IRISH VOLUNTEERS. A Concise Compendium of Military Manoeuvres, represented by Accurate Engravings, executed by an Irish Artist, from the Drawings of an Officer of distinguished merit; and Explained in so clear and easy a Style as to render them intelligible to every Capacity. Particularly Addressed to the Irish Volunteers.

IRISH MILITARY MANOEUVRES

Dublin: Printed by Joseph Hill, 1781. Oblong. 16mo. pp. 13, [1]. Original stitched marbled wrappers as issued. A fine copy. Exceedingly rare.
ESTC T56441. JISC locates 3 copies only.
The Irish Volunteer movement began in 1778 in response to the growing threat of foreign invasion, following the recent landing of a small French force at Carrickfergus. The regular army and the English fleet had been withdrawn to defend the Empire in the American war of Independence. The Volunteers were an amateur military force made up from local companies headed by the great landowners, such as the Duke of Leinster who commanded the Dublin region, and Lord Charlemont who commanded the county of Armagh. The Volunteers were independent but held no official commissions and supplied their own equipment; at one stage they attracted almost 70,000 members.
Hugely popular with all sections of society, they were commemorated in paintings of the period, of which the best known is Francis Wheatley’s ‘Dublin Volunteers on College Green’, held on the 4th November 1779 to celebrate the birthday of King William III under the command of the Duke of Leinster (National Gallery of Ireland). Commemorative earthenware jugs and engraved drinking glasses were much in demand, and even printed fabrics showing the Volunteers encamped in the Phoenix Park have survived. These textiles, known as ‘Volunteer furniture’ depicted, according to a contemporary newspaper notice in November 1783, a “representation of the last Provincial Review in the Phoenix Park”.
Illustrated with eight magnificent engravings, there are only four copies of this exceptional item recorded. Printed by Joseph Hill printer to the Dublin University Press. Joseph (d. 1806), printer, was a cousin of Edward Hill, MD, professor of botany in TCD, and through this connection was appointed printer to the university press in 1779; nothing else is known of his family background. In August 1784 Hill published John Milton’s Tenures of Kings and Magistrates with notes by W. W. Seward, apparently without the college’s sanction. A student took a copy to Dublin Castle, where the chief secretary, Thomas Orde, pronounced it treasonable and alerted the provost, John Hely-Hutchinson, who dismissed Hill on 27 August. His cousin resigned the use of the printing house in protest. Orde had stressed to the provost the need for covering up government involvement, but the story got out and was taken up in great indignation by certain papers. The Dublin Evening Post declared it the ‘most extraordinary attack on the liberty of the press ever known in a free country’ (31 August, 2, 4 September 1784)

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