Luttrell was a captain in the Royal Navy but retires in 1789. He is returned to Parliament for Stockbridge in 1774, a seat he holds until 1775, and again between 1780 and 1785. Between 1785 and 1826 he is a commissioner of HM Customs and Excise. He succeeds his elder brother to the earldom in 1821. This is an Irish peerage and does not entitle him to an automatic seat in the House of Lords.
In 1766, Lord Carhampton marries the Honorable Elizabeth Olmius (1742-97), daughter of John Olmius, 1st Baron Waltham. In 1787, out of respect after the death of his father-in-law, he assumes by Royal Licence the additional surname of “Olmius.” In 1798, he sells the Olmius family seat of Newhall to the founding nuns of New Hall School. There are three children from his first marriage (however only his daughter survives to adulthood):
Lady Frances Maria Luttrell (b. 1768), married Sir Simeon Stuart, 4th Baronet
James Luttrell (d. 1772)
John Luttrell (d. 1769)
Lord Carhampton marries secondly Maria Morgan, daughter of John Morgan, in 1798. They have one child:
Lady Maria Anne Luttrell (1799–1857), married Lieutenant-Colonel Hardress Robert Saunderson
Shackleton is the daughter of Richard Shackleton (1726–92) by his second wife, Elizabeth Carleton (1726–66), and granddaughter of Abraham Shackleton, schoolmaster of Edmund Burke. Her parents are Quakers. She keeps a personal diary for most of her life, beginning at the age of eleven and writing in it almost daily. There 55 extant volumes of her diaries in the National Library of Ireland.
Shackleton is educated, and her literary studies are aided by Aldborough Wrightson, a man who had been educated at Ballitore school and had returned to die there. In 1784, she travels to London with her father and pays several visits to Burke’s town house, where she meets Sir Joshua Reynolds and George Crabbe. She also goes to Beaconsfield, and on her return writes a poem in praise of the place and its owner, which is acknowledged by Burke on December 13, 1784, in a long letter. On her way home she visits, at Selby, North Yorkshire, some primitive Quakers whom she describes in her journal.
On January 6, 1791, Shackleton marries William Leadbeater, a former pupil of her father and a descendent of the Huguenot Le Batre and Gilliard families. He becomes a prosperous farmer and landowner in Ballitore. She spends many years working in the village post office and also works as a bonnet-maker and a herbal healer for the village. The couple lives in Ballitore and have six children. Their daughter Jane dies at a young age from injuries sustained after an accident with a wax taper. Another daughter, Lydia, is a friend and possible patron of the poet and novelist Gerald Griffin.
On her father’s death in 1792, Leadbeater receives a letter of consolation from Burke. Besides receiving letters from Burke, she corresponds with, among others, Maria Edgeworth, George Crabbe, and Melesina Trench. On May 28, 1797, Burke writes one of his last letters to her.
Leadbeater describes in detail the effects of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 on the lives of her family and neighbours in Ballitore. She is in Carlow on Christmas Day 1796 attending a Quaker meeting when the news arrives that the French fleet has been seen off Bantry. She describes the troops marching out of the town and the ensuing confusion in Carlow and Ballitore.
Leadbeater’s first literary work, Extracts and Original Anecdotes for the Improvement of Youth, is published anonymously in 1794 in Dublin. It contains an account of the history of Quakerism and several poems on secular and religious subjects.
In 1808, Leadbeater publishes Poems with a metrical version of her husband’s prose translation of Maffeo Vegio‘s Thirteenth Book of the Æneid. She next publishes in 1811 Cottage Dialogues among the Irish Peasantry, of which four editions, with some alterations and additions, appear by 1813. In 1813, she tries to instruct the rich on a similar plan in The Landlord’s Friend. Intended as a sequel to Cottage Dialogues, in which persons of quality are made to discourse on such topics as beggars, spinning-wheels, and Sunday in the village, Tales for Cottagers, which she brings out in 1814 in conjunction with Elizabeth Shackleton, is a return to the original design. The tales illustrate perseverance, temper, economy, and are followed by a moral play, Honesty is the Best Policy.
In 1822, Leadbeater concludes this series with Cottage Biography, being a Collection of Lives of the Irish Peasantry. The lives are those of real persons, and contain some interesting passages, especially in the life of James Dunn, a pilgrim to Lough Derg. Many traits of Irish country life appear in these books, and they preserve several of the idioms of the English-speaking inhabitants of the Pale. Memoirs and Letters of Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton … compiled by their Daughter is also issued in 1822. Her Biographical Notices of Members of the Society of Friends who were resident in Ireland appears in 1823, and is a summary of their spiritual lives, with a scanty narrative of events. Her last work is The Pedlars, a Tale, published in 1824.
Leadbeater’s best known work, the Annals of Ballitore, is not printed until 1862, when it is brought out with the general title of The Leadbeater Papers (2 vols.) by Richard Davis Webb, a printer who wants to preserve a description on rural Irish life. It tells of the inhabitants and events of Ballitore from 1766 to 1823, and few books give a better idea of the character and feelings of Irish cottagers, of the premonitory signs of the rebellion of 1798, and the Rebellion itself. The second volume includes unpublished letters of Burke and the correspondence with Mrs. Richard Trench and with Crabbe.
Leadbeater dies at Ballitore on June 27, 1826, and is buried in the Quaker burial-ground there.
In the mid-1750s, Fitzsimons’s family immigrates to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his father dies soon thereafter. He has enough education that he begins work as a clerk in a mercantile house. He marries Catherine Meade on November 23, 1761, and forms a business partnership with her brother George. Their firm, which specializes in the West Indies trade, operates successfully for over 41 years.
The firm is soon hit by the new revenue measures created to help support the finances of the British Empire, including the much reviled Stamp Act of 1765. Concerned with these ideas, Fitzsimons becomes active in the Irish merchant community in Philadelphia. He is a founding member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in 1771 and later, in 1774, a steering committee organized to protest the Coercive Acts.
When Pennsylvania begins mobilizing and organizing a militia to fight the British, Fitzsimons is soon involved. He serves as captain of a company of home guards under the command of Colonel John Caldwalader. Initially his company serves as part of the soldiers who man posts along the New Jersey coast. His unit later serves as part of the reserve at the Battle of Trenton in 1776. Later in the war, he serves on the Pennsylvania Council of Safety and heads a board to oversee the newly formed Pennsylvania Navy.
Fitzsimons enters active politics as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1783. He is a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1786 until 1795. He is also a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. Although not a leading member of that convention, he supports a strong national government, the end of slavery, the United States Congress‘s powers to impose a tariff on imports and exports, the granting the House of Representatives, and power in equal to the United States Senate in making treaties. He is one of only two Catholic signers of the Constitution of the United States, the other being Daniel Carroll of Maryland.
After the Constitution is established, Fitzsimons serves in the first three sessions of the House of Representatives as a Federalist, where he favors protective tariffs and a strong navy, co-drafting the Naval Act of 1794 authorizing the original six frigates of the United States Navy. He fails to win re-election in 1794. This is partially attributed to public opinion turning against the Federalist Party over the forceful suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. Although he never holds elective office again, he serves in 1798 as head of the committee of merchants overseeing the subscription-loan to build a warship at private expense for use in the Quasi-War.
In 1796, Fitzsimons, along with James Innes of Virginia, is appointed by President John Adams to serve as one of two American members on the five-man debt commission charged under Article VI of the Jay Treaty with examining the claims of British subjects unable to collect debts incurred by Americans prior to the American Revolution. Fitzsimons, Innes and Samuel Sitgreaves, who replaces Innes upon the latter’s death, become annoyed with the arguments used by their British counterparts to inflate the claims total. Fitzsimons and Sitgreaves angrily and permanently secede from the board in July 1799. The claims are eventually disposed of by a lump-sum payment, agreed upon by United States Minister to BritainRufus King with British Foreign SecretaryRobert Banks Jenkinson and approved by PresidentThomas Jefferson and the Senate in 1802.
There are few surviving records of Sarsfield’s early life, although it is generally agreed he is brought up on the family estates at Tully. While some biographies claim he is educated at a French military college, there is no evidence for this.
Sarsfield fights at Entzheim, Turckheim and Altenheim. He and Hamilton are standing next to Turenne when he is killed by a chance shot at Salzbach in July 1675. He remains in France until the war ends in 1678, then returns to London to join a new regiment being recruited by Thomas Dongan, 2nd Earl of Limerick. However, the Popish Plot then results in Sarsfield and other Catholics being barred from serving in the military.
This leaves Sarsfield short of money, and he becomes involved in an expensive legal campaign to regain Lucan Manor from the heirs of his brother William, who dies in 1675. This ultimately proves unsuccessful amid allegations of forged documents, and in 1681 he returns to London, where he makes two separate attempts to abduct an heiress and is lucky to escape prosecution. When Charles’s Catholic brother James becomes king in 1685, Sarsfield rejoins the army and fights in the decisive Battle of Sedgemoor, which ends the Monmouth Rebellion. James is keen to promote Catholics, whom he views as more loyal, and by 1688 Sarsfield is colonel of a cavalry unit.
After Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, is appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1687, he begins creating a Catholic-dominated Irish army and political establishment. Aware of preparations for invasion by his nephew and son-in-law William of Orange, James sends Sarsfield to Dublin in September to persuade Tyrconnell to provide him with Irish troops. This proves unsuccessful, and in November James is deposed by the Glorious Revolution. Sarsfield takes part in the Wincanton Skirmish, one of the few military actions during the invasion. He remains in England until January when he is allowed to join James in France.
Accompanied by French troops and English exiles, James lands in Ireland in March 1689, beginning the Williamite War in Ireland. Sarsfield is promoted brigadier, elected to the 1689 Irish Parliament for County Dublin, and commands cavalry units in the campaign in Ulster and Connacht. When an Irish brigade is sent to France in October, French ambassador Jean-Antoine de Mesmes proposes Sarsfield as its commander. He notes that while “not…of noble birth […], (he) has distinguished himself by his ability, and (his) reputation in this kingdom is greater than that of any man I know […] He is brave, but above all has a sense of honour and integrity in all that he does”.
James rejects this, stating that although unquestionably brave, Sarsfield is “very scantily supplied with brains.” His role at the Battle of the Boyne is peripheral, although the battle is less decisive than often assumed, Jacobite losses being around 2,000 from a force of 25,000. James returns to France, leaving Tyrconnell in control. He is the leader of the “Peace Party,” who want to negotiate a settlement preserving Catholic rights to land and public office. Sarsfield heads the “War Party,” who feel they can gain more by fighting on. It includes the Luttrell brothers, Nicholas Purcell and English Catholic William Dorrington, a former colleague from Monmouth’s Regiment.
The position of the War Party is strengthened by the Declaration of Finglas, which offers the rank and file amnesty but excludes senior officers. French victories in the Low Countries briefly increases hopes of a Stuart restoration, and the Jacobites establish a defensive line along the River Shannon. Sarsfield cements his reputation with an attack on the Williamite artillery train at Ballyneety, widely credited with forcing them to abandon the first siege of Limerick. The Jacobites also retain Athlone, offset by the loss of Kinsale and Cork, which make resupply from France extremely difficult.
With Tyrconnell absent in France, Sarsfield takes control and in December 1690, arrests several leaders of the peace faction. He then bypasses James by asking Louis XIV directly for French support, and requesting the removal of Tyrconnell and the army commander James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, James’ illegitimate son. The latter, who later describes Sarsfield as “a man […] without sense”, albeit “very good-natured,” leaves Limerick for France in February.
Tyrconnell returns in January 1691, carrying letters from James making Sarsfield Earl of Lucan, an attempt to placate an “increasingly influential and troublesome figure.” A large French convoy arrives at Limerick in May, along with Charles Chalmot de Saint-Ruhe, appointed military commander in an attempt to end the conflict between the factions. Saint-Ruhr and 7,000 others die at Aughrim in July 1691, reputedly the bloodiest battle ever on Irish soil. Sarsfield’s role is unclear: one account claims he quarrels with Saint-Ruhe and is sent to the rear with the cavalry reserves.
The remnants of the Jacobite army regroup at Limerick. Tyrconnell dies of a stroke in August, and in October, Sarsfield negotiates terms of surrender. He is criticised for this, having constantly attacked Tyrconnell for advocating the same thing, while it is suggested the Williamite army is weaker than he judged. However, the collapse of the Shannon line and surrender of Galway and Sligo leaves him little option. Without French supplies, the military position is hopeless, and defections mean his army is dissolving.
The military articles of the Treaty of Limerick preserve the Jacobite army by allowing its remaining troops to enter French service. About 19,000 officers and men, including Sarsfield, choose to leave in what is known as the Flight of the Wild Geese. Sarsfield’s handling of the civil articles is less successful. Most of its protections are ignored by the new regime, although Sarsfield possibly views it as temporary, hoping to resume the war.
On arrival in France, Sarsfield becomes Major-General in the army of exiles, an appointment James makes with great reluctance. In addition to other acts of perceived insubordination, Sarsfield allegedly tells William’s negotiators at Limerick “change but kings with us, and we will fight it over again.” After the planned invasion of England is abandoned in 1692, the exiles become part of the French army, and Sarsfield a French maréchal de camp.
Sarsfield fights at Steenkerque in August 1692, and is fatally wounded at the Battle of Landen in 1693, dying at Huy on August 21, 1693. Despite several searches, no grave or burial record has been found, although a plaque at St. Martin’s Church, Huy, has been set up in commemoration and an announcement in 2023 states that, pending exhumation and identification, his remains have been located. Like much else, his reputed last words, “Oh that this had been shed for Ireland!” are apocryphal.
FitzGerald marries Charlotte Boyle Walsingham in London on August 3, 1791. Together they live at Boyle Farm, Thames Ditton. In 1806, his wife succeeds to the Baron de Ros, the premier baron in the Peerage of England, as 20th Baroness de Ros. The family then takes the surname FitzGerald-de Ros. The couple has 13 children in 21 years, of which nine survive to adulthood.
Bowes epitomizes the severity of the 18th century Penal Laws against Irish Catholics when he rules, in about 1759, that: “The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic, nor could such a person draw breath without the Crown’s permission”. Such views, given that Roman Catholics make up more than 90% of the Irish population at the time, inevitably make him bitterly unpopular, and in 1760 he is assaulted during a riot outside the House of Commons.
In spite of his religious bigotry, Bowes is considered one of the outstanding judges of his time. In particular, he is a reforming Lord Chancellor, who is praised for making the Court of Chancery “a terror for fraud, and a comfort and protection for honest men”. As Attorney-General he shows considerable courage in going on assize during the Irish Famine (1740–1741) despite the infectious fever which is raging at the time, and which claims the lives of three other judges who decide to brave the dangers.
Bowes is considered one of the finest speakers of his time. His speech for the prosecution at the trial of Henry Barry, 4th Baron Barry of Santry, who is charged with murder in 1739, is described by those who hear it as a masterpiece of eloquence and logic, and leads to the Irish House of Lords bringing in a unanimous verdict of guilty against Santry.
Bowes dies in Dublin on July 22, 1767, his mental faculties fully intact despite his bodily infirmities. He is buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, where his brother raises a memorial to him. He never marries, and his title becomes extinct on his death. He lives at Belvedere House, Drumcondra. His estates passes to his brother Rumsey Bowes of Binfield, Berkshire.
Comparatively little is known of his early life, and it has been suggested that he was illegitimate and took his mother’s surname and that his father’s surname was actually Gannon. He emigrates with his father to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1793, eventually settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A short time after their arrival, the friend who had invited them and offered them food and hospitality dies of yellow fever. Several days later, his father also succumbs to the same disease.
One morning, while Brown is wandering along the banks of the Delaware River, he meets the captain of a ship then moored in port. The captain inquires if he wants employment and Brown agrees. The captain engages him as a cabin boy, thereby setting him on the naval promotion ladder, where he works his way to the captaincy of a merchant ship. After ten years at sea, where he develops his skills as a sailor and reaches the rank of captain, Brown is press-ganged into a Royal Navy warship. British impressment of American sailors is one of the primary issues leading to the War of 1812.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Brown escapes the ship he is serving on, a galley, and scuttles the vessel. However, the French do not believe he had assisted them and imprison him in Lorient. On being transferred to Metz, he escapes, disguised in a French officer’s uniform. However, he is recaptured and is imprisoned in the fortress of Verdun. In 1809, he escapes from there in the company of a British Army officer named Clutchwell, and eventually reaches German territory.
Returning to England, Brown renounces his maritime career and on July 29, 1809, he marries Elizabeth Chitty, daughter of an English shipping magnate, in Kent. As he is a Catholic and she a Protestant, they agree to raise their sons as Catholics and their daughters as Protestants. Despite lengthy periods of enforced separation, they have nine children. He leaves the same year for the Río de la Plata on board Belmond and sets himself up as a merchant in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Late in 1811 Brown settles in Buenos Aires just as a criollo rebellion against Spanish colonial rule in Argentina is gaining strength. By April 1812, he is developing a coastal shipping business in fruit and hides. As the Spanish naval blockade of 1812–14 begins to choke trade, he is first commissioned by the patriot government as a privateer licensed to raid Spanish merchantmen, and then, on March 1, 1814, invited to take charge of a small rebel naval squadron to contest Spanish control of the Río de la Plata estuary. Leading a fleet of nineteen ships, he fixes with great speed on a set of wartime naval routines and signaling methods, and organises a system of discipline, founding the navy on principles that pay exceptional attention to the welfare of ordinary seamen.
In early March 1814, Brown shows personal courage and incisive skill in outwitting and defeating a more powerful Spanish force near Martín García Island, thereby dividing the Spanish blockade. A Spanish attempt in May 1814 to break his blockade of Montevideo is decisively crushed by him and his makeshift navy, and the Spanish strongholds on the Atlantic coast collapse, ending open war. In 1815 and 1816, however, he carries out skirmishing raids on military and commercial targets belonging to Spanish South American possessions, until detained by a British colonial governor in Barbados in July 1816 for alleged infringements of international rules of trade.
Illness, and a tortuous but ultimately successful appeal process, take up most of 1817–18, but when Brown returns to Argentina in October 1818, political enemies set in motion a prosecution for alleged disobedience of orders. Cashiered in August 1819, then restored in rank but forced to retire, he attempts suicide the following month. Convalescence and resumption of his trading concern occupies him for several years.
A repentant government renews Brown’s command of the navy in December 1825, when war breaks out with Brazil. Though vastly outnumbered by the Brazilian fleet, he shows audacity and great finesse in a number of successful engagements in the Plate estuary in 1826, roving up the Brazilian coast on occasion to create great confusion. In February 1827, he triumphs in a series of actions known as the Battle of Juncal. After another year of commercial privateering against the Brazilian merchant fleet, he is one of two delegates selected to sign peace terms with Brazil in October 1828.
Retiring from active service that month, Brown tries to remain neutral as civil war erupts in Argentina, but reluctantly accepts the post of governor of Buenos Aires under General Juan Lavalle from December 1828 to May 1829, when he resigns in disgust at government excesses. During 1829–37 he holds aloof from the despotic government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. After French and British encroachments on the region in the later 1830s, he offers to take charge of the navy again to protect national independence and is available to defend Argentine interests when war breaks out with a French-backed Uruguay in early 1841. Though exasperated by a long and “stupid war,” he blockades the Uruguayan navy effectively until French and British fleets intervene in July 1845 with overwhelming force to capture his squadron and bring the war to an end.
Idolised by the Argentinian population for his high-principled and humane advocacy of independent democracy, Brown passes his last years trading and farming a country estate. In late 1847, he journeys to Ireland, hoping to find relations in Mayo, and is shocked by the hunger and destitution of the Great Famine.
Brown dies on March 3, 1857, at his home in Buenos Aires and is buried with full military honours. The Argentine government issues a comuniqué: “With a life of permanent service to the national wars that our homeland has fought since its independence, William Brown symbolized the naval glory of the Argentine Republic.” During his burial, General Bartolomé Mitre famously says: “Brown in his lifetime, standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, was worth a fleet to us.” His grave is currently located in the La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
Barry seems to be an extreme example of an eighteenth-century rake, a man of quarrelsome and violent nature, and a heavy drinker. He is a member of the notorious Dublin Hellfire Club. The club’s reputation never fully recovers from the sensational publicity surrounding his trial for murder, although there is no reason to think that any of his fellow members knew of or condoned the crime. There are widespread rumours that he had committed at least one previous murder which was successfully hushed up, although there seems to be no firm evidence for this.
On August 9, 1738, Barry is drinking with some friends at a tavern in Palmerstown, then a small village near Dublin. Drinking more heavily than usual, he attacks a drinking companion but is unable to draw his sword. Enraged, he runs to the kitchen, where he chances to meet Laughlin Murphy, the tavern porter, and for no known reason runs him through with his sword. He then bribes the innkeeper to let him escape. Murphy is taken to Dublin where he lingers for several weeks, dying on September 25, 1738.
Although Barry is not immediately apprehended, there is no reason to believe that the Crown intends that he should escape justice. The authorities clearly aim not only to prosecute him but to secure a conviction. Even in an age when the aristocracy enjoys special privileges, the murder of Murphy, who by all accounts was an honest and hardworking man with a wife and young family to support, shocks public opinion, whereas Barry is regarded, even among members of his own class, as a public nuisance. In due course, he is arrested and indicted for murder. He demands, as the privilege of peerage, a trial by his peers. The trial, which takes place in the Irish Houses of Parliament on April 27, 1739, arouses immense public interest.
Bowes dominates the proceedings, and his speeches make his reputation as an orator. Thomas Rundle, Bishop of Derry, who as a spiritual peer is only an observer at the trial, says, “I never heard, never read, so perfect a piece of eloquence…the strength and light of his reason, the fairness and candour.” The Bishop is scathing about the quality of counsel for the defence, describing the performance of Barry’s counsel as “detestable.” The defence case is that Murphy had died not from his wound but from a long-standing illness (or alternatively a rat bite), but in view of the medical evidence produced by the prosecution this is a hopeless argument. According to Bishop Rundle, Barry’s counsel fails even to mention the possibility that Murphy, who lingered for six weeks after being stabbed, might have died through inadequate medical care. Given the overwhelming evidence of Barry’s guilt, however, any defence would probably have been useless, and despite what is described as their “looks of horror,” his peers have little difficulty in finding him guilty. Wyndham, who had conducted the trial with exemplary fairness, pronounces the death sentence. His retirement soon afterward is generally thought to be due to the strain of the trial.
King George II, like all British monarchs, has the prerogative of mercy, and a campaign is launched by Barry’s friends and relatives to persuade the King to grant a pardon. Their plea concentrates on the victim’s low social standing, the implication being that the life of a peer is worth more than that of a tavern worker, despite the victim’s blameless character and the savage and wanton nature of the murder. The King proves reluctant to grant a pardon, and for a time it seems that Barry will be executed, but in due course, a reprieve is issued. Popular legend has it that his uncle, Sir Compton Domvile, through whose estate at Templeogue the River Dodder flows, secured a royal pardon for his nephew by threatening to divert the course of the river, thus depriving the citizens of Dublin of what is then, and remains long after, their main supply of drinking water.
On June 17, 1740, Barry receives a full royal pardon and the restoration of his title and estates. Soon afterward he leaves Ireland for good and settles in England. He is said to have had a personal audience with the King and thanked him in person for his clemency.
Barry’s last years are wretched. Although he has a second marriage shortly before his death, he is abandoned by all his former friends, is in great pain from gout, and is prone to depression. He dies in Nottingham on March 22, 1751, and is buried at St. Nicholas Church, Nottingham. On his death the title becomes extinct. His estates pass to his cousin, Sir Compton Domvile, 2nd Baronet, who makes unsuccessful efforts to have the barony revived. His widow Elizabeth outlives him by many years, dying in December 1816.
His birth into the politically influential Beresford family affords him a degree of opportunity, and he is made a vice-regal chaplain in 1766. Brother of George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford, he marries Elizabeth Fitzgibbon, sister of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare, on June 16, 1763. They had three sons and five daughters. These connections, however, do not automatically result in his being promoted to bishop, despite reaching episcopal age in 1773, and he spends several years as a well-beneficed rector of Urney in the Diocese of Derry. The Beresford family complains that he has been overlooked for several episcopal vacancies in the 1770s and it is not until 1780 that he is created Doctor of Divinity and consecrated Bishop of Dromore on April 8, 1780. At Dromore he erects a handsome new episcopal residence. On May 21, 1782, he is transferred to the diocese of Ossory and, as bishop there, takes his seat in the Irish parliament and exercises influence over the ecclesiastical borough of St. Canice.
The death of Primate Richard Robinson in 1794 is the stimulus for a reorganisation within the Church of Ireland hierarchy, and Beresford is one of the candidates rumoured to succeed him. However, his familial ties disadvantage him, because the government does not want to favour one Irish “party” over another. He is instead appointed to the vacant archbishopric of Tuam on October 10, 1794. An influential and senior position within the church, it is worth £5,000 per annum, which is more than Archbishop Charles Agar receives for the archbishopric of Cashel and provides him with extensive patronage.
In the late 1790s Beresford regularly attends parliament, particularly in the crucial session of 1799 as the Acts of Union is debated and shares his brother John’s view that a union is the best means of securing the Protestant interest in Ireland.
In the years following the union Beresford gains a temporal peerage, becoming 1st Baron Decies on December 22, 1812. He is an amiable, kind and loquacious individual, and is patron to artists, including Gilbert Stuart, who produces a portrait of him as Bishop of Ossory. His long years of service within the established church also makes him very wealthy, worth £250,000 at the time of his death.
Beresford dies on September 6, 1819, at Tuam, County Galway, and is succeeded in the barony by his eldest surviving son John on September 8, 1819. His eldest son Marcus had died in 1803. His youngest daughter Louisa, widow of Thomas Hope, marries, by special license, her cousin William Carr Beresford on November 29, 1832. Through Louisa he is a grandfather of British MP and patron of the arts, Henry Thomas Hope.
(From: “Beresford, William” by Martin McElroy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised June 2024)
Mitchell’s family moves to Belfast while he is a child. He receives his formal education at Belfast Academy where he excels in mathematics. He begins to notice that his eyesight is failing. By the age of 16 he can no longer read and by the age of 22 he is completely blind.
Undeterred, Mitchell borrows £100 and starts up a successful business making bricks in the Ballymacarrett area of Belfast. This enables him to start building his own houses and he completes approximately twenty in the city. It is during this period that his talent for inventing comes to the fore and he fabricates several machines for use in brickmaking and the building trade.
Mitchell patents the screw pile in 1833, for which he later gains some fame. The screw-pile is used for the erection of lighthouses and other structures on mudbanks and shifting sands, including bridges and piers. His designs and methods are employed all over the world from the Portland, Mainebreakwater to bridges in Bombay. Initially it is used for the construction of lighthouses on Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary in 1838, at Fleetwood Lancashire (UK) Morecambe Bay in 1839 and at Belfast Lough where his lighthouse is finished in July 1844.
In May 1851 Mitchell moves to Cobh to lay the foundation for the Spit Bank Lighthouse. The success of these undertakings leads to the use of his invention on the breakwater at Portland, the viaduct and bridges on the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway and a broad system of Indian telegraphs.
Mitchell dies at Glen Devis near Belfast on June 25, 1868, and is buried in the old Clifton graveyard in Belfast. His wife and daughter predecease him.
seamus dubhghaill 