"Ulster As It Is" by Thomas MacKnight (1896); two unexpected United Irishmen 1798 Rebellion recollections.

Thomas MacKnight (1829-1899) was editor of the Northern Whig newspaper (DIB entry here). The first volume of his series Ulster As It Is was published in 1896, as a retrospective on his almost 30 year career, and is online here.

MacKnight advocated a non-sectarian Ulster, an alternative to the entrenched "two tribes" mentality which came to dominate around 1885/6. In the first chapter he says of himself, "I can scarcely be accused of having much sympathy with the evil spirit of sectarian and party intolerance with which Belfast and the North of Ireland have perhaps been much too indiscriminately associated".

A quick glance through shows him to have been equally critical of both extremes that were emerging.

Here are two quotes from Ulster As It Is about the United Irishmen and the 1798 Rebellion, and how that story was being claimed by Irish nationalism on the cusp of its centenary commemorations.

“I have never been able to find that the Presbyterians in the North of Ireland and others who might be considered either United Irishmen or sympathisers with them entertained what are now called Irish National views. The descendants of these men ought to know what political convictions their fathers and grandfathers held on the great Irish question of the time. They one and all told me that their ancestors at the end of the last century were not Irish Nationalists but that the most advanced of them contemplated setting up a cosmopolitan republic based on the principles enunciated in Paine's Rights of Man. … Irish Nationalists as they are now known the United Irishmen could scarcely be at that time."

“Dr Drennan who might be regarded as the poet of the United Irishmen lived near Belfast. The study in which he wrote is still pointed out in the grounds of a solicitor Mr Dinnen at Cabin Hill three miles from the town in the county of Down. Not long ago a number of Nationalists who visited Belfast thought of paying a visit to Dr Drennan's tomb but his son who recently died pointed out that his father had in 1818 made a remarkable speech in favour of Parliamentary reform. In that address the poet of the old United Irishmen stated that with Parliamentary reform and other recognised Liberal reforms granted he would be quite satisfied. His son was also always a reformer and a Liberal and when he died a decided Liberal Unionist having no sympathy with the present race of Irish Nationalists.”

 

• this 1992 article by Brian Walker '1641, 1689, 1690 and All That: The Unionist Sense of History' published in The Irish Review mentions MacKnight - it's excellent in showing how history here has been selectively celebrated over the centuries (you'll need JSTOR access).

• Here are two examples from it: in 1789 a cross-community procession marked the centenary of the Siege of Derry, but "rather than being seen simply as a Protestant victory, the siege was celebrated as a triumph of liberty"; the procession "included the Catholic bishop Dr Philip McDevitt and his clergy". and in 1790 the centenary of the Battle of the Boyne was "celebrated not as a great Protestant triumph but as a constitutional victory".

Maybe MacKnight's work and thinking deserves to be re-discovered. Few today even know that there ever was a vision for an "alternative Ulster" back then.

A culturally complex society, cleaved in two, divided and radicalised, and subtle histories then 'claimed' and appropriated by the two new opposing factions...

 

William III by Witherow (1873)

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since 1873, but it's often illuminating to go back and see what our predecessors thought and wrote down. Over the past year or so I've occasionally dipped into an excellent book by Thomas Witherow, who was Presbyterian moderator and also a Professor of Church History and Pastoral Theology (Wikipedia here).

In his 1873 book Derry and Enniskillen in the year 1689, there is a chapter entitled 'Reflections' (online here) where he goes beyond the chronological history and gets into what was for him present-day application. He says this:

Every admirer of King William should remember that, as that great monarch often said, he had come over "to deliver the Protestants, but not to persecute the Papists."* To tolerate honest difference of opinion, is the spirit that William always aimed to promote.

Under these circumstances, is it a duty which we owe to God and our country, to celebrate the victories of our ancestors in any form that is calculated to excite the prejudices and provoke the ill-will of neighbours, with whom, though we differ in religion, yet we come into contact on the everyday business of life, and to whom we are bound by ties of citizenship and of mutual service and obligation?

Is it not quite possible to cherish the remembrance of great actions, without doing anything that living men may justly regard as a provocation and an insult? Christianity positively enjoins us to love our neighbour as ourselves; but is the discharge of that obligation consistent with doing something else not commanded by God, but which, as we know for a fact, will hurt our neighbour's feelings, stir up in his heart evil passions, and thus tempt him to sin?

Is it generous to remind, without necessity, any section of our countrymen, that on one occasion our ancestors won a victory over theirs; and would not a noble adversary show more of true greatness and merit by disdaining to stoop to any such unworthy boast? A brave man fights if he must fight, and shakes hands with a gallant foe when the fight is over; but no truly brave man ever insults the vanquished, by reminding him and his, years afterwards, of the defeat. Were he in a thoughtless moment betrayed into such an act, he would, on reflection, feel no little ashamed; certainly he would not desire that the pen of history should record it of him. Is it wise to do an act, not required by the authority of God or of the law, which is known from repeated trial to stir up bitter feelings in our neighbours, which withdraws our own attention from our everyday business, which gives such an unfavourable picture of our own religion, and confirms others in the prejudices which they entertain against our faith?

If to taunt our neighbours with the defeats our ancestors inflicted on theirs, is therefore neither wise, nor manly, nor generous, nor Christian, how can we honestly in the sight of God do such an act, or encourage others to do it?

* Witherow quotes this from Walter Harris' 1745 The History of the Life and Reign of William-Henry, Prince of Nassau on page 175. Whatever the history, as Witherow understood, it's the present-day application which matters. Our generation could learn much from Witherow, even 152 years after he wrote those words.

King James II - 1685 medal celebrating the beheadings of the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll

They had led simultaneous rebellions, both of which began in the Netherlands and had a degree of reach into Ireland. King James II had hardly warmed his claimed throne when these rebellions were both planned. Both attempts were short-lived, ending within weeks in summer 1685. James II had a medal struck, made by Regnier Arondeaux. Wikipedia here.

 

The Critic magazine - "Britain at Closing Time" by Clement Knox

 This is a brilliant article. The state is not the same thing as the nation. 

Almost 40 years ago - 23 November 1985, 'Ulster Says No' at Belfast City Hall

My parents took me to this rally and we stood pretty close to the speakers platform. Over 100,000 others were there. It was a mass protest in defiance of what was perceived to be undemocratic UK government policy, opposing what the Thatcher government had done. 1985 was a great example of "liberty before loyalty" - and through which the convenient Northern Ireland current affairs shorthand of "loyalist" is shown to make no sense. A nation can have an anti-democratic Prime Minister, Monarch, Taoiseach, President, Vice President - whatever high office title, and in whatever nation. Shorn of liberty, nationality is merely a cosmetic label.

A choice between an undemocratic UK and an undemocratic Republic of Ireland is no choice at all. It's merely a choice between United and City, you can choose whether to have red shirts or blue shirts, but you're still playing the same game.

However, what if you object to the game itself? Defining yourself by who rules you, and how they rule you, is madness. As with 1776 in America, it is community and personal liberty which should always be the criteria.

Dr Guy Chet & Professor Bob Allison - "The Colonists' American Revolution; Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783"

Here's a useful discussion, between Dr Guy Chet (author of the 2019 book The Colonists' American Revolution; Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783; publisher page here), in conversation with Professor Bob Allison - about the American Revolution as a British rebellion for liberty. I met Professor Allison when visiting Boston in December 2023 for the 'Tea Party 250' commemorations. 

One of the challenges in telling the American Revolution story to a present-day audience is that we have all grown up with competing nations or competing nationalities as our only paradigm. Movies and war comics and the current affairs media have reduced our capacity to think, because they present everything as a contest between "two teams". And so the American Revolution has often been retro-fitted with these kinds of simplistic, easy-sell, nationalisms.

So, we need to work pretty hard to try to forget about ingrained nationalisms, of conflicts between nations, and think instead about liberty within the nation, or liberty which is worth more than the nation.

Not Americans v British, or Patriots v Loyalists, but rather Liberty v Tyranny. People on each side of the Atlantic were on each side of the cause.

The GoogleBooks entry for this book as the subtitle A Dissenting Companion to the U.S. History Textbook.

The dying embers of the Glorious Revolution – "Cato's Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious", 1720s England

An American on Twitter recommended that I look at Cato's Letters - I'd heard of them, but had never taken the time to dig. Even though they were written in 1720s England (Wikipedia here) by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, they were a regular reference in 1770s America for the British 'colonists' who were preparing for a new Revolution. 

This was the era when Ulster-Scots emigration to America began at full speed, starting in 1718 and surging throughout the century to around 200,000 people. Cato's Letters are a fascinating new insight into the era, and of how liberty-oriented communities in 1720s Britain regarded the corrosive corruption of their own ruling classes.

"How did they behave towards King William, whom they themselves invited over? As soon as he gave liberty of conscience to Protestant dissenters; let them see that he would not be a blind tool to a priestly faction, but would equally protect all his subjects who were faithful to him; had set himself at the head of the Protestant interest, and every year hazarded his person in dangerous battles and sieges for the liberty of England and of Europe, against the most dreadful scourge and oppressor of mankind that ever plagued the earth"

Presumably that "scourge and oppressor" was the genocidal Louis XIV of France. The following extract describes how the Church of England establishment had first benefited from the achievements of 1688, but later, out of self-interest, eroded those achievements away –

"It is certain that there was almost every where a general detestation of popery, and popish principles, and a noble spirit for liberty, at or just before the Revolution; and the clergy seemed then as zealous as the foremost.

But when the corrupt part of them found themselves freed from the dangers which they complained of, and could not find their separate and sole advantage in the Revolution, they have been continually attacking and undermining it; and since they saw that it was impossible to persuade those who were witnesses and sufferers under the oppressions of the former governments, wantonly, and with their eyes open, to throw away their deliverance, they went a surer and more artful way to work, though more tedious and dilatory; and therefore have, by insensible degrees, corrupted all the youth whose education has been trusted to them, and who could be corrupted; so that at the end of near forty years, the Revolution is worse established than when it began.

New generations are risen up, which knew nothing of the sufferings of their fathers, and are taught to believe there were never any such."

The Cato Institute (online here) says this of the letters: "These essays popularised (John) Locke's ideas and were profoundly influential in both England and America. They are the inspiration for the Cato Institute. Published anonymously in the London Journal from 1720 to 1723, the 144 letters provide a compelling theoretical basis for freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. Virtually half the private libraries in the American colonies contained bound volumes of Cato’s Letters."

Cato's Letters are another treasure trove in understanding the era between the two Revolutions of 1688 and 1776, and how they connect to each other. The Letters are online at Libertyfund.org, as text-searchable PDFs via the links below (click on the download button, and then the 'eBook PDF' button)

• Volume 1 (1720-21)

• Volume 2 (1721-22)

• Volume 3 (1722)

• Volume 4 (1722-23)