it. I cannot blame them in regard to the Fencibles – although I would never blush for you being one.48
Drennan’s sojourn in Scotland made it possible for him to avoid having either to support or oppose Sam, though he was secretly in sympathy with the majority. He believed that Sam should have resigned from the Volunteers once he had decided to seek the commission in the fencibles.
There was another controversy which shook the unity of the Volunteers and did much damage at this crucial time. A very successful convention of the Ulster Volunteers held in Dungannon in February 1782 passed a number of pro-reform resolutions, including one strongly condemning ‘the legislation for Ireland by any body but the King Lords and Commons thereof’.49 Over the next couple of months, many Volunteer corps throughout the country threw their weight behind the Dungannon resolutions. The American war was going badly for the British and Lord North’s administration fell in March. Henry Grattan, a leader of the opposition in the Irish House of Commons, who had secretly helped to draft the Dungannon resolutions, was hailed as the hero of the hour when the British were compelled to concede repeal of the Declaratory Act in May 1782.
Henry Flood, Grattan’s opposition rival, very quickly declared that Grattan’s triumph was illusory and what was required was for Britain to renounce forever the power to legislate for Ireland. This was to be the cause of division that side-tracked the Volunteers in a crucial year. Most of the Belfast Volunteers supported Flood but Drennan did not trust his motives. He told Bruce: ‘Mr. Flood has certainly gained many converts in this county-amongst the rest Dr Haliday is rather on his side. Bryson the only man in the Company against him except W. Cunningham – I humbly conceive Flood uses his great abilities at present for the worst of all purposes, yet his argument is a strong one.’50
Drennan could see that even if Flood’s ‘strong argument’ was accepted, he would hardly be successful when demanding Great Britain concede something ‘we forgot to ask for at our last meeting together and before we sign and seal you must give us something more’.51 Drennan felt that the dispute about repeal or renunciation was pointless and purely verbal. He could not vote for either Grattan or Flood without reproach to his heart.52 Much more fundamentally, he was concerned that this dispute was diverting attention away from what, for Drennan, was the most important task for the Volunteers. In his view, that task was now to secure a more equal representation of the people in parliament. In June, Sir Edward Newenham gave notice in Parliament of his intention to move a bill to increase the weight of city and county representation in parliament.53 Drennan believed that the repeal renunciation dispute was sapping the energies that should have been supporting Newenham. ‘Let them all talk but I believe Newenham’s Bill for adequate representation of the people is of more importance than the question that is agitating the mind of the public – yet it is scarce heard of and without the backing of the people it can never prevail.’54
One of the driving forces behind the Dungannon Convention and, by extension, the key figure behind Grattan’s success with the Declaratory Act was Francis Dobbs (1750–1811). Dobbs was a barrister possessed of great organising skills. He now attempted to combat Flood by organising a second Dungannon Convention on 21 June, at which he succeeded in getting the Volunteers approval for Grattan’s settlement.55 He had himself represented the Belfast Volunteers at the convention and some of them demanded an explanation about why he had cast their vote without referring to them for a mandate.
Dobbs was summoned to Belfast to answer for his conduct. The Blue Company met in the Market House and Dobbs was asked to account for himself. His long-winded attempt to vindicate his action did not impress the meeting. Drennan described his rambling defence as: ‘A most verbose oration that lasted nearly an hour, touched upon every point that lay in the whole compass of Irish politics, contained his conferences with every minister in the Cabinet, their opinions, his opinions, plentiful abuse of Flood, plentiful praise of Grattan and Charlemont, and plentiful paucity of argument.’56
Dobbs’ performance succeeded only in further infuriating the angry Volunteers. He withdrew to the New Inn while the Company considered a motion of censure. Drennan moved the motion and it was carried unanimously. However, he was ‘astonished at the unjustifiable and excessive punishment aimed’ at Dobbs and believed some of it was ‘motivated by personal pique and animosity’. He therefore proposed, as Dobbs had admitted his error, that while the censure should stand, it should not be published in the press. When this was carried by a margin of forty-three to thirty-three, the minority withdrew ‘in paroxysms of rage’. They left the meeting and went to join a crowd who were already besieging the New Inn. Some of the crowd cried out ‘Let us see him, the villain has sold his country.’ Drennan and his friends rushed to the New Inn to protect Dobbs. He told William Bruce: ‘I saw and I know this man is singled out as an object for vengeance. He is weak, vain [but] honest ... I would never wish to countenance private pique in its extremity of wrath against a sinking man. It is ungenerous. It is cruel.’57
5
IF YOU SLEEP YOU DIE!
In December 1782, Drennan moved to Newry and set up in medical practice. He hoped to take advantage of the fact that Dr James Moody, one of the local physicians, had moved to Dublin and Drennan anticipated that he might be able to attract the custom of Moody’s former patients. He arrived in Newry with letters of introduction to a dozen principal inhabitants of the town. He took ‘genteel, commodious lodgings at Mrs. Maxwell’s in Market Street’. He soon made friends with the departing doctor’s brother, Reverend Boyle Moody (1752–1799), the local non-subscribing minister.1 He told William Bruce: ‘I consider myself as very happy in acquaintance or rather intimacy with Boyle Moody – he is one of those agreeable, lively well-informed men with whom it is always a pleasure to be connected particularly in a county town where the seeds of rational society are but thinly scattered.’2
Boyle Moody and his older brother, the Reverend John Moody, a Minister at Strand Street, Dublin, had both been educated at Dr Joseph Priestley’s Warrington Academy. William Bruce, who was at this time working as assistant minister to John Moody at Strand Street, had also been educated at Warrington. Drennan admired Boyle’s singing voice and his preaching ability. A few months later, when Sam McTier had occasion to meet Boyle Moody, he formed a somewhat different view of Drennan’s new friend. After Sam had spent an evening drinking with him in the tavern, he described Moody as, ‘a very great coxcomb and an empty fellow’, who did not ‘live as a clergyman ought’.3 Empty fellow or not, Boyle Moody had been an active member of the Volunteers and later the Society of United Irishmen. He was imprisoned during the 1798 Rebellion and died the following year from a fever contracted in prison. A Dr Campbell quotes a letter dated 1800, which goes some way towards explaining the reason for the arrest and subsequent death of Boyle Moody. ‘His crime was his profession, his liberal principles, his avowed friendship with the Catholics, nothing else is alleged.’4 The Non-subscribing Presbyterian congregation at Newry still exists and they display a plaque which, while it acknowledges Boyle Moody’s service as its minister from 1779 until 1799, makes no mention of why or how his ministry came to an abrupt end.
Other than Boyle Moody, Drennan found the young men of the town genteel and dressy, not much cultivated by education but very civil and obliging to himself. The young women Drennan encountered were ‘not much inferior to those in Belfast. They were exceedingly affable and conversable, and he was sure all of them improvable on acquaintance’.5
Fortunately, Drennan’s and Martha’s correspondence resumes at this point. She kept her brother ‘Will’ informed of the fluctuations in her precarious state of health. She constantly reassures him that all the reports of his progress in Newry reaching Belfast are positive. For his part, Drennan kept Martha appraised of his efforts to court the acquaintance of those local families whom he hoped might employ him as their physician. Martha told him of his family’s efforts to ensure that he would have a wardrobe suitable for a respectable young Doctor of Medicine. His sister Nancy had taken his Volunteer coat to the tailor to have the gold braid removed and new lining and lapels sewn on. However, the tailor must have been a Volunteer, for ‘he refused to perform this [sacrilegious] operation’.6
It is perhaps not surprising that one of the established local medical doctors, John Templeton, did not welcome Drennan to town and maintained a hostile attitude