Secret Service Under Pitt

In fact, as Mr. Froude shows, he was in mortal terror of the assassin's knife. Conlan's sworn information, describing the previous doings of Teeling and Turner in Ireland, mentions how Teeling, Corcoran, and Byrne had a password for putting informers out of the way. Whenever one was detected he was sent to some United Irishman with the password, 'Do you know Ormond Steel?' 'But,' adds Conlan – laying 'the flattering unction to his soul' – 'there never was occasion for this.'729 Turner's treachery was of enormous magnitude, and most momentous in its results. Once a man of indomitable courage, conscience made him an arrant coward in the end.

'I feared,' writes the betrayer to Lord Downshire, 'lest Government might not choose to ratify our contract, and, being in their power, would give me my choice either to come forward as evidence or suffer martyrdom myself. Having no taste for an exit of this kind, I set out and arrived here safe.'730

His dread of 'Ormond Steel' is further proved by Portland's words in reply to the Viceroy Camden, who vainly begged that he might come over to Dublin – 'he is convinced he would go to utter destruction.'731

Speaking of Napper Tandy, Mr. Froude says of the veiled informer that he 'had been naturally intimate with the other Irish refugees.'732

Tandy, in the chapter devoted to him, tells how he and three other Irish refugees had been invited at Hamburg by 'T.' to sup, and were betrayed. Watty Cox, a sound authority on such points, broadly states in the 'Irish Magazine' for January 1809, p. 34, that Tandy and his comrades were 'betrayed by Turner.'

'He had come to England to sell his knowledge to Pitt,' says Mr. Froude.

It will be seen that the price paid to Samuel Turner is officially reported in Dublin Castle. For centuries it had been the custom for England to charge her Pension List on the Irish Establishment. Irish spies and informers are generally of a low type. Reynolds – perhaps the most important of them – could not spell, as his letters, placed in our hands by Sir W. Cope, show. The same remark applies to the correspondence of other informers printed by Dr. Madden. The letters of Mr. Froude's spy are those of an educated man, and show that he corresponded and conversed in French. Samuel Turner was well qualified for all this and more, having graduated in the University of Dublin.733

These are but a few of the reasons which satisfied me that the betrayer described by Mr. Froude was Samuel Turner. I arrived at my conclusions slowly – according as certain facts, 'far between,' presented themselves in the field of research. But the reader, if he cares to trace the career of this man, and does not object to meet a repetition or two, will find an array of circumstantial evidence amounting to moral demonstration. It may be added that documental proof finally came to crown these researches.

GENERAL NAPPER TANDY

(See chap. viii. ante.)

The late Mr. Allingham, of Ballyshannon – father of William Allingham the poet – in one of his last letters, dated April 25, 1866, recalls a strange incident. 'Should you treat of the stirring period of 1798,' he writes, 'perhaps the following little fact may be acceptable. Some forty years ago I chanced to be on a visit at the hospitable residence of the late N. Foster, Esq., in the Rosses;734 he told me of J. Napper Tandy having put in to the Rosses, in the year 1798, with a French ship of war, the "Anacréon," and how he at once hoisted an Irish flag emblazoned with the words "Erin go Bragh." Tandy was then a general in the French service. He had with him, for distribution, a sheaf of proclamations, addressed to the Irish nation; they had been printed in France, and he left several copies at Mr. Foster's. I got Miss Grace Foster to take an exact copy of the strange document, and which now I send you.

'The French General Rey also had a grandiloquent proclamation with him, beginning "The soldiers of the Great Nation have landed on your coast, well supplied with arms and ammunition of all kinds, with artillery worked by those who have spread terror amongst the ranks of the best troops in Europe, headed by French officers; they come to break your fetters, and restore you to the blessings of liberty. James Napper Tandy is at their head; he has sworn to lead them on to victory or die. Brave Irishmen! the friends of liberty have left their native soil to assist you in re-conquering [sic] your rights; they will brave all dangers, and glory at the sublime idea of cementing your happiness with their blood."735

'Napper Tandy had a large number of saddles and cavalry appointments on board the French ship of war, but he could not procure any horses in the Rosses. So Mrs. Foster said to him, "I fear, General, you will not be able to put the saddle on the right horse!" N. Tandy asked Mr. Foster: "What news?" to which Foster replied that a part of the French troops had landed at Killala, and, after winning the battle of Castlebar, had been finally compelled, near Longford, to capitulate to Lord Cornwallis. Napper Tandy seemed to doubt this intelligence, and proceeded to take forcible possession of the Rutland post-office, which was kept by Mr. Foster's sister. He opened the newspapers, and, to his dismay, found that all was over with the expedition. His descent on Rutland took place September 16, 1798. Tandy, when embarking from the Island for France, wrote an official letter, signed and sealed, with a view to exonerate Foster from blame for not having despatched his mail-bags. Tandy testified that, being in temporary want of accommodation, he was obliged to put "citizen Foster under requisition," and place sentinels around the island. He and his officers paid for everything they took, including two pigs and a cow. General Rey, when leaving, removed a gold ring from his finger and presented it to Mrs. Foster, as a token of fraternity. Tandy not only discharged every obligation, but discharged a cannon as a farewell note. Foster was a staunch loyalist, and ere the "Anacréon" was under way he despatched two expresses, one to Letterkenny, in hopes that the Lough Swilly fleet would intercept them. This was not so easy, for Tandy told Foster they had met several English cruisers en route, but had outsailed them all. The "Anacréon" was equally successful on its return voyage, captured two English ships near the Orkneys, after a stiff engagement, and at last landed Tandy and his A.D.C.s in Norway.'

A copy of Tandy's letter, deliberately penned when leaving Rutland, appears in the appendix to Musgrave's 'Rebellion,' and seems not quite consistent with the statement in the Castlereagh Papers that he got so drunk on the island he had to be carried to the ship.736 But his grief was so poignant on finding his dearest hopes frustrated that it would not be unnatural, in days when hard drinking was the fashion, if the amateur French general had recourse to eau-de-vie. How he was arrested on neutral territory, contrary to the law of nations, subjected to cruel suffering, and sentenced to death, a previous chapter tells.

Fuller inquiry into the career of this quondam merchant of Dublin finds it curiously interwoven with the history of Europe and his fate influential in its affairs. In 1793 Holland was the scene of disaster to the Duke of York; and his second campaign to that country in 1799 ended in a disadvantageous capitulation. Previously he had sent General Don into the interior of Holland to foment among the natives an insurrection against French rule. Don was seized as a spy and threatened with death for seeking to corrupt an enemy which England had failed to conquer in the field.737 He was, however, safely restored during the negotiations of 1799, and Plowden makes the statement, as one generally believed, that in the Helder convention there was a secret article for restoring to liberty Tandy and Blackwell, in return for the delivery of Don, who, by the laws of war, had incurred the penalty of death. The Paris journals of October 1799 said that the Duke's capitulation contains some private articles which his Royal Highness did not wish to submit to the consideration of the coffee-houses in London.

Prolonged delay attended the liberation of Tandy. Brune bitterly complained of it in the Council of Five Hundred; and then it was that Buonaparte branded, as an attack upon the rights of nations and a crime against humanity, the surrender, by Hamburg to England, of Tandy, Blackwell, Morres, and Corbet.

The painful details already given as regards the severity of their imprisonment it is pleasant to relieve by some notice of the conduct of one official who, superior in gentlemanly instinct to others of higher rank, treated Tandy and his companions with a courteous consideration most acceptable to men whose hearts ached from recent persecution. This letter – unknown to Mr. Ross, the editor of the 'Cornwallis Papers' – was addressed, we believe, to a near kinsman of that writer.

To Mr. Ross, the King's Messenger'Dublin: November 18, 1799 —in prison.

'Sir, – We find ourselves at a loss to know how we best can express our acknowledgments for the very polite, gentlemanly, and philosophic manner in which you have uniformly behaved towards us, ever since the period of our first getting under your care at Sheerness, during our subsequent stay in London, upon the whole of our journey through England, and until our arrival here; a conduct the peculiar inheritance of a man of sense, education, and honour; and which, upon all occasions in life, must leave with the feeling mind a pleasing and everlasting impression.

'All that we, sir, on our parts, can offer (and request your acceptance of as a just tribute to your merit) is our sincerest wishes for your happiness and future welfare – and to all of our fellow-citizens whom the casualties of the day may hereafter chance to place in similar circumstances with us, we wish from our hearts the superior good fortune of falling into the hands of an officer who, knowing his duty like Mr. Ross, like him also executes it in a manner that honours humanity – an idea, that, with us, while drawing a comparison between such-like conduct as we now speak of, and that which we but very recently experienced in a foreign country, restores to its pristine, but nearly lost worth, in our minds, the invaluable weight of social law, and of all generous and liberal-minded converse betwixt man and man.'

The following signatures are affixed:

'James Napper Tandy.Colonel Blackwell.Harvey M. Morres.George Peters.'

The interest which continued to attach to Tandy's memory long after his death, even in quarters not likely to evince sympathy, is curiously shown in the following extract from a letter addressed in 1846 by Robert Shaw Worthington, B.L., to O'Connell, soliciting his patronage with the Whig Government: 'My Liberal opinions I inherit from my father, who, strange as it may appear, was Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1795.738 His liberal opinions did not serve him in those days; he was a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, and in the year 1809, at a private dinner-party at the house of Mr. Farrell, Blackhall Street, my father proposed the memory of Napper Tandy.739 One of the company (the perfidious name was Fanning) reported the circumstance next day at the Castle; my father received a letter from the Chief Secretary (the present Duke of Wellington) calling upon him to disprove the charge; but, being unable to do so, he was dismissed from his office of Dublin Police Magistrate, the salary of which was 500l. per annum.'740

'O'

The letters of secret information in the 'Castlereagh Papers,' though assumed by most readers to come from the one source, are divided between two spies. No successful attempt has been hitherto made to identify the writers. The result of Dr. Madden's inquiry went no further than to show that the letters were penned, not by spies of a low type, but by gentlemen of high standing.741 It was then that I sought to draw aside their masks. 'Downshire's friend' (Turner) was traced more easily than a correspondent of the Home Office, London, whose initial 'O' is dropped once only by Wickham. The spy who contrived to accompany General Tandy's staff in the expedition to Ireland in 1798 has left us a curious account of what passed on board the 'Anacréon'742 during their brief visit to Ireland. The perilous character of his enterprise was quite as striking as Tandy's descent on Donegal and escape from the English fleet. Wickham confides to Castlereagh merely the initial letter of this spy's name.743 The written statement from 'O' is a curious document, and one which has been more than once quoted by historians. An old note-book of mine contains the following: – 'I have long and vainly tried to discover this man; but to Dr. Madden it will be at least satisfactory to know that "O" can never have taken any prominent part in the councils of the United Irishmen, and his name, even if discovered, would not be a familiar one. He can never have been in the Executive Directory, or on any of the baronial committees. He mentions incidentally that he has been but once in Ireland for eight years.'

Some readers fancied that the spy 'O' who accompanied Tandy was O'Herne,744 O'Finn,745 Ormby,746 O'Mealy,747 O'Hara,748 O'Neill,749

O'Connor,750 or O'Keon751; my own theory was that 'O' stood for some man whose name would prove to be Orr. At p. 309, vol. i., of the 'Castlereagh Papers,' in a report of the French fleet preparing to invade Ireland, a list is given of the Irish agents at Brest: 'Orr, who accompanied Murphy, was still at Paris.752 Did not seem to like going.' The letter of 'O,' describing the crew on board the 'Anacréon' in its expedition to Ireland, mentions 'Murphy … and myself' (p. 407).

'O,' in his secret letter dated 1798, speaks of having been in Trinity College, Dublin, nine years before. An 'Orr' graduated as B.A. in 1789, but this proved not much. His letter shows (pp. 406-10) that he had the confidence both of the French Directory, and of the Irish envoys in France. Another anonymous letter of secret information from Paris (Castlereagh, ii. 2-7) is undoubtedly Turner's. He speaks of Orr and Murphy as together; the first as a 'relation of him that was hanged,' and 'Murphy as having been lately expelled Dublin College,' and both, he adds, were applying for passports at Altona (p. 6). John Murphy made a deposition753 at Bow Street, dated November 2, 1798, in which he names George Orr and himself, proceeding to the Hague, thence to Paris, and afterwards joining Tandy's expedition, when Murphy became secretary to the General. It is curious to find Turner754 and Orr – each ignorant of the treachery of the other – reporting their movements to the Secretary of State.755

'By direction of the Duke of Portland,' writes Wickham to Lord Castlereagh, 'I send for the information of the Lord Lieutenant the enclosed extract from some very important communications that have been made to his Grace by a person of the name of O – .'

In this letter, describing Tandy's descent on Ireland, the relations between him and the French Directory are minutely detailed, with an account of the equipment of the expedition, and studies of the officers on board and their antecedents.756 It is not unlikely that Orr and Murphy, especially the latter, had been at first zealous adherents of the movement headed by Lord Edward and Tone; but that after the death of these leaders and the consignment of the Rebel Directory to dungeons they considered their own position as materially changed.

When Buonaparte broke faith with Addis Emmet, and sent his legions to the Pyramids of Egypt, instead of encamping them among the Round Towers of Ireland, Orr then sought to fill his purse, and console a baulked ambition, by extracting gold from Pitt: 'To show how the finances of France are,' he writes regarding Tandy's expedition, 'and how they meant to make their Irish friends pay their expenses, three generals went out on that little expedition; and all the money they could muster among them was about thirty louis d'or. One of them, to my own certain knowledge, had but five guineas in all.'757

Again, in a subsequent letter, he writes: 'The grand object of the French is, as they term it themselves, London. Delenda (sic) Carthago is their particular end; once in England, they think they would speedily indemnify themselves for all their expenses and recruit their ruined finances.'758

England, unlike France, could pay lavishly, and it would be curious to know if Orr's increasing facilities for acquiring valuable information, according as Napoleon's power grew, were acknowledged by the '5,000l., and not more than 20,000l. within the year,' which Wellington in 1808 thought fair fees for the unnamed informer who sent secret news from France – a man who, it is added, had been paid at this rate by Pitt.759

Orr continued long after to discharge in France the perilous rôle of a vigilant spy, and, as such, was a small thorn in Napoleon's side. The Pelham MSS. contain a long letter signed 'G. O.' (33-112, folio 205), further described in a separate note as 'George Orr,' and beginning – 'I much fear that the French have outgeneraled the British Government with respect to what is to go forward in the West Indies.' The date would be about 1802, but it is incorrectly placed with papers of 1807. This is the only report from Orr preserved by Pelham. With complicated precautions of secrecy it is addressed 'C. W. F., Esq.', and by this mysterious official passed on to Pelham for perusal. These initials are often met in the State Papers, both of England and Ireland; and future inquirers have a right to know something of the man who played no unimportant part during an eventful period of our history. 'Cornwallis' and 'Castlereagh' furnish no note on this point; the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' that great storehouse of facts, knows him not. At last, in 'Three Thousand Contemporary Public Characters,' published by Whittaker in 1825, I found the following notice of a career which deserves more permanent record.

'SIR CHARLES WILLIAM FLINT

Was born in Scotland in 1775; and, after having finished his studies at Edinburgh, was taken, in 1793, by Lord Grenville, into the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In 1796 Lord Grenville sent him as confidential secretary with Mr. Wickham, then going minister to Switzerland: with that gentleman Mr. Flint entered into a close intimacy. He was recalled in 1797, and again employed in the Foreign Office. Next year the Alien Bill passed, and Lord Grenville recommended Mr. Flint to the Duke of Portland, as a fit person to put it in execution; and his Grace, who was then Home Secretary, appointed him Superintendent of Aliens. In this situation he was very active, and is said to have rendered essential service to many of the Royalist emigrants.760 When Pichegru returned from Cayenne, he confided to Mr. Flint those plans which, in the end, brought on his destruction. In 1800 the Duke of Portland granted Mr. Flint leave of absence, and he was sent as secretary of legation to Mr. Wickham, then envoy to the allied armies in Germany. After witnessing the campaigns in Bavaria and Austria, he returned to England, where he was employed until 1802, and was then sent to the sister kingdom as Under-Secretary of State in Ireland. He is now [1826] agent, in London, of the Irish Department. In 1812 he received the honour of knighthood.'

It may be added that the Irish 'S. S. Money Book' records a number of payments in 1803 by Flint to minor informers, including Murphy, the colleague of George Orr. The Wellington Correspondence makes frequent reference to Flint; but readers are left without any information as to who this 'very clever fellow' was – to quote the Duke's own words. (v., p. 643).

ROBERT AND ROGER O'CONNOR

The unscrupulosity with which spying was practised in the days of 'the First Gentleman in Europe' is not pleasant to contemplate. I find Robert O'Connor, nephew of Lord Longueville, betraying his own brother!

Pelham writes to Brigadier-General Coote on May 27, 1797: —

'I have received at different times very important information from Mr. Robert O'Connor, and indeed he was the first person who gave me information against his brother.

'I hear that you have excellent spies, and I expect great success from your exertions.'

General Eyre Coote writes ('Pelham MSS.' July 24, 1797): —

'I enclose you strong information against Roger O'Connor just received from Robert. It is very curious that one brother should be so inveterate against the other. I, however, am of opinion that Roger O'Connor has been the principal in all the treasonable practices in this part of the country.'

Roger, of whose adventurous feats volumes might be written, was noted more for backsliding than backbone. Pelham, in a letter to Coote, dated Phœnix Park, July 25, 1797, says: —

'He [Roger] declares himself to be disposed to give every information, and to render every service to the King's Government, in his power.'

No circles, however cultured, were untainted by the spy. Dr. Madden gives a very ugly picture of Sir Jonah Barrington revealing at Dublin Castle the seditious talk that he heard at Lady Colclough's dinner-table, and how Grogan, Colclough, and Harvey, men of rank and fortune, who were present, died on the gallows ere the year expired.761

Mr. Pelham's Papers afford curious glimpses of social life in Ireland as presented by his correspondents. A priest, who resided near Collon in the county Louth, is described as having dined at a squire's house in the neighbourhood,762 and a paper having fallen out of his pocket, 'curiosity tempted some of the gentlemen to read it. A copy of it was brought to England by Mr. William Beaufort, son of the Rev. Dr. Beaufort, rector of Collon, and Mr. Young, his connection, furnished a copy.' The paper, in point of fact, embodied merely secret tenets of his religious rule.

ARTHUR O'CONNOR

On his way to Fort George prison, in Scotland, O'Connor distributed some curious lines, which at first passed as an exemplary effusion, but, on being more closely scanned, they developed rebel sentiments. O'Connor intended that the lines of the second verse should be read after the corresponding lines in the first. The first lines of the two verses constituted the great sentiment which O'Connor liked to emphasise.

The pomp of courts, and pride of kings,I prize above all earthly things;I love my country, but the KingAbove all men his praise I sing;The royal banners are display'd,And may success the standard aid.I fain would banish far from henceThe 'Rights of Man' and common sense;Confusion to his odious reign,That foe to princes, Thomas Paine!Defeat and ruin seize the causeOf France, its liberties, and laws!

LADY MOIRA AND TODD JONES

(Vide chap. xii. p. 156.)

An unpublished letter, addressed to John Philpot Curran, though anonymous, bears internal evidence to show that the writer was Lady Moira, whose daughter, Selina, had married Lord Granard. In those days it was not unusual to intercept and read letters at the post-office, and to this circumstance is doubtless due the great caution with which the noble writer describes her relations with Todd Jones. He was then in custody, and Lady Moira's great object was to exculpate him as well as herself, for 'Cæsar's wife should be above suspicion.' Enough has been already said to indicate the spy763 who kept his eye on Moira House and the movements of Todd Jones.

To John Philpot Curran, K.C'Castle Forbes: August 13, 1803.

'Read, reflect, and do not answer. Time will unfold the intentions. But it is common prudence to watch knaves, who are playing the fool, and who may not chance to consider that others, from having hearkened to the precept to be, although "innocent as doves," induced to adopt somewhat of the "wisdom of the serpent," will scrutinise their measures. To state the case, Mr. Todd Jones is the son of a physician, who in the year 1752 I formed the acquaintance of, and attendant on the family into which I entered by marriage; he was a sensible well-informed man, and having studied abroad his profession at the same college with Doctor Aberside, a person known to Lord Huntingdon and me; as a friend to that medical poet, he became an intimate acquaintance of mine; and having for thirty years and upwards exercised his Æsculapian skill with such success as to have recovered me from dangerous fevers, and also never letting a single patient die in his hands beneath my roof, he became the intimate friend of the family, and his son was the companion of my sons in his early youth, and an inmate like to a relation till my sons went into the world, and since then he has regarded me with a sort of filial respect and attention, and I have shown to him the return of maternal kindness and goodwill. However, his residence for many years past being in England and Wales, has confined our intercourse to correspondence; now and then a letter from me in answer to many of his, which, as he excels in letter-writing, I always received his letters as real sources of amusement, and of information on the subject they transmitted, which usually had reference to antiquities.764 I had not seen him for several years when he came over a twelvemonth ago, to settle some pecuniary affairs with Lord Downshire's executors or agents, having sold his estates as an annuity during his life; and a sum of money, which money was to be kept for a space of time in his lordship's hands, lest any claim should be made on the estate. I saw him frequently whilst he was in Dublin, which was during that space of time that Sir Richard Musgrave and he quarrelled and at length fought. He left Dublin before I quitted it, and came here in the first week of last October. He wrote to me lately from the Lake of Killarney giving me a description of the lake and its odd traditions, mentioning his return to Dublin in a month, and from whence he was to return to Wales. I then heard from general report that he was arrested and in Cork jail, which I imputed to Sir Richard Musgrave's malice.765 For as to any treasonable practices, Jones's indolence as well as his turn of thinking and whimsical pursuits were a conviction to me that he was neither inclined to be, or capable of being, a conspirator. However, in the course of last week I was informed from Moira House that a person, by warrant from the Castle, had come to search for a trunk in consequence of their having received intelligence that Mr. Todd Jones had sent off a trunk directed to me at Moira House. My servants were examined, my house and storerooms explored, but not any such trunk had arrived nor been heard of, and orders were left that when it did, where it was to be sent to. Some English letters that were directed to him at my house were conveyed to Mr. Marsden.766 They were opened to show their contents. One was from a Mr. Maddox, who, I think, is married to Lord Craven's sister767 (better known by being the daughter of the Margravine); another from a young man going to India, and not conveying a trace of injury to him. I wrote to a person who was employed to execute the warrant that I could not be blind to the affront intended to be cast upon me; that, if such intimation had been given of a trunk then sent, the person that communicated the intelligence was able and would certainly inform by what coach it went, and consequently they might have had it seized when Mr. Jones was arrested. That time had now sufficiently elapsed to have had another key made for the trunk and to place in it whatever papers, &c., might be reckoned convenient. That if any trunk did come, the lock and the hinges should be well examined, before credible witnesses, before it went out of my house; and that I neither was awed, nor capable of being frightened, by so mean and paltry a contrivance. Thus they had taken up McCan,768 but, I find, have liberated him, and given out that, as he was connected with Mr. Grattan, it was to get papers of Mr. Grattan's into their hands that he was arrested for that purpose; now, whether this report is to blacken the character of the famous ex-senator, or with further views, I do not decide. In respect to the insult I have met with, it is aimed against Lord Moira through me. It is, however, to me a much blacker and more artful attempt against him, in which high and mighty ones were blended when too many cooks spoiled the broth. The former plot, however, has made me alert, and awakened all my expectations respecting possible malevolence. But my spirit, like the palm-tree, rises by the pressure of oppressive indignity. My eyes are so weak that I fear you will not be able to decipher this hasty scrawl. How absurdly are they acting! Lady G —769 does not know that I write this. It is not in my nature to worry people with disagreeable humours, nor to humiliate myself by complaints, though I like to guard against probable evils, in which case I shall, sir, depend upon your aid if it comes to publicity.'