Irish Patriot Party - Early Irish Patriots

Early Irish Patriots

In 1689 a short-lived "Patriot Parliament" had sat in Dublin before James II, and briefly obtained de facto legislative independence, while ultimately subject to the English monarchy. The parliament's membership mostly consisted of land-owning Roman Catholic Jacobites who lost the ensuing Williamite War in 1689–91.

The name was then used from the 1720s to describe Irish supporters of the British whig party, specifically the Patriot faction within it. Swift's "Drapier's Letters" and earlier works by Molyneaux and Charles Lucas are seen as precursors, deploring the undue control exercised by the British establishment over the Irish political system. In contrast with the 1689 parliament, this movement consisted of middle-class Protestants. The appointed senior political and church officials were usually English-born.

The "Money Bill dispute" of 1753–56 arose from the refusal of Henry Boyle, an MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, to allow an Irish revenue surplus to be paid over to London. Supported by the Earl of Kildare and Thomas Carter, Boyle was dismissed by the viceroy Dorset, and then appealed to public opinion as a defender of Irish interests. In 1755 the next viceroy arranged a favourable compromise, and Boyle was re-instated and created Earl of Shannon.

It was also used to describe Irish allies of the Patriot Whigs of William Pitt the Elder in the 1750s and 1760s. The philosophy was that their legal and trading benefits, and personal freedoms, of being of English origin that derived from Magna Carta, and more so the Bill of Rights that arose from the 1688 Revolution, were largely reduced for those living in Ireland. The Dependency Act of 1719 was considered particularly obnoxious.