Chris Hedges on America's Ruling Class and the November 2024 election

This 2 minute clip from Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, formerly of the New York Times, is pretty remarkable on the circus of the US election and the ruling class. "Our political class does not govern, it entertains. It plays its assigned role in our fictitious democracy, howling with outrage to constituents and selling them out".

If the Duke of Monmouth had succeeded in 1685, nobody today would know about William, Prince of Orange

Check this out. The authorities reported a sighting of James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, near Dublin in 1683, and wanted him to be apprehended. "they knew by his pretty black brows that it was the Duke of Monmouth, he had seen his pretty sweet face fourty times on the picture on horseback". The Duke and William were a similar age, they were first cousins, with the same grandfather, King Charles I. How history could have been different.

What was 'the picture on horseback'? Below is a 1675 painting of Monmouth, showing him during the 1673 Siege of Maastricht. From the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

The 1685 Monmouth Rebellion and the untold Ireland dimension

I was in Devon last weekend and went to Lyme Regis where, in June 1685, the ill-fated James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, rebellion began. I walked along Monmouth Beach, marvelling at the huge ammonite fossils that can be seen there at low tide.

Lyme Regis Museum has a small display about the story, including a wooden panel from the bed that Monmouth slept in (pic above).

In many ways Monmouth's attempt was the exact precursor to what his cousin, William Prince of Orange, would succeed with just over three years later in winter 1688. Monmouth was the bastard son of King Charles II, and was something of a megastar of his era, who believed that he should be the next King. However, the King's brother - James - got to the crown first. So Monmouth tried to oust him, and for a few days that June it looked like the plan just might work. 

During the rebellion, he planned to open a new front in Ireland - Monmouth sent two of his key men, Venner and Parsons, back to Holland to organise boatloads of arms to equip an invasion of Carrickfergus which were to be landed there by a John Waltere. The army forts at Cork, Kinsale, Limerick and Dublin were all ready to rise in mutiny. But it all failed. 

"... J. Tillier, in his examination, stated that Colonel Venner and Major Parsons ... were sent by Ferguson, Major Wade, Captain Tyley, and others, to Amsterdam, to buy arms and ammunition to send to England.

John Waltere, pilot to the Duke of Monmouth's ship, was to pilot those ships that were to carry the arms for Ireland, and to land near Carrickfergus, and there to take a castle. Waltere said there would be men to receive the arms. 

Some Cromwellian officers were to take the forts of Cork and Kinsale and the city of Limerick by treachery; and if his Majesty drew his forces from Scotland, they would rise in Cheshire; and if the King sent his forces to Ireland, London would rise. 

Mr. Hooke was sent for this purpose; and all the prisoners were to be set at liberty, and to assist in setting up a commonwealth. They looked to have all the arms and ammunition in the storehouse at Dublin. There was a plan about blowing up a magazine. John Cragg was to kill the King at Windsor, or at the Lord Mayor's show, and have for doing the deed 1000l. from Ferguson..."

After the rebellion failed, the unimaginable cruelties of King James II’s army in 1685 sent a clear message to continental Europe that James had to be deposed. Some of those cruelties were inflicted by renowned figures who would eventually defect to William of Orange, such as Percy Kirke:

"... But they were so called some time before Kirke's cruelties in the west. When Jeffreys opened his bloody commission at Taunton, this regiment composed his guards, and was cantoned on the piece of ground west of the castle, which has, ever since, been called Tangier, from the name of this regiment.

The colonel, one day, invited his officers to an entertainment, and, after dinner, commanded thirty men to be executed, by ten at a time, while the glass went round in three healths; one to the king, the second to the queen, and the third to judge Jeffreys, of whom news was just then received, that he was to try the rebels. When, in the last agonies of departing life, the feet of the dying were observed to shake, he would cry out, “They shall have music to their dancing" and commanded the trumpets to sound, and the drums to beat, surrounded by the soldiers, with colours flying." "This," observes bishop Burnet, "was both so illegal and inhuman, that it might have been expected that some notice would have been taken of it ;" whereas Kirke was only chid for it.

But the most shocking outrage against all decency, generosity, and humanity, with which, if it be true, the character of colonel Kirke is blackened, is his conduct to a beautiful young woman, whom he is said to have decoyed to his embraces, with the promise of sparing the life of a person, endeared to her by blood or affection, and to have conducted, in the morning, to see the person, for whom she had made the sacrifice of her virtue, hanging on the sign-post of the inn, where he had glutted his brutal lust. Shame, remorse, and distraction are said to have seized the unhappy, injured fair one, and she died within a few days…

… One writer says, that the young woman yielded herself to Kirke's desires, for the sake of her husband, another for her father, and a third for her brother; and though jealousy might have urged the execution of a husband, yet, in case the person were a father or a brother, it is not to be conceived what end his death would have answered: that it is incredible, that a man who could have committed such an inhuman action, such a wanton barbarity, could afterwards have been consulted with the Sidneys and the Cavendishes, on the plan for the revolution; or that the glorious William could have armed such a wretch in the cause of LIBERTY ..."

Even though a failure, the Duke of Monmouth provided a template to show King James’s son-in-law, William Prince of Orange, what he needed to do to succeed in 1688. William arrived three years later, just a few miles along the same coastline, with a similar flag, and a similar Declaration, and the same intent – but with the biggest Armada ever assembled.

As Tony Robinson says in the video below:

"... Such brutal retribution did little more than prove everyone's worst fears about the tyrant James II... Monmouth's mistake was to rebel to early. Instead, he laid the stage for the real winners of this whole saga, his cousins, William and Mary... the joint monarchs were crowned in 1689 and swiftly signed the Bill of Rights. The Glorious Revolution had occurred... enshrined the notion that never again could the monarch rule without the will of its people ... I believe that, above all, they followed the Duke because they wanted to see a Britain that was ruled by Parliament, not by an absolute monarch. And in that respect their legacy is very great indeed..."

• Lots more detail about Lyme Regis is online here. 

Liberty and Transparency

This story caught my notice recently, it's my own local Council, but it was the concept rather than the geography or even the specific issue that I found interesting. The Council - made up of elected representatives voted for by local people - made a decision which it (correctly) thought would be controversial, and so therefore it also took a policy position to not disclose which councillors had voted for it. Undoubtedly they were navigated through these waters by senior staff.

For a few days there was a minor media kerfuffle about it, but that seems to have fizzled out now.

However, Northern Ireland's obsession with politics makes us all think that politicians run the place, but they don't. Northern Ireland is mostly run by public sector 'officials', not unlike the colonial era British Raj which my father-in-law was born under in Lahore in 1942.

My (limited) experience of years interacting with the public sector here is that - when it deems it necessary - it specialises in anonymity, making decisions and issuing directions - but redacting and camouflaging the names of the individuals who did so. I have seen numerous examples of this.

Over the years, senior civil servants have openly told me how incapable they think most politicians here are. And no surprise – particularly at even a small local council like ours - the idea that 40 elected councillors (all of whom already have proper full time day jobs) can in their spare evenings somehow manage the labyrinthine policies and decisions and activities of say 900 full-time salaried staff is lunacy.

The local councillors that I know, and also those whose social media I follow, seem to spend most of their time as an interface between the public and 'the system' - roads, bins, environmental improvements, etc - a lot of the time expending their energies trying to get the people within 'the system' to do the jobs that they are already salaried to do. 

James Burnham wrote about The Managerial Revolution in 1941. This is our world. The politics is a sideshow.

PS: The German-American writer Hannah Arendt's superb definition of bureaucracy was "rule by nobody".

From Ulster to Yorkshire's Spen Valley - the Exodus of 1689

West Yorkshire isn't on the radar for our stories from 1689-90, but here are two, showing both Protestant civilians and also defeated Jacobite soldiers fleeing there.

"... The handful of Protestants in Ireland took the alarm, and every ship that came over was full of families who had fled for their lives, leaving all their possessions behind them.

When these fugitives landed at Liverpool and other ports they were often destitute, and had to get the customary passes from the authorities there, and with the aid of little sums given to them by the chief constables of every village through which they passed, gradually made their way to the places at which they had determined to settle.

Thus the entries in the towns’ books come thick and fast : “Paid to nine Protestants fleeing from Ireland, 2/6” “Paid to Irish Protestants travelling with a pass, 1/9” &c..."

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

"... This was a stirring time in our national history, and the year 1690 especially was one of mingled disaster and victory for King William. The struggle of the bigot James to regain the throne he had so ignobly deserted was not over, but William, by the crowning victory of the Boyne, had destroyed his power in Ireland where sympathisers had mustered in strong force, and we find after this date no more entries of frightened Protestants fleeing through this district for their lives. There are, however, passes for wounded soldiers and destitute seamen in plenty. Here is one that speaks volumes, “Paid for two men and a horse for William Dwyer, an old wounded soldier who had seen thirty years service to hurry him on a sled through Heckmondwike, 1/6.”"

- both extracts are from Spen Valley, Past and Present by Frank Peel (1893) 

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

Interestingly, it seems that they were to be dissuaded from going to London:

"... The number of Protestants fleeing from Ireland to England was so great that the April 25–29, 1689, edition of the London Gazette included instructions to them not to try to make their way to the capital as it was already over-burdened with the influx of refugees: 

"These are to give Notice to all Poor distressed Irish Protestants who came lately from Ireland, and are at present in several remote parts of this Kingdom, That they keep their respective places of abode, unless other necessary Occasions draw them to London then [sic] the Charity of the Brief, seeing they may live much cheaper elsewhere, and many of them cannot find Employments fit for them in the City. The notice indicates that if they comply, “speedy care will be taken to send them Relief out of the Monies that shall be given by virtue of Their Majesties [charity] Brief granted for that purpose.”

 - source here.

1798 Rebellion and Community in the Ards Peninsula

I am deeply thankful to a transatlantic and distant relative - or as we say in Ulster-Scots, a far-oot-freen - who recently sent me typescripts of some family letters from ancestors we share, which are correspondences written between an emigrant who had gone to Philadelphia, and his family back home.

The letters date from 1797 (written to Ballygarvan and Nunsquarter near Kircubbin) and there's a further one dated 1821 (to Ballybally, which I suspect is a typo for Ballyboley, between Carrowdore and Greyabbey).

The 1797 letters give fascinating community context to the era before the 1798 Rebellion, and position the 'United Men' rather differently than the nationalistic way in which they have come to be presented.

We are usually shown them in the simplistic national duality of "British v Irish". However, these letters show them as being one of three elements within a complex community dynamic, made up of the Catholic agrarian "Defenders", Protestant agrarian "Peep O Day Boys" and then the "United" as a different strand altogether. For example:

"this country still continues the war against France contrary to the general wish of the people. There was a great talk of peace the while past but no, found to our cost it was too good news to be, the peepaday men and Defenders still continue at war in this country and are making great depradations the folly of these parties makes a union next to impossible" (letter, 23 April 1797)

"our rulers continue to oppress and lode us more and more and they are at present persecuting the peasable and well disposed for being united in the case of liberty" (letter, 24 April 1797)  

There is much to think about in the content of these letters, which are very much in line with the Canadian academic Donald Harman Akenson's enlightening book about the Islandmagee community entitled Between Two Revolutions. In it he takes a 'bottom up' community perspective to explain the seeming contradictions of how the Ulster-Scots acted in 1798 compared with 1916, rather than the usual 'top down' national perspective.

It was when reading Akenson (see post here) that the penny finally dropped with me that our era's binary fixation on nationality in Ireland is a dead end. In reading Between Two Revolutions, community, and community liberty, emerged as a more fluid and vivid way to think.

However, our ongoing political context in Northern Ireland, and 'hybrid non-linear warfare', remains focussed upon concepts of nationality; every issue ends up there, by design. 

Or, as the old adage says, when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

• High profile 'conversations' like this about a hypothetical future Ireland are a cosmetic distraction when almost the entire political establishment of the Republic of Ireland is already gaslighting its own population and seeking to diminish its liberty. Thankfully the population defied them at the ballot box (Guardian report here).

• Gravestone below of Alexander Byers of Greyabbey who was killed at Battle of Ballynahinch in June 1798.

Self-identifying as an Ulster American President

The American Presidency is seldom out of the news, but in recent weeks it's been relentless. The forthcoming election, the assassination attempt on Trump, the Biden withdrawal, the introduction of Harris and also the selection of Vance (who I have blogged about here a few times). The Ulster dimension of the Presidency has been well known for over 100 years, but it also has been exaggerated and over-stated too.

The 1942 book Ulster Links with the White House shown above proposed a list of 14 Presidents that it claimed were of Ulster Scots descent (replete with wonderful pencil portraits of each by Frank McKelvey). However the research was dubious in places, as the first three it featured - John Adams, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams - were not of Ulster descent at all, and were dropped from the 'canon' by later writers. And, as time went on, subsequent Presidents were added. We're at about 20 now. 

Excellent genealogists have meticulously traced roots, but amateur ones have overstated them.

The strongest case can only be made for those Presidents who in their own writings or speeches self-identified their Ulster-Scots roots. That might make the Ulster Presidents list shorter, but also stronger. 

For example, in recent years I have read people insisting that the controversial President Andrew Jackson only ever described his ancestry as 'Irish', not 'Scotch-Irish', as a wedge from which to de-legitimise the concept of Scotch-Irishness. But, this is merely a present day retro-fitting of a modern idea, a culturally narrow and exclusive definition of what is meant by 'Irish'. 'Irish' does not have to be a mono-cultural and ethnic term, which is sadly what it has often become. Regardless of that issue, during Jackson's own lifetime, one of his closest friends wrote a biography of him, in which it said –

“The family from which General Andrew Jackson is descended were ... among the emigrants from Scotland to the province of Ulster. They were strict adherents to the Church of Scotland, and transmitted their religion, as well as their dialect, to their descendants of the present age.” 

– From Life of Andrew Jackson, by Amos Kendall, 1843. (Kendall was one of Jackson’s ‘Kitchen Cabinet’).

So, in an era where self-identification is all-important, self-identification is the only credible way to list the Presidents of Ulster-Scots descent. They were the ones who were aware of it themselves, and for whatever reason, regarded it as culturally and politically important.

• Amos Kendall Wikipedia here

Rev James Shaw - 'The Scotch-Irish in History' and a blunt view of the 1798 Rebellion

This view, expressed here by Rev James Shaw in 1899, was almost exactly 100 years after the rebellion - "The Presbyterians in the north got frightened, withdrew after a few fights, and the rebellion collapsed". Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge are what Shaw is referring to – I posted this about those events, back in 2020.

Rev James Shaw - 'The Scotch-Irish in History' and a radical view of King William III

Rev James Shaw was a Methodist minister, born in Co Longford. He emigrated from Limavady in 1854 and settled in Indiana, USA. He became a major figure in the Scotch-Irish Society of America. His book from 1899 has tonnes of content - I think some of you will find this reference to William III and Mary II interesting - “he would have given to the Catholics emancipation, as he had the Presbyterians, but he was hindered by the prejudices of his Parliament”. This echoes precisely what figures like Henry Grattan and Rev William Steele-Dickson had written too. William of Orange wasn't the real villain - the 1700s Dublin Parliament was. • The Scotch-Irish in History (1899) is online here • Twelve Years in America (1867) is online here

Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania and the Glorious Revolution

Joseph Reed (1741–85) was one of America's 'Founding Fathers', as George Washington’s First Adjunct General and Secretary During the American Revolution.

His grandfather, also called Joseph Reed, was from Carrickfergus and emigrated to West Jersey.

In a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth written from Philadelphia on 25 September 1774, Reed said:

“No king ever had more loyal subjects ; or any country more affectionate colonists than the Americans were. I, who am but a young man, well remember when the former was always mentioned with a respect approaching to adoration, and to be an Englishman was alone a sufficient recommendation for any office of friendship and civility. But I confess with the greatest concern, that these happy days seem passing swiftly away, and unless some plan of accommodation can be speedily formed, the affection of the colonists will be irrecoverably lost...

... all the principles of the (1688) Revolution show that there are certain cases wherein resistance is justifiable”. 

 

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)

Family Tree - The Drennans and Hamills of Donaghadee and Millisle

• Above: Millisle Presbyterian Church, photos from Findagrave.com. The notes below are posted here in case anyone out there is searching. My thanks to Shirley Cochrane for her help with these.

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

Over the past few weeks we have had two family funerals, for an aunt and also an uncle. My aunt Eleanor Wilson's funeral service was at Millisle Presbyterian Church on 9 March. Her husband, Vincent, survives her - he was named for his grandfather. This has set me to thinking again about the family tree for that side of the family, my maternal side.

My late mother told me that there was a family Bible which had all of the details about the various generations - but, there was a story in it which outraged my great aunt Charlotte / Lottie Hamill (d. 28.05.2006), so she took it upon herself to burn it, decades ago. The oral tradition was that there were various skeletons in the closet - maybe Protestant/Catholic, maybe 'out of wedlock'.

Good research has clarified some of it. Everyone involved in this particular story was a Presbyterian, from the congregations of Millisle, Ballycopeland, and Ballyfrenis. I have generations of family involvement in all three congregations, of which only Millisle still exists today.

.........

My maternal great-grandfather, Vincent Hamill, was born in Donaghadee, on 21 April 1888.
He was illegitimate.

His mother was 21 year old Agnes Hamill (24.05.1866 – 23.02.1942)
His biological father was a Robert Bryce from Millisle. They never married.

Family oral tradition was that a David Drennan (05.12.1875 - 14.10.1948) a 'sailor & clothier' from Donaghadee 'took pity' on Agnes, gave her a job in his tailor's shop and they married in 1896 when Vincent was 8 years old. David was just 21 and Agnes was 30. 

• Here are David and Agnes, with two new daughters of their own, five years later in the 1901 Census of Ireland.

• By the time of the 1911 Census of Ireland they had three new sons.

• Vincent had married Martha Ann Wallace, on 19 March 1909, and she was who my mother was named for. Here they are.

• David and Agnes were living at 9 Victoria Gardens in Donaghadee when they both died in the 1940s.

• Martha died 24.10.1954 and Vincent died nearly ten years later on 16.04.1964. Bizarrely, the dates on their gravestone, at Ballycopeland, are wrong. 

.........

MISC
• David's parents were John Drennan (c. 1838–1886) and Margaret Robinson (c. 1840-1921).
• Agnes's parents were Peter Hamill and Charlotte Stewart.
• Agnes' brother Peter Hamill was a well-known publican/spirit merchant in Millisle, and may have owned either the 'First and Last' or the 'Masonic Arms' which was later the 'Woburn Arms'. He died 08.09.1948.
• Agnes' nephew, also called Peter Hamill, was a grocer in Donaghadee.

Scottish settlement in Lecale, County Down - after 'The Break of Dromore', 1689

This is from an article by Downpatrick historian John William Hanna (d. 1879) entitled "The Anglo-Norman Families of Lecale: In the County of Down" in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Volume 1 (1853).

"... At the period of the Revolution, in 1688, after the "Break of Dromore", Lecale was overrun by the regiment of Magenis, Lord Iveagh, who had his head-quarters at Downpatrick; when many of the adherents of King William, previous to the blockade of the ports, were taken prisoners, and others fled to England and the Isle of Man. Several petty skirmishes ensued; the Iveagh troops were defeated, and Iveagh's prisoners liberated by Captain Hunter, who, in turn, was overthrown by Major General Buchan. 

In August 1689, Schomberg landed in Groomsport, when many of the inhabitants of the barony, who had been supporters of King James, abandoned the country for Connaught. Amid such scenes it is only natural to expect that the country would become desolate and greatly depopulated; and though, when peace was restored, many families returned to their former homes, yet numbers deserted it altogether.

To remedy this, several English and Scots, and some farmers from the Ards, were invited here, and had large tracts of land allotted to them. Of the English families the principal were Moore, Hunter, Swail, Porter, Jennings, Hunter, Neill. Nesbitt and Cochran; to which we may add the families of Seeds, Polly, Elsinor, (now changed to Nelson,) Coates, and Quaile, who were brought over from England, early in the 18th century, by the Hon. Justice Ward, and several of whose descendants are still very numerous in the parish of Ballyculter.

The second colony of the Scots were chiefly Martins, Henrys, Lowres,(now Lewis), Hoggs, Carsons, and Newells, whose descendants are also numerous in different parts of Lecale; and it is remarkable that, although the Scottish idiom never prevailed here,— owing, no doubt, to the English and Scots "mixing, intermarrying, and communicating with each other, in so many different ways" so as to become one people — yet they preserved intact some of their native customs, habits, modes of life and agriculture, up to a recent period, to such an extent, that by looking at the face of the country and observing its plantations, it could be told whether the proprietor was of Scotch or English descent, the Scotch principally planting ash trees, the English oak, elm, birch and beech.

From 1725 to 1758, Primate Boulter states, in his letters, there was a continuous series of bad harvests all over Ireland, but principally in Ulster; where provisions, particularly oatmeal, (which ho mentions as the staple subsistence of the inhabitants) rose to a high price; which, conjoined to uneasiness about the exactions of the tithe farmers, induced great numbers of the northern farmers to emigrate to America and the West Indies. The emigrants, it appears, were chiefly Presbyterians, and, it may be assumed, of Scottish origin; which circumstance contributed largely to the reduction of that class of colonists, and the increase of the old English and native population in Lecale..."

The Intertwining of Ulster and America in 1775 & 1776: The Bigwigs versus the Whigs

The 1776 Revolution was birthed in America but its umbilical cord reached back across the Atlantic. Crowned in 1760, King George III did a very good job of creating social upheaval, and common cause, among the populations of the 13 colonies in America, and also in Ireland. Much of the community opposition to the policies which he and his governments introduced were aimed at Parliament, and him personally, but not necessarily at the institution of the monarchy. This is a critical distinction, but one which few today are aware of.

The story of 1776 needs to be viewed from both sides of the ocean. Here are two examples from our side –

"The Presbyterians of the North, who in their hearts are Americans, are gaining strength every day; and, by letters written by designing men, whom I could name, from your side of the water, have been repeatedly pressed to engage Ireland to take an adverse part in the contest, telling them the balance of the cause and the decision of the quarrel was on this side St. George's channel. The subject would then have been pressed upon me with such advantage as I should have had difficulty in resisting."
— Lord Harcourt (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; DIB entry here) to Lord North (Prime Minister, Wikipedia entry here), Oct. 11, 1775. 

"In Ireland, though those in office and the principal nobility and gentry declared against America, by far the majority of the Protestant inhabitants there, who are strenuous and declared Whigs, strongly leaned to the cause of the colonies."
— The Annual Register for 1776, London p. 39 (online here)

The people were 'whigs', not 'republicans' as some might think, or claim, nowadays. A limited monarchy, not anti-monarchy. Various voices pointed out that the reign of King George III had damaged the civil liberties of the people.

In Philadelphia, a son of Ulster emigrants, David Ramsay was the first to craft the narrative of the new nation. In 1789 he wrote the History of the American Revolution in which he described the Colonists in America having their liberties (which were legally founded in the Glorious Revolution of 1688), eroded –

“... they had enjoyed English revolutionary liberty for eighty years and in that time grown to the size and strength of a nation, the measures of the James's and Charles's in the seventeenth century, for curbing them by mutilating their charters and other arbitrary acts, were revived under George the third in an advanced period of the eighteenth...”

Fascinatingly, in Ireland in a 1792 speech Wexford-born Henry Grattan, (that's him in the statue above), who was a member of the Church of Ireland, made very similar observations about how King George III had treated Catholics in Ireland –

"... they had that elective right near half a century after the Revolution (of 1688); they had it in the Parliament that sat in the reign of William; they had it in the Parliament that sat in the reign of Anne; they had it in the Parliament that sat in the reign of George I, and they had it in the Parliament that sat in the reign of George II. The first Parliament that sat in Ireland since the Revolution in which the Roman Catholics had not the elective franchise was the first of the present reign (of George III). It follows from this example that the elective franchise, so far from securing to them the right of sitting in Parliament, was not able to secure the right of voting at elections; they lost that right in the commencement of George II's reign after having possessed it for 37 years since the Revolution..." 

Grattan secured a new constitution for Ireland in 1782, the famous Wheatley painting which is associated with Grattan's Parliament of 16 April 1782 is above, although the painting actually depicts the Irish House of Commons in 1780. In his speech that day he made these interesting references to the Glorious Revolution, and to William Prince of Orange as 'Prince of Nassau' - which looks like he was offering something of a soft defence of William:

"... I am not afraid to turn back and look antiquity in the face. The Revolution (of 1688) that great event – whether you call it ancient or modern I know not – was tarnished with bigotry. The great deliverer – for such I must ever call the Prince of Nassau was blemished by oppression; he assented to – he was forced to assent to acts which deprived the Catholics of religious, and all the Irish of civil and commercial rights, though the Irish were the only subjects in these islands who had fought in his defence; but you have sought liberty on her own principles. See the Presbyterians of Bangor petition for the Catholics of the South! ..."

Seven years later and Grattan was a founding member of the Whig Club in Dublin in August 1789. Among their Resolutions and Declarations was this statement -

"... 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 in 1782..."

Most politicians choose their words carefully, and strategically. So maybe this was all just rhetoric on Grattan's part, and he did have a penchant for rewriting his speeches for publication. Conceptually, these are very similar to the ideas that Samuel Adams and others had campaigned for in Massachusetts. Perhaps Britain's loss of America had, at this stage at least, made them slightly more lenient in their relationship with Ireland.

Also in 1782, the same year as Grattan's Parliament, was the Great Convention in Dungannon. That's another huge thread to pull one day... 

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

About a century later, in his A History of England in the Eighteenth Century: Volume 4 (published in 1882, online here), historian WEH Lecky (who like Grattan also has a statue in Dublin) did a brilliant job at showing the complex interconnectedness. He put it like this:

"... Protestant Ireland [in 1776] was indeed far more earnestly enlisted on the side of the Americans than any other portion of the Empire. Emigrants from Ulster formed a great part of the American army, and the constitutional question of the independence of the Irish Parliament was closely connected with the American question. The movement of opinion, however, was confined to the Protestants. The Catholic gentry on this, as on all other questions of national danger, presented addresses to the King attesting in strong terms their loyalty..."