Dissent into Treason, King- killers Unitarians and the Society of United Irishmen I have been working on a book which seeks to portray the many links our congregation had with the Society of United Irishmen. After three years the work is now completed and I am trying to convince commercial publishers that it is worth putting into print. Several leading United Irishmen were members of this congregation. They were Nonconformists of Cromwellian descent. Their ancestors had been involved in conflict with “church and king” Tories from the mid seventeenth century. Their enthusiasm for democratic republicanism and aversion to monarchy was related to their demand for tolerance of religious difference and their rejection of religious dogma as expounded by kings, bishops and high churchmen from the time of the English Civil War. The Dissenter congregation of Wood Street in Dublin [ancestor to our congregation] established by Cromwellian officers was a source of republican ideas which inspired the United Irishmen and much democratic politics in Dublin throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some say John Owen [1616-1683] was our first Minister. He certainly preached at Wood Street and may have been linked to the Rye House Plot to overthrow Charles 11 and the Duke of York in 1663 .He was involved in recruiting soldiers for Monmouth’s rebellion of 1665. Jeremiah Marsden tried to preach the Fifth Monarchy [a militant republican doctrine justifying the execution of Charles 1] to our other ancestor congregation at New Row Dublin in 1666. He died unrepentant in Newgate prison in 1680. Before coming to Dublin he played a leading role in the Farnley Wood Plot to overthrow the Restoration which led to the execution of 26 Yorkshire men in 1663. The work profiles other colourful characters who were in one way or another associated with our congregation and radical politics in general. These include: John Toland [1670-1721] a native Gaelic speaker from Donegal. He fled Dublin when his ‘atheististical’ book was burnt in 1697. He is said to have had a profound influence on Voltaire, the German Enlightenment and on the enigmatic English republican William Blake. Francis Hutcheson [1694-1747] from County Down had an influence on the American Revolution, and the Declaration of Independence. He established a school for the Wood Street congregation in Dublin in 1720. He was Professor of Moral theology at Glasgow in 1730. Many of the Presbyterian ministers who led the United Irishmen in 1798 were imbued with the democratic principles of the Scottish Enlightenment at Glasgow. Charles Lucas [1713-1771] was elected to Dublin Corporation by ‘the very scum of the people of Dublin’ including the Presbyterian weavers of Dublin’s Liberties in 1749. He had to flee when his ’ Letter to the Free Citizens of Dublin’ was adjudged treasonable and burnt by the public hangman. Reverend Thomas Emlyn of Wood Street was gaoled in 1705. He was charged with blasphemy on account of his Unitarian opinions. The controversy resulted in the emergence of New Light or Non- subscribing Presbyterianism. It was mainly ‘New Light Presbyterians’ who supported the United Irishmen in Ulster in the 1790s. Archibald Hamilton Rowan [1751-1834] and William Drennan [1754-1820] Chairman and Secretary respectively of the Dublin United Irishmen were members of the congregation then relocated to Great Strand Street. Hamilton Rowan escaped from prison and the gallows, was smuggled to France in a small boat and met Robespierre to seek his aid for Ireland’s democrats. Dublin born John Binns [1772-1854] became leader of the British working class radicals in London in 1794. He was acquitted on a charge of treason in 1798. A fellow accused, James Quigley, a Catholic priest, was convicted and hanged. In 1803 another friend of Binns, British naval hero Colonel Despard was hanged for plotting to kill George 111. Despard’s plot was a joint venture with Robert Emmett. Later in Pennsylvania Binns was a ‘zealous friend’ of Dr. Joseph Priestley. This Unitarian minister and scientist had been burnt out of his home in England by a Tory mob. The Great Strand Street congregation invited Dr. Priestley to become their minister and the Dublin United Irishmen awarded him honorary membership of their society. Edmund Burke was the champion of the conservatives when he attacked the French Revolution. This work suggests he was a deranged anti-democrat with a sectarian hatred of Dissenters who were the real target of his invective. Both of Robert Emmett’s siblings were married to Unitarians and Robert was captured hiding with a family associated with both the United Irishmen and the Unitarians. The most ‘formidable man’ amongst the UI leadership was Oliver Bond. He was murdered in his prison cell in September 1798. Afterwards his widow was comforted by a circle of members of this congregation including the Drennans the Huttons and the Mercers. The villain of the story is Francis Higgins ‘The Sham Squire’ who was a fraudster, a forger, a brothel keeper and a semi-literate misanthrope but an effective government spy. He labelled the Dissenter United Irishmen of Dublin the ‘King Killers of Pill Lane’. King-killer was a term used by Anglicans in relation to their Dissenter neighbours because they believed the ancestors of these ‘fanatics’ had murdered Charles 1st. I can provide a type script for any member of the congregation who is interested but better still if anyone knows a publisher who might be interest in publishing this story let me know. fergus.whelan@ictu.ie Fergus Whelan Dublin Unitarian Church Cover