Unlikely Rebels (19 page)

As time went on the Plunkett family became involved in the IRB and the plans for The Rising of 1916. The Rector's sons, their old friends, naturally joined the British army at the outbreak of the 1914 war. In the fullness of time my oldest uncle was court-martialled and condemned to death and of all people his old boyhood friend was instructed to command the firing party which would execute him. He refused, was himself court-martialled and cashiered from the army and died not long afterwards, or so I have been told. But I have not checked the end of this painful story. There may have been many such incidents in those mad times.
[9]

A substitute officer was appointed to the firing party, and the four Volunteers fell to their fire.

One of the most merciless acts of the authorities was to deprive Mrs Pearse of both her sons. The gentle, artistic Willie had actually pleaded ‘guilty' at the trial. It is said in some analyses that he wished to stand by his brother. Be that as it may, the mortal remains of the four men were put on the waiting lorry and brought to join those of their three comrades who had died the day before. In Plunkett's case, gone with the rebel was also gone the small boy who had booed his Firhouse neighbour for lashing her horses, the youth who was offered the job of skating instructor in Cairo, the mystic poet who wrote one of the best-loved poems in Irish Christian literature, the international envoy of the Military Council of the IRB, the husband whose lady was his ‘share of the world', and the commandant who had ignored his illness to encourage his men in the stifling, smoky atmosphere of the shelled GPO.

There was already a flood of commentary about the executions and the tragic bride, but years later Brendan Kennelly embraced both tragedies:

Surely
Joseph
Plunkett was right
to take
Grace Gifford for a bride
in the untold desolation
of the morning that he died.
She – lover, wife and widow,
almost in a single breath –
understood. He, tautly poised
upon the threshold of his death,
knew simply that in little time
he'd stretch to frenzied lead,
prone, alone on the barrack square,
his unshared bridal bed.
[10]

The executions proceeded with military efficiency, the firing parties consisting of six kneeling soldiers and six standing behind them. The prisoners were placed, blindfolded and with a white card marking the heart, some fifty feet from their executioners.

Major John MacBride had the doubtful privilege of being the only prisoner executed on 5 May. He famously asked not to be blindfolded because he said he had often looked down the barrels of English rifles (referring to his Boer War activities). Protocol overruled his request, and he was blindfolded like the others.

On 8 May, the executed were Seán Heuston, Michael Mallin, Éamonn Ceannt and Con Colbert. A pre-execution visitor to Colbert, Mrs Séamus Ó Mhurchada, noted that he had not even a plank bed or a mattress and that, on that bitterly cold night, he had only one blanket.
[11]
Fr Augustine, who was with Colbert to the last, felt obliged to correct a description of his end which had appeared in the
Evening Herald
on 31 May 1916. The Capuchin described how Colbert, reverent and calm, had suggested that the soldier preparing him for execution should perhaps pin the required white square a little higher to cover his heart. The kindly soldier, touched by the young Volunteer's bravery, asked if Colbert would shake his hand. Confused, Colbert extended his hand, which was shaken warmly by the soldier, who then proceeded to bind his prisoner's hands behind his back and gently blindfolded him.
[12]

The loving thoughts of Nellie Gifford's commander at the Royal College of Surgeons, Michael Mallin, were with his wife (‘pulse of my heart') and with their children: ‘Our manly James, happy-go-lucky John, shy, warm Una, Daddy's girl and oh so little Joseph, my little man … he will rest in my arms no more.'
[13]
Una became a Loreto nun, and James
and Joseph entered the Jesuit Order.

Éamonn Ceannt was the bridegroom who used French gold coins at his wedding ceremony to avoid using English sovereigns. He wrote in Irish to
Áine, a
mhíle grádh
(Anne, my thousand loves). In Irish also he addresses a letter
Dom' mhaicín bhocht Rónán
(To my poor little son Ronan), asking him to look after his mother.
[14]

On the eve of his execution, in a letter to his sister Mary, a Dominican nun, Seán Heuston urged her to teach Irish history ‘as it should be taught'.
[15]
He was visited in his cell by his family and Fr Michael Browne (later cardinal). A young British soldier who was present was so deeply affected he was crying. Theresa, Heuston's sister, heard one officer say, ‘These men must be got away by three.'
[16]
It was, in fact, 3.45 p.m. when her brother was led to the execution yard, prayerful and serene, as described by Fr Albert. His last act on this earth, blindfolded, was to kiss the crucifix held by the priest.

It was generally felt that the twenty-five-year-old Heuston, not a signatory of the Proclamation and with a very small garrison, was executed because he had inflicted such a humiliating hold-up and such losses on the British troops trying to make their way down the Liffey quay, with numbers approximately 400 to his tiny ill-armed garrison of twenty plus. For whatever reason, Heuston was now dead, and by 4 p.m. the four bodies were on the lorry to Arbour Hill.

On 9 May, Thomas Kent was executed in Cork Detention Barracks. It is one of the vagaries of history that two of the sixteen executed, though not related, should bear the very un-Irish name of Kent. Even the Christian names of the Kents of Bawnard House, Castlelyons, County Cork, had no Gaelic resonance about them. Thomas, David, Richard and William were determinedly holed up in their home in the early hours of 2 May 1916, when news of the unwelcome Dublin surrender came through. A pitched battle ensued with a party of RIC men under Head Constable Rowe. The Kents' mother, eighty-four years old, loaded the guns for her sons. Head Constable Rowe and Richard Kent died in the battle, and Thomas, court-martialled on 4 May, was executed five days later. His last recorded words were, ‘I have done my duty as a soldier of Ireland and in a few moments I hope to see the face of my God.'
[17]

There are two versions of the death of James Connolly, the fourteenth and last of the rebel leaders to die in Kilmainham Gaol. At his court martial on 9 May 1916, Connolly stated his philo-sophy:

We went out to break the connection between this country and the British Empire, and to establish an Irish Republic … We succeeded in proving that Irishmen are prepared to die endeavouring to win for Ireland those national rights which the British government has been asking them to die to win for Belgium.

Three days later his gangrenous leg, operated on and ‘mummified' with thick bandages, made his condition appreciably worse. Fr Aloysius found him tired and feverish during his visit to Dublin Castle, in whose military hospital Connolly had been placed following the surrender on 29 April. The priest told him to rest himself and that he would bring him holy communion the following morning. Anxious about his condition, the Franciscan contacted Captain Stanley, the officer in charge. The captain reminded him that the question of Connolly's execution was being debated at Westminster that evening and that there would be no more executions pending the outcome of that debate. Reassured, Fr Aloysius returned to the monastery at Church Street, but at 9 p.m. that night he received a call indicating that his services would be required at the Castle the next morning at 2 a.m. Despite international questioning of the executions, especially that of a very sick man, not only Connolly but also Mac Diarmada were to die the following day.

The most memorable characteristics of Mac Diarmada were his ease of manner and his sense of fun. Kathleen Clarke gave an account of the difference between a visit to her husband's tobacconist's shop by Pearse and one by Mac Diarmada. Pearse was all courtesy, raised his hat and enquired formally if Mr Clarke were available. Mac Diarmada, on the other hand, breezed in, gave her a hug and asked after Tom. He ignored, as far as he could, the lameness left by polio and happily flirted and laughed his way through social gatherings. But this extrovert held two things very dear: his faith and his love for Ireland. Just before his death he wrote of his abhorrence of Ireland's slavery. He declared he died ‘bearing no malice to any man, and in perfect peace with Almighty God … I meet death for Ireland's cause as I have worked for the same cause all my life.'
[18]
He so died at 3.45 p.m. on 12 May 1916.

About Connolly's execution, Fr Aloysius recorded that, having given holy communion to him at Dublin Castle, he accompanied the stretcher-bound patient in the ambulance, along with Fr Sebastian, to the execution yard at Kilmainham Gaol. Owing to his weakened condition, Connolly was to be shot just inside the gate instead of at the far end of the yard like the other prisoners. Fr Aloysius says very little of the actual execution, merely that he ‘was present at the execution' and that he ‘stood behind the firing party at the execution. Fr Eugene McCarthy chaplain to Kilmainham Gaol, anointed Connolly immediately after the shooting.' The usual version of Connolly's execution is that the prisoner was tied to a chair to prevent him from becoming an unstable target for the firing party. A much more distressing scenario, however, was recorded by the Sacristan to the Parish of St James during the Rising and its aftermath:

In giving a description of James Connolly's execution Fr McCarthy told me that the prisoner, who was in a bad condition, elected to stand like the rest but failed. He was then tied to a chair but slumped so much that he overbalanced. Finally, he was strapped to a stretcher and placed in a reclining position against the wall … The sight left an indelible impression on Fr McCarthy.
[19]

Westminster, subjected already to worldwide criticism about the executions, and Connolly's in particular, would be reluctant to have such a scene depicted abroad.

As against its inhumanity, Fr Aloysius recorded his appreciation, and that of James Connolly, for the kindness and consideration shown to them all by the British officer in charge at Dublin Castle. The priest also recorded observations made in his presence by Lord Powerscourt and a group of British officers, one of whom summed up their general feeling for the republicans: ‘They were the cleanest and bravest lot of boys I have ever met.'
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One last execution: Roger Casement, shorn of his knighthood, was hanged in Pentonville Prison, after his trial for high treason in the High Court of Justice in London. Unlike the other fifteen executed, Casement had counsel to argue his case. But he argued his own with great skill, the nub of it being that Ireland meant much more to him than Empire and that loyalty to his country, which was Ireland, was held in Britain to be a crime. He was received into the Catholic Church by an Irish priest and was hanged on 3 August 1916. His was the sixteenth funeral of the executed.

Sixteen funerals and a wedding were to cause the first crack in a powerful empire's grip on Ireland, and in other of her colonies about the world.

Notes