British Library
J.A. Froude: “The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century”
Vol. I (1872), p. 477
Book III
Chapter II: The Smugglers
ON the most superficial insight into the condition of three out of the four provinces of Ireland, the contrast between the laws on the statute book and the living reality is more than grotesque. The Ireland of theory was law-ridden beyond any country in Europe. The Ireland of fact was without any law at all, save what was recognized by the habits of each district and county. The forms of English jurisdiction were admitted only when the chicanery of local attorneys could abuse them for Irish purposes. The Protestant magistrates, who were the nominal rulers over the Catholics, were as powerless as if they were dead, when they set themselves in opposition to Catholic prejudices. The Protestant gentry, clergymen as well as laymen, were rather driven to purchase toleration for themselves by adopting the manners of those among whom their lot was cast, than to stir sleeping dogs by struggling against the stream. The Castle government was best pleased when there was the least disturbance, and assumed that all was well when its composure was unruffled by complaints. Donell Mahony might rule in Kerry, or Martin of Ballinahinch in Connemara. The O’Donaghue might
threaten one magistrate on the bench with a visit from five hundred Rapparees; the high-constable of Killarney might tell another, that he would have broken his staff on his head ‘save out of respect for the rest of the company.’ Such things might be, but the Government desired to hear as little as they might [p. 478] of evidences of administrative weakness. Soldiers might be quartered a few roods off; but the soldiers were so ostentatiously indifferent, that they must have been ordered at all hazards to avoid unpleasant collisions. What could magistrates do so circumstanced, but, since they were forbidden to force the people to submit to the law, submit the law and ultimately their own manners, and sympathies, and characters to the ways of the people. A story, told by an informer like Sylvester O’Sullivan, would, by itself, have been an insufficient witness to the habits of the gentlemen of the South of Ireland. Another incident, almost exactly contemporary, a matter which became at last of international consequence, and was made the subject of judicial investigation, exhibits the country in the same aspect of lawlessness; and, one at least of the same parties - the Vicar General of the diocese - in a position which singularly confirms O’Sullivan’s account of him.
Ballyhige House, or Castle, the seat of a younger branch of the family of Crosby, stands at the northern extremity of the Bay of Tralee. 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 it 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, which was the scene of the following story: -
The Crosbies of Kerry were descended from John [p. 479] Crosbie, who in 1600 was made Bishop of Ardfert by Queen Elizabeth. The Bishop bought estates in the country, which his son increased by good management and a judicious alliance. Sir Thomas, his grandson, a staunch loyalist, was knighted by Ormond. He was twice married, and left behind him eight sons and one daughter. Daniel Crosbie, the eldest, inherited the family property at Ardfert. From him it passed to Sir Maurice, who married a Fitzmaurice, a daughter of Lord Kerry, and, at the time to which our story relates, was member for the county in the Irish Parliament. Sir Maurice, it will be remembered, was one of the magistrates before whom Sylvester O’Sullivan was brought at Killarney. Thomas Crosbie, Sir Maurice’s uncle, the eldest son of Sir Thomas by his second marriage, succeeded to the estates at Ballyhige, which had belonged to his mother. Like the rest of the family he was a fierce High Churchman1, and sate with the Knight of Kerry for the borough of Dingle. He too had married into the peerage, his
wife, Lady Margaret, being sister of the Earl of Barrymore.
1. Those of the Old Church, which they call the High one, are in expectation that either Mr. Meredith, a very honest English gentleman, or Mr. Crosbie, of Ballyhige, are pricked as sheriffs by my Lord Chief
Justice, because they were never yet sheriffs, and that they are High Churchmen to their hilts, and great champions for that cause in this county.’
- Maurice Hussey to Secretary Dawson, 1710. MSS. Dublin Castle
Another Crosbie, a cousin William, was member for Ardfert. Arthur, a cousin also, was Commissioner of the Customs, and had a son who married a daughter of Lord Mornington, the Honourable Fanny Wesley or Wellesley.
The family, which was thus highly connected, became the actors in one of the most remarkable [p. 480] episodes of Irish history in the last century; and the story of it illustrates how much could be ventured with impunity in that country by persons who commanded so many votes in the Parliament.
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 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 Scotchman named Dalrymple for a foreman. Behind the factory the ground sloped away to the sandhills, and thence to the shore.
It so happened that, in the autumn of the year 1728, a Danish East Indiaman, the Golden Lion, having on board twelve chests of silver bullion, which she was bringing home from the East, was driven by foul weather into the Bay of Tralee2. The wind falling round to the north-west, and blowing dead on the land, she was unable to extricate herself, and at five in the morning of the 28th of October she grounded, in the shallow water, half a mile from shore. She had eighty-eight men on board, and she carried twenty-two guns. When first seen the evening before the wreck, she had been taken for a privateer. Her character and [p. 481] the value of her cargo, however, were very soon known. As the tide went back a mob of wreckers and smugglers assembled, who, under pretence of giving help, would have soon disabled and overwhelmed the confined and half-drowning crew. But Mr. Crosbie turned out with his servants and workmen, drove away the people, assisted the captain and sailors to land with their bullion chests, and carried them into the shelter of Ballyhige. The ship was lost. All her company and everything of value which she had on board were saved.
The silver coined and in bars was worth nineteen or twenty thousand pounds.3 Mr. Crosbie showed only the most honourable desire to preserve the property which had been recovered for its lawful owners. He deposited the chests in a cellar, gave the commander, Captain Heitmann, an acknowledgment for their delivery into his charge, and allowed the
Danes themselves to keep guard on the place where the treasure was deposited.
The exposure on the morning of the wreck was unfortunately fatal to him. He caught a severe cold
from standing in the water, and being an old man he died in a few weeks. A claim was put in for salvage by his executors, seemingly exaggerated, for in December an order was sent from Dublin Castle to the Tralee Custom House to protect the Danes from extortion; but, until the question was settled, they were not permitted to remove the treasure, and Captain
Heitmann was made uneasy at the tone in which the subject was talked of in the county. Mr. Crosbie’s funeral drew together a crowd from all [p. 482] parts of the neighbourhood. The Irish were present there in overwhelming numbers. and their general tone was reckless and menacing. The rejection of the salvage claims had been resented in the household, and the servants’ ideas on rights of property were evidently loose. The Captain at last asked Lady Margaret to make over to him the detached stone tower, in which he could lodge his seamen, and have the treasure with him under the same roof. Lady Margaret refused. She wanted one at least, she said, of the rooms in the tower for her own purposes. She permitted the chests, however, to be buried in the tower cellar in a position unknown to any one except her butler. The hole was filled in with broken glass and crockery, and earth was thrown over it. The greater number of the crew went away. Ten or twelve who remained were lodged in the tower garret, a sentinel was stationed at the door at the foot of the staircase, while Captain Heitmann himself continued Lady Margaret’s guest in the castle itself.
2. Local tradition says that she was tempted in by false lights. The charge rose probably from the habits of a later generation, and is certainly unjust. In the contemporary depositions there is not a hint of anything of the kind.
3. The purchasing power of money being more than double what it is at present.
The months passed on; spring followed winter. The salvage difficulty could not be settled, and the unusual presence in Kerry of so large a quantity of money, over the ownership of which meanwhile some uncertainty was supposed to hang, set the whole county in agitation.
The name of the Vicar-General of the diocese now reappears. The Rev. Francis Lawder resided but a few miles from Ballyhige. Towards the middle of April, Mr. Lawder’s steward was superintending a party of labourers, who were thrashing out corn, when a stranger entered the barn and whispered something to the steward, who went away with him. The same evening the steward told the labourers that there was [p. 483] a plan on foot to carry off the Danes’ treasure, and asked if they cared to take a part in it. The exploit was tempting; but whether it might be safely ventured depended on the opinion of the county. If all ranks were implicated, none would be punished; a small party would be discovered and hanged. They asked whether the gentry approved. The steward answered that all the gentry had consented, except the Earl of Kerry who had not been consulted. They had promised either to be present themselves, or else to send their servants.
To men to whom smuggling had become a second nature, chests of bullion recovered out of the sea had lost the character of private property; and the hesitation in paying the Crosbies’ salvage claims removed the scruples of the waverers. What, however, did Lady Margaret think about it? Lady Margaret was the great person of the neighbourhood. Lady Margaret’s supposed rights were the legal groundwork of the proceeding, and, without her leave, the lowest Rapparee would not stir. The Ballyhige butler, Mr. Banner, was taken into council. Banner was instructed to inform his mistress that, if she would give the word, the thing should be done, and a third or half the spoil should be her ladyship’s share. Lady Margaret was neither better nor worse than other ladies and gentlemen in the county; she could not live in an atmosphere of lawlessness without contracting something of the same temperament. Had she spoken her real thoughts she would have answered like young Pompey -
This thou shouldst have done,
And not have spoke on’t. Being done unknown,
I should have found it afterwards well done,
But must condemn it now.
[p 484] When the butler delivered his message, she affected great displeasure. She would not hear of it, she said. She would rather lose her own life than allow the Danes to be robbed under her roof. She spoke decisively, yet something in her manner indicated a less fixed resolution. The butler inferred that, so long as she was not herself compromised, she would not be unforgiving. The report which he carried back was sufficient. The plot gathered shape, stole into the general air, and was whispered in hall and cabin. The steward, who was a practised hand, and knew that in such matters there was nothing more dangerous than delay, collected, as he considered, a sufficient force on the spot, and one midnight, with forty men with blacked faces, and armed with guns and pickaxes, he stole up through the sandhills, and sent a boy into the house to tell the butler that the people were come.
It happened that Mr. Arthur Crosbie, Lady Margaret’s nephew, was that night a guest at Ballyhige. Mr. Arthur was clerk of the Crown for the county, and might be held exceptionally responsible. He must, of course, have been taken generally into confidence, and have given a general approval, but he was unprepared for such sudden action. The butler ran to his room and woke him. He said, ‘he would not for any consideration the thing should be done while he was in the house; as soon as he was gone he did not care what they did.’ The butler with much difficulty persuaded the gang to withdraw for that night and to wait for another opportunity. Arthur Crosbie departed, but it seemed now as if Lady Margaret’s own mind misgave her. Eager conspirators continued to flit about the house and gossip [p. 485] with the servants. The Vicar-General’s men were in haste to be at work. The Ballyhige house steward assured Lady Margaret from him that she should have her part secured, and it would he more than she would get from the Danes. He told her that the attempt would certainly be made, indeed had all but been made already.
Lady Margaret still wavered. ‘She seemed to abhor the thought of it,’ or it might 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. A day or two after the first attempt she sent for one of the Danish officers, called him into a private room, and told him that the treasure was in danger. She bade him ask Captain Heitmann if he was satisfied with the place in which it was bestowed, and she offered, if he preferred it, to keep the chests in her own bedroom. Captain Heitmann said that the dwelling-house being thatched, and therefore liable to be fired, he thought they were safer in the tower. The officer carried back the answer. Lady Margaret gave so odd a smile that he was led to ask, how she knew that there were ill designs on foot. In his own country, he said, persons revealing intended crimes were brought before a magistrate, and examined upon oath. If she had serious grounds for suspicion there ought to be a similar enquiry.
Lady Margaret said that this was not the custom in Ireland. Information might be given privately, but gentlemen did not like their names to be made public. In fact, she could say no more, but she [p. 486] desired to let him understand generally that mischief was in the wind.
The Danes knew not what to make of information so ambiguously given. They were strangers; most of them understood no language but their own: one or two spoke English imperfectly, and Irish not at all.4 But they naturally assumed, that in the English dominions, and under the English Flag, they were in a country which respected the first principles of law. Similar warnings continued to reach them: the butler’s wife told them one day they ought to be much obliged to her husband; half a hundred villains had come to the house one night, to make away with them, and but for Mr. Banner, they would have been all murdered, and the treasure taken away. She too perhaps, like her mistress, wished them to take precautions which should make the robbery impossible ; but they only laughed at her. In the house of the sister of a peer and the widow of a member of Parliament they refused to believe that they could be really in danger. She left them, they said afterwards, ‘very angry.’
The affair was by this time whispered over the whole country side, and, among others, reached the ears of Mr. Collis, the vicar of Tralee, Mr. Collis had not perhaps been long enough in Kerry to outgrow his prejudices. He was stopped on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of May, by one of his parishioners, who said that he desired to consult him. The twelve chests of silver at Ballyhige were about to be carried off and divided: Lady Margaret was to have four of them ; four were for the gentlemen of the county ; the four remaining were to be [p. 487] shared among the party who were to execute the robbery. He had himself, he said, been invited to join, and he wished to know whether it was robbery in the real sense of the word, and whether it was an act which the vicar would approve. Collis, astonished and shocked, told him that it was a monstrous piece of wickedness, and that, at all hazards, it must be prevented. He was unable to conceive that a person in Lady Margaret’s position could herself be an accomplice; and not being himself acquainted with her, he desired a gentleman of Tralee, whom he knew to visit at Ballyhige, to let her know what was going on. The gentleman promised to tell her, but he understood Kerry better than the vicar of Tralee, and put it off from day to day. Collis himself at last rode over to Ballyhige, had an interview with Lady Margaret, and told her frankly that officious friends of her own, under pretence of doing her the justice which the Danes refused, were about to commit a frightful crime in her supposed interest.
Lady Margaret was polite but unsatisfactory. She expressed ‘a great dislike’ to the idea, but had evidently not realized the criminality of it. She said that she would speak to Captain Heitmann, and that the chests should be removed to her own room. It would have been more to the purpose if she had proposed to send them to the gaol or barracks at Tralee. Collis left Ballyhige with more misgivings than he had brought with him. He endeavoured to impress upon her before he went, that, besides robbing, there would be bloodshed and probably murder; and he seriously entreated her to forbid an act, which a word from her, spoken decidedly, would certainly prevent. Lady Margaret’s conscience was again moved, She [p. 488] sent once more for the officer to whom she had spoken before. Her present informant she was able to name. Mr. Collis of Tralee, she said, had told her that a robbery would certainly be attempted. A second time she suggested that the chests should be removed to the dwelling-house and placed under her personal charge.
Her object probably was less to prevent the robbery than to prevent a collision between the Danes and the Vicar-General’s gang. The officer was still incredulous, that an act of open violence would be ventured upon strangers in the house of a gentleman of fortune full of servants, with a linen factory swarming with workmen not a hundred yards distant. He was perhaps less satisfied that, if the chests were transferred from their present position, they might not mysteriously disappear. He declined to let them be removed. He took the precautions of placing a second sentinel at the turret door during the night. He again begged Lady Margaret to let the Danes have the turret to themselves, and asked
4. The captain’s deposition is in Latin.
that some of his own ship’s muskets, which were in the castle, with ball and powder, might be served out to his men. The first request Lady Margaret declined; it would be inconvenient, she said, and she could not allow it. After some delay, eight or ten muskets were sent over, and some balls, but, under one pretext or another, no powder was sent with them.
Even yet the unfortunate Danes were not seriously alarmed. The officers and seven sailors slept in upper rooms in the turret. One of the servants occupied the apartment on the ground-floor, so they were unable to barricade the door. They kept careful watch, however; and Captain Heitmann had [p. 489] so far seen no reason to move his quarters from the dwelling-house and remain with his men.
Lady Margaret meanwhile had given her definite consent, and in keeping back the powder, she trusted that she had taken sufficient precautions to prevent bloodshed. Everybody in the house was now in the secret. Mr. Thomas Hassett5 came to stay at Ballyhige with a number of servants. They were all taken into confidence. Several other gentlemen’s servants were in attendance; their presence was the price they were made to pay for their share of the booty. The preparations were made with the utmost deliberation. A sloop was brought round into the bay to be at hand in case of sudden danger. The house steward sent the wheel-barrows and truckles, which were in the yard, to be repaired, that they might be in condition to bear a heavy load. Mr. Lawder’s servants put in readiness his horses and carts. The night of the fourth of June was fixed on for the attack. The gang were to come up as before from the sea, through the sand-hills. The servants undertook that they should find all gates and doors unlocked.
No fresh warning was allowed to the Danes. The officer in the turret had gone to bed, and was asleep. He was awoke at midnight by a sound of shots. A moment after one of his men was at his bedside, wounded and bleeding. The two sentries had been suddenly fired on, and had both been killed. Peterson, the wounded man, who had been with them, had dragged himself up the stairs, securing behind him the door which divided the upper and lower stories. The officer sprung up and flew with the rest to the leads. He saw the court below swarming [p. 490] with armed men, with guns and torches. By the flaming light he recognized one of the Crosbie family, and more than one of the household. The Danes had but a pair of pistols and one gun with them, and no ammunition for a second charge. To fire would be to throw away their lives uselessly, so they remained behind the parapets, watching the robbers’ proceedings.
Captain Heitmann, in the dwelling-house, had in a like manner been roused by the uproar. He too had darted out of bed, and had run down to the hall, where he found the family assembled. He went to the door to open it. Lady Margaret threw herself in his way, and implored him not to stir as he would be killed. He asked if she would not send some one down to rouse the factory hands. She said it was impossible. In fact they were already roused, and were at work in the court with the rest. He appealed to the servants. No one stirred. He appealed to Mr. Hassett. Mr. Hassett sate still and made no reply. If he went out alone, he feared they would lock the door behind him, and leave him to be murdered. He flung himself, in despair, upon a bench, and sate helplessly listening to the yells and cries in the court.
The turret door meanwhile was wide open; the cellar floor was torn up; the earth and broken bottles were cleared away, and the twelve chests were lifted out to be distributed, according to the arrangement. Beforehand the division had appeared easy. Lady Margaret was to have a third, the gentlemen a third, and the robbers a third; but the question now rose, who were the gentlemen, and, who were the robbers? Were the Ballyhige servants [p. 491] to be paid out of their mistress’s share, or out of the share of the Vicar-General’s gang? The butler, the footman, the coachman, a young David Crosbie, the Scotch factory foreman, and six or seven others, all insisted that they had borne their part in the robbery, and were entitled to their part of the robbers’ portion; at last they laid hold on six of the chests, and tried to carry them off. A fight began, which, bad there been time to finish it, would have diminished the number of the claimants; but the grey June morning was already breaking, and for Lady Margaret’s sake it was essential to prevent daylight from overtaking them before they had finished their work. Half by force, a rough partition was effected: the Ballyhige party secured what they had seized; Lady Margaret’s four chests were buried in the garden; two were broken up and the contents rudely divided; and the Dolphin sloop sailed in the morning, with young David Crosbie and several others, who had staggered down to the shore loaded with money bags. The six remaining chests were taken off in carts to the Vicar-General’s barn. One cart broke down on the way. There
5. Perhaps Benner or Blennerhassett.
was no time to repair it: the chest was opened by the roadside, and ‘the scum,’ as the rank and file of the gang were called, received their wages in handfuls of silver. Mr. Lawder’s proctor had marked three, which he intended to secrete; perhaps for private and careful distribution at leisure; but the other parties interested were impatient or suspicious. Mr. Arthur Crosbie’ s steward came over a day or two after to enquire after the gentlemen’s shares, and intimated ‘that it would he worse for those concerned if they were not sent.’ Servants came on horseback [p. 492] who filled their hats and their pockets; and thus, in a short time, the whole disappeared.
The strangest part of the story has now to be told. Even in Kerry it was not expected that an exploit of this kind could be passed over without a show of enquiry. The day after the robbery, Lady Margaret sent word to Mr. Chester, chief collector of the revenue, that her house head been broken into and the Danish silver stolen. Her son and her servants she said, had attempted to trace the perpetrators, but had failed in discovering them.
The son, who was a mere lad, was not likely to discover them. Lady Margaret, perhaps, hoped that the excuse would be accepted, but the affair had been on too large a scale. The leading magistrates in the county were, Sir Maurice Crosbie, county member and high sheriff; William Crosbie, member for Ardfert; Mr. Blennerhassett, Edmund Denny, and the Knight of Kerry. Mr. Blennerhassett, if not related to the Hassett who was an accomplice, certainly assisted afterwards in suppressing investigation. The Crosbies’ first duty was to their own family. The Knight had too many transactions of his own with the smugglers to be able to exert himself if he had wished. Mr. Denny could not act alone in a matter which might bring him in deadly feud with his neighbours. The robbery was on the night of the 4th of June. A week passed. No arrests had been made, and no steps taken. On the 15th there came a sharp reprimand from Dublin from Mr. Lingen, the first commissioner of the Customs. The Government, Mr. Lingen said, were at a loss to understand such extraordinary remissness in an affair of so much consequence. The magistrates were commanded to [p. 493] exert themselves instantly to recover the money, and ‘prevent the damage which would otherwise fall on the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.’
For decency’s sake it was necessary to do something, but something which should furnish no clue to the real perpetrators. A notorious smuggler named Andersen, who had not been concerned, was taken up, and sent to Dublin to be examined. Andersen pleaded his own innocence, and of course there was no evidence against him. He could not call himself wholly ignorant of what everyone knew; but when pressed by Sir Edward Southwell, the principal secretary, for the names of the parties guilty, he said, that he could mention no one in particular ‘unless he named the whole commonalty on that side of the county of Kerry.’
If the commonalty were all implicated there was, at least, the Earl of Kerry, the lord lieutenant of the county. Carteret, the then viceroy, was in England. The Lords Justices, Archbishop Boulter, and the Speaker, Conolly, wrote in real indignation to require the Earl to bring the offenders to justice, and compel them to restore their plunder. Lord Kerry himself promised to do his best. His own hands were clean, and, for himself, he had nothing to conceal; but he acknowledged, frankly, that there would be great difficulty. He could expect no help from the magistrates. The money, he feared, was beyond recovery.
His son, Lord Fitzmaurice, if his behaviour at Killarney was a specimen of his general conduct, was probably less scrupulous than his father. On Lord Fitzmaurice and the Earl, however, the responsibility was now thrown so seriously that they could not evade it. The steward and the butler at Ballyhige were [p. 494] arrested, threatened with the gallows, and frightened into full confessions; but, the more they confessed, the more perplexing the situation became. The first families in the county; high officials in Church and state; members of Parliament who had votes, and who required to be conciliated; the Earl of Kerry’s own kindred, for Sir Maurice Crosbie was his son-in-law; the whole county side, as Andersen truly said, were implicated. There was no longer a difficulty in getting at the truth. Captain Heitmann and his officers gave their evidence. The Ballyhige servants made a clean breast of it. The Vicar-General’s servants seeing concealment useless, were as plainspoken as the rest. Mr. Collis, of Tralee, deposed to his conversation with Lady Margaret. The depositions were sent to the Castle, and Lingen returned Lord Kerry his hearty thanks, ‘for having unravelled such an enormous piece of villany, which was now set in the truest light.’
But the difficulty now was the truth itself. There had not been robbery only, but murder, and murder of a dastardly kind - murder of two shipwrecked foreign seamen - in violation of the sacred rights of hospitality. Yet no one, high or low, seemed aware of its wickedness. The origin of the crime was the utter demoralization 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. They, if any, ought to have been selected for punishment.
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 civilization of Kerry by three-quarters of a century. [p. 495]
But the days of George the Second and Sir Robert Walpole were not the days of Cromwell. The judges came to Tralee on their summer circuit, and the assizes were opened at Tralee. One or two of the gang were tried and sentenced; but the Earl of Kerry pleaded justly, ‘that it would be small service to the county to let the poor rogues be hanged, while the principals escaped.’ The judges shared Lord Kerry’s opinion, or, when they came into the county, they assumed the habits of thought which prevailed there. If no one was to be punished, an effort might at least be made to recover the plunder. Here the apathetic magistrates affected a real zeal, and gave the concluding touch of the grotesqueness of the picture. Since they were not wanted for the gallows, there could be no longer a reason for detaining the prisoners. The Knight of Kerry had written generally to Mr. Lingen, that he knew of persons who, if assured of pardon, would assist in discovering the money. Lingen replied with general encouragement; and under the shelter of Lingers letter, and pretending to be acting by order of the Government - the Knight, Sir Maurice Crosbie, Mr. Blennerhassett, and two other magistrates - signed an order to the governor of Tralee gaol to release the Vicar-General’s servants, the most prominent of the actual perpetrators of the crime; and to two of these persons - one of them the steward who had planned the robbery and divided the plunder, they committed the recovery of it from the hands of those among whom it had been distributed. No choice could have been better if there had been a real desire to find the money, but the object was merely to turn ridicule on the whole affair. The released prisoners strutted about the county showing their commissions amidst universal amusement, [p. 496] saying openly, that if the thing had been still to do they would do it again, and parading the protections which they professed to have received from the Castle.
If the most notorious villains were selected for special favour, those who had promoted the investigation became naturally alarmed for themselves. The Earl of Kerry wrote to the Castle, that he expected nightly to have his house burnt over his head. On his own authority he re-arrested the two scoundrels who had been thus ridiculously pardoned. Lingen wrote in towering indignation to the Knight. The Kerry gentry should not be allowed to carry matters with so insolent a hand. For decency’s sake they were forced to undertake an appearance of a real search for the money, and hopes were held out from time to time that the greater part would soon be collected.
Unfortunately for the Irish Administration there was a party in the case which declined to be satisfied with mere restitution. Two Danish subjects had been killed, and a third wounded. The Copenhagen Government, when Captain Heitmann’s report reached them, insisted not only that the stolen silver should be restored, but that the guilty persons should be brought to justice. Walpole felt or affected a proper displeasure. He admitted that England’s honour was concerned in punishing crime, and gave Carteret orders to prosecute. He discovered that a mode of administering justice, which may answer well among a people who have a natural love for right and abhorrence of wrong, is the worst gift which can be bestowed on those who do not know what justice means. Carteret set in motion the usual machinery. A hundred obstructions were at once flung in the way. Arthur Crosbie, the clerk of the Crown, was at last actually tried in Dublin. The Danes remained in Ireland [p. 497] to give evidence. The confessions of the Ballyhige servants proved as plainly as possible that he knew what was about to be done, and that neither by word nor deed had he attempted to prevent it. Yet the judge summed up in favour of the prisoner, and the jury acquitted him. Captain Heitmann complained indignantly ‘that the judges were in a conspiracy to suppress the enquiry;’ that ‘they showed partiality to shield the Crosbies.’ The judges answered, ‘that Mr. Arthur Crosbie was acquitted for want of such proof as was according to law,’ and affected to feel injured and insulted by the suspicion of favouritism.
The robbery had been committed in 1729. In 1731 Carteret retired from the viceroyalty, and as yet there had been no redress. The Kerry magistrates pretended that 9,000 pounds worth of bullion had been found, and that they were ready to account for it; but three more years went by; the Danes had lingered on, besieging the Castle with their complaints, yet the Irish disliked ‘paying back’ as heartily as Falstaff. They had so far not received an ounce of it. ‘ During all this time,’ wrote the Duke of Newcastle in 1734 to Cateret’s [sic] successor (the Duke of Dorset), ‘the master and sailors of the Golden Lion have not been able to obtain satisfaction for their loss, nor restitution of the money and plate which were recovered from the persons concerned.’ 6
Dorset was as powerless as Carteret had been. He could but act by forms of law, and law in Ireland was organized iniquity. Again there was a delay of two years, and in January, 1736, the Danish minister in London laid his last remonstrance before Newcastle and the English Cabinet. [p. 493]
‘In an affair so odious,’ he said, ‘every trick and stratagem has been employed to screen parties who are notoriously guilty from the punishment which they have deserved. The chief authors and accomplices of this infamous conspiracy are as well known to your Grace and to the Lords of the Council as to the whole of Ireland. Your Grace has many times expressed to me your indignation at the manner in which the Danish Company has been dealt with in that country throughout the whole affair. His Majesty, my sovereign, instructs me now to say to you, that if justice is longer refused, the Danish consul will be recalled from Dublin; and if 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 may overtake them.’7
With this letter the curtain drops on the scene. Whether the Danes went back empty-handed to their own country, forming their own reflections on the English method of civilizing Ireland, or whether the Kerry gentlemen at length unwillingly relaxed their clutch upon their prey, no evidence has as yet been discovered to show.’8
[15 August 2003]
6. ‘Newcastle to the Duke of Dorset, July 17, 1734.’ MSS. Record Office.
7 . ‘The Danish Minister to the Duke of Newcastle, January 3. 1736.’ MSS. Ireland. Record Office.
8 . For the story of the Danish treasure see the Irish MSS. in the Record Office, from November 23, 1730, to January 3, 1736, and the depositions of the prisoners, the correspondence between the Castle and the Earl of Kerry, the evidence of Mr. Collis of Tralee. and of the Danish officers and seamen, the letters of the judges and of the Duke of Newcastle, among the MSS. in the tower at Dublin. It is to be observed that the story is not mentioned in Smith’s Antiquities of Kerry, although that book was written almost immediately after and contains a minute and complimentary account of the Crosbie family.
(Sent from E.R.Y., London)
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