The unrest in Ireland and particularly in the County of Limerick led to the passing by the British Parliament of the Insurrection Act 1822. Thus my g g grandfather, Edward Markham, had the dubious honour of being the first person arrested there, before dawn on the day of promulgation of the Act on 28 February 1822. The record of his arrest and trial and other contemporary incidents and issues is worth reading to obtain some knowledge of the circumstances of the time.
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Lord Wellesley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland wrote a series of Despatches to the UK Government. [British Parliamentary Papers (BPP) 1822 (XIV) 743 et seq. and BPP (XIV) 764 – 770.] Reports were submitted also by Major Wilcocks and the Magistrate Torrens. The summary includes items also from The Times (London) and Limerick Chronicle. Some Wilcocks items taken from papers made available at the Four Courts Building, Dublin, in 1972 and 1978.
To read these extracts, click here.
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Furthermore, the background to the period leading up to the Insurrection Act 1822 is well set out in
“Wellesley, Whiteboys and the Brampton Men” by Dr. Jennifer Harrison, Dept of History, The University of Queensland.
See also
“Ireland’s Forgotten ‘Rockite’ Rebellion” by Peter Berresford Ellis.
Two other informative articles are available through the National Library of Australia website’s electronic resources to those who have a Library Card. [To obtain a card, go to NLA homepage and click on “Get a Library Card”.] The articles are :
New Hibernia Review. Volume 11 No 4, Winter 2007
“Captain Rock: The Origins of the Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–24”
by James S. Donnelly.
Field Day Review. Volume 2 (2006) pp40-53.
“Irish Melodies and Discordant Politics: Thomas Moore’s ‘Memoirs of Captain Rock’.”
by Emer Nolan.
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A general explanation of the years leading to the proclomation of the Insurrection Act(s) is here”Markham 1822 -1831 in the Colony is here.:
Extract from Ryan , King of Galong Castle by Father Max Barrett.
Ireland,1815
One might have thought that, after the rebellion of 1798 had been put down so bloodily, Ireland would have greeted the 19th Century on a rather subdued note. Such was not the case. Robert Emmet led yet another unsuccessful uprising in 1803. The measures adopted by the government indicate the extent of the unrest in the country. In the period, 1800-1815, habeas corpus was almost continuously suspended; the Insurrection Act of 1796 was re-imposed in 1802-3, 1807-9 and 1814; there was martial law from 1803-5; there were about fourteen different Coercion Acts during this decade and a haH; .- new enactments gave landlords terrible powers of confiscation and oppression. Repressive measures produced greater resistance, a resistance that was “sporadic, local, unpredictable, continual, anonymous”; and “from the 1760s, secret societies became the central forces in sustaining Irish violence..”
In the 1760s, Irish agriculture passed from tillage to pasturage, with the result that the landlords began to fence in the commons. This enclosure of common land affronted the peasants who considered it their right to use the commons; and, as a basic fact of existence, the peasants did not see how they could eke out a living if access to the commons were denied them. So they banded together and, under cover of darkness, threw down the fences. This activity accounted for the name “Levellers” given to them. In the course of time they acquired a variety of titles; for example, those who wore white shirts on a night raid came to be called Whiteboys. And, as time went on, they extended their activities to the settlement of other grievances as well, such as the eviction from one’s land; low wages; and especially the imposition of the hated church tithes. (It was odious for an overwhemingly Catholic peasantry to have to pay tithes to the Established Church. The Presbyterians in the north of Ireland also had to pay this tithe, and they were similarly resentful of the arrangement.) The secret society members beat up landlords and the proctors who collected the tithes. They meted out brutal punishment, and they themselves were brutally dealt with when caught.
In 1762 the Catholic bishop of Cloyne described Whiteboys as “dissolute night walkers. . . loose and desperate sort of people. . . who showed as little regard to religion as to morals.” In 1779 the bishop of Ossory excommunicated all Whiteboys. Yet, despite Church discouragement, the societies continued into the next century, “farmers by day and banditti by night.” Cornewald Lewis described them as a “vast trades union for the protection of the Irish peasantry.” An Irish landlord, writing to Lord Norbury on September 15, 1815, defined them as “midnight legislators.”
While the Ireland of day was in a general state of unrest, “Tipperary and Limerick were the most consistently disturbed counties.” Other parts of the countrywere more poverty-stricken and over-populated, but they did not match Tipperary as a trouble spot.