Using the Tennent family as a starting point, this study has explored the political and cultural milieu inhabited by the Presbyterian elite of late Georgian Belfast. In so doing, it has sought both to enrich, and in places challenge, the existing literature relating to Ulster Presbyterian political development in the aftermath of the Union; to reassess the significance of cultural and intellectual life in late Georgian Belfast, an area that has received little systematic study; and to examine the complex interactions of evangelicalism and philanthropy and the means by which philanthropy served as a form of social control, areas that, in the context of late Georgian Belfast, have hitherto been entirely overlooked. In addition, it has addressed a particular scholarly lacuna relating to the Tennents themselves and placed Belfast firmly within a broader British narrative, highlighting the ways in which its political and intellectual life conformed to more widespread patterns.

In addressing these areas, the study has developed a number of key arguments and themes. It has argued that William Tennent was not merely a member of the United Irishmen, as has formerly been thought, but that he was in fact one of its leading members, and has demonstrated the extent to which the Tennent family was involved in political, cultural and philanthropic activity in late Georgian Belfast. Building on existing scholarship it has, moreover, sought to illustrate the extent to which Belfast politics were, during the period 1801–32, both livelier and more complex than has previously been thought. Without doubt, the story of political transformation forms one strand of the narrative of Presbyterian politics during this period, but it is not the whole story.