THE fmtyter'm Church \ • IN IRELAND A Popular History . I CHORO ” F.r THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN IRELAND Finlay Holmes The Presbyterian Church in Ireland A Popular History £ n A X rhe columBZt pRess First published in 2000 by che columBZi pRess 55A Spruce Avenue, Stillorgan Industrial Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin Cover by Bill Bolger Origination by The Columba Press Printed in Ireland by Colour Books Ltd, Dublin ISBN 1 85607 284 3 Copyright © 2000, R. F. G. Holmes Contents Introduction 7 1. The First Presbyterians in Ireland 9 2. Laying the Foundations of an Irish Presbyterian Church 26 3. The Eighteenth Century 49 4. The Nineteenth Century: Outreach at Home and Abroad 84 5. The Twentieth Century: Changes and Challenges 123 Select Bibliography 160 Index 163 , . Introduction I was glad to have the invitation of The Columba Press to write a popular history of Irish Presbyterianism. It gave me an opport¬ unity to revise and simplify my earlier history. Our Irish Presbyterian Heritage, published in 1985 for the Publications Board of the Irish Presbyterian Church and intended primarily for Presbyterian church members. It is hoped that this popular history will inform a wider public about Irish Presbyterianism, who they are, where they have come from and what they have done and are doing in their obedience to Christ. Frequently caricatured as dour bigots, that is not how they see themselves, and if we are to understand the Irish historical experience since the early seventeenth century, we need to take into account their distinctive role in that experience. Why was it, for example, that some Presbyterians were prominent among the founding fathers of Irish Republicanism in the late eight¬ eenth century and participated in the 1798 rebellion against British rule in Ireland, yet most Irish Presbyterians became ar¬ dent Unionists in the course of the nineteenth century? Quotations in the text indicate my indebtedness to many other historians and I have provided a select bibliography to ac¬ knowledge that indebtedness more specifically. Finally, my thanks are due to Sean O Boyle and The Columba Press for their helpfulness in the process of publication and to my wife, Josephine, great grand-daughter of the first Irish Presbyterian missionary to China, who has encouraged me to complete this history and have more time to enjoy the leisure of retirement and see more of our seven grandchildren. Finlay Holmes 7 ' '