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Select Documents XLIII: A secret return of the Volunteers of Ireland in 1784

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

James Kelly
James Kelly*
Affiliation:
Department of History, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra
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Extract

Though the Volunteers had an enormous impact on Irish politics in the years between their formation in the mid 1770s and their dissolution in 1793, there has been comparatively little historical investigation of this phenomenon. One important and problematical matter in need of resolution is the size of the Volunteer force. Contemporary estimates abound, but they are often more valuable for the insight they give into contemporary thinking on Volunteering than reliable guides to the number of Volunteers in Ireland at any given time. In the absence of registers or other schedules of the hundreds of corps that constituted the Volunteers, it is improbable that we shall ever be able to provide absolute answers to the question of just how numerous they were. We are not wholly bereft of documentation, however, and by combining the more trustworthy of contemporary calculations and such lists as exist it is possible to throw much light on the rise and decline of Volunteering in the 1770s and 1780s. One of the most important and most detailed of these lists is the ‘secret’ and little known ‘Return of the Volunteers with private observations’ which was compiled in the early winter of 1784–5 as Dublin Castle readied itself for an attempt to replace this independent and highly politicised paramilitary body with a compliant and non-political militia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 103 , May 1989 , pp. 268 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1989

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References

1 The most important recent works are Smyth, P.D.H., ‘The Volunteer movement in Ulster: background and development, 1745–84’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1974)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Volunteers and parliament, 1779–84’ in Bartlett, Thomas and Hayton, D.W. (eds), Penal era and golden age: essays in Irish history, 1690–1800 (Belfast, 1979), pp 113-36Google Scholar, and Pádraig Ó Snodaigh’s series of county studies which are listed in Moody, T.W. and Vaughan, W.E. (eds), A new history of Ireland, iv: the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1986), pp 765-6Google Scholar.

2 Smyth, The Volunteers and parliament’, pp 114, n. 3, 116.

3 See O’Connell, M.R., Irish politics and social conflict in the age of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1965), passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDowell, R.B., Ireland in the age of imperialism and revolution, 1760–1801 (Oxford, 1979), chs 5 and 6Google Scholar.

4 ‘Abstract of the effective men in the Volunteer corps ...’ in Military memoranda (N.L.I., MS 743). As indicated in Table 1, the actual figure given in MS 743 puts the Volunteers’ strength in mid-1782 at 88,827, but the compiler also claimed that the 22 corps not included raised the total to 100,000. The abstract is published in MacNevin, Thomas, The history of the Volunteers of 1782 (4th ed., Dublin, 1846), pp 220-22Google Scholar.

5 For renunciation, see Jupp, P.J., ‘Earl Temple’s viceroyalty and the question of renunciation, 1782–3’ in I.H.S., xvii, no. 68 (Sept. 1971), pp 499–520 Google Scholar; for the fencibles, see Memo, 22 June 1782 (P.R.O., H.O. 100/2, f. 149) and O’Brien, Gerard, Anglo-Irish politics in the age of Grattan and Pitt (Dublin, 1987), pp 147-8Google Scholar.

6 For reform, see Kelly, James, ‘The Irish parliamentary reform movement: the administration and popular politics, 1783–85’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University College, Dublin, 1981), chs 2 and 3Google Scholar.

7 The parliamentary register, or history of the proceedings and debates of the house of commons of Ireland, 1781–97 (17 vols, Dublin, 1782-1801), ii, 226 Google Scholar; see also Fitzgibbon to Temple, 31 Oct. 1783 (B.L., Buckingham papers, Add. MS 40179, ff 96–7).

8 [Pelham] to Portland, 24 Oct. (B.L., Pelham papers, Add. MS 33100, f. 374); Northington to Fox, 31 Dec. (B.L., Fox papers, Add. MS 47567, ff 77–8); see also Northington to Portland, 17 Dec. 1783 (B.L., Northington letterbook, Add. MS 38716, f. 239).

9 Kelly, ‘Parliamentary reform’, pp 107–32.

10 Ibid., pp 160–79.

11 For Volunteer recruitment, see Dublin Evening Post, 1, 11, 13 May; Volunteer Journal (Dublin), 3 May; Belfast Mercury, 4 May; Rutland to Sydney, 18 May 1784 (P.R.O.I., Index to departmental letters and papers, 1760–89, f.266).

12 See Volunteer Evening Post, May-June, passim.

13 Rutland to Sydney, 8 May (The manuscripts of the duke of Rutland (H.M.C., 4 vols, London, 1888-1905), iii, 93-4)Google Scholar; Rutland to Sydney, 19, 24 May (P.R.O., H.O. 100/13, ff 73–4, 79–82); Cooke to Eden, 14 May 1784 (Sneyd papers, P.R.O.N.I., T.3229/2/3).

14 Rutland to Sydney, 2 June (P.R.O., H.O. 100/13, f.97); Fitzgibbon to Pelham, 5 June (B.L., Pelham papers, Add. MS 33101, ff 97–8); Broderick to Midleton, 4 June [1784] (Brodrick letterbook, N.L.I, microfilm pos. 4295; the original is in the possession of the town clerk, Midleton, Co. Cork).

15 Thomas Percy, bishop of Dromore to Sydney, 4 Nov. (N.L.I., Bolton papers, MS 16350/54-5); see also George Tandy to Napper Tandy, 2 Nov. (P.R.O., Chatham papers, 30/8/330, ff 258–9); Orde to Pitt, 6 Nov. 1784 (N.L.I., Bolton papers, MS 16358, ff 61–4).

16 Orde to Pitt, 6 Nov. (N.L.I., Bolton papers, MS 16358, ff 61–7); Plunkett to Hamilton, 6 Nov. (MS 16350/56); Extract of a letter from Colonel Dawson, 1 Nov. 1784 (P.R.O., Chatham papers, 30/8/330, ff 302–5).

17 Rutland to Sydney, 7 Oct. 1784 (Rutland MSS, iii, 141); Rutland to Pitt, 14 Nov. (ibid., pp 147–8).

18 Rutland to Sydney, 22 Nov. (Rutland MSS, iii, 150); Orde to Pitt, 16 Dec. 178 [4] (P.R.O., Chatham papers, 30/8/329, ff 280–81).

19 Cabinet minute, 10 Jan. (N.L.I., Sydney papers, MS 52/P/4); Pitt to Rutland, 11 Jan. 1785, in Stanhope, Philip, Mahon, Lord (ed.), Correspondence between William Pitt and Charles, duke of Rutland, 1781–87 (London, 1890), pp 75–82 Google Scholar.

20 Memo of the duke of Rutland, 14 Jan 1785 (Rutland MSS, iii, 164).

21 Parl. reg. Ire., iv, 222–38; Rutland to Sydney, 15 Feb. 1785 (P.R.O., H.O. 100/16, ff 171–3).

22 Charlemont to Stewart, 27 Nov. 1784 (P.R.O.N.I., Stewart papers, D3167/1/9); Charlemont to Maxwell, 22 Feb., Charlemont to Haliday, 14 Mar. 1785 (The manuscripts ... of James, first earl of Charlemont (H.M.C., rep. 12, app. 10, London, 1891), pp 17–19.

23 O’Brien, Anglo-Irish politics, p. 152; Charlemont to Flood, 2 Aug. 1787 ( R[odd], T[homas] (ed.), Original letters to Henry Flood (London, 1820), p. 171 Google Scholar); Lord Palmerston to Lady Palmerston, 18 Sept. 1788, in Connell, Brian (ed.), Portrait of a whig peer (London, 1957), pp 268-9Google Scholar.

page no note 1 The district totals actually add up to 18,463. This appears to have been due to a misreading of the King’s County figure (above, p. 283) as 436 and not 430.