McNamara and Newman are particularly outspoken on the issue of a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. While other bishops advocate people vote with their conscience in the referendum on the issue, McNamara and Newman instruct Catholics that they have a duty to “vote yes” to the referendum.
In 1984, the Archdiocese of Dublin becomes vacant when Archbishop Ryan is given a senior appointment in the Roman Curia. Ryan is expected to be made a cardinal as a result of the appointment but dies suddenly in office before a consistory can be held. McNamara’s selection to replace the more liberal Ryan in Dublin creates media reports linking his appointment to the ongoing tensions between the papal nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, and the liberal Fine Gael–Labour Partycoalition under Garret FitzGerald. Relations between Alibrandi and the coalition break down, with the government requesting that Alibrandi be removed because of his suspected closeness to Irish republicans in Sinn Féin and to the opposition Fianna Fáil party and in particular its leader, Charles Haughey. Critics accused Alibrandi of engineering McNamara’s appointment in the belief that the outspoken McNamara can help derail the coalition’s liberal policies on divorce and contraception.
McNamara, as expected, takes a far more outspoken stance of issues than had Ryan previously. While the coalition succeeds in liberalising the law on contraception, its efforts to amend the constitution on divorce are defeated.
McNamara’s service in Dublin is short-lived. Already suffering from what proves to be terminal cancer, he dies on April 8, 1987 after a three year battle with the disease, months after the Fine Gael minority government is defeated in the 1987 Irish general election. He is succeeded as archbishop by a university lecturer, Desmond Connell.
In the early 2000s, amid growing scandals within the Catholic Church in Ireland about clerical sex abuse, it is revealed that as archbishop McNamara had sought legal advice as to the Church’s liability arising from such abuse.
On June 5, 1976, a bomb explodes at the door of the Times Bar on York Road, killing two Protestants. The pub is frequented by members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a legal loyalist paramilitary group. Irish republicans are blamed for the bombing. Shortly after, the UVF Brigade Staff (its Shankill Road-based leadership) decide to hit back by attacking the Chlorane Bar. It is a hastily arranged operation devised by its military commander “Bunter,” whom investigative journalistMartin Dillon refers to as “Mr. F.” The Chlorane Bar is located at 23 Gresham Street in Belfast’s city centre, near Smithfield Market. Its clientele is mixed (Protestant and Catholic), which is unusual during The Troubles. On August 17, 1973, the Chlorane Bar had been firebombed, however, no one was injured as the pub was closed at the time of the attack. Later that same month, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name sometime used by the UDA, claim responsibility for a car bomb which exploded in Gresham Street. Although there were no human casualties, a pet shop located near the bomb’s epicentre was damaged in the blast and a number of animals inside the building were either killed or injured.
The attack is planned and executed by the UVF platoons based at the Brown Bear and the Windsor Bar respectively. These are two pubs located on the Shankill Road and regularly frequented by UVF members. Dillon sometimes refers to the former platoon as the “Brown Bear Team” because the members generally meet at that particular pub, which faces Shankill Library on the corner of Mountjoy Street. To carry out the attack, along with the procuring of weapons and masks, a black taxi is hijacked by two young men outside the Long Bar on the Shankill Road to transport the gunmen to the Chlorane Bar. Taxi driver Mark Hagan and a passenger are held hostage at the Windsor Bar.
The Chlorane Bar is likely chosen for its nearness to the Shankill Road, affording the attackers a speedy getaway. There is not much of a security presence that evening in the area. The driver of the taxi, with four specifically chosen armed men seated in the rear of the vehicle in the manner of genuine passengers, makes his way from the Shankill Road to North Street and turns south into Gresham Street. Upon arrival outside the Chlorane Bar, the four gunmen don their masks, devised from yellow money bags, and exit the taxi.
At 10:00 p.m., the four masked gunmen storm through Chlorane Bar’s front door leading to the public bar. There are about sixteen customers inside the pub at the time. One of the four gunmen is Robert “Basher” Bates, a member of the violent Shankill Butchers gang led by Lenny Murphy, who is in police custody at the time the attack against the Chlorane takes place. Bates is the only one of the four to have been from the “Brown Bear Team.” The hit squad is commanded by a “Mr. G,” leader of the Windsor Bar UVF platoon, with “Mr. D” as his second-in-command and “Mr. C” completing the team. Entering the bar in single file, “Mr. G” orders everybody to stand up, and then asks the startled customers whether there are any “Prods” (Protestants) among them. William Greer, a Protestant, thinking the gunmen are from the Irish Republican Army, quickly flees to the men’s toilet where he places his feet up against the door. Customer Frederick Graham and his girlfriend, Pat Mahood, assume the same thing. “Mr. G” tells the customers to separate into two groups, with the Protestants standing at the bottom end of the bar, and the Catholics at the top.
When one man, Edward Farrell, admits to being a Catholic, the UVF men open fire. Farrell tries to run toward the toilet but is shot dead. The Catholic owner of the Chlorane, 64-year-old James Coyle, is standing behind the bar when he is hit at close-range. The bullet enters his heart and he dies instantly. The gunmen continue firing and two Protestant men, Daniel McNeil and Samuel Corr, are also struck by the hail of bullets. McNeil is killed on the spot and Corr is fatally wounded. Another Catholic man, John Martin, is shot and dies of his injuries on June 23. Several other customers are hit as gunfire is sprayed around the bar. One customer pretends to be dead, however, a gunman walks over to where he lay and deliberately fires three shots into his thigh, knee, and below the ankle. The man later recounts that he had then looked up to see “men lying shot all over the place.” William Greer, hiding in the toilet, is shot when one of the gunmen fire through the door. He survives despite being hit in the leg and neck. There are more customers upstairs in the lounge area, but although they hear the gunshots, the gunmen never go near them. Dillon maintains that it had not been the UVF unit’s intention to kill any Protestants.
“Mr. G” calls a halt to the shooting, saying “that’s it,” and the four-man UVF team nonchalantly walks out of the pub and re-enters the hijacked black taxi, which is parked so the driver has easy access to North Street. This route offers a quick return to the Shankill. After the four men get into the back seat, the driver (“Mr. H”) drives off. As the taxi passes by the Catholic Unity Flats area, three shots are fired from the vehicle. Two young men walking nearby get a look at the driver. He is described as being around 38 to 40 years old and having shoulder-length, black curly hair. Upon the taxi’s return to the Shankill, Mark Hagan and the passenger are released. They immediately go to the Tennent Street Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Station off the Shankill where they report the taxi’s hijacking. The shooting team proceeds to the Long Bar pub where “Mr. I” (commander of UVF 1st Battalion) procures a forty-ounce bottle of vodka for “Mr. G” and “Mr. D” – their payment for leading the operation.
Having heard the gunshots, a barmaid serving in the upstairs lounge goes downstairs to investigate and discovers the body of her employer, James Coyle, lying on the floor behind the bar and those of the other dead and wounded. The first policeman on the scene is Constable George McElnea, from the RUC Special Patrol Group in Tennent Street. He quickly notices the pile of bodies near the men’s toilet as Samuel Corr stumbles toward him, gravely injured. McElnea places Corr on a bench and offers what assistance he can but to no avail. Corr dies of his gunshot wounds before the ambulance arrives. Alan McCrum, a Scenes of Crime officer, appears at the Chlorane fifteen minutes after the shootings. He retrieves 24 spent bullet casings from the floor and determines that most of the shots had been fired at the rear of the pub. Later ballistic testing establishes that the weapons used in the attack were a .22 caliber pistol, a 9 mm pistol, and two .45 snub-nosed revolvers. Police believe one of the victims, Daniel McNeil, had tenuous UVF connections, although he is not an active member.
The hijacked black taxi is found by police the following morning in a cul-de-sac in Beresford Street, off the Shankill Road. A cyclist, who had witnessed the masked gunmen entering the Chlorane Bar, describes the four men as having been in the 20 to 30 age group, all about 5’10 in height and well-built. The last gunman to enter had shoulder-length brown hair. The witness had gone to a nearby British Army post where he told soldiers what he had seen.
Ten days after the gun attack, the Chlorane Bar is blown up by a bomb. Three weeks after the attack the Provisional IRA, using their sometime cover-name of the “Republican Action Force“, enter Walker’s Bar in Templepatrick and kill three Protestant civilians in retaliation for the Chlorane attack. As part of this series of deadly tit for tat attacks on pubs, the UVF responds by killing six customers at the Catholic-owned Ramble Inn outside Antrim.
No one is ever charged with the shootings. In February 1979, Bates is convicted of the murders he had committed as part of the Shankill Butchers, and given ten life sentences. In his statement to the police following his arrest in 1977, he recounts his role in the Chlorane Bar attack. He alleges while working as a barman in the Long Bar on the evening of June 5, 1976, he is approached by the UVF military commander, “Mr. F”, who informs him of a job in which he is to take part that same evening. It is decided to attack the city centre pub in retaliation for the IRA’s earlier bombing of The Times pub. Bates goes on to say that “Mr. I” provides the weapons which are used in the shooting and “Mr. J” (UVF Provost Marshal) procures the masks. Bates claims that his revolver malfunctions and therefore he never fires his gun during the attack. However, forensic evidence proves that two .45 revolvers had been fired inside the Chlorane. Upon his release from the HM Prison Maze, Bates is gunned-down in June 1997 by the son of James Curtis Moorhead, a UDA man he had killed in 1977.
Pilkington is born to John Pilkington and Margaret Mary Pilkington (née Torsney), the second of twelve children born to the couple. Only nine of his siblings survive into adulthood. He receives his education at the local Marist Brothers convent school and the Day Trades Preparatory School. Later he is a student at the Department of Agriculture Forestry College in County Wicklow. When the Irish War of Independence begins, the college is closed and he is forced to return to Sligo. He then gains employment with Wehrly Brothers Ltd., a jewelry and watchmaking store in Sligo.
Several notable incidents occur in Pilkington’s military career. On October 25, 1920, at Moneygold, eight miles from Sligo (between Grange and Cliffoney), IRA men led by him ambush a nine-man Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) patrol, killing four (Sergeant Patrick Perry, Constables Patrick Keown, Patrick Laffey, Patrick Lynch) and wounding two others (Constables Clarke and O’Rourke). In January 1922, he makes clear his opposition to the IRAs General Headquarters (GHQ) support for the Anglo-Irish Treaty. “We intend to cut away from this headquarters, all of you (pointing to the staff and officers of the GHQ) want to build up a Free State Army so you can march in step into the British Empire. Do it openly. We stand by the Republic.” On April 6, 1922, a meeting addressed by Arthur Griffith in Sligo, is proclaimed illegal by Pilkington, who is the local Anti-Treaty IRA divisional commander. His troops take over a number of buildings in the town. Seán Mac Eoin brings Provisional Government troops from Athlone and on the day of the meeting, he is joined by further troops led by J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell. A tense situation ensues but, at the last minute, Pilkington backs down and the meeting goes ahead. On September 4, 1922, an Anti-Treaty IRA unit under Pilkington takes the Dromhaire barracks in County Sligo after the Free State garrison surrenders.
On August 27, 1923, Pilkington runs unsuccessfully in the general election for the 4th Dáil as a Republican candidate, polling 2,089 first preference votes.
Pilkington is a prominent member of the Anti-Treaty IRA for many years, but his most important role as part of the Anti-Treaty IRA comes on April 20, 1923. The Executive of the Anti-Treaty IRA meets in Poulacappal (four miles southwest of Callan and three miles from Mullinahone). Present in addition to Pilkington (who is replacing Liam Lynch) are Frank Aiken, Sean Hyde, Sean Dowling, Bill Quirke, Tom Barry, Tom Ruane (replacing Michael Kilroy), Tom Sullivan (replacing Sean Lehane), Sean McSwiney, Tom Crofts, P. J. Ruttledge and Sean O’Meara (substitute for Séumas Robinson). Frank Aiken is elected Chief-of-Staff and an Army Council of Aiken, Pilkington and Barry is appointed. Aiken proposes that peace should be made with the Pro-Treaty Government on the basis that “the sovereignty of the Irish Nation and the integrity of its territory is inalienable.” This is passed by nine votes to two.
Pilkington becomes a Catholic priest after his foray into politics and due to the disillusionment of the Irish War of Independence. He joins the Redemptorist Order and becomes known as Father William Pilkington CSsR. He serves as a priest in the Archdiocese of Cape Town, South Africa, priest of Monmouthshire, Wales, and retires to Bishop Eton Monastery, Liverpool.
In 1954, Pilkington is guest of honour at a dinner sponsored by Clan na Gael and the IRA Veterans of America in New York City where he says he is returning to the mission fields of Africa, but he remains faithful to the All Ireland Republic. He dies at Bishop Eton Monastery on March 26, 1977, and is buried in Liverpool.
Jackson is born on September 27, 1948, in Tullynarry Cottages, Donaghmore, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, one of seven children of John Jackson, farmhand, and his wife Eileen. As a teenager he participates in Paisleyite demonstrations against the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. He is already a local “hard man” who cultivates an air of menace. After a brief period in Australia, he returns home and serves in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from 1972 to 1975. He also joins the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and is alleged to have committed his first murders in 1973. He is arrested in 1973 after the doorstep killing of a BanbridgeCatholic who works in the shoe factory that employs Jackson. The victim’s wife identifies Jackson as the murderer, but the charge is withdrawn after she admits to a degree of prompting by the police.
Jackson is a leading member of a UVF gang linked to about 100 murders carried out at random against Catholic civilians between 1973 and 1979, earning for the north Armagh and east Tyrone area the nickname “the murder triangle.” He also allegedly helps to plan the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings of May 17, 1974, killing thirty-three civilians, and orchestrates the attack on the Miami Showband on July 31, 1975. He becomes UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade commander in 1975. Never convicted of any of the numerous murders attributed to him, he is however jailed between 1979 and 1983 for arms possession.
Jackson marries Eileen Maxwell in the late 1960s. They have a son and two daughters. The marriage does not survive his imprisonment and after his release he moves to Donaghcloney, County Down, where he lives with a much younger girlfriend. He remains active in loyalist paramilitarism but takes a less prominent role. He survives several Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts on his life, including the detonation of a car bomb outside his house. In 1984, the editor of the Belfast edition of the Sunday World is shot and wounded after publishing articles denouncing “the Jackal,” the nickname by which the press calls Jackson during his lifetime.
After the Anglo–Irish Agreement of 1985, Jackson is briefly linked to Ulster Resistance (UR), a paramilitary group founded by associates of Ian Paisley. He allegedly assists the rearming and reorganisation of the Mid-Ulster UVF under Billy Wright after the killing of his brother-in-law and alleged accomplice, Roy Metcalf, by the IRA in 1988. Relations between Wright and Jackson cool after the killing of a Catholic in Donaghcloney by Wright’s men leads to Jackson being called in for questioning, and he supports the UVF leadership in its 1996–97 dispute with Wright. He is also the focus of recurring allegations about collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and elements of the security forces in mid-Ulster, including claims that he operated on behalf of British military intelligence who shielded him from prosecution.
Jackson dies of lung cancer at the age of 49 at his Donaghcloney home on May 30, 1998. He is buried on June 1 in a private ceremony in the St. Bartholomew Church of Ireland churchyard in his native Donaghmore, County Down. His grave, close to that of his parents, is unmarked apart from a steel poppy cross. His father had died in 1985 and his mother outlives him by five years.
Considerable uncertainty surrounds his involvement in many of the crimes attributed to him, but there is no doubt that he is a cold-blooded multiple murderer and one of the most sinister “hard men” of loyalist paramilitarism.
(From: “Jackson, Robin” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Charles is the eldest surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France. His early years are unremarkable, but before he is twenty his conventional education has been completely overshadowed by the harsh lessons of defeat in the English Civil War against the Puritans and subsequent isolation and poverty. Thus he emerges into precocious maturity, cynical, self-indulgent, skilled in the sort of moral evasions that make life comfortable even in adversity.
Though the early years of tawdry dissipation tarnish the romance of Charles’s adventures, not all his actions are discreditable. He tries to fight his father’s battles in the west of England in 1645. He resists the attempts of his mother and his sister Henrietta Anne to convert him to Catholicism and remains openly loyal to his Protestant faith. In 1648, he makes strenuous efforts to save his father, and when, after Charles I’s execution in 1649, he is proclaimed Charles II by the Scots in defiance of the English republic. He is prepared to go to Scotland and swallow the stringently anti-Catholic and anti-Anglican Presbyterian Covenant as the price for alliance. But the sacrifice of friends and principles was futile and leaves him deeply embittered. The Scottish army is routed by the English under Oliver Cromwell at Dunbar in September 1650, and in 1651 Charles’s invasion of England ends in defeat at Worcester. The young king becomes a fugitive, hunted through England for forty days but protected by a handful of his loyal subjects until he escapes to France in October 1651.
Charles’s safety is comfortless, however. He is destitute and friendless, unable to bring pressure against an increasingly powerful England. France and the Dutch Republic are closed to him by Cromwell’s diplomacy, and he turns to Spain, with whom he concludes a treaty in April 1656. He persuades his brother James to relinquish his command in the French army and gives him some regiments of Anglo-Irish troops in Spanish service, but poverty dooms this nucleus of a royalist army to impotence. European princes take little interest in Charles and his cause, and his proffers of marriage are declined. Even Cromwell’s death does little to improve his prospects. But George Monck, one of Cromwell’s leading generals, realized that under Cromwell’s successors the country is in danger of being torn apart and with his formidable army creates the situation favourable to Charles’s restoration in 1660.
Most Englishmen now favour a return to a stable and legitimate monarchy, and, although more is known of Charles II’s vices than his virtues, he has, under the steadying influence of Edward Hyde, his chief adviser, avoided any damaging compromise of his religion or constitutional principles. With Hyde’s help, Charles issues in April 1660 his Declaration of Breda, expressing his personal desire for a general amnesty, liberty of conscience, an equitable settlement of land disputes, and full payment of arrears to the army. The actual terms are left to a free parliament, and on this provisional basis Charles is proclaimed king in May 1660. Landing at Dover on May 25, he reaches a rejoicing London on his 30th birthday.
The unconditional nature of the settlement that takes shape between 1660 and 1662 owes little to Charles’s intervention and likely exceeds his expectations. He is bound by the concessions made by his father in 1640 and 1641, but the Parliament elected in 1661 is determined on an uncompromising Anglican and royalist settlement. The Militia Act of 1661 gives Charles unprecedented authority to maintain a standing army, and the Corporation Act 1661 allows him to purge the boroughs of dissident officials. Other legislation places strict limits on the press and on public assembly, and the Act of Uniformity 1662 creates controls of education. An exclusive body of Anglican clergy and a well-armed landed gentry are the principal beneficiaries of Charles II’s restoration.
But within this narrow structure of upper-class loyalism there are irksome limitations on Charles’s independence. His efforts to extend religious toleration to his Nonconformist and Roman Catholic subjects are sharply rebuffed in 1663, and throughout his reign the House of Commons thwarts the more generous impulses of his religious policy. A more pervasive and damaging limitation is on his financial independence. Although the Parliament votes the king an estimated annual income of £1,200,000, Charles has to wait many years before his revenues produce such a sum, and by then the damage of debt and discredit is irreparable. He is incapable of thrift and finds it painful to refuse petitioners. With the expensive disasters of the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–67 the reputation of the restored king sinks to its lowest level. His vigorous attempts to save London during the Great Fire of September 1666 cannot make up for the negligence and maladministration that leads to England’s naval defeat in June 1667.
Charles clears himself by dismissing his old adviser, Edward Hyde, and tries to assert himself through a more adventurous foreign policy. So far, his reign has made only modest contributions to England’s commercial advancement. The Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663, which are prompted by the threat to British shipping by the rise of the Dutch carrying trade, are valuable extensions of Cromwellian policies, and the capture of New York in 1664 is one of his few gains from the Dutch. Although marriage to Princess Catherine of Braganza of Portugal in 1662 brings him the possession of Tangier and Bombay, they are of less strategic value than Dunkirk, which he sells to Louis XIV in 1662. He Is, however, prepared to sacrifice much for the alliance of his young cousin. Through his sister Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans, he has direct contact with the French court, and it is through her that he negotiates the startling reversal of the Protestant Triple Alliance (England, the Dutch Republic, Sweden) of 1668. By the terms of the so-called Secret Treaty of Dover of May 1670, not only does England and France join in an offensive alliance against the Dutch, but Charles promises to announce his conversion to Roman Catholicism. If this provokes trouble from his subjects, he is assured of French military and financial support. He sees to it that the conversion clause of the treaty is not made public.
This clause, which is the most controversial act of Charles II’s reign, can be explained as a shortsighted bid for Louis XIV’s confidence. In this, however, it fails. Louis neither welcomes Charles’s intentions nor believes in them, and, in the event, it is only upon his deathbed that Charles is received into the Roman Catholic Church. But he has now fatally compromised himself. Although he subsequently attempts to pursue policies independent of Louis, he remains bound to him by inclination as well as by the fear of blackmail. More seriously, he has lost the confidence of his subjects, who deplore the French alliance and distrust the whole tendency of his policies.
Other circumstances deepen Englishmen’s discontent with their king. By the 1670s the miscarriages of the queen have reduced hopes that Charles will have a legitimate heir, and in 1673 the second marriage of his brother James, Duke of York, to Mary of Modena, increases the possibility of the Catholic line of succession, for James’s conversion to the Roman church is well known. But it is for his autocratic character as much as for his religion that James is feared as his brother is not, and it is on his brother’s behalf that Charles eventually has to face the severest political storm of his reign.
The Popish Plot of 1678 is an elaborate tissue of fictions built around a skeleton of even stranger truths. The allegations of Titus Oates, a former Anglican cleric who has been expelled from a Jesuit seminary, that Roman Catholics plan to murder Charles to make James king, seem to be confirmed by scraps of evidence of which Charles is justifiably skeptical. But he is obliged to bow before the gusts of national hysteria that seek to bar his brother from the line of succession. Between 1679 and 1681, Charles very nearly loses control of his government. Deprived of his chief minister, the Earl of Danby, who has been compromised by his negotiations with France, he has to allow Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury, and his Whig supporters, who uphold the power of the Parliament—men whom he detests—to occupy positions of power in central and local government. Three general elections produce three equally unmanageable parliaments, and, although Charles publicly denies the legitimacy of his first son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, he has to send his Catholic brother James out of the country and offer a plan of limitations that will bind James if he comes to the throne. The plan proves to be unacceptable both to the Whigs and to James, and, when Charles falls seriously ill in the summer of 1679, there is real danger of civil conflict.
But Charles keeps his nerve. He defends his queen against slanders, dismisses the intractable parliaments, and recovers control of his government. His subjects’ dread of republican anarchy proves stronger than their suspicion of James, and from March 1681, when he dissolves his last Parliament, Charles enjoys a nationwide surge of loyalty almost as fervent as that of 1660. He has made yet another secret treaty with France and in addition to a French subsidy can now count upon a healthy public revenue. Reforms at the Treasury, which he inaugurates in 1667, provide the crown with a firm basis of administrative control that is among Charles II’s most valuable legacies to English government.
As a result of these actions, Charles, who dies on February 6, 1685, at Whitehall in London, is able to end his reign in the kind of tranquil prosperity he has always sought.
Boland is enrolled in the IRB along with his younger brothers Harry in 1904, following in the footsteps of his father. He and his brothers Harry and Ned subsequently join the Irish Volunteers when that organisation is established in 1913, serving in the same company as Arthur Griffith. When news breaks out of the Easter Rising in 1916 he immediately leaves his job, however, he is bitterly disappointed when he finds out that the order has been countermanded. When the rebellion begins in earnest on Easter Monday, he makes his way to Jacob’s Mill where he fights under Thomas MacDonagh. Following the official surrender, he is arrested and interned at Frongoch internment camp in Wales, where he comes into contact with other notable revolutionary leaders, including his brother Harry’s friend Michael Collins.
Boland is released after a general amnesty in December 1916, however, he remains involved in revolutionary circles, although he declines to rejoin the IRB, believing the organisation is no longer needed. He is arrested and imprisoned in Belfast from May to December 1918 for practising military drills in the Dublin Mountains. Meanwhile, a number of his colleagues secure their release by winning seats in the 1918 United Kingdom general election.
Boland and his brothers are opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. He is Battalion Commandant of 3 Battalion, 2 Dublin Brigade (South Dublin) in Blessington, County Wicklow, but is captured early on in the Irish Civil War on July 7, 1922, and is interned until his release in July 1924. On the outside, his brother Harry dies some days after being shot, in August 1922, after two National Army officers attempt to arrest him at the Grand Hotel in Skerries, County Dublin. Boland applies to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act of 1934 and is awarded 11 and 5/12 years of service at Grade C for his service with the Irish Volunteers and the IRA between April 1, 1916 and September 30, 1923.
Following the end of the Irish Civil War, Boland helps to build up Sinn Féin as the main Republican party. While still imprisoned, he is selected to stand for Dáil Éireann as the Teachta Dála (TD) for Roscommon, Harry’s old seat, for the 1923 Irish general election, in which he is successful. He is among those in Kilmainham Gaol who go on hunger strike in October 1923. The hunger strike does not result in his release and he credits his practice of yoga with keeping him alive at the time.[3]
Boland is eventually released from the custody of the state in July 1924. Upon his release, he becomes secretary of Sinn Féin and stands on the executive of the party.
Boland is among the first in Sinn Féin to call for an end to the party’s abstentionism from DáilÉireann, believing it to be a political dead end. Party leader Éamon de Valera proposes that the party abandon this policy and take their seats in the Dáil if changes are made to the oath of allegiance to the British monarch. His proposal is defeated and de Valera and his supporters, including Boland, leave Sinn Féin. Shortly after this split, a new party emerges called Fianna Fáil, with de Valera acting as leader and the other disillusioned Republican TDs joining. Boland is vital in transferring many members from Sinn Féin to Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil briefly also has an abstentionist policy but in 1927 a new law forces Fianna Fáil TDs to take the oath of allegiance and take their seats in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil dismisses the oath as “an empty formula.”
Boland works alongside Seán Lemass in building up Fianna Fáil’s grassroots support and organisation, giving particular attention to the party’s rural apparatus. In the September 1927 Irish general election Fianna Fáil comes within four seats of the ruling Cumann na nGaedheal party. The latter forms a coalition of sorts with the Farmers’ Party and returns to government.
Following the 1932 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil forms a new government. Boland is appointed Government Chief Whip, a position which allows him to attend cabinet meetings but not vote at them.
Fianna Fáil remains in power with an increased mandate following the 1933 Irish general election and Boland is promoted to the position of Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Despite being the Minister in charge of the postal service, he does not own a telephone until some time later. During his tenure, the postal service makes considerable progress. It is also during this time that the Post Office becomes a paying concern. During his time as minister, he oversees a major expansion of the telephone service in Ireland, improvements in the transmission capacity of Radio Éireann, and construction of new provincial post offices and a new central postal sorting office.
Boland is acting Minister for Justice briefly for a time when P. J. Ruttledge is ill. It is during this time that he declares the Irish Republican Army a proscribed organisation.
A cabinet reshuffle in 1936 sees Boland become Minister for Lands. The Land Act 1939 reforms land distribution, broadening the criteria by which the state can take control over undeveloped land while offering the tenant of the land more favourable terms of compensation. He is critical of the policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, of centralising industrial development in Dublin. He instead wishes to see a more decentralised economy based around food production. The differing viewpoint causes a rift between Boland and Lemass, but despite this Boland favoured Lemass’s policy of state intervention in the economy over Seán MacEntee‘s more laissez-faire approach.
In 1937 Boland is highly vocal during the drafting of a new constitution of Ireland by Fianna Fáil against any word which would give the Catholic Church special status, something heavily considered at the time. He declares that if the constitution elevates the position of the Catholic Church above others, it would be sectarian, anti-republican, and a hindrance to any prospects of Irish reunification. As a compromise, the term “special position” is used in the approved text of the Constitution.
Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, known in Ireland as the Emergency, there is a cabinet reshuffle, and Boland is appointed as Minister for Justice. He takes over at a time when the IRA has once again declared war against the British state and has begun their Sabotage Campaign. He is charged with the task of crushing the organisation and preventing the IRA from drawing the Irish state into conflict with the United Kingdom. Although he always considers himself a republican, he takes a hardline against the IRA and uses his powers to order the internment of hundreds of IRA members before introducing military courts and special criminal courts.
In 1940, several imprisoned IRA members go on hunger strike but Boland refuses to grant their release. Two of the men eventually die, one of whom is the nephew of one of his Fianna Fáil colleagues. Tony D’Arcy dies at the age of 32 on April 16, 1940, as a result of a 52-day hunger strike, and Jack McNeela dies three days later after 55 days on hunger strike. These deaths spark reprisals by the IRA on the Garda Síochána. Boland subsequently introduces tougher measures by setting up a military court with the death penalty and no provision for appeal except for a review by the government. In all, twelve men are found guilty with six of them facing death and the remaining six having their sentences changed to imprisonment. Among those executed is Charlie Kerins, an acting Chief of Staff of the IRA.
As Minister of Justice, Boland is also asked to enforce policies of wartime censorship, however, finding the idea of the state censorship distasteful he establishes a censorship board to avoid accusations of bias.
During the Emergency, Boland is also responsible for the detention of several foreign agents in pursuit of Ireland’s strict policy of neutrality. During this time some 500 individuals are interned and 600 are sentenced under the newly introduced Offences against the State Act, 1939. By 1943 the IRA is in disarray, particularly after the Chief of Staff is arrested and imprisoned, leaving the organisation without leadership. Boland and Fianna Fáil feel their hardline is backed by the electorate following strong returns for the party at the 1944 Irish general election.
In 1947, Boland is among four leading Fianna Fáil figures (including de Valera) involved in the “Locke’s Distillery Scandal”, an accusation brought by Oliver J. Flanagan that foreign businessmen are bribing members of Fianna Fáil to gain the right to purchase the distillery. A tribunal of inquiry finds no evidence to support the claims, but the event taints the public’s view of Fianna Fáil.
By 1948, Fianna Fáil has been in government for an uninterrupted 16 years. With World War II finally over, the electorate seeks change and a fresh start. Arising to meet this desire is the new political party Clann na Poblachta. Led by Seán MacBride, this new party seeks to kick off a new post-war political era in Ireland, and to do this means removing Fianna Fáil from power. Many in Clann na Poblachta have republican backgrounds and in some ways, the party can be partially described as an organic reaction to Fianna Fáil and Boland’s hardline stance during the war years. Many in political circles, including inside Fianna Fáil, believe Clann na Poblachta can be a new force to reckon with.
However, de Valera always holds a reputation for being cunning in selecting the dates of general elections, and he once again cements that notion, when he calls for a general election in early 1948 before Clann na Poblachta is completely ready to contest a national election. At the 1948 Irish general election Clann na Poblachta and other Fianna Fáil opponents do well, but not as well as expected. To remove Fianna Fáil from government, every single party in the Dáil and several independents have to form the unwieldy “First Inter-Party Government.” The coalition sees Clann na Poblachta forced to work with Fine Gael, considered the traditional “enemy” of Irish republicanism. By 1951, the coalition collapses and Fianna Fáil returns to government following that year’s election, with Boland re-appointed Minister for Justice.
Boland does not seek ministerial office in 1957 when Fianna Fáil returns to power after its defeat in 1954. However, his son, Kevin, is appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Defence at the beginning of his first term in the Dáil. By this stage, Boland is beginning to be seen as an aging warhorse, with his base in Roscommon starting to slip and Fianna Fáil unhappy that he is unable to get a Fianna Fáil running mate elected alongside himself.
At the 1961 Irish general election, Boland is defeated for the first time in fourteen general election campaigns. Despite losing his Dáil seat, he subsequently secures election to Seanad Éireann. Four years later in 1965, he returns to the Seanad, this time as a nominee by the Taoiseach Seán Lemass.
In 1970, the outbreak of the Arms Crisis sees Kevin Boland resign as a Minister and as Secretary of Fianna Fáil in protest at the government’s policy on Northern Ireland and in response to the sackings of Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney from the cabinet over allegations they had arranged for weapons to be provided to the Provisional IRA. Gerald Boland, in a similar protest, resigns as a vice president and as a trustee of Fianna Fáil, although he remains a member of the party. He also articulates his loss of confidence in the leadership of TaoiseachJack Lynch.
Boland dies in Dublin at the age of 87 on January 5, 1973. He is buried in the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin. His wife, Annie Boland, predeceases him in 1970. He is survived by his three daughters and four sons.
From 1546 to 1549, Weston is a principal of Broadgates Hall (afterwards Pembroke College), and at the same time deputy reader in civil law at the university, under Dr. John Story. He is not a clergyman, and his later appointment to two lucrative deaneries greatly troubles his conscience.
On January 12, 1559, Weston is created Dean of the Arches and is a commissioner for administering the oaths required of ecclesiastics under the Act of Uniformity 1558. He is consulted in regard to the Queen’s Commission issued on December 6, 1559, for confirming Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury and is included in a commission issued on November 8, 1564, to inquire into complaints of piratical depredations committed at sea on the subjects of the King of Spain.
The Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney, requests that Weston be nominated for the post of Lord Chancellor of Ireland in succession to Hugh Curwen, Archbishop of Dublin, in April 1566. After a year, on June 10, 1567, Queen Elizabeth I tells Sidney that after good deliberation she has made the “choice for the supply of room of Chancellor by naming thereunnto our trusty well-beloved Doctor Weston, dean of the arches here, a man for his learning and approved integrity thoroughly qualified to receive and possess the same” and “that for some increase of his living whilst he remaineth in our service there she was pleased to give unto him the Deanery of St. Patrick’s, whereof the Bishop of Armagh, Adam Loftus, is now dean and yet to leave it at our order, as we know he will.”
Weston arrives in Dublin early in August and is sworn into office on August 8, 1567. He is conscientious in performing his duties, and greatly respected for his integrity, although ill-health (he is plagued by gout and gallstones) hampers his effectiveness. He is appalled by the laziness and inefficiency of many of the Irish judges and urges Elizabeth I to replace them with Englishmen wherever possible. He is equally shocked at the poverty and ignorance of many of the Protestant clergy in Ireland. His zeal for reform leads him, though a layman, to become an effective leader of the Church of Ireland for a few years. He cooperates with Adam Loftus, now Archbishop of Dublin, in purging the Archdiocese of Dublin of crypto-Catholics, but is opposed to the persecution of the Roman Catholic majority, or any efforts to forcibly convert them.
Weston dies on May 20, 1573, and is buried beneath the altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, “leaving behind him an excellent character for uprightness, judgment, learning, courtesy, and piety.”
Weston marries Alice Jenyngs, daughter of Richard Jenyngs of Great Barr, Staffordshire. They have a son, John, and three daughters, of whom most of known of Alice, who marries firstly Hugh Brady, Bishop of Meath, by whom she has numerous children including Luke and Nicholas, and secondly Sir Geoffrey Fenton, by whom she is the mother of Catherine, who marries Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, and of Sir William Fenton.
Whyte is born on April 30, 1928, in Penang, Malaysia. His father is manager of a rubber plantation on the mainland. His family leaves Malaysia and returns to Europe when he is three, eventually settling in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland. The Whytes are a well-known County Down family recorded in the area since at least 1713. The family is said to have come to Ireland from South Wales with Strongbow in 1170 and settled in Leinster. He is educated locally, at Ampleforth College and Oriel College Oxford, from which he takes a degree in Modern History in 1949. Continuing studies some two years later he is awarded a B.Litt degree for further research, which is to form the nebula of his first book which is published in 1958.
Whyte undertakes national service during the 1950s and works as a history teacher in his old school before being appointed lecturer in Modern History at Makerere University, Uganda. In 1962, he returns to Ireland having been appointed first “lecturer in empirical politics” at the then expanding University College Dublin (UCD). In 1966, he weds fellow academic Dr. Jean Murray and moves to Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to undertake further studies.
In his book, Preventing the Future: Why Was Ireland So Poor for So Long?, Whyte’s successor as Professor of Politics at UCD, Tom Garvin, gives an account as to the clerical politics prevalent at the time at UCD which causes Whyte’s untimely departure:
A little later, in 1966, McQuaid provoked, possibly unintentionally, the resignation of John Whyte, a distinguished Catholic political scientist, from University College Dublin’s Department of Ethics and Politics. This resignation and move to Belfast on Whyte’s part in 1966 almost certainly was the unintended result of an extraordinary piece of clerical interference and bullying that rebounded upon McQuaid and on UCD. Whyte was in the midst of writing his standard history of the Catholic Church in independent Ireland, later published in 1969; at McQuaid’s apparent instigation, his professor and head of Department attempted to forbid him from continuing with this work. The irony was that the resultant scholarly book, finished in Belfast rather than Dublin, deeply underestimated clerical power in the Irish state and gave the Catholic Church a rather easy ride. Another irony was that Whyte, as a Roman Catholic historian and political scientist, was apparently rather favoured by McQuaid. However in 1966 bishops didn’t know they needed friends. Whyte was to come back to UCD and was professor of Ethics and Politics between 1984 and 1990. In a very real sense, McQuaid was the patriarchal and eccentric governor of Dublin Archdiocese, where one-third of the stat’s population lived; he attempted to run an urban society of a million people as though it were a large feudal community.
At Queen’s, Whyte spends seventeen years as lecturer and reader, and from 1982 Professor of Irish Politics during which he seeks to bring together political scientists from across the island and develop an All-Ireland political science fellowship. From 1973 to 1974 he works at as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Centre for International Affairs, and in 1975 he helps lead a team of researchers investigating the Northern Ireland conflict, then at its height. He also works as research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies during the late 1970s and is elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in 1977, serving as Vice-President from 1989 to 1990.
In 1984, Whyte returns to University College Dublin, then faced with stringent fiscal cuts and wider problems in Irish third-level education. In his second period at UCD, he leads the Department, which he now heads, through a troubled period of financial cuts while supervising a reorganisation of the undergraduate curriculum. In his last years at UCD he completes his seminal work, the widely regarded Interpreting Northern Ireland. He finishes correcting the proofs and compiling the index of this work only a week before his death. While en route to an academic conference at Airley House, Virginia, he collapses at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, is taken to a local hospital, and dies there on May 16, 1990. He is survived by his wife, two sons, and one daughter.
Following his death, Whyte’s family, friends, and colleagues set up the John Whyte Trust Fund to continue Whyte’s work, honour his memory and encourage “informed dialogue and interaction at graduate level among people who are likely to be leaders and opinion-shapers.” To date the fund has awarded one fully paid scholarship and a number of part-paid scholarships as well as essay prizes annually. The fund also hosts an annual John Whyte Memorial Lecture. Speakers have included Paul Bew and Brendan O’Leary.
MacNeill is one of five children born to Archibald McNeill, a Roman Catholic working-class baker, sailor and merchant, and his wife, Rosetta McNeill (née McAuley), also a Catholic. He is raised in Glenarm, an area which “still retained some Irish-language traditions.” His niece is nationalist and teacher, Máirín Beaumont.
MacNeill marries Agnes Moore on April 19, 1898. The couple has eight children, four sons and four daughters (though the 1911 census entry for MacNeill notes eleven children, seven of whom are still alive).
The Gaelic League is from the start strictly non-political, but in 1915, a proposal is put forward to abandon that policy and become a semi-political organisation. MacNeill strongly supports this and rallies to his side a majority of delegates at the 1915 Oireachtas. Douglas Hyde, a non-political Protestant, who had co-founded the League and been its president for 22 years, resigns immediately afterward.
Through the Gaelic League, MacNeill meets members of Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and other nationalists and republicans. One such colleague, The O’Rahilly, runs the league’s newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis, and in October 1913 asks MacNeill to write an editorial for it on a subject broader than Irish language issues. He submits a piece called “The North Began,” encouraging the formation of a nationalist volunteer force committed to Irish Home Rule, much as the unionists had done earlier in the year with the Ulster Volunteers to thwart Home Rule in Ireland. In July 1915, he comments on the threat that the unarmed nationalists in Ulster might face: “…a demented…English driven Orange Army would be let loose upon the helpless Catholic people of Ulster, who would be driven out of the province or massacred where they stood.”
Bulmer Hobson, a member of the IRB, approaches MacNeill about bringing the idea to fruition, and, through a series of meetings, MacNeill becomes chair of the council that forms the Irish Volunteers, later becoming its chief of staff. Unlike the IRB, he is opposed to the idea of an armed rebellion, except in resisting any suppression of the Volunteers, seeing little hope of success in open battle against the British army.
The Irish Volunteers have been infiltrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which plan on using the organisation to stage an armed rebellion, to separate Ireland from the United Kingdom and establishing an Irish Republic. The entry of the UK into World War I is, in their view, a perfect opportunity to do that. With the cooperation of James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army, a secret council of IRB officials plan a general rising at Easter 1916. On the Wednesday before Easter, they present MacNeill with a letter, allegedly stolen from high-ranking British staff in Dublin Castle, indicating that the British are going to arrest him and all the other nationalist leaders. Unbeknownst to MacNeill, the letter—called the Castle Document—is a forgery.
When MacNeill learns about the IRB’s plans, and when he is informed that Roger Casement is about to land in County Kerry with a shipment of German arms, he is reluctantly persuaded to go along with them, believing British action is now imminent and that mobilization of the Irish Volunteers will be justified as a defensive act. However, after learning that the German arms shipment has been intercepted and Casement arrested, and having confronted Patrick Pearse, who refuses to relent, MacNeill countermands the order for the Rising by sending written messages to leaders around the country, and placing a notice in the Sunday Independent cancelling the planned “manoeuvres.” This greatly reduces the number of volunteers who report for duty on the day of the Easter Rising.
Pearse, Connolly and the others agree that the uprising will go ahead anyway, but it begins one day later than originally intended to ensure that the authorities are taken by surprise. Beginning on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the Rising lasts less than a week. After the surrender of the rebels, MacNeill is arrested although he has taken no part in the insurrection. The rebel leader Tom Clarke, according to his wife Kathleen, warns her on the day before his execution, “I want you to see to it that our people know of his treachery to us. He must never be allowed back into the National life of this country, for so sure as he is, so sure will he act treacherously in a crisis. He is a weak man, but I know every effort will be made to whitewash him.”
In 1923, MacNeill, a committed internationalist, is also a key member of the diplomatic team that oversees Ireland’s entry to the League of Nations.
MacNeill’s family is split on the treaty issue. One son, Brian, takes the anti-Treaty side and is killed in disputed circumstances near Sligo by Free State troops during the Irish Civil War in September 1922. Two other sons, Niall and Turloch, as well as nephew Hugo MacNeill, serve as officers in the Free State Army. One of his brothers, James McNeill, is the second and penultimate Governor-General of the Irish Free State.
In 1924, the three-man Irish Boundary Commission is set up to settle the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. MacNeill represents the Irish Free State. He is the only member of the Commission without legal training and has been described as being “pathetically out of his depth.” However, each of the Commissioners is selected out of political expediency rather than for any established competence or insight into boundary making. On November 7, 1925, a conservative British newspaper, The Morning Post, publishes a leaked map showing a part of eastern County Donegal (mainly The Laggan district) that is to be transferred to Northern Ireland, the opposite of the main aims of the commission. Perhaps embarrassed by that, especially since he said that it had declined to respect the terms of the Treaty, MacNeill resigns from the commission on November 20. Hus performance in the Boundary Commission has been deemed highly negative in a 2025 study The Root of All Evil: The Irish Boundary Commission.
On November 24, 1925, MacNeill also resign as Minister for Education, a position unrelated to his work on the commission.
On December 3, 1925, the Free State government agrees with the governments in London and Belfast to end its onerous treaty requirement to pay its share of the United Kingdom’s “imperial debt” and, in exchange, agrees that the 1920 boundary will remain as it is, overriding the commission. This angers many nationalists and MacNeill is the subject of much criticism, but in reality, he and the commission have been sidestepped by the intergovernmental debt renegotiation. In any case, despite his resignations, the intergovernmental boundary deal is approved by a Dáil vote of 71–20 on December 10, 1925, and MacNeill is listed as voting with the majority in favour. He loses his Dáil seat at the June 1927 Irish general election.
MacNeill is an important scholar of Irish history and among the first to study Early Irish law, offering both his interpretations, which at times are coloured by his nationalism, and translations into English. He is also the first to uncover the nature of succession in Irish kingship, and his theories are the foundation for modern ideas on the subject.
MacNeill is a contributor to the Royal Irish Academy‘s Clare Island Survey, recording the Irish place names of the island. His disagreements and disputes with Goddard Henry Orpen, particularly over the latter’s book Ireland under the Normans, generate controversy.
MacNeill retires from politics completely and becomes Chair of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. In his later years he devotes his life to scholarship and publishes several books on Irish history. He dies in Dublin of natural causes, aged 78, on October 15, 1945. He is buried in Kilbarrack Cemetery.
The Catholic Association is the latest in a series of similar associations formed over the previous ten years or so, none of which had prospered. Like the other associations, this new association is composed mainly of the middle class elite: an annual subscription amounting to a guinea, an amount equivalent to what an average farmer would pay for six months’ rent. In 1824, the Catholic Association begins to use the money that it has raised to campaign for Catholic emancipation.
In 1824, the association creates a new category of associate members at the cost of a penny per month, the so-called Catholic Rent. The reasoning behind the creation of this new membership category is to stimulate a swelling in association numbers. This new, cheaper category ensures Catholics from a poorer background can join, and thus the association’s initial class-based entry barriers are removed. The Catholic rent transforms the association and Catholic political advocacy more broadly. In terms of the association, the rent catalyzes a transformation in a number of ways. Firstly, as previously mentioned, it gives the Catholic Association a constant source of money, which enables O’Connell to run a consistent campaign. Secondly, it facilitates easy calculation of total association membership numbers so that O’Connell can say with confidence that he has the support of so many people. This is important as it can be used to apply pressure against the British government. Third, and perhaps most importantly, however, it announces the arrival of mass mobilization politics, being the first such populist movement in Europe. O’Connell decides to add this additional membership level, at a reduced price of a penny a month, deliberately. The benefits are clear. With the membership subscription set at a relatively cheap price, a large number of the peasant and working classes can join. Affordability ensures large numbers. In effect, it becomes a universal Catholic organization that is transparent and populist. The fact that each member contributes financially to the association also ensures that they are more deeply involved in pushing the cause of Catholic emancipation. People want value for their money. Thus, this ensures a cheap method for O’Connell to get the message of Catholic emancipation spread throughout Ireland.
The Catholic Association’s funds are diffused widely in a variety of areas. Some is spent campaigning for Catholic emancipation, defraying the costs of sending petitions to Westminster, and training of priests. Following the 1826 election campaign, funds are used to support the members of the organization who had voted against their landlords. The money is used for those who have been evicted from land by the landlords because of their connection to the Catholic organization or for those who were boycottingabsentee landlord. For the Catholic peasants that are in this situation, the future would be grim as they would be unable to continue the boycott without food and money, and they would be unable to lease land from any landlord as the peasants would be boycotted against in return. The Catholic Association’s funds are used to support these boycotts so that they can continue and live well enough to have enough food to survive.
The Catholic Association is originally aristocratic in its composition, and some of the gentry (such as Richard Lalor Sheil) hold relatively conservative views. However, O’Connell holds an enormous influence over society and largely dictates the policies it pursues. It is radical in nature but also extremely loyal to the Crown in appearance. This had been the strategy of the previous major Catholic group, the Catholic Committee of the 1790s, which achieved major Catholic Relief in 1793.
Since the aims of the Catholic Association are fairly moderate and the organization remains loyal to the monarch, British MPs are conceptually more willing to pass Catholic emancipation. The matter had been discussed in London since the Acts of Union 1800, when Prime MinisterWilliam Pitt and most of his colleagues resign from the cabinet when emancipation is denied by the king. Henry Grattan continues to support the cause, and Catholic emancipation had been passed by the House of Commons previously by a majority of six, but it is rejected in the House of Lords and generally by King George III, who reigns until 1820.
The biggest strength of the Catholic Association is that the Catholic Church helps in the collection of the Catholic rent. Catholic priests also hold sermons in favor of Catholic emancipation. This means that it is easy for the members to pay the Catholic rent, and it will attract more members as the message of Catholic emancipation is being spread throughout Ireland. Sir Robert Peel believes the alliance of the Catholic Association and the Catholic Church is a “powerful combination.”
In 1826, the Catholic Association begins to use its funds to support pro-emancipation MPs in elections. They use their money and manpower to campaign for the candidate to be elected into parliament to pressure the government from within to pass Catholic emancipation.
The turning point comes in 1828, when two factors come into play. The first is that the Catholic Church takes over the collection of the Catholic Rent and effectively the Catholic Association itself. The other is that by 1828, O’Connell’s reputation has increased dramatically. He is an internationally recognized figure and is seen as one of the leading figures in liberal thinking. This successful campaign leads on to, but is distinguished from, his later efforts to end the union with Britain, to increase the franchise, and to end the payment of tithes. His particular talent is to push the emancipation process along in an organized way.
In May 1828, the Sacramental Test Act 1828 repeals the Test Acts 1673 & 1678 against non-AnglicanProtestants. This gives non-Catholic non-conformists greater political freedom and equality in Britain. The repeal has two effects: it gives Catholics hope that a similar act will be passed that will include Catholics; it also alienates Catholics, as they have become the only Christians not to have political freedom and equality.
In May 1828, William Huskisson resigns from the cabinet, and William Vesey-Fitzgerald is chosen as the President of the Board of Trade. According to the law, there is to be a by-election in his constituency of Clare. O’Connell decides to exploit a loophole in the Acts of Union 1800. It requires MPs to take the Oath of Allegiance, but the oath is not required of candidates for election. He stands in the by-election and wins. Since he is a Catholic, he cannot take his seat in parliament. Demand rises to allow him to become an MP for Clare, as it does not have representation.
Sir Robert Peel and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, see that if O’Connell is not allowed to take his seat, then there could be a revolution in Ireland. While using non-violent methods, O’Connell hints that he will get more Catholics elected to force the situation. In an emotive speech, he says, “They must crush us or conciliate us.”
Peel decides to change the government’s approach and submits the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 in February 1829. The bill is passed. It is a momentous victory for O’Connell and the Catholic middle class, and he becomes known as “the liberator” and the “uncrowned king of Ireland.” However, the simultaneous enactment of the Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act 1829 restricts the franchise in the county constituencies in Ireland. The archive of the Catholic Association is housed with the archives of Dublin Diocese in Holy Cross College, Dublin.
(Pictured: “Daniel O’Connell: The Champion of Liberty” poster published in Pennsylvania, 1847)
seamus dubhghaill 