‘Either to do me justice or to show themselves the greatest rascals in existence’
Daniel O’Connell, April 1829
‘THE FIRST DAY OF FREEDOM!’: this was how Daniel O’Connell headed one letter on 14 April 1829, the day after Catholic Emancipation became law in Britain and Ireland. Shortly before that, O’Connell had informed his wife that once the bill got the Royal Assent, he would proceed with what he called his experiment and arrange to take his seat. ‘So as to compel them either to do me justice or to show themselves the greatest rascals in existence.’1 As we have seen, O’Connell, an Irish Roman Catholic, had been duly elected for Co. Clare nine months earlier. The first Roman Catholic MP to be elected after the passage of the Act was, aptly enough, the English Earl of Surrey, son and heir of the 12th Duke of Norfolk. Their experiences were to be very different.
In the meantime, the reactions to the first day of freedom, and the giddy days which followed, were characteristically mixed, as reactions to Emancipation had always been. In the House of Lords it was no longer relevant that the Dukes of Cumberland and Wellington demonstrably did not speak to each other: the royal Duke had lost out to King Arthur. At Windsor the situation was different. Lady Conyngham was frankly alarmed at the prospect of having the Duke of Cumberland there for so long. Even if the King’s behaviour was in general rather more bearable since he had given the Royal Assent – Wellington, for example, found him not so much bad-tempered as cold – the Duke of Cumberland continued to make trouble. Sir William Knighton reported that the whole household was in awe of His Royal Highness. As for Lady Conyngham, the King was very much upset by the fact that she could not get on with Ernest, his favourite brother.
Duke Ernest did not in fact return to the Continent, but took up residence in his house in Kew. Rumours continued to swill round about his private life; there was the matter of a scandalous affair with Dolly Lyndhurst, the handsome if ‘under-bred’ wife of the Lord Chancellor, for example. His troublemaking did not cease. George IV himself was reported as saying: ‘there never was a father well with his son, or husband with his wife, or lover with his mistress, or a friend with his friend, that he did not try to make mischief between them’.2 So HRH the Duke of Cumberland continued to use his seat in the House of Lords in the future to denounce reforms with his usual vitriolic energy.
Elsewhere, congratulations were heaped upon the Prime Minister; only Lord Falmouth, recently Winchilsea’s second in that potentially game-changing duel, stood by himself, ‘sad and sombre’. For some it was difficult to take in. ‘By God, it seems like a dream!’, as his neighbour exclaimed to John Cam Hobhouse MP, as they sat as spectators in the Lords. From the opposite point of view, Brunswick Tom, Earl of Longford, wrote to his sister Bess: ‘This morning the Popish bill passed by a very great majority.’ He added that he would be truly happy to find he was mistaken in his views. He was not aware that Daniel O’Connell had told Mary on 11 April that the Ascendancy and superiority which her neighbours had over her would end the day she received his letter.3
Maria Edgeworth reflected that the Duke of Wellington must now be a happy man as well as a great one: he had after all prevented a civil war and saved both England and Ireland. As for Tom Moore, he came up with a characteristically original response: ‘I started suddenly, after a few minutes reverie, from my chair and taking a stride across the room as if to make trial of a pair of emancipated legs, exclaimed: “Thank God! I may now, if I like turn Protestant!”’4
Not everyone rejoiced at the prospect of this freedom for themselves and others. The Duchess of Richmond had stuffed rats under a glass cover on her dinner table, pointedly awarded the names of Peel and Wellington. Lord Kenyon’s maiden aunt thought the Duke of Wellington deserved hanging. The Duchess of Rutland was so horrified by it that she took to her bed, ‘prostrate with alarm about Bloody Mary, Guy Faux and the Duke of Norfolk’ in that order.5
The first instinct of Bernard, Duke of Norfolk, had in fact been the reverse of lethal: it was placatory, the historic attitude of the old English Catholics which had enabled them to survive. He left a note for the Duke of Wellington on 22 April, asking whether it would be right for the English Catholics to present an address to the King thanking him. Wellington’s response was terse. They were trying to efface distinctions on the grounds of religion, not publicize them.6 Imagine the opening: ‘The Roman Catholics approach your Majesty for the last time as a body distinct from the rest of your subjects!’ The answer was: ‘No’.
So the Duke of Norfolk’s actual lethal behaviour consisted of giving a banquet to celebrate. On 18 April, five days after the passing of the bill, he took his seat in the House of Lords, with Lord Dormer and Lord Clifford, the first Catholics to do so since the reign of Charles II. There were in fact only eight Catholic peers available – one duke, one earl and six barons – whereas 200 years earlier there had been at least twenty-two. The rest of the titles had one way or another slipped out of Catholic hands.
Lords Stafford, Stourton and Petre followed on 1 May, all bearing ancient Catholic names, part of a long recusant history; the ancestor of Lord Stafford had been executed in 1680 for his (fictitious) part in the so-called Popish Plot. William Stourton, who had escaped the threat of the French Revolution, had become the 18th Lord Stourton. He had then taken an interest in the poor of both countries, England and Ireland, publishing pamphlets on the subject. In particular he criticized the absenteeism of the Irish landlords; this led to a lack of public provision for the distressed, whose plight they were happily able to ignore from afar.
Now Stourton was able to take his seat in the united nation’s Parliament, ‘having, first, at the table, taken and subscribed the oath appointed to be taken by the Act of the present Session by Peers professing the Roman Catholic Religion’.7 It so happened that Lord Clifford was extremely tall, as was another Catholic peer, Lord Arundell of Wardour, a kinsman of the Duke of Norfolk. ‘What a pity we have so long excluded from our deliberations such a fine-looking set of men!’ was the reaction of one lady spectator.
The personal background of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the first English Catholic MP to be elected, was chequered, despite his high position in the peerage as direct heir to the premier Duke: his parents had divorced when he was four and he himself was married to an heiress whose powerful mother was suspected of bending him towards Protestantism. But Greville described him on his election to Brooks’s Club as ‘plain, unaffected, reasonable and good-natured’, just what was needed now, under the circumstances which provided a combination of ancient privilege with a new opportunity.8 He too was a handsome, upstanding man with many court connections, and would later hold distinguished offices in the Royal Household.
In the future, as Duke of Norfolk, he would acquire a satirical Marie Antoinette-and-the-cake reputation for advising the poor who could not afford bread to try curry instead (thus his nickname, Old Pepper and Potatoes).9 He also became a nominal Protestant, although turning to the Catholic Church for the Last Sacraments at his death. For now he was returned for his father’s borough of Horsham in Sussex, not far from Arundel Castle, on 4 May, the sitting Member retiring in his favour. His speech to his constituents was the very opposite of revolutionary. Surrey insisted that his patriotism was undiminished by his upbringing in ‘a religion in some trifling respects different to you’. He hoped that both Catholics and Protestants would vie with each other ‘in showing an attachment to the King and in maintaining the church as established by law’.
The Catholic Orthodox Journal dismissed the speech as ‘cant’; it certainly displayed a diplomatic indifference to recent struggles. There was a public meeting at the London Tavern to congratulate him, and on 6 May he took the new oath which was the prelude to taking his seat; the hateful declarations against Transubstantiation, adoration of the Virgin Mary and the ‘superstitious and idolatrous’ Mass of the Church of Rome were no longer demanded. Six other Catholic MPs were elected for the House during this period. Like the peers, their names were resonant of Catholic history: Philip Henry Howard, Edward Petre, Henry Stafford Jerningham and Robert Throckmorton. Surrey, however, was the first person ‘confessedly of his Communion’ to do so since the Penal Laws. As Hansard commented, Lord Surrey MP was ‘warmly greeted by many of his friends’ in the House of Commons.10
In contrast to that was the chilly reaction to Daniel O’Connell given by the Cisalpine Club of the old English Catholics. A proposal to elect him was made by Charles Langdale, seconded by Thomas Stonor. O’Connell was blackballed. Although members resigned as a result, it was plain that even now Catholic Ireland was seen as a millstone round English necks; the phrase was that of Lord Petre in the previous century, a man who even then had been considered worthy to entertain George III magnificently at his house, Thorndon Hall. The Cisalpine Club was in fact soon changed into the Emancipation Club, and as such lasted fifteen years; worldly compromise to secure tolerance was no longer a necessary object of contemplation. The whole incident provoked a dry response from O’Connell. He described himself as having been ‘black-beaned’, adding, ‘but it was a strange thing of them to do; it was a comical “testimonial” of my services in emancipating them. It would be well, perhaps, if I could unemancipate some of them.’11
Daniel O’Connell made his long-awaited entry to the Commons at the Bar of the packed House on 15 May.12 The expectation of his appearance to take his seat under the provisions of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill ‘occasioned a strong sensation’. The Gallery and the ‘avenues’ of the House were crowded, for there was a complication: a grotesque complication which did no credit to the government. Advantage was taken of the fact that O’Connell had technically been elected at a time when the old oath was valid, to demand that he took this previous oath instead of the new one (as sworn, for example, by Lord Surrey).
At five o’clock the Speaker of the House ritually asked if there were any new MPs. O’Connell rose from his seat under the Gallery and went to the table of the House, conducted according to custom by two sitting MPs, Lords Ebrington and Duncannon. The Times wrote afterwards of ‘the silent, almost breathless attention with which he was received’. O’Connell already had his qualification papers and a certificate saying that he had taken the preliminary oaths. The Clerk of the House examined them and found them correct. At which point he produced a copy of the original oath,* as well as a copy of the New Testament. It was now that the Speaker formally told him of the situation concerning the oath he needed to swear. O’Connell bowed to the Speaker but showed no signs of moving.
For a few moments O’Connell said nothing but simply gazed back in silence. He then announced that as a Catholic he could not take this oath, although he would willingly take any new oath required. When this was formally reported to the Speaker, he ordered O’Connell to withdraw from the House.
Now Henry Brougham, Whig MP for Winchelsea, rose to speak in O’Connell’s favour, only to be cut short by the Speaker with the barking words: ‘Order! Order!’ Once more O’Connell was ordered to withdraw. O’Connell bowed again and this time he withdrew. He still neither uttered nor attempted to utter a single word.
It was a masterstroke from the greatest orator of his age: what words could convey more than the unyielding, heroic silence of this man? The King of Ireland, as George IV had angrily termed him, had maintained all his royal dignity, compared to the petty vengeance of the English Establishment. As Creevey put it, ‘one damned thing’ had been allowed to taint the whole process of conciliation.13
O’Connell returned to his seat under the Gallery, while an angry debate ensued with many demanding that he should be heard, while Peel as Home Secretary maintained with energy that he had no right to speak.
On 18 May O’Connell reappeared. There was an interesting historic link for those who cared for such things: under the Gallery sat two French royals: the Duc d’Orléans (who would transform into King Louis-Philippe after the fall of the Bourbon dynasty a year later), and his son the Duc de Chartres. Together they observed one event in what was a revolutionary British situation.
O’Connell was called to address the House.14 Although there were genteel English doubts about his flamboyant Irish style, his message was clear enough: it was the voice of his people that had sent him there. He made a long and detailed speech on the subject of the Commons which ended: ‘My title to sit in it is clear and plain; and I contend that the Statute [of Emancipation] is all comprehensive in its intentions, in its recital, and in its enactments... But while I show my respect for the House, I stand here on my right, and claim the benefit of it.’ In the words of Hansard, the honourable and learned gentleman – a reference to O’Connell’s legal profession – bowed to the House and withdrew, amidst loud and general cheering. It so happened that one of the French royals had occupied his seat, and he therefore sat by the sergeant-at-arms.
Daniel O’Connell made a final appearance – for the time being – the next day. On 19 May he asked to see the oath in question, and was presented with it on large pasteboard cards. He proceeded to put on his spectacles. After studying it, he pointed to one assertion he knew to be false, and one he believed to be untrue. Then, in a voice of contempt, he declared: ‘I therefore refuse to take this Oath’ and dramatically flung his card away. He was then formally disqualified by the Speaker of the House of Commons on account of his refusal to take the oath – actually the previous oath in law. The seat for Co. Clare was declared vacant.
O’Connell fared no better with the real King of Ireland (and England). He duly presented himself at the royal levée. The last time he had set eyes on George IV was in 1821 when the King paid his famous visit to Ireland and promised to serve the country. At the newly named Kingstown he had presented George IV with a laurel wreath. Now O’Connell saw the King’s lips move but could not hear what he said. O’Connell correctly kissed his hand and then passed on. Later it was reported in a Scottish newspaper that George IV had cursed ‘an Irish subject’. O’Connell asked the Duke of Norfolk to explain to him what had actually happened. Norfolk did not beat about the bush. ‘Yes. His Majesty said as you were approaching: “There is O’Connell! God damn the scoundrel.”’15
Who was responsible for this vindictive decision, like so many acts of vengeance, self-defeating in its purpose? It was not after all likely to lead to warmer relations with O’Connell personally. It immediately secured still greater blasts of what would now be called the oxygen of publicity for the Irish leader – without keeping him out of the Commons for very long. Nobody could have supposed that the bold victor of Clare would be rejected in a new election, now that he could legally take his seat, in spite of the alterations to the franchise. O’Connell did explore a safe (but expensive) nominated seat, before going once again for Clare. Robert Peel, as Leader of the House of Commons, even though he supported O’Connell’s appearance at the Bar, must take the responsibility. It was a short-sighted action, whereas Peel’s conversion to Emancipation had been far-seeing.
Sure enough, in July Daniel O’Connell was once more elected unopposed. The Viceroy, the Duke of Northumberland, reported ‘perfect tranquillity’ where the electoral process was concerned. Yet Wellington still told Peel on 14 July that O’Connell’s renewed election would be ‘a great misfortune to the public interests... I would do much to prevent it’. He hoped the county would not be terrified into voting for the Great Dan. It is only fair to say that O’Connell’s opinion of the Great Duke in August was equally low: ‘a narrow minded, single idea’d [sic] man, fit to be a great general with the aid of exceedingly brave troops but he is not a statesman nor a liberal nor an enlightened man’.16 The truth was that both men had worked hard for what was in the short term the same objective: neither of them had turned into a saint – the sort of saint venerated at a shrine in their shared native Ireland.
Wellington’s advice to Admiral Sir Thomas Pakenham, uncle of Brunswick Tom, on behalf of the Irish landed class, was more sensible.17 The Brunswickers (including their shared connection, Tom Longford) were being very foolish. ‘If men of property continued to quarrel about a religious question, which is decided, they must become victims of the more numerous class who have everything to gain and nothing to lose’ from such a quarrel. Hang together and adhere to the government! That way the Brunswickers would be too strong and able to repel any injury which might be apprehended. In other words, keep calm and carry on.
So the celebrated green banners of the previous year might be faded and have to be bleached white. Green or white, the Clare by-election was another famous victory. It was left to bigots like the Duke of Buckingham to exclaim at the end of the year that the Catholics themselves were more and more disgusted with O’Connell: ‘he should share the fate of an extinguished tallow candle, and die in his own stink’. But O’Connell’s flame was not so easily extinguished. A friend jokingly slapped him on the back on the day that Emancipation was passed and quoted Shakespeare: ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ O’Connell replied with a smile, referring to a possible future occupation: ‘Isn’t there a Repeal of the Union?’18
Daniel O’Connell had to wait until Parliament reassembled to commence his parliamentary career. He finally took his seat on 4 February 1830. He swore his oath on the left side of the table rather than the right, which took Members aback, but no official complaint was made. O’Connell then sat with a long-term ally, Sir Francis Burdett. One of the other five MPs who swore the oath at the same time, incidentally, was the twenty-one-year-old Marquess of Douro, heir to the Duke of Wellington, whose clear pathway into the House of Commons had been in marked contrast to O’Connell’s own complicated route.19
When the Member for Co. Clare rose it was to comment on the King’s speech, which had called for the relief of ‘some’ public distress.20 O’Connell’s beginning was plain enough (and might be echoed by many leaders down the ages): ‘The people had sent him here to do their business.’ In the discharge of that duty, he felt that he was authorized to express his humble opinion as to the state of the country. On the supposed partial nature of the public distress, O’Connell was quick to express astonishment at the Chancellor of the Exchequer for describing a certain ‘oasis in the desert’ – where there was no distress at all. ‘Who would have thought it?’ he asked with mock bewilderment: that was in Ireland! Under the circumstances it was surely the duty of the House to sit on, and on, ‘from day to day’, until it had finally managed to ascertain the causes of this surprising Irish public distress where it actually did occur. According to Hansard, this characteristic ironic flourish was greeted with cheers and laughter.
When the time came O’Connell voted with Sir Edward Knatchbull’s amendment, which suggested distress should be described as ‘general and extraordinary’. The amendment was defeated by fifty-three votes.
O’Connell had made his mark in the English Parliament as an elected Member, although the honour of being the first Roman Catholic MP had gone to the future Duke of Norfolk nine months earlier. Greville described O’Connell’s debut as ‘a successful one, heard with profound attention, his manner good and his arguments attended to and replied to’. Soon he was sufficiently versed in the way of the House to send urgently to Dublin for his court dress to be packed up and despatched by the first mail coach. He was to dine with the Speaker on Sunday and ‘it seems one dines with him in Court Dress’.21 This was the customary dinner given to the Opposition, and O’Connell was asked as a matter of course.
‘I am fast learning the temper of the House,’ reported O’Connell further, ‘and in a week you will find me a constant speaker.’ He added: ‘There is more folly and nonsense in the House than anywhere out of it. There is a low and subservient line of thinking, there is a submission to authority which is to the last degree of debasing.’ From the happy flow of denigration, one gets the impression that O’Connell was beginning to feel somewhat at ease.
Liberal issues in the modern sense soon occupied him. He spoke in favour of the Petition supporting Jewish Emancipation, just as he had earlier spoken out against slavery. Game laws and the monopoly of the East India Company engaged his attention, as did flogging in the army and blasphemy laws. Having begun by thanking the Jewish leader, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, for his kindness to him in London, he went on to tell him that the Irish Christian community was the only one unsullied by acts of persecution of the Jews. It was ‘an external and universal truth that we are responsible to God alone for a religious belief and that human laws are impious when they attempt the exercise of those acts’.22 He was now able to pursue this counsel of perfection in the British House of Commons.
O’Connell arrived at a time when that deepening rift between Ultra-Tories and their more liberal colleagues over Emancipation and other matters was beginning to have a profound effect on the next vigorous public campaign: the Reform of Parliament itself. In February the Marquess of Blandford, heir to the Duke of Marlborough and Ultra-Tory MP, notoriously against Emancipation, actually joined an organization in favour of Reform. The new rules allowing Catholics into the House affronted him so deeply that he accused the government of giving in to ‘Jesuits and Jacobins’. As a result, he thought that what the House actually needed was: Reform!23 Conversely, in the long battle for Reform ahead, the vote of the Irish MPs would play a significant part.
This was a period when George IV’s health had passed from being a matter of anxious speculation to one of acute concern. In February, about the time of O’Connell’s proper entry into the Commons, Sir William Knighton recorded in his diary: ‘I conjecture that his heart is enlarged, much loaded with fat and that his Majesty’s death will be sudden’. Bulletins began to be issued about his health at the end of April.24 George IV died two months later, on 26 June 1830; a year and a quarter after his Royal Assent to Emancipation. That death would bring to an end a thirty-year period when the conscience of the King – two kings in succession – was one huge element in the great issue of the day, the Catholic Question.
* The oath in fact constituted several oaths together.