on my soul! I beseech the great Creator that for your benevolence to me he will grant you grace to make such use of your time here that you may see and enjoy him hereafter. Remember me to Mr. Waite, the Lord Chancellor, Speaker, and the Judges of the King's Bench; may God bless them! Recommend to them, all under the same charge with me; they are innocent of the murder; the prosecutors swore wrongfully and falsely; God forgive them. The accusers and the accused are equally ignorant of the fact, as I have been informed, but after such a manner I received the information that I cannot make use of it for my own preservation; the fact is, that John Bridge was destroyed by two alone, who strangled him on Wednesday night, the 24th October, 1764. I was then from home, and only returned home on the 28th, and heard that he had disappeared. Various were the reports, which to believe I could not pretend to, until in the discharge of my duty one accused himself of the said fact. May God grant the guilty true repentance, and preserve the innocent! I recommend them to your care. I have relied very much on Mr. Waite's promise. I hope no more priests will be distressed for their religion, and that the Roman Catholics of this kingdom will be countenanced by the Government, as I was promised by Mr. Waite would be the case if I proved my innocence. I am now to appear before the Divine tribunal, and declare that I was unacquainted with Mary Butler, alias Casey, and John Toohy, never having spoken to or seen either of them, to the best of my memory, before I saw them in the King's Bench last February. May God forgive them, and bless them, you, and all mankind, are the earnest and fervent prayers of, "Dear Sir, "Your most obliged, humble servant, The witnesses stated that the murder was committed the 28th October, 1764. Father Sheehy says it was on the 24th. The number of persons implicated in it by the former was considerable, by the latter two only were concerned in it. In the mode of committing it the discrepancy of the accounts is no less obvious. The question arises, when was this confession made to Father Sheehy, and with what object? Amyas Griffith speaks of the disclosure thus made under the veil of confession, as "no new method of entrapping credulous priests." Curry treats the disclosure as a snare laid by the enemies of Sheehy for their own purposes. The purposes to be served by having recourse to the infamous proceeding of deceiving the unwary priest, and of making the functions of his sacred office subservient to the designs of his enemies, could only be the following. If resorted to previously to trial, by the disclosure of the alleged murder to deter him from adducing evidence of the man's existence; or, if subsequently to it, to leave it out of his power to make any declaration of his ignorance of the fact of his alleged death. The attempt for the accomplishment of either object was not too unimportant for the character of the prosecutors; nor can it be deemed too infamous to be beyond the compass of their wickedness, when we find them holding out offers of pardon to their three next victims, on condition of their making a declaration that "the priest" in his last solemn protestation of innocence" had died with a lie in his mouth." Bridge had been sought out, at the commencement of the persecution of the Sheehys, as a fit person to be worked upon by the influence of terror and the infliction of corporal judgment. This man, having been tortured, made whatever disclosures were suggested to him, or required of him; and he was bound over to appear as a witness when called on. He made no secret of the punishment he had received, or the disclosures he had made, and some of the people implicated by him were desirous to get him out of the country; others, in his own rank of life, there is reason to believe, distrusted his intention to leave the country, and contrived a nefarious plot to get rid of his testimony, by implicating him in a felony. The church plate, chalice, &c., of a small Roman Catholic place of worship at Carrigvistail, near Ballyporeen, usually kept for better security at the house of an innkeeper of the name of Sherlock, adjoining the chapel, were stolen, or said to be so, and concealed on the premises, with the knowledge, it is alleged, of the owner of the house. The facts now mentioned have not been published heretofore, and the importance of their bearing on the character of these proceedings, rendered it necessary to be well assured of the grounds there were for attaching credit to them, before coming to a determination to give them publicity. The authority on which they are now given, there are good grounds for relying on. The result of these inquiries as to the truth of the statement of one main fact respecting the fate of Bridge, coincides with the opinion of every surviving friend and relative of the Sheehys, and the other innocent men who suffered in this business, with whom I have communicated on the subject. The rumour of the stolen church plate was soon circulated in the country, and Bridge being in the habit of frequenting Sherlock's house, was pointed out as the person suspected of having stolen it. The double infamy now attached to Bridge's character, of being an informer and a sacrilegious person. He was advised to leave the country; and at length he made preparations to do so. On their completion, he took leave of his acquaintances; and the last time he was seen by them was on his way to the house of an old friend of his, named Francis Bier, for the purpose of taking leave of him. It was known that he intended calling on another of his acquaintances, named Timothy Sullivan, a slater. Sullivan and a man of the name of Michael Mahony, better known in his neighbourhood by the name, in Irish, for "wicked Michael,' lived at Knockaughrim bridge; he fell into their hands, and was murdered by them. No other human being had act or part in this foul deed. Mahony's flight, and his reasons for it, were known for a long time only to his friends. The body of the murdered man was thrown into a pond at Shanbally. Mahony fled the country; Sullivan remained, and lived and died, unsuspected by the authorities, though not unknown as the murderer to one individual at Clogheen; an innkeeper of the name of Magrath, who had been one of the innocent persons sworn against by Mary Dunlea, and had undergone a long imprisonment in Clonmel gaol. Sullivan was a Protestant; Mahony, a Catholic. If the crime was perpetrated and revealed by either, the disclosure must have been made by Mahony. From the time of Bridge's disappearance till this disclosure in the Confessional, Father Sheehy states that various rumours were afloat, but which of them to believe he knew not. In concluding this part of the subject, I have only to observe, if the shadow of a doubt remains respecting the fate of Bridge, none whatever can be entertained of the innocence of those who were the victims of one of the foulest conspiracies on record. "On the day of his (Sheehy's) trial," we are told, "a party of horse surrounded the court, admitting and excluding whom they thought proper; while others of them, with a certain Baronet (Sir Thomas Maude) at their head, scampered the streets in a formidable manner; forcing into inns and private lodgings in the town; challenging and questioning all new comers; menacing the friends, and encouraging the enemies of the priest. Even after sentence of death was pronounced against him, which one would think might have fully satisfied his enemies, Mr. Sw (Sparrow), his attorney, declares that he found it necessary, for his safety, to steal out of the town by night, and with all possible speed to escape to Dublin."* VOL. I. * Candid Enquiry, &c. pp. 9 and 10. K K The prisoner was found guilty of the murder of John Bridge, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and on the 15th the sentence was carried into execution at Clonmel. The head of the persecuted priest was stuck on a spike, and placed over the porch of the old gaol, and there it was allowed to remain for upwards of twenty years, till at length his sister was allowed to take it away, and bury it with his remains at Shandraghan. Beside the ruins of the old church of Shandraghan, the grave of Fathey Sheehy is distinguished by the beaten path, which reminds us of the hold which his memory has to this day on the affections of the people. The inscriptions on the adjoining tombs are effaced by the footsteps of the pilgrims who stand beside his grave, not rarely or at stated festivals, but day after day, as I was informed on the spot, while the neglected tomb of the ancestors of the proud persecutor, William Bagnell, lies at a little distance, unhonoured and unnoticed by them. The inscription on the tomb of Father Sheehy is in the following terms: "Here lieth the remains of the Rev. Nicholas Sheehy, parish priest of Shandraghan, Ballysheehan, and Templeheny. He died March 15th, 1766, aged 38 years. Erected by his sister, Catherine Burke, alias Sheehy." An attempt on a large scale was now made to implicate the leading Roman Catholic gentry of Tipperary in the alleged Popish Plot of 1766, after the necessary arrangements had been completed for the disposal of Father Sheehy. The rescue of some prisoners in the county of Kilkenny, and the murder of a soldier (as in Keating's case, at a previous period), was the principal charge on which Edmond Sheehy, James Farrell, and James Buxton, were first arrested. They were sent to Kilkenny, to be tried at the assizes; but after they had been arraigned, the nature of the evidence affording no grounds for expecting a conviction, the proceedings were stopped, and they were sent back to Clonmel gaol, |