The term is not usually applied to Presbyterians in the province of Ulster, whose ancestry is mostly Lowland Scottish, rather than English or Irish, and who are sometimes identified as Ulster-Scots. The Anglo-Irish hold a wide range of political views, with some being outspoken Irish Nationalists, but most overall being Unionists. And while most of the Anglo-Irish originated in the English diaspora in Ireland, others were descended from families of the old Gaelic nobility of Ireland.[6]
The term "Anglo-Irish" is often applied to the members of the Church of Ireland who made up the professional and landed class in Ireland from the 17th century up to the time of Irish independence in the early 20th century. In the course of the 17th century, this Anglo-Irish landed class replaced the Gaelic Irish and Old English aristocracies as the ruling class in Ireland. They were also referred to as "New English" to distinguish them from the "Old English", who descended from the medieval Hiberno-Norman settlers.
Under the Penal Laws, which were in force between the 17th and 19th centuries (although enforced with varying degrees of severity), Roman Catholicrecusants in Great Britain and Ireland were barred from holding public office, while in Ireland they were also barred from entry to Trinity College Dublin and from professions such as law, medicine, and the military. The lands of the recusant Roman Catholic landed gentry who refused to take the prescribed oaths were largely confiscated during the Plantations of Ireland. The rights of Roman Catholics to inherit landed property were severely restricted. Those who converted to the Church of Ireland were usually able to keep or regain their lost property, as the issue was considered primarily one of allegiance. In the late 18th century, the Parliament of Ireland in Dublin won legislative independence, and the movement for the repeal of the Test Acts began.
Not all Anglo-Irish people could trace their origins to the Protestant English settlers of the Cromwellian period; some were of Welsh stock, and others descended from Old English or even native Gaelic converts to Anglicanism.[6] Members of this ruling class commonly identified themselves as Irish,[5] while retaining English habits in politics, commerce, and culture. They participated in the popular English sports of the day, particularly racing and fox hunting, and intermarried with the ruling classes in Great Britain. Many of the more successful of them spent much of their careers either in Great Britain or in some part of the British Empire. Many constructed large country houses, which became known in Ireland as Big Houses, and these became symbolic of the class' dominance in Irish society.
The Dublin working class playwright Brendan Behan, a staunch Irish Republican, saw the Anglo-Irish as Ireland's leisure class and famously defined an Anglo-Irishman as "a Protestant with a horse".[7]
The Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Bowen memorably described her experience as feeling "English in Ireland, Irish in England" and not accepted fully as belonging to either.[8]
Due to their prominence in the military and their conservative politics, the Anglo-Irish have been compared to the Prussian Junker class by, among others, Correlli Barnett.[9]
Statue of Anglo-Irish mathematician and theologian George Salmon (1819–1904), in front of the campanile of Trinity College Dublin, the traditional alma mater of the Anglo-Irish class. Salmon was provost of Trinity from 1888 until his death.
Sir John Winthrop Hackett emigrated to Australia where he became the proprietor and editor of many prominent newspapers. He was also influential in the founding of the University of Western Australia and was its first chancellor.
Confederate general Patrick Cleburne was of Anglo-Irish ancestry.
Discussing what he considered the lack of Irish civic morality in 2011, former TaoiseachGarret FitzGerald remarked that before 1922: "In Ireland a strong civic sense did exist – but mainly amongst Protestants and especially Anglicans".[10]
The Anglo-Irish, as a class, were mostly opposed to the notions of Irish independence and Home Rule.[12] Most were supporters of continued political union with Great Britain, which existed between 1800 and 1922. This was for many reasons, but most important were the economic benefits of union for the landowning class, the close personal and familial relations with the British establishment, and the political prominence held by the Anglo-Irish in Ireland under the union settlement.[13] Many Anglo-Irish men served as officers in the British Army, were clergymen in the established Anglican Church of Ireland or had land (or business interests) across the British Isles – all factors which encouraged political support for unionism. Between the mid-nineteenth century and 1922, the Anglo-Irish comprised the bulk of the support for movements such as the Irish Unionist Alliance, especially in the southern three provinces of Ireland.[14]
However, Protestants in Ireland, and the Anglo-Irish class in particular, were by no means universally attached to the cause of continued political union with Great Britain. For instance, author Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), a clergyman in the Church of Ireland, vigorously denounced the plight of ordinary Irish Catholics under the rule of the landlords. Reformist politicians such as Henry Grattan (1746–1820), Wolfe Tone (1763–1798), Robert Emmet (1778–1803), Sir John Gray (1815–1875), and Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891), were also Protestant nationalists, and in large measure led and defined Irish nationalism. The Irish Rebellion of 1798 was led by members of the Anglo-Irish and Ulster Scots class, some of whom feared the political implications of the impending union with Great Britain.[16] By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, Irish nationalism became increasingly tied to a Roman Catholic identity.[16] By the beginning of the twentieth century, many Anglo-Irishmen in southern Ireland had become convinced of the need for a political settlement with Irish nationalists. Anglo-Irish politicians such as Sir Horace Plunkett and Lord Monteagle became leading figures in finding a peaceful solution to the 'Irish question'.
During the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), many Anglo-Irish landlords left the country due to arson attacks on their family homes.[17] The burnings continued and many sectarian murders were carried out by the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War. Considering the Irish State unable to protect them, many members of the Anglo-Irish class subsequently left Ireland forever, fearing that they would be subject to discriminatory legislation and social pressures. The Protestant proportion of the Irish population dropped from 10% (300,000) to 6% (180,000) in the Irish Free State in the twenty-five years following independence,[18] with most resettling in Great Britain. In the whole of Ireland the percentage of Protestants was 26% (1.1 million).
It concerns us all to offer the Irish Free State our loyalty. I believe there is a genuine desire on the part of those who have long differed from us politically to welcome our co-operation. We should be wrong politically and religiously to reject such advances.[19]
In 1925, when the Irish Free State was poised to outlaw divorce, the Anglo-Irish poet W. B. Yeats delivered a famous eulogy for his class in the Irish Senate:
I think it is tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence we should be discussing a measure which a minority of this nation considers to be grossly oppressive. I am proud to consider myself a typical man of that minority. We against whom you have done this thing, are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created the most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence. Yet I do not altogether regret what has happened. I shall be able to find out, if not I, my children will be able to find out whether we have lost our stamina or not. You have defined our position and have given us a popular following. If we have not lost our stamina then your victory will be brief, and your defeat final, and when it comes this nation may be transformed.[20]
Following the English victory in the Nine Years' War (1594–1603), the "Flight of the Earls" in 1607, the traditional Gaelic Irish nobility was displaced in Ireland, particularly in the Cromwellian period. By 1707, after further defeat in the Williamite War and the subsequent Union of England and Scotland, the aristocracy in Ireland was dominated by Anglican families who owed allegiance to the Crown. Some of these were Irish families who had chosen to conform to the established Church of Ireland, keeping their lands and privileges, such as the Dukes of Leinster (whose surname is FitzGerald, and who descend from the Hiberno-Norman aristocracy), or the Gaelic Guinness family. Some were families of British or mixed-British ancestry who owed their status in Ireland to the Crown, such as the Earls of Cork (whose surname is Boyle and whose ancestral roots were in Herefordshire, England).
Until the year 1800, the peers of Ireland were all entitled to a seat in the Irish House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of Ireland, in Dublin. After 1800, under the provisions of the Act of Union, the Parliament of Ireland was abolished and the Irish peers were entitled to elect twenty-eight of their number to sit in the British House of Lords, in London, as representative peers. During the Georgian Era, titles in the peerage of Ireland were often granted by the British monarch to Englishmen with little or no connection to Ireland, as a way of preventing such honours from inflating the membership of the British House of Lords.[21]
A number of Anglo-Irish peers have been appointed by Presidents of Ireland to serve on their advisory Council of State. Some were also considered possible candidates for presidents of Ireland, including:
Meg: In the name of God, what's that? Pat: A Protestant with a horse. Ropeen: Leadbetter. Pat: No, no, an ordinary Protestant like Leadbetter, the plumber in the back parlour next door, won't do, nor a Belfastorangeman, not if he was as black as your boot. Meg: Why not?
Pat: Because they work. An Anglo-Irishman only works at riding horses, drinking whiskey, and reading double-meaning books in Irish at Trinity College.
^"Roberts, Kitchener and Wolesley were three national heroes of the nineteenth century whom Correlli Barnett sees as prime examples of the Anglo-Irish gentry, the nearest thing Britain ever possessed to the Prussian Junker class". Desmond and Jean Bowen, Heroic Option: the Irish in the British Army, Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2005.
^"Ireland's lack of civic morality grounded in our history", Irish Times, 9 April 2011, p.14
Julian Moynahan (1995), Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, ISBN978-0691037578
Terence de Vere White (1972), The Anglo-Irish: The Men and Women Who Were Involved in a Confluence of Cultures that Spanned 200 Years. London: Victor Gollancz.
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