The head was finely formed [he writes], but the expression of the face was that of the most frightful agony. The mark of very violent injuries, done during life to the right eye, nose, and mouth, were particularly apparent; the very indentation round the neck, from the pressure of the rope, was visible; and there was no injury to the cervical vertebræ occasioned by any instrument.
These horrible marks were doubtless caused by the brutal and bungling way in which the executioner had done his work. Madden, in good taste, restored to the shrunken trunk its long-lost head. When John Sheares, in his last letter, spoke of 'an affectionate tear shed over his dust,' he little foresaw the grim irony by which the words of the Burial Service—'Dust to dust, ashes to ashes'—were to be thwarted. He never married. Roche, in his 'Essays of an Octogenarian,' says that, happening to occupy the rooms in Dublin where John Sheares had once lived, he discovered, in a recess, a package of his letters, which, on finding them addressed to a lady, he instantly burned. Rich material for romance was thus, happily, lost.
John Sheares's last letter to his sister makes feeling reference to his natural daughter Louise, then aged seven years. Julia Sheares gave from her pinched resources what served to educate this girl. Louise married a Mr. Coghlan, but, owing to his loose habits, left him. John's dramatic dash descended to his child. She became a popular actress, and was known on the London stage as 'Miss White.' Here the gentle histrion went through many struggles, and was pursued by much adulation. But panting—like Goldsmith's hare—to the spot from whence at first she flew, Louise returned to Ireland, and died there in 1828.
Whilst the parchment features of the Sheareses grinned in agonised expression, and their orphans shivered in the storms of a cold, neglectful world,[708] John Warneford Armstrong battened on his blood-money, and posed as a prosperous and popular man. Lord Cork's damaging account of his antecedents in the letter which remained near a century sealed will be remembered. The magisterial bench hailed his adhesion; he took a leading place on the grand jury of his county; Burke's 'Landed Gentry' enrolled him in its ranks.
In 1843 the name of Captain Armstrong again came before the public, in connection with the prosecution of his servant, Egan, for stealing, among other effects, a gold medal in commemoration of his discoveries in 1798. The late F. Thorpe Porter, from whose lips I had the following anecdote, was on the bench with Sir Nicholas FitzSimon as police magistrate, when the latter, recognising through a glass door the well-known figure of Armstrong approaching, said: 'Here is Sheares' Armstrong; I don't care to meet him,' and retired into a private room. FitzSimon, as former member for the King's County in which Armstrong lived, had been in pleasant touch with him, and often chuckled at his quaint conceits. Armstrong with his accustomed swagger took his seat, uninvited, on the bench. Mr. Porter said that he had not the honour of his acquaintance, and requested him to withdraw. 'I always had this privilege from Major Sirr,' replied Armstrong, unabashed; 'and I am a magistrate for the King's County.' 'This not being the King's County,' retorted Porter, 'I must only repeat my request. If you continue to sit here people in court might suppose that you were—what I should much regret—a friend of mine.'
Sir Thomas Redington, the Under-Secretary, informed Mr. Porter that Armstrong had reported to the Government the words of which he complained, but that it was decided to take no action in the matter.
Soon after a case came on for hearing before the judicial Chairman of the King's County, to whom the Clerk of the Peace, speaking in a half-whisper, said: 'Sheares' Armstrong' (a nickname by which he was well known) 'has some testimony to offer which it might be well for you to hear.' This was done, and the chairman, in summing up, said: 'I now come to the evidence of Mr. Sheares Armstrong'—and he then proceeded to observe upon it, innocently using—over and over again—the stigmatising nickname, to the amusement of the audience and the agony of Armstrong. All was not couleur de rose with this prosperous person. 'The Attornies Guide,' a local satire, published at Dublin in 1807, and written by the Rev. Richard Frizell, rector of Ilfracombe, notices as a judgment, a fact which can be regarded merely as a coincidence: 'Shortly after he gave his ever-memorable evidence on the trial of these unfortunate gentlemen—the Sheareses—he was afflicted with a fistula in the face, which rendered him as remarkable an object as Cain is supposed to have been after the murder of his brother.' Frizell finally exclaims (p. 42):—
Thy infant, hanging at its mother's breast;
Friendship pretending, revelled at thy board,
While round your neck he tied the fatal cord!
Stings like these must have severely tried his patience. His temper was of as hair-trigger a character as the pistols which he carried for protection. Robert Maunsell, a leading solicitor, of whom Armstrong was a client, informed me that the captain, on one occasion, when entertained by Mrs. Maunsell in Merrion Square, smashed, by an awkward swinging gesture, the leg of the chair on which he sat, whereupon his exclamation was not a gallant apology, but—'D—— n your chairs, madam!' This, Maunsell said, was intoned with a nasal twang—the penalty paid for the lupus—which ate into his beauty fifty years before.
To earn 500l. a year Armstrong must have done something more than merely to ensnare the Sheareses, although hitherto he has been credited with that exploit alone. William Lawless was Professor of Physiology at the College of Surgeons, Dublin, a man of mark, and very highly connected. Immediately after his interview with Armstrong at Sheares's house we find a warrant issued for his arrest, and it was not Armstrong's fault if he failed to meet the fate of the brothers. A timely hint from Surgeon-general Stewart put Lawless on the alert. By hair-breadth escapes he eluded his pursuers, and at last reached France, where he became a distinguished general under Napoleon.
Armstrong, when stealing on the Sheareses, sought to kill another bird with the same stone. He was clearly making notes for the ruin of Lawless as well, and mentioned on Sheares's trial, among other remarks alleged to have been made by Lawless, that the trees near the Royal camp would come handy in suspending prisoners captured by the rebel force. Lawless had luckily escaped at this time, but at once wrote indignantly denying that he had ever made so horrible a suggestion. Previous to his flight he had resided in French Street, Dublin, whither Major Sirr proceeded with a warrant both for his arrest and that of John Sheares, who had been in daily conference with him. While Sirr was engaged in searching Lawless's house a knock came to the door, Sheares entered, and Sirr at once said, 'You are my prisoner.'
Lawless had seen Lord Edward constantly during the period of his concealment; but Armstrong knew nothing of the chieftain's movements, and, of course, had no hand in his betrayal, though some infer to the contrary from a passing remark made by Mr. Froude.[709] But he qualified for his pension by a general vigilance and activity in support of that red system and policy which John Sheares's proclamation brands. Armstrong having been questioned by Curran as to three peasants which he had taken prisoners in '98, he replied: 'We were going up Blackmore Hill, under Sir James Duff; there was a party of rebels there. We met three men with green cockades. One we shot, another we hanged, and the third we flogged and made a guide of.'[710]
The murder of a little child by a yeoman named Woolagan excited, even in those days, a feeling of abhorrence, and Plowden, in his 'History of Ireland,' notices Woolagan's acquittal by the court-martial which tried him, but does not cite the evidence. This we find in the 'Dublin Magazine' for October 1798. There it will be seen that the murderer threw the onus on the general orders issued by Captain Armstrong. Phillips and Curran, who have written of that man, do not appear to have read this trial. The crime was proved and not denied, yet Woolagan was acquitted. But the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis, condemned the verdict, and disqualified the president of the court-martial, Lord Enniskillen, from again presiding in that capacity.
Captain Armstrong, though hot-tempered, was capable of generous acts, and his redeeming points must not be ignored. He was a bad hater, a good laugher. Affable to all, he frequently went out of his way to be civil; and with him sweet words had more than their proverbial value. In days when landlordism reigned with iron sceptre, he showed indulgence to his tenantry; but when giving leases, or using his influence with higher lords of the soil for that end, he cunningly got his own life inserted as a beneficial interest to the tenants. Thus in the hot-bed of Ribbonism he gloried to the end in a sort of charmed life. He survived until April 20, 1858, when he died at Clara, in the King's County, after having drawn from Dublin Castle 500l. a year, or about 29,464l. Castlereagh, who had urged him to his work, recommended him for a pension, and predeceased him by nearly forty years, might have deemed this sum excessive had he lived to see it paid.
Seeking to disarm prejudice and cultivate rural friendship, Armstrong maintained cordial relations with the peasantry. He would enter their cabins, sit with rude hosts, and converse with their wives on various domestic points solely of interest to themselves. We must suppose that, consistently with his later utterance, their children attracted from him no moving manifestation of regard. His long life had one decided advantage. It is stated that he lived down every political enemy and contemporary, becoming in the end downright popular. His face, familiar from childhood even to old men, became at last endeared to early memories, and his neighbour, Captain Fuller, who attended his funeral, testifies to the almost incredible fact that he saw some well-known Ribbonmen, who were present, weep, and horny hands upraised which, in the hot blood of youth, had dispensed 'the wild justice of revenge.'[711]
FOOTNOTES:
[692] The fact that Mr. Lecky, when noticing the Sheares, tells his readers to 'see a curious anecdote about them' in a former book of mine, affords in itself an excuse for now offering something new. Vide England in the Eighteenth Century, viii. 191.
[694] The will of Sheares senior lends no support to this often repeated statement; but he commits his children to the care of Lord Shannon, a relative of their mother. This peer had been created, in 1786, Baron Carleton in the peerage of England, and hence the confusion.
[696] She did not long survive the great shock, but a prolonged purgatory was reserved for Henry's widow. She never raised her head, loved to occupy a darkened room, and always spent in fasting and prayer the anniversary of his death. Like her husband she was a Protestant.
[697] Brutal and bungling as all this was, it would appear that, from the first, it was designed that a cruel butchery should desecrate their death. The original warrant for their execution orders that:—
'They, and each of them, be hanged by the neck—but not until they be dead—for whilst they are yet alive, they are to be taken down—their entrails are to be taken out of their bodies, and, whilst they are yet alive, to be burned before their faces; their heads are then to be respectively cut off; their bodies to be divided into four quarters, and their heads and bodies to be at His Majesty's disposal.'
The above death warrant, with written directions from Mr. Cooke, as to the troops to attend at the scaffold, is addressed to Alderman Archer, High Sheriff for Dublin in 1798, and is now preserved by his grandnephew, Rev. Thomas Gray, M.A., F.T.C.D.
[698] The Society of United Irishmen.
[699] Most writers on the period, in noticing the anomaly that in England two witnesses were necessary in cases of treason, but in Ireland only one, assume that this law continues in force. The law as regards two witnesses dates from the reign of Edward III. It received strengthening touches by the 7 & 8 Will. III. cap. 3. But in 1822 it was extended to Ireland (1 & 2 Geo. IV. cap. 24); and editors of Haydn might note this fact.
[700] General Edward Boyle, eighth Earl of Cork, survived until June 29, 1856, and was the last surviving peer who had sat in the Irish and in the English House of Lords.
[702] 'Anonymous letters are flying. My friend got two this week threatening death and destruction if he exerted himself on the approaching trials.' 'My friend' is the 'cipher' by which McNally always means himself.—J. W. to Cooke, July 10, 1798. (MSS. Dublin Castle.)
[703] The late Lord Ross, a friend of Armstrong's, to Rev. Thomas Gray, M.A., F.T.C.D., who has communicated it to W. J. F.
[704] The late Dr. Ireland, a nonagenarian, who had filled official posts in Dublin Castle, knew Flemyng, to whom Dr. Dobbin's letter is addressed. Flemyng had been in the East India Company's service, but joined the United Irishmen during leave of absence from Bengal, in which place he had known Lord Cornwallis, its then Governor-General, but later Viceroy of Ireland. 'Flemyng,' says Dr. Ireland, 'attained popularity for having, with his own arm, killed the largest boar seen in India, an animal which had often ripped open horses and oxen. One night, at Dublin, the Viceroy sent for Flemyng and surprised him by saying that all that had passed between him and the Sheares was known to the Privy Council. The Lord Lieutenant, then placing his arm on Flemyng's shoulder, said: "Let not another day elapse, or not all my influence can save you from the gallows. Start for India at once; those fellows at Ghazapore must be put down; you are just the man to do it. You will be gazetted to your company ere you reach Bombay." Flemyng went to India, did the work, rose, and died rich. In 1805 he again met Lord Cornwallis, on his arrival in India charged with the re-assumption of its reins of government; with gratitude he acknowledged the timely service he had rendered him in 1798. Death was written in the face of Lord Cornwallis as he landed at Calcutta: India, the grave of Europeans, folded him to its embrace, and a few weeks later the soldier-statesman was no more.'—Richard Stanley Ireland, M.D., to W. J. F. This aged physician died on March 13, 1875.
[705] The word 'possible' was written here, but afterwards crossed out.
[706] The above letter of John Sheares, enclosed in Dr. Dobbin's communication, has, I find, been printed by Dr. Madden; but, on comparing the original document with the printed copy, no fewer than thirteen discrepancies are detected.
[707] The soil and walls of the crypt being a compound of argillaceous earth and carbonate of lime, a singularly antiseptic character is thus imparted to these vaults.
[708] In 1860, a daughter of Henry Sheares, then seventy-two years of age, was an occupant of an almshouse in Cork.
[709] Froude, iii. 341.
[711] The late Sir Robert Peel.