Their plots succeeded admirably well; for the Earl of Drogheda, with the forces under his command, was ordered to Clogheen, county Tipperary, to act in conjunction with the Protestant magistrates and gentlemen, who, thus strengthened and encouraged, proceeded to carry out their programme, selecting as their victim the Rev. Nicholas Sheehy.

This good priest was just such a man as wins the utmost respect and love of the true Irish heart. He was warm and generous in disposition, destitute of every thought of self; full of sympathetic charity for the flock of over-awed, poverty-stricken, down-trodden people among whom he had chosen to cast his lot, pitying their affliction, relieving by every means in his power their actual distress, while fatigue and time, humiliation and insult, were of no account in his estimation, when it was a question of softening the wrath or staying the persecution of their oppressors. He was a man of bold heart, one to whom the sense of fear seemed unknown, as the petty tyrants themselves seemed to acknowledge by their combined and inhuman thirst for his death. Yet in his case, as in that of every true Catholic priest persecuted under one or another political pretext, the blindness of those who fight against the Lord is most manifest. Had it not been for the noble and incessant exertions of the Catholic clergy, who made use of their vast influence. over their flocks to curb and control, or at least restrain, the unhappy inclination to rebellion which seems inherent in human nature, especially against illegal and ill-used authority, there is but little doubt that the whole fair island would have become one vast arena of violence and anarchy: for the Catholic people were fairly driven to understand that they had absolutely naught to hope from their heartless rulers. They saw their priests accused of rebellion and treasonable teachings, when, time and again, they well knew how strenuously those same

FATHER NICHOLAS
NICHOLAS SHEEHY.

1776

FROM the petty tyranny which had at all times driven the peasantry to band together in illegal associations, from the rack-rent and the persecution of the tithe-proctors-in short, from that spirit of natural and universal resistance to injustice and oppression, sprang the terrible organization known as the Whiteboys, which caused such terror in Tipperary and Limerick, and the south of Ireland generally, in the course of the last and present centuries. They fairly overran the country at night, dressed in white shirts, from which they took their name; levelled the fences with which the landlords had enclosed the public commons for their own use; dug up the fields which had been sown in grass, and from which, most likely, some of the Whiteboys had been themselves ejected; cut down trees, and carried on such an incessant, harrassing war of destruction, that the landlords. were encouraged to increase their already abundant. means of persecution, and this they did with terrible effect.

In order, in the first place, to secure the aid of government and the sympathy of those in high places, the landlords sought and found a host of witnesses ready at any time to swear to the existence of a treasonable conspiracy for the restoration of the Stuarts and the Catholic religion. In the next place, they proposed to strike terror at once to the hearts of the disaffected people, by wreaking desperate vengeance on some of the faithful, self-sacrificing clergy.

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priests had not only coaxed and urged, but threatened with the terrible judgments of the Church, all those who were inclined to take the vengeance of the Lord into their own hands against their oppressors. They had heard their fathers tell, the memories of their own infancy recalled, and now their own manhood witnessed, the scorn, the ignominy, the diabolical treatment to which priest after priest and bishop after bishop were exposed, and from which, for their sake, these martyrs of the living God never flinched.

Such a man was Father Sheehy, a native of Tipperary, but educated in France, because the laws of Christian England forbade a Catholic gentleman to educate his children in the faith of his fathers. Even after his return. to his native land, he was for a time compelled to offer the Holy Sacrifice and administer the consolations of religion secretly, because the number of priests who began to be tolerated was limited by law, and could not be increased without certain punishment. Already had he been several times within the grasp of the law, yet managed each time to escape conviction, when his appointment to the regular mission at Clogheen, and, later, to the united parishes of Shandraghan, Ballysheehan and Templeheny, brought him somewhat under the protection of the law, but still more under the eye of his bitter enemies, the Orange magistrates and landowners of the county. These men, among whom were Sir Thomas Maude, John and William Bagwell, Bumbury, Toler (worthy ancestor of the notorious Lord Norbury), and John Hewitson, Rector of Clogheen, irritated by his undis guised opposition to their unjust taxation and crushing intolerance, formed a close alliance for his destruction or, rather, murder.

After one or another trumped-up charge against him had been in vain essayed, they succeeded in having him indicted on the charge of aiding and abetting in the

murder of one John Bridge, a poor half-simpieton, whom intimidation had induced to turn informer against the Whiteboys. Bound over to appear for their prosecution at the coming assizes, Bridge suddenly disappeared, and the enemies of Father Sheehy seized the opportunity to accuse him of complicity in the supposed or pretended murder of John Bridge. Here was a rare chance; and no trouble was spared, nor expense, in manufacturing a body of witnesses who would swear away the priest's life for a few paltry guineas, or to gratify some personal spite. Parson Hewitson was eminently successful in getting such; and by promises and bribes succeeded in enlisting in his service a disreputable woman named Mary Bradly, alias " Moll Dunlea," whom Father Sheehy had expelled from his chapel for her wicked, immoral life; one Toohey, a noted horse-thief, who was brought out of the jail of Kilkenny for this purpose; and a vagabond strolling boy, named Lonergan. On the information of these immaculate witnesses, a warrant was issued for the arrest of the priest, and £300 offered for his apprehension.

Father Sheehy, knowing full well that, if he were brought to trial at Clonmel, he had not the least chance. of escape from his relentless enemies, concealed himself for several months, and was even sheltered by several Protestants, particularly by a farmer named Griffith, at Shandraghan. After much suffering and many escapes, Father Sheehy wrote a letter to Secretary Waite at Dublin Castle, offering to surrender, on condition that he should be tried in Dublin; stating that, so bitter were the Tipperary magistrates against him, he could not have a fair trial at Clonmel.

His offer was accepted. Father Sheehy at once delivered himself up to Mr. O'Callaghan, a just magistrate, and ancestor of the present Lord Donoghmore, who not only received him kindly, but sent to Clogheen for a troop of horse to escort him to Dublin, fearing to deliver