Chapter I

History of Irish Local Disturbances from 1760 to the Present Day

By the settlement of Ireland after the revolution of 1688, the power of the new government was so firmly established, that no combined movement took place in favour of the ancient dynasty, not even during the Scottish rebellions of 1715 and 1745¹. The system of Irish government, adopted in order to further the Protestant and English interest, and the severe penal code against the Catholics, though unsuccessful in converting the natives to the reformed faith, nevertheless so coerced the mass of the people, as to prevent any open insurrection. By degrees, however, as population increased, the closer contact of the miserable peasantry led them to form local and limited combinations, for the purpose of shaking off those burdens which pressed most heavily upon them, but which, when thinly scattered over the face of the country, they could not hope successfully to resist². The first of the risings which originated in this new state of things, and which had little or nothing in common with the previous troubles in Ireland, (such as the great rebellion of 1641,) was that of the Whiteboys, or Levellers, in 1761. These insurgents were so called, because they wore white shirts over their clothes, as a badge of their union, and because one of their principal objects was the levelling of the fences of the newly-inclosed waste land. The immediate cause of their rising is stated as follows by Dr. Curry, the earliest and best informed writer of the subject:—

‘About this time great tumults had been raised, and some outrages committed in different parts of Munster, by cottiers and others of the lowest class of its inhabitants, occasioned by the tyranny and rapacity of their landlords. These landlords had set their lands to cottiers far above their value, and, to lighten their burden, had allowed commonage to their tenants. Afterwards, in despite of all equity, contrary to all compacts, the landlords inclosed the commons³, and precluded their unhappy tenants from the only means of making their bargains tolerable. Another cause of these people’s discontents was the cruel exactions of tithe-mongers; these harpies squeezed out the very vitals of the people, and by process, citation, and sequestration, dragged from them the little which the landlord had left them. These are the real causes of the late tumults in Munster, and it may be safely affirmed that there is no nation that has not had tumults from such or the like causes, without religion coming into question⁴.’

A letter from a gentleman in Youghall to his son in London (printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1762), likewise states, that the Whiteboys ‘all along pretended that their assembling was to do justice to the poor, by restoring the ancient commons and redressing other grievances⁵.’

The following letter from Mr. O’Conor to Dr. Curry, dated 4th June, 1762, and therefore written soon after the first outbreak of these disturbances, gives a perfectly similar account:—

‘In relation to the disorders of the poor in Munster (he says), I assured him (Dr. Warner) that they proceeded from the throwing of that province, like Connaught and Leinster, into pasture-inclosures, which excluded these poor and reduced them into a state of desperation, and into that rage which despair on such occasions will dictate. I told him that the whole proceeded from the laws which leave the better sort of our people no occupation in the inland counties but pasturage alone; agriculture being virtually forbid on account of the shortness of their tenures. That in such a state papists worry papists, the rich excluding the poorer sort to make room for flocks and herds, which are easily converted into ready money and find a ready market⁶.’

Arthur Young, in his description of the early Whiteboys, exactly agrees with these accounts; as he states that ‘they began in Tipperary, and were owing to some inclosures of commons which they threw down, levelling the ditches; and were first known by the name of Levellers⁷.’

A more detailed statement of the causes of the Whiteboys risings in 1762, but precisely agreeing with the accounts just quoted, is given by Crawford, in his History of Ireland, published in 1783. After having mentioned that there had been for several years preceding 1761 a murrain amongst the horned cattle in England, whither it had spread from Germany and Holland, he proceeds to say—

‘From this cause a foreign demand for butter and beef became uncommonly great. In proportion these articles rose in value, until at last they grew to an immoderate price. Hence ground appropriated to grazing was more valuable than that under tillage. Cottiers being tenants at will were everywhere dispossessed of their little holdings, which, in considerable tracts, were set by the landlords to monopolizers⁸, who, by feeding cattle, were enabled to pay them a higher rent. In this manner even whole baronies were laid open to pasturage. Pressed by want of subsistence, numbers of the poor fled to large cities, or emigrate to foreign countries.⁹ Those who remained took small spots of land consisting of about an acre each, at an exorbitant price, [from] which they laboured to procure, if possible, the means of support for themselves and their miserable families. To lessen somewhat the burdens by which they were oppressed, some of their landlords granted them the liberty of commonage. The relief was but temporary, for some time after, in breach of justice and positive compact, they were deprived of this privilege. Tithes, and the small price given for labour, which, notwithstanding the increased price of necessaries, did not exceed the wages given in the days of Elizabeth, were circumstances which aggravated their distresses. As the calamities of these unhappy creatures arose principally from the extravagant price of land, a number of them, either ignorant or incapable of the proper mode of redress, had recourse to illegal expedients, to oblige the proprietors to set it on more reasonable terms¹⁰.’

The consolidation of farms, and the increase of pasturage caused by a rise in the price of cattle, and the consequent dispossession of many cottier tenants, appear to have led to disturbances exactly similar in their character to those which occurred in England in the reign of Edward VI.; and to mark a corresponding change in the manner of cultivating the soil¹¹. The same transition likewise took place in Scotland towards the end of the last century; when the surplus rural population was absorbed into the towns, and employed in mechanical trades, or in the newly-established manufactures; so that the change was made without any violent reaction. In England and Scotland the new state of things has become permanent; in Ireland (as we shall have occasion to show) this transition has never been effected, and it is to prevent its completion that the Whiteboy combinations have principally been organized.

The proceedings of the Whiteboys, at their first appearance, may also be taken as evidence of the objects which they had in view; since they seem, at first, to have met with scarcely any opposition, the rural police of Ireland having been in about the same state in 1761 as that of England was in the disturbances of 1830. They are stated to have gone about the country in large bodies, throwing down fences, rooting up orchards, cutting down trees, destroying bullocks¹², and doing various injuries to property. The general character of their proceedings may be collected from the preamble of an Irish Act passed in 1775, ‘to prevent and punish tumultuous risings of persons,’ (commonly called the Whiteboy Act,) which recites that—

‘It has frequently happened of late years, in different parts of this kingdom, that several persons calling themselves Whiteboys, and others, as well by night as in the daytime, have in a riotous, disorderly, and tumultuous manner, assembled together, and have abused and injured the persons, habitations, and properties of many of his Majesty’s loyal and faithful subjects, and have taken away and carried away by their horses and arms, and have compelled them to surrender up, quit, and leave their habitations, farms, and places of abode; and have, with threats of violence, imposed sundry oaths and solemn declarations contrary to law, and solicited several of his Majesty’s subjects, by threats and promises, to join with them in such their mischievous and iniquitous proceedings; and have also sent threatening and incendiary letters to several persons, to the great terror of his Majesty’s peaceable subjects; and have taken upon themselves to obstruct the exportation of corn, grain, meal, malt and flour, and to destroy or damage the same when intended for exportation; and have also destroyed mills, granaries, and storehouses provided for the keeping of corn; which, if not effectually prevented, must become dangerous to the general peace of this kingdom and his Majesty’s government therein¹³.’

It appears, both from this recital and from accounts of particular outrages, that from the very beginning the Whiteboys used the same means for enforcing their will as have since been unhappily so common in Ireland; intimidation, by threatening notices, of persons who refused to join their combination, or who disobeyed their orders; and punishment for disobediences by destruction of property, personal violence or murder. The singular cruelty which has characterized the combinations of Ireland appears very early in the proceedings of the Whiteboys. Thus we are told that they ordered a peasant at Cappoquin to refund some money upon pain of having his tongue drawn through his under-jaw, and fastened with a skewer¹⁴. The following affidavit of William Abraham, a Protestant farmer of Bohereed, in Queen’s County, sworn before a justice of that county on the 27^th December, 1774, may probably be relied on as a statement of the means then employed by some of the Whiteboys:—

‘That a report had prevailed for some time that the Whiteboys intended to carry off examinant the night of the 15th instant; that a party of them, blowing horns, and armed with muskets, and dressed in white shirts and frocks, entered his house, and put him behind one of them on horseback; that his wife, endeavouring to prevent their doing so, received a stroke of a musket in the small of the back; that before examinant was mounted, they gave him a violent blow to the head with the lock and hammer of a gun, which inflicted a deep wound therein, and rendered him stupid and senseless; they carried him off mounted behind one of them, with only his breeches and a loose great coat on; that in their progress, they beat, battered, and abused him with their guns, and the man behind whom he rode wounded him severely in the legs, with long nails in his heels, commonly called heel spurs. They carried him ten miles off, to a place near Ballyconra, where they held a consultation whether they should cut out his tongue, or pull out his eyes; and at last agreed to cut off his ears, which they did with circumstances of great barbarity; that after having administered to him many unlawful oaths, they buried him up to his chin, though mangled, in a grave lines with furze¹⁵.’

The following is Arthur Young’s account of the proceedings of the Whiteboys, soon after their first appearance:—

‘It was a common practice with them to go in parties about the country, swearing many to be true to them, and forcing them to join by menaces, which they very often carried into execution. At last they set up to be general redressers of grievances, punished all obnoxious persons, and having taken the administration of justice into their own hands, were not very exact in the distribution of it, forced masters to release their apprentices, carried off daughters of rich farmers, ravished them into marriages, of which four instances happened in a fortnight. They levied sums of money on the middling and lower farmers, in order to support their cause, by paying attornies, &c., in defending prosecutions against them; and many of them subsisted for some years without work, supported by these contributions. Sometimes they committed several considerable robberies, breaking into houses, and taking the money under pretence of redressing grievances. In the course of these outrages, they burnt several houses, and destroyed the whole substance of men obnoxious to them. The barbarities they committed were shocking. One of their usual punishments (and by no means the most severe), was taking people out of their beds, carrying them naked in winter on horseback for some distance, and burying them up to their chin in a hole filled with briars, not forgetting to cut off one of their ears. In this manner the evil existed for eight or ten years, during which time the gentlemen of the country took some measures to quell them. Many of the magistrates were active in apprehending them; but the want of evidence prevented punishment, for many who even suffered by them had not spirit to prosecute. The gentlemen of the country had frequent expeditions to discover them in arms; but their intelligence was uncommonly good, by their influence over the common people, that not one party that ever went out in quest of them was successful. Government offered very large rewards for informations, which brought a few every year to the gallows, without any radical cure for the evil. The reason why it was not more effective was, the necessity of any person who gave evidence against them quitting their houses and country, or remaining exposed to their resentment¹⁶.’

In this account we have all the main features of the Whiteboy system as it has existed within the last ten years; the swearing in of the peasantry, and the compelling of them, by threats, to join the association; the enforcement of the will of the insurgents by severe inflictions; and the intimidation of witnesses and prosecutors.

The principal members of the government in Dublin appear to have shown as much forebearance and impartiality in their proceedings against the early Whiteboys as was consistent with their situation. They sent some eminent lawyers, of distinguished loyalty, to inquire, on the spot, into the true causes and circumstances of the riots; and upon the report of these persons (afterwards confirmed by the judges of assize), was grounded an official declaration inserted in the Dublin and London Gazettes, that—

‘The authors of these disturbances have consisted indiscriminately of persons of different persuasions, and that no marks of disaffection to his Majesty’s person or government have been discovered upon this occasion in any class of people¹⁷.’

The first five of the Whiteboys executed at Waterford for being present at the burning of a cabin, declared before their execution that, ‘in all these tumults, it never entered into their thoughts to do anything against the king and government.’ The government, however, though they might have been inclined to justice, were unable to restrain the local and subordinate authorities from raising the alarm of a popish rebellion, and from construing the scattered outrages of a suffering peasantry into a political and religious insurrection, supported by French influence, and having for its object the restoration of the Stuarts, and of the Catholic religion. Gentlemen of high rank, little likely to be found in the ranks of a peasant army, were publicly accused of being concerned in these disturbances, merely because they were Catholics, and were summoned to Dublin in order to give bail for their good conduct¹⁸.

The person who, in these disturbances, was the chief object of enmity of the local authorities, on the alleged ground that he had incited the rioters, or assisted them with French money, was Nicholas Sheehy, parish priest of Clogheen, in the county of Tipperary. ‘This man (says Dr. Curry), was giddy and officious, but not ill-meaning, with somewhat of a quixotish cast of mind towards relieving all those within his district whom he fancied to be injured or oppressed, and setting aside his unavoidable connexion with those rioters, several hundred of whom were his parishioners, he was a clergyman of an unimpeached character in all other respects.’ During the disturbances he has more than once been indicted and tried as a popish priest, but acquitted for want of evidence. At last, in 1765, the government were prevailed on to issue a proclamation offering a reward of 300l. for his apprehension, as guilty of high treason. As soon as Sheehy heard of this proclamation, he wrote to the government, offering to surrender himself on the condition that he might be tried, not at Clonmel, but at Dublin. This proposal having been accepted, he was tried by the Court of King’s Bench in Dublin, for rebellion, and (says Dr. Curry), ‘after a severe scrutiny of fourteen hours, he was honourably acquitted; no evidence having appeared against him but a blackguard boy, a common prostitute, and an impeached thief, all brought out of Clonmel gaol, and bribed for the purpose of witnessing against him¹⁹.’

Sheehy’s enemies, however, were not daunted by this failure. One Bridge, who had given evidence for the Crown in some former trials against the Whiteboys, and who had recently disappeared, (having probably left the country for security), was said to have been murdered in revenge by the associates of those against whom he had informed, and Sheehy was accused of his murder. Sheehy was accordingly sent to Clonmel, and was there tried, convicted, and executed upon the evidence of the same three witnesses whose evidence had just been disbelieved by the Dublin jury; although Bridge’s body was never found, and two witnesses of good character swore that he had privately left the kingdom a short time before he was said to have been murdered²⁰.

It is unnecessary to give further particulars of the intimidation and violence practised by persons in authority to accomplish this judicial murder; as the statement of these few facts is sufficient to show to what extremities of rigour the Irish government then proceeded in the treatment of suspected Whiteboys.

‘Such (says Dr. Curry), during the space of three years, was the fearful and pitiable state of the Roman Catholics of Munster, and so general did the panic at length become, so many of the lower sort were already hanged, in gaol, or on the informers’ lists, that the greatest part of the rest fled through the fear; so that the land lay untilled for want of hands to cultivate it, and a famine was with reason apprehended. As for the better sort, who had something to lose (and who for that reason were the persons chiefly aimed at by the managers of the prosecution), they were at the utmost loss how to dispose of themselves. If they left the country, their absence was construed into a proof of their guilt; if they remained in it, they were in imminent danger of having their lives sworn away by informers and approvers; for the suborning and corrupting of witnesses on that occasion was frequent and barefaced to a degree almost beyond belief²¹.’

The alarm which the proceedings of the government had created among the peasantry may be inferred from the gratitude and surprise excited by the conduct of Mr. Justice Aston, who was sent on a special commission in 1762 to try the rioters in the counties of Limerick, Cork, and Tipperary.

‘Aston (says Mr. Crawford) did his duty, but in the discharge of it would not violate the dictates of humanity. On his return from Dublin, he was witness to a sight most affecting, and which he must have beheld with the highest satisfaction. For above ten miles from Clonmel, both sides of the road were lined with men, women, and children, who, as he passed along, kneeled down and supplicated Heaven to bless him as their protector and guardian angel²².’

Some vague rumours were also circulated as to the connexion of these disturbances with the intended French invasion of Ireland at the end of the reign of George II. That these reports were destitute of foundation, is proved by the simple fact, that the defeat of Clonflans by Sir E. Hawke took place in 1759,and the landing Thurot in Carrickfergus Bay in February, 1760; whereas the first risings of the Whiteboys did not occur till October, 1761²³. It is not likely, if the Catholic peasants of Munster had been armed, trained, and paid by the French, in order to co-operate with them in case of an invasion, that the landing of the French would have been effect in Ulster; and that the insurrection would have broken out nearly two years after the expedition had failed.

‘I made many inquiries (says Arthur Young) into the origin of these disturbances, and found that no such thing as a Leveller or Whiteboy was heard of till 1760, which was long after the landing of Thurot, or the intended expedition of M. Conflans²⁴; that no foreign coin was ever seen among them, though reports to the contrary were circulated²⁵; and in all the evidence that was taken during ten or twelve years, in which time there appeared a variety of informers, none was ever taken, whose testimony could be relied on, that ever proved any foreign interposition. Those very few who attempted to favour it were of the most infamous and perjured characters²⁶. All the rest, whose interest it was to make the discovery, if they had known it, and who concealed nothing else, pretended to no such knowledge. No foreign money appeared; no arms of foreign construction; no presumptive proof whatever of such a connexion²⁷.’

The first disturbances of the Whiteboys, which were distinguished by the levelling of inclosures, and were chiefly directed against the landlords, having (as has been stated) begun near the end of  1761, lasted for several years, notwithstanding the exertions of the military and the severities of the criminal law²⁸. They had, however, nearly ceased in Munster before 1770; but having re-appeared in the county of Kildare in 1775²⁹, and in the county of Kilkenny and the Queen’s County in 1775 and the following years³⁰, they continued with partial interruptions till 1785, when they spread to the districts in the south, where they had formerly prevailed. The Munster and Kilkenny insurgents of 1785 and the following years generally assumed the name of Rightboys; but their grievances, and their proceedings, and their objects appear to have been nearly the same with those of their predecessors the Whiteboys, except that their enmity was more peculiarly directed against the clergy; and as the legal payment to the parson was more onerous than the voluntary payment to the priest, against the Protestant clergy.

The following authentic account of this Rightboy insurrection was given by the Attorney-General, Mr. Fitzgibbon, in a speech in the Irish House of Commons, upon a motion that the House resolve itself into a Committee to take into consideration that part of the Lord Lieutenant’s speech which related to the commotions that had in some places disturbed the public tranquillity (31st January, 1787). After a few prelimary remarks, he proceeds to speak as follows on the recent disturbances:—

‘Their commencement was in one or two parishes in the county of Kerry, and they proceeded thus:—The people assembled in a mass-house, and there took an oath to obey the laws of Captain Right, and to starve the clergy. They then proceeded to the next parishes on the following Sunday, and there swore the people in the same manner, with this addition, that they (the people last sworn) should, on the ensuing Sunday, proceed to the chapels of their next neighbouring parishes, and swear the inhabitants of those parishes in like manner.

‘Proceeding in this manner, they very soon went through the province of Munster. The first object of their reformation was tithes; they swore not to give more than a certain price per acre, not to take from the minister at a great price, not to assist, or allow him to be assisted, in drawing the tithe, and to permit no proctor. They next took upon them to prevent the collection of parish cesses, then to nominate parish clerks, and in some cases curates; to say what church should or should not be repaired, and in one case to threaten that they would burn a new church if the old one was not given for a mass-house³¹. At last they proceeded to regulate the price of land, to raise the price of labour, and to oppose the collection of the hearth-money and other taxes.

‘In all their proceedings they have shown the greatest address, with a degree of caution and circumspection which is the more alarming as it demonstrates system and design. Bodies of 5000 of them have been seen to march through the country unarmed, and if met by any magistrate who had spirit to question them, they have not offered the smallest rudeness or offence; on the contrary, they have allowed persons charged with crimes to be taken from amongst them by the magistrates alone, unaided with any force. Wherever they went they found the people as ready to take an oath to cheat the clergy as they were to propose it; but if any one did resist, the torments which he was doomed to undergo were too horrible even for savages to be supposed guilty of. In the middle of the night he was dragged from his bed, and buried alive in a grave filled with thorns; or he was set naked on horseback, and tied to a saddle covered with thorns: in addition to this perhaps his ears were sawed off.

‘Sir, there is this day an account of received of two military men, who had exerted themselves in the line of their duty, being attacked by a body of Rightboys, and, I fear, murdered, for there is but little hope of their recovering from their wounds. The way in which the Rightboys perpetrated this crime was—the two men were walking together armed, they set a dog at them, when one of the men fired; he had no sooner thrown away from his fire than a multitude rushed upon the two from behind the ditches, and wounded them in a most shocking manner.

‘Now, Sir, upon the best inquiry that I have been able to make, it does not appear that there is the least ground to accuse the clergy of extortion. Far from receiving the tenth, I know of no instance in which they receive the twentieth part. I am very well acquainted with the province of Munster, and I know that it is impossible for human wretchedness to exceed that of the miserable peasantry in that province. I know that the unhappy tenantry are ground to powder by relentless landlords. I know that, far from being able to give clergy their just dues, they have not food or raiment for themselves; the landlord grasps the whole; and sorry I am to add, that, not satisfied with the present extortion, some landlords have been so base as to instigate the insurgents to rob the clergy of their tithes, not in order to alleviate the distress of the tenantry, but that they might add the clergy’s share to the cruel rack-rents already paid.

‘Sir, I fear it will require the utmost ability of the Parliament to come to the root of those evils. The poor people of Munster live in a more abject state of poverty than human nature can be supposed able to bear; their miseries are intolerable, but they do not originate with the clergy; nor can the Legislature stand by and see them take the redress into their own hands. Nothing can be done for their benefit while the country remains in a state of anarchy³².’

The first proceedings of the Whiteboys in Munster, such as the levelling of fences and the restoration of commons, were exclusively directed against the landholders, and were connected directly or indirectly with the payment of rent. The receivers of rent, however, whether landlords or middlemen, finding it easier to divert than to suppress the newly awakened spirit of resistance, encouraged or connived at the attempts which were soon made by the Whiteboys to withhold the payment of tithe; a payment to which they themselves were equally liable.

Dr. Curry states, with respect to the earliest Whiteboy disturbances in Munster, that ‘it was well known that several Protestant gentlemen and magistrates of considerable influence in that province, did all along, for their own private ends, connive at, if not foment, these tumults³³.’ It was, however, at a later period, during the tumults of the Rightboys, that this influence appears to have been most exerted. Thus in addition to the strong statement of the Attorney-General just cited, Mr. Lowther, in the same debate, says,―‘the magistrates and landlords are accused, and, I fear, not without reason, as being one cause of the Whiteboy disturbances³⁴:’ and in another debate in the same year, Sir James Cotter, defending the conduct of the magistrates in the county of Cork, admits that ‘perhaps some have been base enough to connive at the excesses in hopes of raising their rents, by adding the clergy’s share to what they now receive³⁵.’ Even Dr. Woodward, the Protestant bishop of Cloyne, who wrote a pamphlet in 1787 (which attracted much attention at the time), to prove that the Whiteboys were actuated by systematic hostility to the Established Church, distinctly states that they were encouraged by the Protestant land-owners.

‘The present proceeding (he says) is not a paroxysm of frenzy, originating with ignorant and rash peasants; but a dark and deep scheme, planned by men skilled in law and the artifices by which it may be evaded. These enemies to the public peace and the Protestant clergy (though nominal Protestants), suggested to the farmers to enter into a combination, under the sanction of an oath, not to take their tithes or to assist any clergyman in drawing them. And a form of summons to the clergyman to draw, penned with legal accuracy, was printed at Cork, at the expense of a gentleman of rank and fortune; and many thousand copies of it circulated with diligence through the adjacent counties of Limerick, Kerry, and Tipperary³⁶.’

The Whiteboys of this period, however, did not content themselves simply with resistance to the payment of tithe, and intimidation of the individuals concerned in collecting it, but even carried their hostility so far as to attack the persons of the Protestant clergy. The bishop of Cloyne enumerates a long list of clergymen in his diocese and those of Ross and Cork, who had been threatened or assaulted by the Whiteboys.

The following may serve as specimens of these attacks:―‘One (a dignitary in my cathedral) was forced to come out of his house at midnight, by a band of 150 ruffians, to swear that he would give up his legal rights; a gun being pointed close to his head whilst the oath was tendered, and a horse produced with a saddle full of spikes, on which he was to be mounted if he refused to swear.’ Another ‘was menaced (with dreadful imprecations) that he should meet with a horrible reception, if he did not obey their laws more punctually, though he by a public notice declared submission.’ Another ‘received a written message from the Whiteboys, declaring, with their usual imprecations, that if he intended such villany as to set tithe at the old rates, they had prepared a pitched shirt for him, in which they would set him on fire.’ ‘A clergyman, now resident in Cork, a fortnight since received a Whiteboy message, that his ears should be cropped or his tongue cut out of his mouth.’ ‘On the whole (continues the bishop), all the clergy in the extensive county of Cork (of whom only I speak with the support of authentic proofs), whose places of residence were in the country, were under continual alarm, and obliged to arm themselves in the best manner they could; and had they not yielded to the violence of the insurgents, I am persuaded, would have been personally ill-treated; perhaps buried in those graves which were in many places dug (professedly) for their reception³⁷.’

To so great an extent were the Protestant clergy of Munster the objects of popular attack at this period, that many of them fled from their parishes and took refuge in the large towns; and the Governments, in the session of 1786, introduced a Bill ‘to protect the persons, houses, and properties of rectors, vicars, and curates actually resident within the parishes³⁸.’ This Bill, after several debate, was finally lost, upon an amendment moved by the Attorney-General; principally, as it would appear, because it proposed to levy a fine on the land of the parish where injury was inflicted on the clergyman.

Notwithstanding the appearance of religious hostility which this conduct of the Whiteboys bears, there can be no doubt that tithe was at this time object to by the Irish peasant rather as being an oppressive fiscal burden, than as being paid to the Protestant clergyman; rather as being a payment generally, than as a payment to a particular class of persons. Having once begun a war against tithes, it was natural that they should extend it to the receivers of tithes; just as a war against rent would naturally become a war against landlords. The peasantry of the south of Ireland, finding themselves pressed by heavy burdens, sought to relieve themselves of the pressure, and naturally began with that charge where the power of exaction was the least.

‘The fact is,’ said Mr. Ogle, in a debate on the Bill for protecting the persons of the Protestant clergy, ‘that the landed man of Ireland is the great extortioner. There is hardly an estate which is not let to the highest penny, and much above its value. The poor tenant feels the oppression, and, not knowing which way to turn, falls upon the clergy as the weakest and most unprotected body of men. This is the true state of the case³⁹.’

‘As to the peasantry of Munster,’ said the Attorney-general, in 1787, ‘it is impossible for them longer to exist in the extreme wretchedness under which they labour. A poor man is obliged to pay £6 for an acre of potato ground, which £6 he is obliged to work out with his landlord for 5d. a day⁴⁰.’

That the Whiteboys of 1787 were not stimulated by any religious sentiments in their opposition to tithe, further appears from their conduct to their own clergy; as they equally comprehend the priest’s dues in their new scale. The following placard was at this time posted by them on the doors of churches and chapels:―

‘You are hereby cautioned not to pay ministers tithes, only in the following manner, viz., potatoes 4s. per acre, wheat and barley 1s. 6d. per acre, oats and meadows 1s. per acre. Roman Catholic clergy to receive for marriages 5s., for baptism 1s. 6d., for confession 6d. You are hereby warned not to pay clerk’s money, or any other dues concerning marriages; be all sure not to go to any expense of your confessing turns, but let them partake of your own fare⁴¹.’

Nor did the Whiteboys at this time confine themselves to regulating the dues to be paid to their own clergy; but they also, in many cases, attacked their persons. It is distinctly stated, more than once, by Mr. Hely Hutchinson, the Secretary of State, in the debate on the Bill for the Protection of the Protestant Clergy, that the Roman Catholic clergy had likewise suffered from the violence of the Whiteboys⁴². Several instances of the maltreatment of priests by the rioters are mentioned by Mr. O’Leary.

‘Was not a Father Burke (he says) obliged to quit his parish the same day that Archdeacon Tisdal quitted his? Were not balls fired at one Father Sheehy? Were not two clergymen, one a secular and the other a regular, robbed the same night of their wearing apparel? Another parish priest, a venerable old man, who was never charged with any extortions, and who, in my own presence, challenged his congregation to bring forward any charge against him, was robbed of what little he had to support him in his old age, even of his very bed. Another, on suspicion of having brought the army to his congregation to prevent the deluded people from swearing, was on the point of being torn limb from limb at his altar, had not a gentleman stepped forward and said, that he himself was the gentleman who had applied to the magistrate for that purpose. The gentleman himself narrowly escaped with his life, through the interposition of the Vicar-general, who had the presence of mind to step, with the crucifix in his hand, between the gentleman and the enraged multitude, crying out to them with a loud voice, “I conjure you, in the name of that God whose image I hold, not to pollute his altar with murder⁴³.”’

The hostility thus shown towards the priests by the Whiteboys was partly earned by their collection of dues, and partly by the activity which, from the beginning, they showed as a body in opposing the Whiteboy combinations.

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne issued a circular letter to his clergy, dated March, 1762, earnestly requiring them to use all their influence as pastors, and to proceed with spiritual censures against the disturbers. An extract from this document will show the danger to which the priests exposed themselves in performing this thankless service in behalf of a hostile government.

‘As to my order (the bishop says) concerning the general exhortation relative to those disturbances, I have sufficient testimony of its having been executed in accordance to directions. But for the censures, the said frontier parish priests sent me a remonstrance, desiring they may be excused and dispensed from issuing any menaces of spiritual penalties, until such time as the clergy of the neighbouring dioceses should have proceeded to act in like manner, alleging for their excuse, that as they had been assured, and as it really appeared from all circumstances, the different bands of those nocturnal rioters were all entirely composed of the loose and desperate sort of people, of different professions and communions, who showed as little regard to religion as to morals; they apprehended immediate danger with regard to the safety of their persons, if they made themselves singular in proceeding to censures against a multitude of dissolute night-walkers, who had already given so many terrifying proofs of their rash dispositions, as well as of their disregard to all laws, and contempt of all characters⁴⁴.’

Dr. Troy, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ossory, likewise caused an excommunication of the Whiteboys to be read in all the chapels of his diocese in 1779; and five years later he circulated a pastoral letter against the Whiteboys, for which he received the formal thanks of the Lord Lieutenant, conveyed to him in a letter from the secretary⁴⁵. It is stated in the Annual Register that, near the beginning of November, 1775, the Whiteboys, in a visit they paid to Johnstown, in the county of Kildare, ‘besides breaking the windows of the inhabitants, and other similar outrages, buried a priest to the neck, first inclosing him naked in brambles and thorns, and threatened the like usage to every priest they could lay hands on, on account of their endeavours to dissuade them from these wicked practices⁴⁶.’

In a petition intended to have been presented on behalf of the Irish Catholics, in 1787, when the clause for demolishing their chapels⁴⁷ was to be debated, it is alleged,―‘That in the suppression of the disturbances which happened of late in the South of Ireland, the Catholic nobility and gentry, their prelates and inferior clergy, have been most active. That during these disturbances their chapels have been nailed up, their pastors abused and forced from their parishes, and no distinction made in the paroxysm of popular frenzy⁴⁸.’

So great indeed was the alienation between the priests and their flocks, produced by the conduct of the former in opposing themselves to the rioters, that a Roman Catholic clergyman, who furnished Mr. Newenham with an interesting account of the state of his church in Ireland, considers that the influence of the priesthood over the people, which for some years had been waning, was finally extinguished by the Whiteboy disturbances in 1786⁴⁹; the very moment when opposition to tithes was at its height. The first effective resistance to the Whiteboys of Kilkenny appears to have been made by the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Ballyragget, who formed and armed association, and drove away with considerable loss, a large body of Whiteboys who attacked a house in the town⁵⁰.

Upon the whole it is evident, from the conduct both of the Catholic gentry and clergy, and of the Whiteboys themselves, that the Munster disturbances at the end of the last century were wholly devoid of any religious character, and that, although they were carried on by Catholics, they were not intended to serve the cause of Catholicism: in which respect (as will be shown hereafter) they agree with the Whiteboy disturbances of later times.

A few years after the first rising of the Catholic peasantry of the south, there occurred a disturbance among the Protestant peasants of the north, though wholly unconnected with it, and springing from local causes. It seems that the disturbances of the labour which each housekeeper was bound to contribute to the repair of roads was abused by the landowners; that the rich had been exempted, and that the work done had been bestowed on roads more beneficial to individuals than to the public.

‘At length (says Dr. Campbell), in the year 1764⁵¹, in the most populous, manufacturing, and consequently civilized, part of the province of Ulster, the inhabitants of one parish refused to make more of what they called job roads. They rose almost to a man, and from the oaken branches which they wore in their hats, were denominated Oakboys. The discontent being as general as the grievance, the contagion seized the neighbouring parishes. From parishes it flew to baronies, and from baronies to counties, till at length the greater part of the province was engaged⁵².’

The first object of these insurgents was to produce a more equal distribution of the burden of maintaining the roads; the second, to deprive the clergy of a portion of their tithe; the third, to regulate the price of land, especially of peat-bogs⁵³.

‘The appeared (says Hardy, in his Life of Lord Charlemont) in bodies of four or five hundred, headed, it is said, by farmers of respectable property. According to the ancient practice of all insurgents in Ireland, they obliged such obnoxious persons, clergy or laity, as fell into their hands, to swear that the former should not levy more than a certain proportion of tithe; and the latter, that they would not assess the county at more than a stipulated rate. … It is to be observed, that though they talked much, though they insulted several gentlemen, erected gallowses, and menaces ineffable perdition to all their enemies, no violent cruelty was exercised, as Lord Charlemont said, nor was a single life lost, or any person maimed, in the county of Armagh; a species of conduct totally opposite to that of the southern insurgents, but which his Lordship ascribed, not to any diversity of religion, but to the oppression under which the unfortunate creatures in the south laboured. “A rebellion of saves (continued he) is always more bloody than an insurrection of freemen.”’

This Oakboy disturbance was easily quelled by the King’s troops, in five or six weeks after its commencement, and with the loss of only two or three lives. In the following session the law with regard to roads was altered, and with the cause of the discontent all disturbances was removed.

About eight years afterward, the neighbouring counties of Antrim and Down were the theatre of a disturbance closely resembling in its origin and character the Whiteboy risings in the south, already described.

‘In the government of Lord Townshend, (says Mr. Gordon, in his History of Ireland,) a part of Ulster began to be disturbed by an insurrection which, originating from a local cause, yet a severe grievance, was much less extensive, but vastly more bloody and of longer duration, than that of the Hearts of Oak. An estate in the county of Antrim, a part of the vast possessions of an absentee nobleman, the Marquis of Donegal, was proposed, when its leases had expired, to be let only to those who could pay large fines; and the agent of the Marquis was said to have exacted extravagant fees on his own account also. Numbers of the former tenants, neither able to pay the fines nor the rents demanded by those who, on payment of fines and fees, took leases over them, were dispossessed of their tenements, and left without means of subsistence. Rendered thus desperate, they maimed the cattle of those who had taken their lands, committed other outrages, and, to express a firmness of resolution, called themselves Hearts of Steel. To rescue one of the number, confined on a charge of felony in Belfast, some thousands of peasants, who neither before nor after took any part in the insurrection, marched with the Steelmen into the town, and received the prisoner from the military guard; the officers of which were fortunately persuaded by a respectable physician to his liberation, to prevent the ruinous consequences of a desperate battle.

‘The association of the Steelmen extended into the neighbouring counties, augmented by distressed or discontented peasants, who were not affected immediately by the original grievance. By the exertions of the military some were taken, and tried at Carrickfergus. As they were acquitted from the supposed partiality of the witnesses and jury, an Act of Parliament was passed in March, 1772, ordering their trials to be held in counties different from those in which their offences were committed. Some, in consequence, were carried to Dublin, but were there acquitted, from prejudices entertained against a law so unconstitutional. In the December of 1773, in the administration of Lord Harcourt, the obnoxious Act was repealed. From a sense of the evil consequences of disorder, insurgents tried in their respective counties were now condemned and executed. The insurrection was totally quelled, but its effects were long baneful. So great and wide was the discontent, that many thousands of Protestants emigrated from those parts of Ulster to the American settlements, where they soon appeared in arms against the British Government, and contributed powerfully, by their zeal and valour, to the separation of the American colonies from the empire of Great Britain⁵⁴.’

About the year 1785 the north was again disquieted by tumults arising from religious and political animosity, and not from any local grievance. The Protestant party began by visiting the houses of Catholics, in order to search for arms; and, from the time when these visits were made, they derived their name of Peep or Break-of-day-Boys⁵⁵. They did not, however, confine themselves simply to searching for arms, but attacked the houses and chapels of the Catholics, sometimes burning the building, and sometimes destroying all the furniture and property contained in it⁵⁶. The Catholics, on the other hand, organized themselves under the name of Defenders, and during a series of years many violent conflicts took place between the two parties, who were sometimes engaged to the extent even of thousands of armed men. The combats of these factions began in the county of Armagh, whence they spread to the neighbouring districts. The Peep-of-day-Boys, in 1795, or soon afterwards, changed their appellation, and were called Orange Boys, or Orange Men⁵⁷. The Defenders having originally been (as their name purported) a defensive, soon became an aggressive body; they extended their ramifications to counties where there were no strong bodies of Protestants to alarm them, and in many cases they became mere gangs of robbers, breaking into and plundering houses, and committing other outrages⁵⁸. The Secret Committee of the Lords, in 1793, reported that the Defenders of that time ‘were all, as far as the committee could discover, of the Roman Catholic persuasion; in general, poor, ignorant, labouring men, sworn to secrecy, and impressed with an opinion that they were assisting the Catholic cause; in other respects, they did not appear to have any distinct object in view, but they talked of being relieved from hearth-money, tithes, county-cesses, and of lowering their rents⁵⁹.’

At length the Defenders were partially dissolved, and partly absorbed into the body of United Irishmen⁶⁰, till they were finally lost in the more important movements which gave rise to the rebellion of 1798; since which time their society has been revived under the name of Ribbonmen.

This rebellion (as is well known) was originally organized by Presbyterians in Belfast, and sprang from a sympathy with the French Revolution; the object of its original promoters being to make Ireland, with the assistance of France, an independent republic. When it spread to the south-eastern counties, being an insurrection of the rest of the community against the governing class, it necessarily assumed the character of a war of Catholics against Protestants⁶¹; which alarmed the Presbyterians of the north, and deterred them from further participation in the rebellion of which they themselves had been the originators. As this movement was purely of a political nature,―a rising intended to be general, and to produce a total change in the form of government, it has no connexion with the class of disturbances of which it proposed to give an account in the present work⁶².

By the Union, carried in 1800, it was intended that a more equal system of government should be introduced into Ireland; by which the motives for resistance to the English influence would be weakened. The policy of its authors, though tardily and imperfectly followed, was at length adopted under the pressure of necessity; and the plan of administration pursued since the Union has at least prevented the existence of such wide-spreading discontent and disaffection as prevailed in Ireland at the end of the last century.

The Union, however, only affected the surface of the Irish community; the under-current of society still flowed in their former directions. To the peer or land-holder, who lost his place in parliament; to the barrister, who found his profession inconsistent with a seat in an English House of Commons; to the various persons who were concerned in the management of parliamentary majorities, the distribution of places, and the exercise of ministerial influence; the loss of (what was termed) national independence must have produced a mighty change; but to the Munster of Connaught peasant, who still was forced to pay rent and tithe, to the same persons, at the same rates, and under the same laws, the change was only nominal, and scarcely had more influence on his condition than the contemporaneous transfer of the French sovereignty from the Directory to the First Consul. Accordingly we find that the local troubles arising from the misery of the peasantry proceeded without interruption, and have continued to the present day.

The first disturbance in Ireland after the Union, not of a political nature, was that of the Thrashers, in 1806. At this time, ‘the entie province of Connaught, with the exception of one county, and two counties on the north-west circuit (Longford and Cavan), were overrun by insurgents so formidable, that the king’s judges upon a special commission could not move through the country, except under a military escort; so formidable, that the sentence of the law could not be executed in one particular county town till a general officer had marched from a distant quarter, at the head of a strong force, to support the civil power⁶³.’

The Thrashers of Connaught, like the Whiteboys of Munster in 1786, appear to have had two principal objects in view, the regulation of the parson’s tithe, and of the priest’s dues⁶⁴. The purposes of these insurgents and their proceedings are thus described by the Attorney-General in his opening speech at Sligo:―

‘These persons have discovered that the existing laws are not to their mind; they have found out that there are errors in the state and in the church, and they have conceived that they are the proper persons to undertake the task of reforming them. But not satisfied with infringing the law in their own persons individually, they become associated for the purpose of saying that no person in the community shall dare to obey the law. So that the first act of those who profess to interfere upon principles of liberty, is to exercise compulsion over the consciences of others, and to say that no man shall presume to form an opinion for himself, nor act upon it, unless it meet the approbation of these self-created reformers. The pretext upon which these illegal confederacies is framed is a repugnance to the payments in support of the legal establishment of the church of the country, and also of the fees which have been usually paid, without any law to enforce them, to the clergymen of the Catholic persuasion. The mode taken to accomplish this object has been by assembling themselves at night in disguise, sometimes with arms, going to the houses of such persons as refuse to associate themselves in their body, and, if necessary for their purpose, breaking open the houses of those persons, and robbing them of their property; inflicting torture upon those who become objects of their enmity; and, if necessary for the final completion of their designs, if any person be honest or bold enough to give information against them, the business which began in lawless combination is consummated by murder⁶⁵.’

‘The first object of the association (says Mr. Dennis Browne, at Castlebar) was the reduction of tithes and priests’ dues; when it travelled into this part (Mayo), it assumed that and also another shape, that of attacking the wages of weavers and other artificers, and latterly famers. In different stages of its progress it professed different objects; all kinds of payments, whether of tithes, industry, labour, or farming; assemblies of people collected in disguise, and wearing badges and armed, appeared in different parts of the country. It showed itself in posting up written notices exciting people to rebellion under various different pretences. When I took steps in different parts to stop the consequence of these notices by tearing them down and offering rewards, they adopted another mode of exciting disturbances, by delivering messages in the chapels, threatening the priests, and calling upon the congregations, that if they did not lower their dues, avoid the payment of tithes, and alter the wages of labourers, the Threshers would visit them, and that the priests might have their coffins prepared, and that the flesh would be torn off their bones; which messages have had more effect than any mode which was before resorted to⁶⁶.’

An instance of the delivery of one of these messages occurs in a trial at Castlebar. One witness states that―

‘He went to mass, and after Mr. Nolan came out to shake the holy water among the people there assembled, the prisoner said to the priest, that he was sworn to come to him, and told him that he should marry persons for half-a-guinea, baptize for nineteen-pence halfpenny, read mass for thirteen-pence, and at any house to which he came to confession, if he got hay and oats for his horse, to take it, but if not, to go away on pain of suffering for it.’

Another witness gives a similar account:―

‘When the prayers were over at mass, and the priest was shaking the holy water, the prisoner said he was sent with a message against his will to the priest. He said he was ordered to tell him not to charge more than half-a-guinea for marriage, thirteen-pence for mass, and nineteen-pence halfpenny for christening. He said he should lower his fees, and sinking his voice, said “if not, to have his coffin convenient⁶⁷.”’

Mr. Serjeant Moore gives the following description of the confederacy of the Thrashers in the county of Longford, in his first speech on behalf of the Crown.

‘Gentlemen, it seems to me that its general character is that of an association, certainly of very wicked and evil-designing persons, but not of any rank or influence in the community; and, what must be a consolation to the mind of every good subject, not, as I conceive, partaking of any political complexion, or confined to any particular party or persuasion of people. Their professed object is that of regulating the payment of tithes, and certain dues customarily taken by the clergymen of the Roman Catholic persuasion, and the rates and prices of manual and manufacturing labour. These appear, at least, to be their professed objects; and the great instruments by which they seek to attain their ends seem to me to be alternate terror and delusion, hope and fear, vain and wicked promises, daring and atrocious threats, amplified and false reports of the numbers, and strength, and success of the association, of the benefits which they profess to achieve, and of the grievances which they pretend to redress⁶⁸.’

In the year which followed the disturbances of the Thrashers, the Insurrection Act, first passed in 1796, during the tumults of the Defenders, was renewed. The system of Whiteboy outrage and intimidation continued nevertheless still to prevail among the peasantry of the centre and south, and it broke out into open violence at various intervals.

‘In 1807 the county of Limerick was alarmingly disturbed. In 1811 and 1812 the counties of Tipperary, Waterford, Kilkenny, Limerick, Westmeath, Roscommon, and King’s County, became the theatre of the same sanguinary tumults. In 1815 a great part of the county of Tipperary, considerable portions of the King’s County, and county of Westmeath, and the whole of that of Limerick, were placed under the Insurrection Act.

‘The counties of Limerick and Tipperary, however, continued in a dreadful state, and they remained under the Insurrection Act until that Act, after a temporary renewal in 1817, finally expired in 1818.

‘In 1817 part of the county of Louth was subjected to the Insurrection Act.

‘In 1820 came the disturbance in the county of Galway; and in 1821, the actual deplorable outrages in that of Limerick⁶⁹.’

Since the troubles here alluded to (which originating in the Courtenay estate in the county of Limerick, spread over that and other adjoining counties, and lasted for several years), there have been the disturbances of the Terry Alts in the counties of Limerick and Clare, in the spring of 1831; and at a later period, the serious outrages which prevailed chiefly in the county of Kilkenny, and the King’s and Queen’s Counties, and which gave rise to the Coercion Act passed in 1833; renewed, with some alterations, in 1834, and finally reduced to a milder measure in 1835 (5 and 6 Wm. IV., c. 48).

1 The feeling so long and so ardently entertained by the Jacobites of Scotland in favour of the family of their former princes, did not prevail in Ireland to anything like an equal extent, notwithstanding the large numbers of Catholics in the latter country. ‘As to the Pretender (says Swift, in his 7th Drapier’s Letter, written soon after 1724) his cause is both desperate and obsolete. There are very few now alive who were men in his father’s time, and in that prince’s interest; and in all others the obligation of conscience has no place. Even the papists in general, of any substance or estate and their priests, almost universally are what we call Whigs, in the sense which by that word is generally understood.’ Vol. vii. p. 46. ed. Scott.

‘It is notorious (says Plowden, Hist. Review, vol. i. p. 336), that when Murray, the Pretender’s secretary, gave up all the letters and papers relative to the last rebellion in Scotland, a scheme which had been planning and contriving for seven years before, it plainly appeared that the Jacobite party had no dependence upon, or connexion or correspondence with, any Roman Catholic in Ireland; the very name of that kingdom not having been once mentioned throughout the whole correspondence.’

Dr. Campbell, in his Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland, published 1777, speaking of the common people of Athlone, says, ‘Curious to learn their sentiments as well as manners, I have entered into conversation with them as often as possible, and I could not find them so much attached to the house of Stuart as I apprehended. They have frequently spoke of James II. with indignation. He called the Irish cowards, and said that all was lost through their fault at the battle of the Boyne: this they have not forgot, and do not fail to recriminate; they brand him with a name the most opprobrious in their language, and expressive of the most dastardly cowardice. Some of them have said to me, “We expect little good from any of the race of Sheemas-a-caccagh.”’ P. 273. See also Curry’s Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland, vol. ii. p. 252, 260. On the tranquillity of Ireland about the middle of the eighteenth century, see a pamphlet by Dr. Lucas, entitled ‘A short but true History of the Rise, Progress, and happy Suppression of several late Insurrections, commonly called Rebellions, in Ireland.’ Reprinted. Dublin. 1760.

2 It appears, from the accounts which cannot be very wide of the truth, that the number of Catholics in Ireland, in 1733, was less than a million and a half. See Edinburgh Review, No. 124, p. 514. Towards 1790, the population of Ireland was about four millions; of which about three millions were Catholics. London Review, No. 3, p. 230. In 1834 the number of Catholics in Ireland was 6,427,712, as returned by the Commissioners of Public Instruction. It has therefore more than quadrupled itself in a century.

3 By commons is here doubtless meant merely waste land. If there had been a right of commonage over these wastes, and they had not been private property, the landlords  would have been unable to inclose them without the consent of the commoners.

4 Dr. Curry’s State of the Catholics in Ireland, in his Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 271-2, (London, 1786). Dr. Curry was the author of an anonymous pamphlet, published in 1766, entitled, ‘A candid Enquiry into the Causes and Motives of the late Riots in Munster; together with a brief Narrative of the Proceedings against the Rioters, in a Letter to a Noble Lord in England,’ which he in part repeats in the extract given in the text. See the Preface to his Review, p. iv. and for the high opinion of this tract entertained by impartial persons, see O’Conor’s History of the Irish Catholics, Part I., p. 318-9.

5 This statement occurs in the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xxxii., in ‘A succinct Account of a Set of Miscreants in the Counties of Waterford, Cork, Limerick, called Bougheleen Bawins (i. e. White Boys). Being an Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman residing in Youghall to his Son in London.’ The following is a further extract from this authentic account of the proceedings of the early Whiteboys:—

‘Their first rise was in October last [1761], and they have ever since been increasing: they then, and all along, pretended that their assembling was to do justice to the poor, by restoring the ancient commons and redressing other grievances; for which purpose they always assemble in the night with their shirts over their clothes, which caused them to be called White Boys. Their number in the county of Waterford is computed at 600 or 700. They have done infinite damage in the county, levelling ditches and stone-walls, rooting up orchards, &c. On the 11th ult. [March, 1762], I saw several ditches they had levelled, part of an orchard destroyed, and two graves they had dug on the road between Clonmel and Cappoquin; the graves were to hold those that did not comply with their orders. Some time before this, they came by night into the town (a large village) of Cappoquin, where is a horse-barrack, drew up in the green near the barrack, fired several shots, marched by the sentry with their piper, playing the Lad with the White Cockade. The 13^th, I saw a bier near Affance Church, which they had carried [caused?] two days before to be made, to carry people alive, and bury them in those graves. An esquire at Cappoquin, when a bachelor, agreed with a peasant for the use of his daughter, for which he passed the peasant his bond for 100l.; but on the esquire’s entering the matrimonial state, he was compelled to take up his bond. They wrote to the peasant to refund the money, upon pain of having his tongue drawn through his under-jaw, and fastened with a skewer. On the 14th they assembled at Lismore (between Cappoquin and Tallow), posted advertisement on the door of the post-office, requiring the inhabitants to have their houses illuminated, and under a certain number of horses bridled and saddled, ready for them to mount against next night; which was complied with. On the night of the 10th they mounted, went to Tallow Bridge (near Tallow), where they levelled the ditches of several find parks, and cut down a number of full-grown ash-trees (knee high); they then proceeded to Tallow; the horse marched to the West Bridge, where the commander called out, Halt, to the right about, and then proceeded into the market-place in a smart trot. They broke upon Marshalsea, discharged the debtors; sent an advertisement to the justice, to lower the price of provisions one-half; which he tamely complied with, though a troop and a half of dragoons were quartered very near him. On the 22nd they came to the Ferry-point opposite his town, levelled the ditches of a small park opposite the back-window of my parlour, and a musket-shot off the town; they made a large fire, dug a grave, and erected a gallows over it, fired several shots, and at each discharge huzza’d; and sent several audacious letters to the inhabitants of this town, threatening to pull down several houses, particularly a handsome house at a small distance, which they said was built upon the waste. … The 29th, the ditches of Tirkelling and Ballydaniel, near Tallow, were levelled: 500 men in a day could not repair the damage.’—Pp. 182-3.

6 O’Conor’s History of the Irish Catholics, part I. pp. 287-8. On the extent of pasturage in Ireland during the last century, see Newenham’s Inquiry into the Population of Ireland, pp. 44-57.

7 Page 75.—Arthur Young may be considered as an original authority on this subject, inasmuch as he travelled in the South of Ireland in 1776, and collected his information on the spot.

8 Plowden, Hist. Review, vol. i. p. 337, states that the early Whiteboys called these monopolizers land pirates. Land shark is a word now used with a similar sense in Ireland.

9 The number of those who emigrated was probably very inconsiderable. The Catholic peasantry of the South were too poor to raise the means of emigrating to America. The Protestant peasantry of the North were better able to emigrate, as will appear lower down, in the account of the Steelboys.

10 History of Ireland, in a series of Letters addressed to Wm. Hamilton, Esq., by Wm. Crawford, A.M., one of the Chaplains of the First Tyrone Regiment (Dedicated to Lord Charlemont). Strabane, 1783. vol. ii. p. 317-8.

11 See the beginning of Hume’s 35th chapter, and Campbell’s Phil. Survey of Ireland, p. 294-7. The conspiring to put down all inclosures was ruled to be high treason in Burton’s case, 39 Eliz. See 1 Hale’s P.C. 132, 153.

12 This is stated by Crawford, vol. ii. p. 318. The Whiteboys of 1762 destroyed bullocks with the same view that the Terry Alts of 1832 turned up grass land, viz., in order that the ground being under tillage might be let at a cheaper rate for setting potatoes.

13 15 & 16 Geo. III., c. 21.

14 Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xxxii, p. 182, quoted above, p. 5.

15 Musgrave’s Rebellions in Ireland, Appendix I., 8. Crawford, vol. ii., p. 241, states that the Whiteboys placed men quite naked on horseback, on saddles covered with the skins of hedgehogs.

16 P. 75-6.

17 Annual Register for 1762, p. 84.

18 Crawford’s Hist. of Ireland, vol. ii., p. 318.

19 Curry’s Review, vol. ii., 275.

20 O’Leary, in his answer to Bishop Woodward’s pamphlet (London, 1787,) p. 20, states that Bridge was reported to have been afterward alive in Newfoundland. Sheehy’s innocence is confirmed by Dr. Campbell’s opinion, Phil. Survey, p. 298. Dr. Thomas Campbell was a great admirer of Johnson, and he is mentioned by Boswell as being the author of this work, which he published anonymously. He was also the author of ‘Strictures on the Ecclesiastical and Literary History of Ireland,’ in the title-page of which book he is called Chancellor of St. Macartins, Clogher.

21 Ib. p. 282-3.

22 Crawford, vol. ii. 318.

23 The first rising of the Whiteboys is stated by the author of the letter in the Gentlemen’s Magazine, from Youghal, (himself in the midst of the disturbed district, and an eye-witness of their proceedings,) to have taken place in October 1761. (See above p. 5) The lord-lieutenant’s speech at the opening of the session, delivered on 22nd October, 1761, speaks of ‘the peaceable demeanour of the papists in this kingdom,’ and hopes that nothing may interrupt ‘that tranquillity which is desirable at all, times, and at this season is particularly necessary to your welfare,’ without any allusion to recent disturbances. (7th Irish Com. Journals, p. 13.) But the lord-lieutenant, in his speech at the close of the session (30th April, 1762), alludes to recent tumults and riots of the lower sort of people in some distant quarters, which he hopes are wholly suppressed (ib. 173). It is clear, therefore, that the first Whiteboy risings took place between October 1761 and April 1762. Sir R. Musgrave, however, in his History of the Rebellions in Ireland, (p. 32,) places the first Whiteboy disturbances in 1759; which appears to be an intentional misrepresentation in order to make their rising coincide in time with Conflan’s intended expedition, with which he states it was connected, and which falls in that year.

24 In point of fact, the first Whiteboy rising did not occur till October, 1761. See the last note.

25 Sir R. Musgrave, in his History of Rebellions in Ireland, p. 33, states that he was informed by the Marquis of Drogheda, who was sent with his regiment in 1762 to command a large district in Munster, that French money was found in the pockets of some of the Whiteboys killed by his soldiers in the county of Tipperary. If Lord Drogheda’s informants were not mistaken, or if he was not deceived by them, it may be conjectured that some of the Irish soldiers in the French service may have brought some French money to Ireland after the peace of 1760.

26 Such appears to have been the case with the persons whose depositions are given in Sir R. Musgrave’s Appendix I. 1—7.

27 Tour in Ireland, p. 75. See also Hardy’s Life of Charlemont, vol. i., p. 171; Campbell’s Phil. Survey of Ireland, p. 298; and Gordon’s History of Ireland, vol. ii., p. 241. There seems in general to be a strong disposition to give credit, on insufficient grounds, to stories about the connexion of civil dissentions with foreign money and foreign agents. Thus, even in French writers of fair authority, we find the notions about the disturbances in the French Revolution being fomented by English agents, and ‘l’or de Pitt,’ repeated as if there was some foundation for them beyond the idle rumour of the day.

28 O’Conor’s Hist. of the Irish Catholics. Part I., pp. 285, 300, 311.

29 Ann. Regist. 1775, p. 170.

30 A pastoral letter of Dr. Troy, Roman Catholic Bishop of Ossory, against the Whiteboys, in Plowden’s Hist. Review, vol. ii., part 2, App. No. 74, p. 51-2, is dated Kilkenny, 12 Nov. 1784m and mentions a previous excommunication of the Whiteboys, dated 17th October, 1779, and read in all the chapels of the diocese. Outrages of Whiteboys in the county of Kilkenny, are mentioned in 1775. Ann. Reg., p. 92. Rightboys near Bandon occur in February, 1794: Plowden, vol. ii., part I, p. 460.

31 On this point see O’Leary’s Defence, p. 57.

32 Irish Debates, vol. vii. p. 57-9.

33 Review, vol. ii. p. 272. A similar statement is made by Dr. Campbell:―‘In order to divert their [i.e. the Whiteboys] attention from themselves, it became the policy of the landlord and grazier to cherish or at least connive at, the spirit of curtailing the church of its pittance.’ Philosophical Survey of Ireland, p. 305. This work was published in 1777; the Rightboy disturbances did not begin till 1785 or 6.

34 Irish Debates, vol. vii. p. 61.

35 Ib. p. 24. The following account of the origin of the Whiteboys in Kilkenny is given by Mr. Mason, in a debate in 1786:―‘The Whiteboys in that county first began with opposing tithes; no person gave himself any trouble about them. They then proceeded to prevent the payment of rents, and for years a landlord could not distrain a tenant in that county, or set his lands but according to the will of the Whiteboys. At last, unused to opposition, they broke into the house of a gentleman, and murdered him. People then saw the danger; they thought it approached too near; they roused and exerted themselves, and the Whiteboys were suppressed.’ Debates, vol. vi. p. 444.

36 Present State of the Church of Ireland, p. 79. Similar statements are made in a pamphlet on the same side of the question, published in 1787, entitle ‘Advice to the Protestant Clergy of Ireland, &c. By a Layman of the Church of England.’

37 Present State of the Church of Ireland, pp. 82-5. Grattan, in moving for a Committee to inquire into the state of tithes, in February 14, 1788, says,―‘The most sanguinary laws on your statute books are tithe bills; the Whiteboy act is a tithe bill; the riot act a tithe bill.’ Speeches, vol. ii. p. 49. It is probably in allusion to the circumstances of this period that Dr. Doyle, in his evidence before the House of Commons’ Committee on Irish tithes, states that ‘it is universally admitted that the first object of the Whiteboys was to dissolve the tithe system,’―a statement by no means true in a general sense. (Qu. 3044).

38 Irish Debates, vol. vi. p. 400. In a debate on this bill, Lord Luttrell tells the following story: ‘A friend of mine, a few days since, after riding through Urlingford early in the morning, overtook, beyond that town, a person, who proved to be a clergyman, riding seemingly in pain, with his head muffled to a monstrous size, and bound over with a napkin. My friend addressed him, being a very compassionate man, and inquired what was the matter. Ah! Sir, said he, did you see, as you rode through that town, two ears and a cheek nailed to a post? I did; said my friend. They were mine, the clergyman replied.’ P. 432. This story is not told as a jest: it is afterwards seriously alluded to by the Secretary, Mr. Hely Hutchinson, who applies to the clergyman the lines of Virgil―

―populataque tempora raptis,
Auribus, et truncas inhonesto vulnere nares.

39 Irish Debates, vol. vi. p. 435.

40 Irish Debates, vol. vii. p. 63. The following statement of the condition of the Irish peasantry of this period occurs in a tract entitled ‘A Congratulatory Address of his Majesty from the Peasantry of Ireland, vulgarly denominated White Boys, or Right Boys.’ Dublin, 1786, p. 17.

‘The rates paid by the cottagers in Ireland, particularly in the southern and western counties, for rents, dues, &c., will surprise the reader; they must appear almost improbable. The following statement was made on an average amongst several thousands of these people.’

41 O’Leary’s Defence, p. 147. The clerk-money mentioned in this notice is the money paid for the priest’s clerk. The confessing turns are what are now called stations. Another table of this kind was promulgated in a paper signed ‘Wm. O’Driscol, Secretary-General to the Munster Peasantry,’ dated 1st July, 1786―

‘Resolved,―That the fickleness of the multitude makes it necessary for all and each of us to swear voluntarily not to pay priest or proctor more than as follows:―

See Address to the Nobility and Gentry of the Church of Ireland on the Commotions in the South respecting tithes. By a Layman. [Dr. Duigenan ?] Dublin, 1786, p. 112.

42 ‘The Roman Catholic clergy had been treated with the utmost cruelty by the same insurgents and rioters that had insulted and injured many of the Protestant clergy.’ Irish Debates, vol. vi., 409. In answer to an objection of Lord Luttrell’s he says:―‘Had he attended an examination where I was present he would have seen it clearly proved, by clergymen of undoubted veracity, that the parishioners are in fault, and that their anger is not against the Protestant clergy only, but the Romish clergy also have fallen under their displeasure.’ Ib. p. 430. ‘He (the Secretary of State) observed that those disturbances did not proceed from religious prejudices, and that the Roman Catholic clergy had been equally ill-treated by those.’ Ib. p. 445.

43 O’Leary’s Defence, p, 43. Newenham (View of Ireland, p. 261) gives an incorrect statement of the contents of the pamphlet published in 1787 by Dr. Butler, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Cashel, in answer to Bishop Woodward. It contains no ‘account of the indignities and atrocities which the insurgents practised on the clergy of his communion,’ but consists only of theological remarks, in a few pages.

44 O’Conor’s History of the Irish Catholics, part i. app. no. ix. p. xxvi-ix.

45 Plowden’s Historical Review, vol. ii. part  i. p. 107, and see above p. 16, note.

46 Annual Register for 1775, p. 170.

47 See Plowden’s Historical Review, vol. ii. part i. p. 162.

48 O’Leary’s Defence, p. 172.

49 Extract of a letter from a Roman Catholic clergyman, of the diocese of Cork, to Mr. Newenham, dated 12th June, 1806:―

‘The influence which the clergy formerly possessed over their flocks, and which was for a long series of years proverbial, was considerably diminished by the relaxation of the popery laws; it thenceforward continued gradually to decline, and received the coup de grace by the Whiteboy disturbances in 1786. At that period, not only all former influence was lost, but even that confidence in their clergy, without which all their exertions must prove abortive, ceased in a great measure to exist among the people. Nor was it till the rebellion [of 1798] and its consequent irritations and antipathies opened their eyes, that this confidence began again to revive. The people then perceived that their priests were, in common with themselves, objects of persecution to one party, and of disregard and derision to the other; and that, though some of them had been unfortunately implicated, and some few deeply engaged, in the rebellion, all were accused or suspected, and all condemned, by party enthusiasm, to one general comprehensive indiscriminate execration.’ Newenham’s View of Ireland, App. p. 41.

50 A. Young’s Tour in Ireland, p. 77. Annual Register for 1775, p. 92. The attack was made on 21st January, 1775.

51 Hardy, in his Life of Lord Charlemont, p. 94 quarto ed., gives 1763 as the year of the rising of the Oakboys. The same date is given by Gordon, History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 242.

52 Phil. Survey of Ireland, p. 309.

53 Ibid. p. 310. ‘The exactions of the clergy in their collection of tithes, and still more the heavy taxes on the country, and the making and repairing of roads, were, according to Lord Charlemont, the principal causes of these disturbances.’ Hardy, p. 74.

54 Gordon’s History of Ireland, vol. ii. 250, 251. ‘The rising of the Steelboys was owing, as they said, to the increase of rents, and complaints of general oppression; but Mr. Waring remarked that the pardons which were granted to the Oakboys, a few years before, were principally the cause of those new disturbances.’ Warrenstown, Co. Down. A Young’s Tour in Ireland, p. 112: and see Campbell’s Phil. Survey, p. 311, and Crawford’s History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 323-6.

55 Plowden’s Historical Review, vol. ii. part i. p. 200, and see Gordon’s History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 334.

56 The destruction of all the moveables and furniture in a house was termed ‘wrecking.’ See the evidence of Mr. James Christie, a quaker, who lived in the county of Down at the end of the last century, before the Commons’ Committee on Orange Lodges in 1835, Nos. 5567-9. ‘There is one thing I should just mention (Mr. Christie says), that, at the time when the wrecking of the Catholic chapels took place in my neighbourhood, it was observed by myself and many others, that while it was lying uncovered, the Catholics, no matter how severe the weather, attended more attentively to their duty during that time than was observable when they had a good house to go into; and in my opinion the old adage was fully verified, that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church;” persecute a man for his religion and it will make him more strongly riveted to it. I passed by the chapels in the winter time, when they had to kneel down in the snow, six inches deep, and I really pitied them; and it was remarked by myself, and by others, that they were more attentive in attending their places of worship after the chapel was burnt than previously, when the chapel was in good order.’ No. 5707.

57 Plowden, Hist. Rev. p. 536, and see Christie, Evidence on Orange Lodges, No. 5575.

58 Plowden, ibid. pp. 437, 460, 537.

59 Plowden, ibid. p. 389.

60 Plowden, p. 570. Several particulars respecting the outrages committed by these Protestant and Catholic parties at the end of the last century will be found in the evidence taken by the Committee on Orange Lodges in last session.

61 See Lord Kingston’s evidence before the Lord’s Committee on the state of Ireland, 1825, p. 428; and Mr. O’Connell’s before the Commons’ Committee, p. 73.

62 The following extract from Mr. O’Driscol’s Views of Ireland is curious as showing that, in joining in the rebellion, the Irish peasant did not look beyond the alpha and omega of his grievances―land.

‘The Irish peasantry received slowly and imperfectly the ideas which were attempted with so much pains to be impressed upon them. They understood nothing of theories of government. The word liberty, which was in every one’s mouth, imported nothing with them but freedom from the old annoyance of tithes and taxes. It was no more than the old system of Whiteboyism, in which they were surprised to find themselves joined by numbers of the higher ranks of society, and multitudes of the middle classes. They had been used to confederations of their own class; and, as in all cases of accession of allies, they soon began to extend their views beyond the old grievances of tithes and heavy assessments to the grievance of rent. Those who had land expected to hold it discharged of this as well as other incumbrances; those who had none, hoped to procure some on the like terms.

‘But in the midst of these imaginations they never put off in idea their allegiance to the throne; and their leaders found it necessary to amuse them with a show of respect for kingly authority. This, too, was according to the usual process of Whiteboyism; which in all its violence never was used to contemplate more than a redress of real and almost intolerable oppressions. Upon this occasion, stretching itself far as it did beyond its accustomed range, surrounded by temptations, and irritated with the difficulties and hazards of its enterprise, yet it failed not to respect the throne of the monarch.’―Vol. ii. p. 205.

63 Chief Justice Bushe on the Maryborough Special Commission, p.10.

64 See above, p. 28.

65 Report of Proceedings under a Special Commission in the Counties of Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, Longford, and Cavan, in December, 1806, by W. Ridgway, Barrister-at-Law, p. 9.

66 Report of Proceedings, p. 134.

67 Ibid. pp. 136―143.

68 Report of Proceedings, p. 275.

69 Mr. Charles Grant’s speech, 22nd April, 1822, on Sir John Newport’s motion on the state of Ireland, pp. 6 and 7.