Nightly Visitors, at St Ann's Hill

This is the second of two prints published in 1798 set at St. Ann's Hill, the home of Fox's long-time mistress, Elizabeth Armistead, where Fox had retreated in late May, 1797 after a series of resounding Whig defeats in Parliament. The other is the Shrine at St Ann's Hill. It followed a summer that saw a major Irish rebellion starting at Wexford (which lasted from around May 27 to June 21, 1798), and was accompanied and succeeded by the trials and executions of a number of United Irishmen for their presumed roles in the insurrection.

As he did in the earlier print, Gillray creates an imaginary scene that has no basis in a real event, but goes much further than suggesting a general reverence for French revolutionary principles. Here, in Nightly Visitors, at St Ann's Hill Gillray extends the insinuation made in ( Search Night, or State Watchmen Mistaking Honest Men for Conspirators) that Fox and the Whigs were involved in the plans to coordinate a rebellion in Ireland with a French invasion. And through a combination of visual details and literary allusion, it places the blame squarely on Fox for inciting the failed rebellion, setting up an equivalence with arch-villains such as Shakespeare's Richard III and Macbeth, and Milton's Satan.

Gillray shows Fox in the middle of the night wearing a revolutionary bonnet rouge as a nightcap. Unlike the sleeping Mrs. Armistead next to him, the guilt-ridden and terrified Fox has been awakened by the appearance of a series of ghosts of prominent members of the United Irishmen, all of whom were either killed or executed in the course of the rebellion. They include (from right to left):

• Cornelius Grogan a commissary-general in the insurgent Irish army who denied any active involvement in the rebellion but was nonetheless hanged and beheaded on Wexford bridge on 28 June 1798.
• Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a prominent spokesman for the United Irishmen (here and in reality) married to a French woman, with ties to French and European groups supporting the rebellion. He died from gunshot wounds to his shoulder suffered in a scuffle while resisting arrest.
• Bagenal Harvey, Commander in Chief of the rebel forces, who, like Grogan was hanged and beheaded on Wexford Bridge.
• Father James Coigly (aka Quigley), part of the group including Arthur O'Connor who were on their way to get promises of support from France when they were apprehended in Margate. He was hanged and beheaded at Maidstone on June 7, 1798.
• John and Henry Sheares - members of the Society of United Irishmen, arrested in May, tried and convicted for treason on the 12th of July, and hanged, beheaded, drawn, and quartered on the 14th.

The assemblage of apparitions is similar to the one in Shakespeare's Richard III, Act V Scene 3 the night before the famed battle at Bosworth field. Richard is alone in his tent in the middle of the night when he is visited by a succession of ghosts for whose deaths Richard was responsible. As in Gillray's print, the first and most prominent is named Edward, in this case Prince Edward (the son of Henry VI) who addresses Richard as follows:

Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow!
Think, how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth
At Tewksbury: despair, therefore, and die!

He is followed by the Ghost of Henry VI, the Duke of Clarence, Earl Rivers, Lord Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Lord Hasting, and others—all of whom bid Richard to think on them, despair, and die. It's hard to believe that the theater-loving Gillray would not have remembered this striking scene from Shakespeare's play and not have conceived Fox as another Richard experiencing the belated pangs of remorse for his actions. But there is more.

Speaking for the other headless ghosts, Lord Edward FitzGerald blames Fox for their deaths.

Who first seduc'd my youthful Mind from Virtue? - "Who plann'd my Treasons, & who caus'd my Death? - "Remember poor Lord Edward, and despair!!! - "

The somewhat unusal construction, "Who first seduced my youthful Mind from Virtue" sounds Miltonic. And I would argue that Gillray is remembering a passage from Paradise Lost which contains a similar question about Adam and Eve.

...say first what cause
Moved our grandparents in that happy state,
Favored of Heav'n so highly, to fall off
From their Creator and transgress His will. . . .
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Book One, ll, 28 - 33

Gillray had been associating Fox with Satan since as early as 1782 in Gloria Mundi. In The Republican Rattle-Snake Fascinating the Bedford-Squirrel (1795), his snake-like powers to seduce the Duke of Bedford were on full display. And as recently as a few days earlier, Gillray had published The Tree of Liberty, with the Devil Tempting John Bull (May 23, 1798) with Fox in the role of Devil. So it would not be surprising if an allusion to Satan were not suggested here especially in the context of a seduction to a "foul revolt."

As most commentators have already recognized, Fox's response to Lord Edward recalls another theatrical villain, Macbeth, whose plot to murder his friend Banquo, comes (almost literally) back to haunt him.

Shakespeare	Gillray
Thou canst not say I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me. Act III, Scene iv	Why do'st thou shake thy, Goary Locks at me? "Dear, bravest, worthiest, noblest, best of Men! "Thou can'st not say, I did it!

Like Macbeth (and other well known politicians), Fox is shown anxiously trying absolve himself from any responsibility for the deaths of people acting on his behalf. But Gillray continues to insinuate that the plot was centrally planned. The open book next to Fox's bed contains the words " Head Quarters London. Plan of the Irish Rebellion." And in a slightly later print on the subject, Evidence to Character: being a Portrait of a Traitor published ten days later (October 1, 1798), Fox is shown vouching for the admitted traitor O'Connor with "Letters to Lord Ed F" protruding from his pocket.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Nightly Visitors, at St Ann's Hill.
• "Charles James Fox," Wikipedia
• "Elizabeth Armistead," Wikipedia
• "Oliver Bond," Wikipedia
• "James Coigly," Wikipedia
• "Lord Edward FitzGerald," Wikipedia
• "Cornelius Grogan," Wikipedia
• "Bagenal Harvey," Wikipedia
• "Arthur O'Connor (United Irishman)," Wikipedia
• "Sheares brothers," Wikipedia
• "Wexford Rebellion," Wikipedia
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #207.
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. X.