While the American War still raged, and hostilities from France and Spain continued to threaten, Richard Cumberland, son of a bishop and the secretary of a former viceroy, started on his secret mission to the courts of Lisbon and Madrid, bearing from England letters of accreditation, quite a boxful of instructions, and accompanied by his wife and daughters 'on the pretence of travelling into Italy upon a passport through the Spanish dominions.' Cumberland's interviews with Del Campo are described, and for a time all went well; but, owing to terrible rumours as regards the 'No Popery' riots in London, which now broke out, led by Lord George Gordon, President of the Protestant Association, the treaty[549] collapsed; Del Campo refused to appear; Cumberland was recalled, and the Government who sent him out withheld the repayment of 5,000l., the amount of expenses he had incurred.
It may be said that Orde's want of confidence in O'Leary arose, not because he had furnished so little secret information, but because of some whisper that the Spanish Minister had had pourparlers with him. It would be strange if O'Leary, who in 1779 wrote powerfully against the hostile designs of Spain, should be suspected, within the next few years, of abetting them. The rumour, which Mr. Lecky says is not stated, may have been merely that O'Leary, the only Catholic writer of intrepidity at that day, had been asked by Del Campo, who soon after became resident Spanish minister in London, and was himself of English extraction,[550] to write an exposure of the 'No Popery Riots' and their leaders—incidents which Spain, now more than ever defiant in its pose, could not fail to turn to political account.
A postscript to O'Leary's 'Miscellaneous Tracts' mentions that he had been requested to give a history of the London riots. 'I promised to undertake the task,' he writes, 'and began to digest my materials; but afterwards reflecting that the duty of the historian bound me to arraign at the impartial tribunal of truth both men and actions—unmask the leading characters,' &c.... he then came to 'consider my own state exposed in consequence of the Penal Laws to the insult of every ruffian, and, comparing the defenceless situation of the priest with the duty of the historian, I dropped the attempt.'
These tumults of 1780 lit a flame which did not die out even with the expiring century. During their height most of the Roman Catholic chapels of London, especially those of the foreign embassies, were gutted and burnt. Papists' houses were attacked, as well as the houses of all persons known to favour them. For days and nights the mob gained an almost complete mastery of London, which is described as like a city taken by storm. The venerable Bishop Challoner was roused from his sleep and urged to fly; he died soon after of palsy, the effects of the shock. No man's life was safe who did not mount the badge of riot, a blue cockade; windows displayed flags of the same colour; while the watchword 'No Popery' was prudentially inscribed. Broadsides were circulated under the auspices of Lord George Gordon—the unholy high priest of the holocaust—in which Englishmen were exhorted to remember 'the bloody tyranny and persecuting plots exercised on Protestants by Rome'—the Spanish Armada, of course, included. Society seemed falling to pieces. From Tyburn to Whitechapel the highway presented a frontage of mourning. Every shop was closed. Mr. Archer, a priest, deposed in court that he had paid 40l. to be allowed to pass through Fleet Street, and a hackney coachman refused 10l. to drive a papist to Hampstead. The mob, flushed with victory, now sought allies in the prisons. Newgate, then recently rebuilt at a cost of 150,000l., was attacked with fury; its great gates fell before them like frail partitions; 500 felons, including those set free from Clerkenwell, were let loose upon the burning city, leaving behind them in flames, not the gaol only, but the whole street.[551] It seemed a second 1666, and the famous fall of the Bastile, nine years later, was but the mere echo.
Storm had not as yet burst over Ireland; but the heavy air was charged with electricity. The following are the words with which Mr. Froude awakened widespread interest, and drew forth that missive from the Antipodes given on a previous page.
If rebellion was meditated [Froude writes], the Government required fuller knowledge; and 'a new plan of management' had to be adopted 'to obtain exact information of the conduct and motives of the most suspected persons.' 'Useful and confidential agents,' whose silence and fidelity could be relied on, 'who would write the daily history of a man's motions,' without betraying himself, were not to be found in Dublin.
The Irish Secretary applied to the English Cabinet to furnish him from their own staff of informers. Two valuable persons answering to Mr. Orde's description were sent, and the name of one of them will be an unpleasant surprise to those already interested in the history of the time.
They were both Irishmen. One was a skilled detective named Parker,[552] an accomplished orator who could outmouth the noisiest patriot, and had already some knowledge of the leading agitators. Orde welcomed this man with a twinge of misgiving. 'I hope he is discreet,' he wrote, 'for he must to a certain extent be possessed of the power of hurting us by garrulity or treachery.'[553]
The other was no less a person than the celebrated Father O'Leary, whose memory is worshipped by Irish Catholic politicians with a devotion which approaches idolatry. O'Leary, as he was known to the world, was the most fascinating preacher, the most distinguished controversialist of his time. A priest who had caught the language of toleration, who had mastered all the chords of liberal philosophy, and played on them like a master; whose mission had been to plead against prejudice, to represent his country as the bleeding lamb, maligned, traduced, oppressed, but ever praying for her enemies; as eager only to persuade England to offer its hand to the Catholic Church, and receive in return the affectionate homage of undying gratitude. O'Leary had won his way to the heart of Burke by his plausible eloquence. Pitt seemed to smile on him: it is easy now to conjecture why. When he appeared in the Convention at the Rotunda the whole assembly rose to receive him. Had such a man been sent over on an open errand of conciliation, his antecedents would have made the choice intelligible. But he was despatched as a paid and secret instrument of treachery, in reply to a request for a trained informer.[554] What the Government really thought of Father O'Leary may be gathered from Orde's language when told to expect him. 'He could get to the bottom of all secrets in which the Catholics were concerned,' and Catholics were known to be the chief promoters of the agitation in Dublin. But he too was to be dealt with cautiously, for he was a priest. 'They are, all of them,' Orde said, 'designing knaves;' 'the only good to be derived from them is, perhaps, to deceive them into an idea that they are believed.'[555]