Editing Newfoundland and Labrador (section)

==== The United Irish Conspiracy and Catholic Emancipation ====
The founding proprietor of the [[Province of Avalon]], [[George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore]], intended that it should serve as a refuge for his persecuted Roman Catholic co-religionists. But like his other colony in the [[Province of Maryland]] on the American mainland, it soon passed out of the Calvert family's control. The majority Catholic population that developed, thanks to [[Irish language in Newfoundland|Irish immigration]], in [[St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador|St. John's]] and the [[Avalon Peninsula]], was subjected to the same disabilities that applied elsewhere under the British Crown. On visiting St. John's in 1786, Prince William Henry (the future [[King William IV]]) noted that "there are ten Roman Catholics to one Protestant",<ref>[https://www.mun.ca/rels/ang/texts/pwh.htm Memorial University] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110110015234/http://www.mun.ca/rels/ang/texts/pwh.htm |date=January 10, 2011 }}, Note 87: PWH to King, September 21, 1786, Later Correspondence of George III, Vol. 1, 251.</ref> and he counselled against any measure of Catholic relief.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rollman |first=Hans |date=1986 |title=Prince William in Newfoundland |url=http://www.mun.ca/rels/ang/texts/pwh.htm |website=Religion Society and Culture: The Newfoundland and Labrador pages of Dr Hans Rollman, Memorial University, Newfoundland |access-date=July 16, 2022 |archive-date=January 10, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110110015234/http://www.mun.ca/rels/ang/texts/pwh.htm }}</ref>

Following news of [[Irish Rebellion of 1798|rebellion in Ireland]], in June 1798, Governor Vice-Admiral [[William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock|Waldegrave]] cautioned London that the English constituted but a "small proportion" of the locally raised [[Royal Newfoundland Regiment|Regiment of Foot]]. In an echo of an earlier Irish conspiracy during the French occupation of St. John's in 1762, in April 1800, the authorities had reports that upwards of 400 men had taken an oath as [[Society of United Irishmen|United Irishmen]], and that eighty soldiers were committed to killing their officers and seizing their [[Anglican]] governors at Sunday service.<ref name="mannion">{{Cite journal|last=Mannion|first=John|date=January 1, 2000|title="... Notoriously disaffected to the Government..." British allegations of Irish disloyalty in eighteenth-century Newfoundland|url=https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NFLDS/article/view/816|journal=Newfoundland and Labrador Studies|language=en|issn=1715-1430|access-date=March 12, 2021|archive-date=July 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210730211028/https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NFLDS/article/view/816|url-status=live}}</ref>

The [[United Irish Uprising in Newfoundland|abortive mutiny]], for which eight men (denounced by Catholic Bishop [[James Louis O'Donel]] as "favourers of the infidel French")<ref name=":82">{{Cite book |last=MacGiollabhui |first=Muiris |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75x28210 |title=Sons of Exile: The United Irishmen in Transnational Perspective 1791-1827 |publisher=UC Santa Cruz (Thesis) |year=2019 |pages=118 |access-date=January 10, 2023 |archive-date=December 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221226131551/https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75x28210 |url-status=live }}</ref> were hanged, may have been less a United Irish plot, than an act of desperation in the face of brutal living conditions and officer tyranny. Many of the Irish reserve soldiers were forced to remain on duty, unable to return to the fisheries that supported their families.<ref>{{cite web|last=Fitzgerald|first=John Edward|date=2001|title=The United Irish Uprising in Newfoundland, 1800|url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/united-irish-uprising.php |url-status=live|access-date=March 11, 2021|website=Heritage: Newfoundland and Labrador|archive-date=February 9, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210209221118/https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/united-irish-uprising.php}}</ref><ref name="mannion"/> Yet the Newfoundland Irish would have been aware of the agitation in the homeland for civil equality and political rights.<ref name=":4">{{cite web|date=February 7, 2013|title="The entire island is United..."|url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-entire-island-is-united/|access-date=March 11, 2021|website=History Ireland|archive-date=July 31, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210731220850/https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-entire-island-is-united/|url-status=live}}</ref> There were reports of communication with United men in Ireland from before '98 rebellion;<ref name=":4"/> of [[Thomas Paine]]'s pamphlets circulating in St. John's;<ref>Fitzgerald (2001), p. 25</ref> and, despite the war with France, of hundreds of young [[County Waterford]] men still making a seasonal migration to the island for the fisheries, among them defeated rebels, said to have "added fuel to the fire" of local grievance.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Pedley|first=Rev. Charles|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HGABAAAAQAAJ|title=The History of Newfoundland from the Earliest Times to 1860|publisher=Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green|year=1863|location=London|page=210|language=en|access-date=March 19, 2021|archive-date=August 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210814150713/https://books.google.com/books?id=HGABAAAAQAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

When news reached Newfoundland in May 1829 that the UK Parliament had finally conceded [[Catholic emancipation]], the locals assumed that Catholics would now pass unhindered into the ranks of public office and enjoy equality with Protestants. There was a celebratory parade and mass in St. John's, and a gun salute from vessels in the harbour. But the attorney general and supreme court justices determined that as Newfoundland was a colony, and not a province of the [[United Kingdom]], the [[Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829|Roman Catholic Relief Act]] did not apply. The discrimination was a matter of local ordinance.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Fitzgerald |first=John Edward |title=Newfoundland and Daniel O'Connell |url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/daniel-oconnell.php |access-date=April 22, 2022 |website=heritage.nf.ca |archive-date=November 12, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201112040237/https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/daniel-oconnell.php |url-status=live }}</ref>

It was not until May 1832 that the British [[Secretary of State for the Colonies]] formally stated that a new commission would be issued to [[Thomas John Cochrane|Governor Cochrane]] to remove any and all [[Roman Catholic disabilities]] in Newfoundland.<ref>John P. Greene (1999), ''Between Damnation and Starvation: Priests and Merchants in Newfoundland Politics, 1745–1855,'' McGill-Queen's University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-7735-1880-3}}.</ref> By then Catholic emancipation was bound up (as in Ireland) with the call for [[home rule]].