Tag Archives: William Congreve Alcock

On This Day -Drivetime – 30 May, 1807- Alcock-Colclough duel and a dubious link to the Kennedy fortune

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Irish elections can be boisterous and violent affairs but none more so than the Co.Wexford election to the British House of Commons in 1807, just a few years after the Act of Union.

 

Among the contestants (who, unbeknownst to himself included the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan) were two local grandees William Congreve Alcock and John Colclough. Colclough’s brother, who gloried in the traditional Irish monicker of Caesar, had been the local MP but was a prisoner of war in France. The Colclough’s, who were generally popular landlords, had lived at Tintern Abbey, a former monastery, since the mid-16th century.

 

The election campaign was a bitter one, polling was due to take place on 1 June but with just two days to go Alcock took exception to what he alleged was an attempt by Colclough to steal the support of tenants obligated to vote for him in what was, by today’s standards, a slightly democratic election. In what appears like a piece of egregious over-reaction, he challenged Colclough to a duel and in the encounter that followed Alcock shot his political opponent dead. As the MP for Athlone, George Tierney observed tartly, ‘that’s one way of getting an election’. As duelling was still socially acceptable in early 19th century Ireland Alcock was acquitted of murder and allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons. But he was not to continue in office for long – two years after the duel he was committed to an asylum. The Irish judge and memoirist, Jonah Barrington wrote of Alcock that ‘alas! the acquitted duellist suffered more in mind than his victim had done in body. The horror of the scene, and the solemnity of the trial, combined to make a fatal inroad on his reason! He became melancholy; his understanding declined; a dark gloom enveloped his entire intellect; and an excellent young man and perfect gentleman at length sank into irrecoverable imbecility.’

 

But there is an interesting postscript to this sad tale. Not all those affected by the duel came out of it badly.

 

Colclough’s estate at Tintern Abbey was managed by his steward, one James Kennedy. Because of the absence of Caesar Colclough in France Kennedy continued to run the estate until his Caesar’s return in 1815. During that period something of the order of £80,000 disappeared. Nobody could pin it directly on the steward but in 1818 Kennedy was dismissed at the behest of Caesar Colclough’s wife, Jane Stratford Kirwan. The money remains unaccounted for. There are, however, persistent rumours that at least some of it may have been used a generation later to fund the migration to the USA of the Kennedy family in the 1840s, and perhaps even to set up the Boston saloon that became the basis of the family fortune. A descendant of James Kennedy, by the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, went on to become President of the United States of American in 1961.

 

Was the Kennedy fortune based on the tragic outcome of a tragic confrontation between two Irish aristocrats? Perish the thought.

 

William Congreve Alcock shot his opponent John Colclough dead in a duel 207 years ago, on this day.

 

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Affairs of honour – the Irish ‘code duello’

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As #anniversaries has featured some interesting duels and duellists of late – some random thoughts on the practice of ‘gentlemen’ attempting to kill each other in ‘affairs of honour’.

Before pistols became widely available in the 17th century ‘affairs of honour’ between gentlemen were usually settled with the sword as the weapon of choice. But Irish playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was clearly on to something in 1775 when he created the bellicose Irish squire, Sir Lucius O’Trigger, in his celebrated play The Rivals. (Although, in the play itself, despite his name, Sir Lucius fights a duel with swords.)

In 1777, with pistols now far more frequently used than swords, a new ‘code duello’ was adopted at the summer assizes in Clonmel ’by the gentlemen of County Tipperary, County Galway, County Mayo, County Sligo and County Roscommon and prescribed for general adoption throughout Ireland.’ The Irish code soon gained wide acceptance in Britain and North America. Under the new code fatalities tended to increase as the use of pistols was more dangerous than the more benign regime of sword-play to ‘first blood’. Also, under the Irish code the practice of firing into the air or the ground to avoid wounding an opponent was discouraged.

Duelling, which was a 17th century import from Britain,  was endemic in Ireland in the 18th century. Such was its popularity that nineteen companies in Dublin alone made or sold dueling pistols. The death rate in such encounters in Ireland was 1:4 whereas in England it was 1:14.  The spread of the practice was assisted by supportive attitudes even within the judiciary and the legal establishment. John Scott, (aka Copper-faced Jack), Ist Earl of Clonmel, was an Irish Attorney General, Solicitor General and Lord Chief Justice between 1777-98. But he himself fought four duels and defended the practice, observing that …

‘There are cases where it may be, and when it is prudent for a man to fight a duel – cases in which the law does not afford him redress – cases of preserving malignity, cases of injured honour, cases of a wounded spirit; and a wounded spirit who can bear? In cases of this complexion the courts will never interfere with its discretionary authority against a man.’

The duel became increasingly socially unacceptable as the nineteenth century progressed, but in Ireland at least it remained an appropriate response to an insult until well into the 1820s. Prominent Irish politicians and aristocrats fought or threatened duels. In 1807, for example, William Congreve Alcock shot and killed John Alcock in a duel in Wexford. Both were contenders for the Wexford parliamentary seat. Alcock accused Colclough of attempting to steal voters to which he felt he was entitled. (www.soundcloud.com/irishhistory)

The duel was used by far more prominent politicians than Alcock and Colclough as a potential means of ridding oneself of inconvenient opponents. Before the passage of the Act of Union in 1800 a pugnacious supporter of the Irish Parliament pledged to challenge sufficient supporters of the Union to swing the vote against the template of Pitt and Castlereagh.   In 1815 then Irish chief secretary Robert Peel challenged the leader of the Roman Catholic Irish opposition, Daniel O’Connell, to a dawn meeting (with pistols) in Ostend. The future Prime Minister made it to Belgium but O’Connell was arrested en route. Peel, naturally, accused O’Connell of having engineered his own arrest in order to avoid the confrontation. O’Connell, just as naturally, accused the chief secretary of having arranged his arrest for the same reason.

In February 1815 Daniel O’Connell fought a duel with a unionist member of Dublin Corporation, John d’Esterre in which d’Esterre died. Thereafter, so mythology has it, when he attended religious services, O’Connell always wore a white glove over his hand as a sign of penitence. O’Connell’s second on that occasion and subsequently on of his most prominent supporters in the 1828 Clare election, the O’Gorman Mahon, was an inveterate duelist. He is rumoured to have fought dozens and to have adopted the duel as ‘his favoured method of conflict resolution.’ Thackeray based his truculent character ‘The O’Mulligan’ (Mrs. Perkins’ Ball) on Mahon.

In the 1840s James Shields, an Irish born Illinois politician, who went on to represent three states in the U.S. Senate, challenged Abraham Lincoln to one-to-one combat over an alleged slight. The two actually faced each other (Lincoln, who towered over Shields, wisely chose swords rather than pistols) but the matter was resolved by the seconds before any blood was drawn.  (www.soundcloud.com/irishhistory)

Even in the 1880s (1881 to be precise) – a time when duelling was supposed to have died out completely – when former Hussar William O’Shea first became aware that Charles Stewart Parnell was involved in an affair with his estranged wife he issued a challenge. However, when Parnell accepted O’Shea backed down. The duel was eventually fought out in the London divorce courts in November 1890, to Parnell’s detriment.

By the early 19th century it appears that duelling in Ireland had become a form of adventure sport for a bored aristocracy and an infinite resource for the ‘gentleman’ who doubled as an aristocratic bully. For example an Irish landlord who delighted in the name of Hyacinth O’Rorke, ‘was accustomed to take his walks abroad with a pistol in one hand and a horsewhip in the other’. After numerous duels and horse-whippings he met his match at the hands of a courageous magistrate, Phillip ‘Caoch’ Perceval, who had the good fortune to shoot him in the head in an encounter. The fact that ‘caoch’ is the Irish for ‘blind’ suggests that Perceval was exceptionally fortunate in killing the inveterate duellist with the florid name.

http://www.libraryireland.com/irelandpainted/gentlemen-ireland.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_duels#British_and_Irish_duels

James Kelly, ‘That Damn’d thing called honour’: duelling in Ireland 1570-1860 (Cork University Press, 1995)

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On This Day – 30 May 1807 – The Wexford duel that may connect to the US Presidency

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On this day – 30 May 1807.

Irish elections can be boisterous and violent affairs but none more so than the Co.Wexford election to the British House of Commons in 1807, just a few years after the Act of Union.

Among the contestants (who, unbeknownst to himself included the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan) were two local grandees William Congreve Alcock and John Colclough.  Colclough’s brother, who gloried in the traditional Irish monicker of Caesar, had been the local MP but was a prisoner of war in France. The Colclough’s, who were generally popular landlords, had lived at Tintern Abbey, a former monastery, since the mid-16th century.

The election campaign was a bitter one, polling was due to take place on 1 June but with just two days to go Alcock took exception to what he alleged was an attempt by Colclough to steal the support of tenants obligated to vote for him in what was, by today’s standards, a slightly democratic election. In what appears like a piece of egregious over-reaction, he challenged Colclough to a duel and in the encounter that followed Alcock shot his political opponent dead. As the MP for Athlone, George Tierney observed tartly, ‘that’s one way of getting an election’. As duelling was still socially acceptable in early 19th century Ireland Alcock was acquitted of murder and allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons.  But he was not to continue in office for long – two years after the duel he was committed to an asylum. The Irish judge and memoirist, Jonah Barrington wrote of Alcock that ‘alas! the acquitted duellist suffered more in mind than his victim had done in body. The horror of the scene, and the solemnity of the trial, combined to make a fatal inroad on his reason! He became melancholy; his understanding declined; a dark gloom enveloped his entire intellect; and an excellent young man and perfect gentleman at length sank into irrecoverable imbecility.’

But there is an interesting postscript to this sad tale. Not all those affected by the duel came out of it badly.

Colclough’s estate at Tintern Abbey was managed by his steward, one James Kennedy. Because of the absence of Caesar Colclough in France Kennedy continued to run the estate until his Caesar’s return in 1815. During that period something of the order of £80,000 disappeared. Nobody could pin it directly on the steward but in 1818 Kennedy was dismissed at the behest of Caesar Colclough’s wife, Jane Stratford Kirwan. The money remains unaccounted for. There are, however, persistent rumours that at least some of it may have been used a generation later to fund the migration to the USA of the Kennedy family in the 1840s, and perhaps even to set up the Boston saloon that became the basis of the family fortune. A descendant of James Kennedy, by the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, went on to become President of the United States of American in 1961.

Was the Kennedy fortune based on the tragic outcome of a duel fought, on this day, in 1807? Perish the thought.

Tintern