Neilson considered that the Government’s breach of faith towards him absolved him from his engagement to them—and from this time forth he threw himself, with a feverish energy his debilitated frame could ill support, into the service of the Union. According to his own statement, “he was very active in procuring that the vacancies caused by the arrest at Bond’s should be filled up, attended several committees belonging to the union, delivered some messages from Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and together with his Lordship, was stopped by a patrol near Palmerstown, and liberated after being a short time in custody, owing to the ignorance of the officer respecting our persons.” A Northern delegate reported at a provincial meeting in Belfast that Neilson “was riding almost night and day, organising the people; and scarcely any person knew where he slept.”
During the time between March the 12th and Lord Edward’s arrest on May the 19th, Neilson constantly visited his Lordship at his various places of concealment. Miss Moore long afterwards told Dr. Madden that “no matter how depressed Lord Edward was, the appearance of Neilson always brightened him up.”
On the day Lord Edward was arrested at Murphy’s, Neilson visited him and told him that he had seen a party of soldiers pass up the street. He dined with Lord Edward and, according to Murphy, as soon as the dinner was over hurried away, as if a sudden recollection had occurred to him, leaving the door open behind him. Through this door an hour later entered Major Sirr and his party. “Lord Edward’s arrest following so immediately Neilson’s exit, his restlessness during dinner, his ‘fidgety’ demeanour at the moment of leaving the house, and the strange circumstance of the door being found open by Major Sirr, were circumstances that caused Neilson’s conduct to be freely canvassed; and those who were in the secret of the treachery which really led to the capture of the prisoner took care to let suspicion light and rest on those whom it was thought desirable to bring into odium with their own party. Neilson and Murphy were made the scape-goats of the infamy of the memorable F. H. whose initials have finally been identified with the name of Francis Higgins, one of the worst men of the worst period of our history.”
It makes our heart bleed for poor Anne Neilson and her children when we think of this terrible imputation being cast on him whose only fault was that he loved his country before all else!
On the night of May the 23rd, that fixed for the general rising, Neilson was re-arrested outside Newgate, where he was reconnoitring, with a view to leading an attack on this Irish Bastille, and inaugurating the projected Irish Revolution after the French model, by the liberation of Lord Edward and the other chiefs imprisoned in it. Unfortunately Neilson was too well known to the prison authorities for his presence in the neighbourhood not to excite suspicion. He was taken prisoner by a file of soldiers after a desperate resistance and lodged in gaol in a pitiable condition of body, but his mind more determined to resist tyranny than ever. Grattan told his son that when Neilson was taken, his clothes were torn off him, his body wounded all over by the soldiers hacking at him, he was cut and scarred in upwards of fifty places, and was only saved by the number of his assailants.
On June the 26th, bills of indictment were sent up for high treason against Samuel Neilson, the two Sheareses, John McCann, William Michael Byrne, and Oliver Bond. Counsel were named by all the prisoners except Neilson, who refused to name any. We find in the Life of Grattan by his son a graphic description of the scene in court to which Neilson was brought heavily ironed. “When brought into court the noise of his entrance was like the march of men in irons. He was called on to plead, and asked if he had anything to say; he replied in a stentorian voice, ‘No! I have been robbed of everything—I could not fee counsel; my property—everything has been taken from me,’ and he turned away. But he came again to the front of the dock, and said, ‘For myself I have nothing to say; I scorn your power, and despise that authority that it shall ever be my pride to have opposed; but I may say—not that I value it—why am I kept with these weighty irons on me, so heavy that three ordinary men could scarcely carry them? Is it your law that I should be placed in irons, and in such irons?’”
The execution of the Sheareses took place on July 14th, that of McCann on the 19th. In order to save the lives of Byrne and Bond, Neilson with some others of the State prisoners consented to enter into terms with Government. Byrne, in spite of these negotiations, was executed on July 28th, and Oliver Bond died, under very suspicious circumstances, after having been respited.
The circumstances attending Bond’s death, and the chagrin caused by the Government’s perfidy with regard to the compact (which they not only broke in the most flagrant manner, but represented, in their account of it to the public, in a way most injurious to the prisoners’ honour) had a very bad effect on poor Neilson. He was literally at death’s door when the word came from the Castle on March the 18th, 1799, that the State prisoners were to be deported to an unknown destination on the following morning.
John Sweetman’s diary gives a most harrowing account of Neilson’s condition during the journey to Fort George. He got delirious on the very night the Ashton Smith, with the prisoners aboard, sailed from Dublin Bay. The prisoners had to take two hours’ watches by his bedside to restrain his violence. Dr. MacNevin, as a medical man, warned the Captain of the likely consequences if something were not done for the unfortunate patient, and a petition was sent for leave to have him landed at Belfast, where the boat put in to take more prisoners. But it was all in vain.
Fortunately Neilson’s condition improved after a day or two, and his unfortunate companions were spared at least acute anxiety on his account. They had plenty of discomforts to put up with, without that. A heavy gale came on as they approached Ailsa, and presently it increased to a rank storm. “The sea broke clear over us, and poured into the hold; several of the berths were drenched with water. Mine was completely flooded by the bilge-water, which came up between the timbers and through the ceiling. All the trunks were knocked about, and most of the crockery broken. The hold exhibited a most confused scene.” Later on they were nearly ship-wrecked.