Lord Chancellor, Earl of Clare, still going...

Chapter XLVIII.

Life of the Earl of Clare, Lord Chancellor, Continued.

On the north side of Dame Street, Dublin, stood Shaw’s Court, containing a spacious dwelling-house. This was occupied in 1756 by the Dublin Society, which had been incorporated by Royal Charter in 1749-50, for promoting husbandry and other useful arts in Ireland. The Society removed from this house to one in Grafton Street in 1767, and a beautiful little theatre was opened in Shaw’s Court, in 1786. Many Members of the Irish Parliament were great actors (in public and private), and the first play announced here had to be postponed until the prorogation of Parliament, so many of the performing members belonged to the House. As I have a copy of the bill of the play which was performed, I place M.P. after the name of the dramatis personae entitled to this distinction. The Viceroy, Duke of Rutland, with his Duchess, the Duke of Leinster, and the most fashionable circle of Dublin, witnessed the performance.

SHAW’S COURT THEATRE.

Monday Evening, May 8, 1786.

‘The Force of Love.’

Varanes Lord Henry Fitz Gerald, M.P.

Leontine Mr. C. Powel Leslie, M.P.

Atticus Mr. Cromwell Price, M.P.

Theodosius Mr. Isaac Corry, M.P.

Delia Mrs. Price.

Athenais Mrs. St. Leger.

When the play concluded, the Attorney-General had the Grand honour of receiving the Lord Lieutenant and Duchess of Rutland, the Duke of Leinster, and other members of the Attorney nobility and gentry to a superb supper at his house in Ely Place. This was a bachelors’ fete, and probably the last as such, for I find he was married to Miss Whaley on July 1, following.

The Duke and Duchess of Rutland, the principal guests of the Attorney-General on this occasion, deserve more than a passing notice. The host could hardly have foreseen the powerful influence the fair wife of the Viceroy was destined to have upon his fortunes at a most momentous crisis.

Charles, Fourth Duke of Rutland, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1784. He married, when he attained the age of twenty-one, Mary Isabella, youngest daughter of Charles Duke of Beaufort, one of the most fascinating women of her time. The young Duke, for he was Viceroy at thirty - was gay, and, I fear I must add, dissipated. He loved sports and amusements better than business, though we have known Viceroys who, devoted to field sports in due season, had a keen eye for business also. The Court of the Duke was presided over by her Grace with a charm that enhanced its pageantries, and added to its general festivity. She was the theme of poets, and inspired more than one Irishman with admiration that outstepped the formality of Court etiquette. Ministerialist and Oppositionist were alike enchanted by her beauty, and won by her affability. Parties were given for her amusement, and Vanessa’s Bower at Celbridge was the scene of a féte champétre, when Sir Hercules Langrishe, attired as a peasant, presented a poem to the Duchess, in which he recalled the loves of Dean Swift and the unhappy Miss Vanhomrigh, under the forged names of Cadenus and Vanessa. The verse of Sir Hercules ran thus:-

Bright Stella here to view the conscious shade

Where wit in time of old with passion play’d;

When lost beneath this consecrated grove,

Cadenus taught Vanessa how to love,

And sweet Vanesssa, to reward his flame,

Immortalised this arbour with her name.

But, heavenly messenger, vouchsafe to say,

Why bend on mortals your resistless sway?

Why condescend from your exalted sphere

To spread a formidable glory here?

Before the lightning of your eyes was seen,

The girls were pretty and the fields were green;

The nymphs and swains, to higher bliss unknown,

Felt equal joys and raptures of their own.

But now, alas! those nymphs are left forlorn,

Their beauty slighted and their swains forsworn;

All bow before you in obeisance meet;

The soldier * lays his laurels at your feet;

For you the lawyer bends his stubborn knee,

Forgets his disputation and his fee.’ **

• The soldier referred to was the Commander-in-Chief, General O’Hara.

** The lawyer was the Attorney-General, whose devotion to the beautiful Duchess was so gratifying to her, that she repaid him with a friendship that blossomed into kind deeds of the greatest benefit to him, as we shall see in due time.

Though of a cold and reserved temperament, Fitz Gibbon appears to have been a victim to the power of the blind god, and a mark for the arrows of Cupid. His enmity against the unfortunate brothers, John and Henry Sheares, is stated to have been the successful rivalry of Henry Sheares, who won the heart and hand of Miss Swete, to whom Fitz Gibbon was deeply attached. [United Irishmen, by Dr. R. R. Maddon, vol. ii. 1st Series, p. 26.] Fitz Gibbon was perfectly enamoured of the beautiful Duchess, but a more legitimate object of affection soon presented grounds for the rumour that he was an engaged man. His professional income now averaged 7,000l. a-year, independently of the large landed property he inherited; and he succeeded in finding a wife in Anne, eldest daughter of Richard Chapel Whaley, Esq., of Whaley Abbey, in the county of Wicklow, to whom he was married on July 1, 1786. Mr. Whaley, like a near namesake of later days, was a furious anti-Catholic, who used the license of power entrusted to the magistracy in the days of rebellion so fatally for the Roman Catholic houses of worship, that he was known by the sobriquet of Burn-Chapel Whaley. He was a humourist in his pleasanter moods, as appears by a versified order on his banker in favour of his wife:-

Mr. Latouche,

Open your pouch,

And give unto my darling,

Five hundred pounds sterling,

For which this will be your bailey,

Signed, Richard Chapel Whaley. [A brother of Lady Clare was Buck Whaley, one of the eccentric characters whose freaks are chronicled in the ballads of Dublin towards the close of the last century. He was also called Jerusalem Whaley, having laid a bet he would play ball against the walls of Jerusalem and return to Dublin in a space of time so short as to be then deemed impossible. This was a fine subject for a ballad:-

One morning walking Georges Quay,

A monstrous crowd stopped up the way;

Who came to see a sight so rare,

A sight that made all Dublin stare.

Buck Whaley lacking much some cash,

And being used to cut a dash,

He wagered full ten thousand pound,

He’d visit soon the holy ground.

Whaley won the bet. Another feat was his leaping over a mail coach, which he did, by having the vehicle placed beneath the windows of his house, the splendid ‘Whaley mansion’ in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. How mortified Burn-Chapel Whaley and his son-in-law, the Earl of Clare, would be, if they beheld this princely dwelling, with its spacious halls and noble suites of rooms, thronged by the students and professors of the Catholic University, of which it now forms part, presided over by the learned and respected Monsignor Woodlock, D.D., the immediate successor to the first rector, the renowned champion of Catholicity, John Henry Newman, D.D.]

In the Irish Parliament of 1787, a Bill was introduced to check outrages in the South of Ireland. The Reverend Arthur O’Leary, of whom I have already made honourable mention, used his trenchant pen to dissuade his unfortunate countrymen from the perpetration of these crimes. Many Members of Parliament, when discussing the Bill, attributed these excesses to the pressure of want and distress, and though the Attorney-General admitted the prevalence of deep misery, he felt it his duty to preserve the peace of the country. ‘It was impossible,’ he said, ‘for human wretchedness to exceed that of the miserable peasantry of the Province of Munster, he knew the unhappy peasantry were ground to powder by relentless landlords, and that so far from being able to pay tithes to the Clergy, they had neither food or raiment for them-selves.’ He marred the measure by a clause, ‘that Catholic places of worship should be pulled down and prostrated if any unlawful oath should be tendered, administered, or taken in or adjoining to any Popish Chapel.’ The clause was properly omitted, and the Riot Act passed, but the proceeding left an opinion on the mind of the Irish people, injurious to the character, as a Statesman and a legislator, of the Attorney-General. [Grattan’s Life, vol. iii. P. 285.] It was on the discussion of the Navigation Act [12 Car. II. c. 18, and 14 and 15 Car II.] in the same Session of 1787, the dissension between Grattan and the Attorney-General broke into open hostility. By the Statute 12 Charles II. c. 18., Ireland enjoyed a right to trade with Asia, Africa, and America; but as Ireland was omitted in the subsequent Act, 14 & 15 Charles II., the privilege of foreign trade was denied to Irish merchants, and their commerce, with the colonies, then termed the ‘Plantations,’ was restricted. Mr. Grattan desired to remedy this .state of affairs, and, although he was not able to carry a resolution on the subject, his agitating the grievance induced the Attorney-General to introduce a clause extending the benefits of the Navigation Act to Ireland, but it was done in a subdued tone, as though he was solicitous not to awaken hostility in England. [Grattan’s Life, vol. iii. P. 292] The speech of the Attorney-General brought down the following retort from Mr. Grattan:- ‘He (the Attorney-General) has misstated what I said. Perhaps a very able advocate, as undoubtedly he is, may think misstating a very fair figure of argument. I did not say that the Act of Navigation was the law of Ireland, I gave no opinion; I said some great lawyers doubted; but the people obeyed. I did not say that we had no benefit from the direct Plantation trade, but I did say that, as yet, we had not any great benefit from it. The right honourable Member has spoken of the English Opposition, much to their disadvantage; he will allow, however, they had one merit, that of making the right honourable Member Attorney-General. He is, however, too high in station, ability, and independence to be the partisan of the party in Government, or any party; but if he has censured the English Opposition, he has censured his own countrymen at least as liberally.’ [Grattan’s Life vol. iii. P. 293] Considerable discussion took place in the Irish Parliament on the subject of paying tithes to the Clergy of the Established Church, but as happily the wisdom of modem legislation has put an end to such injustice, I have no desire to recur to unpleasant topics, which separated Irishmen and did not benefit our common Christianity. On March 20, the Attorney-General brought forward a measure for the better execution of the laws. It was a measure which has proved extremely beneficial, though it was looked on with much distrust. It created constables by thousands, and chief constables by hundreds, and provided for thirty-two chairmen of Quarter Sessions, at a salary of 300 a-year. [3,000 sub-constables and 620 chief constables.]

In the month of October of the year 1787, the beautiful Duchess of Rutland became a widow. A fever to which habits of conviviality added fuel, carried off the Viceroy at the early age of thirty-three. He left an only child, a son, who in after years succeeded to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. The Marquis of Buckingham, who had been Viceroy in 1783, and retired with other Members of the Rockingham Administration, again accepted this responsible office. He had married a Roman Catholic Irish Lady, daughter of Lord Nugent, and was a nobleman of refined tastes, fond of literature, and desirous to benefit Ireland. He rallied many of the trusted leaders of the National party around him, and, as the Marchioness was of the same faith as the great bulk of the nation, much confidence was expressed on some benefit being bestowed on the people during his administration. During the Viceroyalty in 1789, the octogenarian Lord Chancellor Lord Lifford died.

On the death of Lord Lifford in 1789, the chances of his being succeeded by John Fitz Gibbon as Lord Chancellor was regarded with great interest by the Irish Bar. They felt that although Decrees of the Court of Chancery are based upon those principles of equity which are common to all places, yet there are peculiarities in our habits and manners which render an Irish barrister more adapted to preside in our Courts of Justice than a stranger to them. That however deeply versed a barrister may be in legal lore, however familiar with Coke upon Littleton, though he may have Fearne at his fingers’ ends, Burton ever present to his memory, and carry an abridgment equal to Viner, or have as deep a knowledge of law and its best remedies as a Chitty, with a know ledge of equity equal to the best lawyers of the age, he ought to possess qualities which books can never impart. He should have a knowledge of the people to whom he is called on to mete out justice. Their habits, passions, prejudices, and local customs, these were familiar to Fitz Gibbon, who had lived among them from his youth, and was capable of dealing readily with every legal question.

The claims of Irishmen for Irish offices is deserving consideration. The preference is not one of mere sentiment, but has a much stronger basis than that of justice and policy. The young men of any profession aspire, naturally, to obtain the highest appointments to which application and energy can raise them. It is with this glittering prize before them they submit to difficulties, master every obstacle, and acquire the utmost proficiency, so as to qualify them for the place they hope to win. As often, then, as the Lord Chancellorship of Ireland was bestowed upon a member of the English Bar, whose qualifications in standing, legal knowledge, and efficiency were not superior to many of the Irish Bar, they felt hurt and offended, humiliated, and alike deprived of the reward for their industry, and the incentive to exertion. I can only wonder that, while the system of importing Chancellors was so habitually pursued, the Irish Bar maintained its high reputation for learning and ability, and did not become a congregation of idle, spiritless, and incompetent pettifoggers.

It was extremely lucky for the Attorney-General that he had established so warm an interest in the breast of the Prime Minister; for, in the month of April following, the death of Lord Lifford took place after a brief illness. This event placed the Irish Great Seal, that valuable prize, in the gift of the Crown. Though the services which the Attorney-General had rendered to the party then in office were unquestionable-although, as I have already stated, the King, as well as successive Viceroys, applauded his conduct - although the Prime Minister of England, in the letter just quoted, states that, ‘in every circumstance he must entertain a grateful recollection of the support and credit the Government had received from his exertions;’ it was with the utmost difficulty the appointment was secured for Fitz Gibbon. Lord Thurlow stopt the way.

He was Lord Chancellor of England, and was resolved that no Irishman should hold the Great Seal of Ireland. The Marquis of Buckingham, then Lord Lieutenant, and the Chief Secretary, declared ‘they would not hold their offices if Fitz Gibbon was passed over.’ Pitt was most desirous to reward him for his services; but the Chancellor, a man of morose disposition and dogged temper, held his ground. Major Hobart, afterwards Earl of Buckinghamshire, was deputed by Mr. Pitt to try and win over the inflexible Lord Thurlow. Major Hobart was well qualified for the task, a man of cheerful temper, with an open, prepossessing countenance, an experienced tactician, who gained wonderfully on those with whom he came in contact; but it is said even his skill in diplomacy would have failed had not another, more powerful ally, interfered in favour of Mr. Fitz Gibbon; this was the beautiful widowed Duchess of Rutland, of whom I have already written in praise. She not only addressed Mr. Pitt, mentioning how high Mr. Fitz Gibbon stood in the opinion of her dear departed husband, but, on learning that Lord Thurlow was the obstacle, she resolved to plead her friend’s cause with him. Well may the poet say,-

Beauty, she hath been

The bewitching tyrant of the universe,

From her first blush in Eden’s verdant bower,

Great wisdom bows before her.

Lord Thurlow had not the heart to resist such pleading, and the consent was obtained. John John Fitzgibbon became Lord Chancellor of Ireland, with the title of Baron Fitz Gibbon, of Lower Connello. [Dublin University Mag. vol. xxx. p. 684.]

Lord Thurlow wrote to Lord Chancellor Fitz Gibbon a kind of half-congratulatory, half-apologetic letter, in these words:-

‘July 4, 1789.

‘My dear Lord, - Allow me also to join in congratulating your Lordship on your advancement, which I do as sincerely as if I had contributed to it. The rule which has been observed so long, [Appointing English barristers Lord Chancellors of Ireland.] evidently sprung out of a principle to which your Lordship gave force and credit, at a moment when too many circumstances contributed to impair it; and your merit to both countries was accordingly enhanced by the assurances which my Lord Lieutenant was authorised to give, that a disappointment would not shake your principles or change your conduct. If it were clear that the precedent of relaxing the rule, out of attention to so much merit, would never be repeated till a similar occasion should offer, the exception would, probably, not hurt the rule. But if it must be repeated, as often as similar merit is claimed, probably the exception eats up the rule. While this consideration was depending in the Cabinet, to which I had the honour of being called on that occasion, I thought it inconsistent with that duty to explain myself to any other person; and I flatter myself that your Lordship will accept that as my apology for declining to enter upon that subject sooner. I shall conclude with assuring your Lordship, that whatever may become of the example, I am very happy that his Majesty has in your station so able a minister, whose personal attachment to the King, combining with his public principle, is so likely to maintain the peace and security of his Government for the rest of his reign.

‘I have the honour to be, my dear Lord, with great regard,

‘Your Lordship’s most faithful and obedient Servant,

‘Thurlow. [Dublin Univ. Mag. vol. xxx. p. 685.]

An instance of the Lord Chancellor’s desire to requite services rendered to him was related to me by a respected member of the Irish Bar: [John Adair, Esq.] ‘My grandfather,’ said he, ‘had been of some service to the Chancellor, and when his Lordship received the appointment, the Chancellor visited him. “Dwyer,” said he, “I have often desired to be of service to you, but nothing was in my gift worth your acceptancc. My secretaryship is now at your disposal, oblige me by taking it.”’

The place, then worth some thousands a year, was accepted in the same spirit as it was offered, and held by Mr. Dwyer during the time of Lord Clare and two succeeding Chancellors. [Lord Redesdale and Lord Chancellor Ponsonby.]

While Lord Clare was Chancellor, a native of Limerick, who wandered from the banks of the Shannon to those of the Liffey, after watching the progress of an equity cause in the Court of Chancery, and returned to the place whence he came, was asked on his return, ‘How the Chancellor got on as a Judge?’

‘Chancellor, indeed!’ repeated the Garryown boy; ‘tis he has the asy sate of it. He doesn’t spake a word; but when the Counsellors are done argufying, he leans over the desk, and gives a nod to Jack Dwyer, who tells him what to do. ‘Tis Jack Dwyer ought to be Chancellor, for he makes all the Decrees.’

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