the impending union with Great Britain. Reformist and nationalist politicians such as Henry Grattan (1746–1820), Wolfe Tone (1763–1798), Robert Emmet (1778–1803), and Sir John Gray (1815–1875) were also Protestant nationalists, and in large measure led and defined Irish nationalism. At the same time the British Government included Anglo-Irish figures at the highest level such as Lord Castlereagh (1769–1828) and George Canning (1770–1827), as well others such as the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816). Even during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Irish nationalism became increasingly tied to a Roman Catholic identity, it continued to count among its leaders Protestants like Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891). With the Protestant yeoman class void being filled by a newly rising "Catholic Ascendancy", the dozens of remaining Protestant large landowners were left isolated within the Catholic population without the benefit of the legal and social conventions on which they had depended upon to maintain power and influence. Local government was democratized by the Act of 1898, passing many local powers to councilors who were usually supportive of nationalism. Formerly landlords had controlled the grand jury system, where membership was based on being a large ratepayer, and therefore from owning large amounts of land locally. The final phase of the elimination of the Ascendancy occurred during the Anglo-Irish War, when some of the remaining Protestant landlords were either assassinated and/or had their country homes in Ireland burned down. Nearly 300 stately homes of the old landed class were burned down between 1919 and 1923. The campaign was stepped up by the Anti-Treaty IRA during the subsequent Irish Civil War (1922–23), who targeted some remaining wealthy and influential Protestants who had accepted nominations as Senators in the new Seanad of the Irish Free State. Artistic and cultural role Many members of the Ascendancy played a role in literary and artistic matters in 19th- and 20th-century Ireland, notably Oscar Wilde and Nobel prize-winning author George Bernard Shaw, and Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats who started the influential Celtic Revival movement, and later authors such as Somerville and Ross, Hubert Butler and Elizabeth Bowen. Ballerina Dame Ninette de Valois, Samuel Beckett (also a Nobel prize-winner) and the artist Sir William Orpen came from the same social background. Chris de Burgh and the rock concert promoter Lord Conyngham (formerly Lord Mount Charles) are more recent high-profile descendants of the Ascendancy in Ireland. See also Orange Institution Plantations