Davitt – Land Warrior

As dawn was breaking on April 3rd, 1878, a crusty, seventy-two-year-old Irish landlord, William Sidney Clements, 3rd Earl of Leitrim, was travelling on his horse and sidecar along a deserted roadway near his estate in County Donegal when he was ambushed by a number of armed men who pointed their weapons directly at him and brought him to a halt.

The first shot killed his driver, who had sought to shield him, and two more mortally wounded his clerk. Then Mickey Rua McElwee jumped upon the sidecar and threw the Earl to the ground. The others moved in, and clubbed him with their musket-butts, rendering his features scarcely recognizable. The assassins escaped by boat; they were never brought to trial, although their identity was an open secret. Even the Royal Irish Constabulary, it was believed, took the view that the world was a better place without the Earl of Leitrim. For years the Earl had rent-racked his tenants, lashed them with his horsewhip as he rode by, forced himself upon their daughters and shot their goats and pigs. His name had become a byword for severity and intransigence, and several attempts had been made on his life before.