Protestant Ascendancy
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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.
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[edit] Background
The gradual dispossession of native Catholic landowners in Ireland took place in various stages from the reign of Elizabeth I until reaching its highest following the Williamite Wars. English soldiers and nobles became the new ruling class (see Plantations of Ireland). This process was facilitated and formalized in the legal system of the time by the passing of various Penal Laws, which discriminated against the newly displaced majority Catholic population and non-conforming Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians. 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.
[edit] Act of Union
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The parliament repealed some of the Penal Laws but did not abolish them, and, following the forced recall of the liberal Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795 by conservatives, it was effectively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, and 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.
[edit] Decline
The abolition of the Irish parliament was followed by economic decline in Ireland, and widespread emigration of 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. The festering sense of native grievance was magnified by the horrors of the Potato Famine of 1845-52, the Ascendancy exposed as absentee landlords shipping food to England, protected by the extablishment they created, while the population starved.
The economic position of many landowners became untenable as rents became noncollectable due to the emergence of 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, which saw a mass mobilisation of tenant farmers against the landlord class. At around the same time, the political power of the Ascendancy 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 the Irish Land Acts, which allowed tenants to take ownership of the 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 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.
After the independence of most of Ireland in 1922, the Ascendancy lost real political influence and became a small, isolated minority in their own land. The Trade War with England between 1932-38 and resulting government intervention into the agricultural market wiped out any remaining economic clout held by the Ascendancy class.
