Let Erin remember the days of old Ere her faithless sons betrayed her-- escaped the blight of McNally's breath. Moore was the bosom friend of Emmet, sympathised with the 'cause,' and wrote for the organ of the United Irishmen. Shortly after '98, however, he entered at the Middle Temple, London, and saw McNally no more. Plunket told Moore that it was in a duel McNally received the wound in the hip that lamed him, and on a subsequent occasion, when he was again going out to fight, a friend said, 'I'd advise you, Mac, to turn the other hip to him, and who knows but he may shoot you straight.'[453] McNally was indeed a brave man. If anyone seemed to doubt him, he would be called out and probably shot. In early life he practised at the English Bar. It is recorded in the 'Cyclopædian Magazine,' for 1808, that during the Gordon Riots, when the mob had smashed down the Bishop of Lincoln's coach, had dragged him out, and were beating him with bludgeons, McNally, at the risk of his life, rescued Dr. Thurlow, on whose forehead, he heard them say, they meant to cut the sign of the cross. This prelate, who somewhat favoured Catholic Relief, was the brother of Lord Chancellor Thurlow; and the young barrister may have had an ulterior object in thus exposing himself to danger. McNally himself evidently supplied the account, of which but a few details are here borrowed, and we learn that 'the Bishop required, and received, the address of his protector, but never after acknowledged the obligation.'[454] Some pamphlets on the Regency struggle, and the 'Claims of Ireland' vindicated on the principles of the English Whigs, introduced him to Fox, for whom he acted as counsel at an election for Westminster. 'By whatever right England possesses Liberty,' he said, 'by the same right Ireland may claim it!' McNally as an orator was declamatory, and at times theatrical. His outward man has been often caricatured, but John O'Keefe tells us that he had 'a handsome, expressive countenance, and fine sparkling dark eyes.'[455] Sir Jonah Barrington recognises the same features. Contemporary memoirs of him supply a long list of his dramas, farces, comic operas, touching lyrics, prologues and masques, all produced at Covent Garden. But when in England he was a genuine, thoroughgoing Irishman very unlike the sham which he afterwards became; and why he resigned a dramatic for a forensic career is curiously shown by 'Sylvanus Urban.' The opening of Covent Garden Theatre, on September 23, 1782, was commemorated by a prelude from McNally's pen.