Secret Service Under Pitt

529

Dean Lee, the grandnephew of Dr. Carpenter, tells me that a smart apostate priest had been deputed to frame the new oath.

530

Annual Register, xxi. 208. See also a fine panegyric on O'Leary, published in the Irish Quarterly Review, vii. 686.

531

This is, no doubt, M. Perrin, of whom some particulars will be found, infra, p. 246.

532

Rutland to Sydney, most secret, Aug. 26, 1784.

533

Rutland's letter, to which this is an answer, seems to have been destroyed.

534

My first idea was that, unless it were possible to trace some of the written reports in which Froude insinuates that O'Leary kept a daily record of espionage, his guilt as a spy must be doubted; but, judging by Sydney's testimony, the guilt seems primâ facie proven, the absence of such letters notwithstanding. O'Leary was not much of a letter-writer: few of any sort appear in his memoirs. The biographers tell us that when producing the great essays by which he acquired fame, his practice was to dictate them while he paced his study. – W. J. F.

535

Life of Rev. A. O'Leary, by Rev. T. R. England, 1822, pp. 234 et seq. In 1788, Orde himself received a pension of 1,700l. a year, charged on the Irish Establishment.

536

Irish Parl. Debates, i. 293.

537

From the word 'sermons' I thought, at one time, that O'Leary was summoned – on the re-appearance of the 'Whiteboys' – to administer the dissuasives which, some years previously, had produced good effect. I have diligently searched newspaper files and contemporary pamphlets, and I can find no letter, or reported sermon, addressed by O'Leary to the Whiteboys in 1784. Two years later, he certainly tried to reason with them. The words 'if we can depend on him,' lead to the inference that O'Leary gave Orde some personal assurance as regards his willingness to make the inquiries desired.

538

Froude's English in Ireland, ii. 413.

539

Musgrave's Memoirs of the Rebellion, pp. 50-1. (Dublin, 1801.)

540

In 1784, the very year that O'Leary consented, as we are told, 'to dive to the bottom of secrets,' a gold medal was presented to him by the Cork Amicable Society. 'Father O'Leary is represented in the habit of his order,' writes England, 'crushing with his right foot the Hydra of religious persecution; with his right hand he opens the gates of the Temple of Concord; whilst with his left he beckons his countrymen (emblematically represented by the harp) to enter the sacred edifice, forgetful of their prejudices against each other. The genius of his country is represented with extended arms over his head, each bearing a crown – the one of Science, the other of Victory.'

541

See Attorney-General Fitzgibbon's account of this scare, infra, p. 245.

542

The Chief Secretary for Ireland.

543

State papers of the present century are a sealed book; but special leave was given to search for such papers as threw light on Shelley's visit to Dublin in 1812. During this inquiry a sight was obtained of a correspondence between Dublin Castle and the Home Office, numbering many hundred sheets, and dealing entirely with the information furnished by a tipsy clerk of Mary's Lane Chapel to the effect that a general massacre of all the Protestants in Ireland had been projected! Myths of this sort have periodically scared the executive. Passing on to 1830, we find, in the Sirr Papers, informations dated December 24 and 27, and disclosing another Popish plot. Among the men alleged to be deep in the conspiracy were the late saintly Bishop Blake, Brother Syrenus, a monk, Thomas Reynolds, afterwards city marshal, W. J. Battersby, and a number of other Catholic laymen. Twenty-three officers —i. e. young priests from Carlow and Maynooth – are alleged to be sent by different coaches to various parts of Ireland, and all charged with secret missions of a most formidable character!

544

Lecky, Hist. of England, vi. 537.

545

London, printed; Dublin, reprinted by H. Fitzpatrick, 1800. O'Leary seems to have had a pension when in France. 'I resisted the solicitations,' he adds, 'and ran the risk of incurring the displeasure of a Minister of State, and losing my pension.' 'A small pension from the French Government he retained until the French Revolution,' as we learn from a sketch of O'Leary, probably written by Plowden, in the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1802.

546

The obsolete custom of drinking healths on the knees is noticed in Brand's Popular Antiquities, ii. 329; and Dekker's Honest Whore, A.D. 1630.

547

Cumberland's Memoirs, ii. 2-38. (London, 1807.)

548

Cumberland several times calls it a 'treaty.'

549

Vide Correspondence of Sir John Sinclair, ii. 385-6. Del Campo's letters are written in excellent English; it appears that, though born in Spain, he had come from an English Catholic family named Field.

550

Vide Annals of the English Catholic Hierarchy, by W. Maziere Brady, pp. 170-4. (Rome, 1883.) 'Sketch of a Conference with Earl Shelbourne,' The Dublin Review, vols. xx. – xxi. Trials of the rioters, The Rockingham Correspondence, ii. 419. This remarkable incident has been all but overlooked by historians. Dickens was greatly struck by its features.

551

We have no proof that Parker was an Irishman.

552

Orde to Evan Nepean, September 8, 1784 (see English in Ireland, ii. 413).

553

In the postscript to O'Leary's letter (see Appendix) we catch a glimpse of some of the Catholic leaders in Dublin at this time, into whose secrets Orde assumes he could easily dive. They include Thomas Braughall, so often mentioned in Wolfe Tone's Diary as a Catholic organiser and United Irishman; Charles Ryan, a very important Catholic leader (fully described in Wyse's History of the Catholic Association, i. 138-9); and Mr. Kirwan, noticed at p. 177 of the same book. Sutton, 'the Brigadier,' also mentioned in O'Leary's letter, was, with Braughall, one of the thirty-three Catholic delegates who, in 1793, represented the City of Dublin (see Vindication of the Catholics of Ireland, p. 90.) (London: Debrett, 1793.) Edward Lewins, the two Sweetmans, Thomas Reynolds, and other afterwards very prominent rebels, figure in the said list of the Dublin delegates.

554

Mr. Orde to Mr. Evan Nepean, October 17, 1784. See Froude's English in Ireland, iii. 414. But Mr. Froude will excuse me for adding that the chief passage he quotes is from a letter dated September 8, 1784.

555

Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, Paris ed. p. 319.

556

My Australian correspondent, Mr. Morgan McMahon, was puzzled to determine how O'Leary, the scene of whose labours was Ireland, could be summoned from London in 1784, inasmuch as his biographer states that it was not until 1789 O'Leary took up his residence in that city (Buckley, p. 304). The accuracy of Mr. Froude's date is, however, confirmed by a letter in the Life of George Anne Bellamy, iii. 120 (Dublin ed. 1785). On August 16, 1784, Mr. W. T. Hervey writes to that celebrated actress, then living at 10, Charles Street, St. James', and expressing the 'infinite satisfaction' he felt at meeting O'Leary at dinner.

557

Life of Father O'Leary, by the Rev. M. B. Buckley, p. 203.

558

See his letter, ante, p. 212.

559

England, from whom Buckley recast and embellished this account, calls him 'a gentleman in the confidence of the Ministry' (p. 118). Was it Sir Boyle Roche – of whom presently?

560

See England's account of the overtures made to O'Leary in London, ante, p. 220. England puts 'country' before 'religion.'

561

In April 1783 the Coalition came into power. Pitt's administration dates from December 1783.

562

England's Life of O'Leary, p. 118.

563

O'Leary was specially weak in yielding acquiescence. Buckley states (Life, p. 355) that O'Leary, having been led to connive at the legislative union, he expressed remorse.

564

Bird's-eye View of Irish History.

565

England's Life of O'Leary, p. 105. (London, 1822.)

566

See Life by Buckley, pp. 212-213, 237, 277. See also England, pp. 133, 134, 176, 179.

567

See Mr. O'Leary's Defence, in reply to the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, pp. 41-42. (Dublin, 1787.)

568

Thomas Moore's Diary, iv. 112.

569

See letter to Mr. Kirwan in Appendix. After 1783, no such bold tone is traceable in O'Leary's expressions.

570

See Appendix. Their intercourse may have been strengthened by clannish claims. O'Leary was a Cork man, and Roche is described as 'a branch of the ancient baronial family of Roche, Viscount Fermoy.' See obituary in Gentleman's Magazine for 1807, p. 506. His wages comprised the baronetcy bestowed in 1782; a pension of 300l. a year, with a separate annuity of 200l. for his wife; and, later on, the miserable post of Gentleman Usher, or Master of Ceremonies, at Dublin Castle. It is remarkable that in all the contemporary reports of the discreditable transaction, as regards Lord Kenmare, the name of Sir Boyle Roche is suppressed, and George Ogle, afterwards a P.C., put in his place. Ogle and O'Leary were both 'Monks of the Screw.'

571

The Rev. Dr. Wills, when writing his Lives of Distinguished Irishmen (v. 243), gathered curious facts from survivors of those times. Of Sir Boyle Roche we learn that 'it was usual for the members of the Irish Cabinet to write speeches for him, which he committed to memory, and, while mastering the substance, generally contrived to travesty into language, and ornament with peculiar graces, of his own. On many of these occasions he was primed and loaded for action by the industry of Mr. Edward Cooke, who acted during several administrations as muster-master to the wisdom of the Castle.' Sir Boyle felt that he had specially earned the gratitude of the Crown; and I find, by the Précis book of Lord Fitzwilliam, he had even applied for a peerage. In the Pelham MSS. he is constantly found worrying for honours and reward.

572

See England's Life of O'Leary, p. 109.

573

Lord Kenmare died September 9, 1795. For a careful study of his temporising character see Wyse's Catholic Association. He had enjoyed his title merely by courtesy. In 1798 his son was advanced to a Viscounty, and the next year to an Earldom.

574

Mr. Lecky says that 'it is a strange illustration of the standard of honour prevailing in Ireland, that a man who, by his own confession, had acted in this manner continued to be connected with the Government and a popular speaker in the House of Commons' (vi. 368). But, in point of fact, Dublin Castle could not get on without him.

575

See Froude, ii. 415.

576

Vide ante, p. 220.

577

The Convention had greatly alarmed the Government. In 1793, Lord Clare introduced the Convention Act, making all such assemblages henceforth illegal; but a popular leader remarked that it was the wisdom of Xerxes attempting with iron fetters to chain the sea. In 1811, Lord Fingall, Mr. Kirwan, and other Catholic delegates were arrested under the Act. It never became law in England, and about the year 1878 Mr. P. J. Smyth, M.P., succeeded in freeing Ireland from its pressure.

578

The Letters of Orellana, an Irish Helot, to the Seven Northern Counties not represented in the National Assembly of Delegates held at Dublin in October 1784, for obtaining a more equal representation of the people. Halliday Pamphlets, Royal Irish Academy, vol. 482, p. 29.

579

Besides the journals of the day, I have searched the litter of pamphlets to which that pregnant year gave birth; but, the names 'O'Leary' and 'Parker' never appear. Their mission, clearly, was a secret one. Sheahan's Articles of Irish Manufacture (Cork, 1833) certainly speaks of Mr. Parker, 'who fell in with a Doctor O'Leary' (p. 112); but, on hunting up the pamphlet from which he quotes, Plea for the Poor (p. 15), it appears that the date is 1819, and the Dr. O'Leary was a physician in Kanturk.

580

Diplomatic letters, but fulsomely servile, are addressed by Orde to Grattan (vide Life, by his Son, iii. 209-11). Orde must have known that Grattan was jealous – first, of Flood, with whom he constantly quarrelled, and, secondly, of a new, bold, and thoroughly honest Protestant leader, who had just made his début, and worked hard to make the Congress a success. This was James Napper Tandy, commander of the Dublin Volunteer Artillery, and afterwards a general of division in the service of France.

581

Dublin Evening Post, September 18, 1784.

582

The Freeman's Journal, September 28, 1784. This journal, once the organ of Grattan, Flood, and Lucas, fell into the hands of an unprincipled adventurer, named Francis Higgins, who prostituted the once virtuous print to a venal executive.

583

See Appendix, p. 374.

584

Dublin Evening Post, October 23, 1784.

585

The policy of creating a schism has often since been acted upon. We have already seen Lord Northington's approval of such a scheme. The Viceroy, Cornwallis, addressing Portland, June 22, 1799, writes in reference to a public question: 'Dublin is not without material for a counter party, which I should have sanguine hope of collecting if my endeavours to produce a schism in the corporation should prove successful.' —Cornwallis Correspondence, i. 339.

586

The Freeman's Journal, December 24, 1784.

587

Life of O'Leary, by Rev. M. B. Buckley, p. 385. See also England's O'Leary, p. 289. (London, 1822.)

588

The 'White Boys' were perpetually denounced by O'Leary.

589

Historical Review of the State of Ireland, by Francis Plowden, ii. 104.

590

Lecky, vi. 369.

591

Irish Parliamentary Register, iv. 227.

592

'For King Louis is loved by the Irish Brigade,' we know on the authority of Irish song, and the judge was baptised 'Louis' apparently in compliment to the French king, described as 'the assertor of American liberty.' The bias of the Perrins was always democratic, and the judge himself had been the attached friend of Robert Emmet, whom he embraced in the dock. The conduct of 'P. the Scholar' (T.C.D.) at this time is noticed by Archbishop Magee, then a fellow, in a letter printed in Plunket's Life. The judge's brother, Mark Perrin, rector of Athenry, in a letter to me, states that on the night Emmet was sentenced to death, Louis Perrin came home to their house at Chapelizod, bathed in tears. In that picturesque part of the 'Strawberry Beds,' where one can cross the Liffey by a ferry, access is gained to the old churchyard of Palmerstown, in which, partly smothered in weeds and fallen leaves, may be traced the epitaph of Judge Perrin's father. When Brougham declared in 1828 'The Schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him armed with his Primer against the Soldier in full military array,' he used the idea in a higher sense than could apply to M. Perrin and his 'Grammar,' who, unobtrusive as he seems to have been, caused some disquietude to Lord Clare, a man of all others the most difficult to perturb.

593

'I disclaim anonymous productions.' – Postscript to his Miscellaneous Tracts. (Dublin, 1781.)

594

Buckley says that this proposition was made to O'Leary in Dublin (Life, p. 354).

595

As service of a political or diplomatic sort might possibly be inferred from this paragraph, I thought it just to O'Leary to see the book from which 'Shamado' quotes. The incident is described by Mrs. Bellamy in the Apology for her Life, ii. 246-7 (Dublin ed. 1785). She complains that the remains of Count Haslang were not treated with due respect; and that a new chaplain, who had been assigned to the Bavarian ambassador, behaved towards 'the chaplains and domestics of the late count with unmanly arrogance … had it not been for the timely arrival of that justly respected luminary Father O'Leary.' Her account is not very clear. In what year Haslang's death occurred is not mentioned; but the Gentleman's Magazine of the time throws in a few dates and facts. Count Haslang died at Golden Square, London, on May 29, 1783, after an embassy of forty-two years (liii. 454). George II. had formed an attachment for him in Hanover, and brought him to London. Haslang's son was Prime Minister of Bavaria, while his father, during a crisis in its history, filled the post of ambassador to England. On June 5, 1783, a solemn dirge, attended by all the corps diplomatique in London, was sung in Warwick Street (R.C.) Chapel; but 'owing to a dispute at the grave [in old St. Pancras] several of the ambassadors returned home without supporting the pall.' The dispute, which is not explained, at last obliged the Anglican chaplain to read the burial service over the deceased envoy of a Catholic power.

O'Leary, in finally adjusting the difficulties, may have discharged a diplomatic mission inspired from Downing Street. Mrs. Bellamy alludes to insults offered even to the domestics of Count Haslang. How serious it was to insult even a servant of the Bavarian ambassador is shown by the Gentleman's Magazine, xxv. 232-3. In 1755, we learn that 'T. Randall, late an officer to the Sheriff of Middlesex, pursuant to his sentence for arresting a servant of Count Haslang, was brought from Newgate before his Excellency's house in Golden Square, having on his breast a paper proclaiming that he had been adjudged by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke and the Chief Justices to be a violator of the laws of nations, and a disturber of the public repose, and stands convicted thereof.' Randall was carried back to Newgate.

Mrs. Bellamy, in vaguely alluding to insults offered even to Count Haslang's domestics, doubtless includes herself, for Haslang describes her as his 'housekeeper' (Life, ii. 104). This woman, the natural daughter of Lord Tyrawley, ambassador at Lisbon, was introduced into society by his sister; became a very influential person, and shared the confidence of Fox and other Whig lights. O'Leary, she describes (ii. 8): '… who, with unaffected piety, is blest with that innocent chearfulness which, joined to his brilliant wit and sound understanding, makes him the admired darling of all who have the happiness of knowing him.'

Count Haslang's house in Golden Square has been, since 1789, the presbytery of Warwick Street R. C. Chapel; and its transfer to parochial uses dates also from that year.

596

Ante, p. 213.

597

The Freeman, the subsidised organ of the Irish Government, after extolling O'Leary, added, on May 12, 1785: 'It were sincerely to be wished that this excellent writer and Christian philosopher would once more sit down and employ his talents in the service of his country and literature in general.' In the following year, i. e. 1786, he reviewed a 'forgotten controversy,' including a defence of Pope Clement XIV. in suppressing the Jesuits.

598

The Rev. Mr. O'Leary's Address to the Common People of Ireland, pp. 12-14. (Dublin: Cooney, 1786.)

599

Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, vi. 540.

600

Edward Hay, in his History of the Rebellion, says that the Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet 'was dedicated to the Spirit of Discord.' Dr. Woodward was hardly the bigot that he pretended to be; his epitaph in Cloyne Cathedral records that 'he was a warm friend to Catholic Emancipation.'

601

A very clever, poetic version of this and other addresses of O'Leary, entitled The O'Leariad, appeared, and seems to have been written to direct attention to O'Leary's loyal pamphlets, and to enforce and imprint their arguments on the popular mind. (Printed in Dublin, and reprinted at Cork by Robert Dobbyn, 1787.) Vide Halliday Pamphlets, Royal Irish Academy, vol. 514.

602

The Viceroy of Ireland.

603

Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George III., from Original Family Documents, by the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, 1853.

604

Ibid.

605

Dr. England, the first biographer of O'Leary, mentions that his pension had been charged on the Irish Establishment.

606

Narrative of the Misunderstanding between Rev. A. O'Leary and Rev. Mr. Hussey, p. 11. (Dublin, 1791.)

607

Life of O'Leary, by Rev. T. England, p. 190.

608

The good Priest does not quite deny the statement though seeming to do so.

609

With Lord Moira, too – a great Whig power in those days – O'Leary was specially intimate; and it was this peer who erected in St. Pancras the monument to his 'virtues and talents,' for which the Tablet newspaper, fifty years later, opened a subscription list to restore, – in such enduring honour was the memory of this marvellous friar held.

610

England's Life of O'Leary, p. 289. (London, 1822.)

611

See ante, p. 214.

612

Life of the Rev. A. O'Leary, by the Rev. M. B. Buckley, pp. 304-5.

613

Vide ante, p. 213.

614

See Alison's History of Europe, ii. 30, 203, 425.

615

See p. 218, ante.

616

Buckley's O'Leary, p. 306.

617

Cumberland's Memoirs, ii. 62-5. (London, 1807.) Dr. Hussey had died four years previous to their publication.

618

Ibid.

619

Previously, Dr. Hussey is found at Vienna, hand in glove with the Emperor Joseph of Austria. See England's O'Leary, p. 199.