Above : Illustrating Picture Of Samuel Neilson In A Meeting The progress of the French Revolution was watched with great interest in Ireland. Many of the Catholic gentry had spent some years of their youth at one or other of the French colleges, or had relatives or friends serving in the Irish Brigade. These, as a rule, sided with the Royalists, especially when news reached them of the terrible excesses of which the extreme section of the revolutionists had been guilty. The ... Read More

Above : Painting Of Lord Gosford Meanwhile, the treatment of the Irish rural population by the authorities was calculated rather to exasperate than to appease their discontents. In September, 1795, the Orange Society had been founded in the county of Armagh. From the first it was a secret and wholly Protestant association. Armagh had already gained for itself an unenviable notoriety through the bitterness of the religious animosities of its inhabitants and the continual outrages and frequent armed encounters between the opposing creeds ... Read More