Mr. Collins did not get the post for which he was recommended until the year 1800. It was Dominica, one of the West Indian Islands, as we learn from the S. S. Money Book.' The first entry of his name is on November 23, 1797: Mr. Collins. Sent to him, in London, 1081.' 2 Here he remains for two years-no doubt one of the gentlemen' recommended by Mr. Cooke,' and mentioned in the Castlereagh Correspondence' as qualified to 'set' the movements of Lord Cloncurry in London.

In more than one of the secret letters sent by Collins to Cooke, he offers his services for fields in other countries, where he thinks he could be even more useful than at home. A large sheaf of papers regarding troubles in the West Indies is preserved at Dublin Castle. Dominica-the site of his first appointment-had been captured by the British in 1756, but in 1771 the French, after a hard fight, once more became its masters. In 1783 the island was again restored to the English, but its executive felt far from secure. Intrigue was at work; French emissaries were not few; and the presence of Collins, a practised spy, came not amiss. The French, however, again effected a landing in 1805; Roseau, the chief town, was obliged to capitulate, and pay the enemy 12,000l. to quit. In 1890, after the cession of Heligoland to Germany there was talk of surrendering Dominica to France.

What was Collins' later history I have been unable to discover. Sylvanus Urban' tells of a Thomas Collins who was hanged; but this is a mere coincidence of name. It is within the possibilities that our spy may have posed as Governor Collins, and even received at his levees Hamilton Rowan, who,

Several persons named Collins, and described as silk mercers, appear in the Dublin Directory between the years 1770 and 1800. Thomas Collins vanishes in 1793; and Samuel Collins, silk and worsted manufacturer, 35 Pill Lane,' is also found for the last time in the Directory for 1793. They seem to have been brothers. A bill of Samuel, duly receipted, for goods supplied to Dr. McNevin, a leading rebel, is enclosed by Thomas in one of his secret missives to Cooke.

2 Other entries follow: Thomas Collins' bill, from London, 54l. 3s. 4d.' is entered on September 22, 1798. These payments continue to be made until 1799, when they become very frequent.

during the travels by which his exile was beguiled, would pay his devoirs, as he says, to the British resident.'

An informer of a novel type was a priest named Phillips. Describing the events of the year 1795, Mr. Froude writes:

Lord Carhampton went down and took command in Connaught. Informers offered their services, provided their presence was not required in the witness-box. A Priest named Phillips caused himself to be made a Defender with a view of giving information.' 2 Others came whose names the Viceroy dared not place on paper. With the help of these men, Carhampton was able to arrest many of the Connaught Leaders; 3 and legal trials being from the nature of the case impossible, he trusted to Parliament for an Act of Indemnity, and sent them by scores to serve in the Fleet. Thus, amidst the shrieks of Patriots and threats of prosecution, he succeeded in restoring some outward show of order.4

Among Mr. Froude's startling passages, none created in Ireland a more painful sensation than this. That an Irish priest-the Soggarth Aroon5 of the people--should be selling the lives of his friends, flock, and penitents, was indeed a novel incident. Interest in the episode has recently been revived by Mr. Lecky, who describes Father Phillips as having given the Government some really valuable assistance in detecting Rebel Leaders. For all we know to the contrary, this Ecclesiastic might have gone on to the end undiscovered, posing and pontificating as a solemn hierarch. But, in point of fact, Phillips, though in orders, had been degraded and suspended by his Ordinary. Dr. Madden, long before the publication of Froude or Lecky, casually notices Phillips' as an 'excommunicated priost from French Park, co. Roscommon.'

Autobiography of Hamilton Rowan, p. 318.

2 Camden to Portland, July 29, 1795.

The late Colonel the Right Hon. Fitzstephen French, whose brother became Lord De Freyne, informed me that his father, Arthur French, M.P. for Roscommon from 1785 to 1820, had been threatened with arrest by Lord Carhampton. French lived at French Park, where 'Priest Phillips' also resided. 4 The English in Ireland, iii. 161.

Anglice darling priest.' John Banim has given to the ballad poetry of Ireland a well-known piece under this title.

Cooke to Pelham, Dec. 4, 1795.

7 United Irishmen, i. 537.

AWFUL DEATII OF A PRIEST

173

His end was involved in some mystery which it may be well to penetrate. McSkimmins' History of Carrickfeargus' records, under date January 5, 1796: The body of a stranger, said to have been an informer, of the surname of Phillips, was found in a dam, near the paper mills, Belfast.' How he came there we learn from James Hope, a Protestant rebel of Ulster. After the excommunicated priest, Phillips, had betrayed a number of the Defenders in Connaught, he proceeded to Belfast, only to find, however, that his character had cast its shadow before him. A party of Defenders seized Phillips, tried him on the spot, and sentenced him to death. "They gave him 'time to pray,' adds Hope, 'then put leaden weights into his pockets, and drowned him.'

Punishment of informers by death was not of the frequency that McSkimmin supposed and Turner feared. Hope, who is always truthful, adds, that at a meeting of the Craigarogan Branch, they came to a resolution: "That any man who recommended or practised assassination of any person whomsoever, or however hostile to the Society, should be expelled."

There is another informer whose name Mr. Froude undertakes to disclose. In April 1797 Camden sends Portland A statement which had been secretly made to him by a member of the Military Committee of the United Irishmen,'-and we learn that the informer in this instance was a miniature painter named Neville. Due inquiry has failed to find any man named Neville in the Society of United Irishmen, though a respectable wine merchant, Brent Neville, appears as the uncle of Henry Sheares's wife; Neville' has been reprinted in every succeeding edition of Mr. Froude's book. But it is now quite certain that Neville is a misprint for Newell. The Life and Confessions of Newell (a Spy),' written by himself, and undoubtedly genuine, was published in London in 1798; and in it (pp. 13-15) he describes his calling as that of a miniature painter.

CHAPTER XIV

LEONARD MCNALLY

1

THIRTY years ago I published in 'Notes and Queries an exposé of McNally, so far as it could then be done on circumstantial evidence. His secret letters to the Irish Government were not accessible when I first touched the subject, but these have become very familiar to me of late, and it will be seen that all I sought to show is proved by the revelation of McNally's own testimony. Before I come to these letters, some of the remarks with which I had long previously prefaced my doubts may perhaps be allowed to stand.

It is an object with Mr. Froude to show-and evidently as pointing a moral-that men who posed as the greatest patriots were secretly betraying the plans of their colleagues. But although Mr. Froude mentions McNally more than once, it does not appear that he was an informer. When describing the arrest and death of the Rev. Wm. Jackson in 1795, he mentions McNally as a popular barrister,' and further on his name is given with that of Curran, Ponsonby, Emmet, and Guinness, as constituting the legal strength of Irish Liberalism.' This remark is made in connection with an episode told with such dramatic effect by Mr. Froude that it remains merely for a minor pen to unmask the popular barrister.'

Charles Phillips, although he had made the lives of famous Irish barristers his study, as shown in 'Curran and his Contemporaries,' refused to believe any tale to the pre

1 Vide Notes and Queries, October 8, 1859.

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN

175

judice of McNally. In the last edition of his popular book Phillips declares that

The thing is incredible! If I was called upon to point out, next to Curran, the man most obnoxious to the Government-who most hated them, and was most hated by them--it would have been Leonard MacNally-that MacNally, who, amidst the military audience, stood by Curran's side while he denounced oppression, defied power, and dared every danger!!

In this impression he was supported by W. H. Curran, afterwards judge-a man who, unlike his illustrious father, was of the hardest and coldest nature. He travelled out of his path, in tracing that father's life, to pronounce a panegyric which is quite a curiosity to exhume :

Among many endearing traits in this gentleman's private character, his devoted attachment to Mr. Curran's person and fame and, since his death, to the interests of his memory, has been conspicuous. The writer of this cannot advert to the ardour and tenderness with which he cherishes the latter, without emotion of the most lively and respectful gratitude. To Mr. McNally he has to express many obligations for the zeal with which he has assisted in procuring and supplying materials for the present work. The introduction of these private feelings is not entirely out of place--it can never be out of place to record an example of steadfastness in friendship. For three and forty years Mr. McNally was the friend of the subject of these pages; and during that long period he performed the duties of the relation with the most uncompromising and romantic fidelity. To state this is a debt of justice to the dead. The survivor has an ampler reward than any passing tribute of this sort can confer, in the recollection that during their long intercourse not even an unkind look ever passed between them.2

These remarks were elicited by a scene which occurred at Finney's trial in '98. John Philpot Curran, embracing

' Curran and his Contemporaries.

Life of Curran, by his Son, i. 384.

McNally had spoken against time for an hour and three-quarters, as he states in an autograph note. This has been enlarged into three hours and a half' by Dr. Shelton Mackenzie in his Life of Curran, p. 228, while professing to quote from McNally's note given by Davis in Curran's Specches, p. 365.