Free M by Andrew Cook

had done so in dealing with Mr Monro…
    Mr Jenkinson asked what was to become of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
    Sir W. Harcourt observed that on the whole he thought the sooner they quitted London the better…
    Mr Jenkinson observed that that being so, he did not see that there was much use in his appointment.
    Sir W. Harcourt said that was a matter for him. 9
    Jenkinson, who was a little more subdued after this, spent the next few days producing a long memo setting out his case. 10 He was willing to concede almost nothing. At the end of June the Liberal Government fell, and would remain out of office for the next seven months. Harcourt went with it and departed in anger, as Jenkinson with characteristic arrogance had announced that Lord Spencer was coming over and would settle the dispute in his favour with the new Conservative Home Secretary, Sir Richard Assheton Cross. 11 Monro calmly wrote a note explaining why Jenkinson’s scheme was not only operationally unsound, but unconstitutional. 12
    Cross, the incoming Secretary of State, was impatient with the whole thing. He met both men and scribbled a set of rules which he considered adequate to settle it. The rules could be partially interpreted, and were.
    For the rest of 1885 Monro and Jenkinson were distracted by other matters. Jenkinson knew that a plot was being cooked up that would involve the Tsar in sponsoring Irishmen to drive the British out of Afghanistan, and possibly promote a Franco-Russian alliance against Germany. It was all a diversion. The Foreign Office was paying a senior Fenian called Carroll-Tevis in Paris and he, along with Jenkinson’s man Casey, was deep in the plot. The English Government now had so many agents dotted about Paris, New York and London unknown to each other that they risked playing a double or treble game that would inevitably lead nowhere; this to a great extent was the case with the Russo-Irish plan. 13
    Nonetheless Jenkinson looked forward to Millen’s arrival from America via Le Havre in November. 14 Before that a meeting of Irish revolutionaries would leave France by way of Le Havre in September. 15 It would be Melville’s job to watch them; to watch them come in, and make sure they left; to watch Millen arrive. Jenkinson was still excluding the SIB from anything but mundane tasks, but Melville had plenty of routine work at the port, his French was fluent, and there was a new baby at home: in April, James Benjamin had been born.
    There were no immediate bomb threats to London. In the lull that marked the second half of 1885 Jenkinson’s urge to manipulate events became almost megalomaniac and his epistolary efforts more stupendous than ever. His eighteen-page Memorandum on the present situation in Ireland of 26 September set out an eloquent case for Home Rule which he sent to Lord Salisbury and selected members of the Cabinet. In his view, were Home Rule not conceded the violence would worsen; the reasonable majority of Parnellite Irish nationalists would be overwhelmed and outmanoeuvred by the violent extremists unless Parnell received support.
    Salisbury dismissed this. Home Rule was out of the question from a Conservative government and he was perfectly prepared to confront an escalation of hostilities. Jenkinson bombarded his only sympathiser in Cabinet, Spencer’s successor in Dublin Lord Carnarvon, with notes and memos; he even wrote about Home Rule to Gladstone, pointing out that only by keeping Parnell on side could violence (and implicitly a violent swing to the Tories) be prevented. Gladstone, who had always kept the Secret Service strictly at arm’s length, sent the following somewhat deflating reply:
    I agree very emphatically – but these are not abstractions, they call for immediate action. I must ask in what capacity you address me – and what use I can make of your letter? 16
    1886 would be Melville’s third year in Le Havre, and he was frustrated by a dangerous