page_title: Redmond O'Hanlon (outlaw)
section_title: The Titus Oates Plot
hierarchical_section_title: Redmond O'Hanlon (outlaw) / The Titus Oates Plot
caption_attribution_description: Oliver Plunket, by Edward Luttrell (died 1737). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.
context_page_description: Count Redmond O'Hanlon was an Irish tóraidhe or rapparee during the 17th century.
  Historian John J. Marshall has called Redmond O'Hanlon Ireland's answer to Robin Hood and Rob Roy MacGregor. Stephen Dunford has further dubbed O'Hanlon, "The Irish Skanderbeg."
context_section_description: In 1678, former Catholic seminarian Titus Oates had gone public with allegations of a non-existent Catholic conspiracy aimed at assassinating King Charles II of England and massacring the Protestants of the British Isles. As a result, more than 22 Catholic clergy and laity were falsely convicted of high treason and executed at Tyburn. The last to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, was Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh.
  In 1680, Father Edmund Murphy agreed to testify falsely at the high treason trial of Archbishop Plunkett. When this became known in Armagh, Ensign Smith and Lt. Baker set out to assassinate the priest. Whether they did so at O'Hanlon's orders remains unknown. However, Father Murphy was placed in Dublin Castle for his own protection. In retaliation, Lt. Baker and Ensign Smith murdered one of Father Murphy's informants and delivered his head to the Lord Deputy as that of a hunted outlaw. To Father Murphy's outrage, they were paid a substantial bounty.
  According to John J. Marshall, Redmond O'Hanlon was offered a full pardon by Rev. Henry Jones, the Church of Ireland's  Welsh-born Bishop of Meath. Bishop Jones, who Marshall describes as, "an ultra-Protestant," was interested in using the outlaw Count as a witness against Archbishop Plunkett and other alleged Catholic traitors.
  According to Stephen Dunford, "O'Hanlon refused. He protested that no offer could induce him to betray an innocent man, even though the man in question had on numerous occasions denounced outlaws: during the General Synod of the Irish Church in 1670, the Archbishop had ordered priests and preachers to warn all their people against, 'giving aid to Tories.'"
  As persecution of Catholics heated up in reaction to the Titus Oates plot, a priest named Father Mac Aidghalle was murdered while saying Mass at a Mass rock that still stands atop Slieve Gullion. The perpetrators were a band of redcoats under the command of a priest hunter named Turner. Redmond O'Hanlon is said in local tradition to have avenged the murdered priest and in so doing to have sealed his own fate.
caption: St. Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh
exif: {}