[122] At Bantry Bay in 1796. By many, Tone was regarded somewhat as a clever adventurer; but when the French authorities saw a nobleman—brother of the Duke of Leinster—as well as O'Connor, nephew and heir of Viscount Longueville, acting in a way which meant business, their hesitancy ceased.
[123] After the arrest and death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and the collapse of the rebellion, the State prisoners consented to give some general information which would not compromise men by name.
[124] Wickham's correspondence illustrative of his secret mission to Switzerland, when he debauched the French minister, Barthélemy, with 'saint-seducing gold,' was published by Bentley in 1870.
[125] Castlereagh Papers, i. 259-60.
[126] 'Everything was planned,' are the words in the betrayer's letter to Lord Downshire.
[127] In this suspicion, Lord Edward and O'Connor were not far astray. The Confidential Letters of the Right Hon. William Wickham reveal that Pichegru and other French generals were paid by Pitt to allow themselves to be beaten in battle.
[128] At Margate with Father O'Coigly.
[129] Castlereagh Papers, i. 309-10.
[130] General index to the Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh. 'Furness' is the name under which Reinhard, the French minister, refers to him when writing to his Government.
[131] Letter of W. E. H. Lecky, Esq., to W. J. F., Athenæum Club, London, July 5, 1888. Richardson, the popular author of 'Pamela,' was then a specially familiar name, and one which would readily occur to a well-read man who divulged the secrets of a real Pamela. The plot in the stories of Samuel Richardson is developed by letters, a branch of composition in which Samuel Turner was au fait. There seems a strange irony in this spy describing, under the nom de plume of Richardson, a new 'History of Pamela' and her struggles. Dr. Madden says that, after the death of her husband, Pamela returned in painfully straitened circumstances to Hamburg, the only place to which she could with prudence go. Madden little dreamt that the fugitive's retreat was the serpent's lair.