The Roscrea Conspiracy: When Stephen Egan Was Accused of Murder
A staged assassination, a disputed prosecution and a sensational trial in 1816
On the night of 28 December 1815, three shots crashed through the parlour window of the Reverend
John Hamilton in Roscrea.
Inside, illuminated by candlelight, a solitary figure appeared to be sitting at a table, reading an open Bible. One bullet
struck the figure in the back. Another hit the Bible. Within minutes, alarm spread through the town that Roscrea's
Protestant curate and magistrate had narrowly escaped assassination.
Before the night was over, Stephen Egan junior and his brother Daniel, members of one of Roscrea's best-known Catholic
business families and brothers of the future Earlscliffe owner Cornelius Egan, were under arrest. Accused of involvement
in a conspiracy to murder Hamilton, Stephen would soon be marched under military guard to Clonmel and placed on
trial for his life.
Yet almost from the beginning, the case contained an extraordinary twist.
The apparent victim had not been sitting in the parlour at all.
The figure struck by the bullets was made of straw.
More than two centuries later, one question remains unresolved. Was John Hamilton the target of a genuine conspiracy,
or had he helped create the very case he claimed to uncover? The surviving records, the courtroom testimony and
Hamilton's own published defence tell a remarkable story of informers, secret meetings, alleged oaths, political
suspicion and a prosecution that collapsed under its own weight.
For the Egan family, the consequences were immediate and terrifying. For historians, the mystery has never
entirely gone away.
A prosperous Catholic family in Roscrea
Long before the shots were fired at Reverend Hamilton's house, the Egan family had become one of the best-known Catholic families in Roscrea.
At its head was Stephen Egan senior, born in Birr around 1751. Sometime after his marriage to Margaret Coffee in the 1770s, he settled in Roscrea, where he built a successful business that began as a shop and bakery before expanding into brewing. By the early nineteenth century, his sons Stephen junior and Daniel were active partners in what had become a substantial brewery, employing local people and supplying a growing market.
The family's home stood beside the brewery on Abbey Street. Originally known as Sans Souci Cottage, it later developed into the much larger Sans Souci Villa. Early Ordnance Survey mapping shows the scale of the brewery buildings adjoining the property, evidence that the Egans had become far more than ordinary tradesmen 2 (see Map 1 below ). They were among Roscrea's leading Catholic commercial families.1
Their success had been built during a period of significant change for Irish Catholics. In 1793, Stephen Egan senior took the oath of allegiance required under the Catholic Relief Acts, one of the legal steps that enabled Catholics to enjoy greater civil rights and participate more fully in commercial life. Like many ambitious Catholic families, the Egans were taking advantage of opportunities that would have been denied to an earlier generation.
By 1815, the family was large, prosperous and well established. Stephen junior lived and worked in Roscrea with his father and brothers. Daniel helped manage the brewery. Another brother, Cornelius Egan, was still a young man, but would later become a successful Dublin businessman, alderman and, eventually, owner of Earlscliffe.
This was what made the accusations that followed so extraordinary.
The men who would soon be accused of conspiracy and attempted murder were not strangers passing through the town. They were business owners, employers and members of a family that had spent decades building its reputation.
Yet in Roscrea in 1815, reputation alone could not guarantee safety.
The town was entering a period of growing tension, where religion, politics and personal rivalries could become dangerously entangled. And at the centre of that tension stood an energetic Protestant magistrate named Reverend John Hamilton.
Religion, Rivalry and Suspicion
Roscrea Before the Crisis: A Town Divided
To understand why the accusations against the Egans gained such traction, it is necessary to understand the atmosphere in Roscrea in the years before 1815, a town where religion, business and politics were difficult to separate.
Ireland was changing. Many of the Penal Laws that had restricted Catholics for generations had been relaxed, allowing Catholic merchants and property owners greater freedom than their parents had enjoyed. Yet Catholics still lived with the legacy of legal exclusion and social suspicion.
The memory of the 1798 Rebellion was also recent enough to shape how rumours were interpreted. Reports of secret meetings, illegal oaths, armed drilling or men carrying pikes could quickly be treated not as local gossip, but as evidence of conspiracy and rebellion.
Roscrea reflected these wider tensions. The town contained both prosperous Catholic families, such as the Egans, and members of the Protestant ascendancy who occupied many of the positions of influence. Religion, business and politics frequently overlapped. Disputes that began in one sphere could quickly spill into another.
Reverend John Hamilton
Among the most influential Protestant figures in the town was the Reverend John Hamilton. Originally from Enniskillen, Hamilton had arrived in Roscrea as a Church of Ireland clergyman and served as tutor to the Birch family of Birchgrove.
The Birch family
The Birch family occupied an important place in this world. They were Protestant distillers who produced the well-known Roscrea Whiskey and were also substantial local landowners.
As employers of both Robert Dyer and James Dyer, the Birch family would soon become closely connected with the extraordinary events that followed. Later Egan family accounts portrayed the Protestant Birches and the Catholic Egans as commercial rivals, although the extent to which commercial competition influenced subsequent events remains difficult to establish with certainty.
Appointment as magistrate
Reverend Hamilton had recently been appointed a magistrate, giving him considerable authority in local affairs.3
According to later accounts, Hamilton was also energetic, ambitious and deeply committed to the Protestant cause. His critics regarded him as an aggressive Orangeman; Hamilton himself would later insist that he was simply carrying out his duty in a troubled district.
Adding to the tension was the presence of the Monaghan Militia , stationed in the area during this unsettled period. Armed patrols, military exercises and displays of loyalty to the Crown were common. To some inhabitants they represented order and security. To others they appeared intimidating and provocative.
Several contemporary accounts describe Hamilton accompanying them on armed marches through the town and surrounding countryside. Shots were fired. Orange songs were sung, and Hamilton was said on occasion to have appeared in an orange cloak with pistols at his belt while military fifes played The Boyne Water and The Protestant Boys, reinforcing his reputation as a highly visible and active magistrate.4
To Hamilton and his supporters, such displays may have represented vigilance in a country still haunted by rebellion.
To many Catholics in Roscrea, they must have looked like intimidation.
Then came the rumours.
It was in this atmosphere that rumours began to circulate.
One of the men carrying those rumours was Robert Dyer, a stable hand employed by the Birch family. Dyer claimed that secret meetings were being held in the district, that men were drilling at night and plotting violence against Protestant residents.5
Hamilton later acknowledged that Dyer had been encouraged by local magistrates to discover what they believed was happening in the district. At first, the allegations were little more than claims made by an informer.
But then, most alarmingly of all, Dyer suggested that Reverend Hamilton himself might be a target.
Now, Hamilton decided that rumours were no longer enough.
He wanted proof.
Building the Case
At first, Dyer's allegations appear to have been treated cautiously.
Dyer's accusations went beyond vague rumours. He claimed to have witnessed gatherings on land belonging to Francis Prittie where men assembled after dark, some reportedly armed with pikes and dressed in green and appeared to be organised along semi-military lines. Most significantly, he alleged that Daniel Egan had directed their movements and exercised a position of authority among them. 9 If true, this was not evidence of a casual gathering but of organised activity under the leadership of one of Roscrea's most prominent Catholic businessmen.
The allegations were difficult to verify. Dyer struggled to explain precisely what exercises he had witnessed, and no immediate arrests followed his first reports.6 His evidence depended on secret conversations, supposed meetings and his own account of what he had seen.
The later Egan account alleged that Hamilton wanted to damage influential Catholics, assist the Birch business and enhance his own standing by exposing a dramatic conspiracy. Hamilton would later insist that he had acted only from duty and that his opponents had distorted his conduct.7
What is clear is that Hamilton believed, or claimed to believe, that men in Roscrea intended to kill him.
Yet rumours and suspicions alone were not enough to sustain a prosecution. Even Hamilton acknowledged that stronger evidence was required. His critics believed he wanted a prosecution.
Thomas Halpin arrives from Dublin
To obtain that evidence, Hamilton turned to a man with experience of informers and political investigations. His name was Thomas Halpin, sometimes referred to in later accounts as Halfpenny. Halpin had connections with the office of Major Henry Charles Sirr , Dublin's chief police magistrate and a figure strongly associated with the suppression of political unrest after the 1798 Rebellion. 10 Hamilton believed Halpin could help establish whether Dyer's stories were true.
Halpin was not sent to Roscrea merely to watch and listen.
According to Hamilton's own account, he was introduced into the investigation under a carefully arranged plan. Dyer, whose local knowledge gave him access to the men under suspicion, would make introductions. Halpin would present himself as an outsider, a man accustomed to violence and willing to undertake dangerous work. 8 It was a form of undercover operation long before the term existed.
What happened next would later become one of the most controversial aspects of the entire affair.
Meetings were arranged in public houses and other locations around Roscrea and were meant to appear accidental. Signals were agreed in advance. Conversations were deliberately directed towards murder.
Halpin reportedly boasted that he had already shot a man.
When talk turned to Hamilton, he offered to perform a similar service in Roscrea. According to the prosecution’s later account, some of the men appeared willing to accept his offer.
Halpin would later claim that he was introduced to men who discussed violence against magistrates and Protestant residents. Hamilton’s defence was that Dyer had discovered a genuine conspiracy and that Halpin had merely entered it to expose those involved.
The Egans and their supporters would later argue something very different: that Dyer and Halpin had not simply discovered evidence but had actively encouraged and shaped the conversations they later described in court.
A capital accusation
A further allegation soon raised the stakes dramatically.
Patrick Hickey, Dyer's brother-in-law, claimed that Stephen Egan junior had administered an oath binding him to support anyone who attempted to kill Reverend Hamilton. If believed, this evidence would place Stephen at the centre of a conspiracy to murder a magistrate. It transformed him from a respected brewer into a potential capital defendant. If a jury believed Hickey, Stephen could be convicted of participating in a murder conspiracy and sentenced to death. 11
By the end of 1815, Hamilton had assembled what appeared to be an increasingly alarming picture.
He had an informer.
He had an undercover operative.
He had allegations of secret drilling.
He had claims of illegal oaths.
And he had reports that his own life was in danger.
Yet there remained one problem.
For all the rumours, meetings and sworn statements, nobody had actually tried to kill him.
That was about to change.
The Night of the Shooting
A figure in the parlour
By late December 1815, Hamilton believed he had gathered enough evidence to prove that a conspiracy existed.
What happened next remains the most extraordinary episode in the entire affair.
According to Hamilton's own account, a plan was devised to test whether the threats against him were real. The plan was theatrical, calculated and extraordinarily dangerous.
In the ground-floor parlour of his house, a figure made of straw was dressed in his clothes and seated at a table. An open Bible was placed before it, with candles arranged to give the impression that the curate was sitting alone reading late into the evening. Anyone looking through the window would naturally assume the figure was Hamilton himself.12
Hamilton later described the arrangement as a legitimate stratagem designed to expose would-be assassins. His critics would argue that it was something very different. Whatever his motive, some facts are beyond dispute: Hamilton knew the figure was there. He supplied Halpin with a pistol, and both Halpin and Dyer knew that the man visible through the window was made of straw. 13
on the night of 28 December 1815, Halpin joined several local men, among them Thomas Quinlan. According to later testimony, they gathered first in Roscrea before moving towards Hamilton's house. What precisely was said during these conversations would become the subject of fierce dispute in court. Some witnesses claimed murder was openly discussed. Others painted a far less convincing picture. 14
Shortly before eleven o'clock, the group approached the house.
Then came the shots.
Three bullets were fired through the parlour window. One struck the straw figure in the back. Another hit the Bible on the table. A third lodged in the wall beyond. Glass shattered. The room was left looking exactly as though an assassin had narrowly missed his target.
Halpin claimed that Quinlan fired at the figure believing it to be Hamilton. Hickey’s evidence, however, tended to clear Quinlan of having fired at all.
That contradiction would matter in court.14
Roscrea is called to arms
The effect on Roscrea was immediate.
News spread rapidly that Reverend Hamilton had been shot at while reading his Bible. Drums beat to arms. Soldiers of the Monaghan Militia moved through the streets.15 What had begun as rumours of conspiracy now appeared to have been confirmed by an assassination attempt. 16
Within half an hour, Stephen and Daniel Egan were under arrest.
The brothers were not found fleeing the town or hiding from the authorities. According to later accounts, they were sitting quietly with friends when they were taken into custody and brought to the guard-house for questioning. The shooting, the alarm and the arrests had all occurred within the space of a single evening. 17
“There, sir”
The following morning brought another curious development.
When Francis Prittie called to enquire about Hamilton's narrow escape, he asked where the curate had been sitting when the shot was fired. Hamilton pointed towards the table in the parlour and replied:
"There, sir."
By that answer, Hamilton allowed Prittie to believe what much of Roscrea already believed: that he himself had been seated in the parlour when the shots were fired.
In reality, the bullets had struck a dummy.
Hamilton would later insist that he had never directly claimed to have been the target inside the room. Yet the surviving accounts say that he allowed officials and members of the public to remain under precisely that impression. 18 Whether Hamilton was deliberately encouraging a false impression, or merely expressing himself carelessly, would later become one of the most contentious issues raised at the trial.
More than two centuries later, it remains one of the most debated moments in the entire affair.
For the Egans, however, the immediate question was not what Hamilton had meant.
It was whether the authorities now believed they had finally found proof of a conspiracy.
The Egans Become Prisoners
The shooting on 28 December 1815 did not immediately send Stephen and Daniel Egan to trial.
Although they had spent the night in custody, they were released the following morning after friends and supporters intervened on their behalf. For a few days, life in Roscrea appeared to return to an uneasy normality. Hamilton and other magistrates continued to investigate the alleged conspiracy, while searches were carried out for weapons and further evidence. Nothing decisive was found.19
Behind the scenes, however, the case was gathering momentum.
Dyer's allegations remained in circulation, and Patrick Hickey's claim that Stephen Egan had administered an oath connected with Hamilton's murder gave the authorities a much stronger basis on which to proceed.20 Whether the evidence was convincing was another matter, but the accusation itself was grave enough to place Stephen in serious danger.
The authorities return
On 11 January 1816, the authorities returned.
Stephen Egan senior, Stephen junior and Daniel Egan were arrested and placed under guard. They found themselves among a larger group of prisoners, some accused of involvement in the alleged plot against Hamilton, others charged with unlawful assemblies and drilling by night.21 What had begun as rumours in Roscrea had now become a formal criminal prosecution.
Forty miles under guard
The following morning, the prisoners began the forty-mile journey to Clonmel, where a Special Commission would hear the case.
For the Egans, the journey was as public as it was humiliating. Stephen and Daniel travelled in a chaise under military escort, while many of the other prisoners marched behind on foot, handcuffed and surrounded by soldiers and police. Heavy rain and winter weather made the journey miserable.22 The procession itself sent a powerful message: men who had recently been respected businessmen were now being paraded through the countryside as suspected conspirators.
The Black Hole at Templemore
Their first stop was Templemore.
There, the prisoners were initially lodged in a bleak room known locally as the Black Hole. Only the intervention of Sir John Carden secured more tolerable accommodation at an inn for the night.23
The next stage of the journey proved little better. At Cashel, they were confined in a damp and sparsely furnished room, and requests for more comfortable lodgings were refused because of the supposedly disturbed state of the country. 24
An invitation to escape
Then came one of the strangest incidents in the entire affair.
As the escort approached Clonmel, two mounted members of the party suddenly appeared to quarrel and fell from their horses. The horses bolted, and almost the entire escort galloped off in pursuit, leaving the prisoners under the supervision of a single policeman. According to later accounts, the remaining guard urged the Egans to escape and even offered to leave them temporarily unattended.
The brothers refused.
Whether they suspected a trap, or simply believed that innocence was best demonstrated by remaining to face the charges, is impossible to know. What is certain is that they stayed exactly where they were and waited for the escort to return.25 Had they fled, their escape would almost certainly have been presented as evidence of guilt.
The ropes at Clonmel Gaol
Clonmel offered little comfort.
According to later family accounts, Hamilton and Magistrate Corker Wright visited the prisoners and encouraged them to confess what they knew about the alleged conspiracy, suggesting that cooperation might help secure a pardon. The prisoners insisted they knew of no conspiracy and rejected the proposal. 26 Soon afterwards, they were reportedly shown through the gaol and into a room where the hangman was preparing ropes for an upcoming execution. Whether this was intended as intimidation or merely remembered as such afterwards, the message was unmistakable.27
For Stephen Egan junior, the reality of the situation could no longer be ignored.
Just weeks earlier he had been helping to run his family's brewery in Roscrea.
Now he sat in Clonmel Gaol awaiting trial before one of the most feared judges in Ireland, charged in a case that could end on the gallows.
Trial for Their Lives
Ireland’s hanging judge
Within days of their arrival in Clonmel, the Special Commission opened before Baron George and Lord Norbury , Ireland's most feared criminal judge, known as Ireland’s “hanging judge”.
Norbury's reputation had long preceded him. Across Ireland, stories circulated of his severity in capital cases and his readiness to send convicted prisoners to the gallows. Whether all the stories were deserved hardly mattered. To men awaiting trial on a charge connected with conspiracy to murder, his presence was alarming enough. Stephen Egan junior was not simply defending his reputation. He was defending his life.
Alongside Thomas Quinlan, John Quinlan and Daniel Herrick, Stephen was charged with participating in a conspiracy to murder Reverend Hamilton. The prosecution was led by Charles Kendal Bushe, the Solicitor-General, and depended heavily upon the evidence of a small group of witnesses headed by Robert Dyer.
At first, Dyer appeared to provide exactly the sort of evidence the Crown needed.
He described secret meetings, drilling by night, armed men gathering in secluded places and discussions about taking Hamilton's life. He portrayed himself as a man who had infiltrated a dangerous conspiracy and reported what he had discovered to the authorities. If the jury accepted his version of events, the consequences for the prisoners could be fatal.
Then the cross-examination began.
The case begins to unravel
Under questioning, cracks quickly appeared in Dyer's story. He admitted that his meetings with Halpin had not been chance encounters. Introductions had been arranged beforehand. Signals had been agreed. The supposed stranger who had appeared in Roscrea offering his services as a killer turned out to be part of a carefully planned operation. What had initially sounded like the exposure of a conspiracy now appeared far less straightforward.
More difficulties followed.
Dyer was questioned about an earlier criminal case in which he admitted receiving five shillings a week while withholding evidence connected with a murder prosecution. Contradictions also emerged concerning some of the alleged drilling and meetings on Mr Prittie's land.28 The prosecution's principal witness was increasingly being portrayed not as a trustworthy informer but as a man whose evidence required very careful scrutiny.
The defence then received unexpected assistance from a witness named William Smith.
Smith was a Protestant layman from Roscrea with no obvious reason to favour the Egans. He told the court that before the affair reached trial he had attended a gathering at Birch's house where accusations against the Egans had been discussed. More significantly, he stated that he believed Dyer's account could not be correct because he knew the Egans had been elsewhere when some of the alleged activities were supposed to have taken place.29
The prosecution was beginning to collapse under its own evidence.
Hamilton enters the witness box
Then Reverend Hamilton entered the witness box.
For the first time, the man at the centre of the entire controversy had to explain his own actions under oath. Hamilton described the straw figure as a stratagem designed to test the truth of Dyer's information. He insisted that he had acted in good faith and that his object had been to expose a genuine threat against his life.
But the questioning soon turned to what had happened after the shooting.
Hamilton was forced to acknowledge that many people, including officials and magistrates, had been left under the impression that the shots had been fired at him personally. Attention was drawn once again to his conversation with Francis Prittie on the morning after the attack. Asked where he had been sitting when the shot was fired, Hamilton had pointed towards the table and replied:
"There, sir." 30
Whether this amounted to deliberate deception or merely an unfortunate answer was left for the jury to decide.
What is clear is that the exchange had a dramatic effect in court.
According to later accounts, Hamilton's testimony provoked loud reactions from those attending the trial and created a sensation in the courtroom. The focus was no longer solely on the accused men. Attention was beginning to turn towards the conduct of those who claimed to have uncovered the conspiracy. 31
Conflicting witnesses
Halpin and Patrick Hickey followed.
Yet their evidence failed to restore confidence in the prosecution. Differences emerged between their accounts, particularly concerning the events of the shooting itself and the role played by Thomas Quinlan.32 The jury had now heard an informer whose credibility had been damaged, an undercover operative involved in the operation, witnesses whose accounts did not fully agree, and a magistrate defending a stratagem that many found troubling.
As the evidence drew to a close, an extraordinary outcome was beginning to seem possible.
The defence had scarcely begun to answer the charges.
Yet the prosecution's own witnesses were rapidly dismantling the case it had brought.
Not guilty, but not yet safe
The jury has heard enough.
In the end, the defence scarcely had to make its case.
After listening to the prosecution witnesses and watching their evidence unravel under cross-examination, the jury indicated that they had heard enough. According to contemporary reports, there was no need for the defence to call further witnesses. The prosecution had failed to establish its case. Stephen Egan junior, Thomas Quinlan, John Quinlan and Daniel Herrick were acquitted.
For Stephen, the transformation was remarkable.
Only weeks earlier he had left Roscrea under military guard, accused of participating in a conspiracy to murder a magistrate. He had endured imprisonment, public suspicion and the prospect of standing trial before Lord Norbury on a charge that could have ended at the gallows. Now he walked out of court a free man.
The collapse of the prosecution raised immediate questions about the reliability of the evidence on which it had been built.
Contemporary newspaper reports noted that Dyer's testimony had appeared suspicious and had not been adequately supported by the other witnesses. More striking still, the Solicitor-General reportedly expressed the view that Hamilton and the other magistrates had themselves been deceived by Dyer. Ten additional prisoners whose cases depended upon the same evidence were also discharged. 33
Dyer taken into custody
Attention now turned towards Robert Dyer.
With the approval of the court, the Solicitor-General ordered that he be indicted for wilful and corrupt perjury. The jury had rejected the prosecution he helped create, and many expected that he would now face prosecution himself. Dyer was taken into custody as proceedings against him were prepared.
Outside the courthouse, friends and supporters gathered around the acquitted men. Their immediate ordeal had ended, but the controversy had not. The jury had decided that the charges against Stephen and his fellow defendants had not been proved.
After weeks of accusation, imprisonment and the threat of execution, they could finally return to Roscrea.35
A dangerous homecoming
But Roscrea was waiting for them.
According to the later Egan account, around one hundred members of the Monaghan Militia had gathered in the town, many of them intoxicated and prepared for violence. Armed Orangemen were also said to be on the streets, firing squibs and anticipating trouble. Colonel Kerr was eventually persuaded to order the soldiers back into their barracks.36
The Egans were warned not to enter Roscrea by the main road.
So the men who had refused an apparent opportunity to escape on the journey to Clonmel returned to their own town by a back lane. They had faced a capital charge in open court and been acquitted, yet they could not safely make a public homecoming.
There was no triumphal procession.
No official apology awaited them.
The searches of their home, the weeks in custody and the accusation of conspiracy could not be erased by the verdict.
Stephen Egan had survived the prosecution.
But acquittal was not the same as vindication.
He was free.
Whether anyone would be held accountable for placing him in danger was another question.
It had not decided whether Reverend Hamilton had uncovered a genuine conspiracy, whether he had been misled by unreliable informers, or whether his own actions had contributed to the disaster that followed.
Those arguments were only beginning.
Within weeks, the battle that had failed in the courtroom would continue in pamphlets, petitions and even the House of Commons itself.
Who was held accountable?
The War of Pamphlets
The verdict ended the trial, but it did not settle the argument.
Almost immediately, the controversy moved from the courtroom into the public arena. The acquittals had resolved one question, whether the Crown had proved its case against Stephen Egan and the other defendants. They had not resolved the equally awkward question of how the case had arisen in the first place.
Reverend Hamilton was determined to defend both his reputation and his conduct.
Hamilton publishes his defence
In 1816, he published a lengthy pamphlet entitled An Explanatory Statement of Certain Occurrences at Roscrea, setting out his version of events in meticulous detail. Hamilton insisted that he had acted throughout from a sense of public duty. He maintained that Dyer's information appeared credible, that genuine concerns existed regarding secret meetings and armed activity in the district, and that the straw figure had been a legitimate stratagem designed to test whether the threats against him were real. He denied acting from malice towards the Egans and portrayed himself as a magistrate unfairly attacked for attempting to preserve order.
Hamilton was particularly sensitive to accusations that he had deliberately misled the Government and the public following the shooting. He denied deliberately telling the Government that he himself had been fired upon and argued that Major Sirr and other senior officials had been informed of the plan.
Hamilton portrayed himself not as the architect of a false conspiracy, but as a magistrate whose attempt to expose a genuine threat had been distorted by political opponents in order to damage his reputation. 37 The very length of the publication reveals how seriously he took the challenge to his character.
The Egans take their case to Parliament
Daniel and Stephen Egan gave a very different account.
According to Hamilton's own account, Daniel and Stephen Egan submitted a memorial to the Lord Lieutenant detailing their arrests, imprisonment and prosecution. They argued that serious injustice had been done to them and questioned the conduct of those responsible for bringing the case forward. What had begun as a criminal prosecution had now become a political dispute concerning magistrates, informers and the administration of justice itself.
The affair soon reached Westminster.
Questions were raised in the House of Commons about Hamilton's continued role as a magistrate.38 Speaking on behalf of the Government, Robert Peel acknowledged that Ministers disapproved of aspects of Hamilton's conduct, yet stopped short of condemning him personally. Instead, Peel suggested that Hamilton and the other magistrates had been misled by unreliable information and had acted in what they believed to be the public interest.
Although the Government publicly disapproved of the methods used, Hamilton retained his clerical position and continued to exercise influence in Roscrea.40 Records show that he remained curate of the town and was still involved in its sectarian disputes years later.41
Hamilton continued to insist that he had uncovered a real conspiracy. The Egans and their supporters remained convinced that innocent men had been placed in mortal danger by a prosecution built upon deeply flawed evidence. More than two centuries later, the surviving sources still reflect those competing interpretations. Hamilton's pamphlet is a defence; the Egan family tradition is an accusation; and the contemporary newspaper reports sit somewhere between the two.
Decades later, William Joseph O’Neill Daunt drew upon both when he wrote his fiercely critical account in Eighty-Five Years of Irish History. He acknowledged that his chapter was based on Hamilton’s publication and on a manuscript lent to him by Alderman Cornelius Egan of Dublin. 39
That source history matters.
Daunt’s account contains vivid details absent from the formal reports, but it is openly hostile to Hamilton and strongly aligned with the Egan interpretation. Hamilton’s pamphlet, by contrast, was written to defend his reputation and position.
Neither is neutral.
For the Egan family, however, one fact was beyond dispute.
Stephen Egan junior had entered Clonmel as a man accused of conspiracy and facing a possible death sentence.
He returned to Roscrea acquitted.
Dyer faces a perjury charge
Robert Dyer came closest to punishment.
After the prosecution collapsed, he was taken into custody and the Solicitor-General ordered that he be indicted for wilful and corrupt perjury. His evidence had been central to the Crown’s case, yet it had been contradicted, undermined and judged untrustworthy.
But the charge went no further.
The grand jury declined to return the bill, so Dyer was never brought to trial and was not convicted. Dyer, whose evidence had placed Stephen Egan's life in jeopardy, ultimately stood trial for nothing. 34 Beyond that, the surviving record says little with certainty about what became of him.
Halpin disappears from the record
Thomas Halpin had played an active role in the operation.
He had entered Roscrea as a police operative, presented himself as a man willing to commit violence, helped steer conversations towards murder and took part in the staged shooting at Hamilton’s house.
Yet no reliable evidence has been found that he was prosecuted or convicted for his part in the affair. After giving evidence at the trial, he largely disappears from the surviving record.
All in all, Dyer escaped trial for perjury. Halpin appears to have faced no prosecution. Hamilton defended his conduct, retained his position and continued his career.
The accused men had been required to answer for their lives.
Those who had helped create the case against them were never required to do the same.
Yet the questions raised by the case, about informers, magistrates, evidence and justice, would linger far longer than the trial itself.
What Can Really Be Established?
More than two centuries after the events at Roscrea, the surviving sources allow some conclusions to be drawn with confidence.
Certain facts are not seriously disputed. Shots were fired into Hamilton's parlour on the night of 28 December 1815. A straw figure dressed in his clothes had been placed at the table. Stephen and Daniel Egan were arrested. Stephen Egan junior was later tried at Clonmel on charges connected with a conspiracy to murder Hamilton. The prosecution collapsed, and he was acquitted along with the other principal defendants.
Beyond those facts, certainty becomes more difficult.
The principal surviving accounts were written by people with strong views and clear personal interests. Hamilton's pamphlet was written to defend his conduct and reputation after the trial had ended. Daunt's later narrative, although based in part on Hamilton's own publication and on Egan family material, is openly sympathetic to the Egans and deeply critical of Hamilton. Neither source is entirely neutral.
The central question concerns Hamilton himself.
Hamilton maintained that he genuinely believed a conspiracy existed, that Dyer's information appeared credible, and that the use of the straw figure was a legitimate investigative device designed to test whether threats against his life were real. He consistently denied conducting a malicious or fabricated prosecution.
His critics reached a very different conclusion.
They pointed to the close cooperation between Hamilton, Dyer and Halpin, the arranged meetings, the contradictions exposed during the trial, and Hamilton's apparent willingness to allow others to believe that he himself had narrowly escaped assassination. To them, the affair looked less like the exposure of a conspiracy and more like the construction of one.
The jury never answered that question.
Their task was not to determine whether Hamilton had behaved improperly, nor to investigate the conduct of the magistrates. They were asked a much narrower question: whether the evidence proved the guilt of Stephen Egan junior and his fellow defendants.
Their answer was clear.
It did not.
For the Egan family, that verdict brought an end to an ordeal that had included arrest, imprisonment, military escort, public suspicion and the possibility of execution. For Roscrea, however, the controversy lingered long after the trial ended. Pamphlets, memorials and parliamentary debates kept the argument alive, whilst conflicting versions of events continued to circulate for years.
For Cornelius Egan, then still a relatively young member of the family, the affair became part of a family history that would not be forgotten. His brothers had stood accused of one of the most serious crimes imaginable, only to see the prosecution collapse in open court. It was an episode that revealed both the opportunities and the dangers facing a prosperous Catholic family in early nineteenth-century Ireland.
The jury settled one question in January 1816.
Stephen Egan was not guilty.
The larger question remains unresolved.
Was Reverend John Hamilton the intended victim of a conspiracy, or the man who helped bring one into existence?
Sources and further reading
- The ‘Other Egans’ from Birr and Roscrea By Dermot McAuley. Blogs No 80, 05 May 2018 - offalyhistoryblog https://offalyhistoryblog.com/2018/05/05/the-other-egans-from-birr-and-roscrea-by-dermot-mcauley/. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800–1885, new ed. (London: Ward and Downey, 1888). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Rev. John Hamilton, An Explanatory Statement of Certain Occurrences at Roscrea (1816). A pamphlet published by Hamilton in response to the Egans’ memorial, parliamentary criticism and public allegations concerning his conduct. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- The Speckled Booklet of the MacEgans (no. 1) is a 1984 historical and genealogical publication edited by Liam Egan and Michael J. S. Egan focusing on the MacEgan (Mac Aodhagáin) family clan history https://www.clanegan.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SpeckledBooklet-of-MacEgans.pdf . ↩
- Rev. John Hamilton, An Explanatory Statement of Certain Occurrences at Roscrea (1816). A pamphlet published by Hamilton in response to the Egans’ memorial, parliamentary criticism and public allegations concerning his conduct. . ↩
- William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800–1885, new ed. (London: Ward and Downey, 1888). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Rev. John Hamilton, An Explanatory Statement of Certain Occurrences at Roscrea (1816). A pamphlet published by Hamilton in response to the Egans’ memorial, parliamentary criticism and public allegations concerning his conduct. . ↩
- William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800–1885, new ed. (London: Ward and Downey, 1888). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- The Speckled Booklet of the MacEgans (no. 1) is a 1984 historical and genealogical publication edited by Liam Egan and Michael J. S. Egan focusing on the MacEgan (Mac Aodhagáin) family clan history https://www.clanegan.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SpeckledBooklet-of-MacEgans.pdf . ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800–1885, new ed. (London: Ward and Downey, 1888). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser Sat 27 Jan 1816, page 4. ↩
- William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800–1885, new ed. (London: Ward and Downey, 1888). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- The Speckled Booklet of the MacEgans (no. 1) is a 1984 historical and genealogical publication edited by Liam Egan and Michael J. S. Egan focusing on the MacEgan (Mac Aodhagáin) family clan history https://www.clanegan.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SpeckledBooklet-of-MacEgans.pdf . ↩
- Rev. John Hamilton, An Explanatory Statement of Certain Occurrences at Roscrea (1816). A pamphlet published by Hamilton in response to the Egans’ memorial, parliamentary criticism and public allegations concerning his conduct. ↩
- William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800–1885, new ed. (London: Ward and Downey, 1888). ↩
- UK Parliament, House of Commons debate, “Case of the Rev. J. Hamilton,” 13 June 1816. Robert Peel stated that the Government disapproved of Hamilton’s proceedings but noted that he was otherwise regarded as an active and useful magistrate. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1816-06-13/debates/53c3666e-f3c9-4e2e-a225-caab93f8719f/CaseOfTheRevJHamilton . ↩
- National Archives of Ireland, Chief Secretary’s Office Registered Papers, CSO/RP/SC/1825/583 and related records; see also CSO/RP/1828/278. Hamilton was still curate of Roscrea in 1825 and 1828 and remained involved in disputes concerning Orange and sectarian activity in the town. https://csorp.nationalarchives.ie/search/index.php?PHPSESSID=04d0bb1dc93c76c37e0975c28f9852d0&browse=true&browseresults=true&category=27&offset=580&subcategory=188 . ↩
- William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800–1885, new ed. (London: Ward and Downey, 1888). ↩
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