The Rebellion Papers – Delving Deeper
The Rebellion Papers capture the workings of the Irish Chief Secretary’s Office (CSO), the central agency that oversaw all various government departments within Dublin Castle, acting as the executive government for Ireland. The vast majority of the Chief Secretary’s Office records were destroyed in the Four Courts in 1922.
System of Arrangement
The calendars are arranged into 67 ‘cartons’, reflecting the earlier method of storing the papers when they were initially sorted in the 1870s. These cartons occasionally contain ‘files’ which consist of multiple documents, but more commonly each carton simply contains several hundred items which are all listed individually.
The first section of the archive (cartons 1 to 22) primarily encompass documents related to “State Prisoners,” courts martial, and the confiscated papers of United Irishmen who were arrested or imprisoned. Included among these materials are stray letters and sets of correspondence, usually arranged by a certain correspondent or theme. This subset of the collection predominantly dates from 1797 onwards, covering the peak period of revolutionary activity and government suppression.
The remainder of the collection (cartons 23 to 67), consists of letters sent to Dublin Castle, arranged chronologically for the years 1796 to 1804.
Content of the Calendars
The calendars of the Rebellion Papers consist of just over 8,000 entries, describing one of the single richest collections for the study of Ireland in the late-eighteenth century. What is provided in this curated collection is a searchable version of the existing calendars. In most cases the calendars provide a date and a short description which includes the names of the correspondents, sometimes with the location of the correspondent included in parentheses. In some cases where the date is unclear, it is given as ‘No date’. Where there is some indication of month or year, this is given. Sometimes the correspondent is anonymous or pseudonymous; in many cases, it is not clear who the letter was addressed to, simply addressed ‘Lord ___ ‘, or ‘to government’. In certain cases, spellings or typographical errors have been corrected. However persistent spelling choices for person or place names are retained. Where possible, common abbreviations are expanded such as common names and titles.
It must be remembered that these calendars are subjective descriptions, created by staff of the Irish State Paper Office, summarizing often lengthy correspondence in a line or two. They are not full or even partial transcriptions of content, but merely a guide to the major topics discussed in an item. Even so, the calendars make it clear that the content of the Rebellion Papers is extremely varied. In addition to the letters being written by a wide range of correspondence, their focus is also diverse. However it is fair to say that the theme of ‘law and order’ predominates, with many of the letters concerned with the threat posed by ‘seditious’ individuals and groups like the United Irishmen or the Defenders. The threat posed by a French invasion, and by Irish men and women who might aid the French, is another recurring theme.
Many of the letters also include the author’s recommendations for how the government should respond to such threats, which usually consisted of the writer attempting to convince the government to send more soldiers to their neighbourhood. At the same time, the correspondents usually report on broader political developments in their district, such as the growth of the Orange Order, recruitment into the militia or yeomanry, or local elections. As such, while most letters are focused on the threat of rebellion or invasion, the incidental details that are included provide a vivid picture of their localities. The Rebellion Papers are therefore a useful source for local researchers, providing information about local figures and events.
While the bulk of the collection consists of the above correspondence, the first 22 cartons contain ‘non-epistolary’ items i.e. items which are not in the form of letters between individuals. These include:
- Prisoner lists, prisoner petitions, and memorials of ‘state prisoners’ (mainly found in cartons 1, 12, 14, 15, 16)
- Courts martial records (cartons 2,3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17)
- Miscellaneous memorials and confiscated papers (cartons 19-22)
For the above materials, the calendars are less detailed in their description of the content, compared to the correspondence sections.
How were the Rebellion Papers created?
The Rebellion Papers are a composite archive. Their contents were extracted from other collections held by the Chief Secretary’s Office, presumably at some point in the early nineteenth century. Most of these other series were destroyed in the fire in the Public Record Office in 1922. The series which the Rebellion Papers most closely resemble is ‘Correspondence (Miscellaneous Civil), 1685-1799’ (PROI CSO 1/19). This series contained information about internal threats to the state, as well as a multitude of ‘law and order’ issues. The material within this series was drawn from sources such as military personnel, county governors, sheriffs and private individuals. The reason these types of letters were described as ‘miscellaneous’ was because much of them were from ‘non-official’ sources i.e. those not in direct employment by the government. It also seems that Dublin Castle had stopped systematically preserving miscellaneous non-official correspondence for a period after 1760. The Rebellion Papers attest to a revival of the practice after 1790, albeit in a form that corresponded to the official preoccupation of that decade. The retention of these unofficial papers can be attributed to the diligence of one man: Edward Cooke.
Cooke had arrived in Ireland in 1778 as the private secretary to a Chief Secretary, going on to serve in a number of roles within the Dublin Castle administration. By the mid-1790s, Cooke had gained significant influence, serving as military under-secretary from 1789 to 1795, and then civil under-secretary from 1796 to 1801. It was in his capacity as civil under-secretary that Cooke oversaw the daily operations of the government, including the government’s system of intelligence gathering. A large number of the letters within the Rebellion Papers are addressed to the under-secretary Edward Cooke, although many letters are also addressed to the Chief Secretary or Lord Lieutenant. The evidence suggests that many of these letters to the Lord Lieutenant or Chief Secretary were subsequently passed to Cooke, or that Cooke might even have been given permission to open letters addressed to his superiors. At any rate, it is clear that Edward Cooke was responsible for screening correspondence to the government, aggregating and analyzing the intelligence which the Castle was receiving.
As stated, the majority of the letters in the Rebellion Papers are from ‘non-official’ sources. For the most part, these private letters come from those friendly to the government. These included certain members of the gentry, magistrates, clergymen and local office holders, all eager to keep Dublin Castle informed about events in the local area. However the collection also contains a number of documents from official or semi-official sources. These include reports and letters from military personnel, judges, members of the post office, and paid informants. It is important to remember that this correspondence is derived mostly from one sector of the community: those who identified with the government, considering themselves ‘loyal’ or ‘loyalist’. In contrast, there are far fewer letters from ‘liberal’ members of the gentry, or from individuals who were critical of government policy. While this does not seriously diminish the collection’s usefulness, it is a limitation which should be considered.
The content of many of the letters makes clear that Edward Cooke was responsible for instigating much of the correspondence in the collection, with letters frequently addressing enquiries made by him. However, while many of these letters were written to Cooke, far fewer items written by him survive. It was not standard practice in this period to copy out-going correspondence from government to private individuals. While the odd copy of a reply by Cooke survives, the opinions and views of Dublin Castle staff must usually be inferred. Similarly, the Rebellion Papers are not a comprehensive collection of letters between Cooke and his regular correspondents. In some instances it is clear that items are missing, having been passed onto other officials, subsequently finding their way to other archives. Even within the papers held by Dublin Castle, some letters were separated from the Rebellion Papers, finding their way to a smaller, but related collection known as the ‘State of the Country Papers’.
Archival History
While the origins of the Rebellion Papers stem from the Chief Secretary’s Office, the subsequent archival history of the collection contains some gaps. We do not have a clear idea of how or when the papers were extracted from other, larger series held by the Chief Secretary’s Office, or the precise moment they were brought together as a discrete collection. While we know that the records of the Chief Secretary’s Office were reviewed by the Irish Record Commissioners during the 1810s, there is no direct mention of a collection resembling the Rebellion Papers in any of the reports produced by the Commission.The earliest account of the Rebellion Papers dates from 1853, when they were reportedly stored in the Record Tower in Dublin Castle, having been placed in two large chests, fasten down with the government seal and with the words written on them: ‘secret and confidential: not to be opened’.
By this stage the collection was held by the Irish State Paper Office (SPO), which was responsible for the records produced by the various lord lieutenants and the Chief Secretary’s Office. In the nineteenth century, the Chief Secretary’s Office regularly transferred materials to the SPO, where they were to remain until the records were 50 years old, at which time they were to be transferred to the Public Record Office. Yet despite the Rebellion Papers falling within this remit, they were never transferred.
During the 1870s and 1880s, when the Rebellion Papers began to be listed, the Keeper of the State Papers Sir John Bernard Burke, was concerned that politically sensitive records might become public knowledge, particularly papers which illustrated the British government’s use of informers in Ireland. In the case of the Rebellion Papers, this was heightened by fears that the documents could be used to identify informers who were previously unmasked, and whose descendants still lived in Ireland. Indeed, another reason the Rebellion Papers had been segregated from other government records was due to the fear of such revelations. Nonetheless, knowledge of the collection gradually spread following a description of the Rebellion Papers appearing in 1877, within The Ninth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in Ireland. While the papers were not generally available for inspection by scholars, the historians W.E.H. Lecky and W.J. Fitzpatrick were granted privileged access to the papers, possibly as a result of their social status and reputation. In the case of Fitzpatrick, access to the papers confirmed earlier accusations he had made regarding the informer Francis Higgins, as well as helping him to identify Francis Magan as the man who had betrayed Lord Edward Fitzgerald in 1798. Fitzpatrick’s revelations even led to a question being raised in the British House of Commons concerning how he had been given access.
What the Calendars reveal
The Calendars offer more than just a finding aid to the Rebellion Papers; they provide a comprehensive overview of the collection, enabling researchers to understand the sources of information available to Dublin Castle during a critical period in Irish history. Historians have typically mined the Rebellion Papers for quotes or isolated evidence without assessing the archive as a whole. However, these calendars reveal significant insights into the nature, objectives, and methods of the Dublin Castle administration in the 1790s. Organized chronologically, the letters allow researchers to discern which issues and regions concerned Dublin Castle at specific times. For example, during 1796-97, Ulster was correctly perceived as the hub of United Irish strength and the most likely center of rebellion. After the failed French expedition to Bantry Bay in late 1796, the Castle shifted its focus to Cork and South Munster to gauge the extent of disaffection. By early 1798, attention turned to the counties surrounding Dublin, with fears of rebels advancing on the capital.
The collection highlights the network of correspondents cultivated by the under-secretary Edward Cooke, revealing the government’s heavy reliance on a select group of individuals for information. It was a handful of loyalists in certain counties who maintained regular communication with Cooke, ensuring a steady flow of intelligence. Some of these key individuals included the Marquess of Downshire in County Down, Dean Warburton in Armagh, Sir George Hill in Londonderry, the Rochfort family in Carlow, and Major Joseph Hardy in Wicklow, to name just a few examples. However, this network was uneven. In areas where there was not already a web of loyalist correspondents, the Castle often failed to create one, meaning that the letters received from these counties were random and irregular. For instance, the noticeable lack of correspondence from Wexford and Kildare during the winter and spring of 1798 is striking. Wexford had both a strong liberal gentry faction and a strong loyalist presence, while Kildare had a liberal gentry with a history of opposing the establishment. Yet, both counties appear to be silent, reflecting gaps in the government’s intelligence network. Such discrepancies underscores the selective and politically determined nature of the Rebellion Papers.
The Calendars also expose the sheer volume of correspondence received by Dublin Castle, which sometimes amounted to an information overload. Intelligence came from diverse sources, including the military, post office, customs officers, private citizens, and paid informants. This abundance of information led some later historians to believe that the government had near-total knowledge of the plans of Ireland’s revolutionaries, yet the reality was more complex. What the calendars reveal is the substantial problems created by the various streams of information that the Castle was receiving. Information must be collated, assessed and interpreted in order to guide decision making. As the calendars make clear, this task devolved almost entirely onto Edward Cooke, who must have been overwhelmed at points by the correspondence he was receiving. By mid-1797, Cooke was handling nearly 180 letters per month, increasing to about 250 letters per month by the following summer. It is unclear how much of Dublin Castle’s intelligence victories were the result of good luck, rather than its ability to sift valuable information from the sea of letters it was receiving.
Finally, the calendars may reveal aspects of the subsequent archival history of the collection. As several historians have noted, the creation of the Rebellion Papers was not politically neutral. The papers were curated with specific political purposes, both during the 1790s when the letters were written and subsequently when they were selected and arranged. Thomas Bartlett has gone as far as to describe the collection as another strand of post-Rebellion polemic, designed to illustrate ‘the Irish propensity for savage violence (and informing on one another)’, and whose purpose was to ‘validate the British civilizing presence in Ireland’. While this view might be an exaggeration, the uncertain archival history of the collection before 1853 means that the Rebellion Papers require careful handling, something they have rarely received. The calendars provide a bird’s-eye view of the collection, one which allows users to discern the patterns and omissions within this important collection, allowing for a more thoughtful and considered use of the records.
Further Reading
Deirdre Lindsay, ‘The rebellion papers: an introduction to the rebellion papers collection housed in the National Archives, Bishop Street, Dublin’, Ulster Local Studies, The Turbulent Decade: Ulster in the 1790s, Vol. 18, no. 2 (1997) pp 28-43.
L.M. Cullen ‘Politics and Rebellion: Wicklow in the 1790s’ in Hannigan and Nowlan (eds.) Wicklow: History and Society (1994) pp. 412 – 501
Thomas Bartlett (ed.) Revolutionary Dublin, 1795–1801: the Letters of Francis Higgins to Dublin Castle ( 2003)
Thomas Bartlett ‘Why the history of the 1798 Rebellion has yet to be written’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 15 (2000) pp. 181-190
W.J. Fitzpatrick, Secret Service under Pitt (1892)
