The Declaration of Finglas was issued on 17 July 1690 by

William III of Ireland William III (William Henry; ; 4 November 16508 March 1702), also widely known as William of Orange, was the sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from the ...

Finglas Finglas (; ) is a northwestern outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland. It lies close to Junction 5 of the M50 motorway, and the N2 road. Nearby suburbs include Glasnevin and Ballymun; Dublin Airport is to the north. Finglas lies mainly in the posta ...

County Dublin "Action to match our speech" , image_map = Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Dublin.svg , map_alt = map showing County Dublin as a small area of darker green on the east coast within the lighter green background of ...

, shortly after his

Williamite A Williamite was a follower of King William III of England (r. 1689–1702) who deposed King James II and VII in the Glorious Revolution. William, the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, replaced James with the support of English Whigs. O ...

army's decisive victory at the

Battle of the Boyne The Battle of the Boyne ( ga, Cath na Bóinne ) was a battle in 1690 between the forces of the deposed King James II of England and Ireland, VII of Scotland, and those of King William III who, with his wife Queen Mary II (his cousin and J ...

during the

War of the Two Kings The Williamite War in Ireland (1688–1691; ga, Cogadh an Dá Rí, "war of the two kings"), was a conflict between Jacobite supporters of deposed monarch James II and Williamite supporters of his successor, William III. It is also called th ...

. The Declaration was issued by William from Finglas, where his army had camped following the battle against the Jacobite

Irish Army The Irish Army, known simply as the Army ( ga, an tArm), is the land component of the Defence Forces of Ireland.The Defence Forces are made up of the Permanent Defence Forces – the standing branches – and the Reserve Defence Forces. The A ...

. It was targeted at the followers of William's uncle and rival James II. There was a religious division between the two sides with William backed by Protestants and James mainly supported by Catholics. William was looking for a quick end to the fighting in Ireland, as he was the leader of the Grand Alliance against

Louis XIV Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was List of French monarchs, King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the Li ...

and his presence was urgently needed elsewhere in Europe. The Declaration was drafted by Sir Richard Cox, 1st Baronet, the future

Lord Chancellor of Ireland The Lord High Chancellor of Ireland (commonly known as Lord Chancellor of Ireland) was the highest judicial office in Ireland until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. From 1721 to 1801, it was also the highest political office of ...

. William approved the final draft and said he hardly needed to change a word of it. While offering full protection (effectively a

pardon A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the j ...

) to those who surrendered by 1 August (this was later extended to 25 August), the Declaration significantly excepted those who were "the desperate leaders of the present rebellion". This was an attempt to split the rank-and-file Jacobites away from their leadership.Childs p.229 This repeated a tactic employed by

Oliver Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three ...

during his Irish Campaign forty years earlier. Despite the Williamites capturing the Irish capital of

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

, the uncompromising terms set out at Finglas encouraged many leaders to fight on, and this was reinforced by the successful Jacobite defence of Limerick the same summer. Much of the ordinary population remained loyal to the landowners and to King James while William increasingly had to concentrate his forces in Southern England and Flanders to confront the French, leading to the war dragging on for another year in Ireland. The Treaty of Limerick in 1691 granted more generous terms to the defeated Jacobites than had been offered at Finglas, allowing them to retain their pre-war estates. This met with many objections from the Irish Parliament who felt the terms offered had been too generous. Nonetheless, a sizeable number of the Jacobite leaders went into exile on the continent in the Flight of the Wild Geese, continuing to swear loyalty to James II and his successors.

References

Bibliography

* Childs, John. ''The Williamite Wars in Ireland''. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007. * McNally, Michael. ''Battle of the Boyne 1690: The Irish Campaign for the English Crown''. Osprey Publishing, 2005. 1690 in Ireland Proclamations Political history of Ireland {{Ireland-stub