Dr William Drennan

William Drennan, a Belfast Presbyterian doctor and poet of radical views, is usually credited with being the first person to call Ireland "the emerald isle". Drennan was also the main originator of the Society of United Irishmen, an idea which matured in his mind between 1780 and 1785.

Drennan was born on 23 May 1754. Like so many of the United Irishmen, Drennan was a son of the manse. His father, the Revd Thomas Drennan, Minister of First Presbyterian Church, in Rosemary Street, Belfast, had been a friend of Francis Hutcheson, the Ulster Presbyterian philosopher who held the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.

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