The secret societies of Ireland : their rise and progress

Front matter

I r

p rr

CORNELL

Foreword

For the purposes of this book I have undertaken a considerable amount of research, and have read all the existing books, pamphlets and contemporary journals, germane to the subject, upon which I could lay my hands. In most cases I have indicated, either in foot-notes or in the text, the sources of information quoted. Most of these sources are available in the libraries either of Dublin Castle, the Irish Office, or the British Museum. In all cases where statements of fact appear which are not referred to published books or documents, they have been gleaned from papers which came into the possession of the authorities after raids, etc., or are from confidential official sources.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Early Organisations . . . i

II. The United Irishmen

Preface

A BOOK of this nature, dealing with existent organisations, inevitably labours under certain handicaps. The worst of these is, perhaps, the fact that all the counter-measures of the Intelligence Departments and Police who deal with the problems raised by these societies may not be even suggested. All that can be said is that the authorities are well informed. They will probably continue to be so, unless, at some future date, the cost of vigilance is foolishly economised. This has been done' in the past by doctrinaires in office, and to a large extent the expense and political difficulties attendant on the recent Irish Rebellion could have been obviated, had an Intelligence Department, dealing with Irish affairs, been properly maintained in the years preceding and during the Great War. Sound political intelligence, properly appreciated, would have obviated the tragic years.

The problem of the Irish secret societies raises a vital question for solution by statesmen rather than by politicians. So long as there exists a powerful criminal organisation rooted in the United States, as well as in Ireland, and with ramifications all over the globe, whose avowed object is the establishment of an independent Irish Republic by methods of poUtical assassination

X PREFACE

and secret murder, then how long will any settlement of " The Irish Question " endure ?

The following pages will show that for centuries the peace and prosperity of Ireland have been broken by malignant and terrible secret associations of Irish people who have brought ruin and suffering on their country.

For the last seventy years, the source of infection has been external, and the Irish of the United States have been responsible for energising the Irish of Great Britain and Ireland into active crime. It must be realised that this " organising " of the Irish is a remunerative trade or calling — just as much as that of the professional coiner, burglar or blackmailer — and that, so long as men can earn dishonest livehhoods by the plea of patriotism, so long will the Irish Republican Brotherhood and kindred criminal bodies maintain a sporadic activity. Given a spell of weak government in Ireland (and it is not yet proven that Irish self-government can be strong) they will seize the opportunity and trouble will inevitably occur.

The attitude which I have taken throughout this book is that of the normal citizen interested in the maintenance of social order. To certain doctrinaires and extremists, rebellion and murder are not criminal, but justifiable and even praiseworthy. I do not hold these views, and with some experience of other revolutions besides the Irish one, I do not believe that they convey any immediate or future benefit which cannot be obtained almost as expeditiously and with far less suffering to the whole mass of the nation by ordinary constitutional means.

PREFACE xi

Certain elements deride that loyalty which is the stereotyped code of the servants of the Crown, but there cannot be diverse political interpretations of the functions of a policeman or a soldier. The unshakable loyalty of the Royal Irish Constabulary throughout its career has been one of the finest and noblest things in the history of Ireland.

From the point of view of the adherent of social order, it is impossible to treat of sedition, political assassination and rebellion other than as criminal. One must view them purely from the police standpoint and treat political phenomena of this nature from a criminological point of view. In these days of political instability there is a wide-spread confusion of ideas ; and the conception that crime attributable to or covered by a gloss of political grievance is not true criminality is spreading dangerously, and moral values are being usurped.

That I am not alone in this view is shown by a letter on the Irish Question by Lord Hugh Cecil, M.P., to The Times, in which he stated : —

" Murder is not a legitimate political instrument ; it is a cruel abomination, which deserves the gallows in this world and hell-fire in the next.

" Both the Government and their critics appear to believe that a remedy is to be found in some change of political machinery. But the true causa sine qua -non of the murders in Ireland is not a political grievance, but a wide-spread moral depravity. The Sinn Fein movement and its abominable crimes are only the last of a long series, certainly going back to the days of the Whiteboys, 1 60 years ago.

" The evil is a moral one, and the remedies must be moral. The two great remedies are law and religion."

xii PREFACE

Religion has failed utterly as a deterrent from homicide in so far as the Irish are concerned, and, in point of fact, it matters little to a soldier whether he is shot by a seditious communicant or an equally murderous atheist. But it matters a great deal to genuinely religious people. No one would be so foolish cis to judge Roman Catholicism by the Irish rendering of it, for Irish Catholicism is something apart ; yet it is, perhaps, the greatest failure of a Church celebrated for successful missionary endeavour.

Some explanation of the continued failure by the English to enforce law throughout Ireland will be found in the following pages.

Chapter I

The earliest records of a secret society in Ireland are those connected with the insurrection of 1641. Under Charles I Roman Catholicism had been again proscribed and worship had to be performed in secret. There was then organised among the people an association known as The Defenders, whose ruling spirit was the celebrated insurgent leader, Roger Moore, celebrated in legend as Rory O'Moore.

Roger Moore had been educated abroad in exile and had spent much time in Spain, where he probably learnt the mechanism of secret revolution which he later applied to Ireland. Certain it is that the rising was generally anticipated, and that Irish Catholic exiles began to filter back to Ireland from all parts, preparatory to the rising which burst out on October 23rd, 1641, and was characterised by massacres of the Protestant settlers. The popular password of the period was " God Our Lady, and Rory O'Moore."

The reasons for the rising of 1641 were compHcated in that, though nominally a reUgious war, all the other elements of the period, the contest between King and Parliament, the aggressive intrigues of Spain and the old resistance of the conquered and expropriated Irish landowners, provided motives for the alliance of different elements.

The nominal function of the Defenders was the protection of the fugitive priests during the period of proscription and the holding of the passes while Mass was celebrated in some mountain glen. The enemies of the faith being the Protestants, and the Protestants standing for the Constitutional authority of Britain, the Defenders soon became a criminal association of law-breakers and banditti.

The CromweUian campaign of 1649 crushed out the effects of the successful rising of 1641, and famine and banishment completed the subjugation of the turbulent land.

The priesthood was early recognised as largely responsible for the continuous insurgency of the country, and all Irish priests were deemed guilty of rebellion and sentenced to death. It was also a capital crime to know where a priest was hidden and not inform the authorities. The five pounds reward, given for a wolf's head, was also given for a priest's. The bigotry of the CromweUians in Ireland was remarkable, but, in fairness, it must be admitted that loyal Roman Catholics in England were not persecuted. The policy of extermination in Ireland was mainly due to the unfortunate identity of Irish Roman Catholicism with sedition and rebellion, a tendency which recent events show persists* to the present day.

The nature of the Irish priesthood was recognised when, at the Restoration of Charles II, the Irish Catholics were excluded from the Act of Indemnity ; and when the Popish Plots of Titus Oates

* The Administration of Ireland, ig2o, by ' I.O.', pages 44, 49. 53. 54. 57- came to a head, Irish Papists terrified the popular imagination as much as did Jesuit emissaries. It is a peculiar circumstance, that Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, who had attempted to put down the criminal association of Defenders in the South of Ireland, was accused by the infamous Gates ; and at his trial at Westminster certain of these Irish priests, who had been censured by him, gave false evidence against him. The Archbishop, though innocent, was, through the false evidence of these members of the secret society, sentenced and duly hanged at Tyburn.

The notorious modem society known as The Ancient Order of Hibernians (q.v.) is the direct successor of the original society of Defenders : in common with its ancestor it attempts to enable the clerics to exercise control in poHtics.

The Defenders as an organisation seem to have been modelled on the infamous Spanish secret society known as the Garduna {anglice " polecats "). This Garduna was originally a secret organisation of robbers, bandits and masterless men who were organised by the priestly party in Spain to take the offensive against the Moors and Jews under the Emperor Ferdinand. The war against the Moors promised pillage ; the bandits of the period were devout if bloodthirsty Christians, and the curious organisation was successful. Two millions of Moors and Jews were driven from the realm, and their money and property passed via the partnership of Garduna and priests into the possession of the State and the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

After a time the Garduna resented the heavy tax on its ill-gotten gains, and the State took action against the bandits. The Inquisition, however, maintained the old alliance and continued to accept its share of the proceeds of robberies ; so we find the military and civil power at war with banditti who are united in a secret organisation and who work in alUance with the most powerful factor in the Church.

The Garduiia had no written charter ; the rules, signs and passwords being, in the main, orally transmitted. There were nine degrees, those of the 7th being priests known as Magistri. They conducted the initiations, kept the rolls and preserved the traditions of the society. Above them were the Capaces or district commanders, who yielded allegiance to the Hermano Mayor {anglice " Chief Brother ") who, as Grand Master, exercised absolute control over the whole organisation. He was usually a powerful Court official, and the whole social fabric was honeycombed with people in authority who were secretly Garduiieros.

The society was political in that its services were devoted to the Church Party, but in practice it was entirely run for the profitable exploitation of crime. It acted as a hideous jackal to the powers of the Inquisition, but systematised ordinary crime such as robbery, kidnapping, murder for hire and similar activities. The profits were divided into three parts, one for the Headquarters Fund, one for those who carried out the deed and one for the current expenses of the local association.

The basis of the ritual was purely religious and patriotic, in the sense that patriotism is always interpreted by those who join secret criminal societies of ostensibly patriotic purport. The central legend round which clustered the mysteries of the Garduiia was as follows : —

" When the Moors, sons of Beelzebub, first invaded Spain, the celebrated Madonna of Cordoba took refuge in a Christian camp. The Almighty, nevertheless, allowed the Moors to defeat the Christians in order to chasten them. Driven by the invader, the Christians became wandering bands in the Asturias.

" In the Sierra Morena lived at this time a hermit of great sanctity caUed Apollinarius. To him appeared the Virgin with the following message : — ' Thou seest what evil the Moors do to thy native country and thy religion. The sins of the Spanish people are, indeed, so great as to have excited the wrath of the Most High, for which reason He has allowed the Moors to triumph over you. But while my Son weis contemplating the earth, I had the happy inspiration to point out to Him thy many and great virtues, at which His brow cleared, and I seized the instant to beseech Him by means of thee to save Spain from the many evils that afflict it. He granted my prayer. Hear, therefore, my commands and execute thein. Collect the patriot and the brave, lead them in my name against the enemy, assuring them that I shall ever be by their side. And as they are fighting the good fight of the faith, tell them that even now they shall have their reward, and that they may in all justice appropriate to themselves the riches of the Moors, in whatever manner obtained.

" ' In the hands of the enemies of God, wealth

B may be a means of oppressing religion, while in those of the faithful it will only be applied to its greater glory.

" ' Arise, Apollinarius, inspire and conduct this crusade ; I invest thee with full power, anoint thee with celestial oils and present thee with this amulet which worn will give safety against Moorish arms, the rage of heretics and sudden deaths.' " *

Such, briefly, was the legend of the inspired anchorite Apollinarius. This figure became vulgarised as Cat PoUnaro, the hero of the ritual, and his name was one of the passwords. The ordinary hailing-sign was the lifting of the right thumb to the left nostril, and there were certain grips, signs and words for every degree.

The Garduiia flourished at its best between 1520 and i6go, after which its intimate connection with the Inquisition became relaxed. It was not finally suppressed in Spain till 1822, when the last Grand Master, one Francisco Corting, and sixteen followers were duly hanged at Seville. The records of the Society were captured and are now accessible among Spanish criminal archives. The American lodges of this society continued in South America and Cuba until 1850, but the anti-clerical revolutions of the quondam Spanish colonies destroyed the power of the society with that of its leaders, the priests.

Ttiis strange alliance of Catholicism with brigandage is not incomprehensible in an age when men passionately sought temporal power for the Pope. It was a lawless mechanism as well suited to the Irish as to the Spanish temperament. O'Moore

* C. W. Heckethorn : Secret Societies, vol. I.

preached his secret doctrine to the wild Irishry, and it is probable that the fraternity of the Defenders was one of the most potent elements in helping mutually incompatible representatives of Irish septs to sink their domestic hatreds and personal jealousies and prepare for a massacre of Protestants and the delivery of their country from the Scots and EngHsh settlers within the pale.

Behind O' Moore were French and Spanish Jesuits, and the redoubtable hero was probably only an instrument ^ in their hands, his country only a pawn in the game of world politics. He initiated the combination of a criminal and political secret society working with a seditious national priesthood for the overthrow of Government by force of arms. These elements have been permanently and disastrously rooted in Irish national life ever since. The secret association of Defenders blossomed into the open movement of the Confederate Catholics and the massacre of 1641.

The history of the Defenders after Cromwell's bloody reckoning with the Irish CathoUc Confederacy is little known. The open movement of insurrection had been stamped out and the organisation was simply a secret criminal political society, submerged but venomous. It was an age of intrigue and religious plotting. Roman Catholicism in those days meant foreign domination to the British, and the shadow of mihtant France and Imperial Inquisitional Spain stood behind the now exiled Stuarts. The Irish Catholics, as distinct from the English CathoHcs, supported the Stuarts more from hatred of the EngUsh than from any behef in the Divine right of Kings — unless they be Irish Kings.

The exiled Irishmen who infested the European capitals acted as couriers, bravos and intermediaries in the seething web of intrigue. The Jesuit influence in the development of the Defenders was reinforced, and their ceremonies and S57mbolism slowly changed to an elementary ritual closely modelled on that of the ceremony of initiation to the Society of Jesus of the period. This ritual has descended with many accretions and modernisations to the present time ; and the American branch of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, misled by it, traces its origin back, not to 1641 and the Garduna, but to 1563 and the foundation of the Society of Jesus.

In the troubled period till 1745 the terrible penal laws against Irish Roman Catholics perpetuated the enmity between the Catholics, as the dispossessed, and the Protestants, as the possessing. But in 1745 the Catholics were again granted the right of public worship, so the need for the Defenders as secret protectors of the faith vanished. Despite this, the organisation endured as a primitive secret society enforcing its own laws and disregarding all others. For years its real object had been agrarian outrage and opposition to Protestant exaction ; this slowly merged into the natural anti-landlordism which has always been a marked Irish national characteristic.

The members of the organisation were mainly peasants and small farmers, and the endless land hunger of the native Irish urged them to the commission of agrarian outrage. It was one of the basic tenets of the society that all Irish land belonged to the Irish people, not to the usurping landlords or tenants of the victorious British Crown. Though remaining inherently Catholic, and exacting a mystical sense of comfort from this peculiar perversion of the faith, the society became agrarian rather than political. It also suffered change in name and split into several different but kindred secret organisations, of which the most notorious was the White Boys.

The White Boys gained their name from the white shirt they wore as a disguise or uniform over their clothes when on their nocturnal raids. They were also known as Levellers, and resisted the enclosure of common or undeveloped lands by destroying the new walls or hedges. The White Boys progressed rapidly from attacks on property, cattle-maiming, tarring and feathering to occasional assassination ; they developed their programme to include all grievances connected with the buying and selling of land, tithes, rates and evictions.

In 1762 Lord Drogheda w£is charged with the suppression of this murderous association, and the White Boy Act was passed. For a time the action of the authorities was moderately effective, but by 1774 Whiteboyism had become a general menace ; outrages took place by daylight and offenders were seldom brought to justice for fear of the vengeance of the other miscreants.

Among offshoots of local branches of the White Boys were the Levellers of Tipperary, the Cork Boys of Cork, the Right Boys or agents of Captain Right ; all these organisations made a practice of nocturnal outrage, intimidation and turbulence and general agrarian outrage, and the general condition of the country was badly disturbed.

By 1760 the Protestant peasantry who had settled in Ulster also began to form secret turbulent agrarian societies in imitation of their Catholic neighbours. The Oak Boys of Armagh, who wore a sprig of oak leaf in their caps, were the first of these tenant organisations, and in 1768 the Hearts of Steel or Steel Boys were formed among the dispossessed Presbyterian tenants of the absentee Marquess of Donegal, who had sold their holdings to new owners. After great outrages and disorders, in which troops were involved, the Steel Boys emigrated en masse to America and were pecuUarly vindictive opponents of the British in the subsequent War of Independence. They may conceivably have founded the germ of the subsequent anti-British Irish-American organisations which were not essentially Catholic, but were absolutely revolutionary.

In 1774 two rival secret societies sprang into prominence in Ulster ; one was the Protestant Peep-o'-Day Boys, the other a renaissance of the old terror, the Catholic Defenders.

In the south and west time had changed the nature of the duel between the criminal secret associations from their original religious or sectarian basis to a struggle between landlord and tenant. Here in Ulster the duel of rival secret organisations began and has always continued on sectarian or religious Unes. The Peep-o'-Day Boys were the genesis of the powerful Orange organisation, and their rivals, the Defenders, were doomed to abandon agrarian outrage for political fervour and the disastrous insurrection of '98.

Chapter II

Just as the complex religious struggle of the seventeenth century had its reflex in the abortive Irish rising of the Catholic Confederacy in 1641, so the world-wave of the French Revolution with its new standards of philosophy was about to have its reaction in the Irish rising of 1798. In the same way as the secret society of Defenders had laid the seeds of the open insurrection of the Confederacy in 1641, so once again Irish secret societies were to play their part in the preparation for the drama of '98.

The spirit of the age was that of Republicanism, and it was not compatible with the inherent Catholicism of the southern secret societies. The south w£is insurrectionary in the National and Catholic sense, but in the Presbyterian north a party had formed who were Protestant and Presbyterian and hated Popery, but were also keen on the independence of Ireland as a Republic.

After all, the northern settlers were not many generations removed from the stern Republicans of Cromwellian times, and the Orange traditions which they held celebrated the success of William III as a leader of the anti-Stuart revolution. This North Irish Republican movement antedated that of France, but was one of the vital factors in bringing about the successful revolt of the American Colonies.

A distinction must be made between this typical British Republicanism and the later European variety which brought about the Terror in France. The works of Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot, and the current philosophy of the time circulated among the few Irish intellectuals, but the essential doctrine of the European Revolutionists concerning the destruction of property and all social order made but little headway, the bulk of the North Irish Republicans being tenant farmers and small property owners.

The Declaration of Independence of the American Congress on July 4th, 1776, had an astonishing effect on the Irish situation as a whole. All elements, both Catholic and Protestant, were restive under the chronic misgovemment of the period, and the hardships inflicted on commerce by the incidence of the American War had all but ruined the country. The British Government, faced with the certainty of trouble in Ireland and the fact that they had neither men nor resources to undertake a proper subjugation of the island, jdelded a belated measure of justice to the oppressed Catholics. In November, 1778, a bill was passed enabling Irish Catholics to take the oath of allegiance, to acquire lands by lease or purchase. This measure tided over difficulties for the time, but the state of the country was too bad to be ■ materially affected by any measure which did not give financial relief.

The British Government was at war with France, America, Spain and Holland. Russia and the Northern Powers were in armed neutrality, and the outlook was dark. Then came the threat of a French invasion of Ireland — and the British Government had no troops to spare for its defence. The prospect of a French invasion might be grateful to the south, but the Protestant north, albeit at the time not in favour of British control, had even less use for French and Papal domination. Contrary to law, but without overt opposition from the British, the City of Belfast raised armed companies for self-defence — ^the Irish Volunteers.

The movement spread throughout the country from north to south and was supported by the CathoHcs, though these latter were statute-banned from bearing arms. Volunteer associations spread throughout the country ; soon they were a regular army organised in brigades and equipped with artillery and specialist troops. Dubhn Castle, afraid of the movement, but still more afraid of the invasion, reluctantly issued twenty thousand muskets, and the joint assembly of volunteers became the only important political power in the land.

The power of the Volunteers rose steadily from 1779 to 1782, when, rather than face open insurrection. Great Britain surrendered her claim to control the Irish Parliament and repealed the Act of George I. Ireland was constitutionally free and a bloodless revolution had been brought about.

The Irish Volunteers then began to debate on measures of reform to be applied to their Parliament and at the National Convention of November loth, 1783, delegates of 150,000 armed men attended. The bone of contention was the plea of the Catholics for emancipation. The Convention rejected it and then proposed a Bill of Reform to the House of Parliament, who, resenting the influence and menacing pressure of the Volunteers, stood firm. The quarrel was now between Parliament and the Volunteers ; dissensions spread in the ranks, great men withdrew their patronage, and in a short time the whole wonderful Volunteer organisation fell to pieces^ lost all power and, having denied the cause of the CathoUcs, received no support from even the minority.

The break-down of the open movement of the Irish Volunteers led to a revival of the ever-present subterranean current of intrigue, and 1790 gave birth to a new revolutionary movement. In the meantime certain developments had taken place in the secret associations.

The Catholic Defenders had developed from plain agrarian outrage and sectarian warfare into an organisation with at least rudimentary poHtical consciousness. The open Catholic Association which stood for Catholic emancipation and reform was spineless and powerless, but the secret organisation gathered adherents. On the other side the Protestant Peep-o'-Day Boys had waxed powerful in Ulster and waged a bitter and oppressive warfare against all Catholics. Both parties were savage and merciless, and between them they brought large tracts of Ulster to a state bordering on anarchy.

The enormous influence of the French Revolution now began to make itself felt in the councils of the secret associations. Jacobin missionaries spread the doctrine of the revolution, and a new spirit of militant republicanism was born. These emissaries from France aimed at bringing England low and spreading the doctrine of world-revolution by means of an alliance between the Catholic malcontents of the south and the Republican Presbyterians of the north.

The tenets of a true Jacobin of the French Revolution were utterly subversive of all existing institutions and approximated to those scheduled by the revolutionary secret society of the Illuminati of Bavaria, which was founded by Weisshaupt in 1776 and had penetrated both France and Italy by 1782. The ritual of this order was symbohc and followed certain spurious masonic parallels, but its basic tenets became the credo of revolutionaries of all kinds, and it furnished the dominant motive behind a host of minor secret societies and was later the essence of Carhonarism.

Just as the Jesuits had adopted much of the outward form of Freemasonry, so lUuminism in its turn adopted the mechanism of unquestioning obedience of the Jesuitical system and its doubtful doctrine that evil may be wrought in the cause of good, but substituted an anarchial and subversive code for the tenets of the Society of Jesus.

The higher degrees of lUuminism and its affiUated societies alone held the secret doctrine of revolution. Worthy aspirations of reform, platitudes about tyrannies, and mild philosophies concerning the rights of man, contented the vast mass of the lower degrees and the blind followers. The elect Magi or Philosophers of the higher degrees held faith in nothing but general destruction. They believed in the overthrow of all forms of Government and all creeds and forms of religion. They abjured Christianity, advocated sensual pleasure without any restriction of ethics or morality, believed in the annihilation of the soul at death, and held patriotism, loyalty and other virtues as narrow-minded prejudices restricting universal brotherhood. Privilege and property were to be done aw9,y with, marriage was to be abolished, and the education of children taken out of the hands of parents and transferred to those of the State. The abstract conception of good was attacked, and the Jesuit proposition that evil might be committed in order to produce ultimate good was further extended to include the theory that only the wisdom of the elect was able to determine what was that eventual " good " which was the object of the Order.*

The RepubHcan idea was held by the elect to be no less troublesome than royalty, but a good bait for the mob. The catch-phrase of liberty was never defined except as the liberation of the mind and body from all shackles and restraint imposed by any extraneous condition. This proposition in itself was destructive of the slogan of fraternity and equality.

There was never any sign of a real constructive programme, though theoretically the destruction of society was to be followed by a Millennium and probably by a communal world schem,e. Actually it is very doubtful if the secret leaders of the cult had any other desire than to overturn existing