Riotous Assemblies

by William Sheehan

  ... that there was no doubt that every collision with the people of the country in enforcing the law interposes an additional obstacle to the prospect of a future favourable settlement of the question of tithe.99

  Subsequently, Blacker was told by the Irish under-secretary, Sir William Gossett, that the government disapproved of clerical magistrates distraining for their own tithe arrears, owing to the conflict of interest. Then Dublin Castle issued instructions to all magistrates that no tithe owner who was also a magistrate could grant a military escort for tithe duties or ‘take a part in enforcing its payment, or personally appear on the occasion of its levy’.100 Thomas Drummond brought in further changes shortly after he became under-secretary in July 1835, allowing military or police escorts for tithe duties only in cases where there were actual breaches of the peace.101 A memorandum to all magistrates on 26 October 1835 decreed that no police escort could be employed ‘for the recovery of tithes or in the levy of rent by distress except in the cases where two or more magistrates describing the extent of that resistance’ submitted an affidavit to the Dublin Castle authorities.102

  Drummond refused a police presence for a tithe sale for Rev. W. Beresford of Ballincally, County Galway, but the sale went off peacefully.103 He also refused police assistance for tithe collection for Rev. Maxwell of Inishowen, County Donegal, despite the fact that Maxwell had paid the tithe composition of his tenants-at-will under the 1832 Act in his other role as landlord. Surprisingly, Drummond also refused Rev. M. Beresford’s request on 10 August 1836 for police assistance to execute writs of rebellion in Inniscara parish, two miles from Ballincollig, County Cork.104 A tithe riot had already occurred in that parish earlier that year, on 7 January, resulting in the deaths of two of the peasantry with a third fatally wounded.105 However, Drummond’s policy bore fruit because the last recorded riot of the tithe war was the Dunkerrin affray in King’s County on 21 October 1836. This mêlée resulted in two deaths, one of a man called Hogan, assistant to Proctor Philip Ryan of Nenagh. In July 1837, the ensuing trial ended in acquittals as it could not be proved that the Dunkerrin men had struck Hogan, but only that they had been among the crowd. They were later convicted on a lesser charge of unlawful assembly.106

  The tithe war saw a sea change in attitude by the authorities in the handling of violence and riotous assemblies. In the early years of the agitation, the Dublin Castle authorities were determined to enforce the law and granted police and military escorts as a matter of course to those collecting tithe arrears. This led to numerous riots, and eventually such escorts were severely restricted under the reforming policies of Under-Secretary Thomas Drummond. This removed one of the more provocative aspects of the tithe system until the partial resolution of the vexed question of Irish tithes with the 1838 Rent-charge Act.

  5

  THE GREAT PROTESTANT MEETING OF DUNGANNON, 1834

  DARAGH CURRAN

  The period between the 1830s and 1840s has been described as ‘the age of crowds’ and the mass meetings of Daniel O’Connell have been well examined and documented.1 Less attention has been paid to Protestant meetings from the same period which, though not as big as O’Connell’s monster meetings, were of great significance to the Protestant community. The meeting that took place in Dungannon on 19 December 1834 was one of a series of great Protestant gatherings in Ulster that year, others attracting 75,000 people to Hillsborough in October, 30,000 to Cavan a month later, and 20,000 to Enniskillen in late December, if crowd reports are to be believed.2 These meetings were called to unite Protestants of all sects, as it was perceived that ‘their privileges were in peril’,3 to show their support for the king and for maintenance of the Protestant ascendancy.

  Because of changes in society and in the economy in the early nineteenth century, many Protestants felt threatened by (what they saw as) the erosion of what they considered their rightful position of superiority over Catholics. The collapse of the linen industry after the Napoleonic wars, coupled with technological advances in manufacturing, signalled a great change for the numerous weavers, many of whom were pushed downwards into the poverty-stricken cottier class. An expanding population increased competition for land, competition heightened by a trend for landlords and their agents to eliminate the practice of land subdivision on leases being inherited. Many landlords also sought to impose modern agricultural methods, such as enclosure, farm consolidation and crop rotation, to make their land more productive. These ‘improvements’ were not always welcomed by a tenantry who often considered them detrimental to their way of life. It is commonplace to read of the effect of these changes on the Catholic population, but such changes affected many Protestants too, especially in Ulster, and added to anxiety within this community. Despite this, little agitation occurred. The gentry of Tyrone retained the loyalty of their Protestant tenantry and could count on their support when mass mobilisation, such as the Dungannon meeting, was required.

  For many Protestants, the series of political reforms carried out by the Liberal government in the 1830s proved to be more contentious than local land issues. The granting of Catholic emancipation in 1829 led to a rise in sectarian clashes as angry Orangemen reacted with violence to this threat to the Protestant ascendancy; changes in the educational structure promised to lead to a non-denominational system of schooling; the Church Temporalities Act reduced the number of bishops of the Established Church and created a body of commissioners who now controlled much church income. Protestants perceived the changes as part of a government policy which would lead to disestablishment of the Church of Ireland if allowed to go unchecked. Reforms led to more centralised control over law and order, and this lessened the power of that cornerstone of rural society, the local magistrate, usually a Protestant middle gentry figure, often sympathetic to breaches of the law by Orangemen. The government-enforced disbandment of the yeomanry in 1834 was a further aggravation because it denied Protestants the security provided by what was essentially a local defence force controlled by the gentry, many of them Orangemen.

  By the mid-1830s, the latest concession being sought by Catholics – led by Daniel O’Connell, a figure who could mobilise the masses – was repeal of the Act of Union. In the words of one Presbyterian clergyman, Henry Cooke, repeal was just a discreet word for ‘Romish ascendancy and Protestant extermination’.4 The idea of repeal and the leadership of O’Connell caused much fear and anxiety among a Protestant population that was becoming increasingly unnerved as they saw their superior position over Catholics being undermined. One welcome champion of the Protestant cause was the king, William IV, who, dissatisfied with the liberal policies of the Melbourne government, dismissed several members of the cabinet in November 1834, thereby provoking a general election in January 1835. It was in anticipation of this election and in appreciation of the actions of their monarch that the Dungannon meeting was called by the gentry in Tyrone one month before the election.

  The meeting was initially planned for ‘the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of the county of Tyrone’.5 No mention was made of the lower classes of society, who made up a large part of the Orange Order in the county. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that the Earl of Caledon, lord lieutenant of the county, would have allowed the meeting, still less supported it, had he thought the Orange masses were to be present. He had said, ‘I do not anticipate anything but unanimity as regards to the avowed purpose of the meeting, and I hope it will not be made a handle for any party feeling’.6 On these assumptions, Caledon gave permission for the meeting to be held and did not seek any extra police or soldiers, later stating that ‘when I considered that the meeting was convened at the desire of persons of the highest respectability and weight in the county, I thought it would be unbecoming in me to require a military force or an increase of the constabulary’.7

  Caledon, while supporting the Conservative cause, was moderate in his views; he did not subscribe to the ultra-conservative stance of the Orange Order, shared by much of Tyrone’s gentry, including many
of those who called the meeting. They were determined to secure the Protestant position of ascendancy by mobilising the Orange Order if parliamentary procedure failed to satisfy their demands. The result was what the Londonderry Journal later called a ‘struggle between sedate conservatism and conservatism run mad’. In December 1834, the moderates and ultra-conservatives were prepared to unite for the meeting. However, the following month’s election would see a bitter battle between twenty-two-year-old Lord James Alexander, son of the Earl of Caledon, and twenty-one-year-old Lord Claud Hamilton, brother of one of the biggest landowners in Tyrone and Donegal, the Marquess of Abercorn.8

  The choice of Dungannon was geographically curious. The county town of Tyrone was and is Omagh, much more central than Dungannon, which is in the east of the county. In 1829 Omagh had hosted a meeting organised by the Tyrone Brunswick Clubs, which had attracted 20,000 people to voice their opposition to Catholic emancipation.9 Dungannon was far from convenient for the Marquess of Abercorn and his tenantry, who faced an almost 100-mile round trip from Strabane on roads described as ‘shameful’ by government commissioner Jonathan Binns.10 Ordnance Survey Memoirs stated that the roads around Dungannon were ‘not kept in good order’ and ‘all are in bad repair’, making the journey yet more difficult for the crowds that flocked to the town.11 The MP for Dungannon was Lord Northland, a member of the powerful Knox family, but he lived in Brussels, did not support the Orange Order and was not involved in organising the meeting, so he did not influence the choice of meeting place.

  The most likely reason for choosing Dungannon was its historical importance to Protestants. By holding monster meetings at venues like Clontarf and Castlebar, Daniel O’Connell delved into events of historical and nationalist import to stoke up emotion and popular support. The historical significance of Dungannon was much less, but the organisers of the meeting may have had a similar idea to O’Connell, because the town had hosted the volunteer convention of 1782, a meeting of Presbyterians and other Protestants that had forced the government into granting major concessions, including Grattan’s Parliament. The motives of Protestants in 1834 were very different from those of their more liberal predecessors, but by invoking the spirit of 1782 the organisers obviously hoped to appeal to popular memory by choosing the location of a previous triumph. The difficulties of getting there do not appear to have affected the size of the crowd that attended.

  In the mid-1830s, County Tyrone had 1,447 freeholders, that is, those with sufficient property to qualify to vote.12 If we add the gentry and clergymen for whom the meeting was supposedly convened, there should have been roughly 5,000 people at the meeting whereas, according to newspaper reports, 75,000 people attended.13 Even allowing for biased reporting, this figure is way above the police estimate of 3,000.14 The meeting was staged in the confined area of the great square of the town, in contrast to the large open spaces used by O’Connellite meetings, and this also tends to cast doubt on the crowd size. The square itself measured 156 yards by 43 yards, an area surely incapable of holding a crowd as large as 75,000 along with their horses and carts, banners and drums.15 Furthermore, the town itself stood on high ground with the approaches, particularly from the south, being described as ‘very steep and difficult’.16 Just four streets led to the square, which again leads to a question mark over the numbers. It can be seen that the conservative press grossly overestimated the crowd size, a common occurrence since meeting organisers depended heavily on propaganda to further their cause. Gary Owens points out that crowd estimates in this period need to be scaled down considerably and that clearly applies in this case.17 Nonetheless, the crowd was much larger than Caledon expected. Where did they come from, and why?

  According to the chief of police in Ulster, Sir Frederick Stoven, the initial announcement would not have deterred Catholics from attending the meeting had they chosen to do so.18 The factor that turned what Caledon envisaged as a meeting of the highest classes in Tyrone into a party meeting of the plebeian rabble was the circulation of a notice throughout the county in the days preceding the event:

  Protestants of Tyrone, will you desert your King? No; ‘you will die first’. The King as becomes a son of GEORGE the third, has spurned from his council the men who would have overturned the most valued institutions of your country, and would have led your monarch to a violation of his coronation oath. Your sovereign has done his duty, will you ABANDON yours? If you will not; if you will support your King as honestly as he has supported you; if you will maintain the LIBERTIES which your FATHERS purchased with their blood, you will be found at the GREAT PROTESTANT MEETING to be held in DUNGANNON, on FRIDAY 19th instant at 12 o’clock, and your cry will be ‘The King and Constitution; The Altar and the throne’.19

  Stoven later reported that sixteen emissaries had distributed hundreds of these notices the night after the meeting had been convened; they gave a new character to the meeting, so that Caledon was ‘completely deceived’ according to Stoven.20 It is not known who distributed the notices or who was behind the idea of bringing the lower classes on board, but the way some of the county’s elite entered the square in Dungannon provided evidence that many of them must have played a part in getting the mob there.

  Owens asserts that ‘processions lent colour to every public occasion; no great event was considered complete without one’ and Dungannon did not disappoint in this regard.21 The Omagh meeting of 1829 had seen Beltrim landowner Alexander Cole Hamilton arrive at the meeting on horseback at the head of 400 of his tenantry,22 and this precedent was very much imitated at Dungannon in 1834. In what appear to have been well-choreographed grand entries to the square, ‘local Orange lodges appeared first, next came the tenantry of Mr Pettigrew, and Squire Mountray, followed by Orange lodges from Aughnacloy, Carnteel, and Emyvale. Then came the Ballygawley “Boys” led by Captain Crossley and Sir Hugh Stewart. Moy and Killyman came next led by Joseph Greer.’ Stoven later recalled that:

  ... all morning large quantities of people had been coming in from all directions, particularly from the Ballygawley side, a great many horsemen. I heard one large procession of 50 to 60 horsemen, who were said to be Mr Murdrie’s tenants, and then I heard drums coming ... I saw three separate Orange processions with two flags each, very large flags, like the ensigns of a regiment, drums and fifes, and playing ‘Protestant Boys’, and all those sort of tunes.23

  Ladies waving their handkerchiefs from windows added to the colour of the occasion, while the most spectacular entrance was reserved for Abercorn and Lord Claud Hamilton who rode in mounted on white horses ‘splendidly decorated with orange and purple’ followed by 1,061 of their tenantry on horseback, a procession said to have ‘occupied upwards of two miles’.24 It is obvious that the tenants, who came from as far away as Strabane or Emyvale, did not merely turn up of their own accord on the morning of the meeting. They had to be organised, mobilised and transported to the venue, something that required advanced planning by the gentry with whom they entered the square.

  The liberal newspaper The Londonderry Journal and Tyrone Advertiser was of the opinion that tenants had been forced to attend the meeting and, in a passage worth quoting at length, was scathing in its criticism of their landlords:

  We have had several communications regarding the means which were taken to persuade the Marquis of Abercorn’s tenantry to attend the meeting. We have no pleasure in speaking harshly of this young nobleman; but certainly, we do not calumniate him when we say, that there are few, indeed of his tenantry, who would go an inch out of his way to serve him, if they could avoid it; and yet he collected about 1,000 of them, as his retinue, at this county meeting, where they were compelled to listen to and applaud sentiments which most of them cordially abhor. The truth is, circulars were distributed among them requesting their attendance; and as nearly the whole of them are tenants-at-will, disobedience was out of the question ... We learn that the tenantry were paraded at Baron’s Court on Thursday morning; and any shabby looking, or badly mounted, poor d
evil got permission to return home; while tickets were given to all decent looking tenants, which were given to frank them at the inns at Dungannon and on the road.25

  If this is true, and the bias of this newspaper must be kept in mind, it would suggest a well-planned mobilisation of Abercorn’s tenantry.

  The paper had ‘little doubt whatever, that the other bodies of tenantry who attended were acted upon by the same soft persuasions which so well succeeded with those on the Abercorn estates’.26 But we have to ask whether it is true that the tenantry was forced to attend. The Orange Order included much of the Protestant lower classes within its ranks, and tenants who were members would certainly not have had to be forced into attending a meeting of this sort. Nor, it may be assumed, would the tenants have been averse to a day spent away from the drudgery of everyday life especially as hospitality in the form of food and drink was provided along the route to the meeting, with the Strabane Morning Post reporting that Abercorn’s tenantry received ‘necessary refreshments’ at Omagh and Ballygawley.27 In addition, what occurred after the meeting would suggest popular Protestant support for its organisers and their aims from an extremely tense crowd indeed. Maura Cronin makes the point that the reason repeal meetings were generally peaceful was the apathy of the crowd and the fact that the main issue in question was of little interest to them.28 However, the issue in question in Dungannon was of extreme importance to the crowd because they felt that their very way of life was under extreme threat.