The secrets of the Castle revealed.

Abstraction of Papers from the Castle Archives.

We have received from Mr S. Redmond, a respectable gentleman connected for many years, first with the Irish, and later with the English press, the following letter, correcting the account given by Dr --- of the disappearance from the Castle Archives of the Secret-Service-Money Book. It is right to premise, however, that having submitted Mr Redmond’s letter to Charles Haliday, Esq., J.P., perhaps the most extensive collector of rare and curious books illustrative of Irish history, he informs me that the Secret-Service-Money Book is in his keeping, and that Mr Redmond’s impression, as to its having been forcibly recovered by the Government is erroneous. Mr Redmond was a very young man in 1838, and probably the story told him did not lose in the carriage by Mr Byrne. “The Secret-Service-Money Book;’ writes Mr Haliday, “was sold with other very curious documents as waste paper.”

It was in 1838, during the Mulgrave Viceroyalty, that this important volume found its way, among a mass or waste paper, [We are informed by a gentleman, connected for half a century with the office of the Secretary of State, Dublin, that seven years previous to this clearance - namely, during the AngleseyViceroyalty, in 1831 - cartloads of correspondence were removed to the Riding School, in the tower Castle Yard, while some alterations were in progress at the Chief Secretary’s Office. They remained for a lengthened period publicly exposed in the Riding School, until they became “small by degrees, and beautifully less.” The documents sold in 1839 were a different lot, and their abstraction was attributed to the dishonesty of some of the messengers who had ready access to the presses in which the letters were contained.] to an obscure dealer in second-hand books. After some vicissitudes it passed into the bands of a bookseller, residing on Upper Ormond Quay, by whom we understand it was sold for £10 to Mr Haliday.

“46 Salisbury Street, Liverpool,

*“October *22.

“Sir, - Although I have not the honour of your personal acquaintance, I am very well aware of your name and character. I trust you will excuse me for addressing you on a subject which you have ventilated, and which is of deep historical interest. It is in reference to the footnote, referring to what your friend Dr --- told about the Secret-Service-Money Book. Perhaps the following facts may be of use to you, and if so, you are at liberty to make any use you think proper of them. The document in question was not ‘cleared out and sold’ by any official in the Castle - it was *stolen *with some other valuable documents, but it came into the hands of poor John Fegan in an honest and legitimate manner. He kept a stall at the corner of Off Lane and Henry Street, and was a man of great natural intelligence, had a limited education, but improved it wonderfully by self-culture. The doctor, I think, has made a mistake by stating that it was publicly exhibited for sale. No man in the world knew the value of such a document better than poor Fegan. He showed it to Mr Edward Byrne, (since dead,) who kept a tavern at No. 6 Capel Street. I was then a very young man, connected with the reporting staff of the *Morning Register *newspaper, (and subsequently for nearly ten years on the Freeman’s Journal,) and Mr Byrne sent for me and showed it to me. Although young, I was immediately alive to the value of the treasure that lay before me, and I at once resolved to possess it. I appointed to meet Mr Byrne and Fegan in the evening, and did so; but imagine my surprise when I found the treasure had flown. Mr Byrne had taken it back to the Castle! Between the time I had seen him in the forenoon and my visit in the evening, a person from the Castle called on Mr Byrne, and threatened to have him transported if he did not give up the document! Mr B. was a very timid man, and at once proceeded to the Castle and delivered it up. It seems that in consequence of the gossip raised by poor Fegan about it, it was missed from the Castle, and hot search made after it. The above is the result. This was in the latter end of 1838, or beginning of ‘39. I have often regretted the loss, for had I got it, no pressure would have extracted it from me.

“It may be interesting to you, when I state that many of Lever’s and Carleton’s best stories are founded on tales told them by Fegan. He was obliged to quit Dublin in ‘48, and subsequently kept a bookstall at the Custom House here. He lost his life, with his wife and three children, in a fire in the house where he lived in Shaw’s Alley, in this town, three or four years ago. I wrote a short memoir of him in the journal to which I am attached. The public raised a handsome monument to the family, in Saint Anne’s Church, Edge Hill.

“I have frequently seen the slab (a black stone, either marble or heavy dark limestone) over the grave of Higgins, in Kilbarrack Churchyard, but little did I think who lay beneath it. The last time I saw it, (some years ago,) it was partly on its side, apparently turned over. What a gigantic scoundrel he was, and to have done such a multiplicity of novel villanies in a life, comparatively short, surpasses comprehension. One would think that, to conceive and mature such an amount of hell-born crimes, would have taken a couple of centuries; but when we find a human being capable of acting them, and dying at 55, our astonishment becomes altogether lost. Poor Magee! *ought *he not have a statue some place about *College Green? *Fearfully as I felt my gorge rise at the treble-dyed damnation of Iscariot Higgins, I must say, with the utmost sincerity, that in all my life I never enjoyed such hearty laughter as I did at the description of the *fetes *at Fiat Hill; and when I meet with any one troubled with the *hips, *I shall turn doctor and order the patient to read that part of the work twice, and I will insure him a radical cure. Many a day have I gambolled about these spots, little thinking that the ground was sacred to *Olympic pig races, *or that I would, in this country, (to use a well-known phrase,) nearly burst my sides reading of the scenes that were enacted on that now memorable hill. -I am &c. “Sylvester Redmond.”

The Duke of Wellington, when Sir Arthur Wellesley, more than once complained of the abstraction of papers from their legitimate repository. Among the curious papers alluded to by Mr Haliday, is a voluminous correspondence between influential persons and viceroys of the day, soliciting place, promotion, pay, and patronage. One letter from Compton Domvile, Esq., M. P., of Santry House, addressed to the Duke of Richmond, asks for the peerage of Santry. The Lord Lieutenant writes across the letter - “A modest request! I Answer this letter evasively. - Richmond.” But the application was not, after all, very unreasonable, for an ancestor of Mr Domvile’s possessed the peerage of Santry, which he lost, according to O’Reilly’s “Reminiscences of an Emigrant Milesian,” from having at a meeting of the Hell-Fire Club, in Saul’s Court Fishamble Street, compelled an unfortunate man to swallow brandy until his throat filled to overflow, when a lighted match was applied, and the sufferer slowly blazed into eternity! [The Hell-Fire Club of Dublin was succeeded by the Cherokee Club. The late Mr John Patten told us that the late estimable Earl of Charlemont was a member of it, and dressed in red and black - the devil’s livery! Lords Ormond, Enniskillen, and Llandaff also belonged to it] But what little reliance can be placed upon hearsay stories, and how likely men are, after the lapse of many years, to confound the details of utterly distinct incidents, is exhibited in this “Reminiscence.”

Lord Santry was tried by his peers, not for the above diabolical escapade, which, we believe, he never committed, but for having, at the village of Palmerstown, stabbed a man named Loughlin Murphy, who died of his wound on September 25th, 1738. The report of his trial is now before us Lord Santry was sentenced to death; but there is an authentic tradition to the effect that his cousin, Mr Compton Domvile, having threatened to deprive Dublin of water, the noble convict’s life was pardoned by the viceroy. The title, however, was forfeited, and Lord Santry’s estates passed to Sir Compton Domvile.

It may be asked, how Mr Domvile could deprive Dublin of water. The supply came from the Dodder at Templeogue, and ran through the Domvile property. By damming up or turning off this stream., which then was the sole conduit of supply to the Earl of Meath’s Liberty and Dublin city, formidable inconveniences could not fail to arise.

The corporate records are said to contain some curious details of a quarrel in which Mr Compton Domvile and the executive were occasionally engaged. It was more than once brought to a crisis by Mr Domvile cutting off the water supply, sometimes in pique, sometimes in salutary pressure on the powers that were. On one occasion, as we are assured by an officer of the corporation, the Lord-Lieutenant was constrained to send out horse and foot, and forcibly wrest the water from the custody of Domvile’s retainers.

In 1775 the insufficiency of the supply from the Dodder, which for several centuries was the sole resource of Dublin, led the corporation to resort to the Grand Canal. But matters were not much mended by the change. Dr W--- of Dublin, who is still living, saw the troops cut the canal, when, owing to a dispute, the directors refused to continue to give water. A pure and abundant supply of soft water was long desired by Dublin, and this has been recently obtained for it through the energy of Sir John Gray.

Sham Index Home.