William Colclough

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Contributor Number: 32

Born ABT 1850
Father: ?
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Married Sarah Willson Crofton

Notes: web hosting domain names email addresse s Chapter VII DUFFRY HALL Duffry Hall had been built by Caesar's grandfather Patrick, the Protestan t son of the exiled Dudley, who with the aid of his uncles had succeede d in recovering more than half of his father's sequestrated lands and a g reat deal more besides. In 1663 Patrick was with his father in Holland wh ere he was painted by Frans Hals in the uniform of a Cavalier. It was sai d to be on the occasion of his 20th birthday, though it would seem that a s he was 27 in 1663 and fighting with the local iron works in Enniscorthy , the painting actually dates from 1656. In 1663 Patrick had married hi s second cousin Katherine Bagenal and such of his time as was not devote d to his duties as justice of the peace, High Sheriff of Wexford, Deput y Lieutenant and M.P. for Enniscorthy was taken up with building operatio ns. The Hall, which was beautifully situated on the southern slopes of th e Blackstairs mountains was described as the most magnificent seventeent h century building in Co. Wexford . In 1723 Caesar inherited Tintern an d shortly afterwards started to re-edify Duffry where his brother Adam wa s living. In 1769 it was described in Finn's Leinster Journal as being no t over 35 years built. "Large and spacious with all kinds of offices fo r servants, stabling for 30 horses, coach house for 4 carriages, an excel lent dog kennel, well watered barn, cow house, etc". In 1769 "Sir" Vesey' s nephew, Adam, moved in as tenant. He was followed on his death in 179 9 by his son, the dubious Rev Dudley Colclough, who had previously been l iving in Enniscorthy Castle. It was the Rev. Dudley who two weeks befor e the rebellion broke out in Wexford, said he thought that all this tal k of rebellion was highly exaggerated . It was left derelict when Jane Ki rwan evicted the Rev. Dudley's children after his death in 1830. Unfortun ately it remained inhabited for only five generations. When Mrs Biddulph- Colclough sold the Duffry in 1907 the original building had disappeared a nd now no trace of it now stands except the ruin of the entrance porch . Caesar's father, also a Dudley, was M.P. for Enniscorthy and Colonel of t he Militia and though a Catholic was given the right to carry arms - on e sword, one gun and one case of pistols. He married in 1691 Mary Barnewa ll, grand-daughter of Viscount Kingsland (a peerage which became dorman t when its holder died in the Southwark Workhouse having married 'a woman '; when the woman died a public subscription was raised to provide a suit able monument to her in St Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, because she wa s a Viscountess). Mary bore him eleven children and immediately after hi s death married a Mr Ben Flaherty of Dublin. Dudley's concern during hi s lifetime was to keep at bay the proprietors of the Enniscorthy Iron Wor ks which had been established in 1643 on land compulsorily acquired fro m his grandfather without payment and who considered that they were entit led to use the Duffry Hall trees as fuel in their blast-furnaces. In thei r attempts to have him expropriated as a Papist they pleaded that his int erference with their timber cutting was "...to their great damage after t heir setting up iron-works at great expense and bringing over hundreds o f English workmen and their families in parts which were lately waste an d unpeopled with much resultant profit to the customs. " Dudley's death in 1712 and the inheritance of the property by his 2 CON C Protestant son finally defeated them and they made no attempt to displa ce his grandson Adam during any of his spells of Popery. Dudley's son "Th e Great Caesar" was a man of such character that 100 years later Patric k Kennedy would be able to learn about every detail of Caesar's life fro m his neighbours at Duffry. Kennedy's 'Legends of Mount Leinster', 'Eveni ngs in the Duffry' and 'By The Banks of The Boro' give wonderful pen pict ures of a man who was a popular magistrate, a landlord on 2 CONC friendl y terms with his tenants, a champion hurler and wrestler, an intellectua l philosopher, an M.P., patron of bards, and friend of clerics of all per suasions. His portrait shows him to have the Colclough nose, but apart fr om that he is well built and good looking with a humorous face. Caesar i s said to have taken a team of Duffry Hurlers to Greenwich to play a Corn ish team before King George I. The Wexford team wore the Colclough colour s of blue with a yellow sash, and their supporters urged them on with th e cry of "Up The Yellow Bellies", the nick name for Wexfordmen ever since . Caesar's first wife whom he married in 1717 was Frances Muschamp, 2 CON C daughter of Sir Thomas Vesey, Bishop of Ossory, but she died only two y ears after the birth of a daughter who died in infancy. Two years later h e married her cousin Henrietta, daughter of Agmondisham Vesey so 2 CONC b ringing the names Agmondisham and Vesey into the family roll of Christia n names. Henrietta's first child died young as did three of her others bu t the surviving sons were all sent for some obscure reason of Caesar's t o Westminster School. The eldest of these, Vesey, within eighteen month s of leaving school and becoming an undergraduate at Trinity College go t himself married to a widow many years older than himself. She was Mary , daughter of Sir John Bingham and a descendant of Charles II by way of L ucy Walters and Patrick Sarsfield, Lord Lucan. Her first husband, Hugh Mo ntgomery, had died in 1741, two years after the wedding, and three week s after writing his will. Shortly after marrying Mary he had develope d a mysterious wasting disease which had finally proved fatal. Hugh had b een a very successful property speculator and at the time that he marrie d Mary was building one of the finest houses in Dublin, now known as Clan william House, on Stephens Green. On the central axis of the Square, it c ombined the latest fashions with the finest quality. The architect was Si r Richard Castle. The decorators were the Lafrancini brothers. It oozed m oney and style. She would probably have known of Vesey (and his expectati ons of over 20,000 acres in Wexford), as her half brother Sir John Bingha m was married to his cousin, Anne Vesey. She actually first met Vesey i n November 1744, when she was already more than two months pregnant. Alth ough she was 10 years his senior they got married by special licence on D ecember 11 1744, a fortnight after their first meeting. They moved into N o 12 St. Stephen's Green, North, lent to them by Vesey's uncle Thomas. Th ere Vesey died six weeks after the wedding and there Mary's son also call ed Vesey was born in the following June. Mary died shortly after his birt h. Though the child had two 2 CONC baptisms, one in Dublin and one at Tin tern, they seem to have left him with an inordinate amount of original si n on which to build. Caesar observed that the fatherless Vesey was, at an early age, showing d efects of character which boded ill for the future of the Tintern and Duf fry estates. Accordingly he made a will designed to ensure that while Ves ey should enjoy the income of the property he would not be able to dispos e of it or even encumber it and he was given powers of appointment to b e exercised in favour only of descendants of Caesar. Immense legal ingenu ity being shown in drawing up what proved in subsequent litigation to b e unbarrable entails. Vesey eloped before he was twenty. He chose not a p regnant widow but the girl next door, Catherine, the daughter of John Gro gan of Johnstown Castle, who was even younger than himself, and he did no t marry her. When they returned to Tintern with all their money spent an d Catherine heavily pregnant they announced that they had been married a t Port Patrick, Glasgow, on 2nd August 1765, and they stuck to that stor y consistently for the rest of their lives. A runaway marriage at Port Pa trick was at that time a popular craze and these irregular 2 CONC marriag es were deemed quite respectable and acceptable. The complete list of Por t Patrick marriages in the 1760s reads like a catalogue of the nobility a nd gentry of Ireland but the names of Colclough and Grogan are not to b e found in it. The couple were completely taken aback by the generosity o f the marriage settlement which the two families made upon them and dread ed any revelation of the true state of affairs, even by a secret marriag e to regularise the position, would result in the settlement being lost f or the trust deed began by reciting that it had been made "in considerati on of the marriage celebrated on 2nd August 1765" If there had been no ma rriage on that date the deed would not be operative and a marriage subseq uent to that recited would not revive it. In 1843 the defendant's solicit ors in Rosborough v Boyse anticipating that Vesey's legitimacy would be i n issue made a search at Port Patrick but found no record of the marriage . When Eusebius, Jane Kirwan's brother who was 'managing' the case for he r, was informed of this he immediately produced a very convincing certifi cate of their having been married at Tintern on 2nd August 1765 even thou gh they claimed that they were in Glasgow on that date, and the Tintern r egister subsequently and mysteriously altered itself to accord with tha t certificate. Scarcely had the will been attested and the deeds of marriage settlemen t executed when Caesar died and Vesey found himself in charge of the Tint ern estates and all their attendant responsibilities of being M.P. for th e County of Wexford, High Sheriff (at the age of 22), Portreeve of Ennisc orthy and the rest. In June 1772 the Enniscorthy Council recorded in thei r minute-book that the King had conferred a baronetcy on the portreeve, V esey Colclough, but this involves a considerable amount of doubt and som e mystery. The original baronetcy was extinct and the letters patent prod uced to the Enniscorthy Council have disappeared and if they existed at a ll may well have been a product of the skilled forger, possibly the notor ious 'Dick the Penman', who produced for Vesey the sets of bogus title-de eds which became the basis of his finances. Anyway, 'Sir' Vesey had no la wful issue to inherit. If he had merely assumed the dignity and had any l awful heirs they would certainly have been permitted to record their clai m when the Register of Baronets was established for any such titles in us e at that date were registered without question or proof and from such ar e descended many of to-day's baronets . Sir John Barrington in his 'Personal Sketches' says: - "Amongst those Parliamentary gentlemen frequently to be found in the cof fee-room of the Houses were certain Baronets of very singular character w ho until some division called them to vote passed the intermediate time i n high conviviality. Sir John Stuart Hamilton, a man of small fortune an d large stature possessing a most liberal appetite for both solids and fl uids - much wit, more humour and indefatigable cheerfulness - might be th eir leader...Sir Vesey Colclough, member for County Wexford, who understo od books and wine better than any of the party, had all his days treate d money so extremely ill that it would continue no longer in his servic e and the dross (as he termed it) having entirely forsaken him, he bequea thed an immense landed property, during his life, to the use of custodium s, elegits, and judgments which never fails to place a gentleman's acre s under the special guardianship of attorneys. He was father to that exce llent man John Colclough who was killed at Wexford and to the present Cae sar Colclough whose fall might probably have afforded less cause for regr et. Sir Vesey added much to the pleasantry of the party by occasionally f orcing on them deep subjects of literature, of which few of his companion s could make either head or tail but to avoid the imputation of ignoranc e they often gave the most 2 CONC ludicrous proofs of it on literary subj ects, geography and astronomy on which he eternally bored them. " One of Vesey's money-making devices was, after validly exercising in favo ur of his son Caesar the powers of appointment contained in the marriag e settlement and the will of Caesar of Duffry and Tintern, in respect o f the remainders after his life-estate, purported to exercise them agai n in favour of money-lenders as security for loans, using forged title-de eds to conceal the fact that the appointment had already been made. Havin g found how easy and cheap it was to get convincing title-deeds forged h e had many sets made on the strength of which he mortgaged over and ove r again an estate in which he had only a life interest. In the case of Co lclough v Bolger, the first of many brought after his death to fight of f his victims, the judge with great restraint described him merely a s "a dissolute and intemperate character led astray by the steward of the T intern estate, Garrett Cavanagh, a greedy, extravagant and impecunious ma n who was his constant guide in dissipation. " Another of his cronies was Caesar Colclough the barrister who may not hav e been party to his criminal activities but must have known what was goin g on and as a lawyer was in a position to give him sound if immoral lega l advice. When his intolerable conduct finally drove Catherine to leave him Alici a Harrington, on whom he fathered two sons, and Elizabeth Carter, were am ongst the women who joined his harem in the Abbey, but only these two wer e mentioned in the will which Caesar drafted for him and in which Caesa r himself was made the residuary legatee. For Alicia's sons, Anthony an d George Washington, Vesey purchased commissions in the army and they bot h had distinguished military careers. Anthony having been commissioned i n the 1st Life Guards as medical officer became Inspector General of Arm y Medical Services. His wife, Sarah Pearson, came from a landed family ne ar Clondalkin in Co. Dublin. George Washington when first commissioned ha d Lieutenant Arthur Wellesley as his senior officer and with Wellesley h e remained during the whole of his service. He married one of the Duke' s illegitimate daughters and their son in due course became a major-gener al and having been seconded to the Turkish army in command of their artil lery during the Crimean War, was awarded the Khedival medal. 2 CONC Antho ny's sons, too, benefited in their careers from avuncular influence . After Vesey's death John, in a letter to his brother Caesar in France, co mplained that their father had filled the Abbey with strumpets and bastar ds. The late Ulick Sadleir, Deputy Ulster King at Arms, had so many inqui ries at Dublin Castle from Vesey's descendants believing themselves to b e heirs to a baronetcy and to vast estates in Wexford that he tried to ca talogue all Vesey's illegitimate offspring but he gave up when the numbe r reached thirty. He considered that a major cause of Vesey's financial t roubles was that he made adequate financial provision for all his childre n except the first two. Unfortunately this list has not yet been found am ongst Sadleir's papers in the Genealogical Office. Amongst the Colclough s for whom at present no parents can be identified only a few are candida tes for Sir Vesey's line. Robert of Limerick, Caleb of Cork, John of Dubl in and John of Waterford, whose daughter was transported to Australia, Jo hn of Carrick on Suir, James of Dublin and the two Patricks of Kildavin a re possibilities. Anne, Henry, James, John and his brother Rodolphus, an d William, all of Kilkenny, are more likely to be of Adam of Boley's line . On leaving 'Sir' Vesey, Catherine had taken refuge with Thomas Francis Co lclough and his family at Ballyteige Castle. Thomas Francis had 2 CONC su cceeded his father John not only in the ownership of the Castle but als o in his business as an attorney in Wexford, where he owned a certain amo unt of property. He was able to give Catherine a small house in the Bul l Ring at Wexford where she lived until moving into the magnificent Georg ian house with its private theatre after Vesey's death. Florence Colcloug h writes that in the early days of their marriage Vesey and Catherine ha d held splendid entertainments in the George's Street House and had fitte d out the theatre for those gala evenings. The two boys were sent to a su ccession of boarding schools, including that of the Rev. Samuel Francis o f Enniscorthy, but were thrown out of each of them after a couple of term s because Sir Vesey refused to pay their fees, and years later, when he c ame of age, Caesar had served on him writs for the fees still unpaid. Eve ntually Adam of Duffry Hall took Caesar into his family to be educated wi th his own younger sons at the village school, whilst John joined his mot her at Wexford and attended a school there . Thomas Francis seems later to have employed John in his Wexford office fo r many letters relating to conveyances and other legal matters which wer e being handled by Thomas Francis are signed 'John Colclough' and there w as no other 'John Colclough' in Wexford at that time, Thomas Francis's ow n younger brother John having gone to Montserrat many years before and dy ing there. In any case John seems to have had a remarkably sound legal tr aining and handled with quite amazing skill the legal jungle left on hi s death by his father with the assistance of Garrett Cavanagh and Caesa r the barrister. With great difficulty he managed to evict Alicia, Elizab eth and the rest of the harem and all their brood from the Abbey. He foug ht off all the claims by 'Sir' Vesey's creditors and was able to hand ove r to his brother an unencumbered estate in good condition with proper pro vision for their mother. He acquired more property in Georges Street, an d handled all the building contracts for that and for the restoration o f the Abbey and its extension, controlled the whole estate and put it o n a very profitable basis, though assisted by a number of not very compet ent or honest stewards, among whom was Kennedy, part of whose defalcation s may have contributed to the costs of transporting his nephew's family t o America (after one of his successors had evicted them from the Tinter n holding in which he had installed them) and in the setting up of the Bo ston saloon that was the basis of the Presidential fortune. John also suc ceeded in establishing a bank in New Ross for the more efficient handlin g of the funds not only of the Tintern estates but of all the neighbourin g landowners as well. The bank was originally composed of four partners , Anthony Cliffe, John Deane, John M'Cord (who was agent at Tintern and w hose daughter married Bagenal Colclough of St Kierans & Alabama) & John C olclough. Cliffe died before the bank was opened in 1803 and Caesar stepp ed in as a director in absentia with an investment of Ð1,000.00 for a qua rter share. The primary source of the funds which John was able to comman d was the Ð13,000 for which he sold the representation of the Borough o f Enniscorthy which 'Sir' Vesey had bought from Dudley many years befor e and forgotten to mention to Caesar, his legal adviser, when his will wa s being drawn up. Ð8,000 of this had been claimed by John under the term s of Catherine and Vesey's marriage settlement . During the Rebellion of 1798, while John Henry Colclough was busy with ta ctical plans, or trying to keep his head down at Ballyteigue, Catherine C olclough was gathering her family at the house in George's Street. John , her son, and M'Cord the agent at Tintern were both sympathetic with th e rebel cause, if not actually out in open rebellion. In Georges Street h owever Florence and Harriet Colclough, the daughters of the Rev Thomas Co lclough, were helping her aunt hide the family valuables under the stag e of the theatre. Harriet's husband was Col. Jonas Watson, Commander of t he Crown Forces in Wexford and while on a reconnaissance he was shot wit h a rocket. Harriet was naturally devastated and Catherine decided the ti me had come to move the family to safety in England. They arranged a pass age on a ship that was lying off shore and bound for Bristol and the nex t day made their way through hostile crowds to the quay. They had just go t on board ship's tender, to their great relief, when Harriet discovere d that her new born baby had been left in the Georges Street house by th e nurse. Naturally enough ignoring the advice she went back into the crow d, which by then was turning very nasty. However soon the dreadful circum stances of poor Harriet's plight circulated and a pathway was cleared t o allow the frantic woman to run the couple of hundred yards to the house , seize the baby and return to the boat. After the troubles were over Har riet returned with her six children to Ireland and in 1803 we find John m aking over some of the Tintern leases of land in Wexford to her . At around this time John undertook a considerable building programme. Th e Irish Tourist, published in 1819, describes how the late Mr John Colclo ugh had replaced the peasants cabins with neat slated dwellings and outho uses, to the advantage of the area and in 1812 John Bernard Trotter write s how the cabins in the village of Tintern were falling into decay . At t he abbey itself, after escaping death when the bedroom ceiling fell on hi s bed, John decided to construct a new house within the nave walls of th e abbey. By the time he died he had built a modest two storey, three ba y house with attic bed rooms lit by circular windows in the gables. The g able walls were built into the first archway of the Abbey and the rest o f the nave created a courtyard between it and the tower. This was to beco me a home for his elderly mother. The writer Atkinson was shown the 'lumi nous and respectable apartments' in 1814 whilst on his tour of Ireland. T he second and third arches of the nave were covered in later. The delay m ust have proved inconvenient as they linked the main house with the kitch en which was in the vaulted undercroft of the Lady Chapel. The chapel its elf was given a massive gothick window, but John died before it was roofe d. It was left to Caesar, to construct what became a splendid library an d to fill in the two remaining archways between 1815 and 1818, with the a ssistance of the architect Thomas Cormick . Whatever the inconvenience of a detached kitchen, it must have been bette r than the accommodation that Vesey inhabited in the chancel and tower o f the Abbey. First constructed by Sir Anthony after the Keatings had dest royed the abbots lodging and other conventural buildings, its mullioned w indows must have seemed very old fashioned to the likes of the fashionabl e artist Dutch artist Gabriel Beranger , who stayed at the Abbey in Octob er 1780 with George Barret, whilst doing views of ancient buildings for t he Irish Antiquarian Society. He noted the accommodations were good and s nug, but that the room was full of vessels to catch the rain dripping int o the room and that parcels of rats or mice were sitting on their hind le gs warming themselves by the fire. He also made some obscure notes abou t the fair ladies of the Seraglio (the Sultan's harem) and a meeting on t he stairs on going to bed. John's political activities secured the return of his brother Caesar i n a contested parliamentary election for Wexford in May 1806, but bein g a prisoner in France at the time Caesar could not take his seat, and th e only result of his being elected was to add to his value as a prisone r of Napoleon. John himself stood at the general election which followe d immediately on Caesar's victory and was duly returned. Parliamentary se ats, prior to the Reform Acts at least, were regarded as the property o f the great landowners, to be bargained for, bought and sold, and member s elected owed a duty to their proprietors but nothing to their constitue nts. Caesar was acceptable although quite unknown - a prisoner in Franc e who had left Wexford as a schoolboy and never been back - because on th e death of Sir Vesey he had become a great landowner and automatically pa rt of the 'establishment', and John was at first accepted as his deputy . The Marquis of Ely, who knew John and felt that he could not be truste d to play the landowners' game, pressed him not to stand and offered to b uy him a constituency elsewhere at the next election but his offer was re jected. When others, too, found John had views of his own, arrangements w ere made to dispose of him. He was to be arrested on a visit to his const ituency and charged with treason. So convincing were the affidavits of th e posse of informers detailed (and paid) to give evidence against him tha t he would certainly be hanged even though he was voting in the lobbies a t Westminster on the dates of the sworn acts of treason in Ireland. Fortu nately warning reached him as he was about to embark at Fishguard and h e returned to London and was able to circumvent the plot. He took the war ning seriously for in August 1789 he had been arrested, taken to Dublin a nd thrown into the Castle Street prison next to the tower and had been ke pt there without trial until the following November . At the 1807 election the gentry of Wexford put up as their candidate agai nst John one William Congreve Alcock, a neighbour of John's and brother o f his fiancée. Alcock was not a person of great mental stability and whe n his committee pointed out to him that his own tenants were supporting J ohn and that it was his duty to call and demand that he should reject the ir support failing which he would 'call him out' Alcock did as he was tol d. His committee arranged in anticipation for him to have some practice i n pistol-shooting and for an optician to make him a special pair of teles copic spectacles for the purpose. Alcock was 2 CONC expendable. If he wer e killed Colclough would have to flee the country failing which he woul d be tried for murder and there was sufficient influence on Alcock's comm ittee to ensure that he would be hanged. If Colclough were killed those s ame influences would be sufficient to secure Alcock' acquittal which in f act happened. Alcock however went mad and died in a lunatic asylum but no t before he had established the constitutional principle that to be of so und mind is not a requisite for membership of Parliament; a committee o f his constituents failed in their application to the court for a declara tion that the seat was vacant after he had to be removed from the Common s in a straight-jacket. To ensure that somebody was killed each of the co mbatants was given two pistols but with the aid of his telescopic spectac les Alcock put his first shot through Colclough's heart. The whole of th e local bench of justices, eleven of them in all, were amongst the crow d of spectators who had turned up with prior knowledge of the plan . The extent of the mourning - the body was 'waked' in the theatre in Georg es Street for a whole week and over 4,000 people attended the funeral - a nd the public indignation and outcry at the killing more than convinced t he perpetrators of the wisdom of their action in getting rid of Colclough . The bank which John had set up came under severe pressure, but a numbe r of prominent merchants issued a manifesto undertaking to accept the not es of the bank at full nominal value. However in early 1808 a run develop ed and it failed with liabilities of Ð200,000 (the total capital investe d was only Ð4,000.00!). In John's will he left provision for his son Jame s by Catherine Doyle, who lived by the gates of Tintern. It seems that hi s remarks about his father's strumpets may be a case of pot and kettle ! James had a short but very eventful life. He was a remarkable swordsman , but did not have the patrimony that had bought his cousins their commis sions. When in l818 the egregious Sir Gregor MacGregor was raising his pr ivate army, consisting mostly of Irishmen, to seize Portobello in the Ist hmus of Panama from the Spanish he recruited James as his ADC. On the 9t h of April 1819 the attack was made and the Spaniards driven out leavin g MacGregor and his army in possession. Three weeks later a 2 CONC counte r-attack was made and the Spaniards retook the town. MacGregor had made t he Government House his headquarters and the Spaniards surprised him an d his staff there. Most of the staff managed to escape by jumping fro m a window 20 ft into the sea whilst Colclough single-handed held up th e attackers at the entrance to the building, killing the Spanish Colone l and a Captain and another officer. Then with a bullet-wound in his han d and a sword- thrust through his body Colclough followed MacGregor and t he others through the window into the sea. In his wounded condition he fe ll rather than jumped and broke an ankle in the process. The others had m anaged to get into a small boat and return to their transport-ship, The H ero, but Colclough had to swim a long way to join them. Not wanting to b e bothered with the care of a gravely wounded man his companions dumped h im on a deserted beach near Port au Prince in the island of San Domingo a nd sailed away. He was found by one Father 2 CONC O'Flynn, who took him i n and tended him until his death three days later at the age of 26. Onl y The Gentleman's Magazine and Carrick's Morning Post recorded the passin g of this extraordinary hero. Caesar enjoyed life in the family at Duffry except for constant frictio n with his eldest cousin and namesake, Caesar the barrister, who was twel ve years older than him and when at home tried to make the young Caesar' s life unendurable. The mutual hatred of the two Caesars culminated i n a duel which they fought while the young Caesar was still a student a t Trinity. (It was mentioned in the evidence in Rossborough v. Boyse bu t no other information is available about it.) Before he was 17 Caesar we nt to Dublin to seek work as a journalist and was evidently successful bu t it is not to his journalistic activities that the record of his life i n Dublin relates. He found lodgings at 23 Parliament Street and possibl y with a view to being better equipped to deal with his cousin when nex t they met, he joined the volunteers as a cheap way of learning swordsman ship and pistol shooting. His military enthusiasm was such that he was gi ven an almost immediate commission and by the time he entered Trinity Col lege at the age of eighteen he was already a captain. With a full-time jo b as a journalist and his military activities he somehow managed to spen d a great deal of time in the tool-shop and engineering works in Fishambl e Street run by William Keenan, Francis Murphy and Joseph Wyatt, whom h e had met in the volunteers and who remained throughout his life close fr iends. He visited them whenever he could get to Dublin and they were th e witnesses of the will which he made without his wife's knowledge in Jul y 1824. As a result of their training of him they were able to report tha t he was a skilled craftsman in woodworking and most fields of engineerin g and was a particularly competent lathe-hand - and those skills stood hi m in good stead when in later years he was a prisoner in France. He manag ed, too, to acquire a remarkable knowledge of chemistry which he demonstr ated in his skilled alterations to a stolen passport which enabled him a s an escaping prisoner of war to cross the frontier from France into Swit zerland, and later as a member of the Parliamentary Committee on the Lond on Gaslight Bill. As soon as 'Sir' Vesey heard that Caesar was earning a living he began pe stering him for money, as also did some of Vesey's creditors. By 1786 h e felt that he was earning sufficient to enable him to enroll as an under graduate at Trinity College but having to earn a living at the same tim e and coping too with those incessant demands for money made his undergra duate existence pretty miserable. He had nothing left to pay for clothin g and books and in one letter to his brother he said "often a penny cak e from the bakers on the corner of King Street and Grafton Street is my s ole sustenance for the day". On his 21st birthday he had to run from College without a degree to avoi d imprisonment for debt. He managed to dodge the army of process-server s pursuing him with writs, both for his own debts and his father's, and t o get to London, where, after a time, he found employment as a journalist . He intended to seek admission to the Bar but had no money to pay the fe es and it was only by 1790 that he had saved enough to become a student a t Lincoln's Inn. By 1790, however, the French Revolution was well under w ay. The Bastille had fallen six months before and there was a flow of émi grés into London with tales so extraordinary that Caesar's employers fel t that the time had come to have their own correspondent in Paris, and th at was the end of Caesar's law studies. As a Wexford man he spoke fluen t French - those from the coastal regions all did to facilitate their dea lings with the French smugglers who brought them their supplies of wines , brandy and silks. His friend the Rev. Z. Cornick, who had been at Trini ty with him, accompanied him to Dover and arranged to send money to him a s required, and did not see him again for 25 years. On the day of his ret urn to England he was driving from Dover to London when he 2 CONC overtoo k a horseman. Recognition was immediate and mutual - it was Cormick ! From the moment Caesar set foot in France as a press-reporter his life wa s in danger from the Guillotine as a spy. It was still in danger four yea rs later when on the death of his father his status changed from that o f a working journalist to a great landed proprietor and still in 1806 whe n with his return to Parliament he became a member of the British legisla ture, a hostage in Napoleon's hands. During the whole of his 20 years i n France he was under constant surveillance both by the French secret ser vice and the British whose secret agents had been informed that he wa s a secret emissary of the United Irishmen sent to France to 2 CONC organ ise an invasion during the coming rebellion reported accordingly. In th e Public Records Office there is a letter dated June 1793 from the Iris h Chief Secretary to the Secretary of State in London which say s " I have received an account that a Mr. Colclough of Wexford is now in Pa ris, which he is to leave immediately for this country coming by way of G eneva and London and that he is likely to have papers from Lord Edward Fi tzgerald and probably Thomas Paine. " Caesar was in a prison cell at the time and had never met either Tom Pain e or Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Most of the British residents in Paris had s igned an address to the National Convention congratulating the French Nat ion on its victories over the enemies of liberty, but this was a matter o f prudence rather than conviction, and Caesar was amongst the signatories . The only information which survives concerning his doings after leaving L ondon in 1790 is contained in a series of letters to John and, after John 's killing, to his mother, which were read in court during the various he arings of Rossborough v Boyse. In August of 1793 he wrote that he obtaine d a passport from the Committee of Public Safety but having reached St Ge rmain-en-Laye he was placed under arrest and was committed to the Chatea u where James II of England had died in 1701. Imprisoned with him were fi ve other English and Irish including Bingham. He next reported from Lausa nne that "after an imprisonment of nine months, an illness of four months , an indigence of seventeen months, and nine days of travelling through e very risk and inquietude" he had reached Switzerland. Concerning his esca pe he wrote "The Committee of Public Safety offered a reward for all inventions to sa ve manual labour in agriculture. I embraced this occasion and made a mode l of the old machine of Uncle Adam but could not go to present it as it w as death to go to Paris...I presented my machine at the Commons, demande d exception as a workman, succeeded in getting a passport for all the int erior of the Republic and came to Paris. I gave my model to the Commissio ner, got a receipt, and then found out a Swiss who had passports to sel l but only one of these answered my description and that was for a woma n of 21 years of age, with black eyes. As such I came and was not discove red until I got to the frontier where I found means to corrupt persons an d escape. With oxalic acid the sex and eyes were obliterated and made m e masculine and the eyes blue. The name Anne de Grax also but this was ag ain written in by me as men are called Anne in France. " When he escaped he left behind "a magazine of affairs all paid for the va lue of Ð250. An electrical machine made for the Dauphin, music and instru ments, tools, lathe, et cetera." The first letter announcing his escape w as written from Lausanne in June 1795, the further details being in a let ter of the 26th of August. In the earlier letter he said that he had rece ived a letter from John "...which would have caused a suspicion and broug ht me to the guillotine, but it was not examined and came to me open by t he penny post." ( and that was the year in which Rowland Hill was born! ) The next seven years he spent travelling about Europe but made Lausanne h is headquarters and spent most time in Germany and Switzerland. With th e Peace of Amiens in 1802 he returned to France to visit friends in Ardec he and the Vivarais mountains, but on the resumption of hostilities was a rrested and imprisoned in Vaux. He had discovered lead and antimony depos its in Ardeche and begun the exploitation of these and was also developin g the use of coal amongst the inhabitants. The people of Ardeche petition ed so strongly for his release that he was granted parole and remained a t large until 1806 when, John having secured his return to Parliament wit hout his knowledge or approval, his parole was withdrawn and he was agai n imprisoned, remaining in close confinement for the next eight years unt il Napoleon's departure for Elba. Chapter VIII Home Country House Tours Some notes on The Grogan Family of Johnstown Castle . Mary Reynolds, married John Grogan (1653-1720), in the 1682. Their son, L arry was born in 1701, the fourth son and sixth child of John Grogan th e first of his line at Johnstown, by his second wife. The piper, who is l ikely to have been the Laurence Grogan who was admitted attorney of the C ourt of Exchequer in Dublin in May 1726, also died young, in Barbados, ac cording to family tradition: the will he drew up in May 1728 was proved i n the diocese of Ferns in March 1729 . Larry's grandfather Cornelius, a merchant in Wexford town in Cromwellia n times, had married a Mary MacDonnell, a relation of the earl of Antrim' s. (Randal MacDonnell (1609-83), 2nd earl and 1st marquis of Antrim, live d in Wexford town during the 1640s, which was the base for his privateeri ng operations.) But the Grogans apparently also acquired a Cromwellian co nnection. Though Larry's father, John, came into the Johnstown Castle est ate through marriage with his first wife, Mary Reynolds, in 1682, the for ename 'Overstreet' in several generations of their descendants 2 CONC sug gests that the family was related to the Colonel Overstreet to whom Johns town had been granted under the Cromwellian land settlement. John Reynold s , a Wexford Merchant, had rented and then somehow acquired Johnstown fr om the Overstreets. Cornelius Grogan, 1738-98, joined the United Irishmen in a revolt agains t the British Crown. He was the eldest son of John Grogan of Johnstown Ca stle, Wexford, and his wife Catherine, dau. of Maj. Andrew Knox of Rathma ckee. John was a member of the Irish Parliament, Cornelius was High Sheri ff of Wexford from 1783-90. Cornelius, unmarried of at least 5 siblings was executed in 1798. 2 CON T The castle was confiscated in 1798, but his brother John Knox Grogan ( b July 1736), who was wounded in the rebellion of 1798, was granted the c astle in 1810. He had married Anne Coote (Dau of Chidley Coote of Ash Hil l) Oct 26 1785 Their daughter Anne having been born Oct 24 1785 (who m Jo hn Greene of Greenville, Co Kilkenny and had 2 children John b 1807 & Ann e b 1810). In Jan 1803 he married Elizabeth Fitzgerald in Laois. They ha d 3 sons, John Knox Grogan, b 1803, Hamilton Knox Grogan b 1807 & Georg e Gilbert Grogan b 1809. Hamilton Knox Morgan Grogan married Sophia Mari a Rowe (b 1805) (who M secondly Thomas Esmonde and d 1867). His daughter , Jane Colclough Grogan Morgan (b 1834), married George Arthur Hastings F orbes, 7th Earl Granard in June 1854, and she died in January 1872 . http://members.fortunecity.com/chtii/colclough/cap7.htm