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The Position of Irish Catholics Within the Officer Corps of the British Army: 1829-1899

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The Position of Irish Catholics Within the Officer Corps of the British Army: 1829-1899 Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title The position of Irish Catholics in the Officer Corps of the British Army: 1829-1899 Author(s) Scannell, Mark Publication Date 2018-12-18 Publisher NUI Galway Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/14746 Downloaded 2021-09-26T12:39:48Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. The position of Irish Catholics within the Officer Corps of the British Army: 1829-1899 Mark Scannell Supervisor Dr. Padraig Lenihan School of Humanities, Discipline of History National University of Ireland Galway 2018 I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other University and is entirely my own work. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and the National University of Ireland Galway’s conditions of use and acknowledgement. i Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... v Section 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1.1: Overview ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.2: Historiography................................................................................................................. 9 1.3: Objective ....................................................................................................................... 17 Section 2: The Exclusion and Emancipation of Catholics within Ireland and the British Realms.......................................................................................................................................... 2.1: The Origin of Catholic Exclusion ................................................................................. 19 2.2: The Process of Emancipation ........................................................................................ 27 2.3: Early military forays of Irishmen and Catholics ........................................................... 34 2.4: Irishmen of the rank and file – the Nineteenth Century ................................................ 43 2.5 – Irish Catholics and the Officer Class........................................................................... 48 Section Three: Statistical Overview ............................................................................................. 3.1 Methodology .................................................................................................................. 61 3.2: The 88th and 94th – The Connaught Rangers ................................................................. 72 3.3: The 102nd and 103rd – The Royal Dublin Fusiliers ....................................................... 77 3.4: The 44th and 56th – The Essex Regiment ...................................................................... 79 3.5: 39th and 54th – The Dorsetshire Regiment ..................................................................... 83 3.6: The West Indian Regiment............................................................................................ 85 3.7: Overarching Trends ....................................................................................................... 87 ii Section Four: Perceptions of Irish Catholics within the officer class .......................................... 4.1: The United Service Journal ........................................................................................... 93 4.2: The position of Irish Catholicism in Victorian Britain ................................................. 96 4.3: Anti-Catholic prejudice within the Army .................................................................. 102 4.4: Policies of Pragmatism ................................................................................................ 137 4.5: The Celtic Archetype .................................................................................................. 149 4.6: Conclusion................................................................................................................... 159 Section Five: ‘Not quite pukka’, Four Irish Catholic generals .................................................... 5.1: The Collective Approach ............................................................................................ 163 5.3: Thomas Kelly-Kenny (1840-1914) ............................................................................. 169 5.4: Cornelius Francis Clery (1838-1926) ......................................................................... 176 5.5: Martin Dillon (1826-1913) .......................................................................................... 185 5.2: William Francis Butler (1838-1910) ........................................................................... 190 5.6: Prosopography............................................................................................................. 206 5.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 216 Section 6: Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 6.1: Conclusion................................................................................................................... 220 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 230 iii Abstract The chief objective of this dissertation is to attempt to answer the question of whether or not Irish Catholics formed a disproportionately small element of the Officer Corps of the British Army, in the period following formal Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The wider issues arising from this question include whether or not such Irish Catholics were subject to continued discrimination despite the removal of formal restrictions on their advancement, the disposition of Irish Catholic officers by rank and regiment, and the extent to which the most successful Irish Catholic officers could advance. These questions will be answered primarily through a quantitative analysis of the officer lists, regimental returns, and army returns of the period. This statistical approach will in turn be supplemented through a qualitative analysis of the individuals uncovered, seeking to ascertain their faith through careful examination of genealogical material. For those few Irish Catholics who achieved the greatest success in the officer corps, this has been augmented by a more thorough examination of their background, circumstances, economic position and personal history, in order to discern more clearly the facts which permitted their advancement, and concurrently the non-advancement of their peers. iv List of Tables Table 1: Demographics of selected British regiments in 1810 ................................................ 41 Table 2: Decennial Breakdown of Irishmen and Catholics in British Army Service compared with Irelands proportion of the total UK population ............................................................... 47 Table 3: Units under examination ............................................................................................ 64 Table 4: Irishmen as a percentage of all rank and file ............................................................. 88 Table 5: Catholics as a percentage of all rank and file ............................................................ 88 Table 6: Catholics as a percentage of all officers .................................................................... 89 v Acknowledgements The completion of this PhD would not have been possible without the support, encouragement and expertise of several individuals and institutions I wish to express gratitude to here. Foremost I owe thanks to my father, mother and brother, who have over the years of this work been endlessly patient and supportive in my pursuit of this work and who have since an early age fostered in me an interest in the study of history in all its forms. In my supervisor, Dr. Padraig Lenihan, I count myself lucky to have found not only a scholar whose knowledge and expertise guided me through this endeavour, but also a polymath who served variously as historian, confidante, insightful intellect, and occasionally, drill sergeant. I am also immensely grateful to the staff of the Department of History at NUI Galway, all of whom have served as fine examples of the Academic craft, and always gladly offered their experience and time and in particular, Dr Róisín Healy, Dr. Gearóid Barry and Dr. Niall Ó Ciosáin, my instructors since the undergraduate level. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Military Heritage of Ireland Trust, both for their support and recognition of this developing work, as well as their assistance in disseminating its findings. Finally, I offer my thanks to the
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