← Table of contents
Secret Service Under Pitt

Note 473 — Chapter XIV · LEONARD MCNALLY

Reading edition

'Trials, if they must so be called, were carried on without number, under martial law. It often happened that three officers composed the court, and that, of the three, two were under age, and the third an officer of the yeomanry or militia, who had sworn, in his Orange lodge, eternal hatred to the people over whom he was thus constituted a judge. Floggings, picketings, death, were the usual sentences, and these were sometimes commuted into banishment, serving in the fleet, or transference to a foreign service. Many were sold at so much per head to the Prussians. Other less legal, but not more horrible, outrages were daily committed by the different corps under the command of Government. The subsequent Indemnity Acts deprived of redress the victims of this widespread cruelty.'—Lord Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party.

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings