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Tag Archives: Dublin City (Parliament of Ireland constituency)


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Birth of John Claudius Beresford, Tory MP and Lord Mayor of Dublin

John Claudius Beresford, Irish Tory Member of the UK Parliament representing Dublin City (1801–04) and County Waterford (1806–11), is born on October 23, 1766. He also serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin (1814-15).

Beresford is educated at Trinity College, Dublin. From 1783, he serves as a storekeeper for the port of Dublin. He is subsequently appointed to a wealthy sinecure post of Inspector-General of Exports and Imports. He is returned by his father, Hon. John Beresford, for the family borough of Swords to the Irish House of Commons in 1790. In 1798 he is returned for Dublin City, helped by his position in the port, and as a partner in a leading Dublin bank and a member of Dublin Corporation.

During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Beresford leads a yeoman battalion which fights against the rebels with a particular ferocity. He keeps a riding school in Dublin, which acquires an evil reputation as the chief scene of the floggings by which evidence is extorted from the United Irishmen. As such, he becomes identified as one of the leading opponents of the rebellion, and the rebels deliberately burn the banknotes issued by his bank. His reputation for persecuting political opponents survives throughout his political career.

Beresford takes a prominent part in the Irish House of Commons, where he unsuccessfully moves the reduction of the proposed Irish contribution to the imperial exchequer in the debates on the Act of Union. He is to the last an ardent opponent of the union, taking the opposite position to his father. He resigns his post at the port on January 25, 1799, so as not to be tainted by it or by the suggestion that his actions are motivated by a desire to retain it.

Under a provision of the Act of Union 1800 Beresford retains his seat in the 1st Parliament of the United Kingdom (1801–02) without a fresh election, and in the Union Parliament he is a supporter of William Pitt the Younger and later Henry Addington. He has to give up his Irish business interests to play a full part in Parliamentary business. He is re-elected at the 1802 United Kingdom general election, being top of the poll.

On June 3, 1803, Beresford is the only previous supporter of the government to desert them and support a censure motion moved by Peter Patten, making a speech in support which is regarded as “absurd” by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant for Ireland. In March 1804, he is appointed to the Irish currency committee, and therefore resigns his seat by accepting the Escheatorship of Ulster, a sinecure office of profit under the Crown.

After the death of his father on November 5, 1805, Beresford returns to Parliament by winning the by-election to replace him as MP for County Waterford. Politically, he allies to a family faction of the Marquess of Waterford, under the leadership of Henry de La Poer Beresford. The faction aims at trying to stop the government from giving power in Ireland to the Ponsonby family. Beresford is the chief spokesman for his group in their meetings with Ministers.

Although expected to go into opposition in 1806, Beresford in fact supports the government, because a run on funds at his bank leaves him in need of government support for credit. His support leads to his re-election at the 1806 United Kingdom general election in a contested election. This is a controversial decision within the government, with the Duke of Bedford admitting that Beresford had been guilty of persecution but believing he is now loyal, while Lord Howick believes it unlikely that he can be relied upon.

Howick turns out to be correct. In 1807 Beresford does not support the government and becomes a supporter of the Duke of Portland before his accession to the premiership later that year. He is unopposed in the 1807 United Kingdom general election. However, he is erratic, and some of his speeches are reckoned as doing more harm than good to the government’s cause. He strongly supports government against the proposal that peace negotiations with France begin in 1809.

In January 1811, Beresford suffers a further severe financial crisis which prevents his attendance at Parliament for some months. In June he resigns his seat through appointment as Escheator of Munster, being succeeded by his kinsman, Major General Sir William Carr Beresford. The next year, he attempts to get a government appointment but is refused as he already has a good pension. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1814–15, where he is known for his “princely hospitality,” but thereafter withdraws from public life.

Beresford dies on July 20, 1846, at his house at Glenmoyle, County Londonderry.

(Pictured: Portrait of John Claudius Beresford, seated and wearing the chain of office of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, by William Cuming, August 1814)


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Birth of Arthur Wolfe, 1st Viscount Kilwarden

Arthur Wolfe, 1st Viscount Kilwarden KC, Anglo-Irish peer, politician and judge, who held office as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, is born on January 19, 1739, at Forenaughts House, Naas, County Kildare.

Wolfe is the eighth of nine sons born to John Wolfe (1700–60) and his wife Mary (d. 1763), the only child and heiress of William Philpot, a successful merchant at Dublin. One of his brothers, Peter, is the High Sheriff of Kildare, and his first cousin Theobald is the father of the poet Charles Wolfe.

Wolfe is educated at Trinity College Dublin, where he is elected a Scholar, and at the Middle Temple in London. He is called to the Irish Bar in 1766. In 1769, he marries Anne Ruxton (1745–1804) and, after building up a successful practice, takes silk in 1778. He and Anne have four children, John, Arthur, Mariana and Elizabeth.

In 1783, Wolfe is returned as Member of Parliament for Coleraine, which he represents until 1790. In 1787, he is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland, and is returned to Parliament for Jamestown in 1790.

Appointed Attorney-General for Ireland in 1789, Wolfe is known for his strict adherence to the forms of law, and his opposition to the arbitrary measures taken by the authorities, despite his own position in the Protestant Ascendancy. He unsuccessfully prosecutes William Drennan in 1792. In 1795, Lord Fitzwilliam, the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, intends to remove him from his place as Attorney-General to make way for George Ponsonby. In compensation, Wolfe’s wife is created Baroness Kilwarden on September 30, 1795. However, the recall of Fitzwilliam enables Wolfe to retain his office.

In January 1798, Wolfe is simultaneously returned to Parliament for Dublin City and Ardfert. However, he leaves the Irish House of Commons when he is appointed Chief Justice of the Kings Bench for Ireland and created Baron Kilwarden on July 3, 1798.

After the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Wolfe becomes notable for twice issuing writs of habeas corpus on behalf of Wolfe Tone, then held in military custody, but these are ignored by the army and forestalled by Tone’s suicide in prison. In 1795 he had also warned Tone and some of his associates to leave Ireland to avoid prosecution. Tone’s godfather, Theobald Wolfe of Blackhall (the father of Charles Wolfe), is Wolfe’s first cousin, and Tone may have been Theobald’s natural son. These attempts to help a political opponent are unique at the time.

After the passage of the Acts of Union 1800, which he supports, Wolfe is created Viscount Kilwarden on December 29, 1800. In 1802, he is appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin.

In 1802 Wolfe presides over the case against Town Major Henry Charles Sirr in which the habitual abuses of power used to suppress rebellion are exposed in court.

In the same year Wolfe orders that the well-known Catholic priest Father William Gahan be imprisoned for contempt of court. In a case over the disputed will of Gahan’s friend John Butler, 12th Baron Dunboyne, the priest refuses to answer certain questions on the ground that to do so would violate the seal of the confessional, despite a ruling that the common law does not recognize the seal of the confessional as a ground for refusing to give evidence. The judge apparently feels some sympathy for Gahan’s predicament, as he is released from prison after only a few days.

During the Irish rebellion of 1803, Wolfe, who had never been forgiven by the United Irishmen for the execution of William Orr, is clearly in great danger. On the night of July 23, 1803, the approach of the Kildare rebels induces him to leave his residence, Newlands House, in the suburbs of Dublin, with his daughter Elizabeth and his nephew, Rev. Richard Wolfe. Believing that he will be safer among the crowd, he orders his driver to proceed by way of Thomas Street in the city centre. However, the street is occupied by Robert Emmet‘s rebels. Unwisely, when challenged, he gives his name and office, and he is rapidly dragged from his carriage and stabbed repeatedly with pikes. His nephew is murdered in a similar fashion, while Elizabeth is allowed to escape to Dublin Castle, where she raises the alarm. When the rebels are suppressed, Wolfe is found to be still alive and is carried to a watch-house, where he dies shortly thereafter. His last words, spoken in reply to a soldier who called for the death of his murderers, are “Murder must be punished; but let no man suffer for my death, but on a fair trial, and by the laws of his country.”

Wolfe is succeeded by his eldest son John Wolfe, 2nd Viscount Kilwarden. Neither John nor his younger brother Arthur, who dies in 1805, have male issue, and on John’s death in 1830 the title becomes extinct.

(Pictured: Portrait of Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Arthur Wolfe (later Viscount Kilwarden) by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, between 1797 and 1800, Gallery of the Masters)