Triumph of the Catholic Committee: the Irish Catholic Campaign, 1790-1793

Abstract

The overall aim of this study is to reawaken interest in the frequently overlooked and misunderstood poplar political campaign of the Irish Catholic Committee between 1790 and 1793. The first chapter of this thesis will provide a broad overview and an introduction and will also present the primary topics to be addressed, including the membership, motivation, methodology, and character of the Irish Catholic organisation.

The second chapter will relate the historical background of the penal era in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Ireland and the evolution of Irish Catholic activism in the decades immediately prior to the 1790s. Chapters three, four, five, and six will be devoted to relating the actual events of the campaign in detail, investigating the contribution of specific members and outlining the adoption of innovative tactics and measures. Chapter three will cover the campaign's gradual and hesitant beginnings, while chapters four and five will describe the critical months between September 1791 and December 1792, when the Committee was at its most politically active.

Chapter six will cover the events of 1793, when the Catholics of Ireland received the parliamentary franchise, and will consider the historical legacy of the Catholic Relief Act of 1793. Finally, the last chapter of this thesis, chapter seven, will provide a thorough analysis of the character of the Catholic Committee, asking whether the Committee can most accurately be characterised as either a sectarian, radical, or patriotic political organisation.

One of the intended aims of this dissertation is the effective reintroduction of the Catholic Committee to eighteenth-century Irish historiography, placing it alongside other contemporary popular political groups such as the Society of United Irishmen. In addition, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the important rediscovery of the voice of the secular, eighteenth-century Irish Catholics, which has repeatedly been neglected or underappreciated by historians investigating the political events surrounding the Irish Catholic question of the eighteenth century. Finally, this dissertation will show that the campaign of the Irish Catholic Committee was conducted peacefully, without social bias or religious prejudice, for the relief of the Irish Catholics and the improvement of Irish society