The and that he was the proper channel through to Armagh, to turn the ferocity and fanawhich that information should pass. Here ticism of Peep of Day Boys into a religitheir mission was determined. Mr. Keogh ous contest with the Catholics, under the continued to deliver his sentiments up- specious appearance of zeal for Church on the critical situation of affairs, and and King. Personal animosity was artamongst many strong things which fell fully converted into religious rancour; from him, one observation gave particular and for the specious purpose of taking off offence to Government. He was not, he the stigma of delinquency, the appelsaid, sorry that the measure had been at-lation of Peep of Day Boys was changed tempted, though it had been defeated; for into that of Orangemen." It was in the it pointed out one fact at least, in which northern part of Armagh County that the feelings of every Irishman were in- this bloody association originated, and terested, and by which the Irish Legis- Mr. Thomas Verner enjoyed the bad emiture would be roused to a sense of its nence of being its first "Grand Master.” own dignity. It showed that the internal Their test is said to have been: "In the regulations of Ireland, to which alone an awful presence of Almighty God, I, A. B., Irish Parliament was competent, were do solemnly swear, that I will, to the to be previously adjusted by a British utmost of my power, support the King Cabinet. Whilst this debate was going and the present government; and I do on, a very large party of the young men further swear, that I will use my utmost of the college came into the chapel, and exertions to exterminate all the Catholics were most honourably received. Some of the kingdom of Ireland." But this of them joined in the debate. They oath, being secret, has latterly been came that hour from presenting an ad- denied by the Orangemen of respectability dress to Mr. Grattan, to thank and con- and consequence. It has been generally gratulate him upon his patriotic efforts credited that it was taken by all the in the cause of Catholic Emancipation, original lodges, and continued afterwards and the reform of those abuses which had to be taken by the lower classes. inflamed public indignation, to which Mr. Orange oath is given in the above terms Grattan made an appropriate answer. in a pamphlet published in 1797, called Every patriotic Irishman must look back "A View of the present state of Ireland," with unavailing regret to the lost oppor- which is attributed to Arthur O'Connor. tunity, or rather to the cruel deception, of But whatever may have been the original Lord Fitzwilliam's short administration. form of engagement, or however it may There was really at that moment a dis- have since been changed by more politic position to bury the hatchet of strife. At "Grand Masters," nothing is more certain no subsequent period, down to this day, than that the Orange Society did immediwere the two nations which make up the ately and most seriously apply themselves Irish population, so well disposed to amal- to the task of exterminating the Catholics. gamate and unite. But that did not suit There is quite as little doubt that this the exigencies of British policy. There shocking society was encouraged by the was to be an insurrection, in order that Government, and by most of the magisthere might be a Legislative Union. In trates and country gentlemen to keep this same eventful year of 1795, British alive religious animosity, and prevent the policy was materially aided by a new and spread of the United Irish organization. portentous institution-the Orange Society. An union of Irishmen upon the just, The recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and the liberal, and fraternal basis of this organiabsolute and most inevitable despair of zation, would have rendered impossible obtaining either Reform of Parliament or that other "Union" on which Mr. Pitt Catholic Emancipation under the existing had set his heart—the Union of Ireland order of things, had driven vast numbers with England. The recall of Lord Fitzof the people, of both religions, into the william and the arrival of Lord Camden United Irish Society. A spirit of union gave the signal for the bloody anarchy, and fraternity was spreading fast. "Then," through which Ireland was doomed to says Mr. Plowden, "the gentlemen in pass for the next four years, and which, place became frightfully alarmed for their it was deliberately calculated, was to end situations; active agents were sent down in her extinction as a nation. CHAPTER XXIX. 1795-1797. "To Hell or Connaught." but the Orangemen commenced a persecution of the blackest dye. They would no longer permit a Catholic to exist in the county. They posted up on the cabins of these unfortunate victims this pithy notice, To Hell or Connaught;" and apppointed a limited time in which the necessary removal of persons and property was to be made. If, after the expiration of that period, the notice had not been complied with, the Orangemen assembled, destroyed the furniture, burned the habitations, and forced the ruined families to fly elsewhere for shelter." Mr. Emmet adds, "While these outrages were going on, the resident magistrates were not found to resist them, and in some instances were even more than inactive spectators." Dr. Madden THE chief object of the Government and its has preserved and printed a number of agents was now to invent and disseminate the "notices," ill-spelled, but sufficiently fearful rumours of intended massacres of intelligible, which were posted on the all the Protestant people by the Catholics. cabin doors. But the Orangemen by no Dr. Madden says: "Efforts were made to means confined themselves to mere forinfuse into the mind of the Protestant cible ejectment of their enemies. Many feelings of distrust to his Catholic fellow-fearful murders were committed on the countrymen. Popish plots and conspira- unresisting people; and what gives percies were fabricated with a practical haps the clearest idea of the persecution facility, which some influential authorities is the fact that seven thousand persons were conceived it no degradation to stoop to; estimated in the next year to have and alarming reports of these dark con- been either killed or driven from their federations were circulated with a restless homes in that one small county alone.* assiduity." The effects were soon ap- But the unhappy outcasts, even when parent in the atrocities committed by they escaped with their lives, had no the Orangemen in Armagh, and by the shelter to fly to. In most cases they could magistrates and military in other coun- only wander on the mountains until either ties. The persecuted "Defenders" of death relieved them, or they were arrested Armagh made some feeble attempts to and imprisoned; while the younger men protect themselves, though almost with- were sent, without ceremony, to one of out arms. This resistance led to the trans- the "tenders," then lying in various seaaction called "Battle of the Diamond," ports, and thence transferred on board near the village of that name, on the 21st British men-of-war. This was the device of September, 1795. Several writers have originally of Lord Carhampton, then comalleged that the Catholics invited this manding in Ireland. It was called a conflict by a challenge sent to the Orange-" vigour beyond the law"-a delicate men. Of course, the latter, having abundance of arms, and being sure of the protection of the magistrates, were not slow to accept such an invitation; but nothing can be more absurd than to term the affair a battle. Not one of the Orange party was killed or wounded. Four or five Defenders were killed, and a proportionate number wounded; and this is the glorious battle that has been toasted at Orange banquets from that day to the present. Mr. Emmet* thus describes the transaction: "The Defenders were speedily defeated with the loss of some few killed and left on the field of battle, besides the wounded, whom they carried away. The Catholics, after this, never attempted to make a stand, * * * *Pieces of Irish History. phrase which has since come very much into use to describe outrages committed by magistrates against the law. During all the rest of this year the greater part of Leinster, with portions of Ulster and Munster, were in the utmost terror and agony; the Orange magistrates, aided by the troops, arresting and imprisoning, without any charge, multitudes of unoffending people, under one pretext or another. It is right to present a sample of the story as told by "loyal men.” Thus, then, the matter is represented by Sir Richard Musgrave, p. 145: "Lord Car Mr. Plowden, who is as hostile to the Defenders as any Orangeman, says from five to seven their Memoirs of the Union, say, "seven thousand thousand. O'Connor, Emmet, and MacNeven, in driven from their homes." He said that the act then in force for hampton, finding that the laws were silent magistrates and others, who, in their exand inoperative in the counties which ertions for the preservation of the public he visited, and that they did not afford tranquillity, might have acted against the protection to the loyal and peaceable forms and rules of law; he stated that the subjects, who in most places were obliged bill for the more effectually preventing of to fly from their habitations, resolved to insurrections, tumults, and riots, by perrestore them to their usual energy, by the sons styling themselves Defenders, and following salutary system of severity: other disorderly persons, was, however, In each county he assembled the most repugnant to his feelings. respectable gentlemen and landholders in it, and having, in concert with them, ex-administering unlawful oaths was not amined the charges against the leaders of sufficiently strong, and the administering this banditti who were in prison, but of unlawful oaths was the source of all defied justice, he, with the concurrence of the treasonable actions which had taken these gentlemen, sent the most nefarious place in the country: the bill proposed of them on board a tender stationed at that the administering of unlawful oaths Sligo, to serve in His Majesty's navy.' ." should be felony of death; but he would There is no doubt that great numbers of propose that that bill should be but a people were obliged to fly from their temporary law; there was also a clause habitations; but then these were the very in the bill to enable the magistrates, at people whom Lord Carhampton and the the quarter sessions, to take up all idle magistrates called banditti, and sent to vagrants and persons who had no visible the tender as "nefarious." Such is, how- means of earning a livelihood, and send ever, a specimen of the history of these them to serve on board the fleet; he said times as told upon Orange authority. he did not propose to hurry this bill In the midst of these painful scenes, through the House, but give time for the Parliament assembled on the 21st of consideration, as it might be necessary to January, 1796. Lord Camden, in his add much, and make several alterations. speech from the throne, congratulated He then moved for leave "to bring in a them on "the brilliant successes of the bill for the more effectual prevention of Austrian armies upon the Rhine;" and insurrections, tumults, and riots, by perthen, alluding to dangerous secret socie-sons styling themselves Defenders, and ties, he intimated that certain additional other disorderly persons; " and leave was powers would be called for; in other given to bring in the bill. Then he words, martial law. The Attorney-Gene- moved for leave "to bring in a bill for ral lost no time in bringing forward an indemnifying such magistrates and others Insurrection Act and an Indemnity Act who might have, since the 1st of January, -the latter being for the purpose of 1795, exceeded the ordinary forms and indemnifying magistrates and military rules of law for the preservation of the officers against the consequences of any public peace, and suppression of insurrecof their illegal outrages upon the people. tion prevailing in some parts of this kingdom." Mr. Curran wished to know the extent and nature of that delinquency which it was intended to indemnify; when Mr. M. Beresford observed, the word delinquency was not applicable to the persons intended; a part of the country was alarmingly disturbed; the magistrates and others invested with power had, in order to prevent the necessity of proclaiming martial law universally, acted in that particular district as if martial law were proclaimed: this conduct, so far from Jeing delinquency, was justifiable and audable, and of happy consequence in the event. On the 28th of the month, the Attorney-General adverted to the notice he had given on the first night of the session, of his intention of bringing in two bills: the object of one of them was for preventing in future insurrections, and tumults, and riots in this kingdom; and the object of the other bill was to indemnify certain There was earnest opposition against these two bills, but without effect: they were both passed into laws; and they had the effect, which they were certainly intended to have, of exciting, or at least hastening, the insurrection of 1798. It is observable that the motive assigned by the Government officials for passing these laws was always the outrages and alleged secret associations of Defenders. Not a word was said about the real outrages and exterminating oaths of Orangemen. Indeed, the measures in question were really directed not against either Defenders or Orangemen, but against the United Irishmen, the only association of which the Government had the slightest fear. Besides the two bills the Attorney-General proposed four supplemental resolutions asserting the necessity of giving enlarged powers to magistrates to search for arms and to make arrests. On the reading of - these resolutions, Mr. Grattan observed, gave them liquor or money, they somethat he had heard the right honourable times discharged him-otherwise they gentleman's statement, and did not sup- sent him to a recruiting officer as a depose it to be inflamed; but he must ob- serter. They had very generally given serve at the same time it was partial; he the Catholics notice to quit their farms did, indeed, expatiate very fully and and dwellings, which notice was plastered justly on the offences of the Defenders; on the house, and conceived in these short but with respect to another description of but plain words: "Go to Hell, Connaught insurgents, whose barbarities had excited won't receive you-fire and faggot. Will general abhorrence, he had observed a Tresham and John Thrustout." That complete silence; that he had proceeded they followed these notices by a faithful to enumerate the counties that were and punctual execution of the horrid afflicted by disturbances, and he had threat- soon after visited the house, omitted Armagh;-of that, neither had robbed the family, and destroyed what he comprehended the outrages in his they did not take, and finally completed general description, nor in his particular the atrocious persecutions by forcing the enumeration; of those outrages he had unfortunate inhabitants to leave their received the most dreadful accounts; land, their dwellings, and their trade, and that their object was the extermination to travel with their miserable family, and of all the Catholics of that county; it with whatever their miserable family was a persecution conceived in the bitter- could save from the wreck of their houses ness of bigotry, carried on with the most and tenements, and take refuge in vilferocious barbarity, by a banditti, who lages, as fortifications against invaders, being of the religion of the state, had where they described themselves, as he committed with the greater audacity and had seen in their affidavits, in the followconfidence, the most horrid murders, and ing manner; "We (mentioning their had proceeded from robbery and massacre names), formerly of Armagh, weavers, to extermination; that they had repealed, now of no fixed place of abode or means by their own authority, all the laws lately of living, &c." In many instances this passed in favour of the Catholics, had banditti of persecution threw down the established in the place of those laws the houses of the tenantry, or what inquisition of a mob, resembling Lord they called racked the house, so that George Gordon's fanatics, equalling them the family must fly or be buried in in outrage, and surpassing them far in the grave of their own cabin. The experseverance and success. tent of the murders that had been comThat their modes of outrage were mitted by that atrocious and rebellious as various as they were atrocious; banditti he had heard, but had not heard they sometimes forced, by terror, the them so ascertained as to state them to masters of families to dismiss their that house; but from all the inquiries he Catholic servants; they sometimes forced could make he collected that the Catholic landlords, by terror, to dismiss their inhabitants of Armagh had been actually Catholic tenantry; they seized as de- put out of the protection of the law; that serters, numbers of Catholic weavers- the magistrates had been supine or partial, sent them to the county jail, transmitted and that the horrid banditti had met with them to Dublin, where they remained in complete success and, from the magisclose prison, until some lawyers, from tracy, with very little discouragement. compassion, pleaded their cause, and pro- This horrid persecution, this abominable cured their enlargement, nothing appear- barbarity, and this general extermination ing against them of any kind whatsoever. had been acknowledged by the magisThose insurgents who called themselves trates, who found the evil had now proOrange Boys, or Protestant Boys, that is, ceeded to so shameful an excess, that it a banditti of murderers, committing mas- had at length obliged them to cry out sacre in the name of God, and exercising against it. On the 28th of December, despotic power in the name of liberty-thirty of the magistrates had come to the those insurgents had organized their re- following resolution, which was evidence bellion, and had formed themselves into a of the designs of the insurgents, and of committee, who sat and tried the Catholic their success: "Resolved, That it appears weavers and inhabitants, when appre- to this meeting, that the County of Arhended falsely and illegally as deserters. That rebellious committee they called the committee of elders, who, when the unfortunate Catholic was torn from his family and his loom, and brought before them in judgment upon his case—if he Р magh is at this moment in a state of uncommon disorder; that the Roman Catholic inhabitants are greviously oppressed by lawless persons unknown, who attack and plunder their houses by night, and threaten them with instant destruc tion, unless they abandon immediately opposed by the Attorney-General, and their lands and habitations." rejected as a matter of course." The "Insurrection Act" was intended One of the clauses of the " Insurrection to give magistrates most unlimited powers Act" was vehemently, but vainly, opposed to arrest and imprison, and search houses by Sir Lawrence Parsons: it was to emfor arms; the other act, called of "Indem-power any two magistrates to seize upon nity," was an actual invitation to break persons who should publish or sell a newsthe law. Mr. Grattan, whose speeches, paper or pamphlet which they, the two more than any records or documents, magistrates should deem seditious, and illustrate this period of the history of his without any form or trial to send them country, commenting on this latter act, on board the fleet. This was a total says: "A bill of indemnity went to secure annihilation of the Press, saving only the the offending magistrates against the Castle Press. consequences of their outrages and ille- When it it is recollected that the magisgalities; that is to say, in our humble tracy and Protestant country gentlemen conception, the poor were stricken out of of Ireland were at that time inflamed the protection of the law, and the rich out with the most furious rage against their of its penalties; and then another bill was Catholic countrymen, and were besides passed to give such lawless proceedings purposely excited by rumours of intended against His Majesty's subjects continua- Popish risings for the extirpation of Protion, namely, a bill to enable the magis-testants (which many of them in their trates to perpetrate by law those offences ignorance believed), it will be seen what which they had before committed against a terrible power these acts conferred upon it; a bill to legalize outrage, to barbarize law, and to give the law itself the cast and colour of outrage. By such a bill, the magistrates were enabled, without legal process, to send on board a tender His Majesty's subjects, and the country was divided into two classes, or formed into two distinct nations, living under the same King, and inhabiting the same island; one consisting of the King's magistrates, and the other of the King's subjects; the former without restraint, and the latter without privilege." them. They naturally conceived, and very justly, that the law now made it a merit on their part to break the law, provided it were done to the oppression and ruin of the Catholic people; and felt that they were turned loose with a full commission to burn, slay, rob, and ravish. It will be seen that they largely availed themselves of these privileges. There was but one thing now wanted; and this was the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act. This was supplied in the next session of Parliament, which took place on the 13th of October; and from that moment Ireland stood utterly stripped naked of all law and government. In the meantime the United Irish Society had been steadily increasing and busily labouring and negotiating. Some valuable members had lately joined it, in despair of any peaceable or constitutional remedy. The chief of these was the generous and gallant Lord Edward Fitz Both the bills passed; but amongst those who opposed them to the last in the House of Commons, by the side of Mr. Grattan and Sir Lawrence Parsons, it is with pleasure that one finds the honoured name of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. The debates on these bills and resolutions furnish perhaps the most authentic documents for the history of the time, and especially for the lawless outrages which were then devastating the north of Ire-gerald, brother to the then Duke of Leinland. One of the Attorney-General's resolutions spoke of the necessity of pun ishing persons who "seized by force the arms of His Majesty's subjects." Mr. Grattan moved an amendment, to add "and also the persons of His Majesty's subjects, and to force them to abandon their lands and habitations; " and in the third resolution, after the words "murdering those who had spirit to give information," to add, "also attempting to seize the persons, and obliging His Majesty's subjects, by force, to abandon their lands and habitations." But the amendment, as it evidently contemplated the protection of the unhappy Catholics of Armagh County, was ster, formerly a major in the British army, and who had served under Cornwallis against the Americans. Since his return to Europe he had several times visited the Continent, and mingled much with revolutionary society in France. Having seen so much of the world, he was not so ignorant and stupid as were most of the Irish gentry at that period; and his natural nobility of soul was revolted by the brutal usage to which he saw his countrymen subjected at the hands of the "Ascendency." It is probable, too, that he, the descendant of an ancient Gallo-Hibernian house, settled in Ireland more than six centuries, which had given chiefs to the ancient Clan |