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The success of the Irish Rising calmed for a short time the fierce ferocity of the English settlers, but subsequent events proved that the short era of peace was only the lull before the storm. To get the full force of popular opinion in England on the government side, the wildest and most extravagant stories were circulated of the dreadful massacre of Protestants by Irish Catholics, and there was aroused a fierce wave of indignation in England against the Catholic community of this country. A regular systematic murder of Catholics was organized, and even Catholics who took no side in recent controversies suffered the same fate as their fighting co-religionists. Needless to say, this policy only strengthened the backs of the Catholic leaders, and the Confederation of Kilkenny was summoned to take into consideration the state of the country and make laws for its government. This great National assembly met in Kilkenny on October 23rd, 1642, and a Supreme Council of six members from each province was elected. This was the only authority recognized by the Irish people for the following three years, and as it undertook all the duties and responsibilities appertaining to a government, and carried them out with justice and impartiality, it can be claimed that Ireland was practically free during the reign of this body.
The Confederation of Kilkenny - which was the union of all Catholic bodies and organizations for the defense of the Church and property of Catholics - embraced the brotherhood of the Defenders. As the Defenders were merged in the Confederates, we cannot for a considerable time find sufficiently reliable data to trace the former body as a distinctively separate organization. But in all the battles fought by the Confederate army, the Defenders were ever to the fore, fighting side by side with their fellow countrymen for the defense of Faith and Fatherland.
On the 6th February, 1649, the government of England was vested in a council of thirty-eight members, with Cromwell as President. Soon after, Cromwell was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and landed in Dublin the following August. Now began an era of crime, slaughter and massacre, the like of which the history of any other country fails to record. The murder of defenseless men, women and children in Drogheda, by Cromwell's soldiery, is sickening, revolting reading. It was an attempt on the part of an autocrat to terrorize the inhabitants by letting loose a torrent of human blood, in the vain hope of subjecting an entire people to his will. Vain hope, alas! for like all the other crimes committed by England in the name of justice, this, perhaps, the worst of all, only had the effect of planting a deep and lasting hatred in the hearts of the natives towards their rulers. And is is impossible that it could be otherwise. A people would be lost to all sense of shame, all sense of justice and right, if they permitted a crime such as the Drogheda massacre to go unpunished. The death cries of defenseless women and children called aloud for vengeance - and did not call in vain.
It may appear to the reader that I am dealing more with the history of Ireland than with that of the Hibernians or Defenders, but I must point out, that it would be impossible to give the history of one without encroaching on the indulgence of the reader by recounting some of the history of the other.
The merciless cruelty dealt out by Cromwell's soldiery provoked the worst passions of the people, and who can wonder that excesses on both sides were the natural consequences, or who can blame the native Irish for meting out to their opponents some measure of the treatment to which they themselves were subjected?
Cromwell's campaign lasted nine months, and in that time he practically succeeded in wiping out the Confederate army.
The war continued fitfully for two years after Cromwell left Ireland, when the Irish surrendered at Kilkenny. Now began such a policy of extermination that one wonders how Ireland retained her individuality, or even again lifted her head as a nation. We are told that thousands of Irish children were transported to the West Indies and there sold as slaves in the pestilential settlements of the tobacco islands. The best of Ireland's sons enlisted in the service of foreign countries, while the remainder of the Irish who lived outside Connaught had to yield up their farms, their business, and such other property they possessed, and seek refuge in that province under penalty of death.
In effect To Hell or to Connaught, This was Cromwell's war cry.
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The following are a few of the laws enacted under Lord Capel during the dark days of our history.
- No Catholic could employ a Catholic instructor to educate his children, and if he sent a child abroad to be educated, he was fined £100, and the child could not inherit any property in Ireland or England. The reason for this law is obvious. The Continent was at this time seething with Irish exiles, and the English government feared that if the sons of the gentry went abroad to be educated they would be contaminated by mixing with the Irish patriots, and would return to their native land imbued with no friendly feelings towards england. The government feared mostly the educated Irish, and this was the hellish plan to thwart the Irish from educating their children.
- Any Catholic gentleman's child, by becoming a convert could take possession of his father's house and property. -- This law speaks for itself; it was one of the many inducements held out to the Irish to become traitors to the faith of their fathers.
- Catholic gentlemen were fined £60 for absence from Protestant worship.
- Catholics were forbidden to travel five miles from their houses, to keep arms, or to maintain a suit in a court of justice. --This law proves that, though to all appearances Ireland was subdued, the government feared any meeting or conclave of Catholics, and it supports the view that there was an organisation in existence at the time.
- Any Catholic priest who came to Ireland should be hanged.
Is it not wonderful how the Catholic faith remained in Ireland, in spite of written laws and practical tyranny? Truly, the hand of God can be traced in all this, for without Divine aid no people could so faithfully cherish their religion, ans suffer the crual penalties which their devotion to their faith cost them.
It is at this period that we again come across the Defenders as a distinctively seperate organisation.
Guarding the mountain passes during the celebration of Holy Mass, the Defenders proved themselves the faithful guardians and soldiers of the Cross. While the priest of God, like a criminal flying from justice, was offering up the adorable Sacriment of the Mass in the thickness of the mountain, that Holy sanctuary was closely guarded by the Defenders with a fidelity and faithfulness which demanded admiration.
The following poem is taken from Gavan Duffy's ballad poetry of Ireland, it indicates the popularity enjoyed by the founder of the Defenders amongst his fellow-countrymen.
On the green hills of Ulster the white cross waves high,
And the beacon of war throws its flames to the sky;
Now the taunt and the threat let the coward endure,
Our hope is in God and Rory O Moore
Do you ask why the beacon and banner of war
On the mountains of Ulster are seen from afar?
"Tis the signal our rights to regain, and secure,
Through God and Our Lady and Rory O'Moore.
For the merciless Scots, with their creed and their swords,
With war in their bosoms, and peace in their words,
Have sworn the bright light of our faith to obscure,
But our hope is in God and Rory O'Moore.
Oh! lives there a traitor who'd shrink from the strife,
Who, to add to the length of a forfeited life,
His country, his kindred, his faith, would abjure?
No! we'll strike for our God and Rory O'Moore.
I may say that the Defenders remained true to their trust up to the year of 1745, when the Catholics were length granted the right of public worship. The occupation of the Defenders as the bodyguard of the Clergy now gone, they turned their attention to matters affecting the internal welfare of Ireland.
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The Irish land laws, governing the relations between Landlord and tenant were of such an unjust and iniquitous nature, that farmers could scarcely eke a living out for themselves and their families. To the redress of these laws, and to the aid of the farmer, the Defenders now devoted themselves.
In 1745 the Defenders started the campaign against Landlordism; (over 250 years have since elapsed, and the Landlords are still with us. It is true to say at this time that farmers under various different Acts have regained land which had originally belonged to their forefathers, however there is still land in the hands of absentee Landlords who continue to be paid rent. )
At this time the Protestants of the North formed a society under the title of "Oak Boys", and wore as their emblem an oak leaf. This society was practically patronised, if not, indeed, subsidised by the government to carry on the tyrannical campaign against Catholics, and many a fierce conflict took place between the members of this new body and the Defenders.
Connaught and Ulster was always the stronghold of the Defenders. At the time the Defenders started the campaign against Landlordism, there sprang upan organisation known as the "Whiteboys", which also aimed at the relief of the farmer, and with this organisation, in order to affect a thorough systematic plan of working, the Defenders joined hands, the combined body working under the title of "Ribbonmen. It was obvious that a united front on the part of the tenants would be more effective, and could achieve its objective better than a few scattered bodies working individually for the same purpose. Combination, also, is really the only method which can be employed with effect in dealing with tyrants, and tyranny and persecution can only be met with resistance. The peasantry were not sufficiently harassed by Landlordism to please the extreme section of the planters, and the persecution of individual Catholics on religious grounds was again resorted to. While Catholics were strictly forbidden to keep arms on any pretext, the most dastardly and ruffianly corner-boy who professed non-Catholic views was permitted his weapon of self-defence. What he was to defend himself against is not stated, but what he actually used his weapon for is. They were employed to terrorise his Catholic neighbours, and were used without scruple or fear of punishment on his fellow man. It was quite a usual thing for a Catholic farmer to find pasted on the door of his house a notice to clear out, and make himself scarce, or else his holding and goods would be burned to the ground. And this was no vain threat! If the Catholic thus warned did not leave his farm "Within a reasonable time" the bloody crew would swoop down on him at the dead of night, fire his house, watch for the flight of its inhabitants, and if they were discovered, put them to death. Appeals to the law were useless; in fact, in many districts, the bench of magistrates aided and abetted the policy of extermination to which Catholics were subjected. The crime of killing a native was equally as legal as the crime of killing a dog, and the person charged had only to plead that "the victim was an Irishman" to gain acquittal. In truth, one wonders how the Catholic organisation restrained its individual members from retaliating on these human demons, who used every means, legal and otherwise, to totally annihilate the Catholic population.
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Such was the state of affairs in Ireland at this period, and while the Whiteboys have been condemned by prejudiced historians as a cruel and lawless organisation, there are many writers of an impartial kind who claim that it was a purely defensive society, and have expressed wonder that, considering the provocation received, it contented itself with defensive tactics. John Mitchel, a Protestant historian, writing of the state of the country at this period said: "The Defenders, that is the luckless Catholics of the North, struggling only to live by their labour, surrounded by a larger population of insolent and ferocious Protestants, remained always, as their name imports, strictly on the defensive. They were never mad enough to become aggressors at all; and it is right to understand once and for all - and we shall have but too many occasions of illustrating the fact - that in all the violent and bloody contentions which have taken place between the Catholics and Protestants from that day to the present, without any exception, the Protestants have been the wanton aggressors."
Of course this reference of Mitchel's applied principally to the North, where the Peep-of-Day Boys, a Protestant society (successors of the Oak Boys), and which afterwards ripened into the Orange Order, were viely persecuting, with the connivance of the authorities, the Catholics of Ulster.
That some organisation was required to fight the common enemy for its assaults on Catholicism is indisputable; and if the Defenders, Whiteboys, or Ribbonmen resorted to means which we in the present enlightened century would find it difficult to justify, it must be remembered the dire provocation which they received, and the awful abuses to which Catholics at that period were subjected. That the society known as the Whiteboys was condemned by the Irish Hierarchy does not justify us in describing the organisation as immoral, or preclude us from sympathising with the principles which animated its leaders. It si true that members of this body were guilty of deeds which we at the present day might be inclined to describe as forcible, but what organisation ever existed for a period of years which did not deserve censure through the over-enthusiasm or lack of discretion of some of its members? And while recognising the undoubted right of the Irish Bishops to condemn any organisation which they considered was engaged in unlawful practices, yet, I venture to think that without some such body as the Whiteboys, acting unitedly together according to their lights for the nations good, and demonstrating clearly to our British rulers that they were prepared to fight the cause of the Irish Catholic tenants with every available weapon they could wield, that the claim of justice for catholic farmers would not have been kept to the front in the manner in which it was.
The Whiteboy disturbances as they are described by historians, were all traced by a specially appointed committee to the abject state of the peasantry of the country. The strenious efforts the peasantry were compelled to make to meet the claim of the landlord invariably reduced them to a state of semi-starvation, even in a prosperous season, and when the crops were unfavourable there was only one thing that stared them in the face - the roadside. Is it any wonder, then, that disturbances followed, and that even crime should be the outcome of such treatment? Can you, reader, picture to yourself a farmer struggling year by year, not for his own profit, not for his own comfort, not to make provision for his family, or to secure a competence for old age - but working, starving, slaving, from morning's dawn to evening's fall, for the upkeep of one man, and that man a stranger, probably an English settler, undoubtedly a bigoted Protestant, his landlord. Half starving himself and his family, this poor farmer succeeded for a number of years in paying the exorbitant rent demanded from him; to enable him to do this he had to improve the land, probably reclaim bogland, expend money on the improvement of his out-houses for the rearing of stock, and after spending the best years of his life in this manner he was, owing to a bad season, evicted from his home, with a young and helpless family by his side. Saintly, indeed, would be the man who would take treatment like this calmly, and would look on at his innocent, hungry children, crying for bread, and say to his persecutor, I forgive you!
Beware you, my critic, when at home in your armchair, surrounded by evry luxury which wealth can purchase, how you ascribe bad, ungenerous, unlawful, or immoral conduct to those who, in the face of every and all opposition took the burden of the farmers on their shoulders and resolved to redress their wrongs. I say directly and emphatically, if there were any crimes committed by the Whiteboys or the Ribbonmen at this awful period of our country's history, that I believe, as I believe in a hereafter, that those who provoked such crimes were more guilty than those who committed them, and will suffer proportionately "when the day of reckoning comes."
I feel that at this point I should clarify the terms Defenders, Whiteboys and Ribbonmen. The Defenders were confined solely to Ulster and the Whiteboys in the South. When both societies amalgamated they worked under the term Ribbonmen however amongst the inhabitants of Ulster the organisation was spoken of as the Defenders and in the South it was still styled the Whiteboys.
In May 1795, a convention was held in Belfast to initiate a new movement under the title of the United Irishmen. To this gathering representatives of the Ribbonmen were invited and attended and took part in the deliberations. Thus, we find additional proof of the claim made by present day Hibernians that the members of their organisation, if not actually responsible for every national effort made in the past couple of centuries to free Ireland, were nevertheless active allies in all such enterprises.
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The Peep-ofDay Boys at this period (1796) were working dreadful havoc amongst the Catholics of Ulster - so much so, that the Catholic population had to take to the hillside, and only return to their homes under cover of night. We are told by Plowden that in one month up to 7,000 Catholics were compelled to leave Ulster owing to lawlessness displayed by the Protestant society. It is no matter for surprise that Catholics, driven as they were from their homesteads by this hellish crew, and compelled to seek the shelter of the mountains in defence of their very lives, determined to make their power and influence felt throughout the province. So well did they organise, and so effective became their resistance that the Defenders became an alarming menace to the government. It was at this period that the government, through the instrumentality of its many hirelings, was doing its utmost to compel the Irish nation to an insurrection, with the objective of carrying the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland. To help on this movement the utmost ridiculous stories were fabricated and circulated of the massacre of Protestants in Ulster by the Defenders. To their credit be it said, that some of the more manly Protestants refuted these statements, and, as an instance, the first company of volunteers in Ulster, composed entirely of Protestants, threw the whole blame for the state of the province on the heads of the Peep-of-Day Boys.
The following resolutions were passed at a meeting of inhabitants of Tullylish, Co. Down, Mr. George Law in the chair:-
Resolved:- "That we hold in just contempt and abhorrence the criminal advisers and wicked perpetrators of that inhuman, murderous and savage persecution which has of late disgraced the County of Armagh. That if these barbarities are not immediately opposed, and some wise, firm and effectual steps taken by men in authority to arrest their progress, they will instantly involve this kingdom in all the horrors of civil war, and deluge our land with blood."
"That in our opinion, the present existing laws are fully adequate to the detection and punishment of every species of offence, in case the civil magistrate do his duty."
These resolutions passed in condemnation of the atrocities perpetratedby the Peep-of-Day Boys, at an almost entirely Protestant meeting, did not, it need scarcely be said, achieve their purpose.
The magistrates ignored the censure passed upon them, the government ignored the warning contained in the resolutions, and the Peep-of-Day Boys were left unmolested by a paternal, just, and impartial government.
The first serious hand to hand encounter between the Defenders or Ribbonmen and the Peep-of-Day Boys occured at this period, and it is known by the somewhat extravagant term of the "Battle of the Diamond." Some claim that the Defenders sent a challenge to the Peep-of-Day Boys, but this is scarcely probable, for, while their opponents were well armed with useful weapons, the Defenders had only their number and their hands to rely on. From an elevated position the Peep-of-Day Boys opened fire on the Defenders, who, at the time of the attack, were in a hollow or glen surrounded by hills. Needless to say, the position occupied by the Peep-of-Day Boys was, even if both sides were well equipped, of a very adventageous nature; but, when it is recollected that the Defenders were totally unarmed, the position occupied by their opponents can be doubly appreciated. After firing for a considerable time from the heights on their enemy, the Peep-of-Day Boys swooped down the slope and a fierce struggle ensued.
The Peep-of-Day Boys were, of course, victorious, claiming that there were up to thirty Defenders killed and many more injured. However Mitchell, writing about the battle stated that there were only 4 -5 Defenders killed. There were no casualties on the protestant side, and yet, from that day, the Toast of the "Glorious Battle of the Diamond" is given at all Orange Banquets. Just after the battle delegates from all the branches of the Peep-of-Day Boys gathered at a convention in Loughgall and changed their name to that of Orangemen, the object being to avoid prosecution for their lawlessness at the Diamond. At the convention the constitution of the first Grand Lodge of Orangemen was decided upon.
The Orange Society being oath bound, with its members being cemented together, not by bonds of patriotism and love, but by a mutual hatred of the Catholic community. Thus was started the now world-famed society of Orangemen, so called in order to avoid detection for murder, and who will say the organisation was not founded under the happiest auspices? The wording of the original Orange oath was:-
"I_______ do swear that I will be true to King and Government, and that I will exterminate the Catholics of Ireland as far as in my power lies."
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The First Orange Outrage On Record
The following is the first Orange outrage on record, and will enlighten the reader as to the real origins of the Orange Order.
In 1795 there resided within a mile or so of Armagh a feeble old priest named Father McMeekin. He had lived through the persecution of the 18th century, fleeing from one place to another throughout counties Armagh and Down, celebrating Mass in some lonely glen or on a mountainside in the wildest and least frequented parts of the counties. His frequent companions through all this persecution were his niece, and her son, a lad of sixteen. Toward the close of the century this poor priest, who had led a life of extreme hardship and suffering, a life of constant toil, torment, fear, and dread, a life bordering closely on that of his Divine Master's, was enabled, owing to the comparative quietness of the period, to settle down for the first time in his sacred ministry in a house of his own in the little village of Ballymacnab, Co. Armagh. On the night of the 22nd September 1795, a party of Orangemen, most of them half drunk, and headed by a notorious ruffian from Portadown, proceeded to father McMeekin's dwelling. The household had retired, with the exception of the old clergyman, who was engaged reading his office. Marching to the window, one of the party deliberately took aim and wounded the old priest in the arm. This was the signal for attack; down went doors and windows, and in surged the murderous ruffians. A dozen of them made upstairs to seize the other inhabitants of the house, which consisted of the niece, her son, and a servant woman, while the remainder pounced upon the old priest who was by now exhausted from the loss of blood. They placed him on his knees, and threatened to cut him up; joint by joint, if he did not tell them at once where he kept "that damned wafer that he frightened the devil with." Needless to say, they did not get the required information, and, true to their promise, they brutally chopped off the fingers of his right hand. The question was repeated, and yet no answer was forthcoming. As they were proceeding to lacerate the left hand in the same manner, they noticed the firm way he kept that hand pressed to his breast, and evidently divining the reason they tore open his vest and there found the Blessed Sacrament. Revolting and horrible to relate, it was subjected to the vilest and most sacrilegious treatment, being spat and trampled upon and otherwise abused. The ruffian's overhead had been equally as busy as their companions below had. The clergyman's niece, a fine young woman, was shamefully dragged from her bed, and her screams for aid attracted the attention of her son, who went to her assistance. He was contained and compelled to look on at the accomplishment of a crime the bare mention of is enough to turn the blood cold in one's veins. The young woman, now half dead, was dragged to the room below, together with the boy and servant, and here the next act in this tragedy was enacted. The priest himself was now subjected to an outrage of the most diabolical kind, which can be better imagined than described.
The boy had his two eyes put out in the presence of his mother, but her sufferings were now, fortunately soon to be over. Having divested her of all her garments, they stabbed her, and afterwards brutally mutilated her. The priest was then hanged from one of the rafters of his house, but the servant managed to escape with the now blind child, and in the course of her flight, as she turned to take a parting look at her old home, she saw flames rising into the sky.
What will you the reader think when you hear that no prosecution was instituted against the perpetrators of this awful crime? The above story was taken from a book History of Orangeism. If you were to ask, Why did I choose to print this revolting tale of barbarism? I would have to say that it is with the object of showing the motives, which actuated the men who started the Orange Association, and to prove the implacable hatred to Catholicism, which is an adjunct to the Orange mind. It will be seen that the Orange Order started its career well - in bloodshed, crime and sacrilege.
As a direct result of this outrage in County Armagh, which was committed by the first Orange Lodge, branches of the Defenders sprang up like wildfire throughout Ireland.
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