I immediately waited on Lord Clare [he writes]; he read the letter with great attention; I saw he was moved—his heart yielded. I improved on the impression; he only said 'What a coward he is! but what can we do?' He paused. 'John Sheares cannot be spared. Do you think Henry can say anything, or make any species of discovery which can authorise the Lord Lieutenant in making a distinction between them?—if so, Henry may be reprieved.' He read the letter again, and was obviously affected. I had never seen him amiable before. 'Go,' said he, 'to the Prison, see Henry Sheares, ask him this question, and return to me at Cooke's office.' I lost no time, but I found on my arrival that orders had been given that nobody should be admitted without a written permission. I returned to the Castle—they were all at Council. Cooke was not at his office: I was delayed. At length the secretary returned, gave me the order. I hastened to Newgate, and arrived at the very moment the executioner was holding up the head of my friend, and saying, 'Here is the head of a traitor.'[695]

Barrington says nothing of Lord Shannon, who was related to the Sheareses, and it is certain that the message for him miscarried. This peer, with the object of offering condolence, called upon their mother[696] the day of the execution, and was greatly distressed when she threw herself upon her knees to beg the favour of his intervention for John; she did not know that Henry had been implicated, and, of course, was ignorant that either had already suffered death. Lord Shannon, in an agony of mind, and unable to explain, rushed from the room.

There was a butchery displayed in the immolation of the brothers which, if employed at the present day on a beast in the shambles, would evoke angry protest. The 'New Cork Evening Post' of July 23, 1798, while supplying some painful details, bears out Barrington's recollection:—

They requested that they might not continue long exposed to the gaze of the multitude, and, having each an halter fixed round his neck, and a cap drawn over his face, holding by each other's hand, they tottered out upon the platform in front of the prison. In making the rope fast within, John Sheares was hauled up to the block of the tackle, and continued nearly a minute suspended alone before the platform fell. It did fall, and instantly both were suspended. After hanging about twenty minutes, they were, at a quarter after three o'clock, let down, when the hangman separated their heads.[697]

Much feeling was roused by this sanguinary act. Classic students who lived in the past started in horror, comparing the Sheareses to 'the hapless victims' described by Gibbon: 'the two brothers of the Quintilian family whose fraternal love endeared them to posterity—whose bodies seemed animated by one soul—and whose union in death is due to the cruelty of Commodus.' Grattan loudly condemned the men 'whose misrule had brought Ireland to so black a crisis. The question men should have asked was, not why was Mr. Sheares upon the gallows?—but why was not Lord Clare along with him?' And two years later, in a speech of resistance to the Union, he declared that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people was far worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister. But even in the latter sense, Henry Sheares must be held guiltless. John, pouring out to his sister, in an agonised letter, his most secret thoughts, writes: 'Heaven is my witness how assiduously I sought to keep aloof, in any of my political concerns, from him;' and there is not a line in the evidence of Armstrong to prove that Henry took any active part in the treason. Addis Emmet, Arthur O'Connor, McNevin—all the men who had been at the head of it, and its very soul, were at that hour in gaol. O'Connor declared that he and his colleagues knew nothing of the Sheareses; and it is certain that neither of them had ever intrigued with France, as O'Connor and the others had done. The names of the Sheareses find no place in the list of marked men that Turner gave Downshire (p. [7], ante). This omission can be easily accounted for. Arthur O'Connor, in a letter to Dr. Madden, which pointed out some inaccuracies, writes:—

You seem to think the Sheares were leading men in the Union,[698] whereas, I may say, they never entered it, so as to be known to us. The fact is, they were just entering it when they were cut off. It was the younger Sheares's Proclamation, which was an act purely personal, without the knowledge or concurrence of the Union, that has misled some to think he and his brother were deeply engaged in the Union.'

The following is one of the letters, already promised, and now published for the first time. It is written by Henry previous to his trial:—

Dear Sir,—Accept my best thanks for the friendly readiness with which you consented to present my letter, which I hope has been received. I am now to trouble you on a subject more immediately relating to my unfortunate situation. I have apply'd as is usual in those cases to my different Friends to come forward on my tryal, and to give me a character such as they think I deserve, and to put it in a manner most likely to produce a beneficial effect. From my knowledge of the goodness of your heart, from a sympathy which I am sure you feel for a fond husband and an affectionate father, from the regard which I am sure you have for Mrs. Sheares, I feel a hope that in this instance you will gladly embrace this opportunity of saving us both. You know that on these occasions a general character is not admissable so that it must apply to the political character. And so far to the domestic as will go to establish the political.

Taking it this way may I hope that you can say that you know me to be a man of domestic habits, fondly attached to my wife and children, so as to make it highly improbable that I would suffer my political conduct to endanger their happiness; that you consider me a man of liberal but not violent principles; that I go no farther in them than the first characters of opposition in the English and Irish Parliament have done, namely being an advocate for a reform in Parliament and a renovation of the ancient purity of our constitution; that I am not a friend to violent systems, and that I am not an advocate for Revolution.

This is what, from your knowledge of me, I trust you can say without going farther than will justify you to yourself. And for this friendly service I shall seize with pleasure every opportunity of showing how much I shall feel myself obliged to you for it.