In March 1854 the committee of First Belfast Presbyterian Church consented to the erection of a memorial tablet in commemoration of the life of a former member, William Tennent.¹ In and of itself, this was far from remarkable. First Belfast was a long-established congregation with a respectable, wealthy membership and over the course of the nineteenth century its walls were adorned with numerous memorials commemorating both the ministers who served the church and the upright citizens who worshipped under them.² What distinguishes William Tennent’s memorial, however, is its scale: in contrast to the sober plaques that surround it, it incorporates...

Who were the Tennents? Writing in June 1857, Robert James Tennent recounted some of the claims that had been made regarding his family’s history. The name Tennent, he noted, was believed to have been ‘derived from the royally allied D’Annands of the Scottish south west’, and numbered among his ancestors were individuals who ‘filled the highest municipal dignities in the Scottish Metropolis’, ‘married sisters of archbishops and kinswomen of lords’, ‘sat in an English parliament so long ago as the middle of the 16^thcentury’ and ‘fought for Mary at Layside’. Later, another had ‘followed the court of James to...

Of all the aspects of Belfast life that William and Robert Tennent were involved in, arguably the most significant was politics. Certainly, their political activities were long remembered. In his mid-century pamphlet,Memoirs of the Rea family from the period of the Irish rebellion in 1798 till the year 1857, A. H. Thornton identified Robert Tennent as a member of a distinct faction, including such individuals as Dr Drennan, John Templeton, John Sinclair and John Barnett, who ‘assumed the office of dictators of the people, and directors of public opinion’, declaring themselves at one point to be ‘the natural leaders...

As chapter two has demonstrated, the natural leaders’ political outlook was a broad one. They not only sought to engage with British political issues, but adopted tactics similar to those employed by British radicals and reformers, using short-term scandals to make broader political points. However, moving beyond the Irish and British contexts, the breadth and complexity of the natural leaders’ engagement with politics may be further illustrated by widening the focus and examining their attitudes towards contemporary European events. Belfast’s reformers had followed European political developments closely during the 1790s and they retained an interest in European politics in the...

In December 1816 Robert Tennent penned a letter to James Jackson, a young relative who had, some time previously, quit Ulster for America. In an earlier letter, Jackson had identified ‘the deficiency of social enjoyment as the great drawback upon the comfort of an American residence’ and Tennent responded at length. First reflecting in general terms, he mused that ‘[i]t would require a very philosophic as well as a very impartial examination, assisted by much experience, to determine what degree of civilization is most conducive to human happiness’, before proceeding to encourage Jackson to exert the influence of his ‘mind...

If cultural activity was one significant element of the Belfast middle classes’ world, then charitable activity was another. Both William and Robert Tennent were actively involved – as trustees, committee members and treasurers – in a variety of philanthropic societies, including the Charitable Society, Dispensary and Fever Hospital, Mechanics’ Institute and House of Industry. Indeed, by the end of his life Robert Tennent had become renowned for the ‘uncommon zeal’ and ‘incessant assiduity’ with which he strove to ‘promote the interests of his beloved charities’.¹ In a purely biographical sense, then, it is appropriate that this final chapter should address the subject...

Using the Tennent family as a starting point, this study has explored the political and cultural milieu inhabited by the Presbyterian elite of late Georgian Belfast. In so doing, it has sought both to enrich, and in places challenge, the existing literature relating to Ulster Presbyterian political development in the aftermath of the Union; to reassess the significance of cultural and intellectual life in late Georgian Belfast, an area that has received little systematic study; and to examine the complex interactions of evangelicalism and philanthropy and the means by which philanthropy served as a form of social control, areas that,...