 For many years they, by the very terror of their name, restrained the landlords and agents who were inclined to oppress the people—which was most essential to the very existence of the latter; and when they were at length condemned by church priests,
it was because unscrupulous persons had, by bloody acts, turned the association to their own base purposes.About the year 1780 there lived in Bawn House a certain Captain Barnes, agent over several estates in the neighbourhood of Moydow,
and famed among the people as an uncompromising exterminator of the tenants, whom he ruled with a rod of iron.On a certain
November night after collecting the rents of his estates, he was engaged upstairs with his clerk in counting his money and
making out his accounts.