Irish Appeals Act 1783. With increased legislative independence secured, "Patriot" MPs such as Henry Grattan continued to press for greater enfranchisement, although the campaign quickly foundered on the issue of Catholic emancipation: although Grattan supported it, many "patriots" did not, and even the Presbyterians were "bitterly divided" on whether it should be immediate or gradual. Against this background actual reform proceeded slowly. The Papists Act 1778 began to dismantle some earlier restrictions by allowing Catholics to join the army and to purchase land if they took an oath of allegiance to the Crown. In 1793 Parliament passed laws allowing Catholics meeting the property qualification to vote, but they could still neither be elected nor appointed as state officials. Catholic opposition to the government Since the early 18th century, the remains of the Catholic landowning class, once strongly Jacobite, had protected their position by adopting an "obsequious" attitude to the regime, cultivating the favour of the Hanoverian monarchs directly rather than that of a hostile Irish Parliament. The death of the Old Pretender in 1766, and Pope Clement XIII's subsequent recognition of the Hanoverians, reduced government suspicions of Jacobite sympathies among Catholics. Most senior Catholic churchmen also expressed loyalty to the government, hoping to secure increased tolerance. These attitudes however "barely impinged on [...] the mass of the population". 19th century historiography assumed that the rural, Catholic Ireland of the majority was largely quiet during the 18th century and unaffected by urban demands for reform. Outbreaks of rural violence by "Whiteboys" from the 1760s onwards, directed against landlords and tithe proctors, were assumed by historians such as Lecky to have been driven by local, agrarian issues such as tenant farmers' rents rather than wider political consciousness. More recently it has been argued that the persistence of Jacobite imagery among Whiteboy and other groups suggests that strong opposition to Protestant and British rule remained widespread in Gaelic-speaking rural Ireland. A further dimension was provided by a younger generation of Catholic gentry and "middlemen" in counties like Wexford, some of whom were radicalised by time spent in Revolutionary France, and who often emerged as local leaders in 1798. Unrest had also grown in County Armagh in the decade prior to the Rebellion involving clashes between groups of "Defenders", a Catholic secret society, and Protestant gangs of "Break of Day Men" or "Peep o' Day Boys". Originating as nonsectarian "fleets" of young men, the