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dares to wear that rebellious emblem?' Mr. Turner sternly replied, 'I am my own man. Whose man are you, who dares to speak so insolently to an Irish gentleman?' 'I am one who will make you wear a hempen necktie, instead of your flaunting French silk, if you do not instantly remove it!' retorted Lord Carhampton. 'I wear this colour,' replied Mr. Turner courageously, 'because I like it. As it is obnoxious to you, come and take it off.' Carhampton, finding that his bluster did not frighten the North Erin rebel, turned to leave; but Turner, by a rapid movement, got between him and the door, and, presenting his card to the general, demanded his address. Carhampton told him he would learn it sooner than he should like. Turner thereupon said, 'I must know your name; until now I have never had the misfortune to be engaged in a quarrel with aught but gentlemen, who knew how to make themselves responsible for their acts. You cannot insult me with impunity, whatever your name may be. I will yet find it out, and post you in every court as a coward.' The Commander of the Forces withdrew from Newry, having come off second best in the quarrel he had provoked. Mr. Turner, for reasons connected with the cause in which he had embarked, was obliged to lie perdu soon after, and so Carhampton escaped the 'posting' he would, under other circumstances, have got from the Northern fire-eater.

      

The general accuracy of Mr. O'Byrne's impressions is shown by the 'Life and Confessions of Newell the Informer,' printed for the author at London in 1798.[32] Newell travelled with the staff of Lord Carhampton, and in April, 1797, witnessed the scene between Turner and him.

      Newell's pamphlet, which created much noise at the time and had a large circulation, did not tend to weaken popular confidence in Turner. It appeared soon after the time that he had begun to play false; but Newell, with all his cunning, had no suspicion of Turner.

The late Mr. J. Mathews, of Dundalk, collected curious details regarding the rebel organisation of Ulster in 1797. With these details the name of Samuel Turner is interwoven, but, although the object of Mathews was to expose the treachery of some false brothers, he assigns to Turner the rank of a patriot and a hero. How the authorities, by a coup, made a number of arrests, is described; and how Turner, after some exciting adventures, got safely to France.[33]

The spy on this occasion was Mr. Conlan, a medical practitioner in Dundalk. A sworn information, signed by Conlan, is preserved among the Sirr MSS. in Trinity College, Dublin. It is dated 1798, when Turner himself was betraying his own colleagues to Pitt! Conlan states that one evening, after Turner had left his house at Newry to attend a meeting of United Irishmen at Dundalk, the officer in command at the barracks of Newry got orders to march on Dundalk and arrest the leaders. An officer's servant apprised Corcoran, who was an adherent of Turner's. Corcoran mounted a horse and galloped to Dundalk, where he arrived in time to warn Turner. Conlan recollected Turner and Teeling travelling through Ulster and holding meetings for organisation at Dundalk, Newry, Ballinahinch (the site of the subsequent battle), Ronaldstown, Glanary, and in Dublin at Kearn's, Kildare Street,[34] where the principal meetings were held.[35]

I find in the Pelham MSS. the examination of Dr. John Macara, one of the Northern State prisoners of 1797. It supplies details of the plan of attack which had been foiled by the arrests. 'Newry was to be attacked by Samuel Turner, of Newry aforesaid, with the men from Newry and Mourn.'[36]

It was not Conlan alone who reported Turner's movements to the Crown. Francis Higgins, the ablest secret agent of Under-Secretary Cooke, announces that Turner had sent 'letters from Portsmouth for the purpose of upholding and misleading the mutinous seamen into avowed rebellion;'[37] and some weeks later he states that 'Turner had returned from Hamburg with an answer to the Secret Committee of United Irishmen.'[38]

      We know on the authority of James Hope, who wrote down his 'Recollections' of this time at the request of a friend, that Turner, having fled from Ireland, filled the office of resident agent at Hamburg of the United Irishmen. The Irish envoys and refugees, finding themselves in a place hardly less strange than Tierra del Fuego, ignorant of its language, its rules and its ways, sought on arrival the accredited agent of their brotherhood, hailed him with joy, and regarded the spot on which he dwelt as a bit of Irish soil sacred to the Shamrock. The hardship which some of the refugees went through was trying enough. James Hope, writing in 1846, says that Palmer, one of Lord Edward's bodyguard in Dublin, travelled, 'mostly barefooted, from Paris to Hamburg, where he put himself into communication with Samuel Turner.' The object of Palmer's mission was to expose one Bureaud, then employed as a spy by Holland. 'Palmer,' writes Hope, 'gave Turner a gold watch to keep for him.' He enlisted in a Dutch regiment, and was found drowned in the Scheldt. 'When Turner,' adds Hope, 'was applied to for the watch by Palmer's sister, he replied that he forgot what became of it.'

      Hamburg in troubled times was a place of great importance for the maintenance of intercourse between England and France. Here, as Mr. Froude states, 'Lord Downshire's friend' had vast facilities for getting at the inmost secrets of the United Irishmen. Hope's casual statement serves to show how it was that this 'person' could have had access to Lady Edward Fitzgerald's confidence, and that of her political friends at Hamburg.

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [27] In chapter vii. my contention will be found established on conclusive testimony, which had failed to present itself until years had been given to a slow process of logical deduction. Vide also Appendix to this volume.

[28] 'The Northern Marquis' was, of course, Lord Downshire.

[29] 'A Lanthorn through some Dark Passages, with a Key to Secret Chambers,' was the title originally chosen for the present book, but I finally laid it aside as being too much in the style of old Parson Fry's 'Pair of Bellows to Blow away the Dust.'

[30] How this book got out of the Castle and was sold for waste paper by a man named Fagan is a curious story in itself. The volume is now preserved in the Royal Irish Academy.

[31] A prisoner named Turner, Christian name not given, indicted for high treason, is announced as discharged in December 1795, owing to the flight of a Crown witness.—Vide Irish State Trials (Dublin: Exshaw, 1796); Lib. R. I. Academy.

[32] Vide pp. 21−2. Newell's pamphlet will be found in the Halliday Collection, vol. 743, Royal Irish Academy.

[33] Vide Mr. Matthew's narrative in The Sham Squire, sixth edition, pp. 355−363.

[34] This place of rendezvous was, doubtless, chosen because of its proximity to Leinster House, where Lord Edward mainly lived.

[35] Major Sirr's Papers (MS.), Trinity College, Dublin. Conlan's information makes no mention of a remarkable man, the Rev.

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