clearly from ‘their religious principles, church polity and habitual discipline,’ natural conservatives.32
The administration in Dublin Castle did not take Burke’s advice and instead chose the path which Wolfe Tone described as ‘oppression and persecution’ which he believed had radicalised ‘the great mass of Catholics’.33 No one has suggested that Burke’s assertion that Irish Catholics are natural conservatives is an indication that he was an anti-Catholic bigot. However, the fact that Drennan suspected that Burke might be right is one of the reasons which has resulted in Drennan being labelled a bigot. For his own part, Drennan felt that, in him, the Catholics of Ireland ‘have not had a more constant friend’.34
Despite Drennan’s doubts about the Catholic Committee’s commitment, he was fair minded about their each-way bet. He observed that ‘the truth was and is, the Catholics [Committee] wish to have two strings to their bow, a part to treat with government, a part to allay with us, and if one string cracks, why try the other. This is good and perhaps fair archery’.35
One historian has made the erroneous claim that when Drennan wrote in favour of Catholic Emancipation in the Belfast Monthly Magazine in 1808, this represented a shift in his position. This writer claims, ‘like many Protestant reformers of the 1790s [Drennan] had doubts about Catholics’.36 Here we come to the kernel of the question. To have doubts about the sincerity or steadfastness of one’s allies has nothing to do with prejudice, bigotry or racism. Far from shifting his position in 1808, Drennan could point back nearly a quarter of a century when he sowed the seed of Catholic and Protestant union in Newry in 1784.
We associate although differing in religious opinions because we wish to create a union of power and to cultivate that brotherhood of affection amongst all the inhabitants of this island … We are all Irishmen. We shall ever think an association deserves well of its native land whose chief objective is to unite the different religions in the cause of our common country.37
In 1805, Martha heard rumours that the Catholics had unanimously, but in secret, agreed a new petition to the British House of Lords seeking emancipation. She suggested to her brother that this seemed like a time he might again write a pamphlet in the Catholic cause:
If there is a man who once stirred up an ardent love of reform, who first pleaded for and brought forward the Catholic rights, if still consistent he ceases the favourable moment and with truth, energy, propriety and eloquence forces a healing, perhaps redress – the Catholics ought to erect a statue to him and what would be far better make him independent for life.38
She knew, however, that if he took her advice, he would require great prudence as he would likely be involving himself in ‘an odious, dangerous business’ where he would be cast as a rebel and a lover of blood. Drennan did not expose himself to this danger but he kept a close eye on developments and shortly thereafter informed his sister:
The Catholics, I believe, are to allow their petition to remain on the table, if the ministers promise future support. Lord Moira, who goes between the King and the Prince, wished to be advised of the arrival of their delegates in London. I know two of them Scully and Ryan, very honest and honourable men. I suppose their petition will be put off for the present.39
Drennan’s prediction here was correct and two years later, in 1807, the Catholics agreed yet another petition which no party was willing to present to Parliament on their behalf. Drennan advised them to appeal to ‘that power above King, above Lords and Commons – that is – public opinion’.40 They accepted his advice and he drafted a long address for them, which he hoped they would use as an ‘open and manly appeal to their fellow subjects of Great Britain and Ireland’.41
For as long as the Belfast Monthly Magazine lasted, Drennan advocated Catholic emancipation. In 1809, he was still vigorously condemning the oppression of Catholics. ‘In every country in Europe [the Irish Catholic] was caressed and encouraged. To every country but his own, were his talents acceptable. In the career of science or of military honours, he met with no obstacle but at home. There he was an alien indeed: there he was treated as an enemy to God and to his king.’42
Ian McBride tells us that in 1813, when the emancipationists secured their first majority in the House of Commons, ‘support for the Catholic cause in Belfast was directed by the Friends of Civil and Religious Liberty with William Drennan and Robert Tennant (1765–1837), at their head’.43 In 1819, a year before his death, Drennan wrote a highly complimentary letter to Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), predicting that O’Connell’s ‘manly spirit, his openness and candour, and his moral integrity, would ensure that his objective [Catholic Emancipation] would be obtained and his name be recorded in history’.44
McNally the informer, in his comprehensive report on the Catholic Committee told his masters in the Castle that Drennan hated his Catholic allies. Whether or not Drennan ever used the term hate, we know that, at least for a time, he was unsure of and harboured suspicions and resentments regarding Keogh, McCormack and their committee. These may or may not have been justified. His ‘pigs and papist’45 remarks in 1786 are unconscionable and can never be justified, particularly in one who claimed to be an enemy of religious sectarianism. In mitigation, however, his comments were made in private correspondence and were not a public statement of his position. They were made in the context of a politically engaged writer who felt isolated and stuck in a backwater who, after having enjoyed acclaim and admiration, was now deeply affected by ennui and conscious of his political irrelevance.
When looking at Drennan’s political career in the round, however, the consensus which has emerged amongst modern historians that Drennan was an anti-Catholic bigot cannot be sustained. Had any of his contemporaries accused him of such he would, no doubt, have described the accusation as ‘a cruel and ignoble calumny’.46 In early 1798, when musing on his mortality and on the arrangements, he would like to be made for his funeral, Drennan wrote to Martha, ‘Let me be buried in any of the country churchyards adjoining this city [Dublin], and let six poor Protestants and six poor Catholics get a guinea piece for carriage of me, and a [Catholic] priest and a dissenting clergyman attend with any other friends that choose.’47
In fact, many years later, when he was interred in Belfast, he was carried to his grave by six Protestant and six Catholics as he had wished.48 Those who have branded him ‘the Wretched Drennan’ and as an anti-Catholic bigot must consider his funeral request to be very peculiar.
7
AMONGST THE DUBLIN DISSENTERS
In early August 1789, Irish newspapers carried accounts of the momentous events in France, including the fall of the Bastille. Drennan had no doubt that the news from France would please his sister. However, the French Revolution was alluded to only briefly in their correspondence which, at this time, was almost completely preoccupied with Martha’s deteriorating health. She complained of ongoing problems with her stomach and bowel, an inability to sleep and a return of her old nervous problems. She pleaded with her brother to visit her. He found it difficult to get away from Newry as some of his regular patients were demanding his attention. He wrote to her Belfast doctors giving his advice on what he hoped might be suitable treatments. He was very distressed that notwithstanding his medical knowledge, he could not comfort his sister as he did not know the cause of her bodily ailments or mental distresses.1 From August of that year and for a considerable time thereafter, their correspondence remained one-sided, as Martha seems to have been unable or disinclined to answer William’s pleas for information on her condition. William, for his part, wrote regularly to Martha’s husband, Sam.
When Drennan heard that Dr Moody, who had relocated to Dublin from Newry, was seriously ill and not expected to live, he began to conceive a plan to move to Dublin. He would attempt to establish a medical practice based on Moody’s Dublin patient base, much as he had succeeded in doing in Newry. He was advised by his Dublin friends that this would be no easy task. They told him he would have many
