Antrim rises—Henry Joy M'Cracken—James Hope's Story—M'Cracken
attacks Antrim—Major Seddon warned, prepares to resist—The Rebels make a
Spirited Attack—Lord O'Neil killed—Colonel Lumley wounded—The Dragoons
retreat—Colonel Durham arrives with Reinforcements—The Rebels defeated—
M'Cracken arrested and executed at Belfast—The Rising in Down—Henry
Munro of Lisburn elected Leader—His Military Knowledge—Colonel
Stapleton's Forces attacked—The Battle of Ballinahinch—Munro defeated—He
is hanged at Lisburn—The Rebellion in Ulster suppressed.
But though Ulster as a whole did not take a part in
the rebellion, small risings took place in Antrim and Down. In Antrim
the person chosen by the United Irishmen as their General having, at the
last moment, resigned his appointment, a spirited young man named Henry
Joy M'Cracken was induced to accept the hazardous position of chief. The
rising in Ulster had been delayed for two weeks after the 23rd of May
(the day agreed upon) owing to some misunderstanding among the leaders,
the betrayal of all their plans to Government, and the arrest of some of
their number.
One of the leaders, James Hope, gives some
interesting details which prove the effect the disagreement among the
chiefs had on the rising in the north. "At the moment of taking up
arms," he says, "Russell, the first-appointed General of Down, was a
prisoner in Kilmainham. The Rev. Steele Dixon was appointed in his
stead. The General of Antrim was arrested with Russell, but was
liberated, and had gone home when the orders commenced. It was agreed
between him and another chief, who was to lead a forlorn hope in case of
necessity, that I should attend either as aide-de-camp. The General of
Antrim either misunderstood, or knowingly and wilfully misrepresented,
the signal for rising on the 21st of May, and kept us in suspense until
the beginning of June. Blood had been shed in the south, and the people
in the north became impatient. I went to the General of Antrim, and told
him that an irregular movement could not long be prevented. He said he
would certainly call them out; I went among the people and told them
what he said; they wanted to know who he was; I said they would know
that when he appeared, not being at liberty to tell his name. The
General summoned me, and sent me on a command to the south, and said he
had called a meeting of his Colonels that day. I was met on my way by
Henry J. M'Cracken, who stopped me, and said the General had not obeyed
the signal for general action, and must be watched. I went home by his
orders, and that evening he came to my house, we learnt that the General
had resigned; and John Hughes, the informer, being the medium of
communication between Down and Antrim, he sent me with a letter to Mr.
Dixon, but he had been arrested that day. Hughes sent me subsequently to
different places to look for him, but he knew well my labour was lost.
"The organization of the north being thus disarranged, the Colonels
flinched, and the chief of the Antrim men, the forlorn hope party of the
Union, not appearing, the duty fell on Henry J. M'Cracken; he sent
fighting orders to the Colonels of Antrim, three of whom sent the
identical orders to General Nugent, and the messenger he sent to Down
proving unfaithful, the people of Down had no correct knowledge of
affairs at Antrim, until they heard of the battle of the 7th of June.
The greatest part of our officers, especially of those who were called
Colonels, either gave secret information to the enemy, or neutralized
the exertions of individuals as far as their influence extended. I never
knew a single Colonel in the County of Antrim, who when the time for
active measures came, had drawn out his men, or commanded them in that
character."
On the date above referred to, the 7th of June, 1798,
M'Cracken led a body of insurgents in an attack on the town of Antrim,
where a meeting of magistrates had that day been called for the
prevention of rebellion. M'Cracken's object was to seize the persons of
these magistrates and keep them as hostages, and with that view he
attacked the town at two o'clock in the afternoon. A quantity of arms
was known to be stored in Antrim, and of this the rebels hoped to gain
possession.
General Nugent soon received intelligence of their
intentions, and lost no time in sending orders to Blaris for the second
light battalion, consisting of the 64th Regiment, and the light
companies of the Kerry, Dublin, Armagh, Tipperary, and Monaghan Militia,
and 150 men of the 22nd Light Dragoons, with two 6-pounders and two
howitzers, to march to Antrim with all possible speed. Other
reinforcements were ordered to hasten to the scene of danger, and
orderlies were dispatched to Major Seddon, who commanded at Antrim, to
inform him of the intended attack.
Antrim at that time consisted chiefly of one main
street, terminated at one end by a district known as the Scots' quarter,
and at the other by the garden wall of a house belonging to Lord
Massareene, to the right of which a long narrow street, called Bow Lane,
led into open country. Lord Massareene's garden wall commanded the main
street, which ran parallel to a river called the Six-mile-water, and
about half-way between the garden wall and the commencement of the
Scots' quarter, in the middle of the street, stood the market-house,
then used as a guard-house, in which prisoners were confined. At the
corner of the street, where the Scots' quarter turned off
the main street, stood the churchyard, on rising ground and surrounded
by a wall.
The plan of the rebels had been laid with
deliberation; four columns were to advance upon the town on different
sides at the same time. One of these, collected from the district
between Antrim and Belfast, was to enter the town by the Belfast road,
while a second column, gathered from Ballymore, Ballyclare, and Doagh,
marched in by the Carrickfergus road, and joined the former at the end
of the Scots' quarter. A third column from Connor, Kells, and Ballymena
was to enter by a lane called Paty's Lane, which branched from the main
street between the church and the market-place, and a fourth, from
Shane's Castle, Randalstown, and Dunsilty, was to enter by Bow Lane,
under Lord Massareene's garden wall.
When Major Seddon, at nine o'clock in the morning of
the 7th of June, received news of the proposed attack on the town, he
ordered the drums to beat to arms to assemble the yeomanry, and the
inhabitants of Antrim were called upon to arm in their own defence. In
the course of the morning news came in that the peasantry were rising in
various parts of the country. Parties of yeomanry and regulars kept
coming in, but the advanced guard of the second battalion, commanded by
Colonel Lumley, with its two guns, only passed over the bridge from
Lisburn (which led into the main street on the opposite side to Paty's
Lane, and somewhat nearer the market-house) as the two columns of the
rebels converged at the entrance to the Scots' quarter. The guns were
placed in position in the main street, opposite to the bridge, but, in
spite of the case-shot with which they were greeted, the rebels advanced
boldly, their musketeers firing upon the troops by whom the guns were
supported.
When the insurgents came within about 150 yards of
the guns, they suddenly exposed to view a 6-pounder which they had
brought with them, and with which they fired two rounds of grape, and
killed or wounded ten or twelve of the military. The gun, however,
proved a poor one, for the second discharge damaged it to such an extent
that it could not be fired again, and then the rebels rushed forward,
and their musketeers, under their leader, M'Cracken, succeeded in
getting possession of the churchyard. From this advantageous position
they kept up a galling fire on the soldiers in the street; and, the main
mass of the pikemen having run across the fields and formed in Bow Lane,
to attack the military in the rear, it was found necessary by the latter
to retreat with the guns to Massareene's garden wall. To cover this
retreat the dragoons under Colonel Lumley charged past the churchyard
into the Scots' quarter, driving the rebels before them; but in passing
and repassing the churchyard they suffered considerably in killed and
wounded, Colonel Lumley himself being amongst the latter. The yeomanry
now retreated, and took possession of the Massareene garden, of which
the wall (having a high terrace behind it) served as a rampart from
which the guns could be protected while they served to arrest the
progress of the rebels who were advancing along Bow Lane.
But in spite of the heavy fire which was kept up on
them from the wall, this column of rebels continued to advance with the
same intrepidity as the others had done, until Colonel Lumley, who was
severely wounded, abandoned his guns, and, retreating with his dragoons
across the river, proceeded along the Lisburn road to join the second
battalion of the royal troops, who were within two miles of the town.
The majority of the magistrates had received timely
warning of the state of affairs, and therefore had absented themselves;
but Lord O'Neil, who had come from Dublin to preside at the meeting,
entered Antrim about half-past twelve in utter ignorance of the rising.
He and Dr. Macartney, the Protestant incumbent, being mounted, remained
in the street with a party of dragoons during the action. When the
dragoons retreated, O'Neil's horse, being wounded, refused to accompany
them, and, the rebels coming up, one of them seized the bridle,
whereupon O'Neil with his pistol shot him dead. Lord O'Neil was then
attacked with pikes, and, being badly wounded, fell from his horse. Dr.
Macartney tried in vain to get his lordship away, but he failed, and
O'Neil died of his wounds two or three days later. Macartney now
galloped through the rebels, and, joining Staples, the Member for the
County, they got into a boat and rowed across Lough Neagh into Tyrone,
and, landing, hurried to Dungannon to inform General Knox of the trend
of events. Knox, hitherto in ignorance of the rising, immediately
assembled all the available yeomen of the county, and, marching to Toome
with 1500 men, was in time to prevent a rising of the peasantry of
County Londonderry.
The insurgents, seeing the retreat of Lumley's
dragoons, concluded that victory was theirs, and rushing forward with a
cry of triumph they seized upon the abandoned guns, but they were at
once driven back by a deadly fire from the yeomanry on the garden wall.
A lieutenant in the Antrim Yeomanry, and another in the Royal Irish
Artillery, both mere lads, sons of Dr. Macartney, headed a small party
of the Antrim troop, and, sallying into the street in the teeth of the
rebel fire, succeeded in drawing the guns and ammunition-cart inside the
garden wall, where the guns were at once placed upon the terrace and
brought to bear with great effect upon the entire street.
A fresh body of rebels now arrived, and being greeted
by a heavy fire from the guns were thrown into confusion, and a panic
seems to have seized the entire body of insurgents, from which M'Cracken
endeavoured in vain to rally them. He might have succeeded but for the
arrival of Colonel Durham with reinforcements from Blaris and Belfast.
Thinking that the rebels were in possession of Antrim, Durham brought up
his cannon, but for its use there proved to be no need, for in the face
of such odds M'Cracken's forces fled across the fields, pursued by
parties of the freshly arrived royalists. The rebels are deemed to have
lost about 200 killed in the engagement and flight. With a small band of
followers, who gradually dispersed, M'Cracken retired to the heights of
Slemish. He escaped arrest until the beginning of July, when he fell
into the hands of the royalists. He was tried and executed at Belfast on
the 17th of the same month.
On the same day as the battle of Antrim a body of
rebels attacked the town of Larne, where they were repulsed by a small
detachment of the Tay fencibles. Some other feeble attempts were made,
the insurgents obtaining possession of Randalstown, where fifty of the
yeomanry were taken prisoners. The rebels were, however, driven out the
same night and marched to Toome, where they remained two days, having
broken down the bridge to prevent General Knox from crossing the Bann to
attack them. The main body of the Antrim rebels retired to Donagorehill,
where, discouraged at their lack of success, and urged by the
exhortations of a magistrate named M'Cleverty, whom they had taken
prisoner, they surrendered their arms and dispersed.
In Down the rising was more considerable, and the
people had several successful conflicts with the military. A body of
them, commanded by a Dr. Jackson, of Newtownards, at Saintfield set fire
to the house of a farmer named M'Kee, who was accused of being an
informer. They then elected as their leader Henry Munro, of Lisburn, who
was of Scottish descent, and, like M'Cracken, had been engaged in the
linen trade. He possessed some knowledge of military matters, having
been trained as a Volunteer to the use of arms. Hearing that Colonel
Stapleton was marching against them from Newtownards with a body of
cavalry (the York fencible regiment) and two pieces of cannon, the
rebels hid behind a thicket hedge in his line of march on either side of
the road where it was steep. When about half of Stapleton's force was
between the hedges the rebels opened fire, killing a Mr. Mortimer, vicar
of Portaferry, his nephew, and some seven or eight yeomen. Several
officers were killed or wounded in attempting to dislodge the hidden
enemy, by whom many of the cavalry were shot or piked, and the infantry
were only rallied by the personal exertions of their commander. They
then charged the rebels with coolness and intrepidity, and succeeded in
dislodging and dispersing them. The royalists suffered so much in this
engagement that they retreated to Comber.
On the 10th of June Colonel Stapleton marched from
Comber to attack the insurgents of Newtownards, but changed his route
and retreated to Belfast. The people of the southern barony of Ards had
risen and attacked Portaferry, where they were vigorously opposed by a
small body of yeomanry under Captain Matthews, and after a number of
pikemen had been killed they were compelled to retreat. After this
engagement, which was fought with obstinacy, Matthews, apprehending a
second attack, and knowing he could not resist it, abandoned the town
and went to Strangford. On the 10th Newtownards was attacked. The rebels
were at first repulsed, but in the course of the day they returned in
much larger numbers and found the town deserted by the soldiers. They
then went to Saintfield, which had become the centre of operations in
Down, and which now contained insurgents to the number, it is estimated,
of about 8000 men.
The rebels now proceeded to Ballinahinch, where they
established their camp in Lord Moira's demesne, on a commanding eminence
skirted by a thick wood. Munro made his preparations with considerable
skill. He sent a detachment of his forces, under a leader named
Townsend, to take Ballinahinch, which he succeeded in doing, as the
royalists fled at his approach. Munro then stationed a strong force at
Creevy Rocks to oppose troops from Belfast and preserve his
communication with Saintfield.
On the 12th of June the royalist troops, under
Generals Nugent and Barber, marched against Munro from Belfast. A good
deal of skirmishing took place that evening, and the army, having set
fire to the town, passed the night in revelry. Whilst in this state of
disorder Munro was urged to attack them, but he considered the attempt
would be disgraceful, and refused to take such an advantage of the foe.
The action commenced on the 13th. The rebels had eight small cannon,
mounted on market-carts, and only a scanty supply of ammunition. The
troops, on the contrary, had heavy artillery, and mowed down the
insurgents with a well-directed fire of musketry and grape. Charles
Teeling, in his personal account, states that Munro had penetrated to
the centre of the town, and that General Nugent had ordered a retreat.
The sound of the bugle, he states, was mistaken by the rebels as an
announcement of the arrival of reinforcements for the royalists, and,
discouraged thereby, they were seized with panic and fled.
Munro, although hotly pursued, endeavoured to rally
his followers on the heights of Ednavady, but the royalist troops almost
surrounded the hill, leaving but one passage for retreat, and by this
the defeated Munro led off his men, now not exceeding 150 in all. A
little later the rebels of Down surrendered their arms. Munro fled to
the mountains, but was betrayed. He was taken, tried by court martial,
condemned, and hanged in Lisburn, opposite his own door. His head was
cut off and placed on the market-house.
Such was the manner in which was suppressed the small
rising by which Ulster expressed her sympathy with the rebellion of
1798.
