Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century

James Gregory, Daniel Grey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429756429
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This volume examines the nineteenth century not only through episodes, institutions, sites and representations concerned with union, concord and bonds of sympathy, but also through moments of secession, separation, discord and disjunction. Its lens extends from the local and regional, through to national and international settings in Britain, Europe and the United States. The contributors come from the fields of cultural history, literary studies, American studies and legal history.

Part I

Representing union and disunion in art

1 To ‘purchase union thus cheaply’

The controversial statue of an Irish Archbishop in the United Kingdom’s Houses of Parliament

James E.H. Ford

High on the walls of the House of Lords Chamber stand statues of eighteen of the barons and prelates who sealed Magna Carta (Figure 1.1). Among them is the figure of Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin between 1213 and his death 1228 (Figure 1.2). Designed by the sculptor John Evan Thomas, the statue was installed above the sovereign’s throne at the south end of the Chamber in 1852. Cast in copper and finished to appear like bronze, it depicts the thirteenth-century archbishop in his vestments, a bible in his right hand and a crosier in his left. Easily overlooked due to the overwhelming decorative ornament in Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Pugin’s interior, it is perhaps hard to imagine that this unassuming Victorian sculpture was once the subject of heated public debate and no small amount of controversy. This controversy did not revolve around the completed statue, but took place seven years prior to its installation when, in late 1845, de Loundres was excluded from the planned Magna Carta statue scheme. This caused a storm of indignation and protest in Ireland, with nationalists such as Daniel O’Connell and the writers of the Nation newspaper quick to attack the royal commission responsible for the Houses of Parliament’s decoration. The decision also drew condemnation from Irish unionists, in particular the poet Samuel Ferguson. In what today would be derided as a U-turn, the Fine Arts Commission ultimately conceded, commissioning the statue of de Loundres in 1847. Not all of the Commissioners agreed with this concession, however, with Sir Robert Harry Inglis MP lamenting that they should have to ‘purchase union thus cheaply’.

Table 1.1 Joseph Nash, State Opening of Parliament, 1857, bodycolour on paper, 1858. Photo: Parliamentary Art Collection.

Given the profile of the protagonists, it is perhaps surprising that the controversy surrounding the Magna Carta statue scheme has gone largely unnoticed, both in wider histories of Irish events in the period and more focussed studies of the individuals involved.¹ Furthermore, although accounts of the decoration of the Houses of Parliament have noted that the plan for the statues was altered, art historians have been unaware of the precise details and debates that lay behind the alteration.² In providing a detailed account of this forgotten controversy, this chapter argues that the reaction in Ireland, specifically that of Ferguson, alerted the Fine Arts Commission to the potential disunion that the task to decorate the Houses of Parliament could engender, particularly on the other side of the Irish Sea. The result was that, alongside the eventual decision to include the Archbishop of Dublin in the Lords Chamber, decorative schemes planned subsequently by the Commission would attempt to create an inclusive version of the United Kingdom’s history; an art of union that addressed not only English themes, but Scottish, Welsh and, crucially, Irish subjects too.

Table 1.2 Statue of Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin, by John Evan Thomas, 1852. Photo: James E.H. Ford.

The Fine Arts Commission

The famous Victorian edifice known as the Houses of Parliament owes its existence to a fire that destroyed most of Parliament’s former home on 16 October 1834. Designed by Charles Barry, the new Palace of Westminster, to give the building its official name, was one of the largest and most significant architectural projects in nineteenth-century Britain. The schemes to decorate the building, both externally and internally, were equally ambitious. During the main building period between 1840 and the 1860s, these included a wealth of architectural embellishments and decorative detail overseen by Barry, with the assistance of Pugin, and mural and sculptural programmes under the control of the Fine Arts Commission.

Formed in 1841 under the chairmanship of the young Prince Albert, and with the influential artist and arts administrator Charles Lock Eastlake as its secretary, the Fine Arts Commission eventually counted leading statesmen, historians and intellectuals among its two dozen or so members. The Commission’s aim was to use the decoration of the new Parliament buildings ‘for the purpose of promoting and encouraging the Fine Arts in [the] United Kingdom’.³ The early years of the Commission were occupied with investigating materials and techniques suitable for use in such an important project, and with staging large and extremely popular prize exhibitions to stimulate art in the United Kingdom and identify potential artists for employment. By 1844 the Commission was ready to tackle the task of deciding specific subjects for the decorative schemes, beginning with sculpture. The appointment to the Commission of Thomas Babington Macaulay and Philip Henry Stanhope, Viscount Mahon on 4 May 1844 proved central to this.⁴ On joining the Commission, these two eminent historians were immediately placed on a new subcommittee, chaired by Mahon, which undertook a number of important tasks. Principal among these were drawing up ‘a general list of distinguished persons of the United Kingdom, to whose memory statues might with propriety be erected in or adjoining the New Houses of Parliament’ and determining the individuals to be commemorated with statues in the Lords Chamber.⁵

Although Mahon’s subcommittee was not set up until 1844, the Commission as a whole had briefly discussed statues for the Lords Chamber as early as 1843, where it resolved that they should be of the sovereigns of England cast in bronze.⁶ At a meeting of Mahon’s subcommittee on 14 March 1845, however, a resolution was passed to place statues of celebrated peers in the Lords Chamber instead of sovereigns.⁷ The following day, Macaulay wrote to Mahon with suggestions.⁸ These comprised of Peers of the Blood Royal, Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. Macaulay explained:

I have introduced all the noblemen who have governed England as protectors during a minority, and this I think is rather an advantage. It is also an advantage, I think, that the list includes the lineal ancestors of the two first Dukes, Norfolk and Somerset, of the premier Marquess, Winchester, and of the first Earl who signs the roll as an Earl, Lord Shrewsbury. It includes also the ancestors of one of the noblest Scottish families. No Irish names occur to me. For as to Strongbow and De Burgh, the mention of their names would be offensive to one Irish colleague.⁹

The last two sentences show Macaulay’s awareness of the need to include figures that relate to the different nations, or at least kingdoms, of the United Kingdom. The reference to two early Anglo-Norman conquerors of Ireland also indicates his awareness of the potential of the Commission’s choice of subjects to upset national sensitivities. In this instance, this appears only to extend to other Commissioners and not to the peoples of the United Kingdom as a whole, with Thomas Wyse, the only Irish member, being the ‘one Irish colleague’ to whom Macaulay referred. Despite Macaulay’s assumption, it is, however, unlikely that Wyse would have found the choices offensive as his family descended from an old Anglo-Norman family who had been given land by Strongbow (Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke) for assisting in his Irish campaigns in the 1160s.¹⁰ Nevertheless, given his Scottish background, Macaulay appears to have been more aware of the national sensitivities of the Celtic fringe nations than most of the other Commissioners. It is also notable that at this time he was writing his seminal History of England which, despite its name, gives consideration to the histories of Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

The belief in the need to include the other nations soon disappeared from the plan for the statues in the Lords Chamber. At the suggestion of Prince Albert, the subcommittee instead developed a scheme to fill the eighteen niches with figures of the barons and prelates who enforced Magna Carta. The list of figures was outlined in a report submitted to the Commission dated 15 May 1845.¹¹ In the report, the subcommittee noted how the ‘very narrow size of the niches, and their gothic form’ limited its choice ‘to characters drawn from the feudal age, and, as usual with effigies of that period, presenting little or no variety of attitude’.¹² Referring to a plan to install stained glass windows depicting British sovereigns, it further explained that:

the difference of character as laymen, or as prelates, would afford a picturesque variety of attire, and that the historical analogy would be most suitably attained by placing side by side in the same House of the Legislature, in windows or in niches, the successive holders of Sove...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Representing union and disunion in art
• Part II Union and disunion in Europe
• Part III The politics of union and disunion in Great Britain
• Part IV Union and disunion in the United States of America
• Part V Family division and union
• Index