The Anglo-Irish

The term Anglo-Irish is used to denote Irish Protestants of English ancestry, who either settled Ireland during the Anglo-Norman or later English conquests. During the 18th century Anglicans were referred to simply as Protestants, while those of nonconformist denominations such as Ulster-Scottish Presbyterians were called "Dissenters".

English Rule in Ireland

King Henry II of England, great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was granted permission in 1155 to invade Ireland by the English Pope Adrian IV, in exchange for payment of taxes from Ireland to the Holy See. Henry II assumed the lordship of Ireland under the title "Dominus Hibernae"; he was therefore able to invade Ireland under the jurisdiction of a Papal Bull.

As Henry II was an Anglo-Norman, ruling from Anjou in France, the Lordship of Ireland was a affectively a Norman conquest; with the invasion of England in 1066 and disfranchisement of the Anglo-Saxons, Norman lords assumed the role of the aristocracy and brought its entitlements with them to Ireland in the 12th century.

In 1533 King Henry VIII of England was excommunicated by Pope Clement XIII after seeking a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he broke off all ties with the Church in Rome to establish his own English (Anglican) Church sparking an "English Reformation". Henry VIII became King of Ireland in 1545 when the Irish Parliament granted him the crown.

Protestant Ascendancy

Hoping to recover their lands and political dominance in Ireland, Catholics took the side of the Catholic king James II in England's Glorious Revolution of 1688 and thus shared in his defeat by William III at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The Irish Protestant elite consolidated its victory over what was left of a Catholic elite by enacting a number of Penal Laws designed to exclude the latter from property and power.

Protestants had not, however, won for their parliament the powers that the landed elite of England had won for theirs in the Glorious Revolution. Furthermore, British trade policies discriminated against Ireland, and many of the Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster began to emigrate to America, where their descendants became known as the "Scotch-Irish."

In 1782 a "Patriot" party led by Henry Grattan and backed by an army of Protestant volunteers persuaded the British government to amend Poynings's Law to give the Irish Parliament legislative independence, including the right to establish Ireland's own tariff policy.

Rebellion & Union

The immediate origins of the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland can be traced to the setting up of the Society of United Irishmen in Belfast in October 1791. Inspired by the French Revolution, and with great admiration for the new democracy of the United States.

The United Irishmen were led by Protestants Theobald Wolfe Tone, Thomas Russell and Dissenters Henry Joy McCracken and William Drennan. They came together to secure a reform of the Irish parliament; and they sought to achieve this goal by uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter in Ireland into a single movement.

The initial outbreak of the rebellion was confined to a ring of counties surrounding Dublin. The fighting in Kildare, Carlow, Wicklow and Meath had been largely suppressed by government forces, and the capital secured, when news arrived of a major rebel success in County Wexford.

On 29 May 1798 a terse communiqué was issued from Dublin Castle confirming the rumours that had swept the city a day earlier. For the first time in the rebellion, a detachment of soldiers - in this case over 100 men of the North Cork Militia - had been cut to pieces in an open engagement at Oulart, County Wexford. Wexford was ablaze.

The eruption of Wexford was a most unexpected (as well as most unwelcome) development for Dublin Castle for the county had, by and large, escaped official scrutiny in the months and years before the rebellion. The Castle had had very few informants (or informers) in Wexford and, most unwisely, it had clearly considered this lack of information as pointing towards a general quiescence among the people there. Accordingly, the garrison in that county numbered only a few hundred men.

A number of controversial and sectarian incidents occurred in County Wexford that caused support for rebellion to fall, particularly amongst Presbyterians, the news of atrocities by the rebels against Protestants at Scullabogue and on the bridge in Wexford.

One consequence of the rebellion caused little public interest at the time, but was to become a significant issue in Irish politics during the following century. This was the Act of Union, joining the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom, in January 1801.