Protestant Ascendancy - Act of Union

Act of Union

The confidence of the Ascendancy was manifested towards the end of the 18th century by its adoption of a nationalist Irish, though still exclusively Protestant, identity, and the formation in the 1770s of Henry Grattan's Patriot Party. The formation of the Irish Volunteers to defend Ireland from French invasion during the American Revolution effectively gave Grattan a military force, and he was able to force Britain to concede a greater amount of self-rule to the Ascendancy.

The parliament repealed most of the Penal Laws in 1771–1793 but did not abolish them entirely. Grattan sought Catholic Emancipation for the catholic middle classes from the 1780s, but could not persuade a majority of the Irish MPs to support him. Following the forced recall of the liberal Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795 by conservatives, parliament was effectively abandoned as a vehicle for change, giving rise to the United Irishmen - liberal elements across religious, ethnic, and class lines who began to plan for armed rebellion. The resulting and often Protestant-led rebellion was crushed with vicious brutality; the Act of Union of 1801 was passed partly in response to a perception that the bloodshed was provoked by the misrule of the Ascendancy, and partly from the expense involved.

In the opinion of professional historians, the Ascendancy ended with the closing of the Dublin parliament in 1801, but it became a convenient expression to denote areas of life where a small minority of Church of Ireland members still had unique legal advantages, such as sitting in the London parliament (until 1829) or the tithe support for their church which was levied on most landowners.