Land agent’s miraculous escape during the Famine
This column looks at the attempted murder in 1848 of William Armitage Moore whose daughter later married Percy French. Moore survived. After his death in 1883, his widow took a liking to French but the balladeer chose her daughter's hand instead.
In 1848, an assassin’s bullet almost took the life of the Earl of Annesley’s land agent. The unfortunate employee was William Armitage Moore. To tell you the truth, the Annesley family were themselves wealthy bigshots whose extensive lands lay in the counties of Cavan, Laois and Down. If Moore had died, then Percy French’s first wife might not have been a Cavan woman.
This land agent became more than a landlord’s employee. The third Earl of Annesley later became the husband of Armitage Moore’s daughter, Pricilla, the aristocratic sounding Countess Annesley. The former Annesley property, Arnmore House, Cavan Town, became William’s home.
Gunpoint
The barbarous outrage perpetrated against Armitage Moore occurred on November 3, 1848. The Anglo-Celt reported on the horrifying incident that same day. Moore was collecting rents due to Lady Annesley from her tenants. He was on his merry way to Milltown, close to Belturbet when the attempt on his life occurred.
Close to Baker’s bridge two unruly men stopped his carriage. One of them drew a pistol, aimed it towards Moore’s heart and pulled the trigger. Miraculously, the gun misfired, and the ruffians fled for their lives. The journalist noted that ‘Mr Moore, who was closely muffled up at the time, could not extricate a pistol, which he carried in an inside pocket.’ He always carried a small weapon for personal protection.
The two had run ‘some distance’ when Moore located his gun and gave chase. He found himself accompanied on foot by his clerk and carriage driver. The neighbourhood was not on Moore’s side. Described as ‘country people’, they metaphorically put their feet out to trip him. The reporter wrote, ‘it seems,’ the locals ‘gave them every obstruction in the pursuit, and assisted the would-be murderers in their flight’.
But just as the gunmen were on the horizon, Moore discharged three pistol shots. But, as good a shot as he was, the distance was too great. Moore headed to the nearest police station and ‘alarmed’ them to his near fatal encounter. Having listened attentively, the police set out to ‘scour the country’. Later that winter afternoon, the police made an announcement. They had caught a young man called Kiernan. They escorted him to Cavan station.
Ungrateful
The temper was up. On Thursday of the following week, Moore summoned a meeting of Annesley’s Drumlane tenantry in Cavan Town. The Moreton Bay Courier on April 7, 1849, reported that just after midday 2,000 people assembled to hear their land agent. William Armitage Moore stood at the front door on the office steps to give his oration. Like a disgruntled teacher, he was not best pleased towards the disobedient tenantry.
Moore’s speech began as follows: ‘I have called you together to speak of the shameful and daring outrage, which was committed upon me on Friday last. I appointed to go on that day to your neighbourhood to receive rents. I did this to save you trouble, and not to drag you from your business to Cavan. When on my way, near Baker’s bridge, two fellows attacked me, and thought to take away my life; but through the merciful interposition of God their design was frustrated. These fellows were your emissaries paid by you, and acting under your orders. You imagined that, by murdering me and sending me into eternity with all my sins upon my head, that you would not have to pay your rents. But you were mistaken.’
Infuriated, he added, ‘you did this after my living 10 years with you, and spending of my own money over £10,000 with you’ and ‘I advanced you loans out of my own pocket, of from £5 to £25 each… is this not true? (to which several replied it is! it is!) Was it for this you sought to murder me? Or was it for procuring an abatement of forty percent upon your two last years (of) rent?’
He continued: ‘I went amongst you in your distress, more like a pedlar than anybody else, distributing blankets and giving clothes to your children, and was it for this you sought to murder me?’
Given the fact that he saved them from starving, did not register, he explained. Moore had bought them food. He said, ‘I purchased meal in large quantities when it was dear, and gave it out to you, the most of it for nothing, and some, to those whom I thought able to pay, at half price, the greater part of which money has never been repaid me.’
The crowd bellowed, ‘Shame! Shame!’ and others cried that every word was true, and more shouted ‘you were always a kind landlord to us’.
Moore at length spoke of the agricultural seeds he went to Dublin to buy and had given out to the tenantry. He talked of the improvements he had encouraged them to make on their holdings. Moore emphasised that, for those who failed to pay him, he did not confiscate their animals, further adding, ‘no, I did not like to take your cows and your pigs, I preferred waiting until you would dispose of your crops, and you might pay me little by little.’
William said that the public now knew the shocking ingratitude of the tenantry. Then, he told them, that ‘the outrage of which I complain is a disgrace to your neighbourhood… conducted in your Ribbon Lodges at night, when honest men should be sleeping in their beds.’
One of the gunmen was still at large and he gave them 24 hours to hand him to the police. Otherwise, they would feel the pain of having their debts called in immediately.
Family ties
Born in 1871, William’s daughter Ettie Armitage Moore became Mrs Percy French. She lived at the family home Arnmore House, Drumelis, Cavan. Arnmore House originally belonged to the Annesley family and its ownership eventually passed to Lord Farnham. Today the building belongs to Cavan Golf Club. Living to the age of 76, William Armitage Moore died on February 17, 1883. He never lived to see his daughter marry Percy French, the balladeer. Would he have approved. Who knows?
Apparently, when Percy first met the widowed Mrs Armitage Moore, the widow herself had set her eyes on him. But, when Percy chose her daughter Ettie’s hand in marriage, they say the mother looked visibly upset. Curiously, if Ettie’s father had died in 1848, there may have never been a Mrs Percy French linked to Cavan Town.