Death of the Sham Squire. His tomb attacked.

CHAPTER VIII**

Effort of Conscience to Vindicate its Authority- Last Will and Testament of the Sham Squire. - A Tempest Roars Round his Death-bed. - Kilbarrack Churchyard. - A Touching Epitaph -Resurrectionists. - The Dead Watcher. - The Sham Squire’s Tomb Insulted and Broken. - His Bequests.**

Charity, it is written, covereth a multitude of sins. Let us hasten, therefore, to record a really meritorious act on the part of Mr Higgins. Anxious to throw the utmost amount of light on a career so extraordinary as that of Francis Higgins, we examined in the Prerogative Court his “Last Will. and Testament.” From this document - which, by the way, was the subject of considerable litigation after his death - we learn that the Sham Squire’s conscience was not hopelessly callous. On the contrary, while yet comparatively young, it seems to have given him a good deal of uneasiness; and it may not unreasonably be inferred that, unscrupulous as we have seen Mr Higgins, his early life was checkered by sundry peccadilloes now irrevocably veiled. Whatever these may have been, they contributed to disturb the serenity of his manhood, and conscience seems to have made an energetic effort to assert its authority.

Unable any longer to bear the reproachings of his ill-gotten wealth, Mr Higgins, on September 19, 1791, then aged 45, mustered up courage and bequeathed a considerable portion of it to charitable purposes. It is amusing to trace the feelings of awe which, in the last century, filled our ancestors previous to attempting a voyage across St George’s Channel! Mr Higgins’s will begins by saying that as he meditates a voyage to England, he thinks it prudent to prepare his will; and in humble supplication at the feet of the Almighty, and by way of making atonement for his manifold transgressions, he is desirous of leaving large sums of money to charitable purposes.

But before he proceeds to specify them, the vanity of the Sham Squire shows itself in a command to his executors to commemorate his memory in a proper manner, on a slab “well secured with lime, brickwork, and stone” in Kilbarrack Churchyard. To defray the cost of this monument, Mr Higgins left £30, and a further sum for his funeral. He adds, that in case he should die in England, his remains are to be removed to Ireland and “publicly interred.”

To a lady who had been of considerable use to Mr Higgins, and had clung to him with great fidelity, but who had suffered seriously from this circumstance, he bequeathed not only £1,000 as compensation, but all such property as might remain after paying the other bequests; and to his housekeeper; Mrs Margaret Box, he left £100 But, perhaps, the most remarkable item in the will is £1,000 which he bequeathed to be laid out on landed security, in order that the annual interest might be applied to the relief and discharge of debtors confined in the city marshalsea on Christmas eve in each year. [See Appendix for some correspondence on the alleged non-execution of this bequest. The four Courts Marshalsea of Dublin., previous to its removal westward, stood in Werburgh Street.] This generous bequest has served, we trust, to blot out some of the Sham Squire’s achievements, not alone at the hazard table, but by means of sundry pettifogging quibbles and doubles.

Having been the means in early life of considerably increasing the number of inmates at the Lying-in Hospital, Mr Higgins now creditably bestowed £100 upon that institution. To an asylum for ruined merchants, known as Simpson’s Hospital, he bequeathed £50, and ordered that a particular ward in it should be dedicated to his memory. To the Blue-Coat Hospital, where his friend Jack Giffard [For a notice of Giffard, see the 32d note to General Cockburn’s Step Ladder, Appendix.] and other kindred spirits passed their youth, Mr Higgins left the sum of £20.

The Catholic and Protestant Poor Schools were remembered with impartiality by Higgins, who had been himself both a Catholic and a Protestant at different times. He bequeathed £10 to each of the Protestant schools, as well as a like donation to the Catholic Charity Schools of “Rosemary Lane, Adam and Eve, Bridge Street, and Lazor Hill.” To Mr (afterwards Colonel O’Kelly, of Piccadilly, London, the owner of the celebrated race-horse “Eclipse”) £300 was left, “and if I did not know that he was very affluent,” adds Higgins, “I would leave him the entire of my property.”

Father Arthur O’Leary one of Curran’s ” Monks of the Screw,” was also advantageously remembered by Mr Higgins. [Mr Grattan, in the Life of his father, (ii. 198,) mentions that O’Leary was very intimate with Colonel O’Kelly, and lived with him. O’Leary had a pension from the Crown for writing down the White Boys. Mr Grattan adds, on the authority of Colonel O’Kelly, that Mr Pitt offered O’Leary considerable remuneration if he would write in support of the Union, but the friar refused.] To that accomplished ecclesiastic he bequeathed the sum of £100; but O’Leary never lived to enjoy it, and passed into eternity almost simultaneously with the Sham Squire, in January 1802. To George J. Browne, assistant editor, £50 was bequeathed, in order to purchase mourning for Mr Higgins, as also certain securities held by Higgins for money lent to Browne. Several other bequests in the same shape and similar circumstances are made.

Some young people, who shall be nameless here, are advantageously mentioned, [In the third volume of the Cornwallis Correspondence, one of the name is found obtaining a pension of £300 a year at the same time that Francis Higgins’s services received similar recognition. A Christian name borne by the junior recipient is stated in the same work to have been “Grenville”, he was probably born during the vice royalty of George Grenville*, *Lord Buckingham, of whom Higgins was a parasite and a slave. See p. 66, ante, &c.] probably on *natural *grounds. William, James, and Christopher Teeling, [Is this the party whose name appears in the Secret Service Money Account viz.:- “Nov. 5, 1803, chaise for C. Teeling from the Naul, £1, 6s.”] are named executors; but it appears, from the records of the Probate Court, that they declined to act. In those days there was no stamp duty; and the sum for which Higgins’s residuary legatee administered does not appear. The will was witnessed by George Faulkner.

In September 1791, Mr Higgins declares that he has £7,000 in Finlay’s bank; “but my property,” he adds, ” will, I believe, much exceed this sum when all is estimated.” Mr Higgins having lived for 11 years subsequent to the date of his will, during which time he laboured with fiercer zeal, and reaped even richer remuneration than before, it may be inferred that his property in 1802 was not far short of £20,000.

Little further remains to be told regarding the Sham Squire. In 1799 we catch a parting glimpse of him in a work descriptive of the actors in the Union struggle. “From his law practice, his gaming-table contributions, and newspaper,” says this work, “the Sham now enjoys an income that supports a fine house in a fashionable quarter of a great city, whence he looks down with contempt on the poverty of many persons, whose shoes he formerly cleaned.” [Sketches of Irish Political Characters, p.148.]

Mr Higgins did not long live to enjoy the price of poor Lord Edward’s blood. On the night of January 19, 1802, he died suddenly at his house in Stephen’s Green, aged 56. “It is as awful a storm as the night the Sham Squire died,” was a phrase in the mouths of many old persons while the calamitous hurricane of 1839 swept Dublin. We are informed by Dr J---, that his grandfather took his children to the window on the night of the 19th of January 1S02, to view the extraordinarily grand convulsion of the elements which raged. Dense black clouds rushed across the lurid sky, like the charge of the Black Brunswickers at Waterloo, while piteous moanings of the night wind filled the air: and it has always been a tradition in the family that the sight derived additional solemnity from the fact of its association with the last agony and death of the Sham Squire.

To the lonely graveyard of Kilbarrack he bequeathed his body. A more picturesque spot,

“Where erring man might hope to rest,”

it would be hard to select. Situated at the edge of the proverbially beautiful bay of Dublin, the ruins of Kilbarrack, or, as they are anciently styled, “the Abbey of Mone,” have long existed as a monument of that primitive piety which prompted the Irish mariners of the 14th century to erect a chapel in honour of St Mary Star of the Sea, wherein to offer up an orison for their messmates, who had perished beneath the waves. [An interesting notice of Kilbarrack appears in Mr D’Alton’s History of the County Dublin, pp. 113-115, but he does not suggest the origin of its name, i.e. Kill *Berach, *or the Church of St Berach, a disciple of St Kevin.]

In accordance with Mr Higgin’s expressed wishes, a large tabular tomb was erected over his remains in 1804. Beside it repose the ashes of Margaret Lawless, mother of the patriot peer Cloncurry, and near it lies the modest grave of John Sweetman, a leading “United Irishman,” from whose house adjacent Hamilton Rowan escaped - crossed in an open boat from Kilbarrack to the Bay of Biscay, where it passed through the British fleet - and although £1,000 lay on his head, was safely lauded in France by the faithful fishermen of Baldoyle, who were well aware of his identity.

But the Sham Squire’s ambitious-looking tomb is the monarch of that lonely graveyard, and it is impossible to pass without one’s attention being arrested by it. It records that “the legal representatives of the deceased deem it but just to his memory here to inscribe, that he has left bequests behind him, a memento of philanthropy, liberality, and benevolence to the poor and distressed, more durable than can sculptured marble perpetuate, as it will last for ever, and be exemplar to all those to whom Heaven has intrusted affluence.” [Here the chief bequests are enumerated in detail.]

“Reader,” adds the epitaph, “you will judge of the head and heart which dictated such distinguished charity to his fellow-creatures, liberal as it is impartial, and acknowledge that lie possessed the true benevolence which Heaven ordains, and never fails everlastingly to reward.’?

This epitaph suggests a curious comment on the question asked by a child after spelling the inscriptions in a churchyard, “Mamma, where are the bad men buried?”

The lonely and desolate aspect of the hallowed ruin which Higgins chose as his last resting-place, contrasts curiously with the turbulence of his guilty life; and Old Mortality could not select a more fitting sight for the moralising ruminations in which he loved to indulge.

Francis Higgins was wise in his generation, and astutely kept his own counsel. Some of his sins we have told, but the bulk are probably known only to the Searcher of hearts. Of the guilty secrets which were buried in Higgins’s heart, how many have found a vent in the rank heartsease and henbane, which spring from his grave. “Where,” writes Nathaniel Hawthorne, describing a dialogue between a doctor and his patient, “where did you gather these herbs with such a dark flabby leaf?” “Even in the graveyard,” answered the physician; “they grew out of his heart, and typify some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime.”

“Perchance he earnestly desired it, but could not.” And wherefore,” rejoined the physician, “wherefore not, since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest an unspoken crime?”

But why speculate upon it? It is not certain, after all, that the storied urn of the Sham Squire really enshrines his ashes. The deserted position of Kilbarrack graveyard rendered it, some years ago, a favourite haunt with those who, under the nickname of “sack-‘em-ups,’ effected premature resurrections for anatomical purposes. [The *Irish Penny Magazine *for January 20, 1833, contains a picture of Kilbarrack churchyard undergoing spoliation at the hands of medical students, who have succeeded, meanwhile, in slipping a sack over the head of “the dead watcher.” The latter is made to tell a long story descriptive of his feelings previous and subsequent to this denouement.

“One time I would picthur to myself the waves approaching like an army a-horseback, and shaking their white tops for feathers; and then I would fancy I saw the dead people starting up out of their graves, and rushing down helthur skelthur to purtect their resting-place, shouldering human bones for fire-arms - they grabbed thigh-bones, and arm-bones, and all the bones they could cotch up in their hurry, and when they would *make ready - present - back *the waves id gallop nimble enough, but it was to wheel about agin with more fury and nearer to the inemy, who in their turn would scamper back agin with lorng stridcs, their white sheets flying behind ‘em, like the cullegion chaps of a windy Sunday, and grinning frightfully through the holes which wanst were eyes. Another time I would look across to Howth as it *riz *like a black *joint *betune me and the sky; and I would think if the devil that is chained down below there at full length in a cavern near the light-house was to break loose, what a purty pickle I’d be in.”] and possibly the heart of Higgins may have been ‘long since the subject of a lecture on aneurism of the aorta. [It has been remarked by Dr Mapother and other physiologists, that aneurism of the aorta is peculiarly liable to overtake the designing, selfish, and wrongly ambitious man. It kills suddenly.]

Through life he was the subject of popular execration, and in death this enmity pursued him. An alderman of the old corporation, who resided at Howth, declared, in 1820, that in riding into Dublin he could never pass Kilbarrack without dismounting from his horse for the purpose of ridiculing and insulting the Sham Squire’s grave. The loathing in which Higgins had been held wreaked its vengeance in more formidable demonstrations. Many years ago some persons unknown visited his tomb, and smashed off the part on which the words, “Sacred to the memory of Francis Higgins,” were inscribed. The thickness of the slab is considerable, and nothing short of a ponderous sledge-hammer could have effected this destruction. The same eccentric individual who, in the dead of night, wellnigh succeeded in depriving an obnoxious statue of its head, [The statue of William III. in College Green.] is likely to have been cognisant of the malign joke played on the Sham’s mausoleum. No one better knew the depth of his rascality than Watty Cox, who, in the *Irish Magazine, *makes reference to both his turpitude [See *Irish Magazine? *for October 1810, p. 436, &c.] and tomb. Of the latter we read, that in “Kilbarrack churchyard the remains of the Sham are deposited under a magnificent tomb and splendid inscription, unequalled in the history of sepulchral literature.” [*Irish Magazine *for November 1813.]

Nearly two generations passed away, and unless by a few families, all memory of the Sham Squire became obliterated Tourists visited Kilbarrack; and disciples of Doctor Syntax, moved by the touching epitaph and the romantic scenery around, perchance dropped a tear upon the stone. Pedestrians made it a halting-point and resting-place; the less matter-of-fact mused on Erin’s days of old:

“Ere her faithless sons betray’d her,”

cleared the moss out of the inscriptions, and prayed for the nameless patriot and philanthropist who mouldered below.

[On September 16, 1853, a gentleman published a letter in the *Freeman, *requesting to know, not only the name of the person on whom so eulogistic an epitaph had been written, but the fate of the trust-money named in it. “It is gross ingratitude,” he added, and practical materialism, to allow the tomb and memory of such a philanthropist to perish for want of a suitable monument to mark his last resting-place; and I should only hope that, among so many benefited, one, at least, may be found to turn to the grave of their common benefactor.” A letter in reply went on to say “This will hardly satisfy your correspondent in regard to the trust bequest for poor debtors, or offer any apology or explanation of why the tomb of such a charitable testator should be left so totally neglected and defaced by the highway.” Twelve years later found another Jonathan Oldbuck poking among the stones of Kilbarrack, and addressing a similar query to the *Irish Tintes. *The subject excited considerable sensation, and became invested with almost romantic interest. Several leaders, as well as letters, appeared. “Kilbarrack,” wrote the editor, “is as lonely and desolate a ruin as ever an artist painted. A stray goat or sheep may be seen browsing upon the old graves, half covered with drifted sand; or a flock of sandlarks sweeps through the wide and broken arches. Round the forsaken tombs grow in abundance heartsease, veronica, and the white harebell. There are pretty mosses on the gray walls; but the aspect of the ruins oppresses the heart with a sense of melancholy loneliness. Sometimes, when the storm blows inshore, the waves dash in spray over the ruined walls, and weep salt tears over the tombs.”

“An Humble Debtor,” dating from the Four Courts Marshalsea, and citing as his text, “I was in prison, and ye visited me not,” (Matt. xxv. 43, 44,) went on to say, “Your journal for the last few days has given great consolation to the inmates of this prison, by its insertion of letters bearing on the hitherto almost unknown benefactions of Francis Higgins, of good memory.”

The gentleman thus addressed was of opinion that the money, if invested in land, ought to yield now, at least £50 per annum.]

All remembrance of his life had died out, although a tradition of his sobriquet still floated about the locality; and by degrees the history of Higgins degenerated into “the beautiful legend of the Sham Squire;” [“The legend of the Sham Squire,” full of romance, and bearing no resemblance to the authentic details which we have gathered, appears in 1856 in a serial published by Mr Chamney.] which at last was cruelly disturbed by the publication of the Cornwallis correspondence, the researches of the present writer, and some patriotic scribe who, since our first disclosures on this subject, has inscribed across the imposing epitaph, surmounted by a picture of a pike and a gallows:-

“Here lies the Monster,

Higgins,

Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s

Informer.”

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