Priest hunter
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A Priest hunter was a person who, acting on behalf of British forces, spied on or captured Catholic priests during Penal Times in seventeenth and eighteenth century Ireland. A 1709 Penal Act demanded that catholic priests take the Oath of Abjuration, and recognise the Protestant Queen Anne as Queen of England, and by implication, Ireland. Priests that did not conform were arrested and executed. This activity, along with the deportation of priests who did conform, was a documented attempt to let the catholic clergy die out in Ireland within a generation. Priests had to register with the local magistrates to be allowed to preach, and most did so. Bishops were not able to register.
Priest hunters were effectively bounty hunters, and despite some opportunists, in most cases the men were criminals who were arrested and forced into the position by their police force. The reward rates for capture varied from £100-£50 for a Bishop, to £20-£10 for the capture of an unregistered priest; substantial amounts of money at the time. The work was dangerous, and some priests killed in defence. The men were outcast from their communities, and were viewed as the most despised class. Often when a gentleman informed on a priest, locals would effect revenge by burning his house and farmyard. The Penal law made fugitives of the remaining clerics, and they were forced to conduct ceremonies in secret, and in remote locations. Night time worship at mass rocks became common, although the attending priest would usually wear a veil, so that if an attendee was questioned they were able to truthfully say that they did not know who had said the Mass.
The distribution of Priest hunters around the island was uneven, and some local police forces chose to overlook both the presence of priests and their mass rock activity.
Perhaps the best known Priest hunter was Sean na Sagart from County Mayo, an alcoholic horse thief who took up the profession in return for a pardon from the hangman's noose, c. 1715. He was eventually murdered by a priest he was pursuing, and his body was later dug up and thrown in a lake.
[edit] Sources
- de Burca, Eamon. South Mayo Family Research Centre Journal, 1987.
- McGee, Thomas D'Arcy. "The priest hunter : a tale of the Irish penal laws", 1844.
- Power, Denis. Archaeological inventory of County Cork, Volume 3: Mid Cork, 9467. ColorBooks, 1997. ISBN 0-7076-4933-1
