National Library of Ireland 

Mary A Hickson

Selections from old Kerry Records 

2^nd series, 1874 

[p. 45]



THE story of the robbery of the Danish silver from Ballyheigue House in 1731, has been given to the world by Mr. Froude in two of his most interesting works: the second series of “Short Studies on great Subjects” and the “English in Ireland.” It was a well remembered but seldom openly talked of tradition, in Kect, and most of us would, I suppose, be too glad to let the matter rest in oblivion had not Mr. Froude’s able pen made it familiar to thousands of readrry, for in truth it reflected deep discredit on, at least, two persons bearing names which we had been long accustomed to regard with esteem and respeers in both islands. Now that it has gone forth however, as I have said, and rather in the shape of a highly coloured dramatic sketch, than a “plain unvarnished tale” of a crime which might have found its fellow in the records of many another remote county in England and in Ireland between 1680 and 1760, it is evident that the people of the Kingdom of Kerry, like those of bigger kingdoms, must be content to have the good and bad deeds of their remote ancestors and connections chronicled for the benefit of a critical generation. All that they have a right to ask is, that the incidents, illustrating the social state of the county in old times should be carefully and impartially chronicled, “nought extenuate”, it is true, but also “nought set down in malice.”

   Mr. Froude is so lavish of his expressions of regard for Ireland and the Irish that it may seem ungenerous to distrust him, but there were circumstances connected with the first publication of his story about this Danish silver robbery which almost justified not a few Kerry people in believing that all that the brilliant historian wrote [p. 46] on this particular subject was from beginning to end set down in the spirit condemned by the poet. He came for several summers to reside in the very Roman Catholic neighbourhood of Kenmare. Although Mr. Froude was in early life an Oxford tractarian and the intimate friend of some distinguished ’Verts, and that his brother and several of his immediate relatives have changed from Protestantism to Romanism, he is as most people know a professed opponent of sacerdotalism in all its shapes and modifications. Still, according to his own account, he seems to have lived on wonderfully good terms with the parish priest and his Roman Catholic neighbours. But Kerry folk say, that with the exception of Mr. Trench the agent of Lord Lansdowne, (Mr. Froude’s landlord at Dirreen) the gentry of the county and its inhabitants in general remained cold and indifferent to the presence of the “greatest living historian” within their borders, and that, as sometimes happens, his mental greatness did not save him from the moral smallness of resenting the non-payment of a single grain of incense rightly due to his fame. However this may be, he wrote in Eraser’s Magazine, of which he is the editor, an article on Kerry, its scenery and its people. Even this did not seem to make much stir amongst the indifferent Kerryonians—it scarcely occurred to half a dozen of them to ask “Who wrote it?” - until after a little while a fillip was given to their attention (or inattention) in the shape of a second part of the article entitled a “Fortnight in Kerry;” and then indeed they became aware of the fact that a “a [sic] chiel was ’mang them taking notes” and notes of a very singular kind. The second part of the ‘‘Fortnight in Kerry” (a fortnight it would seem of most varied experiences), contained a highly spiced account of some disputes between a gentleman tenant of Lord Lansdowne’s and that nobleman’s agent, which Mr. Froude professed to give exactly as it was related to him by Mr. Townshend Trench himself, in the course of an evening visit at Dirreen Lodge. According to Mr. Froude on the evening of the day when an action for ejectment had been decided against the gentleman tenant aforesaid and in favour of Lord Lansdowne’s agent, he, Mr. Townshend Trench, had walked up the avenue of the defeated tenant’s house, and “in a peculiarly Irish fashion,” said the magazine article, “had executed a parade” on the lawn “walking back and forwards several times close to the drawing-room windows.” I doubt if a single intelligent person in Kerry believed one word of this extraordinary statement. Party spirit however made a few amongst us affect to believe it, and the English journals, of course (notably the “Spectator”), took, or professed to take it, for gospel and fell foul of Mr. Trench as a “mean white” of Ireland assuring their readers that only an agent and a “mean white” would have so acted, and that Lord Kenmare or the Knight of Kerry, or MacGillicuddy of the Reeks, or Mr. Crosbie of Ardfert, would, none of them have been capable of such conduct i.e. of [p. 47] “executing a parade” before their ejected tenant’s windows! It may be doubted if the nobleman and gentlemen thus distinguished felt particularly grateful to the “Spectator” for deeming this assurance necessary, but let that pass. The “Spectator” further called Lord Lansdowne’s attention to the alleged delinquency of his agent, and then the storm in the teacup rose to such a height that Mr. Froude had to write a letter to the papers admitting that he had entirely misunderstood his friend Mr. Trench, and that the latter had never “executed the parade” in question at all! All Kerry rubbed its hands gleefully, and maintained that Mr. Froude’s retractation [sic] was penned in consequence of an order from “the powers that be” at Dirreen (and Bowood), but at any rate it placed him in a decidedly absurd not to say humiliating position, and he seems soon after to have made up his mind to bid farewell to our lakes and glens. He left us, but Parthian like casting his arrows behind him, for immediately there came forth a third article of Kerry in Fraser, very inferior indeed to the first, and chiefly remarkable for egotism and ill temper. This was not all. More thunder was to be launched on our devote heads. After a year had elapsed, when the second series of “Short Studies on Great Subjects” was published the whole of the unlucky “Fortnight in Kerry” reappeared in it, minus only, the story of Mr Trench and the gentleman tenant, and in its stead Mr. Froude gave his own peculiar version of the robbery of the Danish silver, which plainly charges not only Mr. Arthur Crosbie, Mr. Lauder, and Mr. Thomas ’Hassett, but every magistrate and gentleman in Kerry, with being a principal or accessory in the crime. Reading such a monstrously unjust accusation it was quite natural that Kerry people should say that the object of the historian in substituting for the erroneous statements he had been obliged to expunge from his re-published notices of our county, an equally erroneous version of this old scandal against Arthur Crosbie, was to revenge himself in an unworthy spirit of paltry pique and spleen upon its gentry and inhabitants in general. It was a small piece of revenge in truth - so small that Mr. Froude himself felt ashamed of it, and understood, that with those who were behind the scenes, as it were, it placed him in a more absurd and unworthy position than he occupied when he was compelled to contradict his mistaken statement about Mr. Trench. So his pique with one corner of the island developed itself into a grand scheme of revenge against the whole, and it is not too much to say, that it is to this we owe the brilliant succession of slap-dash sketches known as the “English in Ireland,” in which every-incident of the Danish silver robbery is reproduced, and the unjust charges against every Kerry gentleman are reiterated with a recklessness of assertion which one is equally surprised and sorry to meet in the pages of a writer like Mr. Froude. The only two gentlemen whom he exempts from blame are Colonel Denny and Mr. Collis (even in dealing with their names he has made several mistakes) [p. 48] but their exertions in exposing and punishing the crime and criminals are so plainly set forth in the depositions, that it was manifestly impossible for him to include them in his sweeping condemnation, He is also careful to do justice to Lord Kerry, the noble ancestor of his noble landlord at Dirreen, but here again he cannot resist the temptation of flinging a stone at Lord Kerry’s son Lord Fitzmaurice, who he says “could not evade the responsibility of taking the depositions of the witnesses. Now it so happens that Lord Fitzmaurice, Colonel in the Cold stream Guards and Governor of Ross Garrison, was not a magistrate at all. It was his youngest brother, the Hon. John Fitzmaurice, afterwards created Earl of Shelburne, who zealously and honourably assisted their father in taking the depositions and procuring the arrest of the criminals from the highest to the lowest. Mr. Froude says not a word of Mr. Morris’s exertions (which caused his house to be burnt and his life threatened) leaving it to be inferred that he and his brother as well as the Batemans, Stoughtons, Orpens, Guns, De Moleyns and others who had not the remotest share in protecting the poor tools of Cantillon and Ryan were all deeply implicated. How unjust are those wholesale charges made by Mr. Froude can be clearly seen from the following documents, which I have spent 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. They tell their own tale with sufficient clearness, but for those who may never have seen any detailed account of the whole case, or heard the Kerry traditions concerning it, I have given a brief introductory sketch containing the sum and substance of the depositions and reports, pointing out more especially where their evidence corrects the exaggerations and misstatements of Mr. Froude.

   Smith in his History of Kerry, describing with his usual accuracy, the north-west coast of our county says, -
“To the north of Fenit, an island close to the northern shore of Tralee Bay, is the Bay of Ballyheigue infamous for shipwrecks. This bay from Fenit to Kerry Head is about two leagues over, towards the midst of which is a high rock called Muckolough. The shore along the bottom of the bay is very shoal and flat and full of sandbanks, over which the sea breaks with great fury when agitated by westerly winds. When a ship is so unfortunate as to be embayed here, as it is scarce practicable to save her in stormy weather in this extremity, such as cannot obtain Fenit Creek, above mentioned, ought to endeavour to run ashore towards the north end of the bottom of the bay where the water is deep and flows higher than towards the middle or south end, by which method the lives of the mariners [p. 49] and the cargo may be saved. In most of the other parts of the bay the tide is long approaching the shore, so that vessels are involved in the midst of great and terrible breakers whereby the lives of men are saved with difficulty. . . . Some ships fatally mistake Ballyheigue or Kerry Head for Cape Lane or Loop Head in Clare, which forms the north entrance to the Shannon, but this last hath always a light upon it and is much lower land than Kerry Head.” (Smith’s Kerry, p. 362.)

   The view from Fenit on a fine summer day of the Bay of Ballyheigue and the adjoining one, named after St. Brendan, with the comparatively safe little harbour of Tralee, running inland under the shadow of Sliabh Mis, is extremely beautiful. But to see it in its glory (misguided tourists inclined to stop short at Killarney should be told) an August sunset is the fitting time. Taking the rail from Killarney to Tralee in the afternoon, after an early dinner at the excellent “Royal Hotel” lately opened in the fine well-built street of the latter town, known as Denny Street, you can in the course of half an hour’s drive reach the coast-guard station at Fenit, with its neat white cottages and tiny flower gardens, looking like a bit of “merry England” set down on the wild Irish shore. Between seven and eight o’clock in the evening as the sun sinks before you into the Atlantic leaving a trail of glory rippling past Kerry Head into the sand hills of Barrow, the amber and blue tints on the shoulder of Cahirconrigh, the slopes of Glauntinassig, and the distant peaks of Counminard, Benoskehy and Brandon melt away into a deep sombre purple, massive against the pale and never quite cloudless Kerry sky, though on such nights the clouds are mere flecks of dull or burnished silver scattered here and there across the golden stars and harvest moon. Looking on such an evening across the full, tranquil tide which sweeps from Blennerville Bridge out yonder to Brandon, where the fishermen are putting forth in their tiny corrachs (little leather or skin-covered skiffs like cockleshells) for their night’s work, you can scarcely fancy the change that comes over that scene when the fury of a north-west gale from Iceland and Labrador drives before it those “great and terrible breakers” described by Smith. Two years after his History of our county was written, the York East Indiaman escaped the sands of Ballyheigue and the sunken rocks of Brandon Bay only to drift a helpless wreck at the entrance to Tralee Harbour, between Garrywilliam and the Samphire Islands, on one of which there is now a lighthouse. According to tradition the infamous practice of “wrecking” was carried on around Kerry and Brandon Heads as well as in Iveragh during the last century, but in the large collection of papers relating to Kerry I have examined at the Record Office and Castle I could find. no mention of this terrible crime, so that I am inclined to think it was never a common one in our county, as it certainly was in Cornwall, the Scilly Isles and Northumberland. There is not a tittle of evidence [p. 50] to show that the ship of whose loss I am about to write, the Danish East Indiaman, from Copenhagen to Tranquebar, with twelve chests of silver bullion and coin amounting to £15,966. 9s. 6d., sixty tons of iron and other valuables on board, was ever led into Ballyheigue Bay by false lights. She was driven out of her course under stress of weather, and her crew, either by design, or a lucky chance, followed the course recommended by Smith and on the morning of the 28th of October, 1730, (not 1728 as-stated by Mr. Froude,) ran her ashore on the north side of Ballyheigue Bay. A short distance inland from the sandhills which skirt its shores stood at this time Ballyheigue House, the residence of Thomas Crosbie of whose lineage and connexions I have already given a full account. 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 court yard 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 corner of the court yard, 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 the district is often called in the old State Papers. Smith says that in his time (A.D. 1756) the peasantry used to show a cluster of rocks in the bay at low tide, as the remains of an island, where the Cantillon lords of Ballyheigue were always buried, but he omits the most picturesque part of the old tradition, which Crofton Croker has turned to good account in his “Legend of Florry Cantillon’s Funeral,” and which asserted that when a member of the family died the coffin containing his remains was left on the shore in the evening and that at midnight, when all the mortal mourners had departed, a ghostly procession glided over the waves and carried back the dead to his island grave. The Cantillons intermarried with the Crosbies and held Ballyhigue [sic] until 1649 when some of them went abroad[1] and some were transplanted (v. Certificates and Notes of Forfeited Lands) their estates passing by grant, mortgage, or purchase to their Protestant connexions. A few lingered on near their old home much reduced however in fortune and position. Scattered between the shore and the gates of the court yard 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 [p. 51] together and established there, under the superintendence of a north countryman named Moses Dalrymple. Even Mr. Froude admits that the owner of Ballyheigue at this time was an honourable and estimable country gentleman. Through his exertions and influence with his tenants, John Heitman the Captain of the Golden Lyon, her chaplain, officers and sailors, fifty or sixty in number, were all saved and the valuable and heavy cargo was brought safe to Ballyheigue House. The captain, chaplain, and officers remained at the mansion house, the sailors lived in the farm houses about or in Ardfert or Tralee. Those at Ballyheigue seem to have made up their minds to a long stay, and in anticipation of it, the chaplain and several of the officers finding themselves crowded into one room in the house, asked and obtained Thomas Crosbie’s permission to move into the old stone tower in the court yard. They took with them the twelve chests of bullion which were placed in the cellar and watched over night and day by a guard of Danish sailors. The officers lodged in the upper floor of the tower, the ground floor being occupied by a Mrs. Sandes, who appears to have been a poor relation of the Crosbie family. So matters remained for some weeks, when unhappily for many others beside his widow and young family, Thomas Crosbie, whose health had been seriously injured by long exposure to cold and wet on the morning of the wreck, became very ill, grew rapidly worse and died. His exertions to save the crew and cargo had unquestionably cost him his life, and his widow Lady Margaret and his mother, who were left executrixes to his will, feeling rather than reasoning as women are apt to do, and also acting probably under the advice of a comparatively distant relative, Arthur Crosbie of Tubrid, who was a constant visitor at Ballyheigue, claimed an amount of salvage £4,300 which the Danes considered excessive. They appear to have complained to the authorities, for a dispatch was sent from Dublin to the Tralee Custom House directing that they should be protected from extortion. This caused unpleasant feeling on both sides, but pending the settlement of the salvage claims the silver remained at Ballyheigue House. There can be no doubt that the people outside its gates sympathized in an exaggerated degree with the disappointment of the executrixes. Thomas Crosbie had been on the whole as times went a good master to the ignorant and impoverished peasantry on his estate, all their scant experience of justice and kindness in this world came from him and his—the ‘(sublime majesty of the English law”—its mercy and equity were fine sounding phrases to be sure—but all that the Kerry peasantry of 1730 knew of English law was, that it had picked their pockets to fill those of the English trader, and had made them and kept them a nation of outlaws and paupers—how far were they bound to respect it? When the subtle, shifty, Irish intellect,

“The mind debased and passions roused by wrong” 

[p. 52] came to discuss this question in the cabins around Ballyhigue the answer was not far to find. Early in April the leaven began to work. Thomas Cantillon (a gentleman farmer on the Earl of Kerry’s estate) whose conduct, certainly, throughout the whole transaction proves him to have been as thorough paced a scoundrel as it was possible for the most ill-governed of Christian countries to produce, seems to have been the first to plan the famous midnight raid on the old tower which his ancestors had raised, little dreaming of the snare that it would prove to their degenerate descendant. To him came David Lawlor, an innkeeper from Tralee, and both these worthies walked out one fine spring morning to a farm called in the depositions Beinaree;[2] where in a barn belonging to the Rev. Francis Lauder, the Protestant Archdeacon of Ardfert and a J.P., they found a number of men threshing corn under the superintendence of Francis Ryan, tithe proctor and steward to the reverend gentleman. Ryan left the barn and walked about the farm for a half an hour with his visitors, lending a quick and willing ear to the projects which they laid before him. The two then returned and chatted with the threshers for a time before they left Beinaree. That night Ryan called John Kevane, one of the threshers, aside and told him that Cantillon and Lawlor had been “conferring” with him about “a design they had to take away the Danish treasure from Ballyheigue,” and Ryan earnestly pressed Kevane not only to join in the robbery, but to persuade some of his relatives to do the same. Kevane answered, as well he might, that he “thought it too much to be engaged in,” but then, apparently searching about for something wherewith to screw his courage up to the sticking point, and guessing perhaps that Ryan’s master was in the background, enquired, “whether the consent of any of the gentlemen of the county had been obtained?” He (Kevane) did not ask, as Mr. Froude has said, “whether all the gentlemen of the county had consented to the crime?” for although the poor tool might have had good reason to believe some of them unscrupulous, he knew right well that the majority would condemn it and punish its contrivers. Mr. Froude’s version of Ryan)s reply is equally disingenuous. He tells us—“the steward answered that all the gentry had consented except the Earl of Kerry who had not been consulted. They had all promised to be present or to send their servants. (English in Ireland, 1st vol. p. 483. ) Now Kevane’s own deposition, the one in the entire series which has the most unmistakeable ring of truth in it,[3] expressly [p. 53] states that Ryan gave him no direct reply at all, but merely said that he “intended to consult” Mr. Lauder before he undertook the robbery, and that he “was sure all the gentlemen of the county would consent to it.” And on this vague bragging and equivocation of a ruffian engaged in overcoming the scruples and fears of the ignorant, credulous, tool he means to drag into crime, Mr. Froude gravely builds up his charges, not merely against Ryan’s master and Arthur Crosbie, but against every gentleman in the county. His ardent imagination in short runs a neck and neck race with Ryan’s and in the end fairly distances it. For the words “had not been consulted,” which Mr. Froude skilfully puts after Lord Kerry’s name in Ryan’s mouthy were never spoken at all. What was the object of introducing them? Simply to emphasize the incorrect statement made in the first part of the sentence, and to insinuate a suspicion that Lord Kerry’s consent to the crime might have been had for the asking. The best proof that Ryan was unable to give Kevane the assurance he required, that even a few of the gentry were in the plot, is that the latter refused to take part in it and the two parted for a time. Ryan however soon returned to the charge but still was unable to give the distinct assurance which Kevane sought. The man evidently feared that Ryan and Cantillon were only bent on making a cat’s paw of him, and he said to his tempter that “if it were true that the gentry consented to the crime some of them ought to appear in it,” to encourage, or as he expressed it, “spirit up” the people. Ryan re-iterated his vague assurances for the gentry, and added that at all events their servants were to assist in the robbery and Kevane finally consented to do the same. Meantime Cantillon and Lawlor were actively recruiting at both sides of Tralee Bay and in Clanmorris. I am happy to say they did not extend their operations into Corcaguiny. Spite of all they could do, however, the peasantry hung back, a good proof that ignorant, lawless and credulous as they were, their tempters found it hard to persuade them that the crime was approved of by every gentleman in the county. On three several occasions at least the leaders appointed a meeting on the sand hills near Ballyhigue at night, but the numbers expected did not arrive, or the traitors within the camp for the butler and steward at Ballyhigue were now deep in the plot hesitated, (one of the depositions tells us in consequence of the threats of Sir Maurice Crosbie) and the party dispersed without venturing to attack the tower.

   Matters had advanced thus far when about the middle of May a man named Denis Cahane, residing at Kilgobbin, a parish ,on the south-west side of Tralee Bay, was visited by Cantillon who plyed him with the usual arguments and inducements to enlist him in the ranks of the plunderers. Cahane like others hesitated and Cantillon went away for the time, saying- he would return on a certain day for a decided answer. John Carrique of Glandine (the descendant of a [p. 54] Cromwellian Commissioner for surveying forfeited lands) the principal gentleman proprietor in Kilgobbin and. a magistrate, was Cahane’s landlord. An Irish peasant in any social or political crisis invariably has recourse to his landlord or his priest, but Cahane was probably a “Conformist,” and the Protestant Rector of Kilgobbin the Rev. William Collis (better known in Kerry as “Vicar Collis”, from his having held the post of Vicar General in the diocese) being non-resident, the perplexed and tempted man turned to Mr. Carrique for counsel and sympathy. Cahane told that gentleman that a plan was on foot to rob the Danes and that “grandees and prime gents” were concerned in it. Mr. Carrique knowing the credulous disposition of his humbler countrymen and the extraordinary way in which they will magnify idle rumours, seems to have thought the story a doubtful one, but as Cahane persisted in asserting its truth and said he had been asked to aid in the robbery, his landlord warned him on no account to listen to any one who tempted him to commit such a crime. Cahane readily promised to follow this good advice but entreated Mr. Carrique to keep secret what had passed between them or their Jives would be in danger. Cantillon came to renew his solicitations at the appointed hour but as before was unsuccessful. It is probable that he had also failed to find recruits elsewhere, for the robbery was again put off and he gave Cahane until the following Sunday evening to re-consider his decision. Meantime Mr. Carrique continued sceptical and hearing no more of the matter dismissed it from his mind. Not so his unfortunate informant. Poor Cahane wandered about Kilgobbin like a restless spirit, in a state of misery, looking forward to the Sunday evening when his tormentor was to return to him. But on the morning of the sacred day his conscientious struggles were to be rewarded. The Rev. Wm. Collis rode out from Tralee to Kilgobbin to attend his duties at the parish church and either in going to or in returning from it he was waylaid by Denis Cahane, who astonished him by saying that he (Denis) had a confession to make of a “weighty matter which was troubling his mind” and could only be disclosed to the “minister “ under promise of strictest secresy, for if it were publicly known “they would surely have to fly the country.” The worthy clergyman (Mr. Froude sneeringly suggests that perhaps he was not a Kerry man, but I am happy to say he was a member of an old and much respected Kerry family) in his anxiety to relieve the poor man’s evident distress of mind promised sympathy, counsel, and rather rashly—secresy. Then Cahane told his story to Mr. Collis’s surprise and horror. He bade the man persist in his honest resolutions, pointed out the wickedness of the intended crime and that it was their bounden duty to do all in their power to prevent it. Mr. Collis did not reach Tralee until late that evening, but on the very next morning he called on Mr. Carrique who appears to have been staying in the town, and urged him as an intimate acquaintance of Lady Margaret Crosbie’s to give her immediate notice of the plot. Mr. Froude, in relating this [p. 55] part of the story, gives us to understand that after some days had elapsed and Mr. Carrique had neglected to go to Ballyheigue, Vicar Collis “at last” went to warn Lady Margaret. Now the depositions prove that there was no such delay at all. Cahane told his tale to Mr. Collis on Sunday the 16th of May, the clergyman after returning home spoke to Mr. Carrique early on Monday, and obtained from him a promise that he would see Lady Margaret on Tuesday the 18th, but he wrote on that morning to excuse himself from going, and immediately in an hour or two Mr. Collis set out for Ballyheigue. So that between the receipt of the information by Vicar Collis and his interview with Lady Margaret one day only intervened and that the busiest weekday of a clergyman’s working life. Again Mr. Froude’s account of that interview is studiously unfair. “ Lady Margaret, he says, “was polite but unsatisfactory. Unsatisfactory as the conclusion may be to Mr. Froude, I think all unprejudiced persons who read the depositions will agree that the lady could do no more than she did, in assuring Mr. Collis she would warn the Danes of the plot, and that if they pleased to remove the chests into her private rooms in Ballyheigue they could, do so. Further, it appears that she did on two occasions give the captain and his officers fair warning that the tower was likely to be attacked. The butler’s wife also gave them notice that the robbers had actually on one occasion been at the gates, and this warning was equally disregarded. Mr. Chute,[4] the Collector of Customs at Tralee, advised Captain Heitman to employ a guard of soldiers from the barracks to assist the sailors in watching over the money and bullion, but although, according to his own story, he and his men were absolutely left without firearms they rejected all these warnings and suggestions. There is to me something quite inexplicable in their conduct supposing them to have been really honest as well as intelligent men. To say that their imperfect knowledge of English prevented their being aware of the danger is simply absurd, for we have the evidence of those among them who were acquainted with that language, that they well understood the warnings they had. received and repeated them to the captain. About the most lawless members of society, especially in old times, have been merchant sailors released from the discipline of [p. 56] shipboard and I confess that I cannot get rid of a suspicion[5] that some of the crew of the “Golden Lyon” were false to their colours and confederates of the robbers with whom they had mixed freely for months. At any rate captain and crew were impervious to all warnings until Cantillon, Ryan and Lawlor had matured their plans and found allies within and without the mansion house. A man named Stephen Mac Mahon who was the owner of a ship plying between Dunkirk and the Irish coast and who kept a tavern or store in the little village, his servant John Malony, William Banner the butler, and Richard Ball the steward at Ballyheigue, were all pledged to assist the robbers whenever they decided to attack the tower.

   In the first week of June, 1731, two ladies came to spend a few days at Ballyheigue House. One was the wife of John Blennerhasset of Ballyseedy, for sixty years a member of the Irish Parliament and the other was the wife of his younger brother Thomas styled in the depositions “of Ballymac Elligot.” The male line of the former is long extinct and the latter has no descendants male or female in Ireland at the present day. The same may be said of many whose names appear in this affair. The last male descendants of John, Knight of Kerry, (who has been charged with shielding the criminals) and of Archdeacon Lauder, Thomas Crosbie of Banemore, and his brother Arthur of Tubrid died in the last or very early in the present century. On the afternoon of the 4th of June Mr. Thomas Blennerhasset joined his wife at Ballyheigue. No other visitors (the Danish officers of course excepted) seem to have been in the house. The long summer evening passed, we may suppose, pleasantly away and the family and guests had retired to rest, while the servants according to their own account were preparing to do the same, when at midnight the Danes, sleeping in the upper room of the tower, were suddenly awakened by the entrance of one of their comrades who had been guarding the silver in the vault below. The man, who was wounded and bleeding profusely, said that the robbers were in the vault and had killed his two companions. After such a fearful announcement the unarmed sailors may be pardoned perhaps for thinking in the first instance of their own safety. They barricaded their chamber door and then looking through the window, saw the courtyard and gateway filled with a crowd of men having their faces blackened, some with guns which they were wildly firing [p. 57] at random to show the Danes that resistance would be death. The latter recognised the voices of two persons, John Malony (Mac Mahon’s servant) and Thomas Crosbie “alias Godley,” but this most inappropriate alias seems to have been the man’s real name, he was certainly not a legitimate scion of the Crosbie family. Meanwhile the shots and cries had awakened the captain and his officers in Ballyhigue House. He hastily dressed and rushed to the hall where he found the family guests and most of the servants assembled. His deposition states that he vainly appealed for arms and assistance to repel the robbers, and that when, in despair, he attempted to go out into the yard Lady Margaret Crosbie threw herself in his way and entreated him to remain in the house else he would be murdered on the spot. The courtyard and tower being by this time filled with nearly two hundred rapparees, many of them well armed, it is certain that no one in the house could have ventured to rescue the booty from them. The unfortunate Danes had nothing left them to do but to sit patiently like Sister Anne, on their “watch tower” and to see their silver dragged through the gates harnessed to the sleek “chaise horses” (v. Depositions, No. 13) of the Venerable Archdeacon Lauder! It is but fair however to give that spiritual potentate his due and to mention that he certainly did not put in an appearance at Ballyhigue that night, nor at his overflowing barns at Beinaree next day, but by the unanimous “voice of the contrie,” (as Dominic Miagh said on the question of the betrayers’ of Castlemayne, v. 1st vol. p. 311) his tithe proctor and his “chaise horses” were the most efficient agents in the transaction from first to last. The equitable division of the spoil caused some slight confusion, but the majority calling respectfully for “Mr. Ball,” that worthy appeared and satisfactorily settled the contending claims, including his own. Three chests were drawn by the “chaise horses” home to Beinaree and there in Lauder’s orchard several persons opened them and carried away part of their contents. The residue was taken to Ballingown, where it was left in a dry ditch at a convenient distance from the Archdiaconal residence. One chest was brought to Tralee, a small share for the metropolis, which would probably have obtained more but for the presence of Colonel Denny and the military, the remaining six were left at Ballyheigue to be apportioned amongst Malony, Mac Mahon, Godley, Ball and Banner and according to the depositions of the two latter (who there can be no doubt perjured themselves grossly) four of the six chests were by them generously laid aside for Lady Margaret and her children. The short June night must have been fairly over before the work was done, for the carts broke down on the road to Beinaree, and the “chaise horses” sulked under their unwonted burden. One can imagine the gossip and rumours that circulated, with a brisk accompaniment of hand shaking and head shaking, that Saturday (market day) afternoon through the busy streets of [p. 58] the little town of Tralee. Servants returning from market, or chief tenants from the Spa and Listrim, who had wonderingly on the way to town encountered scattered groups of the Beinaree convoy making for their homes, were probably the first to convey the unwelcome intelligence to the honoured Lady[6] of Tralee Castle and her husband. Mr. Froude calls him Edmund Denny, although his real name Arthur Denny stands written in full at the end of the depositions taken before him. The mistake of one Christian name for another is of little moment compared with others which Mr. Froude has made, not it is to be hoped designedly, but through a carelessness most unpardonable, considering the grave nature of the charges he is seeking to establish against a whole county. He finds it impossible not to admit that Colonel Arthur Denny came out of this, to him necessarily most painful business, with the same high and unstained character which he bore throughout his whole life. Still the way in which Mr. Froude does scant justice to Colonel Denny, betrays the animus of the whole of the following passage, which contains at least one utterly false statement. With the depositions before him I cannot conceive how Mr. Froude could have written it :

“Mr. (i.e. Colonel Denny) could not act alone in a matter which might bring him into deadly enmity with his neighbours. The robbery was on the night of the 4th of June. A week passed, no arrests had been made, no steps taken. On the 15th came a sharp reprimand from Dublin.”

   We have the written proof under our eyes that Colonel Denny did not hesitate to act alone and as promptly as possible. The robbery took place on the night between Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th of June. Or Sunday or on Monday two of the robbers were arrested, were examined before Colonel Denny on Tuesday, and their examinations transmitted to the Lords Justices (the Viceroy as usual being absent) that same evening. Mr. Froude’s notions of time are apparently as arbitrary as his politics. The twenty-four hours which intervened between Cahane’s confession to Vicar Collis and that gentleman’s visit to Ballyheigue amount according to the historian’s calculation to several days, and the forty-eight hours between Saturday the 5th and Monday the 7th of June make up exactly a week! Elsewhere the historian says—“the robbery had been committed in 1729, in 1731 Carteret retired from the Viceroyalty, and yet there had been no redress.” (English in Ireland, p. 497.) The robbery (as almost every document connected with the case expressly states) took place in June, 1731, and in the early part of that year or towards the end of 1730, Lord Carteret retired from the Viceroyalty. His successor the Duke of Dorset was sworn into office in September, 1731. So that though there is some [p. 59] reason to believe that another English Viceroy, a few judges, and it may be even still higher personages, did to say the least of it neglect, if they did not deliberately injure, the Danes, Lord Carteret, like Colonel Denny and a good many of Colonel Denny’s countrymen, was certainly blameless in the matter. I may as well say that amongst those innocent persons I think it quite impossible to include Arthur Crosbie of Tubrid or Archdeacon Lauder, and there can be no doubt that from the first their guilt was suspected by John Blennerhassett [sic]and Colonel Denny. Mr. Froude says that the former “certainly assisted in suppressing an investigation into the crime.” I can find no certain proof that he did so directly, at least, but as he was the nephew of Arthur Crosbie and the brother of Thomas Blennerhassett accused on Banner’s very doubtful testimony of being an actual accomplice, it is quite possible he did not actively exert himself in hunting down those two black sheep of his family. Few persons I imagine will be so Spartan in spirit as to condemn him for this. If Mr. Froude turns to the annals of his own native county in modern times, he will find instances of offences far graver than this robbery of the Danish silver committed by men of good family and position, whose relatives not only shrank from putting the law in force against them but helped them to evade or defy it. It is doubtful that John Blennerhasset would have taken any steps to bring home the guilt to the chief offenders if Colonel Denny who was the nephew of his wife had not urged him to do so. The day after Colonel Denny had arrested and examined Doyle and Trassy John Blennerhassett took Grady’s and Conolly’s deposition, which though probably false on many points had one good effect, in causing James Anderson one of the ringleaders to abscond into Limerick where he was immediately arrested by the Hon. Henry Southwell[7] the cousin-german of Colonel Denny. Mr. Froude says of Anderson—“A notorious smuggler named Anderson who had not been concerned was taken up and sent to Dublin to be examined. Anderson pleaded his own innocence and of course there was no evidence against him. He could not call himself wholly ignorant of what every one knew but when pressed by Sir Edward Southwell the 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 Kerry.’ If the [p. 60] commonalty were all implicated .there was at least the Earl of Kerry, the Lord Lieutenant of the county.” (English in Ireland, p. 493.) James Anderson’s two depositions taken in Limerick are hereafter given. In them he confesses his guilt and the reader will observe that in almost all the other depositions he is mentioned as one of the principal ringleaders. The Narrative drawn up by order of the Lords Justices for the King’s perusal, from which I have already quoted, also expressly says, - “Their. Excellencies having received a letter from the Hon Mr. Southwell, dated 10th June, 1731, giving an account of his apprehending James Anderson concerned in the robbery and he having sent his Examination to their Excellencies, they ordered the Privy Council to be summoned and issued a Proclamation dated 14th of June, 1731, offering considerable rewards for the apprehending and bringing to justice of David Lawlor, Francis Ryan, Thomas Cantillon,” etc., etc. (Narrative of Proceedings in Case of the Golden Lyon, Rolls’ Office, Chancery Lane.) Having spent more than six months in London and Dublin searching both Record Offices and the State Papers still in Dublin Castle, for every document connected with this Ballyheigue case, without finding any trace of such a deposition of Anderson’s as Mr. Froude has described, I cannot but think he has made a mistake and confounded this James Anderson with a namesake of his, who in the Castle MSS. of a later date than 1731-6 is mentioned as a smuggler and robber. On another point the historian has certainly fallen into an error, that is in interpreting the expression which he says was used by Anderson that “all the commonalty” near Ballyhigue and Tralee were concerned in the robbery, to mean that all the gentry or commoners were guilty. If James Anderson ever did use this expression at all he undoubtedly meant by the “commonalty” the peasantry, small farmers, labourers, servants, etc. The word is used in this sense by the uneducated Kerryman of Anderson’s class at the present day. He would never think of using it in the strict sense of commoners or gentry as distinct from noblemen, which is the way Mr. Froude takes it, and wishes his readers to take it, for what purpose he best knows. The Danes now offered a tenth part of the treasure to any one who would inform them where the whole had been concealed, and this reward as well as the exertions of Lord Kerry, John Fitzmaurice, Colonel Morris and his son, Mr. Southwell, and Colonel Denny, made many of the robbers who had been left out in the cold at the division of the spoil willing to turn approvers.

   On the 26th of June, three weeks after the robbery, Mr. Meredith, the High Sheriff of Kerry, wrote to the Lords Justices informing them, that nine of the robbers had been committed to Tralee gaol and that in a few days he expected to arrest others. At the summer assizes following three only of the prisoners were found guilty and one of them was pardoned at the request of Captain. Heitman and his [p. 61] agent Alderman White of Limerick, they believing he could put them on the track of the money. One man was hung and the third cut his throat in prison the evening before the day appointed for his execution. The Earl of Kerry had Ball and Banner arrested, and they were both sent with Anderson to Dublin for further examination. Soon after £4000 of the money was recovered and transmitted to Dublin. These arrests looked so like real work, that Ryan and Lawlor evidently began to think that the game was up, and that more might be made out of the Danes’ proffered reward than could be extracted from the Archdeacon and Arthur Crosbie. They accordingly opened negotiations with the Knight of Kerry, who whatever Mr. Froude may say to the contrary (without bringing forward a tittle of proof in support of his assertions) was undoubtedly perfectly sincere in his statement to the authorities, that he believed those two chief scoundrels might give and obtain very important information and recover some of the treasure. For the £1500 reward offered by the Danes (equal in value to about £3000 at the present day) it is very certain that Ryan and Lawlor would have betrayed any man high or low connected with the robbery, or hung him with their own hands. The Knight knew what they were willing to do, how far they could act it was more difficult for him to say, he probably overrated their power and underrated that of Lauder, but they professed much and he believed them and granted them a sort of protection and roving commission to go about amongst the peasantry at all hours and search for the treasure or for information as to where it lay. In a few days however Lord Kerry wrote to the Castle saying that they were doing no real service, but were harassing the country and that he had arrested them and sent them to Tralee gaol. They and it appears Alderman White, on behalf of the Danes, appealed to the Knight and to six other magistrates, stating that they had been doing real service and could do more if set free, and the result was that a supersedeas was signed to Lord Kerry’s warrant and the two were released from gaol. In February, 1732, Anderson, Wise, Healy and Gould were pardoned at the petition of the Danes who believed that this act of mercy might induce others to turn “king’s evidence” and restore the money. A large portion of it was probably by this time in Dunkirk, and almost all the rest in the possession of Lauder and Arthur Crosbie, who were no doubt bidding high to silence Ryan, Lawlor and Cantillon. The latter was arrested by Lord Kerry and committed to Tralee gaol. Finding that Ryan and Lawlor were not fulfilling their promises the Danes once more petitioned to have them proclaimed, and that directions should be given for prosecuting Lauder against whom a man named Cushin had given damning evidence. The proclamation was issued and Ryan at once fled across the Shannon to Clare (Lawlor appears to have surrendered) where he tendered his deposition to Mr. Francis Burton who transmitted it to the Castle. Ryan was then sent to [p. 62] Dublin where he was committed to gaol. At the summer assizes of 1734 James Crosbie[8] who could not have been more than nineteen years of age, was put on his trial and acquitted, and three men named Long, Fitzgerald and Connor, were also acquitted, the Narrative says, “against evidence.” At the Spring Assizes of 1734, Archdeacon Lauder, his wife (the daughter of Capt. Theobald Magee), and son, and Thomas Blennerhassett were tried and acquitted. At the same assizes Arthur Crosbie and his brother Thomas of Banemore were indicted, the former as “an accessory before the fact” and the latter as “an accessory after the fact,” and on the 3rd of May, 1735, a Habeas Corpus was ordered to William Godfrey, Esq., High Sheriff of Kerry, to bring Arthur Crosbie from Tralee gaol to Dublin, there to take his trial in the Court of King’s Bench. Ryan, Lawlor and Camillon, the three chief witnesses against him, were also transferred to the metropolis. It might be supposed that the object of all this was to secure a more impartial trial of the accused by a Dublin jury, but the Chief Justice’s (Rogerson) report sent over to the king tells us, that the Court of King’s Bench “further ordered that process should issue to the Sheriff of the County Kerry to return a good and substantial jury for the said trial.” The plain meaning which he who runs may read of this solemn mockery of justice was—that the Viceroy, in those good old times of Home Rule parliaments, feared to put the law in force against a member of a county family, commanding many votes, and that he, the criminal, had bought over the judges of the King’s Bench and other legal officials with large bribes out of the plundered silver. On the 17th June, 1735, he was placed at the bar of the King’s Bench, but some of the Crown witnesses failing to appear, the trial was put off until the 18th, when again, on the same grounds, the Attorney General moved the Court for a further postponement until the Michaelmas term following, which was allowed and the prisoner was admitted to bail. The object of the delay was probably to give him time to tamper with the witnesses. Ten days after he had been released from gaol [p. 63] however one of them was called away to hear his sentence from a higher judgment seat. David Lawlor, who was, there is good evidence to show, the witness that Arthur Crosbie would have found it most difficult to deal with, died after a few days’ illness, “of malignant fever” said the apothecary’s assistant who attended him, but the Danes considered that he had been poisoned. The probability is that feeling disgusted, ashamed and miserable, at the part he was called on to play the unfortunate man tried to drown remorse and thought by drinking to excess, for his landlady said to the apothecary that she attributed his illness to intemperance. On the 13th of November, 1735, Arthur Crosbie once more appeared at the bar of the King’s Bench and the trial proceeded. John Suchsdorf, the Dane, was the first witness called, who repeated the sum and substance of his deposition taken by Mr. Morris in Kerry four years previously. The next witness called was Thomas Cantillon. He had been examined in Kerry after his arrest, first by Lord Kerry and his son Mr. Fitzmaurice and Samuel Morris, and afterwards by Colonel Denny and Mr. Fitzmaurice. I spent many weeks searching for these depositions and for the equally important ones of Lawlor and Ryan, as it was on their joint evidence that Arthur Crosbie had been arrested. But, so far as I could ascertain, not a trace of them remains in the London or Dublin Public Record Offices or amongst the Castle MSS. while all the other depositions establishing the guilt of the meaner class of criminals are extant. As Clerk of the Peace for Kerry, Arthur Crosbie had it in his power in after times to destroy this evidence of his guilt, if it remained in the Tralee office, but it is strange that no copies are to be found in the Castle. It is certain however 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 contained might have done if they were now before us. When Thomas Cantillon was placed in the witness-box, face to face with the prisoner, and called on to repeat the evidence he had given in Kerry he turned right round and contradicted every word to which he had there sworn. “Being asked,” says the Chief Justice’s Report of the trial, “what he, Thomas Cantillon, knew of this robbery he answered, that he and some young men wanted a purse of money and they attacked the house where the Danes’ silver was and took it, that David Lawlor, Francis Ryan and. he, the witness, were the persons who contrived the said robbery, that they were at the head and foot of it as he expressed himself. . . . . And the said Cantillon being asked if he knew the prisoner Arthur Crosbie and whether he had any discourse with him about the Danes, he said he had known the prisoner for some time, but it was only by eyesight and that he never had any discourse or a word with the prisoner about the Danes, or the robbery or anything relating to it.” On being asked why then had he distinctly sworn in Kerry that Arthur Crosbie had [p. 64] encouraged and employed him to commit the robbery, Cantillon swore that all his former evidence given on oath was spoken under intimidation, that he and Lawlor when in Tralee gaol together had agreed to swear against the prisoner before Colonel Denny and Mr. Fitzmaurice, in order to save their lives and obtain protection for his (Cantillon’s) family who had been in a starving condition after his arrest. He further swore that the Kerry magistrates had threatened to hang him if he did not swear against-Arthur Crosbie, and the monstrous perjuries of the man having been capped by this manifestly absurd statement, he was ordered to leave the witness-box, the Attorney General moving the Court that he should not be discharged from custody unless he gave bail to appear again the last day of term, when the Crown intended to indict him for perjury. No one being bold enough to offer bail Cantillon was accordingly committed to gaol. The report of the trial says, - “John Heitman, jun., the next witness produced being sworn, proved David Lawlor to be dead, upon which Mr. Attorney General and the King’s Counsel offered the aforesaid Examinations of Lawlor’s prayed to be taken by the said Mr. Fitzmaurice and Col. Denny to be read, to the reading of which the prisoner objected, for that at the time of giving in and swearing the said examinations Lawlor was in prison, under an attainder of High Treason, for not surrendering himself pursuant to the said Proclamation, and also stood indicted for the aforesaid Burglary, and Felony, which facts being proved to the Court the said examinations of Lawlor were not admitted to be given as evidence. Francis Ryan was next produced as a witness for the Crown, who being sworn said, that he knew Arthur Crosbie the prisoner at the bar . . . . and being asked what he knew of the prisoner being concerned in exciting or persuading the robbery, he said he knew nothing of it, but hearsay, and that he had nothing to say against the prisoner. Mary Clifford was next called as a witness for the Crown, but the Counsel for the Crown declined examining her, and the prisoner Arthur Crosbie being called on to make his defence, he acquainted the Court, that though he had witnesses to produce yet, apprehending that the witnesses for the Crown had sworn nothing against him to fix this crime upon him for which he stood indicted, that he would not take up the time of the Court and submitted his case to the jury, upon the testimony of the witnesses produced against him. Whereupon Mr. Justice Ward began to sum up the evidence, it being the constant practice in the Court of King’s Bench here, for the second Judge of the Court in all cases of felony to sum it up, but the King’s Counsel saying there was no occasion for it, there not being sufficient evidence to charge the prisoners with this crime, the jury retired and in a very little time returned, and gave in their verdict that the prisoner, Arthur Crosbie, was “not guilty,” and no motion being afterwards made by the King’s Counsel in, arrest of judgment, or to quash the indictment, or any further [p. 65] accusation or charge exhibited against him by the prosecutors, the said Arthur Crosbie was discharged.”

   The Report further mentions that Thomas Crosbie of Banemore not having surrendered was outlawed, and that the Exigent to the process of Outlawry was returnable in Trinity Term following (1736). Beyond the brief account given in the Narrative no records as far as I could ascertain exist of Lauders or Thomas Blennerhassett’s trials in Tralee Court House. The records of the trials in Dublin of the two Crosbies and of Cantillon are equally scant, and I had begun to think I could find no further information about them than that which I have here given from the Report, when one day while I was looking through certain bundles of ancient affidavits in the Dublin Record Office, black with the undisturbed dust of fifty years, in hopes of lighting on the missing evidence given by Lawlor, Cantillon, and Ryan, from the grimy folds tumbled out three sheets of the coarse, yellowish, office paper of the last century, on which were written (but in far better ink than the present century knows how to produce) the verdicts etc. given at p. 99.[9] Mr. Froude seems to intimate that no portion of the money was recovered by the Danes but the “Narrative” from which I have so often quoted says—“All the silver which has been recovered was safely lodged in Dublin, which Mr. Heitman said amounted to £7524. 2s, Danish value, but by a petition of the insurers of the said ship to his Majesty it is said to amount to £9287. 6s. 6d. Danish value, and that Lady Margaret Crosbie detained in her hands the value of said ship and sundries belonging to the cargo to the amount of £3000.” I need not remind Irish readers that the following depositions or those at least of them which were made by the robbers who turned “approvers” or as they would themselves say “King’s evidence must be taken cum grano salis. Amongst the virtues (and they are not a few) of the Irish Catholic peasantry truthfulness cannot be reckoned. What Hawthorne says of the Italians is in a great measure applicable to the Irish, - “they make a lie look so like the truth and the truth look so like a lie that it is next to impossible in dealing with them to find out where the truth really is.”[10] Consciously, or unconsciously, their tendency is to exaggerate and over colour every statement they make in any important matter, and to twist facts to suit their own prejudices or interests or the prejudices or interests of those they wish to please. The Times or Daily News correspondent during the Welsh collier strikes of 1872, noted how similar tendencies in the people of the principality made it extremely difficult for a “Sassenagh” to arrive at a right judgment in the disputes between masters and men. “As bold as a Kerry witness, [p. 66] no offence to the MacGillacuddy” says Crofton Croker, “It is a proverb meaning that a Kerry witness will swear to anything.” The story teller of course wrote this in jest, and certainly the jest, has lost its point in Kerry of to-day, where perjury is as rare as any other crime, but in the early part of the eighteenth century, debased as our people were by the action of the penal laws—laws which the designs of foreign despots ecclesiastical and secular had to some extent rendered necessary—it would have been strange indeed if the mass of the Irish nation had been either upright or truthful. The Abjuration Oath and the expedients devised by the Roman Catholic clergy to meet it, which elevated lying into a science, or a theological virtue, were in themselves sufficient to rot or “sear as with a hot iron” the conscience of any people. A passage from the evidence of a witness against the Galway cattle houghers of the last century well illustrates the value of “King’s evidence” in Ireland in former times:—“Being asked if he knew any of the cattle houghers personally, witness saith he did not, being asked if he ever did hough any cattle himself, saith he never did, but that he could hough them if he knew he might have a reward for discovering on any one who helped him to do that same.” (Castle MSS.)