The Dioceses of the Church of Ireland

The Church of Ireland came into existence in 1536 when the Irish Parliament declared Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church on earth (i.e. Head of the Church of Ireland), although he would not legally become King of Ireland until 1541. Henry’s assumption of the title of King of Ireland had great ecclesiopolitical significance since the title Lord of Ireland implied a tacit acceptance of the Pope’s claim, (apparently) first made by Hadrian IV in the Bull Laudabiliter of 1155, that Ireland was a Papal fief. Hadrian granted Henry II the Lordship of Ireland. Thus Henry’s assumption of the title of King had less to do with dispossessing the native Irish kings than with confronting the Pope.

Although he accepted the Royal Supremacy, George Cromer the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland was not excommunicated and deprived of his see by the Pope until 1539. The Pope’s appointment of Robert Wauchope to Armagh in the same year marked the beginning of the rival Archbishoprics, a situation briefly resolved in 1553 with the re-appointment of George Dowdall as Primate. After Dowdall’s death the see was vacant until the Pope appointed a successor in 1560 (an Irishman, Donat O’Teige) and Queen Elizabeth appointed Adam Loftus in 1562. The Papacy did not create parallel hierarchies in England or Scotland and it was presumably because the Pope considered Ireland a Papal territory, where the Queen had no right to approve the appointments of bishops, that he did so in Ireland. Paul IV had recognised Phillip and Mary as King and Queen of Ireland in 1555 but the Papacy’s later actions demonstrated that Elizabeth was thought to have forfeited the title.

The most significant event for the Church of Ireland during Elizabeth’s reign was the establishment of Trinity College, Dublin for the training of clergy, although the vast majority of these were not Irishmen but English. An exception was John Garvey, Primate 1589-95, who came from County Kilkenny.

In 1615 the Convocation of the Church of Ireland adopted 104 articles known as the Irish Articles. Although these articles superficially resemble the 39 Articles of the Church of England they are in fact a great deal more detailed and much less ambiguous on many matters; they also represent a more thoroughgoing and explicit Calvinism than the 39 Articles. For instance, Article 17 of the English Articles is supplemented considerably in Articles 11-17 of the Irish Articles, which insist upon a fixed and certain number of Predestined and Reprobated persons. Whereas Article 17 of the English Articles carefully cautions against an overemphasis on the teaching of reprobation since it may drive people to despair, the Irish Articles merely state, ‘to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s predestination is very dangerous’. The Irish Articles were largely the work of the Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College, James Ussher, who became Primate in 1625. When the Irish Parliament adopted the 39 Articles in 1634 under pressure from the King and Archbishop Laud, Ussher ensured that the Church of Ireland adopted them in addition to, not instead of, the Irish Articles.

Ussher’s Church of Ireland, with its stringently Calvinist theology, largely served the Pale of Settlement and the plantations and it did not succeed in commanding support from the old Hiberno-Norman aristocracy, still less the native Irish. In that sense, it failed as a national church and was seen by the Irish as an instrument of English occupation. The first person to attempt to reverse this was William Bedell, who was appointed Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh in 1629 and is celebrated for translating the Old Testament into Irish in an effort to reach out to and convert the native population.

In spite of Bedell’s efforts, the Irish rising of 1641 and the native backlash against the plantations solidified the alienation of the Church of Ireland from the Irish people, and the exaggerated accounts of Catholic atrocities committed in that year pass as fact even today. Ussher opposed Ormonde’s alliance with the Confederacy of Kilkenny and was equally respected by Parliamentarians and Royalist Protestants, although himself a determined Royalist and episcopalian.

William Bedell’s work bore some fruit, however, in the conversion of the family of O’Sioridain who anglicised their name to Sheridan. In 1641 there was a concerted effort by the Confederates to install the Catholic clergy in the houses, churches and cathedrals then occupied by the clergy of the Church of Ireland (an action to be repeated, albeit on a smaller scale, in 1689). Although Bedell was loved by the Irish he was ejected from his palace and was sheltered by Sheridan, who went unmolested – a sign that the Confederates’ cause was not entirely a religious one, but was resistance to the English occupation of Ireland.

The destruction of numerous Irish cathedrals by Cromwell was a direct result of their having been occupied by the Catholic bishops – and Cromwell, being a Presbyterian, saw no reason for them to be preserved as properties of the Church of Ireland, which was suppressed and replaced with Presbyterian church government, as in England. Again, as in England, Presbyterian ministers were dispossessed at the Restoration and the polity of the Church of Ireland was restored, but Ireland was a very different place in 1660 from what it had been in 1641, and the English Protestant ascendancy was irrevocably alienated from the Irish people.

Dennis Sheridan, the protegé of William Bedell the founder of ‘Gaelic Protestantism’, had two sons who became Bishops of the Church of Ireland. Patrick Sheridan was Bishop of Cloyne from 1679-82, while Dennis’s youngest son William became Bishop of Bedell’s old see, Kilmore, in 1681.

On 12th March 1689 James II landed at Kinsale in order to secure the Kingdom of Ireland, in which he was supported by Irish Catholics. Some repossession by Catholics of Church of Ireland property occurred at this time – Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin was given over to Catholic worship and Alexius Stafford was appointed Dean. It is perhaps understandable, therefore, that the bishops of the Church of Ireland were hostile to James’ regime since they did not receive the same consideration as their English counterparts. On James’ defeat in 1691, all of the Irish bishops swore the oaths to William of Orange, with the exception of William Sheridan, Bishop of Kilmore, the only Irish Non-Juror. Sheridan was removed from his see and died in 1711. With him, the Royalist Church of Ireland died too as he made no provision for the ordination of successors; there was no Non-Juring Church of Ireland in parallel to the Hanoverian church.

After 1691 the Church of Ireland was the resort of English and Irish Protestants who could not manage to find preferment in the Church of England – an increasingly moribund church with little or no relevance to the Irish people, which collected and spent tithes paid by a population to whom it meant nothing. In 1801 the Church of Ireland disappeared altogether when it was absorbed into the Church of England in the same way that Ireland was absorbed into the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the Church of Ireland underwent a kind of resurrection in 1871 when it was disestablished; Episcopalian Irish Protestants were forced to find a new identity, and to do so they turned to the ancient Irish church and many were drawn to the nationalist cause – but those events lie outside the scope of my title.

Seal of the General Assembly of the Catholic Confederacy of Kilkenny

The Confederacy of Kilkenny functioned as a de facto state in Ireland from 1642 to 1649, controlling large parts of the country and based, as its name suggests, in the cities of Kilkenny and Waterford. The raison d’etre of the Confederacy was threefold, and represented by its motto: first, the demand for religious toleration of Catholics in Ireland (the huge majority of the population) which Charles I’s government had failed to grant; second, the recognition of Charles I as King of Ireland; third, the demand for true self-government for Ireland. The Confederacy is politically and constitutionally interesting from a High Tory point of view, since although the Confederates ultimately gave their name to the Tories in England by a long chain of pejorative etymology, the doctrine of passive obedience espoused later by the English Tories can scarcely be attributed to the Confederates, whose obedience was modified by two crucial and interlinked imperatives: religious toleration and the self-determination of the Irish people.

These imperatives were interlinked because the Irish defined themselves as different from the English through their continued Catholicism and, indeed, they viewed the Roman Catholic Church as a representative of and embodiment of the Irish people, just as many in England viewed the Church of England. Unlike in England, the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was not missionary but truly national; the Confederacy of Kilkenny made the putative Catholic commonwealth of Ireland a fact.

The origins of the Confederacy lay in the Irish rising of 1641 against the royal government, which was essentially the consequence of royal neglect of Ireland as well as the intransigence of Church of Ireland clergy such as the Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, on the King’s proposed Graces. The Irish Catholics were extremely loyal to the Stuart Kings but the continued plantations of the country with foreign Protestants and the failure of the King to listen to Irish petitions for religious toleration, in addition to the constitutional injustice of Poynings’ Law, made a reluctant rebellion inevitable. Had Charles paid more attention to Ireland he would not have had to negotiate later for a Catholic army – loyal Irish Catholics could have crossed to England and crushed the Parliamentarians early on in the English Civil War.

The Dublin government led by Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford and then James Butler, Earl of Ormonde existed in order to protect the interests of the plantations, since it consisted only of Protestants; although Catholics had not yet formally lost their right to sit in the Irish Parliament, the Parliament contained an unrepresentative number of Protestants. Since the Confederates recognised the King and his Parliament, they self-consciously avoided setting themselves up as an alternative to the legislature of the Irish state. Consequently, the General Assembly was not divided into houses of Lords and Commons; peers, bishops and commoners all sat on the Assembly. Likewise, the speaker of the General Assembly was not addressed as such but by his surname, and was called the Prolocutor. Nevertheless, the Assembly had its own seal and functioned as an alternative government until such time as the King would grant Catholics a role in the official organs of the Irish state. It set up it own courts, raised its own armies and minted its own currency (see below).

Ormonde’s cessation of war with the Confederacy in September 1643 was the only sensible course since there were by this time Parliamentarian rebels on Irish soil, who posed a far more serious threat than the Catholics. In 1644 a Confederate army crossed to Scotland to aid the Royalists there. However, Ormonde betrayed the Confederacy and the King when he handed over Dublin to the Parliamentarians in August 1647, preferring the Parliamentarians to hold the city rather than the Confederates. At the subsequent Battle of Dungan’s Hill the Leinster army of the Confederacy was destroyed by a Protestant force consisting of both Royalists and Parliamentarians. However, by January 1649 the Confederacy was prepared to accept help from Ormonde against the encroaching Parliamentarians and Ormonde realised the situation in England was desperate enough to consider an alliance with them.

However, in 1648 the Confederacy was fatally weakened when Owen Roe O’Neill broke with the Confederates in his belief that it was not defending the rights of the Gaelic Irish; he became an ally of the Parliamentarians and was supported by the Papal Nuncio Rinuccini. Many of the Confederate leaders were ‘Old English’ Catholic families who had supported Queen Elizabeth during the Catholic risings of the 16th century, and this rankled with the native aristocracy. When the combined Confederate-Royalist army failed to take Dublin on 2nd August 1649 Cromwell had a place to land his army of Ironsides, whose genocidal campaign changed Ireland forever. The Confederates resisted town by town but the end for the Confederacy of Kilkenny finally came on 12th May 1652 when Thomas Preston surrendered the city of Galway, the last in Confederate hands, after a nine-month siege.

Irish Confederate Halfpenny (Kilkenny Money)

The Confederacy minted its own coinage, not so much to demonstrate its authority but ‘of necessity’, as money was desperately needed to pay the armies and no new money was in circulation. On 15th November 1642 the General Assembly decreed that ‘there shall be 4000l. of red copper coyned to farthings and halfpence, with the harp and the crown on one side and two septers on the other’. This resulted in the production of the Kilkenny Money (1642). In the same decree, the General Assembly ordered that silver plate should also be made into coin, giving rise to the crowns known as Blacksmith’s Money. In 1643, the Confederates issued what has become known as Rebel Money, a variation on the Ormonde Money issued by the royal government in Dublin, which substituted a cross for the royal cipher. In addition, Confederates holding Bandal, Kinsale and Youghal minted local issues in those places, mostly of small denominations.

The Confederacy of Kilkenny had some similarities to the next independent Irish state to succeed it, the Irish Free State of 1922. Unlike the Irish Free State, the Confederacy did not begin with Republican aims and later set them aside, but the Confederate courts of the 1640s could be compared with the Republican courts of the 1920s that were set up in defiance of the British administration in those areas under the control of the IRA in the Anglo-Irish War. Likewise, the armies raised by the Confederacy were not much different from the IRA in that war. The eventual reluctant co-operation of Ormonde with the Confederacy likewise mirrors the co-operation of the British with the Free State on the basis that Republicans were more dangerous than rebels prepared to acknowledge the King – although, in the 17th century, the republicans were Protestant settlers!

Those ignorant of Irish history often remark that 17th century conflicts lingered on there for longer than anywhere else; the truth is that both Unionists and Nationalists updated their political ideology even if their aims remained the same. The Unionists modelled themselves on the ascendancy classes of the British Empire and treated the Irish like recalcitrant natives, while the Nationalists from 1798 became Republicans, basing their claim for Ireland’s independence on the right to national self-determination of the Irish people. The latter is a great tragedy of Irish history, since it gave an essentially ethnic identity to the Irish state and it has actually held back the unification of Ireland. The modern Scottish National Party has learnt from the mistakes of Irish Republicans and self-consciously downplays the ethnic element of the struggle for independence.

Had Irish Nationalists made a constitutional argument for Irish independence, rather than one based upon ethnic identity, the British government would have had far less justification in withholding Irish unity by keeping control of the six counties. Irish Nationalists could have argued, for instance, that Poynings’ Law and the Act of Union of 1801 were unconstitutional and illegal; they could have argued that the Plantations were an illegal act imposed upon Ireland, and that the Confederacy of Kilkenny represented the legitimate government of Ireland until Cromwell’s invasion. The strength of the Confederacy was its unification of Gaelic Irish with ‘Old English’ Catholics in the cause of religious toleration and Ireland’s independence. The Republican ideological commitments of modern Irish politics (which are, after all, foreign imports to Ireland) have held back and still hold back the unification of Ireland; ethnic animosities have taken the place of legitimate constitutional grievances.

Forward in Faith’s Conference has produced a variety of different views on the Pope’s forthcoming Apostolic Constitution; it has revealed the divisions at the heart of Anglo-Catholicism that may yet unsettle Rome’s plans for an orderly exodus from the Church of England into new personal ordinariates. However, Geoffrey Kirk’s comments leave me with the feeling that a disingenuousness and mercenary spirit lies at the heart of Anglo-Catholicism that I have long suspected. Fr. Kirk may think that he has come to the end of a long journey and now finally realises that he must become a Roman Catholic, but one would have thought that he had had long enough to come to this realisation before now. That he would make such a statement only once the Pope has given assurances that his ‘Anglican heritage’ will be protected suggests that some Anglo-Catholic clergy are interested in what Rome can do for them rather than in what they can do for Rome. Unless the Church of England is prepared to hand over church buildings (a crucial factor in keeping many clergy from converting in 1994), I suspect that no more will go over to Rome now than would have done anyway once the first woman bishop is ordained – and it is certain that, had the Pope done nothing, there would nevertheless have been an Anglican exodus on a modest scale.

Most interesting among the comments made at the Conference were those of the Bishop of Chichester. Without putting forward a particular point of view on the Apostolic Constitution in his keynote address, he nevertheless gently questioned the ecclesiology that lies behind personal ordinariates. If the church is a bishop and his local church, as both Scripture and Apostolic tradition dictate, one is making a dramatic departure from Anglican tradition by accepting from Rome a status that is not ‘churchly’ but effectively reduces Anglo-Catholic clergy to a kind of ‘chaplaincy’ to Catholics with peculiar tastes. After all, what is the Pope’s long-term intention? Will Anglo-Catholic personal ordinariates gradually integrate into the Roman mainstream, so that Anglo-Catholicism disappears altogether? Or will they be a permanent arrangement, still here in 400 years time, which suggests a major innovation in the canonical structure of the Church and a move, as I have already pointed out, against the ecclesiopolitical spirit of Vatican II?

Anglo-Catholicism at present is, in a sense, inherently unCatholic in its ecclesiology. Everyone knows that the theological extremities of different denominations touch, and at the lower end of the spectrum co-operation and para-church structures between Anglicans, Baptists and Presybterians are commonplace. However, the ecclesiology of low church Anglicans is such that this makes perfect sense for them. Likewise at the Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum belief and practice is identical to that of the Roman Catholic Church. Roman Catholic doctrine prohibits the kind of permeability, however, that we see between denominations at the low church end, yet from the Anglo-Catholic side such permeability is longed for. In this way, Anglo-Catholics are unCatholic; they do not have the Roman Catholic confidence in their own identity as a church, indeed as the church. Those who now confidently assert that ‘The Anglican experiment is over,’ as one Forward in Faith delegate put it, are forgetting that Anglo-Catholicism was not merely a set of practices; it was once, at a time that has evidently been forgotten, an ecclesiological theory. What has become of ‘branch theory’, whereby the Church of England is regarded as a branch of the Apostolic Church together with the Roman and Orthodox branches?

The answer, perhaps, is to be found in the fact that the foundation of ‘branch theory’ has subsided. Anglo-Catholics are wont to claim that the Church of England was once Catholic in belief – and they are quite correct that from the Act of Supremacy in 1535 to the death of Henry VIII in 1547 Ecclesia Anglicana differed in virtually none of its doctrines from Rome. It differed in one important respect only; that the King of England, having imperial jurisdiction, was the Head of the Church in his dominions. The basis for this historical claim was Cranmer’s Collectanea Satis Copiosa of more or less dubious documents, but the essential argument was to be found in William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man (in spite of the fact that Henry had Tyndale burnt for heresy). Tyndale argued that the King, as the father of his people, could not therefore accept the jurisdiction over his people’s church (the church being the embodiment of the people in a Christian commonwealth) of a foreign power. The King, therefore, is the Head of the Church of his people as he is at the head of the Christian Commonwealth. Arguments from history could confirm this too; in particular, the authority that the Byzantine Emperors had to summon Councils has long been a problem for the Pope’s exclusive claims in later centuries to be able to do so. The Byzantine Emperor was indisputably regarded as the Head of the Church and Orthodox rulers have continued to be so since (viz. the Tsars of Russia and the Kings of Georgia).

Tyndale’s argument was the foundation for the doctrine of Divine Right, a belief that fundamentally opposed Rome’s claims of jurisdiction in spite of the fact that many who held it most passionately were attracted by other aspects of Rome. Archbishop William Laud, according to legend, was offered a Cardinal’s hat if he would convert to Catholicism. That he did not accept this offer has more to do with his respect for the rights of his Sovereign than with his abhorrence of Popery. The doctrine of Divine Right sustained the Church of England through the persecution of the Commonwealth and forged an identity that went on to sustain the Non-Jurors who were the definitive expression of High Church principles. Yet there is not a single case, as far as I am aware, of a Non-Juring High Churchman converting to Catholicism in the 18th century, even when Catholicism was the religion of his Sovereign.

In short, without the doctrine of Divine Right accepted as a serious proposition, genuine High Church Anglicanism becomes impossible. Divine Right, the foundation of the Church of England’s distinctive identity from Presbyterians on the one hand and Catholics on the other has subsided. The Anglo-Catholicism of the 19th century, although it harked back to Henry VIII’s Ecclesia Anglicana, lacked the profound belief in the King’s authority over the church; consequently it has lost its distinctive identity and slipped into being subservient to Rome.

By their willingness to accept Rome’s invitation, the Anglo-Catholics of Forward in Faith have proved once and for all that they are in no way the successors of the High Churchmanship of the Non-Jurors, who no matter how close they approached Rome in doctrine would never have accepted her discipline.

In the aftermath of the Pope’s authorisation of personal ordinariates for ex-Anglicans the notion that it constitutes a snub to the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has occurred to some, such as Damien Thompson in the Telegraph. Thompson’s characterisation of the Catholic bishops as liberal and trendy and the Anglo-Catholics as worshipping in crumbling neogothic churches in industrial areas may be somewhat stereotyped (all of the ‘Forward in Faith’ parishes I have come across have been in rather attractive buildings in less than industrial areas), but it is certainly true that a cultural gulf exists between ‘more-Catholic-than-the-Pope’ Anglo-Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church in England. The Irish influence on the latter is pronounced and, in many areas, the importance of other cultural influences such as that of the Poles is increasing. The majority of senior clergy in the English Catholic Church are of Irish descent and of a generation that trained in the immediate aftermath of Vatican II. The distinctive ‘Englishness’ of Anglo-Catholicism and its liturgical conservatism are alien to them. Perhaps the reason for this is that Ultramontanism finally defeated Cisalpinism in the English Catholic Church at the end of the 19th century; the reformed Ultramontanism of Vatican II is the ecclesiopolitical creed of the vast majority of English Catholics, who have largely lost their distinctive English identity. The Ecclesia Anglicana that the 17th century Benedictines dreamed of and which was still a possibility when the Sarum rite was proposed for the Diocese of Westminster, was definitively crushed by the decrees of Vatican I.

Pope Benedict’s decree is couched in the language of the reformed Ultramontanism of Vatican II but it is certainly at odds – dramatically at odds, in fact – with the spirit of the Council. The restoration of the discipline of the primitive church through the elevation of the bishop’s role (as opposed to the priest’s) was a key element of the Council’s reforms, yet the sidelining of diocesan bishops by the creation of personal ordinariates is likely to be as popular with the Bishops’ Conference as the appearance in dioceses of Opus Dei houses that owe no allegiance whatsoever to the local bishop. Insofar as many Catholic bishops in England consider their role in the diocese important and in this way want to implement the reforms of Vatican II, they are ‘liberal’; they are hostile to the centralising tendency of the Church just as their predecessors were hostile to the Jesuits since their only allegiance was to Rome. Ironically, like the Jesuits and Opus Dei, the new ordinariates of ex-Anglicans may become the next group of Ultramontane wildcards whose authority is the Pope’s mandate alone who trample on the territory of the local bishops.

Indirectly, the Pope’s move may be seen to demean and undermine the distinctive cultural inheritance of England’s Catholics, to the extent that it still exists. The Anglo-Catholics have long proclaimed themselves to be the guardians of England’s pre-Reformation heritage and, now that they will be within the Catholic Church, the claim of English Catholics to be the inheritors of that tradition will be weakened. If the episcopal hierarchy in England, the descendents of the Apostolic Vicars and the Archpriests, can no longer claim to represent the whole body of English Catholicism, Catholics in England will be divided. In a certain sense, ‘old’ English Catholics might even come to be seen as a second-class, ‘foreign’ kind of Catholic compared to the new Catholic Anglo-Catholics.

It seems to me very doubtful that the Church of England will permit church buildings to fall into Catholic hands – it is very reluctant to do so at present, and I see no reason why that should change after the Pope’s pronouncement. The fear of losing their church buildings has long been a factor that has kept Forward in Faith priests in the Church of England and I suspect that it still may.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s announcement that the Holy See will approve ‘Personal Ordinariates’ for Anglicans wanting to join the Catholic Church could well spell the end of the phenomenon of Anglo-Catholicism, although it seems to me that the most significant feature of the Pope’s plans is to allow married clergy to be ordained as Catholic priests, something which has not been permitted since special arrangements were made for the mass exodus of Anglo-Catholics when women were first ordained in 1994. The promise to allow ex-Anglicans to keep their liturgical and spiritual traditions is not as significant as this, given that a large number of Anglicans use Common Worship which is derived from the ICEL translation of the Catholic mass; Anglo-Catholics differ in the respect they accord the Book of Common Prayer, with many abandoning it as too Protestant. It is puzzling that proponents of the ordination of women bishops have condemned the Pope’s move as poaching when it considerably advances their cause by potentially removing Anglo-Catholic opposition to women bishops; likewise, it is amusing that Forward in Faith should welcome the move since, in one sense, it represents the end of Forward in Faith’s existence – unless, that is, Forward in Faith makes a seamless transition across the denominational boundary to be reborn as a personal ordinariate of the Catholic Church!

However, the media may have overstated the impact of the Pope’s decision, insofar as a number of Anglo-Catholics claim to differ with Roman Catholics on the scope of Papal authority. The statement from the CDF makes quite clear that an acceptance of the Catholic Church’s understanding of the Petrine ministry (i.e. the doctrinal statements of Vatican I and Vatican II) will be required of anyone seeking to establish a personal ordinariate. Many Anglo-Catholics doubtful about the validity of Anglican orders have orders from the Dutch Old Catholics and have historic links with schismatic groups that refused to accept the decrees of Vatican I. It would be surprising, to say the least, if every Anglo-Catholic priest were to find himself suddenly able to bury the hatchet with Rome on the issue of Papal Infallibility, and I suspect fewer than the 1000 predicted by the Bishop of Fulham will accept the Pope’s invitation.

This move of the Pope’s ought to please everyone at the extreme ends of the argument over women bishops – the proponents because their opponents will migrate, and the opponents because it will be easier for them to migrate. The broad church liberal ‘high’ Anglicans (of whom Rowan Williams is one) will genuinely suffer from this, because it blows out of the water their belief that the Church of England can incorporate Anglo-Catholics without reservation.

The ‘No’ campaign to the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland has seen some curious bedfellows, notably Sinn Fein and Nigel Farrage, the UKIP leader, who came to campaign in Ireland on behalf of the pan-European ‘Libertas’. Farrage’s appearance in Dublin went down like a lead balloon and did untold damage to the ‘No’ campaign, insofar as it reinforced the view of ‘Yes’ campaigners that for Ireland to estrange herself from Europe means coming closer to Britain. It now appears that Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, has given a boost to the ‘No’ campaign by suggesting that Ireland has been right to resist the EU’s growth in power since it threatens Ireland’s moral and cultural identity. The Irish Bishops’ Conference seems to have remained silent on the matter, although the Bishop of Down and Connor has said that Catholics may vote ‘Yes’ in good conscience.

Enthusiasm for Europe has been a natural outgrowth of nationalism in Ireland and it fundamentally distinguishes the politics of, say, Fine Gael and its conservative counterpart in Britain. Nevertheless, a tipping point must come when Irishmen see that the threat to their independence from Europe could be as great or greater than the threat from Britain. Concerns about the economy have blinded Fine Gael to the danger Ireland faces, and which Cardinal Bertone has pointed out. Hopefully ‘Libertas’ has not done too much damage to the ‘No’ campaign, and the Irish people will not allow themselves to be bullied into accepting a treaty that could compromise the Republic.

Arms of the House of Aberffraw, senior line descendents of the House of Cunedda

In 1283, when Edward I defeated Llewellyn the Last, the Principality of Wales (Llewelyn’s lands in Gwynedd and those of his native vassals) came under the rule of the English king by the Statute of Rhuddlan. In other words, the title of Prince of Wales was merged in the English Crown but not abolished, since it was granted by Edward I to his son. The Principality of Wales remained a distinct entity, a right of the English crown, administered by the Council of Wales. The Council’s continuing existence until its abolition after the Revolution in 1689 indicates that the ‘Principality of Wales’ can be spoken of until that point, and for Jacobites the abolition of the Council and, implicitly, the Principality of Wales as a distinct entity from England by a revolutionary government cannot be regarded as legitimate. It is incorrect to see Henry VIII’s series of acts to harmonise English and Welsh law between 1535 and 1542 as Acts of Union in the same sense as the Acts of Union of 1707 and 1801; they were designed to incorporate the March of Wales more fully into England and their effect on the Principality was incidental. To all intents and purposes, in spite of the imposition of county administration on the Welsh and the acts of Henry VIII, the Principality of Wales continued to exist as a theoretical entity until the Revolution.

Numerous Welsh aristocrats, many descended from the old native nobility, showed great loyalty to the House of Stuart and Wales was a hotbed of Jacobitism. Most famously, Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 3rd Baronet, decided not to raise a Welsh force to join with the Prince Regent when he entered England in 1745. Had he done so, the retreat from Derby might never have taken place and George of Hanover might have been overthrown. Sir Watkin was the son of Jane Thelwall, great-granddaughter of Sir John Wynn, 1st Baronet of Gwydir, who was the descendent of Owain Glyndwr (last native Prince of Wales) and Head of the House of Aberffraw.

The Houses of Cunedda, Aberffraw and Dinefwr

In around 440AD, if the ancient Welsh genealogies are to be believed, Cunedda Wledig, a descendent of Roman or Romano-British war leaders in the ‘Old North’ came from the Kingdom of Gododdin (near Edinburgh) to the land of the Venedoti, Gwynedd. The straggling dynasty that Cunedda established and that bore his name provided the kings of both Gwynedd and Deheubarth.

Rhodri Mawr (c. 820-878), was one of the few kings of the House of Cunedda to unite Wales but the traditional principle of partition required him to divide his kingdom between his sons. Rhodri’s eldest son Anarawd ap Rhodri established the senior House of Aberffraw, which ruled Gwynedd and then all Wales until the defeat of Llewellyn the Last (1223-83). Rhodri’s grandson Hywel Dda (880-950) established the Kingdom of Deheubarth. However, the Kingdoms of Wales were united in the Principality of Wales, ruled by the House of Aberffraw, in the 1160s.

Owain Glyndwr, the last native Prince of Wales (who asserted his sovereignty by summoning a Parliament at Machynlleth) apparently died without issue. At this point the position of head of the House of Aberffraw reverted to Robert, eldest son of Maredudd ap Hywel of Tywyn, who became the progenitor of the Wynns of Gwydir, the last of whom was Sir John Wynn, 5th Baronet, who died in 1719. Sir John died without issue but Jane Thelwall, descendent of a daughter of the 1st Baronet, continued the line into the Williams-Wynn family. On this interpretation of the descent of the House of Aberffraw, the present head of the House is the descendent of Jane Thelwall, Sir David Watkin Williams-Wynn, 11th Baronet of Bodelwyddan (b. 1940).

Arms of the Williams-Wynn Baronets, descendents of the House of Aberffraw through Sir John Wynn, 1st Baronet and Jane Thelwall

The Kings of Deheubarth, the junior descendents of Rhodri Mawr, also have descendents today. Rhys ap Gruffydd, King of Deheubarth (1132-97) had a daughter Gwenllian (d. 1236) who married Edynfed Fychan, Seneschal of Gwynedd, who was the ancestor of Owain Tewdyr who apparently married Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V. His second son by Catherine, Edmund Tudor, 1st Duke of Richmond, married Lady Margaret Beaufort, making him the progenitor of the Tudor dynasty. When Elizabeth died in 1603, the last of the direct Tudor line, the Tudor succession reverted to the descendents of Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII, who had married James IV of Scotland and was the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots and great-grandmother of James VI of Scotland, the first Stuart to rule England.

Arms of Owain Tewdyr, descendent of the House of Dinefwr (Kings of Deheubarth)

If the House of Tudor is taken to represent the legitimate descent of the House of Dinefwr, the successor of the House of Tudor (Franz von Wittelsbach) is the head of the House of Dinefwr.

Wales’ Constitutional Status

It is clear that, for Jacobites, the Principality of Wales exists as a separate entity from England, administered by the Council of Wales. What is less clear is whether the English Crown ever had the right to annexe the Principality to itself. Aside from questions concerning the legitimacy of the Plantagenets as rulers of England (let alone Wales), the legitimacy of the Statute of Rhuddlan is doubtful. If the Statute of Rhuddlan were to be repealed it would leave Jane Thelwall’s successor as Prince of Wales and, presumably, legitimate the acts of Owain Glyndwr as Prince of Wales, most notably his summoning of a Parliament. This would require a Parliament to be established for Wales.

It may be that Jacobite legitimism requires one, in all honesty, to disregard the Statute of Rhuddlan. In the absence of this solution and, bearing in mind the present King’s descent from Hywel Dda and the Stuart monarchs’ implicit recognition of the Statute of Rhuddlan, it seems that a Jacobite must at the very least support Welsh devolution and the Welsh Assembly as an approximation to the legal and constitutional recognition of the Principality of Wales.

In this regard it is interesting that, when the Welsh Assembly requested armorial bearings the College of Arms responded in 2008 by producing a new badge for Wales. This is the arms of the Princes of Wales surmounted by St. Edward’s Crown (rather than the Prince of Wales’ coronet, as in the arms of Charles, Prince of Wales). The use of St. Edward’s Crown symbolises the sovereignty of the Queen of England rather than the Prince of Wales (who has no actual sovereignty over Wales), and the placing of the Crown over the arms of Llewellyn would heraldically indicate that these are the arms of the Queen in right of Prince of Wales (compare the use of St. Edward’s Crown in the arms of the Isle of Man). Whilst a coat of arms can scarcely be accounted a constitutional change, the use of these arms on Welsh Assembly measures is equivalent to the use of the royal arms on Acts of the Westminster Parliament, thereby suggesting that Wales is a distinct constitutional entity from England.

The Royal Badge of Wales, symbolising the royal authority of the Welsh Assembly

Firle Place in Sussex is the seat of the senior branch of the Gage family, a junior branch of which inherited Hengrave Hall outside Bury St. Edmunds as a result of the marriage of Sir John Gage, 1st Baronet of Firle, to Penelope Darcy, granddaughter of Sir Thomas Kytson the Younger of Hengrave. Although in the usual course of events Hengrave would have been inherited by her eldest son, the 2nd Baronet of Firle (in which case it might still be in the Gages’ possession), Penelope settled it on her third son Edward, who was created 1st Baronet of Hengrave by Charles II in 1662.

Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Kytson the Younger, wife of Thomas Darcy, Earl Rivers and mother of Penelope

Penelope, daughter of Mary Darcy, wife of 1) Sir George Trenchard, 2) Sir John Gage and 3) Sir William Hervey, mother of Sir John Gage 2nd Bt Firle and Sir Edward Gage 1st Bt Hengrave

Sir Edward Gage, 1st Bt Hengrave

The Hengrave Gages became extinct in 1887 but, unlike the Gages of Firle, who conformed to the Church of England in 1714, the Hengrave Gages remained Recusants to the last. The Firle Gages consequently have little political interest attaching to them after 1714, and Firle Place itself, which would appear to have begun as an early Tudor house with a courtyard and great hall just like Hengrave, was remodelled in the early Georgian period by the family newly freed from Recusancy fines. However, the interest of Firle is in its paintings of members of the Gage family that were undoubtedly replicated at Hengrave but, since the sale of all the contents of that house in 1947, have subsequently been lost to the historical record.

Sir John Gage, Lord Chamberlain to Queen Mary I

Fortunately, there are engravings of a few of the paintings once at Hengrave to be found in John Gage’s History and Antiquities of Hengrave in Suffolk (1822) that can be compared to the paintings on the great staircase at Firle today. There is a full length portrait of Sir John Gage the Elder, Lord Chamberlain to Mary I, embedded in the 18th century panelling. This painting is posthumous, done in the early 17th century, and it is reproduced facing p. 228 in Gage, ‘From the original at Hengrave’. Presumably the one at Hengrave was likely to be a later copy of the Firle portrait, since it would make sense for the original to be in the possession of the senior line. At Firle there are also small portraits of Sir George Trenchard, Lady Penelope’s first husband, and Sir William Harvey her third and last. It is likely that these were reproduced at Hengrave in some form as well. Facing p. 224 Gage reproduces a portrait of Lady Penelope herself at the age of 14 or 15, a copy of which is on the staircase at Firle. However, judging by its style I strongly suspect that it is a copy of the late 18th or early 19th centuries from the original at Hengrave. Hengrave was, after all, Lady Penelope’s main residence. The portrait of Sir John Gage, 1st Baronet Firle on the staircase is similar to, but not the same as, the portrait Gage has facing p. 239, and the portrait of Mary Darcy, Countess Rivers (Penelope’s mother, who lived all her life at Hengrave and at her house in Colchester) was new to me entirely. It shows her late in life, wearing black with a single string of perpendicular pearls and a black brimmed hat. There is a full length portrait in the Great Hall at Firle of a lady in a violet dress holding a half opened fan, which is supposed to be Lady Penelope in her 20s or 30s, but the identification has not been established.

Sir John Gage, husband of Penelope Darcy

The arms of the Gages of Firle is Gage quartered with St. Clere, just as at Hengrave, but the Hengrave Gages evidently differenced their arms by the introduction of the red hand to the centre of the red saltire of Gage, signifying a baronetcy. Likewise, the crest of a ram was never used by the Hengrave Gages.

The tomb of the elder Sir John Gage in Firle church

On the day when Her Majesty the Queen became the first monarch to visit the site of the Battle of Culloden, a poll revealed that a majority of the Scottish people support a referendum on independence. The news is not quite as good as it seems, since only 42% of people agreed that ‘The Scottish government should negotiate a settlement with the government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state.’ However, when the phrase was put more bluntly, ‘In a referendum on independence for Scotland, how would you vote?’ even fewer said that they would vote for independence. The wording of the questions is interesting – whereas the first question requires merely a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, the second requires the respondent to specify independence as their explicit will. Furthermore, the first question implies that independence will be a gradual process and it will be managed by the Scottish government. Yet the use of the phrase ‘Scottish government’ and the idea that it could negotiate a settlement with the United Kingdom government already suggests that the Scottish and UK government are potential equals – which, under current constitutional conditions, they most certainly are not. However, it is encouraging that Scots think of the Scottish government as potentially a real government, and, as Alex Salmond has pointed out, the polls show a ‘driection of travel’ towards independence and growing trust in devolved government.

Scottish independence, when it happens, must not be a revolutionary process or even have the feel of a revolution. Scotland’s independence is her constitutional right, taken from her in 1707; it should never be a crude ethnicist aspiration but instead the calm insistence that what is rightfully Scotland’s should be restored. I am surprised that there was not more controversy concerning the Queen’s visit to Culloden (I note that she wore dark blue – presumably not a conscious reference to the Hanoverian substitution of dark for light blue as the ‘royal’ blue to distinguish themselves from the Stuarts!), but it is a good thing that there was not. The restoration of Personal Union between England and Scotland in the person of the Queen is a crucial element in any future independence settlement – although if, as would be logical for an independent Scottish Parliament, all of the Acts of Succession as they apply to Scotland were ultimately to be repealed, it would not follow that the Prince of Wales would succeed the Queen as King of Scotland; consequently any Scottish Parliament serious about genuine independence would sound out the legitimate descendent of the Scottish kings.

David Cameron has very belatedly said that he will not interfere in Scottish devolution, but the Tory Party still has a long way to go before it throws off the Imperialist mantle of Unionism. Much of the fear of Scottish independence at Westminster seems to focus on the military dimension; the SNP has made clear its opposition to the renewal of Trident and the keeping of Britain’s so-called ‘nuclear deterrent’ in the Firth of Clyde. General Sir Mike Jackson’s comments on the issue highlight the worry there is at Westminster that it could become a divisive issue in Scotland. It is pleasing that the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh has raised the profile of this issue, which has the potential to sway Scottish voters towards independence in a future referendum, just as the invasion of Iraq produced more support for ending the Union.

The deposition of the Speaker of the House of Commons ought to be a disturbing event to both conservatives and liberals alike. The Speaker, who represents the institution of Parliament itself, has been unseated by the Prime Minister, the leader of Her Majesty’s Government. Whether the Prime Minister directly deposed Michael Martin or did so indirectly by declining to lend him his support is inimportant; from a liberal point of view, the Prime Minister who in a constitutional monarchy exercises the Royal Prerogative has triumphed over Parliament – surely a shocking return to the days of Charles I for those who despise the notion of royal interference in Parliament. For conservatives, it is horrifying that the leader of the Government should triumph over Parliament. It has been said repeatedly that the institution of Parliament has been damaged by the expenses scandal, and that may be true, but the thought that the authority of Parliament should be subordinated to the Government so utterly is more unpleasant, and will have more lasting consequences, than any amount of ‘mortgage flipping’ by MPs.

The behaviour of MPs with regard to their expenses is, ultimately, a matter of their personal integrity, and it is deeply regrettable that the Palace of Westminster cannot operate like a ‘gentleman’s club’ – that is to say, on honour. Such a concept clearly no longer exists in politics. Short-sighted commentators are evidently delighted that MPs have forced Michael Martin to quit the Speaker’s Chair, acclaiming it as a revolutionary assertion of the power of the people. In reality it is an assertion of the power of MPs and political parties against Parliament – and primarily an assertion of the power of the government, which in spite of having its MPs discredited is now able to shunt the blame onto the Speaker’s shoulders. In this regard, the Archbishop of Glasgow’s comments on Michael Martin’s departure are the most sensible I have yet heard.

Constitutional iconoclasts, who would like to see the constitution demolished, are gleeful; everyone else should be saddened and concerned by this episode. In my own view the only acceptable solution to the expenses crisis would have been the dissolution of Parliament by the one person who does genuinely hold an authority that exceeds Parliament’s – the Queen. The expenses scandal has shown the members of Parliament to be flawed; ought we therefore to accept proposed changes from a Government composed of those same members? In the British constitution the only authority that exceeds that of Parliament is not the people’s but the monarch’s. If that principle is not maintained the constitution is heading for its latest disaster, and the subordination of Parliament of which Tony Blair could only dream will be achieved by accident by Gordon Brown.