James Napper Tandy - Planning A Revolution in Exile

Planning A Revolution in Exile

Sympathy with the French Revolution was rapidly spreading in Ireland. A meeting of some 6,000 people in Belfast voted a congratulatory address to the French nation in July 1791. In the following year, Napper Tandy took a leading part in organizing a new military association in Ireland modelled after the French National Guards; they professed republican principles, and on their uniform the cap of liberty instead of the crown surmounted the Irish harp. Tandy also, with the purpose of bringing about a fusion between the Defenders and the United Irishmen, took the oath of the Defenders, a Roman Catholic society whose agrarian and political violence had been increasing for several years.

He was about to be tried in 1793 for distributing a seditious pamphlet in County Louth, when the government found out he had taken the oath of the Defenders. Being threatened with prosecution for this step, and also for libel, he took refuge by changing his Dublin address often - some are recorded as follows: 16 Dorset Street in 1779, 21 Cornmarket till 1783, 180 Abbey Street till 1785, 67 Bride Street in 1786, 97 Bride Street till 1788, and a return to 67 Bride Street from 1789 till 1795 when he fled to the United States, where he remained till 1798. In February 1798, he went to Paris, where at this time a number of Irish refugees, the most prominent of whom was Wolfe Tone, were assembled, planning rebellion in Ireland to be supported by a French invasion, and quarrelling among themselves.