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 angel*."

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 Conflans by Sir E. Hawke took place in 1759, and the landing of Thurot in Carrickfergus Bay in February, 1760; whereas the first risings of the Whiteboys did not occur till October, 1761 †. It is not likely, if the

* Crawford, vol. ii. 318.

The first rising of the Whiteboys is stated by the author of the letter in the Gentleman'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 of 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

C

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 effected in Ulster; and that the insurrection would have broken out nearly two years after the expedition had failed.

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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. Conflans*; that no foreign coin was ever seen among them, though reports to the contrary were circulated †; 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 characters. 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 connexion§."

first Whiteboy disturbances in 1759; which appears to be an intentional misrepresentation in order to make their rising coincide in time with Conflans' intended expedition, with which he states it was connected, and which falls in that year.

* In point of fact, the first Whiteboy rising did not occur till October,

1761. See the last note.

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.

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

§ Tour in Ireland, p. 75. See also Hardy's Life of Charlemont, vol. i.,

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 law*. They had, however, nearly ceased in Munster before 1770; but having re-appeared in the county of Kildare in 1775†, and in the county of Kilkenny and the Queen's County in 1775 and the following years, 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, 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 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 dissensions 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,

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* O'Conor's Hist. of the Irish Catholics. Part I., pp. 285, 300, 311. † Ann. Regist. 1775, p. 170.

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. 1784, 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 1. p. 460.

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-house*. At last they proceeded to regulate the price of land, to raise the price of labour, and to oppose the collection of thehearth-money and other taxes.

*On this point see O'Leary's Defence, p. 57.

"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 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 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 the clergy their just dues, they have not food or raiment for themselves;