The Orangeman (1915) as Ulster-American Origin Narrative

In the 1820s and 1830s, County Monaghan, in the borderlands of South Ulster, played a significant role in the struggle between supporters and defenders of the Protestant Ascendancy. ¹ During the 1826 general election, the contest in County Monaghan, where the Catholic Association used its voting power to defeat the conservative Colonel Leslie of Glaslough, decisively showed the voting strength available to Daniel O'Connell. An election riot on Saturday, June 24, 1826, when Catholics attacked Leslie as he entered Monaghan town with a crowd of Orange supporters, was known as "Stony Saturday." In 1868, this attack was still recalled as an unparalleled outbreak of violence; a subsequent stage of the proceedings was known as "Stick Wednesday." ² In the 1830s, Orangemen were preoccupied with the perceived influence of O'Connell over the Whig administration, shown in several attempted prosecutions of Monaghan Orangemen for breaching the Party Processions Act in the years 1833-1835. ³

For much of the nineteenth century, the core leadership of Orangeism and Irish Toryism was provided by a network of South Ulster evangelical gentry, such as the Coles and Crichtons of Fermanagh and the Jocelyns of South Down. In the 1820s and 1830s, Monaghan was notorious for the use of extra-judicial force by Orangemen in reaction to Catholic mobilization. Orange paramilitary intermingling with the local legal apparatus was symbolized for many contemporaries by Sam Gray (1782-1848), who was an innkeeper, a property-owner, and manager of a local Loan Fund in Ballybay; Worshipful Master of Ballybay lodge and District Master of Ballybay; land agent, tithe proctor, local tax-collector, and baronial High Constable for the Ballybay area. Gray's inn contained a cell for alleged lawbreakers. A former member of the yeomanry, the Protestant-dominated local defence force, physically brave and hot-tempered, Gray walked around with two pistols in his belt accompanied by numerous hangers-on and political sympathizers who were prepared to support him by physical force or testimony in a court of law. In 1824, when a Catholic was kicked to death during a sectarian brawl at Ballybay fair, the Catholic Association raised money to prosecute him for murder. Gray escaped conviction by the evidence of his associates and was complimented by the judge for his peacemaking efforts. ⁴ By threatening mob violence in September, 1828, Gray prevented the O'Connellite spokesman Jack Lawless from holding a pro-Emancipation meeting in Ballybay. Lawless's campaign in Monaghan was christened "the Invasion of Ulster." Gray was hailed nationwide as a Protestant hero and ballads were composed in his honor. ⁵

During the Tithe War of the 1830s and early 1840s, Gray used his followers to collect tithes in the parishes of Ballybay and Aughnamullen from Catholics who resisted payment. Two of Gray's followers were acquitted of murder committed while tithe-collecting in 1834, and unsuccessful attempts were made to prosecute him for assault. ⁶ At the same time, Gray regularly defied legal restrictions on Orange parades and ran various semi-criminal rackets, including selling "passports" to Catholics passing through Ballybay after dark. ⁷ His quasi-feudal power proved an embarrassment to a Dublin Castle administration that was trying to exert central control over the embattled structures of local administration. When Gray was made sub-sheriff of Monaghan through local poltical influence in February, 1838, Whig Under Secretary Thomas Drummond employed measures of doubtful legality to remove him, and when, in November, 1840, Gray killed a witness whose evidence led to the setting aside of a will made in favor of Gray's son by a business partner, the government repeatedly prosecuted him in a manner that strained the limits of double jeopardy. Gray escaped on a legal technicality, but some of his key lieutenants were transported to Australia and his finances were drained by legal costs.

Charles Gavan Duffy, the Young Ireland leader and son of a Monaghan Catholic tradesman who had been an United...