The Invisible Irish by Sherling Rankin;

Author:Sherling, Rankin; [Sherling, Rankin;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2016-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

(2) “A LAWLESS, TURBULENT, AND DANGEROUS

SPIRIT OF INSURGENCY”

A second major reason we posited for the slow-down in clerical migration from 1739 to 1769 was that it was a period decidedly lacking in religio-political strife between the Presbyterians in Ireland and the governments in Dublin or Westminster. Such conflict (at least from the Presbyterian perspective) was religious in nature, as it almost always centered upon the political rights or privileges denied or the penalties applied to Presbyterians in Ireland solely because of their Presbyterianism.14 In direct contrast to the previous period, the years from 1770 to 1810 saw both a major increase in clerical migration and in Presbyterian religio-political conflict with the British government.

During a period that saw more clerical migration than any previous period – ninety-eight clerical migrants in forty-one years – the level of religio-political conflict between Irish Presbyterians and the Irish or British governments was also unprecedented. If considered transatlanticly – for by 1770 the greater Irish Presbyterian community was situated on both sides of the Atlantic – the years from 1770 to 1810 seem to have been completely dominated by conflict with the British government. Indeed, these may well have been the most warlike decades in Irish Presbyterian history.15 The War for Independence in America and the 1798 rebellion in Ireland act as bookends of a bellicose period, and they are the most immediately noticeable of the clashes. Their historical prominence, however, tends to disguise the fact that they are only the most intense points in a larger constellation of conflicts.

First consider nearly forty years of Irish Presbyterian conflict with the British government. Ironically, that conflict might relate to the easing of internal Presbyterian conflict, freeing Presbyterians to focus their bellicosity on those who sanctioned their continued second-class citizenship in Ireland. By 1770 there was relative peace within Ireland’s largest Presbyterian body, the Synod of Ulster. The internecine conflicts that had turned Presbyterian ferocity inward in the earlier years of the century had resulted in the formation in Ireland of a number of splinter groups, and the exodus of those groups may have been the major reason for the Synod’s relative internal tranquility. In addition to the Synod of Ulster, the de facto mainstream body because of its size and age, there was the more theologically liberal New Light (or Non-Subscribing) Presbytery of Antrim. On the other end of the theological spectrum from the Presbytery of Antrim were the Associate Presbyterians, commonly known as Seceders, a group who seceded from the Synod of Ulster over their belief that the synod had allowed too much of the New Light doctrine to seep into its midst.16 However, soon after their secession from the synod, the Seceders themselves suffered schism, splitting into sects called Burghers and Anti-Burghers by choosing to mirror the factions of a dispute amongst Scottish Presbyterians that really had no relevance to Ireland except that Irish Seceders decided to join in.17 There were also the Covenanters. Tending toward radical politics (and the overthrow of “un-Godly” governments), the

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