"Remonstrance, Repeal and Revival: The Gifting of Irish Linen Damask to Daniel O'Connell, 1844".

'This man,' warned lord Anglesey, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, on 17 January 1830 'has established a sort of tyranny that is indescribable. He seems to have fixed the opinion in Men's Minds that his person is sacred... Thus we live, and thus we shall remain, whilst O'Connell is at large'. Within weeks, despite initially being refused entry, O'Connell took his place in the House of Commons in Westminster on 4 February, the first Irish Catholic to benefit from the 'Catholic emancipation' he had triumphantly delivered the previous year. Marked by bonfires throughout Ireland and a 'chairing' from his constituency in County Claire to County Limerick, the victory could have marked the culmination of his career. But his greatest challenge was yet to come - repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of an Irish parliament. Despite a decline in his popularity in the decade following election, his fiery oratory, force of personality and charisma came together for a last time to reawaken the singular connection he held with the people of Ireland. Leading a new national movement - the signature of which was the open-air 'Monster Meeting' that attracted people in their hundreds of thousands - the Establishment fear of demagoguery resurfaced, and on the eve of a meeting summoned for 5 October 1843 at Clontarf the assembly was proclaimed and O'Connell, along with eight of his supporters, incarcerated in the notorious Richmond Bridewell in Dublin. An unprecedented outpouring of support followed: an 'extraordinary flying through town, of presents arriving to the prisoners by every coach from the country'. It is against this background that the paper examines a gift from a group of northern Catholic Repeal supporters in Banbridge, Co.Down, now housed in The National Museum of Ireland. A linen damask tablecloth, it coupled an advocacy of Irish political independence and modern democratic politics with a newly-emerging nationalist iconography reimagined from Ireland's past. An early example both of 'practical patriotism' and the influence of the Gaelic revival, its significance, to date, has been lost to view.