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Historical revision: Was O’Connell a United Irishman?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

C.J. Woods
C.J. Woods*
Affiliation:
Department of History, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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Extract

Daniel O’Connell, asked when appearing before a select committee of the House of Commons on 1 March 1825 whether there had been many Catholics among the United Irishmen, replied that there were scarcely any among the leading United Irishmen. The leading United Irishmen were almost all Presbyterians or Dissenters. In the north the lower classes of United Irishmen were at first almost exclusively Dissenters. It spread then among the Roman Catholics and as it spread into the southern counties and of course, as it took in the population, it increased in its numbers of Roman Catholics. In the county of Wexford, where the greatest part of the rebellion raged, there were no United Irishmen previous to the rebellion and there would have been no rebellion there if they had not been forced forward by the establishment of Orange lodges and the whipping and torturing and things of that kind.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 138 , November 2006 , pp. 173 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2006

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References

1 First report from the select committee on the state of Ireland, 1825, p. 73, H.C. 1825 (129), viii, 73.

2 Musgrave, Richard, Memoirs of the different rebellions in Ireland (Dublin, 1801; 3rd ed., Dublin, 1802)Google Scholar. For its influence and Protestant fears see Kelly, James, ‘ “We were all to have been massacred”: Irish Protestants and the experience of rebellion’ in Bartlett, Thomaset al. (eds), 1798: a bicentenary perspective (Dublin, 2003), pp 312–44Google Scholar.

3 Duffy, C.G., Young Ireland (London, 1881), p. 58Google Scholar. For Plunket see Oxford D.N.B.

4 As made clear by Sheil, Richard Lalor in his anonymous article, ‘The solicitor-general, Mr Joy’ in New Monthly Magazine, vii (1823), pp 481–90Google Scholar.

5 Latimer, W.T., Ulster biographies relating chiefly to the rebellion of 1798 (Belfast, 1897), p. 9Google Scholar; McNeill, Mary, The life and times of Mary Ann McCracken (Dublin, 1960), pp 122, 162Google Scholar.

6 Senior, Hereward, Orangeism in Ireland and Britain, 1795–1836 (London, 1966), pp 213–15Google Scholar.

7 The life and speeches of Daniel O’Connell, ed. O’Connell, John (2 vols, London, 1846), i, 13–14Google Scholar.

8 Fagan, William, The life and times of Daniel O’Connell (2 vols, Cork, 1847–8), i, 18–19Google Scholar.

9 The term is Thomas Bartlett’s and is employed as the main title to his edition of the reports of Higgins, Francis: Revolutionary Dublin, 1795–1801: the letters of Francis Higgins to Dublin Castle (Dublin, 2004)Google Scholar.

10 These and other details of O’Connell’s career can be found in MacDonagh, Oliver, The hereditary bondsman: Daniel O’Connell, 1775–1829 (London, 1988), ch. 1Google Scholar.

11 It first appeared in 1846 in Life & speeches of Daniel O’Connell, ed. O’Connell, John, i, 9–10Google Scholar. See also Daunt, W.J.O’Neill, Personal recollections of the late Daniel O’Connell (2 vols, London, 1848), ii, 94—5Google Scholar, and Roche, James, Critical and miscellaneous essays by an octogenarian (2 vols, Cork, 1851), ii, 112Google Scholar.

12 Quoted in Bartlett, Revolutionary Dublin, pp 227–8.

13 See below, n. 21.

14 Examination of Robert Hobart by Alderman William Alexander, 2 June 1798 (N. A.I., Rebellion papers, 620/38/28).

15 J. B. Palmer to Edward Cooke, 2 June 1798 (ibid., 620/38/25).

16 Daniel Ó’Connnell: his early life and journal, 1795 to 1802, ed. Houston, Arthur (London, 1906), pp 165–6Google Scholar. See also below, n. 21.

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19 Smyth, Jim, The men of no property: Irish radicals and popular politics in the late eighteenth century (London & Dublin, 1992), p. 155Google Scholar.

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21 ‘A journal for the years 1795 … [to] … 1799 kept by D. O’Connell, member of Lincoln’s Inns’ (R.I.A., MS 12 P 13). It is printed in Daniel O’Connell: his early life & journal, ed. Houston.

22 O’Connell corr., i, 19–33.

23 ‘Journal’, p. 49.

24 Examination of Robert Hobart by Alderman William Alexander, 2 June 1798 (N.A.I., Rebellion papers, 620/38/28).

25 ‘Journal’, p. 66.

26 MacDonagh, Hereditary bondsman, p. 53.

27 Teeling, C.H., Personal narrative of the Irish rebellion of 1798 (London, 1828)Google Scholar, Sequel to ‘Personal narrative of the Irish rebellion of 1798’ (Belfast, 1832) and Observations on the ‘History and consequences of the battle of the Diamond’ (Belfast, 1838). A copy of a Belfast edition of the first of the three, in R.I.A. H.P. 736/2, is inscribed ‘Daniel O’Connell, Merrion Square, April 4th, 1828’.

28 MacNeven, W.J. (with Emmet, T.A.), Pieces of Irish history (New York, 1807)Google Scholar; Sampson, William, Memoirs (New York, 1807)Google Scholar. The suspicion that MacNeven’s book had been reprinted in Dublin caused alarm in government circles in 1808 (Civil correspondence and memoranda of Field-marshal Arthur duke of Wellington, ed. by his son (London, 1860), pp 119–20).

29 The journal of Thomas Moore, ed. Dowden, W.S. (4 vols, Newark, Del., 1983–7), iv, 1Google Scholar.

30 Daunt, , Personal recollections of O’Connell, ii, 98–9, 103Google Scholar. This dating is from Daunt’s reference also to the British in China. It may be significant that O’Connell referred to the British in China in three speeches made in March 1841 (Freeman’s Journal, 12, 17, 30 Mar. 1841).

31 ‘Slieve Gullion, ’ [pseud. O’Hagan, John], ‘Leinster and Munster in the summer of 1844’ in Irish Monthly, xl (Oct. 1912), p. 589Google Scholar.

32 Fitzpatrick, W.J., ‘The sham squire’ and the informers of 1798 (Dublin, 1866), pp 307–8Google Scholar.

33 Ibid. Fitzpatrick does not give the forename of Murray the elder; it has been found in Wilson’s Dublin Directory.

34 Life & speeches of Daniel O’Connell, ed. John O’Connell, i, 14.

35 Daunt, Personal recollections, i, 117.

36 Barrington, Jonah, Personal sketches (London, 1830–32), iii, 396–7Google Scholar.

37 Fitzpatrick, Sham squire, pp 307–8.

38 O’Connell is said to have been called to the Irish bar on 19 May 1798 (Hamilton, J.A., Life of Daniel O’Connell (London, 1888), p. 7)Google Scholar. If so, he must have been in Dublin on that date; the rebellion broke out four days later. The records of the King’s Inns, Dublin, give only the law term for calls to the bar, in O’Connell’s case Easter 1798 (Keane, Edward, Phair, P.B. and Sadleir, T.U. (eds), King’s Inns admission papers, 1607–1867 (Dublin, 1982), p. 373Google Scholar). The Easter term in 1798 was from 23 April to 21 May (Gentleman’s & Citizen’s Almanack (Dublin, 1798), p. 6)

39 MacDermot, Brian (ed.), The Irish Catholic petition of 1805 (Dublin, 1992), p. 155Google Scholar. ‘J[acobi]n’ is the editor’s expansion.

40 Daunt, Personal recollections, i, 117.

41 Ibid., ii, 6–7.

42 Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1841. I am deeply indebted to Dr Mary Ann Lyons for the considerable trouble she has taken to trace the report of O’Connell’s statement to this issue. Madden, R.R., in The United Irishmen (2nd ed., Dublin, 1857–60), iii, 178–9Google Scholar, misquotes the statement slightly and cites his source mistakenly as the Freeman’s Journal, 22 May 1841.

43 Freeman’s Journal, 20 May 1841.

44 O’Keeffe, C.M., Life and times of Daniel O’Connell (Dublin, 1864), ii, 588–9Google Scholar.

45 The Times, 30 June 1843. Details of the banquet are given also in Freeman’s Journal, 29 June 1843, where O’Connell is quoted as stating: ‘The old women of Ireland think that the cocks have not crowed at midnight since 1798, but they shall crow again in 1844.’ Cf. Pros and cons about the Irish repeal question … in a letter to Sir James Graham, bart M.P. By the author of ‘Outlines for an Irish poor law’ (Dublin, 1843), pp 7–8, where O’Connell’s words are ‘The cock that crows for Irish liberty was still as merry as ever, though the old people think he lost his voice since ‘98.’

46 See the vivid description of the meeting at Tara in O’Keeffe, , O’Connell, ii, 683–5Google Scholar. Arthur James Plunkett, fifth earl of Fingall, is the subject of an article in the Dictionary of Irish biography (forthcoming).

47 William Murphy is the subject of an article in Dictionary of Irish biography (forthcoming). For his connexion with Fitzgerald see Byrne, Miles, Memoirs (3 vols, Paris, 1863), ii, 284–9Google Scholar.

48 Madden’s apologia for the United Irishmen is discussed in C. J. Woods, ‘R. R. Madden, historian of the United Irishmen’ in Bartlett et al. (eds), 1798: a bicentenary perspective, pp 497–511.

49 O’Connell, Maurice R., ‘Daniel O’Connell and the Irish eighteenth century’ in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, v (1976), pp 475–95Google Scholar.