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Anglicanism Portal

The Protestant Ascendancy refers to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by Anglican landowners, Church of Ireland clergy, and professionals during the 17th, 18th, and 19th century. The term can be misleading, however, because Presbyterians and other "Dissenters" were excluded along with Irish Catholics. Therefore, a more accurate term might be "Anglican Ascendancy".

The gradual dispossession of several hundred native Catholic landowners in Ireland took place in various stages from the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary and her Protestant sister Elizabeth I. Unsuccessful revolts against English rule in 1595-1603 and 1641-1653 and then the 1689-91 Williamite Wars caused much Irish land to be confiscated by the Crown, which then was sold to people who were thought loyal, most of whom were English and Protestant. English soldiers and traders became the new ruling class and its richer members were elevated to the Irish House of Lords and controlled the Irish House of Commons (see Plantations of Ireland).

This process was facilitated and formalized in the legal system after 1691 by the passing of various Penal Laws, which discriminated against the richer families of the majority Catholic population, and the non-conforming Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians, when they

• had revolted against the government and
• did not swear allegiance to the king.

As a result, political, legal, and economic power resided with the Ascendancy to the extent that by the mid-eighteenth century, 95% of the land of Ireland was calculated to be under Protestant control. A small amount of this land belonged to Catholic landlords who had converted to the state religion.

St. Patrick’s Cross – Geraldine Flag adopted as symbol by Ascendancy

The confidence of the Ascendancy was manifested towards the end of the 18th century by its adoption of a nationalist Irish, though still exclusively Protestant, identity, and the formation in 1760 of Henry Grattan's Patriot Party. The formation of the Irish Volunteers to defend Ireland from French invasion during the American Revolution effectively gave Grattan a military force, and he was able to force Britain to concede limited independence to the Ascendancy.

The parliament repealed most of the Penal Laws in 1771-1793 but did not abolish them, and, following the forced recall of the liberal Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795 by conservatives, it was effectively abandoned as a vehicle for change by liberal elements who began to plan for armed rebellion. The resulting rebellion was crushed with vicious brutality; the Act of Union of 1801 was passed partly in response to a perception that the bloodshed was provoked by the misrule of the Ascendancy, and partly from the expense involved.

In the opinion of most historians, the Ascendancy ended with the closing of the Dublin parliament in 1801, but it became a convenient expression to denote areas of life where Anglicans still had unique legal advantages, such as sitting in the London parliament (until 1829) or the tithe support for their church which was levied on most landowners.

The abolition of the Irish parliament was followed by economic decline in Ireland, and widespread emigration from among the ruling class to the new centre of power in London which led to the phenomenon of the absentee landlord. The eventual arrival of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 meant that the Ascendancy now faced competition from prosperous Catholics in parliament and the various professions. From 1840 corporations running towns and cities in Ireland became more democratically elected; previously they were dominated by guild members who were often Protestant.

The festering sense of native grievance was magnified by the horrors of the Potato Famine of 1845-52, with many of the Ascendancy perceived as absentee landlords shipping food to England, protected by the British establishment, while much of the population starved. However, the Encumbered Estates Act of 1848 was passed to allow landlords to sell mortgaged land; many went bankrupt as their tenants could not pay any rent due to the famine.

The economic position of many landowners worsened as rents became uncollectable due to the emergence of both secret and open societies, such as the Land League, challenging the power of the landlords. Such agitation peaked during the Land War of the 1880s, caused by the fall in agricultural prices, which saw a mass mobilization of tenant farmers against the landlord class. At around the same time, a greater number of seats in the Irish House of Commons passed to a largely Catholic and middle class Irish nationalist movement. As a consequence, the remnants of the Ascendancy were gradually displaced during the 19th and early 20th centuries through impoverishment, bankruptcy, the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, and finally the Irish Land Acts, which allowed tenants to buy their land.

During the Anglo-Irish War, many of the Loyalist landlords had their country homes burned down by the Irish Republican Army in retaliation for destruction of property by British forces. The burning of 300 stately homes of the old landed class was stepped up by a vengeful Anti-Treaty IRA during the subsequent Irish Civil War (1922-23), who identified them with what they saw as the continuing domination of Britain over Ireland. Compensation was paid for this destruction by the new Irish Free State.

Long before the independence of most of Ireland in 1922, the Ascendancy had lost real political influence and those who remained comprised a small, isolated, landed minority in their own land. By now their involvement had passed to literary matters, with Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats starting the Celtic Revival and followed by authors such as Hubert Butler.

• Orange Institution
• Plantations of Ireland
• Anglo-Irish
• Williamite