a private gentleman.' The Chancellor, who was of undaunted personal bravery, I think did not like to shield himself by any official position, for he requested his friend Colonel Murray to breakfast with him next morning, and told him the whole affair. The Colonel at once saw the impropriety of any one in the Chancellor's station being held personally responsible for his conduct, and went to Mr. Rowan, with whom he was very intimate, to represent the indiscretion of which he had been guilty. 'A pretty piece of work you have made of it, Hamilton,' said the Colonel, taking a challenge to the Chancellor.' 'How came you to know what passed between us?' asked Rowan. 'I breakfasted with Fitz Gibbon this morning, and he told me the whole affair,' answered the Colonel. 1 The Lord Chancellor, in the course of a speech in the House of Lords in July, 1794, said, 'There were in Dublin two persons who were members of the French Jacobin Club, and who, he believed, were in the pay of that Society, to foment sedition in the country. One of their names appeared at the head of a printed paper published last month by the UNITED IRISHMEN, to which society they also belonged.'2 This is the only instance I could find of a challenge to a Lord Chancellor. ? There were two brothers named John and Henry Sheares, both members of the Irish Bar, and a full and carefully written memoir of both is contained in vol. iv. of the United Irishmen,' by R. R. Madden. This narrative states that when the Chancellor was a young briefless barrister, he paid his addresses to Miss Swete, and had been rejected. She eloped with Henry Sheares. Henry was called to the Bar in 1789, and John had been called the previous year. They were both United Irishmen and deeply implicated in the rebellion. John had always been strongly attached to republican principles, while Henry was humane and the best possible domestic character. A violent letter written by John Sheares, addressed to Lord Clare, designated as The Author of Coercion,' caused the suppression and seizure of the Press' newspaper. The letter found in type, ready for pub. lication, is given in Dr. Madden's United Irishmen,' vol. iv. p. 221. They were betrayed by a pretended friend named Armstrong, and tried in the Court of Common Pleas, Dublin, July 4, 1798. Found guilty of high treason and executed.-Ridgeway's Reports of the Trial of the Sheares, p. 51. Madden's United Irishmen, vol. iv. p. 264. CHAP. XLIX. CHAP. Letter to the Lord from Henry This speech having been reported in the Freeman's Journal' of July 20, 1794, was believed by a barrister, Mr. Henry Sheares, to have been pointed at him. Under this belief, he addressed the following letter to his Lordship: 'MY LORD,-Having this day seen in the public prints Chancellor of yesterday a gross and infamous calumny, which, from the strength of its allusion, I cannot avoid considering as directed against me, I think it incumbent on me to address myself to your Lordship prior to taking any step towards the punishment of its author. I am induced to take this liberty, my Lord, from the circumstance of your Lordship's name having been made use of (falsely I am persuaded) to sanction the malignant falsehood contained in that publication. It is therein asserted, that your Lordship, in the House of Lords, represented me as a member and agent of the Jacobin Club in France, and employed by them to foment sedition in this country-an assertion which I am bound to believe as ill-founded in regard to your Lordship as I know it to be false in respect to me. Assuring your Lordship of my perfect conviction that such an accusation could never have proceeded from the alleged source, I take the liberty of requesting that your Lordship will authorize me to assert that the publication was unwarranted by anything that fell from your Lordship, and that I may have your Lordship's permission for such legal proceedings against the publisher as may seem advisable. 'I am, my Lord, your Lordship's most obed 'Baggot Street, July 21, 1793.' 'HENRY SHEARES.' The Chancellor took no notice of this letter. Possibly he felt that were he to be held answerable to every person who chose to apply to himself the hard names he used against disloyal men, he would incur no small amount of 1 The United Irishmen, by R. R. Madden, vol. vi. N. S. p. 215. bodily risk. "The United Irishmen ' presented Mr. Sheares with a complimentary address. In his reply he says, 'In contempt and defiance of calumny and oppression, I will devote my life to the great cause for which we first united, confident that, by a firm adherence to the principles of our institution, we shall proportionately effect the welfare and happiness of our native country."1 'Here,' remarks Dr. Madden, the matter ended, with a great deal of dissatisfaction openly (and perhaps violently) expressed on the part of both brothers; the younger talked of challenging the Chancellor, and the expression is attributed to him, perhaps unjustly, "of seeking him on the woolsack, if he were not to be found elsewhere." 2 CHAP. XLIX. interview It is highly creditable to Lord Clare that he did not allow these insulting remarks to prevent his dissuading these unfortunate gentlemen from involving themselves in the perils of rebellion. My late truly learned friend James Roche of Cork, the Roscoe of Ireland, in his 'Essays by an Octogenarian," relates: Before the outbreak of the insurrection in 1798, during the Assizes of Limerick, Lord Clare desired to have an interview with the two Sheares, Private to which my father, in the hope of a pacific result, invited between them at his house; but it ended, unfortunately, in more the Chanintense and exasperated irritation, as was discernible in the young men's flushed features and defiant bearing as they parted. Yet the Chancellor's object was certainly benevolent and conciliatory, but they were intractable. The interview was close and private, still I marked their aspect on leaving the house inflamed and indignant in every lineament. Possibly overtures repugnant to their feelings may have thus excited them."4 The United Irishmen, by R. R. Madden, vol. vi. N. S. p. 219. 2 Ibid. Vol. ii. p. 112. Dr. Madden does not consider the Chancellor actuated by any kindly feelings towards these hapless brothers. cellor and the Sheares. CHAP. CHAPTER L. LIFE OF JOHN EARL OF CLARE, LORD CHANCELLOR, CONTINUED. THE intemperate enthusiasm engendered by the French Revolution spread republican principles throughout the northern parts of Ireland, but for some time they were Revolution not shared by any considerable number of the Roman Effects of the French in Ireland. Fears of the Lord Chancellor. Catholics. Their clergy,' observes Grattan, 'always sincerely attached to their religion, were terrified at the excesses and cruelties perpetrated on the pastors of their Church, and at the open profanation of religion displayed in France. Besides this, the Roman Catholics were never republicans; the Presbyterians and the Protestants of the north were more susceptible, both on account of the nature and sturdiness of their politics and their religion." But the fears of the Lord Chancellor, that disaffection and French connection were extensively in operation, was perhaps only natural, for Theobald Wolf Tone, while Secretary to the Catholic Convention, was connected with a body to which the Government was hostile, and the conduct of the executive has been blamed for not proceeding against Tone as well as against Hamilton Rowan.2 The Rowan to whom I have already referred was a man of large fortune and considerable talents. To a figure of the grandest proportions, he united a mind guileless and romantic to a degree almost incredible. It was no surprise to those who knew him that he threw himself heart and soul into the ranks of those who styled themselves 'the Patriots of Ireland." Despite the advocacy of Curran, 2 Ibid. p. 167. 1 Grattan's Life, vol. iv. p. 129. In Lord Cloncurry's 'Personal Recollections,' many amusing facts of Hamilton Rowan are related. 'We made a pedestrian tour through England Hamilton Rowan was found guilty, and sentenced to a fine of 500l. and two years imprisonment.' СНАР. L. together,' says his Lordship, p. 162, 'and when, as I well remember, his Feats of practice at starting from our inn of a wet morning was, to roll himself into the Hamilton Rowan. first pool he met, in order that he might be beforehand with the rain. He won a race on foot in presence of Marie Antoinette and the French Court, wearing heavy jack boots, while his competitor, an officer of the Garde de Corps, was equipped with light shoes and silk stockings.' Mr. Rowan was Secretary to the Society of United Irishmen at Dublin, when established for the purpose of Constitutional reform, and an address, published by Mr. Rowan, though not written by him, calling upon the volunteers to resume their arms for the preservation of the general tranquillity, was prosecuted as a seditious libel. Mr. Curran was selected by Mr. Rowan to conduct his defence, and it was in the Rowan course of that remarkable speech, in 1794, every line of which shows its claim prosecuted. to be placed beside the best specimens of ancient or modern oratory, he delivered the finest eulogium upon British law that ever fell from human lips. When Defended commenting upon the part of the publication which proposed complete emanci- by Curran. pation to persons of every religious creed, Curran continued, I speak in the Extract spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and insepar- from able from, British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, speech. the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he Eulogy on treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No British matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced, no matter what laws. complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him, no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down, no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery, the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty, his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION!'-Curran's Life, by his son, vol. i. p. 312. Vide also Howell's State Trials for 1794. Curran's 1 Mr. Fitzpatrick in his popular work, Ireland before the Union,' states: 'Rowan had not been long in Newgate when the startling fact reached him that the Government had discovered he had been implicated in high treason, and would proceed against him on that indictment. MacDowel the under gaoler, and his son, ignorant of the coming prosecution for high treason, accompanied their prisoner to his adjacent residence in Dominick Street, for the nominal purpose of enabling him to sign some legal documents. Rowan was Escape of a man of large property, and could afford to pay his way with munificence. Hamilton The under gaoler stood at the door gloating over a purse of gold which had Rowan. just been put into his hand, while Rowan entered the back drawing-room, and gliding by a rope into the garden beneath, he entered the stable where he found a horse ready saddled. He escaped to Mr. Sweetman's of Baldoyle. A fishing-boat was procured in which he embarked for France. While coasting off Wexford a revenue cutter bore down on them, threw a paper into the fishing boat and sailed off. The paper was a copy of the Proclamation, dated May 2, • Now occupied by the eminent Irish solicitor John Macnamara Cantwell. |