Henry Grattan, the Regency Crisis and the emergence of a Whig party in Ireland, 1788–9

Abstract

The Regency Crisis that proceeded from the apparent insanity of George III in October 1788 has a twofold importance in Irish political history. In an Anglo-Irish context, it can be argued that this episode crucially accelerated the hardening of British opinion in support of a political union with Ireland, and therefore marked a stage in the long ‘prelude to union’. But the Regency Crisis was also significant in purely domestic terms. Its consequences for the development of Irish parliamentary politics form the central concern of this article, the primary object of which is to analyse the course of events in Ireland and especially the evolving motives of the key individuals and factions in opposition between November 1788 and March 1789. The process not only made for intrinsically thrilling political drama; the ‘opposition’ response to the machinations of government on this issue paved the way for the advent of an Irish Whig party that was to transform the balance of power in the Irish parliament during the course of its final decade.