The
Portland Ministry
(April 1807 to October 1809)
Summary.
The Tories returned to power, and Tory administrations followed one another
until 1832. The ministry put together under the Duke of Portland contained some
anti-Catholic member, but others like George Canning were pro-Catholic, while
others like Arthur Wellesley were satisfied with anything the king agreed to.
Not until 1827, when Canning became prime minister, was it possible for a
ministry to put forward a pro-Catholic measure without splitting. The chief aim
of successive Tory administrations was to win the war against Napoleon, and
after 1815 to obtain a secure peace. In Ireland, however, it was unfortunate
that several anti-Catholic politicians accepted office and preserved a strong
'ascendancy' bias in the Irish Government until 1822. They were not
anti-Catholic except in so far as they were determined to prevent the concession
of further reliefs to Catholics.The Catholics themselves put forward a proposal
that in the case of Emancipation being conceded, the king would be allowed to
veto the appointment of disloyal bishops. This proposal increased the divisions
among the Catholics.
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Portland’s Ministry
The question of the Veto
The War in the Peninsula
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Portland’s Ministry
[April 1807] Despite
what was often alleged, the ministry that the Duke of Portland, leader of the
Portland Whigs, who had joined Pitt’s war cabinet in 1794, put together was not
a particularly anti-Catholic one. Some members of the Government however were
noted for their anti-Catholic feelings, like Spencer Perceval in Britain and William Saurin in Ireland. During the General Election of 1807 in England, Perceval, and some who felt like him, did raise
the popular cry of 'No Popery'. But all that was required of the individual
members participating in the Government was that they would agree to the
postponement, at least, of the question of Emancipation. The Duke of Richmond
was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was a man of moderate views and was generally
popular during his stay in Ireland. The instructions given to him were the same as
those given to Hardwicke. Sir Arthur Wellesley was appointed Irish Secretary,
and was in general in favour of some accommodation with the Catholics. An
English lawyer, Lord Manners, was appointed Lord Chancellor. He adopted a
conservative policy, just interpreting the law as it stood, and never
interfering in the internal affairs of counties. This meant that if some
counties had particularly anti-Catholic sheriffs or magistrates he did nothing.
Foster returned as Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer. Plunket was invited to
remain as Attorney General but declined because of his friendship with Lord
Grenville. Kendal Bushe remained as Solicitor General. Plunket's place as
Attorney General was taken by one of the most bitterly anti-Catholic
politicians William Saurin. Saurin's character was that of an able but
scrupulous lawyer who opposed Emancipation to the best of his ability. His
influence should not be exaggerated. He used no unfair or illegal methods, and
his office had no direct control over in public appointments. We can probably
safely assume that he did what he could to ensure that 'ascendancy' rather than
moderate Protestants were appointed to public office but we have no idea how
successful he was in this. (The fact that O’Connell detested him should not be
held against him; it was a common fate in Ireland.)
Lord Castlereagh became Secretary for
War, and George Canning Foreign Secretary. After the battle
of Friedland, Russia was forced to join the
'Continental System'. Sir
Arthur Wellesley led an expedition from Cork to destroy the Danish fleet before Napoleon
captured it. Napoleon tried to persuade the southern European states to join
the System. When the Pope refused his territory was invaded, Rome occupied on 2 February 1808, and finally the Pope was arrested and sent under
guard to Savona. Napoleon then secured the concurrence of the
Spanish Government in an invasion of Portugal. On the 19 November 1807 the French under Junot entered Portugal, and the Portuguese court sailed to Brazil, Portugal’s largest colony. But he went too far when he
deposed the king of Spain and placed his own brother on the Spanish throne.
On the 2nd of May 1808,
the Dos de Majo, the people of
Madrid revolted and drove out the new king, and the
rising spread to the rest of the country. In various parts of Spain the Spaniards formed local juntas. The junta in
Seville declared war on France, and Canning made peace with Spain. Castlereagh had been fitting out another
expedition in Cork and it was decided to send it to the Peninsula. Sir Arthur Wellesley took charge of the first
troops sent out and won a victory over the French before a more senior general
superceded him. After the signing of the Convention of Cintra with the French
on 31 August 1808
he returned to the United Kingdom. Though there was an outcry at the over-generous
terms given to the French he retained the confidence of Lord Castlereagh.
In Ireland the general election of 1807 seems to have been a
very low-key affair with little general interest. The first domestic task of
Sir Arthur Wellesley and the incoming Irish Government was to continue with the
passage of the Whig Insurrection Act (1807) through Parliament. It was more or
less the same as the Act passed in 1796, and was to last two years. Henry
Grattan supported the measure because of evidence of a French plot that had
been shown to him by Mr. Elliot the previous Secretary. There were sporadic
outbreaks of agrarian crime in parts of Munster. Others were frankly sceptical about the
existence of such a plot. Castlereagh reorganized the militia, and it was used
until the end of the War as a recruiting ground for trained militiamen who
volunteered to transfer into regular regiments. As the prestige of the Irish
generals in the Peninsula was high there was always a regular supply of
volunteers. (The militia then had to recruit to fill up its own ranks, but at
least the militia and the army were no longer competing with each other for the
same volunteers.) In his budgets, John Foster cut the Maynooth grant back to
what it had been before.
[1808] Sir Arthur
Wellesley finally got the Dublin Police Act through Parliament in l808 and the
new Dublin Metropolitan Police was to have a great influence on the development
of other police forces in Ireland, and eventually throughout the Empire.
A Commission was set up to examine the
possibilities for the commercial development of Irish bogs. The Bog
Commissioners appointed surveyors to examine the extent and positions of the
bogs. A base benchmark for surveying was established at the foot of Nelson's
Pillar. The foundation stone for the memorial column to Admiral Lord Nelson who was killed at Trafalgar on 21 October
1805, had been laid in
February 1808.The surveyors were also given rainguages to measure rainfall,
anticipating the wider researches of the Ordnance Survey two decades later. The
half million pounds voted by the Irish Parliament for the development of inland
navigation in Ireland was now all spent, but Richmond kept the Board of Inland
Navigation in existence to adjudicate on new proposals. Further monies would be
voted by Parliament for particular schemes it recommended. An Irish Road Act (1809) was passed. Among
other things it enacted that in future all traffic going in one direction would
keep to the left, while facing traffic would keep to the opposite side. (The
regulation apparently was first made with regard to the crossing of narrow
bridges.) Work commenced on the new packet harbour at Howth.
With regard to the Catholics,
Richmond followed the policy of Hardwicke. Two
appointments he made however caused great offence to many Catholics. One was
the appointment of Jack Giffard to a public office, but those who defended the
appointment maintained the Hardwicke never intended that Giffard's exclusion
should be permanent. The other was the appointment of the outspoken
anti-Catholic Dr Patrick Duigenan as a Privy Councillor. It is likely the
appointment was made purely for technical reasons, for Duigenan was one of Ireland's few doctors of Canon and Civil Law and so was a
key figure in the ecclesiastical courts. (These courts had considerable civil
jurisdiction especially with regard to wills and matrimonial cases.) In l809
the High Sheriffs of Dublin summoned several leading Catholic freeholders to
service on the City Grand Jury. This had not been done in Dublin for centuries, though it had been done in other
parts of Ireland. It was symptomatic of the growing feelings of liberality
among Protestant gentlemen.
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The
question of the Veto
The Catholics had to decide
what to do about their petition that had caused the downfall of the Talents
ministry. The infighting among them continued and Daniel O'Connell emerged as
the leader of the intransigents. It was decided to continue petitioning
Parliament, and petitions were drawn up for presentation to the two Houses of
Parliament in 1808. The Earl of Fingall informed George Ponsonby of the
discussions with regard to a veto which had been going on for some years, and
introduced him to Dr Milner who would state the Catholic position with
authority.
When Grattan and Ponsonby, in May
1808, introduced the petition they gave as new grounds for considering the
claims the undertaking of the Catholics to seek a powers
of veto from the Pope over the appointment of bishops. The motion was in fact
lost but a storm of protest arose in Ireland in which Milner's effigy was burned. Archbishop
Troy of Dublin confirmed that the Irish bishops would not oppose
a political settlement. In September 1808, however, the Irish bishops met and
issued a statement that it was 'inexpedient' to change the existing mode of
appointing Irish bishops. Replying to a query from Lord Southwell and Sir
Edward Bellew, Troy stated that the resolution referred only to
present circumstances with an anti-Catholic ministry in office, and was not
intended to be permanent. Others were inclined to dispute Troy's view. Troy then informed Dr. Concanen in Rome of the views of the bishops. A deep division grew
in the ranks of the Catholics between the 'Vetoists' and 'Anti-vetoists' which
was not patched over until l823, and then only temporarily. Edward Hay replaced
James Ryan as Secretary to the Irish Catholics.
Archbishop Carroll of
Baltimore, Maryland, wrote to Archbishop Troy asking him to keep him informed about the
activities of the Irish bishops. Most of the Catholic bishops in the world were
now in territories directly controlled by Napoleon and the bishops of the 'free
world' were concerned that they had sole responsibility for guarding orthodoxy
without access to the Pope. If Napoleon were to seize
Sicily and Sardinia there
would be few bishops left except the English-speaking bishops and those in the
Spanish colonies. In Sicily
the British troops worked out a plan for rescuing the Pope and transporting him
to any country he might wish to settle in, but the Pope did not believe the
messenger sent to him. For the next five years all communications with the Pope
were carried by smugglers. In 1809 Archbishop Troy got the consent of the Pope
for the appointment of the Rev. Daniel Murray as coadjutor with right of
succession to Troy, and with the personal title of archbishop. This
was the last episcopal appointment to be made in Ireland for several years. It is well to remember the
position the Irish bishops found themselves in when considering events over the
next few years.
Feelings among the laity were running
strongly against any concession to the crown. For the rest of 1808 there were
many arguments about the advisability of continuing petitioning in the present
circumstances. In March 1809 the English Catholics decided to petition. The old
Irish Catholic Committee of 1793 was re-constituted. Survivors of that
Committee were to be on the new Committee, and other gentlemen were to be
co-opted. It was made clear that the members of this Committee were in no way
the delegates of any body or group, so avoiding the Convention Act. The
Catholic lords had considerable influence, and O'Connell maintained that they
were (in supporting a veto) representing no interest but their own. From this
followed everlasting attempts by O'Connell to get a representative body without
being caught by the Convention Act. The Irish Government for the moment just
ignored the Committee.
In
Ulster the Presbyterians, who lacked any institute of
higher studies of their own, began to build a new college in Belfast that they called the Belfast Academical
Institution. Like Maynooth, it was partly a grammar school, and partly a school
for the further instruction of ordinands. Before that Presbyterian ordinands
had to go to Glasgow University. [Top]
The
War in the Peninsula
[1809] Following the
Convention of Cintra, the British troops in the Peninsula were placed under Sir John Moore. Napoleon
intervened personally in Spain, and half of the British Army that had advanced
too far to help the Spaniards had to retreat hastily to Corunna for
re-embarkation. (Moore was killed at Corunna, and his death was
commemorated in a famous Irish poem, 'The Burial of Sir John Moore at
Corunna'.) About 10,000 British troops remained in Portugal. By March 1809 the French, under Marshal Soult,
had reached Oporto in northern Portugal. Arthur Wellesley convinced Castlereagh that a
British Army could be maintained indefinitely in Portugal. He therefore resigned from the Irish
Secretaryship (being succeeded briefly by Robert Dundas, April to October 1809)
and set about organizing a further expedition to the Peninsula. The expedition sailed from Cork, beginning a close involvement of Ireland with the Peninsula which was to last for six years. Wellesley sailed from Portsmouth with the other half of the fleet, and never
returned to Ireland for the rest of his life. Another Irish soldier,
William Carr Beresford, was appointed commander-in-chief of the Portuguese
army. The Portuguese, unlike the Spaniards, adopted the methods of drilling
developed in Ireland, and their army became an effective force. Most
of the Portuguese officers had gone to Brazil, so Beresford replaced them with British
officers. (The Spaniards became experts at ‘little war’ guerrilla, as opposed to big war guerra, and a new words entered the
English language.)
Wellesley advanced, like Moore, into central Spain to aid the over-confident Spanish armies, but
after a victory at Talavera had to retreat into Estramadura. Wellesley had no wish to be caught in an advanced position
like Sir John Moore, and usually retreated in good time. Only once had he to
make a precipitate retreat like Moore, and even then he had a secure base he
could fall back to. Cautiously, he began the construction of fortified 'lines'
at Torres Vedras, but they were not needed this year. They were across the
isthmus on which Lisbon with its great port was situated, and reached
from shore to shore. He was then raised to the peerage as Viscount Wellington.
He assured Lord Liverpool in London that he could hold out, and for the next few
years Wellington and the successive shaky Tory ministries propped
each other up. On occasion Wellington fought battles with the French he would rather have avoided to
provide the Government with another victory and so keep it in office. In 1809 Austria came back into the war, and so prevented Napoleon
concentrating his forces against Wellington in Spain.
There was a young Irishman
belonging to the Augustinian Order studying at the
University of Coimbra in Portugal. His name was James Warren Doyle. All the
students, clerical as well as lay, joined the Portuguese army. The Irish
students were used as English interpreters by the Portuguese army. Their
superiors in Ireland hastily called them home. Lord Henry Paget, later
Marquis of Anglesey, ran away with Henry Wellesley’s wife, which was to have
repercussions much later between Anglesey and
Wellington.
In London, the Duke of Portland was dying and his ministry
was falling apart. Canning, who had hopes of succeeding as Prime Minister, was
plotting behind Castlereagh's back. The two fought a duel, and then resigned.
Several more resignations followed, but Spencer Perceval succeeded in putting
another ministry together.
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