A Dark and Painful Mystery. In the footsteps of Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

CHAPTER VII.**

Was Higgins Guiltless of Oliver Bond’s Blood? - Walter Cox - Reynolds the Informer - William Cope. - Insatiable Appetite for Blood-money. - A Dark and Painful Mystery. - Lord Wycombe Walks in the Footsteps of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Spies Follow in the Footsteps of Lord Wycombe.**

There is no man so bad but that he might be worse; and the will of Francis Higgins, to which we shall soon refer, shows that he was not incapable of a generous impulse; but on the whole we cannot divest ourselves of the suspicion that his general policy was worse, and his dark deeds more numerous than have in black and white transpired. When a man is once suspected and convicted of peculiar turpitude, there is no limit to the suspicions which ever after follow him.

A remarkable passage occurs in Walter Cox’s *Irish Magazine *for November 1813, p. 52. [No one was better acquainted than Cox with the antecedents of Higgins. *Vide *also the *Irish Magazine *for October 1810, p. 436]

“We hope,” writes Cox, “no greater evil will be sustained by Mr Scully than what this act of the *Freeman’s Journal *has inflicted; had we nothing more to record, to the prejudice of Irish interests, than such impotent, and we may say harmless nonsense, *Oliver Bond and Lord Edward Fitzgerald would be now alive, *and Tom Reynolds would have been only known as a harmless monster.”

Cox, as a United Irishman, and one of Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s bodyguard, was cognisant of the various conflicting suspicions and surmises to which the arrest of their chief gave birth. Further, he was in the secrets of the Government subsequent to 1798. Arthur O’Connor has said, that while a chance of success awaited the rebel movement, it possessed no more staunch partisan. But flesh is weak, and we find Cox, during 35 years that he personated the character of an indomitable patriot, in the receipt of a secret stipend from the Crown. He played fast and loose, sometimes revealing to the Castle the plans of the United Irishmen, at other times disclosing to the popular party the secrets of the Government and of its agents.

Mr Cox would seem to have formed a shrewd opinion in reference to Lord Edward’s discovery; but he advances the charge so ambiguously that, unless with the light afforded by recent revelations, it is not easy to understand his meaning.

A dark and painful mystery enshrouds the death of Oliver Bond. Bond, an opulent merchant, residing in Bridge Street, Dublin, possessed, for many years, the fullest confidence of the United Irishmen, who, so early as 1793, formally addressed him on the occasion of his fine and imprisonment. From 1785 to 1797 we recognise him as an active member of the two northern directories of United Irishmen, a body largely composed of Presbyterians. At his house in Dublin the Leinster directory regularly met, until the night of March 12, 1798, when, Thomas Reynolds having betrayed his associates, 15 delegates were arrested, conveyed to Newgate, and sentenced to death. Mr Mark O’Callaghan, in his “Memoir of O’Connell,” p. 32, says:- “It is asserted on credible authority, that the secret dungeons and state prisons of ‘98 were the scenes of murder and assassination.

Among others, Oliver Bond, a wealthy merchant, was generally allowed to have been murdered by a turnkey employed for the purpose, although it was at the time given out that he died of apoplexy.” How far Mr O’Callaghan may be correct in this conclusion we know not; but a letter addressed by James Davock to Dr Madden, and printed in the very interesting work of the latter, tends to corroborate it:-

“The evening before Bond’s death I saw him in the yard of the prison; he seemed then to be in perfect health; the next morning he was found dead in the passage outside his cell. It was the general opinion that he had been strangled. Bond had a free pardon signed at the Castle at that time, and was to have been sent out of the country with the other state prisoners. It was necessary for his wife to obtain this pardon, to enable her to collect in the debts, for he left about £30,000 behind him; and his friends were afraid of impeding her application, and thought it better to allow the common report of his death arising from apoplexy to pass unnoticed.

… . The report in the prison was that he had been killed by the under-gaoler, Simpson. I was informed by Murphy, there was such an uproar in the prison all that night, that Murphy and others barricaded their doors on the inside, afraid of violence. The woman who first swore at the inquest that she had seen him die in the yard, afterwards, in a quarrel, accused Simpson of the murder; on which he kicked her on the back, of which injury she died.” [Lives and” Times of the United Irishmen, fourth series, second edition, p. 164]

It may be added that Mr Davock was for many years the intimate friend and close neighbour of Oliver Bond, who was a remarkably robust man, and not more than 35 years of age at his death.

Sentence of death on Bond and the fourteen delegates arrested at his house was commuted on condition of their signing a compact; but Bond was by far the most formidable man amongst them; and it may have struck some of the unscrupulous understrappers attached to the Irish Government that it would be desirable to get him out of the way. To make an exception in Bond’s case by bringing hint to the scaffold would be impossible. Of some of the darker doings which notoriously took place; the higher members of the Government were, we have no doubt, ignorant.

From the Castlereagh Papers we find that two influential judges, Lords Carleton and Kilwarden, warmly urged the execution of Byrne and Bond. They were not of opinion that the offer made by Byrne and Bond to give information would counter-balance the discontent likely to be occasioned by saving them from “the punishment due to their crimes.” Lord Carleton and his colleague also expatiated on the injurious effects such an act of mercy might have on the administration of criminal justice, by discouraging jurors hereafter from coming forward to discharge an odious duty. The viceroy transmitted a paper to the Duke of Portland, dated September 14, 1798, from which we gather that “their reasoning did not altogether satisfy the Lord-Lieutenant. His Excellency, however, felt that he could not do otherwise than abide by the opinion of the first law authorities in Ireland.” Byrne was accordingly executed. [Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh, vol. i., pp 347-8.] Oliver Bond was found dead in his cell.

The Sham Squire, when a prisoner in Newgate, we learn, made love to his keeper’s daughter, “whose friends, considering the utility of his talents in their sphere in life, consented to her union with the Sham, and that the gaoler’s interest procured Higgins admission to be a solicitor, in which situation his practice is too notorious to require particular statement.” [Sketches of Irish Political Characters, Lond. 1799, p.182.]

Did Francis Higgins, who seems to have enjoyed a thorough immunity from legal pains and penalties, and was specially officious in doing the dirty work of unscrupulous statesmen, take upon himself to suggest to his friend, the keeper, the expediency of getting rid of Oliver Bond? The Sham Squire was too astute to do the deed himself; but he or his myrmidons may have got it done, and then with complacency mused, “Shake not thy gory locks at me, thou canst not say *I *did it.”

To return to Cox. It would appear that, according to his information on the subject, Higgins took some part in persuading Thomas Reynolds to become a spy upon his colleagues in the Irish Executive Directory. It is at least certain that William Cope, an eminent merchant, [See Sir William Cope’s letter in the Appendix. It is right to add that no letters from Higgins exist among the late Mr Cope’s papers.] who certified to the general credibility of Reynolds on the trials, and had exerted considerable influence in leading him to turn informer, was openly recommended for a pension by Higgins in his paper of September 1, 1798. The influential recommendation of the Sham Squire proved, as usual, successful. Mr Cope received a pension of £1,000 a year, which after his death was continued to his daughters, who resided, until the last few years, at Rhos Y Guir, near Holyhead.

Among the inducements held out by William Cope in urging Reynolds to inform were, that the Crown would probably prove them appreciation by giving him £2,000 a year and a seat in Parliament. [Carrick’s *Morning Post, *April 3, 1823, quotes the following paragraph from the *Examiner, *then edited by Leigh Hunt:-

MR REYNOLDS. - A correspondent at Paris informs us, that the Mr Reynolds now in that capital, inquired about some time back in our paper, is really the person who played such a conspicuous part in Ireland, and who for his meritorious services on that occasion was rewarded by an appointment at Lisbon, after which he was placed as Consul-General at Copenhagen - from whence, about three years since, he proceeded to Paris, where he keeps his carriage, and is reported to live expensively. Our correspondent says, that Mr Reynold’s family appear on Sundays at the chapel of the English Embassy in seats reserved for them close by the ambassador and Lady Elizabeth; and that at his parties Lady Douglas, (of Blackheath notoriety,) Mrs and the Miss Reynolds, &c. form a portion of that company for the entertainment of whom the ambassador’s salary is swelled out to £14,000 a year.”] Reynolds, who held the rank of colonel and delegate from the province of Leinster in the rebel army, settled his terms, writes Mr Curran, “namely, 500 guineas in hand, and personal indemnity.” [Life of Curran, by his son. First edition, vol. ii., p.128.]

One by one he prosecuted his colleagues to conviction. In contradiction to Mr Cope’s evidence, witnesses swore that they believed Reynolds unworthy of credence on oath. Curran lashed and lacerated him.

“He measures his value by the coffins of his victims; and in the field of evidence appreciates his fame, as the Indian warrior does in fight, by the number of scalps with which he can swell his triumphs. He calls upon you by the solemn league of eternal justice to accredit the purity of a conscience washed in its own atrocities. He has promised and betrayed - he has sworn and forsworn; and whether his soul shall go to heaven or to hell, he seems altogether indifferent for he tells you that he has established an interest in both. He has told you that he has pledged himself to treason and to allegiance, and that both oaths has he condemned and broken.” [Ibid., vol. ii, p. 134]

Mr Curran imagines that the reward of Reynolds did not exceed 500 guineas. The “Life of Reynolds,” by his son, would fain persuade the reader that his emolument had been still smaller The MS. book of secret service money expenditure, now in the possession of Mr Halliday, and printed by Dr Madden, reveals, however, that Reynolds received, not only in 1798, £5,000 in four payments, but in the following year a pension of £1,000 a year, besides which he long enjoyed several lucrative offices under the Crown.

The total amount of money flung to satisfy his in-Satiable cupidity was about £45,740. [Lives and Times of the United Irishmen, by R. R. Madden]

The delivery of “a live lord” into the jaws of death proved so profitable a job to Francis Higgins, that we find him soon after in hot scent after another. John, Earl of Wycombe, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, was committed more or less to the fashionable treasons of the time: he sympathised with the men and the movement of ‘98; and as the late John Patten, a near connexion of Emmet’s, assured us, his lordship was fully cognisant of the plot of 1803. Had Higgins been alive during the latter year, Lord Wycombe might not have escaped the penalty of his patriotism.

His movements in Dublin and elsewhere were watched most narrowly by the Sham Squire. In despair, however, of being able to gain access to Lord Wycombe’s confidence or society, we find Higgins saying, “Lord Wycombe, son to the Marquis of Lansdowne, is still in Dublin. He has gone to Wales and back again to Dublin several times. His lordship has given many parties in the city, it is said, *but *they have been of a close, select kind.” [*Freeman’s Journal, *August 6, 1798. His lordship’s movements are further indicated by the same journal on August 9, 1500.]

Higgins and his confederates, like “setters,” pointed, and the scarlet sportsmen of the line immediately fired. Lord Holland, in his Memoirs of the Whig Party, mentions that his friend, Lord Wycombe, was fired at by common soldiers on the highways near Dublin, and narrowly escaped with his life.

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