A Liberty 12th - First Presbyterian Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania - the "Carlisle Resolves" of 12 July 1774

250 years ago, on 12th July 1774, a committee chaired by a John Montgomery met in Carlisle First Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania to publish the 'Carlisle Resolves'. The church held some events last week to mark this: https://www.facebook.com/firstprescarlisle.org

The committee members were James Wilson, John Armstrong, John Montgomery, William Irvine, Robert Callender, William Thompson, John Colhoon, Jonathan Hoge, Robert Magaw, Ephraim Blaine, John Alison, John Harris and Robert Miller. The community of Carlisle expressed their "common cause" with the other "British Colonies in North-America" due to the Parliament of Great Britain annulling the Rights and Liberties of the people of Boston and Massachusetts when it revoked or 'abrogated' the 1691 Charter of William and Mary (see Wikipedia article here).

The Carlisle Resolves were just one of a series issued from Ulster-Scots communities in Pennsylvania. Some of the others from June & July 1774 were the Hanover Resolves, the Middletown Resolves, the Lebanon Resolves and the Lancaster Resolves.

"Scotch-Irish districts were firm yet dignified in their demands for justice and in the denunciation of British tyranny and wrong. These Hanover Resolves ... (show that) the liberty-loving Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania were the head and front of the American rebellion of 1776” 

- quoted from ‘History of the counties of Dauphin and Lebanon: in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania' (1883) page 78

One of those who was present at the meeting that authorised the 'Carlisle Resolves' was Ulster-born James Smith. Two years later he would sign the Declaration of Independence.

Ged on the Shankill for the 12th

One of my sons knows this guy, as you'll see in the video below he has undergone a complete faith transformation in recent months and is using his skills as an online influencer to now do evangelistic work and voxpop interviews. It's an insight into the condition of our society and deeply embedded narratives.

Pastoral Letter from The Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia, 20 July 1775

On 12 June 1775, a few weeks after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress published an appeal for a national day of fasting and prayer on 20 July (full text online here). On that day, the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia published a 'pastoral letter' to its congregations across the 13 Colonies:

"... The Synod cannot help thinking, that this is a proper time for oppressing all of every rank seriously to consider the things that belong to their eternal peace. Hostilities, long feared, have now taken place; the sword has been drawn, in one Province, and the whole Continent, with hardly any exception, seem determined to defend their rights by force of arms.

... If, at the same time, the British Ministry shall continue to enforce their claims by violence, a lasting and bloody contest must be expected ...

... Surely, then, it becomes those who have taken up arms, and profess a willingness to hazard their lives in the cause of liberty, to be prepared for death, which to many must be the certain, and to every one is a possible or probable event... let every opportunity be taken to express your attachment and respect to our Sovereign King George, and to the (1688) Revolution principles by which his august family was seated on the British throne ..."

The full text is online here.

Synod minutes image from this website. Congress order from this website.

Stolen Valour

This story was in our headlines recently - a top police officer who lied about his past record to gain career advancement. In the United States this is known as stolen valor and is a federal crime which comes with a prison sentence.

This is a lesson that would serve Northern Ireland well - various commercial brands have been revived here in recent years, whiskeys especially. This allows the companies who have renewed these defunct trademarks to effectively also acquire the emotional heritage of those brands too. 

Various "organisations" here have appropriated names from the distant past. You'll see their brand names, and their laying claim to the imagery, insignia, accomplishments and events of that past, on flagpoles during July - during the season when the original men, who would also serve with unimaginable courage in the Great War, are annually commemorated. My grandfather's cousin James Thompson was one of them, killed at the Battle of the Somme aged just 20. Below is my grandfather's memorial poem about him.

Valour stolen generations later by those with little or none. We live in a very messy society. 

Triggernometry with Rory Stewart – how political change changes nothing, because the public sector (mis)rules the nation

"They call themselves Scotch-Irish": Delaware and the Scotch-Irish in the 1720s

 “They call themselves Scotch-Irish ... and the bitterest railers against the church [Church of England] that ever trod upon American ground.”
• Rev. George Ross, Rector of Immanuel Church, New Castle, Delaware, September 1723

"The first settlers of this County were for the far greatest part originally English. Some few however there are of Dutch families, but of late years great numbers of Irish (who usually call themselves Scotch Irish) transported themselves and their families from the North of Ireland unto the Province of Pennsylvania and have distributed themselves into the several Counties where lands were to be taken up. Many families are settled in the County Sussex. They are Presbyterians by profession"
• Rev. William Becket of Lewes, Delaware, 1728

"Class-based snobbery and identity politics" – article by Dr Rakib Ehsan on the arts and heritage sector

You might need a subscription for this, but worth a read.

I know various people who are full-time within the sector across our islands and they have said similar things in conversation. "Luxury beliefs" have always reduced the working classes, or treated the working classes as totemic exotic pets – online here.

I have seen this in my own lifetime in the way that the white collar bureaucracies here in little Northern Ireland have behaved with Ulster-Scots. Generations ago it was the schools which purposefully eroded the Ulster-Scots speech of children; now it's the patronage of funders and departments that control the 'sector' and therefore filters what 'content' is permissible.

The full extract is "The arts and culture sector, along with other spheres of British life, is increasingly characterised by a toxic combination of old-fashioned class-based snobbery and contemporary US-inspired racial identity politics".

"Diversity through homogeneity" is a bizarre concept, one that Orwell would be proud of.

Asserting Liberty, before the Revolution: "English Liberties: or, the Free-born Subject's Inheritance" by Henry Care, 1680

"...The constitution of our English government (the best in the world) is no arbitrary Tyranny, like the Turkish Grand Seignior’s, or the French King’s, whose wills, or rather lusts, dispose of the lives and fortunes of their unhappy subjects: Nor an Oligarchy, where the great ones, like fish in the ocean, prey upon, and live by devouring the lesser at their pleasure: Nor yet a Democracy, or popular state; much less an Anarchy, where all confusedly are hail fellow well met: But a most excellent mixt, or qualified Monarchy, where the King is veiled with large prerogatives sufficient to support majesty, and restrained only from the power of doing himself and his people harm, which would be contrary to the very end of all government, and is properly rather weakness than power, the nobility adorned with privileges to be a screen to majesty, and a refreshing shade to their inferiors; and the commonalty too so guarded in their persons and properties by the sense of law, as renders them freemen, not slaves.

In France, and other nations, the meer will of the Prince is law; his word takes off any man’s head, imposes taxes, seizes any man’s estate, when, how, and as often as he lists; and if one be accused, or but so much as suspected of any crime, he may either presently execute him, or banish, or imprison him at pleasure; or if he will be so gracious as to proceed by form of their laws, if any two villains will but swear against the poor party, his life is gone. Nay, if there be no witnesses, yet he may be put to the rack, the tortures whereof make many an innocent person confess himself guilty, and then with teeming justice he is executed; or, if he prove so stout, as in torments to deny the fact, yet he comes off with disjointed bones, and such weakness as renders his life a burthen to him ever after...

This original happy frame of government is truly and properly called an Englishman's liberty..."

..............

Henry Care has been described as "London's First Spin Doctor".  Born in 1646, maybe in London but probably somewhere in England, he was a prolific publisher and critic of the establishment and Stuart monarchy of King Charles II and his brother King James II - however he 'switched sides' towards the end and supported James.

Care published a summation of the liberties that English civilians should be aware of, entitled English Liberties: or, The Free-Born Subject's Inheritance, containing I. Magna Charta, The Petition of Right, The Habeas Corpus Act; and divers other most Useful Statutes: With Large Comments upon each of them.

It was published around 1680, reprinted by William Penn as The Excellent Priviledge of Liberty in 1687, and was an articulation of liberties which would only be legally fulfilled as a result of the Revolution of 1688. Care also had a hand in the production of the 1689 pamphlet Their Highness The Prince & Princess of Orange's Opinion about a General Liberty of Conscience (online here).

In these publications, Care is said to have set out "to conceptualise liberty as a birthright of all mankind, to separate religion and the state into two spheres ... was remarkable. John Locke made these selfsame points".

Care died on 8 August 1688, probably of kidney failure or liver disease caused by overwork and alcohol, not living long enough to see the Revolution begin in November of that year. He was buried at St Anne's Parish of Blackfriar's Church - even in death "his enemies vilified him for  assailing the Anglican Church and writing in defence of religious liberty". An epitaph said –

A true Dissenter here does lye indeed
He ne'er with any, or himself agreed

English Liberties was frequently republished in the British Colonies in America during the 1700s – Thomas Jefferson owned a copy. 

• A 1774 Rhode Island printing is online here on Archive.org

The Break of Killyleagh as defined in Patterson's 'Glossary of words in use in the Counties of Antrim and Down" (1880)

When William Hugh Patterson says it's Ulster Scots, then it's Ulster Scots:

 

New publication - "The Break of Killyleagh, 28 April 1689" - coming soon

Having decided to "go further" by doing a lot of reading about the international impact of the Glorious Revolution on America, and which was published a few weeks ago (see previous post) – I also decided to "go deeper" by looking at the Glorious Revolution era in a very localised way through the story of The Break of Killyleagh which happened 335 years ago on 28 April 1689. Very much in the spirit of the story itself, I am self-publishing it, at 128 pages long, later this month. More info to follow on locations where it will be available.

This is from William Hugh Patterson's Glossary of Antrim and Down (1880):

It's a cracking story and I'm amazed it has been forgotten for so long. As always, there is so much local heritage to recover and put back into the hands, heads and hearts of the community.

From 1688 Glorious Revolution to 1776 American Revolution: new article on "Liberty" now published online

As we head towards America 250 on 4 July 2026 (website here), I'm expecting that most of the commemorations and narratives will be - lazily - framed as being about forms of nationality, whereas in fact the story should be about liberty.

The people of the 13 British Colonies sought the full reinstatement of their legally-entitled liberties. London refused. Independence was a last resort in pursuit of those liberties. The American Revolution of 1776 was the natural outworking of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Some months ago my friend Dr Jonathan Mattison asked me to pull together the mountain of sources I had been reading on the subject over the past year or two (many of which have appeared here as individual posts) for a detailed article that went online last week in the Journal of Orange History, which is published by the Museum of Orange Heritage. It's on this link, from pages 17 - 49. It's just over 11,000 words, including the footnotes. 

 

It’s about as comprehensive as I could make it. As a collection of sources I hope it's of benefit to some people out there.

My final quote is from Michael Barone’s 2008 book –

“Americans were thus not rebelling against the Revolutionary settlement. They were seeking to preserve in their own states what they believed the Revolution of 1688-89 had established.”

Or, as Winston Churchill wrote in 1956 –

"The Declaration (of Independence) was in the main a restatement of the principles which had animated the Whig struggle against the later Stuarts and the English Revolution of 1688, and it now became the symbol and the rallying centre of the Patriot cause"

• Feel free to share with others you know who might be working on ‘America 250’ projects.

United Irishman Rev. William Steele-Dickson - of Ballyhalbert and Portaferry - on the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution

Most people, of whatever background or perceived affiliation, whether in the past and the present, are being manipulated by those in power.

"... By the treaty of Limerick, on the faith of which the Roman Catholics of Ireland submitted to king William in 1691, they were to be secured in the enjoyment of rights and privileges, therein specified or alluded to. This treaty was signed by his majesty's commander of the army, and the lords Justices of Ireland; confirmed by the king and queen, under the great seal of England; solemnly ratified afterwards by an act of parliament; and continued inviolate for thirty six years. 

During this period, they enjoyed the privileges, and exercised the rights guaranteed to them; those of serving on juries, and voting for members of parliament, not excepted; nor did they incur the slightest imputation of disloyalty, or disaffection to government, from their bitterest enemies, though alarms of invasion were repeatedly spread, and a neighbouring nation convulsed by rebellion. 

Yet in the year 1727*, without fault or provocation on their part, the parliament chosen by them, in common with their protestant brethren, stripped them of every power and privilege of freemen, and in particular, left them incapable of joining in the election of another. Under all the incapacities which this and succeeding parliaments created, they continued till within these few years; and even now, the greatest and most opprobrious lie heavy upon them. 

Yet still it is remarkable, that, during these sixty-five years of worse than Egyptian slavery, in which insult and ignominy have frequently added to oppression, they have never forfeited by act or declaration, their character of unshaken loyalty to their king, and respectful obedience to government – that very government which reduced them to slavery, poverty, and wretchedness ..."

• Extract above is from this sermon.

* In 1727 the Disenfranchising Act was passed by the Dublin government (Wikipedia here), barring Catholics - and other 'non-Conformists' such as Presbyterians and Quakers - from voting for the first parliament in the reign of King George II.  

• It is very interesting that Steele-Dickson, a Presbyterian minister who was imprisoned as a leading United Irishman, in this extract is not blaming King William III and the Glorious Revolution for the problems in Ireland. In fact, he seems to somewhat approve of the terms of the 1691 Treaty of Limerick.

• Maybe 'King Billy' was not the man he has been depicted as in recent decades, both by his fiercest advocates and his staunchest opponents.

David Hume on William of Orange's 1688 'Declaration' - "... a full declaration of all the rights of the subject in a free parliament ..."

David Hume (1711-76) was a pupil of Francis Hutcheson of Saintfield (1694-1756), who, even though an Ulsterman, is known as The Father of the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume wrote these words in his landmark History of England (published 1754; online here) about William Prince of Orange's Declaration which was brought to England in 1688 and first read aloud in Newton Abbot, where a monument in the town centre commemorates the event (see previous post here) –

"... The Prince of Orange's declaration was dispersed over the kingdom, and met with universal approbation. All the grievances of the nation were there enumerated: The dispensing and suspending power; the court of ecclesiastical commission; the filling of all offices with catholics, and the raising of a Jesuit to be privy-counsellor; the open encouragement given to popery, by building every where churches, colleges, and seminaries for that sect; the displacing of judges, if they refused to give sentence according to orders received from court; the annulling of the charters of all the corporations, and the subjecting of elections to arbitrary will and pleasure; the treating of petitions, even the most modest, and from persons of the highest rank, as criminal and seditious; the committing of the whole authority of Ireland, civil and military, into the hands of papists; the assuming of an absolute power over the religion and laws of Scotland, and openly exacting in that kingdom an obedience without reserve; and the violent presumptions against the legitimacy of the prince of Wales.

In order to redress all these grievances, the prince said, that he intended to come over to England with an armed force, which might protect him from the king's evil counsellors: And that his sole aim was to have a legal and free parliament assembled, who might provide for the safety and liberty of the nation, as well as examine the proofs of the prince of Wales's legitimacy. No one, he added, could entertain such hard thoughts of him as to imagine, that he had formed any other design than to procure the full and lasting settlement of religion, liberty, and property. The force, which he meant to bring with him, was totally disproportioned to any views of conquest; and it were absurd to suspect, that so many persons of high rank, both in church and state, would have given him so many solemn invitations for such a pernicious purpose.

Though the English ministers, terrified with his enterprise, had pretended to redress some of the grievances complained of; there still remained the foundation of all grievances, that upon which they could in an instant be again erected, an arbitrary and despotic power in the crown. And for this usurpation there was no possible remedy, but by a full declaration of all the rights of the subject in a free parliament..."

Revolutionary words. Anyone caught spreading them was regarded as a rebel and traitor.

• More on Hutcheson to follow...

William Drennan and the Glorious Revolution of William of Orange - 1784 & 1795

Having been reminded that I have Drennans in my ancestry, it's been serendipitous to fall upon the following references in recent reading.

William Drennan (1754-1820) is best known today for his involvement with the Society of United Irishmen, but following his arrest in May 1793 he stepped back from direct participation. His Letters of Orellana (1784) were what brought him to public attention, published in the Belfast News-Letter. Letter VI, directed to King George III, contains rich references to William, Prince of Orange, his 1688 Glorious Revolution and 1689 Bill of Rights:

"... To reform the constitution is in this case to restore it. But little studious of names in a subject so deeply interesting, we are ready to call the attempt to renovate our constitution an innovation, if the same term be applied to those changes in our government which form the brightest pages in the annals of its history to Magna Charta, to the Bill of Rights, to that religious revolution distinguished, by the name of Reformation: and to what we shall ever deem a glorious innovation on the usage of the realm - the settlement of the illustrious House of Hanover on the throne of these kingdoms. 

At the same time in which we lay our grievances before our Sovereign and our Father, we call upon the shades of an Alfred, an Edward, and a William, to hover at this instant over your honoured head, and to pour down upon you: the inspiration of their just, generous, and extensive counsels. We call upon Him who first founded the constitution, and mixed the genius of so many nations into a rich tide of personal valour and public glory, upon Him, who carried on the glorious work, tempered monarchy with popular privilege, and made the greatest happiness of the greatest number the policy of the state; upon Him, who rescued this constitution from perdition, and wrote upon his flag those golden words, “I will maintain the liberties of the empire”.

We call upon you, illustrious Sovereign, in their great names, to vindicate your crown and to save your people. There are certain eras in the history of this nation when the elastic spirit of freedom struggles to throw off the incumbent weight which oppresses it, and which the lapse of time, or the abuses of the constitution had accumulated with slow and almost imperceptible additions. When a James, or a Charles, happens to mount the throne in these critical periods, they disobey or shut their eyes against the signal of Heaven  press the people with as still heavier hand, and force the tortured nation into convulsion. Yet the crimes of the prince become the immediate or remote means of general good, and tyrants themselves, the unwilling instruments of divine benevolence. But, blessed be God, he often condescends to signalize such momentous periods by sending as his messengers patriot kings, who unite with the nation in bringing about a bloodless revolution; and thus restoring the empire to its original grandeur. In such a period appeared the immortal WILLIAM, whose conquest was without a groan, and whose triumph was without a war.

That great and good monarch George the First, seconded in: the same manner the designs of Heaven, and rescued the crown once more from a race that polluted it  It is yours, royal Sir, to rise not only above the crowd of kings, but above even these our most illustrious monarchs, and to become our greatest deliverer. In your power is it placed, O King! to usher in a new order of things, to perfect the glories of the constitution, and to make the name of George the Third, luminous in the historic page to remotest generations..."

.........

In 1795, in A Letter to His Excellency Earl Fitzwilliam, Lord Lieutenant Of Ireland (page 41, online here) Drennan also referred to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and John Locke, and their influence upon the American Revolution of 1776:

"...You will be told , that the people in the North of Ireland are deeply infected with what are called French principles ... I do believe them most obstinately attached to the principles of Locke, as put in practice at the (Glorious) revolution... ... the very same principles of Locke were illustrated in the plains of America..."

.........

In 1810, Drennan wrote a biography of renowned Whig Alexander Henry Haliday (see previous post here) again using vocabulary that is most often associated with the Glorious Revolution, which the Whig Club of Dublin which was founded in 1789 had avowed to 'support and maintain' (see previous post here).

.........

It has been a surprise to me to find these connections, which I have stumbled into as an offshoot of reading about the links between 1688 and 1776, and of the forthcoming booklet about 'The Break of Killyleagh' of 1689. These uncovered histories don't slot neatly into our 2024 assumptions, or of how people like Drennan, Henry Grattan and Archibald Hamilton Rowan are usually portrayed in our times. But that isn't the issue – our present-day categories, and manipulated simplifications, are the issue.

These were intelligent, educated and committed people living and writing in complex times. Be wary of those today who too easily mesh the complex past with the agendas of the present.

Liberty for Ireland: the 'Resolutions and Declarations' of the Whig Club of Dublin - 9 August 1789

"RESOLVED, that the great object of this Society is the Constitution of the Realm as settled by the Revolution in Great Britain and Ireland in 1688 - and re-established in Ireland 1782.
That we will support and maintain, as a principal object and fundamental part of that Constitution –
the 'Sacred Rights of the People...'

More on the Whigs. The National Library of Ireland has the Whig Club's 'Resolutions and Declarations' on their website here. 

This looks massively important, connecting 1688 with 1782 and 1789 - and eventually of course feeding in to 1798 and 1801. The emerging picture with the sources I've been posting about here is that narrow nationalism is an inadequate concept, and that these generations were more interested in an broader liberty, whatever that meant at that time. Why did Ireland's establishment class want to lay claim to 1688? Did they actually believe these words, or were they saying what their 'masters' in London wanted to hear? Were they trying to preserve their power? Was it just a stepping stone on a longer strategy? Were they responding to events in America? Were they adopting the vocabulary and philosophy which had worked for Samuel Adams & co in re-claiming the liberties of the 13 British Colonies, which had become the United States in 1776?

The Chair for this meeting was William Robert Fitzgerald (1749-1804), the brother of  Edward Fitzgerald (1763-1798), whose family crest became part of the flag of the new United Kingdom in 1801 (previous blog post here). The Secretary was Thomas Connolly (portrait here).

The 'logo' of The Whig Club: the Irish female harp, surmounted by the 5 pointed Irish crown (see previous post here)