I suspect it may well take an Englishman a lifetime fully to understand Irish history and Irish identity, and I make no claim to do so; yet I remain fascinated by Ireland’s resilience to the homogenising influence of Westminster over so many centuries that managed to enthrall the rest of the British Isles.
For me at least, one of the great puzzles of Irish identity is how Ireland has drifted away from Jacobitism and enunciated its right to independence in terms other than those of the 17th century. Part of the answer surely lies in the fact that mainstream Catholic Irish politics in the 16th and 17th centuries was never wholeheartedly royalist in the first place. The Tudors were never accepted and the ancient Kings maintained their courts well into the 17th century even though the policy of ‘Surrender and Re-Grant’ under James I had stripped them of their proper titles. Indeed, James I’s policy in Ireland was one of the less savoury episodes in that great monarch’s reign. There was no particular reason why the Stuarts should be accepted more readily in Ireland than the Tudors (albeit an ancestor of James I, Edward Bruce, had been the last man to hold the title of High King of Ireland in 1315), other than the potential the Stuarts demonstrated for pro-Catholic policies. The Catholic Confederacy was united not by a constitutional or ideological vision for Ireland but by a common faith; its support for Charles I was largely a matter of convenience. If the Confederacy did have a vision, it was presumably the restoration of the prestige of the demoted local Kings. On the other hand, it is doubtful that any overarching political vision other than the centralised rule of a monarch was conceivable to the Confederates.
A fundamental difference, then, between Irish and English royalism was the fact that Irish royalism was driven by a particular religious agenda. In England, by contrast, Churchmen and Catholics were prepared to share a single political and constitutional agenda. Many historians have commented that James II could have become the ruler of an independent Ireland (and thus a kingdom of his own) when he returned there in 1689 if he had not been determined to reclaim his English kingdom. Irish people have resented James’ campaign ever since, as it landed the Irish in a worse situation than they would have been if he had never made his attempt.
Nevertheless, Irish political sentiment remained determinedly Jacobite; Irish soldiers (the ‘Wild Geese’) fought in the service of France and Spain but still in the red coats of James’ army. The Duke of Berwick, James’ eldest illegitimate son and himself a Marshal of France took a personal interest in the Wild Geese, who continued to serve up to and beyond the French Revolution when a realistic policy of Jacobite restoration by force of arms had faded. At Culloden the Irish Piquets, volunteers from all of the Irish regiments in French service, stood against the Hanoverian cavalry when the Highlanders were fleeing, but this was the last overtly Jacobite military intervention by the Irish.
In the 1760s, when the ‘Voce Populi’ token was produced, all Irish opposition to English rule was Jacobite in form. However, the meaning of Jacobitism had, by the late 18th century, become attenuated to a convenient romantic veneer for radical as well as conservative movements; the Irish independence movement, always characterised by the marriage of social conservatism and political radicalism, is the child of this brand of Jacobitism. Had the American and French Revolutions not established a new republican ideology, it seems likely that Irish radicalism would have continued to be Jacobite in inspiration.
The very word ‘nationalism’ is in one sense at odds with Jacobite thinking; the Jacobite programme was never a nationalistic one (contrary to the image portrayed of Jacobitism, particularly in Scotland). Jacobitism is by its very nature a constitutional ideology that stresses the place of the King and the rightful succession. The aspect of Jacobitism that can easily be confused with nationalism, and out of which nationalism grew, is its emphasis on the separation of the Three Kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland) as independent countries. Yet for Jacobites the grounds for such separation were always constitutional and never ‘nationalistic’ in the sense in which the term was understood after World War One, i.e. based on linguistic and cultural revival and the notion of a people’s right to self-determination.
Jacobitism is not a democratic ideology; its adherence to the rightful line, notwithstanding public opinion to the contrary, is indeed entirely at odds with modern democratic thinking. The Irish Republic of 1919, by contrast, founded itself upon democratic principles, and it was on those principles that two wars, first the ‘Tan War’ with the British and then the Irish Civil War between Free Staters and those who upheld the Republic of 1919, were fought.
Despite the profound differences between Jacobite ideology and the ideology of Irish Republicanism, Irish nationalism owes a great deal to Jacobitism in a number of ways. In the first place, Irish nationalism might have had a narrow appeal to Catholic and Gaelic Irishmen, but in fact many of its original leaders were Protestants and some even members of the Ascendency who saw the patent constitutional injustice visited upon Ireland by the Act of Union of 1801. Furthermore, there had always been (since the Confederates) a strand of Irish nationalism that emphasised, not republican ideology, but self-government for Ireland under whatever dispensation was available, and it was this approach that the Free State government ultimately represented.
The enthusiasm of all Irish political parties (besides Sinn Féin) for the European Union is something that many in England fail to grasp, and it is usually interpreted unfairly as the consequence of the financial benefits Ireland has received from Europe. On a political level, however, the European Union gives Ireland an identity separate from its historic oppressor (England) as well as from the principal recipient of its emigrants (the USA). Furthermore, there is a long tradition of Irish Europeanism – one only has to look at the list of Irish generals who served most of the crowned heads of Europe at one time or another.
Whilst no Jacobite should deny that Ireland is a de jure monarchy, it is entirely unreasonable to ask the Irish people to give their allegiance to a de facto monarchy in a foreign country. For an Englishman, the consideration that the existence of the de facto Hanoverian-descended monarchy in the so-called ‘United Kingdom’ is the best preservative of what remains of the legitimate constitution of the English kingdom is a very good reason indeed to support that de facto monarchy over all other forms of government (excepting the unlikely restoration of the de jure monarch). However, whilst the Hanoverian monarchy has upheld certain important elements of the English constitution, that same monarchy has done untold damage to the ancient constitution and rights of the Irish people, by the Act of Union of 1801 and all that followed it. The 1937 constitution of Eire provides for a far preferable de facto government (which, since 1949, has defined itself as republican) to anything the Hanoverian monarchy might offer. Even the House of Stuart must bear the blame for exploiting and oppressing Ireland.
11 Comments
June 20, 2008 at 1:19 am
I broadly agree with much of the post but please be patient while I tease out some points. Can I say also that its probably the most logical , fair minded article I have read on Jacobitism and Ireland?
It would take much longer than a lifetime for an Englishman to understand Ireland. Indeed as English “involvement” in Ireland has lasted around 700 years or ten times Mans allotted span, I think its evident that one lifetime would not be enough. The novelist brother (John ? Joseph?) of Irish singer Sinead O’Connor perhaps summed it up when he said (I paraphrase) that the English cannot really understand
the fact that the Irish don’t want to be like them. The fate of Ireland and England has always and will always be entwined. Ireland is simply not far enough from England to be totally free of English influence but certainly too far to be fully integrated.
My interest in Jacobitism is entirely historic as an important part of Irelands national story. A fatal attraction, as one writer put it recently. I cannot take Jacobitism out of Irish nationalism but the opposite is also true…….Jacobitism cannot write Irish nationalism out of its history. The great difference is of course that Nationalism succeeded eventually while Jacobitism died in 1746. Incidently I think you have to put the heroism of the Irish Brigade (including of course Fitzjames Horse)at Culloden in context. As serving French soldiers they knew they would get “quarter” when they did surrender. In fairness to the fleeing Scots (whose retreat the Wild Geese covered) they had no such fall-back position.
As an Irishman and a practicing Catholic, I am always astonished at the notion of a de jure Kingdom of Ireland. The notion of a lordship granted by Papal Bull (thru an English Pope) to the English which in 1541 became a Kingship……and “re-granted” to Philip and Mary is not one I find particularly appealing. And I don’t actually know any Irish Catholics (including one deceased Cardinal) who find it appealing. Not surprisingly English Catholics see it as entirely logical.
The default position of the English Catholic Church establishment is politically conservative. The Irish Church is more peasant based.…and left wing ideology is more “accepted”
In that context its entirely understandable that Irish Catholicism was not wholeheartedly “royalist”. After all Catholic Mary and Philip were expelling Catholic O’Connors, O’Moores and MOONEYS!!!from “Kings County and Queens County”
I hold the notion, unpalatable in traditional Jacobite terms that the nation of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland. A radical idea 300 years ago but not all that radical today.
Too many modern Jacobites fail to see that Jacobitism was effectively a coalition between legitimacy and nationalism. The Scots Jacobites in 1745 wanted repeal of the Act of Union while Charles was not committed. As you observe James might have held on to an Irish throne had he given up “English ambitions” The Scottish Jacobites were very unenthusiastic about invading England. Charles insisted…..In truth Scotland and Ireland gave more to Jacobitism than England ever did. Ultimately the Sturats let down the Celtic fringes of their kingdoms.
There has always been coalition of interests. The Anglo Catholic planters who sided with Gaelic chiefs in Elizabethan Ireland were motivated by religion, the chieftains by nationalism and tribal/clan interests. Again the Confederation was a coalition and latterly Jacobitism was a coalition. When the coalition failed it was right and proper for the Irish element to seek an alternative.
It is noteworthy that the earliest republicans and “democratic” nationalists in Ireland were Presbyterians who saw their rights as better protected in an Irish nation. It was by and large Catholics who felt hey were better protected by direct rule.
Increasing franchise in the 1800s, literacy, emancipation meant that by 1880 the roles were reversed. Protestants sought British protection. Catholics had by this stage the majority of votes.…all of this like modern republicanism itself a product of the Enlightenment.
While you suggest that the Hanoverian dynasty did nothing for Ireland (the famine for example) I cannot see how the Catholic Stuarts would have been more benign. Certainly their continental kin were hardly ever in the forefront of reform.
I am not convinced that social conservatism and radical politics is the product of romanticised Jacobitism although it is true to say that the legend of the Wild Geese (songs such as the “Irish Brigade” or “Jackets Green” or “Clares Dragoons” being a product of the mid 1800s and the Young Ireland movement.
But the myth was already established in the late 1700s thru Jacobite poets. Indeed even in 1798 there was the expectation that the Wild Geese……by now almost extinct and totally French would arrive.
To sum up your position and please correct any misinterpretation of mine.
While you take the view that a Jacobite/Westminster led “homogenous” constitution is best for Ireland, you accept the view that the de facto Irish republican Constitution is a better option than a de facto Hanoverian monarchy.
And that there is no realistic expectation of a Jacobite restoration.
Can I just add one view you might find unpalatable. Indeed Id be surprised if you found it anything other than unpalatable. You mention two wars in defence of the 1919 Republic. History will probably add the 1970-1998 War as advancing beyond that.
July 9, 2009 at 6:46 am
Many of the obscurities of Ireland’s constitutional position may be clarified by referring to Breandan Ó Buachalla’s excellent and exhaustive book, ‘Aisling Ghear, na Stiobhart agus an taos leinn, 1603-1788.’ For those who are unable to engage with his work in Irish, his pamphlet, ‘The Crown of Ireland, Arlen House (2007)’ offers something of his researches in English. The Stuart succession to the three kingdoms presented the possibility of a dynasty acceptable as rulers to almost everyone on the Island of Ireland. Their broad popularity, clearly demonstrated in Ó Buachalla’s work, offered the one foundation upon which the terrible ruptures of plantation and dispossession could have been reconsiled. Does anyone reading this know the song ‘ Séarlas Óg’ or ‘Óró, sé do Bheatha Abhaile,’ collected in South Armagh in the first years of the 20th century but rewritten as ‘ An Dord Féinne’ by Padraig Pearse, but in such a way as to mask its strong Jacobite sentiments. The last verse of the original is:
Tá Séarlas Óg ag traill thar sáile / Béidh siad leisean, Franncaigh is Spáinnigh / Óglaigh armtha leis mar gharda / ‘S bainfidh siad rinnce as éiricigh!
(Chorus)
Óró, sé do bheatha abhaile, / B’fhearr liom tú ná céad bó bhainne, /Óró, sé do bheatha abhaile / Anois ar theacht an tsamhraidh.
This loosely translates as :
When Young Charles comes over the sea /The men of France and Spain will accompany him / Armed warriors to guard him / and then the strangers will dance.
(Chorus)
Oro, Your welcome to your home / I’d rather you returmed than I had a hundred head of cattle / Oro, Your welcome to your home / And now it will be summer again!
As in Scotland, Jacobite only turned to become Jacobin when despair seemed to close any hope of a restoration.
One last point, I cannot understand how the 1970-98 ‘war’ has achieved anything for the ‘defence’ of even an Irish republic. I thought it was simply a way in which the last tatters of 1916 could be absorbed finally into its natural home, the Whig assembly at Stormont. I also fail to see how the ideals of 1916 could have any recognizable place (other than as a snazzy graphic) in a post De Valera Ireland. And the shift from an Ireland controlled by the Bank of England (pre 1990) to an Ireland controlled by American banking has never felt like ‘independence’ to me. True sovereignty seems to have left Ireland with James II and has yet to return.
June 20, 2008 at 10:40 am
Thank you for a very considered and informative response to my post. I agree with a great deal of what you say and it is clear that this is an issue that has exercised both our minds. I think you are right that many English people (and particularly English Catholics) find it hard to understand why the Irish are not like them. I have been guilty in the past of accepting the view, based on an ‘ultramontane’ understanding of Papal power, that the legitimacy of the Irish monarchy was conferred by Papal recognition of Mary I’s Irish title. However, as I looked more closely into Ireland’s history I found myself becoming increasingly uneasy about the earlier constitutional changes imposed on Ireland from without, just as I remain uneasy about the Statute of Rhuddlan in Wales.
I think there could be more than just a conventional modern post-Enlightenment justification for vesting the sovereignty of Ireland in her people; if one considers the nature of Irish society and Irish land ownership prior to the Norman and Plantagenet invasions it was based on clan ownership rather the inheritance of individuals. The disruption of Irish society by English intervention has been so great since that the clans have been scattered and, for someone who does not recognise the imposition of English institutions on Ireland, the sensible option could be to say that Ireland must be a republic since the old land-rights and the old lines of kingship are broken. So many relics of English rule of Ireland remain today even in the Republic – the imposition of county boundaries and an English legal system among them.
The key question that needs to be answered by historians, it seems to me, is whether such a thing as ‘Irish nationalism’ can be said to have existed as a meaningful thing before the Young Irelander rising of 1798. If, as you say, Irish opposition to England since 1688 was a coalition of nationalists and Jacobites this would need to be demonstrated.
As a Jacobite, I am sympathetic to Irish nationalism (and indeed Republicanism) but I am reluctant to acknowledge that the House of Stuart was complicit in violations of the ancient constitution of Ireland that I prefer to blame on the Hanoverians and the Act of Union of 1801. Ireland was a separate Kingdom in 1688 with its own legislature, but Poynings’ Law subjected that legislature to England in a manner that was unacceptable. One could argue that Ireland began to function as an independent Kingdom only in the period of Grattan’s Parliament (1782-1801) once Poynings’ Law had been repealed.
I believe that it is crucial that Ireland be entirely independent of Westminster and that Ireland be united; everything else (including the question of whether Ireland should be a Republic) is secondary to this. For that reason I have always found the Free State solution of 1921 an attractive one and I have struggled to understand Republican opposition to it. I am not sure how history will view the war of 1969-98 but I believe the real issue in the north of Ireland has always been the British government’s reluctance to cut loose the Unionists, who are after all Irishmen who self-define as British. The British government’s problem has been that it has pandered to that fantasy, and the Republican movement is to blame as well for failing to put forward the constitutional, rather than the nationalistic case for a united Ireland.
July 9, 2009 at 6:52 am
I strongly agree that the Free State was probably as good as it could get for Ireland, but the issue of financial soverignty still holds. Without a King above banking interests any so called independant Irish state continues to be at the mercy of international finance.
June 21, 2008 at 1:21 am
Can I just point out a small error on your part that the 1798 was the Young Ireland Rebellion. The United Irishmen were the leaders in 1798, Young Ireland was 1848.
But the substance of your point is correct. Incremental progress from 1798 towards (arguably)
2008.
1798 United Irishmen (effectively Presbyterian) plus a French type jacquerie in Wexford and traditional nationalism/catholicism in the third (Connacht) theatre. which begat the Act of Union
1829 Emancipation which begat the Young Ireland Movemen
1860s which begat Fenianism (Republicanism) and Home Rulers (nationalists) and Parnellite tradition.
1900 which begat post Fenianism in Sinn Féin
and subsequently the traditional split in Revolutionary Nationalism (Sinn Féin IRA) and constitutional nationalism (of Irish governments/northern nationalists up to and including John Humes SDLP). To some extent that split was always exploited. The effect of the 1998 Agreement has been to pull all shades of “Irish” opinion broadly together and get SF off the hook of their own making, loyalty to 1919 Election.
While the line from 1798 is fairly easy to authenticate. The same can be said for the period prior to say 1641 (albeit a different kind of line).
I think that the period 1641 to 1789 (sic) which includes the Jacobite period is more of a transition period.
The nature of the relationship between aristocracy/”underclass” was prevelant in any nation (indeed can we date the ORIGIN of nation state from Westphalia 1648?) so effectively the rules of the game were already changing prior to Enlightenment.
I find it odd that many Jacobites/legitimists hold any real hope of rewinding the History of Europe (and incredibly North America) to a different era. Although you observe that county boundaries (ironically much loved by modern Irish) are English inventions, Irish people also happily live with Royal Irish Academy, Royal Dublin Society and indeed the very place names in Dublin.
Am I talking myself into an acceptance of a place in the Commonwealth? Perhaps.
August 14, 2008 at 10:44 am
I’ve left it some time before commenting on this post, though it’s rather nice that I’m able to do so while within gunshot range of the GPO in Dublin. As I look out of the door of this internet cafe, I am also able to see a railway station named after the 1916 rebel and labour organiser James Connolly.
You pose the question of why Ireland moved away from Jacobitism. I suggest that one answer is that Jacobitism simply faded from the Irish historical consciousness, with the passing of years, the lack of practical interest of the dynasty in re-establishing itself, the arrival of new de facto political arrangements, and the development of new ideologies.
The Wild Geese don’t necessarily disprove this notion, since the “pull” of the Jacobite cause mingled with the “pushes” of economic necessity and the ban on Catholics serving in the British Army. Thereafter, from the 19th century up to the First World War a considerable number of Irish Catholics served under the (Hanoverian) British colours. Indeed, the large-scale enlistment of Irish Catholics up to the very eve of the 1916 Rising is one of several embarrassing secrets of Irish republicanism, though enlistment no doubt had more to do with economic need than allegiance to the British monarch (and also, in the case of WWI, with the pro-enlistment political manoeuvring of John Redmond and others).
I would question how far it was republicanism that did for Jacobitism. As you indicate, republicanism was not a consistent or predominant strand of Irish nationalism until very, very late in the game (1918, perhaps). It competed with nostalgia for Grattan’s parliament, with Home Rule-ism, and with the idea (originally endorsed by Sinn Fein) of an Austrian-style dual monarchy.
August 15, 2008 at 11:26 am
Incidentally, could I ask you to google “Reform Movement”? I’d be interested to know what you make of them.
August 21, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Greetings
I had your blog appear as an autoposted link beneath the blog that I posted at the following URL:
http://troyspace2.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/the-papal-power-behind-the-irish-potatoe-famine/
You might find these email exchanges which was posted to me by the author of “Vatican Assassins”, now in its 1800+ page third edition, Eric Jon Phelps to be of some interest. In the first email Phelps is in red and his questioner in grey.The second one is a little hard to follow as it comprises of two email exchanges interspersed with each other. In that one Phelps is in lilac and red, his correspondent is in blue and grey.
Any questions, please direct them to Eric Phelps, as this is based on his research, although from my studying his work and analysis on parapolitical matters I do support his conclusions.
Thank you -
Troy Space
December 31, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Over the last three years, there has been a four-fold increase in the number of people joining the British Armed Forces from the Irish Republic. The only reason why there aren’t even more is revulsion at the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(Incidentally, if the war in Afghanistan is because of an attack on New York, then why aren’t the Irish Republic’s own Armed Forces fighting it? This has nothing to do with neutrality: any number of Irish citizens must have died on 9/11.)
The Irish Republic is growing up, and duly adopting a more mature attitude both to her neighbour and to her own history, an attitude which should include accession to the Commonwealth without delay.
After all, it was the Pope who gave the Kings of England the Lordship of Ireland in the first place, and a Papal Blessing was sent to William III when he set out for Ireland. The Lateran Palace was illuminated for a fortnight when news of the Battle of the Boyne reached Rome.
Into the nineteenth century, Catholics joined in the annual celebrations of the Relief of Derry; into the late eighteenth, Catholic priests even took part in the prayer service at the Walls of Derry.
The professors and seminarians of Maynooth published a declaration of loyalty to the King during the 1798 Rebellion, and those extremely few priests who had adhered to that Rebellion were excommunicated, the bishops calling them “the very faeces of the Church”.
Prominent Belfast Catholic laymen chaired rallies against successive Home Rule Bills, with prominent Catholic priests on the platforms. There were numerous Catholic pulpit denunciations of Fenianism, which is unlike any of the three principal British political traditions in being a product of the French Revolution. Hence its tricolour flag. And hence its strong anti-clerical streak, always identifying Catholicism as one of Ireland’s two biggest problems.
Jean Bodin’s theory of princely absolutism, held by the Stuarts and by their anti-Papal Bourbon cousins, was incompatible with the building up of the Social Reign of Christ, subsequently the inspiration for all three great British political movements. Likewise, ethnically exclusive nation-states deriving uncritically from the French Revolution do not provide adequate means to that end.
By contrast, the absence of any significant Marxist influence in this country has been due to the universal and comprehensive Welfare State, and the strong statutory (and other, including trade union) protection of workers and consumers, the former paid for by progressive taxation, and all underwritten by full employment: very largely the fruits of Catholic Social Teaching, especially via Diaspora Irish participation in the Labour Movement here as in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
And such fruits have been of disproportionate benefit to ethnically Gaelic-Irish Catholics throughout the United Kingdom; even in the 1940s, Sinn Féin worried that they were eroding its support.
All very well worth fighting for (if only it were in fact what the British Armed Forces were currently fighting for, of course).
As more and more people in the Irish Republic clearly agree.
February 25, 2009 at 6:27 pm
There has always been a tradition of people from the Republic of Ireland joining the British Army. The recent threefold increase (and I doubt that number) has more to do with the “Peace Process” in the North than a willingness to fight a war in Afghanistan.
It would logically have been more difficult in conscience for a Republics citizen to join the British Army while the conflict was raging here. It would have meant social isolation and could possibly have been lethal.
I dont see the link between Irish citizens getting klled on “9/11″ and a great necessity to rush off to Afghanistan to avenge them.
While there is a widespread revulsion at the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in Ireland it is clearly not the case that this is the “only” reason that there are not more Irish troops in British uniform.
The Coalition of the Willing as Bush called the Allies in Iraq (I prefer to think of them as the Coalition of The Stupid) never included Irish Defence Forces.
Oddly and I consider stupidly we have SEVEN (7) personnel in Afghanistan. No doubt this looks good on paper but (good though the Irish Army is) I cant see our seven soldiers making a great difference.
The 1798 Rebellion alluded to above…..did come within a decade of the French Revolution and the Terror against CatholicChurch in France…..naturally the Irish Bishops were against 1798. The British had after all just set up Maynooth Seminary in 1795 and were making strides (slowly) towards Emancipation.
Whether the Pope in Rome (especially an English one) has any “right” to gift Ireland to England is a bit irrelevant.
Even if endorsed by GOD himself, I would never accept its legitimacy.
March 10, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I don’t see Jacobitism and nationalism to be absolutely at odds with each other. As I understood it part of what the Jacobites were fighting for was essentially the autonomy of Scotland and Ireland while sharing a Crown with England. I may be adding Catholic adherence to subsidiarity at a time before that had been very well spelled out but it seems to me that the Church (as evidenced by the Holy Roman Empire for sure) favored as much localized government as possible and would have fit in well with the nationalist aspirations of the Irish and Scots to be free of centralized rule from London.