The eldest son, Henry, who inherited his father’s real and personal property, estimated at about £1,200 a year, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and first chose the army for his profession. In 1782, when he was scarcely twenty years of age, he eloped with Miss Swete, of Cork, whose father, Alderman Swete, was considered one of the wealthiest men in the City. Young Councillor Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Clare) had been among Miss Swete’s suitors, and it is said that he never forgave the man whom she preferred to him—and that thoughts of this early rivalry in love were at the bottom of the implacable hostility which drove Henry Sheares to his doom. Shortly after the marriage, Alderman Swete became bankrupt, and his daughter’s fortune having vanished with the rest of his assets, Henry Sheares was obliged to give up the army and take up the study of law. He was called to the Bar in 1790, his brother John, thirteen years younger than he (born 1766) having been called the preceding year. The brothers began practice together, taking up their residence in Dublin—at first in a house on Ormond Quay, and from 1796 in Baggot Street (now 128). A little after the move to Dublin the young wife of Henry Sheares died (December 11th, 1791) leaving her husband four little children. Three of the children were taken by the grandparents, the Swetes, and educated by them in France. The youngest child, Jane, appears to have been put in charge of Grandmother Sheares and Aunt Julia. In 1792 Henry Sheares, accompanied by his brother, John, went to France to visit his children. The stirring events which were taking place in Paris drew the brothers to the capital, and here they made the acquaintance of some of the most prominent men of the Revolution; notably Roland and Brissot. The influences under which they found themselves in this atmosphere were to give the most decisive direction to their political philosophy, and ultimately to seal their fate. The ardent spirit of John was irresistibly attracted to the new doctrines, and where John led, Henry, who loved him with a love surpassing the love of ordinary brothers, was fain to follow. Left to himself, poor Henry would have felt little call to republicanism; he liked dignified splendour; a fine house, a good table, a choice library. He loved society in which from his conversational powers, and his charming deferential way with women, he was a great favourite. He was a devoted family man—a loving son, and husband and father—and his happiest hours were spent in his own beautiful home in Baggot Street in the years which followed his second marriage with Miss Sarah Neville, a lady of good family in the County Kilkenny. In this home, with its rich furniture and fine library, he was soon joined by his mother and Julia and little Jane; and Sarah Sheares, who was a woman of character, as well as of accomplishments and charm, lived on the happiest footing with her people-in-law.