Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T01:59:30.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wellington and the “Open Question”: The Issue of Catholic Emancipation, 1821–1829

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Richard W. Davis
Get access

Extract

For all the recognition of the immense importance of Catholic Emancipation, both in itself and for what it is supposed to have led to (most notably, parliamentary reform), significant questions still surround it. Why, after Daniel O'Connell's victory in County Clare in June 1828 precipitated a crisis, did that crisis drag on for more than six months of perpetual wavering and mixed signals from the British government? Why was a cabinet not summoned? Why did the prime minister so long refuse either to confide in or to remove the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland? Finally, what was the likely effect of these months of shuffling and confusion in shaping the course of politics in the years to come?

The Duke of Wellington is central to answering such questions. Before 1828, Wellington was a key player whose doubts and fears were broadly representative of those that reshaped the positions of many of emancipation's most powerful opponents and brought them around to the necessity of accepting the measure. In 1828 and 1829 as prime minister, Wellington made decisions that were critical in determining how the measure would be carried. Some of those decisions had an important bearing on how emancipation was received in the country and therefore on the political divisions that followed.

The explanation usually given for the government's failure to act is that the king refused to permit it and would not allow the cabinet to consider the matter. In January, when the king asked Wellington to form a government, he had stipulated and the duke had agreed that Catholic Emancipation should not be a government measure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 39 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1997

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 British Library (B.L.), Dropmore Papers, Add. MS. 59264, 5 April 1807.

2 Durham University Library, Grey Papers, Grenville to Grey, 2 April 1807.

3 The Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester, 3 vols. (London, 1861), 2: 211–12Google Scholar.

4 Henry E. Huntington Library (H.E.H.), STG 38(33), Thomas Grenville to the first Marquess of Buckingham, 24 February 1812.

5 Parliamentary Debates, 1st ser., 33: 395Google Scholar; B.L., Liverpool Papers, Add. MS. 38328, Liverpool to Newcastle, 26 June 1812.

6 For the most recent contribution to the discussion, see Davis, R. W., “Wellington, the Constitution, and Catholic Emancipation,” Parliamentary History, vol. 15, no. 2 (1996): 209–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Aspinall, A., ed., The Letters of King George IV, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1938), no. 90Google Scholar.

8 H.E.H., STG 79(13), Grenville to Buckingham, March 1821.

9 H.E.H., STG 89(53), C. W. W. Wynn to Liverpool, 11 December 1821; 89(54), Liverpool to Wynn, 12 December 1821.

10 Machin, G. I. T., The Catholic Question in English Politics, 1820 to 1830 (Oxford, 1964), p. 34Google Scholar.

11 H.E.H., ST 95, 1823 Diary of the first Duke of Buckingham, pp. 25–42; Southampton University Library (S.U.L.), Wellington Papers 1/762/13, Liverpool to Wellington, 12 May 1823; H.E.H., STG 72(42), W. H. Fremantle to the first Duke of Buckingham, 24 April 1823. I am grateful to the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office for permission to include Crown Copyright material from the Wellington Papers.

12 Ward, B.N., The Eve of Catholic Emancipation 3 vols. (London, 1911–1912), 2: 347–51Google Scholar.

13 H.E.H. STG 71(56), W. H. Fremantle to the Marquess of Buckingham, 30 March 1821; Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, , ed., Memoirs of the Court of George IV, 1820–1830, 2 vols. (London, 1859), 1: 148Google Scholar.

14 Aspinall, , The Letters of King George IV 2: 424–25Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 2: 151.

16 Despatches, Correspondence, and Memoranda of the Duke of Wellington, 1818–1832, 2nd Duke of Wellington, 8 vols. (London, 1867–1880), 2: 592–607Google Scholar.

17 S.U.L., WP1/817/1, copy Wellington to Liverpool, 2 April 1825.

18 Wellington, , Despatches, 2: 435Google Scholar.

19 Machin, , The Catholic Question in English Politics, p. 65Google Scholar.

20 Wellington, , Despatches, 2: 464Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., p, 564.

22 Aspinall, A., ed., The Diary of Henry Hobhouse, 1820–1827 (London, 1947), p. 115Google Scholar.

23 Machin, G. I. T., “Canning, Wellington, and the Catholic Question,” English Historical Review 99 (1984): 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Parliamentary Debates, n.s. 13: 890Google Scholar.

25 Wellington, , Despatches, 3: 462–64Google Scholar.

26 Aspinall, A., ed., The Formation of Canning's Ministry, February to August 1827 (London, 1937), pp. 10–12Google Scholar.

27 Davis, R. W., “The Tories, the Whigs, and Catholic Emancipation, 1827–1829,” English Historical Review 97 (1982): 95–96Google Scholar.

28 Aspinall, , Formation, p. 123Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. 145.

30 Davis, , “Wellington, the Constitution, and Catholic Emancipation,” p. 210Google Scholar.

31 Machin, , The Catholic Question in English Politics, p. 110Google Scholar.

32 Davis, , “Wellington, the Constitution, and Catholic Emancipation,” pp. 212–13Google Scholar.

33 S.U.L., Broadlands MSS GMC/18, 24, 25/1–4. I acknowledge the permission of the Trustees of the Broadlands Archive Trust to consult and quote the Palmerston Papers, then in the care of the National Register of Archives.

34 Machin, , “Canning, Wellington, and the Catholic Question,” p. 99Google Scholar; Pares, Richard, King George III and the Politicians (Oxford, 1953), p. 157Google Scholar.

35 Wellington, , Despatches, 4: 564–65, 573Google Scholar.

36 Machin, , “Canning, Wellington, and the Catholic Question,” p. 99Google Scholar.

37 S.U.L., Broadlands MSS GMC/25/1–4.

38 University College, London, Brougham Papers, Brougham to Lord Grey, 29 October 1828.

39 S.U.L., WP1/994/28; 993/77, copy of Wellington to Salisbury, 30 January 1829; Hinde, Wendy, Catholic Emancipation: A Shake to Men's Minds (Oxford, 1992), p. 134Google Scholar.

40 H.E.H., STG 79(37), Lord Grenville to the Duke of Buckingham, 7 February 1829.

41 See Machin, The Catholic Question in English Politics, ch. 7, which is an excellent account of the anti-Catholic reaction during the six-month hiatus; Hinde, , “Catholic Emancipation”, p. 94Google Scholar; Noyce, Karen, “The Duke of Wellington and the Catholic Question,” in Wellington: Studies in the Military and Political Career of the first Duke of Wellington, ed., Gash, Norman (Manchester, 1990), p. 151Google Scholar.