Protestant Ascendancy
The Protestant Ascendancy (also known as the Ascendancy) was the sociopolitical and economical domination of
During the
Origin of term
The phrase was first used in passing by Sir Boyle Roche in a speech to the Irish House of Commons on 20 February 1782.[3] George Ogle MP used it on 6 February 1786 in a debate on falling land values, saying that "When the landed property of the Kingdom, when the Protestant Ascendancy is at stake, I cannot remain silent."
Then on 20 January 1792
The phrase therefore was seen to apply across classes to rural landowners as well as city merchants. The Dublin resolution was disapproved of by a wide range of commentators, such as the Marquess of Abercorn, who called it "silly", and William Drennan who said it was "actuated by the most monopolising spirit".[5]
The phrase became popularised outside Ireland by Edmund Burke, another liberal Protestant, and his ironic comment in 1792: "A word has been lately struck in the mint of the castle of Dublin; thence it was conveyed to the Tholsel, or city-hall, where, having passed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon became current in parliament, and was carried back by the Speaker of the House of Commons in great pomp as an offering of homage from whence it came. The word is Ascendancy."[6] This was then used by Catholics seeking further political reforms.
In the Irish language, the term used was An Chinsealacht, from cinseal, meaning 'dominance'.[7][8][9]
Penal Laws
This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2018) |
The process of Protestant Ascendancy was facilitated and formalized in the legal system after 1691 by the passing of various
- Exclusion of Catholics from most public offices (since 1607), Presbyterians were also barred from public office from 1707.
- Ban on intermarriage with Protestants; repealed 1778
- Presbyterian marriages were not legally recognised by the state
- Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces (rescinded by the Militia Act 1793)
- Bar from membership in either the Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of England from 1652; rescinded 1662–1691; renewed 1691–1829, applying to the successive parliaments of England (to 1707), Great Britain (1707 to 1800), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1800 to 1829).
- Disenfranchising Act1728, exclusion from voting until 1793;
- Exclusion from the legal professions and the judiciary; repealed (respectively) 1793 and 1829.
- Education Act 1695 – ban on foreign education; repealed 1782.
- Bar to Catholics and Protestant Dissenters entering Trinity College Dublin; repealed 1793.
- On a death by a Catholic, his legatee could benefit by conversion to the Church of Ireland;
- Popery Act – Catholic inheritances of land were to be equally subdivided between all an owner's sons with the exception that if the eldest son and heir converted to Protestantism that he would become the one and only tenant of estate and portions for other children not to exceed one third of the estate. This "Gavelkind" system had previously been abolished by 1600.
- Ban on converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism on pain of Praemunire: forfeiting all property estates and legacy to the monarch of the time and remaining in prison at the monarch's pleasure. In addition, forfeiting the monarch's protection. No injury however atrocious could have any action brought against it or any reparation for such.
- Ban on Catholics buying land under a lease of more than 31 years; repealed 1778.
- Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics on pain of a £500 fine that was to be donated to the Blue Coat hospital in Dublin.
- Ban on Catholics inheriting Protestant land
- Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5 (to keep horses suitable for military activity out of the majority's hands)
- Roman Catholic lay priests had to register to preach under the Registration Act 1704, but seminary priests and Bishops were not able to do so until 1778. At least they could register; the English Popery Act 1698awarded a bounty for arresting a priest.
- When allowed, new Catholic churches were to be built from wood, not stone, and away from main roads.
- 'No person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm' upon pain of a £20 fine and three months in prison for every such offence. Repealed in 1782.[11]
- Any and all rewards not paid by the crown for alerting authorities of offences to be levied upon the Catholic populace within parish and county.
They also covered the non-conforming ("
- had revolted against the government and
- had not under the 1691 established churchin Britain.
However, those protected by the Treaty were still excluded from public political life.
The situation was confused by the policy of the
The son of
As a result, political, legal and economic power resided with the Ascendancy to the extent that by the mid-18th century, the greater part of the land in Ireland (97% in 1870) was owned by men who rented it out to tenant farmers rather than cultivating it themselves. Smaller landlords in the east, in Ulster or on the outskirts of towns were more favourably placed than the owners of tracts of infertile bog in the west. In 1870 302 proprietors (1.5% of the total) owned 33.7% of the land, and 50% of the country was in the hands of 750 families of the Ascendency. At the other end of the scale, 15,527 (80.5%) owned between them only 19.3% of the land. 95% of the land of Ireland was calculated to be under minority control of those within the
Reform, though not complete, came in three main stages and was effected over 50 years:
- Reform of religious disabilities in 1778–82, allowing bishops, schools and convents.
- Reform of restrictions on property ownership and voting in 1778–93.
- Restoration of political, professional and office-holding rights in 1793–1829.
Grattan's parliament
The confidence of the Ascendancy was manifested towards the end of the 18th century by its adoption of a nationalist Irish, though still exclusively Protestant, identity and the formation in the 1770s of Henry Grattan's Patriot Party. The formation of the Irish Volunteers to defend Ireland from French invasion during the American Revolution effectively gave Grattan a military force, and he was able to force Britain to concede a greater amount of self-rule to the Ascendancy.[12]
The parliament repealed most of the
Act of Union and decline
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The abolition of the Irish Parliament was followed by economic decline in Ireland, and widespread emigration from among the ruling class to the new centre of power in London, which increased the number of absentee landlords. The reduction of legalised discrimination with the passage of Catholic emancipation in 1829 meant that the Ascendancy now faced competition from prosperous Catholics in parliament and in the higher-level professional ranks such as the judiciary and the army that were needed in the growing British Empire. From 1840 corporations running towns and cities in Ireland became more democratically elected; previously they were dominated until 1793 by guild
Great Irish Famine of 1845–52
The festering sense of native grievance was magnified by the
Land War
As a consequence, the remnants of the Ascendancy were gradually displaced during the 19th and early 20th centuries through impoverishment, bankruptcy, the disestablishment of the
Nationalist movement
The
With the Protestant yeoman class void being filled by a newly rising "Catholic Ascendancy",
Artistic and cultural role
Many members of the Ascendancy played a role in literary and artistic matters in 19th- and 20th-century Ireland, notably
See also
- Orange Institution
- Plantations of Ireland
- Anglo-Irish
- Williamite
- Suffrage#Religion
- Aristocracy (class)
- Official Ireland, the "ruling class" of the Irish Free State/Republic after 1922
References
- ^ McCormack, W.J (1989), "Essay", Eighteenth Century Ireland, 4
- ^ McCormack 1989, p. 181.
- ^ McCormack 1989, p. 162.
- ^ Calendar of the Ancient Records of Dublin, vol. 14, pp. 241–42.
- ^ McCormack 1989, p. 177.
- ^ McCormack 1989, p. 175.
- ^ "Téarmaí staire A–M". acmhainn.ie.
- .
- ISBN 9780755712618– via Google Books.
- ISBN 9781570030253.
- ^ "irish-society". irish-society. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
- ^
Crosbie, Barry Irish Imperial Networks Migration, Social Communication and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century India. Cambridge University Press (2012) ISBN 0-521-11937-5.
- ISBN 0-8369-6956-1.
- ^ a b "Act of Union". Queen's University Belfast. Archived from the original on 15 April 2012. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
- ISBN 0-521-66109-9
- ^ Encumbered Estates Act detail Archived 16 April 2009 at archive.today
- hdl:2262/15085.
- ^ a b D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (Routledge, 2 Sep 2003), 309.
- ISBN 1-873063-00-811 June 1910 "We are a generous people; and yet we are told we must keep up a sectarian bitterness to the end; and the Protestant Ascendancy has been broken down, only to build Catholic Ascendancy on its ruins. Are we in earnest about our country at all or are we seeking to perpetuate our wretchedness by refusing the honest aid of Irishmen? Why should we throw unto the arms of England those children of Ireland who would be our most faithful allies, if we did not seek to disinherit them? "
Canon Sheehan of Doneraile asked in a long editorial, which was the Manifesto of the All-for-Ireland League, published by the Cork Free Press - ^ a b Murphy, Gerard (2010), The Year of Disappearances: Political Killings in Cork 1920–1921, Cork: Gill & Macmillan Ltd.
- ^ "Beckett and Ireland – Cambridge University Press". cambridge.org.
- JSTOR 30090194.
- ISBN 0-283-06236-3.
- ISBN 0-571-15497-2.
Further reading
- Bence-Jones, Mark (1993). Twilight of the Ascendancy. London: Constable. ISBN 0-09-472350-8.
- Claydon, Tony and McBride, Ian (Editors). Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650-c. 1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1999). ISBN 0-521-62077-5
- Hayton, David. "Anglo-Irish Attitudes, Changing Perceptions of National Identity among the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, C. 1690–1750." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 17 (1987): 145–157.
- Hill, Jacqueline R. "National Festivals, the State and 'Protestant Ascendancy' in Ireland, 1790–1829." Irish Historical Studies (1984): 30–51. in JSTOR
- Lecky, William Edward Hartpole. History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (6 vol. 1892)
- ISBN 978-0691037578)
- Walsh, Patrick. The Making of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy: The Life of William Conolly, 1662–1729 (Boydell & Brewer, 2010)
- Wilson, Rachel, Elite Women in Ascendancy Ireland, 1690–1745: Imitation and Innovation (Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2015). ISBN 978-1-78327-039-2
External links
- Protestant Ascendancy decline 1800–1930
- Episode 6 of the Irish Passport Podcast explores the modern legacy of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy on the island today.