The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Indeed, a few years later, the English Parliament had been obliged to remind the Protestant Irish Parliament somewhat firmly, “The troops you have raised and paid for are by no means to be considered under your control.” And just a couple of years ago, King George had even had to promulgate a Declaratory Act to remind them, once and for all, that London could and probably would override any decision or legal judgement they made.

  “We are loyal to the king and his established Church,” the Irish Parliament concluded, “yet we are regarded as inferior subjects.” They were exactly right.

  The Catholics, though affected by anything that damaged the island’s trade, were not really part of the quarrel. They had their own problems to worry about. It was the Protestant ruling class, the Ascendancy—the Anglo-Irish as they were starting to be called—who felt so badly used by London. Why, even the best-paid government jobs, the sinecures, the best-endowed livings for the clergy—the expected perquisites of government in that genial age—were being given to men sent over from England. “Why should it be only the second-rate jobs that are left for our own boys?” the Irish gentry wanted to know. And if the oppressed Catholic peasants hated the absentee landlords and their grasping middlemen, the Ascendancy often disliked them almost as much. “This rent money flooding out of the country to the absentees is stealing away Ireland’s wealth,” they complained. The amounts that left were not in fact large enough to do serious damage, but both Barbara Doyle and Fortunatus Walsh were convinced they did.

  The final insult, however, had just occurred this very year.

  “What are you going to do,” Mrs. Walsh demanded, “about those damned copper coins?”

  It has always been the prerogative of rulers, in all countries and in all political systems, to look after their mistresses. King George of England, naturally wishing to do something for his mistress, the Countess of Kendal, had had the happy thought of giving her a patent to mint copper halfpence and farthings for Ireland. The gift of such a license to a charming royal friend was such a normal thing that nobody had even thought about it twice. She in turn, not being in that business, had very sensibly sold the patent to a reputable ironmaster named Wood. And now Wood’s copper change had arrived in Ireland.

  “Why should we take these cursed, clipped coins in Dublin?” Barbara Doyle fixed Fortunatus with a bellicose eye.

  In fact, when Walsh had inspected some of Wood’s coins, it had seemed to him that their quality was perfectly sound, but he did not say so now.

  “What is so foolish about the business,” he remarked with perfect truth, “is that we’re actually short of silver coinage these days. It’s silver we need, not copper.” The various outflows of money to England had produced a shortage of the higher-value currency on the island recently—which was one of the reasons why even the English placemen in the Revenue Commission had warned London that this copper issue was a bad idea. But if he hoped to deflect his cousin’s assault by changing the subject, Walsh was out of luck. Barbara Doyle had never been deflected in her life.

  “Do you think Ireland should be governed by the favours given to a jezebel?” she threateningly enquired.

  That his cousin was actually shocked by the king having a mistress was doubtful; as for royal favours, Ireland had been familiar with those since before Saint Patrick came. “The whole thing was done behind our backs,” she cried. “That’s what turns my stomach.”

  And that, thought Fortunatus, was the rub. It was the casual insult implicit in the transaction that had infuriated everyone. Time and again, the English Parliament had refused to let the loyal Irish mint their own coins, since that would have smacked of too much independence; now, without even a word to the Irish Parliament, and against the advice of the authorities in Dublin, this private coinage had been foisted upon them.

  “It’s shameful,” he agreed.

  “So what are you and the Parliament going to do about it?”

  The Irish Parliament met from the autumn to the following spring, every other year. After a gap of eighteen months, a new session was just about to begin. Fortunatus had no doubt that there would be a big protest about the coins, but whether it would do any good was another matter.

  “I shall speak out on the subject, you may be sure,” he answered firmly.

  “Damn your speech,” she answered. “Those coins must be withdrawn. And you and your friends must see to it.” She stared at him. Her eyes were not in the least friendly.

  “We shall do our best,” he said guardedly.

  She continued to stare.

  “The lease on this house is up for renewal soon,” she remarked. “I could get a hundred and twenty for it. More, I dare say.”

  He gazed back in horror. Was the woman actually trying to bully him into a parliamentary action, which he probably couldn’t accomplish anyway, by threatening to raise his rent? Or possibly evict him? The naked brutality of the thing was appalling. And in front of a child!

  He looked down to the stool where the little boy sat, and found the child staring at him coldly. His eyes were just like his mother’s. Good heavens, he realized, the widow Doyle had deliberately brought the child along to show him how to conduct business. And she’s teaching him, he thought with despair, how to bully me.

  And then, suddenly, he almost burst out laughing. The dreadful woman was right, of course. The boy had to learn. For wasn’t this exactly how all public life was run? Indeed, he didn’t suppose that parliamentary politics could be organized in any other way. In England, government ministers and mighty aristocrats with control of patronage commanded small armies of parliamentary men, who did their bidding in return for favours, or the fear of losing them. Even in the Dublin Parliament, powerful men like Speaker Conolly, or the Brodrick family in Cork, controlled large factions with promises and threats. In her crude way, Cousin Barbara was just trying to do the same.

  The problem was that he had no idea how the business would go once the Parliament met; to imagine that a new and insignificant Member of Parliament like himself could promise anything was absurd. Yet as he gazed at her, he had no doubt that she would carry out her threat.

  “We shall have to see, my dear Barbara,” he said carefully. “I shall certainly do my best.”

  But when she left a few minutes later, he shook his head and wondered—was he about to be evicted from his house?

  It was partly to take his mind off this tiresome subject that he decided, that very afternoon, that he’d walk across the Liffey to see about young Smith.

  Having crossed the Liffey, he made his way into the parish of Saint Michan’s. It was one of the more ancient parishes, lying on the western side of the old Norsemen’s district of Oxmantown, and there had been a church there since time out of mind. Making his way through several handsome new terraces, he came to a more modest quarter still occupied by gabled houses which dated from the century before. And entering Cow Lane, he was soon directed to the premises occupied by Mr. Morgan MacGowan, grocer.

  He liked what he saw. A yard with stores around it. From an open door in one of these came a faint and pleasant malty smell; inside, he could see smoked hams hanging from hooks, and sacks of spices— cloves, garlic, sage, peppers—on a low wooden shelf that ran along the wall. There seemed to be children everywhere, running barefoot in the yard, buzzing in and out of the house like bees around a hive, peeping from rafters. Ushered inside the house by the tradesman’s pleasant wife, he found an old-fashioned parlour with a wooden floor, a scrubbed wooden table, wooden benches and stools, all spotlessly clean. When he explained that he was the brother of Terence Walsh, his welcome turned from politeness to warmth, and the smaller children at once made it clear that they expected to be swung around in the yard. When he mentioned the name of Garret Smith, however, he was informed that the young man was out, and, it seemed to him, a cloud passed over Mrs. MacGowan’s face. Soon after this, MacGowan himself arrived.

  The tradesman was a small, round, comfortable-looking man. The gr
ocer’s trade in Dublin was a pleasant one. Unusually, there was no guild, and therefore no discrimination against Catholics. A Catholic like MacGowan could engage in the grocery business without a sense of inferiority, and could prosper. Grocers were among some of the richest merchants in the city. And though MacGowan was not rich, Walsh had a feeling that he probably had more money than he cared to let you know.

  They talked amiably for a few minutes, about Terence, for whom the grocer clearly had a high regard, and his forthcoming journey. Though he had not travelled abroad himself, MacGowan was clearly well-informed about the trade and ports of France, and Fortunatus liked him.

  “So I hear,” he said after a little while, “that you have had some trouble with our relation, young Garret Smith.”

  MacGowan was silent for a moment. He looked at Walsh carefully, as if he were considering something.

  Walsh noticed that the grocer had a curious stare. He didn’t think he’d ever seen one quite like it. As he cocked his head slightly to one side, his left eye drooped half closed, but his right eye remained fixed upon the person he was speaking to, and opened so wide that it seemed as if it had grown, staring at you with a gaze of such intensity that it was startling.

  “He does his work well enough,” MacGowan said quietly. “I sent him to Dalkey on an errand this morning, or you’d have seen him here.”

  “He gives no trouble, then?”

  “He has a headstrong spirit, Mr. Walsh, and he thinks highly of his own opinions, as many young people do.” He paused. “He’s a clever young fellow, Sir, and I think he has a good heart. But he is subject to moods. He can sing you to sleep, or make you laugh till you cry. But then something will make him angry . . .” He paused again. “He’s fallen into bad company recently. That’s my opinion, Sir.”

  “What sort of company?’

  “You remember the trouble in the Liberties the other week?” As in other cities, there were sometimes fights between different gangs of apprentices. In the poorer sections of Dublin, especially the old Liberty areas which had been under the feudal rule of the medieval Church, there had been some altercation between the butcher boys and the Protestant Huguenot immigrants from France. Recently, some Huguenot boys had taken a savage beating.

  “A bad business,” said Walsh.

  “It was a terrible thing they did,” MacGowan continued. “He’s been spending time with the butchers—though I have told him not to keep bad company—and he was there when it was done. I don’t say he had a hand in it. Please God he didn’t. But he was there. And when I told him he must never go there again, all he said to me was: ‘It was only some Protestant Frenchmen that they beat. They deserved no better.’ Those were his words.” The grocer continued to fix Walsh with his one-eyed gaze.

  “That was very wrong of him,” Fortunatus agreed. “Though I dare say he only spoke in the heat of the moment.”

  “Perhaps.” MacGowan’s gaze travelled slowly round the room until his eye appeared to fix on some distant point outside the window. “He worries me, Sir.”

  Fortunatus nodded.

  “And is there anything else,” he gently enquired, that you think I should know?”

  MacGowan’s eye stared at him once again, then looked down at the floor.

  “No.” He paused. “But you could ask Doctor Nary, the priest,” he suggested quietly. “He might know more than me.”

  As the house of Doctor Cornelius Nary lay not far away, when Fortunatus left the grocer’s, he decided to see if he was at home. Indeed, he was quite glad of the chance to visit him, for the parish priest of Saint Michan’s was one of Dublin’s more notable figures.

  So he was delighted when, arriving at the door of the house, he was greeted by the worthy divine himself.

  “I am Fortunatus Walsh, the brother of Terence Walsh,” he began politely, and got no further. For the priest beamed.

  “I know who you are,” he cried. “I know your brother well, and I know all about you. Come in, Fortunatus, and welcome.”

  Like other priests of that time, you would not necessarily have known that Doctor Nary—it was an odd spelling of the usual Neary, which the doctor pronounced “Nairy”—was a priest at all. Sometimes, to be sure, he wore the flowing gown and tabs of an academic and divine, but today he was simply dressed in the long buttoned tunic, cravat, breeches, and stockings of an ordinary gentleman, and his wig was off. Fortunatus was especially struck, however, by the priest’s noble features. His face was a perfect oval, with fine, almond-shaped eyes and only a slight loosening of the flesh under the chin. As a youth, thought Walsh, he must have looked like a renaissance Madonna. When he smiled, the eyes creased with humour in a pleasant way. Though now in his sixties, the priest looked fit and energetic. He led Fortunatus inside to a modest study, neatly crammed with books, offered him a chair, and, sitting down at his table, enquired, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye:

  “So what may a Catholic priest do for a good Church of Ireland Protestant like yourself?”

  If the English did not like Catholicism and did all they could to discourage it, the native Irish had ignored the Penal Laws and kept steadfastly to their faith. So the government had been forced to compromise. The religious orders—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits especially—were all strictly outlawed. Bishops were also forbidden. But ordinary parish priests were tolerated, as long as they had registered with the authorities and taken an oath of loyalty to the crown.

  Cornelius Nary had been at Saint Michan’s for a quarter of a century. He ran a busy parish with the help of several junior priests. Having studied theology in Paris, he was a noted scholar; he had written a thousand-page history of the world, and even translated the New Testament into everyday English. He was widely liked by the Protestant clergy. Fortunatus knew that the vicar of his own Church of Ireland parish held Nary in high esteem. “What I find admirable,” he told Walsh, “is that he stands up for his faith in a manly way: he writes pamphlets against us Protestants—and you have to admire his courage—but he’s always reasonable, never discourteous.” It might be that the Catholic priest was merely diplomatic, but he was careful always to present these religious disputes as an honest disagreement between well-meaning parties. “If matters between Protestants and Catholics could always be conducted in such a manner,” the vicar had confessed, “I personally would see no need for the Penal Laws at all.”

  Fortunatus told the priest that he had come from Morgan MacGowan and explained his mission at once.

  “You’ll be aware that Terence has taken an interest in our relation, Garret Smith.”

  “It does your brother credit. I placed the boy with an excellent little school in this parish, you know.” Under the Penal Laws, Catholic schools were not supposed to exist. But the English administrators had long since discovered that, instead of being the barbarian beasts that they had supposed, many of the native Irish regarded education as a birthright, and it had been quite impossible to keep them from it. Officially, therefore, they did not exist; but behind closed doors, Dublin was full of them. “He proved to be very intelligent,” the scholarly priest continued. “I gave him instruction myself.”

  “He is a fortunate young man, then,” said Fortunatus politely.

  Nary gave him a wry look.

  “Oh, he doesn’t think so, I assure you. He has the greatest contempt for me. He told me so himself.” Observing Walsh’s astonishment, Nary laughed. “I’m not nearly good enough for him, you know.”

  “How can he possibly . . . ?”

  “Oh, he’s a most furious young Jacobite, you know. He despises me because I am registered and do not flout the law—much as I dislike it—and because some of the Church of Ireland clergy are my friends.” Nary shrugged. “I like to think he does me an injustice.”

  In fact, as Walsh knew very well, the priest had done more than write some fearless pamphlets. Ten years ago, he had been forced into hiding and then arrested after illegally helping some poor nuns who’d been
dispossessed. Only two years ago, when a Catholic in Cork had been unfairly condemned to death, Nary had openly rebuked the authorities by draping his entire chapel in black mourning cloth. There was no question about the man’s courage. He had simply calculated that he could achieve more for the faith by making friends than by making enemies.

  “I had been intending,” said Fortunatus a little doubtfully, “to keep an eye on him while Terence was away.”

  “You were?” Nary clearly found this quite amusing. “And you a Protestant. Brave man.”

  “He sounds a monster,” Walsh ventured, “and yet it seems to me that you like him.”

  The priest nodded.

  “You are right. I even discussed him with the bishop.” Catholic bishops might not be allowed in Ireland officially, but of course they were often there, and the authorities usually ignored them. “Yet neither of us was certain how to help him. The bishop wondered if he would make a priest. He has the brain, but no vocation.” Nary gazed thoughtfully at Fortunatus. “You might say that he is both the best of young men,” he continued, “and the worst. His mind is very keen. Give him a subject to master, and he will swoop down upon it like a falcon. He will master it with an intensity at which I marvel. I lend him books. He has read prodigiously. But he lacks a centre. I’m not even sure of his convictions. Just when you suppose you have engaged his attention, he’ll turn from you—it’s as if he’s been swept up by a whirlwind into the sky. And suddenly you’ve lost him.” He paused. “He has a terrible, dark passion,” he added regretfully.

  “I asked Morgan MacGowan if there was anything in particular I should know,” Fortunatus remarked. “He said I should ask you. I’m wondering what it might have been.”

  “Ah.” The priest sighed. “That would be the girl.”

  “He mentioned no girl.”

  “How like him. He wouldn’t because, in his eyes, she belongs to me.” Doctor Nary stared up at the bookcase where three unsold copies of his translation of the New Testament kept each other company. “Kitty Brennan. A servant girl in this house. Her family live down in Wicklow. Poor farmers. I feel responsible for her. So I take it unkindly that young Smith has made the girl his sweetheart.”