The Trial of William Drennan on a Trial for Sedition, in the Year 1794 and his intended Defence.
Author: LARKIN, John (Editor).
Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1991. 139pp. Hardback.
In 1794, William Drennan, then chairman of the United Irishmen, was brought to trial on nine counts of having written and published a seditious libel. This account of the trial, originally published at the time, provides a microcosm of the dynamic currents of change sweeping Ireland in this revolutionary era; the hopes and fears generated by the French revolution; the desire for a greater say in the governing of Ireland; and the fears of many of a foreign invasion of Ireland. This new, re-set edition contains an introduction which sets the trial in its historical context and has as an appendix the Defence Drennan wrote in 1794 and published in 1812 and 1815.
Professor John Larkin’s introduction, a notable contribution to Irish legal history studies, describes Drennan’s background and the personalities involved in his trial and highlights the development of radical Presbyterian consciousness in the 1790s.
ISBN: 0716524570
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