Orr and the Northern Star
Lord Camden, the lord lieutenant, and his chief secretary, Thomas Pelham, faced an exceptionally difficult problem. The United Irish movement had begun earlier in the decade with demands for parliamentary reform and Catholic inclusion, but repression and the international war had driven much of it underground. Its declared ideal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter had found a particularly powerful constituency among Presbyterian radicals in the north, while links with Defender networks brought many Catholic artisans and labourers into a broader revolutionary organisation.