On the Whiteboys

1769

John Bush

From around 1760 there were frequent disturbances in the south of Ireland by groups calling themselves "Whiteboys." John Bush was an eyewitness to an assemblage of Whiteboys and a shrewd analyst of conflicting accounts of the movement.

SEE ALSO Land Questions; Whiteboys and Whiteboyism

You have frequently met with accounts, in the public papers, of the insurrections of the Whiteboys, as they are called in this country. From the people of fortune who have been sufferers by them, and who, too generally in this kingdom, look on the miserable and oppressed poor of their country in the most contemptible light, the accounts of these insurgents have, for the most part, been too much exaggerated to be depended on. . . . The original of their denomination of Whiteboys was from the practice of wearing their shirts without-side of their clothes, the better to distinguish each other in the night-time. It happened that we were at Kilkenny, in our road to Waterford, at the very time of the late considerable insurrection of these unhappy wretches, in the south of Kilkenny county, not far from Waterford.

I was naturally led to enquire into the cause of these insurrections and the pretensions of the insurgents themselves for creating these disturbances. From the people of easy and affluent circumstances it is natural to suppose the accounts would be very different from such as were given by those of the same class with the delinquents. By comparing these, however, with the obvious appearance of things in the country, I soon had sufficient reason to believe their disquiet arose, in general, from the severe treatment they met with from their landlords, and the lords of the manors and principally from their clergy. Our road to Waterford lay through the very midst of these unhappy insurgents, and we were, consequently, advised to take a different route. Why, whence should be the fear? We have neither deprived them of their common rights nor their potatoes. They have no quarrel with us, who have never injured them.

We rode through the country, in which they were assembled in great number, but the very day before the last considerable engagement they had with the troops quartered at the towns in the neighbourhood; but met with no molestation from any of them. The very next day after we came to Waterford, the news was brought of this engagement, about four or five miles from the town. The opinions and representations of the inhabitants of the town were various on the merits of the affair; but it was easy to distinguish the sentiments of the humane from the aggravated representations of inveterate prejudice. . . .

There are many little commons, or vacant spots of ground, adjacent to the road, upon which the inhabitants of the cabbins by the highwayside have been used, from time immemorial, to rare, as they express it, a pig or a goose, which they have bought very young, the sale of which has helped to furnish them with a few necessaries. Many of these have been taken into the fields or enclosures on the road side by the landlords, who have farmed or purchased them, or the lords of the manor. From an impartial view of their situation, I could not, from my soul, blame these unhappy delinquents. They are attacked and reduced on all sides, so hardly, as to have barely their potatoes left them to subsist on.

John Bush, Hibernia Curiosa(1769). Reprinted in Ireland from the Flight of the Earls to Grattan's Parliament(1607–1782), edited by James Carty (1965), p. 125.