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Issue No.14 Autumn 2003
Thomas Russell
By Margaret O’Neill
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Thomas Russell was born 21 November 1767 in the small village of Drumahane,
near Mallow in Co. Cork. Russell’s father was a Lieutenant in the
English army and his mother an O’Kennedy from Tipperary. Though never
in receipt of a formal education at either school or university Russell
was literate in a wide range of disciplines and mirrored his father as
a devout, biblically-inclined Christian. Following in family tradition
at the age of fifteen Russell joined the 100th Foot as an ensign and served
in India. Russell served with out any undue distinction and returned to
Dublin in either 1786 or 1787 where as a cost cutting exercise he was
retained at half-pay. By this time Russell’s father had been posted
to Kilmainham Hospital in Dublin and while lodging with his parents found
no difficulty gaining access to the homes of the most fashionable.
It was during this period July 1790, that Russell while attending a debate
in the Dublin House of Commons crossed paths with Theobald Wolfe Tone.
The pair quickly developed a deep friendship with Russell a frequent visitor
to Tone’s Irishtown home. At this stage though sensible of the disabilities
experienced by both the Catholics and Presbyterians neither had developed
the concepts of separation from England or republicanism. Throughout the
following months the pair met frequently debating inequalities experienced
in Irish life.
The following summer Russell’s commission was reactivated and he
was posted to Belfast. This city then referred to as ‘the Athens
of the North’ housed many of the foremost radical and liberal thinkers
of the time and as an articulate and personable young officer many homes
made him welcome. Russell became friends with another marginalised religious
group, northern Presbyterians, people such as Samuel Neilson, the Mac
Cracken family and the Simms brothers. Forced to resign from the regiment
for financial reasons Russell returned to Dublin. However, in the October
of the same year along with Tone Russell was back again to Belfast for
the inaugural meeting of the Belfast Society of the United Irishmen.
Russell through his army career had made friends with a Tyrone family
and who now used their influence to provide the by now unemployed ex-soldier
with a living, and Russell found himself seneschal of the manor court
of Dungannon and a magistrate for Tyrone. Russell lasted only a few months
at this as he found it ‘impossible to reconcile it to his conscience
to sit as magistrate on a bench where the practice prevailed of inquiring
what a man’s religion was before inquiring into the crimes with which
a prisoner was accused’.
Russell then appears to have devoted the next year promoting the doctrine
espoused by the United Irishmen and developing concepts and ideas particularly
that of separatism. In February 1794 he was appointed librarian to the
Belfast Library, and over the next two years contributed regularly to
the ‘Northern Star, and in the summer of 1796 he published ‘A
Letter to the People of Ireland on the Present Situation of the Country’.
During this time also Russell took the oath of secrecy that signalled
his belief in the need for armed rebellion to break the link with England
and then begin to solve Ireland’s religious and social problems.
Since his return to Belfast in 1792 Russell was constantly under surveillance
from government forces and on September 1796 was arrested along with Samuel
Neilson and other prominent United Irishmen. Detention in Dublin’s
Newgate prison for the next few years meant that Russell did not participate
in the events of 1798, and as a result of the agreement of 29 July 1798,
whereby he and other United Irishmen being held consented to exile in
order to prevent further executions. The prisoners were then transported
to Fort George in Scotland where they were held for the next four years.
Set free in 1802 as a result of the Peace of Amiens, Russell then began
the journey which would end in his death. Arriving first in Holland, he
then journey on to Paris where he teamed up with other United Irishmen.
It was in this city that he met Robert Emmet and enthusiastically agreed
to play a major part in his future plans.
He returned to Ireland in April 1803 where he immediately began his task
of organising the north. However Russell returned to a city at best indifferent
to his doctrinaire, and at worst openly hostile. Russell made two attempts
to re-organise Belfast, but to no avail, the ‘Men of Ireland’
addressed in his proclamation did not answer his call.
Returning to Dublin in July of the same year he was finally arrested on
September 9th in a house in Parliament Street on the foot of information
supplied by an informer named Emerson who received £1,500 for the
information.
Though a trial was unnecessary because Russell by returning to Ireland
had broken the terms of his release (38 Geo. III, c. 78) he was returned
to Downpatrick to face trial for high treason. On October 20, the jury,
six of whom had previously sworn the United Irishmen oath found him guilty
and he was sentenced to die the following day. After delivering a stirring
speech in which he reiterated his beliefs in liberty and equality Thomas
Palister Russell died.
Russell was a complex man, deeply religious, he abhorred the use of religion
to justify exploitation and discrimination. This led him to conclude that
the source of this division needed to be removed.
Russell devoted his life to the furtherance of his ideas, though born
into social order that would have ensured a comfortable and privileged
existence he chose to travel a different path, dramatically illustrated
when, as he mounted the scaffold in October 1803, his only worldly possession
was his Greek testament and that he gave to his attending clergyman.
Buried in Downpatrick parish churchyard his grave marked by his friend
Mary Ann Mac Cracken with a simple slab inscribed with ‘The grave
of Russell’.
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