part, was a turning point in the history of the family. We know from
Tone’s account of the proceedings that Luke Teeling was _the_ man of the
Convention. When the counsels of the more pusillanimous seemed likely to
prevail, his commanding spirit and ability won the day for the bolder
measures advocated by Tone, and it was due to him that there went forth
from the great assembly a Petition to the King demanding (instead of the
partial relief for Catholic disabilities to which the Sub-Committee that
drew up the Petition had originally limited their request) Total
Emancipation. “My instructions from my constituents,” said Mr. Luke
Teeling in a speech which produced the most profound impression on his
audience, “are to require nothing short of total emancipation; and it is
not consistent with the dignity of this meeting and much less of the
great body which it represents, to sanction by anything which could be
construed into acquiescence on their part, one fragment of that unjust
and abominable system, the penal code. It lies with the paternal wisdom
of the Sovereign to ascertain what he thinks fit to be granted, but it
is the duty of this meeting to put him fully and unequivocally in
possession of the wants and wishes of his people.” The effect of Mr.
Teeling’s attitude was to win to his views even the most cautious—not to
say timid—members of the assembly, and his amendment was passed
unanimously. We cannot help feeling, as we read Tone’s “Diary,” and
follow the events subsequent to the return from London of the Delegate
who had gone from the Convention with the Petition to the King, that if
Mr. Teeling had been living in Dublin, instead of in distant Antrim,
things would have taken a different course for the Catholic Cause, and
the whole Cause of Ireland. His influence would have prevented the
spirit of compromise which had such disastrous results.
The years that followed the Catholic Convention were marked by a great
increase in bigotry—fomented with nefarious designs by the Irish
Government of the day. The new activities of the new men at the head of
the Catholic movement—wealthy and progressive merchants, like John Keogh
and E. Byrne; young professional men, fresh from Continental
Universities, like Dr. MacNevin—were countered by increased activities
on the part of the bigots. The Grand Juries sent in to Parliament
Petitions against the Catholic claims, and when these fell flat owing to
the clever pamphleteers like Tone and Emmet, other methods were resorted
to. The chief was the fostering of party spirit, which was first
evidenced in the enormous increase in sectarian associations. Against
the aggressions of the “Peep o’ Day Boys” (who got their name from their
custom of repairing at that hour to the houses of their Catholic
neighbours, dragging them from their bed and otherwise maltreating them,
while they searched their houses for arms) the Catholics, who not only
had no protection from the law or the armed forces of the crown, but
saw, on the contrary, both these mights used against them, formed
themselves into an association called “Defenders.” In those quarters
where the contending parties were nearly balanced, the peace was kept by
their wholesome fear of each other, but where the Catholics were in the
minority they were obliged to adopt a system of nightly patrols, each
townland or parish furnishing its proportion of armed men. But this
system was intolerably burdensome, and at length some of the young men
decided that there was nothing for it but to meet their opponents in the
open field, and have done with the matter there and then.
News of this impending conflict came to the ears of young Charles
Teeling, and although he was only a lad of seventeen at the time, he
determined to try and prevent it. He was well aware, he tells us in his
pamphlet on “The Battle of the Diamond,” that whether the Catholics won
or lost in the fight the result would be equally disastrous for them; if
they lost, they would be still more at the mercy of their savage
opponents than before; if they won, Government, which was undisguisedly
in favour of their enemies, would exact the severest penalties from
them. He hoped that the influence which his family enjoyed both with the
Catholics and the Protestants would make the opposing parties ready to
listen to his proposals for peace between them. Without saying a word to
anyone he set out therefore from Lisburn to the disturbed districts, but
he had not gone far when he saw that the task was too serious and
responsible for his seventeen years. He sent, therefore, to Belfast for
Samuel Neilson, then editor of the _Northern Star_, who for many years
had been the warm friend of his father in the causes of Reform and
Catholic Emancipation.
Before Neilson could reach him, the Battle of the Diamond had been
fought and won by the Protestants, and the Catholics were, as he
anticipated, in a worse condition than before.
The “Peep o’ Day Boys,” on the very day of the Battle of the Diamond
(September 21st, 1795) formed themselves into the famous association of
“Orangemen,”[49] and these immediately set themselves to exterminate the
Catholics. “They would no longer permit a Catholic to exist in the
county.[50] They posted up on the cabins of these unfortunate victims
this pithy notice, ‘To Hell or Connaught,’ and appointed a limited time
in which the necessary removal of persons and property was to be made.
If after the expiration of that period, the notice had not been complied
with, the Orangemen assembled, destroyed the furniture, burned the
habitations and forced the ruined families to fly elsewhere for
shelter.... While these outrages were going on, the resident magistrates
were not found to resist them, and in some instances were even more than
inactive spectators.” Many fearful murders were committed on the
unresisting Catholics, and it is estimated that seven thousand Catholics
were either killed or driven from their homes by the Orangemen in the
County Armagh alone. But the unhappy outcasts, even when they escaped
with their lives, had no shelter to fly to. In most cases they could
only wander on the mountains until either death relieved them, or they
were arrested and imprisoned; while the younger men were sent without
ceremony to one of the “tenders” then lying in various seaports, and
thence transferred on board British men-of-war. During the years 1796
and ’97 the Orange magistrates, aided by troops, established a reign of
terror over the greater part of Leinster and portions of Ulster and
Munster. They arrested and imprisoned, without any charge, multitudes of
innocent persons, and many of these were only removed from prison to be
sent to serve in the navy.
Footnote 49:
The first Orange lodge was formed on September 21, 1795, at the house
of a man called Sloan, in the village of Loughgall, Co. Armagh.
Footnote 50:
James Hope says that in reality what the Orangemen aimed at was to get
the farms of the Catholics who had recently, by their industry in the
linen trade, acquired the means of renting desirable farms.
Parliament—the famous Irish Parliament, Grattan’s Parliament, came to
the rescue of the oppressed by passing the Insurrection Acts and the
Indemnity Acts—the objects of which were to give the magistrates a free
hand to commit the most illegal outrages against the people without fear
of any unpleasant consequences for themselves. It is true that Grattan
fought gallantly against these measures, and to his splendid speech in
opposition to them we owe much of our information concerning the
outrages perpetrated by the “banditti of persecution.”
It was felt by the most far-seeing and patriotic of the Irishmen who
deplored this appalling state of affairs that the one hope of the
country lay in the system of the United Irishmen, which aimed at a real
union of Irishmen of all denominations in the bonds of love and loyalty
to their common country. In the North, especially, the urgency of this
union of hearts was keenly felt, and hence we find the younger men of
the advanced party like Henry Joy MacCracken and Lowry, working
strenuously with Charles H. Teeling and his brother-in-law, John
Magennis, to get “the Defenders” into the ranks of the United Irishmen.
Government showed its appreciation of their labours by an unexpected
_coup_. The most active protagonists of the policy were suddenly
arrested on a charge of high treason and clapped into prison in Dublin.
* * * * *
On a delightful September morning of the year 1796, Mary Teeling stood
on the doorstep of her beautiful home in Lisburn waving a farewell
greeting to her husband and her son Charles ere they rode off together
on one of those business expeditions—of which the extraordinary
affection uniting this father and son always made a pleasure excursion.
As she gazed on her stately husband, now in the pride of his years and
his honourable prosperity, making a superbly gallant figure, as he
always did on horseback, and saw how fine a pendant Charles’s dashing
youth and fresh good looks, offered to his father’s, can we wonder if
her heart swelled with wifely and maternal pride, and she turned to her
home duties with a prayer of thankfulness to God for all the good things
that were hers.
Alas! Alas! Sorrows and crosses beyond all telling were to follow that
radiant moment, and ere the day was over, the fair structure of her
life’s peace was to be laid in ruins.
Not very long afterwards she was startled by seeing the old groom who
had ridden out with Luke and Charles return with Charles’s riderless
horse. What dreadful thing had happened?
It was not _the worst_ at all events. No fatal accident had taken her
boy from her—but what really had happened it was difficult enough to
make out from the servant’s narrative. She could hardly believe that
Lord Castlereagh, an old friend of the Teeling family, who was under the
most real obligations to Mr. Teeling for his help and support on many
occasions, could really have her boy now under arrest in the house of
his father-in-law, the Marquis of Hertford. Lord Castlereagh, according
to the groom, had with his usual appearance of cordiality and friendship
joined the master and Master Charles as they rode up the main street of
the town, but when they came to the Marquis’s gates, Master Charles had
been asked by his lordship to accompany him. As soon as he had entered
the gates, these were closed and an armed guard had suddenly appeared.
The master had demanded admission, and this, after a time, was granted.
He was only allowed a few minutes with his son. Then he had come out,
and leaving orders with the groom to lead home Master Charles’s horse,
he had continued his journey alone.
She was not left long in doubt of the truth of the old servant’s
extraordinary tale. Very shortly afterwards she saw Lord Castlereagh
himself enter her house, accompanied by a military guard. Her youngest
son, John, a boy of fourteen, daring to demand by what authority the
house was thus forcibly entered, saw a pistol presented at his breast,
and himself compelled to accompany Castlereagh and his minions in their
search through the house for treasonable (?) papers. “My brother,”
Charles tells us in his “Narrative,” “conducted himself on this occasion
with a firmness and composure that could hardly have been expected from
a lad of his years.” It is regrettable that he does not mention the name
of the sister “who evinced the most heroic courage; she was my junior,
and, with the gentlest, possessed the noblest soul; she has been the
solace of her family in all subsequent afflictions, and seemed to have
been given as a blessing by Heaven, to counterpoise the ills they were
doomed to suffer.” One guesses, however, from the deep affection
entertained for her by Charles all through the after years, that this
heroic sister was her mother’s namesake, Mary.
As for the mother herself, she was “totally overpowered by the scene.
She had just been informed of my arrest, and now saw our peaceful home
in possession of a military force. Maternal affection created imaginary
dangers, and in the most energetic language she prayed Lord Castlereagh
to permit her to visit my prison, and to grant even a momentary
interview with her son. This he had the good sense and firmness to
decline, and in communicating the matter to me in the course of our
evening’s conversation, I expressed my approval of his decision. But my
mother felt otherwise; the afflicted state of her mind precluded that
reflection which should have rendered her sensible of the propriety of
Lord Castlereagh’s refusal. Agitated and disappointed, her gentle but
lofty spirit was roused, and burying maternal grief in the indignant
feeling of her soul, ‘I was wrong,’ she exclaimed, ‘to appeal to a heart
that never felt the tie of parental affection—your Lordship _is not a
father_.’ She pronounced these words with a tone and an emphasis so
feeling and so powerful, that even the mind of Castlereagh was not
insensible to its force, and he immediately retired with his guard.”
That night, Charles and the other prisoners, arrested on the same day in
Belfast, (including Neilson and Russell) were taken in coaches, under an
armed escort, to Dublin, and thrown into prison, where he remained for
about two years, without trial, until the breakdown of his health
procured his release.
In the meantime all sorts of misfortunes had befallen the happy
household on Church Hill. Some months after the arrest of Charles, the
Orangemen, in broad daylight, had entered Mr. Teeling’s premises,
wrecked his bleach-yard, looted his house, and in the course of a few
hours’ deliberate devastation left the entire establishment “a desolate
ruin.” And all this, as Charles points out in his narrative, “in the
blush of open day, within the immediate vicinity of two garrisoned
towns, an active magistrate, and an armed police.” It is quite clear
that the Orangemen were the agents of vengeance of the Government, who
thus designed to punish Mr. Teeling’s temerity in acting as Secretary of
a meeting of the Freeholders of Co. Antrim, convened by public notice at
Ballymena on May 8th, 1797, from which had gone forth a Petition to the
King setting forth the intolerable grievances under which the Irish
people were suffering, and praying his Majesty to dismiss the ministers
responsible for them.
As their lives were no longer safe in Lisburn, Mr. Teeling moved his
family to Union Lodge, near Dundalk, which had been previously used by
Bartle as his headquarters, But even here they were not safe. He got
private notice from a well-wisher that he was about to be arrested. He,
therefore, found an asylum for Mrs. Teeling and the girls with her
brother, Mr. John Taaffe, at Smarmore Castle, Ardee, while he looked
around him to make fresh provision for them.
It is not very clear at what date Bartle began to identify himself with
the United Irishmen; but it seems to have been about the same time as
Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O’Connor joined them, that is to say
early in 1796. He became the fast friend of Lord Edward, and before
Charles’s arrest on September 16th, 1796, the two brothers were frequent
guests at Kildare Lodge. It was here that Bartle met and loved the fair
Lady Lucy Fitzgerald, Lord Edward’s favourite sister, and who shall say
that he loved Ireland the less, because his vision of Kathleen Ni
Houlihan borrowed the lovely ardent face, and the bright eyes, veiled
with long dark drooping lashes of “Lucia.” While Lord Edward and
O’Connor were on the Continent negotiating with the French Government,
Bartle Teeling, under a plausible plea of a business journey, made a
complete tour of Ireland on foot. His object, according to his nephew,
was to make himself “perfectly acquainted with Ireland’s resources, with
her capabilities of entering upon, and maintaining an internal war, with
the intellectual and physical qualities, the habits and the manners of
her people, with their wants and their endurance, their hopes and their
resolves; as well as with the natural features of the country—her
rivers, her coasts, and her harbours.” The fact shows that Bartle
Teeling, for all his youth, was amongst the most far-sighted of the
leaders.
After his return from this journey he took up his residence in Union
Lodge, with his friend, John Byrne, of Worcester, who having served his
apprenticeship to the linen trade in Lisburn had established extensive
bleaching mills on the banks of the river at Dundalk.
It is from the evidence of the informers, John Hughes and Samuel Turner,
that we gather our scanty information as to Bartle’s activities about
this period. Hughes, a Belfast bookseller, arrested in October, 1797,
turned king’s evidence in order to secure liberation. Being brought
before the Lords’ Committee in 1798, he stated amongst other things,
that in November, 1796, he had been sent by Bartle Teeling (then settled
as a linen merchant in Dundalk) to Dublin to extend the United Irishmen
societies there. Hughes seems to have been a sort of organiser for the
Society, for again in June, 1797, he was sent for to come to Dublin.
Before he left the north, John Magennis (Betty Teeling’s husband)
administered an oath to him that he would not communicate the names of
those to whom he should be introduced. In Dublin he was present at a
breakfast given by Bartle Teeling, at his lodgings in Aungier Street,
where the other guests were John Magennis, Anthony MacCann, of Dundalk;
Samuel Turner; Messrs. John and Patrick Byrne, of Dundalk; Colonel James
Plunkett; A. Lowry; Mr. Cumming, of Galway; and Dr. MacNevin. The object
of the conference was to discuss the fitness of the country for an
immediate rising. Teeling, Lowry and MacCann were in favour of an
immediate effort; the others were afraid the people were not
sufficiently prepared for it.
Shortly afterwards, before the month of June was up, Bartle Teeling,
Turner, MacCann, Tennant, Lowry, etc., seeing the “Rising” postponed,
fled to Hamburg; and some of the others, including John Magennis, found
refuge in Scotland.
Bartle Teeling must have remained in Hamburg a very short time, for his
brother states that he joined the French army under the name of
Biron[51] and served a campaign under Hoche, whose death occurred on
September 8th of that year. He may have returned to Hamburg after the
death of Hoche, for in October of 1797 Turner reports to his friend,
Lord Downshire, a letter Teeling was sending from that place to Arthur
O’Connor. In November, Turner’s information shows Bartle in Paris. At a
date of the same year which it is difficult to determine, he paid a
stolen visit to Ireland, bearing messages from the Irish leaders on the
Continent to those at home. It is said that on this occasion Lady Lucy
gave him the ring which is still treasured in the Teeling family—and
which he wore until the eve of his execution, when he sent it to his
brother “as the dearest pledge he had to leave, of fraternal love.”
Footnote 51:
In the Castlereagh papers the assumed name of B. Teeling is stated to
have been Byrne.
* * * * *
All this time Mary Teeling was without news of him, and to the burden
which she already had to bear was added that of intolerable anxiety for
her eldest son, and great uneasiness about Charles, of whose health his
father brought back discouraging reports from his visits to Kilmainham.
The kindness of her brother John and his wife Catherine, and the
hospitality they so gladly offered her and her girls, could not make her
forget the wreck of her own beautiful home, and the irreparable damage
done to her husband’s fortune. Moreover, his health was much affected by
the condition of his affairs, and the fatigues he had undergone to
re-establish them. A trip to a Donegal Spa, followed by a horseback
journey to Connacht (where he hoped to establish a new bleach-green) had
exhausted him, and in the spring of ’98, he had been sent by his doctor
to Cushendall for sea-bathing. His frequent changes of abode were
represented to Government as connected with treasonable activities, and
accordingly on June 16th, 1798, he was arrested, and committed to prison
in Belfast, no charge being made against him.
For four years Luke Teeling was kept in prison, and was only liberated
in 1802. And during all that time no charge was brought against him, nor
did his repeated requests to be brought to trial bring any result. From
the provost prison in Belfast, he was moved to the _Postlethwaite_
tender, lying in Belfast Lough, one of the prison ships which were among
the horrors of the day; from that to Carrickfergus Castle, and finally
back to the prison in Belfast. It has been my privilege to read many of
the letters addressed by Luke Teeling from his various prisons to
members of his family, and truly it was with a great stirring of the
heart that one held them in one’s hands, and read the story they tell of
sufferings heroically borne; of a devotion to honour and principle which
counted no cost too great; of a Faith and Hope, and love of God and
God’s Church intense enough to make the writer free of the ardent and
heroic company of the saints. There is one letter written from the
_Postlethwaite_, where the firm hand trembles, and the strong heart
shows nigh to breaking—which it is impossible to read without tears. It
is the letter in which the father writes to Bartle’s old friend, Sam
Wall, the news of Bartle’s execution.
For in the days when Luke Teeling was enduring the horrors of the prison
ship in the sweltering summer heat,[52] Bartle’s brief but glorious day
had come to its heroic close on the “martyr’s mound” at Arbour Hill,
Dublin. It is not here that may be fully told the gallant story of
Bartle Teeling and the part he played in the Humbert Expedition. On his
white charger he rides for ever amid the “fair chivalry” of the
boy-heroes of Ireland amid the
“White horsemen with Christ their Captain—forever he.”
Footnote 52:
“The _Postlethwaite Tender_, on which my father was confined,
contained within the limits of one small apartment, thirty-four
gentlemen, of respectable rank in life and independent circumstances.
In this miserable prison-house, its inmates could never stand erect,
and crowded together in a circumscribed space not fourteen feet
square, they could only enjoy a partial and unrefreshing slumber in
succession. Here, entombed on the ocean, during the sultry heat of a
summer the most oppressive that has been remembered for thirty years,
they inhaled the pestiferous atmosphere of a tender; in the depth of
winter, when their numbers were reduced to a few, they were exposed
with open port-holes to all the inclemency of the chilling blast. Nor
were they permitted to receive a supply of wholesome food from their
friends; nothing was allowed them beyond what the parsimonious bounty
of Government afforded. At four o’clock in the evening the hatches
were locked down, and the prisoners remained in darkness until nine on
the following morning. Sometimes, forgetful of his situation, the
prisoner would raise his form to stand erect ... when the hard
repelling beam, in contact with his head, reminded him that the hand
of man had prescribed his limits. My father, whose fine-formed head
and silver locks are still present to my imagination, presented on his
removal from this prison, a perfect encrustment of festered wounds
from forehead to nape.”—C. H. Teeling’s “Narrative.”
And the day shall come, please God, when no Irish boy shall be ignorant
of the lines he wrote in the Golden Annals of their knightly company.
* * * * *
Was it given to his mother to see her idolised son once more before he
mounted the scaffold on Arbour Hill on September the 24th, 1798? To this
question we can find no answer. We know, from her husband’s letter to
Sam Wall, that for a time it was feared Mary Teeling would die, so
completely did she break down under the agonising load of her conjugal
and maternal sorrows. Bartle was not the only son whom Ireland claimed
from her. Charles and John were now on their keeping. A few months after
the consummation of Bartle’s sacrifice, John, her youngest son, her
Benjamin, was taken from her—and of him, as truly as of Bartle, she
might say, he gave his life for Ireland.
During her husband’s continued imprisonment, she tried to keep as close
to him as she could, and for a time, it would appear she was permitted
to share it in Carrickfergus Castle. Stifling her own sorrows she found
strength to comfort him, and to lend him courage. His affairs had been
reduced to ruin, by the vindictive action of Government, and to all his
other woes was now added that which must have been of a peculiarly
galling character to a man of his fastidious sense of honour: his
inability to pay his creditors in full.