Dissent Into Treason: King-Killers, Unitarians and the Society of United Irishmen

Everyone knows that Wolfe Tone laboured to bring together 'Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter'. We all know-or at least we think we know-what 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' mean. But how many of us really understand the third force in eighteenth-century Ireland, the 'Dissenter'? It is Fergus Whelan's great achievement in Dissent into Treason to reconstruct the mental and social world of the most advanced Dissenters of the revolutionary period, and to remind us of their distinctive contribution to Irish republicanism...

In this radical, path-breaking book Fergus Whelan reveals the hidden history of the Protestant Dissenters whose Dublin congregations were established in the Cromwellian era and who went on to contribute their republican ideas to the United Irishmen.

Based substantially on hidden records of the Dublin Unitarian Church about its links with United Irishmen, the truth revealed in this unique book will come as a shock to readers of all kinds of backgrounds on the island of Ireland, and in Britain, too.