At Castlebar, on Friday the 9th of June 1786, George Robert Fitzgerald was brought into the dock at half past eight in the morning. This unaccustomed hour bespoke the gravity of the proceedings: the indictment did not concern a single hasty deed, but the death of Patrick Randal M’Donnell following a long course of animosities, a contested arrest, and an alleged attempt at rescue. Fitzgerald had pleaded not guilty in April. He challenged fifteen jurors; the Attorney General set aside those reputed to be connected to the deceased. In this procedural detail, Borrow observes a rare concern for impartiality. The chronicle then opens with the testimony of Gallagher—a witness, a survivor, and a man who understood he would be pressed upon what he had not seen.
M’Donnell and Fitzgerald resided in close proximity in the county of Mayo. Gallagher recounted that they had frequently quarrelled. Some eighteen months prior, a shot fired from a window of Fitzgerald’s house had wounded M’Donnell in the leg. A man had been prosecuted for this assault and subsequently acquitted; Gallagher believed Fitzgerald had thenceforth extended his enmity to M’Donnell, to Charles Hipson, and to himself, for having aided in the search for the marksman. Such was his interpretation, delivered under oath, rather than an independent finding of the chronicler. It nevertheless furnished the tragedy of the 20th of February with an antecedent which the Crown deemed indispensable.
On that morning, M’Donnell and Hipson requested Gallagher to accompany them to Chancery Hall, the country residence of the former. M’Donnell, he stated, wished no longer to dwell near Fitzgerald and had taken lodgings in Castlebar. They went thither, however, to leave instructions with the servants. Fitzgerald was apprised of their arrival and dispatched an armed party bearing a warrant obtained, according to Gallagher, upon a pretext of assault. The provenance of the warrant was disputed: the witness described it as procured covertly from a magistrate who was subsequently stripped of his commission. The prisoners maintained that the alleged offence was bailable and demanded to be carried before a magistrate. This was denied them.
Perceiving that they were pursued, the three men took refuge in a house upon the road. Gallagher prevailed upon M’Donnell to conceal himself beneath a heap of malt. Fitzgerald’s party came up, discharged several shots into the dwelling, and forced their way inside. The men ransacked the house and its outbuildings, discovered M’Donnell, and dragged him forth. The three captives were conveyed, pinioned, to Rockfield, the seat of Fitzgerald. Gallagher stated that M’Donnell was permitted to remain on horseback on account of his injured leg, while he and Hipson were bound together. They were repeatedly told it was too late to go before a magistrate. They passed the night within the house, under guard, exposed to gross indignities. The detention, by this account, had already ceased to resemble the lawful execution of a warrant.
On the following morning, an armed escort waited outside. Gallagher swore he heard Fitzgerald command Andrew Craig to guard the prisoners and to shoot them should any rescue be attempted. They were conducted along the road for some few hundred yards. Craig then cried out, “A rescue!” A discharge came from the rear, killing one of the guards and wounding several others. The firing instantly became general. M’Donnell was struck in the arm; Hipson and Gallagher were wounded and fell to the earth. M’Donnell’s horse galloped forward until stopped by a man posted at a gap. Craig then discharged his piece into M’Donnell’s body. Gallagher added that the wounded man was perhaps dispatched with blows from the butts of their muskets. The same party thereupon fired upon Hipson. Gallagher, who had crawled into the ferns, was spared further shot when one of the company recalled that the order did not extend to his death. He was carried back to Rockfield and subsequently relieved by his friends.
Gallagher made no claim to have seen Fitzgerald fire. Examined directly on the point, he replied that he had seen the prisoner neither discharge a piece at M’Donnell nor strike him. He had seen him at Rockfield when the escort set forth, carrying a blunderbuss beneath his arm, and had heard him give the fatal order to Craig. The distinction was essential: the Crown had not merely to show that Fitzgerald had participated in the fray, but to establish his authorial hand in the resolution that brought it to pass.
Craig, an erstwhile retainer of Fitzgerald, furnished the principal evidence. On the 20th of February, he declared, Fitzgerald commanded him to apprehend M’Donnell, Hipson, and Gallagher by virtue of the warrant, and to bring them to Rockfield. On the following morning, Fitzgerald, Timothy Brecknock, John Fulton, and Craig were alleged to have concerted a second design: a feigned rescue, devised to afford a colourable pretext for the slaughter of M’Donnell. Craig was to give the alarm, whereupon men placed in the rear were to fire. Another was instructed to aim at Fitzgerald’s own guards, that the stratagem might appear genuine to uninitiated onlookers. Men were stationed at the gaps to intercept M’Donnell should he flee. Craig confessed to having fired upon him after his horse carried him off. He swore that the supposed rescue was entirely contrivance, intended solely to cover the murder.
This testimony was formidable, yet it proceeded from an accomplice who confessed his own guilt. The trial does not resolve this difficulty into facile certainty. Craig admitted his part and pointed to Fitzgerald as the author of the orders. Cross-examination compelled him to distinguish between those privy to the design and those who believed they were merely guarding prisoners. The survivor Gallagher corroborated the order overheard, without being able to attest to the fatal shot. Several particulars coincided; others depended entirely upon the credit of confederates who had an obvious interest in depicting the hierarchy of the plot in a particular light. It was this tension that charged the courtroom: the jury had to determine whether a command overheard before departure sufficed to fasten the murder upon a man whom no witness placed with a smoking weapon in hand.
Counsel for Fitzgerald pressed the witnesses closely regarding their client’s presence. Gallagher reaffirmed that he had seen him only at Rockfield, following the arrest. Upon the act of murder itself, counsel inquired whether Fitzgerald had fired upon the victims. Craig replied that he believed not: the prior compact had been that Craig himself should kill M’Donnell, or see that another did so. This answer did not exculpate Fitzgerald; it severed the physical deed from the alleged contrivance. The prosecution rested its case precisely upon that severance, maintaining that the master was criminally answerable without having pressed the trigger.
When the witnesses for the Crown had concluded, Fitzgerald was called upon for his defence. He entrusted his cause to his advocates. They produced several witnesses to establish that he was not present when the killings took place. The defence thus directed the jury’s attention to an absence; the Crown referred them back to the instructions that had preceded that absence. The witnesses could depose to where Fitzgerald was; they did not, in the eyes of the court, refute the concerted plan described by Craig.
In his charge to the jury, the learned judge professed he had no desire to bias their judgment. Yet he observed that an instance of more aggravated guilt had never come before him. He commended their impartiality, urged them to dismiss all idle conversation and printed reports, and cautioned them that an ill-judged lenity might prove subversive of justice. Such observations did not leave the matter entirely open: they conveyed with unmistakable force the court’s own view of the case. After a hearing of sixteen hours, the jury withdrew. In fourteen minutes they returned with a verdict of guilty. Sixteen hours to hear the evidence; fourteen minutes to decide.
In this transaction, the terms “arrest,” “custody,” and “rescue” served as instruments of a single snare. The warrant lent colour to the seizure of putative offenders; the custody served to remove them from their kin; the cry of rescue gave the signal to fire. The depositions do not establish that Fitzgerald slew with his own hand. They depict an authority exercised after another fashion: selecting the victim, assigning the roles, and cloaking an execution in the guise of an affray. The death of M’Donnell remains the core of the matter, yet the broader question remains: how far is the master answerable when others execute the deed which they swear he commanded?