Protestant Ascendancy


The Protestant Ascendancy was the sociopolitical and economical domination of Ireland between the 17th and early 20th centuries by a small Anglican ruling class, whose members consisted of aristocrats,
landowners, barristers, politicians, clergymen, military officers and prominent professions all by practice and law closed to Catholics. They were either members of the Church of Ireland or the Church of England and wielded a disproportionate amount of social, cultural and political influence in Ireland. The Ascendancy existed as a result of British rule in Ireland, as land confiscated from the Irish Catholic aristocracy was awarded by the Crown to Protestant settlers from Great Britain.
During the Tudor conquest of Ireland, land owned by Irish nobles was gradually confiscated by the Crown over several decades. These lands were sold to colonists from Great Britain as part of the plantations of Ireland, with the province of Ulster being a focus in particular for colonisation by Protestant settlers after the Battle of Kinsale. These settlers went on to form the new aristocracy and gentry of Ireland, as the Gaelic nobility had either been killed, fled with the Flight of the Earls or allied with the Crown. They eventually came to be known as the Anglo-Irish people. From the 1790s the phrase Protestant Ascendency became used by the main two identities in Ireland: nationalists, who were mostly Catholics, used the phrase as a "focus of resentment", while for unionists, who were mostly Protestants, it gave a "compensating image of lost greatness".

Origin of term

The phrase was first used in passing by Sir Boyle Roche in a speech to the Irish House of Commons on 20 February 1782. George Ogle MP used it on 6 February 1786 in a debate on falling land values, saying that "When the landed property of the Kingdom, when the Protestant Ascendancy is at stake, I cannot remain silent."
Then on 20 January 1792 Dublin Corporation approved by majority vote a resolution to George III that included this line: "We feel ourselves peculiarly called upon to stand forward in the crisis to pray your majesty to preserve the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland inviolate ...." The corporation's resolution was a part of the debate over Catholic emancipation. In the event, Catholics were allowed to vote again in 1793, but could not sit in parliament until 1829.
The phrase therefore was seen to apply across classes to rural landowners as well as city merchants. The Dublin resolution was disapproved of by a wide range of commentators, such as the Marquess of Abercorn, who called it "silly", and William Drennan who said it was "actuated by the most monopolising spirit".
The phrase became popularised outside Ireland by Edmund Burke, another liberal Protestant, and his ironic comment in 1792: "A word has been lately struck in the mint of the castle of Dublin; thence it was conveyed to the Tholsel, or city-hall, where, having passed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon became current in parliament, and was carried back by the Speaker of the House of Commons in great pomp as an offering of homage from whence it came. The word is Ascendancy." This was then used by Catholics seeking further political reforms.
In the Irish language, the term used was An Chinsealacht, from cinseal, meaning 'dominance'.

Penal Laws

The process of Protestant Ascendancy was facilitated and formalized in the legal system after 1691 by the passing of various Penal Laws, which discriminated against the majority Irish Catholic population of the island. While the native Irish Gaels comprised the majority of the Irish Catholic population, long-standing fully Gaelicised and intermarried Norman families, having previously held immense power in Ireland, became major targets of the crown and of more stridently anti-Irish members of the Ascendancy. With the defeat of Catholic attempts to regain power and lands in Ireland, a ruling class which became known later as the "Protestant Ascendancy" sought to ensure dominance with the passing of a number of laws to restrict the religious, political and economic activities of Catholics and to some extent, Protestant Dissenters. These aspects provided the political basis for the new laws passed for several decades after 1695. Interdicts faced by Catholics and Dissenters under the Penal Laws were:
  • Exclusion of Catholics from most public offices, Presbyterians were also barred from public office from 1707.
  • Ban on intermarriage with Protestants; repealed 1778
  • Presbyterian marriages were not legally recognised by the state
  • Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces
  • Bar from membership in either the Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of England from 1652; rescinded 1662–1691; renewed 1691–1829, applying to the successive parliaments of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
  • Disenfranchising Act 1728, exclusion from voting until 1793;
  • Exclusion from the legal professions and the judiciary; repealed in 1793 and 1829.
  • Education Act 1695 – ban on foreign education; repealed 1782.
  • Bar to Catholics and Protestant Dissenters entering Trinity College Dublin; repealed 1793.
  • On a death by a Catholic, his legatee could benefit by conversion to the Church of Ireland;
  • Popery Act – Catholic inheritances of land were to be equally subdivided between all an owner's sons with the exception that if the eldest son and heir converted to Protestantism that he would become the one and only tenant of estate and portions for other children not to exceed one third of the estate. This "Gavelkind" system had previously been abolished by 1600.
  • Ban on converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism on pain of Praemunire: forfeiting all property estates and legacy to the monarch of the time and remaining in prison at the monarch's pleasure. In addition, forfeiting the monarch's protection. No injury however atrocious could have any action brought against it or any reparation for such.
  • Ban on Catholics buying land under a lease of more than 31 years; repealed 1778.
  • Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics on pain of a £500 fine that was to be donated to the Blue Coat hospital in Dublin.
  • Ban on Catholics inheriting Protestant land
  • Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5
  • Roman Catholic lay priests had to register to preach under the Registration Act 1704, but seminary priests and Bishops were not able to do so until 1778.
  • When allowed, new Catholic churches were to be built from wood, not stone, and away from main roads.
  • 'No person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm' upon pain of a £20 fine and three months in prison for every such offence. Repealed in 1782.
  • any rewards not paid by the crown for alerting authorities of offences to be levied upon the Catholic populace within the parish and county.
They also covered the non-conforming Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians, where they:
However, those protected by the Treaty were still excluded from public political life.
The situation was confused by the policy of the Tory Party in England and Ireland after 1688. They were Protestants who generally supported the Catholic Jacobite claim and came to power briefly in London from 1710 to 1714. Also in 1750, the main Catholic Jacobite heir and claimant to the three thrones, Charles Edward Stuart, converted to Anglicanism for a time but had reverted to Roman Catholicism again by his father's death in 1766.
The son of James II, James Francis Edward Stuart, was recognised by the Holy See as the legitimate monarch of the Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland and the separate Kingdom of Ireland until his death in January 1766, and Roman Catholics were morally obliged to support him. This provided the main political excuse for the new laws, but it was not entirely exclusive as there was no law against anyone converting to Protestantism. While a relatively small number of Catholics would convert to the Church of Ireland between the 17th and 19th centuries, more often than not these "conversions" amounted to the alteration of paper work, rather than any changes in religious beliefs or practices. With job prospects and civil rights for Irish Catholics having grown quite grim since the mid-17th century, for some, converting to the Anglican Church was one of the few ways one could attempt to improve one's lot in life. A handful of members of formerly powerful Irish clans also chose to convert, learn English, swear fealty to the King, and perform roles on behalf of the Anglo-Irish of The Pale in exchange for lands and other privileges. Records of these conversions were tracked in "Convert Rolls", which can be located through various online resources. Interestingly, early 20th century census records inform us that a fair number of Irish men and women who'd converted to the Anglican Church between the mid 17th and mid 19th century actually returned to their original Catholic faith by the early 20th century. A similar phenomenon can also be observed with the return of "O" and "Mc" to surnames during the mid/late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period known to scholars as the Gaelic Revival.
As a result, political, legal and economic power resided with the Ascendancy to the extent that by the mid-18th century, the greater part of the land in Ireland was owned by men who rented it out to tenant farmers rather than cultivating it themselves. Smaller landlords in the east, in Ulster or on the outskirts of towns were more favourably placed than the owners of tracts of infertile bog in the west. In 1870 302 proprietors owned 33.7% of the land, and 50% of the country was in the hands of 750 families of the Ascendency. At the other end of the scale, 15,527 owned between them only 19.3% of the land. 95% of the land of Ireland was calculated to be under minority control of those within the established church. Absenteeism is accepted as having been an almost universal practice in Ireland and detrimental to the country's progress.
Reform, though not complete, came in three main stages and was effected over 50 years:
  • Reform of religious disabilities in 1778–82, allowing bishops, schools and convents.
  • Reform of restrictions on property ownership and voting in 1778–93.
  • Restoration of political, professional and office-holding rights in 1793–1829.