Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2017 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2017 An Ghaoth a Chriofidh an orna:E The Moral Economy of Ireland's Whiteboys, 1761-1787. Connor Bartlett McDermott Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017 Part of the Agriculture Law Commons, Common Law Commons, Models and Methods Commons, Political Economy Commons, and the Political Theory Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Recommended Citation McDermott, Connor Bartlett, "An Ghaoth a Chriofidh an orna:E The Moral Economy of Ireland's Whiteboys, 1761-1787." (2017). Senior Projects Spring 2017. 306. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017/306 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An Ghaoth a Chroifidh an Eorna: The Moral Economy of Ireland’s Whiteboys, 1761-1787. A Senior Project submitted to The division of Social Studies at Bard College By Connor Bartlett McDermott Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 1 May 2017 This project is dedicated to the Stephen Dedalus in all our souls. May we wake. Acknowledgements In the process of writing, inestimable debts are accrued. To thank all of the individuals who helped me to write this project would require a space longer than the pages which lie before you. I do not wish to create a hierarchy of worth, but a few people in particular deserve mentioning. My parents, Don and Sarah, have made my education possible and instilled in me a love of learning—especially learning about Ireland—which will remain with me till my last breath. Professor Gregory Moynahan sparked my love of James Joyce, and fed the flames of my obsession with Irish history. His notes and drive helped me to write the best project that I could write. Professor Staunton’s encyclopedic mastery of Irish history was invaluable for my own pursuit of knowledge about the Whiteboys. Without his constant guidance, this project could not have happened at all. To understand the mindset of the eighteenth century Irish peasant a rudimentary grasp of Gaelic is essential; Steve Lowry’s help with translations proved crucial in this regard. Finally, I must thank the other residents of 9 Moul—life is long and full of surprises. “But blood for blood, without remorse, I took at Oulart Hollow. And I’ve laid my true love’s clay-cold corpse Where mine full soon must follow. Around her grave I’ve wandered drear, Noon, night, and morning early With this breaking heart, when e’er I hear, The wind that shakes the barley.” Contents Preface … ii List of Important Movements & People ………………………………………………. iv I.) Insurrection & Rebellion ………………………………………………………………. 1 Subalternity & Moral Economy ………………………………………………………… 6 The Wind Below ………………………………………………………………………….. 8 II.) A Historical Context for Moral Economy ………………………………………. 13 Levellers ……………………………………………………………………………………. 17 Diggers …………………………………………………………………………………….... 24 Covenanters ……………………………………………………………………………..… 29 Houghers …………………………………………………………………………………… 34 Rechtge …………………………………………………………………………………….. 36 Food Riots …………………………………………………………………………………. 40 Distress ….…………………………………………………………………………………. 42 The Beginning …………………………………………………………………………….. 44 III.) The View From Up Above ……………………………………………………….…. 47 So Many Questions ………………………………………………………………………. 50 For ‘True’ Liberty ………………………………………………………………………… 53 Legislative Repression ………………………………………………………………….. 57 In Enquiry ………………………………………………………………………………… 61 Court Views ……………………………………………………………………………….. 66 A Philosophical Approach ……………………………………………………………….. 72 Trant …………………………………………………….…………………………………. 79 O’Leary ……………………………………………………….……………………………. 82 Contested Vision …………………………………………….………………………….. 85 IV.) The Unwritten Book of Rights …………………………………………………… 87 Father Sheehy ……………………………………………………………………………. 89 The Sub-Gentry Three …………………………………………………………………. 95 Ready Money They Have Not ………………………………………………………….. 108 Darby Brown ………………………………….…………………………………………. 112 Eacnamíaocht Mhorálta ………………………………………………………………… 121 V.) The Wind That Will Shake the Barley …………………………………………. 124 The Use-Value of Moral Economy ……………………………………………….….. 128 The Voice of the Voiceless ………………………………………………………………. 130 Appendix …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 133 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………. 136 Index …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 144 Preface The history of modern Ireland is often told as a story of the sectarian battle between the privileged Protestant class and the dispossessed Catholic multitude. The Protestant religion is associated with English colonial rule which forcibly extracted resources and capital from the oppressed Catholic Irish. One result of English imperialism in Ireland was that Ireland remained a peripheral economy in Europe. The majority of the Irish were agricultural laborers, and the majority of Ireland’s produce was agricultural goods. Despite this, many portrayals of the major dramas of the antagonism between Ireland and England are depicted as having played out in the metropoles of Dublin and London. For example, Daniel O’Connell’s battle to emancipate the Catholics of Ireland was largely waged in the Halls of Westminster. But it was the support of the masses of agrarian laborers at home which gave him the power necessary to have his voice heard at all by the English government. I first became interested in those agrarian laborers when I was writing a term paper on The Liberator. As anyone who has either read the “Hades” chapter of Ulysses or been to Glasnevin Cemetery can tell you, the round tower over O’Connell’s grave dominates the geography of that cemetery. But what of the people below? They did not give the thundering speeches which O’Connell issued at his monster meetings, but they did give thundering cheers in approval of the sentiments of liberation and equality which he expounded. It was beyond the scope of that paper to delve into their mindsets, but I became consumed by the question of who those masses were, what they were doing, and why were they doing it. For one thing, these people did not simply follow O’Connell blindly. Even if he was willing to use the threat of potential violence to gain concessions from the English government in Ireland, O’Connell was a pacifist. Yet sometimes his followers took matters into their own hands, and the answer that they were Catholics who wanted justice from their Protestant lords did not seem satisfying. In researching this problem, I found out that in order to understand the masses which rallied behind O’Connell, I had to first understand the Defenders. The Defenders were a secret agrarian society who formed to protect the Catholic Peasantry from the violence of the Protestant Peep o’ Day Boys. They organized themselves into lodges, and in 1798 some of them took part in the Rebellion led by the Society of United Irishmen. But this only led to another problem: in order to understand the Defenders, I first had to understand the prior context of agrarian violence in Ireland. This context is convoluted and opaque, but its very complexity took me satisfactorily outside the realm of sectarianism. To be sure, the labor relations of eighteenth century Ireland were intertwined with the fact that the men of property were almost exclusively Protestants as a result of the Penal Laws and land theft perpetrated against the Catholic Irish by successive invasions during the latter half of the seventeenth century. However, a few Catholics retained some land, and especially in the north there were many Protestants peasants laboring alongside the Catholics. Most importantly, the protests of the masses were not conducted on a sectarian basis, but were rather related to the issue of primary importance for the Irish peasantry: access to the land. I discovered many difficulties in working with the historical record on peasant movements in eighteenth century Ireland, not least of which was sectarianism itself. The Protestant gentry lived in a constant state of fear that the Catholics over which they ruled would one night rise up and massacre them in their beds. Doubtless, this is why many landlords in Ireland chose to become absentees. However, even though I have had to rely on their writings, my project is not about the men of power who ruled over Ireland. My project is an attempt at a history from below. From the multitude of agrarian groups who, in some ways, prefigured the Defenders I have chosen the Whiteboys as the group which I feel deserve special attention. Like the Defenders, they were an oath bound secret agrarian society. Like the Defenders, the overwhelming majority of their members were the rural poor. However, the Whiteboys left even less evidence in the historical record concerning the motives behind their actions than the Defenders. They were written about from a confusing spectrum of perspectives, and it is these very difficulties which made them such a fascinating group to study. Movements Defenders: A Catholic secret agrarian society formed in the 1780s. Many Defenders took part in the 1798 uprising,