Wood's Halfpence controversy

Wood's Halfpence controversy (1722–5), a campaign against the patent to mint £100,800 worth of copper coin for Ireland acquired by William Wood, a Wolverhampton manufacturer. Opponents argued that the patent, allegedly purchased from George I's mistress, the duchess of Kendal, would flood Ireland with worthless coin. The scheme provoked hostile pamphlets and popular demonstrations, but the really effective opposition came from the political establishment. The House of Lords and House of Commons both passed hostile resolutions, and the lords justices, privy council, and revenue commissioners resisted pressure to use the coin in official receipts and payments. Having failed to overcome opposition by reducing the proposed issue to £40,000 and replacing the ineffective duke of Grafton, lord lieutenant 1720–4, with the astute and sociable Lord Carteret, Sir Robert Walpole's ministry cancelled the patent in September 1725.

Walpole saw resistance to the patent as revealing a desire for ‘independency’, and Swift's Drapier's Letters did in fact raise the issue of Ireland's political subordination. Most opponents, however, concentrated on the damaging consequences of the patent, rather than challenging its legality. The determined defence of Irish against English interests nevertheless gives the episode a place in the development of patriotism. The crisis led Walpole's ministry to initiate a policy of ensuring that a proportion of key posts (including, invariably, the lord chancellorship and the archbishopric of Armagh) were in the future held by politically reliable Englishmen. But the rejection of the patent also demonstrated that the English government could manage Ireland only with the assistance of Irish undertakers, among whom William Conolly now emerged, through the eclipse of his rival Brodrick, as the undisputed chief.