FROM THE ARCHIVES:The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the early 1880s, Lord Spencer, set out by rail and horseback for a tour of the south of the country at the height of the Land League campaign. This report covered his visit to Millstreet, Co Cork. – JOE JOYCE
EARL SPENCER is a man not easily driven from the path he has deliberately chosen or he would have resigned his intention to visit the birthplace and home of the Moonlighters yesterday. Millstreet is not the place of all others in this part of the world where the administrator of the Crimes Act might anticipate a cheerful welcome, and its selection as the scene of his first visit just after his arrival in the south shows as much perhaps as anything could do, the determination of the Viceroy, who has throughout so terrible a period of our history as that chronicled since the date of the [Phoenix] Park murders [in 1882], held a firm grasp of the reins of government, and calmly and courageously faced the situation with all its perils and difficulties.
But it is not solely because the district through which he rode was one of the most notorious haunts of lawlessness, that the journey of Saturday may be considered remarkable. There was a still more powerful deterrent in the gloomy sky and lowering clouds, and the moisture-laden gale that swept from the westward over the unsheltered country that stretched from the wooded mountains and lake shores of Killarney to the Blackwater Bridge at Mallow.
An escort of the 11th Hussars was in waiting [at Millstreet station], and at half past twelve o’clock his Excellency abruptly gave the signal to horse, and rode off at so rapid a rate in the direction of Millstreet, about a mile distant, as obliged the cavalry men to put their horses to a gallop The straggling street through which his Excellency passed was far from being deserted. Here and there the people had mustered in knots of over half-a-dozen, and here and there the Lord Lieutenant acknowledged a salutation but the malcontents had spared no effort to give expression to their views, and upon some of the houses, copies of the cartoons issued recently with United Ireland and other prints were displayed. In one place the motto, in large green characters, painted upon a white ground, “Ireland loves William O’Brien” [nationalist MP for Mallow and Land League leader] appeared; in another, displayed with equal prominence, was the legend “Faith and Fatherland.” The front of a prominent house had upon it the inscription “Parnell for ever.” The Lord Lieutenant during his two hours’ stay in Millstreet was the guest of the Rev. Canon Griffin, P.P., an ecclesiastic of broad views and cultured mind. In a few cases the shutters were put up on the shop windows. The instances in which this was done were, however, very few, and having regard to the external appearance of the places where it was done, the demonstration could not be considered other than an ignominious failure.
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