FATHER O'COIGLY HANGED
Mr. Froude, after a perusal of the letters of Downshire's friend, and
other documents, states that a priest named O'Coigly or Quigley 'had
visited Paris in 1797, returned to Dublin, and had been with Lord
Edward Fitzgerald at Leinster House; that he was now going back to
Paris, and Arthur O'Connor determined to go in his company.[39] Their
mission, though ostensibly for presenting an address from the London
corresponding society of United Irishmen to the French Government, was
really for the double purpose of urging upon it the prompt despatch
of an invading fleet to Ireland, and of deposing the Irish envoy,
Lewins, who, instead of Turner, had begun to be suspected. Mr. Lawless,
afterwards Lord Cloncurry, invited O'Coigly to dinner in London; and it
was on this occasion that O'Connor met the priest for the first time.
O'Coigly, under the name of Captain Jones, with Allen[40] seemingly as
his servant, and Leary, left London for Margate, on their mission of
mystery. O'Connor travelled by another route to Margate, took the name
of Colonel Morris, and was accompanied by Binns. On the following day,
at the King's Head Inn, Margate, all the party were arrested by two Bow
Street officers. O'Coigly and O'Connor had dined at Lawless's lodgings
more than once; and here, though not necessarily with his knowledge,
the travelling arrangements seem to have been made. Whether Turner
was a guest does not appear; but he was certainly in London at this
time, and as one of the Executive Committee is likely to have been
invited. Presently it will be shown that from this quarter came all
the information which enabled Pitt to seize O'Connor and O'Coigly at
Margate _en route_ to France, although, to elude observation, they had
journeyed by different roads. The prisoners, meanwhile, were removed
to London, examined before the Privy Council, and then transmitted to
Maidstone Jail to await their trial. The source of the information
which caused these historic arrests on February 27, 1798, has hitherto
remained a mystery. Father O'Coigly, while in jail, wrote some letters,
in which he failed to avow his share in the conspiracy, but admitted to
have made a previous visit to Cuxhaven. This was part of the city of
Hamburg. Turner, in addition to being the official agent of the United
Irishmen at Hamburg, was an old Dundalk acquaintance of O'Coigly's, and
no doubt was promptly hailed by the country priest.
Turner and O'Coigly are mentioned in Hughes's information. They
belonged to the same district organisation. After describing Teeling,
Turner and Lowry working in concert in 1797, Hughes adds that priest
Quigly or O'Coigly introduced him at that time to Baily and Binns.[41]
The paper revealed by Mr. Froude, now shown to be Turner's, and other
letters from the same hand in the 'Castlereagh Papers,' show that
the writer always felt a strong dislike to work with the 'Papists,'
especially priests. 'Casey, the red-faced, designing Dublin priest,'
was one of the leading men he met in Dublin, and whose 'prudence or
cowardice' disgusted him. Immediately after O'Coigly's return to
London we find the authorities on his track. The priest himself refers
to an abortive attempt to arrest him by night at Piccadilly.[42] Mr.
Froude, dealing with this case, does not seem to have suspected that
the arrival in London of Downshire's friend, at the time of the arrests
at Margate, was other than accidental. Yet clearly it was business of
no ordinary moment which brought him back to London at this time. It
will be remembered that, panic-stricken and fearing death from the
assassin's knife, he had returned to Hamburg in October 1797, ere an
answer came from Pitt to the proposition of betrayal conveyed by Lord
Downshire.
It happened that at this particular time [writes Mr. Froude]
that Downshire's friend was in London, and Pelham (the Irish
Secretary) knew it. If the 'friend' could be brought over, and
could be induced to give evidence, a case could then be established
against all the United Irish leaders. They could be prosecuted
with certainty of conviction, and the secrets of the plot could be
revealed so fully that the reality of it could no longer be doubted.
Most earnestly Camden[43] begged Portland[44] to impress on the
'friend' the necessity of compliance. 'Patriotism might induce him
to overcome his natural prejudice.' If patriotism was insufficient,
there was no reward which he ought not to receive.[45] Portland's
answer was not encouraging: 'The friend,' he said, 'shall be
detained. As to his coming over to you, I have reason to believe
that there is not any consideration on earth which would tempt
him to undertake it. He is convinced that he would go to utter
destruction. Better he should stay here and open a correspondence
with some of the principal conspirators, by which means you may be
apprised of their intentions. If I could be satisfied, or if you
would give it as your positive opinion that this person's testimony
or presence would crush the conspiracy, or bring any principal
traitor to justice, I should not, and Lord Downshire would not,
hesitate to use any influence to prevail on his friend to run any
risk for such an object. But if he should fail and escape with his
life, he could render no further service. Weigh well, therefore,
the consequence of such a sacrifice.'[46]
After describing the arrest at Margate of Father O'Coigly, O'Connor,
and Binns, Mr. Froude writes:--
O'Connor wrote a hurried note to Lord Edward, telling him not to
be alarmed, nothing having been taken upon them which compromised
any individual.[47] The messenger to whom the note was entrusted
was unfortunate or treacherous, for it fell into the hands of
the Government. _Had O'Connor known the connection between the
Government and Lord Downshire's friend, he would have felt less
confident._ There was evidence, if it could only be produced, which
would send both Lord Edward and himself to the scaffold.
It may be observed here--_en parenthèse_--that Downshire must have felt
conflicting emotions when called upon to communicate information which
might bring Lord Edward to the block. His father had married the sister
of James, Duke of Leinster; Lord Edward was, therefore, the first
cousin of Lord Downshire.
One of the most truthful chapters of the laudatory life of Reynolds,
the informer,[48] is that aiming to show that he could not have been
the spy who caused the arrests at Margate. But the biographer is unable
to offer any suggestion as to who that agent was--so carefully veiled
from Reynolds, one of their own confidential prompters, was the part
played by Turner in that episode.
The information which led to the arrest of O'Connor, O'Coigly, and his
companion cannot have come from Ireland, because in the 'Book of Secret
Service Monies expended in the Detection of Treasonable Conspiracies'
no entry appears connected with the above incident, unless 'Dutton's
Expenses going to England to attend Quigly's Trial,' and where he had
merely to swear to the priest's handwriting. For his courage in doing
this--having once seen him sign a lottery ticket at Dundalk--50_l._
is paid to 'Dutton on June 12, 1798.' The names of Newell and Murdoch
certainly appear in the 'Secret Service Money' book about that time;
but it is clear from Newell's narrative--doubtless a genuine and frank
confession--that neither he nor Murdoch had any hand in tracing the
movements of O'Coigly and O'Connor.
Lord Castlereagh was now acting for Pelham as Chief Secretary
for Ireland. On July 25, 1798, a secret letter--printed in the
'Castlereagh Papers'--is addressed to him from the Home Office:--
I am directed by the Duke of Portland to inform your Lordship
that I have received intelligence from _a person very much in the
confidence of [Reinhard] the French Minister at Hamburg_,[49]
that several French officers and soldiers have lately arrived
at that place, where they have purchased sailor's dresses,
clothed themselves in them, and gone on to Denmark and Sweden,
from whence it is intended that they should embark for the North
of Ireland.[50] I know not what credit is to be given to this
information, which must be received with caution, as it does not
appear to have reached his Majesty's Minister at Hamburg.
It comes, however, from a person[51] whose reports while he was
in this country[52] were known to his Excellency as singularly
accurate and faithful--_the same who gave such an accurate account
of the proceedings of O'Connor and Coigly_ whilst they were in this
country, and on whose authority those persons were apprehended.[53]
Some of the letters of 'Lord Downshire's friend,' not being
forthcoming in the official archives, Mr. Froude assumed that they
had been destroyed; but, however masked, they are recognisable in the
'Castlereagh Correspondence.' Several anonymous papers, furnishing
information of the movements of the United Irishmen about Hamburg and
elsewhere, crop up in that book, having been enclosed from Whitehall
for the guidance of Dublin Castle. One of these letters makes special
reference to information already sent to Lord Downshire.[54]
Another long letter of the same batch will be found the first placed
in the second volume of Castlereagh, though an examination of it
shows that it belongs to the middle of the previous volume. Detailed
reference is made to Father O'Coigly's mission and movements, both in
France and in London. One is struck by the accuracy of its information
regarding the Ulster United Irishmen, of whom Turner was one. Of
MacMahon, who travelled to Paris with O'Coigly, we learn that, '_tired
of politics_, especially those of France, he is to write to Citoyen
Jean Thomas,[55] _à la poste restante à Hamburg_, whom he looks on as a
good patriot.'[56] It will be remembered that a similar phrase occurs
in the letter of Downshire's friend, printed by Froude, _i.e._ Rowan
had 'professed himself sick of politics.' Again, 'I found Maitland and
Stewart, of Acton, both heartily sick of politics.'
How to hang O'Coigly was now the difficulty. The Government knew--from
somebody who had worked with him--that he was deep in the treason; but
nothing could persuade the informer to prosecute him openly.
On April 11, 1798, Wickham writes from Whitehall:--
It is most exceedingly to be lamented that no person can be sent
over from Ireland to prove Coigly's handwriting. Proof of that kind
would be so extremely material, that I have no doubt that the law
officers would think it right to put off the trial if they could
have any hope of any person being found, in a short time, who could
speak distinctly to his handwriting.[57]
The secret adviser who, as Portland said, 'should be detained,' worked
his brain until at length a man, hailing from a place suspiciously
familiar to Turner, is sent for to swear to the point. Samuel Turner,
formerly of Newry, had intimate knowledge of every man in the place.
One Frederick Dutton, described as 'of Newry,' was now subpœnaed by the
Crown to swear to O'Coigly's handwriting in a letter addressed to Lord
Edward Fitzgerald. 'He claimed to have seen Coigly write his name for
the purpose of getting a watch raffled which belonged to a poor man
under sentence of death.' Dutton had been a dismissed servant and had
kept a public-house at Newry without a licence.[58]
Turner--it seems absurd to doubt the identity--got back to London on
Tuesday, May 15, 1798. What secret help he gave to the law officers
can only be inferred, for they pledged themselves that he should never
be asked to come forward publicly. Though O'Connor, O'Coigly, and
Binns[59] were arrested on March 1, their trials did not take place
till late in May 1798. The Duke of Norfolk, Lords Moira, Suffolk,
Oxford, John Russell, and Thanet, Fox, Sheridan, Whitbread, Erskine,
Grattan, all testified to O'Connor's character. All the prisoners were
acquitted, except the priest, notwithstanding that Lord Cloncurry paid
a counsel to defend him. He was hanged on Penenden Heath, June 7, 1798.
Judge Buller had leant heavily on O'Coigly in his charge.
O'Coigly [writes Lord Holland] was condemned on false and
contradictory evidence. I do not mean to aver, as Lord Chancellor
Thurlow assured me he did to Judge Buller, who tried him, that
'_if ever a poor man was murdered it was O'Coigly_,' but simply
to allude to a circumstance which, in the case of a common felon,
would probably have saved his life. The Bow Street officer who
swore to finding the fatal paper in his pocket-book, and remarked
in court the folding of the paper as fitting that pocket-book,
had sworn before the Privy Council that the same paper _was found
loose in O'Coigly's great-coat, and, I think, had added that he
himself had put it into the pocket-book_. An attorney of the name
of Foulkes[60] gave me this information, and I went with it to Mr.
Wickham, who assured me that the circumstance should be carefully
and anxiously investigated before the execution. But the order had
gone down, and while we were conversing the sentence was probably
executed.[61]
Lord Holland adds that when the Judge was descanting on the mildness
and clemency of the Administration, O'Coigly quietly took a pinch of
snuff and said 'Ahem!'
When no evidence was produced in court which could legally ensure a
verdict against O'Coigly, it seems reasonable to assume from the tone
of the law officers and the Judge that they possessed some secret
knowledge of his guilt, for in point of fact, though O'Coigly declared
his innocence, he was deeply pledged to the conspiracy.
'O'Connor was leaving the court in triumph,' writes Mr. Froude, 'but
the Government knew their man too well to let him go so easily. He
was at once re-arrested on another charge, and was restored to his
old quarters in Dublin Castle.'[62] From whom the fatal whisper came
does not appear, but the sequel seems to leave no doubt that to Turner
it was due. MacMahon and other prominent rebels were Presbyterian
clergymen of Ulster. It was an object now with those who desired the
collapse of the conspiracy to detach the Presbyterian party from the
'Papists.' Binns was a staunch Presbyterian rebel, a colleague of
O'Coigly. In a letter dated Philadelphia, 1843, Binns, addressing
Dr. Madden, states that great efforts were used to try and persuade
O'Coigly to implicate him, 'offering Mr. Coigly his life if he would
criminate me agreeable to the instructions of the Government, which
proposal he indignantly refused to accede to. Though heavily ironed, he
pushed the gentlemen out of his cell, when he there lay under sentence
of death.'
We have seen that when severely tried he resorted to snuff. He had
other small consolations. Even in his irons he talked irony. One of
several letters of protest addressed by the priest to Portland, shortly
before his death, tells him that he is 'one of his Grace's envoys
to the other world, charged with tidings of his mild and merciful
administration.'
As O'Coigly's memory has been all but beatified as a martyr's, it is
due to the interests of historic truth to add--especially after the
remarks of Lord Holland--the following from a letter written by Arthur
O'Connor in 1842:--
Though there was not legal evidence to prove that the paper found
in Coigly's coat-pocket was Coigly's, yet, the fact is, it was
his, and was found in his riding-coat; for when the five prisoners
were brought to Bow Street, a report was spread that the papers
taken on the prisoners were lost; for the first time Coigly said
it was fortunate the papers were lost, for that there was one in
his pocket that would hang them all. He never made a secret to his
fellow-prisoners that he got that paper from a London society. In
my memoirs I will clear up this point.
O'Connor's promised work, however, never appeared.
As regards Dutton, the witness who swore to O'Coigly's handwriting, his
subsequent career was cast on a spot also frequented by Turner.[63]
He is found at Cuxhaven, not very far from Hamburg, and, until 1840,
holding office in its postal and diplomatic departments, and the
husband of a lady well connected.[64] Cuxhaven, as gazetteers record,
was from 1795 a place of the utmost importance for the maintenance of
intercourse between England and the Continent.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] _The English in Ireland_, iii. 312.
[40] Allen, a draper's assistant in Dublin, afterwards a colonel in the
service of France.
[41] _Report of the Secret Committee_, p. 31. (Dublin, 1798.)
[42] _Life of the Reverend James Coigly_, p. 28. (London, 1798.)
Halliday Collection, R.I.A., vol. 743.
[43] The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
[44] The Home Secretary.
[45] Camden to Portland, March 1, 1798. _English in Ireland_, iii. 310.
[46] Portland to Camden, March 7, 1798.
[47] In O'Connor's valise were found 900_l._, a military uniform, and
some papers relating to Lord Edward Fitzgerald.--W. J. F.
[48] _Life of Thomas Reynolds_, by his Son. (London, 1839.)
[49] For proofs of the intimacy between Reinhard and Turner at Hamburg,
see _Castlereagh Papers_, i. 277 _et seq._; and my chapter on McNevin,
_infra_.
[50] In August, 1798, Humbert and 900 Frenchmen arrived in Killala Bay.
[51] 'The person' is the name by which Downshire's friend, the
betrayer, is usually styled in the letters from the Home Office to
Dublin Castle. The words, 'while he was in this country,' show that he
had left England, as Downshire's friend admittedly did, in panic.
[52] '_I.e._ in October 1797, when he called upon Downshire; and again
in March 1798, when Portland offered him large sums if he would openly
prosecute.'
[53] Mr. Lecky describes this arrest, and rather suggests that it
may have been due to Higgins in Dublin (_vide_ viii. 55). The above
evidence points surely to the Hamburg spy.
[54] See _Castlereagh Papers_, i. 231-6.
[55] Of course one of Turner's many aliases. See p. 97, _infra_.
[56] _Castlereagh Correspondence_, ii. 1-7.
[57] _Ibid._ i. 178.
[58] Dutton, on his examination, said that he had sworn in Ireland
against one 'Lowry.' This is the man whom Turner, in his letters,
constantly points to. Dutton admitted that he had previously sworn
secrecy to the Society of United Irishmen, but the oath had been sworn
only on a spelling-book.
[59] Trial of Arthur O'Connor and James Quigley at Maidstone. Howell's
_State Trials_, vols. xxvi. and xxvii.
[60] Foulkes was the attorney whom Lawless engaged to defend O'Coigly.
Lord Cloncurry, in his _Memoirs_, writes very inaccurately of the
facts. He says that the arrests took place at Whitstable, instead of
Margate, and that O'Coigly was hanged on May 7, whereas he should have
written June. See p. 67.
[61] _Memoirs of the Whig Party._ By Lord Holland, afterwards a Cabinet
Minister.
[62] Froude's _English in Ireland_, iii. 321.
[63] See p. 31, _infra_.
[64] In the Pelham MSS. is a letter signed Frederick Dutton, regarding
his Vice-Consulate, and dated Dec. 19, 1825.