Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter: Wolfe Tone, William Prince of Orange, and his 1688 'Declaration' in the original Dutch

Theobald Wolfe Tone is of course an icon of the Irish nationalist cause, and lauded for his vision of an inclusive republic, as expressed in these famous words from his Memoirs:

"... To unite the whole people of Ireland: to abolish the memory of all past dissension; and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denomination of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means...".

Our secularised age tends to not understand the precise meaning of this. Tone states that all three are faith denominations. "Protestant" meant Church of Ireland. "Catholic" is of course pretty obvious. "Dissenter" doesn't mean "neither" of those, ie agnostic or irreligious, but rather it refers to Reformed traditions which weren't Anglican, such as Presbyterians.

Sometimes known as the "three strands" of traditional identity in Ireland, these religious denominations also map onto the cultural communities of English, Irish and Scottish, and onto the three languages too. Wolfe Tone gets the credit, but I have been told that it was his fellow 'United Irishman' the Belfast Presbyterian William Drennan who used this expression first. Worth further research.

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William III, Prince of Orange was in that triple "headspace" over 100 years before Tone. In his Declaration of 10 October 1688, authored by Gaspar Fagel, and translated into English by Gilbert Burnet, he included these words:

“…making such Laws as may establish a good Agreement between the Church of England and all Protestant Dissenters; as also, for the covering and securing of all such who would live peaceably under the Government, as becomes good Subjects, from all Persecution upon the account of their Religion, even Papists themselves not excepted…”.

 

Conscious that translations can sometimes lose the meaning of the original language, I found Fagel's original Dutch version - Declaratien van syn Hoogheyt Wilhem Henrik - on the excellent Brill.com website. It was worded as follows –

"... ende van gelijken tot het maken van soodanige Wetten, die bequaem zijn een goede eendragt tusselien de Kerk van Engelant en alle de Protestantse Dissenters te weegh te brengen: als mede tot beschermingh ende geruft- ftellingh van alle die gene, die vreedsamelijk als goede Onderdaenen onder de Regeeringh willen leven, fouder de minste vervolgingh ter oorsake van haer Religie, de Papisten selfs niet uitgesondert; ende tot het besorgen van alle andere saken, welke beide de Huisen des Parliaments sullen geraden vinden voor de Vrede, eer en behoudenis van de Natie ..."

So I put that text into Google Translate, and it gave me back an English translation which was virtually identical to Burnet's of 1688. Feel free to try it.

(image above from Alamy.com)

William's published Declaration of 10 October 1688 was followed a few weeks later by a published Resolution by the States General government of the Netherlands on 28 October (see previous post here), assuring European leaders of William's intentions –

"... His Highness hath declared to their Highness, that he is resolved, with Gods Grace and Favour, to go over into England, not with the least insight or intention to Invade or Subdue that Kingdom, or to remove the King from the Throne, much less to make himself Master thereof, or to invert or prejudice the Lawful Succession, as also not to drive thence, or persecute, the Roman Catholicks, but only and solely to help that Nation in Re-establishing the Laws and Priviledges that have been broken, as also in maintaining their Religion and Liberty..."

The religious toleration stated by these two Dutch documents can be traced back to William III's grandfather.

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William I Prince of Orange was recognised as the Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht in 1572. He had rebelled against the oppression of Spain. A Spanish sympathiser assassinated him in 1583. The late Professor Lisa Jardine CBE, who I posted about a few days ago, wrote this article entitled Liberalism Under Pressure for the BBC website in 2006 –

"... In July 1572, the Protestant leader of the northern Netherlands, William I of Orange - still celebrated today as the father of the Dutch nation - publicly proclaimed the right of all individuals to freedom of thought and worship at a political assembly at Dordrecht.

He vowed "to protect and preserve the country from foreign tyrants and oppressors", and he promised the Dutch people that "the free exercise of religion should be allowed as well to Papists as Protestants, without any molestation or impediment".

When, a month later, Catholic France turned on her own Protestants, and tens of thousands of Calvinist Huguenots were brutally murdered in the St Bartholomew's Day massacre, it was Holland which took in large numbers of the ensuing flood of refugees. It was Holland too which for centuries welcomed the Jews, displaced from all over Europe by Christian persecution ..."

• From this 2006 BBC article about Ayaan Hirsi Ali - online here

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After Sedgemoor - Butchery and horror against the civilian population, by King James II - England 1685, Ireland 1689

The 340th anniversary of the Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset was last weekend. It was the "last stand" of the rebellion against the new King James II, led by the Duke of Monmouth in June 1685. We visited the excellent After Sedgemoor exhibition at the Museum of Somerset, a few weeks ago. (You can see ITV news coverage of the exhibition and commemorative events here)

It is often described as "the last pitched battle on English soil" - that terminology is historically correct, but it's a merely technical description which misses the emotive big picture narrative.

The Battle of Sedgemoor was the bridgehead for the Glorious Revolution - it was a failure in itself, but the lessons learned, intelligence gathered, popular support, and what its aftermath revealed about James II as an "absolute monarch" were essential elements for the massive liberation of 1688.

After Sedgemoor, King James II's dragoons - under Percy Kirke (see previous post here) - enacted a lawless and ruthless subjugation of the civilian population for 7 weeks through Dorset, Somerset and Devon. Summary "justice" resulted in public executions.

In late August, King James II decided that the indiscriminate slaughter needed a gloss of legal justification, so he sent Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys and some other judges into the area to hold fast-tracked mass trials known as the 'Bloody Assizes'. Jeffreys infamously said he could smell a Presbyterian 40 miles away.

For the hundreds who were executed in the weeks and months after the battle, being hanged in the town street (maybe from the sign of the local pub in front of your family and neighbours) before being drawn and quartered and your remains boiled and tarred for public display - it made no difference to you whether Percy Kirke had decided to do it himself, or a judge had approved him doing it. 

The Battle of Sedgemoor had ended on 6 July. The dragoons wasted no time. They began rounding people up and butchered 19 in Taunton alone on the 9th July.  And after the judge turned up, after due legal process was observed, another 22 were butchered the same way in September.

The horrors in England were meticulously recorded by many contemporary writers, there are extensive corroborating primary sources for the violent and murderous rampage of James II's troops. 

What of Ireland?

Here is a 1693 source from our side of the water - King James II's huge army had arrived at Kinsale in March 1689, the Siege of Derry began in April, and the events below are from May. The description is horrifically similar to what James's dragoons had done in south west England in 1685:

"The Lord Galmoy was likewise sent with forces to guard the passages between the north of Ireland, and those parts of Munster and Connaught that adjoined to Ulster, to prevent the south and western Protestants from joining, who being a malicious and bloody Papist, first drew blood there, causing two gentlemen who had taken arms for their own defence, under Colonel Sandason, to be hanged on a signpost at Belnahatty, and their heads being cut off, were kicked about the streets by his soldiers, like foot-balls;

at Omagh he took two others upon the same pretence, and caused the son first to hang his father, and carry his head on a pole through the streets, crying, ‘This is the head of a traitor;’ and then the young man himself was hanged. It was also reported, that some of his dragoons meeting with a clergyman's wife, whose husband had fled northward, several of them, one after another, ravished her, and then ripped up her belly, and exposed her with a dead man upon her.

At Tipperary, an English gentleman seeing some dragoons marching towards his house, shut up his doors (it being late in the evening), as if they were gone to bed; but sixteen of them coming thither, and not being quickly admitted, they forced open his doors, calling him traitor for shutting them against the King's forces; and having pillaged all things of value, they then deflowered his daughter and only child before his face; all sixteen lay with her, and three of them (as was affirmed by his family) after she was actually dead. These were the beginnings of the villainies which the Protestants suffered from these execrable wretches."

- from The History of the Kingdom of Ireland by Richard Burton [Nathaniel Crouch] (1693)

Below: a 1684 book by Richard Burton / Nathaniel Crouch

"... James the Second, inherited all the diabolical spirit of his whole house; was a person that no experience could teach wisdom, laws make honest, nor oaths bind; and therefore the whole nation united, as one man, to exclude him, and his detested race, from the crown of these realms for ever ..."

- from 'An Historical Essay on the English Constitution'

by Obadiah Hulme / Holmes (London, 1771)

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"... if you now grow up to be free men in a free land, privileged to think or to pray as your consciences shall direct, you may thank God that you are reaping the harvest which your fathers sowed in blood and suffering when the Stuarts were on the throne ..."

- from Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle (1889)

his debut novel, about the Monmouth Rebellion

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Even in Rev John Graham's landmark A history of the siege of Londonderry and defence of Enniskillen, in 1688 and 1689 (first published in 1823) he begins with European liberty, and a notorious reference to the failed Monmouth Rebellion:

"... As Ireland was doomed to be the arena upon which the fate of the liberty of the West of Europe was to be decided, so was it from this Island that James II received the first intelligence of the Prince of Orange's designs against him. The Earl of Tyrconnel obtained the earliest account of the preparations in Holland, by a ship which arrived in the bay of Dublin, and he lost no time in transmitting his report of it to the King.

It was received with the utmost scorn and derision by the English Court; the Secretary ridiculed it in his reply to the Viceroy, who, nevertheless, was observed to lower his tone towards the Protestants, and to talk of his impartiality in such a way as to indicate his desire to secure the confidence and intercession of some of them, in his apprehension of a reverse of fortune.

Chief Justice Nugent, however, echoed the bolder sentiments of the Romish party, in his charge to a Grand Jury, in which he promised the Prince of Orange the fate of the Duke of Monmouth, and declared his conviction that the Protestant rebels of England would, before the expiration of one short month, be seen hanging in all parts of it like bunches of onions..." 

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Viscount Dungannon on the 1688 'Declaration of the Prince of Orange' (1835 account) - The Cuckold, the Pope - and leaking the plan to destroy Holland

Above: an assembly of the States General of the Netherlands in the 1600s. © Rijksmuseum

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Arthur Hill-Trevor, the 3rd Viscount Dungannon (1798-1862) wrote The Life and Times of William the Third, King of England, and Stadtholder of Holland in 1835. It's online here - chapter 12 is about the Declaration of William Henry, Prince of Orange and has a summary of its content. There's some tantalising additional commentary too, on page 276:

"... About the same time was published the resolution of the States General*, containing the reasons that had obliged them to assist his Highness the Prince of Orange, with ships, men, and ammunition, in his intended expedition into England.

The two principal reasons were, —

1st, That the Prince of Orange had been invited to this expedition by the English nobility, gentry, and clergy.

2dly, That the States had just cause to fear, that, in case the King of England became absolute in his own kingdom, he would, in conjunction with the King of France, endeavour to bring their state to confusion, and, if possible, totally subject it.

This fear, according to Dr. Burnet, was founded upon the Earl of Castlemain having pressed the Pope to admit his master to mediate a reconciliation between the courts of Rome and Versailles, assuring his Holiness that when the reconciliation should be effected, the two kings would serve the cause of the church by a destructive war against Holland.

The Pope, who did not at the time approve the plan, informed the Emperor of the matter, by whom it was communicated to the Prince of Orange..."

The Earl of Castlemain was Roger Palmer (1634-1705 - Wikipedia here), and from this account he seems to have disclosed to Pope Innocent XI the masterplan to destroy Holland – by inviting the Pope to join the forthcoming King James II and Louis XIV team. But the Pope wasn't up for it – so he relayed this intelligence to William Prince of Orange, via the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia.

The backdrop is very seedy. Roger Palmer and Barbara Villiers (Wikipedia here) married in 1659, but the very next year she became one of the many mistresses of King Charles II. The King then granted Palmer the titles of Earl of Castlemaine and Baron Limerick - "for her services in the King's bedchamber". She had five, and probably six, children to Charles. There is low life in high places.

Fast forward to the new King James II and in 1686 he made Palmer Ambassador to the Vatican "where he was ridiculed as Europe's most famous cuckold" - and this is how Palmer came to have an audience with the Pope.

The Dr Burnet referred to was of course Gilbert Burnet, a first hand witness of the time...

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* the States General of the Netherlands is the overall governing legislature for its many provinces. The Extract of the States General their Resolution was published on 28 October 1688 and is online here.

"... His Highness hath declared to their Highness, that he is resolved, with Gods Grace and Favour, to go over into England, not with the least insight or intention to Invade or Subdue that Kingdom, or to remove the King from the Throne, much less to make himself Master thereof, or to invert or prejudice the Lawful Succession, as also not to drive thence, or persecute, the Roman Catholicks, but only and solely to help that Nation in Re-establishing the Laws and Priviledges that have been broken, as also in maintaining their Religion and Liberty..."

Professor Lisa Jardine CBE's "Going Dutch" (2009) - How William Prince of Orange's "Declaration" was developed - "a masterly effort in collaborative drafting"

(Image above from 2015 obituary in The Independent)

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"...While the invasion was still in the early planning stages, English aristocrats sympathetic to William's cause, and corresponding regularly with his closest Dutch advisers, Willem Bentinck, Everard Weede, Heer van Dijkvelt and Frederick van Nassau, Count Zuylestein, argued that a widely distributed manifesto was vital for the success of any bid for the English throne: if he wanted to keep England 'in humour', William must 'entertain it by papers'.

They also provided advice and information on the content and distribution of pamphlets, and established connections with local printers and publishers. Jacobite pamphleteers attributed the ready acceptance of regime change to the Prince of Orange's 'debauching' of the English people with his well-judged propaganda publications.

The carefully reasoned case made in the Prince of Orange’s Declaration ‘of the reasons inducing him to appear in armes in the Kingdome of England’ — composed in the greatest secrecy, and then blanket-distributed to all those likely to be affected by the invasion — has shaped the telling of the story of the Glorious Revolution ever since.

As a piece of writing, William of Orange’s Declaration was a masterly effort in collaborative drafting on the part of the Prince, his English and Dutch advisers at The Hague, and selected members of the English expatriate community there.

It originated in a series of discussions discreetly held in England in 1687, between Dijkvelt, who had been sent by William to sound out opinion concerning James II’s policies for the English succession, and a group of English aristocrats. The final text was produced months ahead of the campaign, during the early autumn of 1688, by Gaspar Fagel — a leading political figure in the States of Holland, and William’s chief spokesman in the Dutch government. It was further edited and translated into English by Gilbert Burnet, an expatriate Scottish cleric who had become close confidant and adviser to William and Mary, and who was to play a leading part in orchestrating the acceptance of the new English royal couple.

Specially commissioned printers worked simultaneously at The Hague, Amsterdam and Rotterdam to print the manifesto at speed, in an unprecedented run of sixty thousand copies. To ensure that the invasion and its aftermath went according to plan, enormous care was taken to conceal the contents of the pamphlet even from those sympathetic to William’s cause until immediately before the invasion, with Bentinck keeping all copies under lock and key in his personal lodgings. He subsequently arranged, through his agents, for stocks of copies to be carried to (and concealed in) key locations across England and Scotland, and then authorised their release simultaneously at all these places as the fleet left the Low Countries.

Enormous care was taken to avoid leaking the contents of the manifesto prior to the Prince’s landing. As soon as he heard of its existence, James II’s ambassador at The Hague tried to obtain a copy, entirely without success. On 28 September (new style), James's Secretary of State pressed him:

‘It would be of the greatest importance imaginable to his Majestie to see the Declaration they intend to sett out, as soon as possible, and this I am well assured, that you have us'd your best endeavours to gett it, yet the better to enable you, you are to spare no money, nor stick at any summe, that may procure it.’

It was to no avail. ‘You may imagine I have taken all possible care to come by the Declaration which | hear is on the press,’ the Ambassador responded, ‘but the States printer is not to be corrupted; I have employ’d some to see if any of his servants can be; they are all sworn, and their places so lucrative they will not endanger them.’ Three days later he reported that ‘the manifesto or Declaration can not yet be had at any rate for | have offer’d considerably for it, and you will, I believe, see it there [in England] sooner than we here.”

In fact, William signed and sealed the final, agreed text of the Declaration on 10 October. On 15 October, the English consul at Amsterdam reported that ‘order is come hither from The Hague for the printing of 20,000 copies of the Prince’s manifest’, and that ‘a proportionable number is printing at Rotterdam and at The Hague’, but that he too was unable to obtain a copy. ‘They are to be distributed at the same time that the Fleet putts to sea.’

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Gilbert Burnet's first-hand account of the development of the 'Declaration of William Henry, Prince of Orange' 10 October 1688

Here is an account of how the Declaration of William Henry, Prince of Orange of 1688 - which was a template for the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, came about. John Locke was in the Netherlands at the time, and was probably part of the editorial team. As per the account below, Gilbert Burnet was involved in its production; his uncle Archibald Johnston of Warriston had been one of the two authors of Scotland's National Covenant of 1638 –

"... The declaration that the Prince was to publish came to be considered. A great many draughts were sent from England by different hands. All these were put in the Pensioner Fagel’s hands, who upon that made a long and heavy draught, founded on the grounds of the civil law, and of the law of Nations That was brought to me to be put in English.

I saw he was fond of his own draught: And the prince left that matter wholly to him: Yet I got it to be much shortened, though it was still too long.

It set forth at first a long recital of all the violations of the laws of England, both with relation to religion, to the civil government, and to the administration of justice, which have been all opened in the series of the history. It set forth next all remedies that had been tried in a gentler way, all which had been ineffectual. Petitioning by the greatest persons, and in the privatest manner, was made a crime. Endeavours were used to pack a Parliament, and to pre-engage both the votes of the electors, and the votes of such as upon the election should be returned to sit in Parliament. The writs were to be addressed to unlawful officers, who were disabled by law to execute them: So that no legal Parliament could now be brought together. In conclusion, the reasons of suspecting the Queen's pretended delivery were set forth in general terms.

Upon these grounds the Prince, seeing how little hope was left of succeeding in any other method, and being sensible of the ruin both of the Protestant religion, and of the constitution of England and Ireland, that was imminent, and being earnestly invited by men of all ranks, and in particular by many of the Peers, both Spiritual and Temporal, he resolved, according to the obligation he lay under, both on the Princess's account, and on his own, to go over into England, and to see for proper and effectual remedies for redressing such growing evils, in a Parliament that should be lawfully chosen, and should sit in full freedom, according to the ancient custom and constitution of England, with which he would concur in all things that might tend to the peace and happiness of the Nation.

And he promised in particular, that he would preserve the Church and the established religion, and that he would endeavour to unite all such as divided from the Church to it, by the best means that could be thought on, and that he would suffer such as would live peaceably, to enjoy all due freedom in their consciences, and that he would refer the enquiry into the Queen's delivery to a Parliament, and acquiesce in its decision. This the Prince signed and sealed on the tenth of October. With this the Prince ordered letters to be writ in his name, inviting both the soldiers, seamen, and others to come and join with him, in order to the securing their religion, laws, and liberties..."

• From Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time: from the restoration of King Charles II, to the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht, Vol II (Online here)

"The Economic Case for Constitutional Change" - Benjamin Franklin sets the London government straight

How out of touch can a government be? It's nothing new. When presented with the economics of finance versus freedom, Franklin could scarcely contain his exasperation -

"... They have no idea that any people can act from any principle but that of interest; and they believe that 3d. in a pound of tea, of which one does not drink perhaps 10lb in a year, is sufficient to overcome all the patriotism of an American"

- Benjamin Franklin, London, June 1773

Franklin knew that real values have no price. If you can be bought, you can be sold.

A Fatal Start to the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion - Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, and Thomas Jefferson

On 11 June I was in Devon and Dorset, so to mark the date I went to Monmouth Beach at Lyme Regis. Somewhere along here was where the Duke of Monmouth landed on Thursday 11 June 1685, with three ships of varying sizes and 80 men, to begin the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion. The coastline has changed a lot over the intervening centuries (the cliff erosion regularly uncovers impressive fossils, Monmouth Beach is littered with ammonites and fossil hunters with small hammers, splitting rocks).

One of the most powerful visual records of the time were illustrated playing cards, so I brought my reprint set with me to mark the 340th anniversary.

Two of the men who sailed from the Texel in the Netherlands with Monmouth were Thomas Dare (paymaster) and Andrew Fletcher (cavalry commander). Initially things were going well, within 48 hours nearly 1500 local men had joined them and were organised into four regiments.

However on Saturday 13 June 1685, in a disastrous incident, Fletcher and Dare fell into a disagreement, Fletcher pulled a pistol and shot Dare dead.  It was fatal for Dare, and fatal for the rebellion enterprise. Fletcher was arrested and imprisoned onboard one of the ships, the Helderenberg. He then fled to Spain, then to Hungary, and then back to the Netherlands. In November 1688 Fletcher sailed with Monmouth's cousin, William Prince of Orange, in the vast international "go big or go home" re-run of the Monmouth attempt.

Fletcher was from Saltoun in Scotland (Wikipedia here); his writings outlived him and are still in print. Over a century later, and a continent away, Thomas Jefferson wrote of Fletcher that –

"The political principles of that patriot were worthy of the purest periods of the British constitution. They are those which were in vigour at the epoch of the American emigration. Our ancestors brought them here, and they needed little strengthening to make us what we are."

It's another brilliant example of how the revolution in our islands and continental Europe in the 1680s, would inform and echo into the American Revolution a century later - of ideas that were forged here and handed down through the generations. 

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• Fletcher had travelled in his younger years, returning to Scotland in 1678 where, as a landholder member of the Convention of Estates of Scotland he was one of 39 to oppose the government of King Charles II using the army to suppress Presbyterian field-meetings / conventicles - "Among the thirty-nine was Fletcher, who thus, from the outset of his public life, took his stand against the arbitrary system on which Scotland was governed until the Revolution".    

• In this recent Joe Rogan podcast, renowned documentary filmmaker Ken Burns leaves the impression that American independence was conceived out of thin air in Philadelphia in 1776. Not true. Even the editor of the Belfast News-Letter, Henry Joy, knew the real story - see previous post here).

Divide and Conquer? - The Fall of the Stuarts; and Western Europe 1678-1697

Divide and conquer is a well-known strategy. The more I read the more I realise that the true 'big picture' story of the 1688 Revolution has, over the past century or so, been divided and diminished, its events detached from one another and told as broken pieces which took place solely within the various parts of our islands. The cords have been broken. Even today's 'unionists' don't think in a truly joined-up way, most are content to have stories which are limited to their own 'home nation'. But, leaving aside the politics of competing nationalisms, these stories don't make sense separately, they belong together.

To escape the present you have to read from the past. This 1889 book - The Fall of the Stuarts; and Western Europe 1678-1697 (online here) was written by Rev Edward 'Badger' Hale, the assistant master of Eton College. International in scope, easy to read, a glimpse of how the pieces of the jigsaw once fitted together to create a far bigger story - the end of 'Stuart' tyranny of Charles II and James II, and the confounding of the 'superpower' plan of Louis XIV.

Since this book was published in 1889 there's been a lot of political division, upheaval and change on these islands, never mind the two world wars. Our context is different now.

But in present-day England, the telling of this story is remarkably free of the overtly tribal obsessions in Ireland - of course there's a religious dimension to it, but it's nothing like how it's told on our side of the water.  I'm just back from Somerset where I saw afresh how the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion is told there. More to follow.

Hugh Williamson, 'The Plea of the Colonies' 1775

"... The second position which your Lordship has endeavoured to establish is, that the Americans do not wish for peace, they would not be satisfied with relief from particular grievances; they aim at independence, and would throw off their subjection to the crown of Great Britain. As this very charge is circulated through every part of the kingdom by those who would justify the oppressor by casting a darker shade on the oppressed, I have taken much pains to discover the evidence on which it is founded; but after all my researches I cannot find any better reason for supposing that the Americans desire to be independent, than their own uniform declarations that they do not desire it..."

1881 Language Map of Great Britain and Ireland

This 1881 map is pretty consistent with the orthodox understanding of the language question on the 1911 Census of Ireland and the "scoring out" of thousands in demographically predominantly Ulster-Scots regions who had self-completed their census forms wrongly. Some activist types have (bizarrely) claimed this was not the correcting of errors, but some kind of widespread state suppression. The narrowing of the once-understood diverse possibilities of what the term 'Irish' can mean has corroded our society. There are various previous posts here about it - here's one example.

 

"New Lisburne" - Pelham, Massachussetts, and the Scotch-Irish

In Western Massachusetts, not far from Colrain and Palmer is the town of Pelham. It was originally founded as "New Lisburne" by Ulster-Scots settlers who had landed in Boston in 1718, then moved inland to Worcester, and then further still. As the opening lines of History of Pelham, Mass, from 1738 to 1898 (online here) says:

The people who settled in Pelham in 1738-9 were of Scotch origin, as many of the sturdy names would indicate if it was not definitely known that they were such. They came to this country from Ireland and were commonly called Scotch-Irish...

The story shows the classic pattern - settlement in Ulster, persecution by the state, the 1718 migration, the arrival in New England. The History of Pelham, Mass includes lists of the names of the 41 'proprietors' who were the founders of the settlement - such as McFarland, Gray, Young, Alexander - and maps of the land grants they individually received.

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PRESBYTERIANS: The ancient West Burying Ground has some gravestones which predate the American Revolution; it even as a Betsy Gray who died in 1793.

Of course these people were Presbyterian – "They adhered to the creed, the doctrines and the government, and discipline of the Scotch Presbyterian church to the letter, and brought with them all the church customs and practices that were prevalent in Scotland, and among the Scotch who had made their homes in the North of Ireland for many years previous to coming to Massachusetts." The first minister of the congregation was a Rev Robert Abercrombie:

he preached among Presbyterians at Boston, Worcester, and other places, going about on horseback and in this work became acquainted with Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who went from Worcester to Pelham, before they had become fully established in their new settlement.

In 1745 Abercrombie was one of the founders of the first "Boston Presbytery", along with Rev. Messrs. John Moorhead of Boston, David McGregor of Londonderry, N. H., James McKeon, Alexander Conkey and James Hughes. Jonathan Edwards was present in the area at the time too.

The settlement name was changed to Pelham in 1742, for Lord Pelham.

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DECLARATION: Like in Palmer, and Colrain, Pelham had a committee which (reputedly*) published its own Declaration. It was a compilation of expressions from earlier sources such as William III and Mary II's 1689 Bill of Rights:

I — A.B. Truly and Sincerely acknowledge profess certify and declare that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is and of Right ought to be a free Sovereign and Independent state and I do Swear that I will Bear true faith and allegiance to the said Commonwealth — And that I will defend the same against Traitorous Conspiracies and all hostile attempts whatsoever and that I do Renounce and abjure all allegiance, subjection and obedience to the King, Queen or government of Great Britain (as the case may be) and every other foreign Power whatsover, and that no foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction, Superiority, Preeminence, Authority, Dispensing or other Powers in any Matter Civil, Ecclesiastical, or Spiritual, within this Commonwealth except the authority which is or may be rested by their Constituents in Congress of the United States, and I do further testify and declare that no man or body of men hath or can have any right to absolve or discharge me from the Obligations of this oath Declaration or Affirmation,— and that I do make this acknowledgement, Profession, testimony, Declaration, Denial, renunciation and obligation heartily and truly according to the common meaning and acceptation of the foregoing words without equivocation, mental evasion, or secret reservation whatsoever. So help me God.

John Rankin,

John Haskins,

Andrew Abercrombie

Alexander Berry

Nath'l Sampson

* The History of Pelham on page 345 says that this Declaration was "evidently drawn up and subscribed toby the five men whose names appear, just before the war broke out". However, it looks almost identical to the 1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (online here), so perhaps it dates from that era.

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REVOLUTION: At the Battle of Lexington and Concord of 19 April 1775. Pelham sent a militia of 20 men led by a Colonel David Cowden, with surnames like Gray, Johnson, Rice, Barnes, Alexander, Ferguson, Hunter, McKee, Patterson and Rankin. By August of that year, the Pelham military had almost doubled, adding surnames like McCulloch, Gilmore, Hamilton and McCartney. Joshua Conkey was the drummer, and Silas Conkey was the fifer.

One of the Pelham men who served in the Revolutionary War was Daniel Shays, he was born in Massachusetts to parents believed to have emigrated from County Kerry. The war ended in September 1783 and Shays went back to farming in Pelham. However, in 1786-7 Shays led a rebellion against the government of the state of Massachusetts over the issue of post-war taxation and revenue raising.

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The history of "New Lisburne" / Pelham is yet another example of how much there is still yet to uncover in rural Massachusetts, and like the research in recent years in New England generally, demonstrates that the near fixation on the southern Appalachian story totally misses the scale and scope of Ulster-Scots influence in America. And of a community who believed that liberty was more important than loyalty. 

 

 

Lexington 1775 and the Glorious Revolution 1688 - a contemporary newspaper report from Ireland

In its 26-28 June 1775 edition the Hibernian Journal or Chronicle of Liberty newspaper printed a long article by an author named as Tullus in support of the historic action that had been taken at Lexington two months before on 19 April, by the colonists in America (such as David Spear and his 'Minutemen' in my previous post) and opposing "the despotic measures of the administration".  It was later reprinted in a number of newspapers in Philadelphia and Virginia:

“... If the Americans who lately fought in their own defence, in the defence of their chartered liberties, in defence of their undoubted properties, in defence of their wives and their little ones, nay more, in defence of the constitutions; if those men were rebels, then every man who joined in the Glorious Revolution, every man who drew his sword in this kingdom to oppose an arbitrary Stuart, was an arrant rebel ..."

The Scotch-Irish in Palmer, Massachusetts - and the "Palmer Declaration of Independence, 17 June 1776" / "Born in the north of Airland"

The town of Palmer, Massachusetts is on the route from Boston through Worcester to Springfield, and 60 miles south of Colrain. Its story was published in 1889, entitled History of the Town of Palmer, Massachusetts, early known as The Elbow Tract, by Josiah Howard Temple and is online here.

The settlement of 'Elbow Tract' was founded in 1715 by a John King who had headed west from Boston; when the Ulster-Scots started to arrive in Boston in large numbers in 1718, some moved to 'The Elbows'.

"... Probably the first of these came here in 1720; and others followed at different dates, scattering along till 1733. A part of the Worcester colony, joined by a fresh arrival of their countrymen, settled at Coleraine in 1736; and a company of thirty-four, partly recent emigrants, purchased of Col. John Stoddard, Jan. 1, 1739-40, a township to the east of Amherst, being the northerly section of the Equivalent Lands. To this, the first comers gave the name Lisbon, or New Lisburne - changed to Pelham, on the incorporation of the town Jan. 15, 1742 ..."

Others from Ulster later arrived at Elbow Tract from their Londonderry, New Hampshire settlement, and many of the surnames can be found in the famous Shute Petition. The 'List of Early Settlers' includes many specifically described as being from the north of Ireland - online here.

"... The line marked by the passage of the Chicopee river through the town of 'Palmer, early bestowed upon that tract the name of "The Elbows." On this tract, as early as 1727, settlements were made by a considerable colony of emigrants from the North of Ireland, on grants from the proprietors of Lambstown, now Hardwick, and it is stated that John King made a settlement some ten years earlier.

The settlers were the descendants of a colony of Protestants which migrated from Argyleshire, in Scotland, and settled in the North of Ireland about 1612. They emigrated to this country in 1718, and were the first Presbyterians in the country..."

(from 'History of Western Massachusetts', Vol II, Part III, by JG Holland, 1855)

 

Elbow Tract was renamed as Palmer on 30 January 1752, after a recently deceased Scottish friend of John King's. A Presbyterian congregation and meeting house was founded and the first minister was a Rev John Harvey:

"... it is commonly understood that he was a Scotchman, born in the north of Ireland, and a graduate of the University. Before coming to the Elbows he was employed as a schoolmaster at Londonderry, N. H." .

"... On the 5th day of June, Anno Dom. 1734 the Rev. Mr. John Harvey was ordained the first minister of the church of the Elbow settlement. The ordination was performed by the delegates of the Reverend Presbytery of Londonderry, upon a scaffold, standing on the plain, on the East side of the meadow called Cedar Swamp Meadow, within Mr. Harvey's lot. The Rev Mr. Thomson of Londonderry preached the sermon, and the Rev. Mr. Moorhead gave the charge..."

(from 'History of Western Massachusetts', Vol II, Part III, by JG Holland, 1855) 

 

This Rev John Moorhead was a Newtownards man, and was the minister of the "Church of the Presbyterian Strangers" in Boston. Harvey was succeeded by a Rev Robert Burns, who was "from the North of Ireland, though of Scotch parentage".

Fast forward a couple of generations and the people of Palmer were of course swept up into the momentum of the American Revolution.

One of Palmer's prominent citizens, and an elder of the Presbyterian church, David Spear (1725-1800), gathered a company of 44 'minute men' to march to Lexington on 19 April 1775. The muster roll of those men's names is online here. [His father, David Spear senior (1676-1760), is believed to have been born in Ulster, possibly Coleraine. He and his wife Jane had five sons – David junior, John, William, Calvin and Luther).

(illustration above: Minutemen: Heroes of 1776 / Heroes of 76, Marching to the Fight - Currier & Ives lithograph, 1876)

A few weeks later David Spear junior was appointed as Palmer's representative at the General Assembly of Massachusetts; and on 13 June 1776 a town residents public meeting was called for 17 June. At that meeting, moderated by Robert Ferrell, the people approved the following Declaration:

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"At a very full meeting of ye Inhabitants of Palmer, legally met at ye publick Meeting-house, on Monday, the 17th day of June, 1776 , at one of the clock, ye meeting being opened, Robert Ferrell was chosen moderator: and then proceeded & Voted ye following instructions to the Representative of this Town, now at the General Assembly of this Colony, as ye sentiments of this Town:

That, Whereas, the Court of Great Britain hath by sundry acts of Parliament, assumed the power of Legislation for ye Colonies in all Cases whatsoever, without the Consent of the Inhabitants; - Have likewise, exerted ye assumed power in Raising a Revenue in ye Colonies without their Consent: we cannot justly call that our own, which others may when they please take from us against our wills: - Hath likewise, appointed a New set of officers to superintend these Revenues, wholly unknown in the Charter, and by their commissions, invested with powers altogether unconstitutional, and destructive to ye security which we have a Right to enjoy. Fleets and armies hath been Introduced to support these unconstitutional officers in collecting these unconstitutional Revenues: - Have also altered the Charter of this Colony, and thereby overthrown the Constitution, Together with many other grievous acts of Parliament too grievous to be borne: -The peaceable Inhabitants being alarmed at such repeated inroads on ye Constitution & gigantick strides to despotick power over ye Colonies, Petitioned the King for Redress of grievances separately: -finding that to fail, Petitioned joyntly - begging as children to a Father to be heard and Relieved, But all to no purpose, the Petitions being treated with ye utmost contempt.

The united Colonies finding that No Redress could be had from Great Britain, unitedly agreed to an opposition In the most Peaceable way they could contrive, being willing to try every peaceable measure yt possibly could be invented, rather than Brake with Great Britain.

Great Britain being bent on her favorite scheme of Enslaving ye Colonies, declared them Rebbels & Treated them as such. The Colonies being driven to a state of Dispare from the least Reliefe from them, were obliged by ye laws of self-preservation, to take up arms in their own Defence, and meant to use them only as such. But the dispute has arose to so great a height that it is Impossible for the Colonies ever to be Joyned with Great Britain again, with the least Security & Safety to themselves or posterity.

We, therefore, the Inhabitants of this Town, do believe it absolutely Necessary for the safety of the United Colonies, to be Independent from Great Britain, & Declare themselves Intirely a Separate State, as we can se no alternative but Inevitable ruin, or Independence. - But as there is a General Congress of the United Colonies, composed of Honourable, wise and good men, who sit at the Head of affairs, consulting measures which will be most for the Safety and Prosperity of the whole; & have the means of Intelligence and Information in their hands, we submit the whole affair to their wise Consideration & Determination: - And if they shall unite in a separation from Great Britain, we do unanimously determine & declare we will Support them with our Lives and Fortunes!

We do Direct the Representative of this Town to lay these votes before the Honourable General Assembly of this Colony, to Enable them to communicate our Sentiments to the Honourable Continental Congress.

Robert Ferrell, Moderator

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• This predates the eventual 4th July Declaration of Independence by 17 days.

• A catalogue of births, deaths and marriages for Palmer, entitled Vital Records of Palmer, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, was published in Boston by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1905. Its Publications Committee included renowned historian of the Scotch-Irish in America, Charles Knowles Bolton (1867–1950) - online here.

• The Spears and other early families were buried in Palmer Center Cemetery, which can be searched on FindAGrave.com here.

• There is a series of gravestone 'Tablets and Epitaphs' at the back of the book, which include references such as "Born in ye county of Antrim, in Airland", "Born in the north of Airland", "Formerly of Londonderry", "Born in ye county of Derry, Ireland" - online here.