the Whiteboys

She did not see the whiteboys who pulled it down, yanked up the posts and smashed the gate leaving 124 desolate and exposed at the very hour when everybody stopped dropping by.

While the Crown's motives in bringing on the Doneraile conspiracy trials have been questioned, most historians accept that there was a conspiracy of some sort, which formed part of a wider pattern of agrarian disturbance which had begun with the Whiteboys movement of the previous century.