Lewis Wingfield - My Lords of Strogue. Volume 2 of 3

The dowager's words produced their effect upon Doreen, despite her virtuous indignation. She no longer committed herself by indiscreet communings with the 'scatter-brained young men.' She seemed to be growing lukewarm to the cause as the decisive moment approached, shirking responsibility in a way her character belied, to the surprise of the patriots, amongst whom we must count Cassidy. The giant remarked with pained astonishment that she gave him no grateful look when he whispered about the pikes, when he hinted with dark nods that Phil and Biddy had been busy in the night; and he reflected with self-upbraiding that this change must be due to his ill-timed wooing. No doubt it was presumptuous in a 'half-mounted' to aspire to an heiress, but sure she should accept as a compliment a piece of bungling for which her own charms were entirely responsible. He resolved to be more careful in the future, striving to bridge the breach by a nimble deference tempered by judicious sadness; and let no opportunity pass of making himself useful to the young earl. His hands were pretty full, thanks to my Lords Clare and Camden, who pursued the stormy tenor of their way with an edifying steadiness of purpose. He gladly rode errands for Lord Glandore, did shopping for the countess, drank bumpers in the Castle-yard in company with Major Sirr, waited about in my Lord Clare's anteroom; became a ubiquitous, faithful, and generally useful personage. He brought news sometimes of the gravest moment to the mysterious resorts where Dublin 'prentices were pretending to play ball; which hints resulted more frequently than not in a message smuggled in a loaf to the prisoners at Kilmainham and a courier sent galloping far away into the country.

The electric cloud loomed near on the horizon. Lord Clare watched the threatening vapour as it rolled, increasing hourly in volume, and, laughing, showed his gums. The ranks of the yeomanry were swelling day by day, thanks to the exertions of large proprietors whose interest it was to be well with the court; thanks to the complaisant alacrity of the squireens who acted at the beck of the great landowners. Small riots took place both in the capital and in the provinces, tussles between browbeaten peasants and a soldiery who grew hourly more insolent, which originated for the most part in taunts at the old faith. Rumours floating vaguely, none knew whence, became current gossip, hints of a French invasion, of a landing somewhere in the north, which should set free the enslaved Catholics-of a Republican crusade in favour of liberty of conscience. The Orange societies of the north took the alarm. 'Liberty of conscience indeed!' they cried. 'We remember what happened in King James's time, when the national religion was for a brief space triumphant; how Protestants were massacred and their property destroyed. We will repel such an invasion with all our might, and will just prick these presuming slaves a little as a warning of what may follow.' There were excesses in Armagh and the cities of the north; wherein cottages were burnt, cattle confiscated, their owners hewn in pieces. News of military outrages arrived in Dublin; and the public, growing uneasy, looked to the Castle to mark its attitude. Ever since Lord Camden's advent, people remarked, things had been going wrong. Traitors by dozens had been imprisoned or executed. Coercion was the order of the day. But popular opinion had been divided; one party declaring that traitors must be hanged for the security of the body politic, the opposite party cogently pointing out that if Government acted with more prudence, men would not be driven into treason. But now the matter was taking a new form. One class, which had always been antagonistic to the other, was showing overt symptoms of the harshest tyranny. The Protestant ascendency party had banded itself together in armed force at the call of Government for the protection of the land. It was obvious that this armed force must not be permitted to exert its strength against its own brethren of another faith-to convert a deplorable harshness, of which in memory of man the instances were isolated, into a regularly organised system like that of Elizabeth. Government must interfere promptly, men said. These savage squireens, who swaggered in the King's colours, must be taught at once to curb their brutal proclivities, or a reign of terror would result such as shocked Europe in '89.

But Government did nothing of the kind. My Lord Clare held up his delicate hands in the lobby of the House of Lords, and, under shadow of William's statue, harangued passing senators upon the iniquity of the lower orders.

'It is awful,' he declared in his rasping voice. 'What will Mr. Pitt say? He will withdraw your pensions, my poor gentlemen, unless you act with decision. Arm your vassals, my lords. The French will come and murder us in our beds. I vow the country is in danger. The Catholics must be shown their place.'

That the country was in danger there could be little doubt; but it was not precisely from the side to which the crafty chancellor thought fit to point.

Parliament met in solemn conclave, and did as it was told. Curran and a few others rose up in their places, solemnly protesting against a policy which sprang from a hidden fear of the lower orders. An Act of Indemnity was passed with regard to the proceedings in the north. Magistrates and petty officers were held to have behaved wisely in permitting cottages to be burnt in the name of religion, in allowing fathers of families to be kidnapped in the night, and spirited away no one might tell whither. A profound feeling of wrath was stirred over all the land by the passing of this, and the Insurrection Bill which allowed it; whereby, amongst other things, a power of arbitrary transportation was given to magistrates, and outrages made legal which till now had been accomplished in defiance of the law. People saw clearly that the majority of both Lords and Commons were merely the representatives of their own greed and their own venality; that nothing could free motherland from a vicious thraldom of unpatriotic selfishness but a reform of Parliament and a complete change in the system of Government. How was this to be accomplished? There was the knotty point. Was the threatened rising of the masses really inevitable? Could they accomplish their objects at all if France should refuse substantial help? Was Government deliberately acting for a wicked purpose, or was the crime merely the negative one of incapacity? Agitation-meetings blaming the executive were held about the country, at which, when he heard of them, my Lord Clare expressed his amazement, ingeniously stating in public that he was astonished at the mildness of the Viceroy in not severely punishing the agitators. Such a hint was not lost upon his amateur colonels and military magistrates. They began to exhibit renewed examples of vigorous zeal, destroying property at pleasure, searching houses for arms, treating the inhabitants with such brutality that women fell into convulsions and brought forth children before their time. A singular effect of these proceedings, which in itself spoke volumes, was a sudden moral reform among the peasantry. Men who had been drunken became reclaimed; fairs and markets were undisturbed by quarrelling; factions which had been at feud for centuries smoked the pipe of peace together. Hatred, kept down by fear, festered in the hearts of the children of the soil. It was felt that a moment was imminent when man might endure no more, when a down-trodden race must conquer its persecutors or seek relief from misery in death.

Doreen, from her retreat among the roses, watched the current of events which now rushed with rapid impetuosity towards an horizon of blood; and as month followed month, each laden with its progressive freight of trouble, wondered with beating heart that no news should be received from Tone.