Week IV. Further humiliation was heaped upon Colonel Richard Martin, who sought redress for the ‘dishonour to his bed, the alienation of his wife’s affection, the destruction of his domestic comfort, the suspicion cast upon the legitimacy of the wife’s offspring, and the mental anguish which the husband suffers’ (such was the legal language of the day ), during his divorce trial against John Petrie, to be awarded only £10,000., exactly half of the £20,000. which he felt justified in demanding.
Perhaps the real injury was that after 13 years ‘when Martin and Eliza had lived together in very great happiness’ and, following a number of miscarriages, had three children, it was suggested that Petrie’s open affair with Eliza, both in Paris and in London, was the result of Martin’s neglect of his wife.
The court was told that for three months, Martin had left his wife alone ‘in a city of the greatest luxury’ caught up in the excitement of the French Revolution. In Martin’s absence Eliza, we are told ‘understandably’, sought protection from the dramatic events about her. She found solace in the arms of John Petrie, a merchant.
There must have been times when Martin regretted not putting a pistol ball through Petrie’s heart. Although it is unlikely, he is reputed to have fought 100 duels by sword, or by his preference, pistols at 10 paces. He was not called ‘Hair-triger Dick’ for nothing.
Yet chastened as he was, he returned to Connemara, and soon recovered his former ebullient self. He would eventually remarry, to the novelist Harriet Evens, and have three children. And he must have been particularly preoccupied by the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the emergence of Theobald Wolfe Tone as one of its leaders.
Tone was a tutor to his children at Dangan House, who had appeared on stage with Eliza and himself, and Martin now had suspicions that his eldest child, Laetitia, could have been the result of an affair between Eliza and Tone.
One outcome of the 1798 Rebellion was the controversial Act of Union, when the Irish Parliament in Dublin was subsumed into Westminster, becoming the one parliament of the United Britain and Ireland. It gave, however, Martin a bigger audience. As the member for Galway, and a Protestant, he was outspoken in his demand for the right for Catholics to be elected to parliament. He would later become a strong supporter of Daniel O’Connell. He was universally popular, and noted for his interruptions and humorous speeches.
But Martin is probably best known for his campaign against animal cruelty. He sensed a growing ground-swell of public disquiet against bear-baiting and dog fighting, and the crude herding of animals through the streets of London to be slaughtered at Smithfield. After various attempts and failures, the Martin Act of 1822, and subsequent bills, became the first animal welfare legalisation in recorded history. Although Martin was lampooned, and pictured in cartoons with donkey ears, King George IV gave him the affectionate name: ‘Humanity Dick’.
Immunity from arrest
In the meantime of course, the debts on his estate, and the upkeep of his household, continued to spiral upwards. Most of his 200,000 acres were mountain, bog and water. The Martins were regarded as good landlords, and Richard was no stranger to his tenants. He had grown up on the estate and knew the names of everyone since childhood, conversing in Irish. But the land was poor and it was not unusual for a tenant to have nothing but a potato patch. The rent for this might be a low as a half-crown a year, and as often as not that might be paid in kind, or in labour.
On the death of his father, Robert Martin, Richard, aged 40 years, inherited the estate, the second largest in the country, and its accrued debts. Nothing worthwhile came of all the plans for mines or marble quarries, but there was a steady revenue from the salmon fisheries (which are still there today ), and from oyster beds along the coast.
Martin enjoyed immunity from arrest for debt as long as he was an elected member of parliament. But it was be coming increasingly difficult to be reelected once the powerful marquises of Clanricard and Sligo began to sponsor candidates against him. Clanricarde had deep pockets, and could mount an impressive canvass; whereas Martin had little or no funds; but he had other tricks he could play.
In the notorious 1826 election hundreds of his tenants arrived at Woodquay on boats from all over Connemara, and began patrolling the streets of Galway to the ‘spirit-stirring drum and ear-piercing fife. When somebody opened up the whiskey supplies, the crowd rioted and the military were so slow in acting that there were several deaths’.
Blatant intimidation, and the chasing out of town of Martin’s opponents and their supporters, saw Martin elected on that occasion. But following a parliamentary inquiry, instigated by an irate Clanricarde, it was shown that Martin’s tenants had not only voted twice, even three and four times, but that Martin himself had encouraged rioting; while his cousin James Martin, the High Sheriff, had failed to use his authority to stop it.
Martin was stripped of membership of parliament.
Just before his creditors pounced Martin and his family made a hasty exile to Boulogne, France, where eight years later, at 80 years of age, he would die peacefully in the presence of his wife Harriet and their three daughters and son Richard.
United Ireland
If Martin had thoughts about Wolfe Tone, Wolfe Tone had thoughts about Martin. A proficient diarist and recorder of the events of his life, Wolfe Tone, along with every one else, must have read the extensive coverage generated by Martin’s ‘criminal conversation’ case against John Petrie. He felt that Martin had been treating his wife with the usual neglect, and wrote in his diary: ‘I am satisfied from my own observation and the knowledge of the characters of both parties during my residence for many months in their family, that the fault was originally Martin’s’.*
Wolfe Tone would come dramatically to the fore of Irish life when he was captured after a furious six-hour sea battle off the Donegal coast on October 30 1798. His ship, the Hoche, part of a French flotilla on its way to support the Irish Rebels who had risen in Connacht and Wexford, was forced to surrender to a British naval squadron.
Two months earlier General Jean Humbert had landed at Killala, Co Mayo, with 1,000 men. After some success at Castlebar, and during the heady days that followed, including the short-lived declaration of Connacht as an independent republic, Humbert’s force marched on Dublin, but was captured at Ballinamuck. Although the French prisoners were treated well, and returned to France, the Irish among them, including Wolfe Tone’s brother Matthew, were hanged.
Wolfe Tone, whose dream of a United Ireland, Protestant and Catholic working together against a common enemy, faced the same treatment. He never lost his flair for theatricality. He appeared at his court martial in the full French officer uniform of the Armée de Sambre et Meuse. He requested death by firing squad, but was sentenced to be hanged. Despite last minute efforts by his Trinity friends, to have his sentence mitigated, he was found with self inflicted wounds in his cell, and died on November 19 at 35 years of age.
‘My beloved husband’
Through it all Elizabeth Vessey (Vesey ), alias Martin, did not disappear from history as many of us thought. Dr Hugh Carey** tells us that in fact Eliza and John Petrie were married, possibly in June 1793, two years following her divorce from Richard Martin. They had three children, the eldest of whom Emily, born in February 1792, was mentioned during the Criminal Conversation case which ended her mother’s first marriage. There was a son John who died aged 11 months, and is commemorated on a memorial inscription near the family vault in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Lewisham, Kent. In addition the couple had at least one other daughter Harriet Jane Gilbert.
John Petrie died at Calais 1826. He was a widower when he courted Eliza. His first wife is also resting in the family vault. Eliza died in 1829. ‘Her last will and testament survives to prove that far from being an opportunistic ‘coup de foudre’, born on the libertine boulevards of revolutionary Paris, Mrs Martin’s relationship with Mr Petrie rose above scandal and survived the vicissitudes of time and family life, to last for 36 years’.
In her will Eliza expressly requests that her remains ‘to be laid by the side of my ever to be revered (? ) and my beloved husband in our family vault in the Church of Lewisham Kent’.
The will also shows that Eliza maintained some degree of contact with her first family. Part of her estate refers to a re-payment of unsecured loans to Laetitia Martin (the former Lady Peshall ) daughter of Richard Martin and Elizabeth.
Laetitia was born in February 1785 and perhaps because her father was in England until the previous July, was regarded as premature. ‘Martin’s biographers noted this but also alluded to suspicions that Theobald Wolfe Tone, who lived with the family at Dangan, near Galway city, may have been Laetitia’s real father’.
Next Week: The last of the Martins of Ballynahinch
NOTES: * Shortly after leaving the Martin household at Dangan, Wolfe Tone eloped with Matilda (Martha ) Witherington, of Dublin, who was devoted to him, and travelled with him through France and America as he sought his political destiny. He dedicated his life tirelessly seeking a united Ireland, Presbyterian and Catholics working together. With their son William she edited and published Tone’s autobiography, diary, letters and pamphlets which were published in Washington in two volumes, 1826. It became an international best seller.
** Richard Martin’s Divorce from Elizabeth Vesey: A Drama in Three Acts 1791 - 1793, by Hugh Carey, JGAHS Volume 68 2016.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
