[379] The records of the Chief Secretary's Office show that in 1802 Richard Thomas Orpen, of Frankford, was High Sheriff of Cork. During the present year (1891), I found in the Irish State Papers a letter dated 'Cork, March 24, 1802,' from the above Mr. Orpen, in his capacity of high sheriff, regarding a correspondence he had with General Myers as to a small assistance of cavalry. [380] Probably Dr. Hardinge of Cork, an active agent in those troubled times. [381] Atkinson was desired to be on the alert in Cooke's letter to Sirr, written on the day of Lord Edward's intended move, of which Magan gave notice. [382] Mr. Justice Day, writing to the Irish Government on September 27, 1803 (eight days after Emmet's execution), suggests that Lord Bantry, who got his peerage for reporting the arrival of the French in '96, would be a good man to make inquiries regarding Jones. [383] _Curious Correspondence of William Todd Jones with the Secretary of State._ Dedicated to Lord Moira and Mr. Fox. (Cork: Odell, 1804.) [384] Plowden's _History of Ireland since the Union to 1810_, iii. 626 _et seq._ [385] Plowden's _History of Ireland since the Union to 1810_, ii. 36, 216-220, 623-632. [386] _Hansard's Parliamentary Debates_, v. 793-5. [387] _Curious Correspondence._ (Cork: Odell, 1804.) [388] _United Irishmen_, iii. 329. [389] The _Annual Register_ and other usually well-informed sources fail to record the death of Jones. A full obituary of him appears in the _Ulster Register_ for March 1818, iv. 186-8; and a fine monody on 'Immortal Jones,' probably by Drennan, in the same serial, pp. 224-5. CHAPTER XIII THOMAS COLLINS. PHILLIPS THE SACERDOTAL SPY A recent letter from the ex-Crown and Treasury Solicitor for Ireland quotes the following from Mr. Lecky's notice of an unnamed spy, and asks me 'Who is he?'[390] 'He was a Dublin silk merchant,' writes Lecky, 'and can be identified by a letter from Cooke to Nepean, May 26, 1794, in the Record Office, London.'[391] I may now state that his name was Collins. Cooke's letter mentions that 200_l._ a year had been settled on the informer of 1794, and that he was recommended for office in the West Indies--his future residence in Ireland, after Rowan's arrest, being unsafe. Mr. Joynt's query comes not amiss, for John Keogh, also a silk merchant, was broadly branded by Walter Cox as an informer, and the plausible indictment is transcribed by Dr. Madden and enshrined in his _magnum opus_.[392] The charge against Keogh, who, by the way, preceded O'Connell as leader of the Irish Catholics, is, however, baseless.