Today whilst checking the Wikipedia entry on Abraham Creighton, the second Earl of Erne, I noticed that new information hasadded recently to the entry. It now appears that Abraham was a prominent member of Kildare Street Club.
This Club, founded in 1782, eventually became a bastion of the Anglo Irish Protestant Ascendancy, but in its early days included many individuals, including members of the aristocracy, who were deeply opposed to the British rule of Ireland.
Members of The Kildare Street Club included the MP Arthur O'Connor who embraced the Irish Republican movement, becoming a member of the Society of United Irishmen in 1796. In the wake of the French Revolution and inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of the American Revolution O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald petitioned France for aid in support of an Irish revolution to end British monarchical rule. Lord Fitzgerald was also a member of the Kildare Street Club and a close friend of Abraham Creighton having studied together as young men. By the mid 1790's it seems clear that Abraham Creightons politics were moving in a direction that his father, the first Earl of Erne, a staunch supporter of the Hanoverian King George, a believer in the necessity of continued British rule and a pillar of the Protestant Ascendancy would have found deeply disturbing. Ireland at this time is on the brink of armed revolution, British rule is under threat and a clash between father and son seems inevitable.
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