Documents relating to the Sham.

Deeds Relating to Higgins, Magan, and Others.

(See Chapter 6)

Among the documents relating to Francis Higgins, preserved in the Registry of Deeds Office, Dublin, are several mortgages from Thomas Magan to the Sham Squire, including one for £2,300, and another for £1,000, One of the witnesses is Francis Magan. Richard Daly, the lessee of Crow Street Theatre, was also pecuniarily accommodated at different times by Mr Higgins; and, in 1799, we find Daly, then styled “now of the Isle of Alan,” mortgaging his house in Harcourt Street to Shamado. We also find a mortgage to Higgins from Charles Kendal Bushe in 1799, and several bonds of Sir John Ferns, and a promissory note of the Right Hon. John Foster, “late Speaker of the House of Commons,” are recited in the marriage settlement of the lady who was chief legatee of Higgins, and whose name we have hitherto refrained from mentioning. In the latter deed, dated Sept. 6, 1802, the remarkable fact also transpires, that this lady received, in recognition of the Sham Squire’s services, a pension of £300 per annum, charged on the Irish Establishment. Owing to extraordinary circumstances, the pension continues to be paid to this hour. On the 10th December 1797, Lord Carhampton, whose intimacy with Shamado, Magee detected in 1789, secured the Squire as a neighbour by setting to him the lands of Hartstown and Barnageath, near Luttrelstown. The lease of the Sham Squire’s house in Stephen’s Green describes it as next door to that occupied by the late Counsellor Harward; and adjoining Lord Earlsfort’s lawn. Rents seem to have been then comparatively low. The Sham Squire guaranteed to pay for his house in Stephen’s Green £30 fine, and £55 a year; while the rent of his house in Rose Lane, “bounded on the north by Darby Square,” was £38 per annum. With all his cunning, the Sham Squire blundered his will. “Two witnesses seem to have been in those days insufficient; and the property was legally adjudged to Francis Higgins, “formerly of Downpatrick, and now of Philadelphia,” first cousin and heir-at-law” of the Sham Squire. The Court of Chancery was appealed to, and some arrangement seems to have been come to between the litigants; for an assignment is preserved in the Registry Office from “the heir-at-law” of the Sham Squire to one of the parties to whom the property was bequeathed.

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