'The poor fellow was speedily released, for higher game had been bagged, and nothing beyond his warm words could be adduced against him. But the young wife, whom he soon after left a widow, always believed that his early death was caused by his arrest. He had caught a severe cold whilst in prison, his lungs became affected, and rapid decline and early death ensued.
'On the day of the arrest of the Sheareses the wearer of the green bonnet beheld the sacking and the attempted burning of the house and stock-in-trade of Patrick Byrne, the bookseller of Grafton Street in whose shop the brothers were first introduced to their betrayer, Captain Armstrong. It was a pitiful sight to behold the amount of property in beautifully bound books ruthlessly torn to pieces and tossed out of windows into the street. Byrne was arrested, but afterwards got safely out of the country, and settled in Philadelphia. His brother, a Roman Catholic priest in Rosemary Lane Chapel, followed him to America.'
The old lady's garrulousness about her green bonnet has been allowed space the more readily because the following contemporary statement comes to illustrate and explain, not only her own reminiscence, but an oft-quoted phrase which has become historic. I have culled it from the London Courier of August 29, 1797. The Dublin Journal to which it refers was the organ of the Irish Government, and the property of Jack Giffard:—
Ireland.
Dublin, August 24.—The Dublin Journal, with base malignity, throws out the most indecent insinuations against the virtue of every female who wears green in her apparel. How the citizens of Dublin, and the inhabitants of the country, who are also included in this infamous denunciation, will bear to have their wives and daughters so stigmatised, remains to be seen. A more villainous libel never disgraced the Press. In case of success, it must render useless all the goods in silk, cotton, or woollen which have been dyed green, to the ruin of the manufacturers. Language is not adequate to express the abhorrence that arises at this hellish meditation to rob women of their character and working-people of bread!
A corps, called the 'Antient Britons,' attained by their cruelties notoriety in '98. Pelham, in a secret letter, recognises their activity and loyalty; but casually adds (a trait which, coming from him, will be more regarded than if told by a partisan): 'They were quartered at Newry,' he writes, 'where there was a lady as active as the Miss Greggs at Belfast, and upon her accosting a soldier on guard, she was certainly very roughly treated.... They tied her petticoats round her neck, and sent her home showing her garters.'[801] Pelham probably learned this fact from one of the letters of Samuel Turner, formerly of Newry.
FATHER O'LEARY
(See chap. xvi. p. [236].)