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Ireland is one of the few remaining countries where it's a major news item that Catholics make up less than 90 percent of the population. According to reports last spring, the number of Protestants is edging higher while the number of Catholics is holding steady. The Church of Ireland, Ireland's largest Protestant denomination and the former established church, gained congregants for the first time in over a century. Presbyterian and Methodist memberships also increased. Meanwhile, many new non-Catholics have recently arrived in Ireland, and groups that still represent only a tiny fraction of the Irish population, such as Muslims and Orthodox Christians, are nevertheless growing rapidly relative to their numbers a decade ago. As a result, only 88.4 percent of residents in the Republic of Ireland are Catholic.1
A New Anatomy of |
Making the Grand |
Changing religious affiliation reflects a changing Ireland. Thanks to the "Celtic tiger" economy, Ireland has become a country that attracts, rather than sends, migrants. Its diversifying population has encouraged many, from political commentators to radio presenters, to ponder what it means to be Irish. Do you have to be born in Ireland to be Irish? Do you need to speak Irish to be Irish? And do you have to be Catholic to be Irish?
Toby Barnard's work on the often-neglected history of Irish Protestants has something to add to this contemporary discussion. A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1648-1770 outlines who Irish Protestants were; Making the Grand Figure: Lives and Possessions in Ireland, 1649–1770 describes what Irish Protestants owned. Filled with detailed and careful research, Barnard's books remind us that Protestants have a long history in Ireland and that their history includes more than Oliver Cromwell's rampage in the 1650s.
In Cork my husband and I often encounter remnants of that forgotten history: a Methodist church (now a clothing store), a Quaker assembly room (now closed), and three Church of Ireland churches that have been turned into a Catholic church, a concert hall, and an office development. Barnard's books help the reader envision who might have filled such Protestant churches from the 1650s to the 1770s, a period known as the Protestant ascendancy. At this time the Protestant population in Ireland was around 400,000, or a quarter of the island's population. Catholics outnumbered Protestants, but Dublin and parts of Ulster, the northernmost province, had more Protestant than Catholic residents after 1732. Protestants continued to dominate Ulster demographically, while the Protestant presence in Dublin declined over the eighteenth century. In Cork, 33 to 40 percent of the population was Protestant. Other Irish towns—Limerick, Drogheda, Kilkenny, and Galway—were less than a third Protestant. In any case, Protestants enjoyed disproportionate wealth and influence. The law of the land reserved the upper reaches of Irish society—as well as positions in the church, law courts, and army and navy—for Protestants.
A New Anatomy surveys the Irish Protestant population, from peers to the poor. Barnard organizes the book by social class, but he acknowledges that defining someone's social standing depended more on perception than on substance. Participating in hunts, which marked "quality," required an annual income of forty pounds. Beyond appearing on horseback, dress and living arrangements greatly influenced the perception of "quality."
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