CHAPTER VI.

A Secret Well Kept.-The "Setter" of Lord Edward at last Traced.-Striking in the Dark.- Roman Catholic Barristers Pensioned. - A Lesson of Caution.-Letter to the Author, from Rev. John Fetherston-Haugh.-Just Debts Paid with Wages of Dishonor.-Secret Service Money.-An Ally of "the Sham" Analyzed.-What were the Secret Services of Francis Magan, Barrister-at-Law? — Shrouded Secrets Opened.

"ONE circumstance," says a writer, "is worthy of especial notice. Like Junius, an unfathomed mystery prevails as to who it was that betrayed Lord Edward Fitzgerald and received the reward of one thousand pounds."*

When one remembers the undying interest and sympathy which have so long been interwoven with the name of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, it-is indeed surprising that for sixty-one years the name of the person who received one thousand pounds for discovering him should not have transpired. The secret must have been known to many persons in the Castle and to the executive; yet even when the circumstance had grown so old as to become the legitimate property of history, they could not be induced to relax their reserve. Whenever any inquisitive student of the stormy period of '98 would ask Major Sirr to tell the name of Lord Edward's betrayer, the major invariably drew forth his ponderous snuff

*Castlereagh Correspondence, vol. i., p. 468, First Series.

† Francis Higgins received the £1,000 for having pointed out Lord Edward's retreat; but recent inquiries on the part of the author have ascertained that Counsellor Magan betrayed Lord Edward to Higgins.

box, inhaled a prodigious pinch, and solemnly turned the conversation. Thomas Moore, when engaged upon the Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, made two special visits to Ireland for the purpose of procuring on the spot all the sadly interesting particulars of his lordship's short but striking career. The Castle was then occupied by an Irish Whig administration; but, notwithstanding Moore's influence with them, and their sympathy, more or less, with the hero whose memory he was about to embalm, he failed to elicit the peculiar information in which the Castle archives and library were rich. In 1841 Dr. Madden was somewhat more fortunate. He obtained access to a number of receipts for secret service money, as well as to a book, found under strange circumstances, in which the various sums and the names of the parties to whom paid are entered. But perhaps the most interesting entry was written in a way to defeat the ends of historic curiosity.

In the book of Secret Service Money Expenditure, now in the possession of Charles Haliday, Esq., the entry "June 20th [1798], F. H. Dis

* Dr.― has given us the following account of the discovery of this document: "When Lord Mulgrave, since Marquis of Normanby, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, some official in Dublin Castle cleared out and sold a quantity of books and papers, which were purchased in one lot by John Feagan, a dealer in second-hand books, who had, as his place of business, a cellar at the corner of Henry Street. I had the oppor. tunity of examining the entire collection, but, not being inuch of a politician, I only selected two volumes, Wade's Catalogue of the Plants of the County Dublin, and the Catalogue of the Pinelli Library, sold in London A. D. 1789, which I bought for 18. 60. They, and the others of the collection, had each a red leather label, on which, in large capitals, was impressed 'Library, Dublin Castle.' Among them was the MS. account of the expenditure of the secret service money, and of which I was the first to point out the possible value when it was about to be thrown, with various useless and imperfect books, into waste paper."

covery of L. E. F. £1,000," appears on record. The researches of one of the most indefatigable of men proved, in this instance, vain. The reader," says Dr. Madden, "has been furnished with sufficient data to enable him to determine whether the initials were used to designate Mr. Hughes, or some other individual; whether the similarity of the capital letters J and F, in the handwriting, may admit or not of one letter being mistaken for another, the F for a J; or whether a correspondent of Sirr, who sometimes signed him· self ‘J. H.,' and whose name was Joel Hulbert, an informer, residing in 1798 in Monastereven, may have been indicated by them."*

Watty Cox declared that Laurence Tighe, to whose house the bleeding body of Ryan was borne after Lord Edward's arrest, had played the spy; while on the other hand, Dr. Brennan, in his Milesian Magazine, broadly charged Cox with the perfidy. Murphy, an honest, simpleminded man, in whose house Lord Edward was taken, has not been exempt from suspicion. The late eminent anecdotist, Mr. P. Brophy, of Dublin, used to tell that Lord Edward's concealment became known "through an artilleryman who was courting Murphy's servant girl"; but Thomas Moore unintentionally disturbs this story, which never reached his ears, by saying "an old maidservant was the only person in Murphy's house beside themselves." The memory of Samuel Neilson, one of the truest disciples who followed the patriot peer, suffered from a dark inuendo advanced in Moore's Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and echoed by Maxwell (p. 47), in

* Madden's Lives and Times of the United Irishmen, vol. ii,, p. 443.

To one of

his History of the Irish Rebellion. the most honorable of Lord Edward's followers, Charles Phillips, under an erroneous impression, refers in a startling note attached (p. 288) to the last edition of Curran and his Contemporaries. He professes to know the secret, and adds: "He was to the last, apparently, the attached friend of his victim." In a memoir of O'Connell, from the pen of the late Mark O'Callaghan, it is stated in positive terms (p. 32) that John Hughes received the thousand pounds for the betrayal of Lord Edward. The son and biographer of the notorious Reynolds writes (vol. ii., p. 194): "The United Irishmen, and their partizans, especially Mr. Moore, emboldened by the distance of time and place, have insinuated that my father was the person who caused the arrest of Lord Edward." Further on, at p. 234, Mr. Reynolds flings the onus of suspicion on Murphy, while Murphy in his own account of the transaction says: "I heard in prison that one of Lord Edward's body guard had given some information." Again, Felix Rourke was suspected of the infidelity, and narrowly escaped death at the hands of his comrades. Suspicion. also followed William Ogilvie, Esq., who, as a near connection, visited Lord Edward at Moore's, in Thomas Street, a few days before the arrest, and transacted some business with him.* Interesting as it is, after half a century's speculation, to discover the name of the real informer, it is still more satisfactory that those unjustly suspected of the act should be

* When Miss Moore heard this dark suspicion started, she said, "If so, I know not whom to trust. I saw Lord Edward take a ring from his finger and press it on Mr. Ogilvie as a keepsake Tears fell from Ogilvie's eyes as he grasped Lord Edward's hand."-Tradition of the Moore family.

finally acquitted from it. It is further useful as teaching a lesson of caution to those who, blindfold, strike right and left at friend and foe.*

One of the most valuable letters printed by Mr. Ross in his Memoirs and Correspondence of Marquis Cornwallis (vol. iii., p. 320) is that addressed by Secretary Cooke to his excellency, in which Mr. Francis Higgins and others are recommended as fit recipients for a share in the £1,500 per annum, which in 1799 had been placed for secret service in the hands of Lord Cornwallis. "My occupation," writes this nobleman on 8th June, 1799, "is now of the most unpleasant nature, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. I despise myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work." And again : "How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court." It may be premised that "Mac" is Leonard McNally, the legal adviser and advocate of the United Irishmen. His opportunities for stagging were great, as, besides being a United Irishman himself, his name may be found for the defence in almost every state trial from Rowan's to that of the Catholic Delegates in 1811.† McGucken, the third name mentioned, was the solicitor to the United Irish

men.

* Never was stronger anxiety expressed to trace an informer, or fiercer maledictions hurled at his head. One stirring ballad, descriptive of the arrest and death of Lord Edward, says:

"May Heaven scorch and parch the tongue by which his life was sold,

And shrivel up the hand that clutched the proffered meed of gold!

May treachery for ever be the traitor's lot on earth,

From the kith and kin around him, in his bed and at his hearth!"

† See Addenda K.