‘In our familiar intercourse, the Prince Regent would call out... “Hush, hush, Cardinal Tempter: when listening to you I seem to see Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth following me as avenging spirits.”’
Mémoires du Cardinal Consalvi
THE TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU in April 1814 marked the final defeat – as it seemed at the time – of the Emperor Napoleon by the Allies. The Emperor abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba, off the coast of Italy; Louis XVIII, younger brother of the guillotined King, resumed the Bourbon throne of his ancestors. A minor congress was planned in London in June to celebrate the peace, before the great Congress of Vienna later in the year, when the actual details of this peace would be worked out.
In that same month of April, when the map of Europe was still to be rearranged by the victorious powers, a highly concessionary document arrived from Rome in the shape of a letter called the ‘Rescript’. The crucial phrase ran as follows: if the English legislators only wished to forbid ministers of the Catholic Church from ‘disturbing’ the Protestant Church or government by violence or arms, or ‘evil artifices of whatever kind’, then the Papacy had no objection. That is to say, the Pope would accept Catholic Emancipation in Britain on these terms. Civil disturbance and other evil artifices were after all a matter of national security, not a spiritual concern.
The ‘Rescript’ was sent by Monsignore Quarantotti, Secretary to the office known as the Propaganda Fide (Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith); Quarantotti was in charge of affairs at Rome during the enforced absence of the Pope himself.1 (The captivity of Pius VII, begun in 1809, had ended in January 1814, but he only reached Rome in May.) This letter from Quarantotti, distinguishing the two possible aspects of Catholic behaviour, was acceptable by many standards including, as has been seen, those of the English Catholic lay leaders. Nevertheless, when it arrived in England it ‘set the Catholics of the United Kingdom by the ears’, in the words of a nineteenth-century Catholic historian.2
On the one hand there was an understandable sensitivity among Catholics concerning the past history of subversion and even terrorism among their forebears. If the Popish Plot of 1678 was a fantasy, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was not, and stories of the reign of Queen Elizabeth – such as assassination plots theoretically accepted by the Pope, to say nothing of the martyrdoms carried out by her Catholic half-sister ‘Bloody Mary’ – belonged, rightly or wrongly, to English history. This historical dimension, coupled with more recent wars against Catholic foreign powers, should never be forgotten in the consideration of Anti-Catholicism in Britain. Certainly the ardent Catholic advocates of Emancipation, and other liberal advocates who were not Catholic, were concerned to make it clear that they were loyal patriots with absolutely no intention of ‘evil artifices of whatever kind’.
On the other hand, any question which indicated a Veto over Catholic affairs from an explicitly non-Catholic source was already highly controversial before Quarantotti’s bolt from the Vatican. It publicly divided the powerful Irish Catholic Church, for whom the uncompromising Bishop John Milner now acted, from the English, who prided themselves, by friendship and social class, on having some access to the monarch and the government.
The first question which needed to be solved was whether Monsignore Quarantotti had any actual right to send the Rescript. It was not his goodwill which was questioned, but his authority in the troubled situation caused by the Pope’s prolonged absence from the Eternal City – not only absence, but obvious helplessness as a captive. The ins and outs of this authority remained dubious, but clearly the situation changed substantially with the return of Pius VII himself to Rome. Milner was present in Rome to argue the Irish case. Eventually a new Papal communication was sent at the end of 1814, which reached England in February the following year:
It concerned the Rescript ‘issued and sent to you by our beloved son’ – i.e. Quarantotti – ‘during our absence and the dispersion of our venerable council’. This new communication was not what the pragmatists wanted. On the contrary: the whole matter was now being referred to the cardinals. In the meantime, ‘We entreat you,’ wrote the Pope to the Catholic Board, ‘to be persuaded that in this important matter we shall most willingly comply with your wishes, so far as the dignity, the purity, and the integrity of the Catholic religion will allow.’3 This was a victory for the Anti-Vetoists. Was it also a defeat for those who would secure Emancipation theoretically by the only possible means, that is, compromise?
The celebratory congress in London in June 1814 was a magnificent affair. Here were Czar Alexander of Russia, King Frederick William III of Prussia, Prince Metternich, Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, Field Marshal Blücher and other great men. A grand reception was held at Dover. After that entertainments were diverse, ranging from honorary degrees at Oxford to racing at Ascot, as well as a City of London banquet at the Guildhall; a naval review at Portsmouth, attended by the Prince Regent, concluded the festivities. In London itself there was a magnificent pageant, witnessed by one boy called Nicholas who, forty years later as Cardinal Wiseman, would be the first Archbishop of Westminster at the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy.
From the point of view of Catholic Emancipation, the important delegate arrived from Rome and stayed for nearly a month. This was Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, the first cardinal to set foot officially on British shores since Cardinal Reginald Pole in the sixteenth century.4 He secured his passport from the British Ambassador in Paris; in doing so, he did not insist on any kind of diplomatic precedence, which in Europe would have rated him just below royalty. He began tactfully dressed in black (ecclesiastical dress was forbidden by law), but seems to have progressed sartorially to a more splendid scarlet in that the Prince Regent expressed personal curiosity about his red stockings, part of his regalia. Certainly the red stockings made their mark, leading Castlereagh for one, despite being a Catholic sympathizer on the subject of Emancipation, to hope that ‘ostentation’ would be avoided: ‘the religionists in the country [Protestants and Dissenters] would be very likely to cry out if my friend Consalvi’s red stockings were seen too often at Carlton House’.5 All the same, Consalvi had arrived with a placatory letter from the Pope to the Prince Regent, thanking him for the support Britain had given in the war, before turning to Papal concerns for the future. And the people cheered him in the streets, as one who had suffered under Napoleon.
The Pope continued to send his advice to Consalvi, some of which was less palatable: for example, he should not forget ‘the persecuted’ while he was evidently having such a good time. But fundamentally Consalvi’s personal success, particularly with the Prince Regent, was rightly seen as an asset. In the words of the Pope, Consalvi should continue to cultivate his royal benefactor: ‘and you will see this little grain of mustard seed bring forth abundant fruits’.6
Cardinal Consalvi, aged fifty-seven in 1814, was a man who caught the eye regardless of his dress. Tall and thin, with manners that were both simple and dignified, it was, wrote the novelist Stendhal a few years later, ‘impossible to be a more handsome man’. Others stressed his high and broad forehead, his distinguished grey hair and Roman nose, and as the perfect accompaniment his ‘soft insinuating tone of voice’. It was scarcely surprising that as Consalvi’s amicable relationship with the English court developed, Sir Thomas Lawrence was wanted to paint him.*1 It was also reported by the Catholic historian John Lingard that Lawrence called Consalvi’s head ‘the finest that God had ever made’. It was significant that Consalvi was actually a cardinal without being a priest, perfectly possible within the laws of the Catholic Church. This made sense of Napoleon’s verdict: ‘Yonder man, who would never become a priest, is the best priest of the lot.’7
His career hitherto had been as vivid and traumatic as the history of Europe itself during recent years. He had endured imprisonment by the French Revolutionary armies, and had been made Secretary of State by Pius VII in 1800. It was Consalvi who had negotiated the famous – or infamous – Concordat of 1801. Brought to Paris in 1810 on Napoleon’s orders, he had been banished to Rheims (where he wrote his Mémoires). There had been a release and another banishment, before he was re-appointed Secretary of State in May 1814. However, during one conversation with Napoleon in 1810, he did manage to display the kind of impeccable suavity worthy of cardinals in fiction. ‘Is it not true, Cardinal,’ asked Bonaparte roguishly, ‘that all Italians are thieves and liars?’ Consalvi was not to be outdone: ‘Oh, no, sire,’ he replied, ‘just the major part – la buona parte.’8
Furthermore, since his early years Consalvi had had an unusual connection to England. As a young man he had attended for over five years the college at Frascati in Tuscany just opened by the Stuart Prince known as Cardinal Henry of York, who inherited (but chose not to press) the Stuart claim to the British throne after the death of his brother Charles Edward. Thereafter the Cardinal of York acted as a benevolent patron to Consalvi. According to Nicholas Wiseman, ‘it was rather by the ornamental than by the useful arts’ that the future statesman ‘captivated the good Duke-bishop’s affections. It is said to have been his skill and grace in a musical performance that first attracted his notice.’9 The artist developed many other skills. As the Cardinal’s executor, Consalvi would be able to transmit to the Prince Regent those relics bequeathed to him by his benevolent Stuart relative.
Consalvi’s interests remained many and various: they included architecture and gardening. In London he was enthusiastic about the newly landscaped St James’s Park and the improvements to the city made by John Nash, as well as the Italian music shops in Soho selling sheet music and instruments. Consalvi had many admirers. Elizabeth Duchess of Devonshire had retired to Rome during her widowhood: she had married her long-term lover the Duke after the death of his celebrated first wife, Georgiana. She knew Consalvi well and she too stressed his profound love of the arts; he also wrote poetry. A different but equally attractive aspect of his character was his kindness to those who served him; and, perhaps the greatest compliment of all, he was an ‘unalterable friend’: in short, ‘I think if there is a pure and angelic mind on earth now, it is his.’10 This obvious adoration aroused rumours that Duchess Bess had converted to Catholicism, but she denied ever discussing religious matters with ‘my friend the Cardinal’, beyond the odd question on her part; in fact they shared an interest in the archaeology of Rome such as the excavations at St Peter’s.
The whole atmosphere in Europe was now one of practical politics towards minority religions. And Europe itself was not, after all, a solid Catholic bloc. A few years before, the Regent’s brother, William Duke of Clarence, had looked forward to the ultimate settlement of Europe, ‘in which case the Prince Regent, the Emperor of Russia the King of Prussia and the Prince of Sweden who are not Catholics will have much to say in settling affairs.’11 It had certainly never been true that the English King was the only monarch to deal with the problem of a small but important religious minority. Austria had had to deal with Protestants, Holland with Catholics, and above all France with Huguenots.
In 1775 Louis XVI had been faced with his own Coronation Oath crisis. His chief minister, Turgot, wanted the King to drop the King’s pledge to extirpate heretics, which had actually been inserted in the thirteenth century to deal with the Albigensian heresy of the Cathars, but was now applied to Protestants. The French King replied: ‘I think there are fewer drawbacks to leaving things as they are,’ although in point of fact at the ceremony itself, in the words of his latest biographer, ‘he simply mumbled the French equivalent of “rhubarb, rhubarb”’.12 The events of the French Revolution, when Catholicism was abolished as the religion of the State, and Napoleon’s subsequent complicated relationship with the Papacy – all this had tempered the original divisions. Belgium, for example, was annexed to the French republic and subjected to the same regime.
It was thus possible for Consalvi’s visit to herald a new stage in the history of the Papacy, now back in Rome (but still the object of sympathy as having been Napoleon’s victim), and also in Anglo-Papal relations. It was no part of Consalvi’s policy to strike harsh attitudes. He developed a rapport with the Prince Regent which was not without its lighter moments as he depicted it: ‘in our familiar intercourse, when gently and in season I turned the conversation on to certain religious questions which are very delicate to touch on, the Prince Regent, putting his hand to his mouth as though telling me to be silent, but in reality encouraging me to speak, would call out with an inimitable accent of affected fear, and in effect good humour: “Hush, hush, Cardinal Tempter: when listening to you I seem to see Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth following me as avenging spirits.” ’13 On a sadder note, when the daughter of the Prince Regent, Princess Charlotte, died in childbirth, Consalvi was moved to write a personal letter of condolence to the man to whom he was ‘so gratefully attached’, in the words of Duchess Bess.
The presence of Cardinal Consalvi did much to soften the image of the dangerous foreign Popish bogeyman which had hovered in the vision of England for so long. Even the Duke of Clarence, in no way an Ultra-Tory, shared this preoccupation. Advocating that the friends of Emancipation should be ‘mild and steady’ a few years earlier, he had added with a certain royal optimism: ‘the grand obstacle and danger after all is the Pope’.14 Perhaps when the war in Europe was over the Catholics might be persuaded ‘to do away with the Pope?’. Cardinal Consalvi was not going to do away with the Pope; but he did personify the new Papal diplomacy, no longer reminiscent of the ‘Popish villains’ of yesteryear.
It was remarked that Consalvi tactfully declined to discuss the controversial Rescript, saying that he knew nothing about it. Despite that gentle warning from Rome about favouring Britain too much, the Cardinal continued to pursue the path of reconciliation – or compromise. He had two interviews with the Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh. When John Lingard went with Lord Stourton to Rome in 1817, they were received and helped by Consalvi. Nicholas Wiseman, by now a student priest in Rome, paid tribute to Consalvi’s support: how he would yield on ‘unessentials’ to gain progress for the larger Church issues at the same time as the Roman zelanti felt he was yielding too much.15 The Cardinal was also a strong active supporter of the restoration of the English College in Rome, wrecked during the city’s travails.
During the Congress of Vienna, which took place later in 1814 until June 1815, Consalvi actively pursued the issues which were supposed to hinder Emancipation in interviews with Castlereagh. In a long meeting on 11 October, Consalvi enlightened Castlereagh about Catholic doctrines such as Papal Infallibility (not yet defined as dogma).16 They then discussed the three main issues from the point of view of Rome, at all times in that conciliatory spirit – how can we make this work? – which Consalvi believed was the best way forward. For example, he accepted the Coronation Oath with one slight modification. Where the bishops were concerned, there might be certificates of loyalty issued by the government before appointments were made by Rome. There were other suggestions, such as a Minister in Rome to smooth the way between the Pope and Britain. State stipends for Catholic clergy in Ireland was another issue on which Consalvi had practical suggestions to make.
The visible association of a Papal dignitary with the Prince Regent, coupled with the latter’s presumed ‘Catholic’ sympathies, created an atmosphere of hope on the subject of Emancipation; after all, the poor mad old King was now eighty-six years old, surely not destined to live much longer. The marriage to the Catholic Mrs Fitzherbert was in the past, and the Prince’s marital troubles with the tempestuous Caroline Princess of Wales were of a very different order.
It was true that, both personally and politically, the fifty-year-old Prince Regent no longer resembled the handsome, ardent young Prince Florizel who had wooed Maria, and dallied with the Whigs, dazzled by the ever-seductive Charles Fox, now dead eight years. His appearance began to be the subject of witty – or cruel – attacks such as the anonymous rhyme actually written by Charles Lamb:
Is he Regent of the Sea?
By his bulk and by his size
By his oily qualities
This (or else my eyesight fails)
This should be the Prince of Whales17
His latest mistress, Isabella Marchioness of Hertford, two years older than the Prince, commanded her lover as much by her powerful character as by her stately and ample beauty (she was known privately as the Sultana). One observer, Mrs Calvert, recorded in June 1807: ‘Last night we went to a ball at Lady Hertford’s. I think poor Mrs Fitzherbert much deserted by him now. He has taken into his head to fall desperately in love with Lady Hertford... without exception the most forbidding, haughty, unpleasant woman I ever saw.’18
Gone were the days of semi-domesticity with his Catholic ‘wife’ Maria Fitzherbert, her virtue protected by being married to the Prince in the eyes of her own Church, although the match had no legality under English law. She spent much time bringing up her adopted daughter Minnie Seymour, whom gossips inevitably but almost certainly wrongly accused of being a royal bastard.*2, 19 Isabella Hertford, who did not treat her predecessor kindly in social ways, was an earnest Protestant, read the Bible daily and was interested in the Methodists.
Always impressionable where women were concerned, the Prince was beginning to listen to the siren voice of Protestantism even if it was in the improbable form of his mistress and her family. Francis Marquess of Hertford was a nobleman of noticeably elegant appearance, but ‘without one virtue that can grace a name’, in the words of a satirical poem, who acted happily as Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household from 1812 onwards.20
Yet the Prince’s circle continued to include Catholics, and Catholic connections. One member in particular was Charles, the 11th Duke of Norfolk: he who had declared that if he was going to hell, he would prefer to go to hell in the House of Lords, and became a theoretical Protestant. While still styled Earl of Surrey as heir to the dukedom, and thus able to enter the Commons, he had in fact contested a parliamentary seat as a Protestant to enter Rockingham’s administration. Duke Charles fitted into a particular category: a Catholic who preferred an ambivalent status which enabled him to partake in the government if he so wished, but also to act as a generous patron to fellow Catholics. He kept Catholic chapels open and maintained his father’s stipends to Catholic priests.
Joviality was the keynote of much of this Duke’s behaviour. Nicknames bestowed on him included not only ‘the Protestant Duke’ but ‘the Drunken Duke’: it was said of him that when he was drunk, he became a Catholic again. Physically huge, both muscular and stout, Duke Charles was described euphemistically by a contemporary: ‘Nature which cast him in her coarsest mould, had not bestowed on him any of the external insignia of high descent’; put more bluntly, he might have been mistaken for a grazier or a farmer. Worn old clothes, a lack of hair powder and enormous whiskers completed a conspicuously unducal picture. As against this, he was a passionate bibliophile: he greatly augmented the collection at Arundel, and in 1800 created a new library for it, lined and vaulted in mahogany, over a hundred feet long.21
Nevertheless, the Protestant Duke was both the premier Duke in England, as such by birth destined to be Earl Marshal at the Coronation, and also by birth the head of the leading Catholic house. The Norfolks had a long and colourful history, including executions for treason: Thomas Duke of Norfolk, who had raised a Northern rebellion on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots and Edward the 9th Duke, who had fought for the Stuarts in 1715 before he succeeded, but was subsequently reconciled; it was in his London house that George III had been born. There were also some previous episodes of conformity to the State Church, as well as other instances of what the leading historian of the family has described as ‘a zealous papist’.22 Duke Charles was extremely proud of the position of Earl Marshal, and always appeared formally with the Earl Marshal’s staff of office – from his point of view it was regrettable that there happened to be no Coronation in his lifetime, that of George III having taken place before he succeeded to the title.
The other side to the Duke was that he had been a Foxite Whig in the latter’s lifetime, following Fox into Opposition. He opposed the slave trade and advocated Parliamentary Reform. Freedom of worship for Catholics in Ireland was something he believed in. His private life was also in keeping with that of many Whigs, although in fact not entirely of his own making. His first wife died very soon in childbirth, and his second wife went mad, which left him unable to marry and beget lawful heirs; the solution was an official mistress, Mary Gibbon, by whom he had five children, two of whom, known as Howard-Gibbon, became Heralds.
It was true that ‘the old toper’, as the diarist Creevey peevishly described him in 1805, was not the kind of aristocrat likely to convince the Irish Catholic Church, as represented by Bishop John Milner, of the value of the Cisalpine English laity. At which point there was one of those reversals which will inevitably occur in systems based on hereditary succession. Duke Charles died in 1815, and owing to the failure of his two marriages to produce a legitimate son, his heir was his cousin from the Howard of Glossop branch, Bernard the 12th Duke, known as Barney or Twitch or Scroop. Barney, short in stature and rather slight in build, was in other ways as well the opposite of his cousin.23
Here was a ‘zealous papist’ for whom Catholic Emancipation was his main aim in life. What is more, he had a legitimate son and heir, Henry, known after 1815 as the Earl of Surrey. These two successive Dukes of Norfolk, the showcase title of Catholic England, one of whom performed the ultimate compromise of passing officially as a Protestant and the other a strong supporter of pure Catholicism, symbolized the split in the Catholic world. One faction believed in laissez-faire, the other in steadfast rigour; both hoped for Emancipation.
Duke Bernard’s presence as an ardent Catholic did, however, nothing to solve the problem of the Veto: was it acceptable in any form as had sometimes seemed the case, or was ‘Cardinal Tempter’ an illusion? Was there to be no compromise at all? It was Castlereagh again who pointed to the fact that the Catholics themselves must find a means of ‘putting their intentions and principles beyond dispute, if they desire to conciliate’.24
At the same time, these were the years which saw the rise of specifically Catholic publications in the press. The Catholic Magazine of 1801 was an early attempt and included poetry, such as this lament on the ‘Miseries of Heresy’:
Of that pure church despoil’d in Henry’s reign
For union fam’d sad monuments remain;
Amid whose crumbling ruins spread around
How sad, how desolate, is Albion found!
The most serious effort was the Orthodox Journal. This was founded by William Eusebius Andrews in 1813. The title of the paper was intended to indicate that ‘it could not belong to any party, as it would be on the side of the TRUTH, which ought to be the aim of all parties’.25
Andrews was born in Norwich, the child of Catholic converts, where he had progressed from apprentice to editor of the Norfolk Chronicle, a post he held for nearly fifteen years. In London he set about using the press to advance the Catholic cause – a very different avenue of approach to the charm of Cardinal Tempter and the relaxed joviality of Duke Charles, but practical and in theory capable of wider appeal. It was indeed Bishop Milner who supported Andrews in his endeavour, so that the Orthodox Journal and Milner stood in contrast to the Cisalpine Catholic Board.
For Milner, it was the organ of public opinion that he chose to write on the subject of the Veto, on which he continued to hold strong views. So strong were his views, and as usual the strength of his language equalled the strength of his views, that in the end an appeal was made to Rome – surely this ferocity was unsuitable in a bishop? – and Milner was forbidden to write further in the Orthodox Journal. His expulsion from the Catholic Board was another logical step following his robust denunciation of the Veto and anyone who supported it. He went with a fierce dignity: ‘Gentlemen, you consider me unfit for your company on earth, may God make me fit for your company in Heaven.’26
While these internecine struggles hardly helped the cause, as Castlereagh pointed out, there was at the same time in England after 1815 a general atmosphere of relaxation towards the Catholic community, even if it was for the time being unaccompanied by any positive legal results. The Tory administration was now headed by Lord Liverpool, since the assassination of Spencer Perceval by a madman in 1812. Liverpool was well able to bear the embargo on the discussion of Catholic Emancipation in the Cabinet which had been accepted by Pitt on his return to office in 1806. A man in his forties, he was a regular attender of the Anglican Church; but as Mrs Arbuthnot, the wise observer who was also the confidante of Wellington, put it, he wanted to have nothing to do with the actual issue of toleration (or otherwise) of minority religions.
In his first public statement on the subject in 1805 Liverpool had declared that the King by virtue of the British constitution was in a special relationship with the Church of England, and so long as Roman Catholics refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, it was proper that they should be deprived of political power. The day after Liverpool was made Prime Minister in 1812, he announced a policy of neither proposing nor opposing the question of Catholic Relief as a government, leaving all Members free to act as individuals.27
Henry Grattan’s latest Bill for Emancipation of 1813 had ended with defeat, although it was supported by both Canning and Castlereagh. Grattan was at his best as he condemned the exclusion of Catholics from political power: ‘Why should they be sentenced to utter and hopeless exclusion from all political power?... If it is ambition, then was Magna Carta ambition – then was the Declaration of Rights ambition? Protection, not power is the request of the Catholics... It is the Protestants who ask for power.’ It was after all Catholics, pointed out Grattan, who wrote Magna Carta.28 The Bill passed its second reading but was lost in committee. Grattan would try again.
In June 1815 no lesser person than the Duke of Sussex, brother of the Regent, presented the Petition of the Catholics in the County of Lancaster, which was couched in ‘respectful language’. Although a debate in May had included language by MPs which was certainly disrespectful about Catholics, notably about O’Connell in Ireland – Charles Yorke MP chose to mock him for claiming descent from the ancient monarchs of Ireland – another MP, Sir Henry Parnell, hailed Grattan. Here was one whom every Catholic should revere, as their great deliverer ‘from the most intense system of persecution that ever disgraced a government or aggrieved a people’.29
Despite the temporary setback of Napoleon’s escape, ending in his final defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, wartime problems began to subside; there followed the less dramatic trials of peace. It would be premature to describe Whigs and Tories as solid political parties in the modern sense of the word, as the events of the next decade would demonstrate. But there was at the very least a tendency for the Whigs to be Pro-Emancipation, in keeping with their general feelings about personal liberty, whereas the Tories were inclined towards an Anti-Catholic patriotic fervour and a feeling for the Establishment as represented by the State Church. As usual, throughout the history of the British Isles, Ireland remained the wild card in the pack – hopefully an ace in the hand for the English Pro-Catholics, but there could be no certainty about this: from time immemorial in its interaction with England, Ireland had been less like an ace than an unruly knave whose actions could not be foreseen.
Viscount Palmerston was a Tory MP who was Irish and thus eligible for the House of Commons despite his peerage; he was currently Secretary at War. In 1813 Palmerston had spoken lyrically on the subject of his native country – which he had first visited in 1808 when he was twenty-four, but for which he had natural empathy – and its Catholicism: ‘It is in vain to think that by any human pressure, we can stop the spring which gushes from the earth. But it is for us to consider whether we will force it to spend its strength in secret and hidden courses, undermining our fences and corrupting our soil, or whether we shall, at once, turn the current into the open and spacious channel of honourable and constitutional ambition, converting it into the means of national prosperity and public wealth.’30
This was a splendid passage but O’Connell, actually present in Ireland, was not interested in gushing springs and secret and hidden courses. As it happened, 1815, which saw peace in Europe at least for the present, might well have seen an eternal rest for O’Connell. On 23 January he made a speech to the Catholic Board in Dublin in which he castigated the Dublin Corporation under the rule of the Protestant Ascendancy as ‘beggarly’.31
John D’Esterre, a member of the Corporation, was a former Royal Marine who famously could snuff out a candle at nine yards with a pistol shot. His challenge to O’Connell for his speech was in part based on his dire personal finances, approaching bankruptcy, which convinced him that he was insulted by the word ‘beggarly’. He was in any case a man of fiery temperament, spiced with courage. He had defied the mutineers of the Nore towards the end of the last century when tied up at the yardarm – ‘Haul away, ye lubbers! Haul away and be damned. God save the King!’ – after which they cut him down. But it is also likely that O’Connell’s opponents saw in D’Esterre someone who could be manipulated to secure their enemy’s destruction.
At the same time, O’Connell himself had a complicated history where duelling was concerned. When he was a law student in London in the 1790s, there had been a row over a young woman at a party which might have resulted in a duel but did not – conceivably to O’Connell’s discredit. In 1813, in an actual duel with the opposing counsel in a case in Limerick, he had allowed a compromise to be struck on the field of action without shots being fired; this time O’Connell was a sufficiently prominent public figure to provoke unpleasant rumours of cowardice.
After a series of manoeuvres, a challenge was issued by O’Connell and D’Esterre accepted it. Snow was falling lightly when the two men met at the demesne of Lord Ponsonby in Co. Kildare. D’Esterre fired first – too low. O’Connell then wounded him – as it happened fatally, the bullet passing into the spine, and D’Esterre bled to death two days later. The financial ruin of his estate followed: it was an indication of O’Connell’s absolute horror at what had transpired that he was inclined to wear a glove or wrap a handkerchief round the hand that had fired the fatal shot. Another story had O’Connell raising his hat and saying a prayer whenever he passed D’Esterre’s house. He also paid an allowance for D’Esterre’s daughter until his death (his widow declined the offer of an income).
O’Connell’s reaction to Consalvi, on the other hand, and his treachery in giving way on the Veto – and Papal authority – in favour of the English nobility (as he saw it) displayed another kind of violence. This was the violence of rhetoric, which, unlike physical force, was the resistance he actually advocated. Although O’Connell’s courage in defending himself against what was seen as the attack of a Protestant assassin impressed the Catholics, he himself was more troubled.
His language regarding Consalvi was parallel to that of the Papal zealots in Rome who tried to wreck the Cardinal’s attempts at compromise. To him Consalvi was a ‘perfidious minister’ and ‘the mere agent of the British government’.32 O’Connell stressed the very fact which had touched Napoleon, but in very different terms: ‘Though a Cardinal, this man is not a priest.’ Instead he was a salesman, looking for bargains: ‘right glad I presume to have so good a thing to sell as the religion of Ireland’. The exact amount of his price was sneeringly said to be 11,000 guineas. There was a similar reference to ‘Quarantotti – the odious, the stupid Quarantotti’. Even Milner was given a roasting for his Vetoist past, before being forgiven in favour of his current ‘anti-vetoistical principle’.
O’Connell ended this particular speech to a meeting of the laity on 29 August 1815 with a characteristic peroration: ‘But the spirit, the genius of liberty survives. Man cannot, with the knowledge he has acquired, and the examples he beholds, continue in slavery... See within the last twenty years how we have risen from a horde of helots to a nation... Let [England] act as she has done by the Canadians; let her leave inviolate the religion which the chief and the people of Ireland possess; and’ – in an allusion to the courage of the Irish soldiers – ‘we will in return support her by our unbroken strength, and sustain her with our young blood, in every distress, and through every peril!’ He sat down, as usual ‘cheered by most rapturous applause’.