(The 1798 listing is from Ryan, op.cit., p381 where he gives as officers those listed for the Rathvilly cavalry above.  The one may have succeeded the other.)

Now allowing for the comparative newcomers into the ranks of the Carlow landed wealthy (such as Bruen, La Touche and Jackson) and for exceptions such as the Burton and Bunbury families who, in the period concerned, seem rarely to have married among their Carlovian peers, it is reasonably clear that the Volunteers fall within a definite pattern of loyal local defence among a particular class of society,, (That Crosbie did not follow the rest into the yeomanry makes him again all the more remarkable). The relationship between the families supplying the officer corps in militia, yeomanry and volunteer formation is underlined perhaps when one bears in mind further that there was a nexus of marriage connections which demonstrate further the fundamental unity of this class. The Butler, Stewart and Eustace families were connected for example, as were the Eustace, Whelan, Hardy and Butler groups. Leckey was a relative of Watson. There was a Vigors, Boyne, Heweston and Mercer connection as there was between the Newtons, Bernards and Bagenals or the Bernards, Shepperds and Humfreys.

In a recent review of the writing of "Mary Renault" describing it as "A fictional projection of history”, Peter Green commented on her being "within the limitations of history".⁵² A similar sense of the rôle of such novels lead me to disappointment in Bill Nolan's – for me at any rate - reducing acceptability through the violence done to the easily accessible historical facts. I regard most of that refusal to accept the tyranny of the facts with regret in that, for the most part - in my view - it was artistically unnecessary and that it spoils the nearest approach to the United Irishmen of Carlow that we have so far in the literature on the period.

In an often cited sentence Heweward Senior wrote

The volunteers, were in a sense, the progenitor of both the United Irishmen and the Orange movement.⁵³

We have already seen the extent to which the volunteers can be firmly placed in the tradition of loyal, local, military service. That should exclude the republican connection and insofar as we can make out it does, at officer level at least, as far as Carlow is concerned. Given that there were between 11,000 and 14,000 United Irishmen in Carlow in 1793⁵⁴ one would expect that some of them must have had volunteer antecendents. It would seem that most if not all of the Carlow United Irishmen were Catholics (no priests however) and yet if one looks to that area of the county in which Catholics were conspicuous among the Volunteers (Borris) one finds no evidence of the succeeding yeomanry corps being infiltrated by United Irishmen. This in its own way could well be a comment on the attitude - of the indigenous population to the Kavanaghs, to one of their own so to speak, however much the Kavanaghs had become assimilados into the ranks of the landed, property owing establishment of the day.

One gets records of disaffection, suspicion and infiltration among many other yeomanry corps but nothing to suggest that such as were in fact United Irishmen - some of the executions seem to have had more to do with sectarian bigotry than with loyal defence against, republicanism - had been volunteers. The first part of Hereward Senior's equation does not hold up therefore, and the very existence of United Irishmen among the Yeomanry at all in these circumstances raises doubts about the rest of his equation (all the suspect yeomanry, were Catholics as far as we can tell, and at that time only members of the established church were Orangemen). But while Ogle Gowan's claim that all the yeomanry were Orangemen⁵⁵ obviously goes by the board also, neverthless in Carlow there is, interestingly enough, some base for the second half of Senior's thesis. Ryan tells us that John Stauton Rochfort was responsible "for the introduction (in 1798) of that bond of loyalty, the Orange system within its limits" (“the Protestant yeomanry of 1798" seems to be the "it" referred to).⁵⁶

Now, Carlow outside of Dublin was the strongest Orange county in Leinster - and its ten lodges exceeded by far the number of lodges, say in Derry or in Donegal. Carlow landlords were prominent in the elite lodge 176 in Dublin which in time was to become the nucleus of the Grand Lodge of Ireland.  One of the first members of that lodge was Samuel Montgomery a nephew of Samuel Faulkner's and therefore first cousin to Robert Cornwall. Though his home was in Kildare Montgomery was a Lieutenant in the Carlow Militia. Robert Burton was a member of this lodge as were John Staunton Rochfort, Henry Faulkner, James Eustace, Henry Colelough, Robert Cornwall, Benjamin O'Neale Stratford (who often associated with his Carlow rather than his Wicklow peers), Major Stewart of Leighlinbridge, William Knott (of Mayo, nephew to Bruen) and, in 1799, William Faulkner.

Within the county there were 10 lodges. Our information⁵⁸ is not excellent on them but such as it is it does elucidate our question.

Lodge No	Location	Officer
399	Leighlin Bridge	Nicholas Roche Robert Rochfort
414	Garryhill Garryhill Aharoe Clogyrinan	Robert Cornwall Moses O'Neill Wm Tyndall Luke Bishop
653	Clonagonnell Coolen Ballicknyter	Moses Derinsey

The members of lodge 414 numbered 241 - obviously the total strength of the Cloydagh and Killeshin yeomanry of the date. (Interestingly enough the last two lodges Coolane and Ballickmoyler - from Laois - are included in the 'Orange' county of Carlow as indeed were Rochfort's yeomanry corps). While there is not sufficient data to hazard too firm a set of conclusions from this at least there is a sufficiency to show that, while Senior's equation will not hold entirely for Carlow, there are a sufficiency of overlaps (Stewart, Ballintemple Foresters/Leighlin Bridge Infantry/Lodge 176; Rochfort, Carlow Legion/ Cloydagh and Killeshin Yeomanry/Lodges 176 and 414; Burton, Carlow; Association/Carlow Infantry/Lodge 176; Cornwall, Union Light Dragoons/Carlow Calvary/Lodge 176 and Garryhill) to indicate that there was a certain if not complete truth in .his thesis. It still can be suggested that it does not hold up in full despite people such as Sara Carpenter being added to the list of Volunteers who were later Orangemen.⁶⁰ A glance at a distribution map of corps and lodges shows that the generalisation cannot be totally sustained.

But that they were a factor, an exacerbating factor, in Carlow in 1798 cannot be gainsaid: an obituary of Cornwall, probably by Finn, describes Cornwall.

accompanied by his companion in cruelty, B Butler, with a strong escort of Calvary --- The burning of the Cross in Myshol, which had survived former barbarians was an act of the two co-partners in depradation, torture and impiety.  Butler whenever he shot any of the unfortunate men who came in his way just searched the victim, and if he found a beads or scapular on the person, he decorated his dog with the sacred articles, discharged his pistol into the head of the shivering victim, and then exhibited his dog, to the affrighted inhabitants, as the trophies of his bravery.⁶¹

However much one may be inclined to make parallels from say Rhodesia or South Africa, and the power and control of an armed established minority in control of judiciature and legislature, to some of the features of the Carlow of 1798, one also must remark that the minority was also a nervous, often shivering and fearful one until the 'year of liberty'' or the year of 'croppy lie down’ - whichever brand of fear one looks at it with - was over.

The last word should rest with Farrell

There has been great lamentation made, and very justly, about the unfortunate burning at Scullabogues, but here were forty Scullabogues in Carlow and very little said about it from that day to this⁶²

He was of course adverting to that phenomenon we are well acquainted with - the selective indignation, the weighting of lives according to property or position, the disparagment of other's losses because of class or pigmentation, which are all marks of the victor writing the history as well as of the establishment working the news.