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The Hidden Rebels: Irish Women in the Jacobite Cause
36 Plays1 month ago
Episode eleven of the new series of Pieces of History shines a light on the often-overlooked role of Irish women in Jacobite networks, revealing their significant yet underappreciated contributions to the cause. Far from passive observers, these women were active participants in the struggle to restore the Stuart monarchy, operating in a world of secrecy, strategy, and high stakes.
Joining me is historian Dr. Frances Nolan, recipient of the SFI-IRC Pathway Fellowship at the UCD School of History in 2023, whose research brings fresh insight into the crucial - yet frequently underestimated - contributions of Irish women to the Jacobite movement. Together, we examine the strategies they employed, the dangers they faced, and the lasting impact of their actions.
From clandestine communication to financial manoeuvring, these women were instrumental in the political and military efforts of the Jacobites. In this episode, we uncover their hidden stories, challenge traditional narratives, and explore how their influence shaped the course of history.
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Dr. Frances Nolan:
The Jacobite Duchess:: Frances Jennings, Duchess of Tyrconnell, c.1649-1731
https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783276141/the-jacobite-duchess/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Role of Irish Women in the Jacobite Movement
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pieces of History. I'm Colin McGrath and in each episode explore both the renowned and lesser known events that have shaped our world. Today we turn our focus to the often overlooked role of Irish women in the Jacobite movement, women who played a crucial role in intelligence gathering, financial support and resistance efforts to restore the Stuart monarchy.
Dr. Francis Nolan on Irish Women's Contributions
00:00:34
Speaker
To help us uncover their stories, I am joined by Dr Francis Nolan, historian and recipient of the SFI IRC Pathway Fellowship at the UCD School of History in 2023. Dr Nolan's research sheds light on the vitally and frequently underestimated contributions these women made to the Jacobite cause.
00:00:52
Speaker
In this episode we'll explore the strategies they employed, the dangers they faced and the lasting impact of their actions. From secret correspondence to financial manoeuvring, these women played a pivotal role in shaping our history.
Dr. Nolan's Academic Journey and Inspirations
00:01:05
Speaker
Francis, thanks very much for joining me. Just to kick things off, do you mind sharing a bit about your academic background and what led you to focus on early modern Irish history? Yeah, yeah. So um I suppose to to look at the the long view, I did my undergrad, and I did a joint major in English and History and enjoyed both, but I knew history was something I kind of wanted to pursue at post-grad level. So um I looked into the possibility of a master's and I was really fortunate to to get in touch with Professor Ivan Graham in UCD School of History and
00:01:37
Speaker
And he encouraged me to take it on. And funnily enough, I wasn't, I think in my undergrad anyway, wasn't interested in early modern Ireland. and In Irish history, more generally, it didn't appeal to me as much as British, um particularly English or you know European history as well. They kind had more of an appeal to me. and But I did my master's. Then I eventually did my master's at UCD on a woman named Sarah Churchill, who was Duchess of Maralborough.
Frances Jennings' Influence in Irish History
00:02:00
Speaker
and An English woman, a very, very powerful English woman, the favourite of Queen Anne. Anyone who would have seen the film, Jorgis Lansmus is the favourite. She's Rachel Weisz's character, or played by Rachel Weisz in a fictionalised, very fictionalised, loose way. But I think captures her spirit. Really interesting woman, very politically engaged and active, hugely powerful, like I said, had enormous um influence over a Queen Anne.
00:02:24
Speaker
and Until she kind of unmade herself, I think, with some of those aspects of her personality that and maybe weren't as, I don't want to say the word attractive, but weren't as, I suppose, endearing over time, I guess. and So I focused on her and her political activity and her kind of accumulation and use of soft power and in particular.
00:02:45
Speaker
And the way that she used that, she had a very strong ah political ideology. She was a Whig. She very much supported the Whig party. and This is in the age of parties as well, where that whole party system started to to be established too. So she was
Women's Property Ownership and Political Roles in History
00:02:58
Speaker
influential in that. And she was also then married to John Churchill, who was Duke of Marlborough, and he was a very military general, highly decorated, and led the Allied forces in the War Spanish Succession, all of these things that made them a consummate power couple, basically.
00:03:12
Speaker
and So I looked at her, and I'm like that, looking at the kind of English-European contexts, and But I also came across her sister then, who was a woman named Frances Jennings, her older sister. um And Frances had ah thing for Catholic Irishmen, I think. She married two of them. and And she eventually came to have a very strong association with Ireland. She was vice-reign of Ireland in 1680s under ah James II's reign. Her husband, Richard Talbot, would have been Lord Deputy.
00:03:40
Speaker
And so I really then started to turn my focus towards Ireland and found that it was a fascinating place to look at. I'm just completely captivated by that and particularly the late kind of 17th and early 18th centuries in Ireland. So that's how I ended up where I am.
00:03:54
Speaker
And I'm now leading um a four year project at UCD on women's property ownership in early modern Ireland. So. So just you've lightly touched on it there. Whenever you first started of your research, ah because whenever I was looking into, you know, and getting you on the podcast and and your background um on your work, whenever I scrolling through some of the pages, the first woman mentioned was maybe about a thousand words into some of the documents and articles that I was reading. It's all about, you know, James II, the Jacobite revolution, you know, 1688 and all that. And obviously in the north of Ireland.
00:04:25
Speaker
we have the Battle of the Boeings, you've got William III. Women are not figured at all in this time period. Is that one of the key drivers in your research? Massively, yeah, it is. it like it's I suppose it's symptomatic of the historiography more widely. you know Historical research doesn't tend to centre women, particularly if you're looking at political history. And I think what's been written...
00:04:50
Speaker
particularly on that period as well, has often been high political history. and It's been focused very much on the war itself. and I suppose the the consequences of William's victory like that. It has a long cultural impact in Ireland, as you mentioned there with and the Battle of the Boyne and the way that's still commemorated in Northern
Frances Jennings: Myth vs. Reality
00:05:09
Speaker
Ireland. So it has like it it has That angle, I suppose, has become very embedded and and and there hasn't really been much emphasis then on on even the social history, I suppose, not even just to look specifically at women, but anything beyond maybe the high political and the consequences then of the confiscation of land and land moving from one man's ownership to another man's ownership and and that kind of thing. So it definitely was something when I started to look at it, I was like, there's so many women presenting in the sources, particularly around
00:05:41
Speaker
and not so much the war, but particularly around the confiscation of land after the war as well. and And once I realized that there was kind of, I won't say an abundance, but certainly and that ah a lot of women's names cropping up, I kind of figured out this was a viable avenue of research. So my PhD then focused on and Jacobite or Catholic, they're fairly interchangeable at this time.
00:06:04
Speaker
Jack of White Women let's say and the William I confiscation in Ireland then so looking at a period between 1689, 1690 and 1703 and so that's yeah what really drew me in. Could you go into but a bit more detail about who Frances Jennings was, her who her sister were and how influential were they were they in society within Ireland at at that time and whenever you came to researching these women were they looked at in the past or were they overlooked would you say?
00:06:33
Speaker
OK, so well, the first thing to say, I suppose, about Sarah Churchill's hugely influential, the Churchills are the wealthiest private couple in England. They're enormously wealthy, enormously influential, all of that. So you know there is ah large body of evidence relating to Sarah and her family and her descendants, all of that. and And because of them, there is a significant body of evidence remaining, I think, for Frances as well. So um a lot of her letters or her daughter's letters are still held within the Blenheim papers in the British Library.
00:07:03
Speaker
and So there was like, there was, it occurred to me that there was a body there that I could work with, at least. It's not just fragmentary references, because oftentimes you're faced with assembling fragments to to try and build a bigger picture.
00:07:15
Speaker
I knew once I started to look at her that there was like potential there. And I actually ended up then writing a biography of her because I came across so much information. and And part of that was to correct what had already been written. So because she was a well-known figure, and there had been some work done, particularly because her husband as well was a,
00:07:33
Speaker
was a prominent Jacobite and quite a ah controversial and or divisive figure, let's say, ah in the history of Ireland. There had been some work done on him as well. But like there had been a joint biography of them, let's say, written in the early 20th century.
00:07:45
Speaker
There had also been, in the Victorian period, some histories written about influential women and influential Jacobites. And that included Frances as well. But there had been a whole narrative, a whole mythology built up around her that, when I went to the sources, was partly true. It reflected partly her character and the circumstances. and and the facts of her life, but it didn't it didn't really tell, and don't want to say a full truth, but it it didn't really get to the core of who she was, what her motivations were, and and I suppose how understandings of her then as well and were shaped during her life and and after her life as well. So I really wanted to go back and do
Espionage and Agency of Irish Women
00:08:22
Speaker
her justice, to look at the source material, to re-evaluate her, um and to try and and give her the credit she deserves, I think, for for the influence she had in Jack About Ireland in particular.
00:08:33
Speaker
Francis, I saw you speak um in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland um just before Christmas there. And there your paper was called Zealous for the Cause, Irish Women ah as Jacobite Agents.
00:08:43
Speaker
So can we go a bit more into detail about that? So how did you come across writing that paper? Was it just for that workshop itself or was this... kind of ongoing work that you have been doing over the last number of years.
00:08:55
Speaker
And one of the key interests, has like a thread that's run through the podcast over the last while, is espionage and spying as well. So can you go into a bit more detail about that area as well?
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So that that paper actually, it arose because of my my work on Turconnell. So again, she's kind of formed the hub of my research interests for an number of years now. and But in looking at her case, she remains...
00:09:19
Speaker
um I suppose not an active Jacobite in the sense that she's involved directly in politics in um in in Ireland or in England. she's She's exiled to the continent after the war and and she lives at the Jacobite court of Saint-Germain for a number of years. Then she moves to the Low Countries and she works as a Jacobite agent there and as an intermediary with yeah Churchill or Marlborough.
00:09:42
Speaker
and But she she also continues, I think, to have links with the Jacobite community beyond that as well. She returns to Ireland in 1708. and and very much establishes herself amongst the the Protestant elite.
00:09:56
Speaker
She's accepted in that society, and but she's also acknowledged to be Catholic. She's acknowledged still to support and the the the Exile Steuarts or the Jacobites. And we kind of come across Catherine Lucas then through, and i suppose, well, I came across her through a mention of Turconnell in the state papers,
00:10:17
Speaker
and So basically, Catherine Lucas ah is a lower status woman, which is, I think, a huge thing. And it's a shift in my own focus is to move away from these elite women like Turconnell to look more so at women in in in the tiers below them, Catherine Lucas definitely fits that criteria.
00:10:34
Speaker
So she is a woman who and is arrested after in 1723. So this is one year after ah plot named the Atterbury plot is discovered. It's a Jacobite plot to send an invasionary force ah to England.
00:10:46
Speaker
She's a arrested. She's questioned. She's interrogated by english the English authorities and she's imprisoned in Newgate. um And basically from there, she starts to write to a number of individuals, including agents of the state. So she, you know, she writes to the king. She writes also to the the secretary of state and to two others as well. But she she turns also then to.
00:11:09
Speaker
people who maybe weren't living openly as Jacobites, and people who were of a higher status as well who weren't living openly as Jacobites, but who were understood by Lucas and to be Jacobites.
00:11:21
Speaker
One of those is the Duchess of Traconnell. There's another Irish woman named Anne Bagnall who's connected to the Ormonds. and And there's a number of other individuals as well. so and When I came across this case, it was just it was such an exciting thing. I was like, I have to do have to do something with this. um And it was it was a mere mention, actually, initially in a guy called Paul Monod, a historian and and of English Jacobitism. He had mentioned Lucas in it. as It was about three lines long.
00:11:45
Speaker
And that's what kicked the whole thing off. When I got to look at the state papers, it was just um well a relative mountain of material. It was just like it was fantastic. There was reports on the interrogations.
00:11:56
Speaker
They had also copied all of Lucas's kind correspondence going out of Newgate as well. So there were copies of her letters to to different people, and papers that had been discovered in her possession when she was arrested. It was just a trove. and And I actually think I've written an article on this now. It's going to appear, hopefully, in 18th century Ireland at the end of the year.
00:12:14
Speaker
and But I think I've only really scratched the surface, to be honest. this um I think a lot more could be done with it. ah But like it it it is like it's it's it will be a standalone article, but it's going to be, I think, the catalyst for me to branch out and look more widely at women as agents, as spies, meaning spies, intelligences, or um I suppose, couriers of information, or like Lucas's case, recruiters of men as well.
00:12:39
Speaker
So I'm hoping I don't know if you're familiar with Nadine Ackerman's work, Invisible Agents. So she looks at royalist women um in the Civil War and Interregnum in England so and how they operated as agents for the royalist cause.
00:12:52
Speaker
And it's looking at the ways that I suppose women used their position within a patriarchal society and umm within a subversive political movement and to support the that movement. So I'm hoping to build out from this and actually potentially write a book looking more broadly at at women in the Jack by Cause in this way. so That's fantastic. I love
Domestic Networks in Political Movements
00:13:14
Speaker
that about whenever you're in history and you're researching something. And like you said, you've come across something. There's only three lines written. And you kind of thought, there's something here.
00:13:22
Speaker
Why? Obviously, somebody in the past hasn't picked this up. I'm going to run with it. And then, like you said, you've found a whole treasure trove. So whenever you're doing the research around Catherine Lucas as well, like you said, you've you come up with a lot of information.
00:13:33
Speaker
Generally, you would find a lot of record keeping and and and archives and details are kept about, like you said, those kind of more, how how would you say In society, those... higher, more elite. We'll call them elite.
00:13:48
Speaker
Yeah. I'd say that that wrong, but one, two, three below, obviously there's not as much detail written. Have you found that, say, even a stumbling block in your research over the last number of years?
00:13:59
Speaker
Oh yeah, hugely. I mean, like, I suppose, you know, I, my focus initially was on elite women. So I kind of was drawn in, i think by, and the potential of those sources, because a lot of the time they're so rich, you can you can actually, you don't have to do so much reading between the lines, let's say.
00:14:16
Speaker
and But I think what occurred to me as I moved along looking at that research was that there the evidence for women of a lower status is there, It's not there in any great quantity, let's say, but it is there and and it deserves to be paid attention to as well. So, um you know, you can't I don't think you can fully as well. That's one thing to say. I don't think you can fully understand the experience of elite women without actually understanding their the dynamic between.
00:14:43
Speaker
those women who were, let's say, on a ah socioeconomic level with them, but also those women women who existed, and men indeed as well, who existed below them. and Because that's the fabric of society, right? It's not just one line.
00:14:54
Speaker
We all have to enter. we all have to We're all connected in some way or another. And particularly in this kind of society, which is particularly hierarchical, it tends to be those economic relationships. So you have those high status women who have servants, men and women, but particularly for household servants, their own personal servants,
00:15:12
Speaker
um a lot of women involved so you have these networks these kind of domestic networks that exist in in kind of a private sphere let's say but have have a lot of potential i think to to bleed into the public and to to act in ways that maybe aren't perceived by the state to be a threat but that certainly serve a function particularly within a subversive political movement as well so supposed to look at it in the case of um maybe not even Catherine Lucas, but there's another case as well around the Bellew family and in 1722. They're apprehended and a number of their servants are apprehended as well. and
00:15:50
Speaker
And again, it's around the Atterbury plot. They're suspected of being involved. It's a guy named ah Dennis Kelly and his wife, Frances Arabella, or Sorry, rather right his wife, Mary, and his mother-in-law, Frances Arabella Bellew, and their daughters as well, the Kellys' daughters. So they're apprehended, but their servants are also apprehended and they're all questioned and statements are taken.
00:16:12
Speaker
and So we get some insight into these connections between elite women and and those women who are employed as their servants. And it also... that case, I think, tells us that it's not just the upper crust and then ah really steep, long, long descent to the lower orders. You have you also have hierarchies within servants as well. So, you know, Frances Arabella Bellew, for example, has a lady's maid named Isabella Grace, who's a gentlewoman. You know, she's not she's she's educated and she's literate.
00:16:44
Speaker
and You know, so she and she also is, if you read between the lines, clearly, a Jacobite supporter too. So she is ideologically aligned with her mistress, let's say, and with the family she's employed with.
00:16:58
Speaker
Whether that goes the whole way down along the line, it's impossible
Challenges in Researching Jacobite Women
00:17:01
Speaker
to say. But again, what it does do is it highlights the potential for these domestic networks, let's say, and these domestic hubs to actually be a politically engaged unit and a politically active unit as well. So there is some indication that Isabella Grace has been going and meeting um with others who share her political sympathy. She's found in possession of a Jacobite pamphlet, written by a really staunch Jacobite as well. So there's all these indications of this political world that exists within the domestic and and which extends out into the public as well. So I'm just fascinated by that and what the sources can tell us um about about that and about women's political activity within that context.
00:17:46
Speaker
Hypothetically, if you've just touched on one those examples as well, if they're writing correspondence to each other and they're writing and letters to each other, how openly are they talking about their political opinions on on what they would like to see going forward over the next five or ten years? And was there a different rule, let's just say, for those elite and those people who are below those elite levels? Let's just say if they were ever caught with those correspondence.
00:18:07
Speaker
did you ever Did you find much many examples of that? It's a tricky one because... there's issues around the the quantity of correspondence that we still have so again like some of the problems that attend sources when you're looking at women's history generally um apply here so they're not like retained as frequently let's say um they don't tend to be or they haven't been in the past i should say by archivists um given priority in catalogues so oftentimes You have to do a lot of trawling in undefined bundles of papers to try and find ah references, scattered references of that to women and as well.
00:18:45
Speaker
I suppose the one thing to say is there's not an abundance of correspondence from Jacobite women. So we tend to have sources that write about them and their activities as opposed to them writing about their activities. And you do have to infer...
00:18:56
Speaker
and meaning and in some cases as well. So there is some reading between the lines. and I'm trying to think. There's there's some, there's like, you know you can take a lot from from observations on women's activity though as well. So even though they may not say explicitly,
00:19:12
Speaker
this is what I believe, this is what I think the five-year plan is, and here's how I'm going to help. You can see how they are intent. And and that was one of the things I think when looking at Turconnell, who although she is and you know ah about as high status as you can get, um particularly by her her middle age,
00:19:29
Speaker
um you know, she doesn't leave a huge amount of correspondence. There's more because, like I said, of that Marlborough connection. and But a lot of it is otherwise fragmentary. So you're relying on her correspondence, certainly, but you're also relying on accounts of her by others.
00:19:43
Speaker
and You're relying on legal papers, ah estate papers, just anything really that can give you an insight into some of those, those kind of, i I suppose, aspects of her identity and how she understands herself within the Jacobite movement, but also then her identity as a Catholic, ah her identity as an English woman who is very much associated with Ireland.
00:20:04
Speaker
Like there's so much you can do. And then that's one of the real drivers of my research, I suppose, as well, is that I'm i'm very invested in trying to create biographical profiles from women where we don't have many of their writings because that's that's the majority of women right we don't have we maybe have a name and very little else so when you start to expand out you can capture again political allegiances um and and outlooks by by by taking that that perspective i suppose just on On the back, you're finding these things in like three sentences and then you you have all these treasure troves.
00:20:40
Speaker
How much research do we have e there that still needs to be looked at? like if you have If you have academics who are coming to in Francis, this is a particular area. I'm very interested in Jacobite women of of this era.
00:20:53
Speaker
Could you say, listen, do you know what? The field's kind of very closed or or do we still have a lot more we can but can do in this area? Yeah, there's um I think there's a massive amount. So I mean, know I spoke about Turconnell there again and and the lack of it. Like, she had a cipher. So again, in my book, through're one of the appenddas append or in the appendices, and there's a cipher for her correspondence. So again, she's writing within a network of people and using a cipher to correspond. So I should just flag that that there is evidence there, of course, of women concealing and within correspondence and, again, conveying what they do think and feel. I'm not going to say that doesn't exist. It does.
00:21:30
Speaker
i it's Again, there's not an abundance of it, but I don't think that I've discovered everything that's there, certainly. and There are so many women's names that I've come across that there's potential to look into, to do research on, and to really understand how they operate and within this bigger picture. Because again, it comes back to the point before that I made about, you know, to be Jacobite, you know, it can be in in that kind of period at the end of the 17th and into the early 18th century,
00:21:58
Speaker
it's very closely aligned with being Catholic in Ireland. and And actually a lot of Catholic families' survival either depends on emigration and life within the Jacobite court or elsewhere in Europe, or it depends on, you know, accepting the state as it stands and after, you know, William's victory, but also maintaining your religion or making an accommodation and converting. So there's
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women's History
00:22:21
Speaker
so many blurry areas and women are very active within those areas I think women are certainly active in terms of their support for the church and particularly for the clergy and a particularly after ban the banishment of clergy through penal legislation as well and we have evidence of women like there's a woman named Anne O'Dempsy who's Vicenteous Clam Lear she's particularly active in hiding and supporting priests and there are other women like women like um Lady Slane who's Anne Fleming she dies in 1708 and
00:22:52
Speaker
a Catholic mob carries her corpse through the street in a procession. And that's just one insight into her life that tells us there's more there. i don't have the time. And I think I'm actually probably the only person looking at Jacobite women in the Irish context now.
00:23:10
Speaker
Some are looking at at tangential aspects, but I think I'm probably the only one one looking at Jacobite and Catholic women, let's say, in this period. and So there's definitely scope, definitely to do more.
00:23:20
Speaker
um I think you know newspapers will be a really valuable source for people taking the perspective of you know material culture as well. That's a huge and deced potential there. And particularly if you look at Scotland, and particularly Scotland, but also England, and there is more potential, I think, for material culture. And that has been done there to a greater extent. But there's certainly work to be done here to build on what's what's been done already by others. But yeah, i lots of potential is the one thing to say.
00:23:49
Speaker
but going mention Scotland as well, because um in the north, obviously, of Ireland, we have a lot of close ties with Scotland as well. it'd be great to kind of bridge that gap, because I'm sure there's plenty of stories which can of cross the RSE as well, from even Wales, England as well. There's probably a lot of correspondents that are probably sitting in archives somewhere which just haven't been looked at yet.
00:24:08
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah, there's definitely, I've come across stuff myself in regional archives, you're schlepping it out to Leeds or to to Nottingham and like, you know, going into little porch cabins and not, they're wonderful archives, but it's, ah you're really you really, have to do the legwork in in some cases, you know, so it it just reflects how um fragmented women's presence can be, but also just how fragmented the Irish archive is in general, particularly when you're looking at early modern Ireland, so.
00:24:33
Speaker
That was Dr.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:24:34
Speaker
Frances Nolan, historian and recipient of the SFI IRC Pathway Fellowship at the UCD School of History in 2023. A huge thank you to Frances for sharing her insights into the hidden role of Irish women in Jacobite networks and the extra extraordinary risks they took in support of their cause.
00:24:50
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about her research and the broader Jacobite movement, be sure to follow her work through the UCD School of History and academic publications. make sure to subscribe and rate Pieces of History on iTunes and Spotify.
00:25:03
Speaker
You can also reach out to me at piecesofhistoryatoutlook.com or follow the podcast on Instagram and Facebook at Pieces of History. Thanks for listening.