Townsend quickly put aside his initial misgivings about O’Connor. The Viscount was as taken with O’Connor’s bold proposition as Deane was and gave Deane permission to ‘dispatch him as soon as possible with his letters’. Townsend approved the pardon. He sent a courier to Deane with £100 for O’Connor. John Deane was to be keeper of the purse. Townsend gave Deane full authority to control the flow of money as he saw fit. Townsend was keen for O’Connor to get going as soon as possible. He suggested a contingency plan if O’Connor’s true purpose was discovered by their enemies before the Irishman left them. Deane was to give O’Connor a reward and his pardon, and then O’Connor was to go to ground for five or six months. Townsend emphasised to Deane the importance of thoroughly interviewing O’Connor on his return from Spain and Ireland, and milking every drop of information he could provide from the Jacobite heartlands.
It was September. October was agreed as the best time for O’Connor to begin his journey. Townsend sent a further £100. The viscount tried to pre-empt anything that might go wrong with O’Connor’s mission. He recommended Mr Stanhope, the English ambassador in Madrid, as a trusted man to whom O’Connor could deliver his intelligence if it was too dangerous to return to Deane. Townsend was concerned about O’Connor carrying large amounts of money across Europe. Townsend suggested that Deane give half the allotted money to the Irishman. Then Townsend instructed Deane to take a playing card, cut it in half and give it to O’Connor. The other half of the card and the rest of the money was to be taken to Townsend who would forward card and money to Stanhope in Spain. When O’Connor arrived in Spain, whoever approached him with the other half of the card could be trusted and would give the Irishman the rest of his money. Townsend was keen to establish correspondence between Deane and Stanhope. Townsend’s attention turned to O’Connor in Ireland. The Viscount was particularly interested in the weapons O’Connor had referred to. Townsend wanted to know where they were. He wanted them seized and would remunerate O’Connor generously if he could discover their whereabouts. Townsend suggested a £500 reward. Come October, John Deane sent Edmund O’Connor on the first stage of his journey. He was to go to Rotterdam and see Archdeacon. Things progressed without suspicion on the part of the Jacobite. O’Connor delivered letters to Archdeacon and was given letters for O’Connor to take back to William Hay. O’Connor copied the letters and sent them to Deane in Amsterdam.
Townsend received news from Spain that disturbed him. An ally had been taken in his bed by the Spanish authorities who had forced their way into his room and imprisoned him in a castle in Granada. In the light of this news, sending O’Connor to Spain now seemed disproportionately risky to the viscount. Townsend sent Deane alternate orders regarding the Irishman. He wanted Deane to instruct O’Connor to ‘skulk about in Holland or any other place’ and for the Irishman to ‘settle a correspondence with you that you may always know how to write to him’. O’Connor was effectively being put on ice until Townsend could figure out how best to use him without unnecessarily endangering his life. O’Connor had not yet received his pardon. The pardon had been approved. Townsend had the document with him and was anxious to pass it on to the Irishman. All he needed to know was how to correctly spell the Irishman’s Christian name.
O’Connor had been busy in Rotterdam. There was a lot of confused activity. O’Connor tried his best to keep Deane informed. An unnamed man from France had arrived with a letter for ‘their man at Rotterdam’. O’Connor told Deane, who then instructed O’Connor to get the messenger drunk and get him talking. There was a letter from Gordon. There was an Irish clerk present whom O’Connor knew. O’Connor obtained a handwriting sample of Archdeacon’s French clerk and a sample of Archdeacon’s seal. O’Connor discovered the route the correspondence between Archdeacon and his friends in Russia would take. The Irishman was doing very well but was conscious of outstaying his welcome and arousing Archdeacon’s suspicion. Nevertheless, Deane instructed him to stay where he was and further win Archdeacon’s confidence.
O’Connor did as ordered. Deane’s instincts proved correct. Archdeacon seemed quite taken with O’Connor and asked the Irishman if he would accompany him to Spain. Deane was excited. He did not yet know that Townsend was losing confidence in the Spanish venture. Deane wrote to Townsend approving the arrangement the viscount had made with Stanhope. Deane had faith in O’Connor and the Spanish mission. In contrast with Townsend, Deane’s approach to the possibility of failure in Spain was to prepare O’Connor to succeed somewhere else. O’Connor was in correspondence with William Hay. Deane encouraged the Irishman to ‘flatter’ Hay ‘and desire he would mention his name to his brothers’. William Hay’s brothers lived in Italy. Deane was guiding O’Connor to pave the way to be of use in Italy if things in Spain did not go well.
O’Connor observed more comings and goings in Rotterdam. There was another anonymous man who came to see Archdeacon. The stranger was from the north of England; tall, between 20 and 30 years old, level-headed and reticent.
O’Connor had eight days before he was due to travel to Spain and there was much to accomplish before he departed. There was a clan of Jacobites who flocked around a lieutenant. The lieutenant was either Spanish or Italian and carried a heavily locked leather bag with him. The lieutenant and his cronies were notably excited about something O’Connor had not yet discovered. O’Connor had befriended the lieutenant and was to drink tea with him. Deane instructed O’Connor to go one step further and take the lieutenant round Rotterdam: ‘Show him some rarity, separate him from the clan and then “attack him with the bottle”.’ The last visceral instruction was John Deane’s exquisite euphemism for getting a victim hammered on alcohol and encouraging him to talk, a favourite technique of Deane’s for extracting sensitive information.
Deane received the dispatch from Townsend effectively aborting the Spanish mission. O’Connor’s trip to Ireland also seemed to be in question. Deane was stunned. He sent a reply respectfully imploring Townsend to change his mind. Deane stressed the time. He believed that such an opportunity might not present itself to O’Connor again. He even offered to accompany O’Connor on the Ireland chapter of his journey if that would help. Deane gave the letter to O’Connor. He ordered O’Connor to deliver the letter to Townsend in person. Deane hoped that the Irishman’s presence, earnestness and enthusiasm would sway things. Deane sent O’Connor on his way him giving a new name to travel under: William Wilson.
Deane seemed beset by worries. He had received word from St Petersburg that Dr Consett was suffering persecutions at the hands of the Jacobites. Deane’s promise to educate the son of the publican Trescod was weighing on him. Deane asked Townsend if he could help in any way in either situation. ‘It has never been my method to neglect my absent friends,’ he told Townsend. Deane had also been thinking about his own future. The business with O’Connor was exciting and important but in financial terms it was only an adjunct to his responsibilities in St Petersburg and would, one way or the other, soon be over, then once again John Deane would be unemployed. John Deane was worrying about ageing. He had already written to Townsend and diplomatically asked for work, or else a pension, ‘to move beyond the dreadful apprehension of want in old age’.