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Irish History: Antiquity, Conquest and Incomplete Liberty

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Edmund Burke as Historian

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Abstract

It has been well known that Burke was a supporter of the Irish revisionist historians of his day, but his own views on Irish history are often neglected. Burke was different from the Irish patriots of the late eighteenth century in his lesser attention to the historical origins of the Irish legislature. His greater attention within Irish history was more in the realm of religious issues, that is, the history of the Protestant persecutions of the Catholics, especially after 1688–9. Burke’s views on Irish history helped him to shape his own conception of religions, civilisation and the Enlightenment.

This chapter is derived in part from Sora Sato, ‘Edmund Burke’s Views of Irish History’, History of European Ideas, 41 (2015), 387–403.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 2.

  2. 2.

    Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 14. See also L.M. Cullen, ‘The Blackwater Catholics and County Cork Society and Politics in the Eighteenth Century’, in Cork: History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County, ed. Patrick O’Flanagan and Cornelius G. Buttimer (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1993), pp. 535–84 (at 552).

  3. 3.

    Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 21.

  4. 4.

    Bourke, Empire and Revolution, p. 48. Cf. Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 24–5.

  5. 5.

    ‘Burke to Richard Shackleton (12 July 1746)’, in Corr., I, 68. The ‘public Library’ probably means Trinity College Library.

  6. 6.

    See ‘George Montagu to Horace Walpole (27 November 1761)’, in Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W.S. Lewis and others (48 vols., London, 1937–1983), IX, 405; ‘Walpole to Montagu (8 December 1761)’, in Walpole’s Correspondence, IX, 407. See also Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 193.

  7. 7.

    The editor’s ‘Introduction to Part II’, in WS, IX, 400–1.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 404–5.

  9. 9.

    Burke’s views on Irish history have been neglected by modern historians, but see, for example, Séan Patrick Donlan, ‘The “Genuine Voice of its Records and Monuments”? Edmund Burke’s “Interior History of Ireland”’, in Edmund Burke’s Irish Identities, pp. 69–101. Eighteenth-century Irish historiography has also been relatively under-researched, but more historians have worked on it in recent years. The most substantial work for this theme is Clare O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations: Antiquarian Debate and Cultural Politics in Ireland c. 1750–1800 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2004). Recent studies also include Jacqueline R. Hill, ‘Popery and Protestantism , Civil and Religious Liberty: The Disputed Lessons of Irish History 1690–1812’, Past & Present, 118 (1988), 96–129; Clare O’Halloran, ‘Irish Re-Creations of the Gaelic Past: The Challenge of Macpherson’s Ossian’, Past & Present, 124 (1989), 69–95; idem, ‘“The Island of Saints and Scholars”: Views of the Early Church and Sectarian Politics in Late-Eighteenth Century Ireland’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 5 (1990), 7–20; John Patrick Delury, ‘Ex Conflictu Et Collisione: The Failure of Irish Historiography, 1745 to 1790’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 15 (2000), 9–37; Jacqueline Hill, ‘Politics and the Writing of History: the Impact of the 1690s and 1790s on Irish Historiography’, in Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ireland, ed. D. George Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); Clare O’Halloran, ‘Historical Writings , 1690–1890’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature, ed. Margaret Kelleher and Philip O’Leary (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), I, 599–632.

  10. 10.

    John C. Weston, Jr., ‘Edmund Burke’s Irish History: A Hypothesis’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 77 (1962), 397–403 and Walter D. Love, ‘Edmund Burke and an Irish Historiographical Controversy’, History and Theory, 2 (1962), 180–98 are the pioneering and still leading works of the theme, to which the present section clearly owes. See also Walter D. Love, ‘Edmund Burke, Charles Vallancy and the Sebright Manuscripts’, Hermathena, 95 (1961), 21–35; idem, ‘Charles O’Conor of Belanagare and Thomas Leland’s ‘Philosophical’ History of Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 13 (1962), 1–25.

  11. 11.

    Weston, ‘Edmund Burke’s Irish History’, p. 399.

  12. 12.

    ‘O’Conor to John Curry (8 Aug 1768)’, in Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1881), p. 489; Weston, ‘Edmund Burke’s Irish History’, p. 399. Burke owned both 1775 and 1786 editions of Curry’s Historical and Critical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland: LC MS; LC, pp. 4, 15.

  13. 13.

    Quoted in Weston, ‘Edmund Burke’s Irish History’, p. 399. See also Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, pp. 480, 489; ‘Dr John Curry to Edmund Burke (8 June 1765)’, in Corr., I, 201–3.

  14. 14.

    Weston, ‘Edmund Burke’s Irish History’, p. 399.

  15. 15.

    See Annual Register ... for the Year 1763, pp. 257–64 (second pagination); Weston, ‘Edmund Burke’s Irish History’, p. 399. Warner’s History of Ireland intended a general history of Ireland, but only volume one was published in 1763.

  16. 16.

    ‘Address and Petition of the Irish Catholics (1764)’, in WS, IX, 429–34. See also Bourke, Empire and Revolution, p. 217.

  17. 17.

    ‘John Curry to Edmund Burke (18 August 1778)’, in Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, between the Year 1744 and the Period of his Decease, in 1797, ed. Charles William, Earl Fitzwilliam and Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke (4 vols., London, 1844), II, 237–8.

  18. 18.

    ‘O’Conor to Burke (25 April 1765)’, in Letters of Charles O’Conor of Belanagare: A Catholic Voice in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, ed. Robert E. Ward et al. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), p. 174; Charles O’Conor, Dissertations on the History of Ireland (Dublin: George Faulkner, 1766), p. xv: ‘To one who fell into so unbeaten a Track, Nothing can be more gratifying than the Countenance and Encouragement of Men, whose own Writings will edify future, as they do the present Times. In this Number, the Writer must justly place E. Burke, Esq’.

  19. 19.

    Weston, ‘Edmund Burke’s Irish History’, p. 398; Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, p. 486.

  20. 20.

    Love, ‘Edmund Burke and an Irish Historiographical Controversy’, p. 182.

  21. 21.

    Burke was even believed to be a secret Jesuit and at times was so caricatured. For this, see Nicholas K. Robinson, Edmund Burke: a Life in Caricature (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1996).

  22. 22.

    See O’Brien, The Great Melody, p. 49.

  23. 23.

    ‘Burke to Dr William Markham [post 9 November 1771]’, in Corr., II, 285.

  24. 24.

    Corr., V, 15 (editor’s note). See also Leland, History of Ireland, I, xxvi. In the 1770s, these manuscripts were circulated among Leland, Vallancey and others, but were returned to Sebright through Burke. Eventually, Trinity College was given the manuscripts on 31 October 1786. See Corr., V, 108 (editor’s note); Love, ‘Edmund Burke, Charles Vallancey and the Sebright Manuscripts’.

  25. 25.

    ‘Burke to Richard Burke, Jr (20 March 1792)’, in Corr., VII, 104. See also Sir James Prior, Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke (2nd edn., 2 vols., London, 1826), I, 510–1. Burke does not seem to have been content with Leland’s description of the battles between the houses of Desmond and Butler. Burke owned Leland’s History of Ireland (in three volumes): LC MS; LC, p. 16. The Annual Register positively reviewed Leland’s History. See Annual Register … for the Year 1773 (London, 1774), pp. 255–66.

  26. 26.

    The catalogue of Burke’s private library records the fifth volume of Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis: LC MS; LC, p. 23.

  27. 27.

    ‘Vallancey to Burke (25 June 1783)’, WWM Bk P 1/1816; quoted in Corr., V, 108 (editor’s note).

  28. 28.

    Ibid; quoted in Corr., V, 108 (editor’s note).

  29. 29.

    ‘Burke to Colonel Charles ‘Vallancey (15 August 1783)’, in Corr., V, 108.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., in Corr., V, 109.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., in Corr., V, 109–10.

  32. 32.

    ‘Burke to Colonel Charles Vallancey (29 November)’ in Corr., V, 290–1.

  33. 33.

    Thomas Campbell, Strictures on the Ecclesiastical and Literary History of Ireland (Dublin, 1789), p. 304.

  34. 34.

    Love, ‘Edmund Burke and an Irish Historiographical Controversy’, pp. 191–3. Burke owned the 1789 edition of Campbell’s Strictures: LC, p. 4. He also owned Campbell’s Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland (1778): LC, p. 23. See also LC MS (Campbell’s ‘History of Ireland’).

  35. 35.

    Campbell, Strictures, pp. 1, 3; John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century: Consisting of Authentic Memoirs and Original Letters of Eminent Persons; and Intended as a Sequel to the Literary Anecdotes (8 vols., London, 1817–1858), VII, 773; Dr. Campbell’s Diary of a Visit to England in 1775, ed. James L. Clifford, with an Introduction by S.C. Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947), p. 20.

  36. 36.

    ‘Vallancey to Burke (8 October 1789)’, WWM Bk P 1/2186; quoted, for example, in Love, ‘Edmund Burke and an Irish Historiographical Controversy’, p. 193.

  37. 37.

    ‘Burke to Richard Burke, Jr (20 March 1792)’, in Corr., VII, 104.

  38. 38.

    Campbell, Strictures, p. 27 (note).

  39. 39.

    ‘O’Conor to Curry (12 June 1762)’, in Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, pp. 470–1. In another letter, O’Conor also wrote: ‘Hume and Smollet, the best modern historians we ever had in England’. See Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, p. 465.

  40. 40.

    Hume, History of England, IV, 395 (note).

  41. 41.

    Robert Bisset, The Life of Edmund Burke. ... (2 vols., London, 1800), II, 426.

  42. 42.

    Other than those mentioned above, Burke was a correspondent of Sylvester O’Halloran and owned his work, A General History of Ireland, from the earliest accounts to the Close of the Twelfth Century (2 vols., London, 1778): LC MS; LC, p. 16; Bourke, Empire and Revolution, p. 210 (note).

  43. 43.

    For the evidence, see Annual Register … for the Year 1763 , p. 264 (second pagination; review of Warner’s History of Ireland) and his advice to Campbell mentioned above.

  44. 44.

    Annual Register … for the Year 1761, pp. 276–86 (second pagination). In the preceding year, he also reviewed Fragments of ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gallic or Erse language. See Annual Register … for the Year 1760, pp. 253–6 (second pagination).

  45. 45.

    Annual Register … for the Year 1761, p. 276 (second pagination).

  46. 46.

    Annual Register … for the Year 1761, pp. 277, 281 (second pagination); Ferdinando Warner, Remarks on the History of Fingal, and other Poems of Ossian (London, 1762).

  47. 47.

    Annual Register … for the Year 1761, p. 278 (second pagination). Burke owned Macpherson’s Fingal: LC, p. 17.

  48. 48.

    See ‘Burke to Thomas Percy (24 March 1772)’, in F.P. Lock, ‘Unpublished Burke Letters (II), 1765–97’, English Historical Review, 114 (1999), 636–57 (at 640). See also The Letters of David Hume, I, 400. In the late 1780s, Burke once more expressed his rejection of Macpherson’s work. See Boswell: The English Experiment 1785–1789, ed. Irma S. Lustig and Frederick A. Pottle (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 150.

  49. 49.

    Later, he was reported to have said: ‘Poetry was highly cultivated by the ancient Irish’ and ‘Sedulius was an excellent poet.’ See Prior, Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, I, 509.

  50. 50.

    For instance, see Sir John Davies , A Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland was never Entirely Subdued, nor brought under Obedience of the Crowne of England, until the Beginning of His Maiesties Happie Raigne (London, 1747; first published in 1612), pp. 13–4 and passim: Sir John Temple , The History of the General Rebellion in Ireland. Raised upon the three and twentieth day of October, 1641 (Cork, 1766; first published in 1646), pp. 1–14.

  51. 51.

    Warner, History of Ireland, p. viii.

  52. 52.

    Hume, History of England, I, 339. See also ibid., I, 340: the invasions by the northern tribes, including the Danish ones, ‘which had spread barbarism in other parts of Europe, tended rather to improve the Irish’.

  53. 53.

    For the ‘Scandian’ and ‘Oriental’ interpretations of ancient Ireland, see Love, ‘Burke and an Irish Historiographical Controversy’, pp. 183–4.

  54. 54.

    Warner , History of Ireland, p. iv.

  55. 55.

    See also Campbell, Strictures, p. 10. For detail overviews of the late eighteenth-century interpretations of ancient Ireland, see O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations, pp. 13–70.

  56. 56.

    Abridgment, in WS, I, 509. Later, according to Prior, Burke stated that soil in Ireland was generally favourable to agriculture as opposed to the popular notion. See Prior, Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, I, 508.

  57. 57.

    Abridgment, in WS, I, 509–510. See also ‘Burke to Charles O’Hara (10 July 1761)’, in Corr., I, 141: ‘In our old fabulous History I think I have read that the Prophet Moses advised the antient Scots to go as far Westward as possible’.

  58. 58.

    Temple, Introduction to the History of England, pp. 26–7; Rapin de Thoyras , The History of England, III, 56.

  59. 59.

    Abridgment, in WS, I, 510.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., in WS, I, 510–1.

  61. 61.

    According to his comment in 1775, however, it was ‘never governed by a despotic power’. Speech on Conciliation with America, in WS, III, 139.

  62. 62.

    Abridgment, in WS, I, 512.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., in WS, I, 513.

  64. 64.

    Edmund Burke, ‘Hints of Ireland’, in Bourke, ‘Party, Parliament, and Conquest’, 642–4 (at 643).

  65. 65.

    Bourke, ‘Party, Parliament, and Conquest’, p. 626. Cf. T.O. McLoughlin, Contesting Ireland: Irish Voices against England in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999), p. 163.

  66. 66.

    Molyneux, The Case of Ireland, p. 17.

  67. 67.

    Charles Lucas, A Tenth Address to the Free Citizens, and Free-Holders, of the City of Dublin (Dublin, 1748). In his private letters, Burke censured Charles Lucas. For example, see ‘Burke to Charles O’Hara (3 July 1761)’, in Corr., I, 139; ‘Burke to Charles O’Hara (10 July 1761)’, in Corr., I, 140; ‘Burke to Charles O’Hara (18 November 1771)’, in Corr., II, 287.

  68. 68.

    Burke, ‘Hints of Ireland’, in Bourke, ‘Party, Parliament, and Conquest’, p. 643.

  69. 69.

    Abridgment, in WS, I, 513–4. In the Annual Register , Warner’s History of Ireland was, in its review, criticised for its supposition that manors had existed in Ireland before the English conquest. See Annual Register … the Year 1763, p. 264 (second pagination).

  70. 70.

    Bourke, ‘Party, Parliament, and Conquest’, p. 627.

  71. 71.

    Speech on Conciliation with America, in WS, III, 139–40.

  72. 72.

    ‘Burke to Unknown--- [February 1797]’, in Corr., IX, 256 (or WS, IX, 674).

  73. 73.

    ‘Burke to French Laurence ([23] November 1796)’, in Corr., IX, 125.

  74. 74.

    ‘Burke to Unknown--- [February 1797]’, in Corr., IX, 256 (or WS, IX, 674).

  75. 75.

    Lock, Edmund Burke, II, 407 (note). For the details of James I’s Irish parliament, see T.W. Moody, ‘The Irish Parliament under Elizabeth and James I: A General Survey’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, 45 (1939/1940), 41–81.

  76. 76.

    ‘Burke to Unknown--- [February 1797]’, in Corr., IX, 256 (or WS, IX, 674). See ‘Burke to French Laurence (12 May 1797)’, in Corr., IX, 336: ‘the actual constitution, which was in a great part fabricated in 1614’.

  77. 77.

    Speech on Conciliation with America, in WS, III, 140.

  78. 78.

    See R.B. McDowell, ‘Burke and Ireland’, in The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion, ed. David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993), pp. 102–14 (at 104).

  79. 79.

    Molyneux, Case of Ireland, pp. 17, 23, 31–4, 38–9.

  80. 80.

    Davies, Discoverie, p. 102.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., p. 118.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., p. 167.

  83. 83.

    Ibid., pp. 120, 169–70.

  84. 84.

    Ibid., p. 127.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., p. 128.

  86. 86.

    Ibid., pp. 129–30.

  87. 87.

    Ibid., pp. 131–3.

  88. 88.

    Ibid., p. 123. For Davies on the Brehon law, see Hans S. Pawlisch, Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 55–81.

  89. 89.

    O’Conor, Dissertations on the History of Ireland, pp. 74, 90.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., p. 131. See also ibid., p. 133.

  91. 91.

    Ibid., p. 137.

  92. 92.

    Ibid., p. 140. For O’Conor’s historiography, see McLoughlin, Contesting Ireland, pp. 135–60; O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations; idem, ‘Historical Writings , 1690–1890’, pp. 607–10; John Wrynn SJ, ‘Charles O’Conor as a “Philosophical Historian”’, in Charles O’Conor of Ballinagare, 1710–1791: Life and Works, ed. Luke Gibbons and Kieran O’Conor (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), pp. 72–80 and other articles in Charles O’Conor of Ballinagare, 1710–1 7 91.

  93. 93.

    Warner, The History of Ireland, pp. 89–92; Thomas Leland, The History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II (3 vols., 1773), I, xxxiii–iv.

  94. 94.

    Campbell, Strictures, pp. 42–3. See also ibid., p. 200.

  95. 95.

    Ibid., pp. 251–2. See also ibid., pp. 200–1.

  96. 96.

    Abridgment, in WS, I, 433.

  97. 97.

    In 1764, the Annual Register reviewed Warner’s History of Ireland, and commented that the author should have explained the Brehon laws in more detail. Annual Register … for the Year 1763, p. 258 (second pagination). See also Prior, Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, I, 508; ‘Burke to Colonel Charles Vallancey (29 November 1786)’, in Corr., V, 292.

  98. 98.

    Abridgment, in WS, I, 511.

  99. 99.

    Ibid., in WS, I, 512.

  100. 100.

    For further discussion of the eighteenth-century views on the Irish native laws, see Seán Patrick Donlan ‘“Little Better than Cannibals”: Sir John Davies and Edmund Burke on Property and Progress’, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 54 (2003), 1–24; idem, ‘The “Genuine Voice of its Records and Monuments”?’, pp. 77–80; O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations, pp. 127–40.

  101. 101.

    Speech on Conciliation with America, in WS, III, 140.

  102. 102.

    WWM Bk P 6/202, reproduced in WS, III, 204. Cf. Davies, Discoverie, p. 9.

  103. 103.

    Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792), in WS, IX, 615. For Burke’s reading of Davies on American and Canadian affairs, see Richard Bourke, ‘Edmund Burke and the Politics of Conquest’, Modern Intellectual History, 4 (2007), 403–32 (at 417–20).

  104. 104.

    Burke owned Ussher’s Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1639): LC, p. 24. In his History of Ireland, Warner also made this point, of which O’Conor was highly critical: ‘Dr. Warner has revived the old exploded Usserian chimera, that the religion established here by the Roman missionaries in the fifth century was that now established here by law’. See Warner, History of Ireland, pp. 297–8; ‘Charles O’Conor to John Curry (M.D., 23 July, 1763)’, in Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, p. 476.

  105. 105.

    ‘Tracts relating to Popery Laws’, in WS, IX, 469.

  106. 106.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 469–70.

  107. 107.

    Love, ‘Charles O’Conor of Belanagare and Thomas Leland’s “Philosophical” History of Ireland’, p. 11. For Leland’s discussion of the effects of the Reformation on Ireland, see Leland, History of Ireland, II, 155–218.

  108. 108.

    ‘Advertisement’, in John Curry, Historical Memoirs of the Irish Rebellion in the year 1641 (London, 1758), p. xv.

  109. 109.

    Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe , in WS, IX, 615.

  110. 110.

    ‘Tracts relating to Popery Laws’, in WS, IX, 468.

  111. 111.

    See Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election (6 September 1780), in WS, III, 639; Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in WS, IX, 604–7; ‘Burke to Unknown [February 1797]’, in Corr., IX, 261. See also Thoughts on French Affairs, in WS, VIII, 341–2.

  112. 112.

    Davies , Discoverie, p. 71.

  113. 113.

    Hume, History of England, V, 338; Temple, The History of the General Rebellion in Ireland, pp. 25–7.

  114. 114.

    Hume, History of England, V, 342.

  115. 115.

    David Berman, ‘David Hume on the 1641 Rebellion in Ireland’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 65 (1976), 101–12 (at 108–10); O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations, p. 141.

  116. 116.

    Burke owned Borlase’s History of the Irish Rebellion (Dublin, 1743): LC, p. 17.

  117. 117.

    For example, see John Curry, A Brief Account from the most Authentic Protestant Writers of the Causes, Motives, and Mischiefs, of the Irish Rebellion, on the 23d Day of October 1641 (London, 1747), pp. 12–3; idem, Historical Memoirs of the Irish Rebellion in the Year, 1641 (London, 1758), pp. 38, 54–5.

  118. 118.

    Curry, Brief Account, pp. 28–9; idem, Historical Memoirs, pp. 86–99.

  119. 119.

    Curry, Brief Account, p. 27.

  120. 120.

    Curry, Brief Account, pp. 17–8; idem, Historical Memoirs, pp. 70–1. For more details of Hume and the Irish revisionists on 1641, see especially Berman, ‘David Hume on the 1641 Rebellion in Ireland’; O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations, pp. 141–57; John Gibney, The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), pp. 50–3, 70–1, 81–103.

  121. 121.

    A recent analysis of Burke’s interpretation of the 1641 Rebellion is Katherine O’Donnell, ‘Edmund Burke and the Long Seventeenth-Century in Ireland’ (translated into Japanese by Haruko Takakuwa), Shiso, 1063 (2012), 208–29.

  122. 122.

    ‘Burke to Dr William Markham [post 9 November 1771]’, in Corr., II, 285.

  123. 123.

    For Burke’s reference to Temple, see ‘Burke to Richard Burke, Jr (20 March 1792)’, in Corr., VII, 104.

  124. 124.

    ‘Tracts relating to Popery Laws’, in WS, IX, 479.

  125. 125.

    Arthur Chichester served as Lord Deputy of Ireland during 1605–1616, and so did Thomas Wentworth during 1631–1639. For the details, see John McCavitt’s entry on ‘Arthur Chichester (1563–1625)’; Ronald G. Asch’s entry on ‘Thomas Wentworth (1593–1641)’, in ODNB.

  126. 126.

    Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in WS, IX, 616.

  127. 127.

    See also Burke’s possible allusion to Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland at ‘Burke to Charles O’Hara [ante 23 August 1762], in Corr., I, 147. For Burke’s critical views of Cromwell, see this and WWM Bk P 8/173; Parl. Hist., XXVII, 1098. See also Account, II, 61–2.

  128. 128.

    ‘Letter to Richard Bourke’, in WS. IX, 655.

  129. 129.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 655–6.

  130. 130.

    ‘Speech on Foreign Troops in Ireland (15 February 1776)’, in WS, IX, 501.

  131. 131.

    ‘Letter to Richard Burke (post 19 February 1792)’, in WS, IX, 656–7. In this public letter, Burke wrote that the reaction of the Irish to 1688, including the patriot parliament, was blameworthy, and that the English parliament’s subsequent confiscation of Catholic property was excusable. See also Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in WS, IX, 617. It is not correct that Burke supposed that the parliament held in Ireland by James II had repealed Poynings’ Law.

  132. 132.

    Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in WS, IX, 613–4. Burke was, of course, highly critical of the confiscation of Catholic property in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, he maintained that the new owners of the forfeited property had already acquired prescriptive titles, and so these should not be returned to the Catholics. See Lock, Edmund Burke, II, 406–7.

  133. 133.

    Letter to Lord Kenmare (21 February 1782), in WS, IX, 570; Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in WS, IX, 610. See also ‘Letter to William Smith’, in WS, IX, 664.

  134. 134.

    ‘Tracts relating to Popery Laws’, in WS, IX, 442–6. See also J.G. Simms, ‘The Establishment of Protestant Ascendancy, 1691–1714’, in A New History of Ireland IV Eighteenth-Century Ireland 1691–1800, ed. T.W. Moody and W.E. Vaughan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 1–30 (at 18–19); J.G. Simms, ‘The Making of a Penal Law (2 Anne, c.6), 1703–1704’, Irish Historical Studies, 12 (1960), 105–118.

  135. 135.

    ‘Tracts relating to Popery Laws’, in WS, IX, 436–8.

  136. 136.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 473, 480–1.

  137. 137.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 449.

  138. 138.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 437.

  139. 139.

    Burke incorrectly believed that Irish Catholics were deprived of parliamentary franchisement in George I ’s reign. See Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in WS, IX, 610, 628. His contemporaries, including Curry, Foster and Grattan, also misunderstood the date. See J.G. Simms, ‘Irish Catholics and the Parliamentary Franchise, 1692–1728’, Irish Historical Studies, 12 (1960), 28–37.

  140. 140.

    Letter to Lord Kenmare, in WS, IX, 570. See also ‘Address and Petition of the Irish Catholics (1764)’, in WS, IX, 433.

  141. 141.

    Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in WS, IX, 628.

  142. 142.

    ‘Tracts relating to Popery Laws’, in WS, IX, 471.

  143. 143.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 452.

  144. 144.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 471. For his reference to the 1728 act, see also ‘Address (14 December 1792)’, in WS, IV, 523.

  145. 145.

    ‘Tracts relating to Popery Laws’, in WS, IX, 476–7.

  146. 146.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 452.

  147. 147.

    Ibid., in WS, IX, 476–7.

  148. 148.

    ‘Speech on Irish Trade (15 February 1779)’, in WS, IX, 528. See also ‘Speech on Irish Trade (6 May 1778)’, in WS, IX, 519–20.

  149. 149.

    ‘Speech on Irish Trade (6 May 1778)’, in WS, IX, 520.

  150. 150.

    See WS, IX, 516 (editor’s note with corrections).

  151. 151.

    ‘Burke to the Duke of Portland (25 May 1782)’, in Corr., IV, 455. See also ‘Burke to Harford, Cowles and Co. (2 May 1778)’, in Corr., II, 443 (or WS, IX, 516): ‘the whole Woollen Manufacture of Ireland … has been in a manner so destroyed by restrictive Laws of ours, and (at our persuasion, and on our promises) by restrictive Laws of their own’.

  152. 152.

    ‘Burke to Charles O’Hara (1, 4 March 1766)’, in Corr., I, 240. See also Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 222–3; ibid., II, 17; Bourke, Empire and Revolution, p. 234.

  153. 153.

    Two Letters on the Trade of Ireland (23 April and 2 May 1778), in WS, IX, 509.

  154. 154.

    ‘Speech on Irish trade (6 May 1778)’, in WS, IX, 519.

  155. 155.

    J.H. Hutchinson, The Commercial Restraints of Ireland Considered in a Series of Letters to a Noble Lord. Containing An Historical Account of the Affairs of That Kingdom, so far as They Relate to This Subject (Dublin, 1779), pp. 13–34 (second letter).

  156. 156.

    Ibid., pp. 31–2.

  157. 157.

    See ‘Burke to Garrett Nagle (25 August 1778)’, in Corr., IV, 18–9. For this relief act, see also Corr., III, 449, 455–7; ibid., IV, 6, 20, 87, 248–9, 263–4; ibid., IX, 422–3; ibid., X, 7. In 1782, another relief act was enacted. Clearly, he still found it unsatisfactory. See Letter to Lord Kenmare, in WS, IX, 564–80.

  158. 158.

    ‘Burke to Henry Grattan (8 March 1793)’, in Corr., VII, 360. For this relief act, see also Corr., VII, 349–51; ibid., VIII, 129.

  159. 159.

    For Burke’s comments on these concessions, see his ‘Speech on Trade Concessions to Ireland (6 December 1779)’, in WS, IX, 535–42; Letter to Thomas Burgh (1 January 1780), in WS, IX, 543–63.

  160. 160.

    Two Letters on the Trade of Ireland, in WS, IX, 517.

  161. 161.

    Prior, Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, I, 507.

  162. 162.

    ‘Burke to Harford, Cowles and Co. (2 May 1778)’, in Corr., III, 443–4.

  163. 163.

    ‘John Hely Hutchinson to Burke (6 April 1782)’, in Corr., IV, 436; ‘Burke to John Hely Hutchinson [post 9 April 1782]’, in Corr., IV, 440.

  164. 164.

    For Burke’s comments on this, see ‘Speech on Affairs of Ireland (29 December 1782)’, in WS, IX, 583. Previously, Burke protested against the hasty rush to its repeal. See ‘Speech on Irish Crisis (8 April 1782)’, in WS, IX, 581.

  165. 165.

    ‘Speech on Irish Commercial Propositions (19 May 1785)’, in WS, IX, 591. See also ‘Burke to Earl Fitzwilliam (20 November 1796)’, in Corr., IX, 122.

  166. 166.

    See ‘Burke to Samuel Span (23 April 1778)’, in Corr., III, 434. ‘This union is a business of difficulty; and, on the principles of your letter, a business impracticable.’ See also Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe , in WS, IX, 632: ‘I really do not see how this threat of an union can operate, or that the Catholics are more likely to be losers by that measure than the churchmen.’ See also ‘Burke to French Laurence (12 May 1797)’, in Corr., IX, 336.

  167. 167.

    Smith, Wealth of Nations, II, 944.

  168. 168.

    ‘Letter to Richard Burke (post 19 February 1792)’, in WS, IX, 651.

  169. 169.

    See WWM Bk P 8/173: ‘The English driven out. Return. The Introduction of a new Religion by force. Not as in England and other places. An attempt on all the property of the Inhabitants under pretext of Title in the Crown. The war of 41 and its consequences. Cromwell ’s Letter. Sir W. Petty’s State. Popery Laws. Comparison with their antient State their present distress a kind of prosperity. ‘Compared with their late condition it is miserable.’ For this manuscript, see also WS, IX, 515 (editor’s note).

  170. 170.

    Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election, in WS, III, 640.

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    Sora Sato

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Sato, S. (2018). Irish History: Antiquity, Conquest and Incomplete Liberty. In: Edmund Burke as Historian. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64441-7_5

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