Irish Fright

James II inherited an army in Ireland on his accession in 1685. At the time it amounted to 8,238 men, all of whom were supposed to be Protestants and required to provide certificates confirming that they received the Church of England's sacrament twice a year. (Some Catholics did nonetheless manage to join the force during the Catholic James II's reign.) By 1688 its strength had grown to 8,938, of which 2,820 were sent to England in September 1688 to reinforce the English Army against the expected invasion by William, Prince of Orange, James II's son-in-law who had been invited to enter the country by English politicians opposed to James II's rule. Many of them were stationed in Portsmouth, where they became objects of suspicion and fear. A newsletter of early October 1688 reported that Portsmouth's inhabitants were making "great complaints of the rude Irish who have caused many families to leave that place, having committed many robberies". Their presence in England further stoked long-standing fears that Irish or Catholic forces were poised to launch an anti-Protestant uprising. In Staffordshire in 1641, Protestants were reportedly so afraid that their Catholic neighbours would attack them that they "durst not go to Church unarmed". Later that same year, a panic in the towns of Ludlow and Bewdley led the inhabitants of both towns to mobilise on the night of 19–20 November, watching for what they believed was the arrival of insurgent Catholics. In 1681 the House of Lords announced the existence of "a horrid and treasonable Plot and Conspiracy, contrived and carried on by those of the Popish Religion in Ireland, for massacring the English, and subverting the Protestant Religion, and the ancient established Government of that Kingdom." Rather than fight William's invasion, however, the Earl of Feversham disbanded James's forces and released the Irish troops from their obligations. ==Outbreak of the Irish Fright==

On Thursday 13 December, according to Bishop Gilbert Burnet, "Country Fellows, arriving about Midnight at Westminster caused a sudden Uproar, by Reporting that the Irish, in desperate Rage, were advancing to London, and putting all before them to Fire and Sword." Another newswriter reported that in the early hours of 13 December "an alarm was spread through City and suburbs of 'Rise, arm, arm! the Irish are cutting throats'." The alert immediately sparked a mass panic and 100,000 men were reported to have mobilised to defend their homes within half an hour. Buildings were illuminated to ensure that marauding Irishmen could not sneak up in the early morning darkness. The Grand Duke of Tuscany's ambassador in London wrote that he had seen young and old alike, False reports that Uxbridge had been sacked by the Irish added to the panic. Philip Musgrave wrote that Lord Feversham's disbandment of the Irish Army "hath increased our miseries, for he did not disarm any of them, and the Irish and Roman Catholics ... are in a great body about Uxbridge who burn, kill, and destroy all they meet with." The House of Lords convened at 3 a.m. at Whitehall to discuss the situation and send for word of the supposed burning of Uxbridge. Spread The Irish Fright thereafter spread rapidly across England. It reached Norfolk around 14 December, when it was rumoured that the Irish were marching on Norwich. Kent descended into mass panic on the morning of 14 December, while in Surrey, Kingston-upon-Thames was said to have been burned and the inhabitants cut down trees to block the path of the supposed Irish insurgents. In Cambridge, four to six thousand Irishmen were supposed to have destroyed Bedford and massacred its inhabitants and were on their way to Cambridge to repeat the deed. The news caused some of Cambridge's inhabitants to flee, but travellers arriving from Bedford were able to discredit the rumours and calm the situation. The panic reached the Midlands on the same day; the mayor of Chesterfield wrote that 7,000 Catholics and Irishmen had burned Birmingham and were advancing to Derby, while a Leicestershire clergyman, Theophilus Brookes, recorded that he had heard "that the Irish were cutting of throats, Lichfield on fire and Burton attempted upon." Brookes was evidently an unusually martial clergyman, as he raised a militia of local men to confront the enemy, but he had to dismiss them after a day when no Irishmen could be found. Yorkshire's turn came a day later on 15 December, with the scare prompting several towns to mobilise troops and arm local people. Lord Danby sent a troop of horse from York to Pontefract to guard against possible aggressors from Ireland and pro-Catholic Lancashire. Wakefield received reports that Doncaster had been burned, while those in Doncaster heard that Birmingham and Stafford had been sacked. Artificers in Leeds abandoned the Sabbath to mend scythes for use as weapons, and the following day a sizeable army of about 7,000 infantry and cavalry was assembled there to defend the city. While Yorkshire was readying its defences against possible Lancastrians as well as Irish, the Lancastrians themselves were no less affected by the Fright. It reached the county at the same time as Yorkshire, with the same stories circulating of Birmingham's inhabitants being massacred and Stafford being burned to the ground. A rumour had it that after their defeat at Reading, the Irish had begun to "plunder kill & destroy", burning Birmingham and advancing towards Wolverhampton. In response, as a letter-writer signing himself as "J.E." put it, the counties "rise to defend themselves". Local men formed militias and Warrington Bridge was barricaded and guarded. In Chester, the governor disarmed the royal garrison, armed the city's civilians from the garrison's armoury and placed cannon at the city gates. He wrote to Secretary at War William Blathwayt to inform him of his action and to express his alarm at "ye Reportt of a Body of 8 or 9000 Bloody Irish coming this way from London." He had heard that they "Burn all Places they come at, and kill Man, Woman and Child" and he urged Blathwayt ensure that troops were sent to Chester to protect it from the Irish "Enemies of our Honest Protestant Religion and Country." The West Country also received word of the supposed Irish onslaught on 15 December. The Dichess of Beaufort heard at 2 a.m. that the Irish were only five miles from Wootton Bassett and were burning and killing all in their path. Reading, Andover, Hampshire and Newbury were also said to have been destroyed and Marlborough was said to be under threat. A 'Mr. Cothrington', probably a cousin of Sir John Guise, brought a troop of gentlemen to guard the duchess at Badminton and took her house's arsenal of sixty muskets to arm the party. Sir John had meanwhile raised and armed the Gloucestershire militia and all of its officers. Probably not coincidentally, he was a supporter of William of Orange and most likely took advantage of the Fright to ensure that any uprising by James II's supporters could be quashed rapidly. The Fright continued to spread to remoter parts of England and even into Wales. It reached Dolgellau in Merionethshire on 18 December, where a local mob shot and killed a supposed Irishman – who turned out to be an exciseman and therefore not someone who would have been much mourned by the inhabitants anyway. On the same day in Settle in the North Riding of Yorkshire, an announcement was made in the market that the Irish and Scots had burned Halifax and were marching on Skipton. The following day, the Fright reached the town of Yeovil in Somerset. In all, at least nineteen counties were affected by the Irish Fright. In each case, the details of the rumours were comparable: rampaging Irishmen were said to have burned and massacred the inhabitants of towns no more than 40–50 miles distant (i.e. a day or two's journey) and were said to be advancing in the direction of the town where the rumours were being proclaimed. Wherever it spread, the panic burned itself out quickly and subsided within only a day or two of erupting. The only reported casualty was the unfortunate exciseman in Dolgellau, but the panic had severely adverse effects on many innocent Catholics. The Yorkshire diarist Abraham de la Pryme wrote that Protestant mobs ==Responsibility for the Irish Fright==

The Irish Fright was a sign of the febrile and confused political climate that existed in the days after James II's flight from London, and demonstrated how years of anti-Catholic Whig propaganda had imbued the English public with a deep fear of Irish bloodthirstiness. It also undeniably served the interests of William of Orange's claim to be the protector of England's Protestants against Catholic oppressors. Writers at the time queried whether the Fright had been caused deliberately, and if so by whom. In Leeds, Ralph Thoresby wrote that he "could never learn who was concerned, even in this neighbourhood" as the source of the rumours. The agitator Hugh Speke claimed twenty years later to have been responsible, but this seems unlikely and is not supported by any evidence. ==References==