Local stories from the age of reason and revolution
The period from the last few years of the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th is known as the era of The Enlightenment. It has also been described as The Age of Reason.
Many people felt that humanity was making progress through science and philosophy. They aimed for greater tolerance, greater sensitivity, and better manners. They believed that human beings could put the bloody religious wars and superstition of the past behind them.
Among the Protestants who lived in Ireland there were many men and women who played a part in the ‘Age of Reason’ and acted on its principles although some of them were also critical of some of the changes they witnessed. Numerous political revolutions took place, inspired by a vision of change. Learning about this period as Unionists and Loyalists can help us to understand our history and recognise the local men and women who helped shaped the world we live in.
THE MAN WHO BUILT ARMAGH
Archbishop Richard Robinson of Armagh was born into an aristocratic family in the south of England in 1708. Training for a life in the clergy, he came to Ireland in 1751 and rapidly moved up the Church of Ireland hierarchy. In 1765, he became the most powerful churchman in Ireland with the lofty title of Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
On moving to Armagh, Robinsons was not impressed by the state of this small city. So, he set about rebuilding it, funded by his own considerable wealth.
No project speaks more effectively of his values than the observatory he founded in 1789. It was equipped with a powerful telescope and a range of other ‘state-of -the-art’ equipment. Astronomy was popular, due to the amazing discoveries of the English mathematician Isaac Newton which could be used to help predict the movement of the stars and planets. Astronomy was also useful for navigation; Britain was developing as a trading nation across the world’s oceans.
The Archbishop hoped Armagh would become a university city. His interest in education led him to donate money for the development of the ‘Royal School’. This school had existed since the early years of the 17th century.
The Archbishop’s Library speaks of his passion for learning. Wealthy Enlightenment men like him were collectors of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, atlases, coins, gems, and curios. The library was founded in 1771 and above the entrance is an inscription describing the library as ‘The Healing Place of the Soul.’
Robinson was also interested in medicine. This was in keeping with recent improvements such as vaccination for smallpox and the invention of the stethoscope. In 1774, he was involved in the foundation of the new county infirmary.
In 1780, Robison granted land for a new jail at a time when new prisons were going up all over Europe. The Archbishop also funded restoration work at St Patrick’s cathedral and laid the basis for the new, elegant mall at the heart of the town.
Robinson’s critics thought he was more interested in making his mark on the landscape than saving souls. The elegant Bishop’s palace that he built was regarded by his critics as much too grand. The architectural style, like that of other buildings for which he was responsible, was ‘neo-classical’. This popular style was based on an imitation of the architecture of the ancient Greece and Rome. These civilisations were often regarded as models of good governance and excellent taste.
The style used for Robinson’s buildings links the built heritage of Armagh to the style found throughout much of Europe and America at this time.
THE WEALTHY BISHOP OF THE NORTH COAST
Another Irish bishop can be called a man of The Enlightenment and once again he came from wealthy, aristocratic English stock. Earl Bishop Hervey had been born into a landed family in East Anglia in 1730. Like Richard Robinson he became a clergyman in the Church of Ireland and in 1768 he was appointed as Bishop of Derry.
Hervey soon began creating an estate on the Atlantic coast at Downhill. It had a walled garden, a dove cote which provided food in the winter and an icehouse for preserving food in the summer. There was an impressive gateway and most strikingly of all there was a small ‘temple’ which was modelled on the Temple of Vesta in Italy. It stood on the cliffs overlooking a wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The so-called Mussenden Temple contained his library.
Aristocrats have long been associated with sumptuous estates but his library on the cliff-top associates Bishop Hervey with the values of the Romantic movement. The Romantics began to flourish during the Enlightenment. They fell in love with the ‘sublime’ beauty of stormy seas and wild mountain peaks.
Hervey travelled widely in Europe and brought back paintings by the great masters of European art including Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt and Caravaggio, hanging their pictures in his mansion which was said to have had ‘more windows than days of the year.’
The Earl Bishop was interested in coal mining, agricultural improvements, and forestry. This was an era when the agricultural and industrial revolutions were beginning to ‘take off’ in England, producing better crops and manufacturing a vast range of goods.
Indeed, Hervey was clearly interested in all manner of learning. This included the science now known as geology, and he wrote about the wonders of the rock formations at the nearby Giant’s Causeway.
Hervey called for the end of discrimination by the Established Protestant church against Catholics and Presbyterians. He is reputed to have allowed Catholic Mass to be celebrated at Mussenden Temple.
Hervey’s family had been Whig supporters in England, in other words they had been supporters of the Glorious Revolution which installed William of Orange on the English throne, an event that sowed the seeds of further democracy though its legacy has often involved religious conflict in Ireland, with Orange and Green pitted against one another.
Like Robinson, Hervey had his critics. They spoke of his drunkenness and adultery. However, before his death in 1803, he became a prized acquaintance of some of the great Enlightenment men of the age. These included the renowned writer Voltaire in France and Benjamin Franklin, one of the major figures in America as it decided on a revolution against its British master.
THE SPECIMEN COLLECTOR AND ROYAL PHYSICIAN
Hans Sloane was born in 1660 in the town of Killyleagh on the shores of Strangford Lough. His father was an agent for the Hamilton family of Killyleagh Castle. Whether through money provided by the Hamiltons or his own family’s wealth, Hans was sent to England to train as a doctor.
As a personal physician to the newly appointed governor of Jamaica, Sloane sailed to the Caribbean and stayed there for several months, cataloguing over 800 species of plant which he brought back to London. They would form the basis for the British Natural History Museum.
Sloane was interested in the medicinal qualities of plants he encountered and brought back specimens of ‘Peruvian Bark’ which we know as quinine, which would prove effective in reducing the symptoms of malaria. His medical practice led him to the top of British society, and he was called on to serve the Royal Family.
However, it was not as a medical man that Sloane excelled, but as a collector whose curios and manuscripts helped form the basis for further significant institutions such as the British Museum and British Library. Sloane Square in London is named after him.
Sloane was involved in the scientific life in the capital, including the Royal Society, which was formed in the 1660s, dedicated to the pursuit of scientific knowledge. For a short while Sloane edited its journal. He was also well-acquainted with the great physicist Sir Isaac Newton.
Like Robinson and Hervey, Sloane had critics. They thought his collecting amateurish and they said his pursuit of medicine was an excuse to get wealthy from treating rich clients. Critics in later generations note that Sloane never criticised slavery, which existed in the British-owned island of Jamaica, despite witnessing the brutality of the regime. Critics point to how his career was financed through marriage to a wealthy heiress who owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean.
These criticisms cast light on one unfortunate feature of many men and women of the Enlightenment - despite their professed love of reason and progress, some turned a blind eye to the rights of other human beings whom they ought to be inferior.
Not all Enlightenment thinkers followed this path. Another product of Killyleagh, the philosopher Francis Hutcheson was a critic of slavery, as was a later owner of Killyleagh Castle, Archibald Hamilton Rowan.
Killyleagh was arguably a seed-bed of optimistic Presbyterianism during the Enlightenment, and men like Rowan supported the American Revolution of the 1770s and the French Revolution which occurred in 1789, professing a hunger for equality, fraternity and liberty.
Thousands of Ulster Presbyterians strove to copy these revolutions in an ill-fated rebellion against British rule in 1798.
THE FATHER OF THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT
Francis Hutcheson was born in 1694 near Saintfield in County Down and was educated at a school in nearby Killyleagh which catered for Presbyterian families whose sons were denied high quality education that was potentially available to members of the Church of Ireland.
The academy in Killyleagh educated its students to a high standard, enabling Francis to proceed to Glasgow University where he subsequently graduated with a divinity degree.
On his return to the north of Ireland, Hutcheson spent a short time in a ministerial role. He began a teaching career in a so-called ‘dissenting academy’ on the northern outskirts of Dublin, which was similar to the Killyleagh institution. It was in Dublin in the 1720s that he began to write philosophy books. His career would continue long after he left the Irish capital to become a philosophy professor in his old haunt of Glasgow.
Whilst in Glasgow, Hutcheson gained a reputation not just as a philosopher but a teacher and friend to the many Ulster Presbyterian students who came across to Scotland to study. Amongst the Scottish students who revered him was the influential economist Adam Smith, whose face adorns the British £20 bank note. Hutcheson’s influence on several Scottish thinkers of this era led to his characterisation as the father of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Hutcheson’s values were in stark contrast to the stern theologies that dominated the 17th century. He did not support the Calvinist notion that mankind was bent on evil right from his birth. He emphasised the importance of tolerance and kindness. He stressed the existence of goodness in human nature.
However, Hutcheson also wrote about the importance of politics and about human liberty, especially when a subject colony finds itself under the sway of its colonial master. This was music to the ears of those American leaders who read Hutcheson and determined to free themselves from Britain in the 1770s. Thus, we could say he played a role in the formation of the United States of America.
Hutcheson saw slavery as barbaric and incompatible with Christianity. Sadly, all too many Enlightenment figures in the infant United States kept slaves, and held the native people of the American continent in what looks to us like contempt.
The Society of United Irishmen, which launched a rebellion in 1798, set store by the French Revolution, which was inspired by Enlightenment ideals. In the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte which emerged from this revolution, slavery abolished for a while then it resumed.
Ironically, General Humbert who led a French invasion force to Ireland to support the rebellion in 1798 was sent to the Caribbean island of Haiti shortly afterwards. He helped put down a slave rebellion there!
THE CREATOR OF GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
The most famous of all the figures mentioned in this document is Jonathan Swift who was born in 1667 and spent much of his working life as the Dean of Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral. His ‘fantasy’ book entitled Gulliver’s Travels has been rendered as a popular children’s story but in reality, it is a very clever attack on the things its author hated most – stupidity and arrogance.
In one section of the tale, the central character, Lemuel Gulliver, visits Lagado, a city where the King has invested in a series of bizarre scientific experiments, including an attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and to turn excretion back into food! Swift was unimpressed by the self-importance of organisations like the Royal Society and its pride in its contributions to knowledge.
Swift also attacked religious narrowmindedness in an amusing story entitled Tale of Tub. Elsewhere, Swift had already given his opinion on the blood which had been shed down through history over the vexed differences between Catholic and Protestant versions of the sacraments –
‘Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.’
Swift spoke out against the penny-pinching ruthlessness of British governments in Ireland. In a short text called A Modest Proposal, the author pretended to be a supporter of the horrid idea that parents could save money benefit the state by cooking and eating their own children!
Swift’s anger at the stupidity and cruelty of human nature was his response to the Enlightenment hope that human nature was good, that governments could be progressive, that religious people were reasonable, and that science and technology would lead to progress.
Swift spent an early part of his career as a curate at Kilroot near Carrickfergus. During his time in Dublin, he often came north to Count Armagh. He was friendly with the Acheson family of Gosford Castle. A signed copy of Gulliver’s Travels resides on the shelves of Archbishop Robinson’s library in Armagh. Swift regularly worshipped in the cathedral.
The Acheson family grew tired of Swift. Despite his talents, he was not an easy guest. It seems that he was rude, selfish, and argumentative.
A couple of quotations from Jonathan Swift will serve well to illustrate his disbelief in an Age of Reason. He declared that ‘It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into’. He also suggested that most people are happy to be kept in the dark - ‘Happiness’ he argued ‘is the perpetual possession of being well-deceived.’
THE IRISH FEMALE NOVELIST AND EDUCATOR
Maria Edgeworth was born and raised in England in 1768 but by the time she was a young adult she was living on her father’s estate in County Longford. Her chosen career as a writer was successful, and during the first decade of the 19th century she was one of the most widely read novelists in these islands.
Edgeworth was home-tutored by her father who insisted that the narrow curriculum to which most young women were exposed was inadequate. He taught her law, history, economics, politics, science, and literature.
Maria Edgeworth soon took an interest in the family estate and the well-being of the local villagers. She corresponded throughout her life with men of learning, including many progressive, clever members of the famous but oddly named Lunar Society in Birmingham. Among her correspondents was the economist David Ricardo, with whom she discussed the role of science in improving agriculture.
One of her interests was education and she believed in the establishment of schools where boys and girls could be educated together, irrespective of religious affiliation. She read the Enlightenment thinker Jacque Rousseau who emphasised the importance of a well-rounded, imaginative education. She declared that education is ‘the foundation of the well-governed nation.’
Her belief in what we now refer to as ‘child-centred’ teaching comes across in a guide she published in the year of rebellion, 1798. She argued that ‘learning should be a positive experience’ and that we should ‘entrust the child with responsibility for his own mental culture.’
Her ideas on education tally with those of other figures in the Irish Enlightenment. Francis Hutcheson had written about children, stressing their kindness and sense of fairness and justice. He made a plea for an education that avoided rigid learning and harsh punishment.
As a means of instructing children, Edgeworth wrote several children’s stories, but she gained fame for her adult novels where she showed a willingness to challenge difficult subjects. Her novel entitled Castle Rackrent was a blistering attack on absentee English landlords. Another novel entitled Belinda included an inter-racial marriage between an African servant and an English farm girl. One later work of hers centred on a Jewish narrator and it attacked antisemitism.
Maria Edgeworth continued to write until her death in 1849 when she was witnessing the distressing impact of the Irish Famine.
Her role as a novelist is a reminder that the Enlightenment was not just about reason but about imagination and morality. The novels of Edgeworth and many other fiction writers of the era explored human nature and relationships. They focused on how we can best behave with one another.
MARY ANN MCCRACKEN
Mary Ann McCracken was born into a prominent Belfast Presbyterian family in 1770. She would live into her nineties, dying in 1866.
The McCracken family were notable in several areas of business in the small but growing town of Belfast. Like numerous Ulster Presbyterian families, Mary Ann’s parents were influenced by the values of the Enlightenment. And this extended to their choice of her education.
So, she and her brother Henry, whom she knew as ‘Harry’, were sent to David Manson’s co-educational school in the town. Manson educated boys and girls together and claimed to teach by ‘amusement’ or enjoyment rather than through a system of dry lectures, rote learning and punishments; his system was in advance of the education available throughout much of Britain and Ireland.
Amongst the subjects which Mary Anne was taught were the French language and Music. She also became an able mathematician. Her fluent letter-writing made her an excellent communicator with other women in her circle and with her beloved brother.
Mary Anne was one of several Belfast women who developed an enthusiasm for Mary Wollstonecraft whose famous book on the rights of women argued that females were endowed with reason and were perfectly capable of most things that men had traditionally done. Wollstonecraft was known personally by Archibald Hamilton Rowan of Killyleagh Castle as was her daughter, Mary Shelley the author of Frankenstein.
And Frankenstein is a depiction of an ambitious scientists who thinks to meddle with human nature but ends up creating a monster! Swift might have approved.
One of the features of Belfast in this era was the growth of a kinder and more responsible community. Mary Ann was part of this, working with the Belfast Charitable Society to improve the lot of children, women, prisoners, prostitutes, the sick and disabled and those with no job or home. The building known as the Charitable Institute was an elegant redbrick building which stood at the heart of her labours.
By the mid-1790s the Society of United Irishmen in the town had begun to plan for rebellion, hoping to sever the link with England, create a more democratic parliament and establish good relations amongst the warring religious groupings in Ireland. She played an active role as a supporter of this struggle and she was present when her brother was hanged in the summer of 1798 for helping lead a bloody and disappointing rebellion.
Mary Ann continued with charitable activity throughout her long life, as well playing a part in commercial life through her textile business. In keeping with the ant-slavery sentiment so prevalent in the Belfast of her youth she opposed the ongoing presence of enslavement in the United States of America, an evil that led to the American Civil War in 1861.