Life
1753-1798; United Irishman; b. Cork, ed. TCD, son of wealthy banker and
MP; joined Army, resigned commission after 3 years; bar. 1789; wife died
1791, their parents being raised by her parents in France; visited France
with his brother in 1792; arrested, tried, at a twenty-four hour treason
trial prosecuted by Toler and defended by Curran; sentenced and executed
with his brother John Sheares [Rx]; there is a poem on the Sheares brothers
by Lady Wilde. DNB DIB
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Notes
Lord Carleton, to whose lot it fell to pass sentence on the brothers Sheares’
... was a hypochondriac. See Patrick Kennedy, Modern Irish Anecdotes
(London: Routledge 1872), p.81.
An account of the trial is given in Thos. King Moylan, ‘The Little Green’ [Pt. II], Dublin Hist. Record (Sept-Nov. 1946), p.151ff.
"The Liberty Tree", ‘May all lurking traitors, wherever they be/Make the exit of Sheares, and Erin be free./Derry down, down, trators bow down.’ (Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, p.1101.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)