Galway and the United Irishmen
By
Refugees in the Countryside After 1798
In 1803 the captains of smuggling ships often brought letters from exiles in France to leaders of the rebels who had been on their keeping in the mountains, especially since 1798. Caves and hillsides sheltered these outlaws and the sympathetic people of the district fed them. This state of affairs was well known to the great landlords of Connemara and caused them the greatest uneasiness. On the day of the rising of the United Irishmen in Dublin, Richard Martin of Ballinahinch wrote to Marsden warning him that there were many indications that even people he had thought loyal were meditating revolt. Arms, it was said, has recently been landed by smuggling vessels that came from Guernsey. He had also heard that two noted rebel leaders in that district had received letters from McDonnell, the Mayo barrister who had been in France since l798. For the information of Marsden was a list of the rebel leaders who were then in the mountains among them being Valentine Jordan, formerly a well-to-do shopkeeper, young John Gibbons, whose nickname was Johnny the Outlaw, and the most important of all being Father Prendergast. Martin added that Father Prendergast was misleading the people from their loyalty and that he even said Mass twice a month in the house of a tenant of his named Walter Corey, a Protestant. Lord Sligo of Mayo was also disturbed about these men. He had recently received £50 from Marsden as a reward for the yeomen who had captured Thomas Gibbons, the uncle of Johnny the Outlaw.
Denis Browne
Both Lord Sligo and his brother the Hon. Denis Browne were very active in their efforts to put down sedition in any form to the extent that Denis Browne became so unpopular that a poem in Irish (translated by the late Dr. Douglas Hyde) shows the feeling of the people of Connemara and Mayo.
If I got your hand it is I would take it
But not to shake it, O Denis Browne.
But to hang you high with a hempen cable
And your feet unable to reach the ground.
For its many a boy who was strong and able
You sent in chains with your tyrant frown
But they'll come again with the French flag flying
And the French drums raving to strike you down.
When Johnny the Outlaw was finally captured, it was Denis Browne, his godfather, who adjusted the rope about the boy's neck.
If the Rising had Succeeded in Dublin...
There is no doubt that agents had been through the district keeping the people informed of what was happening in Dublin, and had the rising succeeded there would have been plenty of recruits for the rebel army. The loyalists were very apprehensive and Lord Sligo was certain that the French had only to land and they would be supplied with everything. The disposition of the people was definitely republican, and their object was to get possession of the country and secure a total separation from England.
Arrests are Made
The surrender and unexpected desertion of one of the Emmet leaders to the ranks of the informers secured for Dublin Castle one of the most important catches of the whole rising. Through him, Quigley, Stafford and the Parrots were arrested in County Galway, where they had gone "on the run" disguised as spalpeens, and brought to Dublin. Quigley was considered by the Castle as being by far the cleverest of all the rebels, and the Government had no intention of losing him as a source of information by executing him. His landlord had been brought from Ardfry in County Galway in custody and from him as well as from all the other informers the Government obtained sufficient information to hang Quigley ten times over.
Brought to the house of the notorious Lord Borbury he completely reversed his political ideas and principles. He gave local information of considerable value. The two Parrots were the sons of an Englishman who was employed as gardener and land surveyor to Blake of Ardfry. Among those in hiding at Ardfry was Barney Doogan, "a dark-visaged little Northern who had been one of Emmets' most confidential aides." On the occasion of the raid on Ardfry he had been with Quigley and his party and narrowly escaped arrest. For eighteen months he travelled throughout County Galway meeting all the disaffected in the area. On his return to Dublin he was arrested and turned spy. Writing to friends outside he stated
"that he had undergone all the tortures that the Government could inflict in order to extort information from me, but as you would expect, without effect thanks be to God"
Yet he had given the name of every person he had known among the rebels of County Galway. For nearly forty years Doogan remained unsuspected. During that time he kept the Government informed of all the activities, seditious and otherwise, of previous State prisoners. He had been sent to France in the guise of an Irish patriot to spy on the Irish exiles there; he spied on O'Connell's Irish Repealers and on the Young Irelanders. In 1840, Doogan's treachery was discovered by the Editor of a Repeal paper from documents in the possession of Major Sirr'sson, the Reverend James D'Arcy Sirr. He was not publicly exposed and was allowed to leave the country.