CHAPTER VIII.

Effort of Conscience to Vindicate its Authority.-Last Will and Testament of the Sham Squire.-Kilbarrack Churchyard. A Touching Epitaph.-Resurrectionists.-The DeadWatcher.-The Sham Squire's Tomb Insulted and Broken.His Bequests.

CHARITY, it is written, covereth a multitude of sins. Let us hasten, therefore, to record a really meritorious act on the part of Mr. Higgins. Anxious to throw the utmost amount of light on a career so extraordinary as that of Francis Higgins, we examined, in the Prerogative Court, his "last will and testament." From this document we learn that the Sham Squire's conscience was not by any means hopelessly callous. On the contrary, while yet comparatively young, it seems to have given him a good deal of uneasiness; and it may not unreasonably be inferred that, unscrupulous as we have seen Mr. Higgins, his early life was checkered by sundry peccadillos, now irrevocably veiled. Whatever these may have been, they contributed to disturb the serenity of his manhood, and conscience seems to have made an energetic effort to assert its authority. Unable any longer to bear the reproachings of his ill-gotten wealth, Mr. Higgins, on September 19th, 1791, then aged forty-five, mustered up courage and bequeathed a considerable portion of it to charitable purposes. It is amusing to trace the feelings of awe which in the last century filled our ancestors previous to attempting a voyage across St. George's Channel! Mr. Hig

gins's will begins by saying that as he meditates a voyage to England he thinks it prudent to prepare his will, and in humble supplication at the feet of the Almighty, and by way of making atonement for his manifold transgressions, he is desirous of leaving large sums of money to charitable purposes. But before he proceeds to specify them, the vanity of the Sham Squire shows itself in a command to his executors to commemorate his memory in a proper manner, on a slab "well secured with lime, brickwork, and stone,' in Kilbarrack churchyard. To defray the cost of this monument, Mr. Higgins left £30, and a further sum for his funeral. He adds, that in case he should die in England, his remains are to be removed to Ireland and "publicly interred." To a lady who had been of considerable use to Mr. Higgins, and had clung to him with great fidelity, but who suffered seriously from this circumstance, he bequeathed not only £1,000 as compensation, but all such property as might remain after paying the other bequests; and to his housekeeper, Mrs. Margaret Box, he left £100. But, perhaps, the most remarkable item in the will is £1,000 which he bequeathed to be laid out on landed security, in order that the annual interest might be applied to the relief and discharge of debtors confined in the City Marshalsea on Christmas eve in each year. * This generous bequest has served, we trust, to blot out some of the Sham Squire's achievements, not alone at the hazard-table, but by means of sundry pettifogging quibbles and doubles. Having been the means in early life of

* See Addenda for some correspondence on the alleged nonexecution of this bequest. The Four Courts Marshalsea of Dublin, previous to its removal westward, stood in Werburgh Street.

considerably increasing the number of inmates at the Lying-in Hospital, Mr. Higgins now creditably bestowed £100 upon that institution. To an asylum for ruined merchants, known as Simpson's Hospital, he bequeathed £50, and ordered that a particular ward in it should be dedicated to his memory. To the Blue-Coat Hospital, where his friend Jack Giffard* and other kindred spirits passed their youth, Mr. Higgins left the sum of £20. The Catholic and Protestant poor schools were remembered with impartiality by Higgins, who had been himself both a Catholic and a Protestant at different times. He bequeathed £10 to each of the Protestant schools, as well as a like donation to the Catholic charity schools of "Rosemary Lane, Adam and Eve, Bridge Street, and Lazor Hill.' To Mr., afterwards Colonel, O'Kelly, of Piccadilly, London, the owner of the celebrated race-horse "Eclipse," £300 was left, "and if I did not know that he was very affluent," adds Higgins, "I would leave him the entire of my property." Father Arthur O'Leary, one of Curran's "Monks of the Screw," was also advantageously remembered by Mr. Higgins.† To that accomplished ecclesiastic he bequeathed the sum of £100; but O'Leary never lived to enjoy it, and passed into eternity almost simultaneously with the Sham Squire, in January, 1802. To George J. Browne, assistant editor, £50 was bequeathed, in order to purchase mourn

*For a notice of Giffard, see the 32d note to General Cockburn's "Step-Ladder," Addenda J.

† Mr. Grattan, in the Life of his father (vol. ii., p. 198), mentions that O'Leary was very intimate with Colonel O'Kelly, and lived with him. O'Leary had a pension from the crown for writing down the White Boys. Mr. Grattan adds, on the authority of Colonel O'Kelly, that Mr. Pitt offered O'Leary considerable remuneration if he would write in support of the Union, but the friar refused.

ing for Mr. Higgins, as also certain securities held by Higgins, for money lent to Browne. Several other bequests in the same shape and under similar circumstances are made. Some young people, who shall be nameless here, are advantageously mentioned,* probably on natural grounds. William, James, and Christopher Teeling,t are named executors; but it appears from the records of the Probate Court that they declined to act. In those days there was no stamp duty; and the sum for which Higgins's residuary legatee administered does not appear. The will was witnessed by George Faulkner.

In September, 1791, Mr. Higgins declares that he has £7,000 in Finlay's Bank; "but my property," he adds, "will, I believe, much exceed this sum when all is estimated." Mr. Higgins having lived for eleven years subsequent to the date of his will, during which time he labored with fiercer zeal and reaped even richer remuneration than before, it may be inferred that his property in 1802 was not far short of £20,000.

Little further remains to be told regarding the Sham Squire. In 1799 we catch a parting glimpse of him in a work descriptive of the actors in the Union struggle. "From his law practice, his gaming-table contributions, and his newspaper," says this work, "the Sham now enjoys an income that supports a fine house in a fashionable quarter

*In the third volume of the Cornwallis Correspondence, one of the name is found obtaining a pension of £300 a year at the same time that Francis Higgins's services received similar recognition. A Christian name borne by the junior recipient is stated in the same work to have been "Grenville." He was probably born during the viceroyalty of George Grenville, Marquis of Buckingham, of whom Higgins was a parasite and a slave. See p. 78, ante.

Is this the party whose name appears in the Secret Service Money Book, viz.: November 5th, 1803, chaise for C. Teeling from the Naul, £1 68. Od."

of a great city, whence he looks down with contempt on the poverty of many persons, whose shoes he formerly cleaned."*

Mr. Higgins did not long live to enjoy the price of poor Lord Edward's blood. On the night of January 19th, 1802, he died suddenly at his house in Stephen's Green, aged fifty-six. To the lonely graveyard of Kilbarrack he bequeathed his body. A more picturesque spot where erring man might hope to rest," it would be difficult to select. Situated at the edge of the proverbially beautiful Bay of Dublin, the ruins of Kilbarrack, or as they are sometimes styled, "the Abbey of Mone," have long existed as a monument of that primitive piety which prompted the Irish mariners of the fourteenth century to erect a chapel in honor of St. Mary, Star of the Sea, wherein to offer up an orison for their messmates who had perished beneath the waves.†

In accordance with Mr. Higgins's expressed wishes, a large tabular tomb was erected over his remains in 1804. Beside it repose the ashes of Margaret Lawless, mother of the patriot peer Cloncurry, and near it lies the modest grave of John Sweetman, a leading United Irishman, from whose house adjacent Hamilton Rowan escaped, · crossed in an open boat from Kilbarrack to the Bay of Biscay, where it passed through the British fleet, and, although £1,000 lay on his head, was safely landed in France by the faithful fishermen of Baldoyle, who were well aware of his identity. But the Sham Squire's ambitious look

* Sketches of Irish Political Characters, p. 148.

An interesting notice of Kilbarrack appears in D'Alton's History of the County Dublin, pp. 113-118, but he does not suggest the origin of its name, i. e., Kill Berach, or the Church of St. Berach, a disciple of St. Kevin.