Beginning in 1830, Irish Catholic tenant farmers began to withhold the tithes they had been ordered to pay towards the vicar of the Anglican Church of Ireland's local parish.

Once the party and its escort had left Bartlemy, it soon encountered a crowd of roughly 250 local tenant farmers who began pelting them with stones before retreating to a plot of land inhabited by a widow named Johanna Ryan where a defensive barricade had been previously constructed.

After reading out the Riot Act and ordering the crowd to disperse, the escort advanced towards the plot of land but the tenant farmers attacked them with "spades, sticks and stones" and forced them back.

An inquest was subsequently held for the nine people who died at the scene, which saw Repeal Association politician Feargus O'Connor attend to argue in favour of O'Connell's points.

[4] Fellow Repeal Association politician Henry Grattan published a letter written by Lord FitzRoy Somerset in which he expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the escort.