Secret Service Under Pitt

620

A Narrative of the Misunderstanding, etc. p. 7.

621

Cumberland's Memoirs, ii. 2.

622

Del Campo lived in the well-known palatial structure opposite the old chapel in Spanish Place, described by Thackeray as 'Gaunt House,' and lately occupied by Sir Richard Wallace. The defeat of the Armada in 1588 had marked an epoch in the history of the British Empire, and Englishmen uneasily regarded the feasts and intrigues in Manchester Square.

623

One, published in 'April, 1784, by Keating, of Bond Street,' displays the following fine sentiment: 'Let not religion – the sacred name of religion – which even in the face of an enemy discovers a brother, be any longer a wall of separation to keep us asunder.'

624

A Narrative of the Misunderstanding between the Rev. Arthur O'Leary and the Rev. Mr. Hussey. (Dublin: printed at No. 75, Aungier Street, 1791.)

625

Ibid. p. 13.

626

O'Leary's comment on Hussey's treatment of his picture is amusing. 'When Constantine the Great was informed that stones were cast at his statue, he rubbed his forehead and said that he did not feel himself hurt. And I can say that my body was not lacerated when my picture was torn.'

627

Why Dr. Berington, Bishop of the Midland District, should be called in was, clearly, because a schism threatened the diocese in consequence of the Pope appointing Dr. Douglas bishop in opposition to the strenuous efforts made by the Catholic Committee to get Dr. Berington translated to London. Several lay members of that league went so far as to maintain that the clergy and laity ought to choose their own bishops without any reference to Rome, and procure their consecration at the hands of any other lawful bishop. After the appointment of Dr. Douglas, they even threatened to pronounce it 'obnoxious and improper.' Dr. Berington, however, addressed a printed letter to the London clergy, resigning all pretension to the London vicariate, and soon the schismatical opposition to Dr. Douglas was withdrawn. See Brady's Catholic Hierarchy in England, pp. 178-9. (Rome, 1877.)

628

On visiting this chapel, in 1888, a fine relic of the ancient splendour of Spain, I found it very much as it was in the days of Father O'Leary. A study of Dr. Hussey's face, by Gainsborough, is preserved here, as well as some maps and papers in the autograph of the former. The foundation stone of a new church to replace it, and near the old one, was laid by Cardinal Manning, on June 27, 1887, in presence of the Infanta of Spain and the Spanish minister. Canon Barry, the present pastor, mentions an interesting tradition connected with Tyburn tree, which, as is well known, stood near the Marble Arch: 'The Chapel of the Spanish Embassy was, during the dark days of persecution, a special home for Catholics. Many a martyr on his way to Tyburn received the blessing of the chaplain of the embassy and was aided by the prayers offered in the Spanish Chapel for perseverance in his conflict for the faith.' The Canon, in the course of a statistical detail, adds: 'When war between England and Spain broke out, the usual payments made by Spain for the support of the chapel fell 4,000l. into arrears. Diplomatic relations having been again suspended between England and Spain in 1805, the chapel was confided to the care of Don Miguel de la Torre.'

629

Del Campo ceased, soon after, to be Spanish minister to St. James's, and was succeeded by the Chevalier Azara. The latter had great influence at the Vatican, and proposed that Dr. Hussey should be the channel of communication between the Pope and the British Government. Castlereagh Papers iii. 86.

630

An historic writer, Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, famous rather for pleasant gossip than for strict accuracy, states that the Spanish embassy in London maintained friendly relations with England. But what was the prevailing idea in Spanish diplomatic circles at this time is traceable in a despatch of Talleyrand published last year (1890) by M. Pallain. Talleyrand states, on the authority of the personal assurance of the Spanish minister, that nearly all the sailors who man the British fleet are Irish, and from love of country would turn their guns on England. The accurate number will be found set forth at p. 114, ante.

631

The sermon was preached in St. Patrick's, Soho, where O'Leary mainly officiated. Last year (1891) the chapel was in process of demolition.

632

Vide chap. xi. ante.

633

Father Buckley, the biographer of O'Leary, died soon after the date of the following letter. It notices a weakness, of which a paid purveyor of news, like Higgins, would be apt to take ready advantage. Shamado is likely to have been the more successful because his own character of a brain-sucker and betrayer had not then been unmasked. On December 7, 1869, Father Buckley writes from SS. Peter and Paul's, Cork: 'The Personal Memoirs have arrived, and I am much pleased with them. The sketch of O'Leary I am sorry I had not seen, to embody in my book. I fear, however, it would not have tended much to enhance the esteem of the good padre's character, inasmuch as, in the background of the picture, there is a strong steam of whisky-punch, and the narrative affords a strong confirmation of what Michael Kelly records that Father O'Leary, like himself, was rather partial to "Saint Patrick's Eye-Water."

634

It cannot be said that this agency was of a base character. In 1795, Dr. Hussey announces to Edmund Burke that the Catholics were loyal and ready to spill their blood to resist the French (Lecky, vii. 90). Mr. Lecky states that he was 'constantly employed by the Government in negotiations with the Irish Catholics.' In September 1794, Dr. Hussey, then an employé of the Crown, comes over to consult with the Catholic bishops at Dublin on new measures of education (Lecky, vii. 121). The foundation of Maynooth College was the result.

635

Higgins to Cooke, September 1, 1797. (MSS. Dublin Castle.)

636

Vide 'Fathers of the Turf,' in St. James's Gazette, January 6, 1881. The writer adds that O'Kelly is said to have held post-obits to a large amount, 'and his transactions were upon so large a scale that he might be seen turning over "quires" of bank-notes in search of a "little one," by which term he meant one for £50.' In the Registry of Deeds Office, Dublin, is preserved a document, dated February 12, 1819, whereby the Marquis of Donegal secures to O'Kelly the sum of 27,934l. 12s. 4d., a gambling debt, and O'Kelly is described as Andrew Denis O'Kelly, Esq., son and heir apparent of Philip Kelly, Esq., deceased. 'Colonel' O'Kelly died in 1820, leaving no children.

637

Life of O'Leary, by the Rev. M. B. Buckley, p. 357 (italics in original).

638

Vide Ireland before the Union, 6th ed. pp. 211-15. (Dublin: Duffy.)

639

Grattan's Life, by his Son. Those who may suppose that O'Leary forgot the priest in the diplomat, should see Father Morgan D'Arcy's account of the reforms he effected in the demoralised region of St. Giles. Vide Buckley, pp. 397 et seq.

640

Life of O'Leary, by Rev. M. B. Buckley, p. 359.

641

See ante, p. 213.

642

Ireland before the Union, pp. 211-15.

643

Life of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, by the Rev. M. B. Buckley, p. 355.

644

See ante, p. 218.

645

W. E. H. Lecky, Esq. to W. J. F., October 28, 1890.

646

Parliamentary Register, Feb. 26, 1782.

647

In a letter signed by Orde.

648

Address to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, p. 12. (London, 1800.)

649

O'Leary does not tell this anecdote correctly. It was not of two ladies named Devereux, but of a famous beauty, Miss Ambrose, that Chesterfield made this joke; and it was told, not to George II., but to Lord North. Chesterfield addressed the following impromptu to Miss Ambrose at a viceregal ball: —

'Pretty Tory, where's the jestOf wearing orange on a breastWhich, in whiteness, doth discloseThe beauty of the rebel rose?'

650

See ante, p. 220.

651

Francis Higgins to Under-Secretary Cooke. (MSS. Dublin Castle.)

652

Postscript to Miscellaneous Tracts, 1781.

653

Richard Parker is usually described as a common sailor. A statement from his widow appears in the Courier of July 5, 1797: she claimed Parker's corpse, and, when asked by the admiral for what purpose, she answered, 'To have him interred like a gentleman, as he had been bred.' The request was refused. Parker's corpse remained exposed for years on the island of Sheppey, hung in chains until it dropped to pieces at last. The London Courier of the day insists that he had been for some time a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

654

For other instances in which priests acted as secret agents see Appendix.

655

One letter conveys the proposal of a much respected ecclesiastic 'to foment an insurrection in the Cevennes.' Wickham Correspondence, i. 165.

656

Hussey was residing in Ireland from 1795. Four years previously his friend, Bishop Egan of Waterford, recommended him at Rome as worthy to succeed 'the illustrious' Archbishop Butler of Cashel. See O'Renehan Papers.

657

Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 264.

658

It may be said that the prefix 'Mr.' disturbs this belief; but all Wickham's letters thus describe foreign diplomats. For example, he writes to Lord Grenville on October 5, 1796: 'I have had in my own hands, and read, a despatch of Mr. La Croix to Mr. Barthelemy,' etc. —Wickham Correspondence, i. 462.

659

English in Ireland, iii. 215. As Dr. Hussey, an Irishman by birth, had been president from 1795, of the college at Maynooth, it is not quite correct to say that the young Englishman, Lord Camden, who became Viceroy in 1797, brought Hussey to Ireland.

660

Castlereagh Correspondence, iii. 89.

661

See Brady's Episcopal Succession, ii. 75. (Rome, 1876.)

662

Ibid.

663

In 1799, it appears that Bishop Douglas of London was anxious that a provision should be made for the English Catholic clergy; in other words, that they should be pensioned. See Castlereagh Papers, iii. 87.

664

In March 1799, as I find from the Pelham MSS., Dr. Moylan, Bishop of Cork, urges in the name of his colleagues a State endowment of the clergy.

665

Hussey, as the friend of Johnson, is allotted a niche by Boswell.

666

I find in the Pelham MSS. an interesting paper of eight folios, in Hussey's autograph, as regards an alleged systematic interference with the religious tenets of soldiers, and handed by himself to the Government. There is also a letter from Portland, dated November 1, 1796, concerning the alleged appointment by the Pope of Dr. Hussey as Vicar Apostolic over the Catholic military of Ireland. Pitt, in giving him authority over Catholic chaplains, did so on the understanding that, as a staunch anti-Jacobin which he was, he would stamp out disaffection in the army.

667

Gentleman's Magazine, September 1803, p. 881.

668

Cork, January 1, 1802; the Pelham MSS. Pelham had been Chief Secretary for Ireland when Maynooth College was founded.

669

The late Very Rev. Dr. Fitzgerald, P.P., Carrick-on-Suir, to the Author, September 19, 1888.

670

Napoleon's marshals were rich men. The salary of a marshal was 1,600l. a year; but their emoluments were much increased by allowances made by Napoleon. Berthier had in addition 400l. a month as a major-general, and further received from his generous master 50,000l. every year.

671

It may have been because Lewins, the shrewd attorney, and incorruptible envoy of the United Irishmen, suspected MacMahon, that he refused to yield information on being pumped. Hence the intrigue to oust Lewins of which we have already heard.

672

MacMahon was in the pastoral charge of Kilrea at the very time that Mack, a native of Franconia, held high rank in the army of the Prince of Coburg, and was directing the operations of the campaign of 1793. From 1794 to 1797, while MacMahon was preaching at Holywood, and representing the rebel colonels of the county Down, General Mack was serving in the Netherlands, and in command of the Army of the Rhine. Charles Mack earned notoriety by delivering over to Napoleon, in virtue of the capitulation of Ulm, 33,000 Austrians as prisoners of war. For this act he was tried at Vienna, and received sentence of death as a traitor to his country. But Bourrienne denies that any secret understanding existed between him and Buonaparte. Mack's sentence having been commuted, he was consigned to an Austrian dungeon, where for a long time his fate was lost in mystery. Even more inglorious was the final career of Arthur McMahon.

673

Life of Wolfe Tone, ii. 460.

674

Castlereagh Papers, i. 306.

675

Compare the passages 'sick of politics,' in p. 6, ante, &c.

676

Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 408.

677

Memoirs of Miles Byrne, ii. 17. (Paris, 1862.)

678

Memoirs of Miles Byrne, ii. 59.

679

Hoche's expedition was scattered by adverse winds. How the Walcheren came to grief was partly due to fever, which decimated the troops. A long report from Dr. Renny appears in the sixth volume of the Castlereagh Correspondence, and, on reading it now, one cannot doubt that the 'antiphlogistic' treatment then employed thinned the ranks more effectively than Napoleon's shells. Antimony and calomel, blister and blood-letting, did their work.

680

Castlereagh, ii. 226.

681

Castlereagh, ii. 15.

682

The Pentlands opposed the United Irishmen. Henry Pentland served as sheriff of Drogheda in 1799, with George MacIntagart as mayor. MacIntagart was the man who dressed up spies in French uniforms to entrap credulous peasants.

683

F. Thorpe Porter, police magistrate, to W. J. F., January 1862.

684

Life of Reynolds, by his Son, ii. 514. Mr. A. F. Reynolds, the biographer, died in 1856, after having long filled the post of stamp-distributor for the East Riding of Yorkshire.

685

Sir W. Cope died Jan. 9, 1892.

686

The full text of the correspondence I have published elsewhere. The letters of Reynolds are full of bad spelling.

687

Cornwallis, ii. 375.

688

Life of Thomas Reynolds, by his Son, i. 103.

689

Frank Thorpe Porter, police magistrate, to W. J. F., May 30, 1860.

690

Life of Thomas Reynolds, by his Son, ii. 445.

691

The fact that Mr. Lecky, when noticing the Sheares, tells his readers to 'see a curious anecdote about them' in a former book of mine, affords in itself an excuse for now offering something new. Vide England in the Eighteenth Century, viii. 191.

692

Ridgeway's Report of the Trial of the Sheares, p. 129.

693

The will of Sheares senior lends no support to this often repeated statement; but he commits his children to the care of Lord Shannon, a relative of their mother. This peer had been created, in 1786, Baron Carleton in the peerage of England, and hence the confusion.

694

Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, p. 365. (Paris, 1833.)

695

She did not long survive the great shock, but a prolonged purgatory was reserved for Henry's widow. She never raised her head, loved to occupy a darkened room, and always spent in fasting and prayer the anniversary of his death. Like her husband she was a Protestant.

696

Brutal and bungling as all this was, it would appear that, from the first, it was designed that a cruel butchery should desecrate their death. The original warrant for their execution orders that: —

'They, and each of them, be hanged by the neck – but not until they be dead – for whilst they are yet alive, they are to be taken down – their entrails are to be taken out of their bodies, and, whilst they are yet alive, to be burned before their faces; their heads are then to be respectively cut off; their bodies to be divided into four quarters, and their heads and bodies to be at His Majesty's disposal.'

The above death warrant, with written directions from Mr. Cooke, as to the troops to attend at the scaffold, is addressed to Alderman Archer, High Sheriff for Dublin in 1798, and is now preserved by his grandnephew, Rev. Thomas Gray, M.A., F.T.C.D.

697

The Society of United Irishmen.

698

Most writers on the period, in noticing the anomaly that in England two witnesses were necessary in cases of treason, but in Ireland only one, assume that this law continues in force. The law as regards two witnesses dates from the reign of Edward III. It received strengthening touches by the 7 & 8 Will. III. cap. 3. But in 1822 it was extended to Ireland (1 & 2 Geo. IV. cap. 24); and editors of Haydn might note this fact.

699

General Edward Boyle, eighth Earl of Cork, survived until June 29, 1856, and was the last surviving peer who had sat in the Irish and in the English House of Lords.

700

See notice of the duel, p. 177, ante.

701

'Anonymous letters are flying. My friend got two this week threatening death and destruction if he exerted himself on the approaching trials.' 'My friend' is the 'cipher' by which McNally always means himself. – J. W. to Cooke, July 10, 1798. (MSS. Dublin Castle.)

702

The late Lord Ross, a friend of Armstrong's, to Rev. Thomas Gray, M.A., F.T.C.D., who has communicated it to W. J. F.

703

The late Dr. Ireland, a nonagenarian, who had filled official posts in Dublin Castle, knew Flemyng, to whom Dr. Dobbin's letter is addressed. Flemyng had been in the East India Company's service, but joined the United Irishmen during leave of absence from Bengal, in which place he had known Lord Cornwallis, its then Governor-General, but later Viceroy of Ireland. 'Flemyng,' says Dr. Ireland, 'attained popularity for having, with his own arm, killed the largest boar seen in India, an animal which had often ripped open horses and oxen. One night, at Dublin, the Viceroy sent for Flemyng and surprised him by saying that all that had passed between him and the Sheares was known to the Privy Council. The Lord Lieutenant, then placing his arm on Flemyng's shoulder, said: "Let not another day elapse, or not all my influence can save you from the gallows. Start for India at once; those fellows at Ghazapore must be put down; you are just the man to do it. You will be gazetted to your company ere you reach Bombay." Flemyng went to India, did the work, rose, and died rich. In 1805 he again met Lord Cornwallis, on his arrival in India charged with the re-assumption of its reins of government; with gratitude he acknowledged the timely service he had rendered him in 1798. Death was written in the face of Lord Cornwallis as he landed at Calcutta: India, the grave of Europeans, folded him to its embrace, and a few weeks later the soldier-statesman was no more.' – Richard Stanley Ireland, M.D., to W. J. F. This aged physician died on March 13, 1875.

704

The word 'possible' was written here, but afterwards crossed out.

705

The above letter of John Sheares, enclosed in Dr. Dobbin's communication, has, I find, been printed by Dr. Madden; but, on comparing the original document with the printed copy, no fewer than thirteen discrepancies are detected.

706

The soil and walls of the crypt being a compound of argillaceous earth and carbonate of lime, a singularly antiseptic character is thus imparted to these vaults.

707

In 1860, a daughter of Henry Sheares, then seventy-two years of age, was an occupant of an almshouse in Cork.

708

Froude, iii. 341.

709

The Trial of the Sheareses, reported by Ridgeway, p. 129.

710

The late Sir Robert Peel.

711

Froude, iii. 277.

712

See Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 285.

713

Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 285.

714

Turner's is the only name in the list to which Hughes prefixes this title of courtesy, which shows that he was looked up to as a man superior to his fellows.

715

Castlereagh Correspondence, iv. 504.

716

Report of the Secret Committee of the House of Lords, 1798, pp. 26-8.

717

Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 283. Turner was known by the alias of 'Furness,' partly, perhaps, in allusion to his seemingly red-hot patriotism.

718

Ibid.

719

James Hope in his narrative speaks of Colonel Plunket as at first a flaming rebel, who had been assigned to the command of Roscommon; but Lord Carleton, in a manuscript note to Irish Pamphlets, vol. 129 (Nat. Lib. of Ireland), says that on the eve of action he surrendered to Dr. Law, Bishop of Elphin. Plunket was tried by court-martial and hanged.

720

Castlereagh Correspondence, ii. 231.

721

Castlereagh Correspondence, ii. 232.

722

Every man desiring to become a barrister is obliged to lodge a memorial describing himself and his parentage. Anxious to ascertain whether the description of Lord Downshire's friend would apply to Turner, as the son of a gentleman of property in Ulster, I applied at the King's Inns, Dublin, to be allowed to see how Turner described himself – but was refused, although the object was explained to be one purely historical. This greatly retarded my inquiries, which were begun many years ago. At last an examination of the wills and the entrance-book of Trinity College, Dublin, established all that I had surmised, and the following letter, which I find in the Pelham MSS., is further important in this connection: – 'The arms belonging to Mr. Turner, senior, a magistrate near Newry, were taken from him at the time of the general search for arms in that county. I believe that his conduct has been misconceived owing to the conduct of his son, and, if you see no particular objection to it, I should be glad that his arms should be restored to him' (Pelham to General Lake, Phœnix Park, August 3, 1797).