RICHARD CHADWICK (1800-1827), THE BRIDGE AND THE GRACE-MARA VENDETTA

My 4x great uncle Richard Chadwick was murdered in circumstances remarkably similar to those surrounding the death of his cousins Austin Cooper and Francis Wayland twelve years later. Do such things run in families? In a sense yes – all three men were killed in their inherited roles as members of the hated ruling protestant class in Ireland.

Richard worked for his uncle Billy Sadleir as a land agent for the township of Rathcannon in Tipperary (Rathkennan on some of today’s maps), west of Holycross. Billy was a major landowner in the county and a leading Orangeman in Tipperary town, and Richard was according to one account “firm” in his dealings with Billy’s tenants.

Rathcannon, near Holycross, Co Tipperary

scene of rebellious acts in 1827 and 1848 which led directly to at least two murders,  eight hangings, and eight transportations

For “firm” read “ruthless.” Rents at that time were paid in the form of tithes to the protestant Church of Ireland, something which stuck in the craw of Catholic tenants. The Catholic Association was formed in 1823 to agitate for change, and its members did so through non-payment of rent. In 1827, two years into the job, Richard met such tactics by simply evicting tenants; they in turn responded by setting fire to houses and haybarns.

Richard was also the local magistrate; and his next move in the so-called Tithe War was to arrange for the building of a police barrack at Rathcannon. If he hoped that this would deter the Association’s activities or help to monitor them, he had badly misjudged the mood (just as Francis Massy, another cousin did, eleven years later). At noon on 30^th June 1827 he oversaw the cutting of the first sod for the new building. On his way from the site to Holycross with his building foreman Philip Mara, his road was blocked by two gunmen. One ordered him to “give yourself up, you rascal,” and the other, favouring actions over words, shot him twice at close range.

“Oh Mara, I’m shot, I am killed,” Richard cried, and died. As Mara ran off, he saw the second gunman searching Chadwick’s clothing, from which he stole promissory money notes and Richard’s gun. He used this to fire a third shot into the lifeless head of his victim.

Paddy Grace was hung on a portable gallows at the site of his crime, the last man in Ireland to be so executed

Mara identified the gunman as Paddy Grace, a popular local activist already known to the authorities as a troublemaker. When Grace was arrested at dawn the following morning, and the stolen notes were found in his possession, his fate was sealed. He was tried and convicted in Clonmel on 17^th August before a jury of Orangemen and the sentence of death by hanging was carried out with great haste only three days later.

Of course the gunmen were not acting in isolation. Other men walking with Richard Chadwick as he left the site withdrew before the shooting, leaving him alone with Philip Mara; and after it, no one came running from either Rathcannon or the next village Bohernacrusha, although both were well within earshot. It was as if they all knew what had just happened. Mara himself, as Chadwick’s foreman, may have tipped the assassins off about his boss’s movements, then turned informer on Grace when he realised that he would come under suspicion.

Piery Grace, who had held his dead brother in his arms at the gallows, began to gather a gang of heavyweights to take revenge on Mara (the key witness to Paddy’s act, and now under protective custody) by killing his three brothers. They murdered one, Daniel Mara, in a house at Bohernacrusha, on 1^st October 1827; the other two only escaped the vendetta when the authorities spirited them out of the country for their own good. The gang of twelve was eventually caught: six, including Piery, were hanged, and six more transported to Australia.

A cartographical footnote to the story:

The sentencing of Thomas Meagher, Terence McManus and Patrick O’Donohue after the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 – death was commuted to life transportation

Twenty years later, when the Dublin-Cork line of the Great Southern and Western Railway was laid through the area, a bridge over it was built on the road (the modern R661) and at the very place where my 4x great uncle was shot. A year later, messrs Meagher, Leyne and O’Donohue, three leaders of another secret society, Young Ireland, were arrested on the bridge after a failed uprising. Meagher and O’Donohue were transported in 1849; and Leyne was eventually hung in 1854. The crossing is known to this day, perhaps surprisingly, not as Grace’s, Meagher’s, Leyne’s or O’Donohue’s but as Chadwick’s Bridge.

WILLIAM GEORGE COOPER (1721-1769) AND THE PRICE OF PORTER

I’ve written before about Killenure Castle, my ancestral home. Sadly for me (and the rest of the Cooper diaspora) it had to be sold out of the family in 1963, after 217 years of occupation.

The Coopers had already been in Ireland for more than 100 years when, in 1746, my 5x great grandfather William George Cooper leased Killenure in Co Tipperary from the Coppinger family who were using it as a hunting lodge. Before then the Cooper family homes had been the houses of Beamore in Co Meath and Butterhill in Co Wicklow.

William George Cooper (1721-1769)

William’s relocation to a new county was prompted, as all of mine have ever been, by a new job. In 1745 he was appointed to the post of Diocesan Registrar by the new Church of Ireland Archbishop of Cashel, Arthur Price (who himself had only been appointed the previous year). The Registry is the administrative office of any Diocese, the repository of all church papers including title deeds and other Episcopal records.

Cashel is an ancient Christian centre. Very briefly, Ireland was originally divided north and south between the archbishoprics of Armagh and Cashel, jurisdictions established in the year 1111. Henry VIII extended his 1534 Protestant Reformation of the Church of England to Ireland in 1541. The upshot was, from 1567, parallel Protestant and Roman Catholic archbishoprics. The Irish ruling class with its English roots were known as the Protestant Ascendancy and the Anglican Church of Ireland was the official church of state (despite the fact that the majority of the Irish population remained resolutely Catholic).

Cashel’s Anglican Cathedral , Co Tipperary

commissioned by Archbishop Price in 1749 
to replace the ancient cathedral on Cashel Rock 
(which he gutted and unroofed to prevent its re-use)

The Diocesan Registrar played a vital part the financial well-being of the Church of Ireland. Records were important because the C of I was funded in large part by tithes, proportions of income paid by all households regardless of faith – an arrangement unsurprisingly unpopular with the Catholic majority, as a future Cooper and his cousin found out to their cost. William Cooper’s brother John was a Chief Clerk in the Dublin Treasury, and perhaps William too acquired skills there which made him a suitable candidate for the Cashel post. His membership of the Protestant Ascendancy was probably a more crucial factor.

William’s role at Cashel moved him very quickly to the heart of local society. The same year that he acquired Killenure he retired from the Registry to concentrate on his new estate. A year later, in 1747, he married Jane Wayland, my 5x great grandmonther, whose father Henry owned the neighbouring estate of Kilmore to the south of William’s (having, according to the family historian Richard Austin-Cooper, also recently moved to the area with Archbishop Price). The Killenure Coopers had arrived.

Killenure Castle, Co Tipperary

my 5x great grandparents’ home, former stronghold of the O’Dwyer Clan until Oliver Cromwell dispossessed them of it in the 1650s

Archbishop Price remained in office until his death in 1752. He was the son of the vicar of Kildrought near Dublin, and before he took holy orders Arthur Price ran the town’s brewery. His production manager there was a certain Richard Guinness, and the two men became great friends and business partners, to the extent that Guinness may even have named his son after Price, who became the boy’s godfather.

When the archbishop died, he left £100 to Richard’s son, whose name was Arthur Guinness, to fund the expansion of the brewery which Arthur was by now running with his brother. Arthur soon struck out on his own and in 1759 bought a small brewery at St James’s Gate in Dublin. The rest is history.

Arthur Guinness (1724-1803)

AUSTIN COOPER (1802-1838), THE TITHE WAR AND THE BACK-TO-BACK TRAP

This is No.4 in my infinite and occasional series of Austin Coopers. It could also form part of a Tall Tales From The Trees mini-series on assassination. Elsewhere in this blog I’ve written about John and William Gurney, who were both caught up in attempts on the lives of British Prime Ministers. This Austin however (my great great grandmother’s brother) was himself murdered. By mistake, so the story goes, although having read round it a little, I’m not convinced.

A modern-day back-to-back trap

(this one from Denver, CO)

Austin, a Protestant bishop, was on his way to Tipperary Fair in a back-to-back trap (one in which two passengers faced forward and two backwards). His cousin and neighbour Francis Wayland sat beside him and his brother Samuel held the reins. All three were armed, as well they might be. They were all powerful landowners in the area, part of the protestant settler class who had ruled over the native population, in some cases for hundreds of years but in few cases by popular acclaim.

Since 1823, when Daniel O’Connell had formed the Catholic Association to campaign for Catholic electoral rights, unrest had become more active and deliberate. Rents at the time were in the form of tithes to the Protestant Church, a system which the Catholic peasants naturally resented and against which they fought the so-called Tithe War, a campaign of non-payment and violent protest. The Protestant powers responded by simply evicting unruly tenants. With no further redress within the law, frustrated Catholics turned to more direct ways of making their grievances heard.

"When a tenant is removed," said the Devon Commissioners, describing Tipperary in 1845, "he is looked upon as an injured man, and the decree too often goes out for vengeance upon the landlord or the agent, and upon the man who succeeds to the farm; and at times a large numerical proportion of the neighbourhood look with indifference upon the most atrocious acts of violence, and by screening the criminal, abet and encourage the crime. Murders are perpetrated at noon-day on a public highway; and whilst the assassin coolly retires, the people look on, and evince no horror at the bloody deed."

Withholding tithes from a Protestant minister

(19^th century cartoon)

On the 5th April, 1838, somewhere between Ballinaclough and Greenane on the back road from Golden to Tipperary, the trap was ambushed. Reports vary, but between three and eight men with blackened faces leapt out from concealment below the roadside and opened fire. Austin was killed immediately, and Wayland died later from a fatal bullet wound in his back. Samuel returned fire, fatally wounding one of the attackers, and made his escape.

When I visited Austin Cooper’s old mansion about ten years ago, the owners (no longer Coopers) told me that he had been shot by mistake as he stood up in the trap to take off his coat. But Wayland’s father George had in April 1837 put out a farmer called Thomas Ryan, and Francis himself had evicted a William Ryan for being £15 in arrears on a rent of £45. Cooper too had recently evicted several tenants and, even if Wayland was the intended target, I don’t suppose the assassins much regretted the “mistake” of catching Cooper in the crossfire.

It was during the harsh winter of early 1838, when those evicted were suffering cruelly, that various members of the Ryan family hatched the plot to “meet” Wayland. Other men were involved, including Cornelius Hickey and William Walsh, two local carpenters. During the manhunt which followed the assassination, at least three men were arrested: Hickey, Walsh and another man who died during custody. In the run up to the trial, George Wayland (and perhaps Sam Cooper too) received death threats by post, and shots were fired at his house in an attempt to get him to drop the charges and release the suspects.

The Main Guard, Clonmel’s courthouse

On 17^th January 1839 Hickey and Walsh were convicted of the murders by a special jury and they were hanged outside Clonmel Prison twenty days later on Wednesday, February 6th. A plaque today marks the spot where the gallows stood, and commemorates the “many notable patriots” imprisoned there. In 1838, the year of their crime, tithes were abolished and a system of fixed rents introduced.

Some of the information in this article comes from Butterhill and Beyond, a Cooper family history by another Austin Cooper, Richard Austin-Cooper.