Although O’Connell begins calling for repeal in the early 1830s, the formal Association is only established in 1840. Prior to this, candidates supporting repeal contest the 1832 United Kingdom general election and between 1835 and 1841, form an electoral pact with the Whigs. Repealer candidates, unaffiliated with the Whigs also contest the 1841 and 1847 general elections.
Following the movement’s decline in the late 1840s, nationalists, including members of the Young Ireland movement, emerge from its ranks.
Walker is born in Dublin, son of Cooper Walker, merchant, and educated by Thomas Ball. He suffers from asthma, which prevents him from attending college. Instead he travels to Italy, where he possibly receives some private tuition in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish. He takes a special interest in Italian literature and Irish antiquities, and on his return to Ireland (where he is employed in the Irish treasury as third clerk in the upper department) resides in an Italianate villa, St. Valerie, on the road from Bray to Enniskerry.
In 1785, Walker is elected one of the original members of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and on March 17, 1786, is requested to sit on its committee of antiquities. In this capacity he submits several essays to the Academy’s Transactions. However, his best-known work is Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786). His interest in poetry, and in eighteenth-century vernacular survivals of the ancient bardic tradition, suggests important new contemporary and literary dimensions for what had previously been antiquarian and scholarly pursuits. He also breaks new ground by considering modern as well as historical Irish culture, and introduces it to an Anglo-Irish audience by providing English translations of Gaelic songs and poems.
The authorities Walker cites covers the entire range of Irish and Anglo-Irish scholarship on Irish antiquities. He includes excerpts from his correspondence with Charles O’Conor, Charles Vallancey, and Sylvester O’Halloran and carries out an extensive correspondence with Thomas Percy after he becomes Bishop of Dromore in 1782. He focuses on both poetry and music, which according to the popular eighteenth-century view has been the two traditional pursuits of the Irish bards. He presents a historical outline of their progress from the earliest times to the eighteenth century and ends with nine appendices, which are almost as lengthy as the main text. In these, his appreciation of what he considers to be the contemporary survivals of the ancient Irish bardic tradition is apparent in his including an account of Cormac Common, a blind eighteenth-century poet from Mayo, as well as a lengthy biographical notice of Turlough O’Carolan, together with translations of several of his songs. The book brings together many of the literary, scholarly, popular, Celtic, antiquarian, political, and musical dimensions of eighteenth-century Irish culture and prefigures the synthesis of literary modes, cultural theories, and musical styles that would occur in the literary productions of the United Irishmen.
Despite his linguistic skills, Walker has little knowledge of the Irish language, yet he (a member of the Anglo-Irish elite) is consistent in his praise of Gaelic culture, portraying it as sophisticated and literate and, although he highly romanticises his work, he does help to challenge negative appraisals of the Irish character. By the standards of the time it is a work of great erudition. However, today the book is judged to be of limited academic merit as Walker is severely hampered by a shortage of primary documents and by his limited grasp of the Irish language. This is illustrated by his ambiguous use of James Macpherson‘s volumes of Ossianic poems, published in the 1760s, which he quotes as authentic in the text while hinting in the footnotes that they are unreliable.
Charlotte Brooke translates three poems, and in return Walker encourages her to produce her Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789). Her work reflects Walker’s influence and she thanks him in the preface for affording her “every assistance which zeal, judgment and extensive knowledge, could give” as well as for prevailing on people to subscribe to her work and for being a subscriber himself. He is part of a literary circle that includes Edward Ledwich, Charles O’Conor, Edward Berwick, John Philpot Curran, and Henry Grattan. He also writes Historical essay on the dress of the ancient and modern Irish (1788), dedicated to his friend James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont, for which he interviews the older generation, consults manuscripts, and even visits tombs to examine the clothing of corpses, and admits he has received copious aid from Elizabeth Rawdon, Countess of Moira. The English Review receives it warmly but Richard Gough, the reviewer for TheGentleman’s Magazine, states he is “much disappointed in the perusal of this high priced history.” Other works by Walker include “an historical essay on the Irish stage,” RIA Trans., ii (1788), Historical Memoir on Italian Tragedy (1799) and contributions to Vallancey’s Collectanea de rebus Hibernicis (Dublin, 1770–1804). In the 1790s he subscribes to Anthologia Hibernica: a monthly collection of science, belles lettres and history and in December 1794 submits an “Historical essay on the Irish stage” which surveys Irish drama from bardic times through to contemporary folk plays.
Walker dies on April 12, 1810, in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, leaving a fine gallery of pictures, a library containing Irish manuscripts, and a collection of antiquities. He is buried on April 14 in St. Mary’s Churchyard, Dublin. His memoirs of Alessandro Tassoni are published posthumously in London in 1815 (with a lengthy preface by his brother Samuel), as is the second edition of Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (2 vols., Dublin, 1818).
(From: “Walker, Joseph Cooper” by Rosemary Ritchie, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Barrington is born in 1756 or 1757 in Knapton, Abbeyleix, Queen’s County (now County Laois), the third son of John Barrington, an impoverished Protestantgentleman landowner in Queens’s County and his wife Sibella French of Peterswell, County Galway. He is raised and schooled by his grandparents in Dublin and enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1773, aged 16, but leaves TCD without a degree.
Barrington joins the Irish Volunteers and supports the Irish Patriot Party in the early 1780s. His father raises and commands two Corps: the Cullenagh Rangers and the Ballyroan Light Infantry.
Barrington’s elder brother commands both the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. Through his correspondence with General Hunt Walsh, Barrington’s father secures him a commission in Walsh’s regiment. Upon learning that the regiment is to be sent to America to fight in the American Revolution, and fearful of dying on some foreign battlefield, he writes to Walsh asking him to present the commission to another candidate instead, claiming that he himself is too tender to be of any real use. His fears prove well founded when his replacement, the only child of one of Walsh’s friends, is killed in his first engagement.
Barrington is called to the Irish bar in 1788 and in 1789 he marries Catherine, daughter of Dublin mercer, Edward Grogan. They ultimately have seven children. The following year he enters by the purchase of the seat the pre-1801 Parliament of Ireland as MP for Tuam. He accepts a sinecure post in 1793 at the Dublin customhouse worth £1,000 p.a. generally supporting Henry Grattan and he takes silk the same year. He is a member of the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798, he re-enters parliament the same year as member for Clogher and votes against the Act of Union in 1799–1800, rejecting John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare‘s offer of the solicitor-generalship in 1799. In 1802, he unsuccessfully contests a seat for Dublin City in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Barrington’s comments on the Act of Union has a continuing resonance with the Young Ireland, Fenian and Irish Parliamentary Party movements, which hope to re-establish “Grattan’s Parliament” in some way. In particular, his Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (1833) provides the basis for this romantic idealisation of Grattan’s Parliament adopted by the Irish Parliamentary Party from the 1880s.
Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798 at a salary of £500, Barrington finds there is little work to be done and his lack of a degree restricts other opportunities to support extravagant tastes. His award of a knighthood in 1807 brings no increased income. His court orders the sale of two derelict vessels and he gives instructions that the proceeds are to go to his own bank account. In 1810 or 1811 he takes his wife and family to England and from that time on his work in Ireland is carried out by surrogates. Still retaining his judgeship and salary, he moves to France in 1814 to escape his creditors and never returns to Ireland.
In 1828, commissioners learn of Barrington’s financial irregularities. He crosses the channel to London and protests that he is innocent but does not answer the charges based on the documentary evidence produced by the commissioners. In 1830, a parliamentary commission recommends that he be removed from office, finding misappropriations of court funds in 1805, 1806 and 1810. Pursuant to a provision of the Act of Settlement 1701, which seeks to protect the independence of the judiciary, both Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom vote for an Address to King William IV praying for his removal, and the King duly dismisses Barrington from office. By then, Barrington’s first 1827 volume of memoirs has sold successfully, and they are republished and expanded. He is the first judge removed from office under the Act of Settlement, and to this day, is the only judge in the United Kingdom to be so removed.
According to one of Barrington’s sometimes spurious personal memoirs, on March 20, 1780, he travels to Donnybrook, Dublin, to duel with Richard Daly. Daly has fought 16 duels in three years – three with swords and thirteen with pistols. Remarkably, he, and his opponents, have always escaped serious injury. Barrington has no pistols so he and his second, Richard Crosbie, spend the previous night constructing a pair “from old locks, stocks and barrels.” At Donnybrook, Daly’s second, Jack Patterson, a nephew of the Chief Justice, approaches Crosbie, explains that it is all a mistake and asks that the two shake hands. Barrington is in favour, but Crosbie has none of it. Taking out a duelling handbook, he points to rule No.7 – “No apology can be received after the parties meet, without a fire.”
Taking up their positions, Barrington loses no time in pressing the trigger and Daly staggers back, puts his hand to his chest, and cries, “I’m hit, Sir.” The ball does not penetrate but does drive part of a brooch slightly into his breastbone. Barrington only then thinks to inquire why the duel is even taking place. This time the rule book notes: “If a party challenged accepts the challenge without asking the reason for it, the challenger is never bound to divulge it afterwards.”
Barrington is most notable today for his memoirs which include scathing but humorous thumbnail portraits of contemporary Irish lawyers, judges and politicians during the last years of the Protestant Ascendancy. Personal sketches also includes vignettes on Irish people from every background. His works are reprinted with frequent additions and renamings.
Since his death, Barrington’s work has been quoted by a wide selection of editors, primarily following two themes: the political drama surrounding the Act of Union and the colourful nature of life in 1700s Ireland.
Fitzgibbon is an early and extremely militant opponent of Catholic emancipation. The Earl is possibly the first person to suggest to King George III that granting royal assent to any form of Catholic Emancipation will violate his coronation oath.
FitzGibbon is born in 1748 near Donnybrook, Dublin, the son of John FitzGibbon of Ballysheedy, County Limerick, and his wife Isabella Grove, daughter of John Grove, of Ballyhimmock, County Cork. His father is born a Catholic but converts to the state religion in order to become a lawyer, and amasses a large fortune. He has three sisters, Arabella, Elizabeth, and Eleanor.
When appointed Lord Chancellor for Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Connello Lower in County Limerick, in the peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy (1793) and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament, and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system (1787–1789) under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).
FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, for which, in a “magnificently controlled vituperation in vigorous, colloquial heroic couplets,” The Gibbonade, he is pilloried by the satirist Henrietta Battier. But acceding to pressure exerted through the Irish executive by government of William Pitt in London, intent, in advance of war with the new French Republic, to placate Catholic opinion, he is persuaded to recommend its acceptance in the Irish House of Lords. Pitt, and King George III, who had been petitioned by delegates from the Catholic Committee in Dublin, expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and admit Catholics to the parliamentary franchise (although not to Parliament itself), enter the professions and assume public office.
FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is recalled, apparently due to his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family (he is married to one of their daughters), and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is probably what leads to his recall. Thus, if any is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is the great Irish politician Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother John Ponsonby—not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.
Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon agree on one point apparently – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon has been a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.
In a speech to the Irish House of Lords on February 10, 1800, FitzGibbon elucidates his point of view on union: “I hope and feel as becomes a true Irishman, for the dignity and independence of my country, and therefore I would elevate her to her proper station, in the rank of civilised nations. I wish to advance her from the degraded post of mercenary province, to the proud station of an integral and governing member of the greatest empire in the world.”
In the end, FitzGibbon’s views win out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority (or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom). He later claims that he had been duped by the way in which the Act was passed with the new Viceroy Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, promising reforms to Irish Catholics, and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.
The role of the Earl of Clare (as FitzGibbon becomes in 1795) as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs and the Encyclopædia Britannica states that he is “neither cruel nor immoderate and was inclined to mercy when dealing with individuals.” However, the same source also states that “(FitzGibbon)… was a powerful supporter of a repressive policy toward Irish Catholics”. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders, “State prisoners,” in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the brothers John and Henry Sheares on July 14, 1798.
In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. FitzGibbon is inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and, in October 1798, he expresses his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he has been granted a trial, and his belief that Tone should be hanged as soon as he set foot on land.
FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”
Another anecdote is to the effect of FitzGibbon’s callousness. Supposedly, upon being informed during a debate in the Irish Parliament that innocent as well as guilty are suffering atrocities during the repression, he replies, “Well suppose it were so…,” his callous reply purportedly shocking William Pitt.
FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. There is, however, no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might be interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.
FitzGibbon dies at home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and, according to a widespread story, a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.
FitzGerald is born on March 13, 1749, in Arlington Place, Piccadilly, London, the second son of nine sons and ten daughters of James Fitzgerald, 20th Earl of Kildare and later 1st Duke of Leinster, and his wife, Lady Emily Lennox. He is educated at Eton College (1758–63). He is the elder brother of the 1790s revolutionary Lord Edward FitzGerald, and is a first cousin of the English liberal politician Charles James Fox.
In November 1775, FitzGerald marries Emilia Olivia Usher, daughter of the 1st Baron Saint George and Elizabeth Dominick and sole grand daughter of Sir Christopher Dominick. They have three sons and six daughters.
In 1770, FitzGerald is chosen Grandmaster of the masonicGrand Lodge of Ireland, a post he holds for two years. He is re-elected for another year in 1777. In 1783, he is among the first knights in the newly created Order of St. Patrick.
In 1788–89, FitzGerald is Master of the Rolls in Ireland. In theory a senior judicial office, it is then largely a sinecure, but so blatant a choice of a man who is wholly unqualified for it gives rise to unfavourable comment, and a few years later it becomes the rule that the Master must be a lawyer of repute.
FitzGerald’s homes are at Carton and Kilkea Castle in County Kildare, and at Leinster House in Dublin (now the home of the Oireachtas). He is a founder member of the Order of St. Patrick in 1783 and of the Royal Irish Academy in 1785, and is a large investor in the Royal Canal company launched in 1790. His family’s estates of 60,000 acres (25,000 Ha) in Kildare are in three main parts, around Maynooth, Rathangan and Athy. He rebuilds the main bridge in Athy over the River Barrow.
FitzGerald dies of strangury, a urinary tract disorder, at Carton House on October 20, 1804. He is buried in Kildare Abbey. His funeral is so well attended that the mourners reach across The Curragh. He is succeeded by his second, but eldest surviving, son, Augustus Frederick Fitzgerald, as 3rd Duke of Leinster.
The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the police force in Ireland from 1822 until 1922, when all of the island was part of the United Kingdom, is disbanded on August 17, 1922, and replaced by the Garda Síochána.
A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), patrols the capital and parts of County Wicklow, while the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later have special divisions within the RIC. For most of its history, the ethnic and religious makeup of the RIC broadly matches that of the Irish population, although Anglo-IrishProtestants are overrepresented among its senior officers.
The Peace Preservation Act 1814, for which Sir Robert Peel is largely responsible, and the Irish Constabulary Act 1822 forms the provincial constabularies. The 1822 act establishes a force in each province with chief constables and inspectors general under the United Kingdom civil administration for Ireland controlled by the Dublin Castle administration.
The RIC’s existence is increasingly troubled by the rise of the Home Rule campaign in the early twentieth century period prior to World War I.
In January 1922, the British and Irish delegations agree to disband the RIC. Phased disbandments begin within a few weeks with RIC personnel both regular and auxiliary being withdrawn to six centres in southern Ireland. On April 2, 1922, the force formally ceases to exist, although the actual process is not completed until August 17. The RIC is replaced by the Civic Guard (renamed as the Garda Síochána the following year) in the Irish Free State and by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland.
According to a parliamentary answer in October 1922, 1,330 ex-RIC men join the new RUC in Northern Ireland. This results in an RUC force that is 21% Roman Catholic at its inception in 1922. As the former RIC members retire over the subsequent years, this proportion steadily falls.
Just thirteen men transfer to the Garda Síochána. These include men who had earlier assisted Irish Republican Army (IRA) operations in various ways. Some retire, and the Irish Free State pays their pensions as provided for in the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty agreement. Others, still faced with threats of violent reprisals, emigrate with their families to Great Britain or other parts of the British Empire, most often to join police forces in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. A number of these men join the Palestine Police Force, which is recruiting in the UK at the time.
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.
Sullivan, the second of six sons of Daniel Sullivan, house painter, and his wife, Catherine (née Baylor), a teacher, is born on May 15, 1829, in Bantry, County Cork. A popular date for Sullivan’s birth appears in many histories as 1830, but his gravestone reads 1829. He is educated in the local national school. One of his brothers is Timothy Daniel Sullivan, the Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1886 to 1888.
During the Great Famine of 1845 to 1847, Sullivan is employed as a clerk in connection with the relief works started by the government. Deeply influenced by the distress he witnesses, he afterward joins the Confederate Club formed in Bantry in support of the revolutionary movement of the Young Irelanders and is the organiser of the enthusiastic reception given by the town to William Smith O’Brien in July 1848 during the insurgent leader’s tour of the southern counties. Early in 1853, he goes to Dublin to seek employment as an artist. An exhibition of the arts and industries of Ireland is held in Dublin that year, and he is engaged to supply pencil sketches to the Dublin Expositor, a journal issued in connection with the exhibition. Subsequently, he obtains a post as a draughtsman in the Irish valuation office, and afterward as a reporter on the Liverpool Daily Post.
In 1855, Sullivan becomes assistant editor of The Nation, and subsequently editor and proprietor. From 1861 to 1884, in conjunction with his elder brother, T. D. Sullivan, he makes The Nation one of the most potent factors in the Irish Nationalist cause and also issues the Weekly News and Zozimus. Called to the Irish bar in 1876, he is a “special call” of the Inner Temple in 1877 and is made QC in 1881. He mainly practices at the English bar, though he acts in some political cases in Ireland.
As a member of the Dublin Corporation, Sullivan secures a magnificent site for the Grattan Monument, toward which he donates £400, the amount of a subscription by his admirers while he is undergoing imprisonment for a political offence in 1868. The monument is formally unveiled in January 1876. Between 1878 and 1882 he is engaged in many notable trials. His last great case is on November 30, 1883, when he is a colleague of Lord Russell in the defence of Patrick O’Donnell for the murder of James Carey, an informer.
Sullivan suffers another heart attack while on holiday in Bantry in September 1884 and spends his last days with William Martin Murphy at Dartry, County Dublin. Murphy regards him as a father figure, attributing his success to Sullivan’s early advice and journalistic training. Sullivan dies on October 17, 1884, at Dartry Lodge, Rathmines, Dublin. He is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery. With his wife, Frances Genevieve Donovan, whom he marries on April 27, 1861, and who outlives him by nearly forty years, he has a family of three sons and five daughters. His second son and namesake, Alexander Martin Sullivan, is the last to hold the rank of Serjeant-at-law (Ireland).
In addition to his labours, Sullivan is a great temperance reformer. He also writes two notable books, The Story of Ireland and New Ireland and contributes many sketches (including some verse) to Irish Penny Readings (1879–85). Some of his correspondence is located in the Isaac Butt papers in the National Library of Ireland.
When appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Lower Connello in the County of Limerick, in the Peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the Peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy in 1793 and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
As Lord Chancellor for Ireland, FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).
FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 personally but apparently recommends its acceptance in the House of Lords, being forced out of necessity when that Act had been recommended to the Irish Executive by the British Cabinet led by William Pitt the Younger. Pitt expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and allow Catholics to vote again and hold public offices. At the same time, FitzGibbon apparently denounces the policy this Act embodies, so it is probably safe to say that FitzGibbon’s own beliefs and principles conflict with his obligations as a member of the Irish executive of the time.
FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is apparently recalled, because of his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is likely what leads to his recall. Thus, if anyone is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother George Ponsonby — not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.
Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon apparently agree on one point – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon is a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.
In the end, FitzGibbon’s views wins out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority, or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom. He later claims that he has been duped by the way in which the Act is passed and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.
FitzGibbon’s role as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the 1798 rebellion is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the Sheares brothers on July 14, 1798.
In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. Fitzgibbon ss inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and in October 1798 he expressed his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he had been granted a trial and his belief that Tone should have been hanged as soon as he set foot on land.
FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”
FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might have been interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.
FitzGibbon dies at his home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in the churchyard at St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and there is a widespread story that a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.
(Pictured: “Portrait of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare,” painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1789)
When Oisín Kelly completes his statue of the union leader James Larkin in 1978, he does not know that it is to be among his final works. He is at the height of his power, the go-to sculptor for public commissions in Ireland.
That Larkin would be commemorated by a monument in Dublin is proposed in 1959 by the Workers’ Union of Ireland (WUI), which Larkin had set up in 1924, after his expulsion from the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), which he had also established. But it is 1974, the centenary of Larkin’s birth, before the commemoration gets under way. Larkin had claimed to be two years younger than he was, which results in his centenary celebrations taking place in 1976 and the date of his birth inscribed on the monument having to be corrected to read 1874.
The memorial committee, comprising the great and the good of the union, includes Donal Nevin, who is instrumental in choosing the sculptor. Kelly is an inspired choice, as the resulting statue is one of the most dynamic public works in the centre of Dublin. Only John Henry Foley’s representation of Henry Grattan, from 1876, on College Green, exudes a similar energy. In these two works, emphatic gesture and naturalistic treatment of the men’s clothing create a liveliness in the figures. Foley’s 19th-century concern is to create a contrast with his statues of Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke, positioned opposite, in the grounds of Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Kelly’s 20th-century aspiration is to please both his patron and the public.
Kelly, who had not known Larkin, chooses to use a familiar image of the man. Joseph Cashman had photographed Larkin addressing a crowd in Dublin in 1923. He looked so vital and passionate that the photograph has become iconic.
Once his maquette is approved, Kelly begins work on the plaster model in the backyard of his family home, in Firhouse, outside Dublin. His neighbour Eddie Golden, the actor, poses for the statue. When the full-size model is completed, it is transferred to Dublin Art Foundry, where it is cast in bronze by Leo Higgins and John Behan.
Although ready for unveiling in 1978, a delay ensues while attempts are made to quarry a colossal stone for the pedestal. Larkin’s son Denis is keen that it be carved from a single piece of granite, which proves impossible. Also, PresidentPatrick Hillery’s decision to perform the unveiling necessitates careful consideration of his speech. The writing of several drafts ensures that his language is neither controversial nor ambiguous. The word “comrades,” present in early drafts, does not appear in the final text. The statue is unveiled on June 15, 1979.
The sculpture has a commanding presence on O’Connell Street, where it has become one of the most popular monuments in Dublin. It regularly serves as a site of celebration and demonstration and is often a central motif in photographs of union members and politicians of the left gathering for anniversaries, or of crowds of the aggrieved and dissatisfied marching past.
The quotation on the pedestal, in French, Irish and English, dates back to the French Revolution: “The great appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.”
(From: “Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1978 – James Larkin statue, by Oisín Kelly” by Paula Murphy, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, January 30, 2016)
seamus dubhghaill 