Career
Educated in Franciscan colleges, Taaffe was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1782. He was soon trying to scrape a living as a tutor and pamphleteer. A supporter of the French Revolution and the United Irishmen, Taaffe claimed to have fought in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
He edited a patriotic newspaper, The Shamroc, and his pamphlets against the 1800 Acting of Union saw him arrested for seditious libel in 1799.
