Episode 46: The Irish Hearts of Steel Rebellion

In the 1700s land owning British aristocracy in Ireland pushed rent prices to incredibly high levels, causing many local Irish farmers to become destitute and homeless. Out of this chaos the Hearts of Steel were born, a militant organization committed to bringing down the old landlords by any means necessary.

Ireland had been greatly influenced by Great Britain since the time of the Roman Empire, but it was not truly conquered by the British until the 1500s under the Tudor dynasty.  The Tudors instituted the infamous plantation system, a form of settler colonialism that kickstarted hundreds of years of oppression and violence.  In the plantation system, vast areas of land that had been owned by Irish families for generations were forcibly seized by the Crown and redistributed to wealthy English and Scottish aristocrats.  The aristocrats would then rent their new land out to its former owners, who were now displaced.   This, of course, led to widespread poverty among the Irish, and fed their resentment towards their new landlords.

By the 1700s the Irish had suffered two hundred years of abuse at the hands of the British.  They had fought back and rebelled at several points during this time span, but had been crushed every time, and often in particularly brutal ways.  Oliver Cromwell’s campaign to control Ireland in the 1600s has been estimated to have killed around 15% or more of the Irish population.

If you ever want to get real depressed for some reason just read up on Irish history.  Its almost a stereotype that its notably very sad.

Fast forward to 1769.  One man, an English lord called the Fifth Earl of Donegall, was the single largest landowner in Ireland.  He owned tens of thousands of acres across Ireland, primarily in the north part of the island.  The Earl of Donegall lived an extravagant lifestyle, with half a dozen massive, palatial homes across Britain and Ireland.  He specifically wanted to build a new mansion with a surrounding estate in Staffordshire.  He had laborers build a colossal house surrounded by acres of landscaped  parks and gardens and an artificial lake.  This was an extremely expensive project, and Lord Donegall was already in substantial debt.  However, substantial debt was not going to get in the way of his dream of owning a seventh mansion, and so Lord Donegall came up with a plan.  It was simple; he would aggressively raise rent prices in his holdings in Ireland to pay his ever-increasing bills.  Donegall was by no means thethe only greedy British landlord in Ireland, but he was the most influential, and his abusive strategies were in no way rare among his aristocratic peers.  

Across Ulster, rent prices skyrocketed.  In many cases, they more than doubled.  If the renters could not pay, they were forcibly evicted and removed by Lord Donegall’s men, resulting in hundreds of Irish families becoming homeless overnight.   Donegall then parceled out the land he acquired through the evictions and leased it to English aristocrats merchants (with a hefty new lease fee), who then sub-let to the destitute Irish farmers in smaller and smaller plots.    The farmers, who were already lived on a subsistence basis, had no choice but to pay the exorbitant new rent prices.  To buy food and other necessities they were forced to take out loans – and the money lenders were typically the same upper class British men that now owned their land.   And because there were little to no legal protections for the Irish, the lenders were often openly corrupt, overcharging the farmers with interest and fees and pocketing the extra money.   This exploitation, combined with several years in a row of bad harvests, led to one of the worst economic periods in Irish history.

The Fifth Earl of Donegall

Out of this oppression and chaos the Hearts of Steel movement was born.  Thousands of young men throughout Northern Ireland began to gather in secret meetings, intent on resisting their landlords by any means necessary.   At first the Hearts of Steel were primarily a covert underground movement that operated in the shadows.   They engaged in acts of vandalism and arson, setting barns on fire and maiming cattle with the intent of convincing the landowners into lowering rent prices.  As tenant farmers whose families had lived in Ireland for generations, they had an intimate knowledge of the surrounding landscape that the British could not match, making their nighttime raids near impossible to stop.  At the same time, menacing letters were sent to the landlords, threatening to escalate the violence if demands weren’t met.

Interestingly, because of its origins in Northern Ireland the Hearts of Steel was an organization primarily filled with Presbyterians.  When many people imagine Irish vs English conflicts they think of Catholics vs Protestants, but in this case both sides were primarily Protestant.  However, Catholic farmers were also affected by the rent prices and also joined the rebels by the thousands, proving that fighting colonialism is nondenominational.

Despite the best efforts of the Hearts of Steel, rent prices did not go down – notably, a year after the rebellion began, rent prices continued to steadily rise.  As more and more families were evicted, the rebels’ ranks increased, and the organization began intensifying its tactics.  They carried out a campaign of violence, burning the British houses and crop fields.  In some cases, they even killed the land-lords in public lynchings, enacting what they saw as a crude sort of justice.  In many towns the insurrection was so complete that the Hearts of Steel almost entirely usurped the local government, issuing proclamations lowering rent, tithes, and the cost of supplies.

The British government reacted with mass arrests.  However, when the arrested suspects were sent to trial for arson, or murder, or destruction of crops, they were rarely convicted even when there was ample evidence, due to the fact that the local juries were extremely sympathetic to the rebel’s cause.  Eventually the Crown began shipping Irish defendants away from their homes to different parts of Ireland or even different parts of the empire in order to ensure guilty verdicts.  Sometimes they even tried a suspect several times for the same crime in front of a variety of juries, hoping to find a ruling that would allow the suspect to be hanged.  One leader of the Hearts named William Redmond was tried three times and found innocent three times.

The authorities hoped that a large amount of hangings would intimidate the Hearts of Steel into submission.  Instead, it fanned the flames of rebellion.

In 1770 an Irish tenant farmer named David Douglas was arrested for suspected cattle maiming and his association with the rebels.  He was imprisoned at the Belfast barracks, under the guard of 40 soldiers. 

News of Douglas’ detainment traveled quickly across Northern Ireland.  Within two days around one thousand two hundred members of the Hearts of Steel armed with rifles, pistols, swords, club and whatever else they could get their hands on began marching towards Belfast. 

The rebels surrounded the barracks and demanded the release of Douglas.  When the besieged soldiers failed to release him, the Hearts of Steel began burning houses, starting with the wealthy land-owners who had been profiting off their misery.   They also began throwing bricks and large stones through the windows of public officials.  In desperation, the soldiers guarding the barracks opened fire, killing three men.  Belfast was quickly descending into chaos. 

Just as the Hearts of Steel were about to storm the barracks, a land-owning merchant named Halliday convinced the British soldiers to release Douglas, preventing further bloodshed.  The soldiers turned Douglas over to the mob, and the rebels dispersed, back to the various villages and towns they came from.  Many of the rebels must have walked away feeling that they had accomplished something, that they had proven that they could get what they wanted through brute force.  

Unfortunately for the rebels, they were about to face the world’s foremost expert on brute force – the British Empire.   

Similar skirmishes as the incident in Belfast were occurring all over Northern Ireland – dozens died in violent clashes in places like Derry and Gilford.  What had begun as a local protest against rent prices had turned into a full-fledged crisis. 

The Crown controlled the largest empire in the history of the world, and the Hearts of Steel had finally drawn its full attention. 

Within the British government, a number of important figures sympathized with the Irish rebels.  The aristocrat governor of Ireland, Lord Townshend, privately wrote that he blamed the landlords for the rebellion.  Even the King himself, George III, stated that the Hearts of Steel quote “owe their rise to oppression, and to the greediness and harshness of their landlords.”

While the British leadership may have believed that the Hearts of Steel’s cause was righteous, they still were not about to let a bunch of Irish people take control of Ireland.  Members of Parliament argued that the situation in North Ireland could inspire other British colonies to rebel, and because of that risk the Hearts of Steel had to be destroyed quickly.  Several thousand battle-hardened redcoats were ordered to put down the rebellion and firmly place North Ireland once more under the thumb of the Empire.

By 1772 the British military’s presence in North Ireland was overwhelming.  Checkpoints were set up at the entrances of every town and city and throughout every major road.  One newspaper reported that the army’s repression of the area was so complete that the only people seen out in public were redcoat-wearing British soldiers.  Anyone who was suspected of being a member of the Hearts of Steel was rounded up and promptly hanged without trial – the British government had learned from its experience with juries and decided it wasn’t going to use them anymore. 

Fearing for their lives, over thirty thousand Irish workers and their families fled to North America.  Those Hearts of Steel members who were not fortunate enough to escape were killed in clashes with the British military or drowned attempting to swim across the Irish Sea  to Scotland.

Despite nearly causing the collapse of North Ireland, the Fifth Earl of Donegall faced no repercussions for his actions.  His connections and generational wealth allowed him to live a life of luxury for the rest of his days, unaffected by the violence his policies had brought forth.

  The battle-hardened veterans of the Hearts of Steel that managed to make it to the American colonies settled throughout the east coast.  The newly immigrated Irish did not forget the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the British.  A large number of them would go on to join the revolutionaries in the American War of Independence just a few years later, forming a vital part of George Washington’s Continental Army – around 40% of the Washington’s troops were Irish.

The Hearts of Steel rebellion was a conflict born out of the battle between the greedy elite and the desperate lower class, a battle that still rages to this day around the world.  And while the Hearts themselves were not successful in their rebellion, their fight continued later in the American Revolutionary War.  Just as Parliament had feared, the rebellious thoughts of the Irish had spread throughout the Empire.

The Continental Army marching through New York City

Sources:

A History of Ireland by Jonathan Barden

Lord Donegall and the Hearts of Steel by W.A. Maguire from Cambridge's Irish Historical Studies

The Battle of Gilford by D E McElroy from the Craigavon Historical Society