In a March 4, 2008, announcement, the Rev. Ian Paisley signals the end of an era by announcing he will retire as First Minister of Northern Ireland. He also confirms he is stepping down as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the party he founded in the early 1970s. The news represents a huge moment in the politics and recent history of Northern Ireland, removing from the scene as it does one of its most striking figures.
The 81-year-old announces he will quit both posts following an international investment conference in Belfast in May 2008 but will remain as an MP and Assembly member.
“I came to this decision a few weeks ago when I was thinking very much about the conference and what was going come after the conference,” Paisley tells Ulster Television. “I thought that it is a marker, a very big marker and it would be a very appropriate time for me to bow out.”
Paisley denies he is leaving in part over allegations that his son, Ian Paisley Jr., lobbied Downing Street on behalf of a wealthy party member. He says his son has been “wrongly accused.” He is also weakened over defeat in a recent by-election – an indication that a section of the DUP’s electorate is uneasy about his historic decision to share power with Sinn Féin.
Significantly, Paisley does not back any contender in the DUP leadership contest to succeed him. “This is not the Church of Rome. I have no right to say who will succeed me. I will not be like Putin in Russia saying to the president – ‘this is the way you have to go.’ When I make a break it will be [a] break.”
Paisley defends his decision to enter into government with Sinn Féin. “It was the right thing to do because it was the only thing to do to save us from a united Ireland. We were threatened that we would be more Irish in our rulership, that there would be more Dublin say in government. That was what the British government threatened. We managed to put that to a rest.”
“We have laid to rest that and republicans have come to see that they have to put up with Paisley and his clan. We took what was meant for our destruction and turned it into our salvation.”
Speaking from Dubai the previous night, the deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, says, “It wasn’t unexpected. It was the right decision to go into sharing power with Sinn Féin which changed the politics of Ireland forever.”
The Sinn Féin MP describes Paisley as “courageous” for agreeing to enter into the power-sharing government. “We have had a positive and constructive working relationship,” McGuinness said.
Paisley’s fiercest critic within unionism, the ex-DUP MEP, Jim Allister, claims opposition to his power-sharing with Sinn Féin and his relationship with McGuinness means that Paisley “jumped before he was pushed.”
Allister’s new party, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), split the DUP vote in a by-election in February 2008 and cost the party a council seat in County Down. It was Paisley’s first electoral test since he agreed to share power with Sinn Féin following the St. Andrews Agreement at the end of 2006.
In April 2008, Peter Robinson is chosen to succeed Paisley as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. The 36 DUP members of the Northern Ireland Assembly unanimously select Robinson, who has been MP for Belfast East since 1979 and Paisley’s deputy since 1980. He is the Minister of Finance and Personnel in the Northern Ireland Executive – Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government – for the previous year.
(From: “Paisley to step down as Ulster’s first minister” by Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent, The Guardian, March 4, 2008)
Pigott is born in Ratoath, County Meath, in 1835, the son of George Pigott of Ratoath, and his wife, a woman from Roscommon. As a young man he supports Irish nationalism and works on the publications The Nation and The Tablet before acting as manager of The Irishman, a newspaper founded by Denis Holland. James O’Connor later claims Pigott embezzled funds from The Irishman and covered his tracks by not keeping written records. He also works for the Irish National Land League, departing in 1883 after accusing its treasurer, Mr. Fagan, of being unable to account for £100,000 (equivalent to £10,700,000 in 2021) of its funds and for keeping inadequate records. Nothing is done about his accusation, and he turns against the League, which is allied to the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) led by the League’s president, Charles Stewart Parnell.
In 1879 Pigott is proprietor of three newspapers, which he soon sells to the League. Hitherto a zealous nationalist, from 1884 onwards he vilifies his former associates and sells information to their political opponents. In an effort to destroy Parnell’s career, he forges several letters which purport that Parnell had supported the perpetrators of the Phoenix Park murders of 1882.
The Times purchases Pigott’s forgeries for £1,780 (equivalent to £211,000 in 2021) and publishes the most damning letter on April 18, 1887. Parnell immediately denounces it as “a villainous and barefaced forgery.” In February 1889, the Parnell Commission vindicates him by proving that the letters are fake. They included misspellings (specifically ‘hesitency [sic]’) which Pigott had written elsewhere. A libel action instituted by Parnell also vindicates him, and his parliamentary career survives the Pigott accusations.
The Commission eventually produces thirty-seven volumes of evidence, covering not just the forgeries but also the surrounding violence that follows from the Plan of Campaign.
After admitting his forgeries to Henry Labouchère, Pigott flees to Spain and apparently shoots himself on March 1, 1889, in a hotel room in Madrid, a city in which O’Shea has a network of connections, and Pigott himself apparently has none. Parnell then sues The Times for libel, and the newspaper pays him £5,000 (equivalent to £588,000 in 2021) in an out-of-court settlement, as well as considerably more in legal fees. When Parnell next enters the House of Commons, he receives a hero’s reception from his fellow Members of Parliament.
(Pictured: Pigott as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, March 1889)
In his early years, Devlin is active in various local debating societies, where his associates include Cathal O’Byrne, who he retains a personal friendship despite later political differences. A committee member of the Belfast branch of the Irish National League (INL) in 1890, he joins the anti-Parnellite faction during the O’Shea divorce scandal (1891), becoming local secretary of the Irish National Federation (INF). His political model at this time is Thomas Sexton, MP for Belfast West, whose campaign he organises at the 1892 United Kingdom general election.
Although Healyism is strong in CatholicUlster, Devlin aligns himself with the faction led by John Dillon and, from 1899, with the United Irish League (UIL), founded by William O’Brien. From the late 1890s this brings Devlin into conflict with the Belfast Catholic Association of Dr. Henry Henry, bishop of Down and Connor (1895–1908). This organisation, though sometimes regarded as Healyite, is essentially based on the view that mass nationalist political mobilisation in Belfast can only bring trouble and ostracism, and that Catholic interests are best represented by allowing a small group of lay and clerical notables to broker concessions from the unionist majority. After a series of local election contests in Catholic wards and controversies between the pro-Devlin weekly Northern Star and the clerically controlled The Irish News, Devlin succeeds in marginalising the politically maladroit Henry by 1905. In the process, however, he takes on some of the qualities of his “Catholic establishment” opponents. At the same time, he moves onto the national political stage.
Returned unopposed for North Kilkenny (1902–06), Devlin is appointed secretary of the United Irish League of Great Britain in 1903, and of the parent body in Dublin in 1904. A speaking tour of the United States in 1902–03 convinces him of the organisational potential of Catholic fraternal organisations, and in 1905 he takes over the presidency of the Board of Erin faction of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), a specifically Catholic body which he proceeds to develop as an organisational arm of the Nationalist Party. Under his tutelage the AOH expands from 10,000 members in 1905 to 60,000 in 1909, despite opposition from some Catholic bishops who distrust it because of its close affiliation to Dillonism, its secrecy, and its habit of staging dances and other entertainments without paying what they regard as due deference to local priests. His AOH also faces opposition from a rival separatist body, the Irish-American Alliance AOH. Though far less numerous, this group is able to draw on the support of separatists within the American AOH and hinder Devlin’s attempts to mobilise the American organisation in his support. The AOH expands further after 1910 and is strengthened by becoming an approved society under the National Insurance Act 1911.
Belfast is where Devlin’s political career begins and where it ends. Organisational skill contributes substantially to his hold on the largely working-class seat of Belfast West, which he wins in 1906 on a platform that seeks to transcend religious boundaries by combining labour issues with the home rule demand. A lifelong bachelor, though short in stature, he is apparently highly attractive to women, and takes a special interest in their problems, no doubt mindful of the influence they might have on the political behaviour of their spouses. He founds a holiday home for working-class women. When the scholar Betty Messenger interviews former Belfast linen workers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she is startled to discover the extent to which Devlin is remembered as a champion of the workers decades after his death. This image persists among Protestant workers as well as Catholics, and he is generally credited with various ameliorations of workplace conditions even when he had not been responsible for them.
Possessed of great oratorical skills and even greater organisational ability, Devlin effectively becomes the key organiser of the Nationalist Party from the early years of the twentieth century, relieving the party leader, John Redmond, of a great deal of the administrative burden of party affairs, and becoming well known abroad through fund-raising trips, especially in North America. His personal geniality makes him a great favourite at Westminster, and Irish socialists are dismayed at the willingness of British Labour Party MPs to accept him as an authentic Labour representative. Several MPs elected after 1906 can be identified as his protégés, and groups of Hibernian strong-arm men uphold the party leadership in such contests as the 1907 North Leitrimby-election and the 1909 “baton convention” which witnesses the final departure of William O’Brien and his supporters from the UIL. He is the only post-Parnellite MP to be admitted to the tight leadership group around Redmond. In 1913 he is a leading organiser of the National Volunteers.
When William O’Brien embarks on his personal initiative to deal with the Ulster problem through conciliation in the early Edwardian period, he finds a stern critic in Devlin and in turn demonises the “Molly Maguires” as sectarian corruptionists. Personally non-sectarian, Devlin, like other party leaders, endorses the shibboleth that home rule will prove a panacea for Ireland’s problems, including Ulster, and uses his credentials as a labour representative to dismiss popular unionism as a mere product of elite manipulation. In a period when the Vatican‘s Ne Temere decree on religiously mixed marriages is heightening Protestant fears about the “tyranny” of Rome, he seems to be oblivious to how his integration of Hibernianism and nationalism is exacerbating that problem. As the third home rule bill passes through Parliament and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) mobilises, he encourages the Irish party leaders in the view that the Ulster unionist campaign is a gigantic bluff, dismissing contrary opinions even when held by other nationalist MPs. During these years the AOH clashes with the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) during the Dublin lock-out, and from late 1913 the AOH spearheads the Redmondite attempt to take over and dominate the Irish Volunteers.
Devlin endorses Redmond’s support for the British war effort and engages in extensive recruiting activity. He seems to be motivated, at least in part, by the belief that after the war nationalist ex-soldiers can be used to overawe the Ulster unionists by the threat of force. According to Stephen Gwynn, Devlin wishes to apply for an officer’s commission but is asked not to do so by Redmond on the grounds that the party needs his organisational skills.
Devlin’s career is decisively shaped by his decision to use his influence to persuade northern nationalists to accept temporary partition, in fulfilment of the flawed agreement arrived at between David Lloyd George, Sir Edward Carson, and Redmond in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising. He later claims he has been decisively influenced by the prospect that under this agreement the excluded area would be governed directly from Westminster, rather than by a local, Orange-dominated parliament. He forces the agreement through a Belfast-based convention despite protests from west Ulster nationalists, but the proposal collapses after it transpires that Lloyd George has made incompatible commitments to nationalists and unionists. Northern nationalism immediately splits between west and south Ulster dissidents and Devlin’s loyalists predominant in Belfast and east Ulster, and the next year sees massive secessions of AOH members outside Ulster to Sinn Féin. Although he retains a core of loyal supporters, he is reduced from a national to a sectional leader. As a member of the Irish convention (1917–18) he sides with Bishop Patrick O’Donnell against Redmond on the issue of seeking a compromise settlement with southern unionists on the basis of home rule without fiscal autonomy. He is offered the leadership of the Nationalist Party on Redmond’s death in 1918, but concedes the honour to his long-standing mentor, John Dillon.
Devlin holds Belfast West until 1918 and easily sweeps aside an attempt by Éamon de Valera to displace him from the Falls division of Belfast at the general election of that year, though the electoral decimation of the Nationalist Party elsewhere leaves him leading a rump of only seven MPs. In the ensuing parliament he is an outspoken critic of government policy towards Ireland and highlights sectarian violence against northern nationalists. Clearly discouraged and with boundary changes militating against retention of the Falls seat, he unsuccessfully contests the Liverpool Exchange constituency as an Independent Labour candidate in 1922. Elected for Antrim and Belfast West to the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1921, he eventually takes his seat in 1925, holding it until 1929, when he combines representation for Belfast Central with that for Fermanagh and South Tyrone at Westminster.
Only after the boundary commission ends the border nationalists’ hopes of speedy incorporation in the Irish Free State is Devlin able to assert leadership of northern nationalism as a whole on the basis of attendance at the northern parliament. Even then he is considerably handicapped by recriminations over the events of 1916–25. He embarks on his last significant political campaign in 1928, when he seeks to unite minority politics through the agency of the National League of the North (NLN). The initiative, emphasising social reform, is unsuccessful. His own political baggage is a hindrance to the unity of the factions that minority politics had thrown up over the previous ten years, while the minority community itself is politically demoralised by the fate that has overtaken it, and the unionist government shows itself unwilling to make concession to him. The project, moreover, coincides with the onset of the gastric illness, exacerbated by heavy smoking, that takes his life on January 18, 1934. For some time before his death he ceases to attend the Northern Ireland parliament.
Devlin’s political career is one of great promise only partially fulfilled, its ultimate realisation undermined firstly by the fallout from the Easter Rising that destroyed the vehicle of his political ambitions, and secondly by the sequence of events that led to the creation of a constitutional entity so constructed that all nationalist politicians, regardless of talent, were effectively denied a route to power. Only at his death does the unionist regime adequately acknowledge his political stature. His funeral is attended by at least three Northern Ireland cabinet ministers, together with representatives of the government of the Irish Free State. Northern nationalism never again produces a leader of his ability in the Stormont era. His ability to use Westminster to promote the interests of Ulster nationalists is comparable to John Hume‘s use of Europe for the same purpose from the mid 1970s. After his death the nationalist party in Belfast grows increasingly reliant on middle-class leadership and is eventually displaced by nationalist labour splinter groups, some of whose prominent activists, such as Harry Diamond, had begun their careers as election workers for Devlin.
At the 1961 Irish general election, Mac Giolla unsuccessfully contests the Tipperary North constituency for Sinn Féin. In 1962, he becomes President of Sinn Féin and is one of the people who moves the party to the left during the 1960s. In 1969, Sinn Féin splits, and he remains leader of Official Sinn Féin. It is also in 1962 that he marries May McLoughlin who is also an active member of Sinn Féin as well as Cumann na mBan, the women’s section of the IRA. In 1977, the party changes its name to Sinn Féin the Workers Party and in 1982 it becomes simply the Workers’ Party.
In 1999, Mac Giolla writes to the chairman of the Flood Tribunal calling for an investigation into revelations that former Dublin Assistant City and County Manager George Redmond had been the official supervisor at the election count in Dublin West and was a close associate of Liam Lawlor. In 2003, Redmond is convicted of corruption by a Dublin court but subsequently has his conviction quashed due to conflicting evidence.
In his eighties Mac Giolla continues to be active and is a member of the group which campaigns to prevent the demolition of No. 16 Moore Street in Dublin city centre, where the surrender after the Easter Rising was completed. He also serves on the Dublin ’98 committee to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Tomás Mac Giolla dies in Beaumont Hospital in Beaumont, Dublin on February 4, 2010, after a long illness.
(Pictured: Tomás Mac Giolla, former president of the Workers’ party and lord mayor of Dublin in 2007, by Niall Carson, PA Wire, Press Association Images)
Wolfe is the eighth of nine sons born to John Wolfe (1700–60) and his wife Mary (d. 1763), the only child and heiress of William Philpot, a successful merchant at Dublin. One of his brothers, Peter, is the High Sheriff of Kildare, and his first cousin Theobald is the father of the poet Charles Wolfe.
Wolfe is educated at Trinity College Dublin, where he is elected a Scholar, and at the Middle Temple in London. He is called to the Irish Bar in 1766. In 1769, he marries Anne Ruxton (1745–1804) and, after building up a successful practice, takes silk in 1778. He and Anne have four children, John, Arthur, Mariana and Elizabeth.
Appointed Attorney-General for Ireland in 1789, Wolfe is known for his strict adherence to the forms of law, and his opposition to the arbitrary measures taken by the authorities, despite his own position in the Protestant Ascendancy. He unsuccessfully prosecutes William Drennan in 1792. In 1795, Lord Fitzwilliam, the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, intends to remove him from his place as Attorney-General to make way for George Ponsonby. In compensation, Wolfe’s wife is created Baroness Kilwarden on September 30, 1795. However, the recall of Fitzwilliam enables Wolfe to retain his office.
After the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Wolfe becomes notable for twice issuing writs of habeas corpus on behalf of Wolfe Tone, then held in military custody, but these are ignored by the army and forestalled by Tone’s suicide in prison. In 1795 he had also warned Tone and some of his associates to leave Ireland to avoid prosecution. Tone’s godfather, Theobald Wolfe of Blackhall (the father of Charles Wolfe), is Wolfe’s first cousin, and Tone may have been Theobald’s natural son. These attempts to help a political opponent are unique at the time.
In 1802 Wolfe presides over the case against Town Major Henry Charles Sirr in which the habitual abuses of power used to suppress rebellion are exposed in court.
In the same year Wolfe orders that the well-known Catholic priest Father William Gahan be imprisoned for contempt of court. In a case over the disputed will of Gahan’s friend John Butler, 12th Baron Dunboyne, the priest refuses to answer certain questions on the ground that to do so would violate the seal of the confessional, despite a ruling that the common law does not recognize the seal of the confessional as a ground for refusing to give evidence. The judge apparently feels some sympathy for Gahan’s predicament, as he is released from prison after only a few days.
During the Irish rebellion of 1803, Wolfe, who had never been forgiven by the United Irishmen for the execution of William Orr, is clearly in great danger. On the night of July 23, 1803, the approach of the Kildare rebels induces him to leave his residence, Newlands House, in the suburbs of Dublin, with his daughter Elizabeth and his nephew, Rev. Richard Wolfe. Believing that he will be safer among the crowd, he orders his driver to proceed by way of Thomas Street in the city centre. However, the street is occupied by Robert Emmet‘s rebels. Unwisely, when challenged, he gives his name and office, and he is rapidly dragged from his carriage and stabbed repeatedly with pikes. His nephew is murdered in a similar fashion, while Elizabeth is allowed to escape to Dublin Castle, where she raises the alarm. When the rebels are suppressed, Wolfe is found to be still alive and is carried to a watch-house, where he dies shortly thereafter. His last words, spoken in reply to a soldier who called for the death of his murderers, are “Murder must be punished; but let no man suffer for my death, but on a fair trial, and by the laws of his country.”
Wolfe is succeeded by his eldest son John Wolfe, 2nd Viscount Kilwarden. Neither John nor his younger brother Arthur, who dies in 1805, have male issue, and on John’s death in 1830 the title becomes extinct.
(Pictured: Portrait of Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Arthur Wolfe (later Viscount Kilwarden) by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, between 1797 and 1800, Gallery of the Masters)
Luttrell is born in 1713, the second son of Henry Luttrell, of Luttrellstown Castle (whose family had held Luttrellstown Castle and the demesne and adjoining lands since the land had been granted to Sir Geoffrey de Luterel in about 1210 by King John of England) and his wife Elizabeth Jones. His father is a noted commander in the JacobiteIrish Army between 1689 and 1691. He later receives a pardon from the Williamite authorities and is accused by his former Jacobite comrades of having betrayed them. He is murdered when his sedan chair is attacked in Dublin on October 22, 1717.
On October 13, 1768, Luttrell is created Baron Irnham of Luttrellstown in the Peerage of Ireland. As his title is an Irish peerage, he is able to keep his seat in the British House of Commons. He is elevated to the title of Viscount Carhampton on January 9, 1781, and is made Earl of Carhampton on June 23, 1785. He lives at Four Oaks Hall, Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield, from 1751 to 1766.
On January 22, 1735, Luttrell marries Judith Maria Lawes, daughter of Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica and Elizabeth Cotton (née Lawley), by whom he has eight children:
John Luttrell-Olmius, 3rd Earl of Carhampton (c. 1745 – 1829), marries the Honorable Elizabeth Olmius and in 1787 by Royal Licence the additional surname of ‘Olmius’ out of respect after death of his father-in-law.
Temple Simon Luttrell (c. 1738 – 1803)
James Luttrell (c. 1751 – 1788), naval officer, dies of consumption.
Luttrell’s rakish behaviour earns him the nickname “King of Hell,” with “Hell” being a district of Dublin notorious for its brothels. He reputedly starts the courtesanMary Nesbitt in her career by seducing her.
Luttrell dies at Four Oaks, Warwick, England, on January 14, 1787. He is buried at Kingsbury, Warwick, England.
Robinson serves in the role of General Secretary of the DUP from 1975, a position he holds until 1979 and which affords him the opportunity to exert unprecedented influence within the fledgeling party. In 1977, he is elected as a councillor for the Castlereagh Borough Council in Dundonald, County Down, and in 1979, he becomes one of the youngest Members of Parliament (MP) when he is narrowly elected for Belfast East. He holds this seat until his defeat by Naomi Long in 2010, making him the longest-serving Belfast MP since the Acts of Union 1800.
In January 2010, following a scandal involving his wife Iris (née Collins), Robinson temporarily hands over his duties as First Minister to Arlene Foster under the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 2006. Following a police investigation, which recommends that he should not be prosecuted following allegations made by the BBC in relation to the scandal, he resumes his duties as First Minister. The Official Assembly Commissioner’s Investigation and Report clears Robinson of any wrongdoing.
In September 2015, Robinson again stands aside to allow Arlene Foster to become acting First Minister after his bid to adjourn the assembly is rejected. His action is a response to a murder for which a member of Sinn Féin, a party in the Northern Ireland Executive, had been questioned. He resumes his duties on October 20, 2015. On November 19, 2015, he announces that he will be stepping down as First Minister and as leader of the DUP. He subsequently steps down as First Minister on January 11, 2016 and is now fully retired from frontline politics.
Robinson is the author of a number of books and pamphlets on local politics and history including: Capital Punishment for Capital Crime (1974), Savagery and Suffering (1975), Ulster the Facts (1981), Self-Inflicted (1981), A War to be Won (1983), It’s Londonderry (1984), Carson – Man of Action (1984), Ulster in Peril (1984), Their Cry was no Surrender (1986), Hands Off the UDR (1990), Sinn Féin – A Case for Proscription (1993), The Union Under Fire (1995), Give Me Liberty (no date), Ulster—the Prey (no date).
Acheson is born around 1744-45. He is the eldest son of Archibald Acheson, 1st Viscount Gosford, and his wife, the former Mary Richardson. His paternal grandfather is Sir Arthur Acheson, 5th Baronet, and his maternal grandfather is John Richardson of Rich Hill. His father succeeds to the baronetcy in 1748 upon the death of his father and is subsequently created Baron Gosford in 1776 and Viscount Gosford in 1785.
In 1774, Acheson marries Millicent Pole, daughter of Lieutenant-GeneralEdward Pole, who is descended from the Poles of Radbourne Hall in Derbyshire, and Olivia (née Walsh) Pole, a daughter and heiress of John Walsh of Ballykilcavan. The have seven children, two of whom die at a young age.
“It is no secret that a persecution is now raging in this country… the only crime is… profession of the Roman Catholic faith. Lawless banditti (Orange Order) have constituted themselves judges… and the sentence they have denounced… is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and an immediate banishment.”
Upon the death of his father in 1790, Acheson succeeds to the viscountcy. He is subsequently created Earl of Gosford in February 1806.
Acheson dies on January 14, 1807, at Bath, Somerset, England. His widow, Lady Gosford, dies on November 1, 1825.
(Pictured: “Arthur Acheson (c.1742–1807), 2nd Viscount, 1st Earl of Gosford,” oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart)
Lalor is born on March 10, 1807, in Tinnakill House, Raheen, County Laois, the first son of twelve children of Patrick “Patt” Lalor and Anne Dillon, the daughter of Patrick Dillon of Sheane near Maryborough. His father is an extensive farmer and is the first CatholicMP for Laois (1832–1835). The household is a very political one where active discussion on national issues is encouraged.
Because of an accident when he is young, Lalor is semi-crippled all his life. He is not a very healthy young man and consequently is educated at home. In February 1825 he goes to St. Patrick’s, Carlow College. He studies chemistry under a Mr. Holt and the classics under Father Andrew Fitzgerald. While in college he becomes a member of the Apollo Society, where literature and music are studied, his favourite author at the time being Lord Bolingbroke. He suffers greatly through ill health during his time in college, and in February 1826, being ill and very weak he has to return home.
Lalor’s father is passionately opposed to the payment of tithes and urges Catholics not to pay. He supports this stand, but it is the land question and the power of the landlords to evict tenants that exercises him in particular. His father is also a great supporter of Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal movement. However, Lalor does not support the Repeal movement as he considers it to be flawed. As a result, a rift occurs between him and his father on this question. Such is the rift that he leaves home and spends time in Belfast and Dublin. He finally returns home due to ill health and heals his differences with his father.
It is while writing from home that Lalor achieves national prominence. He contributes articles to The Nation and The Felon. He advocates rent strikes and active resistance to any wrongdoings. His central theme is the rights of the tenant farmer to his own land. In his opinion, land reform is the biggest issue of the time. He writes articles such as “What must be done,” “The Faith of a felon,” “Resistance,” and “Clearing Decks.” It is he who says it is time for revolution and active resistance. This is especially evident during the famine years when tenants are being evicted for nonpayment of rent. As a result, he is arrested and imprisoned. Upon his release he continues to write. He is now a nationally acclaimed writer, revolutionary, and reformer.
Ill health once again curtails his efforts. An attack of bronchitis eventually brings about his early death on December 27, 1849, at his lodgings in Great Britain Street (now Parnell Street) at the age of 43. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
The James Fintan Lawlor Commemorative Committee, chaired by David Lawlor is formed in August 2005 to erect a memorial to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of James Fintan Lalor. Laois County Council provides the site; Irish Life and Permanent sponsors the project; the Department of the Environment provides half the cost. The bronze statue of Lalor holding a pamphlet aloft is sculpted by Mayo-based artist Rory Breslin. The inscription on the limestone plinth reads: “Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland.”
Michael Davitt considered Lalor “the only real Irish revolutionary mind in the ’48 period.” His ideas were the ideological underpinning of the Irish National League during the Land War.
In September 1808 Napier sails with his regiment to Spain, where he serves throughout the Peninsular campaign of Gen. Sir John Moore. He is present at many of the major actions of the later campaigns, including the Combat of the Côa in July 1810, where he is wounded, the Battle of Bussaco on September 27, 1810, and the actions at Pombal and Redinha. At the action at Casal Novo on March 14, 1811, he is severely wounded while leading forward six companies of the 52nd (Oxfordshire) Regiment of Foot in an effort to harass the rearguard of André Masséna‘s army. He later returns to the army, with his wound still open and a bullet lodged near his spine, and is appointed as brigade major to the Portuguese brigade. He takes part in the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro on May 3-5, 1811, and is promoted to major at the end of the month.
Succumbing to fever, Napier returns to England. During a period of leave, he marries his cousin, Caroline Amelia Fox, daughter of General Henry Edward Fox and niece of Charles James Fox in February 1812. After his leave he returns to Portugal and takes command of the 43rd (Monmouthshire) Regiment of Foot as senior major present. He subsequently serves in the battles of Salamanca on July 22, 1812, Nivelle on November 10, 1813, and Nive on December 10-13, 1813, which is Marshal Jean-de-Diew Soult‘s last attempt to drive the allied army from France. Promoted to lieutenant-colonel in November 1813, he is present at the Battle of Orthez on February 27, 1814, but has to return to England due to wounds and illness. He is subsequently awarded the gold and silver Peninsular medal, with two and three clasps respectively. Arriving too late in France in 1815, he takes no part in the ‘Hundred days’ campaign and retires from the active list in 1819. He is made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the same year.
Napier devotes the rest of his life to historical writing, initially contributing an article to the Edinburgh Review in 1821. In 1823, at the suggestion of Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale, he begins writing his History of the War in the Peninsula and the South of France, 1807–1814 (6 vols., 1828–40). This epic work, which runs to several editions, makes use of material supplied by both the Duke of Wellington and the French marshals Soult and Suchet, while papers of Joseph Bonaparte, captured after the Battle of Vittoria, are also made available to him. In July 1830 he is promoted to full colonel. Promoted to major-general in November 1841, he is appointed Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey (1842–47). Appointed colonel of the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot in February 1848, he is made a KCB in May 1848.
Napier later publishes several works centred on his brother, Gen. Sir Charles James Napier, after the latter resigns as commander-in-chief in India. These include History of Sir Charles James Napier’s Administration of Scinde (1851) and Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier (4 vols., 1857). As both of these works seek to vindicate his brother, they are generally seen to be biased in the extreme. Subsequently promoted to lieutenant-general on November 11, 1851, and general on October 17, 1859, he spends his later years troubled by ill health. He dies on February 12, 1860, at his London residence, Scinde House in Clapham, and is buried at West Norwood Cemetery.
seamus dubhghaill 