CHAPTER XVIII.
A STAR-CHAMBER TRIAL.

On the evening of December the 5th, 1858, there was an entertainment at my house in Skibbereen in compliment to Dan McCartie, the brewer, who was leaving town, to accept the position of brewer in some Brewery in the County Galway. The company did not separate till about two o’clock. I went to bed, and was soon aroused from sleep by a thundering knocking at the hall door. When it was opened a dozen policemen rushed in and took charge of me and of every one in the house. Then every room was ransacked for papers, and for everything contraband of war—contraband of peace or war, I may say. I stood in the drawing-room under arrest. The sergeant-in-command was smashing the drawers of the chiffonier in search of documents. My wife rushed toward him, crying out not to break the drawers, as she would get him the keys. He rudely shoved her away. One of the policemen near me was making a rush at him, but I caught him and pushed him back. He was a Kerryman named Moynahan; he is not living now, so I do him no harm by mentioning his name. Tom O’Shea was a guest at the entertainment, he lived at the Curragh, some distance from the town. As there was an “eerie” place at the Steam-mill Cross, on his way home, where the “good people” used to show themselves, I told him it was better for him to sleep in one of the rooms than to risk getting a “puck” by traveling that road at the dead hour of the night. He was occupying one of the bedrooms when the police ransacked the house. They made a prisoner of him, and he was taken with us to Cork Jail, though he never was a member of the Phœnix Society. He was simply a friend of mine and a friend of Dan McCartie, and was at the entertainment as such. ’Tis one of those misfortunes that come upon good people on account of keeping bad company. Some twenty men were arrested in Skibbereen that night. We were lodged in the police barracks till clear day in the morning. Then, with two policemen in charge of every one of us—every one of us handcuffed to a policeman—we were taken through the towns of Rosscarbery and Clonakilty, to Bandon, where we arrived about seven o’clock in the evening. We were put into the jail of Bandon that night, and put into cells that were flooded with water. We met here Jerrie Cullinane, Pat Cullinane, Denis O’Sullivan, and William O’Shea, who had been arrested in Bantry that morning. Next morning we were taken by train to the county jail in the city of Cork. We were two weeks in this jail, without any trial or any charge of any kind being made against us. Then, two stipendiary magistrates came into the jail, and opened court in a room in the jail, and charged us with treason of some kind to something belonging to England. We had McCarthy Downing for our attorney. Sullivan-goula was there to swear that we belonged to the Phœnix society; that he saw us in the rooms of the society, and that he saw me drilling three hundred men out near the New bridge one night. He never saw such a drilling; there never was such a drilling took place; he never saw a drilling of any kind amongst us anywhere. ’Tis true, that he saw many of us at the rooms of the Phœnix Society, for he was lodging in the house where those rooms were. We, having word from Kenmare, that he was a suspicious character, and maybe sent among us as an English spy, went in some numbers to the rooms that night, out of curiosity, to see him. We told Morty Downing to bring him in to the room, that we may have some talk with him. In his sworn information against us, he swore against every man that was in the room that night—swore that they were all among the three hundred men that I was drilling out at the New bridge that same night. He didn’t leave a single one of the company escape, that would be able to contradict his perjury. Fitzmaurice, the stipendiary magistrate, knew well that he was swearing falsely. In fact, it was Fitzmaurice that made the swearing for him; and made the plot for him. Davis, the stipendiary magistrate, knew well he was swearing falsely; Davis belonged to Roscommon, and seemed to have more of a conscience than Fitzmaurice, for he used to occasionally address Goula, when McCarthy Downing was cross examining him, and say “Oh, you unfortunate man! Remember you are testifying on your oath before your God;” but ’twas all to no use; Goula went along with his perjuries. Sir Matthew Barrington, the Crown Prosecutor, was down from Dublin to assist Goula in this star-chamber prosecution. To provide some kind of testimony that would make a corroboration of Goula’s testimony, he put on the witness table one of the Skibbereen policemen, who swore that he saw Denis Downing marching through North street, Skibbereen “with a military step.” In the cross-examination of this policeman, our attorney asked him, “Who was walking with Denis Downing?” The policeman said, “No one was walking with him, but he was stepping out like a soldier.” And so he was a soldier—by nature and instinct—as many an Irishman is; he is the Captain Denis Downing who lost a leg at the battle of Gettysburg in America, and who had charge of the military company that were present at the execution of Mrs. Suratt in Washington, America. He was released from Cork Jail that day of the examination there; but his brother Patrick—who afterward came to be in command of the Forty second (Tammany) Regiment in the American war—was detained in jail till an appeal was made to the Queen’s Bench for his release on bail. About half the number arrested in Bantry and Skibbereen were so released at this first examination in Cork Jail. The other half were kept in prison, and would not be released on bail. Then, an application for “release on bail” was made to the Court of Queen’s Bench in Dublin, and all were released, except Billy O’Shea, Morty Moynahan, and myself.

The Tralee Assizes came on in March, 1859, and Dan O’Sullivan-agreem was convicted and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. The Cork Assizes came on a week afterward. Our attorney came to us in Cork Jail and told us that if we allowed our counsel to put in a plea of “guilty” we would be released without any sentence of punishment being passed against us. “Plead guilty!” said we, “and confirm the sentence on Dan Agreem, and put the stamp of truth on all the perjuries Sullivan-goula swore against us! No, we would not do it.”

Patrick’s Day came on; it was the day the Assizes opened in Cork. Morty Moynahan, Billy O’Shea and I were placed in the dock. Patrick J. Downing and others who were out on bail were put in the dock too. Patrick was telling us he had a grand time of it last night down at Cove, in company with Poeri, and other Italians, who had escaped from a convict ship in which they were being transported to a penal colony. Those are the Italian convicts about whose prison treatment England’s prime minister Gladstone shed rivers of tears—that same prime boy who afterward treated Irishmen in England’s prisons far worse than King Bomba treated Poeri and his companions. Gladstone starved me till my flesh was rotting, for want of nourishment; Gladstone chained me with my hands behind my back, for thirty-five days at a time; Gladstone leaped upon my chest, while I lay on the flat of my back in a black hole cell of his prison. Poeri didn’t experience such treatment as that in the Italian prisons. Yet the great Englishman could cry out his eyes for him. No wonder those eyes of his got sore in the end!

(This chapter of my “Recollections” was published in the United Irishman newspaper of May 8, 1897. I am, this fourth day of June, 1898, revising all the chapters for publication into book form. The telegrams of the day announce that this Mr. Gladstone was buried in London this week—Rossa.)

That Patrick’s Day, in the dock in Cork Jail, I was ready for trial; my companions were ready for trial; we had our witnesses ready; the people of my house were in court, to swear truly that I was in and around my house the hour Goula swore he saw me drilling 300 men one night. Our counsel also declared they were ready for trial. The Crown Counsel whispered with Keogh, and then Keogh announced that our trial was postponed to the next assizes; that the prisoners who were out on bail could remain out on bail; but that the prisoners who were brought into the dock from the jail, should be taken back to jail. Bail was offered for us by our counsel, but no bail would be taken. Morty Moynahan, Billy O’Shea, and I were taken back to the County Jail, where we remained till the following July.

A second application for release on bail was made for us to the court of Queen’s Bench, in April, but it was refused. The Tory ministry, under Lord Derby as prime minister, were then in office. They were outvoted in parliament on some division; they “made an appeal to the country,” and there was a general election. I was a voter of the County Cork, and I took it into my head to write to the English Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Dublin Castle, telling him it was against the Constitution to hold an innocent voter in jail at such an important crisis, and keep him from recording his vote on election day; that English law proclaims every man innocent until he is adjudged guilty. I told him he could have me taken to Skibbereen in charge of his jailers, to record my vote on election day, or let me out on parole that day, to return to jail the second next day. I haven’t that letter in my head. It was published in the newspapers afterward. The London Spectator wrote a leading article about it. When I was in London in 1895, I went into the Spectator office and bought a copy of the paper of the date of May 14, 1859. The following is the article it contains:

“THE GENEROUS PRISONER.”