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accustomed to contrast its pretended oath with that of the United Irishman, which bound him only to endeavour to form a brotherhood of affection among Irishmen of every religious persuasion; to labour for the attainment of an equal, full, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland in Parliament; and never, either directly or indirectly, to inform or give evidence against any member of the society. This was probably their most successful mode of propagandism, and the panic which it created had, as we shall see, a great part in producing the horrors that followed. It is, however, a curious fact, that the fear of the Orangemen appears to have been most operative upon populations who came in no direct contact with them. The worst scenes of the insurrection were in Wexford, where the Society had never penetrated; while in Ulster, and in Connaught, which was full of fugitives from Ulster, the rebellion assumed a far milder form.

In the beginning of 1797, the United Ireland movement was powerful in Dublin, and had overspread all or the greater part of Ulster, but beyond these limits it had probably no considerable influence, except in the counties of Westmeath and Meath, where it entered in the wake of Defenderism. In the first months of the year, there was a sudden and most ferocious and alarming outburst of Defenderism in the King's County. All the houses over a large area were plundered. The depredators 'put several of the honest inhabitants on the fire, to induce them to deliver up their arms and money.' The house of a Mr. Bagenal was set on fire. The owner and his wife were both murdered, and shots were fired at his children. The magistrates, as early as February 17, petitioned the Lord Lieutenant to proclaim certain portions of the county, but more than two months passed before their request was attended to. In the mean time they succeeded in capturing some fifty prisoners, and in obtaining two witnesses; but when the assizes came, these witnesses were so intimidated, that they denied in the witness box everything they had sworn before the magistrate. Confident in impunity, the outrages now burst out with renewed violence. Every night there were robberies; the robbers brought fire to the farmers' houses, and threatened to put it on the thatches,

See e.g. The Beauties of the Press, pp. 152, 153.

CH. XXVIII.

THE CENTRAL COUNTIES TAINTED.

371

and to treat the owners as they did the Bagenals,' unless they surrendered their money and arms; and they made it a special object to seize the swords and pistols of the yeomanry, who generally lived in small thatched houses. The magistrates wrote, that if this continued, the yeomen would soon be totally disarmed, and therefore useless; that it was hopeless attempting to get evidence; that great numbers of the peasantry were being sworn into the organisation; that nothing short of the proclamation of a portion of the county could stay the evil, and that there were already signs that it was spreading to the adjoining county of Kildare. One serious check was encountered by the Defenders in the King's County. A large party, after midnight, attacked Castle Carberry near Clonard, the house of a gentleman named Sparks, but they found the owner fully prepared, and after a heavy fire, which lasted for more than an hour, they retired, leaving six of their number dead, and several others badly wounded.1

The circle of contagion was rapidly expanding. A letter written on May 1 by a magistrate of Enniscorthy, in the county of Wexford- the town which was afterwards the centre of the most horrible scenes of the rebellion--described that county as being still 'perfectly quiet and well disposed,' and the writer said that, although he knew of some turbulent and disaffected characters, and had heard of some attempts to administer oaths, he did not believe that a single person had yet been sworn in, though, he added, the neighbouring parts of the counties of Carlow and Kilkenny are by no means so quiet.' Very soon, however, we find seditious papers industriously scattered through this county and through the county of Carlow; and by November, Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Wexford, and Wicklow were all tainted. One Carlow magistrate wrote, that in that county alone there were at least 3,000 United Irishmen, that almost the whole district that lay between the counties of Wicklow, Wexford, and Kilkenny was United,' and that additional troops were urgently required.3 An intercepted letter of a United Irishman

1 John Tyrell (Clonard), April 26; Mr. Everard (near Edenderry), April 26; Mr. Sparks, May 14, 1797. There are several other papers written in May, about the King's County, in the I.S.P.O.

2 Cæsar Colclough (Enniscorthy), May 1, 29; Edward Croker, May 15; Rev. T. Hardwick, May 18; Hon. B. O. Stratford, June 1797.

3 Mr. Rochfort, Nov. 2, 1797.

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boasted that in a single week 26,741 persons had been ‘United' in the counties of Meath, Wicklow, Louth, and Dublin; and predicted that in a little time all the people of Ireland would be of one way of thinking.' In Wexford, Wicklow, and for the most part in Carlow, the spread of disaffection appears at this time to have been unaccompanied by crime; but in Kilkenny, Defender outrages were of frequent occurrence, and in the county of Kildare there was a perfect reign of terror. A man named Nicholson, who had assisted in conducting a prisoner to gaol, had his house burnt; he was afterwards dragged out of a farmer's house and pierced by some fifty pikes; the murderers then returned to the farmhouse and deliberately murdered his wife; and such was the terror that reigned, that it is stated that there would have been no inquest or inquiry of any sort, but for the intervention of a party of soldiers from Kildare. Letter after letter came to the Castle describing the growing anarchy, and imploring the Government to send down fresh troops.2

In Kildare the situation was much aggravated by the strong political opposition of the chief gentry to the Government. In May, the Duke of Leinster and most of the principal magistrates of the county signed a requisition to the High Sheriff, asking him to call a meeting of the magistrates and freeholders; and on his refusal, they resolved to meet without his consent. The meeting was prohibited by the Government, and they then drew up the petition to the King to which I have already alluded, accusing the Ministry of having, by their corruption and system of irritation, produced the disorders of the country, and predicting that, unless reform and Catholic emancipation were speedily granted, the contest must lead to bloodshed and rebellion, and might terminate in a complete alienation of affection from England, and in the separation of Ireland from the Empire.3

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CH. XXVIII.

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KILDARE AND CARLOW.

373

An attorney of no very high character, named John Pollock, was at this time Crown prosecutor for Leinster, and much in the confidence of the Government, and he has left an interesting, though probably a somewhat partisan, description of the summer assizes in a considerable part of Leinster. In Carlow he found no appearance of any political party whatever,' but in Kildare there was a most decided and unequivocal determination to subvert the King's Government.' In every case growing out of the disturbances, the prisoner was supported by the countenance of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Lawless, and every Roman Catholic on the grand jury. The agent and confidential friend of Lord Edward 'challenged the jurors for the prisoners, and appeared the executive officer of sedition and rebellion.' ‘A rooted and desperate rebellion' had been planted in the county. There were notorious and decided rebels on the grand jury,' who disclosed the evidence of the Crown to the prisoners, and openly encouraged refractory jurymen. In the King's County outrages were numerous and sanguinary, but the adjoining Queen's County was, as usual, perfectly tranquil.'

The reports disseminated about the murderous intentions of the Orangemen, played a great part in these disturbances. No other means were so successfully employed to drive the Catholics to desperation. In the county of Carlow, some of the Protestant gentry, combining to maintain the peace of the county in the midst of smothered rebellion, very injudiciously affiliated their association to the Orange organisation in Ulster, and thus gave a pretext to the agitators which was abundantly used. On one occasion two well-dressed men rode in the dead of night through a village about three miles from Carlow, and rapping at every door, warned the inhabitants to fly, as the Orangemen were on the march from Carlow to burn their houses, and slaughter every Catholic they met. The panic was so intense, that the whole population fled for shelter and

1 J. Pollock, Aug. 30, 1797. Pollock was aware of McNally's connection with the Government; he communicated constantly with him, and reports that McNally thought himself cruelly neglected by his friends. An extremely unfavourable account of Pollock, and of the manner in which

he conducted himself in dealing with prisoners, will be found in the Narrative of the Rev. Dr. Dickson, a Presbyterian minister implicated in the conspiracy. (Pp. 65-75.)

2 See a letter from W. Elliot to Pelham, Aug. 7, 1798.

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protection to a neighbouring magistrate. At Nenagh, in the county of Tipperary, a placard was posted on the chapel door informing the people that every Orangeman was bound by his oath to exterminate the Catholics, and pointing out by name to the popular vengeance a number of persons in the town who were said to be Orangemen. The terror,' wrote Lord Camden, 'which was occasioned in a part of the county of Wicklow not seventeen miles from Dublin, from the report which has been sent into that county by the Dublin committees, that the Orangemen were to march into it and murder the Catholics, was such, that those miserable, ignorant, and deluded persons left their houses and lay in the fields, and at last assembled in large numbers for their own protection.' This alarm,' the Lord Lieutenant continues, of the designs of the Orangemen was really created in some parts; in others it was used as a pretext for mutiny.'3

4

The anarchy and disaffection in Leinster prevailed chiefly in the counties I have mentioned, but even outside this area there were disquieting symptoms. At Clondalkin, within a few miles of Dublin, housebreaking outrages were going on which bore an ominous resemblance to those of the Defenders; and a curious and interesting letter of Sir Edward Newenham, who had been recently staying in the hill country of Tipperary, throws some light on the state of that county. He had been talking, he said, very freely to the farmers, and found that they expected many thousands of French soon to come, and the Protestants of the North to assist the Catholics of the South. A number of pedlars, speaking an accent which was not that of the county, had recently been distributing multitudes of seditious papers, which they carried in secret drawers under their boxes, and there was a widely spread belief that tithes would never again be paid, and that land would be equally divided. From the unreserved manner,' concluded Newenham, ' in which these mountaineers spoke to me, I am confident the northern spirit of rebellion has got generally among them, and

1 Faulkner's Journal, Jan. 13,

1798.

2 Camden to Portland, Nov. 15, 1797.

Ibid. See, too, Gordon's History

of Ireland, ii. 357; Gordon's History of the Rebellion of 1798, pp. 30-32.

• Mr. Caldbeck (Dublin), Nov. 17,

1797.

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