for Winchester
Henry Flood (1732 –2 December 1791) was an Irish statesman and Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench for Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin,and afterwards at Christ Church,Oxford,where he became proficient in the classics. He was a leading Irish politician,and a friend of Henry Grattan,the leader of the Irish Patriot Party. He became an object of public interest in 1770,when he was put on trial for murder,after killing a political rival in a duel.
Henry was the son to Warden Flood. He was married to Lady Frances Beresford,daughter of Marcus Beresford,1st Earl of Tyrone,and Lady Catherine Power,who brought him a large fortune. [1]
In 1759,he entered the Irish parliament as member for County Kilkenny,a seat he held until 1761. There was at that time no party in the Irish House of Commons that could truly be called national,and until a few years before there had been none that deserved even the name of opposition. The Irish parliament was still constitutionally subordinate to the English privy council;it had practically no powers of independent legislation,and none of controlling the policy of the executive,which was nominated by the ministers in London. Though the majority of the people were Roman Catholics,no person of that faith could either enter parliament or exercise the franchise;the penal code,which made it almost impossible for a Roman Catholic to hold property,to follow a learned profession,or even to educate his children,and which in numerous particulars pressed severely on the Roman Catholics and subjected them to degrading conditions,was as yet unrepealed,though in practice largely obsolete;the industry and commerce of Ireland were throttled by restrictions imposed,in accordance with the economic theories of the period,in the interest of the rival trade of Great Britain. Men like Anthony Malone and Hely-Hutchinson fully realised the necessity for far-reaching reforms;and it only needed the ability and eloquence of Flood in the Irish House of Commons to raise up an independent party in parliament,and to create in the country a public opinion with definite intelligible aims. [1]
The chief objects for which Flood strove were the shortening of the duration of parliament which had then no legal limit in Ireland except that of the reigning sovereign's life,the reduction of the scandalously heavy pension list,the establishment of a national militia,and,above all,the complete legislative independence of the Irish parliament. For some years little was accomplished;but in 1768 the English ministry,which had special reasons at the moment for avoiding unpopularity in Ireland,allowed an octennial bill (limiting the term of parliament to eight years) to pass,which was the first step towards making the Irish House of Commons in some measure representative of public opinion. [1]
It had become the practice to allow crown patronage in Ireland to be exercised by the owners of parliamentary boroughs in return for their undertaking to manage the House in the government interest. But during the vice-royalty of Lord Townshend the aristocracy,and more particularly these undertakers as they were called,were made to understand that for the future their privileges in this respect would be curtailed. When,therefore,an opportunity was taken by the government in 1768 for reasserting the constitutional subordination of the Irish parliament,these powerful classes were thrown into a temporary alliance with Flood. In the following year,in accordance with the established procedure,a money bill was sent over by the privy council in London for acceptance by the Irish House of Commons. It was rejected,but a reason for this course was assigned;namely,that the bill had not originated in the Irish House. In consequence,parliament was peremptorily prorogued,and a recess of fourteen months was employed by the government in securing a majority by the most extensive corruption. Nevertheless,when parliament met in February 1771 another money bill was thrown out on the motion of Flood;and the next year Lord Townshend,the lord lieutenant whose policy had provoked this conflict,was recalled. The struggle was the occasion of a publication,famous in its day,called Baratariana ,to which Flood contributed a series of powerful letters after the manner of Junius,one of his collaborators being Henry Grattan. [1] [2]
The success which had thus far attended Flood's efforts had placed him in a position such as no Irish politician had previously attained. He had,as an eminent historian of Ireland observes,"proved himself beyond all comparison the greatest popular orator that his country had yet produced,and also a consummate master of parliamentary tactics. Under parliamentary conditions that were exceedingly unfavourable,and in an atmosphere charged with corruption,venality and subservience,he had created a party before which ministers had begun to quail,and had inoculated the Protestant constituencies with a genuine spirit of liberty and self-reliance." Lord Harcourt,who succeeded Townshend as viceroy,saw that Flood must be conciliated at any price "rather than risk the opposition of so formidable a leader." [1] Even his trial for the murder of his long-time enemy James Agar in 1770 did nothing to damage his career or his reputation. Found guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter,he was spared a prison sentence,and the episode is said to have made duelling more rather than less respectable.[ citation needed ]
Flood represented Callan between 1762 and 1776,where he had a bitter feud with the Agar family,whose effective head James Agar he killed in a duel,and Longford Borough between 1768 and 1769.[ citation needed ] Accordingly,in 1775,he was offered and accepted a seat,in the Privy Council of Ireland and the office of vice-treasurer with a salary of £3500 a year. For this step,he has been severely criticized. Flood may reasonably have held that he had a better prospect of advancing his policy by the leverage of a ministerial position. The result,however,was that the leadership of the national party passed from Flood to Grattan,who entered the Irish parliament in the same session that Flood became a minister. [1]
Flood continued in office for nearly seven years. Re-elected for Enniskillen in 1777,he necessarily remained silent on the subject of the independence of the Irish parliament,and had to be content with advocating minor reforms as occasion offered. He was instrumental in obtaining bounties on the export of Irish corn to foreign,countries and other commercial concessions. On the other hand,he failed to procure the passing of a Habeas corpus bill and a bill for making the judges irremovable,while his support of Lord North's American policy gravely injured his popularity and reputation. [1]
An important event in 1778 led indirectly to his recovering to some extent his former position in the country;this was the alliance of France with the revolted American colonies. Ireland was thereby placed in peril of a French invasion,while the English government could provide no troops to defend the island. A volunteer movement was then set on foot to meet the emergency;in a few weeks more than 40,000 men were under arms,officered by the country gentry,and controlled by Lord Charlemont. This volunteer force,in which Flood was a colonel soon made itself felt in politics. [1]
A Volunteer Convention,formed with all the regular organisation of a representative assembly,but wielding the power of an army,began menacingly to demand the removal of the commercial restrictions which were destroying Irish prosperity. Under,this pressure the government gave way;the whole colonial trade was in 1779 thrown open to Ireland for the first time,and other concessions were also extorted. Flood,who had taken an active though not a leading part in this movement,now at last resigned his office to rejoin his old party. He found to his chagrin that his former services had been to a great extent forgotten and that he was eclipsed by Grattan. [1]
When in a debate on the constitutional question in 1779 Flood complained of the small consideration shown him in relation to a subject which he had been the first to agitate,he was reminded that by the civil law if a man should separate from his wife and abandon her for seven years,another might then take her and give her his protection. But though Flood had lost control of the movement for independence of the Irish parliament,the agitation,backed as it now was by the Volunteer Convention and by increasing signs of popular disaffection,led at last in 1782 to the concession of the demand,together with a number of other important reforms. [3]
No sooner,however,was this great success gained than a question arose known as the Simple Repeal controversy as to whether England,in addition to the repeal of the Acts on which the subordination of the Irish parliament had been based,should not be required expressly to renounce for the future all claim to control Irish legislation. The chief historical importance of this dispute is that it led to the memorable rupture of friendship between Flood and Grattan,each of whom assailed the other with unmeasured but magnificently eloquent invective in the House of Commons. [4]
In 1783,Flood was again returned to the house,this time for Kilbeggan. His view prevailed for a Renunciation Act such as he advocated was ungrudgingly passed by the English parliament of the same year and for a time he regained popularity at the expense of his rival. Flood next (28 November 1783) introduced a reform bill,after first submitting it to the Volunteer Convention. [4]
The bill,which contained no provision for giving the franchise to Roman Catholics,which Flood always opposed,was rejected,ostensibly on the ground that the attitude of the volunteers threatened the freedom of parliament. The volunteers were perfectly loyal to the crown and the connection with England. They carried an address to the king,moved by Flood,expressing the hope that their support of parliamentary reform might be imputed to nothing but a sober and laudable desire to uphold the constitution and to perpetuate the cordial union of both kingdoms. The convention then dissolved,but Flood had desired,in opposition to Grattan,to continue it as a means of putting pressure on parliament for the purpose of obtaining reform. [4]
In Dublin,he was a member of Daly's Club. [5]
In 1776,Flood had made an attempt to enter the British House of Commons. In 1783,he tried again,this time successfully. He purchased a seat for Winchester from the duke of Chandos,and for the next seven years he was a member at the same time of both the British and Irish parliaments. He reintroduced,but without success,his reform bill in the Irish House in 1784;supported the movement for protecting Irish industries;but short-sightedly opposed Pitt's commercial propositions in 1785. He remained a firm opponent of Roman Catholic emancipation,even defending the penal laws on the ground that after the Revolution,they were not laws of persecution but of political necessity;but after 1786,he does not appear to have attended the parliament in Dublin. [4]
In the House at Westminster,where he refused to enrol himself as a member of either political party,he was not successful:Grattan remarked that Flood,at fifty,was too old a tree to be transplanted. His first speech,in opposition to Charles James Fox's India Bill on 3 December 1783,disappointed the expectations aroused by his celebrity. His speech in opposition to the commercial treaty with France in 1787 was,however,well received;and in 1790 he introduced a reform bill which Fox declared to be the best scheme of reform that had yet been proposed,and which in Edmund Burke's opinion retrieved Flood's reputation. But at the dissolution in the same year,he lost his seat in both parliaments,and he then retired to Farmley,his residence in County Kilkenny,where he remained until his death. [4] He and Frances,who survived until 1815,had no children,and his property passed to a cousin,John Flood;a large bequest to Trinity College Dublin was declared invalid.[ citation needed ]
Henry Grattan was an Irish politician and lawyer who campaigned for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century from Britain. He was a Member of the Irish Parliament (MP) from 1775 to 1801 and a Member of Parliament (MP) in Westminster from 1805 to 1820. He has been described as a superb orator and a romantic. With generous enthusiasm he demanded that Ireland should be granted its rightful status,that of an independent nation,though he always insisted that Ireland would remain linked to Great Britain by a common crown and by sharing a common political tradition.
Robert Stewart,1st Marquess of LondonderryPC (Ire) (1739–1821),was a County Down landowner,Irish Volunteer,and member of the parliament who,exceptionally for an Ulster Scot and Presbyterian,rose within the ranks of Ireland's "Anglican Ascendancy." His success was fuelled by wealth acquired through judicious marriages,and by the advancing political career of his son,Viscount Castlereagh. In 1798 he gained notoriety for refusing to intercede on behalf of James Porter,his local Presbyterian minister,executed outside the Stewart demesne as a rebel.
Lord Edward FitzGerald was an Irish aristocrat and nationalist. He abandoned his prospects as a distinguished veteran of British service in the American War of Independence,and as an Irish Parliamentarian,to embrace the cause of an independent Irish republic. Unable to reconcile with Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy or with the Kingdom's English-appointed administration,he sought inspiration in revolutionary France where,in 1792,he met and befriended Thomas Paine. From 1796 he became a leading proponent within the Society of United Irishmen of a French-assisted insurrection. On the eve of the intended uprising in May 1798,he was fatally wounded in the course of arrest.
James Caulfeild,1st Earl of Charlemont KP PC (Ire),was an Irish statesman.
Sir Phelim Roe O'Neill of Kinard was an Irish politician and soldier who started the Irish rebellion in Ulster on 23 October 1641. He joined the Irish Catholic Confederation in 1642 and fought in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms under his cousin,Owen Roe O'Neill,in the Confederate Ulster Army. After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland O’Neill went into hiding but was captured,tried and executed in 1653.
John Hely later Hely-Hutchinson was an Irish lawyer,statesman,and Provost of Trinity College Dublin.
Charles Manners,4th Duke of Rutland,KG,PC was a British politician and nobleman,the eldest legitimate son of John Manners,Marquess of Granby. He was styled Lord Roos from 1760 until 1770,and Marquess of Granby from 1770 until 1779.
The history of Ireland from 1691–1800 was marked by the dominance of the Protestant Ascendancy. These were Anglo-Irish families of the Anglican Church of Ireland,whose English ancestors had settled Ireland in the wake of its conquest by England and colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland,and had taken control of most of the land. Many were absentee landlords based in England,but others lived full-time in Ireland and increasingly identified as Irish.. During this time,Ireland was nominally an autonomous Kingdom with its own Parliament;in actuality it was a client state controlled by the King of Great Britain and supervised by his cabinet in London. The great majority of its population,Roman Catholics,were excluded from power and land ownership under the penal laws. The second-largest group,the Presbyterians in Ulster,owned land and businesses but could not vote and had no political power. The period begins with the defeat of the Catholic Jacobites in the Williamite War in Ireland in 1691 and ends with the Acts of Union 1800,which formally annexed Ireland in a United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 and dissolved the Irish Parliament.
The Volunteers were local militias raised by local initiative in Ireland in 1778. Their original purpose was to guard against invasion and to preserve law and order at a time when British soldiers were withdrawn from Ireland to fight abroad during the American Revolutionary War and the government failed to organise its own militia. Taking advantage of Britain's preoccupation with its rebelling American colonies,the Volunteers were able to pressure Westminster into conceding legislative independence to the Dublin parliament. Members of the Belfast 1st Volunteer Company laid the foundations for the establishment of the United Irishmen organisation. The majority of Volunteer members however were inclined towards the yeomanry,which fought and helped defeat the United Irishmen in the Irish rebellion of 1798.
George Ogle was an Irish Tory politician.
William Robert FitzGerald,2nd Duke of Leinster,KP,PC (Ire) was an Irish liberal politician and landowner. He was born in London.
The Irish Patriot Party was the name of a number of different political groupings in Ireland throughout the 18th century. They were primarily supportive of Whig concepts of personal liberty combined with an Irish identity that rejected full independence,but advocated strong self-government within the British Empire.
Charles Lucas was an Anglo-Irish apothecary,physician and politician. He sat as Member of Parliament for Dublin City and was known as the "Irish Wilkes" because of his radical views.
Francis Dobbs (1750–1811) was an Irish barrister,politician and writer on political,religious and historical topics.
Sir John Newport,1st Baronet was an Anglo-Irish Whig politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland.
Francis Hardy (1751–1812) was an Irish barrister,politician and biographer.
The 1797 Irish general election was the last general election to the Irish House of Commons,with the Act of Union three years later uniting the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain. The election followed the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793,meaning it was the first general election in Ireland in which Catholics could vote,provided they met the property requirements. The election also coincided with simmering rebellion in Ireland,coming not long after an attempted French expedition to Ireland,and the following year witnessing the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
General elections were held in the Kingdom of Ireland in 1783,the first after the passing of the series of constitutional legal changes known as the Constitution of 1782,which lifted the substantial legal restrictions on the Irish parliament. The elections were fought in a highly charged political atmosphere,with a major emphasis on the issues of parliamentary reform and free trade.
The Irish Appeals Act 1783,commonly known as the Renunciation Act,was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. By it the British Parliament renounced all right to legislate for Ireland,and declared that no appeal from the decision of any court in Ireland could be heard in any court in Great Britain.
James Grattan was an Irish Whig politician and army officer.