Part 8
After the repeal of the Edict of Nantes many French Protestant refugees settled in Ireland. Some of these were highly skilled in the linen manufacture and a settlement of them under Louis Crommelin in Lisburn, a town on the Marquis of Hertford’s estate, made that place a thriving centre of the industry. After Luke Teeling had completed his apprenticeship, he stayed on in Lisburn, got a lease from the Marquis of Hertford, and started a bleachyard of his own; and he was so successful, that Mr. George Taaffe needed to have no misgiving about the future when he gave his beloved daughter to him.
The early years of the married life of Luke and Mary Teeling were years of unclouded happiness. A little Elizabeth, called perhaps after the mother Mary Teeling had never known, came to them the following year. She was followed by a goodly train of brothers and sisters: Bartholomew, George, Charles, Luke and John were the boys. The girls, in addition to Elizabeth, were Mary, Alice (called after Alice Taaffe who had married James Lynch, of Drogheda), and Millicent.
Fortunate families, like fortunate nations, “have no history,” and there is little to record of Mary Teeling during the years when her boys and girls were growing up. In 1782 her husband acquired the lease of some building ground on Church Hill and built a residence for his family in keeping with his wealth and position; and a decade and a half of happy years passed swiftly under its dignified roof. The large family party which gathered permanently round the Teelings’ board was seldom without a reinforcement of guests: business correspondents like Mr. Sam Wall, of Worcester, or merchants from Dublin and Belfast, were sure of a hearty welcome there. Old Mr. George Taaffe loved to come from Ardee, and spend a month or two with his beloved grandchildren. Aunt “Ally” Lynch from Drogheda, and kind Uncle James were frequent visitors. The elder boys, Bartle and George and Charles, who were attending Mr. Saumarez Dubourdieu’s famous classical school in the town, had frequent permission to bring home their schoolfellows to dinner or supper, and Mrs. Teeling’s “parties” were voted the most delightful in Lisburn. As the boys grew older other guests were much in evidence—young officers from the camp at Blaris-Moor with whom the Teeling lads fenced, or went fishing or shooting, or rode to hounds, liked to be asked when the day’s sport was over to accompany them to the hospitable mansion on Church Hill, where a pleasant supper and a dance would wind up many a delightful evening. The Teelings were noted horsemen—an hereditary trait. The writer in _The Gentlemen’s Magazine_, having quoted the younger Bartholomew Teeling’s description of his father and uncles as “the best horsemen and the most accomplished swordsmen in the province,” tells us that the Teelings “were proverbial for their love of small, perfectly shaped, high-bred horses,” and refers to stories, still current in the County of Meath, of the incredibly short time in which they used to ride from their home to Dublin, on their beautiful little horses.
“White with green facings their retainers did wear And the young cavaliers were beloved of the fair.”[47]
Footnote 47:
Luke Teeling was looked on as a remarkably good judge of a horse, and I find among the family papers not a few in which his friends seek his advice on that all important subject.
The young men were born soldiers, and more than one effort was made by officers and others of the highest rank to induce them to enter the English army. The Marquis of Hertford, dining one day with Mr. Teeling, promised his influence to get Charles into the Guards, and pledged his powerful support towards his advancement. Luke Teeling replied that, as far as he was concerned, his son was free to accept the flattering offer—but to the surprise of the Marquis, it was declined by Charles himself.
In truth, the boy, who though younger in years than Bartholomew or George, had ripened earlier than they, had turned his thoughts in a direction not very likely to end in a Commission in the English Army. While Bartle still dallied in the pleasant ways of youth, and George was away in Dublin,[48] Charles was thrown largely into his father’s company, and imbibed the political views which the circumstances of the time forced on a man of Mr. Teeling’s logical and just mind. Though it is not said in so many words, we gather that Bartle and his father did not quite understand each other. The younger Bartle tells us that his namesake “scarcely brooked the restraint which the stoical and somewhat severe principles of his father imposed upon him; but to his mother, whose idol he was, and to his sisters, he was warmly and tenderly attached. There was no youthful adventure too daring or even extravagant for him; but nothing which inflicted pain, or which trifled with human misery ever had his countenance.” He was fond of books, too, a diligent student of the Classics, and a devotee of Shakespeare and perhaps these tastes helped to keep him for a longer time than his brother a sojourner in those regions of the Ideal where the call of the Real resoundeth not. The day was to come, indeed, and speedily, too, when the cry of his suffering country was to ring as loudly in Bartle’s ear as it had long rung in that of Charles. And how he was to answer it all men know.
Footnote 48:
They were both apprenticed in the linen trade. Bartle with his father, and George with the MacDonnells in Dublin.
In 1790 Mr. Teeling gave very active support to the parliamentary candidature of Hon. Robert Stewart—afterwards Lord Castlereagh—who stood in the Reform interest against the Downshire _clique_. Being a Catholic, Mr. Teeling had no vote himself, but he spared neither his money nor his personal exertions in favour of one who advocated so eloquently the causes dear to Mr. Teeling’s heart: Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. The Teeling boys were enthusiastic admirers of the young candidate, who indeed had been the idol of every patriotic heart in the north since the day he rode—a lad of thirteen—at the head of a company of boy Volunteers in the Review in Belfast, and made men think of Cuchullin and the boy troop of Emain Macha, by the martial skill and daring of their exploits. We know from Charles’s own assurance that the tenderest ties bound him to his father: “He was to me,” he says, in one of the most moving passages of his narrative, “not only the affectionate parent, but also the companion and friend.” And doubtless, in the long rides which father and son delighted to take in each other’s company, Charles imbibed his father’s political opinions and learned to feel the wrongs which the Catholics of Ireland were suffering as intolerable.
The Catholic Convention of 1792, in which Mr. Teeling took a leading part, was a turning point in the history of the family. We know from Tone’s account of the proceedings that Luke Teeling was _the_ man of the Convention. When the counsels of the more pusillanimous seemed likely to prevail, his commanding spirit and ability won the day for the bolder measures advocated by Tone, and it was due to him that there went forth from the great assembly a Petition to the King demanding (instead of the partial relief for Catholic disabilities to which the Sub-Committee that drew up the Petition had originally limited their request) Total Emancipation. “My instructions from my constituents,” said Mr. Luke Teeling in a speech which produced the most profound impression on his audience, “are to require nothing short of total emancipation; and it is not consistent with the dignity of this meeting and much less of the great body which it represents, to sanction by anything which could be construed into acquiescence on their part, one fragment of that unjust and abominable system, the penal code. It lies with the paternal wisdom of the Sovereign to ascertain what he thinks fit to be granted, but it is the duty of this meeting to put him fully and unequivocally in possession of the wants and wishes of his people.” The effect of Mr. Teeling’s attitude was to win to his views even the most cautious—not to say timid—members of the assembly, and his amendment was passed unanimously. We cannot help feeling, as we read Tone’s “Diary,” and follow the events subsequent to the return from London of the Delegate who had gone from the Convention with the Petition to the King, that if Mr. Teeling had been living in Dublin, instead of in distant Antrim, things would have taken a different course for the Catholic Cause, and the whole Cause of Ireland. His influence would have prevented the spirit of compromise which had such disastrous results.
The years that followed the Catholic Convention were marked by a great increase in bigotry—fomented with nefarious designs by the Irish Government of the day. The new activities of the new men at the head of the Catholic movement—wealthy and progressive merchants, like John Keogh and E. Byrne; young professional men, fresh from Continental Universities, like Dr. MacNevin—were countered by increased activities on the part of the bigots. The Grand Juries sent in to Parliament Petitions against the Catholic claims, and when these fell flat owing to the clever pamphleteers like Tone and Emmet, other methods were resorted to. The chief was the fostering of party spirit, which was first evidenced in the enormous increase in sectarian associations. Against the aggressions of the “Peep o’ Day Boys” (who got their name from their custom of repairing at that hour to the houses of their Catholic neighbours, dragging them from their bed and otherwise maltreating them, while they searched their houses for arms) the Catholics, who not only had no protection from the law or the armed forces of the crown, but saw, on the contrary, both these mights used against them, formed themselves into an association called “Defenders.” In those quarters where the contending parties were nearly balanced, the peace was kept by their wholesome fear of each other, but where the Catholics were in the minority they were obliged to adopt a system of nightly patrols, each townland or parish furnishing its proportion of armed men. But this system was intolerably burdensome, and at length some of the young men decided that there was nothing for it but to meet their opponents in the open field, and have done with the matter there and then.
News of this impending conflict came to the ears of young Charles Teeling, and although he was only a lad of seventeen at the time, he determined to try and prevent it. He was well aware, he tells us in his pamphlet on “The Battle of the Diamond,” that whether the Catholics won or lost in the fight the result would be equally disastrous for them; if they lost, they would be still more at the mercy of their savage opponents than before; if they won, Government, which was undisguisedly in favour of their enemies, would exact the severest penalties from them. He hoped that the influence which his family enjoyed both with the Catholics and the Protestants would make the opposing parties ready to listen to his proposals for peace between them. Without saying a word to anyone he set out therefore from Lisburn to the disturbed districts, but he had not gone far when he saw that the task was too serious and responsible for his seventeen years. He sent, therefore, to Belfast for Samuel Neilson, then editor of the _Northern Star_, who for many years had been the warm friend of his father in the causes of Reform and Catholic Emancipation.
Before Neilson could reach him, the Battle of the Diamond had been fought and won by the Protestants, and the Catholics were, as he anticipated, in a worse condition than before.
The “Peep o’ Day Boys,” on the very day of the Battle of the Diamond (September 21st, 1795) formed themselves into the famous association of “Orangemen,”[49] and these immediately set themselves to exterminate the Catholics. “They would no longer permit a Catholic to exist in the county.[50] They posted up on the cabins of these unfortunate victims this pithy notice, ‘To Hell or Connaught,’ and appointed a limited time in which the necessary removal of persons and property was to be made. If after the expiration of that period, the notice had not been complied with, the Orangemen assembled, destroyed the furniture, burned the habitations and forced the ruined families to fly elsewhere for shelter.... While these outrages were going on, the resident magistrates were not found to resist them, and in some instances were even more than inactive spectators.” Many fearful murders were committed on the unresisting Catholics, and it is estimated that seven thousand Catholics were either killed or driven from their homes by the Orangemen in the County Armagh alone. But the unhappy outcasts, even when they escaped with their lives, had no shelter to fly to. In most cases they could only wander on the mountains until either death relieved them, or they were arrested and imprisoned; while the younger men were sent without ceremony to one of the “tenders” then lying in various seaports, and thence transferred on board British men-of-war. During the years 1796 and ’97 the Orange magistrates, aided by troops, established a reign of terror over the greater part of Leinster and portions of Ulster and Munster. They arrested and imprisoned, without any charge, multitudes of innocent persons, and many of these were only removed from prison to be sent to serve in the navy.
Footnote 49:
The first Orange lodge was formed on September 21, 1795, at the house of a man called Sloan, in the village of Loughgall, Co. Armagh.
Footnote 50:
James Hope says that in reality what the Orangemen aimed at was to get the farms of the Catholics who had recently, by their industry in the linen trade, acquired the means of renting desirable farms.
Parliament—the famous Irish Parliament, Grattan’s Parliament, came to the rescue of the oppressed by passing the Insurrection Acts and the Indemnity Acts—the objects of which were to give the magistrates a free hand to commit the most illegal outrages against the people without fear of any unpleasant consequences for themselves. It is true that Grattan fought gallantly against these measures, and to his splendid speech in opposition to them we owe much of our information concerning the outrages perpetrated by the “banditti of persecution.”
It was felt by the most far-seeing and patriotic of the Irishmen who deplored this appalling state of affairs that the one hope of the country lay in the system of the United Irishmen, which aimed at a real union of Irishmen of all denominations in the bonds of love and loyalty to their common country. In the North, especially, the urgency of this union of hearts was keenly felt, and hence we find the younger men of the advanced party like Henry Joy MacCracken and Lowry, working strenuously with Charles H. Teeling and his brother-in-law, John Magennis, to get “the Defenders” into the ranks of the United Irishmen.
Government showed its appreciation of their labours by an unexpected _coup_. The most active protagonists of the policy were suddenly arrested on a charge of high treason and clapped into prison in Dublin.
* * * * *
On a delightful September morning of the year 1796, Mary Teeling stood on the doorstep of her beautiful home in Lisburn waving a farewell greeting to her husband and her son Charles ere they rode off together on one of those business expeditions—of which the extraordinary affection uniting this father and son always made a pleasure excursion. As she gazed on her stately husband, now in the pride of his years and his honourable prosperity, making a superbly gallant figure, as he always did on horseback, and saw how fine a pendant Charles’s dashing youth and fresh good looks, offered to his father’s, can we wonder if her heart swelled with wifely and maternal pride, and she turned to her home duties with a prayer of thankfulness to God for all the good things that were hers.
Alas! Alas! Sorrows and crosses beyond all telling were to follow that radiant moment, and ere the day was over, the fair structure of her life’s peace was to be laid in ruins.
Not very long afterwards she was startled by seeing the old groom who had ridden out with Luke and Charles return with Charles’s riderless horse. What dreadful thing had happened?
It was not _the worst_ at all events. No fatal accident had taken her boy from her—but what really had happened it was difficult enough to make out from the servant’s narrative. She could hardly believe that Lord Castlereagh, an old friend of the Teeling family, who was under the most real obligations to Mr. Teeling for his help and support on many occasions, could really have her boy now under arrest in the house of his father-in-law, the Marquis of Hertford. Lord Castlereagh, according to the groom, had with his usual appearance of cordiality and friendship joined the master and Master Charles as they rode up the main street of the town, but when they came to the Marquis’s gates, Master Charles had been asked by his lordship to accompany him. As soon as he had entered the gates, these were closed and an armed guard had suddenly appeared. The master had demanded admission, and this, after a time, was granted. He was only allowed a few minutes with his son. Then he had come out, and leaving orders with the groom to lead home Master Charles’s horse, he had continued his journey alone.
She was not left long in doubt of the truth of the old servant’s extraordinary tale. Very shortly afterwards she saw Lord Castlereagh himself enter her house, accompanied by a military guard. Her youngest son, John, a boy of fourteen, daring to demand by what authority the house was thus forcibly entered, saw a pistol presented at his breast, and himself compelled to accompany Castlereagh and his minions in their search through the house for treasonable (?) papers. “My brother,” Charles tells us in his “Narrative,” “conducted himself on this occasion with a firmness and composure that could hardly have been expected from a lad of his years.” It is regrettable that he does not mention the name of the sister “who evinced the most heroic courage; she was my junior, and, with the gentlest, possessed the noblest soul; she has been the solace of her family in all subsequent afflictions, and seemed to have been given as a blessing by Heaven, to counterpoise the ills they were doomed to suffer.” One guesses, however, from the deep affection entertained for her by Charles all through the after years, that this heroic sister was her mother’s namesake, Mary.
As for the mother herself, she was “totally overpowered by the scene. She had just been informed of my arrest, and now saw our peaceful home in possession of a military force. Maternal affection created imaginary dangers, and in the most energetic language she prayed Lord Castlereagh to permit her to visit my prison, and to grant even a momentary interview with her son. This he had the good sense and firmness to decline, and in communicating the matter to me in the course of our evening’s conversation, I expressed my approval of his decision. But my mother felt otherwise; the afflicted state of her mind precluded that reflection which should have rendered her sensible of the propriety of Lord Castlereagh’s refusal. Agitated and disappointed, her gentle but lofty spirit was roused, and burying maternal grief in the indignant feeling of her soul, ‘I was wrong,’ she exclaimed, ‘to appeal to a heart that never felt the tie of parental affection—your Lordship _is not a father_.’ She pronounced these words with a tone and an emphasis so feeling and so powerful, that even the mind of Castlereagh was not insensible to its force, and he immediately retired with his guard.” That night, Charles and the other prisoners, arrested on the same day in Belfast, (including Neilson and Russell) were taken in coaches, under an armed escort, to Dublin, and thrown into prison, where he remained for about two years, without trial, until the breakdown of his health procured his release.
In the meantime all sorts of misfortunes had befallen the happy household on Church Hill. Some months after the arrest of Charles, the Orangemen, in broad daylight, had entered Mr. Teeling’s premises, wrecked his bleach-yard, looted his house, and in the course of a few hours’ deliberate devastation left the entire establishment “a desolate ruin.” And all this, as Charles points out in his narrative, “in the blush of open day, within the immediate vicinity of two garrisoned towns, an active magistrate, and an armed police.” It is quite clear that the Orangemen were the agents of vengeance of the Government, who thus designed to punish Mr. Teeling’s temerity in acting as Secretary of a meeting of the Freeholders of Co. Antrim, convened by public notice at Ballymena on May 8th, 1797, from which had gone forth a Petition to the King setting forth the intolerable grievances under which the Irish people were suffering, and praying his Majesty to dismiss the ministers responsible for them.
As their lives were no longer safe in Lisburn, Mr. Teeling moved his family to Union Lodge, near Dundalk, which had been previously used by Bartle as his headquarters, But even here they were not safe. He got private notice from a well-wisher that he was about to be arrested. He, therefore, found an asylum for Mrs. Teeling and the girls with her brother, Mr. John Taaffe, at Smarmore Castle, Ardee, while he looked around him to make fresh provision for them.
It is not very clear at what date Bartle began to identify himself with the United Irishmen; but it seems to have been about the same time as Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O’Connor joined them, that is to say early in 1796. He became the fast friend of Lord Edward, and before Charles’s arrest on September 16th, 1796, the two brothers were frequent guests at Kildare Lodge. It was here that Bartle met and loved the fair Lady Lucy Fitzgerald, Lord Edward’s favourite sister, and who shall say that he loved Ireland the less, because his vision of Kathleen Ni Houlihan borrowed the lovely ardent face, and the bright eyes, veiled with long dark drooping lashes of “Lucia.” While Lord Edward and O’Connor were on the Continent negotiating with the French Government, Bartle Teeling, under a plausible plea of a business journey, made a complete tour of Ireland on foot. His object, according to his nephew, was to make himself “perfectly acquainted with Ireland’s resources, with her capabilities of entering upon, and maintaining an internal war, with the intellectual and physical qualities, the habits and the manners of her people, with their wants and their endurance, their hopes and their resolves; as well as with the natural features of the country—her rivers, her coasts, and her harbours.” The fact shows that Bartle Teeling, for all his youth, was amongst the most far-sighted of the leaders.
After his return from this journey he took up his residence in Union Lodge, with his friend, John Byrne, of Worcester, who having served his apprenticeship to the linen trade in Lisburn had established extensive bleaching mills on the banks of the river at Dundalk.