page_title: Cornwallis in Ireland
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Cornwallis in Ireland / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake (1744-1808)
context_page_description: British General Charles Cornwallis, the 1st Marquess Cornwallis was appointed in June 1798 to serve as both Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Commander-in-Chief of Ireland, the highest civil and military posts in the Kingdom of Ireland. He held these offices until 1801.
  Cornwallis had specific instructions and authority to deal with the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which had broken out in May 1798. He took steps to ensure that justice was consistently applied to captured rebels, personally reviewing a significant number of court cases. He directed military operations when a French Revolutionary force landed at Killala Bay in August 1798.
  In the aftermath of the rebellion, the political climate with regard to Ireland became dominated by the idea that the union of the Irish and British kingdoms was necessary to improve conditions in Ireland. Cornwallis favoured union, but believed that it would also require Catholic emancipation to create a lasting peace. While Cornwallis was instrumental in achieving the passage of the Act of Union in 1800 by the Irish Parliament, he and Prime Minister William Pitt were unable to convince the king of the merits of Catholic emancipation.
context_section_description: Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, was a British general, civil administrator, and diplomat.  His early career was primarily military in nature, including a series of well-known campaigns during the War of American Independence from 1776 to 1781 that culminated in his surrender at Yorktown. This was followed in 1786 by a period of service as Commander-in-Chief and Governor-General of India.  There he oversaw the consolidation of British power throughout most of southern India, primarily at the expense of the Kingdom of Mysore and its vassals, and introduced administrative reforms that had long-term consequences. In 1794 he returned to England, which was then militarily engaged in the French Revolutionary Wars.  After he was sent on an ultimately fruitless diplomatic mission to stop the fighting, he was appointed master of the ordnance, a post he held until 1798.
  The Kingdom of Ireland was at this time in personal union with the Kingdom of Great Britain, and therefore was under the rule of King George III, although it had separate political and administrative institutions.  Members of the Parliament of Ireland were only elected by Protestants, as the Roman Catholic property owners had been disenfranchised in 1728.  The majority Catholics had, over the previous century, been progressively stripped of other rights as well.  King George was represented in civil affairs by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who ruled in consultation with a privy council, and in military affairs by a Commander-in-Chief.
  The demands of the American War of Independence had forced King George to withdraw many troops from Ireland for service in North America.  To bolster forces supportive of the king, Protestants raised militia companies called the Irish Volunteers to replace the departing regulars. Protestant leaders in the Irish Parliament, including Henry Flood and Henry Grattan, who had the support of the Volunteers, convinced the British Parliament to pass a series of acts known collectively as the Constitution of 1782, giving the Irish Parliament significant political independence.
  Unlike many English, Flood and Grattan were also proponents of Catholic emancipation, and under their leadership the Irish Parliament overturned a number of the restrictions on the rights of Catholics, although they continued to be unable to vote or hold elected offices. When the French Revolution broke out in the early 1790s, Catholics and middle-class Protestants united to form the Society of United Irishmen. They successfully extracted additional rights, although there was some Protestant resistance to the idea of full Catholic suffrage due to their overwhelming numerical majority. The more radical elements favouring Irish independence found a leader in Theobald Wolfe Tone, who went to France for support from the revolutionaries there that led to an aborted attempt to invade Ireland in 1796. The failed invasion led the government of the Earl of Camden to round up leaders of the United Irishmen and attempt to disarm the Catholic populace. Use of these tactics was made possible in part by the passage of an Insurrection Act, giving the administration broad police powers, and also by the suspension of habeas corpus in October 1796.
  By mid-May 1798 the Commander-in-Chief, General Gerard Lake had organised British troops and the Irish Volunteers to put down elements of the growing rebellion.  These actions, sometimes capricious and brutal, fanned the flames of rebellion.  While Lake's actions had been effective in Dublin, rebel leaders successfully orchestrated the simultaneous start of widespread hostilities on 23 May. News of the rebellion reached London a few days later, taking the British cabinet by surprise.  Lord Camden had assured the Home Secretary, the Duke of Portland, that rebellion was unlikely in a letter written less than two weeks earlier.  Camden, predicting a protracted and bloody struggle, sent his family to safety in England, undermining William Pitt's confidence in him.
caption: Miniature portrait of General Gerard Lake, by George Place
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