|
a rewiew Dissent into Treason, Unitarians, King-killers and the Society of the United Irishmen by Fergus Whelan tells the story of the Unitarian Church’s influence on the United Irishmen and through this its long term influence on modern Irish nationalism and republicanism. In a well researched and well written book the thin thread which was radical religious thinking is shown to have multiplied in strength until it formed one of the main and perhaps the strongest strands in the rationalist, liberal modern politics. Whelan traces the thread of Unitarian thought from its beginnings in the Dissenter meeting houses of the Cromwellian period through the vicissitudes of the seventeenth century to the founding of the United Irishmen, culminating in the vicissitudes of Robert Emmet and his family. Many prominent members of the United Irishmen came from the Dublin congregation, based then in Strand Street, and the Belfast congregation, based in Rosemary Street, where it still meets today. Each chapter begins with an anecdote relevant to the subject matter, with a precise date for the event described. One, for December 7th 1688, concerns what came to be called the “Glorious Revolution” in British historiography which was preceded by the iconic “Apprentice Boys of Londonderry” standing against the onslaught of forces sympathetic to James II. More than a century later, on March 12th 1798, in Bridge Street, we find Major William Swan arrested the Leinster Directory of the United Irishmen and dealt a severe blow to their efforts. These anecdotes serve to set the scene for the stories of each chapter. As we travel through the pages of this book we meet many fascinating characters and are introduced to lives sometimes mentioned in passing in histories but never fleshed out. Archibald Hamilton Rowan was a romantic figure, described as of “gigantic stature” he successfully challenged the entrenched power of the Ascendancy in the person of Lord Carhampton, who had arranged for the kidnap and rape of a young woman, Mary Neale. Rowan later became an important and charismatic leader of the United Irishmen. Another incident points to Rowan’s chivalry when in 1788 he arrived at the Barrister’s Dinner Club in Dublin and faced down twenty young men in defence of the honour of “…a young woman whose part [he] has taken.” John Toland, born in the Inishowen peninsula, an Irish speaker, converted from Catholicism to Protestantism as a teenager, but by the end of his teens his thought had developed to the extent that his university education was paid for by Dissenters. He is widely seen as the father of the European Enlightenment and the first freethinker. Whelan suggests that Toland’s contribution to Irish thought has been largely ignored because of his militant anti-catholic radicalism. Another impressive gentleman is the father of the essayist William Hazlitt, also William. The Rev. Hazlitt, brought up in the Shrone Hill congregation founded by Joseph Damer graduated from Glasgow University and was the minister in Maidstone Kent when his support for the American War of Independence proved too radical for some in his congregation. He found an alternative post in Bandon Co. Cork. While there he was active on behalf of American rebels held prisoner in Kinsale and both protested publicly about the conditions in which they were held and assisted in the escape of a small number of them. He also was fearless in pursuit of justice, writing to the war Office about the abuse of some Roman Catholics on Good Friday at the hands of soldiers of the 14th Dragoon Regiment which resulted in the regiment being removed from Kinsale. He later spent three years in America but returned to take up a position in Shropshire where the essayist was born. The book abounds in interesting an exciting stories such these as well as the great writer, Edmund Burke’s attack on Dr Price which resulted in Burke’s classic book, Reflections on the French Revolution. There is always a danger in writing a history such as this to be a little “Whiggish”, which presents historical narratives as progressive, towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, as though there is an inevitability to this process. Present day usage of words such as freedom and democracy can be projected back to a time when the meanings were very different. Democracy in Ancient Athens, for instance applied only to male citizens who belonged to certain oligarchic families. Ideas of liberty might be written about and asserted as universal but must be understood in the context of their time. This is a well researched book, and most informative, indeed this writer found it something of a page turner. However the absence of an index makes it difficult to go back to re-read particular events or references of interest. Even an index of names would have been useful. It will hopefully lead on to further researches by Mr. Whelan and by other members of the congregation. Perhaps John Toland’s self-fashioned obituary would be the best way to sum up the thrust of this book and its stories of Irish Dissent over three centuries: "He was an assertor of liberty, a lover of all sorts of learning ... but no man’s follower or dependent. Nor could frowns or for tune bend him to decline from the ways he had chosen.
Ann Downey |