Henry Joy McCracken
Henry Joy McCracken (31 August 1767 – 17 July 1798) was a leading member in the north of Ireland of the republican Society of the United Irishmen. He sought to ally the largely Presbyterian movement with the Catholic Defenders, and in 1798 to lead their combined forces in Antrim against the British Crown. Following the defeat and dispersal of the rebels under his command, McCracken was court-martialled and executed in Belfast.
Henry Joy McCracken | |
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Born | High Street, Belfast, Ireland | 31 August 1767
Died | 17 July 1798 30) Belfast, Ireland | (aged
Cause of death | court-martialled and hanged for treason |
Nationality | ![]() |
Occupation | Textile manufacturer |
Movement | ![]() |
Early life
Henry Joy McCracken was born in High street, Belfast into two of the city's most prominent Presbyterian industrial families. He was the son of a shipowner, Captain John McCracken and Ann Joy, daughter of Francis Joy, of French Huguenot descent. The Joy family made their money in linen manufacture and founded the Belfast News Letter. Henry was the older brother of political activist and social reformer Mary Ann McCracken, with whom he shared an interest in Irish traditional culture.
In 1792, he helped organise the Belfast Harp Festival which gathered aged harpists from around Ireland, and helped preserve the Irish airs by having them transcribed by Edward Bunting.[1] Bunting, who lodged in the McCracken's Rosemary Lane home, was a classically trained musician.
United Irishman
McCracken became interested in democratic, and ultimately republican, politics from an early age. He was drawn to the Society of the United Irishmen formed in October 1791 by men with which he and his family had been associated in Belfast through the Rosemary Street Presbyterian churches and the Irish Volunteer militia. While his name does not appear in early records, he was in the confidence of the Society's executive committee from the outset.[2]
By the time McCracken formally took the United Irish pledge (or "test") on 24 March 1795 to "persevere in endeavouring to form a brotherhood of affection among Irishmen of every religious persuasion", and "to obtain an equal, full and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland", the Society was abandoning its hopes for parliamentary reform. It was just week since the reform-minded Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland after just 100 days in office, and just four days before trade in Belfast and Dublin shut down in "sullen indignation" at this departure.[3] Under the newly repressive regime of Lord Camden, a decided opponent of Catholic emancipation and of all other concessions, thoughts turned increasingly toward the prospect of a French-assisted insurrection.
In June 1795, with three other members of the movement's Northern Executive, Thomas Russell, Samuel Neilson and Robert Simms, McCracken met with Theobald Wolfe Tone who was en route to exile in the United States (and France). At McArt's fort atop Cave Hill overlooking Belfast they swore the celebrated oath "never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country, and asserted our independence'".[4]
Working parallel to the "uniting" efforts of Father James Coigly,[5] during the Armagh Disturbanes McCracken and other emissaries from Belfast travelled extensively in an effort to counter sectarian tensions with the Society's republican programme. For a time he lived in County Armagh, working with Charles Teeling amongst the Defenders (and ranging as far south as King's County), urging them to join the united movement and binding himself in substantial sums to meet the expenses of those hauled before biased magistrates by their Protestant neighbours.[6]
Nearer home, in Belfast and its hinterland in Down and Antrim, McCracken worked with Jemmy Hope organising among Presbyterian tenant farmers, tradesmen and labourers. He also undertook the fraught task of seducing government militia and of carrying information between Belfast and Dublin.[7]
In September 1796 Lord Castlereagh personally presented Neilson, Russell, Teeling and five other prominent United men with warrants for their arrest and pursued McCracken. He was seized on 10 October and lodged with the others in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. Serious illness, however, permitted his release on bail a little more than a year later, in December 1797.[8]
Rebel commander
The north did not respond to the call from Dublin and the south to rise on 23 May 1798. In Antrim, Robert Simms, resigned his county command rather than proceed without greater certainty of French assistance. Seizing the initiative, McCracken was elected his replacement by local delegates, and he proclaimed the "First Year of Liberty" on 6 June. There were widespread local musters but before they could coordinate, most were burying their arms and returning to their farms and workplaces. The issue had been decided by the following evening. McCracken, commanding a body of four to six thousand, failed, with heavy losses, to seize Antrim Town where he had planned to surprise a meeting of the county's magistrates.
Catholic Defenders turned out, but in the march upon the town tensions with the Presbyterian United Irish may have caused some desertions and a delay in McCracken's planned assault.[9] The Crown forces meanwhile prepared and were able themselves to surprise McCracken with reinforcements from their main base in Lisburn.
On 15 June McCracken, together with his brother William, James Hope, James Orr, James Dickey and about 50 other rebel survivors took refuge on the slopes of Slemish, near Ballymena. There they received news of the defeat of the Down insurgency at Ballynahinch on the 12th and, under threat of attack from Scottish Fencibles, dispersed.[10]
Court martial and execution
McCracken sister, Mary Ann, met with him twice while he was on the run, supplying him with money and clothes. On 8 July she received news that he was in Carrickfergus Gaol: where he had been seized with two companions hoping to embark on a foreign vessel. Court-martialled,[11] he refused clemency in return for naming the Robert Simms. His last request of his sister, was that she convey to his friend Thomas Russell (who, five years later, was to suffer the same fate) the simple message that he had done his "duty".[12] McCracken was hanged in the Corn Market, Belfast (land his grandfather had donated to the town) on 17 July 1798, aged 30.[8]
Remembrance
McCracken's corpse, spared the indignity of decapitation (comrades who had preceded him had had their heads displayed on spikes), was buried in the Parish Church of St George in Belfast. In 1909, after the High Street graveyard had been cleared for redevelopment, Francis Joseph Bigger reinterred what he believed were McCracken's remains in Clifton Street Cemetery, Belfast, alongside his sister Mary Ann and his daughter Maria (thought to be the child of Mary Bodell) for whom Mary Ann had cared.[13][14]
Jemmy Hope, who survived both 1798 and his attempt with Robert Emmett and Thomas Russell to renew the insurrection in 1803, named two of his sons (the first having died in infancy) Henry Joy McCracken Hope.[15] "When all our leaders deserted us", recalled Hope, "Henry Joy McCracken stood alone faithful to the last. He led the forlorn hope of the cause ...".[16]
Notes
- https://rosemarymccracken.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/on-the-trail-of-henry-joy/
- McNeill, Mary (1960). The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866. Dublin: Allen Figgis & Co. p. 76.
- McNeill (2008), pp. 102-103
- William Theobald Wolfe Tone, ed. (1826). Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, vol. 1. Washington D.C.: Gales and Seaton. p. 127.
- Keogh, Daire (Summer 1998). "An Unfortunate Man". 18th - 19th Century History. 5 (2). Retrieved 21 November 2020.
- McNeill (1960), pp. 97-98
- McNeill (1960), p. 98
- Hamilton 1893.
- "Author on the hunt for local tales as he pens new book on the Battle of Antrim". Antrim Guardian. 13 December 2019. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
- M. Young (1893), Ulster in '98 : episodes and anecdotes, Belfast, Marcus Ward & Co., Limited, Royal Ulster Works, London and New York, pp. 32-38.
- Patrick C. Power (1997). The Courts Martial of 1798-9. Irish Historical Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-1-902057-00-2.
- McNeill (1960) p. 184
- Guy Beiner (2018). Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198749356.
- "Henry Joy "Harry" McCracken". Find a Grave. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
- Bob Armstrong (1998), "Jemmy Hope--Writer and Revolutionary", in The Liberty Tree: The story of the United Irishmen in and around the Borough of Newtownabbey, Archie R. Reid (ed.), A Newtownabbey Borough Council Bi-Centenary Publication. ISBN 0953337308.pp. 36
- Hope, James (2001). United Irishman: The Autobiography of James Hope (John Newsinger ed.). London: Merlin Press. p. 127. ISBN 9780850364965.
References
- Hamilton, Thomas (1893). Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 35. London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In