William Tennant (United Irishmen)

William Tennent was born in 1759 in County Antrim, Kingdom of Ireland the eldest son of Reverend John Tennant[1] a Scottish Presbyterian minister who settled in Ulster in the mid 18th century and was associated with the seceding faction of Ulster Presbyterians.[2] As a young man he served as an apprentice with John Campbell, a Belfast merchant and banker. He joined the Belfast Chamber of Commerce in 1783, and was junior manager in the New Sugar House in Waring Street. He eventually became a partner in this business, and he held partnerships in the distilling firm of John Porter & Co. and the Belfast Insurance Co. By the time he reached adulthood, Tennant was a very prosperous businessman.[3]

The Society of United Irishmen, originally proposed by Tennant's friend in Dublin, William Drennan, was formed in Belfast by a group of the town's more radical Presbyterian reformers, enthused by the French Revolution and Thomas Paine's vindication of The Rights of Man. They had read Theobald Wolfe Tone's Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland in which he argued that that division between Catholics and Protestants was being used by English and landed interests to balance "the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both." He put forward the case for unity between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. In October 1791 they invited Tone and his friend Thomas Russell for what proved to be the Society's nagural meeting.

According to Bardon; Tennant was a key leader of the Society in Ulster, and an advocate of violent revolution,[4] while Jonathan Wright states that Tennant must be considered one of the highest-ranking members of the secret organisation in Ulster.[5] It is unclear when he joined the Society, but as early as December 1792; Tennant was listed as one of twenty-one committee members tasked with building out the organisation.[6] Other members of this committee included Henry Haslett and Drenna's brother-in-law Samuel McTier.

According to Wolfe Tone, Tennant had been a member of a pre-United Irishmen secret society in Belfast which included McTier and Haslett, as well as Samuel Neilson and Gilbert McIlveen.[7] This was the Jacobin Club described by William Drennan's sister Martha McTier in 1795 as an established democratic party in Belfast, composed of "persons and rank long kept down" and chaired by a "radical mechanick".[8] When April 1795 Earl Fitzwilliam, Lord Lieutenant for just fifty days, was recalled to London for publicly urging support for Emancipation, and the general prospects for reform appeared buried, these Jacobins with their radical ideas flooded United Irish societies.[9]

During the rebellion of 1798, he was arrested for his membership of the United Irishmen, and imprisoned on a prison ship in Belfast Lough with William Steel Dickson, Robert Hunter and Robert Simms. On 25 March 1799, Tennant, Dickson, Hunter, and Simms joined the United Irish 'State Prisoners' on a ship bound or Fort George, Highland prison in Scotland.[10] This group, which included Samuel Neilson, Arthur O'Connor, Thomas Russell, William James MacNeven, and Thomas Addis Emmet arrived in Scotland on 9 April 1799. Tennant would spend two years there.[11]

Unlike the more high-profile prisoners like O'Connor and MacNeven who would not be released until June 1802, Tennant, Dickson, and Simms were permitted to return to Belfast in January 1802[12] due to the pleas of his brother.[13] [14]

With William Drennan, Tennant and his brother Robert, were co-founders in 1810 of the Belfast (later Royal Belfast) Academical Institution, its mission to render "less expensive the means of acquiring education; to give access to the walks of literature to the middle and lower classes of society; [and] to make provision for the instruction of both sexes."[15] He was co-founder, in 1809, of the Commercial Bank, and he worked in the bank until it became Belfast Banking Co. in 1827. He was on the Board of the Spring Water Commissioners and the Belfast Banking Company, and was Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce.[16] Tennent eventually became the town's richest merchant and banker.[17]

In 1814, Tennant purchased the village and demesne of Tempo, County Fermanagh. He bequeathed property to the Presbyterian Church, and died of cholera at the age of 73.[18] He left behind at last 13 illegitimate children, all of whom he recognised and supported.[19]

• Kate Newman 2016, William Tennent (1760–1832): United Irishman and Banker, 'Dictionary of Ulster Biography', (available at: http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/viewPerson/1617#. Retrieved 3 March 2016)
• Jonathan Bardon 2013, From rebel town to right-wing bastion, 'The Irish Times' 23 November 2013, (available at: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/from-rebel-town-to-right-wing-bastion-1.1604371. Retrieved 3 March 2016)
• Richard R Madden 1860, The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times, with Several Additional Memoirs, and Authentic Documents, Heretofore Unpublished, the Whole Matter Newly Arranged and Revised, Volume 4, James Duffy, 1860 – Ireland.
• Richard Torpin 2013, review of The 'Natural Leaders' and their World: Politics, Culture and Society in Belfast, c. 1801–1832, (review no. 1464) (available at: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1464, 3 March 2016)