Black and Bruce for the soul of Irish Presbyterianism. The school, which became known colloquially as the ‘Inst’, was an ‘astonishingly ambitious’ project and was the ‘first university established in the British Isles since Trinity College Dublin at the end of the sixteenth century’.22 The Inst was founded and, to some extent, run by former United Irishmen and their sympathisers.
Some of those most closely associated with the school held a dinner on Saint Patrick’s Eve 1816 where, after the speeches, many unashamedly radical toasts were raised including one to the United Irishmen who had escaped to America in ’98. Castlereagh saw this as an opportunity to wrest control of the Inst from Drennan and his friends but he overplayed his hand and did not succeed.
Drennan became terminally ill in late 1819 and died in February 1820. The letters written in the last active year of his life show us clearly that Drennan’s radical principles which inspired his great zeal in Volunteering and his enthusiasm for the United Irish Society and its principles remained with him to the very end.
1
SON OF THE MANSE
William Drennan was born in the manse of First Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Lane, Belfast, on 23 May 1754. He was the son of Reverend Thomas Drennan (1696–1762) and Anne Lennox (1718–1806). Thomas Drennan was a ‘New Light’ Presbyterian Minister and Anne Lennox was a co-heiress, with her elder sister, to a moderate estate in County Down.1 Little is known of Thomas Drennan.2 It appears ‘he was the clever son of a poor family, probably first generation emigrants to Ulster from Scotland’.3 He has been described as an ‘elegant scholar, a man of fine taste, overflowing benevolence and delicate sensibility’.4 His father ‘was induced by the early promise of his son’s abilities to spend on his education more than came to his share’.5 Thomas made excellent academic progress and graduated from Glasgow University in April 1717.6 He met Francis Hutcheson (1696–1746) at Glasgow and the two became firm and life-long friends. Hutcheson, who was born near Saintfield in County Down, would eventually establish himself as the greatest Irish philosopher of his own or, perhaps, any generation. He is universally acknowledged today as the Father of the Scottish Enlightenment.
At Hutcheson’s invitation, Thomas Drennan moved to Dublin circa 1720 where together they ran an academy for Protestant Dissenters in that city.7 Hutcheson’s and Drennan’s Presbyterianism had Scottish roots but the families who sent their sons to the Dublin Academy were of English descent and most were members of the Protestant Dissenting congregation based at Wood Street. Some of them had come to Dublin with Oliver Cromwell’s army in 1649 or as settlers in the wake of the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland. Despite the fact that these Cromwellians were a community of Protestants in a Protestant city, they were regarded with suspicion by the Irish government and the Established Church authorities. Like their Dissenting brethren in England, from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, they faced legal disabilities arising from their refusal to conform to the Established Church.
In their Dublin years, Hutcheson and Thomas Drennan formed an intellectual circle under the patronage of Robert Molesworth (1656–1725), who had been a supporter of William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution and had acted as his Ambassador to Denmark. This group, which often met at Molesworth’s home in Swords, County Dublin, included Hutcheson’s cousin William Bruce, Reverend John Abernethy (1670–1740) and Reverend James Duchal (1697–1761). Bruce was an editor and book publisher by profession and was an elder at Wood Street. Abernethy was called to Wood Street as Minister in 1730 and Duchal was his successor there.
Back in 1705, Abernethy had formed a philosophical, study and reading group in Belfast, which became known as the Belfast Society. This group became notorious to orthodox Presbyterian historians for allegedly opening the door to heresy and schism.8 The Society became the nucleus of a group of ministers who became known as New Light Presbyterians. The central message of New Light sermons and theology was the right to freedom of conscience and private judgement and that religious persecution violated the natural genius of man.
Caroline Robbins in her classic work, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman, identifies Molesworth as having begun the agitation for reform, which went further than that offered by the Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act with the appearance of his Account of Denmark in December 1693.9 Robbins suggests that there is no doubt that Hutcheson, Drennan, Abernethy and Bruce shared the politics of the Molesworth connection. She had this to say of them: this ‘New Light group preached and published sermons that were widely read, had contributed a quota of tracts and pamphlets to contemporary controversy, and handed to a second generation a patriotic spirit that included all Irishmen in its loyalties, and diffused a liberal philosophy throughout more than one city or country’.10
The New Light Presbyterians referred to themselves as Protestant Dissenters and formed the most intellectual and radical wing of the Presbyterian church.11 They described themselves as:
Created by a love of freedom, [they claimed] they have ever championed the cause that gave them birth. Whether the freedom was that of the coloured slave or the honest religious enquirer, they have fearlessly taken the side of justice, and resisted every attempt to stifle private judgement. An ardent desire to bring about the brotherhood of man has led them to generously support many charitable and benevolent movements of a non-sectarian nature.12
This New Light background has been described as of great importance to William Drennan’s intellectual development.13 The love of freedom, an end to slavery and the slave trade, the right to private judgment in religion, the pursuit of brotherhood and an end to sectarian divisions were important themes of Drennan’s life and work. When he faced one of the major crises of his life, as he stood trial on charges of writing and publishing a seditious libel in 1794, he claimed his father, with Bruce, Ducal, Hutcheson and some of their circle, as the source of his political principles.
While a member of the Molesworth circle, Francis Hutcheson wrote The Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, which established his international reputation. Thomas Drennan remained at the Dublin academy after Hutcheson moved to Glasgow to occupy the Chair of Moral Philosophy in 1730. In 1736, Drennan was appointed assistant minister to the First Presbyterian Congregation, Belfast. After he left Dublin, Thomas maintained strong ties with the ministers and elders at Wood Street. The complex theological, historical and political significance of these connections will be explored in more detail later. However, a straightforward aspect of the connection was that it led to Thomas Drennan’s marriage to Anne Lennox. Anne’s father had been a prosperous merchant in Belfast. Her mother was a descendant of the Scottish Hamilton who had persuaded James I to grant him the O’Neill’s land in North Down.14 When Anne was just twenty-three, she had occasion to travel to Dublin. As her parents were both dead, her wealthy Presbyterian relations were anxious to find a suitable chaperone for her. Thomas Drennan travelled to Dublin regularly to preach at Wood Street. What could be more suitable than the company of a forty-five-year-old clergyman, who was regarded by his friends as a confirmed bachelor? In the event, the family tradition has it that, before their carriage reached Swords, in County Dublin, the couple were engaged. They were married on 8 August 1741.15
Anne ‘brought a respectable marriage portion and, for some years, the couple appeared to live happily and in moderate affluence’.16 Thomas was not good at keeping in touch with his friends and this aspect of his character, along with his reputation as a bachelor and Anne’s relative prosperity, brought forth a somewhat mischievous letter of good wishes from Francis Hutcheson:
Dear Thom
Tho’ I have often heard the rumour of your courtship without believing it, as I never thought your Talent lay in Fortune hunting; yet as late I have had such assurances that you are actually married, as I could not question it any longer. My wife and I congratulate you most heartily and wish you all the joys of that new Relation and wish the same to Mrs Drennan, who shows a much more valuable Turn of Mind in her conduct than most young Ladies in such circumstances.17
The Drennans had eleven children, only three of whom, Martha (1742–1837), Nancy (1745–1825) and William (1754–1820) survived infancy.18 We know a great deal about Martha and William because of their regular correspondence from 1776 until 1819.19 We know almost nothing about Nancy as she was withdrawn and silent and seems to have suffered