Secret Service Under Pitt

by William J. Fitz-Patrick

In 1789, a great struggle raged between the Parliaments of England and Ireland on the question of creating the Prince of Wales Regent during the insanity of George the Third. The Prince at this time had been bound up, politically and socially, with the Whigs. Pitt, fearing that the Regency might prove fatal to his ambition and his Cabinet, resisted the heir-apparent's right to the prerogative of his father, and declared that 'the Prince had no better right to administer the government during his father's incapacity than any other subject of the realm.' An address to the Prince from the Irish Parliament requested that he would 'take upon himself the government of Ireland during the continuation of the King's indisposition, and no longer; and under the title of Prince Regent of Ireland, in the name, and on behalf of his Majesty, to exercise, according to the laws and constitution of that kingdom, all regal powers, jurisdiction, and prerogatives to the crown and government thereof belonging.'

Pelham, speaking of 'the tricks and intrigues of Mr. Pitt's faction,' adds, 'I have not time to express how strongly the Prince is affected by the confidence and attachment of the Irish Parliament.' Portland takes the same tone. The Buckingham Papers afford rich material for a history of this struggle. The noble editor admits that 'the Parliament of Ireland preserved the unquestionable right of deciding the Regency in their own way. The position of Lord Buckingham[603] had become peculiarly embarrassing. What course should be taken in the event of such an address being carried? The predicament was so strange, and involved constitutional considerations of such importance, as to give the most serious disquietude to the Administration.'[604]

Hopes were felt that the King might recover. The Viceroy receives instructions to use obstructive tactics, 'to use every possible endeavour, by all means in your power, debating every question, dividing upon every question, moving adjournment upon adjournment, and every other mode that can be suggested, to gain time!'[605] But the Viceroy did more. He openly threatened to make each opponent 'the victim of his vote.' Fitzgibbon was promised the seals and a peerage if he succeeded for Pitt. Lures and threats were alternately held out. The peerages of Kilmaine, Glentworth, and Cloncurry were sold for hard cash, and the proceeds laid out in the purchase of members. Meanwhile the King got well. Thereupon the Master of the Rolls, the Treasurer, the Clerk of Permits, the Postmaster-general, the Secretary of War, the Comptroller of Stamps, and other public servants, were dismissed. The Duke of Leinster, Lord Shannon, the Ponsonbys were cashiered. Employments that had long remained dormant were revived, sinecures created, salaries increased; while such offices as the Board of Stamps and Accounts, hitherto filled by one, became a joint concern. The weigh-mastership of Cork was divided into three parts, the duties of which were discharged by deputies, while the principals, who pocketed the profits, held seats in Parliament. In 1790, one hundred and ten placemen were members of the House. The Viceroy, Buckingham, during his short régime, added 13,040l. a year to the pension list; the names of the recipients are already on record. On the other hand, some men who had taken the Prince's side in the contest lost their pensions. O'Leary may have been in this batch.[606] Croly, in his 'Life of George IV,' dilates on the intimate relations which subsisted between the Prince and the priest, and adds that O'Leary was no unskilful medium of intercourse between his Church and the Whigs, and contributed in no slight degree to the popularity of the Prince in Ireland. According to Buckley, the Prince patronised O'Leary to such an extent that rumour whispered it was by him the marriage ceremony with Mrs. Fitzherbert had been performed.

Barrington, describing the chastisement applied to those who, in Ireland, favoured the appointment of the Prince as Regent, says: 'Lord Buckingham vented his wrath on the country;' but what proof have we that the alleged agent of the Castle, O'Leary, incurred that Viceroy's displeasure?

In 1789, the year O'Leary removed permanently to London, he settled down, at the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel in London, as an assistant priest to Dr. Hussey, and, apparently, a most unwelcome one. An extraordinary pamphlet, not known to his biographers, was privately issued by O'Leary referring to a feud between himself and Dr. Hussey. At page [11] O'Leary writes:—

The old clerk told me in the vestry, 'that I might now return to Ireland, as my enemy, the Marquis of Buckingham, had returned to England.' Surprised how or where the clerk of a vestry could get such an insulting information, I recollected that his master [Dr. Hussey] had told me some time before that he had seen a letter from the Marquis of Buckingham, when Viceroy of Ireland, to some nobleman or gentleman of the English Catholic Committee, wherein he depicted the Catholics of that kingdom in very unfavourable if not odious colours, and painted me as one of the ringleaders.[607]

This serves to explain Dr. England's remark in 1822, when accounting for O'Leary's permanent removal to London, that 'his residence in Ireland had become painful;'[608] but elsewhere in his book he assigns a different reason for the change.

It has been stated [he writes] that a secret condition was annexed to this grant, binding O'Leary to reside in England,[609] and preventing him from further interference in the political concerns of the empire. The fact, however, is that O'Leary had made previous arrangements for a permanent residence in London—not only as being more favourable to his health, which generally suffered by his visits to Dublin, but from a rational conviction that the great seat of influence and power was the proper sphere of his benevolent exertions.

This biographer did not know O'Leary personally; his conjecture, or explanation, is plausible. But few men would remove for their health to the purlieus of St. Giles and Soho, the mission with which O'Leary had most to do. Its fearful squalor at the period described is curiously shown in Clinch's recently published 'Bloomsbury and St. Giles.' It will be remembered that the preacher of his funeral sermon conveys that the migration in 1789 was caused by O'Leary's refusal to write in a venal Dublin print against the party with whom he had long been associated. Snubbed by the Viceroy, Buckingham, his usefulness at Dublin Castle was now a thing of the past; but yet, as he could not afford to give up all State endowment, I suspect that he settled down in London in some undefined diplomatic rôle, where his tact and influence would find a field for exercise. A most careful memoir of O'Leary, ending with the words 'Requiescat in pace'—written probably by his friend and co-religionist Plowden—appears in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for February 1802. It contains some facts not noticed by his more diffuse biographers. 'This laudable conduct,' we are told, 'did not escape the attention of the Irish Government, and induced them, when he quitted Ireland, to recommend him to men of power in this country.' I believe that O'Leary's removal to London was made under Government auspices, extended in the hope that, by his diplomatic power, it might lead to useful knowledge and results.