СНАР. XLVII. Duel be tween the AttorneyGeneral and Curran. Duels between lawyers. with warding it off. I will not enter into a conflict in which victory can gain no honour. The right honourable gentleman should have known that on former occasions I was merciful in my resentment.' These were the days in which the barbarous custom of duelling was very prevalent in Ireland.' Fitz Gibbon sent a hostile message to Curran, and a meeting took place. Mr. Ogle was second to the Attorney-General. The duel between the Attorney-General and Mr. Curran was fought near Ball's Bridge, Dublin, a favourite spot for hostile encounters before the Fifteen Acres grew into fashion for such affairs. The conditions were that both combatants might fire when they chose. Curran fired first; and, on returning his fire, Mr. Fitz Gibbon declared himself satisfied.' Curran afterwards said, 'I never saw any man whose deliberation was more malignant than Fitz Gibbon's. After I had fired, he took aim at me for at least half a minute; and, on its proving ineffectual, I could not help exclaiming to him, "Mr. Attorney, you certainly were deliberate enough!" "2 1 Scott, Chief Justice and Earl of Clonmell, fought several duels, as did also Toler, Chief Justice and Earl of Norbury; Metge, a Baron of the Exchequer, fought three duels; Curran, Master of the Rolls, fought three; Fitz Gibbon, Lord Chancellor; Egan, Chairman of the County Dublin; Doyle, a Master in Chancery; Hutchinson, Provost of Trinity College; Sir Jonah Barrington, Judge of the Admiralty; Henry Grattan, and Peter Burrowers, fought duels. 2 As some contradictions appear respecting the cause of this duel, I have taken pains to trace it, and find the weight of evidence leads to show it originated in the angry debate just referred to, and not, as stated by the late William Henry Curran in his 'Life,' or by Mr. Charles Phillips in his 'Recollections,' earlier in the year. Both these usually accurate authors represent this duel to have arisen from the charge made by Mr. Fitz Gibbon against Curran in the debate on February 24, that he was a 'puny babbler;' Henry Grattan, in the Life of his Father, mentions it as I have stated in the text, and this is strongly corroborated by a letter from the first Lord Plunket, dated August 27, 1789, in which he states the result apparently with some regret; 'Curran and Fitz Gibbon fought, but unluckily they missed each other.'-Life of Lord Plunket, vol. i. p. 46. CHAPTER XLVIII. LIFE OF THE EARL OF CLARE, LORD CHANCELLOR, CONTINUED. CHAP. XLVIII. Court. theatricals On the north side of Dame Street, Dublin, stood Shaw's Court, containing a spacious dwelling-house. This was occupied in 1756 by the Dublin Society, which had been Shaw's incorporated by Royal Charter in 1749-50, for promoting husbandry and other useful arts in Ireland. The Society removed from this house to one in Grafton Street in 1767, Private and a beautiful little theatre was opened in Shaw's Court, in 1786. in 1786. Many Members of the Irish Parliament were great actors (in public and private), and the first play announced here had to be postponed until the prorogation of Parliament, so many of the performing members belonged to the House. As I have a copy of the bill of the play which was performed, I place M.P. after the name of the dramatis persona entitled to this distinction. The Viceroy, Duke of Rutland, with his Duchess, the Duke of Leinster, and the most fashionable circle of Dublin, witnessed the performance. When the play concluded, the Attorney-General had the Grand honour of receiving the Lord Lieutenant and Duchess of banquet Rutland, the Duke of Leinster, and other members of the Attorney VOL. II. at the Generals. XLVIII. CHAP. nobility and gentry to a superb supper at his house in Ely Place. This was a bachelors' fête, and probably the last as such, for I find he was married to Miss Whaley on July 1, following. Duke of Rutland. The Duke and Duchess of Rutland, the principal guests of the Attorney-General on this occasion, deserve more than a passing notice. The host could hardly have foreseen the powerful influence the fair wife of the Viceroy was destined to have upon his fortunes at a most momentous crisis. Charles, Fourth Duke of Rutland, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1784. He married, when he attained the age of twenty-one, Mary Isabella, youngest daughter of Charles Duke of Beaufort, one of the most fascinating women of her time. The young Duke, for he was Viceroy at thirty-was gay, and, I fear I must add, dissipated. He loved sports and amusements better than business, though we have known Viceroys who, devoted to field sports in due season, had a keen eye for business Duchess of also. The Court of the Duke was presided over by her Grace with a charm that enhanced its pageantries, and added to its general festivity. She was the theme of poets, and inspired more than one Irishman with admiration that outstepped the formality of Court etiquette. Ministerialist and Oppositionist were alike enchanted by her beauty, and won by her affability. Parties were given for her amusement, and Vanessa's Bower at Celbridge was the scene of a fête champêtre, when Sir Hercules Langrishe, attired as a peasant, presented a poem to the Duchess, in which he recalled the loves of Dean Swift and the unhappy Miss Vanhomrigh, under the forged names of Cadenus and Vanessa. The verse of Sir Hercules ran Fête at thus: Bright Stella here to view the conscious shade Cadenus taught Vanessa how to love, But, heavenly messenger, vouchsafe to say, Before the lightning of your eyes was seen, The girls were pretty and the fields were green; Felt equal joys and raptures of their own. CHAP. XLVIII. pointed Gibbon. Though of a cold and reserved temperament, Fitz Gibbon Disapappears to have been a victim to the power of the blind affection of god, and a mark for the arrows of Cupid. His enmity John Fitz against the unfortunate brothers, John and Henry Sheares, is stated to have been the successful rivalry of Henry Sheares, who won the heart and hand of Miss Swete, to whom Fitz Gibbon was deeply attached." Fitz Gibbon was perfectly enamoured of the beautiful Duchess, but a more legitimate object of affection soon presented grounds for the rumour that he was an engaged man. His professional income now averaged 7,000l. a-year, independently of the large landed property he inherited; and he succeeded in finding a wife in Anne, eldest daughter of Richard Chapel Whaley, Esq., of Whaley Abbey, in the Marriage county of Wicklow, to whom he was married on July 1, Attorney1786. Mr. Whaley, like a near namesake of later days, General was a furious anti-Catholic, who used the license of power entrusted to the magistracy in the days of rebellion so fatally for the Roman Catholic houses of worship, that he was known by the sobriquet of Burn-Chapel Whaley. He The soldier referred to was the Commander-in-Chief, General O'Hara. The lawyer was the Attorney-General, whose devotion to the beautiful Duchess was so gratifying to her, that she repaid him with a friendship that blossomed into kind deeds of the greatest benefit to him, as we shall see in due time. United Irishmen, by Dr. R. R. Maddon, vol. ii. 1st Series, p. 26. 0 2 of the in 1786. CHAP. was a humourist in his pleasanter moods, as appears by a versified order on his banker in favour of his wife : XLVIII. Disturbed state of Ireland in 1787. Buck Whaley mansion, now the Catholic University. Mr. Latouche, Open your pouch, And give unto my darling, For which this will be your bailey, Signed, Richard Chapel Whaley.' In the Irish Parliament of 1787, a Bill was introduced to check outrages in the South of Ireland. The Reverend Arthur O'Leary, of whom I have already made honourable mention, used his trenchant pen to dissuade his unfortunate countrymen from the perpetration of these crimes. Many Members of Parliament, when discussing the Bill, attributed these excesses to the pressure of want and distress, and though the Attorney-General admitted the prevalence of deep misery, he felt it his duty to preserve the peace of the country. It was impossible,' he said, 'for human wretchedness to exceed that of the miserable 1 A brother of Lady Clare was Buck Whaley, one of the eccentric characters whose freaks are chronicled in the ballads of Dublin towards the close of the last century. He was also called Jerusalem Whaley, having laid a bet he would play ball against the walls of Jerusalem and return to Dublin in a space of time so short as to be then deemed impossible. This was a fine subject for a ballad : One morning walking Georges Quay, A monstrous crowd stopped up the way; A sight that made all Dublin stare. Buck Whaley lacking much some cash, He wagered full ten thousand pound, Whaley won the bet. Another feat was his leaping over a mail coach, which he did, by having the vehicle placed beneath the windows of his house, the splendid Whaley mansion' in St. Stephen's Green, Dublin. How mortified Burn-Chapel Whaley and his son-in-law, the Earl of Clare, would be, if they beheld this princely dwelling, with its spacious halls and noble suites of rooms, thronged by the students and professors of the Catholic University, of which it now forms part, presided over by the learned and respected Monsignor Woodlock, D.D., the immediate successor to the first rector, the renowned champion of Catholicity, John Henry Newman, D.D. |