Reuben Harvey: Irish Friend of American Freedom

Reuben Harvey: Irish Friend of American Freedom Sheldon S. Cohen* In its "Notes and Documents" section for April 1964 The William and Mary Quarterly printed an article by Ernest J. Moyne entitled, "The Reverend William Hazlitt: A Friend of Liberty in Ireland during the American Revolution." The subject of the article, Hazlitt (1737-1820), whose sons William and John became respectively a noted essayist and an artist, was a nonconformist English cleric. He had moved to the Irish town of Bandon in 1780 from his pastorate in Maidstone, Kent. In Bandon, Hazlitt presided over a dissenter congregation until his temporary departure for America in April 1783.' Professor Moyne's article notes that during his career in western Ireland, the Reverend Mr. Hazlitt had displayed special sympathy for the rebel cause in America, and most particularly, for several hundred American captives who were incarcerated nearby within the bleak, cramped confines of a prison in the seaside village of Kinsale. Here, the author provides a concise picture of Hazlitt's benevolent and occasionally extralegal activities on behalf of the rebel prisoners, as well as his protests against alleged maltreatment by prison staff and the supervisor John How; and he also notes that these services went unrecognized by the American government. For all these worthy points, however, the article consigns a mere footnote to the role of Reuben Harvey.2 Harvey, an Irish Quaker, had promoted the American cause and had aided American detainees at Kinsale well before Hazlitt, and, unlike the parson he did receive significant recognition from the United States for his services. In light of these facts, as well his inauspicious contemporary anonymity, Reuben Harvey should merit some measure of historical redress. This article seeks to reconstruct Harvey's efforts on behalfofthe American prisoners detained in Britain and Ireland. Reuben Harvey was born on September 29, 1734 in Youghal, County Cork, the son of Susanna and Thomas Harvey. The Harveys had apparently arrived in Ireland originally as part of the Cromwellian forces dispatched there during the tumultuous religious developments that had marked the Commonwealth period in seventeenth-century Britain. In Ireland the family was numbered among the many nonconformists won over to the Society of Friends through the travels andexhortations ofGeorgeFox.3Reuben's great grandfather, Henry Harvey, had been a landowner in County Kildare, but like several members of the Society, his grandfather Thomas moved to Dublin where there was a larger Quaker community. Thomas's occupation in the city was listed as alinen draper. Reuben's father, alsonamed Thomas, ?Sheldon S. Cohen is a professor in the History Department, Loyola University of Chicago. Reuben Harvey: Irish Friend of American Freedom23 had settled with his family in Youghal, where he became a successful merchant and was named a freeman of the town in 1738.4 The eldest of twelve children, Reuben Harvey spent his youth in Youghal. He was made a freeman of the town in 1 755, but a few years later departed forCork City, the largestcommunity in the county. Quakerismhad appeared in the city during the mid-1650s, spreading to other communities in the county. In Cork City's Grafton Street Meeting William Penn was formally converted through the preaching of Thomas Loe, a Quaker missionary in 1678.5 During these early years of residence in the city, Quakers had endured their share of arbitrary arrests, fines, imprisonment, and other forms of hostility experienced by their fellow sectarians throughout Britain. Yet despite the intermittent vexations and other inequities, as well as serious civil strife in the county from 1689 to 1692, most Quakers in the community held fast to their principles of nonresistance and inner discipline offered to them through their monthly meetings. The ensuing years of monarchical rule under King William III, Queen Anne, and especialy those of the first Hanoverians produced a softening of sectarian tensions that in turn provided considerable religious toleration to Protestant dissenters throughout Britain. This moderating sectarian climate provided spiritual relief to Quakers in Ireland, and it also offered them broad new secular avenues for economic prosperity—a fact particularly evidenced by the considerable number of Quakers living in Cork City.6 The actual reasons for Reuben Harvey's removal to Cork...