William Sinclair

Reverend William Sinclair (died 1830) was an Irish Presbyterian minister and, as a radical democrat, a member of the Society of United Irishmen. Forced after the rebellion of 1798 into American exile, he became a leading figure in the Irish immigrant community in Baltimore. Early life Probably the fourth son of William Sinclair, a farmer in Kilcronaghan parish, County Londonderry, Sinclair graduated from the University of Glasgow (then a centre of the Scottish Enlightenment) in 1775. By 1786 he was preaching in Newtownards, County Down, in a congregation within the non-subscribing Presbytery of Antrim. United Irishmen and 1798 Rebellion On 14 October 1791, he was one of 12 men including Henry Joy McCracken and Wolfe Tone who met to form the Belfast Society of the United Irishmen. In time his brothers George and Thomas would also join. He fell under the suspicion of Lord Castlereagh, his congregant, former student and son and heir to the leading landowner in north Down, the Earl of Londonderry. In November 1796 Castlereagh wrote to his wife that "Sinclair has been playing a most artful game, and has done much to mislead." Later that month, however, Castlereagh reported on a successful meeting where several hundred of the inhabitants of Newtownards and district took the oath of allegiance. Afterwards "we had a very jolly dinner: Cleland quite drunk, Sinclair considerably so, my father not a little, others lying heads and points, the whole very happy, and ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia’ declared permanent." During the Rebellion, Sinclair was part of an insurgent committee in Newtownards, though it was afterwards claimed that the minister was less than a willing participant in this. After the arrest of Reverend William Steel Dickson on the eve of the Battle of Ballynahinch in June 1798, his brother George Sinclair was briefly the declared Adjutant General of the United forces of County Down.