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| Ireland, 1813. |
Ireland’s problems were exacerbated by social and religious
tensions which regularly erupted into dreadful violence. For example, during
the 1790s the Protestant and Presbyterian
‘Peep-O’-Day Boys’ attacked and
burned the houses of Catholics in Armagh. To protect themselves, the Catholics
formed armed associations known as the
‘Defenders’. After a terrific battle
between the two factions at
Diamond in Armagh in 1795, some Protestants formed
the first Orange Lodge with the avowed intention of killing all Roman
Catholics.
But some Irishmen like Theobald Wolfe Tone, Samuel Neilson
and others wanted to promote religious toleration, give the vote to
disadvantaged Catholics, and push for an independent Ireland. Theobald Wolfe
Tone (1763–1798) recalled that the thunderbolt of the French Revolution ‘changed
in an instant the politics of Ireland…This oppressed, plundered, and insulted
nation...sympathised most sincerely with the French people, and watched their
progress to freedom’.
The Society of
United Irishmen of Belfast was founded by Wolfe Tone and others in 1791. The Society
promoted the works of
Thomas Paine. The Belfast group was joined a few weeks
later by another Society in Dublin, which had James Napper Tandy, a former
Volunteer, as Secretary.
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| James Napper Tandy. |
At this date the United Irishmen wanted peaceful,
constitutional reform: universal manhood suffrage. The Society’s mostly middle-class members included
Catholics and Protestants; they tried to damp down the ongoing sectarian violence.
However, Ireland’s Roman Catholics were bitterly disappointed in 1793
when
Pitt the Younger, under pressure from George III, shelved Catholic
emancipation. Many Irishmen believed that civil war was now inevitable between
the Protestant landowners and Catholic peasantry.
The Dublin government gave local magistrates sweeping powers
to search for arms and disperse meetings. Militia regiments were embodied, public
meetings were made illegal, societies like the United Irishmen were banned, and
spies set to work.
Images:
Wolfe Tone and James Napper Tandy, courtesy Wikimedia
Commons.
Map of Ireland. Barclay’s Dictionary, 1813. Author’s
collection.
The same issue of the magazine has another feature by me on secondary education and teacher training. University and college records can be a good way of researching your ancestors' schooldays, as well as finding information on other family members. 
