Irish Fright

Rumours began to circulate in mid-December that the Irish soldiers were preparing to carry out a campaign of massacre and pillage against the English population in revenge for James's overthrow.

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.

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".

"[4] After spending three tense months garrisoned in Portsmouth, the Irish troops were sent north to fight in the Battle of Reading on 9 December 1688, the only substantial military action of the Glorious Revolution.

[6] 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.

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.

[5] 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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

[5] The Yorkshire diarist Abraham de la Pryme wrote that Protestant mobs made most miserable of all the papists' [Catholics'] houses they came near; for, under pretence of seeking for arms, they did many thousands of pounds worth of hurt, cutting down rich hangings, breaking through walls, pulling in pieces of excellent ceilings ... then they secured all the papists they could get, intending to carry them all away to prison.

[5] An anonymous historian suggested another scenario, noting the way that the Fright was spread out from London along the main communication routes: That the Report [of Irish attacks] was publish'd in every Country [county] by Persons planted there on purpose, who receiv'd their Orders by the Post, 'tis much more possible.