Lord Edward at last seemed awakened to his danger, and it was considered by himself and friends that a longer residence where he was might be hazardous and lead to a discovery. Another asylum was accordingly provided for him at a feather merchant’s house in Thomas Street, and at Murphy’s, as the owner was called, he remained for several days in safety.
On the 30th March the kingdom had been declared by proclamation ‘in actual rebellion,’ the troops were directed to act without magisterial authority whenever their own officers deemed it proper. This fearful order loosed a licentious soldiery upon the country, and every hope of averting bloodshed ended. As the great object of the revolutionary leaders was to prevent a premature explosion, agents were despatched to hold out encouragement to the disaffected that a French invasion would speedily be reattempted. But a double failure had damped the expectations of the Directory. Hoche, the apostle of this adventurous policy, was in his grave; Bonaparte, bent on other objects, and unfriendly to an Irish demonstration; and without foreign assistance it became evident to the conspirators that ‘themselves must strike the blow.’ The plot was on the verge of coming to a head.
For the following fortnight Lord Edward—whose leadership counted for so much at the opportune and decisive moment of actual outburst—made Murphy’s house his place of concealment. Even there he received company (some of his friends were regarded as traitors to the cause), walked out at night, and, disguised in women’s clothes, visited Lady Edward in Denzel Street. He then changed his residence, and sought shelter in the houses of tradesmen, named Moore and Corwick, situated in the same street.
Some circumstances gave alarm to his friends, and Lord Edward a second time was conducted to his suburban retreat, and placed again in charge of his former hostess. Things were approaching a climax. On the 11th of May the proclamation that offered L.1000 for his apprehension appeared; the day for the insurrection was appointed; John Sheares despatched to Cork to raise the southern rebels; and, for the purpose of holding a closer communion with the Dublin leaders, Lord Edward quitted the house of his faithful protectress on the 13th May, and on the 18th he re-entered Murphy’s, and only left it on the 19th for a cell, wherein to linger out a few miserable days, and expire in the common jail, without a friend or relative to watch ‘the spirit’s parting’!
THE ARREST OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD
It was evident that the Government were cognisant of these plans. The date of the rising had been determined, Lord Edward was to head the movement; his commanding officer’s uniform was ready, but it was preordained that the commander-in-chief of the rebel forces would never appear in it. From this distant point of view the operations of the Government resembled the movements of the watchful cat prepared to spring upon the doomed mouse.
On the night preceding the 18th of May it was arranged that Lord Edward, the hero and hope of the movement, now on the eve of being declared openly, should resume his residence with Murphy in Thomas Street, and he set out, accordingly, under a strong escort of his followers. One of those affrays, of common occurrence in those days of terror—which this popular escort seemed destined to attract—resulted.
It is quite evident from this occurrence that his betrayal was already complete. Of Lord Edward’s intended movements Sirr, the Dublin town-major, had received certain information; and this officer was on the spot, ready prepared to stultify the plans of the conspirators. Sirr had with him a party for the purpose, and as either of two streets would have conducted Lord Edward to his destination, the town-major divided his myrmidons,—one section occupied Wading Street, the other was posted in Dirty Lane.
A similar precaution happened to be adopted by Lord Edward’s escort; there consequently ensued in both these streets a conflict between the parties. In the street affair John McCabe, a very active member of the United Irishmen, was seized and made a prisoner; he was afterwards tried, convicted, and executed. Lord Edward, by a miracle, was left free for the moment. Sirr, bearing the brunt of the struggle, found his opponents overstrong, and was nearly losing his life. In defending himself with a sword, which he had snatched from one of his assailants, he lost his footing and fell; and had not those with whom he was engaged in a hand-to-hand scuffle been much more occupied with their noble charge than with him, Sirr could hardly have escaped. A pistol or two was snapped at the fallen officer, and the group passed on with Lord Edward to Murphy’s.
The house was under surveillance. On the morning following, evidently the eve of the insurrection, the generalissimo of the United Irishmen’s uniform—dark green, faced with scarlet—was delivered by an old woman to Murphy. This ‘his already nervous host’ concealed under goat-skins in his warehouse. At noon a party of soldiers suddenly entered the street, and suspiciously halted before Moore’s house, the man who had formerly sheltered Lord Edward. Alarmed for the safety of his guest, the feather merchant conveyed him by a trap door to the roof of his warehouse, and in one of the valleys which ran between the houses.