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Death of Laurence Ginnell, Politician, Lawyer & Member of Parliament

Laurence Ginnell, Irish nationalist politician, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, dies in the United States on April 17, 1923. He serves as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) for North Westmeath at the 1906 United Kingdom general election. From 1910 he sits as an Independent Nationalist and at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland he is elected for Sinn Féin.

Ginnell is born in Delvin, County Westmeath, in 1852, (baptised April 9, 1852) the son of Laurence Ginnell and Mary Monaghan and twin to Michael Ginnell. He is self-educated and is called to the Irish bar as well as the Bar of England and Wales. In his youth, he is involved with the Land War and acts as private secretary to John Dillon.

The last great social and agrarian campaign of the Irish home rule movement, the Ranch War (1906 and 1909), is largely led and organised by Ginnell from the central office of the United Irish League. He is elected an MP in 1906, takes his seat at Westminster and swears allegiance to Edward VII. On October 14, 1906, he launches the “war” at Downs, County Westmeath.

The purpose of the war is to bring relief to the large numbers of landless and smallholders, particularly in the West, who are relatively untouched by the Wyndham Land Act (1903) and by the larger policy of purchase. The strategy that Ginnell pursues is the Down’s Policy, or cattle driving, a proceeding designed to harass the prosperous grazier interests, whose “ranches” occupy large, under populated and under worked tracts. The Down’s Policy is also meant to draw public attention to the scandalous inequalities that survive in the Irish countryside. The conservatives within the home rule leadership are understandably suspicious about the revival of agrarian disturbances, but the mood of the party organisation is hardening in the aftermath of a disappointing devolution bill in May 1907, from the new Liberal government, so that it seems logical to turn to the traditional mechanism for reactivating the national question: agrarian agitation.

Ginnell’s cattle drives begin to tail off after the summer of 1908, and the agitation is finally dissolved with the passage of a 1909 Act by the Liberal Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell that allows the transfer to the Irish Land Commission of farmland by compulsory purchase, which is hailed by the national movement as an historic victory. In reality, the Ranch War involves an implosion within sectors of the Irish Parliamentary Party, as its leadership has not facilitated the working of the Wyndham Land Act in the first place because John Dillon and his like want conflict above victory.

In 1909, Ginnell is expelled from the Irish Parliamentary Party for the offence of asking to see the party accounts after which he sits as an Independent Nationalist. During this time, he is addressed frequently as “The MP for Ireland.” At Westminster, he is highly critical of the British government‘s war policy and its holding of executions of certain participants in the Easter Rising of 1916. On May 9, he accuses British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, of “Murder” and is forcibly ejected from the Chamber. He visits many of the prisoners who are interned in various prisons in Wales and England.

In 1917, Ginnell campaigns to try to ensure the election of George Noble Plunkett in the North Roscommon by-election in which he defeats the IPP candidate on an abstentionist platform. Following the victory of Éamon de Valera in East Clare, while he is standing for Sinn Féin, on July 10, 1917, Ginnell joins Sinn Féin.

At the Sinn Féin ardfheis in 1917, at which the party is reconstituted as a republican party with de Valera as president, Ginnell and W. T. Cosgrave are elected Honorary Treasurers. He is imprisoned in March 1918 for encouraging land agitation and later deported to Reading Gaol. In the 1918 United Kingdom general election, he is elected as a Sinn Féin MP for the Westmeath constituency by comfortably defeating his IPP challenger. After his release from prison, he attends the proceedings of the First Dáil. Along with fellow TD James O’Mara, he is one of the only TDs to serve as a member in both the House of Commons and Dáil Éireann.

He is one of the few people to have served in the House of Commons and in the Oireachtas. He is appointed Director of Propaganda in the Second Ministry of the Irish Republic. After spending a year as a republican campaigner in Chicago, he is appointed the Representative of the Irish Republic in Argentina and South America by de Valera. He carries out his propaganda work here to distribute copies of the Irish Bulletin and to provide the Sinn Féin version of the conflict during the Irish War of Independence. On August 16, 1921, he returns home to attend the first meeting of the Second Dáil. He travels back to Argentina some months later to serve as the Representative of the Republic there.

Ginnell opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty that is ratified by the Dáil in January 1922, and is elected as an anti-Treaty Sinn Féin TD at the 1922 Irish general election on the eve of the Irish Civil War.

On September 9, 1922, Ginnell is the only anti-Treaty TD to attend the inaugural meeting of the Provisional Parliament or Third Dáil. Before signing the roll, he says, “I want some explanation before I sign. I have been elected in pursuance of a decree by Dáil Éireann, which decree embodies the decree of May 20, 1922. I have heard nothing read in reference to that decree, nothing but an Act of a foreign Parliament. I have been elected as a member of Dáil Éireann. I have not been elected to attend any such Parliament. Will anyone tell me with authority whether it is…”.

Ginnell is at this point interrupted but resumes by saying that he will sign the roll and take his seat in the Assembly if the Assembly is Dáil Éireann. He is informed he is not allowed raise any such question until a Ceann Comhairle has been elected. He continues to ask questions regardless to which he gets no answer including his question: “Will any member of the Six Counties be allowed to sit in this Dáil?” W. T. Cosgrave moves at this point that he be excluded from the House. Ginnell protests, and he is dragged out by force.

De Valera later appoints Ginnell a member of his “Council of State,” a twelve-member body set up to advise him on the deteriorating situation in the civil war. He returns to the United States soon afterward to serve as the Republic‘s envoy in the country. He orders Robert Briscoe and some of his friends to take possession of the Consular Offices in Nassau Street, New York City, then in the hands of the Irish Free State Government, to obtain the list of the subscribers to the bond drive organized to aid the struggle in the War of Independence. At the time, a court case is ongoing to decide on who has the right to the funds: the newly installed Provisional Government or de Valera, as one of the three trustees among the anti-Treatyites.

Ginnell dies in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1923, at the age of 71, still campaigning against the Anglo-Irish Treaty.


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Death of Jonah Barrington, Lawyer, Judge & Politician

Sir Jonah Barrington, KC, Irish lawyer, judge and politician, dies at Versailles, France, on April 8, 1834. He is most notable for his amusing and popular memoirs of life in late 18th-century Ireland, for his opposition to the Act of Union 1800, and for his removal from the judiciary by both Houses of Parliament in 1830, still a unique event.

Barrington is born in 1756 or 1757 in Knapton, Abbeyleix, Queen’s County (now County Laois), the third son of John Barrington, an impoverished Protestant gentleman 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.


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Birth of Anna Haslam, Campaigner for Women’s Rights

Anna Maria Haslam (née Fisher), a suffragist and a major figure in the 19th and early 20th century women’s movement in Ireland, is born in Youghal, County Cork, on April 6, 1829.

Fisher is the sixteenth of seventeen children to Jane and Abraham Fisher. The Fishers are a Quaker family with a business in Youghal. They are noted for their charitable works, especially during the Great Famine.

Fisher helps in soup kitchens and becomes involved in setting up cottage industries for local girls in lace-making, crocheting and knitting. She is brought up believing in equality for men and women and also supporting the campaign against slavery and for temperance and pacifism. She attends Quaker boarding schools, Newtown School in County Waterford and Castlegate School in York, England, which later becomes The Mount School, York. She then becomes a teaching assistant in Ackworth School, Yorkshire. She meets Thomas Haslam who is teaching there and who is from Mountmellick, County Laois. He is born into a Quaker family in 1825. He is a feminist theorist and from 1868 he write about many topics concerning female rights and issues such as prostitution, birth control and women’s suffrage.

Fisher and Haslam marry on March 20, 1854, in Cork Registry Office. Their marriage is mainly celibate as a result of them not wanting to have children. In later writings Thomas argues in favour of chastity for men. The couple shares a belief in equality for men and women and he supports her campaigns.

Both of the Haslams are expelled from the Society of Friends due to their interests in social reform but both maintain links with the community. Thomas is said to have been disowned for harbouring ideas contrary to Quaker teachings. In 1868, he publishes a pamphlet called “The Marriage Problem,” in which he raises and supports the idea of family limitation and outlines a number of contraceptive methods including the safe period. He dies on January 30, 1917, in his ninety-second year.

Haslam is best remembered today for her work for votes for women. She is a pioneer in every 19th century Irish feminist campaign and fights for votes for women from the year 1866. In 1872, she organises the “General Meeting of the members and friends of the Irish Society for Women’s Suffrage” in Blackrock, Dublin, which is chaired by George Owens and attended by MPs Maurice Brooks (a Home Ruler) and William Johnston (a northern Orangeman) and by the future Liberal Unionist Party MP Thomas Spring Rice, 2nd Baron Monteagle of Brandon. The Haslams are founding members of the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association (DWSA) in 1876. This marks the start of a remarkable campaign in Dublin for votes for women. Haslam, along with the writing of her husband, continues the campaign and in 1896 women in Ireland win the right to be elected as Poor Law Guardians, members of the official bodies which administer the Poor Law. Ireland’s early women’s rights activists have a close relationship with their English correlatives and share the same discrimination in education, employment, sexual freedom and political participation. The DWSA organises the introduction of a private member’s bill to remove disqualification “by sex or marriage” for election or serving as a poor law guardian. The bill passes in 1896 and the association immediately writes to the newspapers and publishes leaflets explaining the process on how to register to vote and stand for election and encouraged qualified women to go forward as candidate.

By 1900, there are nearly 100 women guardians. Haslam then leads a campaign to encourage qualified women to stand for election in 1898. Women win eligibility to vote in local government elections, and to stand for elections as rural and urban district councillors. In 1913, she steps down as secretary of the Association and is elected life-president.

One of Haslam’s longest campaigns, working alongside the Belfast suffragist Isabella Tod, is for repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864. The acts allow for state regulation of prostitutes in areas in which the army is stationed. The act permits compulsory internment of women for up to three months, which is later extended to one year. Medical treatment is also enforced on the women. The act seeks only to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among the military. She opposes the act as she feels it legitimises prostitution, commoditises women and undermines family life. It is finally repealed following eighteen years of campaigning.

Haslam is involved in the 1866 petition and gathers 1,499 signatures to extend suffrage to women as well as men. In 1867, male suffrage is extended but it is not until 1911 that the Suffrage movement achieves the significant victory of securing the right of women to stand for election as local councillors.

In 1918, a woman of almost ninety, Haslam goes to the polls “surrounded by flowers and flags,” with women who unite in her honour to celebrate the victory of the vote. This display of unity by activist women from all shades of political opinion acknowledge her role in the fight for the right to vote. The same year in which she dies, in 1922, the Irish Free State extends the vote to all men and women over the age of 21.

Haslam dies on November 28, 1922, at her home in Carlton Terrace, Dublin, of “cardiac dropsy” at the age of 93. She is buried next to her husband in the Quaker burying ground at the Friends Burial Ground in Temple Hill, Blackrock, Dublin.

A memorial seat to Anna and Thomas Haslam is erected in 1923 in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, with the inscription “in honour of their long years of public service chiefly devoted to the enfranchisement of women.” 

Haslam’s name and picture, as well as those of 58 other women’s suffrage supporters, are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.


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Birth of Graham Shillington, Northern Irish Police Officer

Sir Robert Edward Graham Shillington CBE, a senior Northern Irish police officer, is born on April 2, 1911, in Portadown, County Armagh. He serves as Chief Constable of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) from 1970 to 1973.

Shillington is the youngest of six children born to Major David Graham Shillington, who goes on to become a Member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and Sarah Louisa (née Collen). He is educated at Castle Park School, a preparatory school in Dublin, and Sedbergh School, a public boarding school in Sedbergh, Cumbria, North West England. He then attends Clare College, Cambridge, where he studies natural sciences. He graduates Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1932.

Shillington originally plans to join the Northern Ireland Civil Service, however he wants a more varied career. He joins the Royal Ulster Constabulary on February 8, 1933, as a cadet officer. He completes his training at the Newtownards depot in County Down. He is promoted to district inspector in 1935, and serves as officer in charge of D District in Belfast. In 1944, he is promoted to 1st Class District Inspector and is posted to Derry, County Londonderry.

In 1953, after nine years in Derry, Shillington is promoted to County Inspector and returns to Belfast. There, he joins the Inspector General’s Headquarters and serves in an administrative post. On January 16, 1961, he is appointed Commissioner of Belfast City.

In 1969, Shillington is appointed Deputy Inspector-General of the RUC, as second-in-command to the Inspector-General, Anthony Peacocke, who, like Shillington, had been educated at Sedbergh and Cambridge. When the Battle of the Bogside breaks out in Derry in August 1969, he requests permission to use CS gas for the first time in the United Kingdom. When that does not halt the rioting, he requests that the British Army be brought in. He telephones Peacocke on August 13 in order to persuade him of this. Peacocke, who has long denied the need for army involvement, eventually agrees, but his reputation never recovers and following the publication of the Hunt Report in October he resigns as Inspector-General.

Shortly thereafter, Sir Arthur Young is seconded from the City of London Police to be the last Inspector-General and the first Chief Constable of the RUC. James Callaghan, then Home Secretary, sends him to implement the Hunt Report. Young’s measures introduce the standard British rank system for police officers in Northern Ireland and disbands the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). Shillington remains as Young’s deputy, and when the latter returns to the mainland in 1970 he succeeds him to become the RUC’s second Chief Constable.

In the 1952 New Year Honours, Shillington is appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). He is promoted to Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1959 Queen’s Birthday Honours. He is knighted in the 1972 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Shillington marries Mary (Peggy) Bulloch in 1935. They have two sons and a daughter. He dies on August 14, 2001, at the age of 90, in a County Armagh nursing home.


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Birth of Hugh Hamilton, Church of Ireland Bishop

Hugh Hamilton FRS, mathematician, natural philosopher (scientist) and professor at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and later a Church of Ireland bishop, Bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh and then Bishop of Ossory, is born at Knock, near Balrothery in Fingal, County Dublin, on March 26, 1729.

Hamilton is the eldest son of Alexander and Isabella Hamilton. His father is a solicitor and politician who represents the Killyleagh constituency in the Irish House of Commons from 1739 to 1759. Alexander’s great-grandfather Hugh Hamilton migrates from Scotland to County Down in the early 17th century. The Scottish architect James Hamilton of Finnart is an ancestor. Isabella Hamilton is born Isabella Maxwell, the daughter of Robert Maxwell of Finnebrogue, Downpatrick. Hugh’s siblings include George Hamilton, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) and Charles, father of the wealthy Canadian lumber merchant and politician  George Hamilton.

Hamilton enters Trinity College Dublin on November 17, 1742, at the age of 13 with Thomas McDonnell as his tutor. He graduates Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1747 and Trinity Master of Arts (MA Dubl) in 1750. He takes the competitive examination for a vacant fellowship of the college in 1750, but the position is secured instead by his friend Richard Murray, who is a few years older. Two fellowships become vacant the following year and Hamilton is elected to one of them at the age of 22. He is appointed Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin in 1759 and that same year graduates Bachelor of Divinity (BD). He is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on February 19, 1761, and graduates Doctor of Divinity (DD) in 1762.

Trinity College presents him to the rectory of Kilmacrennan in the diocese of Raphoe, County Donegal, in 1764. This is a small benefice in the gift of the college, for which he resigns his fellowship. He retains the Erasmus Smith’s chair, however, being succeeded in that by Thomas Wilson in 1769. He resigns from Kilmacrenan in 1767 and becomes vicar of St. Ann’s Church in Dublin.

Hamilton then becomes Dean of Armagh, the chief resident cleric of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, County Armagh, from April 1768 to 1796. Finding the existing dean’s house inconvenient and poorly situated, he has a new one built in a better location just off Portadown Road, now known as Dean’s Hill. The house, of three stories and a semi-basement, is built in 1772–74. The house is later sold by the church and the present owners provide bed and breakfast accommodation in it. While dean he also acts as treasurer for the infirmary or county hospital, he establishes Sunday schools in the districts of the parish, and he founds a charitable loan for poor tradesmen. He is also instrumental in planning a piped water supply for the town, which is later put into effect. He is one of the 38 original members of the Royal Irish Academy when it is founded in 1785. Gilbert Stuart paints his portrait in about 1790 (pictured above).

Hamilton is promoted to Bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh on January 20, 1796, without seeking it. On January 24, 1799, he is translated to Ossory, where he is bishop until 1805. He dies of a fever at Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, on December 1, 1805. He is buried in the graveyard of St. Canice’s Cathedral at Kilkenny, and there is a memorial to him inside the cathedral.

Hamilton writes a mathematical treatise on conic sections called De Sectionibus Conicis: Tractatus Geometricus, published in 1758. In this book he “was the first to deduce the properties of the conic section from the properties of the cone, by demonstrations which were general, unencumbered by lemmas, and proceeding in a more natural and perspicuous order,” according to writer James Wills in 1847. The work is acclaimed for its lucidity and Leonhard Euler describes it as a perfect book. It is “soon adopted in all the British universities” and is translated from Latin into English as A Geometrical Treatise of the Conic Sections in 1773.

Hamilton also writes Philosophical Essays on Vapours (1767), Four Introductory Lectures on Natural Philosophy (1774), and An Essay on the Existence and Attributes of the Supreme Being (1784). His principal works are collected and republished, with a memoir, as The Works of the Right Rev. Hugh Hamilton by his eldest son, Alexander Hamilton, in two volumes in 1809.

Hamilton marries Isabella, daughter of Hans Widman Wood of Rosmead, County Westmeath, in 1772. Isabella’s mother Frances is the twin sister of Edward King, 1st Earl of Kingston. They have five sons and two daughters. They are Alexander, who was a barrister; Frances; Hans, who is rector of Knocktopher, County Kilkenny, and associated with the Carrickshock incident of 1831; Isabella; Henry; George, who is a biblical scholar; and Hugh, who marries Elizabeth Staples, a daughter of John Staples, a Member of Parliament. The younger Hugh is the great-grandfather of Clive Staples Lewis, better known as C. S. Lewis. Bishop Hugh Hamilton is a great-great-great-grandfather of the mathematicians John Lighton Synge and his brother Edward Hutchinson Synge. Dodgson Hamilton Madden, the High Court judge and noted scholar, is Hamilton’s great-grandson.

(Pictured: “Hugh Hamilton,” oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart)


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Birth of Patrick Guiney, Irish Nationalist Politician

Patrick Guiney, Irish Nationalist politician, agrarian agitator and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, is born in Newmarket, County Cork, on March 16, 1867.

Guiney is the eldest son of Timothy Guiney, a shopkeeper and later clerk of Kanturk poor law union, and Ellen Carver. He is educated at St. Patrick’s Monastery, Mountrath, County Laois. He serves three terms of imprisonment for activity in the Land War and later Plan of Campaign movement during the 1880s under the Coercion Act. He becomes a farmer and serves as councillor for Newmarket and on the Cork County Council (1908–11) as well as Chair of Newmarket Agricultural Society, Newmarket Gaelic League and Newmarket Old-Age Pensions Committee.

With strong family connection in the North Cork area, Guiney builds a personal political base as a Land and Labour Association activist, skilled in organising land agitation and deploying it at a local level to make landlords agree to sales terms under the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903. A supporter of William O’Brien‘s All-for-Ireland League, he is elected MP for North Cork in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election. He is re-elected in the following December 1910 United Kingdom general election, when he also contests (unsuccessfully) for East Kerry.

Guiney marries Nanette O’Connor of Ballyclogh, Mallow, County Cork, in 1895.

Guiney dies at his home in Newmarket on October 12, 1913, after contracting pneumonia and is buried in Clonfert Cemetery, Newmarket.

Guiney’s brother, John, a solicitor in Kanturk, is returned unopposed for his seat in the resulting 1913 North Cork by-election. They are uncles of Philip Burton, Fine Gael TD for Cork North-East from 1961 to 1969, and member of the Seanad from 1973 to 1977.

(Pictured: All-for-Ireland League group portrait of five of its Members of Parliament, in the “Cork Free Press”, 30 July 1910. These are: Patrick Guiney (North Cork), James Gilhooly (West Cork), Maurice Healy (North-east Cork), D. D. Sheehan (Mid Cork), and Eugene Crean (South-east Cork))


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Birth of Charles McGuinness, Sailor & Adventurer

Charles John McGuinness, sailor and adventurer, is born on March 6, 1893, in Derry, County Londonderry.

McGuinness is the elder of two sons of John McGuinness, sea captain and harbourmaster who is born in the United States, and Margaret McGuinness (née Hernand) from Donegal, County Donegal.

In 1908, at the age of 15, McGuinness leaves home, stowing away in a ship and traveling extensively throughout the world for several years. At the age of 17 he is involved in the first of several shipwrecks, drifting for two weeks on a lifeboat before being rescued near Tahiti. He works as a pearl fisher in the South Seas for a year before resuming his nautical career.

In 1913, McGuinness travels through Canada, working as a panhandler and briefly joining the Canadian Militia. In August 1914, following the outbreak of World War I, he joins the British navy, serving in Admiral Reginald Bacon‘s Dover Patrol and in Cameroon. After learning of the 1916 Easter Rising, he deserts the British navy but later joins the South African Army, in which he fights in east Africa. He is captured by the German Schutztruppe of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck but manages to escape by trekking through the jungle.

Disillusioned with the war, McGuinness resumes his travels. In 1920, he returns to Derry and joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA), leading a flying column in northwest Ireland. McGuinness, who reputedly introduces the first monkey to Derry, is viewed locally as an eccentric adventurer but is much celebrated for his instrumental role in the daring escape of Frank Carty, the IRA Sligo Brigade commander, from Derry jail.

Wanted for the murder of Inspector Robert Johnson in Glasgow, a charge he denies, McGuinness is captured by the British army in June 1921 after a failed bank raid in Glenties, County Donegal, but escapes from Derry’s Ebrington Barracks before his identity is established. Shortly after the truce in July 1921 he is sent by Liam Mellows to Germany, from where he smuggles arms to Ireland. After the treaty split, he continues to smuggle arms for the republican side but leaves the IRA, having become disillusioned with its incompetence. He claims to have been arrested in Berlin in 1922 for conspiring with Bulgarian revolutionaries, and released on condition that he leaves the state.

McGuinness emigrates to New York in 1923 where, following an alleged spell of employment by Chiang Kai-shek‘s forces in China, he establishes himself as a building contractor. In 1928, he joins Admiral Richard E. Byrd‘s expedition to the Antarctic, serving as a navigation officer. At a reception on his return in 1929, he presents the mayor of New York City, Jimmy Walker, with an Irish tricolour which, he claims, Byrd had flown over the South Pole. He is not, as he claims, awarded a congressional medal by the secretary of the navy.

In 1930, McGuinness embarks on a new career, smuggling rum between Canada and the United States (his memoirs of which are subsequently published in the American press under the pseudonym “Night-Hawk”). After losing his fortune when his boat and cargo are impounded in the summer of 1931, he travels to the Soviet Union to observe communism at first hand. He remains in the Soviet Union around two years, where he claims to work as a harbourmaster in Murmansk, and forms an unfavourable opinion of the Soviet Union.

McGuinness’s autobiography, Nomad, is published in 1934. His publisher, Methuen Publishing, is sued for considerable damages by the notorious Alderman John William Nixon, MP, as a result of McGuinness’s veiled reference to him as the former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detective inspector who led a murder gang in Belfast in 1922, believed responsible for the murder of the McMahon family.

In late 1936, McGuinness joins the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War but soon deserts after disagreements with the authorities. He returns to Ireland, where he pens a sensational exposé of the International Brigades, I fought with the Reds, which is published by the Irish Independent. He also writes colourful accounts of life under communism, such as Behind the Iron Curtain, under the pseudonym “Peter Dawson.”

In 1942, while serving as chief petty officer in the marine service at Haulbowline, McGuinness offers to assist the German legation by smuggling spies out of Ireland. Despite his British naval service, he is virulently anti-British. According to local legend he has the sole of both feet tattooed with the Union Jack so wherever he goes he is safe in the knowledge that he is “trampling on the butcher’s apron.” He is arrested and sentenced to seven years imprisonment but is released shortly after the end of the Emergency.

McGuinness is believed to have died on December 4, 1947, when he supposedly drowns alongside four other crew members of the schooner Isaalt that he is piloting on Ballymoney Strand near Gorey, County Wexford. Two members of the crew survive, managing to swim ashore, the ship is a mere 100 metres from land. However, members of McGuinness’ family express doubt over the years. A nephew claims to have encountered McGuinness on the London Underground in 1955. Upon their gazes meeting, McGuinness is reported to smile and say four simple words: “You never saw me.”

(From: “McGuinness, Charles John” by Fearghal McGarry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of James Chichester-Clark, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

James Dawson Chichester-Clark, Baron Moyola, the penultimate Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and eighth leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), is born as James Dawson Clark on February 12, 1923, at Moyola Park, near Castledawson, County Londonderry, his family’s ancestral home.

Chichester-Clark is the eldest of three children of James Lenox-Conyngham Clark and Marion Caroline Dehra (née Chichester). His brother is Robin Chichester-Clark and his sister is Penelope Hobhouse, the garden writer and historian.

In 1924, James Clark Snr. changes the family name to Chichester-Clark by deed poll, thus preventing the old Protestant Ascendancy name Chichester, his wife’s maiden name, from dying out. On his mother’s side the family are descended from the Donegall Chichesters and are the heirs of the Dawsons of Castledawson, who had originally held Moyola Park.

Educated, against his own wishes, at Selwyn House, Broadstairs, and then Eton College, Chichester-Clark leaves school and enters adulthood in the midst of World War II. On joining the Irish Guards, the regiment of his grandfather, in Omagh, he begins his year-long training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before receiving his commission as a second lieutenant.

Chichester-Clark marries widow Moyra Haughton (née Morris) in 1959. Lady Moyola’s first husband, Capt. Thomas Haughton from Cullybackey, had been killed in the RAF Nutts Corner air crash in January 1953. She, while pregnant, is seriously injured in the crash and suffers a broken neck.  He and his wife have two daughters (Tara and Fiona), in addition to Moyra’s son Michael from her previous marriage. Lady Moyola is a cousin of Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell, Lord Lieutenant of County Londonderry (1975–2000). Chichester-Clark serves as his Vice Lord-Lieutenant.

Chichester-Clark is an officer in the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, part of 24th Infantry Brigade attached to British 1st Infantry Division, and participates briefly in the Anzio landings. He is injured on February 23, 1944, by an 88m shell as he and his Platoon Sergeant take their first look at the ground in the “gullies” to the west of the Anzio–Albano Laziale road. His company is all but wiped out, and he spends most of the war in hospital recovering from injuries, the effects of which stay with him throughout his life.

Following the war, Chichester-Clark’s military career takes him from the dull duties of the post-war occupation of Germany, to Canada as aide-de-camp to Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, then Governor General of Canada. The popularity and competence of his senior officer makes this uneventful two-year period of his life the most remarkable element of his pre-parliamentary career. On returning from Canada, he continues in the Army for several years, refusing promotion to seniority before retiring a major in 1960.

In an uncontested by-election in 1960, Chichester-Clark takes over the South Londonderry seat in the Northern Ireland Parliament that had been held by his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker, since 1933. As Dehra Chichester, she is an MP for the county of Londonderry until 1929 when she stands down for a first time. Chichester-Clark’s father replaces her in 1929 when the county is split, but he suddenly dies in 1933. Dehra, by then remarried, willingly returns to Northern Ireland from England, and wins the ensuing by-election.

Chichester-Clark retains the seat for the remainder of the Parliament’s existence, and so the South Londonderry area is represented by three generations of the same family for the entire period of the Northern Ireland House of Commons. Between 1929 and the last election in 1969, the family is challenged for the seat on only two occasions, the second being in 1969, when future Westminster MP Bernadette Devlin stands, attracting 39% of the vote.

Chichester-Clark makes his maiden speech on February 8, 1961, during the Queen’s speech debate.

For the remainder of Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough‘s premiership, Chichester-Clark remains on the back benches. It is not until 1963, when Terence O’Neill becomes Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, that he is appointed assistant whip, and a month later when William Craig is promoted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, he takes over as Government Chief Whip. Accounts of the period are that he enjoys the Whip’s office more than any other he is to subsequently hold in politics. This despite including references to anti O’Neill MP and future Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Westminster MP, John McQuade, and the occasional “good row.” From the outset, O’Neill takes the unusual decision to allow Chichester-Clark to attend and speak at all cabinet meetings while Chief Whip. Proving a competent parliamentary party administrator, O’Neill adds Leader of the House of Commons to Chichester-Clark’s duties in October 1966, a promotion that makes him a full member of the Cabinet. He is also sworn into the Privy Council of Northern Ireland in 1966.

In 1967, O’Neill sacks his Minister of Agriculture, Harry West, for ministerial impropriety, and Chichester-Clark is appointed in his place, a position he retains for two quiet years. On April 23, 1969, he resigns from the Cabinet one day prior to a crucial Parliamentary Party meeting, claiming that he disagrees with the Prime Minister’s decision to grant universal suffrage in local government elections at that time. He states that he disagrees not with the principle of one man one vote but with the timing of the decision, having the previous day expressed doubts over the expediency of the measure in Cabinet. It has since been suggested that his resignation was in order to accelerate O’Neill’s own resignation, and to improve his own position in the jostling to succeed him.

O’Neill “finally walked away” five days later on April 28, 1969. In order to beat his only serious rival, Brian Faulkner, Chichester-Clark needs the backing of O’Neill-ite MPs elected at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, to which end he attends a tea party in O’Neill’s honour only days after causing his resignation.

Chichester-Clark beats Faulkner in the 1969 Ulster Unionist Party leadership election by one vote on May 1, 1969, with his predecessor using his casting vote in the tied election for his distant cousin because “Faulkner had been stabbing him in the back for a lot longer.” Although Faulkner believes, until his death, that he is the victim of an upper-class conspiracy to deny him the premiership, he becomes a high profile and loyal member of Chichester-Clark’s cabinet.

Chichester-Clark’s premiership is punctuated by civil unrest that erupts after August 1969. He suffers from the effects of the Hunt Report, which recommends the disbandment of the Ulster Special Constabulary, which his Government accepts to the consternation of many Unionists.

In April 1970, Chichester-Clark’s predecessor and another Unionist MP resign their seats in the Northern Ireland House of Commons. The by-election campaigns are punctuated by major liberal speeches by senior government figures like Brian Faulkner, Jack Andrews and the Prime Minister himself. Ian Paisley‘s Protestant Unionist Party (PUP), however, takes both seats in the House of Commons. Later that same month the O’Neill-ite group, the New Ulster Movement, becomes the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and his party begins passing votes of no confidence in him.

As the civil unrest grows, the British Government, particularly the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, becomes increasingly involved in Northern Ireland’s affairs, forcing Chichester-Clark’s hand on many issues. These include the disbanding of the “B” Specials of the Ulster Special Constabulary and, importantly, the handing over of operational control of the security forces to the British Army General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland.

On March 9, 1971, the Provisional Irish Republican Army lures three off-duty soldiers from a pub in Belfast to a lane way outside the city, where they kill them. Chichester-Clark flies to London on March 18, 1971, to request a new security initiative from the new British prime minister Edward Heath, who offers an extra 1,300 troops, and resists what he sees as an attempt by Chichester-Clark to gain political control over them. Chichester-Clark resigns on March 20.

On March 23, 1971, Brian Faulkner is elected UUP leader in a vote by Unionist MP’s, defeating William Craig by twenty-six votes to four. He is appointed prime minister the same day.

On July 20, 1971, Chichester-Clark is created a life peer as Baron Moyola, of Castledawson in the County of Londonderry, his title taken from the name of his family’s estate. He endorses the Good Friday Agreement in the 1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement referendum. He remains quiet about his political career in his retirement. Lady Moyola, however, says that her husband does enjoy the time – contrary to popular opinion – and that he thinks of life as an MP as akin to that of an army welfare officer.

Chichester Clark dies on May 17, 2002, at the age of 79, following a short illness. His funeral takes place at Christ Church in Castledawson on May 21. He is the last surviving Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.


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Gerry Adams Threatens to Walk Away from Peace Process

On February 8, 2000, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams issues a stark warning that he is ready to walk away from the Northern Ireland peace process if the Government re-imposes direct rule from Westminster.

Adams tells reporters, “I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life trying to shore up a process that is going to be in perpetual crisis.” His words are taken as those of an exhausted and deeply frustrated politician, angry that the bulk of the blame for the impasse has been directed at him and his colleagues.

They also raise, in a very stark way, the question of what effect the suspension of the new political institutions will have on Sinn Féin. In the days leading up to Adams’s announcement, the efforts of London and Dublin are primarily directed at saving David Trimble‘s leadership of his party. Peter Mandelson, MP for Hartlepool, emphasises the importance of this in the House of Commons on February 8. To abandon Trimble at this time would be seen as a betrayal that would even further harden political attitudes in the broad unionist community.

This leads to both governments putting a degree of pressure on the republican movement, Sinn Féin as well as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which is having entirely predictable and dangerous results. The old, familiar sense of beleaguered isolation, summed up in the party’s name, is reasserting itself. Adams has told the British government that he believes his position as Sinn Féin’s president will very quickly become untenable if the political institutions are suspended. The most common reaction to this news is, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” The inference is that Adams is firing a warning shot across the bows of both governments, that there are two parties to this dispute and both need to be protected.

There is deep pessimism among republicans about what will happen if the Executive is suspended for any length of time. The fear is that it will be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to put it together again. Over a period of weeks and months, confidence in the political process, already pretty fragile at grass roots level, will likely ebb even further. Adams, Martin McGuinness, Mitchel McLauglin and others closely identified with the move to a political strategy will be seen to have failed.

One Sinn Féin source, a staunch supporter of the peace process, says, “Already there’s a widespread suspicion that we’ve been suckered into this by the British government, helped by Dublin. The long-term aim has always been to destroy Sinn Féin politically. There’s no pressure on the loyalists to disarm because they don’t represent a political threat. If Adams is seen to have misjudged this, what else can he do but resign?”

Many dismiss this as the old republican paranoia coming once again into play. But it is important to understand how this crisis appears to very many people within Sinn Féin. It is not just a matter of a hundred or so IRA activists seeing the hand-over of weapons as a surrender. There has always been a profound suspicion of politics, not only within the IRA, but at many other levels. Politics has always failed to deliver the holy grail of a united Ireland.

Some of these people believe that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are cynical opportunists who have sold out for the rewards of office. Many more see them as sincere, but mistaken, in their strategy. They genuinely believe that they have been seduced by the British government, probably with the active co-operation of Dublin, by the promise of political progress. Now they are in a position where Sinn Féin is carrying all the opprobrium for the breakdown.

If, as seems likely, it is necessary to hold an election for a new assembly, Sinn Féin will be greatly weakened. The party’s hopes of taking Dáil seats will also be diminished. As Sinn Féin is seen to lose ground, there will almost certainly be a drift back to violence, sporadic at first, but gathering momentum.

This conspiracy theory, and the bleak scenario it predicts probably sounds utterly fanciful to many, those who lay the blame for this threat to the peace process squarely on the IRA. Possibly the republican movement is simply preparing itself for a retreat to the political trenches, and putting forward reasons to justify this. But there is also a danger that such an interpretation of what has happened could gain much wider credibility in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.

There is a profound sense of disappointment that the Executive is about to be suspended. It is quite striking how many professional interest groups – doctors, teachers, farmers – express their satisfaction with local politicians and a reluctance to go back to dealing with “remote, ignorant, arrogant” British ministers.

For nationalists there has been the added satisfaction of seeing their own elected representatives taking up posts in government and performing well. For the first time, many of them feel that they are equal citizens in Northern Ireland. Now, it seems, that could be put at risk, to save David Trimble’s “pretty valuable” skin.

If this does prove to be the case, sympathy will swing back to Sinn Féin. Within his own community, Adams is not seen as having betrayed the peace process. On the contrary, along with John Hume, he is seen as one of its main architects. If Adams had decided to resign the leadership of his party, or had been forced to do so, it would have been seen by many nationalists as proving that politics, within the context of Northern Ireland, cannot work.

(From: “What future if Adams walks away from peace efforts now?” by Mary Holland, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, February 10, 2000)


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Death of William Congreve, Playwright & Poet

William Congreve, English playwright, satirist and poet, dies at his home in Surrey Street, London, on January 19, 1729.

Congreve is born on January 24, 1670, at Bardsley, West Yorkshire, England, the son of William Congreve, an army officer, and Mary Browning of Doncaster. In 1674, his father gains a commission as lieutenant in the army in Ireland, and moves with his family to the garrison port of Youghal, County Cork, where they remain until 1678. After a brief period at Carrickfergus, they move in 1681 to Kilkenny, where his father is assigned to the Duke of Ormond‘s regiment. This service entitles Congreve to a free education at the renowned Kilkenny College, where Jonathan Swift is also a student, and where he receives an excellent schooling in classics. He forms a lasting friendship with another pupil, Joseph Kelly, a lawyer and MP for Doneraile (1705–13), with whom he later maintains a lengthy correspondence. In April 1686, he enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) as a classical scholar and, again like Swift, is taught by St. George Ashe. It seems likely that his degree is disrupted by the political upheaval of 1688 as the college is forced to close in 1689 and his BA is not recorded.

At this point, Congreve leaves Ireland and spends the spring and summer of 1689 with relatives in Staffordshire. He subsequently moves to London, and in March 1691 enters the Middle Temple. He is not assiduous in his legal studies, preferring to socialise with intellectuals and writers, notably John Dryden, to pursue literary projects. In 1692, under the pseudonym “Cleophil,” he published Incognita, or, Love and Duty Reconciled, a romantic novella reputedly written while he is a student in Dublin. He also contributes some verse to Charles Gildon‘s Miscellany (1692), as well as two translations from Homer and three odes to Dryden’s Examen poeticum (1693). Dryden evidently thinks highly of the young writer, and with his advice and approbation Congreve’s first play, The Old Batchelor, is recommended by the Irish playwright Thomas Southerne to Thomas Davenant, manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. A fast-paced and witty comedy, concerning amorous appetites, The Old Batchelor is accepted and opens on March 9, 1693, to popular acclaim, enjoying an unusually long run of fourteen nights. Among the cast are Thomas Doggett, still relatively unknown, as Fondlewife, and a young English actress and singer, Anne Bracegirdle as Amarinta, with whom Congreve falls in love and begins a prolonged relationship. The play is dedicated to his friend Charles Boyle, eldest son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Burlington, whose estates Congreve’s father had begun to manage in 1690.

After this early success, Congreve is dismayed by the poor reception of his next play, a domestic comedy with dark undertones entitled The Double Dealer, which is staged in December 1693 and criticised as immoral and unflattering in its representation of women. Its popularity improves somewhat when Mary II, Queen of England, soon after its undistinguished debut, commands a performance. When the queen dies the following year, Congreve eulogises her in The Mourning Muse of Alexis, a Pastoral. Regarded by contemporaries as his finest literary work, it is rewarded by a gift of £100 from King William III. Production of his next play is delayed by the revolt of the Drury Lane actors against the management of Christopher Rich. Congreve supports the actors and their petition to the Lord Chamberlain to reopen the theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. When their request is granted, the renovated theatre opens on April 30, 1695, with Congreve’s enduring romantic comedy Love for Love, and the playwright being made a shareholder in the new company. A characteristically witty and well-plotted comedy, the production of Love for Love is particularly notable for Doggett’s sparkling performance as Sailor Ben. Congreve’s dramatic success also brings political advancement, as he receives his first government appointment as commissioner for hackney coaches.

Congreve returns to Ireland for most of 1696, where, with Southerne, he receives an MA from TCD, and probably visits his parents, then living at Lismore Castle, County Waterford. He also begins work on a tragedy entitled The Mourning Bride, which becomes an instant hit at Lincoln’s Inn Fields when it is first performed in February 1697 and running for thirteen nights. Despite his considerable success and popularity, he is deeply disconcerted by Jeremy Collier‘s aggressively anti-theatrical pamphlet, Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), which targets John Vanbrugh, Dryden, and Congreve. He is stung into a response, publishing Amendments of Mr. Collier’s False and Imperfect Citations (1698), which eloquently defends his dramatic methodology, but is rendered less effective by an emotional and ill-judged tone. His theatrical acumen seems to be at odds with the times, for in the dedication to his next play, The Way of the World, he observes that “little of it was prepar’d for that general taste which seems now to be predominant in the pallats of our audience.” Nevertheless, he is still bitterly disappointed by the disparaging response to its first performance on March 12, 1700. Dryden, however, realises the merit of the play, which is now recognised as Congreve’s masterpiece and a landmark in the dramatic tradition of the comedy of manners.

Disheartened, Congreve abandons play-writing, but he maintains his theatrical connections and embarks upon several collateral projects, producing a libretto for The Judgement of Paris (1701), and collaborating with Vanbrugh and the poet William Walsh on a translation of Molière‘s Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, staged as Squire Trelooby at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre in 1704. Less successfully, he makes an ill-advised investment with Vanbrugh in a new theatre and opera house in the Haymarket, from which he withdraws with financial losses in 1705. His opera libretto Semele, written for the opening of the new theatre, is not performed until 1744, when it is scored by George Frideric Handel, though John Eccles writes a score in 1707 which remains unperformed until 1972. In the early 1700s his relationship with Anne Bracegirdle falters, though they remain lifelong friends.

In 1710, Congreve publishes The Works of Mr. William Congreve in three volumes. He continues throughout his life to write poetry, ballads, essays, and other miscellaneous pieces. He remains active and influential in literary and theatrical circles, often assisting young writers such as Charles Hopkins, son of Ezekiel Hopkins, Bishop of Derry, and Alexander Pope, who dedicates to him The Iliad (1715). Financially, however, he becomes increasingly dependent upon various minor government posts. He belongs for many years to the celebrated Kit-Cat Club, alongside such prominent writers, wits, and whigs as Richard Boyle, 2nd Earl of Cork, Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Walsh, and Vanbrugh. Through the good offices of his friend Jonathan Swift, he retains his government position as Commissioner of Wines during the Tory administration of 1710–14. His party loyalty is rewarded in 1714 when he receives a lucrative government appointment as Secretary of the island of Jamaica. His personal life also improves around this time, as a friendship with Lady Henrietta Godolphin develops into a love affair that lasts for the rest of his life. They have one daughter, Mary (1723–64).

Congreve suffers for much of his life from gout and failing eyesight. These afflictions worsen with age, though friends remark that his cheerful temper survived unaffected. He is involved in a coach accident in September 1728, and dies January 19, 1729, at his home in Surrey Street, likely from a related injury. He names Francis Godolphin, 2nd Earl of Godolphin, his lover’s husband, as his executor, and bequeaths almost his entire estate to Henrietta, thereby discreetly leaving his property to his daughter. He is buried in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey, on January 26.

Letters and manuscripts of Congreve are held in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, the British Library, London, and the National Archives of Scotland. Several likenesses are in the National Portrait Gallery, London, including the portrait in oils shown above by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1709).

(From: “Congreve, William” by Sinéad Sturgeon, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009; Pictured: Portrait of William Congreve (1709) by Sir Godfrey Kneller)