Protestant Irish Nationalists - Pre-Union Background

Pre-Union Background

In the eighteenth century the first attempt towards a form of greater Irish home rule under the British Crown was led by the Irish Patriot Party in the 1770s and 1780s, inspired by Henry Grattan.

The Age of Revolution inspired Protestants such as Wolfe Tone, Thomas Russell, Henry Joy McCracken, William Orr, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the brothers Sheares, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Valentine Lawless, and others who led the United Irishmen movement. At its first meeting on October 14, 1791, all attendees, minus Tone and Russell (both, Anglicans) were Presbyterians. Presbyterians, led by McCracken, James Napper Tandy, and Neilson would later go on to lead Protestant and Catholic Irish rebels in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Tone did manage to unite if only for a short time, at least, some Anglicans, Catholics and Dissenters into the "common name of Irishmen", and would later go on to try to get French support for the rising, recalling the failed French Bantry Bay landing of 1796.

At that time, the French republicans were opposed to all churches. Such men were inspired by Thomas Paine of the American Revolution, who disapproved of organized religions in The Age of Reason (1794–1795) and preferred a deist belief. Though the United Irish movement was supported by individual priests, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was opposed to it, in part because its new seminary in Maynooth had been funded by the government in 1795.

During the 1798 rebellion the military leaders were also largely Anglicans. After the initial battles in County Kildare the rebels holding out in the Bog of Allen were led by William Aylmer. In Antrim and Down the rebels were almost all Presbyterians, and at the Battle of Ballynahinch the local Defenders decided not to take part. In County Wexford, which remained out of British control for a month, the main planner and leader was Bagenal Harvey. Joseph Holt led the rebels in County Wicklow. Only in Mayo, where there were few Protestants, was the rebellion led entirely by Catholics, and it only developed because of the landing by a French force under General Humbert. The disarming of Ulster saw several hundred Protestants, tortured, executed and imprisoned for their United Irish sympathies. The rebellion became the main reason for the Act of Union passed in 1800.