1916
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O’Dwyer wrote another letter to O’Riordan, on 18 May:
There is hardly a second opinion in Ireland as to the savagery with which the govt has been acting. But it will do good. The country was being hypnotised by the politicians, but it is being revived these days. Imagine, Sir J.G. Maxwell had the impudence to write to me asking me, in rather peremptory terms, to remove the Revs Mick Hayes and Thos Wall, as being a serous danger to the peace of the realm. I told him to specify his charges against them, and the evidence which he had to support them, and then I would investigate the matter. He then wrote more civilly that he thought I could deal with the case by disciplinary methods. I don’t think he will forget the answer which I sent him yesterday.87
(Maxwell’s first letter had been sent to O’Dwyer on 6 May, and requested that he discipline the two named priests for their part in radical nationalist politics).
O’Dwyer’s blistering reply to Maxwell was delayed by the censor but was published on 27 May in the Cork Examiner, and in the Dublin Evening Mail on 30 May. The bishop referred to Maxwell’s appeal for help ‘in the furtherance of your work as military dictator of Ireland’. He stated, however: ‘The events of the past few weeks would make it impossible for me to have any part in proceedings which I regarded as wantonly cruel and oppressive.’ O’Dwyer referred to Maxwell’s part in the Jameson raid, describing those who took part as ‘buccaneering invaders’ who were deserving of the ‘supreme punishment’. Turning to those who took part in the Rising, he continued:
You took care that no plea for mercy should interpose on behalf of the young fellows who surrendered to you in Dublin. The first information which we got of their fate was the announcement that they had been shot in cold blood. Personally I regard your action with horror, and I believe that it has outraged the conscience of the country. Then the deporting by hundreds and even thousands of poor fellows without a trial of any kind seems to me an abuse of power as famous as it is arbitrary, and altogether your regime has been one of the worst and the blackest chapters in the history of the misgovernment of this country.88
This was a strong statement from the seventy four year old prelate, who forwarded his reply to Maxwell to Riordan on 31 May.89
The bishop was in fine form when he responded in early June to a resolution of support received from the Limerick board of guardians:
It would be a sorry day for the church in Ireland if her bishops took their orders from agents of the British government. As to the poor fellows who have given their lives for Ireland, no one will venture to question the purity and nobility of their motives or the splendour of their courage. But many blame them for attempting a hopeless enterprise. Yet we cannot help noticing that since Easter Monday home rule has come with a bound into the sphere of practical politics.90
Fr P.J. Roughneen, on holiday in Dublin from his parish in England, wrote to O’Riordan on 9 June, describing the final moments of the leaders of the Rising: ‘Major MacBride refused to be blind-folded, saying: “I have looked down your gun-barrels all my life”, a rosary beads hung from his hands. Pearse’s last words were that Connolly should die in peace with the church; his prayer was efficacious and Connolly died well.’91 Thus, the new Catholic image of the leaders of the 1916 Rising was already beginning to take shape at a popular level. Fr Roughneen also spoke very positively of the bishop of Limerick: ‘Dr O’Dwyer of Limerick is the hero of the day; rumour has it that his opponent was one of the Jameson raiders, sentenced to death and afterwards reprieved.’92
O’Dwyer was enjoying his notoriety. Fr J.J. Ryan wrote to O’Riordan on 23 June:
I was in Limerick Monday and called on the bishop. I never saw him look better – he all energy ‘agin the government’. We are passing through troublous times here at home … There is no leader in church or state as in the Land League days (‘when we were boys’). The nation is in a dream and asleeping. The government were rudely aroused from lethargy in the afternoon of Easter Monday and both of them have been doing many foolish things since … How will the poor country emerge from the present chaos is the question.93
Meanwhile, Eoin MacNeill had to face court martial. Unknown to him a number of advocates lobbied against his being executed. John Dillon and John Redmond both interceded on his behalf, as they also did on behalf of other leaders.94 But he faced a court martial and a possible death sentence. He sought to enlist the services of the Dublin solicitor John O’Connell, ‘a man of independent position and of high standing in his profession’. But MacNeill wrote that ‘he was afraid to defend me and positively refused to take up my case…. His conduct would be hard to explain in the history of the legal profession in Ireland.’95 MacNeill found an alternative. Maxwell ruled that he would be tried before a general court martial and not a field general court martial. The former allowed him to have his own counsel, James Chambers KC. Fr Michael Curran was one of the defence witnesses called on his behalf. On 24 May MacNeill was given penal servitude for life. On 31 May, on his way to jail in England, he wrote to his wife Taddie:
We are all in good form and in excellent spirits. We said the rosary last night in Irish…. What I told you about Éamonn Kent fainting is untrue. He did not faint but went to death in full self-possession, RIP. I pray for them all every night. Jas. Connolly died in the true faith. We have reached Taunton. My cash is done, but a fellow-prisoner is standing me an orange.96
On 6 June 1916 Archbishop Walsh left for respite care in Co. Wick-low, where he remained until 6 September. In his absence Fr Bowden, administrator of the pro-cathedral, took over his duties as chairman of the National Aid Fund. The archbishop kept himself well informed of political developments, and the shifting pattern of public opinion. On 29 June, for example, he wrote a public letter announcing that he was sending on £1,000 of the amount subscribed in America ‘in aid of the sufferings from recent troubles in Dublin’.97
In Rome O’Riordan and Hagan were sufficiently concerned about the drift of events in Ireland to fear a possible British-inspired statement being issued from the Holy See. There was evidence that the British had stepped up their efforts to secure such a démarche. On 16 June the rector wrote to the cardinal secretary of state, Pietro Gasparri:
Being the rector of an ecclesiastical college I am generally detached from the day to day politics and also other like questions. I confirm however that some representation has been made, and is to be made, to the Holy See on the part of the British government regarding the revolution in Ireland and in particular regarding the attitude of some members of the clergy in this area. I don’t know if this is true. But I feel compelled to turn to you to make you aware that I am able to give you information in this regard in the form of official documents, private letters coming from reliable sources in Ireland. And I will also refer to the personal consequences for the revolutionaries (even though their acts had failed). And from the agents of the military regime of the government who punished them and afterwards, and even up to this moment, the current popular sentiment found among all classes – from this bloody episode an attitude emerges that is completely contrary to what can be traced in newspapers and politicians. I can say this with certainty, that all classes in Ireland resent profoundly the conduct of the agents of government; and amongst whom are Protestants and also a lot of people who did not have sympathy for the rebellion and not even for the ideal of the revolutionaries. The Irish in England from what I can gather and referring to the most popular Catholic newspaper there, the Catholic Times, participate in same feeling … I also heard from trustworthy sources that there is more anger at what has happened in America than in Ireland. Things being as they are, I feel an obligation to put myself at your disposal, your eminence, in order to help you in any way I can in these circumstances.98
Both Hagan and O’Riordan, well supplied with cuttings from home, set about documenting the events of the Rising from a Catholic perspective. There the matter rested until early September when the fruits of their combined labours were ready for present
ation to the Holy See.
Episcopal opinion had been very significantly radicalised, as may be seen by the statement of Cardinal Michael Logue to the Maynooth Union (a gathering of priests) on 22 June, when he referred to ‘late lamentable occurrences’. Perhaps a little naïvely, he believed that ‘not one in five hundred of their [Irish Volunteers] members ever foresaw what any inner body was driving at – the organisation of a rebellion.’ He rejected the false accusations against the clergy put forward by police at the official inquiry, that the Rising was ‘to some extent patronised by the younger clergy’. The cardinal believed that to be ‘a calumny’ on them. He did not think that there was any sympathy amongst the priests as a general body. Such allegations were gathered up by the police from suspicions that had been ‘fished up by their subordinates in the different parts of the country, and these suspicions are founded on the most futile and the most absurd grounds’.99 The usually mild Logue also rejected similar accusations against teachers, and went on to accuse the British authorities of mis-managing the affair. The public authorities had muddled things, he said, adding:
No person would find fault with them for defending the rights of the state or for punishing moderately and within the laws of humanity those who violated the laws of the state; but they sent emissaries through the whole country and picked up every man who belonged to the Irish Volunteers, although it was the firm conviction that the great body of Volunteers knew nothing about it. They picked all these men up as suspects, took them away from their businesses, their families and their friends, and sent them away to England, either to jails or concentration camps. That was the greatest act of folly any government could have been guilty of. They should have let the matter die out like a bad dream – and it was a dream – so painful that it was not likely to be repeated, without going to these extreme measures.100
C.S. (Todd) Andrews, a founder member of Fianna Fáil and senior civil servant, was fifteen years old at the time of the Rising. Living at 42 Summerhill, he was very close to the fighting in O’Connell Street, Dublin. A lifelong republican and political activist, he recalled the following in the first volume of his memoirs, published in 1979:
The first open manifestation of the deep public feeling aroused by the executions was at the month’s mind for the dead leaders. A month’s mind is the mass celebrated for the soul of a relative or friend a month after his death. It was the first opportunity that sympathisers of the rebels had to come out in the open. I went with my father to the first of the month’s minds, which was for the brothers Pearse, at Rathfarnham. We arrived well in time for mass but could not get into the church and the forecourt was packed right out to the road. I was surprised to see so many well dressed and obviously well-to-do people present. The Volunteers I knew were shop assistants, small clerks, labourers or tradesmen. I did not realise that there was, quite apart from the effect of the rebellion and the executions on public opinion, a sizeable section of Irish nationalists, disillusioned with Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary party, who were anxious to find an alternative outlet for their beliefs. In the sub-conscious of every nationalist, there was a sympathetic response to rebellion.101
The June issue of the Catholic Bulletin reflected the change of public mood. It had its editorial censored. As a consequence the pages were left blank with ‘Dublin – May 1916’ written on the final page.102 The section, ‘Matters of the Moment’ was also left blank, and the diary of current events censored. John Hagan, the Roman correspondent for the Bulletin, caustically began his July ‘Letter from Rome’: ‘Lest the censor, in his anxiety that nothing should come between his efforts to found a new reign of peace, harmony, justice, honour, fair-play, truth and charitableness in Ireland,’ might object if he wrote on matters of the moment or even the last century, he would confine himself to a tour of Rome in the footsteps of the earls of Tyrone.103 But between July and the end of the year the magazine ran a series of articles profiling the executed leaders and men of the Rising. The final edition for 1916 carried profiles of the widows and families of those leaders. The event was presented as being very much a Catholic and/ or Christian rebellion. The issue was bold and provocative, and it proved to be a very popular number.
In his diary entry for 22 July Curran recorded details of a meeting with a former internee, Michael Lennon of Longford Terrace, Dublin. He mentioned ‘the barbarous treatment of the prisoners in Kilmainham. He himself was half-strangled by soldiers with his own necktie.’ Local feeling had been incensed by such experiences. There was also a very negative reaction to General Maxwell’s report, including his supplementary report of 26 May, which was published on 22 July. Curran described the supplementary report as ‘plainly a political apology for the executions, etc’. It was a ‘scandalous and dishonourable calumny on the Volunteers’ fighting conduct, accusing them of murder of police, looting, etc’. He also noted that he had attended a meeting in the Phoenix Park against partition, which had attracted a ‘crowd of four or five thousand’.
Curran captures the atmosphere of those days in two letters, sent to the rector and vice rector of the Irish College. Curran wrote to O’Riordan on 29 July:
We are all in a great ferment of mind in this country, though there is no probability of another rising, unless things go to the dogs altogether. There are considerable stores of arms in many districts; there is any amount of young hot blood ready to rise and become martyrs. The country element is largely untrained, but we think ourselves past masters in rifle work and apparently trust to Germans or Americans or some deus ex machina for artillery and other luxuries and refinements of warfare. The spirit is certainly willing, but the materials I fear are sadly weak. I need not tell you how bitter feeling is against the party over the attempted partition of Ulster. The north west is ferocious at the attempt of Devlin and co. to hook them in with the selfish motive of bettering their own position in the Northern Pale. The party would not secure twenty seats in Ireland at present. They know that Devlin himself confessed it in private and that is why that one of the essential conditions always is that the existing MPs are to be the members of the new body, and therefore we had all the furore over the ‘diminished representation’. Diminished representation anywhere means an election and that means the kicking out of the partitioners. Here in Dublin we are torn between denunciation of the party and an agitation to secure a public inquiry into the military murders. These are more numerous, more cold-blooded and more revolting than even well informed people ever suspected. It is only within the last fortnight or so that all the evidence has been more or less centralised. If the govt still hold out against an inquiry, it is possible that a private commission may be held. As it is, sworn depositions are already made out. The wholesale military looting has now taken a very subordinate place.104
He told O’Riordan that the
American Representatives of Cardinal Farley’s Irish Relief Fund have come over and have gone about everywhere gathering information and learning the extent and nature of the problem before the relief committees. Two came a fortnight ago. Thomas Hughes Kelly, the treasurer, and another arrived at Liverpool about Wed. last, but were forbidden to land and return to the States today with one of the men who arrived here a fortnight ago. They will raise Cain in America. These feelings run up to boiling point. These Americans say that the Americans won’t have war. They expect, and I think welcome, the prospect that Hughes will be elected. They say he is very upright and a real, and not a pretended, neutral. They don’t expect war in Mexico. But of course you know everything from the American College. I wonder could you get me from some American in Rome ‘cuttings’ of the Irish-American demonstrations.105
On 30 July 1916 Curran wrote to Hagan:
Public feeling in Dublin is getting more and more fierce. Everything seems calculated to embitter it. Home rule, partition and above all the refusal of the govt to enquire into and punish those guilty of the military murders. These are by no means confined to King’s street. Half of the deported are already
back and it looks as if Frongoch will be broken up. They are being sent back in fifties to avoid demonstrations. Apparently a few hundreds will be retained in England – partly as hostages perhaps, but more particularly to prevent the rise of literary activity of an inconvenient kind. It is very remarkable to note the releases and the detained. The latter are all the literary, journalistic and student characters, even though many of them had nothing at all to do with the Rising and some were actually against it. These men are being sent to Reading prison – also the trades leaders – include Griffith, Darrell Figgis (as innocent as the king) Seán O’Kelly etc and a few university students. The real active fighters, including captains etc., have been sent home but the unfortunate quill-drivers and BAs are kept. There is a family [name blotted out and M. J. C. written over it to indicate erasure made by Curran and not the censor] which had four boys in the Rising. One was a terror altogether, in the middle of the gun-running and gun-buying from soldiers. He and two of his brothers released but a fourth – a quiet student fellow studying for his degree – is detained … They only want to be called out again. I never saw such spirit. Imagine trying to conscript these chaps!106