Declaration
of the United Irishmen
Oliver Bond
The government kept a strict watch on the
United Irishmen, the Catholic Committee, and all such associations, so
as to be ready for prosecutions as occasions might arise. At a meeting
of United Irishmen held in Dublin in February 1798, with the Hon. Simon
Butler as chairman, and Oliver Bond, a Dublin merchant, as secretary,
an address was adopted and circulated, animadverting on the conduct of
the lords in a secret inquiry about the Defenders. For this Butler and
Bond were sentenced to be imprisoned for six months and to pay a fine
of £500 each.
Mar. 12, 1798 : Police raid meeting of
Leinster directory of United Irishmen at Oliver Bond's house at Dublin,
arresting 12 leaders; four others arrested elsewhere; all but two
members of supreme executive thus arrested.
Henry Grattan (July 3, 1746 - June 6, 1820) was a member of the Irish House of Commons and a campaigner for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century. He opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain.
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Samuel Neilson (1761-1803)
was one of the original members of
the Society of United Irishmen and the founder of its newspaper the Northern Star.
William Orr (1766-1797) was a member of the United Irishmen who was executed in 1797 in what was widely believed to be a judicial murder and whose memory led to the rallying cry “Remember Orr” during the 1798 rebellion.
Orr was born to a Presbyterian farming family outside Antrim town and little is known of his early life. He was active in the Irish Volunteers and joined the United Irishmen sometime in the mid-1790’s, contributing several articles to their newspaper, the Northern Star. He was compelled to go on the run to avoid imprisonment during the brutal “dragooning” of Ulster in 1797, a concerted attempt by the authorities to smash the United Irish movement. However, he was captured on 15 September 1797 when he slipped home to pay a visit to his dying father.
He was charged with administering the United Irish oath to two soldiers, an offence which had recently been deemed a capital charge under the Insurrection Act of 1796. It was widely believed that the evidence of the soldiers was fabricated and that the authorities wished to make an example of Orr to act as a deterrent to potential United Irish recruits. Despite packing the jury, the court had difficulties in convicting Orr as he was widely believed to be a scapegoat and innocent of the trumped up charges. Even the presiding judge, Yelverton, was said to have shed tears at the passing of the death sentence, although Orr’s friend, the poet and United Irishman William Drennan expressed his disgust at this display with the words “I hate those Yelvertonian tears”.
Orr was hanged on October 14 1797 in Carrickfergus and is regarded as the first United Irish martyr. Source: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Orr"
Thomas Russell
(1767-1803) was born in
County Cork. He joined the British Army in India at the age of fourteen
and returned to Ireland as an Ensign in 1788. He spent some time in
Dublin where he became acquainted with Theobald Wolfe Tone before being
posted to the 64th Regiment of Foot in Belfast. Russell later sold his
Commission to pay a surety he had put up for a friend. In 1790 he
became Seneschal of Dungannon and a Magistrate in Tyrone but was
reluctant to prosecute members of the agrarian secret societys, the
Peep O' Day Boys and the Defenders, and so resigned his post as
magistrate.
Russell then became a librarian with the
Society for the Promotion of Knowledge in Belfast where, in the summer
of 1791 he, together with Samuel Neilson and Henry Joy McCracken, wrote
the Declaration and Test of the United Irishmen which they later
revised with Wolfe Tone and William Drennan. Thomas Russell's life.
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Theobald Wolfe Tone, commonly known as Wolfe Tone (June 20, 1763 – November 19, 1798) was a leading figure in the United Irishmen Irish independence movement and is regarded as the father of Irish republicans. He died, allegedly by cutting his own throat, following an illness after being sentenced to death for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. |
1798: the United Irishmen and the early Trade Unions
1798
Click on the pike at the bottom of the page for a link
to an excellent site created by Irish school children.
1798 Ireland
Exellent site, many great links!
The
Battle of Antrim
Battle
of Vinegar Hill
Battles
of the 1798 Rebellion