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British Library
‘Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society’
No. 24 (1991), p. 113
New Light on the Golden Lion and the Danish Silver Robbery at Ballyheigue, 1731
Bryan Mac Mahon
On 28 October, 1730, a Danish East Indiaman ran into severe weather conditions off the south-west coast of Ireland and was driven on to the strand at Ballyheigue, Co. Kerry. The ship,
The Golden Lion (Den Gylden Løve), was en route from Copenhagen to Tranquebar in India. The crew of eighty-eight survived the ordeal, and was protected from a predatory mob by the efforts of Thomas Crosbie of Ballyheigue, who came to their assistance. Tradition has it that the ship was lured ashore by decoy lights, but, although such wrecking practices were undoubtedly common on the south-west coast, there is no evidence in any of the extant sources to suggest that
The Golden Lion was a victim of the wreckers.
The ship’s captain, Johan Heitman, the chaplain and officers were given shelter in the Crosbie residence overlooking the bay. The ruin of Ballyheigue Castle, a later Crosbie residence built around 1812, now stands on the site, but in 1730, the house was a long, low, thatched mansion. Near the house was a tower, which had been built by the Norman family, the Cantillons, who had been supplanted by the Crosbies in the late 17th century. Other members of the ship’s crew were sheltered in the surrounding area.
Captain Heitman, who was aged 67, was a Norwegian, and a man of many accomplishments. He had earned a reputation as “the best pilot in Norway” and was a naturalist and author of religious tracts. He had carried out a major survey of the coast of Norway, mapping out all its ports, fjords and islands. The map was not published, but much of the work was used by other cartographers later. Heitman’s decision to take charge of
The Golden Lion was to lead him into prolonged litigation in Ireland, and he did not finally return to Denmark until 1740.1
Everything of value was recovered from The Golden Lion and taken to the house of Thomas Crosbie: its rather unusual cargo, the property of the Danish India Company (or Asiatic Company), consisted of twelve chests of silver valued at between £16,000 and £20,000, a quantity of iron (as ballast) and other equipment. According to the records of the company, “the ship itself with spars, anchors, ropes, sails, rigging, running and standing tools, blocks and other equipment” was valued at 7,160 Rigsdaler, and its ammunition was valued at 931 Rigsdaler.2 In September 1730, the minutes of the company record figures which appear to be at variance with these: “The ship
The Golden Lion is hull assessed with all its belongings except the consumable things to £4,000 or 20,000 Rigsdaler, and thereupon are insured £3,000 or 15,000 Rigsdaler. The cargo consisting of 5 to 6 per cent iron and other goods and the rest of it cash, is assessed to 80,000 Rigsdaler…”3 Another ship,
Fredericus Quartus, also bound for [p. 114] Tranquebar, was assessed at 25,000 Rigsdaler, and its cargo, consisting of 5 to 6 per cent goods and the rest of it cash, was valued at 90,000 Rigsdaler. There is information from another source that ten of the chests of silver belonged to the East India Company, one to the King (contents valued at £625) and one to the Mission Company (contents unknown).4
Thomas Crosbie, M.P. for Dingle and former High Sheriff of Kerry, died some weeks after the rescue, probably from an illness caused by his exposure to the elements on that night. His widow, Lady Margaret, sister of Lord Barrymore, and his son James proceeded with a salvage claim, while continuing to shelter the Captain and officers. The silver, under a Danish guard, was hidden in the old tower adjoining the house pending the outcome of the claim. On the night of 4/5 June 1731, a band of over sixty men with blackened faces, some carrying guns, stormed the tower. They met with little resistance from the sixty Danes who are said to have been there, but killed at least two of those on guard and succeeded in escaping with the silver.5 Six of the chests were taken away to Ballysheen, near Abbeydomey, two were divided up among the local members of the raiding party, and four were hidden in the grounds of the Crosbie residence at Ballyheigue.
The robbery, and the subsequent investigation of it became a
cause celebre of 18th century Ireland. Between 1731 and 1736, at trials in Tralee and in Dublin, various members of the Crosbie families of north Kerry were charged with complicity in the robbery. In 1736, Arthur Crosbie of Tubrid was acquitted in Dublin after a long-delayed and sensational trial. Archdeacon Francis Lauder of Ardfert, Vicar-General of the Diocese of Ardfert, was also tried and acquitted, as were his wife and son. Among the known participants in the robbery, there was a hanging, a suicide and a possible death by poisoning. The protracted legal proceedings were conducted in such a manner as to cause the Danes to lay charges of corruption and malpractice at the highest levels of the judiciary. King George II requested a full account of the affair from the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Dorset. The Danish government, through its envoy in London, made its displeasure known in terms which gave great offence to the English king.
The nub of the scandal was the extent of the involvement of certain members of the Kerry gentry in plotting, directing and sharing the spoils of the robbery. Members of the notable families of Crosbie, Denny, Fitzmaurice, Blennerhasset and Fitzgerald had their names tarnished and their probity questioned in the course of some proceedings of dubious legality. One commentator, writing in 1937, has described the whole affair as “a kind of parallel to the modern Dreyfus case.”6 There is no difficulty in establishing that three of the ring-leaders on the night of the robbery were Francis Ryan, David Lawlor and Thomas Cantillon, and that the steward and butler of Lady Margaret Crosbie were involved. The names of over fifty other participants are also recorded. The horses and carts used to transport the chests belonged to Archdeacon Lauder, and it was in his orchard [p. 115] that some of the money was distributed. Young James Crosbie was described as helping to hide some of the money in the gardens at Ballyheigue. Folklore has depicted Lady Margaret as the real villain of the affair, but she was not charged in connection with the robbery, although there is now evidence to show that she was obliged to compensate the Danes for their losses and legal expenses.
The legal proceedings were vitiated by the fact that investigators and suspects were closely bonded by ties of blood, marriage, class, religion – and perhaps, conspiracy. One of the leading magistrates was Sir Maurice Crosbie of Ardfert, M.P. for County Kerry, 1st Baron Brandon, head of the Crosbie clan and nephew of Thomas of Ballyheigue. Sir Maurice was married to the daughter of the Earl of Kerry, Thomas Fitzmaurice, and between these two local potentates a sharp difference developed over the strategy to be adopted in the investigation. John Blennerhasset of Ballyseedy took the statements of his own servants (who happened to be in Ballyheigue on the night of the robbery!) and further evidence implicating his own brother, Thomas. These two were nephews of Arthur Crosbie. When Captain Heitman became aware of the web of ‘Kerry cousins’, he appealed to the authorities in Dublin, only to become ensnared in a legal labyrinth. The Dublin oligarchy proved as formidable an obstacle as the Kerry squirearchy. The first published account of this extraordinary story of treasure, duplicity and death appeared 140 years later, when the celebrated English historian
and man of letters, James Anthony Froude, took an interest in the affair. By way of a direct response to Froude, the Kerry local historian, Mary Agnes Hickson published her account in 1874. She corrected factual errors made by Froude, and challenged (with some indignation) his conclusions with regard to the apportioning of blame. Both Hickson and Froude had access to official records made available only since 1867, and this gives their accounts an added significance. Some of these records are now lost, but new material has come to light to add some nuances, and new information, to their versions of events.
J.A. FROUDE
Mr. Froude’s interest in the Danish silver robbery was first aroused during his frequent holidays in Kerry. In the summer months of 1869 and 1870, he lodged at Dereen House near Kenmare, on the estate of Lord Lansdowne, (whose ancestor, John Fitzmaurice, played a role in
The Golden Lion saga). Froude’s reputation as an historian rested at this time on his twelve volume work on Tudor England. He had visited Ireland before and took a keen interest in Irish affairs; he professed a love for the country and was exhilarated by his holidays in Kerry. His novel,
The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, was inspired by his experiences there.7 Froude’s writing was acclaimed for its literary qualities, but attracted criticism on the basis of his rather cavalier approach to historical accuracy and his lack of objectivity. In later years, his [p. 118]
magnum opus, a biography of Carlyle, evoked similar reaction.8
Froude is regarded as a significant, if unreliable, writer on Irish history in the eighteenth century. His book
The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1872) aroused considerable controversy when first published. Its content and tone succeeded in offending all classes of Irish people. W. E. Lecky’s own
History of Ireland was undertaken, he wrote elsewhere, to refute the calumnies of Froude against the Irish people.9 Even an admiring biographer of Froude’s was forced to concede that “if Froude’s reputation as an historian depended upon his
English in Ireland it certainly would not stand high.”10 R. F. Foster succinctly conveys Froude’s prejudice in a note in which he describes him as a “Carlylean chronicler of Protestant heroism and Catholic villainy; had much first hand experience of Ireland and an exasperated interest in Irish affairs…”11
Undoubtedly, Froude’s writing on Irish matters tends to be polemical in style; his purpose is to illustrate the inefficiency and corruption of the administration of the country and England’s culpability in tolerating this. The conduct of investigations into the silver robbery at Ballyheigue offered him a most potent illustration to support his thesis. However, notwithstanding the fury aroused by his partiality and inaccuracy, it is recognised that Froude did, at least, help to draw attention to Irish affairs, and Irish grievances, in the late nineteenth century. He contributed to English guilt, according to one authority, “firstly by his own candid and eloquent condemnation of the misgovernment of Ireland in the past, and secondly by exhibiting in his own writings the most extreme forms of racialism, imperialism, religious intolerance and anti-democratic feeling.”12
Following his summers at Dereen, Froude published his observations on Irish life in a series of colourful articles in
Fraser’s Magazine, of which he was editor. Much of what he wrote, under the title ‘A Fortnight in Kerry’, gave offence to his hosts in Kerry. One anecdote in particular, which reflected unfavourably on Lord Lansdowne and his agent, caused a furore; Froude was obliged to apologise and retract the story. When the articles appeared in book form, in Froude’s
Short Studies on Great Subjects,13 the offending anecdote was replaced by the story of
The Golden Lion and the robbery at Ballyheigue. In a manner that is typical of his forays into Irish affairs, Froude’s second story succeeded in compounding the offence and in widening the circle of those offended.
Another account of the incident, lengthier and more substantiated, was published in Froude’s The English in Ireland in a chapter entitled ‘The Smugglers.’14 Here, there is evidence that Froude had undertaken research into the affair in the Record Office and in Dublin Castle. The story was related to illustrate Froude’s conviction that while “the Ireland of theory was law-ridden beyond any country of Europe, the Ireland of fact was without any law at all, save what was recognised by the habits of each district arid county. The forms of English jurisdiction were admitted only when the chicanery of local attorneys could abuse [p. 117] them for Irish purpose.”15 A feature of Froude’s writing is this reiteration of his belief that a general spirit of lawlessness and degeneracy permeated all levels of society and that the administration of Ireland, particularly at local level, was incorrigibly corrupt, The crime committed in Ballyheigue in 1731 illustrated for him “the utter demoralisation of the gentry of an entire Irish county. Those who, by the constitution, were the natural governors of the people were their leaders in depravity.”16 In Froude’s view, “law in Ireland was organised iniquity,”17
and the behaviour of the Kerry magistrates and officials provided clear proof of this.18 Froude ends his account of the affair on an inconclusive note; he found no further evidence to show whether the Danes returned empty-handed, “or whether the Kerry gentlemen at length unwillingly relaxed their clutch upon their prey.”
In her response to Froude, Miss Hickson says that it was natural to people in Kerry to assume that his intention in writing about the robbery was “to revenge himself in an unworthy spirit of paltry pique and spleen upon its gentry and inhabitants in general” following his humiliation over the Lansdowne incident. Only this spirit of revenge she believed, could explain why Froude “plainly charges. . . . every magistrate and gentleman in Kerry with being a principal or accessory in the crimes.”19 Miss Hickson’s outrage is made abundantly clear, and is, no doubt, typical of how the eminent historian was spoken of in the Big Houses of Kerry after the publication of the story. Froude was nonetheless, gracious enough to write a preface for a later work of Miss Hickson’s in which he admitted that “I had myself smarted under her criticisms because I had, as she conceived, written hard things of Irishmen and Irish ideas.”20 Some of Froude’s criticisms of the Irish administration, however unpalatable to his Irish contemporaries, were undoubtedly deserved; the faults in his account are the sweeping nature of his condemnation, and his refusal to admit that any official acted with integrity.
In spite of his embellishments and excesses, one cannot but be impressed by Froude’s literary style. His prose has a vigour, clarity and grace that is most effective in descriptive passages. His
History of England is said to have established him “among the greatest prose writers of the nineteenth century (although) its value as history is more open to question.”21 The following description of Ballyheigue conveys something of the elegance of his style:
The sand and powdered shells, which form the bed of the Atlantic, are swept in by the eddying tides behind Kerry Head, and lie for miles as a fringe upon the shore. The shoals reach far to the sea, and the rollers with a north-west wind break over them in sheets of yellow foam. Blown sand heaps, covered with long pale grass and burrowed by rabbits, divide the beach from the brown morass which stretches inland over the level plain. At the north end of the sands where the ground rises out of the bog is the castle…
Ballyhige was at this time a long straggling house, built low to avoid the storms, and thatched, which was a proof of confidence in the people, and a sign that the owner had no reason to fear incendiaries. On the [p. 118] east side was a large fruit and kitchen garden; on the west, attached by a wall to the main building, was a square stone fire-proof tower of unknown antiquity. Between the house and the sea there had been run up a set of cabins forming a court or quadrangle, and occupied by workmen; for Mr. Crosbie, being a man of enterprise, had erected a linen factory there, and was doing a thriving business, with a Scotsman named Dalrymple for a foreman. Behind the factory the ground sloped away to the sandhills, and thence to the shore.22 |
M.A. HICKSON
Turning to Miss Mary Hickson’s research into the robbery, we see a meticulous attention to the evidence, involving “months in searching for and transcribing from the MSS in the London and Dublin Public Record Offices and in the Record Tower of Dublin Castle.”23 Her account of the events at Ballyheigue has an authoritative stamp to it, based as it is on the detailed, formal statements made by many of the participants immediately after the robbery. The importance of her narrative is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of many of these depositions made before magistrates. The statements convey very dramatically the tensions and misgivings among the conspirators, and the charged atmosphere on the night of 4 June 1731. Their incidental details give the modern reader an occasional, fascinating glimpse through the curtains of time, revealing a little of everyday life in the Ireland of the 1730s. Hickson also had access to a document entitled “Narrative of the Proceedings in Relation to the Robbery of the Silver and Effects belonging to
The Golden Lion.” This was drawn up at the request of the King, at a time when the Danes were protesting vigorously at the conduct of the Irish administration. This detailed account was an invaluable source of information to Miss Hickson.
She was unable to trace three vital statements made by the leaders of the robbers. These statements implicated Archdeacon Lauder and Arthur Crosbie, and were, in fact, the main evidence against these two in the proceedings taken against them. Hickson points out that the latter, as Clerk of the Peace for Kerry in later times, would have had ample opportunity to destroy these records. She was very disappointed that her assiduous searches in London and Dublin did not uncover these statements, and concluded that “the disappearance of those Kerry depositions of Ryan, Cantillon and Lawlor will do more to convince the public of the present day of the reality of Arthur Crosbie’s guilt, than any words they contain might have done, if they were now before us.”24 In fact, one of these crucial statements has survived, and is to be found among the Crosbie Papers in the National Library. It is the 35-page deposition of Francis Lawlor, dated 12 March 1734, and it contains a wealth of detail not available to Miss Hickson. Lawlor’s information about the genesis of the conspiracy is particularly interesting, as is his account of the roles of Arthur Crosbie and Lauder.
Even without Lawlor’s evidence, Hickson reached the conclusion that [p. 119] Lauder and Crosbie were undoubtedly involved in planning the robbery, but she was at pains to explain or excuse the behaviour of others. John Blennerhasset, she declares, “possibly did not actively exert himself in hunting down. . . two black sheep of his family. Few persons, I imagine, will be so Spartan in spirit as to condemn him for this.” With stout local loyalty, she exonerates Colonel Denny and “a good many of his countrymen,” but points the finger at “an English Viceroy (the Duke of Dorset), a few judges and, it may be, even still higher personages (who) did, to say the least of it, neglect, if they did not deliberately injure, the Danes”25 In her reprint of an important Danish letter of December 1736, Miss Hickson deletes an unflattering reference to Colonel Denny in which he was accused of threatening hang a witness unless he (the witness) swore against Arthur Crosbie. The charge was that Denny was pursuing a personal vendetta against Crosbie, and was made in the course of the trial in which the latter was acquitted.26 Miss Hickson’s search through records “black with the undisturbed dust of fifty years” did not lead her to any official denouement of the affair, and she can only state that the Danes received at least £9,287. She found no further developments in the case after 1736, although Heitman remained in Ireland until 1740.
Miss Hickson’s description of Ballyheigue in 1730 may be compared to Froude’s:
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“A short distance inland from the sandhills which skirt its shores, stood at this time Ballyheigue House, the residence of Thomas Crosbie. . . . It was a long, low, thatched mansion of the old-fashioned Irish type, having an orchard, gardens and bowling-green at the rear and east side, and a walled courtyard in front with gates, which like the gates and doors of many Kerry country houses up to a late period were never locked ‘from one end of the year to the other’, as the Irish phrase goes. In the south west comer of the courtyard and only connected with the house by a wall some eighty or a hundred feet long, stood a strong, stone tower with vaults and a cave beneath it, the restored fragment of the feudal keep of the De Cantillons, or Cantelons, to whom the Plantagenet kings had granted the lands of Ballyheigue, or Heyston, as it is often called in the old State Papers. . . . Scattered between the shore and the gates of the courtyard of Ballyheigue House were a few cottages or cabins inhabited by linen weavers, whom Thomas Crosbie, with a praiseworthy desire to improve the condition of his dependants, had drawn together and established there, under the superintendence of a north countryman named Moses Dalrymple. . .”27 |
THE DANES IN BALLYHEIGUE
Miss Hickson’s account of the Danish silver robbery gives a detailed account of events before and after the robbery of 4 June 1731. What follows here is additional information gleaned from other sources not available to her when she wrote.
Frances Chute, Collector of Customs in Tralee, was the first to [p. 120] inform the Dublin authorities of the stranding of
The Golden Lion in a letter dated 31 October 1730. He commended the actions of Thomas Crosbie, saying “it was very lucky for [the Danes] that Mr. Crosbie happened to be in the way . . . He is very careful of their affairs, even to the hazard of his life.” Crosbie wrote to William Lingen, Commissioner of Customs in Dublin, outlining his role in rescuing the sailors and guaranteeing the security of the cargo. He explained that he was “obliged to keep my bed with a Pleuratick Fever I got by means of the Fatigues in Saving the Goods.” The letter stressed that the cargo was rescued “without the Least assistance from any person whatsoever, other than my own Servants and tenants.” Thomas Crosbie died soon afterwards.28
From all the evidence available up to now, it seemed that Crosbie acted honourably towards the Danes, rescuing them from the elements and from a hostile mob, putting his own life at risk and providing sanctuary for the hapless sailors. However, a different picture emerges from a summary of events found among the diplomatic papers of Hans Rantzau-Ascheberg, an official of the Danish legation in London.29 These are two letters in French written by Hans Grave, Ministre du Vaisseau. He was a representative of the Danish East India Company. One letter says that Crosbie was implicated in various attempts to rob the Danish officers who were his guests. Sums of money were taken from the officers’ quarters, sometimes 100 crowns, sometimes 200 crowns. Quantities of sails, rigging and provisions were also taken, “as much by the orders of Mr. Crosbie as by his negligence” (“tant par les ordres que par la negligence du dit Signeur”)
The Golden Lion itself was sold to Crosbie, together with the iron on board. Later, according to Grave, he demanded other items at his own price. Demands were accompanied by threats: the Danes were told that if they did not comply, “I would not leave you a boucle in your shoes else.” After Crosbie’s death, Lady Margaret and others of the family continued with the same pattern of threats and duplicity:
“il laisse son esprit de chicane et de violence a sa femme, a son beau frère Mylord Earl of Barrimor, Sir Maurice Crosbi, et a son frère Sir Peers Crosbie.”
The Crosbie claim for one-third of the cargo as salvage was opposed by the Danes and the subsequent legal intricacies prolonged their stay in Ballyheigue. Speculation was rife among the local people, according to the deposition of David Lawlor. As an encouragement to him to join in the plot to rob the silver, he was told that the Danes were expecting another ship to take them and the cargo away, and that they would pay no salvage; he, Lawlor, “would lose the twenty guineas which were ordered for him for his trouble in helping to save the said goods out of the said ship.”30 It was true that the commissioners of the East India Company did consider sending a second ship to save the crew and
cargo, but company records show that this was abandoned as impractical, when they were informed that “the news of the stranded ship
The Golden Lion [was] worse, and the possibility of a perfect and
unharmed salvaging of food and other equipment [was] remoter.”31 [p. 121]
THE SALVAGE DISPUTE
The question of salvage is discussed in a paper found in the
Rowan Papers, NLI.32 This is a copy which is headed “Statement submitted to Councellor Singleton on behalf of the captain or owners.” The paper is dated 30 January (old style), and in it, Singleton answers questions put to him. The document confirms that
The Golden Lion was stranded rather than wrecked: “the ship is yet entire and people now at work in bringing her off.” The Danes’ predicament is made clear in this question put to Singleton: “What is to be done if the person in whose possion (sic) the said Treasure is, refuseth to deliver the same, or is unreasonable in his demand?”
The central question concerning salvage was whether
The Golden Lion case came within the ambit of a certain Act of Parliament, the Fourth of George I. The Danes’ case hinged on two crucial points first, whether
The Golden Lion was actually shipwrecked at Ballyheigue; second, whether Thomas Crosbie and his helpers actually saved the cargo from the sea. On the first point. Singleton’s view was unequivocal: “There being no wreck in this case, I doe not see how Mr. Crosbie, ye lord of the Manner, can be entitled to any part of the treasure or cargo, or any reward whatsoever.” Hans Grave’s account confirms that this was the Danish position. The term ‘échouer’ (to be stranded or run aground) is the word used repeatedly for
The Golden Lion and the claim was that a ship which is stranded remains intact and cannot be a called a wreck (“un vaisseau échoué étant entier. . . ne peut pas être appellé an wrack”).
On the second question. Singleton agreed that the Act covering shipwrecks and rescues did not apply to
The Golden Lion, “the chests of silver being saved and landed by the captain of the captain of the ship and crew, without any assistance from the people of the country.” Grave also stressed that the crew alone were responsible for saving the cargo: the ship was “garde par son propre monde pendant qu’on sauve la cargaison, et dont l’équipage avoit premierment tout seul sauve la partie la plus considerable.” This account directly contradicted that of Thomas Crosbie.
While the Crosbies might not have had any rights in the matter Singleton did suggest that “a reasonable reward” might be offered to them, “for their pains and trouble.” This advice was followed and Lady Margaret was offered first, £1500 and then £2000, which she declined. By now, the Danes were full of misgivings about the intentions of their hosts, and feared that no magistrates could be relied on to give them justice. Singleton’s last advice was that Captain Heitman “may file in Chancery against the executors of Mr. Crosbie, to oblige him to return the chests and the Bill may pray a discovery of whether the chests have been opened and any part of the treasure taken out.” [p. 122]
CONSPIRACY
The early months of 1731 saw the whole affair unresolved. Lady Margaret was indeed granted £4000 as salvage, but the Danes were unwilling to accept this award made by local magistrates who, they believed, were in league with the Crosbie family. During this period, the plot to steal the silver was hatched, and the statement of David Lawlor gives a Rood deal of information about the genesis of the whole scheme to rob the Danes of their cargo. This statement was made several years later, in March 1734. Captain Heitman considered it to be the most important of the depositions of the three main conspirators, Lawlor, Ryan and Cantillon. In his petition of 1735, Heitman stated that of the three, Lawlor’s “discovery was the fullest.” Ryan, for example, “did not swear distinctly against the family of the Crosbies, and Cantillon and Lawlor did.”33 It is interesting therefore to examine precisely the extent to which Lawlor implicates the Crosbies of Ballyheigue and their numerous relatives in north Kerry. The role of Arthur Crosbie of Tubrid is particularly important in the light of his subsequent trial and dramatic acquittal in connection with the case.
Lawlor had been on the run for about three years and returned to the scene of the crime in March 1734. He had been awaiting word of a pardon which had been promised him by Sir Maurice Crosbie and the Knight of Kerry, but, “finding himself neglected and being tired with that kind of life,” he had resolved to give himself up to Lord Kerry. On 24 February 1734, he called to Lady Margaret in Ballyheigue and there, in a room in the very turret where the silver had been stored, he was duly arrested. She had apparently reported his presence to the authorities.
Hickson’s account merely says that in April 1731, three men began to recruit others in a plot to rob the silver. These were David Lawlor, an inn-keeper from Tralee, Francis Ryan, tithe proctor and steward of Archdeacon Lauder, Vicar-General of the diocese, and Thomas Cantillon of Rahoonagh, a gentleman farmer on the estate of Lord Kerry. Hickson believed that Cantillon was the instigator of the scheme to rob the Danes: “he seems to have been first to plan the famous midnight raid on the old tower which his ancestors had raised, little dreaming of the snare it would prove to their degenerate descendant.”34 In Lawlor’s account the first suggestion of a robbery came from a John Malony; although he had lived for several months in the Crosbie house, this man was described as a clerk of Stephen Mac Mahon, an innkeeper of Ballyheigue. Malony met Lawlor in the house of William Maguire of Ardfert, and informed him that the Danes were awaiting another ship to come to their rescue, and that before this would happen, Lady Margaret was determined to appropriate four chests of silver in lieu of the amount awarded as salvage. Lawlor was disinclined to take part in the affair until he was informed that “there was to be encouragement given by the family at Ballyheigue.”
With this information, Lawlor met Thomas Cantillon and both were [p. 123] invited to meet Arthur Crosbie. They walked in the latter’s garden in Ardfert, and spoke of taking away the silver; Crosbie said that “if it were rightly managed, it might be done, that it was a thing that ought to be done.” When asked if he would speak to Lady Margaret about it, Crosbie replied that he would not, for “if a man kissed her overnight, she would tell it in the morning.” However, he agreed to go to Ballyheigue “and try their pulses.” At a later meeting, Crosbie said that he had “sounded her ladyship about it, and found her that way inclined.” Arthur Crosbie himself declined an invitation to take part in the raid, saying that if he did, he would be obliged to abscond for a few days, and would not be in a position to give information regarding the reactions of the authorities — he “could not be in a capacity of giving so good intelligence of what should pass, as he might be in case he were amongst his friends.”
Arthur Crosbie was happy to share in the spoils of the robbery, as Lawlor indicates: “Cantillon said Mr. Crosbie, do you fix the affair and you shall have five or six hundred pounds. Well, sayd he, Tom and David, if you will be faithful to me, I will befriend you as well, or words to that purpose.” Crosbie confirmed that his brother, Thomas, would be involved, and suggested that “six lusty persons” should take the silver away by sea, and divide it later. He fully expected proclamations to be issued by the government, but “hoped that, as the putting them in execution would be chiefly in friends’ hands, the prosecution would soon be at an end.”
Francis Ryan was now recruited by Lawlor; he suggested that his master, Archdeacon Lauder, “was as proper to be entrusted with the affair as anyone in the county, and as fit to be advised with, being a man of good head.” The suggestion was adopted, and Lauder’s first reaction was to ask why he had not been informed sooner. Lauder’s advice was to abandon the plan to take the silver away by boat, “for that the party would never agree who should go and who should stay at home, and by that means would fall out, and so the whole affair be discovered.” Despite this advice, one witness gave evidence that a sloop called the
Dolphin or Bona Vista, part owned by Stephen Mac Mahon, left Ballyheigue with some of the robbers and some of the silver on board.35
THE ROLE OF THE CROSBIES OF BALLYHEIGUE
Over the next months, Lawlor was inclined to lose interest in the enterprise, but his resolve was stiffened by encouragement from Arthur Crosbie and Lauder. On one occasion, Lawlor received a stimulus from another source. He met Thomas Blennerhasset and young James Crosbie, son of Lady Margaret, near the sandhills at Ballyheigue. They discussed the rumours about a robbery, and James said “if it be not taken from them, we shall never get a penny of our salvage, or words to that effect, and then asked this informant i.e. Lawlor if he knew hands [p. 124] that would be proper for it.”
One question which has intrigued those familiar with the story of
The Golden Lion and the silver robbery is the extent of the involvement of the Crosbie family of Ballyheigue. M.A. Hickson was unable to reach any conclusions about the role of Lady Margaret and her son James during this period. It is worthy of note that it was only after this lengthy statement of David Lawlor was given that court proceedings were taken against Arthur, Thomas and James Crosbie, Thomas Blennerhasset and Francis Lauder. All were acquitted in Kerry courts, but Hickson found no record of these trials, and neither has this author. Three others were acquitted also, “against evidence.” (In the Kerry Evening Post of 22 February 1868, a correspondent gave a list of twelve men who were fined £100 each at the Summer Assizes of 1734, and Hickson suggests that this may have been the jury which acquitted James Crosbie, and that the heavy fine indicates some irregularity).36
Hickson was outraged at Froude’s charges levelled at all the Kerry gentry families, and she believed that only Arthur Crosbie and Lauder could be judged guilty in the affair. However, Lawlor’s evidence also implicates James Crosbie of Ballyheigue, although it gives no evidence against Lady Margaret. In the depositions given in Hickson’s account, none of the conspirators provides any incontrovertible evidence against her. Clearly, she was warned about a proposed attack, but she did pass this information on to the Danes. Froude certainly saw her as a Lady Macbeth figure, violating the sacred rites of hospitality, adept at duplicity while shrinking from violence. However, while his speculations are imaginatively expressed, they are not founded on evidence. Froude depicts her in the weeks before the robbery as wrestling with her conscience, and ultimately stifling it. The style is more that of the novelist than the historian, although it may well be that, with uncanny insight, Froude has hit upon the truth: “Lady Margaret still wavered. She seemed to abhor the thought of it, or it may be that she only abhorred the officiousness which thrust an unwelcome privity upon her. She desired and did not desire; approved and disapproved. She, perhaps wished to escape the temptation, and by an effort of honesty, to place the prize out of her reach. . .”37 Eventually, according to Froude, Lady Margaret gave her consent to the robbery, and tried to ensure that there would be no bloodshed by withholding powder for the muskets of the Danes.
Captain Heitman certainly had no doubt about the involvement of Lady Margaret, but, on the other hand, her cousin Pierse Crosbie was confident of her position in 1735 when his information was that the three main conspirators, Ryan, Lawlor and Cantillon “all agree that she was in the dark of the whole scheme of villainy.”38 Further evidence against James Crosbie is found in descriptions of his behaviour after the robbery.
Richard Ball, steward of the Crosbies at Ballyheigue, stated that James (who may have been no more than sixteen at this time) hid some money in the grounds of the house: he and others “put it into baggs and [p. 125] buryed it in and about the cyder house and garden.” William Banner, the butler, also saw Crosbie passing two bags of money containing about £200 to Thomas Blennerhasset. Blennerhasset met Lawlor at the fair of Ardfert on 7 June and reminded him that “Jemmy Crosbie and I were as active within doors in hindering (?) the Danes from going out as you were abroad, so that I expect you will not forget me . . . . .”39 Later on. Ball intimated that he might have further information to reveal about Lady Margaret’s role, and was aggrieved that “she designed I should fall an innocent sacrifice.” He went on to say that he had “never yet said anything that can be proof against her, but on ye contrary, justified her though I have been sorely pressed to it.” He threatened to “tell all I know to the most minuit title.”40
While it is true that the evidence against Lady Margaret is scant, this is perhaps a tribute to her own ingenuity rather than an indication of her innocence. Suspicion must still surround her, although she may have believed she was justified in taking steps to retain what had been legally awarded to her.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE ROBBERY
Estimates of the value of the silver vary. Heitman’s deposition gives a figure of “eighteen or nineteen thousand pounds sterling.” Hickson gives a precise figure of £15,966 9s 6d, but in a reward notice published by the ship’s agents, it was valued at £19.375.41 This would be equivalent to at least £750,000 today. Contemporary newspapers gave accounts of the incident at Ballyheigue. One valued the silver at £19,375, while another reported that treasure to the value of £23,000 was stolen, “leaving only £5,000 that was to be paid for salvage money.” This report continues: “But some neighbouring gentlemen pursuing them to some Turbrie lands, recovered most of the treasure before they had made a dividend, but were so busie in securing the same that the rogues all took the opportunity to make off.”42
Faulkner’s Dublin Journal of June 15 published a letter under the pseudonym ‘Tim Vernon’ of Tralee, which said that “a very neighbouring Col.” secured all of the treasure, “but being more intent on the money than securing the robbers, they withdrew.” In subsequent issues, Faulkner was obliged to publish retractions of this claim, stating that “all the Name and worthy Family of the deceased who saved that Cargo always showed the greatest Indignation and Abhorrence of all such scandalous and wicked Practices.” The colonel referred to was probably William Crosbie, brother of Arthur, who, in fact, does not appear to have been involved in the robbery: the identity of ‘Tim Vernon’ was not established. Faulkner was threatened with a libel action, according to correspondence in the Crosbie Papers, TCD, and he agreed to offer a reward of £10 to anyone who could identify the author of the letter.43
A proclamation of 14 June 1731 offered a reward of £100 to anyone [p. 126] who helped to capture the ringleaders. Richard Morris of Finuge claimed the reward, saying that he had employed ten men and horses for nineteen nights, neglected his own affairs and placed his own life in danger, while he pursued the robbers. He made himself “so odious to their accomplices” that several of them tried to burn his house. Morris claimed to have apprehended eleven of the culprits, including Ryan and Lawlor, “having no sort of assistance from any one gentleman of the county.”44
In the months after the robbery, two factions emerged among the gentry of north Kerry. The Earl of Kerry, Thomas Fitzmaurice, Col. Arthur Denny and Col. Samuel Morris of Ballybeggan (father of Richard) were of the belief that those known to have been leaders in the robbery should be apprehended and charged. On the other hand, several local grandees believed that bringing in the silver was more important, and to that end they were prepared to sanction the release of some of the participants, including Ryan and Lawlor, to give them an opportunity of gathering in the silver. In this group were the Knight of Kerry, John Fitzgerald, Sir Maurice Crosbie, John Blennerhasset and Pierse Crosbie of Rusheen. Perhaps their hope was that the return of what was stolen would bring a satisfactory conclusion to the affair, without any further scandal. The rift between the two factions became most acute when Maurice Crosbie issued a
supersedeas instructing that Ryan and Lawlor were to be released, over-riding the warrant for their arrest, which had been issued two days earlier by Lord Kerry.
In fact, a considerable amount was returned to Sir Maurice Crosbie, and was sent by him to Dublin. In a letter to Sir Maurice on 2 July, Heitman acknowledged his success in finding some of the silver, while adding the rider: “but I would be more glad to hear that you have found some of the chief rogues.”45 By the end of 1731, Sir Maurice had returned £9,400 to the ship’s agents, in the form of twenty-four bars of silver and twelve bags, and this amount was lodged in a Dublin bank.46 (Lady Margaret insisted that £4,000 of this should be set aside pending the outcome of her salvage claim.) Despite this, correspondence in the Crosbie Papers show that Maurice Crosbie’s actions in superseding the orders of Lord Kerry were disapproved of by Commissioner Lingen and Lord Chancellor Wyndham. The latter wrote that releasing Ryan and Lawlor in the hope that they would help to gather in the money was not wise, “since, if they should not prove very honest, it gave them the opportunity to carry off and conceal, as well as to bring in their money.”47 Lingen was prepared to be magnanimous about the decision to supersede Lord Kerry’s warrant: “I could wish it had not been done, but am much inclined to believe it only a mistake. . . . and God forbid that we should not excuse one another for errors of judgement.”
Ryan, who was still at liberty in January 1732, was indignant to find that he was named in a second proclamation, despite promises of a pardon. He wrote to Sir Maurice claiming that he had been instrumental in bringing in nine or ten thousand pounds, and said that if he had ignored Sir Maurice’s advice, he might “be happy in some other [p. 127] country this day.” Ryan threatened to go in person to Dublin to put case, and was proud of his role in recovering the silver: “it was never known . . . for money yt was so dispersed to be so well collected — nay even did not part of it come from France?”48
THE LETTERS OF HENRY ROSE
The Crosbie Papers contain letters which give some revealing insights into the gossip, speculation and agitation behind the scenes in the year 1731.49 The author was Henry Rose and the recipient Sir Maurice Crosbie. The earliest of the letters was written on 19 June, and the last in October. Rose was married to Anne Crosbie, sister of Sir Maurice, and had been M.P. for Ardfert until his appointment to the Bench in 1731. He wrote from Dublin, and the letters show how the whole affair was seen in the metropolis.
From an early stage. Rose was fully aware of the seriousness of the affair for the Crosbie family. On 19 June, he wrote of “an universal cry against the Crosbies and their relations.” In July he wrote that the examination of Lady Margaret’s role would be “close, dangerous and heavie.” If it were true that a sloop containing some of the treasure left Ballyheigue after the robbery, Rose believed that “it must and will without peradventure, be ye eternal ruin of ye family of Ballyhige, and give a fresh handle to our enemys.”
In September, Rose wrote: “The examinations I am assurd are full against ye Lady Margaret, Jemmy and little Tom Crosbie . . .. Lauder is painted as black as his gown . . . As for White, I cant say much in his behalf . . .” (Caspar White was agent for
The Golden Lion). In a postscript. Rose offers some advice: “Get in ye money as fast as you can. Pray don’t let ye busie malicious set know either what you get or what you do.” The next letter 18 September, reassured Sir Maurice about the strategy he was adopting: “Sir Ralph Gore is . . . of opinion as well as White, yt if ye people are to be sent to gaol they will never bring in the money.” (Gore was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons.) The news from Dublin was that “little Tom Crosbie and ye Lady Margaret and Jemmy are in everybody’s mouth, and as for Lauder he is violently suspected and talked off.” A letter of 21 September is one of the few sources to give any indication of Lady Margaret’s attitude at this juncture. She is depicted as resolute and defiant: “She says as to ye delivery of ye money, she will be advised solely by her brother, ye Earl of Barrimore, yt she is determined to vindicate her character and innocence.” Further words of reassurance to Sir Maurice follow: “People yt think to lay it on the county may talk as they please but pray let us follow the dictates of our own judgement and understanding.”
Rose also refers to a man named Mc Donel who had recently been tried in connection with the case. This was probably Peter Mc Donel or Donnelly, who is referred to in the depositions as Arthur Crosbie’s [p. 127] servant. “Me Donel’s acquittal is loudly exclaimed against and I must say very justly. Something must still be done with him. It is a shame that he should go off unpunished and inriched. His escape is imputed here to a declaration yt he made in goal viz. yt if he was convicted he would discover some gentlemen of fortune and figure.” Another letter ends: “Pray make Me Donel disgorge.” The letter of 21 September also gives the official view; “The government are assurd, as I hear, yt two chests remain still untouched in Kerry. Pray is it so? Have you upon your honour heard anything like, or is it an insinuation as usual without any reality from Poland?” The reference to Poland is obscure and may well be a private code. On 7 October Rose declared: “as for ye Danish treasure etc. I have done what I could, and if I could do more to oblige you I would.”
On 23 September, Rose wrote that White had offered him an opportunity to examine the evidence against Lady Margaret and her son; he declined. “I told him I did not care for peeping into any such thing, for as there are a great many busie malicious people listed in this affair with a design to prejudice as many as they can and gratifie their own particular resentments, I think that prudence calls upon us to intermeddle as little as possible.” He made an interesting observation on the question of the claim to salvage, which one might expect to have been abandoned by now: “You know Lady Margaret still insists upon salvage, wch notwithstanding ye robbery, she may be in some measure intitled to, unless she connived at or was assisting in it. For wch reason you may depend yt nothing will be left unattempted to fix it upon her.”
Rose’s reference to the evidence against Lady Margaret is interesting in the light of the fact that she was not tried in connection with the affair, although her son was. Perhaps, as Froude claims, her influence with Lord Barrymore was sufficient to protect her, but there was, in truth, very little real evidence against her. Froude regrets that severe punishment was not inflicted: “The public trial and execution of an earl’s sister, a Vicar-General of the Irish establishment and a member or two of the Irish legislature would have been an example that would have lifted forward the civilisation of Kerry by three quarters of a century.”
Judge Henry Rose himself appeared to be in some unspecified limbo in late 1731. “As for myself, nothing is determined. I have friends not a few, and some that are not lukewarm, but I verily believe nothing will be suddainly determined.” The likelihood is that this refers to Rose’s career prospects within the judiciary, rather than to difficulties arising out of
The Golden Lion affair. However, five years later, Rose would find himself embroiled in controversy over that very case. He, Judge Michael Ward and the Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Rogerson, would be obliged to write to the Lord Lieutenant in 1736, defending themselves against charges of bias and malpractice in their conduct of proceedings
against the alleged conspirators and leaders of the Ballyheigue robbers. [p. 170]
Henry Rose’s letters give an indication of how Archdeacon Francis Lauder was seen in Dublin, but, until the discovery of Lawlor’s statement, there were few details in the records about his role in the whole affair. He was a native of King’s County, educated at Trinity College, and was appointed Archdeacon of the Diocese of Ardfert in 1724 or 1728. He was married to the daughter of Captain Theobald Magee, the notorious pirate who gave his name to Portmagee. [Magee’s wife was a Crosbie, characterised by Froude as ‘the fair smuggler of Iveragh’ ].
Froude wrote that Lauder was “deeply involved” in the smuggling trade in Kerry. He related a colourful anecdote concerning a suspected government informer active in south Kerry some time before
The Golden Lion affair. Lauder is described as bluntly warning the man: “My friend, this is not France; this is Kerry, where we do as we please. We’ll teach you some Kerry law, which is to do no right and to take no wrong.”50 Hickson cites a document which gives less vivid, but more official evidence of how Lauder was perceived. Henry Lingen wrote to Caspar White in Tralee on 10 March 1732 that the Lords Justices thought it “proper for the good of the Publick that the Rev. Francis Lauder should be struck out of the Commission of the Peace.” The delicate state of the investigations is made clear in the instruction that this was to be done, “except you apprehend that the affairs you are now on in relation to the Danish Asiatick Company may suffer from this proceeding.” Hickson also described Lauder as “ Vicar General of the diocese, and Captain General of the smugglers.”51
Mary Cliford, servant of the Lauders, gives a revealing account of activities in the household in the months after the robbery; she says more about the activities of Bridget Lauder than about her husband, the Archdeacon.52 Mary overheard conversations between Ryan and her mistress, and describes bustle and activity involving movements of silver at night. She saw the mistress returning “mightily draggled and dirty” after hiding silver in the garden. Bridget Lauder was actually hiding money on behalf of Ryan and Lawlor, to whom she had become a mentor in the months after the robbery. She played successfully on the fears and insecurity of these two, advising them not to give up their hard-won silver too readily to the authorities, even for the promise of a pardon. She had her own designs on the hoard. Lawlor’s statement says that, on one occasion, she told him that she had eighteen hundred large pieces of coin and four bars of silver. He replied that she ought to have at least three or four thousand pieces, but she claimed that a great deal had been stolen from her. When asked to return some of their share, she gave Ryan and Lawlor a series of excuses for being unable to do so. Finally, Archdeacon Lauder offered each of them a bond for £100, payable in a year, instead of their silver.
From Mary Cliford’s deposition, we know what was going on in Lauder’s house in the autumn of 1731, and why he was unwilling to [p. 130] return the silver. A man called Gates came there and worked in the cellar for about five weeks. There was no fireplace in the cellar, but smoke was seen to emerge from time to time; when Gates appeared, he was “in a leather apron, sweaty and dirty not very unlike a blacksmith.” He was engaged in melting down the Danish silver. Mary managed to steal a wedge of silver for herself, but, her mistress “leading her an uneasy life,” she left the service of the Lauders. She spent six weeks in jail before she agreed to lead the authorities to where she had hidden the silver. Clearly, a case of different laws for servants and masters.
DANISH SOURCES
Among the papers of Hans Rantzau-Ascheberg, there is a letter of 5 July 1731 which gives a summary of events concerning
The Golden Lion. It was written in Danish by John Collet, an agent of the East India Company based in London, to a Monsieur Smith, and was based on letters received from Captain Heitman:
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In the month of November the ship named The Golden Lion commanded by Capt. Johan Heitman en route to Tranquebar was shipwrecked on the Irish coast at a place called Ballyheigue Bay in the county of Kerry, whereupon the crew themselves salvaged the 12 chests of money belonging to the King arid the Company, which they later put in the care of a nobleman named Tho, Crosby, submitted themselves to his protection and also received his assistance salvaging the ship and the rest of the cargo, which was so completed that the cargo, together with sails, barrels etc. were brought ashore on the mentioned Mr. Crosby’s land, wherefore Capt. Heitman promised him a fair salvage. The ship which was found not to be the least seaworthy was put up for auction together with some iron from the cargo, which everything was knocked down and sold to Crosby, as they were not themselves capable of keeping it from the bad persons that were there m the vicinity and night and day endeavoured to rob them, and otherwise treated them very badly, so that they were kept busy saving their own lives from their daily attacks. . . . |
Collet goes on to describe the dispute over salvage, and says that the decision to award one-third of the value of the money was appealed to the Chancery in Dublin, “to where Crosby’s inheritants were summoned, and as they no doubt feared to lose the case, they may themselves have made the intrigue of getting hold of the money in such a way which Mr. Graves further describes in his letter to His Excellency, to which I refer. But this is only a suspicion, which needs further evidence.” Collet is somewhat detached about the violence offered to the sailors: “Captain Heitman complains very much against the local mob, that they in many ways have done them great harm etc., but that is unfortunately too common in the counties where ships are wrecked, and although it is unfair, I do not think it can be of much help in the affair.”
Among these papers, there is also a copy of a letter of Captain [p. 131] Heitman’s outlining the facts as he saw them. It is dated 18 December 1731 and was sent to Henry and Peter Muilman and John Collet who were agents for the Danish East India Company in London. Heitman’s deposition as given by Hickson was relatively short and was written in “corrupt Latin” suggesting that Heitman had poor English, and his view of the whole affair some six months after the robbery is of interest. (For his view of later events, see the petition of 9 December 1735 printed by Hickson.)
With his letter of 18 December, Heitman enclosed copies of the depositions of Richard Ball, the steward, William Bonner, the butler James Anderson and of the vicar of Tralee (probably the deposition of Rev. William Collis). These three statements are given in Miss Hickson’s account. Heitman clearly saw these as the most weighty evidence against the chief conspirators. He wrote: “Just as I from the beginning have written to you that we were in the power of bullies, so also that the matter is verifiable that the robbery was done with Lady Crosbie’s and some of her friends’ knowledge, and that her own son was participating in the breaking up and the haul of one of the robbed chests of money etc.” He asked for support in bringing the matter to the attention of the parliament and in compelling the Duke of Dorset to act “because otherwise it is feared that they send us back to the court of Kerry where we are sure to get every injustice.”
He had further grievances against the Crosbies also, because not only had Lady Margaret shared in the spoils of the robbery, but “she keeps the ship and the iron unpaid still.” (This refers to the auction mentioned by Collet). Heitman acknowledged the help given by Lord Kerry – “now the only person helping us a good deal” – and concluded his letter by giving his opinion that “if Lady Crosby and Mr. Thos. Hasset could be arested, for which the witnesses give occasion, and the last mentioned head men of the robbery (Ryan and Lawlor) could be found that the matter then would look quite differently.”53
Collet forwarded the captain’s statement to the Danish envoy in London, and in a covering letter commented on “the coolness of the Duke of Dorset” and on the fact that “as long as the case is resting
unsettled, the insurers will not pay a ‘skilling’, which is a great disadvantage to the Danish Company.” Heitman was to receive little satisfaction over the next eight years, and found that he was hindered at every turn.
The most serious setback for Captain Heitman was the acquittal in Dublin of Arthur Crosbie, following the collapse of the case against him. Crosbie was tried by the Court of King’s Bench, and the main evidence against him was in the statements of Lawlor and Cantillon. Lawlor died in March 1735, in circumstances which were suspicious; the Danes believed he was poisoned. His evidence was then declared inadmissible. When the trial opened in November 1735, Cantillon dramatically withdrew his earlier statements, and, in the words of an eye-witness, “in the most impudent and uncloaked manner denied all had had formerly given on oath”54 Cantillon now declared that Arthur [p. 132] Crosbie played no part in the conspiracy, and that he, Ryan and Lawlor were “at the head and foot of it.” He claimed that his earlier statements had been made under duress.
Pue’s Occurrences of 15 November reported that “the tryall lasted but a short time when Mr. Crosbie was acquitted with the greatest honour imaginable, to the great satisfaction of every gentleman present.” Cantillon was promptly charged with perjury, and found guilty in February 1736; the verdict is not recorded. Arthur Crosbie’s brother Thomas, who did not appear for the trial, was outlawed, and a year later a verdict of not guilty was recorded against him.
TRANSCRIPTS OF STATE PAPERS
Transcripts of State Papers of Ireland held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland contain a great deal of correspondence about the affair.55 These include ‘representations made by the Danish envoy in London, Mr. van John, and full statements made by the judges involved in the acquittal of Arthur Crosbie. These were Lord Chief Justice Sir John Rogerson, Justice Michael Ward and Justice Henry Rose. Rogerson believed that he and his fellow judges were “most grossly traduced and injuriously treated by the Danes.” He answered their charges point by point, and declared that no man can be condemned without evidence and that “Arthur Crosbie’s acquittal for want of such proof was according to law, and not by any partiality of the judges.” The accusations of the Danes, according to him, were designed to mask “ their own ill-conduct and mismanagement of their prosecutions.”
Ward and Rogerson expressed surprise at the fact that the Danes knew of what had been said in private conversations with Lord Kerry and Col. Denny. Rose expressed the view that some people were advising Captain Heitman, “since the Danes, who are foreigners and very much strangers to our laws and constitution, could not probably be the sole contrivers of it.”
Rogerson also believed that “those libellous letters. . . . were framed and contrived by some abler pen to gratify some private resentment against us. . .” One commentator suggests that this may be a reference to Jonathan Swift, but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis.56 It is more likely to refer to the role being played behind the scenes by Lord Kerry, Col. Denny and other Kerry magnates who from the outset had been working against the Crosbies.
These transcripts give further information on the attitude adopted by the Danish government at this point. The Danish envoy in London, Mr. van John, wrote to the Duke of Dorset with scant attention to the niceties of diplomatic language, saying that “the chief authors and accomplices of this conspiracy are as well known to your Grace and to the Lords of the Council as to the rest of Ireland.” Van John conveyed a message from the King of Denmark to the effect that “if justice is longer refused, the Danish consul will be recalled from Dublin; and if [p 133] any British vessels are so unfortunate as to be cast away hereafter on the coast of Denmark, the Irish Administration will be responsible for any misfortune which might overtake them.” Dorset consulted London, and received a reply from the Duke of Newcastle stating that “his majesty could not but be very much surprised and offended at the indecent terms made use of in that letter” and that proper representations would be made to His Danish Majesty upon this irregular and offensive behaviour of this resident here.”
DENOUEMENT
Neither Froude nor Hickson found any references to the Danish silver robbery in official records after 1736, and were obliged to end their investigations inconclusively. However, there is further information from a Danish source which indicates that there was a formal, legal resolution of the issues, and a severe judgement against Lady Margaret. It is found in a letter of 1738 from Hans Gram of Copenhagen to Hans Rantzau in London:
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“With respect to the Ireland matter, I presume your Excellency is already aware that we reached a happy conclusion (that is, as happy as we could hope or wish for in such circumstances) owing to the fact that My Lady Crosby had been ordered to pay our company the sum of 10M pd. sterling and all the legal expenses. The general opinion is that this very sentence could have been passed long ago had it not been for our captain Johann Heitmann desiring so strongly to see her hang. How this fits in with his great devotion and priceless Prayer Book which he had issued in an improved edition and presented to the management in a fine gilded finish, is something no two people can agree on. But all of us would rather have a few pounds sterling come to us in Copenhagen than give it away to see Myladys hang in Ireland. If only we could actually get some of the 10M pound sterling awarded to us and which may not be so easy for the noble lady to find! Or, no matter how rich she may be, perhaps it is not out of the question to sell the entire sentence for ready cash, and leave some of the profit to whoever would see to the execution at his own cost and risk.” 57 |
Here then is a clear confirmation that Lady Margaret did not emerge unscathed from the whole affair. She faced a harsh penalty, in excess of £10,000, although she may never have paid it. Gram’s letter also confirms the persistence of Captain Heitman in pursuing his erstwhile hostess, to the consternation of at least one of his own employers. The letter also indicates the chasm that existed between the purely commercial interests of the East India Company and the passion and principle which impelled the captain of
The Golden Lion. Clearly, Hans Gram was not very optimistic about the prospects of ever receiving the money from Lady Margaret. This writer has been unable to trace any reference to this award in contemporary newspapers, in Crosbie Papers or in official documents. Neither has it been possible to establish whether lady Margaret was paid the amount claimed as salvage. [p. 134]
The minute-book of the Danish East India Company shows that “the protracted and troublesome Irish case” was being discussed in April 1738. It also shows that, in spite of Gram’s criticisms of Captain Heitman, the latter was acting under express instructions from the company. Since 1736, according to the minutes, over 3,000 Rigsdaler had been spent on the case, and the commissioners of the company concluded that “the case by no means can be abandoned before that is procured which is required in accordance with the already made first decision or decree.” This is apparently a reference to the award of £10,000 made to the company in 1738. The minutes continue:
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“Wherefore we also already by the last post have had written by Counsellor Holmsted to Captain Heitman to prosecute the case till next session in May next coming, and have had Mr. Collet requested to give him a letter of credit to a man in Dublin to furnish the money that is needed for the running of the case and especially for the session ahead. Then, when the outcome is seen, what then happens and [how the case] advances — further measures can be taken.” |
On 7 March 1740, there is a father entry which records the return to Denmark of Captain Heitman and his assistant Jens Ostorf. They presented a final bill to the company, and handed over documents and letters concerning the case. The amount outstanding was 362 Rigsdaler — 14 skilling, besides other claims for expenses in respect of the captain’s son and John Suchdorf, both of whom were retained at the captain’s expense. It seems that the company had still not received the sum awarded, as the minutes record the following assessment of the documents submitted: “no other use of them is known than petitioning the Government for help and compensation for this violence and payment of the sum that the company is awarded.” 58
Captain Heitman died soon after his return to Denmark. Ripples from the affair lingered on in Kerry and continued to divide the Kerry gentry, as shown in letters about appointments to the important position of Sheriff of Kerry. H. Herbert wrote from London to Sir Maurice Crosbie in 1736, in support of certain nominees. He wrote that he had informed Sir Robert Walpole (effectively Prime Minister at the time) of the way the Crosbies had been hounded: “I shewd Sir R.W. the Heads of the Trial of Arthur Crosbie, which was transmitted to me by Ned Herbert, and astonished my friend.”
Herbert enclosed a copy of a letter from Walpole to the Lord Lieutenant expressing the hope that Herbert’s friends in Kerry may have a chance for justice from the violent persecutions they labour under, as appeared at a late Tryal.” Later, however, Herbert found it expedient to dissociate his candidate from the Danish silver debacle; recommending John Markham of Nunstown for the shrievalty of Kerry, Herbert wrote: “He is not concerned in that dispute directly or indirectly, nor any of his relations, to the best of my knowledge and information. I make this observation to obviate all objections.” 59
The power struggle among the Kerry gentry was resolved by the [p. 135] decline of the house of Fitzmaurice, and the consolidation of position of the newer settler families of Crosbie, Blennerhasset and Denny. James Crosbie became Sheriff of Kerry in 1751, and the name of the redoubtable Lady Margaret Crosbie became part of folklore. For several generations later the Ballyheigue family were regularly involved in salvage claims, and also earned a reputation for smuggling in the area. In October 1824, Faulkner’s Dublin Journal published extract from the Report of the Revenue Commissioners which gave details of an elaborate cave built in the lawn in front of the Castle clearly intended as a hiding-place for contraband. The family’s social prestige was at its highest under Col. James Crosbie at the end of the 19th century. An obituary in the Kerry Evening Post in 1897 described him as “the most popular man in all Kerry.” In 1912, J. D. Crosbie sold the Castle to his sister, Mrs. Erskine, and she in turn sold it in 1921, bringing to an end the Crosbie’s 200-year connection with the parish. 60
Folklore records contain many versions of treasure stories, and accounts of several fruitless attempts to locate buried treasure. One story says that the silver was melted down into three pigs and buried in three glens in the district — Ballyronan, Ballinoe and Ballinglanna. Others told a story of digging for the treasure near the Holy Well close to the village.61 For the ordinary cottiers of Ballyheigue
The Golden Lion incident must have provided a respite from the everyday wretchedness of their existence, and perhaps made some of them a little wealthier. As for the Danish seamen who were thrown onto the strand in October 1730 — one can only speculate that they must have cursed the fate which led them to the treacherous sands of Ballyheigue, instead of the sultry port of Tranquebar.
[p. 136]
NOTES
| 1 |
Biographical details are taken from
Norsk Biografisk Leksikon, Vol V, (Oslo, 1931) pp.
597-599. In 1704. Heitma’s ballad ‘The
Seafarer’s Melancholy Complaint on Their Bad
Condition’ was published. In 1730, a collection
of prayers was published under the title Troubled
Seamen’s Sweet Peace of Mind, or Spiritual Hills
of Delight. The book proved very popular, and was
published in at least eighteen impressions over
the next 150 years. See also Forfatter Lexicon
Ornfattende Danmark Norge og Island indtil 1814,
Vol III, (Copenhagen 1926), pp. 491-492. I am
grateful to Mr. Edward Roe, whose research led me
to these and other Danish sources. |
| 2 |
Minutes of Danish East India Company, II November 1729, C, parcel 28a,
Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen. I am grateful to Mr. Henrik Stissing Jensen for his assistance in tracing these records, and to Ms. Birgit Christensen for the translation. The documents are written in an archaic form of Danish which requires specialist translation. |
| 3 |
Minutes of Danish East India Company, 22 September 1730, C, parcel 28. |
| 4 |
Rowan Papers, MS 20600, National Library of Ireland. These are transcripts of documents relating to the Danish silver case. In
National Library Reports on Private Collections, No. 374,
J.F. Ainsworth gives further information on these. |
| 5 |
Pue’s Occurrences of 15 June 1731 reported: ‘We hear from Ballyheige in the County of Kerry that last week about 200 men well armed and their faces blackened came there in the night and carried off the 12 chests of silver, saved out of a Danish East India Ship stranded there last winter and detained on Account of the Money due for Salvage.’ |
| 6 |
Report of the Deputy Keeper, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 1937, p. 24. |
| 7 |
(London, 1889). In the foreword to a recent edition (1969), A. L. Rowse gives an interesting literary appraisal of Froude: ‘Every one of his books is alive, tingling with life and vigour, with poetry prejudice and sense.’ |
| 8 |
See Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, (London, 1910-11) p. 435. |
| 9 |
Ibid., p.435. |
| 10 |
Herbert Paul, Life of Froude, (London, 1905) p. 247. |
| 11 |
Modern Ireland, (London, 1988) p. 103n. |
| 12 |
Donal Mc Cartney, ‘J. A. Froude and Ireland,’ Irish University
Review, No. 2, (Spring 1971) p. 256. |
| 13 |
Second Series. (London, 1872) pp. 377-386. |
| 14 |
Vol. II (London, 1872) pp. 532-556. |
| 15 |
Ibid., p. 532. |
| 16 |
Ibid., p. 551. |
| 17 |
Ibid., p. 555. |
| 18 |
One published account of the affair is based solely on Froude’s version: The Irish
Builder, 15 June 1895.
Another account appeared in The Kerryman, January-March 1956. The author, Edward Gallagher, relied on Hickson’s account as well as Froude’s. |
| 19 |
Selections from Old Kerry Records, Second Series, (London, 1874) p. 47. |
| 20 |
M. A. Hickson, Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, (London, 1884) p. x. |
| 21 |
Dictionary of National Biography, p. 435. |
| 22 |
The English, p. 533-535 |
| 23 |
Old Kerry Records, p. 48 |
| 24 |
Ibid., p. 63. |
| 25 |
Ibid., p. 59. |
| 26 |
The full text of the petition is to be found in the Report of the Deputy
Keeper, PRONI, 1936, pp. 26-27. The chief witness against Arthur Crosbie was Thomas Cantillon, but he changed his evidence completely at the trial of Crosbie in November 1735, leading to the collapse of the case. The information omitted by M. A. Hickson is as follows: ‘but on the table the said Cantillon swore directly opposite to his first information, and further swore that he was forced to swear the first information by Colonel Denny’s threatening to hang him if he did not swear against the said Arthur Crosbie. . .’ Hickson merely has the following in parentheses: ‘details proceedings of trial already given.’ |
| 27 |
Old Kerry Records, p. 50. |
| 28 |
Copies of the letters of Francis Chute and Thomas Crosbie are to be found in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London, ref. SP63/395 Nos. 188 and 185. |
| 29 |
These letters are in the legation archive of Hans Rantzau-Ascheberg (London), Parcel No. 239: ‘Instructions with enclosures, letters received and varia, 1731-32’ These are from the archives of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (then the Foreign Department of the German Chancellery), now in the Rigsarchivet, Copenhagen. I am. grateful to Mr. Jensen for drawing my attention to these documents. |
| 30 |
Deposition of David Lawlor, taken before the Earl of Kerry, Arthur Denny, John Fitzmaurice and Samuel Morris on 12 March 1734. This statement is among the Crosbie Papers held in the National Library of Ireland. MS No. has not yet been assigned to these Papers, but most of the material concerning
The Golden Lion affair is to be found in folder nos. 149-1. Lawlor’s statement is no. 153. The Rowan Papers contain copies of some of this material. I wish to acknowledge the co-operation of the National Library in allowing me to consult these documents. |
| 31 |
Minutes of East India Company, 18 December 1730. |
| 32 |
MS 20,600, NLI |
| 33 |
See Old Kerry Records, p. 94-96. |
| 34 |
Ibid., p. 52. |
| 35 |
Another ship was under suspicion also. On 10 July, Henry Southwell wrote to the authorities from Limerick: “There is a ship now in this river
The Charming Molly bound for New England, Abraham Vanhugger Master. I am very credibly informed that she has lain some time in the river on purpose to take the persons on board that robbed the Danes.” SP 63/395 No. 209, PRO Chancery Lane London. I have found no other references to this ship. |
| 36 |
See Old Kerry Records, p. 62. |
| 37 |
The English, p. 451. |
| 38 |
Letter of Pierse Crosbie of Rusheen, 4 October 1735, Crosbie Papers. NLI, no. 149 |
| 39 |
The depositions of Ball and Banner are given in Old Kerry Records, pp. 89-93. |
| 40 |
Letter of Richard Ball to Robert Parkinson, Chancellor at law. Crosbie Papers, NLI, no. 150. |
| 41 |
SP 63/395 no. 219. PRO London. |
| 42 |
Dickson’s Dublin Intelligence, 23 June 1731. |
| 43 |
The Crosbie Papers held in Trinity College are MS 3821, and material on the silver robbery is nos. 179-192 |
| 44 |
MS 20600, NLI. |
| 45 |
Crosbie Papers, NLI. no. 152. |
| 46 |
Ibid., no. 149 |
| 47 |
Ibid., no. 152. |
| 48 |
Ibid., no. 151. |
| 49 |
Rose’s letters are to be found in the Crosbie Papers, NLI, no. 44, in Trinity College, MS 3821, and in the Rowan Papers, MS 20600, NLI. |
| 50 |
The English, p. 528. |
| 51 |
Old Kerry Records, p. 183. |
| 52 |
Mary Cliford’s deposition is in the Crosbie Papers, NLI, no. 154 |
| 53 |
Letter dated 18 December 1731 from Johan Heitman to Messrs. Henry and Peter Muilman and John Collet. Rantzau-Ascheberg archive, parcel no. 239. |
| 54 |
Letter of 13 November 1735 from John Fitzmaurice to Samuel Morris in MS 20600, NLI. |
| 55 |
Transcripts of State Papers of Ireland in Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Bundle 395, Nos. 1704-1932. In The British Library, Egermont MS 2683, ff. 280-293, the statements of the Lords Justices are part of a manuscript entitled “A Narrative of the Proceedings in relation to the Robbery of the Silver and Effects belonging to the Danish Asiatick Company. . . .” This appears to be the summary of events demanded by the London authorities, a document which was a valuable source of information to Miss Hickson. |
| 56 |
Report of the Deputy Keeper, PRONI, 1937, p. 23. |
| 57 |
Translated from Breve fra Hans Gram, 1685-1748, ed. Herman Gram (Copenhagen, 1907) p. 152. |
| 58 |
Mr. Andrew O’Rourke, Irish Ambassador to Denmark, has, in a private capacity, been studying
The Golden Lion affair, and he confirms that all the available records show that the sum awarded was not paid by the mid-1740s, and he agrees that it was probably never paid. Mr. O’Rourke has also informed me of the existence of a journal kept by a member of the ship’s crew containing details of the voyage from Copenhagen. The journal records many signs and portents of evil to come, before the ship is overtaken by a dreadful storm, and finally, in the darkness, driven ashore. It also records the sailor’s perspective on the fateful morning in October, 1730: “As day broke, some Irish were seen running along the strand like wild beasts.” |
| 59 |
Transcripts, PRONI. |
| 60 |
Further information on the Crosbie family of Ballyheigue Castle may be found in this author’s book
The Story of Ballyheigue, published by Oidhreacht, Baile Uí Thaidhg, 1994. |
| 61 |
See Schools MSS, Vol. 417, Department of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin. |
|
[p. 139]
APPENDIX. 1.
Persons mentioned in the text:
THOMAS CROSBIE of Ballyheigue. M.P. for Dingle 1713-1730.
LADY MARGARET CROSBIE, nee Barry, sister of Earl of Barrymore. Married Thomas in 1711.
JAMES CROSBIE, son of above.
SIR MAURICE CROSBIE of Ardfert, 1st Baron Branden. M. P. for Co. Kerry 1713-1758; married to LADY ANNE, daughter of Earl of Kerry. Nephew of Thomas of
Ballyheigue.
ARTHUR CROSBIE of Tubrid, later Clerk of the Peace and Commissioner of the Customs for Kerry; cousin of Thomas of
Ballyheigue.
THOMAS CROSBIE of Banemore, brother of Arthur.
COL. WILLIAM CROSBIE, M. P. for Ardfert 1727-1758. Brother of Arthur.
LT. MAURICE CROSBIE of Ballykealy, brother of Arthur.
PIERCE CROSBIE of Rusheen. Barrister-at-law.
COL. JOHN BLENNERHASSET of Ballyseedy, nephew of Arthur Crosbie.
THOMAS BLENNERHASSET of Ballymacelliggot, brother of John.
COL. ARTHUR DENNY, J. P. of Tralee, married to LADY ARABELLA daughter of the Earl of Kerry.
ARCHDEACON FRANCIS LAUDER of Ballingown, J. P. and Vicar-General of the Diocese of
Ardfert.
BRIDGET LAUDER, wife of Francis and daughter of Capt. Theobald Magee. First cousin of Sir Maurice
Crosbie.
THOMAS FITZMAURICE, of Lixnaw, 21st Lord Kerry. Member of Privy Council of George I and George II. Created 1st Earl of Kerry in 1722. Married to daughter of Sir William Petty.
WILLIAM FITZMAURICE, 2nd Earl of Kerry.
JOHN FITZMAURICE, son of Thomas. Later Earl of Shelbume. Father of William, 1st Marquis of Lansdowne, later Prime Minister.
COL. SAMUEL MORRIS of Ballybeggan, J. P. and Counsellor at Law.
RICHARD MORRIS of Finuge, son of above.
JOHN FITZGERALD, 15th Knight of Kerry. Later Sheriff of Kerry.
HENRY SINGLETON, Counsellor at Law and Prime Serjeant. Later Lord Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls.
FRANCIS CHUTE, Collector of Customs at Tralee.
REV. WILLIAM COLLIS of Kilgobbin.
WILLIAM MONTGOMERY, agent for the Golden Lion.
ALDERMAN' CASPAR WHITE of Limerick, agent for the Golden
Lion.
WILLIAM LINGEN, Commissioner of Customs in Dublin.
DUKE OF DORSET, Lionel Cranfield Sackville, Viceroy 1730-1737.
DUKE OF NEWCASTLE, Thomas Pelham-Holles, First Secretary of State to King George II.
EARL of BARRYMORE, James Barry, brother of Lady Margaret Crosbie. Arrested on suspicion of treason in 1744, and later discharged.
-----VAN JOHN, Danish ambassador in London.
H. A. HERBERT, cousin of Herberts in Kerry; apparently resident in London.
SIR JOHN ROGERSON, Lord Chief Justice.
HENRY ROSE, Justice of the King's Bench; married to sister of Sir Maurice
Crosbie.
MICHAEL WARD, Justice of the King's Bench.
SIR RALPH CORE, Speaker of the House of Commons. [p. 140]
THOMAS WYNDHAM, Lord Chancellor.
FRANCIS RYAN, tithe-proctor and steward of Archdeacon Lauder. Ring-leader of the robbers.
DAVID LAWLOR, inn-Keeper from Tralee. Ring-leader of the robbers.
THOMAS CANTILLON, gentleman farmer on Lord Kerry's estate. Ring-leader of the robbers.
WILLIAM BANNER, butler to the Crosbies of Ballyheigue.
RICHARD BALL, steward at Ballyheigue.
MOSES DALRYMPLE, Manager of Linen factory in Ballyheigue. Scotsman.
THOMAS CROSBIE, alias GODLEY, servant at Ballyheigue House.
DAVID CROSBIE, alias GODLEY, son of above.
MARY CLIFORD, servant of Archdeacon Lauder.
JAMES ANDERSON, of Tralee, sawyer. Ring- leader of the robbers.
STEPHEN MAC MAHON, of Ballyheigue. Inn-keeper.
JOHN MOLONY, of Ballyheigue. Servant of Mac Mahon.
JOHN HEITMAN, Captain of the Golden Lion. (Johan
Heitmann)
JOHN HEITMAN, JNR. son of above.
REV. CHRISTIAN GRAVE, Chaplain of the Golden Lion.
JOHN SUCHSDORF, soldier in service of Asiatic Company of Copenhagen; interpreter.
EDWARD LUTH, third mate of the Golden Lion.
LAURENCE MAGNUSSON, ERASMUS NIELSEN, – PETERSON, Danish sailors.
J. OSTORF, Assistant to Captain Heitman.
[p. 139]
APPENDIX 2.
Names of those involved in the robbery, as given in the deposition of
James Anderson of Tralee, Sawyer, on 10 July 1731.
FRANCIS RYAN of Ballingown, receiver to Rev. Francis Lauder.
DAVID LAWLOR of Tralee, innkeeper and merchant.
JOHN MALONY, clerk to Stephen Mac Mahon of Ballyheigue.
THOMAS CANTILLON of Rahoonagh, farmer.
EDMUND PURCELL of Tralee, malster.
PATRICK PURCELL of Tralee, shoemaker.
DAVID SCOLLARD near Tulligarron, mason.
JOHN GOULD of Tralee, merchant.
MICHAEL DOYLE of Tralee, coachman.
DARBY TRASS Y of Tralee, joiner.
THOMAS GIBBONS of Tralee, quit rent driver.
JOHN HELY of Tralee, lemon seller.
ANDREW CONNOLLY, coachman to Colonel Hasset of Ballyseedy.
SIMON GRADY, yoeman.
MATTHEW HOARE, servant to Thomas Blennerhasset of Ballymacelligott.
TERENCE CONNOR of Ballysheene, servant to Mr. Lauder.
JOHN DAVIS of Abbeydomey, farmer.
JOHN THORNTON of Abbeydomey, hatter.
THOMAS GLOSTER of Abbeydomey, farmer.
JAMES GLOSTER of Lackamore, farmer.
EDMUND BRIEN of Ballyheigue, farmer.
DANIEL BANE O'SULLIVAN of Ballyheigue, weaver.
----- SULLIVAN of Ballyheigue, tailor.
JOHN CORIDAN, near Ballyheigue, farmer.
THOMAS CORIDAN, near Ballyheigue, yoeman. [sic]
JAMES CORIDAN, near Ballyheigue, yoeman.
JOHN WISE of Ballyheigue, joiner.
THOMAS WISE of Ballyheigue, yoeman.
DAVID CROSBIE, alias GODLY, of Ballyheigue, yoeman.
MOSES DARUMPLE, of Ballyheigue, wheelwright.
PATRICK LALOR of Ballyheigue, coachman.
WILLIAM KEEFE, servant at Ballyheigue House.
JAMES GILLIGAN, of Newcastle, Co. Limerick, butcher.
PETER DONELLY of Ardarte (Ardfert), servant to Mr. Arthur Crosbie.
----- DONELLY, brother of Peter.
PATRICK LAWLOR of Ardfert, ale seller.
DANIEL LAWLOR of Ballyheigue, farmer.
THOMAS NOONAN, of Ballyheigue, herdsman.
Names mentioned in other depositions include:
JOHN DORAN of Abbeydomey.
DENNIS LOUGHNANE of Ballysheene.
JOHN KEEVANE of Ballysheene.
DANIEL CONNOR alias GARRAFFE ofBallysheene.
THOMAS SHEEHANE ofBallysheen.
CORNELIUS REIDY of Keel.
DENIS NOONAN of Tiduff.
[p. 142]
MICHAEL DOYLE of Tralee.
MATTHEW HOARE of Ballymacelligott.
GEORGE DAVIS of Droumenmg.
WILLIAIM FITZGERALD alias na Buoiy, of Ballysheene
JOHN FLAHERTY of Ballyhenry.
THOMAS DOOLAN of Ballyhemy.
JOHN SULLIVAN of Clanerourk.
JAMES CARROLL of Rathicannell
CORNELIUS GALLIVAN of Bailysheene.
WILLIAM TWISS.
MATTHEW TWISS.
JOHN GYNE.
NICHOLAS WISE.
RICHARD WISE.
PAIJL CANTTLLON
[p. 143]
APPENDIX 3
Letter of Thomas Crosbie to William Lingen, Commissioner of Customs, Dublin
|
Ballyheige
November
23rd 1730
Sir
I received your favour of the 7th Inst but being
obliged to keep my bed with a pleuractick Fever I got by
the means of the fatigue in Saving the Goods I could not
sooner answer it.
I am very Glad my Services have been put into so
true a light before their Excellencies as to meet with
their thanks and approbation.
The Ship was Stranded the 28th of 8ber [sic]
at five
of the Clock in the Morning and I did the same day with
the utmost Hazard of my life Rescue from an Outragious
Mobb twelve Chests alledged to be Silver and did convey
them to my Dwelling House without the least assistance
from any person whatsoever other than my own Servants
and Tenants, and since that with the greatest difficulty
danger and vast Charge have saved a great part of the of
[sic]
Her
cargo and continue so doing ’till I preserve the
remainder and hope in a little time shall be able to
inform their Excellencies that no Cargo of any Ship in
so great distress has ever been better preserved. I must
do the Justice to the Collector that the day after I
secured and saved the Chests of Silver and some other
goods, that he appeared with the Custom House Officers,
who are very industrious in serving His Majesty’s
Duties, the Ship I am afraid will never get off and its
very Strange that she has not been Hove before now I
keep a Constant guard of men to preserve her and the
money; their Excellencies have done me great Honour I
shall always show myself their most dutiful Servant and
Sir
Your Humble servant
Tho: Crosbie |
[p. 148]
APPENDIX 7.
BALLAD ON THE KERRY JURY, C. 1735.
The Burgage Collection of printed ephemera, which is held in the Early Printed Books section of Trinity College Library, contains the following piece of doggerel relating to the acquittal of one of the Crosbies by a jury of his peers. The ballad has been described as “a true ‘street-ballad’. . . (although) more than usually uninspired.” (See Long Room, The Bulletin of Friends of the Library, TCD, 1980, p. 39.)
|
An Excellent new Ballad on the County of Kerry Jury
(To the tune of Yeara My Shudy) |
|
Good neighbours attend
These lines I have penned
Will make you all merry etc.
Of twelve honest men
That lately have been
From the County of Kerry etc.
You often have heard
Of a Danish vessel
Well laden with silver etc.
How she was stranded
And all the coin landed
In a house safe and well there.
The house it was robbed
And the coin ta’en away
And notwithstanding, yet and etc.
They sued for a salvage
From the foreign strangers
But they understanding etc.
Who got all the plunder
Had then brought them under
Some jurisdiction, some jurisdiction,
But they by their neighbours
Did justly endeavour
To prove it a Fiction to etc.
Twelve honest men
From the County of Kerry
They outdid the Gallway etc.
Jury, by verdict in not bringing guilty
Their brave cousin C-----e etc.
[p. 149]
With two boots and one spur
From home they did steer
To Dublin at Term etc.
To swallow a Pill in behalf of their friend
They though it no harm etc.
They cannot disown
When they came from home
That with a hot Iron
Their Conscience was sear'd
And nothing they feared
As they could Inviron.
When they brought the verdict
They seemed to be
In sad Consternation etc.
The Foreman could hardly
The verdict deliver
With high Palpitation
When at the Inns
They afterwards met
To examine their Conscience etc.
They said to stand up
To a vow or an oath
Was nought but mcer nonsense.
Ulster and Leinster
Could ne'er send to Dublin
Such a brave jury
That to service their friend
Would hazard their end
And venture perjury.
How shall we say when
Connaught and Munster
Such Juries Assemble
That any one can a property claim
When men are so nimble etc.
|
[Transcribed 28 July 2003]
|
