Magan, who resided within a few doors of Moira House, possessed peculiar facilities for 'setting'[374] the movements of its _habitués_.[375] It must have been in 1802 when he was found by Mathias O'Kelly[376] associating with Todd Jones, and that date merits attention. 'I had been absent from Ireland for _ten_ years, from the year 1792,' writes Jones in his petition to the king, 'during the whole of which period I was uninterruptedly a resident in England, and in May 1802 I was indispensably compelled to return to Dublin, by an affair of honour.'[377] Soon after he proceeded to Munster, 'which I had never beheld, and had long entertained an inclination to see.'[378] At what date can we trace the first arrival of Jones on his mysterious mission to Clonakilty, where with several of his friends he was arrested on a charge of high treason in July 1803? To that question the answer is, December 1802. The 'Account of Secret Service Money, applied in detecting Treasonable Conspiracies,' contains the following entry:--'1802, December 15th, Francis Magan, by direction of Mr. Orpen, 500_l._' There is but one family named 'Orpen' in Ireland; and the only Orpen who could possibly be authorised to direct the payment of 500_l._ to Magan at this time was the High Sheriff of Cork, in whose bailiwick Jones was tracked and caught.[379] Emmet, in his speech from the dock, denied that he was the life and soul of the conspiracy, as alleged by Mr. Solicitor-General Plunket; declared that men of greater mark than he were deep in it; that on his return to Ireland he found the organisation formed; he was asked to join it; he requested time to consider; they invited him again, and he embarked in the enterprise. And yet, so carefully was the secret kept, that nothing transpired to show that he had any colleagues of good position. Lord Norbury, who tried the case, and the Attorney-General stigmatised the plan as contemptible from the fact that Emmet's allies were of no higher rank than 'ostlers, bakers, carpenters, and old clothes men,' and, notwithstanding the solemnity of Emmet's dying words, history has since given him the exclusive credit, or discredit, of the rising of 1803.