Above : Painting Of Hugh O’Neill

When the news of the intended confiscations came to the ears of the Irish whose lands lay within the counties to be planted, it was to them ” as a sentence of death.” The fiat, however, had gone forth against them; no justice, much less mercy, was accorded them. In vain they employed lawyers to plead their cause before the Royal Commission ; the decisions were almost always against them. It mattered little that, in order to justify many of the confiscations, the most absurd pleas had to be resorted to.

Above : Painting Of Daniel O’Connell

A bolder stroke than any which they had yet attempted was now prepared by the Catholic Association. A Parliamentary vacancy had occurred in Clare, owing to the appointment of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, the sitting member, to an office under Government, the holding of which forced him to seek re-election. The Association resolved to put forward a Catholic candidate, O’Connell himself. His election would bring the whole question of Emancipation to an issue, as he declared from the first that he would not take the oaths against the Mass, Transubstantiation, etc. O’Connell at first was rather reluctant to undertake the contest. Fitzgerald was himself a man of liberal views, and his father, who was now dying, had suffered for his opposition to the Union. When once, however, he had made his choice, he entered into the fight with the whole vigour of his nature.

Above: The Rebellion