Caesar was delighted to be back at Tintern which with John's alterations and additions and his gardens and orchards now in maturity was a place very different from that which he had left thirty-seven years before, and the next four years were certainly the only time in his life that he had enjoyed unalloyed happiness and freedom. He came to the place as a stranger but his young neighbour, Thomas Boyse of Bannow, took charge of him and introduced him to everybody. One evening when a dinner party had been arranged and he was not ready to greet his guests he called out of his bedroom window to apologise to a group standing on the lawn below explaining that he could not find his trousers and shoes because, being accustomed to living in a prison cell, he could not keep control when his clothes had such an extensive area over which to disperse themselves. On the same occasion he remarked that he ate more fresh fruit in a day at Tintern than he had been able to get in a year in France, and on the topic of French wines that he had never tasted them and that as a life-long abstainer he was no more likely to do so now than he was to get married. These two observations were remembered by witnesses in the case of Rossborough v Boyse forty years later.

In June 1817 Boyse accompanied Caesar to a party at the Morgans at Johnstown Castle and there introduced him to the Kirwan family and in particular to their daughter Jane. The father was a Dublin barrister and the family had extensive interests in the Island of Montserrat where they had an unenviable reputation for devious, unscrupulous and ruthless dealings; as relatives of Lord Aldborough they hyphenated 'Stratford' to their name- a compliment which neither Lord Aldborough nor his wife appreciated. After it had been ascertained that Caesar was in fact the owner of more than 25,000 unencumbered acres it was pointed out to Jane that he was over 50 years of age, had led a life of privation and hardship which had undermined his health, that he was not likely to live very long and that there would be plenty of time after his death for her to marry Boyse to whom as mistress of 25,000 acres she would be even more acceptable. Whether Boyse was party to the scheme is uncertain. Coupled with her ferocious determination of character Jane had a completely devastating charm remarked upon by all her acquaintances- she had no friends- who had not seen the displays of vicious ill-temper and manic fury to which she would give rein if she considered that she had been in the least measure thwarted. She married the unfortunate Caesar on 30th of November of the following year. Caesar, however, went on living, on and on, and it was 25 years before Jane and Boyse could get married. That marriage was not a success either. Boyse after six weeks, terrified by her rages and with recollections of Caesar's fate- he had been the last person allowed to see him before his death- left her. He refused to appear as a witness on her behalf in court in the case of Rossborough and Boyse and died two years later.

In 1818 before his wedding Caesar had already been returned to Parliament as a supporter of the opposition but his contribution to debates was not outstanding. Wishing to make a maiden speech on the rights of Catholics he failed to catch the Speaker's eye, and contented himself with a speech on a motion on state lotteries in which he dealt with the superiority of the continental lotteries of which he claimed considerable experience, and incidentally apologised to the House for his French accent. He made a speech opposing the Irish Window Tax on public health grounds and devoted a great deal of time to the work of the committee sitting on the London Gaslight Bill. The committee was reluctant to consider the chemical problems involved in the manufacture of gas but he was able to convince them that the processes in gas-works involved dangers to the health of those working in them as well as to those living in their environment, that the risks of explosions called for strict statutory controls and that the proposals for discharging gas-washings into the Thames would be a public-health disaster. He did not stand for re-election in 1820 primarily because Jane objected to his engaging in any activity which was not subject to her control, but also because he found the work exhausting and disliked the life in London which it entailed and his parsimonious outlook made him begrudge the expense involved. In the 1818 election his supporters had expended his money lavishly but the thing which rankled most was that to celebrate his victory twenty of them, all Colcloughs, had held a banquet and sent him the bill.

They left London and returned to Tintern where Caesar spent his time pottering about in the workshop which he had set up in the Abbey to house his bench, tools, and above all, his beloved lathe and these were still there over a hundred years later. By the beginning of 1822 Jane had decided that she loathed Tintern as much as she loathed her husband and all the Colcloughs and everything associated with them and insisted on a move to Bath. Thereafter their residences were alternately Bristol and London each year until 1826 when they had another unhappy year at Tintern. Caesar employed an architect to design a house to meet Jane's requirements and set aside £10,000 to pay for it but she refused to entertain the idea. To Paris they had to go, then Rome, back to Paris, a year in Switzerland, Paris, Dublin, London, Bath, Clifton, London, Lewisham, London, Paris, Tonbridge, Bath, Paris, Dublin and so on but with all that Caesar seemed no nearer his end.

By this time Jane had established the normal pattern of behaviour. All post would be handed to her and she would decide what letters Caesar might or might not see. Callers had to interview her first and were only permitted to see Caesar with her permission and in her presence. On one occasion a deputation of Tintern tenants dissatisfied with the way a succession of unsatisfactory stewards were handling the estate called on them with a petition asking Caesar to return and take over control himself and speaking of the good that he could do. Their somewhat shocked report to the rest of the tenantry on their return to Tintern was that Jane had jumped to her feet and shouted at Caesar "Good! What good do you imagine you could do for anybody?" and turned them out of the house. The Rev. John Reade who was a distant connection of the Colcloughs and whose family had rented one of the Tintern farms for over a century called on them in London to ask for the renewal of the lease. In Jane's absence he saw Caesar alone and the lease had just been agreed when Jane rushed into the room shouting "What's all this about?" When she was told she bundled Caesar out of the room, told Reade that he could not have the lease and sent him off. A closer relative of the Colcloughs, John Green, who afterwards was for many years a Member of Parliament, had been promissed by Caesar that a commission in the army would be bought for him in accordance with the family's normal practice but when he called to discuss the matter Jane took charge and said that the money would be advanced only as a loan and subject to payment of interest and to his being able to produce suitable guarantees and sureties for its repayment.

When Caesar had first got back to Ireland he found his mother very unhappy in the Georges Street house with its private theatre which had not been used since John's wake and its unfortunate memories. Her sole companion was her niece, Mary Anne, the daughter of her sister who had married Sir John Ribton. Catherine was very fond of Mary Anne who seems to have been a woman of singular sweetness of character and in later years was to be the only one of the two hundred or so involved in the case of Rossborough v Boyse to emerge with the slightest credit, though Jane took a most violent dislike to her. As his mother wanted to move to Dublin Caesar bought No. 18, Molesworth Street for her to occupy and there she moved with Mary Ann, the Georges Street house being sold and becoming ultimately part of White's Hotel. As a first exercise of her muscle Jane demanded that Caesar should convey the title of the house to her, which he did. She then informed her mother-in-law that her continued residence in Molesworth Street depended on her paying £150 a year rent to Jane and giving an undertaking that Mary Anne was to be turned out of the house and never in any circumstances permitted to visit it. On rejecting these terms Catherine, who was then over 80, and Mary Anne were evicted and had to look for other accommodation, which they found in Kildare Street, where Catherine died in 1835 at the age of 99.

Most of the major houses of the Tintern estate such as Duffry Hall and some other half-dozen Kildavin houses had been left to younger sons as tenants-for-life and on their deaths their children had continued in occupation as tenants-at-will or from year to year. Jane insisted on these tenancies all being terminated and the houses became derelict ruins, for no new tenants could be found for them in the agricultural depression and the famines of the 1830s, and the evicted families dispersed, some to Canada, the United States or Australia. When even such friends as Jane allowed him were shocked into protesting to him at his toleration of Jane's conduct Caesar made inept replies to the effect that old men who married young women must humour them. To casual observers who met them not in their home but at places of entertainment and in public they appeared a most loving couple and many witnesses were forthcoming to swear to Jane's extravagant public demonstrations of affection for her husband.

Their incessant travels, with the faithful Boyse ever hovering in the background, brought them to Dover in 1840 and there the Kirwan family, feeling that the business had gone on long enough, began to close in. Jane's sister was married to a clergyman in Cheltenham and for the Kirwan family's convenience to Cheltenham it was decided to take Caesar. A house was taken- Botelers Hall- and there the last eighteen months of his life were spent. Jane's brother Eusebius and her other sister and her niece came from Dublin and lodged discreetly in another part of the town, readily available if Jane needed help.

Of Caesar's life at Botelers Hall a gruesomely detailed account survives in the proofs of evidence of the servants employed there given in the case of Rossborough V Boyse. They tell of how his wife made him empty the chamber-pots, do the housework and constantly go to the kitchen to count the silver or the saucepans. He had a workshop in which he would take refuge from Jane and the gardener, Beamish, gave evidence that looking through the window he would often see Caesar standing at the lathe with no work on it, making a noise by spinning it with the treadle and that this would go on for hours, and he would often hear him cry out "Oh Jane! Why? Why?" and on one occasion " I can't be tormented when I am dead."

Meeting the butcher at the gate one day Caesar had congratulated him on the excellence of the beef which he had delivered some days before and asked him to deliver more of the same quality. When Jane heard that he had been interfering with the housekeeping she flew into a rage and smashed the dining-table with a chair. Frequent repairs to the furniture damaged by her in fits of temper were carried out by a Cheltenham carpenter and one day in a fury she managed to break her own arm and required the nursing help of her sister and niece. She not infrequently smashed the windows. Jane seemed surprisingly solicitous for her husband's health and frequently called in a Dr. Fortnum, an apothecary introduced by her sister, to attend him. The staff at Botelers Hall said that before coming under the care of Dr Fortnum Caesar enjoyed excellent health, used to rise at 6 a.m. and led a very active life. After treating him over a period of some months for a succession of ailments from which Jane claimed that he was suffering the doctor decided that he had influenza and must take to his bed and have no solid food, only four glasses of port a day and as he had never before in his life drunk port he was allowed a little arrowroot in it. Jane meanwhile had consulted his will and finding it not to her liking instructed a solicitor, found by her sister, to draw up a new one. This was witnessed by two of the servants who said that Caesar was semi-conscious at the time and could not hold the pen so Jane clasped his hand with the pen in it and guided it to make the signature. The will on being further examined by Jane was found to have some defects and the solicitor was called back to prepare a fresh draft. This second will was witnessed not by the servants but by the solicitor himself who swore in court that it was read over to Caesar who was fully conscious at the time and understood its terms. The other witness was Dr Fortnum who denied on oath that he knew that Caesar had made a will or that he had witnessed it or that the signature was his. The executors were Eusebius Kirwan and Thomas Boyse.

When Dr Fortnum succeeded in confining Caesar to his bed Jane's sister Anne Kirwan took up her residence at Botelers Hall to afford Jane support. Caesar was allowed no visitors except for a call from Sir Thomas Esmond a few days before the signing of the first will, which named him as an executor. He gave evidence that he was horrified at the state of emaciation and weakness in which he found Caesar. The only other visitor allowed was Thomas Boyse.

A fortnight after the signing of the will while Jane was administering the late night glass of port to Caesar the servants heard an outcry from the bedroom. They rushed up the stairs and as they pushed open the bedroom door they heard Caesar scream "Oh! The burning! Burning!" and saw him drop back on the pillows. Jane with the empty glass still in her hand hustled them out of the room saying, first, that he was complaining that the candles were guttering, and then, that he had just being saying something in French. After the funeral to celebrate her long-awaited widowhood Jane purchased a house being built in Westbourne Terrace which at the time was considered to be London's finest street and the one in which all people of rank and fashion were clamouring for homes. Pending completion she took a lease of 30 Albermarle Street, Piccadilly, where she was living at the time of her wedding to Thomas Boyse at St. James Church, Paddington, on 17 January 1846.

With Caesar' death Sarsfield Colclough became the undisputed head of the family. His elder brothers being dead he was the senior representative in the male line of Sir Anthony and heir to the Tintern and Duffry estates. Though his brother Dudley had been Caesar's contemporary at school and at Trinity it was with the younger Sarsfield that the warmest friendship developed during Caesar's life at Duffry Hall and when in 1814 Caesar returned to Ireland Sarsfield was the first to welcome him. Before Jane appeared on the scene Sarsfield was a regular guest at Tintern and even after Caesar's marriage he was often there and seems to have been received by Jane with a cordiality which she showed to no other Colclough. As the idea grew in her mind that the Colcloughs were a gang of scroungers chiselling away the fortune which would ultimately be hers alone the atmosphere grew increasingly chilly and unfriendly. If Sarsfield met Jane and Caesar in the street Caesar would acknowledge his salute by raising his hat but would walk past without a word. If Jane were not with him he would seize Sarsfield by the hand and engage him in a long and friendly gossip. When visiting London when Jane and Caesar were there he would generally call on them but was not usually admitted, but on one occasion when he was, he received from Caesar a lecture on economy which might better have been addressed to his elder brother Dudley, by now the Reverend Doctor. He replied that he had never called on Caesar or anyone else for financial help and that he was well able from his own resources to support his carriage and liveried servants.

The Reverend Dudley was a singularly stupid man with illusions of grandeur who was a nuisance to all who had dealings with him. When his father Adam died in 1799 and the life-estate in Duffry Hall terminated Dudley took a tenancy from year to year convinced that if his father could farm the estate profitably he himself could do better. Adam, however, in spite of his religious eccentricities, was an extremely competent agriculturist, an innovator and pioneer of mechanised farming and it will be remembered that it was his recollection of one of Adam's inventions in the field of agricultural engineering that was instrumental in enabling Caesar to escape from France. With the increasing agricultural depression of the early nineteenth century Dudley's farming became less and less profitable and his arrears of rent accumulated until Jane insisted on his being evicted. He then took a lease of Enniscorthy Castle where he lived in great magnificence with no means to support it and was several times imprisoned for debt. Each time, to Jane's increasing fury, Caesar purchased his release. In his original will Caesar had left Dudley one shilling, and a letter survives from Caesar to Dudley refusing all further assistance unless he mended his ways. Dudley got into trouble with the Church authorities too. Finding a Mr Beale occupying the Colclough pew in Enniscorthy Church he peremptorily ordered him out of it. On Mr. Beale refusing to leave he tried to evict him forcibly and a punch-up ensued in the aisle, the contestants exchanging black eyes and bloody noses whilst the Rev. Mr. McGrath was trying to conduct a service. For this offence, which occurred on 8th July 1827, he had his licence withdrawn by the bishop, not that it worried him at all for since his ordination he had never officiated as a clergyman. There were plenty of comfortable livings in the gift of the Colclough family but though he was quite willing to be a bishop he could not contemplate being a mere curate or a vicar. Dudley, who had married Mary, daughter of Luke Gavan of Wexford, died in 1830 leaving three sons and a daughter. All of these died young except Agmondisham Vesey who lived at Newtown Barry, married in 1836 Matilda daughter of John Jackson of Liverpool, had a son and two daughters all of whom except the youngest daughter Matilda also died young. Matilda would have been the rightful heiress to the estate but it was nobody's concern in the court hearings to protect the interests of this orphaned infant from the bogus claim of Mrs Rossborough.

Sarsfield had married in 1792 Margaret, daughter of Patrick Colclough of Anneville, and took over Upper Kildavin which he farmed successfully until 1828. His father-in-law was a solicitor practising in Carlow and Dublin upon whose guidance most of the Colclough family relied until his death in 1816. Caesar on his return from France spent a good deal of time in consultation with him. From Sarsfield's point of view not the least important feature of Patrick was that he had with the help of a grand-nephew from Canada built a mill on the river Slaney just by Shrule Castle of which it is recorded in Coote's 'Queens County' that it was the best bolting mill in the Barony, had an undershot wheel, and an output of four thousand barrels of flour annually. On Patrick's death, his son Captain Dudley of the Green Horse being already dead, the mill passed to Margaret and Sarsfield and supplemented their declining income from the farm at Kildavin. Patrick also held on a long lease from the Tintern Estates the Lands at Nash, the rack-rents of which added to their income and after their deaths to that of their son Patrick Sarsfield. After leaving Kildavin, where in the early days of their marriage Caesar and Jane had frequently stayed with them, Sarsfield and Margaret moved about a good deal. In 1829 when their house in Portarlington was blown down- or blown up- they moved to Dublin and after living in Dawson Street for a year moved to Gardiner Street where they stayed for three years. They subsequently lived in Harrogate, Edinburgh, Armagh and the Isle of Man. Whilst he was in the Isle of Man disturbing news which he received from his cousin Bagenal Colclough, who was then steward of the Tintern Estates living at St. Kierans, just by the Abbey, determined Sarsfield to go to Cheltenham to see Caesar.

Calling at Botelers Hall he was refused admittance. He then wrote a note and asked for this to be delivered to Caesar but it was refused. Knowing that it was useless to try and get a letter by post past Jane, Sarsfield asked a friend who lived in Cheltenham to deliver the note for him but that, too, was refused. The servant who had been instructed not to admit him or any communication from him or from any other member of the Colclough family described Sarsfield as "...a fine looking "gentleman, pretty stout and elderly, with grey hair- a kind "of white." He was aged about 70 at the time. He had written not long after the move to Cheltenham and received an extraordinary reply, obviously written by Jane though signed by Caesar, which said, amongst other things, "....I have been "persecuted by you and your sons, my wife has been arrested in "Grafton Street, Dublin, we have been turned out of hotels..." All these allegations were amplified and argued for days during the subsequent litigation. The milliners with whom Sarsfield's daughters were supposed to have pledged Jane's credit and so caused her arrest were examined and cross-examined and it was clear that Jane's credit had not been pledged with them and that she certainly had never been arrested. Sarsfield's son Patrick had never stayed at the George Hotel, Paris, from which Jane claimed that she and Caesar had been thrown out because he had left there with his bill unpaid- when in Paris he like all his family stayed with Mme. Browne in the Rue de Richelieu...and so on.

After many discussions with Bagenal Colclough and various solicitors Sarsfield filed on 12 December 1842 a Bill in Chancery impeaching Caesar's will and so set in motion a train of legal proceedings which lasted continuously for fifteen years, brought financial ruin to the successful party, and materially changed English law by establishing that a wife may coerce and exercise undue influence over her husband to the extent of invalidating his will. The final judgement in the House of Lords takes up 25 large pages in the English Reports (Vol.10, p.1192) and in some of the other series of Reports it is given even fuller coverage. Copies of the House of Lords briefs for both the appellants and respondents have been given to the Irish National Library in Dublin, two stout printed quarto volumes of about 400 pages each, and contain amongst other things all the affidavits and proofs of evidence of the witnesses on both sides. Of the 228 people named in these volumes 62 were lawyers, 43 were members of the Colclough family, 29 Colclough employees, 10 members of the Kirwan family, 40 other witnesses and 44 people who were mentioned in the evidence but did not appear in court themselves. At their first conference with her Jane's solicitors and counsel agreed that 'being of a hasty and excitable temper' it would be impossible to put her in the witness-box or let her be subjected to cross-examination or even let the jury get a glimpse of her, and in fact during the next fifteen years of incessant litigation she was only once inside a court when the fears of her legal advisers proved fully justified. Usually she was waiting in the street outside for tidings of the day's progress. There is a moving affidavit which makes one feel almost sorry for her in which she describes how on the last day of the trial at Wexford assizes she was standing in the road-way outside the court-house when she heard a sudden roar of cheering coming from inside. The cheering was taken up by the crowds outside and with the noise people came running out of their houses and dancing in the street, and she knew that she had lost the case. That evening as dusk fell bonfires were lighted in the streets and beacon fires on the adjacent hills to carry the tidings across the County. When it was decided to appeal the chief ground was that it would not be possible to have a fair trial in Wexford of any case involving a Colclough and that no Wexford jury could be empanelled which would find against a Colclough. It must be remembered that the Colcloughs owned a lot of small properties in Wexford town and that the tenants had good reason for disliking and fearing Jane.

Sarsfield's case was based on the evidence of all the people who had occasion to call on Caesar prior to the move to Cheltenham, of those who had been denied access to him after the move, and of all the domestic staff at Botelers Hall- butlers cooks, chambermaids, gardeners and the rest. Owing to her violent temper Jane's domestic staff was frequently being replaced, but the indefatigable Bagenal was able to trace them all and bring them to court The trend of evidence which counsel tried to bring out was that Caesar was a weak and feeble-minded man, a semi-imbecile some of the servants suggested, who would be a ready victim for the domination which Jane had exercised. For the Kirwans the evidence called was intended to show that he was a determined and enterprising man who would be dominated by nobody. His letters from France were put in; it was said that he was a violent and dangerous man who at the 1818 election had challenged Major Irwin, the candidate opposing him, to a duel on the ground that he had abstracted his voters. He had fought a duel with his cousin Caesar, the Chief Justice, and though they had been reconciled the legal advice which Caesar had subsequently given to Vesey and Vesey's will under which all that was left after the bastards and their mothers had got their share went to the Chief Justice with no mention of Caesar or John, had filled him with such hatred and fury that the Chief Justice feared with good cause that if ever he met his cousin again he would once more find himself at the point of his sword. For that reason on leaving Newfoundland he had taken refuge in Versailles where he had died.

Of the evidence of people who swore to the loving relationship existing between Caesar and Jane that of Mrs Crofton was not untypical. She said that she was the wife of the Reverend Augustus Crofton in whose parish Botelers Hall was situated. When the Colcloughs arrived she accompanied her husband on a pastoral visit to them and thereafter they were regular visitors and most cordial and friendly relations arose with them. After the usual evidence as to the obvious affection between the couple and the lack of any restriction on Caesar's freedom or the visitors who might see him, she reluctantly admitted- under intense cross-examination - that she was Jane's sister, that it was at her suggestion that Caesar was brought to Cheltenham, that she found Botelers Hall for them, that she found Dr. Fortnum to attend Caesar at a time when he was enjoying perfect health and that she found the solicitor, George Edward Williams, to draw up a will for him at a time when he certainly showed no signs of impending death and as far as she knew had already made his will. Dr. Fortnum was a particularly bad witness constantly contradicting himself and giving wildly incompatible accounts of the various ailments from which he believed Caesar to have been suffering and of the treatment to which he had subjected him.

When the jury brought in their verdict that the document produced was not the will of Caesar Colclough and the Kirwans decided to appeal Eusebius set about getting rid of all the witnesses whose evidence had led to Sarsfield's victory. To Beamish the gardener he offered £100 and his fare to go to Australia. Some of the maidservants he succeeded in sending off to Canada or the United States where Bagenal managed to find them and bring them back or obtain from them affidavits of their evidence sworn in the Canadian or American courts and mentioning the part which Eusebius had played in securing their removal from the jurisdiction. Mary Woodhouse, one of the maids who had witnessed Caesar's death, was bullied and intimidated in an attempt to make her change her evidence. Others of the maidservants gave evidence that they had been threatened and intimidated by Eusebius and when they were induced to enter the witness box they were clearly in terror of him.

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