The story of the Limerick Athenaeum is linked with the city that founded the institution in 1852. It is necessary to revisit, however briefly, some elements of medieval history that have a direct bearing on events that took place within its hallowed walls. For example, the ancient Charters of Limerick and the corrupt Corporation of Limerick that emerged from these charters are examined in some detail. The elections and legal battles to reform the Corporation in the 1830s have a direct bearing on the building that later became the Athenaeum. That titanic struggle between the 19th century "reformers" and the descendants of the ancient "undertakers" who conquered Limerick is crucial to the understanding of the spirit of the Athenaeum. It is no coincidence that both reform movements originated from the same building and in many cases by the same people. The ultimate victors of this battle was democracy for the people of Limerick. Visitors to Ireland are baffled by the interplay of ancient history with the present time that seems to underpin every Irish conversation. Many visit "the old country" to retrace ancestral roots. Generally they have a good time, enjoy the historical sights, the vibrant music and the sense of irreverence that the Irish people seem to have towards life in general. Specific questions on, for example, the situation in Northern Ireland, are answered with a sad shake of the head and a comment like "Sinn sceal eile"
( "that's another story"). They quickly learn that behind every story lurks another. Visitors accept the validity
of the Irish fight for National Independence. They will have no problem understanding the fiery words of John
Francis Maguire MP, William Smith O'Brien, Isaac Butt MP, Charles S.Parnell, Michael Davitt, Maud Gonne
McBride, Patrick Pearse and Sir Roger Casement, all of whom lectured at the Limerick Athenaeum; all of
whom nudged their Limerick audiences towards a "want" for independence. What visitors cannot understand,
however, is the bitter sectarianism behind what North American television bluntly calls The War in Northern
Ireland [against political euphemisms as "the Troubles" (Ireland) or "the Conflict" ( Britain)].
THE ROOTS OF SECTARIANISM
The roots of sectarianism are buried in the past. Visitors unfamiliar with Irish history will be surprised, perhaps
even shocked to read in this book of the forced resettlement of Papist paupers to North America during the
famine from the port of Limerick . They may be amused at the stories of Catholic tugboats competing
with Protestant tugboats on the river Shannon in the 1870s.
ATHENAEUM AS A FORUM FOR CHANGE
Visitors will understand the importance of the Athenaeum as a forum for change in a bitterly divided sectarian
city when they read of the formation of a "non-sectarian" musical society there in 1880 and earlier in 1868,
when the English MP and social reformer, John Bright spoke against "the ancient tyranny" of the Established
State Church (Protestant) which his government disestablished in the following year. Seventy years later, in the
Constitution of Eamonn de Valera in 1937, another Church was given constitutional status in Article 44.1
which granted "special recognition" to the Catholic Church. The sectarian wheel had turned full circle. To
many people in Ireland the Catholic bias of the Constitution was divisive. Earlier in 1925, Senator William
Butler Yeats, the poet, had spoken eloquently in debate to defend the rights of the Protestant minority and of
their contribution to modern Ireland. The issue was over a Catholic inspired Bill to outlaw divorce for all the
citizens of the fledgling state, irrespective of their religious beliefs or traditions. The prophetic words of Yeats
fell on deaf ears.
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"We against who you have done this thing are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell." W.B.Yeats. |
Article 44.1 was removed from the Constitution by referendum in 1972. In the referendum of November 1995 the Irish people removed another part of the 1937 Constitution, the ban on divorce by a narrow majority of less than a half of one percent. Many commentators see that event as the watershed in modern Irish life. The city of Limerick poll reflected the national voting returns. The irony of which is not lost on those interested in history because it was as a result of the violated treaty at Limerick in 1691 that sectarianism was codified into the Penal Laws in 1695 by the Irish Parliament, an elected assembly forbidden to Catholics. The brutality of these laws speak for themselves and are summarised as follows:
Catholics were deprived of educating their children, at home or abroad.
Catholics were forbidden to bear arms.
Catholics were forbidden to own a horse worth more than £5.
Catholic priests were banished.
Protestants were forbidden to marry Catholics.
No Catholic could become a solicitor.
In 1704, the Irish Parliament passed further legislation to prevent "the further growth of Popery" which contained these measures:
The lands of Catholics were to be divided up among the sons. In the event of the eldest son becoming a Protestant, he would inherit all property.
No Catholic could inherit or purchase land for more than 32 years or settle in Limerick or Galway.
No Catholic could hold office or seek election unless they signed an oath of abjuration against the Catholic faith. In 1727, Catholics were deprived of voting at municipal or parliamentary elections.
The Penal Laws were abolished in 1829 by the Catholic Emancipation Act following the campaign by Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator. Political emancipation came to the South of Ireland in 1922.
Limerick is an ancient city. Traces of its antiquity are being unearthed almost daily as the city reconstructs its inner city in the building boom of the 1990s. Remnants of the Norsemen or Vikings who sailed up the Shannon to Limerick towards the end of the eight century have been dug up by archaeologists at King John's Castle. The Vikings were lured by the legendary wealth of the Christian monastic settlements. They liked what they saw and stayed in Ireland until a local hero, Brian Boru, King of Munster, defeated them at the Battle of Clontarf on Good Friday 1014.
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Evidence of a much earlier civilisation can be seen at Grange near Lough Gur, a few miles from the city, where a perfect pre-Celtic stone circle exists that has been carbon dated to 4,000 B.C. predating the Pyramids of Egypt by some two thousand years. Both are solar measuring constructions.
The circle at Grange (from Irish, an grainne, the sun) measured light and was designed as a theatre or ritual centre. Archaeology and mythology are keys that unlock the secrets of pre-history. Both confirm the intelligence of the ancient races of Ireland. The intelligence of the native people was later put into doubt following the conquest of Ireland by Henry II of England and the subsequent colonisation of the country. The native Irish were dispossessed of their lands by English "adventurers". This was followed by more sinister racist attitudes towards the aboriginal Irish, by way of justification perhaps, of the supposedly intellectual superiority of these colonists or West-Britons, as many later preferred to call themselves. The chapters on politics in this book deals with the fight to regain the land and to regain the lost "soul" of a Celtic civilisation.
TEMPLE OF LEARNING
The Athenaeum was the Temple of Learning where that great intellectual battle took place in Limerick. The
conquest by England began in 1154 when Henry II became King of England in the same year as Nicholas
Breakspeare became the Pope at Rome. The English Pope gave the English King a Bull of Authority in
religious matters over Ireland. Henry II., then fighting in Normandy, was ambitious and hungry for a new
power base. Meantime an apparently insignificant marital dispute in Ireland opened the gateway for the
conquest of Ireland. Dermot MacMurragh, King of Leinster had run off with Dervorgille, wife of the
O'Rourke, Prince of Breffni. The end result was that he was forced to return the woman and banished from
Ireland for his indiscretion.. McMurragh appealed to Henry II of England who put him in touch with a
powerful Baron in Wales named Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow.
McMurragh wanted an army to regain his lost kingdom; Strongbow wanted McMurragh's beautiful daughter
Aoife. King Henry II. had an altogether different agenda and quickly gave permission for the invasion of
Ireland. Strongbow's army landed in Wexford in May 1169. He married Aoife shortly afterwards.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES:THE MEDIEVAL QUARTER
Old Baals Bridge URBS ANTIQUA FUIT studiisque asperrima belli (An ancient city inured to the arts of war)
URBS ANTIQUA FUIT
studiisque asperrima belli
(An ancient city inured to the arts of war)
The Charter of Limerick dates to either 1197 or 1199. Historians differ on the precise date. Fitzgerald and McGregor in their History of Limerick published in 1827 quotes an abstract of the Charter of King John dated 1199 as the origin Charter of Limerick which empowered the citizens "to elect one mayor". This charter is cited by both the Select Committee of the House of Commons Inquiry into Limerick of 1822 and by the Royal Commission of 1833 as the original Charter of Limerick. However Maurice Lenihan in his History of Limerick published in 1866 refutes this saying that the Corporation was formed in December 1197 under an Act of Richard I., when the future King John, then Earl of Morton and Lord of Ireland granted the citizens the facility of electing praetors, who are called mayors". Lenihan quotes from the Arthur and Sexton MSS as his source of information. The issue is important to some local people on two counts. One is that Limerick has always claimed pride in that its charter of incorporation is older than that of the City of London. That claim still stands, no matter which date is correct. The other reason is that those involved in the heritage industry plan to celebrate the Charter in 1997 with a series of public cultural events. Irrespective of whichever of these "charters" is the legal one, the real issue must surely be that these Charters calibrate the date of the conquest of Limerick by the Kings of England. An event to commemorate, perhaps; hardly an event to celebrate unless counter-balanced by the true story.
HISTORY V HERITAGE
This point was not lost to Limerick in 1897 when plans by Mayor Michael Cusack to celebrate the
Septo-Centenary were publicly ridiculed in a pamphlet published by O'Connor and Co, Booksellers and
Stationers, titled King John's "Charter" to Limerick. The pamphlet begins with a pertinent question: "What
Irishmen are Asked to Celebrate" and went on to spell in forcible language that the Charter could not be seen
as a charter of democracy or as an Irish Declaration of Rights but rather that it was "a symbol of that dominant
influence of English authority over Irish affairs." The Charter of King John to Limerick was a Charter of
Conquest. The pamphlet effectively rained on the parade of any public "celebration" of the charter in 1897.
Limerick celebrates the 800th anniversary of the Charter in 1997. The subject will arouse public interest in
and perhaps even controversy over the handling of that history. The conflict between history and the
reinterpretation of that history in modern "interpretative centres" by those involved in the new heritage industry
is a cause of nation-wide controversy in historic sites across the country. [see Preface for comments].
A TALE OF TWO CITIES NEW TOWN PERY
The Charter of King John in 1199 was followed by many others. Each one recording the annihilation of the rights of the aboriginal Irish people and which codified land confiscations as spoils of war amongst the conquerors. The final obscenity was the violation of the Treaty of Limerick. The "planted" members of the Corporation of Limerick rubber-stamped these transactions and its members openly participated in the grand larceny. Their greed and abuse of power led to calls for change in the early years of the 19th century. Ironically it came as a consequence of The Act of Union of 1800 which abolished the Irish Parliament and political power was transferred from Dublin to Westminster. In Limerick most of the corporation voted against the Union, not out of a sense of national unity but because of their fear of loss of influence. The Corporation became so corrupt that those citizens who could afford to, abandoned the old city and moved into the New Town of Pery, then being built west of the Abbey River. Parliament accepted their grievances and their claim for independence in the enactment of the St. Michael's Parish Acts of 1807 and 1811. The old Corporation led by Colonel Vereker MP retained political power of the constituency until the election of 1820 when Thomas Spring-Rice, champion of the Independents and a defeated election candidate, successfully appealed to Parliament to have the election results overturned [on the grounds of non-residency of Vereker voters in the New Town] and was declared M.P. for Limerick.
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Painting by William Turner (Limerick Chamber of Commerce). |
Column by James Pain Statue by Themas Kirk RHA |
The voters of the New Town celebrated the victory of their candidate by commissioning the famous painting "The Chairing of Spring-Rice" by an artist named William Turner and the erection of a "colossal" column to him, designed by James Pain in Pery Square, with a statue atop by the sculptor Thomas Kirk RHA (who also sculpted the statue on Nelson's Pillar in Dublin which was expertly blown up by parties unknown in 1966. Nelson's head is now exhibited at the Dublin Civic Museum and not in the many Nelson's Head pubs as is generally supposed). In Parliament, the new MP for Limerick called for an investigation into the affairs of his arch rivals, the old Corporation of Limerick. The results was a Select Committee of the House of Commons into the matter of local taxation in Limerick. The Committee report was published in 1822 and was a damning indicment of Limerick Corporation that brought about the Limerick Regulation Act of 1823. In the meantime the independent St. Michael's Parish Commissioners got on with the job of building their New Town funded by the own self- imposed local taxes. The new town prospered. On a large green field site, they employed their own architects, James Pain, Joseph Fogarty and others, to lay out the streets and houses of their new city in their own distinct Georgian style. In 1833, they commissioned construction of their new administrative headquarters in Upper Cecil Street. The architectural details are outlined in pp. 17-20. The political climate at the time was explosive. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 had created a whole new body of voters and a second seat in Parliament for the city. As a result, the general election of 1832 was without precedent. Anything could happen and it did. The aldermen and burgesses of Limerick Corporation were determined to regain power. In early July, the sitting MP, Thomas Spring-Rice declared that he would not seek re-election in the city. The old guard of the old town were jubilant. They were so certain of regaining power that they nominated John Vereker, jun. [nephew of Lord Gort] as their first candidate and left it to Samuel Dickson and Pierce Mahony to fight it out for the second seat. The new Catholic votes they reckoned could be bought with the usual distribution of cash and privileges. In the New Town, Lord Glentworth, the richest man in the city, astonished the electorate by declaring his support for Daniel O' Connell, who was then on his crusade for Repeal of the Union between England and Ireland and the abolition of the hated tithe taxes. The editor of the Limerick Herald in September 17th was aghast to report that the candidate was to visit O'Connell at Derrynane saying that Lord Glentworth has now openly declared himself "the slave of O' Connell" and asked rhetorically "who could believe that even Lord Glentworth could have sunk so low". Lord Glentworth had a reputation as a social spendthrift and political lightweight and so his application was rejected. [evidence of Glentworth's reputation is provided at his death in August 1834 in an obituary in Limerick Times which described him as "Genius of Pleasure" and hinted strongly that he had died from it at Killaloe].
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Lawyer, politician and orator is remembered in Limerick by a statue to him, erected in 1857 at the Crescent and whose principle street George Street was renamed after him in 1903 in memory of the enormous changes that he brought about as Liberator for the Irish Catholic people. He was first elected MP for Clare in 1828 and although disbarred from taking his seat (because he was a Catholic) by King George IV until 1830, his adroit political influence with Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington ensured the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. In the election of 1832, he was elected for his home constituency of Kerry. His huge personal popularity in Limerick and his campaign issues to Repeal the Union with England and the abolition of the tithe tax ensured the election of his political candidates, David Roche and William Roche [no family relationship] in the city.
 John Gubbins. c.1817 |
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MEN of LIMERICK -Attend to me - Attend to your friend
-attend to a man who boasts only of the honesty of his
intentions and his incessant love of Ireland!
Another day of trial has arisen -another day to attest to the virtues
of the brave and patriotic men of Limerick,
You never were found deficient when the battle for Ireland
was to be fought. YOU NEVER WERE CONQUERED.
When the enemies of Ireland made breaches in your walls -when
the exhausted warriors of Limerick, overcome by the fatigue
of continued fighting, were driven back -when the enemy
more than half victorious, exhultingly entered your city
- at that moment - at that crisis, THE WOMEN OF LIMERICK
threw themselves between their fathers, husbands, brothers,
and the foe -stopped the torrent of battle -rallied the Irish
soldiery. Ten thousand deaths were preferable to the sight
of the blood of the heroines. The soldiers of Limerick were
men again, and in the presence of their wives, their mothers,
and their sisters, they strewed the breach with the
bodies of the invaders, and scattered the surviving Saxons,
Danes, and Dutchmen, over their walls and into their
own camp. Limerick remained unconquered.
Am I writing history or romance? Yes, it is history; but
never did romance feign a fact so glorious as that which
history relates to the women of Limerick. Sons of such mothers - descendants
of such heroines -will you dare to disgrace yourselves -will you
presume to sell yourselves - will you allow yourselfs to be betrayed?
Limerick was never conquered! Never! But she was before
betrayed - foully betrayed. Shall she be betrayed again?
I write with a vehemence; I write with the deepest anxiety.
The betrayer is amongst you - the deceiver -the prince of
political jobbers - Mr Peirce Mahony.
I say nothing of his private life; I say nothing of
him in his profession as an attorney; I assail him only in his
public capacity as a candidate for the high office of
representing the unconquered city of Limerick.
As such I denounce him to you. I know his political
character well. He deceived me for a time, but I know him
the more thoroughly on that account. I tell you from my heart
and my conscience, that you could not possibly select a
WORSE MAN
Extract of letter from DANIEL O'CONNELL
to the Limerick Chronicle
November 1, 1832
Glenstal Castle
Matthew Barrington of Glenstal Castle and Pierce Mahony, both lawyers, courted Daniel O'Connell's
patronage. Barrington was rejected on the grounds of the large legal fees which he earned from the
Government might compromise him in future Parliamentary battles. He accepted the point and retired with
dignity. Pierce Mahony, from Dublin was a different animal. Daniel O'Connell in a blistering letter published in
the Limerick Chronicle on September 19th exposed the duplicity of this candidate who falsely tried to
hoodwink voters that he had the support of the great Liberator. The letter continued for another two pages of
analysis of the issues of the election, the Repeal of the Union, and called upon the Limerick to return "two
honest, independent, talented Repealers." to Parliament. Catholics in Limerick banded together into a Political
Union in an attempt to attract a new candidate that they could support. Late in November two surprise
candidates entered the race. William Roche and David Roche. Both had the public support of O'Connell and
of the Limerick Political Union. It was a masterstroke of good political timing. Dickson and Mahony despite
efforts to buy voters with expensive public dinners and God forbid, the papers said, "drinks on the Sabbath",
were literally spent men. Polling took place over Christmas week. There were four candidates. The two
Repeal candidates, the Messrs Roche, Mr John Vereker, jun, for the Corporation and Samuel Dickson who
ran on his own agenda. On the second day of polling, Mr Samuel Dickson was defeated.
The Limerick Herald were clearly delighted and gave a detailed report with lurid graphics of the "Lamentable Death of Samuel Dickson" with voters dancing around the coffin celebrating his (political) death. On Christmas Eve, the final poll count was declared. The results were:
Mr William Roche (of George's street) 1,648 votes -elected.
Mr David Roche (of Carass, Co. Limerick) 1,285 votes -elected.
Mr John Vereker, jun, 1,105 votes -defeated.
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William Roche MP was a member of the Limerick banking family who established Roche's LIMERICK BANK in 1801 at Charlotte Quay which moved to 96 George Street in 1804. In this location, they opened their famous roof-top Hanging Gardens to the public in 1808. The Bank survived the Bank Crash of 1820 and was later merged into the Provincial Bank of Ireland.
William Roche MP, a Catholic, represented Limerick at three Parliaments until his retirement from politics in July 1841. He was the first Roman Catholic to be appointed to the commission of the peace in Ireland. At a public meeting in Limerick, Daniel O'Connell said that "William Roche was the only man in Ireland from whom he would not demand a pledge." William Roche was a Life Commissioner of St. Michael's Parish Commissioners and an active member of the Limerick Literary Institution. He died, unmarried, in April 1850. His brother, Tom Roche and his nephew William Roche later became founder members of the Limerick Athenaeum.
David Roche, MP, (1791-1865) a Protestant, was a member of the Limerick milling family who lived at Carass, Croom, County Limerick. He was elevated to the peerage in 1838 and served as MP for Limerick until his resignation in 1844.
Samuel Dickson later became MP for County Limerick in place of William Smith O'Brien who was forced to give up his seat following his conviction for high treason in October 1848. Samuel Dickson died in 1850.