CHAPTER XII
WILLIAM TODD JONES. EMMET'S REBELLION
Todd Jones, Wolfe Tone, and Hon. Simon Butler were three Protestants to whom, Mr. Froude says, the Catholic Committee voted 1,500l. each, as a reward for their cordially rendered aid. This was in 1793, and we hear no more of Todd Jones from Froude. His subsequent history is not without interest, and seems interwoven with that of Francis Magan.
John Philpot Curran's writing-desk remains exactly as he left it when quitting Ireland in 1817 to die. A long and cautiously written letter,[373] without signature, dated August 13, 1803, but known to be from Lady Moira, reposes in this desk. It was written three weeks after Emmet's rebellion, and a month prior to his execution. The letter begins mysteriously, 'Read, reflect, but do not answer. Time will unfold the intentions.' She complains of information which had been sent to the Government, regarding a trunk, assumed to be full of papers, reaching Moira House, Usher's Island, and presumably from Todd Jones. She declares that her rooms were ransacked, under a warrant from the Secretary of State, and how letters addressed to Todd Jones at Moira House had been carried to Dublin Castle. In writing to Curran, whom she wishes to be her counsel if the matter should come to trial, she makes light of these letters, and prudentially describes her correspondence with Jones as mainly of an antiquarian and picturesque interest.
Magan, who resided within a few doors of Moira House, possessed peculiar facilities for 'setting'[374] the movements of its habitués.[375] It must have been in 1802 when he was found by Mathias O'Kelly[376] associating with Todd Jones, and that date merits attention. 'I had been absent from Ireland for ten years, from the year 1792,' writes Jones in his petition to the king, 'during the whole of which period I was uninterruptedly a resident in England, and in May 1802 I was indispensably compelled to return to Dublin, by an affair of honour.'[377] Soon after he proceeded to Munster, 'which I had never beheld, and had long entertained an inclination to see.'[378]
At what date can we trace the first arrival of Jones on his mysterious mission to Clonakilty, where with several of his friends he was arrested on a charge of high treason in July 1803? To that question the answer is, December 1802. The 'Account of Secret Service Money, applied in detecting Treasonable Conspiracies,' contains the following entry:—'1802, December 15th, Francis Magan, by direction of Mr. Orpen, 500l.'
There is but one family named 'Orpen' in Ireland; and the only Orpen who could possibly be authorised to direct the payment of 500l. to Magan at this time was the High Sheriff of Cork, in whose bailiwick Jones was tracked and caught.[379]
Emmet, in his speech from the dock, denied that he was the life and soul of the conspiracy, as alleged by Mr. Solicitor-General Plunket; declared that men of greater mark than he were deep in it; that on his return to Ireland he found the organisation formed; he was asked to join it; he requested time to consider; they invited him again, and he embarked in the enterprise. And yet, so carefully was the secret kept, that nothing transpired to show that he had any colleagues of good position. Lord Norbury, who tried the case, and the Attorney-General stigmatised the plan as contemptible from the fact that Emmet's allies were of no higher rank than 'ostlers, bakers, carpenters, and old clothes men,' and, notwithstanding the solemnity of Emmet's dying words, history has since given him the exclusive credit, or discredit, of the rising of 1803.
Among others to whom suspicion attaches, although there is no absolute evidence to show his guilt, may be mentioned William Todd Jones, a Protestant of good family and some means, a barrister and writer, and a member of the late Irish Parliament. The Viceregal organ, the 'Dublin Journal,' in its issue of August 6, 1803, after noticing the arrest of Jones, adds: 'This gentleman has been many months on a tour through the provinces of Leinster and Munster, making speculations on the state of the country through which he passed.' He remained eight months in Cork, and it is a question whether, during that prolonged stay, he may not have sought to foment revolution. All memoirs of Emmet have hitherto been silent as regards the complicity of Cork in his designs. Kildare is the county of which mention is chiefly made. The following from the 'Courier' (London) of August 5, 1803, furnishes a glimpse into the then state of Cork:—
A Dublin mail arrived this evening, and brought us letters and papers of Monday last.... Though there has been no rising in Cork, yet very unfavourable symptoms of disaffection have appeared there, and to the south of that city we are sorry to hear that the malignancy of the former rebellion is by no means extinguished.
The same journal, of August 16, 1803, contains a letter 'written by a gentleman of distinction in the county of Cork,' possibly Mr. Orpen himself, who commanded a corps of Yeomanry. The writer, after stating that he had spread yeomen in all directions to prevent the embarkation of persons charged with treason, goes on to say:—