Sheares brothers

The Sheares Brothers, Henry (1753–98), and John (1766–1798) were Irish lawyers and republicans. After witnessing revolutionary events in Paris, in 1793 they joined the Society of United Irishmen for whom they organised in Cork and in Dublin. They were arrested on the eve of the risings of 1798 and executed at Newgate Prison. Early lives The Sheares brothers were the sons of Henry Sheares, a liberal banker from Cork who also sat in the Irish Parliament for the Borough of Clonakilty. Henry attended Trinity College Dublin, bought an officer's commission and then studied as a lawyer, being called to the bar as a barrister in Michaelmas term, 1790. John had qualified as a barrister in Michaelmas term, 1789. Their father had died in 1776, leaving a large income of £1,200 p.a. Politicisation in Paris In 1792 the brothers went to Paris and were swept away by the popular enthusiasm of the French revolution. They met leaders such as Brissot and Roland, both of whom were to be executed in 1793. In particular, they witnessed the introduction of the guillotine, on which 1,400 were to die in 1792. On the boat from France to England they met a young Daniel O'Connell to whom they displayed a handkerchief soaked, they claimed, in the blood of Louis XVI, the late executed king. The episode is said to have reinforced O'Connell with a lifelong aversion to mob rule and violence. United Irish On their return to Dublin in January 1793, the brothers, committing themselves to Catholic Emancipation and democratic reform, joined the Society of United Irishmen. The Society supported the Catholic Committee who, following an audience in England with King George III, induced the government in April 1793 to introduce the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793. This relieved the Catholic majority of most of their remaining Penal Law civil disabilities. It also admitted them to the franchise on the same idiosyncratic and highly restrictive basis as Protestants, but not yet to the Ascendancy-dominated Parliament.