Roddy of Duneane

Roddy Of Duneane

The story of Roddy McCorley does not begin during the years of the United Irishmen but begins in the early 1760s with the formation of the mainly Catholic Defenders. The Defenders were a secret agrarian society that agitated for reform of the harsh penal laws then in force and consisted mainly of smallholders, small businessmen and the landless peasantry.

It is told that Roddy’s father, who owned a cornmill in the townland of Lismacloskey in the parish of Duneane, was an early recruit to the organisation. Roddy’s mother, a McErlean from Oldtown near Bellaghy, gave birth to several children who died in infancy before giving birth to Roddy in the early 1770s. He was born at a time of agitation in Europe, America and Ireland.

There are two versions of what happened to Roddy’s father. One says that he was transported for stealing sheep, the other that he was transported for making pikes. The truth probably lies between the two. Crown forces would have known the leaders of the defenders were and lacking solid evidence, habeas corpus was still then in force, concocted allegations that would allow them to deal with the leaders without making martyrs of them by hanging. It is not known where he was transported to or even if he survived the journey.

Following the transportation of his father the cornill passed to Roddy’s uncle and both he and his mother returned to her family home in Oldtown. They remained there for several years before returning to live with Roddy’s uncle in the cornmill. There his mother married a man called Orr. Local people who relate this story are often unaware that Samuel Orr, one of the leaders of the United Irishmen came from Randalstown and was probably related to the Orr that married Roddy’s mother.

The American colonies declared independence in 1776 and were at war with England for several years. The British garrison in Ireland was reduced as troops were sent to the Americas. Then the first signs of revolution broke out in France in 1783. England worried. When the revolution broke out in 1789 England trembled. Fearing similar scenes in England (the execution of the monarchy and the declaration of the rights of man) the Irish garrison was again depleted. And then in Belfast In 1791 the Society of United Irishmen was formed. It was inspired by both the American and French revolutions and took onto themselves the slogan ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’.

It pledged to work reform and ‘to put the common name Irishman in place of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter’. Because Catholic peasant life was hard (they were afraid of the landlords, most of whom were government supporters) few joined the ranks of the United Irishmen. Through his stepfather Roddy was one of these. Fearing a popular revolution in Ireland and the possible invasion through ‘the back door’ a Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in 1793. This gave rights to Catholics and gave funding for a Catholic seminary, Maynooth.

The act also gave rights to the rank and file clergy to raise ‘dues’ from their parishioners. This toll was to be on top of rents and tithes paid to the Church of Ireland and helped to further alienate the mass of Catholic peasantry who surged to the colours of the Defenders. In recompense for recognition the Catholic hierarchy damned all anti-government agitation. When France and England finally went to war in 1793 the Government asked supporters in the ranks of the landlord class to raise local militias. The landlords forced their tenants to join the ranks, threatening eviction to anyone who would not join, thus making it impossible for United Irishmen and Defenders to avoid this draft. The raising of these companies and the suppression of the United Irishmen in 1794 forced the society to become a secret oath bound organisation. Going underground the United Irishmen planned an armed rebellion and to this end began mustering other groups such as the defenders. The United Irishmen were particularly strong in counties Antrim and Down, so in 1797 the government sent in General Lake to terrorise Ulster into submission.

This succeeded to a great extent and only the most resolute of the United Irishmen remained committed to the idea of rebellion. As the government seemed prepared to pursue a similar operation in the rest of Ireland it was decided to carry out the rebellion as soon as possible even if the French help did not come. The scene was set for revolution. On the 6th June 1798, Henry Joy McCracken issued his general order: ‘Army of Ulster, tomorrow we march on Antrim; drive the garrison of Randalstown before you and haste to form a junction with your commander in chief. 1st year of liberty 6th day of June 1798’.

Early in the morning of the 7th, the men of four parishes, namely Drumaul, Duneane, Grange and Connor, met under the leadership of a man called Henderson. Before hostilities began he was superseded by George Dickson, who is described as ‘a man of much military tact and undaunted courage’. The body of men marched on Randalstown. Reports from the time describe that the colours tied to their pikestaffs were yellow and white, the colours of the Defenders, rather than the green of the United Irishmen.

The battle of Randalstown took place in the early afternoon and lasted approximately 52 minutes. The Defenders numbered around 500 and the garrison around 120. Heavily outnumbered but not outgunned, the garrison under the command of Lieutenant Ellis fled to the market house, which was their barracks. The Defenders smoked them out using damp straw. When the garrison surrendered they were ‘taken out and treated with great kindness, not one was put to death or offered either injury or insult’.

Leading a holding party at Randalstown the insurgent force was then divided. A squad of some 50 men was dispatched to Toome to destroy the bridge. This they did in 14 hours hard manual labour. The main corps, led by Samuel Orr, Dickson and two others named Maginnis and Halliday, set off to join McCracken at Antrim where the battle was just beginning. McCorley was amongst these.

When the column from Randalstown approached Antrim from the north, a party of United Irish horsemen, sheltering in Bow Lane, were in danger of being cut off from the main body of McCracken’s men. The horsemen galloped up the street towards the open country where they met the column from Randalstown. Being uncertain of the actual situation in the town the Defender column apparently mistook the horsemen for an attack from a victorious garrison and despite the efforts of their leaders they panicked and scattered.

It was found impossible to rally them into an effective force but several small groups made it into Antrim and fought in the battle. Eventually overwhelmed by government reinforcements the insurgents withdrew. The insurgents, although scattered, were still a force to be reckoned with. To try and diffuse the situation the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis, gave a general amnesty to all those involved in the United Irishmen rising. Significantly this proclamation did not cover the Catholic Defenders, who as a whole remained on the run.

Roddy found refuge on the farm of friends in the parish of Drumaul near Randalstown. Here he helped work the land until, according to local Protestant tradition, he was caught by a small patrol of local yeomanry. A man called Nugent who had sympathy with the United Irishmen led the patrol. Although he should have been arrested, the yeomanry gave him ‘a good skelping’ and let him go.

Fearing arrest and hanging Roddy again went on the run. He hoped to make it to Derry and then to America. On his way he met an old Defender comrade, Thomas Archer who was a shoemaker from Ballymena. Archer had continued to act as a Defender even after the collapse of the rising. Roddy decided to join him and his band. For several months the band raided the farms of the most cruel of the local yeomanry and took part in ambushing militia patrols.

In December of 1799 the band raided the farm of a leading yeoman called James Love and in the fight killed him. This raid forced General Nugent, the military commander of County Antrim, to post a substantial reward and the offer of free pardons to anyone who would turn the band in. Most of the band was captured early in 1800 in Ballymena. Both roddy and Archer escaped. Roddy took his chances and again decided to head for America. Travelling to the port in Derry city he stopped off at Far Ballyscullion beside Lough Beg.

Tired and hungry, Roddy approached the farm of the Duffins and asked for food. He was asked in. A member of the Duffin family, mindful of the substantial reward, went to their neighbours, the McErleans, and then with one of them went to get a local yeoman, Sam ‘Cruel Sam’ Finneston, at the yeoman barracks at Millquarter. While the Yeomen were coming to arrest Roddy the old woman of the house was given the job of keeping him there. She kept him from leaving by telling him to wait until the porridge was ready but by adding cold water she kept the pot from boiling.

This gave the nickname to the family ‘eke the pot Duffins’. The daughter of the house, feeling guilty, told Roddy of the approaching yeomanry. He escaped through the back window but was captured shortly afterwards. He was taken firstly to Toome where he was handed over to the Dumbartonshire Fencibles who were stationed at the barracks here. They hastily arranged a court martial for Roddy at Ballymena. At the trial he was described as a Defender. Heavily chained he was forced to walk the elevn miles to Toome to be hung.

The scaffold was roughly constructed. Beside the bridge parapet a post was stuck in the ground, and from it the ground, and from it at the top was a bar at right angles, over which a rope was thrown. This post was so set in the ground that it could be swung round over the water, with the hanging struggling body, as an added insult and indignity. A report of his execution in the Belfast Newsletter, under the heading ‘Extract from a letter from Ballymena’, of the 4th March 1800 and reads: ‘Upon Friday last, a most awful procession took place here, namely, the escorting of Rodger McCorley, who was lately convicted at a Court Martial, to the place of execution, Toome Bridge, the unfortunate man having been bred in that neighbourhood, as a warning to others… his body was given up for dissection and afterwards buried under the gallows’.

The term dissection at the end of that piece disguises the brutality of what happened. Roddy was taken from the scaffold and publicly disemboweled, a cruel and inhuman punishment even for those times. The body was buried at the rise of the bridge on the roadway, where all the traffic from Antrim to Derry and back again would pass over it. The body lay there for fifty-two years.

In 1852 a new bridge was to be built and the foreman in charge was Hugh McCorley of Portglenone, Roddy’s nephew. Hugh, aware of the position of the body organized the work until he found the remains, which were intact. He then had them placed in a coffin and had them brought to the family burial ground in the old Church of Ireland graveyard at Duneane.

Fearing reprisals from the local Orange Order, which was strong at the time, he had them buried quietly but this did not stop local people visiting the grave in large numbers. A headstone was erected but members of the local Orange Order secretly pulled up the stone and threw it down a well. They issued dire threats if a new stone were to be erected. Today the grave remains unmarked and no one knows its exact location.

In recent years a permanent memorial has been erected at the spot of his execution. On it the date of his execution is given as 1799 but more recent research shows that this date is wrong. That Roddy was executed in Toome is not disputed but the date of Good Friday seems to come from the Ethna Carberry poem written during the centenary celebrations of the rising.