Transcript below.
This story is an actual 18th century creative criminal, in Ireland . It is just the 4th year since the 7 yrs war ended. Very, likely the of city was moving along, in a slightly crippled state, but the local population is resilient, as evident in it’s history.
The main parish of Armagh, Ireland, is St Patrick’s Cathedral –the seat of the Archbishop of Armagh in the Church of Ireland.
The origins of the cathedral are related to the construction in 445, a stone church on the Druim Saileach (Willow Ridge) hill by St. Patrick. The church itself has been destroyed and rebuilt 17 times.
Originally a center of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, having been transferred to the Protestant Church of Ireland, by the English government under Henry VIII during the Irish Protestant Reformation.
Living a life of poverty always brings unique and often unpleasant challenges, like the Irish poor, experienced during the 18th century.
The 1700s in Ireland’s history is alternately referred to as the “Penal Era” and the “Age of Ascendancy.” The two references aptly describe the difference in the lives of Ireland’s Catholics and the Protestant English, living in Ireland.
Irish Catholics made up the Irish poor who constituted 80 percent of the population and owned less than one-third of the land. As the Protestant English landowners “ascended” to the gentrified class in the 1700s, the Irish Catholics descended deeper into lives of desperation and deprivation.
The state of Ireland’s poor in the 18th century can be partly attributed to the devastation caused in the mid-17th century by the armies of Oliver Cromwell.
The war that Cromwell waged against the Irish rebelling against English rule and the exiled Royalist supporters of England’s King Charles I — whom Cromwell had overthrown and executed — going far beyond conquering Ireland.
Cromwell’s armies employed “scorched earth warfare,” burning land, crops and food stores in their wake. Ireland was always prone to intermittent famines. However, Cromwell’s wounding of the land made it even more susceptible to future crop failures.
Catholics in Ireland were socially marginalized by the penal laws introduced in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
The laws were designed to suppress the Catholic religion and strengthen the Protestant stronghold on Ireland’s economy.
Under the penal laws, Catholics were not allowed to vote, hold office or send their children abroad to be educated in Catholicism.
Catholics who owned even small amounts of land were prohibited from willing their land to the eldest son, as Protestants did. The land had to be divided among all male heirs. This law in effect reduced each heir’s individual land ownership to barely tillable plots.
In both England and Ireland, aristocrats passed on their own debts to merchants, making purchases on credit and then failing to pay promptly.
In Ireland, hostility toward this dynamic was strengthened by opposition to British rule.
Almost all relevant Irish newspaper articles and pamphlets from the period opposed debtors’ prisons.
Two major patriotic papers, the Freeman’s Journal and the Hibernian Journal, called for reforms.
One of their arguments was that the debtors—largely craftsmen and small merchants like weavers, grocers, and carpenters—were being removed from socially valuable jobs and left to languish in prison.
Meanwhile, members of the upper classes who lived beyond their means were much less likely to face imprisonment.
Tradesmen and merchants formed clubs in which they pooled resources, protecting themselves against indebtedness and reducing their dependence on aristocratic clients.
The clubs, which drew some of their inspiration from American resistance to British creditors, joined the newspapers in pushing for reforms.
The patriotic Irish institutions:
The following is extracted from a letter wrote by a person who says he was an eye witness: It is dated from Armagh, Ireland, Dec 14,1767. ” On Tuesday last Thomas O’Neale , who was capitally convicted for Stealing a Mare, was ordered for Execution.
The Sheriff accordingly attended with a proper Guard, saw him to the place of Execution, and after sometime spent in prayer, he was turned off, having hung about half an hour, he was observed by the sheriff to move his neck , as though he wanted to ease himself ; on that the sheriff ordered the executioner to strip off his Coat and waistcoat; nothing appearing, he ordered him to strip off his shirt , which the executioner seemed very reluctant to do, saying it would be indecent, and that his time of hanging was near expired.
The sheriff, however, insisted it should be done; the executioner was dilatory in doing it. in hopes that the hour would expire; but when he had stripped off his shirt, there was discovered a collar of iron around his neck, which was fastened to two straps that went under his arms, which two were fastened to four others that went round his body, they were likewise fastened to the two that went to the bottom of his bottom of his feet, and underneath there were two plated of iron near big as his feet, there went up each thigh another strap which met and went round his waist.
On the sheriff seeing of this , he ordered immediately the straps to be cut, and stayed with him for full four hours and a half, and ordered a guard to attend all that night and the next evening abbot six o clock, he was cut down and immediately buried.”
