Oakboys

The Oakboys was a largely non-sectarian agrarian secret society on Ireland. They are also called Greenboys or Hearts of Oak. It was regulatory, concerned with a moral issue as they perceived it.

It sprang up in Ulster in mid-1763. Its targets were the County cess, the road-building activities of the Grand Juries which the cess financed, and the perennial grievance of tithes.

Compulsory road labour had been abolished by act in May 1760. Therefore the Oakboy movement was not a protest against road-building programs that seemed to them to favour the interests of the landlords. The Oakboys were engaged in a pitched fight in March 1772, the Battle of Gilford, when they were confronted by a local landowner, and a body of troops.

The movement died down and burst forth again in 1772 when Oakboys marched into Belfast and attacked the home of a new lessee of the Lord Donegall, who was raising rents and entry fines beyond the levels at which the outgoing tenants could afford to compete. Oakboy activity faded away from 1772.

Sources

• Peter R. Newman, Companion to Irish history 1603-1921. From the Submission of Tyrone to Partition. Facts on File: Oxford & New York 1991