Anglo-Irish people () are an ethnic, social and religious grouping consisting mostly of the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.The Anglo-Irish, Fidelma Maguire, University College Cork and Donnchadh Ó Corráin Predominantly, the Anglo-Irish belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the established Church of Ireland until 1871 or, to a lesser extent, to one of the English Dissenting Churches, such as Baptists, Presbyterians, the Methodist Church. However, some were Roman Catholics. They often defined themselves simply as "British", or less frequently as "Anglo-Irish", "Irish" or "English". Many became notable as administrators in the British Empire or as senior army and naval officers. The Kingdom of England and Great Britain were in a real union with the Kingdom of Ireland for over a century, before politically uniting into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
The term is not usually applied to Presbyterians in the province of Ulster, whose ancestry is mostly Lowland Scottish, rather than English or Irish, and who are sometimes identified as Ulster Scots. The Anglo-Irish hold a wide range of political views, with some being outspoken Irish nationalists, but most overall being Unionists. And while most of the Anglo-Irish originated in the English diaspora in Ireland, others were descended from families of the old Gaelic nobility of Ireland.
As a social class
The term "Anglo-Irish" is often applied to the members of the Church of Ireland who made up the professional and landed class in Ireland from the 17th century up to the time of Irish independence in the early 20th century. In the course of the 17th century, this Anglo-Irish landed class replaced the Gaelic Irish and Old English aristocracies as the ruling class in Ireland. They were also referred to as "New English" to distinguish them from the "Old English", who descended from the medieval Hiberno-Norman settlers.
Under the Penal Laws, which were in force between the 17th and 19th centuries (although enforced with varying degrees of severity), Roman Catholic recusants in Great Britain and Ireland were barred from holding public office, while in Ireland they were also barred from entry to Trinity College Dublin and from professions such as law, medicine, and the military. The lands of the recusant Roman Catholic landed gentry who refused to take the prescribed oaths were largely confiscated during the Plantations of Ireland. The rights of Roman Catholics to inherit landed property were severely restricted. Those who converted to the Church of Ireland were usually able to keep or regain their lost property, as the issue was considered primarily one of allegiance. In the late 18th century, the Parliament of Ireland in Dublin won legislative independence, and the movement for the repeal of the Test Acts began.
Not all Anglo-Irish people could trace their origins to the Protestant English settlers of the Cromwellian period; some were of Welsh stock, and others descended from Old English or even native Gaelic converts to Anglicanism. Members of this ruling class commonly identified themselves as Irish,The Anglo-Irish, Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870–1914, Multitext Projects in Irish History, University College Cork while retaining English habits in politics, commerce, and culture. They participated in the popular English sports of the day, particularly racing and fox hunting, and intermarried with the ruling classes in Great Britain. Many of the more successful of them spent much of their careers either in Great Britain or in some part of the British Empire. Many constructed large country houses, which became known in Ireland as Big Houses, and these became symbolic of the class' dominance in Irish society.
The Dublin working class playwright Brendan Behan, a staunch Irish Republican, saw the Anglo-Irish as Ireland's leisure class and famously defined an Anglo-Irishman as "a Protestant with a horse".
The Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Bowen memorably described her experience as feeling "English in Ireland, Irish in England" and not accepted fully as belonging to either.Paul Poplowski, "Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)," Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2003), pp. 26–28.
Due to their prominence in the military and their conservative politics, the Anglo-Irish have been compared to the Prussian Junker class by, among others, Correlli Barnett."Roberts, Kitchener and Wolesley were three national heroes of the nineteenth century whom Correlli Barnett sees as prime examples of the Anglo-Irish gentry, the nearest thing Britain ever possessed to the Prussian Junker class". Desmond and Jean Bowen, Heroic Option: the Irish in the British Army, Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2005.
Business interests
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Anglo-Irish owned many of the major businesses in Ireland, such as Jacob's Biscuits, Bewley's, Beamish and Crawford, Jameson's Whiskey, W. P. & R. Odlum, Cleeve's, R&H Hall, Maguire & Patterson, Dockrell's, Arnott's, Goulding Chemicals, the Irish Times, the Irish Railways, and the Guinness brewery, Ireland's largest employer. They also controlled financial companies such as the Bank of Ireland and Goodbody Stockbrokers.
Prominent members
Prominent Anglo-Irish poets, writers, and playwrights include Oscar Wilde, Maria Edgeworth, Jonathan Swift, George Berkeley, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne, George Darley, Lucy Knox, Bram Stoker, J. M. Synge, W. B. Yeats, Cecil Day-Lewis, Bernard Shaw, Augusta, Lady Gregory, Samuel Beckett, Giles Cooper, C. S. Lewis, Lord Longford, Elizabeth Bowen, William Trevor and William Allingham. The writer Lafcadio Hearn was of Anglo-Irish descent on his father's side but was brought up as a Catholic by his great-aunt.
In the 19th century, some of the most prominent mathematical and physical scientists of the British Isles, including Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Sir George Stokes, John Tyndall, George Johnstone Stoney, Thomas Romney Robinson, Edward Sabine, Thomas Andrews, Lord Rosse, George Salmon, and George FitzGerald, were Anglo-Irish. In the 20th century, scientists John Joly and Ernest Walton were also Anglo-Irish, as was the polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Medical experts included Sir William Wilde, Robert Graves, Thomas Wrigley Grimshaw, William Stokes, Robert Collis, Sir John Lumsden and William Babington. The geographer William Cooley was one of the first to describe the process of globalization.
The Anglo-Irishmen Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Henry Grattan, Lord Castlereagh, George Canning, Lord Macartney, Thomas Spring Rice, Charles Stewart Parnell, and Edward Carson played major roles in British politics. Downing Street itself was named after Sir George Downing. In the Church, Bishop Richard Pococke contributed much to C18 travel writing.
The Anglo-Irish were also represented among the senior officers of the British Army by men such as Field Marshal Earl Roberts, first honorary Colonel of the Irish Guards regiment, who spent most of his career in British India; Field Marshal Viscount Gough, who served under Wellington, himself a Wellesley born in Dublin to the Earl of Mornington, head of a prominent Anglo-Irish family in Dublin; and in the 20th century Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Lord Alexander of Tunis, General Sir John Winthrop Hackett, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson and Field Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley. (see also Irish military diaspora).
Others were prominent officials and administrators in the British Empire, such as: Frederick Matthew Darley, the Chief Justice of New South Wales; Henry Arthur Blake, Antony MacDonnell and Gavan Duffy. Others were involved in finding better ways of managing it, heading the Donoughmore Commission or the Moyne Commission.
Sir John Winthrop Hackett emigrated to Australia where he became the proprietor and editor of many prominent newspapers. He was also influential in the founding of the University of Western Australia and was its first chancellor.
Prolific art music composers included Michael William Balfe, John Field, George Alexander Osborne, Thomas Roseingrave, Charles Villiers Stanford, John Andrew Stevenson, Robert Prescott Stewart, William Vincent Wallace, and Charles Wood.
In the visual arts, sculptor John Henry Foley, art dealer Hugh Lane, artists Daniel Maclise, William Orpen and Jack Yeats; ballerina Dame Ninette de Valois and designer-architect Eileen Gray were famous outside Ireland.
William Desmond Taylor was an early and prolific maker of silent films in Hollywood. Scriptwriter Johanna Harwood penned several of the early James Bond films, among others.
Philanthropists included Thomas Barnardo and Lord Iveagh.
Confederate general Patrick Cleburne was of Anglo-Irish ancestry.
Discussing what he considered the lack of Irish civic morality in 2011, former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald remarked that before 1922: "In Ireland a strong civic sense did exist – but mainly amongst Protestants and especially Anglicans"."Ireland's lack of civic morality grounded in our history", Irish Times, 9 April 2011, p.14
Henry Ford, the American industrialist and business magnate, was half Anglo-Irish; his father William Ford was born in Cork to a family originally from Somerset, England.
Attitude towards Ireland's independence
The Anglo-Irish, as a class, were mostly opposed to the notions of Irish independence and Home Rule.Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 376. Most were supporters of continued political union with Great Britain, which existed between 1800 and 1922. This was for many reasons, but most important were the economic benefits of union for the landowning class, the close personal and familial relations with the British establishment, and the political prominence held by the Anglo-Irish in Ireland under the union settlement. Many Anglo-Irish men served as officers in the British Army, were clergymen in the established Anglican Church of Ireland or had land (or business interests) across the British Isles – all factors which encouraged political support for unionism. Between the mid-nineteenth century and 1922, the Anglo-Irish comprised the bulk of the support for movements such as the Irish Unionist Alliance, especially in the southern three provinces of Ireland.Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 384.
During the First World War, Irish nationalist MP Tom Kettle compared the Anglo-Irish landlord class to the Prussian Junkers, saying, "England goes to fight for liberty in Europe and for junkerdom in Ireland."