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,

* 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.

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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 wasthe 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;

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 distresses of the tenantry, but that they might add the clergy's share to the cruel rackrents already paid.

"Sir, I fear it will require the utmost ability of 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 anarchy*.”

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 tumults." It was, however, at a later period,

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

† 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

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 disturbances*:" 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 receive †.” 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

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.

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

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.