Porter, James (1752/3–1798), presbyterian minister and satirist, was born in the townland of Tamnawood, near Ballindrait in the Laggan district of Co. Donegal. His parents, who were presbyterians, were natives of the place and had three younger sons and four daughters. The father (Alexander Porter) worked a farm there and a scutch-mill on the River Deal. Porter was taught by a local schoolmaster and eventually attended Glasgow University but did not graduate. At the age of twenty or so he moved to Dromore, Co. Down, apparently as a tutor or schoolmaster. There he began studying Latin, Greek and theology, and eventually married Anna, daughter of Alexander Knox of Edenhill in 1780. The officiating presbyterian minister was Robert Black (qv). The couple soon moved to Drogheda, Co. Louth, where Porter opened a school. His studies in Glasgow from 1784 were limited to divinity for three winter sessions. Subsequently he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Bangor and a call came from the congregation at Greyabbey, Co. Down, for which he was ordained on 31 July 1787. As well as an impressive preacher, he was a practical, progressive farmer with technical ability; he gave lectures on science and constructed sundials, a surviving example of which is dated 1771.
Drawn into the radical politics of the day, he became antagonistic towards the high-handed local protestant squirearchy of the Ards peninsula. In the 1790s he became a regular contributor to the Northern Star, the organ of the Belfast Society of United Irishmen. He may have written ‘The Irish bard’, a poem influenced by James Macpherson and attributed to a mysterious ‘Rev. James Glass, A.M.’ (Northern Star, 16 May 1792), and some other poems that appeared in the paper (Thuente). Undoubtedly Porter's chief literary work was a series of satirical prose pieces known as ‘Billy Bluff and Squire Firebrand’ (Northern Star, 30 May–2 Dec. 1796). Very popular, it was frequently republished in pamphlet form, and there were many reprints in the nineteenth century, as late as 1879 in Belfast and 1886 in Glasgow. Billy Bluff was a local farmer who spied on his neighbours to ingratiate himself with Squire Firebrand (most probably John Cleland (qv)), agent to Lord Mountmumble (Lord Londonderry (qv), father of Viscount Castlereagh (qv)). In the same paper appeared, on 7 October 1796, 23 December 1796, and 24 February 1797, three letters on political matters signed ‘Sydney’ and addressed to the marquess of Downshire (qv). Full of invective, they charged the British prime minister, William Pitt, with endangering the country and the constitution. On the day fixed by the government (16 February 1797) for thanksgiving for the failure of the French military expedition to Bantry Bay, Porter preached a controversial sermon which received wider attention on being printed. A second edition appeared with the title Wind and weather (1797). Its tenor was ‘grave sarcasm and ironical loyalty’ (Madden).
Though he undoubtedly shared the aims of the United Irishmen, no evidence has been found for Porter being ever a sworn member, or in arms during the rebellion that broke out in Ulster in June 1798. Nonetheless he was arrested and charged with being with a party of insurgents who intercepted the mail from Belfast to Saintfield. At his trial by court martial at Newtownards on 28 June there was only one testimony against him. Porter was found guilty and sentenced to death; Londonderry refused to recommend a reprieve (despite a plea from his own daughters, who had attended Porter's lectures); in consequence Porter was executed on 2 July, aged forty-five. He was hanged near his manse and meeting-house at Greyabbey and buried in the local churchyard (on the site of an old Cistercian abbey), the only presbyterian minister to suffer capital punishment in 1798. James Porter and his wife (who died on 3 November 1822) had two sons and six daughters. One daughter, Matilda, married a presbyterian minister, Andrew Goudy (d. 1818) of Ballywalter, and was mother of another, Alexander Porter Goudy (qv), a moderator of the general assembly of the presbyterian church; three others also married ministers, as did James Porter's sister Catherine. One son was Alexander Porter (qv); the other was James Porter (d. 1849), attorney general of Louisiana.