Page 289 - Demo

Chapter eight 289
The impious crew with anxious eyes Gaz’d on each verdant plain
And mock’d and scof’d the holy hour With many a jest profane.
But sure such loud and angry winds Ne’er shook the seas before;
Nor ever did the glaring skies
In such deep thunder roar.
For thirteen nights and thirteen days
The famish’d wretches strove,
And some were wreck’d, and some despair Before the tempest drove.
Now ever praised be our God, Who sav’d us from their hand; And never more may foe presume To dare this Christian land.
That the French should come so close to success was most alarming to the authorities, particularly as revolutionary discontent in Ireland was now becoming efectively organized by means of the United Irishmen.
To counteract this seditious threat, the Irish Parliament took drastic action and quickly passed an Insurrection Act. Styled as ‘the Bloody Code’ the act made it death to administer a political oath to anyone in Ireland; it also gave magistrates the power of proclaiming mar- tial law, and further allocated power to local authorities to arrest all persons who were found to be out between the hours of sunset and sunrise-and send them to the British Navy. An Indemnity Act protected magistrates who used ‘vigour beyond the law,’ while a Riot Act was also passed and the Habeas Corpus Act suspended. In addition, a large force of military was quartered in the country. The soldiers were billeted in the houses of the ordinary people, whom they pillaged and abused unmercifully without check.
Now it was not the intention of the United Irishmen to rise in rebellion, that is until they