Conspira

tors re

crime.

person to be one of his soldiers, to assist in overthrowing the King, Government, and all Magistrates.

The Rev. Mr. Mansell, the evangelizer of tract, and Portadown, before whom the examinations of own their the conspirators were sworn, induced such of them as were or had been Catholics, to read their recantation before they were examined.* Mr. Coile was confined above eight months in prison, vainly entreating and urging to be put upon his trial. Four of the conspirators against his life, touched with remorse, deposed, in the mean time, before different magistrates, that they had been suborned to swear falsely against him. Some of them added, that they had been compelled by twelve men, whom they named in their affidavits, to swear false oaths against him, and others, that they had been rewarded for having done so with clothes and money.

How Mr.

Coile was

Mr. Coile was enlarged without trial, after an prevented imprisonment of eight months. Wishing to profrom pro- secute the rest of the conspirators, he was presecuting other ma- vented from doing it by the judge, because his gistrates,

and what

justice done to Orange delin

quents.

own

The following is a copy of a certificate given to one James Murray on this occasion: "James Murray of Dery"hesna came before me this day, and renounced the errors "of the Church of Rome, and embraced the Protestant faith as by law established." GEORGE MANnsell, Drum, Jan. "13, 1796."

own trial was still hanging over him, whenever it might be expedient for the Crown to bring it forward. This management of justice bespeaks the spirit of those, by whom it was administered. At the spring assizes, in 1796, more than 100 of these exterminating Orangemen were commited for trial and although by the judges' order the prosecutors and witnesses were escorted, for security, on the high roads by patroles of dragoons, many of them were waylaid, maimed and murdered. Others were intimidated from

attending to give evidence, as the juries were from convicting. Notwithstanding these obstructions to justice, eleven of the banditti were found guilty, of whom one only was executed. He was a Protestant dissenter. It was the ordinary and open conversation of these convicts, who were remanded to prison, that if they considered their lives in danger, they would discover the names of their employers in the nefarious business. At the solicitation of the magistrates they were respited from time to time, and at last pardoned, and let loose upon the public to recommence their work of extermination. Mr. Coile, from having prosecuted Mr. Greer to conviction, became a marked victim to the resentment of the Orangemen. He was waylaid, and narrowly escaped with his life. Persecution followed him to Dublin, where his sufferings will be traced in the sequel, not for the sake of the persecuted, individual,

Alarming With such rapidity did the atrocious fanatiprogress cism of the Orangemen spread through the of Orangism. County of Armagh, that in three months from

their inauguration on the 21st of September, the very magistrates, who had hitherto countenanced them, were appalled at the consequences of their own concurrence and connivance. On the 21st of February, 1796, Mr. Grattan, in debating the four resolutions of the Attorney General, for quieting the disturbances of the country, which neither mentioned nor referred to the County of Armagh, thus spoke.*"This horrid persecution, "this abominable barbarity, and this general ex"termination has been acknowledged by the "magistrates, who found the evil had proceeded "to so shameful an excess, that it had at length

obliged them to cry out against it. On the 28th " of December thirty of the magistrates came to "the following resolution, which was evidence "of the designs of the insurgents, and of their ،، success. Resolved, that it appears to this "meeting, that the County of Armagh is at "this moment in the state of uncommon disorder; "that the Roman Catholic inhabitants are griev

66

ously oppressed by lawless persons unkown, "who attack and plunder their houses by night, "and threaten them with instant destruction, "unless they abandon immediately their lands " and habitations."

That

16 Parl. Deb.

of the Ar

magh ma

against

Lord Gos

That was the first of six resolutions proposed Evidence by Lord Gosford, whilst governor of the county, to a general meeting of magistrates, for the pur- gistrates pose, as the third of those resolutions expresses, the of stopping the progress of the persecution now Orangecarrying on by an ungovernable mob against the men. Roman Catholic inhabitants of this county. That noble Lord spoke a written address to the Speech of meeting, in which he told them, that he was as ford. true a Protestant as any in the room, and that from holding the situation he did in the county, he was called upon, and would declare his sentiments without fear and without disguise. That meeting of the whole body of the magistracy of the County of Armagh was convened on the 28th of December, 1795, by his Lordship, for the special purpose of concerting measures the most likely to check the enormities, that had brought disgrace upon the County, and would soon reduce it to the deepest distress. His Lordship's words to them on that occasion, are the most unimpeachable evidence, that can be resorted to of the nature, spirit and extent of Orangism at that time, which comprized only the first quarterly return of the success of that exterminating society. "It is," said his Lordship, "no secret, that a persecution, accompa"nied with all the circumstances of ferocious cruelty, which have in all ages distinguished "that calamity, is now raging in this County.

66

Mischief

of Orang

i-m kept

individual, but for the purpose of exhibiting to the nation the spirit and principles of the perse

The exterminating system was carried on with such alacrity in Armagh, that the passive from the objects of the persecution were intimidated into public. silence. Moderate and liberal Protestants wished to suppress the enormities perpetrated by their brethren in faith, under pretence of supporting the Protestant ascendancy, and the ferocious instruments of the outrages were prevented by their more bloody instigators from recording them to posterity. Thus, unfortunately, has the public been left in ignorance of the atrocities,† by

which

* Through their influence with the head of the Linen Board, this gentleman, who had hitherto been accommodated like others, in that branch of trade, with the usual advantages of the Hall, was, in an unprecedented manner, deprived of rooms in it for the sale of his goods: he was obliged for that purpose to purchase a house in the neighbouring street, in which he had scarcely been settled, when forty-eight woinen and children, and four troopers were billetted upon him for ten weeks and four days. The further grievances of this persecuted individual will be noticed, as they occur in the chronological order of the ensuing sheets; as they are all to be traced to the inexpiable offence of having resisted and punished some of the most prominent zealots of the Orange Institution.

Dr. Sheridan, the patriotic and enlightened author of the Unbiassed Irishman, (3d. edition by Coyne, Dublin, 1808.)

in