think might have satisfied the malice of connections; and, above all, without that his enemies), his attorney found it neces- consciousness of his innocence, on which, sary for his safety to steal out of the and the protection of the Almighty, he town by night, and with all possible speed might possibly have relied for his make his escape to Dublin. The head of deliverance. the brave murdered priest was spiked over the gates of Clonmel jail, and there remained twenty years. At last his sister was allowed to bury it where his body lies, in the old churchyard of Shandraghan.

Emboldened by this success, Sir Thomas Maude published an advertisement, somewhat in the nature of a manifesto, wherein, after having presumed to censure the administration for not punishing, with The night before his execution, which greater and unjustifiable severity, these was but the second after his sentence, he wretched rioters, he named a certain wrote a letter to Major Sirr, wherein he day, on which the following persons of declared his innocence of the crime for credit and substance in that country, viz.: which he was next day to suffer death; Edmund Sheehy, James Buxton, James and on the morning of that day, just Farrel, and others, were to be tried by before he was brought forth to execution, commission at Clonmel, as principals or he, in the presence of the sub-sheriff and accomplices in the aforesaid murder of a clergyman who attended him, again de- Bridge. And, as if he meant by dint clared his innocence of the murder; of numbers to intimidate even the solemnly protesting at the same time, as judges into lawless rigour and severity, he was a dying man, just going to appear he sent forth a sort of authoritative before the most awful of tribunals, that summons "to every gentleman in he never had engaged any of the rioters the county to attend that commission." in the service of the French king, by His summons was punctually obeyed tendering them oaths, or otherwise; that by his numerous and powerful adhe never had distributed money among herents; them on that account, nor had ever received money from France, or any other foreign court, either directly or indirectly, for any such purpose; that he never knew of any French or other foreign officers being among these rioters; or of any Roman Catholics of property or note, being concerned with them. At the place of execution he solemnly averred the same things, adding, "that he never heard an oath of allegiance to any foreign prince proposed or administered in his lifetime; nor ever knew any thing of the murder of Bridge, until he heard it publicly talked of; nor did he know that there ever was any such design on foot."

Everybody knew, that this clergyman might, if he pleased, have easily made his escape to France, when he first heard of the proclamation for apprehending him; and as he was all along acccused of having been agent for the French king, in raising and fomenting these tumults, he could not doubt of finding a safe retreat, and suitable recompense for such services, in any part of that kingdom. It seems, therefore, absurd in the highest degree, to imagine that he, or any man, being at the same time conscious of the complicated guilt of rebellion and murder, would have wilfully neglected the double opportunity of escaping punishment and of living at his ease and safety in another kingdom; or that any person, so criminally circumstanced as he was thought to be, would have at all surrendered himself to a public trial, without friends, money, or family

and these men, innocent (as will appear hereafter), were sentenced to be hanged and quartered by that commission.

It will naturally be asked, upon what new evidence* this sentence was passed, as it may well be supposed that no use made of the former reprobated witnesses on

was

James Prendergast, Esq., a witness for Mr. Edmund Sheehy, perfectly unexceptionable in point of fortune, character, and religion, which was that and hour on which the murder of Bridge was sworn of the established church, deposed, that on the day to have been committed, viz.: about or between the hours of ten and eleven o'clock, on the night of the 28th of October, 1764, Edmund Sheehy, the prisoner, was with him and others, in a distant part of the country; that they and their wives had, on the aforesaid 28th of October, dined at the house of Mr. Tenison, near Ardfinan, in the county of Tipperary, about eleven o'clock when he and the prisoner left the house of Mr. Tenison, and rode a considerable way together on their return to their respective homes; that the prisoner had his wife behind him; that when he (Mr. Prendergast) got home, he looked at the clock, and found it was the hour of twelve exactly. This testimony was confirmed by several corroborating circumstances, sworn to by two other witnesses, against whom no exception appears to have been taken. And yet, because Mr. Tenison, although he confessed in his deposition that the prisoner had dined with him in October, 1764, and does not expressly deny that it was on the 28th of that month; but says, conjecturally, that he was inclined to think that it was earlier than the 28th, the prisoner was brought in guilty. Thus positive and particular proof, produced by Mr Prendergast, with the circumstances of the day and the hour, attested upon oath by two other witnesses, whose veracity seems not to have been questioned, was overruled and set aside by the vague and indeterGentleman's and London Magazine," for April, and June, 1766.

where they continued until after supper, that it was

minate surmise of Mr. Tenison.-See "Exshaw's

this occasion.

But use was made of them, an oath of allegiance to any foreign prince and a principal use too, in the trial and proposed or administered amongst them; conviction of these devoted men. The that they never heard that any scheme of managers, however, for the crown, as they rebellion, high treason, or a massacre, impudently called themselves, being was intended, offered, or even thought of, afraid, or ashamed, to trust the success of by any of them; that they never knew of their sanguinary purposes to the now any commissions, or French or Spanish enfeebled, because generally exploded, officers being sent, or of any money being testimony of these miscreants, looked out paid to these rioters. After this, they for certain props, under the name of ap- severally declared, in the same solemn orovers, to strengthen and support their manner, that certain gentlemen, whose tottering evidence. These they soon names they then mentioned, had tampered found in the persons of Herbert and Bier, with them at different times, pressing two prisoners, accused, like the rest, of them to make, what they called useful the murder of Bridge; and who, though discoveries, by giving in examinations absolutely strangers to it (as they them- against numbers of Roman Catholics of selves had often sworn in the jail), were fortune in that province (some of whom nevertheless in equal danger of being they particularly named) as actually hanged for it, if they did not purchase concerned in a conspiracy and intended their pardon by becoming approvers of massacre, which were never once thought the former false witnesses. Herbert was of. But, above all, that they urged them so conscious of his innocence in respect to to swear that the priest, Nicholas Sheehy, Bridge's murder, that he had come to the died with a lie in his mouth; without assizes of Clonmel, in order to give doing which, they said, no other discovery evidence in favour of the priest Sheehy; would avail them. Upon these conditions, but his arrival and business being soon they promised and undertook to procure made known, effectual measures were their pardons, acquainting them at the taken to prevent his giving such evidence. same time, that they should certainly be Accordingly bills of high treason were hanged, if they did not comply with found against him, upon the information them." of one of these reprobate witnesses, and a party of light horse sent to take him prisoner. Bier, upon his removal afterwards to Newgate, in Dublin, declared, in a dangerous fit of sickness, to the ordinary of that prison, with evident marks of sincere repentance, "that for anything he knew to the contrary, the before-mentioned Edmund Sheehy, James Buxton, and James Farrel, were entirely innocent of the fact for which they had suffered death; and that nothing in this world, but the preservation of his own life, which he saw was in the most imminent danger, should have tempted him to be guilty of the complicated crimes of perjury and murder, as he then confessed he was, when he swore away the lives of those innocent men."

On Saturday morning, May 3rd, 1766, the convicts were hanged and quartered at Clogheen. Their behaviour at the place of execution was cheerful, but devout; not content to forgive, they prayed for and blessed their prosecutors, judges, and juries. After they were tied up, each of them, in his turn, read a paper aloud, without tremour, hesitation, or other visible emotion, wherein they solemnly protested, as dying Christians, who were quickly to appear before the judgmentseat of God, "that they had no share either by act, counsel, or knowledge in the murder of Bridge; that they never heard

All that has since come to light with regard to these black transactions-the testimony of Burke (already cited) that there was no conspiracy for insurrection at all-the failure to produce the body of Bridge, though it was carefully searched for in the field where a witness swore it had been buried-the hatred notoriously cherished against Father Sheehy and all his friends, on account of his bold conduct in standing up for his poor parishoners— and we must add the whole course of Irish "justice" from that day to thisall compel us to credit the dying declaration of these men, who were also of unblemished character; and force us to the conclusion that the whole of these military executions and judicial trials in Munster, extending over four years, were themselves the result of a most foul conspiracy on the part of the Ascendency faction, with its government, its judges, its magistrates, and its juries-based upon carefully organized perjury and carried through by brute force, to "strike terror" in Tipperary (a measure ofter found needful since), to destroy all the leading Catholics of that troublesome neighbourhood; and above and before all things, to hang and quarter the body, and spike the head, of the generous and kindly priest who told his people that they were human beings and had rights and wrongs.

Dr. Curry winds up his account of the skull of their revered priest upon its spike transaction with these reflections :- withering away in the wind, could read "Such, during the space of three or the fate that, on the first murmur of four years, was the fearful and pitiable revolt, was in store for themselves or any state of the Roman Catholics of Munster, who should take their part. The next and so general did the panic at length year (1767), some further arrests were become, so many of the lower sort were made, and the Ascendency party tried already hanged, in jail, or on the inform- hard to get up an alarm about another ers' lists, that the greatest part of the " Popish rebellion." No executions folrest fled through fear; so that the land lowed on this occasion, as several benevolay untilled for want of hands to culti- lent persons contributed money to procure vate it, and a famine was with reason the prisoners the benefit of the best legal apprehended. As for the better sort, who defence. It is with pleasure one reads had something to lose (and who, for that among the names of the friends of an reason, were the persons chiefly aimed at oppressed race who contributed to this by the managers of the prosecution), they fund, the name of Edmund Burke. One were at the utmost loss how to dispose of of the persons arrested on this last themselves. If they left the country, their occasion, but afterwards discharged withabsence was construed into a proof of out trial, was Dr. McKenna, Catholic their guilt if they remained in it, they bishop of Cloyne. He, as well as all other were in imminent danger of having their ecclesiastics of his order, was, of course, lives sworn away by informers and ap- at all times subject to the penalties of provers; for the suborning and corrupting law, to transportation under the acts of witnesses on that occasion was frequent "for preventing the growth of Popery" and barefaced, to a degree almost beyond in Queen Anne's time; and also to the belief. The very stews were raked and penalty of premunire under earlier laws: the jails rummaged in search of evidence; yet these bishops continued to exercise and the most notoriously profligate in both their office, to confirm and confer were selected and tampered with, to give orders under a species of connivance, information of the private transactions which passed for toleration. But and designs of reputable men, with whom their situation, as well as that of all they never had any dealing, intercourse their clergy, in these first years of King or acquaintance; nay, to whose very George III. was still as precarious and persons they were often found to be anomalous as it had been during all the strangers, when confronted at their trial. reign of George II. Sometimes they "In short, so exactly did these prosecu- were tolerated, sometimes persecuted. tions in Ireland resemble, in every partic-It depended upon the administration ular, those which were formerly set on foot which happened to be in power; upon in England, for that villanous fiction of the temporary alarms to which the Oates's plot, that the former seem to have" Ascendency" was always subject; and been planned and carried on entirely on the model of the latter; and the same just observation that hath been made on the English sanguinary proceedings, is perfectly applicable to those which I have now, in part related, viz.: that for the credit of the nation, it were indeed better to bury them in eternal oblivion, but that it is necessary to perpetuate the remembrance of them, as well to maintain the truth of history, as to warn, if possible, our posterity, and all mankind, never again to fall into so shameful and so barbarous a delusion.""

·

All now seemed quiet in Munster: but it was the quietude of despair and exhaustion. The Whiteboy spirit was not really suppressed, because the oppressions which had occasioned it were not relaxed, but rather aggravated. Many hearths were now cold that had been the centre of a humble family circle four years before; and the surviving parishoners of Clogheen, when they saw the blackening

upon the disposition of local proprietors and magistrates, who were occasionally men of liberal education, and relished the society of the neighbouring priests who had graduated at Lisbon, or Salamanca, or Louvain, and who were then frequently far superior in cultivation and social refinement to the Protestant rectors, of whom Dean Swift sometimes betrays his low estimate. Even the regular clergy, although the rage and suspicion of the Ascendency were yet more bitter against them than the secular priests, were always to be found in Ireland. They ran more cruel risks, however, than the parish priest. If any blind or self-interested bigot desired to show his zeal in trampling on the right of conscience, or to raise the ferocious old cry of "No Popery!' the regular clergy formed an inexhaustible subject for his vociferations: if the legislature of the day wished to indulge the popular frenzy by the exhibition of newfashioned enactments, or of a new series

of tragedies-monks, jesuits, and friars, the better securing of these latter objects; were sure to pay the cost of the enter- it was known that men who went regutainment. It has often been affirmed, larly to mass would never take an oath even by the timid Catholic writers of the that the King of England is head of the last century, that the accession of the Church, or that the mass is a damnable House of Hanover inaugurated an era of idolatry; and these oaths formed the very more liberal toleration. It is to be feared barrier which fenced in all the rich and that this kind of admission on their part fat things of the land for the Protestants, was but a courtly device to conciliate, if and shut the Papists out. That observant not to flatter, that odious House and its and honest English traveller, Arthur partisans for the priest-hunters were Young, was so powerfully struck with this never more active than in the reign of true character of the Penal Laws, that in George I., when Garcia brought in his his account of his tour he more than once batches of captured clergymen, and re- dwells upon it with righteous indignation. ceived a good price out of the treasury He says:-"But it seems to be the upon each head of game. In the whole meaning, wish, and intent of the disreign of George II., until the administra- covery laws, that none of them (the tion of Chesterfield, Catholic worship had Irish Catholics) should ever be rich. to be celebrated with the utmost caution It is the principle of that system, that and secrecy. In this reign, Bernard wealthy subjects would be nuisances; MacMahon, Catholic primate, "resided and therefore every means is taken to in a retired place named Ballymascanlon, reduce, and keep them to a state of in the County of Louth; his habitation poverty. If this is not the intention was little superior to a farmhouse, and of these laws, they are the most abominfor many years he was known through able heap of self-contradictions that ever the country by the name of Mr. Ennis. were issued in the world. They are In this disguise, which personal safety so framed in such a manner that no Catholic strongly prompted, he was accustomed to shall have the inducement to become rich. travel over his diocese, make his visitations, exhort his people, and administer the sacraments."* In the same way, Michael O'Reilly, another primate, "lived in a humble dwelling at Turfegin, near Drogheda, and died here about the year 1758," just two years before the accession of George III. In the reign of George III. himself, we have seen Fathers Sheehy and Quinlan regularly indicted at assizes, for that they had, at such times and places, not having the fear of God before their eyes, but moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, said mass and did other functions of a Popish priest, against the peace of our lord the king, and contrary to the statutes in that case made and provided. We must, therefore, take these grateful acknowledgments of the liberal dispositions of the House of Hanover, with considerable qualification, remembering that the writers in question were labouring in the cause of Catholic Emancipation, under that royal House, and felt obliged to pay it some compliments upon its noble generosity.

As for the Catholic laity, their disabilities continued all this time in full force, and while a contemptous connivance was thown to their religious worship, good care was taken to debar them from all profitable occupation, and to seize the poor remnants of their property. Indeed, the toleration of their worship was for Brennan's Eccl. Hist., p. 573. t Ib.

.. Take the laws and their execution into one view, and this state of the case is so true, that they actually do not seem to be so much levelled at the religion, as at the property that is found in it. The domineering aristocracy of five hundred thousand Protestants feel the sweets of having two millions of slaves; they have not the least objection to the tenets of that religion which keeps them by the law of the land in subjection; but property and slavery are too incompatible to live together: hence the special care taken that no such thing should arise among them."-Young's Tour in Ireland, vol. ii., p. 48.

In another place Mr. Young repeats :"I have conversed on the subject with some of the most distinguished characters in the kingdom, and I cannot after all but declare that the scope, purport, and aim of the laws of discovery, as executed, are not against the Catholic religion, which increases under them, but against the industry and property of whoever professes that religion. In vain has it been said, that consequence and power follow property, and that the attack is made in order to wound the doctrine through its property. If such was the intention, I reply, that seventy years' experience prove the folly and futility of it. Those laws have crushed all the industry, and wrested most of the property from the Catholics; but the religion triumphs; it is thought to increase." Readers may now under

stand the nature and extent of that appears from the report at large, and the vaunted" toleration," and the true intent returns thereunto annexed; part of the and purpose of it, such as it was-namely, report is to the following effect: plunder.

CHAPTER XVI.

1767-1773.

66

Your committee beg leave to take notice, that the entire reduction of the army, after the conclusion of the peace, did not take place till the latter end of the year 1764; and that it appears from the return of the quarter-master-general, that there were great deficiencies in the several regiments then upon the establishment, at the several quarterly musters comprised in the said paper, which precede the Embezzlement. - Parliament prorogued. month of January, 1765; the full pay of Again prorogued.-Townshend buys his majority. such vacancies must amount to a very -Triumph of the "English Interest."- New attempt to bribe the Priests. - Townshend's large sum, and ought, as your committee "Golden Drops."-Bill to allow Papists to reclaim apprehends, to have been returned as a bogs.-Townshend recalled. Harcourt, Viceroy saving to the public, especially as it apProposal to tax absentees.-Defeated.-Degraded condition of the Irish Parliament.-American Re-peared to your committee, that orders

Townshend, Viceroy.-Augmentation of the army.

volution, and new era.

66

same time reduce the expense of the establishment in such a manner as might be more suitable to the circumstances of the nation. The Government, however, was able to secure a majority for their measure. As Mr Plowden expresses it, "Vainly did the efforts of patriotism encounter the exertions of the new system to keep individuals steady to their post on the Treasury bench."

were issued by government, not to recruit the regiments intended to be reduced." THE history of Lord Townshend's ad- Upon the whole, it was resolved that an ministration, and of the two which fol- address should be presented to his majesty, lowed, is unhappily little more than a to lay before him the report of the said history of the most shameless corruption committee, to acknowledge his constant and servility on the part of the Irish attention to the welfare of the people, to Parliament, relieved, however, by some express the utmost confidence in his examples of a rising national spirit in the majesty's wisdom, that if upon such reassertion of constitutional right. Very presentation any reformation in the said early in the same session of Parliament, establishment should appear necessary to which had finally passed the Octennial his majesty, such alteration would be Bill, the attention of the House of Com-made therein as would better provide for mons was espec ally called to the con- the security of the kingdom, and at the sideration of the army upon the Irish establishment. A message from the lordlieutenant was sent to the House by the hands of the Right Hon. Sir George Macarteney, in which he informed the Commons that it is his majesty's judgment that not less than 12,000 men should be constantly kept in the island for service, and that his majesty finding, that, consistently with the general public service, the number before mentioned The Parliament was now dissolved; cannot always be continued in Ireland, and the first Octennial Parliament was to unless his army upon the Irish establish- be elected. There was an unusually long ment be augmented to 15,235 men in the interval of sixteen months from the dissowhole, commissioned and non-commis-lution of the old to the meeting of this sioned officers included, his majesty is of opinion, that such augmentation should be immediately made, and earnestly recommends it to his faithful Commons to concur in providing for a measure which his majesty has extremely at heart, as necessary not only for the honour of his crown, but for the peace and security of his kingdom." The message was ordered to be entered on the journals, and at the same time a committee was appointed to inquire into the state of the military establishment, and also into the application of the money granted for its support from the 25th March, 1751. The result of this inquiry showed manifest misconduct, as

new Parliament. This interval was used by the Court in establishing the "new system;" which system was neither more nor less than buying the people's representatives in detail, by direct negotiation with individuals, instead of contracting for them by wholesale with the four or five noble "Undertakers," who owned many boroughs, and influenced the owners of many others. Lord Townshend hoped to render the concession of the Octennial Act worse than nugatory, and to create a new junta in support of the English interest, independent of their former leaders. But he had not yet so matured his plan as to have insured the whole game. He had