Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/89

 9*8. XL JAN. 31, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

81

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 1903.

CONTENTS.-No. 266.

NOTES :- Historical Crux, 81 Jubilee of the 'Field,' 82- Merry Tales, 84- Dr. Edmond Halley, H5 " Paan," a Loincloth Church Briefs " Suburbanite " Purcell's ' Life of Manning,' 86.

QUERIES : " Lucid interval " "Such spotless honour," &c. Dumont Family McDonongh Bishop Fleming Portrait of General Medows, 87-Capt. Masterson- Early Jewish Engravers Han ison, Regicide Pitt 'Quarterly Review' Novels with Same Title McNair Family Poems Wanted Milton's 'Hymn on the Nativity' Road Waggons from Liverpool 'Bibliographical and Retrospective Miscellany,' 88 Inn Signs by Artists "Ant" and " Emmet" " Shis'n " and "This'n"- Lyceum Library, Hull Jervois Newspaper Cuttings changing Colour, 89.

REPLIES :-" Appendicitis," 89 Watchhouses to prevent Bodysnatching Author of Lines Kurish German" To the nines," 90 Maltese Language and History " Kit- Cat " Portraits Annie of Tharau Castle Care we -Village Library, 91 " Keep your hair on" Duels of Clergymen Miss Anne Tallant Tucker, 92 Cope Cockade of George I. Ireton Family Tintagel Church Misquota- tions, 93 Princess Charlotte, 94 " Lupo-mannaro" Clarke Worsham Keats's ' La Belle Dame sans Merci ' " Fert, Fert, Fert," 95 Sir John de Oddyngesles- Shake- speare's Seventy -sixth Sonnet, 96 Norton Family " Dutch courage," 97.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Besant's 'London in the Eighteenth Century ' Dayot's 'Napoleon raconte par 1'Image ' Bell's ' Lives and Legends of the Great Hermits and Fathers of the Church ' Taylor's 'Gammer Grethel's Fairy Tales ' "Chiswick Shakespeare "' Clergy Direc- tory and Parish Guide.'

Notices to Correspondents.

HISTORICAL CRUX.

HAVING read in the newspapers some months ago that a stained glass window had been put up in the Roman Catholic Church at Maidstone to the memory of the Irish priest John O'Coigly, or Quigley, who was executed there for treason in 1798, I was induced to read the account of the trans- action which is given by Froude in his ' The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Cen- tury.' I do not enter into the question of the relations of O'Coigly to the English Government, his traitorous intentions, and other surmises of the kind. * N. & Q.' does not furnish an arena for political or theo- logical controversies, and long may it be free from them ! I merely wish to discuss the matter upon historical grounds, and shall be very happy if any reader better informed than myself can clear up the difficulties of the case. I say nothing of the extremely virulent language used by Froude when speaking of O'Coigly and one of his fellow- prisoners, Arthur O'Connor. It will suffice to quote the historian's remarks on the latter : he calls him "another Phelim O'Neil, with the polish of cultivation, and with the inner nature of a savage. "

The readers of 'N. & Q.' will perhaps remember that O'Coigly was arrested under very suspicious circumstances at Margate at /he " King's Head," whence he was about to sail to France, being in treasonable corre- spondence with the French Government. The real cause of the capital sentence inflicted upon him at Penenden Heath (not Penning- ton, as Mr. Froude has it, ed. 1882, iii. 369) was that a document was said to have been
 * ound in his possession which contained an

address to the French Directory, inviting them to send assistance to the Irish rebels. This document was stated to have been discovered in the pocket of a great-coat. Here Froude shows his usual inaccuracy. He speaks of the great -coat as hanging in the room in which the prisoners were arrested ; but John Eenett, the Bow Street runner (for so these officers were called), says in his evidence, " When I went into the room where Coigly was found, I saw a great-coat lying on a chair on the left hand ; as I went into the room Coigly asked if he might take his breakfast." I ought to say here that I have had for many years a copy of the account of the trial published in London just after it occurred (1798), a pamphlet of fifty -one pages. I suppose nothing more complete on the sub- ject could be found.

Of course I do not deny that O'Coigly and his companions were engaged in what were called treasonable plans ; but the evi- dence was not enough to have convicted him had not the pocket-book furnished the most direct proof. They shuffled and prevaricated, naturally, but Froude acknowledges (iii. 368) that O'Coigly declared on the scaffold that the papers in his pocket had been placed there by other hands, and that he died a murdered man. Froude again says (p. 369), "From the platform below the gallows he repeated ' firmly and distinctly,' without passion and without extravagance, that he was an innocent man."

The following is Froude's comment on the dying man's conduct :

" So with a certain courage for according to his professed creed he was risking his soul for his revenge this miserable being, who had been raised by accident into momentary and tragic visibility, was swung off and died."

Let us observe the perversity and malignity of each word of this sentence.

The writer of the present note is one of those who think that O'Coigly spoke the truth on the scaffold. According to this view, the paper had been put into the great- coat pocket by one of the infamous band of informers who flourished so much at that