BOOK VII. 1783. SECTION IV. THE Cabinet had insisted that the Volunteer convention should be encountered with firmness. They November. had even recommended that it should be prevented from meeting by force, if nothing else would serve. Lord Northington was a coward, and he had cowards all about him. The Volunteers had been twice thanked by the House of Commons as saviours of their country; they had been courted by Temple and flattered by Colonel Fitzpatrick. Not one member of the Privy Council could be found 'to advocate the idea of Government interfering to forbid the meeting.'1 On the 10th of November Dublin was to witness the presence of two rival representative assemblies, sitting one on each side of the river, and dividing between them the allegiance of Ireland. Every province had responded to the invitation to send deputies. Three hundred members had been chosen to match the number of the House of Commons, the moving spirit among them being the Bishop of Derry, otherwise known as Earl of Bristol, who had received the thanks of the Volunteers at Dungannon. Frederick Augustus Hervey was the most singular representative of the class of bishops who had been chosen to preside over the spiritual destinies of the Irish people. He had been appointed during the short viceroyalty of his brother, and as long as the 1 The Earl of Northington to Mr. Fox, November 17, 1783.' late earl lived he had been known only as an eccentric person of unepiscopal habits, who had built a vast palace in a wild corner of his diocese. The earl dying childless, the bishop succeeded to the title and a large fortune, and rather from love of excitement and vanity than from personal interest in Ireland, he assumed the character of a warlike prelate of the Middle Ages. He was connected with the wildest blood in the country. George Robert Fitzgerald, of Turlow, near Castlebar, notorious, even in those reckless days, for his defiance of all laws, human and divine, was his sister's son, and commanded a regiment of Volunteers whom the bishop had raised, with a second regiment whom he had collected himself out of his vagabond dependents at Turlow. George Robert had ruled as absolutely among the bogs and mountains of Mayo as the Mac Williams of the days of Elizabeth and James. Like many of his countrymen who essentially resembled him, he showed little in his exterior of the real man. He was refined in manner, and soft and smooth of speech. He had travelled, and had rivalled Beauchamp Bagenal in the variety of his exploits and adventures; and he was so often in scrapes, from which only sword or pistol could extricate him, that he wore a chain-shirt under his clothes.1 He had inherited his temper in his blood. 1 Dick Martin was counsel for the prosecution when George Robert was tried for ill-treating his father. Dick said the wretched father had indeed committed many crimes, the worst of them being that he had begotten the prisoner. George Robert glanced at him. 'Martin!' he said, 'you look very healthy. You take good care of CHAP. I. 1783. November. BOOK 1783. His father had been a lawless ruffian. George Robert, thinking the father lived too long, shut him up for November. three years in a cave with a muzzled bear, and in this condition the old man was lying at the time of the Dublin convention.1 footways lined with These two—the bishop and his nephew—were the principal figures in the scene. When the day came the whole city was out; the armed Volunteers, the windows crowded with spectators. The Royal Exchange had been first thought of as the place of assembly. The Rotunda, at the top of Sackville Street, was substituted for the Exchange, as more central and convenient. Thither were streaming the deputies in uniform, the streets all ablaze with scarlet and green and gold and azure. Grenadier corps marched first, with Irish battleaxes and muskets slung across their shoulders. Behind the grenadiers came the delegates, two and two, in uniform, with side-arms, each wearing a green scarf. Then the barrister corps, brilliantly decked out with buttons, carrying for a motto, Vox populi suprema lex.' In the rear came Napper Tandy, with the Dublin artillery, the guns dressed out in ribands, each with a scroll about its muzzle, saying in conspicuous letters, 'Open thou our mouths, oh Lord, and our lips shall show forth thy praise.' The bishop himself entered Dublin with the state and manner of a monarch, as if he expected to be chosen force of the blow; but, to Mar- 1 George Robert was hanged a imprisonment for some crime. The Marquis of Buckinghamshire pardoned him, after a few months' detention. He went down to Turlow, and immediately afterwards murdered one of his own people. For this offence he was tried, convicted, and finally hanged. I. 1783. King of Ireland. He sate in an open landau, CHAP. drawn by six horses, magnificently apparelled in purple, with white gloves, gold-fringed, and gold November. tassels dangling from them, and buckles of diamonds on knee and shoe. His own mounted servants, in gorgeous liveries, attended on either side of his carriage. George Robert rode in front, with a squadron of dragoons in gold and scarlet uniforms, on the finest horses which could be bought in the land. A second squadron brought up the rear in equal splendour, and thus, with slow and regal pace, the procession passed on, Volunteers falling in, with bands playing and colours flying, the crowd shouting Long life to the bishop!' the bishop bowing to the crowd. Passing through College Green, the right reverend earl paused at the door of the Parliament House. The dragoons halted. The trumpets were blown. The Lords and Commons, who had just finished prayers, came out to pay their respects, and gaze on the extraordinary scene. The bishop saluted; the bishop's guard presented arms; the band struck up the Volunteers' march, and having thus, as he supposed, produced a proper impression, the august being waved his hand. The horses again moved; the cavalcade swept on, amidst screams and shouts, past King William's statue, over the river, and up the broad line of Sackville Street. As the carriage ap proached the Rotunda, the artillery opened, and between the guns pealed wild hurrahs; the delegates were entering the hall. The bishop passed in after them, to show himself, scattered condescending smiles and patronizing words of encouragement, and then retiring, to give them an opportunity of electing him, as he expected, to the chair, drove to his house, with BOOK VII. 1783. November. the same state, to entertain the leading members of the assembly at a magnificent dinner. Lord Northington meanwhile had not been idle. Though afraid to encounter the Volunteers with open resistance, he had known how to sow divisions among them, and they had come together predisposed to quarrel on elementary principles. All the delegates were for reform, all were members of the Established Church; and among churchmen at least a moiety were determined Protestants. The Bishop of Derry and the extreme party were for Catholic emancipation and separation from England. Lord Charlemont and the country gentlemen who acted with him, though enthusiastic for 1782, and anxious for a more creditable Parliament, were not disposed to place themselves at the mercy of a numerical majority of Papists, or to run the risk of a repeal of the Act of Settlement. Both the Viceroy and Burgoyne had preferred diplomacy to force. They had discovered the line of division, and had judiciously operated on it; and thus when, on the bishop's departure, the election of chairman came on, the choice was found to have fallen, not on the right reverend English nobleman, but on Lord Charlemont. Successful so far, the Viceroy still feared that if the Catholic millions were roused to demand the suffrage, or if they were ever supposed to be anxious to obtain it, a majority in the Convention might yet press it upon Parliament; and he ventured on a manœuvre highly characteristic of his cunning, feeble nature. My plan,' he said, 'was, by means of our friends in the assembly, to perplex its proceedings and create confusion.' Sir Boyle Roche, one of the delegates, a light, absurd person, declared in the convention on |