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

Tag Archives: Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper


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Birth of Edmund Henry Pery, 1st Earl of Limerick

Edmund Henry Pery, 1st Earl of Limerick PC, Irish peer and politician styled Lord Glentworth between 1794 and 1800 and Viscount Limerick until 1803, is born in Limerick, County Limerick, on January 8, 1758.

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.

Following the Acts of Union 1800, Pery becomes an Irish representative peer, sitting in the House of Lords between 1801 and 1844. He is created Earl of Limerick in the Peerage of Ireland on January 1, 1803, in recognition of his vocal and persistent support for the Union. In addition, he is created Baron Foxford of Stackpole Court in the Peerage of the United Kingdom on August 11, 1815, giving him and his descendants a permanent seat in the House of Lords. During this part of his life, he lives at South Hill Park, Berkshire, England.

Pery dies on December 7, 1844, at Bracknell, Bracknell Forest Borough, Berkshire, England. He is buried at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. His wife, Alice Mary, dies on June 13, 1850, in Marylebone, City of Westminster, Greater London, England. She is buried alongside her husband in 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.


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Birth of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Politician, Writer & Inventor

Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor, is born on May 31, 1744, in Pierrepont Street, Bath, Somerset, England.

Edgeworth is the son of Richard Edgeworth senior, and great-grandson of Sir Salathiel Lovell through his mother, Jane Lovell, granddaughter of Sir Salathiel. The Edgeworth family comes to Ireland in the 1580s. He is descended from Francis Edgeworth, appointed joint Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper in 1606, who inherits a fortune from his brother Edward Edgeworth, Bishop of Down and Connor.

A Trinity College, Dublin and Corpus Christi College, Oxford alumnus, Edgeworth is credited for creating, among other inventions, a machine to measure the size of a plot of land. He also makes strides in developing educational methods. He anticipates the caterpillar track with an invention that he plays around with for forty years but never successfully develops. He describes it as a “cart that carries its own road.”

Edgeworth is married four times, including both Honora Sneyd and Frances Beaufort, older sister of Francis Beaufort of the Royal Navy. He is the father of 22 children by his four wives. Beaufort and he install a semaphore line for Ireland. He is a member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. The Lunar Society evolves through various degrees of organization over a period of years but is only ever an informal group. No constitution, minutes, publications or membership lists survive from any period, and evidence of its existence and activities is found only in the correspondence and notes of those associated with it. Dates given for the society range from sometime before 1760 to it still operating as late as 1813. Fourteen individuals have been identified as having verifiably attended Lunar Society meetings regularly over a long period during its most productive time: these are Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Samuel Galton, Jr., James Keir, Joseph Priestley, William Small, Jonathan Stokes, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, John Whitehurst and William Withering.

Edgeworth and his family live in Ireland at his estate at Edgeworthstown, County Longford, where he reclaims bogs and improves roads. He sits in Grattan’s Parliament for St. Johnstown (County Longford) from 1798 until the Act of Union 1801 and advocates Catholic Emancipation and parliamentary reform. He is a founder-member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Edgeworth dies in Edgeworthstown on June 13, 1817.

(Pictured: “Portrait of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817)” oil on canvas by Hugh Douglas Hamilton)