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STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 AND BIOGRAPHY 
 
STUDIES IN IRISH 
 HISTORY AND 
 BIOGRAPHY, mainly 
 
 OF THE EIGHTEENTH * * 
 CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 C. LITTON FALKINER 
 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 Paternoster Row, London, New York 
 and Bombay. 1902 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

PEEFACE 
 
 The Essays collected in this volume, though in form 
 separate and independent of each other, will be found to 
 deal in the main with the same period of Irish history, 
 and to possess sufficient historical sequence to give to the 
 book as a whole a certain unity. If they should be held to 
 justify republication it must, however, be chiefly in virtue 
 of the fact that in every instance they represent a care- 
 ful investigation at first hand of the available authorities, 
 and a serious endeavour, first to fully apprehend the facts of 
 the case, and next to present a faithful impression of the 
 results of such research. 
 
 Lord Rosebery has felicitously observed that ' the Irish 
 question has never passed into history because it has never 
 passed out of politics ; ' and it results from this peculiarity 
 that writers upon Irish history, however successfully they may 
 endeavour to be impartial, are almost certain to be criticised 
 from the point of view of Irish politics. It is therefore 
 almost idle to hope to deal with such questions as are dis- 
 cussed in these Essays with absolute colourlessness, or to defy 
 criticism from either or both sides of current controversies. 
 Yet, though it be impossible in the twilight of history to 
 discern distinctly all the features of the dim figures whom we 
 strain our eyes to identify, and while it is in vain that we 
 seek to attain to the whole truth about the past, it is hoped 
 
vi STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 that at any rate the outlines of the figures sketched here, how- 
 ever incompletely caught, have been faithfully reproduced ; 
 that the aspects of history which are dwelt upon have been 
 presented truthfully ; and that at any rate the book does 
 not offend against the one broad moral of Irish history — 
 that the study of the past of Ireland is a signal lesson in 
 charity to all Irishmen. 
 
 The writer does not of course flatter himself that he has in 
 any instance exhausted his subject, though he trusts that the 
 biographical papers, especially those on the Earl-Bishop of 
 Derry and Lord Clare, add something to historical knowledge ; 
 still less does he pretend to deal with the whole of the ques- 
 tions involved in his topics. In general it is with the by- 
 currents rather than with the main stream of Irish history 
 that the book is concerned, and the characters discussed 
 belong more often than not to the unpopular side of the 
 controversies with which they were connected. But though 
 the main object of the Essays has been either to revive the 
 recollection of great or interesting figures whose importance 
 appears to have been too much lost sight of, or to recall 
 certain aspects of history which seem to have been too little 
 regarded, it is certainly not intended thereby to disparage the 
 fame of those acknowledged heroes of modern Irish history 
 whose memory is most warmly cherished by the mass of 
 their countrymen. It is to be lamented that, for the reason 
 already mentioned, a common pride in what is memorable 
 in her history, irrespective of the occasion, is but too rare 
 in Ireland, and that a general readiness to forget what is 
 least admirable on either side is too seldom displayed. The 
 martial valour of Irishmen is a quality whose glory we 
 shall all agree is independent of the merits of the cause in 
 which it is displayed, and our homage to moral grandeur, 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 intellectual power, or great achievement need not be limited 
 by our predilections or prejudices. To insist on the impor- 
 tance of Plunket's share in the struggle for Catholic Emanci- 
 pation is not to rob O'Connell of the aureole of his genius, 
 nor is the majestic figure of Grattan dwarfed by dwelling on 
 the great qualities of the Earl of Clare. 
 
 Most of the Essays have been published in whole or in part 
 within the last few years in Reviews or Magazines ; but 
 they have in every case been carefully revised and in some 
 instances in great part rewritten for the present volume. 
 The articles on ' The Grattan Parliament and Ulster,' ' The 
 Earl-Bishop of Derry,' ' Lord Clare,' and ' Plunket and 
 Catholic Emancipation,' appeared in the 'Edinburgh Review/ 
 and that on ' Castlereagh and Ireland in 1798 ' appeared in 
 the ' Quarterly Review.' From the last named periodical are 
 also taken some passages in the article on ' The Grattan Par- 
 liament and Ulster ' which were first printed in a review of 
 the concluding volumes of Mr. Lecky's ' History of England 
 in the Eighteenth Century.' The short paper on Sir Boyle 
 Roche appeared in the ' Cornhill Magazine,' and that on 
 ' Thomas Steele ' is an expansion of a brief memoir con- 
 tributed to the ' Dictionary of National Biography.' A portion 
 of ' The French Invasion of Ireland ' appeared in ' Mac- 
 millan's Magazine.' The author's cordial thanks are due to 
 Mr. John Murray, Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., and to 
 Messrs. Macmillan and Co., as well as to the publishers of 
 the present volume, for permission to reprint the Essays first 
 published through their auspices. 
 
 In a volume of Essays an author is scarcely entitled to 
 afflict the general reader who may take up his book with no 
 studious intention with marginal annotations of the text. 
 With rare exceptions, therefore, the notes in the body of the 
 
 a 
 
viii STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 work contain no references to authorities save as verifying 
 actual quotations. But as the Essays represent a careful, 
 and as far as possible exhaustive study of the accessible 
 authorities for the period of history they embrace, it has been 
 thought convenient to append lists of the more important 
 books and documents which have been consulted. In some 
 instances illustrative documents hitherto unpublished are 
 given as appendices to the Essays to which they respectively 
 relate. The subject of authorities must not be dismissed 
 without acknowledgment of the writer's obligation to the 
 'Dictionary of National Biography.' It is impossible to over- 
 state the extent of the service rendered to historical research 
 by that invaluable publication. 
 
 C. Litton Falkinee. 
 
 Dublin : November, 1901. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Grattan Parliament and Ulster .... 1 
 
 II. The Earl-Bishop of Derry .... . . 58 
 
 III. Lord Clare 101 
 
 IV. Castlereagh and Ireland in 1798 155 
 
 V. Plunket and Roman Catholic Emancipation . . . 190 
 
 VI. Sir Boyle Roche 228 
 
 VII. Thomas Steele 241 
 
 VIII. The French Invasion of Ireland in 1798 . . . . 250 
 
 Index 351 
 
STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 I 
 
 THE GRATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 
 
 Early in 1896 the citizens of Belfast were interested, and 
 perhaps a little startled, by the announcement of a curious 
 antiquarian discovery. In the course of the demolition, to 
 provide a site for a new City Hall, of one of the old buildings 
 of the city, the White Linen Hall, the workmen came upon 
 the inscribed foundation-stone of the edifice. This celebrated 
 structure, which stood until quite recently in Donegall 
 Square in one of the most central positions in the city, was 
 long among the most interesting for its historic associations 
 and mercantile importance which the capital of Ulster con- 
 tains. In the year 1784 the expansion of the linen trade, 
 which had converted Belfast from the obscure and incon- 
 siderable village which it may be described as having been 
 even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century into 
 a great mercantile community, obliged those interested in 
 its development to provide a suitable mart for its most im- 
 portant industry. The White Linen Hall was therefore 
 erected in the prominent position it occupied till lately, on 
 what was then described as ' the Castle Meadows, situate 
 on the south side of the town and castle of Belfast,' but is 
 now the head of the busiest thoroughfare in the middle of 
 one of the busiest of cities. 
 
 Antiquaries had long been aware that the laying of the 
 foundation-stone of this building, which was to be for more 
 
 B 
 
2 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 than a century the scene of the mercantile enterprise of the 
 most thriving community in Ireland, had been made the occa- 
 sion of an elaborate ceremony. According to the summary 
 of the proceedings contained in Benn's ' History of Belfast,' 
 the new Linen Hall seemed to have just such a pedigree as 
 might most naturally be expected by persons ignorant of the 
 byways of Irish history in the case of an important institu- 
 tion in the heart of the Protestant North. 
 
 The Master of the Orange Lodge,' as we learn from the 
 newspapers of the period, ' with the Wardens and Brethren, 
 and accompanied by the members of other lodges, together 
 with the Sovereign, burgesses, and principal inhabitants of 
 the town, walked in procession ; and in aid of the building 
 the Orange Lodge presented the managers with 100Z. The 
 grandeur of the procession on this occasion could be equalled 
 only by the public spirit that gave rise to so important an 
 undertaking. l 
 
 The terms of the contemporary record might seem to 
 indicate that the Orange Society was an institution of earlier 
 origin than a study of its somewhat obscure history has 
 hitherto led people to suppose. But when the foundation- 
 stone was examined more closely, it was seen to contain a 
 copper plate bearing an inscription which conclusively re- 
 butted the theory of an Orange parentage, and set forth 
 that ' the first stone of the Belfast White Linen Hall was 
 laid the 28th of April, a.d. 1783, in the year of Masonry 
 5783, by John Brown, Esq., Worshipful Master of the 
 Orange Lodge of Belfast, No. 257,' &c, thus showing that 
 the Orange Lodge referred to was not, as the historian of 
 Belfast had too hastily assumed, a branch of the Orange 
 organisation, but was merely the denomination of a Masonic 
 lodge. The origin denoted by this inscription, though pos- 
 sibly disappointing to the perfervid loyalty of the devoted 
 adherents of the ' glorious, pious, and immortal memory,' 
 was probably more satisfactory to the average Belfast citizen ; 
 for the foundation of the Linen Hall was thus associated 
 with a craft not less noted for its loyalty to established insti- 
 
 1 Benn's History of the Town of Belfast, vol. i. 348-9 ; see also Belfast 
 Historical Collections. 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 3 
 
 tutions than for its antiquity and honourable fame. Nor 
 was there anything in such a pedigree to indicate that the 
 cherished honour of Ulster Unionism had ever been de- 
 graded by the bar sinister of that lapse into sedition and 
 treason which marked the closing years of the eighteenth 
 century in Ulster. But a more minute investigation of the 
 buried title-deeds of the old Linen Hall disclosed records of 
 a very different kind. 
 
 In a cavity of the stone had lain a glass tube, which on 
 being opened was found to contain a roll of papers consisting 
 of three separate documents. The first of these was a printed 
 sheet giving an account of the meeting of the Volunteers at 
 Dungannon on February 15, 1782, together with a report of 
 a meeting held in Belfast on March 7 in that year, at which 
 resolutions had been passed endorsing the action of the 
 Volunteers. The second document was a cutting from the 
 ' Belfast Newsletter ' of April 25, 1783, containing a true 
 copy of the ' Bill relating to Ireland which received the royal 
 assent on Thursday last ' — i.e. the Declaratory Act by which, 
 in the year after the concession of an independent legisla- 
 ture, Great Britain recognised in terms the claim of Ireland 
 to be bound only by the laws passed by the King and 
 Parliament of Ireland, and to have all suits finally decided 
 at home, without an appeal to England. The third of 
 these documents was a written one couched in the following 
 terms : — 
 
 Belfast, 28th April, 1783. These papers were deposited 
 underneath this building by John M'Clean and Kobert 
 Bradshaw, with the intent that if they should hereafter be 
 found, they may be an authentic information to posterity 
 that by the firmness and unanimity of the Irish Volunteers, 
 this kingdom (long oppressed) was fully and completely eman- 
 cipated. 
 
 If in future times there should be an attempt to encroach 
 upon the liberties of this country, let our posterity look up 
 with admiration to the glorious example of their forefathers, 
 who at this time formed an army, independent of Govern- 
 ment, unpaid and self-appointed, of eighty thousand men. 
 The discipline, order, and regularity of which army was 
 looked upon by all Europe with wonder and astonishment. 
 
 1! 2 
 
4 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Thus, by a curious chance, were the loyal citizens of Belfast 
 reminded, at the very moment when, having but just 
 emerged from the General Election of 1895 with its decisive 
 rejection of Mr. Gladstone's Home Eule policy, they were 
 celebrating the triumph of the Union, that only a century 
 ago their ancestors had entertained notions differing toto coelo 
 from their own in regard to the constitutional relations be- 
 tween Great Britain and Ireland ; and that in its external 
 attitude, though not, as will be shown in a moment, in the 
 essence of its political sentiment, Ulster had undergone as 
 signal a revolution as has ever been recorded in the history 
 of opinion. 1 
 
 Of the many seeming inconsistencies of Irish conduct and 
 character which perplex the sedate observation of English- 
 men when they contemplate the history of Ireland, not the 
 least confusing is that which is presented by the apparently 
 inexplicable revolution in political sentiment which has 
 taken place in Ulster within the last century. The would-be 
 solver of the Irish difficulty, when he first investigates the 
 question and lifts the curtain which hides a troubled past 
 from a scarcely less troubled present, is perplexed by the 
 discovery, which the most cursory glance reveals, that the 
 unity of sentiment and consistency of conduct which the 
 characteristics of the people of Ulster have led him to expect 
 are belied by the history of that province. He is speedily 
 made aware that Ulster was not always Unionist, that she 
 
 1 See a report of the demolition of the White Linen Hall in the Belfast 
 Newsletter and the NortJiem Whig of February 5, 1896. The following account 
 of this incident is given in Joy's Historical Collections relative to the Toivn of 
 Belfast (1817) : ' At the laying of the first stone of the Belfast White Linen 
 Hall there were deposited (beside the copper-plate inscription) a quantity of 
 new shillings and halfpence, together with a large glass tube, hermetically 
 sealed at both ends, so as not to admit the smallest particle of air. The pro- 
 cession was conducted by the Orange Lodge, so confessedly acknowledged to be 
 the first in Europe, being composed of 150 gentlemen, among whom are noble- 
 men and commoners of the very first distinction. The Orange Lodge was first 
 revived in September 1780, at which time it merely consisted of the present 
 Past-Master and two other gentlemen ; since which time 147 gentlemen and 
 noblemen have been admitted members of it, and the most munificent acts of 
 charity and benevolence have arisen from this never-to-be-forgotten phoenix.' 
 P. 233. 
 
THE GEATTAN PAELIAMENT AND ULSTEE 5 
 
 was not even always loyal ; but that, on the contrary, 
 there was a period in her history, and that no more than a 
 century ago, when she was not merely opposed to a legis- 
 lative union, but in a great degree animated by frankly 
 separatist and even republican convictions. 
 
 The astonishment of the ignorant or ill-informed inquirer 
 on finding himself confronted with a new Irish enigma 
 whose existence he had not even suspected is far from 
 surprising ; for the controversies of the present generation 
 have served not merely to obscure but to misrepresent the 
 nature of the process by which the northern province has 
 grown to be what it now is. For opposite reasons, both 
 parties in the country have combined to convey, without 
 designing it, a quite erroneous impression of the true facts. 
 The Unionists of Ulster, proud of their loyalty to the Crown 
 and Constitution of the United Kingdom, have naturally no 
 desire to look back to the days when the great-grandfathers 
 of many of them were as earnest and as active in their 
 opposition as they now are in their attachment to the 
 Legislative Union. The Nationalists, on the other hand, 
 dominated by an ideal of independence which is Celtic rather 
 than national, have forgotten, or choose not to recall, the days 
 when the motive force of Irish nationalism was provided by 
 the Protestant province and by the descendants of the 
 English garrison of the Plantation. Each side uncon- 
 sciously does its best, from shame for its past or pride in its 
 present, to ignore what nevertheless belong to the most 
 conclusively proved certainties of history. For it is plain 
 beyond all controversy that Grattan could never have won 
 the independence of the Irish Parliament had not Ulster 
 been behind him ; that the decay of that Parliament dates 
 from the day when the Irish Catholics were admitted to a 
 partial community of privileges with their Protestant fellow- 
 countrymen ; and that the union of the legislatures only 
 became possible as a consequence of the efforts of the United 
 Irishmen of the North to widen the breach between the three 
 kingdoms. It is, too, a melancholy and humiliating, yet withal 
 an instructive reflection for Irishmen that the era of their 
 
6 - STUDIES IN IEISII HISTOEY 
 
 story most deeply stained with the blood of fratricidal strife 
 and marked by the wildest fury of religious hate is precisely 
 that in which Ireland witnessed, for the first and last time, 
 the temporary union of a majority of each of the two creeds 
 in earnest and angry opposition to English rule. 
 
 But in addition to the distorting influences of contempo- 
 rary politics and popular misconceptions, the judgment of 
 the most impartial inquirer is liable to be disturbed by other 
 obstacles to a complete apprehension of the facts. The 
 copious literature which has grown up round the history of 
 the last quarter of the eighteenth century in Ireland presents 
 by no means an unclouded mirror. The history of lost 
 causes supplies perhaps the least reliable chapters in the 
 chronicles of mankind. Such topics lend themselves to the 
 eloquence of a sympathetic imagination, to the poetry of 
 pathos and romance. The elegies of patriotism are always 
 touching, but they are not often accurate. Even if the his- 
 torian is impartial, he is liable to succumb to the temptation 
 to panegyrise the chief personages in mitigation of their 
 failures. The romance of history exalts a Mary Stuart or 
 a Charles I. to degrade an Elizabeth or a Cromwell. If he 
 is not impartial, the historian is apt to advance from the 
 negative misrepresentation of animated apology to the posi- 
 tive falsehood of perverting or suppressing facts, and to 
 overwhelm the successful cause with obloquy and insult. 
 The history of Irish independence and Irish rebellion is 
 not exempt from these infirmities. The materials of Irish 
 history are predominantly partisan, and it is not always an 
 easy task to disencumber truth from the meretricious adorn- 
 ments of fiction. The record of Irish patriotic movements 
 has been compiled almost exclusively from one point of view 
 by writers who deem it a crime to impute blame to their heroes 
 and a blunder to admit merit in their adversaries. A whole 
 literature of Irish treason has been formed on these prin- 
 ciples, of which the best example is that comprehensive 
 hagiology known as the ' Lives of the United Irishmen,' 
 compiled by Dr. Madden, a biographer whose devotion can 
 find no flaw in the perfection of these martyrs, and whose 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 7 
 
 notion of giving the other side of the picture is to draw up 
 a lengthy Index Expurgatorius, in which are catalogued, 
 with abundant aspersion or innuendo, the names of all who 
 have dared to dissent from the popular point of view. Eela- 
 tively speaking, but little, and that not always reliable, has 
 been written on the other side, and it is not surprising that 
 very mistaken impressions prevail in regard to some of the 
 most striking features of the story. 
 
 It may well be doubted whether any political institution 
 that has ever existed has been the subject of more extra- 
 ordinary misconceptions than the Irish Constitution of 1782. 
 Though much progress has been made of late years towards 
 a correct appreciation of the true character of that Parlia- 
 ment which Grattan founded and which Pitt destroyed, it is 
 still worth while to examine its framework, and to trace the 
 causes of that gradual transformation in its essential features 
 which after precipitating a violent civil strife necessitated 
 the extinction of the parliamentary independence of Ireland. 
 From such an examination it will incontestably appear that 
 the Grattan Parliament was in no real sense of the word a 
 representative institution ; that from the very commencement 
 of its existence down to its close this Irish Parliament was 
 an assembly representative merely of what, from a democratic 
 point of view, was an inconsiderable section of the English 
 population ; a Parliament filled with the nominees of 
 absentee noblemen ; a Parliament of landlords, of placemen, 
 and of Protestants. And it will appear further how it came 
 about that this Parliament — Protestant, aristocratic, and loyal 
 to the English connection as it was — was yet a Parliament 
 whose existence could and did form a serious menace to 
 the imperial unity of the three kingdoms ; and why, despite 
 the British sympathies of its members, it was vehemently 
 opposed to a union involving closer alliance with England. 
 
 The Grattan Parliament was, in the first place, a con- 
 cession wrung from England in an hour of weakness, and 
 acquiesced in by the English statesmen who assented to it, 
 from that faineant spirit that has so often fatally influenced 
 English councils, and led to results ultimately most injurious 
 
8 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 to the interests of those for whose welfare England is re- 
 sponsible. The revolt of the American colonies, and their 
 successful assertion of independence, besides seriously crip- 
 pling English resources, and rendering England's rulers 
 doubly fearful of the danger of neglecting to conciliate Irish 
 disaffection, gave a degree of plausibility to a policy of 
 acquiescence in the demand which Flood and Grattan had 
 long been urging. But it is plain that at the time when 
 the concession was made the English statesmen who 
 granted it believed they were presenting Irish patriots with 
 a mere toy. And had they maintained the basis upon which 
 the Grattan Parliament was created, a toy that institution 
 must ever have remained. The independence of the Irish 
 Parliament was not at all the same thing as the indepen- 
 dence of the Irish people, and was never intended to be so. 
 The Parliament, to which was confided the liberties claimed 
 in Grattan's Declaration, was a Parliament friendly to 
 English ascendency. It was an assembly filled, as has just 
 been pointed out, with the representatives of all the most 
 stable classes in the island. It was impossible to imagine 
 that a House of Commons composed of country gentlemen, 
 of the nominees of great noblemen, and of lawyers trained in 
 the traditions of English law, would be an assembly level- 
 ling in its tendencies. In truth, no representative assembly 
 has ever existed more aristocratic in its sympathies, more 
 conservative in the ideas of the majority of its members, 
 than the Grattan Parliament as it was prior to 1793. Its 
 general tendency, as shown by its attitude in respect to the 
 Begency, was far more favourable to the power of the Crown 
 and the preservation of the prerogative than that which 
 characterised the contemporary English House of Commons. 
 The acrimonious opposition offered by Grattan to Pitt's 
 proposals in 1789 was due as much to the circumstance that 
 the Irish statesman was in close alliance with Fox, as to 
 any solid or sincere objection to the propositions of the 
 Government. Even the leaders of the patriotic party were 
 known to be perfectly loyal to the English connection, and 
 had no particular desire, prior to 1793 at all events, to foster 
 
THE GRATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 9 
 
 extravagant claims. The heated debates which took place in 
 College Green signified nothing more than the struggles of 
 parties for place, and possessed no international significance. 
 The two sections in the Irish Parliament prior to 1793, how- 
 ever acute the personal differences which might separate 
 them, were cordial and unanimous in their attachment to 
 the British Crown. Questions involving the substitution of 
 a Roman Catholic for a Protestant ascendency, or tending to 
 establish national independence in any separatist sense, 
 were as remote from the minds of such men as Lord 
 Charlemont and the Duke of Leinster as the disestablish- 
 ment of the Church of England is remote from the policy 
 of Lord Salisbury. The only bone of contention, which 
 caused any serious trouble, was the commercial question ; 
 and, in reference to the restrictions imposed upon Irish 
 trade, the demand put forward was not for separate control 
 of Customs, but simply for equal trade privileges with 
 England. 
 
 The Grattan Parliament was therefore an assembly 
 which, as originally constituted, might probably have been 
 entrusted, with perfect safety to the British connection, with 
 a larger share of legislative initiative than in practice it 
 possessed. But the peculiar relations which subsisted between 
 the Government and the House of Commons provided, had 
 they been necessary, additional safeguards and securities. 
 The position in which the Irish Parliament of 1782 stood as 
 regards the Crown really resembled more closely the relations 
 that existed between the English Parliament and the Tudor 
 Sovereigns than the constitutional arrangement that pre- 
 vailed in England in the eighteenth century. The Chief 
 Secretary, the most important member of the Government, 
 though seated in the lower house, was as little amenable to 
 the constitutional censure of Parliament as Cardinal Wolsey 
 was to the Parliament of Henry VIII. His business was 
 to submit to the House of Commons measures decided upon, 
 not by Ministers representative of a majority of the House, 
 but by the English Cabinet after consultation with the 
 Lord-Lieutenant. So long as Government possessed a 
 
10 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 majority in College Green, and prior to 1793 it did continu- 
 ously possess such a majority, the decrees of Westminster 
 or Downing Street were for the most part certain to be 
 registered in Dublin. Of course, successive Lords-Lieu- 
 tenant strove to consult and conciliate Irish opinion, and 
 the measures resolved on in London were naturally framed 
 with a careful eye to the opinions entertained by Grattan 
 and his followers. But the essential point is that whenever 
 there was a divergence of view between the popular party 
 and the Government the latter could feel secure of triumph. 
 
 Not only was the legislative machinery worked from 
 England, but the appointment of all the higher officials 
 was in English hands. The Lord-Lieutenant and his Chief 
 Secretary, then as now, were of course the nominees of the 
 English Cabinet, the representatives of whatever English 
 party might chance to be in power. The Chancellor, 
 throughout the whole of the eighteenth century and for 
 long previously, was always an Englishman, until Lord Clare 
 was appointed ; and Clare's strong English sympathies had 
 been well tried when he received the Seals. The bishops 
 were appointed from England, and the Primate, who then 
 took a not unimportant part in political affairs, was always 
 a personage connected by close ties with England. The 
 Castle officials were thoroughly English in feeling. The 
 independence of the Parliament of 1782, hedged in, as we 
 thus see it to have been, by all kinds of restrictions upon 
 any national impulses which might have swayed it, consisted 
 simply in its being constitutionally entitled to reject the 
 policy recommended to its adoption by English statesmen. 
 But, inasmuch as there never was a majority opposed to 
 that policy, the independence of the Parliament, for all 
 practical purposes, went for naught. 
 
 It may naturally be asked, however, if this estimate of 
 the Grattan Parliament be correct, how was it enabled to 
 gain that hold upon the affections of the people which, for 
 a time, it undoubtedly possessed ? Those only will require 
 an answer to this question to whom the idiosyncrasies of 
 Irish character are altogether unfamiliar. The Grattan 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 11 
 
 Parliament easily appealed to the fanciful and picturesque 
 notions of the Celtic race. Remote as it was in the charac- 
 ter, creed, and even in the nationality, of those who sat in 
 it, from what a truly Irish assembly would have been, it 
 was still in the eyes of the people the native Parliament of 
 Ireland. It possessed a nominal independence, sufficient to 
 make it an object for the genuine Irish love of show, and 
 of patriotic sentiment. The Irish people have ever delighted 
 in spectacle and display ; and they delighted in their Dublin 
 Parliament. They rapturously applauded the fine senti- 
 ments that, clothed in the gorgeous rhetoric of Grattan, 
 appealed to their most grandiose aspirations. They were 
 proud, and justly, of the matchless exhibitions of eloquence 
 which dignified the arena of debate. The populace of 
 Dublin, which may be said to bear something of the same 
 relation to the Irish people that the Parisian mob does to 
 the French, revelled in the opportunities for demonstration 
 which the annual opening of Parliament, or the progress 
 of some great debate or party struggle, was sure to afford. 
 Though there was at times little reality in these parliamen- 
 tary displays, the orations which they produced, the mag- 
 nificence of the eulogiums upon the spirit of Irish freedom 
 which Grattan loved to pronounce, filled the people with 
 the liveliest satisfaction. Some allowance, too, must be 
 made, in accounting for the favour with which this assembly 
 was regarded, for the material benefits that accrued to the 
 metropolis, and in a measure to the country at large, from 
 the existence of a Parliament in Dublin. The wealthy 
 magnates who sat in it of necessity resided in the capital 
 for a large part of the year. They were closely interested 
 in the country and kept in contact with the people, and the 
 commercial classes in Dublin naturally profited largely by 
 the residence within its boundaries of so many gentlemen 
 of fortune. An aristocratic society was maintained in the 
 capital, which to this day contains the evidences of the 
 prosperity which the Grattan Parliament brought to it. 
 The chief mansions in the city, now deserted by the de- 
 cendants of their founders and converted into public offices, 
 
12 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 as well as almost all the best residential squares and streets, 
 date from the time when the city was thronged with all the 
 opulence of Ireland. 
 
 For in all its essential features, in almost all that attracts 
 the attention of the passing traveller, the Dublin of to-day 
 is the Dublin of 1800. With the exception of the Castle and 
 the Cathedrals, the only buildings of real antiquity which it 
 contains, almost every structure of interest in the city, and 
 every distinctive feature of the capital, apart from its natural 
 environs, it owes to the eighteenth century. Scarcely any of 
 the buildings on which Dublin now prides itself existed in 
 the seventeenth century, and curiously little was added in the 
 nineteenth. Of the distinguishing features of the centre of 
 the city, the Parliament House, now the Bank of Ireland, 
 was built in the first half of the eighteenth century, and 
 the great fa9ade of Trinity College was erected, at the cost 
 of Parliament, in the second. Even what is now the 
 handsome abode of a democratic Corporation is only the 
 Royal Exchange of the eighteenth century ; whilst the Four 
 Courts and Custom House, the two chief adornments of the 
 River Liffey as it flows through the city, are the monuments 
 of eighteenth- century architects. Nor are the memories of 
 the most vivid period of Irish history in the Dublin of to-day 
 confined to its public buildings. The residential quarters 
 belong as exclusively as the public edifices to the same 
 period. The great squares commemorate in their names the 
 Viceroys and nobility of the eighteenth century, and few of 
 the more important streets were unbuilt a hundred years ago. 
 The whole character of the city remains unchanged, and 
 the ghost of an eighteenth-century citizen moving through 
 the principal thoroughfares on a moonlight night would 
 find little in their appearance with which he was not familiar, 
 save the handsome Post Office, the buildings round 
 Leinster House, and the public statues ; adornments in 
 which Dublin, never opulent, was notably deficient before the 
 erection of the monuments to Nelson, Burke, Goldsmith, 
 Grattan and O'Connell. Great sanitary improvements and 
 changes of other kinds there have been, of course, but 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 13 
 
 whereas during the eighteenth century street architecture 
 underwent a complete revolution in the older parts of the 
 city, and great additions were made to the residential quarters, 
 the external appearance of the capital has since remained 
 practically unaltered. 
 
 Of these improvements and enlargements by far the 
 greater portion belong to the latter half of the century, 
 for the great social splendour which characterised the 
 Irish metropolis from 1780 to 1800 was in marked contrast 
 to the petty and provincial Dublin of the previous genera- 
 tion. The contrast is one which no student of the Ireland 
 of those periods can easily miss, and is pointed by a com- 
 parison between the era of Swift and that of Grattan. 
 Between the dirty, dingy, and narrow streets which formed 
 the principal thoroughfares of the city at the earlier period, 
 and the ample thoroughfares and spacious squares which 
 grew up during the later epoch, and still lend distinction to 
 the metropolis, there was little in common. Since the 
 splendid era of the first Duke of Ormond, in which the 
 capital had been greatly enlarged and beautified, little if 
 anything had been done to develop the city. The Dublin 
 of Swift's day could boast indeed its Stephen's Green, 
 though the houses on its borders were still few in number, 
 and the Beaux' Walk, as Mrs. Delany's sprightly letters 
 testify, was then in its early glory as a fashionable resort. 
 But Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square, Kildare Street 
 and the great mansions of which the Duke of Leinster's was 
 the chief, upon the south side of the city ; Kutland Square, 
 Mountjoy Square and even Sackville Street on the north 
 side, were then unbuilt and unthought of. Fashionable 
 Dublin, as it became half a century later, there was none, 
 and well-to-do Dublin, the Dublin, that is, of the professional 
 classes and of the very few members of the resident aris- 
 tocracy who sported a town house, were crowded together 
 in the district of which St. Patrick's Cathedral is the centre. 
 
 The change in habits and manners, the advance in the 
 luxuries of life, between the first and fourth quarters of the 
 eighteenth century, were not due, as similar progress in 
 
14 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 the nineteenth century has usually been due, to increased 
 facilities of locomotion, or the development of the sources of 
 material wealth. It is to be ascribed primarily to that accident 
 in the evolution of the political system under which the 
 affairs of Ireland were then governed which will be noticed 
 later in this volume. Just as at the present day impor- 
 tant social results are anticipated by many as the result of 
 the establishment of a royal residence in Ireland and the 
 frequent presence there of members of the Royal Family, 
 so the visible improvement of the Irish Metropolis in the 
 eighteenth century was mainly owing to the change which 
 was made in 1767 in the conditions under which the Lord- 
 Lieutenancy was held. Prior to that date the Irish Parlia- 
 ment met only every alternate year, and the Viceroys were 
 practically non-resident, not deeming it their business to do 
 more than attend in Dublin for a few weeks at the com- 
 mencement of each biennial session ; and with the exception 
 of the Lords Justices, who governed in the absence of the 
 Viceroys, few even of the peers resident in Ireland thought 
 it worth while to live in the capital, which was practically 
 without a Court during the prolonged absence of the 
 representative of the Sovereign. Those of the aristocracy 
 whose fortunes afforded the luxury of attendance at Court 
 preferred to pay their respects to their Sovereign at St. 
 James's, whither they flocked in such numbers as caused 
 Bishop Berkeley to ask in his Querist ' whether London 
 is not to be considered the metropolis of Ireland.' By the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, however, the system of 
 viceregal absenteeism had become a source not only of 
 disadvantage to Ireland but of inconvenience to the English 
 Cabinet ; and it was ordained by the King that constant 
 residence in Ireland would be required of the Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant during his tenure of office. Lord Townshend, the 
 brother of the brilliant Charles Townshend, was found ready 
 to accept the new conditions, and not only did his vice- 
 royalty inaugurate a new era in Irish politics, but from it 
 dates the great period of Dublin as the capital of a resident 
 aristocracy. From the viceroyalty of the Marquis of 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 15 
 
 Townshend dates that expansion of Dublin and of the 
 application to its architecture of all the resources of decora- 
 tive art for which it became so remarkable during the last 
 quarter of the century, and which still enriches so many of 
 its mansions with memorials of Angelica Kauffman and with 
 such admirable examples of the work of Italian artists. 
 
 But while the Grattan Parliament as originally constituted 
 was a body which could threaten little danger to imperial 
 unity, while its sessions provided for the people a succession 
 of attractive pageants and numerous occasions for the 
 effervescence of a not too noxious excitement, and while its 
 material advantages rendered it popular in the capital, its 
 character was liable to be totally changed as a result of the 
 Relief Act of 1793. Only a bigot would argue that the admis- 
 sion of Catholics to the franchise was necessarily a source of 
 danger to the connection between Great Britain and Ireland. 
 Many of the Catholic leaders were men of approved loyalty, 
 and many of the advocates of Emancipation honestly believed 
 that the moderate views of the leaders were fairly repre- 
 sentative of those of the bulk of their followers. Yet 
 the admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise was 
 undoubtedly fraught with danger. 
 
 It was dangerous not because the newly enfranchised 
 voters were Roman Catholics, but because, in addition to being 
 Roman Catholics, they were anti-English in sentiment. The 
 masses in Ireland had never become reconciled to the rule of 
 the Saxon invader, they were permeated with an intense 
 spirit of nationalism, which, so long as they were powerless 
 to give expression to it, remained a harmless sentiment, but 
 which, so soon as they were placed in a position to give effect 
 to it, became a source of real danger. The harm lay in the 
 admission, not of Roman Catholics, but of the disloyal, to 
 the franchise ; and the Roman Catholics, from causes un- 
 necessary to discuss, were, unfortunately, disloyal. It was 
 the knowledge of this fact that convinced Pitt and his Irish 
 advisers of the inevitable necessity for a Union, from the 
 moment of the passing of the Relief Act. They knew that 
 the sham freedom which might please a people while they 
 
16 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 were powerless to secure a more real liberty would cease to 
 satisfy that people when the weapon of the franchise was 
 once placed in their hands. He saw that demands would 
 ere long be made, wholly inconsistent with the arrangement 
 of 1782, which must prove absolutely subversive of the 
 system of management of Irish affairs from London, and 
 must ultimately lead to a really dangerous separatist move- 
 ment. 
 
 From all this it follows that the passing of the Act of 
 Union was practically forced upon Pitt by the compulsion 
 of circumstances, by the ominous development under the 
 Grattan Parliament of principles and impulses absolutely 
 antagonistic to imperial unity, as a measure essential to avert 
 the danger which imminently threatened the integrity of 
 the Empire. Fox himself had written in 1783, with respect 
 to the demands of the Volunteers : ' The question is not 
 whether this or that measure shall take place, but whether 
 the constitution which Irish patriots are so proud of having 
 established shall exist, or whether the government shall be 
 as purely military as ever it was under the Praetorian 
 bands.' And the enfranchisement of the Irish masses, 
 followed by the Irish rebellion, was not long in reproducing 
 this dilemma in a form from which there could be no escape. 
 But before proceeding to analyse the circumstances which 
 led to the destruction of Irish independence, it is worth 
 while in connection with the discussion of the true nature of 
 the Grattan Parliament to dwell upon the paradoxical chance 
 which, after the Bebellion had been suppressed, brought it 
 to pass that Pitt in passing the Act of Union should find 
 the most formidable obstacle to his policy not in the anti- 
 English masses of the people, not in the anti-Protestant 
 feelings of the Catholic population, but in the attitude of the 
 oligarchical faction, Protestant in faith and British in sym- 
 pathy, by which the politics of the Irish Parliament came to 
 be controlled ; and that almost the only whole-hearted support 
 accorded to the ministers was rendered by the accredited 
 representatives of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 The dominant influence in the Irish Parliament was the 
 
THE GRATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 17 
 
 influence of the borough-mongers. These, of course, were 
 either wealthy noblemen or great landed commoners, of 
 whose attachment to the British connection no possible 
 doubt could be entertained. But they were opposed to a 
 Union, because the rotten boroughs which they held were a 
 substantial property and an immense source of influence. 
 To them a Union meant the destruction of their property 
 and the loss of much of their importance. When these 
 persons were bribed by the offer of peerages, or steps in 
 the peerage, to surrender their power and influence, it was 
 not as patriots tempted to sell the independence of their 
 country that they were approached, but as the owners of 
 what was then, and for thirty years longer continued to be 
 in the English Parliament, a recognised source of territorial 
 and political importance. Had they been men who held an 
 established position as patriots, who were fired with the 
 genuine spirit of Irish nationality, they would have merited 
 all those charges which have been brought against them of 
 having sold their nation's liberties. But they were far from 
 being attached to Home Rule in the sense in which that 
 term is now understood. They desired, as warmly as any 
 Englishman could desire it, the unity of the Three King- 
 doms, and in assenting to Pitt's measure they agreed to an 
 arrangement under which that which they had always 
 professed to wish to preserve would be effectually secured. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to feel anything but con- 
 tempt for the motives that influenced a number of them 
 at first to oppose, and afterwards to acquiesce in, the 
 measure of the Union. In the words of Mr. Lecky, ' the 
 great borough-owners perceived that a legislative union must 
 take the virtual government of Ireland out of their hands, 
 and a crowd of needy legislators saw in it the extinction of a 
 system under which they could always, by judicious voting, 
 obtain places for themselves or their relatives.' ' But it is 
 ridiculous to pretend that the corruption employed to secure 
 such votes was corruption applied to lure from their alle- 
 giance to the popular cause the outspoken advocates of Irish 
 
 1 Vol. viii. p. 279. 
 
 c 
 
18 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 nationality. What occurred was, simply, that the owners of 
 boroughs were compensated for the loss of their influence by 
 a lavish distribution of places or titles, and thereupon the seats 
 at the disposal of such owners were either vacated by their 
 former representatives in favour of men not pledged to oppose 
 a Union, or, as happened in most cases, the occupants of those 
 seats obediently followed the behests of those who had placed 
 them in Parliament. De Quincey, who was a witness, it is 
 strange to remember, of the final scene when the Grattan 
 Parliament sat for the last time, has expressed his astonish- 
 ment that the senators of Ireland could so lightly part with 
 their rights and privileges. The explanation of their apathy 
 is that they had always taken a purely pecuniary view of the 
 value of their seats, and, having obtained what they accepted 
 as a fair equivalent for the loss, they could readily sacrifice the 
 external dignity of their membership of an assembly which 
 many of them had always despised as provincial. 
 
 It is equally impossible to deny that methods unfor- 
 tunately familiar in the politics of the eighteenth century 
 from the time of Walpole were made use of to overcome 
 the reluctance of opponents of the Union to assent to that 
 inevitable measure. But who were the corrupters and who 
 the corrupted ? This is a subject which has over and over 
 again been discussed ; and the weight of evidence certainly 
 points to the conclusion that Pitt's agents in bringing about 
 the Union did resort to the illicit expedients of corruption 
 by the offer of peerages and titular distinctions of all kinds, 
 in order to gain support for the measure. Attempts have 
 been made by zealous partisans to deny that these influences 
 were brought to bear by Lords Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and 
 Clare, to bend recalcitrant politicians to their will. But 
 the well-meaning defence which has been set up cannot 
 be successfully maintained. Though the gravity of the 
 charges has been grossly exaggerated, a candid review of 
 the evidence compels the conclusion that peerages and other 
 bribes were given on the understanding that the votes 
 in the control of the recipients should be cast in favour 
 of the Government measure. It is clear that Pitt having 
 
THE GRATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 19 
 
 made up his mind as to the necessity of a Union, and 
 having resolved to bring it about, the three ministers of 
 his will in Ireland set themselves to the task of conciliating 
 the opponents of his policy by the only efficacious means ; 
 and that, for the purpose of removing the obstruction offered 
 to the measure by certain influential Irishmen, they did not 
 scruple to hold out the substantial inducements of place and 
 title as a means of assuaging opposition. It must, however, 
 in fairness be remembered, with reference to what is called 
 corruption, that the procuring of votes by the distribution of 
 titles differed in degree and not in kind from the methods 
 always employed, and properly employed, by Government 
 to reward political service. 
 
 Apart from the circumstance that the illicit influence 
 exerted by the Irish Government to secure the passing of 
 the Union was not applied towards sapping bond fide 
 nationalism, it is incontestable that the opposition of many 
 among those who resisted the blandishments of administra- 
 tion was based upon instincts and motives the reverse of 
 patriotic in the modern Irish sense of that adjective. The 
 most eminent among the upholders of Irish nationality after 
 the Grattan model were men deeply imbued with those ideas 
 of aristocratic privilege that long marked the Whig nobility 
 of England. Charlemont, next to Grattan's the most 
 honoured name connected with the legislative independence 
 of Ireland, viewed the Union with horror, because, rightly 
 or wrongly, he believed it to be inimical to the interests of 
 his order. He considered that the absenteeism which a 
 Union would be certain to promote, the slackening of the 
 close ties that ought to exist between the landed proprietors 
 and their tenantry, would lead to the destruction of the in- 
 fluence of property. This doubtless was not only, as after 
 events have too truly proved in many instances, a sound 
 view, but it was also a sincerely patriotic one. Yet patriotic 
 as was the attitude of Charlemont and his friends, it was 
 patriotism of a very different sort from that which is con- 
 veyed by the word in the language of modern Irish politicians ; 
 and it would be hard to find nowadays the Nationalist who 
 
 c 2 
 
20 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 regrets the Union for the reasons that caused Lord Charle- 
 mont to oppose it. 
 
 Another influence strongly adverse to the Union was the 
 attitude of the Irish bar. Its opposition was not unnatural, 
 but it was almost altogether dictated by selfish considerations. 
 The most brilliant parts in the drama of Irish independence 
 had been played by members of the legal profession. Next 
 to those of Flood and Grattan, the names that have rendered 
 the Grattan Parliament illustrious as a temple of Attic oratory 
 are those of Irish lawyers. Yelverton, Burgh, Fitzgibbon, 
 Curran, and Plunket were men who would have added lustre 
 to the deliberations of any assembly that ever existed. The 
 members of the legal profession crowded the benches of the 
 House of Commons, and found there a more rapid road to 
 the celebrity and notoriety which are so great aids to legal 
 eminence than they could hope to traverse at the Four 
 Courts. They could force their way, by virtue of their 
 political influence, into numerous positions, which, once 
 they were deprived of their seats, would be closed to them ; 
 and it is no imputation upon the honour of the Irish bar 
 that its members should have desired to preserve an institu- 
 tion which so much enhanced the dignity and importance 
 of their profession. The desire, therefore, to resist a Union 
 was fostered by a variety of causes which had no con- 
 nection whatever with the desire for national independence. 
 Such a desire was present in the breasts of a large section of 
 the Irish people. But those in whom it was most strongly 
 implanted looked forward to something very different from 
 the constitutional liberty which Grattan and his friends 
 might have been content with. Wolfe Tone had desired 
 independence, so had the brothers Sheares, so had the 
 fanatics of Scullabogue ; but the independence they looked 
 for was a total emancipation from British rule, an absolute 
 liberty to set up an independent Ireland hostile to England 
 and ready to co-operate with her enemies. 
 
 For these reason?, then, the Grattan Parliament was 
 opposed to a Union ; but how came it that an assembly so 
 largely representative of the most Conservative elements in 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 21 
 
 the country was also an assembly which threatened, if per- 
 mitted to remain, to destroy the Imperial unity of the three 
 kingdoms ? In dealing with this part of the story, it must 
 never be forgotten that there was a wide difference between 
 the Irish Parliament as it was constituted in 1782 and as it 
 had become by 1800. No doubt in the general character of 
 those who sat in it, the Grattan Parliament was the same 
 from beginning to end ; but the body by whom those 
 representatives were elected underwent a radical change in 
 1793. The admission to the franchise in that year of large 
 numbers of the Roman Catholic population produced a 
 conflict of sentiment and policy between the electorate and 
 its representatives which was highly dangerous and likely to 
 lead to serious results. The Roman Catholics who were 
 then accorded the right to vote were imbued with ideas of 
 national independence very far in advance of those which 
 actuated such men as Grattan and Charlemont. They were 
 impregnated with the same spirit of militant nationalism 
 which has been the motive force of every Irish movement 
 that has ever attained any hold upon Ireland since that period. 
 The spirit that fired O'Connell to attempt to obtain Repeal ; 
 the spirit that dominated the men of '48 ; the spirit that Smith 
 O'Brien found himself unable to control, and that precipitated 
 his Quixotic enterprise ; the spirit that was rife again in '67 ; 
 the spirit which, however its existence may have been denied, 
 has given force to every Irish movement which ever achieved 
 anything, in or out of Parliament, through the whole course 
 of the nineteenth century — this spirit, altogether hostile as 
 it is to English rule, dominated the newly enfranchised elec- 
 torate. But while the Roman Catholics were thus admitted 
 within the Constitution, their exercise of the franchise was 
 barred by the most illogical limitations. The people were 
 permitted to vote, but the limits within which that liberty was 
 to be exercised were very narrowly defined. Their suffrages 
 could only be cast in favour of the members of an alien race, 
 a rejected creed, and a superior class ; of those who were deter- 
 mined to maintain privilege in every form,— of men, in short, 
 who had absolutely nothing in common with those to whom 
 
22 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 they were now to owe their election to sit in Parliament. 
 Obviously, a system so artificial could not possibly be 
 maintained. The people were certain to claim, and they 
 quickly began to claim, not only the right to vote, but the 
 right to the unfettered choice of those to whom their votes 
 should be given. They threatened to insist upon sweeping 
 measures of Parliamentary Reform and of Catholic Emanci- 
 pation far in excess of what English statesmen then, or for 
 many years after, believed to be safe. The charge that the 
 Rebellion was the provoked and premeditated precursor of 
 the Union is quite beside the mark. The Union had its 
 origin five years earlier, in the Relief Act of 1793. 
 
 Mr. Lecky has well pointed out 1 what he rightly calls ' a 
 fatal fault ' in the Constitution of 1782. The machinery of 
 government in Ireland differed radically in design from the 
 constitutional practice that has grown up in England and with 
 which we are all familiar. The officials of the Government 
 in Ireland were not responsible to the Irish Parliament. 
 The Minister who introduced the Government measures to 
 the House of Commons was the Chief Secretary to the 
 Lord-Lieutenant, who was always an Englishman, and who 
 on his arrival in Ireland was invariably returned at once for 
 some Government borough, to enable him to conduct 
 Government business in the House of Commons. The Lord- 
 Lieutenant and his Chief Secretary were the representatives, 
 not of an Irish but of an English administration, and their 
 tenure of office depended altogether upon the balance of 
 parties in the English House of Commons. So long as the 
 Irish Parliament was likely to remain a loyal body, it might 
 be easy enough to manage it on this basis, though the 
 reception accorded to Sir John Orde's twenty commercial 
 resolutions in 1785 showed how difficult it might sometimes 
 prove to secure Irish assent to the policy dictated from 
 England. But it became plain, from the moment that the 
 Roman Catholics were admitted to the franchise, that their 
 privileges could not be limited by that concession. If they 
 had a right to vote for representatives in a Protestant 
 
 1 Vol. vi. p. 315. 
 
THE GEATTAN PAELIAMENT AND ULSTEE 23 
 
 Parliament, they had a right also to sit in Parliament them- 
 selves, they had a right to fill official positions, they were 
 entitled to object to a Protestant Establishment. In short, 
 there was no logical reason why Ireland with a native 
 Parliament should not be governed ' according to Irish ideas.' 
 But if this was so, the whole system of English govern- 
 ment in Ireland was threatened with the gravest danger. 
 Obviously, if the whole, or a part, of the Roman Catholic 
 demands were conceded, one of two results must follow. 
 Either the House of Commons, filled as it would become with 
 the representatives of Roman Catholic opinion, would place 
 itself in avowed antagonism to the representatives of English 
 rule on every conceivable question that could come before 
 the Parliament, in which case all government would be at 
 a standstill ; or Pitt and his colleagues must make up their 
 minds to the destruction of the status quo, they must assent 
 to Ireland being governed by Irishmen in an Irish Parlia- 
 ment modelled after the English pattern, and they must 
 allow a Ministry to be formed in Ireland which would reflect 
 the opinions and carry out the policy of the majority in the 
 Irish Parliament. To consent to such a change would have 
 been to surrender every shadow of Imperial control over the 
 island, to establish an independent Legislature with un- 
 controlled powers, and to erect a native Government 
 answerable to the majority of a native House of Commons. 
 Such a change would have been tantamount to an absolute 
 revolution in Ireland, it would have been equivalent to a 
 concession of Home Rule in its fullest and most undisguised 
 form, and there would practically remain, under this 
 enlarged Constitution, no connection between the two islands 
 save the vague and unsubstantial link which the Crown 
 would continue to supply. Such being, in the eyes of 
 responsible statesmen in Ireland, the inevitable result of 
 continuing to countenance a policy of concession, it is small 
 wonder that Lord Clare and the leading exponents of the 
 Castle policy should have pressed upon Pitt the necessity 
 for a Union, or that the latter should have acquiesced in the 
 expediency of the suggested course. 
 
24 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 It may naturally be asked, however, if such were the 
 views of Irish Ministers in endeavouring to procure a 
 Union, how was it that a considerable section of Roman 
 Catholic opinion could be found which was favourable to the 
 measure ? That such a section of opinion did exist cannot 
 be doubted ; but historians have, perhaps, exaggerated the 
 sympathy with which the action of the Catholic leaders 
 who countenanced the Union was viewed by the bulk of 
 their followers. The majority of the latter would certainly 
 have preferred an extension of Roman Catholic liberties 
 under the Parliamentary regime inaugurated by Grattan. 
 Their leaders, however, saw the impossibility of this. They 
 felt that Lord Clare's influence would prevail with Pitt to 
 prevent any final measure of Catholic Emancipation from 
 being submitted to a local Parliament, and they appear to 
 have believed that a Union would be followed immediately by 
 such a measure. In this belief they were probably encou- 
 raged by private assurances as to the state of Pitt's mind 
 upon the subject. Although it was the influence of Clare 
 which had led Pitt to contemplate a Union, there is no 
 doubt that, in embracing the proposal, the English Minister 
 was guided also by motives which differed from those of his 
 adviser, and were concealed from the knowledge of the latter. 
 Pitt had early become persuaded of the abstract justice of 
 Catholic Emancipation ; his difficulty was only as to the 
 mode in which that boon could safely be conceded to the 
 Irish people. In 1793 he had considered the project of a 
 Union, and had advanced as one argument in its favour 
 that it would remove whatever dangers might be supposed 
 to lie in concession to Catholic claims. He was convinced 
 that in an Irish Parliament emancipation would be attended 
 by the evils which Clare anticipated ; but he believed that 
 in an Imperial Parliament, where the Irish representatives 
 would contribute less than one-sixth of the whole House of 
 Commons, the influence of the Catholics could no longer be 
 dangerous. Accordingly, in the instructions given to Lord 
 Cornwallis for his guidance in negotiating the prelimina- 
 ries of the Union, the Lord-Lieutenant was empowered to 
 
THE GEATTAN PAELIAMENT AND ULSTEE 25 
 
 approach the Roman Catholic leaders in a conciliatory 
 spirit ; and though no direct promise was made to them, the 
 notion was conveyed that, while the English Government 
 had resolved to make no concessions to the independent 
 Parliament, much might be granted when once a legislative 
 Union should be established. It is highly probable that 
 assurances much more explicit would have been given, had not 
 Pitt been aware that any programme of Roman Catholic relief 
 would be certain to meet with serious opposition in a quarter 
 where opposition was particularly difficult to cope with. 
 
 Before the Union, as well as after it, George III. enter- 
 tained the same rooted objection to Catholic Emancipation 
 which, in the year after the former measure was carried, led 
 to Pitt's resignation of office. In 1795, immediately after 
 the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, the Irish Chancellor, for the 
 purpose of placing an effectual bar in the way of any sub- 
 sequent attempt to revive the policy which Fitzwilliam 
 had endeavoured to champion, entered, through the medium 
 of Lord Westmorland, into private correspondence with the 
 King. In a series of letters he laid before the Sovereign 
 certain alleged constitutional objections to any measure of 
 emancipation. He had always laid stress upon the inviola- 
 bility of the Protestant Constitution of the United Kingdom. 
 ' I consider,' he said in 1793, ' a repeal of the Act of 
 Supremacy in any of the hereditary dominions of the Crown 
 of Great Britain to be as much beyond the power of Parlia- 
 ment as a repeal of the Great Charter, or a repeal of the 
 Bill of Rights,' and these views he urged with success upon 
 his Sovereign. 1 Pitt, therefore, well knowing the King's 
 settled convictions in regard to this matter, could not 
 authorise Lord Cornwallis to do more than give general 
 assurances to the Roman Catholics of the friendly disposition 
 of the Ministry. 
 
 The Protestantism of the Grattan Parliament and its 
 utter want of resemblance to anything which modern patriots 
 understand by Nationalism have at length come to be under- 
 stood, though the process has been a slow one. But many 
 1 See the eseay on Lord Clare, infra, pp. 134-136. 
 
26 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 intelligent and fairly well informed people still labour under 
 an hallucination no less extraordinary than that which for 
 so long caused that Parliament to be taken for an assembly 
 representative of modern Irish ideas. It seems to be still 
 supposed by persons who should know better that the cele- 
 brated Volunteers by whom the independence of the Grattan 
 Parliament was won were the offspring of an effective 
 union of Protestant and Catholic, of Saxon and Celt, for the 
 national regeneration of Ireland. Yet nothing could be more 
 widely remote from the reality. When in 1778 the Chief 
 Secretary of the day, Sir Richard Heron, made his extra- 
 ordinary confession that the Government of Great Britain 
 could spare for the defence of Ulster and Ulster commerce 
 no more than ' a troop or two of horse, or part of a company 
 of invalids,' it was in defence of a province not less attached 
 than in the days of the Plantation to the British connection 
 that the people of Belfast and its neighbourhood armed in 
 the name of their king. Only eighteen years had elapsed 
 since Thurot's invasion, the capture of Carrickfergus, and 
 the threatened destruction of Belfast had evoked a sponta- 
 neous outburst of loyalty, and there had been no change in 
 the interval in the temper of the people of Ulster. 1 
 
 Few facts of Irish history are plainer, or at the same 
 time more reluctantly acknowledged by popular writers, 
 than the Protestantism, and it may even be said the militant 
 Protestantism, of the only national movement which has 
 ever succeeded in its aims, and which gave to Ireland the 
 only semblance of independence which she has ever been 
 able to boast. It has been said that Grattan could never 
 have gained the independence of the Irish Parliament if he 
 had not had Ulster behind him. It must be added that by 
 the Ulster which ranged itself behind Grattan must be 
 understood an Ulster not merely predominantly but abso- 
 lutely Protestant in respect both of the classes who 
 possessed the franchise and of those who contributed to 
 
 1 For a striking illustration of the character of Ulster sentiment in 1760, 
 see Crofton Croker's Popular Songs illustrative of the French Invasions of 
 Ireland in the Percy Society's Publications, vol. xxi. 
 
THE GEATTAN PAELIAMENT AND ULSTER 27 
 
 form public opinion. Grattan himself came into Parliament 
 as the nominee of Lord Charlemont for the Ulster borough 
 from which his patron's title was derived. The great 
 ' General ' of the Volunteers was not alone a Protestant, but 
 a fervid, not to say a bigoted, opponent of Catholic claims. 
 Charlemont's conviction that the franchise, still more the 
 admission of Catholics to Parliament, could never be conceded 
 consistently with the unity of the Empire and the main- 
 tenance of the rights of property, was never entirely sur- 
 rendered, though in the last year of his life he consented to 
 return an emancipator for his own borough, and is said to have 
 waived to the pertinacity of Plunket the cherished principles 
 which had impaired the cordiality of his co-operation with 
 Grattan. 1 If the Protestantism of the Volunteer leader be 
 not held to establish that of the majority of his followers, let 
 it be remembered that the Mecca of the Irish Volunteers was 
 the statue of King William III. in College Green, round 
 which, on each anniversary of the monarch's birth, that 
 patriot army was wont to parade, and at which for more than 
 a century, and down to the Lord-Lieutenancy of the Duke of 
 Bedford in 1806, the Government and, until the Union, the 
 Parliament of Ireland did annual homage to the principles 
 of the Revolution. It would be too much to say that there 
 were no Roman Catholics among the Volunteers ; and it may 
 perhaps be fairly contended that they would have formed 
 a considerable element in the movement had Protestant 
 Ulster been willing at that time to welcome a Roman Catholic 
 alliance. But so far were the Volunteers from representing 
 a union of creeds that the great Dungannon Convention was 
 held within the walls of a Protestant church. 
 
 But if the Volunteers of Ireland were thus Protestant in 
 their origin, and Protestant in their memories, they differed 
 not less widely from their Celtic and Catholic countrymen in 
 their political objects. It is true, indeed, that their organisa- 
 tion was in a large degree the outcome of British misgovern- 
 ment, and that as its military importance was the result of 
 the incapacity of the authorities to guard Ireland from foreign 
 1 See the essay on Plunket, infra, p. 204. 
 
28 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 attack, so its political power was founded on the inability of 
 her rulers to give contentment to the country. In the fine 
 image of Walter Hussey Burgh, ' England had sown her 
 laws in dragons' teeth and they had sprung up as armed men.' 
 But the tyranny against which the Volunteers cried out was 
 not the religious tyranny of the penal laws against the Roman 
 Catholics, but the commercial tyranny by which the enter- 
 prise of Protestant Ireland, and especially of Protestant 
 Ulster, was fettered or forbidden. Their first efforts as a 
 political organisation were directed to securing free trade, 
 their second to the attainment of parliamentary reform. 
 They thought little, and cared even less, for the Catholic 
 body, and it was only when they found themselves unable 
 to coerce the parliamentary oligarchy to a grant of privileges 
 — which, had they been granted, they would have carefully 
 confined to the Protestant minority — that they called the 
 Roman Catholics to their aid. The eightesnth century in 
 Ireland has been not inaptly described as a period during 
 which a privileged aristocracy and a privileged Church 
 tyrannised over the Protestant population and the Protestant 
 Dissenters, who, by way of recompense for their submission, 
 were allowed to tyrannise, in turn, over the Roman Catholic 
 community. The patriotism of the Volunteers was not 
 sufficient to emancipate them completely from this curious 
 conception of religious liberty, and even while they clamoured 
 for the removal of restrictions which pressed injuriously on 
 their own interests, they were not unwilling to rivet the 
 fetters which bound a subject race and proscribed a detested 
 religion. 
 
 That this is no exaggerated description of the attitude of 
 the real founders of the independent Parliament towards the 
 great majority of their fellow-subjects is proved to demon- 
 stration both by the proceedings of the Volunteer Conven- 
 tion and by the deliberately expressed opinions of some of 
 the most conspicuous among them. Lord Charlemont's is 
 not the greatest name in the history of the Volunteer move- 
 ment, but it is among the most distinguished, and may be 
 said to be in some respects the most representative. Lord 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 29 
 
 Charlemont was not a statesman ; his mental horizon was too 
 limited to allow him to earn that much-abused title, which 
 has nevertheless been often given to much less public-spirited, 
 and perhaps not much more able men. But by virtue of 
 the very narrowness of his prejudices, the unanimously elected 
 ' Commander-in-Chief of the army in Ulster,' who was 
 himself an Ulster man, and who retained, be it remembered, 
 the confidence of the Volunteers long after Grattan had 
 forfeited it, is a safer guide to the real sentiments of his 
 followers than men of greater abilities and more detachment 
 of view. And this is what Lord Charlemont, the lifelong 
 champion of Irish independence, writing many years after 
 1782, thought of the policy of concession to the Koman 
 Catholics and of the measures which had been granted for 
 their relief — measures which down to that period were 
 confined to the Act of 1778, conferring the power to take 
 leases for 999 years and the right of alienation, and the Act 
 of 1782, repealing the Statute of Queen Anne, by which 
 Catholics were debarred from holding landed property : — 
 
 In a country unfortunately circumstanced like Ireland . . . 
 where the many are to be governed by the few, where a rooted 
 antipathy has long subsisted between the parties governing 
 and governed, grounded on mutual injuries, and nourished 
 by antiquated and abortive claims on the one side, and on the 
 other by a perpetual dread that these claims might one day 
 be successfully asserted — where the great mass of the people 
 profess a religion perfectly distinct and even averse from 
 that by law established, and not only in its principles and 
 tenets hostile to civil liberty, but intimately connected with 
 the claims above mentioned, and from its identity with that 
 of the surrounding nations likely on every struggle to be 
 protected by them from motives both religious and political 
 — in a country, I say, so circumstanced there are two points 
 which never can, with safety, be conceded by the governing 
 few ; namely, the free and uncontrolled use of arms, and a 
 share in the legislature. Neither of these points were, I 
 allow, ceded by the Acts in question . . . but everything short 
 of these fundamentals was given to the Catholics. . . . Our 
 liberality in the paroxysm of its fever was madly profuse. 
 We gave too much at a time, never reflecting on the 
 necessary prudence of reserving something to satisfy future 
 
•30 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 cravings, something which might without ruin be still 
 conceded. 1 
 
 The action of the Volunteers was fully in accordance with 
 these views, and what little was effected at this time in the 
 direction of relaxing the penal laws was due rather to the 
 desire of the Government to strengthen themselves against 
 the Protestant reformers by enlisting Catholic sympathy 
 on their side than to any efforts of the popular party. 
 Neither the parliamentary leaders in the Declaration of 
 Right nor the rank and file of the Volunteers at the 
 Dungannon Convention gave serious thought either to 
 Roman Catholic enfranchisement or to the removal of 
 agrarian grievances. The Convention approved, indeed, the 
 removal of the restrictions which had prevented Roman 
 Catholics from holding land, but they made no suggestion 
 of further concessions ; and indeed those concessions, when 
 submitted to Parliament, were not pressed by any of their 
 most influential leaders. It is noteworthy that as late as 
 1787 the first Earl of Moira, though his successor was 
 according to the ideas of his time an almost violent liberal, 
 was strongly opposed to the enfranchisement of the Roman 
 Catholics, as a measure incompatible with the preservation 
 of that Protestant ascendency which even Radicals then 
 considered an inseparable element in the Constitution ; and 
 Grattan himself could speak at this period of the repeal of 
 the Statute of Queen Anne as giving freedom to his Catholic 
 fellow-countrymen. It was upon free trade, and through the 
 action of the Volunteers, that Irish independence was won. 
 Even when, after the victory, the offended vanity of Flood and 
 the pompous patriotism of Charlemont, dissatisfied with the 
 Constitution of 1782, endeavoured to make the Volunteers 
 the lever for obtaining further concessions, and when 
 Grattan's refusal to co-operate with them had made the 
 conciliation of the Roman Catholics an object of greater 
 importance, the Catholic claims received equally scant 
 recognition. The demand then made for simple repeal was 
 
 1 Lord Charlemont's ' Memoirs of his Political Life,' Historical Manuscripts 
 Commission, Twefth Report, App. part x. p. 47. 
 
THE GRATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 31 
 
 accompanied by a demand for the reform of Parliament ; yet 
 in the plan submitted to the Dungannon Convention of 1783 it 
 was not only not proposed to include Roman Catholics in the 
 benefits of the desired reforms, but an amendment to that 
 effect was expressly negatived, Charlemont scouting as an 
 1 alarming idea ' the suggestion that the Constitution could 
 never be completely settled till the elective franchise was 
 extended to persons of all religions. In his autobiography he 
 speaks of this amendment as ' the first appearance of that 
 unaccountable frenzy which afterwards became so danger- 
 ously epidemical.' 
 
 Nor were the Volunteers of Leinster much more favour- 
 ably inclined towards concession than their brethren in the 
 North. In Dublin it was indeed resolved, at the instance of 
 a friend of the Catholics, ' that the rights of suffrage ought 
 to be extended to all those, and to none but those, who were 
 likely to use it for the public good ; ' but this liberal senti- 
 ment became a somewhat equivocal compliment when the 
 same meeting refused to agree to its apparent corollary that 
 the attachment to the rights of the Constitution manifested 
 by the Roman Catholics merited some extension of the 
 elective franchise to 'that respectable body.' Similar un- 
 satisfactory results attended similar efforts in the same 
 direction at the General Convention of all the provinces held 
 in November at Dublin, though on this occasion the 
 Catholic claims had the patronage of Frederick Augustus 
 Hervey, Bishop of Derry and Earl of Bristol. 1 And though 
 it seems that a few Northern Dissenters began to manifest 
 the first symptoms of ' that strange madness ' by which they 
 were subsequently actuated, the majority were clear that 
 the limit of concession had been reached. They declined 
 to consider any proposals for conferring the franchise, 
 being convinced, with their leader, that the possession 
 of such a privilege must render Ireland a Roman Catholic 
 country, totally break its connection with England, and 
 force it into an alliance with France or Spain. They were 
 equally fearful, it may be added, of an investigation into the 
 ' See the essay on the Earl Bishop of Deny, infra, p. 80. 
 
32 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 title of Protestant property and of an attempt by the Eoraan 
 Catholic majority to repossess themselves of the land the 
 moment they were strong enough to do so. 
 
 Few would now attempt to defend the justice or reason- 
 ableness of these views. They are interesting, however, as 
 illustrating the continuity of Ulster sentiment, and as serving 
 to remind us of the political and religious atmosphere which 
 prevailed in Ireland, and in Great Britain for that matter, a 
 century ago. But easy as it is to scoff at the narrowness or 
 bigotry of such notions, those who condemn them should 
 first be sure that in like conditions they would have known 
 how to display a liberality which was foreign to all the 
 notions of the time. They should remember that in 1782 
 the English Revolution and the attempt of James II. to 
 establish a Bonian Catholic absolutism were not a century 
 old, that such an extreme of religious intolerance as the 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was of no more ancient 
 date, and that the title of the English and Protestant 
 population, but more particularly that of the people of Ulster, 
 was founded in successive confiscations of the property of the 
 native Irish, which were far from having passed out of 
 popular recollection. Nor is it less germane to reflect that 
 at this period the liberties of Irish Boman Catholics, however 
 grossly restricted in comparison with those of their Protestant 
 fellow-countrymen, were yet far in advance of those conceded 
 to Protestants by any Roman Catholic State in Europe. 
 For it was then an almost universally accepted maxim that 
 nonconformity to the State religion was a conclusive disquali- 
 fication for any share in the political duties of citizenship. 
 
 It thus appears that the much-lauded Parliament of 
 1782-1800 was not only Protestant in its composition, but 
 was Protestant, in modern phraseology, in its mandate. 
 However completely it ignored or disowned the opinions of 
 two-thirds of the nation, absolutely lacking as it was in 
 most of what are now regarded as the essentials of a 
 representative body, it was yet in a sufficiently real sense 
 representative of the aims, opinions, and prejudices of those 
 by whom it was founded. For the nationalism of the 
 
THE GRATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 33 
 
 Volunteer movement was not less remarkable than its 
 Protestantism. It has been noted that the Volunteers 
 originated in the necessity for self-defence, and that their 
 functions were at first confined to the protection of the 
 country from a threatened invasion. When, however, that 
 object had been achieved ; when, unaided by the Government, 
 they had shown themselves capable of supplying the place of 
 the Imperial forces, and had thus been taught to rely upon 
 their own energies rather than upon the power of England, 
 they became animated by a new spirit. The sons and 
 brothers of many Ulster men who had crossed the Atlantic 
 in search of commercial freedom were in arms against the 
 authority of Great Britain, and had risen in vindication of 
 rights for whose sake they had submitted to exile. It was 
 inevitable that those who remained behind should catch some- 
 thing of the contagion of resistance to English authority; and 
 that, possessed of the means of securing the necessary con- 
 ditions for the full commercial development of Ulster, they 
 should resolve to exact them. Hence the confusion which still 
 prevails as to the real character of the Volunteer movement. 
 It is taken for granted that because the Volunteers were 
 Nationalists they also were cordial supporters of Koman 
 Catholic enfranchisement, and willing to admit their Celtic 
 and Catholic brethren to a complete community of civil 
 privileges. The truth is that a more distinctly self-interested 
 movement has rarely been known in history. Its nationalism 
 was the nationalism of a caste. The aristocratic and land- 
 owning elements concurred in the demand for a free legisla- 
 ture because an independent but unrepresentative Parliament 
 increased their importance without threatening either their 
 privileges or possessions. The mercantile classes supported 
 it because they thought they saw in it a means of procuring 
 commercial advantages which Great Britain had refused to 
 grant. The rank and file of the Protestant tenantry sup- 
 ported it because they were assured of its Protestantism. 
 But not one of these three great bulwarks of the new Irish 
 Constitution was concerned for the interests of the vast 
 majority of the population. Whatever their own grievances 
 
 D 
 
•34 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 against England, the Volunteers of Ulster were as far from 
 a anion of sentiment, affection, or nationality with their 
 Roman Catholic countrymen as their brethren in America 
 were from a like community with the negro population of 
 the States. 
 
 But if the Parliament of Ireland and the men who made 
 it were thus militantly Protestant and devotedly Nationalist, 
 how account for the contrast, not merely between the 
 Separatist Ulster of 1797 and the Imperialist Ulster of to-day, 
 but for the rapid change of feeling in a race not prone to 
 sudden emotions which came over the northern province, 
 and which made it possible to destroy in 1800 the Parliament 
 it had been impossible to withhold in 1782? How came it 
 that a section of this ultra-Protestant community were 
 induced to enter into a partnership with their Eoman 
 Catholic countrymen and to seek an alliance with republican 
 Prance for the purpose of upsetting the Constitution they 
 had helped to create ? The answer to this latter question 
 is to be found in the action of the ideas of the French 
 Revolution upon the Presbyterians of Ulster. 
 
 While the Volunteers were, as has been seen, predomi- 
 nantly Protestant, their Protestantism was by no means 
 uniform in shade or intensity. The leaders at the Conven- 
 tion, and probably a majority of the enfranchised classes, 
 were members of the Established Church ; but the great 
 majority both of the tenant-farmers in the counties and of 
 the artisans in the towns of Ulster were Dissenters, and the 
 bulk of them Presbyterians who inherited the political and 
 religious prejudices and opinions of their Covenanting fore- 
 fathers. These had at that time, as three-quarters of a cen- 
 tury later, little respect and no love for the episcopal esta- 
 blishment. Their devotion, too, to monarchical institutions 
 was likely to be sapped by the same circumstance which we 
 have noted as a factor in their clamour for an independent 
 legislature. They were bound by the close ties of family 
 affection and commercial interest to the new republic of the 
 West. The principles of the French Revolution, and even 
 the first acts of its earlier spokesmen, were hailed with 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 35 
 
 enthusiasm in the North of Ireland. Their successes were 
 applauded and their excesses condoned. The literature of 
 revolutionary and even of infidel opinion was eagerly read 
 in Ulster. In Belfast and its neighbourhood Paine's ' Eights 
 of Man ' became so popular that Wolfe Tone in his Journal 
 describes it as the Koran of Blefescu (Belfast). Adhesion 
 to such views soon and inevitably involved the northern 
 leaders in admissions which were totally at variance with 
 the cherished Protestantism of the province. It was impos- 
 sible to assert the equal rights of man, and at the same time 
 to impose an arbitrary restriction upon the professors of an 
 obnoxious creed. For a time, at all events, the influence of 
 this new philosophy and the coercion of logic compelled a 
 profession of toleration. Animated less by sympathy for 
 the Roman Catholics than by devotion to republican prin- 
 ciples, the descendants of the Planters allied themselves with 
 their ancient foes to achieve parliamentary reform in the first 
 place, and, in the case of some among them at all events, to 
 found an Irish republic in the second. 
 
 It may fairly be doubted, however, whether there was at 
 any period a really considerable party — considerable, that is, 
 in point of numbers — who sincerely desired either of these 
 objects. As for the latter of them, there were doubtless many 
 enthusiasts for liberty, but there were few enthusiasts for 
 revolution. It is worth remarking that as late as 1793, 
 when the Volunteers had been suppressed by proclamation 
 in consequence of the alarms of the Government for the peace 
 of Ulster, a requisition, which bore the signatures of many 
 of the most prominent leaders of the United Irishmen, was 
 sent to the Sovereign (Mayor) of Belfast asking that in 
 vindication of their loyalty the town should be illuminated 
 on the occasion of the King's birthday. As for the former, 
 here are a few items from the toast list at a gathering held 
 in Belfast in February 1788 to celebrate the anniversary 
 of the Revolution : — ' The glorious memory of William III.,' 
 ' Lord Charlemont and the Volunteers,' ' The Memory of 
 John Hampden,' ' The Protestant Interest,' ' The Friends 
 of Liberty, Civil and Religious,' ' May the Principles of the 
 
 D 2 
 
36 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Revolution ever prevail.' Much has been made by popu- 
 lar writers of the inconsistency of Castlereagh, then a 
 very young man, in participating in the toasts which were 
 popular at the Northern Whig Club in 1790, when the 
 aristocracy of Ulster drank to • The Sovereignty of the 
 People ' and ' The Conquerors of the Bastille.' ' But it is 
 fair to recollect that even in 1792 the toast of * The French 
 National Assembly ' itself was not incompatible with 
 aspirations for the health and prosperity of the King of the 
 French. The most extravagant eulogies upon the children 
 of liberty in France were not, at that time at least, in- 
 consistent with more constitutional declarations in regard 
 to home affairs. The Whig Club cannot of course be 
 represented as a reflex of democratic opinion, but its members 
 were representative of the most advanced constitutional 
 opinion of the day, and it was for a time in the van of the 
 popular movement. It represented the Liberalism of Grattan 
 and Charlemont in Ireland, of Fox in England. It embodied 
 the faith of the Whigs in principles which had not yet 
 reached the disillusion of triumph. 
 
 But though the politicians of the Northern Whig Club 
 were probably not very seriously in earnest in their post- 
 prandial dithyrambs about liberty, the character of that 
 association helps to an understanding of the sentiments 
 which were entertained by the majority of the members of 
 a much more serious organisation. For the kid-glove 
 radicalism of the Whig Club glided imperceptibly into the 
 revolutionary republicanism of the United Irish Society. Of 
 the frankly separatist and republican objects which the inner 
 circle of the latter body had before them, there can be, as 
 will be seen in a moment, no sort of question. But it is at 
 least equally certain that the United Irish leaders were 
 conscious from the outset that there would be great diffi- 
 culty in carrying Ulster opinion with them in their designs, 
 and were obliged to conceal from many of their converts a 
 large part of the inner mysteries of their creed. The neces- 
 sity for conciliating the Whig Club and the inclusion of many 
 1 See the account of Castlereagh's early opinions, infra, p. 186. 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 37 
 
 of its members in the new society gave to the latter, for a time 
 at least, an appearance of moderation which enabled it to 
 secure the adhesion of numbers of Ulster Presbyterians who 
 had no suspicion of its real ends, and who, had they sus- 
 pected them, would assuredly never have joined it. 
 
 While the Protestants of Ulster, though thoroughly in 
 earnest in their eagerness for reform, were distinctly luke- 
 warm in their sympathy for the enfranchisement of the 
 Roman Catholics, it is not less clear that the other party to 
 the union of hearts were very far from caring deeply about 
 parliamentary reform. They wanted Catholic emancipation 
 for its own sake and for its advantages to themselves, but 
 they had no particular anxiety to fall foul of the Government 
 for the sake of effecting modifications in a system which, 
 whether modified or not, seemed certain to remain essentially 
 Protestant. It may well be doubted whether in such cir- 
 cumstances either section would have made any overtures 
 towards an effective union of the two creeds for a common 
 political object, but for the accident which at this moment 
 brought to the surface of politics the restless, imaginative, 
 and dare-devil ambassador of treason, Theobald Wolfe Tone, 
 the founder of the United Irishmen. It is the distinction 
 of that extraordinary personage to have discerned that while 
 it was impossible to establish any real community of interest 
 or affection between the two creeds, each of them might be 
 induced to promote the other's interests for their individual 
 ends. He became the pioneer of log-rolling, and invented 
 a system which would embrace Whigs and Nationalists, 
 Protestants and Catholics, in a common hostility to English 
 rule. 
 
 Historians have lamented the fatality, due, however, not 
 less to design than to accident, which has robbed them of 
 much valuable and authentic material for this period of 
 Irish history. And it is unfortunately true that there are 
 deplorable and irreparable gaps in the record. Viceroys, 
 Chief Secretaries, and Chancellors whose correspondence 
 would have thrown a clear light upon many dark passages 
 of the story, and revealed the hidden and not always 
 
38 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 explicable motives which guided the policy of the rulers of 
 Ireland, appear either to have kept no papers or to have 
 taken pains to insure their destruction. Lord Clare, the 
 omnipotent and imperious Chancellor, to whom more fully 
 than to any other individual the whole tangled mystery of 
 Castle policy was intelligible, ordered the destruction of 
 every shred of his correspondence. A host of minor officials 
 did the same. The Cornwallis and Castlereagh memoirs are 
 indeed valuable, but they cover only the later history of the 
 rebellion and the passing of the Act of Union. But it 
 is to be observed that, in the main, the lacunae occur in 
 the case of official correspondence only. The papers of 
 statesmen have perished, but the memoranda of conspiracy 
 survive. If the literature of statecraft is scanty and inade- 
 quate, the literature of treason is ample and luxuriant. In 
 the milder years that followed the Union few ' feared to 
 speak of '98 ' or of the years that went before. The con- 
 spirators, on the contrary, underwent an apotheosis. Thus, 
 quite irrespective of the abundant biographies of the con- 
 stitutional leaders, of Grattan, Charlemont, and their 
 colleagues— not to mention the ben trovato narrative of Sir 
 Jonah Barrington — there survive the fullest records of the 
 physical force party of the day. Ere yet the survivors of 
 their generation had departed, the Old Mortality of the 
 United Irishmen, Dr. Richard Madden, gathered together 
 in the work already alluded to the fullest materials for the 
 history of their movement ; and we are thus enabled to 
 study their motives and actions in narratives the most 
 favourable to their policy that can be imagined. Nor do we 
 depend solely upon the panegyrics of biographers and hero- 
 worshippers. Many of the United Irishmen wrote in exile 
 their versions of the events with which they had been con- 
 nected. Keogh, indeed, the most important of the Roman 
 Catholic leaders, is believed to have destroyed all his papers, 
 to the no small loss of historians of Catholic emancipation. 
 But MacNevin and the elder Emmet, Hamilton Rowan, and 
 many others have provided valuable original materials for 
 forming a judgment on their enterprises. 
 
THE GEATTAN PAELIAMENT AND ULSTEE 39 
 
 But, above all, this literature is remarkable for one of 
 the most candid and unconventional records of the working 
 of a human brain that ever were penned. The journals of 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone rank among the most fascinating 
 contributions to the most interesting of all forms of bio- 
 graphy and history. In it we see the whole machinery of 
 treason at work, and watch the motion of its springs and 
 wheels. Tone indulges in no self-deception about his own 
 motives, and is at no pains to conceal them. He hardly 
 even affects to consider himself a patriot. He hated Eng- 
 land much more than he loved Ireland. His was not 
 perhaps a first-rate intellect. But few have brought to the 
 trade of politics a more acute intelligence, and he was 
 possessed of a genius for intrigue which was only equalled 
 by his delight in it. In his diaries he sets down his opinions 
 and designs with startling freedom, and with no less frank- 
 ness discusses the views, motives, and capacities of his 
 associates. Taken as a whole, it is hardly an exaggeration 
 to say that his journals form as authentic and vivid a 
 piece of history as ever was penned. For it is not, like so 
 many autobiographies, a volume of random recollections. 
 It is a contemporary record by the most active, most 
 trusted, best informed, and most capable member of a great 
 insurrectionary movement of events in which he played a 
 large part, and of the genesis of a conspiracy of which he 
 was himself the chief contriver. His candid avowals abso- 
 lutely dispose of the fiction, which has nevertheless been 
 often repeated since their publication, that the United 
 Irishmen became a treasonable organisation only when the 
 Government had goaded the people into rebellion. They 
 were indeed goaded into rebellion in the sense that the 
 conspirators were compelled by the premature discovery of 
 their plans to proceed with a half-prepared insurrection. 
 But Tone, though he is eloquent on the hardship of having 
 to fight before he was ready, never affects to deplore the 
 necessity for a rising. The theory that the rebellion was 
 the result of the coercion and cruelty of the Government 
 has no historical foundation, though the ferocity of the 
 
40 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 rebels was in some instances unquestionably provoked by 
 the excesses of the soldiery. 
 
 Tone must always be remembered as the first of the 
 Fenians, not in name of course, but in spirit and sentiment. 
 Irish Nationalism, ever since that ' ism ' first existed, has been 
 of two kinds. There has always been a moderate party, 
 strong mainly in the lower middle classes of Irish society, 
 which has sympathised vaguely with moderate aspirations 
 for a modified form of national independence. There has 
 also been, and probably there always will be, another 
 and a larger body of opinion, which appeals with powerful 
 effect to the sentiment of the masses of the people, which is 
 animated by an unconquerable antipathy to England and the 
 English name. Among modern patriots Tone was the first 
 to appeal to this latter spirit. ' From my earliest youth,' 
 he said, when arraigned before the court-martial in Dublin, 
 ' I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great 
 Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced 
 that while it lasted this country could never be free or 
 happy. ... I designed by fair and open war to procure 
 the separation of the two countries.' He sought to found 
 an absolutely independent nation ; and seeing that such 
 independence could never be obtained by Irish strength 
 alone, he did not scruple to invoke the aid of a foreign 
 power. From such men as Grattan and Charlemont, 
 "Wolfe Tone was as far apart, alike in motive and method, 
 as O'Donovan Eossa from Isaac Butt. He was not, indeed, 
 a man of the people. Few Irish leaders have been. But 
 he understood the material on which he was working, and 
 gauged rightly the true animus of a large section of his 
 fellow-countrymen ; and the instinct was a sound one 
 which a few years ago led the organisers of the celebration 
 of the centenary of the Rebellion of 1798 to select Tone 
 as the embodiment of the Separatist movement which 
 culminated in that rising. 1 
 
 1 The failure of Thomas Davis to complete his study of the United Irish- 
 men in the person of their founder is a loss to history and to literature. For 
 hou h it is improbable that his biography would have been accepted as a final 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 41 
 
 It may be doubted, as already observed, whether, but 
 for the appearance at such a moment of the one person in 
 Ireland who, from his official connection with the Koman 
 Catholic committee on the one hand, and his own entirely 
 Protestant antecedents on the other, was capable of winning 
 the unstinted confidence of men of both religions, the 
 mutual suspicions of antagonistic creeds would have per- 
 mitted an effective alliance between Catholics and Presby- 
 terians. Even with Tone's assistance the community of 
 political interest never developed into a real harmony of 
 sympathy and mutual trust. The forces of religious 
 prejudice proved too strong even for the astute diplomacy 
 of this versatile conspirator. From the very commencement 
 of his operations he found his efforts towards union conti- 
 nually embarrassed by the rooted and inveterate antipathy 
 which the Ulstermen exhibited towards those with whom 
 political necessity seemed to oblige them to make common 
 cause. It is remarkable that when, in 1791, he sent down 
 to the United Irishmen of Belfast three resolutions binding 
 them to the propositions that English influence in Ireland 
 was the great grievance of the country, that the most 
 effectual means of opposing it was a reform of Parliament, 
 and that no reform which did not include the Roman 
 Catholics would suffice, the third proposition was rejected 
 by the local leaders ; and he notes with irritation that ' in 
 the party apparently most anxious for reform, it is rather 
 a monopoly than an extension of liberty which is their 
 object.' l When, on the part of the Catholic committee to 
 which he was secretary, he met the secret committee which 
 was the nucleus of the United Irish Society of Belfast, he 
 found himself confronted with the same difficulty, and he 
 angrily exclaims in his diary against the prejudices of the 
 principal leaders, one of whom went so far as to suggest 
 that thirty-nine out of every forty Protestants in Ulster 
 
 estimate, the leader of ' Young Ireland ' was much too conscientious a crafts- 
 man to distort or suppress the truths of history, while his fine historical 
 imagination would doubtless have enabled him to paint a really vivid picture of 
 his hero. 
 
 1 Life of Wolfe Tone, i. 140 (Washington edition). 
 
42 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 were opposed to the liberation of their Eoman Catholic 
 countrymen. 
 
 During the whole course of his missionary efforts in 
 the North of Ireland, Tone never completely succeeded 
 in overcoming this obstacle to the success of his plans. 
 There can be no sort of doubt, indeed, that the little 
 coterie of personal friends who figure in his diaries — the 
 coterie who, as early as 1795, were prepared to go all 
 lengths against the authority of England, and who bound 
 themselves on the top of the Cave Hill never to desist from 
 their efforts till they had subverted English rule and ob- 
 tained the independence of Ireland — were, with their imme- 
 diate adherents, thoroughly in earnest. But it may well be 
 questioned whether the majority of the Ulster reformers ever 
 sincerely accepted these extreme doctrines, or ever heartily 
 embraced the notion of an equality with the Koman 
 Catholics, notwithstanding that their oath pledged them to 
 ' a communion of rights and an union of power among 
 Irishmen of all religious persuasions.' On the contrary, it 
 is evident that this oath was very differently interpreted 
 within the ranks of the society. In January 1792, at a 
 meeting of the Belfast Third Society of United Irishmen, 
 six hundred in number, when it was moved that no reform 
 would be practicable or just which did not include Irishmen 
 of every religious persuasion, two hundred and fifty members 
 dissented, protesting that they understood by the admission 
 of Roman Catholics no more than a gradual enfranchisement, 
 and one not more speedy than ' the circumstances of the 
 country and the general welfare of the whole kingdom ' * 
 would permit. The protesting members comprised all those 
 previously most distinguished for patriotic zeal, with very few 
 exceptions. MacNevin himself states that at a celebration of 
 the French Bevolution in July 1791 the leaders found it pru- 
 dent to abandon an intended resolution favouring the admis- 
 sion of Catholics to the franchise, from an apprehension 
 that the minds of those present were not fully prepared for 
 the measure. And in a series of resolutions passed by the 
 1 Historical Collections of the Town of Belfast, p. 365. 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 43 
 
 Whig Club declaratory of the needs of the country, the only 
 admission of Roman Catholic rights was one to which their 
 most bigoted opponent could hardly avoid subscribing — viz. 
 'that no person ought to suffer civil hardships for his 
 religious persuasion, unless the tenets of his religion lead 
 him to endeavour at the subversion of the State.' 
 
 In such a state of feeling it is perhaps more remarkable 
 that a substantial, though temporary, union was brought 
 about between elements so antagonistic and incongruous 
 than that the two parties should have fallen asunder later on. 
 For it speedily became evident that the fusion which the 
 labours of Tone and the enthusiasm of his Belfast friends, 
 Neilson, Eussell, and McCracken, had succeeded in bringing 
 about could be utilised for very limited purposes, and could 
 not safely be subjected to any severe strain. And, in point 
 of fact, the enfranchisement of the Roman Catholics in 
 1793 was really fatal to United Irishism as a constitutional 
 movement. The Ulster theory of the reform of the Con- 
 stitution was, as Tone noted, a reform of the Protestant 
 Constitution. A mixture of logic and self-interest had com- 
 pelled the reformers to acquiescence in the admission of the 
 Catholics to the franchise ; but they were resolved to go no 
 further. They were fully convinced that the measures of 
 1792 and 1793 represented the extreme limits of legitimate 
 concession consistent with the preservation of the Protestant 
 ascendency. No sooner did it appear that the Catholics 
 and their friends intended to press for further privileges, 
 including admission to Parliament and eligibility for the 
 great offices of the State, than the principles of the glorious 
 Revolution began to reassert themselves. They fell back 
 on the excellences of the Constitution which they owed to 
 the patriotism of the Volunteers, and they carefully limited 
 their aspirations for reform to a measure for enlarging the 
 representation of commercial Ulster which would add to their 
 own political consequence. 
 
 Deserted, therefore, by the armchair politicians of the 
 Northern Whig Club, their Catholic allies being discoun- 
 tenanced by the secession of the Catholic aristocracy, who 
 
U STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 declared themselves satisfied with the concessions of 1793, 
 and discouraged by the shopkeeping prudence of Keogh, the 
 little knot of revolutionary politicians who led the extreme 
 faction in Belfast were hurried by the violence of their 
 principles into that alliance with the lower orders of the 
 Roman Catholic population which was the chief cause of 
 their ultimate failure. They forgot to reckon with the 
 inherent Protestantism of Ulster, and the instinctive loyalty 
 of the province to the unity of the three kingdoms. The 
 secrecy and mystery, evidently designed to aggravate the 
 general alarm, which the United Irishmen began to affect 
 were resented by the majority of their adherents in the North. 
 The imitation of republican principles and language, strikingly 
 evidenced by an alteration in the oath or test of the United 
 Irishmen, which indicated the subversion of the Constitu- 
 tion rather than the reform of Parliament as the final goal 
 of their ambition, contributed to alienate many more. 
 Sentiments which might have been safely avowed, and even 
 applauded, in 1790, met with a very different reception when 
 the execution of Louis XVI. and his queen and the Reign 
 of Terror had shown to what lengths revolutionary prin- 
 ciples might be pushed by the subjects of His Most Catholic 
 Majesty. And when the prosecution of Catholic emancipa- 
 tion, as a measure quite separate from parliamentary reform, 
 was made a distinct object of the society, the revulsion of 
 feeling made itself felt in the declarations of the moderate 
 reformers. The latter began to examine the history of the 
 British Constitution, and suddenly discovered that all the 
 virtues of liberty, all the objects for which they as Ulster- 
 men had striven, were inherent therein. They began to 
 reflect that if United Irish principles were to be pushed to 
 their logical conclusions, they would become an inconsider- 
 able minority in a Catholic and independent Ireland, which 
 was not likely long to be bound by Tone's suggested check 
 for Roman Catholic intolerance — a franchise of ten-pound 
 freeholders. They exchanged prayers for the French arms 
 for declarations of loyalty, and they made a formal protest 
 against the charge made in the report of the Lords' Com- 
 
THE GEATTAN PAELIAMENT AND ULSTEE 45 
 
 mittee that they had, in the presence of military associations, 
 prayed for the success of the French arms, averring that 
 from the date of the French declaration of war they had 
 abstained from the practice. 
 
 Such a revolution of opinion and language on the part 
 of those to whom they were accustomed to look up for 
 guidance soon had its natural effect upon the populace of 
 Belfast and its neighbourhood. And when the extremists, 
 passing from violent language to violent action, adopted a 
 military organisation and enrolled the Belfast Eegiment of 
 National Volunteers, the revulsion of feeling became in- 
 tensified. Two circumstances only were wanting to complete 
 the transformation, and these were soon supplied. The 
 threat of French invasion, and the terror created by the 
 armed organisation of the Catholic population under the 
 name of ' Defenders,' quickly dissipated whatever still re- 
 mained of the short-lived enthusiasm of the Protestant 
 colony of the Plantation for the Catholic cause. In 
 December 1796 the terrors of a French invasion were 
 averted by the elements, but not before the dread of it had 
 roused the North to an active loyalty. Far from rallying 
 to the cause of treason, the Ulstermen, despite the dissua- 
 sion of O'Conor, Sampson, and other United Irish leaders, 
 insisted on adopting active measures for the defence of the 
 country. A corps of Volunteers was quickly enrolled, and, 
 to the chagrin of the conspirators, was joined by many 
 whose previous actions had seemed to indicate a readiness 
 for revolution. 
 
 Whilst Ulster patriotism was thus stimulated by the 
 menace of a foreign foe, Ulster Protestantism was angered 
 by the atrocities of the Rebellion. In the long-drawn-out 
 agony of that piecemeal insurrection, the United Irish in 
 Ulster were crushed before they well had time to rise, and the 
 fire had been extinguished north of the Boyne ere it broke 
 out in the South. A subdued and only partially disaffected 
 Ulster thus had leisure to contemplate the progress of dis- 
 order in Wicklow, Wexford, and elsewhere. The ex-United 
 Irishmen of Antrim and Down derived considerable edifica- 
 
46 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 tion from the mode in which their Roman Catholic brethren 
 in Wicklow and Kildare observed the solemn obligation en- 
 joined in their oath, ' to promote a brotherhood of affection 
 and an identity of interest among their brethren of all 
 religious persuasions.' The devoted adherents of the Whig 
 Constitution — the men who a few short years before had 
 pledged the glorious memory of William III., and ' the cause 
 for which Hampden died upon the field and Sidney on the 
 scaffold ' — found themselves, to their dismayed astonishment, 
 partners in a Eoman Catholic crusade. They read of the 
 priests of a religion they could with difficulty tolerate lead- 
 ing the rebel army in Wexford, and making the Mass the 
 preface to a massacre. Startled by the prospect of a 
 religious war, the Protestants of the North, Episcopalians 
 and Dissenters alike, went over in crowds from the United 
 Irish to the loyal, and what now began to be known as the 
 Orange, camp. Not the moderates only, but the conspirators 
 themselves, felt the influence of the reaction, and recognised 
 the radical inconsistency between their aims and their 
 actions. At the edge of the precipice, in the very act of 
 falling over it, their eyes were opened to the true aims of 
 those with whom they had allied themselves. Shortly before 
 his execution for participating in the battle of Antrim, 
 James Dickey, one of the Presbyterian leaders, declared 
 that if he and his friends had succeeded in their designs 
 they would have had to contend ultimately with their 
 Roman Catholic allies. 
 
 While these influences were at work, it fell out by a 
 curious chance that at the very moment when the excesses 
 of their allies were beginning to alarm the leaders of the 
 United Irishmen, and even to lead them to consider the 
 possibility of remodelling their society upon a Protestant 
 basis, the accidental and local difficulties of one of the 
 Ulster counties had provided the startled Ulstermen with 
 the model of a defensive organisation. Few circumstances 
 in Irish history are more remarkable than the rapid growth 
 of Orangeism, and few perhaps have been more often and 
 more persistently misrepresented or more generally mis- 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 47 
 
 understood. In connection with recent controversies it has 
 become the subject of a theory, according to which the 
 Orange institution was a device of the landlord and aristo- 
 cratic party to carry the Protestant populace with them in 
 support of a Union by an appeal to their religious bigotry. 
 Nothing can well be more remote from the reality, as is shown 
 plainly enough by the single fact that the Orange body was 
 deeply divided on the Act of Union, its leading men taking 
 opposite sides ; and the notion is one which only total 
 ignorance of the somewhat obscure origin of Orangeism can 
 at all excuse. It would be much nearer the mark to say, 
 on the contrary, that the Orange organisation was the first 
 movement of essentially democratic origin which was wit- 
 nessed in Ireland. 
 
 Though the first Orange lodge was not formed till the 
 year 1795, the associations of Protestant farmers in which 
 Orangeism originated were at least ten years older, and date 
 in fact from the disbanding of the Volunteers, of whom, in 
 a sense at least as real as the relationship of the United 
 Irishmen, the Orangemen were the direct descendants. 1 
 
 1 It is curious that a century after its birth Orangeism should still remain 
 without an historian and that it should only be possible to trace its far from 
 uninteresting or uneventful history either in stray articles in half-forgotten 
 magazines or in the even less attractive pages of Parliamentary bluebooks. 
 And it is still more curious that of the few accounts which have been given of 
 the institution by far the most complete came from the pen of the founder of 
 the Home Rule party. Just sixty years ago, the late Mr. Isaac Butt, then a 
 rising young Conservative barrister, contributed to the pages of the Dublin 
 University Magazine an article entitled ' What is an Orangeman ? ' which con- 
 tains the best definition of the objects of the institution, and the most succinct 
 account of the circumstances in which it originated, which has yet been 
 penned. A year or two later, the Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan, a once celebrated 
 Protestant controversialist, contributed to the same periodical, as part of a 
 series of articles called ' Byways of Irish History,' the account of the Battle of 
 the Diamond, which is referred to in the text. A Parliamentary inquiry 
 in 1823, and again in 18S5, elicited much information about the movement 
 in the nineteenth century, but already at that date the number of persons 
 who could speak of its foundation was very small. The fullest and most complete 
 account is buried, unrepublished, in the files of the Belfast Newsletter in a series 
 of papers by Mr. Richard Lilburne, and perhaps the handiest account now avail- 
 able is a little pamphlet by the late Mr. Edward Rogers, Grand Secretary of 
 Armagh, called The Revolution of 1688 and the History of the Orange Association, 
 but this unfortunately contains more about the Revolution than about Orangeism 
 
48 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable or more creditable in the 
 history of the Irish Volunteers than the respect for law and 
 order which they exhibited throughout the period of their 
 influence and power. Their great achievements were un- 
 stained by a single outrage, and so far from being — in their 
 earlier career, at all events — obnoxious to the law, they 
 became its guardians. In the later years of the organisa- 
 tion, however, when the great and dignified objects for 
 which they had been called into existence had been accom- 
 plished, their discipline was relaxed. Although retaining 
 their formal organisation down to 1792, in which year the 
 last of the Volunteer celebrations round the statue of 
 William III. was held, they may be said to have ceased to 
 exist as a political force after the abortive Convention of 
 1783. No longer held together by leaders of station and 
 influence, the rank and file of the Volunteers became a 
 source of aggression in certain districts of the country, and 
 in one county kindled the flame of agrarian and religious 
 discord to a point which threatened a serious political con- 
 flagration. 
 
 It was in the year 1784, and in the county of Armagh, 
 that the roving banditti, called the Peep of Day Boys, were 
 first heard of. The Peep of Day Boys were disbanded 
 Volunteers, who, sharing the convictions of their old leader, 
 Charlemont, as to the risk of entrusting arms to the Catholic 
 population, formed themselves into marauding parties, 
 visiting the houses of their Catholic neighbours before 
 daybreak with the object of depriving them of arms. 
 These attacks, and the outrages by which they were some- 
 times accompanied, were by no means tamely submitted to, 
 and soon called into existence the organisation, afterwards 
 widely known as Defenders, which was formed in the first 
 instance for the mutual protection of the Catholic tenantry 
 against the attacks of their assailants. These Defenders, 
 
 properly bo called. A few years ago the centenary of the institution led to some 
 investigation on the subject, and in the Contemporary Review for August 1896 
 appeared an interesting article on the organisation by Mr. Michael Macdonagh, 
 which contains much valuable information. 
 
THE GRATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 49 
 
 in their later and more questionable history, owed much to 
 the felicity of the pacific title which they thus assumed. 
 For, though formed for purposes scarcely illegitimate, and, 
 at any rate, having endured very considerable provocation, 
 they did not very long adhere to the defensive operations 
 which their name implies. When, some ten years subsequent 
 to their formation, the violent conflicts between Peep of Day 
 Boys and Defenders culminated in the famous Battle of the 
 Diamond, this peaceful appellation stood them in good 
 stead. Historians have hesitated to admit the paradox that 
 Defenders could be the attacking party, and the Peep of Day 
 Boys have been visited with the sole blame of these feuds 
 even after they had changed places with their adversaries 
 and assumed the defensive position themselves. 
 
 The standing animosities of Protestant and Catholic had 
 broken out intermittently in Armagh from 1784 to 1795, 
 and occasional eruptions had shown that the ever-smoulder- 
 ing volcano of religious discord was not completely at 
 rest. In 1795, however, it burst into fierce action, and its 
 ravages on this occasion appear to have been aggravated 
 by the accidental coincidence of agrarian with religious 
 interests. The concession of the franchise to the Roman 
 Catholics in 1793 had produced in those parts of the country 
 where Protestants and Catholics were not very unevenly 
 divided a curious result, which no one probably had antici- 
 pated, but which in a country like Ireland was certainly 
 very unfortunate. Prior to that measure Irish landowners, 
 with the object of strengthening their political influence, 
 were in the habit of giving a preference to Protestant 
 tenants, in order to command their votes. When, how- 
 ever, the Act of 1793, by giving Roman Catholics a voice in 
 elections, made the religion of his tenantry immaterial to the 
 landlord, who had expected in any event, as down to the 
 Waterford election of 1823 he always did, to control their 
 votes, 1 a change took place which was much resented by the 
 
 1 After the Enfranchising Act of 1793 the ' forty-shilling freeholder ' was 
 multiplied in large numbers in the Irish counties, the landlords counting upon 
 implicitly and, down to the Waterford and Clare elections, uniformly receiving 
 
50 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Protestant farmers. Deprived of the advantages of his 
 political monopoly, the thrifty and cautious Presbyterian 
 found himself outbid in the competition for vacant farms by 
 the uncalculating land-hunger of the Catholic Celt. The land- 
 owners gave the preference to the highest bidder, irrespective 
 of religion, and the disgust of the disappointed Protestants, 
 their hereditary hatred aggravated by the sight of their 
 Roman Catholic neighbours entering into what they had 
 grown to regard as the heritage of a chosen people, broke 
 out into fury. It is said that an attempt was even made 
 to organise a crusade for the expulsion of the new tenants. 
 It is certain, at all events, that the latter soon found them- 
 selves served with threatening notices, which bade them go, 
 in the language of Cromwell, ' to hell or Connaught ' — a 
 sentence which was in some cases enforced by serious 
 outrage. The whole country speedily took fire, and the 
 ranks of Peep of Day Boys and Defenders were swelled 
 by immense numbers of recruits. In the heat of sectarian 
 strife the agrarian casus belli was forgotten ; the quarrel 
 was embraced on either side by numbers of persons en- 
 tirely unconnected with the land ; and the whole North 
 threatened to resolve itself into opposing religious camps. 
 By the middle of 1795 the Defenders' organisation had 
 spread from Ulster to Leinster and Connaught, and its 
 active spirits had determined on making effective reprisals 
 on their original assailants. During the whole summer the 
 county of Armagh remained in a state of constant turbu- 
 lence, which culminated in September in a pitched battle at 
 the Diamond, a village near Portadown. It is interesting 
 to recall the circumstances in which this once celebrated 
 encounter originated. 
 
 The long-standing animosities of Peep of Day Boys and 
 Defenders had been much aggravated by the active propa- 
 
 the votes of their tenants. It was the revolt of these freeholders in Waterford 
 and Clare that carried Catholic Emancipation, and Sir Eobert Peel accompanied 
 his Emancipation Act with a measure disfranchising these freeholders and 
 substituting a 101. franchise, a franchise which, as noted above, Wolfe Tone 
 had suggested as a security to the land-owning claims against confiscatory 
 legislation. 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 51 
 
 ganda of the United Irishmen of Armagh. Emissaries were 
 mischievously busy in inflaming the animosities of the 
 people and disseminating treasonable principles among them. 
 Political and religious feeling reached a high pitch of in- 
 tensity. Fairs and funerals, weddings and wakes supplied 
 arenas in which the country people engaged in acrimonious 
 discussion of inflammatory topics — discussions which often 
 terminated in bloodshed. As the summer went by the state 
 of things became progressively worse, and armed bands 
 paraded the countryside. In July the first serious encounter 
 took place at the fair of Loughgall, when the Protestant 
 party were driven out of the town by the Defenders. From 
 that time till September 21 the two parties remained 
 watching each other, and the county was in the hands of 
 two rival mobs. Numerous isolated outrages took place, 
 and the magistracy was powerless to check the spread of 
 disorder. The Defenders and Peep of Day Boys were 
 equally active, and in the eye of the law equally culpable, 
 and equally fierce in religious zeal and intolerance. 
 At length, about the middle of September, it was discovered 
 by the inhabitants of the Protestant village of the Diamond, 
 situated about four miles from Portadown, that the Defenders 
 had encamped in large numbers in their immediate vicinity 
 at a place called Annaghmore, where they constructed a 
 rude fortification and from which they sallied out from time 
 to time to commit depredations on their Protestant neigh- 
 bours. The Peep of Day Boys from the surrounding 
 district were at once assembled, and for two days and nights 
 a species of skirmishing was kept up by the two factions, 
 both of which were well supplied with firearms. On the third 
 day, however, and before any very serious damage had been 
 inflicted by either party, the influence of a neighbouring 
 squire, Mr. Atkinson, of Crowhill, on the one side, and of a 
 Roman Catholic priest, Father Traynor, on the other, effected 
 a truce between the two parties. A conference was held at 
 the house of one Daniel Winter in the Diamond, and a 
 treaty of peace entered into ; Mr. Atkinson and Father 
 Traynor binding themselves as sureties in a penalty of 50Z. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 each for the future preservation of the peace by their 
 respective parties. The truce was proclaimed, and the two 
 parties had begun to disperse, when unhappily the arrival of 
 a large force of Defenders who had been summoned 
 from Keady, at the western end of the county, to the aid of 
 their friends at the Diamond, and who were ignorant of the 
 treaty of peace, led to a renewal of the encounter and pro- 
 duced the much more serious encounter which has become 
 historical as the Battle of the Diamond. 
 
 These extraordinary proceedings were watched with 
 mingled feelings by the Government on the one hand and 
 by the insurrectionary leaders on the other. To the latter 
 they were the source of serious disquietude, as threatening 
 to destroy the harmony of that co-operation between the two 
 creeds which they had so energetically laboured to bring 
 about. The United Irish leaders had the sagacity to see 
 how injuriously their cause was affected by this demon- 
 stration of the radical opposition between the two parties 
 whose co-operation was essential to the triumph of their 
 designs, and in Tone's correspondence we find Armagh 
 spoken of with irritation as ' having always been a plague 
 to us.' Two of the most important members of the 
 organisation were despatched to the scene of the distur- 
 bances. In vain they used their best efforts to compose 
 these unfortunate dissensions. The hostility of race and 
 religion proved stronger than all other arguments, and 
 the angry feelings engendered by the blood spilt at the 
 Diamond made reconciliation impossible. On the morrow 
 of that affair, September 22, 1795, the first Orange lodge 
 was formed in the house of a farmer named Sloan. 1 It 
 
 1 The precise circumstances which caused the men who fought at the Diamond 
 to adopt or receive the name of Orangemen remains and probably must 
 continue unknown. But that it was given to them very early is certain. Mr. 
 Jephson, a member of the Irish Parliament, writing to Lord Charlemont from 
 Loughgall, in the county Armagh, on October 9, 1795, thus refers to them: 
 ' As I happen to find myself in the centre of the northern disturbances, it 
 occurs to me that your lordship may be glad to hear some account of the state 
 of the country from a person on the spot. I find that the old quarrel between 
 the Peep of Day Boys and the Defenders has come to an alarming height 
 indeed and though there is at present a temporary suspension of hostilities, 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 53 
 
 was in its first intention apparently designed as a purely 
 defensive precaution for the mutual protection of the farmers 
 of the district, to the neighbourhood of which the organisa- 
 tion was at first confined. But the Defenders having formed 
 themselves in formidable numbers in the adjacent counties, 
 the example of the Armagh Orangemen was quickly followed 
 in Down, Antrim, and other northern counties. By the 
 middle of 1797 the United Irish Society, which had recruited 
 its forces so extensively and so exclusively from the ranks 
 of the Defenders that it had become an essentially Roman 
 Catholic body, had been so entirely discredited with many 
 of its original supporters, and had induced so much suspicion 
 and alarm among the Protestant party, that the latter, 
 unable in such troubled and excited times to preserve a 
 neutral position, even if they had wished it, became active 
 supporters of the Orange body. The day dream of a United 
 Ireland had become a nightmare, and the evanescent union 
 which had threatened to give reality to the United Irish 
 movement was at an end. 
 
 Another circumstance which greatly assisted the rapid 
 propagation of Orange principles was the influence of the 
 numerous bodies of Yeomanry which between 1796 and 1798 
 were formed for the purpose of resisting invasion. It is a 
 
 yet the public men of the country, as far as I can collect from their conversa- 
 tion, live in daily dread of a renewal of the same commotions. In the mean- 
 time the outrages that have passed have left some of their worst effects behind 
 them— a deadly irreconcilable rancour in the minds of the lower people, and 
 such a dread of violence as induces the better sort of people to desert their 
 houses. It is impossible for the Protestant gentry to keep up the farce of 
 impartiality between the parties, or to disavow the absolute necessity of giving 
 a considerable degree of support to the Protestant party, who from the activity 
 of the two Copes have got the name of the Orange Boys. Indeed, the preserva- 
 tion of the country from the most dreadful consequences is attributed by some 
 to a very seasonable victory gained by a small number of their people over 
 400 of the Defenders, whom they met returning from a part of Mr. Cope's 
 estate, laden with plunder of all sorts and kinds. In this battle sixteen of the 
 Defenders were killed. I do not hear that any of the gentry have met with any 
 mischief ; and my brother William told me that he rode through 300 well- 
 armed Orange Boys in the middle of the night, who wished him safe home, and 
 did him no kind of injury.' — Correspondence of Lord Charlemont : Eepoi-t 
 of Hist. MSS. Gomn. It does not appear what was the connection between 
 the Copes and the name Orange; but possibly they were members of the 
 Masonic 'Orange ' Lodge already referred to. 
 
54 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 curious coincidence that the Yeomanry movement had its 
 origin in the very district in which Orangeism was founded, 
 namely, the borders of Armagh and Tyrone ; that the persons 
 instrumental in raising the first Yeomanry regiments were 
 the same who were the first to countenance and connect 
 themselves with the Orangemen ; and that the rank and file 
 of these regiments were recruited mainly from the members 
 of the Orange lodges in the neighbourhood. As the disturbed 
 state of the country necessitated the despatch of these 
 regiments from one part of Ireland to another, the Orange 
 principles with which they were imbued quickly spread 
 throughout Ireland, and led to the formation of Orange 
 lodges in the south and west. It was, however, in Ulster 
 that they took quickest hold. In 1796 the first Twelfth of July 
 celebrations were held in Armagh and Portadown, and in 
 the year following in Belfast ; while in 1798, on the eve of the 
 Rebellion, the organisation spread to Dublin, Grand Lodge 
 being instituted there on April 9. 
 
 For more than a generation it became impossible to revive 
 in any part of Ireland the ideals of the men of '98. It has 
 never become possible to revive them in Ulster. Long before 
 the "Rebellion broke out the United Irish movement had 
 ceased to be formidable in the district where it had origi- 
 nated, and from which it derived its importance as a menace 
 to English rule. In the town of Belfast itself not a finger 
 was raised, and though Henry Joy MacCracken and two 
 or three more of the Protestant leaders persisted in forcing 
 their way through the fields of Antrim and Ballinahinch to 
 the unhappy fate that awaited them, the men on whom Tone 
 and his comrades had relied for success refused to fire a 
 shot in a struggle from which they foresaw that even if 
 they emerged triumphantly they would be called on to 
 surrender their cherished sympathies, alike religious and poli- 
 tical, in favour of the hereditary enemies of both. Though 
 the Union was by no means hailed with enthusiasm in the 
 North of Ireland, it is remarkable how quickly even pro- 
 minent United Irishmen became reconciled to it. After 
 the insurrection of Robert Emmet and Russell a numerous 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 55 
 
 meeting of the inhabitants of Belfast expressed ' their horror 
 at the nefarious attempt to disturb the peace of Ireland,' 
 and leave was obtained to raise two corps of Volunteers, in 
 whose ranks were conspicuous many of the men who had 
 figured as active agitators prior to 1793. In a few years 
 the Protestants of Ulster had become, in the language of 
 one of the original reformers, ' convinced of the necessity 
 of an incorporation of the two kingdoms, which by delivering 
 them from a dependent independence had removed the 
 danger of a rupture between them.' And even so thorough- 
 a United Irishman as Dr. Drennan, the Tyrtseus of the 
 insurrectionary army, declared in 1817 that a full, free, and 
 frequent representation of the people in Parliament would 
 reconcile him to the Union. 1 
 
 It is curious, as suggesting the rooted and irreconcilable 
 aversion of Irishmen to English rule, to reflect that of the 
 grievances in which the Rebellion originated not one now 
 remains. The Statute Book of the United Kingdom has 
 been purged of every civil and commercial disability of 
 which United Irishmen of Ulster complained, and of more 
 than all the inequalities against which Irish Catholics in 
 1798 ever thought of protesting. In his valuable work 
 entitled ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' Mr. Barry 
 O'Brien has enumerated the various disabilities under which, 
 in respect of the agrarian, the religious, the educational, the 
 parliamentary, the poor-law, and the municipal systems, one 
 class or another in Ireland has from time to time, during the 
 last half-century, believed itself to labour. Some of these 
 have not yet, indeed, been finally settled ; but this at any rate 
 is certain, that not one among the questions which now 
 agitate Ireland dates back to the period of the Rebellion, nor 
 does a single item in the programme of the United Irishmen 
 remain unaccomplished, with the sole exception of separa- 
 tion. The speeches and writings of the men of '98 may be 
 searched in vain for the statement of a single wrong that 
 has been suffered to remain unremedied. If it is alleged 
 that the failure to conciliate Ireland is due not so much 
 1 Belfast Historical Collections, Preface, p. xv. 
 
56 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 to the lack of healing measures as to the delay which has 
 occurred in passing them, or to the ungracious and reluctant 
 manner in which they have been conceded, may it not 
 fairly be enquired to what is due the conversion of the 
 once rebel north to ardent loyalty to the connection ? No 
 legislative distinctions have been made between the treatment 
 of Ulster and that of the rest of Ireland. If the descendants 
 of the men who drank to the memory of Orr and fought upon 
 the field of Antrim and Ballinahinch are now, like the 
 descendants of the Protestant United Irishmen of Dublin and 
 the south, warmly attached to the connection with Great 
 Britain, while the descendants of the Celtic and Catholic 
 elements in the Irish Union remain inveterately opposed to 
 that connection, the difference can only be accounted for by 
 that racial antagonism whose fires have survived for seven 
 centuries and are unhappily still unextinguished. 
 
 It is a matter of some importance that the continuity 
 of Ulster sentiment — of Ulster prejudice, if the phrase be 
 preferred — should be understood ; and that the misappre- 
 hension founded upon an inconsistency of political conduct 
 which is much more apparent than real should be corrected. 
 Other causes besides those already referred to have no doubt 
 contributed to strengthen the attachment of Ulster to the 
 Union ; but the considerations here indicated have unques- 
 tionably been the dominant factors in producing that 
 enthusiasm for the British connection which is now the 
 characteristic of North-Eastern Ireland. Even those most 
 convinced of the soundness and justice of the principles on 
 which Ulster Unionism rests must be far from expressing 
 sympathy with their every development. But the student 
 or the statesman who seeks to apply the lessons of 
 history to the empirical science of politics will err gravely 
 if he thinks that what he is unable to sympathise with is 
 not worth comprehending. No sensible man, no statesman 
 of sagacity, and certainly no true lover of Ireland, however 
 strenuous his opinions, can possibly deem it for the advan- 
 tage of the country that the distinctions of race and creed 
 and party should be so broad and deep as they unfortunately 
 
THE GEATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER 57 
 
 are and have been, nor should anything be spoken or 
 written which implies approval of ancient dissensions or 
 tends to fan to fresh vigour flames which happily, if not 
 yet dying, are at least less furious than of yore. But 
 scarcely less disservice is done to the true interests of Ireland 
 and the Empire by misreading the facts of history, and by a 
 too facile acceptance of pleasant and convenient theories. 
 No one is entitled to theorise about Ireland until he has 
 made some progress towards understanding Ulster. 
 
58 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 II 
 
 THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 
 
 The part played for a brief season in the Irish politics of his 
 day by that Earl of Bristol who united with his temporal 
 dignity in the kingdom of Great Britain the rank of a 
 spiritual peer in the kingdom of Ireland, as Bishop of Derry, 
 is familiar to all students of the troubled period of Irish 
 history which marked the earlier years of Irish legislative 
 independence. In connection with the part played by Lord 
 Bristol in the volunteer movement Froude has drawn in a 
 few graphic touches the portrait of ' the most singular repre- 
 sentative of the class of bishops who had been chosen to 
 preside over the spiritual destinies of the Irish people,' 
 who, ' rather from love of excitement and vanity than from 
 personal interest in Ireland, assumed the character of a war- 
 like prelate of the Middle Ages.' l Mr. Lecky has painted the 
 same picture with more detail, and with a more serious 
 attempt to understand the inconsistencies of a character 
 which, though notorious in the Bishop's later years for a 
 degree of licence and libertinism which scandalised even a 
 scandalous age, was yet able to win the approbation of 
 Wesley by the exemplary discharge of episcopal duty, and 
 to earn the encomiums of the philosopher Bentham by the 
 display of intelligence, learning, and personal charm. But 
 even the patience of Mr. Lecky owns defeat in the attempt 
 to ascertain ' whether any real change had passed over the 
 character and opinions of the Bishop, which might help to 
 explain the strange want of keeping between the different 
 descriptions or periods of his life.' 2 Upon this problem, as 
 well as upon the general story of Lord Bristol's career, 
 
 1 The English in Ireland, Cabinet edition, ii. 413. 
 % England in the Eighteenth Century, vi. 334. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 59 
 
 a little light is thrown by the letters from and to Lord 
 Bristol contained in the correspondence of his daughter 
 Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, better known as Lady- 
 Elizabeth Foster, a lady whose remarkable gifts and graces 
 shared with those of Madame Neckar the distinction of 
 having seduced from his resolution of celibacy the cold 
 egotism of the historian of Borne. To the revelation of 
 character afforded by these letters, which range over a space 
 of two-and-twenty years, and by those addressed to Sir 
 William Hamilton, which have been privately printed by 
 Mr. Alfred Morrison, some passages in the autobiography of 
 Arthur Young add the estimate of a keen observer, who, as 
 a near neighbour in Suffolk, was on terms of intimacy with 
 Lord Bristol. Joined to the materials already existing else- 
 where, of which the fullest and most important are the 
 manuscript authorities and letters in the library of the 
 British Museum, and to the results of a careful endeavour 
 to collect such memories of the Bishop as yet remain in his 
 Irish diocese, the correspondence published by Mr. Vere 
 Foster in The Two Duchesses aids us largely, if not to the 
 complete solution of Mr. Lecky's problem, at any rate to 
 an understanding of that dual nature which made it pos- 
 sible for Lord Bristol to merit equally the maledictions of 
 Charlemont and Horace Walpole, the friendship of Shel- 
 burne, and the encomiums of acquaintances so dissimilar as 
 Wesley, Bentham, and Arthur Young. 
 
 Few characters in English or Irish history present 
 a stranger medley of incongruous opposites than that of 
 Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. 
 Combining high rank in the English aristocracy and a 
 splendid estate with the wealthiest of Irish bishoprics, and 
 uniting to the manners of a grand seigneur a devotion to art 
 which would have done no discredit to a Medici, the fourth 
 Earl of Bristol resembled rather a prince-bishop of the 
 Middle Ages than an English nobleman or an eighteenth- 
 century divine. Yet, with political talents that would have 
 sufficed to sustain the role of a great ecclesiastical statesman 
 he combined extravagances of speech and action which 
 
'60 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 rendered co-operation with him impossible, and reduced to the 
 level of pure Quixotism an adventure in Hibernian politics 
 which, ballasted by good sense and dignified by the most or- 
 dinary decorum, might have exercised a useful and liberalising, 
 instead of a disturbing and injurious influence on the course 
 of Irish history. With tastes for painting, sculpture, and 
 architecture as remarkable as his means of gratifying them 
 were splendid, he joined, especially in his later years, a loose- 
 ness of morals which, however venial the fashion of the day 
 may have deemed it in a layman, was unpardonable in the 
 wearer of a mitre ; and the shamelessness with which he 
 flaunted in the eighteenth century a profligacy which would 
 have disgraced the worst examples of the fifteenth betokened 
 a Borgia rather than a Wolsey. 
 
 The chameleon-like personality which united these extra- 
 ordinary contradictions and inconsistencies was the offspring 
 of parents scarcely less remarkable than himself. John, 
 Lord Hervey, eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol, who, 
 in Walpole's Administration, first as the occupant of a Court 
 office in the entourage of Queen Caroline and afterwards 
 as Lord Privy Seal, exercised a direct and sometimes com- 
 manding influence on the opinions and policy of George II., 
 was among the most notable Englishmen of his day, and 
 one of the most eminent figures in the Court of which he 
 has left so unflattering a picture. He had the misfortune to 
 earn the malevolent enmity of Pope ; and the pen of the 
 satirist was never dipped more deep in gall than when, 
 smarting under personalities which exaggerated his normal 
 spitefulness to the dignity of a fiercer passion, the poet drew 
 that savage portrait of ' Sporus,' which no one who has read 
 it can forget. 1 The last couplet of Pope's tirade was, per- 
 haps justified by the curious effeminacy, characteristic of 
 
 1 ' Sporus ! that mere white curd of asses' milk, 
 His wit all seesaw between that and this, 
 And he himself one vile antithesis. 
 Amphibious thing ! that acting either part, 
 The trifling head or the corrupted heart, 
 Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board. 
 Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.' 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERRY 61 
 
 the mental qualities, as well as the physical features, of 
 Lord Hervey, which prompted the epigram of his friend and 
 correspondent Lady Mary Montagu (sometimes ascribed to 
 Chesterfield) that ' at the beginning God created men, women, 
 and Herveys.' But the jibes at Lord Hervey's understanding 
 were altogether inapplicable to one of the most capable 
 politicians, shrewdest observers, and most caustic writers of 
 his time ; and the author of the ' Secret Memoirs of the 
 Court of George II.' has had intellectually an abundant, 
 though posthumous, revenge for the oblique slanders of the 
 ' Epistle to Arbuthnot ' and the ' Imitations of Horace,' and 
 the direct insults of the celebrated ' Letter to a Noble Lord.' 
 
 The brothers of this remarkable person were likewise 
 distinguished by talents which were, however, accompanied 
 by considerable eccentricity and a deplorable laxity of 
 morals. A younger brother, Henry, who, marrying the 
 heiress of Sir Thomas Aston, became the ancestor, through 
 his daughter, of the Irish family of Bruce, whom the Bishop 
 of Derry made the heirs of his Irish property, won, by his 
 careless kindness, despite great vices, the grateful epitaph of 
 Johnson, ' Call a dog Hervey, and I will love him ; ' while 
 an elder brother, Carr, Lord Hervey, who is suspected, on 
 evidence more positive than the close resemblance of personal 
 and mental characteristics which corroborates it, of having 
 been the parent of Horace Walpole, occupies a prominent 
 place in the memoirs of his time. 
 
 Much as Lord Hervey occupied the attention of eminent 
 contemporaries, his lady was no less an object of interest, 
 though in her case criticism took the happier form of com- 
 pliment. The universal testimony of a host of admiring 
 contemporaries has left Mary, Lady Hervey, in no need of 
 the posthumous evidences of her charm and vivacity which 
 survive in her published letters. In early youth Mary Lepel f 
 the fair maid of honour to the Princess of Wales, divided 
 with Miss Mary Bellenden (afterwards Duchess of Argyll) 
 the homage of the courtiers of St. James's and the toasts of 
 the wits of White's ; and Lady Hervey preserved in middle 
 and even to old age the qualities which gave distinction to 
 
62 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 her beauty. Even at a time when it was the fashion to cele- 
 brate in verse the charms of Court beauties not many could 
 boast of tributes from both Pope and Gay. The author of 
 the ' Beggars' Opera ' celebrates the graces of the hand- 
 somest pair at Court in the couplet — 
 
 Now, Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well 
 
 With thee, youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepel ; 
 
 and not all the malignity of Pope's enmity to her husband 
 could provoke him to disparage a lady for whom at one 
 time the poet seems to have entertained a sincere affection. 
 The fury of his ' Letter to a Noble Lord ' is relieved by the 
 parenthesis in which ' the beauty, merit, and vivacity ' of 
 Lady Hervey exempt her from the denunciations showered 
 on her spouse. Chesterfield's mature testimony to the 
 charms of mind and manner possessed in her fiftieth year 
 by a lady whose maiden beauty he had, with Pulteney, 
 celebrated in a ballad, best enables posterity to understand 
 the sources of a fascination which inspired Voltaire to the 
 only set of English verses which he is known to have 
 written. 1 
 
 She has been bred all her life at Courts, of which she 
 has acquired all the easy good breeding and politeness with- 
 out the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a woman 
 should have, and more than a woman need have ; for she 
 understands Latin perfectly well, and wisely conceals it. 
 No woman ever had more than she has le ton de la par- 
 faitement bonne compagnie, les manieres engageantes et le je 
 ne sgais quoi qui plait. 2 
 
 From Lady Hervey her son, the Bishop, appears to have 
 derived the two characteristics which had the strongest 
 
 1 ' Hervey, would you know the passion 
 You have kindled in my breast, 
 Trifling is the inclination 
 
 That by words can be expressed. 
 
 ' In my silence see the lover — 
 
 True love is by silence known — 
 In my eyes you'll best discover 
 All the powers of your own.' 
 
 1 Chesterfield's Letters, ii. 40. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 63 
 
 influence on his career — viz. his love of Continental life and 
 that penchant for Roman Catholicism which so shocked his 
 contemporaries, and which, to say truth, sat somewhat 
 strangely on a bishop of the Establishment half a century 
 before Catholic emancipation. Miss Lepel was of French 
 extraction, and of her latter years many were spent abroad. 
 Cole, the antiquary, states that she lived so long at Paris, 
 after her husband's death, that it got to the ears of George 
 II. that her Ladyship was not only turned Jacobite, but also 
 Roman Catholic ; but adds that, when he mentioned it to 
 her son Frederick (the Bishop), the latter part of the story 
 was denied. Her letters, published in 1822, to Rev. Edmund 
 Morris, who acted as tutor to her sons, show that she took a 
 keen interest in theological questions, and a passage, written 
 in 1749, apropos of Conyers Middleton's once celebrated 
 ' Inquiry as to the Miraculous Powers of the Church,' reads 
 curiously like a comment on the Tractarian controversy of 
 a century later. 1 
 
 The offspring of this union of talent and originality with 
 
 1 ' One thing only seems pretty evident to me, which is that the Fathers and 
 the Protestants can hardly be supported together. All those things which we 
 call superstitions and innovations of the Roman Catholics were undoubtedly 
 the practice of the primitive Christians ; and though I believe the Papal power 
 was an innovation, yet their ceremonies and faith were to my apprehension 
 not so. Therefore I must stick to my old opinion that the Reformation as 
 managed by Henry VIII. was warrantable according to Christianity ; but that 
 introduced by Luther and Calvin, and adopted by Edward VI., was not quite 
 so clearly founded in authority.' 
 
 Of Lady Hervey's acuteness as a critic of character her estimate of 
 Charles Townshend, written on hearing the news of the death of that splendid 
 failure, is a striking proof, and its closing sentences curiously anticipate the 
 similar language used by Edmund Burke in one of the most gorgeous passages 
 in his speeches. ' One of the brightest stars in our hemisphere is set. Mr. 
 Towrjshend will be missed as a speaker in the House of Commons, and as an 
 inexhaustible fund of entertainment in all companies ; but no party or set of 
 men will want him, because none ever knew when they had him. When I was 
 told of his death I could hardly forbear saying " Alas ! poor Yorick. Where 
 be now your gibes ? Your flashes of entertainment that set the table in a 
 roar ? " 'Twas only in that light I could think of him. Great is the difference 
 between his real death and the political demise of Lord Chatham. Certain 
 companies at certain times will regret the one ; but a nation suffers in the loss 
 of the other. Mr. Townshend was a shining, sparkling star ; Lord Chatham 
 an invigorating vivifying sun ; we miss the one, but can hardly subsist without 
 the other.' 
 
•64 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 beauty and charm inherited no small share of the attributes 
 of their progenitors, and as three out of four sons suc- 
 cessively inherited one of the wealthiest of English earl- 
 doms the excellences and eccentricities of this generation 
 of Herveys could not fail to attract as much attention from 
 their contemporaries as an earlier age had bestowed on their 
 parents. What Pope and Chesterfield did for Lord Hervey 
 and Molly Lepel Horace Walpole and his brother gossips 
 have done for their children ; and, while the diplomatic, 
 naval, and ecclesiastical history of Great Britain attests the 
 intellectual vigour of the second, third, and fourth Earls of 
 Bristol, the pens of the scandal-mongers of the age found 
 frequent exercise in recounting the astonishing doings of 
 George, Augustus, and Frederick Hervey. A fourth brother, 
 who, though designed for the Church, ended his career as a 
 general in the army, displaying the qualities of his race in 
 less marked fashion, and on a less eminent stage, has hitherto 
 appeared to have escaped the stings of the gossips of the 
 eighteenth century ; but the character drawn of him by 
 Arthur Young, in his lately published ' Autobiography,' 
 proves William Hervey to have been no exception to the 
 rest of his name in point of eccentricity. 
 
 Of the early years of the future bishop, who was born on 
 August 1, 1730, but few authentic details are available. Lord 
 Hervey, though called to the House of Peers in his father's 
 lifetime, died before the first Earl of Bristol, in 1743, and 
 the care of the children devolved on Lady Hervey, aided by 
 the counsel and assistance of their grandfather, an amiable 
 and accomplished nobleman, to whom, as appears from his 
 letters, published by Mr. Sydenham Hervey, Frederick seems 
 to have been an object of peculiar interest and affection. 
 Young Hervey, with his younger brother William, was 
 educated partly at Westminster School and partly under the 
 tutelage of Mr. Morris, a Hampshire rector, already mentioned 
 as the correspondent of Lady Hervey, whose letters he edited. 
 
 The letters of Mr. Morris to his mother — who, how- 
 ever, in after years, according to Horace Walpole, ' did not 
 highly reverence her son's sincerity,' and rarely had him 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERRY 65 
 
 at her house — were such as justified in Lady Hervey high 
 hopes for the future of her son, and his progress at 
 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whither he went in 
 1747, confirmed this favourable augury. Cole, the Cambridge 
 antiquary, who knew Hervey well, states that his application 
 to study was as remarkable as it was unusual in persons of 
 his rank ; and his grandfather's letters show that the delight 
 in travel and love of art which always marked the Bishop 
 were developed early. The young student consults his 
 grandfather as to the purchase of a reputed Vandyke 
 portrait of the old Earl's mother, and discusses schemes of 
 foreign travel with his tutor and Lady Hervey. It was 
 at Cambridge, too, that the future Bishop formed an 
 acquaintanceship which seems to have been tolerably 
 intimate, and to which we owe some instructive sidelights 
 on his character. The poet Gray was then resident at the 
 University, and of him and his friend Mason Hervey saw a 
 good deal. 
 
 Originally designed for the law, in pursuit of which he 
 got as far as to enter at Lincoln's Inn, Frederick Hervey 
 suddenly resolved to enter the Church. Upon the causes of 
 this change of purpose no information is forthcoming, The 
 worldliness of his subsequent character naturally suggests 
 the hope of speedy ecclesiastical preferment as his incentive. 
 But if this were so he must have suffered disappointment, 
 for, though ordained in 1754, he remained for thirteen years 
 without any clerical appointment save that of chaplain to 
 George III., a post to which he was appointed in 1762, and 
 which he combined with the lay office of Clerk of the Privy 
 Seal. He was thus, as his friend Cole observes, a singular 
 instance of a man of his learning, family, and connections 
 that never attained any ecclesiastical preferment till he was 
 made a bishop. Possibly the change was dictated by his 
 early marriage, contrary to the wishes of the parents of both 
 parties, when barely two-and-twenty, to Elizabeth, daughter 
 of Sir Jermyn Davers ; a lady older than himself, to whom 
 the Bishop in later years was in the habit of referring 
 disrespectfully as a ' majestic ruin,' but for whom he must 
 
 F 
 
' 66 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 at one time have entertained a genuine affection, since, 
 though the lady subsequently proved a wealthy spouse, 
 through the death of her only brother without issue, both 
 bride and bridegroom were portionless at the time of their 
 marriage. 1 A letter from Mason to Gray indicates that the 
 young couple in the early part of their married life were in 
 very narrow circumstances. 
 
 There are no family papers available, if any exist, which 
 belong to the career of Frederick Hervey prior to his elevation 
 to the episcopate, and it is, therefore, impossible to follow 
 his development during those years of early manhood when 
 character becomes fixed and set in the mould of circumstance. 
 While such indications as remain show that the clerical 
 courtier spent his time in the pursuits and relaxations 
 natural to a young Englishman of rank and position, 2 the 
 letters of Lady Hervey seem to indicate that he under- 
 took with some seriousness a course of theological study, 
 though he chose for his mentor a divine whose views were 
 unorthodox enough to leave him open to the charge of 
 infidelity ; and the Deism of which the Bishop of Derry is 
 accused by Charlemont was probably imbibed at the feet of 
 Dr. Conyers Middleton. But whatever the young clergyman's 
 private aberrations from the straight and narrow pathway of 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, it is certain that he must have 
 applied himself seriously to the study of divinity. Some of 
 the Bishop's MS. sermons survived long enough to be 
 perused by his most distinguished successor in the see of 
 Derry, and to Wesley's eulogy on ' his Lordship's useful 
 and judicious sermon on blasphemy of the Holy Ghost' 
 may be added the testimony of so eminent a critic as the 
 
 1 A miniature of this lady preserved at Ickworth, shows her to have been 
 possessed, at the time of her marriage at least, of considerable personal 
 attractions. 
 
 * In Dodsley's ' Collection of Poems by Various Hands ' (1758), vol. iii. 
 p. 183, there is a poetical apologue ' On the Origin of Cards— A Tale,' addressed 
 to the Hon. Miss Carpenter, which, in a MS. annotation in the copy in the 
 library of Trinity College, Dublin, is stated to be by the Hon. and Eev. Mr. 
 Hervey. The poem belongs to that order of verse of which the ' Rape of the 
 Lock ' is the most classic example, but the lines are poor. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERRY 67 
 
 Archbishop of Armagh (Dr. Alexander) to the theological 
 erudition of Lord Bristol. 
 
 Much of Hervey's time at this period seems to have been 
 devoted to the gratification of the dominant passion of his 
 life — the passion for travel — by which his later years were 
 entirely absorbed. Neither the temporal duties of the 
 Clerk of the Privy Seal nor the spiritual preoccupations of 
 the Court Chaplain were so engrossing as to interfere with 
 frequent and extended visits to the Continent. In 1765 he 
 started on a lengthened tour in Italy, visiting Vesuvius 
 in company with his old schoolfellow Sir William Hamilton, 
 and undertaking in the following year, in company with 
 Mr. Burnaby, the English chaplain at Leghorn, a tour 
 through Corsica, of which the record contained in the jour- 
 nal of his fellow traveller was largely utilised in Boswell's 
 account of that island. The visit to Vesuvius was made on 
 the eve of an eruption, and, approaching incautiously too 
 close to the volcano, Hervey was severely wounded in the 
 arm. Volcanic and geological phenomena appear to have 
 henceforth had a great attraction for him. In subsequent 
 travels he continually visited both Vesuvius and Etna, and 
 in his communications with Sir William Hamilton, who 
 published a volume of ' Observations on Volcanoes of the 
 Two Sicilies,' he constantly alludes to the subject ; while the 
 letters of the Bishop to Sir John Strange, the English 
 Resident at Venice, testify to the interest he took in that 
 great natural curiosity adjacent to his diocese, the Giants' 
 Causeway, to the geological peculiarities of which he was 
 among the first to direct the attention of scientific men. 
 
 If promotion was slow in coming to the future bishop, the 
 delay does not seem to have been attributable to any bash- 
 fulness on the part of the aspirant. Hervey seems to have 
 had a particular desire to be appointed to the headship of a 
 Cambridge College, a position for which, indeed, according 
 to the standard of the day, he was not altogether ill equipped 
 in point of scholarship, though his subsequent career 
 scarcely suggests his suitability in other respects. On the 
 death of Dr. Chapman, in 1760, he applied for the Master- 
 
68 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 ship of Magdalene College, but found it had been already 
 disposed of ; and four years later sought to procure the 
 retirement of Dr. Bernardeston from the headship of Corpus 
 Christi, in the belief that he would himself be appointed to 
 that position. He also sought more strictly ecclesiastical 
 preferment, and was an applicant more than once for 
 the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle, who in one of 
 his letters rebukes an importunity which made Hervey's 
 application for the Deanery of Bristol the first information 
 which the Minister had received of the vacancy. Gray, in 
 one of his letters, deplores his friend's want of success in his 
 search for promotion, and appears to have been anxious to 
 assist. ' Here,' he writes, ' is a bishopric (St. David's) 
 vacant. Can I anyhow serve him? ' 
 
 In 1767, however, during his elder brother's brief tenure 
 of the Irish Viceroyalty, Hervey was nominated to the 
 bishopric of Cloyne, it is said at the instance- of the King, 
 who, according to the gossip of the day, charged his Viceroy 
 to exercise his first piece of ecclesiastical patronage in favour 
 of a brother who, it was hinted maliciously, would not have 
 been so readily advanced had fraternal affection not been 
 prompted by the suggestion of the sovereign. But, though the 
 Bishop was certainly on the worst of terms with his second 
 brother, Augustus, and, according to Walpole, was prepared 
 to aid in proving the invalidity of that nobleman's marriage 
 with the Duchess of Kingston, in order to prevent a new 
 alliance which might interfere with his own succession to 
 the Bristol title and estates, there is no warrant for this 
 malicious assumption. The appointment was certainly due 
 to the spontaneous suggestion of Lord Bristol, though, as a 
 letter in the ' Chatham Correspondence ' shows, the King's 
 eagerness to promote his chaplain had no need to be stimu- 
 lated by his Viceroy's zeal in his brother's behalf. On the 
 death of his eldest brother the Bishop referred with obvious 
 sincerity in a letter to his friend Strange to the loss of ' the 
 kindest friend and the most affectionate brother,' and, in 
 reference to a bequest of 10,000£., observes, ' He has testified 
 his kindness to me to the last ; but no accession of wealth, 
 
THE EAEL-BISHOP OF DEEEY 69 
 
 especially to one in my situation, can compensate for the loss 
 of a real friend.' The appointment to the see of Cloyne, 
 which was made in February 1767, was near being snatched 
 from the grasp of the designated prelate by the accident of 
 his brother's resignation of the Lord-Lieutenancy before the 
 formalities connected with the nomination had been com- 
 pleted. An attempt was made to induce Lord Bristol's 
 successor to bestow the office on another aspirant, and 
 Hervey seems to have owed the confirmation to the see to 
 the powerful intervention of Lord Shelburne, whose friend- 
 ship was destined to exercise a notable influence on the 
 Bishop's political career. 
 
 The new bishop, who was still travelling on the Conti- 
 nent at the time of his appointment, lost no time in assuming 
 the active duties of the episcopate, on which, like many of 
 his colleagues in an age when it was customary to bestow 
 lawn sleeves upon the cadets of noble houses as the reward 
 for the political services of their relatives, he entered in the 
 full vigour of early manhood. 1 He arrived in Ireland at a 
 moment of peculiar interest in the political history of the 
 island. The year 1767 marked a fresh chapter in the rela- 
 tions between the English Government and the Irish 
 Parliament, and a change of method on the part of the 
 British Cabinet had led to the resignation of the viceroyalty 
 by Lord Bristol before he had discharged any of the 
 functions of his position save that of nominating the 
 successor to Bishop Johnson in the see of Cloyne. The 
 system prevalent through the first half of the eighteenth 
 century, under which the Viceroys spent only a few weeks 
 in Ireland each alternate year at the opening of the biennial 
 sessions of the Irish Parliament, had made the Lords Jus- 
 
 1 Before proceeding to Ireland Hervey spent some time in England, and in 
 Gray's correspondence we catch glimpses of his lordship of Cloyne 'very jolly,' 
 and devouring with boyish enjoyment, in company with the poet, ' four rasp- 
 berry puffs together in Cranbourne Alley, standing at a pastrycook's shop in 
 the street.' Mason describes him at the same date as preaching for him at 
 York, whence he went to Durham, where it was reported 'he danced at the 
 assembly with a conquering mien, and all the misses swear he is the genteellest 
 thing they ever set eyes on, and wants nothing but two feet more in height.' 
 
70 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 tices, who governed the country in the absence of the Lord- 
 Lieutenant, the sole depositaries of power and patronage ; 
 and the rivalries of these partisan substitutes for the 
 Sovereign had led to difficulties and embarrassments of a 
 very serious kind. With the object of checking more effec- 
 tively the power of the great nobles Chatham insisted on 
 putting a stop to this viceregal absenteeism, and announced 
 to his ministers that the vicegerent would in future be ex- 
 pected to perform in person the duties of his office. The 
 great statesman seems also to have had in view a com- 
 plete change in the principles of Irish government, which 
 there is some reason to believe included a union of the 
 Legislatures and a very large measure of Roman Catholic 
 relief, and Lord Bristol appears to have undertaken the 
 viceroyalty with the idea that it would be his business to 
 carry out such a policy. But, whatever its details, the pro- 
 gramme was upset by Chatham's illness, and ' the man who 
 could and would have supported him in the noble plan that 
 was formed ' l being no longer available, Bristol at once 
 resigned his post. Thereupon Lord Townshend was sent to 
 Ireland to initiate that new system of managing the venal 
 politicians of College Green which has given his viceroyalty 
 and that of his successor, Lord Harcourt, so bad an emi- 
 nence in the annals of Parliamentary corruption. 
 
 This new era in the political relations of the two islands 
 was coincident with the first dawning of the liberal move- 
 ment, which in the course of the ensuing generation was to 
 lead Ireland to the apogee of her legislative independence. 
 The Roman Catholics of Ireland were beginning to show the 
 first stirrings which betokened their awaking from the long 
 slumber that followed the violation of the Treaty of 
 Limerick ; and, though some years were still to elapse 
 before any formal relaxation of the severity of the penal 
 laws was wrung from the Irish Parliament, the more 
 thoughtful observers of Irish affairs were beginning to 
 apprehend the nature of those difficulties which the revolt 
 of the American colonies and the French Revolution were 
 
 1 Lady Hervey's Letters. 
 
THE EAEL-BISHOP OF DERRY 71 
 
 ere long to press home on the attention of the least con- 
 siderate. 
 
 Hervey, however, though he applied himself from the 
 first to a study of the social and political conditions of the 
 country, was content for a time to stand aloof from parties, 
 and the devotion to his diocesan duties and the abstinence 
 from political intrigue which marked the first years of his 
 episcopate are in striking contrast as well to the complete 
 indifference to the duties of his office which he manifested in 
 later years as to the mischievous violence of his intervention 
 in politics in the era of the Volunteer Convention. His tenure 
 of the see which had been dignified by the episcopate of 
 Berkeley x lasted for little more than a year; but he left his 
 mark upon the diocese by bringing to a termination, with 
 results very advantageous to his successors, a long-standing 
 agrarian dispute which for more than a generation had 
 impaired the cordiality of the relations between the dwellers 
 on the Church lands of Cloyne and the occupants of the 
 Palace. The account of this dispute and its termination, 
 as narrated in Brady's ' Records of Cloyne,' strikingly 
 attests the vigour, resolution, and business capacity which, 
 when he chose to exert himself, marked Herve} r 's actions. 
 
 Early in 1768 the young prelate was nominated by Lord 
 Townshend, at the instance of Shelburne, to succeed Bishop 
 Barnard in the opulent see of Deny. A well-authenticated 
 anecdote records the jest with which the fortunate Bishop 
 received the news of his translation. He was amusing him- 
 self with some youthful companions in a jumping competi- 
 tion when the letter announcing his promotion was placed 
 in his hands. • I will jump no more,' said the Bishop, 
 withdrawing from the contest, ' for I have distanced you 
 all. I have jumped from Cloyne to Derry.' Arrived in 
 the North of Ireland, Hervey appears to have applied him- 
 self at once and with diligence to the affairs of his very 
 
 1 ' Is it not, think you,' wrote Mason to Gray in irony, 'according to the 
 order of things (I mean not the general, but the peculiar order of our own 
 times) that the mitre which was so lately on the brows of the man with every 
 virtue under heaven should now adorn those of our friend Frederic ? ' 
 
72 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 important diocese, and, whatever his subsequent failings, 
 it must be acknowledged that he brought to the discharge 
 of his duties, both as bishop and as citizen, an activity, a 
 public spirit, and a zeal for improvement which were then 
 far from common among his brethren of the episcopal bench. 
 The emoluments of the bishopric, which at the date of his 
 appointment amounted to 7,000Z., rose ultimately, under the 
 skilful management of its new occupant, to a princely revenue 
 not far short of 20,000Z. a year. Attached to the bishopric 
 were 70,000 acres of land, and for the renewal fines on the 
 leases of the diocesan estate the Bishop received immense 
 sums, which he spent with lavish profusion. He inaugurated 
 a movement for providing a new and splendid bridge over 
 the Foyle, and headed the subscription list with a contri- 
 bution of 1,000Z. In this project he took an extraordinary 
 interest, publishing an account of the intended structure in 
 the gazettes of Switzerland and France, and inviting plans 
 for its erection from foreign engineers. He also undertook 
 at great expense operations for prospecting the coal-fields of 
 the North of Ireland, which after a lapse of a hundred and 
 twenty years are once more being exploited, and employed 
 armies of labourers in the construction of roads through the 
 more remote districts of his diocese. At the same time he 
 gratified his passion for architecture by building in two of the 
 wildest and most distant extremities of the see the magnificent 
 mansions of Downhill and Ballyscullion, which divided with 
 the splendid edifice of Ickworth those treasures of Italian 
 painting and sculpture for which in later years he ransacked 
 the Continent, and to procure which he not only lavished 
 the whole of his episcopal income, but even crippled the 
 resources of his successors in the family estates. 
 
 Nor, in these earlier years at least, was the activity of 
 the Bishop limited to the merely personal and selfish objects 
 which ultimately engrossed his regard. He found on his 
 arrival that the majority of the incumbents of the diocesan 
 livings were non-resident, and that, although in the enjoy- 
 ment of incomes ranging from 2501. to 1,500Z. a year, these 
 clergymen provided for the duties of their cures by paying 
 
THE EAKL-BISKOP OF DEERY 73 
 
 50/. a year to a curate, which, as the Bishop observed, was 
 their own estimate of the worth of the service for which they 
 received such rich emoluments. Hervey did whatever his 
 episcopal authority permitted to enforce residence on the 
 incumbents, and insisted on raising the status of their 
 deputies. He also busied himself in a scheme for providing 
 pensions for the widows of deserving rectors, to which his 
 own contributions were constantly given on a large and 
 liberal scale. He marked his first year by an exhaustive 
 visitation of every parish in the diocese, and. a layman, 
 writing towards the close of the year 1768, after recounting 
 the various instances of the new Bishop's energy, concludes 
 his report by observing that ' if he goes on as he has begun 
 we shall not grudge him the monstrous income of his 
 bishopric.' Before the close of 1768 his energy and public 
 spirit had so impressed the citizens of Londonderry as to win 
 him the honour, never praviously accorded to their bishop, of 
 the freedom of the city. Another outlet for his superabundant 
 energies, which enabled him to combine the improvement of 
 the diocese with the gratification of his delight in architec- 
 ture, was the adorning of his cathedral and of many of his 
 churches with elaborate spires. He presented the cathedral 
 with a handsome spire of cut freestone, which, however, was 
 too heavy for the tower which supported it, and had to be 
 taken down ; and in one of his letters to John Beresford, 
 the well-known head of the Irish revenue, whose kindred 
 taste for architecture is commemorated in Gandon's chef- 
 d'oeuvre, the Dublin Custom-House, the Bishop developes 
 his views on this question of spires with much elaboration. 
 ' Let the Church decorate the country, if it cannot receive 
 it,' he concludes, ' and let its steeple and spire make it the 
 visible as well as the Established Church.' ; His interest in 
 buildings connected with the Church survived his neglect of 
 all the more serious duties of his office, and one of his last 
 
 1 In 1778, when there was a prospect of a large and immediate extension of 
 Roman Catholic liberties, he wrote to his daughter from Borne : ' If such a 
 bill should pass I pledge myself to bring 60,000Z. sterling within eighteen months 
 into the kingdom for the purpose of building cathedrals, churches, and chapels.' 
 
74 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 extant letters is an angry remonstrance, addressed to Lord 
 Cavan, at the injury done by the King's troops, during the 
 disturbances of the rebellion, to the palace at Derry, which 
 he had then long ceased to inhabit, and to which he had no 
 intention of returning. 1 So favourably did Hervey's energy 
 contrast with the apathy of most of his episcopal brethren 
 that, in a striking speech of Shelburne's in 1779 on the state 
 of the Irish Church, the Bishop of Derry was bracketed with 
 Primate Robinson in honourable contrast to the rest of the 
 bishops, and his example held up for imitation. 
 
 But the most curious trait in Hervey's relations with his 
 diocese was his cordiality with both Roman Catholics and 
 Protestant Dissenters, to the building of whose chapels 
 and meeting-houses and to the support of whose clergy and 
 ministers he contributed almost as freely as to those of his 
 own communion. At a time when Roman Catholic places 
 of worship were barely tolerated by the Protestants of the 
 North of Ireland the Bishop was anxious to encourage the 
 erection of decent chapels, and when he built a new church 
 for his own flock he would hand over the old one to the 
 parish priest. He was on the best terms with the Presby- 
 terian ministers, and in the dispensation of his episcopal 
 hospitality would invite the clergy of all denominations to 
 his table. A set of apartments at Downhill were known as 
 the Curates' Corridor, and their use was not confined to 
 clergymen of his own Church. The Reverend Classon 
 Porter, who in a little pamphlet, published some years ago, 
 has collected many of the traditional stories which attest 
 the eccentricities of this very original prelate, has preserved 
 a capital anecdote of one of the Bishop's clerical festivities, 
 at which, after regaling his guests with an excellent repast, 
 he ordered his horses out of the stables, and, desiring the 
 reverend gentlemen to mount, set the representatives of the 
 rival communions to an equine contest on the sands at 
 Downhill. According to the Dissenting historian of this 
 comic competition the Presbyterian ministers, being of 
 lighter substance than the portly clergy of the Establish- 
 
 1 See infra, p. 98. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 75 
 
 ment, were in every instance victorious over their rivals, and 
 the Bishop heartily enjoyed the discomfiture of his clergy. 
 
 Though the later career of the earl-bishop conclusively 
 negatives the hypothesis of his having been animated by 
 anything approaching to real spirituality, his curiously com- 
 pounded nature was certainly not devoid of an admixture of 
 religious feeling. The ' admirable solemnity ' with which, 
 according to Wesley, he celebrated the Holy Communion 
 was not a mere exhibition of hypocrisy assumed in deference 
 to the exigencies of his position and profession. His invita- 
 tion to the well-known divine Skelton to become his 
 chaplain and preach his consecration sermon appears to 
 have been prompted by a sincere admiration for the learn- 
 ing and piety of that writer, who was personally unknown 
 to him except by the merit of his theological books. There 
 were occasions, too, when he could exhibit real feeling. On 
 one of these, being solicited for a benediction by an aged 
 clergyman of his diocese, known for his exemplary life, the 
 Bishop demurred. ' You,' he said, ' are more fitted to give 
 a blessing than I,' and insisted on receiving the old man's 
 blessing. And there is a pretty story of a confirmation held 
 by the Bishop in his cathedral, at which there appeared 
 among the candidates a young girl, the orphaned darling of 
 her aged grandfather, who attended her to the ceremony. 
 As the maiden knelt to receive the episcopal benediction, 
 the old man moved forward and placed his hand on the 
 head o his grandchild. The chaplain intervening to check 
 this irregularity, the Bishop, touched with the old man's 
 tenderness, forbade the interference of his subordinate. 
 ' Nay,' he said finely, ' mine is the benediction of office, his 
 the benediction of love. Why should they not be joined ? ' 
 To these illustrations of the better side of the Bishop's 
 character must be added the examples of real benevolence 
 and kindliness of disposition which even so hostile a critic as 
 Charlemont felt constrained to record. 1 
 
 Hervey's first intervention in Irish politics was prompted 
 
 1 See Charlemont's Autobiography ; Historical MSS. Commission, Twelfth 
 Report, App. x. pp. 166-7. 
 
76 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 by the difficulties which he experienced in his diocese 
 through the operation of the tithe system. He writes in 
 November 1773 from Dublin to his friend Strange, ' I have 
 been so immersed in politics as to be totally engrossed by 
 them. My object is to change the whole system of our 
 ecclesiastical property, to abolish tithe, and to give the 
 clergy land in lieu of it.' The measures which Hervey 
 recommended for securing this object exhibit singular acute- 
 ness and foresight. In a letter written long years after l he 
 gives the then Chief Secretary of Ireland, Pelham, the 
 results of his experience, and diagnoses Irish discontent in 
 these pregnant sentences : — 
 
 After thirty years' experience and a more intimate 
 acquaintance with the constitution, pulse, and habits of your 
 frantic patient than any one of my cloth, after having 
 gained his affection, enjoyed his confidence, and merited his 
 esteem, I will venture to assure you he is an animal easily led, 
 not to be driven ; and that, in plain English, there are two 
 fundamental causes of his discontent and of his savage 
 resentment — tithes ; and the nature, quality, and pitiful 
 dependence of his teachers on their hearers, who, if they do 
 not preach what others like to hear, are sure to be first 
 ill paid and then dismissed. 
 
 The exactions of the tithe proctor, in the view of the 
 Bishop, made himself, the parson, and the established 
 religion all equally hated, and Hervey submitted proposals 
 to the bench of bishops which received their sanction, and 
 which, he says, it was arranged should be tried experimen- 
 tally in Derry, but to which his own ill-health had prevented 
 him from giving effect. 
 
 To this question of tithes the Bishop does not seem to 
 have recurred ; but the condition of the Roman Catholic 
 priesthood long occupied his attention. His frequent 
 residence in Italy gave him opportunities of learning much 
 that was hidden from his colleagues at home, and from 
 English statesmen, as to the ideas entertained at the 
 Vatican on the one hand and among the members of the 
 Irish Brigade in France on the other, in regard to the 
 
 1 From "Venice, Jan. 16, 1798: Pelham Papers. 
 
THE-EARL BISHOP OF DERRY 77 
 
 future of Ireland. In a striking letter to his daughter he 
 describes the means he took to arrive at a knowledge of the 
 intrigues of the Irish abroad with the Court of Eome, and 
 the result of these inquiries convinced him that the out- 
 break of war between Great Britain and France, following 
 on the American War of Independence, would give to Irish 
 disaffection an opportunity which, if not counteracted by 
 concessions and precautions, might prove fatal to the 
 English connection. In a letter addressed to Sir William 
 Hamilton, whose schoolfellow he had been, and with whom 
 he preserved through life a friendship which the equivocal 
 nature of his intimacy in later years with the wife of that 
 ambassador does not seem to have disturbed, the Bishop 
 indicates very clearly his view of the situation in Ireland 
 and of the policy demanded of Great Britain in circumstances 
 of difficulty which had, not for the first time or the last, 
 been hailed as Ireland's opportunity ; condemning in strong 
 terms the maintenance of the penal code, and laying stress 
 on the serious danger to the connection between the two 
 countries involved in the refusal to sanction the free exercise 
 of the Boman Catholic religion — ' a Gordian knot which, 
 I fear, only the sword of a civil war can cut.' 
 
 Impressed with the reality of these dangers, with which, 
 as both his letters in ' The Two Duchesses ' and those in 
 the MS. correspondence with his friend Sir John Strange 
 show, his thoughts at this time were much occupied, and 
 sincerely detesting the odious severity of the penal laws, 
 Hervey applied himself with great energy to the task of 
 pressing upon Ministers the desirability of making the con- 
 cessions embodied in the Catholic Belief Bill of 1778 as 
 wide as possible. In two letters addressed to Pery, long 
 the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and one of 
 the most liberal-minded Irishmen of his day, he not only 
 urges the importance of concession while concession could 
 be gracefully yielded, but sketches a policy for the future 
 which exhibits a remarkable appreciation of the enduring 
 difficulties of Irish politics, and suggests expedients for 
 removing them which are far in advance of his time. He 
 
78 STUDIES IN IRISH ITTSTORY 
 
 proposed to secure the loyalty of the priesthood by vesting 
 the appointment of the Eoman Catholic bishops and clergy 
 in the Crown, and by giving them an endowment in land ; 
 and ' in order to perpetuate the political orthodoxy of our 
 Irish priests ' suggested the establishment in each of the 
 Irish provinces of a seminary for the education of the 
 priesthood. It is to be observed that these letters, though 
 they advocate a policy more liberal than any which the 
 ideas of the time would sanction, are distinctly Unionist in 
 tone, and show no trace of that Separatist spirit subse- 
 quently imputed to him and which seemed to mark the 
 Bishop's actions when, a few years later, dissatisfied with 
 the extent of the concessions, he threw himself into the 
 Volunteer movement. 1 
 
 The large toleration and the acute perception of the real 
 difficulties, which, though they lay at the root of the Irish 
 problem, were unperceived at that time by even the more 
 far-sighted of his contemporaries, may now appear to be the 
 veriest commonplaces of statesmanship ; but the reader 
 who would measure the degree by which Hervey's views on 
 Irish questions were in advance of his time must remember 
 that these letters, which in their constructive statesmanship 
 
 1 ' Ireland,' he wrote from Pome to Pery in May 1778, ' if the war with 
 France takes place, must inevitably be thrown into the greatest confusion. 
 The first blow will certainly be directed there, and the Eoman Catholics, 
 exasperated by repeated disappointments, are ripe for an almost general revolt. 
 
 . The disgust which prevails here upon the baffling of every attempt to 
 relieve their countrymen is better conceived than expressed. Their case seems 
 now to be desperate, and I much fear their conduct will be equally so. No 
 one knows better than you do the disadvantages arising to Ireland from the 
 opprobrious solecism of our penal laws against the Papists. A reasonable con- 
 cession in time might secure that allegiance and that fidelity which the fate of 
 war might, perhaps, hereafter totally deny us. . . . Could you at this perilous 
 crisis obtain a legal exercise of that silly but harmless religion which they now 
 exercise illegally, and a revocation of that impolitic statute called the Civil 
 Act which has so reduced the list of Popish nobility that all the influence of 
 the Popish people and gentry is thrown into the hands of the clergy, I am very 
 well persuaded that the French upon their landing could not procure an 
 insurrection of fifty Papists. ... I hope we shall be too wise to act the 
 second part of the American tragedy, and wait until our enemy compels us to 
 terms of moderation.' Historical MSS. Commission, Eighth Report, App. i. 
 p. 197. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERRY 79 
 
 anticipate the policy which led, twenty years later, and on 
 the compulsion of the French Bevolution, to the endowment 
 of Maynooth, and after a lapse of fifty years was applied to 
 the problems raised by Catholic Emancipation and the Tithe 
 Legislation, were written at a time when even the first of the 
 measures by which the severity of the penal laws was gradu- 
 ally relaxed had not yet reached the Statute Book. Grattan 
 was as yet a novice in the debates of the Legislature in 
 which he was soon to eclipse all competitors, the Volunteers 
 had not yet been formed, and the era of reform was still 
 undreamt of. Whatever view may be taken of the Bishop's 
 suggestions as a contribution towards practical statesman- 
 ship at the time they were offered, it is impossible to deny 
 him the credit of having discerned and set forth a very 
 important factor of the Irish problem with a candour and 
 clearness which no contemporary equalled, and with a 
 breadth of tolerance quite remarkable at a time when the 
 attitude of the dominant party towards Eoraan Catholics 
 and Dissenters was still the same mixture of contempt and 
 disgust which had animated the writings of Swift. 
 
 The views thus urged upon those among Irish politicians 
 who came nearest to himself in opinion were not adopted ; 
 and it was reserved for a later generation to apply to the 
 problems of the education of the clergy and the collection 
 of tithe the specifics thus early foreshadowed for disorders 
 which, alone among his contemporaries, Hervey appears to 
 have appreciated. But the relief afforded by the Act of 
 1778 proved sufficient to obviate the immediate fear of a 
 Franco-Irish alliance and to gratify, though not to satisfy, 
 the Bishop. ' The countenance of the French Ministers in 
 this place upon the first intelligence of the Boman Catholic 
 Bill,' he wrote from Borne ' to his daughter in the autumn 
 
 1 Of the impression created by the Bishop's demeanour during his stay in 
 Rome in 1778 a curious account survives in an unpublished journal by Sir 
 Edward Newenham, a well-known Irish politician of the day, who chanced to 
 be in the Eternal City at the same time. Describing a visit to the Sistine 
 Chapel, Newenham says : ' The Bishop of Derry most absurdly appeared in his 
 English bishop's dress. He was laughed at by every one. For this piece of 
 absurdity he was obliged to go to the lower part of the chapel, amon" the 
 
•80 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 of 1778, ' was the clearest proof how salutary that measure 
 was, and that the medicine would go, if the faint-hearted 
 physicians permitted it, to the root of the evil ; but remem- 
 ber, dear child, 
 
 Truths would you teach, and save a sinking land, 
 All fear, none aid you, and few understand. 
 
 The prejudices of some, the interests of others, the fears of 
 still more, and the indolence, indifference, and supineness 
 of all are barriers which even Lord Chatham found insur- 
 mountable.' l 
 
 The reference to Chatham, for whom the Bishop never 
 lost an opportunity of expressing his admiration, and of 
 whom he quoted towards the close of his life that ' he did 
 bestride this narrow world like a stage Colossus, and these 
 petty men do but peep between his legs,' suggests a clue to 
 Hervey's liberalism in Irish affairs, which has not hitherto 
 been sufficiently noticed, and seems to indicate that the 
 Bishop's political principles and his peculiar views of Irish 
 politics were formed under the inspiration of the elder 
 Pitt, as their later development was certainly paralleled 
 by the opinions of Shelburne, the remarkable statesman 
 who for a time wore the mantle, and in the divided Cabinet 
 of Rockingham led the adherents of Chatham. Hervey's 
 tenure of his lay office at Court had been coincident with 
 the grand period of Pitt's career, and during Chatham's 
 second Ministry he was an official in the Premier's own 
 department. It may well have been that this young scion 
 of a family which had played a great part in the Court 
 politics of the preceding generation was admitted to a share 
 in the ideas on Irish politics of the great object of his 
 political veneration. The coincidence of their views is at 
 any rate remarkably illustrated in their attitude towards 
 Irish Presbyterianism. There is a curiously close resem- 
 blance between the language in which the great Minister, 
 
 common people, while my sons and I were in the same upper division with 
 the Cardinals. After this behaviour the eccentric Bishop was held in the 
 greatest contempt. Scarcely a nobleman would visit him.' 
 1 The Two Duchesses, p. .08. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DEEEY 81 
 
 in a letter to the Irish Viceroy in 1760, defended the 
 Presbyterians as a very valuable branch of the Keformation, 
 and a body which, 'with regard to their civil principles, 
 have in all times shown themselves to be in England and 
 Ireland firm and zealous supporters of the glorious revolu- 
 tion under King William and of the present happy 
 Establishment,' and the passage in Hervey's letter twenty- 
 five years later to Arthur Young, in which he defends the 
 advocacy by a bishop of the Established Church of ' the anti- 
 episcopal schismatics called Presbyterians,' by pointing out 
 that, ' as to their political principles, I think them, from 
 their system of parity, and from their practice in most 
 parts of Europe, infinitely more favourable to political 
 liberty than ours.' l 
 
 Whether or not there was any sort of connection 
 between the great commoner and the young cleric who 
 became a bishop while Chatham was still at the head of the 
 Government, the closeness of Hervey's connection with the 
 brilliant leader of the Chathamite Whigs is no more matter 
 of conjecture than the correspondence of opinion between the 
 two men which is demonstrable from the writings of both. 
 In his leaning towards democracy, which caused Bentley to 
 say of him that he was the only Minister he had ever 
 known who did not fear the people, in his tolerance for 
 Papists and Dissenters, and in his attitude towards Parlia- 
 mentary reform, Shelburne had no fellow among his con- 
 temporaries who shared his opinions as cordially as the 
 Bishop of Derry, with whom he was on terms of intimacy 
 and confidence. The ideas upon Irish politics expressed by 
 Lord Shelburne in a paper published in Lord Edmund 
 Fitzmaurice's valuable life of that statesman are identical 
 with the views of his friend as indicated in such of the 
 papers of the latter as survive. This alliance and resem- 
 blance between two of the most original characters of their 
 day was not lost upon some at least of their contemporaries ; 
 and the peculiar venom of all Horace Walpole's references 
 to the Bishop may be accounted for in some degree by his 
 1 Autobiography of Arthur Young, p. 129. 
 
 O 
 
82 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 hatred for the statesman he so constantly vilifies in his 
 correspondence and memoirs. In a letter to Sir Horace 
 Mann in 1783 Walpole denounces ' that mitred Proteus the 
 Count-Bishop,' whose crimes, he says, can only be palliated 
 by his profligate folly, and adds that ' his brother Proteus ' 
 (Shelburne) would have sent him the previous year to 
 Versailles to negotiate the peace, had the Bishop consented 
 to act. ' But to be a peacemaker,' Walpole acrimoniously 
 adds in explanation of Hervey's refusal, ' was too much the 
 character of a bishop for such a bishop to accept.' * 
 
 Upon the motives which a few years later led to the 
 incongruous apparition in the midst of the armed volunteers 
 of Ireland for which the Bishop is best known in history 
 and of which Jonah Barrington and Froude 2 have left 
 pictures too vivid and too familiar to justify any attempt to 
 sketch it here, neither the ' Hamilton Papers ' nor the 
 letters printed in ' The Two Duchesses ' throw any vivid 
 light. Indeed, they serve rather to intensify the inconsist- 
 ency between the calm and even statesmanlike apprecia- 
 tions of the political situation which the Bishop was capable 
 of writing and the violence of the actions into which he 
 plunged at the very moment when, judging by ordinary 
 standards, it was to be expected that his accession to -the 
 title and estates of the earldom of Bristol should have 
 served to strengthen his ties with England. 3 More of his 
 time was spent at home at this period than had been usual 
 with him for some years, and the gout, which was the 
 ostensible reason for his constant trips to the Continent, 
 
 1 The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. by Peter Cunningham, viii. p. 440. 
 
 * Here is Froude's description of the Bishop's appearance in the streets of 
 Dublin on his way to the meeting of the National Convention of the Volunteers at 
 Dublin : ' He sate in an open landau drawn by six horses magnificently apparelled 
 in purple, with white gloves, gold fringed, and gold tassels dangling from them, 
 and buckles of diamonds on knee and shoe. His own mounted servants, in 
 gorgeous liveries, attended on either side of his carri age. George Robert Fitzgerald 
 rode in front with a squadron of Dragoons in gold and scarlet uniforms, on the 
 finest horses which could be bought in the land. A second squadron brought up 
 the rear in equal splendour, and thus, with slow and regal pace, the procession 
 passed on, volunteers falling in with bands playing and colours flying, the crowd 
 shouting, " Long life to the Bishop 1 " the Bishop bowing to the crowd.' 
 
 * The Bishop had succeeded to the Earldom in 1780. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DEERY 83 
 
 seems to have troubled him little from 1778 to 1785. The 
 summer and winter of 1782 were spent at Ick worth, when 
 he became intimate with Arthur Young, who was in the 
 habit of dining with him every Thursday, in company with 
 other persons of learning and distinction ; gatherings of 
 which Young says that the conversation was such as to make 
 these weekly visits to Ickworth the most agreeable days he 
 had ever known. He renewed his connection with Shelburne, 
 whom he visited at Bowood, where Bentham, who met him 
 there, was much struck by his conversation, and praised 
 him in his diary as ' a most excellent companion, pleasant, 
 intelligent, well read and well bred, liberal-minded to the 
 last degree, has been everywhere, and knows everything.' 
 
 But intemperate and inflammatory as was the action of 
 the Bishop of Derry in the famous Volunteer Convention, 
 and natural as it was that the violence of conduct and 
 demeanour, which was far more noticeable in the case of an 
 English nobleman than it would have been in an Irish politi- 
 cian, should provoke the most angry hostility, and give rise 
 to the gravest suspicions, there are grounds for questioning 
 the justice of the view of his motives and designs which, 
 adopting the adverse estimates of contemporaries who wrote 
 as partisans, even when they were not, as in the case of 
 Charlemont, the judgments of avowed enemies, has been 
 followed by most historians. Mr. Lecky considers that the 
 Bishop, had he procured his election to the chair of the 
 Convention, would have pushed matters to a rebellion, and 
 refuses to admit that the assertion of Clare, in 1798, that 
 there was not a rebel among the Volunteers, or any one who 
 would not willingly have shed his blood in defence of his Sove- 
 reign and of the Constitution, was true of the violent Bishop. 
 Froude writes, with palpable extravagance, that the Bishop 
 clung, even after the dissolution of the Convention, to the 
 dream of a separate Ireland, of which he was to be king. 
 It is, indeed, unquestionable that, both during the sittings 
 of the Convention and afterwards, the Government viewed 
 the effects of his dangerous activity with suspicion and 
 even alarm. Lord Northington, the Lord-Lieutenant, is said 
 
 a 2 
 
84 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 to have actually authorised the Bishop's arrest, and in the 
 following year the violence of Bristol's language in acknow- 
 ledging the addresses which were presented to him at Derry 
 on his return from Dublin, led to grave discussion between 
 Pitt and the succeeding Viceroy, the Duke of Kutland, as to 
 the propriety of an impeachment. But, upon the other 
 hand, it is remarkable that even the least charitable 
 character that has been drawn of him — that by Lord 
 Charlemont, who had the best possible knowledge of his 
 designs — though vehement in its denunciations of the 
 Bishop's advocacy of the movement for Beforin, and his 
 encouragement of the Koman Catholic demands, does not 
 accuse him of separatist designs ; and, although the extra- 
 vagance of speech and action was the Bishop's own, it will 
 be found that in his policy he was not animated by any wild 
 revolutionary notions, but rather that he was pursuing, by 
 methods peculiar to himself, objects in which he was 
 cordially supported by some of the most eminent of English 
 statesmen. 
 
 For it is a complete misapprehension to suppose that the 
 leaders of the Volunteers were Irish agitators who acted 
 without the concurrence and encouragement of English 
 politicians. Not only did Fox and Burke, and their imme- 
 diate connections, approve and assist the early policy of 
 Grattan, but there was a considerable section among Eng- 
 lish Whigs who were prepared to act with those who went 
 beyond Grattan in their views as to Reform. In November 
 1779 Lord Shelburne gave utterance in the House of Lords 
 to an animated vindication of the Volunteers, and his 
 approval of their aims at that time was not alienated by 
 their later action. The demand of their Convention was in 
 the main a demand for Parliamentary reform ; and Shelburne 
 was an ardent reformer, who not merely favoured the 
 extension of the franchise among Protestants, but, like the 
 Bishop, was in favour of the admission of Boman Catholics 
 to complete political liberty. In the year 1782 he had 
 actually mooted a Beform Bill in the Bockingham Cabinet, 
 and when, in the following year, Flood broke with Grattan 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 85 
 
 on this question, his natural sympathy with advanced 
 opinion, which would have led Shelburne in any case to side 
 with the elder patriot, was confirmed by the alliance between 
 Grattan and Shelburne's hated rival Fox. There is, in fact, 
 good reason for the conjecture that, in insisting on driving 
 Eeform to the front in Ireland, Flood (who, be it remem- 
 bered, became himself a member of the English House of 
 Commons in 1783) was not acting solely with an eye to 
 Ireland, but was aiming to provide his English allies with a 
 precedent from College Green which might be successfully 
 relied upon at Westminster. 1 That this is no extravagant 
 hypothesis no one who has studied the history of Parlia- 
 mentary reform can doubt. Favoured by Chatham, Eeform 
 had at this period attained a firmer footing than it was to 
 reach again for half a century, and, could Shelburne have 
 secured the co-operation of Fox in the Chathamite Ministry 
 which he formed in 1782, and in which the younger Pitt 
 first held Cabinet office, the great measure of 1832 might 
 have been anticipated by nearly two generations. But of 
 Shelburne Fox had an incurable distrust, and the vehemence 
 of the great Whig statesman's denunciation of the doings 
 of the Volunteers 2 seems to have been accentuated by 
 
 1 The sympathy with which the Volunteer movement and its Eeform 
 policy were regarded by English political theorists is strikingly attested in 
 Bentham's Defence of Radicalism from Particular Experience in the case of 
 Ireland from 1778 to 1788. Bentham's close friendship with Shelburne has 
 been pointed out above. 
 
 2 • If the volunteers are treated as they ought to be,' wrote Fox to Lord 
 Northington on Nov. 1, 1782, ' I look to their dissolution as a certain and not 
 very distant event; if otherwise, I reckon their Government, or rather Anarchy, 
 as firmly established as such a thing is capable of being. If you ask me what 
 I mean by firmness, I have no scruple in saying I mean it in the strictest 
 sense, and understand by it the determination not to be swayed in the slightest 
 degree by the volunteers, not even to attend to any petitions that may come 
 from them. This sounds violent, but I am clear it is right.' And to another 
 correspondent he wrote at the same period, ' If either the Parliamentary 
 reform in any shape, however modified, or any other point claimed by the 
 Bishop of Derryand his volunteers, be conceded, Ireland is irretrievably lost 
 for ever. The question is not whether this or that measure shall take place, 
 but whether the Constitution of Ireland, which Irish patriots are so proud of 
 having established, shall exist, or whether the Government shall be purely 
 military, as ever it was under the Prmtorian bands.' See Life of Grattan, vol. iiii 
 
86 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 the fact that they were inspired by his rival's ally. The 
 suspicion that the Bishop's behaviour at the Convention 
 was inspired by treasonable motives, or anti-English ideas, 
 is further negatived by what is known of his political 
 opinions in later years. The language of his letter to Pelham 
 in 1797, already referred to, is as strongly Unionist in tone 
 as his letters to Pery in 1778, and his last recorded public 
 act is his concurrence in an Address in favour of the Union. 1 
 All his letters on public questions breathe a strong Imperial 
 patriotism, and in the very year before the meeting of the 
 Convention he was the author of a proposal, which Shel- 
 burne encouraged, for building war ships by private contri- 
 butions, and wrote desiring his friend Strange, if possible, to 
 buy vessels from foreign Powers for the English navy to his 
 order. 
 
 Viewed in this aspect, there is much to modify the harsh- 
 ness of the judgment hitherto passed upon the objects and 
 motives of the Bishop's participation in the Volunteer Con- 
 vention. But, to whatever degree his programme may have 
 been approved by his political allies in England, his conduct 
 was such as to forfeit all confidence, and to render co-opera- 
 tion impossible. The extravagance of his language and the 
 wildness of his demeanour suggest that his natural eccen- 
 tricity had at this period passed the border-line of sanity, 
 and that the congenital infirmity which in his father had 
 taken the physical form of epilepsy had in his case shown 
 itself in temporary disorder of the brain. 2 The extravagance 
 of his semi-regal entry into Dublin on the occasion of the 
 
 1 There is a curious letter from the Bishop to his daughter, dated Novem- 
 ber 6, 1779, referring to a then projected union of the two legislatures. ' No one 
 doubts of an union, nor do I believe there will be much difficulty about the 
 terms. . . . God grant this may be true ; ' and in Sir E. Newenham's Journal 
 the following curious passage corroborates this view : ' His conduct is un- 
 accountable. He is violent against the Protestants, ridicules the Papists, and 
 is an advocate for that absurd idea of making the Parliaments of both kingdoms 
 one.' In a letter written to Boswell in 1779, the Bishop sought for information 
 
 as to the effect of the Scotch Union on Edinburgh, and stated his opinion that 
 
 the Irish capital would benefit by a similar measure. 
 
 2 In a letter written to Sir William Hamilton on September 20, 1778, there 
 ocours a passage which lends support to the hypothesis that the Bishop was 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DEREY 87 
 
 Convention might be set down to a desire to dazzle the public 
 by a display of magnificence. But there were also ebulli- 
 tions of purposeless eccentricity of a kind which made it 
 plain that his reason was seriously affected. Horace Wal- 
 pole, indeed, whose rancour against the Bishop seems to 
 have been prompted by some personal grudge, suggests no 
 such charitable hypothesis for the vagaries which at this 
 time astonished society in London and Dublin alike, and 
 seriously attributes the Bishop's fervour in behalf of the 
 Roman Catholics to a design to procure a cardinal's hat. 
 He asserts that the Bishop, who ' has renounced all religions 
 to qualify himself for being a cardinal,' had, with the same 
 object, translated into Italian and circulated at Rome his 
 speech at the Convention in behalf of the Roman Catholics, 
 flattering himself that, ' as episcopacy is deemed an inde- 
 lible character, he would be admitted ad eundem (as they 
 say at Oxford and Cambridge) into the Church of Rome.' l 
 
 Innuendoes such as this seem to be almost as fanciful 
 and extravagant as the actions of the Bishop himself were 
 wild and unaccountable. On his return to the North of 
 Ireland after the Convention — a return which, according to 
 Charlemont, was hastened by the apprehension of arrest — he 
 busied himself in raising fresh corps of volunteers, and in 
 holding levees and receiving addresses laudatory of his recent 
 proceedings from a number of local bodies and corporations, 
 in acknowledging which he used language of such extreme 
 violence as, in the opinion of the Duke of Rutland, rendered 
 him amenable to law. Pitt, however, took a more cool- 
 headed view of these displays, and evidently knew enough 
 of his man to reckon on the certainty that he would never 
 translate the rashness of his language into action ; though, 
 at the same time, he dreaded the effects of a prosecution 
 directed against one who, whatever his faults and excesses, 
 
 throughout his career affected with some sort of periodic mental disturbance 
 which may have become aggravated in his latter years : ' Perhaps you will 
 think that I am not yet recovered from some of my deliriums, and that I am 
 still light-headed.' 
 
 1 Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. by Peter Cunningham. 
 
88 STUDIES IN IBISH HISTOEY 
 
 had become a popular hero with the Volunteers of the 
 North. 
 
 Of this popularity there could be no question. One 
 of the incidents in the Bishop's conduct which had most 
 staggered Charlemont and the more moderate of the popu- 
 lar leaders had been his patronage of a character almost as 
 exceptional as his own, the famous or infamous Fighting 
 Fitzgerald. This extraordinary being, who was at this time 
 notorious not only as the most daring duellist, the most 
 reckless libertine, and the most lawless and most turbulent 
 desperado in Ireland, who had not long before been con- 
 demned to a term of imprisonment as the result of a long 
 and unseemly dispute with his father and brother, and who, 
 not three years later, was executed for murder at Castlebar, 
 was the Bishop's nephew by the marriage of his sister, Lady 
 Mary Hervey, with a Mayo squire. He had acted during 
 the proceedings of the Convention as the captain of the 
 guard of cavalry which attended the Bishop to and from the 
 Rotunda during its meetings. The open alliance between 
 the prelate and the duellist had aggravated in many minds 
 the offences of the Bishop. Yet such was the influence 
 which the latter possessed, and so marked was the deference 
 shown him, that the corporation of Londonderry voted the 
 freedom of their cit}' to Fitzgerald and entertained him at 
 a public dinner. Fitzgerald, in acknowledging the com- 
 pliment, attributed it to the desire of the citizens to do 
 honour ' to that illuminated and illuminating constellation ' 
 his uncle. Nor were the Presbyterian ministers of London- 
 derry behind their laity in approving ' the liberality of his 
 Lordship's religious sentiments.' The Presbytery of Derry, 
 ' rejoicing in the opportunity of giving their tribute of 
 deserved praise to a character in every respect so dignified,' 
 expressed their approbation in a public address, and in reply 
 received the grandiloquent assurance that ' the very rock 
 which founds my cathedral is less immovable than my purpose 
 to liberate this high-mettled nation from the petulant and 
 rapacious oligarchy which plunder and insult it.' On the 
 other hand, the accounts of the private extravagances of the 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 89 
 
 Bishop which the Government received were such as might 
 suggest the excuse of insanity. He was reported to have 
 turned his son, Lord Hervey, violently out of his house for 
 presuming to differ with his political views, and to have 
 used such treasonable language to the aide-de-camp of the 
 Lord-Lieutenant and some other officers who dined with him 
 ' as reduced the company to the alternative of flinging a bottle 
 at his head or of quitting his company.' He is said to have 
 actually gone so far as to ordain his disreputable nephew 
 Fitzgerald, who at once signalised his admission to holy 
 orders by fighting a duel, and to have promised him prefer- 
 ment in his diocese to the value of 2,0001. a year. 1 And 
 when passing through Oxford, on his way to the Continent, 
 he was recognised by an acquaintance attired ' in a light lilac 
 coat and his volunteer hat, fiercely cocked, laced and with 
 a cockade.' 
 
 The popularity in his own diocese which the Derry 
 resolutions attest seems never to have been forfeited. In 
 1788, at a banquet in commemoration of the centenary of 
 the shutting of the gates of Derry, the Bishop's name was 
 honoured in his absence, in the commemorative ode com- 
 posed for the occasion, as the friend and benefactor of 
 mankind ; and in the celebration of the relief of the maiden 
 city in the following year the Bishop headed the procession 
 to the cathedral, and laid the foundation-stone of a 
 memorial arch. In 1790, on the opening of the bridge at 
 Derry, he received addresses from the corporation, the 
 citizens, and the volunteers of the city, and eulogised in his 
 reply to the last-mentioned body that ' unbought auxiliary 
 to an almost impotent Government which secured the 
 internal peace and fixed the external safety of this kingdom.' 
 A permanent memorial of the feelings which this sin- 
 gular bundle of inconsistencies inspired among men of 
 opposite creeds survives in the obelisk reared in the park 
 at Ickworth by inhabitants of Derry of every denomination, 
 and including the Koman Catholic bishop and Dissenting 
 ministers, which attests the munificence of his public 
 ' See Historical MSS. Commission, 13th Report, App. iv. p. 376. 
 
90 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 expenditure, the purity of his administration of his patron- 
 age, and the influence of his example in softening and 
 reconciling the bitterness of sectarian animosity. 1 
 
 From the letters published in * The Two Duchesses ' it 
 appears pretty clear that it is from this period that the 
 change in the Bishop's character which Mr. Lecky suggests 
 must be dated. There is a good deal of evidence of this in 
 his altered relations with his wife and family. Prior to 
 1783 the Bishop appears to have acted as a good husband 
 and an affectionate father. His early letters to his daughter 
 Elizabeth are couched in the language of affection, and are 
 full of pleasant domestic allusions to his wife and their 
 youngest daughter, Louisa, afterwards Lady Liverpool, who 
 were the constant companions of his travels abroad. But 
 thenceforward Lady Bristol's letters betoken a change in his 
 demeanour. She bewails his conduct in confining her to 
 Ickworth, on the plea of poverty, and in letting the family 
 mansion at St. James's Square — conduct which attracted 
 the attention of the inveterate gossip Horace Walpole, who 
 detailed to Sir Horace Mann how, ' though an earl in lawn 
 sleeves, who has an income of 25,000Z., he let his house in 
 St. James's Square for the usurious rent of 1001. a year, 
 without acquainting the Countess, who is a very respectable 
 woman.' It does not appear, however, that the final 
 estrangement with his wife and the complete abandonment 
 of private ties and public duties which disgraced his latter 
 years took place until considerably later. His absences 
 abroad became more frequent and more prolonged, but not 
 of a kind to provoke the scandal which the entire neglect of 
 his duties subsequently aroused. So little does he seem to 
 have anticipated in 1790 the voluntary exile in which the 
 last ten years of his life were spent that, in replying to the 
 address of the citizens of Derry in that year, he actually 
 enlarged on the duty of residence as one of the obligations 
 of his episcopal office. • The duties of an extensive and 
 opulent prelacy wear a superior character and a more 
 binding tie. They summon loudly to residence and dis- 
 
 1 See infra, p. 100. 
 
THE EAEL-BISHOP OF DEERY 91 
 
 cipline ; and a pious discharge of such duties can alone 
 vindicate or insure the splendid rent-roll annexed to the 
 office.' Yet in 1793 he left Ireland never to return ; and 
 the story is authentic which records how, in reply to the 
 remonstrances on his absence addressed to him a year or 
 two before his death by three of his episcopal brethren, he 
 showed his contempt by sending to the Primate three peas 
 in a bladder, accompanied by a couple of lines of doggerel 
 in his own handwriting. 1 
 
 The taste for foreign travel and the fondness for art 
 which had marked Hervey from the outset of his career, and 
 made him, with the exception of Gibbon, the best-informed 
 Englishman of his time, outside the ranks of the professional 
 diplomatists, on Continental affairs, seem to have grown 
 more and more absorbing between 1784 and 1790. But he 
 would appear, nevertheless, to have continued down to his 
 final departure in 1793 to give tolerably close attention to 
 that portion of his episcopal duty which concerned the 
 business administration of his see. On his return from the 
 Continent in 1789 he remained for over a twelvemonth in 
 Ireland, largely occupied, doubtless, with the building of 
 Ballyscullion, the second of the two great mansions he 
 erected in his diocese. To this edifice, though never com- 
 pleted, 2 he devoted enormous sums, and he continued to the 
 day of his death to despatch to Derry no inconsiderable 
 share of the treasures he collected abroad. In 1792 he 
 visited Ickworth, and appears then to have conceived the 
 design of the splendid residence he reared there. To this 
 object his last years were almost exclusively given up. He 
 appropriated 12,000Z. a year to the building, and in the ten 
 years between his final departure to the Continent and his 
 death he seems to have been continually occupied in giving 
 orders to countless artists for the adornment of a palace in 
 which he declared he would never set foot until it had been 
 
 1 ' Three large blue-bottles sat upon three blown bladders ; 
 Blow, bottle-flies, blow — burst, blown bladders, burst. 
 
 ' Bristol and Derbt.' 
 1 After the Bishop's death the unfinished buildiDg became a ruin. Some of 
 its pillars now adorn the portico of St. George's Church in Belfast. 
 
92 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 completed, and which in the result he never saw. From 
 this time on his self-imposed expatriation seems to have been 
 complete, though he kept up a correspondence with his 
 daughter Elizabeth, to whom he occasionally wrote sugges- 
 tions for the family aggrandisement, of which the most 
 extraordinary was one for an alliance between his heir, Lord 
 Hervey, and the Countess de la Marche, a natural daughter 
 of the King of Prussia by the Countess von Lichtenau. 
 This project he commended as certain to endow his son 
 with a fortune of 10,000£. a year and to lead to a dukedom. 
 The separation from his wife and the break in his domestic 
 relations evidently cost him no pang whatever, and at sixty- 
 three this extraordinary pagan, abandoning all his duties as 
 husband and father, as bishop and peer, gave himself up to 
 a life of the most absolute worldliness and the most doubt- 
 ful morality. 'Pour moi, j'irai mon train,' he wrote to his 
 daughter in 1796, ' and if I cannot be the Caesar nor the 
 Cicero I will be a less splendid but a more useful citizen, 
 the Lucullus of my time, the midwife of talents, industry, 
 and hidden virtues.' 
 
 It is but just to admit that in his efforts to achieve an 
 ambition so incongruously unepiscopal he was in one direction 
 at least not wholly unsuccessful. Not only did he get together 
 a collection which, exclusive of what he had sent home, was 
 valued in 1798 at 20,000Z., but he appears to have really been 
 at pains not merely to add to his collection but to encourage 
 art and assist struggling artists. The eminent sculptor 
 Flaxman, writing to Sir William Hamilton in 1794, con- 
 gratulates himself on being detained in Rome three more 
 years by the patronage of Lord Bristol, and adds, ' I cannot 
 conclude this letter without telling you how the liberality of 
 Lord Bristol has reanimated the fainting body of art in 
 Rome ; for his generosity to me I must be silent, for I have 
 not words to express its value.' The extent of his munifi- 
 cence was even more strikingly attested when, on the 
 occupation of Eome in 1798, the Administrator of the Army 
 of Italy was petitioned by no fewer than 343 artists to spare 
 the collections of the Bishop, which had been seized by the 
 
THE EAEL-BISHOP OF DEEEY 93 
 
 French. The petition set forth the liberality of a patron 
 who had for forty years spent the greater part of his income 
 in the encouragement of art, by whose bounty a number of 
 the first artists of the day had been enabled to subsist during 
 years of war little favourable to their pursuits, and appealed to 
 the French Republic to preserve a unique collection. It 
 was not without effect, for though the Bishop, who was 
 himself detained a prisoner in Milan for several months, was 
 for a time terrified for the safety of his treasures, General 
 Berthier ultimately had the generosity to accept the trifling 
 ransom of 400Z. When the Bishop died at Albano in 1803, 
 his effects in Rome were valued at some 14,000£. ; and as he 
 died with none but dependents about him, much of his 
 property at Rome and Florence would have been plundered 
 and dispersed had not Cardinal Erskine exerted his au- 
 thority to preserve it with an energy and effectiveness which 
 won warm acknowledgment from the Bishop's successors. 
 
 It had been well for the Bishop's reputation had this 
 mania for art been the sole incongruity between his private 
 tastes and his professional character. Unfortunately his 
 relations with the fair sex were of a kind to provoke the 
 scandalous stories which soon began to spread about him. 
 Although there is no proof that the impropriety of his con- 
 duct went beyond a highly unepiscopal freedom of language 
 and heedlessness of decorum, the character of the ladies 
 with whom his name was chiefly connected was of a kind 
 which gave probability to the grossest suggestions as to the 
 nature of his liaisons. From 1792 to 1796 he was intimately 
 associated with the notorious Emma, Lady Hamilton, and 
 when the attentions of this elderly and episcopal cavalier 
 had been eclipsed by the more ardent devotion of Nelson, the 
 Bishop became no less closely attached to a lady of equally 
 dubious virtue, the Countess von Lichtenau, the mistress of 
 Frederick William II. of Prussia. His acquaintance with 
 Nelson's unhappy mistress originated in a lifelong friend- 
 ship with her husband, Sir William Hamilton, whose 
 schoolfellow he had been, and with whom, as the Nelson- 
 Hamilton papers show, he maintained an active correspon- 
 
94 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 dence on political and scientific subjects throughout his 
 career. The marriage of Hamilton and Emma took place 
 in 1791, while the Bishop was in England, and on returning 
 to the Continent the resumption of old relations with the 
 husband was accompanied by the formation of the most 
 intimate friendship with his wife. The easy-going character 
 of the Ambassador at Naples encouraged and sanctioned an 
 intimacy which was so far innocent that it was maintained 
 with the entire cognisance of Sir William, to whom in his 
 letters the Bishop constantly desired his ' best and constant 
 love to dearest Emma,' or, to use the odd language of one 
 of these epistles, ' ten thousand good wishes to dear, respect- 
 able Emma.' In another he longs to be at Caserta, the 
 Hamiltons' home near Naples, ' to hear all your excellent 
 anecdotes and dearest Emma's Dorick dialect, to eat 
 woodcock pie, and quaff humble port.' The letters of Lady 
 Hamilton evince without disguise the cordiality of her 
 relations with the Bishop. ' Lord Bristol is with us at 
 Caserta,' she writes to her old paramour Greville. ' He 
 passes one week at Naples and one with us. He is very 
 fond of me and very kind.' It would appear, however, that 
 the homage of the Bishop, however ardent, was not unmixed 
 with admonition or rebuke ; and while he was capable 
 of complimenting Lady Hamilton in the extravagant 
 couplet— 
 
 Ah, Emma, who'd ever be wise 
 If madness be loving of thee ? — 
 
 he is said to have stung her on one occasion, when his visit was 
 interrupted by a lady of questionable character, by departing 
 with the sarcastic observation, ' It is permitted to a Bishop 
 to visit one sinner, but quite unfitting that he should be seen 
 in a brothel ! ' 
 
 Of the nature of his relations with the Countess von 
 Lichtenau the history is more obscure, but the scandal was 
 not less widespread. Several contemporary memoirs con- 
 tain references to this liaison, and, whatever the extent of 
 the intimacy, there is no doubt that the lady exercised a 
 strong fascination on the Bishop down to the close of 1796, 
 when returning to his allegiance to Lady Hamilton he broke 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 95 
 
 off all relations with her on the curious ground that the 
 Countess had entered into intrigues with France. If, however, 
 the scandalmongers testify to the doubtful conduct of this 
 ' Comte-Eveque,' and to the extravagance of his garb — it 
 was his habit to wear a white hat edged with purple, a 
 coat of crimson silk or blue velvet, a black sash spangled 
 with silver, and purple stockings — they do not fail to 
 mention all his accomplishments, the liveliness of his con- 
 versation, his fund of anecdote, and the vein of satire, which 
 made his company much sought after ; whilst the letters 
 published in Mr. Foster's book show him to have been a 
 man of lively imagination and piquant wit, who could hold his 
 own in any assembly. Yet, if we may accept a reminiscence 
 of Goethe published in Erckmann's conversations with the 
 poet, the Bishop met more than his match in the author 
 of the ' Sorrows of Werther.' According to the poet, the 
 Bishop, when passing through Jena, invited him to dinner, 
 when in the course of conversation he upbraided the poet 
 for having in his ' Werther ' painted a character ' in every 
 way immoral and damnable,' and given encouragement to the 
 crime of suicide. The poet, however, met the charge with 
 spirit, and turned the tables by inquiring what the Bishop had 
 to say for the theology which drove weak-minded people to 
 the madhouse by preaching the horrors of hell. 
 
 Of the concluding five years of the Bishop's life, from 
 the date of his imprisonment by the French at Milan to his 
 death, not much is known, though a few anecdotes which 
 belong to this period indicate that they were passed much 
 in the same way as the five which preceded them. He 
 died at Albano on July 18, 1803, having, according to a 
 letter from Nelson to Lady Hamilton, torn up a few hours 
 before a will ' giving everything to those devils of Italians 
 about him.' His remains were sent to England on board 
 the ' Monmouth ' for interment, and by a grim irony Mr. 
 Elliot, the British Minister at Naples, obliged to humour 
 the superstitious dread with which sailors regard the presence 
 of a corpse on board ship, caused the body of this magnificent 
 patron of sculpture to be packed and shipped as an antique 
 statue. 
 
96 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 The attempt here made to trace the career of the fourth 
 Earl of Bristol more closely than it has hitherto been 
 followed has not been undertaken merely because the 
 eccentricity of his character gives piquancy to the record of 
 his life and opinions, though in this respect few characters 
 can offer a more interesting study in the contradictions 
 of human nature. It has been mainly suggested by the 
 belief that Lord Bristol's opinions on Irish affairs and his 
 action in Irish politics have not hitherto been correctly 
 represented. The elucidation of the views by which, not- 
 withstanding many apparent inconsistencies, Lord Bristol 
 appears to have been continuously guided illumines with 
 fresh light the most fascinating chapter in the annals of the 
 people to whose national vanity the Protestant and English 
 Bishop of Derry ministered for a moment more acceptably 
 than the greatest of Irish patriots, and the sources of whose 
 opposition to the interests of his own country the inspiration 
 that is sometimes joined to eccentricity enabled him to gauge 
 more accurately than any other Englishman of his time. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 The following letters from or relating to the Bishop have not 
 hitherto been printed. The originals of the three to Sir John 
 Strange are in the Egerton MSS. at the British Museum, that 
 of the fourth is in the Pelham Papers, and the last, addressed to 
 Emma, Lady Hamilton, is in the possession of Lord Francis 
 Hervey, by whose kind permission it is printed here. The replies 
 of the Bishop to the Volunteer addresses appeared in the ' Dublin 
 Evening Post ' for 1784. 
 
 i 
 From the Earl of Bristol to Mr. Strange 
 
 Eome : March 22, 1778.' 
 
 I am here in a terrestrial Paradise. The French courier is just 
 
 arrived and all the letters breathe nothing but war. The few 
 
 French officers here, and especially those belonging to the Irish 
 
 regiment, set out immediately. By all that I can learn our 
 
 ' Egerton MS. 2001. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERRY 97 
 
 ministers have not the least idea of their danger, yet I hav-8 
 authentick intelligence that the first impression will be made 
 upon Ireland ; that the Irish battalions will be employed in this 
 attempt ; that blank commissions are entrusted to several officers 
 of the corps, who will disperse them amongst their relations. I 
 know likewise that there is resumed the original idea of attempting 
 a Coalition between the Papists and the Protestants of Ireland in 
 order to declare an Independency under the protection of France 
 and Spain. This was the private intention of the popish officers of 
 the Irish Regiments in case M. Conflans' embarkation had suc- 
 ceeded, and I have reason to believe that nobody was privy to ils 
 but M. de Choiseul, two ladies, and a very few Irish officers of 
 distinction, but these differed in opinion about the scheme. I 
 leave you to make what you will of this without citing me. 
 
 II 
 
 Rome : May 7, 1778. 
 
 My daughter is still in Paris, but I hope to persuade her to 
 spend next winter with us in Rome. If the war with France 
 begins, you may expect Ireland rather than America to be the 
 scene of action, and a most bloody conflict it will be : the R. C. 
 are stimulated from hence to avenge their long oppression and 
 finally throw off the yoke. The general pretext for this intended 
 revolt is the intolerable severity of our penal laws against R. C, 
 by which they are not only prohibited from the legal exercise of 
 their religion but are even denied effectual security for money 
 they may lend to Protestants and compell'd to content themselves 
 with a mere personal obligation which dies with the debtor or flies 
 with his flight. It is scarcely credible, but is too true, that if a 
 younger brother in that country, of a Popish family, is base 
 enough to abjure his religion either from indifference or from lucre, 
 he disinherits all his elder brothers, renders his father tenant for 
 life, and after his death gets full possession of his estate. This 
 Irish Code is the more extraordinary that it did not originate from 
 the massacre of the Protestants in 1641, nor yet from the 
 Protectorship of Cromwell, nor yet from the reign of that arch 
 hypocrite Charles II., nor during the reign of the tolerant and 
 liberal-minded William the Second, but under the reign of Queen 
 Anne when Popery was quiet and harmless. 
 
 My wife seems determined not to go to the waters of Valdagno, 
 but if you will receive me perhaps I may make the journey alone. 
 The plot thickens about Ireland. I wish our Government were 
 sufficiently on their guai'd, for I dread some very severe stroke. 
 
 H 
 
98 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 in 
 St. James's Square: August 18, 1782.' 
 
 My dear old friend, — I little thought of ever troubling you 
 with the subject of politics : but a measure which I have had the 
 good fortune to broach, and which has succeeded beyond expecta- 
 tion, encourages me : could you not purchase three or four ships 
 of the line from the Venetian State ? The money should be forth- 
 coming at a moment's warning. The counties here have entered 
 into a voluntary subscription to build, but in my opinion we could 
 purchase cheaper and sooner ; pray write me word if the thing is 
 feasible and consistent with your duty. Adieu, my best regards 
 and affection to Mrs. Strange. 
 
 Note by Sir John Strange. — Answered that the Venetians had 
 no ships of the line to sell, and if they had they are too slight 
 built to suit us ; nor would they dare depart from their scrupulous 
 neutrality to traffic in such a commodity. 
 
 IV 
 
 From Lord Cavan to the Bt. Hon. Thomas Pelham 2 
 
 Londonderry, May 27, '97. 
 
 Sir, — I have the honour to transcribe for your information an 
 extract of a letter from Lord Bristol to Mr. Goldsburg, his resident 
 agent here. 
 
 ' Without entering into any parley or discussion of the illegal 
 and violent manner in which his L'ship (meaning me) has taken 
 possession of the mansion of a Peer of the Realm and a Bishop 
 of the Diocese, I require him not only to quit it directly but also 
 to repair any damage committed, in failure of which his Lordship 
 is my mark for so unexampled an outrage, and Mr. Galbraith has 
 my most positive and decided orders instantly to take up the matter 
 legally, and vindicate the dilapidated property of an Irish subject.' 
 
 In another part of his Lordship's letter he blames his agent 
 for not resisting, as he terms it, the insult I have committed, and 
 says the Insurgents could not have done worse. By this latter 
 observation his Lordship seems aware that Insurgents are in the 
 country, surely therefore his quarrelling about his house at such a 
 time as the present comes with a very bad grace from him. It 
 has no effect on me. The Troops are still in it and more will 
 shortly be, as soon as bedsteads can be made, unless I have official 
 orders to the contrary. I take it for granted that you will support 
 my proceedings on this subject. . . . 
 
 Cavan, B.G. 
 
 To the Bt. Hon: Thos: Pelham. 
 
 1 Egerton MS. 1970, f. 98. * Add. MS. 33104, f. 130. 
 
THE EARL-BISHOP OF DERBY 99 
 
 From the Earl of Bristol to Lady Hamilton 
 
 A son Excellence Miladi Hamilton d Palermo en Sicile 
 
 28 March '99, Venice. 
 
 Hip ! Hip ! Hip ! Huzza, Huzza, Huzza, for dearest Emma ! 
 Those doubly damn'd miscreants, first as French, secondly as 
 Bep, bave thrown doublets, and within these few days been Beat 
 ■ — ay, completely beaten twice. 
 
 General Lusignan arrived the night before last at the Golden 
 Eagle at Padua, where I had been lounging away a month among 
 Greek and Latin professors. The General, according to his age 
 and dignity, had gone to bed tired, but I saw his aide-de-camp, 
 who, like all others of his rank, preferred supper to sleep, just as 
 my aides-de-camp, vulgarly called Chaplains, usually do after a 
 journey of seventy or eighty miles. 
 
 This aide-de-camp speaking nothing but German, I summoned 
 my Dragoman to interpret, and he told us he had met P. Charles' 
 courier going to Vienna with intelligence that the French had 
 attacked either the left or right wing — to us Bishops it matters 
 as little as if it had been the wing of a fat Capon — that P. Charles 
 had made a decisive manoeuvre, cut off this left or right wing 
 from the rest of the body and totally defeated it, so that it was 
 repassing the Rhine. So much for Buckingham, as Richard says ; 
 but yesterday at nine o'clock in the morning, just as I was 
 mounting my Bosinante to come off for Venice, arrives an officer 
 full gallop from the army at Legnago, and proceeding to Vienna 
 with an account that they had attacked and totally defeated the 
 French army, taken 3,000 prisoners, who might better be called 
 Deserters, and laid dead on the field 3,000 more, and were then in 
 pursuit of the rest ; and what is curious is that on that very day, 
 being myself at Este, my servant cried out : ' Milord, the French 
 and Austrians are at it, for I hear the cannonading,' and so in- 
 deed we did very distinctly. 1,700 Russians are now on this 
 side Goritz, but I cannot learn with certainty whether they em- 
 bark at Trieste for Ancona or proceed by land for Rovigo and 
 Ferrara. God grant them success wheresoever they go. 
 
 In the meantime if you can get our dear invaluable Queen to 
 give me a short introductory letter to P. Charles, I have matters of 
 great moment and character of great importance to communicate 
 to him. Of the three demi-brigades with which I made acquaint- 
 ance during my nine month abode at Milan, there are not ten 
 
 H 2 
 
100 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 privates who are not Royalist, and of the Gensd'Armes who guarded 
 me night and day all the officers but one, a Mason by trade, and 
 all the privates without exception, are zealous Royalists and 
 execrate the Directory ; and all these universally advise the carry- 
 ing the war into the South of Prance and especially to carry 
 Louis 18th with one of the armies, as above two thirds of the 
 Rep army would go out to him. This was the general opinion 
 and such was the sentiment of Col. Marion, Commandant de la 
 Place at Perrara, and now at Mantua — a native of La Lorraine 
 Allemande. Sweet Emma, adieu. My direction is, ' Augsburg 
 poste restante.' 
 
 The following is the inscription on the obelisk erected in the 
 park at Ickworth to the memory of the Bishop : — 
 
 SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 FREDERICK, EARL OF BRISTOL, BISHOP OF DERRY, Etc., 
 
 WHO DURING 35 YEARS THAT HE PRESIDED 
 
 OVER THAT SEE, ENDEARED HIMSELF 
 
 TO ALL DENOMINATIONS OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 RESIDENT IN THAT EXTENSIVE DIOCESE. 
 
 HE WAS THE FRIEND AND PROTECTOR OF THEM ALL. 
 
 HIS GREAT PATRONAGE WAS 
 
 UNIFORMLY ADMINISTERED UPON THE PUREST AND 
 
 MOST DISINTERESTED PRINCIPLES. 
 
 VARIOUS AND IMPORTANT PUBLIC WORKS 
 
 WERE UNDERTAKEN AT HIS INSTIGATION, 
 
 AND COMPLETED BY HIS MUNIFICENCE ; 
 
 AND HOSTILE SECTS WHICH HAD LONG ENTERTAINED 
 
 FEELINGS OF DEEP ANIMOSITY TOWARDS EACn OTHER 
 
 WERE GRADUALLY SOFTENED AND RECONCILED 
 
 BY HIS INFLUENCE AND EXAMPLE. 
 
 GRATEFUL FOR BENEFITS 
 
 WHICH THEY CAN NEVER FORGET, 
 
 THE INHABITANTS OF DERRY 
 
 HAVE ERECTED AT ICKWORTH 
 
 THIS DURABLE RECORD OF THEIR ATTACHMENT. 
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP 
 
 AND THE DISSENTING MINISTER RESIDENT AT DERRY 
 
 WERE AMONG THOSE THAT CONTRIBUTED 
 
 TO THIS MONUMENT. 
 
101 
 
 III 
 
 LORD CLARE 
 
 The charming illustration by which Plunket, in perhaps the 
 most beautiful image that ever relieved the aridity of a 
 legal argument, described the action of time in creating 
 prescription, may be applied with equal point to the labours 
 of the Historical Manuscripts Commission. ' Time,' said 
 Plunket, ' is the great destroyer of evidence, but he is also 
 the great protector of titles. He comes with a scythe in 
 one hand to mow down the muniments of our possession, 
 while he holds an hour-glass in the other from which he 
 incessantly metes out the portions of duration that are to 
 render the muniments no longer necessary.' As the fame 
 of great names grows dim with the lapse of years, and as 
 the stately figures of the past fade with the departure of 
 their surviving contemporaries into the obscurity of the un- 
 known, time as gradually removes the hindrances to the 
 revelation of the secret motives, passions, or prejudices 
 which have swayed the actions or governed the policy of 
 statesmen, and permits the publication of those confidential 
 documents which, written under cover of the utmost secrecy, 
 become to the historian the most veracious of all memorials 
 of the past, and enable him to ' people the hollow dark ' 
 with authentic images of the illustrious dead. 
 
 Of few men who have filled a large space in the world of 
 their own day has the memory been more completely blotted 
 out of the national recollection of his countrymen than 
 that of John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare. No individual 
 Irishman has ever exercised a greater direct authority over 
 the affairs and fortunes of his native country than that which 
 Clare wielded, or exerted a more enduring influence upon 
 
102 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 her history. Yet his memory faded out with the departure 
 of the generation which knew him, till scarce a trace 
 remained of his once commanding personality. No contem- 
 porary ever essayed his biography, and the destruction, by 
 his own direction, of all the personal and political cor- 
 respondence in his possession at his death seemed to render 
 it for ever impossible to learn more of his life than could be 
 gathered from the bald and inadequate annals of his period. 
 And as time passed on the growing obscurity of his fame 
 was deepened by the removal of those visible memorials by 
 which the present is anchored to the past. The title which 
 he founded was extinguished, in the person of his grandson, 
 in the Charge of Balaclava. His family estates passed from 
 the possession of his descendants. The splendid mansion he 
 dwelt in was dismantled, and all its contents dispersed. 
 And with this destruction and dispersal have naturally 
 perished the traditions which commonly survive among the 
 descendants of a great man to keep his memory green. 
 
 No fulness of historical research can ever atone for such 
 losses as these, or make it otherwise than difficult to play 
 1 Old Mortality ' to an epitaph so hopelessly erased and dis- 
 figured. But the gradual publication of the correspondence 
 of contemporary statesmen, the patient investigations of 
 eminent historians, and the abundant labours of the Historical 
 Manuscripts Commission, have brought to light within 
 recent years a very considerable number of Clare's letters, 
 and have placed us in possession of much ampler materials 
 for an estimate of his character and statesmanship than 
 fifty years after his death seemed ever likely to be attain- 
 able. It is, therefore, no more than what historical justice 
 demands that the fame of Lord Clare should be redeemed, 
 in the light of fresh knowledge, from so much of the obloquy 
 which has fallen on it as is thus proved to have been un- 
 merited. 
 
 How great were Clare's abilities, how eminent his services, 
 how large the space which he occupied in the eyes of his 
 contemporaries, may be gathered from the scattered refer- 
 ences which are to be found in the memoirs of his principal 
 
LOED CLAEE 103 
 
 political opponents. The pages of Sir Jonah Barrington's 
 Memoirs, of the lives of Grattan, Flood, Curran, and other 
 patriots of the day, bristle with parentheses of abuse which 
 testify at once to the power which Clare wielded, and to the 
 fear in which he was held. As Attorney-General from 1783 
 to 1789, and as Lord Chancellor from 1789 to 1802, his 
 official career was practically conterminous with the era of 
 Grattan's Parliament ; and through the whole of that era 
 he was undoubtedly the mainspring of the Castle policy. 
 His was the brain which directed the Irish administration 
 throughout a spaoe of eighteen troubled years, his the vigour 
 which aided to quench the flame of Irish insurrection, and 
 his the counsel upon which, more than upon that of any 
 other statesman, Pitt relied when he resolved on passing the 
 Act of Union. In the words of Mr. Lecky, he was ' the 
 great Father of the Union.' Yet until quite recent years the 
 history of the Grattan Parliament has been told almost 
 without the slightest reference to the most eminent advocate 
 of Imperial rule who sat in it. While the names of all the 
 popular leaders who played their parts in that brilliant epoch 
 of Irish history have been made familiar to posterity in the 
 pages of innumerable memoirs, and kept alive in the 
 volumes of their speeches, no adequate biography of this 
 illustrious Irishman has ever appeared. 1 
 
 In recent years, indeed, a fuller knowledge of Clare's 
 career has led to a more just appreciation of his character. 
 Froude, in his ' English in Ireland,' painted, with a few 
 vivid touches of his picturesque brush, the picture of the 
 statesman to whose large place in history he was the first 
 to do justice, and whose bold, commanding personality and 
 unswerving devotion to the interests of England struck 
 the imagination of that imperialist historian. Mr. Lecky 
 has given us, in colours less glowing, a conception of 
 Clare's statesmanship, less sympathetic and more impartial. 
 But in the pages of both historians it has necessarily 
 happened that the figure of Clare has been seen mainly in 
 
 1 O'Flanagan's Lives of the Irish Chancellors contains a lengthy and usefu 
 memoir of Lord Clare, but it can hardly rank as an effective biography. 
 
104 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOET 
 
 those harsher attitudes which the statesman's position as 
 the champion of authority and government in times of 
 unexampled agitation obliged him to assume in the latter 
 years of his career. Thus, while justice has been done to 
 Clare's abilities, the impression given of his character has 
 been, perhaps, too uniformly repellent and unlovable, and the 
 very homage rendered to the power of his iron will has 
 accentuated the sterner side of his nature. His head has 
 been praised at the expense of his heart, and his statesman- 
 ship at that of his humanity. That is a price which few 
 men would willingly pay for eminence ; nor is it fitting 
 that posthumous fame should be accompanied by so heavy 
 a penalty unless it is unquestionably deserved. 
 
 To comprehend the part which Clare took in Irish politics, 
 and to account for the peculiar animosity with which he 
 came to be regarded by his opponents, it is necessary to 
 recall his origin. His father was born of Eoman Catholic 
 parents in humble circumstances, and sprang from a sept 
 long identified with the county Limerick and accounted 
 among the most Irish of Irish families in religious and 
 national sentiment. Originally designed for the priesthood, 
 John Fitzgibbon the elder, after applying himself to medicine 
 abroad for a time, had conformed to the Protestant faith, and, 
 becoming a student at the Middle Temple, was ultimately 
 called to the Irish Bar. There he practised for forty years, 
 with success so extraordinary as to enable him to realise a 
 fortune of over 100,000Z. Although he never attained the 
 Bench his professional eminence was remarkable, and he 
 narrowly missed important promotion. In the brief vice- 
 royalty of Lord Bristol he was designated for the high office 
 of Chief Justice of the King's Bench on an expected vacancy, 
 which, however, did not take place. His station in Parlia- 
 ment was one of equal consequence, though he was never 
 in office, and in his latter years he was eulogised by Edmund 
 Burke for the independence of his character and the liberality 
 of his views. 
 
 To this shrewd, hard-headed, and highly successful old 
 gentleman, who married a lady of good family in the south 
 
LOED CLAEE 105 
 
 of Ireland early in his professional career, was born a family 
 of seven children. Of three sons John Fitzgibbon was the 
 youngest. He was born in Dublin, probably in 1748, and 
 was brought up at his father's residence at Donnybrook in 
 the neighbourhood of Dublin. It is interesting to note that 
 his rivalry with Henry Grattan dated from their boyhood, 
 when the two great antagonists were schoolfellows. In 17G3 
 he matriculated at Trinity College, where, as at school, he 
 came closely into contact with Grattan ; and a class dis- 
 tinguished for the number of able men it contained — Foster, 
 the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons during the 
 Union debates, was in the same year — was made remarkable 
 by the keen competition which took place between the two 
 young men, and in which Fitzgibbon, though considerably 
 the junior of his rival, was usually the victor. Graduating 
 in 1767, little trace of Fitzgibbon can be found in the five 
 years which elapsed before his call to the Irish Bar in 
 Trinity Term, 1772 ; but from entries in the books at Christ 
 Church it would seem that, like his elder brother, Ion, he 
 graduated at Oxford in 1770. 
 
 Statements, somewhat carelessly accepted, as to the habits 
 of his early days represent Fitzgibbon as addicted to a life 
 of pleasure, and giving but little thought to the serious busi- 
 ness of life, until the death, in 1776, of his only surviving 
 brother left him the sole heir to the handsome fortune which 
 his father had realised, and opened up glowing possibilities 
 of a great career. These statements cannot be accounted as 
 altogether correct, 1 for it is certain that the young barrister 
 
 ' The misconception appears to have originated in a passage in a letter of 
 Edmund Malone, published in Prior's life of that writer, in which the following 
 passage occurs : ' I met Fitzgibbon at Bath, on his way to Hotwells. His 
 unparalleled effeminacy, I am now convinced, is unconquerable. Change of 
 kingdoms has, I think, rather increased the unnatural delicacy of his manners. 
 His disliabilU was not by any means remarkable, after a long journey from 
 Oxford, but it gave him great concern that I should meet him in such an 
 undress.' But this reference is not to John Fitzgibbon. It is certainly his elder 
 brother, Ion, who is intended, for the future Chancellor was then barely seven- 
 teen, and was an undergraduate at Dublin. Froude, in a letter to the author, 
 observes as to this point : ' I believe Fitzsibbon's private life to have been a 
 simple one. Had it been stained by any vice, we should all have heard of it 
 
106 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 applied himself with considerable vigour to the business of 
 his profession from the very commencement. Extracts from 
 his fee-book which have been published show that his 
 earnings even from the first were substantial. The truth 
 probably is that Fitzgibbon at that time applied himself 
 with equal vigour to the pursuit of business and pleasure. 
 He is described as having immense powers of endurance, 
 and being equal to the most severe demands upon his 
 energies. 
 
 Fitzgibbon's earliest efforts at the bar appear to have 
 been made in election petitions, which in his time were 
 often made the subject of keen party struggle, when argued 
 in committee of the Irish House of Commons ; and in the 
 year 1777 he was successful in no fewer than four petitions. 
 It was to his aptitude for work of this sort that he owed his 
 first introduction to Parliament. The celebrated Provost 
 Hely-Hutchinson, one of the ablest politicians of his time, 
 had procured in 1776 the return of his son Kichard, after- 
 wards Lord Donoughmore, for the University of Dublin, in 
 opposition to the Attorney-General, Philip Tisdal. A 
 petition was brought, with the conduct of which Fitzgibbon 
 was entrusted. After a long struggle Hutchinson was 
 unseated by the committee ; but Tisdal dying in the interval, 
 and the successful party being thus left without a candidate, 
 the young barrister was chosen in his place, and on 
 March 28, 1778, was returned to the Irish Parliament to 
 represent the University of Dublin. He was then barely 
 thirty years of age. 
 
 From the foregoing brief summary of the circumstances 
 of his early life, it will be seen that Fitzgibbon entered 
 Parliament with admirable prospects, and the surest guaran- 
 tees of political and professional success. Inheriting a large 
 fortune, possessed of splendid abilities, a member of a 
 profession which enjoyed immense influence in the Irish 
 House of Commons, and gifted with a considerable degree 
 
 long ago, for no other public man ever had more bitter or unscrupulous 
 antagonists.'- -See a letter from Orde, the chief secretary to the Duke of Eutland, 
 The Rutland Papers, Historical MSS. Commission Reports, vol. iii. p. 309. 
 
LOED CLAEE 107 
 
 of oratorical ability, he was plainly marked out for a con- 
 spicuous part in the animated scenes that were impending. 
 He had not indeed the splendid rhetorical endowments which 
 enabled Flood and Grattan to carry away the senators in a 
 whirlwind of emotion, his manner being more incisive than 
 persuasive ; but he could speak with force, precision, and 
 perspicacity. 
 
 At the moment when Fitzgibbon stepped upon the 
 troubled stage of Irish politics, parties in Ireland, seldom 
 constituted in those days upon any very intelligible principle, 
 were in a state of almost unexampled flux. Little as the 
 Parliament which Grattan was about to found corresponded 
 in its constitutional working with the usages of the English 
 House of Commons, the old dependent Parliament which it 
 replaced was even further removed from the model of 
 English political life. In Ireland the party system was 
 scarcely, if at all, understood. There was, of course, a 
 Government and an Opposition ; but the Opposition could 
 never displace the Government, which was an executive 
 machine rather than a political organism. The Lord- 
 Lieutenant, indeed, was identified directly with the party 
 and the politics which, for the time being, held sway at 
 Westminster. But though theoretically and constitutionally 
 liable to dismissal at any moment at the hands of the Viceroy, 
 the great officials, and especially the law officers of the 
 Crown, enjoyed for a long series of years a practical fixity of 
 tenure. The Chancellor was in effect appointed for life, but, 
 being an Englishman, took no very decisive part in struggles 
 which he only half understood, and usually confined himself 
 to the discharge of his functions as Speaker of the Irish 
 House of Lords, and to the exercise of the immense patronage 
 which was vested in him. The Chief Secretary was often 
 non-resident, and sometimes had not even a seat in the Irish 
 House. Thus the chief administrative and political agent 
 was the Attorney-General, to whom was confided the 
 management of the House of Commons, and who usually 
 held his post continuously, irrespective of the resignations 
 of Viceroys or of the rise or fall of parties at Westminster, 
 
103 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 until such time as he chose to retire to the haven of a Chief 
 Justiceship. Opposition was in practice little more than a 
 competition between a few great families for the favour of a 
 Government which could always extricate itself from its 
 parliamentary embarrassments by purchasing whichever of 
 its opponents happened to be the most formidable for the 
 time being. 
 
 When Fitzgibbon entered the House of Commons he 
 found the Government party unusually feeble, and the 
 various rivals who made up the motley Opposition by which 
 it was confronted proportionately formidable. The death of 
 old Philip Tisdal, who for seventeen years had conducted 
 the business of government under no fewer than eight 
 Lords-Lieutenant, had deprived administration of its most 
 efficient instrument. His successor, John Scott, afterwards 
 Lord Clonmell, though a man of great ability, was much too 
 indolent to fill the post as Tisdal had filled it ; and Lord 
 Buckinghamshire, who had succeeded Earl Harcourt at 
 Dublin Castle in 1777, found himself without any efficient 
 agent in that system of management in which his predecessor 
 had been a past-master. 
 
 Up to this Fitzgibbon had taken no decided part in 
 politics, though he had acted in general with the Opposition '> 
 the sympathies of his constituency, which had elected as 
 his colleague the eloquent Walter Hussey Burgh, being with 
 the popular party, and his personal friendship with Grattan 
 bringing him in contact mainly with members of the Opposi- 
 tion. When the Volunteers were formed he had himself 
 taken his place as a private in their ranks ; but he had confined 
 his co-operation to the purely defensive military purposes 
 in which that remarkable organisation had originated. 
 He had quitted them the moment they assumed the shape 
 of a party association, and had denounced in Parliament the 
 attempt to turn them to political purposes. 
 
 It was his vigorous independence on this occasion that 
 first commended Fitzgibbon to the friends of Govern- 
 ment as a possible recruit. His connections had hitherto 
 been mainly with the Opposition, with which his father, 
 
LOED CLARE 109 
 
 who had sat for many years in Parliament, had usually 
 sided, though in his latter years the force of family 
 ties had brought the old lawyer into touch with influences 
 friendly to Government. The great wealth he had amassed 
 had enabled the elder Fitzgibbon to make considerable 
 alliances for his daughters, one of whom had married a 
 member of the great Beresford family, who subsequently 
 became Archbishop of Tuam and founded the peerage of 
 Decies. The connection had an important influence on the 
 prospects of young Fitzgibbon by procuring him the 
 friendship of John Beresford. This powerful personage, 
 who for thirty years was on the most intimate footing with 
 successive Viceroys, was a member of one of the most dis- 
 tinguished of Irish families. By his marriage with Barbara 
 Montgomery, one of the bevy of sisters portrayed as the 
 ' Three Graces ' in Beynolds's well-known picture, he had 
 become closely connected with Lord Townshend and other in- 
 fluential personages in England. The influence wielded by 
 Beresford, who was described to Lord Fitzwilliam by an in- 
 fluential member of Opposition as ' the King of Ireland,' may 
 be best measured by the single fact that the attempt to dismiss 
 him from his post at the head of the Bevenue had much to 
 do with that nobleman's recall in 1795. The magnificence 
 of his conceptions is still attested by the stately Custom 
 House at Dublin, which was built at his suggestion. 
 
 Beresford was the first person connected with Government 
 to discern Fitzgibbon's ability. As early as 1779 he had 
 mentioned the young lawyer to Lord Buckinghamshire as a 
 man whose support could be had upon honourable terms, 
 and who would be prepared to take an active part in the 
 debates of the House of Commons if encouraged to do so by 
 the prospect of professional advancement. The Viceroy was 
 at first favourably disposed to the proposal, and commissioned 
 Scott, the Attorney-General, to negotiate with Fitzgibbon, 
 who, after consulting with Beresford, agreed to the arrange- 
 ment. But the young politician characteristically based his 
 consent upon the terms ' that there should be a settled plan 
 adopted, and a firm adherence to this plan, whatever it was, 
 
■ 110 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 so that when we had taken a part we might not be left 
 alone and betrayed.' But the vacillation of Heron, the 
 Chief Secretary, violated these terms on the very first 
 occasion on which the new plan was put to the proof, and 
 Fitzgibbon, withdrawing his support, remained in opposi- 
 tion, though in doing so he intimated his readiness to support 
 Ministers if they had the courage to undertake a definite 
 policy. But Lord Buckinghamshire taking offence at the 
 independence he had shown, the negotiation came to an end. 
 
 The resignation of Lord Buckinghamshire and the advent 
 of the Carlisle administration had, indirectly, an important 
 influence on Fitzgibbon's future, by procuring him the 
 intimate friendship, which was continued to the close of his 
 life, of William Eden, afterwards the first Lord Auckland, a 
 statesman who, though at that time so far connected with 
 the Whigs as to be included in the ill-starred Coalition 
 ministry, was subsequently among the most thoroughgoing of 
 the colleagues of Pitt. To Eden, as the Chief Secretary of a 
 Government desirous of enlarging the basis of its connec- 
 tions in the Irish House of Commons, Fitzgibbon was soon 
 introduced by Beresford, and the two men formed a friend- 
 ship the value of which was more than once felt by the 
 young Irishman on critical occasions in his career. As 
 early as 1782 Eden warmly recommended his friend for the 
 important office of Prime Serjeant, and though he had left 
 Ireland before Fitzgibbon received his first official appoint- 
 ment it was in no small degree to his influence that his 
 friend's selection as Attorney-General was due. Almost 
 the only intimate letters of Lord Clare which have been 
 preserved, with the exception of a few published in the 
 Beresford Correspondence, are to be found among the 
 Auckland Papers. They show that a very warm intercourse 
 was maintained between the two men down to the death 
 of Clare, about whose health during his last illness Auckland 
 displayed an obviously sincere and affectionate solicitude. 
 
 In the events which culminated in the legislative inde- 
 pendence of the Irish Parliament, Fitzgibbon took only a 
 very subordinate part, and though he concurred generally in 
 
LORD CLARE 111 
 
 the measures which led up to that concession his approval 
 seems to have gone little further than a passive and scarcely 
 convinced acquiescence in the wishes of his constituents. 
 In 1780 he declined to support Grattan's Declaration of 
 Bight. In language which curiously anticipates some of 
 the arguments used twenty years later in his masterly 
 speech on the Union, he reminded the House of Commons 
 that they could not disavow the authority of British statutes 
 without shaking the security upon which the title to vast 
 numbers of Irish estates depended. And he indicated that 
 contempt for popular clamour and dislike of agitation which 
 marked every stage of his subsequent career by declining • to 
 be terrified by an armed people crowding to the bar.' But 
 though it is pretty evident that his support would not have 
 been withheld from a firm opposition to the demands of 
 the Volunteers, Fitzgibbon was too prudent to wreck his 
 career by exhibiting an irreconcilable hostility to the popular 
 demand in the face of the resolution of the English Govern- 
 ment to concede it. Accordingly, when called on by his 
 constituents in 1782 to vote for Grattan's Declaration he 
 frankly yielded his opinion to theirs, while avowing his 
 1 decided conviction ' that it ' was a measure of dangerous 
 tendency, and withal inadequate to the purpose for which it 
 is intended.' And he added his hope that a total repeal of 
 Poynings's Law would not be pressed by his constituents. 
 
 But, though thus acquiescing in the views of his sup- 
 porters, it is certain that Fitzgibbon never caught the 
 contagion of the popular enthusiasm which swayed Grattan 
 and his friends. At the elections of 1783 his imperfect 
 sympathy with the national aspirations cost him his seat for 
 the University. But he still retained the friendship and 
 confidence of Grattan and his principal associates ; and it 
 was with their full concurrence that Fitzgibbon was in the 
 autumn of that year designated as Attorney-General. It is 
 curious to reflect that the man who is best remembered for 
 the vehemence of his opposition to Irish popular demands, 
 who was for seventeen years the colleague of Pitt and the 
 principal instrument of his Irish policy, and who more than 
 
•112 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 any other individual contributed to the destruction of the 
 Grattan Parliament, was first appointed to office by the 
 Viceroy of a ministry of which Fox was the head and 
 Burke a subordinate member, and with the explicit approval 
 of Grattan. 1 It was, indeed, largely the friendliness of 
 the latter, coupled with the recommendations strenuously 
 pressed by Lord Auckland, that won the prize for Fitzgibbon, 
 who thus found himself elevated to the most influential office 
 open to his profession, short of the Seals for which an Irish- 
 man was then considered ineligible, at the early age of thirty- 
 six. But though it sounds strange that one who was for so 
 many years to be identified with an anti-Irish policy in its 
 severest forms should have won his first promotion under the 
 ministry of Charles Fox, the truth is that at the time of his 
 appointment the English Whigs were under the influence of 
 the reaction which has not unusually followed their conces- 
 sions to Ireland ; and, alarmed at the results of their policy 
 in establishing an independent parliament, they were ready to 
 rush to the opposite extreme of coercion. The agitation led 
 by Flood and the Bishop of Derry in the autumn of 1783 had 
 filled all parties in England with an alarm which was not 
 diminished, so far as responsible ministers were concerned, by 
 the weakness of Lord Northington's Government. In a re- 
 markable letter from the Prime Minister to the Viceroy 
 dated November 1, 1783, and printed in Grattan's Life, 
 Fox counselled his lieutenant to firmer action, affirming that 
 unless the Volunteers were dissolved within a reasonable 
 time ' government, and even the name of it, must be at an 
 end.' In the same communication Fox stated with great 
 clearness his views on Irish policy, laying down the doctrine 
 of finality in concession in the most definite terms : — 
 ' Immense concessions were made in the Duke of Portland's 
 
 1 ' Many of your friends, you say, have disapproved of the proposed arrange- 
 ments for Scott and Fitzgibbon. Are they of this or your side of the water ? 
 If on my side, I can contradict it thus far — Grattan was consulted, and was 
 content to act with Fitzgibbon. The Attorney-General (Yelverton) likewise 
 approves of Fitzgibbon. He stands foremost in rank, abilities, and personal 
 knowledge It is proposed he should take the lead in the House of Commons.' 
 Northington to Fox, November 18, 1783. Grattan's Life, iii. 134. 
 
LOED CLARE 113 
 
 time, and these concessions were declared by an almost 
 unanimous House of Commons to be sufficient. The account 
 must be considered as having been closed on the day of that 
 vote, and should never again be opened upon any pretence 
 whatever.' x 
 
 Even the most careful of historians have fallen into the 
 error of representing Lord Clare as having been, through the 
 whole of his official career, in violent antagonism to the 
 popular party. But this view is entirely erroneous. Fitz- 
 gibbon's first years in Parliament were passed, as we have 
 seen, in opposition, and his acceptance of the Constitution 
 of 1782 was frank and unreserved. With the Opposition 
 leaders he remained for many years on a friendly and even 
 cordial footing. In the letter to his constituents of Dublin 
 University, already referred to, he had explicitly stated his 
 opinion that ' the claims of the British Parliament to make 
 laws for this country is a daring usurpation of the rights of a 
 free people,' and that he had uniformly asserted this opinion 
 in public and private. There does not seem to be any 
 ground for questioning the sincerity of this declaration, nor 
 is it indeed in any sense incompatible with his subsequent 
 advocacy of a union, when the United Irish movement 
 threatened the dissolution of the connection between Great 
 
 1 Further on in the same letter Fox enlarges on this theme, and his remarks 
 throw a curious light on the views of the section of the Whig party with which 
 Grattan was then in closest harmony : ' I hope, my dear Northington, you 
 will not consider this long letter as meant to blame your conduct, but I think 
 I owe it as much to my friendship for you as to the public to give you fairly 
 my opinion and advice in your most arduous situation ; and I will fairly own 
 that there is one principle which seems to me to run through your different 
 despatches which a little alarms me. It is this — you seem to think as if it were 
 absolutely necessary at the outset of your government to do something that 
 may appear to be obtaining boons, however trifling, to Ireland ; and what I 
 confess I like still less is to see that this is in some degree founded upon the 
 ampleness of former concessions. Now I see this in quite a different light, and 
 reason that because these concessions were so ample, no further ones are 
 necessary. Because the Duke of Portland gave much, are you to give some- 
 thing ? Consider how this reasoning will apply to your successor. I repeat it 
 again, the account must be considered as closed in 1782. Ireland has no right to 
 expect from any Lord-Lieutenant to carry any more points for her. Convenient 
 and proper regulations will always be adopted for their own sakes ; but boons, 
 gifts, and compliments, Ireland has no right to expect.' — Grattan'' 's Life, iii. 111. 
 
 I 
 
114 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 Britain and Ireland — a connection he had always asserted to 
 be indispensable, and his jealousy for which had even led 
 him, as we have already seen, to deprecate the total repeal of 
 Poynings's Law. Long prior to the Union, and before that 
 measure had been thought of, he stated, in the debates on 
 the Regency question, the view of the connection with 
 Great Britain which he seems to have steadily held through- 
 out his career : ' The only security for your liberty is your 
 connection with Great Britain, and gentlemen who risk 
 breaking the connection must make up their minds to a 
 union. God forbid that I should ever see that day ! but if 
 ever the day on which a separation shall be attempted may 
 come I shall not hesitate to embrace a union rather than a 
 separation.' Within four years of this utterance the 
 Franchise Act of 1793 and the proceedings of the United 
 Irishmen had brought the dreaded day within measurable 
 distance, and thenceforward, as he avowed in 1800, Clare 
 never hesitated as to the expedient which policy rather than 
 inclination must compel him to embrace. 
 
 The personal intimacy with Grattan continued unbroken 
 down to 1790, and was then dissolved as much through 
 Grattan's vehemence as Fitzgibbon's acerbity. Grattan's 
 sudden leap to fame in 1782, so far from rousing the envy, 
 seems to have attracted the genuine admiration of his 
 quondam comrade. Nor does this feeling appear to have 
 been alienated by the early encounters which necessarily 
 took place on the floor of the House of Commons in the 
 skirmishes between Government and Opposition. In the 
 course of an animated reprobation of the violences of the 
 Volunteers, after that body had passed under the control of 
 Flood, Charlemont, and Lord Bristol, Fitzgibbon took occa- 
 sion to pay an eloquent tribute to the patriotic services of 
 his old friend, whom he eulogised as ' the man whose wisdom 
 and virtues had directed the happy circumstances of the 
 times and the spirit of Irishmen to make us a nation.' 
 Clare's character has been nowhere more acrimoniously 
 condemned than in the Life of Grattan, by his son ; yet the 
 author of that work expressly states that, as late as 1790, 
 
LORD CLAEE 115 
 
 and notwithstanding the heated struggles over the Eegency 
 Bill of 1789, the two statesmen were on good terms, and 
 that their friendship was first broken by the violence of a 
 pamphlet written by Grattan, in the course of which he used 
 expressions which, as even the biographer of the latter 
 admits, ' it was not kind of him, in a personal point of 
 view,' to make use of. 1 
 
 Fitzgibbon's promotion per saltum to the Attorney- 
 Generalship, without serving in the subordinate office of 
 Solicitor-General, took place at a moment of singular anxiety 
 to the Irish Government, and, indeed, the urgency of secur- 
 ing the services of a really strong man had much to do with 
 Lord Northington's final choice in the selection of a law 
 officer. The Volunteer movement had revived in a very 
 dangerous form, and in the hands of Flood and Lord Bristol 
 was being made the instrument of an agitation for Parliamen- 
 tary Eeform which not only went far beyond what Fox in 
 England or Grattan in Ireland deemed either safe or expe- 
 dient, but was an actual menace to the stability of the 
 British connection. On the introduction of Flood's Beform 
 Bill all parties had concurred in refuting proposals brought 
 in with all the unconstitutional menace of an armed assem- 
 bly, and Government took the strong course of refusing 
 leave to bring in the Bill, on the ground taken up by Fitz- 
 gibbon in 1780 in reference to the Declaration of Eight — 
 that the petition originated in an unconstitutional and 
 illegal assembly, designed to awe and control the legislature. 
 Fitzgibbon, who had already been designated as Attorney- 
 General, spoke with great vigour on this occasion, and, 
 according to Northington's report to Fox, ' acquitted him- 
 self astonishingly.' His actual appointment followed almost 
 immediately ; but upon the very day on which his patent was 
 made out the ministry of Fox and Lord North was abruptly 
 terminated, and Lord Northington was immediately replaced 
 by Pitt's intimate friend, the fourth Duke of Eutland. 
 
 His tenure of the Attorney-Generalship, which he held 
 for close on six years, though not the period of his greatest 
 
 1 Grattan's Life, vol. iii. p. 400. 
 
 i 2 
 
116 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 power, was probably the happiest portion of Fitzgibbon's 
 career. He entered upon his official functions in the prime 
 of life. Possessing the fullest confidence of his superiors, 
 and without a rival on the ministerial benches in the House 
 of Commons, he speedily became the first Irishman in the 
 country and the chief inspiration of all the acts of the execu- 
 tive. Nor, as has been seen, was his enjoyment of the dignity 
 and authority of his responsible position at this time marred 
 by that hostility on the part of his political opponents which 
 was so marked in the later stages of his career. His vigorous 
 action, Cromwellian in its contemptuous imperiousness, at the 
 very outset of his official career, in stifling the Kef orm agita- 
 tion sought to be revived in the autumn of 1784, by dissolving, 
 by the direct exertion of his personal intervention, a meet- 
 ing called by the sheriffs of Dublin, 1 was approved by Grattan 
 and the respectable section of the Whigs almost as cordially 
 as it was endorsed by the Government ; and, although in 
 the warmth of debate his characteristic petulance sometimes 
 involved him in altercations with individual opponents, he 
 preserved for the most part the friendliest relations with the 
 principal members of the Opposition. 
 
 With Curran, indeed, though the intercourse of the two 
 men at the bar had at one time been friendly — Fitzgibbon, 
 on the occasion of his taking silk, presented his brief-bag to 
 his junior — the heat of controversy soon developed a serious 
 quarrel, which culminated in a duel. Various accounts have 
 been given of the encounter. Probably the most reliable is 
 that given by Woodf all, the eminent parliamentary reporter, 
 
 1 This incident is thoroughly characteristic of Fitzgibbon's fearless firmness 
 and of the prompt decision with which he invariably acted. A meeting 
 of the people of Dublin had been convened by the city sheriffs for the 
 election of delegates to the National Convention summoned in this year. The 
 authorities considered it dangerous. Fitzgibbon, almost unattended, forced 
 his way through a hostile mob, got on the platform, cut short the harangue of 
 a popular orator, told the sheriffs the meeting was illegal, and threatened them 
 with severe legal penalties if they dared to disobey. The meeting dispersed, 
 and Fitzgibbon, having effected his purpose, walked away with composure, 
 quite undisturbed by the hisses of the mob. The comment on this episode by 
 one of Clare's latest successors in his great office marks the change of times. 
 ' Think of a law officer of to-day,' says Lord Ashbourne in his book on Pitt 
 taking an active, personal, police part in asserting his view of the law ! ' 
 
LOED CLAEE 117 
 
 who, in a letter to Eden describing the famous debate on the 
 commercial resolutions, while acknowledging the extent of the 
 provocation offered by Curran, censured in strong terms Fitz- 
 gibbon's want of command over his temper. Eden appears to 
 have remonstrated with his friend in a friendly spirit, and 
 Fitzgibbon excused his violence on the plea that he had been 
 accused of a lack of personal courage, and was thus driven 
 to fight the duel. 1 The two men were never afterwards upon 
 terms of friendship. Curran asserted that in later years the 
 Chancellor visited upon the lawyer the offences of the poli- 
 tician, and evinced his dislike to an extent which prevented 
 Curran from practising in his court. This is probably true ; 
 but it is true also that the insults which Curran's impetuosity 
 led him to address to the Chancellor passed all the bounds of 
 forensic decency, and were couched, if correctly reported, in lan- 
 guage which no modern judge would tolerate for an instant. 
 Fitzgibbon at this period does not seem to have dreamt 
 of the eminence to which he was to attain within a very few 
 years. He had no ambition for any judicial honours short 
 of the Chief Justiceship of Ireland, and the Chancellorship 
 was apparently placed beyond his reach by the maxim of 
 Government which had obtained during a long succession of 
 years, and to which Pitt was inclined to adhere — that no 
 Irishman should be allowed to hold the Seals. 2 Early in 
 
 1 Fitzgibbon's own account of the affair, as conveyed in a letter to Eden, is 
 as follows : ' My dear Eden, — Be assured that I never can doubt the warmth of 
 your friendship for me, and that no man prizes it more highly than I do. The 
 fact is that many of the gentlemen who compose our Opposition here, having 
 in the course of the session thought fit to exercise their talents for abuse upon 
 me, not perhaps with all the success with which they had nattered themselves 
 seemed inclined to make a different experiment upon me. You know the 
 genius of my countrymen well enough to see that, in my situation, it became 
 inevitably necessary to undeceive them in this particular; and Mr. Curran 
 having in so many words stated " that I was prone to give offence and prone to 
 deprecate it," I sent Ogle to him to desire that he would disclaim the words, or 
 give me an opportunity to convince him of his error. After taking twelve 
 hours to consider of my proposal, during which time there were divers con- 
 sultations of the leaders of the party upon the subject, they determined that he 
 should fight : and, after I had received his fire and returned it, the young 
 gentleman thought good to acknowledge that he had been mistaken, and we 
 parted.' — August 29, 1785. Auckland MS. 
 
 2 A letter from John Beresford throws a curious light on the reasons for this 
 
118 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 1786 he expressed, in a letter to Eden on the occasion of an 
 anticipated vacancy in the Chief Justiceship of the Common 
 Pleas, his desire to remain Attorney-General, ' not feeling 
 any inclination, as yet, to become an old woman,' although 
 a few months later a possible opening in the higher office of 
 Chief Justice of the King's Bench tempted him to convey to 
 the Duke of Rutland his wish for that position. The Viceroy 
 would have been greatly embarrassed by the change, and said 
 as much in a letter to his Chief Secretary Orde, adding that 
 in his opinion it would be for the interest of the Government 
 that Fitzgibbon should be Chancellor upon any vacancy 
 in that office. ' I should feel it very unpleasant,' he told 
 Orde, ' to see him superseded by an English Chancellor, 
 and I sincerely hope that there is no probability of any 
 event to open that situation till the objection of his too much 
 youth could be done away with.' 2 Orde concurred in the 
 high opinion entertained by the Viceroy of Fitzgibbon' 
 merit, suggesting that in the event of a premature vacancy 
 a stopgap Chancellor might be provided from England, with 
 an assurance of the succession to the Attorney-General — an 
 expedient which seems to have found favour with Pitt. 
 But this would not satisfy Fitzgibbon's viceregal champion, 
 who at once replied, ' I could not with satisfaction see Fitz- 
 gibbon's pretensions even postponed. I love the man. He 
 has stood by me and I must stand by him.' And the 
 Viceroy's final words on the subject, in conveying his 
 refusal to ask Lord Lifford to resign, with the object above 
 mentioned, were, ' I cannot sacrifice Fitzgibbon. He 
 
 view : — ' The office of Chancellor is the only one which it is absolutely necessary 
 for England to keep in her own hands, and which it is most highly for the 
 interest of this country (Ireland) should not get into the hands of an Irish- 
 man, and particularly of an Irishman attached to any particular party. Let 
 his conduct be what it might, the public would never be contented with it ; the 
 idea revolts the people of this country ; and I do assure you that I remember 
 well when Lord Bowes died that the alarm was general lest any of the Irish 
 candidates should succeed ; and when the present man came over, and the 
 disappointed candidates endeavoured to raise a combination against him, he 
 was immediately taken up by the public, for no other reason than that he was an 
 Englishman, from whom they expected impartiality.'— Beresford Correspondence. 
 1 The Butland Papers: Historical MSS. Commission, 1 4th Report, App. 
 part i. p. 308. 
 
LOED CLAKB 119 
 
 deserves all I can give him, and I shall fling every obstacle 
 in the way of any arrangement which is to preclude him.' 
 
 The sudden death of the Duke of Kutland, in the autumn 
 of 1787, deprived Fitzgibbon of a friend, whose loss, had the 
 Attorney-General been a weaker man, might have seriously 
 affected his prospects, for the Duke had a weight with Pitt 
 which his successor, Buckingham, never possessed. But 
 the new Viceroy was quickly impressed with the capacity of 
 the Attorney-General, and soon learned to rely upon Fitz- 
 gibbon as absolutely as his predecessor had done. And 
 although Buckingham came to Ireland strongly possessed 
 with the notion of the ineligibility of an Irishman for the 
 Chancellorship, and had stated this view strongly to Pitt in 
 a letter written prior to his appointment, he had not been 
 six months in Ireland before he had not only pledged him- 
 self to support Fitzgibbon's claims, if an Irishman should 
 be selected, but had expressed to William Grenville the 
 opinion that, however strong the abstract arguments in 
 favour of an English Chancellor, the time had gone by when 
 Fitzgibbon's claims could be successfully opposed. In a 
 few words the Viceroy painted a striking picture of his 
 masterful subordinate — ' his intrepidity, his influence and 
 weight, have, in fact, placed him at the head of the country. 
 We all fear him ; and on all occasions I have found him 
 fair, manly, and to be trusted.' x 
 
 Lord Lifford's retirement was at this time believed to be 
 imminent, and, in point of fact, the old Chancellor was only 
 postponing resignation until he should have negotiated 
 favourable terms, in the shape either of a pension or of a 
 provision for his sons. In the autumn of 1788, he definitely 
 expressed to Buckingham his desire to retire, and Fitz- 
 gibbon had thereupon betaken himself to London, where he 
 had received from Pitt himself an undertaking that no 
 appointment should be made without giving him a fair 
 opportunity of stating his claims, and had met, at the hands 
 of the English Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, a reception so 
 
 1 The Dropmore Papers : Historical MSS. Commission, 13th Report, App. 
 part iii. p. 332. 
 
120 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOKY 
 
 flattering as led him to believe that he would meet with no 
 opposition in that quarter, though this impression was subse- 
 quently proved to be erroneous. Amongst other well-wishers 
 and backers of his candidature was the Earl of Mornington, 
 afterwards the Marquess Wellesley, whose intimacy with Pitt 
 made his support of much consequence. The Attorney- 
 General had recently placed Mornington under a considerable 
 obligation, and the Earl conveyed through Grenville his 
 hope that his friend's application would meet with no incon- 
 siderate refusal. Mornington was identified in the main at 
 this period, as in later life, with the Whig connection ; and 
 the approval of Fitzgibbon's candidature by one who looked 
 on Grattan as ' the first of all men in ability and virtue ' is an 
 additional proof that, down to his elevation to the Chancellor- 
 ship, Clare had not alienated the regard of the Opposition in 
 Ireland, in spite of the unmeasured and caustic language in 
 which he assailed his opponents and enforced his opinions, 
 language which led to his receiving in the squibs and 
 lampoons of the day the nickname of FitzPetulant. The 
 Opposition view of him during his Attorney-Generalship was, 
 indeed, felicitously expressed in a speech of Grattan's, in 
 which personal goodwill has still the upper hand of political 
 hostility — ' What has fallen from the right honourable 
 member,' he said, ' is a proof that a certain asperity is not 
 inconsistent with an excellent head and a very good heart.' 
 
 The strong pressure exerted by the Viceroy and others of 
 Fitzgibbon's friends prevailed with Pitt against the solicita- 
 tions of Camden and Thurlow, though the Premier evaded 
 the necessity of definitely deciding between the rival 
 influences by requesting Lord Lifford to remain in his post, 
 which the old Chancellor retained until his death a year later. 
 By the time that event occurred Fitzgibbon's staunch support 
 of Pitt and Buckingham on the Regency question made it 
 impossible to put any other candidate in competition with 
 him for the Seals. The Viceroy's gratitude knew no 
 bounds, and in letter after letter he testified to his sense of 
 his lieutenant's services. ' Fitzgibbon,' he wrote, ' has 
 assisted me in all these anxious moments with an exertion, 
 
LOED CLAEE 121 
 
 zeal, and even personal risk, beyond any line of common 
 attachment. ... I cannot conceive any possibility of put- 
 ting by such pretensions.' In another letter he testified to 
 * the faculties, integrity, and situation which enable him to 
 do more for English government than all "Westminster 
 Hall put together.' ' 
 
 The chief obstacle in the path of Fitzgibbon's ambition 
 was the English Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, who, supported 
 by his predecessor Lord Camden, still held out against the 
 appointment of an Irishman, and suggested every possible 
 alternative. But Buckingham was resolute. He told Pitt, 
 in plain terms, that Fitzgibbon would not remain in office 
 if he were insulted by being passed over for any of the un- 
 known men put forward by the Chancellor, and that he 
 himself would not remain in Ireland without Fitzgibbon. 
 He protested against Thurlow deciding the matter from the 
 point of view of the law only, pointing out that a strong 
 man who knew Ireland had become indispensable as Speaker 
 of the House of Lords, and meeting Thurlow's objection 
 that Fitzgibbon was unpopular in Ireland with the state- 
 ment that it was ' absolute nonsense.' Ultimately Thurlow's 
 opposition was withdrawn through the instrumentality of 
 Hobart, the Irish Secretary and afterwards Lord Buckingham- 
 shire, whom the Lord-Lieutenant sent over to tell Pitt in so 
 many words that if Fitzgibbon were not appointed neither 
 he nor any other member of the Irish Government would 
 remain in office. Hobart was sent by Pitt to the Chancellor, 
 who, according to the emissary, stormed and roared ; but 
 when he found the ministers firm, gave way, saying, ' If Mr. 
 Pitt will appoint an Irishman Chancellor, Mr. Fitzgibbon is 
 the best man he could select.' 
 
 The appointment was received in Ireland with a 
 cordiality which is of itself sufficient to prove that no part 
 of the unpopularity which marked his declining years had yet 
 been experienced by Fitzgibbon. Strange as it now appears 
 in the light of the new Chancellor's subsequent career, no 
 more popular appointment was ever made in Ireland. The 
 
 1 The Dropmore Papers : Historical MSS. Commission, 13th Report, App. 
 part iii. p. 446. 
 
122 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 surrender by the English Government of the old prejudice 
 which had prevented successive ministries from entrusting the 
 Great Seal of Ireland to a native of the country, was viewed 
 by all parties as a national triumph, and not least so by the 
 Opposition. The new Chancellor was presented with the 
 freedom of several of the chief cities, and for some weeks 
 it rained addresses. Even in the heat of the struggle over 
 the regency, in which Fitzgibbon had stood alone against 
 an unprecedented combination, the normal strength of the 
 opponents of Government being increased by the numerous 
 trimmers who were ready to worship what they imagined 
 to be the rising sun, he had avoided giving personal offence 
 to the leaders of the Opposition. And when the recovery of 
 the king made it necessary for them to make their peace 
 with the Government they had defied, it was through Fitz- 
 gibbon that the negotiations were opened. 
 
 Nor were the lively expectations formed on all hands 
 of Fitzgibbon's capacity and fitness for the great post to 
 which he had thus early attained in any wise disappointed 
 in the early years of his Chancellorship. In the discharge 
 of the purely legal part of his functions he gave entire 
 satisfaction. Displaying the utmost assiduity and attention 
 to his business, he disposed of the causes which came before 
 him with a promptitude which gratified the litigants and a 
 judicial acumen which commanded the respect of the legal 
 profession. Of those who have condemned Fitzgibbon as 
 a violent bigot and prejudiced partisan, prone to support 
 authority and privilege against popular rights irrespective of 
 the dictates of justice, few, if any, have ever been at the 
 pains to inquire how far this character tallies with what is 
 recorded of Lord Clare's judicial career. Yet an examination 
 of his reported judgments, many of which are extant in the 
 pages of Eidgway's 'House of Lords Eeports,' and else- 
 where, abundantly proves not only the strength of his legal 
 intellect but the breadth and liberality which constantly 
 led him to take the most generous, most humane, and most 
 tolerant view open to him. A candid perusal of his judicial 
 remains presents indisputably the figure of a powerful judge 
 
LORD CLAEE 123 
 
 who, but for the engrossing political pre-occupations of his 
 latter years, would probably have been a very great one. 
 And in the two great causes of disunion which have most 
 divided Irishmen, the divisions between Protestant and 
 Catholic, between landlord and tenant, Clare's decisions will 
 be found to lean, as far as the law permitted, to the liberal 
 and popular side. 
 
 In the judgments which survive are displayed in a strik- 
 ing and even unusual degree a sincere and deep reverence 
 for the great luminaries of English jurisprudence who went 
 before him, coupled with the boldest independence towards 
 their dogmas when these appeared to him to be un- 
 supported by principle. In all are manifest that first and 
 last of judicial characteristics — a strong will to do justice 
 according to the merits of the case before him. Clare had 
 that immense advantage to an equity judge, a complete 
 practical grounding in the Common Law, and his mind was 
 amply stored from the great treasuries of our traditional 
 law. His capacity for work was immense, and his judg- 
 ments are as conscientious and thorough in their elucidation 
 of the facts as they are clear and courageous in their 
 application of the law. In Clare's time causes, ere they 
 reached the Lords, had usually to be carried through well- 
 nigh impassable bogs of litigation. Through these the 
 Chancellor's luminous judgments followed them step by 
 step, never failing to find sure ground for his tread. He is 
 never content, as some strong judges are, to decide upon 
 one or two salient points, putting the rest aside, nor, as lazy 
 or timid judges are sometimes known to be, is he satisfied 
 to ride off upon some technicality, whereby he may evade 
 the trouble and responsibility of a complete and courageous 
 judgment. Yet this laborious industry is never the result 
 of incapacity to grasp the relative importance of the 
 difficulties involved in the facts ; for he never falters in the 
 masterful confidence of his opinion. As little was it due to 
 any love of the usages of the law, for Clare had a horror 
 quite before his time of the harrowing protractedness and 
 expense of litigation, which, indeed, he never failed to 
 
124 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 denounce and counteract as far as in him lay. The sarcastic 
 and sometimes fierce animadversions which often occur in 
 his judgments upon the flagitious prolonging of litigation, 
 his unstinted denunciation of those cumbrous evasions of 
 the old Chancery procedures which made the law's delay 
 a by-word, not merely evince a healthy sympathy with 
 justice, but give warrant for believing that, had he lived to 
 the less fevered times which followed the Union, the name 
 of Lord Clare would have stood high on the roll of law 
 reformers ; that many of the changes delayed for more than 
 a generation after he had passed away would have been 
 inaugurated through his influence at the opening of the 
 century ; and that the scandals typified in Jarndyce and 
 Jarndyce would never have survived long enough to leave 
 it to the author of ' Bleak House ' to become a factor in the 
 reformation of the Court of Chancery. 
 
 The break-up of Fitzgibbon's friendly relations with his 
 old friends of the Whig Opposition dates from the forma- 
 tion, in 1789, of the Whig Club. One of the first acts of 
 this body was to attack the Chancellor, who, in a dispute 
 about the election to the Mayoralty of Dublin, had espoused 
 the cause of the Corporation as against the popular wishes, 
 and had, as the President of the Privy Council, delivered a 
 decision which Charlemont described as ' by far the worst 
 of all the wicked transactions he had known.' The Club 
 having met and passed a series of resolutions on the subject, 
 Fitzgibbon took occasion, in his place in the House of 
 Lords, to express in the most candid terms his opinion of 
 the Club and its members. He denounced them with his 
 customary virulence of language, as persons of the grossest 
 ignorance who, by their late resolution on behalf of the 
 rights of the subject, had discovered ' as great a perversion 
 of sense as ever distracted the human brain ; ' and he did 
 not scruple to describe a body which numbered among its 
 roll such magnates as the Duke of Leinster and Lord 
 Charlemont as ' a porter club, a horde of miscreant traitors 
 professing peace but practising corruption.' Grattan re- 
 plied in a pamphlet which contained references to the 
 
LOED CLARE 125 
 
 Chancellor so galling as to terminate their acquaintance, 
 and except for such formal intercourse as must have taken 
 place at the meetings of the Privy Council attended by 
 Grattan during Fitzwilliam's viceroyalty, the two men 
 never spoke again. 
 
 Thenceforward the story of Fitzgibbon's career is the 
 story of that stormiest decade in Irish history which, after 
 witnessing the rise and fall of the United Irishmen and the 
 horrors of a civil war, was to terminate in the Union which 
 he did more than any single individual to accomplish. 
 From the first beginnings of the United Irish agitation 
 Fitzgibbon set himself resolutely to fight it. He was at no 
 time under any illusion as to the dangerous possibilities 
 which lurked beneath the surface of Irish society, and, 
 knowing his country and his countrymen, he had discerned 
 the dangers which threatened in the encouragement given 
 by a factious Opposition to the latent disaffection which 
 he knew existed among the people. Writing to Eden 
 within a few months of the excitement over the regency, 
 he laid his finger on the evil which arose from it : * I hope 
 that the gentlemen who are in opposition in Great Britain 
 will learn, before it is too late, the danger of playing their 
 game in this country. If they do not agree with their 
 antagonists in anything else, they must learn to agree in 
 supporting the King's Government in Ireland, else perhaps 
 they may, before they are aware of it, have this country a 
 stake to fight for with a foreign enemy.' The resignation 
 of Buckingham, who had taken an active and direct part 
 in the business of administration, within a few months of 
 Fitzgibbon's elevation to the woolsack, by placing the 
 nominal direction of affairs in the hands of a nobleman with 
 no previous experience of Ireland, greatly strengthened 
 Fitzgibbon's already great authority, and for the next ten 
 years it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the powers of 
 the Irish Government were concentrated in the Chancellor. 
 
 We have traced Lord Clare's career from its commence- 
 ment to the zenith of his power. To follow it through 
 the last and most stirring chapter of his contentious life 
 
126 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 would be to write the history of the United Irish move- 
 ment, of the Kebellion, and of the Union. His large share 
 in those great transactions of that epoch has been clearly 
 outlined in the • English in Ireland ' and in the ' History of 
 England in the Eighteenth Century,' and need not be dwelt 
 on here. But it is worth while to notice some incidents not 
 elsewhere enlarged upon in Clare's personal relations both 
 with his political superiors and with the leaders of the revolu- 
 tionary agitation, and in his conduct of the struggle against 
 them, which strikingly illustrate his character and illuminate 
 his policy. 
 
 No episode in Irish history has been the subject of more 
 vehement controversy or more abundant criticism than the 
 recall of Lord Fitzwilliam from his brief and unfortunate 
 viceroyalty. At the time it took place the incident strained 
 almost to breaking point the lately formed coalition between 
 Pitt and the Portland Whigs, upon which depended the whole 
 policy of England in the struggle with France. And even 
 after the lapse of above a century the passions it engendered 
 can still lend warmth to the pen of the coolest of historians, 
 and inspire the most vigorous passages in the criticisms 
 of the most moderate and most detached of statesmen. 
 The whole question of the justice of Pitt's action in 
 summarily recalling Fitzwilliam has been so recently and 
 so fully investigated from the point of view of Cabinet 
 precedent and official propriety, by Lord Eosebery and Lord 
 Ashbourne, that it is unnecessary to restate it here, though 
 it is impossible to refer to the subject without observing 
 that the significance of the recall has been very greatly 
 exaggerated. It was certainly not the proximate cause of 
 the Eebellion. Had it been so, many of the arguments 
 used in justification of the Kebellion must disappear. The 
 recall was, no doubt, in Lord Kosebery's phrase, ' a land- 
 mark.' It pointed the pause in that policy of concession 
 which had culminated in the Franchise Act of 1793, and 
 which had encouraged extravagant expectations in the 
 popular mind ; but it was not the occasion of that pause. 
 The publication by Lord Ashbourne of the Cabinet Memo- 
 
LORD CLARE 127 
 
 randum drawn up by Pitt and concurred in by Fitzwilliam's 
 most particular friends and colleagues — Portland, Spencer, 
 Windham, and Loughborough— disposes, once for all, of all 
 controversy on that aspect of the question, and fully justifies 
 the censure which Lord Eosebery has pronounced, with all 
 the authority of one who has held the Premiership, on 
 Fitzwilliam's extraordinary disregard of arrangements defi- 
 nitely sanctioned and prescribed by the Cabinet, and of 
 pledges most explicitly entered into. That document entirely 
 destroys the case for Lord Fitzwilliam, convicting the Viceroy 
 not merely of weakness and indiscretion, but of actual bad 
 faith ; for it proves that every one of those acts of his 
 viceroyalty which led to Fitzwilliam's recall, and in regard 
 to which he claimed to have been given complete liberty of 
 action by his colleagues, had been expressly repudiated by 
 the Cabinet in advance, with Fitzwilliam's express assent. 
 
 But we are here concerned with the much-vexed episode 
 only as it concerned Lord Clare. It is plain that the 
 Chancellor was an important factor in the situation to be 
 dealt with in Ireland at the moment when Fitzwilliam was 
 appointed to the viceroyalty. The Chancellor had, as has 
 been seen, by this time entirely lost the confidence of the 
 leaders of the popular party in Ireland. They were 
 resolved to procure his removal at the first opportunity, and 
 the very first item in the programme they submitted to 
 Fitzwilliam, who from the moment his appointment was 
 decided on had placed himself absolutely in the hands of 
 Grattan and his friends the Ponsonbys, was the dismissal of 
 the Chancellor, whom it was intended to replace by an English 
 serjeant-at-law of no particular eminence. As early as the 
 autumn of 1794, several months before Fitzwilliam arrived 
 in Ireland, this step had been definitely decided on in secret 
 conclave. Had the Viceroy and his allies behaved with the 
 commonest discretion, it is impossible to say how far the 
 intrigue might have succeeded. But their designs were 
 soon bruited abroad, and Fitzgibbon was not the man to 
 sit still under such an attack. If in the course of his 
 administration he had made enemies, he also had powerful 
 
123 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 friends. And though Pitt was far from sharing his strong anti- 
 Catholic views, Fitzgibbon was the Premier's most trusted 
 adviser in Irish affairs, and he possessed his ear. Accordingly 
 it was soon evident that the Chancellor was much more likely 
 to dismiss the Viceroy than the Viceroy to dismiss the 
 Chancellor. Fitzwilliam's intention was brought to the 
 knowledge of the Cabinet, when Pitt emphatically declined 
 to assent to any interference with Fitzgibbon, or to the 
 removal of any of the old servants of the Government. 
 And in the subsequent arrangement, in which, as detailed 
 in the Memorandum, every nomination to office in Ireland 
 was specifically dealt with, the retention of Fitzgibbon in 
 his post remained a sine qua non. Foiled in their principal 
 object, the new dispensers of power and patronage did their 
 best, while turning their attention to smaller men, to make 
 the position of the Chancellor and his immediate friends as 
 unpleasant as possible ; and it was not wonderful that 
 Fitzgibbon, on his side, should seize the earliest opportunity 
 to be revenged on his assailants. Such an opportunity the 
 unwisdom of his adversaries speedily presented. Fitz- 
 william had no sooner arrived in Ireland than he entered 
 upon a career of proscription, and one of his first acts was 
 to dismiss Beresford from his post in the Revenue. Beres- 
 ford was not only Fitzgibbon's closest ally in the Irish 
 Government, but from his connections, influence, and great 
 ability in council he had become one of the most powerful 
 men in Ireland. His dismissal was, as Pitt himself averred, 
 in the teeth of the Cabinet understanding, and in his appeal 
 to the Cabinet Beresford was strongly supported by the 
 Chancellor. The whole question of Fitzwilliam's conduct 
 in Ireland became the subject of a conference among the 
 leading members of the Cabinet ; his indiscretions, censured 
 by the Prime Minister and repudiated by his closest friends, 
 were too glaring to be condoned, and he was at once 
 recalled. Lord Camden was sent over in his stead, and 
 thenceforward, and until after the passing of the Act of 
 Union, the supremacy of Fitzgibbon, now created Earl of 
 Clare, remained unchallenged. 
 
LOED CLARE 129 
 
 That so vehement an opponent of the Catholic claims as 
 Lord Clare should ever have assented even to the limited 
 measure of concession to the Catholic demands which was 
 carried in 1793 is a circumstance which has excited the 
 wonder of historians. The explanation probably is that 
 that statesman, who, however little he sympathised with 
 Irish aspirations for independence, knew Ireland as few or 
 none of her rulers have known it, foresaw the inevitable 
 consequences of the legislation he denounced. He perceived 
 that the friction between Parliament and the enfranchised 
 people must, if the exclusiveness of the former were main- 
 tained, lead to a popular storm which could not be withstood 
 successfully, and that choice would have to be made 
 between the concession in their entirety of the Catholic 
 demands, and the absolute suppression of Ireland's par- 
 liamentary liberties. It is remarkable that from the year 
 1793, as he stated in his great speech on the Union, the 
 Irish Chancellor had looked forward to the annihilation of 
 the Grattan Parliament, and it is plain that in council he 
 urged it vehemently upon successive Lords-Lieutenant. 
 Westmorland, Pitzwilliam, and Camden in turn report in 
 their correspondence with the members of the English 
 Cabinet how strenuously this opinion was pressed upon 
 their attention by Clare ; : and it is proved further that the 
 idea was personally propounded to Pitt by his most trusted 
 Irish adviser. Fitzgibbon had never cordially approved the 
 policy which created the Grattan Parliament, though he had 
 acquiesced frankly in the first fruits of that policy. He had, 
 as a young member of the House of Commons, expressed his 
 sentiments in this respect in the course of the celebrated 
 debate on Grattan's momentous resolution of April 19, 1780, 
 ' that the King's most excellent Majesty and the Lords and 
 
 1 Even as early as 1784, the Duke of Rutland, who was then Lord- 
 Lieutenant, had written to Pitt : ' Were I to indulge a distant speculation, I 
 should say that without a union Ireland will not be connected with Great 
 Britain in twenty years longer ; ' and, more remarkable still, Fox had written a 
 few months earlier, and while still a Minister : ' If either the Parliamentary 
 reform in any shape, however modified, or any other point claimed by the 
 Volunteers, be conceded, Ireland is irretrievably lost for ever.' 
 
 K 
 
130 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOKY 
 
 Commons of Ireland are the only power competent to bind 
 or enact laws in this kingdom.' 
 
 1 England,' he said on that occasion, ' is a proud and a 
 high State, a nation not apt to crouch under any burdens. 
 It is said that we are obtaining an act of justice through fear. 
 Who will not be proud to resist such an idea ? For my part 
 I am so much an Irishman that I would not be even 
 supposed to take advantage of fear. Let any man point out 
 any advantage that can be gained by this resolution, and I 
 will subscribe to this Declaration. But no one can do so. 
 We are told that the people are at the Bar with petitions in 
 one hand and arms in the other, and that they are become 
 clamorous. Shall it be said that we are to be terrified by 
 an armed people crowding to the Bar ? I would rather be 
 a slave to English laws than be ruled by a few factious men.' 
 
 Twenty years' experience of the working of an indepen- 
 dent Legislature had not altered these opinions, which Clare 
 steadily maintained throughout the whole period of its 
 existence ; and scarcely for a moment does he seem to have 
 forgotten to promote these ideas. The fundamental argu- 
 ments upon which he based his conclusions are fully set 
 forth in his speech on the Catholic Belief Bill of 1793. 
 
 No personal episode connected with the struggle between 
 the Government and the United Irishmen is more interest- 
 ing than the relations which existed between Fitzgibbon 
 and Wolfe Tone — the animating spirits of the two parties. 
 If Tone was the mainspring of the revolutionary agitation, 
 Fitzgibbon was at least in equal degree the master mind 
 which controlled the forces directed to its overthrow. 
 Each recognised in the other a foeman worthy of his steel. 
 Bef erring, in his journal for March 1798, to the speech 
 delivered by Clare in answer to Lord Moira's arraignment 
 of the Irish Government, in which the Chancellor referred 
 to Tone by name, the latter frankly expresses his admiration 
 of the uncompromising vigour with which his enemy carried 
 on the warfare between them. • I can hardly, I think, be 
 suspected of partiality to the Chancellor, but I declare I 
 have a greater respect for his conduct on this occasion 
 than for that of Lord Moira. He is, at least, an open 
 
LORD CLARE 131 
 
 and avowed enemy ; he takes his party, such as it is, like 
 a man who expects no quarter, and is therefore determined 
 to give none.' 1 
 
 The two men had long known each other, and had even 
 had opportunities of intimacy ; for though Tone was by 
 fifteen years the junior of Fitzgibbon, they had at one time 
 been thrown together by a connection or kinship which 
 existed between Fitzgibbon's family and that of Mrs. Tone. 
 "With the latter for some years prior to 1790 Tone was 
 himself residing at their house in Grafton Street, at which 
 Fitzgibbon was a frequent visitor ; and through their 
 common relatives the two men probably learnt a good deal 
 of each other's character, even if they did not often meet. 
 But these opportunities did not lead to any friendship, there 
 was no mutual attraction ; though Fitzgibbon, who was 
 admittedly a firm friend to all who had claims upon him, 
 would probabty have been willing to befriend the husband of 
 his young connection, who had not at that time disqualified 
 himself for ministerial patronage. But as Tone was, to use 
 his own words, ' one of the most ignorant barristers at the 
 Four Courts,' and took little or rather no pains to conceal 
 his contempt and dislike of his profession, it could not have 
 been an easy matter, even for the omnipotence of an 
 eighteenth -century Chancellor's patronage, to do much to 
 advance his interests. And within a brief space Tone had 
 taken two steps either of which must have proved sufficient 
 to destroy any inclination which Fitzgibbon might have 
 felt to help the young adventurer. He quarrelled with his 
 wife's family, and he took to writing pamphlets for the 
 Whig Club. Thenceforward the hostility between the two 
 was inveterate and relentless. Tone's son, in the preface to 
 the Washington edition of his father's Life, says that he 
 scarcely had a personal enemy, with the two curious excep- 
 tions of Fitzgibbon and George Ponsonby, names which 
 were probably never bracketed together in any other con- 
 nection ; yet, violently as the Chancellor denounced Tone's 
 treasonable proceedings, it is not unlikely that it was due in 
 
 ; Life of Tone, ii. 468 (Washington edition). 
 
 k 2 
 
132 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 part to his kinship with Mrs. Tone that the young conspirator 
 was allowed to leave the country in 1795, without being 
 subjected to a prosecution, on the occasion of his being 
 compromised with Jackson in the mission which cost the 
 latter his life. The transactions which took place upon that 
 occasion are detailed with great minuteness in the Beres- 
 ford Correspondence in the letters of Marcus Beresford, 
 who was the agent in those negotiations which ended in 
 Tone's undertaking to go into voluntary exile ; and the 
 account there given of these negotiations agrees with the 
 narrative in Tone's Life. Marcus Beresford, who was the 
 son of John Beresford, Fitzgibbon's intimate friend, and 
 who had lately been appointed private secretary to the new 
 Chancellor, was on terms of intimacy with Tone, who was 
 on his circuit at the bar, and for whom he had a warm 
 regard. It was primarily to the friendship of Marcus 
 Beresford that Tone owed his escape scot-free in the perils 
 of 1794 ; but even that friendship could not have availed 
 him had the Chancellor been unwilling to acquiesce in his 
 escape. The unfavourable impressions of his young ac- 
 quaintance formed in the Chancellor's mind in the course of 
 their private intercourse were soon confirmed and deepened 
 by what his position at the head of the Government enabled 
 him to learn of Tone's part in the United Irish movement. 
 A letter addressed to Tone's friend and colleague in the 
 United Irish conspiracy, in which he avowed his decided 
 wish for separation, fell into the hands of the Government, 
 and fully revealed the secret aims of the men who were 
 behind the Unity movement of 1791. Thenceforward Clare 
 never ceased to point to Tone as the origin and pivot of the 
 treasonable conspiracy of the United Irishmen, a view of his 
 consequence which the statement confided to Beresford by 
 Tone as the condition of his being allowed to leave the 
 country in 1794 abundantly confirmed. This statement, 
 which was made by Tone only upon the express condition 
 that no use should be made of it to the prejudice of any of 
 the persons referred to in it, except for the purpose of 
 preventing a renewal of treasonable practices on the part of 
 
LORD CLARE 133 
 
 those already implicated, only came to the hands of Lord 
 Clare in 1797, after Beresford's death, and was destroyed 
 with the rest of Clare's papers in 1802. No use was ever 
 made of it, though its existence was referred to in Clare's 
 speech on the state of Ireland in the House of Lords in 
 1801 ; but there is a reference to it in a very curious letter 
 written by Thomas Emmet to Eussell after the capture and 
 before the death of Tone in the autumn of 1798. In this 
 letter, which was written in response to an appeal by 
 Kussell to Emmet and the other State prisoners to exert 
 themselves in Tone's behalf, Emmet, while averring that ' it 
 is impossible for any one to be more concerned or more 
 anxious than we all are about the fate of Tone,' excuses 
 himself from interfering on the ground that intervention 
 would injure rather than serve his friend, and assigns as the 
 main ground of the futility of any efforts, the fact that ' the 
 day we were at the Castle the Chancellor mentioned that 
 Tone had, before he left the kingdom, signed such a con- 
 fession of his own treason as would and was intended to 
 hang him in the case of his ever returning.' It is im- 
 possible to doubt that Emmet, whom Tone in his auto- 
 biography brackets with Eussell as the first of his friends, 
 would have risked his own life could he have done so to any 
 purpose in behalf of his unfortunate comrade in treason 
 But there can be no doubt that Emmet was right as to the 
 hopelessness of any attempt to save Tone. Public opinion 
 would not have tolerated it, and whatever forbearance 
 Fitzgibbon might have been willing to exhibit in 1794 had 
 ceased to influence him in 1798. Though he censured the 
 irregularity of the court-martial by which Tone was con- 
 demned, he wrote with pitiless unconcern of the end of his 
 old acquaintance. ' Nothing could be so preposterous as the 
 whole proceedings with respect to Tone ; he should certainly 
 have been hanged on the shore where he landed.' 
 
 The fixed hostility to Catholic Emancipation which Clare 
 manifested at every stage in his career, and which led him 
 to oppose not merely every measure directly designed to that 
 end, but every enactment which seemed to tend in its 
 
134 STUDIES IN IKISH HISTOEY 
 
 direction, is the cardinal principle in his system of policy. 
 And, however much a later age must deplore his views, it 
 is impossible not to respect the consistency with which, from 
 beginning to end of his career, he maintained the doctrine 
 that Protestant ascendency in Ireland is essential to the 
 connection between the two kingdoms. It is easy, nowadays, 
 to condemn a principle which has been repudiated by the 
 State for more than two generations ; but it is only fair to 
 remember that Clare did no more than give expression with 
 frankness and candour, if with needless acerbity, to principles 
 of government which no one, in his time, affected to disclaim. 
 The unalterably Protestant character of the constitution in 
 Church and State was in Clare's time an axiom of government 
 which no serious politician ever dreamt of challenging ; and 
 it remained one for years after his death. 1 Indeed, the main 
 burden of the speeches in favour of each successive relaxa- 
 tion of the penal laws was to prove that the security of 
 Protestantism would remain as strong as before. Clare did 
 not push his principles a jot further than they were pressed 
 as late as 1817 in Peel's remarkable speech against the 
 Catholic claims which made the ultimate author of emanci- 
 pation the darling of the unbending champions of Protestant 
 ascendency. 
 
 But in one respect Clare pushed his view of the inviolable 
 Protestantism of the British Constitution, as established at 
 the Revolution, beyond that of most of his contemporaries. 
 Mr. Lecky, in his account of the regency debates in the Irish 
 Parliament, has observed upon the admirable subtlety of 
 the speeches delivered on the legal aspects of the question 
 by Fitzgibbon. whom he styles a consummate constitutional 
 lawyer. It is not a little curious that to this subtlety 
 was due the forging of the weapon which destroyed the 
 hopes of Catholic emancipation in the year following the 
 
 1 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, in his notes of the conference of the English 
 end Irish prelates on the occasion of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, 
 reports a remark of that astute observer, the late Primate Marcus G. Beresford, 
 which pointedly illustrates the extent of the change of view in this regard: 
 ' The Irish People used to mean the Protestants ; now it means the Papists.' 
 Life of Bishop Wilberforce, iii. 286. 
 
LOED CLAEE 135 
 
 Union, and caused the retirement of Pitt from office. Clare 
 had always laid stress on the inviolability of the Protestant 
 Constitution of the United Kingdom. ' I consider,' he said 
 in 1793, ' a repeal of the Act of Supremacy in any of the 
 hereditary dominions of the Crown of Great Britain to be as 
 much beyond the power of Parliament as a repeal of the 
 Great Charter or a repeal of the Bill of Bights.' In 1795, 
 when, under the viceroyalty of Fitzwilliam, Grattan was 
 about to bring in his bill for the further relief of the 
 Catholics, Clare had embodied his views on the constitu- 
 tional effects of the measure in a memorandum which was 
 shown to the king by his intimate ally Lord Westmor- 
 land, Fitzwilliam's predecessor in the viceroyalty. In this 
 document he raised for the first time the question whether 
 the king could give his assent to the repeal of any of 
 the laws affecting Irish Catholics without violating his 
 coronation oath, and affirmed that the English Chancellor who 
 should affix the great seal of England to any such repealing 
 measure would stake his head upon the experiment. It 
 does not appear how far this suggestion, which undoubtedly 
 reached the king, took hold at the time of the royal mind, 
 and it was repudiated by the English lawyers to whom the 
 point was referred. But it is certain that the communications 
 between Clare a,nd the sovereign gave great annoyance to 
 the Duke of Portland and the "Whig members of the Cabinet ; 
 and it is certain that Fox was absolutely right when he said 
 that the Catholic Bill, and not the question of the dismissal 
 of the officials at Dublin Castle, was the true cause of Fitz- 
 william's recall. But, however this may have been, it is 
 unquestionable that Clare's views were adopted in their 
 entirety in 1800 by the party in the Cabinet which was 
 hostile to emancipation. As early as October 1800, the 
 king was shown a letter or memorandum from the Irish 
 Chancellor which was probably identical in reasoning, if not 
 in language, with the views suggested by Clare in 1795. 
 This document, which is printed in Campbell's ' Lives of 
 the Chancellors,' having been found in the Rosslyn Papers, 
 has been attributed by the author of that work to Lord 
 
136 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 Loughborough ; but from the fact that it coincides in its 
 ipsissima verba with Clare's argument in 1795, it is impossible 
 to question its real authorship. Through his friendship 
 with Auckland, who was brother-in-law to the English 
 Primate, Clare was able to reinforce the legal argument on 
 the coronation oath by a spiritual appeal to the king's 
 conscience ; and Fox's statement in a letter to a corre- 
 spondent discussing the Cabinet crisis in February 1801, 
 that ' Fitzgibbon and the bishops have pushed the king to 
 resist Pitt in this instance,' seems to have been no exaggera- 
 tion of the facts of the case. The incident, however lament- 
 able in its results, is certainly an astonishing proof of the 
 influence which Clare was able to exert. 
 
 Clare is commonly represented as having died bitterly 
 lamenting the part he had taken in bringing about a union 
 which diminished his influence and abridged his powers. 
 This statement is a great exaggeration of the facts. 
 Undoubtedly he resented, and that bitterly, the deception 
 which he considered had been practised on him by Corn- 
 wallis and Castlereagh in concealing from him the pledges 
 made to the Eoman Catholic leaders on the passing of the 
 Union. But the incident just referred to sufficiently proves 
 that, if his powers in Ireland were impaired, his influence 
 in the highest quarters remained as potent as ever. Jonah 
 Barrington says that ' the Union effected, through his 
 friends, what Ireland could never accomplish through his 
 enemies— his total overthrow ; ' and later writers have 
 adopted the statement. But it is not correct. It is true, 
 indeed, that Clare was on bad terms with Abbot, the Chief 
 Secretary, afterwards Lord Colchester, whose prim and 
 clerklike mode of doing business, and somewhat exaggerated 
 notion of the importance of his office, were distasteful to the 
 masterful methods of one long used to unquestioned and 
 uncontrolled authority. Moreover, the duties of the Chan- 
 cellor necessitating his presence in Ireland, it was difficult 
 for Clare to exercise that direct control over Irish business 
 in Parliament to which he had been for years accustomed. 
 Th6 two men never liked each other from the first moment 
 
LOED CLARE 137 
 
 of Abbot's appointment ; and on his death the latter wrote 
 with the pettiness of a petty mind that Clare had conducted 
 himself impertinently towards him by his letters and lan- 
 guage to other people, adding that his death delivered the 
 Irish and also the British Government from great trouble. 
 Clare had undoubtedly complained bitterly, and with his 
 accustomed outspokenness, to his friends in the Cabinet of 
 the conduct of the Chief Secretary. In a memorandum drawn 
 up by Abbot in January 1802, within a few weeks of Clare's 
 death, containing the heads of matters to be discussed with 
 the Premier relative to Ireland, one of the topics is stated 
 to be whether the Irish Government should be conducted 
 by a Lord-Lieutenant or by Lords Justices, and Clare is 
 represented as hostile to any government by a Lord- 
 Lieutenant, and desirous himself to be Lord Deputy or at 
 the head of Lords Justices, with Cooke as Secretary of State 
 under him. 
 
 There can be little doubt that in a struggle for power 
 between Clare and Abbot the former, had he lived, would have 
 won the day ; and that Clare with his immense ability, his 
 unequalled knowledge of Ireland, and his resolute determina- 
 tion to be at the head of affairs, would have regained under the 
 weak Cabinet of Addington most, if not all, of the authority 
 he had so long enjoyed under Pitt, there seems little room for 
 question. But his health was broken and his race was run. 
 His bodily vigour had been declining for a year or two, and 
 an accident which he met with while riding had given a 
 serious shock to his constitution. At the close of the 
 Michaelmas sittings of 1801 he had proceeded to his country 
 seat at Mount Shannon, where, though ill, he had been able 
 to attend to necess?ry business, and whence he had, as late 
 as December 28, written an important memorandum on the 
 Maynooth difficulty. But on January 13 he was obliged 
 to address an application to the Viceroy ' for leave to go to 
 England for the recovery of my health, which is so much 
 shattered that I begin to be apprehensive it will be impossible 
 for me to attend to business on my return to town.' He had 
 been attacked by a violent bleeding of the nose, which had 
 
138 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 reduced him to a state of extreme weakness, and the 
 physicians considered there was water on his chest. He 
 still hoped to remain at his post until March, and a few 
 days later came up to Dublin. But in his weakened con- 
 dition the exertion of travelling was fatal, and a few days 
 after reaching the capital he expired. He displayed in his 
 last hours and in the presence of death the same fortitude 
 and presence of mind which he had preserved in every 
 emergency of his career, summoning Lord Kilwarden and 
 the other chief judges to his bedside, and himself ad- 
 ministering the oaths investing them under a commission 
 with the custody of the Great Seal. 
 
 It remains to devote a few words to those traits in Clare's 
 private character which attest his high qualities as a man. 
 Even his severest critics have borne witness to the warmth 
 of his affections, the strength of his friendship, his considera- 
 tion for his inferiors and dependents, and his unfailing 
 recognition of the duties of property. Of this last trait 
 and of that practical patriotism it denotes, there is a 
 striking illustration in his will — a document which throws a 
 strong light upon his character, and of which the more 
 personal passages have been printed by Lord Ashbourne in 
 the chapter devoted to Lord Clare in his book on Pitt — 
 which concludes with a warm recommendation to his sons 
 ' to make the country which gave them birth the place of 
 their general residence.' But these qualities he hid with 
 a cold reticence from the world. Though in early life 
 fond of society, he grew in later years, and as he became 
 absorbed in affairs, reserved and cold. That he was sincere 
 in his religious beliefs appears from his will, though it is to 
 be feared he found it difficult to obey the injunction to for- 
 give his enemies. Yet so morbid was his dislike of any 
 display of religion that he would repair to a remote village 
 church when he desired to partake of the Holy Com- 
 munion. 
 
 But while it is right to render justice to the lighter and 
 kindlier features in a character too often inconsiderately 
 aspersed as well by posterity as by contemporaries, it would 
 
LORD CLARE 139 
 
 be absurd to deny that Clare in his public aspect was a 
 man of imperious, not to say despotic, temperament, little 
 tolerant of opposition and disposed at all times to wield 
 authority with Cromwellian sternness. When all is said and 
 done, the most diligent research can never be worth half so 
 much for the interpretation of character as the clear evidence 
 of contemporary reputation. It is a libel upon history to 
 say that it is no better than an old almanac, but it is un- 
 deniable that it is never so likely to be true as an old diary. 
 To set up the incomplete records of the past against the 
 incontrovertible testimony of tradition is often the shallowest 
 pedantry. No apologies can remove the stain of falsity 
 from Charles I. or the vice of cruelty from Henry VIII. , 
 and in the main posterity must accept the findings of con- 
 temporaries on questions of character. That Lord Clare 
 was unconciliatory in manner and uncompromising in 
 method ; that he was the inveterate foe of Catholic emanci- 
 pation at a time when, as is plain to us wiseacres of a 
 later century, emancipation could have been granted with 
 the fairest possibilities of success ; and that these traits and 
 opinions earned him the cordial hatred of his immediate 
 opponents in the first instance, and of the mass of his 
 countrymen in the second ; ' that he would have been both a 
 wiser and a more successful statesman had he been able to 
 restrain the irritating arrogance of demeanour which enraged 
 his opponents and the irritable petulance of temper which 
 embarrassed his friends ; these things cannot be gainsaid, 
 nor can it be denied that they detract from the credit of the 
 statesman and the character of the man. But if a faithful 
 study of Clare's career reveals what the most malevolent of 
 
 1 The extent of Clare's unpopularity in his later years was painfully proved 
 by the scene at his funeral, when an indignity was offered to his remains by the 
 Dublin mob. Lord Ashbourne throws doubt upon this incident. But there 
 can unfortunately be no doubt that dead cats were thrown at the coffin. The 
 insult, however, was the occasion of an impromptu tribute to Clare's memory 
 by Lysaght, well known in the Dublin of his day as a poet and wit : 
 ' Cold is thy heart, hushed is thy voice ; 
 Around thy sacred urn 
 Rapine and fraud and guilt rejoice, 
 While truth and justice mourn.' 
 
140 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 his contemporaries never ventured to deny, the warmth of 
 his friendship, his loyalty to colleagues, his benevolence to 
 dependents, his generosity to fallen foes, and his honest devo- 
 tion to his country according to his view of her real interest, 
 then it is not fitting that history should embalm only the linea- 
 ments of an unfeeling despot, for ever surveying the people 
 from whom he sprang and whom he rose to rule with the 
 sneer of an upstart and the scowl of a tyrant. 
 
 We deplored at the outset the fact that no contemporary 
 pen attempted to provide such a biography of Clare as 
 would have left to posterity a just conception of his character, 
 and would have served to correct many of those false views 
 of the events with which his name is connected which so 
 long enjoyed an unchecked currency. But we have been 
 fortunate enough to light upon an appreciation of his cha- 
 racter which, written within a fortnight of the Chancellor's 
 death, conveys a summary of Clare's qualities which seems 
 to us to accord in the most striking manner with the 
 impressions which our study of his career has suggested. 
 In a letter addressed to Thomas Pelham ' on hearing of 
 Clare's death, the first Lord Stanley of Alderley drew the 
 following portrait, which agrees so perfectly with the 
 estimate we had formed both of the man and of the minister 
 as tempts us to make it our last word : — 
 
 So Lord Clare is gone at last. I am not one of the 
 men who at the moment of death deal out panegyrics on 
 the deceased as a thing of course. But of Lord Clare I am 
 tempted to say I thought him a great statesman. He was 
 not one to amalgamate well with others. High-minded, 
 confident, harsh, often governed by his own view of politics 
 only, he was a man to be wondered at more than to be loved 
 in his station, and few of those near him would feel inclined 
 to value him as he deserved. But when brought to a fair 
 judgment, the right estimation of him could not be refused. 
 He was a man amongst all his countrymen the most suited 
 to his time. Perhaps the time is past when his character 
 was of the kind to be most beneficial, and that in the feeling of 
 gratitude, as we look back and compare the past and present, 
 we may be authorised to sink some portion of our regret. 
 
 1 Pelham Correspondence, British Museum Additional MS. 33109. f. 93. 
 
LORD CLARE 141 
 
 But had Lord Clare never existed I do believe the rebels 
 would have been the masters in a great part of Ireland, and 
 that the Union would not for years to come have taken place. 
 No man ever saw through the mist of a political atmosphere 
 more clearly than he did what the real situation of his 
 country required ; and when he saw danger he could look at 
 it with an eagle's eye. We Englishmen ought the more 
 particularly to value him, for he was our steadiest friend. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Fort the reasons mentioned above, very few of Lord Clare's letters 
 have survived, and of those that remain scarcely any have been 
 published. The following letters, taken from the Auckland Papers 
 in the British Museum, possess so much historical interest, and 
 are besides so eminently characteristic of the writer, that it has 
 seemed well to append them here. 
 
 My dear Eden, 1 — It is now high time I should thank you for 
 your application for me to Lord Sandwich, and inform you of my 
 defeat at the Election, which was occasioned by the rashness of 
 one man — who really was my friend — and by the treachery of 
 another, who broke faith with me. Fortunately for me, however, 
 he was not so bigoted to the customs of the country as I was, for 
 he refused to meet me when I sent to him. You have heard, no 
 doubt, of the death of poor Burgh — Yelverton succeeds him, and 
 I am to be appointed Attorney-General. The office was offered 
 to me by Lord Northington in very handsome and honourable 
 terms indeed, for which I believe I am in a great measure 
 indebted to you, as he told me very fairly that he had first taken 
 up his opinions of me from your representations. Believe me 
 that I did not want this additional proof of the warmth and 
 sincerity of your attachments to your friends in this country. 
 I understand that we are to have additional Judges, in which 
 event Scott will be Prime Serjeant. This however, he tells me, 
 is to be a profound secret. Lord Northington means well certainly, 
 but I very much fear he does not know at this day what may be 
 his real strength. The only men with whom he has hitherto 
 had any confidential communication are the Chancellor, Grattan 
 Yelverton, Forbes, Geo. Ponsonby, and Chas. Frs. Sheridan. 
 You know as well as any man how practicable it is to govern 
 this country at this time with the assistance and by the advice 
 1 Auckland Papers, vol. viii. f. 281. Add. MS. 34419. 
 
142 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 of such a Cabinet. The old and tried friends of Government 
 have been applied to as of course, and I much fear that general 
 professions have been mistaken for explicit engagements. I have 
 not been in town more than three days, in which time I have had 
 but very little communication with Mr. Pelham. However, I 
 mean to state to him very fully my opinion of his situation in this 
 country before we meet on Tuesday. They choose to retain Yel- 
 verton in the House of Commons as their Minister 'till Christmas, 
 to which I have most readily assented, so far as I am personally 
 concerned : but I did submit to Mr. Pelham's better judgment 
 whether it was a prudent act of administration, as he might be 
 certain of being told in the House of Commons of the glaring 
 inconsistency of appointing three new Judges at a time when the 
 principal Court of business in the hall was limited to two, to 
 answer Ministerial purposes in the House of Commons ; and 
 that gentlemen who were not actually bound to him would not 
 be very ready to follow a man in the House of Commons who 
 was avowedly to retire from it in the beginning of a session, and 
 consequently was not himself pledged in any degree. But the 
 Chancellor thinks otherwise. The Chancellor, you know, in 
 giving advice very seldom has any family job in contemplation : 
 in this instance, however, he looks to the Borough of Carrick- 
 fergus, which Yelverton represents. He hopes by postponing the 
 election there to work upon Lord Donegal to return his son into 
 Parliament. Pray how does the Duke of Portland relish the 
 proceedings of his friends and ministers the Volunteers of 
 Ireland ? He told them in very plain terms that they had 
 abolished the supremacy of the British Parliament, and they now 
 choose to abolish the supremacy of their own. A Provincial 
 Congress has been sitting for some days in this town — yesterday 
 it was adjourned — and their proceedings are held to be extremely 
 temperate and decent, for they have entered into resolutions from 
 which there arises a very remote implication that our grievances 
 may be redressed thro' the medium of the Legislature. At 
 Londonderry they are of a different opinion : at a meeting of 
 Volunteers there a resolution was proposed that they would 
 unite in every exertion to procure a redress of grievances. Mr. 
 Robert Stewart moved that their exertions might be constitu- 
 tional ; Lord Bristol opposed him, and on a division beat him ten 
 to one. What a situation has the Duke of Portland reduced this 
 country to ! If concessions are now made to the people there is 
 an end of all order [and] government The gentlemen of the 
 country see it, but they are afraid to stand forth, lest possibly, 
 
LORD CLARE 143 
 
 upon a change of English administration, they may be all pro- 
 scribed for supporting the interests of both countries. I can very 
 truly assure you that I have for some time thought seriously of 
 quitting this country altogether ; and most assuredly, if good 
 order and government are not quickly restored, I will do it. 
 
 Pray make my affectionate compliments to Mrs. Eden. I 
 have sent her gloves by Mrs. Jefferyes, with directions to have 
 them left for her at Sir John Eden's in Downing Street. If Mrs. 
 Jefferyes sh' 1 omit to send them there, you will hear of her at 
 Mrs. Ponsonby's in Holies Street, Cavendish Square. 
 Y rs always truly and affectionately, my dear Eden, 
 
 (Signed) John FitzGibbon. 
 Dublin : October the 11th, 1783. 
 
 Postscript. — If anything worth mentioning occurs here, you 
 shall hear from me. 
 
 My dear Eden, 1 — Be assured that I never can doubt the warmth 
 of your friendship for me, and that no man prizes it more highly 
 than I do. The fact is that many of the gentlemen who compose 
 our Opposition here, having in the course of the session thought 
 fit to exercise their talents for abuse upon me, not perhaps with 
 all the success with which they had flattered themselves, seemed 
 inclined to make a different experiment upon me. You know the 
 genius of my countrymen well enough to see that, in my situation, 
 it became inevitably necessary to undeceive them in this particular ; 
 and Mr. Curran having in so many words stated ' that I was prone 
 to give offence and prone to deprecate it,' I sent Ogle to him to 
 desire that he would disclaim the words, or give me an opportunity 
 to convince him of his error. After taking twelve hours to consider 
 of my proposal, during which time there were divers consultations 
 of the leaders of the party upon the subject, they determined that 
 he should fight : and, after I had received his fire and returned it, 
 the young gentleman thought good to acknowledge that he had 
 been mistaken, and we parted. I could not avoid this little detail, 
 because of all characters I despise that of a man who is too for- 
 ward to fight, and in this instance I trust you will at once acquit 
 me of any such disposition. 
 
 I wrote you a long letter about a week since containing a 
 pretty accurate account of the state of Irish politicks at our last 
 adjournment. Affairs wear at present a much more favourable 
 aspect for Government. Mr. William Ponsonby surrendered at 
 discretion on Tuesday, with many acknowlegements for his 
 
 1 Auckland Papers, vol. ix. f. 90. Add. MS. 34420. 
 
144 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 error in having embarked in such an undertaking, and with as 
 many professions of sincere and warm attachment to the Duke of 
 Rutland's Government. They have been all received by the 
 Duke, and I am perfectly well satisfied that the friends of Mr. 
 Ponsonby will not again betray his Government, unless they have 
 a certain prospect of doing so with effect. This may very easily 
 be prevented, for you may be assured that there never was an 
 opposition in this country of which so many members were anxious 
 to be bought, and who might be bought upon cheaper terms. 
 God bless them all ! they hold character and consistency in very 
 laudable contempt, and if they are but paid will in the next 
 session unsay everything which they have been saying and swear- 
 ing in this. 
 
 Orde set out upon a system of GSconomy and of never making 
 any engagement. I have often told him that this was not the 
 way of doing business in that little corner of the Castle ; he now 
 sees it, and I have no doubt that when this error of Government 
 is corrected we shall sail before the wind. I must agree with you 
 that some of the amendments made by the English Parliament 
 in our propositions were perfectly reasonable, and the principle of 
 the fourth proposition particularly, no rational man ought to object 
 to — the wording of it, however, was highly injudicious. Whether 
 we may hereafter recover our senses and discover that the re- 
 collection of Mr. Grattan's splendid periods is but a slender con- 
 solation for poverty and the most absolute dependence upon 
 Great Britain, which is most certainly our present condition, I 
 cannot take upon me to say. I see by Mr. Woodfall's paper that 
 I am immediately to be removed from my office and from the 
 kingdom of Ireland — the one [event] is certainly as probable as 
 the other. I have habits of business which I should find it 
 difficult to shake off, and most certainly the clamours of an Irish 
 mob will not drive me to England, nor am I quite so great 
 a fool as to wish to seek my fortune upon a publick stage there. 
 Our session I hope will closa in about ten days, at which time I 
 mean to go into the county of Limerick to look a little into 
 my private business, with which I have been for near two years 
 most perfectly unacquainted. Lord Chief Justice Paterson lies 
 dangerously ill upon his circuit ; if he should die, Carleton has 
 no competitor for his seat on the Bench. Pray remember me 
 kindly to Mrs. Eden. 
 
 Y rs always truly, my dear Eden, 
 (Signed) John Fitzgibbon. 
 Dublin ; August the 29th, 1785. 
 
LORD CLARE 145 
 
 My dear Eden, 1 — You will readily believe that no man has 
 received more pleasure than myself at the account of your pre- 
 sent situation, which General Cuninghame communicated to me 
 immediately after he had received your letter. I do not think that 
 any man who is your friend can hesitate in approving the post you 
 have taken : surely it would have been unpardonable in you to 
 decline a commission, which you were called upon to accept as the 
 man who was best qualified to attend to the interests of Great 
 Britain in the depending Treaty with France. Many thanks to 
 you for your applications to Lord Sandwich and Lord Loughborough 
 for my friend Oliver ; there has not as yet been an election, but 
 whenever it may happen I do not think he will meet with any 
 opposition. Lees tells me that Mrs. Eden and you want some 
 Limerick gloves, but that you will not apply to me under the appre- 
 hension that I am too gallant a gentleman to open a debtor and 
 creditor account for them. As you are not likely, however, to get 
 them for several months, unless by my interest with the Limerick 
 glover, send me a glove of Mrs. Eden's and one of yours, and let 
 me know what number you will have, and whether you wish to 
 have them of the very thin sort, and I will undertake to forward 
 them to you by a messenger before you quit England. In the 
 article of their price set your conscience at rest ; when you are 
 settled in Paris I will in return give you a commission to send 
 me over a service of desert china, and, if you will allow me to pay 
 you for the aforesaid china, rest assured I will make you pay me 
 for your gloves. We are likely to have a very short and a very 
 quiet session of Parliament here— I do not see any materials for 
 our Opposition but the old topic of Reform, which is now become 
 a jest, and Mr. Corry's project of making Navigation Laws for 
 England, which is equally feasible. The news-writers have dis- 
 covered that I am extremely anxious to be Chancellor of Ireland 
 or, if that cannot be, to succeed Paterson in the Common Pleas : 
 I need not, however, tell you that for the present I had rather 
 remain where I am— I do not as yet feel any inclination to become 
 an old woman. 
 
 Pray remember me to Mrs. Eden, and believe me to be always 
 very truly y rs , 
 
 (Signed) John Fitzgibbon. 
 Dublin : January the 10th, 1786. 
 
 Rt. Hon. Wm. Eden. 
 
 1 Auckland Papers, vol. ix. f. 367. 
 
116 STUDIES IN IEISH HIST02Y 
 
 Iffy dear Eden. 1 — I have deferred writing :: you in tihe idea 
 m - oossible I might be able to ge: to Paris before my 
 return to Ireland; but this I now see is fan As tc the 
 
 commission vr!ii;h I gave you : 3 1 - tc rely on 
 
 Mrs. Eden altogether. I am obliged it times tc bare twenty 
 covers at dinner, s: that she will proportion the site :: the service 
 to t his c nee. I must trouble her to get me frames and 
 
 figures to c: n — the frames I would not wish to be v 
 
 broad. As to price — anything from two to three hundred pounds 
 will, I suppose, defray it. The best wa] sporting it to 
 
 tndwill be by B : v. en. astfa vhich alvr 
 
 thence to Dublin. If >s to you for your good wishes : I 
 
 have trained on surprizingly to an honest life. You should have 
 had the gloves you 1 -:red for yourself but that the glover 
 had died just before I received your commission, and there 
 no leather in the shop fit for men i gloves ID not 
 
 again accuse me for not allowing you to pay for Mrs. E:: 
 gloves, I now tell yon that 1 nt shillings, 
 
 O you can reduce : his : : the coin of England or 
 of J : :: from the prk china and draw 
 
 upc nM ; Lilley and Eobarts, Laurence Pountney Lane, on 
 account for the balance. To-morrow I set : ut for Spa 
 
 mm here about the - ember me to 
 
 Mrs. Eden and believe me to be alw; 
 
 Y-" 5 .' - . g - 1 1 Johh Eitzgie b : :• . 
 
 T-i : 
 
 ] [y ... Z ten - — _ : ox letters have been forwarded to me from 
 Spa ; and since I reeer a een Mr. I 
 
 who let me nave copies of the papers which you mc If 
 
 vou can prevail with the French Cabinet tc put Pastel - ::r_?:ruc- 
 
 i upon the seat duties 1c in Ireland upon foreign lin 
 
 I tViinV it will nc I ~ i a n can murmur at what 
 
 .11 actually make our way into 
 
 the Erench marketer not, eea the opportunity of 
 
 doing . — tod vou could do no more for us. I have also spoken 
 
 Mr. Pitt upon the subje 1 :u, in which 
 
 lam more immediately interested. He was pc Fair upon 
 
 he could not rt"e me a full out 
 
 ; ; ; - 1: : 1. . 1. . '.--~ 
 
 :'-:land Pa xen, voL si L MB . ... ". xL £. 506. 
 
LORD CLARE 147 
 
 years, I think the object will be within my reach. It is still 
 uncertain whether Orde will return — I know he wishes it, but he 
 is frightened at the idea of encountering the business of the 
 session. So far as respects our adopting the Navigation Code of 
 England, I think is nearly settled. I am just getting into my 
 chaise to get to Ireland. On the important business of my china, 
 when I return to Ireland I shall be able to let you know whether 
 in the present situation of the two countries it will easily be 
 admitted to an entry : you must draw upon me at Dublin, — I 
 know that Perregeaux the banker corresponds with Latouche. 
 Pray remember me to Mrs. Eden and believe me to be always 
 very truly 
 
 Y 1 * (Signed) John Fitzgibbox. 
 London : October the 27th, 1736. 
 
 My dear Eden, 1 — I find by your last letter to Beresford that 
 we have got into a damned scrape here, principally from the 
 blundering stupidity of that old Balderdash Bitch, Lord Sydney. 
 Altho' Orde pressed him again and again for official instruction 
 upon the subject, he never could obtain any answer from him till 
 the Bill for carrying into effect the Treaty had passed our House 
 of Commons, and then for the first time stated that France 
 objected to the duty of fourpence by the yard upon Irish linens 
 imported into France, and insisted upon an ad valorem duty. 
 Whether this may be reasonable or not I will not take upon me 
 to determine ; but sure I am its being reasonable will not make 
 it the more likely to go down in this country. Rose in his private 
 letters to Orde stated again and again that the duties upon the 
 linens in both countries were to follow our hereditarv duty on 
 Dutch linens ; that we should be safe in announcing it so in 
 publick, and Parnell stated the duties accordingly in the House 
 of Commons. If I do no: mistake, the Treaty stipulates the 
 duties upon linens by the yard. How then can they now shift 
 their ground, and insist upon a duty ad valorem ? We have now 
 pretty nearly got to a conclusion of our session, and have got 
 through the business of it without difficulty, for which we are 
 indebted solely to the utter inability and folly of the gentlemen, 
 God bless them ! who think they are in opposition to Government. 
 Orde is one of the honestest and best intentioned men I ever met 
 with, and if he were to follow the first impulse of his mind, 
 would do extremely well. But he has got wholly under the 
 direction of Sackville Hamilton, who is an excellent Clerk, but a 
 
 1 Auckland Papers, vol. siii. f. 266. Add. MS. 31124. 
 
 i 2 
 
148 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 diabolical Minister. Everything is caution and indecision. He 
 has frightened Orde from appointing a judge in the place of 
 Robinson who died in January, and from putting Carleton into 
 the place of poor old Paterson, who for two years before his death 
 was unable to attend to business. It was necessary to send out 
 Carleton as a Judge of Assize to prevent Sir Frederick Flood from 
 murdering the King's subjects Colore Officii. James Brown has 
 never come out of his dormitory since he was last appointed 
 Prime Serjeant, so that here have I been for more than a month 
 without any manner of assistance, save now and then from the 
 Secretary of State, employed from day to day in preparing Bills 
 for Reforming the Magistracy, etc. etc., and in combating absurd 
 observations upon them in and out of the House. If it were not 
 that at times I get relief from a volley of execrations, I do believe 
 I should blow-up. 
 
 Pray make my best complim* 3 to Mrs. Eden. Would she 
 wish for Limerick gloves for herself or her friends ? Perhaps the 
 Queen of France might condescend to wear them. 
 
 Y rB always very truly, my dear Eden, 
 
 John Fitzgibbon. 
 Dublin : April 4th, 1787. 
 
 My dear Eden, 1 — I had heard with infinite regret of Mrs. 
 Eden's illness, which however from your account of her I hope 
 she is in a fair way of shaking off. Many thanks to you for your 
 very kind expressions of satisfaction at my appointment to the 
 Great Seal, in which I do most readily believe you are warm and 
 sincere. You will be pleased to hear that the appointment has 
 been very well received by all descriptions of men in this Country 
 and that I have been able already to dispose of the arrears of 
 business which I found in the Court of Chancery. Probably you 
 have heard with some surprize of the turn which our Politics 
 took in the course of the last session of Parliament. As to our 
 wise Address on the Regency I do not believe that any exertion 
 of Government could have prevented it. Possibly decisive 
 measures at the moment of the King's recovery might have 
 stopped the disgraceful combination which was afterwards formed 
 against his government, but after it had been formed, there was 
 no possibility of dissolving it in time to prevent serious mischief 
 to the country without an offer of general amnesty to the con- 
 spirators. Grattan's exploits in leading them have lowered him 
 more than you can imagine. The people at large consider him 
 
 1 Auckland Papers, vol. xviii. f. 406. Add. MS. 34429. 
 
LORD CLARE 149 
 
 as the tool of an English party, and the gentlemen who were 
 pleased to rank under his banner abuse him as impracticable and 
 insufficient. I hope that the gentlemen who are in opposition in 
 Great Britain will learn before it is too late the danger of playing 
 their game in this country. If they do not agree with their 
 antagonists in anything else, they must learn to agree in sup- 
 porting the King's Government in Ireland, else perhaps they may, 
 before they are aware of it, have this country a stake to fight for 
 with a foreign enemy. By the way, our good neighbour the 
 French King is now reaping the full fruits of his attachment to 
 the cause of American liberty. If there exists anything in the 
 shape of political gratitude, surely America will now send General 
 Washington to the assistance of their great and good ally. Pray 
 make my best compliments to Mrs. Eden. I am not certain that 
 I wrote to thank her for all the trouble she had in executing our 
 Commission for Sevres China, which came to Ireland perfectly safe, 
 and does very great honour to her taste. 
 
 Yours always very truly, my dear Eden, 
 
 Fitzgibbon. 
 Dublin : August the 4th, 1789. 
 
 My dear Lord, 1 — Our rebellion I am sorry to say begins to wear 
 a very serious and formidable aspect. The insurgents are now in 
 possession of nearly the whole of the County of Wexford, and are 
 so strong that I fear the force which has bsen sent against them is 
 altogether unequal to dislodge them. Yesterday a column of five 
 hundred of the King's troops received a very severe check near 
 Gorey, and lost three pieces of cannon with all their ammunition, 
 breadcarts, etc. etc. This misfortune was altogether owing to the 
 rashness and ignorance of Colonel Walpole who commanded them, 
 and was killed early in the action. General Loftus who com- 
 manded another body of troops which was to have co-operated with 
 Walpole has fallen back several miles, and, as yet, we have had no 
 accounts from Johnson & Eustace (Useless) who marched from 
 another point against Wexford. 
 
 Our situation is critical in the extreme. We know that there 
 has been a complete military organization of the people in three- 
 fourths of the Kingdom. In the North nothing will keep the rebels 
 quiet but a conviction that where treason has broken out the 
 rebellion is merely Popish, but even with this impression in their 
 minds we cannot be certain that their love of republicanism wil 
 not outweigh their inveteracy against Popery. In the Capital there 
 
 1 Auckland Papers, vol. sliv. f. 391. Add. MS. 34455. 
 
150 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 is a rebel army organized, and if the garrison was forced out to 
 meet an invading rebel army from the side of Wexford, they would 
 probably on their return find the Metropolis in possession of its 
 proper rebel troops. In a word, such is the extent of treason in 
 Ireland, that if any one district is left uncovered by troops, it will be 
 immediately possessed by its own proper rebels. Believe me I do 
 not magnify our danger ; you know that I have long foreseen the 
 miscbief and condemned the imbecility which has suffered it to 
 extend itself. But as the mischief has taken place, if Great 
 Britain is really interested in preserving this country she ought 
 instantly to push over a very large force to this coast, which may 
 save her hereafter many millions in money, and many thousands 
 of her soldiers. We also stand in need very much of some General 
 officers who know somewhat of their profession. 
 
 Yours always truly, my dear Lord, 
 
 Clare. 
 Dublin : Tuesday (June 5th, 1798). 
 
 My dear Lord, 1 — There has been a very sharp action with the 
 Eebels at New Ross, a town which lies midway between Waterford 
 and Wexford. It would seem that their object was to force their 
 passage to Waterford, for they attacked the King's troops at five 
 o'clock in the morning of Tuesday with uncommon fury and did 
 not give up the assault till they had been three times repulsed. 
 The action, by the General's Report (Johnson), continued ten hours, 
 and at the first onset our troops were beat back with the loss of 
 four guns, however Johnson rallied them and charged at their 
 head. He recovered his guns and took from the rebels three or 
 four ship guns which they had brought into the field. The rebels 
 lost in killed more than two thousand five hundred men. But 
 this lesson has not deterred them from collecting their scattered 
 troops, which are now assembled in very great numbers on the 
 high grounds between Ross and Wexford, and on the other side of 
 Wexford towards Arklow and Hutchtown. There they seem deter- 
 mined to maintain themselves till they are dislodged, which I trust 
 will very soon happen, as General Lake has ordered a very large 
 force to march down upon them from different points, and means, 
 as I understand, immediately to go down and take the command 
 of the whole force which is to act against them. Our loss in the 
 last action has been inconsiderable, but amongst the killed I am 
 
 > AucHand Papers, Add. MS. 29175, f. 43. This letter is only dated Friday, 
 but must have been written on June 8, 1793, the battle of New Ross having 
 been fought en Tuesday, Juna 5. 
 
LOKD CLARE 151 
 
 extremely sorry to inform you we have to lament poor Lord 
 Mountjoy. The obstinacy with which the rebels fought in the 
 battle proves the justice of Lord Grenville's observation, and there 
 is a circumstance which makes it still more important to put down 
 this great effort of rebellion in the county of Wexford instantly if 
 it be possible. 
 
 The rebel camps are all filled with priests, who have certainly 
 in a great degree, if not altogether, worked upon the miserable 
 wretches, who have been heretofore sacrificed, to fight with a degree 
 of enthusiasm scarcely to be credited. Heretofore the Popish soldiers 
 in our ranks have been steady, but if these villains should be 
 enabled to extend their influence to our camps the consequences 
 must be fatal. 
 
 As to the subject of the Union with the British Parliament, I 
 have long been of opinion that nothing short of it can save this 
 country. I stated this opinion very strongly to Mr. Pitt in the year 
 1793, immediately after that fatal mistake into which he was 
 betrayed by Mr. Burke and Mr. Dundas in receiving an appeal 
 from the Irish Parliament by a Popish Democracy. I again stated 
 this opinion to him in the last winter ; and if this were a time 
 for it, I think I could make it clear and plain to every dispassionate 
 man in the British Empire that it is utterly impossible to preserve 
 this country to the British Crown if we are to depend upon the 
 precarious bond of Union which now subsists between Great 
 Britain and Ireland. It makes me almost mad when I look back 
 at the madness, folly, and corruption, in both countries, which has 
 brought us to the verge of destruction. 1 
 
 Yours always truly, my dear Lord, 
 
 Clake. 
 
 My dear Lord, 2 — I have been so teased with a cough for the 
 last three weeks that I have been obliged to spend nearly the whole 
 of my time in bed. I am just now considerably relieved, but 
 despair of shaking it off altogether till I can get into the country. 
 The main difficulty which it strikes me you will have to encounter 
 at the outset of the very important business to which your last 
 letter alludes is our strong national love of Jobbing, which must 
 receive a fatal blow in the ultimate success of the measure. This 
 creditable feeling, altho' by no means extinguished, has been very 
 much counteracted by an apprehension not ill-founded, for the 
 
 1 The last paragraph has been printed by Lord Ashbourne in his Pitt at 
 p. 2G6. 
 
 7 Auckland Papers, vol. xliii. i. 3SC. Add. MS. 34454. 
 
152 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 safety of our persons and Estates, and I should hope will ulti- 
 mately yield to it. I think the general feeling of the landed interest 
 is in favour of the measure, and when the advantages of it in a 
 commercial point of view are understood, I should suppose the 
 commercial interest of the country would also be generally and 
 strongly for it. The Catholics will, I make no doubt, oppose it 
 with violence, as will Northern republicans, and therefore before 
 the measure is avowed, it will be essentially necessary to have a 
 strong British military force here, nor in my opinion will it be 
 prudent to avow it until Great Britain is at peace with her foreign 
 enemies. The Speaker will, I believe, be against the measure, and 
 I know the Archbishop of Cashel will oppose it vehemently. 
 Lord Shannon, I think, sees the necessity which presses for it; and 
 I am pretty confident that the general feeling of the House of 
 Lords is in favour of it. Our proprietors of Boroughs which 
 would not be represented, will demand compensation ; and if this 
 should be practicable, I make no doubt a great majority of them 
 will acquiesce. I think the Rebellion may now be said to be fairly 
 subdued. There are many parties of banditti still out, who do 
 great mischief in the counties of Kildare and Wicklow. Lord Corn- 
 wallis has authorized the general officers in these districts to offer 
 pardon and protection to such of them as shall come in with their 
 arms, and give their names and places of abode, and I should hope 
 they will be very happy to accede to these terms. Nothing could 
 have operated with so much effect as sending over your militia to 
 us, not only as force to act against the rebels of the present day, 
 but as a force which may be poured in upon them on any future 
 occasion. What a contrast is there between the conduct of the 
 English nobility and gentry who have thus volunteered for the 
 preservation of this country, and the profligate folly of the worthy 
 Lords and Commoners who have for the last month wasted their 
 best endeavours for the encouragement of our rebels ! I am 
 told that these gentlemen have honoured me with no inconsiderable 
 portion of their animadversion, and that I am particularly indebted 
 for their civility to his Grace of Bedford, Mr. Fox, and the young 
 cub his nephew. From what I have seen of Lord Cornwallis I 
 like him much. 
 
 Y rs always very truly, my dear Lord, 
 
 Clabe. 
 Dublin: July the 3rd, 1798. 
 
 What could have induced the Dukes of Devonshire and 
 Leeds to join the gang in their Irish treason? 
 
LOED CLARE 153 
 
 12 Feb. 1800. 
 
 My dear Lord, 1 — I have not written to you since the last meet- 
 ing of Parliament because I got alarmed at our situation. I have 
 recovered confidence, however, and I think better of our prospect 
 of success now than ever. I opened the business in the House of 
 Lords on Monday, to you I will say, with great effect. I spoke 
 for four hours, and was attended to throughout, but I was so ex- 
 hausted as to feel utterly unable to conclude with any minute 
 statement of details. Yesterday we had another division on the 
 question in the House of Commons; our majority 47, which 
 I think will hold. The few honest fools who vote with the gang 
 are alarmed at their violence, and disgusted with the company 
 they are forced to keep. And I think the consulate have been 
 frightened on the subject of bribery. I am endeavouring to make 
 sense of a vile note which has been sent to me for correction of 
 my speech. If I can make sense of it I will send you a printed 
 copy. Is it not nearly incredible that Lord Downshire's paper 
 should have so totally deprived him of all understanding? The 
 strong grapple made by Lord Cornwallis with him, has had the 
 best effects in the present contest for the Irish Throne. 
 
 Yours always truly, 
 
 Clabe. 
 
 Postscript. — Pray remember me very kindly to all my female 
 friends of your family. 
 
 Letter from Thomas Addis Emmet to Thomas Russell. 
 
 The following is the letter of Thomas Addis Emmet to his 
 friend Russell referred to in the text. The original, which is 
 undated, is in the Record Tower at Dublin Castle. 
 
 My dear Russell, — It is impossible for any one to be more con- 
 cerned or more anxious than we all are about the fate of Tone. 
 There is not a thing that would appear to us to have any chance 
 of saving his life that we would not gladly do. But it is owing to 
 that very feeling that your letter has embarrassed us most exceed- 
 ingly, because your letters seem to imply that you and your 
 fellow-prisoners imagine that some such thing could be done ; 
 while we have no doubt that any such application would, if possi- 
 ble, do injury. When we negotiated for Bond's life, etc., we had 
 something to give — our banishment and some information. What 
 have we to give now ? If we cannot make it a matter of truck 
 
 1 Auckland Papers, vol. xliv. f. 256. Add. MS. 34455. 
 
154 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 surely you cannot suppose we could obtain it as a favour, when 
 we have been in vain soliciting the very small favour of good faith 
 being kept with us. I am sure Government hate us, and if we 
 asked a favour they would doubly rejoice in the opportunity of 
 gratifying their own vengeance against him and dislike against us* 
 The day we were at the Castle, the Chancellor mentioned that 
 Tone had, before he left the kingdom, signed such a confession of 
 his own treason as would and was intended to hang him in case of 
 his ever returning, so that I am sure the points on which you rely 
 would avail nothing. Indeed, I am convinced it would not be in 
 the power of any interest to ransom him. Even retaliation (the 
 only chance) I think will not avail ; but if it should have any 
 weight our interference would interfere with it. These are our 
 fears, and have prevented our doing anything, because we see 
 nothing we can do. But if you or your friends with you can 
 point out anything which you think would have any chance of 
 success, draw it up and send it to us, and I assure you it is not a 
 trifle will prevent our signing it. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 T. A. Emmet 
 
155 
 
 IV 
 
 CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 
 
 The author of ' Waverley ' has laid it down that sixty years 
 represent the period at which the chronicle of the events 
 that make up the record of political struggles mellows into 
 history. Two generations, he considered, should suffice to 
 give to the animosities of party rancour, and to the still 
 deeper wounds of which even a brief period of civil warfare 
 must inevitably leave the scars, that neutral tone which the 
 veil of time sooner or later imparts to all things human. 
 When the first chapters of ' Waverley ' were written, sixty 
 years had elapsed since the attempt of the Young Pretender 
 had convulsed Scottish society in a struggle which was at 
 once dynastic and national, and which divided sharply the 
 Celtic from the Teutonic elements in the Scottish people. 
 Yet in the course of no more than two generations the fever 
 of loyalty and feudalism which gave reality to the rising in 
 behalf of Prince Charlie had so completely vanished as to 
 have ceased to affect in any real sense the course of Scottish 
 politics. Attachment to Jacobite traditions had become no 
 more than a picturesque survival, with just enough of reality 
 about it to lend attraction to a romance of the times when it 
 dominated the national aspirations of Scotland, and threat- 
 ened, not remotely, a revolution in Great Britain. 
 
 The very opposite case of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 
 affords in this respect yet another of the many striking 
 contrasts in which the history of the two islands that form 
 the three kingdoms abounds. Not two generations, nor 
 three, not sixty years nor a century, have availed to erase 
 from the sombre memories of the Celtic population of Ireland 
 the recollection of the events of '98, For them the lapse of 
 
156 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 time has scarcely served to soften a single animosity, or to 
 obliterate the marks of racial and religious hate which the 
 disorders of the Rebellion traced afresh in Ireland. In the 
 popular imagination the long procession of a hundred years 
 has only served to tinge with the romance of history the 
 figures of the chief actors in a struggle which, hopeless as 
 were its objects, bloody as was its progress, and mournful its 
 conclusion, is still regarded with a certain enthusiasm of 
 patriotic reverence as a central and inspiring episode in the 
 drama of Irish history. 
 
 For this peculiar attachment to memories of defeat 
 and failure which to other races would be too depressing to 
 dwell upon, it is not difficult to account. The pathetic 
 delight with which the Irish people love to indulge in the 
 gloomy recollections of their abortive past is no new feature 
 in their character. Unfortunately for themselves, they have 
 ever been as unable to forget as unwilling to forgive, and 
 the contemplation of their own sufferings and misfortunes 
 has continually a morbid attraction for them. They will 
 allow neither the balm of time nor the oblivion of the grave 
 to work their merciful alleviations. Contests which the 
 victors have long ceased to remember, the vanquished 
 cannot forbear to brood over. And but for the unequalled 
 facility with which they can console themselves with the 
 shadowy might-have-beens of their history, the Irish 
 would surely be the most unhappy instead of the most 
 buoyant of peoples. This characteristic optimism of the 
 race was never more powerfully exemplified than in the 
 celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Rebellion of 
 1798. Had the movement which it was proposed to celebrate 
 been a triumph instead of a disaster, a glory rather than a 
 reproach, a splendid Waterloo rather than a humiliating 
 Sedan, it could not have been more magniloquently 
 commemorated. 
 
 It is long since the subdued notes that followed the 
 Union have checked the grandiloquence of Irish eulogies of 
 the heroes of the Rebellion. The fear to speak of '98, of 
 which Dr. Ingram spoke in his stirring lyric, has ceased to 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 157 
 
 trouble the patriot. The cult of the Kebellion began among 
 the Young Irelanders, and remained as strong in 1898 as it 
 had been fifty years earlier. It did not indeed find literary 
 expression in a form as attractive as when Thomas Davis sat 
 down to devote the stores of his wide historical knowledge 
 and the resources of a gifted imagination to the apotheosis of 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone ; but there was no lack of writing on 
 the subject. Fair enthusiasts of English blood and gentle 
 nurture recalled for crowds of rough artisans the story 
 of the more prominent among the men of '98, and 
 picturesque patriots who had played their part in '48, presid- 
 ing at the lectures, typified the continuity of the revolu- 
 tionary tradition. The leader of the most thoroughgoing 
 branch of Irish Separatism, 1 himself a Wexford man, 
 descanted to crowded audiences on those episodes in the 
 Wexford rising which are the most flattering to the self- 
 esteem of Irishmen. The popular press teemed with articles 
 and paragraphs which, whatever might be thought of the 
 reality of the commemoration as a serious political display, 
 testified at any rate to the hold which the Rebellion and 
 its incidents still retain upon the popular fancy. 
 
 Many additions have been made in recent years to the 
 already considerable literature which the progress of a 
 century has accumulated round the history of the Irish 
 Rebellion of 1798 ; but, meritorious as some of these un- 
 doubtedly are, none of them supply more successfully than 
 earlier publications that accurate, graphic, and impartial 
 record of the most picturesque episode in modern Irish 
 history which has long been desired by the public. For 
 despite the wealth of contemporary narratives, many of 
 them possessing high individual merit, and providing a store- 
 house of materials from which more modern accounts must 
 always be largely drawn, and notwithstanding the elaborate 
 studies of the rising which give so much attraction and 
 value to the pages of ' The English in Ireland,' and of ' The 
 History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' the final 
 history of the Rebellion has still to be written. In one 
 
 1 Now (1901) the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. 
 
158 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 sense, indeed, it is impossible to add anything of serious 
 importance to the pages which Mr. Froude and Mr. Lecky 
 have devoted to the subject. The narrative of the elder 
 historian may and does suffer from a characteristic inexact- 
 ness of detail, and from the somewhat polemical character of 
 the objects its author had in view in writing it. But making 
 the fullest allowance for the defects of Froude's qualities, 
 his account of the Kebellion is in general reliable and accu- 
 rate, while the picturesque vividness with which the period 
 is recalled and presented must remain the despair of all 
 subsequent students in the same school. Still, with all 
 these merits, the Kebellion is with Froude necessarily no 
 more than an episode in a long historical drama, and the 
 brilliant narrative in 'The English in Ireland' cannot be 
 divorced from its context. 
 
 Of Mr. Lecky's yet more detailed examination of the 
 story, it is impossible to exaggerate the merits, nor can any 
 one who follows the historian of the eighteenth century fail 
 to acknowledge an immense indebtedness to the results of 
 his patient investigations, scrupulous accuracy, and generous 
 indication of the sources from which he has drawn his 
 facts. But though of higher authority than Froude's as a 
 chronicle of events, Mr. Lecky's work is scarcely as formi- 
 dable a rival to any fresh attempt at a history of the Bebellion, 
 and his pages on the Bebellion have less of narrative 
 unity than his predecessor's. The effect, however, of the 
 attention devoted to the subject by the two most eminent of 
 modern writers on Irish history has been to deter others from 
 venturing into the same field ; and thus it happens that, at 
 a distance of over fifty years from its first publication, so 
 poor a book as Maxwell's ' History of the Irish Bebellion in 
 1798, with Memoirs of the Union and Emmet's Insurrection 
 of 1803,' remains the most complete account of the rising 
 accessible in a single volume. Even this work, however, is less 
 a history than a compilation based on such authorities as were 
 accessible so long ago as 1845, and is largely a rechauffe of 
 the writings of Musgrave, Hay, Barrington, and others of the 
 earlier historians. Its literary merits are not conspicuous, 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1793 159 
 
 and the book lives mainly through the quaint and rather 
 blood-curdling illustrations with which it was enriched by 
 Cruikshank, whose plates, by the way, though possessing 
 the distinctive touch of the artist, indicate the hopeless 
 unfitness of a caricaturist to be the illustrator of a tragedy. 
 
 Of works earlier than Maxwell's the number is large, 
 and the merits are not inconsiderable ; but they are all too 
 deeply tinged with the prejudices of their respective authors 
 to be entirely trustworthy, even where their writers were 
 fully informed. For the Wicklow and Wexford rising the 
 realistic narratives of Hay and Cloney on the rebel side, of 
 Taylor and Jackson on the loyalist, give a vivid picture of 
 the most stirring episodes by actors in the struggle. Of the 
 works which attempt to tell the whole story, Gordon's nar- 
 rative has been eulogised by Mr. Lecky as presenting the 
 most truthful, most moderate, and most humane account of 
 the Eebellion, and of its causes. In that judgment most 
 people will be inclined to concur; but there is no reason 
 why the encomium should be paid, as it generally is, at the 
 expense of Sir Richard Musgrave, the most painstaking and 
 most fully informed of the crowd of writers who approached 
 the subject in the years immediately succeeding the Eebel- 
 lion. His narrative has been stigmatised by a recent writer 
 on Irish history ' as written in the evil Orange spirit.' But 
 a more just estimate of its merits has been expressed by an 
 American historian of the final episode in the rising, who is 
 certainly not lacking in sympathy for the weaker party. 
 The author of ' The French Invasion of Ireland,' Mr. 
 Gribayedoff, points out that whilst it has been the fashion 
 among anti-English chroniclers of '98 to treat Musgrave's 
 book as utterly unreliable, a comparison of the • Memoirs ' 
 with other contemporary works fails to reveal any instance of 
 conscious misrepresentation. And the same writer also points 
 out that his connection with the Government gave Mus- 
 grave access to channels of information at that time closed to 
 other writers, his appendix of sworn depositions and other 
 original documents giving warrant for many charges which 
 it has been the fashion of too many popular writers 
 
160 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 to denounce as unsupported by authentic evidence. But 
 though many works have been published on either side of 
 the controversy that still rages round the Rebellion which 
 form valuable additions, from their very different points of 
 view, to our knowledge of those aspects of the insurrection 
 to which they more particularly refer, a complete and in- 
 dependent narrative of the whole story of the Rebellion, 
 based upon the original authorities, printed and documentary, 
 still remains to be written. 
 
 The deficiencies of the early historians of the Rebellion 
 intensify the regret which all students of the period must 
 feel that the persuasions of Castlereagh were ineffectual 
 to prevail upon the one man in whom opportunity and 
 capacity united to provide an ideal historian of the 
 Rebellion and the Union. In 1811, while most of the chief 
 personages of the time were still alive — Grattan and Castle- 
 reagh, Cornwallis and Plunket — but when the asperities 
 engendered by the conflict had become in some degree 
 assuaged, the chief agent in carrying the Act of Union 
 pressed upon his old friend and private secretary, Alexander 
 Knox, the duty of compiling, from the ample materials then 
 available, a full and authentic account of the events of that 
 stormy and turbulent time. The quondam associate upon 
 whom, in a remarkable letter published in Owen Maddyn's 
 ' Chiefs of Parties,' he urged this duty, was himself a 
 remarkable and interesting figure. A native of the north of 
 Ireland, he had become intimate with Castlereagh while the 
 latter was still a member of the Opposition ; and when his 
 friend took office, Knox became his secretary, a position 
 which he retained throughout the whole period of the 
 Rebellion and of the Union controversy. Three years older 
 than his patron, Knox was already a thoughtful and mature 
 student of politics when he first came into practical touch 
 with them. He had been at the outset of the popular agita- 
 tion, in his own words, ' a sincere and zealous advocate for 
 a limited Parliamentary reform,' and a sympathiser with 
 the then views of Grattan and the Whig Club. But he 
 was from the first alarmed by the methods of the United 
 
CASTLEEEAGH AND IEELAND IN 1798 161 
 
 Irishmen, and being early convinced that any measure of 
 reform conceded to the importunities of a revolutionary 
 organisation must lead to consequences incompatible with 
 the maintenance of the Constitution, he had become an un- 
 qualified supporter of the Government, and his influence 
 not improbably weighed much in determining Castlereagh's 
 own transition from Whig to Tory views. Surveying Irish 
 politics in the spirit of the old Whigs, Knox had, in 1794, 
 published a pamphlet, entitled ' Thoughts on the W^ill of 
 the People,' in which he analysed the causes of the failure 
 of the Kevolution to give ordered liberty to France ; while 
 in 1795 he had published a series of ' Essays on the Political 
 Circumstances of Ireland,' in which the true inwardness of 
 the United Irish movement was exhibited with remarkable 
 acumen, long before the danger had been substantiated by the 
 Keports of the Secret Parliamentary Committees, of the 
 most instructive of which, that of the Irish House of 
 Commons in 1798, Knox was himself to be the author. 
 That Castlereagh's eulogies of the disinterestedness of his 
 subordinate were well founded may be inferred from the 
 fact that Knox neither sought nor accepted reward for his 
 political services. He had spent his boyhood at the feet of 
 Wesley, whose teaching had aroused in him a passion for 
 religious speculation which ultimately absorbed all other 
 interests ; and almost simultaneously with the passing of 
 the Union he had fallen under the religious influences which 
 were to dominate his subsequent career. Abandoning 
 politics, he gave himself up to the theological discussions 
 which are so fully set forth in the once well-known • Corre- 
 spondence of Knox and Bishop Jebb ; ' and recent criticism 
 has found in the speculations of this subtle and ingenious 
 intellect the spark from which was fired the torch that, 
 handed from Knox to Jebb, from Jebb to Hugh James Kose, 
 and from Eose to Keble and Newman, kindled the flames of 
 the Oxford Movement. 1 But unfortunately, when, in 1811, 
 
 1 See the notice of Knox in the Dictionary of National Biography, and two 
 very interesting articles by the late Professor Geo. Stokes, of Trinity College, 
 Dublin, in tho Contemporary Review for 1888. 
 
 M 
 
162 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Castlereagh sought to charge him with a task for which he 
 was, in point of knowledge, of all men then living, the best 
 fitted, Knox was in enfeebled health, and tortured by a 
 curious distrust of his own abilities, which led him to decline 
 it. The Kebellion of 1798 thus lost its best chance of finding 
 an efficient historian. 
 
 The two most commonly received impressions in regard 
 to the origin and objects of the Rebellion are both equally 
 and most strangely contrary to the facts of the case. Upon 
 the one hand, the idea generally entertained by persons who 
 have not inquired into the subject is that the Rebellion was 
 a rising prompted by the discontent engendered by the harsh 
 operation of the penal laws, and that the sole motive force 
 which rendered it formidable was the zeal of religious 
 fanaticism. Upon the other hand, it is alleged that, great 
 as was the prevalent popular discontent occasioned by 
 religious oppression, the Rebellion would never have broken 
 out but for the vindictive policy pursued by the Government, 
 and the terrible severity of the coercive measures adopted 
 for the purpose of rooting out the United Irish conspiracy. 
 Neither view, perhaps, can be said to be wholly false, yet, as 
 an explanation of the outbreak, nothing can be more ludi- 
 crously inadequate. Indubitably, when the insurrection 
 had once taken place, religious intolerance had much to do 
 with the form which it assumed, and resentment at the 
 severity of the regime of martial law which had preceded it 
 served to aggravate the ferocity of the insurgents. But 
 neither the harshness of the penal laws, nor the severity 
 with which the Executive Government strove to suppress 
 illegal combinations, could of themselves have produced the 
 Rebellion. The Rebellion of 1798 was not, as in English 
 popular imagination it has long appeared, a sort of eighteenth- 
 century repetition of the Gunpowder Treason. It did not 
 originate in a Roman Catholic plot. As little was it provoked 
 by the strong measures of the Government. The circum- 
 stances that the outbreak followed closely upon those 
 measures, and that, in the counties in which it reached the 
 most formidable proportions, it assumed the appearance and 
 
CASTLEEEAGH AND IRELAND IN 1793 163 
 
 character of a religious crusade, render both assumptions 
 very natural ; but these coincidences, however striking, had 
 little to do with the real causes of the Rebellion. We have 
 seen on the contrary that, so far from drawing its inspira- 
 tion from Celtic and Catholic Ireland, from the wrongs of a 
 conquered people or a proscribed creed, the real source of 
 the treasonable conspiracy out of which the Rebellion grew 
 was the Protestant province of Ulster ; and that, so far from 
 being occasioned by the tyrannous coercion of the Govern- 
 ment or the cruelties of the soldiery, the insurrection was 
 most formidable where the Government had been least 
 active, and where the greatest indulgence had been shown. 
 
 In order to form anything like a just conception of the 
 Ireland of a hundred years ago, it is necessary to survey 
 briefly the state of Irish politics during, and even prior 
 to, the era of the Grattan Parliament. And the first point 
 to be noted, with respect more particularly to the third 
 quarter of the eighteenth century, is the profound calm 
 which prevailed throughout Ireland, and the at least nega- 
 tive loyalty of the mass of the people. Whether because of 
 the hopelessness of effecting any real change for the better 
 under a dependent Parliament which was the creature of 
 English ministers, or because, as was certainly the case, the 
 degrading inequalities contained in the Statute Books did 
 not press with much actual severity upon the great body of 
 the inhabitants, Ireland, both north and south of the Boyne, 
 was in a condition of not unprosperous tranquillity. Local 
 and passing disturbances there were, of course. In the 
 southern districts discontent at the conversion of tillage 
 land to pasture, with a resulting diminution in the demand 
 for agricultural labour, gave rise to the Whiteboy societies ; 
 and in the north the outrages perpetrated by the ' Hearts of 
 Oak ' and ' Hearts of Steel ' were stimulated by the hard- 
 ships of local taxation, and by the exaction of heavy fines at 
 the fall of the leases on certain estates. But these dis- 
 turbances represented no general dissatisfaction ; and an 
 active and sincere loyalty prevailed throughout the island. 
 In 1759 the reality of that sentiment in Ulster had been 
 
164 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 conspicuously proved on the occasion of a French descent 
 upon the coast of Antrim, and the landing of Thurot at 
 Carrickfergus. And a few years later the zeal of the Koman 
 Catholics of the south for the integrity of the empire was illus- 
 trated by the success which attended recruiting operations 
 to provide troops for the defence of the American colonies. 
 Again, when in 1778 the junction of the privateers of the 
 revolted colonies with the naval power of France exposed 
 the coast of Ireland to imminent danger of invasion, the 
 people of Belfast and its neighbourhood coalesced to pro- 
 vide for their homes and their commerce the protection 
 which the Irish Government confessed itself unable to afford, 
 and, adopting a military organisation, raised the first com- 
 panies of the afterwards celebrated Volunteers. 
 
 This being the state of the island prior to the concession 
 of legislative independence, it is natural to inquire what was 
 the provocation which, within a dozen years, could produce 
 the widely different condition of popular sentiment from 
 which the Eebellion emanated. Here indeed the suggestion 
 of religious oppression as an explanation of the altered 
 situation begins to assume a greater semblance of reality ; 
 yet it will be found that the Catholic question played a very 
 subordinate part in the movement which led up to the 
 insurrection. The agitation, upon the strength of which the 
 Volunteers wrested the concession of legislative independence 
 from the despairing weakness of British statesmen, had no- 
 thing whatever to do with the wrongs of Roman Catholics. 
 Irish independence was won on a fiscal agitation, and was 
 desired for the benefits which it was supposed that the fiscal 
 legislation of a native parliament would be able to confer 
 upon the country. From the year 1783 down to 1790, the 
 Roman Catholic question was little heard of outside Parlia- 
 ment, and was scarcely mentioned within it. The object 
 which the Volunteer Convention set before it was not 
 Catholic Emancipation, but Parliamentary Reform, and 
 down to the outbreak of the French Revolution little or no 
 progress had been made, even outside Parliament, with 
 either article in what subsequently became the creed of the 
 
CASTLEEEAGH AND IEELAND IN 1798 165 
 
 United Irishmen. From the date of the rejection of Flood's 
 Reform Bill, at the close of 1783, the reform agitation slept, 
 and the Catholic question was scarcely mooted. In point of 
 fact, indeed, the introduction of the Catholic question by the 
 Bishop of Derry was the real cause of the dissolution of the 
 Volunteer Convention. 
 
 Although, in July 1784, the Volunteers of Ulster expressed 
 1 their satisfaction at the decay of those prejudices which had 
 so long involved the nation in feud and disunion, a disunion 
 which, by limiting the rights of suffrage, had in a great 
 degree fostered the aristocratic tyranny, the source of every 
 grievance,' the majority of the Ulstermen deferred to the 
 entreaties of the Earl of Charlemont, who, though he pro- 
 fessed himself ' free from every illiberal prejudice against the 
 Catholics,' entreated his followers ' to desist from a pursuit 
 which would fatally impede the prosecution of their favourite 
 object.' The National Congress summoned by Napper Tandy 
 equally failed to unite the members of the Volunteer As- 
 sociations in favour of a common programme of reform 
 and emancipation. The oil of Eoman Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion could not be mixed with the water of Parliamentary 
 Reform. For five years there was a practical cessation of 
 agitation. Almost the whole period of the Viceroy alty of 
 the Duke of Rutland, which lasted from the spring of 1784 
 to the autumn of 1787, was occupied with other and widely 
 different questions : while during the greater part of the 
 administration of the Marquis of Buckingham the Regency 
 controversy, occasioned by the first appearance of insanity 
 in George III., occupied the attention of the Irish Parliament 
 and people to the exclusion of almost every other topic. 
 
 The revival of the twin movement dates absolutely from 
 the outbreak of the French Revolution. The tidal wave 
 produced by that great upheaval nowhere produced more 
 remarkable effects than in Ireland, and particularly in Ulster. 
 In the capital of that province the outbreak of the popular 
 forces in France was greeted with an enthusiasm of demo- 
 cratic fervour in startling contrast with the loyal and con- 
 stitutional sentiments which had previously prevailed in 
 
166 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 the north. On the 14th July, 1791, the inhabitants of 
 Belfast met to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution, 
 and feux-de-joie were fired by the remnants of the Volun- 
 teer corps who assembled on the occasion. In the year 
 following, the same anniversary was observed as a sort of 
 popular festival. Emblematic figures, including portraits 
 of Lafayette and Franklin, were drawn through the streets 
 in solemn procession, addresses were voted to the National 
 Assembly of France, and resolutions were passed bracketing 
 Catholic Emancipation with Parliamentary Reform as 
 objects of equal interest and importance. 
 
 To account for the rapidity with which this change in 
 the attitude of the leading spirits in Ulster politics had been 
 brought about, it is necessary to remember the effect naturally 
 and inevitably produced in Ulster by the revolt of the Ameri- 
 can colonies and the recognition of the independence of the 
 United States by Great Britain. Between the people of the 
 new republic of the West and the Presbyterians of Ulster 
 there was a close affinity in blood, in religion, and in politi- 
 cal sentiment. Many of the people of Belfast had near 
 relatives in the ranks of the armies which had won indepen- 
 dence for America, and the sympathy with the efforts of the 
 colonists thus naturally produced was soon extended to the 
 principles for which the colonists contended. Years before 
 the French Revolution broke out, republican principles 
 had thus won a large measure of popular assent, and when 
 the successful assertion of those principles in France appeared 
 to herald the reign of democracy in the old world as well as 
 in the new, there was no lack of disciples for the gospel of 
 a democratic Ireland which the more ardent spirits among 
 them at once began to preach. It is an unquestionable and 
 demonstrable fact that, but for the feeling in the north in 
 favour of a democratic reform of Parliament, to effect 
 which the more speedily the Ulster Protestant leaders be- 
 thought themselves of the expedient of a union with the 
 Roman Catholic advocates of emancipation, the latter object 
 would never have attained a prominent position in Irish 
 politics during the period of the Irish Parliament, or at any 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 167 
 
 rate that its supporters would have been content to accept 
 a very limited and partial measure of enfranchisement. 
 During the earlier stages of the United Irish movement, 
 fears were constantly expressed by the Protestant members 
 of the partnership lest the Eoman Catholics should acquiesce 
 in a partial and limited concession, and lest the Parliamentary 
 reformers of the north should thus be deprived of Catholic 
 assistance. In his contribution to Pieces of Irish History,' 
 Thomas Addis Emmet intimates that even John Keogh, 
 the Catholic leader, was not disinclined in 1792 to accept the 
 concession of the elective franchise and the repeal of the 
 Catholic laws relating to juries as a not insufficient satisfac- 
 tion of Catholic demands. Throughout the whole eight 
 years of agitation which preceded the Eebellion the Ulster 
 Protestants were the predominant partners in the United 
 Irish alliance, and the power which really made the move- 
 ment formidable. All the information which has become 
 available in the century which has since elapsed does not 
 render it possible to state the facts upon this point more 
 accurately than they were set forth by Alexander Knox two 
 months after the conclusion of the Eebellion, in the preface 
 to a collected edition of his ' Essays on the Political Circum- 
 stances of Ireland : ' — 
 
 Still, however, the author must deem those persons mis- 
 taken who conceive the Irish Union to have been originally 
 a Eoman Catholic plot. He thinks the erroneousness of 
 such a supposition will fully appear from the following 
 pages. The attentive reader will find sufficient proof that 
 the primary object of the United Irishmen was strictly and 
 exclusively Eevolutionary Democracy ; and that though, 
 from the first moment of their institution, they regarded 
 the religious disaffection of the Irish Catholics as the chief 
 instrument of their design, and the surest pledge of their 
 success, it was uniformly their object to make Eeligion 
 subservient to Jacobinism, and not Jacobinism to Eeligion. 
 
 That these views are scarcely, if at all, an exaggeration 
 appears from the facts that while the insurrectionary 
 organisation of the United Irishmen was fully developed in 
 the Protestant counties of Ulster it made comparatively 
 
168 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 little progress in the more Catholic counties of the northern 
 province, such as Donegal and Cavan ; that of the four 
 provinces, Munster was the least organised, so much so that 
 when, in December 1796, Hoche's invasion threatened the 
 safety of Ireland, the Eoman Catholics of Cork, far from 
 welcoming the prospect, exhibited an active loyalty ; that 
 the higher orders of the Catholic clergy exerted themselves 
 vigorously and often effectively in favour of the Government ; 
 and that the only counties outside Ulster which were fully 
 prepared beforehand for insurrection were those of Dublin 
 and the adjacent counties of Kildare, Meath, and West- 
 meath. A survey of all the facts in the light of the fullest 
 information which the research of Mr. Lecky and other 
 students has provided, compels acquiescence in the conclu- 
 sions proclaimed as long ago as 1808 by Sir Henry Parnell 
 in his history of the Penal Laws, viz. : 1. That the persons 
 who were the founders of the Eebellion were those who 
 formed the first societies of United Irishmen, who were all 
 Protestants. 2. That the object of the leaders of the 
 Eebellion was a republican form of government, and separa- 
 tion from. En gland, and not Catholic Emancipation or the 
 establishment of the Catholic religion. Had the Eebellion 
 broken out in 1797, as the northern leaders desired, and as, 
 but for the restraint put upon them by the Dublin Com- 
 mittee, it would then have broken out, it is not too much 
 to say that it would have been as much a Protestant Eebel- 
 lion as it was subsequently transformed into a Catholic one. 
 Of the explanations and excuses most commonly put 
 forward by apologists of the Eebellion, perhaps the most 
 familiar are those which represent the United Irish So- 
 ciety as having been formed for purely constitutional pur- 
 poses, and as entirely devoid of treasonable intentions in 
 the earlier stages of its development, and which further 
 represent the transition from constitutional agitation to 
 treasonable conspiracy, from treasonable conspiracy to 
 armed rebellion, as having been produced solely by the 
 brutal excesses which the soldiery, militia, and yeomanry 
 were guilty of in carrying out the orders of an oppressive 
 
CASTLEKEAGH AND IEELAND IN 1798 169 
 
 Government. The latter charge has, indeed, been pressed 
 even further, and posterity has been gravely invited to believe 
 that the cruelties complained of were not merely unreproved 
 by the authorities, but were advisedly prompted by them 
 with the object of goading the people into an insurrection 
 in order to provide a justification for the Union. In view 
 of the apotheosis of the Rebellion and its authors, and of 
 the hearty endorsement of its separatist objects which is to 
 be found in the writings of so many historians of the move- 
 ment, the formal demonstration of the groundlessness of 
 these charges may be thought superfluous. But as these 
 same historians have, with extraordinary inconsistency, 
 repeated and enforced these charges in the same breath in 
 which they have eulogised the martyrs of rebellion as the 
 leaders of a spontaneous movement, those representations 
 can scarcely be passed by in silence. When even such 
 frankly Separatist writers as John Mitchel and Dr. Madden 
 have not been above repeating these insinuations, notwith- 
 standing that, if well founded, the fact would deprive their 
 heroes of one of their chief claims for the admiration that is 
 demanded for their aims, it is to be supposed that they 
 seriously believe them. These charges have been adopted, 
 too, in all their naked ugliness by an English historian of 
 the Rebellion with some pretensions to impartiality. Mr. 
 Harwood, in his account of the Rebellion published in 1845, 
 actually attributes to the Government ' a deliberate policy 
 of exasperation, a determination to get up a rebellion for 
 the sake of putting it down.' 
 
 The attachment of popular writers to these time- 
 honoured fictions is probably due to the fact that they were 
 originally put forward with the official seal of the United 
 Irish leaders themselves, in the ' Memoir of the Origin and 
 Progress of the Irish Union ' delivered to the Government 
 by Messrs. Emmet, O'Connor, and McNevin, three members 
 of the United Irish Executive, and insinuated in the account 
 of the objects of the organisation given by these leaders in 
 the course of their respective examinations before the 
 Committees of the Irish Houses of Parliament in August 
 
170 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 1798. The apologist theory of the United Irish organisa- 
 tion is thus stated in the ' Memoir : ' ! — 
 
 The disunion that had long existed between the 
 Catholics and Protestants of Ireland, particularly those of 
 the Presbyterian religion, was found by experience to be so 
 great an obstacle to the obtaining a reform in Parliament 
 on anything of just and popular principles, that some 
 persons equally friendly to that measure and to religious 
 toleration conceived the idea of uniting both sects in 
 pursuance of the same object — a repeal of the penal laws 
 and a reform including in itself an extension of the right of 
 suffrage to the Catholic. From this originated the societies 
 of the United Irishmen in the end of the year 1791 ; even 
 then it was clearly perceived that the chief support of the 
 borough interest in Ireland was the weight of English 
 influence ; but as yet that obvious remark had not led the 
 minds of the reformers towards a separation from England. 
 Some individuals, perhaps, had convinced themselves that 
 benefit would result to this country from such a measure : but 
 during the whole existence of the Society of United Irishmen 
 of Dublin we may safely aver, to the best of our knowledge 
 and recollections, that no such object was ever agitated by 
 its members, either in public debate or private conversation, 
 nor until the society had lasted a considerable time were any 
 traces of republicanism to be met with there ; its views were 
 purely and in good faith what the test of the society avows. 
 
 The ' Memoir ' goes on to assert that separation never 
 became an active principle with any of its members till 
 after the dissolution of the Society of United Irishmen in 
 Dublin in 1794, and the consequent promulgation of the 
 secret organisation which was at once substituted for the 
 suppressed body : — 
 
 While the formation of these societies was in agitation 
 (so the ' Memoir ' proceeds), the friends of liberty were 
 gradually, but with a timid step, advancing towards republi- 
 canism ; they began to be convinced that it would be as easy 
 to obtain a revolution as a reform, so obstinately was the 
 latter resisted, and as the conviction impressed itself on their 
 minds they were inclined not to give up the struggle, but to 
 extend their views ; it was for this reason that in their test 
 the words are ' an equal representation of all the people of 
 
 1 Pieces of Irish History, p. 174. 
 
CASTLEEEAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 171 
 
 Ireland,' without inserting the word Parliament. The test 
 embraced both the republican and the reformer, and left to 
 future circumstances to decide to which the common strength 
 should be directed ; but still the whole body, we are con- 
 vinced, would stop short at reform. 1 
 
 In the volume of ' Pieces of Irish History ' published 
 several years after in America, Emmet insists upon this 
 distinction in principle between the United Irishmen of 1791 
 and those of 1794 and 1795, asserting the completely separate 
 identity of the secret and the avowed Society, and averring 
 that the ' erroneous belief that the new system was only a 
 direct continuation of the old one ' was due only to the identity 
 in the titles of the two distinct organisations ; and he goes on 
 to attribute the triumph of the republican over the consti- 
 tutional elements in the Society to the discontent engendered 
 by the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam. One other important 
 element the Memoir admits to have largely influenced the 
 plans of the associates. This was the war with France. 
 
 They [the United Irishmen] clearly perceived that their 
 strength was not likely to become speedily equal to wresting 
 from the English and the borough interest in Ireland even 
 a reform ; foreign assistance would therefore perhaps become 
 necessary ; but foreign assistance could only be hoped for in 
 proportion as the object to which it would be applied was 
 important to the party giving it. A reform in the Irish 
 Parliament was no object to the French — a separation of 
 Ireland from England was a mighty one indeed. 2 
 
 Even if it be granted that this account by the Dublin 
 members of the executive of the objects of the Society as 
 known to them is candid and veracious, it is to be observed 
 that it presents only a very partial and fragmentary view of 
 the facts ; for since, as the ' Memoir ' states, none of its- 
 three authors were members of the United system until 
 September or October 1796, the latter were obviously not 
 the persons most competent to answer for its earlier ideals. 
 Their disclaimer can therefore at best apply no further than 
 to themselves. But there is no lack of evidence from other 
 authoritative sources to prove the large part which separatist 
 
 1 Pieces of Irish History, p. 176. * lb. p. 177. 
 
172 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 objects played in the contemplation of the first founders of 
 the system. The diary and autobiography of a much more 
 thorough-going revolutionist than any of the authors of the 
 1 Memoir ' is conclusive as to the true animus of those who 
 invented the organisation, and its own official documents 
 afford the clearest evidence that the separatist ideas were 
 not confined to the breasts of a few leading spirits, but were 
 fully appreciated by the members generally. The vigorous 
 common sense of Lord Clare first laid bare the falsehood of 
 the pretence put forward by the apologists of treason in the 
 Irish Parliament by fastening on an explicit avowal of his 
 real objects by the true parent of the United Irish system, 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone, contained in a letter written in 1791, 
 accompanying the original constitution of the United Irish 
 Society as transmitted to Belfast for adoption. In ampli- 
 fication of the grievance set forth in his formal plan of the 
 constitution, that ' we have no National Government ; we 
 are ruled by Englishmen and the servants of Englishmen,' 
 Tone remarked to his correspondent : — 
 
 The foregoing contain my true and sincere opinion of 
 the state of this country, so far as in the present juncture it 
 may be advisable to publish it. They certainly fall short of 
 the truth, but truth itself must sometimes condescend to 
 temporise ; my unalterable conviction is that the bane of 
 Irish prosperity is the influence of England. I believe that 
 influence will ever be extended while the connection between 
 the countries continues ; nevertheless, as I know that opinion 
 is, for the present, too hasty, though a very little time may 
 establish it universally, I have not made it a part of the 
 resolutions. I have only proposed to set up a reformed 
 parliament as a barrier against that mischief which every 
 honest man that will open his eyes must see in every 
 instance overbears the interest of Ireland. I have not said 
 one word that looks like a wish for separation, though I 
 give it to you and your friends as my most decided opinion, 
 that such an event would be a regeneration to this country. 1 
 
 With still more candour and much greater deliberation 
 does the inventor of the conspiracy set forth, in the pages of 
 his Autobiography written at Paris in 1796, ' the theory I 
 have unvaryingly acted on ever since : ' — 
 
 1 Report of the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, 1797. 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1793 173 
 
 To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to 
 break the connection with England, the never-failing source 
 of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of 
 my country, these were my objects. To unite the whole 
 people of Ireland, to abolish all past dissensions, and to 
 substitute the common name of Irishman in the place of 
 the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter, 
 these were my means. 1 
 
 Tone saw that only by bringing together the Dissenters 
 and the Eoman Catholics could this design be accomplished, 
 and thus it was with this object and this alone in view that 
 this extraordinary and most original of conspirators, totally 
 unconnected with the Koman Catholic party (with not a 
 single individual in whose body was he acquainted at the 
 time), but aiming to forge a weapon strong enough to wrest 
 Ireland from Great Britain, sat down to compose his 
 ' Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland.' In this 
 pamphlet the Dissenters were bidden to observe that they 
 and the Catholics had but one common interest, and one 
 common enemy ; that the depression and slavery of Ireland 
 were produced and perpetuated by the divisions, subsist- 
 ing between them, and that to assert the_ independence of 
 their country they must forget their former feuds. They 
 were reminded that the failure of all former efforts at 
 Parliamentary reform, and especially that of the Volunteer 
 Convention of 1783, had been due to the unjust neglect of 
 the claims of their Roman Catholic brethren. 
 
 The second of the two charges against the Irish Govern- 
 ment rests, like the pretended constitutionalism of the United 
 Irish movement, upon certain passages in the examinations 
 of Emmet and McNevin, and in the joint ' Memoir.' In 
 the latter document the writers aver that no general plan of 
 insurrection existed before the 12th of March, 1798, though 
 they admit that some persons had formed local plans for 
 the taking of Dublin and other places. At the examination 
 before the House of Lords Committee, Emmet was asked 
 by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Clare : — 
 
 1 Life of Wolfe Tone, vol. i. p. 51 (Washington edition). 
 
174 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 ' Pray, Mr. Emmet, what caused the late insurrection ? ' 
 He answered, ' The free quarters, the house-burnings, the 
 tortures, and the military executions in the counties of 
 Kildare, Carlow, and Wicklow.' ' Don't you think,' he was 
 further asked, ' the arrests of the 12th of March caused it ? ' 
 He replied, ' No ; but I believe if it had not been for those 
 arrests it would not have taken place ; for the people, 
 irritated by what they suffered, had been long pressing the 
 executive to consent to an insurrection, but they had resisted 
 or eluded it, and were determined to persevere in the same 
 line ; after these arrests, however, other persons came 
 forward, who were irritated and thought differently, who 
 consented to let that partial insurrection take place.' 1 
 
 It is difficult to speak with patience of the credulity 
 which has accepted, or of the dishonesty which has put 
 forward, these answers of Emmet and his colleagues as 
 seriously amounting to a proof that the insurrection would 
 not have taken place, nay even would not have been 
 attempted, but for the indignation aroused by the coercive 
 measures of the Government. The most cursory examina- 
 tion of the ' Memoir ' and the evidence of the witnesses 
 themselves, apart from abundant extraneous testimony, 
 prove in the plainest manner that their answers amount to 
 no more than an expression of the preference of the United 
 Irish leaders for invasion as distinguished from insurrection. 
 That preference, it is well known, was uniformly exhibited 
 by the Dublin leaders, whose non possumus had in 1797 
 prevented the rising for which the Ulster leaders were 
 prepared, and who had the effrontery in their examinations 
 to avow this preference on the ground that an invasion would 
 be the more humane method of the two. 
 
 ' If I imagined,' said Emmet, ' that an insurrection 
 could have succeeded without a great deal of waste of blood 
 and time, I should have preferred it to an invasion, as it 
 would not have exposed us to the chance of contributions 
 being required by a foreign force ; but as I did not think so, 
 and as I was certain an invasion would succeed speedily, and 
 without much struggle, I preferred it, even at the hazard of 
 that inconvenience which we took every pains to prevent.' 2 
 
 1 Pieces of Irish History, p. 220. 2 lb. p. 218. 
 
CASTLEEEAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 175 
 
 McNevin's evidence was to the like effect. Asked what had 
 prevented the rising in the north from taking place in 1797, 
 he answered that the Ulster men desisted in consequence of 
 assurances of immediate succour from France and of repre- 
 sentations of the unwisdom of giving England an advantage 
 by beginning before the army of invasion had arrived. To 
 the question — 
 
 ' If you thought you would have succeeded, you would 
 have begun ? ' he frankly answered : ' Most probably we 
 should ; at the same time, I am bound to declare that it 
 was our wish to act with French aid, because that would 
 tend to make the revolution less bloody, by determining 
 many to join it early who, while the balance of success was 
 doubtful, would either retain an injurious neutrality, or even 
 perhaps oppose it.' x 
 
 Much capital is sought to be made, in popular versions of 
 the insurrection, of a passage in the Report of the Secret 
 Committee of 1798, in which it was stated ' that the rebel- 
 lion would not have broken out as soon as it did had it not 
 been for the well-timed measures adopted by Government ; ' 
 and further, that ' from the vigorous and summary expedients 
 resorted to by Government, and the consequent exertions of 
 the military, the leaders found themselves reduced to the 
 alternative of immediate insurrection.' A phrase used by 
 Lord Castlereagh in the course of McNevin's examination, 
 ' You acknowledge the Union would have become stronger 
 but for the means taken to make it explode,' is also relied 
 on as evidence of a deep-laid plot to incite to insurrection a 
 peaceably disposed and law-abiding people. The contention 
 gravely put forward appears to be that Government, with 
 the information it possessed, knowing as it did through its 
 informers that the United Irish Executive was waiting for 
 the expected invasion, and patiently perfecting its organisa- 
 tion in the meantime, should have stood by with folded 
 hands, and taken no steps to interfere with the benevolent 
 desire of the conspirators to effect a bloodless revolution. 
 The evidence to which we have adverted is abundantly 
 
 1 Pieces of Irish History, p. 197. 
 
176 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 sufficient to rebut the feeble repudiation of Emmet and his 
 comrades, and the language of Knox, in the preface from 
 which we have already quoted, in no wise exaggerates the 
 case : — 
 
 No fact can be more established than that the Society of 
 United Irishmen, from the first moment of its institution, has 
 been, with respect to its leading members, a band of syste- 
 matic traitors ; that no possible means would have been 
 adequate to their suppression but the most unremitting 
 coercion, and the most vigorous resistance ; and that nothing 
 can be more insolently false than to represent them as 
 having been provoked into treason by those strong measures 
 on the part of the Government, which were then only 
 resorted to when both the common sense and common safety 
 of the country irresistibly demanded them.' ' 
 
 While the proved facts of history forbid the acceptance 
 of any less harsh estimate of the actual motives and ulterior 
 aims of the founders of the movement than that which has 
 just been quoted, it is of course no less true that the re- 
 volutionary fervour of the leaders was not fully shared by all 
 who joined the ranks of the United Irish Society. Particu- 
 larly was this the case in Ulster, where considerable differ- 
 ences of opinion manifested themselves from the very first, 
 and where those whose sympathy with the Koman Catholics 
 was not prompted by a purely utilitarian desire to use them 
 as a means of separation from Great Britain were far from 
 hearty in their acceptance of an alliance which was foreign 
 to all the traditions of Ulster, both social and religious. 
 And in point of fact it is to this imperfect sympathy between 
 the bulk of the members of the two sections, as distinguished 
 from their leaders, coupled with the abhorrence created in 
 Protestant breasts by the excesses of their Catholic allies in 
 Wicklow and Wexford, that the failure of the insurrection 
 is to be ascribed. The various shades of Protestant opinion 
 in Ulster, and the process by which the vehement admirers 
 of theoretical democracy and of the French ^Revolution were 
 converted into no less vehement upholders of the Constitution, 
 have never been better analysed than in some early letters 
 1 Essays on the Political Circumstances of Ireland, preface, p. xi. 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 177 
 
 of Castlereagh, written while the future Chief Secretary was 
 still a very young man, and before he had discarded the 
 Liberalism which he has been so fiercely reviled for deserting. 
 Before referring to these views it may not be out of place to 
 try to recall in some detail the figure of one who played a 
 foremost part in the Ireland of the Eebellion, and played it 
 with results so advantageous to his own political career, 
 though, thanks to the relentless hostility of Irish writers, so 
 unhappy for his reputation with posterity. 
 
 It has been the lot of few among British statesmen to 
 play a more conspicuous part in the history of the Empire 
 than that which was filled for close on a quarter of a century 
 by Kobert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh ; and, of those few, 
 still fewer have left as enduring a mark on both the domestic 
 constitution and the external relations of Great Britain. 
 Yet in the whole roll of British ministers none has been less 
 fortunate in respect of posthumous fame. For the greater 
 part of his career Castlereagh occupied, first in College Green 
 and afterwards at Westminster, the most eminent parlia- 
 mentary position. It has been the lot of no other statesman 
 to be the leader of the House of Commons in the Parliaments 
 of two kingdoms : and Castlereagh not only commanded the 
 allegiance but acquired the confidence of both. Of his 
 career in Dublin Lord Cornwallis writes in 1800, that « he 
 has improved so much as a speaker as to become nearly 
 master of the House of Commons,' and tells, in language 
 that now sounds strange, how ' the gratification of national 
 pride which the Irish feel at the prospect of his making a 
 figure in the great political world has much diminished the 
 unpopularity which his cold and distant manners in private 
 society have produced.' Of the position he occupied at 
 Westminster, a political opponent and unfriendly critic — 
 Earl Bussell— wrote, after a parliamentary experience of 
 sixty years, that he had never known two men who had 
 more influence with the House of Commons than Lords 
 Castlereagh and Althorp. Yet though he was, with only a 
 brief interruption, for twenty years a minister of the first 
 rank ; though he was the successful competitor against the 
 
178 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 most brilliant politician of his day for the leadership of the 
 Tory party in the Lower House ; and though, while holding 
 that lead continuously for ten years in the face of a formi- 
 dable opposition, he was the chosen representative of Great 
 Britain at Congresses which settled the map of Europe, 
 Castlereagh's name scarcely counts among the great names 
 that stand as landmarks in the political history of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 The comparative oblivion into which the reputation and 
 services of Castlereagh have fallen in Great Britain is remark- 
 able, but it is not inexplicable. For though a great party- 
 leader, and a great executive minister, he was never, and 
 never essayed to be, a teacher of men, or one who knew 
 how to impregnate an old party with a modern spirit, as 
 Canning and Disraeli at different epochs have known how to 
 do. Neither was there about him that subtle personal 
 magnetism which communicates itself to other and opposite 
 natures, inspiring a following, in spite of itself, with the 
 spirit of its leader. Nor, again, had he the animation, the 
 daring, the elan which enables a Bupert of Debate, at the 
 head of an enthusiastic minority, to carry and for a time 
 to hold the citadels of the majority. Cold, in his calm and 
 imperturbable dignity, he cared little for the applause of his 
 associates. The plaudits of the mob he despised. When, 
 towards the close of his career, after an absence of twenty 
 years, he accompanied his sovereign to Dublin in 1821, he 
 was greeted in the theatre and at the Mansion House with 
 rounds of cheering, the audience in each case rising to receive 
 him ; while the Dublin mob, volatile as the Parisian, in the 
 curious enthusiasm of the royal visit, embarrassed his 
 movements in the streets by attempting to chair the contriver 
 of the Union. But the enthusiasm was irksome to him, 
 and his comment is characteristic. 'I am grown,' he said, 
 ' as popular in 1821 as unpopular formerly, and with as 
 little merit ; and of the two unpopularity is the more con- 
 venient and gentlemanlike.' Such was his invariable 
 attitude. No one, indeed, knew better the importance of 
 conciliatory manners and a gracious demeanour, and in the 
 
CASTLEEEAGH AND IEELAND IN 1798 179 
 
 management of the House of Commons no one has ever taken 
 greater pains to attract confidence by that appearance of 
 deferential consideration which is never so captivating as 
 when vouchsafed by superior to subordinate. But this he 
 did as it were mechanically, as incidental to his position and 
 with a certain aloofness : — 
 
 Stately in quiet high-bred self-esteem, 
 Fair as the Lovelace of a lady's dream, 1 
 
 he performed all the duties of a leader thoroughly and 
 effectively, but with a sort of aristocratic reserve and disdain 
 which forbade the intimacy of his followers, while his assured 
 nonchalance commanded their confidence. 
 
 It may be said, too, that Castlereagh was conspicuously 
 deficient in certain qualities and talents, which, though not 
 essential, as many instances combine to prove, to a command- 
 ing position in Parliament, are yet among the natural and 
 appropriate graces of a statesman. He had neither wide 
 reading nor much general information. He had not the 
 advantage of a public-school training, and his University 
 career lasted little more than a year. Above all, he 
 was no orator. Though not incapable of flashes of natural 
 eloquence, his efforts at rhetoric were laboured and 
 uninteresting. Wellington said of him that he could do 
 everything but speak in Parliament. And though he was 
 always listened to with the attention due to a man who 
 speaks with knowledge, authority, and native good sense, his 
 extraordinary metaphors and his Irish bulls long provided 
 topics and targets for the sarcasm of political opponents and 
 the shafts of party wits. Brougham's description of him as 
 incapable of uttering two sentences of anything but in the 
 meanest manner and in the most wretched language, is no 
 doubt a malicious exaggeration of this defect ; for Greville, a 
 more impartial, though far from good-natured critic, avers 
 that despite the ridicule which his extraordinary phraseology 
 exposed him to, Castlereagh never spoke ill, and always left 
 much to his opponents to answer. But Moore was only 
 
 1 Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's St. Stephen's. 
 
 v 2 
 
180 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOKY 
 
 quoting his actual expressions when he made Phil Fudge 
 address Castlereagh thus : — 
 
 Where (still to use your Lordship's tropes) 
 The level of obedience slopes 
 Upwards and downwards, as the stream 
 Of hydra-faction kicks the beam. 
 
 It was not unfair to describe as a ' Malaprop Cicero ' l a 
 speaker who could be guilty of such absurdities. 
 
 Despite these defects, however, the tendency has latterly 
 been towards a more just estimate of the character, capacity, 
 and services of Castlereagh. The exertions of his biographer 
 and of the editor of his papers did little at first to improve 
 his reputation, and indeed his fame was rather obscured 
 than served by the epistolary pyramid which the devotion 
 of his brother erected on his grave. The ' Memoirs and 
 Correspondence ' were too staid and massive to be interesting 
 to contemporaries who desired the personalities and anec- 
 dotes which make biography acceptable. But, like the 
 pyramids, these memorials have gained in interest with the 
 lapse of time, and have become, at a distance of nigh three 
 quarters of a century, part of the history of the nation. 
 From them the student may judge of the capacity and 
 character which early won the friendship of Wellington and 
 the confidence of Pitt. Tried by the test of time and 
 by comparison with more showy, but less cool and resolute 
 contemporaries, Castlereagh is beginning to take his proper 
 place in the grateful recollection of a people who are learning 
 to recognise how, in the greatest crisis of its fate, 
 
 Far ends in Pitt's deep thought 
 By him, if rudely, were securely wrought. 1 
 
 In one part of the United Kingdom, however, it is still 
 otherwise. In Ireland his memory is not forgotten ; and in 
 the popular estimate of his character there has been no 
 fluctuation. There the name of Castlereagh has been 
 execrated for a century with a uniformity of unalloyed 
 
 ' Castlereagh's well-known entreaty to the country gentlemen ' not to turn 
 their backs upon themselves ' is among the most perfect examples of an Irish 
 bull. 
 
 2 Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's St. Stephen's. 
 
CASTLEEEAGH AND IEELAND IN 1798 181 
 
 obloquy. ' The irreconcilable passion of unchangeable hate,' 
 which, in the language of a modern patriot, is the feeling 
 with which the majority of Irishmen regard England, de- 
 scribes without much exaggeration the attitude of Ireland 
 towards the statesman who suppressed the Rebellion and 
 carried the Union. Even now, in his native land, the cha- 
 racter of Castlereagh continues to be assailed with all that 
 wealth of vituperation which is never so freely lavished by 
 Irishmen as when it is employed to blacken the reputation of 
 one of their own countrymen of an opposite political faction. 
 To them Castlereagh is, in Byron's language — 
 
 A wretch never named but with curses and jeers. 
 
 O'Connell described him as the Assassin of his country. 
 Moore exults, as he addresses England in ' The Fudge 
 Family ' — 
 
 That 'twas an Irish head, an Irish heart 
 
 Made thee the iall'n and tarnished thing thou art, 
 
 and speaks of the ' worst infections ' of his country as • all 
 condensed in him.' English poets writing under Irish 
 inspiration are, if possible, more severe : — 
 
 I met Murder on his way, 
 
 He had a mask like Castlereagh, 
 
 said Shelley in his « Masque of Anarchy.' Later writers in 
 his own country have compared him to Robespierre, ' whose 
 memory has about it the faint and sickening smell of hot 
 blood.' These epithets, and a score of others equally 
 uncomplimentary, have caused Castlereagh to assume in the 
 popular imagination the likeness of some fiend, filled with a 
 bloodthirsty animosity to his countrymen, and gloating over 
 the degradation and misfortunes he had himself contributed 
 to inflict upon her. Yet, according to the universal testimony 
 of those who acted with him in public, and were intimate 
 with him in private, no estimate was further from the truth. 
 The gentler estimate of Irish patriots who knew the man is 
 entirely forgotten or ignored. 
 
 No doubt Castlereagh was, in the language of Brougham, 
 a bold, fearless man, brave politically as well as personally, 
 
182 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 who went straight to his point.' And that point was, in the 
 first great episode of his career, the destruction of what are 
 called the liberties of Ireland. Much niay on that account 
 be forgiven to the indignant feelings of ardent patriots, who 
 may be excused for an inability to see in the destroyer of 
 their political temples and the gods they adored anything 
 but a ferocious iconoclast. Yet it is scarcely permissible for 
 even the enthusiasm of angry patriotism to ignore the dis- 
 passionate testimony of Castlereagh's political antagonists, 
 and of Irish patriot leaders. When he is accused of having 
 provoked the Eebellion in order to put it down, it is fair to 
 remember that his persistent detractor, Brougham, has not 
 only acquitted him of the charge, but has declared that 
 Castlereagh set himself in opposition to those who pro- 
 cured the retirement of Abercromby, and tried to drive out 
 Cornwallis as too humane in their treatment of a treasonable 
 conspiracy. "When he is charged with petty jealousy of 
 great patriots, it is not to be forgotten that he prevented the 
 insertion in the Eeport of the Secret Committee of the 
 House of Commons on the Eebellion of passages tending to 
 implicate Grattan in the United Irish conspiracy. And when 
 he is represented as ruthlessly trampling on the religious 
 liberties of his countrymen, let it be remembered that he 
 was throughout his career, and often in circumstances when 
 advocacy of the cause was disadvantageous to his own 
 prospects, the steady friend of Catholic Emancipation. The 
 statesman who, even after he joined the Government, retained 
 the affection of Charlemont, cannot have been by nature 
 either a brute or a villain. And no Irishman can refuse to 
 hearken to the testimony in which the dying Grattan 
 pronounced a touching vindication of his former foe — 'Don't 
 be hard on Castlereagh ; he loves his country.' l 
 
 Much light is thrown upon the evolution of political 
 opinion among the Irish aristocracy and upper classes in the 
 
 1 ' The Union is passed ; the business between him and me is over, and it 
 is for the interest of Ireland that Lord Castlereagh should be Minister. I beg 
 you again not to attack him unless be attacks you, and I make it my dying 
 request.' — Grattan's Life, vol. v. . . 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 133 
 
 closing years of the eighteenth century by following the early 
 career of Castlereagh. It may, therefore, be well to glance 
 briefly at the circumstances of his origin, and the state of 
 the political atmosphere by which he was surrounded when 
 in 1790 he first entered the Irish Parliament as member for 
 the county Down. The father of the future Minister, 
 Robert Stewart, of Mount Pleasant, now Mount Stewart, in 
 the county Down, was himself for many years the represen- 
 tative of the county in which his property was situated. 
 Identifying himself with the popular or Whig interest, in 
 opposition to the great family of the Downshires, the elder 
 Stewart had, by the year 1789, acquired a character for 
 integrity and independence which was not forfeited when, 
 having increased his importance by aristocratic alliances, he 
 was raised to the peerage as Baron Londonderry, probably 
 through the influence of Lord Camden, the father of his 
 second wife. He was the friend and colleague of Charlemont, 
 in whose autobiography Stewart is mentioned as ' a gentle- 
 man of the best character and most patriotic,' and was also 
 an active supporter of the Volunteer movement, representing 
 his county in the Convention of 1783. The first of two great 
 matches by which Robert Stewart the elder accelerated his 
 rise to eminence was his marriage with Sarah Frances, 
 daughter of the first Marquis of Hertford. Of this union 
 Castlereagh was the eldest son. Lady Sarah died while the 
 future statesman was still a mere child ; but she left her son 
 the inheritance of the stately grace of the Seymours, and 
 the features and presence which Lawrence was proud to 
 paint, as well as the advantage of a family relationship 
 which powerfully aided him in his political career. The 
 second wife of Robert Stewart was the means of instituting 
 a connection of even greater value to her stepson. Lady 
 Frances Pratt was the daughter of Lord Chancellor Camden, 
 the friend and colleague of Pitt, and was the sister of the 
 Viceroy under whom Castlereagh first served as Chief 
 Secretary. 
 
 Among the few recorded incidents of young Robert 
 Stewart's boyhood one is worth mentioning for its bearing on 
 
184 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 his future career, and the evidence it affords of the feelings he 
 inspired in those among whom his early years were passed. 
 In the ' Narrative ' by the Presbyterian minister of Portaferry , 
 written twenty years later, when the writer, who in 1798 had 
 been imprisoned as a United Irishman, had travelled far from 
 the boy hero of his earlier hopes, the following picture is 
 given of the youthful Castlereagh as he appeared in 1782 
 at a review of the Volunteer forces at Belfast, when he took 
 the field at the head of a company of light infantry in 
 the regiment of which his father was colonel : — 
 
 In a sham fight the day after the Eeview, Eobert Stewart, 
 now Lord Viscount Castlereagh, then only in his thirteenth 
 year, commanded the light infantry of the Ards Indepen- 
 dents. His company consisted mostly of boys a few years 
 older than himself. Their appearance attracted universal 
 notice, and excited the most pleasing emotions, as it promised 
 a succession of patriot soldiers under whose banners Ireland 
 would recline in safety. The conduct of young Stewart did 
 more. The manner in which he conducted his boyish band 
 through the variegated and long-protracted engagement 
 displayed such genius of spirit and judgment as excited 
 admiration, extorted applause, and laid the foundation of 
 that popularity which he afterwards obtained. . . . This cir- 
 cumstance had a powerful effect on the ardent minds of the 
 multitude present ; and their account of it excited high 
 expectations of and a warm attachment to the rising Bobert 
 throughout the entire country. From that day many began 
 to look forward to and to speak of him as their future 
 representative. ' If such be the boy, what may we not 
 expect from the man ? ' was to be heard in almost every 
 company ; and I own that my own expectations were as 
 extravagant and my attachment as enthusiastic as those of 
 any man living. 1 
 
 It was thus, as the heir of a nobleman of property and 
 high station and as a popular young country gentleman, 
 that in the year 1790 Castlereagh came forward as a candidate 
 for the representation of his native county, as the advocate 
 of reform. The interest of Lord Downshire had long been 
 supreme in the county. But the young candidate was 
 
 1 Narrative of Rev. William Steel Dickson. 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 185 
 
 warmly supported by the remnant of the Volunteers, and 
 the growing prosperity of the linen manufacture had tended 
 to reduce the importance of the purely territorial influence. 
 On his canvass he was received with a cordiality which was 
 kindled into enthusiasm by his strong expression of attach- 
 ment to the liberty of his country, his ardour for reform, 
 and his solemn declarations that, if returned, ' he would use 
 all his exertions to attain it.' The effect produced, as well 
 by his sentiments as by the spirit with which he prosecuted 
 his canvass, was such that it was estimated that, had the 
 freeholders been left to an unbiassed choice, nine tenths of 
 them would have voted in favour of the young Whig patriot. 
 But Castlereagh was attacking in the family stronghold the 
 influence of one of the most powerful peers in Ireland, and 
 it was only after a contest of forty-two days, and at an 
 expense of 60,000£., that, supported by the exertions of the 
 Presbyterian ministers, he won the day. 
 
 Castlereagh's intimate correspondence with his brother, 
 the third Marquis of Londonderry, the main authority for 
 the facts of his earlier career, was lost while on his way to 
 India, where Bishop Turner, of Calcutta, had undertaken to 
 write a biography of the statesman, Sir Walter Scott having, 
 for sufficient reasons, declined the task. Consequently little 
 record remains of Castlereagh's career for the years that 
 elapsed between his return to Parliament and his appoint- 
 ment as Minister. But a few letters of importance survive 
 which throw a strong light, not merely upon the development 
 of Castlereagh's opinions, but upon the state of parties and 
 politics in Ireland at the period. Shortly after his entrance 
 upon public life Castlereagh proceeded to the Continent, and 
 in 1791 spent several months in France. In a couple of valu- 
 able letters, addressed to the old Lord Camden, he gives us 
 the impressions of a young Whig aristocrat of France under 
 the Constituent Assembly. What he then saw accounts, in 
 all probability, for the changes of opinion which followed in 
 his case, as in that of the much older Burke, from a near 
 view of the Kevolution in action, and of the second National 
 Assembly. Writing under date November 11th, 1791, he 
 
186 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 describes the character and composition of the Legislative 
 Assembly, and details the results of his observation in 
 travelling from Spa to Paris with an insight remarkable in 
 a man of only two-and-twenty. The drift of his comments 
 may be gathered from the following paragraphs. 
 
 From what I have said you will not rank me among the 
 admirers of the French Revolution as the noblest work of 
 human integrity and human wisdom. I really am not. I 
 discover in what they have done much to approve, and much 
 to condemn. I feel as strongly as any man that an essential 
 change was necessary for the happiness and for the dignity 
 of a great people long in a state of degradation. ... If I 
 could do it without seeming to approve the principles 
 professed by their leaders, principles which I shall ever 
 condemn as tumultous pedantry, tending directly to unsettle 
 government and ineffectual in its creation, I should on all 
 occasions worship and applaud the feeling which kd the way 
 to this unparalleled change. 1 
 
 In the same letter, speaking of Ireland, he observes : — 
 
 Your island (Great Britain), thank God, is tranquil, 
 happy, and contented. The situation of ours is more pre- 
 carious. I am inclined to think it will not remain long as it 
 is. The government of it I do not like, but I prefer it to a 
 revolution. There is great room and necessity for amend- 
 ment, and our connection would not be weakened by it. 
 The people begin to grow very impatient, the abuses are 
 considerable, and their weight nothing. The Catholics are 
 calling for emancipation. I dread a collision between them 
 and the dissatisfied Protestants. If tumult then should 
 arise, it will be difficult to establish the Government after- 
 wards to their exclusion. I am afraid reform will be post- 
 poned until it is too late ; and what I particularly lament 
 is, that in Ireland those moderate characters who wish to 
 oppose popular violence, and to employ their weight in 
 repressing tumultuous innovation, have not good grounds 
 to stand on. 
 
 Fifteen months later, January 26, 1793, writing to the 
 same correspondent, he notes how the idea of reform 
 had gained strength, and that ' it is supported by those 
 
 ' Sir A. Alison's Lives of Lord Londonderry and Sir C. Stewart, vol. i. 
 p. 12. 
 
CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 187 
 
 immediately interested in resisting it, I mean the great 
 borough proprietors,' who were desirous, since reform was 
 inevitable, to effect it themselves, rather than allow it to fall 
 into other hands. 
 
 Depend upon it, my dear Lord C, you must change 
 your system with respect to Ireland ; there is no alternative, 
 now her independence is admitted, but to govern by reason, 
 or to unite her to Great Britain by force. A government of 
 gross corruption, no longer a government of influence — 
 extinguishing every possibility of Parliamentary authority — 
 will be no longer quietly endured. Even the opinions of 
 those whose daily bread is the corruption complained of, 
 agree that it would require less force to unite the two king- 
 doms than to govern as heretofore. 
 
 I am afraid the question for your decision now is, not 
 what instructions you should send to Mr. Hobart, but what 
 orders to my Lord Howe — provided it is your determination 
 to resist and not guide the storm. 
 
 Your policy towards Ireland has been temporising. 
 You have made it necessary for her to seize systematically 
 an ungenerous moment to carry her object. You have at- 
 tempted to support a system which your first difficulty 
 compels you to abandon. So far have you pushed matters, 
 that as landlords we have no longer any influence in re- 
 straining the exertions of our tenantry to effect that which 
 we cannot seriously tell them should be desired. 
 
 In almost prophetic language he observes : — 
 
 Claims are coming from all ranks, both Catholic and 
 Protestant. The rational principle appears to be to concede 
 what shall conciliate a sufficient number to guard against 
 tumult, and at the same time does not go to destroy the 
 framework of the Constitution. There appears to me this 
 strong distinction between the dissatisfaction of the two 
 sects, that the Protestants may be conciliated at the same 
 time that the Constitution is improved ; the Catholics never 
 can by any concession which must not sooner or later tear 
 down the Church or make the State their own. I believe that 
 reform will effect itself either now or in a few years. If 
 that be the case, and the elective franchise is given to that 
 body, a few years will make three fourths of the constituency 
 of Ireland Catholics. Can a Protestant superstructure long 
 continue supported on such . a base ? With a reformed 
 
188 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 representation and a Catholic constituency must not every- 
 thing shortly follow? Can the Protestant Church remain 
 the establishment of a State of which they do not comprise 
 an eighth part, which will be the case when Catholics are 
 co-equal in political rights ? You observe that we paint too 
 strongly the danger of Protestant resentment, and under- 
 rate Catholic anger. Although inferior in numbers, I con- 
 sider the Protestants infinitely the more formidable body. 
 They have thought longer on political subjects, and are 
 excited to a higher pitch than the Catholics. Besides, I do 
 not think you are likely to appease the latter by any con- 
 cession you are about to make to them. Nothing short of 
 co-equal rights will satisfy them ; and these you cannot 
 yield if you wish to preserve your Church and State. 
 Therefore, though the Catholics may have equal rights, 
 they cannot have equal enjoyments. Depend upon it they 
 will struggle as much for the practical enjoyment as they 
 do now for the theoretical privileges of the Constitution. 
 You have made an unwise alliance with that body. Give 
 them anything rather than the franchise, for it forces every- 
 thing else. Property will feebly resist a principle so 
 powerful. 1 
 
 For these reasons Castlereagh recommended concession to 
 the Dissenters and resistance to the Catholics, believing 
 that the new-found ardour of the Presbyterians for Catholic 
 Emancipation would soon cool, once their own grievances 
 were conceded. The Government, as we know, decided 
 otherwise ; and from that moment Castlereagh, like Clare, 
 considered a Union inevitable. 
 
 These views illustrate very vividly the tone and temper 
 of the governing classes in Ireland a century ago. For in 
 dealing with this period of Irish history it is necessary to 
 remember what were the dominating ideals, not merely of 
 the Irish Government, but of the whole Irish House of 
 Commons without distinction of party. In 1798 the Pro- 
 testantism of the Constitution was as much an article of 
 political faith with all who were concerned in working 
 the machine of government as the predominance of the 
 will of the people as expressed by the majority of the House 
 of Commons is an article of political faith to-day. Grattan, 
 
 1 Sir A. Alisoti's Life, p. 14. 
 
CASTLEBEAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798 189 
 
 no less than Castlereagh, Charlemont no less than Clare, 
 was pledged to the maintenance of the Constitution in 
 Church and State, and it is mainly to this fact that the 
 revolt from the policy of liberal concession to the Roman 
 Catholics which followed the excesses of the Rebellion must 
 be attributed. 
 
 It has been the object of this sketch rather to analyse the 
 state of Irish opinion a hundred years ago, and to examine 
 the influences which contributed to produce the Rebellion, 
 than to epitomise the history of the insurrection. No good 
 purpose can be served by reviving the bloody memories of 
 Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge upon the one hand, or the 
 tortures of the pitch cap and the riding-school upon the 
 other. It is noticeable that the rising itself produced not a 
 single heroic figure. Neither Father Murphy, who led the 
 Wexford rebels to their brief successes, nor Bagenal Harvey, 
 the timid Protestant squire who placed himself for a few 
 weeks at the head of one of the divisions of the rebel army, 
 can be styled a great leader or even a picturesque figure. 
 The rising in Mayo, notable as it was for the successes 
 achieved over the Imperial troops, was less an insurrection 
 than an invasion ; and, as Mr. Gribayedoff has pointed out, 
 the military honours of the conflict belong entirely to 
 Humbert and the soldiers of France. The really striking 
 figures on the popular side are the figures of the United Irish 
 leaders, Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the 
 Emmets and the brothers Sheares, men who had as little 
 notion of a Catholic rebellion, in the sense in which the 
 word was understood by Father Murphy, as they had of 
 establishing Mahometanism, to use the language of McNevm, 
 one of the United Irish Executive, in his answers before the 
 Committee of the House of Lords. Those who would 
 commemorate the Rebellion as a movement for the establish- 
 ment of Ireland as a Roman Catholic country entirely 
 mistake both its origin and its objects, and attribute to the 
 leaders of the movement views and opinions which it is plain 
 that not one among the earlier United Irishmen ever for a 
 moment entertained. 
 
190 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 V 
 
 PLUNKET AND BOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 
 
 In justifying the publication of her excerpts from the cor- 
 respondence of a long-forgotten Under-Secretary at Dublin 
 Castle, Lady Gregory reports an observation of Mr. Lecky's 
 to which every one interested in Irish history must at 
 once and regretfully subscribe. ' Far less is known,' says 
 the historian, ' of the early part of the nineteenth century in 
 Ireland than of the close of the eighteenth.' The fact is incon- 
 testable, though in nowise surprising. The most strenuous of 
 Unionists can hardly avoid the admission that the abolition 
 of her separate legislature deprived Ireland of many of the 
 sources of that picturesque interest which belongs to her story 
 in the closing part of the eighteenth century, an era which 
 must always remain for the historian the grand period of 
 Irish history. 
 
 Far different is the period which followed the Legislative 
 Union and preceded Catholic Emancipation. The generation 
 which lived between the sunset of legislative independence 
 and the dawn of that modern Ireland which dates from 
 Catholic Emancipation filled a period among the least 
 attractive of the nineteenth century. It is a period deficient 
 in incident and unfruitful in great personalities. With the 
 passing of the Union Ireland relapsed politically into the 
 dulness and provincialism of the age which had intervened 
 between the days of Swift and those of Grattan. The men 
 who had filled great parts in Dublin were, with a few signal 
 exceptions, lost and unknown in the arena of Westminster ; 
 and of the younger generation of the members of the Irish 
 Parliament none achieved fame at St. Stephen's who had 
 not already won it at College Green. In political memoirs 
 
PLCJNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 191 
 
 directly relating to Ireland the period is almost barren ; and 
 the affairs of that island are referred to in the letters and 
 papers of the English statesmen of the day only as episodes 
 in which little interest was taken and of which even less was 
 understood. Of the effect of this neglect in producing 
 apathy and dulness in Irish society two illustrations may 
 suffice. It anglicised the career of so essentially Irish a 
 spirit as Thomas Moore's. Too mercurial to be content 
 with a province, Moore transferred to the salon of Holland 
 House and the gardens of Woburn and Bowood the social 
 talents which, had a parliament remained in Dublin, would 
 have been exerted at the table of the Viceroy or in the 
 drawing-rooms of Carton. Again it is difficult to imagine a 
 contrast more complete than that between the pictures drawn 
 by Jonah Barrington and Richard Lalor Sheil of the periods 
 with which they were respectively familiar. Of the two 
 writers, the younger was far the abler and owned the more 
 accomplished pen ; and the inferiority of Sheil's sketches to 
 those of Barrington only emphasises the difference in the 
 scale of interest between the last quarter of the eighteenth 
 century and the first quarter of the nineteenth. When 
 Barrington wrote his Kecollections he could call them, 
 grandiosely indeed, but not absurdly, the ' Historic Memoirs 
 of Ireland.' When Sheil wished to depict the Dublin of his 
 day he was reduced to the humbler title of ' Sketches of the 
 Irish Bar.' 
 
 But if this early post-Union period is thus deficient in 
 attraction and charm, it is nevertheless a period of signal 
 importance in the development of Ireland. If the contrast 
 between the old and the new order of things was depressing 
 and sometimes painful to the imagination of Irishmen, it 
 was a period marked in no inconsiderable degree by 
 material progress, and by an improvement in the education 
 and social condition of the people which, if gradual, was 
 still apparent, and without which O'Connell, when the time 
 came for his agitation, might have exercised his magical gifts 
 in vain. Above all, it was the period during which the prin- 
 ciple of Catholic Emancipation was struggling for recognition. 
 
192 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 The history of Ireland in the nineteenth century falls 
 naturally into two main periods of nearly equal length, but 
 of which the contrasts are so sharply drawn that to modern 
 observation they might seem to be separated by a century ; 
 so opposite are the social characteristics and so different the 
 political ideas which belong to each. The first stretches 
 from the Union to the Young Ireland movement and the 
 Potato Famine, and belongs to history ; the second reaches 
 from that point to the present moment. Of these periods 
 the first may itself be divided into two ; of which one runs 
 from 1800 to 1828, and is occupied with the struggle for 
 religious freedom. The second and shorter begins with the 
 triumph of O'Connell in the latter year, and ends in the social 
 cataclysm of the famine and the political anarchy caused by 
 schism between Old and Young Ireland, from the throes of 
 which have emerged all the movements that are still 
 living in the Ireland of to-day. It is the earliest of these 
 strongly marked and separated periods that falls to be dealt 
 with here. 
 
 The Ireland of Swift is hardly more remote from the 
 Ireland of Parnell than is the Ireland of that epoch when 
 the principle of Catholic Emancipation was still struggling 
 for recognition, and when resistance to the demand was 
 avowedly based by statesmen on the inconsistency between 
 the concession of the Koman Catholic claims and the main- 
 tenance of the Protestant Constitution in Church and State. 
 In those days Ireland still remained absolutely in the hands 
 of the territorial aristocracy which had held power through- 
 out the eighteenth century. As lately as 1825 the whole 
 parliamentary representation was in the control of the 
 country gentlemen. The Union had altered nothing in 
 this respect. Although Catholic Emancipation was the 
 foremost subject of contention, the cleavage of parties in the 
 country was not as yet synonymous with the antagonism of 
 creeds. In the generation that succeeded the Union, 
 parties followed in the main the lines which had been formed 
 in the parliamentary conflicts of the extinct legislature. 
 The ideals of the elder generation of Protestant landowners 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 193 
 
 were not yet in sharp conflict with those of the mass of 
 the people. Grattan had found among the Protestant 
 squirearchy, who dreaded emancipation as incompatible 
 with the preservation in Ireland of the Protestant Constitu- 
 tion of 1782, the most efficient allies in his struggle against 
 the destruction of the Parliament he had won ; and it took 
 twenty years of steadfast resistance to the Eoman Catholic 
 demand to alienate the forty-shilling freeholders (who were 
 abolished by Peel when he carried the measure which their 
 defection had rendered inevitable) from the landowners who 
 had shared their national aspirations. It was not until 
 after the severe famine of 1822 that the people began to 
 range themselves in systematic political opposition to 
 their landlords, and even then their hostility was mainly 
 the resultant of the distress created by the depression 
 of the times, and the consequent heavy pressure of rents 
 which had been raised during those piping times of 
 agriculture which had prevailed during the Napoleonic 
 wars. 
 
 For it is remarkable that in these early years the mass 
 of the Catholic voters who had been enfranchised in 1793 
 were singularly apathetic on the subject of emancipation. 
 The Eoman Catholic peers represented by Lord Fingall, and 
 even the Roman Catholic merchants of Dublin represented 
 by John Keogh, were far more concerned for the liberation 
 of their faith than the Eoman Catholic peasantry appeared 
 to be at that time ; and the agitation both of Lord Fingall 
 and of Keogh — and indeed, it may be added, of the Eoman 
 Catholic hierarchy headed by Archbishop Troy — was avowedly 
 loyal to the Constitution. For many years after the Union 
 the remarkable expressions used by McNevin and by 
 Thomas Addis Emmet at their examination before Lord 
 Clare in 1798 remained applicable to the mass of the 
 population. ' The importance of the subject,' said McNevin, 
 himself a Catholic, ' has passed away long since ; it really is 
 not worth a moment's thought at the present period.' ' I 
 don't think it matters a feather what the poor think of it,' said 
 Emmet. ' The mass of the people do not care the value of a 
 
 o 
 
194 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 drop of ink for Catholic Emancipation.' l It is this apathy of 
 the population which explains, though it does not justify, 
 the academic character of the early debates on emancipa- 
 tion in the Imperial Parliament, and the amateur spirit in 
 which the great question was approached even by the states- 
 men who affected to support it. 
 
 A. second characteristic which differentiates the Ireland 
 of the first quarter of the nineteenth century from the Ireland 
 of to-day is its remoteness in those days from the centre of the 
 Empire. In days before the locomotive, still more in days 
 when there was no steam communication between Dublin 
 and Holyhead, Ireland was a province in a sense in which 
 it has long ceased to be so regarded. In the first decade 
 of the century Dublin, for every purpose of conference and 
 discussion, was much further from London than Calcutta is 
 to-day. In bad weather the two capitals were often five 
 days apart. As late as 1815 it took Peel, when Chief 
 Secretary, thirty-three hours — two nights and a day — to 
 make the passage from Holyhead to Dublin ; and in 1821, 
 just before the visit of George IV. to Ireland, Lord Talbot, 
 the Viceroy, writing from Ingestre to Mr. Gregory, notes 
 with enthusiasm the feat of the new packet, which had 
 enabled him to cross the Channel and to travel seventy-two 
 miles in England and seven in Ireland within the space of 
 thirty hours. 
 
 Again at this period the Irish American, as he has been 
 known for half a century, was still unheard of. That large 
 naturalised but unabsorbed population of Irishmen, for 
 whose steady immigration the United States has found room 
 for several decades, had not yet commenced its exodus. 
 At the beginning of the century there was indeed an 
 American-Irish population ; but it was a population Saxon, 
 and not Celtic, in its origin, Protestant, and not Catholic, 
 in its sympathies. The Irishmen who participated in the 
 successful assertion of American independence, and whose 
 kindred in Ireland manned the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, 
 were not the progenitors of the American-Irish of to-day. 
 
 1 Pieces of Irish History, p. 200. 
 
PLUNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 195 
 
 It was from among the Scottish-Irish of Ulster that the 
 founders of the American Eepublic drew many of the most 
 valuable among the citizen soldiers of Washington's army, 
 and it was from the same source that the power was drawn 
 to which England felt constrained to yield in 1782, and 
 which, sixteen years later, constituted the backbone of the 
 movement in which the Kebellion of 1798 originated. But 
 the Irish Americans who traced their birth to Ulster had no 
 affinities with Catholic Ireland, and their sympathies with 
 the democratic movement at home were withered in the fires 
 of the Kebellion. From 1798 to 1848 no external influences 
 worth speaking of hostile to Great Britain were exerted from 
 America by men of Irish descent — a fact which the abortive 
 rising of the younger Emmet illustrates rather than contra- 
 dicts. The failure of that enthusiast either to stimulate in- 
 surrection from without or to nurse it from within testifies 
 in the strongest manner to the stagnation which had fallen 
 upon the usually angry waters of political discontent. 
 
 But although there was thus an almost total absence of 
 organised agitation, either upon patriotic or upon religious 
 lines, there were throughout this period from time to 
 time evident manifestations of those sporadic agrarian dis- 
 turbances from which Ireland has seldom been wholly 
 exempt. To the Steel Boys, Hearts of Oak, and Defenders of 
 the eighteenth century there succeeded the Threshers, whose 
 objective was Tithe, and the Ribbonmen, whose conspiracy 
 was perhaps the earliest avowed combination against the 
 payment of rent in Ireland, and whose agitation derived its 
 strongest impulse from the ineradicable land-hunger of the 
 Irish people, and the traditionary doctrine of the ownership of 
 the land by the descendants of its expropriated possessors. 
 But during the pre-Emancipation period neither of these 
 movements attained to really formidable proportions. Bib- 
 bonism appears to have originated in the North of Ireland, 
 where it seems to have been the Catholic counterblast to 
 Orangeism, and to have partaken at first mainly of the 
 character of a religious combination, though it soon assumed 
 an agrarian form. The movement was not widespread, 
 
 o i 
 
196 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 being confined to the Roman Catholic population of Ulster ; 
 and that it had not made itself felt as a force sufficient to 
 inspire much serious alarm may be inferred from an anec- 
 dote indicative of the depths of official ignorance which 
 Lady Gregory reports. When in 1818 it was reported to 
 the Home Secretary by an informer that ' a great deal of 
 Ribbon work is carrying on at Ballycastle,' Lord Sidmouth 
 forwarded the letter to Ireland, endorsing it as information 
 relative ' to an intended rising of the Ribbon Weavers.' 
 
 It was in an Ireland thus tranquil, self-contained, and 
 provincial that the struggle for Emancipation commenced. 
 The first years of the century passed amid the dubious 
 expectancy excited during the negotiations for the Union 
 by the pledges of Cornwallis and Castlereagh. For a time, 
 Grattan and his adherents continued to await the fulfil- 
 ment of the Irish policy of Pitt. When it had become 
 plain, first through the retirement of Pitt from office, and 
 afterwards through his resumption of it without any con- 
 ditions in favour of the Roman Catholics, that the boon 
 would not be granted by George III. or the Tories, expecta- 
 tion was centred for a brief moment in Fox and the heir to 
 the throne, who it was considered certain would signalise 
 their accession to the power long denied to them by passing 
 the measure with which both were understood to be identi- 
 fied. When, however, Fox, as Foreign Secretary, under 
 the nominal chieftainship of Grenville, arrived for a brief 
 moment at the helm, he declined to legislate in a direction 
 obnoxious to the feelings of his sovereign. During their 
 short tenure of office the Whigs were reduced to appeals to 
 their Irish friends not to embarrass the Ministry by agitat- 
 ing the question, but to be satisfied with the good intentions 
 of statesmen determined to redeem their pledges at the 
 earliest opportune moment. The friends of Emancipation 
 were, indeed, consistently unfortunate. Fox, like Canning 
 twenty years later, died in the moment of belated triumph, 
 at the head of a divided party. With him died even the 
 faint hopes that rested on the good intentions of the 
 Whigs, and the Tories entered on the most extended period 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 197 
 
 of power ever enjoyed by any party since the one-man 
 Ministry of Walpole. Under the leadership of Perceval, 
 they offered an absolute and uncompromising resistance to 
 the Catholic claims, and afterwards, under the premiership of 
 Lord Liverpool, they established that extraordinary system 
 under which the controversy which most divided parties in the 
 State was allowed to remain an open question in the Cabinet. 
 For the long struggle which was maintained under these 
 peculiar conditions in Ireland and in the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, there was developed a protagonist well suited in 
 temperament and training as well to the grey era which 
 witnessed his efforts as to the forces at his disposal and to 
 the weapons which were available. Between the passion 
 and the pomp of Grattan and the turbulent but conquering 
 vehemence of O'Connell there intervenes in the history of 
 Irish patriotism and eloquence the granite figure of Plunket. 
 The secondary place which is occupied in the chronicles of 
 the agitation that make up the contribution of Ireland to 
 the parliamentary history of the first quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century by the man who, through three fourths of its 
 course, occupied the foremost place in the struggle, has never 
 been sufficiently accounted for. The surpassing eminence 
 of Plunket in the parliamentary arena in the days when 
 
 Emancipation, not as yet in reach, 
 
 Was still a glorious question for a speech ' 
 
 has been proclaimed not by one, but by all, of his most 
 conspicuous contemporaries. Brougham and Mackintosh, 
 Peel and Russell, have vied in eulogies which concur to 
 raise the fame of the Irish orator to the level of the greatest 
 names in the parliamentary eloquence of the three kingdoms, 
 and render the more extraordinary the comparative failure 
 of the most eloquent champion of the Catholic cause to 
 touch the hearts and imaginations of that people with whose 
 aspirations, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, his 
 fame is for ever associated. 
 
 This failure has usually been ascribed to the coldness of 
 
 * Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's St. Stephen's. 
 
198 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Plunket's temperament and to his imperfect sympathy with 
 the people whose cause he represented. Yet the judgment 
 is hardly just, either to an eloquence which in many of its 
 finest manifestations evinced heart as well as intellect, or 
 to a character which, though ordinarily rugged, and at 
 times even arctic in its exterior, had its sunny season of 
 almost torrid warmth. More justly may Plunket's limited 
 popularity be ascribed to the period in which his lot was 
 cast and to the inequality of his opportunities. None of 
 the great reputations of the Irish Parliament were obtained 
 more quickly than Plunket's. It is difficult to believe that 
 a parliamentary success achieved as rapidly as Grattan's 
 would not have been followed by a political career of com- 
 mensurate importance had the field of his early fame re- 
 mained open. Plunket is the first and greatest of a series 
 of great Irish lawyers, of whom his contemporary Bushe, 
 and his successor Whiteside, are examples, whose reputation 
 in extra-legal circles has been dwarfed by the extinction of 
 the Irish Parliament. The Forum is a smaller stage than 
 the Senate, and though the Bar affords in some respects a 
 more severe test of the powers of an orator than those 
 which Parliament demands, the magnitude of the issues 
 with which a statesman deals gives to his rhetoric an 
 elevation which is lacking in the less conspicuous and 
 more ephemeral issues with which forensic rhetoric is 
 concerned. 
 
 With a legislature in Dublin, a parliamentary career was 
 easily and naturally combined with professional pursuits. 
 With a Parliament in London, such a combination is always 
 maintained with difficulty, and in the days before the loco- 
 motive, when, as Mr. Gregory's diary shows, a journey from 
 Dublin to London cost, to a person of position, as much as 
 451. 10s. , it was wellnigh impossible. To Plunket the 
 extinction of the Grattan Parliament meant the suspension 
 of his political career for several years. From 1800 to 1806 
 he was without a constituency, and though while Attorney- 
 General in the Grenville Administration he occupied for a 
 short period in 1807 a seat in the House of Commons, he 
 
PLUNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 199 
 
 was obliged to resign it on the fall of that Ministry, being 
 unable to afford, without the emoluments of office, the loss 
 of income involved in his severance from the Irish Bar. It 
 was not until an accession of fortune came to him through 
 the death of an elder brother that he was enabled in 1812 
 to re-enter the Assembly. That a man who, between the 
 thirty-sixth and forty-eighth years of his age, was almost 
 entirely removed from Parliament, should have been able 
 to achieve the fame which Plunket so easily won, is as high 
 a proof of the greatness of his powers as could possibly be 
 asked. For that his eloquence in the House of Commons, 
 even at its highest, suffered in some degree from this great 
 disadvantage, is evident from the remark of a very competent 
 critic on his greatest speech in that Assembly — ' If he had 
 been bred in Parliament I am inclined to think he would 
 have been the greatest speaker that ever appeared in it.' 
 
 It may be said, however, that though these considerations 
 sufficiently account for the subordinate place which Plunket 
 occupies in the annals of politics, as distinguished from 
 those of parliamentary eloquence, it does not explain the 
 comparatively low place which he has kept in the affections 
 of the people of his own country. Grattan and O'Connell 
 hold secure thrones in the hearts and imaginations of the 
 majority of Irishmen, while the author of the most majestic 
 assertion of the rights of the Irish Roman Catholics that 
 ever shook the walls of Parliament is almost forgotten. 
 Here, again, the explanation is, largely, the misfortune of 
 his position. Plunket left office with the Grenville Whigs 
 in 1807 because he could not serve in a Ministry which 
 refused to contemplate Catholic Emancipation as a possi- 
 bility. 1 It was not until 1821, when the remnant of the 
 same party was induced to join the Liverpool Ministry by 
 the promise that Emancipation should be regarded as an 
 open question, that he returned to office. But he was 
 
 1 He was pressed by Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Chief Secretary, to retain the 
 post, being assured that it would be considered a strictly legal office, and free 
 from political obligations. But Lord Grenville, whom Plunket consulted on 
 the occasion, rightly considered that he could not consistently remain in office 
 under the Liverpool Administration as then constituted. 
 
200 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 removed to the House of Lords in 1827, on the succession 
 of Canning to the premiership just before the triumph of 
 Emancipation. And no sooner had he found a chief who 
 shared his views in regard to Ireland than the death of 
 Canning, who, if spared, might have carried the long-looked- 
 for reform as the voluntary gift of a powerful Ministry, 
 precipitated the short-lived triumph of Protestant ascendency 
 which ended in Peel's capitulation to O'Connell. 
 
 Thus, though Plunket had been through years of difficulty 
 and discouragement the foremost champion of the Catholic 
 cause, though he had made serious sacrifices to his con- 
 victions on the subject, and though in the last debate on 
 the question in the House of Lords he exerted himself 
 powerfully in its behalf, he had the misfortune to occupy 
 for six years the ambiguous position of a supporter of Eman- 
 cipation in a Ministry which was unable to adopt as part of 
 its policy the measure to which his whole career and 
 highest powers had been devoted. He was thus robbed by 
 the circumstances of his position of the credit of his services, 
 at the same time that his personal popularity was seriously 
 diminished by the conflict in which, as chief law officer of the 
 Crown in Ireland, he was obliged to engage with O'Connell, 
 while attempting to repress the turbulence of the great 
 agitator. Perhaps, too, it may be said that in the days of 
 acute strife and of popular agitation down to which Plunket 
 lived it did the friend and follower of Grattan no service with 
 the majority of his countrymen to receive the eulogies of 
 Brougham and Lord John Eussell and the hated Whigs 
 with whom O'Connell strove. But in the clearer air of 
 history such tributes may be accepted at their true worth, 
 even by Irishmen too fervid to share the staid patriotism 
 of Plunket ; and more than half a century of concessions, 
 won only after sustained appeals to the Imperial Parliament, 
 should teach his countrymen to appreciate at their true 
 magnitude the services of an orator who could subjugate 
 that Parliament by the power of an eloquence unequalled by 
 any of his contemporaries. Of that power and of the 
 qualities which underlay it, Bulwer Lytton has conveyed 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 201 
 
 some notion to posterity in one of the most masterly of the 
 many vivid pictures in which his poem * St. Stephen's ' 
 abounds. 
 
 If the circumstances of his career have thus tended, in 
 a measure, to dwarf the name and services of Plunket, other 
 and more accidental disadvantages have been no less hurtful 
 to his reputation. Of the great speeches which moved his 
 auditors so profoundly the reports which remain to posterity 
 are curiously incomplete and unsatisfactory. In his preface 
 to the biography by Lord Kathmore, Brougham has described 
 the curious indolence and indifference which made Plunket 
 neglect until too late almost every opportunity of revising 
 his speeches ; so that it ' must be a matter of unceasing 
 regret to every admirer of eloquence, and to all who 
 devote themselves to the rhetorical art, whether in the 
 Senate or in the Courts of Justice, that so vast a body of 
 the noblest orations ever delivered in any age should 
 have perished, and that the great man's fame rests upon 
 tradition, and on a small number of speeches, as it were 
 samples to justify the accounts of those who lived in his 
 day.' And of the legitimate material of political biography 
 the remains are deplorably scanty. The two volumes 
 published more than thirty years ago by Lord Eathmore 
 practically exhaust the available documents. Never a 
 ready correspondent, Plunket's letters on public affairs 
 were usually meagre ; whilst the papers which had accumu- 
 lated in his possession through the more generous epistles 
 of his friends are said to have been destroyed by the 
 ex-Chancellor in a moment of chagrin while smarting under 
 the ill-treatment which his old friends had shown him in 
 superseding him on the Irish Woolsack for the benefit of 
 Lord Campbell. 
 
 Born at Enniskillen on July 1, 1764, William Conyngham 
 Plunket was the youngest son of the Kev. Patrick Plunket* 
 a Nonconformist clergyman of that town, who subsequently 
 became the minister of the Unitarian congregation of Strand 
 Street, Dublin. Dr. Plunket, who appears to have possessed 
 something of the force of character which distinguished his 
 
202 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 son, died at a comparatively early age, leaving his wfdow 
 and family in circumstances so straitened as to require the 
 public subscription by which the means of education were 
 readily provided for his six children by a grateful congrega- 
 tion. Young Plunket was thus enabled to acquire, first at 
 Dr. Kerr's School, and subsequently at Trinity College, 
 Dublin, a competent knowledge of the classics, and an 
 abundant intellectual equipment. To his abiding sense of 
 the advantage to himself of the kindly benevolence shown 
 by his father's friends Plunket in his last days testified in a 
 striking manner when, on the death, some sixty years later, 
 of a succeeding minister at Strand Street, in circumstances 
 equally trying, he contributed to the fund raised for the 
 relief of the clergyman's family the munificent subscription 
 of 500Z. 
 
 Plunket's college life began at the moment when Grattan 
 had won for the Irish Parliament its short-lived indepen- 
 dence, and he soon joined the coterie of brilliant young 
 Irishmen who emulated and imitated in the Historical 
 Society of Trinity College the eloquence which reverberated 
 through the adjacent building in College Green. In this 
 society the future senator took his first lessons in oratory, 
 and there it was that he imbibed the principles of that 
 moderate Liberalism to which he clung steadfastly through- 
 out every phase of his career. Dublin University, which has 
 been too commonly accounted the home of an undiscerning 
 and undeviating Toryism, but which has always been more 
 Liberal than its reputation, was then under the influence of 
 its somewhat incongruous Provost, Hely Hutchinson ; and 
 in days before Burke had sounded the note of alarm which 
 cleft the Whig party in twain the Historical Society was the 
 home of a distinctly militant Liberalism. At the period 
 when Plunket first bethought himself of politics, men whom 
 the stress of a revolutionary era was to place so far asunder 
 as Charles Kendal Bushe and Wolfe Tone, Laurence 
 Parsons, afterwards Lord Bosse, and the elder Emmet were 
 joined in a cordial union of political conviction which lasted 
 for many years ere it perished in the flames of revolutionary 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 203 
 
 agitation. But the tone and colour of Plunket's creed may 
 be said never to have varied from the outset to the close of 
 his career. He was a Whig by temperament, and a Whig 
 he remained through every alternation of political fortune, 
 never advancing beyond the limits of a cautious Liberalism 
 combined with a fearless imperialism. In later life he was 
 the subject of some animadversion from the more stern and 
 unbending disciples of Fox for throwing in his lot with the 
 Grenville Whigs. But those who thus attacked him can 
 have had little real understanding of his political sym- 
 pathies, for Plunket was a Grenville Whig before the 
 Grenville Whigs existed, and remained one after they had 
 become extinct. 
 
 Called to the Irish Bar in 1787, which he joined under the 
 patronage of the jovial and popular Chief Baron Yelverton, 
 Plunket applied himself strenuously to his profession, 
 maintaining, however, a keen interest in public affairs. By 
 virtue of his knowledge of politics and his university con- 
 nections, he made his first important appearance as counsel 
 for Sir Laurence Parsons in a celebrated election petition 
 against the return of Mr. Hely Hutchinson for the University, 
 which, it was alleged, had been procured through the illicit 
 intervention of the Provost. The development of Irish 
 politics was gradually separating Plunket at this time from 
 his early associates, and throwing him more and more into 
 sympathy with Grattan, whose devoted adherent he remained 
 to the close of the veteran patriot's career, and to whom in 
 the greatest of all his speeches he paid the homage of a 
 splendid panegyric. But a letter written to Wolfe Tone in 
 1795, on the occasion of the departure of the United Irish 
 leader for America, shows that even in their altered circum- 
 stances he still preserved a cordial friendship for his old 
 companion ; while on his side Tone dwells more than once 
 in his diaries on his affectionate memories of their inter- 
 course in their early years at the Bar, when they were 
 members of the same circuit. 
 
 It was not, however, until 1798, when he had been above 
 ten years at the Bar, and had already obtained his silk gown 
 
204 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 from Lord Chancellor Clare, that Plunket entered the Irish 
 Parliament. In that year Lord Charlemont, the Nestor of 
 the Irish Whigs, and the early patron and friend of Grattan, 
 was desirous of finding some young politician of ability and 
 promise to sit for the family borough from which his own 
 title was derived. Two-and-twenty years earlier the same 
 patron, by means of the same borough, had given to the 
 author of legislative independence his first Parliamentary 
 opportunity ; and he was now to afford to the friend and 
 champion of Emancipation the means of rendering the first 
 of a long series of services to that cause. Charlemont had 
 long been the formal and ornamental head of the popular 
 party in Ireland. He had been the Commander-in-Chief of 
 the Volunteers, and had presided at the famous Convention 
 of 1783. But he was a Protestant of the Protestants, and 
 a firm foe to Constitutional innovation. His influence had 
 been successfully exerted at the Volunteer Convention to 
 prevent the endorsement of the Catholic claims by that 
 body ; and he preserved tenaciously in his declining days 
 the principles and prejudices which had animated his prime. 
 Accordingly his invitation to Plunket to accept the nomina- 
 tion to the seat for Charlemont was offered upon the basis of 
 opposition to the obnoxious doctrine of Emancipation. At 
 the interview between the old peer and the young politician 
 at which this offer was made, the divergence of their views 
 upon this point became apparent ; and it is much to the 
 credit of one who has been too often charged with the selfish 
 opportunism of the political lawyer, that Plunket at once 
 decided to forego an opportunity so advantageous to his 
 career at the price of his convictions on what seemed to him 
 the most vital of Irish questions. His independence did 
 him no disservice in the eyes of the old patriot, who invited 
 Plunket to a second conference, at which he promised his 
 nominee a free hand on the Catholic question. Plunket 
 accordingly entered the House of Commons as member for 
 the borough of Charlemont. It was thus his good fortune 
 to mark his entrance upon the stage of active politics by a 
 signal service to the cause with which to the day of its final 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 205 
 
 triumph Plunket was thenceforward identified. The conver- 
 sion of the old Protestant stalwart was complete, and in a 
 conversation with his protege shortly before his death on 
 the subjects of Parliamentary reform and the Catholic claims 
 Charlemont frankly admitted his change of view, observing 
 epigrammatically that to these two questions he had made 
 two sacrifices, ' to the former a borough, and to the latter a 
 prejudice.' 
 
 The political circumstances of 1798 were not especially 
 favourable to the parliamentary success of the member for 
 Charlemont. The outbreak of the Eebehlon, justifying all 
 the forebodings of the dominant party in the Irish assembly, 
 condemned their opponents to inaction, and afforded no op- 
 portunity of distinction to a parliamentary novice. Plunket 
 earned no special reputation in his first session ; and although 
 his patron wrote of him, within two months of his entering 
 the House of Commons, that he had exceeded his (Charle- 
 mont's) expectations, and was ' already one of the best and 
 most useful debaters,' Mr. Plunket was described in a book 
 of ' Sketches of Irish Political Characters,' published in 
 1799, and written in a tone of friendliness to the popular 
 party, as ' an acute reasoner, bat not an eloquent speaker,' 
 and it appears that, at this period at least, his voice was not 
 powerful. 1 
 
 Of Plunket's attitude towards public affairs at this period 
 a particularly interesting record survives in a hitherto un- 
 published letter, written in October 1798 to a friend in 
 America, in which he reviews the incidents of that exciting 
 year, and discusses with remarkable insight the conduct of 
 the Government in relation to the outbreak and suppression 
 of the Kebellion. He was of opinion that at the moment 
 of the outbreak of the Rebellion the Government was totally 
 unable to cope with the insurgents, and considered that if 
 
 1 The following account of the impression created by one of Plunket's 
 earliest speeches against the Union survives among the Pelham Correspondence 
 at the British Museum in a letter dated January 24, 1799, addressed to the 
 ex-Chief Secretary by Mr. R. Griffith : ' George Ponsonby made a great display 
 of ability, but was outshone by Plunket, who, notwithstanding his very weak 
 voice, made a very powerful impression, and, I may say, decided the question.' 
 
206 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 the French who subsequently arrived under Humbert had 
 landed during the Kebellion the country would have been 
 subdued. 1 
 
 As we are at present concerned mainly with the post- 
 Union period of Plunket's political activity, we shall refer 
 but briefly to the part he played in the debates upon the 
 Union. Though the invective of some of his speeches, and 
 particularly of his attacks upon Castlereagh, whom he 
 derided in the greatest of his post-Union speeches as ' an in- 
 sufficient boy,' rises to an extraordinary pitch of passionate 
 vehemence, Plunket scarcely attained to the high- water 
 mark of his powers in the Irish Parliament. In his Union 
 speeches his oratory has the rush, the haste, and the move- 
 ment of a swollen river torrent ; in his Emancipation speeches 
 there is more of power and majesty, and he resembles, as 
 was said of a great Irishman of an earlier generation, ■ a 
 great sea in a calm.' The admirable courage which Plunket 
 exhibited at a period when opposition had been rendered 
 almost powerless by the withdrawal of Grattan and his im- 
 mediate associates from the debates at College Green un- 
 questionably proved his possession of the essential quality of 
 fearless self-reliance. But the rhetoric of these speeches is, on 
 the whole, overstrained. If his castigation of Castlereagh 
 recalls in its unsparing denunciation the pitiless ferocity of 
 Junius, it recalls also its exaggeration. The indignation 
 seems at times artificial, and personalities too frequently 
 usurp the place of argument. That Plunket was himself con- 
 scious of the unfairness of many of his diatribes is manifest 
 from the terms in which he alludes, in a letter written 
 to Lord Londonderry shortly after Castlereagh's death, to 
 the circumstances under which he had accepted the Attorney- 
 Generalship in the administration of which his quondam 
 enemy was the most eminent member : — 
 
 His (Castlereagh's) friendship and confidence were the 
 prime causes which induced his Majesty's Government to 
 desire my services ; and I can truly add that my unreserved 
 reliance on the cordiality of his feelings towards me, joined 
 
 1 See Appendix for this letter. 
 
PLUNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 207 
 
 to my perfect knowledge of the wisdom and liberality of all 
 his public objects and opinions, were the principal causes 
 which induced me to accept the honour which was proposed 
 to me. 
 
 But although Plunket was occasionally hurried, in the 
 height of the stormy controversies of the Union, into 
 violences of expression and even action which were foreign 
 to the natural calm of his nature, and although his view of 
 the policy of the Union underwent considerable modification 
 as he observed the gradual course of its effects, there is no 
 doubt whatever that at this period he was sincerely con- 
 vinced of the magnitude and reality of the evils he seemed 
 to foresee, and at which he declaimed with so much magnifi- 
 cent wrath. In the letter of 1798 from which we have 
 already quoted he communicated to his correspondent in 
 America his apprehension of a Union, writing of it as a 
 measure which if determined on by ministers would most 
 probably be adopted by the Irish Parliament owing to the 
 disgust of moderate men with the excesses of the popular 
 side. But he added that though ' it would for the present 
 be submitted to, it seems to me equally clear that in the 
 course of not many years it would be followed by a separation 
 — an event ruinous both to Great Britain and Ireland.' 
 
 With the passing of the Act of Union, Plunket quietly 
 turned from politics to the Bar. He made no attempt for 
 several years to enter the Imperial Parliament. But the 
 fame he had won at College Green attended him to the 
 Four Courts, and helped to ensure his forensic success. In 
 1803 his acceptance of a brief for the prosecution on the 
 occasion of the trial of Robert Emmet for high treason 
 caused the first rift in his relations with the popular party. 
 To Plunket was assigned the luty of replying for the Crown 
 and reviewing the evidence. This he did with a vigour 
 and directness which drew down upon him the wrath of 
 Emmet's friends. Plunket was incorrectly represented as 
 having been the intimate of the unfortunate patriot, and as 
 having, in the ardour of the Crown advocate, forgotten the 
 respect due to the memories of private friendship. These 
 
203 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 charges were proved to be false, and when, on his appoint- 
 ment as Solicitor-General a few months later, Cobbett made 
 them the basis of a bitter personal attack, Plunket obtained 
 5001. damages in respect of the libel from a London jury. 
 It is obvious that the inconsistency which was sought to be 
 established between Plunket's fiery opposition to the Union 
 and his denunciation of the treason which sought to overturn 
 it by force was purely superficial. Whether as the opponent 
 or the apologist of the Union, Plunket was always a convinced 
 Imperialist, and, like Grattan, was loyal to the core to the 
 British connection and abhorrent of every form of uncon- 
 stitutional agitation. But, however unjust the charge, the 
 incident undoubtedly injured his popularity. 
 
 Plunket's acceptance of the Solicitor-Generalship in the 
 Addington Administration was followed by his promotion to 
 Attorney- General in 1805 ; and, retaining his position in 
 the ' Ministry of all the Talents,' he entered the House of 
 Commons in 1807 at the solicitation of Grenville as the 
 member for Midhurst, a borough for which Fox had once 
 sat. From the representation of this seat he retired, as 
 already mentioned, on his resignation of the Attorney- 
 Generalship at the fall of the Grenville combination, and 
 did not appear again at Westminster until 1812. But he 
 signalised his first brief appearance in the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment by a speech on the Catholic question which charmed and 
 delighted the House of Commons, and which was referred 
 to a year later by so high an authority as Mr. Whitbread as 
 ' a speech which will never be forgotten.' Keturning to 
 Ireland, he assumed in the lesser world of the Four Courts 
 a position of eminence more commanding, perhaps, than 
 has ever been occupied by any private member of the Irish 
 Bar. In 1812 he was returned to Parliament as member 
 for the University of Dublin, and was thus enabled to 
 participate in the debate raised by Grattan on the Catholic 
 question in 1813. It was then that he delivered the speech 
 upon which, together with the still more magnificent effort 
 of 1821, his parliamentary fame chiefly rests. 
 
 At this period the Catholic cause had made what appeared 
 
PLUNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 209 
 
 to be substantial strides towards success. As early as 1807 
 George Ponsonby had written to Plunket that the 'No 
 Popery ' cry was dead, and that ' if the King were out of 
 the question the Catholic Bill would pass like a turnpike 
 one. ' For some years the only questions left open for discussion 
 between parties at Westminster appeared to be merely the 
 form which the Relief Bill should take and the securities by 
 which it should be accompanied for the protection of the 
 Establishment. Croker in his statesmanlike pamphlet on 
 the State of Ireland, written in 1808, laid down, in sugges- 
 tions which are valuable as depicting the ideas of the 
 moderate Protestants for whom the writer spoke, the con- 
 ditions upon which Emancipation might be safely granted. 
 Of these the most important was * that the priesthood be 
 Catholic but not Popish, paid by the State, approved by the 
 Crown, and independent of all foreign control ; ' in other 
 words, endowment of the priesthood and a royal veto on the 
 appointment of bishops. That both these proposals might 
 have been readily carried on these lines at any period from 
 1807 to 1821, but for the obstacle stated by Ponsonby, 
 appears practically certain ; and there is no reason to doubt 
 that such a settlement would have been accepted by every 
 section of Catholic opinion in Ireland, including the bishops, 
 and by all but an insignificant remnant of Protestant ex- 
 tremists. The Catholic organisation was at this time less 
 militant than it had been since 1791 or than it became a 
 few years later. Wyse, the historian of the Catholic As- 
 sociation, admits that the agitation had been weakened by 
 contention for leadership, and rendered less effective by ' the 
 apprehension of incurring by any acts of a bold and inde- 
 pendent nature the displeasure of the superior powers.' 
 The hierarchy were still led by Archbishop Troy, a prelate 
 of great moderation and discretion, who had conducted the 
 negotiations with Castlereagh which preceded the Union, 
 and who, loyal to the English connection from beginning to 
 end of his episcopate, had always shown himself favourable 
 to a reasonable compromise. But then, as in 1800, the 
 impossibility of gaining the concurrence of the King obliged 
 
210 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 even the ministers who favoured Emancipation to postpone 
 all thought of legislation; and before the scruples of the 
 Sovereign could be overcome, Catholic opinion under the 
 influence of O'Connell had so hardened against what were 
 known as ' the securities ' as to render any measure of 
 limited Emancipation useless and impossible. 
 
 The state of parties in Ireland at this period is somewhat 
 involved and confusing. But the ideas of the "Whig aristo- 
 cracy with whom Plunket most nearly sympathised, though 
 he went beyond them in his views on Emancipation, as 
 well as those of the constitutional Catholics, of the official 
 Tories, and of the irreconcileable Orangemen, may best be 
 explained by a reference to the four conspicuous figures in 
 whom those ideas were respectively personified — viz. George 
 Ponsonby, John Keogh, William Saurin, and Patrick 
 Duigenan. 
 
 Grattan apart, the chief figure among Irish Liberals in 
 the House of Commons was that of George Ponsonby. A 
 member of one of the most influential and wealthy of the 
 propertied families of Ireland, he had, while still a very 
 young man, co-operated with Grattan in 1782, and had 
 throughout the career of the Irish Parliament acted uni- 
 formly with the old patriot. He had been the trusted 
 adviser of the Kockingham Whigs in their dealings with 
 Ireland, and when in 1794 the Duke of Portland and his 
 friends coalesced with Pitt, Ponsonby was the person 
 chiefly consulted by them in framing the Irish policy which 
 was then thrust on the Prime Minister. At the time of this 
 combination he had expected that the appointment of 
 Attorney-General would be given to himself, and that a 
 large share of Irish patronage would be placed at the dis- 
 posal of his friends, who had long been excluded from office. 
 He exercised a boundless influence over Lord Fitzwilliam, 
 with whom he was closely connected by family ties. And 
 to his determination ' to get,' in his own words, ' the whole 
 power of the country into his hands,' Lord Ashbourne, in 
 his book on Pitt, has properly ascribed the chief respon- 
 sibility for the errors of that well-intentioned but most ill- 
 
PLUNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 211 
 
 advised Viceroy. After the Union Ponsonby became pro- 
 minent in the Imperial Parliament, of which, save during 
 his brief tenure of office as Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the 
 Grenville Ministry, he remained a member until his death 
 in 1817. During the latter half of this period he was the 
 actual leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, 
 thus taking his place with Castlereagh and Plunket — one 
 can hardly include Grattan — in the small group of Irishmen 
 who had sat at College Green whose parliamentary fame 
 was enlarged by the Union. Ponsonby, however, from the 
 outset of his career at Westminster, was too closely con- 
 nected with the official Opposition to be able to lend much 
 material assistance to the agitation of the Catholic question ; 
 and though he was active in the debate on the Catholic 
 Petition of 1805, and subsequently took a strenuous part in 
 advocating the Veto, the real conduct of the Catholic cause 
 in Parliament fell more and more into the hands of Grattan. 
 The veteran patriot, however, though still great on great 
 occasions, was in delicate health. He had never been 
 eminent as a tactician. He was thus but ill fitted in his 
 declining years for the conduct of an uphill struggle in a 
 hostile assembly on behalf of an unpopular cause. 
 
 While the Catholic cause had fallen into aristocratic 
 hands, to an extent which made it possible to describe it 
 with little exaggeration, as Croker did in his pamphlet, 
 as meaning no more than the emancipation of ' at most 
 six lords, one hundred and fifty commoners, and twenty 
 ecclesiastics,' the popular voice was still heard in the 
 councils of the movement in the person of John Keogh, 
 who, supported by the remnant of the old Catholic Com- 
 mittee, was able occasionally to force upon Lord Fingall 
 and his friends measures of which they disapproved. 
 Though now an elderly man, whose work lay in a past 
 which had been distinguished by very solid services to his 
 religion, Keogh's record and performances still entitled him 
 to the acknowledged leadership of the remnant of that body 
 of Roman Catholics by whose exertions in the ' Back-lane 
 Parliament ' of 1792 the concession of the parliamentary 
 
 p 2 
 
212 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 franchise had been secured. Humble in his origin, bred to 
 trade, rough in exterior, and unconciliatory in temperament, 
 Keogh may be styled the first plebeian leader of the Irish 
 Catholics. He had been closely connected with the United 
 Irish movement, in which he was for a time the intimate 
 associate and adviser of Tone; but having been arrested, 
 perhaps fortunately for himself, as early as 1796, he escaped 
 complicity with the actual committee of the organisation, 
 and thus avoided the fate which in 1798 overtook the 
 majority of his associates. He had subsequently made his 
 peace with the Government, who, satisfied of his disposition, 
 left him unmolested in his residence at Mount Jerome, near 
 Dublin, where a few years earlier he had undoubtedly 
 plotted with Tone and his associates the means of procuring 
 a French invasion. During the Emmet insurrection his 
 papers were seized by the Government, but were returned to 
 him unopened, an indulgence upon which Keogh's posthu- 
 mous detractors have founded the suspicion of bad faith. 
 For this charge there appears to have been no sufficient 
 justification, though it is certain that Keogh, whose interest 
 in revolutionary politics seems to have been inspired solely 
 by solicitude for the Catholic cause, loyally accepted the 
 Union and never sought to disturb it. Such an attitude 
 was not unnatural in a man who had realised a large fortune 
 by successful industry, and had acquired substantial real 
 estate in Ireland. 
 
 In 1807, in addressing a meeting of the Catholics of 
 Dublin to advocate the adoption of a more vigorous agitation, 
 he stated their object in seeking Emancipation to be ' to 
 attach the (Catholic) population by interest and affection to 
 the Throne and the Empire ; and we are bold to say that 
 that single measure will render the Empire invincible.' 
 But these views were not acceptable to the more militant 
 patriots who began to come to the surface in Irish politics 
 during the second decade of the century ; and at the close 
 of his life Keogh was rudely dethroned by O'Connell, and 
 his policy repudiated. Yet his boast to his supplanter, 
 'Twas I made men of the Catholics,' was no exaggeration of 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 213 
 
 the part he had played in Irish politics ; and it is not a 
 little curious that, though so carefully constitutional in his 
 actions, he predicted the means by which Emancipation 
 was eventually to be won — asserting that the return of a 
 Roman Catholic to Parliament would appeal to a principle 
 of liberty more rooted in the minds of Englishmen than 
 their antipathy to Emancipation ; and that, rather than 
 disfranchise a constituency by refusing admission to its 
 chosen representative, Parliament would remodel the qualify- 
 ing oath in favour of Eoman Catholics. 
 
 The personage by whom Plunket was succeeded in 1807 
 in the office of Attorney-General, and who retained that 
 appointment for the space — unparalleled in the nineteenth 
 century and but once exceeded in the eighteenth — of fifteen 
 years, was among the most remarkable Irishmen of his day. 
 Of Huguenot descent on the father's side, a Scotch Presby- 
 terian through the mother's, William Saurin united in a 
 person which presented an odd mixture of Languedoc and 
 Fife the cognate religious strains of an uncompromising 
 Protestantism and an ineradicable distrust of Eoman 
 Catholicism. Already an eminent king's counsel at the 
 outbreak of the Rebellion in 1798, he had headed the lawyers' 
 corps of Yeomanry, to whose energy and vigilance on that 
 occasion Government was in no small degree indebted for 
 the preservation of order in Dublin ; and, entering the Irish 
 House of Commons in the following year, he had led the 
 resistance of the Irish Bar to the Union, bitterly opposing, 
 on strictly Protestant grounds, a measure which threatened, 
 in his opinion, a breach in the Protestant fabric of the Irish 
 constitution. Saurin was reputed to have refused the most 
 attractive offers from Government to induce him to change 
 his opinion, and undoubtedly declined to accept the Solicitor- 
 Generalship when that office fell vacant in 1800. He 
 allowed a similar opportunity to slip in 1803, apparently 
 from a want of confidence in the sincerity of the resistance 
 likely to be offered to Emancipation by the Addington 
 Ministry. When in 1807 the Duke of Portland formed an 
 administration on a frankly anti- Catholic basis, Saurin's 
 
214 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 consistent attachment to what were known as Protestant prin- 
 ciples, combined with the highest personal character and the 
 foremost professional status, marked him out as the most 
 suitable adviser of the Crown on legal affairs. On Plunket's 
 resignation he was accordingly promoted per saltum, mainly 
 at the instance of Sir Arthur Wellesley, over the head of 
 Bushe, who had been Solicitor-General for two years, but who 
 was too closely identified with the Catholic cause to be accept- 
 able to the new regime. Associated with a Lord Chancellor 
 who was a stranger to Ireland, and with a subordinate who 
 lacked the full confidence of his superiors, Saurin quickly 
 became the sole reliance of the Irish Government in legal 
 matters ; while the chance which gave him, in the first two 
 years of office, an absentee Chief Secretary in the person of 
 Sir Arthur Wellesley, enabled him to grasp a share of 
 political authority which, once seized, was never voluntarily 
 surrendered. He became the embodiment of the policy of 
 Dublin Castle, and, until he was peremptorily removed from 
 office in 1822, he practically directed the machine of Irish 
 government. So great was his power that he was described 
 by Lord Wellesley, the Lord-Lieutenant who superseded 
 him, as having been the virtual Viceroy for fifteen years. 
 
 Saurin was not a great speaker, and he steadily resisted 
 the pressure brought to bear upon him to enter the Imperial 
 Parliament, but he was always at the elbow of successive 
 Chief Secretaries, and as he was also socially well connected, 
 having married a sister of the last Marquis of Thomond, he 
 wielded not merely exceptional official authority, but an 
 extraordinarj- influence upon the policy of his nominal 
 superiors. How frankly Protestant were Saurin's views 
 may be gathered from a short extract from a letter to Peel 
 in 1813, which may be said to epitomise the whole case 
 of the Protestant opposition to the Catholic claims : — 
 
 In Ireland the wit of man cannot devise any security for 
 Protestant establishment but a Protestant government. 
 Nor could the wit of man furnish an argument by which 
 the existence of an exclusive Protestant Church establish- 
 ment could be defended in a country in which the population 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 215 
 
 was more than two to one Catholic, if the government of 
 that country was Catholic also, or as much Catholic as 
 Protestant. . . . We ought not to deceive ourselves. Ireland 
 must be either a Catholic or a Protestant State — let us 
 choose. But he is a Utopian who believes he has dis- 
 covered a nostrum by which it can be both, or neither. 
 This is the project of Grattan and Plunket, who have 
 with great talent and ingenuity first deceived themselves 
 (at which no two men are more expert), and next misled 
 many others. 1 
 
 Of the humblest origin, and originally of the Roman 
 Catholic religion, Patrick Duigenan came to be regarded, by 
 a singular contradiction of fate, as the chief exponent of 
 Irish Protestant opinion in its most confident and uncom- 
 promising form. Designed by his parents, who were 
 Leitrim peasants, for the Catholic priesthood, he early 
 exhibited such proofs of that robust vigour of character 
 which distinguished him through life as attracted the notice 
 of a Protestant clergyman who kept a school in his parish. 
 He was henceforward brought up in the Protestant faith, 
 thus affording one of the rare examples of the successful 
 operation of the policy by which the clergy of the Establish- 
 ment in the middle of the eighteenth century were 
 encouraged to bring over the children of Roman Catholics 
 to the State Church. Profiting by the educational advan- 
 tages thus opened to him, Duigenan entered at Trinity 
 College, Dublin, where his ability and industry gained for 
 him the distinction of a fellowship. He was subsequently 
 called to the Irish Bar, where his vigorous and somewhat 
 noisy self-assertion soon pushed him into prominence. 
 Attaching himself to the fortunes of Tisdal, the Attorney- 
 General of the day and member for the University, 
 Duigenan had the misfortune to earn the hostility of Tisdal's 
 personal enemy, Provost Hely Hutchinson. As a con- 
 sequence he lost his Fellowship. But the sacrifice was 
 more than compensated by the patronage with which his 
 devotion to the Attorney-General was rewarded, and by his 
 appointment as Professor of Civil Law in the University ; 
 
 1 Sir E. Peel's Correspondence, ed. Parker, vol. i. p. 83. 
 
216 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 and Duigenan took an ample and enduring revenge upon 
 the Provost by publishing a volume called ' LachrymaB 
 Academicae,' in which Hutchinson's astonishing unfitness 
 for his position as head of the University was made the 
 subject of a ferocious satire. 
 
 On the death of his patron Tisdal, Duigenan made 
 himself instrumental in securing the return of Fitzgibbon 
 for the University, and was thenceforward known as the 
 sturdy and trusty henchman of Lord Clare, who rewarded 
 his devotion by successive appointments to the important 
 offices of King's Advocate and Judge of the Prerogative 
 Court. In the Irish Parliament, where he sat for many 
 years, he was distinguished by the violence of his language, 
 and both in speeches and pamphlets constantly attacked 
 Grattan and his associates. At the Union, his position as a 
 Judge of the Probate Court having brought him into close 
 relations with the ecclesiastical authorities, Duigenan was 
 returned, through the influence of the Primate, as member 
 for the borough of Armagh. Thenceforward, until his 
 death in 1816, he was a constant and prominent figure in 
 the debates on the Catholic question, standing sentinel like 
 an angry watchdog at the gates of the Establishment, and 
 presenting the ultra-Protestant view with a coarse and 
 plain-spoken vigour which left no room for doubt as to 
 either the strength or the sincerity of his sentiments. 
 Eemarkable for his quaint appearance — he was invariably 
 attired in a rusty bobwig and wore rough Connemara 
 stockings — he earned in the House of Commons the sort of 
 popularity which is commonly produced in that assembly by 
 the piquant contrast between intolerant violence of language 
 and a native kindliness of nature, which, in Duigenan's case, 
 the most malignant outbreaks of fanaticism were powerless 
 to conceal. He won the regard of Wellington, who, while 
 Chief Secretary, placed him in the Irish Privy Council, and 
 the importance of his position, and of the political element 
 which he represented, may be gathered from a letter from 
 Peel to Saurin in 1812, which, though it indicates that the 
 worthy doctor occasionally brought some ridicule upon the 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 217 
 
 cause he had at heart, shows that Duigenan's lack of dis- 
 cretion had not obliterated in the mind of his chief the 
 recollection of his zealous services. 1 
 
 The old Orangeman did not retire, but remained in 
 Parliament till his death, which took place in his eighty- 
 eighth year, and which occurred appropriately while ' in the 
 act of eating an orange.' The curious contrast between the 
 violence of his precept and the tolerance of his practice is 
 shown by the fact that Duigenan's first wife was a Roman 
 Catholic whose religious principles he respected even to the 
 extent of maintaining a Roman Catholic chaplain in his 
 house ; and he concluded one of his most fiery philippics by 
 declaring, in words which bear the stamp of sincerity, that 
 'in thus publicly declaring my opinion I do some violence to 
 my private feelings and affections, as I live in the strictest 
 intimacy and friendship with several Boman Catholics, for 
 whom I have the sincerest regard and esteem, knowing them 
 to be persons of the greatest worth, integrity, and honour.' 
 
 It was on behalf of an Ireland in which such men as 
 these were the representative spokesmen of opposing 
 interests that the Irish Liberals, under the leadership of 
 Grattan and Plunket, renewed at Westminster the struggle 
 which had been suspended at the Union. But, although 
 the latter was unremitting in his parliamentary exertions, 
 his eminence was at first overshadowed by Grattan's stately 
 and venerable figure. It was not until 1821 that Plunket 
 attained to the zenith of his fame, alike in eloquence and in 
 statesmanship. In the preceding year he had taken from 
 the dying hands of Grattan the formal leadership of the 
 Catholic cause, and he lost no time in proviug that that 
 cause, though no longer ' enforced by all the resistless 
 
 1 ' I must own,' says Peel, ' that I could never bring myself to propose to Dr. 
 Duigenan to resign his seat in Parliament after all his labours and all his per- 
 secutions for righteousness sake, and all the obloquy he has braved and will 
 brave in the cause of Protestant ascendency. I think he should consult his 
 own inclinations exclusively in retiring from the field, and I would really wish 
 that he might feel an impression that the Government were sensible, I had 
 almost said of his services, and that they would lend him a hand in buckling 
 on his cumbrous armour for another encounter.' — Sir R. Peel's Correspondence, 
 vol. iii. 
 
218 STUDIES IN IBISH HISTOEY 
 
 powers which waited on the majesty of Grattan's genius,' 
 had lost nothing in parliamentary weight by the change. 
 Early in 1821 he presented to the House of Commons the 
 petition of the Catholic body, and, in the most famous of all 
 his speeches, moved and carried by a majority of six a reso- 
 lution in favour of immediate relief. The resolution was 
 followed by a Bill, which was introduced by Plunket, and 
 which, accompanied by a companion measure embodying the 
 ' securities ' which were deemed necessary to the safety of the 
 Establishment, passed through the House of Commons by a 
 majority of nineteen. So signal a triumph had not been 
 anticipated even by the friends of the measure, and Plunket 
 enjoyed for a brief moment a popularity with the masses 
 in Ireland which, despite his long devotion to the interests 
 of the Catholics, he had never before attained. 
 
 Though the ' securities ' or restrictions upon the 
 appointment of Roman Catholic bishops were by no means 
 universally accepted in Ireland, and were indeed denounced 
 by O'Connell at Limerick in language of manufactured 
 violence ' as more penal and persecuting than any of all the 
 statutes passed in the darkest and most bigoted periods of 
 Queen Anne and of the first two Georges,' the general 
 gratification at the adoption of the principle of Emancipa- 
 tion by the House of Commons completely silenced the 
 dissentients. Sheil, who differed all along from O'Connell 
 on the Veto, congratulated the Catholics of Dublin on 
 having reached the day of the political regeneration of 
 Ireland. ' You have not yet entered the Constitution, but,' 
 he proclaimed, ' its gates have been thrown open amidst the 
 acclamation of the Empire, and they stand expanded before 
 you.' In language scarcely less glowing he reminded his 
 countrymen of the debt they owed to those who ' with the 
 thunder of their eloquence have burst the ponderous bars 
 asunder, . . . till at last they have disclosed the great 
 temple to the reception of a long excluded people.' Of 
 Plunket's personal services Sheil made signal acknowledg- 
 ment in the same speech, describing him as having ' borne 
 away the suffrages of the Empire,' and as having ' by a 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 219 
 
 single bound of his vigorous mind reached a point of glory- 
 to which others, by the toil of years and with great talents, 
 have not been able to attain.' High as was this eulogy, it 
 was not exaggerated, and its justice is attested by the most 
 competent and most impartial auditors of Plunket's greatest 
 effort. In Peel's opinion the speech ' stood at the highest 
 in point of ability of any ever heard in the House, combin- 
 ing the rarest powers of eloquence with the strongest 
 powers of reasoning ; ' and Mackintosh averred that it 
 proved its author to be ' the greatest master of eloquence 
 and reasoning then existing in public life.' 
 
 Plunket was, of course, unable to follow the fortunes of 
 the Bill in the Upper House, and in that assembly no 
 kindred orator appeared to overwhelm prejudice by elo- 
 quence, or disarm doubts by victorious argument. Opposed 
 by the Premier and the Chancellor, his Bill was rejected by 
 a majority of thirty-nine, and O'Connell with his irrecon- 
 cileables exulted at the failure of a compromise which they 
 had detested because they feared it. But within a few 
 months of this check the ever-varying kaleidoscope of Irish 
 politics shifted to a new and wholly unexpected combina- 
 tion. George IV. paid his celebrated visit to his Irish 
 dominions, and the unexampled spectacle was witnessed of 
 a united Ireland in which even the truculence of the great 
 agitator was soothed to the language of compliment 
 under the tactful insincerity of the first gentleman in 
 Europe. The King arrived in August. A millennium, 
 which lasted a fortnight, succeeded his visit, and was 
 followed by a winter of outrage and disturbance which 
 exceeded anything that had been witnessed since the Bebel- 
 lion. The Cabinet of Lord Liverpool, unable to cope with 
 the disturbance, and aware of their parliamentary weak- 
 ness, but not yet reconciled to the inevitable, resolved to 
 stave off Emancipation a little longer. They effected a 
 junction with Lord Grenville and his friends ; and the 
 Marquis of Wellesley was sent to Ireland with instructions 
 to resist a change of measures and to effect a change of 
 men. In these circumstances it was a matter of extreme 
 
220 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 importance to the remodelled Ministry to strengthen itself by 
 including in the Irish Government the most representative 
 Irishman to be found in Parliament. The appointment to 
 high office of the foremost parliamentary advocate of Emanci- 
 pation was expected to secure the confidence of Roman 
 Catholic Ireland ; while hostages for the passive acquiescence 
 of the Orangemen in a more liberal administration were found 
 in the persons of the Tories Goulburn and Joy, who respec- 
 tively filled the places of Chief Secretary and Solicitor- 
 General. 
 
 It seemed certain that, as the confidential adviser of the 
 new Lord-Lieutenant, the Attorney-General would now 
 become the virtual governor of Ireland. But it cannot be 
 said that in this new situation Plunket rose to the level of 
 his opportunities, and though it is possible that the internal 
 difficulties at Dublin Castle were quite as great as the 
 external advantages appeared to be, the Viceroyalty of Lord 
 Wellesley ranks as the most disappointing of the nineteenth 
 century. Though an Irish peer, and possessed of a con- 
 siderable Irish estate, "Wellesley knew little of Ireland, and, 
 apparently, still less of Irishmen. Sir Walter Scott, who 
 was in Ireland during his Viceroyalty, and was the guest of 
 the Attorney-General at Plunket's residence at Old Con- 
 naught, hit off the characteristics of his statesmanship in a 
 sentence : ' The marquis's talk gave me the notion of the 
 kind of statesmanship that one might have expected in 
 a Roman emperor, accustomed to keep the whole world in 
 his view, and to divide his hours between ministers like 
 Maecenas and wits like Horace.' Accustomed to the 
 exertion of a despotic authority, he was totally unfitted for 
 a community which demanded the most delicate treatment. 
 ' Graceful as Canning, and perhaps as vain,' his self- 
 confidence would not allow him to purchase ease by such a 
 surrender of his opinion to the counsels of his chief adviser as, 
 during the long predominance of Saurin, had enabled such 
 mediocrities as his predecessors, Richmond, Whitworth, 
 and Talbot, to discharge their duties with sufficient credit 
 and a minimum of unpopularity. Wellesley contrived to 
 
PLUNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 221 
 
 offend the aristocracy by the exaggerated pomposity of 
 his demeanour, and the Protestants generally by forbidding, 
 at O'Connell's dictation, the decorations of the statue of 
 King William III. in College Green. Some exasperated 
 Orangeman threw a bottle at his Excellency's head during 
 a visit to the theatre, and a prosecution, initiated by 
 Plunket on ex-officio informations, after a grand jury had 
 thrown out the ordinary indictments, ended abortively in a 
 disagreement. 
 
 Thenceforward both the Viceroy and his advisers were 
 enveloped in a cloud of unpopularity which emanated 
 equally from both the religious factions. O'Connell, finding 
 that nothing was to be done towards Emancipation, became 
 more than ever active in agitation, and violent of speech ; 
 and Plunket, having, perhaps somewhat prematurely, 
 ordered a prosecution for sedition, had the mortification 
 to find his bills of indictment once more ignored by a 
 grand jury, who, much as they hated O'Connell, hated the 
 Wellesley regime still more. Thenceforward the great 
 orator's popularity was entirely at an end. He had offended 
 both parties mortally, the Catholics not less than their 
 opponents. Sheil's encomiums were changed to lamen- 
 tation and rebuke, and O'Connell was converted from an 
 unruly ally to an implacable foe of the Administration. 
 From that hour the influence of the great agitator was 
 paramount in Ireland. The splendid services rendered by 
 Plunket to the Catholic cause were speedily forgotten in the 
 odium incurred in the contest he was thenceforward obliged 
 to wage with the Catholic Association and its chief ; and all 
 hopes of an Emancipation Bill on the lines of Plunket's 
 were at an end. 
 
 On the accession of Canning to power in 1827 Plunket 
 was at length removed from this atmosphere of unpleasant 
 contention, and was raised to the peerage, though the 
 hostility of George IV. delayed until 1831 the great prize of 
 the Irish Chancellorship. But with the concluding period 
 of Plunket's career we are not concerned here. The posses- 
 sion of the seals added dignity to his already acknowledged 
 
222 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 eminence, but it did not add to his reputation. Great as he 
 had been as an advocate, he had never been a really pro- 
 found lawyer, and his long judicial record did little to enlarge 
 his fame. 
 
 It is by the large part he played in the long struggle for 
 Catholic Emancipation that Plunket as a man of affairs 
 must be judged. The glory of his eloquence detraction has 
 never dimmed and rancour could never injure. By their 
 combination of the most glowing rhetoric with the most 
 cogent reasoning powers, his speeches must always rank as 
 among the highest expressions of human thought. In point 
 of pure intellect he was perhaps the foremost Irishman of 
 the nineteenth century. Yet in the history of his country 
 Plunket's figure stands for a stately presence, rather than 
 a commanding force. His deficiency in those attendant 
 qualities which make men great in action, and which win 
 enthusiasm as well as admiration, has undoubtedly lowered 
 his fame in the eyes of posterity, while the apparent coldness 
 of his temperament and the austerity of his manner deprived 
 him of those hosts of warm friends whose praises have often 
 served to inflate reputations based on a genius far less 
 splendid than Plunket's. He was also of a somewhat 
 fretful disposition, and though Croker's remark that ' when 
 Plunket is sulky no one is so sulky,' presents an exaggerated 
 aspect of this trait, some letters in Lord Eathmore's bio- 
 graphy indicate an unnecessary susceptibility in regard to 
 the criticism of his colleagues upon his political conduct. 
 His speeches are curiously deficient in humour, but in this 
 quality, as his letters and many anecdotes record, he 
 was not deficient, though his jests had usually a somewhat 
 saturnine flavour. Plunket also did himself some disservice 
 by a curious lack of energy in ordinary affairs which stands 
 in odd contrast to the strength of conviction which, accord- 
 ing to Bulwer Lytton, was the secret of his impressiveness 
 
 as an orator : 
 
 Man has no majesty like earnestness. 
 
 But these defects and drawbacks should not be suffered 
 to degrade Plunket from his true place in the history of his 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 223 
 
 country. As the inner course of politics becomes more and 
 more fully revealed in the memoirs and state papers of his 
 age, the impression he created and the influence he exerted 
 on his contemporaries are becoming more and more fully 
 understood. And though the pen of the historian of the 
 nineteenth century in Ireland must often be devoted to 
 more picturesque and more popular personalities, it can be 
 occupied with none that have exerted a more splendid genius 
 or a more sincere patriotism in behalf of the essential 
 liberties of their countrymen. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 LETTER WRITTEN BY PLUNKET TO A FRIEND IN AMERICA, 
 DESCRIBING THE STATE OF IRELAND IN THE AUTUMN 
 OF 1798. 
 
 Dear Dunn, — I persuade myself you will not be sorry to re- 
 ceive a few lines from a very sincere friend on this side of the 
 Atlantic, and to hear some account of affairs in this country. 
 Indeed, I would have put you to this trouble sooner if we had not 
 all been in daily expectation of seeing you. You have not sus- 
 tained any great loss of comfort by your absence, for we have 
 lived in a state of perpetual anxiety and danger almost ever since 
 you left Ireland. You have heard, no doubt, the general history 
 of the rebellion here, and perhaps from what we all know of the 
 state of preparation in which the minds of a great majority of the 
 people were, it did not much surprise you. I send you by this 
 conveyance the report of the Committees of the two Houses, 
 which will give you more detailed information on the subject than 
 you may probably have met with. 
 
 Though it appears that Government had very early notice of 
 the designs of the United Irishmen and of the full extent of them, 
 and though they had come to a very early resolution of putting 
 them down by force and coercion merely, they certainly made no 
 preparations, correspondent with this resolution, for this event, 
 which must have been foreseen. Sir Ralph Abercrombie had come 
 over here as Commander-in-Chief and had begun to put the army 
 on a respectable footing, but some noblemen who were colonels of 
 Militia regiments took offence at his conduct, and he was obliged 
 to go away. The consequence was that, at the time of the public 
 
224 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 bursting out of the rebellion on the 23rd of May last, the Govern- 
 ment was in a situation totally unable to cope with the insurgents. 
 The plans of these latter had been laid with so much judgment 
 and pursued with so much activity and perseverance that it still 
 remains to me a matter of much astonishment how they could 
 have failed. The immediate preservation of the country was 
 owing to the yeomanry. The early example set by the Lawyers 
 Corps, in particular, and their zeal and alacrity when the hour of 
 danger came, produced, I am convinced, the most happy con- 
 sequences over the whole Kingdom. Notwithstanding all their 
 exertions Dublin very narrowly escaped falling into the hands of 
 the enemy, both at the first breaking out of the business and after- 
 wards in the progress of it, and I have little doubt in my own 
 mind that, if even the small body of 1,000 French who since 
 landed at Killala had arrived during the rebellion and while Lord 
 Camden was here, the country would have been subdued. The 
 measures, both military and civil, of Lord Cornwallis have very 
 much altered the face of our affairs, and if he shall be effectually 
 supported by those who affect to be the friends of Government, or 
 if he shall be even suffered to pursue his own views, there is some 
 reason to hope that all things may end quietly here. The late 
 victories in the Mediterranean and the recent and total failure of 
 the French expedition against this country have at the least given 
 us a breathing time, and if the interval be wisely used I think 
 there will be left but a very small and contemptible party in favour 
 of revolutionary measures. The mind of the North of Ireland 
 has certainly undergone a material change. The conduct of the 
 Great Nation to America, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, &c, has 
 completely opened their eyes as to what they may expect from 
 them, and besides, the novelty and new fanglement of revolutionary 
 clubs and committees having worn off, I believe the great body of 
 those who were disaffected are now disposed to mind their busi- 
 ness and dismiss politics from their thoughts. The great danger 
 appears to me to result from the Catholic question. When you 
 were here there were, I believe, but very few ' Orangemen,' and 
 these confined principally to the county of Armagh. They have 
 since grown into a very formidable body, and in almost every part 
 of the Kingdom. They are composed almost entirely of red-hot 
 Protestant ascendency men ; you know the degree of political 
 sagacity and moderation possessed by that description of city 
 and country gentlemen here, and how conciliating they would 
 probably be both in act and expression towards their Catholic 
 brethren. The fact is that partly owing to the insolence of their 
 
PLDNKET AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 225 
 
 language on all occasions, and to the oppressiveness of their con- 
 duct in many instances, and partly owing to the artful exaggerations 
 of this by the disaffected party, the Catholics, the lower orders of 
 them particularly, have been taught to believe that a systematic 
 plan has been formed for their extermination ; and they have been 
 disposed to recriminate, and in many instances have done so in 
 the most dreadful manner; insomuch so that in some par's 
 of the country, particularly in Wexford and Kildare, whole dis- 
 tricts have been laid waste and the Protestant inhabitants either 
 murdered or forced to fly. Lord Cornwallis has in every instance 
 discouraged this Orange system, in which they had even been so 
 absurd as to involve the Militia and marching regiments, and to 
 make all the Protestant soldiers wear Orange emblems as a test 
 of loyalty, the consequence of which to our army, three fourths 
 of whom are Roman Catholics, you may readily conceive. This 
 spirit has been a good deal checked by the marked disapprobation 
 of Lord Cornwallis, but is still far from being subdued ; and if it 
 should succeed so far as to make the question of loyal or disloyal 
 narrow itself into that of Protestant or Papist, I absolutely must 
 despair of the safety of this country. 
 
 Have I tired you with politics, or shall I proceed to tell you that 
 there are very prevalent rumours of an union being in immediate 
 contemplation of the British Cabinet? Indeed I have stronger 
 ground than mere rumour for supposing that such a measure is in 
 agitation, and even that the heads of the plan have been digested. 
 The measure has long been a favourite one with the British 
 Government, and perhaps this may be thought a favourable moment 
 for bringing it forward — when moderate men are disgusted with the 
 excesses which have taken place on the popular side. I cannot, 
 however, suffer myself to think that it will be thought prudent to 
 make the experiment when it is known how rooted an opposition 
 must be given to it by all those persons and classes of persons who 
 are most likely to influence, and may indeed be said to constitute, 
 the public mind here ; at the same time, if the people of England 
 concur in it, there is little doubt that they can procure a majority 
 in this Parliament to adopt it, and that it would for the present 
 be submitted to, but it seems to me equally clear that in the course 
 of not many years it would be followed by a separation, an event 
 ruinous both to Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 It is now full time for me to give you some private news of 
 some of your friends here. To begin with myself, I have come into 
 Parliament for one of Lord Charlemont's seats, which he proposed 
 to me in a very handsome and flattering manner. Whether I have 
 
 Q 
 
226 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 acted a prudent part in at all coming into Parliament I do not 
 know. In all events, the situation in which I am placed corre- 
 sponds perfectly with my sentiments, and I am at liberty to act in 
 a manner which, though it cannot recommend me to my party, yet 
 I think may be not without some use to the country. Your friend 
 Dobbs is my colleague. The only alterations which have taken 
 place at the Bar are the retirement of Burston, the death of Mark 
 Beresford, and the advancement of Wolfe to the King's Bench in 
 the room of Clonmel. His (Clonmel's) good fortune accompanied 
 him to the very last : he died on the night of the 22nd May, im- 
 mediately previous to the day on which the rebellion broke out, 
 and on which the city of Dublin was to have been seized and the 
 principal members of the aristocracy destroyed. I assure you 
 many sagacious people augured very favourably to the revolution 
 from that circumstance. All those changes have hitherto pro- 
 duced very little effect on the Bar, as the terrors of the revolution 
 had nearly put a stop to all business, so that on your return you 
 will find things pretty nearly in statu quo. Bob Day has been 
 made a Judge in the place of Bob Boyd who resigned, and Luke 
 Fox has turned patriot. Politicians pretend to connect these 
 events in the relation of cause and effect ; for my part I give no 
 opinion. Your friend Barrington was promoted on the death of 
 Flood to the place of Judge of the Admiralty, which you know is 
 held during good behaviour, and Egan was appointed to succeed 
 Day as Judge of Kilmainham, which office, in order to gratify him, 
 has been by an Act of last session made independent of the Crown. 
 Those two great patriots have so much of the old Roman feeling 
 about them that no considerations of gratitude could restrain their 
 zeal for the public, and accordingly they have been in violent 
 opposition during the whole of the Session : you see there is still 
 some virtue left amongst us. Arthur O'Connor and a large cargo 
 of Irish patriots are on the point of departure. It is said they are 
 intended as a present for America. I doubt much whether they 
 will not be considered as an acquisition. You will be surprised at 
 seeing in the report of the Committee of the Lords some facts 
 relative to Grattan. In consequence of his acquiescing under that 
 statement without any attempt at denial, he has been struck off 
 the list of the Privy Council and disfranchised by most of our 
 corporations. I lament that he has subjected himself to any 
 degradation, for such a man is much wanting to Ireland. 
 
 The Ponsonbys have absented themselves from Parliament, 
 grand juries, and all part in the constituted authorities, &c. Their 
 whole party (Bowes Daly, &c.) have pursued the same course. 
 
PLUNKET AND EOMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 227 
 
 Lattei'ly they seemed disposed to relent a little, but I should 
 suppose they are not yet quite satisfied how things will turn out, 
 and they have already had enough of guessing. Toler, in his new 
 situation of Attorney-General, is just as dignified and discreet as 
 you would have supposed. Jack Stewart, solicitor, and Osborne 
 counsel to the Commissioners. I think I have given you a suffi- 
 cient dose of public and private history. Your friends here are 
 anxious in their turn to hear something from you about your side 
 of the water, but would rather learn it from yourself in person 
 than by letter. We are indeed all very anxious to see you here 
 again speedily, and lament that any business should be of sufficient 
 importance to detain you so long, though there never was a 
 time at which a professional man might with more impunity have 
 been absent than hitherto. I think, however, things will now very 
 rapidly alter, and I am sure you will not think it an impertinent in- 
 trusion in me to tell you that all your professional friends here 
 look anxiously for your return, and hope it will not be deferred a 
 great while longer. Let me assure you that there is not one 
 among them who more sincerely and affectionately wishes for it 
 than I do. If this should find you in America and you should 
 make any further stay there, I hope you will let me have a few 
 lines from you, and let me know if there is anything I can do for 
 you here until you return. Your family are all well — I need say 
 nothing particular of them, as they write to you by this conveyance. 
 
 The D joins me in affectionate regards to you, as do Mrs. 
 
 Plunket and my sisters. 
 
 Believe me, dear Dunn, 
 
 Very truly and affectionately yours, 
 
 W. C. Plunket. 
 
 Dublin, Ootober 22, 1798. 
 
 q 2 
 
228 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 VI 
 
 SIB BOYLE BOCHE 
 
 Heeodotus is not more indisputably the father of history 
 than is Sir Boyle Eoche the father of bulls. No doubt there 
 were makers of bulls before his day, even as brave men lived 
 before Agamemnon ; but they are not remembered, and if 
 their bulls have survived them they are credited to Sir 
 Boyle by a posterity generously forgiving and forgetful of 
 his famous indictment. It is true that Richard Lovell 
 Edgeworth, in his once celebrated Essay on Irish Bulls — of 
 which, by the way, the only readable pages were written by 
 his daughter — makes no mention of his still more celebrated 
 contemporary. But then Richard Edgeworth, with all his 
 peculiarities, was a gentleman of the old school ; and in 
 1800 it was not considered good form to put one's acquain- 
 tances into a book. Besides, it may be doubted whether 
 Edgeworth really knew what a bull is. Judged by his 
 illustrations, he certainly did not. Thus he quotes as an 
 example of a bull the blunder of the French gentleman who, 
 in endeavouring to compliment an actress, replied to her 
 modest self-depreciation that 'to act that part a person 
 should be young and handsome,' ' Ah madam ! you are a 
 complete proof to the contrary.' This is a blunder, a 
 gaucherie, but it is surely not a bull. Edgeworth's object, 
 however, was to prove that the form of blunder known as a 
 bull is not peculiarly Irish, and, like all special pleaders, he 
 loses himself occasionally in the refinements of his own 
 arguments, frequently confounding the exaggeration of 
 hyperbole with the extravagance of a bull. 
 
 But we must not press too hardly on a writer who lacked 
 the enlightening definitions which have been supplied by 
 
SIR BOYLE EOCHE 229 
 
 subsequent interpreters from the days of Sydney Smith to 
 those of the editor of the ' New English Dictionary.' The 
 latter, by the way, supports Kichard Edgeworth's view. He 
 defines a bull as ' a self-contradictory proposition ; an 
 expression containing a manifest contradiction in terms, or 
 involving a ludicrous inconsistency unperceived by the 
 speaker ; now often with epithet Irish, but the word had 
 been long in use before it became associated with Irishmen.' 
 By way of illustrating the latter assertion, the editor quotes 
 from the letter of a soldier in the year 1702 : ' These gentle- 
 men seem to me to have copied the bull of their countryman, 
 who said his mother was barren.' The context of this is 
 not given, but one would be inclined to lay odds that the 
 gentlemen were Irishmen, in which case a very respectable 
 antiquity is ascribed to what the editor alleges to be only 
 a very modern connection between bulls and Irishmen. 
 Sydney Smith's attempt comes nearer the mark. ' A bull,' 
 he says, ' is an apparent congruity and real incongruity of 
 ideas suddenly discovered.' But these and all other defini- 
 tions miss one of the chief elements in the humour of a bull, 
 which is surely the unconsciousness of its author when 
 making it. The essence of a bull is really indefinable ; but, 
 fortunately, this does not matter, for the distinction of a 
 real bull is that it is instantly recognisable as such. And 
 this it is which gives Sir Boyle Roche his acknowledged 
 pre-eminence. All his authentic bulls are manifest at once 
 for what they are. They are absurdities incapable of 
 explanation, but needing none ; verbally irreconcileable in 
 their contradictions, yet unmistakably conveying the mean- 
 ing intended. They are lucid obscurities, in which the 
 verbal confusion is not sufficient to conceal the speaker's 
 idea. When, for instance, Sir Boyle asserted that ' the best 
 way to avoid danger is to meet it plump,' he only gave 
 awkward expression in a ludicrous form to a serious truth. 
 The bull may pass for an aphorism. Sir Jonah Barrington, 
 atoning in this as in other cases for the inaccuracy of his 
 facts by the shrewdness of his observation, notes that Sir 
 Boyle seldom launched a blunder from which some fine 
 
230 . STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 maxim might not be extracted. Every one is familiar in 
 the modern House of Commons with the amendments 
 which he deprecated in the Irish one — ' amendments which 
 make matters worse ; ' and inspectors of weights and 
 measures, as well as the bibulous public, have had reason 
 before now to sympathise with his proposed bill to enact 
 that ' a quart bottle should hold a quart.' His bulls however 
 are not always quite so pointed. Sir Boyle's infelicitous 
 mode of conveying an invitation to a noble lord to partake 
 of his hospitality is among the best known of his blunders : 
 — ' I hope, my lord, if ever you come within a mile of my 
 house, that you'll stay there all night,' a blunder which has a 
 family resemblance to the most immortal of all his bulls, 
 that of the bird in two places at once. 
 
 It is not a little strange, and is certainly subversive of 
 the popular conception of him as the Fool of the Grattan 
 Parliament, that the greater part of Sir Boyle Roche's 
 public career was passed in the discharge of the duties of 
 an office for which a dignified and decorous demeanour is 
 among the chief essentials. The member of Parliament 
 who survives in popular recollection as a mountebank and 
 buffoon held for close on a quarter of a century the office of 
 Gentleman Usher and Master of the Ceremonies to the Irish 
 Court. If he was also unofficially appointed to the post of 
 Court Jester, he knew when to lay aside his cap and bells, 
 and took care to observe all the minutiae of Viceregal 
 ceremony. We find Lord Charlemont referring to his 
 approval as a necessary condition precedent to a visit from 
 the Lord Lieutenant. His Excellency (Lord Camden) will 
 honour him thus ' if etiquette and Sir Boyle permit.' It is 
 perhaps worth while, in recalling some of the specimens of 
 unconscious humour which have made Sir Boyle Boche's 
 name so familiar, to gather together the few facts regarding 
 his life which seem worth preserving, and which, at so great 
 a distance from his death, it still remains possible to collect 
 from sundry scattered sources. 
 
 Sir Boyle, who was born in 1736, was the youngest of 
 three sons of Jordan Roche, a small squire in the county 
 
SIE BOYLE EOCHE 231 
 
 Galway, whose immediate ancestors had migrated to Con- 
 naught, embracing the less disagreeable of Cromwell's 
 compulsory alternatives. Whether or not his boast was 
 warranted that he ' had more Macs and O's in his name 
 than all the O'Callaghans, O'Brallaghans, and O'Briens put 
 together,' there is no doubt that Sir Boyle came of ancient 
 Irish lineage — the Galway Roches being a branch of the 
 family of which Lord Fermoy was the head. Prior to their 
 exodus they had occupied a good position in Limerick, of 
 which city Sir Boyle's great-grandfather had been four 
 times Mayor. His grandfather's adherence to the loyalist 
 cause was the origin of the family misfortunes to which Sir 
 Boyle thus referred in the Irish House of Commons. ' I am 
 descended from a noble family in this country, who lost high 
 honours and extensive properties for their loyalty. They 
 sacrificed everything that was dear in this life to support a 
 race of kings in their time to whom they swore fealty and 
 allegiance.' 
 
 At the Bestoration the exiled family made an unsuc- 
 cessful attempt to obtain possession of their old lands in 
 Limerick ; but their loyalty to the Stuarts gained for the head 
 of the family the barren honour of being created an Irish peer 
 — Lord Tarbert of Cahirvalla was his title — by James II., 
 after the deposition of that monarch. A sister of this 
 gentleman was married to Sir Toby Butler, the Irish 
 Solicitor-General of James II., who is known in history as 
 the draughtsman of the Treaty of Limerick, and of whose 
 life the only other recorded incident marks him as an 
 appropriate branch of Sir Boyle's family tree. Sir Toby, it 
 appears, like not a few of his contemporaries, was fond of 
 his glass ; but on one occasion, being engaged in an important 
 suit, he was induced by his attorney to pledge himself not 
 to touch a drop of liquor until the conclusion of the trial. 
 Having gained the verdict, Sir Toby was congratulated by 
 his attorney both on his forensic success, and on the absti- 
 nence which was assumed to have contributed not a little 
 thereto. ' Not so fast,' replied the advocate ; ■ I pledged my 
 word I would not drink a drop of claret till I had concluded 
 
232 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 my argument, and no more I did. But I soaked two fresh 
 penny loaves in two bottles of claret, and I ate them ! ' 
 
 The Koche family was, of course, originally Eoman 
 Catholic, and it does not appear at what period its head con- 
 formed to the established religion. Probably it was Sir Boyle's 
 father who 'verted at the same time that he sold his Galway 
 estate and settled in co. Limerick. Through his mother, Sir 
 Boyle was connected with Lord Kenmare's family, a connec- 
 tion which had its consequences in the best-known episode in 
 Roche's career as an active politician. Young Roche early 
 embraced a military career, and is stated to have been present 
 at the siege of Quebec. He certainly served in America and 
 the West Indies, where he won considerable distinction ; and 
 by 1770 he had attained the rank of major in the 28th Foot. 
 On the breaking out of the American war of independence 
 Roche was among the first to volunteer for service, and, ' at- 
 tended by his captain and a grand procession, beat up for 
 recruits in Limerick, and met with great success,' raising as 
 many as five hundred recruits for the King's army. ' He 
 was the first man of rank,' says the historian of Limerick, 
 1 who, when the war broke out in America, with an honest 
 zeal for his Majesty's service, beat up in person for recruits. 
 Lord Kenmare gave half a guinea additional bounty to every 
 recruit.' On his retirement from the army Roche was 
 appointed to a small sinecure in the Revenue, and at once 
 entered Parliament. He remained a member of the Irish 
 House of Commons down to the Union, sitting successively 
 for the boroughs of Tralee, Gowran, Portarlington, and Old 
 Leighlin. In 1778 he was appointed Gentleman Usher to 
 the Lord Lieutenant, receiving a knighthood at the same 
 time. In 1780 the functions of Master of the Ceremonies 
 were added to those he already discharged, and in 1782 he 
 received a baronetcy from Lord Temple, the Lord Lieutenant. 
 Sir Boyle retained his position of Gentleman Usher and 
 Master of the Ceremonies, as well as his seat in Parliament, 
 down to the Union, but on the demise of the Grattan Parlia- 
 ment he did not seek election to the Imperial legislature. He 
 made several attempts to secure a peerage ; and seems to 
 
SIE BOYLE EOCHE 233 
 
 have gone very near attaining that object during Lord 
 Westmorland's administration. Indeed, it seems strange 
 that at a period when peerages were so often the direct and 
 immediate reward of political service, so diligent a promoter 
 of ministerial interests should have failed to reach the 
 dignity he desired. In 1801 he resigned his position at Court, 
 receiving a pension of 300Z. a year, subsequently raised to 
 400Z. He died in Dublin, June 4, 1807. 
 
 Such are the main landmarks in Sir Boyle Roche's career, 
 with the important exception of his marriage to Mary, 
 daughter of Sir Thomas Frankland, a Yorkshire baronet. 
 Sir Boyle, proud of this alliance with an English family of 
 ancient lineage, is said to have been fond of referring to Sir 
 Thomas's kindness in having given him his eldest daughter 
 — a boast which provoked Curran's retort, ' Ay, Sir Boyle ! 
 and, depend on it, if he had had an older one, he would have 
 given her to you.' Whether it was this sarcasm which 
 provoked Sir Boyle's hostility, or that an enmity had already 
 been created between Koche and Curran, it is certain that 
 the two men were perpetually sparring at each other in the 
 House of Commons, as the debates of the Irish Parliament 
 testify. Nor was the witty advocate and orator always 
 successful in these encounters. One biting repartee survives 
 to disprove Curran's assertion that all Sir Boyle's sayings 
 were carefully elaborated. The former had observed one 
 night, somewhat magniloquently, that he needed aid from 
 no one, and could be ' the guardian of his own honour ; ' 
 whereupon Sir Boyle instantly interjected his sarcastic 
 congratulations to the honourable member on his possession 
 of a sinecure. 
 
 It was, however, by no means exclusively as a master of 
 tart repartee that Sir Boyle acquired his unique reputation 
 as a Parliamentary humorist of the highest order. On the 
 contrary, it was mainly by virtue of his genial manners and 
 kindliness of disposition, joined to his extraordinary facility 
 for felicitous blundering, that he was enabled to attain the 
 position of first favourite with all parties in the House. 
 ' Such was his humour,' says a contemporary, ' that he could 
 
234 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 at any time change the temper of the House. Through his 
 pleasant interference the most angry debates have frequently 
 concluded with peals of laughter.' Such a talent was 
 naturally useful to ministers, who often found Sir Boyle 
 Roche's bull a better answer to a troublesome opposition 
 than any which the front bench could offer. Who could 
 pursue further the prosaic and utilitarian argument that a 
 grant from the Exchequer would operate unjustly on the 
 taxpayers of a future generation in the face of Sir Boyle's 
 triumphant interrogative, ' Why should we put ourselves out 
 of our way to do anything for posterity ; for what has 
 posterity done for us ? ' 
 
 The debates of the Grattan Parliament are unexplained 
 and unaccompanied by any such pleasantly instructive 
 commentaries as those which Mr. Lucy has provided for 
 the information of future generations. The prosaic and 
 businesslike methods of Parliamentary reporters of the old 
 school disdained the irrelevancies of applause or hilarity. 
 There are no sign-posts, no ' cheers and laughter ' in brackets 
 to quickly direct the student to Sir Boyle Eoche's bulls, and 
 the ' Essence of Parliament ' is only to be distilled by dili- 
 gent perusal of the memoirs and correspondence of contempo- 
 rary celebrities. It is likely, too, that just as the friendly 
 reporter of to-day trims and smoothes the slipshod rhetoric 
 of our modern legislators, the decorous editor of these old 
 debates expunged many of Sir Boyle Eoche's choicest mots. 
 But, despite these drawbacks, the ' Parliamentary Eegister 
 of the House of Commons of Ireland ' enables us to get a very 
 fair idea of the Parliamentary oratory of the member for 
 Tralee. Here, for example, is his method of diverting the 
 attention of the House from the powerful speech in which 
 Curran had recommended a motion for an inquiry into 
 abuses in the Boards of Stamps and Accounts : — 
 
 Though I am in point of consequence the smallest man 
 among the respectable majority in this House, yet I cannot 
 help feeling the heavy shower of the honourable gentleman's 
 illiberal and unfounded abuse. If I had his advantage of 
 
SIR BOYLE ROCHE 235 
 
 being bred to the learned profession of the law, I should be 
 the better enabled to follow the honourable gentleman 
 through the long windings of his declamation ; by such 
 means I should be blest with the gift of the gab, and could 
 declaim for an hour or two upon the turning of a straw, and 
 yet say nothing to the purpose ; then I could stamp and 
 stare, and rend and tear, and look up to the gods and 
 goddesses for approbation, etc., etc. 
 
 Again, in a similar strain of irrelevant but good-humoured 
 absurdity, he is found laughing away the effects of one of 
 Grattan's most passionate pieces of declamation by a ludicrous 
 hypothesis : — 
 
 Pray, Mr. Speaker, would it not be very comical if I 
 should become a Whig ? I wonder how I should look ? 
 But if that day should ever come, then we, the Whigs, in 
 opposition, will feel ourselves warranted by present ex- 
 perience to discharge a demi-culverin of filth on the Tories 
 (who now call themselves Whigs), that shall so daub and 
 besmear them that they shall only be fit for the hospital for 
 incurables. 
 
 On another occasion he expressed his antipathy to a 
 petition from the Dissenters of Belfast in favour of the 
 Catholics in these uncompromising terms : — 
 
 Now the question is whether we will receive the 
 insidious petition of a turbulent, disorderly set of people 
 whom no king can govern, or no God can please ; or whether 
 we shall treat it with merited contempt. For my part, I 
 call on you to dispose of it by tossing it over the bar, and 
 kicking it into the lobby ; and I am determined to divide 
 the House on it, even if I should stand alone in so just a 
 cause. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand that burlesque of this 
 kind, delivered in a rich brogue, endeared Sir Boyle to an 
 assembly not unwilling to be amused ; and as his verbal 
 oddities were not inconsistent with a soldierly appearance, or 
 the manners of a well-bred gentleman and courtier occupy- 
 ing a dignified position at the Viceregal Court, he enjoyed 
 exceptional facilities for turning his humour, conscious and 
 
236 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 unconscious, to account. Even his opponents had a kindly- 
 word for the genial Master of the Ceremonies. The author 
 of ' Irish Political Characters,' an opposition scribe, thus 
 sketches him in 1799, towards the close of his career : — 
 
 He speaks often, although under the greatest disad- 
 vantages ; for to oratory he has not, and surely cannot 
 imagine himself to have, the most distant pretensions. Of 
 all brogueers he is the greatest. His language is neither 
 simple, correct, nor pure, seemingly the spontaneous produc- 
 tion of the moment, though conceived with ease, yet 
 delivered with difficulty ; in a high degree quaint, and richly 
 ornamented with that flower of rhetoric called a bull. His 
 action is vehement and forcible. In reasoning, he has 
 occasionally much dry humour, and is not destitute at times 
 of point and sarcastic allusion. 
 
 He had an excellent memory ; so good, indeed, as to give 
 rise to the belief that his speeches were written for him by 
 abler hands, and got by heart by Sir Boyle. On one occasion 
 he illustrated the accuracy of his memory and the audacity 
 of his character at the expense of a brother member. Mr. 
 Serjeant Stanley, anxious to produce an effect in an 
 important debate, had been at the pains to reduce his speech 
 to writing. Unluckily for himself, the Serjeant happened to 
 drop his manuscript in the coffee-room, and walked back into 
 the House unconscious of his loss. Sir Boyle Eoche, picking 
 up the document, speedily made himself master of its 
 contents, and, rising at the first opportunity, delivered the 
 speech almost verbatim in the hearing of its dismayed and 
 astonished author. Sir Boyle's apology, when he had finished, 
 only added insult to injury. ' Here, my dear Stanley, is your 
 speech again, and I thank you kindly for the loan of it. I 
 never was so much at a loss for a speech in the whole 
 course of my life ; and sure it is not a pin the worse for 
 the wear.' On another occasion he amused and relieved the 
 House, when irritated by the prospect of being obliged to 
 listen to the reading of a mass of documents as a preliminary 
 to a resolution, by suggesting that a dozen or so of clerks 
 should be called in, who might read the documents 
 
SIR BOYLE ROCHE 237 
 
 simultaneously and thus dispose of the business in a few 
 minutes. 
 
 Notwithstanding the frequency of his appearances on the 
 floor of the House, he was not above pleading the time- 
 honoured excuses of the rhetorical tyro, and is to be found 
 commencing an harangue with the stale exordium ' Unaccus- 
 tomed as I am to public speaking.' But possibly Sir Boyle 
 was the inventor of this classic phrase. Of actual bulls 
 the Debates do not afford many specimens, though a few 
 genuine ones are to be found in them. Deprecating a charge 
 of inequality in the commercial relations between Great 
 Britain and Ireland, he observed that ' he is an enemy 
 to both kingdoms who wishes to diminish the brotherly 
 affection of the two sister countries.' The petition of the 
 citizens of Belfast in favour of the Boman Catholics he 
 described as ' an airy fabric based upon a sandy foundation.' 
 In the discussions on the Union he observed that, ' what- 
 ever clamour might be raised by interested men against 
 a legislative union, he would venture to prophesy that the 
 country would arrive at that state that when the Day of 
 Judgment would come, the people of Ireland would call 
 out and implore for an Union.' His readiness to give up 
 ' not only a part, but, if necessary, even the whole of our 
 constitution to preserve the remainder ' is worthy of the 
 most advanced disciples of a Tory .Democracy. To Junius 
 he referred as ' an anonymous writer named Junius,' and 
 he was heard on another occasion to ' answer boldly in 
 the affirmative " No " ! ' In deprecating the excesses of 
 the French Kevolution he conjured up a gruesome picture 
 of the unbridled fury of the mob. 'Here, perhaps, sir, 
 the murderous Marshal Law Men (Marseillois) would 
 break in, cut us to mincemeat, and throw our bleeding 
 heads on that table to stare us in the face.' His inter- 
 vention in debate was sometimes deprecated by the Oppo- 
 sition, which, on one occasion, tried to cough him down. 
 He met the interruption by producing some bullets, with 
 the observation — ' I have here some excellent pills to 
 cure a cough.' His personal courage being beyond dis- 
 
238 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 pute, this jest in earnest was quite sufficient in those 
 duelling days to procure attention for the remainder of his 
 speech. 1 
 
 From these specimens of his Parliamentary style it will be 
 gathered that Sir Boyle was not a very serious politician, or 
 at least that he did not take a very serious view of his duties 
 as a member of Parliament. And although he made himself 
 useful to the administration and was employed as a go-between 
 in more than one matter of delicacy and importance, his most 
 notable appearances in the political arena only serve to 
 emphasise this want of seriousness. His best-known achieve- 
 ment in this capacity is his extraordinary intervention in the 
 proceedings of the Volunteer Convention of 1783, in which 
 he acted a part only less remarkable than his immunity from 
 the opprobrium which might have been expected to attach to 
 it. One of the principal questions before the Convention was 
 that of the admission of Bonian Catholics to the franchise ; 
 and it was an object of importance to the Irish Government 
 to prevent this question from receiving the impetus which a 
 resolution of the Convention in its favour would be 
 likely to give to it. To defeat the supporters of the move- 
 ment, Lord Northington, the Lord-Lieutenant, and his 
 advisers availed themselves of the services of Sir Boyle Boche, 
 whose family connections with Lord Kenmare and others 
 enabled him to assume the part of an accredited exponent of 
 the sentiments of the Boman Catholic aristocracy. Sir Boyle 
 accordingly authorised a leading member of the Convention 
 to announce on the part of Lord Kenmare, when the question 
 came up for discussion, that the Boman Catholic leaders had 
 abandoned the notion of demanding further enfranchisement. 
 On reference to Lord Kenmare it turned out that that noble- 
 man had never authorised any such communication. The 
 equanimity of Sir Boyle Boche was, however, quite undis- 
 turbed by this disclosure, and he defended himself by saying 
 that Lord Kenmare being at a distance from town, he had 
 felt warranted in making such a statement by his knowledge 
 
 ' This incident is introduced by Charles Lever in his novel of The Knight 
 of (1 wynne. 
 
SIR BOYLE ROCHE 239 
 
 of his lordship's sentiments. It must in justice be observed 
 that, indefensible as was Roche's conduct on the occasion, 
 his unauthorised statement did little injustice to Lord 
 Kenmare's private sentiments, as appears from the guarded 
 terras of the repudiation and from the subsequent conduct of 
 that nobleman in relation to the Catholic claims. 
 
 Although his conduct on this occasion has left Sir Boyle 
 Roche under the reproach of being a vehement opponent of 
 concession to his Roman Catholic countrymen, such a view 
 of him is contrary to his known sympathies and expressed 
 opinions. He was one of those who, like Lords Fingall and 
 Kenmare, as well as many liberal statesmen of the day, 
 desired the abolition of the Penal Laws, but believed that 
 concession to be safe must be gradual. He was really the 
 representative in the House of Commons of the sentiments 
 of that Catholic nobility to which he was allied ; and in the 
 debate on the Catholic petition of 1792, he amused the 
 House of Commons with a ludicrous, if scurrilous, description 
 of the plebeian leaders who immediately after ousted the 
 nobility in the Catholic Convention known as the ' Back 
 Lane Parliament.' But, on the other hand, he supported 
 the Franchise Bill of 1793 in language which bears the 
 impress of sincerity and earnestness. ' The Bill,' he said, 
 'in its present form I think a total emancipation of the 
 Catholics, as far as is consistent with the constitution ; and 
 as that has always been my landmark, the present Bill has 
 my entire approbation. Every person who knows me must 
 be sensible how much I have at heart the interest of the 
 Roman Catholics. I should act against my nature should 
 not that be the case ; I am descended from them, and my 
 nearest and dearest connections are among them.' 
 
 Sir Boyle Roche, though he survives in popular recollec- 
 tion only through his bulls, his blunders, and his oddities, 
 thus appears to have occupied a conspicuous social, and a 
 by no means inconsiderable political position in the Ireland 
 of his day. It speaks highly for his genuine kindliness of 
 disposition that in times when political acrimony was un- 
 sparing in denunciation and misrepresentation, but few of 
 
240 STUDIES IN IRISH IIISTOBY 
 
 the shafts of party malice were directed against him. Had 
 it been otherwise— had his ability been greater or his 
 amiability less — it could never have happened that close on 
 a century after his death he should stand as the typical 
 representative of a mental peculiarity characteristically Irish 
 in humour and in good-humour. 
 
241 
 
 VII 
 
 THOMAS STEELE 
 
 It has often been remarked that the history of Irish politics 
 and the careers of Irish politicians present curiously little 
 trace of those distinctively Irish features which are commonly 
 associated with the Irish people. The most careless, happy- 
 go-lucky, or devil-may-care Irishman, if he takes to politics, 
 is apt to bid good-bye to the geniality, high spirits, fun and 
 humour which are commonly imputed to Irishmen of all creeds 
 and classes as part of the heritage of the race. O'Connell is 
 perhaps the only great popular leader who has carried into 
 political contests something of the native-born humour 
 which belonged to him ; and even O'Connell was never half 
 so much an Irishman at Westminster as in the Four Courts 
 at Dublin. The Irish politician, to whichever party he 
 happens to belong, is generally in such deadly earnest that 
 he gives his natural geniality little or no chance of asserting 
 itself. Even in the old Irish House of Commons, where the 
 atmosphere might be supposed to have been more favourable 
 to native wit, the tone of political discussion was just as 
 serious as it is at Westminster. A professional buffoon like 
 Sir Boyle Roche might occasionally startle the legislators of 
 College Green out of their decorum ; but as a rule it was 
 the warmth of Irish blood rather than the sunshine of Irish 
 temperament that evidenced the nationality of that cele- 
 brated assembly. Duels were more frequent than jests in 
 College Green. No effort of the imagination can figure 
 Grattan perpetrating a joke ; and even such a wit as Curran 
 scattered little of the golden coin of his fancy about the 
 benches of the House of Commons. 
 
 The half-forgotten Sancho Panza — not that his eminently 
 
 K 
 
242 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 practical leader was at all a Quixote — who was O'Connell's 
 henchman through the abortive struggles for repeal as well as 
 during the victorious battle for Catholic Emancipation, is no 
 exception to the general rule that an Irishman takes his 
 politics in deadly earnest ; but as there have always been 
 people who, though not witty themselves, are the cause of 
 wit in others, so the whimsical eccentricities of ' Honest 
 Tom Steele ' provide an element of comedy which is no un- 
 welcome admixture in the stormy and tragic drama in which 
 he played a not inconsiderable part. For wild, erratic, and 
 rash as he certainly was, eccentric to the point of absurdity 
 as he often appeared in speech, demeanour, and dress, Steele 
 was an important factor in O'Connell's success. A Pro- 
 testant and a landlord, his support of the Liberator, whom 
 he seconded at the nomination, was invaluable at the Clare 
 Election, and, indeed, it was largely by his advice that 
 O'Connell was guided when he took the momentous decision 
 to oppose the re-election of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald. Sheil, who 
 was certainly well qualified to judge, has left it on record 
 that to Steele's influence and exertions the triumph of 
 O'Connell on that extraordinary occasion is largely to be 
 ascribed. 
 
 Thomas Steele came of an old Somersetshire family, a 
 branch of which had at the time of his birth been settled 
 for more than a century in the county Clare, where there 
 was a not inconsiderable property to which the future 
 agitator succeeded at an early age on the death of his uncle. 
 His father, William Steele, died before he was born. 
 A Protestant and a landowner, young Steele received the 
 training natural to his birth and position. He was educated 
 at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1810, and 
 from thence he went to Cambridge, at which University he 
 also proceeded to a degree. Independent of personal exer- 
 tion, he appears, nevertheless, to have qualified himself for 
 the profession of engineering, and became an Associate of 
 the Institute of Civil Engineers ; but he made no attempt 
 to turn his acquirements to practical advantage, for the 
 patenting of an invention called the • communicating diving 
 
THOMAS STEELE 213 
 
 hell,' of which he published an account in the 'London 
 Philosophical Magazine,' can scarcely be considered as a 
 serious exercise of his professional attainments. His scientific 
 tastes, however, led him to project from time to time schemes 
 for the development of the material resources of his native 
 country through the agency of engineering. In 1828 he 
 published a work designed to propound proposals for the 
 improvement of the Shannon navigation. How far his pro- 
 jects were feasible from a professional point is hardly worth 
 inquiring now ; but the curious twist of impracticability and 
 oddity which showed itself in almost every action of Steele's 
 life, exhibited itself in the whimsicality which led him to in- 
 corporate in the same volume which contained this highly 
 technical disquisition on the engineering difficulties of river 
 navigation, a strange medley of politics. The conjunction of 
 Defoe's celebrated essay on the apparition of Mrs. Veal with 
 the pious and ponderous platitudes of Drelincourt on Death 
 was not more incongruous than the inappropriate blend of 
 science and politics which was introduced to the public 
 under a title of extraordinary length, with an oddly inappro- 
 priate motto. 1 
 
 Throughout his life Steele manifested an intense en- 
 thusiasm for lost causes and forlorn hopes. Sheil in his 
 sketches describes how in the Spanish war of 1821 he joined 
 the patriot army, ' and fought with desperate valour upon 
 the batteries of the Trocadero.' The sincerity of his devotion 
 to the struggle of the Spanish insurgents in their endeavour 
 to overturn the monarchy was attested by his raising the 
 sum of 10,000Z. by a mortgage on his family property, every 
 farthing of which was expended in the purchase of stores and 
 supplies for the expedition fitted out for the assistance of 
 
 1 Practical Suggestions on the General Improvement of the Navigation of 
 the Shannon between Limerick and the Atlantic ; and more particularly of 
 tliat part of it named by Pilots ' Tlie Narrows,'' with some remarks intended to 
 create a doubt of the fairness of not keeping faith with the Irish Roman 
 Catholics after they had been lured into a Surrender of Limerick (their princi- 
 pal fortress) by a Treaty. By Thomas Steele, Esq., one of the Protestant 
 members of the Irish Catholic Association, M.A. Magdalene College, Cambridge, 
 aud an Associate Member of the London Institute of Civil Engineers. 
 
 r 2 
 
244 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 the rebel forces. He returned from Spain surrounded by 
 Spanish exiles, to whose wants he ministered, and published 
 his ' Notes on the Conduct of the "War in Spain.' But this 
 book is curiously devoid of incidents, and bears but few 
 marks either of the picturesque enthusiasm of its author, or 
 of those moving accidents of war which might be expected 
 in the record of a civil struggle. 
 
 Shortly after this episode, the struggle for Emancipation 
 becoming acute, Steele attached himself to O'Connell, and 
 thenceforward his whole career was devoted to the Irish 
 National movement, and his whole being merged in an 
 absolute, unquestioning devotion to the person of the 
 Liberator. In fact, he almost ceased to have any indepen- 
 dent identity or separate volition, and almost the only 
 notices of him which remain are to be found in references 
 contained in the biographies of his ' Chief.' When O'Connell 
 died it was time for Steele to die too. His once ample 
 competence had been by that time completely wasted by 
 his sacrifices to the causes he had embraced ; and his 
 formerly exuberant spirits experienced the reaction common 
 to sanguine and unbalanced natures. He attempted suicide 
 by throwing himself into the Thames off Waterloo Bridge, 
 and though rescued from drowning he died, a broken spirit, 
 a few days later on June 15, 1848. His remains were 
 brought to Ireland, and the faithful henchman lies beside 
 his master in the cemetery of Glasnevin. 
 
 Though his part in the struggles of his time, important 
 as it was, was relatively small, Steele's is unquestionably one 
 of the most picturesque and attractive figures in the history 
 of Irish popular movements, and it may be worth while 
 by a few anecdotes to attempt to convey a just idea of his 
 whimsical character and of those qualities of integrity and 
 patriotism, bravery and simplicity, which won for him a 
 unique place in the regard of opponents as well as of friends, 
 procuring him the title, by which he will always be 
 known in the annals of Catholic Emancipation and of the 
 Repeal Movement, of ' Honest Tom Steele.' 
 
 Of the extravagant oddity of Steele's character the illus- 
 
THOMAS STEELE 245 
 
 trations are numerous, and there is little doubt that his 
 eccentricity reached almost the verge of insanity. Sir James 
 O'Connell, a brother of the great Dan, who was not how- 
 ever always or altogether sympathetic with his relative's 
 doings, was once asked why a man of O'Connell's sagacity 
 had appointed a semi-lunatic to the post of ' Head Pacificator 
 of Ireland,' as Steele was usually called. ' Why, indeed ! ' 
 answered James, dealing a double-edged thrust at his brother 
 and his brother's lieutenant, ' pray, who the devil else would 
 take such an office ? ' But this is probably an extreme 
 view, for James O'Connell was fond of putting things in 
 this caustic way ; and once being asked at what period his 
 brother's money troubles commenced, he replied, 'Well, Dan 
 was a couple of years older than me, and I don't remember 
 him till he was fourteen ; but he was in trouble then and 
 never got out of it since.' 
 
 At O'Connell's second election for Clare he was opposed, 
 it is curious to remember, by William Smith O'Brien, after- 
 wards the leader of the Young Ireland movement, but who in 
 1829 acted with the landed gentry in opposition to the 
 champion of Emancipation. Speaking on the hustings in 
 the course of the contest, O'Brien affirmed that O'Conneil 
 was not supported by any of the gentry of Clare, whereupon 
 Steele promptly challenged and fought him, considering 
 himself personally affronted, in the character of a Clare 
 landowner, by a speech which was certainly never intended 
 to apply to him individually. Mr. O'Neill Daunt, one of 
 Steele's contemporaries and comrades in the O'Connell 
 agitation, includes in his memoirs several anecdotes of 
 Steele's peculiarities. Among his idiosyncrasies was a love 
 of pompous and high-sounding, and withal vehement, 
 language, which reminds one of Walter Savage Landor, as 
 caricatured by Dickens in 'Bleak House,' and which, applied 
 to the most trivial occasions, often sounded ridiculous 
 enough. In the midst of some tremendous invective agains 
 one Peter Purcell, who had treated his chief with disrespect 
 O'Connell sought to mollify him by saying he had himself 
 fully forgiven Purcell. ' You may forgive him, Liberator 
 
246 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 replied Steele ; ' in the discharge of your ethereal functions 
 as the Moral Eegenerator of Ireland you may forgive him, 
 but I also have my own functions to perform ; and I tell 
 you that, as your Head Pacificator of Ireland, I never can 
 forgive the diabolical villain.' 
 
 At a political meeting held in Tralee on a bitterly incle- 
 ment day, the sufferings of a poor harper who, in the 
 intervals between the speeches, sought to enliven the audience 
 by snatches of Irish airs which his half-frozen fingers 
 scarcely suffered him to play, aroused the commiseration of 
 O'Connell's daughter. 'Pray do something for that poor 
 fellow,' she said to Steele ; ■ he looks very miserable.' • Make 
 your mind easy about him, daughter of Ireland's Liberator,' 
 answered the Pacificator. ' I have taken care of the bard. I 
 have made him immortal. By virtue of my office I have 
 constituted him O'Connell's chief musician.' 
 
 Though violent in his language, Steele had a great and 
 sincere horror of outrage, and occasionally took curious 
 methods of showing his reprobation. On one occasion his 
 account for expenses, when presented to the Committee of 
 the Eepeal Association, was found to include a charge for a 
 large quantity of black crape. Asked for particulars of this 
 expenditure, Steele explained that he desired to show the 
 authors of an agrarian murder in Tipperary that their 
 crime had put the Association in mourning, and accordingly 
 he had travelled through the county with his carriage 
 thickly draped with the trappings and suits of woe, and 
 displaying a laurel branch, being the nearest available ap- 
 proach to an olive, likewise enfolded in the same material. On 
 another occasion, when disturbance and outrage in the county 
 Limerick threatened to compromise the national cause in 
 the eyes of its English sympathisers, the Pacificator ap- 
 peared on the scene solemnly waving a white flag edged 
 with green, and displaying the legend, 'Whoever commits a 
 crime adds strength to the enemy.' 
 
 Steele's devotion to O'Connell was as absolute and as 
 genuine as the devotion of a dog to its master, and was not 
 the less sincere because it was expressed with his usual 
 
THOMAS STEELE 247 
 
 rhetorical exaggeration. ' If my august leader, O'Connell, 
 were to say to me, " Steele, place yourself upon that mine ; 
 it is about to be sprung, and you will lose your life, but it 
 will be in the cause of Ireland," I would do it on the instant.' 
 There are not many allusions in O'Connell's letters to the 
 most whole-hearted and devoted of his followers ; but there 
 is no doubt that the great man both understood and ap- 
 preciated the affection with which he was regarded His 
 son, John O'Connell, in his • Eecollections and Experiences ' 
 (a poor book, but one which throws a good deal of light on 
 the history of O'Connell's agitation), does justice to his 
 father's friend ; and his eulogy of Steele as ' one of the 
 most single-minded, kind, and chivalrous-souled men that ever 
 breathed ' may be taken as the expression of O'Connell's own 
 esteem. 
 
 John O'Connell describes the occasion of the only 
 estrangement which ever occurred between leader and 
 follower, and it was one peculiarly characteristic of the 
 latter's fanciful and quixotic disposition. Steele, who was 
 never married, was smitten on a chance encounter in the 
 streets of Ennis with a passionate admiration for a young 
 lady whose beauty took entire possession of his heart. With 
 his usual openness and simplicity he made no attempt to 
 disguise his feelings from any one save their object. ' I have 
 no hope,' he told O'Connell. ' I do not know the young lady, 
 and I will not get myself introduced, for I am too poor a 
 man to offer her my hand. But she is the only woman I ever 
 have loved, and ever will love, and I shall love her till my 
 death.' O'Connell, naturally enough, treated this extrava- 
 gant declaration with good-natured ridicule ; but his defective 
 sympathy nearly cost him the friendship of his follower, who 
 declared that he could no longer act in politics under a leader 
 who had so misunderstood him. It is said that he actually 
 retired for some months from the agitation, and was only with 
 difficulty mollified by an absolute withdrawal of O'Connell's 
 well-meant but injudicious criticisms. But if the misunder- 
 standing was serious, the reconciliation was complete. 
 Steele's devotion to his ' leader and the Father of his country ' 
 
218 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 continued to the death of the latter, and as Mr. Daunt says, 
 ' when O'Connell died, life lost all its savour for Tom Steele. 
 His heart and soul had been wrapped up in the movement 
 of which his defeated chief was the leader. To him there 
 seemed nothing left worth living for.' 
 
 Steele has been described by one who knew him well as 
 a ' political Ossian.' The description is not inappropriate to 
 the fanciful exaltation of his temperament and the vague 
 but grandiose character of his sentiment and expressions. 
 It does not seem likely that the comparison with Ossian was 
 made with any reference to Steele's literary productions, 
 which, as has already been noted, were published in a form 
 singularly unfitted to attract a reader, and have long since 
 gone to the limbo of forgotten pamphlets. But quaintly 
 interspersed in the pages of his pamphlets on the Shannon, 
 between dry demonstrations of mechanical problems and 
 bold declarations of political views, are to be found passages 
 which possess just that sort of wild beauty which might 
 have prompted such a parallel. Perhaps nowhere in 
 English prose could a more perfect example be found of 
 Celtic melancholy than is contained in the closing sentences 
 of the extract with which this brief epitaph may well con- 
 clude : — 
 
 There is a spot upon a mountain promontory in Fingal 
 where, in my early boyhood, external nature first burst upon 
 my vision in beauty and sublimity, not separated, but in com- 
 bination. Upon the eastern side of the solitary mountain, 
 where it shelves abruptly to the sea, and so near to its 
 summit that there was a glorious expanse of horizon, was a 
 little fountain, bursting among the rocks, and wild flowers, 
 and sunbeams. A bee hummed over the flowers close to the 
 fountain and its little rill ; some sea-gulls whirled and 
 floated in the air high above the sea that broke upon 
 the shore, and there was a distant bark with white sails, 
 holding on her course upon the swelling tide. Whenever I 
 call this scene to remembrance, ' pure, bright, and elysian,' it 
 floats in my imagination like a vision of enchantment. This 
 is the pure elysian enchantment of nature, without any inter- 
 mingling of feelings inspired by the history of the times of 
 old. ' Canst thou loosen the bonds of Orion, or canst thou 
 
THOMAS STEELE 249 
 
 bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades ? ' No ! and there 
 are other sweet influences too, that, while man retains his 
 nature, never can be bound — 
 
 There is given 
 Unto the things of earth that time hath bent 
 A Bpirit's feeling. 
 
 There is a power 
 And magic in the ruined battlement. 
 
 And when I stand in the ancient cathedral of Limerick, and 
 listen to the choir and the organ ; when I hear the chant of 
 the High Mass, and ringing of the Mass bell, and vieiu 
 the incense ascending from the Altar in one of their Convent 
 Chapels ; when I wander through the gardens of the Holy 
 Sisterhood of St. Clare, and view their figures gliding 
 among the Gothic ruins, or when I stand within the sanctuary 
 of their Convent Chapel; when I sit upon the ancient bastion 
 in St. Munchin's Cemetery upon a gloomy evening, and 
 listen to the sullen sough of the wind among the dark elms 
 over my head, and the rushing flood of the Shannon that 
 sweeps at its basement, and hear the roar of the bugles, the 
 beat of the drums, and the voice of the trumpet within the 
 Court of the Castle: — I become inspired by a feeling, solemn 
 and mournful ; different from that of which I am susceptible 
 in any other place in the world, but not very unlike that 
 with which, upon the shore of the solitary lake where he re- 
 poses, I hear the wind whisper at night in the grass around 
 the grave of my father, whom I have never seen. 
 
250 STUDIES IN IBISH HISTOEY 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND IN 1798 
 
 I 
 
 HUMBERT AND HIS MEN 
 
 Few chapters in the chequered history of Ireland can have 
 less attraction for any Irishman jealous for the honour of his 
 country than that which is occupied with the tragic story 
 of the Rebellion of 1798. A civil struggle, however short- 
 lived, leaves bitter memories behind it, and of the bitterness 
 which the Rebellion provoked or aggravated there is but too 
 much evidence in the venomous political pamphlets by 
 which, in the guise of historical narratives, the partisans of 
 both sides, writing within a few years of the events, have 
 photographed for posterity the passions of an unhappy era. 
 Nor is there in the story of the Rebellion, viewed merely 
 as a civil strife between Celt and Saxon upon Irish soil, 
 much which adds to that martial renown which on more 
 legitimate battle-fields Irishmen, of whatever origin, have 
 never failed to win for their country. Marked as deeply 
 with the stains of religious fanaticism as with the scars of 
 civil rancour, the Rebellion ran its brief, unhappy, and 
 inglorious course almost without a single heroic incident to 
 redeem its horrors. The rank and file of the peasant army 
 indeed exhibited the undisciplined valour of their race. In 
 the battle of New Ross, for example, they fought with a 
 dash and enthusiasm which no disciplined troops could have 
 exceeded, enduring a tremendous carnage with an indifference 
 which, probably, no disciplined troops would have shown. 
 But the rising produced no leader capable of utilising 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 251 
 
 the reckless courage of his followers, and it is unmarked 
 by any brilliant achievement of arms in which a sober 
 patriotism may find some recompense for the suffering entailed 
 by the actual conflict, or the consequences which followed 
 in its train. Its story is, as Mr. Lecky has called it, ' a 
 dreary and ignoble story, in which there is much to blame 
 and very little to admire.' Murders on one side, executions 
 and torture on the other, indiscriminate passion on both, 
 are the pictures presented to our gaze in an impartial 
 survey. And these sanguinary features of the struggle over- 
 shadow all the rest. 
 
 But if the story of the Rebellion itself is repulsive, the 
 movement in which it originated led to the addition of at least 
 one picturesque episode to the chronicles of the romance of 
 war. The Irish insurrection of 1798, which had been prepared 
 and promoted in entire reliance on the promise of foreign 
 assistance, in the form either of an actual invasion of 
 England from France or of a descent upon Ireland upon 
 the scale of Hoche's abortive expedition to Bantry Bay, was 
 followed by the only successful attempt of the Napoleonic 
 wars to land a foreign force upon the shores of the Three 
 Kingdoms. And the achievements of the little army of 
 twelve hundred men which in the space of a few weeks 
 overran an Irish province, defeated a superior force of 
 British troops in an important engagement, and compelled 
 a Viceroy who was also a distinguished soldier to marshal 
 the whole of the forces at the disposal of the Irish Govern- 
 ment to combat a serious peril, are full of all those elements 
 of romance and adventure in which the Rebellion itself is 
 notably deficient. 
 
 The story of the French invasion of Mayo has of course 
 been often told, but lying outside the general history of the 
 Rebellion, and robbed by the accidents which delayed it until 
 the Rebellion had been suppressed of the immense political 
 importance which must otherwise have attached to it, it 
 has scarcely received its proper meed of attention from 
 historians. The British and Irish State Papers bearing on 
 the French invasion have long ago been carefully examined by 
 
252 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 eminent writers, and but little of what is essential to a full 
 knowledge of the facts, so far as it can be derived from 
 these sources, has been left unrecounted. But the labours of 
 French investigators, and the publication of French archives, 
 have in quite recent years added much to the materials 
 available on the subject. At least two works l of value and 
 importance, though not always free from prejudice, have been 
 based on documents in the French Admiralty and War 
 Office ; and the documents themselves have now been pub- 
 lished under the direction of the historical section of the 
 Staff of the French Army, in three large volumes. 2 
 
 Readers of the Journals and Autobiography of Theobald 
 Wolfe Tone have no need to be reminded of the circum- 
 stances in which, as early as 1796, the project of a French 
 invasion of Ireland had originated. In that year Wolfe 
 Tone, who had gone into exile a twelvemonth earlier, visited 
 Paris with his colleague Lewens to seek, as the emissary of 
 the so-called Irish Directory, the assistance of the French 
 in an effort to establish Irish independence. And in the 
 history of intrigue there is perhaps no more extraordinary 
 chapter than that which records the marvellous adroitness 
 and indomitable purpose with which an unknown and 
 friendless Irishman, ignorant of the French language and 
 almost without introductions, made his way into the French 
 Directory, and succeeded in pledging Carnot, the coolest 
 statesman of the Republic, and Hoche, at that time its most 
 distinguished soldier, to embrace the cause of Ireland. 
 
 But in 1798 the conditions were less favourable to 
 the Irish cause than when Tone's persuasive audacity had 
 captivated the Organiser of Victory. While the Rebellion 
 was running its brief and sanguinary course, the agents of 
 the United Irishmen had been vainly seeking to induce the 
 Directory to hasten the fulfilment of its pledge to equip a 
 fresh expedition which might have an issue more fortunate 
 
 1 (1) Hoche. en Irlande. Par G. Escande. Paris, 1888. (2) La France et 
 VIrlande pendant la Revolution. Par E. Guillon. Paris, 1888. 
 
 2 Projets et Tentatives de Dibarquement aux lies Britanniaues. Par 
 Edouard Desbriere, Capitaine brevets au ler Cuirassiers. 3 vols. Paris, 1900-1. 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 253 
 
 than that which, under the direction of Hoche and Grouchy, 
 had been successively befogged, becalmed, and shattered by the 
 elements in Bantry Bay, or that other which, designed in con- 
 cert with France for the same object, after lying for months 
 wind-bound in the Texel, was annihilated at Camperdown. 
 For the Directory of 1798 was not the Directory of 1796, or 
 even of 1797. The men who had befriended Tone, and by 
 whom the expeditions from Brest and the Texel had been 
 undertaken and captained, were gone. Carnot had been 
 obliged to seek safety in consequence of the coup d'etat of 
 September 4th, 1797, which changed the composition of 
 the Directory, and which was the first visible sign that a 
 power greater than the power of the Republic had arisen in 
 the person of the commander of the army of Italy. On the 
 28th of the same month Hoche, the most distinguished 
 general, with the single exception of Buonaparte, whom the 
 wars of the Republic produced, had died at the head of 
 the army of the Rhine. With him died the one steady 
 friend to the Irish cause, the friend whose enthusiasm was 
 such that, as Tone mournfully notes in almost the last page 
 of his journal, written while the Rebellion was in progress, 
 ' he would be in Ireland in a month, if he only went with 
 his Etat-Major in a fishing-boat.' 
 
 But above all the influence of Buonaparte had become 
 paramount ; and the influence of Buonaparte was unfavour- 
 able to Ireland. 'He listened but said very little,' writes Tone 
 after an interview with the Corsican in which Lewens, as Irish 
 Ambassador, had represented the situation of Ireland and the 
 desires of the United Irishmen. Alter three interviews it re- 
 mained impossible to augur anything good or bad as to his real 
 intentions. In truth Buonaparte does not seem at this time to 
 have seriously believed in the policy of an invasion either of 
 England or Ireland, though he allowed the preparations to go 
 forward. Already he was looking not to the West but to the 
 East, and dazzled by the golden visions of Egypt and India. 
 On February 23rd, 1798, after some months of seeming 
 indecision, he addressed a letter to the Directory, pointing 
 out that the inefficiency of the French navy must render the 
 
254 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 projected invasion inexpedient, and that, since the fleets at 
 Brest and the Texel had failed to slip through the British 
 blockade in the dark nights of winter, it was idle to hope 
 for better fortune during the months of spring or summer. 
 And thereupon he seems to have definitely abandoned all 
 thoughts of an invasion. Ten days later, on March 5th, in 
 another letter Buonaparte formulated his scheme for the 
 capture of Malta and the conquest of Egypt ; and on April 
 12th it was formally announced that it was through India 
 and not through Ireland that the French armada, so 
 laboriously collected at such an enormous cost, was to attack 
 England. The Army of the East was constituted; and on 
 May 20th, the very month for which the rising in Ireland 
 had been arranged, and only three days before it actually 
 broke out, Buonaparte left Paris for the Mediterranean. 
 
 With their treasury exhausted and their arsenals depleted 
 by this expedition, designed for England but appropriated 
 to Egypt, it was scarcely possible for the Directory, even 
 had it so desired, to organise assistance for Ireland on a scale 
 commensurate either with the hopes of the Irish leaders or 
 with the actual military requirements of such an enterprise. 
 Yet its members did not wholly repudiate their pro- 
 mises ; they professed still to cherish the notion of an 
 invasion, and they still appeared to lend a ready ear to the 
 representations of Lewens and his colleague. It is unfor- 
 tunate that just at this period we lose the vivid commentary 
 of Tone, who had spent May and June at Rouen and Havre 
 with the so-called army of England, and whose Journal ends 
 with his arrival on June 30th in Paris, whither he had 
 moved from Havre to consult with the Minister of Marine. 
 But there is little difficulty in following the course of the 
 negotiations. On the outbreak of the Rebellion Lewens 
 had written to the Directory reminding it that the Irish 
 Committee had raised the standard of rebellion in reliance 
 on the formal promise which he had been instructed to 
 convey to his associates that France would make the inde- 
 pendence of Ireland the condition of any peace with England ; 
 describing the progress of the insurrection, and the strength 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 255 
 
 of the English garrison ; and indicating five thousand troops 
 of all arms, with thirty thousand muskets and artillery and 
 munitions of war in proportion, as the force necessary to 
 support the movement. On June 16th a further appeal was 
 made in which the attention of the Directory was called to 
 the success of the Rebellion, then at its height, and a detach- 
 ment of one thousand men and five thousand muskets was 
 stated to be sufficient to assure the liberty of Ireland. As a 
 result of these demands, and in recognition of their engage- 
 ment to the United Irishmen, the Directory determined to 
 equip rapidly an expedition designed on the plan of that of 
 1796. Three squadrons were to be fitted out at Dunkirk, 
 Brest, and Eochefort, the first, directed by General Kilmaine, 
 to convey the munitions of war for the whole army, the 
 second and third, under Admirals Bompard and Savary 
 respectively, to carry the soldiers and to be commanded 
 respectively by Generals Cherin and Humbert. The whole 
 was designed to provide an effective force of eight thousand 
 men. Cherin declined the command of the second force, 
 which was subsequently conferred on General Hardy. 
 
 Want of money, a feeble organisation, and possibly a 
 lack of sincerity in their preparations, caused unexpected 
 delay in the equipment of the fleet ; but at length, on July 
 30th, Bruix, the Minister of Marine, addressed the following 
 despatch to General Hardy, to whom, as the senior of 
 Humbert, the supreme command of the expedition had been 
 provisionally allotted. 
 
 The executive Directory is busily engaged in arranging 
 to send help to the Irish who have taken up arms to sever 
 the yoke of British rule. It is for the French Government 
 to second the efforts of a brave people who have too long 
 suffered under oppression. It is the intention of the 
 Directory to send troops, arms, and ammunition to Ireland, 
 by different routes but simultaneously. Twelve small ships 
 are to leave the ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, 
 carrying artillery, muskets, and powder, and having on 
 board also a few Irishmen who are anxious to rejoin their 
 countrymen. At Eochefort a squadron of three frigates is 
 ready to set sail ; and at Brest the Directory has fitted out 
 
256 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 a squadron, composed of one line-of-battle ship and six 
 frigates, commanded by Admiral Bompard, which will carry 
 the staff of the Army of Ireland. 
 
 Full of confidence in your valour, your talents, and your 
 enthusiasm for liberty, the Executive Directory, while 
 awaiting the arrival of General Cherin, has charged you 
 with the provisional command of the army of Ireland. 
 Admiral Bompard will receive detailed instructions as to the 
 route he is to follow. He has orders to disembark at 
 Killala, Sligo, or Donegal. 1 
 
 In addition to these instructions Hardy was provided 
 with proclamations addressed to the Irish peasantry, pro- 
 bably the same as those which had been provided for Hoche's 
 expedition, and some of which, bearing the signature of 
 Kilmaine, were subsequently distributed pretty generally 
 in Mayo, notwithstanding that Kilmaine himself never set 
 foot in Ireland. Hardy's orders concluded with the follow- 
 ing statement of the political objects of the expedition and 
 of the means by which they were to be effected. 
 
 It is most important to take every possible means to 
 arouse the public spirit of the country, and particularly to 
 foster sedulously its hatred of the English name. You will 
 neglect no opportunity of making known the crimes which 
 an odious Government has committed or may seek to com- 
 mit in Ireland. It is needful too that you should maintain 
 the most stringent discipline among your troops, who 
 should serve as a model for the Irish levies, and impress 
 upon your comrades that they should look on the Irish as 
 their brothers, as citizens persecuted by a tyrannical 
 Government, the enemy of every free man, and that, fight- 
 ing for the same cause, they should be united by the same 
 ties and the same sentiments. The Executive Government, 
 citizen General, is persuaded that you will justify its con- 
 fidence by your conduct of the important mission with 
 which you are charged. There has never been an expedi- 
 tion whose result might more powerfully affect the political 
 situation in Europe, or could more advantageously assist 
 the Republic. May your success be commensurate with 
 my good wishes in your behalf, and bring to a people too 
 long the victims of despotism the blessings of liberty and 
 equality. 
 
 1 Projets et Dibarqwments, p. 134-5 : Bruix to Hardy, 12 thermidor. 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 257 
 
 Despite this imposing language it is difficult to believe 
 that the Directory was really in earnest. It is certain at 
 least that while they issued orders they withheld the 
 means of complying with them. Neither Hardy nor Hum- 
 bert was supplied with funds to pay his soldiers, nor, 
 although it was intended that the two fleets should start 
 simultaneously, had any date been fixed for their departure. 
 In these circumstances Hardy remained in the roadstead of 
 Brest patiently awaiting an order from the Treasury (which 
 never came) for 135,000 francs. But his second in com- 
 mand, less patient and more resourceful, was not to be 
 hindered by the parsimon} r or poverty of his Government. 
 He succeeded in obtaining an advance of 47,000 francs from 
 the paymaster at Rochefort, who was accommodating enough 
 to supply him without awaiting a formal order from the 
 Treasury at Paris ; and having thus supplied himself he set 
 sail from Aix on August 6th. The expedition consisted of 
 three frigates, the Concorde (44 guns), the Franchise 
 (44 guns), and the Medee (38 guns). Distributed on board 
 these vessels was an army of one thousand and seventeen 
 men with eighty-two officers. The General himself was on 
 board the Concorde. 
 
 Humbert was not only, as was shown by his conduct in 
 thus taking the initiative, a man of vigorous and self-reliant 
 will, but a soldier of experience and proved ability. He was 
 indeed a characteristic product of the Revolution, his career 
 being in many respects typical of that of the many soldiers 
 to whom the Revolution and its opportunities brought fame 
 and fortune. If his knapsack did not chance to hold a 
 Marshal's baton, that was the fault less of his ability or his 
 services than of the chance which, as he approached that 
 summit of a French soldier's ambition, threw him across 
 the path of Buonaparte. The son of a small farmer in 
 Lorraine, Jean Joseph Amable Humbert was born in 1767 
 at Rouvrey. At the age of seventeen certain youthful 
 indiscretions had obliged him to leave the employment of a 
 cloth-merchant to whom he was apprenticed ; and after wan- 
 dering from one town to another in various capacities, he 
 
 s 
 
258 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 had set up as a dealer in rabbit and goat skins, to supply the 
 glove factories of Lyons. At the outbreak of the Revolution 
 he had been the first to join one of the volunteer regiments 
 raised in the Vosges, the command of which he quickly 
 reached through his combination of republican zeal and 
 military efficiency. Thenceforward his progress was rapid. 
 By 1794 he had reached the rank of General of Brigade. 
 He received a command under Hoche in the army 
 which was sent to effect the pacification of La Vendee, 
 and which did so after one of the most sanguinary and 
 merciless campaigns of even that sanguinary era. In Hoche's 
 expedition he had been placed in command of the Legion of 
 France, and, sailing on board the battleship Les Droits des 
 Hommes, had distinguished himself by his personal valour 
 in an engagement with two English vessels which inter- 
 cepted his retreat. So badly did the vessel fare between 
 storm and shell that of fourteen hundred men only four 
 hundred escaped with their lives. Humbert's experience in 
 La Vendee had taught him how formidable a sturdy and dis- 
 affected peasantry might make itself to a civil government, 
 and he seems to have believed that nothing but the leader- 
 ship of a disciplined army was necessary to the success of 
 an insurrectionary movement in Great Britain. Under this 
 persuasion he had in 1797 suggested to Carnot and his col- 
 leagues the desirability of organising an expedition to Scot- 
 land or Cornwall, which, taking advantage of the disaffection 
 in the English navy, might, he thought, achieve great suc- 
 cesses. Thus, when an expedition was decided on by the 
 Directory, Humbert, now that Hoche was no more, seemed 
 marked out for its control. But his fierce and violent 
 passions had earned him many enemies, and in official circles 
 had inspired some distrust ; and he was in consequence 
 designated only for the post of second in command. Of his 
 appearance and manners a graphic description has been left 
 us by Bishop Stock, to whose admirable narrative of the 
 invasion constant reference will be made in these pages. 
 
 Of good height and shape, in the full vigour of life, 
 prompt to decide, quick in execution, apparently master of 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 259 
 
 his art, you could not refuse him the praise of a good officer, 
 while his physiognomy forbade you to like him as a man. 
 His eye, which was small and sleepy (the effect probably of 
 much watching), cast a sidelong glance of insidiousness and 
 even of cruelty ; it was the eye of a cat, preparing to spring 
 on her prey. His education and manners were indicative of 
 a person sprung from the lowest orders of society, though 
 he knew how (as most of his countrymen can do) to assume, 
 when it was convenient, the deportment of a gentleman. 
 For learning he had scarcely enough to enable him to write 
 his name. His passions were furious, and all his behaviour 
 seemed marked with the characters of roughness and 
 violence. A narrower observation of him however served 
 to discover that much of this roughness was the result of 
 art, being assumed with the object of extorting by terror a 
 ready compliance with his commands. 1 
 
 The army of which this hardy soldier was the leader was 
 of like quality with its general. One half of the troops had 
 served under Buonaparte in the Italian campaign ; the re- 
 mainder were from the army of the Rhine, and had served 
 under Jourdan, Moreau, and Hoche. They were for the 
 most part young men and, except the grenadiers, not of very 
 striking physique ; yet men who, from their grim experience 
 of five years' incessant war, might already be counted 
 veterans. At the siege of Metz, in the winter of 1797, they 
 had slept on the ground in holes dug four feet deep through 
 the snow, and throughout the campaign the toil had been so 
 incessant that one of their officers averred that he had not 
 once removed his leathern garments for a whole twelve- 
 month. In this hard school they had been trained to habits 
 of the most perfect discipline, temperance, and simplicity, 
 and had learned to live contentedly on the plainest fare. 
 Of Humbert's officers none had reached, or were destined 
 to reach, remarkable eminence, but all of them were efficient 
 subordinates, and Sarazin, the second in command, a brilliant 
 one. Among them were three or four Irishmen, who included 
 Matthew Tone, brother of the more celebrated Theobald, 
 and Sullivan, nephew of Madgett, Tone's friend at the French 
 Foreign Office, the latter being the only one of the Irish 
 
 1 Narrative of what passed at Killala, p. 34. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 refugees accompanying the expedition who made good his 
 escape when all was over. 
 
 Two other Irishmen, holding command in the French 
 army and attached to Humbert's immediate staff, deserve to 
 be specially noticed. Bartholomew Teeling was the son of 
 a Roman Catholic linen-merchant of Lisburn, near Belfast, 
 who having taken an active part in the proceedings of the 
 Catholic Convention of 1793 had, four years later, been 
 arrested and thrown into prison for treason. Teeling, then 
 a very young man of prepossessing manners and appearance, 
 who had received a good education, had in 1796 proceeded 
 to France as one of the emissaries to solicit French assistance 
 for the United Irish movement. His mission having become 
 known to the authorities at home, he had deemed it unsafe 
 to return, and had then accepted a commission in the French 
 army. He had served in La Vendee under Hoche, where 
 he had become acquainted with Humbert. Had the expedi- 
 tion succeeded in reaching Donegal and pushed forward into 
 Ulster as was intended, Teeling would have been particularly 
 useful to his commander from his knowledge of that province. 
 As it was, though he had no special local knowledge of Mayo, 
 he was active as an interpreter, displayed conspicuous 
 gallantry both at Collooney and Ballinamuck, and, according 
 to the testimony of his chief, was unsparing throughout the 
 campaign in his endeavours to protect the lives and property 
 of Protestants. A witness for the prosecution at the court- 
 martial before which he was tried deposed to his conspicuous 
 humanity, and said that when some rebels at Castlebar had 
 endeavoured to excuse their outrages by saying they had only 
 injured Protestants, Teeling had warmly exclaimed that he 
 knew no distinction between Protestant and Catholic, and 
 would permit none. 
 
 Accompanying the expedition in the capacity of inter- 
 preter, and as such attached by a special commission to the 
 .General's staff, was Henry O'Keon, son of a cowherd of Lord 
 Tyrawly and a native of the district in which the invaders 
 ultimately landed. O'Keon had left Ireland at a very early 
 age with such smattering of education as a hedge school could 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IRELAND U61 
 
 afford. Making his way to Nantes he had, after studying 
 divinity there for some years, taken orders as a priest, and in 
 1789 had already passed some years as a French cure. The 
 Revolution had of course stripped him of his preferment ; 
 but accommodating himself to circumstances he exchanged 
 his cassock for a sword. Entering the army of the Republic 
 as a private, O'Keon had by 1798 reached the rank of captain. 
 He was a fat, jolly, good-humoured man, with ruddy counte- 
 nance and thick black eyebrows running into one another. 
 Of indifferent morals and accommodating conscience, he yet 
 displayed, like Teeling, a humane and tolerant disposition, 
 exerting himself on every occasion to restrain the violence 
 of patriotic, and still more of religious fervour against the 
 loyalists, a humanity which stood him in good stead when, 
 taken prisoner by the British troops at the recapture of 
 Killala, he found his assumed French nationality an unavail- 
 ing plea before the court-martial. The selection of O'Keon 
 as interpreter helps to explain Humbert's choice of Killala 
 as a landing-place, in preference to either Sligo or Donegal. 
 O'Keon was almost ignorant of English, retaining only just 
 enough of the language to make himself intelligible ; but his 
 father lived near Ballina, and he was himself well acquainted 
 with the whole district and a proficient in its vernacular. It 
 was therefore natural that Humbert, whose instructions 
 allowed him a latitude of choice, should select as the scene of 
 his first effort a country in which he could rely on the assist- 
 ance of O'Keon's local knowledge and intimate acquaintance 
 with the dialect and habits of the people. 
 
 In other respects, indeed, the county of Mayo was a 
 district little favourable to the success of such an enterprise 
 as that in which Humbert had so readily embarked. The 
 United Irish movement had at first progressed but slowly 
 in the West, and it had given the leaders no little trouble to 
 develope it. Of the four provinces Connaught had, through- 
 out the whole period of the agitation, been the least disturbed 
 and had given the least concern to the Government. The 
 extent to which the progress of the conspiracy was impeded 
 by the jealousy and rivalries of the local Roman Catholic 
 
262 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 gentry (some of whom, influenced by the Hon. Denis 
 Browne, brother to Lord Altamont and member for the 
 County, were desirous of acting independently of their 
 brethren in the East of Ireland and of promoting a separate 
 Catholic petition) had obliged Wolfe Tone to undertake in 
 October 1792 what he describes in his journal as a ' peregrina- 
 tion to convert the natives of Connaught, and more especially 
 of Galway and Mayo, to the true political faith.' Tone had 
 then attended meetings in Ballinrobe and Castlebar, but had 
 met with little encouragement, finding the local leaders very 
 suspicious of each other. On the Catholic Committee the 
 western delegates acted uniformly with the more moderate 
 section of that body, and displayed little sympathy with the 
 violent measures recommended by its vehement secretary. 
 
 The province seems to have remained outside the United 
 Irish organisation down to 1796, though Defenderism 1 was 
 rife among the peasantry. But by 1797 many recruits had 
 been enrolled among the lower orders, and these were drawn 
 exclusively from the ranks of the Roman Catholics. At the 
 meeting of the Ulster Provincial Committee of the United 
 Irishmen on September 14th, 1797, it was reported that 
 Connaught was in a fair state of organisation. This change 
 in the disposition of the Mayo peasantry, and the exclusively 
 Catholic complexion of the movement which then began to 
 spread, was mainly due to the immigration of some among 
 the Roman Catholic population of Armagh and Tyrone, 
 many of whom had been forced into exile by the outrages of 
 the Peep of Day Boys which followed the defeat of the De- 
 fenders at the Battle of the Diamond. As many as four 
 thousand of these people are said to have immigrated to 
 Sligo and Mayo. By the admission even of those who were 
 not likely to exaggerate facts in their favour, they were for 
 the most part decent and industrious, and, from their skill in 
 the linen industry and their general superiority in intelligence 
 to the peasantry of Connaught, their arrival was welcomed 
 by the proprietors. The majority of these immigrants 
 appeared to be free from active disloyalty and readily took 
 1 See p. 49 for an account of Defenderism. 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OP IRELAND 253 
 
 the oath of allegiance ; but their presence, and the tales of 
 oppression which they brought with them, naturally inflamed 
 their Eoman Catholic neighbours, while those among them 
 who had been actively engaged in Defenderism in their old 
 homes as naturally became centres of sedition in their new 
 surroundings. They brought with them too the habits of 
 organisation with which they had become familiar in Ulster ; 
 and political clubs and meetings soon became numerous in 
 the district. But above all they brought with them a terror 
 of Orangeism, spreading the most extravagant rumours as to 
 the malignant and murderous intentions of the Protestants, 
 who, they averred, had entered into a conspiracy to massacre 
 the entire Roman Catholic population. 
 
 So far as regarded Connaught, at any rate, these asser- 
 tions were without the slightest foundation, and it is certain 
 that down to the actual outbreak of the Rebellion Orangeism 
 itself had gained little if any hold in Mayo. The Bishop of 
 Killala had denounced the institution, and on the very day 
 of the invasion was entering a protest in his primary visita- 
 tion-charge against the first sentence of the Orange oath, ' I 
 am not a Roman Catholic,' which appeared to him intolerant 
 and unconciliatory. The vehemence of the exiled Catholics, 
 who attributed the persecution they had suffered mainly to 
 Presbyterians, had, however, by a not unnatural process, 
 led to the growth of the institution among the Presbyterian 
 community of Multifarragh, which had been brought from 
 Ulster to Connaught earlier in the century by the Earl of 
 Arran. 
 
 Though the statements of the immigrants were accepted 
 and propagated by disaffected priests, it certainly appears 
 that their imputations upon Protestantism, and especially the 
 confusion of the terms Protestant and Orange as though 
 they were synonymous, were due less to the priests than to 
 the refugees themselves, who perhaps were hardly to be 
 blamed for imputing to the Protestants of Mayo the treat- 
 ment which had been meted out to them by the Protestants 
 of Armagh. It is worth noting that these Ulster Roman 
 Catholics, better educated and with a higher standard of 
 
264 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 comfort than the Catholics of the same class in the West, 
 while they were among the most energetic supporters of the 
 French, declined to serve with the Connaught peasantry and 
 insisted on forming a separate corps. 
 
 But, these religious disturbances notwithstanding, the 
 general condition of the country continued down to a late 
 period to be, at least to all outward appearance, orderly and 
 loyal. Denis Browne, writing on December 30th, 1796, 
 from Westport, informed the Government that the country 
 was quiet and loyal beyond expectation, and that the immi- 
 grant Northerners were quiet and inoffensive. The reports 
 of the Orange terrorism spread by the latter had indeed, 
 according to Browne, produced in some parts of the country 
 a curious and incongruous effect. ' The inhabitants,' he 
 wrote, ' of this part of Mayo have connected the French and 
 the Presbyterians of the North, who, they hear, invited the 
 French over ; consequently they have transferred a portion 
 of their hatred to the enemy, who they are persuaded are 
 coming with their northern allies to drive them from their 
 habitations and properties ; and so strongly does this operate, 
 that I am persuaded they would beat the French out of this 
 country with stones.' 
 
 Another circumstance which continued to sustain the 
 impression that the West remained loyal was the success of 
 the yeomanry movement in Connaught. As many as eight 
 corps of cavalry, and a substantial number of infantry, had 
 been raised. These, no doubt, were recruited mainly from 
 the Protestant farming class, which was then much more 
 numerous in Mayo than it is to-day, but they also contained 
 a far from inconsiderable number of Roman Catholics ; and 
 there is no warrant for believing, as alleged by Musgrave, 
 that, down to 1797 at all events, these latter were other- 
 wise than cordial in their allegiance. The general con- 
 fidence that was felt in the loyalty of the district, in its 
 ability to resist external attack, and in its immunity from 
 internal disturbance, is plainly indicated by the language 
 held as late as January 6th, 1798, by the Protestant clergy 
 whose duty it was to preach at the services held in all the 
 
THE FKENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 265 
 
 churches on the occasion of a general thanksgiving for the 
 victories of Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown. On that 
 occasion Dr. Neligan, a well-known clergyman and an active 
 magistrate in the neighbourhood of Ballina, preaching 
 before the Ardnaree Infantry, delivered himself thus : ' It is a 
 pleasing source of consolation that, while some parts of the 
 kingdom are secretly employed in private machinations 
 against the State and in preparing to assist a foreign enemy 
 with the means for our destruction, the inhabitants of this 
 neighbourhood, actuated by the purest motives of patriotism 
 and loyalty, have boldly and openly come forward under the 
 banners of Government and arrayed themselves in arms 
 under respectable leaders determined to support their King, 
 their Constitution, their laws, and their properties against 
 the foreign invaders of their rights and liberties.' 
 
 It is evident, however, that the confidence of the Govern- 
 ment and its friends in the loyalty of the Mayo peasantry was 
 imprudently exaggerated, and that throughout the early part 
 of 1798 a spirit of active sedition had made itself felt among 
 the people. It is pretty plain, too, that the local leaders 
 had been instructed to expect and prepare for the arrival of 
 the French in their district. Meetings began to be frequent 
 in the neighbourhood of Ballina, and rumours of midnight 
 drilling reached the ears of the authorities. Dr. Neligan, 
 having in the summer procured the arrest of a pedlar named 
 Reynolds, had obtained a confession of a widely extended 
 plot, together with the names of the leading persons 
 immediately concerned. But the country was so denuded 
 of military that it was felt unsafe to attempt any very 
 vigorous measures to explode the conspiracy. A few of the 
 leaders were arrested and sent to Sligo for examination 
 before General Taylor; but they were discharged at the 
 instance of the local magistrate, who seemed satisfied of the 
 groundlessness of the charges. One of the prisoners, how- 
 ever, at once developed into an active insurgent so soon as 
 the Rebellion broke out. 
 
 The magistrates were still further thrown off their guard 
 by the eagerness with which the oath of allegiance was 
 
266 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 taken ; and so anxious did the people appear to give this 
 guarantee of loyalty that in June a committee was formed 
 by the magistracy under the presidency of the Bishop of 
 Killala for the taking of the oaths by the Roman Catholic 
 priests and their flocks ; and the country being divided into 
 districts, the oath was administered on Sunday after mass 
 in all the parishes, and was taken almost universally. It 
 seems certain, however, that in more than one instance this 
 eagerness of priest and people to testify to their loyalty 
 originated in their anxiety to prevent, by an appearance of 
 devotion to the Constitution, the quartering of any large 
 garrison in their county ; and many of the clergy not only 
 encouraged their flocks to join the insurrection when it broke 
 out, but were active in assisting the invaders. But to this 
 conduct there were some notable exceptions. The elder 
 priests shared as a rule the abhorrence of the French Revo- 
 lution which characterised their bishops. Father Conway 
 of Ardagh and Father Grady of Rathrea not only exhorted 
 their flocks to continue in their allegiance, but braved the 
 insult and assaults of their parishioners in defence of their 
 principles. 
 
 Whilst the organisation of disaffection in Mayo had thus 
 assumed a religious complexion, the fires of religious in- 
 tolerance were unchecked by the presence of any considerable 
 body of Protestants among either the leaders or the rank 
 and file of the movement. The United Irish organisation, 
 as the testimony of Wolfe Tone proves, proceeded in Con- 
 naught almost entirely on a basis of Defenderism, and was 
 thus exclusively Catholic. And whatever might have been 
 the disposition of a few among the local Protestant gentry 
 prior to 1798, the burning of Scullabogue and the massacre 
 on Wexford Bridge effectually deterred any of them from 
 actively embracing the insurgent cause, while they in- 
 evitably inflamed the ardour of the Protestant yeomanry 
 and produced a craving for vengeance. So marked was the 
 sectarian character of the disturbance in Connaught that 
 in Mayo only two Protestants joined the movement during 
 the whole progress of the invasion, and these were men of 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 267 
 
 admittedly bad character who signalised their defection from 
 their loyalty to their sovereign by abjuring their Church. Not 
 only did the Protestant gentry of Connaught hold resolutely 
 aloof from the agitation, but the number of Roman Catholics 
 of position and respectability who came forward was singu- 
 larly small. Indeed, no feature of the insurrection in Con- 
 naught is more remarkable than the distrust of the invasion 
 and its consequences which was shown by the better sort of 
 the Roman Catholics of Mayo, Galway, and Sligo. Of the 
 few who did come forward only two or three were men of 
 any substance or of much personal worth. 
 
 Such was the situation and disposition of the province 
 of Connaught, and especially of the county of Mayo which 
 was to be the immediate scene of the invasion, when, on the 
 morning of August 22nd, 1798, Humbert and his fleet, after 
 a voyage of sixteen days, the monotony of which was dis- 
 agreeably broken by a partial mutiny, occasioned by the 
 clamour of the soldiers to receive their pay, and during 
 which they had been beating almost continually against 
 contrary winds, reached the coast of Ireland. It had been 
 Humbert's design, in accordance with his instructions, to land 
 in Donegal Bay, but the wind being unfavourable and time 
 of importance, he adopted the alternative of Mayo, and the 
 fleet dropped anchor in the bay of Killala. 
 
 II 
 
 KILLALA 
 
 On the northern shore of Mayo, but twenty miles from 
 the north-westein extremity of Ireland, and pleasantly situ- 
 ated at the head of the wide bay to which it has given its name, 
 lies the little town of Killala. Never an imposing place, it 
 has dwindled within the last century, and more particularly 
 since the Great Famine, to little more than a village. Yet, 
 small and poor as it is to-day, Killala a century ago was a 
 town of some importance, the port for the not inconsiderable 
 grain trade of the neighbouring district, and, from the 
 
268 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 circumstance of its being the seat of a bishopric, serving as 
 an outpost of civilisation on the frontiers of the wild West. 
 Few places in that part of Ireland are more rich in tradi- 
 tions and memorials of the past. The conversion of Aladth, 
 or Aulay, the chief of a clan inhabiting part of what is now 
 the barony of Tyrawley, and the founding of a church near 
 the cell to which he retired, are among the best-authenti- 
 cated traditions of St. Patrick's missionary work ; and the 
 Cathedral Church of Killala (CM Aladth) has for thirteen 
 centuries commemorated this conversion of the pagan war- 
 rior into the Christian anchorite. 
 
 The diocese embraces the wild baronies of Erris and 
 Tyrawley, the former of which still remains perhaps the 
 most primitive district in the three kingdoms. Secure in its 
 wild fastnesses of rock, torrent, and bog, guarded on its outer 
 borders by a stormy and inhospitable coast, and to the 
 south and east by a chain of wild mountains and wilder 
 lakes, it remained almost to our own day remote and un- 
 visited, untravelled and trackless as the wilds of Lyonnesse, 
 
 a waste land, where no one comes, 
 Or hath come, since the making of the world. 
 
 The reports of such adventurers as penetrated these 
 solitudes from time to time were not likely to encourage 
 travellers. When Bishop Pococke, in 1752, made his tour 
 through the island, he found Erris but little changed from 
 the days of the first bishop of the Irish Church. A few 
 ruins of ancient fortifications seemed to attest the incursions 
 of Danish invaders, and the remains of a small Protestant 
 colony planted by the Cromwellian owners of the barony, 
 which has since been absorbed in its surroundings, were 
 still to be met with. Arthur Young describes the astonish- 
 ment with which the people of Erris, in their rare visits to 
 more civilised districts, viewed the unknown marvels of 
 trees and shrubs ; and it was not until 1820 that the country 
 was rendered accessible to even a two-wheeled vehicle. 
 Killala, however, situated at the eastern side of the less 
 primitive barony of the two, and the seat since shortly after 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OP IEELAND 269 
 
 the Eeformation of the united dioceses of Killala and 
 Achonry, stood on a more fertile spot. Its pleasant fields 
 and pastures had ministered in old days to communities of 
 monks, of whom the abbeys of Moyne and Eosserk are still 
 the venerable memorials. In more modern times they had 
 furnished the endowment of a bishopric which, though one 
 of the poorest in the Irish Church, was still a desirable 
 piece of preferment, forming the first rung in the ladder 
 of episcopal promotion, though its comparatively slender 
 income and remote situation caused the occupants of the 
 see to ascend as rapidly as they could. In the eighteenth 
 century alone there were no fewer than thirteen bishops of 
 Killala, of whom only three died in the see ; and an old 
 lady, living in 1805, is said to have been able to count as 
 many as eleven prelates who had ruled the diocese within 
 her memory. Nevertheless the bishops of Killala, despite 
 these rapid translations, did their work, the later prelates 
 at all events, in a manner which compares favourably with 
 the record of many of their richer brethren of the Irish 
 Establishment in the eighteenth century ; and they have left 
 pleasant memories behind them. They resided in the town 
 to which their presence lent importance and their incomes 
 prosperity. After the amalgamation of the see in 1834 with 
 the Archdiocese of Tuam it became a saying among the 
 inhabitants of the decaying town, where the old palace is 
 now the workhouse, that ' the luck went out of Killala with 
 the bishops.' 
 
 In August 1798 Killala Castle, the see-house of the 
 diocese, was tenanted by the penultimate Bishop of Killala, 
 Dr. Joseph Stock, to whose presence in the town at the 
 period of the invasion we are indebted for the fullest, most 
 interesting, and most authentic description of the character 
 of the French army and of the episodes which marked its 
 occupation of Killala and the adjacent country. Dr. Stock 
 was a man not only of learning and piety, but, as his 
 narrative shows, of tolerant and humane disposition, as 
 well as of shrewd observation. Unlike the majority of 
 his contemporaries on the Irish episcopal bench, he had 
 
270 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 been born, bred, and educated in Ireland, and his preferment 
 bad been earned by solid performances. Far from ranking 
 among Swift's ' highwaymen bishops,' he belonged rather to 
 the type of ' Greek play bishops,' so common in the Anglican 
 Church in the early part of the nineteenth century. The 
 son of a hosier in Dublin, whose family had been settled in 
 the Irish metropolis for more than one generation, Stock 
 had achieved a distinguished career in Trinity College, 
 Dublin, of which he became a Fellow. While in residence 
 at the University he produced editions of the classics which 
 long remained in vogue ; and having retired upon a college 
 living he became head-master of Enniskillen, then, as now, 
 one of the most important schools in Ireland. Even these 
 distinctions, however, might have failed to win him a 
 bishopric had he remained without advantageous family 
 connections ; but a wife who bore him eleven children 
 brought him also the means of supporting them. This lady 
 was a sister-in-law of Archbishop Newcome, and during 
 Dr. Newcome's brief tenure of the Irish Primacy, Stock 
 was appointed to the see of Killala. Unlike some of his 
 episcopal brethren before and since, the Bishop's activity of 
 mind was not exhausted by his promotion. He only ex- 
 changed the literary labours of a schoolmaster for those 
 appropriate to a divine, and while awaiting his own trans- 
 lation to some richer see he occupied his leisure with a 
 metrical translation of Job. It was as well perhaps that he 
 should thus have preached to himself the virtue of patience, 
 for he had to wait twelve years for his advancement to 
 Waterford. Lord Holland, in his ' Memoirs of the "Whig 
 Party,' ascribes this delay in recognising the Bishop's un- 
 doubted merit to the dissatisfaction which his kindly 
 testimony to the moderation and humanity of the French 
 troops inspired in official circles at the time when Nelson's 
 advice to his midshipmen to ' hate the Frenchman as you 
 do the devil ' conveyed the popular view of our enemies. 
 
 On the morning of August 22, Dr. Stock and his guests 
 at Killala Castle, where several of the clergy of the diocese 
 were assembled for the Bishop's primary visitation, intended 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 271 
 
 to be held on the day following, descried three large vessels 
 in the bay carrying English colours. Eager to see a British 
 man-of-war, the Bishop's sons, Edwin and Arthur Stock, 
 lads of nineteen and sixteen, threw themselves into a 
 fishing-boat along with the port-surveyor, and pulling to 
 the largest of the ships speedily found themselves prisoners 
 on board the French frigate Concorde. The fleet was in 
 the act of anchoring and the army preparing to disembark. 
 The elder of the brothers, happening to be a proficient in the 
 French language, was quickly brought ashore to act as an 
 interpreter to the invaders, who at three o'clock received 
 orders to disembark, an operation which was completed 
 before nightfall. Sarazin, the Adjutant-General, with the 
 grenadiers, was the first to reach the shore, and was at once 
 sent forward to attack Killala. The rest of the troops 
 quickly followed ; and, leaving only a small force at Kilcum- 
 min to land the stores from the ships, and to distribute 
 among the peasants, who flocked to the shore, a supply of 
 arms and uniforms for such as might be found willing to 
 join the army of Ireland, Humbert hurried to the support 
 of his subordinate. Marching by Palmerston, some three 
 miles from Killala, and crossing a considerable stream, the 
 Owenmore, at that place, they advanced quickly towards 
 Killala in the dusk of a fine August evening. 
 
 The Bishop of Killala, with the Dean and others of his 
 clergy, and a couple of officers belonging to the regiment of 
 Carabiniers quartered at Ballina, were just rising to join the 
 ladies after dinner, when a mounted messenger dashed 
 breathlessly up to the castle gates with the alarming intel- 
 ligence that the French were upon them. Captain Kirk- 
 wood of the local yeomanry, the Tyrawley Cavalry, had 
 been apprised a little earlier by a fisherman of the enemy's 
 landing ; and aided by a small party of regulars belonging 
 to the Prince of Wales's Fencibles, a regiment lately 
 stationed in the district, he hastily took up a position, with 
 not more than fifty men, at the top of the street leading to 
 the castle. From the centre of Killala, near what is called 
 the Steeple Hill, on which stands a very perfect example of 
 
272 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 the ancient Bound Towers of Ireland, three roads diverge to 
 the south, west, and north-east. The last of these wound 
 by the cathedral and the churchyard wall past the castle 
 towards Ballina ; by the second the French advanced. 
 
 On reaching the outskirts of the town, Humbert detached 
 a party across the meadows under the guidance of an Irish 
 recruit named Kerrigan, who was subsequently given a 
 commission in the Irish army, to occupy the southern road, 
 and then ordered Sarazin to charge with his grenadiers. 
 The position taken up by Kirk wood was a strong one, but 
 the yeomanry, unaccustomed to actual fighting, were unable 
 to withstand the onset of the French bayonets. After firing 
 a volley which wounded some of the enemy, but failed to 
 check their progress, they fled precipitately down the road 
 towards Ballina, leaving their commander, with Lieutenant 
 Sills of the Fencibles, and Dr. Ellison the Eector of Castle- 
 bar, a ci-devant cavalry officer of the British army, to make 
 with a few others a brief and ineffectual resistance. These 
 officers were quickly forced back to the castle gates, where 
 they were obliged to surrender themselves prisoners. Thus, 
 after little more than a few minutes' skirmishing, Killala, 
 with its castle and bishop, was in the hands of the enemy. 
 There was no loss of life on the French side, but of the 
 yeomanry two were killed — one of them, the elderly and 
 gouty apothecary of the town, receiving a bullet in his head 
 as he attempted to gain the shelter of his own house. 
 Among the wounded were the valiant Dr. Ellison, slightly 
 injured by a shot in the heel, and two French officers. 
 Twenty-three yeomen (including two officers) were taken 
 prisoners and ordered into confinement in the castle, which 
 was at once occupied, but the Fencibles, with the exception 
 of Lieutenant Sills, their commander, made good their retreat 
 to Ballina, some seven miles distant. Most of the clergy 
 assembled for the visitation had meantime escaped as best 
 they could, some of them only doing so with very consider- 
 able difficulty. Charles Seymour, afterwards the well-known 
 Protestant evangelist of Connemara, has told how, finding 
 himself in the midst of the French troops in the streets 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 273 
 
 of Killala, and knowing not how otherwise to avoid being 
 taken prisoner, he made the best use of the one word of 
 French he was acquainted with by shouting Frangais, 
 Frangais, as he waved his arms with pretended enthusiasm. 
 
 The fighting over, General Humbert, accompanied by 
 Edwin Stock, quickly appeared at the castle gates. The 
 French commander had taken no active part in the struggle 
 in the town, but arriving immediately after, he, with some- 
 what magnificent exaggeration of the achievement of his 
 lieutenant, promoted Sarazin to be a General of Brigade 
 upon the spot. This done he demanded to see M. l'Eveque. 
 The Bishop had been urged to fly in the company of some 
 Carbineer officers, who, on hearing the news of the French 
 advance, had ridden back to their quarters at full speed ; 
 but he had determined, wisely as the event proved, to stand 
 his ground. He had quietly awaited in his garden the issue 
 of the French attack, and promptly appearing in response to 
 Humbert's summons he soon, as he puts it in his narrative, 
 1 found full employment as an interpreter, and still more as 
 a contributor to the wants of a brave nation.' A green flag, 
 bearing the motto Erin go bragh, was hoisted over the castle, 
 which was speedily inundated by the invaders. In a few 
 minutes the dining-room, so lately the scene of the Bishop's 
 hospitality, was filled with French officers and their baggage, 
 with the wounded and their surgical assistants, and with 
 the prisoners who were ordered in for immediate examination. 
 But, despite the confusion and disorder inevitable in such 
 circumstances, the utmost consideration was shown to Dr. 
 Stock. The French took possession of the ground floor, 
 court-yard, and offices ; but the Bishop and his family, with 
 the Dean and his wife, and Dr. Ellison, were allowed to 
 occupy unmolested the upper portion of the house, including 
 the library. 
 
 The courtesy thus exhibited, from which, throughout 
 the four weeks of the French occupation of the castle, there 
 was scarcely a moment's departure, was doubtless dictated 
 in the first instance by the expectation that the Bishop and 
 the Protestant population of Killala generally might be 
 
 T 
 
274 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 induced to espouse the French cause. It was also in pre- 
 cise accordance with the instructions conveyed to the French 
 General by the Directory to respect, and cause to be re- 
 spected, the manners, customs, and religious observances of 
 the Irish people. Humbert appears to have been possessed 
 with the delusion which Wolfe Tone had found so difficult 
 to dissipate in the minds of the Directory, and which had 
 doubtless been fostered in French minds by less clear- 
 sighted and more bombastic intriguers, such as Napper 
 Tandy, that the propertied classes in Ireland would be found 
 willing to join the insurrectionary movement. In pursuance 
 of this idea, while Lieutenant Sills, as an officer of the 
 British army, was ordered aboard the ships as a prisoner, 
 Captain Kirkwood of the yeomanry was at once placed on his 
 parole ; and the French General, in his first conversation 
 with the Bishop, actually intimated that there was room in 
 the Directory of the Province of Conaught, which it was 
 his intention to establish forthwith, for a person of the ability 
 and consequence of the Bishop of Killala. Humbert evinced 
 evident astonishment at the refusal of this overture, and 
 indeed it was some time before the French officers could be 
 got to understand how widely different was the episcopal 
 standpoint. 
 
 Thus, though naturally a good deal perturbed by this 
 martial visitation of his diocese, the Bishop had no reason 
 to be apprehensive for the safety of his own person or that 
 of his family and friends ; though for a day or two the 
 conduct of the General, a man of violent and uncertain 
 temper, occasionally inspired alarm. It was at first 
 arranged that the Bishop should accompany the French 
 army, when they should set out for Castlebar, as a hostage 
 for the safety of the garrison left at Killala ; but when the 
 time came his son Edwin was accepted in his stead. On 
 the day after the landing, however, he was threatened with 
 a more serious inconvenience. Being unable to comply with 
 a requisition of the General to procure, or cause to be 
 procured, from the country people horses and wagons to 
 draw the artillery and convey the stores, he was ordered on 
 
THE FKENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 275 
 
 board ship for deportation to France, and was even given in 
 charge of a corporal's guard for that purpose. The Bishop, 
 however, was not suffered to proceed more than half a mile 
 from the castle ere he was recalled by a messenger on horse- 
 back to receive from the General, standing on the staircase, 
 apologies for an indignity which was offered, according to 
 Humbert, only with the object of impressing and terrifying 
 the populace. 
 
 Meantime, the disembarkation of the stores and artillery 
 had been quickly completed, and on the morning of the 24th 
 the French ships, their safety menaced by a storm, and 
 anxious doubtless to elude the vigilance of the English 
 squadron which was on the look-out for them, sailed out of 
 the bay, taking with them most of the prisoners captured in 
 the fighting at Killala. 
 
 Humbert, thus left to himself with his little army in this 
 remote corner of Ireland, lost no time in taking the offensive. 
 The day after his arrival he despatched General Sarazin with 
 a detachment of a hundred men, including forty troopers, to 
 make a reconnaissance towards Ballina. Finding the oppo- 
 sition likely to be formidable, Sarazin fell back on Killala, 
 taking, however, the precaution of posting a strong ambuscade 
 under an old bridge about two miles out of the latter town. 
 Later in the day the English forces in Ballina, having been 
 reinforced by some yeomanry and by a detachment of the 
 Carbineers under Major Keir, advanced on Killala ; but, 
 being vigorously assailed from the ambuscade, they were 
 forced to retire after a brisk skirmish, and not without loss. 
 Mr. Fortescue, a young clergyman who had volunteered his 
 services, was mortally wounded, and died a few days after- 
 wards. The day following Humbert himself, with the main 
 body of his army, marched against Ballina. On this occasion 
 scarcely any attempt was made to oppose Sarazin and his 
 grenadiers, who again led the advance. Some troops had been 
 collected under Colonel Sir Thomas Chapman, who took up 
 a position near Moyne Abbey on the road from Killala ; but 
 these quickly retreated, and, scarcely halting in Ballina, 
 evacuated that town and retired to Foxford, eight miles 
 
 T 2 
 
276 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 further south. The execution of a rebel by the retreating 
 English troops enabled the Frenchmen to signalise their 
 entry into Ballina by a characteristic display of theatrical 
 sympathy. A man named Walsh, who with premature and 
 injudicious assiduity was found recruiting for the invaders, 
 had been hanged on a tree in the main street of Ballina. As 
 the French troops advanced Sarazin and many of his 
 followers embraced the still-warm body of the victim, the 
 leader exolaiming as he kissed the face of the corpse : ' Voild, 
 Messieurs, thus do we honour the martyrs of your sacred 
 cause.' 
 
 Having by these rapid and successful movements, and 
 with the loss so far of only a single soldier, obtained control 
 of a very considerable part of north-west Mayo, and having 
 impressed the populace with a belief alike in the prowess 
 of the French arms and in the weakness of the defence, 
 Humbert's next care was to attract recruits to his standard, 
 and as the representative of the French Bepublic to establish 
 a form of civil government. On the morning following his 
 arrival he issued a grandiloquent proclamation, setting 
 forth the sympathy of the French for Ireland, the valour 
 and disinterestedness of the invading army, and the 
 glories attendant on popular liberty. This document, the 
 composition probably of Humbert's Irish officers, Teeling 
 and O'Keon, ran as follows : 
 
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Union ! 
 
 Irishmen, you have not forgot Bantry Bay ; you know 
 what efforts France has made to assist you. Her affection 
 for you, her desire to avenge your wrongs and insure your 
 independence, can never be impaired. After several unsuc- 
 cessful attempts, behold Frenchmen arrived amongst you. 
 They come to support your courage, to share your dangers, 
 to join their arms and to mix their blood with yours in the 
 sacred cause of liberty. 
 
 Brave Irishmen, our cause is common : like you we 
 abhor the avaricious and bloodthirsty policy of an oppressive 
 Government ; like you, we hold as indefeasible the rights of 
 all nations to liberty ; like you, we are persuaded that the 
 
THE FKENCH INVASION OE IEELAND 277 
 
 peace of the world must ever be troubled, as long as the 
 British Ministry is suffered to make with impunity a traffic 
 of the industry, labour, and blood of the people. 
 
 But exclusive of the interests which unite us we have 
 powerful motives to love and defend you. Have we not been 
 the pretext of the cruelty exercised against you by the 
 cabinet of St. James's ? The heartfelt interest you have 
 shown in the grand events of our Revolution, has it not 
 been imputed to you as a crime? Are not tortures and 
 death continually hanging over such of you as are barely 
 suspected of being our friends ? Let us unite, then, and 
 march to glory. 
 
 We swear the most inviolable respect for your properties, 
 your laws, and all your religious opinions. Be free ; be 
 masters in your own country ! We look for no other conquest 
 than that of your liberty, no other success than yours. The 
 moment of breaking your chains has arrived ; our triumphant 
 troops are now flying to the extremities of the earth, to tear 
 up the roots of the wealth and tyranny of our enemies. 
 That frightful Colossus is mouldering away in every part. 
 Can there be any Irishman base enough to separate himself 
 at such a happy juncture from the grand interests of his 
 country ? If such there be, brave friends, let him be chased 
 from the country he betrays, and let his property become the 
 reward of those generous men who know how to fight. and 
 die. 
 
 Irishmen, recollect the late defeats which your enemies 
 have experienced from the French ; recollect the plains of 
 Houscoste, Toulon, Quiberon, and Ostend ; recollect America, 
 free from the moment she wished to be so. The contest 
 between you and your oppressors cannot be long. Union ! 
 Liberty ! The Irish Republic ! such is our cry. Let us 
 march ! Our hearts are devoted to you ; our glory is in your 
 happiness. Health and Fraternity ! 
 
 Humbert, General. 
 
 To inspire confidence in these promises it was announced 
 that Humbert's was only the vanguard of an army of thirty 
 thousand men who were to arrive within a fortnight; that 
 arms, ammunition, and clothing were ready for distribution 
 among the brave allies of France ; and that, pending the 
 arrival of a supply of ready money with the rest of the army 
 of invasion, the necessaries of the soldiers would be purchased 
 
278 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 by drafts on the new provincial Directory which it was 
 proposed to establish forthwith. A commissary of stores 
 soon found his whole time occupied in writing out drafts in 
 the following terms : ' In the name of the French Govern- 
 ment, good for half a guinea to be raised on the province of 
 Connaught.' 
 
 For the arms and uniforms the demand was brisk from 
 the outset. Chests containing each forty muskets, and others 
 filled with gay French uniforms, were opened in the court- 
 yard of the castle, and distributed indiscriminately among 
 the applicants, upwards of five thousand stand of arms being 
 handed out, according to the statement of a French officer. 
 The eagerness of the people for the uniforms, of which as many 
 as a thousand were given out among the people round Killala 
 alone, was so great that some of the peasants, after receiving 
 their suits, presented themselves next day in their native rags 
 for a second supply. The gaudy helmets, elaborately edged 
 with spotted brown paper in imitation of leopard-skin, were 
 special objects of ambition. 
 
 It may be doubted, however, whether, with a longer 
 experience of the quality of these raw recruits, so general 
 and extravagant a distribution of arms would have been 
 deemed expedient. Indeed, a little later Humbert gave up 
 the attempt to turn the peasantry into disciplined soldiers, 
 finding them much more efficient when charging with the 
 pikes they understood the use of, than when attempting to 
 fire volleys with weapons which they knew not how to 
 manage. These Irish levies quickly disappointed their 
 French friends. Entirely without military training, scarcely 
 comprehending the necessity of discipline, and uncontrolled 
 by persons of superior education, it was scarcely surprising 
 that they should prove a hindrance rather than a help to their 
 allies. To many of them firearms were so little familiar that 
 they sought to insert their cartridges at the wrong end, and, 
 when the ammunition stuck in the barrel, in their efforts to 
 extract it, often beat and bent the weapon against the ground 
 till it was rendered useless. Those who were more expert were 
 so proud of their accomplishment that they were perpetually 
 
THE FKENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 279 
 
 discharging their muskets and wasting their allowance of 
 powder in shooting crows. This practice was peremptorily 
 put a stop to after the French commander had narrowly 
 escaped a bullet fired by one of this awkward squad ; and 
 thenceforward the recruits remained unprovided with bullets, 
 and were restricted to one charge of gunpowder. 
 
 Even more unfamiliar than musket and cartridge to the 
 untutored peasants of the West was the fare served out to 
 them as rations in common with their French comrades. 
 To the poor cottier from the mountains of Erris meat was 
 an unknown luxury, and from his ignorance how to use or 
 cook it the wastefulness was extreme. A French officer 
 complained that these Irishmen would consume in four 
 days proportionately more than the army of Italy would 
 have consumed in a month ; and he told with disgust how 
 he had seen a recruit, on receiving his week's allowance of 
 beef (eight pounds), lie down on the ground and gnaw it 
 with such voracity that he was certain the fellow would 
 devour it all before he rose. Small wonder that, in less 
 than a fortnight from their arrival, the contemptuous 
 estimate of the French for these new allies of the Eepublic 
 should be thus expressed by an old soldier, on his command- 
 ing officer ordering him to set out for Sligo at the head of a 
 detachment of Irish levies : ' Do you know what I would do 
 with these Irish devils, if I had a body to form out of them ? 
 I would pick out one third of them, and by the Lord I 
 would shoot the rest ! ' 
 
 Scarcely greater than the dissimilarity in training and 
 discipline between the two wings of the allied forces were 
 the differences of opinion which separated them in religious 
 matters. The simple and untutored peasant of Mayo, with 
 his implicit reverence for the priest, his unquestioning accept- 
 ance of the mysteries of his faith, and his belief that he was 
 engaged not less in a holy war than in a patriotic enterprise, 
 was incomprehensible to the free-thinking veterans of the 
 army of Italy, who laughed at the simplicity with which the 
 peasantry took arms, as they expressed it, ' for France and 
 the Blessed Virgin.' ' Why, then, God help these simple- 
 
280 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 tons ! ' exclaimed a Frenchman. ' If they knew how little 
 we care for the Pope or his religion, they would not be so 
 hot in expecting help from us. We have just sent Mr. Pope 
 away from Italy ; and who knows but we may find him 
 again in this country ? ' Throughout the campaign the 
 French troops, heedless of their instructions to treat the 
 Irish as fighting for the same cause as themselves, took but 
 little pains to show respect to the religious views of the in- 
 habitants of the country, mocking at them for their ob- 
 servance of the Sabbath and their fasting on Fridays, and 
 deriding as an absurd superstition the practice of wearing 
 scapulars, which had become prevalent among the peasantry 
 of Mayo. 
 
 While the peasantry thus came forward with undisciplined 
 enthusiasm, Humbert and his officers looked in vain among 
 the volunteers for representatives of the other orders of 
 society. Neither from among the landed gentry nor from 
 the commercial class did they receive any considerable sup- 
 port. At Killala, as afterwards at Castlebar, the French 
 General found that his enterprise, even when not actively 
 opposed, was viewed with dislike and suspicion as well 
 among the Boman Catholic gentry as among their Protestant 
 brethren. Mr. Bichard Bourke of Ballina, and one Matthew 
 Bellew, brother of the Boman Catholic bishop of the diocese, 
 were the only persons of good connections in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of Killala who declared definitely for the in- 
 vaders ; and neither of these was a very reputable specimen 
 of his class. General Bellew, as he came to be called, was 
 indeed a member of the ancient Boman Catholic family of 
 that name, but he had disgraced his relations by a life of 
 drunkenness and debauchery. Intended for the priesthood 
 by his father, who had sent him to Borne to be educated, he 
 had deserted divinity for a soldier's life. After spending 
 some years in the Austrian, and subsequently in the Bussian 
 service, he had been severely wounded by the explosion of a 
 mine at the siege of Ismail, and obliged to abandon his 
 military career. Beturning to Mayo as a dependent upon 
 his brother the bishop, he had fallen into drunken and dirty 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 281 
 
 habits. Being, however, a man of some humour and enter- 
 taining social qualities, he continued to be tolerated by the 
 Mayo gentry, and wandered about, at will, a sort of dis- 
 reputable Will Wimble, from one country house to another. 
 So little of a United Irishman was he, that, on the arrival 
 of the French, he desired to take arms against them and 
 offered to serve with the local yeomanry. This offer being 
 refused he had, unable to keep out of the excitement, joined 
 the French ; and was at once placed by Humbert in com- 
 mand of the Irish recruits, a position in which his military 
 experience, joined to his knowledge of French, would have 
 made him exceedingly useful, had he been able to place his 
 intemperate habits under restraint. The example of Bourke 
 and Bellew was followed by James O'Dowd, the last repre- 
 sentative of one of the most ancient families of Tyrawley, 
 and by two gentlemen named Barrett, father and son. Of 
 these the elder was a doctor and apothecary in Ballina, and 
 the son had been, prior to the outbreak of the Rebellion, an 
 active member of the Tyrawley Yeomanry Corps, with the 
 reputation of an efficient soldier and a loyal subject. The 
 Barretts were both men of humane and peaceful disposition, 
 and appear rather to have drifted into the treason which 
 cost the father his life and drove the son into exile, than to 
 have acted from any warm enthusiasm for the popular 
 cause. 
 
 At the end of three days from his arrival Humbert, having 
 enrolled and officered an Irish contingent of about six hun- 
 dred men, moved forward with the main body of his troops 
 to Ballina, with the intention of advancing from that point 
 on Castlebar. For the protection of his military stores and 
 ammunition, which included a quantity of gunpowder that 
 ultimately became a source of great embarrassment to the 
 garrison, and perhaps also with a view to the protection of 
 his rear in the event of a landing of troops by the British 
 squadron, which, as he was aware, had been chasing him, a 
 detachment of nearly two hundred French soldiers with six 
 officers was left behind in Killala. As hostages for the 
 safety of these officers Humbert carried with him Edwin 
 
282 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 Stock, Mr. Nixon, the curate of Killala, and four other 
 residents of the town. These, however, were permitted to 
 return a day or two later. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE CASTLEBAR RACES 
 
 While these events were passing at Killala, the authorities 
 at Dublin Castle were making hurried preparations to resist 
 an attack as to the precise magnitude of which they were 
 necessarily for some time in ignorance. The first rumours 
 of the invasion had reached the Lord-Lieutenant at Dublin 
 on Friday, August 22, through the General commanding the 
 forces in Connaught. To allay as quickly as possible the 
 excitement which, it was anticipated, would follow the an- 
 nouncement that the long-expected invasion w T as at last an 
 unexpected reality, as well no doubt as to prevent ex- 
 aggerated reports of the enemy's force from getting abroad, 
 Lord Castlereagh at once addressed a letter to the Lord 
 Mayor of Dublin, in which he conveyed the information that 
 a small French squadron had appeared at Killala and landed 
 a force, the number of which was unknown, and concluded 
 by stating that inasmuch as a squadron of his Majesty's 
 ships, consisting of one line-of-battle ship and five frigates, 
 was cruising off the north-west coast, there was good 
 reason to hope it would fall in with the enemy. 
 
 The cheerful optimism of this communication by no 
 means represented the true state of the official mind. The 
 Rebellion in Wexford was much too recent to allow the 
 Viceroy and his advisers to view matters with all the 
 equanimity they felt it politic to profess. Neither the 
 information then in possession of the authorities as to the 
 state of the popular feeling, nor the actual provision for the 
 defence of the country, was sufficiently satisfactory to forbid 
 the most serious anxiety. Lord Cornwallis had but just con- 
 cluded a redistribution of his military forces, in which he 
 had consulted principally the security of the southern coast, 
 as the quarter from which attack might most naturally 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 283 
 
 be expected. The province of Connaught had not been 
 altogether neglected in these preparations, but the counties 
 of Mayo and Sligo had been very thinly garrisoned, as 
 having been perhaps the least disturbed of all the Irish 
 counties during the actual progress of the insurrection ; and 
 of the regiments intended to be stationed in Connaught 
 several had not yet reached their destination at the moment 
 the invasion occurred. Only the day before the landing, 
 Captain Taylor, the military secretary and aide-de-camp to 
 the Viceroy, had expressed in a letter to Wickham the 
 gravest misgivings in regard both to the efficiency and the 
 loyalty of the Militia regiments, especially those of the 
 northern counties, in which conspiracy and desertion had 
 recently gone to great lengths. In the same communication 
 fears were expressed that the quiescence of the insurgent 
 counties proceeded from necessity only, and that the first 
 prospect of foreign assistance would encourage them to a 
 fresh rising. 
 
 Lord Cornwallis, in these circumstances, at once deter- 
 mined to take the field in person ; and on August 26, having 
 meantime received despatches giving a fuller account of the 
 movements of the enemy and the condition of the country, 
 he embarked at the Grand Canal Harbour for Tullamore at 
 the head of a thousand men, drafted from the Dublin 
 garrison, with three pieces of artillery. He had, two days 
 previously, on the first receipt of the news of the invasion, 
 sent forward General Lake to Galway, to take command of 
 the troops west of the Shannon. It had been the intention 
 of the Viceroy, mindful of the effect likely to be produced 
 on the country by any mischance, the result of premature 
 action, that no attempt should be made to bring the French 
 army to an engagement until a force should have been 
 concentrated sufficient to insure the complete defeat of the 
 invaders. But the Viceroy was without the means of 
 communicating with his subordinates in the west, pending 
 the assumption of the command by Lake. At the moment 
 of the French landing, the officer in charge of the Connaught 
 district was Major-General Hutchinson (afterwards the 
 
284 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 second Lord Donoughmore), a soldier who, though described 
 by Lord Cornwallis after Castlebar as ' no general,' had 
 already attained a reputation for ability ; and whose sub- 
 sequent career in Egypt proved, at all events, that if he did 
 not know his business in 1798 he had at any rate learned it 
 by 1801. 
 
 Hutchinson was the second son of the well-known 
 Provost of Trinity College, of whom Lord North, disgusted 
 with his insatiable greed for office, had said that if the King 
 were to give him the three kingdoms on one day he would 
 ask for the Isle of Man the next for a potato garden. He had 
 entered the Irish Parliament at an early age, and at the 
 moment of the invasion still held a seat in that assembly. 
 He had commenced his military career under Abercromby, 
 whom he was subsequently to succeed in Egypt. Though 
 unpopular in the service from his unsociable habits and un- 
 gracious manners, he was well fitted by his naturally 
 humane temperament — as well perhaps as by his hereditary 
 connection with the popular party in Ireland — for the 
 divisional command which had been assigned to him ; and 
 his views of policy harmonised with the methods relied upon 
 by Cornwallis for the pacification of the country. 
 
 Hutchinson, who with General Trench was at Gal way 
 on August 22, had received his first intimation of the inva- 
 sion on the morning after Humbert had landed, in a letter 
 from Sir Thomas Chapman, already mentioned in the affair 
 at Ballina, which, without giving the actual numbers of the 
 French army, stated the strength of the fleet at seven or 
 eight ships. As a fleet of these dimensions might have been 
 sufficient to carry a force numerically formidable, Hutchin- 
 son deemed it his duty to await further intelligence before 
 taking the field ; but meantime he gave orders to the troops 
 under his command to hold themselves in readiness to move 
 forward on a moment's notice. Early on the morning 
 following, having received from General Taylor, who was 
 stationed at Sligo, more definite information as to the real 
 strength of the invading army, together with a pressing 
 demand for assistance, he determined to move at once 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 285 
 
 towards Castlebar with the whole force at his disposal, in 
 order to prevent a forward movement on the part of the 
 French. This action of Hutchinson's was certainly prema- 
 ture, for to effect it he was obliged to leave the counties of 
 Leitrim and Roscommon open to the French army, and to 
 suffer the bridges on the upper Shannon to remain entirely 
 without protection. Leaving Galway at 10 a.m. on Friday, 
 he arrived that evening at Castlebar, the country through 
 which he marched being perfectly tranquil. Immediately 
 on his arrival Hutchinson sent forward an officer with a flag 
 of truce to Killala, ostensibly to make inquiries after an 
 officer who, he learned, had been wounded and taken 
 prisoner in the skirmish at Ballina, but really to ascertain 
 the exact strength of the enemy. This emissary, having 
 first privately reassured the captives at Killala with the 
 information that a force equal to three times that of the 
 French would be certain to give a good account of the 
 invaders at Ballina, returned with reports which placed the 
 French force at rather less than their actual numbers ; and 
 Hutchinson, supported by General Trench, made his pre- 
 parations for giving battle. The force which he had brought 
 with him consisted of the Kerry, Kilkenny, and Longford 
 Militias, a detachment of the Fraser Fencibles, and a 
 detachment of Lord Roden's Fencible Dragoons. Of these 
 the Kerrys were sent forward to reinforce General Taylor at 
 Foxf ord ; but a few troops belonging to the 6th Regiment of 
 Foot and the Prince of Wales's Leicester Fencibles were 
 already quartered in the town. Lake, arriving so late as 
 eleven o'clock on Friday night, was only able to take over 
 the command when all arrangements for giving battle had 
 been completed, and could not, even had he desired it, have 
 effected a retreat in time to avoid an engagement. 
 
 It is exceedingly difficult to compute the numerical 
 strength at the disposal of the English Generals at 
 Castlebar ; and the greatest discrepancies exist between 
 the various accounts. The British forces have been 
 variously stated at 6,000, the figure given by Humbert in 
 his despatches and adopted by Plowden, and at 1,500, the 
 
286 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 number preferred by those who have sought to minimise 
 the disgrace of the defeat inflicted by the French. Both 
 estimates, however, appear to be wide of the truth. 
 Hutchinson, in the exculpatory account of the engagement 
 which he subsequently forwarded to Lord Cornwallis in 
 justification of his decision to give battle to the enemy, 
 relies on his own superiority of strength as removing the 
 imputation of rashness, and puts the troops under his com- 
 mand at some 4,000 ; a figure which precisely accords with 
 the statement of one of Humbert's subordinates, Captain 
 Jobit, who, describing the position in which the French 
 found themselves on reaching Castlebar, says : ' The enemy, 
 according to the unanimous report of all the prisoners, 
 numbered two thousand five hundred infantry, fifteen 
 hundred cavalry, and sixteen guns of varying calibre.' l 
 On the other hand, Hutchinson, in the very statement 
 just quoted, says : ' The troops were posted on a position 
 previously taken. They were 1,600 or 1,700 cavalry and 
 infantry, ten pieces of cannon, and one howitzer.' Lord 
 Cornwallis, commenting on the latter statement, says : 
 ' You state the force under your command to have amounted 
 to near 4,000 men ; but I have understood that you bad not 
 more than 1,000 infantry with you at the time that you 
 exposed yourself to be attacked by the French.' It is 
 obvious that no general writing to his commander-in-chief 
 could be guilty, particularly when endeavouring to exculpate 
 himself, of such gross carelessness as to represent a force of 
 1,700 as being really 4,000 ; and the explanation doubtless 
 is that the 1,700 mentioned by Hutchinson meant the 
 troops actually at his disposal at Castlebar, while by the 4,000 
 is to be understood the total number of all arms under the 
 General's command in Connaught. Of this larger number 
 1,200 were posted near Foxford under General Taylor to 
 resist Humbert's advance, and a considerable force was 
 scattered along the road from Sligo to Boyle. 
 
 While Hutchinson had been making his dispositions on 
 
 1 Projets ct Tentativcs dc Ddbarquement aux lies Britanniques, 1793-1805, 
 ii. p. 102. 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 287 
 
 the assumption that Humbert must advance on Castlebar 
 by the Foxford road, as the only route possible for an army, 
 the French General was preparing to execute a manoeuvre 
 as daring and as unexpected as it proved to be successful. 
 Arriving at Ballina early on the morning of Saturday, 
 September 26, he had quickly informed himself of the 
 nature of the country. There were but two ways of reach- 
 ing Castlebar, the first and most practicable being by the 
 coach road which proceeds in a south-westerly direction via 
 Foxford, crossing the fine river Moy at that town, seven 
 Irish miles from Ballina, and thence leading due west 
 through the comparatively fertile and level baronies of 
 Gallen and Carra. The other road — then little more than 
 a bridle track — leading by the northern shore of the wild 
 waters of Lough Conn to the little town of Crossmolina, bends 
 suddenly southward at that place, and winds by moor and 
 waste and mountain through the wildest part of the barony 
 of Tyrawley. From Crossmolina to within six miles of 
 Castlebar the road runs between the lake and mountains 
 through the glens of the high range that stretches from 
 south-western Erris across to Sligo, rising in the mountain 
 of Nephin to the height of 2,600 feet, and thence is carried 
 over the summits of a succession of hills to Castlebar. Six 
 miles from that town the road narrows to the rocky and 
 difficult defile called Barnageragh or the Windygap, a pass 
 quite insurmountable in the face of opposition, and capable 
 of being defended against the strongest army with a small 
 force and a couple of pieces of artillery. Learning from 
 Father Conroy, the priest of Addergoole, a parish in the 
 immediate vicinity of Barnageragh, that the mountain road, 
 though difficult, would not be impracticable for his troops, 
 Humbert at once determined to adopt this unusual route. 
 At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the 26th he began his march. 
 His whole available army amounted to no more than 700 or 
 800 of his own men ; but he was accompanied by some 600 
 or 800 of the Irish recruits. The road being impassable 
 for horse artillery, he encumbered himself only with two 
 light curricle guns, to draw which the services of the Irish 
 
288 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 levies were utilised. A number of these, much to their 
 dissatisfaction, were actually harnessed to the cannon and 
 obliged to drag the guns over the hills. Marching steadily 
 through the night, and halting for but two hours' bivouac, 
 the entire army passed safely and without opposition 
 through Barnageragh, and had arrived at seven in the 
 morning within two miles of Castlebar. But for the break- 
 down of one of the guns on the road and a delay of two 
 hours in repairing it, they would have arrived still earlier, 
 and Humbert would have taken the English forces entirely 
 by surprise. 
 
 As it was, the British commander was left but little 
 time to prepare for the attack. A messenger had been 
 sent forward from Ballina the evening before to apprise 
 Hutchinson of the route taken by Humbert ; but he had 
 been stopped by Father Conroy, sworn a United Irishman, 
 and enrolled in the rebel ranks. The probability of an 
 attack from the Barnageragh side does not seem to 
 have been seriously entertained by Hutchinson, though the 
 possibility of it had occurred to others, and the Government 
 had even been indirectly warned of the danger. A sugges- 
 tion had been made the day previously to place one or two 
 field pieces with a couple of hundred men at the Gap as a 
 measure of protection ; but this was apparently deemed 
 superfluous, Hutchinson being persistent in his belief that 
 the French would march by Foxford. General Taylor, at 
 the latter town, appeared equally satisfied on this point, and 
 even on the 27th, when the non-appearance of the French 
 might have caused him to reconsider his opinion, and when 
 a reconnaissance in the direction of Ballina had revealed no 
 trace of the enemy, he declined to make any movement 
 towards Lough Conn, so as to take the French in the flank 
 should an attack be made from the Barnageragh direction. 
 So convinced were the English commanders of the correct- 
 ness of their forecast of the strategy likely to be adopted by 
 the French, that even the intelligence brought in at 3 a.m. 
 by a yeoman who had been visiting his farm at Barna- 
 geragh, that he had seen a body of men advancing in blue 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 289 
 
 uniforms, was not at first credited. At length, however, 
 General Trench, with a couple of hundred horse, went 
 forward to reconnoitre. Being immediately fired on by the 
 French within three miles of Castlebar, he quickly returned 
 and ordered the garrison, who had received instructions to 
 be at arms two hours before daybreak, to occupy a position 
 which had been selected on the previous day. 
 
 Castlebar, which was thus to become, not for the first 
 time, the scene of a battle, 1 is an irregularly built town, 
 consisting of one principal street more than half a mile in 
 length, running north and south, with others branching from 
 it. A small river flows through the town, which is situated 
 at the north-west angle of the plains of Connaught, and just 
 below the broken country which borders on the highlands of 
 Erris and Tyrawley. Low hills rise on each side of it, 
 rendering it easy of defence. The ground taken up was 
 very strong by nature, on an eminence called Sion Hill, 
 about half a mile distant from the north-west extremity of 
 the town, running from east to west, and commanding a 
 rising ground opposite to it and about a thousand yards 
 distant, over which the French must necessarily pass. The 
 English infantry were posted in three irregular lines, the first 
 consisting of the Kilkenny Militia, with a company of 
 the 6th Foot, and a detachment of the Prince of Wales's 
 Fencibles. The second was formed of the gallant Frazer 
 Fencibles, with two battalion guns and a corps of the 
 Galway Yeomanry. In the rear, in a valley between the 
 north and north-west end of the town, and to the left of 
 the Kilkenny Militia, were stationed four companies of 
 the Longford Militia ; while behind the front lines were the 
 cavalry, which included the 1st Fencibles (Lord Koden's 
 Foxhunters), some squadrons of the 6th Carbineers, and 
 some yeomanry. On the northern end of the hill, and on 
 each side of the road by which the French must approach, 
 Captain Shortall was stationed in front of the first line with 
 
 1 Its castle had been besieged and taken in the wars of the seventeenth 
 century, by the leaders of the Confederated Irish, when Sir Henry Bingham, tha 
 Governor, was killed. 
 
 XT 
 
290 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 two curricle guns, two battalion guns attached to the Kil- 
 kenny Militia being on his left. Besides this, two curricle 
 guns were posted in the town itself — one on the market 
 place and a second at the northern bridge under Lieutenant 
 Blundell of the Artillery. 
 
 Arriving on the heights north of Castlebar at six o'clock, 
 after a fatiguing march of fifteen hours, Humbert recon- 
 noitred his antagonists posted in the manner described, in a 
 position which he considered very strong. He nevertheless 
 resolved on an immediate attack, and at eight o'clock 
 ordered General Sarazin to open the action with his grena- 
 diers. As these troops gained the crest of the rising ground 
 in front of the English position a heavy fire from Shortall's 
 artillery greeted the head of the column, composed of a 
 number of Irish recruits under General Blake. But these 
 Irishmen, as described in Humbert's despatch, were at once 
 driven off, and were of no further use in the engagement. 
 Undeterred by a misfortune for which, as his leader wrote, 
 he was not wholly unprepared, Sarazin and the French 
 grenadiers, supported by their line infantry, continued to 
 push forward, still assailed by a heavy fire, which dis- 
 mounted one of the French guns and obliged part of the 
 column to retire— though a part of it, rushing forward, 
 gained the shelter of a house fifty yards in front. The 
 main body then reformed in very orderly fashion, still under 
 the fire of the English artillery, and advanced a third time 
 to the attack. Finding it impossible to advance in column 
 formation, Humbert now commenced deploying rapidly from 
 his centre, with open files, until he formed line, mostly in 
 rank entire, nearly parallel with that which occupied the 
 front of the English position. In this order his troops 
 advanced steadily to the point at which they had previously 
 been forced to retire. Up to this the battle had gone 
 entirely in favour of the English troops, who had suffered 
 comparatively little loss, while the French had smarted 
 severely under the accurate fire of Shortall's well-served 
 guns. At this moment, however, an error was committed 
 of which Humbert was quick to take advantage. As the 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OP IEELAND 291 
 
 French lines moved forward, but before they came within 
 range of the English infantry, the latter opened a premature 
 fire, which was entirely futile. Perceiving the mistake, the 
 French rushed forward and gained the shelter of some 
 hedges, under cover of which they pushed forward in irregular 
 parties, extending their wing, with the intention of making 
 a flank movement. The fire of the artillery, though well 
 sustained, was this time less effectual ; and, aided by the thick 
 cover of furze and hedge, the French were able to advance 
 to close quarters and charge the British line. As they did 
 so, the infantry, composed mainly of the Longford Militia, 
 without waiting to receive the onset, broke in the utmost 
 disorder and fled panic-stricken towards the town. Sarazin, 
 hurrying forward with his grenadiers, quickly carried the 
 English guns, Shortall, who was left unsupported, with 
 difficulty escaping. At the same time Ardouin, another of 
 Humbert's subordinates, attacked on the left, where he was 
 sturdily resisted by the Frazer Highlanders ; but these were 
 unable to hold their ground after the defeat of their comrades, 
 and were forced to retire on Castlebar. 
 
 Had there been among the scattered militia the sem- 
 blance of discipline, gallantry, or pluck, they might easily 
 have been rallied in the rear of the guns stationed in the 
 town (where a party of officers and a few of the Frazers and 
 Kilkenny Fencibles were making a spirited defence on the 
 bridge), and the issue of the encounter entirely reversed. 
 Many of the French officers stated subsequently that they 
 had ne-ver seen guns better served or more destructive than 
 those of the British artillery, and that the action would 
 have terminated in favour of the English if the infantry had 
 stood their ground for ten minutes longer. The retreating 
 militia, however, had not the slightest notion of making 
 any further resistance, and though their officers did their 
 utmost to rally them they fled headlong through the town, 
 flinging away their arms and accoutrements as they ran, 
 the better to make their escape. The little party on the 
 bridge were ultimately driven off, though not till after 
 more than half their number had been killed by a charge 
 
 u 2 
 
292 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 of the French hussars, while one of their guns being 
 captured was turned by the enemy on the remainder. 
 Lieut. Blundell, with the second gun, had been unable to 
 effect anything in the market-place, and with the capture of 
 the bridge the defence of the town was over. The retreat- 
 ing troops, stricken with fear, continued to fly as fast as they 
 could to Tuam, twenty-seven miles from Castlebar, whence 
 after a brief rest they made their way to Athlone, some 
 of the Carbineers actually accomplishing this march of sixty- 
 three miles in twenty-seven hours. So rapid and so general 
 indeed was this retreat that the slaughter was comparatively 
 slight, the loss being officially computed after the battle at 
 fifty-two killed, twenty-nine wounded, and two hundred and 
 fifty-one missing. In the last-named category are to be 
 included nearly two hundred privates of the Longford and 
 Kilkenny Militias, who deserted en masse to the enemy. 
 On the other hand, Humbert, in his despatch to the Direc- 
 tory announcing his victory, places the English loss at 
 eighteen hundred men, of whom six hundred were killed 
 or wounded, and twelve hundred prisoners. He also 
 claimed to have taken ten pieces of cannon, five standards, 
 and twelve hundred muskets ; and a trustworthy English 
 account puts the loss in artillery as nine guns. 
 
 The disasters and dishonours of this day were, however, 
 not unmarked by acts of individual gallantry. Captain 
 Chambers, one of the party on the bridge, stuck to his post 
 till the moment before it was carried, and with his musket 
 fired five successive shots, bringing down a Frenchman with 
 each, till at length he fell desperately wounded with a 
 bayonet through his neck. Lord Eoden's ' Foxhunters ' were 
 an exception to the general worthlessness of the Irish militia 
 regiments : they behaved with great gallantry, protecting the 
 retreat of the infantry, and even recovering a six-pounder 
 which the French had pushed forward through Castlebar. 
 A party of them, as they were retreating out of the town, 
 turned on a body of chasseurs who were pursuing them, and 
 killed five of them on a spot which has since been known 
 from the occurrence as French Hill. But it was reserved for 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 293 
 
 one of the gallant Highlanders, the Frazers, to vindicate the 
 honour of his country and of the British arms by the one 
 heroic action of that inglorious day. The Frazers were the 
 last to quit the town ; and even after the main street had 
 been carried by the French, maintained a vigorous fire from 
 the churchyard. The gaol was guarded by a solitary Frazer 
 sentinel, who had refused to retire with his comrades, and 
 who, when the French advanced, maintained himself for 
 some minutes at the top of a flight of steps, killing no fewer 
 than five Frenchmen before he was hurled from his post and 
 his brains knocked out. A tablet on the wall of the church 
 still records the valour of the Frazers on that unlucky 27th 
 of August. 
 
 So ended what have ever since been called, from the 
 rapidity with which the bulk of Hutchinson's army executed 
 their sauve-qui-peut, the Races of Castlebar. The annals 
 of civilised warfare scarcely present an instance of a more 
 ignominious rout of a large and well-equipped force by a 
 smaller and less formidable army. Even adopting the low- 
 est estimate of his forces, the British commander enjoyed 
 a substantial preponderance over his opponents in the 
 numbers of his men and in the strength of his artillery, 
 while the natural strength of the position attacked was 
 unquestionably great. Assuming the town to be defended 
 by trained and disciplined troops, commanded by generals 
 of capacity, Humbert's conduct was daring, even to rash- 
 ness. Indeed, according to the testimony of Hutchin- 
 son himself, the attack was certainly one of the most 
 hazardous and desperate ever thought of against a very 
 superior body of troops, as the retreat of the French towards 
 both Killala and Ballina was cut off by Sir Thomas 
 Chapman and General Taylor. The conduct of General 
 Hutchinson in so disposing his forces as to render an 
 engagement inevitable was the subject of a reprimand by 
 Lord Cornwallis after Ballinamuck, and no doubt it would 
 have been more prudent, if it was not absolutely his 
 duty, to await instructions from his Commander-in-Chief 
 before proceeding to Castlebar. But of the legitimacy of 
 
294 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 his belief in the ability of his army to inflict a severe defeat 
 on the French, so far as such a success depended on the 
 relative military strength of the opposing forces, there can 
 scarcely be any question. Neither Hutchinson, who planned 
 the action, nor Lake, who only succeeded to his command 
 within a few hours of an action which was inevitable before 
 his arrival, can properly be blamed, at least in their purely 
 military capacity, for a catastrophe that was due much more 
 to political than to tactical causes. Hutchinson's refusal to 
 consider the possibility of an attack from the Barnageragh 
 side was indeed a serious strategical error, and his failure 
 to maintain any effective connection between the troops 
 immediately under his command and those at Foxford was 
 a grave and indeed inexcusable blunder. But Hutchinson's 
 worst mistake lay not so much in the character of his dis- 
 positions, as in his failure to take note of the state of feeling 
 among the troops he commanded and of the serious danger 
 of disaffection. He forgot not only that his force was largely 
 composed of Irish militia and of yeomanry regiments not used 
 to service in the field, but, what was a still more formidable 
 source of weakness, that the Longford Militia was recruited 
 from one of the most disaffected counties in Ireland. 
 Though there is no direct evidence that these troops had 
 been tampered with, or that, as ha,s been suggested, it was 
 in reliance on their disaffection that Humbert ventured an 
 otherwise hopeless attack, it is unquestionable that the troops 
 whose conduct caused the rout were the troops from the 
 disaffected counties, the rest of Hutchinson's force, militia and 
 yeomanry as well as regulars, fighting till the day was lost with 
 valour, determination, and loyalty. That this view of the case 
 is the true one is shown by the behaviour of Cornwallis, who, 
 after reprimanding Hutchinson, refused to accept the resigna- 
 tion tendered by that officer, affirming that his conduct in the 
 action had done him the greatest credit, and that he had 
 been guilty of nothing worse than an error of judgment in 
 undertaking a critical engagement with untried troops. 
 Lake's testimony was to the same effect. ' I have reason,' 
 he wrote to the Viceroy the day after the battle, ' to 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 295 
 
 apprehend the people of the country are flocking to the 
 French army very fast, which will not be prevented unless 
 they are beat shortly, which I should think might easily be 
 done with any troops but those I have to deal with.' 
 
 IV 
 
 AFTER CASTLEBAR 
 
 Thus far Humbert's adventurous campaign had been 
 extremely successful. Within five days from his landing 
 he had taken three considerable towns, had completely 
 scattered a formidable British army, and had made himself 
 master of one of the largest counties in Ireland. As he 
 wrote from Castlebar to the Directory, he was in possession 
 of Killala, Ballina, Foxford, Castlebar, Newport, Ballinrobe, 
 and Westport. What was even more important, he had 
 inspired in the peasantry of Mayo a belief in the invin- 
 cibility of his arms, and might reasonably expect to be 
 quickly at the head of a formidable force, which, acting in a 
 country hostile to the British Government, might have 
 achieved successes still more substantial. He at once wrote 
 despatches to the Directory and to the Minister of Marine, 
 announcing the successes he had achieved, expressing an 
 expectation that within three days he would have with him 
 a large reinforcement of Irish who had hitherto hung back 
 and thus retarded his progress, and indicating his intention, 
 ' as soon as the English army shall have evacuated the pro- 
 vince of Connaught,' of passing the Shannon and endeavour- 
 ing to effect a junction with the insurgents of Ulster. 
 ' When this shall be effected,' he added, ' I shall be in suffi- 
 cient force to march to Dublin and fight a decisive action.' 
 He concluded by an urgent request for reinforcements, 
 the precise composition of which he specified in detail, and 
 with a confident prediction that ' in the course of a month 
 after the arrival of these reinforcements, which I estimate 
 at 2,000 men, Ireland will be free.' 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that in this sketch of his 
 
296 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 plans and requisitions of reinforcements, Humbert says 
 nothing whatever about the army at Brest with which it 
 was originally intended he should co-operate, and which in 
 the instructions given to Admiral Savary at his departure 
 was stated to be on the point of setting sail when he left 
 Eochefort. He does not appear to have had the least 
 expectation of their arrival, or of any other supplementary 
 expedition coming to his assistance or effecting a diversion in 
 any other part of the island. Throughout his despatches 
 there is not a single allusion to the Brest expedition, or to 
 the failure of his Government to support him ; though had 
 he really believed that such support was intended it is 
 difficult to suppose that he would not have uttered some 
 sort of protest or complaint at the delay in providing it- 
 He seems on the contrary to have regarded himself as the 
 sole agent of the Republic in its Irish enterprise, and to have 
 had little confidence in the reality of the preparations of his 
 Government. 
 
 But whatever his private expectations of the probable 
 fate of his expedition, Humbert allowed no symptoms of 
 them to escape him. He at once set about the very 
 necessary task of establishing order in the town and making 
 some efforts towards creating discipline among the Irish 
 levies who now crowded to his standard. At Castlebar his 
 earliest recruits had been driven off at the first cannon shot 
 that was fired ; but they had been busily engaged during 
 and after the battle in more congenial employment. In a 
 certain sense General Sarazin had not exaggerated when he 
 wrote that Irish liberty was established, and the peasantry 
 quickly proceeded to enjoy that liberty in the manner they 
 best understood by plundering the houses of the neighbour- 
 ing gentry, indulging in the most reckless waste of pro- 
 visions, and holding high revelry in the camp, which soon 
 became a sort of gipsies' paradise to which every kind of 
 booty was carried, and in which the fleshpots were con- 
 tinuously replenished with an inexhaustible supply of stolen 
 provisions. Multitudes flocked from all parts of the 
 country-side, carrying flags and shouting ' Erin go bragh.' 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 297 
 
 A tree of liberty and a harp without a crown were borne 
 through the streets of Castlebar, and droves of sheep, cows, 
 and horses were driven into the town every day. The 
 mansion of Lord Lucan, the principal landowner in the 
 neighbourhood, and a nobleman who had done much to 
 improve the town, was completely gutted, and even the 
 residences of friends of the Catholic cause did not escape, 
 Lord Altamont's being one of the worst treated. Those of 
 Dr. Ellison, the energetic Protestant Kector, and of Mr. 
 Denis Browne, the member for the county, naturally fared 
 still worse. So little method was there in the looting, and 
 so much did the mere exuberance of unfettered licence prevail 
 over the promptings of self-interest, which might have 
 restrained a less primitive people in similar circumstances, 
 that the rich furniture taken from these houses was often 
 broken up to furnish fuel for the boiling of their pots. For 
 a few hours of glorious liberty, the insurgent could enjoy 
 the delights of lighting his pipe with engravings from the 
 picture gallery, or replenish his camp fire with furniture 
 from the drawing-room, of Castlebar House. The appear- 
 ance of the plunderers in the camp exhibited the most 
 ludicrous absurdities of costume, some going about clad in 
 two silk waistcoats of different colours, others in fine nan- 
 keen trousers, but without shoes, and others again drawing 
 attention to their ragged and unwashed exterior by the 
 powerful contrast of richly coloured scarves. One of the 
 more provident of the plunderers, having chanced to obtain 
 a small clock of foreign workmanship, was carrying it off in 
 triumph on her back to her mountain home, when she was 
 suddenly startled by the, to her, unknown sound of its 
 chime as it struck the hour. Terrified by this uncanny 
 sound, she incontinently dropped it in the bog and took to 
 her heels. 
 
 Nor was the destructive spirit of the populace exhibited 
 merely in acts of plunder. It was soon further inflamed by 
 the spirit of religious intolerance. A massacre of Protestants 
 was debated, but prevented by the exertions of Teeling and 
 O'Keon. A good deal of damage was done to the Protestant 
 
298 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 church, where the large Bible was destroyed ; but an attempt 
 by Father Egan, the parish priest of Castlebar, to appro- 
 priate it for high mass was prevented by the decision of Dr. 
 Ellison, who had arrived from Killala with Toussaint two days 
 after the battle, and who was subsequently treated with 
 courtesy by the French General during his stay in the town. 
 The demeanour and actions of the people were entirely 
 opposed to the spirit both of Humbert's instructions, already 
 quoted, and to the General's own sense of order and discipline. 
 Aided by his aide-de-camp Teeling, under the nom de guerre 
 of Biron, by Father Michael Gannon, a local priest who had 
 passed several years in France, and by some of the better 
 class of Boman Catholic merchants in the town, he quickly 
 took measures for the restoration of order. 
 
 His first step was the formal establishment of a civil 
 administration for the Province of Connaught. A provisional 
 Government was constituted by a proclamation at Castlebar 
 under the presidency of John Moore, son of a country 
 gentleman in the neighbourhood, who had formerly been a 
 merchant at Malaga, and had acquired an estate of 2,000Z. a 
 year. The President was assisted by a council of twelve 
 members nominated by Humbert. A proclamation com- 
 mended to the new Government, as its first duty, the 
 organisation of the militia and of the commissariat of the 
 French and Irish armies ; declared all those to be rebels and 
 traitors who, having received arms and clothing, did not at 
 once rejoin the army ; and required every male between the 
 ages of sixteen and forty to repair to the French camp, • in 
 order to march in mass against the common enemy, the 
 tyrant of Ireland — the English ; whose destruction alone can 
 ensure the independence and welfare of ancient Hibernia.' 
 To provide for this machinery, Humbert further proposed 
 .to levy a tax of two thousand guineas on the town ; but 
 this does not appear to have been enforced, and it is asserted 
 that it was remitted through the influence of Dr. Ellison, who 
 represented that such taxation would alienate the goodwill 
 of the townsfolk. The next few days were busily occupied 
 by Humbert and his officers in eJIorts to reduce to something 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 299 
 
 like discipline the recruits who had crowded to his standard. 
 They were not quite so numerous as he had estimated, but 
 they were not inconsiderable. He was assisted in these exer- 
 tions by some of the Roinan Catholic gentry. Here, how- 
 ever, as at Killala, it was remarked how few of the better sort 
 were induced to throw in their lot openly with the French. 
 Besides young Moore, the President, not more than two or 
 three of the sons of Koman Catholic landowners joined the 
 ranks at the head of the peasantry of their district. Of 
 those who came forward the most considerable was Colonel 
 Macdonell, a native of Castlebar, who having been started 
 in mercantile life by his father, a gentleman of good property 
 near that town, had deserted commerce for the bar, being 
 among the first of his creed to take advantage of the removal 
 of the disability which down to 1793 had excluded Eoman 
 Catholics from the legal profession. As a student in London 
 he had dabbled in revolutionary politics, and, returning 
 to Ireland, had been elected delegate for the county Mayo 
 to the Back Lane Parliament. Between the period of that 
 convention and the breaking out of the Rebellion he had 
 been active in propagating United Irish principles, and, 
 joining the French immediately before the battle at Castlebar 
 with a very considerable number of adherents, he was 
 welcomed by Humbert as a man of influence and at once 
 appointed a colonel. 
 
 This gentleman and a Mr. Blake of Gal way (who was 
 taken and hanged at Ballinamuck) were, with Father 
 Gannon, Teeling, and O'Keon, Humbert's principal agents 
 in the difficult task of drilling the Irish recruits, a task 
 which was not rendered easier by the impatience with which 
 their efforts at instruction were received. The Connaught 
 peasantry were willing enough to take the uniforms and 
 arms which were distributed ; but, as Humbert's proclama- 
 tion shows, they were not equally ready to respond to the 
 commands of their officers and submit to the coercion of 
 discipline. Untrained and unused to military exercises, they 
 were found unfit to be trusted with the more responsible 
 duties of garrison troops, and the work of sappers to which 
 
300 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 they were set they deemed beneath their dignity, the more 
 so as among the French officers over them were some men 
 of colour from St. Domingo, to whom they thought it insult- 
 ing to be subjected. In addition, they resented being obliged 
 to surrender their loot and bidden to refrain from further 
 plunder. Two of the Irish captains refusing to obey this 
 part of the regulations were promptly shot for mutiny by 
 the French. The recruits complained that the French were 
 better clothed, better lodged, and better fed than they were ; 
 and they were also irritated at the restraint put upon their 
 religious fervour by their free-thinking allies. The French, 
 on the other hand, soon began to despise and mistrust 
 recruits with whom they had so little in common, and who 
 were so little of soldiers that they preferred the pike and the 
 pitchfork to the muskets which were distributed to them 
 from the French stores. Teeling himself, in the interval 
 between his capture and execution, sorrowfully admitted the 
 disappointment of the hopes which had been built on the 
 co-operation of the peasantry. ' The country people,' he 
 told Cooke at Dublin, ' were very ill-behaved ; came in, got 
 arms and clothes, and ran away ; their sole object seemed 
 plunder.' 
 
 Miss Edgeworth has Jeft in her memoir of her father a 
 striking but unpleasant description derived from the accounts 
 given her by the French officers, after their final defeat, of the 
 disgust which Humbert's troops expressed for their allies of 
 the Irish republic, which, making every allowance for the 
 excusable chagrin of defeated troops, is little creditable either 
 to the patriotism or the valour of the peasantry : ' The 
 French generals declared that they had been completely 
 deceived as to the state of Ireland. They had expected to 
 find the people in open rebellion, or at least, in their own 
 phrase, organised for exertion ; but to their dismay they 
 found only ragamuffins, as they called them, who in joining 
 their standard did them infinitely more harm than good. 
 The generals described the stratagems which had been 
 practised on them by their good allies, the same rebels 
 frequently returning with different tones and new stories, 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 301 
 
 to obtain double and treble provisions of arms and ammuni- 
 tion and uniforms — selling the ammunition for whisky, 
 and running away at the first fire in the day of battle. The 
 French, detesting and despising those by whom they had 
 been thus cheated, pillaged, and deserted, called them 
 beggars, rascals, and savages. They cursed also without 
 scruple their own Directory for sending them, after they 
 had, as they boasted, conquered the world, to be at last 
 beaten in an Irish bog. Officers and soldiers joined in 
 swearing that they would never return to a country where 
 they could find neither bread, wine, nor discipline, and where 
 the people lived on roots, whisky, and lying.' 
 
 While the relations between the allied forces of the French 
 and Irish were thus unsatisfactory, the demeanour of the 
 visitors towards their captives in Castlebar was not less 
 considerate and conciliatory than that exhibited towards the 
 Protestants at Killala. The French did their utmost to 
 protect the property of the townspeople, and set their faces 
 steadfastly against every attempt to gratify religious intoler- 
 ance. Freedom to exercise their own worship was permitted 
 to the Protestant loyalists, though Humbert was not able 
 to prevent the violation of the church, involving some 
 injury to the pews and communion table, and the destruction 
 of the font. Dr. Ellison was treated with the utmost respect, 
 and even consulted by Humbert. On one occasion, while 
 conversing with Humbert and his staff, a local priest 
 entered the room to ask permission of the General to celebrate 
 mass in the Protestant church. Humbert carelessly replied 
 that he might say mass wherever he pleased, so long as he 
 did not ask him to attend it himself. Whereupon Ellison 
 interposed ; and on the priest, in reply to a question, stating 
 he intended to take advantage of this permission, Ellison 
 replied, with the silent acquiescence of Humbert, ' Well, I 
 cannot prevent it ; but if you offer this insult to my church 
 I will have you hanged on the steeple within a fortnight.' 
 To the townsfolk generally, irrespective of their religious 
 opinions, the French commended themselves by their gaiety, 
 vivacity, and hospitality. They fully sustained their 
 
302 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 national reputation for gallantry, and on the very day after 
 the battle — which was fought early in the morning — the 
 officers announced a ball and supper for the same evening. 
 
 While Humbert and bis troops were thus occupied, the 
 defeated army under Lake had executed a retreat upon 
 Tuam as disorderly as it was rapid, committing revolting 
 depredations on the road, and stimulating by their conduct 
 whatever of discontent and disaffection existed in the country. 
 This misconduct was by no means confined to the Irish 
 militia regiments, the behaviour of the Frazers and 
 Carbineers being equally discreditable. To such an extent 
 did the army practise the worst forms of military licence that 
 Lord Cornwallis, the moment he had arrived in the district 
 and established communications with Lake and Hutchinson, 
 was obliged to issue a general order calling on his sub- 
 ordinates ' to assist him in putting a stop to the licentious 
 conduct of the troops, and in saving the wretched inhabitants 
 from being robbed and in the most shocking manner ill- 
 treated by those to whom they had a right to look for safety 
 and protection.' It was announced that immediate exe- 
 cution would be the fate of any soldiers caught in the 
 act of plunder, and a provost-marshal was appointed to 
 patrol the camp and follow with a guard in the rear of the 
 army when on the march. 
 
 The Viceroy, on his way to the west, had got as far as 
 Kilbeggan, nearly sixty miles from Dublin, when the news 
 of the defeat at Castlebar reached him on the morning of 
 the 28th. He at once proceeded to Athlone, where he was 
 informed on what appeared reliable intelligence, conveyed by 
 officers who had just come from Tuam, that the French 
 had followed the defeated army to the latter town and had 
 occupied it, after driving Lake through it. Further informa- 
 tion showed that the defeat at Castlebar was exercising the 
 apprehended result, and that in addition to the county 
 Mayo the country to the north towards Sligo, including the 
 whole of Boscommon, where the smiths in the forges were 
 busy making pikes, was in a state of insurrection. Though 
 this intelligence proved to be grossly exaggerated, the 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 303 
 
 Viceroy felt constrained to act with extreme caution, and 
 determined to await reinforcements from Longford and Kil- 
 kenny before making any further advance. Lake had 
 meantime established himself at Tuam, where he had been 
 strengthened by the arrival of two Highland regiments on 
 the 29th, and by the Louth militia. A flag of truce had 
 arrived at Tuam with twelve of the captured officers, from 
 whom Lake had ascertained the actual state of affairs at 
 Castlebar, information which he at once sent forward to his 
 commander-in-chief, adding that for want of artillery and 
 ammunition he might find himself obliged to retreat on 
 Athlone. Cornwallis at once decided to move forward to 
 Lake's support, and directing the latter to meet him at 
 Ballinamore, between Athlone and Tuam, he marched to 
 that point on the 30th. Here he remained a day, sending 
 forward Colonel Crauford, with a strong force of cavalry 
 furnished by Lord Roden's Fencibles and the Enniskillen 
 Dragoons, to ascertain the proceedings of the enemy. This 
 officer, pushing forward to Hollymount, a dozen miles beyond 
 Tuam, learned that Ballinrobe in the county Mayo had been 
 occupied by Colonel Blake and a party of Irish, an exploit 
 which formed perhaps the sole independent achievement of 
 Humbert's Irish allies during the campaign. This party 
 was quickly dispersed by Crauford, who continued to advance 
 towards Castlebar without meeting the enemy. On the 1st, 
 the Viceroy proceeded to Knock Hill, and on the 2nd reached 
 Tuam, where he was joined by the Queen's and the 29th, 
 which had marched from Wexford, two old and well- 
 disciplined regiments, by which the effective strength of his 
 army was enormously increased, and by which he would be 
 enabled if necessary to attack Humbert in Castlebar with a 
 certainty of success. 
 
 To provide for the contingency, which actually happened, 
 of an attempt by Humbert to push either to Sligo or towards 
 the Shannon, the Viceroy at the same time made arrangements 
 to provide a sufficient force to check any attempt in either 
 of these directions. Brigadier-General Taylor, command- 
 ing the Sligo district, who had retired, after Castlebar was 
 
304 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 captured, from F oxford to Bellaghy, and ultimately to Boyle, 
 was in command of a force of some 2,500 men, upon 
 which, though numerically strong, Cornwallis did not feel 
 that he could place sufficient reliance, from the circumstance 
 of its being made up of a number of very small detachments, 
 mainly drawn from the Irish militia. To secure the country 
 to the eastward and north, he determined to send Lake 
 forward with large reinforcements sufficient to enable the 
 northern army to act effectively on the enemy's left, and 
 with instructions to follow them pertinaciously, but without 
 bringing the French to an engagement. He proposed him- 
 self, should he fail to find the foe in Castlebar, to pass the 
 Shannon at Carrick, with the main army, and move up its 
 eastern bank. Lake accordingly proceeded on the 3rd to 
 Frenchpark, where Taylor was directed to meet him, and 
 the advanced positions of the army were at this side pushed 
 forward to the north-west, towards Bellaghy and Swineford. 
 On the following day the Viceroy moved from Tuam to 
 Hollymount, thirteen miles from Castlebar, being assured that 
 the French still occupied the latter town, and intending to 
 surround it. To protect Sligo, which by this arrangement 
 was thus left exposed, Major-General Nugent was directed to 
 proceed from Enniskillen and make the necessary arrange- 
 ments for its defence. That officer accordingly sent forward 
 the Limerick City Regiment, three hundred strong, to 
 strengthen and take command of the garrison, hitherto 
 consisting only of Colonel Sparrow and three hundred of the 
 Essex Fencibles. These two regiments, with the Sligo 
 Yeomanry and some other small detachments of infantry, 
 made up a force of 856 efficient men, who had with them six 
 guns, served by a small detachment of artillery. Beaching 
 Hollymount on the 4th, the Viceroy was informed that the 
 enemy were still in Castlebar, which they were endeavouring 
 to strengthen against attack. Not until five o'clock on the 
 evening of the 4th did he learn that on the previous night 
 the French and Irish forces had evacuated the town in two 
 bodies, carrying with them the artillery and ammunition 
 captured a week before from General Lake's army. Humbert 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 305 
 
 had remained eight days in Castlebar, occupying himself, as 
 has been seen, in the endeavour to make something out of 
 the recruits, and doubtless desiring to maintain his position 
 there as long as possible, to give time for the arrival of the 
 reinforcements he had requisitioned from France. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine a more anxious, or indeed a more 
 hopeless position than that in which Humbert and his 
 army found themselves placed when, after a week's occupa- 
 tion of the county town of Mayo, it became evident to the 
 French General that he was almost completely hemmed in 
 by the British forces, and obliged to choose between the 
 ugly alternatives of fighting a second battle in Castlebar, with 
 no possibility of victory, and the forlorn hope of attempting 
 to reach the north through the one gap still left open to him 
 on the Sligo road. He had originally proposed to move into 
 Boscommon, and thence to march into Ulster, with the 
 ultimate hope of finding himself strong enough to advance 
 on Dublin and fight a decisive battle. But a week's experience 
 of his Irish allies had proved to him the futility of this dream. 
 Owing to the caution and completeness of the Viceroy's 
 arrangements he was, at the moment when he was obliged to 
 make a decisive move, unable to embrace either course with 
 any assurance of success. On the one hand, it was too soon 
 for the reinforcements to have arrived ; and on the other, 
 he was entirely unequipped for a contest with either wing of 
 the Koyal Army, and even were he able to fight a successful 
 engagement, his force was so small that, as the French 
 Minister of War wrote to Hardy, every victory served to 
 weaken him. As the less desperate, or at any rate the less 
 humiliating, of these desperate alternatives, he eventually 
 chose to march towards Sligo, possibly deeming that he might 
 find on the road to the north a population more capable of 
 giving efficient assistance than that of Mayo and Galway. 
 
 Accordingly, having been joined on September 1st by the 
 garrison left at Killala and Ballina, with the exception of a 
 few officers who remained at the episcopal palace, Humbert 
 left Castlebar on the night of the 3rd or early on the morning 
 of the 4th, resolving, as his aide-de-camp Teeling afterwards 
 
 x 
 
306 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 stated, to attempt something desperate, and marched as fast 
 as he could, on the speculation of an insurrection among the 
 country people. Before leaving, he sent the Rector of 
 Castlebar, with eighty prisoners, to Lord Cornwallis. Ellison, 
 falling in with Colonel Crauford and his cavalry on the road, 
 was the first to apprise the latter of the evacuation of 
 Castlebar. Crauford at once advanced, and entering the 
 town late in the evening, between nine and ten o'clock, 
 rcoccupied it almost without opposition, receiving the 
 submission of Moore. Next morning, however, pursuant to 
 orders, Crauford set out to follow Humbert, upon whose 
 rear he hung, and contrived to harass him effectively 
 throughout his march. Castlebar was in consequence left 
 with only a small garrison, and the town abandoned to four 
 or five days of uninterrupted loot, which threatened on the 
 12th to culminate in a complete sack of the town, a body of 
 two thousand Irish making a descent upon it with the 
 avowed intention of plunder. But the small party of Frazer 
 Fencibles and a few yeomanry who had been left in charge, 
 sufficed under the spirited leadership of Lieutenant Urquhart 
 to put the insurgents to flight with heavy loss. 
 
 Marching out of Castlebar in the small hours of Sep- 
 tember 4, and with the Irish recruits placed between the van 
 and the rear to prevent desertions, of which there were 
 already many symptoms, Humbert marched rapidly towards 
 Swineford, and after resting there for a time advanced, by 
 the slopes of the Ox Mountains, within two miles of Bellaghy, 
 where he halted for the night. Here he was informed that 
 General Lake's force, which had marched from French- 
 park, had bivouacked that evening at Ballaghaderreen, only 
 eight miles distant. Sarazin, it is said, urged the expediency 
 of a night attack on the bivouac, but the proposal was over- 
 ruled by Humbert, and early on the morning of the 5th 
 the march towards Sligo was resumed. At Tubbercurry 
 they fell in with an advanced picket sent out by the Sligo 
 garrison, and composed of a corps of the Leney Yeomanry 
 under Captain O'Hara, the member for the county. After 
 a short skirmish in which one of the yeomanry was killed, 
 
THE -FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 307 
 
 the picket was driven back, and O'Hara at once reported to 
 his commanding officer that a division of the French army 
 had arrived at Collooney, five miles from Sligo, and intended 
 an attack on Sligo. Colonel Vereker, who commanded in 
 Sligo, had received orders through General Nugent not to 
 risk a battle with the main army, but to retire if necessary 
 upon Enniskillen in the event of an attack ; but conceiving 
 himself to be dealing with but one division of the French 
 army, and deeming it more advisable in that case to attack 
 than to wait to be attacked by the enemy, he boldly marched 
 out of the town at the head of a little army of three hundred, 
 mainly composed of his own regiment of Limerick Militia, 
 and accompanied by a troop of light dragoons and two 
 curricle guns. 
 
 The little village of Collooney, also known as Carrignagat, 
 standing upon the west bank of the Owenmore, which at this 
 point is a broad and picturesque river, had, from its position 
 in the gap between Connaught and the North, been more 
 than once the battle-ground of rival armies. According to 
 antiquaries it had boasted the first stone and mortar castle 
 in Ireland in days even before the coming of the English, and 
 in the thirteenth century had witnessed a sanguinary battle 
 between the rival chieftains of the royal sept of 0' Conor, 
 while it had in 1691 been the scene of a sharp encounter 
 between the garrison of Sligo and Sir Albert Conyngham's 
 Dragoons. On September 5, 1798, it was to behold a 
 combat more spirited and more celebrated. The French 
 army had crossed the Owenmore at Collooney, and had 
 halted for refreshment a quarter of a mile further on, on 
 the Sligo side of the village. As they bivouacked quietly, 
 without any suspicion of attack, Vereker and his men, who 
 had marched with every secrecy, and whose approach was 
 concealed by the rising ground in front of them, suddenly 
 appeared on the left of the hill of Carrignagat ; a cannon 
 shot falling in the midst of their camp first apprising the 
 French of his presence. Acquainted with the ground, the 
 Colonel had disposed his little forces with much judgment, 
 having his right covered by the hill, while his left was 
 
 x 2 
 
308 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 protected by the river, and having placed a detachment, under 
 Colonel Ormsby, on the hill itself, so as to command the 
 road by which the French must proceed. Thus challenged, 
 Humbert at once advanced in two columns, one moving for- 
 ward by the road, the second making a detour to the left of 
 Carrignagat Hill, and proceeding up the valley with the 
 object of making a flank attack on the British position. At 
 two o'clock the action began, and for an hour and a half 
 Vereker gallantly sustained the onset of the whole force of the 
 French army and its ten pieces of artillery, aided by one 
 thousand Irish, till finding himself about to be outflanked on 
 •the right, and his ammunition being nearly exhausted, he was 
 obliged to sound a retreat, which was effected in good order. 
 The horses being shot under one of the guns, he was obliged 
 to leave them on the field ; but the ammunition wagon and 
 gun harness being safely carried off, the artillery was useless 
 to the captors. So effectively were his troops handled that 
 while the French lost no fewer than twenty-eight killed and 
 thirty wounded, Vereker's casualties were returned at only 
 seven killed and twenty-seven wounded. The fame of this 
 spirited action was enhanced by the gallant conduct of a 
 French — or rather Irish — officer, Bartholomew Teeling, who 
 remarking the execution done by one of Vereker's curricle 
 guns, served with great spirit by a gunner named "Whittier, 
 galloped on alone on his grey charger across the stretch of 
 ground which intervened, and riding straight up to the gun 
 shot the sturdy gunner dead with his pistol, and regained the 
 French lines in safety. 
 
 Spirited as was the action, and marked as was the 
 military capacity displayed in his dispositions — conduct 
 which is said to have drawn from Humbert the criticism 
 that he was the only general he had met in Ireland — 
 Vereker had made a mistake which might have cost him 
 dear in thus attacking the French army. Luckily for his 
 reputation, the erroneous assumption that he was engaging 
 only a section of the French army (which had led him to 
 disregard the cautious instructions of the Viceroy) was 
 balanced by an opposite misconception on the part of his 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 309 
 
 opponent. The very rashness of his enterprise proved his 
 safeguard. For Humbert, unable to imagine that such an 
 attack would have been risked by a handful of men, and 
 conjecturing that Vereker represented only an advance 
 guard of Lake's whole army, refrained from any attempt to 
 pursue the retreating force. Supposing Sligo to be effec- 
 tively defended by a formidable force, he turned off the 
 Sligo road, and, marching by the east of Lough Gill, ad-* 
 vanced towards Dromahaire in Leitrim. Fortune thus com- 
 bined with conduct and capacity to win, honour and reward 
 for Vereker,. who straightway became famous as the first 
 commander who successfully engaged the French. He 
 received the thanks- of the Irish Parliament, was voted a 
 sword of honour by the citizens of Limerick, and a grateful 
 sovereign accorded him the privilege of adopting the motto 
 of ' Collooney,' which has ever since been> proudly borne by. 
 the noble family of Gortv 
 
 V 
 
 BALLIN AMUCK AND THE SECOND EXPEDITION 
 
 While Humbert and his troops,, followed by Lake and" 
 his army, and harassed at every step by the pertinacious 
 Fox-hunters and Hompeschers under Lord Eoden and 
 Colonel Crauford, were seeking their way out of Connaught, 
 along the line of least resistance,, the United Irishmen of' 
 Longford, Cavan. Westmeath, and Koscommon were busily 
 engaged in organising the only independent movement of 
 the peasantry which marked the progress of the French 
 invasion. These counties had for years been noted as the 
 chief stronghold of the Defenders, and in no part of the 
 country had the military organisation of the United Irish 
 movement been adopted more spontaneously or more 
 generally. In three of the counties named, the movement, 
 as in most of the centres of Defenderism, was in the main a 
 religious one, and produced no union of creeds or classes, 
 being confined exclusively to the lower orders of the 
 Roman Catholic population. In Longford, however, the true 
 
310 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOBY 
 
 principles of Tone and his friends had been embraced in a more 
 genuine spirit, and • the brotherhood of affection ' had been 
 established with greater success. Several Protestants, persons 
 of property and position, had joined the movement, and 
 a communication was consequently kept up with the northern 
 leaders. Two brothers in the neighbourhood of Granard, 
 Hans and Alexander Denniston, who were at the head of 
 the movement in Longford, were men of reputable station, 
 and the latter a lieutenant in the local corps of Yeomanry 
 Cavalry. On the first news of the landing of the French, 
 Hans Denniston had set off to Belfast to take counsel with 
 the members of the Ulster Committee. He returned on 
 September 3, the day Humbert was preparing to march 
 from Castlebar, with a plan which had been agreed upon 
 for seizing Granard, as a post of importance in which the 
 French might establish themselves before marching on 
 Dublin. In the event of the success of this enterprise it 
 was further contemplated to seize the town of Cavan, which 
 as a depot of arms and ammunition would have been a prize 
 of much value. Emissaries were at once sent out to raise 
 the people, and a force of three thousand men was instantly 
 ready in Westmeath, which marched upon Granard, disarm- 
 ing on its way the corps to which Denniston had belonged, 
 many of whom were disaffected and prepared to join the 
 rebels. Monaghan and Cavan were at the same time 
 organised, and made ready to act with the Longford men 
 against Cavan, the moment Granard should fall. The town 
 was garrisoned by a small yeomanry corps, under Lord 
 Longford, quite inadequate to defend it effectively ; and 
 expresses were sent to Cavan requesting reinforcements. 
 Major Porter had just arrived in that town from Belfast 
 with the Argyll Fencibles, to strengthen it against a possible 
 attack by the French army ; and on the morning of the 5th 
 he detached Major Cottingham with an infantry detachment 
 of eighty-five men to the relief of Granard. Starting at 
 three o'clock in the morning and marching with the utmost 
 expedition, Cottingham reached Granard at eight o'clock, to 
 find the rebel army in the act of marching on the town in 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 311 
 
 formidable numbers (said to be six thousand) and com- 
 manded by Lieutenant Denniston. Cottingham drew up 
 his whole force, consisting with the garrison of 157 infantry 
 and forty-nine cavalry, in a strong position upon the hill on 
 which Granard is built. At nine o'clock, the rebels advanc- 
 ing in large numbers and in three columns and threatening 
 to outflank him and cut him off from the town, Cottingham 
 retreated to a second position still closer to Granard, where; 
 protected by a bank, he received their attack. 
 
 The rebels, adopting the traditional tactics of the Irish 
 Celt, began by driving forward a number of cattle with 
 their pikes ; but these were turned aside without doing any 
 damage. Advancing rapidly behind the cattle and armed only 
 with pikes, the vanguard were received with a fire so well 
 directed that they were quickly thrown into disorder, and 
 falling back were charged with the bayonet by Cottingham's 
 men with immense slaughter. As many as four hundred were 
 slain, according to Cottingham's report, and several of the 
 leaders were numbered among the dead. Only one man 
 was killed and two wounded on the loyalist side. Half the 
 rebel army fled over the hills towards Mohill, and the rest 
 towards Edgeworthstown, a good many of the latter joining 
 on their arrival in the disturbances which had meantime 
 broken out in that direction. 
 
 On September 4 a large force of peasantry presented 
 themselves at Wilson's Hospital, a Protestant charity for 
 aged men, situate about six miles on the Longford side of 
 Mullingar, and midway between the villages of Multyfarnham 
 and Bunbrusna, on the road from Sligo to Dublin. They 
 demanded arms, which the Rev. Mr. Radcliffe, the chaplain, 
 was obliged to give them. Having obtained the arms, they 
 plundered the house, took Mr. Radcliffe prisoner, and 
 then marched to the Crooked Wood, some five miles off, 
 where they spent the night. Next day (September 5), being 
 joined by a large body of Longford insurgents, they returned 
 to the Hospital and entrenched themselves in what, defended 
 by a force with any pretence to discipline, must have 
 proved a formidable stronghold. On the news of the capture 
 
312 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 of the Hospital reaching Granard, Lord Longford, with a 
 party of yeomen and Major Porter, who had come over 
 the day before from Cavan with a detachment of one hun- 
 dred of the Argyll Pencibles, marched out to Bunbrusna, 
 in the immediate neighbourhood of Wilson's Hospital, a 
 distance of about twelve miles, and took their post on 
 the high road. Here the insurgents, anticipating their 
 attack, marched out to meet the troops, headed by a party 
 five hundred strong, armed with muskets and fowling- 
 pieces. They were received with a heavy fire of grapeshot 
 from the field guns, and, imitating Cottingham's tactics at 
 Granard, Porter's soldiers followed this up with a bayonet 
 charge, before which their assailants quickly broke and were 
 pursued by the Yeomanry Cavalry, who cut many of them 
 down without mercy. It being now dark, the hostilities 
 were perforce suspended, the military lying all night at 
 arms on the road, and the rebels occupying the Hospital. In 
 the dead of night a surprise attack was attempted by a party 
 of rebels, who fired, but ineffectively, at the Highlanders, 
 the latter returning the compliment with destructive effect ; 
 and in the morning at daybreak, Porter, advancing to the 
 attack of the Hospital, found it had been evacuated in 
 the darkness, the whole rebel force having fled. Of the 
 troops, only two artillerymen had fallen, while a couple of 
 hundred rebels fell in the action and subsequent pursuit. 
 Both at Granard and Bunbrusna, or Wilson's Hospital, the 
 insurgents displayed much useless and undisciplined but 
 unquestionable valour. As in Wexford, however, their 
 leaders evinced a total incapacity to command ; and in 
 each case a force amounting to thousands of peasantry, 
 many of them well armed, was dispersed by a handful of 
 regulars. 
 
 Collooney, it will be remembered, had been fought on the 
 5th, and Humbert, advancing on Dromahaire in co. Leitrim, 
 had marched on the morning of the 6th from that place 
 to Manorhamilton, still pursuing the road to the north. 
 Apparently he was still animated with some vague hope of 
 reaching the Ulster insurgents, on whose co-operation the 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 313 
 
 French had been taught by Tone to place their main reliance. 
 On his march through Sligo he had lost by desertion many 
 of the insurgents who had accompanied him under Mac- 
 donnell and Blake, and up to this point was without any 
 considerable adhesions, the Sligo priests having persistently 
 discouraged the movement in that county, and as far as 
 possible forbidden their people to go out. Pressed closely 
 in the rear by Crauford, he felt himself obliged to lighten 
 his movements by abandoning most of the English cannon 
 captured at Castlebar. He dismounted and left behind him 
 three six-pounders and a tumbril at Collooney, and at 
 Dromahaire threw five more guns over the bridge. At 
 Manorhamilton Humbert appears to have heard for the 
 first time of the movements of the United Irish forces round 
 Granard ; and in the forlorn hope that here at last he might 
 find effective support, and be enabled to maintain himself 
 pending the possible arrival of succour from France, he 
 suddenly doubled back, and descending through the wild 
 hills of the Barony of Dromahaire and by the gloomy shores 
 of Lough Allen, through which pass the upper waters of 
 the Shannon, he crossed that river at Ballintra, near the 
 southern extremity of the lake, on the afternoon of the 7th. 
 It was now a race between the Viceroy and Humbert 
 which should first reach Granard. Cornwallis, on hearing at 
 Hollymount of the evacuation of Castlebar, had moved to 
 Ballyhaunis on the north-eastern road, when, receiving news 
 from Lake of the change in Humbert's route, he had marched 
 with all speed for Carrick-on-Shannon, with the object of 
 reaching the Shannon before the enemy, and in time to bar 
 their passage across it. Arriving at Carrick on the evening of 
 the 7th, he found he had just failed of this object, and hearing 
 that Humbert had halted for the night at Cloone he marched 
 at ten o'clock on the night of the 7th for Mohill, three 
 miles to the south of that town, to which at the same time 
 he directed Lake to march. Beaching Mohill at daybreak 
 on the morning of the 8th, the Viceroy learned that Humbert 
 had already begun to move towards Granard, and therefore 
 proceeded at once to St. Johnstown, through which village 
 
314 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOKY 
 
 he knew the French must pass. Humbert's long and rapid 
 four days' march was now near its end. He was followed 
 by Crauford, in command of Lake's cavalry, who pressed so 
 closely on him as to come up in time to foil an attempt to 
 blow up the bridge at Ballintra. Even yet, however, he 
 might conceivably have outstripped his pursuers and gained 
 Granard before Cornwallis could intercept him. Unluckily, 
 however, being obliged to halt at Cloone to give an indis- 
 pensable rest to his jaded soldiers, the guard which was 
 instructed to awaken the officers in two hours allowed them 
 to sleep for four, thus giving time for Cornwallis to reach 
 St. Johnstown in front of him. 
 
 At Cloone, Humbert received a delegate from the 
 insurgent forces, an officer picturesquely clad — according to 
 Fontaine's sarcastic description — in every imaginable ac- 
 coutrement, and more closely resembling a preux chevalier 
 of the thirteenth century than a soldier of the eighteenth. 
 This hero (upon whom, moreover, Fontaine lays the blame 
 of the fatal delay at Cloone) took up much time in a 
 loquacious exposition of the position and prospects of the 
 insurgents, which, however, resolved itself into the melan- 
 choly upshot that they had been defeated in the attack 
 at Granard, and that the insurgents had dispersed at the very 
 moment when they were most needed. This last specimen 
 of Irish co-operation was too much for Humbert, who seems 
 thereupon to have determined on an honourable surrender. 
 Lake arrived at Cloone at seven o'clock on the morning of 
 the 8th, at the head of a column consisting of Carbineers, 
 detachments of the 23rd Light Dragoons, the 1st Fencible 
 Light Dragoons, the Roxburgh Fencible Dragoons (under 
 Sir T. Chapman, Colonel Maxwell, Lord Roden, and Captain 
 Kerr respectively) ; the 3rd Battalion of Light Infantry, the 
 Armagh and part of the Kerry Militia, the King's, Northamp- 
 ton, and Prince of Wales's Fencible Infantry (under Colonel 
 Innes of the 64th Regiment, Viscount Gosford, Lord Glan- 
 dore, Major Ross, Colonel Bulkeley, and Colonel Macartney 
 respectively). Colonel Crauford (with whom was Lord 
 Roden) was the first to come up with the enemy, whom he 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 315 
 
 vainly summoned to surrender. By this time the French 
 forces had passed out of the county of Leitrim and reached 
 the little village of Ballinamuck, in the county of Longford, 
 four miles beyond Cloone. Of the nine hundred French with 
 whom he began his march, Humbert had still with him eight 
 hundred ; and having been joined on the way through 
 Leitrim by a good many insurgents, had also a force of about 
 one thousand five hundred Irish. Finding himself so closely 
 pressed by Colonel Crauford, who, with his cavalry detach- 
 ment of Foxhunters and Hompeschers and a few companies 
 of the Armagh and Monaghan Militia, had been sent forward 
 by Lake, he prepared for the battle which was now inevitable 
 — or rather for what was, so far as the French troops were 
 concerned, little more than a sham fight, a formality of 
 resistance necessary to the vindication of French honour. 
 
 The French General posted his army advantageously on 
 a hill, on which he planted his cannon, and was protected on 
 the left by a lake, and on the right by a lake and bog. It is a 
 little difficult to collect from the accounts the precise extent 
 of the resistance offered by the French, and a certain degree 
 of confusion and perhaps of divided counsels seems to have 
 marked their conduct in this final scene. Crauford, on 
 overtaking the French rearguard, appears to have sum- 
 moned them to surrender, and not being attended to, 
 attacked them, when — after a few moments' fighting — 
 Sarazin, who commanded in that part of the field, threw 
 down his arms, and upwards of two hundred soldiers followed 
 his example. Under the impression that this surrender was 
 general, Captain Cradock and General Pakenham, two of 
 Lake's staff, rode forward with about twenty dragoons to the 
 main body, but to their surprise were fired on by the Irish 
 contingent, and Cradock received a slight wound. Colonel 
 Innes, with a battalion of Light Infantry, now came up, and 
 thereupon a confused and partial struggle commenced of 
 some twenty to thirty minutes' duration, at the end of which, 
 Lake's column having come up and further resistance 
 being manifestly futile, Humbert surrendered at discretion. 
 He and his officers and army were at once treated as 
 
316 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 prisoners of war ; but no quarter was given to the Irish- 
 men, who were chased by the cavalry into the adjacent 
 bog, and slaughtered without mercy to the number of five 
 hundred. Many of them were taken prisoners, of whom 
 Blake of Galway and nine of the deserters from the Long- 
 ford Militia were hanged on the spot. Macdonnell, more 
 fortunate, escaped through the bogs, making his way to 
 France, and ultimately to America. One of the Longford 
 men saved his life by his wit. Being told he was to be 
 hanged for deserting at Castlebar, he observed with equal 
 humour and truth : ' Shure, your honours, I think it's the 
 army that was the desarters. I stayed where I was, and 
 they left me alone.' When Sarazin threw down his arms, 
 Lord Boden, who was also under the impression that the 
 surrender was already general, had ridden forward with his 
 Fencibles, and had found himself surrounded by the French 
 van to the number of four hundred, and for fifteen minutes, 
 pending the result at the other side of the field, had been a 
 prisoner in charge of their hussars — a period during which 
 the French officers loaded with execrations their Irish allies. 
 The English loss, however, was trivial. Only twelve were 
 killed, of* whom two were Hessians, who being mistaken for 
 French were unfortunately killed by the Yeomanry. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth gives a pretty and vivid account of the 
 scene of the battlefield, which she visited a day or two after: 
 
 Enclosed I send you a little sketch of the situation of 
 the field of battle at Ballinamuck. It is about four miles 
 from the hills. My father, mother, and I rode out to 
 look at the camp ; perhaps you recollect a pretty town on 
 the road where there is a little stream with a three-arched 
 bridge. In the fields, which rise in a gentle slope on the 
 right-hand side of this stream, about sixty bell tents were 
 pitched, the arms all ranged on the grass ; before the tents, 
 poles with little streamers flying here and there ; groups of 
 men leading their horses to water ; and others filling bottles 
 and black pots ; some cooking under the hedges ; High- 
 landers gathering blackberries. The various uniforms looked 
 pretty. 1 
 
 Life of R. L. Edgeworth, ii. p. 236. 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OP IRELAND 317 
 
 It seems almost certain that Humbert had no serious 
 intention of giving battle at Ballinamuck, a surmise which 
 the conduct of Sarazin in surrendering almost at the first 
 summons tends to confirm. His army was not only com- 
 pletely tired out by incessant marching, but was thoroughly 
 disheartened by the lack of support from its Irish allies ; 
 and as early as Collooney Humbert is said to have been urged 
 by his troops to surrender, but to have declined on the plea 
 that he was not in presence of a sufficient force of the enemy 
 to do so honourably. Of the two hundred of the Longford and 
 Kilkenny Militia who joined at Castlebar, all but sixty had 
 deserted before Ballinamuck. The country people had 
 behaved so badly to their allies, plundering and obtaining 
 arms on false pretences, that some had to be shot as exam- 
 ples, and it was alleged by Sarazin that the French plans 
 were betrayed to English officers by the Irish allies. 
 According to more than one account, the French even fired 
 on the flying rebels in token of their disgust. On the other 
 hand, the Irish were not without their own grievances. 
 They complained bitterly of having been left to their fate at 
 Ballinamuck. Among the prisoners many of them gave a 
 pitiable account of their treatment by the French, and the 
 hardships they had suffered in the campaign, describing them- 
 selves as half starved, having seldom anything but potatoes, 
 which there was no time to cook, while the French, they 
 asserted, lived on the choicest plunder of the houses of the 
 gentry. A large number of prisoners were marched to 
 Carrick-on-Shannon, where Lord Cornwallis, anxious to 
 avoid indiscriminate slaughter, but feeling the necessity of 
 making an example, directed that a certain number should 
 be hanged. A field officer thus described the mode in 
 which these orders were obeyed : 
 
 An order arrived from Lord Cornwallis directing a certain 
 number of them to be hanged without further ceremony, 
 and a number of bits of paper were rolled up, the word 
 1 Death ' being written on the number ordered ; and with 
 these in his hat the Adjutant, Captain Bay — on whom 
 devolved the management of this wretched lottery — entered 
 
318 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 the courthouse and the drawing began. As fast as a wretch 
 drew the ticket, he was handed out and hanged at the door. 
 I am not sure of the number thus dealt with, but seventy 
 were actually hanged. It was a dreadful duty to devolve 
 on any regiment, but somehow or other men's minds had 
 grown as hard as the nether millstone. I know it from my 
 own feelings. I would go some miles out of my way to 
 avoid an execution now, yet I well remember the indiffer- 
 ence with which I looked on such a spectacle in 1798. 
 
 In contrast to the behaviour of the Boyal troops in 
 Wexford, Cornwallis was enabled to congratulate his troops 
 not only on their zeal and spirit, but upon their orderly 
 conduct. On the day after Ballinamuck he issued the 
 following General Order : 
 
 Lord Cornwallis cannot too much applaud the zeal and 
 spirit which has been manifested by the army, from the 
 commencement of the operations against the invading 
 enemy until the surrender of the French forces. The per- 
 severance with which the soldiers supported the extra- 
 ordinary marches which were necessary to stop the progress 
 of the very active enemy does them the greatest credit ; and 
 Lord Cornwallis heartily congratulates them on the happy 
 issue of their meritorious exertions. 
 
 The corps of yeomanry, in the whole country through 
 which the army has passed, have rendered the greatest ser- 
 vices, and are peculiarly entitled to the thanks of the Lord- 
 Lieutenant, for their not having tarnished that courage and 
 loyalty which they displayed in the cause of their country 
 by any acts of wanton cruelty towards their deluded fellow 
 subjects. 
 
 The number of the French prisoners who surrendered at 
 Ballinamuck was, according to Lake's official return, ninety- 
 six officers and 748 non-commissioned officers and privates, 
 with three Irish general officers, Roche, Blake, and Teeling. 
 According to the probably more accurate report made by 
 Ardooin to the French Directory, the total was but 794 of 
 all ranks. 
 
 Humbert's brief and indeed laconic despatch to the 
 Directory, written while on his way to Dover, is really an 
 accurate epitome of the actions and fate of the expedition : 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OP IRELAND 319 
 
 Lichfield, 2 Vendemiaire. 
 
 September 25, 1798. 
 
 Citizen Directors, — After having obtained the greatest 
 successes, and made the arms of the French Republic to 
 triumph during my stay in Ireland, I have at length been 
 obliged to submit to a superior force of thirty thousand men, 
 commanded by Lord Cornwallis. I am a prisoner of war 
 upon my parole. 
 
 Humbebt. 
 
 At the moment when this despatch was penned Admiral 
 Bompard's fleet, with Hardy and his troops on board, was 
 on its way to Ireland, and Savary was engaged in organising 
 a second expedition to Killala. For although the French 
 Government had exhibited but little vigour in pushing their 
 scheme of invasion, the Directory had not by any means aban- 
 doned Humbert to his fate. The fleet of Admiral Bompard, 
 comprising the Hoche, a line-of-battle ship, and seven frigates, 
 had been anchored in the roadstead at Brest, ready to embark 
 Hardy and his three thousand troops, ever since July 25, and 
 had received on July 30 instructions practically identical with 
 those issued to Savary and Humbert. But the despatch of 
 the necessary stores was delayed until August 5, when at 
 last the embarkation commenced, and even when all else 
 was ready the 150,000 francs with which Hardy was to be 
 supplied still lay in the Treasury, and it was not until ten 
 days after Humbert had set sail that all was at length ready. 
 Hardy's nominal force of three thousand was actually con- 
 siderably less. It comprised 2,587 men and 172 officers. 
 Among the latter was the Ulysses of the enterprise, Theo- 
 bald Wolfe Tone, who, under the nom de guerre of General 
 Smith, was attached to the staff of General Hardy and sailed 
 on board the Hoche. 
 
 No sooner had the official obstacles to the departure of 
 Bompard's fleet been successfully overcome than Nature 
 interposed a yet more formidable impediment. General 
 Frost was not more inimical to Napoleon in his Russian 
 campaign than was General Wind to Tone in his schemes 
 for the invasion of Ireland. The winds for several days 
 forbade the departure of the expedition, and when at length, 
 
320 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 on August 20, a favouring breeze arrived, Bompard found 
 himself menaced by a powerful English fleet of forty-two 
 sail. Thus, although, taking advantage of the thick weather, 
 the French Admiral set sail in the night, it was only to 
 return to port next day with two of his frigates disabled by 
 a collision, and with the knowledge that the blockade was 
 too effective to be defied with any prospects of success. 
 Hardy, eager for the fray, and filled with the idea that 
 ' what the Irish needed above all things was a General,' 
 wrote to his Government suggesting that he should himself, 
 with a few officers and a small force of four hundred men, 
 embark in a frigate at Eochefort and endeavour to reach 
 Ireland. He was informed, however, that no vessels 
 capable of putting to sea were then at that port ? and he was 
 ordered to await the moment when Bompard might find 
 himself able to get out of Brest. But Savary had returned 
 from Killala before that moment arrived, and long before 
 Hardy sighted the Irish coast Humbert had been forced to 
 surrender. 
 
 While Bompard lay idle at Brest, Admiral Savary had 
 returned from Ireland. He had left Killala on August 24, 
 but delayed by bad weather, as well as by the necessity for 
 giving a wide berth to an English squadron under Sir John 
 Warren, it was not until September 9 that he anchored 
 near Eoyan, in the estuary of the Gironde. He at once 
 notified his Government of the successful disembarkation of 
 Humbert's force, and of his preliminary success at Killala, 
 and then proceeded to Rochelle. Savary's report roused 
 the Directory to the necessity for immediate exertion. On 
 the 13th he received orders to prepare at once to return to 
 Ireland with a fresh force to reinforce Humbert, and troops 
 were ordered to concentrate for that purpose. At the same 
 time Bompard and Hardy were advised of Savary's intelli- 
 gence, and enjoined to make every effort to get under way, 
 and, once started, to effect a landing at Killala and join forces 
 with Humbert. Two days later orders were given to one of 
 Bompard's frigates, the Biche, to proceed with all speed to 
 Ireland to convey to Humbert the news of approaching 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 321 
 
 succour, but the Admiral with his whole fleet, the Biche 
 included, had sailed before this despatch could be delivered. 
 For on the 16th he had put out from Brest. 
 
 But Bompard had hardly got to sea when he found 
 himself pursued by a small British force, to avoid which he 
 was obliged to steer in a southerly direction, and in his 
 effort to escape he had the ill-luck to fall in four days later 
 with a larger squadron. After being chased for several days 
 he eluded his pursuers, but only by making a detour so wide 
 that when on October 10 he at length arrived in Lough 
 Swilly, he found that the vessels which had been following 
 him had joined Warren's fleet, which, warned of Bompard's 
 departure from Brest, had made all sail to the North of 
 Ireland, and was ready to meet the French Admiral in supe- 
 rior force. The battle which ensued was brief and decisive. 
 The Hoche, overpowered by a vigorous cannonade, was 
 obliged to surrender. Several of the frigates followed her 
 example. Others escaped from Lough Swilly only to be 
 overtaken by English frigates in the open sea, and of 
 Bompard's whole fleet only three of the smallest of his 
 vessels got back to France. 
 
 Savary's second expedition was scarcely more fortunate. 
 A number of difficulties arose in equipping it, and it was not 
 until October 11 that, with three frigates, a corvette, and two 
 smaller vessels, and carrying with him a force of close on 
 eleven hundred soldiers under General Cortez, he was able to 
 set sail from Rochelle. The voyage of this little fleet was 
 uneventful, and on October 27 Savary once more found him- 
 self at anchor in the Bay of Killala. He had received very 
 explicit instructions not to disembark the troops unless he 
 should ascertain that Hardy had already arrived and had 
 effected a landing. Just as on the occasion of his first visit, 
 Savary's fleet was taken for an English one, and a party of 
 two officers and a dozen soldiers put off from Killala and 
 boarded the Admiral's ship. From these Savary learned the 
 capitulation of Humbert and the destruction of Bompard's 
 fleet. Relying on this intelligence he at once determined to 
 return to France. Cortez, who commanded the troops, had, 
 
 Y 
 
322 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 however, received different intelligence from a party of Irish 
 who came on board about the same time, and who reported 
 that Hardy with his army had made good their landing in 
 Donegal. Eelying on this intelligence he gave orders to 
 disembark. A dispute ensued between Savary and Cortez 
 as to which of these widely different versions was to be 
 accepted, but Savary, wisely relying on the account of the 
 British officers, and threatened besides by the appearance of 
 some British ships, insisted on setting sail at once for France. 
 He was not a moment too soon, for on the day following four 
 British ships hove in sight. By these Savary was pursued 
 for three days, and it was only by throwing overboard his 
 heavy guns and a large part of his supplies that he was 
 enabled to make good his escape. Ten days later his 
 squadron, scattered in their hurried flight, reached the coast 
 of France, and the invasion of Ireland was at an end. 1 It 
 remains only to describe the fate of the solitary vessel other 
 than Savary's first fleet which succeeded in effecting a landing 
 of troops in Ireland. The otherwise contemptible expedition 
 of Napper Tandy on the brig Anacreon deserves notice as 
 the only one of the many schemes devised to co-operate 
 with Humbert which, inasmuch as it reached the Irish coast 
 in safety, had even a moment's semblance of success. 
 
 The fame of Napper Tandy has acquired a familiarity 
 wider than that of many far abler associates, through the 
 accident which has embalmed his name in the touching 
 requiem of the United Irish movement, the immortal 
 street ballad of ' The Wearing of the Green.' But neither 
 in his early life, when he was an active leader of the Dublin 
 populace and a prominent member of the Volunteer Con- 
 vention, nor in the latest and most famous adventures of a 
 roystering career does he seem to have merited the chance 
 eminence to which he has thus attained. After having 
 fled from Ireland in 1793, to avoid persecution as a promi- 
 nent Defender, Tandy had shared Tone's exile in America, 
 and when he learned that the latter had succeeded in his 
 
 1 The incidents of Savary's second expedition are detailed with great 
 fulness in Projets et Tentatives de Dibarqtieinent, vol. ii. chap. viii. 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 323 
 
 mission to France he had followed his friend to Paris. 
 There, however, his vanity wounded by the pre-eminence 
 accorded to his youthful ally, he had become the head of an 
 Irish party opposed to Tone, whose designs he embarrassed 
 by what the latter describes in his journal as ' ridiculous 
 rhodomontades,' representing his influence as sufficient to 
 attract thirty thousand men to his standard the moment he 
 could unfurl it in Ireland. 1 Tandy was successful, however, 
 in securing some credit with the French Directory, and in 
 the plans for the invasion of Ireland was eventually included 
 the allocation to his control of the 16-gun brig Anacreon, 
 reported to be one of the fastest-sailing corvettes in the 
 French navy, with a small quota of French troops on 
 board, and a considerable supply of arms. Accompanied by 
 the squad of Irish refugees who had attached themselves to 
 his fortunes, a party which unfortunately included at least 
 two who were ready to betray him to the British Govern- 
 ment, this elderly ex-citizen of Dublin transformed into a 
 general of the French army set sail from Dunkirk on 
 September 4. Our knowledge of Tandy's character and 
 the story of his last adventure has hitherto depended mainly, 
 if not exclusively, on British or Irish sources of information, 
 which, however they may differ in details, are unanimous in 
 stigmatising the conduct of the leader of the expedition 
 as at best that of a poltroon. There is strong evidence 
 that on more than one critical occasion he was helplessly 
 intoxicated, and it is certain that his only contribution to the 
 emancipation of the people he came to encourage in insurrec- 
 tion was an absurdly inflated proclamation in which, at the 
 very moment of abandoning the enterprise, he bade his 
 countrymen to ' wage a war of extermination ' against their 
 oppressors. It is right, however, to say that the narrative 
 contained in the report made by Ameil, 2 the commander of 
 
 1 It is stated in the life of Wolfe Tone that Humbert's premature departure 
 from Rochelle was prompted by the importunities of Tandy ; but there is no 
 other authority for this statement, and it does not appear probable. 
 
 1 Projets et Tentatives de Dibarquement aux lies Britanniques, 1793-1805, 
 tome deuxi^me, pp. 150-157. 
 
 y 2 
 
324 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 the French troops on board the Anacreon, to his superiors, 
 the conduct of Tandy appears in a light, ineffectual indeed, 
 but less repulsive than that attributed to him by his 
 associates among his own countrymen. 
 
 From Ameil's narrative it appears that the Anacreon 
 left Dunkirk on September 4 with its complement of soldiers 
 and artillery, ' charged to carry to Ireland Napper Tandy 
 and several of his fellow-countrymen, with supplies, for the 
 encouragement of the United Irishmen.' The expedition 
 reached the little isle of Arran off the Donegal coast on 
 September 16, and anchored opposite the pretty village of 
 Kutland, by whose inhabitants word was speedilybrought 
 of the unhappy fate of Humbert's expedition. The people, 
 however, maintained that despite the defeat of the French 
 the insurrection was still in full swing, that as many as 
 a thousand men were assembled in a church hard by, ready 
 to join the French, and that these were certain to receive 
 large additions from the Ulster counties. 
 
 A council of war was at once called by Tandy to consider 
 these tidings, and decide on the course to be followed. Accor- 
 ding to Ameil the French officers were unanimous in advis- 
 ing the disembarkation of the force on the mainland, being 
 of opinion that the expedition of the Anacreon had no rela- 
 tion to that which had set out from Eochefort, and that 
 the success or failure of Humbert should in no way affect 
 the object of the mission, which was, according to Ameil's 
 view of his instructions, ' to facilitate the return of Napper 
 Tandy and his comrades to Ireland, to put at their disposal 
 the arms and stores carried in the ship, and to help them by 
 the experience of the French artillery officers to nourish 
 and sustain among the Irish people the spirit of liberty and 
 independence.' Such, however, was not Tandy's view, and 
 it was ultimately determined that Tandy and the French 
 officers should go ashore and ascertain how far the reports 
 which had been brought were trustworthy. They accord- 
 ingly landed, hoisted the Irish standard, assembled as many 
 of the peasantry as they could collect, and distributed 
 proclamations and cockades. A visit to the post-office, where 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 325 
 
 the letters were seized and opened, speedily confirmed the 
 news of Humbert's capitulation, and Tandy thereupon 
 decided not to disembark his force. Greatly to the dissatis- 
 faction of the French officers, he determined to go aboard 
 ship again at once, and was carried in triumph to the boat 
 on the shoulders of some of the peasantry. 1 Once on board 
 again Tandy gave orders to set sail, and the Anacreon, after 
 undergoing various and exciting vicissitudes, capturing an 
 English merchantman in the Orkneys, and driven thence 
 as far as Norway by a British man-of-war, reached Dunkirk 
 with its futile tale of fiasco just two months after it had set 
 out. So ended the last exploit of the vainglorious Tandy, 
 and the last expedition which made good even a momentary 
 footing in Ireland. Of the leader's share in it, it is but just 
 to say that Ameil's narrative, though conclusive as to his 
 ineptitude, mitigates in some degree the judgment hitherto 
 passed upon Tandy's demeanour on the occasion, and 
 conveys the impression that Jonah Barrington's qualified 
 dispraise is after all more just than Tone's uncompromising 
 censure : ' Though in many instances erroneous and violent, 
 his private character furnished no ground to doubt the 
 integrity of his public one ; and like many of those persons 
 who occasionally spring up in revolutionary periods, he 
 acquired celebrity without being able to account for it, and 
 possessed an influence without rank and capacity.' 
 
 VI 
 
 'WHAT PASSED AT KILL ALA 1 
 
 The story now returns to the little community at Killala. 
 During the four weeks which elapsed between the depar- 
 ture of the French General for Castlebar and his final defeat 
 and surrender at Ballinamuck, the loyalists at Killala 
 
 1 In the narrative of the United Irishman Orr, which is printed in the 
 Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 404, it is stated that when Tandy landed at 
 Butland for a few hours ' he intoxicated himself to such a degree as to be 
 incapable of getting to the boat.' History, however, may charitably accept 
 Ameil's kindlier version of the incident. 
 
326 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 passed through a period of the most anxious disquietude, 
 hope and despair alternating rapidly in their breasts as 
 the chances of war depressed or cheered the foes by whom 
 they were surrounded and outnumbered. Cut off from all 
 communication with their friends, and surrounded by a 
 population which became every day more turbulent and 
 difficult to restrain, they were entirely without information 
 of the progress of the rebellion, save what came to them 
 from French or rebel sources, and, in the language of Bishop 
 Stock, knew no more of what was going forward in the rest 
 of Ireland than if they were at Calcutta. While the French 
 garrison remained with them the inhabitants of the castle 
 were able to contemplate the situation with some approach 
 to equanimity. M. Charost, the Commandant, proved to 
 be a man of sense, honour, and humanity, in whom the 
 experience of a few days inspired feelings of the highest 
 respect and regard for the gentlemen confided to his charge. 
 During this period, too, the captives were cheered by the 
 arrival in the bay of two vessels which, though they were at 
 first hailed by the French as the forerunners of Hardy's 
 army, proved to be an English squadron. A frigate, the 
 Cerberus, with her cutter, anchored and sent out her boats 
 to fire two trading-vessels laden with oatmeal and in pos- 
 session of the French. This, however, was but a short-lived 
 hope, for after the accomplishment of this not very important 
 feat the frigate sailed away. Three days after the General's 
 departure news arrived, by an express messenger to Charost, 
 of the French victory at Castlebar, and on the following day 
 Toussaint, one of Humbert's principal lieutenants, with other 
 officers, arrived with authentic details of the battle. In the 
 course of a conversation with the Bishop, this officer made 
 some frank admissions as to the purpose of the invasion. The 
 real object, he stated, was merely to annoy England and to 
 force a peace. The French had no expectation of being able 
 to effect a revolution with so small a force, and looked on 
 themselves as a forlorn hope who must ultimately be forced 
 to surrender themselves prisoners of war. Dr. Ellison and 
 another of the Bishop's captive guests were permitted 
 
THE FEENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 327 
 
 to accompany Toussaint back to Castlebar, where during 
 the remainder of his stay the Eector was treated, as has 
 been seen, with much consideration, and he finally escaped 
 to Dublin on the evacuation of Castlebar. 
 
 Meantime the Bishop, though he had to deplore a melan- 
 choly waste of his substance, the destruction of his crops, 
 and the slaughter of his cattle, had suffered little personal in- 
 convenience. If his French visitors had helped themselves 
 liberally to his goods so long as his stores lasted, they did 
 not neglect him when his cellar and larder had been ex- 
 hausted. The commissary of stores made it his first care to 
 provide for the Bishop's household, which consisted of twenty- 
 five persons in the upper story, the total number actually 
 sleeping in the castle numbering as many as seventy-eight. 
 Meat, bread, and even wine, were brought in daily and 
 supplied without stint. The provender was of course 
 obtained at the expense of the loyalists of the town and 
 neighbourhood, but the Bishop's conscience was soon 
 accommodated to his circumstances. ' I have so much 
 honesty left yet,' he humorously notes (a propos of a 
 requisition of a supply of mutton from his friend, Mr. Kirk- 
 wood), ' that when I take a neighbour's sheep, I spare him 
 one joint for his private use.' On another occasion he 
 writes : ' Here comes a cargo of wine and rum to my cellar 
 from Ballina plundered from poor Colonel King. Cacus 
 was not a greater robber than I am.' 
 
 On September 1 however, a week after Humbert's 
 departure, the captives experienced a much more serious 
 alarm. Orders were received from the Commandant to des- 
 patch immediately to Castlebar all the French garrison at 
 Killala, except Charost himself and a couple of subordi- 
 nate officers, Ponson and Boudet, who remained behind 
 to protect the town, the Bishop's son Arthur accompanying 
 the departing garrison as a hostage for the safety of the 
 Commander. The Bishop and Protestant townspeople 
 of Killala were not unnaturally dismayed at being thus 
 summarily obliged to exchange the protection of a dis- 
 ciplined French garrison for that of two hundred United 
 
323 STUDIES IN IBISH HISTOEY 
 
 Irishmen, with no better guarantee for their safety than the 
 doubtful authority of the few French officers who were to 
 remain. And indeed it quickly became apparent that this 
 authority could not always be enforced. The country round 
 Ivillala was by this time in a state of absolute lawlessness. 
 Bobberies and assaults had become incessant. To secure 
 the inhabitants from danger, Charost's first act was to issue 
 a proclamation inviting all the inhabitants, without dis- 
 tinction of religion or party, to apply to him for arms for 
 their own defence. This offer, which included the prisoners, 
 was eagerly embraced by the Protestants who had been 
 disarmed at the taking of the town, and a distribution of 
 weapons took place on the evening of September 1. But 
 the Roman Catholic population and the armed recruits could 
 not at all sympathise with the impartiality of the Com- 
 mandant. They murmured loudly against trusting arms to 
 their Protestant fellow-townsmen, and one of their officers 
 actually repudiated Charost's control. ' The Bishop laboured 
 hard to pacify the malcontents, amid clamour and darkness 
 and the confusion of three languages.' Ultimately the Pro- 
 testants were obliged to purchase peace by a voluntary 
 surrender of the arms Charost had provided them with. 
 
 By this time the Irish population, no longer restrained 
 by the presence of the French troops, were indulging pretty 
 freely in the delights of plundering the gentry. Tyrawley's 
 new house at Deal Castle was reduced to a mere wreck ; 
 Castle Lacken, the seat of Sir John Palmer, and several 
 other houses, were plundered. It is right, however, to 
 observe that throughout the invasion the violence of the 
 peasantry was restricted to robbery and looting. Though 
 the district of Killala was for upwards of a month in the 
 hands of the rebels, not a single human life was taken in cold 
 blood. In the Bishop's words, not a drop of blood was shed 
 in the whole course of the rising except in the field of battle, 
 and even there not one loyalist was slain for every ten 
 rebels. 
 
 To check outrage as far as possible, Charost and the 
 Bishop, who had by this time arrived at a complete mutual 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 329 
 
 understanding, the Commandant being almost as much a 
 prisoner to the Irish as Dr. Stock, devised a system of civil 
 government for the town. Following the example set by 
 Humbert at Castlebar, a cantonal administration was formed. 
 The country was divided into departments, with an elective 
 magistrate and a guard of sixteen men at the head of each. 
 Arms and ammunition were served out to the latter on the 
 express stipulation that they were to act only as a police, and 
 not to be employed against their sovereign. The town of 
 Killala was placed under the protection of a body of one 
 hundred and fifty men, at the orders of Mr. James Devitt, a 
 Roman Catholic tradesman of moderation and respectability, 
 who was elected to the post of civil magistrate. The castle, 
 being the only place which could be deemed at all secure 
 from depredation, had become the depository of a vast 
 amount of valuable property, plate, cash, leases, etc., being 
 confided to the Bishop's care by the neighbouring gentry. 
 To provide for the safety of these treasures, as well as of its 
 numerous inhabitants, a guard of twenty of the most trust- 
 worthy Irish in the garrison was appointed, who being 
 lodged, clothed, and fed better than their comrades, might 
 be counted on to exhibit some degree of fidelity. 
 
 The next step was to concoct measures to prevent the 
 inordinate waste of provisions, which threatened not only to 
 strip the country of its supplies, but even to create an 
 epidemic in the town from the reckless slaughter of cattle. 
 As many as seven bullocks were killed of a morning, and as 
 there was no salt, and the weather was warm, much of the 
 meat had actually to be buried to prevent danger from 
 putrefaction. It was therefore arranged that the supply of 
 meat should be regulated daily by a requisition from the civil 
 magistrate based on the certificate of the town-major as to 
 the amount required, and that the beasts should be brough 
 to a common slaughter-house. To enforce obedience it was 
 ordained that any person caught driving in and killing cattle 
 without a magistrate's order should be at once shot. 
 
 Adversity makes strange bedfellows. The Bishop and 
 his nominal gaolers, thus left to themselves, soon became 
 
330 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTOEY 
 
 close friends. M. Charost, with his two officers Boudet and 
 Ponson, and occasionally the Irishman O'Keon, messed 
 together with the Bishop and his family. Of these officers 
 Dr. Stock has left in his narrative a graphic and pleasing 
 description. 
 
 Charost was a Parisian, the son of a watchmaker who had 
 settled in St. Domingo, where he had married and become 
 the owner of a thriving plantation. Driven out by the war, 
 he had lost everything, including his wife and child, and had 
 entered the army shortly before the Revolution broke out. 
 Remaining in the service of the Republic, he had risen to 
 the rank of lieutenant-colonel (chef du demi-brigade), and 
 happening to be with his brother at Rochelle he had been 
 suddenly ordered to serve with this expedition. ' His 
 religion,' he told the Bishop, ' he had yet to seek, because, 
 his father being a Catholic and his mother a Protestant, they 
 left him the liberty of choosing for himself, and he had never 
 yet found time to make this inquiry, which, however, he 
 was sensible he ought to make, and would make at some 
 time when Heaven should grant him repose. In the interim 
 he believed in God, was inclined to think there must be a future 
 state, and was very sure that while he lived in this world it 
 was his duty to do all the good to his fellow creatures that 
 he could. Yet what he did not exhibit in his own conduct he 
 appeared to respect in others ; for he took care that no noise 
 or disturbance should be made in the castle on Sundays, 
 while the family and many Protestants from the town were 
 assembled in the library at prayers.' 
 
 Boudet, the next in rank, was a tall Norman of a some- 
 what boastful disposition, though of unusual gravity for a 
 Frenchman. He was a captain of Foot and had been bred 
 in the Ecole Militaire at Paris, and was much the best 
 educated of the French officers. He had seen hard service 
 with the army of the Rhine. ' In person, complexion, and 
 height, he was no inadequate representative of the Knight 
 of La Mancha, whose example he followed in a recital of his 
 own prowess and wonderful exploits, delivered in measured 
 language and with an imposing seriousness of aspect.' 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 331 
 
 The third officer, Ponson, was a native of Navarre, a 
 little fellow, but of great vivacity and good humour. 
 ' Wherever he was his presence was testified by a noise as 
 loud and as pertinacious as that of a corn-crake ; it was 
 a continued roll of talk, or laughter, or whistling. The 
 decencies of polished life he had never known, or, if he had, 
 he affected to despise them. Yet in a gloomy hour this 
 eternal cackle had its uses, and more than once kept our 
 spirits buoyant when terror pressed heaviest. Ponson was 
 hardy, and patient to admiration of want of rest. He was 
 ready at a moment's notice to sally out on the marauders, 
 whom, if he caught, he belaboured without mercy. Tied 
 to a sword as long as himself, and armed with pistols, firelock, 
 and bayonet, he stretched himself up to view till he became 
 terrific. He was strictly honest, and could not bear the 
 want of this quality in others ; so that his patience was 
 pretty well tried by his Irish allies, for whom he could not 
 find names sufficiently expressive of contempt.' 
 
 Thanks to the excellence of the precautions taken, little 
 or no damage was done to the buildings in the town, and 
 religious intolerance was held effectively in check. One 
 attempt was made on September 9th to appropriate the 
 cathedral : the bell was broken and the locks wrenched off 
 the gate ; but the remonstrances of the Bishop prevailed on 
 O'Donel to return the key to his own keeping. Thereafter 
 the building remained unmolested, and when all was over a 
 sum of less than a guinea sufficed to make good the slight 
 damage to locks and belfry. Outside the town of Killala, 
 however, matters were far otherwise, and many churches bore 
 marks of violence. The most serious injuries were offered 
 to the Reverend Mr. Marshall, the minister of a Presbyterian 
 colony of weavers who had been planted there by Lord Arran 
 some years previously, and in whose skill with the loom, it 
 is interesting to note, originated those industries which in 
 our own day have been fostered so successfully by the 
 convents of Foxford. A newly erected meeting-house was 
 completely wrecked, and the minister himself driven for 
 refuge to the castle. The pretext for the violence shown to 
 
332 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 these people was an unjustifiable charge of Orangeism, for 
 no lodge had been founded in Mayo, and the Bishop himself, 
 as has been already said, had entered a protest against the 
 Orange oaths as intolerant and indictable. Despite a 
 protection from Charost these poor folk were subjected to 
 nocturnal visits, their property seized, and many of them 
 carried off to Ballina, where True, the French officer in 
 charge, was a person much less humane and tolerant than 
 Charost, and confined as close prisoners for the alleged crime 
 of being Orangemen. By Charost's orders and personal 
 intervention they were, however, soon released. 
 
 For about a fortnight after the departure of Humbert from 
 Killala, comparative order was thus maintained under the 
 regulations of Charost. So long as the tale of French 
 success continued uninterrupted, French order and French 
 discipline were an effectual restraint on the license of 
 an excited population and on the sanguinary violence of 
 the native recruits. With the first rumours of a reverse, 
 however, the situation became much more alarming. On 
 the morrow after the battle of Collooney a crowd armed with 
 pikes, for which they had by this time exchanged their 
 French weapons, came to demand permission, which they 
 were with difficulty restrained from taking ungranted, to cut 
 down all the young ash-plants in the castle demesne for 
 pike-handles, and the first rumours of the defeat at Ballina- 
 muck, with the consequent apprehension that the era of license 
 must soon be terminated, brought with them a marked 
 increase in the depredations and destruction of property. On 
 November 13th Mr. Fortescue, Member for Louth, was 
 brought in a prisoner from Ballina, and confirmed the news 
 of the French surrender. He was a brother of the clergyman 
 who had been shot at the taking of Ballina, and pushing 
 forward incautiously in the desire to obtain news of his 
 brother, and under the impression that the town had already 
 been recovered by the King's troops, found himself a prisoner 
 in the hands of a patrol. Fortescue' s intelligence was fully 
 confirmed by two letters from Humbert's army. 
 
 The little garrison were now eager for the arrival of the 
 
THE FKENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 333 
 
 King's troops ; and Charost himself was no less anxious 
 than the Bishop for the moment when an honourable 
 surrender should terminate his difficulties, foreseeing how 
 impossible must be the task of keeping the violence of the 
 people in check. It was agreed to withhold from the Irish 
 recruits, so long as possible, the news of the final defeat 
 of the French by Lord Cornwallis. Unfortunately, a full 
 fortnight had to elapse before the arrival of General Trench 
 on September 23rd. Although Castlebar had been occupied 
 as early as the 12th, and although a large number of troops 
 had been collected there, it was not until the 22nd that 
 General Trench marched to the relief of Killala. It is 
 difficult to understand the cause of the delay, which was 
 answerable not only for much cruel suspense, but for a great 
 and unnecessary increase in the destruction of property. 
 
 ' The work of devastation,' wrote the Bishop in his diary, 
 1 continues with such perseverance that when our friends 
 come I fear they will find it a second La Vendee.' Prohibi- 
 tions ceased to be respected, and apprehensions were felt by 
 the garrison of an attack from the now numerous body of pike- 
 men, whose officer, O'Donel, Charost was obliged to order 
 under arrest. A leader from the camp outside came in with 
 the announcement that the Irish had determined to imprison 
 all the Protestants in the cathedral as hostages for their own 
 security. He was told by the Commandant that, while he 
 was willing to head the Irish if they wished it against the 
 English army, he would put himself at the head of the 
 Protestants of the town if any attempt were made on the 
 persons or property of the latter, saying that he was chef de 
 brigade and not chef de brigands. It soon became impossible 
 to rely on the guard who had been appointed to protect the 
 castle, and Charost accordingly made preparations for its 
 defence against his late allies. Arms were distributed to the 
 Bishop, his family, and such servants as could be trusted, and 
 the French officers kept watch by turns through the night. 
 
 On the 19th the apprehensions of the people were further 
 inflamed by rumours of the ill-treatment of the Irish prisoners 
 at Castlebar, and they threatened immediate retaliation. The 
 
334 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 Bishop, who from the time of the departure of the garrison had 
 been the sole interpreter to Charost, was sent out to reason with 
 them ; and suggesting that before resorting to reprisals the 
 truth of the rumours should be first established, he advised 
 the despatch of a joint embassy to Castlebar with a flag of 
 truce and letters explaining their situation to General 
 Trench, and expressing a hope that nothing would be done 
 to the Irish prisoners in Castlebar which might provoke 
 reprisals on those in Killala. This was agreed to, and on 
 the following morning Dean Thompson on the one side, and 
 one Koger Maguire on the other, set out on this mission. 
 The two days which elapsed between the departure and 
 return of these envoys were the most troubled of the whole. 
 Crowds of the peasantry armed with pikes continued to 
 assemble from the neighbouring villages, and could not be 
 restrained from ransacking the town, every house in which, 
 except the castle, was completely pillaged. Deputations 
 came to Charost demanding permission to disarm such of the 
 neighbouring gentry as had succeeded in arming themselves 
 and protecting their houses : to which the Commandant 
 replied that he would fire on them himself should he catch 
 them plundering. By this time the countenance shown to 
 the English and Protestants by the French had almost 
 destroyed the authority of the latter with the Irish, who were 
 with the utmost difficulty restrained from an attack on the 
 castle. At length, on Saturday 22nd, the embassy returned 
 from Castlebar, with an assurance from General Trench, which 
 sufficed to allay the danger of an attack on the castle, that the 
 prisoners there would be treated with all possible tenderness, 
 and with private information for the Bishop that he might 
 expect the army on the morning of the following Sunday. 
 On Saturday evening the welcome sound of artillery in the 
 direction of Ballina announced that succour was impending, 
 and from the Steeple Hill could be seen the flash of artillery. 
 In fulfilment of his promise General Trench, who was 
 in command at Castlebar, had left that town on Saturday 
 22nd, having previously directed Lord Portarlington, at 
 Sligo, to join him at Ballina on the following morning with 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 335 
 
 his regiment ; forty of the 24th Light Dragoons, the three 
 corps of yeomanry, and the Armagh Militia, who were 
 quartered at Foxford, being also directed to meet at the 
 same rendezvous. Trench, taking with him the Roxburgh 
 Light Dragoons, three hundred of the Downshire Regiment, 
 the Kerry Regiment, the Prince of Wales's Fencibles, and 
 two curricle guns, marched out by the Barnageragh road, 
 the same through which Humbert had made his forced 
 march to Castlebar, and arrived at Ballina next day, to find 
 that Portarlington and Acheson, though repeatedly attacked, 
 had occupied that town, the rebel garrison retreating to 
 Killala. "Without halting, the General immediately advanced 
 on Killala. Dividing his force, which numbered some twelve 
 hundred men with five guns, into two divisions, he sent 
 forward the Kerry Regiment under Colonel Crosbie and the 
 Knight of Kerry, together with the Tyrawley Yeomanry, with 
 orders to proceed by a forced march, involving a detour of 
 three miles, so as to cut off the fugitives in their retreat to 
 the north-west. This movement was so successfully executed 
 that the Kerry Militia appeared at the further end of the 
 town simultaneously with the arrival of the main body of the 
 army at the Ballina entrance. Exposed thus to attack from 
 both sides, and hemmed in in every direction by the British 
 troops, the issue of the conflict could not be doubted. 
 Nevertheless the rebels, inspired by the courage of despair, 
 fought with great gallantry. Posted to the number of four 
 thousand behind a stone wall on a hill above the road, they 
 maintained a vigorous fire upon the Downshire Regiment, 
 which led the advance. Though, owing to unskilful marks- 
 manship, they did but little injury, and killed only one man, 
 their shot passing over the heads of the soldiers, they managed 
 to keep their assailants at bay until the Frazer Fencibles, filing 
 off to right and left and crossing a marsh which separated 
 them from the hill, poured a heavy fire into their flank. 
 Then they gave way, and fled through the town, hotly 
 pursued by the Roxburgh cavalry under Colonel Eliot. The 
 slaughter that ensued was sanguinary and indiscriminate. 
 Scores were cut down in the streets, and those who made 
 
336 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 their way through the town escaped only to meet with the 
 fire of the Kerry Militia at the other end. According to 
 General Trench, between five and six hundred, or, according 
 to Bishop Stock's more moderate estimate, at least four 
 hundred were slain. 
 
 The Bishop and his family viewed the battle from the 
 window of the library. The French officers, though they 
 deemed it their duty to place themselves formally at the head 
 of the rebels, took no very active part in the resistance, 
 and so soon as the issue of the contest was apparent made 
 haste to surrender their swords, which the General, in- 
 formed of their treatment of the Bishop, allowed them to 
 retain, with their effects and bedrooms. O'Keon, as an 
 Irishman, was at first refused this indulgence, though 
 naturalised as a Frenchman ; but he was at the Bishop's 
 instance allowed to remain with his comrades pending the 
 meeting of the court-martial. 
 
 Though little or no injury was done to the loyalists by 
 the fire of the enemy, the townspeople did not escape un- 
 scathed from the battle. The efforts of the flying rebels to 
 find refuge in the houses caused much confusion, and in the 
 case of Mr. Andrew Kirk wood actually proved fatal. As 
 he stood at his door, shouting ' God save the King ! ' in the 
 exultation of victory, a rebel burst through the door 
 followed by a volley of musketry from a party of the 
 pursuing soldiers, which proved instantly fatal to the too 
 triumphant loyalist. This gentleman had, curiously enough, 
 been haunted by a presentiment (a foreboding which, as the 
 Bishop observes, often tends to work its own acomplishment) 
 that he would not survive the recovery of the town. A yet 
 more unfortunate misadventure caused the death of a number 
 of Protestant farmers from Carrowcarden, a neighbouring 
 village, who had been forced by the rebels into their lines, 
 and many of whom in the confusion of the pursuit fell iu 
 the indiscriminate slaughter which followed the capture of 
 the town. 
 
 The town retaken, the peaceably disposed inhabitants 
 imagined they were immediately to enjoy the repose and 
 
THE FEBNCH INVASION OF IRELAND 337 
 
 safety denied them for the past month. In this, however, 
 they were very greatly disappointed. The week following 
 the recapture of the town was occupied with courts-martial, 
 before whom seventy-five people were tried at Killala and 
 one hundred and ten at Ballina. Unlike the Wexford 
 courts-martial, the trials of prisoners at Killala were marked 
 on the whole by humanity and discrimination. A few of 
 the neighbouring gentry who had suffered severely in person 
 and property were not unnaturally clamorous for severe 
 measures, but the more lenient disposition of the Bishop, 
 whose evidence at the court-martial was as far as possible 
 favourable to the prisoners, was effectual in mitigating the 
 severity of the sentences. But though the treatment of the 
 more responsible leaders of the rising was upon the whole 
 merciful, the poorer sort were made to suffer severely. Not 
 only did the troops, after the capture of the town, indulge 
 in cruel and often unnecessary slaughter ; they also plundered 
 and pillaged the neighbourhood, making but little distinction 
 between the law-abiding citizens and those who had partici- 
 pated in the insurrection. The militia regiments were the 
 principal offenders in this respect, the regular troops as a whole 
 behaving with propriety and discipline. ' Their rapacity,' 
 says the Bishop, ' differed in no respect from that of the 
 rebels, except that they seized on things with somewhat less 
 of ceremony and excuse, and that his Majesty's soldiers 
 were incomparably superior to the Irish traitors in dexterity 
 at stealing.' Whatever had escaped the rapacity of the 
 Irish was now, without even a pretence at payment, carried 
 off by the soldiers. This most culpable disorder proved 
 ultimately very costly to the Government, which, apart from 
 the payment subssquently made to the suffering loyalists for 
 losses caused by the rebels, was obliged to send commissioners 
 to Killala to report on the injuries done by the King's 
 troops ; and in March 1799 a large sum had to be paid in 
 discharge of the claims allowed by the Commission. 
 
 A still ruder lesson was taught to the wild peasantry of 
 Erris. On the day following the capture of Killala, the 
 rebels were rumoured to be reassembling in force in the 
 
 z 
 
338 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 Laggan,a wild district between Lacken and Ballycastle Bays 
 terminating in the promontory of Downpatrick Head. During 
 a fourteen hours' march the troops succeeded in dispersing 
 the remnant of the armed peasantry, fifty or sixty of whom, 
 many of them in their French uniforms, were killed. A few 
 days later a large force marched in three divisions to com- 
 plete the final reduction of the Laggan and Erris, not 
 returning from the expedition for a week, during which 
 they taught a terrible and enduring lesson to the wretched 
 peasantry, ruining a number of villages and firing many 
 houses. A few of these wild mountaineers, wandering 
 houseless and homeless through the desolated wilderness, 
 continued for a while to give trouble ; but upon the whole 
 order was quickly restored. 
 
 One pathetic picture remains of this last and terrible 
 chapter in the abortive insurrection in Mayo in the record 
 of the fate of one of the wildest and poorest of the poor 
 and wild villages of the Laggan. Here, where Downpatrick 
 Head stands out against the ocean, is a striking natural 
 curiosity called the Poolnashanthana, a chasm nearly half a 
 mile in length which cuts clean through the headland and 
 from the top of which the clear green water can be seen 
 eighty feet below. Near the bottom of the chasm and 
 along its whole length runs a ledge of rock, bare when the 
 tide is out but covered by many feet of water when it rises. 
 The peasantry returned from the rebellion were busy one 
 October day endeavouring to save the remnant of their 
 neglected harvest, when suddenly the alarm was spread that 
 the troops from Killala were at hand. Well knowing what 
 they had to expect from the terrible Frazer Fencibles, the 
 rebel harvesters, surprised and unable to escape to the moun- 
 tains, made for the adjacent cliffs, whose rough faces they 
 were used to climbing and with whose caves they were familiar. 
 It was with many of the younger of them a constant diversion 
 to descend to the ledge of rock at the Poolnashanthana. in 
 pursuit of seals or seabirds' nests, to which they could gain 
 access by means of a rope let down from the top of the cliff. 
 It chanced that at the moment of the soldiers' raid the tide 
 
THE FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND 339 
 
 was out, and quickly bethinking themselves that here was a 
 place of safety in which they might find a temporary refuge, 
 they descended to the ledge, the rope being held for them 
 by a young woman, who was to return and release them so 
 soon as the soldiers had withdrawn. Many hours they 
 waited there expecting the moment when the rope would 
 be lowered by their friend. But though the soldiers had 
 retired long ere the tide rose, the woman came not. 
 Terrified by the presence of the military, she had fled 
 to the hills without remembering her charge, or apprising 
 others of the hiding-place of some five-and-twenty stalwart 
 peasants. Night came on, and with it the remorseless 
 tide running high above the level of the ledge ; and when 
 morning dawned the villagers looking down into the chasm 
 saw the lifeless corpses of their sons, brothers, and hus- 
 bands, washing to and fro with the idle plash of the waves 
 in the abyss of Poolnashanthana. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 The following letter addressed by Bishop Stock to a lady friend 
 just after the reoccupation of Killala by the British troops 
 is an admirable summary of the events detailed by the Bishop 
 with so much spirit in his ' Narrative of what passed at Killala.' 
 It is printed by permission of the present owner of the original, a 
 descendant of the lady to whom it was originally addressed. The 
 concluding sentences of the manuscript, being partly obliterated, 
 are omitted. 
 
 Killala : September 29, 1798. 
 
 My dear Miss W., — Your friendly anxiety for us must be grati- 
 fied, tho' in the midst of distracting occupations. Take our story in 
 brief. On the morning of Monday, the 22nd of August, an army of 
 a thousand French landed from three frigates and surprised the town 
 of Killala ; they continued here some days devouring our provisions 
 of every kind and arming above five thousand peasants whom they 
 furnished also with clothing and helmets ; they marched next to 
 Ballina and Castlebar, of which towns they made themselves 
 masters after some resistance. Determined to push on as far as he 
 could into the kingdom, the French General drew away on Septem- 
 ber 1st about two hundred French soldiers, all that remained here 
 
 z 2 
 
340 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 to defend us against the bigotry and rapacity of his Irish allies, 
 leaving us only three French officers for our protection, but by the 
 unwearied exertions however of these humane and brave men, 
 by prudent management on the part of the Protestants, and above 
 all by the Invisible interposition of Heaven, we continued alive 
 for the space of three weeks, though expecting almost hourly 
 some aggression on our lives and property ; the last ten days were 
 particularly threatening. From the moment when it was certainly 
 known that the French and Irish army was defeated, nothing was 
 heard but clamours for the French officers here to arrest all the 
 Protestants and keep them in the Cathedral as hostages for the 
 security of such as should be taken by the English ; no way at 
 last remained to avert the storm but the measures proposed by me 
 and with difficulty consented to by the Rebels — that of sending 
 away two ambassadors to Castlebar, Dean Thompson and one 
 Maguire, a Catholic, to request of General Trench humane treat- 
 ment of his prisoners, as he valued the safety of the Protestants 
 of Killala ; two good effects were produced by the embassy, the 
 delay amused the Rebels, and the General was made sensible of 
 the necessity of marching instantly to our relief and that a day's 
 delay would most probably have been fatal to us, as the rebels 
 were positively determined on the morning of Sunday last the 
 23rd instant to attack both the Protestants and their protectors the 
 French officers before night, and to try whether they could not 
 overpower the house especially, where we had a score of carbines 
 well loaded for receiving them ; they were several hundreds in 
 number and we were not above twenty capable of fighting, yet we 
 had very good hopes of success though the house was crowded with 
 women and children. While we were looking on one another 
 with countenances of people bent on mutual destruction, at three 
 o'clock in the afternoon the English army under General Trench 
 appeared on the hills at both ends of the town and in about 
 twenty minutes put to the rout an army of Rebels who showed 
 they did not want courage to do mischief if they had known how. 
 The action passed so nearly under our windows that twelve slugs 
 from a carbine made a riddle of one of the windows of this library 
 whence I am writing to you, and one of the slugs wounded in the 
 forehead (but not dangerously) Mr. Fortescue, member for the 
 County of Louth, who has been three weeks here a prisoner. 
 Think what we felt when we saw the Rebels pursued into the 
 town by a body of cavalry, the Roxburghe Fencibles, in the thick 
 of whom we discerned my boy Arthur Stock sword in hand, who 
 had been sent to Castlebar three weeks before as an hostage for 
 
THE FKENCH INVASION OF IEELAND 341 
 
 the safety of our French Commandant, Charost, and had never 
 till then been able to give or receive news. Saturday night on 
 the march he was forced by wet to strip to the skin and take his 
 rest on a heap of straw, but he is now very well, as are we all, 
 thanks to God, in spite of multiplied distress and danger. The rest 
 of the dismal tale, the carnage and destruction of property, the 
 apparent danger of famine, the grievances we yet suffer by the neces- 
 sary and unnecessary expenditure of an army of two thousand men : 
 these are details which I must leave to your imagination to supply ( 
 for indeed I was never more completely stupefied with employ- 
 ment than I am at this moment, when I have a whole staff of 
 officers to entertain from morning to night and near four-score 
 persons to feed daily. A bullock of six cwt. was the amount of our 
 consumption the last two days. All my stock within doors is 
 long past and gone. My house is converted into a barrack, my 
 offices into a guard-room and gaol for more than prisoners, my 
 cellar is emptied, and my furniture destroyed. I have not a horse, 
 bullock, or sheep remaining ; many of my tenants are killed or 
 hanged. 
 
 J. Killalla. 
 
APPENDIX OF AUTHOEITIES 
 I. 
 
 THE GBATTAN PARLIAMENT AND ULSTER. 
 
 The Life and Times of Henry Grattan. By his Son 
 
 Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont. F. Hardy 
 
 Memoirs of Henry Flood. Warden Flood 
 
 Historic Memoirs of Ireland. Sir Jonah Barrington 
 
 Personal Sketches of his oxon Time. Sir Jonah Barrington 
 
 Lives of Illustrious Irishmen. Eev. James Wills 
 
 Compendium of Irish Biography. Alfred Webb 
 
 Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland. J. B. O'Flanagan 
 
 Curran and his Contemporaries. Charles Phillips 
 
 The Lives and Times of the United Irishmen. B. B. Madden 
 
 Courts and Cabinets of George III. and IV. Duke of Buckingham 
 
 and Chandos 
 The Journals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland 
 Life of John Philip Curran. By his Son 
 Collectanea Politica, or Political Transactions of Ireland, 1760- 
 
 1801. W. H. Seward 
 Grattan s Speeches. Edited by D. 0. Maddyn 
 Curran s Speeches. Edited by Thomas Davis 
 The Irish Parliamentary Bcgister 
 The Irish House of Commons, 1789. ' Falkland ' 
 Sketches of Irish Political Characters, 1799. McDougall 
 Treatise of the Exchequer and Bevenues of Ireland. G. E. Howard 
 Ireland, Statistical and Political. Edward Wakefield 
 The Commercial Bestraints of Ireland. J. Hely Hutchinson 
 Historical Manuscripts Commission s Bcports : 
 
 1. The Butland Papers, vol. iii. 
 
 2. The Dropmore Papers 
 
 3. The Charlemont Papers 
 
 4. The Donoughmorc Papers 
 
 5. The Emly Papers 
 
 6. The Carlisle Papers 
 
344 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 Gilbert's History of Dublin. 
 
 Life of James Gandon. Edited by Thomas J. Mulvany 
 
 History of the Penal Laws against the Irish Catholics. Sir H. 
 
 Parnell 
 Popular Songs of Ireland. Edited by T. Crofton Ooker 
 The Population of Ireland. Thomas Newenham 
 Historical Review of the State of Ireland. Francis Plowden 
 The Sham Squire. W. J. Fitzpatrick 
 Ireland before the Union. W. J. Fitzpatrick 
 Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. W. E. H. Lecky 
 History of England in the Eighteenth Century. W. E. H. 
 
 Lecky 
 The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. J. A. 
 
 Froude 
 Critical Examination of Irish History. T. Dunbar Ingram 
 Irish Legislative Systems. J. T. Ball 
 Secret Service under Pitt. W. J. Fitzpatrick 
 History of Belfast. George Benn 
 Belfast Historical Collections. Henry Joy 
 The Town Book of Belfast. 
 Essays on the Political Circumstances of Ireland. Alexander 
 
 Knox 
 Belfast Politics. Henry Joy and Eev. W. Bruce 
 History of Volunteering. C. H. Wilson 
 History of the Proceedings of the Volunteer Delegates, 1784 
 Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone. By his Son 
 Autobiography of A. Hamilton Rowan 
 
 II. 
 
 THE EAEL-BISHOP OF DERRY. 
 
 The Txoo Duchesses. Vere Foster 
 
 Letterbooks and Diaries of John Hervey, First Earl of Bristol. 
 
 Edited by Sydenham Hervey 
 Memoirs of the Court of George II. Lord Hervey 
 Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. Edited by Eev. E. Morris 
 History of Siiffolk. Gage 
 Hamilton and Nelson Papers. Morrison Collection, privately 
 
 printed 
 Autobiography of Arthur Young. Edited by M. Betham- Edwards 
 Life of Skelton. Rev. Samuel Burdy 
 The Charlemont Papers, i. 116, 121-127, 165-167 
 
APPENDIX OP AUTHOEITIES 345 
 
 Life and Times of Henry Grattan, ii. 262-3 
 
 Life of Countess of Huntingdon, i. 33 
 
 History of the Irish Church. Mant, ii. 692-4 
 
 Historic Memoirs of Ireland. Sir Jonah Barrington, ii. 18-5, 200 
 
 Records of Cork, Cloyne, and Boss. Brady, iii. 24 
 
 History of the Presbyterians. Eeid 
 
 Ordnance Survey of Londonderry. Colby 
 
 Life and Times of George Robert Fitz Gerald 
 
 Observations on Vesuvius. Sir W. Hamilton, p. 17 
 
 History of Corsica. Boswell 
 
 Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vii. 455, 474, viii. 228, 669 
 
 Wesley's Journal, June 1775 
 
 Proceedings of the Volunteer Delegates 
 
 Memoirs of Comtesse von Lichtenau 
 
 Personal Memoirs of Pryse Lochhart Gordon, i. 172 
 
 Memoirs of Lady Hamilton. Edited by W. H. Long, 98-112 
 
 Correspondence of Rt. Hon. John Beresford 
 
 Life of Lord Shelburne. Lord E. Fitzmaurice 
 
 The Gentleman' s Magazine, vols. 68 and 73 
 
 Anglo-Roman Papers. Brady, pp. 197-200 
 
 Cox's Magazine, Nov. 1807, p. 60 
 
 Cotton's Fasti Ecclesim Hibernicce, i. 301, iii. 325 
 
 Letters of Horace Walpole. Edited by Peter Cunningham, vii- 
 
 199, 260, 298, 339 
 Lives of Bishops of Berry. Maturin 
 Entretiens de Goethe et Erckmann, p. 266 
 Dublin University Magazine, xvi. 10 
 Historical Manuscripts Commission s Reports : 
 
 1. The Dropmore Papers 
 
 2. The Rutland Papers 
 
 Letters to Sir J. Strange in Egerton Manuscripts. British 
 
 Museum 
 Cole Manuscripts. British Museum 
 
 III. 
 
 LOKD CLAEB. 
 
 Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, ii. 166. J. E. O'Flanagan 
 Pitt : Some Chapters of his Life and Times. Lord Ashbourne 
 Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh, vols, i.-iv. 
 The Cornwallis Correspondence, vols. ii. and iii. 
 Diary and Correspondence of Lord Colchester, vol. i. 
 Life and Times of Henry Grattan 
 
346 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 Grattaris Miscellaneous Works, pp. 266-270 
 
 Life of Charlemont. Francis Hardy, ii. 85, 146, 192 
 
 Memoir and Speeches of Peter Burrowes 
 
 Historic Memoirs of Ireland. Sir Jonah Barrington 
 
 Personal Sketches of his own Times. Sir Jonah Barrington 
 
 Curran and his Contemporaries. Charles Phillips 
 
 Pieces of Irish History. W. MacNevin and T. Emmet 
 
 Life and Journals of Thomas Reynolds. By his Son 
 
 Administrations of Great Britain. Sir J. Cornewall Lewis, p. 185 
 
 Life and Journals of Theobald Wolfe Tone, Washington edition 
 
 The Beauties of the Press, 1 800 
 
 Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry, p. 146 
 
 The Journals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland 
 
 Unpublished letters in the British Museum : Pclham and Auckland 
 
 Correspondence 
 Letters of Lady Clare in the Fane Correspondence at Dublin Castle, 
 
 printed in part by Lord Ashbourne in his work on Pitt 
 Remains of the Rev. Samuel G 'Sullivan, vol. ii. 
 Life of Malone. Sir James Prior 
 Correspondence of Pitt with the Duke of Rutland 
 Report of the Committee of Secrecy to the Irish House of Lords 
 Historical Manuscripts Commission' s Rcp>orts : 
 
 1. The Rutland Papers, vol. iii. 
 
 2. The Dropmore Papers 
 
 3. The Charlemont Papers 
 
 4. The Donoughmore Papers 
 
 5. The Carlisle Papers 
 
 The Dublin University Magazine, xxx. 671 
 
 The Metropolitan Magazine, xxiv. 377, xxv. 113 
 
 Gentleman's Magazine, lxxii. 185 
 
 Walker's Hibernian Magazine, 1789-1802, passim. 
 
 The Dublin Chronicle Nciuspapcr, 1789-1790 
 
 Annual Register, 1802 
 
 Notes and Introduction to W. G. Carroll's edition of Hutchinson's 
 
 Commercial Restraints of Ireland 
 Sketches of the Parish of Donny brook, p. 317. Eev. B. H. Blacker 
 
 IV. 
 
 CASTLEREAGH AND IRELAND IN 1798. 
 
 Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Castlcreagh 
 
 Lives of Lord Castlcreagh and Sir C. Stewart. Sir A. Alison 
 
APPENDIX OF AUTHOEITIES 347 
 
 Statesmen of George III. Lord Brougham 
 
 The Greville Memoirs, 1st ser., i. 53 
 
 Chiefs of Parties, i. chap. vi. D. Owen Maddyn 
 
 Narrative of Rev. W. Steel Dickson 
 
 Histories of the Irish Rebellion. By the Bev. J. Gordon, Sir R. 
 
 Musgrave, Edward Hay, George Taylor, P. 0' Kelly 
 The History of Ireland. Rev. Samuel Burdy 
 Personal Narrative of the Rebellion in Wexford. Thomas Cloney 
 Narrative of Charles Jackson 
 
 Personal Narrative of the Rebellion. C. H. Teeling 
 Autobiography of Myles Byrne. 
 
 Memoirs of Joseph Holt. Edited by T. Crofton Croker 
 The Cornivallis Correspondence, vols. ii. and iii. 
 Report of Secret Committee of Irish House of Commons, 1798 
 Report of Committee of Secrecy, Irish House of Lords, 1798 
 Jones's Narratives of the Irish Rebellion 
 Life of Lord Edtvard FitzGcrald. Thomas Moore 
 The Lives and Times of the United Irishmen. R. R. Madden 
 Biographical Anecdotes of the Founders of the Rebellion, 1799 
 
 V. 
 
 PLUNKET AND E0MAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 
 
 The Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket. The Hon. David 
 Plunket (Lord Rathmore), with a Preface by Lord Brougham 
 
 Plunket's Speeches. Edited by Hoey 
 
 Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, ii. 405. J. R. O'Flanagan 
 
 Legal and Political Sketches. R. L. Sheil 
 
 Sketches of the Irish Bar. W. H. Curran 
 
 Life and Times of Henry Grattan. By his Son. Vol. v. 
 
 Life of Charlcmont. Francis Hardy. Vol. ii. 
 
 Curran and his Contemporaries. Charles Phillips 
 
 Life of John Philpot Curran. By his Son 
 
 Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell. Edited by W. J. Fitz- 
 patrick 
 
 Life of Sir Walter Scott. J. G. Lockhart 
 
 Diary and Journal of Sir Walter Scott 
 
 Life of Bishop Doyle (J. K. L.). W. J. Fitzpatrick 
 
 History of the Catholic Associations. Thomas Wyse 
 
 Sketches of Eminent Persons. James Whiteside 
 
 The Irish Quarterly Review, i. 76 and iv. 161, 313 
 
 The Dublin University Magazine, vol. xv. 
 
348 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTORY 
 
 Ireland and its Rulers. D. Owen Maddyn 
 
 Memoirs of Sir S. Bomilly, iii. 172 
 
 Life of Sir James Mackintosh 
 
 Courts and Cabinets of George III. Duke of Buckingham and 
 
 Chandos 
 Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker. Edited by L. 
 
 J. Jennings 
 Sir Robert Peel's Correspondence, vol. i. Edited by C. S. Parker 
 Mr. Gregory's Letter Box, 1813-1837. Edited by Lady Gregory 
 ' St. Stephen's.' Sir E. Bulwer Lytton 
 Daniel O'Conncll. Robert Dunlop. (Heroes of the Nations 
 
 Series.) 
 The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xlv. 
 
 VI. 
 
 SIB BOYLE EOCHE. 
 
 Irish Parliamentary Register 
 
 Personal Sketches of his own Times. Sir Jonah Barrington 
 
 Sketches of Irish Political Characters, 1799. McDougall 
 
 The Irish House of Commons, 1789. ' Falkland ' 
 
 Life and Times of Henry Grattan, iii. 116 
 
 Lives of Illustrious Irishmen. Rev. James Wills 
 
 The Charlemont Papers, ii. 265 
 
 Secret Service under Pitt. W. J. Fitzpatrick 
 
 History of Limerick, pp. 133, 352. Ferrar 
 
 English in Ireland. J. A. Froude 
 
 History of England in the Eighteenth Century. W. E. H. Lecky 
 
 Additional MS. British Museum, 33090 
 
 Cornwallis Correspondence, iii. 40, 97, 363 
 
 Curran and his Contemporaries, pp. 87-8. C. Phillips 
 
 The Irish Bar, pp. 99-102. J. R. O'Flanagan 
 
 Members of Parliament for Kilkenny, pp. 170, 171. G. D. Burtchaell 
 
 The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xlix. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THOMAS STEELE. 
 
 Ireland and her Agitators. W. O'Neill Daunt 
 Recollections and Experiences. John O'Connell 
 Memoirs of R. L. Shell. W. McCullagh Torrens 
 
APPENDIX OF AUTHORITIES 349 
 
 Legal and Political Sketches, ii. 108. E. L. Sheil 
 
 Compendium of Irish Biography. A. Webb 
 
 The Gentleman's Magazine, 1848, ii. 107 
 
 Four Years of Irish History. Sir John Gavan Duffy 
 
 History of the Catholic Associations. T. Wyse 
 
 Sir Bobert Peel's Correspondence, ii. 70, 73 
 
 The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. liv. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE FRENCH INVASION. 
 
 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vols. vii. and viii. 
 
 W. E. H. Lecky 
 The Castlereagh Correspondence 
 The Cornivallis Correspondence 
 The Auckland Correspondence 
 
 The Lives and Times of the United Irishmen. E. E. Madden 
 History of Rebellions in Ireland. Sir Richard Musgrave 
 History of the Rebellion of 1798. Rev. J. Gordon 
 Narrative of what passed at Killala. Joseph Stock, Bishop of 
 
 Killala 
 History of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. W. H. Maxwell 
 Memoirs of Myles Byrne, iii. 64-7 
 Impartial Relation of Military Operations in consequence of the 
 
 Landing of the French Troops, 1799 
 Life of Richard Lord Edgeworth, ii. 214, 236 
 Life and Journals of Theobald Wolfe Tone 
 Historic Memoirs of Ireland. Sir Jonah Barrington 
 Historical Review of the State of Ireland. F. Plowden 
 Collectanea Politica. W. H. Seward 
 Jones's Narratives of the Irish Rebellion, Part 2, 1799 
 History of the Rebellion of 1798, pp. 205-250. P. O'Kelly 
 The Dublin Penny Journal, 1833-4 
 
 French Invasion of Ireland in 1798. V. Gribayedeff, New York 
 Personal Narrative of the Irish Rebellion. C. H. Teeling 
 Connaught in 1798. 
 Legends of Connaught. 
 
 Sketches in Erris and Tyrawley. Rev. Caesar Otway 
 Erris in the ' Irish Highlands' P. Knight 
 Notice historique de la Descente des Frangais en Irlande. L. O. 
 
 Fontaine 
 
350 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 La France et I'Irlande pendant la Revolution. E. Guillon 
 
 Hoche en Irlande, 1795-1798. E. Escande 
 
 1793-1805. Projets et tentatives de Debarquement aux lies 
 Britanniques, par Edouard Desbriere. 3 vols. Paris, 1898- 
 1901. Publie sous la Direction de la Section Historique de 
 l'Etat-Major de l'Armee 
 
 Manuscript Narrative of the Rev. James Little, Rector of Lackan 1 
 
 1 This narrative, which is now in the library of the Koyal Irish Academy, 
 describes the experiences of a Protestant clergyman during the first ten days of 
 the invasion, and fully corroborates in all material particulars the narrative of 
 Bishop Stock. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot (Lord Colchester), at variance 
 
 with Lord Clare, 136, 137 
 Abercrombie, Sir Balph, 223 
 Act of Union, the. See Union 
 Addington administration, 203 
 Ameil, commander of the ' Anacreon ' 
 French expeditionary force, 324 ; 
 his report of Napper Tandy's pro- 
 ceedings, 324, 325 
 American colonies, the, influence of 
 their achievement of independence 
 upon England's policy to Ireland, 8 
 American Irish, 194 
 Annaghmore, Defenders' camp at, 51 
 Antrim, battle of, 46 ; French descent 
 
 upon the coast of, 164 
 Ardouin (French officer), at Castlebar, 
 291 ; report of number of Hum- 
 bert's surrendered force, 318 
 Argyll, Duchess of (Mary Bellenden), 
 
 61 
 Armagh, religious animosities in, 49 ; 
 in the hands of rival mobs, 51 ; a 
 plague to Wolfe Tone, 52 
 Arran, Napper Tandy at, 324 
 Ashbourne, Lord, quoted, 126, 138, 
 139 n., 210 
 
 'Back-lane Parliament,' the, 211, 239, 
 
 299 
 Ballina, seditious meetings at, 265, 
 
 272 ; Presbyterians imprisoned at, 
 
 332 ; courts-martial at, 337 
 Ballinamuck, battle of, 315, 316 
 Ballyscullion, 72, 91 
 Bar, the Irish, reasons for opposition 
 
 to the Union, 20 
 Barretts, the (father and son), join 
 
 Humbert's force, 281 
 Barrington, Sir Jonah, 38, 136, 191 ; 
 
 on Sir Boyle Boche, 299 
 Belfast, the White Linen Hall, 1-3 ; 
 
 endorses action of Volunteers at 
 
 Dungannon, 3 ; ' Historical Collec- 
 
 tions, Joy's,' 4 n., 42 n. ; in 
 habitants arm, 26 ; the Koran 
 of Blefescu, 35; loyalty, 35, 36; 
 United Irishmen object to include 
 Catholics in reforms, 41, 42 ; alliance 
 of revolutionary politicians with 
 lower orders, 44 ; Begiment of 
 National Volunteers, 45 ; ' De- 
 fenders,' 45 ; dread of a French 
 invasion, 45 ; collapse of the 
 United Irish movement, 54 ; raising 
 of Volunteers, 55, 164 ; celebration 
 of the anniversary of the French 
 Be volution, 166 ; ' Belfast News- 
 letter,' quoted, 3 
 
 Bellew, General Matthew, in com- 
 mand of the Irish recruits in Hum- 
 bert's force, 280, 281 
 
 Bentham, cited, 58 ; on the Earl- 
 Bishop, 83 ; on the Volunteer 
 movement, 85 n. 
 
 Beresford, John, head of the Irish 
 Bevenue, 73, 109 ; reasons for not 
 giving the Chancellorship to an 
 Irishman, 117 n. ; threatened with 
 dismissal from his post in the 
 Bevenue, 128 
 
 Beresford, Marcus, friendship for 
 Wolfe Tone, 132 
 
 Blake, Mr., of Galway, joins Humbert, 
 299 ; head of insurgent Irish at 
 Castlebar, 290 ; defeated by Colonel 
 Crauford at Ballinrobe, 303 ; hanged 
 at Ballinamuck, 316 
 
 Bompard, Admiral, his fleet for the 
 invasion of Ireland, 255, 256 ; leaves 
 Brest for Ireland, 319; menaced by 
 a large English fleet, and puts back 
 to port, 320 ; defeated by Warren, 321 
 
 Borough-owners, the, and the Union, 
 18,19 
 
 Boswell, James, correspondence with 
 Lord Bristol, 86 n. 
 
 Boudet, Captain, at Killala, 330 
 
 Bristol, Frederick Hervey, Earl of, 
 
352 
 
 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Bishop of Derry, 58 ; character, 
 5 ( J; parentage, 60, 61, 62; as a 
 student, 65 ; college acquaintance 
 with Gray, 65 ; enters the Church, 
 
 65 ; author of the ' Origin of Cards,' 
 
 66 n. ; passion for travel, 67 ; visits 
 Vesuvius and Etna, 67 ; applications 
 fo promotion, 67, 68 ; nominated 
 to the bishopric of Cloyne, 68, 69 ; 
 friendship with Lord Shelburne, 
 69, 71 ; appointed to the see of 
 Derry, 71 ; active discharge of 
 episcopal duties, 72, 73 ; freedom of 
 Londonderry conferred upon him, 
 73; ardour for church architecture 
 and decoration, 73 ; friendliness 
 with Catholics and Dissenters, 74 ; 
 his clerical festivities, 74 ; benevo- 
 lence, 75 ; in favour of abolition of 
 tithes, 76 ; interested in the Catholic 
 priesthood, 76, 77 ; views of Eng- 
 land's Irish policy, 77, 78, 79 ; admi- 
 ration of Chatham, 80 ; defends tbe 
 Presbyterians, 81 ; letter to Arthur 
 Young, 81 ; political views shared 
 by Shelburne, 81 ; at the National 
 Convention of the Volunteers in 
 Dublin, 82 n., 83, 86 ; succeeds to the 
 earldom of Bristol, 82 ; intimacy 
 with Arthur Young, 83 ; his political 
 attitude regarded with suspicion 
 by the Government, 83, 84-86 ; 
 advocates the union of the two 
 legislatures, 86 ; extravagance of 
 language and wild eccentricities, 
 86, 87, 88, 89 ; alliance with right- 
 ing Fitzgerald, 88 ; popularity in 
 Derry, 88, 89 ; altered relations 
 with his wife and family, 90 ; 
 prolonged absences abroad, 90 ; 
 his answer to episcopal remon- 
 strances, 91 ; money spent on 
 Ballyscullion and Ickworth, 91; 
 schemes for family aggrandisement, 
 
 92 ; encouragement of art, 92, 93 ; 
 scandals connected with his closing 
 years on the Continent, 93, 94, 95 ; 
 friendship with Sir W. Hamilton, 
 
 93 ; his social gifts and accomplish- 
 ments, 95 ; death at Albano, 95 ; 
 letters to Sir John Strange, 96-98 ; 
 letter relating to, 98 ; to Lady 
 Hamilton, 99 ; inscription on the 
 obelisk at Ickworth, 100 ; his intro- 
 duction of the Catholic claims the 
 cause of the dissolution of the Volun- 
 teer Convention, 165 
 
 Bristol, George, Earl of, brother of the 
 Earl-Bishop, Viceroy of Ireland, 68 ; 
 bequest to the Bishop, 68 
 
 Bristol, Lady, wife of the Earl- 
 Bishop of Derry, 65, 90 
 
 Brougham, Lord, on Castlereagh, 179, 
 181, 182 ; on Plunket, 197, 200, 
 201 
 
 Browne, Hon. Denis, 202, 297; on 
 the condition of Mayo, 264 
 
 Buckinghamshire, Lord (Irish Vice- 
 roy), 108, 109, 110 ; supports Clare's 
 claims to the Chancellorship, 119, 
 120, 121 
 
 Bulwer Lytton, Sir Edward, on 
 Plunket, 200, 222 
 
 Buonaparte, Napoleon, his aid sought 
 by the Irish revolutionaries, 253 ; 
 discourages a French invasion of 
 Ireland, 253, 254 
 
 Burgh, Walter Hussey, 20, 28, 108; 
 death of, 141 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 84 ; on Lord Clare's 
 father, 104 
 
 Bushe, Charles Kendal, 198, 202, 214 
 
 Butler, Sir Toby, 231 
 
 Butt, Isaac, on Orangeism, 47 n. 
 
 Camden, Lord (Viceroy of Ireland), 
 120, 121, 128, 129, 185, 224 
 
 Carnot, member of the French Direc- 
 tory, aids the Irish national cause, 
 252, 253, 258 
 
 Carrickfergus, capture of, 26 ; landing 
 of Thurot at, 164 
 
 Castlebar, in the French invasion, 
 situation, 289 ; British position, 
 289 ; their defeat, 291 ; ' Races,' 
 293 ; excesses of Humbert's Irish 
 contingent, 296 ; property of the 
 townsfolk protected by the French, 
 301 ; reoccupied by Crauford, 306 ; 
 looted by peasantry, 306 ; British 
 occupation, 333 ; treatment of Irish 
 prisoners, 334 
 
 Castlereagh (Robert Stewart), Lord, 
 18 ; at the Northern Whig Club, 
 36 ; memoirs, 38 ; offends Clare, 
 136 ; eulogises his secretary Knox, 
 161 ; at McNevin's examination, 
 175 ; at College Green and at 
 Westminster, 177 ; reasons for his 
 comparative failure, 178, 179 ; a 
 truer estimate of his character, 
 180 ; still execrated in Ireland, 
 180, 181 ; steady friend of Catholic 
 emancipation, 182 ; Grattan's dying 
 vindication of him, 182 ; early 
 career, 183 ; in his boyhood, 184 ; 
 development of his opinions, 185 ; 
 letter to Lord Camden on ho 
 French Revolution, 186 ; and on 
 
INDEX 
 
 353 
 
 Irish affairs, 186, 187 ; violence of 
 Plunket's attacks upon him, 206 ; 
 action on Humbert's invasion, 282 
 
 Catholic Relief Act (Ireland) of 1793, 
 15 
 
 Cavan, Lord, 74 ; letter on the Earl- 
 Bishop of Derry, 98 
 
 Charlemont, Lord, his political aims, 
 9 ; reasons for his opposing the 
 Union, 19, 20 ; Grattan enters Par- 
 liament as his nominee, 27 ; oppo- 
 nent of Catholic claims, 27 ; waives 
 principles to Plunket's pertinacity, 
 27 ; commander-in-chief of the 
 army in Ulster, 29 ; his views on 
 concessions to the Roman Catholics, 
 29 ; dissatisfied with the Constitu- 
 tion of 1782, 30 ; scouts the idea of 
 including Catholics in the benefits 
 of reforms, 31 ; Mr. Jephson's letter 
 on Orangeism, 52 ; accuses the Earl- 
 Bishop of Derry of deism, 66 ; on 
 the Earl-Bishop, 83, 84, 87, 88 ; on 
 Lord Clare, 124 ; his appeal to 
 Ulstermen, 165 ; influence at the 
 Volunteer Convention, 204 ; offers 
 Plunket a seat for Charlemont, 
 204 ; change of views on emancipa- 
 tion, 205 ; on Sir Boyle Roche, 230 
 
 Charost, M., the French commandant 
 at Killala, 326 ; receives news of 
 the French victory at Castlebar, 
 326 ; invites inhabitants of Killala 
 to arm against lawless men and 
 robbery, 328 ; his scheme of civil 
 government, 329 ; career, 330 ; re- 
 ligious views, 330 ; protects the 
 Presbyterian weavers, 332 ; anxious 
 to surrender after Ballinamuck, 
 333 ; arrests O'Donel, leader of 
 pikemen, 333 ; protects the Protes- 
 tants, 333, 334 ; sends embassy to 
 Castlebar, 334 ; surrenders to 
 General Trench, 336 
 
 Chatham, Earl of, stops Viceregal 
 absenteeism, 70, 80 
 
 Cherin, General, 255, 256 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, quoted, on Lady 
 Hervey, 62 
 
 Clare, Earl of (John Fitzgibbon), 10, 
 18 ; urges upon Pitt the necessity 
 for a Union, 23, 24 ; correspon- 
 dence with George III. on Catholic 
 emancipation, 25 ; orders the de- 
 struction of his correspondence, 38 ; 
 on the Volunteer Convention, 83 ; 
 influence on Irish history, 101 ; con- 
 temporary opinion of him, 103 ; 
 modern appreciation of him, 103, 
 104 ; parentage, 104 ; Grattan's 
 
 schoolfellow and rival, 105 ; habits 
 as a young man, 105 ; at the Bar, 
 106 ; returned to the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, 106; acquires the friend- 
 ship of John Beresford, 108 
 his support sought for by the Irish 
 Government, 109 ; intimate friend- 
 ship with Chief Secretary Eden, 
 110; action with regard to Grattan's 
 Declaration of Right, 111 ; loses 
 his seat for the University, 111 ; 
 made Attorney-General, 110, 111, 
 115, 141 ; relations with the popu- 
 lar party, 113; his view of Ireland's 
 connection with Great Britain, 114; 
 disruption of his friendship with 
 Grattan, 114 ; fearless action in 
 quelling a dangerous meeting, 116 n. ; 
 duel with Curran, 116, 143 ; his 
 account of the affair with Curran, 
 117 n. ; championed by the Duke of 
 Rutland, 118; his claims to the 
 Chancellorship supported by Buck- 
 ingham, 119, 121 ; Mornington 
 favours his candidature, 120 ; nick- 
 named FitzPetulant, 120 ; supports 
 Pitt on the Regency question, 120 ; 
 Thurlow's opposition to his chan- 
 cellorship, 121 ; appointed Chan- 
 cellor, 121 ; popularity of his 
 appointment, 122 ; his judicial 
 judgments, 123, 124 ; attacked by 
 and attacks the Whig Club, 124 ; 
 fights the United Irish agitation, 
 125 ; the powers of the Irish 
 Government concentrated in him, 
 125 ; dismissal sought for, 127, 144 ; 
 share in the recall of Lord Fitz- 
 William, 127, 128 ; disapproves 
 Of the Grattan Parliament, 129 ; 
 speech on Grattan's resolution, 130; 
 relations with Wolfe Tone, 130, 131 ; 
 designates Tone as the pivot of the 
 conspiracy of the United Irishmen, 
 132 ; Tone's confession of treason 
 in his possession, 133 ; fixed hos- 
 tility to Catholic emancipation, 133, 
 139 ; maintains the doctrine of 
 Protestant ascendency, 134 ; me- 
 morandum on Grattan's Catholic 
 Relief Bill, 135 ; reported as re- 
 gretting the Union, 136 ; at vari- 
 ance with Abbot, 136, 137 ; riding 
 accident, 137 ; dies in Dublin, 
 138; private character, 138, 140; 
 imperious temperament, 139 ; signs 
 of unpopularity at his funeral, 
 139 n. ; Lord Stanley of Aldcrley's 
 appreciation, 140 ; letters to Eden, 
 141-153 ; on Wolfe Tone, 172 
 
 A A 
 
354 
 
 STUDIES IN IRIS3 HISTORY 
 
 Cloyne, bishopric of, 68, 69 ; ' Eecords 
 of,' Brady's, 71 
 
 Cobbett, William, Plunket gains 
 damages from him for libel, 208 
 
 Cole, William (antiquary), on Lady 
 Hervey, 63 ; on the Earl-Bishop of 
 Derry, 65 
 
 Collooney, skirmish between Vereker 
 and Humbert at, 307 
 
 Connaught, its state at the time of 
 Humbert's invasion, 261 et seq. ; 
 effects of the influx of Catholic 
 peasantry from Armagh and Tyrone, 
 262-264 ; the Yeomanry movement 
 . in, 264, 266 ; assumption of loyalty 
 by the Catholics, 266 ; the United 
 Irish organisation, 266 ; unchecked 
 religious intolerance, 266 ; distrust 
 of the invasion, 267 ; Humbert's 
 force landed at Killala, 271 ; French 
 money drafts for stores, 278 ; Mayo 
 and Sligo thinly garrisoned, 283 ; 
 battle of Castlebar, 291 ; civil 
 administration established by Hum- 
 bert, 298 ; peasantry irresponsive 
 to discipline, 299 ; surrender of 
 Humbert to Cornwallis, 315 
 
 Cohroy, Father, priest of Addergoole, 
 supplies Humbert with information, 
 287, 288 
 
 Cork, loyalty of the Koman Catholics 
 of, 168 
 
 Cornwallis, Lord, 18 ; Pitt's instruc- 
 tions to, in negotiating the Union, 
 24, 25 ; memoirs, 38 ; on Castle- 
 reagh, 177 ; discourages Orangeism, 
 225 ; redistribution of military 
 forces in Ireland, 282 ; takes the 
 field against Humbert, 283 ; Hut- 
 chinson's report to him on Castle- 
 bar, 286 ; reprimands him for his 
 defeat, 293 ; but refuses to accept 
 his resignation, 294 ; represses 
 military license, 302 ; operations in 
 protection of Sligo and the 
 Shannon, 303, 304 ; endeavours to 
 intercept Humbert at Granard, 313 ; 
 Humbert surrenders to him at 
 Ballinamuck, 315, 316 ; hang9 a 
 number of the rebels as an example, 
 317 ; his General Order congratula- 
 ting his troops, 318 ; cited, 136, 
 152, 224 
 
 Cortez, General, commander of the 
 troops of Savary's second invasion, 
 321, 322 
 
 Cottingham, Major, defeats rebels at 
 Granard, 310, 311 
 
 Crauford, Colonel, defeats Blake at 
 Ballinrobe, 303 ; reoccupies Castle- 
 
 bar and follows up Humbert, 306, 
 313 ; attacks Humbert at Ballina- 
 muck, 315 
 
 Croker, Crofton, cited, on Ulster senti- 
 ment, 26 n. 
 
 Croker, John Wilson, on the Catholic 
 cause, 209, 211 ; on Plunket, 222 
 
 Curran, John Philpot, 20 ; his duel 
 with Lord Clare, 116 ; insults to 
 Clare, 117 ; enmity to Sir Boyle 
 Boche, 233; Sir Boyle Koche's 
 reply to a speech of his, 234 
 
 Daunt, O'Neill, on Thomas Steele, 
 245, 248 
 
 Davis, Thomas, his account of the 
 United Irishmen, 40 n. ; on Wolfe 
 Tone, 157 
 
 Declaration of Bight, the, 111, 115 
 
 Declaratory Act, the, 3 
 
 Defenderism, 262, 263, 266 
 
 Defenders, the, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 
 195 
 
 Delaney, Mrs., cited, 13 
 
 Denniston, Alexander and Hans, heads 
 of the peasant rebellion in Long- 
 ford, 310 ; defeated by Cottingham, 
 311 
 
 De Quineey, at the elose of the Grattan 
 Parliament, 18 
 
 Devonshire, Elizabeth, Duchess of 
 (Lady Elizabeth Foster), 59 
 
 Diamond, Battle of the, 47 n., 49, 50, 
 51, 52, 262 
 
 Dickey, James, executed, 46 
 
 Dickson, Bev. W. S., on Castlereagh, 
 184 
 
 Directory, French, aids the Irish 
 cause, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257 
 
 Dissenters, Northern, and the Catholic 
 franchise, 31 
 
 Downhill, 72, 74 
 
 Downshire, Lord, 153, 184 
 
 Drennan, Dr. William, United Irish- 
 man, 55 
 
 Dublin, 12, 13, 14 
 
 Duigenan, Patrick, 210; chief expo- 
 nent of Irish Protestant opinion, 
 215 ; Professor of Civil Law in 
 Dublin University, 215 ; his 
 ' Lachrymse Academical,' 216 ; 
 henchman of Lord Clare, 216 ; 
 placed by Wellington in the Irish 
 Privy Council, 216 ; death, 217 
 
 Dungannon, meeting of Ulster Volun- 
 teers at,3 ; Convention, 27, 28, 30, 31 
 
 Eden, William (first Lord Auckland), 
 110, 112; remonstrates with Clare 
 
INDEX 
 
 355 
 
 on his quarrel with Cumin, 117 ; 
 letters from Lord Clare to, 141- 
 153 
 
 Edgeworth, Miss, on French disap- 
 pointment with Irish allies, 300 ; 
 her account of the battlefield of 
 Ballinamuck, 316 
 
 Edgeworth, Eichard Lovell, on Irish 
 bulls, 228 
 
 Eliot, Colonel, at Killala, 335 
 
 Elliot, Mr., forwards the body of the 
 Earl-Bishop to England, 9-1 
 
 Ellison, Dr., Rector of Castlebar, 
 wounded at Killala, 272, 273 ; ap- 
 prises Crauford of Humbert's eva- 
 cuation of Castlebar, 30G ; cited, 
 297, 298, 301, 327 
 
 Emmet. Robert, 52 ; rising of, 195 ; 
 trial of, 207 
 
 Emmet, Thomas Addis, 38 ; on Wolfe 
 Tone, 133 ; letter to Thomas 
 Russell, 153, 154; quoted, 167; 
 examined by the Lords Committee 
 on the Irish rebellion, 173, 174, 
 193 
 
 Erris, barony of, 2G8 -, suppression of 
 rebel peasantry in, 338 
 
 Erskine, Cardinal, 93 
 
 Fingall, Lord, 193, 211 
 
 F'jzgerald, George Robert (fighting 
 Fitzgerald), at the Volunteer Con- 
 vention, 82 n., 88 ; alliance with 
 the Earl-Bishop, 88 
 
 Fitzgibbon, Ion, 105 
 
 Fitzgibbon, John (Lord Clare's father), 
 104, 108, 109 
 
 Fitzgibbon, John. Ser. Lord Clare 
 
 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmund, quoted, 
 81 
 
 Fitzwilliam, Lord, 25, 109, 12G, 127, 
 128, 129, 135, 171, 210 
 
 Flaxman, (the sculptor), 92 
 
 Flood, Henry, 8, 20 ; breaks with 
 Grattan, 84 ; pushes Irish reform, 
 85, 112 ; Reform Bill, 115, 1G5 ' 
 
 Fontaine, L. O., on Humbert's delay 
 at Cloone, 314 
 
 Fortescue, Mr., member for Louth, 
 prisoner of the French at Killala, 
 332, 340 
 
 Fortescue, Mr. (clergyman), killed in 
 the French invasion, 275 
 
 Foster, John, Speaker of the Irish 
 House, 105 
 
 Fox, Charles James, on the Irish 
 Volunteers, 16, 129 n. ; alliance 
 with Grattan, 85 ; distrust of 
 Shelburne, 85 ; letter to Northing- 
 
 ton on the Volunteers, 85 n. ; 
 
 view3 on Irish policy, 112, 113 n., 
 
 19G ; quoted, 135, 136 
 France, her designs on Ireland, 96, 
 
 97 ; invasion of Ireland, 250 et scq. 
 Franchise, the, with limitations, 
 
 granted to Catholics, 21 
 Frankland, Sir Thomas, 233 
 Frazer Fencibles, gallantry of the, at 
 
 Castlebar, 289, 291, 293, 306 ; at 
 
 Killala, 335 
 Frederick William II. of Prussia, 92, 93 
 French invasion of Ireland in 1798, 
 
 250 et scq. 
 French Revolution, its action upon 
 
 popular sentiment in North Ireland, 
 
 34, 35, 165, 166 
 Froude, on the Earl-Bishop of Dorry, 
 
 58, 83 ; on Lord Clare, 103, 105 n. ; 
 
 ou the Irish rebellion, 158 
 
 Gay (the poet), on Lady Hervey, 62 
 
 George III., his rooted objection to 
 Catholic emancipation, 25 
 
 George IV., his visit to Ireland and its 
 results, ■ 219 ; hostility to Piunket, 
 221 
 
 Giant's Causeway, 67 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, his admiration for 
 Lady Elizabeth Foster, 91 
 
 Goethe, his conversation with the 
 Earl-Bishop, 95 
 
 Gordon, Rev. James, on the Irish 
 Rebellion, 159 
 
 Granard, Major Cottingham defeats 
 rebels at, 311 ; Humbert and Corn- 
 wallis both make for, 314 
 
 Grattan, Henry, enters Parliament as 
 Lord Charlemont's nominee, 27 ; 
 alliance with Fox, 85 ; school and 
 college rivalry with Lord Clare, 105 ; 
 approves of Clare's appointment as 
 Attorney-General, 112 ; his Declara- 
 tion of Right, 111 ; pamphlet, which 
 dissevered his friendship with Lord 
 Clare, 115, 125 ; approves of Clare's 
 action in dissolving a dangerous 
 meeting, 116 ; good-tempered criti- 
 cism of Clare, 120 ; his Catholic 
 Relief Bill, 135 ; dying vindication 
 of Castlereagh, 18:2 ; aided by the 
 Protestant squirearchy, 193 ; awaits 
 the fulfilment of Pitt's Irish policy, 
 196; Plunket's adherence to him, 
 203 
 
 Grattan Parliament, the, its indepen- 
 dence secured by aid of Ulster, 5, 2G ; 
 in danger owing to admission of 
 Catholics to franchise, 5, 15 ; not 
 
356 
 
 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 a representative institution, 7; a 
 toy presented to Irish patriots, 8 ; 
 friendly to English ascendency, 8, 9 ; 
 attitude on Irish trade, 9 ; legislative 
 machinery worked from England, 
 10 ; reasons for its hold on the affec- 
 tions of the people, 20, 11 ; material 
 benefits it brought to Dublin, 11; 
 change of character as a result of the 
 Iielief Act of 1793, 15 ; development 
 of principles antagonistic to imperial 
 unity, 16 ; borough-mongers opposed 
 to the Union, 17 ; oratory in, 20 ; 
 the Bar opposed to the Union, 20 ; 
 radical change in the electorate, 21 ; 
 government officials not responsible 
 to, 22 ; Sir John Orde's commercial 
 resolutions, 22 ; demands of the 
 Roman Catholics, 23 ; Pitt's views 
 of the evils of emancipation in, 24 ; 
 its Protestantism, 25 ; demands for 
 reforms in, 30, 31 ; Protestant in its 
 mandate, 32 ; its doing away with 
 urged by Lord Clare, 129 
 Gray, Thomas (the poet), 65, 68 
 Gregory, Lady, quoted, 190, 196 
 Gregory, lit. Hon. William, his diary 
 
 quoted, 198 
 Grenville administration, its denial of 
 
 Catholic claims, 198, 199 
 Grenville, Lord, 199 n. 
 Grenville, William, 119, 120 
 Greville, on Castlereagh, 179 
 Gribay6doff, on Musgrave's Memoirs, 
 
 159 
 Griffith, R., on Plunket, 205 n. 
 
 Hamilton, Lady Emma, her relations 
 with the Earl-Bishop of Derry, 93, 
 94 ; letter to her from him, 99 
 
 Hamilton, Sackville, 147, 148 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 59, 67, 77, 
 86 n., 92; friendship with the Earl- 
 Bishop, 93 ; marriage with Emma, 
 94 
 
 Hardy, General, Bruix's despatch to 
 him, 255, 256 ; delayed at Brest by 
 want of money, 257 ; his army on 
 Bompard's fleet, 319, 321 ; offers to 
 go with a small force from Itoehe- 
 fort, 320 
 
 Harvey, Bagenal, 189 
 
 Harwood, Mr., his account of the 
 Rebellion, 169 
 
 ' Hearts of Oak,' 163, 195 
 
 ' Hearts of Steel,' 163 
 
 Heron, Sir Richard, 26, 110 
 
 Hervev, Augustus, 3rd Earl of Bristol, 
 64,63 
 
 Hervey, Carr, Lord (uncle of the 
 
 Bishop of Derry), 61 
 Hervey, Elizabeth (Earl-Bishop's 
 
 daughter), 90, 92 
 Hervey, Frederick. See Bristol 
 Hervey, George, 2nd Earl of Bristol, 
 
 64 
 Hervey, John, Lord (father of the 
 
 Bishop of Derry), 60 
 Hervey, Lady Mary (Mary Lepel), 
 
 mother of the Bishop of Derry, 61, 
 
 62 ; her love for the Continent, 63 ; 
 letters to Rev. E. Morris, 63, her 
 estimate of Charles Townshend, 
 
 63 n. 
 
 Hervey, Louisa (Lady Liverpool), 90 
 Hervey, William, 64 
 Hobart (Irish Secretary), 121 
 Hoche, General, espouses the Irish 
 
 cause, 168, 252 ; deftth, 253 
 Holland, Lord, on Bishop Stock, 270 
 Humbert, General Jean Joseph 
 Amable, leads the French invasion 
 of Ireland, 257 ; sketch of his early 
 career, 257, 258 ; personality, 258 ; 
 character of the force under him, 
 259; Irishmen on his staff, 26o, 
 261 ; selects Killala as the landing 
 place, 261, 267, 271 ; captures 
 Killala, and its Bishop. 272, 273; 
 overture to Bishop Stock, 274 ; 
 threatens the Bishop with deporta- 
 tion, 274 ; advances on Ballina, 275, 
 281 ; grandiloquent proclamation, 
 276 ; distributes arms and uniforms 
 to the peasantry, 278 ; disappointed 
 with the Irish levies, 278, 279; 
 contempt of his troops for the blind 
 faith of Catholic peasantry, 27?*, 
 280; strength of hrs Irish contin- 
 gent, 281 ; advance on Castlebar 
 by a mountain track, 287 ; defeats 
 the English at Castlebar, 291 ; 
 joined by Longford and Kilkenny 
 Militias, 292 ; his despatch to the 
 Directory, 292; hazards of his 
 attack on Castlebar, 294 ; master of 
 Mayo, 295 ; inspires the peasantry 
 of Mayo with a belief in his invinci- 
 bility, 295 ; schemes for future 
 action, 295 ; unsupported by his 
 Government, 296; excesses of his 
 Irish supporters aftor Castlebar, 
 297 ; establishes civil administra- 
 tion for Connaught, 298; efforts to 
 discipline the Irish recruits, 299 ; 
 two Irish captains shot by him for 
 mutiny, 300 ; protects the town- 
 folk's property at Castlebar, 301 ; 
 consideration shown to Ellison, 
 
INDEX 
 
 357 
 
 301 ; evacuation of Castlebar, 
 304 ; marches on Sligo, 305 ; sends 
 prisoners to Cornwallis, 306 ; 
 attacked by Vereker at Collooney, 
 307 ; relinquishes the idea of reach- 
 ing Sligo, 309 ; abandons cannon, 
 313 ; makes for Grauard, 313 ; his 
 fatal delay at Cloone, 314 ; closely 
 followed by the English troops, 
 314 ; arrives at Ballinamuck, 315 ; 
 surrenders at discretion, 315 ; his 
 despatch to the French Directory, 
 319 
 
 Hutchinson, Major-General (second 
 Lord Donoughmore), in command 
 of Connaught, 283, 284 ; moves on 
 Castlebar against Humbert, 285 ; 
 force at his disposal, 285, 286 ; de- 
 feated by the French, 291-293; 
 censured by Cornwallis, 294 ; his 
 resignation hot accepted, 294 ; dis- 
 affection of his troops, 294 
 
 Hutchinson, Provost Hely, 202, 203, 
 215, 216 
 
 Hutchinson, Richard Hely, son of 
 Provost, unseated, 106 
 
 Ickworth, Earl-Bishop of Derry's 
 residence, 72, 83, 89, 90, 91; in- 
 scription to Earl-Bishop on the 
 obelisk, 100 
 
 Ireland, conceded an independent 
 legislature (1783), 3; French in- 
 vasion of (1798), 250 et seq. 
 
 Irish rebellion of 1798, the, 16, 22, 
 149, 150, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 
 160, 162, 163, 169, 205, 223 et seq., 
 250 et scq. 
 
 Jobit, Captain, on Hutchinson's forces 
 
 at Castlebar, 286 
 Johnson, Bishop, of Cloyne, 69 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, on the Herveys, 
 
 61 
 Joy, Henry (Solictor-General), 220 
 
 Kadffman, Angelica, memorials in 
 Dublin, 15 
 
 Kenmare, Lord, 232, 238 
 
 Keogh, John, 38, 44; acceptance of 
 modified Catholic claims, 167 ; his 
 agitation loyal to the Constitution, 
 193 ; record, 211 ; first plebeian 
 leader of the Irish Catholics, 212 ; 
 Wolfe Tone's adviser and associate, 
 212 ; loyally accepts the Union, 
 
 212; advocates emancipation, 212; 
 repudiated by O'Connell, 212 
 
 Killala, county Mayo, traditions, 268 ; 
 diocese, 268 ; bishops, 269 ; amal- 
 gamation of its see with Tuam, 
 269 ; capture by the French, 272 ; 
 Humbert's garrison, 281 ; condition 
 of, after the departure of the 
 French garrison, 328 ; a scheme of 
 civil government, 329 ; regulation of 
 the meat supply at, 329 ; outrages 
 by the Irish recruits, 332, 333 ; 
 pillaged by insurgents, 334 ; rebel 
 defence, 335; occupied by General 
 Trench, 336 ; courts-martial at, 
 337 
 
 Kilmaine, General, 255, 256 
 
 Kilwarden, Lord, 138 
 
 Kirk wood, Captain, of the Yeomanry, 
 his defence of Killala, 271 ; placed 
 by the French on parole, 274 ; killed 
 ait Killala, 336 
 
 Knox, Alexander, on the Irish Rebel- 
 lion, 160 ; ' Thoughts on the Will of 
 the People,' 161 ; ' Essays on the 
 Political Circumstances of Ireland,' 
 161, 167 ; correspondence with 
 Bishop Jebb, 161 ; exposure of the 
 real objects of the United Irishmen, 
 176 
 
 Lake, General, 283, 285 ; defeated at 
 Castlebar, 294 ; after Castlebar, 303, 
 304 ; at Cloone, the composition of 
 his force, 314 ; his return of Hum- 
 bert's force on surrender, 318 
 
 La Vendee, 258 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., quoted, on the 
 Union, 17; on the Constitution of 
 1782, 22; on the Earl-Bishop of 
 Derry, 58, 83 ; on Lord Clare, 103 ; 
 on Clare's speeches in the Regency 
 debates, 134 ; on the Irish rebellion, 
 158, 168, 251 ; quoted, 190 
 
 Leinster, Duke of, 9, 124 
 
 Leinster Volunteers, opposed to con- 
 cessions to Catholics, 31 
 
 Lewens, Edward, appeals for French 
 aid, 252, 253, 254 
 
 Lichtenau, Countess von, 92, 93 
 
 Lifford, Lord, 118, 119, 120 
 
 Lilburne, Richard, on Orangeisrn, 47 n. 
 
 Limerick, Treaty of, 70 
 
 Liverpool administration, the, 199, 
 219 
 
 Liverpool, Lord, Irish policy of, 197 
 
 Londonderry, presents the freedom of 
 the city to the Earl-Bishop, 73 ; its 
 address to him, 88 
 
358 
 
 STUDIES IN IKISH HISTOEY 
 
 Longford, Lord,' in command at 
 
 Granard, 310, 312 
 Longford Militia, the, at Castlebar, 
 
 292, 294 
 Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland (17G7), 
 
 change in the conditions under 
 
 which it was held, 14 ; nature of 
 
 office, 22 
 Loughborough, Lord, 136 
 Loughgall, religious fracas at, 51 
 Lysaght, Edward, on Lord Clare, 139 n. 
 
 MacCbacken, Henry Joy, 43, 54 
 
 Macdonnell, Colonel, joins Humbert, 
 299 ; escape at Ballinamuck, 316 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, on Plunket, 
 197 
 
 MacNevin, William, cited, 38, 42, 169, 
 189 ; questioned on the causes of 
 the Irish Rebellion, 175 ; evidence 
 before Lord Clare, 193 
 
 Madden, Dr. Richard, his history of 
 the United Irishmen movement, 6, 
 38, 169 
 
 Maddyn, Owen, his ' Chiefs of Parties,' 
 quoted, 160 
 
 Maguire, Roger, messenger from 
 Charost to Castlebar, 334, 340 
 
 Malone, Edmund, on Ion Fitzgibbon, 
 105 
 
 Marche, Countess de la, 92 
 
 Mason, Rev. William, friend of Gray, 
 65 ; on the Earl-Bishop of Derry, 
 69 7i., 71 n. 
 
 Mayo, events in connection with the 
 French invasion, 251 et seq., 295 
 
 Middleton, Dr. Conyers, 66 
 
 Moira, Earl of, opposed to enfranchise- 
 ment of Catholics, 30 ; his arraign- 
 ment of the Irish Government, 130 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary, 61 
 
 Montgomery, Barbara, 109 
 
 Moore, John, president of the pro- 
 visional government of Connaught 
 established by Humbert, 298, 299 
 
 Moore, Thomas, on Castlereagh, 179, 
 181 ; cited, 191 
 
 Mornington, Earl of (Marquess 
 Wellesley), 120 
 
 Blorris, Rev. Edmund, 63, 64 
 
 Mountjoy, Lord, 151 
 
 Multifarragh, the Presbyterians of. 263 
 
 Musgrave, Sir Richard, on the Irish 
 Rebellion, 159 ; on the Catholics of 
 Mayo, 264 
 
 Nkmgan, Dr., applauds the loyalty of 
 Mayo, 265 
 
 Nelson, Admiral Lord, and Lady 
 Hamilton, 93, 95 
 
 Newcome, Archbishop, 270 
 
 Newenham, Sir Edward, on the Earl- 
 Bishop of Derry, 79 n., 86 n. 
 
 New Ross, battle of, 250 
 
 Northern Whig Club, the, 36 
 
 Northington, Lord, cited, 83, 112, 115, 
 141 ; Fox's letter to him on the Vol- 
 unteers, 85 n. ; and on Irish policy, 
 113 n. ; employment of Sir Boyle 
 Roche at the Volunteer Convention 
 of 1783, 238 
 
 Nugent, Major-General, 304, 307 
 
 O'Brien, William Smith, 21 ; duel 
 with Thomas Steele, 245 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, cited, 21, 191, 192, 
 200 ; on Castlereagh, 181 ; rejoices 
 at the failure of Plunket's bill, 219 ; 
 repudiates Keogh, 212 ; opposes 
 the re-election of Vesey Fitzgerald, 
 242 ; Steele's devotion to his cause, 
 242 et seq. ; opposed at the Clare 
 election by Smith O'Brien, 245 ; 
 cause of his one estrangement from 
 Steele, 247 
 
 O'Connell, Sir James (brother of the 
 Liberator), on Thomas Steele, 245 
 
 O'Connell, John (son of the Liberator), 
 his eulogy of Steele, 247 
 
 O'Keon, Henry, interpreter on Hum- 
 bert's staff, career of, 260, 261 ; 
 restrains Catholic excesses, 297 ; 
 drills Humbert's Irish recruits, 
 299 ; with Charost at Killala, 330 ; 
 prisoner to Trench, 336 
 
 Orange Lodge of Freemasons, Belfast, 
 2 
 
 Orangeism, 46-48, 52, 263, 264 % 
 
 Orde, Sir John, his commercial re- 
 solutions, 22 ; cited, 118, 147, 148 
 
 Paine's ' Rights of Man,' 35 
 Pakenham, General, at Ballinamuck, 
 
 315 
 Palmer, Sir John, his seat at Castle 
 
 Lacken plundered, 328 
 Parliament House, Dublin, 12 
 Parnell, Sir Henry, quoted, 168 
 Parsons, Sir Lawrence, See Lord 
 
 Rosse 
 Paterson, Lord Chief Justice, 144 
 Peel, Sir Robert, his Emancipation 
 
 Act, 50 n. ; abolishes forty-shilling 
 
 freeholders, 193 ; time occupied by 
 
INDEX 
 
 359 
 
 him in going to Ireland, 194 ; on 
 Plunket, 197 ; on Dr. Duigenan, 
 217 n. 
 
 Peep of Day Boys, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 n., 
 262 
 
 Pelham, Chief Secretary of Ireland, 
 76, 86, 142; letter from Lord 
 Cavan, 98 
 
 Pery, Edmund Sexton, Viscount Pery, 
 Speaker of the Irish House of Com- 
 mons, 77, 78 n., 86 
 
 Pitt, William, convinced of the 
 necessity for a Union after passing 
 of the Relief Act, 15, 16 ; methods 
 of bringing it about, 18, 19 ; 
 Lord Clare's pressure, 23, 24 ; views 
 on Catholic emancipation, 24 ; in- 
 structions to Lord Cornwallis, 24, 
 25 ; on the political attitude of 
 the Earl-Bishop of Derry, 84, 87 ; 
 appoints Lord Clare Irish Chancel- 
 lor, 121 ; recalls Lord Fitzwilliam, 
 126, 128 ; Clare his trusted adviser, 
 128, 129 ; his Irish policy, 196 
 
 Plunket, William Conynghain, 20, 
 101 ; reasons for his limited popu- 
 larity, 198 ; oratorical fame, 198, 
 199 ; subordinate place in the 
 annals of politics, 199 ; failure to 
 win the affections of his country- 
 men, 199 ; in the Grenville admini- 
 stration, 198 ; joins the Liverpool 
 ministry, 199, 200 ; conflict with 
 O'Connell, 200 ; magnitude of his 
 services, 200 ; school and college 
 life, 202 ; a Whig throughout his 
 career, 203 ; called to the Irish 
 Bar, 203 ; an adherent of Grattan, 
 203 ; friendship for Wolfe Tone, 
 203 ; enters the Irish Parliament 
 as member for Charlemont, 204, 
 225; impression made by him, 
 205 ; attitude towards public affairs, 
 205 ; his Union speeches, 206 ; 
 attacks on Castlereagh, 206; after 
 the Union turns from politics to 
 the Bar, 207 ; prosecuting counsel 
 against Emmet, 207 ; obtains 
 damages from Cobbett for libel, 
 208 ; parliamentary changes, 208 ; 
 takes from the dying Grattan the 
 formal leadership of the Catholic 
 cause, 217 ; presents the petition 
 of the Catholic body, 218 ; Shell's 
 acknowledgment of services, 218 ; 
 his Bill rejected by the Lords, 219 ; 
 end of his popularity, 221 ; raised 
 to the peerage, 221 ; acquires the 
 Irish Chancellorship, 221 ; summary 
 of his character and achievements, 
 
 222 ; his letter on the state of Ire- 
 land, 223 ct seq. 
 Pococke, Bishop, 268 
 Ponson, French officer, at Killala, 
 
 331 
 Ponsonby, George, 131, 209, 210, 211 
 Poolnashanthana, the tragedy of, 338 
 Pope, his savage portrait of Sporus 
 
 (Lord Hervey), 60 
 Portarlington, Lord, with Trench at 
 
 Ballina, 334 
 Porter, Major, in command at Cavan", 
 
 310 ; defeats the rebels at Wilson's 
 
 Hospital, 312 
 Porter, Rev. Classon, his aceount of 
 
 the Earl-Bishop of Derry, 74 
 Portland, Duke of, 113 n., 135, 142 
 Poynings' Law, 111, 114 
 Presbyterians of Ulster, action of the 
 
 French Revolution upon, 34 ; objects 
 
 of the United Irish Society, 37 ; 
 
 defended by the Earl-Bishop of 
 
 Derry, 81 ; their address to him, 
 
 88 
 
 Rapcliffe, Rev. Mr., chaplain of 
 Wilson's Hospital, 311 
 
 Rathmore, Lord, his biography of 
 Plunket, 201, 222 
 
 Ribbonism, a counterblast to Orange- 
 ism, 195 
 
 Roche, Sir Boyle, and his bulls, 228, 
 229, 230; loyalty of his family, 
 231 ; his military career, 232 ; 
 member of the Irish Parliament, 
 232 ; receives, with other honours, 
 a baronetcy, 232 ; marriage to Sir 
 Thomas Frankland's daughter, 233 ; 
 enmity to Curran, 233 ; reputation 
 as a humourist, 233 ; speech levelled 
 atCurran,234; humorously counters 
 Grattan's passionate declamation, 
 235 ; answer to a petition from 
 Belfast Dissenters on behalf of 
 Catholics, 235 ; character of his 
 oratory, 236 ; his excellent memory, 
 
 236 ; suggestion as to the reading 
 of tedious documents, 237 ; speci- 
 mens of his parliamentary bulls, 
 
 237 ; personal courage, 237 ; inter- 
 vention inthe Volunteer Convention, 
 238 ; supporter of the Franchise 
 Bill, 239 ; kindliness of his disposi- 
 tion, 239 
 
 Roden, Lord, his ' Foxhunters ' at 
 Castlebar, 292 ; at Ballinamuck, 
 316 
 
 Roman Catholics, admission to the 
 franchise, 21 ; devoted to national 
 
360 
 
 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 independence, 21 ; concessions to, 
 39, 31, 32; allied with the Presby- 
 terians against English rule, 41, 43 ; 
 enfranchisement of, 43 ; 'Defenders,' 
 45 ; early struggles for emancipa- 
 tion, 192, 193, 195, 19G ; apathy of 
 the poor towards emancipation, 193 ; 
 largely concerned in the rebellion, 
 250 et scq. 
 Rosebery, Lord, quoted, 12G, 127 
 Rosse, Lord (Laurence Parsons), 202, 
 
 203 
 Rowan, Archibald Hamilton, 38 
 Russell, Lord John, on Castlereagh, 
 
 177 ; on Plunket, 197, 200 
 Russell, Thomas, partisan of Wolfe 
 Tone, 43, 52, 133 ; T. A. Emmet's 
 letter to him, 153 
 Rutland, Charles, fourth Duke of 
 (Viceroy of Ireland), 84, 87, 118, 
 119, 129 n., 165 
 
 Sampson, William, United Irish 
 leader, 45 
 
 Sarazin, Humbert's adjutant-general, 
 259, 271 ; captures Killala, 272 ; 
 advances on Ballina, 275 ; theatrical 
 display over the body of Walsh, 
 276; at Castlcbar, 290, 291, 296; 
 proposes night attack on Lake at 
 Ballaghaderreen, 306 ; surrenders 
 at Ballinamuck, 315, 316, 317 
 
 Saurin, William, 210 ; Attorney-Gene- 
 ral, 213; head of the Irish Bar 
 against the Union, 213 ; sole reliance 
 of the Irish Government in legal 
 matters, 214 ; his letter to Peel 
 epitomising Protestant opposition 
 to Catholic claims, 214 
 
 Savary, Admiral, his fleet for the in- 
 vasion of Ireland, 255 ; lands 
 Humbert at Killala, 271; his 
 second expedition to Ireland, 319, 
 320, 321 ; failure, 322 
 
 Scott, John (Lord Clonmell), 108, 109 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, on Lord Wellesley's 
 Viceroyalty, 220 
 
 Scullabogue, 20, 266 
 
 Seymour, Rev. Charles, on the French 
 at Killala, 272 
 
 Shannon, Lord, 152 
 
 Sheares, the brothers, 20 
 
 Sheil, Richard Lalor, 191 ; on eman- 
 cipation, 218 ; on Plunket, 221 ; on 
 Thomas Steele, 242 
 
 Shelburne, Lord, 69 ; his views on 
 Irish politics, 81 ; vindicates the 
 Volunteers, 84 ; favours extensive 
 reforms in Ireland, 84 
 
 Shelley, on Castlereagh, quoted, 181 
 
 Sidmouth, Lord, and Ribbonism, 196 
 
 Skelton, invited by the Earl-Bishop 
 of Derry to become his chaplain, 75 
 
 Smith, Sydney, on Irish bulls, 229 
 
 Stanley, Mr. Sergeant, Sir Boyle 
 Roche's use of his manuscript 
 speech, 236 
 
 Stanley of Alderley, first Lord, on 
 Lord Clare, 140 
 
 Steel Boys, the, 195 
 
 Steele, Thomas, education, 242; scien- 
 tific tastes, 243 ; fights for the in- 
 surgents in the Spanish war of 
 1821, 243; devotes himself to the 
 cause of O'Connell, 244 ; attempted 
 suicide, 244 ; anecdotes of his 
 eccentricity, 245 ; duel with Smith 
 O'Brien, 245 ; ' Head Pacificator of 
 Ireland,' 245, 246 ; horror of agra- 
 rian outrage, 246 ; his only rupture 
 with O'Connell, 247 ; a ' political 
 Ossian,' 248 ; extract from a pam- 
 phlet by him, 248 
 
 Steele, William, father of Thomas, 
 242 
 
 Stewart, Charles, third Marquess of 
 Londonderry, 185 ; letter from 
 Plunket, 206 
 
 Stewart, Robert, first Marquess of 
 Londonderry (father of Lord Castle- 
 reagh), 183 ; friend of Charlemont, 
 183 ; his two wives, 183 
 
 Stewart, Robert, the younger. See 
 Castlereagh 
 
 Stock, Dr. Joseph, Bishop of Killala, 
 on Humbert, 258 ; denounces 
 Orangeism, 263 ; administers the 
 oath of allegiance to Catholics, 266 ; 
 narrative of the French invasion, 
 269 ; character, abilities and career, 
 269, 270 ; prisoner of the French at 
 Killala Castle, 272, 273 ; Humbert's 
 proposal to him, 274; threatened 
 with deportation, 275 ; Toussaint'a 
 admissions to him, 326 ; his house- 
 hold provided for by the French, 
 327 ; valuable property deposited 
 with him, 329 ; on Ponson, 331 ; on 
 the outrages of the peasantry, 333, 
 334 ; estimate of the Irish slain at 
 recapture of Killala, 336 ; inter- 
 poses on behalf of O'Keon, 336 ; 
 evidence at courts-martial, 337 ; on 
 the behaviour of the Irish Militia, 
 337 ; letter summarising events at 
 Killala, 339, 341 
 
 Strange, Sir John, cited, 67, 68, 76, 
 77, 86 ; three letters from the Eail- 
 Bidhop, 96, 97, 98 
 
INDEX 
 
 361 
 
 Swift, Dean, cited, 13 
 Swilly, Lough, Warren defeats Bom- 
 pard in, 321 
 
 Talbot, Earl (Irish Viceroy), time 
 occupied in travelling from Ireland 
 to England, 194 
 
 Tandy, Napper, National Congress 
 summoned by him, 1G5 ; career, 
 322 ; head of party opposed to 
 Wolfe Tone, 323 ; invasion of 
 Ireland in the ' Anacreon,' 323 ; 
 drunken habits, 323 ; Ameil's report 
 of him, 324 ; lands at Arran, 324 ; 
 decides not to disembark his force, 
 325 ; Jonah Barrington's estimate 
 of him, 325 
 
 Taylor, General, 2G5, 284, 285, 286, 
 288, 293, 303 
 
 Teeling, Bartholomew, 200 ; restrains 
 the Catholic mob after Castlebar, 
 297, 298; drills Humbert's Irish 
 recruits, 299 ; disappointed with the 
 Connaught peasantry, 300 ; gallantry 
 at Collooney, 308 
 
 Temple, Lord (Lord-Lieutenant), 232 
 
 Thompson, Dean, on embassy from 
 Charost to Castlebar, 334, 340 
 
 Threshers, the, 195 
 
 Thurlow, Lord, 119, 120, 121 
 
 Thurot, Francis, his invasion of 
 Ireland, 20 ; lands at Carrickfergus, 
 104 
 
 Tisdal, Philip, Attorney-General, 106, 
 108, 215, 216 
 
 Tone, Matthew (brother of Wolfe), 
 259 
 
 Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 20 ; on Paine's 
 ' Bights of Man,' 35 ; founder of the 
 United Irishmen, 37 ; character of 
 his journals, 39 ; his hatred of 
 England, 39 ; before a court-martial 
 in Dublin, 40 ; aids in the alliance 
 of the Roman Catholic and Pro- 
 testant dissentients to English 
 rule, 41, 42 ; difficulties with the 
 United Irishmen, 41 ; refers to 
 Armagh as a plague, 52 ; relations 
 with Lord Clare, 130, 131 ; quarrels 
 with his wife's family, 131 ; 
 writes for the Whig Club, 131 ; 
 befriended Jry Marcus Beresford, 
 132 ; confession of treason, 133, 
 154 ; on the real objects of the 
 United Irish system, 172, 173 ; his 
 ' Argument on behalf of the Catho- 
 lics of Ireland,' 173 ; friendship for 
 Plunket, 203 ; seeks, as emissary of 
 the Irish 'Directory,' French aid, 
 
 252; appeals to Napoleon Buona- 
 parte, 253; his 'peregrination to 
 convert the natives of Connaught,' 
 202 ; with Hardy's invading army, 
 319 
 
 Toussaint, his account of the true 
 object of the French invasion, 320 
 
 Townshend, Lord (Viceroy of Ireland), 
 14, 70 ; nominates Hervey to the see 
 of Derry, 71 
 
 Trench, General, at Castlebar, 284, 
 285, 289 ; promises good treatment 
 to Irish prisoners, 334 ; recaptures 
 Killala, 330, 340 
 
 Trinity College, Dublin, 12 
 
 Troy, Archbishop, 193, 209 
 
 True, French officer, in charge of 
 Ballina, 332 
 
 Turner, Bishop, 185 
 
 Tyrawley, barony of, 268 ; Deal Castle 
 wrecked, 328 ; Yeomanry at Killala, 
 335 
 
 Ulster, unionism in, 3-5 ; origin and 
 Protestant character of Volunteers, 
 26, 27 ; annual parade round 
 William III.'s statue, 27 ; efforts to 
 secure free trade and parliamentary 
 reform, 28 ; Dungannon Convention, 
 27,28, 30,31 ; separatist movement, 
 34, 35 ; action of the French 
 Bevolution upon the Presbyterians 
 of, 34, 35 ; Northern Whig Club, 86 ; 
 antipathy of the reformers to 
 Catholics, 41, 42; theory of con- 
 stitutional reform, 43 ; return of 
 reformers to loyal views, 44, 45, 
 46 ; active measures to resist French 
 invasion, 45 ; the Rebellion, 45, 
 46 ; origin of Orangeism, 46-48 ; 
 Yeomanry movement, 54 ; rapid 
 advance of Orange societies and 
 decadence of the United Irish 
 agitation, 54 ; Protestants favour- 
 able to the Union, 55 ; real source 
 of the Irish Rebellion, 163 ; general 
 effect of the French Revolution, 
 165 ; influence of the recognition 
 of American independence, 166 ; 
 Roman Catholic emancipation 
 subservient in political schemes, 
 166 ; Protestants predominant 
 partners in United Irish Alliance, 
 167 ; divergence of opinion be- 
 tween religious sections, 176 ; 
 Scottish-Irish in the American 
 Republic, 195 
 
 Union, the, corrupt influences work- 
 ing for, 17, 18 ; Charlemont's 
 
3G2 
 
 STUDIES IN IEISH HISTOEY 
 
 opposition, 10 ; Irish Bar adverse, 
 20 ; origin in the Belief Act, 22 ; 
 Lord Clare presses for, 23, 151 ; 
 a section of Boman Catholic 
 opinion favourable to, 24 ; Pitt's 
 instructions to Lord Cornwallis as 
 to the preliminaries, 24, 25 : Act of, 
 divides the Orange body, 47 ; Earl- 
 Bishop of Derry advocates, 86 ; 
 Plunket against, 206 ; Saurin 
 against, 213 
 
 United Irishmen of the North, 
 motive for their action in the union 
 of the legislatures, 5 ; founder, 37, 
 39 ; writers in exile, 38 ; secrecy and 
 mystery affected, 44 ; alteration in 
 oath, 44 ; Catholic emancipation 
 espoused, 44 ; Presbyterian section 
 alarmed by excesses of Catholic 
 allies, 46 ; agitation against the 
 Government, 130, 170 ; difference 
 between the secret and the avowed 
 society, 171 ; Knox's expose, 176 ; 
 designs, 223 ; appeal to the French 
 Directory for aid, 252, 255 ; Long- 
 ford, Cavan, Westmeath, and Bos- 
 common, 309 
 
 United Irish Society, at Belfast, 36, 
 37, 41 ; discredited by its strong 
 Catholic tendency, 53 ; cited, 167, 
 168, 173 
 
 Vereker, Colonel, in command at 
 Sligo, 307 ; attacks the French at 
 Collooney, 307 ; rashness of his 
 attempt, 308 ; honours conferred 
 on him, 309 
 Voltaire, on Lady Hervey, 62 
 Volunteers, Ulster, nationalism that 
 of a caste, 33 ; supporters of the 
 movement, 33 ; strength of the 
 Presbyterian element, 34 ; Belfast 
 regiment, 45 ; cessation as a politi- 
 cal force, 48 ; Dublin, 82 n., 83, 84, 
 85 n., 86, 87 ; Fox presses for then- 
 dissolution, 112 ; dangers from, 114, 
 115 ; Londonderry, 142 ; Belfast 
 Convention, 164, 165, 173, 204, 
 238 
 
 Waepole, Horace, oh Shelburne and 
 the Earl-Bishop of Derry, 81, 82, 
 87,90 
 
 Warren, Admiral Sir John, defeats 
 Bompard in Lough Swilly, 321 
 
 Wellesley, Sir Arthur (Chief Secre- 
 tary), presses Plunket to remain 
 in office, 199 n. ; appoints Saurin on 
 Plunket's resignation, 214 ; (Duke of 
 Wellington) on Castlereagh, 179 ; 
 puts Duigenan in the Irish Council, 
 216 ; his vieeroyalty, 220 ; forbids 
 the decoration of William's statue 
 in College Green, 221 
 
 Wellesley, Marquess of, his mission 
 to Ireland, 219 
 
 Wesley, cited, 58 ; on the Bishop of 
 Derry, 66, 75 ; influence of Knox, 
 161 
 
 Westmorland, Lord, 25, 129, 135 
 
 Wexford, rebellion in, 46, 157, 159, 
 266, 282 
 
 Whig Club, the, formation of, 124 ; 
 Wolfe Tone writes pamphlets for, 
 131 
 
 Whiteboy Societies, 163 
 
 White Linen Hall, Belfast, inscribed 
 foundation stone, 1, 2 ; records 
 discovered in a cavity of the stone, 
 3 
 
 Wicklow, rebellion in, 159 
 
 William IIP, his statue on College 
 Green, 27 
 
 Wilson's Hospital, rebels entrenched 
 nt, 311 ; Major Porter defeats them, 
 312 
 
 Winter, Daniel, treaty between Peep of 
 Day Boys and Defenders made at 
 his house, 51 
 
 Woodfall, on Clare's duel with Curran, 
 116 
 
 Wyse, on Catholic emancipation, 209 
 
 Yelverton, Chief Baron, 20, 112 «., 
 141, 142, 203 
 
 Young, Arthur, autobiography of, 59 ; 
 on Lord William Hervey, 64 ; in- 
 timacy with Ihe Earl-Binhop of 
 Derry, 81, 83 ; quoted, 208 
 
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 EVOLUTION. ANTHROPOLOGY. 
 
 &c. '- 18 
 
 FICTION, HUMOUR, &c. - - - 21 
 FUR, FEATHER AND FIN SERIES 12 
 FINE ARTS (THE) AND MUSIC - 30 
 HISTORY, POLITICS, POLITY, 
 
 POLITICAL MEMOIRS, &c. - - 3 
 LANGUAGE, HISTORY AND 
 
 SCIENCE OF i 7 
 
 LOGIC, RHETORIC, PSYCHOLOGY, 
 
 &c. 14 
 
 MENTAL, MORAL, AND POLITICAL 
 PHILOSOPHY 14 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS AND CRITICAL 
 WORKS 3r 
 
 POETRY AND THE DRAMA - - 20, 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AND ECO- 
 NOMICS 
 
 17 
 24 
 
 POPULAR SCIENCE - 
 
 RELIGION, THE SCIENCE OF 18 
 
 SILVER LIBRARY (THE) - - 27 
 
 SPORT AND PASTIME - - - 11 
 
 STONYHURST PHILOSOPHICAL 
 
 SERIES 16 
 
 TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE, THE 
 
 COLONIES, &c. - 9 
 
 WORKS OF REFERENCE- - - 25 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Page 
 
 OF AUTHORS AND EDITORS. 
 
 Abbott (Evelyn) 
 
 (T. K.) - 
 
 (E. A.) - 
 
 Acland (A. H. D.) ■ 
 Acton (Eliza) - 
 Adeane (J. H.) - 
 Adelborg (O.) - 
 jEschylus 
 Ainger (A. C.) - 
 Albemarle (Earl of) • 
 Allen (Grant) - 
 Allgood (G.) - 
 Angwin (M. C.) 
 Anstey (F.) 
 Aristophanes - 
 Aristotle - 
 Arnold (Sir Edwin) • 
 
 (Dr. T.) - ■ 
 
 Ashbourne (Lord) ■ 
 Ashby (H.) 
 Ashley (W. J.) - 
 Avebury (Lord) 
 Ayre (Rev. J.) - 
 
 Bacon - - 7. 14, 15 
 Baden-Powell (B. H.) 3 
 Bagehot (W.) 7, 17, 27, 31 
 Bagwell (R.) - - 3 
 Bailev (H. C.I - - 21 
 Baillie (A. F.) - - 3 
 Bain (Alexander) - 15 
 Baker (J. H.) - - 31 
 (Sir S. W.) - g 
 
 3.19 
 
 14.15 
 
 15 
 
 3 
 
 29 
 
 8 
 
 26 
 
 19 
 
 29 
 21 
 J 9 
 14 
 
 9, 20 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 29 
 
 3, 17 
 18 
 25 
 
 Balfour (A. J.) - n, 
 
 (Lady Betty) - 
 
 Ball (John) 
 Banks (M. M.)- 
 Baring-Gould (Rev. 
 
 S.)- - - 18,27, 
 Barnett (S. A. and H.) 
 Baynes (T. S.) - 
 Beaconsfield (Earl of) 
 Beaufort (Duke of) - n, 
 Becker (W. A.) 
 Beesly (A. H.) - 
 Bell (Mrs. Hugh) - 
 Bent (J. Theodore) - 
 Besant (Sir Walter)- 
 Bickerdyke (J.) - 12, 
 
 Bird (G.) - 
 Blackburne (J. H.) - 
 Bland (Mrs. Hubert) 
 Blount (Sir E.) 
 Boase (Rev. C. W.) - 
 Boedder (Rev. B.) - 
 Bowen (W. E.) 
 Brassey (Lady) 
 
 (Lord) 
 
 Bray (C.) - 
 Bright (Rev. J. F.) - 
 Broadfoot (Major W.) 
 Brown (A. F.) - 
 
 (J. Moray) 
 
 Bruce (R. I.) - 
 Bryce(J.)- 
 Buck(H. A.) - 
 
 ge ) Page 
 
 18 Buckland (Jas.) - 26 
 6" Buckle (H. T.)- - 3 
 9 Bull (T.) - - - 29 
 
 21 Burke (U. R.) - - 3 
 
 , Burns (C. L ) - - 30 
 
 31 Burrows (Montagu) 5 
 
 17 ' Butler (E. A.) - - 24 
 
 31 
 
 21 I Cameron of Lochiel 13 
 
 12 Campbell(Rev.Lewis) 18,19 
 
 19 J Camperdown (Earl of) 8 
 Cawthorne (Geo. Jas.) 13 
 Chesney (Sir G.) - 3 
 
 9 Childe-Pemberton(W.S.) 8 
 3 Cholmondeley-Pennell 
 
 13 (H.) - - - 11 
 Christie (R. C.) - 31 
 Churchill(W. Spencer) 3, 21 
 Cicero - - - 19 
 Clarke (Rev. R. F.) - 16 
 
 5 Clodd (Edward) - 18,25 
 
 16 Clutterbuck (W. ].)- 10 
 
 7 Colenso (R. J.) - 30 
 
 Conington (John) - 19 
 
 Conway (Sir W. M ) 11 
 15 Conybeare (Rev. W. J.) 
 
 3 & Howson (Dean) 27 
 
 Coolidge (W. A. B.) 9 
 
 Corbin (M.) - - 26 
 
 Corbett (Julian S.) - 4 
 
 Coutts (W.) - - 19 
 
 Coventry (A.) - - 12 
 
 Cox (Harding) - 11 
 
 Crake (Rev. A. D.) - 
 Crawford (J. H.) 
 
 (R.) - - - 
 
 Creed (S.) 
 Creiehton (Bishop) 
 Crozier (J. B.) - 
 distance (Col. H.) - 
 Cutts (Rev. E. L.) - 
 
 Dale (T. F.) - 
 Dallinger (F. W.) - 
 Dauglish (M. G.) - 
 Davidson (W. L.) 15, 
 Davies (J. F.) - 
 Dent (C. T.) - 
 De Salis (Mrs.) 
 De Tocqueville (A.) - 
 Devas (C. S.) - 
 Dickinson (G. L.) - 
 
 (W. H.) - 
 
 Dougall (L.) - 
 Dowden (E.) - 
 Dovle (A. Conan) - 
 Du Bois (W. E. B.)- 
 Dufferin (Marquis of) 
 Dunbar (Mary F.) - 
 Dyson (E.) 
 
 Ebrington (Viscount) 
 Ellis (|.H.) - 
 
 (R. L.) - 
 
 Erasmus - - - 
 Evans (Sir John) - 
 
 Page 
 26 
 
 4.5,8 
 
 8,15 
 
 13 
 
 5 
 
 12 
 
 17,18 
 19 
 11 
 29 
 
 4 
 16, 17 
 
 4 
 31 
 21 
 32 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 8,31 
 
 31 
 
INDEX 
 
 Falkiner (C. L. 
 Farrar (Dean) 
 Fitzgibbon (M. 
 Fitzmaurice (Lord E.) 
 Folkard (H. C.) 
 Ford (H.) - 
 
 (W.J.) - - 
 
 Fountain (P.) - 
 Fowler (Edith H.) - 
 Francis (Francis) 
 Francis (M. E.) 
 Freeman (Edward A.) 
 Fremantle (T. F.) - 
 Frestifield (D. W.) - 
 Frost (G.) - 
 
 OF 
 
 Page 
 
 4 
 
 - 17. 21 
 
 4 
 
 AUTHORS AND EDITORS— continued. 
 
 .ii 
 
 Froude (lames A.) 4,8,10,22 
 
 Fuller (P. W.) - - 4 
 
 Furneaux (W.) - 24 
 
 Gardiner (Samuel R.) 4 
 Gathorne-Hardy (Hon. 
 
 A. E.) - - 13 
 Geikie (Rev. Cunning- 
 ham) - - - 31 
 Gibbons (J. S.) - 13 
 Gibson (C. H.)- - 14 
 Gleig (Rev. G. R.) - 9 
 Goethe - - - 20 
 Going (C. B.) - - 26 
 Gore-Booth (Sir H. W.) 12 
 Graham (A.) - - 4 
 
 (P. A.) - - 13 
 
 (G. F.) - - 17 
 
 Granby (Marquess of) 13 
 
 Grant (Sir A.) - - 14 
 
 Graves (R. P.) - - 8 
 
 Green (T. Hill) - 15 
 
 •Greene (E. B.)- - 5 
 
 •Greville (C. C. F.) - 4 
 
 Grose (T. H.) - - 15 
 'Gross (C.) - 4, 5 
 
 Grove (F. C.) - - n 
 
 (Mrs. Lilly) - 11 
 
 Gurdon (Lady Camilla) 22 
 
 Gurnhill (J.) - - 15 
 
 Gwilt (J.) - - - 25 
 
 Haggard (H. Rider) 10,22,31 
 
 Hake (O.) - - - 12 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps(J.) 9 
 
 Hamilton (Col. H. B.) 5 
 
 Hamlin (A. D. F.) - 30 
 
 Harding (S. B.) - 5 
 
 Harmsworth (A. C.) 12 
 
 Harte (Bret) - - 22 
 
 Harting(J. E.)- - 13 
 
 Hartwig (G.) - - 25 
 
 Hassall (A.) - - 7 
 Haweis (H. R.) - 8, 30 
 
 Head (Mrs.) - - 30 
 
 Heath (D. D.) - - 14 
 
 Heathcote (J. M.) - 12 
 
 (C. G.) - - 12 
 
 (N.) - - - 10 
 
 Helmholtz (Hermann 
 
 von) - - - 25 
 Henderson (Lieut- 
 Col. G. F. R.) - 8 
 Henry (W.) - - 12 
 Henty (G. A.) - - 26 
 Herbert (Col. Kenney) 13 
 Herod (Richard S.) - 13 
 Hiley (R. W.) - - 8 
 Hill (Mabel) - - 5 
 Hillier (G. Lacy) - n 
 Hime (H. W. L.) - 19 
 Hodgson (Shadworth)i5, 31 
 
 Hoenig (F.) 
 Hogan (J. F.) - 
 Holmes (R. R.) 
 Holroyd (M. J.) 
 Homer - 
 Hope (Anthony) 
 Horace - 
 Houston (D. F.) 
 Howard (Lady Mabel) 
 Howitt (W.) - 
 Hudson (W. H.) - 
 Huish (M. B.) - 
 Hullah (J.) 
 Hume (David) - 
 (M. A. S.) 
 
 3' 
 
 Page 
 Hunt (Rev. W.) - 5 
 
 Hunter (Sir W.) - 5 
 
 Hutchinson (Horace G.) 
 
 ". 13. 31 
 Ingelow (Jean) - 20 
 
 Ingram (T. D.) - 5 
 
 Jackson (A. W.) 
 James (W.) 
 Jameson (Mrs. Anna) 
 jefferies (Richard) - 
 Jekyll (Gertrude) 
 
 Jerome (Jerome K.) - 
 ohnson (J. & J. H.) 
 Jones (H. Bence) 
 Joyce (P. W. 
 Justinian - - - 
 
 Kant (I.) - 
 Kaye (Sir J. W.) - 
 Kelly (E.)- 
 Kent (C. B. R.) 
 Kerr (Rev. J.) - 
 Killick (Rev. A. H.) - 
 Kingsley (Rose G.) - 
 Kitchin (Dr. G. W.) 
 Knight (E. F.) 
 Kostlin (J.) 
 Kristeller (P.) 
 
 Ladd (G. T.) 
 
 Lang (Andrew) 5, 11, 12, 14, 
 18, 20, 22, 23, 26, 32 
 Lapsley (G. T.) - 5 
 
 Lascelles (Hon. G.) 11, 13 
 Laurie (S. S.) - - 5 
 
 Lawley (Hon. F.) - 12 
 Lawrence (F. W.) - 17 
 Lear (H. L. Sidney) - 29, 31 
 Lecky (W. E. H.) 5, 16, 20 
 Lees (J. A.:) - - 10 
 Leslie (T. E. Cliffe) - 
 Levett- Yeats (S.) - 
 Lillie (A.) - 
 Lindley (J.) 
 Loch (C. S.) - 
 Locock (C. D.) 
 Lodge (H. C.) - 
 Loftie (Rev. W. J.) - 
 Longman (C. J.) 
 
 (F. W.) - 
 
 (G. H.) 
 
 9 
 IS 
 
 30 
 31 
 31 
 22 
 31 
 25 
 22, 31 
 15 
 
 15 
 
 5 
 15 
 
 5 
 
 12 
 15 
 3" 
 
 5 
 - 10, 12 
 
 8 
 30 
 
 15 
 
 Page 
 
 14 
 
 17 
 
 31 
 14 
 5 
 5 
 
 - 11. 13 
 
 14 
 
 - n, 13 
 
 (Mrs. C. J.) 
 Lowell (A. L.) - 
 Lubbock (Sir John) - 
 Lucan ... 
 Lutoslawski (W.) 
 Lyall (Edna) - 
 Lvnch (G.) 
 
 (H. F. B.)- 
 
 Lyttelton (Hon. R. H.) 
 
 (Hon. A.) - 
 
 Lytton (Earl of) - 6, 
 
 6, 2C 
 
 - 9, 
 
 Macaulay (Lord) 
 Macdonald (Dr. G.) - 
 Macfarren (Sir G. A.) 
 Mackail (J. W.) 
 Mackenzie (C. G. 
 Mackinnon (J.) 
 Macleod (H. D.) 
 Macpherson (Rev. 
 
 H. A.) 
 Madden (D. H.) 
 Magnusson (E.) 
 Maher (Rev. M.) 
 Malleson(Col.G.B.) 
 Marchment (A. W.) 
 Marshman (J. C.) - 
 Maryon (M.) - 
 Mason (A. E. W.) - 
 Maskelyne (J. N.) - 
 Matthews (B.) 
 Maunder (S.) - 
 Max Muller (F.) 
 
 9, 16, 17, 18, 23, 32 
 May (SirT.Erskine) 6 
 
 Meade (L. T.) - - 26 
 Melville (G. J. Whyte) 23 
 Merivale (Dean) 6 
 
 Merriman ;H. S.) 
 
 3° 
 
 19 
 
 14 
 6 
 
 17 
 
 12, 13 
 14 
 22 
 16 
 5 
 23 
 8 
 32 
 23 
 14 
 32 
 25 
 
 Millias (J. G.) - 
 Milner (G.) 
 Monck(W. H. S.) - 
 Montague (F. C.) - 
 Moon (G. W.)- 
 Moore (T.) 
 
 (Rev. Edward) - 
 
 Morgan (C. Lloyd) - 
 Morris (Mowbray) - 11 
 (W.) 19, 20, 23, 30, 32 
 
 15 
 23 
 
 8,31 
 
 MulhalKM. G 
 Murray (Hilda) 
 Myers (F. W. H.) - 
 
 Nansen (F.) 
 Nash(V.)- 
 Nesbit (E.) 
 Nettleship (R. L.) - 
 Newman (Cardinal) - 
 Nichols (F. M.) 
 
 Ogilvie (R.) - 
 Oldfield (Hon. Mrs.) 
 Oliphant (N.) - 
 Onslow (Earl of) 
 Osbourne (L.) - 
 Paget (Sir J.) - 
 Park (W.) 
 Parker (B.) 
 Passmore (T. H.) - 
 Payne-Gallwey (Sir 
 R.) - - - 
 Pearson (C. H.) 
 Peek (Hedley) - 
 Pemberton (W. S. 
 
 Childe-) - - 8 
 
 Pembroke (Earl of) - 12 
 Pennant (C. D.) - 13 
 Penrose (Mrs.) - 26 
 
 Phillipps-Wolley(C) 11,23 
 Pitman (C. M.) - 12 
 
 Pleydell-Bouverie (E. O.) 12 
 Pole (W.) - - - 14 
 Pollock (W. H.) - 11, 32 
 Poole (W.H. and Mrs.) 29 
 Poore (G. V.) - - 32 
 Pope (W. H.) - - 13 
 Powell (E.) - - 7 
 
 Praeger (S. Rosamond) 26 
 Prevost(C) - - n 
 Pritchett (R. T.) - 12 
 Proctor (R. A.) 14, 25, 28, 29 
 
 Page 
 7 
 
 Sheppard (E.) - 
 
 Sinclair (A.) 
 
 Skrine (F. H.) - 
 
 Smith (C. Fell) 
 
 (R. Bosworth) - 
 
 (T. C.) - - 
 
 (W. P. Haskett) 
 
 Somerville (E.) 
 
 Sophocles 
 
 Soulsby(Lucy H.) - 
 
 Southey (R.) - 
 
 Spahr(C. B.) - 
 
 Spedding(J.) - - 7, 
 
 Stanley (Bishop) 
 
 Stebbing (W.) - 
 
 Steel (A. G.) - 
 
 Stephen (Leslie) - 10 
 
 Stephens (H. Morse) 7 
 
 Sternberg (Count 
 
 Adalbert) - - 7 
 
 Stevens (R. W.) - 31 
 8 I Stevenson (R. L.) 21,24,26 
 6 I Storr (F.) 14 
 
 12 I Stuart-Wortley(A.J.) 12, 13 
 24 Stubbs (J. W.) - - 7 
 
 „ 1 Suffolk & Berkshire 
 
 (Earl of) - - 11, 12 
 
 Sullivan (Sir E.) - 12 
 
 Sully (James) - - 16 
 
 Sutherland (A. and G.) 7 
 
 12, 14 
 9 
 
 Mill (John Stuart) - 16, 17 
 
 Raine (Rev. James) - 
 
 5 
 
 Randolph (C. F.) - 
 
 7 
 
 Rankin (R.) - 
 
 7.21 
 
 Ransome (Cyril) 
 
 3, 7 
 
 Raymond (W.) 
 
 23 
 
 Reid(S. J.; 
 
 7 
 
 Rhoades(J.) - 
 
 19 
 
 Rice (S. P.) 
 
 10 
 
 Rich (A.) - 
 
 19 
 
 Richardson (C.) 
 
 11,13 
 
 Richmond (Ennis) - 
 
 16 
 
 Rickaby (Rev. John) 
 
 16 
 
 (Rev. Joseph) - 
 
 16 
 
 Ridley (Sir E.)- 
 
 19 
 
 (Ladv Alice) 
 
 23 
 
 Riley (J. W.) - 
 
 21 
 
 Roget (Peter M.) 
 
 17.25 
 
 Romanes (G. J.) 9, 16, 
 
 18,21 
 
 (Mrs. G.J.) - 
 
 9 
 
 Ronalds (A.) - 
 
 14 
 
 Roosevelt (T.) - 
 
 5 
 
 Ross (Martin) - 
 
 24 
 
 Rossetti (Maria Fran- 
 
 
 cesca) ... 
 
 32 
 
 Rotheram (M. A.) - 
 
 29 
 
 Rowe (R. P. P.) 
 
 12 
 
 Russell (Lady)- 
 
 9 
 
 Saintsbury (G.) 
 
 12 
 
 Sandars (t. C.) 
 
 15 
 
 Sanders (E. K.) 
 
 8 
 
 Savage- Arms trong(G 
 
 F.)2I 
 
 Seebohm (F.) - 
 
 7.9 
 
 Selous(F. C.) - 
 
 11, 14 
 
 Senior (W.) 
 
 12,13 
 
 Sewell (Elizabeth M.) 
 
 23 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 21 
 
 Shand (A I.) - 
 
 13 
 
 Shaw (W. A.) - 
 
 7. 31 
 
 Shearman (M.) 
 
 11 
 
 (Alex 
 — (G.) - 
 Suttner (B. von) 
 Swan (M.) 
 
 Swinburne (A. J.) - 
 Symes (J. E.) - 
 
 Tallentyre (S. G.) - 
 Tappan (E. M.) 
 Tavlor (Col. Meadows) 
 Te'bbutt (C. G.) 
 Terry (C. S.) - 
 Thomas (J. W.) 
 Thornhill (W. J.) - 
 Thornton (T. H.) - 
 Todd (A.) - 
 Toynbee (A.) 
 
 16, 32 
 32 
 
 24 
 
 Trevelyan (Sir G. O.) 6, 7, 8 
 
 (G. M.) - - 7 
 
 Trollope (Anthony)- 24 
 
 Turner (H. G.) - 32 
 
 Tyndall (J.) - - 8, 10 
 
 Tyrrell (R. Y.) - - 19 
 
 Unwin (R.) - - 32 
 
 Upton(F.K. and Bertha) 27 
 Van Dyke (J. C.) - 
 Virgil 
 
 Wagner (R.) - 
 Wakeman (H. O.) - 
 Walford (L. B.) 
 Wallas (Graham) 
 
 (Mrs. Graham) - 
 
 Walpole (Sir Spencer) 
 Walrond (Col. H.) - 
 Walsingham (Lord)- 
 Ward(Mrs. W.) 
 
 Warwick (Countess of) 32 
 Watson (A. E. T.) - 11,12 
 
 Weathers (J.) - - 32 
 Webb (Mr. and Mrs. 
 
 Sidney) - - 17 
 
 (T. E.) - - 16, 20 
 
 Weber (A.) - - 16 
 
 Weir (Capt. R.) - 12 
 
 Wellington (Duchess of) 30 
 
 West (B. B.) - - 24 
 
 Weyman (Stanley) - 24 
 Whately(Archbishop) 14,16 
 
 Whitelaw (R.) - - 19 
 
 Whittall(SirJ. W. )- 32 
 
 Wilkins (G.) - - 19 
 
 (W.H.) - - 3 
 
 Willard (A. R.) - 30 
 
 Willich (C. M.) - 25 
 
 Witham (T. M.) - 12 
 
 Wood (Rev. J. G.) - 25 
 
 Wood-Martin (W. G.) 7 
 
 Wyatt (A. J.) - - 20 
 
 Wylie (J. H.) - - 7 
 
 Zeller(E.) - - 16 
 
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 Two cents a day is charged for each book 
 kept overtime. 
 
 If you cannot find what you want, ask the 
 Librarian who will be glad to help you. 
 
 The borrower is responsible for books drawn 
 on his card and foV all fines accruing on the 
 same. 
 

 En 
 
 
 
 IKS 
 
 ■hi 
 
 llttWBHi 
 
 ■■tostim 
 
 BH