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Death of Sir Denis Pack, British Army General

Sir Denis Pack, British Army major general who serves in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, dies in London on July 24, 1823.

Pack is born on October 7, 1775 in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, the younger son of Rev. Thomas Pack, Dean of Ossory, and Catherine Pack (née Sullivan), of St. Andrew’s parish, Dublin. In June 1790, he enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD), aged 15, but does not take his degree. His elder brother, Thomas Pack, previously attends TCD, but dies in December 1786.

Pack enters the army in November 1791, being commissioned as a cornet in the 14th Light Dragoons, and serves with this regiment in Flanders in 1794 as part of Francis Rawdon-Hastings‘s expedition. Transferring to the 8th Light Dragoons, he is promoted to lieutenant In March 1795 and takes part in the expedition to Quiberon Bay. He is promoted to captain in February 1796 and serves with the 5th Dragoon Guards in Ireland during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Promoted to major In August 1798, he is attached to the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, and after the surrender of the French expeditionary force at Ballinamuck, County Longford, on September 8, 1798 he commands the troops that escort General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert and the other French officers to Dublin.

Promoted to lieutenant colonel in December 1800, Pack commands the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot and takes part in the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope in 1806. He then takes part in General John Whitelocke‘s expedition to South America and is captured after an unsuccessful attack on Montevideo. His fellow-prisoner is William Carr Beresford, later 1st Viscount Beresford, and the two men remain friends for the rest of their lives. Refusing to give their parole to General Santiago de Liniers, they escape from La Plata in a boat, meeting a British cruiser at sea. Pack later takes part in the successful attack on Montevideo on February 9, 1807.

Pack is posted to Portugal in 1808 and is present at the Battle of Roliça on August 17 and the Battle of Vimeiro on August 21. In 1809, he takes part in the Walcheren Campaign and, promoted to colonel in July 1810, he is made aide-de-camp to George III. Returning to Portugal in 1810, he serves under Beresford, commanding a Portuguese brigade, and takes part in the Battle of Bussaco on September 27, 1810. Promoted to brigadier general in January 1812, he takes part in the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo and is present at the Battle of Salamanca on July 22, 1812. In June 1813, he is promoted to major general and later is present at the battles of Vitoria (June 21, 1813), Nivelle (November 10, 1813), Nive (December 10-13, 1813), Orthez (February 27, 1814) and the final French defeat at Toulouse (April 10, 1814). In January 1815, he is made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in recognition of his services in the Peninsula.

During the Waterloo campaign of 1815, Pack commands one of the brigades in General Sir Thomas Picton‘s division. Present at the Battle of Quatre Bras (June 16, 1815), he plays a prominent part in the Battle of Waterloo, bringing his brigade forward at a crucial moment to stop the advance of the French 3rd Division under General Pierre-Louis Binet de Marcognet. During the course of his career he is wounded several times and is awarded numerous honours including the Peninsular Gold Cross (with seven clasps), the Military Order of the Tower and Sword (Portugal) and the Order of Saint Vladimir (Russia). In 1819, he is appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Plymouth, and is later made honorary colonel of the 84th (York and Lancaster) Regiment of Foot in 1822.

In July 1816, Pack marries Lady Elizabeth Louisa de la Poer Beresford, daughter of George Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford. They have two sons and two daughters. His descendants adopted “Pack-Beresford” as their family name. He dies on July 24, 1823, at Lord Beresford’s house in Upper Wimpole Street, London. A monument to him is later erected in St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. A portrait by G. L. Saunders is in family possession; another by Charles Turner, showing Pack wearing his numerous orders and decorations, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A collection of his papers is held by the University of Southampton.


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The Union with Ireland Act 1800 Receives Royal Assent

The Union with Ireland Act 1800, which is one of the two complimentary Acts of Union 1800, receives royal assent on July 2, 1800, uniting the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The act means Ireland loses its own independent Parliament and is now to be ruled from England. It will be 1922 before Ireland regains legislative independence.

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.


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Death of Francis Jack Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey

Francis Jack Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, Anglo-Irish soldier and Member of Parliament, dies on November 21, 1832, at Shavington Hall, Shropshire, England.

Needham is born April 15, 1748, in County Down, third and youngest son of John Needham, 10th Viscount Kilmorey, and his wife Anne, daughter of John Hurleston of Newton, Cheshire, and widow of Geoffrey Shakerley of Cheshire. He enters the British Army as a cornet in the 18th Dragoons in 1762, exchanging into the 1st Dragoons in 1763. In 1773, he is promoted to lieutenant and, exchanging into the 17th Dragoons, is made captain in 1774. He serves throughout the American Revolutionary War and is engaged in the blockade of Boston and the New Jersey and Yorktown campaigns. Exchanging into the 76th Foot as a major, he is taken prisoner at the Siege of Yorktown, and at the peace of 1783 is placed on half-pay.

Returning to England, Needham purchases a majority in the 80th Foot and then in February 1783 a lieutenant-colonelcy in the 104th Foot. In April 1783, he exchanges into the 1st Foot Guards. Promoted to full colonel in 1793, he is appointed aide-de-camp to King George III and in 1794 serves with Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira, on the expedition to the Netherlands. He also serves with General Sir John Doyle in the expedition to Quiberon Bay and the Isle Dieu (1795). In February 1795, he is appointed third major of the 1st Foot Guards and promoted to major general, taking an appointment on the home staff in April 1795.

Needham then holds a staff appointment in Ireland, and during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 commands the crown forces at the Battle of Arklow on June 9, 1798. He places his approximately 1,600 troops in strong positions at the eastern and western ends of the town, where they can sweep the Arklow Rock Road and the Coolgreany Road with fire if the rebels approach along them. Ultimately, this is what the United Irish force, estimated at 5,000–9,000 strong, does, repeatedly attacking Needham’s right flank, which is in fact his strongest position. Estimates of the United Irish dead range from 200 to 1,000, and the failure of the attack ensures that the rebels lose the military initiative. He is also present at the Battle of Vinegar Hill on June 21, 1798, but his force arrives late, leaving a gap in the British line through which many rebels escape. This is later christened “Needham’s gap,” earning him the nickname of “the late General Needham” among his fellow officers.

Promoted to lieutenant-general in 1802, Needham is made colonel of the 5th Royal Veteran Battalion in 1804, entering House of Commons as MP for Newry in 1806. He is made full general in 1812, and, following the death of his two older brothers, succeeds as 12th Viscount Kilmorey in November 1818, resigning his parliamentary seat. On January 12, 1822, he is created 1st Earl of Kilmorey (Queen’s County) and Viscount Newry and Mourne. He dies on November 21, 1832, at the family seat, Shavington Hall, Shropshire, and is buried in St. Peter’s Church, Adderley.

Needham marries Anne Fisher, daughter of Thomas Fisher of Acton, Middlesex, on February 20, 1787. They have two sons, Francis Jack Needham, who succeeds as 2nd Earl, and the Hon. Francis Henry William Needham, lieutenant-colonel in the Grenadier Guards, and seven daughters. There are Needham letters in the Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, and in the Rebellion Papers in the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin.


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Birth of Henry Lawes Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton

General Henry Lawes Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton PC, Anglo-Irish politician and soldier, who both in public and private life attracts scandal, is born on August 7, 1743. He is spurned by colleagues in the British House of Commons who believe that in the election of 1769 he played an underhand role in denying his seat to the popular choice, the reformer John Wilkes. In 1788 he is publicly accused in Dublin of raping a twelve-year-old girl. Ten years later, his command in the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 is criticised by fellow officers for its savagery, and not least against women. His last years in Parliament are marked by his opposition to Catholic Emancipation, and to parliamentary reform.

Luttrell is the scion of an Anglo-Irish landed family, descendants of Sir Geoffrey de Luterel, who established Luttrellstown Castle, County Dublin, in the early 13th century. His grandfather, Henry Luttrell, had been a pardoned Jacobite commander murdered on the street in Dublin in 1717 supposedly by his former comrades. His father, Simon Luttrell, is successively titled Baron Irnham, Viscount Carhampton and Earl Carhampton, all in the Peerage of Ireland. His mother, Maria, is the daughter of Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, and the eventual heir to a slave plantation on the West Indian Island which, on her husband’s death in 1787, passes to her son.

Educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, Luttrell is commissioned into the 48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment of Foot in 1757. Two years later he becomes lieutenant of the 34th (Cumberland) Regiment of Foot.

Father and son, both accounted “notorious womanizers,” have a bitter relationship. His father once challenges him to a duel, but he declines, observing that his father is not a gentleman.

Luttrell, described as “strong in body, if not in mind,” achieves a reputation for bravery as a soldier during the Seven Years’ War, becoming Deputy Adjutant-General of the British Forces in Portugal. In 1768 he becomes a Tory Member of Parliament representing Bossiney.

With the support of the Grafton ministry and of the Court, in 1769 Luttrell stands in Middlesex against John Wilkes, the radical and popular figure who had already been the constituency’s three-time democratic choice. He loses the poll (1,143 votes to 269) but is seated in Parliament, Wilkes having once again been barred as an adjudged felon. As a result of the affair, for some months, Luttrell dares not appear in the street and is “the most unpopular man in the House of Commons.”

The government rewards Luttrell by appointing him Adjutant General for Ireland in 1770. He continues to sit in the Commons, where he describes the Whigs in their opposition to the conduct of the American War, as “the abetters of treason and rebellion combined purposely for the ruin of their country.”

Luttrell becomes active in Irish politics and between 1783 and 1787, he sits in the Irish House of Commons for Old Leighlin. On his father’s death in 1787, he succeeds to the earldom of Carhampton and other titles. He becomes Colonel of the 6th Dragoon Guards and Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance in Ireland.

In 1788, Luttrell is publicly accused in Dublin of the rape of a 12-year-old girl. Having been paid to deliver a message, Mary Neal claims she is bundled into a brothel and there assaulted throughout the night by Luttrell. The keeper of the house, Maria Llewellyn, is charged in a case marked by accusations of witness tampering, the death in prison of Mary’s mother and newborn baby sister and by the insinuation that Mary was already working as a prostitute. The affair becomes a cause célèbre with the public intervention of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, later a founding member of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen. To clear Mary’s name he brings her to Dublin Castle to see the Lord Lieutenant, John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorland. Westmorland, unmoved, pardons Llewellyn and sets her at liberty. Luttrell is never asked to answer for raping Mary Neal. In 1790 he re-enters the British Parliament as Member for Plympton Erle.

In 1791 and 1792, Luttrell helps vote down bills to abolish the slave trade. Negroes, he proposes, only want “to murder their masters, ravish their women, and drink all their rum.” At the same time, he opposes lifting civil disabilities on Roman Catholics by abolishing the Test Act in Scotland and speaks scathingly of parliamentary reform.

In October 1793, a younger brother, Temple Simon Luttrell, is arrested in Boulogne and, until February 1795, is held in Paris where, on the strength of their sister Anne Luttrell being married to Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, he is publicly exhibited as the brother of the king of England.

In 1795, Luttrell is entrusted with the breakup and disarming of Defenders, the agrarian semi-insurgency, in Connacht. His proceedings and impressment of some 1,300 “rebels” into the British navy elicits criticism in otherwise loyal circles.

In 1796, with the leaders of the democratic party, the United Irishmen, preparing for a French-assisted insurrection, Luttrell is given overall command of the Crown forces in Ireland. He demonstrates still greater ruthlessness in attempting to “pacify” the country and suppress the eventual rising in the summer of 1798. His command has the unusual distinction of being upbraided by his successor as Commander in Chief, Sir Ralph Abercromby, for an army “in a state of licentiousness, which must render it formidable to everyone but the enemy.”

Luttrell is seen by his critics as having “fanned the flame of disaffection into open rebellion” by “the picketings, the free quarters, half hangings, flogging and pitch-cappings” he directs.

In July 1799, Luttrell sells his Irish property and by his own later account, he takes no part in the Acts of Union. He claims to be “disgusted at the scene that was passing before me”, and to abandon Ireland because, under a “cowardly” government, he sees “the country likely to become Catholic.” When the Dublin Post of May 2, 1811, erroneously reports his death, he demands a retraction which they print under the headline Public Disappointment.

Luttrell purchases an estate at Painshill Park in Surrey and lives for several years in relative obscurity. From 1813 he harries the government of Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, with the claim that George III had promised him a secure seat in the Commons. In June 1817, five weeks short of his eightieth birthday, he finds his own way back to Parliament as Member for Ludgershall and revenges himself, in the four years remaining to him, by voting with the opposition. This, however, does not extend to joining in the attacks on the domestic spy system in 1818 nor to voting for parliamentary reform in 1819. Moreover, in the wake of the Peterloo Massacre, he supports the government, lauding the use of deadly force against “the Radicals and their system.”

Luttrell dies at his home at Bruton Street, London, on April 25, 1821.


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James FitzGerald, Lord Ophaly, Wins Athy By-Election

At the Athy by-election on June 12, 1741, following the death of Sir Walter Dixon Borrowes, James FitzGerald, styled Lord Ophaly and later 1st Duke of Leinster, is returned. In the course of the election there is a duel between William Paul Warren and Jack Hardy, which leads to Hardy’s right hand and arm being shattered. It is thought that it might have to be amputated.

FitzGerald, an Anglo-Irish nobleman, soldier and politician, is the son of Robert FitzGerald, 19th Earl of Kildare, and Lady Mary, daughter of William O’Brien, 3rd Earl of Inchiquin.

FitzGerald is a member of the Irish House of Commons for Athy from the 1741 by-election until he succeeds his father as 20th Earl of Kildare in 1743. He is sworn of the Privy Council of Ireland in 1746 and in 1747, on the occasion of his marriage, he is created Viscount Leinster, of Taplow in the County of Buckingham, in the Peerage of Great Britain, and takes his seat in the British House of Lords that same year. From 1749 to 1755 he is one of the leaders of the Popular Party in Ireland and serves as the country’s Master-General of the Ordnance between 1758 and 1766, becoming Colonel of the Royal Irish Artillery in 1760. He is promoted to Major General in 1761 and to Lieutenant General in 1770.

In 1761 FitzGerald is created Earl of Offaly and Marquess of Kildare in the Peerage of Ireland and in 1766 he is further honoured when he is made Duke of Leinster, becoming by this time the Premier Duke, Marquess and Earl in the Peerage of Ireland.

FitzGerald marries the 15-year-old Lady Emily Lennox, daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, and one of the famous Lennox Sisters, in London on February 7, 1747. She is a great-granddaughter of King Charles II and is therefore a distant fifth cousin of King George III. Both of them are descended from King James VI and I. The couple has nineteen children.

FitzGerald dies at Leinster House, Dublin, on November 19, 1773, aged 51, and is buried in the city’s Christ Church Cathedral. He is succeeded by his second (but eldest surviving) son, William, Marquess of Kildare. The Duchess of Leinster causes a minor sensation by marrying her lover William Ogilvie in 1774 but continues to be known as The Dowager Duchess of Leinster. She has a further three children by him. She dies in London on March 27, 1814, aged 82.

In 1999, Irish Screen, BBC America and WGBH produce Aristocrats, a six-part limited television series based on the lives of Emily Lennox and her sisters. FitzGerald is portrayed by Ben Daniels.


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Death of Leonard McNally, Barrister, Playwright, United Irishman

Leonard McNally, an Irish barrister, playwright, lyricist, founding member of the United Irishmen and spy for the British Government within Irish republican circles, dies in Dublin on June 8, 1820.

McNally is born in Dublin in 1752, the son of a merchant and wine importer. He is raised by his mother with the support of his uncle. He is born into a Roman Catholic family, but at some point in the 1760s he converts to the Church of Ireland. He is passionate about theatre, entirely self-educated and initially becomes a merchant in Bordeaux like his father.

However, in 1774 McNally goes to London to study law at the Middle Temple but returns to Dublin to be called to the Irish bar in 1776. After returning to London in the late 1770s, he qualifies as a barrister in England as well, in 1783. He practises for a short time in London and, while there, supplements his income by writing plays and editing The Public Ledger.

Returning to Ireland, McNally developes a successful career as a barrister in Dublin. He develops an expertise in the law of evidence and, in 1802, publishes what becomes a much-used textbook, The Rules of Evidence on Pleas of the Crown. The text plays a crucial role in defining and publicising the beyond reasonable doubt standard for criminal trials.

Not long after returning to Ireland, McNally becomes involved in radical politics, having already in 1782 published a pamphlet in support of the Irish cause. He becomes Dublin’s leading radical lawyer of the day. In 1792, he represents James Napper Tandy, a radical member of the Irish Parliament, in a legal dispute over parliamentary privilege. In the early 1790s, he becomes a founder member of the United Irishmen, a clandestine society which soon develops into a revolutionary Irish republican organisation. He ranks high in its leadership and acts as the organisation’s chief lawyer, representing many United Irishmen in court. This includes defending Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, the leaders of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions respectively, at their trials for treason. In 1793, he is wounded in a duel with Sir Jonah Barrington, who had insulted the United Irishmen. Barrington subsequently describes McNally as “a good-natured, hospitable, talented and dirty fellow.”

After McNally’s death in 1820, it emerges that he had for many years been an informant for the government, and one of the most successful British spies in Irish republican circles that there has ever been. In 1794, when a United Irishmen plot to seek aid from Revolutionary France is uncovered by the British government, McNally turns informer to save himself, although, subsequently, he also receives payment for his services. He is paid an annual pension in respect of his work as an informer of £300 a year, from 1794 until his death in 1820.

From 1794, McNally systematically informs on his United Irishmen colleagues, who often gather at his house for meetings. It is he that betrays Lord Edward FitzGerald, one of the leaders of the 1798 rebellion, as well as Robert Emmet in 1803. A significant factor in the failure of the 1798 rebellion is the excellent intelligence provided to the government by its agents. McNally is considered to be one of the most damaging informers.

The United Irishmen represented by McNally at their trials are invariably convicted and he is paid by the crown for passing the secrets of their defence to the prosecution. During the trial of Emmet, he provides details of the defence’s strategy to the crown and conducts his client’s case in a way that assists the prosecution. For example, three days before the trial he assures the authorities that Emmet “does not intend to call a single witness, nor to trouble any witness for the Crown with a cross-examination, unless they misrepresent facts… He will not controvert the charge by calling a single witness.” For his assistance to the prosecution in Emmet’s case, he is paid a bonus of £200, on top of his pension, half of which is paid five days before the trial.

After McNally’s death, his activities as a government agent become generally known when his heir attempts to continue to collect his pension of £300 per year. He is still remembered with opprobrium by Irish nationalists. In 1997, the Sinn Féin newspaper, An Phoblacht, in an article on McNally, describes him as “undoubtedly one of the most treacherous informers of Irish history.”

McNally is a successful dramatist and writes a number of well-constructed but derivative comedies, as well as comic operas. His first dramatic work is The Ruling Passion, a comic opera written in 1771, and he is known to have authored at least twelve plays between 1779 and 1796 as well as other comic operas. His works include The Apotheosis of Punch (1779), a satire on the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Tristram Shandy (1783), which is an adaptation of Laurence Sterne‘s novel, Robin Hood (1784), Fashionable Levities (1785), Richard Cœur de Lion (1786), and Critic Upon Critic (1788).

McNally also writes a number of songs and operettas for Covent Garden. One of his songs, The Lass of Richmond Hill, becomes very well-known and popular following its first public performance at Vauxhall Gardens in London in 1789. It is said to be a favourite of George III and popularises the romantic metaphor “a rose without a thorn,” a phrase which he used in the song.

Nothing is known of McNally’s first wife Mary O’Brien, other than that she dies in 1786. In London in 1787, he elopes with Frances I’Anson, as her father William I’Anson a solicitor, disapproves of McNally. Frances, and her family’s estate, Hill House in Richmond, North Yorkshire, is the subject of a song with lyrics by McNally and composed by James Hook, The Lass of Richmond Hill. In 1795, Frances dies during childbirth at age 29 and is survived by only one daughter. In early 1799, McNally marries his third wife, Louisa Edgeworth, the daughter of a clergyman from County Longford.

When McNally’s son, who has the same and professions, dies on February 13, 1820, it is widely reported to have been McNally. The son is buried in Donnybrook, Dublin, on February 17, 1820, and McNally sends a letter on March 6, 1820, to the Proprietor of Saunders’s Newsletter seeking damages for the severe injury caused by the circulation of his death. In June 1820, McNally is on his deathbed, and although he had been a Protestant for most of his adult life, he seeks absolution from a Roman Catholic priest. He dies and is also buried in Donnybrook on June 8, 1820.


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Death of Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton

Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton, Anglo-Irish politician who sits in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1754 to 1780, dies on January 14, 1787.

Luttrell is born in 1713, the second son of Henry Luttrell, of Luttrellstown Castle (whose family had held Luttrellstown Castle and the demesne and adjoining lands since the land had been granted to Sir Geoffrey de Luterel in about 1210 by King John of England) and his wife Elizabeth Jones. His father is a noted commander in the Jacobite Irish Army between 1689 and 1691. He later receives a pardon from the Williamite authorities and is accused by his former Jacobite comrades of having betrayed them. He is murdered when his sedan chair is attacked in Dublin on October 22, 1717.

Luttrell serves as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of Great Britain for four constituencies: Mitchell (1755–1761), Wigan (1761–1768), Weobley (1768–1774) and Stockbridge (1774–1780).

On October 13, 1768, Luttrell is created Baron Irnham of Luttrellstown in the Peerage of Ireland. As his title is an Irish peerage, he is able to keep his seat in the British House of Commons. He is elevated to the title of Viscount Carhampton on January 9, 1781, and is made Earl of Carhampton on June 23, 1785. He lives at Four Oaks Hall, Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield, from 1751 to 1766.

On January 22, 1735, Luttrell marries Judith Maria Lawes, daughter of Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica and Elizabeth Cotton (née Lawley), by whom he has eight children:

Luttrell’s rakish behaviour earns him the nickname “King of Hell,” with “Hell” being a district of Dublin notorious for its brothels. He reputedly starts the courtesan Mary Nesbitt in her career by seducing her.

Luttrell dies at Four Oaks, Warwick, England, on January 14, 1787. He is buried at Kingsbury, Warwick, England.


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Birth of James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster

Lieutenant-General James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster, PC (Ire), Irish nobleman, soldier and politician, is born on May 29, 1722. He is styled Lord Offaly until 1744 and known as The Earl of Kildare between 1744 and 1761 and as The Marquess of Kildare between 1761 and 1766.

FitzGerald is the son of Robert FitzGerald, 19th Earl of Kildare, and Lady Mary, daughter of William O’Brien, 3rd Earl of Inchiquin.

FitzGerald is a member of the Irish House of Commons for Athy from 1741 before succeeding his father as 20th Earl of Kildare in 1744. He is sworn of the Privy Council of Ireland in 1746 and in 1747, on the occasion of his marriage, he is created Viscount Leinster, of Taplow in the County of Buckingham, in the Peerage of Great Britain, and takes his seat in the British House of Lords that same year. From 1749 to 1755 he is one of the leaders of the Popular Party in Ireland and serves as the country’s Master-General of the Ordnance between 1758 and 1766, becoming Colonel of the Royal Irish Artillery in 1760. He is promoted to Major-General in 1761 and to Lieutenant-General in 1770.

In 1761 FitzGerald is created Earl of Offaly and Marquess of Kildare in the Peerage of Ireland and in 1766 he is further honoured when he is made Duke of Leinster, becoming by this time the Premier Duke, Marquess and Earl in the Peerage of Ireland.

FitzGerald marries the 15-year-old Lady Emily Lennox, daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond and one of the famous Lennox sisters, in London on February 7, 1747. She descends from King Charles II and is therefore a distant fifth cousin of King George III (both of them are descended from King James VI and I). The couple has nineteen children.

FitzGerald dies at the age of 51 at Leinster House, Dublin, on November 19, 1773, and is buried in the city’s Christ Church Cathedral. He is succeeded by his second (but eldest surviving) son, William, Marquess of Kildare. The Duchess of Leinster causes a minor sensation by marrying her lover William Ogilvie in 1774, but continues to be known as The Dowager Duchess of Leinster. She has a further three children by him. She dies in London at the age of 82 in March 1814.

In 1999, Irish Screen, BBC America and WGBH produce Aristocrats, a six-part limited television series based on the lives of Emily Lennox and her sisters. FitzGerald is portrayed by Ben Daniels.

(Pictured: James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster, by Joshua Reynolds, 1753)


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Birth of Count Daniel Charles O’Connell, French General & Uncle of “The Liberator”

Count Daniel Charles O’Connell, French general and count in the French nobility, is born on May 21, 1745, in Derrynane, County Kerry, twenty-first among twenty-two children of Donal Mor O’Connell, a Catholic landowner, and his wife Mary, daughter of Daniel O’Donoghue of Glenflesk, near Killarney.

O’Connell is tutored at home in Latin and Greek, and before he is sixteen, he leaves with his cousin, Murty O’Connell, to join the French army. On February 13, 1760, he becomes a cadet in the Régiment de Royal Suédois. He spends almost his entire career in France or serving abroad with French regiments, but remains in close contact with his family, being in constant correspondence with the head of the clan, his brother Maurice O’Connell, who is almost twenty years his senior, and later arranging army appointments for a host of young nephews and cousins.

O’Connell serves with the Royal Suédois in the last two campaigns of the Seven Years’ War and is made assistant adjutant (sous-aide-major) of the regiment. At the close of the war, he is recommended for the military academy of Strasbourg (1765–66). He has a talent for self-advancement and is well regarded by his seniors, being tall, strong, handsome, disciplined, industrious, and sober. He has an almost morbid horror of drink, and his great boast is that he has never wasted a moment of his time or a farthing of his money.

Appointed to Col. Meade’s regiment of Lord Clare’s Irish Brigade with the rank of captain in October 1769, he sets sail immediately for Mauritius. Two years later he is allowed a visit home to Kerry for the first time in eleven years. In 1775 the death of Lord Clare’s son and the extinction of the title results in the reduction of the Irish Brigade and destroys O’Connell’s chance of promotion. He devotes himself to the study of chemistry, literature, and the military. A published study, Discipline of the army, comes under the notice of the military authorities, who obtain for him a Cross of Saint Louis, a pension of 2,000 livres a year, and the rank of lieutenant-colonel with which he is posted to his old regiment, the Royal Suédois, in 1778. With them he serves at the taking of Menorca in 1781 and is severely wounded at the Great Siege of Gibraltar in 1782 but manages to save the life of Charles Philippe, Count of Artois, the future Charles X. For these services he is made a count, one of only twenty-two people outside the royal family to receive this honour, and is made colonel of the German regiment of Salm-Salm in French pay, which at a grand review of 30,000 French troops in Alsace in 1785 is pronounced the best regiment. He begins to move in court circles and in 1788 kisses the hand of Marie Antoinette and rides in the king’s coach.

In 1788 O’Connell recommends to his brother Maurice the college of Saint-Omer as a suitable school for his nephews, Maurice and Daniel O’Connell, but taking belated notice of the gathering revolutionary storm, tries unsuccessfully to dissuade them. During the French Revolution of 1789 he allegedly announces his readiness to move his regiment into the capital to disperse revolutionary mobs but is not able to obtain the king’s permission. In 1790 his men mutiny, leaving him in the anomalous position of a colonel without a regiment. A protégé of the Ancien Régime, he nevertheless remains in Paris in 1790–91, serving the nouveau régime as a member of a commission engaged in revising army regulations.

In 1792 O’Connell joins Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick‘s émigré army at Koblenz and takes part in the disastrous Battle of Valmy in Berchini’s regiment. Ever cautious, he serves as a private, refusing any command so that his name would not be mentioned in France. In November 1792 he is in London, almost penniless and bent on concealing that he had served against the republic. An alibi is procured and attested at Tralee to the effect that O’Connell had been in Ireland all the time and was forwarded to Paris to prevent the confiscation of property.

In London O’Connell petitions William Pitt the Younger to reconstruct the Irish Brigade in the service of George III. Six regiments are raised, with O’Connell appointed colonel of the 4th, but the scheme is only partially realised as three of the regiments are sent to the West Indies and Nova Scotia, where they succumb to pestilence. By 1798 the brigade has entirely ceased to exist, though he retains his full pay as a British colonel, which he draws to the end of his life. At this period his name is mooted by Gen. Henry Clarke and Theobald Wolfe Tone as a possible commander of their troops. Clarke gives his opinion that O’Connell is a good parade officer but has no genius in command, to which Wolfe Tone replies that he “was in favour of his being employed for I know he hates England.”

In 1796, O’Connell marries Martha, comtesse de Bellevue (née Drouillard de Lamarre; d. 1807), a young widow with three children, at the French chapel in Covent Garden. In 1802 he takes advantage of the peace of Amiens to return to France. On the renewal of war, the couple is detained by Napoleon as British subjects, and remain virtual prisoners in France until the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814. Back in favour, O’Connell receives the rank of lieutenant-general in the French army and commander of the Order of Saint Louis. His fortunes revive, he advances a large sum to his nephew Daniel to save him from bankruptcy in 1815 and comes to his rescue again in 1818, though by this date he has already settled the bulk of his fortune on his great-nephews. He follows his namesake’s career with keen interest, but his advice is invariably cautious and is not much heeded. After the French Revolution of 1830 he refuses to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Philippe I and is struck off the military list, though he becomes a naturalised French citizen in 1831.

O’Connell dies on July 9, 1833, at the Château de Bellevue at Meudon, near Blois, and is buried at the cemetery at Coudé. He has no children and his title, though not his fortune, descends to his godson, the Baron d’Eschegoyen’s second son, who takes the name O’Connell. A portrait by Paul Guérin hangs in Derrynane House.

(From: “O’Connell, Count Daniel Charles” by Bridget Hourican, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)


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Birth of Sir Eyre Coote, Soldier, Politician & Governor of Jamaica

Sir Eyre Coote, Irish-born British soldier and politician who serves as Governor of Jamaica, is born on May 20, 1759.

Coote is the second son of the Very Reverend Charles Coote of Shaen Castle, Queen’s County (now County Laois), Dean of Kilfenora, County Clare, and Grace Coote (née Tilson). Educated at Eton College (1767–71), he enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) on November 1, 1774, but does not graduate. In 1776 he is commissioned ensign in the 37th (North Hampshire) Regiment of Foot and carries the regiment’s colours at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. He fights in several of the major battles in the war, including Rhode Island (September 15, 1776), Brandywine (September 11, 1777) and the siege of Charleston (1780). He serves under Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, in Virginia and is taken prisoner during the siege of Yorktown in October 1781.

On his release Coote returns to England, is promoted major in the 47th (Lancashire) Regiment of Foot in 1783, and in 1784 inherits the substantial estates of his uncle Sir Eyre Coote. He inherits a further £200,000 by remainder on his father’s death in 1796. He resides for a time at Portrane House, Maryborough, Queen’s County, and is elected MP for Ballynakill (1790–97) and Maryborough (1797–1800). Although he opposes the union, he vacates his seat to allow his elder brother Charles, 2nd Baron Castle Coote, to return a pro-union member. He serves with distinction in the West Indies (1793–95), particularly at the storming of Guadeloupe on July 3, 1794, and becomes colonel of the 70th (Surrey) Regiment of Foot (1794), aide-de-camp to King George III (1795), and brigadier-general in charge of the camp at Bandon, County Cork (1796).

Coote is active in suppressing the United Irishmen in Cork throughout 1797, and in June arrests several soldiers and locals suspected of attempting to suborn the Bandon camp. On January 1, 1798, he is promoted major-general and given the command at Dover. He leads the expedition of 1,400 men that destroy the canal gates at Ostend on May 18, 1798, holding out stubbornly for two days against superior Dutch forces until he is seriously wounded and his force overwhelmed. Taken prisoner, he is exchanged and in 1800 commands a brigade in Sir Ralph Abercromby‘s Mediterranean campaign, distinguishing himself at Abu Qir and Alexandria. For his services in Egypt, he receives the thanks of parliament, is made a Knight of the Bath, and is granted the Crescent by the Sultan.

In 1801 Coote returns to Ireland. Elected MP for Queen’s County (1802–06), he generally supports the government and is appointed governor of the fort of Maryborough. He gives the site and a large sum of money towards the building of the old county hospital in Maryborough. In 1805 he is promoted lieutenant-general, and he serves as lieutenant-governor of Jamaica (1806–08). His physical and mental health deteriorates in the West Indian climate, and he is relieved of his post in April 1808. He is second in command in the Walcheren Campaign of 1809 and leads the force that takes the fortress of Flushing. However, he shows signs of severe stress during the campaign and asks to be relieved from command because his eldest daughter is seriously ill.

Coote is conferred LL.D. at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1811. Elected MP for Barnstaple, Devon (1812–18), he usually votes with government, but opposes them by supporting Catholic emancipation, claiming that Catholics strongly deserve relief because of the great contribution Catholic soldiers had made during the war. He strongly opposes the abolition of flogging in the army. Despite a growing reputation for eccentricity, he is promoted full general in 1814 and appointed Knight Grand Cross (GCB) on January 2, 1815, but his conduct becomes increasingly erratic. In November 1815 he pays boys at Christ’s Hospital school, London, to allow him to flog them and to flog him in return. Discovered by the school matron, he is charged with indecent behaviour. The Lord Mayor of London dismisses the case and Coote donates £1,000 to the school, but the scandal leads to a military inquiry on April 18, 1816. Although it is argued that his mind had been affected by the Jamaican sun and the deaths of his daughters, the inquiry finds that he is not insane and that his conduct is unworthy of an officer. Despite the protests of many senior officers, he is discharged from the army and deprived of his honours.

Coote continues to decline and dies in London on December 10, 1823. He is buried at his seat of West Park, Hampshire, where in 1828 a large monument is erected to him and his uncle Sir Eyre Coote.

Coote first marries Sarah Robard in 1785, with whom he has three daughters, all of whom die young of consumption. Secondly, he marries in 1805, Katherine, daughter of John Bagwell of Marlfield, County Tipperary, with whom he has one son, his heir Eyre Coote III, MP for Clonmel (1830–33). He also has a child by Sally, a slave girl in Jamaica, from whom Colin Powell, United States Army general and Secretary of State, claims descent.