seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: All Souls College (Oxford)


by Leave a comment

Death of Robert Weston, Civil Lawyer & Lord Chancellor of Ireland

Robert Weston of Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, an English civil lawyer, who is Dean of the Arches and Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, dies in Ireland on May 20, 1573.

Weston is born in Hampshire, England, in 1515, the third son of John Weston, of Weeford, Staffordshire, and Cecilia Neville, daughter of Ralph Neville, 3rd Earl of Westmorland, and sister of Ralph Neville, 4th Earl of Westmorland. His nephew is Knight Simon Weston, son of his brother James Weston, MP for Lichfield.

The Weston family of Gloucestershire, who produce another senior Irish judge in William Weston, are probably cousins of Robert. He enters All Souls College, Oxford and is elected Fellow in 1536. He studies Civil Law and attains the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) on February 17, 1538 and Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) on July 20, 1556. 

From 1546 to 1549, Weston is a principal of Broadgates Hall (afterwards Pembroke College), and at the same time deputy reader in civil law at the university, under Dr. John Story. He is not a clergyman, and his later appointment to two lucrative deaneries greatly troubles his conscience.

Weston is elected Member of Parliament for Exeter in March 1553 and for Lichfield in 1558 and 1559.

On January 12, 1559, Weston is created Dean of the Arches and is a commissioner for administering the oaths required of ecclesiastics under the Act of Uniformity 1558. He is consulted in regard to the Queen’s Commission issued on December 6, 1559, for confirming Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury and is included in a commission issued on November 8, 1564, to inquire into complaints of piratical depredations committed at sea on the subjects of the King of Spain.

The Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney, requests that Weston be nominated for the post of Lord Chancellor of Ireland in succession to Hugh Curwen, Archbishop of Dublin, in April 1566. After a year, on June 10, 1567, Queen Elizabeth I tells Sidney that after good deliberation she has made the “choice for the supply of room of Chancellor by naming thereunnto our trusty well-beloved Doctor Weston, dean of the arches here, a man for his learning and approved integrity thoroughly qualified to receive and possess the same” and “that for some increase of his living whilst he remaineth in our service there she was pleased to give unto him the Deanery of St. Patrick’s, whereof the Bishop of Armagh, Adam Loftus, is now dean and yet to leave it at our order, as we know he will.”

Weston arrives in Dublin early in August and is sworn into office on August 8, 1567. He is conscientious in performing his duties, and greatly respected for his integrity, although ill-health (he is plagued by gout and gallstones) hampers his effectiveness. He is appalled by the laziness and inefficiency of many of the Irish judges and urges Elizabeth I to replace them with Englishmen wherever possible. He is equally shocked at the poverty and ignorance of many of the Protestant clergy in Ireland. His zeal for reform leads him, though a layman, to become an effective leader of the Church of Ireland for a few years. He cooperates with Adam Loftus, now Archbishop of Dublin, in purging the Archdiocese of Dublin of crypto-Catholics, but is opposed to the persecution of the Roman Catholic majority, or any efforts to forcibly convert them.

Weston and Sir William FitzWilliam, the Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, are sworn Lords Justices in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin on October 14, and he becomes a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. He addresses the Irish Parliament when it is summoned on January 17, 1568. In addition to being Dean of St. Patrick’s, he is Dean of Wells from 1570 to 1573, but his health is failing.

Weston dies on May 20, 1573, and is buried beneath the altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, “leaving behind him an excellent character for uprightness, judgment, learning, courtesy, and piety.”

Weston marries Alice Jenyngs, daughter of Richard Jenyngs of Great Barr, Staffordshire. They have a son, John, and three daughters, of whom most of known of Alice, who marries firstly Hugh Brady, Bishop of Meath, by whom she has numerous children including Luke and Nicholas, and secondly Sir Geoffrey Fenton, by whom she is the mother of Catherine, who marries Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, and of Sir William Fenton.

Weston is the 7th great-grandfather of the American firearms industrialist Daniel B. Wesson, who cofounds Smith & Wesson with Horace Smith. Hus great-grandson, John Wesson, immigrates to the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1644 and settles in Reading, Massachusetts.


by Leave a comment

Death of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, Philosopher & Political Economist

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish philosopher and political economist who makes significant contributions to the methods of statistics during the 1880s, dies in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England on February 13, 1926.

Edgeworth is born on February 8, 1845, at Edgeworthstown, County Longford, the fifth of six sons of Francis Beaufort Edgeworth and his Spanish wife Rosa Florentina Eroles, daughter of exiled Catalan general Antonio Eroles. He is a grandson of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. His father dies when he is two years old, followed by his aunt Maria Edgeworth two years later. He is educated at home by tutors until he enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) at the age of seventeen. Leaving to become a scholar at Magdalen Hall, he then proceeds to Balliol College, Oxford, where he takes a first-class degree in literae humaniores. After studying law at the Inner Temple, he is called to the bar in 1877, but never practises, choosing instead to lecture in logic at King’s College, London, where in 1888 he is appointed Professor of Political Economy, and in 1890 Tooke Professor of Economic Science and Statistics.

In 1891, Edgeworth becomes Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford and is elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where he resides principally for the remainder of his career. In the same year he is appointed the founding editor of The Economic Journal and is credited with its success by the economist (and later joint editor) John Maynard Keynes. He writes seven small books and numerous articles and reviews but does not develop a systematic approach to economics. Thus, he never produces a treatise, once informing Keynes that it is for the same reason he never married – large-scale enterprises do not appeal to him. Instead, he applies a highly abstract, mathematical approach to economics, a methodology that is not helped by a difficult writing style. Although his work is sometimes controversial, he makes many original contributions to economics and statistics, which are still recognised. For example, in his own lifetime he is the finest exponent of what he himself calls “mathematical psychics,” the application of quasi-mathematical methods to the social sciences. His career, however, never quite fulfills its promise.

In 1911, Edgeworth inherits the Edgeworthstown estate, and shortly afterward becomes president of the Royal Economic Society (1912–14) and Fellow of the British Academy. Ahead of his time in many areas, he argues against the inequality of men’s and women’s wages. He has an eccentric character and is, according to Keynes, a difficult mixture of reserve, pride, kindness, modesty, courtesy, and stubbornness. His friend and fellow economist Alfred Marshall once says, “Francis is a charming fellow, but you must be careful with Ysidro.” He is never particularly happy, and dies a bachelor, although Keynes admits that it is not from want of susceptibility to women.

Edgeworth resigns his chair in 1922 and is appointed emeritus professor. In 1925, his essays are published in three volumes as his Collected Economic Papers, and for the first time his reputation is properly established throughout the world. He dies at Oxford on February 13, 1926.

(From: “Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro” by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


by Leave a comment

Death of Charles Jervas, Painter, Translator & Art Collector

Charles Jervas, Irish portrait painter, translator, and art collector of the early 18th century, dies at his home at Cleveland Court, London, on November 2, 1739.

Born in Shinrone, County Offaly, around 1675, Jervas is one of seven children (five sons and two daughters) of John Jervas of Clonlisk, Shinrone, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Captain John Baldwin, High Sheriff of County Offaly, of Shinrone. He studies in London as an assistant under Sir Godfrey Kneller between 1694 and 1695.

After selling a series of small copies of the Raphael Cartoons around 1698 to Dr. George Clarke of All Souls College, Oxford, the following year, he travels to Paris and Rome (while financially supported by Clarke and others) remaining there for most of the decade before returning to London in 1709 where he finds success as a portrait painter.

Painting portraits of the city’s intellectuals, among them such personal friends as Jonathan Swift and the poet Alexander Pope, both of which are now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, Jervas becomes a popular artist often referred to in the works of literary figures of the period.

Jervas gives painting lessons to Pope at his house in Cleveland Court, St. James’s, which Pope mentions in his poem, To Belinda on the Rape of the Lock, written in 1713 and published in 1717 in Poems on Several Occasions.

Pope’s verse Epistle to Mr. Jervas, written around 1715, is published in the 1716 edition of John Dryden‘s 1695 translation of Fresnoy’s Art of Painting (Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy‘s De arte graphica, 1668). In it, Pope refers to Jervas’s skill as an artist:

O, lasting as those colours may they shine,
Free as they stroke, yet faultless as thy line;
New graces yearly like thy works display,
Soft without weakness, without glaring gay!

With his growing reputation, Jervas succeeds Kneller as Principal Painter in Ordinary to King George I in 1723, and subsequently King George II. In 1727 he marries Penelope Hume, a wealthy widow with a supposed fortune of £20,000, and moves to Hampton, London. He continues to live in London until his death on November 2, 1739.

Jervas’s translation of Miguel de Cervantes‘s novel Don Quixote, published posthumously in 1742 as being made by Charles “Jarvis” due to a printer’s error, has since come to be known as “the Jarvis translation.” He is first to provide an introduction to the novel including a critical analysis of previous translations of Don Quixote. It has been highly praised as the most accurate translation of the novel up to that time, but also strongly criticised for being stiff and humourless, although it goes through many printings during the 19th century.

As principal portraitist to the King of England, Jervas is known for his vanity and luck, as mentioned in the Imperial Biographical Dictionary, “He married a widow with $20,000; and his natural self-conceit was greatly encouraged by his intimate friend [Alexander] Pope, who has written an epistle full of silly flattery.”

According to one account, after comparing a painting he had copied from Titian, Jervas is said to have stated, “Poor little Tit, how he would starve!”

Upon being told that Jervas had set up a carriage with four horses, Godfrey Kneller replies, “Ach, mein Gott, if his horses do not draw better than he does, he will never get to his journey’s end.”


by Leave a comment

Birth of Cyril Falls, Military Historian & Journalist

cyril-bentham-falls

Cyril Bentham Falls, British military historian, journalist and academic, noted for his works on World War I, is born in Dublin on March 2, 1888.

Falls is the eldest son of Sir Charles Falls, an Ulster landowner in County Tyrone. He receives his formal education at the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, and the University of London. At the age of 27 he publishes his first book, Rudyard Kipling: A Critical Study (1915).

During World War I Falls receives a commission into the British Army as a subaltern in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He serves as a Staff Officer in the Head Quarters of the 36th (Ulster) Division and the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division during the conflict. He receives the French Croix de guerre and is discharged from the British Armed Forces with the rank of Captain.

Immediately after leaving the British Army Falls writes a history of one of the Divisions that he had served with during the war, entitled The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division, which is published in 1922.

From 1923 to 1939 Falls is employed by the Historical Section of the United Kingdom Government‘s Committee of Imperial Defence, researching and writing the text of several volumes of the British Government’s official History of the Great War. He serves as the military correspondent for The Times during World War II from 1939 to 1945.

Falls holds the post of Chichele Professor of Military History at All Souls College, Oxford from 1946 to 1953. From the late 1940s through to the end of his life in the early 1970s he is a productive writer of military histories, publishing in-depth detailed studies as well as general works for the commercial market, his final two titles being published posthumously.

The historian Sir Michael Howard later describes Falls’ work The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division (1922) as “containing some of the finest descriptions of conditions on the Western Front to be found anywhere in the literature of the war.”

Cyril Falls dies at the age of 84 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on April 23, 1971.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Herbert Trench, Poet & Playwright

herbert-trench

Frederic Herbert Trench, Irish poet and playwright, is born at Avoncore, County Cork on November 12, 1865.

Trench is educated at Haileybury and Keble College, Oxford, and is elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. In 1891, after some years spent in traveling, he is appointed an examiner in the Board of Education. He gives up this appointment in 1908 in order to devote himself to literary work.

In 1908 a dramatic symphony, Apollo and the Seaman (Op.51), written by Joseph Holbrooke setting Trench’s poem Apollo and the Seaman is performed, under Thomas Beecham. Trench then moves into theatrical work for a few years becoming director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. Here he collaborates with his friend Thomas Evelyn Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden. They stage The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck in 1909, and Henrik Ibsen‘s The Pretenders in 1913.

During World War I Trench works in Florence for the establishment of a better understanding between Great Britain and Italy.

From his school days Trench has been a writer of verse, and his first volume of poems, Deirdre Wed and other Poems, appears in 1901. It is followed by further poems, notably Apollo and the Seaman, included in New Poems (1907), and Lyrics and Narrative Poems (1911). Among his later publications are an Ode from Italy in time of War (1915), Poems with Fables in Prose (1917) and a poetic play Napoleon (1919), which is produced in London by the Stage Society in 1919. Some of his poems are set to music by Arnold Bax.

Herbert Trench dies in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a coastal city in Northern France, on June 11, 1923.