Richard Ferris

Richard Ferris (Tralee, Co. Kerry, 1750 (or 1754) - Soissons, France, 1828) had indeed an extraordinary, not to say controversial life. In his Biographical dictionary of Irishmen in France (1949), Richard Hayes describes him as an “ecclesiastic and secret agent” who engaged in “an extraordinary career of intrigue and duplicity, posing simultaneously as a secret agent for France and England” before “intriguing to become superior not only of the Irish College but of the combined English, Scottish and Irish colleges in Paris”.

The Irish College, rue des Irlandais

Ferris went to France at sixteen to join Berwick's Regiment of the Irish Brigade. He then studied at the Irish College and the University of Paris and was ordained a priest 1778. He became doctor of civil and canon law and chaplain at the court of Louis XVI. Ten years later, he was canon of Amiens cathedral. After the Revolution he refused to take an oath to the Revolutionaries’ “Civil Constitution” and in 1791 travelled to Germany to join the remnants of his old regiment that remained faithful to the monarchy.

He took part in the abortive invasion of France by royalist, Austrian and Prussian forces in 1792. He then disappeared for a couple of years, emerging in London in 1794 as a secret agent for the French. However, once in London, he switched loyalties again, handing the British the key to the cipher used in French secret correspondence. The British, like the French, handed Ferris a lot of money to fund his spying activities, although the British do seem to have been highly suspicious of this born opportunist. In 1796, Ferris was back in Paris, living at 861, Boulevard Saint-Germain (5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements, address no longer exists), but in 1799 he was arrested and charged with espionage by the French. However, through his pre-Revolution connections to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, then foreign minister, Ferris managed to get himself released and soon set up as a successful lawyer.

The former rue des Postes

In 1808, he was appointed to the board set up by Napoleon to run the affairs of the Irish College. By 1810 he was, according to Miles Byrne, “splendidly lodged” in the English seminary at 22, rue des Postes (5th arrondissement, house no longer exists), just around the corner from the Irish College. He kept a carriage and had a Chinese garden designed at a cost of at least FF20,000, paid for out of college funds. In 1813, he was appointed head of the College. The Irish bishops saw this as a scandal since by this stage the unscrupulous Mr. Ferris was married. In essence, he was a married priest.

Actually, Miles Byrne offers a more charitable picture of the man than Hayes. This is because Ferris and Byrne (along with most of the Irish army officers in France) were on the same side in a dispute over control of the Irish College in the aftermath of Napoleon’s demise. In an Irish version of the ageless dispute in France between Gallicans and those willing to accept the diktats of Rome, the Paris-Irish - led by Ferris - refused to accept the annexation of the Irish College by Maynooth College back in Ireland. Bryne suspected that the Irish hierarchy was in cahoots with the British in its attempts to muzzle a well-know seeding ground for Irish rebels. Ferris and the Paris-Irish (with the backing of the French government) won the day.

Mr. Ferris was “rich and cared little about the emoluments of superior of the Irish College”, but simply wanted to show the Irish bishops that he had more influence with the French government than they had, according to Byrne. He soon proved the extent of this influence by ensuring that Maynooth’s appointee to the college, Father Long, was sent back to resume his duties as a parish priest in the neighbourhood of Dublin.”

The Ferris country house, near Soissons

But in 1820 the argumentative Ferris got into a dispute with a certain Hely d’Orssel, who served with him on the Irish College’s governing council. Despite his age (almost 70) and despite the fact that he could not hold a pistol in his hand “on account of the palsy with which he was afflicted” (Byrne), he challenged Hely d’Orssel (“a mongrel minister, who is only Irish on his father’s side,” wrote Ferris) to a duel that, luckily for Ferris, was called off after an exchange of written insults.

But the dispute forced Ferris to resign as superior of the Irish College, paving the way for the much more amenable (and less irascible) Abbé Charles Kearney. Ferris went to live at 21, rue des Filles de Calvaire (3rd arrondissement, house no longer exists), keeping his carriage. By this stage, Ferris had, according to Hayes, “amassed a considerable fortune through more than doubtful means”. Even while administering the Irish College, Ferris took a prominent part in – and made a large profit from - a reparations commission set up to settle claims from British subjects resident in France during the Revolution. He soon bought a large country house and land near Soissons, north-east of Paris, where he died in 1828.

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