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The Whiteboys () were a secret Irish Agrarianism organisation in 18th-century Ireland which defended tenant farmer land-rights for subsistence farming. Their name derives from the white smock-frock that members wore in their nighttime raids. Because they levelled fences at night, they were usually called "Levellers" by the authorities, and by themselves "Queen Sive Oultagh's children" ("Sive" or "Sieve Oultagh" being anglicised from the Irish Sadhbh Amhaltach, or Ghostly Sally),Kenny, Keven (1998) Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (New York, Oxford University Press, p.9, Chapter 1.) "fairies", or followers of "Johanna Meskill" or "Sheila Meskill" (symbolic figures supposed to lead the movement). They sought to address , tithe-collection, excessive priests' dues, evictions, and other oppressive acts. As a result, they targeted landlords and tithe collectors. Over time, Whiteboyism became a general term for rural violence connected to Secret society. Because of this generalization, the historical record of the Whiteboys as a specific organisation is unclear. Major outbreaks of Whiteboyism occurred in 1761–1764 and 1770–1776.
Their operations were chiefly in the counties of Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Tipperary. This combination was not political: it was not directed against the government, but against local landlords. Members of different religious affiliations took part. Joyce, P.W., "Irish Secret Societies (1760–1762)", A Concise History of Ireland
As well as the digging up of ley lands and orchards, they also searched houses for guns, and demanded money in order to purchase guns and defray the expenses of Whiteboys standing trial.
March 1762 saw a further escalation of Whiteboy activities, with marches in military array preceded by the music of bagpipes or the sounding of horns. Musgrave, Richard. Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland, vol. 1, R. Marchbank, 1802 At Cappoquin they fired guns and marched by the military barracks playing the Jacobitism tune "The lad with the white cockade". These processions were often preceded by notices saying that Sadhbh and her children would make a procession through part of her domain and demanding that the townspeople illuminate their houses and provide their horses, ready-saddled, for their use. More militant activities often followed such processions, with unlit houses in Lismore attacked, prisoners released in an attack on Tallow jail and similar shows of strength in Youghal.
On 2 April 1761, a force of 50 militiamen and 40 soldiers set out for Tallow, County Waterford, "where they took (mostly in their beds) eleven Levellers, against whom Information on Oath was given". Other raids took 17 Whiteboys west of Bruff, in County Limerick and by mid-April at least 150 suspected Whiteboys had been arrested. Clogheen in County Tipperary bore the initial brunt of this assault as the local parish priest, Fr. Nicholas Sheehy, had earlier spoken out against tithes and collected funds for the defence of parishioners charged with rioting. An unknown number of "insurgents" were reported killed in the "pacification exercise" and Fr. Sheehy was unsuccessfully indicted for sedition several times before eventually being found guilty of a charge of accessory to murder, and hanged in Clonmel in March 1766.
In the cities, suspected Whiteboy sympathizers were arrested and in Cork, citizens formed an association of about 2,000 strong which offered rewards of £300 for the capture of the chief Whiteboy and £50 for the first five sub-chiefs arrested and often accompanied the military on their rampages. The leading Catholics in Cork also offered similar rewards of £200 and £40 respectively.
However, Lord Halifax was soon expressing concern that the repression was going too far: "so many People are directly or indirectly concerned in these illegal Practices and so many have been seized on Information or Suspicion, that in several Places, the Majority of the Inhabitants have been struck with the utmost Consternation, and have fled to the Mountains, insomuch that at this Season, from the almost general Flight of the labouring Hands, a Famine is, not without Reason, apprehended." Similarly, the Dublin Journal reported at the same time that the south-east part of County Tipperary "is almost waste, and the Houses of many locked up, or inhabited by Women and old Men only; such has been the Terror the Approach of the Light Dragoons has thrown them into."
In the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, agrarian agitation swept Munster.
In 1822 a group of about fifty attacked the house of a Mr. Bolster near Athlacca, where they damaged the house, broke the windows, and took his musket.
In the 2016 young adult novel, Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Tomb of the Khan by Matthew J. Kirby, the Whiteboys attack on Mr. Bolster's estate is featured. Brandon Bolster is named as an ancestor to the fictional 21st-century teenager Sean Molloy who is reliving his memories.Kirby, Matthew J. Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Tomb of the Khan
Impact
While there had been limited agrarian disturbances in Ireland prior to 1760, the Whiteboys established many of the lasting traditions of peasant protest, including oaths of secrecy, uniforms, quasi-military organisation, and intimidation. Following the first Whiteboy outbreak, there was a marked increase in agrarian violence throughout Ireland which shared these common features.
Reaction of the authorities
The events of March 1761, however, prompted a more determined response, and a considerable military force under the Marquess of Drogheda was sent to Munster to crush the Whiteboys.
Whiteboy Acts
Acts passed by the Parliament of Ireland (to 1800) and Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (from 1801) to empower the authorities to combat Whiteboyism were commonly called "Whiteboy Acts".
+Whiteboy Acts
In popular culture
In Thomas Flanagan's 1979 work The Year of the French, a group of Whiteboys in Killala are featured prominently throughout the novel, with many of them being major characters within the narrative. One of the novel's main protagonists is Malachi Duggan, a Whiteboy who attempts to reverse the domination of the Protestant Ascendancy through guerilla warfare in County Mayo. When a French expeditionary force commanded by Jean Joseph Amable Humbert lands in Ireland in 1798, Duggan joins him in the ultimately successful rebellion.Flanagan, Thomas. The Year of the French
See also
Further reading
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