Secret Service Under Pitt

'Troy may be up,'468 McNally reports, meaning that the Catholic archbishop had been probably enrolled a United Irishman. Henceforth his Grace's letters were regularly opened at the Post Office.469 Minor names are often breathed, and who can doubt that, with the Habeas Corpus Act suspended, advanced men stood upon the brink of an abyss? Carhampton, Commander-in-Chief, sent numbers of untried men out of the country,470 and threatened to do the same with the Rev. Edward Berwick,471 and others. Hundreds were seized on bare suspicion and expatriated without even knowing their accusers, or hearing the charge for which they suffered.472

The acts of no member of the Directory are more regularly reported than those of Arthur O'Connor. McNally seems to have been in his confidence as political ally and legal adviser. In turning over his letters I met one much more voluminous than the rest, furnishing a complete list of all the witnesses to appear at Maidstone for O'Connor's defence, and the facts to which they were prepared to testify.473 These witnesses included Erskine, Fox, Grattan, Sheridan, Whitbread, Lords Moira, Suffolk, Thanet, and Oxford.

Throughout the State Trials men stalked who, as Curran said, measured their value by the coffins of their victims, and gloom was relieved by forensic persiflage. The duel already described left McNally lame, and another limping barrister one day asked Parsons in 'the Hall' of the Court, 'Did you see McNally go this way?' 'I never saw him go any other way,' was the reply.

Ned Lysaght had his skit, too: —

One leg is short which makes him lame,Therefore the legs don't tally;And now, my friends, to tell his name,'Tis Leonard MacAnally.

He had been urged to join a Volunteer corps; but Curran told him that serious trouble might result, for, when ordered to 'march,' he would certainly 'halt.'474 When writing to Cooke on the subject of the Lawyers' Corps, J. W., in a secret letter of June 12, 1798, introduces his real name, no doubt to puzzle outsiders into whose hands it might fall: 'It would be well perhaps if some of the judges would institute a Corps of Invalids. McNally might lead blind Moore to battle.'

Mr. Lecky thinks that McNally after his fall 'retained all the good nature and native kindness of his disposition.'475 I fear that this redeeming virtue cannot be safely assigned to him. A careful sketch of the man appears in a local publication of the year 1806; and we learn that among his characteristics are —

Satire – oft whetted on ill-nature's stone,Which spares no other's failings, nor his own.But well may Leonard wield that branch of tradeWhere cunning comes to penetration's aid;– No logic closer – strong his declamation,But his best leg is cross-examination.476

This, as we now see, was done quite as much in the privacy of his study as in the forensic arena.

Curran's great speech in Hevey v. Sirr contains a passage which has often been quoted: —

A learned and respected brother barrister had a silver cup; Major [Sandys] heard that for many years it had borne an inscription of 'Erin go bragh' – which meant 'Ireland for ever.' The Major considered this perseverance for such a length of time a forfeiture of the delinquent vessel. My poor friend was accordingly robbed of his cup.

This 'learned and respected barrister' was none other than McNally himself. I have read his secret letter to Cooke on the subject, endorsed 'June 2, 1798,' and it makes him less a hero than he would publicly convey. He complains of the seizure of his cup, notwithstanding that, as he assured his military visitor, he had already erased the offending inscription. 'Mac,' in conclusion, says that the cup was value for 22l. 10s., 'hardly earned,' and encloses a separate paper distinctly naming that sum as his due. Four days later he writes to Cooke: 'Major Sandys returned a sterling answer to my friend's note,' which means a full money remittance for the amount claimed.477

Below we have McNally's version of this transaction, as supplied to Curran's son for historic and popular purposes: —

A sergeant waited upon him, and delivered a verbal command from Major Sandys to surrender the cup. Mr. McNally refused, and commissioned the messenger to carry back such an answer as so daring a requisition suggested.478 The sergeant … respectfully remonstrated upon the imprudence of provoking Major Sandys. The consequences soon appeared: the sergeant returned with a body of soldiers, who paraded before Mr. McNally's door, and were under orders to proceed to extremities if the cup was not delivered up. Upon Mr. MacNally's acquainting Lord Kilwarden with the outrage, the latter burst into tears and, exclaiming that 'his own sideboard might be the next object of plunder, if such atrocious practices were not checked,' lost not an instant in procuring the restitution of the property. The cup was accordingly sent back with the inscription erased.479

Arthur Wolfe, Lord Kilwarden, was the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and his alleged intimacy with McNally is probably exaggerated. The biographer says that Curran repeatedly told this episode of '98, and quotes a touching peroration regarding Kilwarden's alleged interposition: that, in fact, great was the odour of its memory and precious the balm of its consolation!

McNally's account of the robbery of his silver cup was part of his stock-in-trade, and I am sure that for twenty times the price he would not have been without it.

William Henry Curran knew not very much of his father, whose biographer he became. John Philpot Curran had excluded him from his domestic circle, and the letters to his son which appear in the book were addressed to Richard. Who can doubt that much detail which lends interest to the ever popular 'Life, by his Son,' was supplied to the youth by the practised old scribe Leonard McNally? Curran's gratitude to him for help afforded is freely expressed. McNally wrote a style clear as rock water and full of classic strength. Nothing can be finer than his secret letters to Pelham and Cooke – three of which he often despatched in one day. The wonderful anecdotes which made Curran's Life, by his son, almost a classic have been quoted over and over, including the dinner scene at McNally's, when the ill-fated Rev. Mr. Jackson was entertained. Curran's son tells how the talk had been getting imprudent, when the butler, beckoning his master to the door, warned him to be careful; 'for, sir, the strange gentleman who seems to be asleep is not so, but listening to everything said: I see his eye glistening through the fingers with which he is covering his face.'

Cockayne was, of course, a spy of Pitt's; but some of the sensational anecdotes which McNally told of him, as also of Reynolds and Armstrong, may have been overcharged to divert suspicion from himself. These are not the only instances in which the embellishments of the professional advocate seem traceable. As regards Jackson's death in the dock, we are told that he made an effort with his cold and nerveless hand to squeeze McNally's, muttering a quotation from Addison's 'Cato'; but the lines and the adjuncts would be more likely to occur at such a moment to an old playwright like McNally than to the dying clergyman.

Emmet's revolt took place on July 23, 1803, but was soon quelled. He remained in concealment at Harold's Cross, and chose that position in order that he might see Sarah Curran, with her father, pass daily to Dublin. On August 25 he was arrested by Major Sirr. Popular confidence in McNally had now reached its height. A special commission for trying the insurgent leaders began on August 24, 1803. 'Most of the prisoners chose Mr. McNally as their counsel, and Mr. L. McNally, junior, as their agent,' records the 'Evening Post' of the day.

McNally had long had his eye on the gifted young orator Robert Emmet: 'Emmet, junior, gone on business to France – probably to supersede Lewins,'480 he writes to Cooke three years previous to the insurrection of 1803. On September 3, in the latter year, McNally sends one of his secret letters to Cooke, saying that he is authorised to treat on behalf of a person privy to the whole conspiracy.481

The remainder of McNally's letters during these troubles of 1803 are yet wanting. No doubt they remain among Wickham's papers of the period which are still a sealed book.482 Among the sensational incidents of the hour was the outrage of searching Curran's house, and the capture of Emmet's love-letters to Sarah Curran – to whom the youth had been secretly engaged. Curran himself, we are told, though aware of Emmet's visits, was ignorant of the attachment. But there was a seemingly dear old friend, having access to Curran's domestic circle, whose eagle eye could penetrate still deeper secrets. In the absence of McNally's private reports of that month there is, however, no absolute proof against him on this point.

Mount Jerome,483 the seat of John Keogh, the great Catholic leader, was also searched, and his papers seized. Dr. Madden mentions that, in 1802, Emmet had dined at Keogh's in the company of John Philpot Curran, when the probability of success in the event of a second rebellion was debated with great animation.484 Whose was the whisper which betrayed this information never transpired. But Curran, the great depository of popular secrets, maintained, as will be shown, no reserve with McNally. So far back as 1797 McNally writes: —

Grattan and Curran are compleatly in the secret. Everything that's done or intended is communicated to them.485

A quantity of information follows, and the letter ends with these pregnant words: —

Curran gives a dinner at his house. Will be there.

This is the man whom William Henry Curran describes as having been 'from his youth to his latest hour the most affectionate, unshaken and disinterested friend' of his father.486

Before and after the conviction and death of Robert Emmet, the initials 'L. M.' peep from the 'Secret Service Money Book.' On August 25, 1803 (the very day on which Emmet was captured), we read: 'Mr. Pollock for L. M., 100l.' Pollock, Clerk of the Crown for Leinster, is the same man through whom the bribes for 'J. W.' (McNally) are paid.487 The 100l. cannot have been for the actual capture of Emmet, for I know that in November following a bulk sum was paid for that service. The douceur to L. M. was in acknowledgment of useful information.488

McNally appears as counsel for Emmet in the State trial on September 19, 1803. Four days previously, namely, on September 14, 100l. is set down to 'L. M.' On the morning of Emmet's execution an affecting scene took place between the rebel chief and McNally, the only friend allowed to see him. Emmet's mother had just died, but he did not know it, and desire to see her filled him – 'Then, Robert, you shall meet her this day,' replied McNally, pointing to Heaven in his accustomed dramatic style. A long account of the interview, doubtless supplied by 'Mac' himself with his usual itch for writing, and evidently designed to promote Lord Hardwicke's popularity as Viceroy, appears in a Ministerial journal, the London 'Chronicle,' on September 24, 1803.

Emmet [we are told] observed that, had he not been interrupted by the Court in his address, he would have spoken as warm an eulogium on the candour and moderation of the present Government in this kingdom as his conception or language were adequate to.

After Emmet's arrest Curran was examined by the Privy Council, when Chancellor Redesdale sought by a tone of intimidation to extort the truth; but the scowl of contempt he encountered gave his own nerves the shock he designed for another's, and made him sink back into his chair, abashed by the failure of his rash experiment. Curran's son speaks of the wonderful intrepidity of McNally's language in his addresses to the Court; but it is easy to be defiant when one knows he is safe. Contemporary critics record his marvellous power of penetration in cross-examining witnesses on the State trials. A shrewd man, deep in the secrets of both sides, would not find it hard to create this impression.

Lord Cloncurry complains, in his Memoirs, that after his liberation from gaol in 1801, and for many subsequent years, no man suffered more from petty worries at the hands of the Irish Government. McNally was in the coterie of which Cloncurry formed the central figure, and it cannot be doubted that he consistently reported his fervid sentiments. The 'Press' was the Rebel organ, its tone distinguished, as Lord Camden said, by 'an unheard-of boldness,'489 and a friendly offer made by Lawless, afterwards Lord Cloncurry, to McNally is thus reported. After mentioning when the private committee of United Irishmen met, McNally490 announces – the underlining his own: —

Lawless, principal proprietor of the 'Press': he has offered a share to J. W.491– a £50 share… Nothing save rebellious toasts at the dinner; McNevin was there. Lawless gave 'Cut the Painter' [i. e. Separation from England].

An accurate and dayly [sic] account will be given. Lawless sails for London to-morrow night. It is his turn of duty, – perhaps to meet some people at the Head. He ought to be watched from George's Quay every hour till his return.492

A later letter assures Pelham: 'The fellow-travellers of Lawless shall be found out if possible.'493

Higgins and Magan knew nothing of Cloncurry's movements, but between Turner and McNally he had a warm time of it. Lord Holland compared his long detention in the Tower, untried and unaccused, to the operation of the lettres de cachet in old France. In 1803, on secret but, he declares, erroneous information, that Emmet's wounded rebels were concealed there, 'a large military force' searched Lord Cloncurry's house in Kildare, and robbed it of a quantity of papers, some fowling-pieces, armour, and even plate.'494

No details are forthcoming as regards the intercourse which subsisted between McNally and Cloncurry throughout the eventful period subsequent to their friendly relations in '98; but the cordiality of that intercourse may be seen from a waif or two. The 'Correspondent,' a Dublin journal, reports on August 27, 1817, a speech of the patriot peer, Cloncurry, in which the epithet 'dear' is applied to his old friend McNally. 'There is no gentleman,' he adds, 'for whom I have a higher respect or esteem, and of whose knowledge, talent and elocution I am more sensible.'

Sometimes McNally travelled as a spy, probably in disguise, through remote rural districts. On August 28, 1805, he announces Tipperary as 'ready to rise.' In September he goes up the Dublin mountains, 'Emmet's line,' and the result of his inquiries was that no rising need be apprehended.495 I do not find that McNally's secret letters exist at Dublin Castle beyond the year 1805; I must, therefore, seek to trace from other sources the close of his career. Pecuniary need drew its toils tighter round him every day, making him, no doubt, more energetic in his effort to cast them off.496

Readers of the 'Wellington Correspondence' from 1807 to 1809 will be able to identify McNally. The subjugator of Tippoo Saib, then Chief Secretary at Dublin Castle, found Catholic Ireland galled by various disabilities. One letter, dated November 21, 1807, encloses a paper headed 'Information received this evening from a very intelligent Priest.'497 This, on being quoted by the reviewers of the Wellington Papers, excited disgust that a priest should be in secret correspondence with Dublin Castle; but it is quite clear to me that the letter came from McNally, and embodies merely the responses of a gossiping priest to the pumping of a practised hand – the same, I may venture to add, to whom McNally, upon dying, will be found making his own confession.

The Whig Duke of Bedford took office with Fox, Lansdowne, and Grey in the administration of 'All the Talents,' and ruled Ireland for one year. Curran became Master of the Rolls, and McNally thought that he himself, as the leading popular barrister, had claims for promotion. All the men who will be remembered as voting with him at the bar meeting in 1799 had got snug berths. His appeal to Bedford was referred to Wellesley, whose common sense appears in the following reply: —

I agree entirely with you respecting the employment of our informer. Such a measure would do much mischief. It would disgust the loyal of all descriptions, at the same time that it would render useless our private communications with him, as no further trust would be placed in him by the disloyal. I think that it might be hinted to him that he would lose much of his profit, if, by accepting the public employment of Government, he were to lose the confidence of his party, and consequently the means of giving us information.498

Curiously enough, at the time he is himself most active as a spy, Mr. T. Mulock, of Dublin, reports him, with Messrs. Hutton and O'Connell, as persons who 'ought to be watched.'499 An account of the first meeting for Repeal of the Union, on September 18, 1810, is preserved in the State Papers; and McNally spoke on that day 'with great zeal and patriotism,' as Plowden proudly500 records. Mr. Mulock had not the knowledge of character shown by his kinswoman Miss Mulock, the novelist.

Reference has been already made to the fact that in 1811 the Irish Secretary of State, Wellesley Pole, with the object of suppressing the Catholic Committee, caused to be arrested, under the Convention Act, Lord Fingall, Lord Netterville, and the other Catholic delegates. Able counsel were retained by them, and private conferences, attended by Burrowes, Johnson, Perrin, O'Connell, Burton, O'Driscoll, and McNally, were held in order to decide on the lines of defence to be taken. The questions involved were difficult and subtle; and although the courses decided upon were equally novel, it was observed with amazement that the Orange Attorney-General, Saurin, seemed marvellously well prepared for every point, as the delegates daily fought their ground inch by inch.501

An aggregate meeting of Catholics was held after the arrests of their delegates. John Mitchel describes the party then in power as a 'No Popery Administration,' and the appearance of a Protestant on the platform was hailed as a happy incident. The following is taken from the 'Correspondent,' a once influential organ of Dublin Castle: —

Mr. McNally offered himself to the consideration of the Catholic body. He was anxious that his name should be coupled to the glorious cause for which, as Irishmen, they were contending – a cause that, from his earliest youth, although a Protestant, he felt as his own. He insisted that the conduct of the Lord Lieutenant was illegal – that he had not the power of arresting an individual by his own mere authority; that, not having the authority, he could not, of course, delegate it to a Magistrate. – [Here he animadverted upon the conduct of Mr. Hare, the police magistrate, who made the arrests.] The King himself, he said, possessed not the power which the Lord Lieutenant assumed in the arrest of Lords Fingal and Netterville. He instanced the case of Chief Justice Hussey and Edward IV. – The King asked the Judge whether his own warrant would not be deemed sufficient to arrest a subject? – The Chief Justice answered in the negative. And the reason was obvious. The King can do no wrong.– But the subject could have no legal redress against such an impeccable magistrate. He referred to the State trials for an exemplification and authority on this point; and he showed that a power which could not be exercised by Majesty itself, could not pass through the opaque body of his Lieutenant – a moonshine and intermitting ray.

O'Connell followed, and the clear head of that great lawyer saved the Catholic body from the deeper pitfall in which the bad law of a false adviser would have placed them. In the course of his speech he declared: —

With regard to what had been said by Mr. McNally he could not assent. The action of Mr. Hare was merely his own, as a magistrate, and the Lord Lieutenant had no concern in being responsible for it; and he [Mr. O'Connell] would not allow in that assembly anything to be laid to the charge of the Duke of Richmond for which His Grace was not in every respect accountable.

On October 19, 1811, Wellesley Pole writes from Dublin Castle to the Home Secretary regarding the proceedings of the Catholic Committee, and enclosing 'a report from,' as he says, 'one of our spies.' This document, signed 'J. W.' is still preserved with Pole's letter in the Record Office, London. About the same time Pole announces to the Home Office that 'Young Mr. Curran, son of the Master of the Rolls, has been very active in soliciting from the Catholics subscriptions for Mr. Finnerty, and letters from persons associated in London for promoting that object have been addressed to the Catholics here.'502 These regular reportings of Curran's domestic circle involve a degree of treachery painful to contemplate.503

The reports of 'J. W.' did not tend to make Curran a favourite with 'the powers.' The patriot's son, describing a prior year, records: —

A party of seventeen soldiers, accompanied by their wives, or their profligate companions, and by many children, and evidently selected for the purpose of annoyance, were, without any previous notice, quartered on Mr. Curran's house.504

The late Mr. Byrne, an old Petty Sessions clerk, informed me that when walking at this time with his cousin Mr. Phelan, an attorney of Liberal politics, McNally, with a significant wink, accosted him, saying: 'The people are at last beginning to read; those who cannot yet read have books and papers read to them; after they read they will think, and they won't be long thinking until they act.'

On the trial of Sheridan and Kirwan, two Catholic delegates, he spoke warmly against the sheriff and others tampering with the jury, and was checked by the bench. He excused himself by saying 'that where the heart and the understanding went together it was difficult to keep bounds,' etc. Great excitement prevailed by the effort made to crush the freedom of speech, in the midst of which Percy Bysshe Shelley came to Dublin, and largely helped by voice and pen to make the crisis historic. Mr. Pole declared in Parliament, that 'if gentlemen would read the debates of the Catholic Committee they would find separation openly and distinctly recommended.' O'Connell, on February 29, 1812, replied: 'Why, my lord, this is a direct accusation of high treason, and he who would assert it of me, I would brand with the foulest epithets. I defy the slightest proof to be given of its veracity.' The Duke of Richmond, then Viceroy, writes at great length to the Home Secretary, speaks of his 'secret information,' and flutters the Cabinet.505

It was during the same year that Roger O'Connor, of Dangan Castle – father of Feargus, member for Nottingham – headed a band of rude retainers and robbed the Galway mail coach on Cappagh Hill. Though somewhat daft, he had method in his system, and when, five years later, he found himself a prisoner in Newgate, pending the long averted prosecution, he directed his attorney, named Maguire, to draw up a fictitious case, including a false line of defence, and lay it before McNally, taking for granted that he would betray to the Crown the person he supposed to be his client. The prosecution strangely broke down, and O'Connor, although notoriously guilty, was acquitted.506 This trial took place in 1817: the death of Curran followed soon. A man named Waring having been indicted for perjury, McNally is found saying: 'Oppressed by the loss of my earliest friend, I have not strength for the task. But I wish to repel the stigma thrown out against my client, though I should die in the trammels.'507

The letters of McNally to Curran would be curious to read; 'but,' writes his daughter-in-law, 'they were destroyed by my late husband when he became so disgusted by the knowledge of the double face McNally must have worn for so many years as the friend of his father.'508

Although McNally's are destroyed, some characteristic letters from Curran to him were supplied by the spy to Curran's biographer. It was a constant effort of McNally to engraft himself on the fame and name of Curran. A touching document in the romance of real life is the letter addressed by Curran to McNally in 1810. He exhibits a kind solicitude for the improved health of his false friend, and alludes to their future meeting where secrets and sorrow would be no more.