Burial of Lord Edward?

Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

A late eminent writer, Mr Daniel Owen Maddyn, author of “Ireland and its Rulers,” “Revelations of Ireland,” “The Age of Pitt and Fox,” “Chiefs of Parties,” &c. in a letter to the author, written a few days before his death, strongly recommended that the present work, of which we gave him an outline, should be entitled, “Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his Bloodhounds,” and enclosed a story which he rightly considered would form an interesting note.

The story, whether true or false, ran to this effect:-

Lady C--- was extremely anxious to discover where her father was interred, so as to give him decent sepulture. It was said that he had been buried in various places ; but on examining them, it was found that the information was erroneous. After much investigation, she was at last referred to one old man, who, it was stated, could tell her.

She accordingly went to this pauper’s house, and found a man in bed, and no sooner did he see her than he said, ‘I know who you are - you must be the daughter of Lord Edward Fitzgerald; you are so like him.’ She told him the object of her visit, and then he related to her that he had lingered about Newgate when her father died, and that after nightfall he saw six men bearing out a shell, and that he followed them until they came to Werburgh’s Church, and that he saw them take the coffin into the vaults of the church, and that, unperceived by them, he stole into the vaults after them, and saw where they deposited the coffin. From intensity of feeling, in the wildness of grief for his lost master, he stayed all that night in the vaults, and in order to mark the coffin he scratched the letters ‘E. F.’ on the lid. In doing this he used a rusty old nail which he had picked up. He had great difficulty afterwards in forcing his way out through a grated window.

“He then put his arm into his breast and took out a rag of cloth, gave Lady C the identical nail, and told her to go to Werburgh’s Church. She went there with her friends, and in the vaults she discovered the coffin exactly as it had been described by her informant, and the letters ‘E. F.’ incised on it several inches long.

“Such,” adds Mr Maddyn, “is the story told me by a member of the bar - a Tory, and a man moving in capital society.”

In the churchyard of St Werburgh is also buried Major Sirr, by whose hand Lord Edward fell. See Appendix.

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