A small incident, which has never appeared in print, may perhaps be given here. The guard which seized the fourteen delegates at Bond's house entered by means of a password. This we shall presently know, and Major Sirr had Reynolds to thank for the information, though the father of a late police magistrate—Mr. Porter—lay for a time under the stigma. Wm. Porter—in whose house Dignan will be remembered as having had a narrow escape from arrest—met Oliver Bond one day on Cork Hill, Dublin, and asked him, as a United Brother, for a list of the signs and passwords employed on special occasions. Bond replied: 'Call at my house on Monday evening next, making sure to ask as you enter, "Is Ivers from Carlow come?"' Porter was on his way to keep this appointment when he met Luke White—the founder of the Annaly peerage —who asked him to accompany him to Crampton Court close by, where some business was transacted between the two—one being a printer and the other a publisher. An hour was thus consumed, and Porter on arriving at Bond's—it was Monday, March 12, 1798—found a cordon of soldiers round the house. Reynolds, who held the rank of colonel in the rebel organisation, was not then suspected; and it was Oliver Bond's conviction, freely expressed, that William Porter had betrayed the password to Sirr. For this suspicion he made frank atonement. Bond's trial did not come on for three months, and the interval proved one of much anxiety to Porter. Then it was that Reynolds excited much surprise by entering the witness-box. Bond, recognising Porter in court, stretched forth his arm across the necks of his keepers, and shook the hand of the man he had wronged.[690]
Reynolds, unlike Magan, who seemed content with the crumbs which fell from 'Shamado's' hand, was less easily satisfied. In 1810 he got the postmastership at Lisbon, the emoluments of which for four years amounted to 5,600l., after which he became British Consul at Iceland; but, not liking the post, he coolly returned to London without leave, when the following scene took place between himself and Mr. Cooke, formerly Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle. Reynolds's son thus tells what passed: '"You are a madman; you are an imprudent; I tell you so to your face; and you were always an imprudent man, and never will be otherwise. I tell you, you are considered as a passionate, imprudent man." "Mr. Cooke," said my father, "if I was not so, perhaps Ireland would not at this day be a part of the British Empire: you did not think me passionate or imprudent in 1798." "I tell you again," said Mr. Cooke, "you are mad. Well, what do you intend to do now?" "Really," said my father, "I intend to do nothing at all; I suppose Lord Castlereagh, on his return, will settle my resignation." ... "Lord Castlereagh," continued Mr. Cooke, "knows you to be a very imprudent man, and he would certainly hesitate at allowing you to be in London, where your imprudence would give advantage to your enemies to bring you into trouble, and him too. He does not like you to be in London: I tell you fairly that is the feeling."'[691]
Lord Castlereagh then filled the critical post of Minister for Foreign Affairs. A formidable Opposition daily questioned and tormented him. The horror of Mathias on hearing 'the Bells' can hardly have been greater than that of Castlereagh whenever Reynolds's ring sounded at his door. Reynolds refused to freeze any longer in Iceland, and, after some delay, was appointed consul at Copenhagen. He soon got tired of it, and coolly installed his son there as vice-consul; but, on Canning succeeding to Castlereagh, after the suicide of the latter, he sent young Reynolds adrift. Meanwhile the sire divided his residence between Paris and London. He constantly crossed Castlereagh's path, posing before him as an ill-used man and largely helping to drive him mad. The cupidity of Reynolds is described as insatiable. In 1817, Thistlewood, Watson, and Hooper were indicted for treason; true bills were found by the grand jury of Middlesex; but the name of Thomas Reynolds having appeared on the panel, much wrath found vent, and a feeling of disgust passed over England. The press took up the subject, and Parliament resounded with 'Reynolds, the Irish informer.'
Society snubbed him, but still his chariot went round the Row day by day. After Castlereagh's death he removed permanently to Paris, where he loved to parade his pompous person, and became as well known in the Champs-Elysées as Charles X. or Louis Philippe. Some lines scribbled at this time illustrate the feelings with which thinkers of a certain type watched his diurnal progress:—
Lolling at his vile ease in chariot gay,
His face, nay, even his fearful name, unhidden!
Uncloaked abroad, 'neath all the eyes of day,
Which—as he passeth—close, while breath is hushed,—
Unspat upon, untrampled down, uncrushed,
I've seen the seven-fold traitor! &c.
Reynolds had a habit of leaving his card on men the buckles of whose shoes he was unworthy to burnish. Amongst others whom he thought that by doing so he honoured, was Dr. Daniel Haliday, of Paris, who represented a family distinguished in Irish letters. In Haliday's hall there hung a fine portrait of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Turning its face to the wall, and sticking Reynolds's card on it, he said to his servant: 'When he again comes, refer him to this picture.' Reynolds, of course, repeated the visit, and felt the rebuff the more because Lord Edward was not among the men he had betrayed. The late Charles Haliday, to whom I owe this story of his uncle, shared the rather general belief as to Reynolds having informed against the Geraldine, while the now convicted Magan, who lived close to Charles Haliday on the banks of the Liffey, failed to incur his suspicion.
One fine day in August 1836, when Paris was en fête, Reynolds died, and his remains were brought to England and consigned to the vaults of Wilton Church, Yorkshire. By a coincidence Dr. Haliday died at the same time, as appears from his epitaph in the picturesque graveyard of Dundrum near Dublin. When struck down by death at Paris, he had been engaged on a History of the Irish Brigade.
FOOTNOTES:
[685] Life of Reynolds, by his Son, ii. 514. Mr. A. F. Reynolds, the biographer, died in 1856, after having long filled the post of stamp-distributor for the East Riding of Yorkshire.
[686] Sir W. Cope died Jan. 9, 1892.