After his return from this journey he took up his residence in Union Lodge, with his friend, John Byrne, of Worcester, who having served his apprenticeship to the linen trade in Lisburn had established extensive bleaching mills on the banks of the river at Dundalk.
It is from the evidence of the informers, John Hughes and Samuel Turner, that we gather our scanty information as to Bartle’s activities about this period. Hughes, a Belfast bookseller, arrested in October, 1797, turned king’s evidence in order to secure liberation. Being brought before the Lords’ Committee in 1798, he stated amongst other things, that in November, 1796, he had been sent by Bartle Teeling (then settled as a linen merchant in Dundalk) to Dublin to extend the United Irishmen societies there. Hughes seems to have been a sort of organiser for the Society, for again in June, 1797, he was sent for to come to Dublin. Before he left the north, John Magennis (Betty Teeling’s husband) administered an oath to him that he would not communicate the names of those to whom he should be introduced. In Dublin he was present at a breakfast given by Bartle Teeling, at his lodgings in Aungier Street, where the other guests were John Magennis, Anthony MacCann, of Dundalk; Samuel Turner; Messrs. John and Patrick Byrne, of Dundalk; Colonel James Plunkett; A. Lowry; Mr. Cumming, of Galway; and Dr. MacNevin. The object of the conference was to discuss the fitness of the country for an immediate rising. Teeling, Lowry and MacCann were in favour of an immediate effort; the others were afraid the people were not sufficiently prepared for it.
Shortly afterwards, before the month of June was up, Bartle Teeling, Turner, MacCann, Tennant, Lowry, etc., seeing the “Rising” postponed, fled to Hamburg; and some of the others, including John Magennis, found refuge in Scotland.
Bartle Teeling must have remained in Hamburg a very short time, for his brother states that he joined the French army under the name of Biron[[51]] and served a campaign under Hoche, whose death occurred on September 8th of that year. He may have returned to Hamburg after the death of Hoche, for in October of 1797 Turner reports to his friend, Lord Downshire, a letter Teeling was sending from that place to Arthur O’Connor. In November, Turner’s information shows Bartle in Paris. At a date of the same year which it is difficult to determine, he paid a stolen visit to Ireland, bearing messages from the Irish leaders on the Continent to those at home. It is said that on this occasion Lady Lucy gave him the ring which is still treasured in the Teeling family—and which he wore until the eve of his execution, when he sent it to his brother “as the dearest pledge he had to leave, of fraternal love.”
[51]. In the Castlereagh papers the assumed name of B. Teeling is stated to have been Byrne.
All this time Mary Teeling was without news of him, and to the burden which she already had to bear was added that of intolerable anxiety for her eldest son, and great uneasiness about Charles, of whose health his father brought back discouraging reports from his visits to Kilmainham. The kindness of her brother John and his wife Catherine, and the hospitality they so gladly offered her and her girls, could not make her forget the wreck of her own beautiful home, and the irreparable damage done to her husband’s fortune. Moreover, his health was much affected by the condition of his affairs, and the fatigues he had undergone to re-establish them. A trip to a Donegal Spa, followed by a horseback journey to Connacht (where he hoped to establish a new bleach-green) had exhausted him, and in the spring of ’98, he had been sent by his doctor to Cushendall for sea-bathing. His frequent changes of abode were represented to Government as connected with treasonable activities, and accordingly on June 16th, 1798, he was arrested, and committed to prison in Belfast, no charge being made against him.
For four years Luke Teeling was kept in prison, and was only liberated in 1802. And during all that time no charge was brought against him, nor did his repeated requests to be brought to trial bring any result. From the provost prison in Belfast, he was moved to the Postlethwaite tender, lying in Belfast Lough, one of the prison ships which were among the horrors of the day; from that to Carrickfergus Castle, and finally back to the prison in Belfast. It has been my privilege to read many of the letters addressed by Luke Teeling from his various prisons to members of his family, and truly it was with a great stirring of the heart that one held them in one’s hands, and read the story they tell of sufferings heroically borne; of a devotion to honour and principle which counted no cost too great; of a Faith and Hope, and love of God and God’s Church intense enough to make the writer free of the ardent and heroic company of the saints. There is one letter written from the Postlethwaite, where the firm hand trembles, and the strong heart shows nigh to breaking—which it is impossible to read without tears. It is the letter in which the father writes to Bartle’s old friend, Sam Wall, the news of Bartle’s execution.
For in the days when Luke Teeling was enduring the horrors of the prison ship in the sweltering summer heat,[[52]] Bartle’s brief but glorious day had come to its heroic close on the “martyr’s mound” at Arbour Hill, Dublin. It is not here that may be fully told the gallant story of Bartle Teeling and the part he played in the Humbert Expedition. On his white charger he rides for ever amid the “fair chivalry” of the boy-heroes of Ireland amid the
“White horsemen with Christ their Captain—forever he.”