Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T16:38:53.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Irish Protestants and James II, 1688–90

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Raymond Gillespie
Raymond Gillespie*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Modern historical writing on the events of 1688 to 1691 in Ireland has been characterised by a sense that the two sides in that conflict were acting out predetermined roles. There is in the writing no doubt that Protestants would rally to the cause of William III and that Catholics would be the loyal supporters of the deposed James II. Roy Foster has characterised the ‘war of the two kings’ as a clash of two cultures: ‘one Catholic, French-connected, romantically Jacobite … and temperamentally Gaelic’, and the other that of the Protestant ‘Ascendancy’ created by ‘the traumatic events of James’s short reign and its aftermath’. For J. G. Simms political advantage was the key to the events of 1688–90: Catholics naturally supported James since to do so offered ‘an unusually favourable prospect of establishing their predominance’; and in the Protestant mind, since ‘William was lawful king of England, he was automatically king of Ireland … [and] would not abandon the English stake in Ireland’. Put more starkly by J. C. Beckett, ‘the struggle which reached its climax at the Boyne and ended at Limerick ran a clear course from the accession of James II’. Modern historians were not the only ones to make the assumption that Irish Protestants would support William and Catholics James. Many contemporaries outside Ireland made a similar equation. The English Jacobite John Stevens seems to have believed there was a definite link between religion and political loyalty when he arrived in Ireland in 1689 to serve James. On his arrival at Naas he was allocated a billet by the sovereign of the town, but the innkeeper refused to admit him. ‘The man being an Irishman and a Catholic’, Stevens noted, ‘made his ill carriage towards us appear more strange but his religion and country he thought would bear him out’. Arriving at Dublin he approached his prominent Jacobite friends, but ‘friendship was grown so rare in Ireland as loyalty in England’. He was relieved from apparent destitution by ‘the hands I least expected it from’, a New English Protestant who lent him £10.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 110 , November 1992 , pp. 124 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Foster, R. F., Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London, 1988), pp 152-3.Google Scholar

2 Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X. and Byrne, F. J. (eds), A new history of Ireland, iii: Early modern Ireland (Oxford, 1976), p. 487.Google Scholar

3 Beckett, J. C., A short history of Ireland (5th ed., London, 1973), p. 90.Google Scholar

4 The journal of John Stevens, ed. Murray, R. H. (Oxford, 1912), pp 51, 54–9.Google Scholar

5 Barnard, T. C., ‘Crises of identity among Irish Protestants, 1641–85’ in Past and Present, no. 127 (May 1990), pp 39–83 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brady, Ciaran and Gillespie, Raymond (eds), Natives and newcomers: essays on the making of Irish colonial society, 1534–1641 (Dublin, 1986), pp 12–13.Google Scholar

6 Ormond to earl of Burlington, 15 July 1679 (Ormonde MSS, v, 155); Gillespie, Raymond, ‘The Presbyterian revolution in Ulster, 1660–90’ in Sheils, W. J. and Wood, Diana (eds), The churches, Ireland and the Irish, Studies in Church History xxv (Oxford, 1989), pp 159-70.Google Scholar

7 Autobiography of SirClarke, George (H.M.C., Report on the manuscripts of Mr F. W. Leyborne-Popham (London, 1899), p. 271).Google Scholar

8 A faithful history of the north of Ireland from the late King James’s accession to the crown to the siege of Londonderry (London>, 1690); Some reflections on a pamphlet entitled ‘A faithful history of the northern affairs of Ireland’ (Dublin, 1691), pp 13, 38.

9 Gorges, Robert to Clarendon, , 4 Feb. 1690 (Calendar of Clarendon state papers (5 vols, Oxford, 1872-1970), v, 689)Google Scholar.

10 N.L.I., MS 40. On the evolution of this idea see Clarke, Aidan, ‘Colonial constitutional attitudes in Ireland, 1640–60’ in R.I.A. Proc., xc (1990), sect. C, pp 357-75Google Scholar; ‘Report of Sir Heneage Finch on the Act of Explanation’ (Carte, Thomas, The life of James Butler, first duke of Ormond (6 vols, Oxford, 1851), v, 123).Google Scholar

11 A collection of the state letters of the … first earl of Orrery, ed. Morrice, Thomas (2 vols, Dublin, 1743), ii, 93–4, 145–6, 150.Google Scholar

12 Marquess of Lansdowne (ed.), The Petty-Southwell correspondence, 1676–87 (London, 1928), pp 50–51, 66–7.Google Scholar

13 The economic writings of Sir William Petty, ed. Hull, C. H. (2 vols, Cambridge, 1899), i, 159.Google Scholar

14 Pender, Séamus (ed.), Council books of the corporation of Waterford (Dublin, 1964), p. 252 Google Scholar; Caulfield, Richard (ed.), The council book of Youghal (Guildford, 1878), pp 366-7Google Scholar; Gogarty, Thomas (ed.), Council book of the corporation of Drogheda (Drogheda, 1915), p. 209 Google Scholar; Anc. rec. Dublin, v, 356–7; Rabbitte, J., ‘Galway Corporation MS C’ in Galway Arch. Soc.Jn., xii (1922), p. 4.Google Scholar

15 Henry Boyle to dowager countess of Orrery, 26 Mar. 1685 (Orrery papers, p. 307).

16 Robert Colville to Henry, 16 Feb. 1685 (T.C.D., MS 1178, ff 18–20).

17 SirPerceval, John to SirSouthwell, Robert, 14 July 1685 (H.M.C., Report on manuscripts of the earl of Egmont (2 vols, London, 1905-9), ii, 157)Google Scholar; Lord Mountjoy’s history (Dublin City Library, Pearse Street, Gilbert MS 109, ff 53–7).

18 SirNewcomen, Thomas to Rawdon, Lady, 17 Jan. 1689 (Berwick, Edward (ed.), The Rawdon papers (London, 1819), p. 297 Google Scholar); Cal. Clarendon state papers, v, 661–2; Ormonde MSS, viii, 343; Caulfield (ed.), Council bk Youghal, p. 386; Pender (ed.), Council bks Waterford, p. 252. Even the former Cromwellian radical Devereux Spratt condemned the ‘late horrid rebellion of an illegitimate person’ in his diary for October 1685 ( StSeymour, John D. (ed.), Adventures and experiences of a seventeenth-century clergyman (Dublin, 1909), p. 32).Google Scholar

19 Perceval to Southwell, 2 Feb. 1686 (Egmont MSS, ii, 177).

20 On Houston see Miller, David, Queen’s rebels (Dublin, 1978), p. 22.Google Scholar

21 Humphry Owen to Lord Herbert, 6 July 1688 (Herbert corresp., p. 343); H.M.C. rep 11, app. v, pp 136–7.

22 Miller, Queen’s rebels, p. 23.

23 Inhabitants of Belfast to Tyrconnell, 14 Mar. 1689 (P.R.O.I., M 2541, f. 21).

24 For Fermanagh see Earl of Belmore, ‘Governor Hamilton and Captain Corry’ in U.J.A., 2nd ser., ii (1896), pp 108-26.Google Scholar

25 Bp of Killaloe to Sir Donat O’Brien, 3 Dec. 1689 (Inchiquin MSS, pp 18–19).

26 Longford to Ormond, 12 Jan. 1689 ( Melvin, Patrick(ed.), ‘Letters of Lord Longford and others on Irish affairs’ in Anal Hib., no. 32 (1985), p. 48).Google Scholar

27 Armagh Public Library, Dopping MSS, i, nos 120, 123, 132. Interestingly, the Catholics relied on the division of loyalties between king and pope formulated in the early seventeenth century to argue that the toleration act did not apply since their loyalty in religious matters was not to the king (no. 127).

28 Robert Colville to Patrick Melvin, 16 Feb. 1685 (T.C.D., MS 1178, f. 20); Thomas Stanhope to Arthur Rawdon, 21 Feb. 1685 (H.M.C., Report on the manuscripts of the late R. R. Hastings (4 vols, London, 1928-47), ii, 395).Google Scholar

29 Miller, John, ‘The earl of Tyrconnell and James II’s Irish policy, 1685–88’ in Hist. Jn., xx (1977), pp 803-23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Childs, John, The army, James II and the Glorious Revolution (Manchester, 1980), pp 56–82.Google Scholar

30 Christopher Cross to Sir Robert Southwell, 11 June 1688 (T.C.D., MS 1181, f. 18); John Jervis to Humphry Owen, 4 June 1688 (Herbert corresp., p. 337). For local scares in Dublin see Ormonde MSS, viii, 356, and Melvin, (ed.), ‘Letters of Lord Longford’, pp 56, 57.Google Scholar

31 T.C.D., MS 847, ff 1–8; ibid., MS 1449; Economic writings of Sir William Petty, ii, 141.

32 Ormonde MSS, viii, 357; Cross to Southwell, 7 Feb. 1690 (B.L., Eg. MS 917, f. 95v).

33 Diary of the earl of Clarendon (The state letters of Henry, earl of Clarendon (2 vols, Oxford & Dublin, 1765), ii, 324).Google Scholar

34 Richard Hamilton to William Waring, 15 Mar. 1689 (P.R.O.N.I., D695/151); Arthur Brownlow to Waring, 12 Apr. 1689 (ibid., D695/155); Sir Thomas Newcomen to Lady Rawdon, Jan. 1689 (Berwick (ed.), Rawdon papers, p. 301).

35 Carpenter, Andrew, ‘William King and the threats to the Church of Ireland during the reign of James II’ in I.H.S., xviii, no. 69 (Mar. 1972), p. 23.Google Scholar

36 Walter Dawson to Dacre Barret, Mar. 1689 (P.R.O.N.I., T2529/6/108).

37 John Cully to Sir William Wentworth, 21 Mar. 1689 (B.L., Add. MS 22192, f. 2).

38 Boyle estate accounts, 1685–9 (N.L.I., MSS 6300, 6303).

39 Hill, George (ed.), The Montgomery manuscripts (Belfast, 1869), p. 273.Google Scholar

40 B.L., Eg. MS 917, ff 105, 108, 109v; Walker, George, A true account of the siege of Londonderry (London, 1689), p. 38.Google Scholar

41 Southwell to Perceval, 16 May 1682 (Egmont MSS, ii, 115); George Walker to Perceval, 5 Dec. 1685 (ibid., p. 168); Orrery state letters, ii, 41.

42 Dopping’s speech is reported in Ormonde MSS, viii, 392–401.

43 Miller, ‘Earl of Tyrconnell’, pp 819–21; the drafting of the legislation is discussed in Simms, J. G., Jacobite Ireland, 1685–91 (London, 1969), pp 39–42.Google Scholar

44 Robert Southwell to William Petty, 8 July 1687 (Petty-Southwell corresp., p. 257).

45 Journal of John Stevens, p. 70.

46 ‘Sense of the Protestant inhabitants of Ireland’, 1690 (Cal. Clarendon state papers, v, 688).

47 Mr Daniel to Mr Wall, 26 Feb. 1689 (B.L., Eg. MS 917, f. 107); Ormonde MSS, viii, 386. Similarly, Michael Cole, who had been prepared to treat with James in February 1689 (see note 33), declared to William in March that he had always supported him only (Cal. S.P. dom., 1689–90, p. 56).

48 Wurtenburg to Christian V, 9 Sept. 1690 ( Danaher, Kevin and Simms, J. G. (ed.), The Danish force in Ireland (Dublin, 1962), p. 76)Google Scholar; see also Wurtenburg to Christian V, 12 Nov. 1690 (ibid., p. 91).

49 William Waring to Friar Magennis, n.d. (P.R.O.N.I., D695/136).

50 Gilbert, J. T. (ed.), A Jacobite narrative of the war in Ireland (Dublin, 1892), p. 40.Google Scholar

51 Ormonde MSS, viii, 359.