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Popular Protestantism in Ulster in the Post-Rebellion Period, c1790-1810

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Myrtle Hill
Myrtle Hill*
Affiliation:
Queen’s University, Belfast
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Extract

Popular Protestantism in Ulster in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, characterized by variety and liveliness, was directly related to events of more immediate national significance. While remaining a mere undercurrent in Irish affairs, Ulster evangelicalism in this important transitional period—shaped and moulded by the rebellion, the Act of Union, and the rise of a more articulate and assertive Catholicism—laid the foundations of a scripture-based, politically conservative Protestantism, which continues to influence the province’s social and political development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 25: The Churches, Ireland and the Irish , 1989 , pp. 191 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 See Miller, David, ‘The Armagh Troubles’ in Clark, Sam and Donnelly, J. S. (eds), Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest 1780-1014 (Manchester, 1983), pp. 155–191 Google Scholar; Crawford, W. H., ‘Economy and Society in south Ulster in the Eighteenth Century’, in Clogher Record, 7 (1975), pp. 251–8 Google Scholar; Senior, H., Orangeism in Ireland and Britain: 1793-1836 (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

2 Ireland’s Mirror or A Chronicle of the Times, 2 vols (Dublin, 1804-5), p iii.

3 Peter Berger discusses manifestations of religious millennialism resulting from crises, disasters, and social disruption in The Social Reality of Religion (London, 1967); see also Susan O’Brien, ‘A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network ‘735-55’. AHR 91 (1986), pp. 811-32.

4 Harrison, J. F. C., The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism: 1780-1850 (London, 1979), p. xiii Google Scholar.

5 Miller, David, ‘Presbyterianism and Modernisation in Ulster’, PP 80 (1980), pp. 66–90 Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., and Brooke, Peter, ‘Controversies in Ulster Presbyterianism, 1790-1836’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1981), p. 35 Google Scholar.

7 Dickson, W. S., Sermon on the Coming of the Son of Man preached before the Particular Synod of Belfast, at their annual meeting, November 14th 1777, Belfast (Belfast, 1777)Google Scholar; see also NIPRO, CR5/5A/1/ 2A, Minutes of the Associate Synod (Burgher), 1779-1814, p. 65; Minutes of the Reformed Presbytery.

8 See the Belfast Newsletter of this period for the general excitement and unrest generated by political events; many examples of millennial excitement could be given, see for example, Mathew Lanktree, Biographical Narrative (Belfast, 18 36), pp. 71,8 5; Memoirs of Francis Dobbs, also Genuine Reports of his speeches in Parliament on the subject of an union, and his Prediction of the Second Coming of the Messiah … (Dublin, 1800); and the minutes of the various synods and the Methodist Conference.

9 The Mss. and Correspondence of James, ist Earl ofCharlemonl, Historical MSS Commission, 2 vols (London, 1891-4), p. 30}.

10 Harrison, The Second Coming, p. 6.

11 For revivalism as a frontier phenomenon, see Bryan Wilson, Religious Sects (London, 1970), pp. 48-51.

12 For a graphic account of the geographical spread of revivalist fervour, see Lanktree, Biographical Narrative, pp. 106-7.

13 See D.N.Hempton,’Methodism in Irish Society, 1770-1830’, TRKS 5, Series, 36(1986), pp. 117-42.

14 The Large Minutes according to the last edition, published during the life of Mr Wesley. Originally published under the title, Minutes of Several Conversations between the Reverend Mr. Wesley and Others, 1744-1789, included in the Minutes of the Methodist Conference in Ireland, 1, pp. xxix-xxx.

15 Minutes of the Methodist Conference in Ireland, volume 1; Crookshank, History of Methodism in Ireland, 3 vols (London, 1885-8), 1, pp. 302, 392,401; 2, pp. 174, 176, 180.

16 Minutes of the Methodist Conference in Ireland, 1, p. 113.

17 See NIPRO, CR6/3, the Journal of Gideon Ouseley, and the letters from the Irish missionaries to the missionary committee in London among the Methodist Missionary Society Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London.

18 See the tables and graphs in Hempton, ‘Methodism in Irish Society’, pp. 140-2.

19 Loughridge, A., The Covenanters in Ireland: A History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Belfast, 1984), p. 28 Google Scholar.

20 Acts and Proceedings of the Associate Synod of Ireland: NIPRO, D1759/1F/1.

21 Introductory Memorial respecting the Establishment and First Attempt of the Evangelical Society of Ulster (Armagh, 1798), p. 2.

22 O‘Brien, ‘A Transatlantic Community of Saints’.

23 Lanktree, Biographical Narrative, pp. 156-7; Ouseley to Lanktree, March, 1805:NlPRO, CR6/ 3; several anecdotes concerning Dow are related in John Kent, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London, 1978), p. 48.

24 Lanktree, Biographical Narrative, p. 84.

25 See for example, Letter from Ann Cooke to her mother, quoted in Lanktree, Biographical Narrative, p. 166.

26 This phrase is used by David Hempton in ‘Bickersteth, Bishop of Ripon: The Episcopate of a Mid-Victorian Evangelical’, NH 17(1982), p. 199.

27 ‘No-one can have any conception of it, but those that are eye witnesses to the crowds of Catholics and others that seem to thirst for the Word’, Charles Graham to Dr Coke, 30 April 1803; see also James Bell to Coke, 23 November 1802: Methodist Archive Research Centre, John Rylands Library, Manchester, MAM PLP 8-3; and Charles Graham to Coke, 11 September 1802: Methodist Missionary Society Archives, Box 74,1802-25.

28 Relations between Ouseley and the Methodist leaders in Dublin became more strained as the 19th century progressed, with Ouseley’s flamboyance increasingly at odds with the move ment’s campaign for respectability and acceptance as an institution in its own right NIPRO, Ouseley Papers, CR6/3 XXVIII.

29 Revd Ferguson, S., Brief Biographical Sketches of some Irish Covenanting Ministers who laboured during the latter half of the Eighteenth Century (Londonderry, 1897)Google Scholar; Loughridge, , The Covenanters in Ireland, p. 50 Google Scholar; see also ‘An Elegy on the Death of Reverend William Staveley’: NIPRO, D1759/ 1F/1.

30 Lovegrove, D. W., ‘The Practice of Itinerant Evangelism in English Calvinistic Dissent 1780-1830’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1780)Google Scholar; Madden, Samuel, Life of Peter Roe (Dublin, 1842), p. 67 Google Scholar.

31 Introductory Memorial respecting the Establishment and First Attempt of the Evangelical Society of Ulster, pp. 7-8.

32 Ibid, and George Hamilton, Armagh, to Rev. J. Eyre, London, 2january 1799: SOAS, Missionary Papers, Box 1, Folder 6.

33 William Gregory, ‘Extracts of a Tour through the North of Ireland, engaged under the patronage of the Evangelical Society ot Ulster, in the summer or the year 1800’: typescript in Linenhall Library, Belfast.

34 Ibid, and Hamilton to LMS, 9 October 1799, Cooper to LMS, 20 June 1709: SOAS, Missionary Correspondence, Box 1, Folder 8.

35 Minutes of the Associate Synod of Ireland, Burgher, 1779-1814; Acts and Proceedings of the Associate Synod of Ireland: NIPRO, D1759/1F/1.

36 Records of the General Synod of Ulster, 3 (Belfast, 1898), pp. 279,298.

37 Gregory, ‘Extracts of a Tour through the North of Ireland’.

38 Church Missionary Society, Minute Books and Abstract Letter Books, 1814-58: Representative Church Body Library, Dublin; Proceedings of the Committee of the Irish Society, 1818-32: Trinity College, Dublin, MS 7644-76450; see the Annual Reports of the Hiberian Bible Society, the London Hibernian Society, and the Irish Evangelical Society in the Halliday Collection, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

39 Desmond Bowen, The Protestant Crusade in Ireland 1800-1870 (Dublin, 1978); I. M. Hehir, ‘New Lights and Old Enemies: the Second Reformation and the Catholics of Ireland, 1800-1835’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1983).

40 Akenson, D. H., The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution 1800-1885 (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Brynne, E., The Church of Ireland in the Age of Catholic Emancipation (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Minutes of the General Synod of Ulster, 1 820-4 °: Challenge and Conflict: Essays in Presbyterian History and Doctrine (Belfast, 1981), pp. 116-47; R. Finlay Holmes, Our Presbyterian Heritage (Belfast, 1985), pp. 110-24.