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Death of Stephen Lucius Gywnn, Writer & Politician

Stephen Lucius Gwynn, Irish journalist, biographer, author, poet and Protestant Nationalist politician, dies on June 11, 1950, at Terenure, Dublin. As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) he represents Galway Borough as its Member of Parliament from 1906 to 1918. He serves as a British Army officer in France during World War I and is a prominent proponent of Irish involvement in the Allied war effort. He founds the Irish Centre Party in 1919, but his moderate nationalism is eclipsed by the growing popularity of Sinn Féin.

Gwynn is born in St. Columba’s College in Rathfarnham, County Dublin, where his father John Gwynn (1827–1917), a biblical scholar and Church of Ireland clergyman, is warden. His mother, Lucy Josephine (1840–1907), is the daughter of the Irish nationalist William Smith O’Brien. He is the eldest of ten children (eight brothers and two sisters). Shortly after his birth the family moves to Ramelton in County Donegal to the parish where his father has been appointed parson. He later becomes Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which is to shape his later view of Ireland. He attends Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.

After graduating, Gwynn spends ten years from 1886 tutoring as a schoolmaster, for a time in France, which creates a lifelong interest in French culture, as expressed in his Praise of France (1927). By 1896 he has developed an interest in writing, becoming a writer and journalist in London focused on English themes, until he comes into contact with the emerging Irish literary revival, when he serves as secretary of the Irish Literary Society.

This is the beginning of a long and prolific career as a writer covering a wide range of literary genres, from poetry and biographical subjects to general historical works. The eighteenth century is Gwynn’s particular specialism. He writes numerous books on travel and on the topography of his own homeland, as well as on his other interests: wine, eighteenth-century painting and fishing.

Gwynn returns to Ireland in 1904 when he enters politics. In the 1906 Galway Borough by-election he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this period, he is active in the Gaelic League and is one of the few Irish MPs to have close links to the Irish literary revival. Along with Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts he founds the Dublin publishing house of Maunsel and Company. He is opposed to the demand for the Irish language to be a compulsory subject for matriculation. He supports the campaign which wins the establishment of a Catholic university when he serves on the Irish University Royal Commission in 1908. During the debate on the third Home Rule Bill, and at the request of his party leader John Redmond, he writes The case for Home Rule (1911) and is in charge of much of the party’s official publicity and its replies to criticism from Sinn Féin.

On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gwynn strongly supports Redmond’s encouragement of Irish nationalists and the Irish National Volunteers to support the Allied and British war effort by enlisting in Irish regiments of the Irish Divisions, especially as a means to ensure the implementation of the suspended Home Rule Act at the end of an expectedly short war. Now over fifty, he enlists in January 1915 with the 7th Leinster Regiment in the 16th (Irish) Division. In July he is commissioned as a captain in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Connaught Rangers and serves with them on the Western Front at Messines, the Somme and elsewhere.

Gwynn is one of five Irish Nationalist MPs who enlist and serve in the army, the others being John L. Esmonde, Willie Redmond, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan, as well as former MP Tom Kettle. Together with Kettle and William Redmond, he undertakes a recruitment drive for the Irish divisions, co-operating with Kettle on a collection of ballads called Battle Songs for the Irish Brigade (1915). He is made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in July 1915. In 1916, he is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission.

Recalled to Ireland in late 1917 to participate in the Irish Convention chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett, Gwynn sides with the Redmondite faction of the Irish Party in supporting a compromise with the southern unionists in an attempt to reach consensus on a Home Rule settlement which would avoid partition. On the death of Redmond in March 1918, he takes over as leader of the moderate nationalists in the Convention. He opposes the threat of compulsory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1918, though as a member of the Irish Recruiting Council he continues to support voluntary recruitment, encountering intense opposition led by Sinn Féin.

Gwynn forms the Irish Centre Party in 1919 and stands unsuccessfully as an Independent Nationalist for Dublin University in the 1918 Irish general election. The party merges with Plunkett’s Irish Dominion League to press for a settlement by consent on the basis of dominion status, but Gwynn subsequently breaks with Plunkett due to his willingness to accept partition as a temporary compromise. The polarities which divide Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War increasingly sideline his brand of moderate cultural nationalism. Although he supports the newly emergent nation, he equally condemns some of the excesses, such as the burning of houses belonging to Free State senators.

Gwynn’s personal life also becomes complicated at this stage and around 1920. He has a romantic association with married artist Grace Henry who is perhaps the best-known female artist in Ireland at the time. During this period, he and Grace travel in France and Italy and at various stages in his life she painted portraits of him including a very distinguished looking one of him in his late 60s or early 70s. Their relationship contributes significantly to the separation of Henry from her artist husband Paul Henry in 1930.

During the 1920s, Gwynn also devotes himself to writing, covering political events as Irish correspondent to The Observer and The Times. Later in his career, he writes some substantial works, and together with his son Denis Gwynn (The Life of John Redmond, 1932) does much to shape the retrospective image and self-justification of John Redmond. In the mid-1930s he authors three books with a connecting theme of fishing with the artist Roy Beddington serving as illustrator: The Happy Fisherman (1936), From River to River (1937), and Two in a Valley (1938).

Gwynn is awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1940, and a Litt.D. by the University of Dublin in 1945. The Irish Academy of Letters awards him the Gregory Medal in April 1950. In his literary writings he stands for a humanism and tolerance, which qualities, due to political upheavals, were relatively rare in the Ireland of his day.

Gwynn dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin, and is buried at Tallaght Cemetery, south County Dublin.

Gwynn marries his cousin Mary Louisa (d. 1941), daughter of Rev. James Gwynn. She later converts to Catholicism. They have three sons and two daughters who are brought up in her religion, of whom Aubrey (1892–1983) becomes a Jesuit priest and professor of medieval history at University College Dublin (UCD). Their second son, Denis Rolleston (1893–1971), is professor of modern Irish history at University College Cork (UCC).

Gwynn’s brother Edward John (1868–1941) becomes provost of Trinity College and another brother Robert Malcolm becomes its senior dean. His sister Lucy Gwynn is the first woman registrar of Trinity. A third brother, Charles, has a successful career in the British Army and retires as a Major General. Younger brothers Lucius and Jack are noted cricketers.


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Death of Andrew O’Connor, American Irish Sculptor

Andrew O’Connor, American Irish sculptor whose work is represented in museums in the United States, Ireland, Britain and France, dies in Dublin on June 9, 1941.

O’Connor is born on June 7, 1874, at Worcester, Massachusetts, the eldest of three sons and two daughters of Andrew O’Connor, a stonecutter from Lanarkshire, Scotland, who becomes a professional sculptor, and Marie Anne O’Connor (née McFadden), of County Antrim. Educated in Worcester public schools, at the age of 14 he becomes apprenticed to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries. He is employed in the early 1890s on sculptural work for the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair), being active in the studio of William Ordway Partridge, and assisting Daniel Chester French on his colossal Statue of the Republic, a landmark of the 1893 Columbian exposition.

Moving to London (1894–98), O’Connor works on bas-reliefs in the studio of the painter John Singer Sargent, who uses him as a model for his mural Frieze of Prophets for the Boston Public Library. His first independent work, Sea Dreams, a relief of a head, is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1896. Returning to the United States (1898–1903), he becomes a studio assistant of French, through whom he receives his first public commission, for the Vanderbilt Memorial Doors for St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Manhattan, New York, a project completed in 1902 to wide critical acclaim. He also executes the tympanum and lateral friezes.

Around 1900, O’Connor marries an artist’s model named Nora, by whom he has a daughter. In 1902, he hires as studio model Jessie Phoebe Brown from New Jersey and of County Down parentage. The following year he elopes with her to Paris, where they marry and have four sons, the youngest of whom, Patrick O’Connor, becomes an artist and gallery curator. Jessie continues for many years as his primary model, sitting for the heads of both female and male figures, O’Connor coarsening the features for the latter.

During his years in Paris (1903–14), O’Connor is influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin, whom he befriends. Among his pupils in Paris is the American sculptor and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney. He continues to fulfil numerous commissions for funerary and public monuments in the United States, an example of the former being the Recuillement in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, near Tarrytown, New York. From 1906 he exhibits annually at the Salon in Paris, where he is the first foreigner to win a second-class medal, for his bronze statue of Gen. Henry Lawton. Included in his only exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy (1907) is a bronze relief of the prophet Nehemiah adapted from a panel of the Vanderbilt doors. The relief is subsequently included in his one-man show at the Galerie Hébrard, Paris in 1909.

In 1909, O’Connor wins a competition open to sculptors of Irish descent to execute a monument to Commodore John Barry, the County Wexford-born “father of the American navy,” for Washington, D.C. His design includes a frieze depicting events in Irish history, flanked by a group of three nude Irish emigrants entitled Exile from Ireland, and another group representing the Genius of Ireland, which includes a female figure of the “Motherland.” Probably owing to opposition from the Barry family to the depiction of their ancestor as a rough-and-ready sailor, the commission is not completed. His marble statue of Gen. Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ), a plaster of which is exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1909, is placed by the state of Indiana in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. Another marble, Peace by Justice, is commissioned as a gift from the United States to the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1913.

O’Connor returns with his family to the United States on the outbreak of World War I, and sets up a studio in Paxton, Massachusetts. In 1918, his standing statue of the youthful Abraham Lincoln is placed outside the Illinois State Capitol at Springfield, Illinois. He later presents a marble head of Lincoln to the American ambassador’s residence, Phoenix Park, Dublin. His memorial in Chicago to President Theodore Roosevelt (1919) is commissioned as a tribute to Roosevelt’s associations with the Boy Scouts of America. The design of four standing scouts, modelled on O’Connor’s sons, is exhibited at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1920. He becomes an associate of the National Academy of Design, New York in 1919. In the early 1920s he executes an equestrian statue of the Marquis de Lafayette for South Park, at Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Maryland.

Returning to Paris in the mid-1920s, O’Connor becomes the first foreigner to win a gold medal at the Salon des Artistes in 1928, for the marble sculpture Tristan and Iseult, now held in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. The French government makes him a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1929. In 1926 he had exhibited a plaster group, Monument aux morts de la Grande Guerre, at the Salon in Paris. The sculpture is requested in 1932 by the people of Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, as a memorial to Christ the King, O’Connor obligingly altering the interpretation of his iconography. Imposed on a “Tree of life” are three figures of Christ, representing in turn “Desolation,” “Consolation” and “Triumph.” Cast in bronze, throughout World War II the statue remains hidden in Paris to avoid its being melted down for the valuable metal. Transported to Dún Laoghaire in 1949, due to clerical opposition to its unconventional iconography, it is not at first erected, but for years lay on its side in a garden in Rochestown Avenue until its eventual unveiling in 1978 as Triple Cross in Haigh Terrace, where it stands in Moran Park. His other chief work in Ireland is a bronze statue of Daniel O’Connell in the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. Inspired by Rodin’s famous Monument to Balzac, the work is executed at his studio in a converted stable at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare in 1931–32.

During the 1930s, O’Connor lives and works in London and Ireland, where he has residences at Glencullen House, County Wicklow, and 77 Merrion Square, Dublin. He dies at the latter address on June 9, 1941, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. His own bronze relief, Le feu sacré, marks the grave. A portrait painting, executed by his son Patrick in 1940, is in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which also holds twenty-six sculptures presented by O’Connor late in his life, and posthumously by his family. The collection includes a marble self-portrait bust of 1940, a bronze of the Lafayette cast by the gallery in 1984 from a reduced plaster model presented by the artist, and a bronze group entitled The Victim, on view in Merrion Square Park, from an uncommissioned and uncompleted war memorial conceived by O’Connor under the general title Le Débarquement. The National Gallery of Ireland has the Desolation maquette for the Triple Cross. A centenary exhibition of his work is held at Trinity College Dublin in 1974. His widow dies in Dublin in 1974.

(From: “O’Connor, Andrew” by Lawrence William White and Carmel Doyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Julia O’Faolain, Novelist & Short Story Writer

Julia O’Faolain, Irish novelist and short story writer, is born in London on June 6, 1932. She works as a writer, language teacher, editor and translator and lives in France, Italy, and the United States.

Although born in England when her father, Irish writer Seán Ó Faoláin, is lecturing at the Catholic college, St. Mary’s College, at Strawberry Hill, London, O’Faolain grows up in Ireland. The family returns to Ireland when she is just one year old. They live first in Killough House in County Wicklow, where future Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald is a playmate, artist Paul Henry a neighbour and Cork writer Frank O’Connor a regular visitor. The family then moves to Knockaderry House in Killiney, County Dublin, where her father publishes the literary journal The Bell from an outhouse at the bottom of the garden. Writers, poets and intellectuals such as Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan and Conor Cruise O’Brien are regular visitors and often have to entertain her while waiting to speak with her father.

O’Faolain does not begin school until she is eight years old as her mother, Irish writer and teacher Eileen Gould, has little time for nuns. Following her schooling, she completes an arts degree at University College Dublin (UCD) and then further studies at the Sapienza University of Rome and the Sorbonne in Paris. A formidable student and strikingly beautiful, she makes a strong impression on those who meet her.

In search of love, literature and freedom from 1950s Ireland, the young O’Faolain remains abroad working variously as a translator, language teacher, editor and writer in London. She makes lifelong friends who speak highly of her generosity, loyalty and kindness. As well as maintaining a strong interest in politics throughout her life, she attains a black belt in karate and attends karate classes until her early 70s.

In her 2013 memoir, O’Faolain recounts a number of her adult loves before she meets and marries Lauro Martines in Florence in 1957. The couple lives in Florence for a year while Martines completes a travelling fellowship from Harvard University. They then move to Portland, Oregon, where their son Lucien is born in 1959. While in the United States, she teaches French at Reed College in Portland. The family returns to live in Florence from 1962-66 while her husband carries out research. When he is offered a professorship at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1966, they move back to the United States. However, not keen to live full-time in the United States, they purchase a house in Hampstead in 1970 and later in central London where she spends a good deal of time. From the 1990s onwards, she and Lauro spend more and more time in London, and they visit Ireland more during these years. Lucian, a painter and picture repairer, lives in London.

O’Faolain’s novels include No Country for Young Men, which is nominated for the Booker Prize in 1980, Women in the Wall (1975), The Obedient Wife (1982) and The Judas Cloth (1992) which is set in 19th-century Italy. Her first collection of short stories, We Might See Sights and Other Stories, is published in 1968, followed by Man in the Cellar (1974), Melancholy Baby (1978) and Daughters of Passion (1982). And with her husband, she edits Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians (1973).

O’Faolain’s writings are suffused with themes of clerical intrigue, women’s role in society, power, faith and sexuality. She says once that she is more detached from her characters than her father was. “He was fond of his characters whereas I was more impatient of mine… The fact that he often forgave their foolishness showed that he was fond of Ireland itself, where he lived for the most of his life. I instead left it and found I was happier elsewhere.”

As a writer, O’Faolain is not particularly well-known in Ireland. Following the publication of her memoir in 2013, she is asked by The Irish Times journalist Arminta Wallace if it bothers her that her name does not often figure in lists of famous Irish writers, perhaps because she did not live here. She replies, “Not only do I not live here but when my last book came out someone wrote an article naming me as a ‘forgotten writer’… which was not a cheerful read. It wasn’t in any way offensive, but it wasn’t very comforting…I suppose I didn’t write enough. You mustn’t let too many years go by between books – and I did that.”

O’Faolain dies at the age of 88 in London on October 27, 2020, following a long illness. Her papers, which include manuscripts of her writing and a significant correspondence between her and her father, are donated to UCD in 2018. At the time, archivists expect them to be available to researchers by 2022.


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Birth of Pat Falvey, Mountaineer, Expedition Leader & Polar Explorer

Pat Falvey, Irish high-altitude mountaineer, expedition leader, polar explorer, entrepreneur, author, corporate/personal trainer/coach, and motivational speaker, is born in Cork, County Cork, on June 2, 1957. He is the first person to complete the Seven Summits twice, with the summiting of Mount Everest reached from both the Tibetan (1996) and Nepalese sides (2004). He is expedition leader of the team that sees Clare O’Leary become the first Irish woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2004. Other extreme expeditions that he makes include walking to the South Pole, crossing South Georgia island, and traversing the Greenland ice sheet. He starts his first business at 15 years of age and has since had businesses in property development, finance, construction, insurance, tourism, and film production. He has been a motivational speaker since the 1990s.

Raised on the north side of Cork city, Falvey starts mountain climbing in his late twenties, having worked as a builder and property developer from his late teens onward. Following the economic recession of the mid-1980s in Ireland, he loses most of his wealth and discovers mountaineering in his late 20s.

Falvey begins his climbing career with hill walking and climbing on the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks in County Kerry. He then devotes himself to training to become a high-altitude mountaineer. He trains initially with the Cork Mountaineering Club, at Tiglin in County Wicklow and becomes a member of Kerry Mountain Rescue, climbing very frequently in Ireland, Scotland, France and the Himalayas.

In June 1994, Falvey climbs Denali, also known as Mount McKinley, in Alaska, reaching the first summit in his Seven Summits attempt. This is followed by Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (January 1995), Mount Everest via the Northeast Ridge (June 1995), Aconcagua in Argentina (December 1995), Mount Elbrus in Russia (March 1996), Vinson Massif in Antarctica (January 1997) and Mount Kosciusko in Australia (February 1997). He is the first Irish man (and the 32nd person in the world) to complete the Seven Summits.

Falvey is the expedition leader of the first Irish team to reach the summit of Cho Oyu in China and Nepal without oxygen, on May 20, 1998. He reaches the summit of Ama Dablam in Nepal on November 3, 1999. In 2003, he is the expedition leader of the first Irish team to reach the summit of Mount Everest via the South-Southeast Ridge, with team members Ger McDonnell and Mick Murphy reaching the summit. On May 18, 2004, he reaches the summit of Everest via the South-Southeast Ridge, and leads the expedition that sees the first Irish woman, Dr. Clare O’Leary, reach the top of Everest.

Falvey and O’Leary complete the Seven Summits on December 16, 2005, when he becomes the first person to complete the Seven Summits twice by climbing Mount Everest from both the Tibetan and Nepalese sides.

In 2006, Falvey leads a group of 32 across the South Georgia Traverse on South Georgia island in honour of Polar explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Kerryman Tom Crean, in the Beyond Endurance Antarctic expedition. He leads the first Irish traverse of Greenland in 2006. In January 2008, he leads a four-person Irish expedition to the South Pole. In April 2009, he and O’Leary do a “symbolic” walk to the North Pole, completing the final four-day trek to the Pole.

Falvey joins the Kerry county football team as a “sports performance coach” in 2021. Manager Peter Keane says, “You take us in this country with five million people and we have had some unbelievable adventurers like Shackleton and Crean; you look at someone like Pat who has climbed Everest twice from two different sides, managed to climb the Seven Summits twice, and I am looking to see if he can bring something different in here.”

Falvey’s publications include Reach for the Sky (The Collins Press, 1997), A Journey to Adventure: Stories I never thought I’d tell (The Collins Press, 2007), The Summit: How Triumph Turned to Tragedy on K2’s Deadliest Days (Beyond Endurance Publishing with The O’Brien Press, 2013), You Have the Power: Explore the Mindset You Need to Realise Your Dreams (Beyond Endurance Publishing, 2016) and Accidental Rebel (Beyond Endurance Publishing, 2018).


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Birth of Ernie O’Malley, Republican Revolutionary & Writer

Ernest Bernard (Ernie) O’Malley, Irish republican revolutionary and writer, is born on May 26, 1897, in Ellison Street, Castlebar, County Mayo, the second child among nine sons and two daughters of Luke Malley, solicitor’s clerk, of County Mayo, and Marion Malley (née Kearney) of County Roscommon. Christened Ernest Bernard Malley, his adoption of variations on this name reflects his enthusiasm for a distinctively Irish identity – an enthusiasm that lay at the heart of his republican career and outlook.

In 1906, O’Malley’s family moves to Dublin, where he attends the Christian Brothers‘ School, North Richmond Street. In 1915, he begins to study medicine at University College Dublin (UCD). Having initially intended to follow his older brother into the British Army, he rather joins the Irish Volunteers in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising, as a member of F Company, 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade. He becomes a leading figure in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence which the Easter Rising helps to occasion. In 1918, having twice failed his second-year university examination, he leaves home to commit himself to the republican cause. He is initially a Volunteer organiser with the rank of second lieutenant, under the instruction of Richard Mulcahy, operating in Counties Tyrone, Offaly, Roscommon, and Donegal. His work in 1918 involves the reorganisation, or new establishment, of Volunteer groups in the localities.

In August 1918, O’Malley is sent to London by Michael Collins to buy arms. During 1919 he works as an IRA staff captain attached to General Headquarters (GHQ) in Dublin, and also trains and organises Volunteers in Counties Clare, Tipperary, and Dublin. He has a notable military record with the IRA during the Irish War of Independence and is a leading figure in attacks on Hollyford barracks in County Tipperary (May 1920), Drangan barracks in County Kilkenny (June 1920), and Rearcross barracks in County Tipperary (July 1920). His IRA days thus involve him with comrades such as Dan Breen, Séumas Robinson, and Seán Treacy. In December 1920, he is captured in County Kilkenny by Crown forces. He escapes from Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol in February 1921, to take command of the IRA’s 2nd Southern Division, holding the rank of commandant-general.

O’Malley’s republican commitment has political roots in his conviction that Ireland should properly be fully independent of Britain, and that violence is a necessary means to achieve this end. But the causes underlying his revolutionism are layered. Family expectations of respectable, professional employment combined with a religious background and an enthusiasm for soldiering provide some of the foundations for his IRA career. As an IRA officer he enjoys professional, military expression for a visceral Catholic Irish nationalism. He also finds excitement, liberation from the frequent dullness of his life at home, defiant rebellion against his non-republican parents, an alternative to his stalled undergraduate career, and, in political and cultural Irish separatism, a decisive resolution of the profound tension between his anglocentrism and his anglophobia.

O’Malley rejects the 1921 Anglo–Irish Treaty as an unacceptable compromise. He spends the 1921 truce period training IRA officers in his divisional area, in preparation for a possible renewal of fighting. He is, in the event, to be a leading anti-treatyite in the 1922–23 Irish Civil War. In the Four Courts in 1922, at the start of the latter conflict, he is captured on the republicans’ capitulation on June 30 but then manages to escape from captivity. Subsequently he is appointed assistant Chief of Staff of the anti-Treaty IRA and also becomes part of a five-man anti-Treaty army council, along with Liam Lynch, Liam Deasy, Frank Aiken and Thomas Derrig.

O’Malley is dramatically captured and badly wounded by Free State forces in Dublin in November 1922. Imprisoned until July 1924, he is during the period of his incarceration elected as a TD for Dublin North in the 1923 Irish general election and is also a forty-one-day participant in the republican hunger strike later that year. Following release from prison, he returns home to live with his parents in Dublin. He decides not to focus his post-revolutionary energy on a political career. During 1926–28 and 1935–37 he unsuccessfully tries to complete his medical degree at UCD, but increasingly his post-1924 efforts are directed toward life as a Bohemian traveler and writer. He spends much of 1924–26 on a recuperative journey through France, Spain, and Italy; and 1928–35 traveling widely in North America. During 1929–32 he spends time in New Mexico and Mexico City. In Taos, New Mexico, he mixes with, and is influenced by, writers and artists as he works on what are to become classic autobiographies of the Irish revolution: On Another Man’s Wound (1936) and The Singing Flame (1978).

O’Malley meets Helen Hooker, daughter of Elon and Blanche Hooker, in Connecticut in 1933. They marry in London in 1935, each rejecting something of their prior lives in the process: he, his Irish republicanism, through marriage to somebody entirely unconnected with that world; she, her wealthy and respectable upbringing, through liaison with a Catholic, Irish, unemployed, bohemian ex-revolutionary. They settle first in Dublin then, from 1938 onward, primarily in County Mayo. Burrishoole Lodge, near Newport, is his main base until 1954, when he moves to Dublin. Three children are born to the O’Malleys: Cahal (1936), Etáin (1940), and Cormac (1942). Sharing enthusiasm for the arts, he and Helen enjoy several years of intimacy. However, by the mid-1940s their relationship has frayed. In 1950, Helen kidnaps (the word is used by both parents and by all three children) the couple’s elder two children and takes them to the United States. From there she divorces O’Malley in 1952. Cormac remains with his father.

O’Malley’s post-American years are devoted to a number of projects. He writes extensively, including work for The Bell and Horizon. He is involved with the film director John Ford in the making of his Irish films, including The Quiet Man (1952). He gives radio broadcasts on Mexican painting for BBC Third Programme (1947), and on his IRA adventures for Radio Éireann (1953). In the latter year he suffers a heart attack, and his remaining years are scarred by ill health. He dies of heart failure on March 25, 1957, in Howth, County Dublin, at the house of his sister Kathleen. Two days later he is given a state funeral with full military honours. He is buried in the Malley family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

O’Malley exemplifies some important themes in modern Irish political and intellectual history. His powerful memoirs form part of a tradition of writing absorbedly about Ireland, while under idiosyncratic emigrant influences which lend the writing much of its distinctiveness. His aggressive republicanism exemplifies a persistent but ultimately unrealisable tradition of uncompromising IRA politics. His unflinching single-mindedness is the condition for much courageous and striking activity, but also lay behind his infliction and his suffering of much pain. Literary, intellectual, and defiantly dissident, he is the classic bohemian revolutionary. His historical significance lies in his having been both a leading Irish revolutionary and the author of compelling autobiographical accounts of those years. His memoirs are distinguished from their rivals on the shelf by subtlety, self-consciousness, and literary ambition. In particular, his preparedness to identify motives for Irish revolutionary action, beyond the terms of ostensible republican purpose, renders his writing of great value to historians. Similarly, the large body of archival material left in his name (especially, perhaps, the papers held in UCD archives, and those in the private possession of his children) leaves scholars in his debt. The most striking and evocative visual images of O’Malley are, arguably, the set of photographic portraits taken in 1929 by Edward Weston and held at the University of Arizona‘s Center for Creative Photography (CCP). These capture with precision his reflective concentration, his piercing earnestness, and his troubled intensity.

(From: “O’Malley, Ernest Bernard (‘Ernie’)” by Richard English, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Photograph of Ernie O’Malley taken by Helen Hooker, New York City, 1934)


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Henry II Returns to England After Granting Charter to Dublin

Henry II returns to England on April 17, 1172, having granted a charter to Dublin, the first granted to an Irish town.

Toward the end of 1171, Henry II, the first king of England to set foot on Irish soil, lands at Crook, County Waterford. His visit to Ireland serves two purposes. Firstly, it allows him to bring his adventurous English barons to heel and put the royal seal on their conquests in Ireland. Secondly, it means he can avoid meeting the cardinal legates who have been dispatched from Rome to investigate his complicity in the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in 1170.

When the King of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, finds himself exiled in the late 1160s, he quickly finds help across the Irish Sea. He finds Henry II on the banks of the Loire in 1166 and is then pointed in the direction of south Wales by a Bristol merchant to find Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, more commonly known as Strongbow, who is then out of royal favour due to his prior support of Henry II’s competition for the kingship, Stephen of Blois.

Bolstered by English forces, Diarmait returns to Ireland and retakes his kingdom with Strongbow’s help, the latter earning the hand in marriage of Diarmait’s daughter, Aoife, in return. None of this has greatly concerned Henry II, until Diarmait dies, and Strongbow seizes the Kingdom of Leinster for himself in 1171. Leinster encompasses not only the counties of Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Kildare, and parts of Wicklow, Laois, and Offaly, but the kings of Leinster are often the overlords of the flourishing Hiberno-Norse ports of Wexford and Dublin, both of which have considerable trading links with England and wider Europe.

Concerned with the growing power of Strongbow in Ireland, Henry II decides to head across the Irish Sea. He originally intends to arrive in Ireland in September 1171, but unfavourable winds on the coast of southwest Wales delay his journey for 17 days. He finally embarks from Pembroke on October 16 and arrives on the County Waterford coast the following day.

Naturally, Henry does not come alone and is at the head of an estimated 4,000 strong army comprised of 500 knights and their esquires and a large body of archers, all of which are carried, along with horses, in 400 ships. The undertaking is vast, and a large quantity of supplies are gathered to provision this considerable force. These ingredients include salted meats and fish, 1,000 lbs. of wax to ensure that Henry can seal charters and mandates, and, of course, the oil on which the medieval war machine runs, wine.

With the arrival of Henry II in Ireland, Strongbow surrenders the kingdom of Leinster and the Hiberno-Norse towns of Dublin, Wexford, and Waterford. Henry II regrants Leinster to Strongbow as a lordship, and later grants him Wexford. However, Waterford and Dublin become, and remain, royal ports.

Henry II then tours Ireland, showing the clergymen and native kings who their new lord is. He first visits Lismore and Cashel, then back to Waterford for a brief rest, before journeying by way of Kilkenny to Dublin, where he arrives around November 11. At all of his stop he collects the submissions of the Irish kings, with the probable exception of Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor), who is the claimant to the high kingship of Ireland at the time.

Outside the city walls of Dublin, Henry II constructs a palace at the present-day southern side of Dame Street, where he celebrates the winter festivities until February 2. At this time, he also grants Dublin its first charter, on a piece of parchment measuring only 121 x 165 mm, which, extraordinarily, survives to this day. Henry’s charter to Dublin grants the right to live in the city to the men of Bristol, with whom the men of Dublin have enjoyed pre-existing economic relations.

About March 1, 1172, Henry II makes his way to Wexford, before finally departing for England on Easter Sunday, April 17, after celebrating Mass. It is probable that he had intended to stay in Ireland longer than he did, but events in England and Normandy divert his attention. In Normandy, Henry II’s son, Henry, has gone into rebellion against his father, while in England, the cardinal legates are threatening to interdict Henry’s lands unless he comes to meet with them regarding Becket’s murder.

The circumstances which lead to Henry II’s departure are more telling for Ireland’s future than any member of contemporary society could have realised. Now, Ireland has to compete with the other segments of a vast transnational realm, with lands stretching across England, Wales and France. Although Henry II is the first king of England to arrive in Ireland, his visit does not mean that royal visits would become a routine occurrence. Throughout the Middle Ages, the kings of England only directly visit Ireland in 1185, 1210, 1394–5, and 1399. As such, Henry’s visit and departure marks the beginning of absentee lordship over Ireland.

(From: “The royal visit: what did Henry II do in Ireland 850 years ago?” by John Marshall, PhD student in the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin, RTÉ, http://www.rte.ie | Pictured: Henry at Waterford, Ireland, October 18, 1172. Illustration by James E. Doyle (1864). Image: Historical Picture Archive/ Corbis via Getty Images)


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Birth of William Brownlow, MP and Landowner

William Brownlow, MP and landowner, is born on April 10, 1726, the son of William Brownlow (1683–1739), landowner and MP for County Armagh (1711–27), and Lady Elizabeth Brownlow of County Armagh, and grandson of Arthur Brownlow. His mother is a daughter of James Hamilton, 6th Earl of Abercorn. He inherits the family estates around Lurgan in 1739 and spends some of his youth in France and Italy with his mother.

Brownlow’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been MPs, and in 1753 he wins a hotly contested by-election in which his opponents accuse him of papist and Jacobite sympathies. The unsuccessful candidate is Francis Caulfeild, brother of James, 1st Earl of Charlemont, his petition to parliament causing a furor and is defeated by only one vote in one of the most celebrated electoral struggles of the day. Brownlow represents the county for over forty years, from 1753 until his death. In 1753, he supports the government on the controversial money bill.

Brownlow marries Judith, daughter of the Rev. Charles Meredyth, Dean of Ardfert, of County Meath, on May 25, 1754. They have two sons. After her death in Lyon, France, in October 1763, he marries Catherine, daughter of Roger Hall of Newry, County Down, on November 25, 1765. They have two sons and five daughters, three who marry into the nobility. In 1758, he is one of the Wide Streets commissioners in Dublin and owns an imposing house in Merrion Square. He is a trustee of the linen board in Ulster, and makes many improvements to his estate, castle, and demesne, the local church, and the town of Lurgan. However, it is alleged that private roads in his demesne were built with public money. He is one of a few landowners in County Armagh who are believed to have misappropriated the unusually high county cess levied by the grand jury, of which he is a member. In 1758, he suggests that salaries be paid to government officials, and one official, Henry Meredyth, his first wife’s uncle, subsequently receives an annual salary of £500.

In June 1763, large numbers of Presbyterian farmers and weavers, calling themselves the Hearts of Oak, in a notable show of dissatisfaction with the privileges of landlords, march on the homes of the gentry to demand redress. Brownlow is in England and avoids a confrontation. Despite the allegations of abuse of public money, he is generally recognised as one of the more independent and reform-minded MPs of the day. He captains a Volunteer troop of dragoons which march from Lurgan to assist Belfast after the French commander François Thurot lands at Carrickfergus in 1760. As one of the supporters of Henry Grattan, he is prominent in the Volunteer movement of the 1780s. He is captain of the Lurgan Volunteer company and lieutenant-colonel of the northern battalion and backs the movement in parliament until displeased by the Volunteer national convention (November 10 – December 2, 1783), which seeks franchise reform and seems to challenge the authority of the existing parliament.

Brownlow subscribes £9,000 to help found the Bank of Ireland in 1783, and in parliament on February 7, 1785, vigorously opposes William Pitt‘s proposals on Ireland’s commercial relations with England, seeing in them the danger that Ireland would become a “tributary nation.” He is appointed a privy councilor in 1765. He organises horse races in his locality and is a talented harpsichord player. After his death on October 28, 1794, the Belfast News Letter prints an unusually long and glowing tribute, expressing admiration for his “incorruptible integrity” and patriotism, as well as two poetic elegies. He is succeeded by his son William Brownlow.

(From: “Brownlow, William” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Portrait of the Right Honorable William Brownlow, oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart, circa 1790)


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Bush-Blair Summit in Belfast to Discuss Postwar Iraq

United States President George W. Bush leaves Belfast on April 8, 2003, following the end of a two-day summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss postwar Iraq.

The two leaders meet at Hillsborough Castle and begin their sessions on April 7 with a half-hour walk through the gardens before dinner. The following day they hold a press conference and further talks, including a session on the Northern Ireland peace effort.

Bush and Blair, Bush’s closest ally in confronting Saddam Hussein, come together to discuss questions made increasingly urgent by the rapid military progress American and British forces have made and to plan for a postwar Iraq. They seek to bridge their differences over how much of a role to give the United Nations in rebuilding the country and putting together a new government.

Blair has been under pressure at home and from much of Europe to support giving the United Nations a strong role in stabilizing Iraq. The White House, however, has consistently signaled that it wants the United States and Britain to play the lead role in creating a new Iraqi government.

United States Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tells reporters traveling with the president that the United States is sending officials to the region to begin assembling a group of Iraqis who will constitute an interim governing authority and will be put in place alongside the American-led military and civilian authorities. In a sign of the speed with which the maneuvering for power in post-Hussein Iraq is unfolding, Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the main Iraqi exile opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is reported to be heading to Baghdad from southern Iraq.

“The hostilities phase is coming to a conclusion,” Powell says. “It’s time for all of us to think about the post-hostilities phase, how we create a representative government consisting of all elements of Iraqi society.”

Powell and British officials play down the magnitude of the differences between the United States and Britain over the United Nations role. The United Nations, Powell says, will have “an endorsing role to play to the interim authority to give it legitimacy,” a formulation that appears to reserve for the United States and Britain the right to select the leaders of the temporary postwar administration. A spokesman for Blair uses similar language, referring to the United Nations’ being involved “in a way that endorses that new Iraqi authority” as a step toward establishing a full-fledged Iraqi government.

Initially, primary responsibility for administering Iraq would rest with a team led by a retired United States Army lieutenant general, Jay Garner, and the interim Iraqi authority would be likely to begin assuming power after that, perhaps 90 days later, the British spokesman says.

Clearly wary of getting into another diplomatic squabble with other members of the United Nations Security Council, Powell and other administration officials have emphasized in recent days that the United States and Britain, having waged the war and paid for it with blood and money, will not be drawn into a negotiation with countries like France and Germany over the immediate postwar period.

Powell emphasizes, however, that part of his focus will now be on “healing” diplomatic wounds and granting the United Nations an important role once Iraq is stabilized.

Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, arrives from Moscow on the evening of April 7, where she had met with President of Russia Vladimir V. Putin, who has broken with Bush over the war but whose country has longstanding economic interests in Iraq, including oil.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says he will travel to Britain, France, Germany and Russia in the coming week to test whether the Security Council might be able to agree on a postwar plan. He announces that he has been working on post-conflict issues with a special adviser, Rafeeuddin Ahmed. He says he expects the United Nations to play an important role, whether as a political facilitator or dealing with issues like reconstruction or human rights. “Above all, the U.N. involvement does bring legitimacy, which is necessary, necessary for the country, for the region and for the peoples around the world,” Annan says.

Bush’s trip to see Blair here is the third British-American summit meeting in as many weeks. It coincides with news that American forces are attacking the presidential palaces and other symbols of the Iraqi government in the heart of Baghdad and that British soldiers have taken control of Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra.

The presence of the two leaders draws crowds of antiwar protesters and set off a local debate about whether this city, which has been trying to put behind it a history of sectarian violence, is an appropriate location for a war council.

The city authorities in Belfast have to divert traffic and clear public buildings in various locations following a series of bomb scares. The scenes are reminiscent of the conflicted time before the Northern Ireland peace agreement in 1998 put an end to organized sectarian violence that cost the lives of more than 3,600 people over three decades.

In the conversations about Iraq, Blair plays his customary role of trying to bridge trans-Atlantic differences. He hopes to placate criticism at home and ease relations with his European neighbors by pushing for a United Nations resolution authorizing an interim governing authority.

He had earlier envisaged a more prominent role for the United Nations, but he emerged from his last meeting with Bush, at Camp David on March 27, emphasizing the need for the United Nations to endorse the transition plans rather than play a central part in the plans, as he had advocated at the first summit meeting, in the Azores on March 16.

Europeans express alarm at what they see as the marginalization of the United Nations. At the same time, European critics of the war, like France, Germany and Russia, may object to Blair’s compromise proposal on grounds that it legitimizes a war they oppose. Even in Britain, the one European country where the war has majority support, there is great resistance to American domination of the postwar running of Iraq. An opinion poll in The Daily Telegraph shows that while Britons’ enthusiasm for the war has grown to a high of 60 percent and their approval of Blair’s conduct has also risen, there is only 2 percent approval of an American-controlled administration of Iraq.

Powell says the United States is only trying to lay out a plan under which military control of Iraq can give way to a mix of civilian and military control, including substantial involvement by Iraqis, and then to a full-fledged government. He says United Nations involvement might be necessary to convince banks and financial markets that they can safely and legally lend money to Iraq. Asked about peacekeeping duties, he says NATO is open to the possibility of helping to provide postwar security or assisting in the search for weapons of mass destruction.

Planning for the peace has exposed differences not only between the United States and Britain, but also within the Bush administration and between the administration and Congress.

Blair chose to hold his meeting with Bush in Northern Ireland in part so that the president can lend his support to the long-running efforts by Britain and Ireland to find a peaceful solution to the strife between Catholics and Protestants in the province. The White House, however, seems not to be paying much attention to Northern Ireland diplomacy. The schedules and credentials it distributes to reporters list the site as “Belfast, Ireland.”

(From: “Bush Meets With Blair to Discuss Postwar Iraq” by Richard W. Stevenson and Warren Hoge, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com, April 8, 2003)


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Death of Matilda Tone, Wife of Theobald Wolfe Tone

Matilda Tone, wife of Theobald Wolfe Tone, dies in Georgetown, District of Columbia, on March 18, 1849. She is instrumental in the preservation and publication of Wolfe Tone’s papers.

Tone is born Martha Witherington in Dublin on June 17, 1769. She is the eldest daughter of merchant William Witherington and his wife Catherine (née Fanning). Her father is listed as a woolen draper on Grafton Street, Dublin, from 1768 to 1784, as a wine merchant from 1784 to 1788, and finally as a merchant from 1788 to 1793. It is claimed that he is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and sits on the merchants’ guild on Dublin’s common council from 1777 to 1783. Her mother is a housekeeper to her father after he is widowed.

Tone receives a good education and maintains an interest in drama and literature throughout her life. Katherine Wilmot visits her in Paris in 1802 and comments on the books she has by French, Italian and English authors. When she is fifteen years old, she gets to know Wolfe Tone through her older brother. He is still a student in Trinity College Dublin, and it is he that renames her Matilda. They marry when she is just sixteen, on July 21, 1785, in St. Ann’s Church, Dublin, honeymooning in Maynooth. Upon their return they live with the Witheringtons, though they are not on good terms, and then with Wolfe Tone’s parents in Bodenstown, County Kildare.

The Tone’s first child, Maria, is born before October 1786. She is followed by a son, Richard, who is named for their neighbour Richard Griffith, who dies in infancy. Tone stays with her husband’s family while he is studying for the bar in London from 1787 to 1788. When he returns, the couple has two more sons: William Theobald Wolfe Tone, born on April 29, 1791, and Francis Rawdon Tone, born on June 23, 1793. Francis is known as Frank and is named after Francis Rawdon-Hastings. William is born in Dublin and Frank is probably born in Bodenstown. By this time, the family has a cottage in Bodenstown which Wolfe Tone had inherited from his uncle Jonathan Tone, which the family jokingly refers to as Château Boue. They live there until May 1795, when they leave for Princeton, New Jersey, due to political reasons.

Tone and her children come back to Europe to join Wolfe Tone in France eighteen months later. The family settles in Paris, at first living with Colonel Henry Shee at Nanterre, later moving to the suburb, Chaillot. She educates her children at home. Very few of her letters survive, but many of her husband’s letters and diaries are addressed or intended for her. From these and her letter to her friend Eliza Fletcher, it is clear she shares her husband’s interest in politics. Following her husband’s death in November 1798, she moves to a small apartment at 51 Rue Saint-Jacques in the Latin Quarter of Paris. This is to be close to her son William, who is attending Lycée Louis-le-Grand. She is awarded a pension of 1,200 francs for herself and 400 for each of her children after the expiration of the Treaty of Amiens on May 1, 1803.

Tone’s daughter Maria dies in April 1803, and then her son Frank dies in 1807, both of tuberculosis. William is displaying symptoms of the disease as well, which prompts her to move to the United States in 1807. From there, they attempt to sort out her husband’s affairs, which had been entrusted to James Reynolds. They retrieve only a few of Wolfe Tone’s pre-1795 diaries, and all of the post-1795 letters and diaries, which they add to the autobiography she already has in her possession. When William enters the Cavalry School at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in November 1810 as a cadet, she moves to be close to him, living at the Hôtel de la Surintendance. By approaching Napoleon in 1811, who knew Wolfe Tone, she ensures that her son receives French citizenship and the privileged status of “élève du gouvernement.” In January 1813, when William begins his service, she returns to Paris to live on the Rue de Lille and later moves to the Latin Quarter.

Following the defeat of Napoleon in June 1815, William is refused entry to Ireland or to visit Britain. This leads to both mother and son returning to the United States. Before she leaves Paris, she marries her old friend Thomas Wilson on August 19, 1816. Wilson is a Scottish businessman and advocate who has taken care of her financial affairs after the death of her husband. The couple visit Scotland, and then move to New York City in 1817, and finally to Georgetown, District of Columbia, around 1820. She lives there until her death and calls herself Matilda Tone-Wilson.

Starting in 1824, The New Monthly Magazine begins the unauthorised publication of extracts from Wolfe Tone’s autobiography. In response, Tone decides to publish all of Wolfe Tone’s papers and writing, including the autobiography, pamphlets and diaries, edited by their son William. What results is two large volumes entitled the Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, published in May 1826. She adds a memoir of her own life in Paris following his death in 1798. The book is a best-seller, and ensures the legacy of Wolfe Tone, as well as being an important contemporary document of both Irish and French revolutionary politics.

William Tone dies in 1828, after which Tone lives more privately. She dies in Georgetown on March 18, 1849. Thomas Wilson predeceases her in 1824. Just two weeks prior to her death she is interviewed by a Young Irelander, Charles Hart. She is initially buried near William Tone at Marbury burying-ground, Georgetown. After that cemetery is sold, she is reinterred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, on October 31, 1891, by her great-grandchildren. A new monument is dedicated to her, which is later restored in 1996.


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Charles Gavan Duffy Buried at Glasnevin Cemetery

Charles Gavan Duffy, Young Ireland leader, Irish nationalist, journalist, poet, and Australian politician, is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, Dublin, on March 8, 1903. He is the 8th Premier of Victoria and one of the most colourful figures in Victorian political history.

Duffy is born on April 12, 1816, in Dublin Street, Monaghan, County Monaghan. Both of his parents die while he is still a child and his uncle, Fr. James Duffy, who is the Catholic parish priest of Castleblayney, becomes his guardian for a number of years. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College in Belfast and is admitted to the Irish Bar in 1845. He becomes a leading figure in Irish literary circles.

Duffy, along with Thomas Osborne Davis and John Blake Dillon, founds The Nation and becomes its first editor. Davis and Dillon later become Young Irelanders. All three are members of Daniel O’Connell‘s Repeal Association. This paper, under Duffy, transforms from a literary voice into a “rebellious organisation.”

In August 1850, Duffy forms the Tenant Right League to bring about reforms in the Irish land system and protect tenants’ rights, and in 1852 is elected to the House of Commons for New Ross. By 1855, the cause of Irish tenants seems more hopeless than ever. Broken in health and spirit, Duffy publishes a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he has resolved to retire from parliament, as it is no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he has solicited their votes.

In 1856, Duffy emigrates with his family to Australia, settling in the newly formed Colony of Victoria. A public appeal is held to enable him to buy the freehold property necessary to stand for the colonial Parliament. He is immediately elected to the Legislative Assembly for Villiers and Heytesbury in the Western District in 1856. He later represented Dalhousie and then North Gippsland. With the collapse of the Victorian Government‘s Haines Ministry during 1857, another Irish Catholic, John O’Shanassy, unexpectedly becomes Premier with Duffy his second-in-charge.

In 1871, Duffy leads the opposition to Premier Sir James McCulloch‘s plan to introduce a land tax, on the grounds that it unfairly penalised small farmers. When McCulloch’s government is defeated on this issue, he becomes Premier and Chief Secretary.  The majority of the colony is Protestant, and he is accused of favouring Catholics in government appointments. In June 1872, his government is defeated in the Assembly on a confidence motion allegedly motivated by sectarianism.

When Graham Berry becomes Premier in 1877, he makes Duffy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, a post he holds without much enthusiasm until 1880, when he quits politics and retires to the south of France. Duffy remains interested in both the politics of his adoptive country and of Ireland. He is knighted in 1873 and is made KCMG in 1877.

Duffy spends his last years in Nice and dies at the age of 86 on February 9, 1903, at his home there, 12 Boulevard Victor Hugo. He is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, Dublin on March 8. 1903. The length of his career, the breadth of his experience, and his voluminous labours as a chronicler make him an important figure in the history of Ireland and the Irish diaspora in the nineteenth century. He also deserves attention as the most prominent and articulate Ulster catholic nationalist of his time. There are Duffy papers in the Royal Irish Academy and National Library of Ireland.