Turner and Lowry were old allies in Ireland, and had no secrets between them. The sworn information of John Hughes mentions that he saw Lowry, Turner, and Teeling engaged on a committee for conducting the defence of United Irishmen at the Antrim and Down Assizes in February, 1797.
Mr. Froude tells us that the spy who hurried to London and sought Lord Downshire was able to describe an important letter which was on the point of going over from Barclay Teeling in France to Arthur O'Connor.[728] Great confidence must have been reposed by Teeling in the man who could tell all this; and such confidence could be earned only by old intimacy and association. What proof is there that early intimacy existed in Ireland between Barclay Teeling and Samuel Turner?
The correspondence of Major Sirr, the Fouché of Dublin, with minor spies, is preserved in Trinity College, Dublin. These papers contain an information in which Dr. Conlan of Dundalk denounces, as deep in the conspiracy, Samuel Turner, Barclay Teeling, Lowry, and Byrne. He describes some hair-breadth escapes of Barclay Teeling, Turner, and Lowry, and how they spent one night in a barn near Dundalk. Conlan had been a United Irishman, who finally brought to the gibbet his cousin Hoey and Marmion[729] of Dundalk.
After the betrayer had hurried from Hamburg to London to sell his secrets to Pitt, and then as suddenly disappeared, 'he wrote to Lord Downshire,' observes Mr. Froude, 'saying that he had returned to his old quarters, for fear he might be falling into a trap.'
In fact, as Mr. Froude shows, he was in mortal terror of the assassin's knife. Conlan's sworn information, describing the previous doings of Teeling and Turner in Ireland, mentions how Teeling, Corcoran, and Byrne had a password for putting informers out of the way. Whenever one was detected he was sent to some United Irishman with the password, 'Do you know Ormond Steel?' 'But,' adds Conlan—laying 'the flattering unction to his soul'—'there never was occasion for this.'[730] Turner's treachery was of enormous magnitude, and most momentous in its results. Once a man of indomitable courage, conscience made him an arrant coward in the end.
'I feared,' writes the betrayer to Lord Downshire, 'lest Government might not choose to ratify our contract, and, being in their power, would give me my choice either to come forward as evidence or suffer martyrdom myself. Having no taste for an exit of this kind, I set out and arrived here safe.'[731]
His dread of 'Ormond Steel' is further proved by Portland's words in reply to the Viceroy Camden, who vainly begged that he might come over to Dublin—'he is convinced he would go to utter destruction.'[732]
Speaking of Napper Tandy, Mr. Froude says of the veiled informer that he 'had been naturally intimate with the other Irish refugees.'[733]
Tandy, in the chapter devoted to him, tells how he and three other Irish refugees had been invited at Hamburg by 'T.' to sup, and were betrayed. Watty Cox, a sound authority on such points, broadly states in the 'Irish Magazine' for January 1809, p. [34], that Tandy and his comrades were 'betrayed by Turner.'