The 1790s have been described as ‘a crucial decade for Ireland, witnessing the rebellion of 1798, a marked polarisation on sectarian lines, and the act of union’. Counter-revolutionary loyalism was, as we have seen, a recognisable feature in Britain by 1792. As Irish loyalists played a vital part in the ‘convergences and conflicts’ of this pivotal decade, and as loyalty in Ireland was a changing and multi-faceted phenomenon before 1789, if the subject is freed from its anachronistic straitjacket, questions arise about the extent to which the Irish variant of this broad ideology drew on indigenous and established patterns of loyalty or was influenced by wider developments like the Reevesite loyal associations begun in Britain in 1792. In short, were Irish loyalists really, as Pitt later claimed, ‘the Brethren of Britons’?

In themselves the events of 1789 did not immediately transform Irish loyalty from pre-revolutionary to counter-revolutionary forms. As in Britain, the French Revolution's first tangible effect was to stimulate political debate and to be welcomed as a Gallic version of 1688 by many reform-minded men who later became loyalists. Though support for the revolution eventually waned among moderate reformers and became associated with extremists, a recognisably loyalist reaction did not appear until late 1792. Before this first phase of irish loyalism can be understood, we must consider changing reactions to the revolution.

The French Revolution's apparent mix of ‘True Whig’ principles and popular activism appealed to the parliamentary reform movement which had emerged from the original Volunteer movement of 1782. Despite links with British reformers like Price and Wyvill, Irish reform had remained moribund since the mid-1780s.