No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2016
The electoral debacle of 1874 removed only the least important aspect of Irish liberalism. The real strength of the liberal approach to Irish government continued to lie in the much less accessible, but much more important, official world of Dublin Castle which, in the early 1880s, was still confidently running Ireland as it thought best without too much reference to public opinion. The emergence of militant nationalism should not divert attention from the plain fact that the government of the country remained firmly in the hands of liberal-minded administrators, of whom very little is known. Dublin Castle, like Whitehall, guarded its secrets with care, the great scandal of 1884 marking the single departure from normal practice. The high value which the liberal establishment of 1880–85 placed on discretion is registered most forcibly through the lack of memoirs written by senior officials, whose competent management of affairs deserved a permanent literary memorial. No Boswell, or even Edward Hamilton (Downing Street's uncritical diarist at this time), came forward to describe the régime at work or at play. Unpublicised achievements are easily forgotten: and in this case the problem of penetrating a wall of silence is made more difficult by the absence of most of the appropriate archives. Apart from Spencer himself, only Thomas O'Hagan, the Irish lord chancellor (1880–81) and one of the least important figures in Forster's circle, seems to have preserved a substantial body of papers, though further discoveries may still be made.
1 The papers of Spencer's predecessor, Cowper, were clearly preserved until after his death, for a significant section of his correspondence as lord lieutenant is printed in the Memoir of Earl Cowper, K.G., by his wife (London, 1913). The actual documents may well have been subse quently destroyed.
2 This collection was recently deposited by the present Lord O'Hagan in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, where it is now being sorted.
3 See I.H.S., xvii, no. 68 (Sept. 1971), pp 521–48; xviii, no. 69 (Mar. 1972), pp 74–89.
4 ‘ The Irish journal of Florence Arnold-Forster, 1880–82 ’, ed. T. W. Moody and Richard Hawkins, is to be published by the Clarendon Press.
5 See Spencer to A. J. Mundella (copy), 25 Dec. 1885 (Spencer MSS).
6 Significantly, some of the most illuminating comments on his general character are to be found in Nethercote, H. O., The Pytchley hunt: past and present (London, 1888)Google Scholar. His determination that politics should not interfere with sport gave way on very rare occasions when outsiders tried to give him advice on the government of the country. On 18 March 1873 Howard Vincent, the tory home ruler, met the lord lieutenant while out hunting and ‘ was cut dead before all the field ’ ( Jeyes, S. H., The life of Sir Howard Vincent (London, 1912), p. 38 Google Scholar). Vincent's offence was that he had recently published a devolution scheme whose central feature was a single chamber national council with legislative powers over local matters.
7 Watson fulfilled his highest ambition in 1890 when he became president of the National Liberal Federation, continuing in that office until 1902. His numerous literary remains include a work on the Irish land laws (1881). He was made a privy councillor in 1906.
8 Corder, Percy, The life of Robert Spence Watson (London, 1914), p. 248Google Scholar.
9 Ibid.
10 Spencer touched briefly on his experiences in his first letter to Gladstone after the murders (cited below, p. 590, n. 11), but there is nothing from him relating to this period in the Glynne-Gladstone MSS where a more personal letter would probably have ended up. He clearly mentioned the subject in passing to Dublin Castle officials, for a brief and rather garbled reference to it appears in SirRobinson, H., Memories: wise and otherwise (London, 1923), p. 39 Google Scholar.
11 Corfe, Tom, The Phoenix Park murders: conflict, compromise and tragedy in Ireland, 1879–82 (London, 1968)Google Scholar.
1 The career of a nihilist (London, 1889), one of several works written in English by the exiled Russian revolutionary, Sergei Mikhailovich Kravchinski (1852–95), alias Sergius Stepniak, who had settled in London earlier in the 1880s. The discussion of his latest novel recorded above reflected the interests of the host, a president of the ‘ Friends of Russian Freedom ’, who was subsequently to write an introduction to the English translation of one of Stepniak's earlier books.
2 Thomas Henry Burke (1829–82), second son of a minor landed family in Co. Galway, and a Roman Catholic; entered government service in 1847, becoming private secretary to various officials; under-secretary for Ireland from May 1869 to his death; highly regarded in administrative circles but virtually unknown to the politicians and public; elder brother of a priest and great-nephew of Cardinal Wiseman.
3 This description of Burke is not clearly borne out by the surviving items of his official correspondence, which reveal little sensitivity to national feeling. However, one striking example of his interest in the land question, dating from 1880, has been brought to light by Mr Richard Hawkins in an article which is due to be published shortly in the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society. On the occasion in question Burke intervened (unsuccessfully) in a dispute on the Carraroe estate, Co. Galway, taking up the cause of the tenants with some vigour. We are grateful to Mr Hawkins for much valuable advice, both on this and on other points in the document.
4 Lord Frederick Charles Cavendish (1836–82) had been appointed chief secretary for Ireland three days earlier in London. For a summary of his career, see I.H.S., xvii, no. 68 (Sept. 1971), p. 536, n. 1.
5 At this point Watson opens inverted commas (which are never subsequently closed), indicating his intention of recalling Spencer's actual words as accurately as possible.
6 The term ‘ head of police ’ is ambiguous. It should probably be taken as referring to Col. G. E. Hillier, the retiring inspector-general of the R.I.C., though there are other possibilities. It was, moreover, quite unusual for high-ranking policemen to concern themselves with the release of political prisoners.
7 Spencer's view that political considerations determined the timing of releases under the 1881 coercion act disposes once and for all of the long, inconclusive wrangle started by Gladstone when he claimed that the liberals had allowed the law to take its course without political interference. On the details of the contro versy, see R. Hawkins, ‘ Gladstone, Forster and the release of Parnell, 1882–8’ in I.H.S., xvi, no. 64 (Sept. 1969), pp 417–45. Spencer eventually ordered the first releases of the new regime on 13 May 1882.
8 Miss Marianne Aline Alice Burke, only sister of the under-secretary, for whom she kept house. His murder left her in serious financial difficulties which were partially relieved by a government pension of £900 p.a. (Spencer to W E. Gladstone, 7 May 1882, B.M., Add. MS 44308, f. 24). In later years she delighted in abusing Gladstone, and claimed that her brother's correspondence with the G.O.M. snowed ‘ how he continually played us false ’ ( Chapman, J. K. (ed.), A political correspondence of the Gladstone era: the letters of Lady Sophia Palmer and Sir Arthur Gordon, 1884–1889 (Philadelphia, 1971), p. 32 Google Scholar). The Burke correspondence in question has never come to light.
9 James Carey (1845–83), betrayer of his fellow assassins: a bricklayer for eighteen years, subsequently becoming a prosperous building contractor and land-lord of slum property; leading Fenian, 1862–78; sometime treasurer of I.R.B.; reverted to an orthodox political career, autumn 1882, on election to Dublin city council; turned queen's evidence, 13 Feb. 1883; shot while en route to S. Africa, 29 July 1883.
10 The relative was Spencer's half-brother and eventual heir, Hon. C. R. Spencer, who in later years described the incident to his son, the present Earl Spencer. His valet had an even better view of the murders from an upper floor of the Lodge, but (like several others) failed to realise what was really happening. Lady Spencer had been left behind in England for her own safety.
11 ‘ They were killed about 10 or 16 yards apart. Mr Burke defended himself and his gloves were cut. He was stabbed in the face and neck and two other places, Freddy about the heart and in three other places. They both, the surgeon says, must have died almost instantaneously. Freddy's face I hear was as if he was asleep; poor Burke showed the agony of a struggle ’ (Spencer to Gladstone, 7 May 1882, B.M., Add. MS 44308, ff 217–24).
12 A house belonging to one of Spence Watson's neighbours in Gateshead.
13 Gf. T Gorfe, Phoenix Park murders, p. 197, where Spencer is said to have actually ‘ started out to see what had happened ’ Despite this and other discrepancies, there is no reason to doubt the essential accuracy of Spencer's account of his own movements.
14 Other politicians (e.g. W E. Forster and Herbert Gladstone) were equally convinced that the assassins’ plans had centred on Cavendish. There is now no obvious way of resolving this difference of opinion which is itself an historical fact of some importance.
15 The lady in question was T H. Burke's first cousin once removed, Mother Magdalene Kirwan, a Sister of Mercy. She visited Kilmainham jail mainly to see Joe Brady, who had struck the blow that killed her cousin. Davitt later rectified his unintentional mistake which occurred in evidence to the Parnell Commission on 31 Oct. 1889. See the Speech delivered by Michael Davitt in defence of the Land League (London, 1890), p. 352 (for the corrected version), and also pp 410–11 (where a full explanation of the source of the error is set out as an appendix). We are greatly indebted to Professor Moody for authoritative guidance on these points.
16 Timothy Kelly (1862–83), a coachbuilder by trade and the youngest of the assassins: arrested in Dublin, Jan. 1883 : convicted, 9 May 1883, after three trials: hanged in Kilmainham jail, exactly one month later, amid widespread public protests.
17 Morley treated YVatson with the consideration that an M.P was bound to show towards his leading constituent and party chairman. Morley's letters, on home rule and other matters, are among the most interesting items in the Watson MSS, and probably provide the most revealing source now available for establishing Morley's earthy and devious political attitudes.
18 I.e., at the time of the Phoenix Park murders.