James Porter

James Porter (1753 – 2 July 1798) was an Irish Presbyterian minister and satirist. He was executed in 1798. He was the only ordained Presbyterian minister to face capital punishment after the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Biography

Early life

He was born into an Ulster-Scots family, being the son of Alexander Porter. He was born in 1753 at Tamna Wood, near the village of Ballindrait in the Laggan district in the east of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. His father was a farmer and owner of a flax-scutching mill. James was the eldest of eight children. On his father's death (about 1773) he gave up the farm and mill to a younger brother, and engaged himself as a schoolmaster at Dromore in County Down.

In 1780, he married and moved to a school at Drogheda in County Louth.

Clerical career

Designing to enter the Presbyterian ministry, he went to Glasgow as a divinity student (apparently in 1784); and, having finished a two years' course, was licensed, in 1786 or 1787, by Bangor presbytery in County Down. After being an unsuccessful candidate for the presbyterian congregation of Ballindrait in East Donegal, he received, through the good offices of Robert Black, D.D., a call to Greyabbey, County Down, where he was ordained by Bangor presbytery on 31 July 1787. By this and other means he did much to promote the physical well-being of his flock, to whom he was an assiduous pastor. He is said to have been an Arian, but there seems no evidence of his attachment to a special school of theology. He was a follower of the ‘New Light’ movement.

United Irishmen

Porter had joined the volunteer movement which began in 1778, but took no prominent part in connection with it. He was not a United Irishman. It was a sustained effort of irony, suggested by the text, "Ye walked according to … the prince of the power of the air." Its literary merit is considerable.

Arrest and execution

On the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Porter was a marked man; a large reward was offered for his apprehension. There is no evidence of any knowledge on his part of the plans of the insurgents; it is certain that he committed no overt act of rebellion, and all his published counsels were for peaceable measures of constitutional redress. He withdrew for safety to the house of Johnson of Ballydoonan, two miles from Greyabbey, and afterwards sought concealment in a cottage among the Mourne Mountains, on the verge of his parish. Here he was arrested in June 1798, and taken to Belfast, but removed to Newtownards for trial by court-martial. The charge against him was that he had been present with a party of insurgents who, between 9 and 11 June, having intercepted the mail between Belfast and Saintfield, County Down, had read a despatch from the commanding officer at Belfast to a subordinate at Portaferry, County Down. the fourth, Isabella, married James Templeton, presbyterian minister of Ballywalter; the fifth, Sophia, married William D. Henderson, esq., Belfast.

Porter's eldest son, Alexander, is stated by a questionable local tradition to have carried a stand of colours at the battle of Ballynahinch (12 June 1798), being then fourteen years of age; and the story runs that he fled to Tamna Wood, and was there recognised (but not betrayed) by a soldier of the Armagh militia. He migrated to Louisiana, of which state he became a senator, and he died there on 13 January 1844. Another son, James, became attorney-general of Louisiana.