agent’s son.
In the disturbed times, “Captain Rock” soon began appearing on threatening notices to landlords, agents and others all across the south of Ireland. The Rockites wanted rents, tithes and taxes down and no evictions.
While the motivations of the Rockites may have been similar to those of the labourers of Kent and Sussex some ten years later, their actions were quite different.
In England there was great deal of arson and machines were wrecked by unemployed workers, but there were few if any killings.
In the initial months of the rebellion in Ireland there was an attempt at full scale insurrection in north Cork, with massed assaults of up to 2,000 rebels on Army barracks at Macroom, Millstreet and Newmarket that were repulsed after prolonged fighting.
In Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork and Tipperary, there was extensive raiding for arms and assassinations of landlords, their agents, “land-grabbers” and informers. Donnelly counts 130 such Rockite killings.
Landlords’ houses and Protestant Churches were also burnt down, as were goods such as stacked hay. There was also a gruesome incident of gang-rape of soldiers’ wives in Killdorrey, county Cork. Agrarian rebellion in Ireland was far more violent than in England and its repression much harsher
Agrarian rebellion in Ireland was far more violent than in England and its repression much harsher
The British military, the Irish Constabulary and the Yeomanry met fire with fire; killing dozens, if not hundreds of people. There were also over 100 executions and around 600 Transportations to Australia of Rockite rebels. Such repression saw the rebellion peter out in 1824. Donnelly also suggests that violent activism of ‘Captain Rock’ became less attractive when the more peaceful method of agitation favoured by Daniel O’Connell in pursuit of Catholic Emancipation began to gather momentum.
The repression of the English “Captain Swing” revolt was also harsh (19 executions and 505 Transportations). But the lethal violence there was almost all of the government side. The question immediately suggests itself, why was Ireland so much more violent than England in its response to the same social crisis? Donnelly’s book suggests that the answer lies in the historical religious and cultural antipathies in rural Ireland.
In the counties affected by the Rockite rebellion, the landed were almost wholly Protestant and frequently English – especially in the case of their agents. The poor were Catholic and in these areas still predominantly Irish-speaking. Donnelly shows that many Rockites saw the rebellion not only as an emergency response to deteriorating living standards, but also as an opportunity for a historic victory over what they understood as their hereditary oppressors. The Rockites combined Catholicism, Jacobitism and elements of United Irish republicanism in their thinking
The Rockites combined Catholicism, Jacobitism and elements of United Irish republicanism in their thinking
A confused “ideology”
Among the Rockites, many of whom seem to have been literate, we find a confused range of views, combining Catholicism with traditional Irish Jacobitism and the republicanism introduced to the countryside by the United Irishmen some twenty years earlier. Donnelly pays particular attention to the influence of the prophecies of “Pastorini” (in fact an English Catholic Bishop named Charles Walmesly) who forecast that 1822 would see the end of Protestantism and the triumph of the True Faith.
All of this was quite disturbing to the “official” Catholic nationalists, largely composed of the better-off Catholics under Daniel O’Connell in the Catholic Association. In Captain Rock we find them stressing that the rebellion was purely agrarian and denying that it had anything to do with Catholic or Irish aspirations. O’Connell was not above defending Rockites in his capacity as a lawyer but Donnelly shows that he was well paid for his endeavors with money the Rockites would extort from the rich.
A sign of things to come?
Something that is not broached in the book, but which struck this reviewer, 