The Rebels of Ireland (52 page)

The letter from O'Byrne did not come until three weeks later. It was affectionate in tone. He was writing to Donatus, he explained, because he felt that he knew him, and he asked Donatus to convey the news, as he saw fit, to Maurice's family.

The Battle of the Boyne had been more like a big skirmish, really. But it had been decisive. King William himself, bravely wear
ing his star and garter for the enemy to shoot at, had led his own cavalry against the Irish troops. They had broken through. James, having done nothing, had fled. He had spent one night in Dublin, where he had blamed the Irish for his own failure. Then he had left for the safety of France. The remains of the Irish army who, like him or not, had respected William's courage, and felt nothing but disgust now for James, had regrouped in Limerick. It was from Limerick that O'Byrne wrote. The story he had to tell was quite surprising.

Maurice Smith had gotten to Armagh. How he had managed it, even O'Byrne could not imagine, but so he had. And there, for days, he'd searched for the Staff. “Without success, alas,” the soldier wrote. Only when William's army was on the move southwards was he forced to ride south again. “They drove the good man, so to speak, into our arms,” wrote O'Byrne, “and the rest, I dare say, will not surprise you.”

The soldier had urged Maurice to return home. There was nothing useful, he assured him, that he could do. But Maurice wouldn't hear of it. He had shown the Deposition to numerous people. Even to Tyrconnell, who'd mentioned it to the King. But without the Staff itself, the document could not inspire great interest.

 

He felt he had failed, and for that reason, I should guess, was all the more determined to fight. I kept him in my sight, you may be sure, so far as I could. But it was a stray musket ball that carried him off, during the business at the Boyne. He was, I should say, as brave a man as I have ever known; and in his own way, I believe, he died as he would have wished.

 

It was not until the end of the following year that Donatus heard from O'Byrne again. Without the presence of King James, the remaining Irish forces had acquitted themselves well, maintaining a resistance in the west. King William had gone about his other business, but sent a good Dutch general, Ginkel, to complete the pacification of the island. The Catholic forces were led by Sarsfield.
Donatus knew him slightly. On the mother's side, Sarsfield was the descendant of Irish chieftains; on his father's, an Old English gentleman like Donatus himself. Conducting his campaign with considerable daring, he had kept the Dutch general busy for another year. Finally, in the autumn of 1691, he had held out in Limerick for months until he could conclude the best and most honourable terms.

Amongst these was the promise that the Catholics of Ireland might continue to practise their religion without persecution.

After this, Sarsfield and some twelve thousand men were permitted to march out of Limerick and take ship for France. Donatus had heard that O'Byrne had stayed to the end, largely, he suspected, from feelings of loyalty to Ireland. He was touched, nonetheless, that the soldier of fortune should have taken the trouble to send him a final word of parting.

 

It is over, Donatus, and I am departing. There is nothing more for me here. I shall roam the world, as I have done before for so long, and as my son, I dare say, will do after me.

But I am glad to have come home to Ireland, and to have seen Rathconan, and to have made the kind friends that I have.

And now we who leave Limerick—Irishmen, soldiers, Catholics that we are—will fly away on the wind, like the wild geese, and I do not believe that we shall ever return.

I am sorry that Maurice never found the Staff.

 

Yet if, in the years that followed, Donatus often turned to that letter, it was with increasing sadness. Within a year the Protestant Parliament had overturned the terms of the Limerick agreement—though King William was quite happy to leave the Catholics in peace. Those who had fought in the Battle of the Boyne—and alas, the name of Maurice Smith had been found—were to lose their land. The Flight of the Wild Geese, as the departure from Limerick came to be called, assumed the character of a recessional: the last,
echoing cry of a noble, Catholic leadership, lost to the island forever. Of the Staff of Saint Patrick, he never heard another word.

It was when his son Fortunatus was a boy of seven that one day, after going to the well at Portmarnock and remaining there longer than usual, Donatus returned and made an unexpected announcement to his wife. Their second child had been a boy also, whom they had named Terence; but there had been no more children after that. Looking at the two boys now, he quietly announced: “I have promised the saint—and my dear father also—that Terence shall always be brought up a good Catholic.”

“I should hope so,” his wife replied.

“There is something more, however, which may at first be harder to bear, yet which I believe, for the preservation of the family, and of the faith itself, may be necessary.”

“And what is that?”

“Fortunatus shall be brought up a Protestant.”

 

ASCENDANCY

1723

 

Y
OU'RE VERY GOOD
to offer,” Terence Walsh said to his brother Fortunatus. “But I should warn you that he may cause trouble.”

The sun was dipping over St. Stephen's Green. There was a soft glow in the air.

“I'm sure,” Fortunatus replied with a smile, “that young Smith can't be so very bad.”

You've no idea how bad he can be, Terence thought, but he didn't say so.

“If only I weren't going away.” Terence had been promising himself this little retreat to the monastery in France for a long time now, and they both knew it. “You're so good-natured that it's almost a fault,” he continued. “I really shouldn't be asking you.”

“Nonsense.”

How delightful the evening was, thought Fortunatus. Dublin was certainly a pleasant city—so long, of course, as you were a member of Ireland's ruling elite. And even if my dear brother is not,
Fortunatus reflected, that is what I am. A handsome city, too. For in Dublin, at least, the Protestant Ascendancy over Ireland was expressed in bricks and mortar.

It was astonishing how the place had changed in his own lifetime. Inside the walls of the old medieval city, the narrow streets and alleys, and the landmarks like Christ Church and the old Tholsell town hall, were not much changed, except for a few repairs. But as soon as you looked beyond the walls, the change was striking.

For a start, the River Liffey was not only crossed by several stone bridges, but it was noticeably narrower. The marshes that had started just downstream from the Castle, and skirted the ancient Viking site of Hoggen Green where the precincts of Trinity College now lay, had been reclaimed and the riverflood contained within walls. Upriver on the northern bank, the Duke of Ormond had encroached on the water further when he laid out the Ormond and Arran quays, with lines of warehouses and buildings that would have graced any city in Europe. Outside the city's eastern wall, the former grassy common of St. Stephen's Green was now surrounded with fine new houses, with subsidiary streets leading down to Trinity College. The curving line of the little stream that had run from the common down to Hoggen Green and the Viking long stone, had disappeared under the roadway of one of these, a pleasant crescent called Grafton Street. On the western side of the city, not a mile from Christ Church, the huge Royal Hospital at Kilmainham had been modelled on the stately, classical Invalides of Paris; and on the northern riverbank, opposite, stood the gates to the Phoenix Park—the enormous tract that Ormond had landscaped and stocked with deer. The Phoenix Park was bigger and grander than anything London had to offer.

But what was truly striking was the appearance of the new houses.

The British might not be original in the arts, but in their adaptation of the ideas of others, they would often show genius. And during the last decades, in London, Edinburgh, and now Dublin,
they had perfected a fresh method of urban construction. Taking simplified classical elements, the builders had discovered that they could endlessly repeat the same brick house, in terraces and squares, in a way that was both economic and pleasing to the eye. Elegant steps led up to handsome doors with fanlights above; outside shutters were not needed in the colder northern climes, so nothing broke the stern brick surface of the outer wall; severe, rectangular sash windows stared blankly out at the northern skies, like the shades of Roman senators. Over the doorway, like as not, there might be a modest classical pediment, for decency's sake—to omit that might have seemed like a gentleman emerging without a hat—but all other external ornament was avoided. Austere and aristocratic in style, yet domestic in scale, it satisfied lord and tradesman alike. It was, without doubt, the most successful style of terracing ever invented and would make its way across the Atlantic to cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In time, it would come to be known as Georgian.

All around St. Stephen's Green, Trinity College, and behind the quays north of the Liffey as well, these classical brick terraces and squares were spreading. As the city's wealth and population continued to grow, it seemed to Walsh that a new street sprang up every year. Dublin, after London, would soon be the most gracious European capital in the north.

“What's wrong with him, anyway?” asked Fortunatus, as they reached the corner of the green.

“He is Catholic.”

“So are you.”

“He carries a deep resentment.”

“Ah.” Fortunatus sighed. “He has not been as lucky as we.”

Looking back now, he could only be amazed at the foresight of their father. Dutch King William might have promised tolerance to the Irish Catholics, but his parliaments, especially the Irish Parliament, had other ideas entirely. The English Parliament, after all, had gone to all the trouble of throwing out King James just to keep Eng
land free of Catholicism. But James was still at large with his young son, supported by his bellicose Catholic cousin, King Louis XIV of France, and Ireland, as always, looked like a perfect base from which to harass England. The western island was to be kept garrisoned, therefore, and under the iron control of English administrators and the established Protestant Church.

As for the new, Cromwellian settlers like Barnaby Budge, hadn't God sent them to Ireland to humble the papists and ensure the triumph of His Protestant faith? And weren't they, besides, occupying the land that the papists would still like to claim back now? Not only their consciences, but their very survival, depended on keeping the Catholics down.

So they had started to pass laws for the purpose. Through the reigns of William and Mary, then of her sister Anne, and now of their German cousin, George of Hanover, the list of anti-Catholic laws had grown longer.

A Catholic could not hold public office or sit in the Dublin Parliament. He could not become a full member of a city guild. Most of the professions were closed to him. He could not attend university himself, or—at least legally—send his children abroad for their education, either. He could not buy land, or even hold it on more than a thirty-four-year lease. Any land he already owned at his death would be divided up equally amongst his sons, unless the eldest converted to the Protestant faith, in which case the Protestant son was to inherit all and his brothers get nothing. And so the list went on.

It was an iniquity; it was an insult; above all, it was calculated to destroy Catholicism in Ireland.

Donatus had died late in the reign of Queen Anne, but he had seen enough to see the wisdom of his decision that Protestant Fortunatus should protect his Catholic brother. Other families since had made similar arrangements, but the early conversion of Fortunatus Walsh had stood him in good stead. He'd married well. Friends in high places, pleased with his loyalty, had several times given him those genial government posts—inspector of this, collec
tor of that, or some other position in the sought-after Revenue—with which, for very little work, a gentleman could handsomely increase his income. Thanks to all this, Fortunatus had been able to add several hundred acres to the family's holdings. Why, when a member of the Dublin Parliament had died recently, he had even gotten a seat in the Irish House of Commons. He had been in a good position to help his brother Terence, therefore.

And Terence had needed it.

“I'd have liked to be a lawyer,” Terence had always said. But although, as a Catholic, he might have been a lowly attorney, the profession of barrister—the gentleman lawyers who argued the cases in court and made all the money—was for Protestants only. For a time, he had tried to be a merchant in the city and had joined the Merchants Guild. As a Catholic he had to pay fees every quarter, higher than those a Protestant paid, and was denied any voting rights in the guild elections; he was also unable to become a freeman of the city. But he could trade.

“Swallow your pride and make money,” Fortunatus had advised him. “Even a Catholic may get rich.” And he had gladly staked Terence with some capital so that he could trade. But after five years, though he had made a living, Terence returned the money and told him: “I'm not cut out for this.”

“What will you do, then?”

“I've been thinking,” Terence had replied, “that I might practise medicine.”

Fortunatus had not been pleased. The practice of medicine was not, in his judgement, a very respectable business. True, anatomy and medicine were studied at the great universities. But the surgeons who pulled your teeth or amputated your leg shared a guild with the barbers—indeed, the surgeon might be the same man who cut your hair. And there was nothing to stop anyone in Dublin setting up as a medical man, whose methods were mostly confined to cupping and bleeding you, or applying herbal remedies of their own invention. Most of these physicians, in his private estimation, were quacks.

But a Catholic could be a physician. There were no restrictions at all.

So after a period of intense study with one of the better medical men, Terence had set himself up near Trinity College, and Fortunatus had recommended him to everyone he knew, with the cheerful injunction to his brother: “Try not to kill all my friends.”

And Terence had done uncommonly well. He had a pleasant manner; the fact that he had gone prematurely grey, and wore a little pointed beard, gave him a look of kindly authority that his patients found reassuring. “It is even possible,” his brother allowed, “that you may do your patients some good.” But above all, Doctor Terence Walsh was a gentleman. The whole of fashionable Dublin agreed. The fact that he was Catholic and that most of his patients were Protestant was not an issue. Old ladies asking him to come to their bedside, aristocrats who might need to confide some medical embarrassment over a glass of claret, could feel that he was a discreet and trusted member of the family. Within three years, he had all the patients he could handle. And being an honourable man, he also set aside time for the poor folk living near him, whom he treated without charge.

The family had been able to help him in other ways. His father might not be allowed to leave him anything directly, but by making use of family trusts, it had been easy enough to give him the use and the income of a small estate out in Kildare. Other families they knew had done the same. If the authorities in Dublin Castle were aware that the law was being quietly flouted, they never said anything. And last year, Fortunatus had seen another way to help his brother.

“Terence,” he announced, “you're going to become a Freemason.”

There had been craft guilds of stonemasons since the Middle Ages. It was not until sometime after 1600, and for reasons unknown, that some gentlemen in Scotland had decided to form what they called a Freemasons' lodge, which used the ceremonies and “mysteries” of the medieval guild but was dedicated not to the
building trade, but to general good works. Only gradually did this new Freemasonry, which was run as a friendly secret society, spread to England and Ireland. But in the last two decades it had suddenly become fashionable, and Fortunatus had joined the most aristocratic of the new Dublin lodges.

“We must get you in, too, Terence,” he had explained. “The Masons make no religious distinctions. Your being a Catholic is not a barrier. And it will be good for your career.” Indeed, they were on their way to a meeting of the brethren that very evening.

Having enjoyed so much support from his own loving family, it was natural as well as commendable that Terence, in turn, should have wanted to help a kinsman himself.

Like young Garret Smith.

If old Maurice Smith hadn't been killed at the Battle of the Boyne, his descendants might not have fared so badly. For King William's Treaty of Limerick was generous to those of King James's army who had surrendered. But for those who had been killed back at the Boyne, there was no such provision. They were judged to be rebels and their estates were confiscated. By the time it was all over, the Smiths were ruined.