and Irish radicals, such as the celebrated English radical John Wilkes and Charles Lucas of Dublin who was sometime called ‘the Wilkes of Ireland’.49 Gawen Hamilton had sent his son to Cambridge and placed him under the care of John Jebb, probably after Wilkes, the most famous and certainly the most able of all the English radicals. Rowan had also spent some time at Joseph Priestley’s Warrington Academy and considered himself a life-long friend of the good doctor.
It is not surprising, therefore, that on arriving in Ireland in 1784, Rowan joined his father’s Volunteer Corps at Killyleagh. Rowan had sought and received John Jebb’s advice on the content of the address which Charlemont had quashed. What perhaps offended Charlemont the most was Jebb’s advice to Rowan that ‘no reform can be justly founded which does not admit the Roman Catholics and does not restore to the people their full power’.50 Rowan told Drennan that he believed Charlemont was nervous and surrounded by other tremulous advisors.51 Drennan had already come to that conclusion. He had lost respect for his Lordship but was very impressed by Archibald Hamilton Rowan. He told Bruce, ‘I do not like Lord Charlemont ... He is not a man of nerve – I like Rowan better – he has somewhat of the Long Parliament in his countenance, some of the republican ferocity.’52
The Long Parliament referred to the English radicals who had defeated Charles I and helped to bring about republican government in England under Oliver Cromwell. Drennan’s political friendship and admiration for Rowan which began with those brief encounters in Newry in 1785 was to have very significant implications for both men and for the radical politics in Ireland in the following decade. They would each play an influential role in the foundation and development of the United Irish Society in 1791. Many of the formative documents issued by the Dublin Society of United Irishmen in the early 1790s were drafted by Drennan and appeared under the names of William Drennan and Archibald Hamilton Rowan. Rowan escaped the gallows by absconding from Newgate in 1794, having been sentenced for distribution of a seditious libel written by Drennan. That same year, Drennan would be acquitted on charges of publishing the same seditious libel.
William Hamilton Drummond, Rowan’s first biographer who knew both Drennan and Rowan, was much struck by the remarkable contrast between them. ‘The one being of Herculean size, warm impetuous, but highly polished withal; the other low in stature, cold in manner, slow deliberative, but lodging in his breast the element of a lofty and noble spirit.’53
Rowan has been described as a handsome giant who could have been a model for Hercules. Drennan’s son William said his father stood only five foot five and would have been considered plain.54 Despite these obvious physical and personality differences, there were less obvious but far more fundamental similarities between them which enabled them to work well together in a common cause over a prolonged period. They shared a background in Ulster New Light Presbyterianism. Neither had compunction about acknowledging their Unitarianism when it was still illegal to do so. They would have regarded themselves as the inheritors of the traditions of Francis Hutcheson and the New Light clergy of Drennan’s father’s generation. They had both been enthusiastic supporters of the American Revolution and would have been avid readers and admirers of the English Unitarian radicals, Doctors Price, Priestley and Jebb. Drennan admired the writings of Price, Priestley and Jebb from afar, whereas Rowan had been a friend of Priestley while Jebb had been his teacher and political mentor. Jebb kept up an active correspondence with Rowan and one of the last letters he ever wrote, dated September 1785, consisted mostly of advice on how his former student should fight for reform amongst the Volunteers.55 John Jebb died in 1786 and his Political Works were published posthumously in London the following year. Drennan was pleased to see that, in the last of his published letters, in August 1785, Jebb mentioned Orellana with approval.56
Drennan’s other positive impression of Rowan is illustrative of the way his thinking was evolving regarding the next stage of the struggle for reform. He told his sister, ‘Rowan is a clever fellow, looks just the thing for a constitutional conspirator.’57 It was clear that now Drennan was contemplating a totally new approach. His mind was now turning to a conspiracy involving ‘sincere and sanguine reformers’. He felt that the political part of Volunteering had been stifled by Charlemont and that all thoughts of reform had been banished from the public mind. Two weeks after the January Convention, he had told Bruce:
I should like to see the institution of a society as secret as the Free-Masons, whose object might be by every practicable means to put into execution plans for the complete liberation of the country. The secrecy would surround the proceedings of such a society with a certain awe and majesty and the oath of admission would inspire enthusiasm into its members ... The laws and institutes of such a society would require ample consideration, but it might accomplish much.58
At about this time also, John Chambers, a Dublin-based printer, wrote to Drennan seeking permission to republish Orellana in the capital, a request to which Drennan was happy to accede. This contact was to have significant implications for the future of Drennan’s literary career. John Chambers would later be an important member of the United Irish Society. He printed and distributed many of Drennan’s later works. He also printed other radical and even seditious materials throughout the 1790s, including the United Irishmen’s most incendiary publication, the Press. This paper, to which Drennan contributed, was founded in September 1797 and suppressed in March 1798. Chambers, like many of Drennan’s United Irish comrades, was imprisoned at Fort George in Scotland from 1798 until 1803 and thereafter exiled from Ireland under the Banishment Act.
6
OF PIGS AND PAPISTS
In May 1785, Bruce told Drennan of plans to establish a Whig Club in Dublin, which was to have a blue uniform with silver buttons and the motto ‘persevere’. He asked if Drennan was prepared to put his name forward for membership. Drennan’s response was a scathing repudiation and utter rejection of the idea of what he saw as ‘a club of little gentlemen’. He believed the club was hostile to Volunteering and saw the members as a jovial crew in blue coats, mere prattlers who would achieve nothing.1 More importantly, Drennan saw that one of the motives for the formation of the Whig club was to separate ‘all the gentlemen and the chaff of the Volunteers leaving the mechanics and the yeomanry who are the weighty grain to themselves’. He responded to Bruce:
You bid me send my name to be inserted in the Club. My name is William Drennan. But don’t think I will put myself to the expense of a suit for such a purpose if that be a sine qua non. For my part I am more eager than ever in the reform business ... I can’t find men that would form a serious Association – a sacred compact about the matter. I would sign such a Confederation of Compatriots with my blood.2
The establishment of the Whig Club in Dublin was followed by another in Belfast and though many of Drennan’s friends became active in both, he stayed aloof, though he did continue to attend Volunteer reviews in Belfast over the next few years. However, his time in Newry, though eventually lucrative in terms of his medical fees, passed in political inactivity and tedium. The local MP, Isaac Corry, offered to make use of Drennan’s writing talents and Martha encouraged him to accept the offer. After considering the matter, ‘his obstinate republican honesty won the day’ and he refused the proposal.3 He admitted to Bruce that he missed the admiration that came from well-received political commentary. ‘Praise to me is everything but a place like this is as cold as a cucumber.’4 He was candid about his misery and dejection. ‘I lead in this place a very insignificant and I had almost said a disgraceful life – I read little or none – I wish nothing – I correspond with none – I hear nothing but the babble of the day. I haunt after company to deliver me from an ennui and a brooding over maladies some imaginary and others real.’5
Drennan’s sense of isolation seems to have increased when Martha was overcome by depression and lost her zest for writing. Only one letter from her to William survives from 1786. His correspondence with William Bruce also seems to have slackened, as he had little to report from Newry. He seemed desperate for political news from elsewhere. On two occasions, he began his pleas to Bruce for interesting news by saying, ‘there is nothing
