A Flame Now Quenched: Rebels & Frenchmen In Leitrim: 1793-1798

List of Abreviations

A.H.G. Archives Historiques de la Guerre, Paris

B.L. British Library

H.O. Home Office

I.H.S. Irish Historical Studies

Ms. Manuscript

N.A.I. National Archives of Ireland

N.L.I. National Library Of Ireland.

P.R.O. Public Records Office, London

P.R.O.N.I. Public Records Office Of Northern Ireland

R.I.A. Royal Irish Academy

R.P. Rebellion Papers

S.O.C. State Of The Country Papers

T.C.D. Trinity College Dublin

U.C.D. University College Dublin

U.C.G. University College Galway

The First Stirrings of Rebellion

1793

We have numbers – and numbers do constitute power

Let us will to be free, and we’re free from that hour.1

George Nugent Reynolds, the last male heir of the Reynolds family of Lough Scur in Co. Leitrim, was only sixteen or seventeen years old when his father (also George Reynolds but better known as ‘the Squire’) was shot by Robert Keon in 1786. Keon had publicly whipped Reynolds at the Assizes in Carrick-on Shannon and, as honour demanded, a duel was arranged. Both parties met as planned early on Monday morning 16th. October 1786 at Drynaun near Sheemore. But before the ground was marked or the arrangements made Keon approached the unarmed Reynolds, shouted ‘Damn you, you scoundrel why did you bring me here?2 and shot him through the head. Robert Keon and four others were sent to trial for the murder. It was felt they would not get a fair hearing in Leitrim and the case was transferred to the Court of King’s Bench in Dublin. Robert Keon was found guilty of murder on 31 January, 1788 and sentenced to death. The writ of execution was read by Lord Earlsfort, the Chief Justice of the Court:

… Robert Keon, hath been by due form of law attainted of traiterously killing and murdering George Reynolds, in the county of Leitrim. It is thereupon considered by the Court here, that they said Robert Keon be taken from the Bar of the Court where he now stands, to the place from which he came (the gaol) that his irons are to be struck off, and form thence he is to be drawn to the place of execution (the gallows) and there he is to be hanged by the neck, but not until he is dead, for whilst he is yet alive he is to be cut down, his bowels are to be taken out and burned, and he being yet alive, his head is to be severed from his body; his body is to be divided into four quarters, and his head and quarters are to be at his Majesty’s disposal …3

This chilling sentence was carried out on 16 February, 1788.

This ‘Sheemore Duel’,44 as it came to be called, left two gentlemen of the county dead and shocked all of Leitrim. Their deaths and the manner of their dying gives us a glimpse into a society where violent acts were commonplace and where the official government response to such acts was often more terrible still. These acts of violence were usually isolated acts against people and property. But within five years of Robert Keon’s execution all that was to change. By early 1793 all of Leitrim was in turmoil and this state of affairs was to continue, more or less, until late 1798 when the French army had left and all the retaliations had ceased.

Some of the northern counties, most notably Armagh, were disturbed from 1785 onwards. Here the Protestant Peep O’Day Boys, a secret society noted for its early morning attacks on Catholic neighbours, and the Defenders, its Catholic counterpart, were both organised and active in attacking those they considered to be their enemy. Gradually Defenderism began to spread into the south Ulster counties of Monaghan and Cavan and by early 1793 it was growing rapidly in Leitrim. Defender-makers moved around, usually in pairs, swearing in the peasantry. For each member sworn in the Defender-maker received a shilling. George Nugent Reynolds, now in his early twenties and head of the Reynolds family at Letterfine, was in no doubt but that it was outsiders who had caused so many to become Defenders. He wrote: ‘some bad men have got among you to stir you up’.5

The Defender oath varied from time to time and from place to place. The oath in north Connaught at this time, strangely enough, included a promise to be true to King George and to the rights of his Kingdom in Ireland. They swore ‘that they must have lands at ten shillings per acre, and that they will have no farmer nor great men and that they are fifty to one gentleman.’6 So the Defenders were not, a this time, part of the new Republicanism being put forward by the Belfast and Dublin based United Irishmen. Rather they were concerned with local grievances relating to land, tithes and the raising of a militia. Some joined the new society out of fear. Mrs Slacke,7 who lived at Annadale House, wrote in her diary on 20 May 1793:

Tumultuous numbers gather themselves … We have been told that the mob killed a man for objecting to take the oath which they force many to swear.

But the work of the Defender-maker was easy. The majority joined voluntarily. Their plight was desperate. They had little to lose. The labourer and small tenant farmers of the county had many grievances. The majority of them lived in poverty that defies description. Chevalier DeLatocnaye travelled through Connaught just two years before that other Frenchman, Humbert, and he describes the conditions of the peasantry as follows:

The nakedness of the poor … is most unpleasant – is it not possible to organise industry which would enable these people to lead a less painful existence? Their huts are not like the houses of men and yet out of them troop flocks of children healthy and fresh as roses. Their state can be observed all the easier, since they are often as naked as the hand, and play in front of the cabins with no clothing but what Nature has given them. These poor folk, (are) reduced to such misery as cannot be imagined … They live on potatoes, and they have for that edible (which is all in all to them) a singular respect, attributing to it all that happens to them. I asked a peasant, who had a dozen pretty children, ‘How is it that your countrymen have so many and so healthy children?’ ‘It’s the praties, Sir,’ he replied.8

Such poverty was widespread. The labourer was poorly paid. He could expect at best sixpence and at worst fourpence a day for his work. If he bought a two pound bar of soap, which he seldom did, it would cost him eightpence. The land rented by the tenant farmers was too dear and they resented having to pay a tithe to the Established Church. The tithe they felt was exorbitant and unjust since they did not belong to that Church. Their anger was aimed not so much at the Rectors, since many of them were absentees, rather it was aimed at the tithe proctors who most times needed an armed guard as they went about their work.

The priests of the Roman Catholic Church were not very popular either. They too charged dues from a people who were already desperate. There were Mass dues, marriage dues, baptism dues and occasionally dues for attendance at funerals, to be paid. But most of all it was widely believed that the priests, like some of the Catholic gentry, supported the new proposals for the setting up of a militia, and that they would help draw up lists for enrolment. Many priests were threatened and near Athlone a priest was strung up by his parishioners and almost hung to death for preaching to them the necessity of submission to the Militia Act.9 The doors of many chapels were boarded up and the priests were expelled and threatened with instant death if they returned. Leitrim was no exception. Mrs Slacke wrote in her diary on 19 May 1793:

We hear of great disturbances. The priests are threatened by their own parishioners.

There were many who felt that the Catholic Relief Act, which removed some of the restrictions Catholics had been living under and which came into effect early in 1793, contributed to the discontent also.10 Some of the Protestant gentry felt that the peasantry interpreted the Act as a sign of weakness and that having got a little they expected more. Others felt that the Act seemed to promise much but in reality made little difference to the poorer Catholics. It merely served to aggravate the situation and to highlight a host of other inequalities.11

The weather contributed to the discontent also. 1793 was a very bad year weather-wise, with a particularly wet summer. Having already paid too much for rented land many saw their crops destroyed and this made an already desperate people even more so. But their greatest grievance of all was the proposal to set up a militia. The dramatic growth in Defenderism in Leitrim and the resultant large-scale disturbances in the county in the first half of 1793 were due primarily to the Militia Act and to a lesser degree to the several grievances listed above.

By March 1793 England was at war with France. Many of the regular government forces based in Ireland were required for war on the continent, leaving a dangerous vacuum at home. In order to replace the military moved to the continent it was decided to set up an new Militia in each county. According to Lord Hillsborough’s calculations Leitrim would have to raise approximately three hundred men for the militia.12 They were to be raised by a peculiar form of conscription called balloting. It was to be officered by Protestant gentry but the majority were to be taken from the ‘lower orders’. The Chief Secretary Hobart was fiercely enthusiastic about the Militia Act. He wrote on 19 March 1793:

I look upon the militia as the most useful measure both to England and Ireland that ever has been adopted, and if I am not extremely mistaken, it will operate … to the civilisation of the people, and to the extinction of the means which the agitators of the country have repeatedly availed themselves of to disturb the peace … I am happy to add that there is every appearance of the restoration of peace in Ireland.13

But he spoke much too soon. The resistance to the setting up of the militia was growing weekly in the county. It was widely believed and greatly feared that men would be torn away from their wives and children, made into soldiers and transported to the continent to fight England’s wars for her. It matters little whether these fears were well-founded or not, the fact is that the peasantry of Leitrim believed them to be. And it was these fears, more than anything else, which prompted people to take the Defender oath, assemble in such large numbers and even engage in violent acts against the military.

Not everyone interpreted the new Militia Act in this way. George Nugent Reynolds saw the setting up of the militia as a necessary and good thing and he set about persuading the rest of the county that this was so. He felt that the Defenders were playing on people’s fears and he was convinced that these fears were without foundation. He wrote a long address To the Common People of County Leitrim14 to persuade them of the merits of the new militia force. It was printed on a poster-type sheet and presumably posted up around the county for all the people to see. In it he pleaded with the people to return to their homes and to listen to reason. He told them they had greatly misunderstood the Militia Act and over-reacted to it. He wrote:

As one who has been your zealous advocate and protector and at all times happy and eager to open the jail doors when justice permitted the interference of mercy, suffer me to address you calmly … Don’t you see poor deluded people that you must be better off than you ever were, for when the gentlemen put guns and swords in your hands, they must trust you more and trust you better than ever they did. Don’t you see therefore that the poor people of Ireland are rising fast. You will shortly be as well off as the English who have meat and bread and ale and so will you if you be quiet, but you will get nothing by rioting but starvation and the gallows … In a county like ours where there is little or no manufacture let me ask you how do many of you expect to dispose of your time to more advantage. You best know if you have but patience to reflect whether it is easier and better to get a shilling a day for walking a few hours to the tune of fife and drum, or digging in a ditch for sixpence from the getting up of the lark to the lying down of the lamb.

Reynolds reminded the people how he and his father before him had always sided with the poor and had used their position as a magistrate and as one of the leading families