ABSTRACT
The influence of the historic Catholic nobility and gentry classes in Ireland was already declining long before the eighteenth century. The Protestant victory in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 reduced it still further. The Irish cattle trade became increasingly important to the British economy. The Lord Lieutenant was invariably a British politician and the post carried with it membership of the British government. The Declaratory Act of 1720 provoked predictable hostility among Irish MPs resenting not only Britain's control over Ireland but also the corrupt politics which underpinned it. The Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secretary were Crown appointees, were invariably British, and their roles remained unchanged. A Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast in 1791. Its most impressive figure was the Protestant lawyer, Theobald Wolfe Tone. A branch of the United Irishmen, founded in Dublin by Napper Tandy, quickly followed. Catholics were permitted to become members of parliament as a result of the Catholic Relief Act of 1829.
