William George Digges La Touche, diplomat and banker, is born in Dublin on August 28, 1747, the third son of James Digges La Touche and his second wife, Martha (née Thwaites) of St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. He is admitted to St. Paul’s School, London, on August 30, 1757. In 1764, he accompanies “Mr. Moore,” the British resident at Basra, to the Persian Gulf. La Touche acts as personal secretary to Moore for a number of years before succeeding him as British resident. Basra is then one of the key trading places for the East India Company, and both the British and Dutch governments have official representation there. La Touche obtains the respect of both Arabs and Europeans. At the siege of Basra in 1775, he gives refuge to prominent citizens of the city and their families. When Az Zubayr is captured by the Persians in the same year, La Touche allegedly ransoms all of the inhabitants at his own expense to save them from slavery.
While serving in the east for twenty years, La Touche collects illuminated Persian manuscripts, some of which come from the royal library at Shiraz. A number of these volumes are presented to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1786 and 1787. He returns to London around 1784 and marries Grace, daughter of John Puget, a wealthy London-based banker of Huguenot origins.
By 1786, he settles in Dublin and becomes a partner of the La Touche bank. In the years 1786, 1788, 1790, 1792, 1794, and 1796, he sits on the board of the Bank of Ireland. He is an active opponent of the Acts of Union and chairs a large meeting on the subject in 1798. Like other members of his family, he gives large sums to charity and is a governor of Dr. Steevens’ Hospital and the Lying-in Hospital, Dublin, and a director of the Grand Canal Company. He lives on St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and at Sans Souci, a country estate that he purchases at Booterstown, Dublin.
La Touche dies in Dublin on November 6, 1803, leaving four sons. A small pastel portrait of him, and another of his wife Grace, probably by Hugh Douglas Hamilton is in the Bank of Ireland collection. Lye is known to have had his portrait painted in oils by Gilbert Stuart.
(From: “La Touche, William George Digges,” by Daniel Beaumont, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Bushe is born at Kilmurry House, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, the only son of the Reverend Thomas Bushe, rector of Mitchelstown, and his wife Katherine Doyle, daughter of Charles Doyle of Bramblestown, near Gowran. Kilmurry House had been built by the Bushe family in the 1690s. His father is forced to sell it to pay his debts, but he is able to repurchase it in 1814. He goes to the celebrated Quaker academy, Shackleton’s School in Ballitore, County Kildare, then graduates from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where his eloquence makes him a star of the College Historical Society. He is called to the Bar in 1790.
Bushe is a member of the Irish Parliament for Callan from 1796 to 1799, and for Donegal Borough from 1799 to 1800. He is Escheator of Leinster in 1799. By this time the office is a sinecure. He is vehemently opposed to the Acts of Union 1800, referring emotionally to Britain’s subjection of Ireland as “six hundred years of uniform oppression and injustice,” a phrase which quickly became a proverb. Although he refuses an offer of a place on the Bench as a bribe for supporting the Union, cynics note that his staunch opposition to the Union does not prevent him accepting high office under the British Crown afterwards. He is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1805 and holds the office for 17 years until in 1822 he is appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for Ireland, although only after William Saurin, the equally long-serving Attorney-General, refuses the position. He retire in 1841.
As an advocate “silver-tongued Bushe” is legendary for his eloquence, and as a politician, he is admired by his English contemporaries like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Brougham. As a judge, according to F. Elrington Ball, he does not live up to expectations, although, if not an outstanding judge, he is an impressive and dignified one. As a statesman he is often accused of double-dealing: having opposed the Acts of Union, he has few scruples about accepting office under the new regime; and while himself supporting Catholic Emancipation, he prosecutes members of the Catholic Association for sedition, merely for advocating the same cause.
Two acts are passed in 1800 with the same long title: An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. The short title of the act of the British Parliament is Union with Ireland Act 1800, assigned by the Short Titles Act 1896. The short title of the act of the Irish Parliament is Act of Union (Ireland) 1800, assigned by a 1951 act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and hence not effective in the Republic of Ireland, where it was referred to by its long title when repealed in 1962.
Before these acts, Ireland has been in personal union with England since 1542, when the Irish Parliament passes the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, proclaiming King Henry VIII of England to be King of Ireland. Since the 12th century, the King of England has been technical overlord of the Lordship of Ireland, a papal possession. Both the Kingdoms of Ireland and England later come into personal union with that of Scotland upon the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland are united into a single kingdom: the Kingdom of Great Britain. Upon that union, each House of the Parliament of Ireland passes a congratulatory address to Queen Anne, praying her: “May God put it in your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your crown, by a still more comprehensive Union.” The Irish Parliament is both before then subject to certain restrictions that made it subordinate to the Parliament of England and after then, to the Parliament of Great Britain; however, Ireland gains effective legislative independence from Great Britain through the Constitution of 1782.
By this time access to institutional power in Ireland is restricted to a small minority: the Anglo-Irish of the Protestant Ascendancy. Frustration at the lack of reform among the Catholic majority eventually leads, along with other reasons, to a rebellion in 1798, involving a French invasion of Ireland and the seeking of complete independence from Great Britain. This rebellion is crushed with much bloodshed, and the motion for union is motivated at least in part by the belief that the union will alleviate the political rancour that led to the rebellion. The rebellion is felt to have been exacerbated as much by brutally reactionary loyalists as by United Irishmen (anti-unionists).
Furthermore, Catholic emancipation is being discussed in Great Britain, and fears that a newly enfranchised Catholic majority will drastically change the character of the Irish government and parliament also contributes to a desire from London to merge the Parliaments.
According to historian James Stafford, an Enlightenment critique of Empire in Ireland lays the intellectual foundations for the Acts of Union. He writes that Enlightenment thinkers connected “the exclusion of the Irish Kingdom from free participation in imperial and European trade with the exclusion of its Catholic subjects, under the terms of the ‘Penal Laws’, from the benefits of property and political representation.” These critiques are used to justify a parliamentary union between Britain and Ireland.
Complementary acts are enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland.
The Parliament of Ireland gains a large measure of legislative independence under the Constitution of 1782. Many members of the Irish Parliament jealously guard that autonomy (notably Henry Grattan), and a motion for union is legally rejected in 1799. Only Anglicans are permitted to become members of the Parliament of Ireland though the great majority of the Irish population are Roman Catholic, with many Presbyterians in Ulster. Under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, Roman Catholics regain the right to vote if they own or rent property worth £2 annually. Wealthy Catholics are strongly in favour of union in the hope for rapid religious emancipation and the right to sit as MPs, which only comes to pass under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.
From the perspective of Great Britain’s elites, the union is desirable because of the uncertainty that follows the French Revolution of 1789 and the Irish Rebellion of 1798. If Ireland adopts Catholic emancipation willingly or not, a Roman Catholic Parliament could break away from Britain and ally with the French, but the same measure within the United Kingdom would exclude that possibility. Also, in creating a regency during King George III‘s “madness”, the Irish and British Parliaments give the Prince Regent different powers. These considerations lead Great Britain to decide to attempt the merger of both kingdoms and Parliaments.
The final passage of the Act in the Irish House of Commons turns on an about 16% relative majority, garnering 58% of the votes, and similar in the Irish House of Lords, in part per contemporary accounts through bribery with the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get votes. The first attempt is defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes to 104, but the second vote in 1800 passes by 158 to 115.
In 1802 Corry is dismissed from the Exchequer and replaced by John Foster (later Lord Oriel), he is awarded, however, £2,000 p.a. in compensation. In 1806 the changes in ownership of the Newry estates alters his position. The lands pass to a senior line of the Needham family and they support General Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, at the general election. Corry does not have the funds needed, in excess of £5000, to purchase a seat elsewhere. However, Lady Downshire is inclined to support the Grenville ministry and comes to a formal agreement with Corry to give him £1000 towards his expenses should he be successful in Newry, and, if not, to bring him in for another borough. He fails against the Needham interest in Newry, but a seat at Newport, Isle of Wight, is purchased for him, with £4000 from Lady Downshire, and he is appointed to the Board of Trade. Six months later Grenville’s ministry has fallen and there is another general election. Corry stands, again unsuccessfully, for Newry.
Corry is unmarried but has a long-term relationship with Jane Symms. They have three sons and three daughters. His daughter Ann marries Lt. Col. Henry Westenra, the brother of Robert Cuninghame, 1st Baron Rossmore. His residence in Newry is the Abbey Yard, now a school, and Derrymore House, Bessbrook, County Armagh, which he had inherited from his father and sold in 1810. It is now the property of the National Trust. During his life, a road is constructed from near the main entrance of Derrymore House around Newry and links up with the Dublin Road on the southern side of the town primarily for his use. This road subsequently becomes known as “The Chancellor’s Road,” as a result of his term as the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer. A local legend has it that the road is constructed after an incident in which Corry’s stagecoach is stoned while passing through Newry by people angry at an unpopular window tax he had introduced. The road has retained this name, but it is cut in half by the Newry by-pass in the mid-1990s, however, as a result of works associated with the new A1 dual carriageway, the two-halves of the road are now reconnected.
Corry dies at his house in Merrion Square, Dublin, on May 15, 1813, his 60th birthday. He is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
Kickham’s father, John Kickham, is the proprietor of the principal drapery in the locality and is held in high esteem for his patriotic spirit. His mother, Anne O’Mahony, is related to the Fenian leader John O’Mahony. He grows up largely deaf and almost blind, the result of an explosion with a powder flask when he is thirteen. He is educated locally, where it is intended that he study for the medical profession. During his boyhood the campaign for a repeal of the Acts of Union 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland is at its height, and he soon becomes versed in its arguments and is inspired by its principles. He often hears the issues discussed in his father’s shop and at home amongst all his friends and acquaintances.
From a young age Kickham is imbued with these patriotic ideals. He becomes acquainted with the teaching of the Young Irelanders through their newspaper The Nation from its foundation in October 1842. His father read the paper aloud every week for the family. Like all the young people of the time, and a great many of the old ones, his sympathies are with the Young Irelanders on their secession from the Repeal Association.
When he is 22 years old, Kickham contributes The Harvest Moon sung to the air of “The Young May Moon,” to The Nation on August 17, 1850. Other verses are to follow, but the finest of his poems according to A. M. O’Sullivan, appear in other journals. Rory of the Hill, The Irish Peasant Girl, and Home Longings, better known as Slievenamon, are published in the Celt. The First Felon appears in the Irishman. Patrick Sheehan, the story of an old soldier, is published in the Kilkenny Journal, and becomes very popular as an anti-recruiting song.
Kickham begins to write for a number of papers, including The Nation, but also the Celt, the Irishman, the Shamrock, and becomes one of the leading writers of The Irish People, the Fenian newspaper, in which many of his poems appear. His writings are signed using his initials, his full name, or the pseudonyms, “Slievenamon” and “Momonia.”
Kickham is the leading member of the Confederation Club in Mullinahone, which he is instrumental in founding. When the revolutionary spirit begins to grip the people in 1848, he turns out with a freshly made pike to join William Smith O’Brien and John Blake Dillon when they arrive in Mullinahone in July 1848. On hearing of the progress of O’Brien through the country, he sets to work manufacturing pikes and is in the forge when news reaches him that the leaders are looking for him. It is here that he meets James Stephens for the first time. At O’Brien’s request, he rings the chapel bell to summon the people and before midnight a Brigade has answered the summons. He later writes a detailed account about this period which brings his connection with the attempted Rising of 1848 to a close.
After the failed 1848 uprising at Ballingarry, Kickham has to hide for some time, as a result of the part he had played in rousing the people of his native village to action. When the excitement has subsided, he returns to his father’s house and resumes his interests in the sports of fishing and fowling and spends much of his time in literary pursuits. Some of the authors in which he is well versed are Alfred Tennyson and Charles Dickens and he greatly admires George Eliot, and after William Shakespeare, is Robert Burns.
In the autumn of 1857, a messenger arrives from New York with a message for James Stephens from members of the Emmet Monument Association, calling on him to get up an organization in Ireland. On December 23, Stephens dispatches Joseph Denieffe to the United States with his reply and outlines his conditions and his requirements from the organisation in America. Denieffe returnd on March 17, 1858, with the acceptance of Stephens’ terms and £80. That evening the Irish Republican Brotherhood commences. Those present in Langan’s, lathe-maker and timber merchant, 16 Lombard Street, for that first meeting are Stephens, Kickham, Thomas Clarke Luby, Peter Langan, Denieffe and Garrett O’Shaughnessy. Later it includes members of the Phoenix National and Literary Society, which is formed in 1856 by Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in Skibbereen, County Cork.
In mid-1863, Stephens informs his colleagues that he wishes to start a newspaper, with financial aid from O’Mahony and the Fenian Brotherhood in America. The offices are established at 12 Parliament Street, almost at the gates of Dublin Castle. The first issue of The Irish People appears on November 28, 1863. The staff of the paper along with Kickham are Luby and Denis Dowling Mulcahy as the editorial staff, O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor in charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. John O’Leary is brought from London to take charge in the role of Editor. Shortly after the establishment of the paper, Stephens departs on an America tour, and to attend to organizational matters. Before leaving, he entrusts to Luby a document containing secret resolutions on the Committee of Organization or Executive of the IRB. Though Luby intimates its existence to O’Leary, he does not inform Kickham as there seems no necessity. This document later forms the basis of the prosecution against the staff of The Irish People.
Kickham’s first contribution to The Irish People, entitled Leaves from a Journal, appears in the third issue and is based on a journal he kept on his way to America in 1863. This article leaves no doubt as to his literary capacity according to O’Leary. It falls to Kickham, as a good Catholic, to tackle the priests, though not exclusively with articles such as “Two Sets of Principles,” a rebuff to the doctrines laid down by Lord Carlisle, and “A Retrospect,” dealing with the tenant-right movement chiefly but also the events of the recent past and their bearing on the present. Kickham articulates the attitude held by the IRB in relation to priests, or more particularly in politics.
On July 15, 1865, American-made plans for a rising in Ireland are discovered when the emissary loses them at Kingstown railway station. They find their way to Dublin Castle and to Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of G Division. Ryan has an informer within the offices of The Irish People named Pierce Nagle. He supplies Ryan with an “action this year” message on its way to the IRB unit in Tipperary. With this information, Ryan raids the offices of The Irish People on September 15, followed by the arrests of O’Leary, Luby, and O’Donovan Rossa. Kickham is caught after a month on the run. Stephens is also caught but with the support of Fenian prison warders John J. Breslin and Daniel Byrne is less than a fortnight in Richmond Bridewell when he vanishes and escapes to France. The last issue of The Irish People is dated September 16, 1865.
On November 11, 1865, Kickham is convicted of treason. Judge William Keogh, with many expressions of sympathy for the prisoner, and many compliments in reference to his intellectual attainments, sentences him to fourteen years’ penal servitude. The prisoners’ refusal to disown their opposition to British rule in any way, even when facing charges of life-imprisonment, earn them the nickname of “the bold Fenian men.” Kickham spends time from 1866 until his release in the Woking Convict Invalid Prison.
Kickham is given a free pardon from Queen Victoria on February 24, 1869, because of ill-health, and upon his release he is made Chairman of the Supreme Council of the IRB and the unchallenged leader of the reorganized movement. He is an effective orator and chairman of meetings despite his physical handicaps. He wears an ear trumpet and can only read when he holds books or papers within a few inches of his eyes. For many years he carries on conversations by means of the deaf and dumb alphabet.
Kickham is the author of three well-known stories, dealing sympathetically with Irish life and manners and the simple faith, the joys and sorrows, the quaint customs and the insuppressible humour of the peasantry. Knocknagow is deemed one of the finest tales of peasant life ever written. Sally Cavanagh is a touching story illustrating the evils of landlordism and emigration. For the Old Land deals with the fortunes of a small farmer’s family.
Kickham dies on August 22, 1882, at the house of James O’Connor, a former member of the IRB and afterward MP for West Wicklow, 2 Montpelier Place, Blackrock, Dublin, where he had been living for many years, and had been cared for by the poet Rose Kavanagh. He is buried in Mullinahone, County Tipperary.
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)
Pery is the son of William Cecil Pery, 1st Baron Glentworth, and his first wife, Jane Walcott, daughter of John Minchin Walcott. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He marries Alice Mary Ormsby, the daughter of Henry Ormsby of County Mayo, by his wife Mary Hartstonge, in 1783, and they have at least eight children. Alice Mary is the heiress of her uncle, Sir Henry Hartstonge, 3rd Baronet, who leaves her substantial property in the south of Ireland.
Pery is elected to the Parliament of Ireland as the Member of Parliament for Limerick City in 1786 and holds the seat until 1794, when he inherits his father’s barony and takes his seat in the Irish House of Lords. As a politician, he is a vocal Unionist. He holds the office of Keeper of the Signet and Privy Seal of Ireland between 1795 and 1797. In 1797, he is invested as a Privy Counsellor. He subsequently holds the office of Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper of Ireland between 1797 and 1806. In 1800, he is created Viscount Limerick of the City of Limerick.
Pery’s eldest son and heir, Henry Hartstonge Pery, Viscount Glentworth, predeceases him on August 7, 1834, and thus Pery is succeeded in his titles by Henry’s eldest son, William Henry Tenison Pery. One of Pery’s daughters, Theodosia, marries the Whig politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon.
MacHale is born in Tubbernavine, near Lahardane, County Mayo on March 6, 1791, to Patrick and Mary Mulkieran MacHale. He is so feeble at birth that he is baptised at home by Father Andrew Conroy. By the time he is five years of age, he begins attending a hedge school. Three important events happen during his childhood: the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the landing at Killala of French troops, whom the boy, hidden in a stacked sheaf of flax, watches marching through a mountain pass to Castlebar, and a few months later the brutal hanging of Father Conroy on a false charge of high treason.
With his friend and ally, Daniel O’Connell, MacHale takes a prominent part in the important question of Catholic emancipation, impeaching in unmeasured terms the severities of the former penal code, which had branded Catholics with the stamp of inferiority. During 1826 his zeal is omnipresent. He calls on the Government to remember how the Act of Union in 1800 was carried by William Pitt the Younger on the distinct assurance and implied promise that Catholic emancipation, which had been denied by the Irish Parliament, should be granted by the Parliament of the Empire.
Oliver Kelly, Archbishop of Tuam, dies in 1834, and the clergy selects MacHale as one of three candidates, to the annoyance of the Government who despatches agents to induce Pope Gregory XVI not to nominate him to the vacant see. Disregarding their request, the pope appoints MacHale Archbishop of Tuam. He is the first prelate since the Reformation who has received his entire education in Ireland. The corrupt practices of general parliamentary elections and the Tithe War cause frequent rioting and bloodshed and are the subjects of denunciation by the new archbishop, until the passing of a Tithes bill in 1838. He also leads the opposition to the ProtestantSecond Reformation, which is being pursued by evangelical clergy in the Church of Ireland, including the Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, Thomas Plunket.
The repeal of the Acts of Union 1800, advocated by O’Connell, enlists MacHale’s ardent sympathy and he assists the Liberator in many ways, and remits subscriptions from his priests for this purpose. In his zeal for the cause of the Catholic religion and of Ireland, so long downtrodden, but not in the 1830s, he frequently incurs from his opponents the charge of intemperate language, something not altogether undeserved. In his anxiety to reform abuses and to secure the welfare of Ireland, by an uncompromising and impetuous zeal, he makes many bitter and unrelenting enemies, particularly British ministers and their supporters.
The Great Famine of 1846–47 affects his diocese more than any. In the first year he announces in a sermon that the famine is a divine punishment on his flock for their sins. Then by 1846 he warns the Government as to the state of Ireland, reproaches them for their dilatoriness, and holds up the uselessness of relief works. From England as well as other parts of the world, cargoes of food are sent to the starving Irish. Bread and soup are distributed from the archbishop’s kitchen. Donations sent to him are acknowledged, accounted for, and disbursed by his clergy among the victims.
The death of O’Connell in 1847 is a setback to MacHale as are the subsequent disagreements within the Repeal Association. He strongly advises against the violence of Young Ireland. Over the next 30 years he becomes involved in political matters, particularly those involving the church. Toward the end of his life, he becomes less active in politics.
MacHale attends the First Vatican Council in 1869. He believes that the favourable moment has not arrived for an immediate definition of the dogma of papal infallibility. Better to leave it a matter of faith, not written down, and consequently he speaks and votes in the council against its promulgation. Once the dogma had been defined, he declares the dogma of infallibility “to be true Catholic doctrine, which he believed as he believed the Apostles’ Creed“. In 1877, to the disappointment of the archbishop who desires that his nephew should be his co-adjutor, Dr. John McEvilly, Bishop of Galway, is elected by the clergy of the archdiocese, and is commanded by Pope Leo XIII after some delay, to assume his post. He had opposed this election as far as possible but submits to the papal order.
Every Sunday MacHale preaches a sermon in Irish at the cathedral, and during his diocesan visitations he always addresses the people in their native tongue, which is still largely used in his diocese. On journeys he usually converses in Irish with his attendant chaplain and has to use it to address people of Tuam or the beggars who greet him whenever he goes out. He preaches his last Irish sermon after his Sunday Mass, April 1881. He dies in Tuam seven months later, on November 7, 1881, and is buried in the cathedral at Tuam on November 15.
When appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Lower Connello in the County of Limerick, in the Peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the Peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy in 1793 and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
As Lord Chancellor for Ireland, FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).
FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 personally but apparently recommends its acceptance in the House of Lords, being forced out of necessity when that Act had been recommended to the Irish Executive by the British Cabinet led by William Pitt the Younger. Pitt expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and allow Catholics to vote again and hold public offices. At the same time, FitzGibbon apparently denounces the policy this Act embodies, so it is probably safe to say that FitzGibbon’s own beliefs and principles conflict with his obligations as a member of the Irish executive of the time.
FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is apparently recalled, because of his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is likely what leads to his recall. Thus, if anyone is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother George Ponsonby — not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.
Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon apparently agree on one point – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon is a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.
In the end, FitzGibbon’s views wins out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority, or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom. He later claims that he has been duped by the way in which the Act is passed and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.
FitzGibbon’s role as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the 1798 rebellion is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the Sheares brothers on July 14, 1798.
In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. Fitzgibbon ss inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and in October 1798 he expressed his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he had been granted a trial and his belief that Tone should have been hanged as soon as he set foot on land.
FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”
FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might have been interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.
FitzGibbon dies at his home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in the churchyard at St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and there is a widespread story that a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.
(Pictured: “Portrait of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare,” painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1789)
Gray is the third son of John and Elizabeth Gray of Mount Street. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin and obtains the degree of M.D. and Master of Surgery at the University of Glasgow in 1839. Shortly before his marriage in the same year, he settles in Dublin and takes up a post at a hospital in North Cumberland Street. He is admitted as a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in due course.
Gray is publicly minded and contributes to periodicals and the newspaper press. In 1841, he becomes joint proprietor of the Freeman’s Journal, a nationalist paper which is then published daily and weekly. He acts as political editor of the Journal for a time, before becoming sole proprietor in 1850. As owner, he increases the newspaper’s size, reduces its price and extends its circulation.
Gray enters politics at a relatively young age and attaches himself to Daniel O’Connell‘s Repeal Association. As a Protestant Nationalist, he supports the movement for the repeal of the Acts of Union with Britain. In October 1843, he is indicted with O’Connell and others in the Court of the Queen’s Bench in Dublin on a charge of sedition and “conspiracy against the queen.” The following February, he, together with O’Connell, is condemned to nine months imprisonment, but in early September 1844 the sentence is remitted on appeal. The trial has a strong element of farce, as the hot-tempered Attorney-General for Ireland, Sir Thomas Cusack-Smith, challenges Gray’s counsel, Gerald Fitzgibbon, to a duel, for which he is sternly reprimanded by the judges. From then on Gray is careful to distance himself from the advocacy of violence in the national cause, though he is sympathetic to the Young Ireland movement without being involved in its 1848 rebellion. Through the growing influence of the Freeman’s Journal, he becomes a significant figure in Dublin municipal politics. He is also active in national politics during an otherwise quiet period of Irish politics up until 1860. With the resurgence of nationalism after the famine, he helps to organise the Tenant’s League founding conference in 1850, standing unsuccessfully as the League’s candidate for Monaghan in the 1852 United Kingdom general election.
Later Gray originates and organises the “courts of arbitration” which O’Connell endeavours to substitute for the existing legal tribunals of the country. Following O’Connell’s death, in 1862 he inaugurates an appeal for subscriptions to build a monument to O’Connell on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street). Independent from O’Connell, he continues to take a prominent part in Irish politics and in local affairs.
In municipal politics, Gray is elected councillor in 1852 and alderman of Dublin Corporation and takes an interest in the improvement of the city. As chairman of the committee for a new water supply to Dublin, he actively promotes what becomes the “Vartry scheme.” The Vartry Reservoir scheme involves the partial redirection and damming of the River Vartry in County Wicklow, and the building of a series of water piping and filtering systems (and related public works) to carry fresh water to the city. This work is particularly important in the improvement of conditions in the city, and to public health, as it improves sanitation and helps reduce outbreaks of cholera, typhus and other diseases associated with contaminated water. On the opening of the works on June 30, 1863, he is knighted by the Earl of Carlisle, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Partially in recognition of these efforts, he is later be nominated for the position of Lord Mayor of Dublin for the years 1868–69, but he declines to serve.
In national politics, the Liberal government at the time is keen to conciliate an influential representative of the moderate nationalists to support British Liberalism and who will resume O’Connell’s constitutional agitation. In an unusual alliance with the CatholicArchbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen, a man devoted to O’Connell’s memory, Gray’s newspaper exploits this shift in government policy. It supports the archbishop’s creation, the National Association of Ireland, established in 1864 with the intention of providing a moderate alternative to the revolutionary nationalism of the Fenians. The Freeman’s Journal adopts the aims of the Association as its own: it advocates the disestablishment of the AnglicanChurch of Ireland, reform of the land laws, educational aspirations of Irish Catholicism and free denominal education.
In the 1865 United Kingdom general election Gray is elected MP for Kilkenny City as a Liberal candidate. In this capacity he campaigns successfully at Westminster and in Ireland for the reforms also advocated in his paper. His newspaper’s inquiry into the anomalous wealth of the established church amidst a predominately Catholic population contributes considerably to William Ewert Gladstone‘s Irish Church Act 1869. He helps to furnish the proof that Irish demands are not to be satisfied by anything other than by radical legislation. He fights for the provision in the new Landlord & Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870 for fixity of tenure, which Gladstone eventually concedes. The Act’s other weaknesses, however, result in its failure to resolve the “land question,” the accompanying coercion, the disappointment with Gladstone’s handling of the university question and national education, causing Gray to deflect from the Liberals and become mistrusted in Britain. In the 1874 United Kingdom general election he is re-elected as a Home Rule League MP for Kilkenny, joining its Home Rule majority in the House of Commons, and holds his seat until his death the following year.
Gray dies at Bath, Somerset, England, on April 9, 1875. His remains are returned to Ireland, and he is honoured with a public funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery. Almost immediately afterwards public subscriptions are sought for the erection in O’Connell Street, of a monument to Gray. The monument is completed in 1879 and is dedicated to the “appreciation of his many services to his country, and of the splendid supply of pure water which he secured for Dublin.” His legacy also includes his contributions to the passage of the Irish Church and Land Bills, his advocacy for tenant’s rights and his support of the Home Rule movement.
(Pictured: Statue to Sir John Gray on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, designed by Thomas Farrell and unveiled on June 24, 1879. Photo credit: Graham Hickey)
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