Henry Sheares

Life
1753-1798; United Irishman; elder br. of John Sheares [q.v.], with whom he shared the judicial sentence of death; b. Cork, ed. TCD, son of wealthy banker and MP; joined Army, resigned commission after 3 years; joined bar. 1789; his wife died 1791, their childen being raised by her parents in France; visited France with his brother in 1792; arrested, tried, at a twenty-four hour treason trial prosecuted by Rt. Hon. John Toler [then Attorn.-Gen., afterwards 1st Earl of Norbory]; and unsuccessfully defended by Leonard McNally, J. P. Curran and Wiliam Plunket - the case turning on the single testimony of Thomas Reynolds, contrary to English law which required two witnesses to the intention of ‘compassing’ the death of the king;

sentenced and executed with his brother John Sheares [q.v.] in 14 July 1798, holding hands in circumstances which have entered national memory as the most pathetic in the history of the United Irishmen; ‘the mumber of spectators was incalculable’; both were beheaded after hanging and the headless bodies were removed to St. Michan’s crypt in coffins supplied by a relative; long preserved undecayed from by property of the soil but finally corrupted contaminated - it is said - by a rose set on one of the coffins; there is a poem on the Sheares brothers by Lady Wilde (“The Brothers: Henry and John Sheares” - as infra). ODNB DIB

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Criticism
A Report of the Whole Proceedings on the Trials of Henry and John Sheares, Esqs., John McCann, Gent., W. M. Byrne, Esq., and Oliver Bond, Merchant, for High Treason. Tried by Special Jury, July 12, 1798 (London: J. Wright, Picadilly [q..d.]).

See also Report of the whole proceedings on the trial of Henry Sheares and John Sheares, Esquires, for high treason [electronic resource] : Tried by special commission, before the Right Hon. Lord Carleton,-the Hon. Mr. Justice Crookshank, and the Hon. Mr. Baron Smith. At the sessions house and a respectable jury of the city of Dublin, on Thursday, July the 12th, and Friday, July the 13th, 1798. To which is annexed, a report of the trials at large of John M'Cann, and W.M. Byrne, Esquire, of Rathdowny, county of Wicklow, for high treason. Tried by the above special commission, before the Hon. Mr. Baron Smith,-the Hon. Mr. Baron George, and the Hon. Mr. Justice day; and a respectable jury of the city of Dublin. At the sessions-house, on Tuesday the 17th, Wednesday the 18th, Friday the 20th, and Saturday the 21st July, 1798. Of which crimes the said Henry & John Shears, John-M'cann, and Will. Michael Byrne, were found Guilty. With a particular account of the behaviour of Henry and John Sheares, at the place of execution (Cork: Printed by A. Edwards, bookseller, Castle-Street 1798), 88pp., 8°[Cat. of National Library of Australia; also NLI - online; available at Google Books - online [accesssed 14.06.2024.]

Bibl. note: Trials of the Sheares Brothers (27 June 1798; resuming after interval to summon witnesses, Tues. 12 June 1798, proceeding to a verdict on 13 June 1798, and sentencing after an adjournment on the same day;) occupies pp.[1]-95 - of which ‘a particular account of the Behaviour of Henry and John Sheres [sic], at the Place of Execution’ ,p.71-95) that of John McCann (17-18 July), pp.[1]-73; that of William Michael Byrne (20-21st July) pp.[1]-40; that of Oliver Bond (23-24th July 1798), pp.[1]1-67. Of all the prisoners, only Bond is not executed and in hope or a reprieve at the end of the whole account.

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Commentary

Jane Elgee (Lady Wilde), “The Brothers: Henry and John Sheares. A.D. I798”

’Tis midnight; falls the lamp-light dull and sickly
On a pale and anxious crowd,
Through the court, and round the judges, thronging thickly,
With prayers they dare not speak aloud,
Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the bar—
You can see them through the gloom —
In the pride of life and manhood’s beauty, there they are
Awaiting their death-doom.

All eyes an earnest watch on these are keeping,
Some sobbing, turn away,
And the strongest men can hardly see for weeping,
So noble and so loved were they.
Their hands are locked together, these young brothers,
As before the judge they stand;
They feel not the deep grief that moves the others;
For they die for Fatherland.

They are pale, but it is not fear that whitens
On each proud high brow;
For the triumph of the martyr’s glory brightens
Around them even now.
They sought to free their land from thrall of stranger —
Was it treason? Let them die;
But their blood will cry to Heaven — the Avenger
Yet will hearken from on high.

Before them, shrinking, cowering, scarcely human,
The base informer bends,
Who, Judas-like, could sell the blood of true men,
While he clasped their hands as friends,
Ay; could fondle the young children of his victim,
Break bread with his young wife,
At the moment that, for gold, his perjured dictum
Sold the husband and the father’s life.

There is silence in the midnight — eyes are keeping
Troubled watch, till forth the jury come;
There is silence in the midnight — eyes are weeping —
Guilty! is the fatal doom;
For a moment, o’er the brothers’ noble faces
Came a shadow sad to see,
Then silently they rose up in their places,
And embraced each other fervently.

O! the rudest heart might tremble at such sorrow,
The rudest cheek might blush at such a scene;
Twice the judge essayed to speak the word —
To-morrow! Twice faltered as a woman he had been.
To-morrow! Fain the elder would have spoken,
Prayed for respite, though it is not death he fears;
But thoughts of home and wife his heart have broken,
And his words are stopped by tears.

But the youngest — O! he speaks out bold and clearly:
&147;I have no ties of children or of wife;
Let me die — but spare the brother who more dearly
Is loved by me than life.”
Pale martyrs, ye may cease; your days are numbered;
Next noon your sun of life goes down;
One day between the sentence and the scaffold
One day between the torture and the crown.

A hymn of joy is rising from creation;
Bright the azure of the glorious summer sky;
But human hearts weep sore in lamentation,
For the brothers are led forth to die.
Ay; guard them with your cannon and your lances —
So of old came martyrs to the stake;
Ay; guard them — see the people’s flashing glances;
For those noble two are dying for their sake.

Yet none spring forth their bonds to sever —
Ah! methinks, had I been there,
I’d have dared a thousand deaths ere ever
The sword should touch their hair.
It falls! — there is a shriek of lamentation
From the weeping crowd around;
They are stilled — the noblest hearts within the nation —
The noblest heads lie bleeding on the ground.

Years have passed since that fatal scene of dying,
Yet life-like to this day
In their coffins still those severed heads are lying,
Kept by angels from decay.
O! they preach to us, those still and pallid features;
Those pale lips yet implore us from their graves
To strive for our birthright as God’s creatures,
Or die, if we can but live as slaves.
—Rep. in Gill’s Irish Reciter: A Selection of Gems from Ireland’s Modern Literature, ed. J. J. O’Kelly [Sean Ó Ceallaigh] (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1905), pp.67-70 [available at Internet Archive - online].

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Quotations
Anti-Sheares: “The Liberty Tree”: ‘May all lurking traitors, wherever they be / Make the exit of Sheares, and Erin be free. / Derry down, down, traitors bow down.’ (See Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Derry: Field Day 1991, Vol. 1, p.1101.)

 

References
R. R. Madden, United Irishmen: the story of their pathetic death on the scaffold, roughly treated by the executioner who jerked the more fearful and younger brother, into the air before hanging. They held hands. The execution was extremely well attended. They were decapitated before burial.

D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); notes that he wrote for United Irishmen’s papers The Press [as ‘Dion’], The Harp of Erin, etc.; verse exemplified in Madden’s Literary Remains of the United Irishmen (1846); others antologised in Edkins’ collection (1789-90) and signed J- S-; remained unmarried; executed 14 July; bur. St Michans; bodies preserved ‘by some peculiar property of the soil’.

Henry Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988), has have contiguous entries on John and Henry Sheares.

 

Notes
Sick judge: Lord Carleton, to whose lot it fell to pass sentence on the brothers Sheares’ ... was a hypochondriac. (See Patrick Kennedy, Modern Irish Anecdotes, London: Routledge 1872, p.81.)

The Sheares brothers’ trial: An account of the trial is given in Thos. King Moylan, ‘The Little Green’ [Pt. II], Dublin Hist. Record (Sept-Nov. 1946), p.151ff. Note: the reference in the title is to Green Street Court where state trials began to be heard in the period of the lead-up to the 1798 Rebellion - and where they were again staged for the jury-less anti-terrorist proceedngs in the Republic of Ireland during the Northern Ireland Troubles .

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