William Orr - Arrest and Trial

Arrest and Trial

He was charged with administering the United Irish oath to a soldier, named Wheatly, an offence which had recently been deemed a capital charge under the Act of Parliament (36 George III), which constituted the administration of their oath a capital felony. The offence was aggravated (from a legal point of view) because of the allegation that it was a serving soldier whom Orr was alleged to have administered the oath to. The prosecution made the most of this “proof” of the “treasonable” aim of the United Irishmen to “seduce from their allegiance” the “men who are the Kingdom's only safeguard against the foreign foe”.

The United Irishmen knew from the evidence of some of their own number that Orr had not administered the oath on the occasion alleged. They also had the evidence of another eye-witness, Jamie Hope. The soldier witness Wheatly perjured himself and it was proved he was of bad character. The person who did tender the oath was a well known member of the Society, William McKeever, who subsequently escaped to America.

It was widely believed at the time that the authorities wished to make an example of Orr to act as a deterrent to potential United Irish recruits. The English engraver George Cumberland, who was a friend of the poet William Blake, summed up Britain's activities internationally at this period: “No news, save that Great Britain is hanging the Irish, hunting the Maroons, feeding the Vendée (counter-revolutionary district of France), and establishing the human flesh trade.”

The actual case, which did not appear in the course of the proceedings but everyone, according to T. A. Jackson, was "in the know" and fully aware was that The United Irishmen's oath had been administered to a soldier; "whether it was Orr or another who administered the oath was merely incidental."