had sufficient courage to denounce the spirit in which
the country was governed and depopulated at the same
time. One of the latter—a nobleman
of the highest rank and acquirements, and of the most
amiable disposition, a warm friend to civil freedom,
and a firm antagonist to persecution and oppression
of every hue—this nobleman, we say, married
a French lady of rank and fortune, who was a Catholic,
and with whom he lived in the tenderest love, and the
utmost domestic felicity. The lady being a Catholic,
as we said, brought over with her, from France, a
learned, pious, and venerable ecclesiastic, as her
domestic chaplain and confessor. This man had
been professor of divinity for several years in the
college of Louvain; but having lost his health, he
accepted a small living near the chateau of ——,
the residence of Marquis De------, in whose establishment
he was domesticated as chaplain. In short, he
accompanied Lord ------ and his lady to Ireland, where
he acted in the same capacity, but so far only as the
lady was concerned; for, as we have already said,
her husband, though a liberal man, was a firm but
not a bigoted Protestant. This harmless old man,
as was very natural, kept up a correspondence with
several Irish and French clergymen, his friends, who,
as he had done, held professorships in the same college.
Many of the Irish clergymen, knowing the dearth of
religious instruction which, in consequence of the
severe state of the laws, then existed in Ireland,
were naturally anxious to know the condition of the
country, and whether or not any relaxation in their
severity had taken place, with a hope that they might
be able with safety to return to the mission here,
and bestow spiritual aid and consolation to the suffering
and necessarily neglected folds of their own persuasion.
On this harmless and pious old man the eye of Hennessy
rested. In point of fact he set him for Sir Robert
Whitecraft, to whom he represented him as a spy from
France, and an active agent of the Catholic priesthood,
both here and on the Continent; in fact, an incendiary,
who, feeling himself sheltered by the protection of
the nobleman in question and his countess, was looked
upon as a safe man with whom to hold correspondence.
The Abbe, as they termed him, was in the! habit, by
his lordship’s desire, and that of his lady,
of attending the Catholic sick of his large estates,
administering to them religious instruction, and the
ordinance of their Church, at a time when they could
obtain them from no other source. He also acted
as their almoner, and distributed relief to the sick,
the poor, and the distressed, and thus passed his
pious, harmless, and inoffensive, but useful life.
Now all these circumstances were noted by Hennessy,
who had been on the lookout, to make a present of
this good old man to his new patron, Sir Robert.
At length having discovered—by; what means
it is impossible to conjecture—that the
Abbe was to go on the day in question to relieve a
poor sick family, at about a distance of two miles