Secret Service Under Pitt

What Cumberland himself thought of his colleague is curious to see. We are told that 'the high-sounding titles and dignities showered upon Dr. Hussey by the Court of Spain outweighed in his balance English guineas;' that 'in his heart he was as high a priest as à Becket, and as stiff a Catholic as ever kissed the cross;' but yet 'had left behind him in his coffin at La Trappe no one passion native or ingrafted that belonged to him when he entered it.' So clear-sighted a man as Hussey could not fail to see the secret thoughts of Cumberland, or to have diagnosed, in his turn, the jaundiced retina through which he was viewed; for Cumberland complains of 'his singular, sudden, and capricious conduct to the author and his family, of which he was an inmate.'617 Hussey had demanded his passports to return to England; but on Cumberland's remonstrance paused, and cancelled a letter he had addressed to the English Secretary of State asking leave to return. Mystery covers much of this mission to Spain, for Cumberland says, 'I will reveal no more than I am in honour and strict conscience warranted to make public. For twenty years I have been silent, making no appeals at any time but to my official employers, who were pledged to do me justice.'618

Mr. Froude tells us that Dr. Hussey619 was in the confidence of Dundas and Portland, and had received favours from them. Both were prominent statesmen in the Cabinet of Pitt, and both eventually turned against Hussey. Dr. Hussey is described as Chaplain to his Catholic Majesty of Spain, and Rector of the Church of the Spanish Embassy in London. He evidently knew something of O'Leary not revealed to the world.

At this point it may be well to open once more the pamphlet privately printed – 'A Narrative of the Misunderstanding between the Rev. Arthur O'Leary and the Rev. Mr. Hussey.' Its purport, O'Leary says, is to remove the bad impressions which a late report, one which impugned his morality, might have made on some Catholic families, and the reader is requested either to burn the brochure, or erase altogether the name of Mr. Hussey. The latter is just the man to have muttered 'qui s'excuse s'accuse' as he read the following; and O'Leary's remark serves to show that Hussey suspected he had deeper motives.

The desire of co-operating in the work of the ministry [writes O'Leary] was my only inducement for associating with Mr. [Hussey] in the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel. He soon began to throw some obstacles in my way – but in the most insulting and contemptuous manner. The old clerk of his vestry, who retails among the common people all the stories he hears from his employer, was commissioned by him to direct me in the choice of my theme [in the pulpit].620

In 1780, the Spanish ambassador to London was, we learn, 'Count Fernan Nunez, who had committed himself to a conversation from which Mr. Hussey drew very promising expectations.'621 But in 1789 we find him succeeded by no less a person than the Marquis del Campo, whose previous attitude, as sub-Premier of Spain, had filled the British Cabinet with alarm.622 Orde, writing to Nepean, of the Home Office, five years before, tells him to be very watchful over this minister; and O'Leary's friend, Plowden, whatever he means by it, says that it was only after giving repeated proofs that the secret conditions had been complied with, that O'Leary received a large arrear of his pension.

'A Narrative of the Misunderstanding' between O'Leary and Hussey shows that the appointment of the former as Hussey's colleague was forced upon the latter, and that Hussey distrusted and despised him, confirming the old adage, two of a trade never agree. O'Leary complains that on Good Friday, in presence of a crowded congregation numbering many Protestants, Hussey sent

one of the boys who attend the altar, twice into the pulpit to interrupt me in the most pathetic part of my discourse by chucking the sleeves of my surplice and ordering me to come down under pretence that the ceremonies of the day were too long. Thus a scene was exhibited of which neither the congregation nor myself had ever been spectators before.

And again: —

By the manner in which he concerted his plans, in waiting until the eve of the days on which I was to appear in public, and then sending me, on a sudden, verbal messages by his clerk, and afterwards such insulting notes as no Prelate would send to the meanest clergyman in his diocese, one would be apt to imagine that he played the part of a skilful general, who amuses an enemy the better to decoy him unprepared into an ambuscade.

I was surprised at such peremptory mandates from a man who, at most, could pretend but to an equality… But his view was, either to disgust me with the chapel, or to commit me with the public, in thus thwarting me in the exercise of my functions.

O'Leary was the lion of the hour; his portrait looked out from the windows of Bond Street and Piccadilly, surrounded by soul-stirring sentiments culled from his published books.623 There it was that Dr. Hussey sought to reduce his prestige, which he considered overcharged, and to destroy the confidence and respect usually manifested in his regard. It is certain that he felt as uncomfortable in his society as he had ever done in the hair shirt and enforced reserve of La Trappe. He did not brand O'Leary as a spy; he could not do so without offending the Government; but he raised what lawyers call 'a false issue.' Indeed O'Leary charges the doctor, on strong circumstantial evidence, with having supplied to the newspapers paragraphs in which an unworthy innuendo is advanced, and one by no means calculated to exalt the friar's reputation for asceticism: 'In proportion as the breach widened between us, the paragraphs rose in a climax to a greater degree of asperity.'624

Many curious things transpire in this brochure, and amongst them the following: 'I got the very singular information,' writes O'Leary, 'that some years before, in a boarding school at Hampstead, then under his (Hussey's) direction, he took my picture out of a frame, tore it in several pieces, and cast it away with disdain, saying, "One would imagine he is founder of this establishment."'625 Here again I submit that Dr. Hussey raised a false issue, and his dislike to O'Leary, as evidenced by this strong proceeding, must have had deeper grounds than the paltry plea assigned.

When this affair relative to the picture happened [writes O'Leary] I was in Ireland, in the full bloom of my reputation,626 which I would have preserved unfaded to the last moment of my existence, had it not spread on the lips of a man to whom I cannot apply the Italian proverb, Whatever your mouth touches, it heals: 'La vostra bocca sana quel die tocca' (p. 14).

Dr. Hussey, as already stated, was in the secrets of the Crown. In 1784 Sydney tells Orde, rightly or wrongly, that O'Leary had consented to furnish private information. In 1789 O'Leary, as we have seen, removed to London and settled down in alarming proximity not only to Hussey, but to the minister of Spain. Hussey's attachment to Spanish interests, Cumberland states, outweighed his devotion to his English patrons, and of course it was highly inconvenient that a man who played fast and loose with both should be domesticated with O'Leary. 'They are all of them designing knaves,' writes Orde, and doubtless he and his colleagues, acting on the coarse prejudice thus expressed, urged the arrangement on the principle of 'set a thief to catch a thief.' The more refined Sydney probably calculated that it would be 'diamond cut diamond' between them.

The effort it must have cost so polished a person as Dr. Hussey to pursue the course ascribed to him may be inferred from the words of Charles Butler: 'He was a man of great genius, of enlightened piety, with manners at once imposing and elegant, and of enchanting conversation: he did not come in contact with many whom he did not subdue: the highest rank often sunk before him.' Cumberland, his companion in the secret mission, describes him as wearing 'a smile seductive; his address was smooth, obsequious, studiously obliging and, at times, glowingly heightened into an impassioned show of friendship and affection. He was quick enough,' he adds, 'in finding out the characters of men.'

O'Leary appealed to Bishop Douglas, and a meeting between the parties took place at his house. The result was a written statement, dated June 21, 1791, that Dr. Hussey never had any crime or immoral conduct to allege against O'Leary, and that he had left the Spanish Ambassador's chapel of his own free will. 'Mr. O'Leary and I have come to a full explanation upon all past misunderstandings, and are both satisfied with the explanation,' writes Dr. Hussey. This paper was certified by Bishops Douglas and Berington627 and by Francis Plowden to be conformable to Dr. Hussey's verbal declaration. The finale was worthy of an ecclesiastic who wished to avoid disedifying the laity by unseemly wrangles. But, privately, Dr. Hussey took means to prevent a recurrence of an incident which greatly annoyed him. The Castlereagh Papers contain a letter to Lord Hobart from Sir J. Cox Hippisley, in which he mentions as having been reported to Rome, 'a very offensive measure of Hussey's in a way so as to have produced a sort of censure on Bishop Douglas of London.' Dr. Hussey, it is stated, had claimed the right, as chaplain to the Spanish mission, of nominating priests to officiate at the Spanish chapel in London independently of Bishop Douglas.628

Frequent reference has been already made to Del Campo. The concluding words of O'Leary's 'Narrative' go on to say: —

I intended to complain in person or to write a severe letter against him to the Marquis del Campo,629 than whom there are few ambassadors630 of a more amiable disposition, or in whose train a chaplain would be more happy. But, expecting never to be disturbed by Mr. [Hussey], after leaving him in the unrivalled possession of his pulpit and controversy, I retired without the slightest murmur. Had I even been treated with that civility to which I was entitled, I would yet have quitted York Street. We were on the eve of a war with Spain, and from my peculiar obligations to my own sovereign, in case of a threatened invasion, I would have returned to Ireland, where, upon a similar occasion, the exertions in the line of my profession had been attended with the happiest results in promoting that loyalty which recommends my Religion and countrymen.

Here O'Leary, though so recently attached to the Spanish embassy, declares himself a partisan, if not a sentinel, in the English interest. It appears that, while officiating at Spanish Place, he lodged in Warwick Street, probably acting as assistant chaplain to the Bavarian embassy as well, and where, as Mrs. Bellamy records, he arrived opportunely, in 1783, to adjust angry difficulties that had arisen in that quarter. Seven years later, although ostensibly pastor of St. Patrick's, Soho, from 1790 to his death, he seems still attached in some way to the Bavarian chapel and embassy, for the preface to his sermon in denunciation of French principles is dated from Warwick Street, though the sermon itself had been preached at St. Patrick's.

In March 1797, O'Leary's desire to retain the favour of Pitt is traceable in the sermon to which reference has just been made. It was preached before a congregation mainly Irish, but embracing also the famous Duchess of Devonshire, and many other great personages.631 Its aim is apparent in the account given of it by the 'Monthly Review' as 'a discourse well adapted to keep alive a high degree of good, warm, Christian hatred of the French, on whom the preacher is very severe, with now and then a stroke of pleasantry, sarcasm and rough wit.' Ireland had been nearly lost to England the previous year by Hoche's expedition to Bantry Bay, but England's unsubsidised allies, the winds, had come to her aid. O'Leary's discourse, occupying fifty pages, was at once issued in pamphlet shape, and reprinted in Dublin.

As has been already observed, O'Leary maintained cordial relations with some men who bore a bad name. Francis Higgins, originally a Newgate felon, became at last a most influential negotiator. Plowden exhibits fully his unpleasant character in the 'Historical Review,' vol. ii. pp. 256-9. 'This man' he says, 'had the address, by coarse flattery and assumed arrogance, to worm himself into the intimacy of several persons of rank and consequence, who demeaned themselves by their obsequiousness to his art, or sold themselves to him. The fact that he died worth 40,000l. is highly illustrative of the system which generated, fostered, and pampered this species of reptile.' Higgins is shown by the 'Cornwallis Papers' to have been a spy on a great scale. There is reason to know that he wormed himself into the confidence of O'Leary; and reason to fear that he turned it to account. The man who began his career by duping a Jesuit and obtaining his co-operation in making an heiress his wife, is not likely to have failed with the genial Franciscan. Higgins early won the friendship of O'Leary; and his bequest 'to my long and faithful friend, the Rev. Arthur O'Leary,' has been already noticed. Fidelity to Shamado seems like fidelity to Mephistopheles!

Higgins liked to utilise profitably the information he acquired from pliable Catholics like Magan.632 Magan was a barrister, and held his head high. It will be remembered that Higgins drew from him the secret of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's hiding place, and for this service alone received 1,000l. in hand, and a pension of 300l. a year. The 'Sham Squire' was not the man to leave money, in 1791, 'to his long and faithful friend,' O'Leary, unless he had made more than the amount by the use of him. Higgins claims O'Leary as a dear friend; the habits of the time warrant the assumption that he was his boon companion too. In the unguarded intimacy of social intercourse, that frank and affable nature is likely to have enriched the Squire's stock of gossip. To what extent that confidence was unfolded can be now but darkly surmised.

O'Leary, if called upon to reveal information to the Government, may have acted with reserve. In softer moments633 much may have leaked out which was not deliberate betrayal.

It is casually stated by Mr. Lecky (vol. vii. p. 211) that Higgins, in enumerating his services to the Government, especially mentions the expense he had incurred in entertaining priests, and other persons of the higher class, for the purpose of obtaining intelligence. In one respect O'Leary's intercourse with Higgins worked for good. The newspaper of the latter, though an organ of Orangeism, advocated the Catholic claims.

In 1796 Dr. Hussey, afterwards Bishop of Waterford, seems to have accepted the post of secret agent, – probably not widely dissimilar from that which the statesmen of 1784 thought O'Leary would not object to discharge. Higgins, writing to Dublin Castle in October 1796, expresses regret that the Government had not been very judicious in their selection of 'an agent for acting on the Catholics.634 'The Roman Catholic body hold a superficial opinion of Dr. Hussey as a courtly priest. If anything was to be effected or wished to be done in the Roman Catholic body, Dr. O'Leary would do more with them in one hour than Hussey in seven years. Of this I am perfectly assured; and O'Leary not ten days since wrote me word he would shortly claim a bed at my house.'

O'Leary had a nephew for whom in a recently published letter he hopes to provide a berth when some friends of his would regain their power. The allusion no doubt is to Fox and the Whigs. This is the nephew noticed by Francis Higgins, in a secret letter to Under-Secretary Cooke eight months before the rebellion. 'At a meeting at Bond's, which Lord Edward Fitzgerald and O'Connor attended, O'Connor read a letter from Fox which had been delivered to him (O'C.) by O'Leary, nephew of Dr. O'Leary, who had arrived from London with despatches from Mr. Fox, and set off in the mail for Cork the same night.' These despatches concurred with the United Irishmen as to the necessity of enforcing a parliamentary reform.635

The bequest of Higgins to O'Leary is noticed as strange by the priest's biographer. Was it meant by way of restitution, seeing that the compact to pay O'Leary had been broken? As in the case of the betrayal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald by Magan, 'Shamado' no doubt pocketed the lion's share.

The will of Francis Higgins goes on to say: 'To Andrew D. O'Kelly, of Piccadilly, London, I leave 300l.: declaring that if I did not know that he, my friend, was in great affluence, I would have freely bequeathed him any property I might be possessed of.' This was the man sometimes known as Count O'Kelly, but more generally as Colonel O'Kelly. An Irish judge who once acted as advising counsel for the legatees of O'Kelly, informs me that the latter was originally a jockey, afterwards a successful blackleg, and was made colonel of a regiment that never existed, simply by the Prince Regent addressing him under that title. This explains a remark made by the 'St. James's Gazette,' that 'his military rank, whatever right he may have had to it, as well as to his Countship, could never obtain for him an entrance to the clubs of his fellow sportsmen.'636 He owned the racehorse 'Eclipse,' and by its aid netted 124,000l.

There has been much discussion by O'Leary's biographers upon Plowden's statement as to the stoppage of the pension, and they vainly try to account for so harsh a step. 'What the reason for this withholding was, it is not easy to ascertain,' writes Father Buckley; but, from an observation in the 'Life of Grattan,' by his son, we surmise that it must have been because O'Leary refused to comply with a request made by the minister, that he would write in the support of the Union.637 Plowden takes care to say that the pension was 'hush money.' Buckley's argument demands, however, a fuller reply.

The agitation against the Union took place chiefly in 1799. O'Leary died in January 1802, soon after the Union became law. Plowden, through whom he got the arrears paid, says that it was 'after a lapse of many years, by importunity and solicitation, and repeated proofs of his having complied with the secret conditions, he received a large arrear.' Therefore there could not have been time for all this in the interval between the Union and O'Leary's death.

But, in point of fact, O'Leary did express himself publicly in favour of the Union. His 'Address to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,' dated from O'Kelly's house, and published in June 1800, mentions that he is 'a great friend to the Union, and reconciled many to it;' and then follows much clever argument in support of the measure. This rather spoils the statement in Grattan's 'Life,' quoted by the biographer of O'Leary as proof that he spurned Pitt's proposal to support the Union.

Colonel O'Kelly [writes Grattan] related that, at the period of the Union, Mr. Pitt offered a considerable pension to O'Leary, provided he would exert himself among his Roman Catholic countrymen, and write in support of the Union; but every application was in vain; O'Leary steadfastly resisted Mr. Pitt's solicitations, and, though poor, he rejected the offers of the minister, and could not be seduced from his allegiance to his country.

The newspapers recording O'Leary's death, in January 1802, say that he died at his lodgings in Great Portland Street, London. When the Union was carried, he probably got his congé from O'Kelly. This man, of bad odour, became a Crœsus in wealth, and eventually a sort of Brummagem Brummell, deep in the confidence of George, Prince of Wales.638 O'Leary is found living with O'Kelly in Mayfair, London, and some of his pamphlets are dated from 46 Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly, the 'Colonel's' house.639 Father Buckley is puzzled 'how our worthy friar contracted so close an intimacy with a man of tastes and habits apparently so little congenial to his own.'640 Perhaps O'Kelly641 was the trustee in whose name O'Leary got a pension on secret conditions. Plowden is the only writer who alludes to the intervention of a trustee. He was very intimate with O'Kelly, and witnessed his will in 1820. The Prince of Wales had already made O'Kelly the medium for paying a secret pension of 300l. a year to Chifney the jockey, in consideration of having designedly lost a race at Epsom.642

I now come to a startling piece of evidence, calculated, almost, to make one exclaim with Luke (xix. 22), 'Out of thy own mouth I judge thee.' The testimony of no less a witness than O'Leary himself claims to be heard.

More than sixty years after the death of O'Leary, Father Buckley was informed in writing, by a relative of the deceased, that O'Leary, when dying, often exclaimed, 'Alas! I have betrayed my poor country.'643 The informant's impression is that O'Leary's remorse was due to having, at the request of Pitt, acquiesced in the Union, notwithstanding that we have 'Colonel' O'Kelly's testimony that 'O'Leary withstood Pitt's solicitations to support that measure.' The Catholic bishops of Ireland cordially encouraged the Union, as the Castlereagh Papers show – and we do not hear that Dr. Troy and his confrères felt much remorse – although, in addition to their support of the Union, they signed resolutions in favour of giving to a Protestant king a veto in the appointment of Catholic prelates.

But the letter of O'Leary's kinsman must not be dismissed without quoting its context. 'Pitt,' he writes, 'promised the emancipation of Catholics and repeal of the Penal Laws, if he (O'Leary) would acquiesce, &c. He did; and so silence was deemed consent. Pitt obtained the Union; then resigned his office; and tricky enough,' adds O'Leary's kinsman, 'said he could not keep his promise.'

This is slightly misleading. Pitt had given a pledge, through Cornwallis, to Archbishop Troy that he would not accept office except on condition that the Catholic claims were to be met. In 1801, owing to the fixed resolve of the King against Emancipation, Pitt went out. His conduct, therefore, was so far straight. When he returned to power in 1804, in complete violation of that compact, O'Leary had been two years dead.

Among O'Leary's admirers there was none more ardent than the late Lord Chancellor O'Hagan, in whose now deserted study still hangs a fine portrait of the friar, inscribed with soul-stirring sentiments on which O'Hagan had long sought to shape his own course. This gentleman could not bring himself to believe Mr. Froude's charge branding O'Leary as a spy, and was unable to rest until he read with his own eyes at the State Paper Office the original correspondence. He returned to Dublin declaring that the imputation was but too well founded. This view, coming from a man of judicial mind, might be taken as conclusive; but yet, one is unwilling to see a great reputation wrecked, without wishing to throw out a hope or a plank by which there is a chance of saving it. This plank is, indeed, a poor one; but, just as a sinking man will grasp even at a straw, humanity suggests that no effort should be left untried to keep the struggler afloat.

The two letters which led Lord O'Hagan to his reluctant conclusion are now before the reader. In neither is the Christian name of O'Leary given; but no other priest of the name obtained contemporary notice. The most damaging bit of evidence is Sydney's letter to Rutland announcing that O'Leary, having been talked to by Nepean, was willing to do what was wished for 100l. a year.644 These letters bear date 1784, eighteen years before O'Leary's death. No letters of his in any way compromising him have been found. The voluminous papers of Pelham, the Irish Secretary, from 1795 to 1798 do not once mention his name. 'I have certainly never seen any reports from O'Leary to the Government,' writes Mr. Lecky in reply to an inquiry; 'and I have quoted in my History every passage I have come across in which he is ever mentioned.'645 These passages are few.

O'Leary was a decided humourist: no one conversing with him felt quite sure when he meant to be serious. In the 'talk' that passed he may have played the diplomat. We have seen how Orde distrusted him. To a request blandly urged in personal converse by a statesman who had already pensioned him, this friar, existing merely by connivance, could not afford to assume attitudes of offended dignity. A glimpse of his precarious position is caught from a speech of Grattan's: —