A recent news report on RTE informed that a named individual "had been sentenced for laundering money at the Central Criminal Court". Ho-hum!
This came to mind on reading of Richard Whately (1787-1863), theologian and Archbishop of Dublin (C of I) in John O'Donovan's Life by the Liffey. Archbishop Whately once tried a lofty put-down, telling a beggarwoman outside his palace in St Stephen's Green that he never gave to anyone begging in the street. "Then", she replied, "where would your Grace desire me to wait upon you?"
English-born Richard was both a liberal and a scholar, being a prolific writer and author of many learned works. "In Stephen's Green the fidgety English Archbishop, Dr Whately, could be seen playing with his dogs and swinging from the trees outside his palace" (Dublin: Peter Somerville-Large). He was regarded as being "mildly eccentric".
Spelt Whately, Whateley and Wheatley, this English locative means "clearing/field where wheat grows". Neither Woulfe's Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall nor Mac Lysaght The Surnames of Ireland list this; de Bhulbh's Sloinnte na hEireann/Irish Surnames does, merely informing that it is found in Belfast, Lurgan, Antrim, Midlands etc. Of the 39 entries in telephone directories south of the Border, 20 are in the 01 area, 11 in south Ulster and Leinster, with six in the Connacht area. The Phone Book of Northern Ireland lists eight Wheatleys and two Whatleys.
One of the Adventurers for Lands in Ireland 1642-46 was John Wheatley, who was allocated land in the south Co Tipperary barony of Iffa & Offa. We estimate that it was somewhere to the east of Cahir. There is not now a single telephone listing of this surname in this area, nor indeed in all Co Tipperary. However a number of families so-named lived in the parishes of Templemore, Cloghprior, Dorrha, and Terryglass, as found in Griffith's Primary Valuation (1852) and Tithe Applotment Books (1823-37). Four families were in Terryglass in the barony of Lower Ormond. The ruins of an abbey founded soon after Patrick's time by one of the many Colums, had became a centre of learning and produced, about 1150, The Book of Leinster, now in Trinity College, Dublin. Some few years later the abbey was a victim of an attack by Galway Irish (not at hurling!) causing the monks to leave it for ever, taking their possessions to Lorrha. Terryglass derives from Tir Dha Ghlas, "country of two streams".
There was a handful of persons bearing this surname in Dublin down the years. Samuel Wheatley (d. 1771), engraver and publisher, was at Salutation Alley, opposite Crane Lane, Cork Hill, and later at the Frying Pan, Anglesea Street, opposite Cope Street. Mary Wheatly, spinster, was among the witnesses to a city of Dublin will of 1799, and The Dublin Directory of 1837 lists The Right Hon. And Most Rev Richard D.D. Archbishop of Dublin, Palace, Stephen's Green, North, and Redesdale, Stillorgan; James Wheatly, chandler, 133 Francis Street, and Thomas Wheatly, worsted manufac. 16 Spittalfields.
The most celebrated trial of the 1790s was that of William Orr, a prosperous young farmer from County Antrim, held at Carrickfergus on 18th September 1797. "After the scare caused by Bantry Bay, an increasingly frustrated government stage-managed a theatre of terror in 1797, ranging from the dragooning of Ulster to the Blaris Moor executions of four Monaghan militia men, who had sworn the United Irish oath, to the execution of Orr. Briefed by Castlereagh, the government had decided that an example had to be made of a leading Presbyterian United Irishman. The opportunity was provided by the trial of William Orr of Farranshane, a Presbyterian, Volunteer, freemason, Northern Star contributor and United Irishman." So wrote Professor Kevin Whelan in his Foreword to the 1998 reprint of Francis Joseph Bigger's 1906 William Orr. Though popularly believed to be innocent of the charge of administering the United oath, his conviction was achieved through the false testimony of two Scotsmen, John Lindsay and Hugh Wheatley. Orr was hanged on 14th October 1797, and payments to this pair, noted in the Account of Secret Service Money 1795-1804, started in December of that year. They received monthly payments of £5 13s. 9d. each until February 1801, and a final payment of £150 to Wheatley.