Henry Joy McCracken, ‘violent young man’ who led doomed United Irishmen rebels

Tall, fair-haired, and just under six foot, McCracken was rash, impulsive and had an instinctive sympathy for his workers, caring for their welfare and education. He and his sister, Mary Ann McCracken, founded the first Sunday School in Belfast. However, it did not fulfil the function of a modern Sunday School. Its purpose was to make good the absence of universal educational provision. Girls, men and boys were the pupils of his Sunday School: ‘Writing as well as reading was taught. They did not presume to impart religious knowledge, but they taught their scholars how to obtain it for themselves, by which every sect might equally profit’. Revd William Bristow, the Anglican vicar of Belfast and frequently Sovereign (or Mayor) of the town, shut the school down, no doubt regarding it as potentially subversive.

By profession, McCracken, like most of his family, had become engaged in the textile industry but the young cotton manufacturer was more interested in radical politics than commerce. The failure of the Joy, Holmes & McCracken cotton printing mill in 1795 may be attributable to this fact.

During the same year McCracken was sworn into the Society of United Irishmen in Belfast. By this stage the Society on the brink of becoming a clandestine revolutionary and military organisation.

In June 1795 McCracken, along with Wolfe Tone, Samuel Neilson, Robert Simms, and Thomas Russell, climbed the Cave Hill above Belfast and at McArt’s Fort they vowed not to desist in their efforts until they had subverted the authority of England and asserted Ireland’s independence.

McCracken was entrusted with the task of bringing the Defenders, a secret Roman Catholic agrarian society, into the United Irish movement. Travelling around the country to sell his cottons provided McCracken with excellent cover for his United Irish activity. In the summer of 1796 McCracken thought ‘that there had been a junction between the leaders of the United Irishmen and the Defenders … there was a complete union between the Defenders and the United Irish’. Since the 7,000 Defenders supposedly enrolled as United Irishmen were conspicuous by their absence in both Antrim and Down in 1798, McCracken’s view proved to be excessively sanguine.

McCracken’ s political activities alarmed the authorities and they concluded that he was one of the more dangerous conspirators. A bid to arrest McCracken in September 1796 failed because he was not at home but the authorities succeeded in apprehending him on 10 October 1796.

Imprisoned in the cold and damp Kilmainham gaol in Dublin, McCracken developed severe rheumatism. On 6 December 1797 McCracken was released on bail, largely as a result of the efforts of his cousin Henry Joy, a Dublin-based lawyer. Following his release McCracken was seriously ill for several weeks.

At the end of February 1798 McCracken and Robert Hunter, a wealthy Belfast shipbroker, were appointed as the Ulster delegates to the national executive of the United Irishmen. At a meeting in Dublin of this body in May 1798 it was decided to mount a rebellion. In Hunter’s words, McCracken was ‘one of the violent young men who attempted to bring out the People’.

No one could accuse Robert Simms, the adjutant-general for Co. Antrim since September 1797, of being ‘a violent young man’. A well-to-do owner of a papermill in Ballyclare, Simms had only accepted the position with great reluctance, pointing out that he had no military experience. Despite the outbreak of rebellion in Leinster on 23 May, Simms did not wish to rise without French aid and doubted whether it would ever materialise. Simms did not even wish to summon a meeting to discuss the situation but Jemmy Hope, a working-class United Irishman and proto-socialist, forced his hand. However Simms’s caution prevailed at the meeting at Parkgate but McCracken, Hope and others were unwilling to acquiesce in the majority view and they overturned the decision at a meeting in Ballyeaston. At another meeting at Templepatrick on 5 June McCracken replaced Simms as adjutant-general for Co. Antrim. Hope later recalled, ‘When all our leaders deserted us, Henry Joy McCracken stood alone faithful to the last. He led on the forlorn hope of the cause …’

McCracken’s hastily constructed strategy consisted of local United Irishmen seizing local centres of administration. He expected the militia to defect and garrisons to surrender one by one. McCracken decided to lead the attack on Antrim himself, hoping to seize the magistrates summoned there by Lord O’Neill, and to hold them as hostages. On 6 June McCracken issued the 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’.

At Craigarogan rath, near Roughfort, McCracken raised the standard of rebellion. Many Antrim men clearly shared Simms’s caution because comparatively few United Irishmen assembled at Craigarogan. Singing the ‘Marseillaise’, they marched towards Antrim. If they had have been confident of victory, they would have marched on Belfast but they possessed only a single cannon, a brass six-pounder which had been concealed under the floor of Templepatrick Meeting House, and had little realistic prospect of success.

Without realising it the insurgents were initially successful at the Battle of Antrim town. However, when they mistook fleeing dragoons for an attacking force, the Army of Antrim dissolved into a mob. The force, known as the ‘Spartan Band’, commanded by Jemmy Hope, covered their retreat.

For McCracken defeat at the Battle of Antrim was a tremendous shock because, as he told Mary Ann, ‘on Friday the 8th June all the county was in the hands of the people, Antrim, Belfast and Carrickfergus excepted’. McCracken failed to appreciate the critical importance of the exceptions.

After the Battle of Antrim McCracken, Hope and others took refuge on Slemish and then hid in the hills of south Antrim. While hiding there Mary Ann visited him and was arranging for a ship to take him to America when he was recognised in Carrickfergus and arrested near the town on 7 July 1798. On 16 July McCracken was transferred from Carrickfergus gaol to Ann Street Artillery Barracks in Belfast. Mary Ann visited him in prison and attended the court martial in the Assembly Rooms at noon on17 July. The Crown prosecutor offered him his life in return for information about other insurgents but he declined the offer. Later that afternoon, at 5:00, McCracken was hanged outside the old market house, built on ground which his great-great-grandfather had given to the town, in Cornmarket.

McCracken was originally buried in the old graveyard of St George’s church in High Street but was subsequently reinterred in Clifton Street burying ground.