Questioning the Catholics

Abstract

The Irish ancien régime was singular. It possessed characteristics that marked it off even from the English ancien régime, of which it was an outgrowth. Its singularity derived chiefly from the significance that confessionalism had come to assume. This gave it nothing but strength. Religious belief, it is true, supported the established order everywhere. In Ireland, however, it was that aspect of religion which most easily excited the public mind (what a later age would dub sectarianism) and its scholarly foundation, the heart and summit of the Christian intellectual endeavour of the age, controversial divinity itself which were engaged. Further, they served in a most immediate way — in defence against a perceived military threat to the power and property of the elite.¹ This emphasis on confessionalism, along with other factors, brought about a further mutation of the English ancien régime that the Tudor and Stuart eras had seen planted in Ireland. A basis was laid for a widening of the elite to include all or, at least, a much greater part of the Protestant body. The consequent self-assertion of tenant farmers in Ulster and artisans in towns throughout the country was an important element in fomenting political discord for much of the eighteenth century. In the longer term, however, its capacity to expand its elite strengthened the Irish ancien régime greatly. In the struggle to adapt to the new circumstances of the revolutionary era and the early nineteenth century, the acquisition of allies became crucial.²