Act of Union 1801: Britain and Ireland Become One Kingdom

The Act of Union 1801 merged the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into a single state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from 1 January 1801. Passed by both the British and the Irish parliaments in 1800, in the shadow of the bloody rebellion of 1798, it abolished the Parliament in Dublin and sent Irish members to Westminster instead. The Union shaped Irish and British politics for more than a century and lies at the root of the “Irish question”.

Background: Ireland before the Union

Ireland had long been ruled by the English crown, but it kept its own Parliament in Dublin. That Parliament represented the Protestant Ascendancy, the landowning elite of the established Church of Ireland. Catholics, about three-quarters of the population, and to a lesser degree Presbyterians were excluded from power by the Penal Laws.

In 1782, during the American war, Irish Protestant reformers led by Henry Grattan won legislative independence: the Dublin Parliament could now make laws without prior approval from London. This period is often called “Grattan’s Parliament”. A Catholic Relief Act of 1793 gave better-off Catholics the vote, but they still could not sit in Parliament.

The Acts of Union of 1707 had already joined England and Scotland. Some British politicians had long thought a similar union with Ireland would be safer, but there was no urgent reason to attempt it until the 1790s.

Causes: the 1798 rebellion

Inspired by the French Revolution, the Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, sought a republic uniting Irish people of all religions. Repression drove it underground, and its leaders sought French help. In 1798 rebellions broke out in Leinster, Wexford, Antrim and Down. They were crushed with great brutality on both sides, and estimates of the dead range from about 10,000 to 30,000 or more.

In August 1798 a small French force under General Jean Humbert landed at Killala in County Mayo and routed government forces at Castlebar before surrendering at Ballinamuck. For the government of William Pitt the Younger, the Irish Rebellion of 1798 proved that Ireland was a dangerous back door for France in wartime, and that the Protestant Parliament in Dublin could not keep the country stable.

Passing the Union

Pitt entrusted the task to the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Cornwallis, and his Chief Secretary, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. When the Irish House of Commons debated the idea in January 1799, it was narrowly rejected after fierce opposition from Grattan and the Speaker, John Foster.

Over the following year the government worked to change minds. It offered peerages and promotions, government posts and pensions, and around £1.26 million in compensation to the owners of the “rotten” boroughs that would lose their seats. Catholics were given informal hopes that union would bring emancipation. Opponents denounced this as bribery, though many historians note that patronage was a normal part of politics at the time.

In 1800 the Irish Parliament voted for union, and two matching laws were passed: the Union with Ireland Act 1800 at Westminster and the Act of Union (Ireland) 1800 in Dublin. They received royal assent in July and August 1800, and the Union came into force on 1 January 1801.

The terms

• Great Britain and Ireland became one kingdom, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a single Parliament at Westminster.
• Ireland was given 100 seats in the House of Commons. In the House of Lords it had 28 representative peers elected for life by the Irish peerage, and four Church of Ireland bishops sitting in rotation.
• The Church of England and the Church of Ireland were joined into one established “United Church of England and Ireland”.
• Trade between the two islands was to be largely free, with some transitional duties, and Ireland was to contribute two-seventeenths of joint expenditure. The two exchequers were merged in 1817.
• Ireland kept its own courts and law, and a separate administration in Dublin Castle under the Lord Lieutenant.

A new Union Flag added the red saltire of St Patrick to the crosses of St George and St Andrew, creating the design still used today. George III also took the occasion to drop the old English royal claim to the title “King of France”.

Key people

• William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806): British Prime Minister, who made union a priority after 1798 and resigned when the King blocked Catholic emancipation.
• Lord Castlereagh (1769–1822): Chief Secretary for Ireland, who managed the campaign in the Irish Parliament and later became a leading Foreign Secretary.
• Lord Cornwallis (1738–1805): Lord Lieutenant and commander in Ireland, the general who had surrendered at Yorktown in 1781; he favoured leniency after the rebellion.
• Henry Grattan (1746–1820): the most eloquent opponent of union, who returned to the Irish Commons in 1800 to speak against it and later sat at Westminster.
• George III (1738–1820): the King whose refusal to accept Catholic emancipation shaped the Union’s troubled start.

Catholic emancipation and its failure

Pitt intended the Union to be followed by Catholic emancipation, allowing Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold high office. George III believed this would break his coronation oath to uphold the Protestant Church and refused to accept it. Pitt resigned in early 1801.

Emancipation was delayed until 1829, when Daniel O’Connell’s mass campaign forced the Duke of Wellington’s government to pass the Catholic Relief Act. The broken promise did lasting damage to the Union’s reputation among Irish Catholics.

Consequences and legacy

The abolition of the Dublin Parliament ended Dublin’s role as a political capital, and its Parliament House on College Green was sold to the Bank of Ireland in 1803. Robert Emmet’s small rising in Dublin in 1803 failed, but resistance to the Union continued by other means.

O’Connell led a mass movement for “Repeal of the Union” in the 1840s. The catastrophe of the Great Irish Famine from 1845 deepened anger at rule from London. Later in the century the Home Rule movement sought a restored Irish Parliament, and William Gladstone’s first Irish Home Rule Bill in 1886 split the Liberal Party. The Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871.

After the Easter Rising of 1916 and the War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 created the Irish Free State in 1922, while Northern Ireland stayed in the United Kingdom. In 1927 the state was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Timeline

• 1782: The Irish Parliament wins legislative independence.
• 1798, May-September: Rebellion of the United Irishmen and a French landing at Killala.
• 1799, January: The Irish House of Commons rejects a proposal for union.
• 1800: The Irish and British parliaments pass matching Acts of Union.
• 1801, 1 January: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland comes into being.
• 1801, February-March: Pitt resigns after George III blocks Catholic emancipation.
• 1829, April: The Catholic Relief Act allows Catholics to sit in Parliament.
• 1922, 6 December: The Irish Free State is established, ending the Union for most of Ireland.

Why it matters

The Act of Union created the United Kingdom that ruled all of Ireland for over a century and made the “Irish question” a central issue of British politics. Its origins in rebellion, political management and an unfulfilled promise of Catholic equality help explain why it never won the loyalty of most Irish people.