‘Hope, James. About 5 feet 7 in[ches] high; black hair & eyes; long faced; ill looking; has a stoop in his shoulders. Speaks with the northern accent and is about 40 years old. Comes from the co[unty] Antrim somewhere near Belfast. [William Putnam] McCabe [qv] & Hope organized the greater part of the country in 1798. McCabe told Quigley that Hope was the most active man he ever met. [f. 41v] Hope went to Drogheda with a view of effecting a rising in conjunction with [George] Teeling [qv]. Kept a linen shop in the Coombe. Is the person who communicated with the Executive [qv]; must know them all. He went twice with Russell to the north. Supposed to be now in the Liberty. No man can convict Ph[ilip] Long [qv] except Hope; Hope assisted McCabe in organiz[in]g the country in 1798’
The passage above is from a ‘ ‘notebook’ … (this is how it is described in the catalogue of the National Library of Scotland) … a sort of prosopography of Irish radicalism … (which) was prepared as part of (the) process (of) gathering information to establish an accurate picture of the plans (for the insurrection) that had been hatched and the name, position and actions of those responsible … not signed, but it can confidently be ascribed to Charles William Flint, the private secretary to the chief secretary, William Wickham; it was assembled in the autumn of 1803.’
(Note: ‘James ‘Jemmy’ Hope (1764-1847) from Templepatrick, county Antrim, was an exceptional promoter and recruiter for the cause of the United Irishmen in the 1790s. Having seen action in county Antrim in 1798, he was committed to a further effort and he was one of Emmet’s most committed organisers in 1803. Sent north with Russell, he avoided apprehension and subsequently melded back into civilian life’.)
(All of the above from:
KELLY, J. (2012). OFFICIAL LIST OF RADICAL ACTIVISTS AND SUSPECTED ACTIVISTS INVOLVED IN EMMET’S REBELLION, 1803. Analecta Hibernica, (43), 129-200.
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23317181)
(Featured image is a photograph made by William McKinney of a sketch, see below, the photograph held and displayed by McKinney in his albums, specifically ‘Box 1 Album 1 Large dark leather album with clasp and a tooled design of a country scene with a bird and a butterfly’; the glass plate negative of this photograph now held in the collection of NMNI.)
See also from other contemporaneous sources:
the empire of the senses 