touched upon every point that lay in the whole compass of Irish politics, contained his conferences with every minister in the Cabinet, their opinions, his opinions, plentiful abuse of Flood, plentiful praise of Grattan and Charlemont, and plentiful paucity of argument.’56
Dobbs’ performance succeeded only in further infuriating the angry Volunteers. He withdrew to the New Inn while the Company considered a motion of censure. Drennan moved the motion and it was carried unanimously. However, he was ‘astonished at the unjustifiable and excessive punishment aimed’ at Dobbs and believed some of it was ‘motivated by personal pique and animosity’. He therefore proposed, as Dobbs had admitted his error, that while the censure should stand, it should not be published in the press. When this was carried by a margin of forty-three to thirty-three, the minority withdrew ‘in paroxysms of rage’. They left the meeting and went to join a crowd who were already besieging the New Inn. Some of the crowd cried out ‘Let us see him, the villain has sold his country.’ Drennan and his friends rushed to the New Inn to protect Dobbs. He told William Bruce: ‘I saw and I know this man is singled out as an object for vengeance. He is weak, vain [but] honest ... I would never wish to countenance private pique in its extremity of wrath against a sinking man. It is ungenerous. It is cruel.’57
5
IF YOU SLEEP YOU DIE!
In December 1782, Drennan moved to Newry and set up in medical practice. He hoped to take advantage of the fact that Dr James Moody, one of the local physicians, had moved to Dublin and Drennan anticipated that he might be able to attract the custom of Moody’s former patients. He arrived in Newry with letters of introduction to a dozen principal inhabitants of the town. He took ‘genteel, commodious lodgings at Mrs. Maxwell’s in Market Street’. He soon made friends with the departing doctor’s brother, Reverend Boyle Moody (1752–1799), the local non-subscribing minister.1 He told William Bruce: ‘I consider myself as very happy in acquaintance or rather intimacy with Boyle Moody – he is one of those agreeable, lively well-informed men with whom it is always a pleasure to be connected particularly in a county town where the seeds of rational society are but thinly scattered.’2
Boyle Moody and his older brother, the Reverend John Moody, a Minister at Strand Street, Dublin, had both been educated at Dr Joseph Priestley’s Warrington Academy. William Bruce, who was at this time working as assistant minister to John Moody at Strand Street, had also been educated at Warrington. Drennan admired Boyle’s singing voice and his preaching ability. A few months later, when Sam McTier had occasion to meet Boyle Moody, he formed a somewhat different view of Drennan’s new friend. After Sam had spent an evening drinking with him in the tavern, he described Moody as, ‘a very great coxcomb and an empty fellow’, who did not ‘live as a clergyman ought’.3 Empty fellow or not, Boyle Moody had been an active member of the Volunteers and later the Society of United Irishmen. He was imprisoned during the 1798 Rebellion and died the following year from a fever contracted in prison. A Dr Campbell quotes a letter dated 1800, which goes some way towards explaining the reason for the arrest and subsequent death of Boyle Moody. ‘His crime was his profession, his liberal principles, his avowed friendship with the Catholics, nothing else is alleged.’4 The Non-subscribing Presbyterian congregation at Newry still exists and they display a plaque which, while it acknowledges Boyle Moody’s service as its minister from 1779 until 1799, makes no mention of why or how his ministry came to an abrupt end.
Other than Boyle Moody, Drennan found the young men of the town genteel and dressy, not much cultivated by education but very civil and obliging to himself. The young women Drennan encountered were ‘not much inferior to those in Belfast. They were exceedingly affable and conversable, and he was sure all of them improvable on acquaintance’.5
Fortunately, Drennan’s and Martha’s correspondence resumes at this point. She kept her brother ‘Will’ informed of the fluctuations in her precarious state of health. She constantly reassures him that all the reports of his progress in Newry reaching Belfast are positive. For his part, Drennan kept Martha appraised of his efforts to court the acquaintance of those local families whom he hoped might employ him as their physician. Martha told him of his family’s efforts to ensure that he would have a wardrobe suitable for a respectable young Doctor of Medicine. His sister Nancy had taken his Volunteer coat to the tailor to have the gold braid removed and new lining and lapels sewn on. However, the tailor must have been a Volunteer, for ‘he refused to perform this [sacrilegious] operation’.6
It is perhaps not surprising that one of the established local medical doctors, John Templeton, did not welcome Drennan to town and maintained a hostile attitude towards him. This hostility resulted in a very unpleasant stand-off between them, when Drennan was called to the sick bed of an elderly gentleman, a Mr Montgomery, one of Templeton’s patients. Usually in such a situation, doctors would be expected to consult each other in terms of comparing opinions and ensuring prescriptions and treatments were compatible. This Templeton resolutely refused to do.
Montgomery died and it is far from clear whether Drennan was appalled or amused by how the burial of the deceased was conducted. He told Martha:
I attended Mr. Montgomery’s public funeral and walked before the rest in a very disagreeable procession, preceded only by a ragged beggar-looking fellow who kept jingling a little bell in his hand as if to appraise the whole town that the deceased and the doctor were just a coming. This is a constant ceremonial in funeral solemnities in this place, and not satisfied with this, there is always one of these bell ringers informing everyone by their papistical bell, who had died and what hour and when he is to be interred. I observe that these fellows always pull off their hats most respectfully on meeting me in the street, as if certain of my being a future friend of theirs, and looking upon themselves as acting pretty much in the same vocation.7
About this time, William Bruce informed Drennan that Dr Priestley’s dissenting academy at Warrington had closed for want of pupils. Drennan suggested to Bruce that this provided an opportunity to draw up a plan to open such an academy in Belfast. Nothing came of this at the time but obviously the idea stayed with Drennan for a very long time. Over thirty years later, Drennan succeeded in opening the Belfast Academical Institution and ironically, one of the most vehement opponents of the project would be William Bruce.
Martha was ambitious for her brother and often urged him to resume his political writings with a view to enhancing his public reputation. Her aspiration was that one day he might be a Member of Parliament and she looked forward to him being referred to as ‘Sir W[illiam] D[rennan]’. He considered a writing comeback in 1783 when he witnessed a massive increase in emigration, which apparently resulted from the end of the war in America, coupled with the effects of a major economic downturn. He considered writing a series of open letters to Lord Charlemont, ‘on the questions of emigration, Volunteering etc’. He was preoccupied with his medical duties at this point and suggested that if he was to resume political writing, he would confine himself to short pieces. He felt that, ‘a natural interruption of letters might give relief to the reader who has not even the patience to finish a sixpenny pamphlet and assist the writer when he became tired of his subject or his subject tired of him’.8
He sent a draft paper to Martha but she was not impressed. She felt it lacked design and it was not clear in its conclusions and she felt that Drennan was arguing against his own feelings. Nor did Martha feel it was a ‘fit’ subject for a patriot and suggested he should find another topic. If, and when, he should find such a suitable subject, he should attach a flattering introduction to Lord Charlemont. She strongly advised him not to claim authorship at first. Rather, he should wait till the work gained recognition and then claim it. The heavy workload in his medical practice prevented him from acting on her suggestions at the time.
An unforeseen circumstance not only delayed his return to writing but nearly terminated his writing career and his life. He was suddenly stricken with a serious illness which he was fortunate to survive. It would be more than a year later, when he had fully recovered his health, that he had found his ‘fit’ subject to resume
