CHAPTER XVIII
BISHOP HUSSEY
The subsequent career of Dr. Hussey—of whom a glimpse is obtained on a previous page—affords features sufficiently curious to claim a fuller view.
A second mission of secrecy to Spain proved more successful than his first. In 1786 London swarmed with freed negroes, made wicked by idleness, and four hundred of them, with sixty white women in bad health and worse repute, were shipped by the Government to Sierra Leone to form a colony. Eight years afterwards this settlement was attacked by the French; Spain sided against England; Dr. Hussey again repaired to Madrid, healed the rupture, and Sierra Leone is now a bishopric. For these and other services Hussey enjoyed a pension from Pitt.[655]
The 'Wickham Papers'—published in 1870—reveal the successful efforts of Pitt to sap Napoleon's power, by paying Pichegru and other French generals on condition that they would do their best to be beaten in battle. Wickham had been sent on more than one secret mission to the Continent, and acquired a shrewd knowledge of the intrigues of men.[656] He was afterwards appointed Under-Secretary at the Home Office, in which capacity he addressed to Lord Castlereagh at Dublin Castle, many letters in 1798, but hundreds of their allusions as printed have been, hitherto, unintelligible. One, referring to the statement drawn up by Arthur O'Connor and the other State prisoners, says:—
I observe also that they have passed very lightly over their connections with the Spanish Government, and yet we have undoubted proof that a direct communication had taken place with some Minister of that country at the time that McNevin was at Hamburg. The Duke of Portland particularly wishes that some of them should be closely questioned as to this point, and the mode now adopted of examining them separately seems to be particularly favourable for drawing the real secret from them. They certainly had audiences of the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires at Hamburg, and, I believe, also of Mr. D. C. at Paris. I have always had strong suspicions that Dr. H.[657] has sent returns of the state and temper of the Catholics in Ireland to the Spanish Government.[658]
'D.C.' must be Del Campo,[659] the Spanish Minister already mentioned in Sydney's letter about O'Leary; and 'Dr. H.' can only mean Dr. Hussey, chaplain to the Spanish embassy in London. As such, he was the servant of Spain, and when a conclave of English Catholics named him as envoy to Rome, there to lay before Pius VI. a document of much importance, Del Campo refused him leave of absence. The latter had now ceased to be Spanish minister, and Lord Camden had become the Viceroy of Ireland. Mr. Froude, with warmth, writes: 'Lord Camden had brought into Ireland, as he supposed, a serpent of healing, but it turned on him and stung him.'[660] This allusion is to Dr. Hussey who, in 1797, became Bishop of Waterford, and at once issued a pastoral charge so ultramontane that it gave quite a shock at Whitehall. He lived in a style of brilliant pretension hitherto unattempted by his brother bishops,—men who, as Shiel states, were wont to pick their steps stealthily, as among penal traps. Dr. Hussey's elevation to the See of Waterford was due to the British Crown, but may have been influenced by a desire to shelve him in a remote place where he could do scant harm by intrigue.
'It was as mischievous a performance as ever I read,' quoth Sir John Coxe Hippesley à propos of Dr. Hussey's pastoral, 'and ministers here took care he should know their sentiments on that subject. He was in dudgeon thereat, and the Duke of Portland told me he demanded his passport "to return to Spain;" it was made out, but the doctor thought better of it, and he remains to lend his hand to the tranquillity of Ireland.'[661]
It appears, however, from the Vatican archives that Hussey, in March 1798, did petition the Pope for leave of absence from his diocese, and for a coadjutor, 'as he could not obtain the consent of the Court of Spain to leave its service.' He adds that for thirty years he was head of the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel, London.[662] His amour propre, no doubt, revolted from accepting at Portland's hands the passport to return to Spain—if, indeed, he could desert his diocese without leave from the Pope. A coadjutor bishop was not granted, but, in reply to the request for leave of absence, it was stipulated by Rome that Hussey should appoint efficient vicars to govern the see while away.[663] Was it of this arrangement that, as Hippesley says, he 'thought better'? Between the two accounts the diplomat stands confessed. He certainly passed the year 1799 in London, where, true to his instincts, we find him busy as a bee. Writing to J. Bernard Clinch, the influential occupant of a chair at Maynooth, he says of the then mooted Legislative Union:—
Whatever my reason may tell me upon a cool inquiry, my