Secret Service Under Pitt

And again: —

My intelligence comes from Rome, and I am pretty certain these Acts have been brought in from the ministry receiving the same intelligence, which I know they have been in possession of for some time; as the measures for preventing the mischief proposed by the person who gives the information are exactly those that have been adopted.

O'Leary by his address aroused not only Catholic loyalty, but awakened the apathy of many Protestants on whom the report of invasion had previously made no impression. The Volunteers sprang into vitality, and though they at first numbered merely 8,000, the force swelled ere the year was out to 42,000 armed men, and without the cost of one shilling to the Crown. Years after, the Government dreading, like Frankenstein, the heaving mass it had helped to create, sought to suppress the Irish Volunteers; but in 1778 their feeling was very different, when O'Leary's inspiring address fanned the spirit of volunteering, and conduced to preserve the country. It was then that Lord Buckinghamshire officially declared that Ireland was prepared to offer a determined resistance to invasion.

A link or two of the heavy penal chain had now been struck from Papist limbs. The relaxation, however, was hampered with a new test oath, drawn up in terms even more subtle than that which, when handed to O'Connell fifty years later in Parliament, he withdrew rather than take. Dr. Carpenter529 ruled the R. C. see of Dublin at this time. His flock embraced a considerable number who, from timidity of conscience, expressed doubts as to the propriety of taking the oath. Dr. Carpenter, though himself no great friend to the temporal power of the Pope, felt that to deny on oath a power already claimed by some famous theologians would seem rash and arrogant. Bishop de Burgo, author of the 'Hibernia Dominicana,' opposed the oath in terms still stronger; lay orators described as a poisoned cup the proffered measure of Catholic relief. Again O'Leary came to the front. A pamphlet of eighty-six pages was thrown on the country, entitled, 'Loyalty asserted, or a Vindication of the new Test Oath of Allegiance, with an impartial inquiry into the Pope's Temporal Power [a strong attack upon it] and the claims of the Stewarts to the English Throne: proving that both are equally groundless.' O'Leary examined the oath sentence by sentence, and with logical precision showed its conformity to Catholic teaching. 'The work was widely circulated,' writes Father England, the first biographer of O'Leary, and called forth as well the acknowledgments of the friends of the Government as the warm gratitude of his Catholic fellow-countrymen. In November 1778 we read that the Catholic Archbishop Carpenter, at the head of seventy of his clergy, and several hundred Catholic laymen, attended at the Court of King's Bench in Dublin and took the oath prescribed.530

The dreaded invasion never took place; but O'Leary's address was scattered broadcast, and during subsequent years it reappeared again and again. It reads more like the argument of a paid advocate than the disinterested appeal of a poor Franciscan.

All this – not to speak of O'Leary's tracts on Toleration, and his exertions, written and oral, to deter the Whiteboys from their conspiracies – furnishes sufficient claim to a pension, without assuming that it must have been earned in the dark field of espionage. However, we now approach the time when overtures to discharge an ignominious task were undoubtedly made to him.

On August 26, 1784, the Viceroy, Rutland, addressed a 'most secret' letter to Pitt's brother-in-law, Lord Sydney: —

I have discovered a channel by which I hope to get to the bottom of all the plots and machinations which are contriving in this metropolis. As I always expected, the disturbances which have been agitated have all derived their source from French influence. There is a meeting in which two men named Napper Tandy and John Binney, together with others who style themselves free citizens, assemble. They drink the French King on their knees, and their declared purpose is a separation from England and the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion. At their meetings an avowed French agent constantly attends, who is no other than the person in whose favour the French ambassador desired Lord Caermarthen to write to me a formal introduction…531 One of this meeting, alarmed at the dangerous extent of their schemes, has confessed, and has engaged to discover to me the whole intentions of this profligate and unprincipled combination.532

This is a glowing picture, one more than realising the beautiful vision of Davis: —

The mess tent is full, and the glasses are set,And the gallant Count Thomond is president yet.The vet'ran arose, like an uplifted lance,Crying: 'Comrades a health to the monarch of France!'With bumpers and cheers they have done as he bade,For King Louis is loved by the Irish Brigade.

The first mention of O'Leary's name in the State Papers is under date September 4, 1784, when Sydney writes to the Lord-Lieutenant: – 'O'Leary has been talked to by Mr. Nepean, and he is willing to undertake what is wished for 100l. a year, which has been granted him.'

On Sept. 8th [writes Mr. Lecky] Orde thanks Nepean for sending over a spy, or detective, named Parker, and adds: I am very glad also that you have settled matters with O'Leary, who can get at the bottom of all secrets in which the Catholics are concerned, and they are certainly the chief promoters of our present disquietude. He must, however, be cautiously trusted, for he is a Priest, and if not too much addicted to the general vice of his brethren here, he is at least well acquainted with the art of raising alarms for the purpose of claiming a merit in doing them away.533

Thus, as it would seem, O'Leary had already not been slow in claiming from the Government the merit, if not the wages, of allaying the causes of public alarm. Plowden and England admit that O'Leary had a pension of 200l. a year. He must have been in receipt of at least 100l. for his writings at the time that, for an extra hundred, it was proposed to him to undertake a base task. The promptitude and facility with which Sydney, in September 1784, made the proposition shows the close relations that had previously subsisted.

A curious letter from Weymouth, a previous Home Secretary, addressed to Dublin Castle, is printed in Grattan's 'Life' (vol. i. p. 369). In great panic he expresses fear that the Catholic colleges of France and Flanders would despatch their alumni as secret agents to Ireland. These were among the reasons that made the Government anxious to secure O'Leary's aid.

Dr. England – his earliest biographer – lived comparatively near the time, and heard from O'Leary's publisher, Keating, a few interesting incidents which, to some extent, tally with the revelations of the State Papers. The biographer knows of an interview between O'Leary and Nepean on behalf of Sydney and Pitt, but England and his informant are deceived as to the conditions which accompanied the pension. Their memory is also at fault as regards the year. Instead of 1784, they set it down as 'soon after O'Leary had fixed his residence permanently in London,' which, of course, was in 1789. O'Leary had been a good deal in London previously, for, as Froude states, Orde in 1784 asked Sydney to send him over confidential agents, and in September 1784 he writes, 'your experts have arrived safe.'534

Soon after he [O'Leary] had fixed his residence permanently in London [writes Dr. England], one day whilst dining with his attached and valued friend, Mr. Keating, the bookseller, he was informed that Lord Sydney's secretary was in the adjoining parlour, and had a communication to make to him. He immediately left the table; and when, in a short time, he returned, he related the substance of the interview. The secretary stated to him that Government had observed with much satisfaction the good effects which Mr. O'Leary's writings had produced in Ireland – peace, good order, and unanimity, amongst all classes of his countrymen, had been promoted and advanced by his exertions; and that, in consideration of the services thus rendered to the Empire, it was determined to manifest the approbation of such conduct by offering him a pension suitable to his circumstances, and worthy of his acceptance; that, with a delicacy arising from the ignorance of his means of subsistence, they had as yet hesitated fixing on any specific sum, choosing rather to learn from himself what would answer his expectations, than to determine on what might be insufficient for his claims. The secretary took the liberty of asking a question to which, at the same time, he did not insist on receiving an answer: whether, in the event of any popular commotion in Ireland, as it was dreaded would be the case from the diffusion of American republican notions, O'Leary would advocate, as formerly, principles of loyalty and allegiance? To this latter question an unhesitating reply was given, confirmatory of the known inflexibility of O'Leary's political conduct; with regard to the pension, he never had sought for one, though, at a former period of his life, something of the kind had been hinted to him; in the present instance he was grateful to the Government for the recollection of him, and suggested that the utmost of his claims would be answered by 100l. a year. He was afterwards informed officially that his presence in Ireland was necessary for the purpose of having the pension placed on the list of that country. He repaired thither, and, after the necessary formalities were gone through, he became entitled to 200l. per annum; but England adds that, 'for some unexplained cause, his pension, after one or two years, was arbitrarily withheld.'535

It will be seen that the point here made is not consistent with Plowden's account (ante, p. 213). According to him, the pension was 'hush-money:' he was to write no more, and, above all, he was not to write in promotion of good feeling and toleration. England upholds that it was given in the hope that O'Leary would continue to write in the same tone that had already earned Governmental gratitude. Sydney settled terms with O'Leary in London, and, through his secretary, told him what to do.

'Cedars have yielded,' says St. Peter. It was a clever thought to plan the corruption of O'Leary for the performance of a part which his employers describe with gusto. Two years previously, on February 27, 1782, popular confidence in him had reached its height when Yelverton, Grattan, and Sir Lucius O'Brien praised him with enthusiasm.

A man of learning, a philosopher, a Franciscan [said Grattan] did the most eminent service to his country in the hour of its greatest danger. He brought out a publication that would do honour to the most celebrated name. The whole kingdom must bear witness to its effect by the reception they gave it. Poor in everything but genius and philosophy, he had no property at stake, no family to fear for; but descending from the contemplation of wisdom, and abandoning the ornaments of fancy, he humanely undertook the task of conveying duty and instruction to the lowest class of the people.536

How he qualified for these praises Mr. Froude may now be allowed to show. After O'Leary arrived in Dublin he saw Orde, and was told what the Government expected him to do. The following letter is dated September 23, 1784: —

Your experts have arrived safe [wrote the Secretary, reporting their appearance]. At this moment we are about to make trial of O'Leary's sermons,537 and Parker's rhapsodies. They may be both in their different callings of very great use. The former, if we can depend on him, has it in his power to discover to us the real designs of the Catholics, from which quarter, after all, the real mischief is to spring. The other can scrape an acquaintance with the great leaders of sedition, particularly Napper Tandy, and perhaps by that means dive to the bottom of his secrets.538

Sir Richard Musgrave was one of the alarmists who loved to purvey sensational news for Dublin Castle. His 'History of the Rebellion,' published in 1801, embodies his impressions of events for twenty years before. No wonder that Dublin Castle was fluttered by his reports. Here is clearly one of them, and it serves to show why it was that the Government were so anxious in 1784 to secure O'Leary by a subsidy: —

A corps called the Irish Brigade was raised in Dublin, of which nineteen out of twenty were Roman Catholics, and they appointed Father O'Leary, an itinerant friar, their chaplain. I have been assured that they exceeded in number all the other Volunteer corps in the city.

And again: —

In the summer of the year 1783, the Irish Brigade, with the Dublin Independent Volunteers, commanded by James Napper Tandy and Matthew Dowling, formed an encampment between Roebuck and Dublin, under the pretext of studying tactics and learning camp duty, though it was well known that they were hatching revolutionary projects. It is to be observed that the war, the only pretext for their arming, was now at an end; yet many corps in different parts of the kingdom resolved not to lay down their arms but with their lives.539

Musgrave's construction of the above, as in many other incidents, is not wholly correct; though in his estimate of Tandy and Dowling, both Protestants, he was accurate enough.

If O'Leary played the part assigned and attributed to him, never did face more belie internal baseness, or was more exquisitely fashioned to command the confidence of its dupes. The 'Gentleman's Magazine' for February 1802 contains a study of 'Father Arthur' from the pen of Mr. Pratt.

His manners [he says] were the most winning and artless, anticipating his goodwill and urbanity before he opened his lips; and when they were opened, his expressions did but ratify what those manners had before ensured. And you had a further earnest of this in the benign and ineffable smile of a countenance so little practised in guile that it at the same time invited to confidence, and denoted an impossibility of your being betrayed.

Curran, addressing the Irish House of Commons in 1787, revealed a trait highly honourable to the friar: 'Mr. O'Leary was, to his knowledge, a man of the most innocent and amiable simplicity of manners in private life. The reflection of twenty years in a cloister had severely regulated his passions and deeply informed his understanding.'540 Curran's knowledge was partly derived from the fact that O'Leary belonged to 'The Monks of the Screw,' often regarded as a convivial club; but 'whose more important object,' writes Hardy, the biographer of Charlemont, 'was a co-operation of men holding a general similarity of political principles resolved to maintain the rights and constitution of their country.' Previously, O'Leary had dedicated his Miscellaneous Tracts 'to the Dignitaries and Brethren of the Monks of St. Patrick,' addressing them, with his wonted humour, as 'Reverend Fathers and illustrious Brethren.'

He had already written in denunciation of French designs on Ireland; and what more natural than that he should now be asked to track the movements of certain French emissaries which the Government heard had arrived in Dublin, and were conspiring with the Catholic leaders to throw off the British yoke.541 This task O'Leary, as a staunch loyalist, may have satisfied his conscience in attempting, especially as he must have known that in 1784 the Catholics, as a body, had no treasonable designs, though, doubtless, some few exceptions might be found. In fact, his friend Edmund Burke, a member of the Ministry in 1783, declared, but later on, that 'the Irish Roman Catholics were everywhere loyal, save at certain points where their loyalty had been impaired by contact with Protestants.' Orde,542 while using O'Leary, thought him a knave; yet feigned a readiness to believe his reports. The exhaustive correspondence of Count d'Adhémar, the French ambassador in London, with his Government, is now open to inquirers at the French Foreign Office; but, as it makes no allusion to any French agent in Ireland at this period, the story may be little better than one of the sensational myths so often found in the letters of informers to the Irish executive.543 But, although no documental evidence exists of a French agent having been in Dublin in 1784, it is certain that five years later, i. e. in 1789, one Bancroft, an American by birth, was sent on a secret mission from France to Ireland.544

We hear of no important arrests during the troubled period that O'Leary is said to have been set in motion; but the Habeas Corpus Act had not been suspended since 1779, and was not until 1794 that Pitt renewed the suspension.

In analysing O'Leary's life and judging his conduct, it is not fair to ignore any remark of his tending to exculpate; but, if panegyrics are desired, the reader should consult the memoirs by England, Buckley and some others. Almost O'Leary's last public performance appeared in 1800: 'An Address to the Lords of Parliament, with an account of Sir H. Mildmay's Bill relative to Nuns.'

His loyalty was not [he said] the effect of necessity or timeserving policy, for in France, where the Penal Laws of England drove him for education, and where the Catholics of Ireland had Seminaries and Convents with full admission to all the degrees of her universities, I resisted every solicitation to enlist any of the subjects of these kingdoms in the French King's service, though I had then every opportunity of being appointed to superintend prisons and hospitals during the wars. It was my interest to recommend myself to the favour of people in power, and consequently more my interest to become more a courtier than a moralist. St. Paul calls God to witness when he asserts the truth: I can do the same when I assert that conscience was the rule of my conduct.545

This is further useful in showing that O'Leary was no admirer of the French king, and now that he was a pensioner of England would hardly object to discover the reported French agents in Dublin, who, with Napper Tandy, are said to have 'drank on their knees' the toast of 'Louis of France.'

The latter story – told by the Viceroy, Rutland, in his letter to Sydney – bears improbability on its face. It seems strange that Tandy and his party, who not long after were Red Republicans and the allies of Carnot and Hoche, would drink the health of Louis XVI. on their knees.546 They were principally Protestants; and John O'Connell, in the Life of his father, says that Sheares shocked the future Liberator by exultantly displaying a handkerchief soaked in the French king's blood.

I suspect that when O'Leary returned from making, in September 1784, the inquiries which he is assumed to have done, his report was something in the spirit of Canning's knife-grinder: 'Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir;' and that Orde concluded O'Leary himself was in the plot. On October 17, Orde writes to Nepean, alluding to some rumour about our friar which is not stated. 'Del Campo's connection with O'Leary – or rather O'Leary's with him – may have given rise to all the report; but, after all, I think it right to be very watchful over the priest, and wish you to be so over the Minister. They are all of them designing knaves.'

Thus it appears that in little more than a fortnight after O'Leary is supposed to have begun to spy, Orde was far from satisfied with him.

CHAPTER XVI

ARTHUR O'LEARY IN LONDON

It is to be regretted that the State Paper naming 'O'Leary and Del Campo' should be couched in words so brief and cautious. Mr. Lecky offers no explanation of it. Not only are we uninformed as to the nature of the 'Report;' but we are left to guess who Del Campo was. One thing is evident: Dublin Castle and the Home Office put their heads together, shook them mysteriously, and then urged extreme caution in dealing with knaves. Books of biographic reference make no mention of Del Campo's name; but it is quite clear from Cumberland's memoirs that Del Campo was the Spanish minister, next in authority to Florida Blanca.

In the year 1780 [writes Cumberland], and about the time of Rodney's capture of the Caracca fleet, I had opportunities of discovering through a secret channel of intelligence many things passing, and some concerting, between the confidential agents of France and Spain (particularly the latter) resident in this country, and in private correspondence with the enemies of it. Of these communications I made that use which my duty dictated and to my judgment seemed advisable. By these, in the course of their progress, a prospect was opened of a secret negotiation with the Minister Florida Blanca, to which I was personally committed, and of course could not decline the undertaking it.547

While the American War still raged, and hostilities from France and Spain continued to threaten, Richard Cumberland, son of a bishop and the secretary of a former viceroy, started on his secret mission to the courts of Lisbon and Madrid, bearing from England letters of accreditation, quite a boxful of instructions, and accompanied by his wife and daughters 'on the pretence of travelling into Italy upon a passport through the Spanish dominions.' Cumberland's interviews with Del Campo are described, and for a time all went well; but, owing to terrible rumours as regards the 'No Popery' riots in London, which now broke out, led by Lord George Gordon, President of the Protestant Association, the treaty548 collapsed; Del Campo refused to appear; Cumberland was recalled, and the Government who sent him out withheld the repayment of 5,000l., the amount of expenses he had incurred.

It may be said that Orde's want of confidence in O'Leary arose, not because he had furnished so little secret information, but because of some whisper that the Spanish Minister had had pourparlers with him. It would be strange if O'Leary, who in 1779 wrote powerfully against the hostile designs of Spain, should be suspected, within the next few years, of abetting them. The rumour, which Mr. Lecky says is not stated, may have been merely that O'Leary, the only Catholic writer of intrepidity at that day, had been asked by Del Campo, who soon after became resident Spanish minister in London, and was himself of English extraction,549 to write an exposure of the 'No Popery Riots' and their leaders – incidents which Spain, now more than ever defiant in its pose, could not fail to turn to political account.

A postscript to O'Leary's 'Miscellaneous Tracts' mentions that he had been requested to give a history of the London riots. 'I promised to undertake the task,' he writes, 'and began to digest my materials; but afterwards reflecting that the duty of the historian bound me to arraign at the impartial tribunal of truth both men and actions – unmask the leading characters,' &c… he then came to 'consider my own state exposed in consequence of the Penal Laws to the insult of every ruffian, and, comparing the defenceless situation of the priest with the duty of the historian, I dropped the attempt.'

These tumults of 1780 lit a flame which did not die out even with the expiring century. During their height most of the Roman Catholic chapels of London, especially those of the foreign embassies, were gutted and burnt. Papists' houses were attacked, as well as the houses of all persons known to favour them. For days and nights the mob gained an almost complete mastery of London, which is described as like a city taken by storm. The venerable Bishop Challoner was roused from his sleep and urged to fly; he died soon after of palsy, the effects of the shock. No man's life was safe who did not mount the badge of riot, a blue cockade; windows displayed flags of the same colour; while the watchword 'No Popery' was prudentially inscribed. Broadsides were circulated under the auspices of Lord George Gordon – the unholy high priest of the holocaust – in which Englishmen were exhorted to remember 'the bloody tyranny and persecuting plots exercised on Protestants by Rome' – the Spanish Armada, of course, included. Society seemed falling to pieces. From Tyburn to Whitechapel the highway presented a frontage of mourning. Every shop was closed. Mr. Archer, a priest, deposed in court that he had paid 40l. to be allowed to pass through Fleet Street, and a hackney coachman refused 10l. to drive a papist to Hampstead. The mob, flushed with victory, now sought allies in the prisons. Newgate, then recently rebuilt at a cost of 150,000l., was attacked with fury; its great gates fell before them like frail partitions; 500 felons, including those set free from Clerkenwell, were let loose upon the burning city, leaving behind them in flames, not the gaol only, but the whole street.550 It seemed a second 1666, and the famous fall of the Bastile, nine years later, was but the mere echo.