In March 1835, Daniel O’Connell wrote to his trusted political lieutenant P. V. FitzPatrick of rumours swirling through London that Peel’s Conservative government had surrendered their ministerial positions. ‘Blessed be the great God for this prospect!’, confessed O’Connell, ‘It is joyful to think that the iron rule of Orangeism is so nearly at an end.’ Brought in less than a year earlier by King William IV after his unwillingness to submit the House of Commons to the leadership of Lord John Russell, which ended Melbourne’s Whig government, Peel’s government resigned after consecutive defeats in the House of Commons regarding the election of a Speaker for the House and the thorny issue of the appropriation of surplus funds from the Church of Ireland – what became known as ‘church appropriation’. These defeats necessitated a rather awkward invitation by the king to the Whigs to form another government, with the implicit understanding that any Whig government would feel compelled to deal with the issue of church appropriation, revisiting the conflict between crown and Parliament that had precipitated the Whigs’ dismissal in 1834.