[2] Joseph Huddy was the bailiff for Arthur Guinness, Lord Ardilaun, a wealthy Anglo-Irish landlord in a region where the Land War was growing more and more heated.
For this reason, the execution of three alleged murderers remains controversial Joseph Huddy, who lived in Creevagh near Cong, had been bailiff and land agent for the Guinness family for over 30 years.
On the morning of the murders, Joseph Huddy left home with his 17-year-old nephew to go to Clonbur and Cornamona to serve eviction notices on twelve of Lord Ardilaun's tenant farmers who were engaged in a rent strike.
Forty crewmen of HMS Banterer, a Royal Navy vessel anchored in Galway Bay, sailed up the River Corrib to Lough Mask.
[6] The RIC, now believing that the death of the Huddys was a result of an entire village rising up against the process servers, arrested, in addition to Mathias Kerrigan and his son, fifteen men on suspicion of complicity in the murders.
Since Healy was extremely proud of the overall quality of the Irish judiciary in his youth, it is interesting that he made an exception for O'Brien, whom he called "a man who worked more injustice in his daily round than the reader would believe possible".