Protestant Ascendancy

Early Georgian Ireland

In Dublin's Fair CityWhere the girls are so prettyI first set my eyes on sweet Molly MaloneAs she wheel'd her wheel barrowThrough streets broad and narrowCrying cockles and mussels alive, alive o!

ChorusAlive, alive o!, alive, alive o!Crying cockles and mussels alive, alive o!

She was a fishmongerBut sure 'twas no wonderFor so were her father and mother beforeAnd they each wheel'd their barrowThrough streets broad and narrowCrying cockles and mussels alive, alive o!

Chorus

She died of a feverAnd no one could save herAnd that was the end of sweet Molly MaloneBut her ghost wheels her barrowThrough streets broad and narrowCrying cockles and mussels alive, alive o!

Chorus

Foreign Affairs

• 1688-1697 England, Holland, HRE, Spain vs. France– Fear of Irish collaboration– Collaboration with HRE inhibits William from

supporting anti-Catholic measures• Treaty of Ryswick – Louis IV recognizes William

Irish Parliament of 1692

• Attempt to reject Treaty of Limerick• 1691 English Parliament prevents Catholics

from being elected• Penal Laws

House of Commons

• 300 members– 32 county constituencies– 8 county boroughs (including Dublin and Cork)– Trinity College– Pot-walloping boroughs– Many pocket boroughs

Irish House of Lords• Spiritual – Majority English - supported administration

• Temporal – Majority “Old Protestant” [from Tudor or early

Stuart periods] – supported administration– “Old English” - More sympathetic to Catholic

causes– Few Catholics

Penal LawsProtestant Ascendancy

• Acts– Against “papists”– Requiring an oath of “supremacy,” “abjuration” or

against transubstantiation– Preventing “the further Growth of Popery”

Penal Laws

• Restrict occupations: lawyers, doctors, teachers, civil or military officeholders

• Restrict education in Ireland or abroad• Restrict leases; land sales; inheritance

1697 Banish Bishops, etc.

• Three leave voluntarily• One transported• Two acquitted• Two pass as parish priests• 424 monastics transported

Test Act - Marriages

• Only Church of England marriages valid• Catholic parish registers often not kept• Mixed marriages– Daughters in mother’s faith– Sons in father’s faith

Test Act - Marriages

• Presbyterian marriages clandestine– 1737 Bill of Indemnity’ exempts Presbyterian

marriage contracts from prosecution – 1782 Presbyterian ministers allowed to marry

Presbyterians– 1845 Marriages of Presbyterians and others

legalized

Land and Catholics

• Leases less than 31 years• Rent not less than two thirds of the improved

yearly value• No Catholics in Limerick, Galway or their

suburbs except sailors, fishermen or day laborers

Exceptions

• Brownes of Westport• Brownes of Kenmare

Quaker Influence

• English Parliament exercised right to return bills to Dublin– Quaker concerns about forced tithes– Quaker concerns about marriage restrictions– Quaker concerns about oaths

1703Catholic Land

Reduced to ~14%

Penal Laws – Consequences?

• Absenteeism• Balance of payments• Failure to improve property• Conversion of tilled land to pasture

Mass Rocks

Hedge Schools

Scotland & Presbyterian migration

1688-1697 30,000 from Scotland to Ulster1698-9 20,000 “ “• 1707 Scotland Act of Union– Forced on Scotland for economic reasons– Establishes Kirk (Presbyterian Church in Scotland)

• Irish request for union ignored

Presbyterians

• Traditional County Armagh Presbyterian prayer “May the Lord protect his ain Kirk [own Church] from the Whore that sits on the Seven Hills and her bastard daughter, the Church of Ireland”

• Regulation of marriage and inheritance

William Molyneux

• 1698 The Case of Ireland's being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated

The Case for Ireland

• England and Ireland were separate Kingdoms, i.e. Ireland is not a colony

• The happiness of a constitution, depended on a proper balance between the king's and the people's rights.

• “All men are by nature in a state of equity” and have the right of “being free from all subjection to positive laws till by their own consent they give up their freedom by entering into civil societies.”

Jacobites

• 1715 Jacobite Rising in Scotland– Most Presbyterians support the government

• 1745 Bonnie Price Charlie– Lack of support from Catholic middle class

Economic issues – 1720’s

• Dependence on and cost of imported coal• Rising debt• Demands for “no new taxes”• Outflow of silver• Need to regulate baking industry

Swift a Modest Proposal . . .

Buy Irish

• Promoted by Swift in 1729• 1731 Dublin Society to foster textile industry• Wearing Irish linens• Non-importation boycotts

The Proposal for the Uniform Use of Irish Manufacture• Burn every Thing that

came from England . . . except their Coals

• Printer tried nine times but grand juries refuse to indict

Wood Half Penny

1729 Famine• Embargo on exports• Riots in Cork, Limerick, Clonmel and Waterford

in early 1729• Mobs in Drogheda and Dublin prevent export

of oats and potatoes– Put down by Army with support of Catholic Church

– Prices lowered; public collections for poor

Immigration through Delaware River Ports

DECADE SOUTHERN IRELAND

NORTHERN IRELAND

1729 723 2961730-39 3,328 2,5101740-49 4,106 5,2251750-59 3,639 8,0991760-69 3,811 12,0671770-74 1,689 7,202

1740-41 Famine

• Pan European cooling• Inability to land coal• Frozen mills• Frozen potatoes• Spring drought

Diet – Farm Family of 6

• Bread from 40 bushels• Potatoes 52 bushels• 6 qts. buttermilk or skim milk/day• Hundred of skim milk cheese• Hundred of butter• Beef from one carcass

Prison Diet – 1840s

• Bread diet—2 lbs. bread, 1 quart of pure milk.• Potato—9 lbs potatoes, 1 pint of new milk, 1

pint buttermilk.• Mixed diet—8oz. meal for stirabout, 4 lbs.

potatoes, 1 pint of new milk and 1 pint of buttermilk

Potatoes and oats

Potatoes and NutritionYield per acre (Kg)

Energy Value(Calories/Kg)

Land needed for 10,000 Calories/day for a year

Wheat 650 3,260 1.7Barley 820 3,310 1.4Oats 690 3,209 1.6Potatoes 10,900 697 0.5

Potatoes and Nutrition (1 Kg raw)

• 330 % of Vitamin C (DV)• 140 % of Iron• 60-90 % of Mg, P, K• Thiamine, niacin• Milk – Ca, Vitamins A and D, B12