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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; bar. 1789; wife died 1791, their parents 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 Toler and defended by Curran; sentenced and executed with his brother John Sheares [Rx]; there is a poem on the Sheares brothers by Lady Wilde (“The Brothers: Henry and John Sheares” - see under JFW, infra). ODNB DIB
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Quotations
“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.)
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.)
Sheares 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.
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