William Tennant

William Tennant (1759–1832), often spelt William Tennent, was an Ulster Presbyterian banker and a leading member in Belfast of the Society of the United Irishmen who, in 1798, sought by insurrection to secure a representative and independent government for Ireland. After a period of imprisonment, he returned to the commercial and civic of Belfast, in 1810 helping to found what is today the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. Early life William Tennant was born in 1759 near Ballymoney, County Antrim, in the Kingdom of Ireland, the eldest eight children born to Reverend John Tennant and his wife Ann Patton. His father had been among the first Scottish Anti-Bugher Presbyterian ministers to settle in Ulster. Seceders from the Church of Scotland, they refused to accept a sacramental test (the Burgher Oath), as a condition of public office. It was a position that had radical implications in Ireland where such tests secured the Anglican ("Protestant") Ascendancy their monopoly of position and influence against both Presbyterians ("Dissenters") and the kingdom's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority. Rev. Tennant was an early subscriber to the Northern Star, the newspaper of the Society of United Irishmen. As a young man, William served as an apprentice with John Campbell, a Belfast merchant and banker. He joined the Belfast Chamber of Commerce in 1783, and was junior manager in the New Sugar House in Waring Street. He eventually became a partner in this business, and he held partnerships in the distilling firm of John Porter & Co. and the Belfast Insurance Co. By the time he reached adulthood, Tennant was a very prosperous businessman.