The Society of United Irishmen was a sworn association in the Kingdom of Ireland formed in the wake of the French Revolution to secure "an equal representation of all the people" in a national government. Despairing of constitutional reform, in 1798 the United Irishmen instigated a republican rebellion in defiance of British Crown forces and of Irish sectarian division. Their suppression was a prelude to the abolition of the Irish Parliament in Dublin and to Ireland's incorporation in a United Kingdom with Great Britain. An attempt to revive the movement and renew the insurrection following the Acts of Union led to an abortive rising in Dublin in 1803.
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 was a major uprising against British rule in Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions: originally formed by Presbyterian radicals angry at being shut out of power by the Anglican establishment, they were joined by many from the majority Catholic population.
Ethna Carbery, born Anna Bella Johnston, was an Irish journalist, writer and poet. She is best known for the ballad Roddy McCorley and the Song of Ciabhán; the latter was set to music by Ivor Gurney. In Belfast in the late 1890s, with Alice Milligan she produced The Shan Van Vocht, a nationalist monthly of literature, history and comment that gained a wide circulation in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora. Her poetry was collected and published after her death under the pen name Ethna Carberry, adopted following her marriage to the poet Seumas MacManus in 1901.
Henry Joy McCracken was an Irish republican, a leading member of the Society of the United Irishmen and a commander of their forces in the field in the Rebellion of 1798. In pursuit of an independent and democratic Irish republic, he sought to ally the disaffected Presbyterians organised in the Society with the Catholic Defenders, and in 1798 to lead their combined forces in Antrim against the British Crown. Following the defeat and dispersal of the rebels under his command, McCracken was court-martialled and executed in Belfast.
The history of Ireland from 1691–1800 was marked by the dominance of the Protestant Ascendancy. These were Anglo-Irish families of the Anglican Church of Ireland, whose English ancestors had settled Ireland in the wake of its conquest by England and colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, and had taken control of most of the land. Many were absentee landlords based in England, but others lived full-time in Ireland and increasingly identified as Irish.. During this time, Ireland was nominally an autonomous Kingdom with its own Parliament; in actuality it was a client state controlled by the King of Great Britain and supervised by his cabinet in London. The great majority of its population, Roman Catholics, were excluded from power and land ownership under the penal laws. The second-largest group, the Presbyterians in Ulster, owned land and businesses but could not vote and had no political power. The period begins with the defeat of the Catholic Jacobites in the Williamite War in Ireland in 1691 and ends with the Acts of Union 1800, which formally annexed Ireland in a United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 and dissolved the Irish Parliament.
Toome or Toomebridge is a small village and townland on the northwest corner of Lough Neagh in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It lies in the civil parish of Duneane in the former barony of Toome Upper, and is in the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council area. It had a population of 781 in the 2011 census.
James "Jemmy" Hope was a radical democrat in Ireland who organised among tenant farmers, tradesmen and labourers for the Society of the United Irishmen. In the Rebellion of 1798 he fought alongside Henry Joy McCracken at the Battle of Antrim. In 1803 he attempted to renew the insurrection against the British Crown in an uprising coordinated by Robert Emmett and the new republican directorate in Dublin. Among United Irishmen, Hope was distinguished by his conviction that "the fundamental question at issue between the rulers and the people" was "the condition of the labouring class".
William Orr was an Irish revolutionary and member of the United Irishmen who was executed in 1797 in what was widely believed at the time to be "judicial murder" and whose memory led to the rallying cry “Remember Orr” during the 1798 rebellion.
Elizabeth "Betsy" Gray, is a folkloric figure in the annals of 1798 Rebellion in Ireland. Ballads, poems and popular histories celebrate her presence in the ranks of the United Irishmen, and her death, on 12 June 1798 at the Battle of Ballynahinch. Contemporary records are unable to confirm the tale that has been told in all its detail, but they do point to the role of women in supporting the insurrection, including as combatants in the field. Contesting ownership of her memory, in 1898 local unionists disrupted Irish nationalist centenary commemorations and destroyed her grave marker.
The Battle of Saintfield was a short but bloody clash in County Down, in Northern Ireland. The battle was the first major conflict of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in Down. The battle took place on Saturday, 9 June 1798.
Henry Munro was a United Irishman born in Lisburn, County Down, who in 1798 commanded rebel forces, the United Army of Down, at the Battle of Ballynahinch.
The Irish rebellion of 1803 was an attempt by Irish republicans to seize the seat of the British government in Ireland, Dublin Castle, and trigger a nationwide insurrection. Renewing the struggle of 1798, they were organised under a reconstituted United Irish directorate. Hopes of French aid, of a diversionary rising by radical militants in England, and of Presbyterians in the north-east rallying once more to the cause of a republic were disappointed. The rising in Dublin misfired, and after a series of street skirmishes, the rebels dispersed. Their principal leader, Robert Emmet, was executed; others went into exile.
The Shan Van Vocht, was the name of a song, dating to the period of the Irish rebellion of 1798 that, once printed, gained notoriety in nineteenth century Ireland as a seditious text. In the 1890s it was adopted as the title of a popular historical novel and of a nationalist magazine, both of which, in the face of the growing sectarian division over Irish Home rule, sought to vindicate the republican legacy of the United Irishmen.
Duneane is a civil parish in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is situated in the historic barony of Toome Upper and contains the town of Toome.
Thomas McCabe, a prominent merchant in Belfast, was an abolitionist credited with defeating a proposal to commission ships in the town for the Middle Passage, and, with his son William Putnam McCabe, was an active member of the Society of the United Irishmen.
James Dickey was a young barrister from a Presbyterian family in Crumlin in the north of Ireland who was active in the Society of the United Irishmen and was hanged with Henry Joy McCracken for leading rebels at the Battle of Antrim.
Francis Joseph Bigger was an Irish antiquarian, revivalist, solicitor, architect, author, editor, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. His collected library, now distributed across several public institutions, comprised more than 18,000 books, journals, letters, photographs, sketches, maps, and other materials. His house in Belfast was a gathering place for Irish nationalist politicians, artists, scholars, and others. He was a prolific sponsor and promoter of Gaelic culture, authored many works of his own, founded several institutions, and revived and edited the Ulster Journal of Archaeology.
Walter (Watty) Graham (1763-1798) was a farmer and Presbyterian Church elder in the north of Ireland who was executed for his role as a United Irishman in the Rebellion of 1798.
Ballymoney Town Hall is a municipal structure in the High Street, Ballymoney, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The structure, which incorporates a local history museum, is a Grade B1 listed building.
