to be an affinity between democratic and deistical doctrines but Drennan saw no solid foundation for this in reason. ‘The life and doctrines of the unlettered prophet Christ are of a nature that I think would perfectly assimilate with the equality and fraternity of real republicans.’23
Drennan asserted that the priesthood in all ages was the curse of Christianity. There would be no virtue or happiness in the world until the priesthood was abolished. He believed he was living in an era where that order of men were losing influence. He had read Paine’s Age of Reason and he accepted that Christian miracle stories had been invented to chill the ignorant and stupid into belief. Yet William Drennan remained a Protestant Dissenter and regarded himself as a Christian. However, his regular attendance at public worship did not protect him from charges of being a Deist or an infidel for, as he once told his sister, ‘take notice an Unitarian and a Deist here [in Dublin] ranks as the selfsame character and if you deny the Trinity, you will be set down to deny there is a God’.24
Reverend Thomas Drennan had a significant lifelong influence over his son’s religious principles. There is no earthly authority in religious matters and no man should suffer penalties for his religious opinions. These guiding principles led to William Drennan’s activities within the United Irish movement. Drennan regarded the Regium Donum as an attempt by the State to wield influence and authority where it should have none.
4
THE VOLUNTEERS
In February 1778, as Drennan prepared for his graduation, he heard the news that France had recognised American independence and agreed to join the war against the British. Ireland and Britain were swept by fear of a French invasion. Drennan had mixed feelings about the unfolding events. He was delighted that Benjamin Franklin had been well received by the French and that, ‘Persecuted Liberty has sought for and found refuge in the French and Spanish courts.’1 Although he continued to support the Americans, ‘he detested the Bourbon regimes of France and Spain’.2 Determined to fight in the event of a French or Spanish invasion, he joined the militia. Along with six other Irish lads, he received training in musketry from the Sargent at Edinburgh castle.
He planned to return to Ireland after his graduation. When he heard that an Irish militia was forming there, he expressed a wish to have some rank in it. He was misinformed about the militia. The Irish administration could not afford to raise and equip a militia at this point.3 Many of the regular troops who garrisoned Ireland had been sent off to fight the war in America. In response to the threat of invasion in many places around the country, independent companies of Volunteers were established. Ulster and Belfast took to volunteering with enthusiasm. In Belfast, on Saint Patrick’s Day 1778, a corps was established which became known as the Blue Company because of the colour of their regimentals. The Blue Company publicly declared its refusal to accept commissions or pay under the Crown or to take any military oath.4
By April, 15,000 men had joined up nationally but as invasion fears heightened, the number of recruits rose exponentially and by mid-1780, some 60,000 had enrolled almost half of them in Ulster.5 Sam McTier, Martha’s husband, was elected as a commander in the Blue Company which Martha told her brother was ‘very inconvenient because an expensive honour’.6
In August, Drennan took his degree and returned to Belfast. He immediately joined the Blue Company and from there began his keen interest in Volunteer politics.7 Because his correspondence with his sister ceases at this point, we do not know much about his professional life in Belfast over the next four years. It appears that he found it difficult to establish a practice as the town was already well supplied with physicians. He had a significant involvement with a public health campaign in cooperation with the infirmary run by the Belfast Charitable Society.8 In March 1782, he read a paper to the board of the Society suggesting that the Poor House premises be used for a smallpox inoculation campaign. He must have used a direct arm-to-arm infection technique as Edward Jenner did not propose inoculation using cow pox until 1798. The board of the society passed a vote of thanks to Drennan for his efforts.9
We do know from his correspondence with Reverend William Bruce in Dublin that, politics and Volunteering aside, he was not particularly happy either in his native town or his chosen profession.
If I leave Belfast, I will never return to it. Do not mistake me I do not like this town. Why should I like what never has behaved as if it liked me? I have not a single friend except among my nearest relations. I have never received a smallest instance of real regard from the friends of my father. Who though they could have no reason to fear me as a rival or dislike me as a man have always been professional friends to me. I know that every profession has a certain portion of servility attached to it. But there is a parasitical species of servitude to men of eminence in our profession which I never will and never can conform to.10
Whatever about feelings of personal isolation and professional dissatisfaction, Drennan did find solace in his involvement with the Volunteers. He was not content with donning his blue uniform and attending marches, reviews and meetings. He was determined to establish himself as a leading writer in the Volunteer cause.
The year 1779 proved a very successful year for the Volunteers of Ireland. As the numbers in their ranks grew, they were thanked in the Irish House of Commons for their endeavours in defence of the country. Their crowning achievement that year was the concession by the British government of Free Trade for Ireland. Through their shows of military strength at rallies and marches, the Volunteers had pressured government into this concession. Edmund Burke (1730–1797), the Irish-born British parliamentarian, denounced Lord North for conceding Free Trade and this provided Drennan with the opportunity for his first foray into literary propaganda.
In April 1780, he published an open letter to Edmund Burke. He was embarking on what was to be a long literary career in which he would, time and again, use the device of writing to well-known public figures and publishing the letters as a way of propagating his radical ideas. In the years that followed, Drennan published letters to King George III, the Earl of Fitzwilliam, William Pitt and C.J. Fox. The purpose of these letters was not to communicate with the recipients but to influence reformist and radical opinion and to establish his literary reputation.
Burke had been a member of the British House of Commons since 1765. At this point, he was fifty years old and although not in ministerial office, he was one of Britain’s most prominent statesmen. The letter was published at a time when, as one of Burke’s recent biographers suggests, ‘the conflict in the colonies was reaching the apogee of crisis, discontent in Ireland was contributing to popular militancy and public protest was affecting confidence in the British system of government’.11
Drennan was encouraged by the progress the Volunteers and reform movement was then making in Ireland. However, in his open letter, he condemned Burke because of the latter’s hostile reaction to the positive developments in their native land. Burke had denounced recent British concessions on Irish trade as ‘an unqualified surrender on the part of Lord North’s government’.12 John Bardon succinctly summarised the developments which so encouraged Drennan and alarmed Burke:
By November of 1799 the Government was helpless before menacing demonstrations of Volunteers, a vigorous campaign against British goods, and a united patriot majority. At the end of the year a beleaguered Tory ministry at Westminster reeling from news of disastrous defeat in America responded … to appeals for immediate concessions. Laws imposed by England on Ireland forbidding the export of Irish wool, glass leather and other goods were removed.13
Drennan began his letter by accusing Burke of being ‘too patriotic, in other words too much of an Englishman to wish for equality of rights and privileges in every part of the British empire’. He told Burke that his ill-timed and inconsiderate expressions were highly injurious to his native country.14 He accused Burke of being a party man, ‘The party may aim at nothing more than local or partial liberty, a liberty which includes not only the desire for a free government at home but the power of arbitrary
