Catholic Committee (Ireland)

The Catholic Committee or Catholic Convention was an organisation in 18th-century Ireland that campaigned for the rights of Catholics and for the repeal of the Penal Laws. It dissolved itself in 1793 the wake of a Catholic Relief Act. This removed most of the remaining civil disabilities and extended to Catholic the right to vote on the same limited basis Protestants. Divisions between former Committee members emerged over cooperation with the republican United Irishmen whom the Roman Catholic bishops condemned. The Committee reconvened during the short viceroyalty of William Fitzwilliam (1794–1795). When the hopes he had raised of Catholic admission to the Irish Parliament was dashed by his dismissal, large numbers of Catholics began to take the United Irish oath.

Charles O'Conor of Belanagare

Early years[]

By the mid 18th century, agitation in the Catholic cause had begun to shift from the gentry to the rising merchant and professional classes. In 1757 the Catholic Committee was formed by Charles O'Conor; others involved included the historian, doctor, and activist John Curry and Thomas Wyse of Waterford.^[1] Prebendary of Cullen, John Carpenter, future archbishop of Dublin, also joined the Committee.

In 1760, at a meeting at the Elephant Tavern on Essex Street, Dublin, Wyse submitted a plan for a more permanent Catholic Committee, made up of clergy, nobility, and representatives of the people.^[2] Before long, every county in Ireland had a committee usually headed by Catholic merchants and landed gentry. These were based locally on county lines. O'Conor's support for the first Catholic Committees from 1758 was copied nationwide, resulting in the successful, but slow, repeal of most of the Irish penal laws in 1774-1793. From the death of the Old Pretender in 1766, the Papacy started to recognize the Hanoverian kings, and Catholics were seen to be less of a threat to the state than before.

From the beginning there was disagreement between the gentry and the merchants how best to achieve their shared goal of relief from the penal laws. The gentry, who had suffered much in fines and lands lost for adhering to their religion, were apprehensive that an overbold approach would only give rise to greater persecution. The "Quarterage", levied by corporations and guilds to cover the costs of celebrations and regalia of different fraternities, was successfully challenged in court, and efforts to reinstate it legislatively were quashed by Lord Lieutenant Townsend.^[2]

Under Kenmare[]

By 1763, factional disputes all but dissolved the Committee. Despite long periods of inactivity, the Committee continued to exist and in 1773, Thomas Browne, 4th Viscount Kenmare convened a meeting in Dublin. The desire of prominent Catholics to show that they did not wish forcibly to overthrow the constitutional settlement contributed to the development of the Catholic Committee, formed to argue for Catholic relief in Ireland. During the 1770s, with Arthur James Plunkett, seventh earl of Fingall, and Anthony Preston, eleventh Viscount Gormanston, as well as a number of senior bishops, Kenmare formed a conservative party on the committee, arguing that Catholic relief was best obtained by producing declarations of loyalty and maintaining good relations with the Dublin and London administrations. This group became the dominant force on the committee. Kenmare supported the recruitment of soldiers in Ireland to fight for Britain in the American War of Independence during the 1770s.

Assisted by parliamentarians like Edmund Burke, who in 1765 had published Tracts on the Popery Laws, his pro-government policy began to pay dividends with the passage of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 which allowed Roman Catholics to own property and to inherit land, These concessions were made to obtain the support of the Catholic gentry for the war in the colonies so that they might encourage enlistments in the British army.^[3] The Papists Act of 1778 is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (18 George III c. 60) and was the first Act for Roman Catholic relief. Later in 1778 it was also enacted by the Parliament of Ireland. However the Irish Parliament of 1782 was willing to do no more than to repeal the law compelling bishops to quit the kingdom, and the law binding those who had assisted at Mass to give the celebrant's name. Further, Catholics were no longer prohibited from owning a horse worth £5, and Catholic schools might be opened with the consent of the Protestant bishop of the diocese. These small concessions were not supplemented by others for ten years.^[4]

Back Lane Parliament and the 1793 Catholic Relief Act[]

In 1790, Dublin merchant and landowner John Keogh, active on the Committee since 1781, became Chairman.^[5] Parish elections to Committee in February 1791 brought a dramatic change in its composition, with urban, middle-class representatives now in the majority and clearly outnumbering the rural gentry delegates.^[6] Dissatisfied with the moderation of Committee, in October some forty members, including many in the new intake, formed a separate Catholic Society with Theobald McKenna as their secretary. They published the Declaration of the Catholic Society of Dublin to promote unanimity among Irishmen and remove religious prejudices, written by McKenna, demanding total repeal of the penal laws as a matter of right. The declaration caused a split in the Catholic Committee: its more conservative members, led by Lord Kenmare, and the catholic hierarchy seceded.^[7]

Acknowledging the departure of the more conservative faction, at the beginning of 1792 Keogh dismissed Edmund Burke's son, Richard Burke, as assistant secretary and with McKenna's support replaced him Theobald Wolfe Tone, another Protestant but a known democrat. In Dublin Tone was a leading member of the Society of United Irishmen originally formed by his Presbyterian ("Dissenter") friends in Belfast, in the midst of the town's enthusiasm for the French Revolution.^[8]

In the 1792 Irish Parliamentary session petitions in favour of a Catholic relief bill, introduced at London's behest to secure Catholic loyalty in the confrontation with France, were met with unprecedented contempt. In response the Committee successfully organised, through Catholic Church parishes, a country-wide election (organised by McKenna) based, in a revolutionary departure, on the principle of universal manhood suffrage. The 233 delegates convened in Back Lane, Dublin,^[9] where they resolved to appeal over the heads of the Dublin Parliament and Castle administration to the King, George III, for complete emancipation.^[10]

The delegates chosen to carry the petition to London made a point of travelling through Belfast, where Presbyterian supporters insisted on removing the horses from their carriages and pulling them by hand over the Long Bridge over the Lagan into the town.^[10] In January 1793, the delegates were well received in London, with Tone reporting "every reason to be content" with their royal audience.^[11]

In April Dublin Castle put its weight behind Henry Grattan in the passage of a Catholic Relief Act. Catholics were admitted to the franchise on the same limited terms as Protestants (two thirds of the Irish Commons were effectively nominees of the Kingdom's principal landowners). They could take degrees on Trinity College, be called as barristers and serve as army officers and, most controversially of all, could carry arms.

Dissolution and split[]

In the wake of the 1793 Relief Act the Committee voted Tone a sum of £1,500 with a gold medal, subscribed to a statue of the King, and (as agreed in London) voted to dissolve.^[12]

As a final gesture, the Catholic Committee had issued a declaration calling for parliamentary reform. While this displeased the government, it was seen as poor recompense for those radical Dissenters in the North who believed they had hazarded much to advance the Catholic cause.^[13] William Drennan, the original mover of the United Irishmen, complained that the Catholic Committee had “two strings to their bow. One to deal with government, the other to treat with the Society: and its strategy was to go with the one that would promise and deliver the most.^[13]

Members formed a new committee to lobby for Catholic Education and this played a part in securing government funding for Maynooth College in 1795.^[14]

Catholic opinion, however, was not placated. The concessions under the Relief Act were "permissive rather than obligatory and a newly awakened Protestant Ascendancy chose as often as not to withhold them". Moreover the retention of the Oath of Supremacy which continue to bar Catholics from parliament and from state offices, when all else was conceded, seemed petty, and was "interpreted by the newly politicised Catholic populace as final proof that the existing government was their natural enemy".^[15]

Keogh and other Committee men took the United Irish "test" at a time when United men were concluding that "the attainment of an impartial and adequate representation of the Irish nation in parliament"^[16] could be achieved only through an insurrection assisted by the French. The government informer Samuel Turner (himself a delegate from Newry) reported that in the early months of 1797 Keogh was one 22 members of the "National Committee" of the United Irishmen meeting in Dublin. He noted, however, that together with fellow Catholic Committee veterans Thomas Broughall^[17] and Richard McCormick,^[18] Keogh was "of the committee but did not attend".^[19] McKenna alarmed at events in France, had resigned from the society in April 1793.^[7]

The issue came to a head in April 1794 with the arrest of the Reverend William Jackson. An agent of the French Committee of Public Safety, Jackson had been having meetings with Tone in the prison cell of Archibald Hamilton Rowan who had been serving time for distributing Drennan's seditious appeal to Volunteers. Thomas Troy, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and Papal legate, threatened excommunication for any Catholic who took the United Irish test and warned his flock to avoid the "fascinating illusions" of French principles.^[20]

Late in 1794 the Committee briefly reconvened.^[21] Hope of seeing Catholic Emancipation complete had revived under a new viceroy. But having declared in favour of admitting Catholics to Parliament, in February 1795 Earl William Fitzwilliam was recalled after just 6 months in post. Despairing of further reform, Catholics in greater numbers began to flock to the United Irishmen and to their larger aim of independence.^[20]

See also

• Catholic Association
• Cisalpine Club

References[]