Some of the negotiations took place in Dundalk. Thomas Russell, Napper Tandy and Coigly played pivotal roles. Later Coigly toured towns drumming up support. He assisted in a campaign to defend small farmers and weavers charged under the Insurrection Act. He wrote pamphlets arguing for ‘civil rights in Britain and Ireland, an end to oppressive measures and calling for freedom and democracy’.

Under growing attention from state authorities he travelled to England, where nevertheless he continued his radical activities in several cities and towns including Manchester, Birmingham and London, while retaining contact with the advanced wing of Belfast United Irishmen.  On their behalf Father Coigly travelled with the Reverend Arthur MacMahon, erstwhile Presbyterian Minister in Hollywood, County Down, first to Hamburg – where there was a sizable group of Irish emigrants, and then to Paris. Unfortunately on the continent Coigly became embroiled in the deteriorating relationship between leaders Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone, favouring the former. Still Coigly submitted a memorial to the French Foreign Ministry. There were other radical leaders present in Paris at the time, from England and Scotland, submitting similar petitions.

On his return to Ireland Coigly submitted a report on his Paris visit to Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Unknown to him and to others at the time, their own ‘fellow leader’ Samuel Turner was giving detailed reports about him and the other Irish émigrés to the English at Dublin Castle. Coigly’s movements were shadowed by agents.

…….

Despite this another trip to Paris was arranged in February 1798 for Father Coigly, Arthur O’Connor and John Binns. O’Connor had been nominated to replace first choice Samuel Lewins who came under suspicion as a spy. Sadly it seems clear now that O’Connor too was a spy for the English. The object of the trip was to secure French help for an uprising in the form of a French invasion. In a London House Coigly, O’Connor and Samuel Turner settled the details of the mission to Paris. Unsurprisingly, because of the treachery of his companions, Bow Street Runners (the forbears of the English police) tracked the party and they were seized and indicted for treason at Margate. Coigly was found to have been in possession of incriminating documents which may well have been planted.

Again unsurprisingly O’Connor was acquitted on character reference from leading politicians. Coigly was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The informers within the United Irish Society were not required to appear in court. Later, commenting on the trial and sentence the English Whig Lord Holland averred that the priest was ‘condemned on false and contradictory evidence’. Later Lord Chancellor Thurlow said, ‘if ever a poor man was murdered it was O’Coigly’.

Father Coigly was executed at Penenden Heath, Maidstone in 1798. He is remembered in a stained-glass window at St Francis of Assisi Church in that town, but sadly barely rates a mention in most histories of the United movement.

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