Part 49 (1/2)
”I am not surprised at your warmth, Mr. O'Carroll; but, unfortunately, your case is not a solitary one. There are thousands of men in Ireland who have suffered for the deeds of their fathers. However, I shall understand the case better when I have read your statement.”
It was evident to Gerald that the lord chief justice, who had taken a leading part in the prosecution and punishment of persons known to be favourable to the Jacobite cause, was not altogether pleased with Lord G.o.dolphin's letter.
”A strange affair,” he said. ”A strange and, as it appears to me, an unfortunate business.
”However, sir,” he went on, with a changed tone; ”I shall certainly do my best to see justice done, in accordance with his lords.h.i.+p's request. I will read carefully through this statement of your claim, and, after considering it, place it in the hands of the crown lawyers.
”But it seems to me that your own position here is a strange one, and that you yourself are liable to arrest, as a member of a family whose head was one of the late king's strongest adherents.”
”My own position, sir, is regulated by this doc.u.ment, bearing the signature of the queen and her chief minister;” and he laid the official paper before c.o.x.
”That certainly settles that question,” the latter said, after perusing it. ”Of course I shall, for my own satisfaction, read your statement; but I do not wish to see any doc.u.ments or proofs you may possess in the matter. These you must, of course, lay before your counsel. I think I can't do better than give you a letter to Mr. Counsellor Fergusson, with whom you can go into all particulars, and who will advise you as to the course that you had best take.”
Mr. Fergusson, although one of the crown lawyers, enjoyed a wide reputation, even among the Jacobite party, for the moderation and the fairness with which he conducted the crown cases placed in his hands. He had less employment than his colleagues, for only cases in which the evidence of acts of hostility to the crown were indisputable were committed to him, it having been found that he was unwilling to be a party to calling doubtful witnesses, or to using the means that were, in the majority of cases, employed to obtain convictions.
The lord chief justice's letter to him was as follows:
Dear Mr. Counsellor Fergusson:
I have been requested, by Lord G.o.dolphin, to place the case of the bearer of this letter in good hands, and cannot better carry out his request than by asking you to act in the matter. Lord G.o.dolphin has expressed himself most strongly as to the justness of his claim. The bearer's father was, he states, James O'Carroll, a noted rebel who was killed at the siege of Limerick. This alone would, it might have been thought, have proved a bar to any action on his part against the present possessor of the property; but he is the bearer of a doc.u.ment, signed by the queen herself, reinstating him in all rights he may possess, notwithstanding the actions of his father or of himself. It is not for me to make any comment upon the royal doc.u.ment, though I may say that I fear it may give rise to other suits, and alarm many loyal subjects who have become possessed of confiscated estates. However, we must hope that this will not be so, as it is expressly stated that, in this instance, the pardon and restoration of rights are given in consideration of services rendered by this young gentleman to Lord G.o.dolphin himself, and to the Earl of Galway. What the nature of these services may have been does not concern me.
Gerald carried this letter to the address indicated, and on saying that he was the bearer of a letter from the lord chief justice, he was at once shown into the counsellor's room. The latter, a man of some fifty-five years old, with features that told of his Scottish extraction, with keen eyes and a kindly face, took the letter which Gerald presented to him, and begged him to be seated while he read it. As he glanced through it, a look of surprise came across his face, and he read the letter carefully, and then looked at Gerald keenly.
”You are fortunate in having such good friends, Mr. O'Carroll,” he said. ”Before I go into the case, will you let me know something about yourself? You are, I take it, some twenty years of age?”
”I am but a few months past nineteen.”
”By your figure, I should have put you as three years older; by your face, two years. You must have been fortunate, indeed, to have gained the protection both of Lord G.o.dolphin and the Earl of Galway. No less than this would have sufficed to gain for you this rescript of Her Majesty.
”And now, sir, please to give me an outline of your case, as to the nature of which I am, at present, entirely ignorant.”
”I have put it down in writing, sir,” Gerald said, handing him the third copy of his statement.
”It will take me some time to read this, Mr. O'Carroll, and I would rather do so alone, and ask you any question that may occur to me afterwards. Will you therefore call upon me again, in an hour's time?”
Upon Gerald's return, the counsellor said:
”It is a strange story, Mr. O'Carroll, and a very disgraceful one.
You allude, I see, to testimonies of Irish officers in the French service as to your likeness to the late Mr. James O'Carroll. Will you please let me see them?”
”Here they are, sir, together with a sworn statement by my nurse.”
The lawyer read the doc.u.ments through carefully.
”The testimony of the Duke of Berwick, and of the other honourable and well-known Irish gentlemen, as to the striking likeness between yourself and Mr. James O'Carroll, cannot but carry immense weight in the minds of all unprejudiced persons. They prove too, conclusively, that James O'Carroll left an infant boy behind him, and the statement of the nurse goes a long way to prove you are that son; and I think that this is substantiated by the conduct of John O'Carroll; first in receiving you and undertaking your care; secondly, in the neglect, and I should almost say the dislike, he manifested towards the child he had sheltered; and thirdly, in the extraordinary step that he, a professedly loyal subject of Her Majesty, took in sending you off to enlist in the brigade composed of the devoted adherents of the son of James the Second.
”No doubt, at any rate, can arise that you are the child brought by this Mrs. Rooney to Kilkargan. That can be proved beyond all question; and the fact that your nurse was sent off without having any conversation save with John O'Carroll himself, would show how anxious he was that no one but himself should know her errand.
”I must say that you have shown great ac.u.men in mustering evidence, of all kinds, that would bear upon the question. I say frankly that, without this royal rescript, and the influence of these two n.o.blemen, your chance, as James O'Carroll's son, of wresting your patrimony from the hands of your uncle would be small indeed. Politics have, much more than facts, to do with decisions here; but with such powerful credentials, and with the chief minister of England interfering on your behalf, I think that there is no great doubt that you will secure a judgment in your favour. When the facts are known, the feeling of the greater portion of the population will run strongly with you, and against this unnatural uncle of yours.”