needed to be careful regarding his support for the American cause. He was aware that one of his fellow medical students had been denied his degree because he had dedicated his thesis to his uncle, John Zubly (1724–1781), a delegate to the American Continental Congress. By January 1778, ‘nothing was going on [in Edinburgh] but the raising of regiments to be devoted to the destruction of America’.36 Drennan observed that every order of men from the lowest to the highest are emptying their pockets in support of the war. Even the Speculative Society, of which he was a member, donated 100 guineas. Drennan absented himself from the meeting and donated nothing.
Martha recommended that William read Dr Richard Price’s Observations on Civil Liberty and the Justice and Policy of the War in America (1776). She told him that with this pamphlet in his ‘hand, or head, he could bid defiance to all the slavish [anti-American] arguments the greatest Scottish genius can oppose to you’.37 This is the same Dr Price who would be the target of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France some fifteen years later.
One Sunday, William was shocked to hear a clergyman pray against the colonists as he was sure that his clergyman father would never have behaved so:
I heard this morning a most virulent prayer to the Father of Mercies against poor America – oh how I pity such – Pray on ye men of blood – but if I ever forget thee O Jerusalem may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, may this right hand forget its cunning. Spirit, gentle spirit of my father, wouldst thou have prayed so?38
Drennan complained that in their race to display their loyalty, ‘every minister in the city have [sic] given what they could spare, to edge the sword of war’ except for Dr Dick of Greyfriars. To bolster support for the war against America, the government had ordered fast days, on which the clergy were expected to promote loyalty to the king and denounce the American rebels from the pulpit. On one such fast day, Dr Dick, ‘this worthy clergyman’, preached ‘how shall I curse whom the Lord has not cursed? How shall I judge whom the Lord had not condemned’?39 Dr Dick may have been in a minority in Edinburgh but it is likely that Drennan would have been aware that many Protestant Dissenting clergy in his native Ulster, and in many other parts of Ireland and England, used their fast-day sermons to denounce the war and support the Americans.
During the early stages of the war, both William and Martha were worried for the Americans, particularly when they heard rumours such as the defeat of Washington with a terrible slaughter on both sides.40 However, the war turned decisively in favour of the Americans, with their victory in the second battle of Saratoga in October 1777. Drennan was delighted and he told Martha, ‘I congratulate the people of Belfast and all mankind for the late victory over Burgoyne.’ He was anxious to know how the news was greeted in Belfast and believed the British defeat would have profound long-term implications for the Empire:
I am persuaded that the event of the war will turn on this great event, and it is probable that future historians will date the fall of the British Empire from the 16th October ’77 – No object can be thought of more melancholy, than a great empire that has thus outlived itself and is now degenerating into a state of political dotage, prophetical of its final dissolution. Was it for this shameful day that Sidney suffered, and that Hampden bled? Were all the glories, triumphs, conquests, spoils, this nation has acquired in the defence of liberty, thus meanly to be blasted in a traitorous attempt to destroy it.41
The statement gives us a clear indication of Drennan’s extremely radical political outlook. He invokes Sidney and Hampden, two heroes of the Real Whigs or Commonwealth tradition of the early eighteenth century. John Hampden had challenged Charles I over the introduction of ‘ship money’ and had died fighting on behalf of Parliament in the English Civil War. Algernon Sidney was a republican theorist, who was executed for treason by Charles II in 1683. Drennan invoked their names to accuse the British government of a traitorous attempt to destroy liberty. In some of his later writings, Drennan used what he called, ‘the sainted name’ of Sidney as a pseudonym.42
Within a short time of his hailing of the American victory at Saratoga, in his letter of 30 January, Drennan appended the date with the words ‘and may the tyrant tremble at the day’.43 This was the anniversary of the execution of Charles I in 1649 and had long been designated by the Anglican Church as the Feast of Charles the Martyr. At church services on the anniversary, the clergy were expected to preach loyalty to the King and to denounce rebellion as sinful. The sermons often involved reminding listeners of the role Protestant Dissenters had played in the overthrow and execution of Charles I. It was rumoured that, as Tories and Anglicans mourned their saintly king, Dissenters secretly celebrated the execution of a tyrant.
On the next government-appointed fast day in March, ‘the Scotch spent in humiliation and prayer’, Drennan and his Irish friends spent the evening ‘making many excellent toasts on the subject of politics’. He told his sister, ‘we concluded with unanimously wishing that all the tyrants in Europe had but one neck, that neck laid on the block and one of us appointed executioner’.44
Toasts in favour of tyrannicide had a long-established provenance, real and imagined, in radical circles. From the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, it was common for Tories to accuse Protestant Dissenters of being covert republicans and regicides. Tory accounts of the Calves’ Head Club, which some suggested was founded by John Milton and celebrated on 30 January by drinking wine from a calf skull, may have been a gothic horror fantasy. However, we know that Drennan’s Belfast friends held an annual celebration each year on 30 January. In 1793, at an event held in the Washington the attendance ‘was very thin’.45 This is not to be wondered at, as the event took place just as news of the execution of Louis Capet,46 just nine days earlier, had reached Belfast.
Edmund Burke had predicted the execution of Louis long before the King was placed under arrest and many commentators have put this down to his keen foresight, which amounted almost to a gift of prophecy. However, Burke would have been very familiar with the accusations of republicanism and regicide often levelled at Dissenters. Sometimes such accusations were unfair Tory propaganda. The annual celebration in Belfast suggests that accusations of support for regicide amongst Dissenters were, in some cases, true, however. Nor can we put the toast of Drennan and his friends down to drink-induced hyperbole. He was presumably sober when he reported the toast to Martha.
Drennan’s enthusiasm for the execution of tyrant kings was not just a foible of youth. Many years later, in December 1792, Drennan met his friend Isaac Corry in the street, who asked him, ‘My dear Drennan, how are you? How many kings have you killed this morning?’47 Drennan does not appear to have been surprised or put out by the question. That same month, just before Louis’ trial commenced, Drennan ventured his view on the affair to Sam McTier: ‘As for Louis it is my opinion in two words [sic], that if he not be executed there will be another massacre, and in mercy to the people, in mercy to the constitution it ought to be cemented and consolidated with his blood.’48
Many of the Irish and British radicals who had welcomed the French Revolution were appalled by the execution of the King. Others such as Wolfe Tone, regarded it as a sad necessity. William Drennan regarded the execution as not only necessary but desirable.
In his student days, Drennan did not let his regicidal revels, nor his support for America, interfere with his medical studies. However, in early 1777, he left Edinburgh temporarily due to his poor state of health. He went to Castlecor, in County Cork, to recuperate from a bout of illness and remained there for most of that year. He drank the spa waters from nearby Mallow and, weather permitting, he went horse riding as his preferred method of taking exercise. Throughout his recuperation, he continued to pore over his medical books. By the end of the year he was back at Edinburgh and applied for permission to graduate. His application was successful and he decided he would submit his thesis with a view to qualifying as a doctor in September 1778.49
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