THE EVENTS OF 1798 - AND THEIR AFTERMATH
^^^^^ REVOLUTION IN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND IN 1798 ^^^^^
REFS: "The Year of Liberty-The History of the Great Irish Rebellion of 1798", Thomas Pakenham1992 edition by Orion Books. (ISBN 1-85799-050-1)
Memoirs of Miles Byrne. Edited with Tom Bartlett. (Enniscorthy: Duffry Press, 1998).
Fellowship of Freedom: The United Irishmen and the 1798 Rebellion. (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998).
"The Growth of an Irish Town." In Enniscorthy 2000: Book of the Millenium, edited by J. Byrne (Eniscorthy, 2000).
The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion. Edited with David Dickson and Daire Keogh. (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993).
The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism and the Construction of Irish Identity 1760-1830. Vol. 1, Critical Conditions: Field Day Essays and Monographs. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996).
The Mighty Wave: The 1798 Rebellion in Ireland. Edited with Daire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996). ("The Mightly Wave" brings together a collection of papers delivered to the inaugural Comoradh '98 Conference in Wexford together with a selection of proceedings of the first Byrne-Perry Summer School, both of which were held in 1995. This is a fine volume of essays of the most up-to-date research on 1798).
HELLO,
This site is for the events of 1798 in the celtic lands, and their aftermath ....
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NATIONAL 1798 CENTRE Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford.
The 1798 rebellion in Ireland
The THE WEXFORD RISING OF 1798
The 1798 Rebellion in Co Wexford - Wexford Public Library
At the first centenary of the Irish 1798 revolution, on
the 15th August 1898 some 100,000 people gathered at the top of Grafton Street in Dublin to take part in the dedication of the first stone of a statue to the well regarded rebel leader and patriot Wolfe Tone.
The award winning National 1798 Centre offers a fascinating insight into the birth of modern democracy in Ireland. The centre is located in the shadow of Vinegar Hill, beside the picturesque river Slaney and just 500 meters from the town of Enniscorthy.
It was to Enniscorthy that the Irish Tricolour which means peace (the white band) between the Orange and Green was brought from Paris by Francis Meagher. the United Irish Movement sought liberty from England's domination and a union of fraternity/equality/harmony between the Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter inhabitants of Ireland.
The Centre tells the epic and heroic tale of the 1798 rebellion and it's aftermath.
There are various other memorials. The Community Hall at Monaseed was built in 1948 and dedicated to the memory of Miles Byrne on the 150th anniversary of the 1798 Insurrection. Local volunteers built it. The building has in its wall a stone taken from Miles ancestral home. The inscription on the plaque reads: "Erected to perpetuate the memory of Miles Byrne 1780-1862. Monaseed United Irishman.
Chef de Batallion in the French Service, Officer of the Legion of Honour, Knight of Saint Louis, Buried in Montmatre Cemetery, Paris. And all from this area who fought, suffered or died during the Rebellion of 1798.
Go dtuga Dia an beatha siorai doibh".
Myles Byrne was born in the townland of Ballylusk near Monaseed in 1780. He joined the United Irishmen in 1797, apparently influenced by Anthony Perry of Inch. The United Irishmen were strong in this part of the country prior to 1798. Byrne participated in the 1798 Rising at Bunclody Tubberneering, Arklow and Vinegar Hill and he accompanied Fr. John Murphy on the advance to and retreat from Castlecomer. He continued in the field until the end, eventually escaping to Dublin where he remained
undetected, employed as a builder from 1799 to 1803. He met Robert Emmet in Dublin and became one of his faithful lieutenants. After the failure of the Dublin rising he escaped to Paris. He was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Irish Legion. He fought in the Napoleonic wars and had a very distinguished career. He died in Paris in 1862. His "Memoirs" were published by his widow in 1863. They include a valuable account of the 1798 rising in Wexford.
The colour green was characteristic of the rebel flags
of 1798. Green flags bearing yellow or golden representations of the uncrowned harp were carried by the rebels in Wexford, Wicklow and in other counties also. When the insurgents entered Wexford town on the 30th May 1798, they came with green banners flying. They later hoisted a green flag above the barracks on the quayside. Because of the shortage of green flags used by rebel corps, it was customary to display banners of all colours except orange which was supposedly disliked by the people.
The last battle in Wexford was fought under a green flag which flew from the ruined windmill on Vinegar Hill
overlooking Enniscorthy town on 21st June 1798.
The rebels withdrew there as defeat tightened around them. They'd been there earlier too. Lord Castlereagh wrote to Pelham, Dublin Castle, 8 June 1798: "The enemy are in great force at Vinegar Hill, within half a mile of Enniscorthy ... Their numbers consist of the entire male inhabitants of Wexford, and the greatest proportion of those of Wicklow, Kildare, Carlow, and Kilkenny. From Carlow to Dublin, I am told, scarcely an inhabitant is to be seen". Vinegar Hill was a great gathering ground of Irish resistance.
THERE WAS HEAVY FIGHTING IN COUNTY WEXFORD
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http://www.wexford.ie/ballads.htm
Many of the best known ballads about the events of 1798 were not written until long afterwards. Among the most famous of these are "At Boolavogue" and "Kelly from Killanne" composed by P.J. McCall.
During the night of May 26-27, the North Cork Militia burned the church at Boolavogue. The arson attack drove Father John Murphy (1753-1798) into becoming one of the leaders of the rebellion in Wexford. After the defeat at Vinegar Hill (21 June), he escaped but was eventually captured near Goresbridge, brought to Tullow, hanged and burned in a barrel of pitch.
"At Boolavogue"
At Boolavogue as the sun was setting
Over the bright May meadows of Shelmalier,
A rebel hand set the heather blazing
And brought the neighbours from far and near.
We took Camolin and Enniscorthy,
And Wexford storming drove out our foes;
Twas at Sliabh Coillte our pikes were reeking
with crimson stream of the beaten Yeos.
Then Father Murphy, from old Kilcormack,
Spurred up the rocks with a warning cry,
"Arm, Arm!" he cried, "for I've come to lead you,
For Ireland's freedom we'll fight or die."
At Tubberneering and Ballyellis
Full many a Hessian lay in his gore,
Ah, Father Murphy, had aid come over
The green flag floated from shore to shore!
He led us on against the coming soldiers,
And the cowardly Yeomen we put to flight;
'Twas at the Harrow the boys of Wexford
Showed Bookey's regiment how men could fight.
At Vinegar Hill, o'er the pleasant Slaney,
Our heroes vainly stood back to back,
And the Yeos at Tullow took Father Murphy
And burned his body upon the rack.
Look out for hirelings, King George of England,
Search every kingdom where breathes a slave.
For Father Murphy from the County Wexford
Sweeps o'er the land like a mighty wave.
God grant you glory, brave Father Murphy,
And open heaven to all your men;
The cause that called you may call to-morrow
In another fight for the Green again.
"Requiem for the Croppies"
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley -
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp -
We moved quick and sudden in our own country
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people, hardly marching - on the hike -
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.
County Wexford took the leading part nationally in the 1798 Rebellion, being the single most important theatre of activity in it. The rebellion, in which the ordinary people of Wexford rose in pursuit of a democratic republic, was the last major campaign in Ireland and a turning-point in Irish history, signaling the failure of the long-standing effort to run Ireland as a colony. The 1798 Rebellion also tied Wexford firmly into a European and world context because of the close linkages between it and the American and French Revolutions, the subsequent linkages of rebel refugees with France and America and the transportation of hundreds of rebels to the penal colony at Sydney.
Vinegar Hill, outside Enniscorthy, scene of the rebels' despairing last stand, is the county's best known landmark and "Boolavogue", P. J. McCall's stirring ballad of the insurrection, is Wexford's anthem.
At Boolavogue in the early summer of 1798, the people were caught in two minds: whether to fight or to surrender, whether to keep the pike hidden beneath the thatch or to receive a signed protection for handing it up. The United Irish leaders knew that it was now or never; they were especially active in the Boolavogue area, even to the extent of attracting the sympathies of a local priest, Fr. John Murphy. On Saturday, 26th May, Fr. John urged the men of Boolavogue to fight, apparently saying it was "better to die like fighting men than to be shot down like dogs in the ditches". Late on Saturday evening, the local Camolin yeomanry, on a house burning raid, swept around a blind bend at the Harrow area near Boolavogue - only to confront a group of United Irishmen. Soon their Captain Bookey lay dead in the dusty road and the spark of rebellion was kindled.
Messages were quickly dispatched from the Harrow to the other United Irish groups that the long-anticipated rising had actually begun. Groups moved to the pre-arranged meeting point of Oulart Hill, a centrally placed strategic point in the east of the county. Here Murphy was joined by other leaders and about 500 committed United men. On Whit Sunday, 27th May, the hated North Cork Militia were sent out from Wexford town to disperse them: it was believed that the rebels would flee on sight of their red coats. But the rebel nerve held as the North Corks clattered up the narrow lane to Oulart Hill (which still bears their name): arrogant and over confident, they advanced too rapidly and were caught in a well-conceived rebel ambush. Gunfire raked them and the horses were thrown into confusion. Before they could regroup, a torrent of pikemen poured out of ditches and the cavalry were no match for them.
The patriots took Wexford Town, which remained in their hands for three weeks and during which time the United Irish declared the first attempt at democratic government by proclaiming the "Wexford Republic". Far from being an ignorant, drunken, ungovernable mob as English propaganda would depict them, the United Irishmen were producing leaders of real talent, like Matthew Keogh.
The Wexford men were now forced back to Vinegar Hill by British troops tightening in around them. Some 20,000 streamed to Vinegar Hill, mostly non-combatants. Beneath them was forming a five-pronged encircling attack under General Lake. They were attacked by a rain of shells, then by foot soldiers and cavalry. Particularly the less agile camp followers of women, children, aged and infirm, were ridden down and slaughtered. All were subsequently thrown into a mass grave just at the foot of the hill.
Sir Jonah Barrington maked the observation that on Vinegar Hill "a great many women mingled with their relatives and fought with fury". Holt tells the story of Suzy Toole, daughter of Phelim Toole, a blacksmith near Annamoe in County Wicklow. She was about thirty years of age in 1798 and was employed in the forge with her father. In her capacity as a "moving magazine" she secured ball cartridge and ammunition from disaffected soldiers. The O'Tooles of Wicklow already had a long history of hundreds of years of fighting and resisting the English along with the O'Byrnes, in earlier times. These particular two clans had held out intermittently against the English for centuries after the rest of Ireland had been subdued.
The fighting in Wexford was over, but the yeomen kept the people in fear and dread for years afterwards. The pitchcap was used extensively. Fugitives were hunted like animals. Chapels were still burned until 1801. During the remainder of June and also in July 1798, other leaders of the rebellion, including Fr. Philip Roche, Bagnal Harvey, John Kelly, Matthew Keogh, were all executed on Wexford bridge.
The Curse of the Irish upon Captain Saunders:
"In the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety eight
A sorrowful tale the truth unto you I'll relate
Of thirty-six heroes to the world were left to be seen
By a false information were shot on Dunlavin Green
"Bad luck to you Saunders, for you did their lives betray.
You said a parade would be held on that very day our drums they did rattle - our fifes they did sweetly play.
Surrounded we were and privately marched away
"Quite easy they led us as prisoners through the town
to be slaughtered on the plain, we were then forced to kneel down. Such grief and such sorrow were never before there seen when the blood ran in streams down the dykes of Dunlavin Green.
"There is young Matty Farrell has plenty of cause to complain. Also the two Duffys who were also shot down on the plain. And young Andy Ryan, his mother distracted will run for her own brave boy, her beloved eldest son
"Bad luck to you, Saunders, may bad luck never you shun!
That the widow's curse may melt you like the snow in the sun. The cries of the orphans whose murmurs you cannot screen, for the murder of their dear fathers on Dunlavin Green.
"Some of our boys to the hills they are going away.
Some of them are shot and some of them going to sea.
Micky Dwyer in the mountains to Saunders he owes a spleen
for his loyal brothers who were shot on Dunlavin Green".
(Anonymous).
The Michael Dwyer (1771-1826) there referred to was from the Glen of Imail, County Wicklow. He known as "The Man They Couldn't Capture". After the rising he and a band retreated to the Wicklow Mountains as the Byrnes and O'Tooles had done centuries before. But finally, in 1804 he surrendered and was transported to the penal colony of New South Wales, where twelve years later he was appointed the Chief Constable of Liverpool.
"Have you heard of Michael Dwyer and his mountain men?
Runs your blood like molten fire when you hear again
how he dashed like mountain torrent on his country's bitter foes. Like a thundering, tearing torrent on the craven Yeos?
Chorus: "Here's the chorus, chant it loudly on the still night air. As the war shout rises proudly o'er the trumpet's blair. Chant it! Peal it! Till it echoes over ev'ry hill and glen. Here's to gallant Michael Dwyer and his mountain men.
"When the stars of freedom vanished and our flag went down.
And the nation's hope was banished from each vale and town,
borne intact thru' blood and fire Ireland's banner waved again. Held aloft by Michael Dwyer and his mountain men.
"Still the nation's hopes are burning as they burned of yore. And the young and strong are yearning for the battle's roar. But the blessed star of liberty shall never blaze again till we strike like Michael Dwyer and his mountain men".
Today there is an imposing monument on Vinegar Hill, alongside of which grows the "Tree of Liberty".
###### AFTERMATH OF 1798 IN AUSTRALIA #######
*** Looking for descendants and to contact the Leicester's Soar valley Irish studies group, or any "Reffin"s.
The mother of the mother of our family (Ann who married David Burns) was Ann Ward of Barrow-upon-Soar, who married John Reffin of Cotes.
That was all over 200 years ago.
Next year we hold a reunion/seminar to celebrate 200 years since the arrival of Ann Reffin (transported for a burglary at Ruddington near Nottingham) in Sydney.
We are a small, and beginning, family and Irish Study Group which would like to link to the Soar Irish Studies Group (hoping this still exists .. ) in any way:
BYRNES AND IRISH STUDY GROUP
PO BOX 264 SUMMER HILL NSW 2130 AUSTRALIA
http://www.webspawner.com/users/thebyrnes/index.html
We are descendants of David Burns/Byrnes (1768-1848) and Ann Reffin
(1783-1839).
David Burns arrived in Sydney as a convict from Ireland on the Friendship in 1800. Little is known of his life before coming to New South Wales except that he had a wife and six children. In 1795, he joined the Londonderry Militia, but soon afterwards became a deserter. The reasons for his
transportation are uncertain but he arrived on a ship loaded with exiles sent to Australia after the 1798 revolution (the United Irish uprising). He appears to have been tried in Dublin in 1798 (but no records have been found
of this) and it has been suggested that he may have been suspected of taking the United Irishmen oaths.
Ann Reffin arrived on the Experiment in 1804, having been tried in Nottingham for burglary at nearby Ruddington. Her birthplace was the nearby Walton-on-the-Wolds in Leicestershire.
There is another event coming up next year for being 200 years old; an uprising of Irish convicts at Castle Hill, which was the first (and largest?) armed rebellion ever in Australia.
Pretty much the key event of what was to bring David and Ann together, and thereby the family into existence, was the (failed) republican revolution, along the principles of the American Revolution, and the French Revolution -
Liberty or Death.
And the same men, the political prisoner exiles of 1798, rose again in 1804 as you know, and marched towards the Hawkesbury to rally and liberate the Irish there, perhaps even planning a later assault against the English government in Sydney Town .. although to us today it all seems hopeless as they were no match for the NSW Corps.
We plan a seminar to celebrate the 200th year since the arrival of Ann Reffin in Australia. Ann and David Burns/Byrnes had six children. The seminar hopes to
attract researchers of those family lines, and will also briefly treat the geology and prehistory of Castlereagh, and the possible reasons that drew the Byrnes family to Castlereagh. Our earliest Australian ancestors did not
write and did not leave direct records of their lives, so this has to be pieced together little by little from other information.
The formation of contacts in Ireland is also welcome, although we cannot as yet trace David Burns/Byrnes parents in Ireland. In forceably relocating him to Australia the English separated him from a wife and six children.
Therefore we doubtless have many thousand of family relatives elsewhere too, but we know nothing whatsoever of them other that that they exist.
Our "Ann and David" were married by the Anglican cleric (probably the only one there) or Parramatta town, a man named the Reverend Samuel Marsden.
Marsden is also termed the "Flogging parson" as he at least once (probably more than once) ordered convicts to be flogged. This happened to extract information when the English authorities feared that Irish prisoners were planning rebellion.
Marsden once ordered the lashing of one young Irish prisioner, and another convict recorded it thus:
"There was two floggers, Richard Rice and John Jonson, the Hangman from Sidney. Rice was a left handed man, and Jonson was right-handed, so they stood at each side and I never saw two trashers in a barn moove their stroakes more handeyer than those two man killers did .... as it happened I was to leew'rd of the floggers and I protest ........ Next was tyed up Paddy Galvin, a young boy about twenty years. He was ordered to get 300 lashes. He got one hundred on the back and you cud see his back bone between his shoulder blades, then the doctor order him to get another hundred on his bottom. He got it, then the doctor order him to be flog on the calves of his legs. He never gave so much as whimper. They asked him where the pikes were hid, he said he did not know, and if he did he would not tell. "You may as well hang me now," he says for you will never get any musick from me". So they put him in the cart and sent him to the hospital"
Australians in general, and particularly Irish-Australians haven't forgetten what was done to the likes of Paddy Galven and presumably to thousands before him back in Ireland. "I'll fight but not surrender" says the anonymous, but clearly Irish-Australian "Wild Colonial Boy" - in an early Australian ballad the authorities tried to ban.
Baulkham Hill council, whose area now includes the site of the shootings at Vinegar hill, has formed an international Sister City relationship with the County of Wexford.
The agreement was signed at a ceremony attended by the Mayor, Clr John Griffiths and the General Manager, Mr David Mead, at Wexford County Council, Ireland on Saturday, 29 June 2002. The agreement was celebrated with a Celtic Banquet, which was attended by Wexford officials, business and community leaders.
Wexford people are are planning to visit Australia next year to recognise the bicentenary of the Battle of Vinegar Hill that took place in 1804.
Would like to hear from anyone interested,
Kind Regards
John Byrnes
john.mail@ozemail.com
###### REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND ###############
http://www.midnet.ie/connolly/irishdem/anonnanallfebmar.html
The United Scotsmen and the insurrection of 1798
As we start to commemorate the momentous events which occurred in Ireland in 1798, Irish Democrat columnist, Peter Berresford Ellis, reminds us that it is appropriate that we also examine developments in Scottish republicanism at this time.
In January, 1798, the London Government's agents there uncovered plans for a general uprising in Scotland and the establishment of a Scottish Republic. Scottish republicans were in close contact with the United Irishmen.
Nine prominent Scotsmen, including progressive members of the London parliament and several Scottish peers, were named as members of the 'Provisional Government of the Scottish Republic'. The president of this government was a young Scottish lawyer named Thomas Muir. Muir had already been sentenced to fourteen years transportation to the penal colony at Botany Bay but had made a daring escape in an American warship and made his way to France where he had been honoured as the first non Frenchman to be made a citizen of the republic.
The Scottish republican movement had started its life about the same time as the Irish movement in the aftermath of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. A movement called The Friends of the People had been formed to sever the Union of 1707 and establish an independent Scottish republic.
The president of its convention in 1793, Basil William Hamilton, Lord Daer - heir to the Earl of Selkirk, declared: 'Scotland has long groaned under the chains of England and knows its connections there have been the cause of its greatest misfortunes ... we have been the worse of every connection with you. The Friends of Liberty in Scotland have almost universally been enemies to the Union with England.'
Thomas Muir had been a prominent leader of this movement and during trips to Belfast, where he was a friend of Napper Tandy, he had been made an honorary member of the United Irishmen. He even opened links with another Celtic country, Brittany, where he was in touch with the famous Marquis La Fayette who had fought in the American War of Independence along with hundreds of Bretons. It was from Brittany that the French Revolution had actually been given its kick-start.
La Fayette had made an impassioned plea for the continuance of the Breton parliament when the French decided to abolish it. Armand Kersaint, another Breton republican, made an interesting address to the French National Assembly, reported in Le Moniteur, January 3, 1790: 'The English people, like all conquerors, have long oppressed Scotland and Ireland; but it should be noted that these two nations, always restive, and secretly in revolt against the injustices of the dominating race, have acquired at different epochs concessions which have engendered the hope of ultimately regaining their entire independence ...
Since the Union, Scotland has been represented in Parliament, but out of such proportion to its wealth, its extent and its population, that it does not conceal the fact that it is nothing but a dependent colony of the English Government. Yet the Scots know their rights and their strength; the principles developed by the French nation have found zealous defenders who have been the first to merit the honour of being persecuted by the British Government; but these persecutions have made proselytes, and nowhere is more joy caused by your victories than in Scotland, the principal towns of which have been illuminated to honour them...'
In July, 1793, Muir was arrested returning from Paris via Ireland. He had able defenders, including the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the Earl of Stair and Earl of Stanhope. Indeed, Muir had popular international connections. American President George Washington personally ordered the United States warship, the Otter, commanded by Captain Dawes, to rescue Muir from the penal colony in New South Wales. Washington even offered Muir a position in Washington. Muir declined.
Having successfully reached Paris after many amazing adventures, including being badly wounded in a brush with an English warship in Cadiz Bay, arrived in Paris and was given a house in Chantilly which became the intellectual centre of the Scottish republicans. Indeed, many Irish revolutionaries, like Napper Tandy, were visitors.
Many leaders of the Friends of the People had, however, been arrested and tried for crimes from high treason to sedition. Robert Watt and David Downie had been arrested with incriminating plans for an uprising in which Edinburgh Castle was to be seized. Robert Watt became the first Scottish republican to suffer the death sentence. After being hanged, his head was cut off and thrown to the people.
The last of several Friends of the People leaders to be sentenced to fourteen years transportation in 1794, Joseph Gerrald, had told the court that the English had deprived the Scottish people of their rights from the time of the Union of 1707. 'But if that Union has operated to rob us of our rights, it is our objective to regain them!'
With most of the leadership of the Friends of the People arrested, a new totally secret revolutionary organisation had to be organised. It was called the United Scotsmen, taking its name from the Irish model. By the Spring of 1797, the United Scotsmen were active, based on local cells of not more than sixteen people sending a delegate to committees at parochial, then county and then national level. The National Convention met every seven weeks in different locations, usually within the vicinity of Glasgow, Stirling or Edinburgh.
There was a seven man executive which governed the movement. Lord Daer, whom the authorities had not touched because of his family connections, was a member. Lord Hugh Sempill of Beltrees (Renfrew), was another. William Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, Colonel Norman MacLeod, a Whig Member of Parliament for Inverness, the Earl of Buchan and Sinclair Campbell of Glenorchy also served on the executive. Robert Fergusson was another member and he was said to be the grandson of the Robert Ferguson of Aberdeen who had been involved in the Presbyterian plot to assassinate William of Orange. Another member was Sorley Bell (referred to in English reports as 'Sorbelloni'. Angus Cameron, a tradesman from Weem, Perth, was also a member.
In 1797 affairs came to a head in Scotland mainly due to the Militia Act in which the government had passed a law conscripting able bodied Scots males, between nineteen and twenty-three years old, for military service. Riots were breaking out in Kirkintilloch, Freuchie, Strathaven, Galston, Dalry and throughout Aberdeen. The Government responded by sending in troops. People were being killed and wounded.
In January, 1797, the French had mistakenly sent troops to England. The plan was to land two armies, one at Bristol and one at Hull, appealing to English republicans to join them. The armies were commanded by American and Irish officers. By mistake the troops heading for Bristol landed at Fishguard. It was a silly mistake. The situation in England was different than in Ireland and Scotland and the English with republican sympathies were English first and republican afterwards.
The French had also tried to land in Bantry Bay in December, 1796, and this caused General Lake to start disarming the United Irishmen in Ulster.
Whether there was a disagreement among the National Executive as to the time to strike is not clear. But, it appears, Angus Cameron of Perth decided to act on his own and issued a call to the United Scotsmen to rise in Perth. His second-in-command was James Menzies Jnr., a Weem merchant whose brother was the famous botanist Archibald Menzies of Weem (1754-1842) who had fought in the American War of Independence. Reports indicate that 16,000 men answered Cameron's call. They included a cavalry regiment.
The United Scotsmen had initial success. They captured Castle Menzies and forced Sir John Menzies to declare against the Militia Act. They marched on Blair Castle where the Duke of Atholl was forced to surrender. Then a detachment went to Taymouth Castle, near Kenmore, residence of the Earls of Breadalbane. This was also a military headquarters and the United Scotsmen were able to seize its armoury.
Thousands of English troops poured into the country. These line regiments were used because the commander in Scotland was afraid of sending Scottish troops against their fellow countrymen. Faced with superior forces, Cameron proved a good commander. His army' simply melted back into the population. He and Menzies were never caught and eventually settled in America.
On July 17, 1797, an Act of parliament declared the United Scotsmen illegal and any member liable to an immediate seven years transportation. In November, 1797, trials for sedition started and George Mealmaker, a Dundee weaver, was sentenced to fourteen years, while other members received various terms of transportation and imprisonment. Two prominent organisers, Archibald Gray and a man named Dyer, were able to escape from prison and make their way to Hamburg in Germany.
The exact aims of the rising were discovered in papers found by government agents in January, 1798. A special House of Commons Committee was sent up to investigate matters.
Over the next four years, many Scotsmen were to be tried for treason and sedition as members of the United Scotsmen. Men like Robert Jaffrey, David Black and James Paterson in September, 1798, who, from the dock, applauded the United Irishmen uprising. There was a former militia sergeant William Maxwell who was tried on June 23, 1800, and given seven years transportation having been found to be an organiser and circulator of United Scotsmen propaganda.
The last record of a United Scotsmen having been tried before the courts for the serious crime of sedition was the trial in 1802 of Thomas Wilson, a Fife weaver, and a delegate to the National Convention.
There were many other trials on less serious charges. The most tragic blow to the United Scotsman was, of course, the death in January, 1799, at the age of thirty-three of Thomas Muir at Chantilly. His death was caused by the wounds received in the fight with the English man o' war.
Among veterans of the Friends of the People and the United Scotsmen was James Wilson of Strathaven. he had become active in 1792. A literate man, he was a weaver by profession and a delegate to the National Convention. In 1820, aged 63, then a grandfather, Wilson, true to his principles, took up his gun and joined the younger men in answering the call in the 1820 insurrection in Scotland.
In the aftermath of that insurrection he was one of 85 prisoners to be charged with High Treason. He was hanged and then beheaded. His last words on the scaffold were 'I die a true patriot for the cause of freedom for my poor country'.
This year we will see many 1798 commemorations. In Scotland, the 1820 is annually commemorated at the graves where its executed leaders lay buried (in Sighthill and in Strathaven). As Scotland begins its tentative steps towards finally achieving its own parliament, one is aware of a sense of excitement and change in the air ... changes in the status for all the nations on these islands. Perhaps the sacrifice and aspirations of the United Scotsmen will now be accorded a proper place in history.
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http://www.scotlandonline.com/heritage/weekly_history/wh35_james_wilson.cfm
James Wilson
1st September 1820
The 1820 Uprising
On 1st September 1820, a weaver from Strathaven, James Wilson, was publicly executed at Glasgow Green, in front of a crowd of some 20,000 people. He was in part a victim of a Government hysteria at a long-running unrest in the working classes, whose wages were miserable and where work was ever harder to find, especially during the post-Napoleonic war period.
James Wilson was born on the 3rd September 1760, in the parish of Avondale. He was from a family of weavers, and is believed to have invented the stocking-frame, which allowed the pearl stitch to be worked. This is a stitch, still used in knitting, for fancy borders and edges, one which worked back on itself allowing a rippled effect to be made. Because of this, he received the nickname of "Perley Wilson".
The weavers in general were a fairly revolutionary group; there had been 1819 demonstrations in Paisley and Glasgow. The Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819 pushed the government to the point of panic. What remains uncertain is how much of this hysteria was in fact stirred up by government agents. What is certain is that on a Sunday morning, April Fools Day, 1820, placards appeared in Glasgow calling for a general strike and uprising.
"Friends and Countrymen," it ran, "Roused from the state in which we have been sunk for so many years, we are at length compelled... to assert our rights at the hazard of our lives". It continued in glowing terms, urging the people to take arms to regenerate their country. The document was signed "By order of the Committee of Organisation for forming a Provisional Government".
On the Monday, some 20 men from Strathaven had been duped into marching north, there to await the huge French battalion they were assured would arrive to liberate Scotland. After waiting all night, they realised it was a waste of time and dispersed home. James Wilson returned home still holding a banner for the march. He was arrested almost immediately and taken to Hamilton, then Glasgow, on a charge of High Treason.
On the same Tuesday, a group of men gathered in Glasgow, in what is now the Necropolis. They too had been fooled and again probably by government spies and agents. Marching towards Falkirk, and consisting mainly of Calton weavers, they intended to gain the Carron Ironworks and seize guns. Some 30 were resting at Bonnymuir when they were found by a troop of Hussars. Resisting, they were soon overpowered.
On the 1st September 1820, James Wilson was publicly hanged on Glasgow Green then beheaded. The other two were publicly hanged in Stirling. Wilson's remains were secretly taken from the paupers' grave in the Glasgow High Church by his daughter and niece, to be interred in a family plot in Strathaven, where there is now a monument to his martyrdom. In Stirling, a plaque on a wall marks the martyrdom of Hardie and Baird.
http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/reviews/scotland-in-revolt/
Scotland in revolt
Ian Bayne reviews The Scottish Insurrection of 1820 by Peter Berresford Ellis and Seumas Mac a' Ghobhainn, John Donald/Birlinn Ltd (Edinburgh), ??12.99 pbk
The singing of Burn's patriotic song Scots Wha Hae, subsequently recognised as Scotland's national anthem, at various radical demonstrations in the months leading up to the rising, appreciated the ideological link between the medieval struggle for freedom from English rule and their own contemporary struggle for 'liberty' and 'justice'.
Moreover, the radicals' fundamental aim of achieving real democracy in Scotland easily translates into the on-going 21st century struggle for Scottish independence. To slightly paraphrase Thomas Muir at his 1793 trial for sedition: 'I have devoted myself to the cause of the (Scottish) people -- it's a good cause... -- it shall finally triumph."
It is a verdict with which the three executed martyrs -- and their 19 comrades transported to Botany Bay -- could scarcely have demurred.
A fuller version of this review appeared in the Scots Independent.
October/November 2001
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