significantly, and began the first major push to abolish the union. 4 This demonstrates the
influence that religion, in the form of Catholic Emancipation, has had on both the build-up of
tensions and the eventual foundation of the Irish Home Rule Movement.
When compared to Ireland, the role of religion does not nearly play as much of a
divisive role in both Wales and Scotland, and as a result it helps to explain why home rule
movements in these countries were not as successful. On the contrary, religion may have
been seen to have a uniting effect on the two nations with their unions to England. At the
time of the eighteenth-century, Wales and Scotland were both majority Protestant nations.
This common relation, Protestantism, was used as an identification of these nations as
British, when compared to ‘others’, particularly France. 5 Even when considering the
differences that were present with Scotland predominantly Presbyterian and Wales Non-
conformist, respective to Anglican England, the greater divide was seen between
Protestantism and Catholicism. 6 This may even be tied back to Ireland, with the difficulty of
integrating Ireland into a British identity, and thus greater cause of Home Rule, stemming
from its Catholic identity, and the threat it posed to a Protestant Britain. 7
However, despite the limited influence it would have, there are still instances where
religion had caused tensions in the two Celtic nations and England. The greatest extent to
which religion caused unrest in Scotland and Wales is in relation their separate movements
for disestablishmentarianism. 8 Welsh desire for the disestablishment of the English Church
4 Shearman, pp. 78-82 5 Linda Colley, ‘ British ness and Otherness: An Argument’, Journal of British Studies , 31. 4, (1992), pp. 309 – 329 (p. 321) 6 Colley, p. 316-317 7 Colley, p. 327 8 Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew, Nineteenth-Century Britain a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 115
27
Made with FlippingBook HTML5