William Drennan (23 May 1754-5 February 1820) was a leader of the United Irishmen and the man who coined Ireland's nickname "the Emerald Isle".
Biography[]
William Drennan was born in Belfast, County Down, Ireland on 23 May 1754, and he came from a Presbyterian family. He graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1772 and became an advocate for smallpox inoculation, and, after his move to Dublin in 1789, he became an active Irish republican leader. Drennan came to support political reform in Ireland after the American Revolutionary War, co-founding the United Irishmen in 1791. He wrote several pamphlets for the society, and, while he campaigned for Catholic Emancipation, he felt that peasants were "unfit for liberty". He later withdrew from the group as the British government launched a crackdown, and he settled in Belfast in 1807 and continued his writings until his death in 1820.