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The Presbyterian Revolution in Ulster, 1660-1690

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Raymond Gillespie
Raymond Gillespie*
Affiliation:
Dublin
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Extract

In early 1642 a Scottish army under the command of Robert Munroe arrived in Ulster as part of a scheme to defeat the native Irish rebellion which had begun late in the previous year. The conquest was not to be purely a military one. As a contemporary historian of Presbyterianism, Patrick Adair, observed ‘it is certain God made that army instrumental for bringing church governments, according to His own institutions, to Ireland … and for spreading the covenants’. The form of church government was that of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and in June 1642 the chaplains and officers established the first presbytery in Ireland at Carrickfergus. Sub-presbyteries, or meetings, were created for Antrim, Down and the Route, in north Antrim in 1654, for the Laggan in east Donegal in 1657, and for Tyrone in 1659. Within these units the Church was divided into geographical parishes each with its own minister. This establishment of a parallel structure rivalling that of the Anglican Church, but without the king at its head, is what has been termed the ‘presbyterian revolution’.It supported the Presbyterian claim to be ‘the Church of Ireland’, a claim which was to bring it into conflict with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the late seventeenth century. In order to further underpin this claim the reformed church began to move out of its Ulster base by the 1670s. The Laggan presbytery ordained William Cock and William Liston for work in Clonmel and Waterford in 1673 and was active in Tipperary, Longford, and Sligo by 1676. Its advice to some Dublin ministers was to form themselves into a group who were ‘subject to the meeting in the north’. The presbytery of Tyrone also supplied Dublin.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 25: The Churches, Ireland and the Irish , 1989 , pp. 159 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 Adair, Patrick, A True Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, ed. Killen, W. D. (Belfast, 1866), pp. 90–4 Google Scholar.

2 Edward Furgol, The military and ministers as agents of Presbyterian imperialism in England and Ireland, 1640-8’ in Dwyer, John, Mason, R. A., Murdoch, A. (eds), New Perspectives on the Politics and Culture of Early Modem Scotland (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 95–11 Google Scholar $; Trevor Roper, H., ‘Scotland and the Puritan Revolution’ in Trevor Roper, H., Religion, Reformation and Social Change (London, 1967), pp. 329–444 Google Scholar; Adair, True Narrative, pp. 214-15.

3 NIPRO, D1759/1E/2, pp. 6s, 213-14, 218, 225, 242, 244; D1759/1A/2, p. 48.

4 Perceval Maxwell, M., The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of Jama I (London, 1975), pp. 252–73 Google Scholar; Holmes, Finlay, Our Presbyterian Heritage (Belfast, 1985), pp. 10–20 Google Scholar. On Anglican theology Alan Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), pp. 193-242; Adair, True Narrative, pp. 99-100.

5 Adair, True Narrative, p. 1 note 1 gives the full title.

6 NIPRO.D1759/1A/2, p. 92;D1759/iE/i, p. 163.

7 Robinson, Philip, The Plantation of Ulster (Dublin, 1985), pp. 109–14 Google Scholar; Henry E. Huntington Lib rary, California, Hastings MSS Boxes 75, 77 (1 am grateful to Prof. N. Canny for drawing my attention to these surveys); BL Add. MS 2902, fol. 218.

8 CalSPD 1684-5, p. 261.

9 W. T. Latimer, The Old Session Book of Templepatrick Presbyterian Church’, JRSAI 25 (1895), pp. 130-4;31 (1901), pp. 162-75,2S9-72(originalinNIPRO,CR4/12B/1);L. M.Smith, ‘Church and Secular Courts in Cromwellian Scotland’ in Dwyer, Mason, Murdoch, New Per spectives, p. 130.

10 Barclay, J. M. The Ruling Eldership in Irish Presbyterianism (Belfast, 1963), pp. 22–65 Google Scholar; Gillespie, Raymond, Colonial Ulster (Cork, 1985), pp. 113–20 Google Scholar. The use of Communion tokens by Presbyterians was also seen as a mark of social approval: Boyse, Joseph, A Vindication of the Remarks on the Bishop of Derry’s Discourse (Dublin, 1695), pp. 53–4 Google Scholar.

11 Barclay, J. M., The Westminster Formularies in Irish Presbyterianism (Belfast, 1956), pp. 44–5 Google Scholar. The use of godparents was denied in Joseph Boyse, Remarks on a Late Discourse of William Lord Bishop of Derry (Dublin, 1694), pp. 67-9.

12 NIPRO, D1759/1A/2, p. 72; D1759/1E/2, n.p.

13 Printed in Murray, R. H., Revolutionary Ireland and its Settlement (London, 1911), p. 366 Google Scholar.

14 Larimer, ‘Session Book’, JRSAI 31 (1901), p. 271.

15 The main sources for Presbyterian worship are in William King, A Discourse Concerning the Inventions of Men in the Worship of Cod (Dublin, 1694): the quotation is from p. 140; Robert Craghead, An Answer to a Late Work Entitled A Discourse the Inventions of Men … (Edinburgh, 1664); Boyse, A Vindication; Boyse, Remarks and other pamphlets by these men in 1694/5.

16 NIPRO, D1759/1E/1, pp. 4, 30, 34; D1759/1E/2, p. 115; Latimer, ‘Session Book’, JRSAI 31 (1901), p. 265.

17 TCD, King Lyons MSS No. 264 King to Samuel Foley, 21 March 1693; King, William, A Second Admonition to the Dissenting Inhabitants of the Diocese of Derry (Dublin, 1695), p. 4 Google Scholar. This explains in part the divergence between the austerity preached by Presbyterians and the ‘riotous living’ of their followers: John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett, 1625-81 (Dublin, 1979), p. 394.

18 Boyse, A Vindication, pp. 2, 19;Boyse, Remarks, p. 136.

19 For another large communion service CalSPI 1669-70, p. 148; on frequency of Communion, Boyse, A Vindication, pp. 15-16.

20 HMC, Report on Ormonde MSS, new series 5, p. 102.

21 Adair, True Narrative, p. 214.

22 NIPRO,D1759/IA/2, p. 312.

23 Ibid D1759/IA/2, pp. 320, 338.

24 Ibid D1759/IA/2, p. 218.

25 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Carte MS 70, fols 521-2, Nicholas French, The Setilement and sale of Ireland inS. H. B[indon], The Historical Works of Dr French, 2 vols (Dublin, 1846), 2, pp. 119-20; Miller, David, Queen’s Rebels (Dublin, 1978), pp. 7–24 Google Scholar.

26 CalSPD 1679-80, pp. 576-7; Bodl., Carte 45, fols 220, 221,274, 348, 530, 543; Osmond Airey (ed.), Essex Papers, 1 (C series, London, 1890), pp. 34, 37-8. 27 Edward Berwick, Rawdon Letters (n.p., 1819), p. 150. The biblical reference is to Judges 16: 23 and 1 Sam. 5: 1-5. a TCD, MS 883/1, p. 189.

29 I am indebted to W. A. Macafee, University of Ulster, for allowing me to see his important unpublished paper on the population of seventeenth-century Ulster, from which I have estimated the number of households. Clergy figures are from T. W. Moody and J. G. Simms (eds), The Bishopric of Deny and the Irish Society, 2 vols (Dublin, 1968-83), 1, pp. 326-9 (Anglican); Benigius Millet, ‘Archbishop O’Reilly’s Report on the State of the Church in Ireland in 1660’, Collectanea Hibemica, 2 (1959), pp. 105-14 (Catholic);J. S. Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 3 vols (Belfast, 1867), 2, pp. 267-9 (Presbyterian).

30 N1PRO, D1759/1A/2, pp. 161,183, 252.

31 Ibid, D1759/iA/i, pp. 56,65.

32 Ibid., D1759/1E/1, pp. 171,188,192,194.

33 T. C. Barnard, Crotnwellian Ireland (Oxford, 1975), pp. 155-8, 166-7.

34 NIPRO, D1759/1E/1, pp. 252-3.

35 NIPRO, D1759/1E/1, pp. 303-4.

36 Adair, True Narrative. p. 293.

37 NIPRO, D1759/1A/2, pp. 329, 313; D1759/1E/1, p. 64.

38 Ibid., D1759/1A/2, pp. 59,64, 420; D1759/1E/1, p. 323.

39 J. T. Gilbert (ed.), A Jacobite Narrative of the War in Ireland (Dublin, 1892), p. 5 56.

40 NIPRO,D1759/iA/2, pp. 414-15; for the Regium Donum J. C. Beckett, Protestant Dissent in Ireland, 1687-1780 (London, 1948), pp. 106-8.

41 Records of the General Synod of Ulster, 3 vols (Belfast, 1890-8), 1, pp. 22, 34.

42 Holmes, Presbyterian Heritage, p. 28.

43 NIPRO, D1759/iA/2, p. 188.