A Factbook of Irish History

From the Earliest Times to 1969

Revised and extended edition

Published by Denis Fahey at Smashwords

"Esto perpetua"

Denis Fahey

Dedication

In memory of my parents Dan and Eileen and my brothers John and Joseph.

Acknowledgements

Parts of the research for this work were undertaken in the Cregan and O'Reilly Libraries of Dublin City University, the Gilbert Library in Pearse Street, Dublin and the National Library of Ireland. I am thankful to the staffs of these libraries for their hospitality. 

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Publisher's note

While every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate, the author, editor and publisher cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for any loss or damage occasioned by any person acting or refraining from acting as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the author, editor or publisher.

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Copyright 2023 Denis Fahey

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Accents and Voices

Agrarian Movements

Alcohol

American Connections

Anniversaries and Holidays

Armada

Armies

Battles

Bishops

Black and Bloody Days

Cannibalism

Church Administration

Church Councils

Church of Ireland

Civil War

Conscription

Converts

Courts

Cromwell

Dáil Éireann

Deaths

Dismissals

Duelling

Economics

Ecumenism

Education

Elections

Emancipation

Emigration

Emmet's Rising

English Connections

Evictions

Families

Famine

Firsts

Flags

Flight of the Earls

Flogging

Funerals

GAA

Gays and Lesbians

Gun Running

Health and Appearance

Home Rule

Idols and Images

Informers

IRA

IRB

Ireland

Irish

Irish Citizen Army

Irish Colleges

Irony

Jewish People

Kings and Queens

Land

Miscellaneous

Monks and Monasteries

Music

Myths

Names and Nicknames

Normans

O'Connell

Orange Order

Parliaments

Parnell

Parties

Partition

Penal Laws

Plague

Plantations

Police

Population

Poynings' Law

Presbyterians

Proclamations

Provisional Governments

Reformation

Religious Affiliations

Rome Speaks

Royal Visits

Saints

Seminaries

Sieges

Sinn Féin

Slaughter

Slavery

Statues

Statute of Kilkenny

Strictly Speaking

Suicides

Superstitions

Tithes

Treaties

Union

Universities

Vikings

War of Independence

What happened to ... ?

Witchcraft

1641-9

1798

1916

23rd

Statements and Soundbites

Words

*****

ACCENTS AND VOICES

Sir John Perrot (1528 -1592), the Lord Deputy, 1584 -88, was said to be exceedingly choleric and foul-mouthed and to have an ungovernable temper. (See Alcohol, Families, Plantations, Slaughter, Universities, Statements and Soundbites).

Sir Walter Raleigh (c 1552 -1618), the soldier, writer, explorer and recipient of 40,000 acres in Munster, had a weak voice and a broad Devonshire accent. (See Firsts, Plantations, Slaughter).

Charles Blount (1563 -1606), Lord Mountjoy, the Lord Deputy, never used swearing and, according to his secretary, Fynes Moryson, he always hated it.

O'Donnell (1572 -1602), the Donegal chieftain, was of middle height, of comely grace, beautiful to behold, and had a voice like the clarion of a silver trumpet, according to a Franciscan priest in Louvain, Fr Donatus Mooney (d 1624), who had known him in Ulster. Mooney was quoted in Fr C P Meehan's (1812 -1890) Faith and Fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donel (sic), Earl of Tyrconnel (1861). The soubriquet red or roe may have referred to his complexion or hair. (See Families, Flight of the Earls).

According to Sir John Davies (1569 -1626) in A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued nor Brought under Obedience to the Crowne of England until the Beginning of His Majesty's Happy Reign, 1612, all the common people of Ireland had a whining tone or accent in their speech as if they did smart or suffer some oppression.

According to the English historian Thomas Carte (1686 -1754) in his Life of James Duke of Ormonde, 1851, the Confederate general Thomas Preston (c1585 -c1655) was very choleric and so unguarded in his passion that he openly declared all his resentments and broke out even in councils of war into rash expressions of which he had frequent cause to regret. His fellow general Owen O'Neile (Owen Roe O'Neill) (c 1583 -1649) on the other hand was a man of few words, phlegmatic in his proceedings, an admirable concealer of his own sentiments and very jealous of the desires of others. (See Battles, Families, 1641-9).

Oliver Cromwell (1599 -1658), the Lord Protector, hadn't the smallest pretention to rhetoric. In his address he was confused and unintelligible but his arguments commanded the attention of the House (of Commons) by their depth, though delivered without grace, eloquence or even clearness according to Rev Mark Noble (1754 -1827) in Memoirs of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell, 1784. (See Health and Appearance).

Richard Talbot (1630 -1691), Earl of Tyrconnell, had a violent temper and it was said that the least disappointment cast him into a paroxysm of rage. According to William Crawford (c1739 -1800) in A History of Ireland from the Earliest Period to the Present Day, Volume II, 1873, he had no sincere regard for religion in any form, his character was marked by insincerity, by dissipated morals and by a haughty intemperance of passion which prompted him to treat his inferiors with contempt and his superiors with disrespect. (See Armies, Cromwell, Names and Nicknames).

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the statesman and political scientist, had a strong Irish accent. According to the parliamentarian, Henry Grattan (1746 -1820) in December 1769, he was unquestionably the first orator among the Commons of England, boundless in knowledge, instantaneous in his apprehensions and abundant in his language and he spoke with profound attention and acknowledged superiority notwithstanding the want of energy and the want of elegance in his manner. 

An anonymous critic quoted in James Prior's (c1790 -1869) Biography of Edmund Burke (1824) claimed that he was excursive, injudicious and pedantic. His wit sometimes descended into buffoonery and ill-nature, his oratory into bombast and fustian. His voice at best was not one of the most harmonious. He frequently neglected to manage it and in the warmth of debate often became so hoarse as to render his accents dissonant and nearly unintelligible. (See Families, Statues, Statements and Soundbites).

According to Henry Grattan, his fellow MP, Patrick (Paddy) Duigenan (1735 -1816) had a manner of speaking that resembled a mob-man (ie a rude, violent person) in the last stages of agony and the lawyer and MP John Philpot Curran (1750 -1817) claimed that his oratory was like the unrolling of a mummy, nothing but old bones and rotten rag and that he had a vicious way of gnawing the names of papists. 

Curran, himself, was a considerable orator and could animate any debate. According to Claude G Bowers (1878 -1958) in The Irish Orators, 1916, he had a vocabulary unsurpassed by any orator who spoke the English tongue and the author quotes the poet Byron's comment that Curran had 50 faces and twice as many voices and that he (Byron) had heard him speak more poetry than he had written though he saw him seldom. According to unnamed writers quoted by Patrick O'Kelly (c1776 -1858) in The Rebellion of 1798, 1842, every quality that could form a popular orator was in him (Curran) combined. On ordinary occasions his language was copious, frequently eloquent yet generally unequal. But on great ones the variety of his elocution, its luxuriance, its effect was quite unrivalled. (See Armies, Converts, Dismissals, Health and Appearance, Statements and Soundbites).

John Foster (1740 -1828), Lord Oriel from 1821, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons from 1785 to 1800, was said to speak through his nose and was considered by members of the British House of Commons to have a strong brogue. (See Union).

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744 -1817), the father of the novelist, Maria Edgeworth (1767 -1849), was born in Bath but spent part of his youth in Ireland. At school in Warwick, he was abused for having a brogue. Later, at another school in Drogheda, he was abused for having an English accent. (See Families).

According to Stephen Barlow in his History of Ireland From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 1814, John Fitzgibbon (1748/9 -1802), Lord Clare, was authoritative and peremptory in his address and commanding, able and arrogant in his language Though his conversation was sometimes licentious and immoral and always devoid of refined wit and genuine humour yet in domestic life he had many meritorious and genuine admirable qualities. He was an indefatigable and active friend, a kind and affectionate master and an indulgent landlord.

According to John Thomas Ball (1815 -1898) in his Historical Review of the Legislative Systems Operative in Ireland (1672 -1800),1888, he was clear and determined in his opinions, had little regard for popular applause and less for popular censure, was conspicuous for courage and self-reliance and had sagacious discernment but was haughty and overbearing in temper and manner. He disdained to conciliate and was impatient of contradiction. (See Funerals, Statements and Soundbites, Union).

Robert Fighting Fitzgerald (c1746 -1786), a murderer and duellist, had a boy soprano voice. (See Duelling, Families).

Henry Grattan had a thin, sharp or shrill voice. When speaking passionately, he often swayed to and fro. In his book, Memoirs of the Whig Party, Henry Vassall-Fox (1773 -1840), Lord Holland, wrote of Grattan's maiden speech in the Westminster House of Commons on May 13, 1805 that it required deep attention to catch the strange and deep fetched whisper in which he began and I could see the incipient smile curling on Mr Pitt's lips at the brevity and antithesis of his sentences, his grotesque gesticulations, peculiar and almost foreign accent and arch articulation ... however ... at length, Mr Pitt beat time to the artificial but harmonious cadence of his periods. 

The poet, Lord Byron (1788 -1824), wrote that I have never heard anyone who fulfilled my idea of an orator. Grattan would have been near it but for his harlequin (buffoonish) delivery. 

According to his son Henry (1789 -1859) in the forward to The Speeches of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan, 1821, his style of speaking was strikingly measured- bold, figurative and impassioned. In the English House his course was comparatively tranquil but in Ireland it was different, hoc opus hic labor (this was the difficult work), he had to awaken and inspirit (sic) an oppressed nation.

By the account of an unnamed member of Dublin University in 1789, as a public speaker, Mr Grattan's voice is thin, sharp, far from powerful, not devoid of a variety of tones but these (are) not rich nor mellow, and though not harsh, its want of harmonious modulation is often striking. 

In Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 1861, the historian William Hartpole Lecky (1838 -1903) wrote that Grattan brought his sentences to a degree of nervousness and condensation that is scarcely paralleled in oratory. 

In The Irish Orators, 1916, Claude Gernade Bowers (1878 -1958) wrote that while Grattan's voice lacked richness and wasn't strong enough for outdoor meetings it possessed a strong variety of tones which lent themselves to musical modulation and while he spoke with great rapidity his enunciation was perfect so that not a syllable was slurred. 

He also wrote that Isaac Butt (1813 -1879), the MP, founder of the Home Rule League, leader of the Home Rule Party, 1873 -79, and barrister was noted for his fluency, the profundity of his talk, his clearness of statement, his persuasiveness and his logic and that no orator since O'Connell had a greater effect on an Irish jury or an Irish crowd.

According to D O Madden in The Life of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan, 1846, he wasn't well adapted for histrionic excellence. His manner was ardent and violent; his nature too vehement and not sufficiently mercurial; his delivery disagreeable from a redundancy of uncouth gestures and his voice without agreeable modulation. He was more deficient in the mechanical parts of public speaking than any orator of his age.

According to Rev E A  Dalton (1860 -1941) in a History of Ireland, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Volume II, 1906, Henry Flood (1732 -1791) was cold, measured and calculating while Grattan was impetuous and energetic; in debate the former appealed to reason alone, the latter to the emotions and passions, as well as to reason. In voice and manner and gesture, Flood had the advantage for Grattan's voice was thin and his gestures (were) ungraceful but amid the fire and force of his delivery, the wealth and splendour of his imagery, the beauty of his diction, these defects were forgotten. 

According to Warden Hatton Flood (d 1882) in Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Henry Flood, 1838, He (Flood) was less suited for a popular assembly than Grattan or (Denis) Daly (d 1791); but, in debate, he was at least their equal - many have said, measurably their superior. The sarcasm of the court became wretched and feeble when matched against his great power of invective; and he may be said not so much to have reasoned men into honesty as to have terrified them. His enunciation solemn and deliberate struck the ear and claimed the notice of the habitually inattentive. (See Health and Appearance, Parliaments, Union, Statements and Soundbites).   

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 -1816), the playwright and MP, was said to have a magnificent voice, to know how to use it and to reveal the actor in the orator without any trace of dissimulation or affectation of manner.

Following his five-and-a-half-hour long speech in the House of Commons on February 7, 1787 in the debate on the conduct  of Warren Hastings (1732 -1818), the de facto governor of India, there was a tumult of applause from the  members, peers and strangers present and the prime minister, William Pitt (1759 -1806), the Younger, adjourned proceedings after saying that the speech surpassed all of the eloquence of ancient and modern times and possessed everything that genius of art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind and Edmund Burke had claimed that it was "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument and wit united, of which there is any record or tradition.   

Sheridan had been denouncing the alleged spoliation of the begums or princesses of Oude at the instigation of Hastings. (See Families).

Leonard McNally (1752 -1820), the informer, had a shrill, full, good bar voice. (See Converts, Health and Appearance, Informers, Union).

According to R. R. Madden (1798 -1886) in The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times, 1842, Watty Cox (c1770 -1837), a United Irishman, and publisher was a man of violent and uncontrollable passions who made the life of his first wife, who did in childbirth, miserable and was brought before the magistrates for ill using his second wife. (See Statues).

According to Robert Walsh (1772 -1852) in Ireland Ninety Years Ago, 1881, the United Irish leader, Theobald Wolfe Tone's (1763 -1798) mode of speaking was in correspondence with his face and person. It was polite and gentlemanly but totally devoid of anything like energy or vigour. (See Health and Appearance, 1798).

After delivering his first public speech, in the Royal Exchange, later the City Hall, in Dublin on January 13, 1800, Daniel O'Connell, (1775 -1847) remarked that he shuddered at the echo of his own voice. Speaking about his last speech in the House of Commons, on April 3, 1846, when he was almost inaudible, the future British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1804 -1881), said that it was strange and touching to those who remembered the form of colossal energy and the clear and thrilling tones that once startled and disturbed and controlled senates. (See Statements and Soundbites).

According to the Dublin Penny Journal of October 3, 1835, O'Connell's voice was greatly in his favour. It is rich, loud and expressive and possesses just enough brogue to mark his country. According to the Evening Freeman, a Dublin newspaper, on July 25, 1840, the deep melody of O'Connell's voice added force and dignity to what he uttered. In contrast, it claimed that John Philpot Curran, the lawyer and MP used touching words but delivered them in a shrill, cracked voice without due pause or emphasis or variation of intonation. (See above, below, Health and Appearance).

According to Justin McCarthy (1830 -1912) in his History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, 1880, O'Connell had a Herculean frame, a stately presence, a face capable of expressing easily and effectively the most rapid alternations of mood, and a voice which all hearers admit to have been almost unrivalled for strength and sweetness. Its power, its pathos, its passion, its music have been described in words of positive rapture by men who detested (him) ... he could send the lightest word thrilling to the extreme of the vast concourse of the people whom he desired to move. (See Flags, O'Connell, Statements and Soundbites). 

According to Rev Henry Giles (1809 -1862), in a lecture published posthumously in Penny Readings for the Irish People, 1879, O'Connell was in every way made for a great tribune. Of commanding height and solid breath of body - with an elevated head, open face, clear, piercing eye, a full sweet voice, imperturbable cheerfulness, ready wit, vernacular expression and earnest address - in thought forcible and direct; in passion kindly or angry, as the case might be; in impulse ever varying from the whisper of emotion to the tempest of excitement; from the rush of prayer to the rage of indignation - O'Connell, as he willed, ruled a popular assembly.    According to a Mr Barnes, writing in the Morning Chronicle and quoted in Irish Tranquillity Under Mr O'Connell, 1838, by Anthony Meyler, O'Connell's voice and manner admirably harmonise with the peculiar character of his oratory and his great powers of delivery are not impeded by any mauvaise -honte (bad shame or bashfulness) or indeed by any special honte (shame) whatsoever. His declamations abound in the most wretched commonplace, again and again repeated.

According to Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816 -1903): Daniel O'Connell had a voice of leonine compass but capable of all the modulations in the gamut of passion or persuasion ... his tones were melodies, Henry Grattan's voice was weak, John Philpot Curran never quite overcame the natural impediments which fixed on the boy the nickname of Stuttering Jack, Richard Lalor Sheil’s (1791 -1851) falsetto was like the noise of a rusty saw, Thomas Francis Meagher's (1823 -1867) tones were passionate and thrilling and Thomas Davis (1814 -1845) had a voice not so much sonorous as sympathetic and a cordial laugh and in conversation he was cheerful and natural but he was best in committees and conferences where his rapid allusions and pregnant suggestions were better understood than in a popular assembly".

According to Robert Shelton Mackenzie (1809 -1880) in his notes to a posthumous edition of Richard Lalor Sheil's Sketches of the Irish Bar, 1858, O'Connell's voice was deep, sonorous and manageable. Its transitions from the higher to the lower notes were wondrously effective. He rather affected a full Irish pronunciation on which was slightly grafted something of the accent which, in his youth, he had involuntarily picked up in France. No man had a clearer pronunciation, at times it even went to the extent of almost syllabicizing (sic) the words.  According to the Penny Journal of October 3, 1835, the splendour of Sheil's diction is the principal characteristic of his oratory. Formerly his style was encumbered with too much tinsel embellishment (but) time has pruned away this exuberance and his language is now beautiful and ornate. His voice is sharp and squeaking and his figure diminutive but the unrivalled intelligence of his eye and the energy of his manner make amends for these deficiencies. 

According to William Fagan (1801 -1859) in his Life of Daniel O'Connell, 1847, before Sheil warms to his subject, his sharp voice is piercing, amounting almost to a shriek, and sounds gratingly on the ear but as he advances you no longer hear the shrill notation; you cannot wait to observe his awkward delivery; - you are carried away, nolens volens, and you are soon enthralled by a magical vehemence that, however critical you may wish to be, paralyses altogether your disposition to analyse.

According to Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825 -1868) in Historical Sketches of O'Connell and his Friends, 1845, O'Connell's sarcasm is one of his most powerful gifts. It is a miracle of bitterness when he exercises it to the full and woe betide the wight (human being) whose portrait he is to draw while in that mood.

According to James Grant (1802 -1879) in Recollections of the House of Commons from the Year 1830 to the Close of 1835 by One of No Party, 1836, one of the extraordinary attributes of Daniel O'Connell was the ease and facility with which he could make a transition from one topic to another. From grave to gay and from lively to severe never cost him an effort.

According to the October 24, 1845 issue of The Liberator, an American anti-slavery magazine, Frederick Douglass (c1817 -1895), an American anti-slavery campaigner visiting Ireland wrote after hearing one of O'Connell's speeches that it was skilfully delivered and was powerful in its logic, majestic in its rhetoric, biting in its sarcasm, melting in its pathos and biting in its rebukes. (See Slavery).

According to the Dublin Saturday Magazine, Volume One, 1865, Sheil, a lawyer, MP, playwright, supporter of Daniel O'Connell, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, Master of the Mint and one of the first Irish Catholic King's Counsels in modern times had a voice that was meagre, harsh and shrill but a profound emotion seemed to regulate its vibrations and he possessed in eminent degree the surprising facility of exciting himself to the verge of delirium without once losing complete self-possession. (See Penal Laws). 

William Gladstone (1809 -1898), a future prime minister, claimed that his detestable Irish brogue was unpleasant to listen to and that his high- pitched voice sounded like a tin kettle being battered from place to place. Donohue's Magazine, 1879, claimed that his voice, when a student, was very bad, weak and squeaky but always listened to with pleasure because of his choice of phraseology.

According to the Dublin University Magazine, January 1841, the novelist William Carleton (1794 -1869) in private is not often distinguished by any of the humour which appears in his writing -his conversation is generally of a thoughtful and melancholy cast and, unless when he is excited, distinguished by no very remarkable quality. At times, however, most frequently when drawn out to describe the scenes familiar to his early memory, he pours out in conversation a stream of natural eloquence in the touching simplicity of which and the fascination of its power, you recognise the storyist of the Irish heart. (See Converts, Ecumenism, Statements and Soundbites).

According to Thomas Davis in his edition of John Philpot Curran's speeches in 1845, Curran overcame his disability by declaiming the writings of William Shakespeare and other authors and developed a sustained, divinely modulated voice in place of his shrill and stumbling brogue. According to the Political Magazine, Volume 10, in 1785, he was a young man of uncommon powers whenever considered as a logician, a dealer in satire, a director of ridicule or of irony and according to the Irish Magazine, 1811, his voice happily corresponds with his genius; easily, by its compass and flexibility accommodating itself to the several passions he wishes to convey. (See above, Duelling, Elections, Health and Appearance, Names and Nicknames, Parliaments).

Meagher, the Young Irelander who was partly educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire (after leaving Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare, following misbehaviour), and William Smith O'Brien (1803 -1864), the leader of the Young Ireland rebellion on July 29, 1848, had English accents. However, when Meagher first went to Stonyhurst, he had a horrible Irish brogue. Later, in America, he resumed the use of his childhood accent. According to the Tipperary Vindicator, in October 1848, he had perfect enunciation. He had developed his oratorical skills at Stonyhurst.

Gavan Duffy, his fellow Young Irelander, described Meagher as a dandified youngster with a languid air and a mincing accent derived from his English education.

When O'Brien returned from exile in 1856, he was said to be annoyed that his children had developed brogues. He had been educated in England but he understood Irish and was disappointed that he couldn't speak it fluently.

James Warren Doyle (1781 -1834) OSA, (JKL), the Catholic bishop of Kildare and Leighlin from 1819, a vigorous opponent of tithes and a supporter of Daniel O'Connell, had a deep, sonorous voice. (See O'Connell, Statements and Soundbites, Tithes).

According to A M Sullivan (1830 -1884) in his New Ireland, 1877, Fr Theobald Mathew (1790 -1856), the Apostle of Temperance was not a great orator but his voice was exceedingly sweet and musical and capable of great inflections. In his An Irishman's Story, 1904, the MP and writer, Justin McCarthy (1830 -1912) stated that Fr Mathew was not eloquent as a speaker either in the pulpit or on the platform and he never made any attempt at rhetorical effects but he had the inspiration which made his simplest words sink deeply into the heart; and if he never spoke a brilliant sentence so also he never uttered an unmeaning commonplace. (See Alcohol, Statements and Soundbites).

According to J L Porter (1823 -1889) in The Life and Times of Henry Cooke, 1871, the conservative Presbyterian minister and opponent of Repeal, Rev Henry Cooke (1788 -1868), studied elocution at Glasgow University and, under the care of an accomplished teacher, his provincial accent was almost entirely corrected and his splendid voice was brought under the complete control of ear and intellect. Like his classical model, Demosthenes, he practised in the open air before imaginary audiences.

In his Letters and Character Sketches from the House of Commons, 1912 (posthumously), the Conservative MP, Richard Temple (1826 -1902) wrote of William O'Brien (1852 -1928), the Irish Party MP and future (1898) founder of the United Irish League, in the House of Commons in the 1880s that he is amiable enough but when he rises to address the House about his wrongs or sorrows or those of his country, he is all sound and fury and fire. He will raise his voice to mimic thunder and then lower it to a strange hiss.

In The Home Rule Movement, 1920, Michael MacDonagh (1860 -1946) wrote that for rousing popular passion at a public meeting O'Brien was the greatest among the Irish leaders, alternately menacing, mournful, prophetic, gentle and appealing. The tones of his voice ranged from a piercing shriek when he was scornful and denunciatory to a soft murmurous whisper when he indulged in passages of gentle pathos. (See Gays and Lesbians, Health and Appearance, Jewish People, Land, Statements and Soundbites). 

In his Irish Orators and Oratory, 1915, Thomas Kettle (1880 -1916) commented that “to Byron Grattan was a harlequin. To others Burke was a majestic bore; Flood had the air of a broken beaked vulture; Hussey Burgh bellowed; O'Connell tainted his words with his perspiring vulgarity". (See O'Connell).

The long, obstructionist speeches of Joseph Gillis Biggar (1828 -1890) MP, in the House of Commons, were doubly annoying to other members because his rich metallic Belfast accent made him difficult to understand. On April 22, 1875, during a speech lasting three hours and fifty minutes, Biggar moved to the front opposition bench, close to the Speaker, after he complained that he couldn't hear the MP. (See Converts, Families, Firsts, Funerals, Health and Appearance, Words).

Thomas Maguire (1831 -1889) FTCD claimed, in England's Duty to Ireland (1886) that the pronunciation of the Huguenots survived in the slang of the Dublin slums.

Peter O'Brien (1842 -1914), solicitor general, 1887, attorney general, 1888, and lord chief justice, 1889, Lord Kilfenora, Peter the Packer, was said by his fellow county man, the writer and Parnellite Richard Barry O'Brien (1864 -1918), to have as near an approach to an English accent as is possible for a man born in Co Clare. (See Courts, Names and Nicknames).

According to the Cork Herald quoted in The Irishman on November 11, 1868, the poet John Keegan Casey (Leo) (1846 -1870) had a voice that mingled all the riches of the Irish tones with a clear ringing melody and possessed all the easy emphasis and pleasing address of the student orator and his eloquence although partaking perhaps too much of the flowery was unquestioned. (See Flags, Funerals, Health and Appearance).

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846 -1891), the leader of the Home Rule Party from 1880 and the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1882, studied at schools in Somerset and Oxfordshire and at Cambridge University and had an upper-class English accent. As a young man, he was a bad public speaker and his first speech in the House of Commons, on an Irish Coercion Bill in April 1875, was marred by repeated stammering.   

He became an effective speaker later but Richard Temple (1826 -1902) MP wrote in Letters and Character Sketches from the House of Commons, edited by his son Sir Richard Carmac Temple (1850 -1931), 1912, that in 1886 he had formed a high opinion of Parnell's manner and style for addressing the House but in February 1887 though at frequently recurring interludes he had indeed flashes, dashes, sparks, gleams of the old style, the mass of his speech was full of hesitancies, repetitions and lateral interpretations destroying the force of his sentences.

According to A M Sullivan (see above), Parnell in personal appearance, voice and accent, is English with a tinge of American. A stranger would judge him to be a cultivated American who had resided a good deal in England or a cultivated Englishman who had resided a good deal in America. (See Parnell).

Michael Davitt (1846 -1906), the Fenian and secretary of the Land League, had the working-class accent of Haslingden in Lancashire where he grew up. His voice has also been described as deep, resonant, and throaty and as bass. According to James J Clancy in The Land League Manual, 1881, he was a highly effective speaker, clear, vigorous, and close in reasoning and with a spontaneous flow of expressive and picturesque phraseology. In 1915, Arthur Lynch (1861 -1934) wrote in Ireland: Vital Hour that his voice rose and fell in cadences with a fine musical note. He always spoke simply with no strained endeavour at impression. (See Evictions, Health and Appearance, Land).

Edward Carson (1854 -1935), the leader of Irish Unionism, who was born in Harcourt Street, Dublin, had a heavy Dublin accent. (See Funerals, Home Rule, Partition).

According to T P O'Connor (1848 -1929), a writer and MP, in Ireland's Crown of Thorns and Roses, 1904, the oratory of his colleague Timothy Michael Healy (1855 -1931) MP was initially tame, disjointed and ineffective but gathered strength and fire and the ardour of his convictions often tempted him to exaggeration of language and conduct. The Conservative MP, Richard Temple (1826 -1902) wrote in Letters and Character Sketches from the House of Commons, edited by his son Sir Richard Carmac Temple (1850 -1931), 1912, that Healy, in the House of Commons in the 1880s, combined a bitter and rasping tongue with great alertness and nimbleness of mind. His wit, though seldom vulgar is never refined and is often scathing, scorching and lambent. His forte is his impromptu and he seldom tries a set speech. (See Families, Parnell).

In Great Irishmen in War and Peace, 1920, compiled by Felix Lavery, T P O'Connor wrote that John Redmond's (1856 -1918) oratory was chaste, careful and studied but that, while he often rose to eloquence, his speeches, which were usually written if they were important, were colder than the typical oratory of his countrymen. He was more effective in the House of Commons than on a platform. (See Health and Appearance, Land, Parnell, Statements and Soundbites).

John Redmond (1856 -1918), the second last leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, had, according to a colleague D. D. Sheehan (1873 -1948) MP, a voice of splendid quality, resonant and impressive in tone and an eloquence that always charmed his hearers. He was liked by reporters in the House of Commons because he spoke slowly and with good enunciation. He is said to have studied elocution as a boy. (See Dismissals, Families, Home Rule).

Roger Casement (1864 -1916), who tried to obtain German support for a rebellion in Ireland in 1916, had a strong musical voice and an English accent. Michael Joseph 'The' O'Rahilly (1875 -1916) had a strong Kerry accent. Joseph Plunkett (1887 -1916) and Countess Constance de Markievicz (1868 -1927), two of the leading insurgents in 1916, had high-pitched voices. Plunkett who, like Thomas Francis Meagher, was partly educated in Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, had an English accent. Thomas MacDonagh (1878 -1916), one of the leading participants in the 1916 Rising was an excellent mimic. Patrick Pearse (1879-1916), the leader of the Rising had a clear resonant voice. (See Armies, Dismissals, Gays and Lesbians, Gun Running, 1916).

According to Maurice Bourgeois, in John Millington Synge and the Irish Theatre, 1913, the playwright (1871 -1909) had a hoarse voice with hardly any mellifluous Irish brogue in it and spoke so quickly that he was difficult to catch (sic). He was a soft spoken, shy, somewhat uncouth person of a retiring disposition and an entirely loveable nature. In a social circle he generally remained an inscrutable listener until drawn out of his shell of reserve. (See Health and Appearance,  Miscellaneous).

Joseph Devlin (1871 -1934), the Belfast Nationalist MP, had a strong Belfast accent. (See Elections, Health and Appearance, Parties, Statues, Statements and Soundbites).

Frank Sheehy-Skeffington (1878 -1916), the pacifist and advocate of women's rights, was born in Bailieborough, Co Cavan and had an Ulster accent. (See Elections, Families, Health and Appearance, 1916).

According to his friend, the trade unionist William O'Brien (1881 -1968), writing in Fifty Years of Liberty Hall, in 1959, James Connolly was always ready to answer questions and could be wittily crushing in repartee. (See 1916). Thomas Kettle (1880 -1916), an MP, writer and soldier had a rich Irish brogue. (See Alcohol, Statements and Soundbites).

Robert Barton (1881 -1975), one of the signatories of the 1921 Treaty, and his cousin, Erskine Childers (1870 -1922), the secretary of the Irish delegation at the Treaty negotiations, had refined English accents. (See Civil War, English Connections, Families, Treaties).

*****

AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS

Early 18th century agrarian groups included the Houghers, originally in West Galway from the winter of 1711 and in neighbouring counties in 1712 generally, who drove cattle off their owners' land and maimed them in protest against high rents that forced tenants to leave their holdings. They may have been led by men of some social standing including one Ever Joyce or Shoy (Seoighe) (Captain Eaver), reputed to be the Hougher leader in West Galway. Outrages by the Houghers subsided following the hanging of a number in 1712. 

Agrarian disturbances became significant from 1759 when commonages were being fenced and taken into private use and other land was being switched from tillage to grazing. Landlords now wanted to rear cattle for export to England following the liberalisation of trade by the 1759 Cattle Act and to take advantage of the ending of tithes on pasture from 1760. The liberalisation had become necessary because a murrain that had spread from Russia to Germany, Holland and France in the early 1730s had returned in a more virulent form in 1744 and spread to Great Britain in 1745 resulting in a significant depletion of the cattle herd and a consequent shortage of butter, cheese and beef. (See Economics, Tithes).

As a result, tenants suffered from the loss of grazing rights and employment opportunities or had to pay higher rents for land to grow potatoes. The men who re-acted by levelling the fences became known as Levellers from 1757. As their activities became more widespread in Tipperary and neighbouring counties from mid-1761, they were called Whiteboys (or Bougheleen Bawns, recte Buachaillí Bána), after the white linen over-shirts or frocks they wore as a uniform. They opposed the enclosure of commonages and the conversion of arable land to sheep walks. They threatened men who underbid their neighbours to obtain employment, or who offered higher rents in order to obtain farms and they opposed the collection of tithes for the Church of Ireland and excessive dues for Catholic priests. The punishments they inflicted including burying people to their necks for up to twenty- four hours. (See Tithes).

In threatening notices and letters the Whiteboys sometimes referred to their leader as Queen Sive Oultagh or used the names Captain Dwyer or Joanna Meskell. They were the first oath bound secret society in Ireland. At the opening of the Irish parliament on October 22, 1761, the lord lieutenant, George Montagu-Dunk (1716 -1771), the Earl of Halifax, noted the peaceful demeanour of the papists of this kingdom but the Whiteboys became increasingly active during the following six months. 

A Commission of Enquiry established by the Government reported in 1762 that the authors of outrages consisted indiscriminately of persons of different persuasions and that no marks of disaffection to His Majesty's person or government had been discovered.

Early in 1762, at a fair in Kilmallock, Co Limerick, a Protestant lawyer and farmer, William Fant, asked for help to remove fences that had been erected illegally by a local landlord and MP, Silver Oliver (1736 -1798).

The Whiteboys may have obtained the idea for their uniforms from the Huguenot peasants of the Cevennes region of South-Central France who rebelled against the revocation of the Edict of Nantes from 1702 to 1710. They wore camisades or smocks and staged attacks at night and became known as camisards. (See Plantations).   

At Newmarket, Co Kilkenny, on the road between Kilmaganny and Knocktopher, on September 29, 1763, more than 300 Whiteboys attacked soldiers taking some of their comrades to jail. During the fracas, two soldiers and nineteen Whiteboys were killed. Six other Whiteboys were hanged later. The activities of the Whiteboys seem to have ceased temporarily following a severe drought in 1766 or because eight men accused of outrages had been executed during the previous three years including six in Co Kilkenny in 1765. (See above). They resumed around 1769 and there were reports of outrages in the mid-1770s in Queen's County (Laois), Co Kildare and neighbouring regions.

In 1762, the Government offered £100 for information leading to the capture of Whiteboys. A group of Protestant merchants offered an additional £200 for the capture of their leader, whoever he might be, and £50 for each of four associates. A group of Catholic merchants then offered £200 and four sums of £40 for the same results. In 1765, the administration of the Whiteboy oath became a capital offence, following the passage of a Whiteboy Act. In 1772, a number of gentlemen in the barony of Iverk offered 50 guineas for information leading to convictions of Whiteboys and William Ponsonby (1704 -1793), the Earl of Bessborough, offered £50. 

In 1775, the Tumultuous Risings Act was passed to prevent and punish tumultuous risings of persons.

In February 1775, Robert Butler, a Catholic landlord in Co Kilkenny, was denounced by the Whiteboys and fled the county. His brother, James (1742 -1791), the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, Fr Cahill, the parish priest of Ballyragget, and others formed an Anti-Whiteboy League and were allowed to carry arms. They defeated the Whiteboys in a clash on February 8 and when members of the organisation attacked the village in what became known as the siege of Ballyragget on the night of February 21, ten of them were killed.

On October 12, the archbishop declared that all Whiteboys in his archdiocese were excommunicated. In 1777, John Thomas Troy (1739-1823) OP, the Catholic bishop of Ossory, denounced the Whiteboys and in 1779 he issued an edict of excommunication against them in which he threatened denial of the sacraments, Christian burial, and consignment to the everlasting fires of hell. 

In November 1784, during another outbreak of Whiteboy activity, he issued a pastoral letter in which he denounced them as scandalous and rotten members of the Church, deluded offenders, unthinking creatures, exposed in this life by their nocturnal excursions and wanton depredations to sickness, loathsome imprisonment and an infamous death, whilst in the next their obstinacy will be punished with endless torture. They were also condemned by other Catholic bishops including Nicholas Sweetman (1695 -1786) in Ferns, Laurence Nihell (1726 -1795) in Kilfenora, John O'Brien (d 1769) in Cloyne, James Keefe (d 1775) in Kildare and Leighlin, Peter Creagh (d 1774) in Waterford and James Butler (1742 -1791) in Cashel and Emly. (See Seminaries, Statements and Soundbites, Union, 1798).

In 1787, the Riot Act passed to suppress the Whiteboys described how they assembled riotously, injured persons and property, compelled persons to leave their abodes, imposed oaths and declarations by menaces, sent threatening and incendiary letters, obstructed the export of corn, and destroyed the same.   

On July 11,1793, a large number of Whiteboys in Wexford and their associates, perhaps up to 3,000 in total, who were demanding the release of two comrades from prison, clashed with a unit of the 56th Regiment of Foot led by a Major Charles Vallaton. Vallaton and one of the Whiteboys, John Moore (b 1771), fatally wounded each other. Moore was armed with a scythe blade attached to a pole. Thirteen or sixteen other Whiteboys (accounts vary) were shot in the clash or hanged subsequently. (By other, dubious, accounts, up to 80 or 100 peasants were killed in the affray).

In March 1793, five Whiteboys were sentenced to death at a single sitting of a court in Dundalk. Whiteboys continued to be used as a general description of agrarian secret societies until the Great Famine.

Two Protestant groups, the Hearts of Oak Boys in North Armagh and parts of Tyrone, Monaghan, Fermanagh, Cavan and Derry and the Hearts of Steel Boys in Antrim and Down, were active for about six weeks in 1763 and in 1769 -72 respectively. The Oak Boys wore oak boughs in their hats as a means of identification and principally objected to giving six days' labour and the employment of their horses for the same duration to landlords to make or repair roads. They also opposed the payment of tithes and the county cess and the payment of rent for bog lands. Although they demonstrated, they weren't involved in violent assaults. They were subdued by troops sent against them by the Lord Justice, the Archbishop of Armagh, George Stone (1708 -1764) and some of their grievances were removed by an amendment to the roads legislation. 

According to Richard Twiss (1747 -1821) in A Tour of Ireland (1775), they refused to pay a tithe of their potatoes, telling their clergy that they ought to be satisfied with their tithe of what grew over ground. On July 26, 1763, troops led by Charles Coote MP (1736 -1800), later the Earl of Bellomont, intercepted unarmed Heart of Oak men at Wattlebridge, Co Fermanagh, as they were planning to raid Belturbet barracks for arms, and killed seven and wounded fourteen. Other clashes resulting in fatalities took place at Castleblaney, Co Monaghan on July 19 and Newtownstewart, Co Tyrone on July 25. They were offered a general pardon at the end of August and only one person was executed.  A topical piece of doggerel excoriated the grand jury who out of their bounty/ made a road at the expense of the county. 

The Hearts of Steel Boys opposed charges for the renewal of leases and the sale of leases to merchants who increased rents and replaced tenants who couldn't afford to pay (especially on the estate of Arthur Chichester, 1739-1799, the Earl of Donegall). They were all Protestants or Non-Conformists. Many of them emigrated to America.

A writer in The Volunteers Journal of February 2, 1784 claimed that the Hearts of Steels organisation grew in Co Armagh after an unnamed rector disinterred the body of a man who hadn't paid church fees.

In 1771, a presbyterian minister in Templepatrick, Co Antrim denounced the Steel Boys as sons of Satan and said that their behaviour was contradictory to the laws of nature. He was referring to the maiming of cattle and the damaging of the property of tenants (often Catholics) who had taken over their holdings. On December 24, 1771, 1,200 members invaded Belfast and succeeded in obtaining the release of a farmer, David Douglass from Templepatrick, who had been arrested three days earlier but during an altercation with the military before his release five people were killed and nine were wounded. Following a period of widespread disturbances and trials and executions, the Authorities issued a general pardon in November 1772 and the movement petered out. It had never been organised and had sprung up spontaneously in parishes when tenants promised to be true as steel to one another. (See Emigration, Orange Order).

The Rightboys, who succeeded the Whiteboys and were supposedly led by Captain Right, originated near Mallow, Co Cork, in 1783. They were prominent in Munster and South Leinster from 1785 to 1788 and had small farmers as well as labourers and cottiers in their ranks. Their grievances included the payment of tithes. They were condemned by, amongst others, Fr Arthur O'Leary (1729-1802) OFM, a controversial preacher and writer in Co Cork but his denunciations were not considered adequate by the Protestant Bishop of Cloyne, Richard Woodward (1726 -1794), or by the Trinity College professor and MP, Patrick Duigenan (1735 -1816), and they, in turn, denounced him. (See Converts, Dismissals).

While these groups caused considerable terror in the countryside, only 50 or so people were killed in agrarian outrages between 1760 and 1790. One of these outrages was the burning of a cabin in Co Waterford in 1762 for which five men were hanged, after another member of the group had given evidence against them.

In Co Louth, during the spring assizes of 1793, twenty-one people were sentenced to death, 25 were sentenced to transportation and 12 were imprisoned for agrarian murders.

The Peep O'Day Boys in Armagh in the 1790s were so called because of their practice of Catholic homes for weapons at dawn. Their main grievance was the propensity of Catholics to outbid them for land available for rent. They were mostly Presbyterians, at least nominally, and didn't have any central organisation. Initially, they were known as the Protestant Boys and the members who destroyed Catholic homes were known as Wreckers. They were opposed by the Catholic Defenders who spread through south Ulster and north Leinster. The Defenders originated as a non-sectarian group who had supported one of two Presbyterian farmers in a dispute at Bunker's Hill, near Markethill, Co Armagh in 1784. Soon afterwards, the Protestants and Presbyterians departed.

In 1793, thirty-eight Defenders were killed in a clash with the militia at Coolnahinch, near Kells, Co Meath.

In 1795, the authorities in Co Armagh hanged three Defenders and two Peep O'Day Boys.

Many of the Defenders joined the United Irishmen. (See 1798).

There were very few outrages for about eight years following the Rising of 1798.

Early 19th century agrarian societies included the Threshers in Counties Longford, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon and Galway from 1806, the Carders in Counties Louth and Meath, the impoverished Moyle Rangers and Moll Doyle's Children in the south-east and their successors, the Caravats (sometimes called Dowsers), the slightly better-off Paudeen Gars (ie géar, sharp in Irish) Party, led by Patrick Connors, who became the Shanavests (sometimes called Dingers), from 1810, the Black Hens, Magpies, Blue Belts, Coffeys and Reaskawallahs in North Co Tipperary, the Whitefeet and Blackfeet mainly in Kilkenny and Queen's County (Laois) in the 1820s and 1830s and the Rockites, mainly in Counties Limerick and Cork, from 1821 to 1825.  Most of these societies were formed when tillage became less profitable following the end of the European (Napoleonic) war in 1815 while tenants were still forced to pay wartime rents.

The Threshers used flails as weapons and scattered hay and corn from haggards. They opposed the payment of excessive dues to Catholic priests and tithes to the Church of Ireland. They disappeared after 1810. The Carders scraped the backs of their victims with cards used for sheep shearing or nails attached to boards. They also used tom cats to scratch their flesh or they cut off ears and noses or buried people in pits.

The Shanavests, who were mainly Moyle Rangers originally, emerged under that title about two years after the Caravats and like their leader Patrick Connors wore old waistcoats as a uniform. The Caravats wore neckties in memory of their leader, Nicholas Hanley, who was hanged in Clonmel in 1805, allegedly because of information given to the authorities by Paudeen Gar's Party. As he stood on the gallows, Connors enraged his followers by making an insulting remark about the necktie he was wearing.

Both groups were primarily faction fighters and lived in the vicinity of Ballingarry, Co Tipperary. In 1818, according to some accounts, the Caravats decided that they would remain active for three more years and the Shanavests decided to remain active for four more years. The groups then became known respectively as the Three-Year-Olds and the Four-Year-Olds or the Threes and Fours. According to other accounts, these names originated in a dispute between two men and their supporters over the age of a cow.

During a brawl between two families the Lynches and the Twomeys and their supporters at Ballyvourney, Co Cork after Mass on Sunday, July 21, 1816, one man was killed and a Daniel Lynch was executed for his murder on April 12, 1817. When a group of dragoons attempted to restore peace, the two groups attacked them.

Two people were killed in a fight in Tipperary town between the Three-Year-Olds and the Four-Year-olds on June 24, 1829. The two groups agreed to a truce at a meeting in Knocklong, Co Limerick, later. On June 3, 1833, a new dispute broke out between them at a fair at Ballingarry. The Caravats pursued a Shanavest, Maurice Ivors, into the chapel and killed him there. The feud survived in the parishes around Emly until a reconciliation was forced by the archbishop of Cashel and Emly from 1854, Patrick Leahy (1806 -1875) in December 1863.

Ribbonmen, Ribbandmen, or members of the Ribbon Society, so called because they wore red and green ribbons, succeeded the Defenders in South Ulster and North Leinster from 1810. They were mainly small tenant farmers, labourers and shopkeepers and didn't have a centralised organisation.

On the night of October 29, 1816, a number of men attacked and set fire to Wild Goose Lodge in Reaghstown near Ardee, Co Louth, believing that the owner, Edward Lynch, was responsible for the capture and execution of three of their comrades who had taken part in a raid for guns during the previous April. It is not known if they were members of a Ribbon gang. Eight occupants of the house, including one or perhaps two babies, were burned to death. Eighteen men, including the alleged leader, Patrick Devan, were found guilty of the murders and hanged in July 1817. All the victims and the convicted men were Catholics.

In 1825, the Ribbonmen became St Patrick's Fraternal Society following denunciations by the Catholic Church. This society, in turn, became the forerunner of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in New York and Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania in 1836. Ribbonmen branches in England became the Hibernian Funeral Society.

Ribbon activities peaked during the years 1820 -30 and 1835 -55 but lodges still existed in Counties Cavan, Longford and Westmeath in the 1860s. Ribbonmen were active in Co Mayo as late as the 1870s and may have intimidated a benign local Catholic landlord, George Henry Moore (1810 -1870), the father of the novelist George Moore (1852 -1933), causing his premature death. There was a tradition that nobody had died from hunger on Moore's 5,000 acre estate during the Great Famine. The Moores' home, Moore Hall, was burned by Irregulars during the Civil War in 1923. (See Converts, Famine).

The activities of the Ribbonmen led to the passage of the Westmeath Act in 1871. This act empowered the Lord Lieutenant, John Poyntz Spencer (1835 -1910), Lord Spencer, to suspend habeas corpus and imprison members or supporters of agrarian secret societies. (See Names and Nicknames).

In his history, New Ireland, 1877, A M Sullivan (1830 -1884) wrote that in Ulster, it (ribbonism) professed to be a defensive or retaliatory league against Orangeism. In Munster, it was at first a combination against tithe proctors. In Connaught, it was an organisation against rack renting and evictions. In Leinster, it often was mere trade unionism, dictating by its mandates and enforcing by its vengeance, the employment or dismissal of workmen, stewards and domestics. (See Tithes, Names and Nicknames).

In 1819, Whiteboys in Co Limerick killed a Catholic priest, Fr Mulqueen, who had denounced them and, in 1822, Whiteboys in Co Kerry organised a rent strike against a number of landlords including Daniel O'Connell (1775 -1847).

In the 1820s and 1830s, outrages were increasingly against farmers and improving landlords, rather than against absentee landlords. The causes of conflict included attempts by farmers to take back conacre (land given out for 11 months in return for payment in cash or labour) as cattle prices rose, and increases in rents.

The poet, Máire Bhúi Ní Laoghaire (1777 -1849), wrote a poem about the battle titled Cath Céim an Fhia.

The Rockites, supposedly led by Captain Rock, emerged in 1821 when Alexander Hoskins (1766 -1830), a London solicitor, the new agent of Lord William Courtenay (1768 -1835) for his estate in West Co Limerick and Co Cork increased rents and tried, aggressively, to collect arrears. Their activities, including resistance to tithes, spread beyond the Courtenay estates to most of Munster, inflamed by hardship caused by a depression in agricultural prices and by malevolent predictions about the future of the Protestant Churches in a book by Rev Charles Walmesley (1722 -1797), using the nom-de-plume Signor Pastorini, which was circulating in the area. (See Ecumenism).

Various people were alleged to be the captain including a blacksmith, Patrick Dillane, who killed Hoskins' son Thomas (1802 -1821) at Barnagh Hill, near Abbeyfeale, on July 27, 1821 and Sean Fitzmaurice, also a blacksmith, from Templeglantine. Dillane's fate is unknown. By one account, he became an approver ie gave evidence against his accomplices and went to America. Fitzmaurice was executed in 1822. In all, about 100 men were hanged for agrarian offences, mainly in Cos Limerick and Cork, between 1821 and 1824, including more than 30 in February 1822, and at least 200 were transported to Australia.  Hoskins was dismissed by the trustees of the Courtenay estate in October 1821. Courtenay was openly gay and lived mostly in America or France. (See Gays and Lesbians).

Faction fighting was a major source of civil disturbance between the years 1803 and 1829, and particularly in Co Tipperary, but outbreaks occurred as late as the 1880s. On November 19, 1821, Edmond and Mary Shea, their seven children, three female servants and five workmen were burned to death when their house at Gortnapish, Cloneen, Co Tipperary was set on fire. Shea was a middleman who had recently evicted a tenant. (See Slaughter). 

On January 21, 1822, a confrontation between Rockites and yeomen at the Pass of Keimaneigh in the Caha mountains between Macroom and Bantry resulted in the deaths of four Rockites and a yeoman. Another Rockite who participated was hanged later. During the last ten days of January there were major incidents in the Co Cork towns of Kanturk, Millstreet, Macroom, Duhallow and Newmarket. And 15 men were hanged for agrarian offences in February.   

The implementation of an Insurrection Act which permitted summary trials early in 1822 and the saturation of Munster with soldiers led to the decline and ending of Rockite activities. 

In 1824, John Marum (also known as Mason), a brother of the Catholic Bishop of Ossory, Kyran Marum (d 1827), who had ejected a Protestant tenant or taken over a holding from which a tenant had been evicted (accounts vary), was shot and bludgeoned to death by three men on the road between Rathdowney, Queen's County (Laois), and Johnstown, Co Kilkenny and his son-in-law was knocked out. Six men were hanged in Kilkenny for the crime. 

Faction fighting was a major source of civil disturbance between the years 1803 and 1829, and particularly in Co Tipperary, but outbreaks occurred as late as the 1880s. On January 6, 1814, about 500 people from the nearby parish of Lusmagh invaded the town of Banagher, King's County (Offaly), and three people were killed by the soldiers of the 12th Regiment when they were breaking up the fracas. Three people were killed by police at Ballina in north Co Tipperary on April 24, 1829 when they intervened in a fight between local men and invaders from Killaloe across the Shannon. Six were killed in a fight in Borrisokane, Co Tipperary, on June 26, 1829.

The Lady Clare's Boys in Co Clare had similar objectives to the Threshers. Later groups included the Terry Alts who spread from Co Clare to neighbouring counties from 1829 to 1832, in Counties Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Waterford, Tipperary and Queen's County in the early 1830s, the Blackfeet in the Midlands and the Molly Maguires who originated in North Connaught in the early 1840s.

The Terry Alts opposed the payment of tithes and were, perhaps, named after a shoemaker from Corofin. In January 1833, Daniel O'Connell (1775 -1847) surmised that the Whiteboys used the name Terry Alt on threatening letters to annoy an extremely loyal old soldier and that he was drafted into the police and moved to Co Wicklow for his protection. The Mollies survived until the 1870s especially in Counties Cavan, Armagh and Leitrim and eventually merged with the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Board of Erin. Molly Maguire may have been an evicted tenant from near Ballymena or an old lady in Co Fermanagh or the owner of a shebeen in Cloone, Co Leitrim. (See Names and Nicknames).

The names Defenders and Ribbonmen, like Whiteboys, were also used as generic terms for agrarian agitators. Between the Union and the Great Famine, Parliament passed 32 public order coercion acts specifically for Ireland and by 1886 there were 85 new or revived acts on the statute books providing for the suspension of habeas corpus and dealing with unlawful oaths, threats against the person, unlawful assembly, the preservation of the peace and the unlawful carrying of arms. Parliament passed 105 coercion acts pertaining to Ireland between 1801 and 1921, including a perpetual act, the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, generally known as the Crimes Act, promoted by the chief secretary, Arthur Balfour (1848 -1930), in 1887, which could be put into force by proclamation in a disturbed" area at any time. (See Black and Bloody Days, Parliaments).

In 1833, more than 600 agrarian outrages in Munster accounted for two-thirds of recorded crime in the province. (The expression agrarian outrage originated in the early 1820s).

On June 24, 1834, St. John's Day, a battle between