Tag Archives: United Irishmen

On This Day – 24  August 1803 – Death of James Napper Tandy

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If you type the words ‘I met with’ into a Google search, in Ireland at least, an obliging or very prescriptive algorithm will add the words ‘Napper Tandy’ immediately. I haven’t tried this in the UK, the USA, Uzbekistan or the Falklands so I’m not quite sure if it works there as well. Maybe if you’re listening on the web you might give it a try and get back to us.

All of which goes to show that Google has obviously engaged the services of a number of Irish Republican algorithms, because the phrase ‘I met with Napper Tandy’ comes from one of the great rebel tunes The Wearing of the Green. The song starts with the patently ridiculous assertion that ‘the shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground’, goes on to claim that there is a law against ‘the wearing of the green’ – presumably it was just out of fashion at the time – and goes on to observe that ‘I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand and he said ‘How’s poor old Ireland and how does she stand’ – which scans very badly indeed as you have to extend the ‘how’ to a ‘how-ow’ to make it work.

The song was a Dublin street ballad about the failure of the 1798 rebellion and the bloodletting that followed. The version that includes the reference to Napper Tandy was written by the playwright Dion Boucicault for his 1864 play Arrah na Pogue, set in Wicklow during the United Irishmen’s insurrection of 1798.

But who was the remarkable Mr. Tandy?

Well, like a lot of the United Irishmen, James Napper Tandy was a Protestant, Irish Republican revolutionary, born in 1739 who went to the same Quaker school as Edmund Burke. He became a Dublin City councillor, railed and fought against municipal corruption, and advocated an Irish boycott of British goods in retaliation for tariffs and restrictions imposed by the British government on Irish products. Except, of course, they didn’t call it a boycott back then because he didn’t happen for another century or so.

In 1784 he became involved in a major spat with the powerful Irish Attorney General John Fitzgibbon. Fitzgibbon, provoked by Tandy’s support for parliamentary reform, accused him of being unable to pay his debts and of being responsible for riots in Dublin . Tandy, in response, took out an advertisement accusing Fitzgibbon of lying. It was tantamount to challenging the Attorney General to a duel. Just in case Fitzgibbon didn’t get the message Tandy strapped on his sword and paraded up and down College Green, in front of the Irish parliament building. Fitzgibbon haughtily chose to ignore the challenge on the basis that Tandy was ‘not a gentleman’. Ouch!

Tandy was always to the fore when it came to radical causes, he was, for example, strongly influenced  by the ideas of the French Revolution, and equally supportive of the American colonists in their struggle for independence. In 1791 he, along with Theobald Wolfe Tone, became one of the founding members of the Society of the United Irishmen. None of this endeared him to the authorities and in 1792 he fell foul of his second top lawyer, John Toler, the Solicitor General. Toler made a reference in a parliamentary debate to the fact that only Tandy’s own mother would have found him physically attractive. [Based on the attached portraits you can decide for yourselves!] Rather than issue a challenge, which Toler indicated in advance that he would be happy to accept, Tandy sought an explanation for the derogatory remarks. His fear was that, as the insult had been made under parliamentary privilege, if he fought and won a duel against Toler, he would be sentenced to death for murder. The episode did little for his reputation until the issuing of a challenge led to Tandy’s arrest. He ended up spending barely an hour in jail but his brief inacareration went some way towards rehabilitating his reputation as a radical firebrand.

He also had a short career as an architectural critic, albeit more muscular than the current Prince Charles, when he led a mob against the building works taking place at the new Custom House, designed by James Gandon. This particular riot was conducted on behalf of the inhabitants of the area around the older model whose trade would be affected when the new building was finally commissioned. Later, fearing arrest for having taken the oath of the Catholic secret society, the Defenders, Tandy fled to the USA. When he fetched up in Boston the Freeman’s Journal waspishly noted the fact and warned the people of the city of the imminent threat from Tandy of ‘plague, pestilence and sedition’, suggesting that he was capable of some primitive form of germ warfare while rousing a mob to violence.

Tandy returned to Europe in 1798 and was all at sea during the United Irishmen’s rebellion, having been given command of a French ship which landed in Donegal. It left rather hurriedly, without achieving very much, after the defeat of General Humbert’s invading French force in Mayo. He was later arrested in Hamburg and handed over to the British authorities. He was sentenced to death for his brief Donegal vacation but was freed under pressure from Napoleon Bonaparte himself, and fled to France.

Radical United Irishman, James Napper Tandy, who never quite managed to fight a duel with anyone very interesting, died of dysentery in Bordeaux two hundred and fifteen years ago, on this day.

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On This Day – Bishop Joseph Stock’s diary of the 1798 Rebellion

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The United Irishmen’s rebellion of 1798 was over—except that it wasn’t. Not quite. There would be a sting in the tail for the British authorities, who had already savagely put down the main uprisings in Antrim and Wexford, and minor eruptions elsewhere. They had been royally assisted by spies and informers, like Francis Magan and Francis Higgins, in anticipating the rebellion in Dublin. Their luck had held out in the winter of 1796 when a French fleet had been unable to land, due to adverse weather conditions at Bantry Bay.

But there was a fairer wind off the coast of Mayo on 22 August 1798 when, two months after the United Irishmen had otherwise been defeated, shot, piked, hanged, drawn and quartered, the French arrived in the form of a force of around 1000 men, led by General Jean Joseph Humbert. A little bit trop tard but better than jamais. The great Irish-American writer Thomas Flanagan called it The Year of the French in his epic novel. In reality it was much closer to ‘The Fortnight of the French’, a designation that lacks a bit of punch and drama. The intervention, initially successful, was all over by 8 September.

The French invasion force—dispatched on the basis of that age-old axiom that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’—begat the short-lived Republic of Connacht, under the Presidency of the Mayo landowner John Moore. But it also spawned a fascinating captivity memoir, written by the incumbent Church of Ireland Bishop of Killala, Joseph Stock.

Stock, a fluent French speaker, was born in Dublin in 1740. The son of a wealthy merchant he was educated at Trinity College. He became a clergyman, and was briefly headmaster of Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, before becoming a bishop in January 1798. In 1776 he had published a biography of the great Irish cleric and philosopher, Bishop George Berkeley, a few years after his death.

Stock had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the French force arrived. He was captured, along with the British defenders of Killala. That evening he met Humbert. The encounter was extremely revealing. It was clear that Humbert had been led to believe that there would be considerable Irish aristocratic support for the invasion. He actually asked an establishment figure like the Church of Ireland Bishop of Killala if, as Stock puts it, ‘he chose to embrace the fortunate opportunity at once of serving himself and liberating his country.’ Stock politely declined the offer and chose to become a prisoner.

The French experienced initial success, notably in overpowering a British force at Castlebar in a skirmish that became known as ‘The Races of Castlebar’, because of the rapidity of the British retreat. This victory prompted uprisings in Longford and Westmeath. These were quickly put down by British troops and loyal Irish militia units. But, no poetry intended, it all came unstuck at Ballinamuck. There Humbert’s force, augmented by Irish rebels, was soundly defeated. The captured French were later exchanged for British prisoners of war, but many of the Irish were immediately executed. Stock demonstrated his personal loyalties by referring in his narrative to 8 September 1798 as ‘a day memorable for the victory at Ballinamuck.’

Humbert was later repatriated in a prisoner exchange, rejoined Napoleon’s army, and even fought against the British, alongside Andrew Jackson, in the American war of 1812. A street in Ballina is called after him, on it stands a monument erected in his honour.

Stock’s narrative of the rebellion was remarkably nuanced and even-handed for someone who was a Bishop of the Established Church, and who had been a prisoner of the rebels. He emphasised that there was little retribution of any kind on the part of the Irish rebels allied to the French force. The only killings took place in pitched battles. There was some looting and arson, but Stock points out that the depredations of the British forces were far greater than those of the United Irishmen. Stock chose to publish the memoir anonymously in 1800, which was, in retrospect, a wise move. All references to himself, or ‘Monsieur l’Eveque’, as Humbert called him, are in the third person. But he was quickly identified as its author, and subsequent imprints bore his name. His relative fairness probably did him no favours when it came to his subsequent clerical career.

Bishop Joseph Stock, author of a fascinating memoir of one of the most colourful episodes of the 1798 rebellion, was born two hundred and seventy-seven years ago, on this day.

 

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On This Day – 14 July 1798 The Sheares brothers are hanged in Dublin

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Irish rebellions should probably all come equipped with something we could call an IQ. That’s an Informer Quotient. This is a scientific measure of how many British agents from among the ranks of the rebels it took to betray the insurrection.

The scale would go all the way from ‘Genius’ at one hundred and fifty, to Witless Imbecile at zero. Let’s take a couple of examples. Obviously the 1798 rebellion was so riddled with spies and informers that if it had been a boat it would have sunk in a calm and windless cup of tea. So, we’ll call that one hundred and fifty. Then, right at the other end of the scale, there’s the 1916 Rising. Here the rebels desperately tried to tip their hand repeatedly, even to the extent of calling the whole thing off in a newspaper advertisement, but the exceptionally dim British authorities had no idea what was going on under their noses. We’ll call that an IQ of zero.

Totally off the scale of course is the War of Independence where Michael Collins’s own spies and informers were tripping over each other in Dublin Castle. That would be a minus IQ of about fifty for the rebels.

But the prize for individual revolutionaries most beset by informers has to go to the United Irishmen, the Sheares brothers. It took not one, not two, but three spies to bring them down. Given the going rate for intelligence information in 1798 it must have cost the authorities almost as much as the bribes paid to pass the Act of Union two years later.

The brothers Sheares, John and Henry, from Cork were both lawyers who had witnessed the French revolution and the frequent use of the guillotine. On the boat back home from Calais they met an utterly disillusioned Daniel O’Connell, pledged to non-violent political action, based on the bloodthirsty slaughter he had observed in Paris. The Sheares brothers were not so easily put off. When they got back to Dublin in 1793 they joined the United Irshmen. Both began organizing in their native Cork.

Enter Spy Number 1. His name was Conway and he kept the Castle well informed of the activities of the brothers, while passing himself off as an enthusiastic supporter.  He gets the bronze medal.

While busying themselves in Cork the brothers were also part of the Dublin Society of the United Irishmen. Here their nemesis was Thomas Collins, another apparent republican fanatic but, in reality, a well-embedded British spy. Because he ratted on so many other prominent revolutionaries he gets the silver medal.

But the gold unquestionably goes to Captain Warnesford Armstrong. You’d think his name would have given him away. How could you be called Warnesford and not be a British spy? After the capture of most of the members of the United Irishmen’s Directory (note the French influence) in March 1798, John Sheares took over and ordained the date of 23 May for a nationwide uprising. Armstrong insinuated himself into the confidence of the brothers, to the point where he was a regular visitor to their house on Baggot street, and dandled the children of Henry Sheares on his treacherous knee. He recorded that he didn’t even have to take an oath in order to become a member of the United Irishman. Not that he would have let something as silly as an oath get in the way. John Sheares himself actually warned Armstrong not to come to the house on one occasion, because certain activists believed him to be in the act of betraying the movement, and were intent on murdering him!

Two days before the planned rising John and Henry Sheares were arrested, on information supplied by Armstrong, and put on trial. Armstrong himself, clearly pleased at his handiwork, testified against them. Despite being defended by the great advocate John Philpot Curran, it took the jury a mere seventeen minutes to convict.

John and Henry Sheares, victims of three separate informers, were hanged, drawn and quartered, two hundred and nineteen years ago, on this day.

 

 

 

 

 

On This Day – 19 May 1798 Francis Magan betrays Lord Edward Fitzgerald

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Today neither a birth nor a death, but an act of supreme betrayal.

Everyone knows that a variety of Irish revolutionary organizations were, over the years bedeviled by informers. Contrary to Brendan Behan’s famous axiom, it would appear that the first item on the agenda of such groups was not ‘the split’ but the decision on who would be the most effective government spy.

One of the most enthusiastic of those was Francis Magan—his most distinguished victim was the charismatic and highly romanticized United Irishman leader, Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was the almost anonymous Magan’s polar opposite, aristocratic, idealistic and captivating. He had fought in the British Army in the American War of Independence, journeyed down the Mississippi river with an escaped African-American slave, Tony Small, who had saved his life on the battlefield, was elected to the Irish parliament as a supporter of the ‘Patriot’ leader, Henry Grattan, and joined the United Irishmen. Fitzgerald, despite his elevated social status, was pledged to the establishment of an Irish Republic, along French lines. In the planned rebellion of 1798 Fitzgerald was to lead the Dublin-based rebels.

Magan, born in 1774, was a lawyer who had come into a decent inheritance and was a man of independent means, but not fabulously wealthy like Fitzgerald, son of the Duke of Leinster. However, Magan didn’t exactly want for money, so his betrayal of the United Irishmen’s cause cannot be explained away simply by the pursuit of thirty pieces of silver. He joined the United Irishmen in 1792, and became a prominent member of the organisation’s Dublin committee.

Magan’s conduit to the government was the infamous Francis Higgins. Known as ‘The Sham Squire’ Higgins was the proprietor of Dublin Castle’s favourite newspaper, The Freeman’s Journal, and a long-standing government agent. Higgins informed the Under Secretary, Edward Cooke, Britain’s spymaster in Dublin, about Magan’s availability and his unrivalled access to the revolutionary plans of the United Irishmen. Cooke immediately recognized that the lawyer could prove to be an invaluable asset. He wasn’t far wrong. After negotiating a nice little earner for himself—£1000 for information leading to the arrest of Fitzgerald—Magan went to work.

In order to help him locate Fitzgerald, Magan organized a meeting of the Dublin United Irishmen in his own house, on the night of 17 May 1798. Lord Edward may even have spent the night in Magan’s home, at No. 20 Usher’s Island on the south quays. The authorities failed to apprehend Fitzgerald on that occasion, however. Time was running out for the Castle. On 19 May Fitzgerald was due to lead more than a thousand rebels in an attempt to seize the capital city. Enter Magan one more time. He kept the Castle informed of Lord Edward’s whereabouts—he wasn’t too far away from them, on Thomas Street—and this time they got their man. Fitzgerald was wounded in the attempt to arrest him, lingered for a few days, and died in Newgate Prison, on 4 June. The rebellion of the United Irishmen, as a consequence, failed utterly in Dublin.

The spies, however, fell out amongst themselves. In 1802 Higgins died without having handed over the £1000 that had been promised to his protégé. The Castle had been under the illusion that Magan had been paid off, and were dismayed when he sued the Higgins estate. They did not particularly want their machinations being discussed in open court, so the erstwhile informer was bought off with an award of £500.

Magan got away with it in his own lifetime. He died in 1834, and prior to that had been an active member of Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Association. There is no evidence that his career as a ‘spook’ was extended into the 19th century, though he did offer to rat out a few more rebels in 1801. He was not outed as an informer until 1859, by the historian William J.Fitzpatrick, who also exposed Francis Higgins as a gifted but corrupt ‘supergrass’. Fitzpatrick, unaware that Magan was a relatively wealthy man, assumed that his actions had been prompted solely by greed.

Francis Magan successfully betrayed Lord Edward Fitzgerald to the British authorities two hundred and nineteen years ago, on this day.

 

 

On This Day – Drivetime – 13.2.1820 – Death of the informer Leonard McNally

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There are spies, there are informers, there are traitors, and then there is Leonard McNally. He was one of the most effective and enduring British spies in the ranks of an Irish revolutionary organisation. The unlucky, or careless, rebels were the United Irishmen, the men of 1798.

McNally, a barrister and playwright, was actually a prominent and radical member of the United Irishmen. He was eager for the organisation to accept military assistance from revolutionary France. But when William Jackson, an agent of the French government, was arrested in Ireland in 1794, McNally, rather than wait to be shopped for treason by Jackson, took a more pro-active course and offered his services to the Crown in exchange for not being hanged, drawn and quartered. Given what actually happens to someone who is hanged drawn and quartered he might well be forgiven for this initial capitulation. But the fact that he was still providing intelligence to Dublin Castle a quarter of a century later suggests that it had become more about remuneration than self-preservation.

After the 1798 rebellion McNally defended many United Irishmen charged with involvement in the abortive insurrection. He didn’t win a single case. It could have been because his clients were guilty to begin with, or because he was fiendishly unlucky. But his winless streak was more likely to have been related to the fact that he was passing information on his clients to the prosecution. Not really the done thing for a defence attorney I’m sure you’ll agree.

Among the men he defended were William Jackson, Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and, in 1803, Robert Emmet. So, were there an Irish Pantheon he would probably have contributed to the presence of about half the occupants. In the case of Emmet he advised the Crown that his client would enter no defence and allow cross examination of no witnesses on his behalf, as long as they did not misrepresent the facts. So the trial would be a walkover for the prosecution and Dublin Castle didn’t even have to bother fabricating evidence that might come back to haunt them in court.

After 1803 you’d have thought McNally would have quietly and gracefully retired. But a £200 bonus, on top of his hefty pension of £300, ensured that ‘JW’, the code name by which he was known to his spymasters, stayed in business until his death in 1820.

In a doubtlessly fruitless effort to mitigate McNally’s evil reputation it should be pointed out that he was also a successful playwright and librettist. One of his songs, The Lass of Richmond Hill, became a huge hit in its day, 1789, and a favourite of King George III, the one who had occasional bouts of madness. It was written about McNally’s first wife Frances and describes her as ‘a rose without a thorn’.

In one of those wonderful ironies for which a fiction writer would be pilloried were it to appear in a novel, a legal treatise, written by McNally the year before his betrayal of Robert Emmet, was pivotal in the definition of the principle of guilt being ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ before conviction.

His espionage activities did not become apparent until after his death when his son sought to have the payment of his pension continued post mortem. When the Lord Lieutenant inquired as to why a pension had been paid to such an ardent nationalist, the truth began to emerge.

Leonard McNally, barrister, playwright, serial informer and a rose with many thorns, died 195 years ago, on this day.