The O'Connell Series. Book 4. Apogee & Perigee.

By Brian Igoe

This, the fourth book in the O’Connell Series, is also the last one. It describes what posterity has treated as the acme of his career when his Monster Meetings for Repeal attracted hundreds of thousands of people who all behaved perfectly peacefully and, exceptionally for Ireland, with absolute abstention from all liquor. That leads us on through prison to his death on his way to Rome..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Igoe
• Release date: Aug 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301075294

Brian Igoe

You don’t need to know much about me because I never even considered writing BOOKS until I was in my sixties. I am a retired businessman and have written more business related documents than I care to remember, so the trick for me is to try and avoid writing like that in these books…. Relevant, I suppose, is that I am Irish by birth but left Ireland when I was 35 after ten years working in Waterford. We settled in Zimbabwe and stayed there until I retired, and that gave me loads of material for books which I will try and use sometime. So far I have only written one book on Africa, “The Road to Zimbabwe”, a light hearted look at the country’s history. And there’s also a small book about adventures flying light aircraft in Africa. And now I am starting on ancient Rome, the first book being about Julius Caesar, Marcus Cato, the Conquest of Gaul, (Caesar and Cato, the Road to Empire) and the Civil War. But for most of my books so far I have gone back to my roots and written about Irish history, trying to do so as a lively, living subject rather than a recitation of battles, wars and dates. My book on O’Connell, for example, looks more at his love affair with his lovely wife Mary, for it was a most successful marriage and he never really recovered from her death; and at the part he played in the British Great Reform Bill of 1832, which more than anyone he, an Irish icon, Out of Ireland, my book on Zimbabwe starts with a 13th century Chief fighting slavers and follows a 15th century Portuguese scribe from Lisbon to Harare, going on to travel with the Pioneer Column to Fort Salisbury, and to dine with me and Mugabe and Muzenda. And nearer our own day my Flying book tells of lesser known aspects of World War 2 in which my father was Senior Controller at RAF Biggin Hill, like the story of the break out of the Scharnhorst and Gneisau, or capturing three Focke Wulfs with a searchlight. And now for my latest effort I have gone back to my education (historical and legal, with a major Roman element) and that has involved going back in more ways than one, for the research included a great deal of reading, from Caesar to Plutarch and from Adrian Goldsworthy to Rob Goodman & Jimmy Soni.

Book preview

This is a LiteBite Book, about the equal of fifty or so pages of a Paperback or Pocket Book. This one is 18,500 words.

The O’Connell Series ‒ Book Four. Apogee and Perigee.

Copyright © 2013 by Brian Igoe

Smashwords Edition

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This, the fourth book in the O’Connell Series, is also the last one. It describes what posterity has treated as the acme of his career when his Monster Meetings for Repeal attracted hundreds of thousands of people who all behaved perfectly peacefully and, exceptionally for Ireland, with absolute abstention from all liquor. That leads us on through his defeat and imprisonment at the hands of the British Administration, and eventually to his death on the way to Rome.

Contents

Chapter 1. 1832 – 1837. Repeal agitation.

Chapter 2. 1837 – 1843. Victoria Regina and Monster Meetings.

Chapter 3. 1843 ‒ 1847. The End.

Chapter 1. 1832 – 1837. Repeal agitation.

I didn’t myself see much of the Liberator after 1832 until the end of the decade. His attentions were elsewhere, playing politics in England. Life isn’t all about politics, even if Daniel’s was now. And I was building my own empire. It was hard work, though satisfying ‒ and rewarding! And at times it could be very funny, too. Such as the night in the widow Minehan’s Inn.

At intervals of around eight miles where there was no convenient town, I had established ‘carman’s stages’ where the horses were changed. About the year 1836 my Manager Dan Hearn and I were at the fair in Thurles, and returning home late, we had to put up at a carman’s stage on the road to Clonmel. Here we had a dinner of bacon and potatoes, and were told that there was only the one bed. Having no option, we agreed to share it. It was very cold, and at last Dan exclaimed

By Jove, I think there must be an iceberg under the bed. And he put his hand under the bed as though to satisfy himself. He suddenly withdrew his hand and with one bound he was in the middle of the room. He never waited to exchange a syllable with me, but darted down the narrow stairs into the kitchen, where a lot of carmen were drinking and smoking. Dan stood there with only his night-shirt on, and called out to me:

Bloody wars! Mr. B., come down out of that! I immediately jumped out of bed, and followed Dan downstairs.

Did you see it? said he.

See what? said I.

The Divil said Dan.

Where? says I.

Under the bed. At this time Dan and I were standing in the middle of the kitchen, quite unconscious of our want of clothing. Biddy Minehan, the hostess, came forward, and said to me,

I had nowhere else to put it, yer honour.

Put what? I replied.

The corpse, yer honour.

Good Heavens! Do you mean there is a corpse under our bed?

Oh, yer honour, a wake was going on when you came into the house and asked for a night’s lodging; and I thought it would be hard to lose the chance of a few shillings, and having no spare place in the house, I just slipped the corpse under the bed. Needless to say, Dan and I lost no time in retrieving our clothes and leaving Biddy Minehan to her corpse.

*

But back to the summer of 1832 and Daniel, who had come back to Derrynane for his annual holiday. By October he was moving again, at first towards what amounted to a coalition with the Conservatives in Ireland, which made perfect sense. He was no longer fighting for Catholic Emancipation but for the Repeal of the Union with England. That concept benefitted all Irishmen, he argued, and indeed it benefitted the Conservative Dublin Protestants the most, since it was the tradesmen among them that had lost so much by the creation of the Union in 1800, and would have as much to gain by Repeal.

A Parliament in Dublin was big business for the city. Daniel’s action over Sir Abraham Bradley King obviously stood him in good stead too, and he kept repeating all the time that he was fighting for Ireland, not any particular religious grouping. At the election Daniel was elected for Dublin, and without even running. ‘My return for Dublin unsolicited, and even unavowed by me, is perhaps the greatest triumph my countrymen have ever given me’ he wrote to Fitzpatrick. He spent the last two months of 1832 talking, talking, talking. He talked to rural gatherings, to dinners given by various charities, all orchestrated by Fitzpatrick as Daniel himself had a horror of double booking. And everywhere his message was the same – agitate, agitate, agitate