Bulmer Hobson
Encyclopedia
John Bulmer Hobson was a leading member of the Irish Volunteers
and the Irish Republican Brotherhood
(IRB) before the Easter Rising
in 1916. Though he was a member of the organisation that planned the Rising, he was opposed to it being carried out, and attempted to prevent it.
He is also notable for swearing Patrick Pearse
into the IRB in late 1913.
, County Antrim
, Ireland
in 1883, though many sources give his place of birth as Holywood
, County Down
. He had a "fairly strict" Quaker upbringing according to Charles Townshend, possibly intensified by being sent to a Friends' boarding school in Lisburn
. Hobson later resigned on principle from the Quakers soon after the 1914 Howth gunrunning, as they forbade the use of violence.
Bulmer’s father was born in Armagh although lived later in Monasterevin in Co. Kildare and was said to be a Gladstonian Home Ruler in politics, while his mother was English-born and a radical. In 1911 she was reported on a suffragist procession in London and was long involved in Belfast cultural activities. She gave a lecture, entitled 'Some Ulster Souterrains' as the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club’s representative in 1901 at the British Association’s annual meeting in Leicester. With the poet Alice Milligan
, she organised the Irishwomen’s Association whose home reading circle met in the Hobsons' house.
Hobson began at thirteen to subscribe to a nationalist journal, Shan Van Vocht. The journal belonged to Alice Milligan. Soon after he joined the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association
.
, their head in Belfast. Together they founded the Dungannon Clubs. The object of the club's title was to celebrate the victory of Volunteers of 1782
in restoring to Ireland her own Parliament, though they were additionally an "open front" for the IRB. The Volunteers of 1782 were an armed militia whose success, they suggested, could offer instructive lessons. The first Dungannon Club manifesto read: “The Ireland we seek to build is not an Ireland for the Catholic or the Protestant, but an Ireland for every Irishman [sic] Irrespective of his creed or class." Under the direction of Denis McCullough, Hobson became one of the key figures in the ongoing revitalization of the IRB in Ulster, along with Sean MacDermott
, Patrick McCartan
and Ernest Blythe
.
Hobson moved to Dublin in 1907, and soon became a close friend of veteran Fenian
Tom Clarke
, with whom he had a very close relationship until 1914. In August 1909, with Constance Markievicz, he founded Na Fianna Éireann
as a Republican scouting movement. In 1911 the republican newspaper Irish Freedom was founded, to which Hobson was an earlier contributor, and later that year he took over the editorship of it from Patrick McCartan.
Hobson was elevated to the IRB's Supreme Council in 1911, which coincided with the resignations of P.T. Daly, Fred Allen and Sean O'Hanlon, opening the way for Tom Clarke and the younger men to take control of the IRB. In 1913 he was elevated to the chairman of the Dublin Centres Board of the IRB, and later that year was one of the founding organizers of the Irish Volunteers
, remaining a primary connection between the Volunteers and the IRB. He put together the plan to bring sufficient Volunteers and their supporters, discreetly to Howth on Sunday 26 July 1914 to unload and distribute the arms being landed from the Asgard
. This became known as the Howth gunrunning.
As secretary and a member of the Volunteers provisional council, Hobson was instrumental in allowing Parliamentary leader John Redmond
to gain control of the Volunteers organisation. He reluctantly gave in to Home Rulers' demands for control, believing that defying Redmond, who was popular with most rank-and-file Volunteers, would cause a split and would lead to the demise of the Volunteers. Clarke, steadfastly opposed to this action, never forgave him or spoke to him informally again. Hobson resigned as a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, and was fired from his job as Dublin correspondent for the newspaper the Gaelic American.
Hobson remained a member of the IRB, but, like Volunteers chief-of-staff Eoin MacNeill
, he was kept unaware of the plans for the Rising. Though he could detect underground preparations, he had no certain evidence. He would later be told by Volunteers officers J. J. O'Connell and Éimer Duffy that the Volunteers had received orders for the Rising, timed for Easter Sunday, and he subsequently alerted MacNeill about what the IRB had planned. MacNeill issued a countermanding order, which served to delay the Rising a day, and kept most Volunteers from turning out. Hobson was kidnapped by the organisers of the rising to stop him from spreading news of MacNeill's order, and was held in a safehouse in Phibsboro
until the Rising was well underway.
Although MacNeill was later to serve in the government of the Irish Free State
, Hobson was confined to a civil service job in the Department of Post and Telegraphs after independence. Though he had been one of the most active members of the IRB for years, and was instrumental in the founding of the Volunteers, Hobson took no major role in politics (though he was later an occasional adviser to Clann na Poblachta
) after the Rising, or the subsequent Anglo-Irish War.
in Connemara
. His wife Claire Gregan, from whom he separated in the late 1930s, died in 1958. Following a heart attack during the 1960s, Bulmer Hobson lived with his daughter Camilla and son in law John Mitchell, in the village of Castleconnell
, Co Limerick
. There he finished his definitive account of his life in the movement for Irish freedom, "Ireland Yesterday And Tomorrow" (Anvil Books, Ireland, 1968).
Irish Volunteers
The Irish Volunteers was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland"...
and the Irish Republican Brotherhood
Irish Republican Brotherhood
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century...
(IRB) before the Easter Rising
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
in 1916. Though he was a member of the organisation that planned the Rising, he was opposed to it being carried out, and attempted to prevent it.
He is also notable for swearing Patrick Pearse
Patrick Pearse
Patrick Henry Pearse was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916...
into the IRB in late 1913.
Early life
Hobson was born "John Bulmer Hobson" in BelfastBelfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
, County Antrim
County Antrim
County Antrim is one of six counties that form Northern Ireland, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of 2,844 km², with a population of approximately 616,000...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
in 1883, though many sources give his place of birth as Holywood
Holywood
Holywood is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies on the shore of Belfast Lough, between Belfast and Bangor. Holywood Exchange and Belfast City Airport are nearby. The town hosts an annual jazz and blues festival.-Name:...
, County Down
County Down
-Cities:*Belfast *Newry -Large towns:*Dundonald*Newtownards*Bangor-Medium towns:...
. He had a "fairly strict" Quaker upbringing according to Charles Townshend, possibly intensified by being sent to a Friends' boarding school in Lisburn
Lisburn
DemographicsLisburn Urban Area is within Belfast Metropolitan Urban Area and is classified as a Large Town by the . On census day there were 71,465 people living in Lisburn...
. Hobson later resigned on principle from the Quakers soon after the 1914 Howth gunrunning, as they forbade the use of violence.
Bulmer’s father was born in Armagh although lived later in Monasterevin in Co. Kildare and was said to be a Gladstonian Home Ruler in politics, while his mother was English-born and a radical. In 1911 she was reported on a suffragist procession in London and was long involved in Belfast cultural activities. She gave a lecture, entitled 'Some Ulster Souterrains' as the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club’s representative in 1901 at the British Association’s annual meeting in Leicester. With the poet Alice Milligan
Alice Milligan
Alice Milligan was an Irish nationalist poet and writer, active in the Gaelic League.-Life:She was born and raised a Protestant in Gortmore, near Omagh, County Tyrone. Milligan's father was the writer Seaton Milligan, antiquary and member of the RIA...
, she organised the Irishwomen’s Association whose home reading circle met in the Hobsons' house.
Hobson began at thirteen to subscribe to a nationalist journal, Shan Van Vocht. The journal belonged to Alice Milligan. Soon after he joined the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders...
.
I.R.B. and the Volunteers
Hobson was sworn into the IRB in 1904 by Denis McCulloughDenis McCullough
Denis McCullough was a prominent Irish nationalist political activist in the early 20th century.-Early career - IRB activist:Born in Belfast, Ireland McCullough was a separatist nationalist from an early age...
, their head in Belfast. Together they founded the Dungannon Clubs. The object of the club's title was to celebrate the victory of Volunteers of 1782
Irish Volunteers (18th century)
The Irish Volunteers were a militia in late 18th century Ireland. The Volunteers were founded in Belfast in 1778 to defend Ireland from the threat of foreign invasion when regular British soldiers were withdrawn from Ireland to fight across the globe during the American War of Independence...
in restoring to Ireland her own Parliament, though they were additionally an "open front" for the IRB. The Volunteers of 1782 were an armed militia whose success, they suggested, could offer instructive lessons. The first Dungannon Club manifesto read: “The Ireland we seek to build is not an Ireland for the Catholic or the Protestant, but an Ireland for every Irishman [sic] Irrespective of his creed or class." Under the direction of Denis McCullough, Hobson became one of the key figures in the ongoing revitalization of the IRB in Ulster, along with Sean MacDermott
Sean MacDermott
Seán Mac Diarmada was one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland.-Early life:...
, Patrick McCartan
Patrick McCartan
Patrick McCartan was an Irish republican and politician. He was born in Eskerbuoy, near Carrickmore, County Tyrone to Bernard McCartan and Bridget Rafferty. He emigrated to the USA as a young man and became a member of Clan na Gael in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and edited the journal Irish Freedom...
and Ernest Blythe
Ernest Blythe
Ernest Blythe was an Irish politician.Ernest Blythe was born to a Presbyterian and Unionist family near Lisburn, County Antrim in 1889, the son of a farmer, and was educated locally. At the age of fifteen he started working as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture in Dublin.Blythe joined the...
.
Hobson moved to Dublin in 1907, and soon became a close friend of veteran Fenian
Fenian
The Fenians , both the Fenian Brotherhood and Irish Republican Brotherhood , were fraternal organisations dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic in the 19th and early 20th century. The name "Fenians" was first applied by John O'Mahony to the members of the Irish republican...
Tom Clarke
Tom Clarke (Irish republican)
Thomas James "Tom" Clarke was an Irish revolutionary leader and arguably the person most responsible for the 1916 Easter Rising. A proponent of violent revolution for most of his life, he spent 15 years in prison...
, with whom he had a very close relationship until 1914. In August 1909, with Constance Markievicz, he founded Na Fianna Éireann
Fianna Éireann
The name Fianna Éireann , also written Fianna na hÉireann and Na Fianna Éireann , has been used by various Irish republican youth movements throughout the 20th and 21st centuries...
as a Republican scouting movement. In 1911 the republican newspaper Irish Freedom was founded, to which Hobson was an earlier contributor, and later that year he took over the editorship of it from Patrick McCartan.
Hobson was elevated to the IRB's Supreme Council in 1911, which coincided with the resignations of P.T. Daly, Fred Allen and Sean O'Hanlon, opening the way for Tom Clarke and the younger men to take control of the IRB. In 1913 he was elevated to the chairman of the Dublin Centres Board of the IRB, and later that year was one of the founding organizers of the Irish Volunteers
Irish Volunteers
The Irish Volunteers was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland"...
, remaining a primary connection between the Volunteers and the IRB. He put together the plan to bring sufficient Volunteers and their supporters, discreetly to Howth on Sunday 26 July 1914 to unload and distribute the arms being landed from the Asgard
Asgard (yacht)
The Asgard is a yacht, formerly owned by the English-born Irish nationalist, and writer Robert Erskine Childers and his wife Molly Childers. It was bought for £1,000 in 1904 from one of Norway's most famous boat designers, Colin Archer...
. This became known as the Howth gunrunning.
As secretary and a member of the Volunteers provisional council, Hobson was instrumental in allowing Parliamentary leader John Redmond
John Redmond
John Edward Redmond was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918...
to gain control of the Volunteers organisation. He reluctantly gave in to Home Rulers' demands for control, believing that defying Redmond, who was popular with most rank-and-file Volunteers, would cause a split and would lead to the demise of the Volunteers. Clarke, steadfastly opposed to this action, never forgave him or spoke to him informally again. Hobson resigned as a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, and was fired from his job as Dublin correspondent for the newspaper the Gaelic American.
Hobson remained a member of the IRB, but, like Volunteers chief-of-staff Eoin MacNeill
Eoin MacNeill
Eoin MacNeill was an Irish scholar, nationalist, revolutionary and politician. MacNeill is regarded as the father of the modern study of early Irish medieval history. He was a co-founder of the Gaelic League, to preserve Irish language and culture, going on to establish the Irish Volunteers...
, he was kept unaware of the plans for the Rising. Though he could detect underground preparations, he had no certain evidence. He would later be told by Volunteers officers J. J. O'Connell and Éimer Duffy that the Volunteers had received orders for the Rising, timed for Easter Sunday, and he subsequently alerted MacNeill about what the IRB had planned. MacNeill issued a countermanding order, which served to delay the Rising a day, and kept most Volunteers from turning out. Hobson was kidnapped by the organisers of the rising to stop him from spreading news of MacNeill's order, and was held in a safehouse in Phibsboro
Phibsboro
Phibsborough , often formerly shortened to Phibsboro and later Phibsboro , is a district of Dublin in Ireland.-Location:Phibsboro' is located in the Dublin 7 postal district on the Northside of the city. The area is very close to the city centre, about two kilometres from the River Liffey which...
until the Rising was well underway.
Although MacNeill was later to serve in the government of the Irish Free State
Irish Free State
The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...
, Hobson was confined to a civil service job in the Department of Post and Telegraphs after independence. Though he had been one of the most active members of the IRB for years, and was instrumental in the founding of the Volunteers, Hobson took no major role in politics (though he was later an occasional adviser to Clann na Poblachta
Clann na Poblachta
Clann na Poblachta , abbreviated CnaP, was an Irish republican and social democratic political party founded by former Irish Republican Army Chief of Staff Seán MacBride in 1946.-Foundation:...
) after the Rising, or the subsequent Anglo-Irish War.
Later years
After his retirement in 1948, Hobson built a house near RoundstoneRoundstone
Roundstone may refer to:*Roundstone, County Galway, a village in the Republic of Ireland.*Roundstone, West Sussex, a village in England.*Roundstone Music, an English rock band....
in Connemara
Connemara
Connemara is a district in the west of Ireland consisting of a broad peninsula between Killary Harbour and Kilkieran Bay in the west of County Galway.-Overview:...
. His wife Claire Gregan, from whom he separated in the late 1930s, died in 1958. Following a heart attack during the 1960s, Bulmer Hobson lived with his daughter Camilla and son in law John Mitchell, in the village of Castleconnell
Castleconnell
Castleconnell is a scenic village on the banks of the River Shannon, some from Limerick city and within a few minutes walk of the boundaries with counties Clare and Tipperary....
, Co Limerick
Limerick
Limerick is the third largest city in the Republic of Ireland, and the principal city of County Limerick and Ireland's Mid-West Region. It is the fifth most populous city in all of Ireland. When taking the extra-municipal suburbs into account, Limerick is the third largest conurbation in the...
. There he finished his definitive account of his life in the movement for Irish freedom, "Ireland Yesterday And Tomorrow" (Anvil Books, Ireland, 1968).
Published works
- A short history of the Irish volunteers (1918), Hobson, B. from Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
. - The letters of Wolfe Tone (1920) Hobson, B. (ed.) from Internet Archive.
- The life of Wolfe Tone (1921), Hobson, B. (ed.) from Internet Archive.
- The New Querist: containing several queries, proposed to the consideration of the public (Candle Press, Dublin, 1933)
Sources
- Bulmer Hobson and the Nationalist Movement in Twentieth—Century Ireland, Marnie Hay, MUPManchester University PressManchester University Press is the university press of the University of Manchester, England and a publisher of academic books and journals. Manchester University Press has developed into an international publisher...
, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7190-7987-0. - Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin, 1916, F.X. Martin (ed.), Methuen, 1967.
- A new Dictionary of Irish History from 1800, D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty, Gill & Macmillian, 2003, ISBN 0-7171-2520-3.
- Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion, Charles Townshend, Penguin Books, 2005, ISBN 978-0141-01216-2.
- 1916: The Easter Rising, Tim Pat Coogan, Phoenix, 2001, ISBN 0-75381-852-3.
- The Green Flag Vol. II: The Bold Fenian Men, Robert KeeRobert KeeRobert Kee CBE is a British broadcaster, journalist and writer, known for his historical works on World War II and Ireland....
, Penguin Books, 1972 - Ireland Her Own, T. A. Jackson, Lawrence & Wishart, Fp 1947, Rp 1991, ISBN 0 85315 7359.
- A History of Ireland Under the Union, P. S. O’Hegarty, Methuen & Co. 1952.
- Roger Casement: The Black Diaries with a Study of his Background, Sexuality and Irish Political Life, Jeffrey Dudgeon, Belfast Press 2002.