William Sampson – Equality Advocate on both sides of the Atlantic
Introduction
Lawyer and author William Sampson was a man who dedicated his life to the ideals of democracy and justice. Both in his homeland and in his subsequent exile in America, he devoted his prodigious abilities to securing the rights of the poor and enslaved. Although himself born into the Anglican ‘ascendancy’ in Ireland, he recognised the unfairness of a political system that denied the majority of the population the vote. These beliefs were to cost him dearly.
William’s Family Background
Sampson was born on 27th January 1764 in Derry. His parents were Anglican clergyman Rev Arthur Sampson and Mary Spaight, who was related to the Dobbs family of County Antrim.
William was the youngest of 3 boys and at least one girl (accounts differ). The Sampsons had a strong literary and clerical background.
William’s sister Margaret was married to the Rev John Dubourdieu of Annahilt who penned a ‘Statistical Survey of the County of Down’ published in 1802. His brother, Rev George Vaughan Sampson, was a noted linguist and social reformer who wrote a ‘Statistical Survey of County Londonderry‘. His grandfather Michael Sampson was the vicar of Lambeg and the rector of Kilrea.
From the age of 4 William was raised by his father’s maiden aunt. This lady was noted for her eccentricities as one “who seems to have adopted the Spartan system of education, at least in physical development”
R R Madden, The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times Vol 2
William enjoyed sports and particularly excelled at boating. He was described as being “distinguished for his superiority in manly exercises”.
Education and Career
Sampson entered Trinity College Dublin and subsequently studied law at Lincoln’s Inn in London. He was admitted to the Irish bar in 1792.
In 1790 Sampson married Belfast-girl, Grace Clarke and settled in the city. Grace was the daughter of the Rev John Clarke and Catherine Anne, née Coates. Both were very academically minded and were early members of the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge founded in 1788 (todays Linen Hall Library). Catherine Anne’s sister was married to the renowned doctor James McDonnell (see link below to the post “James McDonnell – The Father of Belfast Medicine“).
William and Grace had three children. Unfortunately, their first baby boy William died in infancy. Their second son John, named after William’s colleague John Philpot Curran, was born on 18th February 1795. Curran was his godfather. John followed his father into the legal profession becoming Deputy Attorney General of Louisiana. Sadly, he died from fever on 3rd November 1820 at the age of only 25. Daughter Catherine Anne, born in 1796, was to marry William Tone in 1825. He was the son of United Irishman Theobald Wolfe Tone.
Opposition to Inequality
In Belfast Sampson served as Junior Counsel for the noted lawyer John Philpot Curran on the north-east circuit. This involved the defence of a number of United Irishmen charged with sedition, criminal libel and treason.
William, while not a member of the Society, supported their aims to try to secure political change in Ireland and to allow Catholics the vote. In open court he recited “The Test” – the oath admitted to new members of the United Irishmen to show that it sought only reform and was not treasonous.
Sampson abhorred the use of the courts for political purposes and sought to separate the judiciary from the Crown.
“But he struck his most telling blows at the partisanship of Irish judges, in whose hands an ambiguous law could be transformed into a bulwark of the ruling classes. Where the law was oracular (as it too frequently proved to be) the judge usurped the function of juror and legislator. Trials became mere puppet shows….”
Maxwell Bloomfield, William Sampson and the Codifiers, 1967
Written Articles
Sampson was a believer in ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ and sought to expose injustice through his words. At a time when any criticism of the English government was regarded as sedition, he wrote scathing articles for the Northern Star newspaper. Among his political satires were “Review of the lion of Old England” (1794) and “Advice to the Rich” (1796).
The Northern Star newspaper was founded in Belfast in 1792 by a group of Presbyterian businessmen (see link to post “Wilson’s Court – The Story of a Belfast Entry and its Northern Star”]. It advanced the views of the United Irishmen and was much more forthright in its editorials than other newspapers in the town.
“The Northern Star was able to provide a larger content of local news and political comment, making it as critical and close to the bone as it dared. Political satire came to be its stock in trade, attracting the talents of able polemicists like the rising lawyer William Sampson….”
A T Q Stewart, The Summer Soldiers, 1995
Under the alias ‘Fortesque’ Sampson published reports of political trials, this in itself was an arrestable action. In 1794 with his friend Thomas Russell, William wrote a series of articles entitled “The Trial of the Hurdy Gurdy“. In this the pair pilloried the Crown, who had made the playing of certain songs such as ‘Ca Ira’ supporting the French Revolution, a crime.
“A lawyer, a political activist who helped draft the Belfast resolutions for parliamentary reform in 1796, an expert stenographer who reported trials that stirred public interest, a radical pamphleteer, and a satirist of political events, he wrote almost 40 books and pamphlets”
Mary Helen Thuente, Dictionary of Irish Biography, 2009
As well as in newspaper columns, William Sampson used the written word to spread his sense of justice in the form of pamphlets, songs and poetry. One poem entitled ‘Death before Dishonour’ was composed after he witnessed the execution of four young soldiers from the Blaris camp, accused of being United Irishmen, who chose death rather than inform on their comrades (see link to post “Sugarhouse Entry – Belfast’s Forgotten Entry”)
“I saw a dismal Sight, I saw them brought
Solemn and silent to the bed of death.
From slavish hirelings they received the shot,
And yielded up to heaven their native breath.”
Disapproval and Harrassment of William
Obviously, Sampson’s political affiliations became known to the authorities and he was subject to harassment and intimidation.
On one occasion the Sampson’s home on High Street was raided by soldiers led by Lord Westmeath himself. It was thought the editor of the Northern Star, Samuel Neilson, was on the premises. Westmeath searched every room and cupboard in the house, even the hayloft, where he was accidently (?) locked in, -thus acquiring the nickname Hayloft Westmeath for the rest of his life.
William continued to assist with the defence of United Irishmen and was involved in the (show) trial of William Orr in 1797 (see link to post “William Orr- Trial and execution 1797“). He afterwards had Orr’s trial script and dying declaration published in the liberal Dublin newspaper The Press, the Northern Star having been supressed.
He was later to defend Mr John Stockdale, printer of The Press, on the charge of seditious libel. He condemned the use of the courts and the pulpit as a means of disseminating political thought and the fact that a man’s opinions alone could brand him a traitor.
William now, with others, including Lord Moira, began to collect and collate statements, evidence and affidavits of the war-crimes being committed in Ireland by government forces. This made him a serious threat to the English. The written documents which were witnessed and signed by Lord Charlemont and Mr Grattan were presented to the King by Lord Moira. (The papers subsequently ‘disappeared’).
Treason Charge
On 12th February 1798 Sampson was charged with high treason, a capital offense.
“The search was also on for William Sampson, who was wanted for treason on the strength of reports that he was a leading military figure in the movement. The reports were almost certainly untrue, but Sampson had long been a source of trouble to the government; he had written radical pamphlets, defended United Irish prisoners, and chaired a committee that publicised military atrocities in the country”
David A Wilson, United Irishmen, United States 1998
Sampson offered to hand himself over to the authorities if he was promised a trial. The offer was ignored.
In April 1798 he managed to escape, sailing to England on a coal barge. However, at Whitehaven he was captured and transported to Carlisle Jail. On 9th May he was returned to Dublin and kept in solitary confinement in Bridewell. His manservant was tortured in an attempt to extract incriminating evidence, but to no avail.
Banishment
Subsequently under the Banishment Act, he was permitted to travel to Portugal. This proved a hazardous voyage and on 27th October the ship was shipwrecked off the north Welsh coast near the small town of Pulhelly. Fortunately, there were no fatalities.
Sampson disembarked at Oporto on 3rd March, was rearrested on 22nd March 1799 and in May was sent to Bordeaux, still under close surveillance. In France, Sampson and his manservant John Russell, were given the status ‘prisoners of war’. Some three years later in 1802, William’s wife and children were allowed to join him.
In May 1805 the Sampsons travelled to Hamburg and sailed to England. Here once again William was arrested. He was offered the choice of imprisonment or permanent exile. William left for America, arriving in New York on 4th July 1806.
American Career
Despite being in poor health, William Sampson made a successful career for himself in America. He was admitted to the Bar and became a prominent lawyer in the city with several of his cases making legal history.
In 1810 Sampson’s wife Grace and his children were permitted to join him, John was now 16 and Catherine 14.
“In this country, where he found an hospitable asylum, equally creditable to the generosity that he gave, and the gratitude that received it, he lived thirty years a faithful and useful citizen. The Bar, with the usual liberality of that Learned body, received him as a brother, and continued to him, to his death, their respect and esteem”
The New-York Evening Star 31st December 1836
On his arrival in New York, Sampson and fellow Irish exile Thomas Addis Emmet, became lawyers for the Manumission Society. This organisation had been founded in 1785 for the abolition of slavery. Sampson prosecuted cases of cruelty by slave-owners and defended the right to ‘inter-racial’ marriage.
Sampson became known as a respected writer and social reformer. He set up a printing business which published legal trials and highlighted cases of injustice. He was one of the pioneers in urging the codification of American law. This was the process of compiling and standardising laws into a formal code embodied by legislative statutes, rather than relying on customary practice and, in this case, English practice.
He has even been dubbed the ‘Patriarch of the Codification Movement’ by French-American jurist Du Ponceau
“….but in its (the Codification Movement) impact upon popular opinion, it owed a peculiar debt to the tireless public relations work of one man – the flamboyant Irish émigré lawyer William Sampson”
Maxwell Bloomfield, William Sampson and the Codifiers: The Roots of American Legal Reform, 1967
In the Courts
In 1809 Sampson defended the Cordwainers of New York who were being prosecuted for trying to set up a trade-union. This was regarded by employers as a ‘conspiracy’ to force an increase in wages. A cordwainer was a tradesman who made (not repaired) shoes from new leather.
William subsequently published an account of the trial.
“For the defence, Sampson sympathized with the journeymen’s plight, and complained about the injustice of a situation in which merchants could meet ‘to settle the markets’ while journeymen were ‘indicted for combining against starvation’”
David A Wilson, United Irishmen, United States, 1996
In 1813, with American lawyer and politician Richard Riker, William successfully defended the right of confidentiality within the Catholic confessional. Sampson was vehemently opposed to all forms of religious bigotry.
His Memoirs
In 1807 Sampson wrote his memoirs of his life in Ireland.
“At length my friend, I take up my pen to comply with your desire, and to give you the history of my extraordinary persecution. From it you may form a judgement of that system of government which drove the unhappy people of Ireland to revolt. But, to judge rightly, you should also be aware, that of many thousand such cases, mine is one of the most mild”.
William Sampson Memoirs, 1807
In this autobiographical work William explains how his experiences and sense of desperation and frustration honed his moderate views into something more radical.
“I was never inclined to political contention and it required strong conviction to move me to sedition. But there are moments, when to be passive, is to be criminal; as when we see a murder committed before our eyes, and do not stretch out our hand”
Other works include “The Catholic Question in America” (1813) and “Discourse on the Common Law” (1823). He also edited the American edition of the “Life of John Philpot Curran” (1820) by William Henry Curran and a “History of the Civil Wars in Ireland” (1833) by William Cooke Taylor.
Latter Days
For the latter part of his life William and Grace lived quietly in Georgetown to be near their daughter and grandchild Grace. When William Tone died on 10th October 1828 of tuberculosis, the Sampsons returned to New York. Here Sampson is described as having “a small circle of select friends, whom he charmed by the urbanity of his manners, the felicity of his wit, and his invariable good humour”
William Sampson died on 28th December 1836 in New York after a long illness. He had been attended by Dr William James MacNeven. MacNeven, from County Galway, was another Irish emigrant forced to flee his homeland due to his support for the United Irishmen cause.
Sampson’s funeral was attended by a vast number from legal circles, his many friends and admirers and many fellow Irishmen. He was initially buried in the Riker’s family plot on Long Island. Later he was reinterred in the grave of his son-in-law, William Theobald Wolfe Tone, in Brooklyn.
Recognition of his Achievements
In many respects William Sampson was a man ahead of his times. His views on democracy, race and religious freedoms are accepted today but in his lifetime were regarded as radical, even a threat to society.
“….William Sampson, of whom it was the glory and the misfortune to have been fifty years in advance of the state of knowledge and civilisation, in the country in which he was born, and of the Government under which he lived the first and greater part of his life”
The New-York Evening Star, 31st December 1836
As a member of the ruling minority William could have had a respected and affluent lifestyle. However, William chose to follow his conscience knowing the result would lead to hardship, imprisonment and eventually exile from his native land
“… he had every incentive to court favour from the dominant Protestant Establishment. No political or social barriers embittered his young manhood…
Under normal conditions self-interest and a distaste for violent measures would probably have kept Sampson out of radical politics; but the state of Ireland’s affairs in the 1790’s was anything but normal. His debut as a lawyer coincided with an impending crisis in his country’s government. Reform measures in such vital areas as land, suffrage and religion were long overdue”
Maxwell Bloomfield, William Sampson and the Codifiers, 1967
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