¹ For the money bill dispute see in particular McCracken, J.L., ‘The conflict between the Irish administration and parliament, 1753–6’ in I.H.S., 3, no. 10 (Sept. 1942), pp 159–79Google Scholar; O’Donovan, Declan, ‘The money bill dispute of 1753’ in Bartlett, Thomas and Hayton, David (eds), Penal era and golden age: essays in Irish history, 1690–1800, (Belfast, 1979), pp 55–87 Google Scholar; Clark, J.D.C., ‘Whig tactics and parliamentary precedent: the English management of Irish politics, 1754–6’ in Hist. Jn., 21 (1978), pp 275–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the crisis of 1778–82, see Beckett, J.C. ‘Anglo-Irish constitutional relations in the later eighteenth century’ in I.H.S., 14, no. 53 (Mar 1964), pp 20–38 Google Scholar; Butter-field, Herbert, George III, Lord North and the people (London, 1949)Google Scholar; Smyth, J.D.C., ‘The Volunteers and parliament, 1779–84’ in Bartlett, and Hayton, (eds), Penal era and golden age, pp 113–36.Google Scholar

² For a general account of the Townshend viceroyalty see Bartlett, Thomas, ‘The Townshend viceroyalty, 1767–72’ in Bartlett, and Hayton, (eds), Penal era and golden age, pp 88–112.Google Scholar

³ Bartlett, Thomas, ‘Viscount Townshend and the Irish revenue board, 1767–73’, R.I.A. Proc, 79 (1979), sect. C, pp 153–75.Google Scholar

⁴ Ponsonby was first or chief commissioner of the Irish revenue board and speaker of the Irish house of commons. Shannon was master-general of the ordnance. Both men had large parliamentary connexions and had, particularly Ponsonby, long ‘undertaken’ the king’s business through the Irish parliament.

⁵ Townshend to duke of Grafton, 21 Apr. 1769 (W L. Clements Library (hereafter C.L.), Ann Arbor, Michigan, Townshend MSS, Townshend letter book, iv); see Lord Kildare to [?Lord Sandwich], 7 June 1756, printed in Tomlinson, J.R.G. (ed.), Additional Grenville papers, 1763–1765 (Manchester, [1965]), pp 279–80.Google Scholar

⁶ Townshend to Grafton, 21 Apr. 1769 (C. L., Townshend letter book, iv).

⁷ The ‘patriots’ opposed the planned increase in the standing army in Ireland and demanded an Irish mutiny act, habeas corpus act and an act limiting the duration of the Irish parliament.

⁸ Founded in 1763 by Charles Lucas, ‘the Wilkes of Ireland’ For information on Irish newspapers in the early part of the century, see Munter, R.L., The history of the Irish newspaper, 1685–1760 (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

⁹ See Bartlett, Thomas ‘The Townshend viceroyalty, 1767–72’, (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1976), pp 158–61.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Townshend’s protest is printed in Curtis, Edmund and McDowell, R.B. (eds), Irish historical documents (London, 1943), pp 220–21.Google Scholar

¹¹ Townshend to Lord Rochford, 27 Feb. 1771 (C. L., Townshend letter book, ii).

¹² Commons’ jn. Ire., xiv, 751–808.

¹³ Townshend to Lord Clare, 12 Mar. 1771 (C. L., Townshend letter book, v).

¹⁴ Bartlett, , ‘Townshend viceroyalty’, in Bartlett, and Hayton, (eds), Penal era and golden age, pp 104–9.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Freeman’s Journal, 19 Feb. 1771, Lecky, WE.H., A history of Ireland in the eighteenth century (5 vols, London, 1892), 2, 104–5Google Scholar; MacNeill, J.G. Swift, The constitutional and political history of Ireland till the union (Dublin, 1917), pp 121–2, 124.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Bartlett, , ‘Townshend viceroyalty’ in Bartlett, and Hayton, (eds), Penal era and golden age, pp 97–103.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The advice given to Bedford: William Pitt to the duke of Bedford, 26 Nov 1757 ( Taylor, WS. and Pringle, J.H. (eds), Correspondence of William Pitt, earl of Chatham (4 vols, London, 1838–40), 1, 286–7).Google Scholar

¹⁸ ‘The cry through the country is Irelafld for ever and sometimes with the addition of down with the English’ (Lord George Sackville to Sir Robert Wilmot, 18 Dec. 1753, Derby Borough Library (hereafter D.B.L.), Catton collection (Ireland), Wilmot MSS, xvii). I am indebted to Mr D. Neilson of Catton Hall for permission to quote from the documents.

¹⁹ In 1749, 1751 and 1753 there had been a surplus in the Irish treasury and the question had arisen as to who owned this surplus, the king or the Irish commons. If the king, then his previous consent was necessary before the commons could appropriate the money. The Irish commons denied that the king owed the money and claimed therefore that his consent was not necessary. The Castle resisted this claim.

²⁰ For a general survey of opposition campaigns in England during the eighteenth century, see Foord, A.S., His majesty’s opposition, 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964).Google Scholar

²¹ Pares, Richard, George III and the politicians (Oxford, 1953), p. 4.Google Scholar

²² See Goodwin, Albert, ‘Wood’s halfpence’ in E.H.R., 51 (1936), pp 647–74,CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in Mitchison, Rosalind (ed.), Essays in eighteenth-century history (London, 1966), pp 117–45.Google Scholar

²³ There is an enormous secondary literature on the politics of the 1760s but the period is perhaps best approached through the correspondence of the leading actors, much of which has been published. For critical surveys of recent writing on this period see Brewer, John, ‘Rockingham, Burke and Whig political argument’ in Hist. Jn., 18 (1975), pp 188–201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dinwiddy, John ‘Party politics and ideology in the early years of George Ill’s reign’ in ibid., 20 (1977), pp 983–9.Google Scholar

²⁴ See in particular Kämmen, M.G., A rope of sand: the colonial agents, British politics and the American revolution (Ithaca, 1968).Google Scholar

²⁵ Tomlinson, J.R.G. (ed.), Additional Grenville papers, 1763–1765 (Manchester, [1962]), pp 335–6.Google Scholar

²⁶ Lord Bessborough to John Ponsonby, 3 June 1767 ( SirFortescue, John (ed.), The correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783 (6 vols, London, 1928), 1, 484–6).Google Scholar

²⁷ ‘It has long been the language of opposition here’, wrote Townshend, ‘that the English ministry were in too weak difficulties at home to give much attention to the affairs of this country and that men and measures here would remain upon the old footing’ (Townshend to Weymouth, 7 Mar. 1770, C.L., Townshend letter book, ii).

²⁸ In June 1769 the Bedford group in the ministry had made a push to have Sandwich succeed Townshend as lord lieutenant. George III had quashed the idea on the grounds that it would cause jealousy within the ministry (George III to Grafton, 6 June 1769, West Suffolk C.R.O., MS 423/535).

²⁹ Townshend to Lord Clare, 7 Feb. 1770 (C.L., Townshend letter book, v).

³⁰ Thomas Waite to Wilmot, 7 Feb. 1770(D.B.L., Catton collection (Ireland), xlviii).

³¹ Townshend to North, 7 Feb. 1770 (C.L., Townshend letter book, ii).

³² Burke to Nagle, Garrett, 8 Feb. 1770 (The correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. 2: July 1768-June 1774, ed. Sutherland, Lucy S. (Cambridge, 1960), p. 123.Google Scholar

³³ Thomas Allan to Sir George Macartney, 19 Feb. 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/34).

³⁴ Simon Fraser to Townshend, 13 Feb. 1770 (W R. Perkins Library, Duke University, North Carolina, Townshend MSS).

³⁵ Allan to Macartney, 13 Feb. 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/31).

³⁶ Fraser to Townshend, 1 Mar. 1770 (P.R.O.L, Townshend MSS, M 733/42).

³⁷ Allan to Macartney, 20 Mar. 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/51).

³⁸ Quoted in Winstanley, D.A., Lord Chatham and the whig opposition (Cambridge, 1912), p. 352.Google Scholar

³⁹ Walpole to Mann, 24 May 1770 ( The Yale edition of Horace Walpole’s correspondence, ed. Lewis, WS. (Oxford, 1937- ), 23, 216).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Wilmotto Macartney, 20 Feb. 1770 (D.B.L., Catton collection (Ireland), 1770box).

⁴¹ Weymouth to Townshend, 22 Feb. 1770 (C.L., Townshend letter book, vii).

⁴² Allan to Macartney, 29 Mar. 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/53). So confident had some members of the opposition groups been that they had difficulty in believing that they were the losers. Lanesborough, for example, hung on to his post at the revenue board for nearly a month after he had been dismissed. He continued to hope that the political wheel would turn and that he would be granted a reprieve. (Townshend to North, 23 Mar 1770, C.L., Townshend letter book, ii).

⁴³ ’I was yesterday at court’, wrote Allan in December 1769, ’where the conversation of the day ran upon the state of matters in Ireland, our rejecting the money bill from hence and adopting another. I explained this to as many, and as often, as I could but of my hearers or rather enquirers, at least two thirds remained as uninformed as before.’ (Allan to Macartney, 4 Dec. 1769, P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/6).

⁴⁴ For example, Isaac Barré speaking on the address of thanks in the British commons declared that ‘the people of England know, the people of Ireland know, and the American people feel that the iron hand of ministerial despotism is lifted up against them’ (Parliamentary history, xvi, 705 (9 Jan. 1770)). See also Rockingham’s speech on 22 Jan. (ibid., xvi, 744).

⁴⁵ Allan to Macartney, 13 Mar. 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/47).

⁴⁶ For the wider significance of this debate, see below, p. 330.

⁴⁷ Chatham’s speech is reprinted in Pringle, and Taylor, (eds), Chatham correspondence, 3, 403n-04n.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Allan to Macartney, 13 Mar 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/47). Earlier, Camden had been instrumental in blocking the appointment of an Irish lord chancellor (Camden to Grafton, 27 and 29 Sept. 1769 [recte 1767], printed in SirAnson, WR. (ed.), The autobiography and political correspondence of Augustus Henry, third duke of Grafton (London, 1898), pp 159–64).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Quoted in Bolton, G.C., The passing of the Irish act of union (Oxford, 1965), p. 5.Google Scholar See also Cato’s letter in the Freeman’s Journal, 21 Aug. 1770: ‘I am far from thinking it either prudent or proper for us to enter too deeply into the politics of our mother country’ On 30 October 1762 Lord Bessborough had written to his brother, John Ponsonby, commanding him not to resign the speakership of the Irish parliament as a gesture of sympathy with the resignation of their brother-in-law, the duke of Devonshire, as lord chamberlain of England. Bessborough declared:‘ English politics had nothing to do with Irish have nothing to do with the squabbles here (P.R.O.N.L, Grey Ponsonby papers, T3393/1) I am indebted to Dr A. P W Malcomson for this reference.

⁵⁰ Allan to Townshend, 5 May 1770 (P.R.O.I., Townshend MSS, M 730/21 ); Fraser to Townshend, May 1770 (ibid., M 733/44). This debate is not noticed in the Parliamentary history.

⁵¹ Charles James Fox later experienced a similar difficulty in attempting simultaneously to pose as the champion of British commercial interests and the defender of Ireland’s constitutional liberties. See Kelly, Paul, ‘British and Irish politics in 1785’in E.H.R., 90 (1975), pp 536–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵² Allan to Townshend, 5 May 1770 (P.R.O.I., Townshend MSS, M 730/21).

⁵³ Allan to Townshend, 5 Dec. 1770 (P.R.O.I., Townshend MSS, M 730/44).

⁵⁴ Burke to Rockingham, 29 Dec. 1770 ( Burke, , Corr., 2, 174–6).Google Scholar Burke’s report proved to be accurate and North’s (and Townshend’s) administration were proportionately strengthened. As Allan put it: ‘The additional strength government have got by Lord Suffolk, Wedderburn, Whately, etc., of Mr Grenville’s people makes them very strong and may very well have an effect on party on your side’ (Allan to Macartney, 25 Jan. 1771, P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/92).

⁵⁵ Burke to O’Hara, 22 Dec. 1770 ( Burke, , Corr., 2, 177).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Freeman’s Journal, 30 Dec. 1769.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 6, 11 Jan. 1770. The tactic of a six-month supply bill, instead of a biennial one, was successfully employed at the height of the ‘free trade’ agitation in 1779. See Butterfield, Herbert, George III, Lord North and the people (London, 1949), pp 159–60.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Newenham to Macartney, 7 Jan. 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D572/2/27).

⁵⁹ Waite to Wilmot, 28 Dec. 1769 (D.B.L. Catton collection (Ireland), xlviii).

⁶⁰ Grattan to Robert Day, 9 Jan., 11 Feb. 1770, printed in Grattan, Henry, jr (ed.), Memoirs of the life and times of the Rt Hon. Henry Grattan (5 vols, London, 1839–46), 1, 152, 154.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Townshend to Weymouth, 2 Mar 1770 (C.L., Townshend letter book, ii).

⁶² From Clonmel, County Tipperary, Robert Waller wrote: ‘Our assizes has gone hitherto extremely quiet [sic], free from the ill consequences of differences of opinion on private or publick affairs’; it was a similar story in Kilkenny and elsewhere (Waller to Macartney, 26 Mar., 15 Apr., 6 May 1770, P.R.O.N.L, D 572/5/1, 2, 3).

⁶³ Townshend to Weymouth, 17 Aug. 1770 (C.L., Townshend letter book, ii). Only one address appears to have been got up by Ponsonby’s men and this was from the Dublin weavers. Townshend dismissed this as unimportant and declared that it did not represent ‘the sense of the weavers but merely his [Ponsonby’s] own party in twenty hackney coaches’ (Townshend to Fraser, 23 May 1770, C.L., Townshend letter book, v). It is possible that management played a part in preventing the drawing up of addresses. Gorges Howard, the financial writer, was very active on Townshend’s behalf in County Dublin. He wrote to Townshend that ‘the names of such persons as I was most certain were not of the factious or turbulent clan were settled by y[ou]r ex[cellen]cy’s well-wishers in such a manner as to make a great majority (and yet gentlemen of the first estimation for honour and probity in the county [Dublin]) of the grand jury’ (C.L., Townshend misc. MSS., Howard to Townshend, 27 Mar. 1770).

⁶⁴ Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb. 1771.

⁶⁵ The Freeman’s Journal, 15 Mar 1770, pictured Shannon arriving at the great St Patrick’s night ball at the Castle dressed in ‘an old hospitalman’s coat with a wooden leg, bearing several scars on his face and a label on his breast with these words — “thus am I rewarded for my services’“

⁶⁶ ibid, 23 Jan. 1768.

⁶⁷ Grattan to Day, 30 Mar. 1770, printed in Grattan, (ed.), Memoirs of Henry Grattan, 1, 162.Google Scholar See also Broghill’s reply to Sindercombe in the Freeman’s Journal, 6 Mar 1770: ‘to see the business of the nation conducted without the venal concurrence of a rapacious confederacy had long been the wish and despair of the people’

⁶⁸ Freeman’s Journal, 3 Apr 1770.

⁶⁹ A dissolution of parliament was known to have been contemplated in December 1769 and this had alarmed Shannon. He had no desire, as Townshend put it, to commit ‘a kind of political suicide’ (Townshend to Weymouth, 7 Mar. 1770, C. L., Townshend letter book. ii).

⁷⁰ ‘Mr Ponsonby may fluctuate and oppose but it is well-known that Lord Shannon animates and disciplines the whole ag[ain]st government’ wrote Townshend (Townshend to Grafton, 21 Apr. 1769, C.L., Townshend letter book, iv).

⁷¹ Townshend to Weymouth, 2 Mar. 1770 (C.L., Townshend book, ii). Townshend had proposed to dismiss Loftus from the revenue board, to strike out his wife’s pension and to remove various members of the Loftus-Tottenham connexion from their offices.

⁷² Shannon returned to the Castle fold late in 1772 (Earl Harcourt (Townshend’s successor as lord lieutenant) to North, 20 Dec. 1772, printed in Harcourt, WE. (ed.), The Harcourt papers (privately printed, 1888–1905), 9, 52).Google Scholar Flood joined the Castle in October 1775 ( Beckett, , Mod. Ire., p. 204).Google Scholar

⁷³ For the meaning of this word, see Butterfield, , George III, Lord North and the people, pp 255–68.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Shannon to Dennis, 20 May 1770(P.R.O.N.L, Shannon MSS, D 2707/5/Envelope 41A).

⁷⁵ As Macartney aptly put it: ‘The opposition here have as yet committed no overt acts by petitioning, addressing or remonstrating, unwilling, I believe, to make the ground desperate in case another chief governor should be sent over for whose coming they look with as much impatience as the Jews do for the Messiah’ (Macartney to Wilmot, 4 June 1770, D.B.L., Catton collection (Ireland), xlviii).

⁷⁶ Allan to Macartney, 9 Jan. 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D572/3/13).

⁷⁷ Allan to Macartney, 5, 10 Mar 1770 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/3/42, 45); Allan to Townshend, 5 May, 1770 (P.R.O.I., Townshend MSS, M 730/21).

⁷⁸ Townshend to Weymouth, 2 Mar 1770 (C.L., Townshend letter book, ii).

⁷⁹ An address from a noble lord to the people of Ireland on the present state of affairs (Dublin, 1770)’, p. 17

⁸⁰ An letter to a great man (Dublin, 1770), p. 10.

⁸¹ Address from a noble lord ., pp 19–20. Boyle was the family name of the earls of Shannon.

⁸² The Freeman’s Journal reprinted extracts from pamphlets against Townshend in 1761 concerning his conduct at the fall of Quebec (26, 28 Apr., 3 May 1770). For more scurrilous attacks, see the dreary Baratariana (Dublin, 1777), a collection of anti-Townshend tracts first published separately in the Freeman’s Journal in 1770 and 1771.

⁸³ Macartney was ‘a creeping sneaker who dared insult the commons’ speaker’ (Freeman’s Journal, 25 Sept. 1770).

⁸⁴ A series of 27 letters on Poynings’ law was published in the Freeman’s Journal, 30 Dec. 1769–24 Apr 1770.

⁸⁵ Perhaps reinforced by the death of Townshend’s wife in early September. ‘Dublin’, he wrote, ‘has been plunged into real and expressive concern upon the occasion’ (Townshend to his mother, dowager Lady Townshend, 9 Sept. 1770, C.L., Townshend letter book, v).

⁸⁶ Freeman’s Journal, 12 June 1770.

⁸⁷ Townshend to Macartney, 14 June 1769 (P.R.O.N.L, D 572/1/41). In a conscious attempt to lay the ghost of 1756, Townshend nominated Arthur Jones Neville to a commissionership at the revenue board. Neville’s career had been destroyed by the Boyle faction during the money bill dispute of the 1750s and he had never been reinstated. (Townshend to North, 27 July 1771, C.L., Townshend letter book, iii.)

⁸⁸ See Pares, Richard, George IIIandthe politicians (Oxford, 1953), p. 60 Google Scholar; Foord, A.S., His majesty’s opposition, 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964), pp 310–21.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ O’Connell, Ir politics & social conflict, passim.

⁹⁰ Clark, J.D.C., ‘Whig tactics and parliamentary precedent: the English management of Irish politics, 1754–6’ in Hist. Jn., 21 (1978), p. 275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹¹ See in particular Beckett, J.C. ‘Anglo-Irish constitutional relations in the later eighteenth century’ in I.H.S., 24, no. 53 (Mar. 1964), pp 20–38 Google Scholar; Kelly, Paul ‘British and Irish politics in 1785’ in E.H.R., 90 (1975), pp 536–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnston, , G.B. & Ire., pp 285–98.Google Scholar