{{Short description|Mythical Irish folk hero}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Captain Rock''' was a mythical Irish folk hero, and the name used for the agrarian rebel group he represented in the south-west of Ireland from 1821 to 1824.<ref>Ellis, Peter Berresford. [http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/rockite-rebellion/ Irelands Forgotten Rockite Rebellion], ''The Irish Democrat'', 27 July (2004)</ref> [[File:Maclise,_Capt_Rock,_1834_(2).jpg|right|thumb|''The Installation of Captain Rock'' by Daniel Maclise, 1834]] Arising following the harvest failures in 1816 and 1821, the drought in 1818 and the fever epidemic of 1816-19. Rockites, similar to the earlier Whiteboys, targeted landlords who were members of the Protestant Ascendancy. Captain Rock (or Rockites) were responsible for up to a thousand incidents of beatings, murder, arson and mutilation in the short time they were active.
With the return of "a bearable level of subsistence", the low-level insurrection for a period subsided,<ref name=":0" /> but was to flare repeatedly through, and beyond, the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s. Over this period and in subsequent years, well into the nineteenth century, threatening letters signed by "Captain Rock" (as well as other symbolic nicknames, such as "Captain Steel" or "Major Ribbon") issued warnings of violent reprisals against landlords and their agents who tried to arbitrarily put up rents, collectors of tithes for the Anglican Church of Ireland, government magistrates who tried to evict tenants, and informers who fingered out Rockites to the authorities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gibbons |first=Stephen Randolph |title=Captain Rock, Night Errant: The Threatening Letters of Pre-Famine Ireland, 1801-1845 |date=2004 |publisher=Four Courts |location=Dublin}}</ref> Such letters would borrow the language of official or legal documents and failure to obey would be met with destruction of property or livestock or physical violence against the addressee. <ref name="connolly5">Connolly, Sean Joseph, ed. (1998). "agrarian protest". ''The Oxford Companion to Irish History''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 5. </ref>
==Millenarianism==
{{See also|Charles Walmesley}}
[[File:Charles Walmesley. Stipple engraving by G. Keating. Wellcome V0006137.jpg|thumb|right|Portrait of Walmesley held in the Wellcome Collection]]
A key element of the Rockite movement of Munster and Leinster was the revolutionary excitement elicited by millenarian political prophecies stemming from Charles Walmesley, better known by his pseudonym, Pastorini. These prophecies interpreted the Book of Revelation as a foretelling of the destruction of Protestantism in 1825, creating an element of insurrectionary sectarianism among Rockites, unseen in most comparable movements. <ref name="connolly361">Connolly, Sean Joseph, ed. (1998). "millenarianism". ''The Oxford Companion to Irish History''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 361. </ref>
==Relationship with O'Connell==
[[File:Catholic Emancipation.jpg|275px|thumb|left|Catholic Emancipation as a world upside down: held aloft, Daniel O'Connell promises wigs – symbol of Ascendancy rank and property – for "ye all." (Isaac Cruikshank 1789–1856)]]
Despite Daniel O'Connell's opposition to violent agitation, Rockites and other agrarian activists including Whiteboys formed part of O'Connell's broad support base. This is due to his reputation as a lawyer, being willing to act for agrarian activists, including Rockites, charged with serious offenses such as rape and murder. The growth of Catholic advocacy through Daniel O'Connell's implementation of the Catholic rent was also directly linked with millenarian prophecies, with the toppling of Protestant Ascendancy being conflated with the destruction of Irish Protestants.<ref name="Geoghegan">Geoghegan, Patrick (May 2018). "The Impact of O'Connell, 1815–1850". In Kelly, James (ed.). The Cambridge History of Ireland Volume 3: 1730–1880. Cambridge University Press. pp. 102–127.</ref>
==Representation==
Captain Rock becoming a symbol for retaliation by "an underclass which had nothing left to lose"<ref name=":0">The Irish Examiner. [http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsfilmtv/books/captain-rock-the-irish-agrarian-rebellion-of-1821-1824-113880.html Review of 'Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824'], March 6 (2010)</ref> owes much to the publication in 1824 of Thomas Moore's ''The Memoirs of Captain Rock''. Moore relates the history of Ireland as told by a contemporary, the scion of a Catholic family that lost land in successive English settlements. The character, Captain Rock, is fictional but the history is in earnest. When it catches up with the narrator in the late Penal Law era, his family has been reduced to the "class of wretched cottiers". Exposed to the voracious demands of spendthrift Anglo-Irish landlords (famously pilloried by Maria Edgeworth in ''Castle Rackrent''), both father and son assume captaincies among the "White-boys, Oak-boys, and Hearts-of Steel", the tenant conspiracies that attack tax collectors, terrorise the landlords' agents and violently resist evictions.<ref>from ''Memoirs of Captain Rock'', Book the Second, Chapter I, {{cite book |last1=Moore |first1=Thomas |title=Political and Historical Writings on Irish and British Affairs by Thomas Moore, Introduced by Brendan Clifford |date=1993 |publisher=Athol Books |isbn=0-85034-067-5 |location=Belfast |pages=53–55}}</ref><ref name="Moore 18352">{{cite book |last1=Moore |first1=Thomas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eMmqG9-0jiEC&q=Memoirs+of+Captain+Rock&pg=PA146 |title=Memoirs of Captain Rock |date=1835 |publisher=Baudry's European Library |location=Paris |access-date=20 August 2020}}</ref>
In 1829, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, published a riposte to Moore's ''Memoirs'', which she denounced as an incitement to rebellion inspired by the Vatican.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/tonna-charlotte-elizabeth-a8593 |access-date=2023-04-11 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> ''The Rockite: An Irish Story'' links the recurrence of "Rockite banditti" to the failure of a dissolute Protestant gentry to win by example their tenantry to the true faith.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tonna |first=Charlotte Elizabeth |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hDEEAAAAQAAJ |title=The Rockite. By Charlotte Elizabeth |date=1846 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Beiner |first1=Guy |date=2010 |title=Captain Rock |journal=Béascna |issue=6 |pages=198–9}}</ref>
Other notable representations in popular culture include a hand-colored lithograph of "Captain Rock's Banditti swearing in a new Member", caricatures of "Lady Rock" depicting Rockites cross-dressing as women when committing acts of violence, and the painting "The Installation of Captain Rock" by the celebrated romantic artist Daniel Maclise (exhibited in London in 1834, now in the National Gallery in Dublin).
==See also== * Captain Swing, a contemporary English folk hero
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== * Donnelly, James S. ''Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–1824'' (2009) * Christianson, Gale E. "Secret Societies and Agrarian Violence in Ireland, 1790-1840." ''Agricultural History'' (1972): 369-384. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3742161 in JSTOR] * Beiner, Guy. "Captain Rock", ''Béascna'', no. 6 (2010): 193-201
Category:19th-century conflicts Category:Rebellions in Ireland Category:Irish agrarian protest societies Category:Irish secret societies Category:1820s in Ireland