1916 (44 page)

Archbishop Walsh, according to Curran, knew the MacNeill family ‘fairly well’ as an uncle, Dr Charles Macauley, had been a colleague of the archbishop when he was first a professor (1867–80) and then president of Maynooth (1880–5). Walsh first met the MacNeill boys while they were studying under their uncle as private pupils. In Curran’s words: ‘Highly as the archbishop valued Eoin’s work as an Irish scholar and historian and for his outstanding work for the language, he had no faith in his political judgment and regarded him as the least suitable man for revolutionary
leadership.’
Without being ‘openly critical nor in the least way cynical or sarcastic, he was disposed to smile at the scholar turned revolutionary’.
²⁶
These were views also held by the leadership of the IRB.

During the years 1914 to 1916, the archbishop’s health was very poor. He was often confined indoors or to his bed. In September 1915 he suffered a long and serious attack of eczema, which affected him for more than twelve months. That did not prevent him, however, from following events from his sick bed and from being ultra-critical of the Irish party leadership for, according to Curran, ‘their continued subservience to the Liberals and their deception of their country in respecting the Liberals as trustworthy champions of home rule and unfailing friends of Ireland’.
The party’s support for recruitment during the First World War, according to Curran, was supported only by ‘no more than two or three Irish bishops’, who were ‘faithful followers of the Irish Parliamentary Party’. Archbishop Walsh was not among them. He refused to allow recruitment posters to be placed on the railings of Catholic churches in Dublin, and went so far as to discountenance war hospital and Red Cross collections.
²⁷

On 31 March 1915 Curran wrote in his diary that the archbishop had reacted very strongly to a decision of the military authorities to hold a parade on Easter Sunday, with a religious service in the pro-cathedral. Walsh sent a draft letter to the administrator of the pro-cathedral, Fr Mooney, to be forwarded to the military:

I have, of course, no authority to interfere in arrangements for services in the pro-cathedral. The matter has been brought to the notice of His Grace, the archbishop, who directs me to express his surprise that the military authorities, without having even applied for permission to make use of that church, announce their ‘intention’ of holding a parade service there, and I am to add that no such service can be held.

There were other examples of terse exchanges with the military authorities during the war years over efforts to involve the archbishop in recruiting.
²⁸

When a coalition government was formed in London in May 1915 Edward Carson was made attorney general. Redmond refused the position of postmaster general. There was little the Irish party could hope for now from the British government. It was compromised and without benefits to show for its loyalty. Curran recorded in his diary on 26 September 1915 that the
Irish Independent
had a good leading article on that day, which
pointed out that the country had been sold, and ‘the only thing Ireland has gained during the Liberal period of office is university building. It might have added “and some jobs for the Irish party”. The old
Freeman
is spluttering with rage.’
²⁹

Curran regarded the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa in Dublin on 1 August 1915 as the ‘date that publicly revealed that a new political era had begun. It was the prelude to the 1916 Rising’. The assistant commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, Mr Quinn, lived on Riversdale, Drumcondra Road, near the archbishop’s house. Curran first met him when he was approached by Quinn to build a garage on the grounds in Clonliffe. He would visit the premises often. Curran described him as being ‘a typical policeman but, at the same time, he was a sound nationalist of the Irish Parliamentary Party stamp and distinctly anti-military’. The priest gathered that there was considerable tension between the military and the police around the time of the funeral.

Quinn had come to see Curran in an ‘extremely agitated’ state. The news was indeed alarming. He said that the ‘military were determined to raise the most serious trouble’. The remains of O’Donovan Rossa had arrived in Dublin on 27 July and were brought to the pro-cathedral. The military, finding that they could not stop the funeral, ‘were resolved to fire on the people’. Quinn knew that the Volunteers were determined to fire rifle volleys at the graveside, ‘and to resist by arms any interference by police or military’. Quinn was fully convinced that a massacre would take place, ‘and that the military would seize control and wreak bloodshed’. After the funeral, which passed off without incident, Curran ‘never saw a man so relieved’ as Quinn was.
³⁰

Curran admitted that he misjudged the balance of power within the Irish Volunteers. He felt at the time of the funeral that Pearse and his followers were:

in a decided minority; that Eoin MacNeill was definitely against Pearse’s intransigence; that MacNeill commanded a majority; and, although it was perfectly evident that Pearse was in favour of forcing a Rising, that he would not succeed in bringing a sufficient number with him. That was my attitude and what I represented to the archbishop as the attitude, as far as I could ascertain, of people in Dublin.

He said later that he felt at the time that Pearse, while determined to force a rising at any cost, ‘had such a small body of followers that he would not
be able to carry out his intentions’.
³¹
Curran was quite mistaken in that surmise.

During the months leading up to the 1916 Rising, Curran relied for his information on a range of good sources. An old Fenian, James Collins, who died suddenly on 13 January 1916, was one of his informants, as was Eoin MacNeill whom he met occasionally. Curran also relied upon Mr Keohane of Gills, and Seán T. O’Kelly, manager of
An Claidheamh Soluis
,
‘who was his principal informant’. But O’Kelly, whom Curran found to be ‘extremely prudent and reliable’, was the first to ‘make it plain to me that matters were becoming very critical’.
³²
His list of top informants was impressive. Curran was receiving accurate information from the horse’s mouth.

Writing to Hagan on 23 January 1916, Curran noted that:

The party is still losing ground. The credit of the anti-conscription movement goes elsewhere. The retrenchment of the education grants also reacted against them. There was a wonderfully successful and enthusiastic political meeting in the Mansion House Round on Monday [14 January]. Fr Fulberton [?] made a wonderfully impressive speech. The whole affair was largely pro-German but it will put a stop to Nathan and alarm the party. Every time Redmond and the party were named there was a storm of booing.
³³

The popularity of the Irish party continued to slide as preparations for the Rising continued apace.

The last major public meeting before the Easter Rising took place in the Mansion House on 30 March 1916. The deputy lord mayor, Alderman Corrigan, presided. According to a memoir of the period, written by Geraldine Plunkett Dillon, a sister of Joseph Plunkett, Pearse ‘gave a wonderful speech and held the hall full of people completely silent. The time seemed to flash by’. MacNeill also spoke. Fr Michael O’Flanagan, a radical priest from the diocese of Elphin, spoke at the end of the meeting, ‘and his fighting speech put [Bulmer] Hobson’s out of people’s minds’.
³⁴
The latter had his eyes set against a rising as much as Pearse and his co-conspirators were determined to strike on Easter Sunday, which was then only three weeks away.

Count George Noble Plunkett, the father of Joseph, Geraldine and Mimi, was a most unlikely, if, perhaps, unwitting, revolutionary. Born in 1851, he had attended a Marist school in Nice for three years until he was twelve, and completed his education with the Oblate Fathers in Dublin and the Jesuits at Clongowes. He was a regular visitor to Italy where he pursued a strong interest in art. He was also a close friend of the Provencal poet, Fréderic Mistral. Plunkett spoke French and Italian quite fluently. His schooling finished, he worked for a time as a journalist. His wealthy father rented a palazzo for him in Venice for the winter of 1869. He transferred to Paris in 1870 and then signed on in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) to study law. In Rome in 1884, Pope Leo XXIII had requested the Little Company of Mary, known as Blue Sisters, to set up a house in the city. Plunkett, who was in Rome at the time the appeal was made, secured and purchased a house for the order. Plunkett’s generosity came at a time when the new Italian state was threatening to confiscate church property in Rome. His munificence earned the pope’s gratitude and he was made a papal count, a knight commander of the holy sepulchre, on 4 April 1884.
³⁵
His generosity to the Catholic church was well known to the Holy See. That background may explain why he could get a private audience with Benedict XV. As a frequent visitor to Rome and to Italy, he may have been granted requests for a private audience on a frequent basis. The decision to grant him an audience with the pope in April 1916, therefore, may have been a matter of routine for Vatican authorities.

Plunkett was a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). He was made a director of the National Museum in 1907.
³⁶
He died in 1948, aged ninety six. In the circumstances of 1916 he was a most unlikely revolutionary.

His son, Joseph, was a poet and man of letters. He was a prime mover in the planning of the Rising. His family, because of his delicate health as a boy, had taken him frequently to the continent and to Algiers. He was later educated at Stonyhurst. His first book of poetry,
Circle and Sword
,
was published in 1911. He became editor of The
Irish Review
.
His article ‘Twenty plain facts for Irishmen’ led to the suppression of the
Review
in November 1914. Active in the Volunteers before the split in 1914, he was to develop radical nationalist views and join the IRB.
³⁷
Joe Plunkett, together with his close friend, Thomas MacDonagh, were at the heart of
the conspiracy to lead an insurrection at Easter. Those pressing for insurrection also included the veteran Fenian Tom Clarke, Seán MacDermott, Éamonn Ceannt and Pearse. Their plans crystallised in 1915. Using methods of conspiracy, deception and subterfuge, they shut out all those likely to oppose such ‘recklessness’. The chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, was the main victim of these Machiavellian tactics. Pearse, his director of organisation and nominal subordinate, was among those who helped to keep his superior in the dark about the plans for the Rising. Pearse, of course, was also a member of the IRB.
³⁸

Joe Plunkett carried out his first important mission for the IRB in 1915. Spreading the rumour that he was going to Jersey, he set out at Easter time for Germany via London, Paris, San Sebastian, Barcelona, Genoa and Florence. He travelled under the code name James Malcolm. Travelling to Lausanne via Milan, he went on to Berne and thence to Berlin. There he met Roger Casement, who was not a member of the IRB. They laid plans for the sending of a consignment of arms to Ireland at a time to be decided. Plunkett had to receive instructions from the IRB before he could return to Ireland.
³⁹

Diarmuid Lynch, a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, had arrived back in Ireland that year and reported to two members of the IRB executive, Denis McCullough and Tom Clarke. He was made aware that an ‘Advisory Committee’ had been appointed for the purpose of drafting a plan for an uprising in the Dublin area.

In late May the IRB executive met. Lynch, then acting secretary, proposed the standing down of the ‘Advisory Committee’ and the setting up of a ‘Military Committee’ (later reconstituted as a ‘Military Council’.) That was comprised of Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Ceannt. Clarke gave assistance later on that year as did MacDermott. James Connolly and MacDonagh were co-opted in early 1916.
⁴⁰
They were substantially responsible for the planning of the Rising. But others were also involved, including leading members of the Irish Volunteers like Éamon de Valera. As the time for the Rising approached, many people found themselves being ‘sworn in’. This may not have been to the IRB
per se
,
but was rather merely a device to maintain secrecy about the plans afoot. Owen McGee is at pains to point out:

Most historians have described the 1916 revolt as a purely IRB affair, but this could be said to be a misnomer. Clarke and MacDermott may have presented the idea of the Rising to various volunteers, swore some of them into the IRB and formed a ‘military council’ which was
in theory
[original emphasis] something to do with the IRB organisation, but Patrick Pearse, Thomas McDonagh, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Éamon de Valera, Countess Markievicz, Roger Casement and other figures who were leaders of the Rising never had anything to do with the IRB and were certainly not a product of ‘the organisation’ and its political traditions.
⁴¹