The contemporary account concludes, ‘About the same hour Captain Wilcox began to retrace his steps home. ‘He was perfectly convinced that his information was not to be disregarded, and was determined at the expense of his life, to be himself the bearer of a message to the Castle, by which, if he did not produce conviction in the minds of others, he would, at least, satisfy his own conscience.’ It describes how he rose from his sickbed and escaped the assassination attempts and laboured to convince sceptical government officials that even Dublin Castle was threatened by the rebellion.

He apprehended and committed to prison 35 persons concerned in Emmet’s insurrection.’ 3Ī book published in 1853 4 puts flesh and blood on these sentences. Immediately afterwards he organized a Yeomanry Corps in the County of Dublin, with the assistance of which he maintained the tranquillity of his own neighbourhood. On that occasion he narrowly escaped assassination eight persons having been stationed in different places for the purpose of attacking him. Writing in 1827, Hatherton notes Willcock’s role in the suppression of the Emmet conspiracy: ‘In 1803, he obtained and communicated to the Government the first information of Emmet’s designs, and thereby prevented the insurgents from gaining possession of Dublin. He was sent as a Stipendiary Magistrate, from time to time, into the Counties of Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny, Meath, and Westmeath and, according to Baron Hatherton, Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1833-4) 2, ‘By his own exertions unaided by police, he successively tranquillized those counties.’ This, Hatherton writes, ‘was affected chiefly by obtaining private information, apprehending the principal offenders, bringing them to trial, securing witnesses, and preventing them from being tampered with.’

Sir Richard was employed from 1807 to 1827 in active service in different parts of Ireland. He was born 26 July 1768 and died 7 April 1834 and like many of the family was buried in the family plot at Chapelizod, near Dublin. Sir Richard Henry Willcocks, first Inspector-General of the Munster Constabulary, was my great, great, great grandfather 1. The one has been called the founder of modern policing, the other Canada’s Benedict Arnold, the worst traitor in Canadian history and the man who bears the greatest responsibility for the burning of Washington in 1814. The most interesting of our Willcocks ancestors are possibly two brothers, one, Richard, who became Deputy Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary and was knighted, and the other Joseph, who emigrated to Canada and deserted to the Americans in the war of 1812 and, if he had not been killed at the battle of Fort Erie would, according to a family historian, have been hanged.

Traitor's Blood by Michael Arnold