LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

It was the false name by which the Home Office, when obliged to communicate with Dublin Castle, masked Samuel Turner, LL.D., of the Irish Bar. Lord Castlereagh's letter to the Home Office confirms the intimate knowledge possessed by Turner of the doings of O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. O'Connor was now—August, 1798—in an Irish dungeon; and Lord Castlereagh having, as he says, pressed him to answer certain questions, adds: 'This perfectly agrees with Richardson's information, which states that Lord Edward and O'Connor met Hoche and arranged the invasion.'

Besides his horror of martyrdom by the knife, Turner had a lively dread of the martyrdom of exposure and social ostracism. Jackson's trial in 1794 had the effect of deterring approvers. Curran's skill in torturing such persons was marvellous; and Mr. Froude declares that he stretched Cockayne as painfully as ever the rack-master of the Tower stretched a Jesuit. 'He made him confess that he had been employed by Pitt, and showed that, if Jackson was a traitor to the State, Cockayne was a far blacker traitor to the friend who trusted him.'[132]

'Richardson' is now shown to be the same man as he who gave his information to Downshire; and that 'Richardson' was an assumed name for Samuel Turner.[133] Thus the question of identity is established without appealing to further evidence. But inasmuch as my efforts to track Turner open up facts long forgotten, and others new to the historian, some readers may not object to follow.

As regards Lord Edward's meeting with Hoche, more than once referred to in Turner's letter to Lord Downshire and in the correspondence of the Home Office, M. Guillon, a recent investigator,[134] could find no trace of it in the French official archives. Special efforts were made at the time to veil this historic interview. No wonder, therefore, that Mr. Froude, in introducing the information furnished by Downshire's mysterious visitor, points specially to the secret meeting with Hoche, and how Hoche himself had not revealed it even to Tone.[135]

Wickham was but carrying out Portland's behest in signifying to Castlereagh that O'Connor, then a prisoner, should be questioned on points of which the Home Office had acquired private knowledge. On August 23, 1798, the same polite pumping of O'Connor is urged—a task fraught with no great labour to a man of Castlereagh's tact and powers of persuasion. 'A private communication,' Wickham writes, 'of the names of the persons with whom Mr. O'Connor corresponded abroad, would answer the particular purpose required by the Duke of Portland.' The 'particular' object is not explained. It was probably that the spy might, as previously suggested, cultivate epistolary relations with the men whom O'Connor[136] would admit to have been his correspondents.[137]

      Teeling, one of the Northern leaders, who had been closely associated with Turner, gives a curious glimpse of the easy intercourse which Castlereagh would maintain with his captives. Sometimes he made the arrests himself in the first instance, and afterwards could charm his prisoners by drawing silken bonds around them. Teeling was accompanied by his father on horseback, when 'we met,' he writes, 'Lord Castlereagh, who accosted us with his usual courtesy. We had proceeded up the street of Lisburn together, when, having reached the house of his uncle, the Marquis of Hertford, we were about to take leave of his lordship. "I regret," said he, addressing my father, "that your son cannot accompany you," conducting me at the same moment through the outer gate, which, to my inexpressible astonishment, was instantly closed, and I found myself surrounded by a military guard.' Teeling, later on, describes a visit paid by Castlereagh to him when a prisoner:—

Fatigued, and apparently much dispirited, Lord Castlereagh entered the room. He possessed the most fascinating manner and engaging address, with a personal appearance peculiarly attractive, and certainly not in character with the office he had that day assumed. For though national pride was extinct in his soul, the graces of nature were not effaced from the form, nor the polished manners of the gentleman forgotten in the uncourteous garb of the officer of police. He regretted that in his absence I had been subjected to the painful restraint of an additional guard. It was not his desire that they should have been placed within my room. A slight repast had been prepared for him, of which he pressed me to partake. The wine was generous, his lordship was polite, and the prisoner of State seemed for a moment forgotten in the kinder feelings of the earlier friend. [Lord Castlereagh then informed Teeling that they had that day arrested Neilson and Russell.] 'Russell!'[138] said I. 'Then the soul of honour is captive! Is Russell a prisoner?' Lord Castlereagh was silent. He filled his glass—he passed me the wine. Our conversation had become embarrassing. … [139]

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [116] Edward J. Lewins was an attorney, and with the astuteness of that craft he had early suspected Turner, as appears from the letter to 'Citizen Minister Talleyrand' (p. 24, ante).

[117] The 'some such' proved to be Father O'Coigly, arrested en route, and hanged in 1798.

[118] Lewins, Mr. Lecky shows, proved thoroughly faithful to his party.

[119] Henriette de Sercy, the niece of Madame de Genlis, and the companion of Pamela in childhood, who married Mr. Matthiessen, the banker of Hamburg.

[120] Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

[121] Reinhard.

[122] At Bantry Bay in 1796. By many, Tone was regarded somewhat as a clever adventurer; but when the French authorities saw a nobleman—brother of the Duke of Leinster—as well as O'Connor, nephew and heir of Viscount Longueville, acting in a way which meant business, their hesitancy ceased.

[123] After the arrest and death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and the collapse of the rebellion, the State prisoners consented to give some general information which would not compromise men by name.

[124] Wickham's correspondence illustrative of his secret mission to Switzerland, when he debauched the French minister, Barthélemy, with 'saint-seducing gold,' was published by Bentley in 1870.

[125] Castlereagh Papers, i. 259–60.

[126] 'Everything was planned,' are the words in the betrayer's letter to Lord Downshire.

[127] In this suspicion, Lord Edward and O'Connor were not far astray. The Confidential Letters of the Right Hon. William Wickham reveal that Pichegru and other French generals were paid by Pitt to allow themselves to be beaten in battle.

Скачать книгу