[422] The late Colonel the Right Hon. FitzStephen French, whose brother became Lord De Freyne, informed me that his father, Arthur French, M.P. for Roscommon from 1785 to 1820, had been threatened with arrest by Lord Carhampton. French lived at French Park, where 'Priest Phillips' also resided. [423] _The English in Ireland_, iii. 161. [424] _Anglice_ 'darling priest' John Banim has given to the ballad poetry of Ireland a well-known piece under this title. [425] Cooke to Pelham, Dec. 4, 1795. [426] _United Irishmen_, i. 537. CHAPTER XIV LEONARD MCNALLY Thirty years ago I published in 'Notes and Queries'[427] an _exposé_ of McNally, so far as it could then be done on circumstantial evidence. His secret letters to the Irish Government were not accessible when I first touched the subject, but these have become very familiar to me of late, and it will be seen that all I sought to show is proved by the revelation of McNally's own testimony. Before I come to these letters, some of the remarks with which I had long previously prefaced my doubts may perhaps be allowed to stand. It is an object with Mr. Froude to show--and evidently as pointing a moral--that men who posed as the greatest patriots were secretly betraying the plans of their colleagues. But although Mr. Froude mentions McNally more than once, it does not appear that he was an informer. When describing the arrest and death of the Rev. Wm. Jackson in 1794, he mentions McNally as 'a popular barrister,' and further on his name is given with that of Curran, Ponsonby, Emmet, and Guinness, as constituting 'the legal strength of Irish Liberalism.' This remark is made in connection with an episode told with such dramatic effect by Mr. Froude that it remains merely for a minor pen to unmask 'the popular barrister.' Charles Phillips, although he had made the lives of famous Irish barristers his study, as shown in 'Curran and his Contemporaries,' refused to believe any tale to the prejudice of McNally. In the last edition of his popular book Phillips declares that The thing is incredible! If I was called upon to point out, next to Curran, the man most obnoxious to the Government--who most hated them, and was most hated by them--it would have been Leonard MacNally--that MacNally, who, amidst the military audience, stood by Curran's side while he denounced oppression, defied power, and dared every danger![428] In this impression he was supported by W. H. Curran, afterwards judge--a man who, unlike his illustrious father, was of the hardest and coldest nature. He travelled out of his path, in writing that father's life, to pronounce a panegyric which is quite a curiosity to exhume:--