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 menaced 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 slaves (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 discontent all disturbance was removed.

About eight years afterwards, 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 Britain *.

* Gordon's History of Ireland, vol. ii. 250, 251.

"The rising of the

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-Boys*. 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 it. 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 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.

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

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.

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-dayBoys, in 1795, or soon afterwards, changed their appellation, and were called Orange Boys, or Orange Men*. 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 outragest. 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 particular object in view, but they talked of being relieved from hearth-money, tithes, county-cesses, and of lowering their rents‡."

At length the Defenders were partially dissolved, and partly absorbed into the body of United Irishmen§, 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.

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

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

Plowden, ibid. p. 389.

§ 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.

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 Protestants*; 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 is proposed to give an account in the present work†.

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

† 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 accord