“The Road to Ballybay” is romanticised in one of Percy French’s lesser-known songs as a route to marital happiness and – in the final verse – to “paradise” itself.
But the road through Ballybay had the unusual distinction once that travellers wishing to use it required a passport, at least if they were Catholic. The reason was Samuel Gray (1782-1848) an Orangeman, magistrate, and hotel owner whose name and origins might, in different circumstances, have provided material for another of French’s gently comic ballads.
Instead, “Sam Gray of Ballybay” became a byword for oppression of Catholics, winning him infamy among Ireland’s majority population but also, at the height of his career, admiration (and the freedom of Dublin) from loyalists.
A drumlin-country version of Judge Roy Bean, he was the only law north of Lough Egish for a time, and wielded it with pistols in both hands, ruthlessly collecting tithes, for which he had the local franchise, and rents for local landlords.
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More than once he got away with murder – literally – because he could pack juries. After he and his brother kicked a Catholic to death during a market day brawl in 1824, they were not only acquitted, the judge commended Sam for his efforts as a peacemaker.
Already infamous in Monaghan, Gray became a national celebrity in 1828 when, as the Catholic Emancipation campaign reached its climax, he prevented a mass demonstration of O’Connellites passing through Ballybay.
Daniel O’Connell had just won the Clare byelection, following which one of his acolytes, “Honest” Jack Lawless, led a long-distance victory procession to Belfast, intent on spreading the collection of “Catholic Rent” in the north. The procession gathered momentum and support through Leinster and Cavan, until it reached Monaghan, where Gray declared it an “invasion of Ulster” and raised 8,000 men to stop it at in the “Gap of the North”.
As recalled decades later by the Young Irelander John Mitchel: “The Orangmen, far and wide around the region, flocked to Ballybay with Yeomanry, muskets, and other weapons, of which they had a good supply, and awaited the approach of the forces of the Pope and the Inquisition. But the Catholics also had their blood up; from all Farney and Cremorne and the adjacent parts of Cavan they flocked to the scene, with scarcely any weapons, but resolute to see ‘Honest Jack’ through Ballybay.”
Then a third force appeared – regular British army troops from Armagh and Dundalk, officially to preserve the peace “but really to support the Orange party in case of a fight”, according to Mitchell.
Lawless’s supporters thereupon agreed to bypass the town, turning Gray into a loyalist hero. Ballads were composed in his honour, toasts were drunk, and he was made a freeman of both Dublin and Drogheda.
In further reward, he was also appointed high constable of Cremorne, the barony around Ballybay, thereby adding the collection of cess (a local tax) to his portfolio.
He and his gang continued their forcible revenue raising throughout the 1830s, using violence where necessary and being acquitted of a series of shootings, at least one fatal.
Gray meanwhile rose to become county sub-sheriff in 1838, thanks to support from the powerful Rossmore family, so embarrassing authorities in Dublin that they conspired, with questionable legality, to get him sacked.
By now he was implementing a passport system for travellers entering the town at night, reports of which also discomfited a government that prided itself on the free movement of subjects.
But the seeds of his eventual downfall were sown by a family dispute, begun by the death of his wife and then his remarriage, which alienated a rich, hitherto supportive in-law named Moses Bradford.
Bradford too died in 1840, and left his property to a nephew, while Gray forged an alternative will. When the new sub-sheriff came to enforce possession, Gray fired on him, before – later that day – shooting dead one of the witnesses for the original bequest.
Tried for murder, he was as usual acquitted. But determined to slay the monster it had helped create, the crown made four further attempts to convict him on related charges and finally secured a sentence of transportation for life.
So many liberties with the law had been taken, however, that the House of Lords eventually invalidated the verdict. The process had nevertheless taken a toll. Gray was financially ruined.
When he died in 1848, at home in his hotel (where a landmark sign long depicted King William at the Boyne with the message “No surrender”), his family felt it necessary to deny rumours he had lately joined the repeal movement.
His son James, who was transported for crimes on behalf of his father, later became a Catholic and a respected politician in Tasmania, which he represented at the Irish National Convention in Melbourne in 1883.
As for Sam Gray, his name outlived him as a loyalist rallying cry. According to the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he also remained, long after his death, “a bogeyman for Monaghan Catholic children”.