ABSTRACT
The widespread experience among the Irish of reluctantly occupying the space between two implacable forces does not feature strongly in most interpretations of the years leading up to the rebellion in Ireland in 1798. A war of oaths of allegiance to king and constitution on the one side and of secret commitment to political, sometimes social, revolution and French invasion on the other began in earnest in 1795 and continued even after the rebellion. Oaths were by no means unfamiliar to the Irish in the eighteenth century, for they were frequently at the centre of politico-religious contestation. The Dublin government regarded their reliance on secret oaths which nurtured the omerta, the code of silence, essential for success and inhabiting the space between official law and its local reception' to be particularly dangerous. As the Defender-United Irishmen alliance developed, both the oath and the oath-taking procedures became more regularised.
