the treasury a substantial sum of current revenue the origin of which was less certain.64 If that money had arisen from the hereditary or non-appropriated parliamentary duties, then the Commons’ actions could be portrayed as an infringement of the prerogative with regard to the expenditure of public income.65 The Irish government, aware in advance of what was intended but lacking time to consult the British ministry, moved to neutralise potential problems by inserting into the preamble a phrase to


35

the effect that the surplus was being expended ‘agreeably to your majesty’s gracious intentions’.66 The 1749 bill, which was not objected to in England, was returned without amendment and passed into law.67 This was the first substantive debt repayment act passed by the Irish parliament, including as it did not only the appropriated duties for interest payments and a sinking fund, but also the immediate provision for the repayment of £128,500 of the principal.68 Had this act remained a one-off, nothing more might have been heard of the matter. However, the continuing accumulation of a surplus in the treasury during 1750–1 prompted the Commons to draft heads of a similar bill in late 1751. On this occasion, the sum to be appropriated from the treasury was £120,000.69 The Irish government once again tried to pre-empt any problems when the lord lieutenant referred to the matter in his opening speech to parliament, stating that the king ‘will graciously consent, and recommends it to you, that such a part of the money now remaining in his treasury, as shall be thought consistent with the public service, be applied towards the further reduction of the national debt’.70 However, the Commons interpreted this with a degree of flexibility, amending the 1749 wording to the even more anodyne formula that his majesty was ‘graciously pleased to recommend’ the appropriation.71 The absence of any explicit acknowledgment that the money was appropriated with the previous consent of the king was unacceptable in Whitehall, and the bill was amended at the British Privy Council so as to include the phrase ‘your majesty … has been graciously pleased to signify that you would consent, and to recommend it’.72 Despite the long-standing opposition of the Irish parliament to the amendment of bills in England, the Commons passed the returned bill for a variety of reasons, most importantly because the leading government managers (‘undertakers’) in parliament chose not to oppose it.73 But it was also the case that the bill provided the all-important continuation of the appropriated duties for a further two years for the payment of interest and repayment of principal to the public creditors that would remain after the further sum of £120,000 was cleared from the principal debt. To reject the bill without due consideration to the damage this would cause to public creditors would have been unpalatable to many MPs. The conflict that had threatened since the passage of the first Debt Repayment Act in 1749 erupted in late 1753 when the Commons drafted their third such act. Although the 1753 ‘money bill’ dispute took place against the background of a festering power struggle among the leading Irish political managers, the focus of the conflict remained the control of expenditure.74 As was the case with the two previous acts, the 1753 heads looked to appropriate money from the treasury surplus, on this occasion £77,500. Where it differed was in the fact that the sum of £77,500 was intended to clear the remainder of the national debt, so that there was no provision for continuing the appropriated duties.75


The key political consideration, however, was the wording of the preamble. The power struggle among the ‘undertakers’ resulted in the Speaker, Henry Boyle, aligning himself with the opposition, a switching of sides that enabled his new friends to force through the heads without any reference to the king’s recommendation or consent.76 Not surprisingly, when the bill was returned from England the wording from the preamble to the 1751 Act had been inserted acknowledging the king’s previous consent.77 The amended bill was rejected by the Commons on 17 December 1753 by five votes.78 While the justification for rejection was the long-standing objection to amendments by the British Privy Council to Irish bills, there were more obvious political reasons, centring around Boyle’s power struggle with other ‘undertakers’. Possibly even more pertinent was the fact that unlike the 1751 bill, that for 1753 was not actually a supply bill. The Commons baulked at the idea of rejecting supply bills even when amended in England, as had happened in 1709 and 1751,79 and had not in fact done so since throwing out the government’s second supply bill in 1692. But in 1753 the rejection of the bill did not endanger the normal supply to government or deny public creditors a secure fund for repayment of interest and principal, as neither consideration had been part of the legislation. It could be argued that the failure to pass the bill represented a threat to the repayment of the remainder of the national debt. Without an act to that effect, there was no legal obligation on government to use the surplus for clearing the remainder of the debt. Yet in reality the onus remained upon government to make good those financial commitments, not least because the conflict had entered the public domain and to do otherwise would cause great opprobrium, something the opposition must have counted on.80 Certainly there was little delay in issuing orders from Whitehall directing that the debt be reduced, on the grounds that it would help to maintain credit.81 The ensuing release of cash from the treasury did alleviate to some degree the difficulties arising from an economic downturn and the concomitant weakening in credit for normal commercial activity. The fact that the repayment of the debt was undertaken by executive order was also represented by the government in both Ireland and England as a vindication of the Crown’s right to dispose of the surplus.82 During the later 1750s the debt continued to be repaid in such a manner, until by 1759 it had been reduced to £5200, the lowest figure since its inception in 1716.83 The 1750s had served to clarify important aspects of the evolving financial practices in Ireland. The central question in the 1753–4 dispute had been whether government or parliament had the right to dispose of the surplus. Government argued that it was at the disposal of the Crown because it arose from the hereditary revenue and non-appropriated parliamentary additional duties, an argument based on the view that the hereditary revenues in particular were Crown property. The majority of MPs, however, saw the surplus as a sinking fund for the national debt, a view based on the belief that all


37

public income was part of the ‘public wealth’ (whether deriving from the hereditary revenue, parliamentary taxation, or the loans making up the national debt that had been secured on the ‘public faith’84) and therefore at the disposal of the nation, as represented by parliament.85 As such, the dispute was over control of expenditure.

Epilogue In retrospect, the 1750s appeared as a unique phase in the history of the Irish national debt, not least because at that time the debt was almost cleared. However, normality (or what may be considered an approximation to normality) was restored when the government’s finances finally started to feel the negative impact of a serious economic depression later in the decade. Britain’s return to war with France in 1756 added further pressure. In December 1759 the Irish parliament once again sanctioned a loan of £150,000, the immediate cause of which was the fear of a Franco-Jacobite invasion.86 Within two months of this legislation, the Commons passed a further vote of credit for £300,000 (the government availing of £200,000), because of the landing of the French privateer, Thurot, at Carrickfergus.87 Continuing concern over defence saw the debt increase rapidly thereafter. In 1761 a new loan of up to £400,000 was legislated for and a further vote of credit for £200,000 agreed.88 In the mid-1760s acts were passed for three more loans, all of £100,000. Even with government exercising restraint in its borrowing, the principal debt by 1769 was £655,000. In 1783, it had reached £1,919,386.89 Despite the massive escalation in Ireland’s national debt from the 1760s onwards, its justification and use remained the same. The debt was created in 1716 in order to raise troops as part of Ireland’s contribution to the defeat of a Jacobite invasion. In 1729, 1731 and 1741 the purpose was to clear military pay arrears. In 1745 it was for the militia and fortifications at the time of another Jacobite threat. In every instance, the national debt constituted a part of Ireland’s contribution to the defence of the empire.90 As for the year-to-year regular or ordinary parliamentary supply process in Ireland, the patterns established between the 1690s and 1720s, and played out with perfect regularity in the 1730s, 1740s and 1750s, evolved further. In the 1760s the presentation of a token government supply bill at the opening of a new parliament, as agreed in the 1695 compromise, came under challenge again. The bill was rejected in 1769, to the government’s annoyance, though the reality of the situation was demonstrated by the fact that parliament was then allowed to sit long enough afterwards to draft and pass the necessary supply legislation, which constituted a significant climbdown by the administration when compared with 1692. In 1776 the bill was rejected once again in a compromise arrangement which demonstrated that the process had reached the point of irrelevancy. The pantomime was never


to be performed again, as the attainment of ‘legislative independence’ in 1782 removed the need to pretend that in relation to supply legislation the dictates of Poynings’ Law and the Crown’s prerogative had been adhered to. In some ways, the alterations of the 1760s and 1770s were almost disguised by the metronomic passage of supply acts every two years, the only hint of discord occurring in the sessions of 1771 and 1776, which were held for overtly political reasons at a time when a supply was not required, and were in any case out of step with the biennial procedure. Once again, the constitutional reforms of 1782 did away with that pattern following the advent of annual sessions in 1785. Although it also constituted a break with the experience of c. 1720–60, the one apparent continuity from the 1770s into the 1780s was the increasing number of supply acts required in each session as the government’s financial demands (and parliament’s own appropriations for public works) increased. But even that could be misleading, as was demonstrated in 1779–80 when, as part of the agitation for free trade, parliament chose to pass four of their supply acts for only six months in the first instance before renewing them all for a further 18 months, which led to an apparent doubling of the number of supply acts for that session.91 Finally, the increasing number of supply acts also brought an increase in the schedule of duties and taxes. The sedate pattern of new additions to the schedule of additional duties in the first 50 years of the eighteenth century ended in a reversal in the 1750s, when two increases in the import excise on cambrics and lawns were more than cancelled out by the lapsing at the end of 1753 of those on wine, hops, china, earthen, japanned or lacquered ware, vinegar and the tax on non-resident government salaries, profits of employments, fees and pensions. However, the introduction in 1759–60 of an additional import excise duty on paper marked a new era. While the previously lapsed duties were re-imposed, and further rates set on wine, vinegar, and spirits and alcohols of all kinds, new avenues were also explored in the 1760s, with duties on soap-boilers’ waste, linen rags, cider, coffee, tea, private coaches, chariots, berlins, calashes, and chaises with four wheels. By the 1770s new additions and increased rates on existing goods had become the norm rather than the exception.92 The Irish parliament had come a long way from the first tentative steps in 1692 (ironically, initiated by the government), when additional parliamentary inland excise duties had first been imposed on beer, ale and other liquors. Yet everything that had unfolded in relation to legislative financial supply could be traced back to that origin, as parliament, through increasing control of the supply process, came to establish a more significant role for itself and a stronger bargaining position with government. It may well have been the case that for ‘patriot’ MPs in the 1760s and 1770s the lessons of the previous decades meant that ‘legislative independence’ was the logical conclusion to that journey. A starker truth may have been that the real final destination was the Act of Union.


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Notes 1. John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London, 1989). See also idem, ‘The Eighteenth-Century British State: Contexts and Issues’ in Lawrence Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689 to 1815 (London, 1993), pp. 52–71. 2. P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (London, 1967); David Stasavage, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain, 1688–1789 (Cambridge, 2003). 3. T. J. Kiernan, A History of the Financial Administration of Ireland to 1817 (London, 1930), pp. 76–80; Seán Egan, ‘Finance and the Government of Ireland, 1660–85’ (PhD thesis, TCD, 2 vols, 1983), i, 25; C. I. McGrath, The Making of the Eighteenth-Century Irish Constitution: Government, Parliament and the Revenue, 1692–1714 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 24–35. 4. Egan, ‘Finance and Government’, ii, 196–224. For the convention parliament see Aidan Clarke, Prelude to Restoration in Ireland: The end of the Commonwealth, 1659–1600 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 144–5, 158, 268, 285–7, 301. 5. Egan, ‘Finance and Government’, ii, 196–224; McGrath, Irish Constitution, p. 291. 6. Kiernan, Financial Administration, pp. 80–6; Seán Réamonn, History of the Revenue Commissioners (Dublin, 1981), p. 3. 7. Irish Statutes, ii, 419–96; A. J. Donnelly, ‘The Administration of Customs and Excise in Ireland’ (NLI, typescript lecture delivered to the Civics Institute of Ireland, Nov. 1950), pp. 1–2; Réamonn, Revenue Commissioners, pp. 3–4, 6–8; Kiernan, Financial Administration, pp. 76, 79–80; William Edgar, A Collection of Several Statutes and Clauses of Acts Made and Passed in this Kingdom, and in Great Britain, Relating to his Majesty’s Revenue of Ireland (Dublin, 1720), pp. 280–2; James Fleming, A Collection of all the Irish and English Statutes Now in Force and Use, Relating to his Majesty’s Revenue in Ireland (Dublin, 1749), pp. 1–2; Victor Treadwell, ‘The Irish Customs Administration in the Sixteenth Century’ in IHS, xx, no. 80 (Sept. 1977), pp. 384–417. 8. T. C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English Government and Reform in Ireland 1649–1660 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 28–30; Michael Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), p. 99; Donnelly, ‘Customs and Excise’, pp. 10–11; P. K. O’Brien and P. A. Hunt, ‘The Emergence and Consolidation of Excises in the English Fiscal System before the Glorious Revolution’ in British Tax Review, i (1997), pp. 43–51. 9. Irish Statutes, ii, 365–418. 10. Kiernan, Financial Administration, 76–86; Egan, ‘Finance and Government’, i, 25; ii, 5–7, 222–4; C. I. McGrath, ‘The Irish Revenue System: Government and Administration, 1689–1702’ (PhD thesis, Univ. of London, 1997), pp. 63, 314; A. E. Murray, A History of the Commercial and Financial Relations between England and Ireland from the Period of the Restoration (London, 1903), pp. 160–1. 11. Kiernan, Financial Administration, p. 103. 12. Irish Statutes, ii, 365–496. 13. McGrath, Irish Constitution, pp. 49–72. 14. J. E. Aydelotte, ‘The Duke of Ormonde and the English Government of Ireland, 1677–85’ (PhD thesis, Iowa Univ., 1975), pp. 30–194; Daniel Szechi and D. W. Hayton, ‘John Bull’s Other Kingdoms: The Government of Scotland and Ireland’


15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

in Clyve Jones (ed.), Britain in the First Age of Party, 1680–1750 (London, 1987), pp. 262–3; C. I. McGrath, ‘Parliamentary Additional Supply: The Development and Use of Regular Short-Term Taxation in the Irish Parliament, 1692–1716’ in Parliamentary History, xx (2001), pp. 30–1. Cal. SP dom., 1695 and addenda, p. 197; McGrath, Irish Constitution, p. 77. Aydelotte, ‘Ormonde and English Government’, pp. 30–194; Szechi & Hayton, ‘Scotland and Ireland’, pp. 262–3; McGrath, ‘Additional Supply’, p. 31. For these events see J. I. McGuire, ‘The Irish Parliament of 1692’ in Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (eds), Penal Era and Golden Age: Essays in Irish History, 1690–1800 (Belfast, 1979), pp. 1–31; McGrath, Irish Constitution, pp. 73–90; idem, ‘Government, Parliament and the Constitution: The Reinterpretation of Poynings’ Law, 1692–1714’ in IHS, xxxv, no. 138 (Nov. 2006), pp. 165–7. CJI (3rd edn), i, 394, 396–401, 419, 440–1, 459–60, 463–9, 479–80, 503–5, 513–14, 526–9; Fergus O’Donoghue, ‘The Irish Parliament under Charles II’ (MA thesis, UCD, 1970), pp. 57–8, 99–100; McGrath, ‘Government, Parliament and Constitution’, pp. 163–4; James Kelly, Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (Dublin, 2007), ch. 1. J. P. Kenyon (ed.), The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1966), p. 419; McGrath, Irish Constitution, p. 86. ‘A discourse on Ireland by Sir William Temple’, 1695 (BL, Add. MS 27382, ff. 3–6). On the impact of the Glorious Revolution upon Irish Protestant political thought see S. J. Connolly, ‘The Glorious Revolution in Irish Protestant Thinking’ and idem, ‘Precedent and Principle: The Patriots and their Critics’ in idem (ed.), Political Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 27–63, 130–58. C. I. McGrath, ‘English Ministers, Irish Politicians and the Making of a Parliamentary Settlement in Ireland, 1692–5’ in EHR, cxix (2004), pp. 585–613. McGrath, Irish Constitution, pp. 90–117. Idem, ‘Government, Parliament and Constitution’, pp. 167–72. Idem, ‘Additional Supply’, p. 40. This act is an oddity, as, even though it was the only piece of legislation that actually passed in the 1713 session, it does not occur in the statute books. Idem, Irish Constitution, pp. 54–5. Ibid., passim; Philip O’Regan, ‘Accountability and Financial Control as “Patriotic” Strategies: Accomptants and the Public Accounts Committee in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in Accounting Historians Journal, xxx, no. 2 (Dec. 2003), pp. 105–31; Kiernan, Financial Administration, pp. 121–2. Accounts of Net Public Income and Expenditure of Great Britain and Ireland, 1688–1800, pp. 434–9, H.C. 1868–9 (366), xxxv, 1, 483. The additional duties in 1714 were valued at about £85,000 p.a., though by 1778 they had risen to about £240,000 p.a. See ‘The Charge of the Establishment of Ireland for One Year Compared with the Present Revenue’, 1714 (TCD, MS 2022, ff. 110–12; CJI (3rd edn), x, app., pp. xii–xiii, xix. Irish Statutes, iv, 315–20, 325–7, 431–8, 504–8; v, 1–5, 75–81, 137–42, 193–8, 201–6, 333–40, 483–92; vi, 1–9, 171–80, 389–8, 479–9, 601–12, 639–50, 689–710, 805–17; vii, 1–15, 99–111, 255–60, 271–6, 491–7, 613–22. Charles Delafaye to [Robert Pringle], 30 Jan. 1716 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/374/59–60); duke of Grafton and earl of Galway to James Stanhope, 30 Jan. 1716 (ibid., SP 63/374/63–5).


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31. C. I. McGrath, ‘The Irish Experience of “Financial Revolution”, 1660–1760’ in C. I. McGrath and Chris Fauske (eds), Money, Power and Print: Interdisciplinary Studies on the Financial Revolution in the British Isles (Newark, NJ, 2008), pp. 157–88. 32. Treasury commissioners to Sunderland, 23 Aug. 1715 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/373/88); lords justices to [——], 30 Sept. 1715 (ibid., SP 63/373/112); same to Stanhope, 5, 8 Oct. 1715 (ibid., SP 63/373/144, 150); abps of Dublin and Tuam to Stanhope, 26 Oct. 1715 (ibid., SP 63/373/193); Grafton and Galway to Stanhope, 14 Nov. 1715, 13, 20 Jan. 1716 (ibid., SP 63/373/242–3; SP 63/374/26–7, 42–3); CJI (3rd edn), iii, 9–10, 73–5, 92; app., p. lxxvi. 33. Grafton and Galway to Stanhope, 30 Jan. 1716 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/374/63–5); CJI (3rd edn), iii, 60, 73–6, 80, 86, 92–3, 98, 112; app., p. xxxviii; Kiernan, Financial Administration, pp. 45–6. 34. Irish Statutes, iv, 325–7; CJI (3rd edn), iii, 92; C. I. McGrath, ‘Central Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Framework in Ireland: The Government Supply Bill and Biennial Parliamentary Sessions, 1715–82’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xvi (2001), pp. 15–16. 35. Irish Statutes, iv, 504–8; v, 1–5, 75–81, 137–42, 201–6; McGrath, ‘Central Aspects’, pp. 16–17. 36. Irish Statutes, v, 337–40; McGrath, ‘Central Aspects’, pp. 16–19. 37. Marmaduke Coghill to Edward Southwell, 8 Nov. 1729 (Letters of Marmaduke Coghill, 1722–1738, ed. D. W. Hayton (Dublin, 2005), pp. 76–7). 38. Bp Clayton of Killala to Mrs Charlotte Clayton, 9 Nov. 1731 (BL, Add. MS 20102, ff. 152–4). 39. Irish Statutes, v, 487–92. 40. Reflections on the National Debt; with Reasons for the Reducing the Legal Interest; and Against a Public Loan … ([Dublin], 1731), pp. 11–13. 41. Reasons for Regulating the Coin, and Reducing the Interest; with a Scheme for Paying Part of the National Debt without Burthening Ireland ([Dublin], 1731), pp. 21–2. 42. For 1729 see Coghill to Southwell, 18 Apr. 1730 (Coghill Letters, ed. Hayton, pp. 96–7). For 1731 see Bp Clayton to Mrs Clayton, 2 Jan. 1732 (BL, Add. MS 20102, ff. 158–60). 43. Irish Statutes, v, 63–5. 44. Ibid., 337–40. 45. The 1720–1 figures are derived from the various lists of potential subscribers to the failed schemes for establishing a national bank in Ireland. 46. Coghill to Southwell, 18 Apr. 1730 (Coghill Letters, ed. Hayton, pp. 96–7). 47. Irish Statutes, v, 508–10. 48. Ibid., vi, 605–12. See also William Lingen to James Payzants, 6 Jan. 1742 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/405/1). 49. Irish Statutes, vi, 5–9, 175–80, 393–8, 483–9. 50. CJI (3rd edn), iv, app., pp. li–liii, lxxiii, cv–cvi, cxxxix–cxl. 51. Ibid., 74–5, 76–8; app., pp. xxii, xxv, xxxvii–xli; Coghill to Southwell, 20 Oct., 20 Nov. 1733 (Coghill Letters, ed. Hayton, pp. 137, 140); duke of Dorset to duke of Newcastle, 20 Nov. 1733 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/396/103); Walter Cary to Charles Delafaye, 20 Nov. 1733 (ibid., SP 63/396/99–100). 52. CJI (3rd edn), iv, app., pp. xxii, xliii, li–lii, lx–lxi, lxxiii, lxxxi, cv–cvi, cxv, cxxxix– cxl, cl. 53. Irish Statutes, vi, 605–12; CJI (3rd edn), iv, app., p. clviii.

42 Money, Politics and Power 54. Visct Duncannon to Sir Robert Wilmot, 17 Nov. 1741 (PRONI, Wilmot papers, T/3019/341); TNA, PRO, PC 2/97, pp. 20–5; duke of Devonshire to Newcastle, 13 Dec. 1741 (ibid., SP 63/404/258). 55. CJI (3rd edn), iv, 406, 408; app., pp. clvii–clviii, clx, clxx, ccxlviii–ccxlix. 56. TNA, PRO, PC 2/99, pp. 257–9, 264–5; PRONI, T/3019/706; CJI (3rd edn), iv, 465–6, 471–5. 57. Irish Statutes, vi, 702–10; vii, 6–15; PRONI, T/3019/822. 58. CJI (3rd edn), iv, 453, 458; app., pp. ccxlviii–ccxlix, cclix. 59. Ibid., app., pp. clxvi, ccliv–cclvii, cclix, cclxxxii–cclxxxvii; Irish Statutes, vii, 6–15, 104–11; L. M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1993), pp. 50–99; David Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 102–3. 60. While it might be argued that the defeat of the national bank project in 1720–1 or the Wood’s halfpence affair in 1722–5 constituted political crises over money of similar if not larger proportions, neither conflict resulted in parliament actually rejecting important financial legislation. While the threat of disruption to parliamentary proceedings existed during the Wood’s halfpence affair, such disruption did not in fact occur. On the other hand, while the political crisis of 1713–14 had resulted in the passage of only the government’s three-month supply act without any further financial provision, the conflict had not actually been about money. See McGrath, ‘Irish Experience of “Financial Revolution”’, pp. 165–75. 61. On the existence of such a mindset in the Irish Commons see Bp Clayton to Mrs Clayton, 2 Jan. 1732 (BL, Add. MS 20102, f. 160). 62. CJI (3rd edn), iv, app., pp. clxvi, ccliv–cclvii, cclix, cclxxxii–cclxxxvii; Irish Statutes, vii, 6–15, 104–11; Cullen, Econ. Hist., pp. 50–99; Dickson, New Foundations, pp. 102–3. 63. Irish Statutes, vi, 810–17. 64. Ibid., vii, 6–15. 65. See Declan O’Donovan, ‘The Money Bill Dispute of 1753’ in Bartlett & Hayton (eds), Penal Era and Golden Age, pp. 55–87; Eoin Magennis, The Irish Political System 1740–1765: The Golden Age of the Undertakers (Dublin, 2000), pp. 62–83. 66. Earl of Harrington to duke of Bedford, 17 Nov. 1749 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/411/ 214–16). 67. TNA, PRO, PC 2/101, pp. 370–1. 68. Irish Statutes, vii, 6–15. 69. Ibid., vii, 104–11. 70. CJI (3rd edn), v, 91–2. 71. Few copies of heads of bills survive, and in this instance the actual wording of the phrase in the heads has been gleaned from references in other sources and from the eventual wording in the act: see Dorset and Privy Council (Ire.) to [earl of Holdernesse], 14 Nov. 1751 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/412/206–207); ibid., PC 2/102, pp. 378–9; Irish Statutes, vii, 104–11. 72. Irish Statutes, vii, 104–11; TNA, PRO, PC 2/102, pp. 378–9. 73. Magennis, Irish Political System, pp. 66–8. 74. TNA, PRO, PC 2/102/363–4, 378–9, 383–5; PC 2/103/515–16, 518–19, 525, 546; O’Donovan, ‘Money Bill Dispute’, pp. 55–87. 75. CJI (3rd edn), v, 187–8, 190; Dorset to Holdernesse, 17 Nov. 1753 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/413/73). 76. Baron Newport to [earl of Hardwicke], 17 Nov. 1753 (BL, Add. MS 35592, ff. 200– 201).


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77. TNA, PRO, PC 2/103, pp. 515–16. 78. Magennis, Irish Political System, p. 82, gives the division as 123–118. O’Donovan, ‘Money Bill Dispute’, p. 64, gives it as 122–117. 79. For the amendment and passage of the 1709 Supply Act see McGrath, Irish Constitution, pp. 227–8. 80. See Jacqueline Hill, ‘“Allegories, Fictions, and Feigned Representations”: Decoding the Money Bill Dispute, 1752–6’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xxi (2006), pp. 66–88. 81. Edward Weston to Wilmot, 26 Mar. 1754 (PRONI, Wilmot papers, T/3019/2295). 82. O’Donovan, ‘Money Bill Dispute’, pp. 69, 74–9. 83. Loan repayments, 1754–9 (TCD, MS 7265, ff 49, 55–7; MS 7266, ff 28, 30, 32); CJI, vi, app., pp. clxxii–clxxiii. 84. Reasons for Regulating the Coin, p. 21; Reflections on the National Debt, p. 12. 85. Common Sense: In a Letter to a Friend … (London, 1755), p. 48. 86. Irish Statutes, vii, 619–22. 87. Magennis, Irish Political System, pp. 133–43; F. G. James, Ireland in the Empire 1688–1770 (Cambridge, MA, 1973), pp. 259–61; O’Donovan, ‘Money Bill Dispute’, pp. 69, 74–9. 88. Irish Statutes, vii, 809–20; CJI (3rd edn), vii, 95, 97–8, 108–10, 117–18, 147–9, 151–2. 89. Irish Statutes, ix, 7–17, 272–85, 489–503; x, 6–22, 71–87, 342–56, 647–62; xi, 13–29, 311–33, 353–72, 407–22; xii, 19–50; R. V. Clarendon, A Sketch of the Revenue and Finances of Ireland and of the Appropriated Funds, Loans and Debt of the Nation from their Commencement (Dublin, 1791), p. xvi. 90. For a brief but significant acknowledgement of this fact from a military perspective see Brewer, Sinews of Power, p. 32. 91. McGrath, ‘Central Aspects’, pp. 23–34. 92. See for examples Irish Statutes, vii, 491–7, 613–19, 791–807, 809–20; ix, 1–7, 7–17, 261–85, 479–503; x, 1–22, 65–87, 333–56, 366–79, 647–62, 689–704; xi, 3–44, 303–33, 353–72, 374–86, 407–22.

2 Sustaining a Confessional State: The Irish Parliament and Catholicism James Kelly

The composite monarchies of eighteenth-century Europe were confessional states in which dissentients from the state religion were subjected, to a greater or lesser extent, to legal sanctions that deprived them of political, religious and civil rights. Grounded in the conviction that ‘an establishment in church and state’ was a ‘necessity’ if stable and effective government was to be maintained, it was long an axiom with the political élite in Britain and Ireland that this was dependent on the preservation intact of ‘the Protestant constitution’, brought into being by the Glorious Revolution.1 In practice, this meant penalising those of other confessions – Roman Catholics and Dissenters, particularly – because they were precluded by their religious beliefs from committing themselves wholly and unambiguously to uphold the confessional order. The rationale for this was articulated with exceptional clarity in 1786 by Richard Woodward, the Church of Ireland bishop of Cloyne, when, he propounded that, of ‘the three persuasions’ to which the majority of Ireland’s population adhered, ‘the members of the established church alone can be cordial friends to the entire constitution of this realm, with perfect consistency of principle’. As a consequence, it was ‘the business of the Protestant government … to preclude [the Roman Catholic] as much as possible from influence for fear of losing the power of control’, and to marginalise those who adhered to the Presbyterian church because they aspired ‘to pull down’ the ‘ecclesiastical establishment’ that was integral to ‘the Protestant constitution in church and state’.2 The receptivity of Protestants in Britain as well as Ireland to Woodward’s argument was assisted by the belief that Protestants in Catholic Europe were systematically and egregiously oppressed. It was, for example, reported in a Dublin newspaper in 1784 that ‘Protestants in France, Spain and other Catholic countries are ill-treated, and their effects confiscated after their decease to the ruin of their heirs and successors’, though in fact this was no longer the case.3 More generally, it affirmed the link that Protestants had long made between Catholicism and arbitrary power, the perception that ‘despotic states … have found in the papal authority, a congenial system 44

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of arbitrary dominion’, and encouraged the conclusion that ‘the principles and spirit of the Roman Catholic religion have been, are, and ever will be, to acquire the ascendancy in church and state’.4 Guided by such perceptions, Protestants in Ireland felt entirely justified in appealing to the law to protect them against the prospect of Catholic tyranny. In all, approximately 60 acts (known as ‘popery laws’ until this appellation yielded to the term ‘penal laws’ in the later decades of the eighteenth century) were devoted to this purpose.5 But this figure understates the legislative effort involved, since a further 80 bills never made it to the statute book, while a substantial number of measures, such as the ‘qualification of officeholders’ provisions enacted every session between the mid-1720s and late 1780s, which applied or derived their authority from earlier antiCatholic enactments, and the smaller but significant number of bills and acts devoted to their repeal, augment the total corpus of this legislation to about 200 acts. By focusing on the parliamentary history of the legislation, this chapter looks anew at the purpose, introduction, enforcement, and repeal of the laws directed at confining Catholics and Catholicism, which (much more emphatically than those targeted at Protestant Dissenters) defined the confessional character of the eighteenth-century Irish state. Consistent with the fact that the kingdom possessed its own lawmaking institutions, the anti-Catholic sanctions applied in Ireland were primarily of domestic origin, but because the authority of the Irish parliament to make law was limited by the requirement in Poynings’ Law that all legislation receive prior certification, parliament shared its legislative role with the Irish and English (from 1707 British) Privy Councils.6 They possessed different powers: the Irish council could initiate, as well as amend and respite, legislation; the English/British council could amend, respite and certify. The cumulative effect was that, as well as the English statute book from which much Irish law was ultimately drawn, the shape of Irish anti-Catholic legislation bore the imprint of both councils, in particular the English, which used its powers not only to amend and remodel individual bills, but also to influence the broad contours of Irish anti-Catholic legislation, and, when it deemed further law unnecessary, to prevent additions. Indeed, the parliamentary history of the laws targeted at Catholics provides a revealing insight into the manner in which, within a composite-state structure, the dominant power (England) used the mechanisms available to ensure that the law of the subordinate power (Ireland) conformed in one key aspect to what it considered appropriate.

Making the popery laws, 1691–1709 The Protestant interest in Britain and Ireland was persuaded of the necessity of a corpus of anti-Catholic law by political experience as well as theological conviction. The alarming implications of the success of the

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Counter-Reformation in reducing the area of Europe under Protestant control ‘from about half the land mass to about one-fifth’ between 1590 and 1690 were heightened by the threat posed by absolutism, exemplified by Louis XIV’s mistreatment of France’s Huguenot minority.7 Suspicion of France was amplified following the Glorious Revolution by French support for James II’s attempt to regain his crown from Ireland.8 Moreover, the flight to France of some 19,000 ‘wild geese’ on the cessation of hostilities in 1691, and the aspiration of Jacobites to restore James II, and, after his death in 1701, his son James III, to the British and Irish thrones, ensured that the perception of a threat from that quarter to their religious and political liberties remained vivid. It is identifiable, for example, in the observation by the Dublin Gazette at the time of the Jacobite descent on Scotland in 1708 that ‘most of the popish powers in Europe had contributed to this invasion’.9 The apprehension of an internal threat was equally acute, as Edward Wetenhall, the Church of Ireland bishop of Cork, attested when he warned in 1691 that unless appropriate steps were taken to protect the Protestant interest in Ireland there would be another rebellion within a generation and that ‘thirty to forty thousand fresh Englishmen must come over hither and find untimely graves’.10 Wetenhall’s forecast was informed by the conviction, shared across international Protestantism, that the Catholic Church was a singularly despotic institution, but his words had a particularly strong resonance in Ireland because of the ratification by the Jacobite parliament (1689) of an act of attainder declaring forfeit the life and property of some 3000 Protestants.11 It certainly reinforced the apocalyptic reading Irish Protestants imposed on their history. The key event was the 1641 rebellion, when, it was commonly averred, tens of thousands had fallen victim to the bloody wrath of the Catholic population.12 Attributions to Providence of the Protestants’ escape from disaster in 1689–90 heightened sensitivity on this point, and the manner in which the Irish House of Commons in 1709 reminded Queen Anne of her ‘royal promise … always [to] have a great regard to the titles and interests of your Protestant subjects, and particularly to such as depend upon the forfeitures and outlawries of persons guilty of the rebellions of 1641 and 1688’ attest to the continuing reverberation of both events.13 This was reinforced by the successful cultivation of the doleful memory of the 1641 rebellion and, from 1690, of the ‘glorious memory’ of William of Orange.14 But the anti-Catholicism of Irish Protestants also echoed the wider ideological perception, articulated by John Locke, that the Catholic Church was the ‘common enemy’, because it was synonymous with superstition, prejudice and ignorance, the antitheses of reason, knowledge and understanding, which, according to Locke, were the defining characteristics of Protestantism and synonymous with its commitment to liberty. The implication was that a system grounded in liberty, to which Protestants in Britain and Ireland aspired, must exclude Catholics.15

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Given this context and these perceptions, it was scarcely surprising that, following the triumph of the Williamite armies and the elevation of William and Mary to the throne, Protestants in Britain and Ireland concluded that it was crucial to disempower Catholics. In legislative terms, England was significantly better circumstanced than Ireland. It already had the panoply of anti-recusancy laws introduced between 1559 and 1610. More important, the ‘anti-popish fever’ to which English Protestant society succumbed in 1673 prompted the introduction of a measure that set the tone for what was to follow in Ireland as well as England. This was a ‘test’ obliging those who held ‘offices or places of trust under the crown’ to subscribe publicly to the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and to receive ‘the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper according to the usage of the Church of England’; it was reinforced in 1678 by a prohibition on ‘papists sitting in either house of parliament’. In addition, parliament approved legislation in 1677 striking at the authority of Catholic ecclesiastics by ‘taking away the writ de heretico comburendo’.16 The failure to convene an Irish parliament during the 1670s and early 1680s meant that no equivalent legislative action was enacted in Ireland, but following the example of the English Privy Council, which had in 1663 commanded ‘all Jesuits and popish priests to depart’ the kingdom, the Irish council did likewise.17 Thus in October 1673, April 1674, and again in October and November 1678, it proclaimed that ‘all titular popish archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, abbots, and all others exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction or any authority derived from the pope … and all regular priests’ should ‘depart this kingdom with all possible speed’, and ordered that ‘all popish societies, convents, seminaries, friaries, nunneries and popish schools … be utterly suppressed’.18 In addition, in a decision ostensibly directed at ‘the preservation of the public peace’, it was decreed in November 1673 that ‘persons of the popish religion’ could not ‘ride with, carry, buy, use or keep’ firearms, while sheriffs and justice of the peace were instructed in 1678, and again in 1680, to ‘search for, seize upon and secure’ all unlicensed arms in Catholic possession.19 Furthermore, in an initiative designed to inhibit ‘evil designs and practices by persons of the popish religion’ against the ‘Protestant religion’, a ban was approved in 1678 on Catholics entering towns in which military garrisons were located.20 Such actions were an appropriate short-term response to immediate problems, but were a poor substitute for law, as the Westminster parliament demonstrated. Following the accession of William and Mary, it revisited and in 1688 reaffirmed the prohibition on Catholic peers and MPs sitting in parliament; authorised new oaths of supremacy and allegiance; augmented the restrictions on the movement of Catholics by sanctioning their removal from London; forbade from carrying arms Catholics who did not subscribe to an oath of loyalty, and deprived them of the entitlement to own a horse worth more than £5.21 Moreover, because of the English act of parliament of 1691 requiring peers, MPs, barristers and office-holders in Ireland to subscribe


to the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, it also appeared to be envisaged that anti-Catholic disabilities applying in Ireland would be determined in London.22 This was consistent with the efforts of Whitehall to shape the legislative agenda of the Irish parliament scheduled to meet in October 1692, but in this area, as in the equally important area of finance, there were clear indications that Irish Protestant opinion would not be content with a passive role.23 There is no gainsaying that Irish Protestants were at one with their co-religionists in England in believing anti-Catholic sanctions to be necessary. The Irish Privy Council made this clear by approving a number of proclamations in the wake of the Treaty of Limerick, requiring the surrender of arms and the apprehension of Catholic clergy.24 These interventions addressed immediate security concerns, but the Protestant population at large desired more, as they made clear in the main municipalities. Cork and Dublin corporations led the way by determining in 1690 and 1691 to disfranchise Catholics who had been ‘admitted to the freedom of the city’ during the reign of James II. In Drogheda barriers were placed in the way of Catholic worship, while elsewhere the ability of Catholics to engage in trade and industry was confined by restrictions imposed on their entitlement to reside in certain towns and their capacity to employ ‘covenant’ servants, apprentices and journeymen. They were, in addition, barred from employment ‘in the city service’ in Dublin on the grounds that it was ‘prejudic[ial] to poor Protestants, who might get a livelihood by the said employments’.25 Despite the fact that there was broad agreement on the importance of limiting the rights of Catholics, the differing perceptions in both kingdoms as to just how active a role the Irish parliament would play in initiating law ensured that no progress was made during the difficult 1692 session.26 The main problem was the assertion by MPs that they possessed the ‘sole right’ to raise revenue, but even had a solution been forthcoming on this point, parliament and executive would still have found it difficult to agree a programme of legislation because of the wish of ministers to observe the terms of the unpopular treaties agreed with Catholics at Limerick and elsewhere in 1690 and 1691. Ministers made this clear when they included a clause in the 1691 Act ‘for abrogating the oath of supremacy’ exempting Catholic legal and medical practitioners who ‘were covered by the Articles of Limerick’, even though they were aware that it was disliked in Ireland.27 As it happened, the prorogation of the session not only ensured that no significant anti-Catholic measure was admitted to the statute book in the early 1690s, but also gave the participants in the process time to work out a modus operandi that was to pave the way for the enactment by the Irish parliament of a series of important popery laws in 1695 and 1697. Though it took nearly three years, a way out of the legislative impasse that had prompted the prorogation of the Irish parliament in 1692 was finally identified in 1695 when the Lord Deputy, Henry, Lord Capell, famously

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agreed a ‘compromise’ with the leaders of the previous parliamentary opposition, whereby in return for their support for crucial financial legislation he undertook to forward a number of popular measures, including proposals targeted at Catholics.28 In keeping with the interpretation of Poynings’ Law established in 1634 when the responsibility for initiating legislation was assumed by the lord deputy and council, these anti-Catholic measures, numbering four in all, took their rise at the council board.29 The transmission of bills ‘for disarming the papists … and for restraining foreign education’ attests to a commitment to deal with new as well as established concerns, but the decision to prepare a measure confirming the Treaty of Limerick indicated that Irish Protestants too would have to temper their expectations. The manner in which these, and other, measures made it to the statute book in the mid-1690s illustrates how the Irish council, the Irish parliament and the English council together shaped legislation, as well as the way in which the Irish parliament laid the basis for the dominant role it was to assume in the formulation of anti-Catholic legislation thereafter. The bills transmitted to London were described by the Irish executive as necessary to ‘secure the Protestant interest, and … the Protestant religion’, but the English council insisted that they must be modified to meet concerns raised by a number of leading Catholics and William III’s wish to honour the commitments entered into at Limerick. To this end, unease expressed in respect of the arms bill that ‘the general clause disarming all papists seemed to take away the benefit of the Art[icles] of Lim[erick]’ prompted the introduction of ‘a clause … describing and exempting the … persons mentioned there, but not naming the Art[icles] either of Lim[erick] or Gal[way]’. A further amendment was also introduced allowing Catholic ‘noblemen’ and ‘gentlemen’ to possess ‘a sword … a case of pistols and a gun’ for self-defence under licence. In the case of the bill ‘to restrain foreign education’, amendments were authorised increasing the burden of proof when prosecutions were brought, disallowing the retrospective application of the bill, and permitting Catholics education at home.30 The Irish parliament was not enamoured of the bills as recast, objecting particularly to the authority vested in the lord lieutenant and council to permit Catholics to bear arms under licence and to provide for the domestic education of their children, but were unwilling to reject either. Choosing to ‘swallow’ both bills ‘with their faults’,31 peers and MPs underlined their eagerness to contribute to the emerging body of anti-Catholic legislation by preparing separate heads of a bill ‘for suppressing all friaries, monasteries, nunneries and other popish convents and for banishing all regulars of the popish clergy out of this kingdom’. The Irish council responded tactfully by consolidating these into one measure for transmission to Whitehall, where it encountered an unexpected obstacle in the person of the diplomatic representative of Leopold I of Austria, and was laid aside. However, the policy of expelling Catholic clergy was too well established in both


kingdoms not to be revived at a more propitious moment, which came two years later; the bill was returned to Ireland in 1697 with a number of amendments, one of which, relating to the vesting of concealed lands of ‘all guilds, chantries, fraternities or religious societies which still remain and are employed for supporting popish superstition’ in the Crown, was deemed to infringe ‘the settlement of Ireland by breaking into the Act of Settlement and Explanation’. As a result, the bill was lost in the House of Lords.32 However, having made their point, peers promptly reintroduced ‘the same bill in due form, without the said clause and with some small change in the title, as an act for banishing all papists exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and all regulars of the popish clergy out of the kingdom’, and it negotiated all hurdles on its way to becoming law.33 It was a victory, clearly, for the Irish parliament, and MPs registered another in the same session when a measure that had arisen with them ‘to prevent Protestants intermarrying with papists’ made it to the statute book though ‘great exceptions to it, as it was drawn’ were expressed at the English council. This necessitated the introduction of more than 20 amendments, several of which appertained to the provision of certificates to protect against abuse, but the measure was so ‘much desired by the Protestants of this kingdom’ that the amendments met with no resistance on the bill’s return, and it became law.34 If it is apparent from the history of these measures that the Irish parliament was able, through a combination of steeliness and accommodation, to ensure that the emerging anti-Catholic legislation reflected the wish of Irish Protestants, the manner in which the Treaty of Limerick was approved demonstrates that they had a broadly supportive ally in the Irish Privy Council. The treaty was a particularly sensitive matter because it set Irish Protestants at odds with King William, whose preference for its clear and unambiguous confirmation was adjudged inconsistent ‘with the welfare and safety of your majesty’s subjects’ in Ireland. As a result, the Irish council was able ‘only with difficulty’ to agree a draft bill that omitted the disagreeable sixth article. William was not best pleased, but the failure of the English Privy Council to address the omission in a timely fashion, the resolution manifest in Ireland to go no further, and the conclusion of the earls of Portland and Albemarle ‘that the Irish did not merit any consideration because of their continuous intrigues’, encouraged the king to back down, and the bill was returned largely as transmitted, to become law.35 The Treaty of Limerick bill exemplifies the crucial role of the Irish council in the mid-1690s in the preparation of legal sanctions against Catholics. Yet unlike 1695, when all three popery laws to reach the statute book arose at the council board, two of the three measures ratified in 1697 – the Bishops’ Banishment Act and the Marriage Act – originated with the Irish parliament. This was in keeping with more general trends in lawmaking in Ireland, whereby parliament, and the Commons particularly, used the heads of bills process to establish itself as the place of origin of most law. In all, five of

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the nine anti-Catholic measures ratified between 1695 and 1697 originated in the Irish council, but four of these date from 1695. By contrast, three of the four that became law in 1697 were initiated by MPs. The increasing importance of the Commons would have been still more obvious had other initiatives succeeded, most of which began there: these sought to inhibit conversion to Catholicism, to disable Catholics from purchasing lands in corporations, to maintain land in Protestant possession, to increase the number of Protestant freeholders, and to continue sanctions against Irish Catholics abroad.36 This trend notwithstanding, the Irish legislature could not yet claim to possess the initiative in the introduction of anti-Catholic disabilities since, the Bishops’ Banishment Act excepted, the major measures proposed in the 1690s had all been initiated by the Irish Privy Council. Moreover, the English council remained an abiding influence. Although councillors did not insist on the ratification of the Treaty of Limerick in its entirety, they continued to be guided in their attitude to bills transmitted from Ireland by a commitment to honour the terms of the treaty. This is exemplified by the deletion of the offending ‘foreign clause’ in a 1697 bill ‘for preventing abuses in making butter casks’, because it was perceived as a surreptitious attempt to ‘repeal … some part of the late act for confirming the articles’.37 Councillors also insisted in 1698 on amending the bill for ‘the better security’ of the king’s ‘person and government’, when, instead of an act similar to that passed at Westminster, they received a bill that was ‘clogged and altered’ by the presence of a requirement that Catholics should take an oath of supremacy as well as allegiance. The outcome was less positive in this instance, as the amended bill failed to negotiate the House of Lords, yet the inability of councillors to sustain ‘a distinction between the Limerick men and the rest of the papists of Ireland’ ensured that the measure that finally became law answered more to Irish than English concerns.38 Despite this and other outcomes in which one of the parties can be shown to have prevailed, the authorities on both sides of the Irish Sea in the 1690s were so convinced of the need for laws that confined Catholics politically, religiously and militarily that they borrowed from each other. In 1695 the Irish parliament followed the English example by sanctioning a law for ‘taking away the writ de heretico comburendo’, while in 1699 Westminster followed Ireland in proscribing Catholics from sending their children abroad to ‘be educated in the Romish religion’.39 This shared commitment was manifested to still greater effect in the manner in which the largest and most widely embracing of all the Irish ‘popery laws’ – the act ‘to prevent the further growth of popery’ – was ratified in 1704. In its original form, this bill, which took its rise at the Irish Privy Council in the summer of 1703, sought to engage comprehensively with crucial matters of land and inheritance among a host of largely economic issues. Transmitted to Whitehall with the observation of the lord lieutenant, the


duke of Ormond, that ‘there are some clauses concerning [the treaties of] Limerick and Galway that … you may think hard and inconvenient’, it was soon apparent that the measure required (in the words of the English attorney-general Sir Edward Northey) ‘great amendments’. This can be ascribed in part to the ambition of the measure, but it was also significant that there were a flutter of petitions seeking its amelioration. The expectation that an amended bill would be put in due form and returned was overtaken in the autumn of 1703 by the decision of the Irish House of Commons to begin preparing its own measure. Possibly in order to avoid an unwelcome clash, the English council conveyed its draft to Ireland, where it was made available to MPs, who incorporated much of it verbatim into their own bill.40 This was not procedurally appropriate, but it explains why the resulting heads negotiated the Irish Privy Council with ‘no amendment of consequence’. The English council was more circumspect, but it is revealing, both of its eagerness to ensure that the bill passed in due and proper form and of the scale of the interventions it was prepared to contemplate, that it authorised five major amendments, which were among the most far-reaching made to any measure in course of the eighteenth century. Extending in a number of instances to several thousand words, their primary purpose was to bring the restrictions on Catholics retaining or acquiring property proposed for Ireland into line with the spirit of sanctions in place in England. Thus, the eldest son of Catholic parents who converted to the Church of Ireland could usurp his parents’ title; Catholics were precluded from acting as guardians to ‘any orphan’ under 21, who was required to be brought up as a Protestant and whose lands were to descend only to Protestants; while, in an allied clause, the prohibition on Catholics leasing and purchasing land from Protestants was extended to include inheritance. Still more critically, in a draconian late addition to diminish Catholic patrimonies, for which there was no precedent in English statute law, it was stated that the transfer of property in Catholic ownership between generations should be determined by gavelkind rather than by primogeniture. Finally, and most infamously, the ‘test clause’, requiring officeholders to ‘take the Eucharist according to the rite of the Church of Ireland’, were introduced at the behest of English Tories.41 Together, these amendments so extended an already lengthy bill that it was reckoned it would ‘take up to five or six days in engrossing’.42 The bill was returned to Ireland and received the royal assent on 4 March 1704. With this compendious measure, and two other acts in 1704, providing for the registration of Catholic clergy and the prevention of priests from entering the kingdom, both of which originated with Irish MPs, the main elements of the popery laws were in place. This fact was symbolised by the effective withdrawal of the Irish Privy Council from the initiation of anti-Catholic laws. The Protestant population at large were not content

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that matters should rest there, however. The corporation of Cork resolved in January 1704 ‘that an application be made to the parliament next session setting forth the grievance the English lie under by the encroachments of the Irish into their respective trades’, and the ‘damage and danger’ caused to Protestants by the influx of ‘great numbers of Irish into this city’.43 Since the 1704 Act to prevent the further growth of popery included provisions aimed at preventing ‘papists’ leasing and purchasing property in the cities of Galway and Limerick, it may be that Cork aspired to a comparable prohibition; what is clear is that this intervention reflected the strength of the belief within the Protestant community that still more sanctions were necessary. It was a conclusion shared by MPs, and over the ensuing three sessions (1705, 1707 and 1709) they initiated 14 bills of an explicitly anti-Catholic character, three of which became law.44 One that failed was the 1707 heads of a bill amending the 1704 Popery Act. This was altered at the English council to meet certain Catholic concerns, but councillors went too far, and the inclusion among the three-and-a-half folio pages of amendments of a provision to allow a Catholic to sell land to Protestants, which nullified a ‘useful clause in the previous act’ aimed at securing the rights of inheritance of Protestant heirs, proved unacceptable in Ireland, and the measure was lost.45 Significantly, this bill was revived in 1709 when it enjoyed a smoother passage to the statute book. In keeping with the perceived need to ‘explain and amend’ the 1704 act, it addressed a great variety of issues arising from, or ignored in, the original. As such it can be seen as a companion to the earlier measure, but it cannot be interpreted simply in those terms since it also extended the provisions in the Foreign Education Act, the Disarming Act, and the requirements of 2 Anne, c. 3 and 4 Anne, c. 2, appertaining to the registration of clergy, which were made perpetual. Indeed, the 1709 act is best known for its anti-clerical provisions. This is understandable given the enormous controversy excited by the clause directing all registered Catholic clergy to take the oath of abjuration, but this was only one among a number of clauses that sought to encourage conversions from popery and restrict the capacity of registered clergy to minister. Moreover, the act laid down only slightly less condign sanctions for schoolteachers and solicitors.46 For this reason it may be suggested that it complemented bills approved in 1705, addressing the omission of recently ordained clergy in the 1704 act, and in 1707, authorising extended restrictions on popish solicitors, but this also would be to understate its range and significance.47 The 1709 act ‘for explaining and amending’ the 1704 Popery Act was an important measure in its own right. It was also arguably the last major penal law; there was certainly nothing on this scale thereafter, and for this reason it can be said to have concluded the phase of active lawmaking in which Ireland introduced a body of law against Catholics unequalled in the eighteenth-century British empire.


Enforcing and reinforcing the popery laws, 1710–60 Though the ‘popery laws’ were not yet fully formed, the pace of antiCatholic lawmaking slowed in the second decade of the century. There were fewer than a dozen attempts in the 1710s to introduce legislative sanctions, compared with nearly 30 in the 1690s and 20 in the 1700s. Moreover, only two reached the statute book. This does not mean that Protestants in Ireland or, for that matter, in England, were less committed to confining Catholics, but having enacted so many provisions between 1695 and 1709, attention focused on enforcement. The laws against Catholics were applied most strictly over a ten-year period from 1708. This is not to suggest that earlier efforts were half-hearted or ineffectual. A similar intensity of purpose was evident in the manner in which the law against regular clergy and those exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction was applied in the late 1690s; in the way in which bodies such as the Kings’ Inns denied Catholics access to the bar following the enactment of the act to prevent the further growth of popery; in the prosecution of individual Catholic schoolteachers; and in the ongoing construction at municipal level of barriers to Catholics taking apprentices and employing journeymen.48 Notwithstanding, the authorities embarked on a visibly more determined effort in the late 1700s as reports of Jacobite activity in Scotland animated deeply held fears of Catholic disloyalty. The inclusion in the 1709 act of a provision requiring registered priests to take the oath of abjuration before 25 March 1710 or be subject to the severe legal penalties against regulars was a manifestation of this, but merely one aspect of a more serious and general assault, which commenced on 23 March 1708 with a proclamation for apprehending ‘all popish priests who are not already secured; and forbidding all manner of persons to conceal, comfort or support any popish priest or priests … upon pain of incurring her majesty’s highest displeasure, and to be prosecuted with the utmost severity’.49 The apprehension of ‘all’ the priests in the vicinity of Loughrea, County Galway, the attempt by the lord mayor of Dublin to take up 31 named clerics in the city, and invitations to members of the Catholic laity to subscribe to the oath of abjuration indicate that it was applied with some rigour,50 and was but a foretaste of what was to follow as the alarm provoked by the 1709 act prompted clergy to go into hiding and churches to close their doors.51 It was possibly the darkest moment of the so-called penal era, causing Ambrose MacDermott, Dominican bishop of Elphin, to fear for the future of Catholicism in the kingdom.52 MacDermott apprehended that if the pope did not intervene to stem a repression that the papal nuncio at Brussels maintained exceeded ‘the bounds of moderation’, ‘all will be lost’.53 What the nuncio had failed to remark was the fact that MacDermott’s presence in Ireland exposed the limited capacity of the state to enforce the law against Catholics. This did not discourage the lords justices, and the summer of 1710 witnessed further

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proclamations aimed at such manifestations of discontent as the weakened ranks of Catholicism and Jacobitism could muster, and even at religious gatherings such as the pattern at St John’s Well in County Meath, which was proclaimed as ‘tumultuous, dangerous and unlawful’.54 The Privy Council proclaimed the St John’s Well pattern in response to a request of the Irish House of Commons. MPs were otherwise inactive, but their failure to initiate any major anti-Catholic measure between 1710 and 1715 did not signal a diminution in their support for the efforts of the lords justices and council to enforce the sanctions provided for by law. Government’s commitment was demonstrated by its decision, in response to an ‘unlawful’ attempt to establish a convent in Dublin in 1712, not only to pursue those known to have promoted the institution, the Catholic Archbishop Edmond Byrne included, but also to remind the public of the importance of enforcing the ‘divers good laws [which] have been enacted as well for banishing all papists exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction and all regulars of the popish clergy out of this kingdom’. The proclamation called explicitly upon all justices of the peace, mayors, sovereigns and others chief magistrates of corporations, sheriffs, bailiffs, high and pretty constables and … all other her majesty’s officers and ministers of justice within the limits of their respective authorities and powers to apply themselves with all industry in their several stations to the putting the said good laws and every of them in due execution, and to take care of the public safety, by causing diligent search to be made for all popish archbishops, bishops, deans, vicars-general and popish persons exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and all harbourers and concealers of them, and all popish priests which have come into the kingdom since the act for prevention thereof took effect, and all persons who have presumed to say mass or officiate as priests without being duly registered, or who being registered priests have officiated out of their respective parishes for which they were registered, and all curates and coadjutors to any popish registered priests, and all such registered priests as have not taken the oath of abjuration … and all popish schoolmasters, under-schoolmasters, tutors and ushers … and every of them to be proceeded against according to law.55 This was as explicit an instruction to local officers to enforce the religious and educational provisions of the popery laws as it was possible to make, and was given added impetus by the pronouncement that the ‘penalties’ provided by law ‘against such justices of the peace and magistrates as shall neglect … their duties’ should also be enforced. A number of teachers and regular clergy were prosecuted and imprisoned in consequence, though it was already apparent that there were limits to what could be achieved by this means.56 The authorities were more successful in enforcing the law against Catholics bearing arms, partly because the licensing system was centralised, so that


when the destruction of the relevant records in the council office fire of 1711 necessitated the issuing of new licences they published a list in 1713 of the 133 Catholics authorised to wear a sword, and the slightly smaller numbers authorised to possess firearms.57 Significantly, these were conditional entitlements: while the possession of a licence secured Catholics against a fine and a term in prison if they bore arms in public,58 permission could be revoked, which is what transpired in the aftermath of the death of Queen Anne when ‘all papists licensed to keep and wear arms’ were instructed to surrender weapons in their possession. In parallel, the council underlined its function in administering the law against Catholics by strictly command[ing] … all justices of the peace and other officers in this kingdom … to search for, take and seize all arms, armour and ammunition of what kind soever which shall be found in the possession of all papists not licensed, and all reputed papists and other persons suspected to be disaffected.59 Based on the absence of reports of the discovery of significant caches of concealed weaponry, it was an unnecessary precaution. But such was the belief in the mid-1710s that Catholic Jacobites were promoting their ‘wicked contrivances … to defeat his majesty [George I] of his undoubted right to the imperial crown of these realms’, virtually every manifestation of Jacobitism, real or assumed, elicited a proclamation.60 The preoccupation of Irish Protestant opinion with the internal threat apprehended from Catholics ensured that, by comparison with Westminster, Irish peers and MPs devoted markedly less legislative time and attention to the security of the Protestant succession. The Irish parliament did in 1703 sanction an Irish version of the English Treason Act of 1702, which provided for exemplary sanctions for those who supported the Pretender, but it is significant when their anxieties were roused to fever pitch by heightened Jacobite activity that they directed their efforts inwards at familiar targets.61 This was the case in 1715, when Jacobite activity in Scotland elicited a call from Dublin corporation that ‘due care’ be taken ‘to put the laws in execution against papists, nonjurors and other suspected persons’, to which the lords justices responded affirmatively. In addition, instructions were issued to ensure that only Protestants were recruited into the army, to punish those who recruited men into ‘the service of any foreign prince’, and to establish an exclusively Protestant militia in the expectation that it would serve ‘as one of the most effectual checks to the increase of the Roman Catholic interest’.62 Given these steps, it was not surprising that recourse was had to the controversial provision (authorised for England in 1688, implied in Irish law in 1695 and provided for explicitly in 1709), permitting horses in Catholic ownership valued at £5 to be sequestered ‘in case of invasion or intestine war’. It was also one of the rare occasions when local authorities imposed

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a curfew, but radical actions such as these were deemed necessary to ensure that the country remained undisturbed.63 This was a matter of some relief to the Protestant population, which not only remained vigilant, but also sought further restrictions. The corporation of Cork was to the fore once more, in urging the exclusion of Catholics ‘from carrying on any foreign trade’ on the grounds that the economic sanctions introduced in 1703 and 1709 were insufficient ‘for the preservation of the Protestant interest’.64 However, the Irish executive continued to prioritise enforcing the existing regulations, and in 1716 and 1719 the Privy Council issued further proclamations instructing magistrates, sheriffs and others to enforce ‘the many good laws that have been made for banishing all papists exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction’ and regular clergy, and to apply the registration and other provisions ratified in 1703–4 and 1709.65 This direction to enforce the law against the Catholic clergy was prompted by the mounting recognition during the late 1710s that the sanctions approved in 1697, 1703 and 1709 had not achieved the desired result of enfeebling the Catholic Church. Indeed, concern on this point was matched only by the perceived security implications of the infiltration of Catholics into Galway and Limerick, contrary to the 1704 Popery Act. In order to ‘strengthen … the Protestant interest therein’, two proclamations were issued and, in 1717, acts of parliament perpetuated Protestant control in Galway and Kilkenny.66 The only other notable addition to the corpus of anti-Catholic regulations in the 1710s was a measure in 1715 prohibiting any Catholic from serving as ‘high constable in any county, barony or half-barony, or petty constable in any manor, ward [or] parish’. By the same law Catholics were also precluded from serving as parish watches, which the authorities held to be of sufficient importance to merit promulgation nationally, when the kingdom was gripped by a further Jacobite scare in 1719.67 The ratification of the 1715 and 1717 measures can be accounted for by reference to the particular problems they sought to address. The larger, and more worrying, problem for the authorities was that while their efforts to prevent a Jacobite uprising could be said to have succeeded, it was fast becoming apparent that they had palpably failed in their attempt to weaken the Catholic Church. Unease on this account increased appreciably during the reign of George I, and spilled over on occasion, as in 1719, when MPs were prompted by alarming reports from Scotland to propose a further measure ‘for securing the Protestant interest’, which included a provision that would have allowed for the ‘castration’ of ‘unqualified popish priests’. Given the contemporary discussion of the merits of ‘castration’ as a solution to a number of ostensibly intractable social problems, this was not perhaps quite so egregious a suggestion as it has been generally portrayed, but the clause was excised by the British Privy Council and the amended bill failed in the House of Lords.68 Protestant opinion remained tender, however, and while it took heart from the enactment in 1721 of a Commons’ measure


‘to prevent the enlisting of his majesty’s subjects to serve as soldiers in foreign service’ without a licence,69 the obsession with the threat presented by ‘the vast swarm of popish priests who infest and impoverish this kingdom and are continually negotiating against the government’ remained strong. This encouraged a further attempt in 1722 to put ‘the laws in execution against the Roman Catholics’, which resulted in the closure of churches for a time. Apprehensive lest some nefarious plan was afoot, and angry that ‘milder methods have been so frequently despis’d and elud’d’, MPs in 1723 approved heads of a bill ‘for explaining and amending the acts to prevent the further growth of popery and for strengthening the Protestant interest’. This provided for a progressive series of penalties, ascending from transportation to execution, for registered clergy who declined to subscribe to the oath of abjuration, and those not registered who maintained an illegal presence in the country. Archbishop Synge of Tuam called it ‘a most rigorous bill’, Archbishop King of Dublin called it ‘barbarous’, a view shared by the British Privy Council, which deemed the bill so unsuitable that the law officers declined even to make a report on it.70 Though this bill failed to become law, the fact that a measure of such severity had even been proposed attested to the continuing belief in the merits of repression. Sentiment was not unanimous, and the opinion articulated by Bishop Nicolson of Derry after a heated debate on the measure in the Irish council that ‘many of us seem to be exceedingly afraid to provoke our Roman neighbours’ shows that some were beginning to develop serious doubts of the wisdom of additional draconian legislation.71 They were, however, a minority: the alarm that percolated through Irish society on receipt in 1725 of news of the harassment of the Protestant population of Thorn in Poland demonstrated the extent to which Irish Protestants were committed to the use of legal sanction.72 The most compelling index is provided by an increased number of attempts from the mid-1720s to secure approval for new sanctions. As if to give the lie to suggestions that peers were less committed in this respect, a majority of the initiatives were sponsored by Church of Ireland bishops, with the result that between 1725 and 1733 the House of Lords, with a total of 11, overtook the Commons, with five, as the originator of such measures. The suggested heads of bills reflected the concerns publicly articulated by the Lords in 1729 when singling out as necessitating attention the failure of converts to raise their children in the Protestant faith, the presence in the kingdom of ‘monks, friars and Jesuits’, bishops, archbishops and others exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and a spate of ‘mass house’ building.73 Convinced that these problems could be eased by extending the remit of anti-Catholic legislation, and curtailing the growing number of Catholic clergy in the country, peers pressed forward on a number of fronts. They sought in 1725, 1729 and 1731 to extend the regulations targeted at ‘restraining the number of popish priests and regulars coming into this kingdom’; in 1725, 1727 and 1731 to provide ‘more effectually … for the guardianship

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of popish minors, and to prevent their being bred papist’; and in 1725, 1727, 1731 and 1733 to outlaw inter-denominational marriages and prohibit ‘degraded clergymen’ and popish priests and friars from conducting them. Only two of these proposals became law: the 1725 Marriage Act went a long way towards privileging the official Protestant view of marriage, while the concerns directed at converts who frustrated the intentions of the law by raising their children as Catholics contributed to the enactment in 1727 and in 1733 of laws, arising in the Lords and Commons respectively, obliging barristers and solicitors to bring up their children in the Protestant faith.74 As the 1733 Solicitors’ Act demonstrates, the Commons was not entirely inactive on the legislative front in the early years of the reign of George II, and it was symbolically appropriate, given the active efforts of MPs over several decades to diminish Catholic influence, that the lower house was responsible in 1727–8 for adding the coping stone to the arch of political disabilities by proposing a statutory ban on Catholics voting in parliamentary elections. Hitherto, ‘papist’ voters had been required to produce a certificate testifying that they had taken the oaths of abjuration and allegiance. This had been clarified in 1715, and the situation remained the same until 1728 when, as a result of the decision to deprive them of the franchise, Catholics were formally excluded from the political process.75 This prohibition met with no resistance at the British Privy Council because it dovetailed with the situation in England. The point needs to be made because a significantly higher number of the legislative proposals initiated between 1725 and 1735 that included new sanctions were rejected by the British council than by the Irish council or Irish parliament. It was not unusual for anti-Catholic bills to fall at this hurdle. Indeed, it had been the fate of a number of measures in the 1690s and 1700s, when political opinion in Britain and Ireland was in broad agreement on the desirability of the laws being proposed. However, from the early 1720s ministers in Whitehall sought increasingly to moderate the enthusiasm of Irish Protestants for stricter measures. This disposition was first manifest in 1723 when no report was forthcoming on the draconian heads from the Irish Commons ‘for strengthening the Protestant interest’. This set a precedent followed in 1726, when no reports were issued in respect of bills to explain and amend the laws ‘to prevent papists purchasing lands’ and to oblige ‘converts to breed their children Protestants’.76 Thereafter, the attitude of the British council grew even cooler. Measures to extend the time needed to elapse before converts from Catholicism were allowed to practise law (1727) and to annul marriages conducted by Catholic clergy (1734, 1744) were ‘respited’, while bills transmitted in 1733–4 ‘to tighten the existing laws against regulars, bishops and converts’, strengthen registration procedures, and make void ‘all marriages celebrated by popish priests or friars’ were also allowed to lapse unreported.77 A series of comparable interventions restrained the eagerness of Irish Protestants to penalise Catholics


and converts from Catholicism: the most notable were the excision in March 1728 from the Catholic Disfranchising Act of a clause that would have penalised Protestant men married to Catholic women who did not convert within 12 months of marriage;78 and the deletion of a number of clauses in the 1728 barristers’ bill more onerous than the existing sanctions in Britain that would have precluded recent converts from practising. It was part of a pattern that in 1733 ensured Protestants married to Catholics were not penalised and prompted the excision of the death penalty from the solicitors’ bill.79 In addition, the efforts of the Irish parliament in 1735–6, 1745–6 and 1749–50 to combat the thorny problem of clandestine marriage were discouraged by the disinclination of the British council to approve additional sanctions targeted at Catholic clergy.80 As its intervention in the latter instances attests, the British council continued throughout the reign of George II to limit the passage of further anti-Catholic measures. This policy shift was prompted in the 1720s by an improvement in Anglo-French relations, but was sustained subsequently by a diminution in the fear with which Catholics were regarded in England.81 This seems to have taken hold quite quickly, since as late as May 1722 it was reported in Ireland that the law proscribing Catholics aged 16 or over from residing within ten miles of London had recently been implemented.82 There can be little doubt that Irish Protestants would have welcomed the opportunity to equip themselves with equivalent powers if possible, for though the exigencies of Anglo-French relations may have contributed to the failure of the attempt in 1729 to introduce legislation ‘partly for registering a number of secular priests and partly more effectually to drive out the regulars’, the wider diplomatic context did not register deeply with the Protestant interest Ireland. Its representatives remained disposed, as MPs enunciated in 1726, to perceive any design ‘to interrupt the quiet’ of the realm as tending ‘to subvert our happy constitution, to introduce and establish popery and arbitrary power in these kingdoms’. They were committed for this reason to sustain and, when permitted, to reinforce the protection provided by law.83 The strength of feeling surprised English officials in Ireland, who from the 1730s felt obliged to draw attention to the fact when transmitting new anti-Catholic measures to Whitehall. Chief Secretary Walter Carey is a case in point: in a letter accompanying a bill in 1731 to disarm Catholics he observed, ‘how zealous people are here to keep the papists in awe’.84 Four years later the solicitor-general, John Bowes, reminded George Dodington of ‘how much the Protestant interest here depends upon the acts made the 2nd and 8th of the late Queen [Anne] to prevent the growth of popery, and how jealous we are, both for the safety and property of the kingdom that those laws should not be defeated’.85 This was certainly the mood between 1732 and 1734, when, as a result of a combination of factors, including the scare generated by the actions of ‘a poor priest of the diocese of Cork, who … accused his bishop of having collected money for the Pretender’, the authorities executed a number

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of Catholics for enlisting men for foreign service, imprisoned sons of Catholic peers for wearing swords, searched for weapons, and instructed ‘all the magistrates in this kingdom to put the laws against popery in execution’. Catholics were so seized by ‘terror and fear’ that they locked their chapels while waiting for the atmosphere to improve.86 Protestants, meanwhile, sought to seize the moment to strengthen the law, and, while their achievements were modest, they did secure new sanctions against Catholic solicitors, and the outlawing of converts from acting as justices of the peace when their wives and children remained Catholic.87 The scare of 1732–4 also prompted an increase in the number of Catholics prosecuted for ‘carrying’ and concealing arms, and the strengthening in 1737 of the law against unlicensed military service abroad.88 It also ensured that when war with Spain began in October 1739 Irish Protestant nervousness about Catholic intentions induced the lord lieutenant, Devonshire, in response to a call from MPs, to instruct all magistrates ‘to search for, take and seize all arms, armour and ammunition of what kind soever, which shall be found in the possession of any papist, reputed papist, or in the possession of any other person in trust for any papist or reputed papist’.89 Little was found, though a diligent search was made.90 This came as no surprise to Richard Mathew, Lord Fitzwilliam’s agent, who observed pertinently that the Catholic population ‘have been disarmed these forty years past’, but it did little to ease the concerns of peers and MPs, who responded by approving a bill in 1739–40 requiring magistrates ‘to make yearly searches’ and obliging Catholics to surrender by 1 July 1740 all arms, armour and ammunition in their possession.91 Mathew wondered what all the fuss was about because, as he saw it, the Catholics of Ireland ‘are at this present the most inconsiderable body of people on this earth’.92 There was no persuading most Irish Protestants of this, however. Still convinced that they lived in the midst of a population committed to their destruction, they persisted in initiating antiCatholic measures, albeit in smaller numbers during the 1740s and 1750s. Significantly, most of the proposals engaged with the familiar subjects of interdenominational marriage, raising children in the Protestant faith, and foreign military service. Moreover, two of the three laws approved during the 1740s received the royal assent in the 1745–6 session when emotions ran high because of the presence of Jacobite forces in Britain.93 Of course Protestants had other concerns; heads of bills were advanced to tighten the ban on Catholic voting, reinforce the proscription on foreign education, and inhibit Catholic land agents from favouring Catholic tenants to the detriment of Protestants, though only the first became law.94 The low success rate troubled Irish Protestants, some of whom concluded, ‘in relation to the supposed prevalence of the popish interest in England’, that ‘no law for the benefit of Protestantism and discouragement of popery can be passed in England’. This was a misjudgement, but the conviction


was widespread that ‘the lords of the [Privy] Council of England’ did not comprehend ‘the true state of this country as to religion’.95 It had the effect, moreover, of encouraging the authorities to persist in their efforts to enforce those elements of the law that they adjudged crucial to Protestant security, such as the possession of arms by Catholics, and the activities of Catholic bishops.96 This is comprehensible given the tone and content of the alarmist addresses emanating from Protestant clerical circles in the winter of 1745–6.97 Yet there were the signs that some were prepared to think more expansively. The fact that the Catholic population remained ‘quiet’ during the ‘Forty-Five’ (‘not a man of them moved tongue, pen or sword’, the prime serjeant, Eaton Stannard, reported) encouraged the presentation in January 1746 in the Commons of a measure, ostensibly aimed at amending and explaining the 1703 Registration Act, but which in practice aspired to permit more secular priests to minister legally. Significantly, the legislation may have had the support of the lord lieutenant, Chesterfield, but when it encountered opposition, he declined to press it, recognising that he could not ensure its passage because Irish Protestants were ‘in general still in the year 1689, and have not shook off any religious or political prejudice that prevailed at that time’.98 This was misleading. The fear that had provided the rationale for so many anti-Catholic measures had greatly eased, and the 1750s witnessed a diminution in the frequency with which the legislature advanced new penal sanctions. Measures were approved in 1750, 1752 and 1756 relating to the frequently visited subjects of clandestine marriage and foreign military service; in 1755, reiterating the prohibition on Catholics serving as jurors; and, in 1759, extending for a further 11 years the incentives laid down in 1709 to encourage Catholic priests to convert.99 The subjects engaged with and the manner in which they were pursued was hardly consistent with Chesterfield’s claim that the mental horizon of Irish Protestants was fixed in 1689, but was consistent with their continuing belief in the wisdom of maintaining a comprehensive body of sanctions both to assure their protection, and to encourage Catholics to forsake erroneous and illiberal beliefs. Thus, while the authorities were content in 1749 to permit the importation of ‘popish books’, they examined closely such discoveries as were made to ensure that no ‘treasonable papers or books’ were being introduced.100 Similarly, non-registered priests, and those exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, did not function free of the threat of prosecution. Three Catholic bishops and one regular prior were subject to unwelcome attention in 1751, 1753, 1755 and 1756; while prosecutions were pursued against nonregistered clergy and members of the laity carrying arms without a licence. The fact that pardons were forthcoming in a number of such cases in 1752 suggests that the atmosphere was improving rapidly, but the underlying conviction that sustained the credibility and belief in the necessity of legal sanction was so deep rooted that no one seriously considered repealing any

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of the anti-Catholic laws approved over the preceding 60 years.101 There was a greater readiness, however, both to contemplate and to employ incentives rather than penalties. This was not new per se. It lay at the heart of the strategy adopted in 1703 to encourage the children of Catholic property-owners and, in 1709, to induce Catholic clergy to convert to the established church. It was given a new gloss in the late 1740s when measures were presented in 1747 and 1749 that would have permitted Catholic converts take leases for more than the 31 years prescribed by law in 1704, but both failed to progress beyond the Commons. The better known proposals put forward by the earl of Clanbrassill in 1755–6 and 1757–8, to grant legal status to all secular clergy who would swear an oath of allegiance were prompted by a comparable belief in the merits of a more liberal approach; in this instance the calculation was that the ‘8 or 10,000 regulars now subsisting here’ could finally be excluded, but this was still not enough to convince the conservativeminded to agree.102 Chief Baron Willes, who led opposition at the Irish Privy Council, maintained that Hamilton’s bill amounted to ‘an establishm[en]t of popery by a law, for this was not only to licence a present priest in each parish … it p[ro]vided for their succession’, which was a step too far.103 The fact that no comparable objections were raised a year later to the proposal to extend the duration of the bounty to converting Catholic priests underlined the continuing commitment to the original repressive vision the popery laws embodied. For five decades between 1710 and 1760, Irish Protestants adhered to the commitment that had informed their actions between 1695 and 1709 when the main anti-Catholic laws had been enacted. They had believed that the original laws were necessary for their protection, and this same conviction shaped the intermittent stream of refinements, modifications and additions forwarded during the reigns of the first two Georges. Indeed, they would have gone further, and imposed still more punitive penalties on Catholic clergy and on converts had the British Privy Council not acted as a moderating influence. Nonetheless, they succeeded both in expanding and refining the nature of the popery laws by approving a variety of new sanctions in respect of a host of matters previously incompletely or inadequately addressed between 1695 and 1709. In this they were assisted by the experience of applying the laws, which had highlighted their weaknesses as well as their strengths. The popery laws were certainly less than effective at inhibiting the Catholic Church, and it is significant that attempts made in the in the late 1750s to replace the harsh provisions of 1704 with a more realistic registration scheme touched directly on the aspect that had proved least successful. It is equally significant that these proposals were rejected. Indeed, the mood of the late 1750s offered no hint that the Protestant public would soon contemplate dismantling a system that had taken so much time and effort to create, and which a majority still believed was necessary.


Repealing the penal laws, 1760–1800 The changing character of the membership of the Irish parliament had a critical bearing on its preparedness to contemplate a different approach to interdenominational relations from the 1760s. As a result of the 1760 general election, the first in 33 years, a full 40 per cent of the membership of the Commons was new.104 The composition of the Lords changed more slowly, but the rapid increase in the size of the Irish peerage under George III, and the admission of new members to the reconstituted Privy Councils meant that these bodies too were willing to reconsider the wisdom and usefulness of the economic and religious sanctions against Catholics.105 This re-thinking was assisted by the transformation in the international context, which damaged Jacobitism beyond recovery, and by the willingness of the Catholic middle and upper classes, following the foundation in 1756 of the Catholic Committee, not only to disavow certain controversial tenets of ‘popery’, but also to profess loyalty to George III.106 Attitudinal change was also encouraged by the adoption by the Protestant population of Ireland of the culture of ‘improvement’, because this placed a premium on economic development, which the constraints on Catholics appeared to discourage. This was made clear when the courts determined in 1758–9 that Catholics who lent money to Protestants could not secure it against landed property because this was ‘contrary to the spirit of the popery laws’.107 In an attempt to remove this obstacle to economic activity, a mortgage bill permitting the provision of appropriate securities was presented to the Commons in 1762. It was the first of seven such measures proposed during the following eight sessions, but the most significant point about them is not that they failed (though this was obviously important), but that debate invariably focused, not on the merits of the specific measure, but on the rights and wrongs of the popery laws per se, and the advocates of retaining the laws were firmly in the ascendant. One of the loudest voices belonged to Thomas Le Hunt, MP for Newtownards, who maintained in 1764 that the ratification of a mortgage bill must undermine ‘the penal code, the inimitable contrivance of our ancestors to exclude the papists from all power and property, and to reclaim them from idolatry and heathenism’.108 Critics of the laws countered reasonably that ‘the whole [penal] code is defective and requires amendment’, but the moderation with which they expressed themselves in comparison with their opponents attested to the weakness of their position, which was demonstrated still more starkly in the division lobbies.109 It was also reflected in the routine way in which parliament continued to extend the time available to office-holders to meet the ‘qualification’ requirements provided for by the 1704 Popery Act, and by acts to encourage Catholics, lay and clerical, to convert.110 At the same time the advocates of reform were not without influence, and it is significant that efforts of the proponents of quarterage – the impost levied

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by Protestant corporations on Catholics and other non-freemen in return for affording them commercial and other rights – to secure statutory recognition for the charge also failed to impress. Quarterage was loathed by Catholics, who correctly perceived it as a badge of inferiority, but prized by Protestant corporations for whom it was a valuable source of revenue. Thus the effort to give it statutory authority was treated by Catholics as an attempt to impose another penal law. Four attempts to forward quarterage bills between 1763 and 1774 were denied.111 If this outcome suggested that neither supporters nor opponents of what were described increasingly as the penal laws possessed the numbers necessary to get their way, this fact caused the latter less concern since it maintained the status quo. Moreover, they had the satisfaction of knowing that Protestant opinion still adhered to the view that ‘the present popery laws were intended as a barrier and a defence against tyranny and oppression’.112 As result, when MPs and peers were invited in the early 1770s to agree a number of measures, the purport of which was that ‘papists’ would be allowed to take 90-year leases on cabins and threelives leases in towns, to encourage them to build ‘houses and stores in cities and towns corporate’, a reform which proponents maintained optimistically would encourage ‘papists to become Protestants’, they too failed to secure the required support.113 Indeed, the only positive result of more than a decade of activity was Robert French’s Bogland Act of 1772, empowering Catholics to take long leases on stretches of bog distant from urban centres.114 It was, by any standards, an eloquently modest return, for while some were willing to acknowledge not only ‘the cruelty of our laws against papists’ but also that ‘humanity and real advantage’ demanded their amelioration, the combination of conviction and apprehension that ensured no legislative breakthrough during the 1760s remained in the ascendant into the mid1770s.115 Thus, when Robert Jephson pronounced in committee on a bill to allow Catholics to take longer leases in the House of Commons in 1774, that ‘no penal laws should be suffered to subsist after the necessity of making them had ceased’, he was contradicted by James Dennis, the prime serjeant, who brought his audience back to 1689 to remind them ‘that the spirit of popery is evident by an act of King James … by which an hundred of the nobility and three thousand of the gentry of Ireland, who were Protestants were all attainted, and their lives and fortunes declared forfeited’.116 It was, many agreed, a timely reminder and a compelling reason why they could not possibly accede to any dilution of the penal laws. This certainly was the conclusion of Bishop Charles Agar of Cloyne. In 1773, he penned a nine-point protest against the mortgage bill for presentation to peers, in which he defended the laws ‘against papists’ as ‘the effect of the rebellions and treasons from time to time committed by them against the state’.117 He invoked theological as well as political objections to Catholic relief, grounded on ‘the intolerant principles of the popish religion and its enmity to the civil rights of mankind’. It was a view widely


supported in the press; the pseudonymous John Knox described ‘popery’ as ‘the most refined piece of earthly policy that ever was contrived to ensnare, pillage and enslave mankind’, while another writer deemed it a system ‘calculated chiefly to aggrandise the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the most avaricious and tyrannical the world ever saw’.118 Such sentiments assumed increasing importance as the debate on the merits of the penal laws developed, and justifications for their continuance based on historical events weakened in the face of claims that the retention of the laws not only legitimated persecution and intolerance, but also acted as ‘restraints on the honest, the virtuous, the industrious’.119 The latter weighed increasingly heavily following the ratification in 1774 of an oath of allegiance acceptable to Catholics, because it allowed individual Catholics to back up with personal commitments the increasingly voluble professions of loyalty emanating from the Catholic Committee.120 Yet it still did not convince those who believed that the penal laws were the only barrier between Protestants and destruction: The popery laws … stand as a true, fixed barrier to our religion and our liberties; remove them, and give Catholics a footing upon land, power will succeed, the freedom of elections will be deeply affected, and consequently the independency of parliament itself. The Protestant interest would decline.121 Given the conviction informing such statements, and the continuing disposition to pursue Catholics for carrying arms,122 it is unlikely that, left to its own devices, the Irish parliament would have approved a measure in 1778 shattering the structure of economic restrictions that had bound the Catholic population since 1704.123 The decisive factor was the conclusion in Whitehall that, as the international environment deteriorated, it was necessary to be assured of Irish Catholic loyalty. Irish Protestant opinion was far from convinced of the wisdom of such a step; ‘self-preservation’, many concluded, demanded that the penal laws not be repealed. Dozens of statements affirmed this impression. Scenes from Catholic history and quotations from Catholic theology, which rehearsed the traditional depiction of Catholicism as ‘inconsistent, heretical and idolatrous’ and Catholics as committed to effect ‘the most horrid cruelties and massacres on the persons of Protestants’ were published in the major news-sheets, but they were insufficient to hold back the tide of reform.124 Moreover, the 1778 Catholic Relief Act paved the way for still more concessions four years later. Saliently, this took place against a backdrop in which traditional Protestant suspicions were temporarily eclipsed as the optimism of the late 1770s and early 1780s that a new more trusting and tolerant era was imminent allowed advocates of reform to attain a degree of moral authority that enabled them to push through in 1782 two relief acts, removing most of the remaining economic and religious sanctions and easing restrictions on Catholic education.125

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It did not mean that the only sanctions remaining were political; the repeal of the penal disabilities in 1778 and 1782 was selective, but the penal era had well and truly yielded to an era of relief. Significantly, the trusting mood of the early 1780s was not capitalised on to create the cross-denominational polity some conceived possible in 1782. Religiously based suspicion, never entirely eclipsed, was reanimated in the mid-1780s when the question of admitting Catholics to the political process was mooted, and it acquired a still more vigorous ideological character when the impact of the Rightboys’ protest against the payment of tithes prompted the development of an ideological concept of ‘Protestant ascendancy’ founded on a denominationally exclusive political system and what remained of the penal laws.126 It also sustained a strong strand of opposition when in the early 1790s the British government deemed it strategically advantageous once more to concede Catholic relief. The point was made in 1792 when the issue of Catholic enfranchisement was raised that England would have ‘no friends’ in Ireland with which to sustain its influence there if it agreed to ‘the repeal of the penal code’, but this wilfully overlooked the fact that the government did not contemplate engaging in the complete and unconditional repeal of what remained of that much attenuated corpus of law.127 Many Irish Protestants were far from comforted when it emerged that the line was to be drawn at enfranchisement, which was restored to Catholics in 1793, since of the original major restrictions this left in being only the ban on Catholics sitting in parliament. As advocates of relief (who had seized the initiative in the public sphere)128 pointed out, there were many other, smaller but significant, barriers in the way of Catholics, while the failure of many corporations to admit Catholics to membership (and thus to the right to vote) in the aftermath of the 1793 legislation also rankled.129 Irish Protestants, by contrast, were of the opinion that they had given all they could, consistent with the security of the constitution, as the Protestant freemen and freeholders of Dublin made clear in the winter of 1795: The Roman Catholic subjects of Ireland, as the law now stands, enjoy a fuller toleration of their religion, and a much greater measure of civil liberty than the most favoured subjects of any government in Europe, those of the British Empire excepted … they enjoy full as great a measure, both of religious and civil liberty, as any Protestant state can prudently or safely grant to subjects, who formally deny the supremacy of the state in ecclesiastical affairs.130 The Irish administration, which accepted this analysis, contrived during the late 1790s to uphold the ‘Protestant constitution in church and state’, as the expanding constituency of ultra-Protestants demanded, by making opposition to Catholic relief ‘a government question’.131 The 1798 rebellion


suggested that this constitutional arrangement could not long be sustained, and it was thus little surprise when the option of a legislative union was offered that some seized upon it as an opportunity to ‘prevent … the Roman Catholics from stealing into parliament, which in time they will do, if the laws are not repealed that gave them too much liberty’.132 This unenthusiastic supporter of an Anglo-Irish union would clearly have welcomed the restoration of some at least of the penal laws, but there was simply no going back. Ironically, the skill with which the advocates of continued Protestant ascendancy capitalised on the changed political environment of the early nineteenth century ensured that the prohibition on Catholics sitting in parliament remained for a further three decades, but this battle was fought out, not within the composite state of Britain and Ireland, but within the new United Kingdom that came into being in 1801.133

Conclusion One of the more striking revelations of this exploration of the parliamentary history of the legal sanctions imposed on Irish Catholics in the eighteenth century is the extent to which it was influenced by English political and strategic considerations. This was manifest from the outset when Catholics were effectively precluded from sitting in the Irish legislature by an act of the English parliament. Subsequently, during the 1690s, ministers used the powers provided by Poynings’ Law not only to amend and respite legislation arising with the Irish parliament but also actively to promote certain measures.134 Obliged, once the heads of bills process was embedded, to work more specifically within the parameters of Poynings’ Law, the British Privy Council routinely intervened to modify and amend bills received from Ireland; the scale of their interventions ranging from modest syntactical clarifications to the full clauses introduced in 1703–4. Some decades later, when interest in England in penalising Catholics had eased, the British Privy Council used the same powers either to moderate or, in the case of particularly draconian proposals in 1719 and 1723, to neutralise them. The strength of Irish Protestant fears was too great to dissuade them from securing additional disabilities during the reign of George II, but in practice the Irish parliament was confined in what it could do by the disinclination of the British council to accede to more sanctions, and there are grounds for suggesting that by 1750 the Irish parliament was unwilling to promote new anti-Catholic measures because they apprehended their likely rejection in England. This effectively hastened the end of the era of making penal legislation, and prepared the way, two decades later, for the commencement of the dismantling of the penal edifice. Here too ministers played a crucial role in removing the economic restrictions in 1778, in weakening the political disabilities in 1793 and, finally in deciding to retain the ban on Catholics sitting in parliament. If this serves to confirm the conclusion provided by

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a study of the application of Poynings’ Law to the process of lawmaking in eighteenth-century Ireland, that the nature of the political relationship that bound Britain and Ireland was intrinsically colonial, it also bears out the findings of the same study that this operated with a flexibility that allowed Irish Protestants enormous influence over the laws that were made. Indeed, once what was proposed stayed within acceptable parameters it was unlikely to attract negative attention.135 Although Protestants in Britain and Ireland were at one in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in perceiving the necessity of antiCatholic measures, most of what became law took its rise in Ireland; it was Irish Protestants, initially through the medium of the Irish Privy Council, who drafted the initial laws, and agreed with their English equivalent as to the form in which they would be presented to the Irish parliament. Yet the circumstances whereby this was made possible – the ‘compromise’ of 1695 – also provided the House of Commons with the means directly to shape the laws that applied in Ireland. By using the heads of bill process, they were able to inaugurate ambitious new restrictions, introduced with the specific purpose of enfeebling the Catholic Church. The influence of the Irish legislature appreciated during the reign of Queen Anne, when the pattern of parliamentary government that operated for most of the eighteenth century assumed its familiar shape. As a result, the corpus of anti-Catholic law was expanded and extended, though the English/British Privy Council ensured these sanctions were kept within reasonable proportions. This situation persisted until the second half of the eighteenth century, when the combination of loss of belief in the efficacy of repression, a rising acceptance of toleration, a new political generation and the tactical skill of the Catholic Committee, transformed the political environment. However, the evidence suggests that Irish Protestants remained strongly attached to the penal laws, for while it was suggested that they should ‘remain in terrorem only’,136 the strong attachment to the ban on Catholics voting, bearing arms, practising the law, among the other sanctions strictly applied, indicates that this was a practical impossibility. This also explains why there was strong and vocal resistance to the repeal of all but a handful of anti-Catholic sanctions, and why the most vigorous strand of Protestant opinion at the end of the century was ultra-Protestantism, which favoured the restoration of at least some of the laws that had been repealed.137 The implications are clear. The fact that the English/British Privy Council could and did intervene so decisively with important Irish legislation such as the penal laws indicates that within the composite monarchy of Britain and Ireland, the metropolitan power, Britain, possessed the powers to shape the legislation that applied to the smaller, subordinate kingdom. However, Ireland’s position was not that of a powerless dependency, as the laws against Catholics also attest. That this complex arrangement existed at all was due in large part to the long and close interaction of the two kingdoms, and


the convoluted legal and administrative processes defining the Anglo-Irish nexus. In this respect, Ireland’s relationship with Britain bears comparison with that which bound Austria and Hungary, where a similarly intricate and convoluted history obtained.138 Moreover, it is apparent in both cases that the practical requirements of government and the relative dispensation of political influence in both jurisdictions precluded the initiation either of new, or more clear-cut arrangements because they were likely to make things worse rather than better, as the failed experiment in an Anglo-Irish union in the 1650s demonstrated. To be sure, Poynings’ Law did make for a serpentine method of legislating and, in the economic domain at least, may have advantaged English over Irish interests, but it still proved an effective way of allowing Ireland to make law while assuring ministers a direct input. All told, the legislation known as the penal laws constitutes a small proportion of the total number of bills given the royal assent in Ireland between 1692 and 1800. However, when taken together with the still larger number of failed legislative initiatives, they are illuminating of the extent to which antiCatholicism shaped the vision Irish Protestants possessed for the kingdom of Ireland. They were not unique in this. Anti-Catholicism also exerted an important influence on the law made in Britain and in Britain’s transatlantic colonies. What is apparent, however, is that the sanctions upon which antiCatholicism in Ireland relied were harsher and applied with greater intensity, with greater impact and for longer. This may reasonably be ascribed to the demographic, historical and political situation of the Protestant interest in Ireland, but the particular configuration of the penal laws was a product of the political relationship and the lawmaking process in which Britain and Ireland were inextricably bound.

Notes 1. Cork Gazette, 19 Sept. 1792. 2. Richard Woodward, The Present State of the Church of Ireland … (7th edn, London, 1787), pp. 14–15 (original emphasis); James Kelly, ‘The Genesis of Protestant Ascendancy: The Rightboy Disturbances of the 1780s and their Impact upon Protestant Opinion’ in Gerard O’Brien (ed.), Parliament, Politics and People: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Irish History (Dublin, 1987), pp. 114–17. 3. Dublin Morning Post, 2 Oct. 1784. 4. Woodward, Present State of the Church of Ireland, p. 5; Cork Gazette, 19 Sept. 1792. 5. The use of the term ‘popery laws’ and its analogues ‘papist’, and ‘popish’ or ‘papish’, underlines the extent to which Protestant unease with Catholicism was personified in the pope (for examples, see Dublin Daily Post, 24 May 1740; R. Taylor to Mr. Colcot, 12 Jan. 1724 (NAI, Calendar of miscellaneous letters and papers before 1760, f. 155); Freeman’s Journal, 10 Mar. 1774). Significantly, those who aspired to be more respectful employed the term ‘Roman Catholic’, though this was little used until the 1770s when the realisation that Catholics deemed ‘papist’ ‘a term of reproach’ encouraged its discontinuance (Elizabeth Fagan to Lord Fitzwilliam, 20 Nov. 1762 (NAI, Pembroke estate papers, 97/46/1/2/8/44);

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6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

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Freeman’s Jnl, 10 Mar. 1774, 26 Jan. 1782). This elicited a brief but revealing debate on the respective merits of the terms ‘Roman Catholic’, ‘Romanist’, and ‘Catholic’. The more notable outcome from the perspective of the history of legislation was the adoption of the term ‘penal laws’, which had long been employed in England to describe the legal disabilities applied to Catholics, Jews, Quakers and others (for example, A summary of the penal laws relating to nonjurors, papists, popish recusants, and nonconformists … (London, 1716)) and in Ireland in a generic fashion to describe a still wider range of legislation, to apply only to the disabilities against Catholics. The term ‘penal laws’ was used in 1778 and in 1782 in the public debate on the implications of the relief measures proposed in those years in contradistinction to the term ‘popery laws’, or ‘old popery laws’ (Freeman’s Jnl, 25 June 1778, 9 Feb. 1782; James Kelly (ed.), Proceedings of the Irish House of Lords, 1771–1800 (3 vols, Dublin, 2008), i, 78). Significantly, opponents of relief were disinclined to support the change in terminology on the grounds that such language presented a false image of an implacably repressive institution, and persisted in employing the term ‘popery laws’ and ‘papist’. See James Kelly, Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland 1660–1800 (Dublin, 2007) for a detailed analysis. J. F. Bosher, ‘The Franco-Catholic Danger’ in History, lxxix (1994), pp. 6–7; Clement Fatovic, ‘The Anti-Catholic Roots of Liberal and Republican Conceptions of Freedom in English Political Thought’ in Journal of the History of Ideas, lxvi (2005), pp. 43–4; Raymond Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots and their Refuge (Brighton, 2005). See J. G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland 1685–1691 (London, 1969); John Childs, The Williamite Wars in Ireland (London, 2007). Dublin Gazette, 23 Mar. 1708. Cited in R. E. Burns, ‘The Irish Popery Laws: A Study of Eighteenth Century Legislation and Behavior’, in Review of Politics, xxiv (1962), pp. 487–8. See J. G. Simms, The Jacobite Parliament of 1689 (Dundalk, 1966). James Kelly, ‘The Glorious and Immortal Memory: Commemoration and Protestant Identity in Ireland, 1660–1800’ in RIA Proc., xciv (1994), sect. C, pp. 29–30; Toby Barnard, ‘The uses of 23 October 1641 and Irish Protestant celebrations’ in idem, Irish Protestant Ascents and Descents, 1641–1770 (Dublin, 2004), pp. 111–42. Quoted in James Kelly, ‘We were all to have been massacred: Irish Protestants and the experience of rebellion’ in David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective (Dublin, 2003), pp. 314–15; Dublin Intelligence, 20 Aug. 1709. See above, n. 12. Fatovic, ‘Anti-Catholic roots’, pp. 39–40, 45–9. It has been observed that ‘antipopery feeling was the glue that held together the various constituencies’ that constituted English Protestantism (Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, 1986), pp. 140–1). John Miller, Popery and Politics in England, 1660–1688 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 51–9 (Eng.); 25 Chas II, c. 2 (Eng.); 30 Chas II, c. 2 (Eng.); 29 Chas II, c. 9 (Eng.). Proclamation (Eng.), 9 Apr. 1663. Proclamations, 27 Oct. 1673, 27 Apr. 1674, 16 Oct., 6 Nov. 1678. Proclamations, 8 Nov. 1673, 2 Nov. 12 Dec. 1678, 29 Nov. 1680. Proclamation, 20 Nov. 1678. 1 Will. & Mary, c.1, 6, 9, 15 (Eng.). 3 Will. & Mary, c. 2 (Eng.).

72 Sustaining a Confessional State 23. For the preparations for the 1692 parliament see Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 48–60. 24. Proclamations, 15 Apr. 1691, 4 Feb. 1692, 23 Apr. 1694. The right to bear arms was confined, as the proclamation of 4 Feb. 1692 stated, to ‘noblemen and such gentlemen who are housekeepers, and have estates of freehold of one hundred pounds a year’ (see A List of Persons to whom Licences … 22 February 1691/2 [Dublin, 1691/2]). 25. Sir John Gilbert (ed.), Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin (19 vols, Dublin, 1888–1944), v, 509, vi, 130–31, 184, 224, 231; The Council Book of the Corporation of the City of Cork, ed. Richard Caulfield (Guildford, 1876), pp. 214, 215, 266, 267; Cathaldus Giblin (ed.), ‘Catalogue of Material of Irish Interest in the Collection Nunziatura di Fiandra, Vatican Archives: Part 3’ in Collectanea Hibernica, iv (1961), p. 47. 26. See James McGuire, ‘The Irish Parliament of 1692’ in Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (eds), Penal Era and Golden Age: Essays in Irish History 1690–1800 (Belfast, 1979), pp. 1–31; Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 60–9. 27. 3 Will. & Mary, c. 2, §§ 11–13 (Eng.). 28. See C. I. McGrath, The Making of the Eighteenth-Century Irish Constitution: Government, Parliament and the Revenue (Dublin, 2000), ch. 3; Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 69–79. 29. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 11–12. 30. Ibid., pp. 71–2; C. I. McGrath, ‘Securing the Protestant Interest: Policy, Politics and Parliament in Ireland, 1690–95’ (MA thesis, UCD, 1991), pp. 44–5; TNA, PRO, PC 2/76, ff. 103, 104–105; PC 4/1, ff. 217–18, 223, 224. 31. McGrath, ‘Securing the Protestant interest’, pp. 185–6. 32. J. G. Simms, ‘The Bishops’ Banishment Act of 1697’ in IHS, xvii, no. 66 (Sept. 1970), pp. 185–99; TNA, PRO, PC 2/77, ff. 6, 22–3; Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 76–7. 33. Lords justices and council (Ire.) to lords justices (Eng.), 3 Aug. 1697 (Cal. SP Dom, 1697, pp. 283–4); Simms, ‘Bishops’ Banishment Act’, pp. 189–90; 9 Will. III, c. 1: Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 85, 90. 34. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 84–5. The sixth article of the treaty sought to bring to an end continuing ‘animosities’ by discouraging legal actions arising out of losses and injuries incurred during the Jacobite war. 35. Henry Parnell, A History of the Penal Laws (Dublin, 1808), p. 16; Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 88–91; lords justices to earl of Shrewsbury, 12 July 1697, to William Blathwayt, 12 July 1697 (NAI, Irish correspondence 1697–1798, MS 2447, ff. 2–5); James Vernon to [——], 27 July 1697 (Cal. SP, Dom., 1697, p. 268); minutes of proceedings of lords justices, 27 July 1697 (ibid.); marquess of Winchester to Shrewsbury, 26 June 1697 (TNA, PRO, SP 67/2 f. 88; HMC, Buccleuch Mss, ii, 484); earl of Galway to Shrewsbury, 29 June 1697 (HMC, Buccleuch Mss, ii, 485); Shrewsbury to Blathwayt, 27 July 1697, to lords justices, 27 July 1697, to John Methuen, 27 July 1697 (HMC, Buccleuch Mss, ii, 508–10). 36. Unless otherwise stated, information on legislation, both general and specific, is from the Irish Legislation Database (www.qub.ac.uk/ild). 37. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, p. 97; Winchester to Shrewsbury, 2 Dec. 1697 (HMC, Buccleuch Mss, ii, 585). The bill became law in 1698 (McGrath, Irish Constitution, p. 131). 38. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, p. 98; TNA, PRO, PC 2/77, ff. 100, 105; Robert Yard to William Blathwayt, 29 July 1698 (Yale Univ., Beinecke Lib., Osborn coll., Blathwayt papers, box 20). 39. 7 Will. III, c. 2; 11 Will. III, c. 4 (Eng.).

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40. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 122–6; Edward Southwell to Richard Warre, 25 Sept. 1703 (Cal. SP, Dom., 1703–4, p. 133); Northey to Warre, 5 Oct. 1703 (ibid., p. 145); Northey to [earl of Nottingham], 16 Oct. 1703 (ibid., p. 160); draft bill to prevent the further growth of popery (ibid., pp. 182–3); J. G. Simms, ‘The Making of a Penal Law (2 Anne. c.6), 1703–4’ in IHS, xii, no. 46 (Sept. 1960), pp. 107–9. 41. The amendments are in TNA, PRO, PC 2/80 ff. 8–21; S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992), p. 273; D. W. Hayton, ‘Exclusion, Conformity and Parliamentary Representation: The Impact of the Sacramental Test on Irish Dissenting Politics’ in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The Politics of Irish Dissent 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1997), p. 54. 42. William Wogan to Edward Southwell, 29 Jan. 1704 (BL, Southwell papers, Add. MS 37673, f. 53). 43. Cork Council Bk, ed. Caulfield, p. 311. 44. 4 Anne, c. 2 (popish clergy registration act); 6 Anne, c. 6 (solicitors); 8 Anne, c. 3 (further growth of popery amending act). 45. TNA, PRO, PC 2/81, ff. 438–9, 443, 445, 448, 451–2, 453, 456; D. W. Hayton, ‘Ireland and the English Ministers, 1707–16’ (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford Univ., 1975), p. 132; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, pp. 276–7. 46. 8 Anne c. 3. 47. 4 Anne c. 2 (clergy); 6 Anne c. 6 (solicitors). 48. Proclamation, 3 Jan. 1698; Colum Kenny, ‘The Exclusion of Catholics from the Legal Profession in Ireland’ in IHS, xxv, no. 100 (Nov. 1987), pp. 352–3; Cal. Anc. Recs Dublin, ed. Gilbert, vi, 342, 379–80; Cork Council Bk, ed. Caulfield, p. 319. 49. Dublin Gazette, 27 Mar. 1708. 50. Ibid., 23 Mar. 1708; Flying Post, 24 Mar. 1708; Cork Council Bk, ed. Caulfield, p. 328; Cal. Anc. Recs Dublin, ed. Gilbert, vi, 417–18. 51. James Kelly, ‘The Impact of the Penal Laws’ in James Kelly and Dáire Keogh (eds), History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin (Dublin, 2000), pp. 149–50. 52. Bp of Elphin to Grimaldi, Dec. 1709, Fr French to [——], 11 Feb. 1710 (Cathaldus Giblin (ed.), ‘Catalogue of Material of Irish Interest in the Collection Nunziatura di Fiandra, Vatican Archives: Part 4’ in Collectanea Hibernica, v (1962), pp. 9, 11). 53. Bp of Elphin to Grimaldi, Dec. 1709, Grimaldi to Laolucci, 15 May 1710 (ibid., pp. 9, 20). 54. Dublin Intelligence, 1 July 1710. 55. Ibid., 27 Sept. 1712. For the context see Hugh Fenning, ‘The Archbishops of Dublin, 1693–1786’ in Kelly and Keogh (eds), Catholic Dioc. Dublin, p. 179. 56. Cal. Anc. Recs Dublin, ed. Gilbert, vi, 342; order, 9 Mar. 1712 (NAI, military entrybook 1711–13, MS 253, f. 129); proclamation, 11 July 1712. 57. Proclamations, 19 Nov. 1711, 18 Mar. 1713; An Alphabetical List of the Names of All Such Persons of the Popish Religion within the Kingdom of Ireland, who have Licenses to Carry Arms (Dublin, 1713). 58. John Brown, a Catholic who was prosecuted for this offence, was sentenced in 1710, as the law of 1695 directed, to a £30 fine and one year in prison (BL, Irish petitions 1711–13, Add. MS 38160, ff. 48–9). 59. Proclamation, 7 Aug. 1714. 60. Proclamations, 2 Feb. 1713, 8 Feb., 28 May 1714, 23 Nov. 1715. 61. See, inter alia, 7 and 8 Will. III, c. 27 (Eng.); 11 Will. III, c. 4 (Eng.); 13 & 14 Will. III, c. 3 (Eng.); 13 & 14 Will. III, c. 6 (Eng.); 6 Anne, c. 67 (Eng.). The respective Treason Acts are 1 Anne, stat. 2, c. 21 (Eng.), and 2 Anne, c. 5. 62. See below, pp. 109–10.

74 Sustaining a Confessional State 63. Petition of lord mayor, sheriffs and commons of Dublin to lords justices [June 1715], lords justices to Sunderland, 28 June 1715 (NAI, Irish correspondence 1697–1798, MS 2447, ff. 169–70); lords justices to mayors, sheriffs et al., 14, 24 Jan. 1716 (NAI, Calendar of misc. letters and papers before 1760, f. 109); Lords Justices’ Order, 23 Feb. 1716; proclamation, 28 May 1714; Cal. Anc. Recs Dublin, ed. Gilbert, vi, 545–7; Cork Council Bk, ed. Caulfield, p. 379. The English Act directing that Catholics could not own horses worth £5 was 1 Will. & Mary, c.15 (Eng.); officials were authorised to ‘search for and seize horses’ in Catholic possession in 1707 (6 Anne, c. 67 (Eng.)). 64. Cork Council Bk, ed. Caulfield, p. 335. 65. Proclamation, 8 Oct. 1716; The Postman and the Historical Account, 13 Apr. 1719. 66. Proclamation, 3 Nov. 1715; The Postman and the Historical Account, 13 Apr. 1719; 4 Geo. I, c. 15 (Galway); 4 Geo. I, c. 16 (Kilkenny). 67. The Postman and the Historical Account, 13 Apr. 1719. 68. TNA, PRO, PC 2/86, f. 334; William Burke, Irish Priests in the Penal Times, 1660–1760 (Waterford, 1914), p. 200; Patrick Fagan, Catholics in a Protestant Country (Dublin, 1998), pp. 59–60; Edward Webster to Charles Delafaye, 22 Sept., 29 Oct., duke of Bolton to James Craggs, 31 Oct., 3 Nov. 1719 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/378); Solid Reasons Humbly Offer’d to the Consideration of the Public, for Castrating Physicians, Quack-Doctors etc. (Dublin, 1725). 69. 8 Geo. I, c. 9. 70. Harding’s Impartial Newsletter, 7 Apr. 1722; TNA, PRO, PC 2/88, ff. 415–16, 433; Patrick Fagan, An Irish Bishop in Penal Times: The Chequered Career of Sylvester Lloyd (Dublin, 1993), pp. 47–52; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, pp. 282–4; Abp King to Edward Southwell, 2, 26 Dec. 1723, 11 Jan. 1724 (TCD, King letterbks, MS 2537, ff 29, 43, 55); duke of Grafton to Lord Carteret, 15 Nov. 1723 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/382); Bp Nicolson to Abp Wake, 19 Nov., 14 Dec. 1723 (Dublin City Lib. and Archive, Wake papers, MS 27, ff. 330–31, 332); Lord Townshend to Horatio Walpole, 25 Dec.–5 Jan. 1723–4 (BL, Townshend papers, Add. MS 37634, ff. 201–204). 71. Bp Nicolson to Abp Wake, 14 Dec. 1723 (Dublin City Library and Archive, MS 27, f. 332). 72. Dublin Courant, 24 July 1720; Harding’s Impartial Newsletter, 30 Mar. 1723; The Speech of the Revd Father, the Advocate for the Jesuits of Thorn in the High Court of Chancery of Poland, Demanding Justice against the Protestants of the said City upon Account of the Late Tumult There (Dublin, 1725). 73. Resolutions of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled upon the Present State of Popery in this Kingdom (Dublin, 1729). 74. 12 Geo. I, c. 3 (marriage); 1 Geo. II, c. 20 (barristers); 7 Geo. II, c. 5 (solicitors). 75. 2 Anne, c. 6, § 24; 2 Geo.I, c. 19, § 7; 1 Geo. II, c. 9, § 7. 76. TNA, PRO, PC 2/89, ff. 141, 142, 152; abstract of an act, Feb. 1725 (BL, Southwell papers, Add. MS 34777, f. 86); Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, p. 290. 77. TNA, PRO, PC 2/90, ff. 52, 68; PC 2/91, ff. 527–30, 542, 571, 595–6; PC 2/92, ff. 327, 334, 337; PC 2/98, ff. 110, 114, 139; law officers’ report, 20 Feb. 1734 (ibid., PC 1/5/16, f.2). 78. 1 Geo. II, c. 9; TNA, PRO, PC 2/90 ff. 257, 267–8, 276–8. In 1746 the British Privy Council introduced an amendment to an Irish election measure requiring voters to register six months before an election (19 Geo. II, c. 11; TNA, PRO, PC 2/99, ff. 372, 404–5, 411–13). 79. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, p. 229.

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80. 9 Geo. II, c. 9; TNA, PRO, PC 2/93 ff. 325, 332–3, 352, 385–6, 396–7; 19 Geo. II, c. 13; TNA, PRO, PC 2/99, ff. 326, 349, 353–5; 23 Geo. II, c. 10; TNA, PRO, PC 2/101, ff. 459, 473–4, 475–8. 81. See Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1986), ch. 1; Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England: A Political and Social Study (Manchester, 1993), ch. 4. 82. Dublin Courant, 19 May 1722. 83. Abp Boulter to Bp Gibson, 2 Jan. 1729/30 (Letters written by His Excellency Hugh Boulter … (2 vols, Dublin, 1770), i, 276). 84. Quoted in Patrick McNally, Parties, Patriots and Undertakers: Parliamentary Politics in Early Hanoverian Ireland (Dublin, 1997), p. 21. 85. John Bowes to George Dodington, 21 Apr. 1735 (HMC, Various Colls, vi, 63). 86. Dublin Gazette, 19 Dec. 1732, 13 Apr. 1733; Dublin Evening Post, 21 July 1733; Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 19, 22 Jan., 2 Feb 1734; Abp of Cashel to papal nuncio, 12 Apr. 1734 (Cathaldus Giblin (ed.), ‘Catalogue of Material of Irish Interest in the Collection Nunziatura di Fiandra, Vatican Archives: Part 5’ in Collectanea Hibernica, ix (1966), p. 40); L. M. Cullen, ‘The Blackwater Catholics and Cork Society and Politics in the Eighteenth Century’ in Patrick O’Flanagan and C. G. Buttimer (eds), Cork: History and Society (Dublin, 1993), pp. 560–6. 87. 7 Geo. II, c. 5 (solicitors); 7 Geo. II, c. 6 (converts). 88. Dublin Daily Advertiser, 6 Nov. 1736; NAI, Calendar of presentments: 1689–1713, f. 246; minutes of revenue commissioners (Ire.), 25 Aug. 1732 (TNA, PRO, CUST 1/24, f. 316); Pue’s Occurrences, 7 Aug., 9 Oct., 17 Nov. 1739; Faulkner’s Dublin Jnl, 8 Sept. 1739; 11 Geo. III, c. 7. 89. Dublin Gazette, 24 Nov. 1739. 90. Cal. Anc. Recs Dublin, ed. Gilbert, viii, 359; Faulkner’s Dublin Jnl, 12 Jan., 20 May 1740. 91. Mathew to Fitzwilliam, 15 Dec. 1739 (NAI, Pembroke estate papers, 97/46/2/2/4/11); 13 Geo. II, c. 6. 92. Mathew to Fitzwilliam, 20 Mar. 1740 (NAI, Pembroke estate papers, 97/46/2/2/4/14). 93. 19 Geo. II, c. 7 (foreign service); 19 Geo. II, c. 13 (marriage). An earlier measure to prevent interdenominational marriage had failed in 1743. 94. 19 Geo. II, c. 11, §§ 4, 7; 21 Geo. II, c. 10, § 3; Edward Weston to Sir Robert Wilmot, 17 Feb. 1749 (PRONI, Wilmot papers, T/3019/1491). 95. Weston to Wilmot, 6 Mar. 1750 (ibid., T/3019/1504). 96. Dublin Courant, 26 July 1746; Bp MacDonogh to Fr Patrick Brullaghan, 19 Feb. 1745 (Patrick Fagan (ed.), Ireland in the Stuart Papers (2 vols, Dublin, 1995), ii, 23); Dublin Courant, 19 Apr. 1746. Prosecutions were also pursued against Catholics practising in the law who had not subscribed to the appropriate oaths: Pue’s Occurrences, 23 Feb. 1748. 97. Faulkner’s Dublin Jnl, 8, 12, 15 Oct. 1745. 98. Patrick Fagan, Divided Loyalties: The Question of an Oath for Irish Catholics in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1997), pp. 78–9. 99. 23 Geo. II, c. 10 (marriage); 25 Geo. II, c. 12 (foreign service); 29 Geo. II, c. 5 (foreign service); 29 Geo. II, c. 6 (jurors); 31 Geo. II, c. 9 (converts). 100. Minutes of revenue commissioners (Ire.), 13 Sept. 1749 (TNA, PRO, CUST 1/47, f. 111); James Kelly, ‘Regulating Print: The State and the Control of Print in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xxiii (2008), pp. 150–1.

76 Sustaining a Confessional State 101. Dublin Courant, 10 Dec. 1751; NAI, Calendar of presentments 1689–1813, ff. 57, 58, 126; Pue’s Occurrences, 17 Mar. 1752; Universal Advertiser, 27 Apr. 1754; Bp Dunne to Lady Lismore, 18 Oct. 1753 (Fagan (ed.), Stuart Papers, ii, 175–6); an account of fiants, 1751–2, 10 Apr., 20 May 1752 (Yale Univ., Beinecke Lib., Osborn coll., Southwell papers, box 3). 102. Henry Seymour Conway to Wilmot, 3 Jan. 1756 (PRONI, Wilmot papers, T/3019/2740). 103. Edward Willes, legal and political reminiscences, 1757–8 (Warwickshire RO, Willes papers 2, pp. 37–42) 104. Public Gazette, 25 Aug. 1761, cited in J. P. Day, ‘The Catholic Question in the Irish Parliament, 1760–82’ (MA thesis, UCD, 1973), p. 46. 105. See J. G. McCoy, ‘Court Identity in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Ireland: An Examination of Political Culture’ (MA thesis, NUI Maynooth, 1990), ch. 3. 106. Thomas Bartlett, The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question, 1690–1830 (Dublin, 1992). 107. Gorges Edmond Howard, Special Cases on the Popery Laws (Dublin, 1775), pp. 294, 314–15. 108. Cited in Day, ‘Catholic Question’, p. 61. 109. Cited in ibid., p. 62. 110. In all 16 measures fitting this description became law between 1761 and 1782; they comprised 12 acts ‘for allowing further time to persons in office to qualify themselves pursuant to the act to prevent the further growth of popery’ (1 Geo. III, c.4; 3 Geo. III, c.3; 5 Geo. III, c.11; 7 Geo. III c.16; 11 Geo. III, c.27; 11 & 12 Geo. III, c.29; 13 & 14 Geo. III, c.13; 15 & 16 Geo. III, c.5; 17 & 18 Geo. III, c.5; 19 & 20 Geo. III, c.28; 21 & 22 Geo. III, c.7); two measures for ‘quieting possession’, which include provisions ‘for giving time to converts from popery to perform the requisites of conformity’ (3 Geo. III, c.26; 13 & 14 Geo. III, c.25), and two acts appertaining to the maintenance of convert priests (11 & 12 Geo. III, c.27; 19 & 20 Geo. III, c.39). 111. See Maureen Wall, ‘The Catholics of the Towns and the Quarterage Dispute in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in eadem, Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Gerard O’Brien (Dublin, 1989), pp. 61–72. 112. See Hibernian Journal, 14 Feb. 1774; Gentleman’s Magazine, Sept. 1763, p. 535. 113. CJI (3rd edn), viii, 457; ix, 77; Day, ‘Catholic Question’, pp. 86–7. 114. 11 & 12 Geo. III, c. 21. 115. Edward Smith to Ld Townshend, [1770–71] (Yale Univ., Beinecke Lib., Osborn coll., Smith letters, c. 41, no. 62). See also the speech by Luke Gardiner in the Commons on 11 Feb. 1774 (Hibernian Jnl, 15 Feb. 1774). 116. Freeman’s Jnl, 15 Feb. 1774; CJI, ix, 92. 117. Draft protest by Agar, [17 Dec. 1773] (PRONI, Normanton papers, T/3719/M/5). 118. Ibid.; Freeman’s Jnl, 3, 10 Mar. 1774. 119. Freeman’s Jnl, 27 Mar. 1777, 9 Feb. 1782. 120. Ibid.; Peter O’Dwyer, The Irish Carmelites … (Dublin, 1988), p. 155. 121. Freeman’s Jnl, 3 Mar. 1774. 122. For examples, see Tuckey’s Cork Remembrancer, p.166; Hibernian Jnl, 22 Feb. 1775, 19 Mar. 1777; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 30 Aug. 1775; Freeman’s Jnl, 10 Apr. 1781, 6 Apr. 1782. 123. R. E. Burns, ‘The Catholic Relief Act in Ireland, 1778’ in Church History, xxxii (1962), pp. 181–207; Bartlett, Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation, pp. 82–92. 124. Freeman’s Jnl, 25, 27 June 1778.

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125. James Kelly, ‘Interdenominational Relations and Religious Toleration in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The “Paper War” of 1786–88’ in EighteenthCentury Ireland, iii (1988), pp. 41–3; 22 Geo. III, c. 24 (relief); 22 Geo. III, c. 62 (education). 126. Kelly, ‘Interdenominational Relations and Religious Toleration in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland’, pp. 44–67; idem, ‘Conservative Protestant Political Thought in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in S. J. Connolly (ed.), Political Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 185–221. 127. Westmorland to Pitt, 24 Nov., 14 Dec. 1792 (NAI, Westmorland papers, 2/4, ff. 28–30, 91). 128. As instanced by the commentary in 1792–5 in Hibernian Jnl, Clonmel Gazette and Cork Gazette. 129. Hibernian Jnl, 30 Apr., 26 Nov. 1794; Cork Gazette, 19, 23 Oct. 1793; Clonmel Gazette, 5 Oct. 1793, 18 Jan, 1794. 130. Hibernian Jnl, 2 Feb. 1795. The freemen and freeholders also maintained that the demand of Catholics for ‘the total repeal of the penal and restrictive laws affecting the Catholics of Ireland … would ensure the total destruction and subversion of the present constitution in church and state’. 131. Memo. by Lord Clements, c. 17 June 1796 (NLI, Killadoon papers, MS 36054/1). 132. Duke Crofton to Clements, 10 Feb. 1799 (ibid.). 133. James Kelly, Sir Richard Musgrave, 1746–1818: Ultra-Protestant Ideologue (Dublin, 2009), p. 151 et seq. 134. See Kelly, Poynings’ Law, ch. 2. 135. Ibid., pp. 361–2. 136. Freeman’s Jnl, 27 Mar. 1777. 137. Kelly, Musgrave; Allan Blackstock, Loyalism in Ireland 1789–1829 (Woodbridge, 2007). 138. See below, pp. 204–20.

3 Parliament and the Established Church: Reform and Reaction D. W. Hayton

In 1738 an English clergyman, William Preston, travelled to Ireland to settle himself in comfort and dignity as rector and vicar of the parish of Tullow in County Carlow. Of Ireland he knew little; of County Carlow nothing. After coming down from Oxford, Preston had spent two years as a tutor with the Southwell family near Bristol, and a further two years as a curate in Hertfordshire.1 His luck turned when Tullow fell vacant and the proprietor of the advowson, the absentee Lord Arran, asked the Southwells for a recommendation. The rectory must have seemed a plum, for it had been much envied when the previous incumbent had been installed.2 However, Preston’s apparent good fortune proved a mirage. At his very first step in Dublin he ran into trouble. Bishop Edward Synge of Ferns, his diocesan, found fault with the documentation and refused to institute. Arran, he declared, could only appoint to the rectory; the vicarage was a distinct ‘piece of preferment’ in the bishop’s own collation.3 Preston was sent to Synge’s vicar-general, who raised a further difficulty: the name of the parish had been misspelled. Fortunately, Southwell’s friend Marmaduke Coghill, a civil lawyer, was on hand.4 New forms were provided, and Preston made his way to Tullow. What he found was utterly disheartening. His parish was a prosperous market town in a fertile district, with a lively social scene: parsons from the surrounding countryside kept houses there. However, his church was ‘ruinous and tottering’, his rectory dilapidated, and its gardens ‘indifferently stocked’.5 Worse still was his financial predicament. He was required by the act of parliament passed in 1698, to encourage the construction of houses on church lands (10 Will. III, c.6), to pay £300 to his predecessor’s family as reimbursement for the jerry-built rectory. He might reclaim half from his own successor but meanwhile was obliged to borrow at interest. His glebe had also shrunk significantly through the depredations of Arran’s principal tenant, and the income from the rectory had been further reduced as a result of a recent decision of the House of Commons to exempt pasture from tithe. The local squire was amiable, and attended church with his family, 78

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but offered no practical help.6 The majority of the parishioners were ‘rigid papists’, by whom Preston felt physically threatened, and the local Protestant farmers were scarcely better. The rector was regarded as fair game. Tithes were withheld. More encroachments were made on his glebe and he became embroiled in a series of lawsuits. The locals, he declared in desperation, were ‘vermin’:7 No concessions will soften them; they are a sort of metal that will grow harder whenever it is melted. I charged a principal parishioner and a Protestant by the return that was made me six shillings for the tithe of his garden; he told me all that was in it was not worth five. I submitted it to himself. He gave me half a crown by way of compliment and sold one article of his tithe, his onions, for eight pounds the next week. I expostulated the point afterwards. He said every man was to make the best bargain for himself and that is was no sin the cheat the parson. During the winter Preston looked over his finances. Calculating his expenses, the interest to be paid on his loan, and his depleted income, he saw himself as ‘tenant at about £30 a year’. The only option was to ‘set his living’: become an absentee, employ a curate, and farm his tithes. By that means he might secure £80 a year from a living that had promised over £300.8 He duly wrote to the bishop – ‘a submissive letter’, as he put it – but received a reply ‘in a strain of language which would touch a stoic’, refusing to countenance such a dereliction of duty.9 Eventually he was forced to surrender his incumbency, repay as much as he could of the loan, and return to England, where he took another post as a family chaplain. To his chagrin, he noted that the bishop had recovered control of the living, in which he had placed a curate.10 It is hard not to see Preston’s misfortunes as at least partly self-inflicted. He was a Major Yeates without redeeming features or happy endings; an Englishman abroad who made no effort to understand local circumstances. His experience, however, illustrates a number of important themes in the history of the eighteenth-century Church of Ireland: the fundamental importance of the financial basis of ministry; the tensions between clergy and gentry and between parson and bishop; the variety of lay responses to clerical misfortunes; and the intervention of parliament, sometimes seeking to help the clergy (as in the 1698 Church Building Act), and sometimes (as in the case of the resolution against the tithe of pasturage) quite the reverse.

Clergy and gentry Implicit in the construction and maintenance of the ‘confessional state’ in eighteenth-century Ireland was the assumption of an identity of interest between the clerical estate and the ruling propertied élite. For a century

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and a half religion had underpinned successive programmes of reform and settlement, so that for the majority of the ‘political nation’ political loyalty was indistinguishable from allegiance to the established church. There were, of course, elements of the population professing loyalty who remained outside the Church of Ireland. Some were possessed of the necessary economic substance that would have qualified them to participate in political processes had they not been prevented by discriminatory legislation, though only a minority were ever of sufficient status to sit in parliament. Until 1780 the large Presbyterian community in Ulster, whose economic strength resided mainly in a rural tenantry and the urban commercial and professional classes, was effectively barred by the sacramental test from public and municipal office, and thus from voting in elections for corporation boroughs, the most common category of parliamentary constituency, though some southern Dissenters – especially in Dublin – circumvented the law through ‘occasional conformity’. At the same time Catholics were formally excluded from voting from 1728 until the Relief Act of 1793 enfranchised freeholders in counties, and even afterwards they could not sit in parliament nor take office until the concession of emancipation in 1829. Until the closing decades of the century the Anglican majority did not seriously question the propriety of these arrangements; successive attempts to repeal the test were overwhelmingly rejected, while sympathy for the Catholic cause was so slender that any proposal to strengthen the popery laws was guaranteed a hearing. However, despite the contemporary presumption of an essential unity of political interest, the relationship between the landowning élite and the clerical estate was uneasy. As elsewhere in Europe, the church as a corporate entity and the clergy as individuals were not always allies of the aristocracy and gentry but could in some contexts be competitors. As a major proprietor, the church could influence the land market, and thus the development of agriculture, through the length and cost of the leases issued to its tenants.11 The financial demands made by the clergy – not only tithes but the rates collected by the parish vestry and the ‘small dues’ payable for the performance of baptisms, marriages and burials – bore heavily on tenants and reduced the capacity to pay rent. Moreover, the ecclesiastical courts (about which relatively little is known) enjoyed a significant jurisdiction, especially through probate.12 The clergy also played a role in secular government: at local level, parish incumbents served as magistrates and voted as freeholders in parliamentary elections; while at national level, bishops formed a weighty cohort in the House of Lords, with the more active being appointed to the Privy Council. There was thus considerable potential for rivalry, and, as Preston discovered, relations between clergy and gentry could be difficult. The extent to which resentment at clerical pretensions engendered anticlerical sentiments is more difficult to assess. Excitable clergymen interpreted any criticism

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of ecclesiastical income, corporate privileges or jurisdiction as the product of prejudice or malevolent principle. Swift is the most obvious example, but the list is long, ranging from frustrated episcopal reformers to country parsons such as Preston, who saw themselves as the victims of conniving parishioners. How much credibility they should be given is an open question. Certainly some were critical of the way the church exercised authority. A few notorious ideologues vented their hatred of ‘priestcraft’, such as the Irish-born pamphleteer John Toland, and his patron, Robert, Viscount Molesworth.13 But these figures stood out from the general run; and in any case Toland left Ireland early in his career, while Molesworth’s strongest expressions of hostility were to be found in pamphlets written before permanent re-establishment on his native soil in 1715.14 Satirists found the supposed mercenary propensities of the clergy an easy target,15 and in Irish political salons mockery of the clergy may have been commonplace: at one of Speaker Conolly’s house parties, for example, an aspirant for patronage sought to ingratiate himself by telling ‘ill stories of bishops and clergymen’.16 The idea of a conflict of interests between secular and clerical estates should not be over-emphasised, however. For one thing, these were not discrete social groups. Most clergymen – at least those of Irish parentage and education – shared the social background and attitudes of the gentry. This was a point made by pamphleteers writing in support of the maintenance of clerical incomes; that whereas in England the profession was open to persons of inferior status, in Ireland the parson was on a social level with the squire, and in the remoter corners of the kingdom his presence was essential to agreeable social intercourse.17 We lack prosopographical studies on the scale attempted for the Church of England,18 but such research as has been undertaken suggests that, although clerical dynasties emerged as a consequence of nepotism, family tradition, limited career opportunities or lack of ambition, the clergy did not form a separate caste.19 Many landed families thus had a vested interest – through their relations – in maintaining the corporate wealth and influence of the church. The alienation of ecclesiastical property into lay hands also gave some landowners a personal stake in the continuance of the established order. This process, known as ‘impropriation’, affected advowsons (such as Arran held at Tullow), real property, and, most important, the right to collect tithe. It created a class of proprietors who stood to lose income and patronage if the position of the established church were altered. The interrelationship of clergy and gentry underpinned the broad consensus prevailing for much of the century among the Protestant propertied élite in Ireland, that support for the Church of Ireland was vital to the defence of political and social order. In the aftermath of the Williamite revolution the perceived challenges to the settlement were defined in religious terms: on one side an irreconcilable Catholic interest, weakened but not destroyed,


dedicated to the overthrow of the English connexion; on the other, a rapidly expanding Protestant Dissenting community in Ulster, closely aligned with co-religionists in Scotland who in 1689 had overturned an episcopalian establishment and remodelled their kirk on strict Presbyterian principles. However, these twin threats were regarded differently by rival factions within the Irish parliament: some, whom we may describe in party terms as Whigs, were obsessed with the continuing danger from ‘popery’, and went so far as to hope for, and occasionally even encourage, greater Protestant unity against the Catholic and Jacobite enemy; others, closer in spirit to the English Tories, professed to regard the Catholics as a spent force, and concentrated their fire on Presbyterians. Such differences inevitably influenced attitudes to the configuration of the Irish ‘confessional state’. Then, from the 1760s onwards, the emergence within Irish Whiggery of an advanced reformist tendency, intending to incorporate first Protestant Dissenters and then moderate Catholics into a movement for constitutional change, further strained the consensus that had sustained the privileged position of the established church. The issues of religious toleration, the admission of Dissenters and eventually Catholics to the franchise and to government office, and the security of tithe, brought the church to the centre of debate; and as in turn the more engaged among the clergy were induced to involve themselves in political factions, parliamentary conflicts over the boundaries of the confessional state extended into the area of ecclesiastical governance. Reformers seeking legislation to reinforce the privileges and authority of the Church of Ireland, secure its finances, or improve the quality of pastoral provision, relied on the belief, widespread among MPs, that ‘the establishment in church and state’ was indivisible. For many landowners the connexion was indeed axiomatic, but opinion was never unanimous, and changing political circumstances could make churchmen vulnerable to their critics.

The established church and Protestant Dissent In religious terms the Revolution settlement in Ireland was markedly exclusive. The range of laws introduced by the Irish parliament to inhibit Catholic religious practice, restrict political rights and limit economic activity, was broader than in England, while there was also no equivalent of the English Toleration Act of 1689 permitting freedom of worship to Dissenters. As Dr Kelly has demonstrated, the most important pieces of anti-Catholic legislation were passed between 1695 and 1709, though incremental additions to the corpus of laws were frequently proposed and occasionally implemented over the succeeding half-century. By contrast, the only two instances in which the laws applying to Dissenters were extended originated in England rather than Ireland: the test clause in the Popery Act of 1704, was inserted by the English Privy Council and accepted with alacrity in Dublin; and the British Schism Act of 1714, preventing Dissenters from keeping schools, was

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extended to Ireland by the High Church majority at Westminster.20 Debate in the Irish parliament focused instead on the question of whether or not Dissenters should be relieved of disabilities, such as the prohibition on the solemnisation of marriages by Nonconformist ministers, which was a particular grievance.21 In the immediate aftermath of the ending of the Williamite war a Toleration Act on the English model was briefly considered.22 The imposition of the test then overshadowed other issues, and prompted Presbyterians to concentrate their energies on securing its repeal. After the death of Queen Anne in 1714, which created a more favourable climate for the presentation of Dissenting claims, the prospect of religious toleration was raised again. A bill was brought forward in the Irish parliamentary session of 1715–16, which failed, but a second attempt in 1719 secured a partial success: Dissenters could qualify themselves for exemption from the penalties prescribed by the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity for non-attendance at their parish church, and ministers were similarly enabled to avoid prosecution for celebrating the Lord’s Supper.23 In the same year the Schism Act was repealed in England, and although another attempt to repeal the Irish test was rejected, the first of what was to be a series of (admittedly irregular and discontinuous) indemnity acts was passed to extend the time by which office-holders were obliged to qualify themselves.24 Many grievances remained, however: the obligation to pay tithes, the invalidity of marriages contracted outside the established church, the comprehensive jurisdiction enjoyed by ecclesiastical courts, the requirement that Dissenters (though not their ministers) discharge parochial duties. And all the while the test remained on the statute book, embodied as a principle of governance. It was not until the 1770s that progress would be made on any of these issues. The strongest support for the redress of these grievances came from government in England. Not all English politicians were sympathetic to Irish Dissenters, but Whig ministers showed commitment to legislative efforts on their behalf. The first proposal for a bill ‘for the ease of Protestant Dissenters’, in 1692, originated with the English Privy Council, and was renewed by Lord Deputy Capell in 1695.25 And as the initiative for the imposition of the test in 1704 had come from Westminster, so too did the impulse for repeal: the Whig Junto forced the courtier Pembroke, viceroy in 1707, to attempt it as the price of their support, and tried again two years later when one of their own number, Wharton, was lord lieutenant; the Whig ministry of Stanhope and Sunderland obliged the duke of Bolton to attempt repeal during his viceroyalty in 1719 as part of a strategy to outflank critics in their own party; and Sir Robert Walpole launched the forlorn hope again in the early 1730s, partly to convince English Dissenting deputies of his sincerity in their cause, and partly, perhaps, to embarrass a political opponent, the duke of Dorset, whom he had sent to political exile in Dublin Castle.26 The fiercest opposition to Dissenting claims came from the clergy of the Church of Ireland, headed by their bishops, who thwarted attempts


to secure toleration in 1692, and led a rearguard action in the Irish Privy Council and parliament to restrict what was offered in 1719.27 Laymen were not far behind, however. Once the Williamite war was concluded the gravitational pull of English party politics soon made itself felt on the opinions and allegiances of the Irish landed élite, creating a self-consciously ‘Tory’ or ‘church’ interest, a process exacerbated by the alarm induced among Anglicans as a consequence of a massive influx of Scottish Presbyterian immigrants into Ulster in 1694–7. By 1705, Tory and Whig factions were operating in the Irish parliament, and it was Tories in the Commons who led the way in defeating proposals for repeal of the test in 1707 and 1709. Despite a haemorrhaging of support for the Tory party following the involvement of prominent Tories such as Ormond in the unsuccessful Jacobite rebellion of 1715, a recognisable Tory interest remained in existence in Ireland for the next two decades: a substantial remnant in permanent opposition in the Commons; a diminishing cohort on the episcopal benches in the Lords; and even a significant element of ex-Tories in the administration, men such as the prime serjeant Henry Singleton, who retained a sympathy for the church occasionally visible in speeches and votes on ecclesiastical issues.28

Reform from within The Church of Ireland also had a more constructive agenda: indeed, the beginning of the eighteenth century saw the emergence in the episcopate of an active commitment to constructive reform. Hitherto the halting progress of Protestantism had failed to provide the church with a healthy economic base, and the near-catastrophe of the Jacobite counter-revolution, followed by the devastation of a civil war, exacerbated chronic problems. At the same time, the prostration of the Catholic political interest in Ireland after the Williamite victory seemed to offer an unprecedented opportunity. The more conscientious and more energetic members of the episcopal hierarchy – men such as Anthony Dopping (Meath), Nathaniel Foy (Waterford), William King (Derry and then Dublin), Narcissus Marsh (Cashel, then Dublin, and finally Armagh), Richard Tenison (Clogher, then Meath), and John Vesey (Tuam) – responded by promoting measures to regenerate the church by improving the quality and material circumstances of the clergy: rooting out abuses such as simony, requiring parsons to reside, and providing them with the means to do so, in terms of income, glebe land, serviceable rectories and restored church buildings.29 At the same time, as elsewhere in Protestant Europe, godly individuals were engaging in voluntary action to advance the Reformation through societies ‘for the reformation of manners’, and the foundation of charitable and educational enterprises such as hospitals, schools, and workhouses, which embodied an evangelical as well as a humanitarian purpose.30 These endeavours also had advocates among the

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bishops, who preached sermons on behalf of voluntary societies, or, in the case of Nathaniel Foy, established their own charity schools. Not unexpectedly, perhaps, there were differences over the direction and operation of the ecclesiastical reform programme and the initiatives of the philanthropic. On the issue of proselytism through education, some churchmen advocated preaching and teaching the ‘native Irish’ in their own tongue, while others were insistent that charity schools inculcate the English language as the first step towards a proper understanding of the Protestant faith. More radically, a few episcopal reformers were opposed to voluntarism on principle, as undermining clerical authority.31 Among the parish clergy – men whose personal circumstances were as difficult as Preston’s – there was resentment against what seemed to be high-handed and unreasonable episcopal demands, especially over residence. As in England, this sense of grievance contributed to the development of a ‘High Church party’, bitterly opposed to the ‘Low Church’ interest headed by reformers like Archbishops Marsh and King. To import the prevailing analysis of the divisions between ‘High’ and ‘Low Church’ parties in England might suggest that this was a conflict over strategic priorities, High Churchmen focusing on the need to re-establish the authority of the church and defend its corporate interests, and Low Churchmen concentrating on the practical aspects of improving pastoral effectiveness.32 But a close examination shows that the divisions between the two factions were less ideological than political, or even personal,33 and ‘High Church’ or Tory bishops such as Vesey, Archbishop William Palliser of Cashel, and Thomas Lindsay, archbishop of Armagh from 1714, were as busy as their political opponents in promoting reform over a range of issues.34 The Irish parliament became the primary instrument for change, but there was an alternative. The convocation of the Church of Ireland could have provided the means to implement many of the measures brought forward in parliament; and towards the end of William III’s reign, in imitation of the agitation for a revival of convocation in England, leading Irish churchmen raised the possibility that their own assembly might be resurrected. The accession of Queen Anne, and the appointment of officials in Westminster and Dublin committed to supporting the church, resulted in the summoning of convocation in the winter of 1703–4. In the first session serious matters were raised, but bishops and proctors became sidetracked by issues taken from secular politics.35 In 1711 the Tories, having returned to power, tried once more to make convocation work. A royal licence was issued, ‘to propose and agree on canons, orders and ordinances’ on commutations for tithe money, prevention of clandestine marriages, use of excommunication in church courts, and the conversion of Catholics. All that emerged from another session of political infighting was a set of prayers for admitting converts and visiting prisoners.36 This was the last effort to use convocation as an alternative to parliament, and after a brief and stormy meeting in 1713 it was not summoned again.


The Irish parliamentary system allowed bishops considerable influence over the making of legislation, directly, through membership of the Privy Council and House of Lords, and indirectly, through influencing members of the House of Commons. Throughout the century the more politically active, or better connected, were councillors: 40 in all. It may be significant that rather more took their places in the first half of the century than the second – 22 in 1690–1750 as against 18 in 1750–1800, of whom five were appointed during the 1790s, in a minor renaissance of clerical influence. However, given the size of the council in any particular year – 67, for example, in 1723 – and the small proportion attending, it would be unwise to place much weight on these figures.37 In the Lords, bishops always formed a significant cohort, estimated as constituting ‘about a third’ between 1692 and 1750, and about a quarter thereafter. ‘When united, the bishops, with the support of two or three lay peers, could control a majority. Even when their vote was divided, it often proved decisive.’38 Episcopal influence in the Commons was exerted directly on the representatives returned for cathedral boroughs recognised as being at the disposal of the bishop – Armagh, Clogher, Old Leighlin, St Canice and Tuam39 – and for other constituencies, counties as well as boroughs, in which individuals might have built up personal influence. Some MPs hailed from clerical families, such as Henry Tenison (son of a bishop of Meath) and Henry Maxwell (son of a dean of Armagh), each of whom brought in bills to promote the building of parish churches (in 1705 and 1725 respectively). Others held ecclesiastical appointments – the civilian Marmaduke Coghill, for example, Preston’s good Samaritan, who was the primate’s registrar – or were retained on a professional basis, such as the barrister John Weaver, a legal agent for the bishops, who introduced bills on their behalf in 1695 and 1698.40 There were also pious Anglicans who sponsored legislation from a sense of duty, in the same way that they contributed to the upkeep of parish churches, donated vestments or plate, and founded charity schools. Men of this stamp were to be found throughout the century, but at certain times their presence was supplemented by those for whom ‘the church interest’ stood for something more political. The appearance of recognisable Whig and Tory parties in Ireland resulted in much posturing, and not simply in relation to the repression of Protestant Dissent; in 1710, for example, prominent Tory politicians such as Sir Richard Levinge and Anderson Saunders put forward bills against simony and for the repair of parish churches.41 The movement for ecclesiastical reform by statute went through several phases. The first began in the short-lived session of 1692, and gathered impetus in the next parliament, which ran from 1695 to 1699, when more than 20 relevant bills or heads of bills were introduced. It was dominated by enthusiasts among the bishops, operating in the Privy Council and in the House of Lords, where they co-ordinated their efforts in the ‘committee for religion’.42 Of bills dealing with church business introduced between 1695

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and 1699 eight originated in the council, eight in the Lords, and only six in the Commons; a striking contrast to the relative proportions for all legislative initiatives in the same period, which totalled 26 per cent for the council, 12 per cent for the Lords, and 62 per cent for the Commons. The thrust of this legislation was towards improving pastoral stewardship through rationalising parish boundaries to reflect altered demographic distribution, repairing derelict churches, obliging the clergy to reside and building houses to enable them to do so, and restoring ecclesiastical revenues. In financial terms there was a concentration on facilitating the collection of tithe, and ‘small dues’, which would have been of direct benefit to parish clergy, but the bishops also brought forward a bill that would have advantaged themselves by permitting the granting of longer leases than was allowed by the Act of 1635 to prevent the alienation of church lands. This initiative was repeated regularly and in due course became a cause of conflict between bishops and parish clergy, and indeed between clergy and laity. The sharpening animosity between Whigs and Tories in secular politics after 1703, and the transmission of the virus of party faction to the clergy, accelerated by the recall of convocation, resulted in a rupturing of episcopal unity and the passing of the initiative in legislation from one group of bishops to another. It was not that Whiggish or ‘Low Church’ prelates such as Archbishop King abandoned reform; rather, that the spokesmen of the Tory or ‘High Church’ tendency were emboldened by political prominence to make the running as clerical legislators, most notably Vesey, Lindsay, and Bishops Edward Smyth of Down and Thomas Smyth of Limerick. They did not, however, effect any shift in priorities.43 After the Hanoverian Succession the Whig ascendancy was restored, and a renascent ‘Low Church’ faction, with King at its head, again took up responsibility for the reform agenda. King himself, together with his protégés John Stearne (Dromore and then Clogher), Edward Synge the elder (Raphoe and then Tuam), and Theophilus Bolton (Clonfert, Elphin, and finally Cashel), and another Whiggish bishop, Ralph Lambert (Dromore and later Meath), were principally responsible for a raft of proposals put forward between 1715 and 1725. The previous programmatic coherence continued intact, as these measures also focused on improving pastoral efficiency, with, if anything, an even stronger emphasis on ‘encouraging’ clerical residence, through the reorganisation of parish boundaries, the provision of new church buildings and adequate glebe, and improvements in the collection of tithe. In addition, as the fashion for private educational endowments began to wane, the bishops turned their attention to obliging the clergy to build parochial schools and engage masters. This brought further pressure to bear on negligent parsons, some of whom seem to have exploited the Henrician statute establishing parish schools as an economical means of finding curates.44 Despite the often bitter opposition in 1717–25 between those (usually native-born) bishops who advertised their ‘patriotism’ in parliament by


upholding the autonomous jurisdiction of the Irish parliament, or opposing the subordination of the national to the imperial economy, and those (often imported) who consistently stood by government – the so-called Irish and English parties45 – there does not seem to have been any significant division within the episcopate over ecclesiastical reform. Measures were brought forward not only by self-conscious ‘patriots’ such as King and his friends, but also by recent English arrivals who were loyal to Dublin Castle, such as William Nicolson of Derry or Timothy Godwin of Kilmore. Whatever their differences over constitutional issues, bishops were united in their concern for the condition of the church; and the next flurry of reform bills, between 1727 and 1735, benefited from the support of a similar coalition of opposites. The context for this renewed effort was a prolonged crisis of confidence among the ruling élite, prompted by a severe economic depression that threatened to weaken the Protestant interest by compelling large-scale emigration, especially from Ulster, and by the realisation, heightened by the outcome of an inquiry by the House of Lords into the ‘state of popery’, that Catholicism was flourishing despite the popery laws. Efforts were made to ‘improve’ Irish agriculture and manufacture through grants of public money and the dissemination of technical advice (as, for example, by the Dublin Society), and to further the work of conversion by extending basic educational provision, through the foundation in 1733 of the Incorporated Society for Promoting Protestant Schools.46 Improving the effectiveness of parish clergy would have given a further boost to evangelism. The leading lights in this phase of reform were the primate, Hugh Boulter, an Englishman nominated to Armagh explicitly to safeguard the interests of the metropolitan government, and his principal ecclesiastical opponent Theophilus Bolton, an Irish-born bishop of an independent and ‘patriotic’ turn of mind.47 While Bolton’s involvement was a predictable continuation of previous activity alongside King and friends in the early 1720s, Boulter’s does not fit quite so well with his popular reputation as a political bishop, one owing advancement to connexions with ‘great men’. That he was as committed and conscientious a servant of the church as any of his predecessors, is clear both from his correspondence48 and from the parliamentary record. Between 1728 and 1735 Boulter sponsored bills for clerical residence (1728), curates’ pay (1729), reorganisation of parishes (1735), and building houses on church lands (1735).

The church under attack Despite the involvement of clergymen in the parliamentary process, and the energetic leadership of individual prelates, the reform programme faced resistance and enjoyed only a partial success. At first, bishops such as King were inclined to blame government. ‘Little care is taken of the church in this kingdom at court’, he had complained in 1696.49 But however

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unsympathetic the Junto Whig ministers in England may have been at that time, given their commitment to religious toleration for Dissenters, they did not exploit the power of the English council to reject episcopal initiatives. King’s sourness seems to have been accentuated by the failure of three important bills in the 1695–6 session, for the union and division of parishes, the building and repair of churches, and the easier recovery of tithes. In all cases the pattern was the same. Heads were presented by a bishop (or in the case of the church-building bill by an episcopal agent in the Commons) but were suppressed by the Irish council, which then brought forward its own version. This was in turn approved in Whitehall only to be rejected by Lords or Commons in Dublin. Of course, Lord Deputy Capell may have persuaded councillors to interfere with the original heads, but it was parliament that gave the most grievous offence to the reforming bishops. After the loss of the second parish reorganisation bill in the Lords Bishop Foy entered a protest in such vehement terms that he was taken into custody until he apologised.50 This inference is supported by a general examination of the progress of legislation on church reform, which shows parliament to have been the primary seat of opposition. Of the 118 bills of this kind that failed to reach the statute book between 1692 and 1800, five were dropped by the English Privy Council and 23 by the Irish, while 29 failed in the Lords, and 61 in the Commons. Further analysis shows a differential response according to subject matter. Some 40 per cent of bills for the rearrangement of parishes were enacted while bills to facilitate clerical residence, increase curates’ salaries, or repair buildings enjoyed an even higher success rate of between 45 per cent and 55 per cent. However, the figures were significantly lower for bills relating to tithe (30 per cent), or to change the terms on which church land could be let (25 per cent). Evidently, while members of parliament were willing enough to assist the church to put its own affairs in order, they were more likely to cavil at measures affecting their own economic interests. Other specific reasons may be adduced to explain opposition in council and parliament. Most obviously, perhaps, the intensity of clerical involvement in secular politics in the era of Whig and Tory party strife, provoked violent reactions. Whig MPs, even if agreeing that the established church might be a bulwark against a resurgent Catholicism, were alienated by the partisanship of clergymen in preaching against ‘revolution principles’, conspiring against Whig viceroys, or campaigning for Tories at parliamentary elections. This underlying resentment helps to explain incidents such as occurred in 1705, when the lower house of convocation, fearful of a reduction in tithes, memorialised the Commons against a bill to encourage linen manufacture. Outraged MPs promptly declared the memorial a breach of privilege and committed to custody the official entrusted with it.51 At other times, grievances might be taken up by the Commons in ways that translated clerical divisions into secular politics. In 1731, for example,


two bills were presented which angered the self-appointed representatives of the lower clergy. One, the work of Bishop Tenison of Ossory, sought to enforce residence by obliging clergymen with benefices of over £100 per annum to erect manse houses; the second, originating in the council and presumably another step in Boulter’s reform programme, enabled bishops to divide large parishes without the incumbents’ consent. In the ensuing parliamentary struggle, the bills’ opponents openly espoused the cause of the parish clergy.52 Political opportunism may also have been at work here, since the crisis broke at a time of uncertainty within government, and presented Boulter’s enemies with an opportunity to embarrass government and win popularity.53 Significantly, Archbishop Bolton and two episcopal colleagues chose the occasion to oppose the primate. Both bills were defeated. By this time the political context had changed significantly, in ways that were not conducive to the appeal of ecclesiastical reform. One factor was the decline of the Tory party as a parliamentary interest; another was the identification of bishops such as Boulter with unpopular government policies during a period of patriotic enthusiasm. Even more worrying was the emergence of a strain of opinion that was sceptical, even sometimes sharply critical, of the role of the established church in Irish society. Archbishop Boulter reported in 1736 that he had been told by ‘some of sense who went the circuits, that there was a rage stirred up against the clergy, that they thought equalled anything they had seen against the popish priests, in the most dangerous times’.54 There is a temptation to connect this increasing negativity with the simultaneous growth of anticlericalism at Westminster, as expressed in a clutch of bills in the mid-1730s to reform the ecclesiastical courts (1733, 1734), exempt Quakers from tithe (1736), and to restrict the principle of mortmain and thus curtail bequests of property to the church (1736).55 The very same issues were raised in Ireland: in 1737, Marcus Anthony Morgan, MP for Athy, introduced heads of a bill to regulate church courts, while his connexion by marriage Lord Darnley presented heads in the upper house on the model of the English mortmain bill. Criticism of the tithe system was, as we shall see, even more virulent. Some element of English influence, or straightforward imitation, cannot be discounted, but the mainsprings of the movement in Ireland were different. The anticlericalism of English radical or ‘Country’ Whigs was a reflection of their ideological inheritance, and closely bound up with an ambition to dismantle the confessional state by repealing the Test and Corporation Acts. Their Irish counterparts, who may not have been ‘anticlerical’ in the same sense, had a more limited agenda in relation to Protestant Dissenters – bringing in a further indemnity bill in 1737 with an additional provision for relief on the issue of the legality of Presbyterian marriages but not seeking to remove the test – and derived their principles from another source. At least as important in stimulating impatience with ecclesiastical pretensions was the perception taking hold among commentators on the Irish

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economy that the church now constituted a hindrance rather than a help to national progress. Alarmed at successive harvest failures and wholesale emigration, ‘patriots’ became obsessed by the need to foster agricultural, industrial and commercial development. Endeavours for the ‘improvement of Ireland’ encompassed the dissemination of knowledge and techniques through publications and informal exchange in associations such as the Dublin Society, individual acts of enterprise, and parliamentary schemes for building roads, canals and harbours, promoting manufactures, and shifting agricultural priorities from pasture to tillage.56 The pervasive influence of the fashion for ‘improvement’ can be overstated; enthusiasts were probably always outnumbered by the apathetic. But just as no sane politician would have denied the rights of property or denounced the liberty of the subject, so the presumed necessity for ‘improvement’ became publicly incontestable; and arguments on this basis covered attacks on the corporate rights of the church that might otherwise have appeared selfish and destructive. The two principal occasions of conflict were the terms on which bishops could grant leases, and the operation of tithe. The 1635 act protected the value of church lands and clerical incomes by preventing ecclesiastical dignitaries and corporations from issuing leases longer than 21 years, and at less than half the ‘real value’ of the land. The intention was to forestall greedy or desperate bishops tempted to raise money through high fines at the cost of binding their successors to long leases at fixed rent.57 From the point of view of the amateur agronomists who dominated the debate, short-term leases worked against the stability that would enable tenants to invest. There were other issues too: the ability to grant leases for lives enhanced the electoral potential of see lands – another temptation to episcopal politicians.58 But, with rare exceptions, the matter was viewed in monetary terms, and the clergy agreed in opposing alterations to what one bishop described as ‘the great Magna Carta of our church revenues’.59 The first bill to enable bishops to make leases for lives was introduced in 1695 by Archbishop Vesey, as a means of repairing the ravages of war and possibly without much thought for long-term consequences. Further legislation was attempted in the Commons after 1703, by Whig MPs, such as William Conolly, not renowned for devotion to the church.60 The first to arouse controversy was promoted in 1723 by Hercules Rowley, a political connexion of Conolly’s (and later a founder member of the Dublin Society).61 Rowley’s bill – described by one angry clergyman as ‘downright plunder by law’62 –was popular in parliament,63 and produced a heated debate in the press, in which the clergy were condemned for their aggrandisement of wealth and power.64 Several similar bills were introduced in 1735–7, in the Commons by Richard Bettesworth, a County Cork MP involved in parliamentary campaigns to encourage road-building and


tree-planting (and to reduce tithes), and in the Lords by James Hamilton, Lord Limerick, a noted improver whose principal concern at this time was the development of a cambric manufacture on his estate at Dundalk.65 The second front in the campaign was fought on the vexed question of tithe.66 At local level tithe was almost always resented and frequently unpaid.67 It was certainly a major grievance to those outside the established church. One contemporary explanation for the waves of emigration from Ulster to America in the 1710s, 1720s and 1740s was the demand for tithe at times of acute economic distress.68 But, as Preston’s personal history demonstrates, resentment crossed denominations, and social classes. In part it was the manner of collection that provoked: tithes were often let, and even sublet, thus bearing more heavily on the producer. Composition to a money rent caused obvious problems in a depressed economy; while the more usual form of payment in kind created opposition because of the extent and variety of demands. By the 1730s a connexion between tithe and economic stagnation was becoming established in the public mind. The first to make the link was probably Robert Molesworth, whose Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor (1723) advocated abolishing tithe on various agricultural products.69 He and those who followed him laid stress on the need to protect the nascent linen industry, sometimes seen as the key to Ireland’s prosperity. In 1738, for example, Samuel Madden, a prominent member of the Dublin Society, recommended that tithe not be paid by anyone sowing ten acres of flax.70 Arthur Dobbs, another member of the society, included in his Essay on the Trade and Improvement of Ireland … (1729) a wholesale denunciation of tithes (both clerical and impropriate) as responsible for the impoverishment of the country, and recommended a number of reforms including the proposal that part of the yield be devoted to the setting up and maintenance of poor houses.71 Dobbs himself introduced a bill in the Commons in 1735 ‘to ascertain the tithes of hemp and flax’; the fact that it was followed in the same session by a second similar bill, sponsored by Hercules Rowley, author of the leases bill of 1723, indicates how intimately these two issues were connected.72 What is significant about Madden and Dobbs is that, unlike Molesworth, they did not have reputations as anticlerical Whigs; indeed, Madden was himself a clergyman. Their opinions were symptomatic of a more general movement, as discontented Anglicans who had once seen the church as an instrument for bringing economic modernity now took quite the contrary view. The first major conflagration over tithe began in the Irish House of Commons in 1735, sparked by clerical insistence in requiring a levy on pasturage – the so-called tithe of herbage or ‘agistment’.73 A number of clergymen, led by Bishop Synge, Preston’s diocesan, took legal action to secure their dues, giving rise to protests across Ireland and a resolution of the Commons declaring the exaction to be illegal.74 Synge then published a

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vindication, complete with documentary evidence, setting in motion what became a lengthy and acrimonious public debate.75 The Commons’ vote inspired Swift’s satire, ‘The Legion Club’, which dismissed the opponents of the tithe as enemies of the church, and thus – in his view – knaves or fools.76 However, a surviving printed division list reveals a more complex picture.77 MPs with ecclesiastical connexions voted in favour of the clergy’s interests, and a good many ‘improvers’ voted against, but there were crosscurrents: representatives from regions where the raising of cattle or sheep was the mainstay of the rural economy were naturally opposed to a tithe on pasture; those accustomed to preach the widespread adoption of tillage had reservations about encouraging the retention of the old agricultural system. In addition, landowners with impropriate tithes were concerned to maximise their own yields.78 The parliamentary controversy over this issue opened up a frank public debate on the value and validity of tithe in general. The immediate response to Synge’s self-justification was a pamphlet entitled Prescription Sacred (1736), a lengthy attack on ‘the new demand of herbage’, which in turn gave rise to a series of counter-blasts.79 The arguments used were mainly legalistic and historical, and, although at first focused on the ‘agistment’, had much broader implications. Critics of the clergy argued that they were amply provided for despite the poverty of the country. The time had come to reconsider the justification for the variety of small tithes and other imposts, which were a crushing burden on the poor. Advocates of reform denounced the extortions of tithe-farmers and the ‘tithe-jobbers’ working under them.80 It was no wonder that the author of An apology for the Clergy of Ireland … (c. 1738) complained that the Commons vote had initiated ‘an inquisition into their lives and manners … as if they were a body of men, who had distressed the nation to the last degree’, and warned that ‘to break any gap into the lawful enclosure for one sort of tithes, is to open a way to invade the clergy’s rights in every other’.81 By 1742 William Robertson, a one-time candidate for the Presbyterian ministry who had turned his coat and entered the Church of Ireland, was advocating the total abolition of tithe, which had distorted the pattern of Irish agriculture, and stunted the growth of the linen industry.82 By the 1750s the church had been driven on to the defensive, its most vital source of revenue under seemingly constant attack.83 Landlords in dispute with local clergy quickly generalised from particular experiences to condemn the system as a whole. ‘I find people grow more exasperated at ecclesiastical oppression’, wrote Robert Ward from County Down in 1747, ‘and have a mind to dispute everything that is disputable’; while four years later the earl of Abercorn observed of tithe collection that ‘it will be happy if the parliament can find the means to give the nation some relief in the oppression they labour under’; ‘I find the evil is become so great, and so general, that the legislature will soon interpose in it’.84


Ecclesiastical reform as a political issue By the middle decades of the century a conviction that the church was a dead weight had taken hold among politicians and writers committed to the cause of national ‘improvement’. This resulted in a significant alteration in the pattern of legislation. The primary impulse for reform no longer originated within the episcopate, but seems to have come instead from lay critics. A crude indication might be found in the marked shift occurring in the relative legislative output of the two houses of parliament. In the period 1692–1740 more bills on ecclesiastical causes began in the Lords than the Commons (54 against 37); from 1741 to 1770, the figures were closer (11 from the Lords, 18 from the Commons); but from 1770 to 1800 the scales tipped sharply towards the lower house (only 14 such bills originating in the Lords, and as many as 65 in the Commons). Of course, there were other factors at work – the declining importance of the upper house in legislation, which was only marginally altered by the constitutional changes of 1782 – but it is clear that bishops were playing a less important role in the legislative process. A closer analysis of specific types of bill fills out the picture. The majority of bills relating to tithe introduced between 1695 and 1720 were prepared by bishops, and were intended to facilitate collection. Thenceforth almost all tithe bills began in the Commons, especially those designed to reduce the clergy’s entitlement; indeed, between 1750 and 1780 the church faced a barrage of such measures, designed to amend previous legislation, fix the rate on particular kinds of produce, and remove tithe altogether on hemp and flax, or waste lands. A similar story can be told of legislation over the leasing of church lands. Some of the measures brought forward in the early part of the century were the work of bishops, who would themselves have derived private benefit, but from around 1730 these bills were introduced into the Commons by the same kind of MPs promoting anti-tithe legislation (Hercules Rowley, whom we have already encountered, being a case in point), and with a similar purpose, namely to boost agricultural investment. Between 1751 and 1795 parliament debated 12 such bills, designed to extend the time limit in the 1635 act by permitting leases for lives or for terms of up to 61 years. Their tenor was distinctly anti-clerical, in so far as the long-term result would have been to impoverish the church. Although bills to restrict the operation of tithe and to enable longer leases of church lands received support by from all points of the political spectrum, they came to be closely associated with the ‘patriot’ opposition. Prominent ‘patriot’ MPs responsible for the introduction of tithe bills included Warden Flood (1771), Sir Lucius O’Brien (1773, 1788) and Edmond Sexten Pery (1763), while among the keener advocates of legislation to extend ecclesiastical leases were John Ponsonby (1769), William Brabazon Ponsonby (1771, 1774, 1782, 1785 and 1792), Barry Maxwell (1757) and Denis Daly (1789). It had been a short step from the identification of ‘patriotism’ with

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‘improvement’ to the identification of ‘patriotism’ with hostility to the claims of the Church of Ireland. Even those, such as the maverick Sir Edward Newenham, who were on principle disposed to take a sympathetic view of the church’s role in Irish society, had come to believe that the clergy were destitute of the qualities required to combat the rising tide of vice: ‘they worship Mammon’.85 At the same time, among the more radical of Irish Whigs, sympathy for the political claims of Protestant Dissent was being rekindled. The support shown by Ulster Presbyterian freeholders for ‘independent’ candidates in the general election of 1776 was followed by mass participation in the ‘Volunteer’ companies, the extra-parliamentary auxiliaries of the ‘patriot’ party, whose public demonstrations played such a vital part in the achievement of ‘free trade’ and constitutional reform between 1779 and 1782. Their reward was the repeal of the Test in 1780, and a further act in 1782 to give relief in the matter of Presbyterian marriages, though the circumstances surrounding the Repeal Act were complex, to say the least.86 In response to this opposition campaign to reduce the influence of the church, the attitude of government – with some individual exceptions – seems to have undergone a change. At the beginning of the century the Irish Privy Council had been willing to indulge clerical reformers in uncontroversial measures, but not to permit the church to increase its authority or entrench upon the financial interests of the laity. Now, while at the highest level there was support – even if intermittent – for the relaxation of some of the pressures of the confessional state, the Castle administration was willing to intervene against legislation that would have weakened the economic position of the church substantially. The rejection by the council of opposition-inspired tithe bills in 1737, 1757, 1759, 1773 and 1779, and bills relating to letting of church lands in 1737, 1751, 1758 and 1774, is evidence that government now felt it necessary to defend ecclesiastical revenues; and in one case, at least, this was made explicit.87 The unhappy consequences of this politicisation of the issue of ecclesiastical governance may also be seen in parliamentary responses to the continued, albeit sporadic, episcopal championing of reform. Although vigour had waned since the days of energetic prelates such as King and Boulter, there were still flashes of activity; and sometimes the sparks flew from quite unlikely anvils. Boulter’s successor, George Stone, was another Englishman and political appointee, regarded by his enemies as the archetypal meddling priest. He has been dismissed by historians as an inept and careless custodian of the church’s interests.88 Nonetheless, he was responsible for successful bills in 1745, to amend the laws in relation to church building and the disposal of archbishops’ demesne lands, and 1750, to strengthen statutory provision relating to clandestine marriage. In 1756, at the height of the commotion over the ‘money bill’ crisis, in which ‘patriots’ had cast him as the chief villain, he introduced a further three bills: one was enacted, to facilitate payments from the royal grant of first fruits and the particular


charitable bequests for poor clergy made by his predecessor, Boulter, but two others were rejected in the Commons – a bill to make more effective existing legislation to restructure parishes, and another to assist the clergy to reside. Neither measure was contentious, but Stone himself very obviously was.89 The next primate, the philanthropic Richard Robinson, was less controversial, and had rather better fortune, with three successful bills for chapels of ease (1768, 1771, 1774), and another to enforce clerical residence and the building of schools (1772), but even in his case a second bill, in 1774, to amend the statutes relating to residence, fell in the House of Lords on its return from England.90 In due course events beyond parliament – and beyond formal political processes – brought matters to a crisis. Opinion became polarised as, alarmed by an organised popular resistance to tithe, a substantial section of the Protestant political élite began to rally to the church. Successive agrarian protest movements targeted clergymen and tithe proctors as well as landlords and their agents. Although it was not their principal grievance, both Catholic Whiteboys in Munster and Protestant Oakboys (Hearts of Oak) in mid-Ulster in the 1760s singled out ‘High Church’ clergy who were perceived as seeking to squeeze more yield from their tithes. The Oakboys’ successors, the largely Presbyterian ‘Hearts of Steel’ in the early 1770s, were also motivated in part by a hatred of tithe.91 But the most sustained campaign was waged by the so-called ‘Rightboys’ in 1785–8.92 The Rightboy agitation provoked a vigorous response, orchestrated by Robinson’s great rival for leadership in the church, the Irishman Charles Agar, archbishop of Cashel,93 and in the press by Bishop Richard Woodward of Cloyne, whose diocese was one of those most immediately affected.94 Woodward’s incendiary pamphlet The Present State of the Church of Ireland … (1786) interpreted the violence as a manifestation of ‘a deep and well conducted plan’ to extirpate Protestantism from the provinces of Munster and Connacht, and ultimately ‘to separate Ireland from Great Britain’, thus identifying the church once more as the principal upholder of the political system and ‘Protestant ascendancy’.95 The immediate effect of this ‘tithe war’ was to focus attention on the position of the church in Irish society. A succession of tithe bills came before parliament in 1787–9, the first two sponsored by government (and introduced by the secretary of state, and provost of Trinity, John HelyHutchinson) to enable clergy whose tithes had been ‘withheld’ to claim compensation; the rest by opposition members (four out of five by the leading ‘patriot’ orator Henry Grattan) in order to remove the tithe on hemp, flax and rape, the raw materials used in the production of linen, and in one case to appoint commissioners of inquiry into the operation of the system throughout the country.96 The proposal to lift the pressure on linen manufacturers and merchants reflected both a traditional concern that clerical rapacity was stifling progress and a desire to gratify the Presbyterians of

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mid- and east Ulster who formed the backbone of the radicals’ support out of doors. The rhetoric deployed in support of the opposition bills, particularly by Grattan, repeated arguments made since the 1730s: the institution of tithe, he declared, ‘attacks cultivation in its cradle’; it served to ‘tax industry and prohibit improvement’; and damaged ‘the rudiments of manufacture’.97 It also weakened the fabric of society by alienating the majority of the population. The heaviness of Grattan’s bombardment was self-defeating, since it guaranteed an equal and opposite reaction from political opponents, and thus support from government members for the maintenance of the existing position. More dangerous to the church was the possibility that some form of unwelcome change might be instigated by the Castle administration itself. Anxiety over public order might persuade English ministers that, in relation to the maintenance of security and social stability, the church was now part of the problem rather than the solution, in the same way that from time to time Whitehall took the initiative in promoting measures for Catholic relief. The reappointment of the marquess of Buckingham as lord lieutenant in 1787 heralded one such assault on ecclesiastical preserves. Buckingham envisaged ‘a programme of bracing reform for the Church of Ireland’,98 imposed without the mediation of the bishops, which would have required parish clergy to reside on their cures while depriving many of the means to do so: pluralism abolished, parish schools supported at the clergy’s expense, and a reduction in tithe on hemp, flax and rape. While Robinson was prepared to compromise, Agar mounted a sturdy defence, in the closet, in the council, and in parliament, and succeeded in thwarting most of Buckingham’s plans.99 Parliamentary attacks on ecclesiastical property continued into the 1790s, focused as ever on the twin issues of tithe and the leasing of church lands, but although Agar was convinced that he was fighting a battle against the landowning class as a whole, whom he considered to be ‘certainly the originators and promoters of the various attempts to deprive the clergy of their property’,100 and although ministers and their creatures could not always be trusted to vote as the archbishop and his friends thought they should,101 the balance of opinion had shifted significantly. In the long run, the crisis over tithe in 1787–8 reinvigorated popular conservatism, with the church now a symbol of the defence of ‘Protestant ascendancy’. So despite the ferocity of ‘patriot’ denunciations of the iniquity of tithe, and the increasingly powerful argument that the offence given to Catholics and Presbyterians was contributing significantly to popular discontent, there were enough members of both houses convinced of the importance of defending the establishment to forestall hostile reforms. Furthermore, when in 1795 the Commons made yet another attempt to enable bishops to make leases for lives, Agar introduced a bill of his own to restate and clarify the provisions of the 1635 Act, which passed both houses in spite of opposition from the chief secretary.102


The renewed ‘church interest’ was not, however, relentlessly reactionary. Agar himself had a long record of promoting constructive reform through legislation, including bills to explain the Act of Faculties (1778), to enable churchwardens to act for the repair of churches (1782), to remedy inconveniences caused by the loss of ecclesiastical qualifications (1785), and to improve the maintenance of parish clerks (1785) and curates (1800). In the last decade of the century the cause was taken up by members of the lower house. In 1788 Agar had complained to Robinson of their ‘want of friends’ in the Commons. But this situation changed. For a long time the civil lawyer and university member Arthur Browne was a solitary spokesman for the church in the lower house: in 1789 he had brought in a bill for the repair of churches, and to encourage residence, and he continued active in the following decade, with two failed bills in 1795 to improve existing tithe legislation (both falling victim to the factional crossfire the issue provoked), and bills concerning chapels of ease (1796), and church building (1798, 1799).103 He was now joined by others. Of especial importance, inside and outside parliament, was Patrick Duigenan, who in his controversial person linked the negative and positive elements of the defence of ‘Protestant ascendancy’, expressing himself vehemently in pamphlet and debate against any concession to Catholics, and bringing before parliament a succession of bills on ecclesiastical matters: clerical residence (1791, 1800); the preservation of parish lands (1797); the payment of dues to proctors in ecclesiastical courts (1797); compensation for withheld tithes (1799); the payment of first fruits (1800); and the building and rebuilding of churches (1800).104

Conclusion Legislation relating to the condition of the established church and its clergy formed a major part of the business of the eighteenth-century Irish parliament, but although the church occupied a central place in the governance of the kingdom, there was no consensus as to how, and how far, it should be supported. Important differences existed between laity and clergy, and even within the clerical order, over a range of issues, many of which had financial implications. Difficulties arose in parliament over proposals to require parish clergy to reside, over reforms that would have reduced clerical incomes, and over the repeated attempts to liberate church lands from the economically restrictive effects of short-term leases. Parsons such as William Preston found themselves at the receiving end of the heavy-handed interventions of episcopal reformers and intolerant lay opponents of tithe. If a consistent preference may be ascertained among governments, both in Westminster and in Dublin, it seems to have been one of inertia. For most of the century, neither the Irish nor the English/British Privy Councils seem to have been willing to countenance altering the financial basis of the establishment, presumably from a belief in the church’s importance to the maintenance of

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the Revolution settlement, though the gathering crisis of public order after 1785 encouraged some English ministers to reconsider the desirability of concessions to non-Anglicans. In parliament itself, both at the beginning and end of the century, the church was able to mobilise lay support: from the Tories in the age of party politics, and at the end of the century from a conservative interest that identified the church as one of the bulwarks of a tottering Protestant establishment. As the lord chancellor of Ireland, the earl of Clare, avowed in the Lords in 1798, ‘I take it to be a vital principle of the constitution that the church and state are intimately and inseparably united, clinging to each other for support’.105 This was at a cost, since the alliance forged by High Churchmen with Tory politicians in Queen Anne’s reign alienated the Whigs, and the identification of the church with the conservative interest in the closing decades of the century forfeited residual goodwill among radicals. Perhaps the most dangerous time for the clergy, however, was the period in between, from c. 1725 to c. 1785, when previously sympathetic MPs turned against the church, viewing its leaders as tools of English misgovernment, and the ecclesiastical corporation as a drag anchor on Irish economic progress. It was only when the opposition to clerical wealth and clerical impositions took on a socially and politically subversive tone that the clerical estate was rehabilitated as an essential element of the social order and the church recovered its credentials as a pillar of the constitution.

Notes 1. Edward Southwell to Lord Arran, [Aug.1738] (NLI, MS 730). Preston’s sorry story is recorded in a succession of increasingly desperate, self-righteous and angry letters sent to the absentee Irish landlord Edward Southwell. These are preserved in NLI, MS 730, from which the following quotations are taken. See also T. C. Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649–1770 (New Haven & London, 2003), pp. 86–7. 2. Bp Sir Thomas Vesey to William Smyth, 4 Oct. 1722 (NLI, Smythe of Barbavilla papers, MS 41590/2). 3. Preston to Southwell, 24 Oct. 1738 (NLI, MS 730). 4. Preston to Southwell, 28 Oct. 1738 (ibid.); Coghill to Southwell, 28 Oct. 1738 (Letters of Marmaduke Coghill, 1722–1738, ed. D. W. Hayton (Dublin, 2005), p. 183). 5. Preston to Southwell, 17 Dec. 1738, 13 Feb. 1739/40 (NLI, MS 730). 6. Preston to Southwell, 17 Dec. 1738 (ibid.). 7. Preston to Southwell, 13 Feb. 1739/40 (ibid.). 8. Ibid. 9. Preston to Southwell, 3 Oct. 1740 (ibid.). 10. Ibid. 11. A. P. W. Malcomson, John Foster: The Politics of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy (Oxford, 1978), pp. 283–4; idem, Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760–1810 (Dublin, 2002), pp. 388–91, 399–406.

100 Parliament and the Established Church 12. S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 176–8; David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), p. 210. 13. For Toland see S. H. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners and Mind (London, 1984), pp. 12–27; Oxford DNB, liv, 894–8; Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester, 2003); for Molesworth’s career and writings, Caroline Robbins, The EighteenthCentury Commonwealthman (Cambridge, MA, 1959), ch. 5; Hugh Mayo, ‘Robert Molesworth’s Account of Denmark: Its Roots and its Impact’ (PhD thesis, University of South Denmark, 2000); Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton (eds), The House of Commons 1690–1715 (5 vols, Cambridge, 2002), iv, 826–35; Oxford DNB, xxxviii, 530–2. 14. Moreover, Molesworth’s will included a bequest to the church of Swords in County Dublin, the parish nearest to his estate at Breckdenston (TNA, PRO, Prob. 11/609). 15. See, for example, William Dunkin, An Epistle to the Right Honourable James, Lord Visct. Charlemont, with a Translation of the Sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace (Dublin, 1744), p. 6; John Cunningham, Poems, Chiefly Pastoral (Dublin, 1766), p. 191; Thomas Newburgh, Essays Poetical, Moral and Critical (Dublin, 1769), p. 257. 16. Mary Jones to Jane Bonnell, 13 Jan. [?1727] (NLI, Smythe of Barbavilla papers, MS 41577/1). 17. Considerations upon Two Bills Sent Down from the R—— H—— the H—— of L—— to the H——ble H—— of C—— Relating to the Clergy of I——d (London, 1732), pp. 14–17. See also An Apology for the Clergy of Ireland in Respect of their Civil Rights, Especially as to Agistment for Dry and Barren Cattle (Dublin, 1737–8), p. 7. 18. See J. H. Pruett, The Parish Clergy under the Later Stuarts: The Leicestershire Experience (Urbana, IL, 1978); J. S. Chamberlain, Accommodating High Churchmen: the Clergy of Sussex, 1700–1745 (Urbana, IL, 1997); Jeremy Gregory, Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660–1828: Archbishops of Canterbury and their Diocese (Oxford, 2000), ch. 3; W. M. Jacob, The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680–1840 (Oxford, 2007). 19. Barnard, A New Anatomy, ch. 4. Cf. Swift to Lord Carteret, 3 July 1725 (The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (5 vols, Oxford, 1963–5), iii, 70): ‘I cannot but hope that the clergy of Ireland will have their share in your patronage. There is hardly a gentleman in the nation, who hath not a near alliance with some of that body; and most of them [that] have sons, usually breed one to the church.’ 20. J. G. Simms, ‘The Making of a Penal Law (2 Anne, c.6), 1703–4’ in IHS, xii, no. 46 (Sept. 1960), pp. 105–18; G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State 1688–1730 (Oxford, 1975), p. 178. 21. J. C. Beckett, Protestant Dissent in Ireland 1687–1780 (London, 1948), ch. 11. 22. Ibid., pp. 31–4. 23. Ibid., ch. 7; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, pp. 165–6. 24. Beckett, Protestant Dissent, pp. 71–86; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, pp. 164–6. 25. Beckett, Protestant Dissent, pp. 31–3. 26. D. W. Hayton, Ruling Ireland, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 189–90, 223–4, 258–63.

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27. Beckett, Protestant Dissent, pp. 32, 71–9; Philip O’Regan, Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650–1729) and the Constitution in Church and State (Dublin, 2000), pp. 65–70, 248–61. 28. Hayton, Ruling Ireland, pp. 119–24; Arthur Hill to Henry Boyle, 15 Apr. 1729 (PRONI, Shannon papers, D/2707/A/1/2/39). 29. Richard Mant, History of the Church of Ireland … (London, 1840), pp. 71–106; W. A. Phillips (ed.), History of the Church of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (3 vols, Oxford, 1933), iii, 162–8, 181–4; J. C. Beckett, ‘The Government and the Church of Ireland under William III and Anne’ in IHS, ii, no. 7 (Mar. 1941), pp. 280–302; idem, ‘William King’s Administration of the Diocese of Derry, 1691–1703’ in IHS, iv, no. 14 (Sept. 1944), pp. 164–80; M. E. Gilmore, ‘Anthony Dopping and the Church of Ireland, 1685–1695’ (MA thesis, QUB, 1988), chs 6–7; S. J. Connolly, ‘Reformers and Highflyers: The Post-Revolution Church’ in Alan Ford, Kenneth Milne and James McGuire (eds), As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995), pp. 152–65; O’Regan, Abp King, ch. 5; Scholar Bishop: The Recollections and Diary of Narcissus Marsh, 1638–1696, ed. Raymond Gillespie (Cork, 2003), pp. 10–11. For evidence that King often took the prime responsibility for drafting or amending bills that other bishops introduced see King to Abp Vesey, 2 Sept. 1707 (TCD, King letterbooks, MS 750(3), p. 150). 30. T. C. Barnard, ‘Reforming Irish Manners: The Religious Societies in Dublin during the 1690s’ in HJ, xxxv (1992), pp. 805–38; D. W. Hayton, ‘Did Protestantism Fail in Early Eighteenth-Century Ireland? Charity Schools and the Enterprise of Religious and Social Reformation, c.1690–1730’ in Ford et al. (eds), As by Law Established, pp. 166–86. 31. Hayton, ‘Did Protestantism Fail?’ p. 171. 32. G. V. Bennett, ‘Conflict in the Church’ in Geoffrey Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution 1689–1714 (London, 1969), pp. 155–74; Connolly, ‘Reformers and Highflyers’, pp. 160–64; Hayton, Ruling Ireland, pp. 141–3. 33. Hayton, Ruling Ireland, pp. 144–58. 34. Idem, ‘Bishops as Legislators: Marsh and his Contemporaries’ in Muriel McCarthy and Ann Simmons (eds), Marsh’s Library: A Mirror on the World (Dublin, 2009), pp. 83–5. 35. Connolly, ‘Reformers and Highflyers’, pp. 155–8; Hayton, Ruling Ireland, pp. 134–8. 36. Sir Constantine Phipps to duke of Ormond, 10 July 1711 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/367/88–9); draft of warrant for licence to convocation [1711] (ibid., 63/367/338); heads of articles [1711] (ibid., 63/367/340); form for admitting converts and visitation of prisoners (ibid., 63/368/1). On the parallel events of the 1710–11 session of the convocation of Canterbury, see G. V. Bennett, ‘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. 37. T. C. Barnard, The Kingdom of Ireland, 1641–1760 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 102–3. 38. F. G. James, Lords of the Ascendancy: The Irish House of Lords and its Members, 1600–1800 (Dublin, 1995), p. 131. 39. J. L. McCracken, The Irish Parliament in the Eighteenth Century (Dundalk, 1971), p. 13; comments on Irish parliamentary constituencies, [c. 1713] (BL, Southwell papers, Add. MS 34777, ff. 20, 22, 43); S. Marshall to Agmondesham Vesey, 14 June 1716 (NAI, Sarsfield-Vesey papers, Corr./104).

102 Parliament and the Established Church 40. Abp King to Francis Annesley, 1, 18 Feb. 1706[/7] (TCD, MS 750(3), pp. 85, 91–3); King to Edward Southwell, Feb. 1706[/7] (ibid., p. 87). For Coghill see Coghill Letters, ed. Hayton, pp. xi–xxii; Hist. Ir. Parl., iii, 442–5; for Weaver, see Hist. Ir. Parl., vi, 508–9. 41. For Levinge see Hist. Ir. Parl., v, 89–91, and Cruickshanks et al. (ed.), House of Commons 1690–1715, iv, 623–7; for Saunders, Hist. Ir. Parl., vi, 241–2. 42. Hayton, ‘Bishops as Legislators’, pp. 68–73, 79–83. 43. Ibid., pp. 84–5. For Lindsay’s commitment to the enforcement of clerical residence, see, in addition, John Leathes to William Leathes, 7 Aug. 1715 (Suffolk RO, Ipswich, De Mussenden-Leathes papers, HA403/1/6). 44. Hayton, ‘Did Protestantism Fail?’ p. 170. 45. Patrick McNally, ‘“Irish and English Interests”: National Conflict within the Church of Ireland Episcopate in the Reign of George I’ in IHS, xxix, no. 115 (May 1995), pp. 295–314. 46. Patrick Kelly, ‘The Politics of Political Economy in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in S. J. Connolly (ed.), Political Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 109–12; Terence de Vere White, The Story of the Royal Dublin Society (Tralee, [1955]), chs 1–3; Desmond Clarke, Arthur Dobbs, Esquire, 1689–1765: Surveyor-General of Ireland, Prospector and Governor of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1957), ch. 4; Kenneth Milne, The Irish Charter Schools 1730–1830 (Dublin, 1997). 47. See the biographical entries in Oxford DNB, vi, 495–6, 799–801. 48. See e.g. Boulter to Bp Gibson, 13 Apr. 1728 (Letters Written by His Excellency Hugh Boulter … (2 vols, Dublin, 1770) i, 188). 49. Bp King to George Tollet, 22 Sept. 1696 (TCD, MS 750/1, p. 23). See also Bp Thomas Lindsay to Arthur Charlett, 19 Oct. 1697 (Bodl., MS Ballard 8, f. 76). 50. Gilmore, ‘Anthony Dopping’, pp. 147–52; LJI, i, 567; Bp Foy’s account of his conduct in the Lords (TCD, MS 1995–2008/2327). 51. CJI (2nd edn), ii, 271; Laurence Clayton to Thomas Brodrick, 12 Mar. 1704/5 (SHC, Brodrick papers, 1248/2, ff 178–9); Alan Brodrick to St John Brodrick, 14 Mar. 1704/5 (ibid., ff 180–2); D. W. Hayton, ‘Henry Maxwell, MP, Author of An Essay upon an Union of Ireland with England (1703)’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xxii (2007), pp. 55–6. 52. L. A. Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland (Oxford, 1954), pp. 111–23. See also Bp Robert Howard to Hugh Howard, 22 Apr. 1732 (NLI, Wicklow papers, MS 38958/8); Considerations on Two Bills Sent Down …; A Letter from a Lord to a Commoner, Concerning the Two Church Bills Lately Rejected (Dublin, 1732); An Answer to A Letter from a Lord to a Commoner … (Dublin, 1732). 53. R. E. Burns, Irish Parliamentary Politics in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols, Washington DC, 1989–90), ii, 7–13. 54. Abp Boulter to the Earl of Anglesey, 8 Jan. 1736[/7] (Boulter Letters …, ii, 150). 55. T. F. J. Kendrick, ‘Sir Robert Walpole, the Old Whigs and the Bishops, 1733– 1736: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Parliamentary Politics’ in HJ, xi (1968), pp. 421–35; Stephen Taylor, ‘Sir Robert Walpole, the Church of England, and the Quakers’ Tithe Bill of 1736’ in ibid., xxviii (1985), pp. 51–77; idem, ‘Whigs, Tories and Anticlericalism: Ecclesiastical Courts Legislation in 1733’ in Parliamentary History, xix (2000), pp. 329–56. The connexion was made explicitly in ‘Some Considerations upon the Late Proceedings in Ireland, in Opposition to the Clergy’s Demand of a Tithe on Herbage …’ [1736] (BL, Egmont papers, Add. MS 47089, f. 5; further copies in BL, Add. MS 21132, ff. 49–53, 54–9, 60–4).

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56. Kelly, ‘Politics of Political Economy’, pp. 105–29; Eoin Magennis, ‘Coal, Corn and Canals: Parliament and the Dispersal of Public Moneys 1695–1772’ in D. W. Hayton (ed.), The Irish Parliament in the Eighteenth Century: The Long Apprenticeship (Edinburgh, 2001), pp. 70–86; T. C. Barnard, Irish Protestant Ascents and Descents 1641–1770 (Dublin, 2004), chs 7, 11; James Livesey, ‘The Dublin Society in Eighteenth-Century Irish Political Thought’ in HJ, xlvii (2004), pp. 615–40. 57. Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland, pp. 96–111; Malcomson, Agar, pp. 399–401. 58. Malcomson, Foster, pp. 283–4. 59. Bp John Evans to Abp Wake, 5 Dec. 1723 (Christ Church, Oxford, Wake papers, Arch Epist. W. xiv). 60. For Conolly, see Lena Boylan, ‘The Conollys of Castletown: A Family History’ in Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, xi (1968), pp. 1–19; Oxford DNB, xii, 986–8; Hist. Ir. Parl., iii, 474–9; Hayton, Ruling Ireland, pp. 197, 206–7; Barnard, Ascents and Descents, p. 273. 61. For Rowley, see Hist. Ir. Parl., vi, 196. 62. James Smyth to William Smyth, 11 Nov. 1723 (NLI, Smythe of Barbavilla papers, MS 41582/4). 63. Philip Perceval to Viscount Perceval, 30 Jan. 1723/4 (BL, Egmont papers, Add. MS 47030, ff. 57–8). 64. Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland, pp. 97–111. 65. For Bettesworth, see Hist. Ir. Parl., iii, 179–80; for Hamilton, ibid., iv, 344–5. 66. Maurice Bric, ‘The Tithe System in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in RIA Proc., lxxxvi (1986), sect. C, pp. 271–88. See also idem, ‘Richard Townsend Herbert’s “Information on the State of Tithe in Kerry”’ in Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, xvii (1984), pp. 89–93; Marie-Louise Legg, ‘The Parish Clergy of the Church of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century’ in T. C. Barnard and W. G. Neely (eds), The Clergy of the Church of Ireland 1000–2000: Messengers, Watchmen and Stewards (Dublin, 2006), pp. 137–9. 67. There are detailed examples in the tithe cases brought to the consistory court of the diocese of Killaloe (BL, Add. MS 31881, f.170; Add. MS 31882, ff. 38–42, 85–6, 87, 127); and in Baron Wainwright’s notes on Grantham v. Ralph, 1735 (ibid., Add. MS 19853, f. 53). John Grace, A Sermon Preached in the Parish-Church of Lisburn, on the 21st of June, 1749; when the … Bishop of Down and Connor held his Episcopal Visitation of his Dioceses (Dublin, 1750), p. 54, complained in passing about the systematic defrauding of clergy. 68. Abp Boulter to Lord Carteret, 8 Mar. 1728[/9] (Boulter letters ..., i, 229); Boulter to duke of Newcastle, 13 Mar. 1728[/9] (ibid., 229–35); Coghill to Edward Southwell, 23 Oct. 1729 (Coghill Letters, ed. Hayton, pp. 74–5). The opposition in the House of Commons in 1735–6 to the tithe of ‘herbage’ or ‘agistment’ was, it appears, based in part on the fear that ‘if prosecuted with the vigour the clergy have begun’ it would ‘drive great numbers of people out of the kingdom’ (William Taylor to Lord Egmont, 16 Mar. 1735[/6] (BL, Egmont papers, Add. MS 46987, f. 20)). 69. Molesworth, Some Considerations …, pp. 23–5. 70. Samuel Madden, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, as to their Conduct for the Service of their Country, as Landlords, as Masters … (Dublin, 1738), p. 134. See also A Reply to the Principal Argument for the Reduction of Gold Coin, and Some Considerations on the Consequences Thereof … (Dublin, 1737), p. 26. For Madden, see Mairead Dunlevy, ‘Samuel Madden and the Scheme for the Encouragement of Useful Manufactures’ in Agnes Bernelle (ed.),


71.

72.

73.

74.

75.

76. 77.

78. 79.

80.

81.

Decantations: A Tribute to Maurice Craig (Dublin, 1992), pp. 21–8; Oxford DNB, xxxvi, 73–4. Dobbs, An Essay on the Trade and Improvement of Ireland (Dublin, 1729), pp. 54, 87–8, 92–5. His proposal to donate tithes to establish poor houses was repeated in ‘Publicola’, A Dissertation on the Inlargement of Tillage, the Erecting of Public Granaries, and the Regulating, Employing, and Supporting the Poor … (Dublin, 1741), p. 64, and in The Distress’d State of Ireland Considered; More Particularly with Respect to the North. In a Letter to a Friend ([Dublin?], 1740). For Dobbs, see Clarke, Arthur Dobbs; Helen Rankin and Charles Nelson (eds), Curious in Everything: The Career of Arthur Dobbs of Carrickfergus, 1689–1765 (Carrickfergus, 1990); Oxford DNB, xvi, 340–2. A previous Commons’ bill in 1733 to encourage the hempen and flaxen manufactures had included a clause to limit the tithe on ‘flax and hemp’ and for this reason had been opposed by in the Lords by all the bishops and a majority of peers (Coghill to Southwell, 29 Dec. 1733 (Coghill Letters, ed. Hayton, p. 151)). Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland, pp. 135–50; T. C. Barnard, ‘“Almoners of Providence: The Clergy, 1647 to c. 1780’ in Barnard & Neely (eds), Clergy of the Church of Ireland, p. 85. Abp Boulter to Earl of Anglesey, 8 Jan. 1736 (Boulter Letters …, ii, 150); Boulter to Sir Robert Walpole, 9 Aug. 1737 (ibid., ii, 181–4); ‘Some Considerations upon the Late Proceedings in Ireland …’ [1736] (BL, Add. MS 47089, ff 1, 3–4); An Apology for the Clergy …, p. 7. See also Legg, ‘Parish Clergy’, pp. 137–8. Edward Synge, Two Affidavits in Relation to the Demands of Tythe-Agistment in the Diocese of Leighlin; with an Introduction (Dublin, 1736); Roger Throp, A Narrative of the Case of the Reverend Mr Roger Throp, … Lately Rector of Killcornan, in the Diocese of Limerick … ([Dublin?], 1739); Philip Skelton, The Necessity of Tillage and Granaries. In a Letter to a Member of Parliament Living in the County of ——— (Dublin, 1741), p. 17. Jonathan Swift, Poetical Works, ed. Herbert Davis (London, 1967), pp. 601–8. A List of such Members as Voted for and against the New Demand of Herbage in 1736 (University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 941.5 P191, no. 8). Professor Stephen Karian and I are editing this list for publication. See, for example, Baron Wainwright’s notes on Lee v. earl of Drogheda et al., 1733 (BL, Add, MS 19851, f. 80). Prescription Sacred: Or, Reasons for Opposing the New Demand of Herbage in Ireland ([Dublin?], 1736); Alexander MacAulay, Property Inviolable: Or, Some Remarks upon a Pamphlet Entituled, Prescription Sacred (Dublin, 1736); Samuel Blacker, Property Vindicated: Or, Some Remarks upon a Late Pamphlet, Intitled, Property Inviolable (Dublin, 1739); Property Re-Asserted, in Answer to the Arguments and Exceptions in a Late Paper, Intituled, Property Vindicated (Dublin, 1740). Molesworth, Some Considerations …, pp. 23–4, inveighed against tithe-jobbers (‘commonly a litigious, worthless, wrangling fellow, a papist and a stranger’) and the support given them by ecclesiastical courts. Even someone who supported the system of tithes might admit that ‘the tithe-farmers may have been vexatious in … collecting and carrying’ (Welbore Ellis to Abp Agar, 29 Oct. 1786 (PRONI, Normanton papers, T/3719/C/20/34)). Evidently some clergy not only farmed their tithes but the so-called small dues, or book money claimed from weekly offerings, and the fees for christenings, churchings, marriages and burials (BL, Add. MS 31881, f. 141). An Apology for the Clergy of Ireland …, pp. 3–4.

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82. William Robertson, A Scheme for Utterly Abolishing the Present Heavy and Vexatious Tax of Tithe, in a Letter to a Member of Parliament (Dublin, 1742), pp. 5–6, 11, 13–14. Robertson wrote from bitter personal experience: he had begun his pastoral work as a curate in Preston’s parish of Tullow, and even when he secured a clutch of livings was still unable to secure his tithe income (Oxford DNB, xlvii, 269–72). 83. See, for example, A Letter from a Layman, to the Clergy of Ireland (Dublin, 1749); A Letter to the People of Ireland, on the Subject of Tythes (Dublin, 1758); A Second Letter to the People of Ireland, on the Subject of Tythes … (Dublin, 1758); A Third Letter to the People of Ireland, on the Subject of Tythes … (Dublin, 1758); The Rights of the Clergy of Ireland Candidly Considered … (Dublin, 1767); An Impartial Discussion of the Subject of Tithes … (Dublin, 1786). 84. Robert Ward to Michael Ward, 16 Jan. 1747 (PRONI, Castleward papers, D/2092/1/6, p. 143); Abercorn to Mr Nelson, 19 Mar. 1750/1 (ibid., Abercorn papers, D/623/A/14/5); Abercorn to John McClintock, 9 Apr. 1751 (ibid., D/623/ A/14/9). For Ward, see John Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down 1600–1800 (Belfast, 1920), pp. 319–21; for Abercorn, W. H. Crawford, The Management of a Major Ulster Estate in the Late Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 2001), pp. 6–76. 85. James Kelly, Sir Edward Newenham, MP, 1734–1814: Defender of the Protestant Constitution (Dublin, 2003), p. 238. 86. James Kelly, ‘1780 Revisited: The Politics of the Repeal of the Sacramental Test’ in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The Politics of Irish Dissent, 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1997), pp. 74–92. 87. Duke of Devonshire to duke of Newcastle, Nov. 1737 (BL, Newcastle papers, Add. MS 32688, f. 433). 88. This was also the view of one irascible contemporary, William Henry (R. G. Ingram, ‘Correspondence of William Henry and Thomas Secker, 1764–67’ in Stephen Taylor and Melanie Barber (eds), A Lambeth Miscellany (Woodbridge, 2010)). For Stone, see Oxford DNB, lii, 894–6; and for an unflattering picture of his diocesan stewardship, Malcomson, Agar, pp. 222, 318. 89. The political context is described in Eoin Magennis, The Irish Political System, 1740–1765: The Golden Age of the Undertakers (Dublin, 2000), ch. 4. 90. For Robinson see Oxford DNB, xlvii, 396–7; A. P. W. Malcomson, Primate Robinson, 1709–94: ‘A Very Tough Incumbent, in Fine Preservation’ (Belfast, 2003), esp. pp. 13–14. 91. J. S. Donnelly, ‘Hearts of Oak, Hearts of Steel’ in Studia Hibernica, xxi (1981), pp. 7–73; Eoin Magennis, ‘A “Presbyterian Insurrection”? Reconsidering the Hearts of Oak Disturbances of July 1763’ in IHS, xxxi, no. 122 (Nov. 1998), pp. 165–87; W. A. Maguire, ‘Lord Donegall and the Hearts of Steel’ in IHS, xxi, no. 84 (Sept. 1979), pp. 351–76. 92. Maurice Bric, ‘Priests, Parsons and Politics: The Rightboy Protest in County Cork, 1785–1788’ in Past and Present, no. 100 (Aug. 1983), pp. 100–23. 93. Oxford DNB, i, 447–8; Malcomson, Agar. 94. James Kelly, ‘Inter-Denominational Relations and Religious Toleration in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The “Paper War” of 1786–88’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, iii (1988), pp. 39–60. 95. Ibid., pp. 54–6; idem, ‘Conservative Protestant Political Thought in Late EighteenthCentury Ireland’ in Connolly (ed.), Pol. Ideas in 18th-Cent. Ire., pp. 198–206; Stephen Small, Political Thought in Ireland 1776–1798: Republicanism, Patriotism and Radicalism (Oxford, 2002), pp. 156–67.

106 Parliament and the Established Church 96. R. B. McDowell, Irish Public Opinion 1750–1800 (London, 1944), pp. 119–26; idem, Grattan: A Life (Dublin, 2002), pp. 94–9. 97. Henry Grattan, Jr, Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan (5 vols, London, 1839–46), ii, 8–9. 98. Malcomson, Agar, p. 232. 99. Ibid., pp. 232–40. 100. Agar to Robinson, 2 June 1788 (PRONI, T/3719/C/22/22). 101. Duigenan to Agar, 21 Mar. 1798 (ibid., T/3719/C/32/28). 102. Malcomson, Agar, pp. 397–8. 103. Agar to Robinson, 2 June 1788 (PRONI, T/3719/C/22/22). 104. For Duigenan, see James McGuire and James Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography (9 vols, Cambridge, 2009), iii, 325–6; Oxford DNB, xvii, 160–61; and P. J. Jupp, ‘Dr. Duigenan Reconsidered’ in Sabine Wichert (ed.), From the United Irishmen to Twentieth-Century Unionism (Dublin, 2004), pp. 79–96. 105. James Kelly (ed.), Proceedings of the Irish House of Lords, 1771–1800 (3 vols, Dublin, 2008), ii, 427. Two years later, in another debate in the Lords, this time on the Union, Lord Dillon declared, in relation to the clergy of the Church of Ireland, that he was ‘duly sensible that their authority and interference were exceedingly useful and indispensably necessary to promote social subordination, and to bring back the nation to perfect tranquillity’ (ibid., iii, 527).

4 Defending the Kingdom and Preserving the Constitution: Irish Militia Legislation 1692–1793 Neal Garnham

Central to the consolidation of state power across eighteenth-century Europe was an expansion of the number of trained, professional soldiers. Indeed, the composite monarchy of Great Britain and Ireland, with its growing overseas empire, might be described as an archetypal ‘fiscal-military state’. But the establishment of the standing army that underpinned the authority of the Westminster government met with sustained opposition. Vocal elements within the political classes were opposed to the idea of a permanent, professional armed force as inimical to the preservation of individual liberty and the survival of representative institutions. Drawing on examples from classical antiquity, and the much more recent history of the Cromwellian Protectorate, they argued a preference for a force mustered from the propertyowning citizenry – the militia or trained bands – men committed in principle to the cause rather than hired for pay, as a safer guarantee not only of the immediate defence of the realm, but also of longer-term security against domestic tyranny. King William’s determination to maintain a large standing army after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, in readiness for a renewal of hostilities against France, provoked heated interventions in the English House of Commons and a vigorous pamphlet campaign by ‘classical republicans’.1 While the issue diminished somewhat in importance during and after the War of the Spanish Succession, MPs and political commentators did not forget the potential threat posed to liberty by a professional army. The animosity shown by the ‘Country’ opposition in 1730 towards the cost of the Hessian troops employed by George II derived in part from their mercenary status.2 The attitude of the Irish parliament to the maintenance of a standing army was more ambivalent. One of the consequences of the parliamentary debates and ‘paper war’ against a standing army in England in 1697–9 was that the regiments King William and his ministers were determined to retain were transferred to the Irish establishment. Their presence in Ireland offered obvious advantages to the Protestant propertied élite in the immediate aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. Protestants constituted a small minority 107

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of the Irish population, vastly outnumbered by their Catholic neighbours. Their experiences during the Glorious Revolution, combined with the fact that the exiled Stuart monarchy was supported by European monarchies, including France, whose own armies contained large numbers of émigré Irish Catholics, created an atmosphere in which ‘the possibility of invasion or insurrection caused acute anxiety’. A series of plots and proposed invasion schemes driven by ‘reckless Jacobite optimism and French desperation’, added fuel to the fire.3 Moreover, the regular troops stationed in Ireland were an important asset in terms of internal policing, and could be mobilised to defend landlords and their lands from the violence of agrarian protesters, and to suppress urban rioters.4 Nor was the presence of military barracks scattered across the kingdom necessarily a grievance: troops brought business with them, and the presence of a barracks in a country town was perceived as a benefit to the economy, so much so that their location sometimes became a subject of fierce competition between local interests.5 Not surprisingly, perhaps, in the first two decades following the Glorious Revolution there appears to have been a decline in interest in the Irish militia as an alternative or supplementary defence force. A militia was established in Ireland 1666 by the lord lieutenant, Ormond, in response to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. This purely Protestant force was enlarged in 1678 as a result of the popish Plot, but then largely disarmed in the wake of Monmouth’s rebellion. It was then run down still further under the lord deputyship of the Catholic, Lord Tyrconnel. It was reactivated by the Williamites as a volunteer force during the crisis following the Glorious Revolution, but maintained an ephemeral existence until firmly re-established by act of parliament in 1716.6 Although mustered in times of crisis – the attempted Jacobite invasion of Scotland in 1708, for example – it seems to have been poorly maintained and was still largely voluntary. Indeed, one of the charges preferred against the Tory ministers in Dublin in 1710–14 was that they had deliberately neglected the militia (in imitation of Tyrconnel), in order to pave the way for the Jacobite restoration that was assumed by opponents to have been their secret objective.7 After the Hanoverian succession, political opinion in Ireland began to shift. For one thing, the ‘Protestant Ascendancy’ class gradually began to feel more secure. This was not a linear process, and complacency could easily be pricked at times of crisis by rumours of a Jacobite invasion fleet being prepared, reports of an outbreak of sectarian violence, or simply by an appearance of confidence among Catholic political interests. But by the middle decades of the eighteenth century it was rare to encounter in the private correspondence of educated Protestants evidence of the kind of deep-seated insecurity that is visible in the letters and diaries written in the 1690s and 1700s. Just as important was growing scepticism about the value for money to Ireland represented by the stationing of so many regular troops on Irish soil. It was increasingly clear that the Irish parliament had

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only a very limited say in the defence of the country. Though the army on the Irish establishment was paid out of Irish revenues, an English act of 1699 (10 Wm. III, c.1) limited its size to 12,000 men, and at any given time as many as half of these soldiers might be stationed in imperial garrisons outside Ireland. In wartime troops were frequently withdrawn for service elsewhere, leaving Irish defences depleted. Moreover the Mutiny Act, which effectively sanctioned the existence of a standing army by providing for the punishment of the military offences of mutiny and desertion, was passed annually at Westminster rather than in Dublin. To add insult to injury, the granting of military commissions was reserved to the lord lieutenant, and considerable restrictions were imposed on the recruitment of Irishmen, whether Protestant or Catholic.8 The Irish parliament could discuss the army freely, and did so at considerable length, but had little influence over it. It found itself acting as the paymaster to a force controlled from England, elements of which could and would be taken out of the country in times of peril. This being the case, almost by default, attention was turned again to the militia, which became the focus of the Irish parliament’s efforts to legislate for its own defence.

In the background The Act of 1716 was the first to bring the militia in Ireland under statutory regulation. Inspired by the recent Jacobite invasion of Scotland, and perhaps also to some extent a political gesture on the part of Whigs to emphasise previous neglect, it provided for commissions of array and lieutenancy to be issued by the Crown, and all Protestants between the ages of 16 and 60 were liable for service. The force was required to exercise on four days each year, though in urban areas it might be called out at the discretion of local officers. It was funded by a levy in each county, the rate of which was doubled for Catholics and those refusing the oath of abjuration. Catholics were also liable to have their horses seized for the use of the militia. A rudimentary disciplinary code was instituted, allowing for fining and imprisonment of those refusing to serve or disobeying orders.9 Originally valid for two years, this act, renewed periodically, remained the core of the militia establishment in Ireland for the next six decades. During that time it was renewed or revived nine times, before it expired in 1775, and was replaced by new legislation in 1778.10 Twice the initial legislation lapsed, with the act of 1729 being ineffective for a short time in 1737. More significantly, the renewal in 1749 became ineffective in 1753, and new legislation had to wait until 1755.11 It is important not to attach unwarranted significance to these interruptions to the militia’s official existence. The interval in 1737 was merely the result of an unexpected delay in summoning parliament, while the failure to renew the legislation in 1753 resulted from an early prorogation, occasioned by a dispute between Commons and administration over the


application of surplus revenue.12 For the most part the passage of these acts was uneventful. Typical of contemporary attitudes was the accurate prediction of the lord lieutenant in 1719 that the current militia bill would ‘take up no time nor meet with any difficulty’.13 In military terms, the passage of the Militia Act in 1716 was not crucial to the defence of the kingdom: without a major war to drain troops away from Ireland, security from both external and internal threats could safely be left to the detachments of the regular army on the Irish establishment. Its real importance lay elsewhere. The bill introduced in Dublin in January 1716 was closely followed by the heads of a bill ‘for securing the King’s person’, and to this was tacked a clause providing relief to Protestant Dissenters from the effects of the sacramental test imposed by the 1704 Popery Act, which made the taking of communion in the Church of Ireland a requirement for holding public office. In particular, the new clause enabled Dissenters to hold militia commissions. The potentially detrimental effects of the sacramental test on national security, in deterring Ulster Presbyterians in particular from militia service, and the loyalty shown by those Dissenters who braved the risk of prosecution by serving in the militia in 1708 and 1715, or who formed ‘volunteer companies’ of their own, was frequently cited by apologists for the Dissenting cause in arguing the case for repeal. Tacking this clause to the security bill was a clever ruse, as the bill was a prominent statement of loyalty to the Crown, and its rejection would reek of treason.14 The response by bishops in the Irish House of Lords was to frame a similar set of heads, without the offending clause, and both were eventually forwarded to the British Privy Council, with a warning from one of the lords justices that if the clauses regarding the Dissenters were not removed the bill would be rejected in the Lords. Even before the rival measures were considered in London, the Irish Privy Council raised objections.15 Despite a subsequent request that the clause remain, since it was ‘surely for the public safety that there should be no law to hinder the Protestants of this country to unite against our common enemy’, the security bill failed to make progress.16 The only compensation was a resolution in the Commons that anyone who prosecuted a Dissenter for acting in a commission was an enemy of the Protestant interest.17 For all the claims made on behalf of the Dissenters that their ‘zeal and steadiness’ made them highly suitable for militia service, it seems that initially the test was enforced, and they were excluded from the commissioned ranks of the militia.18 However, if the law could not be amended, it could be circumvented. From 1719 an irregular series of indemnity acts was passed, each extending the deadline by which office holders were to qualify themselves, which established a practical if disjointed toleration.19 Attempts to repeal the test outright in 1719 and 1733 both failed, but in practice Dissenting, and especially Ulster Presbyterian, involvement in the militia was both offered and sought, notably at times when the kingdom

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seemed to be in imminent danger.20 In the wake of the Jacobite victory at Prestonpans in 1745, for example, a Presbyterian minister in Newry made an impassioned plea for his congregation to persevere in their loyalty to his majesty, and in their zeal against popery, and slavery. If it be needful, let them exert themselves in the defence of our common rights and liberties. In my humble apprehension, this is not a proper time to complain of the Sacramental Test. All true Protestants have one interest, in the support of which they should be firmly united.21 Looking back on the same events from 1749, a rather more jaundiced view was offered by another Dissenting minister, who noted how ‘when there are public ends to serve which require our assistance the penal law is superseded as long as the necessity of our service continues’.22 William Henry, an ambitious but sincere Church of Ireland parson, found it necessary more than once to thank Ulster’s Presbyterians on behalf of his co-religionists, for their willingness ‘to fly to their assistance’ and ‘cheerfully to array under the proper officers’.23 Eventually, in 1756 the Irish parliament finally approved an act permitting Dissenters to take militia commissions, subject to subscribing to the oaths of abjuration and loyalty.24 By that time opposition was limited, with only the bishops persisting with vain objections.25 Thus a certain measure of pragmatism alloyed political principle with respect to the militia. When circumstances demanded, Dissenters were to be used in defence of the state and in opposition to the Catholic threat. Not until after mid-century, however, were they to be admitted to the greater benefits that the state could offer by way of commissions in the militia. In parliament both court managers and opposition ‘patriots’ were alert to the possibility of making political capital from militia issues, but in each case we may detect a degree of opportunism. An abortive attempt was made in 1735 to ‘inquire into the state and condition of the militia’ in Ireland, but it was the drift into war in 1739 that prompted the Irish parliament to consider seriously plans for self-defence.26 A Commons committee was established in November of that year, and reported in March 1740 that 20,000 firelocks and bayonets were required. The stipulation was made, however, that the sum expended should not exceed £35,262. 10s, and that 5000 of the arms were to be manufactured in Ireland.27 Though this might suggest parliamentary enthusiasm for defence, along with a measure of ‘patriot’ interest, at least two observers saw events differently. The duke of Devonshire, who as lord lieutenant had warned a group of leading Irish MPs of the possibility of a Spanish invasion, thought the crisis had been exploited to extort commercial advantages. The more cynical Sir Richard Cox dismissed the affair as a prime example of the ‘jobbery’ of the parliamentary ‘undertakers’, who had secured a promise from Devonshire


that a proportion of the arms should be made in Ireland.28 A subsequent attempt in parliament to ascertain how much of the money voted for arms had been spent in Ireland was only narrowly defeated.29 It seems, therefore, that the militia was still less important as a military force than as a factor in political negotiation and posturing.

On the political agenda The fact that the Jacobite landing in Britain in 1745 was not accompanied by either a rebellion or an invasion of Ireland emphasised the continued unimportance of the militia in a military context. Eleven years later, despite the onset of war with France, a militia array seems to have gone no further than making returns of eligible Protestant males. Three years later the cabinet decided against a further array as being ‘very hurtful to trade’.30 However, the militia took on a different political aspect and a new prominence in parliament in 1759. The changing military situation in the early stages of the Seven Years War, and the appearance of militia reform as a major political issue in Britain, resulted in the emergence of the militia as a prime concern of Irish ‘patriots’, and an area of conflicting political principles between the administration and the legislature. The parliamentary session of that year opened with ‘patriot’ members calling for details of the militia arrays held over the previous 15 years. Leave was then granted for heads of a bill ‘for the better ordering of the militia forces’, which were duly laid before the Commons.31 The mainsprings of this initiative were threefold. First, the Seven Years War had seen the Irish garrison greatly reduced, and the state of the nation’s defences was a source of concern for some in power in Ireland.32 Second, there was an explicit threat of invasion by the French, based on ‘most authentic intelligences’, which the lord lieutenant had presented to parliament.33 Finally, extensive reforms of the English militia had been instituted in 1756, and, with agitation for similar changes in Scotland, Irish MPs were encouraged to take up the issue.34 The English militia acts of 1757 and 1758 had established a new force which required all men resident in the country aged between 18 and 50 to be balloted for service. It was only with the threat of invasion in 1759, however, that the legislation was implemented.35 In Scotland, where there was no existing militia organisation, agitation began in the same year for the formation of such a force. Here, again inspired by English example, the ideal was the extension of the English Acts to Scotland. The arguments centred on the need not only to defend the north of Britain, but also to promote parity in the British state, and the Enlightenment concept of the right to bear arms as a mark of citizenship.36 The Irish press regarded the initial success in Ireland as a fine display of ‘patriot zeal’.37 The heads made little progress, however, the sole development being the addition of a clause allowing the summoning of meetings

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for the allocation of commissions.38 At this point help came from an unexpected source, with a French landing at Carrickfergus.39 The debacle that ensued, which included the capture of the town and a threat to pillage and burn nearby Belfast, prompted tirades in the press and parliament. The Belfast News Letter reported the failure of the government to defend the country effectively,40 and in the Commons calls were made for reports of militia arms issued since 1745, and for numbers of arms held in stores (which outnumbered arms issued by nearly five to one).41 A motion for an account of ammunition issued to the militia since the last array was rejected, but orders were made for the reading of addresses to the lord lieutenant for the arming and reorganisation of the militia that dated back almost half a century.42 The final ‘patriot’ thrust came with a motion to the effect that, had the Belfast militia been properly armed, it ‘would have been a force more than sufficient to have defeated’ the French, but this was frustrated when sufficient members rallied to the defence of the viceroy. A more blatantly critical motion, that the arms held in store in Dublin should have been issued to the militia, also failed. Eventually a note of conciliation and self-congratulation was struck, the house unanimously declaring that the county militias of Antrim, Armagh, Down and Londonderry, which had attended at Belfast and Carrickfergus, had displayed ‘zeal, courage, and activity … beneficial to themselves and their country’.43 Meanwhile heads of the bill for reforming the militia had worked their way steadily through the Commons, and were ready for transmission to the Privy Council. However, what appears to be a wrecking clause had been inserted ‘relative to the qualification of justices of the peace’, and the measure was subsequently lost.44 In the summer of 1765 Viscount Weymouth was appointed lord lieutenant and given a sheaf of instructions, including one that he bring about the ‘settlement and establishment of the militia’.45 Weymouth did not take office, and the hopes expressed in the ‘patriot’ press ‘that a militia is to be established on a new plan’ were transferred to his successor, the earl of Hertford.46 A short but relatively detailed plan for Irish militia reform was even published, based on the reforms made in England.47 Unfortunately, Hertford’s period of office was short and unsatisfactory, and nothing was done in relation to the militia.48 By the end of 1765, however, reform of the militia returned to the agenda, at the behest of the ‘patriot’ grouping in the Irish House of Commons. The driving force was the ambitious ‘patriot’ orator Henry Flood.49 Flood canvassed William Pitt to support a new Irish measure, as Pitt had been a keen supporter of militia reform in England, and had apparently voiced his support for similar legislation in Ireland.50 Pitt’s belated response was largely non-committal. While he was ‘very sincere’ in his support for militia reform in Ireland, he confessed himself to be insufficiently familiar with circumstances there to know how appropriate it would be to apply


the existing English legislation in Ireland.51 By the time Pitt’s answer was received, Flood had already presented the Commons with the heads of a bill ‘for regulating the militia in this kingdom’, and these had been discussed four times by a committee of the whole house.52 In the event the heads were lost in the Commons, despite Flood’s ‘brilliant and impressive eloquence’.53 Flood attributed the failure solely to the fact that he was the proposer. Despite his having made private use of the letter from Pitt, which generated support from unexpected quarters, the administration ‘moved heaven and earth’ to keep his supporters away from the house.54 The rejection of the heads would appear to have been foreseen by some, who used the opportunity of a general bill renewing expiring legislation to ensure the existing militia laws remained in force, since the clause in this bill covering the militia acts was added only the day after debate on Flood’s measure was unexpectedly adjourned.55 Flood’s unsuccessful initiative created a new urgency in the public debate about the need for militia legislation. An explosion of pamphleteering ensued, in which the constitutional issues surrounding the standing army and the militia were aired. Sir Charles Bingham, an independent member allied to the ‘patriots’, took the lead, arguing that a militia was ‘generally necessary, and absolutely so, where there is any public liberty to be preserved’; a standing army remained ‘a grievance of the first magnitude’, while a militia was ‘the safest, most certain and most parsimonious means of defence’.56 Bingham was followed by William Jackson, who called for numerous reforms in Ireland, among them the establishment of ‘a regular constitutional militia’. He compared such a force favourably with ‘the dangerous consequence to the constitution’ represented by an enlarged regular army, and called for the adoption of the least ‘unexceptionable’ option.57 Another writer contended that expanding the militia was an effective way to counter ‘the schemes of ambition and self-interest’ that an enlarged standing army would engender.58 Alternatively, a militia was essential for the Protestant population to defend ‘the rights, the lives and the religion of their country’.59 The Dublin radical Charles Lucas joined the debate, calling for the use of a standing army in Ireland only until such time as ‘the natives of Ireland become capable and qualified to defend their liberty and property, in the form of a militia’.60 Yet commentators were far from unanimous in the belief that an enlarged and improved militia must prove advantageous. Two authors argued against expanding the militia, and in favour of an augmentation of the army, primarily on the grounds that Protestant tradesmen could not be spared for military service.61 The catalyst for the publishing of these tracts was the appointment as lord lieutenant of Lord Townshend, who arrived in Dublin in the autumn of 1767 with orders to secure an augmentation of the army on the Irish establishment from 12,000 to 15,000 men.62 However, the situation soon became confused. Townshend had been one of the leading supporters of militia

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reform in England, and advocates of the strengthening of the Irish militia expected that he would support similar moves in Ireland, a view encouraged by the suggestion that he would attempt to reconstruct the ‘Castle’ party ‘by granting the four favourite bills’ of the ‘patriots’.63 Disappointment in parliament was palpable when Townshend’s opening speech offered only the possibility of shifting the tenure of judges from the king’s pleasure to good behaviour, and coupled this with the request for 3000 additional troops on the Irish establishment.64 Flood presented an address from the Commons in response that noted ‘the considerable share’ Townshend had taken in ‘planning and carrying into execution in England, an effectual national militia’,65 from which the lord lieutenant surmised that the Commons would oppose the army augmentation as diverting funds from their own pet projects, and reported to Shelburne that it might lead to ‘the forcing in a militia, which will be a great additional expense’.66 Shelburne replied that Townshend’s speech had been impolitic, and should only have hinted at possible measures, such as the possible ‘forming of a militia’.67 The ‘patriots’ now took matters into their own hands, and Flood and others were granted leave to bring in heads ‘for establishing a national militia’.68 Townshend intimated that he would support ‘this particular measure’ in the hope that it would facilitate his creation of a ‘Castle party’.69 However, he soon recognised that these ‘patriots’ would see the army augmentation as ‘meant to preclude’ militia reform.70 He received some backing from Whitehall, but was reminded that militia reform would not negate the requirement for the augmentation, and indeed would render it even more necessary, ‘as the militia will need time to get organised’, and even then would be incapable of acting without regular army support.71 Thus although the administration signalled its readiness to proceed with both militia reform and the augmentation, some Irish MPs were convinced that ultimately only one would be sanctioned. According to Townshend, not even those who generally supported the administration could be relied upon to back the augmentation, primarily because they saw it as impossible to raise enough funds to pay for increasing the army, rebuilding the barracks in Ireland, and ‘some moderate scheme of a militia which they thought ought to be going on at the same time’.72 Perhaps with this in mind, Flood brought forward heads of a bill to reform the Irish militia.73 These were largely based on existing English legislation, proving perhaps, as Townshend had been warned, that the Irish were now ‘fond of imitating our neighbours’.74 The major modification was the initial restriction of recruiting to the nine counties of Ulster, the strategic cities of Dublin, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, Waterford and Cork, and the three Cork towns of Youghal, Bandon and Kinsale. This was expected to raise, through balloting, a force of almost 6000 men. Only in times of ‘impending public danger or of insurrections’ were a further 6000 to be raised from across the country.75 However, the subject of the militia was now seen by some as inextricably linked to


the army augmentation, despite Shelburne’s assertion that the two issues were distinct. Perhaps typical was Charles O’Hara, who regarded Flood’s measure as fit to ‘defeat the intended augmentation’.76 Even before the heads were presented, the prime serjeant, John Hely-Hutchinson, previously considered an ally of administration, said in the Commons that he would ‘give the most strenuous opposition to the intended augmentation … [and] give every support in his power to a national militia’.77 In the event the militia heads passed the Irish parliament with ease, but the bill was respited by the British Privy Council,78 though whether owing to ‘opposition’ or ‘inattention’ was unclear to Irish ‘patriots’.79 Discussion of the militia as a constitutional issue was a new departure in Ireland, despite the fact that Irishmen had produced three of the classic published expressions of the classical republican ideology that denounced standing armies and idealised a militia, as encouraging civic virtue and responsibility, and offering a perfect guard for the balanced constitution.80 John Trenchard, the author of A History of Standing Armies (1698) had been born in Ireland, but educated in London, and acquired an estate in the west of England by marriage.81 A near contemporary had been keen to point out that he never owned property in Ireland, nor had any permanent interest there.82 Moreover, his contributions to the pamphlet debate on the English resumption of Irish forfeited estates in 1700–3 had been stridently anti-Irish in tone.83 John Toland, the deist and writer of The Militia Reformed (1698) was born in Donegal, but left Ireland when only 15 years old, never to return.84 Toland’s one-time patron, Robert Molesworth, whose Account of Denmark as it was in the Year 1692 may be regarded as a scriptural text for these ‘commonwealth Whigs’, or ‘real Whigs’, had been actively involved in politics in Dublin in the mid-1690s, but dropped his interest in Irish affairs in Anne’s reign and only recovered his commitment after the Hanoverian succession when he returned to long-term residence in Ireland.85 While these men’s writings were published in Ireland, as were others portraying the militia as a fitting form of defence for the kingdom and the regular army as an affront to the constitution, it is hard to detect such ideas in Irish political debates or in the Irish parliament.86 Despite the claim by some scholars that there was ‘a strong feeling that a large standing army was a direct threat to liberty’ in Ireland, and the description of Toland and Molesworth as ‘important Irish real Whigs’ it is difficult to find evidence of this ideology in parliament, or to see these men as contributing to a specifically Irish debate.87 The limited discussion of the militia in Ireland before the 1760s concentrated on countering the threat posed by the Catholic majority and deterring a foreign-backed invasion. In passing it was noted that a militia was ‘in some respects, preferable to a standing army as being more concerned in the event’, but it was never explicitly cited as a cornerstone of the constitution, nor was the army condemned as a potential tool of oppression.88 However, such ideas had now been broached and would quickly achieve prominence.

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On the first day of real business during the foreshortened 1769 session, the Commons appointed a committee ‘to consider in what manner the militia of this kingdom may be more effectual for its defence’. It reported within a month, recommending a plan very similar to Flood’s former initiative.89 Once more the House sought to link the militia issue with the army augmentation, through an attempt to refer Townshend’s plan for augmentation to the militia committee, and an effort to get the supply committee to take into account the relative cost of militia reform when considering Townshend’s plan. Both failed.90 The final flourish came in November 1769, when the militia committee reported, estimating the cost of its plan for around 5600 militiamen at £6500 annually in wages, and almost £8000 in clothing. Forwarded to the supply committee, these figures were incorporated in their report, and endorsed by the house. The augmentation was at last approved, thanks to some canny political management by the new chief secretary, George Macartney, but this was accompanied by the inevitable demand for a new militia.91 In the event the augmentation took place, but, lacking the necessary legislation, the militia reform did not, and the intended force ‘fell to the ground’ even though funds had been allocated towards its establishment.92 What had been a hotly contested debate ended in a damp squib. Militia reform then disappeared from the Irish political agenda for half a decade. By 1775, however, the administrations in both Dublin and London were more amenable to the idea, not least because of the continued transfer of regular troops to the colonies.93 Leave was granted in November for bringing in heads of a bill ‘for establishing a militia for the better defence of this kingdom’, and three months later the measure was sent to London with the backing of the lord lieutenant, Lord Harcourt. The proposal was for a law limited in time and expense, with Harcourt arguing that a reformed militia might prove useful in preventing agrarian disorder, and for supporting the collection of the revenue. He had already suggested that with barely 6000 troops in the country Ireland was ‘insecure’ and ‘the peace of the kingdom [could] no longer be depended upon’.94 But the measure was rejected in the British Privy Council as unnecessary and too expensive.95 Finally, in 1778 a new militia establishment at last secured parliamentary sanction. The security background was one of increasing desperation, as the war in America was going badly, and the threat of an open alliance between France and the rebellious colonists compelled the imperial government to mobilise forces on an unprecedented level.96 Leave for heads was granted on 19 March 1778.97 Six days later, George Ogle, who had also introduced the unsuccessful heads in 1775, and was then described as ‘respectable and sensible’ but ‘constantly in opposition’, sought the advice of the house.98 This exercise proved inconclusive, but the following day heads were brought forward, and two clauses were immediately added to exempt Quakers from service, and to allow independent companies to be


formed in the meantime, at the discretion of the viceroy.99 Debate around the new measure was enthusiastic rather than constructive; notably, an attempt to halve the funds to be raised to support the measure, and to make the raising of the revenue dependent upon passing new militia legislation, was easily voted down. The provision allowing for independent companies was also withdrawn, allegedly to prevent the entire measure being rejected by the British Privy Council.100 On 2 April the finished heads were presented to the lord lieutenant, Buckinghamshire, who forwarded them with guarded support.101 Although a majority of the Irish Privy Council did not see such a bill as suitable, its complete rejection would have been ‘a great disappointment’ in Ireland, and there could have been unwelcome consequences.102 An apprehensive Buckinghamshire asked Edmond Sexten Pery, the Speaker of the Irish Commons, then in England, to consult Lord North, but Pery left London earlier than expected, and the two men never met. As a result Buckinghamshire seems to have shifted his stance, and by the beginning of May could only ‘strongly recommend the passing of the bill’.103 In the event neither the viceroy nor the Irish parliament was to be disappointed. The measure was back in Dublin by mid-June, and passed into law on 1 July 1778.104 Yet the new legislation still required effective implementation, and this never happened, despite persistent rumours to the contrary.105 Even before the act received the royal assent, the lord lieutenant had noted that the Irish treasury was empty.106 In the end a simple ‘want of money’ precluded any attempt at embodying the new force.107

The ‘patriot’ cause This was far from the end of the story. With war against America and her European allies threatening Irish trade, and even Ireland itself, some initiative was necessary to improve the country’s defences. In the event it was not taken by the government or by parliament, but by a small number of concerned and active citizens. On St Patrick’s Day 1778 a group met in Belfast to form a volunteer company prepared to defend the town against a French invasion. Such actions were neither original nor unique; volunteer companies had appeared before at times of crisis – in 1745 and 1760 for example. What was different in 1778 was the status of the companies, and their ethos. While previous volunteers could have been legitimised (at least in retrospect) by the existence and implementation of militia legislation, this was no longer the case. More importantly, these Volunteers made it a point of honour to declare their independence of government, eschewing both payment and royal commissions.108 The rapid and widespread formation of similar companies created what was in effect a mass movement: by early 1779 there were more than 30 companies in County Antrim alone, and perhaps 12,000 men in arms across the country.109 In effect, Ireland now had a militia, but one neither controlled by law nor convened under royal

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prerogative. In the short term this presented few problems. The Volunteers, who by 1781 may have numbered as many as 20,000 men, were effusive in protestations of loyalty, and the government issued to them some of the militia arms held in storage. However there were those in both England and Ireland who expressed unease at the embodiment of such a large number of armed men outside government control.110 This apprehension increased when a strong link emerged between the Volunteers and the ‘patriots’ in parliament. Volunteers first showed their political colours in the agitation over Free Trade (that is the right of Irish merchants to trade freely with the British colonies), which came to a head in late 1779. In November the Volunteers staged a demonstration on King William III’s birthday in support of parliamentary agitation by the ‘patriots’. Companies in military formation fired a volley in College Green, and paraded past the Parliament House with cannon displaying placards that declared ‘Free Trade or this’. The following month concessions were granted by the British ministry.111 The focus of the more advanced reformers, parliamentary ‘patriots’ and armed Volunteers now moved towards the issue of legislative independence. The constitutional relationship between Ireland and Britain, in which Ireland was essentially a subordinate kingdom, was increasingly seen as unsatisfactory by many in the Irish parliament. Once more the Volunteers played a decisive part. The issue was taken up by them in February 1782 when, at their ‘National Convention’ in Dungannon, they declared that ‘the claim of any other than the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland to make laws to bind this kingdom is unconstitutional’. Popular agitation, and more Volunteer declarations, followed, and with a change in the British ministry the decisive reforms were secured.112 The Volunteer movement had thus become a major component of the ‘patriot’ interest. Although as early as the spring of 1781 ‘the weight of opinion within the Volunteers was to avoid direct political involvement’, it was also the case that the supposed ethical values of the Volunteers had become central to ‘patriot’ rhetoric.113 ‘Patriot’ ideologues imputed to the Volunteers all those virtues of manliness, honesty, independence of action, and vigilance that had traditionally been bestowed upon the militia by representatives of the British Whig tradition.114 However, the Volunteers were not strictly speaking a militia, since they neither had recognition in law, nor any explicit connexion to the state in whose defence they claimed to be acting. The politicisation of the movement was also extremely worrying for both the Dublin administration and conservative elements within the Irish parliament. Although ministers in Dublin and at Westminster had been happy to acquiesce in the concession of ‘Free Trade’ and ‘legislative independence’, the part played by the Volunteers was seen as vital by many. Now the political focus shifted again, and in 1783 an (admittedly diminishing) number from the Volunteers’ ranks looked towards the reform


of parliament and the electoral system. Ministers realised that simply to declare the Volunteers an illegal organisation and suppress them was impractical. Instead a series of administrative, and then legislative, measures were devised to bring the Volunteers under Crown control and curtail their influence. These focused on implementing or creating effective militia structures and laws that would undercut support for Volunteering. The first step was taken in 1781 when the 1778 Militia Act was quietly and unobtrusively renewed, although once more its provisions were not implemented.115 Then in the summer of 1782 the administration decided to establish a series of fencible regiments, in the hope of detaching support from the Volunteer cause. These units, which would be paid and equipped as regular soldiers but would serve only in Ireland, had the advantage that they could be raised under royal prerogative, without the acquiescence of parliament. Although largely dismissed by historians as a failure, they did have some successes: Francis Dobbs of Carrickfergus was one prominent Ulster Volunteer officer who took a fencible commission. But violent popular disapproval (expressed by various means, including even the alleged refusal of sexual favours by ‘patriot’ women), ensured that the fencible experiment failed to achieve the goal of ‘restoring to the crown the sole exercise of the sword’.116 Just as members of the ‘patriot’ faction had lavished praise upon the Volunteers, so they heaped scorn upon the fencibles. Dismissed at one Volunteer meeting as ‘Offenceable Regiments’, they were derided as unconstitutional, ineffective and excessively expensive.117 In November 1783, as in 1779, Volunteer cannon were paraded past the Irish parliament in an attempt to sway members. This time the end in view was parliamentary reform. Henry Flood, the most vocal political supporter of Volunteering, subsequently presented a reform bill. However, the parliament was not cowed and the measure was rejected by a majority of 80.118 The political influence of the Volunteers was waning, but even so they could be represented as posing as great a threat as ever to stability and order. The war with the American colonists was over, and the Volunteers could no longer claim the legitimacy of necessity. In addition, Catholic relief, an issue to which many Volunteers had for some time been sympathetic, now came more fully on to their agenda. The combination of relief and reform was anathema to many in the Irish parliament. It was against this background that an attempt was made once more to legislate for a militia. The primary intention of the Castle administration in seeking to establish a militia was the undermining of the Volunteer movement. The duke of Rutland, installed as lord lieutenant in February 1784, saw the Volunteers as a threat to good order and discipline in Ireland, and suggested in October that ‘the best way of getting quit of these associations will be by a militia bill’. The British prime minister, Pitt the younger, agreed, though he cited as a major problem the fact that Catholics might be unintentionally recruited.119

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However, Rutland went further, and argued that a militia bill should be brought forward in Dublin at the same time as two other measures: the first, a series of commercial and constitutional concessions; the second, rendering membership of the Volunteers a treasonous act.120 Militia legislation had become thoroughly enmeshed with broader debates concerning the political relationship of Britain and Ireland. By November, with parliament prorogued, Rutland was confident of securing what he described as his ‘favourite project’: a militia act. His chief secretary, Thomas Orde, agreed, noting the support of several key members of the Commons for ‘the great object of a national militia’. Introducing the bill might be problematic, but in the event allies were found.121 During a supply debate on 14 February 1785 Luke Gardiner, a former colonel in the Volunteers and an independent-minded member, proposed that the Militia Act of 1778 be revived, and £20,000 be voted ‘to array and establish, if necessary, a national militia.’ While thanking the Volunteers for their exertions, he observed that ‘their existence now was unconstitutional’. A sharp debate followed, in which praise and ignominy were heaped on the Volunteers in almost equal amounts. Sir Edward Newenham quite rightly accused Gardiner of acting at the request of the administration, and condemned any idea of a statutory militia as not only a ‘system of prodigality’ but also a trick to allow Irishmen to be ‘dragooned into a standing army’. However, Gardiner’s motion was passed by 76 votes.122 The following day William Brownlow and Newenham, unhappy that the earlier motion had been passed late at night in a sparsely attended house, proposed further motions praising the Volunteers, and once again spirited speeches were made. In particular Flood, the protagonist of militia reform in the 1760s, had much to say. Although he had long been ‘a friend to the militia … because the people did not know the use of arms’, he was now ‘against a militia, because the people do know the use of arms’. A militia was to be raised, ‘not that the people may learn the use of arms, but that the people may be obliged to lay down their arms’. Despite these arguments the Volunteers were snubbed again, and praise was offered only to those who had ‘retired to cultivate the blessings of peace’.123 The diminishing ‘patriot’ interest remained resolute in its opposition to militia reform, while the administration continued to muster its forces in support. On 17 February 1785, the Commons granted leave for a bill ‘for establishing a militia in this kingdom’, but the measure went no further despite the lord lieutenant’s declaration of his ‘triumph on the militia question’.124 This failure to act seems to have been intimately linked to wider attempts at reforming relations between Britain and Ireland. Intended by Pitt to draw the two nations closer together, a series of ‘commercial propositions’ had been devised. These would have removed most impediments to trade between the two countries. In exchange, Pitt hoped that the Irish would be willing to take on a greater role in the defence of the empire. The release of


more regular troops from Ireland would become viable only if the country was equipped with a statutory militia. The intention of closer commercial co-operation had been announced in the lord lieutenant’s opening speech in January, and embodied in propositions presented the following month by Chief Secretary Orde. However, the ‘patriots’ in the Commons opposed them on the grounds that they infringed on Ireland’s recently won ‘legislative independence’ and that the lucrative East India trade would remain a British monopoly. Despite the fact that the ensuing expanded resolutions and bill were forwarded to Westminster, the commercial bill was allowed to languish after having passed the Irish Commons in August by a small majority.125 The abandonment of the militia bill was evidently a consequence of the failure of the commercial bill to win wider acceptance in Ireland. This was certainly the connexion made by the earl of Mornington, a close ally of Pitt.126 With the concessions on trade not being accepted, it was most unlikely that the Irish parliament would consent to greater contributions to the defence of the empire. In August Pitt suggested to Rutland that it was ‘not the moment for pressing farther’, given the small majority for the commercial propositions and the possibility of the ‘patriots’ raising ‘a spirit of opposition without doors’. Three months later Orde, the chief promoter of new militia legislation as well as the commercial bill, disingenuously dismissed a militia as ‘never … a very desirable measure’.127 In the 1760s militia reform had been a recurrent and key demand of the ‘patriot’ minority in the Irish Commons. When the concession was won, financial constraints prevented the measure being implemented. By the 1780s a statutory militia was keenly opposed by precisely those individuals who had lobbied for it in the preceding decades. The establishment and politicisation of the Volunteers had made them far more useful to the ‘patriots’ than any militia force sanctioned by government. The administration in turn now sought to introduce effective militia legislation in order to undercut the influence of the Volunteers. This volte-face had first been in evidence with the government’s promotion of, and ‘patriot’ opposition to, the fencible scheme. It became prominent during the debates surrounding the 1785 bill. However, the bill was abandoned not defeated. The failure of the commercial propositions saw the administration withdraw its backing for the allied reforms it hoped to gain from the Irish parliament. Moreover, as Lord Sydney now informed the Castle administration, the militia issue had taken on another dimension. The growth of ideas of toleration had led to Catholic Relief Acts in 1778 and 1782, and the entry of Catholics into some Volunteer companies. This meant that any new militia laws, even if ensuring that the new force was a purely Protestant one, would have to take Catholic sensibilities into account.128 Ministers continued to toy with the idea of strengthening the militia. The duke of Rutland was determined to see through the establishment of a government-controlled militia during his term of office. Just a month before

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his death in 1787 he proposed the introduction of a new militia bill, but the idea died with him.129 Although parliament again voted funds in support of a militia in early 1788, nothing seems to have been done either to raise the money or implement the existing act. Later that year the 1778 act, which had never been implemented and was now about to expire, was renewed with ease. In the autumn rumours circulated that an entirely new militia act would be passed to allow the raising of 15,000 men; again, this came to nothing.130 The 1789 Revenue Act allocated £20,000 for the establishment of a militia, and the 1778 act was again renewed, being made effective to 1792. A further act passed in 1790 extended the 1778 act to 1796,131 despite viceregal scepticism.132 The passing of these various acts indicates that by 1789 both the legislature and the administration were agreed that a statutory militia was essential. This was perhaps not surprising given events in Ireland and further afield. Civil disorder and agrarian protests had already, in 1787, prompted the passing of a riot act and reforms to the Irish policing system. The regency crisis had threatened the constitutional connexion between Britain and Ireland. France was torn by revolution. By 1790 war with Spain beckoned. A militia was now deemed necessary both for the defence of the country from foreign invasion, and the maintenance of order.133 The willingness of parliament to pass legislation in support of a militia was also indicative of its worsening relationship with the Volunteers. The admission to Volunteer companies in 1784 of Catholics and lower-class Protestants, along with Volunteer enthusiasm for parliamentary reform, had eroded their support in parliament. More conservative members had lost patience with the organisation in the early 1780s. By the end of the decade they were no longer to be tolerated, though as yet no militia could be embodied to replace them. Further pressures then emerged. The appearance of serious sectarian conflict in County Armagh (leading eventually to the setting up, on the Protestant side, of ‘Orange’ societies), and the emergence of a Catholic paramilitary organisation, the Defenders, created an internal security problem that could not be dealt with by the diminished numbers of Volunteers, and which was a growing distraction for the regular army. In 1791, too, the Society of United Irishmen was founded by political radicals in Dublin and Belfast, to promote political reform and republican separatism.134 On Bastille Day that year the remaining Volunteers in Belfast displayed their residual radical tendencies by participating in a parade in which one banner declared 14 July 1789 to be a day ‘sacred to liberty’, and after which toasts were drunk to the French constitution and National Assembly. This was a sharp contrast to the position of the Volunteers of August 1779 who had gathered in the King’s Head Inn in Armagh to drink toasts to the royal family, and to express the wish that ‘Frenchmen [may] never be masters’ of Britain.135


Defending the establishment Matters came to a head in late 1792. In June the lord lieutenant, Westmorland, wrote to Lord Hillsborough, a leading landowner in Ireland and an office-holder in England, noting that ‘some other mode besides soldiers’ was required to maintain Ireland’s internal security.136 In November rumours circulated that a militia of 20,000 men was to be embodied and new militia legislation brought forward in the next session of parliament. Westmorland believed that such an initiative was necessary to reinforce Irish Protestant confidence in his government, and to negate the influence of the resurgent Volunteer movement.137 In December Robert Hobart, Westmorland’s chief secretary, wrote again to Hillsborough informing him that the militia would be arrayed under the existing laws, and a proclamation issued to suppress the Volunteers. He hoped that this would ‘mould some of them into a militia’. A report was published, based on ‘indubitable authority’, that the Dublin militia would finally be arrayed, some 14 years after the enactment of the relevant legislation.138 On 19 December 1792 letters patent were issued to array the militia in Dublin and Drogheda.139 Meanwhile proclamations had been issued against Volunteering. Attempts to form a ‘National Battalion’ on the French model from the Dublin Volunteers, and then the calling of an Ulster Volunteer convention at Dungannon in February 1793, proved too much for the authorities. By the spring of that year, even the Belfast United Irish newspaper, the Northern Star, set up as the mouthpiece of northern radicalism, was carrying the announcement that men who ‘collected into armed associations’ to promote ‘the subversion of the constitution’ would be dispersed by the forces of the Crown.140 Another factor now made itself felt. The Catholic Relief Act of 1792, largely forced through an unsympathetic Irish parliament at the behest of British ministers, had left the Irish Catholic élite disappointed but not dispirited.141 As militia reform was once again emerging as a parliamentary issue, so too was Catholic relief. Dundas, the secretary of state in Whitehall, warned Westmorland that further relief was ‘in the interest of the Protestants of Ireland and that of the empire at large’.142 Invitations to the administration’s key Irish advisers to attend Pitt in London met with refusal, but as the new year opened delegates from the Catholic Convention in Dublin were presented to George III. They requested the abolition of ‘all distinctions’ made in Ireland between his Irish subjects.143 The outcome seems to have been a swift reminder to Westmorland that he should seek to ‘connect all lovers of order and good government’ in Ireland through a relief act. This measure should open to Catholics ‘every office of trust, military and civil’, and in particular there should be no distinction ‘in respect of arms’.144 When parliament met in 1793 the lord lieutenant included in his speech a request from the king that parliament ‘adopt such measures as may be most

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advisable for the maintenance of internal tranquillity’ and in particular stressed the need to establish a militia. He went on to support the idea of further Catholic relief.145 Militia legislation became entangled with yet another political issue. Hitherto proposals for militia reform seem never to have considered anything other than the formation of a purely Protestant force.146 However, such a wide-ranging relief measure as now seemed to be contemplated could result in a fundamental change to this approach. Moreover, in preliminary discussions over the content of the bill the British ministers stressed that, in relation to the right to bear arms, there was no reason why Irish Catholics should ‘be distinguished from the rest of his majesty’s subjects’.147 Whatever the repercussions, leave to introduce a militia bill was given to Lord Hillsborough on 5 February. He stressed that he would base the bill on existing British legislation, ‘as nearly as circumstances permit’. The same day Hobart brought forward the outlines of the concessions proposed to be made to Catholics. These included the right to bear arms, subject to a property qualification, and the possibility that Catholics would be able to hold civil office, and military and naval commissions.148 Although no explicit mention was made of Catholic involvement in the militia, it became apparent that this would be the consequence of the twin reforms. In his recent assessment of the passing of the 1793 Militia Act Ivan Nelson has observed that three issues prompted disagreement and debate in parliament. The first was the accusation that a formal militia would extend the patronage network of the Dublin Castle administration; the second was the size of the force; and the third was the provision that would be made, if any, for the families of men enlisted.149 While these were indeed contested points they were not the only ones. Hillsborough had taken some time to bring the militia bill forward, and on its second reading, on 6 March, he admitted that its drafting had been subject to ‘some difficulties, he had not foreseen’. He had certainly taken soundings concerning popular attitudes to both militia reform and Catholic relief.150 Before either the relief bill or the militia bill could be introduced Edward Cooke, the Dublin under-secretary, had raised concerns in Westminster that if ‘Britain should be afraid to admit Catholics to her domestic force [the militia], whilst she was pressing to have them admitted into Irish corps’ there could be a Protestant backlash in Ireland. He also noted the reluctance of some to allow Catholics to bear arms.151 The chief secretary, Robert Hobart, ‘urged the propriety of not excluding Roman Catholics from the militia’.152 The ‘difficulties’ Hillsborough mentioned may well have been the position of Catholics within the new force. In the event the militia bill and the relief bill progressed through the Irish parliament in tandem. By 19 March they were in their committee stages in the Commons. Both were extensively amended. Crucially, the obligation for officers to take the oaths of supremacy and abjuration was removed from the militia bill, and replaced by oaths ‘made and signed by the officers of


his majesty’s other forces in this kingdom’.153 The fact that the relief bill opened up all civil and military offices in Ireland meant that, if qualified, Catholics would be eligible to take militia commissions. That the militia bill required enlisted men to take an oath of allegiance to the monarch, and no more, ensured that Catholics would also be eligible to serve in the ranks. The next day the Lords passed the relief bill, and it was taken to the lord lieutenant for the royal assent.154 Five days later the Lords received the militia bill. Lord Farnham proposed an amendment that would explicitly exclude Catholics from holding commissions, by requiring militia officers to take the oath of supremacy. He was supported by Lord Chancellor FitzGibbon and Archbishop Agar of Cashel. No such amendment would have been necessary had the relief bill not already been passed, and the militia bill not been amended in the Commons. Farnham’s motion failed by 23 votes to 10. It was the only division on the bill, which was then transmitted to the lord lieutenant.155 Both bills received the royal assent on 9 April 1793. Ireland could now boast a statutory militia ‘unweakened by any clause of religious exclusion’.156 Robert Hobart, the only MP nominated to the drafting committees on the two bills, congratulated himself on ‘the most decided advantages’ that the new Militia Act would bring.157 In fact, the militia would go on to become the ‘vanguard of the Irish defence forces’ for the rest of the century, and at the same time ‘the military expression … of the Catholic nation’.158 This was a very different body to the militia first established by law in 1716.

Conclusion In military terms, the militia was not central to the defence of Ireland – or perceived to be – between its establishment by law in 1716, and the French landing at Carrickfergus in 1760. Parliamentary concern about the militia was initially sparked in 1716 by the Jacobite threat. Subsequent parliamentary action and the arrays of the force were no more than ‘momentary statements of Protestant alarm’.159 Nor was the militia a burning political issue in that period. The legislation that maintained the force passed easily through the Irish parliament. Only twice during the first half of the century did the administration of the militia prompt any significant parliamentary activity. One was an example of politicking rather than principle, with members attempting to wring commercial advantages from the situation. The other was potentially more serious, when the point at issue was the exclusion of Presbyterians from the commissioned ranks. In Ireland, as in England, militia service has been seen as a way of bonding individuals to the state, and into the local social structure. Men were ‘groomed for citizenship’ through militia service, and tied themselves to their social superiors through military service under their command.160 In Ireland the Catholic majority of the population was excluded from this bond; but so to until 1756

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were those Dissenters who formed a large proportion of the Protestant people. In practice the position may have been worse for Dissenters than for Catholics: though debarred from the prestigious officer corps of the force, they were still expected to serve in the lower ranks, and invariably under men who did not share their beliefs. The Irish militia thus neither provided civic training nor promoted political loyalty. It could not even encourage Protestant unity. When militia reform did emerge as a ‘patriot’ cause from the late 1750s onwards it was stimulated by developments in Britain and the wider empire: on the one hand, the strategic imperatives of the Seven Years War and, on the other, the contemporary English and Scottish debates over the reconstruction, or in the Scottish case construction, of a militia force. Those involved made use of long-established English ideas and rhetoric regarding the position of the standing army, the virtues of a citizen militia, and the glories of a balanced constitution; ideas that had originally been articulated by Irish writers in England, but had hitherto found no place in Irish political discourse. This was in part because until the 1760s, Irish politicians had been more ready than their English counterparts to accept the presence of a regular army, for the security it offered. The coincidence of the French landing at Carrickfergus and the apparent ill-preparedness of the defences cast the militia issue more clearly as an arena of conflict between the ‘patriot’ group in parliament and the Castle administration. ‘Patriots’ could use the inadequacies of the militia as a stick with which to beat the viceroy and his supporters. Even with the actual arrival of foreign troops on Irish soil in 1760, the politics of the Irish militia had more to do with assaulting the Dublin government than with defending Ireland. Alongside this was the desire of ‘patriots’ to prevent Irish revenues being deployed to service a regular army that was predominantly stationed abroad. The augmentation of the army and the reform of the militia became inextricably linked in ‘patriot’ minds. It was this perception that initiated the pamphleteering activity of 1768. Patriots such as Sir Charles Bingham and William Jackson saw the possibility that augmentation would take place at the expense of militia reform. It was perhaps this consideration rather than any scruple over constitutional implications that prompted them to put pen to paper. Those who favoured the augmentation seem to have had political patronage in mind, rather than purely considerations of defence. The militia issue in Ireland may have been ostensibly one of principle and constitutional niceties; but underlying this was always a foundation of personal political manoeuvring, and the perception of defending Irish interests from English domination and exploitation. Interestingly, the form in which the militia issue eventually emerged in Ireland in the 1760s was essentially based on an old-fashioned ideology. As the militia began to be extolled in Ireland as an integral part of the balanced constitution, the argument elsewhere was changing. In England the militia


debate after 1745 was increasingly one of efficiency and cost, underpinned by notions of a ‘patriot king’ and fuelled by political manoeuvrings concerning the position of the duke of Cumberland.161 In Scotland the militia issue became entangled with Enlightenment ideas of social contract and the obligations of the citizen, the debate shifting from ‘constitutional liberty to civic virtue’.162 In North America the argument in favour of a militia, though still based on long-established Whig ideas of a balanced constitution, was also becoming one about citizenship, with the right to bear arms a mark of that privilege. Militia membership became ‘an expression of patriot sympathies’ and a collective embodiment of ‘republican principles’.163 The eventual introduction of these Whiggish ideas to the mainstream of Irish political thought resulted in the act of 1778, which seems to have been based on the English legislation of the 1750s. Ireland’s earlier militia laws had been quite distinct: different circumstances demanded different laws. When these uniquely Irish measures were replaced with ideas imported from England, the latter were found in the short term to be unsuitable and were not implemented. When further modification occurred subsequently by way of the 1793 act, and necessity forced implementation, problems resulted. The 1793 act prompted popular opposition on a scale not experienced in England.164 Here was further confirmation, if needed, that Ireland was different. With the advent of Volunteering – the formation of an Irish militia outside the confines of the permissory law – the Irish militia debate was rapidly modernised. Militia, or rather Volunteer service, marked the entry of a man into the Irish polity, and bearing arms became a mark of admission to the political nation. That ideal was compromised in 1793, when militia enlistment was extended to men who had little enthusiasm for service, and a limited attachment to the state in support of which they were being mobilised. Perhaps the most striking feature of the development of the militia debate in the last quarter of the century is the shift in support for reform, from opposition to government. Once a ‘favourite bill’ of the ‘patriots’, militia reform rapidly became after 1783 the ‘favourite project’ of administration. Nor can we ignore the importance of the metropolitan power. Throughout the eighteenth century, the British ministry exerted a major, and often decisive, influence on the nature and timing of Irish militia reform, directly through the Privy Council in Whitehall, and indirectly through the administration in Dublin Castle. Initially this was by blocking proposed legislation, partly due to concerns about funding the force, but perhaps also because of worries about the uses to which an Irish militia could be put. Subsequently these same ministers acted as the most vigorous promoters of reform. Yet none of the parties could achieve their ultimate goal without a measure of support from the others. A full coincidence of ideas was achieved only when the threats to Ireland seemed clearly to endanger the interests of all.

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Notes 1. L. G. Schwoerer, ‘The Literature of the Standing Army Controversy, 1697–1699’ in Huntington Library Quarterly, xxviii (1965), pp. 187–212; eadem, No Standing Armies! The Anti-Army Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Baltimore, MD, 1974), esp. pp. 155–98; H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth Century Britain (London, 1977), pp. 104–6. 2. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, pp. 184–7; Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party 1714–60 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 221; Jeremy Black, Parliament and Foreign Policy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 64–8. 3. S. J. Connolly, ‘The Defence of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760’ in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), p. 238; Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685–1766: A Fatal Attachment (Dublin, 2002), p. 87. 4. S. J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630–1800 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 322–3. 5. Edward McParland, Public Architecture in Ireland, 1680–1760 (New Haven & London, 2001), pp. 125–6. 6. Rolf Loeber, ‘The Reorganisation of the Irish Militia in 1678–81: Documents from Birr Castle’ in Irish Sword, xix (1995), pp. 197–224; A. J. Guy, ‘The Irish Military Establishment, 1660–1776’ in Bartlett & Jeffery (eds) Military Hist. Ire., pp. 212–16. 7. An answer to D[ean] Clayton’s Letter [Dublin, 1713]; memorandum by Alan Brodrick, enclosed in Alan Brodrick to earl of Sunderland, 19 Mar. 1714[/15] (BL, Blenheim papers, Add. MS 61636, ff. 147–8); petition of lord mayor, sheriffs, commons and citizens of Dublin to the lords justices, 21 June 1715 (NAI, MS 2447, pp. 169–70); lords justices to Sunderland, 28 June 1715 (ibid., p. 170). 8. Thomas Bartlett, ‘Army and Society in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in W. A. Maguire (ed.), Kings in Conflict: The Revolutionary War in Ireland and its Aftermath, 1689–1750 (Belfast, 1990), pp. 173–82; Toby Barnard, The Kingdom of Ireland, 1641–1760 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 54–8. 9. 2 Geo. I, c. 9. 10. 6 Geo. I, c. 13; 8 Geo. I, c. 6; 10 Geo. I, c. 4; 11 Geo. II, c. 13; 19 Geo. II, c. 9; 23 Geo. II, c. 8; 29 Geo. II, c. 8; 5 Geo. III, c. 5; 17 & 18 Geo. III c. 13. 11. 3 Geo. II, c. 5; 23 Geo. II, c. 8; 29 Geo. II, c. 8. 12. J. L. McCracken, ‘The Conflict between the Irish Administration and Parliament, 1753–6’ in IHS, iii, no. 10 (Sept. 1942), pp. 159–79; Declan O’Donovan, ‘The Money Bill Dispute of 1753’ in Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (eds) Penal Era and Golden Age: Essays in Irish History 1690–1800 (Belfast, 1979), pp. 55–87; James Rooney to [Sir Nicholas Bayly], 24 Apr. 1755 (PRONI, Anglesey papers, D/619/21/B/126); notes on speeches made by Edmond Sexten Pery in the Irish parliament (HMC, 8th Rep., p. 187). 13. Duke of Bolton to ——, 14 Aug. 1719 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/377/603). 14. Charles Delafaye to ——, 30 Jan. 1716 (ibid., SP 63/373/229); J. G. Simms, ‘The Making of a Penal Law (2 Anne, c. 6), 1703–4’ in IHS, xii, no. 46 (Sept. 1960), pp. 105–8. 15. Charles Delafaye to ——, 6 Feb. 1716 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/374/237); Patrick McNally, ‘“Irish and English Interests”: National Conflict in the Church of Ireland Episcopate in the Reign of George I’ in IHS, xxix, no. 115 (May 1995), pp. 295–314; duke of Grafton to Secretary Stanhope, 15 Feb. 1716 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/374/242); Grafton and earl of Galway to Stanhope, 24 Feb. 1716 (ibid., SP 63/374/244). 16. Henry Maxwell to ——, 9 Apr. 1716 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/374/269).

130 Defending the Kingdom and Preserving the Constitution 17. CJI (4th edn), iii, 76; Bp Godwin to Abp Wake, 3 May 1716 (Christ Church, Oxford, Wake papers, Arch. W. Epist. xii, f. 45). 18. William Conolly to earl of Sunderland, 9 Aug. 1715 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/372/78); [Arthur Dobbs] to [Michael Ward], [1716] (PRONI, Castleward papers, D/2092/ 1/3/10). 19. S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660– 1760 (Oxford, 1992), p. 166. 20. J. C. Beckett, Protestant Dissent in Ireland, 1687–1780 (London, 1948), pp. 79–82. 21. James Moody, A Sermon Occasioned by the Present Rebellion in Scotland, Preached at Newry October the Sixth, 1745 (Belfast, 1745), pp. 18–19. 22. Gilbert Kennedy, The Great Blessing of Peace and Truth in our Days: A Sermon Preached at Belfast, on Tuesday, April 25th, 1749, being the Day of the Public Thanksgiving for the Peace (Belfast, 1749), p. 19. 23. [William Henry,] A Philipic [sic] Oration, against the Pretender’s Son, and his Adherents, Addressed to the Protestants of the North of Ireland, and, with all Humility, Respect and Affection Inscribed to that Most Loyal Body (Dublin, 1745), pp. 18, 21; idem, The Advantages of Peace, and the Means to Perpetuate the Present Peace: A Sermon Preached in the Parish Church of Urney, on the 25th day of April 1749, being the Public Thanksgiving for the Peace (London, 1749), pp. 27–30, 35. 24. 29 Geo. II, c. 24. 25. Duke of Devonshire to Henry Fox, 30 Mar. 1756 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/414/300); Lord Jocelyn to Lord Limerick, 1 May 1756 (PRONI, Roden papers, MIC/147/9). 26. LJI, iii, 319; CJI (4th edn), iv, 303. 27. CJI (4th edn), iv, 345–6. 28. Devonshire to Duke of Newcastle, 14 Mar. 1740 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/403/61); Sir Richard Cox to Edward Southwell, 3 Sept. 1741 (RIA, Southwell papers, MS 12/ W/35). 29. CJI (4th edn), iv, 393–4. 30. Sir Henry McAnally, ‘The Militia Array of 1756 in Ireland’ in Irish Sword, i (1950–51), pp. 94–104; Duke of Bedford to Abp Stone, 22 May 1759 (Lord John Russell (ed.), The Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford (3 vols, London, 1842–6), ii, 375–6). 31. CJI (2nd edn), ix, 182, 428, 435, 508, 518. 32. Eoin Magennis, The Irish Political System 1740–1765: The Golden Age of the Undertakers (Dublin, 2000), pp. 56–9. 33. CJI (4th edn), iv, 128. 34. J. R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue 1660–1802 (London, 1965), pp. 127–61; John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 15 et seq. 35. 30 Geo. II, c. 25 (GB); 31 Geo. II, c. 26 (GB); Western, Militia, pp. 127–61. 36. Robertson, Scottish Enlightenment and Militia, p. 15 et seq. 37. Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 1 Dec. 1759; Universal Advertiser, 1 Dec. 1759. 38. CJI (2nd edn), ix, 823, 851. 39. See, for example, Marcus Beresford, ‘Francis Thurot and the French Attack at Carrickfergus, 1759–60’ in Irish Sword, x (1971–2), pp. 255–74. 40. BNL, 18 Mar., 1 Apr. 1760. 41. CJI (2nd edn), ix, 871, 876, 877–8. 42. Ibid., 907–8. 43. Ibid., 909. 44. Ibid., 864, 865, 887, 906, 922. An alternative measure presented by three Ulster members ‘to encourage Protestants to keep arms for the defence of this kingdom’

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45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

60.

61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

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failed owing to a lack of time (ibid., 918, 927, 928); British Privy Council register (TNA, PRO, PC 2/107, pp. 359–60). Instructions to Viscount Weymouth, 12 June 1765 (Cal. HO Papers, 1760–65, pp. 559–60). Freeman’s Journal, 8 Oct. 1765. Ibid., 16 Nov. 1765. M. J. Powell, ‘The Reform of the Undertaker System: Anglo-Irish Politics, 1750– 67’ in IHS, xxxi, no. 121 (May 1998), pp. 32–6. On Flood see James Kelly, Henry Flood: Patriots and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 1998). Flood to Pitt, 31 Dec. 1765 (The Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. W. S. Taylor and J.H. Pringle (4 vols, London, 1838–40) iii, 1–3). The details of Flood’s proposal are unknown, but it seems likely they were based on existing English legislation. Pitt to Flood, 15 Mar. 1766, (Thomas Rodd (ed.), Original Letters, Principally from Lord Charlemont, the Right Honourable Edmond Burke, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and Many other Distinguished Noblemen and Gentlemen, to the Right Honourable Henry Flood (London, 1820), pp. 19–20). CJI (3rd edn), xiv, 158, 177, 181, 184, 188, 189, 203–4, 206. Ibid., 214, 221, 222; Henry Grattan, Jr, Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan (5 vols, London, 1839–46), i, 203. Flood to Lord Charlemont, 27 Mar. 1766 (HMC, Charlemont Mss, i, 279–80). CJI (3rd edn), xiv, 214, 215. [Sir Charles Bingham,] An Essay on the Use and Necessity of Establishing a Militia in Ireland, and Some Hints towards a Plan for that Purpose, by a Country Gentleman (Dublin, 1767), pp. 10, 12, 21. [William Jackson,] A Letter to the Right Honourable J[oh]n P[onsonb]y, Speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland (Dublin, 1767), p. 30. A Letter on a Very Interesting and Important Occasion, the Increase of the Military Establishment in this Kingdom (Dublin, 1768), p. 8. Considerations on the Present State of the Military Establishment of this Kingdom, Addressed to the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of Ireland, in Parliament Assembled (Dublin, 1768), p. 47. [Charles Lucas,] A Mirror for Courts Martial: In which the Complaints, Trial, Sentence and Punishment of David Blakeney, are Represented and Examined with Candour (3rd edn, Dublin, 1768), p. 5. Some Impartial Observations on the Proposed Augmentation, by a Country Gentleman (Dublin, 1768), p. 7; Reasons for an Augmentation of the Army on the Irish Establishment, Offered to the Consideration of the Public (Dublin, 1768), p. 15. Thomas Bartlett, ‘The Augmentation of the Army in Ireland 1767–69’ in EHR, xcvi (1981), pp. 540–59. Camden to Grafton, 29 Sept. 1767 (Autobiography and Political Correspondence of Augustus Henry, Third Duke of Grafton, ed. W. R. Anson (London, 1898), p. 163). Kelly, Flood, pp. 115–18. CJI (3rd edn), xiv, 267–8, 271. Townshend to Shelburne, 27 Oct. 1767 (Cal. HO Papers, 1776–9, p. 196). Shelburne to Townshend, 29 Oct. 1767 (ibid., p. 197). CJI (3rd edn), xiv, 331. Townshend to [marquess of Granby], 10 Nov. 1767 (HMC, Rutland Mss, ii, 293). Townshend to Shelburne, 13 Nov. 1767 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/425/111).

132 Defending the Kingdom and Preserving the Constitution 71. Shelburne to Townshend, 24 Nov. 1767 (The Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, ed. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice (3 vols, London, 1875–6), ii, 98). 72. Townshend to Shelburne, 12 Dec. 1767 (copy) (PRONI, Wilmot papers, T/3019/5634). 73. CJI (3rd edn), xiv, 406, 450. 74. Hunt Walsh to Townshend, 5 June 1766 (HMC, Townshend Mss, p. 402). 75. Printed heads of a bill for regulating the militia, presented by Flood, 10 Feb. 1768 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/420/117–36). 76. Charles O’Hara to Edmond Burke, 9 Feb. 1768 (R. J. S. Hoffman (ed.), Edmond Burke, New York Agent (Philadelphia, 1956), pp. 423–4). 77. Townshend to Shelburne, 6 Feb. 1768 (Cal. HO Papers, 1766–9, p. 303). 78. CJI (3rd edn), xiv, 172, 225, 245. 79. Freeman’s Jnl, 12 Apr. 1768. 80. See above, n. 1. 81. Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, MA, 1968), pp. 115–25; Romney Sedgwick, The House of Commons 1715–1754 (2 vols, London, 1970), ii, 481; M. P. McMahon, The Radical Whigs: John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon: Libertarian Loyalists to the New House of Hanover (Lanham, MD, 1990); Oxford DNB, lv, 307–8. 82. Samuel Madden, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland (Dublin, 1738), p. 99. 83. [John Trenchard,] The Several Addresses of Some Irish Folkes, to the King, and the House of Commons on Forfeitures [London, 1702]; [idem,] A Letter from a Soldier to the Commons of England, Occasioned by an Address now Carrying on by the Protestants in Ireland, in Order to Take away the Fund Appropriated for the Payment of the Arrears of the Army (London, [1702]). 84. S. H. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners and Mind (London, 1984), pp. 12–27; Oxford DNB, liv, 894–8; Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester, 2003). 85. Robbins, Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, pp. 93–109; Ian McBride, ‘The School of Virtue: Frances Hutcheson, Irish Presbyterians and the Scottish Enlightenment’ in D. G. Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds), Political Thought in Ireland since the Seventeenth Century (London, 1993), p. 82; Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton (eds), The House of Commons 1690–1715 (5 vols, Cambridge, 2002), iv, 826–35; Oxford DNB, xxxviii, 530–2. 86. For the production of such material for export see Mary Pollard, Dublin’s Trade in Books, 1550–1800 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 96–102. 87. Bartlett, ‘Augmentation of the Army’, p. 542; Stephen Small, Political Thought in Ireland 1776–1798: Republicanism, Patriotism, and Radicalism (Oxford, 2002), p. 22. For the suggestion that such ideas only came to prominence in Ireland in the 1780s see Norman Vance, ‘Volunteer Thought: William Crawford of Strabane’ in D. G. Boyce et al. (eds), Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 262–3. 88. The Necessity of a Well Disciplined Militia in Ireland; Shewn in a Few Short Questions Proposed to the Protestants of that Kingdom (Dublin, 1746), p. 6; Hints Concerning the Present State of Ireland, Humbly Submitted to the Consideration of the Public (Dublin, 1745), p. 6. See also Seasonable Advice to Protestants; Containing Some Means of Reviving and Strengthening the Protestant Interest where it has Failed, or Declined (Cork, 1745).

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95.

96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111.

112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

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CJI (3rd edn), xiv, 523, 583. Ibid., 605–6. Ibid., 624, 630, 632. Townshend to Weymouth, 16 Oct. 1770 (Cal. HO Papers, 1770–2, p. 81). Stephen Conway, War, State and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2006), pp. 126–9. CJI (4th edn), ix, 222, 237, 257, 258; Harcourt to Weymouth, 28 Feb. 1776 (E. W. Harcourt (ed.), The Harcourt Papers (14 vols, Oxford, [1880–1905]), x, 116–17); Harcourt to Lord North, 30 Nov. 1775 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/451/39–41). TNA, PRO, PC 1/11/13. For the incorrect claim that the measure was rejected on its return to Ireland because of conciliar amendments, see John O’Donoghue, Historical Memoirs of the O’Briens (Dublin, 1860), p. 403. Stephen Conway, ‘British Mobilisation in the War of American Independence’ in Historical Research, lxxii (1999), pp. 61–3. CJI (4th edn), ix, 446. William Hunt (ed.), The Irish Parliament 1775: From an Official and Contemporary Manuscript (Dublin, 1907), p. 39; BNL, 27–31 Apr. 1778. CJI (4th edn), ix, 457. BNL, 31 Mar.–3 Apr., 3–7 Apr. 1778. CJI (4th edn), ix, 466; BNL, 10–14 Apr. 1778. Buckinghamshire to Weymouth, 21 Apr. 1778 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/459/336–40). Richard Heron to Edmond Sexten Pery, 22 Apr. 1778 (PRONI, Additional Pery papers, T/3052/57); Buckinghamshire to Weymouth 1 May 1778 (TNA, PRO, SP 63/460/27–31). CJI (4th edn), ix, 495, 500, 508. BNL, 14–17 July, 1–15 Sept. 1778; ‘A Vindication of the Earl of Buckingham as Lord Lieutenant, c. 1780’ (PRONI, Lothian papers, T/3502/1). Buckinghamshire to Sir Charles Hotham Thompson, 10 May 1778 (PRONI, Hotham papers, T/2429/1/30). Lord Charlemont’s memoirs (HMC, Charlemont Mss, i, 50); Richard Tighe to ——, 12 Aug. 1781 (HMC, Carlisle Mss, p. 516). T. G. F. Paterson, ‘The County Armagh Volunteers of 1778–1793’ in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, ser. 3, v (1942), pp. 40–1. A. T. Q. Stewart, A Deeper Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irishmen (London, 1993), pp. 4–8; P. D. H. Smyth, ‘The Volunteers and Parliament’ in Bartlett & Hayton (eds), Penal Era and Golden Age, pp. 114–15. See, for example, Welbore Ellis to Abp Agar, 25 Dec. 1779 (PRONI, Normanton papers, T/3719/C/13/48). Allan Blackstock, Double Traitors? The Belfast Volunteers and Yeomen 1778–1828 (Belfast, 2000), pp. 2–5; David Lammey, ‘The Free Trade Crisis: A Reappraisal’ in Gerard O’Brien (ed.), Parliament, Politics and People: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Irish History (Dublin, 1989), pp. 69–92. James Kelly, ‘The Politics of Volunteering, 1778–93’ in Irish Sword, xxii (2000), pp. 147–9. Ibid., p. 146. See, for example, BNL, 16–20 Nov. 1781, 10–13 Sept. 1782. 21 & 22 Geo. III, c. 40. BNL, 10–13 Sept. 1782; Gerard O’Brien, Anglo-Irish Politics in the Age of Grattan and Pitt (Dublin, 1987), pp. 147–8; duke of Portland to Thomas Townshend, 18 July 1782 (TNA, PRO, HO papers, consulted as PRONI, MIC/224/2/38).

134 Defending the Kingdom and Preserving the Constitution 117. BNL, 8–11 Oct. 1782. 118. Kelly, ‘Politics of Volunteering’, pp. 148–50. 119. Rutland to Lord Sydney, 25 Oct. 1784 (HMC, Rutland Mss, iii, 145); Pitt to Rutland, 4 Nov. 1784 (Correspondence between the Rt Hon. William Pitt and Charles Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1781–1787, ed. Lord Stanhope (Edinburgh, 1890), p. 49). 120. Rutland to Pitt, 14 Nov. 1784 (HMC, Rutland Mss, iii, 148). 121. Rutland to Sydney, 22 Nov. 1784, Thomas Orde to Rutland, 30 Nov., 6 Dec. 1784 (ibid., 150, 152). The election of 1783 had seen a great deal of rhetoric employed in support of the Volunteers and continuing the excoriation of the fencibles (see, for example, BNL, 12–15 Nov. 1782). 122. BNL, 15–18 Feb 1785; Rutland to Sydney, 15 Feb. 1785 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/16/171–3). For Gardiner’s earlier reservations about the Volunteers and his preference for a militia, see his speech in the Commons on 13 Oct. 1779 (BNL, 15–19 Oct. 1779). 123. BNL, 18–22 Feb. 1785. 124. CJI (4th edn), ix, 353; Rutland to Sydney, 20 Feb. 1785 (HMC, Rutland Mss, iii, 182). 125. James Kelly, Prelude to Union: Anglo-Irish Politics in the 1780s (Cork, 1992), pp. 131–209. 126. Earl of Mornington to W. W. Grenville, 2 Mar. 1785 (HMC, Fortescue Mss, i, 247). 127. Pitt to Rutland, 17 Aug. 1785 (Pitt–Rutland Corresp., ed. Stanhope, p. 118); Orde to Rutland, 25 Nov. 1785 (HMC, Rutland Mss, iii, 262). 128. Sydney to Rutland, 7 Jan. 1786 (HMC, Rutland Mss, iii, 273). 129. Rutland to Pitt, 26 Sept. 1787 (Pitt–Rutland Corresp., ed. Stanhope, pp. 188–9). 130. BNL, 1–5 Feb., 9–12 Sept. 1788; 28 Geo. III, c. 42. 131. 29 Geo. III, c. 1; 29 Geo. III, c. 40; 30 Geo. III, c. 45. 132. Earl of Westmorland to W. W. Grenville, 10 May 1790 (HMC, Fortescue Mss, i, 583–4). 133. For a summary of events in this period see R. B. McDowell, ‘The Age of the United Irishmen: Reform and Reaction, 1789–94’ in T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds), A New History of Ireland, iv: Eighteenth-Century Ireland 1691–1800 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 289–307. 134. On the origins and emergence of the Society see Stewart, Deeper Silence; Marianne Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France (New Haven & London, 1982); N. J. Curtin, The United Irishmen: Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin (Oxford, 1994). 135. BNL, 15–19 July 1791, 10–13 Aug. 1779. 136. Westmorland to Hillsborough, 25 June 1792 (PRONI, Downshire papers, D/607/ B/369). 137. Dublin Evening Post, 17 Nov. 1792; Westmorland to Dundas, 17, 25 Nov. 1792 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/38/70–82, 105–8). 138. Hobart to Hillsborough, 9 Dec. 1792 (PRONI, D/607/B/380); BNL, 11–14 Dec. 1792. 139. Dublin Gazette, 24 Dec. 1792. 140. Ian McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), pp. 174–6; Northern Star, 13–16 Mar. 1793. 141. Thomas Bartlett, The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 (Dublin, 1992), pp. 121–5; Small, Political Thought, pp. 202–6. 142. Dundas to Westmorland, 17 Dec. 1792 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/38/157–60).

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143. Westmorland to Dundas, 29 Dec. 1792 (ibid., HO 100/42/1–4); Memoirs of Grattan, iv, 77. 144. Dundas to Westmorland, 7 Jan. 1793 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/43/128). 145. Parl. Reg. Ire., xiii, 10–11. 146. See, for example, Necessity of a Well Disciplined Militia, p. 5; Rutland to Pitt, 14 Nov. 1784 (HMC, Rutland Mss, iii, 148); Westmorland to Dundas, 17 Nov. 1792 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/38/70–82). 147. Dundas to Westmorland, 7 Jan. 1793 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/43/128–3). 148. Parl. Reg. Ire., xiii, 145; Hobart to Evan Nepean, 5 Dec. 1793 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/43/246–9). 149. I. F. Nelson, The Irish Militia, 1793–1802: Ireland’s Forgotten Army (Dublin, 2007), pp. 43–5. 150. Parl. Reg. Ire., xiii, 368; John Slade to Hillsborough, 3 Mar. 1793 (PRONI, D/607/ B/384). 151. ‘Memorandum of the conversation which passed with Mr Dundas at Wimbledon in the presence of Mr Pitt’ [21–22 Jan. 1793] (PRONI, Melville papers, T/3208/2). 152. Robert Hobart to marquess of Downshire, 12 Feb. 1795 (PRONI, D/607/C/74). 153. CJI (4th edn), xv, 141, 174–7, 182. 154. Ibid., 184–5. 155. BNL, 26–29 Mar. 1793. 156. Clonmel to Dundas, 30 Mar. 1793 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/46/153). 157. CJI, xv, 141; Hobart to Pitt, 19 Mar. 1793 (TNA, PRO, HO 100/43/117–18). 158. Thomas Bartlett, ‘Defence, Counter-Insurgency and Rebellion: Ireland, 1793– 1803’ in Bartlett & Jeffery (eds), Military Hist. Ire., pp. 290, 293. 159. David Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (2nd edn, Dublin, 2000), p. 164. 160. Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649–1770 (New Haven & London, 2003), p. 329. 161. E. H. Gould, ‘“To Strengthen the King’s Hands”: Dynastic Legitimacy, Militia Reform and Ideas of National Unity in England 1745–60’ in HJ, xxxiv (1991), pp. 337–9. 162. R. B. Sher, ‘Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and the Problem of National Defense’ in Journal of Modern History, lxi (1989), pp. 242–3; Robertson, Scottish Enlightenment and Militia, pp. 22–59. 163. L. D. Cress, ‘Radical Whiggery on the Role of the Military: Ideological Roots of the American Revolutionary Militia’ in Journal of the History of Ideas, xl (1979), p. 59. 164. Thomas Bartlett, ‘An End to Moral Economy: The Irish Militia Disturbances of 1793’ in Past and Present, no. 99 (1983), pp. 41–64; I. F. Nelson, ‘“The First Chapter of 1798”? Restoring a Military Perspective to the Irish Militia Riots of 1793’ in IHS, xxxiii, no. 132 (Nov. 2003), pp. 369–86.

5 Legislating for Economic Development: Irish Fisheries as a Case Study in the Limitations of ‘Improvement’ Andrew Sneddon

The idea of ‘improvement’ so popular in eighteenth-century Europe was protean, holding human betterment as a central tenet without delineating what form this should take. It was thus able to maintain internal coherence while changing external shape in order to embrace changes in fashion and to accommodate such trends and tendencies as sociability, politeness, progress, civility and sensibility.1 By the latter part of the century, it had become an essential element in the European Enlightenment.2 Improvement did not just enjoy cultural currency at an attitudinal and behavioural level, it also assumed material form in promoting and encouraging economic development, specifically agricultural and land improvement. In England and Scotland this was visible in the rise of improving boards and societies; urban renewal and cultural renaissance; the growth in the range, accessibility and volume of print; and the development of economic infrastructure through the construction of new networks of turnpike roads and canals.3 Although members of the landed élite were enthusiastic devotees of ‘improvement’, such developments were often directed by the urban ‘middling’ and professional classes, who were particularly adept at using the machinery of local government and parliamentary legislation, alongside the activities of voluntary bodies, to impose their own agenda for social and economic regulation and reform.4 The vogue for social and economic ‘improvement’ took a powerful hold in eighteenth-century Ireland, following on naturally from earlier attempts to bring English ‘civility’ to the island. This objective was to have been achieved through the remodelling of Ireland’s local and national government and legal system along English lines, the adoption of English dress, language and customs, the conversion of the largely Irish-speaking Catholic majority population to the Reformed religion, the spread of English agricultural methods, and the establishment of manufactures, which in turn would lead 136

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to greater urbanisation.5 Much of this programme was subsumed in the new agenda of improvement that flourished in the eighteenth century, though it was less ideologically driven than the previous policy of Anglicisation. Representatives of the Irish Protestant landowning élite were the prime movers in this culture of ‘improvement’. They helped develop the linen industry, oversaw the building and maintenance of roads and canals, and fostered agricultural innovation through statutory bodies such as the Irish Linen Board (1711) and voluntary associations such as the Dublin Society (1731), and the Physico-Historical Society (1744).6 They also played a major role in the planning, establishment and operation of provincial towns, and the construction of fashionably polite country houses and demesne parks.7 An improving aspect can even be detected in their increasing attachment to the ideals of politeness and sociability. To be considered fashionable one had to ‘improve’ oneself, by training in the current, polite, modes of conversation, manners, gestures, music and dance.8 As landowners themselves, many Church of Ireland clergy pursued improvement in similar ways to the gentry and aristocracy. In particular they played a leading part in campaigns to suppress vice and reform manners, and disseminated what T. C. Barnard has termed the ‘cult and culture of improvement’, in sermons and through the example of their clerical households.9 In Ireland the campaign for economic improvement acquired impetus after 1720, as evidenced by the growth of pamphlet literature, voluntary societies, and legislative initiatives. In particular, the 1720s and 1730s witnessed a surge in publications advancing and advocating schemes of economic development. This is not to suggest that all pamphleteers supported the idea; some lampooned it by satirising gentlemen who sought to be counted among the cultivated, polite and sociable through a punishing regime of self-improvement,10 while others lamented various projectors’ schemes as ill-conceived, chimerical and lacking in understanding of the political and economic realities of their country.11 Improving authors came from various backgrounds – clerical and mercantile as well as the landed gentry – and their work displayed a politically pragmatic approach to economic problems. They were concerned to forward concrete schemes for the exploitation of Ireland’s indigenous resources within the confines of existing English economic restrictions, focusing on currency, trade, and agriculture.12 One consequence of the embrace of the culture of improvement by the Irish propertied élite was that the Irish parliament took a more active role in fostering economic and social development, through legislation13 and through channelling public money into individual schemes, statutory boards, and local committees.14 This explains why, in common with their British counterparts,15 many of the tracts written by Irish improvers16 (including those concerned with fisheries17) were legislatively oriented;

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sometimes written by those actively involved themselves in legislating, and directed at courtiers, government ministers and parliamentarians. Influence worked in both directions. On the one hand, pamphleteers reacted positively to the possibility that parliament might act as an engine of economic change; on the other, the decision making of Irish MPs was increasingly influenced by political economy.18 Key improving measures initiated in parliament in the 1729–30 session, for example, had previously been advocated by pamphleteers: these included legislation to increase tillage; to tax absentee landlords; to increase the duty on imported French wines; to provide public money for inland navigation; and (through re-animating a dormant act of 1716) to drain and improve bogs and unprofitable land.19 Before we can state with any certainty that in eighteenth-century Ireland, as in Britain, parliamentary sovereignty was used to encourage economic development,20 a comprehensive analysis has to be made of the legislation passed to facilitate ‘improvement’. However, this is impossible within the short space of a chapter, given the huge number of legislative initiatives involved. The subject classification scheme employed in the Irish Legislation Database project comprises ten top-level categories, three of which embrace improving legislation (‘social issues’, ‘economy’ and ‘communications’). Even an analysis restricted to the legislative initiatives in the two categories most closely concerned with economic development, those dealing directly with the economy and communications, would require the examination of approximately 1200 bills or heads of bills, more than a quarter of all legislation attempted in the period 1692–1800. A more practicable (and it is to be hoped useful) approach – adopted in this chapter – is to take as a case study one feature of the ‘improvement’ agenda, represented by a substantial but not overpoweringly large body of evidence, which will yield specific findings and at the same time may also point to broader conclusions about the way in which parliament advanced the cause of ‘improvement’ in general. Fishing has been chosen for this purpose not only because it was a welldefined and self-contained area of economic improvement, but also because the history of the fishing industry in Ireland has attracted relatively little attention.21 Furthermore, it was a prominent element in the various schemes for the advancement of the Irish economy identified by the advocates of improvement over successive decades from the 1720s. In what follows, this chapter examines the legislative response to the calls to develop Irish fisheries, focusing on the characteristics of fishery legislation, and the circumstances that accompanied its passage through parliament. An attempt is made also to establish the motivations of legislators, and the nature and depth of their commitment to the economic regeneration of their country. But before we consider fishery legislation in detail, it is necessary to locate it in its legislative and commercial context.

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Supporting sea-fishing in Ireland Fishing inevitably attracted the attention of ‘improvers’ because of Ireland’s proximity to the rich fishing waters of the Atlantic and the Irish Sea, and because the country had, in the seventeenth century, sustained a profitable export trade in that commodity.22 Indeed, the volume of herring exported achieved a record level in 1698 (30,379 barrels). However, this was not sustainable, and the 50 per cent decline in the volume exported the following year (15,580 barrels) heralded a trend that was to see annual herring exports fall during the first two decades of the eighteenth century to an average of just in excess of 5000 barrels. The decline would have been still more acute but for impressive catches in 1709 (13,255 barrels) and 1710 (10,252 barrels), but the pattern seemed firmly fixed when the annual average fell to below 3000 barrels in the early 1720s.23 These disappointing figures notwithstanding, belief in the potential of sea-fishing proved enduring, and it was given a fillip when, in 1726, the annual volume of herring exports exceeded 5000 barrels for the first time in nine years. The improvement was sustained, and annual exports of 12,648 barrels in 1728 and 17,909 barrels in 1729 encouraged advocacy of investment in sea fishing among those prompted to develop ambitious schemes for economic development by the difficult economic environment of the late 1720s.24 Its growth was seen by many projectors as a panacea for the country’s ills, and a likely source of employment and prosperity. One such advocate was Francis Hutchinson (1660–1739), bishop of Down and Connor.25 In a pamphlet published in 1729 Hutchinson proposed that the Irish parliament act by various means to increase the consumption of fish in Ireland, maintain high levels of fresh- and seawater stock, develop a pilchard farming industry, and exploit Ireland’s perceived abundant herring fisheries in the same manner as the successful Dutch fleet – fishing in deep seas with large vessels, custom-equipped and heavily manned.26 Others broadly concurred, especially when herring exports in the early 1730s exceeded 20,000 barrels per annum, even if few were quite as enthusiastic as Hutchinson.27 Although exports contracted sharply in the late 1730s to just over 5000 barrels, belief in the economic merit of investing in sea-fishing was unaffected. It was certainly encouraged by the publication in Great Britain of tracts commending ‘the public and private benefit of promoting and extending the fisheries on our … coasts’, and by calls upon those who ‘aim at the title of a patriot’ to conduct themselves in a manner ‘deserv[ing of ] that name’ by embracing a culture of improvement.28 The Irish hydrographer William Doyle concurred. In a pamphlet published in 1739, he maintained that by imitating Dutch techniques, Ireland would finally be able to exploit the large number and varieties of fish swimming off her shores and ‘become masters of the fishing trade’. In so doing, they would increase the


honour, pride, security and prosperity of their country, as well as the private wealth of the individuals involved.29 Doyle specifically recommended that Irish efforts be directed towards developing the potential of the ‘Nymph fishing bank’, which he claimed to have discovered, but in most respects Irish advocates of improvement were guided in their thinking by the same hopes and assumptions that permeated the work of contemporary Scottish and English piscatorial enthusiasts.30 It is notable that the anonymous author who in 1750 proposed the establishment of ‘a general fishery on the coasts of Ireland’ was prompted to do so by the ‘great noise’ generated at the time by the example of ‘the Scotch fishery lately undertaken by British adventurers’.31 Paradoxically, this call for ‘a subscription’ to raise £25,000 ‘for the erection and carrying on a fishery’ was made at a moment when the fortunes of the Irish sea-fishery were at a low point. Indeed, herring exports, which fell to unprecedented low levels during the 1740s and 1750s, remained weak until the early 1770s, the occasional good year (1761, for example) excepted. Despite this, confidence in the economic potential of sea fishing was not merely unimpaired; it grew.32 It is notable, for instance, that the Dublin Society sought from mid-century onwards to encourage the adoption of new ways to improve the catching and curing techniques of the domestic sea-fishing industry, and periodically awarded modest premiums to those committed to such projects.33 Lord Shelburne echoed this sense of confidence by calling publicly in the 1770s for the harvesting of the untapped resources of fish on Lough Erne, while a host of pamphleteers and commentators offered comparably encouraging assessments.34 Interventions of this nature were of limited value in the absence of accessible fish stocks and the means to catch and cure them, but it is striking that the combination of an increased volume of fish exported during the early 1760s and early 1770s combined with the animation of a more vigorous patriot voice in the political sphere, to elicit more focused interventions, such as that made by Sir Lucius O’Brien in the House of Commons in March 1775, who argued that ‘the extension of our fisheries’ would cause such an improvement in ‘the wealth and strength of Ireland’ that Britain and the empire must also benefit.35 This was not O’Brien’s priority, nor indeed that of William Burton Conyngham, who emerged in the late 1770s as the leading champion of the development of seafisheries. Prompted by the appearance of rich shoals of herring on the north-west coast, where the Conyngham estates were located, he concluded that fishing was the key to the economic transformation of parts of the country that were ‘hitherto the most neglected of all’. Conyngham allocated the rental income of his County Donegal estates to this end, but because the scheme he had in mind was beyond the resources of one individual, he also sought funds from the public purse and the repeal of the favourable terms afforded those engaged in the re-export trade in fish.

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Substantial support was forthcoming, but it was not enough to effect the economic transformation of the region or to establish the foundations for a vigorous fishing industry. However, Conyngham’s tireless efforts did serve to raise the profile of fishing both as a source of improvement and wealth, and to encourage a previously reluctant parliament not only to provide him with capital to pursue his ambitious plans, but also to sanction a trade and regulatory regime that was both more coherent and focused than previously.36

Fishery legislation 1692–1800 Between 1692 and 1800 a total of 66 legislative initiatives were presented to the Irish parliament relating to fisheries; this represents 1.6 per cent of all the initiatives brought before parliament (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). In common with all eighteenth-century Irish legislation,37 the vast majority of fishery measures (95.5 per cent) took their rise in the House of Commons (Figures 5.3 and 5.4).38 Of these, 28 failed, and 38, or 56.1 per cent, passed into law; this was just over one per cent higher than the success rate for all bills initiated between 1715 and 1782.39 Viewed across the long eighteenth century, therefore, fishery legislation seems to follow the same pattern as all bills. However, such overviews can mislead, and in order to trace more accurately the patterns that applied in this instance, it is better to examine fishery legislation from the perspective of five shorter periods of 20 (or so) years – namely 1692–1713, 1715–37, 1739–59, 1761–81, and 1783–1800. What this chronological analysis exposes is that the initiation rate for fishery bills remained constant until 1737, but dipped in mid-century. Their number increased dramatically after 1761, and continued to rise thereafter to a peak in the 4500 4093

4000 3500 3000 2500

2256

2000

1837 1546

1500 1000

699 485 214

295 540 245

1692–1713

1715–37

500 0

220 408 188

1739–59 Failed

Figure 5.1

Irish Legislation, 1692–1800

900 484 416

1761–81

Enacted

1043 503

1783–1800

All bills

Total


66

70 60 50

37

40 28

30

20

20 7

10 0

7

0

1692–1713

7 7

10 10 0

4 2 2

1715–37

1739–59

All bills Figure 5.2

29 18

1761–81

All bills, enacted

10

1783–1800

Total

All bills, failed

Fishery bills, 1692–1800

4000 3434

3500 3000 2500 2000 1409

1500 816

1000 500 0

447

418

344

96 156

82 40

59 9

74 6

1692–1713

1715–37

1739–59

1761–81

Initiated Commons Figure 5.3

Initiated Lords

137 0 1783–1800

448 211 Total

Initiated Irish Privy Council

All bills, by initiating house, 1692–1800

years after 1783.40 This conforms broadly to the recent calculation that the initiation rate of all bills declined during the reigns of George I and George II, rose steadily after 1761, and peaked in the period after 1783.41 The decline in legislative activity before the 1760s has been attributed to a number of causes: to the relative instability of Irish politics at certain periods in the 1710s, 1720s, 1730s and 1750s; to a reluctance to embark on ventures doomed to failure; and (in comparison with the Westminster parliament) to the limited availability of time in each session in which business might be conducted. The removal of these obstacles during the 1760s, and the movement to annual sessions from 1783 facilitated an increase in the number of legislative initiatives.42 The initiation rate of fishery bills does not conform to the trend of ‘improvement’ legislation generally. Fishery bills were being introduced

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63

60 50 40 28

30 18

20 10 0

7

6 0 1 1692–1713

0 0 1715–37

Initiated Commons Figure 5.4

4

2 0

0 0

1739–59

1761–81

Initiated Lords

0 0 1783–1800

2 1 Total

Initiated Irish Privy Council

Fishery bills, by initiating house, 1692–1800

into parliament, and in one case passed into law, well before the 1720s. However, a cursory examination of other categories of ‘improvement’ legislation indicates that this trajectory was not unique to fishery bills. The first bill to provide for the building of canals was presented during the 1703–4 session,43 while a road act was placed on the statute book as early as 1710.44 Measures to tackle issues of social reform were also debated before the 1720s; between 1693 and 1725, the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland lobbied unsuccessfully in support of a series of bills seeking the legal power to regulate the sale and production of potentially dangerous drugs and medicines, as well as to prevent unlicensed persons from practising as physicians.45 The success rate of fishery bills ran at 0 per cent before 1715, 100 per cent between 1715 and 1737, 50 per cent between 1739 and 1781, and 64.2 per cent after 1782.46 This broadly echoes the success rate for all bills, which also rose dramatically after 1715, and remained at a steady 55 per cent between then and 1782, before peaking at just under 70 per cent in the years 1783–1800. The increased success rate of Irish bills after 1783 has been attributed to the dramatic drop in the number of bills respited by the English/British Privy Council (Figure 5.5) and Irish Privy Council (Figure 5.6) as a consequence of the removal of the power by the amendment of Poynings’ Law in 1782. Before then, the Privy Councils regularly amended (Figure 5.7) or suppressed Irish legislation,47 including fishery bills: the Irish Privy Council rejected 24.1 per cent of all such legislation passed to it, while the British Privy Council rejected 3 per cent (Figure 5.8). The disparities, albeit modest, between general and specific legislative trends illustrate the limits of general frameworks of explanation in identifying the reasons for the initiation, success, and failure rates of fishery bills. In order to improve the picture we must turn to the particular circumstances accompanying the passage of fisheries legislation through parliament.

144 Legislating for Economic Development 250 200

200

139

150 100

79 42

50 0

32

46

34

31

1715–37

1739–59

5 1692–1713

42 35

31 26 6 6

All bills

2 20 0 1783–1800

Total

Bills initiated Commons Bills initiated Irish Privy Council

Bills initiated Lords Figure 5.5

71 1761–81

40 21

Bills rejected by the English/British Privy Council, 1692–1800

250 232 200

192

150 100

86 80

66 49

50

15

0

0 1692–1713

42

30 12

0 1715–37 All bills

5 0 1739–59

60 1761–81

0 00 0 1783–1800

0 Total

Bills initiated Commons


38

38 33

Bills initiated Irish Privy Council

Bills rejected by the Irish Privy Council, 1692–1800

Regulating inland fisheries Fisheries legislation can be disaggregated into two broad types – bills relating to freshwater fishing and bills appertaining to sea-fishing. Before the late 1770s, freshwater fisheries legislation was confined to the regulation of salmon fishing and the preservation of salmon stock; thereafter, bills were concerned with the protection of inland fishery stocks in general, not only salmon.48 In the 1698–9 session two attempts were made to secure sanction for a measure to prevent the destruction of salmon; one initiated by the Irish Privy Council, the other by Robert Echlin, who hailed from County

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1200 1001

1000

776

800 600 400

308 237

223 122 84 17

200 0

43 28

1692–1713

280 262

190 155

118 107

31 4

1715–37

0 0 0 0 1783–1800

Total

Bills initiated Commons

All bills

Bills initiated Irish Privy Council


16 2 1761–81

1739–59

Bills amended by the English/British Privy Council, 1692–1800

18

17

16

15

14 12 10 8

7

6

6 4 2 0

3

3 1

3

00 1692–1713

0 0 0 0 1715–37

1

Commons rejected

1

1

0 0 1739–59

Irish Privy Council rejected

Figure 5.8

7

7

7 3

1

0 1761–81

0 0 0 1783–1800

2

3

Total

English Privy Council rejected

Lords rejected

English Privy Council amended

Fishery bills and Privy Councils, 1692–1800

Down but sat as MP for Monaghan. The first measure was rejected by the English Privy Council, the second by the originating house, the Commons. Undeterred by this reversal, a similar bill was introduced in 1707, sponsored by William Conolly, the future Speaker, who, as one of the MPs for County Londonderry, had an obvious local interest in the industry. It was rejected by the Irish Privy Council.49 Because of the commercial value of salmon fisheries (the Bann fishery returned an estimated £1000 profit in the early 1760s), it was not long before another more successful attempt was made to introduce legislation to protect what most landlords identified as a valuable asset.50 In 1716 a


bill ‘to prevent the destruction of salmon fry, and for the better preserving the salmon fishing in this kingdom’ presented by George Macartney, MP for Belfast, made its way onto the statute book.51 This measure sought to maintain salmon fry stocks by prohibiting the catching of spawning fish between June and January each year, and banning fishing for sea-bound fry during the months of March, April and May. Anyone infringing its provisions was liable to a 20s fine for every offence committed.52 Indicatively, the act was continued, and then strengthened by a series of measures passed in the sessions of 1721–2, 1723–4, 1725–6, 1739–40 and 1763–4. The 1726 Act ‘for the better preserving the salmon fishery of this kingdom’, for example, imposed a 40s fine on those who blackened or ‘disfigured’ their faces to escape detection.53 This was a logical response to the problem of poaching, but the determination of the landed élite that dominated parliament to protect their interests in inland fisheries was underlined by the inclusion of a clause specifically prohibiting anyone not in possession of a personal estate of £1000 or more, or a freehold worth £40 a year, from keeping any ‘engines, instrument or instruments, commonly made use of to take or kill salmon or salmon-fry’.54 Significantly, the bill was introduced and carried through parliament by James Hamilton, MP for Newry, whose only other legislative intervention was a turnpike bill presented in 1735. In common with all such bills initiated between 1721 and 1763, Hamilton’s measure to safeguard salmon stocks enjoyed a smooth passage through parliament and Privy Councils. Close inspection shows that the few salmon bills that encountered opposition did so in respect of clauses appertaining to issues other than the protection of fish.55 Ironically, the last salmon bill to be initiated, in 1773, was the only one to arouse controversy. The 1773 bill ‘to explain and amend the several laws made in this kingdom for the effective preservation of salmon fish’, proved controversial from its inception because the clause granting ‘full permission to every person worth £1000 capital or £40 p.a. rental income in any county to fish the banks of any river in the country’ was perceived as an infringement on the rights of property.56 For this reason, landowners in Counties Waterford and Cork petitioned against the bill in the Commons in December 1773,57 while others availed of their membership of the Irish Privy Council to criticise it there. Indeed, the personal intervention of the lord lieutenant, Lord Harcourt, was required to ensure the bill did not perish at the council, as he explained to the English secretary of state, the earl of Rochford: In the Privy Council, after two days of the most patient and serious discussion and examination of witnesses, every nerve being strained to damn it by those who have so often tried every means to defeat so many measures of H.M.’s Government, and the concerns of those who are interested in this business having been so misrepresented, and their pretended losses exaggerated, with a view to obstruct this measure and prejudice

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me, and when after two day’s painful debate I have had the good fortune to carry this point though by one casting vote only, I hope I may rely on your lordship and the rest of H.M.’s servants for support in a measure which is magnified in its importance by the wanton opposition given to it. Indemnity might readily be given should any damage be sustained.58 Having negotiated the Irish council, the bill was transmitted to the British council where is encountered still more resistance, in the form of petitions from the ‘governor and assistants London [sic] of the new plantation in Ulster’ (the Irish Society of London);59 the duke of Devonshire, who had extensive landed interests in Counties Cork and Waterford; the mayor and citizens of Limerick; and Thomas Conolly, the proprietor of the fishery at Ballyshannon in County Donegal.60 Conolly was particularly assertive; he objected to a clause that sought to compel ‘the proprietors, farmers or occupiers of every fishery in the said kingdom, [and] any every person possessed of any hatch, sluice, floodgate box … or nets from keeping the same shut from the sunset on any Saturday night until after sunrise on any Monday morning following’.61 This had been added by a committee of the whole house in the Irish House of Commons on 9 March.62 As was its practice, the British Privy Council committee appointed to examine the bill took the petitions very seriously and recommended that the offending clauses be struck out.63 These recommendations were endorsed by the law officers (the attorney- and solicitor-general), who adjudged that ‘the general clause complained of appeared upon the evidence to be a great private inconvenience and a detriment to the fishery in general without being attended with any public advantage whatever’.64 Fully aware that the bill in its original form had the lord lieutenant’s backing, Rochford wrote to Harcourt to explain the precise reasons for these ‘material amendment[s]’.65 The amended bill was engrossed by the British Privy Council on 11 May, and presented to the Irish Commons eight days later. However, the amendments did not sit well with the house, which perceived that the approval of an altered bill was inconsistent with their rights to make law for Ireland, and the bill was summarily rejected the following day.66 In all, 11 measures relating to inland fisheries took their rise in the Irish House of Commons during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Significantly, the reach of these bills was greater than their predecessors in that, as well as salmon, they sought also to afford legal protection to perch, eel, roach, pike, crayfish, carp and bream in rivers, ponds, pools and canals. This object was to be achieved by the prohibition, under threat of fine, of all but landowners (or those under licence from them) from fishing commercially in inland waterways or even possessing the boats, nets or other equipment that would have allowed them to do so. The measures also embraced specific provisions to protect fisheries in Lough Erne, Lough Neagh and the River Bann, by banning large-scale, drag-net fishing.67


Six of the 11 inland fishery bills presented to parliament during the last quarter of the eighteenth century failed to obtain the royal assent. Three failed in their early stages (one in 1781 and two in 1783). All were introduced by Sir Henry Hartstonge, MP for Limerick, who was a staunch ‘patriot’ and brother-in-law to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Edmond Sexten Pery.68 Of the remaining failed bills, two were rejected by the Lords, in 1785 and 1793, and one by the Irish Privy Council in 1779. The 1785 bill, ‘to Amend and Explain an Act passed in the last Session of Parliament entitled An Act for the Improvement of the Inland Fisheries of this Kingdom’, was introduced by Marcus Beresford (eldest son of Bishop Beresford of Ossory), a professional soldier and supporter of the administration. It first encountered opposition in the Commons from the prominent ‘patriot’ Isaac Corry, MP for Newry, who was a keen proponent of the expansion of Irish trade. Corry’s objection was directed at a clause in the bill designed to prevent fishing vessels from smuggling salt from Scotland on the ground that the provision would deprive Irish fishermen of supplementary income, and not achieve its stated purpose of ending smuggling.69 Corry failed in his attempt to frustrate the bill, but when it was received by the Lords, it was amended in a manner that MPs would not accept. Realising this, the Lords responded by adjourning to a distant day the committee to which the bill had been referred.70 The 1793 bill ‘for the further protection and improvement of the inland fisheries of this kingdom’, presented by the MP for Randalstown, John O’Neill, was lost in comparable circumstances.71 Five inland fishery bills passed uncontested through the Irish legislature and into law. Two received the royal assent during the 1793 and 1799 sessions.72 The remainder, which took their rise during the 1777–8, 1783–4 and 1786 sessions, were presented by office-holders and government supporters. The first two were largely uncontested, while an additional clause in the third, to fine landlords who allowed fishing from the banks of their rivers, prompted a division in the Lords. The offending clause was subsequently struck from the bill by the Commons.73 In the first half of the eighteenth century Irish fishery legislation sought to maintain freshwater salmon stocks by prohibiting fishing at certain times of year in order to safeguard the rights of the owners and operators of inland fisheries. After some initial resistance, these measures proved uncontentious, largely because they were seen to work. Opposition, on the rare occasions that it was manifested, was usually local in nature and targeted at specific clauses, rather than the measure as a whole. The inland fishery legislation initiated in the Commons in the last quarter of the century was focused on protecting the rights of landowners, in that it sought to invest them with de facto control of fishing rights to a wide variety of freshwater species. These bills were promoted by with different interests, but whether they were sponsored by back-bench MPs, the holders of major offices, or active supporters of the Irish administration, all were in agreement that the

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primary thrust and purpose was to secure and to safeguard property rights of landowners and financial interests of leaseholders rather than to contribute to any wider programme of improvement that might advance the public good. As a result, bills containing clauses that peers or MPs perceived to be contrary to their interests or that sought to alter the manner in which regulations were enforced were more likely to generate controversy and much more likely to fail.

Promoting sea-fisheries A majority of the fishery bills presented to the Irish parliament before the landmark 1764 ‘Act for the encouragement of … fisheries’ contained provisions relating to both sea- and freshwater fish. The 1703–4, 1705, 1709 and 1757–8 sessions produced five such measures, none of which emerged out of the House of Commons. For example, a bill ‘to prevent the destruction of salmon fry’, introduced unsuccessfully by William Conolly in May 1709, contained provisions for ‘the better preserving the … herring fishing in this kingdom’. The first successful legislation to assist sea-fishing – a portmanteau act that also supported inland fisheries – was passed in 1734; it was followed by similar acts in 1738 and 1758. Significantly, the primary focus of these acts was the preservation of salmon, and the provisions they contained aimed at developing herring fishing and whaling proved to be of little practical benefit.74 The 1738 Act ‘for the further improvement and encouragement of the fishery of this kingdom’ is a case in point. Its legislative origins can be traced to the deliberations of a committee appointed to enquire ‘into the state and condition of the fisheries of this kingdom’.75 The committee’s report suggested new ways of detecting and fining those who endangered pilchard and salmon stocks by fishing without licence, and supported a ban on the trawling of Irish coasts between August and December of every year. More innovatively, the bill that arose out of their deliberations proposed the provision of premiums or bounties for every gallon of barrelled, cured fish, of any variety, caught off Irish shores and intended for export. It also provided for individual premiums for every six score of ling, cod, hake, haddock and conger eel caught and exported.76 Premiums had previously been authorised in the 1720s by the Board of Trustees for the Improvement of Manufactures and Fisheries for those engaged in the cod and herring industries in Scotland, and were to obtain parliamentary sanction in England in 1750 (23 Geo. II, c. 24).77 Meanwhile, in Ireland the committee report that led to the 1738 act proved controversial and only scraped through the Commons because of the efforts of its authors, Sir Richard Cox and Richard Bettesworth, who were both active economic improvers and members of parliament for constituencies in County Cork. The two men were then given leave on 16 December 1737 to bring in a bill based on the


report.78 Despite initial opposition, the bill passed through the Commons without a division and the Irish Privy Council without amendment, and was received at the British Privy Council on 30 January 1738. It was then sent to the Irish bills committee, which was sufficiently perturbed by the novelty of what was being proposed to refer the measure to the customs commissioners for their advice as to whether two of the clauses (affording premiums to those who extracted oil from whales caught off the coast of Ireland, or caught, cured, and packed in barrels for exportation, cod, hake, haddock, ling, and conger eel) would adversely affect Britain’s trade, internal revenue, and fishing industry.79 The decision of the Irish bills committee of the British council to seek direction on this point is not surprising, since the 1730s marked the beginning of a campaign within British economic discourse to revive the sea-fishing industry.80 Moreover, it was fully anticipated that the bill would be amended accordingly since in mid-February 1738, Edward Walpole, chief secretary for Ireland (and the son of Sir Robert Walpole), informed the lord lieutenant, the duke of Devonshire, that the ‘the Irish fishery bill is feared by many, and Lord Cholmondeley thinks it is likely to be altered greatly’.81 Cholmondeley’s prediction was well-judged: the British Privy Council’s Irish bills committee, on the basis of the commissioners’ advice, and in response to petitions received from those engaged in pilchard and herring fishing in Devon and Cornwall, recommended that the two clauses be removed, on the grounds that their retention would assist Irish fishermen to compete in foreign markets with their British counterparts.82 In the end the council only struck out the clause relating to cured, exported fish. This left largely intact an act which promised to increase the ‘wealth and prosperity of this kingdom’ through the ‘improvement and encouragement of the fishery’. In practice, however, the measure gave only a modest encouragement to Ireland’s small whaling industry and concerned itself more with salmon poaching.83 To make matters worse it was a temporary statute, valid only for three years.84 The removal of the clause providing for premiums, which he and his parliamentary committee had meticulously drafted, incensed Sir Richard Cox. In his view the premiums were the one active ingredient of the act, without which it would ‘produce no advantage’ for the Irish fishery:85 The sea round Ireland is as plentifully stored with fish as can be. But the inhabitants, for want of proper encouragement, instead of being fishermen are generally smugglers; and the French come on the south coast in spring and summer and grow rich by catching fish, which the Irish inhabitants despise, because when they are caught (for want of proper encouragement by premium), the merchants will not send them to foreign markets, where they are sure of being undersold by the merchants of other countries, who have national premiums which reduce the first cost of them considerably.

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The perception articulated by Cox that foreign fishermen were growing rich on resources that belonged to Ireland was not new; it had previously been aired in a pamphlet published by John Knightley in Dublin in 1733.86 Prompted by the strengthening aspiration to bring about the economic improvement of the kingdom that was encouraged by the more outspoken patriot rhetoric being heard in the House of Commons in the 1750s, the first bills devoted exclusively to the regulation of sea-fishing were presented to the Commons in February 1756 by the notable improver, and independent MP for County Galway, Robert French. The first, a bill ‘to promote and encourage … fishing for whales, seals and other fish’, did not proceed beyond the committee stage; the second, which aspired ‘to promote and encourage the white herring fishery’ negotiated the House of Commons easily but failed to emerge from the Irish Privy Council. Along with clauses for the development of the herring fishery, this bill had aimed to prevent boats from polluting with ballast inland waterways and harbours.87 The rejection of this measure was a disappointing outcome for French personally, and for the advocates of improvement, but the loss of the measure could not mask the fact that attitudes were rapidly changing; as James Kelly has pointed out, it signalled a greater willingness to contemplate legislative intervention both to promote improvement generally, and sea-fisheries specifically.88 The most telling illustration of this development is provided by the fact that between 1763 and 1799, a total of 28 legislative measures devoted to the encouragement of sea-fishing, and the north-west fishery in particular, were presented to parliament, of which 17 (or 60.7 per cent) became law. According to Kelly, although it brought little immediate benefit, the first of these, the 1764 Act, ‘provided the foundation on which an Irish fishing industry could grow’. Following in the wake of the British parliament, which had approved a similar scheme in 1750, it authorised the introduction of a scheme of incentives (bounties) that laid the foundations upon which an export-orientated fishing industry could develop.89 General bounties, up to a maximum of £100, were given to vessels engaged in the herring industry, while exportation bounties were given for every exported barrel of hake, ling, mackerel, white herring, haddock, coalfish, conger eel or wet fish.90 In the 1770s, though the issue had previously been raised in 1737, acts were approved in both 1773–4 and 1775–6 to help maintain sea-fish stocks by outlawing trawling for fish in Dublin Bay.91 In parallel, efforts were also made to encourage whaling. This too followed on an earlier failed attempt, in this instance in 1755–6, when a bill for the purpose had been initiated, but not passed. However, in March 1776 a parliamentary committee, headed by Sir Lucius O’Brien, instructed to enquire into the state of fisheries of Ireland, reported that the size and yields of the Greenland whale fisheries would be increased by offering bounties of 40s for every ton of whale oil, fin or blubber, or seal oil or skins, imported into Ireland by masters or owners of British and Irish ships.92 As it was already


too late in the session to introduce legislation of this nature, the committee secured a parliamentary order that the bills should be ‘taken into consideration early in the next session of parliament’,93 and that an ‘address be presented to [the lord lieutenant] by such members of this house as are of his majesty’s most honourable Privy Council’.94 The report formed the basis for the 1778 act ‘for the further encouragement of the whale fishery carried on from Ireland, and for other purposes relative to the fishery trade’. Though it was perhaps not immediately apparent, the combination of public interest and parliamentary intervention during the 1770s elevated the profile of fishing, particularly sea-fishing, to an unprecedented level. Thus, when in 1780 an accident of inheritance empowered William Burton Conyngham to develop his ambitious plans both to promote sea-fishing generally and to develop a major fishing port in the north-west of the country, he met with few obstacles. The result was a series of acts passed in the 1780s, chief among them the 1782 and 1785 acts (21 & 22 Geo. III, c.37, 25 George III, c. 35) which closed several loopholes in the 1764 act that had allowed the bounty scheme to be abused, including those enabling foreign vessels to apply for and secure them, and a succession of measures, notably that approved in 1785 (25 George III, c. 65) which contrived, by making public funds available to provide Conyngham with the wherewithal to realise his ambitious dream. Conyngham’s plan was illconceived, but would not have failed as disastrously as it did, had not the large annual herring shoals on which it was premised disappeared. Their failure doomed the plan, but the record amount of barrelled herrings sent for export during the 1780s (an average of more than 20,000 barrels a year) and early 1790s seemed to bear out the optimistic forecasts of generations of improvers that Ireland could indeed develop a lucrative domestic fishing industry.95 The sharp decline in exports in the late 1790s demonstrated that this was not easy to sustain, but the continuing willingness of parliament to address the issue legislatively until its abolition in 1800 shows that commitment to the promotion of the fishing industry survived the eclipse in the belief in the culture of improvement that was a casualty of the more confrontational character of Irish society in the 1790s.

Conclusion The initiation rate of fishery bills introduced into the Irish parliament remained at steady rate until the 1760s, when their number increased significantly, and peaked during the last two decades of the century. This rate was determined not only by general political and parliamentary trends affecting all legislation, but also by the fin-de-siècle enthusiasm for the development of sea-fishing, and a concern to protect landlord fishing rights in inland waterways. The success rate of fishery bills also followed general legislative patterns for most of the century, the main exception

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being the period before 1740. The 100 per cent failure rate of all fishery bills initiated before 1715 can be attributed not only to the low success rate for all bills, but also to the Commons’ objections to government-backed salmon bills, as well as to the exception taken by the Irish Privy Council to parliament’s attempt to pass sea-fishery bills. Ironically, both sea- and freshwater fishery bills in this period were concerned with the maintenance and preservation of salmon stocks. Although the success rate of all bills rose after the accession of George I in 1714, between 1715 and 1737 the pass rate of fishery bills rose to an exemplary 100 per cent. This can partly be explained by the fact that, by the third decade of the century, the Irish Privy Council was less likely to veto legislation in general. More important, the majority of the fishery bills introduced were uncontroversial salmon bills, presented to parliament by MPs whose parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activities associated them with the cause of improvement – a cause few Irish Protestants at the time would have publicly denied was worthwhile. In common with the inland fishery acts brought in during the last decades of the century, these bills were not concerned with the development of the Irish fishing industry on a national scale, but rather aimed to discourage poaching in order to maintain and increase freshwater fish stocks for the economic benefit of local landowners. Only one bill, initiated in 1737 by the House of Commons, gave any practical encouragement to the sea-fisheries. However it was so amended by the British Privy Council as to effectively turn it into yet another salmon bill. For most of the century, sea- and freshwater fishery legislation did not contribute in any major way to the economic improvement of Ireland. Despite the fact that from the late 1720s economic pamphleteers were calling for the Irish legislature to develop and expand the sea-fisheries, it was only after 1763 that legislators and improvers worked consistently to invent and implement practical measures designed to develop the northwest fisheries and the Greenland whaling industry. Thus although the 1720s and 1730 constituted a golden age for improvement, in that the pamphlet literature and voluntary societies became focused on economic development, this was not the case for Irish fisheries. Of course, Irish Protestants were not uniformly committed to ‘improving’ Ireland, as evidenced by the satirical comments of some writers. Members of both houses of parliament also thwarted the progress of ‘improving’ measures, or those marketed as such, when these were perceived to threaten particular vested interests, whether economic or political: inland fishery legislation that compelled landlords to enforce fishery legislation routinely encountered determined resistance lest their private interests ‘should be injured’.96 What gave ‘improvement’ its ability to maintain cultural currency and a prominent position in economic discourse, namely its malleable, protean, ideologically neutral, nature, also allowed it to be used by the self-interested to give their projects and schemes moral legitimacy and public credibility,


when in fact they were little concerned with developing the economy on either a local or national level. Yet the fact that there were individuals such as Burton Conyngham, who contrived, while not ignoring self-interest, to pursue improvement after a broadly selfless fashion illustrates that for all its limitations, it did have a significant social as well as economic impact, and that the statute book is an important, and still under-explored, source if the nature and extent of that impact is to be accurately recovered.

Notes 1. Peter Borsay, ‘The Culture of Improvement’ in Paul Langford (ed.), The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2002), p. 184. For recent discussions of politeness in England, see Markku Peltonen, ‘Politeness and Whiggism, 1688–1732’ in HJ, xlviii (2005), pp. 391–414; and the various essays contained in TRHS, ser.6, i (1991). 2. John Robertson, ‘The Enlightenment above National Context: Political Economy in Eighteenth-Century Scotland and Naples’ in HJ, xl (1997), pp. 667–97; F. A. Jonsson, ‘The Enlightenment in the Highlands: Natural History and Internal Colonisation in the Scottish Enlightenment, 1760–1830’ (PhD thesis, Univ. of Chicago, 2005), chs 1, 5; Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000), p. 14; Borsay, ‘Culture of Improvement’, p. 184. 3. Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 391–417, 424–35; Borsay, ‘Culture of Improvement’, pp. 186–8, 193; idem, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989). 4. Tim Keirn and Lee Davison, ‘The Reactive State: English Governance and Society, 1689–1750’ in Lee Davison, Tim Hitchcock, Tim Keirn and R. B. Shoemaker (eds), Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689–1750 (Stroud, 1992), pp. xvi–xli; Borsay, ‘Culture of Improvement’, pp. 197, 202–3; Langford, Polite and Commercial People, p. 389. 5. J. T. Leerssen, ‘Archbishop Ussher and Gaelic Culture’ in Studia Hibernica, nos 22–3 (1982–3), pp. 50–8; Betsey Taylor Fitzsimon, ‘Conversion, the Bible, and the Irish Language: The Correspondence of Lady Ranelagh and Bishop Dopping’ in Michael Brown, C. I. McGrath and T. P. Power (eds), Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650–1850 (Dublin, 2005), pp. 157–82; Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Sword, Word, and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland’ in HJ, xxi (1978), pp. 475–502; Alan Ford, ‘The Church of Ireland, 1558–1634: A Puritan Church’ in Alan Ford, James McGuire and Kenneth Milne (eds), As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995), pp. 56–7; Mícheál Mac Craith, ‘The Gaelic Reaction to Reformation’ in S. G. Ellis and Sarah Barber (eds), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State (Harlow, 1995), pp. 143–4, 148; T. C. Barnard, ‘Protestants and the Irish Language, c.1675–1725’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xliv (1993), pp. 243–72; idem, ‘The Hartlib Circle and the Cult and Culture of Improvement in Ireland’ in Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor (eds), Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 281–97; idem, ‘Gardening, Diet and “Improvement” in Later Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Journal of Garden History, x (1990), pp. 71–85; idem, Improving Ireland? Projectors, Prophets and Profiteers, 1641–1786 (Dublin, 2008), pp. 13–16, 18–35; Patricia Coughlan,

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7.

8.

9.

10.

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‘Natural History and Historical Nature: The Project for a Natural History of Ireland’ in Greengrass et al. (eds), Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation, pp. 298–317; Nicholas Canny, From Reformation to Restoration: Ireland, 1534–1660 (Dublin, 1987), ch. 4; idem, Making Ireland British 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 121–59; David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2003), p. 170. H. D. Gribbon, ‘The Irish Linen Board, 1711–1828’ in L. M. Cullen and T. C. Smout (eds), Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic and Social History, 1600–1900 (Edinburgh, 1977), pp. 77–87; James Livesey, ‘The Dublin Society in Eighteenth-Century Irish Political Thought’ in HJ, xlvii, (2004), pp. 615–40; Eoin Magennis, ‘A Land of Milk and Honey: The Physico-Historical Society and the Surveys of Mid-Eighteenth Century Ireland’ in RIA Proc., cii (2002), sect. C, pp. 199–217. Lindsay Proudfoot, ‘Land Ownership and Improvement, 1700 to 1845’ in Lindsay Proudfoot and William Nolan (eds), Down History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1997), pp. 212–19, 221–2, 226; Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot, ‘The English and Irish Urban Experience, 1500–1800: Change, Convergence, and Divergence’ in Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot (eds), Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland: Change, Convergence, and Divergence (Oxford, 2002), pp. 2, 24; W. H. Crawford, ‘The Creation and Evolution of Small Towns in Ulster in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ in ibid., pp. 102–3; idem, ‘Economy and Society in Eighteenth-Century Ulster’ (PhD thesis, QUB, 1983), p. 19; idem, ‘The Influence of the Landlord in Eighteenth-Century Ulster’ in Cullen & Smout (eds), Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Econ. Hist. (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 199–200; T. C. Barnard, The Kingdom of Ireland 1641–1760 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 80–89; idem, ‘The Cultures of Eighteenth-Century Irish Towns’ in Borsay & Proudfoot (eds), Provincial Towns, pp. 195–6; Rosemary Richey, ‘Landed Society in Mid-Eighteenth Century County Down’ (PhD thesis, QUB, 2000), pp. 101–3, 109, 299–301; J. T. Fulton, ‘The Roads of County Down, 1600–1900: The Evolution of the Road System of an Irish County’ (PhD thesis, QUB, 1972). T. C. Barnard, ‘The Language of Politeness and Sociability in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in D. G. Boyce et al. (eds), Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and EighteenthCentury Ireland (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 193, 209–11; D. A. Fleming, ‘Diversions of the People: Sociability among the Orders of Early Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xvii (2002), pp. 99–111. T. C. Barnard, ‘Reforming Irish Manners: The Religious Societies in Dublin during the 1690s’ in HJ, xxxv, (1992), pp. 805–38; idem, ‘Improving Clergymen, 1660–1739’ in Ford et al. (eds), As by Law Established, pp. 137, 146; idem, Improving Ireland?, pp. 37–8. An Essay on Gibing, with a Project for its Improvement (Dublin, 1725), p. 2: It is surprising, that among the many curious and useful papers publish’d in this prolific age, for the reformation of manners, the acquisition of conversation, accomplishments, and all other attainments that are necessary to make men agreeable companions, and heighten the pleasures of society, there has not yet appeared any essay on the art and mystery of gibing, nor any imperfect sketches for its improvement. See also ibid., p. 3.

156 Legislating for Economic Development 11. G. B., The People of Ireland not a Parcel of Lazy, Incorrigible Scoundrels … (Dublin, 1779), pp. 4, 8–14, 18–32. 12. Patrick Kelly, ‘The Politics of Political Economy in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in S. J. Connolly (ed.), Political Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 105–29. 13. D. W. Hayton, ‘Introduction: The Long Apprenticeship’ in idem (ed.), The Irish Parliament in the Eighteenth Century: The Long Apprenticeship (Edinburgh, 2001), p. 12; James Kelly, ‘Harvests and Hardship: Famine and Scarcity in Ireland in the Late 1720s’ in Studia Hibernica, xxvi (1991–2), pp. 79, 95–100. 14. Eoin Magennis, ‘Coal, Corn and Canals: Parliament and the Dispersal of Public Moneys, 1695–1772’ in Hayton (ed.), Long Apprenticeship, pp. 71–86; David Broderick, The First Toll-Roads: Ireland’s Turnpike Roads 1729–1858 (Cork, 2002), pp. 27–83. 15. Julian Hoppit, ‘The Contexts and Contours of British Economic Literature, 1660–1760’ in HJ, xlix, (2006), pp. 96, 105–6. 16. [Francis Hutchinson,] A Letter to a Member of Parliament, Concerning the Imploying and Providing for the Poor (Dublin, 1723); David Bindon, Some Thoughts on the Woollen Manufactures of England: In a Letter from a Clothier to a Member of Parliament (2nd edn, Dublin, 1731); A Letter to a Member of Parliament, upon the Deficiency of the Funds and Increase of the Debt, with an Humble Proposal to Raise a Fund to Pay it … (Dublin, 1731); Philip Skelton, The Necessity of Tillage and Granaries. In a Letter to a Member of Parliament Living in the County of —— (Dublin, 1741); Samuel Trowell, The Best Mine Above Ground; or, the Most Laudable and Most Certain Means of Enriching this Nation, by Improving our Agriculture … (3rd edn, Dublin, 1742); A Letter to a Member of Parliament; Containing Observations on a Pamphlet, Intituled, Considerations on the Case of the Bakers in Dublin … (Dublin, 1756). 17. William Doyle, A Letter to Every Well-Wisher of Trade and Navigation, Containing a Relation of … Discoveries on the Nymph-Fishing-Bank, near the South Coast of Ireland … Remarks on the Dutch, and other Foreign Fisheries … most Humbly Inscribed to the Legislature of Ireland (Dublin, 1739); John Knightley, To the Honourable the Lords Spiritual, Temporal and Commons in Parliament Assembled … this Essay Toward Proving the Advantages which may Arise from Improvements on Salt Works, and in the Fishing Trade of Ireland (Dublin, 1733); [Francis Hutchinson,] A Second Letter to a Member of Parliament, Recommending the Improvement of the Irish Fishery (Dublin, 1729); Sir James Caldwell, An Address to the House of Commons of Ireland … (3rd edn, Dublin, 1771). 18. Andrew Sneddon, ‘Bishop Francis Hutchinson: A Case Study in the EighteenthCentury Culture of Improvement’ in IHS, xxxv, no. 139 (May 2007), pp. 304–5. 19. CJI (4th edn), iii, 570; Kelly, ‘Harvests and Hardship,’ pp. 95–100. 20. See Langford, Polite and Commercial People, ch. 9. 21. Notable exceptions are T. C. Barnard, ‘Fishing in Seventeenth-Century Kerry: The Experience of Sir William Petty’ in Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, xiv (1981), pp. 14–25; and James Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham and the North-West Fishery of the Eighteenth Century’ in RSAI Jnl, cxv (1985), pp. 64–85. 22. Barnard, ‘Fishing in Seventeenth-Century Kerry’, p. 14; Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham’, p. 65. 23. These figures are taken from the tabulation of herring exported in T. M. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 274–5.

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24. Ibid; Kelly, ‘Harvests and Hardship’, pp. 65–105; idem., ‘Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, vi (1991), pp. 7–36; Robert Molesworth, Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture, and Employing the Poor (Dublin, 1723), p. 42; [Hutchinson,] Second Letter …; Arthur Dobbs, An Essay on the Trade and Improvement of Ireland (Dublin, 1729–31), pp. 28–9; Reasons for Regulating the Coin, and Reducing the Interest … (Dublin, 1731), pp. 19–20; Samuel Madden, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, as to their Conduct for the Service of their Country, as Landlords, as Masters … (Dublin, 1738), pp. 224–7; Jean François Melon, A Political Essay upon Commerce … (Dublin, 1738), pp. 165–72; Charles Smith, The Antient and Present State of the County of Down … (Dublin, 1744), pp. 142–9, 241–9. 25. For Hutchinson, see Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Whigs: The Life of Bishop Francis Hutchinson, 1660–1760 (Manchester, 2008), especially chs 6–8. 26. [Hutchinson,] Second Letter …, pp. 12–17, 20–22, 27. See also idem, The State of the Case of Lough Neagh and the Bann (Dublin, 1738), pp. 16–24; Sneddon, ‘Bishop Francis Hutchinson’, pp. 303–6, 308. 27. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 1660–1783, p. 274. 28. The British Fishery Recommended to Parliament Shewing the Great Importance of it, to the Trade and Navigation of this Kingdom … (London, 1734), pp. 1–2. 29. Doyle, A Letter to Every Well-Wisher of Trade and Navigation …, pp. 4, 7–14, 16, 18. For another example of a pamphleteer using the Dutch fishing industry as the model for Ireland, see Knightley, Essay toward Proving the Advantages which may Arise from Improvements on … the Fishing Trade …, pp. v–vi, 11–15. 30. Bob Harris, ‘Scotland’s Herring Fisheries and the Prosperity of the Nation, c. 1660–1760’ in Scottish Historical Review, lxxix (2000), pp. 39–41, 50, 60; idem, ‘Patriotic Commerce and National Revival: The Free British Fishery Society and British Politics, c. 1749–58’ in EHR, cxiv (1999), pp. 285, 291–3, 296. 31. Some Considerations on the British Fisheries with a Proposal for Establishing a General Fishery on the Coasts of Ireland (Dublin, 1750), p. 3. 32. See, for example, the observations of Chief Baron Edward Willes (The Letters of Lord Chief Baron Edward Willes to the Earl of Warwick, 1757–1762, ed. James Kelly (Aberystwyth, 1990), p. 108). 33. Dublin Society minute book, 1731–3 (Royal Dublin Society), p. 79; ibid., 1733–41, p. 65; ibid., 1741–6, p. 97; Terence De Vere White, The Story of the Royal Dublin Society (Tralee, 1955), pp. 33–5; Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham’, pp. 67, 72. 34. Barnard, Improving Ireland? pp. 168, 177–8; Sir James Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy; being an Essay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free Nations … (Dublin, 1770), p. 296; Caldwell, Address to the Commons …, p. 7; Some Thoughts on Lowering the Water of Lough-Neagh, and other Great Lakes in Ireland: Without Prejudice to their Navigation or Fisheries (Dublin, 1773), pp. 14–15; Plan of an Universal Fishing Company, in Ireland (Dublin, 1773); Journal of the Proceedings of the Universal Fishing Company of Ireland (Dublin, 1773); Charles Smith, The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork … (2nd edn, 2 vols, Dublin, 1774), ii, 239, 314–15; idem, The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford … (2nd edn, Dublin, 1774), pp. 68, 240, 261, 266, 268, 270; idem, The Ancient and Present State of the County of Kerry … (Dublin, 1774), pp. 74, 149, 317; A Letter to the People of Ireland, on the Subject of Fisheries (Dublin, 1775); Observations on the Finances and Trade of Ireland, Humbly Addressed to the Immediate Consideration of Gentlemen of Landed Interest … (Dublin, 1780), pp. 11, 15, 33–4; Queries Submitted to the Consideration of the Public (Dublin, 1781), p. 5.

158 Legislating for Economic Development 35. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 1660–1783, p. 275; The Substance of Two Speeches in the House of Commons of Ireland on the 25th and 26th of March 1776 on the Subject of Fisheries (Dublin, 1776), p. 6. 36. David Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (2nd edn, Dublin, 2000), p. 184; Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham’, pp. 67–83. 37. James Kelly, Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 162, 195, 312, 356. 38. See Figures 5.1, 5.3, 5.4; Hayton, ‘Introduction: The Long Apprenticeship’, p. 11. Unless otherwise stated, information on legislation, both general and specific, has been taken from the Irish Legislation Database project website (www.qub. ac.uk/ild). 39. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 240, 309. 40. See Figure 5.2. 41. Hayton, ‘Introduction: The Long Apprenticeship’, p. 12. 42. Ibid. 43. ‘To make a canal from Lough Neagh to Newry.’ This bill was brought into the Commons on 30 Sept. 1703, but never enacted. 44. An Act for the Amending the Highways and Roads in this Kingdom, and for the application of the six days’ labour (9 Anne, c.9). 45. See Andrew Sneddon, ‘Institutional Medicine and State Intervention in EighteenthCentury Ireland’ in James Kelly and Fiona Clark (eds), Ireland and Medicine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Aldershot, 2009), pp. 137–62. 46. See Figure 5.2. 47. Hayton, ‘Introduction: The Long Apprenticeship’, pp. 10–11; James Kelly, ‘Monitoring the Constitution: The Operation of Poynings’ Law in the 1760s’ in Hayton (ed.), Long Apprenticeship, pp. 87–106; idem, Poynings’ Law, pp. 156–7, 210–11, 217, 240, 309, 343–4, 357, 361. 48. Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham’, p. 65. 49. CJI (2nd edn), iii, 278, 324. 50. Willes Letters, ed. Kelly, p. 112. 51. Hist. Ir. Parl., v, 152–3. 52. Irish Statutes, iv, 420. 53. Ibid., v, 173. 54. Ibid., 74. 55. The controversial bills were initiated in the 1723 and the 1739 sessions to facilitate the exportation of dairy products and beef: CJI (2nd edn), iv, 672; vi, 632, 638; LJI, ii, 800–1; TNA, PRO, PC 2/88, pp. 413–14; ibid., PC 1/3/124, ff 7–11. 56. J. Henry to Thomas Conolly, 3 Feb. 1774 (Irish Architectural Archive, Conolly papers, A/10/2). 57. CJI (2nd edn), xvi, 322, 325. 58. Harcourt to Rochford, 24 Mar. 1774 (Cal. HO Papers, 1773–5, p. 213). 59. TNA, PRO, PC 2/117, p. 493; ibid., PC 1/10/20, ff. 24–5. 60. Ibid., PC 2/117, p. 520; ibid., PC 1/10/20, ff. 22–3. 61. Ibid., PC 2/117, p. 520. 62. CJI (2nd edn), xvi, 481–2. 63. TNA, PRO, PC 2/118, pp. 24–5. 64. Ibid., PC 1/10/20, f. 7. 65. Rochford to Harcourt, 14 May 1774 (Cal. HO Papers, 1773–5, p. 213). 66. CJI (2nd edn), xvi, 543.

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67. Ibid. (3rd edn), xxx, 407; Irish Statutes, xi, 170–6; xii, 703–8; xiii, 923–32; xvi, 934–6; xix, 327–9. 68. Hist. Ir. Parl., iv, 376. 69. Parl. Reg., v, 175–6; Hist. Ir. Parl., iii, 511–15. 70. CJI (4th edn), xi, 464; LJI, v, 643. 71. CJI (3rd edn), xxx, 407–8; (4th edn), xv, 261; LJI, vii, 186. 72. CJI (3rd edn), xxx, 408. 73. James Kelly (ed.), Proceedings of the Irish House of Lords, 1771–1800 (3 vols, Dublin, 2008), i, 403–4; CJI (4th edn), xii, 131. 74. Irish Statutes, vi, 34–7, 434–6; vii, 559–62. 75. CJI (2nd edn), vi, 502. 76. Ibid., 502–3. 77. Harris, ‘Scotland’s Herring Fisheries’, pp. 47–52; idem, ‘Patriotic Commerce and National Revival’, p. 289; Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham’, p. 66. 78. CJI (2nd edn), vi, 503–4; Hist. Ir. Parl., iii, 179–80; vi, 443, 158; T. C. Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649–1770 (New Haven & London, 2003), p. 248. 79. TNA, PRO, PC/2/94, pp. 400–2. 80. Harris, ‘Patriotic Commerce and National Revival’, pp. 289–90. 81. Edward Walpole to Devonshire, 16 Feb. 1738 (PRONI, Chatsworth papers, T/3158/46). 82. TNA, PRO, PC/2/94, p. 448. 83. Irish Statutes, vi, 434; Sir Richard Cox, ‘Irish Politics Displayed’, 1738 (PRONI, Armagh diocesan registry papers, DIO/4/5/8): Heads of bills were sent from the Commons on two subjects of great importance, which met with a hard fate: one for promoting tillage … the other to encourage fisheries, containing amongst other things several premiums for exported fish. A bill came back to the Commons with all the contents of the heads of the bill which went from them, except only the premiums. 84. Irish Statutes, vi, 436. 85. Cox, ‘Irish Politics Displayed’, 1738 (PRONI, DIO/4/5/8). 86. Knightley, Essay toward Proving the Advantages which may Arise from Improvements on … the Fishing Trade . . ., p. v. 87. CJI (2nd edn), viii, 611; Hist. Ir. Parl., iv, 249–51; Barnard, Improving Ireland? pp. 150–4. 88. Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham’, p. 66. 89. Ibid., p. 66. 90. Ibid. 91. Irish Statutes, x, 612–13, 817–18. 92. CJI (2nd edn), xvii, 332–3. 93. Irish Statutes, xi, 165. 94. CJI (2nd edn), xvii, 333. 95. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, p. 275; Kelly, ‘William Burton Conyngham’, pp. 67–83. 96. Edward Bulkeley to Thomas Conolly, 13 June 1778 (TCD, Conolly papers, MS 3976/517).

Map 3

France before the Revolution

Part II Europe


6 ‘Le roi demande, les états consente’: Royal Council, Provincial Estates and Parlements in EighteenthCentury Burgundy Julian Swann

The historiographical shift that has seen the British Isles become part of the Europe of composite monarchies has to some extent left France alone as arguably the last of the centralised early modern states.1 Generations of scholarly maps depicting Europe after 1648 present France in a uniform shade, standing in stark contrast to the multi-coloured splodges representing the many territories of the Habsburgs or the Holy Roman Empire. The cartographers offer a visual insight into the political reality of dynastic rule. Both the Spanish and Austrian branches of the House of Habsburg continued the tradition associated with Charles V of styling themselves variously as King of Aragon, King of Bohemia, King of Hungary, King of Naples or Duke of Brabant, in recognition of the different titles by which they ruled. In France the situation was very different, and as successive monarchs added formerly independent territories such as Brittany, Burgundy, Provence and Languedoc to their realm the willingness to recognise existing privileges did not mean that they reigned by a different title in Paris to that in Marseilles or Rennes. Before 1789 the Bourbons styled themselves simply as ‘King of France and of Navarre’, while the titles Duc d’Anjou, Duc de Bretagne or Comte de Provence were reserved for the sons or grandsons of the reigning monarch. While naming a young prince the Duc de Bourgogne might conjure up memories of the halcyon days of the Valois dukes, in reality there was no longer a direct correlation between these honorary titles and the apanage bestowed upon them.2 The idea of the monarchy gradually uniting France, while simultaneously extending the kingdom to its ‘natural frontiers’, has a long and distinguished history, providing the basis for the concept of absolutism associated with the policies of Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis XIV. This interpretation forms part of the founding myth of the French state, reinforced by the works of, among others, Alexis de Tocqueville, of an absolute monarch breaking the centrifugal forces represented by Huguenots, over-mighty aristocrats and 163

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the great towns and provinces.3 In France, to quote the memorable words of Louis XV, ‘it is in my person alone that sovereign authority resides … it is to me alone that legislative power belongs and it can neither be divided nor shared’.4 An absolute monarch, secure in the knowledge of his full and unfettered sovereignty and ruling without a national parliament, seems very different to the situation in Ireland or Hungary, and there is no doubt that there were real and important distinctions. Yet the classic interpretation of French absolutism and of administrative centralisation that accompanies it is based overwhelmingly upon the view from the centre, assuming that ministers and their provincial representatives, the intendants, were able to govern at will. Clearly the Bourbon monarchs did gradually exert greater administrative control over their subjects and the intendants of the late eighteenth century were extremely powerful in the pays d’élections. These provinces, defined by an absence of provincial estates, made up nearly two-thirds of the kingdom, and it is their example which provided the model for theories of absolutism and centralisation. However, the other third of the kingdom was divided among the pays d’états, which maintained varying degrees of legal and administrative autonomy through the continuing presence of representative bodies. Provinces such as Brittany, Languedoc and Provence had maintained strong local traditions of self-rule and of cultural and institutional independence from the centre. Not surprisingly, the revisionist critique of ‘absolutism’ that has flourished among British and American scholars in particular has focused upon the pays d’états with a series of major studies challenging the traditional view of a powerful centralising state.5 These works have not conceptualised the French state in terms of a composite monarchy, although on closer inspection the parallels are striking.6 Much depends upon the question of definition. If composite monarchy is thought of in terms of a single ruler of multiple kingdoms then France can scarcely be claimed to fit such a model, but a more flexible definition that includes monarchical states ruling over disparate provinces with their own legal rights and privileges is perhaps a more accurate reflection of the reality in early modern Europe. In a thoughtful article on the subject of composite monarchy, J. H. Elliott discussed the writings of the seventeenthcentury Spanish jurist Juan Solórzano Pereira, who had considered how new territories could be added to existing dominions.7 Solórzano had suggested that one method was ‘the form of union known as aeque principaliter, under which the constituent kingdoms continued after their union to be treated as distinct entities, preserving their own laws, fueros and privileges. “These kingdoms”, wrote Solórzano, “must be ruled and governed as if the king who holds them all together were king only of each one of them.”’8 Such a definition of the relationship between the French Crown and the provinces would not have seemed unduly far-fetched to the inhabitants of the great pays d’états, who were proud of the ‘constitutions’ and ‘liberties’ confirmed

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by successive rulers from the time of their union. If we add the continuing presence of representative institutions, distinct laws and privileges, the need for the Crown to manage the interests of provincial élites, to allow certain key offices to remain in local hands and to permit a degree of administrative autonomy, all of which Elliott sees as defining characteristics of composite monarchy, then the pays d’états unquestionably meet these criteria. Elliott himself noted that the France of Louis XIII ‘was still essentially composite in character’, an argument consistent with that of J. Russell Major, whose studies of what he termed the ‘renaissance monarchy’ emphasised the continuing vitality of representative government in sixteenth-century France.9 However, both scholars assumed that Louis XIV succeeded in establishing greater ‘national unity’, with a ‘conscious policy of political, administrative and cultural Gallicisation’.10 Such an interpretation of society and government in the pays d’états is questionable, especially in relation to local administration. Detailed studies of the provincial estates of Artois, Brittany, Burgundy and Languedoc demonstrate unequivocally that their powers were expanding and that on the eve of the Revolution they oversaw local taxation, international credit structures, the raising of the militia, agricultural improvement and much else besides.11 Clearly for all their sense of history and local pride it would be an exaggeration to pretend that Burgundians or Bretons possessed a sense of identity comparable to that of Catalans or Hungarians, but some of the essential features of composite monarchy were nevertheless present throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The aim of this chapter is to delve further into the constitutional relations between the centre and the peripheries in eighteenth-century France by taking the province of Burgundy as an example in order to investigate both the theory and the realities of lawmaking in a pays d’états.

The Burgundian constitution The glittering composite monarchy that was Valois Burgundy perished alongside its last duke, Charles le Téméraire, on the muddy battlefields of Lorraine in January 1477. His great rival Louis XI was quick to make good his claims to the Duchy of Burgundy and in time-honoured fashion lightened the blow to his new subjects by recognising their rights and privileges in a traitté (treaty) negotiated by his representatives and those of the estates of Burgundy. Among the more significant clauses were those stating that the subjects of the duchy ‘would be and would remain forever in possession of all their rights, exemptions, liberties, prerogatives, [and] written customs authorised by his late royal highness the Duke Philippe’.12 This was confirmed in letters patent issued by Louis XI in March 1477, which stated13 that [the king] would neither levy nor collect taxes or subsidies in the said pays and duchy of Burgundy for his own benefit or that of others, unless

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the said taxes shall have been granted, consented and bestowed by the said members of the three estates. For the later history of the province, it was also significant that the same letters patent confirmed the king’s decision to establish a parlement in Dijon. The traitté and letters patent of 1477 would become the basis of the ‘Burgundian constitution’, and its terms were recognised by successive monarchs on their accession until 1789. As we shall see, there was ample scope for dispute about the precise nature of the constitution, but by the eighteenth century the province had a settled political, judicial and administrative structure. Once every three years the king convoked the Estates-General of Burgundy, which gathered in great pomp to discuss his demands for financial and other assistance.14 In addition, the deputies had an opportunity to raise issues of local concern and to scrutinise the activities of the permanent commission of the estates, the chamber of élus, which directed provincial affairs on their behalf. By the late eighteenth century, most significant administrative tasks were in the hands of the seven élus and the permanent officers and clerks employed by the estates. Burgundy, like other French provinces, had long been host to an intendant, but within the duchy his role while still important was secondary to that of the élus.15 Thanks to Louis XI, the province also possessed its own parlement in Dijon staffed by venal office-holders, which was at the summit of the local judicial hierarchy. After more than two centuries its members had acquired immense prestige and self-confidence, and frequently challenged the claims of the estates to be the defender of provincial rights and liberties. The triennial assemblies of the estates of Burgundy were rapid and harmonious gatherings, especially when compared with those of Brittany or Languedoc. An average of between 50 and 100 deputies met in each of the three chambers, representing the clergy, nobility and Third Estate, to hear the governor’s instructions containing, for example, royal demands for new or increased taxation. Voting was by order, with a majority of two to one sufficient to pass a decree (décret). Here was the ideal of the constitutional relationship in the pays d’états, encapsulated in the phrase ‘le roi demande, les états consente’, with the king asking an assembly of the three orders for their approval, which once given provided the legal basis for taxation in the province. This was very different to the situation in the pays d’élections where new taxation was levied after a royal edict had been registered by the relevant parlement. The king also sought the assent of the estates for other administrative innovations with fiscal implications such as requests to build workhouses for the poor or to grant subsidies to local commercial ventures.16 When assembled, the estates also passed décrets in response to the petitions (requêtes) of its members or of individuals, communities or institutions within the province as well as deliberating upon the remarques

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of both their permanent legal officers and the seven alcades appointed from within the assembly to scrutinise the conduct of the élus. As in other eighteenth-century representative institutions, the formal mechanism for the passage of laws was only one facet of a more complex process. Before the governor arrived in Burgundy with his list of royal demands, ministers had already consulted the intendant as well as leading members of the province’s élites to try and anticipate likely objections.17 Once in Dijon, the governor used all the arts of persuasion. Lavish banquets, accompanied by copious draughts of local wines, were held for the leading deputies of the three orders, while the respectable inhabitants of the city were invited to balls and the ordinary townspeople entertained with music, fireworks, food and drink in a bid to create a festive atmosphere.18 Meanwhile the governor and his advisers engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations, coaxing, cajoling and where necessary coercing the deputies to ensure that their votes were cast in favour of the king’s demands. It was a well-oiled political machine and serious opposition was extremely rare, unlike in Brittany where the Crown frequently struggled to impose its authority.19 The Breton ‘constitution’ permitted any recognised noble to attend the assemblies of the estates and with hundreds regularly choosing to exercise their rights political management was correspondingly more difficult. It was also significant that the governors played a less decisive role than the Condé in Burgundy, rarely attending the estates and leaving the task of presiding over them to the military commandants who, while from the upper ranks of the aristocracy, lacked the prestige and authority of princes of the blood. The assemblies of the estates were not restricted to discussing the governor’s instructions. Time was spent scrutinising their own internal procedures and the work of the chamber of élus, and the resulting décrets did not require royal approval. However, matters involving new or amended legislation were beyond their competence and they could not pass laws on their own authority. When the estates began a campaign for the establishment of a university in Dijon in 1688, for example, they could easily have found the funds, but first they needed an edict from the king.20 As a result, the estates ordered the élus to put their request in the cahier des remontrances presented to the monarch during the voyage of honour to the court that followed their assembly. The remonstrances were a mixture of formulaic grievances about the weight of taxation and the impoverished state of the province, together with some very specific requests for legislation such as that permitting enclosures or the partition of common lands, which featured in the remonstrances of 1764, 1767, 1770 and 1773.21 During the voyage of honour, the élus, aided by the professional advice of the province’s permanent legal officers and supported by the governor, negotiated with ministers and royal officials and also used their own credit with influential courtiers to advance their cause. After several months of hard bargaining, the chancellor

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summoned the élus to a session of the royal conseil des parties at which the king’s response to each item in the remonstrances was announced. Success was not guaranteed, and the plea for the right to establish a university was not heeded until 1718. The subsequent royal edict was then sent to the parlement of Dijon for formal registration, thus completing the legislative process. These examples supply a useful indication of how lawmaking was supposed to function in the pays d’états. The estates did not claim sovereignty in their own right, but nor did they accept that the king’s will was law in the way it was understood by the absolutist theorists. Instead, fiscal demands from the king required the assent of the assembly before becoming law or alternatively a request emanating from within the provincial estates could be passed on to the élus, who petitioned the Crown until it issued the necessary edict, which was then registered in the parlement of Dijon. Thus despite bold claims about full and unfettered royal sovereignty, there was a widely accepted convention that the consent of the estates and registration by parlement was required to give full force to the law. These were straightforward examples, and not surprisingly the picture was often more complicated, and in times of crisis seemingly well-established conventions could become contentious. As we have seen, in theory great emphasis was placed upon the principle of consent, but with the estates assembled for no more than a few weeks every three years the Crown could hardly be expected to wait for their approval when war or other pressing affairs required a quick response. As a result, from the second half of the seventeenth century it became an established convention that the élus could act in their stead, negotiating on taxation and other fiscal matters with the king and concluding agreements, termed abonnements, that were then registered by the parlement of Dijon before being ratified by the next assembly of the estates. Scope for opposition to Louis XIV was limited during the sombre war-torn years at the end of his reign, although the élus were adept at negotiating fiscal deals that were advantageous to provincial élites. However, once France entered another cycle of military conflict in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the parlements and some of the provincial estates, notably those of Brittany, became increasingly outspoken in their criticisms of Louis XV’s government.22 It was in this context that debates about constitutional issues came to the fore. In the pays d’élections, parlements, such as that of Rouen, rediscovered the ancient ‘Norman constitution’, and demanded the restoration of their provincial estates, which they claimed ought to be consulted on matters of taxation.23 In the pays d’états, where the parlements had to confront the reality of the provincial estates, the situation was more complex, with the parlementaires becoming ever more assertive of their own rights and of the claim to defend both the interests of taxpayers and provincial liberties.

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Burgundy offered a classic example of the resulting conflicts because of the dominant role of the chamber of élus in the provincial administration. The two institutions became involved in regular and often protracted disputes both among themselves and with the Crown during which they aired a variety of sometimes conflicting interpretations of the Burgundian constitution and of legislative practice in the province. Both the parlementaires and the élus could agree that consent was the basis of the provincial constitution. President Fevret de Fontette, a distinguished member of the parlement of Dijon, expressed the prevailing view when he wrote that in the pays d’élections the sovereign makes the law and the parlement registers it. It is this registration which renders the law public … and gives it force. In the pays d’états, the sovereign presents his demands to an assembly of estates, it consents, [and] the law is made as a consequence of this consent, and this law can only be enforced, as in the pays d’élections, after registration. Such are the true principles according to which we can be assured that it is as important for the parlement, as it is for the whole nation, that the estates use the most basic of their privileges. In this brief statement, Fontette encapsulated both the dominant parlementaire view of French lawmaking and its many ambiguities. The king’s sovereignty was not in doubt, but even in the pays d’élections it was not unfettered in the way that it was understood by Louis XV. For the monarch, the parlement was expected to publicise and enforce laws issued by his council, whereas Fontette and his colleagues believed that registration was a necessary prerequisite to the lawmaking process. Fontette’s analysis of the situation in the pays d’états was perfectly orthodox, but in Burgundy it had potentially contentious implications because it was part of a more general attack on the élus who were accused of usurping the powers of the estates. It was the monarchy’s need for increased taxation during the Seven Years War that provoked these arguments, and the parlementaires and the élus battled for the right to speak in the name of the province and its taxpayers. The crucial issue was that of consent to taxation when the estates were not assembled. The élus claimed to be nothing less than the ‘representatives of the estates’; as they explained matters, ‘it is to us alone that the estates have confided the care of watching over the preservation of their prerogatives … it is to us alone, who, by the constitutions of the province, are the representatives of the estates and are invested with all their powers’.24 Such authority, they believed, fully justified their practice of contracting abonnements and then raising taxes without the prior consent of the estates. The parlement of Dijon increasingly objected to this idea, arguing that, what it termed ‘a few isolated voices’, could not speak for ‘the immense

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number of citizens who live in one of the major provinces’ of the kingdom, adding that ‘three individuals could not give a consent which belonged to the assembled nation alone’.25 Rather than seeing the élus as the embodiment of the estates, the parlementaires preferred to treat them as simple administrators whose powers were limited to ‘the allocation of the taxes granted by the estates on the communities, parishes and hearths of the province, the maintenance of highways, bridges and roads, adjudications, relief and other affairs of this type which are purely administrative’.26 As part of their assault on the élus, the parlementaires deplored the fact that the estates were content to assemble just once every three years, which, according to Fontette, was the result of a dubious privilege secured in the mid-seventeenth century.27 He was personally in favour of the estates asserting their rights, particularly that of consent, in a more vigorous fashion, but argued that until then ‘they relied entirely upon registration by the sovereign courts when it came to taxation’, with the parlement acting as the guardian of provincial liberty. Here Fontette and his fellow parlementaires more generally were offering a Burgundian version of the wider national argument that in the absence of the Estates-General it was the parlement of Paris that provided the necessary consent to taxation. Having been established by Louis XI, the parlement of Dijon was clearly at a disadvantage relative to the much more venerable estates, and during their quarrels with the élus the parlementaires were usually prepared to cede institutional precedence. Only at times of real tension did that stance alter. In 1762, for example, parlement and élus were locked in an acrimonious dispute about a variety of jurisdictional and administrative matters, prompting the parlementaires to offer an alternative interpretation of the province’s constitutional history by drawing upon ideas developed during the previous decade by the Jansenist antiquarian, Louis-Adrien Le Paige.28 He had revived arguments first used during the French Wars of Religion and the Fronde to claim that the parlement of Paris was as old as the monarchy and that it was a direct descendant of the Frankish assemblies that had once met on the Champs de Mars.29 What excited the Burgundian parlementaires was the accompanying theory of the ‘union des classes’, according to which the provincial parlements were emanations of the one and indivisible parlement of France.30 Inspired by these ideas, the parlement of Dijon temporarily rejected the familiar provincial constitution based upon the ‘treaty’ of 1477. Rather than accept that their institution was a relatively new creation, they claimed that Louis XI’s edict was a ‘monument to the unchanging order of national legislation and to the transfer of the rights of the supreme court resident in Paris to the new tribunal that was affiliated to it and which was assigned a portion of its ancient jurisdiction’.31 The Burgundian parlementaires were thus able to exploit the hoary controversy as to whether the Estates-General or the parlement of Paris represented the ancient French national assembly to advantage in their own provincial context. Indeed, as late as March 1785, the

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parlement was still referring to the works of the historian President Hénault, who had also argued that the parlement of Paris was superior to the EstatesGeneral of France.32 The Burgundian parlementaires, having cited his work, were happy to draw the conclusion that what was true for France must also be so for Burgundy. These were rare outbursts, and the parlement’s flirtations with theories such as the union des classes are probably best interpreted as rhetorical strategies designed to strengthen a weak hand in a jurisdictional dispute. Had the parlementaires pressed their attack against the estates further, they would have risked undermining the intellectual foundations of the Burgundian constitution, which, it is important to note, many of them had sought to reinforce through legal, historical and antiquarian scholarship.33 Once again, the parlement’s real quarrels were with the chamber of élus, which it believed was usurping the rights of the absent estates. It was an opinion that was echoed by some within the estates, who were also critical of the excessive reliance upon the élus, but it was not until the reign of Louis XVI that the demand for more active assemblies gathered real strength. Part of the explanation is to be found in the dominance of the estates by a small, but powerful section of the local élite that was reinforced by its ties to the governor, the Prince de Condé. The governorship of the province had become almost hereditary in the house of Bourbon-Condé, and successive governors played an active role not only in presiding over the assemblies of the estates, but also in choosing many of the élus and monitoring their activities.34 From 1754 until the Revolution, Louis-Joseph de Bourbon-Condé maintained that tradition and remained hostile to reform or innovation in the organisation of the estates. Despite the occasionally heated disputes between the estates and the parlement of Dijon, it should be clear that eighteenth-century Burgundy possessed two powerful and active institutions both of which claimed to defend provincial privileges. Between them, they contained a broad cross section of the local noble and office-holding élites, and their members possessed a strong sense of their own history and that of the province. Also, despite their rivalries, both the estates and the parlement believed in the notion of a Burgundian constitution. While they did not dispute the king’s sovereignty, they were nevertheless convinced that fiscal legislation in the province should be based upon the principle of consent. On the surface at least, the defining features of composite monarchy seemed to be as firmly entrenched in the reign of Louis XVI as they had been in that of Louis XI.

Estates, élus and the royal council Burgundy’s claim to privileged status was perhaps most apparent in the actual conduct of provincial government. It is not an exaggeration to say that every major administrative task was in the hands of the chamber of élus, from the raising of taxation to the organisation of midwifery classes.35

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To achieve these ends, the seven élus were assisted by permanent financial and legal officers and an expanding bureaucracy staffed by salaried clerks. It was an increasingly professional organisation and during the reign of Louis XVI, the estates were, for example, able to supervise the construction of three major canals, improve the road network, establish a model farm for the encouragement of agriculture, and much else besides. The general pattern for this administrative decentralisation was for the Crown to issue a law transferring the relevant jurisdiction to the élus. In 1776, for example, they were granted full jurisdiction over the chemins finerots (minor roads) to add to that of the major highways, while in 1781 they gained similar powers over the province’s waterways, including the crucial river Saône. Once responsibility had passed to the élus, they were expected to carry out their administrative and legal duties within the terms of the edict or other royal legislation that had granted them jurisdiction. However, royal legislation was open to interpretation and modification. As part of their regular administrative practice, the chamber of élus issued large numbers of what were termed ‘délibérations’, which regulated the activities and conduct of their officials and defined the nature of their tasks. These délibérations resembled royal edicts in both form and content, with an introductory preamble, often running on for several pages, that was intended both to explain and to justify administrative decisions. By the late eighteenth century, references to the need for ‘equality’, ‘equity’ and ‘reason’ in the administrative process abounded and they were clearly intended to influence public opinion in their favour. Each preamble concluded with the resounding phrase ‘we élus généraux undersigned have deliberated and ordered, deliberate and order the following’, and a list of articles was then set out. In extreme cases, such as the deliberation of 1 December 1783, codifying the procedures for the levy of the taille, the élus issued more than 100 different articles stipulating in tremendous technical detail who was to be taxed, when and by whom.36 The dominant role of the chamber of élus was one of the defining features of the Burgundian administration, and in provinces such as Languedoc or Brittany these délibérations would have been the preserve of the assemblies of the estates.37 The sheer number and complexity of these délibérations, and the fact that over the years they touched upon almost every conceivable aspect of the fiscal and administrative life of the province as well as on the internal organisation of the provincial bureaucracy, meant that the lines between legislation and administration tended to become blurred because they were not examined until the next meeting of the estates. At those gatherings, the three orders were each presented with a voluminous cahier containing the délibérations and other decisions of the élus for their ratification. The seven alcades, appointed from within the estates to scrutinise the work of the chamber, would also produce their remarques, which might also refer to particularly important délibérations, but not surprisingly it was extremely rare for the expert decisions of the élus to be challenged.

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The Crown was generally happy to leave administrative matters to the élus, and it is doubtful if all of their délibérations received close scrutiny from the government. Provincial autonomy was further reinforced by the ability of the estates to raise vast sums both for the king and for their own purposes using their own credit.38 However, the élus were not allowed a completely free rein, and when their decisions were challenged there was again scope for constitutional dispute. When the parlement raised objections, the élus usually adopted a stance encapsulated in a phrase from the writings of one of their great servants and chief apologists, Jacques Varennes, who had written in 1762 that ‘the pays d’états are under the immediate protection of the king in the administrative order, as the parlements are in the judicial order. These two powers are both equally a product of the sovereign authority’.39 Similar sentiments were expressed in another published memoir of 1784, which declared that ‘by its constitution and by its privileges, the administration of the estates of Burgundy is directly subordinate to His Majesty and to his council, and the established order is, in this respect, as essential to it [the estates], that if it were broken it would itself be destroyed’.40 These theories were extremely helpful to the élus when they were in conflict with the parlement because it enabled them to claim a direct relationship with the monarch independent of the judiciary. The arguments of the parlementaires were nevertheless telling because it was clearly impossible for the élus to possess the right to fix rates of taxation or control the jurisdiction over waterways or roads without the ordinary citizen being entitled to a right of appeal. According to the élus, such cases were to be heard by themselves in the first instance and by the royal council in the event of appeal. The parlement vigorously opposed this practice, declaring, not unreasonably, that it, and not the élus, should hear cases in the first instance. As the Crown’s most pressing concern was usually fiscal, it tended to support the élus wherever possible on account of their crucial role in raising taxes and loans. However, when the élus fell foul of the ministry, their position was suddenly more vulnerable. A good example of such a conflict was provided by the furore generated by the government’s decision to issue an arrêt du conseil on 28 July 1776 quashing three controversial déliberations of the chamber of élus regulating the conduct of the estates’ fiscal officers and altering the procedures for the levy of the vingtième (twentieth tax). Such action was extremely rare; indeed, the élus claimed that it was completely unheard of. The finance minister, Jacques Necker, who, although not personally responsible for the government’s initial decision was subsequently obliged to defend it, wrote that there were suitable precedents, but the examples he cited lacked any real precision.41 Given that the élus had often proclaimed their subordination to the king in administrative matters this might not have mattered. However, the élus of 1775–8 were headed by the formidable, reform-minded

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Abbé Antoine de la Goutte, and they proved far more combative than the government had anticipated. In a strongly worded requête au roi, the élus provided a liberal definition of their own powers, stating that the ‘deputies of the three orders are not only the representatives of the estates, to enforce what has been decreed in their assemblies, they represent them, they deputise for them, they are the stewards and administrators of the province in the name of the estates’.42 As a consequence, the élus were accountable for their actions to the estates, and the king’s decision to quash their déliberation was both a constitutional innovation and a mistake because it was based upon the complaints of influential landowners who had been angered by their reforms. This, the élus maintained, was contrary to all established principles, and only the estates assembled could determine if they had used their powers wisely. Having rather deftly sought to bolster their own prerogatives and those of the estates, the élus then added a new twist to their standard constitutional doctrine by writing that the estates also have their superior who is your majesty, but the élus are directly subordinate to the estates and the authority of your majesty must not fall on the substance of their regulations before the estates have already used their right to confirm or to suppress them; such is the ancient and immemorial institution [sic] of the duchy of Burgundy, and this ancient order, confirmed from reign to reign, has been inviolably preserved until this day. The élus had thus inserted the estates between themselves and the royal council, and if their argument was accepted the arrêt du conseil of 28 July 1776 quashing their délibérations was invalid. In future, any délibérations which offended the government would remain in force until they were either avowed or disavowed by the assembly of the estates. Neither Louis XVI’s ministers nor the Prince de Condé were prepared to countenance such a dangerous outcome, which risked pitting them against the estates at their next meeting in 1778. The requête was therefore rejected, and when the estates did meet they were so closely managed that some participants were shocked. Jean-Marie Bouhier de Bernadon, for example, wrote that they ‘had succeeded in putting off forever those who might have tried to act for the wellbeing of the province; although it was my firm intention to keep quiet … I couldn’t stop myself sometimes from speaking my mind [and] the replies I received were so mad and so extraordinary that I began to doubt myself’.43 In the end, he ‘fled to his country estate’ and did not return until the Prince de Condé had left. Bouhier’s frustration was shared by others who were anxious to reform the estates, but it was not simply the firm hand of the governor which prevented the élus from overturning the arrêt du conseil. The government was

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also able to capitalise upon divisions within the chamber of élus itself, where a number of its members, including some of the permanent officers, openly rejected La Goutte’s analysis. These dissenting voices adopted a more orthodox line, repeating the maxim that the élus were subordinate to the king in administrative affairs, and noting that he could not only approve, but also quash their délibérations.44 Yet any doubts about the authority of the élus did not extend to the estates, and on the issue of administrative innovation the dissenters made the no less powerful claim that ‘the right to rule on the way in which it is to be administered belongs to the assembly of the nation alone because it was with the nation that the sovereign contracted when he had the goodness to transmit this portion of his authority’.45 For all the constitutional wrangling, the three délibérations remained quashed and complaints about the arrêt du conseil were ultimately confined to the pages of the cahier des remontrances and the remarques of the alcades. That said, the affair revealed the ambiguity surrounding legal and administrative matters in Burgundy, and even something as seemingly straightforward as the nature of the délibérations issued by the chamber of élus could raise complex questions about the precise relationship between the royal council, the estates and the provincial administration. Although La Goutte’s attempt to bolster the position of élus caused dissension in the chamber, there was still unanimity when it came to stressing the pre-eminence of the estates, whose authority was increasingly equated with that of the Burgundian nation.

A Burgundian nation? The half-century preceding the French Revolution witnessed a lively debate about Burgundy’s constitutional history and the relative rights and prerogatives of its principal institutions. Whatever their disagreements, both the parlementaires and the chamber of élus were at one in taking a more assertive view of the rights of the estates. This sentiment met with growing support during the triennial assemblies of that body. This campaign was very much in keeping with a wider movement for the reestablishment of provincial estates or other forms of local government elsewhere in the kingdom. Dauphiné provides a particularly good example, and Clarisse Coulomb has shown how the parlement of Grenoble, the local nobility and some of the towns led a campaign for the restoration of the province’s ‘constitution and privileges’.46 Before 1787, there was certainly the potential for reform of the Burgundian estates, with most commentators convinced that they needed to be made more representative and to become more active in defending their rights, especially in the crucial area of consent to taxation. These debates were given renewed urgency by the fall-out from the political and financial crises of 1787–9, which saw a series of failed governmental reforms culminate in the decision to convoke the Estates-General. These

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events almost inevitably raised the question of Burgundy’s constitutional relationship to the kingdom as a whole. Initially the argument was conducted in traditional terms, as the monarchy sought to shore up its fading authority by staging a coup against the parlements in May 1788.47 In a sign of growing corporate solidarity, the Marquis de Digoine, one of the noble alcades, launched a passionate defence of the parlement of Dijon. He denounced the government’s May edicts, declaring them invalid in Burgundy on the basis that ‘the registration of all laws and of all taxes concerning Burgundy can only take place after they have been consented to by the three orders of the province, and can only be [duly] formed by the parlement of Burgundy, such as it was created at the request of the estates’.48 The élus reprimanded Digoine, and delivered a far more emollient protest of their own, but the issue of Burgundian constitutional independence acquired greater significance once it became clear that the Estates-General of France really would meet. Two questions came to the fore, namely was Burgundy liable to pay taxes agreed by the Estates-General? And could the provincial estates be reformed as a consequence of a decision taken at the national level? As we have seen, many of the constitutional theories produced before 1787 referred to the nation, by which the authors meant the Burgundian nation, with its own Estates-General, and these sentiments continued to find favour with some members of the local élite. In 1788, Jacques Varenne, the long-time spokesman and chief theorist of the élus, informed President Joly de Fleury of the parlement of Paris that three centuries of unbroken history confirmed that Burgundy was not bound to pay taxes voted by the Estates-General of France.49 More surprisingly, his views were echoed by some leading lawyers in Dijon, including Jean Cortot, a long-standing supporter of the parlement of Dijon. He too rejected the notion of a superior national body, arguing in a public disputation with his colleagues that50 it is not for the Estates-General of the kingdom to pronounce on the reform of the abuses which have crept into those of the duchy of Burgundy; it is for the people of the three estates of this pays to do what is necessary in the general assembly of the Burgundian nation, that is to say the three orders which make up the nation. Here was a ringing endorsement of Burgundy’s constitutional autonomy, and the impending Revolution had made unlikely allies of Varenne and Cortot, who had united to defend a common conception of the Burgundian constitution. In these quarrels among the Third Estate of Dijon, the protagonists had already foreseen the possibility that provincial privilege might be abolished in favour of ‘a single constitution’ in the kingdom, as indeed occurred on 4 August 1789. Cortot was vehemently opposed to such an outcome and wanted to forbid Burgundian deputies to the Estates-General from

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following such a course and to demand instead that ‘the duchy of Burgundy be maintained in all its rights, franchises and liberties forming its public and constitutional law … which was inalienable’. Cortot and Varenne were swimming against a strong tide, and Jean Joseph Mounier, the influential leader of the recently re-established provincial estates of Dauphiné, had already reached the opposite conclusion. In a published letter of December 1788, he argued that the provinces were individually too weak to legislate on matters of taxation.51 Instead, he declared that [w]e must only retain those individual privileges that do not affect the happiness of our fellow citizens and we must see the whole of France as our patrie … Béarnais, Bretons, Dauphinois glory in the name of Frenchmen, let us do our duty and fly to the aid of our patrie. After the night of 4 August 1789, the Constituent Assembly would put Mounier’s ideas into practice, although he was personally disappointed with the outcome. In October 1789, he returned from Paris to his native province disillusioned with the course the Revolution was taking, and tried unsuccessfully to reassemble the provincial estates.52 In other provinces, similar debates were taking place, and Maximilien Robespierre, the future Jacobin and revolutionary leader, penned his first significant pamphlet under the title À la nation artésienne, sur la nécessité de réformer les états d’Artois.53 Robespierre was highly critical of the estates of Artois, and he identified a number of themes that resonated elsewhere in France, notably the lack of proper representation and the tendency of the provincial estates to act in an arbitrary and despotic manner comparable to that of the intendants in the pays d’élections. Yet his pamphlet is revealing not only because in 1789 the nation could still be conceived of as something other than French, but also because Robespierre like other critics left the door open for reform of the estates. In provinces such as Béarn, Brittany and Dauphiné – to name just a few – the notion of separate or even plural nationhood was seriously discussed. However, in the context of 1788–9, for the idea of Burgundian (or any other provincial) nationhood to make the transition from a historical and rhetorical concept to a political reality would have required a form of popular legitimacy. Without veering off too far down the slippery slope of counter-factualism, it is possible to imagine a scenario whereby the estates of Burgundy might have been permitted to hold elections on a nearuniversal manhood suffrage, as was the case for the Estates-General in the spring of 1789. There were certainly calls for an assembly of the Burgundian estates in the spring of 1789, although these were eventually overruled by the king. At the very least, such elections would have produced a body with a sense of its own mandate and might well have given real meaning to the concept of a Burgundian nation imagined by Cortot and Varenne.

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Such an institution would certainly have been in a better position to challenge the reforms of the Constituent Assembly which in August 1789 abolished not only the estates, but even the province of Burgundy itself. That it proved possible to remodel the political and administrative geography of France in such a drastic fashion is indicative of the fact that there was real hostility towards the administration of the provincial estates. In her study of Artois, Legay has noted that no less than 56 per cent of the cahiers de doléances which mentioned the local estates did so in a critical fashion, while Stephen Miller has argued that the estates of Languedoc were also attacked for their elitist and unrepresentative nature.54 In Burgundy, the situation was more nuanced, in the sense that harsh condemnation of the alleged ‘tyranny’ of the élus was balanced by a widespread and concerted call for the reform of the estates that in many of its key elements was common to the three orders. What prevented a real campaign in favour of revitalised estates from gathering strength in the crucial six months following the announcement in August 1788 that the Estates-General were to meet, was the disagreement between the would-be reformers. At issue was the nature of the ‘constitution’, by which they meant the internal composition and voting procedures of the estates. For many nobles in particular, the constitution was something that needed to be restored to an earlier pristine state before it had been corrupted by ministerial despotism. While they were happy to endorse the notion of genuine representation and elections, what was proposed was reform within the existing society of orders, predicated upon the belief that future voting would be by order not by head. It was an argument that angered many in the Third Estate, particularly in the vocal legal profession in Dijon, who had been inspired by Mounier and the actions of the estates of Dauphiné, for whom the continued predominance of the privileged orders was seen as an attempt to maintain the worst abuses of the existing system. These arguments would soon be played out on the national stage, but the failure to resolve the dispute in Burgundy created a political vacuum into which the reforms of the Constituent Assembly poured. Deprived of leadership and legitimacy, the estates never became the voice of a ‘Burgundian nation’, and, as elsewhere in the pays d’états, the decisions of the Constituent Assembly to abolish provincial privilege and the estates and parlements that had for so long posed as their guardians produced scarcely a murmur of dissent. The overwhelming majority of the population proved more than happy to participate in the movement of national reform that would provide France with a uniform political, legal and institutional structure.

Conclusion On the eve of the French Revolution Burgundy had retained much of its legal and institutional autonomy. The parlement continued to uphold its own customary law, while through the élus the estates exercised a firm

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control over local government. Although due respect was paid to the principle of royal sovereignty, there was seemingly a deep-rooted commitment to a Burgundian constitution based upon consent, offering an excellent example of the old maxim that the ‘King of France was a monarch for whom everything was possible, but not everything was permitted’.55 The estates could not assemble without royal permission nor could they issue laws in their own name, but they did possess well-established constitutional conventions of formal approval in their assemblies (décrets) or of petition (remontrance) which meant that lawmaking was, in part, a matter of negotiation and compromise. For much of the time, the legislative process was a harmonious affair, and many of the quarrels that did arise were between the parlement and the élus about who had the right to speak for the province. Contrary to the traditional scholarly emphasis upon monarchical ‘centralisation’, ‘Gallicisation’ or ‘absolutism’, the relative success of the French monarchy in integrating new provinces is better ascribed to its willingness to permit the continuing existence of difference. As a result, provincial estates continued to meet, local parlements upheld their own legal codes, social élites were able to participate in running local administration, and a spirit of negotiation and collaboration was frequently present in the lawmaking process. Yet for all the insistence on the importance of the Burgundian constitution, it is clear that provincial autonomy rested on fragile foundations. While antiquarians, historians and competing corporate bodies liked to wax lyrical about the ‘Burgundian nation’, in reality it was a will-o’-the-wisp to be conjured up for rhetorical purposes, and there was no deep emotional or institutional bond between the people of the duchy and the privileged corporate bodies that liked to speak in their name. Indeed, apart from a few diehards such as Varenne or Cortot, it is doubtful if the tie to the province was really that strong even for the social élites, which had been absorbed into wider French social, economic and cultural networks since at least the sixteenth century.56 We should not, therefore, be surprised that in 1789 Burgundians looked to the Estates-General of France to resolve their problems, a body to which, unlike their own provincial estates, they had been invited to send their deputies and their grievances. The prospect of becoming French citizens in a new regime of civic equality and democratic participation was ultimately far more attractive than hankering after the yellowed parchments containing their privileges and liberties of 1477.

Notes 1. For an introduction to an expanding field, see Conrad Russell, ‘Monarchies, Wars and Estates in England, France, and Spain, c. 1580–1640’ in Legislative Studies Quarterly, vii (1982), pp. 205–20; Jenny Wormald, ‘The Creation of Britain: Multiple Kingdoms or Core and Colonies?’ in TRHS, ser. 6, ii (1992), pp. 175–94;

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2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

Council, Estates and Parlements in Burgundy and Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill (eds), The British Problem, c. 1534–1707: State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (London, 1996). Sandrine Bula, L’ Apanage du Comte d’Artois, 1773–1790 (Paris, 1993), for example, shows that the Comte d’Artois had extensive estates in, for example, Berry and Poitou. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, i: The Complete Text, ed. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio (London, 1998). Jules Flammermont, Remontrances du Parlement de Paris au XVIIIe Siècle (3 vols, Paris, 1888–98), ii, 554–60. For a selection of these works, see: William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge, 1985); Gail Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille (Cambridge, 1991); J. B. Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Brittany (Cambridge, 1994); Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford, 1986); and Julian Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661–1790 (Cambridge, 2003). One notable exception is William Doyle, who in a perceptive article, ‘The Union in a European Context’ in TRHS, ser. 6, x (2000), pp. 167–80, noted the similarities between both France and Ireland and the composite monarchies of pre-revolutionary Europe. J. H. Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’ in Past and Present, no. 137 (1992), pp. 48–71. Ibid., pp. 52–3. Ibid., p. 51; J. R. Major, Representative Government in Early Modern France (New Haven, 1980); idem, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles and Estates (Baltimore, MD, 1994). Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, pp. 65–6. For Burgundy, see Julian Swann, ‘Les États Généraux de Bourgogne: Un Gouvernement Provincial au Siècle des Lumières’ in Revue d’Histore Moderne et Contemporaine, liii, no. 2 (Apr.–June 2006), pp. 35–69. The situation in Languedoc has been analysed by Stephen Miller, State and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: A Study of Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc (Washington, DC, 2008), and in his chapter in this volume. The situation was more nuanced in Artois, where the estates were less active in administrative terms (M. L. Legay, Les États Provinciaux dans la Construction de l’État Moderne (Geneva, 2001)), and in Brittany, where the intendant and the military commandant were influential when the estates were not assembled (Armand Rebillon, Les États de Bretagne de 1661 à 1789: Leur Organisation, l’ Évolution de leurs Pouvoirs, leur Administration Financière (Paris, 1932)). Quoted in Dom Plancher, Histoire Générale et Particulière de Bourgogne avec les Preuves Justificatives: Composée sur les Auteurs, les Titres Originaux, les Registres Publics, les Cartularies des Eglises Cathédrales et Collégiales, des Abbayes, et autres Anciens Monuments (4 vols, Dijon, 1781), iv, pp. ccclxvi–ccclxix. Ibid., p. ccclxx. For a more detailed explanation of the institutional structure and organisation of the estates, see Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, pp. 41–153. The administrative map of the province was complex. The Duchy of Burgundy and the Comtés of Auxerre, Auxonne, Bar-sur-Seine and Charolles were subject to the authority of the estates, which also exercised tutelage over the états particuliers of the Mâconnais. However, the so-called pays adjacents of Bugey, Dombes, Gex

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16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

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and Valromey as well as parts of Bresse were outside of their jurisdiction and here the intendant-dominated local administration. ‘Projet d’instructions …’ (AN, H1 129, dos. 1, ff. 1–5). There is a voluminous correspondence containing the many plans and observations of those involved in preparing the instructions for the triennial assemblies. For examples from 1750 to the Revolution, see AN, H1 120–34. François Dumont, Une Session des États de Bourgogne, la Tenue de 1718 (Dijon, 1935), provides a useful overview of how the assembly was conducted. Rebillon, Les États de Bretagne, pp. 184, 259–64, 322–69. Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, p. 223. ADCO, C 3332, ff 42–5, 73, 75–80, 116–17, 132. Jean Egret, Louis XV et l’Opposition Parlementaire (Paris, 1970), pp. 93–181; William Doyle, ‘The parlements of France and the Breakdown of the Old Regime, 1771–1788’ in FHS, vi (1970), pp. 415–58; Julian Swann, Politics and the Parlement of Paris under Louis XV, 1754–1774 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 156–249. Egret, L’Opposition Parlementaire, pp. 129–30. Délibération of the élus, 3 June 1788 (ADCO, C 3302); élus to the contrôleur général, Claude Guillaume Lambert, 24 July 1789 (ibid., C 3307, f. 84). ‘Remontrances du parlement de Dijon’, 16 Mar. 1762 (ibid., C 3349); ‘Second projet [par M. de Fontette] [au] réponse de M. le chancelier au nom du roi aux remontrances du Parlement de Dijon’ (ibid.). There were, in fact, seven élus, but those representing the three orders were the most powerful. ‘Second projet [par M. de Fontette]’ (ibid., C 3349). Ibid. Fontette was correct in the sense that the Crown had regularly convoked the estates at shorter intervals in order to demand additional taxation. Julian Swann, ‘Power and Provincial Politics in Eighteenth-Century France: The Varenne Affair, 1757–1763’ in FHS, xxi (1998), pp. 441–74; Stéphane Pannekoucke, ‘l’ Affaire Varenne (1760–1763): Jeux de Clientèle et Enjeux de Pouvoir entre Versailles, Paris et Dijon’ in Annales de Bourgogne, lxxviii (2006), pp. 33–67. For more details about the career of Le Paige, see Catherine Maire, De la Cause de Dieu à la Cause de la Nation: Le Jansénisme au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris, 1998) and Dale Van Kley, The Damiens Affair and the Unravelling of the Old Regime in France (Princeton, 1984). Julian Swann, ‘Robe, Sword and Aristocratic Reaction Revisited: The French Nobility and Political Crisis, 1748–1789’ in R. G. Asch (ed.), Der Europäische Adel im Ancien Régime: Von der Krise der Standischen Monarchien bis zur Revolution, 1600–1789 (Cologne, 2001), pp. 151–78. ‘Remontrances du Parlement de Dijon’, 16 Mar. 1762 (ADCO, C 3349). The ideas of Le Paige also influenced Louis-Philibert-Joseph Joly de Bévy, who published an anonymous pamphlet, Le Parlement Outragé, in 1762, for which he subsequently spent several months in the Bastille. ‘Remontrances du Parlement de Dijon’, 12 Mar. 1785 (ADCO, C 3350). It was hardly surprising that Hénault thought this way as he had once been a member of the parlement of Paris. M. P. Breen, Law, City and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon (Rochester, NY, 2007), pp. 180–206. The parlementaires and especially the local lawyers were deeply involved in historical and legal scholarship about the origins of Burgundian customary law. See Beth Natcheson, ‘Absentee Government and Provincial Governors in Early Modern France: The Princes of Condé and Burgundy, 1660–1720’ in FHS, xxi

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35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Council, Estates and Parlements in Burgundy (1998), pp. 265–98; Katia Béguin, Les Princes de Condé; Rebelles, Courtisans et Mécènes dans la France du Grand Siècle (Paris, 1999); and Stéphane Pannekoucke, ‘Les Princes de Condé, Gouverneurs de Bourgogne au XVIIIe Siècle (de 1710 à la Révolution)’ (PhD thesis, Univ. of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), 2007). Swann, ‘Les États Généraux de Bourgogne’. ‘Délibération de la Chambre des Élus’, 1 Dec. 1783 (ADCO, C 4730). The research team led by Professor Arlette Jouanna at the University of Montpellier is soon to publish a complete collection of the vast corpus of decrees voted by the assemblies of the estates of Languedoc. See Mark Potter and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, ‘Politics and Public Finance in France: The Estates of Burgundy, 1660–1790’ in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxvii (1997), pp. 577–612; Legay, Les États Provinciaux, pp. 177–238. Jacques Varenne, Mémoire Pour les Élus Généraux des États du Duché de Bourgogne (Lyon, 1762). ‘Mémoire pour les élus généraux des états du duché de Bourgogne et pays adjacents en réponse au mémoire remis à Monseigneur le garde des sceaux par M. le procureur général de la Cour des Aides de Paris, en exécution de l’arrêt du conseil d’état du 14 juin 1784’ (ADCO, C 3350). Necker to the Prince de Condé, 24 Apr. 1778 (AN, H1 132, dos. 2, f. 31). ‘Requête des élus au roi’ (ADCO, C 3350). Bouhier de Bernadon to Bouhier de Versalieu, 28 May 1778 (ibid., 32 F 224). Four of ‘Observations sur la requête présentée au roy par les élus généraux des états … tendant à la révocation de l’arrêt du conseil du 28 juillet 1776 qui annule trois de leurs délibérations des 23 décembre 1775, 10 janvier et 1 février 1776’ (ibid., C 3350). ‘Motifs des protestations du 26 février [1777]’ (ibid.). Clarisse Coulomb, Les Pères de la Patrie: La Société Parlementaire en Dauphiné au Temps des Lumières (Grenoble, 2006), pp. 430–33. Jean Egret, La Pré-Révolution Française, 1787–1788 (Paris, 1962). ADCO, C 3302. Varenne to Joly de Fleury, 30 Mar. 1788 (BN, Collection Joly de Fleury 1044, f. 50). ADCO, E 642 ter, ff. 66, 119. Coulomb, Les Pères de la Patrie, pp. 457–8. Ibid., p. 468. Doyle, ‘Union in European Context’; Legay, Les États Provinciaux, pp. 433–6. Legay, Les États Provinciaux, pp. 439–44; Miller, State and Society, pp. 144–53. Lamoignon de Malesherbes (AN, 162 mi[crofilm] 9, f. 47), attributes the quote to his father, the former chancellor Lamoignon. M. P. Holt, ‘Burgundians into Frenchmen: Catholic Identity in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy’ in Michael Wolfe (ed.), Changing Identities in Early Modern France (Durham, NC, 1997), pp. 345–70.

7 The Estates of Languedoc in Eighteenth-Century France: Administrative Expansion and Feudal Revitalisation Stephen J. Miller

During the eighteenth century the French monarchy annually convoked the members of the estates of Languedoc to Montpellier for a meeting of about 40 days to negotiate over taxation. The estates embodied the province’s privilege, recognised by each monarch upon assuming the throne, of only paying taxes to which it consented. The meetings provided an occasion for public ritual, spectacle and diversion, as local élites displayed minute differences of rank in ceremonial events. The king sent his military and administrative appointees, the governor and the intendant respectively, and two venal magistrates (treasurers of France), to present his demands. These officials were greeted by members of the estates and led to places of honour to address the session and make an appeal for the king. The leading members of the estates responded, and then all joined in a public mass in the cathedral and in a procession through the city. The members of the estates then met in ‘liberty’ behind closed doors, without the royal officials, to discuss the king’s demands.1 Alexis de Tocqueville included an appendix concerning the estates of Languedoc in his celebrated book on the ancien régime and the French Revolution. He maintained that the estates originated from the medieval Germanic custom of representative assemblies of clergy, nobility and commons. The kings of Europe, Tocqueville wrote, followed a single-minded policy of attacking these assemblies with the result that only five remained in France at the end of the ancien régime, and only the estates of Brittany and Languedoc offered ‘true provincial self-government’. Even in Languedoc, the estates could not enact significant resolutions or financial measures without the king’s consent. Royal edicts applied to Languedoc just as they did to provinces ruled directly by the Crown. Nonetheless, Tocqueville argued, the estates freely debated the issues facing the province, oversaw many of the public works, and levied and administered their own taxes. Such autonomy permitted the estates to develop a better 183

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transportation network and financial administration than did the central government in the rest of the kingdom. The Third Estate was as numerous as the first two estates combined and debated with them as individuals rather than as an order. The representatives of the three estates co-operated on a footing of equality. In this manner, Languedoc had the means to adapt to the age, and could have served as a model for the rest of France if the kings had sought to improve the estates of the other provinces rather than destroy them.2 Tocqueville’s understanding of the French ancien régime monarchy prevailed among students of history and among scholars until the 1980s. Recent research, however, has shown that the institutions inherited from the medieval past did not have to contend with persistent attacks of the Crown. In the same way, this chapter argues that the members of the estates of Languedoc enlarged the role they played in government, not by resisting royal authority, but by working within the royal agenda and elaborating programmes mutually beneficial to themselves and the Crown. Moreover, the enhanced participation of the provincial élites in the governance of the kingdom did not co-exist with free discussion and collegiality among inhabitants, as Tocqueville argued, but rather enforced the privilege and authority of a minority over and against the rest.3 The first section of the chapter examines the composition of the estates of Languedoc. The second describes their financial and administrative responsibilities, and analyses the political and economic benefits obtained from the provincial administration by the king. Versailles nobles, and Languedoc nobles grouped around the estates. The third and last section discusses the discontent expressed in 1788 and 1789 by provincial subjects excluded from the estates.

The estates of Languedoc The estates of Languedoc were far more aristocratic than their counterparts in the other pays d'états (provinces retaining estates). In Brittany and Burgundy abbots, priors, and canons had the right to sit in the First Estate alongside the bishops. In Languedoc the bishops alone had the right to form the First Estate. These leaders of Languedoc’s 23 dioceses presided over the estates’ subcommittees for public works, diocesan and community finances, the recruitment and lodging of troops, and other administrative matters. The bishops also enjoyed additional privileges within their dioceses. The parlement of Toulouse – one of 14 high courts, and the one enjoying the largest jurisdiction after the parlement of Paris – ruled in 1784 that Jean-Felix-Henri de Fumel, prelate, Lord Count of Lodève and Montbrun, had the right to the supervision of the administration of justice in nine communities and the town of Lodève. This included the appointment of judges, eligible lawyers, and officers filing legal documents. Furthermore, the parlement instructed

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anyone holding documents relative to the jurisdiction to turn them over to Fumel’s officers. Vermandois de St-Simon Rouvoy de Sandricourt, bishop of Agde, enjoyed seigneurial jurisdiction over the entire diocese, including the right to name the town’s administrators (consuls). Jean Arnaud de Catellane, Bishop-Count of the Gévaudan, named the consuls of Mende and most of the priests, abbots, and priors of the diocese. Languedocien prelates also collected seigneurial rents and tithes which brought them annual incomes ranging from the enormous sum of 500,000 livres of the archbishop of Albi to the much smaller but still considerable 30,000 of the bishop of the Vivarais.4 The 23 barons of the Second Estate formed an exceptionally privileged group. In Brittany all nobles had the right to attend the estates, and several hundred did so regularly during the eighteenth century.5 In Languedoc nobles had to establish four generations of lineage and exercise the profession of arms. The estates instituted these rules in 1768 to exclude nobles who had gained their status through the purchase of judicial offices. The parlement of Toulouse invalidated the rules, and the cour des comptes, aides et finances of Montpellier (one of four high courts of the realm with jurisdiction over financial litigation) presented a remonstrance, but the royal council upheld the rules upon an appeal by one of the estates’ executive agents (syndics généraux). During the 1780s the estates carried out careful examinations of the lineage of prospective barons and occasionally snubbed aspirants. Earlier, an executive agent rebuffed the Vicomte de Polignac’s effort to grant Georges François de Vachon his seat for the year 1769, the syndic général determining that Vachon did not possess sufficient lineage.6 In Burgundy the estates took several deliberations over the course of the eighteenth century to reserve the noble deputation solely for those able to prove 100 years of lineage and a military background. The estates of Burgundy also required that the delegates of the nobility possess a fief. About 75 nobles met these criteria and attended in a usual year.7 In Languedoc, in addition to proving the proper lineage and military background, nobles had to own one of 23 specially designated baronies to qualify for membership. The rest of the Languedocien nobility, the overwhelming majority, was excluded. Some of these baronies, such as Rouairoux and Florensac, did not confer many seigneurial rights. They probably granted admission to the estates by dint of royal rewards for the loyalty of powerful families in previous centuries. Other baronies afforded wide-ranging prerogatives. The Prince de Conti sold the domain of Alès, first barony of the estates, to the Maréchal de Castries in 1777 for 600,000 livres. Castries was already the military governor of Montpellier and Sète, and the commander of Flanders and Hainaut. The barony, located north of Montpellier and Nîmes, conferred proceeds from mills and wine presses, and more than 20 separate levies on the town of Alès and neighbouring villages. The holder had the first option to buy property sold within his jurisdiction and the right to ten per cent


of the product of all privately owned mines. He presided over the local judiciary, sold magistracies for revenue, and occupied places of honour in churches and festivals. Madame de Rohan Chabot, widow of the Comte de Lautrec, sold the barony of Capendu to Emmanuel François d’Urre, Marquis d’Aubais, in 1781 for 290,000 livres. This barony, located east of Toulouse, conferred the same assets as did the barony of Alès except the rights on wine and mines but conferred other assets not found in many seigneuries, such as woods, arable fields, and tolls on rivers.8 When, in 1788 and 1789, the cour des comptes, aides et finances of Montpellier orchestrated a broad movement to regenerate the estates of Languedoc, the estates, faced by mounting criticism, published a pamphlet defending their administration. They affirmed that the kings had never intended the barons to represent the nobility. Centuries earlier, the king had convoked a select group of barons and bishops to give him counsel. In the intervening centuries, the estates asserted, this right to assemble became a property worth 60,000 livres beyond each baron’s seigneurial perquisites and lands. The membership of the estates conferred by the barony of Alès, the pre-eminent seat in the Second Estate, was worth 150,000 livres, not counting all of the barony’s other privileges. According to this pamphlet, the rest of the Languedoc nobility did not own property distinguishing it from the third estate. Nobles ‘have never formed a separate body, have never had the right, and cannot assemble as a body to order anything in this capacity’.9 By the end of the ancien régime, élites no longer tolerated such snobbery. In 1789 the abbé de Siran, vicar-general of Mende in the Gévaudan, published a letter to the Comte de Bannes d’Arejan, a baron of the estates, condemning the barons’ custom of entering the estates in a military coat displaying two tails, a white plume, and a diamond, and in the company of a bishop and a retinue of followers. It was ridiculous, Siran wrote, that in the eyes of the Comte de Bannes and the other barons ‘the non-baron nobility was only peuple’.10 The 68 deputies of the Third Estate, their 46 votes, and the practice of counting votes by head rather than by order did not make the estates any more representative. The deputies of the Third Estate, like their counterparts in Brittany and Burgundy, owed their seats to the possession of municipal offices or to the favour of bishops and seigneurs. Many were nobles.11 Since they did not represent anyone but themselves, they had no reason to resist the initiatives of the first two estates. Time and again, proposals from the archbishop of Narbonne, permanent president of the estates, received unanimous support. When meetings drew to a close, five deputies visited the king in Versailles to present grievances, which hardly any provincial inhabitants had participated in formulating. For some of the deputies, the visit amounted to a trip home, as several members of the estates spent most of the year in Paris and Versailles and went to Languedoc only for their annual meeting.12

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Finance and administration During their annual meetings the estates of Languedoc prepared the year’s public works and the allotment and collection of taxes, leased the provincial tax farms, settled on a portion of their revenue to offer the king, and attended to various other administrative duties. These functions gave the estates the capacity to defend the interests of the province. Yet the only instance in which the estates took a stand against royal demands occurred in 1750, when the king’s minister, Jean Baptiste de Machault D’Arnouville, sought to impose a vingtième on all properties, including noble lands exempt from the basic tax on commoners. Machault suspended the estates and began assessing the vingtième through royal agents. Two years later, he granted the estates the right to administer the vingtième in return for an annual payment to the king.13 Thereafter the estates no longer discussed royal demands critically. They presented the king the same grievances year after year as if they were going through the motions. The minutes of their proceedings leave the impression that the members saw to their duties in a formulaic fashion. It would be a mistake, however, to expect the minutes of the estates to reveal evidence of opposition to the Crown. The members did not owe their seats to provincial inhabitants but rather to privileges ultimately upheld by the king and his forces of order. The delegates had little interest, therefore, in mobilising the province against royal demands. They instead pursued their interests by working within the royal agenda. The estates of Languedoc, as in the case of the estates of Burgundy and Brittany, increased their share of governmental responsibility as they became embedded within the expanding spheres of royal authority. Looked at from this angle, royal authority does not seem to have developed in opposition to the medieval past so much as through a revival of institutions of the Middle Ages and in alliance with the nobles in control of them.14 This perspective makes sense of the proceedings of the estates. Most of the pages covering the eighteenth century are taken up with administrative affairs generally regarded as the preserve of the king’s appointed intendant. Sessions were spent managing the financial allocations, progress reports, and other administrative business related to public works. The estates oversaw the elaboration of one of the best regional road networks. Arthur Young, the English traveller, certainly thought that Languedoc had the most beautiful thoroughfares in the realm, ‘stupendous works … superb even to the point of folly’, but that the inhabitants seldom used them.15 In the last year of the old regime, the inhabitants criticised the estates for wasting revenue in beautifying the main roads. The peasants needed local roads linking their communities to the major arteries, but the members of the estates prioritised more noteworthy projects which would give an impression of majesty in the province. They busied themselves in almost every session


of the 1770s and 1780s with plans for the embellishment of the Promenade de Peyrou, located in Montpellier, the city of their meetings. This raised promontory and terraced park extended out from the city centre and offered a view of the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Alps. The estates adorned the promenade with a statue of Louis XIV and a triumphal arch in his honour.16 The estates of Languedoc, like the estates of other provinces, proved particularly useful to the king as a source of credit. In 1760, they helped the royal minister, Étienne-François, Duc de Choiseul, to launch a national campaign to rebuild the navy after the defeats of the Seven Years War. The members made great show of offering their pensions and annual revenues to cover the costs of a loan for the construction of a warship. The archbishop of Narbonne, president of the estates, declared that he had difficulty restraining members’ ardour to contribute, for it was a matter of serving ‘the cause of the king’.17 Overall, the king raised about 330 million livres from the estates of Artois, Cambrésis, Flanders, Brittany, Burgundy, and Languedoc between 1740 and 1789. He obtained the loans at an interest rate of five per cent, while his own credit obliged him to pay as high as nine or ten per cent. What is more, loans from provincial estates did not have to pass through the troublesome process of registration in the parlement of Paris. They allowed royal ministers to raise revenue without public criticism of their policies. The monarchy could have exploited this source of credit more thoroughly. The pays d’états provided about 25 per cent of the king’s fiscal receipts yet raised only about ten per cent of all royal loans. The king borrowed large sums from the estates of Burgundy but raised only 42.5 million livres from Brittany despite it having the largest population of the 36 administrative divisions of the realm. The estates of Artois raised a mere three million.18 Languedoc seems to have been the one pays d’états in which the king exhausted his credit. Nearly half the loans of all the provincial estates came from Languedoc. The Crown used the credit of the estates to borrow nearly 30 million livres between 1733 and 1777, and then over 40 million during the next four years. Jacques Necker, director-general of finances, raised almost ten per cent of all the loans taken out to finance French involvement in the American War of Independence on the credit of the estates of Languedoc, and over the next seven years royal ministers used the estates to borrow another 70 million. The monarchy serviced these loans by allowing the estates to make deductions from their annual subsidy to the royal treasury of the revenue needed to cover five per cent of the accumulated principal and all the interest payments.19 The budget of the estates amounted to a little more than 14 million livres at the end of the ancien régime. Of this sum, the king could devote no more than about nine million to service debts. The rest was set aside for the military, the intendancy, and public works. Though the king and the estates steadily raised taxes to enlarge the provincial budget, in 1787

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the service charges overran the available revenue. The interest payments and scheduled reimbursements amounted to 9,716,160 livres, while the royal revenue available to cover them amounted to only 8,808,718. The monarchy had to obtain a loan from the Royal Military Academy to avoid default.20 The monarchy’s reliance on the estates of Languedoc for liquidity caused it to work closely with their leading figures. Between 1774 and 1789, the correspondence between Versailles and Languedoc was limited to the president (the archbishop of Narbonne) and the syndics généraux of the estates, the intendant, the military governor, and occasionally a leading baron such as the Vicomte de Polignac. The Crown protected these administrators from judicial pursuits. Every year, the king’s council of state heeded a request from the estates to suspend all lawsuits against their members 15 days before the assembly, during the proceedings, and 15 days after their separation. The Crown enforced this policy in 1786 and 1788, when it granted the requests of a syndic général and overturned verdicts of the cour des comptes, aides et finances summoning him to pay debts.21 In particular, the monarchy collaborated closely with the treasurer of the estates, Philippe-Laurent de Joubert. He was descended from an old montpelliérain family ennobled through the purchase of judicial office. His uncle owned one of the executive posts of the estates, and a cousin married a prosperous local seigneur. Joubert’s post as treasurer placed him between the revenue collected in the province and the royal treasury. He received and dispensed provincial taxes, arranged for the annual subsidy, and organised more than 100 million livres in loans for the king on the credit of the estates in the last decade of the ancien régime. Joubert held such a crucial place in royal finances that he spent most of his time in Paris, where his services were most needed. The meetings held in Paris in 1788 and 1789 by the Privileged Company of the Salt Marshes of Sète, a port near Montpellier, reveal that nine of the ten shareholders, including Joubert, resided in Paris. His post of treasurer gave him an income of almost 800,000 livres a year in the 1780s. The rolls of the capitation tax, levied since Louis XIV’s time on all ranks of subjects, show him to have been the richest person in Montpellier, the administrative capital of the province.22 Joubert’s value to royal finances helped him secure an extraordinary measure of autonomy over the peasants of his domain. The Comte d’Eu, of the Orléans family, ceded to the king the barony of Montredon (comprising eight villages and the town of Sommières between Montpellier and Nîmes), who ceded this in turn to Joubert in 1762. Joubert obtained a ruling of the royal council in 1786 forbidding the peasantry to collect wood and graze animals on the scrublands and commons. The peasants submitted to fines in return for Joubert’s pledge to abandon further litigation that they could not afford. They informed the royal minister in charge of finances that Joubert had stripped them of customary rights enjoyed by other inhabitants


of the province. Royal lawyers then obtained titles proving the illegality of Joubert’s pretensions. We will see in due course that the executive agents of the estates helped peasant communities to appeal legal decisions favourable to the lords. The royal council reviewed these decisions, sided with the communities, and overruled the local courts. But in this case the intendant moved cautiously, advising the royal minister in charge of finances, ‘We do not see why the administration should intervene in an affair that is being adjudicated in the customary tribunals.’23 The Crown granted the estates of Languedoc autonomy over indirect taxes. Every six years, the estates leased the right to collect revenue on the fish, wine, and meat sold in Languedoc, a tax farm known as the équivalent. The lease sold for 1,442,000 livres in 1782 and 1,376,000 in 1788. The estates used these proceeds to make a payment to the king and exempt Languedoc from the jurisdiction of the tax farmers who paid the Crown for the right to collect revenue on basic goods from the inhabitants of the core provinces of the realm. The eight companies to purchase the équivalent between 1749 and 1788 comprised nobles, Parisians, wholesale merchants, a few jurists and landlords, office-holders in the financial establishments, and an agent named by the archbishop of Narbonne to oversee the interests of the province. The companies received investments from office-holders in the judiciary (for example, treasurers of France), and townspeople such as wholesale merchants and landlords. They sublet the tax farm in turn to middlemen, who passed additional contracts stipulating the sums to be paid by butchers, shopkeepers, and merchants in the localities. A sample of these contracts suggests that all of the companies, shareholders, and middlemen together invested about 4.5 million livres a year for returns of about 400,000.24 In the last decades of the ancien régime the lower classes began to defy the tax farmers of the équivalent. Rural parishes and associations of shopkeepers, artisans, and workers complained in the booklets of grievances (cahiers de doléances) sent to Versailles in the spring of 1789 that the excessive rates of the équivalent burdened the common people and that the collectors vexed them with threats, lawsuits, and arbitrary demands. Earlier, resistance to the équivalent forced the tax farmers to suspend collection in some parts of the province during the 1750s and 1760s, and in the 1770s the farmers received authorisation to form armed detachments to enforce collection. Continued contraband and violence led the cour des comptes, aides et finances to grant a request of an executive agent of the estates in 1788 and reaffirm a judgment permitting collectors to make unannounced visits to private homes to search for illegal stocks.25 The monarchy granted the estates autonomy over the lodging and provisioning of royal troops. The passage of soldiers through Languedoc had long caused inconvenience to inhabitants, until the estates negotiated an arrangement with the crown in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Whereas the Crown continued to impose on the other regions of France

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fiscal contractors responsible to the army, the estates of Languedoc set up a tax farm to pay for the upkeep of military units and put an end to all problems caused by the soldiery. By the end of the eighteenth century, the estates had succeeded in providing for royal troops while protecting the livelihood of the inhabitants. The archives of the intendancy do not contain any complaints in the last decades of the ancien régime about troops passing through the province, and few languedocien cahiers de doléances make reference to problems caused by troops. The tax farm also turned out to be a boon for investors. In the eighteenth century contractors paid the estates between 100,000 and a million livres a year, depending on military needs, and gained the right to tax revenue with which to provide food and lodging for the soldiers. Their annual profits probably ranged from 8000 to 90,000 livres.26 The authorities sought to bar Protestants from these profits. A ruling of 1754 obliged all contractors and sub-lessees to present proof of Catholicism to an executive agent of the estates. Those who took up the leases generally hailed from the region of Montpellier. Their professions and ranks included wholesale merchants, nobles, jurists, and office-holders in the fiscal establishments. A great number of merchants are to be found on the last leases of the old regime. This tax farm, like others, seems to have been a lucrative placement for merchants and landowners seeking to accumulate wealth, buy judicial offices and obtain titles of nobility. The great number of merchants involved may also reflect the transfer of wealth to a stable investment, as the textile industry of Languedoc declined in the 1770s and 1780s.27 Of all of the courses of action pursued by the Crown to bolster its line of credit in Languedoc, the most important was its effort to enhance the estates’ authority over the direct taxes of the province and correspondingly to reduce the jurisdiction of the high courts. The Crown made an official declaration in 1758 that the estates and their syndics généraux would administer the dioceses and communities. The cour des comptes, aides et finances, the Crown declared, no longer had the right to audit the accounts of the treasurer of the estates or oversee the transactions of the diocesan assemblies in which the members of the estates administered local revenues and allotted the taxes among the communities.28 The monarchy required the intendant and estates of Languedoc to simplify the administration of peasant communities and to consolidate their control over the communities’ finances. Traditionally, the general councils of communities had drawn together anywhere from a quarter to two-thirds of property owners for the purpose of managing communal lands, electing leaders, planning celebrations, and seeing to other village affairs. In the second half of the eighteenth century the intendant and the estates pursued a policy of replacing the general councils with political councils composed solely of local notables in an effort to establish a


more effective administration of the countryside. Part and parcel of this policy were reports and verdicts emanating from Versailles, which obliged tribunals to allow the intendant and the estates to verify and certify community debts before the tribunals could order communities to pay them. According to a royal ruling of 1787 concerning community woods, taxes are the first and principal task of communities. … For a community always to be capable of meeting this obligation … it is necessary to facilitate the collection of revenue from common lands and resources that circumstances might offer the community to succeed in paying its tax burden. All the regulations made in Languedoc … for the administration of local taxes have been aimed toward this goal. These regulations are the work of a commission composed of the intendant and the estates to which the jurisdiction of all that concerns community taxes … is attributed.29 This policy caused conflict with the parlement of Toulouse, whose magistrates sought to shore up the rights of lords and seigneurial judges. The intendant and the leaders of the estates knew, however, that seigneurial rights depleted the resources of tax-paying subjects, and that it would be difficult for well-to-do villagers to administer communities and keep them solvent when subject to lordly authority. When peasants had sufficient resolve and resources to inform one of the intendant’s assistants or a syndic général of the estates of a judicial decision favourable to a seigneur, their perseverance usually led to a verdict from the royal council overruling the local court and redressing the grievance. In the archives containing the correspondence between the royal minister in charge of finances and the authorities of Languedoc, as well as in the archives of the intendancy, there are at least 35 cases between 1775 and 1789 in which the executive agents of the estates, and sometimes the intendant, helped communities appeal legal decisions to the royal council and have the decisions overturned.30 In 1784, for example, the Lord de Ferrant petitioned the parlement of Toulouse for a set of seigneurial rights over Tharaux, a village north of Nîmes. The parlement granted Ferrant’s judges responsibility for public order. It obliged the consuls to present official regulations to his judges before communicating them to inhabitants. The judges would be permitted to review the topics for community assemblies before they took place and were granted unlimited access to the minutes of deliberations. The consuls were then obliged to pay Ferrant honours in all public ceremonies, assemblies, and religious services. The ruling stipulated that three keys to community archives – containing property titles and fiscal rolls – would belong to the first consul, the seigneurial judge and the secretary-clerk. A syndic général of the estates brought this ruling to the royal council, where it was quashed in 1785, the council stating that the local tribunals should not adjudicate these types of cases,

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because they caused delays and expenses, and were often interested parties. According to the council, the parlement’s ruling could only prejudice the administration of communities, in degrading the dignity of consulships, and in imbuing notable inhabitants with a just estrangement from these posts, while it is, on the contrary, in the interest of communities to maintain the glamour of the posts so that they will be filled with capable and distinguished subjects and their responsibilities will be regarded as an honour.31 Verdicts such as this prompted Rességuier, the attorney-general ( procureur général) of the parlement of Toulouse, to write in 1787 to the minister in charge of finances:32 The estates of Languedoc have long planned to establish a new hierarchy in the judicial order, raise a wall of separation against the tribunal of the laws, and emancipate the communities composing the jurisdiction of the parlement. Various rulings of the royal council, granted upon the requests of the syndic general of the estates of the province, without hearing a contradictor, have progressively and insensibly consolidated this plan. The monarchy even sought to extend the influence of the estates in the city of Toulouse, the political bastion of the parlement. Reports and letters sent between the intendant, his assistant, the estates, and Versailles in the early 1770s alleged that the municipality wasted revenue and did not maintain infrastructure and public order. The intendant and his assistant wrote that the practice of ennobling the municipal leaders, known as capitouls, encouraged a wasteful system of patronage and placed incompetent novices at the head of local affairs. To rectify these problems, royal edicts of 1778 and 1783 stipulated that the eight capitouls would henceforth belong to three classes of inhabitants: two lineage nobles (gentilshommes), two former capitouls, and four lawyers, doctors, merchants, notaries, or landlords. The edicts stripped the parlementaires of the presidency of the municipal councils and gave it to the capitouls of noble lineage. Policymakers placed these nobles at the head of the municipality in the hopes of increasing the leverage of the intendant and the estates, assuming that the nobles would rely on the intendant and the estates to avoid undignified deference to the parlementaires. The edicts also assured a more equitable representation in the municipal government of the different classes of inhabitant. They expanded the political councils to include the tax receiver, the archbishop, canons, vicars, notables, landlords, and wholesale merchants. Some of these figures hailed from social strata below the landowning and judicial élite. A few did not own rural property. They were not as beholden to the parlement as were the


associations of jurists, and in 1783 the parlement complained that it had not been asked to verify that the edicts conformed to local customs:33 Not to cry out against edicts, which change permanent establishments, would precipitate moderate government into despotism, not that of the prince, but of the lower orders, a despotism more harsh and degrading, which would suffocate all sentiment of virtue, patriotism, and public good in his subjects’ souls. The reorganisation of the municipality had fiscal implications. Local élites had control over the office of town treasurer. This office received the property taxes destined for the provincial treasurer as well as the indirect taxes collected for municipal expenses. The élites had worked out an arrangement mutually beneficial to the tax receiver and proprietors: the receiver did not have to pay taxes incumbent upon the king’s venal officers; for their part, the proprietors enjoyed a relatively light tax burden, because municipal statutes did not permit the receiver to charge as heavy fees for his service as did the diocesan receivers of Languedoc. The receiver of Toulouse relied on indirect taxes to meet the city’s quota for the provincial treasurer. He took out loans to pay the treasurer while allowing time for indirect taxes to come in, and permitted local proprietors to accumulate arrears. A deliberation of the estates criticised these practices in 1782. One of the syndics généraux reported to Versailles that the parlementaires set a bad example by paying their taxes 18 months (and sometimes even two years) late. To reform these practices, an edict of 1783 took away the fiscal administration of Toulouse from the local élites and brought it into line with the rest of the province. The edict separated the administration of direct and indirect taxes into distinct offices, integrated the municipal receiver into the association of diocese receivers, and obliged him to deposit his funds directly into the treasury of the estates.34 The king’s reliance on the estates left members the autonomy to offer one another about a million livres at their annual meetings. The members made the largest payments to the archbishop of Narbonne, the intendant, the military governor and their staff. Additional sums were distributed when they met in diocesan assemblies to allocate direct taxes among the communities. The bishops presided over these assemblies, and barons and municipal officers were among those attending. The assembly of the diocese of Toulouse, for example, met in the episcopal palace and drew together the archbishop, the Baron de Lanta, officials from 12 communities with the right to send deputies, and a local envoy to the estates. In 1789, the envoy was the squire (écuyer) M. de Verdier de Port de Guy, and the community deputies included two other squires, a baron, a doctor, a lawyer, and a military officer decorated by the king. Several communities claimed in their cahiers de doléances that between 27 and 18 per cent of their direct

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taxes were being squandered on fees charged by these assemblies for public works, the reimbursement of loans, honorariums of auditors, fees charged by tax receivers, and other expenses. A nobleman claimed in 1789 that the deputies of the diocesan assemblies appropriated 217,522 livres a year for their private fortunes.35 In four dioceses – Albi, Velay, the Gévaudan, and Vivarais – petits états allotted the direct taxes. The organisation, membership, and ceremony of these estates mirrored the provincial body, albeit on a smaller scale. The estates of Velay, for instance, assembled the abbot of Monestier, priors of Goudet, Chamalières, Grazac, du Bouchet, and de Devesset, three canons of the cathedral of Le Puy, the Comte de Polignac, 17 other barons, and three members of the Third Estate, usually overlords of towns. De Gallard de Terraube, bishop of Le Puy, and president of the estates of Velay, named replacements to seats frequently left vacant by their holders, distributed thousands of livres to those attending, and built up a network of patronage and influence from diocesan revenues.36 Loans taken out by the estates of Languedoc for the royal treasury channelled much of the province’s wealth into the private fortunes of the upper classes. The bond market of the estates of Burgundy broadened geographically and socially over the course of the eighteenth century. Between 1660 and 1713 local magistrates represented the largest group of investors. But as the eighteenth century wore on inhabitants of other parts of France bought a substantial share of the Burgundian debt. Members of the trades, crafts, and professions purchased few annuities between 1660 and 1713 but owned 27 per cent of the debt between 1727 and 1789. Office-holders, military men, nobles, and financiers acquired 57 per cent of the Burgundian loans between 1727 and 1789. The estates of Artois and Walloon Flanders took out far fewer loans than did the estates of Burgundy yet had similar lenders: nobles, financiers, office-holders, ecclesiastics, and well-to-do commoners.37 In Languedoc any investor could make his bonds part of the five per cent to be reimbursed in a given year, a rule which helped to maintain the confidence of investors. The estates held a lottery to determine the loan contracts that would complete the five per cent of the principal reimbursed annually. In this manner, in 1786, the estates reimbursed 5,347,859 livres of bonds from loans taken out every year since 1775. These bondholders provide a sample of the individuals who gained income from the fiscal system of Languedoc. What stands out is the number hailing from the capital. Nobles of Paris and Versailles owned nearly a third of Languedoc’s debt. If one adds the creditors of the Third Estate of the capital, the portion mounts to over three-fifths. In contrast, the largest group of creditors within Languedoc, the nobles of Toulouse, owned less than a twentieth of the provincial debt.38 Diocesan assemblies also took out loans. The estates allotted more than 500,000 livres in 1789 to service debts of dioceses totalling 12,500,000.


In 1787 and 1788, the diocese of Toulouse paid 93,565 livres of interest on bonds worth 1,945,084 purchased since 1681. The diocesan assembly sold most of these bonds in the 1780s. Ecclesiastics and religious institutions received over half these interest payments, nobles and parlementaires about 30 per cent.39

The campaign for representation When the king and his ministers took measures in 1787 and 1788 to redress the deteriorating state of the royal finances, a mass movement, encompassing everyone from high nobles to common labourers, denounced the arbitrary authority of the government. By the end of 1788 commoners had begun to demand political representation on equal terms with nobles and clergymen. In Languedoc, persons of all ranks focused this aspiration squarely on the institution of the estates, from which they were excluded. The first protests occurred after the penultimate meeting of the estates in January and February 1788. The intendant and the military governor presented the king’s request for a loan of 12 million livres and an extraordinary supplement of about ten per cent to the estates’ annual contribution to the royal treasury. They asked for a prolongation of a vingtième and an increase of the yield by about 25 per cent through official evaluations of properties hitherto exempt from taxation. When the estates set to work to fulfil these requests, the parlement of Toulouse and the cour des comptes, aides et finances of Montpellier demurred. These high courts, like those of other provinces, refused to write the king’s edicts into the legal registers. The cour des comptes, aides et finances published a remonstrance in February 1788, stating that the members of the estates profited from tax revenue, spent vast sums on luxury, and did not represent the three orders of the province. The parlement then issued a remonstrance making similar charges. In response, the Crown suppressed the cour des comptes, aides et finances and the parlement, along with the other high courts of the realm, in May, an action which roused the whole province into uproar, except for the estates, which remained silent.40 On their restoration in the autumn of 1788 the courts intensified their campaign against the estates. In December the cour des comptes, aides et finances issued a statement ‘that a century of reason and justice must no longer allow the spirit of barbarism and superstition to subsist’. The court avowed itself ‘terrified by the rapid pace at which this imperfect constitution [of the estates] has proceeded toward the last degree of degeneration’. It labelled the archbishop of Narbonne a ‘despot’.41 Over the course of 1788 and the beginning of 1789 nobles and magistrates published dozens of pamphlets denouncing the estates. One example is Picot de Lapeyrouse, who owned a seigneurie near Toulouse and an office in the royal domains. In the 1770s and 1780s, he obtained rulings from the local judiciary entitling him to exclusive hunting rights, fines from the peasantry and dues from the

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users of common lands. The courts granted Picot the right to update his seigneurial titles and enhance his prerogatives. In 1789 he published a pamphlet accusing the estates of usurping the authority of judges and seigneurs, in which he alleged that the intendant authorised the syndics généraux to put a few poor and illiterate peasants in charge of village affairs. These peasants did not shoulder much of the tax burden and had no qualms about seeing it rise. ‘These strange and absurd rules do not allow the seigneurs to have any knowledge of the administrative affairs of their communities, even though they ordinarily own the most land, and many of them contribute a third or even a half of community taxes.’ Picot contended that the estates agreed to taxes for provincial inhabitants but did not offer them representation.42 Between the end of 1788 and the beginning of 1789 pamphlets such as this were followed by scores of assemblies of nobles, clergymen, and leaders of the Third Estate, usually meeting together. The assemblies published deliberations calling for a provincial constitution, that would ensure financial accountability and representation for the three estates. At the end of 1788 the Marquis de la Tour-Maubourg chaired an assembly of more than 300 clergymen, nobles, and commoners of the Velay, which declared:43 The orders originally obtained representation through free elections … Yet the principal lords, ecclesiastic and lay, have succeeded in bestowing on their posts and ranks the right of representing the clergy and the nobility … Nor can the deputies of the Third Estate legitimately carry the wishes of this order, since they are taken in the class of noble mayors, owners of offices, or municipal leaders who are chosen by certain inhabitants of their towns and not by the generality of the people living under them. The general council of Bédarieux, a manufacturing town west of Montpellier, stated in December 1788 that ‘the vicious organisation of the estates of Languedoc … comes from the time of fanaticism and ignorance when the clergy and nobility commanded the Third Estate like a herd of slaves whose heads had been weakened and shrunken by superstition and feudal anarchy’.44 The three orders of Cintegabelle, a town near Toulouse, met in February 1789 and acclaimed the Marquis du Villiers, seigneur of Lissac, president of their assembly. They declared that the deputies of the estates owed their positions to the episcopate, baronies, and municipal and diocesan oligarchies. The estates did not have a mandate from inhabitants and consequently did not have a legal mission: Emoluments are excessive. Certain representatives have only pecuniary titles … Certain despotic members distribute large sums in bonuses and useless projects of beautification. This administration has forced the province to borrow without obtaining the consent of any of the orders.45


A month later, nearly every one of the thousands of electoral assemblies of Languedoc, whether of nobles or of rural parishes, denounced the unrepresentative character of the estates. According to a ruling published by the nobles of the constituency of Béziers, the existence of the current administration qualifying itself the estates of Languedoc has profoundly injured the honour of the nobility; the nobility’s civil existence is ignored, and its liberty annihilated … Twentythree gentilshommes supplant and push aside the nobility of twenty-three dioceses … They dare dispose of the property of all … and do not fear keeping control of what is as abusive as it is unjust by smothering the protests of the dispersed nobility … The first article of the cahier will develop this most crucial grievance to obtain … truly constitutional estates … composed of deputies from each order and freely elected in each diocese.46 The inhabitants of Vénézobre, a community north of Nîmes, wrote in their cahier de doléances in the spring of 1789:47 The tax burden will ease by three quarters once the estates will have been regenerated, because new administrators, chosen and named by their equals … will do without the disastrous services of treasurers, receivers of the taille, syndic generals, this breeding ground of engineers, this legion of inspectors and directors of public works for whom the revenue turns to particular utility, and of whom the magnificence and luxury are an insult to the nation they oppress.

Conclusion The estates of Languedoc could scarcely be called a representative institution. Their most powerful members, the bishops at the head of the province’s 23 dioceses, had sole right to the seats of the First Estate to the exclusion of thousands of priests. Twenty-three military men of old families, the possessors of specially designated baronies, held the seats of the Second Estate to the exclusion of other nobles. While the Third Estate had more deputies than did the first two combined, these men owed their seats to the possession of municipal offices and to the support of seigneurs and bishops. They enjoyed privileges and had no inclination to oppose the bishops and barons. Rather than regard the estates as a forum for the ranks of languedocien society to negotiate their political affairs, it seems more appropriate to regard them as a provincial executive. The central power could rely on the estates to offer a majestic representation of the regime, collect taxes, and

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grant a portion to the royal treasury. In the 1770s and 1780s, the estates raised more than 100 million livres of loans for the Crown against the security of this portion at a relatively low rate of interest. By serving as the provincial executive, the members of the estates enjoyed high status in the public representation of the regime and enhanced their role in government. The Crown accorded the estates control of indirect tax farms, the administration of royal soldiers, and the revenue of peasant communities. These functions permitted them to distribute large payments to leading members and patronage to provincial supporters. The growth of royal authority and administration did not necessarily entail the decline of institutions such as the estates of Languedoc, which had originated in the medieval past. To establish royal sovereignty and obedience on the part of the governed, the Crown required partners whose leanings and interests conformed to a monarchical regime and who would uphold it against the mass of the population. In early modern France, the king and his ministers found such partners among the former feudal lords of the Middle Ages.48 If the monarchy had sought alternative forms of governance, it would have had to appeal to the civic involvement of its subjects and grant representative institutions. This alternative entailed obvious risks for royal sovereignty and only became a matter of policy as the monarchy confronted financial difficulties in the last two decades of the ancien régime. In several cases during the 1770s and 1780s, the monarchy overruled local courts and limited seigneurial authority so that competent villagers would help administer rural communities and keep them fiscally viable. It broadened access to the municipal government of Toulouse in order to improve the town finances and enhance its fiscal capacity. At the same time, however, the monarchy undermined representative institutions and discouraged civic involvement by narrowing participation in village affairs to local notables, reserving positions of power in the Toulousain municipality for lineage nobles, and extending the power of the estates over rural communities.49 The king and his ministers hailed from the upper nobility, shared its prejudices of hierarchy and rank, and never seriously considered limits to royal sovereignty. Kings had traditionally governed by co-ordinating the activities of associations of nobles such as the parlements and the provincial estates and by preventing their rivalries from escalating to the point of popular mobilisations and challenges to the established order. In the last decades of the ancien régime the monarchy’s search for revenue upset traditional practices of government. The Crown channelled an inordinate amount of authority to the estates at the expense of the seigneurs and magistrates of Languedoc and caused widespread discontent among the greater part of the provincial élite. Support for the monarchy narrowed to a small unsustainable social stratum. By the end of 1788 the régime was no longer powerful enough to prevent criticism. Public protests gave rise to popular participation in politics and made a social revolution possible.


Notes 1. Édouard Dulaurier et al. (eds), Histoire générale de Languedoc avec des notes et les pièces justificatives par dom Cl. Devic et dom J. Vaissete (15 vols, Toulouse, 1872–93); Claude-Joseph Trouvé, Essai historique sur les états-généraux de la province de Languedoc, avec cartes et gravures (Paris, 1818); William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge, 1985). 2. Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘The pays d’états, with Special Reference to Languedoc’ in idem, The Old Régime and the French Revolution, trans. Stuart Gilbert (Garden City, NY, 1955), pp. 212–21. 3. The paradigm for this recent scholarship was set by Beik, Absolutism and Society. A splendid overview of the scholarship is provided in Julian Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661–1790 (Cambridge, 2003), ch. 1. The latest book on eighteenth-century Languedoc is Stephen Miller, State and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: A Study of Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc (Washington, DC, 2008). 4. AN, H1/938; ADHG, B1817; Ferdinand Saurel, Histoire religieuse du département de l’Hérault pendant la Révolution, le consulat et les premières années de l’empire (4 vols, Montpellier, 1898), i, 4, 63, 110, and p. xxxvi; Joseph Picheire, Histoire d’Agde (Lyon, 1966), p. 48; Michel Péronnet, ‘Jean Arnaud de Castellane, évêquecomte du Gévaudan’ in Benjamin Bardy, Jean-Paul Chabrol and Hélène Duthu (eds), Entre adhésion et refus: La Révolution en Lozère 1789–1799 (Mende, 1990), pp. 76–90; Henri Bru, 1789–1799: la Révolution dans le Tarn (Albi, 1989), p. 16; Alain Molinier, Stagnations et croissance: Le Vivarais aux XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1985), p. 134; Louis André, Essai sur l’histoire de la Révolution en Lozère (Marvejols, 1894), p. 4; E. H. Lemay, Dictionnaire des constituants: 1789–1791 (2 vols, Paris, 1991), i, 91, 236, 361; ii, 834. The average income of a peasant household was 200 to 300 livres a year: Pierre Goubert, ‘Les fondements démographiques’ and ‘Société traditionelle et société nouvelle’ in Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (eds), Histoire économique et sociale de la France (4 vols, Paris, 1970–c.1982), ii, 91, 584. For Brittany and Burgundy see Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, p. 57; Armand Rebillon, Les états de Bretagne de 1661 à 1789 (Paris, 1932), p. 80. 5. Rebillon, Les états de Bretagne, pp. 80, 82, 85, 96. 6. ADH, C7746, C7830; AN, H1/1022, H1/748/180. 7. Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, pp. 65, 68–9. 8. ADH, A66. 9. AN, H1/748/244. 10. Lettre de M. l’abbé de Siran, vicaire général de Mende, député du pays de Gévaudan, à M. le comte de Bannes d’Arejan, baron des états de Languedoc, nommé par le cour député de cette province, et en cette qualité notable (1789). 11. Rebillon, Les états de Bretagne, pp. 80, 82, 121; Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, pp. 57, 66. 12. AN, H1/748/190 contains a list of members in 1788. Present at annual meetings were the Comte de Polignac, a resident of the St Germain neighbourhood of Paris, whose wife was a close friend of Marie-Antoinette; the Cardinal de Bernis, archbishop of Albi, and former secretary of foreign affairs under Louis XV; Dillon, archbishop of Narbonne, president of the assembly of the clergy after 1785, and Polignac's neighbour in Paris; the Comte de Périgord, a relative of the

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13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

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king; Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse; the Maréchal de Castries, the highest military figure of the realm; the Baron de Hautpoul, known in Versailles as ‘the magnificent’; and De Joubert, treasurer of the estates, who resided in Paris. Swann shows that the mid-century dispute followed similar lines in Burgundy. Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, pp. 306–8. Beik, Absolutism and Society, pp. 140, 145, 296–7; Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, pp. 24, 409; Marie-Laure Legay, Les états provinciaux dans la construction de l'état moderne, aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Geneva, 2001), pp. 11–12, 343, 346, 517. Arthur Young, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789 (Garden City, NY, 1969), p. 37; Jean Petot, Histoire de l'administration des ponts et chaussées, 1599–1815 (Paris, 1958), pp. 313–15. AN, H1/748, H1/943; Trouvé, Essai Historique, pp. 259–60. Protests against the Estates are located in AN, H1/748/134, H1/748/135, H1/748/244, H1/942/2. Recueil des Gazettes de France, Supplément de la Gazette du 5 Décembre 1761, xlix, 604–6. Edmond Dziembolwski describes this campaign to rebuild the navy in Un nouveau Patriotisme Français, 1750–1770: La France Face à la Puissance Anglaise à l'époque de la Guerre de Sept Ans (Oxford, 1998), p. 458. Marie-Laure Legay, ‘Le credit des provinces au secours de l’état: Les emprunts des états provinciaux pour le comte du roi (France, XVIII siècle)’ in Françoise Bayard (ed.), Pourvoir les finances en province sous l’ancien régime (Paris, 2003), p. 153; eadem, Les états provinciaux, pp. 200, 220, 343–4, 346; Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy, pp. 295, 300–1, 320–3, 327–8; Mark Potter and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, ‘Politics and Public Finance in France: The Estates of Burgundy, 1660–1790’ in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxvii ( 1997), pp. 586, 604, 609–10; F. R. Velde and D. R. Weir, ‘The Financial Market and Government Debt Policy in France, 1746–1793’ in Journal of Economic History, lii (1992), pp. 33–4; Jacques Necker, De l’administration des finances de la France (3 vols, [Paris], 1784), i, 306. AN, H1/748/62, p. 383; H1/748/65, pp. 314–28; H1/748/138; H1/938; ADH, 2E 56/583; 2E 58/141; 2E 58/157; 2E 58/190; 2E 58/193; 2E 58/197; 2E 58/199; 2E 61/107; BN, Collection Joly de Fleury, 1438, f. 214; Paul Rives, Étude sur les attributions financières des états provinciaux et en particulier des états de Languedoc aux dix-huitième siècle (Paris, 1885), pp. 95, 103. AN, F4/1245. AN, H1/748/179, H1/1050, H1/1054. ADH, B23646, C1370; AN, H1/748/278, H1/748/279, H1/748/293, H1/944/1; Necker, De l’administration des finances … , i, 306; André Chéron and Germaine de Sarret de Coussergues, Une seigneurie en Bas-Languedoc, Coussergues et les Sarret (Brussels, 1963), p. 267. BN, Collection Joly Fleury, 560, dossiers 7432 and 7749; AN, H1/1105. ADHG, C16, C2196, C2405, C2424, C2430; AN, H1/748/219; ADH, A107, A116, A121, A125; ADA, 7C8; Jacques Vidal, L'équivalent des aides en Languedoc (Montpellier, 1963), pp. 18, 65, 326, 393. ADH, A126, B9081, B9156, C878, C9374; ADG, C1193, C1194, C1198, C1200, C1201; Etats généraux de 1789: sénéchaussées de Béziers et Montpellier (procès verbaux et cahiers de doléances), ed. Jean-Pierre Donnadieu (n.p., 1989), pp. 212, 243, 245, 255, 790; Anatolii Ado, Paysans en Révolution: terre, pouvoir et jacquerie 1787–1794 (Paris, 1996), p. 73; Ch. Teissier Du Cros, ‘L’impôt de l’équivalent du Languedoc dans les dernières années de l’ancien régime’ in Annales du Midi (1944–8), pp. 310, 312.

202 The Estates of Languedoc in Eighteenth-Century France 26. AN, H1/748/278; ADH, C7240, C7481, C7648, C8622; Dominique Biloghi, Logistique et ancien régime: De l’étape royale à l’étape languedocienne (Montpellier, 1998), pp. 329, 487; Beik, Absolutism and Society, pp. 132, 172, 248, 261, 283. 27. ADH, II E 57/441; II E 57/629; 2 B 29–747; Biloghi, Logistique & ancien régime, 404, 487; eadem, ‘À la confluence de l’histoire militaire et de l’histoire sociale: les entrepreneurs de l’étape générale en Languedoc au XVIIIe siècle’ in Anne Blanchard (ed.), Société, politique, culture en Méditerranée occidentale, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Montpellier, 1993), pp. 147–68. 28. Dulaurier et al., Histoire Générale de Languedoc, xiii, 1146–7. 29. ADH, A125. For other royal rulings and reports see AN, H1/748/283; H1/1063. For a description of the overall policy see Georges Fournier, Démocratie et vie municipale en Languedoc du milieu du XVIIIe au début du XIXe siècle (2 vols, Toulouse, 1994), i, 45, 52–3, 343–8. 30. Miller, State and Society, pp. 110–17; Fournier, Démocratie et vie municipale, i, 49. 31. AN, H1/748/179. 32. Ibid., H1/1431. 33. The quote is in Jean-Baptiste Dubédat, Histoire du parlement de Toulouse (Paris, 1885), pp. 661–3. Information on the edicts of 1778 and 1783 is in ADHG, C284, C285, C290; AN, H1/1014; Philippe Nelidoff, La municipalité de Toulouse au début de la Révolution (Toulouse, 1996), pp. 14–16, 29–30; Edmond Lamouzèle, Essai sur l'administration de la ville de Toulouse à la fin de l'ancien régime (1783–1790) (Paris, 1910), pp. 4–5, 12–13. 34. AN, H1/944/1; H1/1014; ADHG, C357. 35. For the sums distributed at the annual meetings see Miller, State and Society, p. 93. For the diocesan assemblies see ADHG, C970; ADG, C1196, C1200; Emile Appolis, ‘Une assiette diocésaine en Languedoc à la fin de l’ancien régime’ in Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques de la section d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (1936), pp. 28–9; Félix Pasquier and François Galabert (eds), Cahiers paroissiaux des sénéchaussées de Toulouse et de Comminges en 1789 (Toulouse, 1925), pp. 21, 60; Philippe Picot de Lapeyrouse, baron, De l’administration diocésaine en Languedoc, pour servir d'instruction aux députés de cette province aux États-Généraux (1789), pp. 13, 15, 52. 36. Jacqueline Bayon-Tollet, Le Puy-en-Velay et la Révolution Française (St Etienne, 1982), pp. 180–1; Maxime Rioufol, La Revolution de 1789 dans le Velay (Le Puy, 1904), pp. 8–9, 16–21. 37. Potter & Rosenthal, ‘Politics and Public Finance’, pp. 597, 599, 604; Legay, ‘Le credit des provinces …’, pp. 162, 164; eadem, Les états provinciaux, pp. 201, 222. 38. AN, H1/748/138. 39. Ibid., H1/748/289; H1/982; H1/983; ADHG, C1039. 40. AN, H1/748/65, pp. 522–3; H1/748/135; H1/748/165; H1/748/244; H1/1063; H1/1105; ADH, C6546; Rapport de Messieurs les commissaires nommés par déliberation des états de Languedoc, du 18 Janvier 1788. Précédé d’une lettre des commissaires des trois ordres du diocèse d’Alais à M. l’évêque d’Alais; et suivi d’une lettre du roi à M. l’archevêque de Narbonne (1789). 41. AN, H1/942/2. 42. Picot, De l’administration diocésaine …, pp. 12, 44–5, 58; René Amanieu, ‘Une personalité Toulousaine de la fin du xviiie siècle: Philippe Picot, seigneur de Lapeyrouse’ in Annales du Midi, lxxi (1959), pp. 146, 148, 176–7; Jean Bastier, La féodalité au siècle des Lumières dans la région de Toulouse (1730–1790) (Paris, 1975), p. 57.

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43. Rioufol, La Révolution de 1789, pp. 37–8. Other pamphlets and assemblies may be found in AN, H1/748/65, p. 419; H1/748/134; H1/748/135; H1/748/244; H1/942/2; BIII, 92; ADH, C4685; ADHG, 51B29; Archives Municipales de Toulouse, AA 116; AA 319; ADA, 4E 206 AA 85; Philippe Nielidov, ‘États généraux et particularismes locaux’ in Revue du Tarn, cxxxvi (1989), pp. 602–3; Pierre Gorlier, Le Vigan à travers les siècles: histoire d'une cité languedocienne (Montpellier, 1955), pp. 205–6; Edmond Falgairolle, Vauvert pendant la Révolution Française (Nîmes, 1897), pp. 9–10; Roger Allaire, Histoire de la ville de Bédarieux (Nîmes, 1990), p. 129. 44. Allaire, Histoire de Bédarieux, p. 129. 45. AN, H1/942. 46. Ibid., H1/943. For a survey of the cahiers see Henri Vidal, ‘Les attaques contre les états de Languedoc à la veille de leur disparition’ in Recueil de mémoires et travaux publié par la Société d'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des Anciens Pays de Droit Écrit, x (1979), pp. 225–7. 47. ADG, C1193. 48. Herbert Lüthy, La banque Protestante en France de la revocation de l’édit de Nantes à la Révolution (2 vols, Paris, 1998), ii, 9–10, 16–20; Louis Althusser, Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London, 1972), pp. 85–6, 99–104; Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), pp. 18–20, 31–3, 47–8, 54–5, 97; Robert Brenner, ‘The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism’ in T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin (eds), The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 261–4, 288–90; David Parker, Class and State in Ancien Régime France: The Road to Modernity? (London, 1996), pp. 100–101, 263–5. 49. Robert Schneider, ‘Crown and Capitoulat: Municipal Government in Toulouse 1500–1789’ in Philip Benedict (ed.), Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, (London, 1989), pp. 216–17.

Map 4

Central and eastern Europe, c. 1760

8 Managing a Composite Monarchy: The Hungarian Diet and the Habsburgs in the Eighteenth Century Orsolya Szakály

This chapter reveals parallels in the relationship of the Habsburg empire and Hungary and the British empire and Ireland in the eighteenth century, by examining the way in which the metropolitan executive at Vienna dealt with a provincial assembly or legislature in Hungary. Of course, even this wording would have incensed members of the eighteenth-century Hungarian political élite. By the eighteenth century, they had been for well over 200 years successfully clinging to the fiction that Hungary was an independent kingdom. They acknowledged that the Hungarian monarch, a Habsburg since the dynasty’s accession to the throne in 1526, ruled over other lands as well. However, they maintained that this meant merely a personal union between the kingdom of Hungary and the other parts of the composite Habsburg monarchy. Moreover, some members of the political élite would have argued that a comparison between the Irish parliament and the Hungarian diet was misguided. Rather, the Hungarian legislature, they believed, should be compared to that of Great Britain. The idea that there were strong similarities between the British and the Hungarian constitutions gained ground in Hungarian political discourse from the late 1780s onwards. A group of pamphleteers, mostly reform-minded noblemen, started to compare Hungary to Britain, or England, as they referred to it. Count Lajos Török dedicated an entire pamphlet (Conspectus Regiminis) to the subject in 1790.1 This was followed by a publication in Hungarian on the same topic: Anglus és magyar igazgatásnak egyben-vetése (A comparison between the administrations of England and Hungary) by the Transylvanian writer, György Aranka. It is instructive to consider the focus and arguments of this latter work in order to understand the attitude of the Hungarian political élite to the Habsburg dynasty. Aranka, who set out to justify the resistance of the Hungarians to Joseph II’s reforms, focused on the relationship between Hanover and England, and drew parallels between it and the Habsburg-Hungarian connexion. He dismissed Hanover and Austria (the Archduchy of Austria, one of the core, or so-called hereditary, Habsburg provinces) as states subject to absolute authority where 205

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the prince’s writ ran without opposition. It was so, according to Aranka, because the prince’s relationship to these entities was patrimonial: they were an extension of his personal fiefdom. Hanover and Austria were in a personal union with other territories, England and Hungary respectively. However, these latter were in every respect independent sovereign states with their own peculiar constitutions.2 What made England and Hungary so special in Aranka’s eyes? Unlike Hanover and Austria, which were parts of the Holy Roman Empire, these states, Aranka argued, did not acknowledge any supreme authority, apart from God. Both were ruled by a ‘foreign’ dynasty that enjoyed hereditary succession but these monarchs were not absolute because they shared sovereignty with the ‘country’ – that is the estates. In this way, parliamentary restraints were placed on their rule. Aranka mentioned Ireland in his pamphlet, but only in passing, and treated it as one of the ‘English’ provinces: ‘There exist great natural and constitutional differences, as far as I know, between the actual English [sic] empire and the various other nations and provinces. The English, Irish, American and Indian provinces and nations … have more or less differing constitutions.’3 It is obvious from this quotation, particularly from the references to America and even more so, to India, that Aranka was ill informed about British affairs, but used a convenient and high-profile example to drive home a point. His arguments were tendentious and ignored vital differences such as the crucial distinction between the nature of the estates-based Hungarian diet and the British parliament, not to mention the fact that the political, social and economic conditions of rapidly industrialising Britain were fundamentally different from those of Hungary. Despite all this, over a long period of time, a whole school of thought grew out of this illusionary similarity between England and Hungary. This highlighted, among other parallels, Magna Carta and the so-called Golden Bull, a document which also placed restrictions on royal power and had been issued by King Andrew II of Hungary in 1222.4 The absurdity of such claims evoked contemporary criticism. For instance, August Ludwig Schlözer, the German publicist and professor at the University of Göttingen in Hanover, wrote in his StatsAnzeigen that ‘the pet idea of the Hungarian aristocracy nowadays is that the Hungarian constitution’ is similar to that of Britain; he added wryly: ‘Let them believe so, as this might help them learn and overcome their aristocratism.’5 Aranka’s arguments were dictated by immediate political considerations and his conclusion was ambiguous. He forecast the coming of a flourishing and independent Hungary under the enlightened Leopold II in his capacity as king of Hungary. However, Leopold, a Habsburg, was intent on continuing the centralisation of the disparate parts of his composite dominions, which had commenced in earnest under his mother, Maria Theresa (1740–80), and had been pushed further under his brother Joseph II (1780–90). Aranka

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echoed the position of the Hungarian estates, although some members of the Hungarian élite went much further, secretly plotting to depose the Habsburg dynasty.6 Their attempts remained pipedreams. It suffices here to emphasise that in 1790 the Hungarian estates were at their most belligerent. They recognised that by the end of his ten-year reign, Joseph II had weakened the authority of the Habsburg monarchy through a combination of international isolation and an uncompromising domestic reform programme. The Hungarian estates hoped that by acting firmly they could at the very least squeeze concessions out of the Habsburgs; at best they hoped to regain their country’s independence. Aranka’s work was generated in this political atmosphere. The end result of this conflict between the Habsburg ruler and the Hungarian estates was, as was usually the case, a compromise between the two parties. The Hungarian estates obliged Leopold II, shortly after his accession in 1790, to acknowledge Hungary as an independent kingdom (regnum independens), but in return the estates sanctioned many of Joseph II’s reforms. This followed the ‘customary’ pattern of the turbulent Hungarian-Habsburg relationship. The locus of this compromise, as well as the usual place for bargaining between the Crown and the estates, was the Hungarian diet or parliament.

The diet The Hungarian diet, together with its sphere of competence, was originally regulated only by custom.7 The beginnings of a Hungarian legislative assembly can be traced back to the last decade of the thirteenth century. More or less regular diets evolved in the course of the fifteenth century. There were two types of diets: mass diets which in theory all the many thousands of noblemen of the realm were obliged to attend, and diets at which untitled nobles were represented by delegates (ablegati). Eventually, partly for practical reasons, the latter form became the norm after the succession of the Habsburgs. The organisation and the workings of the diet were regulated by parliamentary articles in 1608, in a compromise between the new Habsburg ruler, Matthias, and Hungary, which brought about the codification of already well-established practices. Article 1 stipulated, for instance, who could be invited to the diet. It defined the four estates as the prelates, the barons (aristocrats), the untitled nobles and the free royal cities. The fact that the untitled nobles did not attend the diet in person was legally acknowledged for the first time. Since the untitled nobles were represented by county delegates, it also meant the acceptance of the considerable power and influence the counties (noble-dominated units of local government) had come to possess by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The existence of two separate houses within the Hungarian parliament was also legally recognised for the first time. Prelates and aristocrats participated in the parliamentary sessions


in person in the Upper House. The Lower House was dominated by the delegates of the untitled nobility who shared the house with the representatives of certain ecclesiastical bodies (mainly chapter houses), those of the free royal cities, the representative delegates of the associated territories of Slavonia, Croatia and Dalmatia, the holders of certain offices (judges of the royal court of justice) and the deputies of absent aristocrats.8 The monarch had the right to convoke and dissolve a diet. He9 was obliged to issue invitations (litterae regales) at least six weeks in advance. These invitations contained the date, the venue, often the main reason for convoking the diet and a list of proposals that the monarch wished to have discussed. Hence the agenda was defined primarily by the king. In the interval between the calling of a diet and its assembly, the institutions that were represented at the diet elected their delegates and supplied them with specific instructions. The county instructions were of key importance and they usually also contained ‘complaints and requests’, that is grievances that the counties wanted to have tabled. It is of significance that by the end of the eighteenth century the county delegates were expected to follow their instructions closely, and if a new topic was brought up at the diet they had to refer back to their counties for supplementary instructions. Should a delegate ignore his instructions, he could be recalled by his county and a new delegate sent instead. It was also provided by custom that each county had two delegates, regardless of its size or population.10 At the end of the seventeenth century, each delegate in the Lower House had a vote. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the practice had evolved; individual counties (and other privileged territories) all possessed a vote, while the free royal cities and the ecclesiastical bodies each had a single collective vote. This again was a custom that was never legally recognised. When a diet opened, it was always a contentious issue whether the royal propositions or the estates’ grievances (gravamina) should be discussed first. Decisions in general were taken either by considering the opinion of those who contributed to the debate or by general acclamation.11 There was no need for unanimity, as in Poland. The two houses of the Hungarian diet, both counting about 200 members, usually sat separately. If the two houses reached opposing conclusions about a proposition, they communicated via written messages. If they still failed to come to an agreement, they held joint sessions (sessiones mixtae). In the event that these proved fruitless, discussion of the matter at issue was postponed until ‘more propitious times’. When the two houses did agree, their modifications to the king’s original proposals were submitted to the monarch. The monarch either graciously accepted or rejected these modifications. In the latter case the diet continued its work until a compromise was reached or the subject was dropped. The final word in the process was always the king’s. He approved the decisions that were organised into individual articles. In exceptional cases he even changed the wording of some articles; for example, by inserting a phrase. This invariably

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resulted in an uproar and a complaint at the following diet. This complex procedure made the diets extremely lengthy. The parliamentary articles themselves were in Latin (both Latin and Hungarian after 1790) and the language of parliamentary debate was Latin until the beginning of the nineteenth century when it gave way to Hungarian which became the official language in 1844.12 The sphere of the diet’s authority was never officially defined but over time certain issues had come to be recognised as of parliamentary competence. This included the election of the ruler (until 1687 when the Hungarian estates gave up this right); the coronation; the election of the palatine and the Crown guards;13 drawing up the hitlevél, a document in which the monarch promised to respect the Hungarian constitution on his accession to the throne;14 acting as a court in cases of high treason; the modification of Hungary’s external borders; issues concerning the defence of the realm (relating particularly to the noble levy); military issues, especially deciding the number of recruits that could be raised in Hungary for the Habsburg army; the level of the war tax (contributio); offering voluntary contributions (subsidia);15 granting privileged status to towns and cities; the naturalisation of foreigners; the articulation of ‘complaints and requests’, and several other matters of less significance.16 In conjunction with the king, the Hungarian diet had an exclusive right to pass legislation for the kingdom of Hungary. This mixed constitution resulted in a continuous power struggle between the two sources of sovereignty, the king and the estates.17 Out of the four estates, the representatives of the free royal cities were the only ones more or less independent of noble influence. However, by the end of the eighteenth century all the free royal cities combined had only one vote at the diet (as compared to roughly 50 noble-dominated county votes), and this meant that their voting power was negligible. The other three estates, the aristocrats, the prelates (recruited overwhelmingly from the aristocracy) and the untitled nobility all subscribed to a noble ethos. The Hungarian nobility on average accounted for around 4.5 to 5 per cent of the total population. In theory this nobility was one and undivided: there were no legal differences between aristocrats and untitled nobles (with the single exception of the aristocrats’ right to attend the diet in person). However, in practice the aristocratic families predominated. Their number approached 200 by the end of the eighteenth century. Below them, within the ranks of the untitled nobility there were vast differences in fortune. The bulk of this nobility, around 70,000 families, was enfranchised but poor and thus politically insignificant. In between were the wealthier strata of the untitled nobility – a group that numbered around 7000–8000 families – comparable, in socio-economic terms, with the well-to-do English gentry. These nobles were known as bene possessionati (roughly meaning well-endowed) and together with the aristocrats they represented the Hungarian élite. Members of this bene possessionati group were originally dependants of the aristocracy but in the course of the eighteenth


century they began to challenge the aristocrats’ monopoly of power first at the county level and subsequently in the Lower House at the diets.18 Despite their differences, the Hungarian nobles, aristocrats and untitled nobles alike, maintained that it was their duty to defend the kingdom of Hungary personally via the remnant of the medieval military system, the noble levy (insurrectio). This was mobilised for the last time during the Napoleonic Wars and was soundly beaten by the French army at the Battle of Gyo˝r in 1809.19 It had become redundant long before then. The existence of such a disparate and ad hoc military institution was an anachronism, particularly after a standing army had come into existence by 1715. Nonetheless, the insurrectio survived, albeit only as a force to supplement the regular Habsburg army in an emergency. However, in return for this military duty, the Hungarian nobles still enjoyed cardinal rights. First, they could not be arrested without a proper judicial process. Second, they were subject only to the power of a lawfully crowned ruler. Third, and from our point of view most important, they can freely use and enjoy as they will their just [property] rights and all revenues within the boundaries of their estates at all times; they are held entirely exempt and free of all servile obligations, and of paying taxes and dues, tolls, customs, and the thirtieth [tricesima, a type of customs]; and they need only serve under arms in defence of the realm. Fourth, the so-called ius resistandi stipulated that in case the liberties of the nobles were violated they had the right to resist and oppose the king without the ‘taint of infidelity’.20 When at the diet of 1687 the Hungarian estates gave up the by-then nominal right to elect the king and accepted the automatic succession of the Habsburgs’ male line to the Hungarian throne, they also agreed to repeal the ius resistandi. Significantly, they later contested this. The Hungarian estates were, of course, aware of their own importance and jealously guarded their position. One element of this was their insistence that the diet should meet regularly. Under the Habsburgs a string of parliamentary articles – Article 49 (1655), Article 58 (1681) and Article 14 (1715) – stipulated that there should be a diet at least every third year, or more often if necessary, but this was largely ignored.21 In the eighteenth century, the diet met with much less frequency, namely in 1712–15,22 1722–3, 1728–9, 1741, 1751, and 1764–5. Then a 25-year gap was followed by an explosion of diets until the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which came close to the triennial diets desired by the estates: 1790–1, 1792, 1796, 1802, 1805, 1807, 1808, and 1811–12.23 However, after 1812 the diet was not convoked until 1825. This shows, to paraphrase Conrad Russell, that the Hungarian diet was an event and was still far from becoming an institution. There was no permanent secretariat or committee that continued in being between diets. The Hungarian parliament did not even have a fixed venue, although

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the overwhelming majority of diets in the eighteenth century were held in Pozsony (today’s Bratislava in Slovakia), a location conveniently close to Vienna.24 This has led István Szijártó to argue that the eighteenth-century Hungarian diet was not a legislative body at all but simply the seat of periodical bargaining between monarch and estates.25 This is true in the sense that a plethora of issues were handled by the Hungarian central authorities representing royal power and not discussed at the diets. Nevertheless, as we will see, the efficient functioning of these institutions depended on the co-operation of the estates. Most significantly, the Hungarian élite did have an institution to fall back upon. This was the system of the counties (vármegyerendszer).26 Crucially, unlike the diets the counties were permanent institutions. The fo˝ispán (comes) of each county was a royal appointee but in reality the administration was in the hands of elected local officials, headed by the alispán (vicecomes). The only way to implement policy was through the counties but these had the right to refuse anything that they deemed ‘unconstitutional’. This meant that the county nobility could frustrate the royal will, even when the matter at issue was tax collection or recruitment.27 The king had means at his disposal to pressurise the counties, which ranged from gauging the mood through the comes to sending in the army and harassing or even arresting recalcitrant county officials. However, these were all unconstitutional methods. Some counties were more manageable than others, and the ones furthest from Vienna, in north and north-east Hungary, tended to be the most troublesome. These had the highest percentage of nobles in the population and were home to large pockets of Protestants, including Protestant nobles. In the absence of diets, the counties championed the Hungarian ‘constitution’, which meant mostly the constitutional rights and extensive privileges of the nobility.28

Crown management: Working with, and around, the estates The reason for the continuous existence of a well-entrenched nobility with considerable legislative power is to be found in the Habsburg dynasty’s precarious position in Hungary. On their accession in 1526, the Habsburgs faced civil war, and a rival ‘indigenous’ king. Soon afterwards there began the Ottoman occupation of central Hungary, which lasted for 150 years. Transylvania, the easternmost territory of the kingdom of Hungary, broke away as a semi-independent principality under Ottoman influence. In effect, for the first century and a half of their rule the Habsburgs controlled only ‘Royal Hungary’, a thin crescent of the western and northern parts, roughly 30 per cent of the original kingdom of Hungary.29 The defence of this territory was of vital importance from the point of view of safeguarding the core Habsburg provinces, including the capital, Vienna. As a result, the Habsburgs were more disposed to compromise with the Hungarian estates


who vigorously repelled their attempts to establish royal absolutism in their midst. When the Habsburg army expelled the Ottomans from the territory of Hungary proper at the end of the seventeenth century, the incumbent Habsburg ruler, Leopold I, saw his chance to break the power of the troublesome Hungarian estates. In 1703 this triggered a large-scale revolt known as the Rákóczi uprising which lasted until 1711. The result was again stalemate: the estates accepted the Habsburgs’ power in Hungary, and in return they retained their constitution. For most of the eighteenth century Habsburg rule rested on this compromise. However, the relative importance of Hungary within the monarchy changed considerably. After the expulsion of the Ottomans, the lands of the Crown of St Stephen (the first Hungarian king), which included Croatia and Transylvania together with Hungary proper, made up around half of the Habsburg monarchy’s territory and, by the end of the eighteenth century, approximately 40 per cent of its population. Despite these facts, even at the very end of the eighteenth century Hungary’s contribution to the Habsburg monarchy’s total revenue was only around one-third. The smallness of this proportion was a constant irritant to Vienna and was blamed on the selfishness and meanness of the Hungarian nobility.30 The Habsburgs’ way of dealing with the problem of the estates was to work around them. After the reconquest of the original territory of Hungary, the kingdom’s territorial integrity was not restored. Transylvania was treated as a principality with its own more malleable diet and system of administration. Large tracts of the southern parts of Hungary were organised into a military frontier (Militärgrenze) in the name of defence against the Ottomans and were administered directly from Vienna by the central military body, the Aulic War Council. Other territories – such as the Temesköz (also in southern Hungary) – saw the introduction of a dual military and civilian administration. The former was also in the hands of the Aulic War Council, the latter in those of the Imperial Court Chamber (Hofkammer).31 These were institutions based in Vienna and loyal to Habsburg interests. Moreover, the Habsburgs were no strangers to managing provincial legislatures and assemblies. They had been used to dealing with such political bodies well before acquiring the kingdom of Hungary. Their own heartland was an intricate mixture of several lands. All of these had their own provincial assemblies. Until the early seventeenth century these estates’ powers were still considerable. The situation very much resembled the Hungarian case. These provincial assemblies, dominated by the local nobility, had the power of the purse and the right to approve military recruits. It was at these assemblies that the Habsburgs’ propositions were countered by the estates’ grievances, and where deals were eventually struck between the ‘parties’. The importance of these assemblies waned in the course of the seventeenth century but the Habsburgs’ habitual way of handling them through a group of hand-picked local aristocratic families provided the blueprint for their

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dealings with Hungary.32 Here too a loyal aristocracy emerged. The best known was the Esterházy family, but there were others such as the Zichys, the Pálffys and the Batthyánys, to name just a few. By the eighteenth century, these families constituted the ‘old’ aristocracy. Under Maria Theresa and Joseph II, their numbers were greatly boosted through the elevation to the peerage of ambitious and efficient individuals who rendered valuable services as bureaucrats. After the Edict of Toleration of 1781, these also included Protestants. Nevertheless, in the Hungarian case their loyalty to the Habsburgs had its limitations, as we will see. Apart from grooming loyal aristocrats who sat in the Upper House of the diet, the Habsburgs also tried to manipulate the Lower House in their favour. A case in point was the elevation of several cities and towns to the status of free royal city. By this means the Habsburgs attempted to provide a loyal counterweight at the diets to the county delegates. The estates’ answer was first, to make the elevation of free royal cities a parliamentary competence, and second, to restrict the voice of all city representatives to a single vote in the Lower House. Another favoured Habsburg management technique was to leave important offices unfilled for long periods. This was particularly true of the office of the highest-ranking Hungarian office holder, the palatine or viceroy. The palatine was disturbingly powerful since he had a right to substitute for the king in most fields when the king was absent from Hungary; which was most of the time, since the Habsburgs never took up residence in Hungary. He presided over the sessions of the Upper House and before 1687 convoked those diets which were to elect the new king. The estates considered the palatine as the champion of Hungarian interests. Predictably, the Habsburg practice of leaving this office vacant became a parliamentary grievance. The way in which this and other issues were always settled depended on the actual power relations between king and estates. From 1608 onwards the palatine’s office was elective. The palatine was selected by the diet from among four royal candidates (two Catholic and two Protestant).33 Nevertheless, the Habsburgs gradually succeeded in ‘taming’ the office. In the course of the eighteenth century it was filled by ultra-loyal Hungarian aristocrats and from 1790 onwards by Habsburg archdukes. From this time forward, the palatine clearly represented Habsburg interests, although curiously the longest serving palatine, Archduke Joseph (1795–1847) became very popular in Hungary.34 His ‘court’ provided a long-desired focus for Hungary’s political and social life. Palatine Joseph also made gestures towards the Hungarians by growing a moustache and attempting to learn the language.35

Enlightened absolutism and governing without the diet In the second half of the eighteenth century, conflict between the Hungarian élite and Vienna reignited with the advent of enlightened absolutism. This top-down reform movement in the monarchy was originally inspired by the


loss of the rich province of Silesia to Prussia, and the Habsburgs’ inability to regain it in the War of Austrian Succession (1740–8). By the late 1750s, these reforms yielded results in the western (non-Hungarian) half of the monarchy. Here, the provincial nobility was successfully removed as an obstacle to resource-mobilisation. However, the Habsburgs were wary of touching Hungary, which consequently escaped this early phase of reform. Then came another unsuccessful war: the Seven Years War (1756–63). This turned the Habsburgs’ attention to Hungary and its untapped assets, and led to the questioning of the settlement that had been in existence since 1711. Nevertheless, the Hungarian diet refused to budge from its adherence to this settlement. When, in 1765 it failed to grant a considerable increase in the country’s tax contribution, it was in effect prorogued indefinitely. From then until 1790, the Habsburgs ruled Hungary through royal decree, demonstrating that another way to deal with the Hungarian legislature was by refusing to convoke it. It was through royal decree and the co-operation of a carefully selected group of Hungarian nobles that the Habsburgs ushered in reforms in this period. These ranged from the uniform regulation of the condition of the peasants (Urbarial Patent, 1767) and its gradual and painstaking implementation, to a wholesale reform of the education system (Ratio Educationis, 1777). Reform-minded noble bureaucrats were recruited to the central administrative institutions governing Hungary, such as the Hungarian royal chancery, the Hungarian royal treasury, the royal lieutenancy, and later to the administration responsible for the only Hungarian seaport, Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia). The Vienna-based Hungarian royal chancery was the main administrative link between the ‘country’ and the monarch. The independence of this and the other institutions was the subject of parliamentary interest. For example, in 1715 parliamentary articles stipulated the independence of the Hungarian chancery and the Hungarian treasury from the influence of other Habsburg chanceries and treasuries. In reality, the Hungarian chancery and the treasury, together with the royal lieutenancy that was set up in the 1720s as an intermediary body between the chancery and the counties, were of dual nature.36 They were naturally not independent from the corresponding Habsburg central institutions. The Habsburgs consulted their mostly non-Hungarian advisers before deciding on a policy, including Hungarian matters. The estates fiercely remonstrated against this practice but accepted that the Hungarian institutions were primarily royal in nature. The top Hungarian officials automatically attended the diet and tended to play the part of broker between the king and the estates.37 The Habsburgs had the power of patronage and those who originally paved the way for reforms in Hungary in the 1760s were rewarded by titles and dazzling careers. The example of György Fekete will suffice. He was born into an untitled noble family yet thanks to services as a bureaucrat became in quick succession a councillor of the royal lieutenancy, vice-chancellor,

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and finally lord chief justice. The latter was a legal office, one of the top three positions in Hungary. Fekete also became a count and comes of Arad county. Careers did not progress any faster than this. Despite doing so well, he remained a Hungarian nobleman and his son, Count János Fekete was an active member of the group that tried to depose the Habsburg dynasty in 1789–90. All of these Habsburg institutions recruited their staff from among the nobility, but despite this Vienna could not buy the nobles off with patronage, at least not to the extent that they became ‘Habsburg’ as opposed to Hungarian. This was partly due to the fact that many also had representative positions. The Protestant nobleman, József Vay, for example, was a councillor at the lieutenancy for six years between 1789 and 1796 while he was also a county delegate representing the rebellious Szabolcs county at the diet of 1790–1 (and also at four subsequent diets).38 Governing Hungary though decrees presented the Habsburgs with two ultimately insurmountable difficulties. The first stumbling block was the refusal of the powerful counties to implement royal decrees of which they did not approve. The second difficulty was posed by the Habsburgs’ need, evident during the late 1780s, for increased taxation and more recruits, to fight the Turkish War and later to permit them to respond to the onset of continual international crisis sparked by the French Revolution. The Habsburgs might attempt to govern through decrees, because they could collect taxes and raise recruits in the territory of Hungary, even without convoking the parliament. However, they could do so only to the amount agreed to by the last diet, which was insufficient. An increase of either the amount of war tax (contributio) from Hungary or the number of recruits depended upon the Hungarian legislature. Hence the flurry of diets between 1792 and 1812 during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Once the war was over the diet could be ignored, which was what happened in the so-called era of Metternich (1815–48).

Contested constitutional powers By the late eighteenth century an atmosphere of distrust and mutual suspicion existed on both sides. This can be well illustrated by the issue of trade, which represents an interesting point of comparison with Ireland. As noted above, the Habsburgs’ emerging central administration continuously complained about Hungary’s disproportionately small contribution to the monarchy’s running costs and referred accusingly to the meanness of the Hungarian nobility, and its unwillingness to share the tax burden. The well-established Hungarian estates, for their part, countered by drawing attention to the shortcomings of the Habsburgs in governing Hungary and one of the grievances that continuously surfaced in the second half of the eighteenth century was that the Habsburgs treated Hungary as a colony. This charge was formulated in many shapes and forms but is best


encapsulated in the comprehensive summary of the state of the Hungarian economy and commerce compiled by Miklós Skerlecz as part of the report of a parliamentary committee on commerce. In his Projectum Legum (1791) Skerlecz wrote that Hungary is forced to sell much of its produce in the German provinces … because those Hungarian products that are required by the German factories39 cannot be exported elsewhere or in case they are exported they are burdened with prohibitive tariffs; in this way the otherwise independent country has almost been reduced to the level of a formal colony … Hungary has become a colony only through tariffs.40 The estates’ inability to regulate tariffs was a recurring grievance, following the introduction of a dual system of tariffs in the Habsburg monarchy in the mid-1750s. This cut off Hungarian agricultural products from markets outside the Habsburg monarchy and prevented the supply of manufactured goods to Hungary from beyond Habsburg territories. The tariff system had two main aims: the protection of the budding industries of the Habsburg hereditary lands, particularly those of Austria and Bohemia, and the punishment of the Hungarian estates economically. However, when one reads Skerlecz’s full report, it is clear that the Hungarian estates did not contest protectionist measures in general, but their focus. They would have liked similar policies to encourage industrialisation within Hungary. This demonstrates their refusal to view Habsburg policies in the context of a centralised empire and their astonishment at the Habsburgs’ unwillingness to build up industry in Hungary that might challenge already existing industries in their other provinces. This Hungary-centred view prevailed in all aspects of the estates’ dealings with Vienna. However, the Hungarian estates freely conceded some fields to the Habsburgs that they acknowledged to be of royal competence. These were primarily military and foreign affairs. It was the responsibility of the central Aulic War Council to administer the Habsburg forces stationed in the territory of Hungary and also the troops recruited from there.41 The estates did not have a say over their organisation or deployment, nor did they challenge the overall set-up. Foreign affairs provided an even more revealing example. Hungarian aristocrats and noblemen served in the Habsburg diplomatic corps but these, without exception, distanced themselves from the nobility’s traditional stance and served the Habsburgs with unswerving loyalty. An informative case is that of Count Károly Reviczky, the Habsburg ambassador at the Court of St James’s at the time when Hungarian malcontents tried to secure British support for their design to get rid of the Habsburgs in 1789–90. The ambassador was loyal to Vienna, to the extent that one of the conspirators’ main objectives was to keep him in the dark.42 However, Reviczky and the likes constituted a tiny minority.

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Conclusion We are left with the overall impression of a duality within the Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburgs made headway in centralising their western, nonHungarian provinces, but failed to achieve the same in the Hungarian parts where neither of the two parties, the Habsburgs and the Hungarian estates, could get the upper hand. The Hungarian élite was deeply rooted in and relied heavily upon a permanent institution, the noble county, which the Habsburgs were unable to penetrate. After several more twists and turns the end result was the creation of the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1867. This put the Hungarian élite, albeit temporarily, into an enviable position, and one which the Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith highlighted in his consciously comparative work, The Resurrection of Hungary (1904).

Notes 1. The same appeared in Hungarian also in 1790 (Anglia és Magyarország igazgatások formájának elo˝-adása) in the journal Orpheus. For details see Domokos Kosáry, Mu ˝velo˝dés a XVIII. századi Magyarországon (3rd edn, Budapest, 1996), p. 597. 2. [György Aranka], Anglus és magyar igazgatásnak egyben-vetése (Kolozsvár, 1790), p. 9. 3. ‘Nagy és mind természet szerint való, mind törvényes külömbség vagyon – a’ mennyire tudom – az tulajdon Angliai Birodalom alatt, és a’ külömbözo˝ Nemzetekbe, és Tartományokba. Az Anglus és Irlandus, az Amérikai ’s Indiai Tartományok és Nemzetek …, többet vagy kevesebbet mind törvényesen külömböznek’ (Aranka, Anglus és magyar, p. 23). 4. This idea was particularly prevalent in the first half of the nineteenth century but left a strong legacy in scholarly works. One of the many examples is a book published in 1900 that discusses how the Hungarian aristocracy evolved. When it considers intermarriage between members of the aristocracy and the untitled nobility (essentially the gentry), it adds ‘this also shows the astonishing similarity between the development of the English and the Hungarian constitutions and political culture’ (Bódog Schiller, Az örökös fo˝rendiség eredete Magyarországon (Budapest, 1900), p. 201). 5. Quoted from Schlözer’s Stats-Anzeigen by Zsuzsa Rényi, ‘A századforduló (18–19. század) Angliája, mint politikai és mu ˝velo˝dési model a magyar kortársak számára’ in Gábor Klaniczay, János Poór and Éva Ring (eds), A felvilágosodás jegyében: Tanulmányok H. Balázs Éva 70. születésnapjára (Budapest, 1985), pp. 199–215. 6. The Protestant nobleman Gergely Berzeviczy, for example, argued in a pamphlet (De dominio Austriae in Hungaria (1790)) that dethroning the Habsburgs would be legal in the light of Joseph II’s actions and a newly elected Hungarian king, preferably from the British ruling house, would be ideal for the country. For the complete text of this Latin pamphlet, see Kálmán Benda (ed.), A magyar jakobinusok iratai, vol. 1: A magyar jakobinus mozgalom iratai (Budapest, 1957), pp. 92–105. For Berzeviczy, see Éva H. Balázs, Berzeviczy Gergely, a reformpolitikus, 1763–1795 (Budapest, 1967). For the Hungarian malcontents’ negotiations with Prussia, see Robert Gragger, Preußen, Weimar und die ungarische Königskrone (Berlin–Leipzig, 1923); for their attempts to win British support: Orsolya Szakály, ‘A brit–magyar


7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

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15. 16.

17. 18.

19.

20.

kapcsolatok egy ismeretlen fejezete: báró Vay Miklós londoni küldetése 1790-ben’ in Századok, cxxxix (2005), pp. 1207–32. László Péter, ‘The irrepressible authority of the Tripartitum’ in János M. Bak, Péter Banyó and Martyn Rady (eds and trans.), The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: A Work in Three Parts Rendered by Stephen Werbo˝czy (The Tripartitum) (Idyllwild, CA & Budapest, 2005), pp. xiii–xxvi. István Szijártó’s recent book on the eighteenth-century diets in Hungary provides a detailed and nuanced picture of the workings of the Hungarian legislature: A diéta: A magyar rendek és az országgyu ˝lés, 1708–1792 (Budapest, 2005). For convenience’s sake, I refer to the ruler as ‘he’ because in the course of Hungarian history there were considerably more kings than queens. However, in the eighteenth century a female, Maria Theresa, reigned over the Habsburg monarchy for 40 years, although legally she was treated as male. I also consequently refer to the Habsburg monarchs as kings in the Hungarian context because this is the title they used even if they were women. Ferenc Eckhart, Magyar alkotmány- és jogtörténet (reprint, ed. Barna Mezey, Budapest, 2000), pp. 212–14. István Szíjártó in A diéta dedicates a whole section to the issue of decision making at the eighteenth-century diets (pp. 281–313). He shows the complexity of this procedure and claims that the same issue could be put to the vote several times, and even in the unusual case of counting the votes the outcome did not necessarily represent the final decision. Eckhart, Magyar alkotmány- és jogtörténet, pp. 219–22. These offices were elective, although most high-ranking positions were filled by royal appointees. The office of the crown guard was prestigious but titular. The palatine is discussed below, p. 213. This document was first issued just before the coronation of nine-year-old Joseph I in 1687, who was crowned in his father’s lifetime. All the successive Habsburg rulers issued a hitlevél. This followed a given formula which subsequently saw only minor modifications. For its articles and its changes see Eckhart, Magyar alkotmány- és jogtörténet, p. 193. It is not well known that noble taxation in cases of emergency and strictly on voluntary basis in the form of the subsidium was relatively frequent in Hungary. A magyar országgyu ˝lés történetének képeskönyve: History of the Hungarian Parliament: Geschichte des ungarischen Parlaments (text by Bódiné Kinga Beleznai, Gizella Föglein, Attila Horváth, Barna Mezey and Mihály T. Révész, Budapest, 1999), pp. 32–5. Péter, ‘The Irrepressible Authority of the Tripartitum’, p. 17. The rise of the bene possessionati is the main thesis of Szijártó’s A diéta, although his claim is not substentiated by detailed analysis, which he promises to provide in the second volume of this ambitious project. For this last episode of the noble levy’s history, see Károly Vörös, ‘The Insurrectio of the Hungarian Nobility in the Era of the Napoleonic Wars’, in B. K. Király (ed.), East Central European Society and War in the Era of Revolutions, 1775–1856 (New York, 1984), pp. 19–31. This and the above quotes are all from part 1, ch. 9, para. 5. Bak, Banyó and Rady (eds and trans.), The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, p. 57. The ‘Tripartitum’ was a code of customary law compiled by István Werbo˝czy in the early sixteenth century that became the basic text of reference for the Hungarian nobility.

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21. Eckhart, Magyar alkotmány- és jogtörténet, p. 97. Until the mid-fifteenth century the frequency of the diets was not regulated. However, already a parliamentary article of 1447 (Article 45) stated that there should be short but annual diets. This was never observed and the frequency of the diet depended largely on the power relations between the monarch and the estates. 22. Some historians, for example Szijártó, date the beginning of this diet back to 1708. 23. The archival documents of diets between 1547 and 1849 are to be found under N 49–70 (Diaetae) in the Hungarian National Archives, Budapest. 24. It is interesting to note that the diets had a permanent building in Pozsony: Szijártó, A diéta, pp. 136–41. 25. Ibid., pp. 30–2. 26. For the evolution of the country administration in the seventeenth century on the basis of Zala country, see Alajos Degré, ‘A megyei közigazgatás átalakulása a XVIII. század elején’ in Andor Csizmadia (ed.), Jogtörténeti Tanulmányok IV (Budapest, 1980), pp. 59–70. 27. Already Article 33, 1545, gave the right to the counties to ‘respectfully’ put aside or remonstrate against royal decrees that were in conflict with the laws of Hungary: Eckhart, Magyar alkotmány- és jogtörténet, pp. 222–4. 28. János Barta, Jr, A tizennyolcadik század története (Budapest, 2000), pp. 37–71. 29. Géza Pálffy, A tizenhatodik század története (Budapest, 2000), esp. pp. 70–76. 30. It is hard to come by reliable statistical data from this period. The above mentioned statistics are from Kálmán Benda, ‘Pénzügyi válság és devalváció Magyarországon 1811-ben’ in idem (ed.), Emberbarát vagy hazafi? Tanulmányok a felvilágosodás korának magyarországi törtenétébo˝l (Budapest, 1978), pp. 335–47. 31. Many of these separate territorial entities were later restored to Hungary proper. For example, the Temesköz was reincorporated in 1778. For an overview of the territorial arrangement see Barta, A tizennyolcadik század története, pp. 108–10. 32. R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 166–70. This book includes reference to the special Bohemian example. The lands of St Wenceslas came into Habsburg hands together with Hungary in 1526. Their once powerful diet was brought into line in 1627 after a decisive Habsburg victory over the rebelling estates in 1620. For details see also ibid., pp. 195–234. 33. Eckhart, Magyar alkotmány- és jogtörténet, pp. 210–11. 34. Éva H. Balázs suggested that Palatine Joseph’s popularity amounted almost to an early Hungarian-Habsburg compromise, predating the Compromise of 1867: Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1765–1800: An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism (Budapest, 1997), pp. 323–5. 35. This in turn, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars, provoked suspicions in Vienna and unfounded fears of a break-away branch of the Habsburg dynasty that would challenge the head of the dynasty. 36. For the lieutenancy, see Ibolya Felho ˝ and Antal Vörös, A helytartótanácsi levéltár (Budapest, 1963), pp. 19–23; for the Hungarian royal treasury, János Szita, ‘A Habsburg-birodalom centralizációja és a magyar pénzügyek 1849-ig’ in Andor Csizmadia (ed.), Jogtörténeti Tanulmányok IV (Budapest, 1980), pp. 301–18. 37. R. J. W. Evans, ‘The Habsburgs and the Hungarian Problem, 1790–1848’ in TRHS, ser. 5, xxxix (1989), p. 47. 38. Previously (1786–9), he was also vice-comes of Szabolcs county. For József Vay’s career, see Orsolya Szakály, Egy vállalkozó f o˝nemes: Vay Miklós báró, 1756–1824 (Budapest, 2003), pp. 24–6.

220 Managing a Composite Monarchy 39. ‘German factories’ in this context means factories in the non-Hungarian parts of the Habsburg monarchy. 40. Skerlecz’s Projectum legum motivatum in objecto Oeconomiae publicae et Commercii perferendarum was published in Hungarian in Skerlecz Miklós báró mu ˝vei, ed. Pál Berényi (Budapest, 1914). For the quotation, see p. 227. 41. János Barta, Jr, A tizennyolcadik század története, p. 28. 42. Szakály, ‘A brit–magyar kapcsolatok egy ismeretlen fejezete’, p. 1229.

9 Lawmaking in a Post-Composite State? The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century Richard Butterwick

Similarities in the trajectories of Irish and Polish history are really visible only after the final dismemberment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.1 Indeed, the closest parallel offered in Polish history to the role of the Irish parliament within the composite British monarchy of the eighteenth century is provided by the role of the parliament (sejm) of the ‘Congress’ kingdom of Poland ruled over by the Russian emperor between 1815 and 1830.2 Although for most of the eighteenth century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was part of the Russian sphere of influence,3 there is a clear difference between the geopolitical dependence of one polity on another, and any kind of institutional union between the two. Like their Hungarian counterparts, but with more justification, Polish political writers of the later eighteenth century compared their constitution not with Ireland’s, but with that of Great Britain (which, again like the Hungarians, they called ‘England’).4 Nonetheless, the Commonwealth does seem at first glance to have possessed some of the characteristics of a ‘composite state’, largely owing to the complexity of its medieval origins. Even though in this case appearances are – it is argued – seriously deceptive, the persistence in the increasingly unitary Commonwealth of local loyalties and local estates (sejmiki), alongside the ‘national’ sejm, offers an opportunity to explore the relationship of centre and periphery in the development of representative institutions in what was a highly distinctive polity.

The history of the Commonwealth: A composite monarchy? One obvious similarity between the British realms and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century is the fact that in each case the throne was occupied by successive rulers of a German electorate. Although the personal union between Poland-Lithuania and Saxony, established in 1697 by the election of Augustus II ‘the Strong’, was broken in 1763 by 221

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the death of his son, Augustus III, his great-grandson, Frederick Augustus, was invited in 1791 to become heir to the Polish throne, in succession to Stanisław August Poniatowski. This connexion did not in itself create the kind of constitutional relationship identified in this book as characteristic of a ‘composite state’.5 While the relationship between Saxony and Poland in some respects resembled that between Hanover and the British dominions, it does not offer a parallel to Ireland’s relationship with Britain. This was especially so in parliamentary terms: the Polish-Lithuanian legislature was no more subordinated to Saxony than was its British counterpart to Hanover.6 As far as lawmaking is concerned, we must look elsewhere for comparisons. As an agglomeration of historically distinct territories, the Commonwealth might still have appeared as a type of composite state in the later decades of the eighteenth century. But although this definition is suggested by Poniatowski’s monarchical titles – ‘King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia, Mazovia, Samogitia, Kiev, Volhynia, Podolia, Podlasia, Livonia, Smolensk, Siewierz and Czernihów’ (Chernihiv) – the impression is misleading. To start with, by the time of the constitution of 3 May 1791, from which this list is taken, some of the titles had long been obsolete. Moreover, it was stated explicitly that Stanisław August owed his royal and grand ducal thrones to ‘the will of the nation’ as well as ‘the grace of God’. The 1791 constitution was passed by the monarch ‘together with the confederated estates in double complement, representing the Polish nation’. The name that had originally been given to the polity founded by the Union of Lublin in 1569, the Commonwealth of the Two Nations, Polish and Lithuanian (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, Polskiego i Litewskiego), was not mentioned anywhere. Only in the royal titles was there so much as a hint of local or provincial variations. If the monarchy was still composite, the ‘nation’ was claimed to be one, indivisible and Polish.7 Of course, to declare national unity was not enough by itself to bring it about, and as we shall see, even though some of the framers of the constitution wished to proceed swiftly towards a unitary Commonwealth, there were others who defended the remnants of its composite origins. Moreover, the idea of nationality was in the process of being redefined, with sometimes contradictory results. The unofficial name of the polity had long been ‘Poland’, but at the end of the eighteenth century the meanings of ‘Poland’ and ‘Polish’ were changing fast. Until the 1780s, the ‘nation’ was constituted by several hundred thousand nobles, who were overwhelmingly Roman Catholics of the Latin rite. In the Commonwealth’s final years, the discourse and concept of the ‘nation’ became more inclusive socially and confessionally, but policymakers also placed greater emphasis on the Polish language as an agent of social cohesion. So although these developments might well be considered steps towards modern senses of nationality, the usages of the 1790s were still far from the meanings attached to them in the modern Polish nation state.8

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Earlier the answer to the question of whether or not the Commonwealth was a composite polity would perhaps been affirmative. In the sixteenth century it would certainly have been. Indeed, Poland and Lithuania were part of still more wide-ranging composite monarchies. The Vasas tried (but failed) to combine the throne of Poland-Lithuania with those of Sweden and Muscovy. During the mid-seventeenth-century crisis, it appeared at times that King Charles X of Sweden might take Poland and Tsar Aleksei of Muscovy become Grand Duke of Lithuania. Stephen Batory (István Báthory) was Prince of Transylvania. The Habsburgs twice (in 1575–6 and 1586–7), came within an ace of winning the throne. At the turn of the fifteenth century the Jagiellonian dynasty ruled a third of the European sub-continent: first three, and then two brothers wore the crowns of Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, and Bohemia. Going back still further, the Hungarian and Polish Crowns were twice briefly united (in 1370–82 and 1440–4), while the Prˇemyšlid kings of Bohemia might well have held on to the Polish Crown had they not died out in 1306. Several of the Commonwealth’s elective kings attempted to establish hereditary appanages for their families in neighbouring territories: Estonia, Ducal Prussia, Silesia, Moldavia, Livonia, and Courland. Yet each of these potential routes led nowhere. In contrast, the dynastic union inaugurated in 1386 by the marriage of Jogaila (Jagiełło), Grand Duke of Lithuania, with Jadwiga, the second daughter of King Louis of Hungary and Poland, whom the Polish nobles two years earlier crowned as their ‘queen regnant’, overcame the turbulence and ruptures of its first six decades and settled down.9 Poland had itself been a kind of composite monarchy. After 1138, partible inheritance divided the early Polish kingdom into a multiplying number of duchies; these duchies later shaped the reunited kingdom’s internal divisions into palatinates, districts, and counties (literally ‘lands’ – terrae). This in turn was reflected in the distribution of the local assemblies of the nobility, the sejmiki (dietines), which among other functions, elected and instructed envoys (posłowie) to the sejm. It also found expression in Poland’s characteristic hierarchies of local dignities – the chamberlains, stewards, cupbearers, swordbearers, and such like – that originated as functions at ducal courts. The concept of an indivisible Corona Regni Poloniæ survived the period of political fragmentation. It was assiduously cultivated by the archbishops of Gniezno, who resisted, for the most part successfully, all attempts to incorporate parts of their ecclesiastical province into neighbouring ones. Nevertheless, the reunification of the divided kingdom in the fourteenth century was only partial. The Duchy of Mazovia was not completely reabsorbed until 1529, while Silesia and Pomerania were lost to the German Empire. On the other hand, the Polish kingdom (or Crown) expanded south-eastwards into part of post-Kievan Rus′ in the mid-fourteenth century. As a result, the kingdom of Poland spanned the continental divide between western and eastern Christendom.10 To the north, Prussian knights and cities

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rebelled against the rule of the Teutonic Order in 1454 and offered their allegiance to King Casimir IV of Poland; the union of the western part of the Ordnungsstaat (known henceforth as Royal Prussia) with the Polish Crown was confirmed in 1467. The terms of that union would provoke much subsequent dispute. Was it a contract made with the king and his successors, or was it an incorporation into the realm?11 The formation and composition of Lithuania was rather different. A recognisable political entity emerged in the thirteenth century, establishing a short-lived Catholic kingdom. Subsequently, Lithuania’s pagan warriors swept across much of post-Kievan Rus′ (Ruthenia), intermarrying and allying with local élites, with the result that by the mid-fourteenth century, the great majority of the inhabitants of the grand duchy were Orthodox in religion and spoke variants of Ruthenian (ruskii).12 The vast south-eastern reaches of Rus′ were transferred from Lithuania to the Polish Crown in 1569. A proposal in 1658 to resolve the chronic religious, social, and political conflicts of these lands by creating a ‘Grand Duchy of Ruthenia’ alongside the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in a ‘Commonwealth of the Three Nations’ proved abortive.13 The dissolution of Teutonic power in the Baltic region under the impact of the Reformation left Poland and Lithuania with two feudal vassals: the Hohenzollern dukes of Prussia in the eastern half of the former Ordnungsstaat, and the Kettler dukes of Courland in the south-western part of the territories once ruled by the sister Livonian Order. The remainder of Livonia became a Polish-Lithuanian condominium. However, the Hohenzollern dukes of Prussia gained their sovereignty in 1658, and for most of the eighteenth century the Duchy of Courland was factually subordinated to Russia. Most of the condominium of Livonia was lost to the Swedes by 1621, and of the rest, all but a water meadow was taken by Russia in 1772.14 The status of Royal Prussia caused persistent controversy until the territory was annexed by the Hohenzollerns in 1772 (a fate avoided by its principal city of Danzig (Gdan´sk) until 1793).15 With that caveat, the eighteenth-century Commonwealth was essentially the union of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Representative institutions In 1569 the impending end of the Jagiellonian dynasty, combined with an invasion of the grand duchy by Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Muscovy, pushed the Lithuanian élite into agreeing to share an elective monarchy and a sejm with the Poles. The common sejm consisted of three estates, common to both Lithuania and Poland. These were: first, the monarch; second, the senate, which had grown out of the royal and grand ducal councils and comprised bishops, palatines, and castellans; and third, but most important, the ‘knightly estate’ (stan rycerski, ordo equestris) in the chamber of

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envoys, elected by the nobles gathered at sejmiki. The influence of the royal cities was negligible, as in Hungary. The old capitals of Cracow and Vilnia/ Wilno (Vilnius), were treated as collective nobles, and each entitled to send envoys to the sejm. They almost never did. Only the lobbyists from Danzig exercised influence, because of the city’s wealth. Although the stan rycerski corresponded linguistically to the Ritterstand, the senate was not equivalent to the hereditary German Herrenstand, or even to the hereditary titled nobility in Hungary. Senators were nominated by the king for life, or until promotion to a higher seat. The order of precedence among senators and envoys was carefully balanced between the ‘Two Nations’. Lithuania retained its own offices, treasury, taxes, army, courts and law; the Lithuanian Statute, in its third and final version, remained in force in parts of the Russian empire until 1832. The Third Lithuanian Statute did not mention the 1569 union with Poland at all; moreover, it was passed without reference to the sejm of the Commonwealth by the Lithuanian convocation (konwokacja), before being accepted by King Sigismund III in 1588. The convocation has sometimes been considered to be the effective successor of the Lithuanian sejm that took its final form shortly before the Union of Lublin. The convocation would sometimes meet, usually in Vilnia/Wilno, to decide matters which were deemed of no concern to Poland. It only met, however, when summoned by the monarch, who tended to call it when taxes were needed for the defence of the north-eastern frontiers: taxes which the sejm had failed to concede. Assemblies of the Lithuanian nobility without royal sanction were considered illegal. Polish parliamentarians insisted on the sovereignty of the joint sejm of the entire Commonwealth. The Union of Lublin explicitly forbade the monarch from calling separate Polish and Lithuanian sejmy.16 The Lithuanian convocation last gathered in 1671. Part of its role was filled by ‘provincial sessions’ of the sejm. The sejm sometimes divided into three sessions: one for Lithuania, and one each for the two Crown provinces of Great Poland (Wielkopolska) and Little Poland (Małopolska). This arrangement implied, at least in the view of Poles from the Crown (the so-called koroniarze), that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was but one of three equal provinces of the Commonwealth. This was a state of affairs also implied by the usual, but not invariable, distribution of taxes and recruitment. All three ‘provincial sessions’ served to facilitate agreement between the envoys and senators of each province, before disputed or complex matters returned to plenary sessions of the sejm. However, from a strict Lithuanian perspective, one of the two nations joined by the Union of Lublin – the Polish Crown – contained two provinces, whereas the other – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – contained just one. The Lithuanian provincial session differed from the other two in that it drafted legislation affecting only its own territory. Lithuania’s parliamentarians therefore sometimes demanded that their colleagues from the Crown did not attempt to alter what the

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Lithuanians decided among themselves. Laws were never made separately for Great Poland and Little Poland, but they continued, sometimes, to be made separately for the Polish Crown and Lithuania. Lithuanian arrangements often copied the Polish ones almost verbatim. Occasionally, however, the reverse occurred, as in the autumn of 1789, when the Lithuanian reform of local government preceded, and indeed prompted, the reform for the Polish Crown. Differences between laws for the Grand Duchy and the Crown reflected the differences in taxes, law courts, offices, and local hierarchies between the ‘Two Nations’.17 Various political rights of the Lithuanian nobility and several competences of office-holders were ‘co-equated’ with those of their Polish counterparts in 1697. This ‘co-equation’ included the replacement in that year of Chancery Ruthenian by Polish as the legal language of the grand duchy (and also of the Ukrainian territories transferred to Poland in 1569). It is usually held by historians to have been a consequence of the widespread adoption of Polish in public as well as private life by the nobility, and an expression of those nobles’ wishes.18 By the end of the Four Years’ Sejm of 1788–92, there were joint central government commissions for education, the army, ‘police’, and the treasury, whose members were elected by the sejm. However, the proportion of Lithuanian members was fixed at either a third or a half; ministerial dignities continued to be duplicated for the Crown and Lithuania; it was agreed that every third sejm should continue to be held in Lithuania; and a solemn act called the ‘Mutual Assurance [or ‘Guarantee’] of the Two Nations’ (October 1791) made it clear that the constitution of 3 May 1791, despite its silence on the question, did not in fact abolish the separate nationhood of the Grand Duchy. However, only a tiny minority could conceive of a Lithuanian nation that was not joined to Poland.19 During the debates on 14 and 17 October 1791, Konstanty Plater, the castellan of Troki (Trokai), refused to accept that an overall majority of the sejm could outvote the representatives of the grand duchy, at least on the question of its own status within the union. He declared that ‘in the circumstances of the union, Lithuania in her assemblies cannot be regarded as a province with regard to a single body, but only as one nation in relation to another nation, able today to act for the continuance of the bond, just as she was, when by this holy union she joined herself with the Crown’.20 In the end, the act was passed unanimously. When all qualifications have been made, however, the trend towards closer unity between the late sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries is clear enough. This shift was reflected in the language used towards the end of the eighteenth century by Lithuanian politicians and sejmiki to designate themselves: ‘the Lithuanian province’, ‘the (Grand) Duchy of Lithuania’, ‘the province of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’, ‘the Lithuanian nation’, ‘the Polish nation’, occasionally even ‘the Polish kingdom’. The terms seem to have been used almost interchangeably, without any consistency or pattern.

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Even on the first page of the printed text of the ‘Mutual Assurance’, we find a reference to the ‘Polish Commonwealth’ (Rzeczpospolita Polska).21 Various features of the Commonwealth’s legislative institutions reveal the composite origins of the Polish Crown. The province of Little Poland, the province of Great Poland, and the Duchy of Mazovia all had ‘general sejmiki’. So too, and not to be confused with the convocation, did the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It first met at Valkavysk/Wołkowysk, later at Slonim/Słonim, both towns located in the middle of the Grand Duchy.22 In the eighteenth century general sejmiki met only sporadically, at moments of crisis, notably during the Great Northern War. They traditionally served to co-ordinate the demands of the szlachta (nobility), as expressed in the instructions issued by the sejmiki to their envoys, and in a broader sense, to integrate the senators and envoys of their territory. The Mazovian general sejmik survived longer than the others, and conducted much local business.23 Although the province of Little Poland encompassed the Ukraine, in practice the Little Polish general sejmik, which usually met at Nowy Korczyn, comprised the three southern palatinates of the original Polish kingdom, before its expansion south-eastwards: Cracow, Sandomierz and Lublin. In Great Poland, the general sejmik that traditionally met at Koło rarely assembled after the early seventeenth century, but the two westernmost palatinates of Poznan´ and Kalisz continued to meet in a combined sejmik at S´roda. This sejmik, by virtue of the relative prosperity and literacy of its participants, reflected in their proud civic traditions, acquired a political authority that ‘weighed’ much at the sejm. The assembly with by far the most contested status was that which the Royal Prussian élites called their Landtag or diet. Political theorists elsewhere in the Polish Crown insisted that it was akin to a general sejmik for the three palatinates of Pomerania, Malbork, and Warmia. If their reasoning was justified, it was the only general sejmik to survive into the second half of the eighteenth century. Uniquely, the Prussian Landtag had two chambers; equally uniquely, the urban patricians participated along with the nobles. The representatives of Danzig, Elbing (Elbla˛g), and Thorn (Torun´) sat alongside the senators in the Upper House; ordinary nobles and the representatives of lesser towns constituted the Lower House. Prussian jurists argued that because their original pact was made exclusively with the king, the Landtag was not obliged to accept decisions made by the sejm in the same way as other sejmiki in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at least after 1717.24 Stanisław August made a telling comparison between Prussian claims and those of the American colonists: Worst of all would be if the will of the parliament of England, in order to be executed in America, required the sanction of the American parliament, which would thus become, little by little, the sovereign of the

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European one. This would be the same abuse that one sees in Poland, where the sejmik of Prussia wants to arrogate the right to confirm or reject that which the sejm of the kingdom of Poland has enacted.25 We might add that neither the sejm nor the Royal Prussian Landtag functioned adequately for virtually the entire reign of Augustus III, so that for almost three decades the question was academic. When, in 1764, legislation again became possible, political, and constitutional arguments concerning Royal Prussia became more heated.26

The liberum veto This paralysis of parliamentary life was the direct result of the infamous liberum veto, which applied at the great majority of sejmiki as well as at the sejm. The liberum veto has acquired the not undeserved reputation of a constitutional absurdity, but it is pertinent, nonetheless, to an exploration of the relationship between centre and peripheries within the Commonwealth. The veto originated in the preference for reaching decisions by consensus rather than by vote that was common in estates across sixteenth-century Europe. Given the diversity and extent of the Commonwealth after 1569, it was sensible not to force contentious policies on groups and regions. However, during the first half of the seventeenth century this preference for consensus hardened into a rigidly interpreted principle of unanimity. Within an increasingly formalistic legal culture, the precedents of 1652 and 1669 established the right of a single envoy to curtail all business and thereby nullify all legislation agreed until that point. The threat of the liberum veto was as devastatingly effective as its use. Approximately as many sejmy were filibustered as were actually ‘ruptured’ by the veto (the verb used was zerwac´ – to tear or break up). In the second half of the seventeenth century, it was still possible to regard the veto as a tactical weapon in parliamentary bargaining between court and opposition factions. In over half the sejmy of that period agreement was reached in the end, and some laws passed. Almost invariably success required an agreed prolongation of the sejm beyond its statutory six weeks.27 However, from the late 1680s onwards, it became normal for no such agreement to be reached. Even the limita, the practice of adjourning the sejm for several months (on the last occasion, for two years), was outlawed in 1726 as dangerous to liberty. The limita evoked analogies to the proroguing of parliament by the Stuart kings of England. By the mid-eighteenth century, the sejm had ceased to function as a legislative institution. After 1736, no laws at all were passed until 1764. In practice, envoys using the veto acted on behalf of magnates or foreign powers. However, sejmiki often instructed their envoys not to permit any other business to be concluded unless their particular desiderata were met. Even minor demands in the instructions were sometimes accompanied by

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the formula sub discrimine sejmu, meaning that the envoys should threaten to rupture the sejm rather than ignore the wishes of their electors. Such instructions testify to the perceived importance of the periphery being able to impose its will on the centre, or at least, to prevent any other constituency within the Commonwealth from doing likewise.28 During the military crises of the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, it had seemed as though the monarchy might be able to take advantage of the parliamentary vacuum produced by the liberum veto. Key decisions, such as the conduct of diplomatic negotiations, the contracting of loans, or the raising of troops to meet invasion or rebellion, could be taken by the monarch with the consent of the senate council. This body theoretically composed the 28 (originally 16) senators-resident appointed by each sejm to monitor the king’s actions. In practice, it could be attended by any senator in proximity to the monarch, and was usually dominated by royal supporters. However, the nobility as a whole vigilantly ensured that neither the senate council, nor the extraordinary convocations and general councils called in wartime, usurped the sejm’s exclusive rights to make laws or agree new taxes.29

Circumventing the liberum veto: Confederacies The only way, therefore, to circumvent the liberum veto was by a confederacy. A confederacy was essentially an armed league of nobles, formed in an emergency, whose object was to restore the Commonwealth to its pristine state; it was not supposed to introduce novelties. Confederacies might be formed either against a king who was considered a threat to liberty, or ‘around’ the king (przy królu). Tellingly, they were always formed during interregnums, when the nation had been ‘orphaned’, and when no king could subvert a confederacy for his own ends. Confederacies were supposed to be formed locally; these would then join with each other, usually first into confederacies for the Crown and the grand duchy, and only then into a united one for the entire Commonwealth. Confederacies formed from the ‘top down’, as it were, were considered irregular. This preference testifies to the importance attached to safeguarding the interests of the peripheries from those wielding power at the centre. The supreme authority of a confederacy was its ‘general council’ or ‘generalcy’ ( generalnosć´ ) which was headed by an elected marshal. If a sejm was held under the auspices of a confederacy, then the sejm formed the confederacy’s general council. Crucially, the liberum veto did not apply, allowing decisions to be made by majority vote, if unanimity was not forthcoming. The sejmy of convocation and election, which took place during an interregnum, were automatically confederated. Other sejmy could be confederated if the circumstances warranted, or permitted. Outside interregnums, it was considered more regular for a ‘free’ sejm unanimously to confederate itself after it assembled, than to be subsumed into an existing confederacy.

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Confederated sejmy were sometimes mooted as a means by which political deadlock could be broken, but in the 1740s the Saxon court and its supporters in the Commonwealth were warned repeatedly by the Russian court not to pursue the idea.30 However, almost all the transformations experienced by the sejm during Stanisław August’s reign, not least the unprecedented amount of legislation (amounting to about half of the statute law in the compilation known as the Volumina Legum) were enabled by confederacies sanctioned in St Petersburg.31 Catherine II first allowed the interregnal confederacy to be maintained after Poniatowski’s election in 1764. Russian intervention in the Commonwealth’s affairs then necessitated a string of confederated sejmy until 1776. As soon as things settled down, however, Catherine insisted that sejmy again be ‘free’: that is, subject to unanimity in all but ‘economic matters’. This remained the case until 1786. None were ‘ruptured’ by the liberum veto during that time, but the correspondence of politicians and diplomats makes it clear that the survival of these sejmy was largely because the opposition leaders were warned by the Russian ambassador not to break them up. Catherine permitted Stanisław August to confederate the sejm of 1788 in order to pass an alliance with Russia, raise taxes, and expand the army, but, with Russia at war with the Ottoman empire, the king’s opponents seized control of the sejm. By 1792, following a rapprochement between the monarch and part of the opposition, many of the institutions of the Commonwealth and its political culture were transformed by an unprecedented burst of legislation, not dictated by any foreign power. Future confederacies were abolished, along with the liberum veto that had made them necessary.32 The work of the Four Years’ Sejm was overthrown by the counterrevolutionary Confederacy of Targowica (in the Crown) and its Lithuanian equivalent, both sponsored by the tsaritsa. The Commonwealth’s last sejm, held in Grodno (Hrodna), Lithuania, in 1793, was therefore also confederated. Its tasks were to ratify the Second Partition of that year, and to approve constitutional arrangements designed to keep the Commonwealth subservient to Russia. These reshaped institutions were somewhat more dualist than those established by the Four Years’ Sejm, but they did not include separate legislatures for the Crown and the grand duchy. The insurrection of 1794, led by Tadeusz Kosćiuszko, was unable to summon either the sejm or the sejmiki, but there is no evidence that any radical change, towards either greater unity or separateness, was envisaged at this time in the relationship between the Crown and Lithuania.33

The membership of the sejm An examination of lawmaking provides an illuminating perspective on the relationship both between the centre and the peripheries, and between the constituent parts of the Commonwealth. Given the eventful nature of

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Poniatowski’s reign, any depiction of a ‘model’ process inevitably reflects the situation in the period between 1717 and 1763. With few exceptions, this was a process of failing to legislate. However, in formal terms the sejm changed little until 1791.34 First, the king issued proclamations (uniwersały) summoning the 62 electoral sejmiki, and informing them of the principal matters for deliberation by the sejm. He also sent letters to senators and other influential nobles, encouraging them to attend the sejmiki, support his candidates, and ensure that his wishes were reflected in the instructions. This required several hundred documents.35 For an ‘ordinary’, biennial sejm, which usually began at Michaelmas (29 September), the electoral sejmiki would assemble six weeks earlier at their traditional venues. In the Crown, these were almost invariably churches, but most of the Lithuanian sejmiki continued to meet in royal castles.36 The number of envoys elected varied between sejmiki. Royal Prussia had the right to send as many envoys as it pleased until 1764, when the number was fixed at 42. Elsewhere in the Crown, 36 sejmiki elected 128 envoys, the 24 Lithuanian sejmiki elected 48 envoys, and the condominium of Livonia six. These figures (from before the First Partition) reflect the fact that Lithuania was more logically divided up than the Crown. The Grand Duchy’s nine palatinates were divided into 24 districts (between one and five per palatinate), each of which elected two envoys. In the Crown, most, although not all, palatinates elected their envoys at a single sejmik. The ten Mazovian and three Podlasian counties each had their own electoral sejmik. The numbers elected could therefore vary from two to 12 per sejmik, not counting Royal Prussia. Three sejmiki, Smolensk and Starodub in the Grand Duchy and Czernihów in the Crown, were sejmiki-in-exile, attended by nobles who claimed descent from those who chose exile after Muscovy annexed their lands in the mid-seventeenth century. Austria and Prussia would permit no analogous sejmiki to be formed after the partition of 1772. Those elected were almost invariably the candidates of one or other of the competing ‘parties’. The name should not imply the modern panoply of members and manifestos, although the dark arts of ‘spin’ were not unknown. The Czartoryski and Poniatowski ‘Familia’ in its heyday in the 1740s had a network of fixers and clients covering most areas of the Commonwealth, but the influence of other clans was regionally based. The Potockis were strongest in the south-east of the Polish Crown, where they had vast estates, while the Radziwiłł interest could often reckon on about half the sejmiki in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. A few dozen families had an influence in one or more sejmiki, but it was rarely a predominant one. Nearly everywhere local coalitions were made and unmade, with or against the royal interest – coalitions that did not always reflect the pattern at the level of the Commonwealth as a whole.37

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A magnate might have his poorest noble tenants carted to a sejmik, and there fed and inebriated, in order to intimidate his opponents. However, most relationships between patrons and clients were less one-sided. Patrons were expected to have their clients elected to local office, help arrange advantageous marriages for them, educate their sons, and support their suits in the law courts. Theoretically, many sejmiki had long agreed to decide by majority vote when necessary. In practice, nearly all were subject to the liberum veto. Admittedly, few if any ordinary noblemen would dare to try to exercise the veto without a powerful backer. When rival factions were more or less evenly matched, the risk of a sejmik splitting or ‘doubling’ was high. On some pretext, genuine or otherwise, one group might walk out, lodge a protest in the local court chancellery, and continue the deliberations at a different venue. Violence was not unknown, but the great majority of sejmiki passed off without bloodshed; many even deliberated in soporific calm. Attendances ranged from a few dozen to several thousand. This meant that almost 100,000 noble citizens could sometimes participate in the parliamentary and legislative process. Differences in local political culture manifested themselves across the Commonwealth. In the Great Polish palatinates, the social, economic, and cultural distance between the leading families and the moderately wealthy nobility was not unbridgeable. The Great Polanders also tended to be highly legalistic; as a result, the sejmiki of S´roda and Sieradz were usually ruptured by the liberum veto in the mid-eighteenth century, leaving the Great Polish palatinates without a voice at the sejm. The same phenomenon, as we have noted, occurred in Royal Prussia, which also enjoyed relative prosperity and had a strong (if more locally focused) civic tradition. In Mazovia, the szlachta was much poorer, but magnate latifundia were largely absent, except for the estates of the bishop of Płock and the archbishop of Gniezno. Mazovian sejmiki tended to elect royalist, or ‘regalist’ envoys, and to take a strong line against non-Catholic ‘dissidents’ and clerical affluence alike. Magnate estates were more substantial in the Little Polish palatinates of Cracow, Sandomierz, and Lublin, but these were also areas distinguished by keen republican traditions. Aristocratic dominance of local political life was greatest in most – but not all – of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in Volhynia, and at the far Ukrainian periphery. Despite the presence of extensive estates belonging to the Radziwiłłs, the Duchy of Samogitia in the north-west of Lithuania was densely populated by nobles with a distinct Samogitian identity, who would not be bullied. This tradition of independence was reflected in the fact that they elected their own senior senator, who was not called a palatine, as elsewhere, but a starosta.38 The neighbouring sejmik of Kowno (Kaunas) was famed for the extent to which the principal local families excluded external influence. It was never once ruptured by the liberum veto.39 The royal domain lands that covered much of the territory around

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Grodno sustained large numbers of nobles who were directly dependent on the monarch. Nobody worked the resultant patronage as well as the court treasurer of Lithuania, Antoni Tyzenhauz, in the mid- to late 1770s. With the co-operation of the Radziwiłł interest, he was able to arrange the election of the great majority of Lithuanian envoys, who obediently followed the royal line at successive sejmy.40 Almost nowhere, however, was it safe (in the long term) for either a magnate faction or the royal court to force through the election of men who did not command respect in the locality. Magnate fortunes were too precarious; the rivalry between the leading clans too bitter.41 In most areas of the Commonwealth, scions of aristocratic families could not afford to take their election for granted; they rarely constituted more than a third of the envoys anyway. Most came from the wealthy and moderately wealthy nobility. King Stanisław August’s memoirs contain an oft-quoted, humorous account of the labours that led to his election, aged 20, as an envoy by the sejmik of Łomz˙a in Mazovia in 1752.42 The Livonian sejmik was exceptional. Traditionally, the king’s nominees for all six mandates (two for Lithuania, two for the Crown, and two for Livonia itself) were confirmed by the 50 or so nobles who turned up. After the First Partition, nearly all the electors were either Russian subjects or sujets mixtes. Sometimes the compliant electors even left open ‘windows’ in the act of election. The king, with the agreement of the Russian ambassador, could then write in the names of the envoys. In this way, he might compensate those of his supporters who had failed to be elected elsewhere. Livonia was the Commonwealth’s nearest equivalent to an English ‘rotten borough’; Stanisław August candidly compared it to Old Sarum.43 However, from 1784 onwards, the court encountered increasing resistance, and in 1788 all six of the opposition candidates were elected. They had a recommendation from Grigorii Potemkin, but they had also bothered to turn up, whereas the court’s candidates had not.44 In general, the reign of Stanisław August saw the pull of aristocratic patrons over middling nobles weaken. In the first months of the Four Years’ Sejm, magnates’ traditional leverage over envoys, even among the Lithuanians, broke down almost completely; and so too did the king’s hold over his supporters.45

The process of lawmaking The instructions given to the envoys were usually written up by a small number of political activists after elections had taken place, and the majority of nobles had left. They had to be signed by the marshal of the sejmik. In the grand duchy, the district marshal (who exercised his office for life, following his choice by the king from four candidates presented by the szlachta) usually presided over the sejmik, although sometimes the senior senator present did so. In the Crown, the szlachta elected a marshal on

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each occasion. Neither in the Crown nor in the Grand Duchy could local élites ignore the commonplaces of noble political culture, even if they wished to. In the main, this ensured that instructions denounced novelties and foreigners, defended old laws and privileges, and contained praises of faith and liberty, as well as thanks to the king for his paternal solicitude. One factor of Tyzenhauz’s dominance of Lithuanian elections was an insistence in the instructions on the preservation of the separate status of the Grand Duchy, something that Stanisław August regarded as an outdated ‘prejudice’.46 Other clauses reflected local interests. One staple feature were lamentations at the extent of war damage (going back to the Great Northern War (1700–21) and beyond) and consequent requests for relief in taxation. The sejmiki might also request confirmation of ecclesiastical foundations because, at least in theory, from 1635 no new legacies could be made to the church without the sejm’s permission. Persons deemed deserving were recommended to the king for promotion in the lay and ecclesiastical hierarchies. Some of these desiderata were repeated for years, even decades, with no realistic prospect of their ever being enacted. Despite the increasingly hollow ring of both elections and instructions, the king might sometimes ask the sejmiki to consider a controversial measure, such as the raising of more revenue to fund a larger army, or the curtailing the powers of the hetmani (the senior commanders of the Crown and Lithuanian armies). Such a request would draw the attention of the key political players to the wording of the instructions. At the very least, suitable instructions might provide a pretext for a client envoy to break up the sejm by the liberum veto, thereby diverting some of the odium away from those who were in fact responsible. The content of such instructions was often the outcome of quid pro quo compromises between various magnate factions and the royal court. Such bargains could produce clauses in direct contradiction to each other. By the time of the Four Years’ Sejm, however, the instructions had become more direct expressions of noble opinion. Their old-fashioned tone and content did not please the enlightened élite in Warsaw.47 From 1678 the principle had been established that every third sejm should be held in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The principle was not always honoured, but the royal castle in Grodno did host 11 sejmy.48 Cracow, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Poland, traditionally hosted the royal coronation and the coronation sejm that followed it, but in 1764 Wawel Castle was considered to be too ruinous for the purpose. Otherwise, the sejm met at the royal castle in Warsaw. An ‘ordinary’ sejm sat for six weeks, although it might be prolonged by common consent. ‘Extraordinary’ sejmy, called outside the usual biennial calendar, were expected to conclude their business in just two weeks. This pattern was broken by the greatly extended sejmy of 1767–8, 1773–5, 1788–92, and 1793. At the inauguration of the sejm, following a sermon, the royal propositions from the throne would be read out to both houses. Then came the senatorial

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responses (vota), which were made according to the order of precedence of the spiritual and then the temporal senators. They were sometimes followed by the reading out of diplomatic despatches and reports, and an audience granted to delegates of the army. Afterwards, the two chambers separated. The chamber of envoys first had to elect a marshal. He was elected by turn from among the envoys of Great Poland and Little Poland when the sejm was held in the Crown, and from among the Lithuanians when it met in the grand duchy. This was a further example of the many alternata that epitomised the weight attached to equilibrium and equality in the form of government. The marshal had a limited, but not negligible, ability to guide the deliberations, and so his office was keenly contested. Young men from aristocratic families were often chosen for the position. Towards the end of the reigns of both Saxon kings, several sejmy in succession were broken up before a marshal could be elected. If the sejm survived this hurdle, it would then verify the credentials of those who had been elected envoys. If a sejmik was ‘doubled’, it was for the other envoys to decide who was lawfully elected. During confederated sejmy, this procedure could give a considerable advantage to the stronger side; at ‘free’ sejmy the potential for time-wasting was enormous. The chamber of envoys could then begin its deliberations. Procedure was extremely fluid until the reform of 1791, as extraneous material could be introduced almost at will. If the marshal would not formally call an envoy to speak, the envoy could speak interlocutorie – other envoys would usually give way. For the marshal to curtail even the lengthiest and most irrelevant of orations was regarded as a grave assault on the hallowed ‘free voice’, the libera vox. Bills had to be read out, discussed, and unanimously agreed, clause by clause (categoratim). This allowed great scope for wrecking amendments, safeguarding the particular privileges of palatinates and provinces. Moreover, any envoy could object to the ‘activity’ of the session, and suspend (literally, dam: tamowac´ ) the proceedings. This prevented bills from being read out or any procedural steps being taken. However, it did not prevent envoys from making speeches, and so the division between sessions in activate and those in passivitate was less sharp than might be supposed. A further source of disruption were the spectators, who were not restricted to the public gallery (an innovation of Stanisław August’s reign), but could sit among the envoys almost as they pleased, unless they were asked to leave, so that supposedly confidential foreign despatches could be read. The senate deliberated in parallel to the envoys, under the presidency of the king, although its sessions were shorter. Messengers coursed between the two chambers, and conferences were held between their deputations. Senators served with envoys on commissions and deputations formed by the sejm for various purposes. These included the working out of plans to increase the army and find the necessary funds in 1736–8.49 Most of the 146 senators (before 1768) failed to attend sessions, or else turned up late,

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after the vota. The bishops tended to be the most assiduous, the castellans least so. Provincial sessions enabled senators and envoys from Great Poland, Little Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to co-ordinate their stances. The senior senator present usually presided. A greater degree of magnate influence and, at times, royalist ‘discipline’ among the Lithuanian envoys, as well as the many distinctly Lithuanian particularities to defend, tended to make the Lithuanian provincial session more cohesive than the others. Questions of taxation and recruitment, however, could easily set Great Polanders against Little Polanders. Theoretically, the two chambers were supposed to rejoin five days before the scheduled end of the sejm; in practice they usually did so only on the last day, if the sejm had survived to that point. The proposed laws to which agreement had been reached, called ‘constitutions’, were read out, and assent was asked three times in each case. The formula was a threefold cry of ‘zgoda!’ (agreement). If the cry of ‘nie masz zgody!’ (you do not have agreement) was heard, the objector(s) would be beseeched to yield to the will of the majority. If, at length, he (or they) refused to do so, the very continuance of the sejm could be threatened by the deadlock, unless agreement could be reached to move on. If the sejm reached a successful conclusion, the laws that were agreed were inscribed into the acts of the local court chancellery (usually that of Warsaw) and published. No distinction was made between laws that dealt with private and public business, except in pious injunctions to set private interests aside in order to attend first to the public weal. Even after the introduction in 1768 of a threefold categorisation of ‘cardinal laws’, held to be immutable and guaranteed by Russia, ‘materiæ status’, requiring unanimity, and ‘economic matters’, subject to majority vote, laws of fundamental constitutional import rub shoulders in the columns of the Volumina Legum with taxes, with permissions to monasteries to purchase estates, and with international treaties, including the ratifications of the partitions of 1772–3 and 1793. Laws were also often ‘reassumed’, or repeated, rather than enforced.50 At any stage of a ‘free’ sejm, the liberum veto might bring all proceedings to an end. About as often, time simply ran out, as the November darkness fell on the last day. The rule that the sejm should not sit by candlelight (except for the one permitted to the secretary in the middle of the chamber) was intended to prevent the court altering the agreed drafts of laws and getting them through an exhausted and unobservant sejm at a last, all-night sitting. This provision also served as a defence of particular and provincial interests. When, after repeated appeals, agreement was not forthcoming either to the reading out of the draft laws or to a prolongation of the sessions, the marshal would declare the sejm over. At a confederated sejm, the chambers deliberated jointly, with the envoys sitting on benches behind the senators’ chairs. Because there was no need

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for the two chambers to rejoin, once laws had been agreed, they could be inscribed into law straight away. The combined chambers deliberated in the king’s presence (which was required until the exceptional circumstances of the Four Years’ Sejm) but under the guidance of the marshal elected by the chamber of envoys. The marshal was also one of the twin marshals of the confederacy: one for the Polish Crown and one for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Because all but one of the confederated sejmy was held in Warsaw rather than Grodno, the marshal for the Crown was generally also the marshal of the sejm. However, during the Four Years’ Sejm, Kazimierz Sapieha, the Lithuanian marshal of the sejm confederacy, played a vital political role, including the negotiation of the ‘Mutual Assurance of the Two Nations’. He often spoke on behalf of the Lithuanian envoys and senators, especially after their stance had been agreed at provincial sessions.51

Representation and accountability Envoys were supposed to return to their localities for ‘relational sejmiki’, at which they would give an account of their actions to their electors. Although no formal sanctions were imposed on envoys who had defied their instructions, such envoys risked verbal abuse (or worse), and their chances of future election were reduced. As expressions of direct democracy, it is not surprising that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who condemned theories of representation in Du Contrat Social (1762), dubbed the sejmiki the ‘palladium of liberty’, upheld the principle of imperative mandates, and called for the revitalisation of ‘relational sejmiki’ in his Considérations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne of 1771.52 The constitution of 3 May 1791 declared envoys ‘representatives of the entire nation’ in the British mould, and so not bound by their instructions.53 From the end of 1789, much of the implementation of the legislation passed by the Four Years’ Sejm was assigned to ‘civil-military commissions of the peace’, elected by the sejmiki in each locality.54 Nevertheless, the political need to carry the noble ‘nation’ in the provinces along with the élite deliberating in Warsaw is shown by the efforts successfully expended to persuade the sejmiki of February 1792 to endorse the constitution, preferably by swearing an oath to defend it. These sejmiki were a model of orderly conduct, and the reform of 1791 that changed both venues and procedures was conscientiously implemented. Landless nobles were excluded from active participation, a measure designed to weaken magnate influence further. No sejmik openly criticised the constitution, and not more than a tenth were clearly lukewarm in their reaction. Almost three-quarters of the sejmiki either swore an oath to defend the constitution or else made a solemn pledge to do so, combined with effusive thanks. More than four-fifths of the Lithuanian sejmiki made the strongest possible commitment, and swore an oath. This was twice the proportion that did so

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in the Polish Crown. The language of the resolutions and oaths testifies to deep-rooted desire for national unity.55

Conclusion Tracing the process of making legislation in Poland-Lithuania highlights complexities in the relationships between centre and peripheries. Much of the Commonwealth’s constitutional apparatus and tradition operated to prevent either the monarch or a parliamentary majority from disadvantaging a particular province or group. The study of this system reveals the composite origins of the polity, the persistence of dualist and trialist structures, and a lasting sense of Lithuanian identity. However, by the eighteenth century (and certainly after 1772) the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth can no longer usefully be described as a composite state. When compared to the situation elsewhere, the similarities in the structures and procedures of its parliamentary life are far more apparent than the remaining differences between its constituent parts. The network of sejmiki helped to integrate political culture between Poles and Lithuanians, Great Polanders and Little Polanders, Mazovians and Livonians, Ruthenians and Samogitians, and even between Prussians and all the rest. When, in 1788–92, it became possible for the noble citizens of the Commonwealth to make laws of their own volition, they set aside many – although not all – of the traditional restraints designed to protect particular and provincial interests. Many Lithuanian legislators and nobles sought to prove their patriotism by adopting a generally more supportive stance towards the reforms of the ‘Polish revolution’ than their colleagues from the Crown. While it respected Lithuanian concerns, the Four Years’ Sejm legislated in the name of a single, sovereign, and ‘Polish’ nation.

Notes 1. See Róisín Healy, ‘The View from the Margins: Ireland and Poland-Lithuania, 1698–1798’ in Richard Unger and Jakub Basista (eds), Britain and Poland-Lithuania: Contact and Comparison from the Middle Ages to 1795 (Leiden, 2008), pp. 355–73, and my foreword to the volume, ‘Taking Stock – Looking Forward’, pp. xxxix–xl. Wherever possible, references will be given to works in English: the reader is asked to forgive the over-representation of my own work. Unless there is an acceptable English form, place names are given in the language most appropriate for the context; usually Polish, sometimes German, and occasionally in both Belarusian and Polish. The current version, if different, follows in brackets on the first mention. The clearest overall guide to Polish and Polish-Lithuanian history is Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2006). However, Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (2nd edn, Oxford, 2005), conveys the flavour in an unrivalled manner. For the period before the Partitions, see also Daniel Stone, The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386–1795 (Seattle, 2001).

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2. See Andrzej Ajnenkiel, W dobie rozbiorów, vol. 2, pt 1 of Historia sejmu polskiego (Warsaw, 1989), pp. 29–51. See also W. H. Zawadzki, A Man of Honour: Adam Czartoryski as a Statesman of Russia and Poland 1795–1831 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 259–62, 276–7, 281, 286, 297–8. 3. See Zofia Zielin´ska, ‘Poland between Prussia and Russia in the Eighteenth Century’ in Samuel Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-century Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791 (Bloomington, 1997), pp. 87–111. 4. Compare Orsolya Szakály’s chapter in this book. Richard Butterwick, Poland’s Last King and English Culture: Stanisław August Poniatowski, 1732–1798 (Oxford, 1998), passim. 5. See above, pp. 1–4. 6. See Mariusz Markiewicz, ‘The Functioning of the Monarchy during the Reigns of the Electors of Saxony, 1697–1763’ in Richard Butterwick (ed.), The PolishLithuanian Monarchy in European Context, c. 1500–1795 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 172–91. 7. Konstytucja 3 Maja 1791: Statut zgromadzenia przyjaciół Konstytucji, edited by Jerzy Kowecki, with introduction by Bogusław Lesńodorski (Warsaw, 1981), p. 81. A translation was made by the Commonwealth’s envoy to the court of St James, Franciszek Bukaty, and published as New Constitution of the Government of Poland (London, 1791), reprinted in the Annual Register for 1791. The work of leading Polish historians can be accessed in Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform. 8. See Andrzej Walicki, ‘The Idea of Nation in the Main Currents of Political Thought of the Polish Enlightenment’ in Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform, pp. 155–74; idem, The Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Nationhood: Polish Political Thought from Noble Republicanism to Tadeusz Kosćiuszko (Notre Dame, IN, 1989); Richard Butterwick, ‘Deconfessionalization? The Policy of the Polish Revolution towards Ruthenia, 1788–1792’ in Central Europe, vi (2008), pp. 91–121; Robert Frost, ‘Ordering the Kaleidoscope: The Construction of Identities in the Lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since 1569’ in Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 212–31. 9. See, inter alia, Richard Butterwick, ‘Introduction’ in idem (ed.), Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy, pp. 1–23; Martyn Rady, ‘Rethinking Jagiełło Hungary’ in Central Europe, iii (2005), pp. 3–18; S. C. Rowell, ‘Forging a Union? Some Reflections on the Early Jagiellonian Monarchy’ in Lithuanian Historical Studies, i (1996), pp. 6–21; Aleksander Gieysztor, ‘The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1370–1506’ in Christopher Allmand (ed.), New Cambridge Medieval History, vii: c. 1415–1500 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 727–47. 10. See Paul W. Knoll, The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320–1370 (Chicago, 1972). 11. See Karin Friedrich, ‘Nobles, Burghers and the Monarchy in Poland-Lithuania: The Case of Royal Prussia, 1454–1772/93’ in Butterwick (ed.), Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy, pp. 93–115. Casimir Jagiellon (b. 1430) reigned 1440–92 as Grand Duke of Lithuania, and 1447–92 as King of Poland. 12. See S. C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295–1345 (Cambridge, 1994). 13. See A. S. Kamin´ski, ‘The Cossack Experiment in the Szlachta Democracy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: The Hadiach (Hadziacz) Union’ in Harvard Ukrainian Studies, i (1977), pp. 178–97. ‘Ruthenia’ derives from Rutenia, dog-Latin for Rus′. It is much to be preferred to the alternative translation, Russia, which

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14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth when translated back from Latin into Russian became Rossiia. From ruskii descend the modern Belarusian and Ukrainian languages. ‘Ruthenia’ has had various meanings, but is used here to mean the lands inhabited predominantly by non-Great Russian eastern Slavs, and which were once part of the Commonwealth. The water meadow served as a pretext to reactivate the sejmik of Livonia in 1778 (Witold Filipczak, Sejm 1778 roku (Warsaw, 2000), p. 109). See Karin Friedrich, The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772 (Cambridge, 2000). Various perspectives are reflected in H. E. Dembkowski, The Union of Lublin: Polish Federalism in the Golden Age (Boulder, CO, & New York, 1982); Ju¯rate˙ Kiaupiene˙, ‘The Grand Duchy and the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in the Sixteenth Century: Reflections on the Lithuanian Political Nation and the Union of Lublin’ in Butterwick (ed.), Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy, pp. 82–92; eadem, ‘The Grand Duchy of Lithuania in East Central Europe, or Once Again about the Lithuanian-Polish Union’ in Lithuanian Historical Studies, ii (1997), pp. 56–71; Juliusz Bardach, ‘L’Union de Lublin. Ses origines et son rôle historique’ in Acta Poloniae Historica, xxi (1970), pp. 60–92; Henryk Lulewicz, Gniewów o unie˛ cia˛g dalszy. Stosunki polsko-litewskie w latach 1569–1588 (Warsaw, 2002). On the sejm before the eighteenth century, see Anna Sucheni-Grabowska, ‘The Origin and Development of the Polish Parliamentary System through the End of the Seventeenth Century’ in Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform, pp. 13–50, and the historiographical anthology edited by Władysław Czaplin´ski, The Polish Parliament at the Summit of its Development (Wrocław, 1985). The Lithuanian sejm and its antecedents are discussed by Lidia Korczak, ‘Pocza˛tki litewskiego parlamentaryzmu’ in S. F. Sokal and A. M. Januskevich (eds), Parlamentskiia struktury ulady u sisteme deiarzhaunaha kiravannia Vialikaha kniastva Litouskaha i Rechi Paspalitai u XV–XVIII stahoddeiakh (Minsk, 2008), pp. 27–40. The convocation and other aspects of parliamentary life specific to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are explained by Andrzej Rachuba, Wielkie Ksie˛stwo Litewskie w systemie parlamentarnym Rzeczypospolitej w latach 1569–1763 (Warsaw, 2002). Jerzy Michalski, ‘Zagadnienie unii polsko-litewskiej w czasach panowania Stanisława Augusta’ in idem, Studia historyczne z XVIII i XIX wieku, i: Polityka i społeczen´stwo (Warsaw, 2007), p. 45. Łukasz Ka˛dziela, ‘Local Government Reform during the Four-Year Diet’ in Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform, pp. 379–96. E.g. Juliusz Bardach, O Rzeczpospolita˛ Obojga Narodów (Warsaw, 1998), pp. 49–50, 53–4; Rachuba, Wielkie Ksie˛stwo Litewskie w systemie parlamentarnym Rzeczypospolitej, pp. 132–3. Compare Gintautas Sliesoriu¯nas, Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštyste˙ vidaus karo išvakare˙se: didiku˛ grupuocˇiu˛ kova 1690–1697 m. (Vilnius, 2000), pp. 245–60, and in the English summary at pp. 330–2, 337, who sees Lithuanian support for the ‘co-equation’ merely as an outcome of the struggle between the Sapieha clan and its opponents that was then raging, and questions the evidence for the view that Lithuanian nobles demanded the adoption of Polish in place of Ruthenian. Juliusz Bardach, ‘The Constitution of 3 May and the Mutual Guarantee of the Two Nations’ in Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform, pp. 357–78. Zigmantas Kiaupa, ‘The Rise of the Mutual Guarantee of the Two Nations’ in Franciszek Ziejka and Krzysztof S´lusarek (eds), Europa unii i federacji. Idea jednosći narodów i pan´stwa od s´redniowiecza do czasów wspólczesnych (Cracow, 2004), pp. 91–8. Quoted after Michalski, ‘Zagadnienie unii polsko-litewskiej’ in idem, Studia historyczne, i, 64.

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21. Zare˛czenie wzaiemne oboyga narodów (Warsaw, 1791). I give examples of the expressions used by Lithuanians during the Four Years’ Sejm in ‘Finis Poloniae, finis Lituaniae, finis Reipublicae?’ in Alfredas Bumblauskas et al. (eds), Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštija ir jos tradicija: Tautiniu˛ naratyvu˛ likimai (forthcoming). 22. Rachuba, Wielkie Ksie˛stwo Litewskie w systemie parlamentarnym Rzeczypospolitej, ch. 4. 23. Józef A. Gierowski, Sejmik generalny Ksie˛stwa Mazowieckiego na tle ustroju sejmikowego Mazowsza (Wrocław, 1948). 24. Friedrich, ‘Nobles, Burghers and the Monarchy’, pp. 95–101. A more detailed treatment is Zbigniew Naworski, Sejmik generalny Prus Królewskich 1569–1772. Organizacja i funkcjonowanie na tle systemu zgromadzen´ stanowych prowincji (Torun´, 1992). 25. Stanisław August Poniatowski to Charles Lee, 20 Nov. 1767/Mar. 1768, quoted (in the French original) in Butterwick, Poland’s Last King and English Culture, p. 164. The reforms agreed at the 1717 ‘Silent Sejm’, which brought an end to civil war and stabilised the constitution until 1764, included an end to the ability of sejmiki to raise taxes on their own authority, and also of the ability of envoys to refer questions of taxation ‘to the brethren’ (do braci) at their sejmiki. 26. See Friedrich, Other Prussia, pp. 201–16. 27. Marcin Sokalski, ‘Political Centre and Periphery of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Parliamentary Conflicts in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’ in Adam Perłakowski, Robert Bartczak and Anton Schindling (eds), Die Reiche Mitteleuropas in der Neuzeit. Integration und Herrschaft. Liber Memorialis Jan Piroz˙ yn´ ski (Cracow, 2009), p. 125. 28. Władysław Konopczyn´ ski’s fundamental Liberum Veto: Studium porównawczohistoryczne, first published in 1918 (2nd edn, Cracow, 2002), is also available in an abridged French translation: Le Liberum Veto: Étude sur le développement du principe majoritaire (Paris, 1930). See also Jerzy Lukowski, Liberty’s Folly: The PolishLithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), pp. 91–3; Michalski, ‘Sejm w czasach panowania Stanisława Augusta’, pp. 338–43. 29. Robert Frost, After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War 1655–1660 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 15–16, 137–9, 142–5, 148–52. Mariusz Markiewicz, Rady senatorskie Augusta II (1697–1733) (Wrocław, 1988). 30. Zofia Zielin´ ska, Walka ‘Familii’ o reforme˛ Rzeczypospolitej 1743–1752 (Warsaw, 1983), pp. 70–7, 140–52, 275–9, 318–19, 339. 31. Jerzy Michalski, ‘Sejm w czasach saskich’ in Historia Sejmu polskiego, i, ed. Jerzy Michalski, Do schyłku szlacheckiej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw, 1984), p. 350. Eight volumes of the Volumina Legum were published by the Piarist Fathers in Warsaw between 1732 and 1782; the ninth volume, containing the laws passed by the sejmy of 1782–92, appeared in St Petersburg in 1889, and the tenth, comprising the legislation of 1793, was published in Poznan´ in 1952. The laws of Stanisław August’s reign fill volumes 7–10, the fattest ones. 32. Stanisław August’s reign is well covered in English. See, inter alia, Adam Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (London, 1992); Lukowski, Liberty’s Folly, chs 8–10; idem, The Partitions of Poland: 1772, 1793, 1795 (Harlow, 1999); R. H. Lord, The Second Partition of Poland: A Study in Diplomatic History (Cambridge, MA, 1915); Daniel Stone, Polish Politics and National Reform, 1775–1788 (Boulder, CO, & New York, 1976); Richard Butterwick, ‘The Enlightened Monarchy of Stanisław August Poniatowski (1764–1795)’ in idem (ed.), Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy, pp. 193–218; and most of Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform.

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33. Lukowski, Partitions of Poland, chs 6–7; Władysław Smolen´ ski, Konfederacya targowicka (Cracow, 1903); Ramune˙ Šmigelskyte˙-Stukiene˙ , Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystes konfederacijos susidarymas ir veikla 1792–1793 (Vilnius, 2003); Łukasz Ka˛dziela, Mie˛dzy zdrada˛ a słuz˙ ba˛ Rzeczypospolitej. Fryderyk Moszyn´ski w latach 1792–1793 (Warsaw, 1993); Michalski, ‘Zagadnienie unii polsko-litewskiej’ in idem, Studia historyczne, i, 70–3. 34. In English, see Lukowski, Liberty’s Folly, pp. 89–101. Multitudinous monographs in Polish cover particular sejmy and individual sejmiki. The best overall guide to parliamentary practice remains Jerzy Michalski, ‘Sejm w czasach saskich’ in Historia sejmu polskiego, i, 300–49, supplemented, given the general absence of reform in this period, by Władysław Czaplin´ ski, ‘Sejm w latach 1587–1696’ in ibid., 217–99; Wojciech Kriegseisen, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej (do 1763 roku). Geneza i kryzys władzy ustawodawczej (Warsaw, 1995); and Edward Opalin´ski, Sejm srebnego wieku 1587–1652. Mie˛dzy głosowaniem wie˛kszosćiowym a liberum veto (Warsaw, 2001). For the sejmiki, see Jerzy Michalski, ‘Les diétines polonaises au XVIIIe siècle’ in Acta Poloniae Historica, xii (1965), pp. 87–107; Wojciech Kriegseisen, Sejmiki Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej w XVII i XVIII wieku (Warsaw, 1991); Adam Lityn´ ski, Sejmiki ziemskie 1764–1793. Dzieje reform (Katowice, 1988). However, Rachuba, Wielkie Ksie˛stwo Litewskie w systemie parlamentarnym Rzeczypospolitej, is an essential corrective to polonocentric perspectives. So too are Andrzej B. Zakrzewski, Sejmiki Wielkiego Ksie˛stwa Litewskiego XVI–XVIII w. Ustrój i funkcjonowanie. Sejmik trocki (Warsaw, 2000), and Robertas Jurgaitis, ‘Vilniaus seimelio veikla 1717–1795 m.’ (PhD thesis, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania, 2007). 35. Sokalski, ‘Political Centre and Periphery of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’, p. 123. 36. Lithuanian locations are detailed by Andrzej Rachuba, ‘Miejsca obrad sejmików Wielkiego Ksie˛stwa Litewskiego w latach 1569–1794’ in Sokal and Januskevich (eds), Parlamentskiia struktury ulady, pp. 183–97. 37. Zielin´ska, Walka ‘Familii’, ch. 11; eadem, ‘Mechanizm sejmikowy i klientela radziwiłłowska za Sasów’ in Przegla˛d Historyczny, lxii (1971), pp. 398–416. For examples of the Potocki influence, see Wiesław Bondryna, Reprezentacja sejmowa Rusi Czerwonej w czasach saskich (Lublin, 2005). 38. Other starostowie were the holders for life of Crown estates, the richest of which almost invariably went to magnates sitting in the senate. Some had judicial responsibilities, but no other starosta was a senator ex officio. 39. Michalski, ‘Sejm w czasach saskich’, p. 304. 40. Stanisław Kosćiałkowski, Antoni Tyzenhauz, podskarbi nadworny litewski (2 vols, London, 1970–1), i, 93–164. 41. R. I. Frost, ‘The Nobility of Poland-Lithuania, 1569–1795’ in H. M. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (2 vols, Harlow, 1995), ii, 199–216. 42. Stanisław August, Mémoires du roi Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, i, ed. Sergei Goryainov (St Petersburg, 1914), pp. 58–62. Much of it is quoted in English translation in Zamoyski, Last King of Poland, pp. 33–4. 43. Stanisław August to Filippo Mazzei, 19 Jan. 1791 (Biblioteka Narodowa, Warsaw, Akc.11,356, vol. 1, f. 457). 44. Jerzy Michalski, ‘Sejmiki poselskie 1788 roku’ in idem, Studia historyczne, i, 258– 60. 45. Emanuel Rostworowski, Ostatni król Rzeczypospolitej. Geneza i upadek Konstytucji 3 maja (Warsaw, 1966), pp. 99–101, 146, 156–7.

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46. Michalski, ‘Zagadnienie unii polsko-litewskiej’ in idem, Studia historyczne, i, 52–5. 47. On the period 1788–92 see Michalski, ‘Sejmiki poselskie 1788 roku’; Emanuel Rostworowski, Sprawa aukcji wojska na tle sytuacji politycznej przed Sejmem Czteroletnim (Warsaw, 1957), pp. 226–32; idem, Legendy i fakty XVIII wieku (Warsaw, 1963), pp. 343–55; Richard Butterwick, ‘Political Discourses of the Polish Revolution, 1788–1792’ in EHR, cxx (2005), pp. 710–11, 722–4. 48. The sejmy of 1678, 1688, 1693, 1718, 1726, 1729, 1730, 1744, 1752, 1784, and 1793 were held in Grodno. 49. Henryk Palkij, ‘Prace komisji aukcji wojska w latach 1736–1738’ in Kwartalnik Historyczny, cvi, no. 1 (1999), pp. 19–44. 50. Lukowski, Liberty’s Folly, pp. 94–5. 51. Łukasz Ka˛dziela, ‘Sapieha, Kazimierz Nestor’ in Polski Słownik Biograficzny: xxxv (Warsaw & Cracow, 1994), pp. 54–63. 52. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projétée’, ed. Jean Fabre, in J.-J. Rousseau, Œuvres complètes: iii, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris, 1964), pp. 979–81. Translation in Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 201–3. 53. Konstytucja 3 Maja, art. vi, p. 89. See Butterwick, Poland’s Last King, p. 295. 54. Ka˛dziela, ‘Local Government Reform’. 55. Wojciech Szczygielski, Referendum trzeciomajowe. Sejmiki lutowe 1792 roku (Łódz´ , 1994); Butterwick, ‘Political Discourses’, pp. 726–8.

Conclusion D. W. Hayton and James Kelly

This book, and the colloquium from which it derives, was conceived with two main purposes. First, we hoped to give additional momentum to the changing current of research into the eighteenth-century Irish parliament. For a long time this followed a nationalist agenda, which prioritised the efforts of Irish ‘patriots’ to achieve commercial and constitutional equality for the kingdom (‘free trade’ and ‘legislative independence’). More recently it has exhibited a preoccupation with ‘high politics’, as manifest in the political management of the House of Commons.1 However, attention has begun to turn to the constitutional and institutional aspects of parliamentary history and, in particular, the making of law, which was after all one of parliament’s prime functions.2 The study of the Irish parliament as a legislative body emphasises the range and diversity of Irish statutes, which the preparation of the Irish Legislation Database has highlighted. It also serves our second purpose by bringing a new perspective to the much-debated question as to how the governance of eighteenth-century Ireland should be understood: in the context of the European ancien régime or the colonial structure of the second British empire?3 The conclusion of a recent study of the impact of Poynings’ Law on the legislative activity of the Irish parliament, that as an institution the Irish parliament ‘compared unfavourably to the colonial assemblies of North America’ provided one answer. That conclusion stemmed from an analysis of the manner in which Irish statutes were made, not their nature or purpose.4 The history of Poynings’ Law, and the willingness of Irish peers and MPs to be guided by Westminster, shows that Ireland was held constitutionally and politically in a dependent and intrinsically colonial relationship. However, the chapters exploring the legislation of the Irish parliament, and the perspectives provided by the other chapters on the manner in which decisions were taken in different European representative assemblies, may also sustain a different interpretation, that the Anglo-Irish nexus resembles the pattern of the ‘composite state’ that has proved so useful in conceptualising the nature of governance in early modern Europe. 244


245

The term ‘composite state’ was first used to describe the situation obtaining in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, before the emergence of the concept of absolute monarchy provided European rulers with a model of kingship which offered the prospect that they need not continue the accommodations and concessions normative to multiple monarchies.5 However, close research into the nature of absolutism has revealed that even its greatest exemplars – Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV in France – were required to compromise their ideals to political and administrative realities, and that the French king’s writ did not extend equally across his kingdom even when Bourbon power was at its most complete.6 It has thus become apparent that the ‘composite state’ paradigm has even greater interpretative applicability than originally perceived. Not only can it be profitably applied to a great variety of polities across sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, but also (as the chapters by Swann, Miller, Szakály and Butterwick in this volume bear witness, each in a different way) to many of the European monarchical states of the eighteenth century, until the French Revolution transformed the political landscape. This is certainly the implication of the accounts offered in this volume of the deliberations and decisions of the estates of Burgundy and Languedoc, which reveal the degree of accommodation between centre and periphery in eighteenth-century France. Some might argue that because both Louis XV and XVI were paler versions of le Roi Soleil – Louis XIV – France had regressed after 1715 to something closer to the European norm, but the reality was that, even at the peak of French absolutism, provincial estates were able to resist the centralising policies of intendants and preserve some of their traditional powers.7 A comparable situation existed in other jurisdictions across the continent, where aspiring absolute rulers were obliged to compromise with established social and regional interests. It is apparent from the chapters on the relationship of the Hungarian diet with the Austrian Habsburgs and the convoluted history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that the composite states of central and eastern Europe possessed regional structures and institutions of great complexity. One of the advantages of the comparative perspective is that it highlights not only the compromises made by monarchs of every stamp with the more powerful of their subjects, but also confirms that a close study of the particular history of each composite state is essential to understanding its character and the particular dynamics that shaped political relationships. This was the case with respect to Britain and Ireland. Indeed, it is improbable that the substantial corpus of legislation enacted in Ireland between 1692 and 1800, which constitutes the subject matter of the chapters in Part 1, would have existed had Ireland not possessed a venerable ‘parliamentary tradition’.8 This was not sufficient on its own to ensure the survival of representative institutions in the subordinate part of a composite state; parliament had to serve a purpose, to confer advantages on ruler and ruled. In the case of Ireland, it was the need for money to pay for government, and, more particularly for

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the upkeep of the army, that prompted the Crown and its ministers in the early 1690s, first, to authorise the convening of an Irish parliament, and, subsequently, to permit it to meet regularly.9 The benefits conferred by similar representative assemblies in other states were not always clear-cut, but it is significant that most possessed a revenue-raising function. The importance of the pays d’états in sustaining the cash-strapped monarchy of France is well known (and well illustrated by the activities of the estates of Burgundy and Languedoc), but the Hungarian diet and the Lithuanian convocation (konwokacja) also authorised taxes that were integral, in their case, to the fiscal-military capacities of the Austrian Habsburgs and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Seen from this perspective, the composite states of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe were not sub-optimal, and still less inherently dysfunctional, state forms, though they could, and did to a greater or lesser extent, become a focus of opposition to the metropolitan power. Significantly, this was tolerated in the composite states considered in this book, so long as the Hungarian diet, the provincial sessions of the sejm held in Lithuania, the Irish parliament and the estates of Languedoc and Burgundy accepted that they were subordinate to the governing institutions within these states (the Crown and parliament in Great Britain, the Crown in France, Austria and Poland-Lithuania). Acknowledgement of subordination did not inhibit representative institutions from acting as a rallying point for local interests or a focus of local ethnic identity, but since some jurisdictions also accommodated less formal local assemblies – the sejmiki in Poland-Lithuania and the counties in Hungary – most sustained an elaborate, and sometimes delicate, balance between a variety of metropolitan, regional/national and local jurisdictions, and the regional/national was tolerated or indulged as long as it did not threaten the functionality of the composite state. Thus in the case of Ireland, having in the early eighteenth century accepted the financial necessity for convening an Irish parliament biennially, ministers were subsequently obliged in the 1770s to agree to the relaxation of various mercantilist regulations, some dating back to the 1650s, that confined Ireland’s right to trade within the empire. In the early 1780s, they acceded to fundamental constitutional reform that changed the nature of the relationship of the Irish parliament from a situation in which it was manifestly subordinate, to a situation in which it was theoretically the equal of the imperial parliament at Westminster.10 Significantly, Irish demands for commercial and constitutional reform were regarded anxiously by those in Britain and Ireland who could only conceive of Ireland in dependent terms, but more pragmatic politicians were able to accommodate the changes because they recognised that, however challenging, these reforms did not threaten the existence of the composite state.11 This is not to suggest that solutions were always achieved or that the arrangements arrived at ensured that composite states functioned efficiently


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and effectively. In the British and Irish case, the Irish parliament could generally be relied on to provide sufficient revenue, whether by raising taxes or authorising the raising of loans.12 The so-called ‘money bill’ dispute of the 1750s indicates clearly that the manner in which money was voted remained a sensitive subject, but, in comparison with the problems arising elsewhere, such crises as did occur were kept within bounds. It was deemed appropriate on three occasions (1692, 1753 and 1769) to prorogue parliament when MPs declined to approve money bills, but these were brief interruptions to an otherwise regular pattern of sessions. The situation in Ireland certainly never approached that of Hungary, where the diet met erratically, and not at all between 1765 and 1790. Meetings of the sejmy in Poland-Lithuania were less intermittent but members might as well not have assembled when the liberum veto theoretically permitted any dissentient to prevent decisions being taken.13 The liberum veto could be circumvented, as Richard Butterwick makes clear, but this was still an inefficient way of doing business, and may well have contributed to the appeal of the integrationist tendency identifiable in Poland-Lithuania in the later eighteenth century. It was certainly the case in Britain and Ireland that problems, perceived and actual, in ensuring a stable and harmonious connexion contributed to the mounting appeal of an Anglo-Irish union in the second half of the eighteenth century.14 Despite the impressive number of advocates of such a radical solution identifiable in Great Britain in the late 1770s and early 1780s, and the enquiries into its feasibility conducted at the behest of a cabinet sub-committee in 1779, no formal scheme for legislative union was animated because the threat to the security of the Anglo-Irish connexion was not considered great enough to justify the risks.15 Although the unwelcome concession of the franchise to Irish Catholics in 1793 prompted a surge in support for an Anglo-Irish union among Irish Protestants, this too was insufficient to prompt ministers to adopt such a solution.16 However, when Ireland erupted in rebellion in the summer of 1798, the decision that led to the ratification in 1800 of the Anglo-Irish union was made while the rebellion was still under way, and pursued thereafter with a commitment and conviction that triumphed over all opposition.17 The late eighteenth century appears to have been a turning point in the history of the European composite state: the partitions of Poland signalled the end of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; the French Revolution resulted in the establishment of a centralised state, in which local estates and parlements were abolished; and the formation in 1800 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland signalled the end of the Anglo-Irish composite polity. This does not necessarily mean that the integrated-state model adopted in Britain and Ireland, or the highly centralised nature of the French revolutionary (and Napoleonic) state, showed the way to what was to become normative in the nineteenth century.18 The growth in state bureaucracy, the codification of law, the creation of armies of an unprecedented

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size and the tendency to concentrate power, did indeed facilitate the creation of more powerful, centralised states. However, this did not occur at an even pace, and the military defeat of France, combined with the emphatically conservative outlook of the crowned heads and ministers who met in the Congress of Vienna, ensured that more than faint traces of the composite state can be detected well into the nineteenth century, in the North German Confederation and in the Austrian, Russian and Ottoman empires. Thus in some respects and in certain countries the model of the composite state, devised for the early modern period, may have applicability until the disappearance of the old empires of Europe amid the carnage of the First World War (though this might well be contested). At the same time, and this is the essential point, the concept can be remarkably elastic. This highlights the interpretative risk of using descriptors applied to the state at different stages in its history – terms such as ‘composite state’ or ‘nation state’ – because in the nineteenth century, as before, each jurisdiction, each state, was unique, and the character of each was shaped by its internal history, its geopolitical situation, and its relationship with its neighbours. This observation is particularly relevant in the case of Ireland’s relationship with Great Britain. Officially, the Act of Union provided for the political integration of what were between 1541 and 1800 separate kingdoms with a common monarch, into a new ‘united kingdom’. While the successful dismantling of customs barriers, inauguration of a free trade zone and creation of a common currency in the first quarter of the nineteenth century may at first glance suggest that full integration was realised, the administrative reality was that Ireland retained a separate executive headed by a lord lieutenant, and the political reality was that a rising proportion of Ireland’s population favoured the restoration of a domestic parliament.19 Given the rhetoric attached to, and the increasing support for, campaigns for the repeal of the union, and subsequently Home Rule, it might even be suggested that a majority of the population had such fine memories of the composite monarchy of which Ireland had been a part that they were eager to revert to it.20 However, to do so would oversimplify their motives and interpret the backward glances they cast on the eighteenth-century Irish parliament as unconditionally favourable, when in fact their position was both more nuanced and more layered.21 During the eighteenth century there were many on both sides of the Irish Sea who harboured deeply felt reservations about the nature of the structures that bound Britain and Ireland, but the disinclination to interfere with these structures was always stronger. Reluctance may be attributable in the first instance to the problem of agreeing the precise changes that would constitute unambiguous improvement, and in the second, to the instinctive disinclination in government circles in England to intervene to reshape the structures of government in Ireland.22 Moreover, it was also the case, as this book demonstrates, that the Irish parliament was an effective legislator.


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It may have made significantly less law than its British counterpart, but it was still responsible for an impressive 2000 enactments between 1692 and 1800, and it is notable that, as a proportion of the total number proposed, the percentage of legislative initiatives reaching the statute book rose from 22 per cent in the reign of George I to nearly 60 per cent between the concession of legislative independence and the Act of Union.23 Because laws made in Ireland mirrored in many respects laws made at Westminster, and because every piece of legislation emanating from the Irish Privy Council and Irish parliament was scrutinised in the English/ British council, the process of lawmaking in Ireland was crucial to the manner in which the composite state was sustained. The precise nature of British conciliar interference changed over time, but a vivid illustration of the extent to which British councillors used their powers to ensure that Irish legislation was consistent with British legislation, is provided by the recently identified statistic that, of Irish bills transmitted to the British council between 1703 and 1782, 11 per cent were respited and an imposing 63 per cent amended.24 This active supervision was critical in ensuring the compatibility of Anglo-Irish law, and in mitigating the possibility that the two kingdoms might drift apart, or, as happened with the American colonies, where practices emerged that facilitated the assertion of independence, and subsequently assisted the establishment and consolidation of the new state.25 Influenced by the manner in which Poynings’ Law was singled out by ‘patriots’ as an unacceptable emblem of constitutional subordination, Irish historians have been slow to recognise that, before the 1770s, criticism of Poynings’ Law was fitful and intermittent.26 Irish MPs were content to accept without cavil most of the amendments introduced into legislation by the British Privy Council because these were ‘literal’ changes, introduced to correct syntactical and orthographic errors, or improvements that enhanced the thrust of a particular measure.27 Of course there were also substantive amendments, but only a minority provoked a negative reaction. The absence of more sustained criticism illustrates the extent to which members of parliament in Dublin were content to operate within the constraints of Poynings’ Law, and the acceptance within the composite state of Britain and Ireland that legislation in Ireland should mirror that in force in Britain. This was an objective that politicians and judges in both jurisdictions contrived to perpetuate, but it is a fair statement of the relative power of each that, while occasionally measures approved at Westminster might be based on acts that were already in force in Ireland, most of the borrowing went the other way.28 In any event, the combined impact of the amending and respiting of Irish bills at the British Privy Council, the readiness of peers and MPs in Ireland to accept such interference, the preparation of Irish versions of a multiplicity of English and British acts, and the imitation in Dublin of British parliamentary procedures, served to ensure that the statute books of Britain and Ireland

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complemented each other. The disputes that arose did not seriously threaten the Anglo-Irish connexion, so that that Britain and Ireland functioned as an effective composite state. In a revealing, if essentially symbolic, illustration of the compatibility of the legislation approved in the two kingdoms, both employed the same system of legislative enumeration and laid out their statute books and parliamentary journals in a similar fashion. Still more striking is the fact that the commitment manifested in the early and mid-eighteenth century to maintain legislative uniformity survived legislative independence, and that the episode that did most to boost support in Britain for a legislative union, before the 1798 rebellion, was the Irish parliament’s suggestion in 1789 that if the Prince of Wales became regent he might hold the position on different terms in Ireland than in Britain.29 If events such as the Regency crisis, the 1798 rebellion, and the unwelcome implications of the aspiration articulated by Catholics towards the end of the eighteenth century to sit in parliament (‘emancipation’), convinced many members of the political élite in both kingdoms that the future of the British/Irish composite state was no longer secure, then its early abolition was only a matter of time, since it could no longer provide the stability that was its raison d’être.30 While the emergence and survival of a composite state was more likely where there were existing representative or decisionmaking institutions, the fact that such institutions had a long and venerable history provided no guarantee that a composite state would be permitted to continue if its existence was seen to affect the security of the dominant partner. This was not unexpected in the Irish instance since the medieval origins of its parliament had not prevented the Protectorate from directing in the 1650s that Ireland send representatives to a united parliament at Westminster.31 Although this attempt to create a unitary state foundered on the reefs of English insouciance, integration continued to exert a strong appeal. The experience of 1689 demonstrated that, in certain circumstances, the existence of a separate Irish parliament could push the two kingdoms apart, and the bitter legacy of the Jacobite régime encouraged those who favoured a legislative union to promote that option in the early 1690s.32 They were overruled by King William, who needed little persuasion of the fiscal-military advantages of an Irish parliament. A majority of Irish Protestants were disposed to concur, based on the belief, influentially mediated by William Molyneux, that they were entitled to possess a separate parliament, though some rallied briefly to the idea of union in the early eighteenth century as they struggled to accept the implications of a subordinate constitutional position. Although the Irish parliament passed resolutions calling on Queen Anne to consider a request for union, the attractions palled as the need for regular supply ensured the Irish parliament would be summoned on a regular basis, and thus be in a position to meet the legislative needs of the kingdom.33 Once a pattern of biennial parliamentary sessions had been established, the essential features of the eighteenth-century British-Irish composite state


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were in place. This polity was to survive until 1800, when it no longer seemed to provide the secure Anglo-Irish connexion that was a sine qua non for the ruling élite in both kingdoms. In the interval it contributed to the maintenance of a relationship that was mutually beneficial. Any attempt to assemble an inventory of these benefits is likely to be incomplete, but even a brief listing must include, on the British side, enhanced strategic security, the maintenance of a large army paid for by the Irish treasury, the restriction of Irish competition in key commercial sectors, and preferential access to Irish agricultural commodities. In return, the Protestant élite that comprised the Irish ‘political nation’ was assured that it could count on British assistance should its political, religious or economic security be endangered by a Catholic uprising within, or externally by an invading force. More obviously, they were able to assume the initiative in determining the law that applied in Ireland and thereby exert the administrative, political and religious ascendancy made possible by the military defeat, economic eclipse and religious marginalisation of the Catholic population. Given the Protestants’ demographic vulnerability and the fact that they had achieved ascendancy by armed force, these were not insignificant benefits. Some Irish Protestants were prepared to argue that they were entitled to more, but chose not to push the point as far as the American revolutionaries when in the 1770s and 1780s they had their best opportunity to re-conceptualise the Anglo-Irish connexion, indicating that, when all was said and done, they recognised the advantages of belonging to a composite state. In this respect the circumstances of the Irish Protestant landowning class corresponded to the situation in which other ruling élites found themselves in composite states across Europe. This was a consequence of the complex historical processes whereby smaller polities had been incompletely taken over by larger neighbours, and compromise arrangements were forged that accommodated the needs of different parties. The composite states of eighteenth-century Europe could be complex, untidy, and if viewed superficially, dysfunctional. That they were not dysfunctional in practice was a testament to the willingness and ability of those involved in their governance to make them work. It was also a testament to the utility of the composite state as a model of statecraft. The point should not be pressed to far, but its extension to embrace eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland can certainly be justified. The constitutional and strategic position of Ireland within the eighteenth-century British empire looks much less inadequate, and much less anomalous, when set in the wider context of the European composite state.34

Notes 1. The key texts in the field include Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (eds), Penal Era and Golden Age: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Irish History (Belfast, 1979);

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2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

Conclusion D. W. Hayton, Ruling Ireland, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties (Woodbridge, 2004); R. E. Burns, Irish Parliamentary Politics in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols, Washington, DC, 1989–90); Patrick McNally, Parties, Patriots and Undertakers: Parliamentary Politics in Early Hanoverian Ireland (Dublin, 1997); Eoin Magennis, The Irish Political System, 1740–65: The Golden Age of the Undertakers (Dublin, 2000); Martyn Powell, Britain and Ireland in the Eighteenth-Century Crisis of Empire (Basingstoke, 2002); R. B. McDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution, 1760–1801 (Oxford, 1979); E. M. Johnston, Great Britain and Ireland, 1760–1800: A Study in Political Administration (Edinburgh, 1963); Gerard O’Brien, Anglo-Irish Politics in the Age of Grattan and Pitt (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1987); James Kelly, Prelude to Union: Anglo-Irish Politics in the 1780s (Cork, 1992); G. C. Bolton, The Passing of the Irish Act of Union (Oxford, 1966); P. M. Geoghegan, The Irish Act of Union: A Study in High Politics 1798–1801 (Dublin, 1999). See James Kelly, Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (Dublin, 2007); D. W. Hayton, ‘Patriots and Legislators: Irishmen and their Parliaments, c. 1689–c.1740’ in Julian Hoppit (ed.), Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1860 (Manchester, 2003), pp. 103–23. See above, pp. 7–8; S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992); 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, MA, 1973); V. T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763–1793 (2 vols, London, 1952–64). Kelly, Poynings’ Law, p. 363. Richard Bonney, The European Dynastic States 1494–1660 (Oxford, 1991); M. S. Anderson, The Origins of the Modern European States System 1494–1618 (London, 1998). Richard Bonney, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1621 (Oxford, 1978); idem, The Limits of Absolutism in Ancien Régime France (Aldershot, 1995); William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge, 1985). J. B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1995), chs 4–5; Bonney, Political Change. For the Irish ‘parliamentary tradition’ see H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1952); Brian Farrell (ed.), The Irish Parliamentary Tradition (Dublin, 1974); James Kelly, ‘“Era of Liberty”: The Politics of Civil and Political Rights in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in Jack Greene (ed.), Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600–1900 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 77–111. See James McGuire, ‘The Irish Parliament in 1692’ in Bartlett and Hayton (eds), Penal Era and Golden Age, pp. 1–31; C. I. McGrath, The Making of the EighteenthCentury Irish Constitution: Government, Parliament and the Revenue, 1692–1714 (Dublin, 2000), chs 3–6. For Anglo-Irish relations in the 1780s, see Kelly, Prelude to Union. Ibid., chs 1–3; McDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution, pp. 275–92. See above, pp. 21–38; McGrath, Irish Constitution. See above, pp. 228–30.


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14. See James Kelly, ‘The Origins of the Act of Union: An Examination of Unionist Opinion in Britain and Ireland 1650–1800’ in IHS, xxv, no. 99 (May 1987), pp. 246–63. 15. Ibid., pp. 251–4. 16. James Kelly, ‘The Act of Union: Its Origins and Background’ in Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), Acts of Union (Dublin, 2001), pp. 63–6. 17. Geoghegan, Act of Union. 18. François Furet, Revolutionary France, 1770–1880 (Oxford, 1995). 19. Oliver MacDonagh, Ireland: The Union and its Aftermath (London, 1977); Cormac Ó Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780–1939 (Oxford, 1994); Brian Jenkins, Era of Emancipation: British Government of Ireland, 1812–1830 (Kingston, Ont., 1988). 20. K. B. Nowlan, The Politics of Repeal: A Study in the Relations between Great Britain and Ireland, 1841–50 (London, 1965); Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 (London, 2003), chs 1–6; P. M. Geoghegan, King Dan: The Rise of Daniel O’Connell, 1775–1829 (Dublin, 2008), ch. 6. 21. For an exploration of the nineteenth-century historiography in respect of one aspect of the eighteenth century – the Act of Union – see James Kelly, ‘The Historiography of the Act of Union’ in Michael Brown, P. M Geoghegan and James Kelly (eds), The Irish Act of Union, 1800: Bicentennial Essays (Dublin, 2003), pp. 5–36. 22. See Hayton, Ruling Ireland, pp. 237–75; Kelly, Prelude to Union, ch. 1; Powell, Britain and Ireland. 23. See above, p. 10; Kelly, Poynings’ Law, p. 159. 24. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, Tables 4, 8, 13. 25. See, for example, Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968). 26. Kelly, Poynings’ Law, pp. 190–203, 316–36. 27. Ibid., ch. 4. 28. For the reliance of the Irish parliament on English criminal law, see Neal Garnham, The Courts, Crime and the Criminal Law in Ireland, 1692–1760 (Dublin, 1996). 29. See J. W. Derry, The Regency Crisis and the Whigs, 1788–89 (Cambridge, 1963); Douglas Kanter, The Making of British Unionism, 1740–1848: Politics, Government and the Anglo-Irish Constitutional Relationship (Dublin, 2009). 30. See Kelly, ‘Origins of the Act of Union’, pp. 259–63. 31. Patrick Little, ‘The First Unionists?: Irish Protestant Attitudes to Union with England, 1653–9’ in IHS, xxxii, no. 125 (May 2000), pp. 44–58. 32. Kelly, ‘Origins of the Act of Union’, pp. 240–2. 33. D. W. Hayton, ‘Ideas of Union in Anglo-Irish Political Discourse, 1692–1720: Meaning and Use’ in D. G. Boyce et al. (eds), Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 142–69. 34. Another profitable avenue that could be explored is the comparison between Irish legislation and that initiated by and sanctioned in Britain’s American and West Indian colonies. This would allow the location of Irish legislation with its imperial context. However, few studies have been undertaken of the legislative activities of the houses of assembly of the American and West Indian colonies, and at present there are few signs that this situation is likely to change.

Index Abercorn, James Hamilton, 8th earl of 93 absolutism 8, 21, 44, 46, 163–4, 168, 179, 212, 245 enlightened 5, 213–14 aeque principaliter unions 4, 164 Agar, Charles (bishop of Cloyne, archbishop of Cashel) 65, 96, 97, 126 Agde 185 agrarian disorder and protest in Ireland 67, 96, 98, 108, 116, 117, 123 agriculture in Burgundy 172 in France 165 in Hungary 216 in Ireland 80, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 136–7, 251 Albemarle, Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st earl of 50 Albi 185, 195 Aleksei, Tsar of Muscovy 223 Alès 185, 186 America 10, 70, 92, 128, 206, 227, 244, 249, 251 American War of Independence (1775–83) 117, 118, 120, 188 ancien régime 3, 6, 7–8, 10–11, 13, 21, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 199, 244 Anglo-Dutch War, Second (1665–7) 108 Anjou 163 Anne (queen of England, Scotland and Ireland) 26, 46, 56, 69, 83, 85, 99, 116, 250 Antrim, county militia 113 Volunteers 118 Aquitaine 5 Arad county 215 Aragon 5, 163 Aranka, György 205–7

Arejan, M. le comte de Bannes d’ 186 aristocracy see nobility and aristocracy Armagh borough of 86 county: militia 113; sectarian conflict in 123 army and defence in Ireland 4, 24, 47 army pay arrears 30, 33, 37 augmentation of army 114, 115, 116, 117, 127 fencible regiments 120, 122 Irish contribution to imperial defence 9, 22, 23, 34, 37, 121, 122, 127, 245–6, 251 Irish regiments transferred to Britain 29 parliament and 12, 13 regiments on the Irish establishment 107, 108–9, 110, 115 standing or regular army 107, 108–9, 110, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 123, 127 Arran, Charles Butler, 2nd earl of 78, 81 Artois 165, 177, 178, 188, 195 Aubais, Emmanuel François d’Urre, marquis d’ 186 Augustus II, ‘the Strong’ (king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) 221 Augustus III (king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) 222, 228 Aulic War Council 212, 216 Austria 3, 50, 163, 205, 216, 231, 245, 246, 248 Austrian lands 11 estates 12 and Hungary 70 taxation in 11 see also Habsburg empire and dynasty Austrian Netherlands 3, 11 Austro-Hungarian monarchy 217 Austro-Turkish War (1787–91) 215 254

Index Ballyshannon 147 Bandon 115 Bank of England 29 Bann fishery 145, 147 Barnard, T.C. (historian) 137 Batory, Stephen (István Báthory) 223 Batthyány family 213 Béarn 177 Bédarieux 197 Bedford, John Russell, 4th duke of (lord lieutenant) 112, 113 Belfast 113, 118, 123 Bentinck, Hans Willem (William), 1st earl of Portland 50 Beresford, Hon. William (bishop of Ossory) 148 Beresford, Marcus 148 Bettesworth, Richard 91, 149 Béziers 198 Bingham, Sir Charles 114, 127 Bligh, Edward, 2nd earl of Darnley 90 Board of Trustees for the Improvement of Manufactures and Fisheries 149 Bohemia 3, 163, 216 diet and estates 5, 6 Jagiellonian dynasty 223 Bolton, Charles Paulet, 2nd duke of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 83, 110 Bolton, Theophilus (bishop of Clonfert; bishop of Elphin; archbishop of Cashel) 87, 88, 90 Bouhier de Bernadon, Jean-Marie 174 Boulter, Hugh (archbishop of Armagh) 88, 90, 95, 96 Bourbon dynasty 6, 163, 164, 245 Bourbon-Condé dynasty 171 Bowes, John 60 Boyle, Henry 36 Brabant 5, 163 Brandenburg-Prussia 3 Bratislava 211 Brewer, John (historian) 8 Britain see England/Great Britain Brittany 5, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 172, 177 ‘constitution’ 167 estates 5, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188 Browne, Arthur 98

255

Brownlow, William 121 Buckingham, George Nugent-TempleGrenville, 1st marquess of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 97 Buckinghamshire, John Hobart, 2nd earl of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 118 Burgundy 5 ‘constitution’ 165–6, 169, 170–1, 173, 175–7, 178–9 estates 5, 165–79, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 195, 245, 246; and Estates-General of France 170–1, 175–8, 179; nobility in 185 and French crown 163 parlement 166, 168–71, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179 ‘patriotism’ 12 ‘treaty’ of 1477 165–6, 170, 179 Burke, Edmund 7 Butler, Charles, 2nd earl of Arran 78, 81 Butler, James, 1st duke of Ormond 108 Butler, James, 2nd duke of Ormond 52, 84 Byrne, Edmond (Catholic archbishop of Dublin) 55 Cambrésis 188 canals and inland navigation 91, 136, 138, 143, 172, 173 Capell, Arthur, 1st earl of Essex (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 24, 25 Capell, Henry, Baron Capell of Tewkesbury (lord deputy of Ireland) 48, 83, 89 Capendu 186 Caracciolo, Marquis Domenico 5 Carey, Walter 60 Caribbean islands 10 Carrickfergus 37, 113, 120, 126, 127 Casimir IV (king of Poland) 224 Castries, Charles Eugene Gabriel de la Croix de 185 Catalonia 5, 165 Catellane, Jean Arnaud de 185 Catherine II (empress of Russia) 230 Catholic Church in Ireland churches, chapels and ‘mass houses’ 48, 54, 57, 61

256

Index

Catholic Church in Ireland – Continued clergy 47, 58, 62, 66, 90; abjuration oath imposed on 54; arrested 48, 54, 55; castration proposed 57; conversion to Church of Ireland encouraged 62, 63, 64; expelled 47, 49–50; houses suppressed 49, 55; laws against enforced 55, 57, 58, 62; licensing proposed 62, 63; marriages conducted by 60; ministry restricted 53; prevented from entering kingdom 52, 55; registration required 52, 53, 54, 55, 59, 62 Catholic Committee (Ireland) 64, 66, 69 Catholic Convention (Ireland) 124 Catholics (in England) 46, 47, 51, 52, 60, 61 Catholics (in France) 191 Catholics (in Hungary) 213 Catholics (in Ireland) 7, 79, 84, 89, 97, 120, 124 and agrarian disorder 123 arms, restrictions on bearing 47, 48, 49, 53, 55–6, 60, 61, 62, 66, 69, 125 army, excluded from 56, 109 conversion to Church of Ireland encouraged 51, 52, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 67, 85, 88, 136 education abroad forbidden 49, 51, 53, 61 and electoral franchise 59, 60, 61, 67, 69, 80, 82 emancipation (1829) 6, 80, 250 in exile 46, 108 garrison towns, excluded from 47 horses: liable to seizure for militia 109; worth more than £5 might not be owned by 47, 56 Irish Protestant fear of and hostility to 12, 16, 22, 44, 46, 47, 50, 54, 56, 57–8, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65–9, 70, 81–2, 98, 107–8, 111, 116, 125, 251 landowning and inheritance restricted 52, 53

laws against enforced 54–7, 58, 61 legal profession, excluded from 53, 59, 60, 61, 69 marriage 59, 61, 62 military service abroad restricted 56, 58, 61, 62 and militia 120, 122, 125, 126, 127 oaths imposed on 47, 53, 66 and office-holding 57, 125 oppose popery laws 49, 52, 53, 64 parliament, excluded from sitting in 67, 68, 250 political activity of 108 as public creditors 34 religious gatherings of 55 schoolteachers, forbidden to be 53, 54, 55 taxation of 109 towns, excluded from or restricted in 47, 48, 51, 53, 54, 57, 65, 67 Volunteers and 120, 122, 123 ‘Whiteboys’ 96 see also economy (of Ireland); Ireland; popery laws (in Ireland) Catholics (in Lithuania) 224 Catholics (in Poland) 222 Cavendish, William, 4th duke of Devonshire (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 61, 111, 150 Cavendish, William, 5th duke of Devonshire 147 Chabot, Madame de Rohan 186 Chamalières, prior of 195 Charles I (king of England, Scotland and Ireland) 9 Charles II (king of England, Scotland and Ireland) 9, 22 Charles le Téméraire (duke of Burgundy) 165 Charles V (Habsburg emperor) 163 Charles X (king of Sweden) 223 Charles XII (king of Sweden) 5 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 62 Choiseul, Étienne-François, duc de 188 Cholmondeley, George, 3rd earl of Cholmondeley 150 Church of England 6, 47, 81, 85, 90 Church of Ireland 3, 7, 12, 13, 78–85, 110

Index bishops of 12, 58, 80, 83, 84, 87, 97, 110, 111; at odds with parish clergy 89–90 clergy 62, 80; as improvers 137 convocation 85, 87, 89 ecclesiastical courts 80, 83, 85, 90 ecclesiastical leases 87, 89, 91, 94, 97, 98 ‘High Church’ and ‘Low Church’ parties in 85, 87, 98, 99 lay-clerical relations 79, 80–1, 89, 90, 98 occasional conformity to 80 reform movement 81, 82, 84–5, 86, 87, 88–9, 90, 92, 94–5, 97, 98 Cintegabelle 197 Clanbrassil, earl of see Hamilton, James Clare, John FitzGibbon, 1st earl of 99, 126 Clark, J.C.D. (historian) 6–7 clergy in estates 11 and French estates 166, 183, 184–5, 186, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198 and Hungarian estates 207, 208, 209 in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 232, 234, 236 see also Catholic Church (in Ireland); Church of Ireland Clogher, borough of 86 Coghill, Marmaduke 78, 86 ‘commercial propositions’ 121–2 composite states or monarchies 3–13, 44, 45, 69, 107, 221–3, 227, 238, 244–5, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251 France as 163, 164–5, 171 Ireland as part of 7, 22 taxation in 3, 4–5, 6, 21 Condé, Louis-Joseph, prince de 167, 171, 174 ‘confessional state’ 44, 79, 82, 90, 95 Congress of Vienna (1815) 248 Connacht 96 Connolly, S.J. (historian) 7 Conolly, Thomas 147 Conolly, William 81, 91, 145, 149 Conti, Louis Francis II de Bourbon, prince de 185

257

Conyngham, William Burton 140–1, 152, 154 Cooke, Edward 125 Cork city 33, 48, 52, 57, 115 county 146, 147, 149 Cornwall fishery 150 corporate institutions and privileges 11, 80, 176, 179 in Ireland 7, 12, 13, 51, 80, 81, 85, 91, 99 see also municipal or local government Corry, Isaac 148 cortes of Catalonia and Aragon 5 Cortot, Jean 176–7, 179 Coulomb, Clarisse (historian) 175 Counter-Reformation 46 Courland 223, 224 Cox, Sir Richard, 2nd baronet 111, 149, 150 Cracow 225, 227, 232, 234 Croatia 208, 212, 214 Cumberland, Prince William Augustus, duke of 128 customs commissioners (of Great Britain) 150 Czartoyski family 231 Czernihów 231 Dalmatia 208 Daly, Denis 94 Danzig (Gdan ´ sk) 224, 227 Darnley, Edward Bligh, 2nd earl of 90 Dauphiné 5, 175, 177, 178 debt, public or national of Artois 195 of Burgundy 195 of diocese of Toulouse 196 of England 29 of Flanders 195 of France 188–9 of Ireland 9, 21, 22, 27, 29–37 of Languedoc 195 ‘Defenders’ 123 Denmark 3 Dennis, James 65 Devesset, prior of 195 Devon fishery 150 Devonshire, William Cavendish, 4th duke of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 61, 111, 150

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Index

Devonshire, William Cavendish, 5th duke of 147 diets (and dietines) 4, 11, 223, 227 see also Bohemia; estates; Hungary; parlements (and parlementaires); parliaments; sejmy (and sejmiki) Digoine, marquis de 176 Dijon 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 176, 178 university founded 167–8 Dillon, Arthur (archbishop of Narbonne) 186, 189, 190, 194, 196 Dissenters (Protestant) in England 82 in Ireland 44, 45, 80, 82, 86, 89, 90, 95; and militia 110, 111, 126–7 see also Presbyterians Dobbs, Arthur 92 Dobbs, Francis 120 Dodington, George 60 Donegal, county 140, 147 Dopping, Anthony (bishop of Meath) 84 Dorset, Lionel Sackville, 1st duke of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 35, 83 Down, county, militia of 113 Doyle, Bill (historian) 5 Doyle, William (hydrographer) 139 Drogheda 48 militia 124 Dublin 48, 54, 55, 56, 67, 80, 115, 123 militia 124 Dublin Bay fishery 151 Dublin Society 88, 91, 92, 137, 140 Duigenan, Patrick 98 Dundalk 92 Dundas, Henry 124 Dungannon Volunteer Conventions 119, 124 East India Company 29, 122 Echlin, Robert 145 economy of Ireland 8, 9, 57, 89 Catholic participation in restricted 48, 51, 53, 54, 57, 64, 65, 66, 68 and Church of Ireland and tithe controversies 91, 92, 96–7, 99

difficulties of 22, 24, 36, 37, 92 English/British restrictions on 70, 137 improvement or development of 10, 12, 13, 64, 88, 92, 136–7, 138, 151, 153 prospers 33, 34 see also trade Edict of Toleration (1781) 213 Elbling (Elbla˛g) 227 Elliott, J.H. (historian) 4, 164, 165 England/Great Britain as ancien régime state 6 aristocracy 6 Bank of England 29 Catholics in 46, 47, 51, 52, 60, 61 Church of England 6, 47, 81, 85, 90 customs commissioners 150 Dissenters in 82 empire 9, 22, 37, 53, 107, 121, 122, 124, 127, 140, 205, 206, 244, 246, 251 financial revolution 29 fisheries 139, 140, 150 and Hungary 205–6, 216 and improvement 136, 137 legislative union with Scotland 3 militia 112, 113, 115, 127–8 national debt 29 navy 23 and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 221–2, 227, 237 Tories 52, 82 Whigs 83, 89, 90, 119 see also Jacobitism; parliament (of England/Great Britain); Privy Council (of England/Britain); unions English language 85 enlightened absolutism 5, 206, 213 Enlightenment 112, 128, 136, 234 Essex, Arthur Capell, 1st earl of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 24, 25 estates 4, 5–6, 8, 9, 11–12, 247 of Austria 12 of Bohemia 6 of Brabant 5 of Brittany 5, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188

Index of Burgundy, see Burgundy of France, see France; see also Burgundy; Languedoc of Hungary, see Hungary of Languedoc 5, 183–99, 245 and taxation 21 see also diets (and dietines); parlements (and parlementaires); parliaments; sejmy (and sejmiki) Esterházy family 213 Estonia 223 Eu, comte d’ 189 Fane, John, 10th earl of Westmorland (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 123, 124 Farnham, Barry Maxwell, 2nd earl of 94, 126 Fekete, Count János 215 Fekete, György 214–15 fencible regiments 120, 122 Ferrant, Lord de 192 Fevret de Fontette, President 169–70 financial revolution (in England) 29 see also fiscal-military state Finland 3 fiscal-military state 4–5, 9, 21, 22, 29, 107, 246 fisheries in Ireland 10, 136–54 freshwater or inland fisheries 139, 144–9, 153 sea fisheries 139–41, 144, 149–52, 153 First World War (1914–18) 248 FitzGibbon, John, 1st earl of Clare 99, 126 Fitzwilliam, Richard, 5th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion 61 Fiume (Rijeka) 214 Flanders 185, 188, 195 Flood, Henry 113–14, 115–16, 117, 120, 121 Flood, Warden 94 Florensac 185 Foy, Nathaniel (bishop of Waterford) 84, 85, 89 France 5–6, 44, 46, 60, 123, 246, 248 estates, provincial 8, 11, 164, 165, 166, 168, 177, 188

259

Estates-General 8, 11, 170, 171, 175–7, 177, 178, 179; fishing fleet 150 as military rival or threat to Britain or Ireland 37, 107, 108, 112, 113, 117, 118, 126, 127 National Assembly 123 nobility 163, 167, 171, 176, 178, 184, 195 relations between Paris and provinces 163–9, 172–6, 179, 183–4, 186–94, 198–9 taxation 165–6, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177 see also Burgundy; Languedoc Franche-Comté 6 Frederick Augustus I (king of Saxony) 222 free trade see under trade French, Robert 65, 151 French Revolution 3, 123, 177, 179, 183, 245, 247 French Revolutionary Wars 215 Fronde 170 Fumel, Jean-Félix-Henri de 184–5 Galway 53, 57, 115 Galway, Articles or ‘Treaty’ of 49, 52 Gardiner, Luke 121 Gdan´sk (Danzig) 224, 227 George I (king of Great Britain and Ireland) 27, 56, 57, 63, 142, 153, 249 George II (king of Great Britain and Ireland) 35, 36, 59, 60, 63, 68, 107, 142 George III (king of Great Britain and Ireland) 64, 124 George, prince of Wales 250 Gévaudan 184, 186, 195 Glorious Revolution 22, 25, 44, 46, 89, 99, 107, 108 Gniezno 223 archbishop of 232 Godwin, Timothy (bishop of Kilmore) 88 Golden Bull (1222) 206 Goudet, prior of 195 Grattan, Henry 97 Grazac, prior of 195

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Index

Great Northern War (1700–21) 227, 234 Greenland whale fishery 151, 153 Grenoble 175 Grenville, George Nugent-Temple-, 1st marquess of Buckingham (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 97 Griffith, Arthur 217 Grodno (Hrodna) 230, 233, 234, 237 Gustavus III (king of Sweden) 5 Guy, M. de Verdier de Port de 194 Gyo˝r, battle of (1819) 210 Habsburg empire and dynasty 3, 5, 6, 163, 246 and Hungary 5, 205, 206–7, 209, 210, 211–17, 245 and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 223 Hainaut 185 Hamilton, James 146 Hamilton, James, 1st Viscount Limerick and 1st earl of Clanbrassil 63, 92 Hamilton, James, 8th earl of Abercorn 93 Hanoverian dynasty 3, 27, 87, 108, 116, 205, 221, 222 Harcourt, Simon, 1st Earl Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 117, 146, 147, 152 Hartstonge, Sir Henry 148 ‘heads of bills’ legislative procedure in Ireland 9–10, 25, 50, 68, 69 see also Poynings’ law ‘Hearts of Oak’ (‘Oakboys’) 96 ‘Hearts of Steel’ 96 Hely-Hutchinson, John 96, 116 Hénault, Charles-Jean-François 171 Henry, William 111 Herbert, Thomas, 8th earl of Pembroke (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 83 Hertford, Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st earl of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 113 Hill, Jacqueline (historian) 7 Hillsborough, Wills Hill, 1st earl of 124, 125 Hobart, John, 2nd earl of Buckinghamshire (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 118

Hobart, Robert 124, 125, 126 Hofkammer (Imperial Court Chamber) 212 Hohenzollern dynasty 224 Holy Roman Empire 163, 206 see also Habsburg empire and dynasty Home Rule 248 Hrodna (Grodno) 230, 233, 234, 237 Huguenots 44, 46, 163, 191 Hungarian language 209 Hungary 3, 8, 163, 164, 165, 221 and Austria 70 constitution 205, 206, 209, 211, 212 diet 4, 5, 6, 11, 205, 206, 207–11, 212, 213, 214, 215, 245, 246, 247 estates 6, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210–13, 214, 215, 216, 217 Jagiellonian dynasty 223, 225 monarchy 205, 206, 208–10 (see also Habsburg empire and dynasty) nobility 205, 206, 207, 209–10, 211, 214–15, 216, 217 ‘patriotism’ 12 taxation 11, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 215 Hutchinson, Francis (bishop of Down and Connor) 139 Imperial Court Chamber (Hofkammer) 212 improvement 10, 12, 13, 64, 88, 91, 141 Church of Ireland as obstacle to 94, 95, 97 and Enlightenment 136 and fisheries 136–41, 143, 149, 151, 152, 153–4 in France 165, 172 and ‘patriotism’ 94–5 Incorporated Society for Promoting Protestant Schools 88 India 206 intendants 164, 166, 167, 177, 183, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191–2, 193, 194, 196, 197, 245 Ireland as ancien régime state 7–8, 10–11 colonial nature of state 7–8, 9, 69, 244 composite state, as part of 3, 22, 245–51

Index constitutional reforms of 1782 (‘legislative independence’) 10, 12, 38, 94, 95, 119, 122, 244, 249, 250 and Hungary compared 205, 206, 215 lord deputy (viceroy) 49 lord lieutenant (viceroy) 4, 12, 49, 89, 109, 118, 248 lords justices 4, 54, 55, 56 lottery 31 militia 33, 37, 56, 107–28 national debt 9, 21, 22, 27, 29–37 nobility 137 and Poland compared 221, 222 popery laws 7, 44–70, 80, 82, 88 Poynings’ Law 9–10, 25, 32, 38, 45, 49, 68, 70, 143, 244, 249 rebellions: in 1641 46; in 1798 67–8, 247, 250 revenue commission 4 revisionist controversies 7–8 Revolution settlement 44, 99 taxation and revenue 9, 12, 245, 247; additional or short term supply 9, 36, 44, 2439; hereditary (or perpetual revenues) 24, 25, 27, 34, 36–7, 923; ‘money bill’ dispute (1750s) 247; ‘sole right’ dispute 25; surpluses 23–4, 30, 32, 33, 34–7, 110 Tories 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 99, 108 ‘undertakers’ 35, 36, 47, 111 Volunteers 95, 118–24, 128 War of the Two Kings (1689–91) 24, 25, 46, 49, 83, 84, 108 Whigs 27, 82, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92, 95, 99, 109, 128 see also agrarian disorder; agriculture; army and defence; Catholic Church; Catholics (in Ireland); Church of Ireland; corporate institutions; Dissenters; economy; fisheries; marriage; parliament (of Ireland); ‘patriots’; Privy Council (of Ireland); Protestants (in Ireland); tithes; trade; unions

261

Irish language 85 Irish Linen Board 137 Irish Society of London 147 Ivan ‘the Terrible’ (tsar of Muscovy) 224 Jackson, William 114, 127 Jacobitism 64 invasions: in 1708 46, 108, 110; in 1715 29, 37, 56, 84, 109, 110, 126; in 1745 33, 61, 62, 111, 112 and Ireland 22, 29, 46, 55, 56, 57, 82, 84, 108 scares: in 1719 57; in 1723–4 61; in 1759 37 and Scotland 29, 33, 46, 54, 56, 57, 108, 109 Jadwiga (queen regnant of Poland) 223 Jagiello ( Jogaila) (Grand Duke of Lithuania) 223 Jagiellonian dynasty 223, 224 James I (king of England, Scotland and Ireland) 9 James II (king of England, Scotland and Ireland) 9, 46, 65 James III (Stuart claimant or ‘Old Pretender’) 46, 56, 60 Jephson, Robert 65 Jogaila ( Jagiełło) (Grand Duke of Lithuania) 223 Joly de Fleury, Jean-François 176 Joseph (archduke of Austria, palatine of Hungary) 213 Joseph II (Habsburg emperor) 5, 205, 206, 207, 213 Joubert, Philippe-Laurent de 189 Kalisz 227 Kaunas (Kowno) 232 Keppel, Arnold Joost van, 1st earl of Albemarle 50 Kettler dynasty 224 Kilkenny 57, 115 King, William (bishop of Derry; archbishop of Dublin) 58, 84, 85, 87, 88, 95 King’s Inns (Dublin) 54 Kinsale 115 Knightley, John 151

262

Index

‘Knox, John’ 66 Koenigsberger, H.G. (historian) 3, 4, 5, 9 Koło 227 Kosćiuszko, Tadeusz 230 Kowno (Kaunas) 232 La Goutte, abbé Antoine de 174, 175 Lambert, Ralph (bishop of Dromore; bishop of Meath) 87 Languedoc 5, 163, 164, 165, 166, 172, 178, 183, 246 estates 5, 183–99, 245 French crown and 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189–90, 191, 192–3, 196, 198–9 nobility 184, 185–6, 187, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199 taxation 183, 187, 188–9, 190–1, 192, 194–5, 196, 197, 198–9 see also Toulouse Lanta, baron de 194 Lapeyrouse, Picot de 196–7 Latin language 209 Lautrec, comte de 186 Le Bouchet, prior of 195 Le Hunt, Thomas 64 Le Paige, Louis-Adrien 170 Le Puy 195 Legay, Marie-Laure (historian) 178 Leopold I (Habsburg emperor) 50, 212 Leopold II (Habsburg emperor) 206, 207 Levinge, Sir Richard 86 liberum veto 228–30, 232, 234, 236, 247 Limerick 48, 53, 57, 115, 147 Limerick, Articles or ‘Treaty’ of 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 Limerick, Viscount see Hamilton, James Lindsay, Thomas (archbishop of Armagh) 85, 87 Lissac 197 Lithuania 222, 223, 224–7, 230, 231, 232–8 convocation 225, 227, 229, 246 Lithuanian Statute 225 Livonia 222, 223, 224, 233, 238 Locke, John 46 Lodève 184 Łomz˙a 233 London 47, 60

Londonderry, county fisheries 145 militia 113 lord deputy of Ireland 49 lord lieutenant of Ireland see under Ireland lords justices of Ireland 4, 54, 55, 56 Lorraine 165 lottery, Irish 31 Lough Erne fishery 140, 147 Lough Neagh fishery 147 Loughrea 54 Louis I (king of Hungary, and Poland) 223 Louis XI (king of France) 165, 166, 170, 171 Louis XIII (king of France) 165 Louis XIV (king of France) 46, 163, 165, 168, 186, 188, 189, 196, 245 Louis XV (king of France) 164, 168, 169, 245 Louis XVI (king of France) 171, 172, 174, 245 Lublin 227, 232 Union of (1569) 221, 225 Lucas, Charles 114 Macartney, George 117, 146 MacDermott, Ambrose (Catholic bishop of Elphin) 54 Machault D’Arnouville, Jean Baptiste de 186 Madden, Samuel 92 Magna Carta 206 Major, J. Russell (historian) 165 Malbork 227 Manners, Charles, 4th duke of Rutland (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 120–2 Maria Theresa (Habsburg empress) 206, 213 marriage in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, or by Catholic clergy, prohibited 50, 59, 60 clandestine 60, 85, 95 by Presbyterian ministers prohibited 83, 90, 95 Marsh, Narcissus (archbishop of Cashel; archbishop of Dublin; archbishop of Armagh) 84, 85

Index Mary II (queen of England, Scotland and Ireland) 47 Mathew, Richard 61 Mathias (Habsburg emperor) 207 Maxwell, Barry, later 2nd earl of Farnham 94, 126 Maxwell, Henry 86 Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal 163 Mazovia 222, 223, 227, 231, 232, 233 Mende 185, 186 mercantilism 246 Metternich, Klemens Wenzel, Prince von 215 militia in Britain (England, Scotland) 112, 113, 115, 127–8 in France 165 in Ireland 33, 37, 56, 107–28 Moldavia 223 Molesworth, Robert, 1st Viscount Molesworth 81, 92, 116 Molyneux, William 251 Monestier, abbot of 195 ‘money bill’ dispute (1750s) 33, 34–6, 95, 109–10, 247 Monmouth’s rebellion 108 Montbrun 184 Montpellier 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 196 Montredon 189 Morgan, Marcus Anthony 90 Mornington, Richard Wellesley, 2nd earl of 122 Mounier, Jean Joseph 177, 178 multiple monarchies 3 see also composite states or monarchies municipal or local government 7, 12, 48, 56, 65, 136, 186, 193–4, 197, 198, 199 Munster 96 Muscovy 223, 225 Naples, kingdom of 3, 163 Napoleonic Wars 210, 215 Narbonne, archbishop of Arthur Dillon 189, 190, 194, 196 ex-officio president of estates of Languedoc 186

263

Nassau van Zuylestein, William Henry van, 4th earl of Rochford 146, 147 Navarre 163 navy, Irish contribution to English 23 Necker, Jacques 173, 188 Nelson, Ivan (historian) 125 Netherlands 3, 11, 108 fishing fleet 139 Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–7) 108 Newenham, Sir Edward 95, 121 Nicolson, William (bishop of Derry) 58, 88 Nine Years War (1689–97) 21, 29 nobility and aristocracy 5 in Britain 6 in Brittany 185 in Burgundy 185 in composite states 4, 5 as an estate 11 in Ireland 137 in Irish parliament 12 at Versailles 184, 195 see also France; Hungary; Languedoc; Poland ‘Norman constitution’ 168 Normandy 5 North, Frederick, styled Lord North 118 North German Confederation 248 Northern Star 124 Northey, Sir Edward 52 Norway 3 Nowy Korczyn 227 ‘Oakboys’ (‘Hearts of Oak’) 96 oaths of abjuration 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 109, 111, 125 of allegiance 47, 51, 59, 63, 66, 126 of loyalty 47, 111 military 125–6 in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 237–8 of supremacy 47, 48, 51, 125, 126 O’Brien, Sir Lucius 94, 140, 151 occasional conformity (to Church of Ireland) 80 Ogle, George 117

264

Index

O’Hara, Charles 116 Old Leighlin, borough of 86 O’Neill, John 148 Orange societies 123 Orde, Thomas 121, 122 Ormond, James Butler, 1st duke of 108 Ormond, James Butler, 2nd duke of 52, 84 Orthodox Church adherents in Lithuania 224 Ottoman empire 211–12, 215, 230, 248 Pálffy family 213 Palliser, William (archbishop of Cashel) 85 Paris 170, 186, 189, 190, 195 parlement of 170–1, 176, 184, 188 parlements (and parlementaires) 6, 166, 168, 170, 175, 176, 178, 179, 199, 247 Burgundy (see under Burgundy) Paris (see under Paris) Toulouse (see under Toulouse) see also diets (and dietines); estates; parliaments; sejmy (and sejmiki) parliament (of England/Great Britain) 8–10, 47, 107, 142, 151, 246 acts of; army (1699) 109; against Catholics (1688) 47, 56; corporations (1661) 90; de heretico comburendo (1677) 47, 51; excluding Catholics from parliament (1678) 47; fisheries (1750) 149, 151; militia (1757, 1758) 112, 114, 115, 128; mutiny acts (annual) 109; oaths for Ireland (1691) 47, 68; schism act (1714) 82, 83; test act (1673) 90; toleration (1689) 82; treason (1702) 56 bills affecting Church of England 90 and fiscal-military state 21 and diet of Hungary compared 206 and sejm of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth compared 227 parliament (of Ireland) 6, 15, 47, 48, 49, 66, 119, 124, 221, 244, 246 acts of; attainder (1689) 65; bogland (1730) 138; bogland (1772) 65;

building houses on church lands (1735) 88; Catholic relief (1778, 1782, 1792, 1793) 66–7, 67, 68, 80, 97, 122, 124, 125–6, 247; chapels of ease (1768, 1771, 1774) 96; chapels of ease (1796) 98; church building (1698) 78, 79; church building (1745) 95; church building (1798, 1799) 98; church building (1800) 98; church leases (1635) 87, 91, 94, 97; church repairs (1782) 98; church repairs and clerical residence (1789) 98; clerical residence (1728) 88; clerical residence (1791, 1800) 98; corporation of Galway (1717) 57; corporation of Kilkenny (1717) 57; curates (1800) 98; curates’ pay (1729) 88; customs (1662) 23–4; ecclesiastical courts (1797) 98; ecclesiastical leases (1795) 97; ecclesiastical qualifications (1785) 98; elections, regulating (1746) 61; electoral franchise (1728) 59; excise (1662) 23, 24; excluding Catholics from minor offices (1715) 57; first fruits (1800) 98; first fruits and bequests (1756) 95; fisheries (1716) 145–6; fisheries (1722–64) 146, 149; fisheries (1763–99) 151; fisheries (1777–1799) 148, 152; indemnity for Dissenters (1719, 1737) 83, 90, 110; loans, public 29–33, 37; marriage, clandestine (1750) 62, 95; marriage, Presbyterian (1782) 95; militia (1716) 108, 109, 110; militia (1755) 109; militia (1756) 111; militia (1778) 109, 117–18, 120, 121, 123, 128; militia (1790) 123; militia (1793) 125–6, 128; parish clerks (1785) 98; parish lands (1797) 98; parish organisation (1735) 88; popery (1703–4) 51, 53, 57, 60, 63, 64, 66, 68, 82, 110;

Index popery (1709) 53, 54, 57, 60, 62, 63; popery (1740) 61; popery (1725, 1727, 1733) 58–9; popery (1755, 1759) 62; registration of priests (1703–4) 52, 53, 57, 62, 63; renewing expiring statutes (1766) 114; restricting Catholic military service abroad (1721, 1752, 1756) 58, 62; riot (1787) 123; road (1710) 143; road (1735–6) 146; sacramental test, abolishing (1780) 95; schools (1537) 87; of settlement and explanation (1662, 1665) 50; supply (1789) 123; supply (1692–1714) 24–7; supply (1715–60) 28; tillage (1730) 138; tithes (1799) 98; toleration of Dissenters (1719) 83, 84; treason (1703) 56; of uniformity (1560) 83 attempt to restore 248 bills and ‘heads of bills’ in: bishops’ leases (1695, 1703, 1723,1735–7) 91; castration of priests (1719) 57, 68; Catholic relief: leases (1747, 1749) 63; leases (1770s) 65; mortgages (1760s) 64; church building (1705, 1725) 86; church building and repairs (1695–6) 89; church courts (1737) 90; clerical residence (1756) 96; clerical residence and school building (1772) 96; commercial propositions (1785) 121–2; disarming Catholics (1731) 60; division of parishes (1731) 90; ecclesiastical leases (1737, 1751, 1757, 1758, 1769, 1771, 1774, 1782, 1785, 1789, 1792) 94, 95; fisheries (1703–4,1705,1709, 1757–8) 149; fisheries (1763–99) 150; fisheries (1779, 1781, 1783, 1785, 1793) 148; licensing Catholic clergy (1746) 62; licensing Catholic clergy (1755–6, 1757–8) 63; linen manufacture

265

(1705) 89; Lough Neagh canal (1703) 143; manse houses (1731) 90; marriage (1735–6, 1745–6, 1749–50) 60; militia (1719) 110; militia (1759) 112–13; militia (1765) 114; militia (1767) 115; militia (1775) 117; militia (1785) 121–2; mortmain (1737) 90; parishes (1756) 96; parliamentary reform (1783) 120; popery (1705–9) 53; popery (1719) 57, 68; popery (1723) 58, 68; popery (1725–33) 59; popery (1740s and 1750s) 61; quarterage (1763–74) 65; for reforming Church of Ireland (1727–35) 88; registering Catholic clergy (1729) 60; securing king’s person (1716) 110; simony, church repairs (1710) 86; tithes (1695–6) 89; tithes (1737, 1757, 1759, 1771, 1773, 1779, 1788) 94, 95; tithes (1787–9) 96; tithes (1795) 98; tithes on hemp and flax (1735) 92; toleration of Dissenters (1692, 1695) 83; toleration of Dissenters (1715–16) 83; union and divison of parishes (1695–6) 89 cathedral boroughs 86 and Church of Ireland 82, 85 committee for religion (in house of lords) 86 committee of public accounts (in house of commons) 27 compared with other representative institutions 8, 9, 12, 13, 205, 248 composition of 12, 80 convention (1660) 23 electoral franchise 59, 67 and English/British parliament: compared with 22; influenced by 24, 25, 51; at odds with 8 growing power of 4, 9 house of commons 55, 110, 111, 113, 115, 117, 125, 140, 148, 151; and Church of Ireland 78,

266

Index

parliament (of Ireland) – Continued 87, 89, 91, 92–3, 94, 96; composition of 12, 64; episcopal influence in 86, 89, 98; initiates legislation 25, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 69, 87, 94, 96, 114, 121, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149–50, 153; prepares ‘heads of bills’ 10, 31; rejects (heads of ) bills 89, 145, 147, 148, 153; and supply legislation 25, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35–7, 109; Tories in 84 house of lords 86, 91, 126, 148; bishops in 80, 83–4, 86, 94, 110, 111; composition of 12, 64; initiates legislation 58, 59, 94, 110, 142, 143, 144, 145; inquires into ‘state of popery’ 88; prepares ‘heads of bills’ 10; rejects (heads of ) bills 50, 51, 57, 89, 96, 145, 148 ‘improvement’ promoted by 137–8, 143 Jacobite (1689) 23, 46, 65, 251 legislation: initiative for 25–6, 50–1, 53, 87, 94; inspired by English or British acts 46, 47, 51, 90, 115, 125, 127, 244, 249; output 10, 141, 142, 245, 248 and military defence 107, 108–9, 111, 116, 122, 123 and popery laws 50, 59, 69, 82 and Poynings’ law 10, 45 Protestant Dissenters in 80 reform of sought 119–20, 123 Restoration (1661–6) 9, 23, 31 sessions, frequency of 10, 26, 33, 246, 250 and taxation 9, 21–2 and tithe 78, 79 unrepresentative character 12 parliament (of Piedmont) 5 parliament (of Sardinia) 5 parliament (of Sicily) 5, 11 parliaments 11 ‘patriots’ and ‘patriotism’ 6, 12 in Ireland 12, 90, 244, 249; bishops as patriots 87, 88; and fisheries 139, 140, 148, 151; and improvement 91, 139;

and militia 111, 112–13, 114, 115, 116, 118–22, 127, 128; and ‘money bill’ dispute 95; and opposition to tithe 94, 96, 97; in parliament 38, 151 Paulet, Charles, 2nd duke of Bolton (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 83, 110 pays d’élection 5, 164, 166, 168, 169, 177 pays d’états 5–6, 164–5, 166, 168, 169, 173, 178, 184, 188, 246 Pembroke, Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 83 penal laws see popery laws (in Ireland) Pereira, Juan Solórzano 164 Pery, Edmond Sexten 94, 118, 148 Petty, William, 2nd earl of Shelburne 115, 116, 140 Philippe (duke of Burgundy) 165 Physico-Historical Society 137 Piedmont 3, 5 Pitt, William 113–14, 120, 121, 122, 124 Plater, Konstanty 226 Płock, bishop of 232 Podlasia 222, 231 Poland and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 3, 8, 221–38, 245, 246 confederacies 229–30, 237 Great Poland and Little Poland 225–6, 227, 232, 235, 236, 238 liberum veto 228–30, 232, 234, 236, 247 nobility (szlachta) 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 229, 231, 232–4, 237, 238 partitions of 221, 246, 247 ‘patriotism’ 12 Protestants in 58 sejmy (and sejmiki) 5, 11, 208, 221, 223, 224–5, 225, 227–8, 229, 246, 247 taxation 225, 226, 229, 230, 234, 236 see also under unions Polignac, Vicomte de 185, 195 Polish language 222, 226 Pomerania 223, 227 Poniatowski family 231 Ponsonby, John 94 Ponsonby, William Brabazon 94

Index popery laws (in Ireland) 7, 44–70, 80, 82, 88 see also individual acts under parliament (of Ireland) Popish Plot 108 Portland, Hans Willem (William) Bentinck, 1st earl of 50 Potemkin, Grigorii 233 Potocki family 231 Poynings’ Law 9–10, 25, 32, 38, 45, 49, 68, 70, 143, 244, 249 see also ‘heads of bills’ legislative procedure in Ireland Poznan´ 227 Pozsony 211 Prˇemyšlid dynasty 223 Presbyterians 44, 80, 82, 84, 90, 93, 95, 96, 97, 110, 111, 126 Preston, William 78–9, 80, 92, 98 Prestonpans, battle of 111 Privileged Company of the Salt Marshes of Sète 189 Privy Council (of England/Britain) 47 and Irish legislation 30, 49, 98, 118; amends 35, 36, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 68, 82, 143, 145, 147, 150, 153, 249; considers 35, 110, 147; drafts 52; popery laws 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 68–9, 82; powers over 10, 45, 89, 249; rejects 58, 89, 116, 117, 128, 143, 144, 145, 249 law officers 58, 147 Privy Council (of Ireland) 4, 15, 152 bishops as members of 80, 83–4, 86 and legislation 10, 45, 98, 118, 146–7, 150, 249; amends 34–5, 49, 51, 143; initiates 10, 49, 51, 52, 69, 87, 89, 90, 142, 143, 144, 145; popery laws 49–51, 51, 52, 55, 58, 59, 63, 64, 69; rejects 89, 95, 97, 110, 143, 144, 145, 148, 151, 153; removed from legislative process (1782) 10, 12, 143 proclamations 47, 48, 54–6, 57, 124 Protestants (in Catholic Europe) 44 in France 44, 46, 163, 191 in Hungary 211, 213, 215 in Poland 58 in Spain 44

267

Protestants (in Ireland) 123, 250 in exile in London 25 as ‘improvers’ 137, 153 as public creditors 34 ‘Protestant ascendancy’ 7, 67, 68, 96, 97, 98, 108 ‘Protestant constitution’ 44, 67 recruitment for army 109 recruitment for militia 108, 109, 114, 122, 125 and union with Great Britain 247 see also under Catholics (in Ireland); Dissenters (Protestant) Provence 163, 164 Prussia 214, 222, 223–4, 227, 228, 238 Royal Prussia 228, 231, 232 Quakers 90, 117 quarterage 64–5 Radziwiłł family 231, 232, 233 Rákóczi uprising (1703–11) 212 Ratio Educationis (1777) 214 Reformation 224 Regency crisis 123, 250 Rességuier, M. de 193 revenue commission (of Ireland) 4 Reviczky, Count Károly 216 Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal 163, 245 ‘Rightboys’ 67, 96 Rijeka (Fiume) 214 riksdag (Sweden) 5 road building and maintenance 91, 136, 143, 146, 170, 172, 173, 187 Robertson, William 93 Robespierre, Maximilien 177 Robinson, Richard (archbishop of Armagh) 96, 97, 98 Rochford, William Henry van Nassau van Zuylestein, 4th earl of 146, 147 Rouairoux 185 Rouen 168 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 237 Rowley, Hercules 91, 92, 94 Royal College of Physicians (of Ireland) 143

268

Index

Royal Military Academy (of France) 189 Rus’ (Ruthenia) 223, 224 Russell, Conrad (historian) 9, 210 Russell, John, 4th duke of Bedford (lord lieutenant) 112, 113 Russia 221, 224, 225, 230, 233, 236, 248 Ruthenia 222, 238 Ruthenian language 224, 226 Rutland, Charles Manners, 4th duke of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 120–2 Ryswick, Treaty of (1697) 107 Sackville, Lionel, 1st duke of Dorset (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 35, 83 sacramental test 47, 52, 80, 82, 83, 84, 95, 110, 111 St Canice, borough of 86 St John’s Well (site of Catholic ‘pattern’) 55 St Petersburg 230 St Stephen (king of Hungary) 212 Samogitia 222, 232, 238 Sandomierz 227, 232 Sandricourt, Vermandois de St-Simon Rouvoy de 185 Saône, river 172 Sapieha, Kazimierz 237 Sardinia 3, 5 Saunders, Anderson 86 Savoyard monarchy 3, 5 Saxon monarchy 3, 5 Saxony 221–2, 230 Schlözer, Ludwig August 206 schools 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 97 Scotland fisheries 140, 149 and improvement 136 and Irish Presbyterians 82, 84 legislative union with England 3 militia 112, 127, 128 smuggling of salt to Ireland 148 see also Jacobitism sejmy (and sejmiki) 5, 11 see also Poland and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Sète 185, 189 Seven Years War (1756–63) 37, 112, 127, 169, 188, 214

Seymour-Conway, Francis, 1st earl of Hertford (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 113 Shelburne, William Petty, 2nd earl of 115, 116, 140 Sicily 3, 5 parliament 11 taxation 11 Sieradz 232 Sigismund III (king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) 225 Silesia 214, 223 Singleton, Henry 84 Siran, abbé de 186 Skerlecz, Miklós 215 Slavonia 207 Slonim/ Słonim 227 Slovakia 211 Smolensk 231 Smyth, Edward (bishop of Down) 87 Smyth, Thomas (bishop of Limerick) 87 ‘sole right’ to initiate money bills (claimed by Irish house of commons) 25, 37, 48, 69 Sommières 189 Spain 44, 61, 111, 123, 163 Spencer, Charles, 3rd earl of Sunderland 83 S´roda 227, 232 Stanhope, James, 1st Earl Stanhope 83 Stanhope, Philip Dormer, 4th earl of Chesterfield (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 62 Stanisław August Poniatowski (king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) 222, 227, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235 Stannard, Eaton 62 Starodub 231 Stearne, John (bishop of Dromore; bishop of Clogher) 87 Stone, George (archbishop of Armagh) 95–6 Stuart dynasty 3, 9, 21, 22–3, 108, 228 Sunderland, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of 83 Sweden 3, 223, 224 riksdag 5 Swift, Jonathan 81, 93

Index Sydney, Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount 122 Synge, Edward (bishop of Ferns and Leighlin) 78, 79, 92 Synge, Edward (bishop of Raphoe; archbishop of Tuam) 58, 87 Szabolcs county 215 Szijártó, István (historian) 211 Talbot, Richard, 1st earl of Tyrconnel 108 Tangiers garrison 23 Targowica, Confederacy of 230 taxation and revenue 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 21, 246 in Austrian lands 11 in composite states 3, 4–5, 6, 21 in Sicily 11 see also France; Hungary; Ireland; Languedoc; Poland; tithes Temesköz 212 Tenison, Edward (bishop of Ossory) 90 Tenison, Henry 86 Tenison, Richard (bishop of Clogher; bishop of Meath) 84, 86 Terraube, Monseigneur de Gallard de 195 test see sacramental test Teutonic Order 224 Tharaux 192 Thorn (Torun´ ) 58 Thurot, François 37 Thynne, Thomas, 1st Viscount Weymouth (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 113 tithes in Ireland 78, 82, 96, 97 of ‘agistment’ (or pasturage or herbage) 78, 79, 92–3 burden on tenants 80 composition or commutation for 85, 92 exemptions proposed for certain produce 89, 92, 94, 96, 97 as a grievance 67, 83, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 98 legislative initiatives 87, 89, 94 other clerical dues 80 Tocqueville, Alexis de 163, 183–4 Toland, John 81, 116

269

Tories in England 52, 82 in Ireland 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 99, 108 Török, Count Lajos 205 Torun´ (Thorn) 58 Toulouse 194, 195, 196, 199 parlement of 184–5, 192, 193–4, 196 Tour-Maubourg, marquis de la 197 Townshend, George, 1st Marquess Townshend (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 114–15 Townshend, Thomas, 1st Viscount Sydney 122 trade 112, 118, 121, 141 English restrictions on Irish 22, 246, 251 free trade between Ireland and Great Britain 38, 95, 119, 244, 248 Habsburg restrictions on Hungarian 215–16 see also economy (of Ireland) Trakai (Trakai) 226 Transylvania 211, 212, 223 Trenchard, John 116 Troki (Trokai) 226 Tuam, borough of 86 Tullow 78, 81 Tyrconnel, Richard Talbot, 1st earl of 108 Tyzenhauz, Antoni 233, 234 Ukraine 226, 227, 232 Ulster 80, 82, 84, 88, 92, 96, 110, 111, 124, 147 ‘undertakers’ (Ireland) 35, 36, 47, 111 unions 3–4 aeque principaliter unions 4, 164 of Ireland and England/Great Britain: in 1800 4, 38, 68, 247, 248; proposed in early eighteenth century 250; in 1650s 70, 251 personal 205, 206, 221–2 of Poland and Hungary (1370–82, 1440–4) 223 of Poland and Lithuania (1251) 223, 224 of Poland and Royal Prussia (1467) 224

270

Index

unions – Continued of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ruthenia, abortive (1658) 224 of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Saxony (1697) 221 Union of Lublin (1569) 221, 225 United Irishmen, Society of 123 Urbarial Patent (1767) 214 Vachon, Georges François de 185 Valkavysk (Wołkowysk) 227 Valois dynasty 163, 165 Varenne, Jacques 173, 176–7, 179 Vasa dynasty 223 Vay, József 215 Velay 195, 197 Vénézobre 198 Versailles 184, 186, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195 Vesey, John (archbishop of Tuam) 84, 85, 87, 91 viceroy see Ireland Vienna 205, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216 Villiers, marquis du 197 Vilnia (Wilno, Vilnius) 225 Vivarais 185, 195 Volhynia 222, 232 Volunteers, Irish 95, 118–24, 128 Walpole, Edward 150 Walpole, Sir Robert 31, 83, 150 Ward, Robert 93 Warmia 227 wars American War of Independence (1775–83) 117, 118, 120, 188 Austro-Turkish War (1787–91) 215 First World War (1914–18) 248 Great Northern War (1700–21) 227, 234 Nine Years War (1689–97) 21, 29 Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–7) 108 Seven Years War (1756–63) 37, 112, 127, 169, 188, 214 War of Jenkins’ Ear/War of the Austrian Succession (1739–48) 33, 34, 111, 214

War of the League of Augsburg (1689–97) 21, 29 War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) 107 War of the Two Kings (1689–91) 24, 25, 46, 49, 83, 84, 108 Wars of Religion in France (1562–98) 170 Warsaw 234, 236, 237 Waterford 115 Waterford, county 146, 147 Wawel Castle 234 Weaver, John 86 Wellesley, Richard, 2nd earl of Mornington 122 Westmorland, John Fane, 10th earl of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 123, 124 Wetenhall, Edward (bishop of Cork) 46 Weymouth, Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 113 whaling 149, 150, 151–2, 153 Wharton, Thomas Wharton, 1st earl of (lord lieutenant of Ireland) 83 Whigs ‘commonwealth’ or ‘real’ 116 in England/Great Britain 83, 89, 90, 119 in Ireland 27, 82, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92, 95, 99, 109, 128 Whig versions of history 6, 8 ‘Whiteboys’ 96 Willes, Edward 63 William III (king of England, Scotland and Ireland) 9, 21, 29, 46, 47, 49, 50, 107, 119, 251 Wilno (Vilnia, Vilnius) 225 Wołkowysk (Valkavysk) 227 Woodward, Richard (bishop of Cloyne) 44, 96 Youghal 115 Young, Arthur 187 Zichy family 212

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