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282 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
privileges was subject to the taking of an oath which contained several offensive insinua- tions.While these measures did not satisfy the Catholics, inasmuch as they still were not allowed, among other things, to enter Parliament, it galvanized the United movement, and for the time being, the talking continued.
Unfortunately, the growing rapprochement was marred by the outbreak of sectarian vio- lence in Ulster. This violent flare-up had its origins in economics, namely land-ownership and also the fierce competition in linen-making that existed between Catholics and Protes- tants. About this time, a Protestant secret society, the Peep O’Day Boys, also known as the ‘Protestant Boys,’ ‘Wreckers,’ ‘Hearts of Steel,’ ‘Oak Boys,’ and, finally the Orange Order, were in existence, and perpetrating violent outrages and attacks upon their Catholic neigh- bours: they got the name ‘Peep O Day Boys,’ because they only attacked during the hours between dusk and dawn!
According to the historian Edward Hay, the object of these societies appears to have been, “not to suffer a Catholic to remain within the limits of their sphere of action.” They posted on the doors of the Catholics, Hay wrote, “peremptory notices of departure; specify- ing the precise time, a week at the farthest, pretty nearly in the following words: To hell or to Connaught with you, you bloody Papists! and if you are not gone by (mentioning the day) we will come and destroy yourselves and your properties. We all hate the Papists here.” They were, Hay concludes, generally as good as their words.
To counteract these attacks, the Catholics formed their own armed secret society, ‘the Defenders,’ who retaliated with as much bloody violence as their Protestant adversaries had shown, and in one violent attack the Defenders brutally murdered eleven revenue men in Drumsna, county Leitrim.The United Irishmen strove hard to end this sectarian conflict- but without much success, and in 1795 the two bodies met in a vicious and deadly encounter at Armagh, known ever since as the Battle of the Diamond, during which the Defenders were defeated with heavy losses. In the aftermath many Catholics living in mainly Protestant districts found refuge in the Province of Connacht, where they became the nucleus of the United Irishmen movement, most especially in county Mayo-it is estimated that over 7,000 Catholics were expelled from their homes in central Ulster.
To put this sectarian violence into a simple context, following the Battle of the Diamond a new extra parliamentary body was founded, the Orange Society, which later changed its
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