Secret Service Under PittFitz-Patrick, William J. (William John)
History
Secret Service Under Pitt
Fitz-Patrick, William J. (William John)
Ireland -- History -- 1760-1820; Pitt, William, 1759-1806; Secret service -- Ireland
Sir,--I received this day a letter from a friend of mine who sits
in Parliament, who heard you defend the meaning of some sentiments
in a pastoral letter, supposed to be addressed to the Roman
Catholic clergy of this diocese by the Right Reverend Dr. Hussey,
against the admixture of fulsome flattery and captious malevolence
of a placeman, and though the intimacy that once subsisted between
us has ceased, I will not be inferior in generosity to any man, and
accordingly I embrace this occasion to thank you for the justice
you do me. If done some months ago it would silence some malevolent
whispers and have obliged your humble servant,
THOS. HUSSEY.
An account of Maynooth College by one of its professors appears in
the 'Irish Magazine' for February 1808; and it is mentioned as a fact
not generally known that Burke was 'attended spiritually in his last
illness by Dr. Hussey.' In the accounts of Burke's funeral Dr. Hussey's
presence is recorded; and it is told by Dr. England that when Hussey
approached his old friend Portland in the graveyard, the duke turned
abruptly away. 'Crosses' continued to come. Pelham, replying to Dr.
Duigenan on February 22, 1799, declared that the Board of Maynooth had
displaced their president for non-residence.
Hussey with all his friendship for Burke was no friend to his son. A
letter from John Keogh to Hussey, dated October 2, 1792, and seemingly
communicated by the latter to Dundas, then Home Secretary, is preserved
among the Secret Irish State Papers in London. It repudiates Burke's
son who had been sent to Ireland by his father as an agent on behalf
of the Catholics, and tells Dundas that he was wholly unauthorised to
speak for that body. According to Tone's journal of September 1792,
Keogh regarded young Burke as a spy sent by Dundas. He was wrong, for
Hobart, writing to Nepean, on October 4, 1792, states that Dundas took
credit with Westmoreland for having given Burke a chilling reception on
his return to England. This was the youth of whom Buckle says, 'Never
can there be forgotten those touching allusions to the death of that
only son, who was the joy of his soul and the pride of his heart, and
to whom he fondly hoped to bequeath the inheritance of his imperishable
fame.'
Hussey was succeeded as an intermediary between the Irish Catholics
and the Crown by Dr. Moylan, Bishop of Cork. This prelate--who had
denounced the French when their fleet lay in Bantry Bay, for which he
would have lost his head had they been able to land--became a great
favourite with Pitt and Portland.
The duke in a letter dated Bulstrode, July 27, 1800, states:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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