“This is to certify whom it may concern, that the bearer, Mr. George Garrick, is known to me; who is on a tour through the country, and intends returning to England, by the way of Tenby.
“Richard Lloyd, Mayor.”
We cannot wonder at the rumour of spies being in their midst, when we think of the number of French prisoners of war there were in our keeping, one prison alone (Mill Prison, Plymouth) having 2,500.
Many were out on parole, which I regret to say all did not respect, many broke prison and got away; in fact, they did not know where to put them, nor what to do with them, so that it was once seriously proposed that, in an hour of danger, should such ever arrive, they should be shut up in the numerous spent mines throughout England. When on parole, the following were the regulations—they were allowed to walk on the turnpike road within the distance of one mile from the extremity of the town in which they resided, but they must not go into any field or cross road, nor be absent from their lodgings after five o’clock in the afternoon, during the months of November, December, and January; after seven o’clock in the months of February, March, April, August, September, and October; or, after eight o’clock in the months of May, June, and July; nor quit their lodgings in the morning until the bell rang at six o’clock.
If they did not keep to these regulations, they were liable to be taken up and sent to prison, a reward of one guinea being offered for their recapture. Should they not behave peaceably, they would also have to return to durance.
There were also very many refugees here who were not prisoners of war, and, in order to keep them under supervision, a Royal Proclamation was issued on the 12th of October, citing an Act passed the last session of Parliament, respecting the Registration of Aliens, and proclaiming that all aliens must, within eighteen days from date, register themselves and their place of abode—if in London, before the Lord Mayor, or some magistrate at one of the police offices; if in any other part of Great Britain, before some neighbouring magistrate.
However, enemies nearer home were plaguing John Bull. “Mannikin Traitors” verily, but still annoying. Then, as now, England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity; and of course, the chance was too tempting to be resisted. The Union (curious phrase!) was but in the third year of its existence, and Ireland was once more in open rebellion. Chief of the spurious patriots was one Robert Emmett, whose picture in green and gold uniform coat, white tights and Hessian boots, waving an immense sword, appears periodically, in some shop windows, whenever Irish sedition is peculiarly rampant, only to disappear when the inevitable petty rogue, the approver, has done his work, and the windbag plot is pricked.
Emmett was the son of one of the State physicians in Dublin, and brother to that Thomas Eddis Emmett, who was prominent in the rebellion of 1798. Robert had so compromised himself, by his speech and behaviour, that he deemed it wise to live abroad during the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, but he returned when his father died, having become possessed of about £2,000, which he must needs spend, in “regenerating” Ireland.
Silly boy! (he was only twenty-four) with such a sum, and about one hundred followers, he thought it could be done. His crazy brain imagined his down-trodden compatriots hastening to his side, to fight for the deliverance of their beloved country from the yoke of the hated Saxon despot. There were meetings sub rosâ—assemblages on the quiet—as there always will be in Ireland when the pot is seething; and at last the curtain was to be drawn up, for the playing of this farce, on the 23rd of July, when towards evening, large bodies of men began to assemble in some of the streets of Dublin—but vaguely, and without leaders.
At last a small cannon was fired, and a single rocket went upwards to the sky; and the deliverer, Emmett, sallied out, waving that big sword. A shot from a blunderbuss killed Colonel Browne; and the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Lord Kilwarden, and his nephew, Rev. Richard Wolfe, were dragged from their carriage, and brutally murdered.