Established Without the People, and Then Disestablished

The anomaly at the centre of the church history is easy to state. The Reformation in Ireland was carried through the institutions of the state and the existing hierarchy without carrying the population, so from the sixteenth century the established church of Ireland was the church of a minority, supported by tithes paid by a Catholic majority and by a substantial Presbyterian population in the north.

That arrangement generated sustained resistance. The tithe war of the 1830s, in which collection was met with organised refusal and in places with violence, ended with tithes converted into a rent charge payable by landlords rather than directly by occupiers, which reduced the confrontation without settling the principle. The Church Temporalities Act of 1833 had already begun reducing the number of bishoprics.

Disestablishment came with the Irish Church Act of 1869, brought forward by Gladstone and taking effect on the first day of 1871. The church ceased to be the state church, its remaining endowment was largely taken and applied to other purposes, and it was left to fund itself. It responded by building its own machinery: a General Synod with laity as well as clergy, a Representative Church Body to hold property, and a revised prayer book. What had been an establishment became a voluntary body, and the transition was managed without a split.