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Death of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare

John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare PC (Ire), an Anglo-Irish politician who serves as the Attorney-General for Ireland from 1783 to 1789 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1789 to 1802, dies in Dublin on January 28, 1802. He remains a deeply controversial figure in Irish history, being described variously as an old fashioned anti-Catholic Whig political party hardliner and an early advocate of the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain (which finally happens in 1801, shortly before his death). 

Fitzgibbon is an early and extremely militant opponent of Catholic emancipation. The Earl is possibly the first person to suggest to King George III that granting royal assent to any form of Catholic Emancipation will violate his coronation oath.

FitzGibbon is born in 1748 near Donnybrook, Dublin, the son of John FitzGibbon of Ballysheedy, County Limerick, and his wife Isabella Grove, daughter of John Grove, of Ballyhimmock, County Cork. His father is born a Catholic but converts to the state religion in order to become a lawyer, and amasses a large fortune. He has three sisters, Arabella, Elizabeth, and Eleanor.

FitzGibbon is educated at Trinity College Dublin and Christ Church, Oxford. He enters the Irish House of Commons in 1778 as Member for Dublin University, and holds this seat until 1783, when he is appointed Attorney-General for Ireland. From the same year, he represents Kilmallock until 1790. He is appointed High Sheriff of County Limerick for 1782.

When appointed Lord Chancellor for Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Connello Lower in County Limerick, in the peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy (1793) and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.

FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament, and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system (1787–1789) under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).

FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, for which, in a “magnificently controlled vituperation in vigorous, colloquial heroic couplets,” The Gibbonade, he is pilloried by the satirist Henrietta Battier. But acceding to pressure exerted through the Irish executive by government of William Pitt in London, intent, in advance of war with the new French Republic, to placate Catholic opinion, he is persuaded to recommend its acceptance in the Irish House of Lords. Pitt, and King George III, who had been petitioned by delegates from the Catholic Committee in Dublin, expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and admit Catholics to the parliamentary franchise (although not to Parliament itself), enter the professions and assume public office.

FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is recalled, apparently due to his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family (he is married to one of their daughters), and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is probably what leads to his recall. Thus, if any is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is the great Irish politician Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother John Ponsonby—not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.

Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon agree on one point apparently – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon has been a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.

In a speech to the Irish House of Lords on February 10, 1800, FitzGibbon elucidates his point of view on union: “I hope and feel as becomes a true Irishman, for the dignity and independence of my country, and therefore I would elevate her to her proper station, in the rank of civilised nations. I wish to advance her from the degraded post of mercenary province, to the proud station of an integral and governing member of the greatest empire in the world.”

In the end, FitzGibbon’s views win out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority (or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom). He later claims that he had been duped by the way in which the Act was passed with the new Viceroy Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, promising reforms to Irish Catholics, and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.

The role of the Earl of Clare (as FitzGibbon becomes in 1795) as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs and the Encyclopædia Britannica states that he is “neither cruel nor immoderate and was inclined to mercy when dealing with individuals.” However, the same source also states that “(FitzGibbon)… was a powerful supporter of a repressive policy toward Irish Catholics”. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders, “State prisoners,” in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the brothers John and Henry Sheares on July 14, 1798.

In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. FitzGibbon is inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and, in October 1798, he expresses his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he has been granted a trial, and his belief that Tone should be hanged as soon as he set foot on land.

FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”

Another anecdote is to the effect of FitzGibbon’s callousness. Supposedly, upon being informed during a debate in the Irish Parliament that innocent as well as guilty are suffering atrocities during the repression, he replies, “Well suppose it were so…,” his callous reply purportedly shocking William Pitt.

FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. There is, however, no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might be interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.

FitzGibbon dies at home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and, according to a widespread story, a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.


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Death of Patrick O’Donoghue, Irish Nationalist & Journalist

Patrick O’Donoghue, also known as Patrick O’Donohoe or O’Donoghoe, an Irish Nationalist revolutionary, journalist and a member of the Young Ireland movement, dies in New York City on January 22, 1854.

Born to a peasant family in Clonegal, County Carlow, O’Donoghue is self educated. He manages to gain a place at Trinity College Dublin. He works as a law clerk in Dublin.

In the aftermath of the failed Young Ireland Rebellion at Ballingarry, County Tipperary, in July 1848, O’Donoghue is placed in October 1848 before a British “Special Commission” at Clonmel, County Tipperary, and sentenced to death for treason. As with other prominent Young Irelanders, this is later commuted to transportation for life to the penal colony at Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).

In 1849, O’Donoghue, together with William Smith O’Brien, Terence MacManus, Thomas Francis Meagher and many others, are on board the prisoner transport ship The Swift for a six-month, 14,000-mile journey under difficult conditions on which some fellow prisoners do not survive.

On January 26, 1850, “Using materials he had begged and borrowed” as one account gives it, O’Donoghue starts publishing in Hobart a weekly newspaper named The Irish Exile, aimed mainly at fellow Irish prisoners and deportees and considered to be the first Irish Nationalist paper to be published in Australia.

The paper features Irish ballads and poetry, articles about Irish history, and a regular column by John Martin reporting on the situation of the Repeal Movement, a campaign to repeal the Acts of Union 1800 under which the Irish Parliament had been abolished. There is also local news of the Irish deportee community, then numbering in the thousands, and of Hobart daily life in general.

O’Donoghue uses The Irish Exile to publish excerpts of his journal aboard The Swift, which are reprinted in Australian, British and Irish newspapers. Brisbane‘s The Moreton Bay Courier, reprinted from Dublin’s The Nation, finds that the journal “will show how severely the tyrannical government of England visited the offences of the Ballingarry cabbage-tree heroes. The studies of Messrs. O’Brien, Meagher (afterwards O’), and O’Donoghoe, will amuse the reader”. While in Van Diemen’s Land, The Examiner, the daily newspaper of Launceston, Tasmania, reprints London‘s The Examiner‘s view that “a singularly large amount of mercy has been shown to those grown-up children who made the escapade from Dublin to raise the standard of Irish rebellion at Ballingarry. One of the worthies, Mr. Patrick O’Donoghue, has published an account of his deportation; and certainly a more pleasureable [sic] voyage could not have been under taken at the expanse of government. A roomy cabin, a capital library, a fair dinner, with a couple of glasses of wine, and cigars upon deck, from the dietary and the entertainment of the political exiles.”

Publication of the paper is not in itself illegal, but is highly displeasing to the Governor, Sir William Denison, who finds that the paper can be suppressed by arresting O’Donoghue and charging him with having “left his allocated district.” He is sentenced to one year’s work in a chain gang – a time spent at hard labour, living in a convict station and wearing a convict uniform, mainly in the company of non-political prisoners such as “rapists, muggers and thieves.”

In March 1851, O’Donoghue is released and taken back to Hobart. Undeterred, he immediately restarts his paper, prominently featuring an extensive personal account of his year with the chain gang. The governor reacts by sending him again to a chain gang, at a more distant location this time – the Cascades Penal Station. Three months later the governor orders him released from there and sent to Launceston.

On the way there, O’Donoghue succeeds in escaping from his guards with the help of fellow-prisoners, who manage to smuggle him on board the ship Yarra Yara, on its way to Melbourne. There, he successfully hides from the British authorities and, with further help from Irish sympathisers, manages to get to San Francisco, where some of his fellows such as MacManus and Meagher have also ended up.

O’Donoghue dies in New York City on January 22, 1854, shortly before the arrival of his wife on a ship from Ireland. The time spent in the chain gang may have contributed to undermining his health. The other escaped state prisoners do not attend his funeral, although Michael Doheny and Michael Cavanagh, fellow Young Irelanders who are living in New York City at the time, are in attendance.

The local Sinn Féin branch in Carlow is named after O’Donoghue.


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Birth of Sir Henry Sidney, English Lord Deputy of Ireland

Sir Henry Sidney, English soldier, politician and Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1565 to 1571 and from 1575 to 1578, is born on July 20, 1529, probably in London. He cautiously implements Queen Elizabeth I’s policy of imposing English laws and customs on the Irish.

Sidney is the eldest son of Sir William Sidney of Penshurst, England and Anne Pakenham. William Sidney is a prominent politician and courtier during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, from both of whom he receives extensive grants of land, including the manor of Penshurst in Kent, which becomes the principal residence of the family.

Sidney is brought up at court as the companion of Prince Edward, afterward King Edward VI, and continues to enjoy the favour of the Crown, serving under Mary I of England and then, particularly, throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He is instrumental in the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, serving as Lord Deputy three times. His career is controversial both at home and in Ireland.

Sidney is knighted by Edward VI in 1550. From 1556 to 1559 he is Vice-Treasurer of Ireland under his brother-in-law, the Lord Deputy Thomas Radclyffe, later the 3rd Earl of Sussex.

Appointed Lord Deputy by Elizabeth in 1565, Sidney faces a major rebellion in Ulster led by the powerful chieftain Shane O’Neill. Failing to subdue O’Neill by force, he intrigues against him with his enemies, the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell and the MacDonnells of Antrim. Finally, O’Neill is assassinated by the MacDonnells in 1567. Nevertheless, Sidney is still not strong enough to destroy completely the power of Ulster’s native chieftains. He does, however, persuade a number of Irish chiefs to submit to Elizabeth’s authority, and he establishes English presidents of Munster and Connacht to control the chiefs. In addition, by refraining from introducing anti-Roman Catholic legislation in the Parliament of Ireland of 1569–71, he makes possible the containment and ultimate defeat in 1573 of a rebellion of Munster Catholics led by James FitzMaurice FitzGerald.

Resenting the Queen’s failure to provide him with an adequate military force, Sidney resigns in 1571, but is reappointed Lord Deputy four years later. His arbitrary taxation arouses popular resentment and leads to his recall in 1578. Thereafter he serves only as president of the Council of Wales and the Marches, living chiefly at Ludlow Castle for the remainder of his life, dying there at the age of 56 on May 5, 1586.

Sidney marries Mary Dudley, eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, in 1551. They have three sons and four daughters. His eldest son is Sir Philip Sidney, and his second is Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester. His daughter, Mary Sidney, marries Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, and by reason of her literary achievements, is one of the most celebrated women of her time.

Richard Chancellor, English explorer and navigator, grows up in Sidney’s household.


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Death of Charles Kendal Bushe, Lawyer & Judge

Charles Kendal Bushe, Irish lawyer and judge, dies in County Dublin on July 10, 1843. Known as “silver-tongued Bushe” because of his eloquence, he is Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1805 to 1822 and Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for Ireland from 1822 to 1841.

Bushe is born at Kilmurry House, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, the only son of the Reverend Thomas Bushe, rector of Mitchelstown, and his wife Katherine Doyle, daughter of Charles Doyle of Bramblestown, near Gowran. Kilmurry House had been built by the Bushe family in the 1690s. His father is forced to sell it to pay his debts, but he is able to repurchase it in 1814. He goes to the celebrated Quaker academy, Shackleton’s School in Ballitore, County Kildare, then graduates from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where his eloquence makes him a star of the College Historical Society. He is called to the Bar in 1790.

Bushe is a member of the Irish Parliament for Callan from 1796 to 1799, and for Donegal Borough from 1799 to 1800. He is Escheator of Leinster in 1799. By this time the office is a sinecure. He is vehemently opposed to the Acts of Union 1800, referring emotionally to Britain’s subjection of Ireland as “six hundred years of uniform oppression and injustice,” a phrase which quickly became a proverb. Although he refuses an offer of a place on the Bench as a bribe for supporting the Union, cynics note that his staunch opposition to the Union does not prevent him accepting high office under the British Crown afterwards. He is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1805 and holds the office for 17 years until in 1822 he is appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for Ireland, although only after William Saurin, the equally long-serving Attorney-General, refuses the position. He retire in 1841.

As an advocate “silver-tongued Bushe” is legendary for his eloquence, and as a politician, he is admired by his English contemporaries like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Brougham. As a judge, according to F. Elrington Ball, he does not live up to expectations, although, if not an outstanding judge, he is an impressive and dignified one. As a statesman he is often accused of double-dealing: having opposed the Acts of Union, he has few scruples about accepting office under the new regime; and while himself supporting Catholic Emancipation, he prosecutes members of the Catholic Association for sedition, merely for advocating the same cause.

In Dublin, Bushe is a member of Daly’s Club.

Bushe dies in County Dublin on July 10, 1843, and is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium in Harold’s Cross, County Dublin.


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The Union with Ireland Act 1800 Receives Royal Assent

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

Two acts are passed in 1800 with the same long title: An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. The short title of the act of the British Parliament is Union with Ireland Act 1800, assigned by the Short Titles Act 1896. The short title of the act of the Irish Parliament is Act of Union (Ireland) 1800, assigned by a 1951 act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and hence not effective in the Republic of Ireland, where it was referred to by its long title when repealed in 1962.

Before these acts, Ireland has been in personal union with England since 1542, when the Irish Parliament passes the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, proclaiming King Henry VIII of England to be King of Ireland. Since the 12th century, the King of England has been technical overlord of the Lordship of Ireland, a papal possession. Both the Kingdoms of Ireland and England later come into personal union with that of Scotland upon the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland are united into a single kingdom: the Kingdom of Great Britain. Upon that union, each House of the Parliament of Ireland passes a congratulatory address to Queen Anne, praying her: “May God put it in your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your crown, by a still more comprehensive Union.” The Irish Parliament is both before then subject to certain restrictions that made it subordinate to the Parliament of England and after then, to the Parliament of Great Britain; however, Ireland gains effective legislative independence from Great Britain through the Constitution of 1782.

By this time access to institutional power in Ireland is restricted to a small minority: the Anglo-Irish of the Protestant Ascendancy. Frustration at the lack of reform among the Catholic majority eventually leads, along with other reasons, to a rebellion in 1798, involving a French invasion of Ireland and the seeking of complete independence from Great Britain. This rebellion is crushed with much bloodshed, and the motion for union is motivated at least in part by the belief that the union will alleviate the political rancour that led to the rebellion. The rebellion is felt to have been exacerbated as much by brutally reactionary loyalists as by United Irishmen (anti-unionists).

Furthermore, Catholic emancipation is being discussed in Great Britain, and fears that a newly enfranchised Catholic majority will drastically change the character of the Irish government and parliament also contributes to a desire from London to merge the Parliaments.

According to historian James Stafford, an Enlightenment critique of Empire in Ireland lays the intellectual foundations for the Acts of Union. He writes that Enlightenment thinkers connected “the exclusion of the Irish Kingdom from free participation in imperial and European trade with the exclusion of its Catholic subjects, under the terms of the ‘Penal Laws’, from the benefits of property and political representation.” These critiques are used to justify a parliamentary union between Britain and Ireland.

Complementary acts are enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland.

The Parliament of Ireland gains a large measure of legislative independence under the Constitution of 1782. Many members of the Irish Parliament jealously guard that autonomy (notably Henry Grattan), and a motion for union is legally rejected in 1799. Only Anglicans are permitted to become members of the Parliament of Ireland though the great majority of the Irish population are Roman Catholic, with many Presbyterians in Ulster. Under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, Roman Catholics regain the right to vote if they own or rent property worth £2 annually. Wealthy Catholics are strongly in favour of union in the hope for rapid religious emancipation and the right to sit as MPs, which only comes to pass under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.

From the perspective of Great Britain’s elites, the union is desirable because of the uncertainty that follows the French Revolution of 1789 and the Irish Rebellion of 1798. If Ireland adopts Catholic emancipation willingly or not, a Roman Catholic Parliament could break away from Britain and ally with the French, but the same measure within the United Kingdom would exclude that possibility. Also, in creating a regency during King George III‘s “madness”, the Irish and British Parliaments give the Prince Regent different powers. These considerations lead Great Britain to decide to attempt the merger of both kingdoms and Parliaments.

The final passage of the Act in the Irish House of Commons turns on an about 16% relative majority, garnering 58% of the votes, and similar in the Irish House of Lords, in part per contemporary accounts through bribery with the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get votes. The first attempt is defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes to 104, but the second vote in 1800 passes by 158 to 115.


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Birth of James FitzJames Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde

James FitzJames Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, KG, Irish statesman and soldier, is born into a Protestant family on April 29, 1665, at Dublin Castle. He is the third of the Kilcash branch of the family to inherit the earldom of Ormond. He serves in the campaign to put down the Monmouth Rebellion, in the Williamite War in Ireland, in the Nine Years’ War and in the War of the Spanish Succession but is accused of treason and goes into exile after the Jacobite rising of 1715.

Butler is the second but eldest surviving son, and one of eleven children, of Thomas Butler by his wife Emilia van Nassau-Beverweerd. His father is known as Lord Ossory. His father is heir apparent of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond but predeceases him and so never becomes duke. His father’s family, the Butler dynasty, is Old English and descends from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177. His mother is Dutch. She descends from a cadet branch of the House of Nassau.

Butler is educated in France and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford. On the death of his father on July 30, 1680, he becomes Baron Butler in the peerage of England and the 7th Earl of Ossory in the peerage of Ireland.

Butler obtains command of a cavalry regiment in Ireland in 1683 and having received an appointment at court on the accession of James II, he serves against the Duke of Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685. Having succeeded his grandfather as 2nd Duke of Ormonde on July 21, 1688, he is appointed a Knight of the Order of the Garter on September 28, 1688. In 1688, he also becomes Chancellor of the University of Dublin and Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

In January and February 1689, Butler votes against the motion to put William of Orange and Mary on the throne and against the motion to declare that James II has abdicated it. Nevertheless, he subsequently joins the forces of William of Orange, by whom he is made colonel of the 2nd Troop of Horse Guards on April 20, 1689. He accompanies William in his Irish campaign, debarking with him in Carrickfergus on June 14, 1690, and commands this troop at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690. In February 1691 he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Somerset.

Butler serves on the continent under William of Orange during the Nine Years’ War and, having been promoted to major general, he fights at the Battle of Steenkerque in August 1692 and the Battle of Landen in July 1693, where he is taken prisoner by the French and then exchanged for the Duke of Berwick, James II’s illegitimate son. He is promoted to lieutenant general in 1694.

After the accession of Queen Anne in March 1702, Butler becomes commander of the land forces co-operating with Sir George Rooke in Spain, where he fights in the Battle of Cádiz in August 1702 and the Battle of Vigo Bay in October 1702 during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). Having been made a Privy Councillor, he succeeds Lord Rochester as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1703. In 1704, he leases and rebuilds a property that becomes known as Ormonde Lodge in Richmond outside London.

Following the dismissal of the Duke of Marlborough, Butler is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Forces and colonel of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards on January 4, 1712, and Captain General on February 26, 1712. In the Irish Parliament he and the majority of peers support the Tory interest.

Butler plays a dramatic role at the notorious meeting of the Privy Council on March 8, 1711, when Antoine de Guiscard, a French double agent who is being questioned about his treasonable activities, attempts to assassinate Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, against whom he has a personal grudge for drastically cutting his allowance, by stabbing him with a penknife. Harley is wounded, but not seriously, due largely to the fact that he is wearing a heavy gold brocade waistcoat in which the knife gets stuck. Several Councillors, including Butler, stab Guiscard in return. Guiscard implores Butler to finish the deed, but he replies that it is not for him to play the hangman. In any case, he has the sense to see that Guiscard must be kept alive at least long enough to be questioned, although as it turns out Guiscard’s wounds are fatal, and he dies a week later.

On April 23, 1712, Butler leaves Harwich for Rotterdam to lead the British troops taking part in the war. Once there he allows himself to be made the tool of the Tory ministry, whose policy is to carry on the war in the Netherlands while giving secret orders to him to take no active part in supporting their allies under Prince Eugene. In July 1712, he advises Prince Eugene that he can no longer support the siege of Le Quesnoy and that he is withdrawing the British troops from the action and instead intends to take possession of Dunkirk. The Dutch are so exasperated at the withdrawal of the British troops that they close the towns of Bouchain on Douai to British access, despite the fact that they have plenty of stores and medical facilities available. Butler takes possession of Ghent and Bruges as well as Dunkirk, in order to ensure his troops are adequately provided for. On April 15, 1713, he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk.

Ormonde’s position as Captain-General makes him a personage of much importance in the crisis brought about by the death of Queen Anne and, during the last years of Queen Anne, he almost certainly has Jacobite leanings and corresponds with the Jacobite Court including his cousin, Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye, who keeps barrels of gunpowder at Kilkenny Castle. King George I, on his accession to the throne in August 1714, institutes extensive changes and excludes the Tories from royal favour. Butler is stripped of his posts as Captain-General, as colonel of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards and as Commander in Chief of the Forces with the first two posts going to the Duke of Marlborough and the role of Commander-in-Chief going to John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair. On November 19, 1714, Butler is instead made a member of the reconstituted Privy Council of Ireland.

Accused of supporting the Jacobite rising of 1715, Butler is impeached for high treason by Lord Stanhope on June 21, 1715. He might avoid the impending storm of Parliamentary prosecution, if he remains in England and stands trial but instead, he chooses to flee to France in August 1715 and initially stays in Paris with Lord Bolingbroke. On August 20, 1715, he is attainted, his estate forfeited, and honours extinguished. The Earl Marshal is instructed to remove the names and armorial bearings of Butler and Bolingbroke from the list of peers and his banner as Knight of the Garter is taken down in St. George’s Chapel.

On June 20, 1716, the Parliament of Ireland passes an act extinguishing the regalities and liberties of the county palatine of Tipperary; for vesting Butler’s estate in the crown and for giving a reward of £10,000 for his apprehension, should he attempt to land in Ireland. But the same parliament passes an act on June 24, 1721, to enable his brother, Charles Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, to purchase his estate, which he does accordingly.

Butler subsequently moves to Spain where he holds discussions with Cardinal Giulio Alberoni. He later takes part in a Spanish and Jacobite plan to invade England and puts James Francis Edward Stuart on the British throne in 1719, but his fleet is disbanded by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. In 1732, he moves to Avignon, where he is seen in 1733 by the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He dies at Avignon in exile on November 16, 1745, but his body is returned to London and buried in Westminster Abbey on May 22, 1746.

On July 20, 1682, Butler, then called Lord Ossory, marries Lady Anne Hyde, daughter of Laurence Hyde, who is then Viscount Hyde of Kenilworth but becomes Earl of Rochester in November. The couple has a daughter, Mary, who dies young in 1688.

Following the death of his first wife in 1685, Butler plans to marry again in order to secure a male heir. He gains permission from the House of Lords for the arranging of a jointure for another marriage in May 1685, and in August of that year, he marries Lady Mary Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort and Mary Capel. The couple has a son, Thomas (1686–1689), and two daughters, Elizabeth (1689–1750) and Mary (1690–1713). His second wife is a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. Their younger daughter, Mary, marries John Ashburnham, 1st Earl of Ashburnham.

(Pictured: Portrait of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, by Michael Dahl, National Portrait Gallery)


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Birth of William Beresford, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam

William Beresford, 1st Baron Decies, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam, is born on April 16, 1743.

Beresford is the third surviving son, out of eight daughters and seven sons of Marcus Beresford, 1st Earl of Tyrone, and his wife Catherine Power, 1st Baroness de la Poer, the only daughter and heiress of James Power, 3rd Earl of Tyrone and 3rd Viscount Decies. He enters Trinity College Dublin on December 18, 1759, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1763 and Master of Arts in 1766, before becoming a clergyman.

His birth into the politically influential Beresford family affords him a degree of opportunity, and he is made a vice-regal chaplain in 1766. Brother of George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford, he marries Elizabeth Fitzgibbon, sister of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare, on June 16, 1763. They had three sons and five daughters. These connections, however, do not automatically result in his being promoted to bishop, despite reaching episcopal age in 1773, and he spends several years as a well-beneficed rector of Urney in the Diocese of Derry. The Beresford family complains that he has been overlooked for several episcopal vacancies in the 1770s and it is not until 1780 that he is created Doctor of Divinity and consecrated Bishop of Dromore on April 8, 1780. At Dromore he erects a handsome new episcopal residence. On May 21, 1782, he is transferred to the diocese of Ossory and, as bishop there, takes his seat in the Irish parliament and exercises influence over the ecclesiastical borough of St. Canice.

The death of Primate Richard Robinson in 1794 is the stimulus for a reorganisation within the Church of Ireland hierarchy, and Beresford is one of the candidates rumoured to succeed him. However, his familial ties disadvantage him, because the government does not want to favour one Irish “party” over another. He is instead appointed to the vacant archbishopric of Tuam on October 10, 1794. An influential and senior position within the church, it is worth £5,000 per annum, which is more than Archbishop Charles Agar receives for the archbishopric of Cashel and provides him with extensive patronage.

In the late 1790s Beresford regularly attends parliament, particularly in the crucial session of 1799 as the Acts of Union is debated and shares his brother John’s view that a union is the best means of securing the Protestant interest in Ireland.

In the years following the union Beresford gains a temporal peerage, becoming 1st Baron Decies on December 22, 1812. He is an amiable, kind and loquacious individual, and is patron to artists, including Gilbert Stuart, who produces a portrait of him as Bishop of Ossory. His long years of service within the established church also makes him very wealthy, worth £250,000 at the time of his death.

Beresford dies on September 6, 1819, at Tuam, County Galway, and is succeeded in the barony by his eldest surviving son John on September 8, 1819. His eldest son Marcus had died in 1803. His youngest daughter Louisa, widow of Thomas Hope, marries, by special license, her cousin William Carr Beresford on November 29, 1832. Through Louisa he is a grandfather of British MP and patron of the arts, Henry Thomas Hope.

(From: “Beresford, William” by Martin McElroy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised June 2024)


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The Popery Act 1704 Receives Royal Assent

An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery, commonly known as the Popery Act or the Gavelkind Act, is an act of the Parliament of Ireland that receives royal assent on March 4, 1704. It is designed to suppress Roman Catholicism in Ireland (“Popery“). William Edward Hartpole Lecky calls it the most notorious of the Irish Penal Laws.

Inheritance in traditional Irish law uses gavelkind, whereby an estate is divided equally among a dead man’s sons. In contrast, English common law uses male primogeniture, with the eldest son receiving the entire estate. The 1704 act enforces gavelkind for Catholics and primogeniture for Protestants.

Two separate bills “to prevent the further Growth of Popery” are introduced in the parliamentary session of 1703–04. One originates with the Privy Council of Ireland and is referred on July 4, 1703, to the Attorney-General for Ireland. The other is introduced as heads of a bill in the Irish House of Commons on September 28, 1703, and is sent to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on November 19. Under Poynings’ Law, both bills are transmitted to the Privy Council of England for approval. Formally, one bill is vetoed, and the other is returned to Dublin with amendments. A lack of surviving documentation makes it impossible to determine which of the two has which fate. The approved bill is engrossed on January 20, 1704, presented in the Commons on February 14, sent to the Irish House of Lords on February 25, and given royal assent on March 4.

Sir Theobald “Toby” Butler, the former Solicitor-General for Ireland, a Roman Catholic, makes a celebrated speech at the bar of the Commons denouncing the act as being “against the laws of God and man… against the rules of reason and justice.” Other eminent Catholic lawyers like Stephen Rice also denounce the measure but to no avail.

Charles Ivar McGrath says that while the Popery Act has “evident … negative effects,” specific research is lacking, and that it is intended more to prevent an increase in Catholic landholding than encourage further decrease. The Catholic share of land had already fallen from 60% before the Irish Rebellion of 1641 to 22% before the Williamite War in Ireland to 14% in 1704. The figure of 5% in 1776 given in Arthur Young‘s Tour in Ireland is probably an underestimate, although in 1778 only 1.5% of rent is paid to Catholics.

Catholic gavelkind cements a tradition of farm subdivision, which persists beyond the act’s repeal and contributes to the Great Famine of the 1840s.

The act is “explained and amended” by a 1709 act, 8 Anne c. 3 (I), which specifies certain time limits left ambiguous by the original act, and closes some loopholes used by Catholics to remain beneficial owners of nominally Protestant property.

A 1719 act, 6 Geo. 1. c. 9 (I), indemnifies officials who have not hitherto subscribed to the oath required by the Popery Act. The time period for Dissenters subscribing to the oath is routinely extended, initially by an Indemnity Act at the start of each biennial parliamentary session. Similar acts are passed by the British parliament, and after the union the UK parliament continues the practice.

From the late 18th century Roman Catholic relief bills ease the Penal Laws, by explicit or implicit repeal and replacement. In 1772, Catholics are allowed to lease up to fifty Irish acres of bog-land for up to 61 years. The 1704 oath of allegiance for Catholics is replaced in 1774. Gardiner’s Act, the Leases for Lives Act 1777, implicitly repeals many other provisions of the 1704 act. Some are replaced with less onerous restrictions. The sacramental test is repealed for Dissenters in 1780. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1782 repeals section 23 of the 1704 act. Another act of 1782 allows lay Catholics to be guardians of Protestants. Most restrictions on intermarriage are removed by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1792. Many Penal Laws are repealed in general terms by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793. The sacramental test for Catholics is effectively replaced by the 1774 oath.

The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 abolishes the declaration against transubstantiation and specifies a new public oath for Catholics, explicitly permitting Catholics to hold Irish civil or military offices other than Lord Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, with the same oaths as required of non-Catholics (in addition to the new Catholic oath).

The Criminal Law Commission‘s 1845 report on oaths says sections 1, 3, and 6 of the 1704 act have fallen into disuse and should be repealed. The Religious Disabilities Act 1846, passed in consequence of the committee’s report, explicitly repeals provisions of sections 1, 3, and 4 of the 1704 act.

The Popery Act is explicitly repealed as obsolete by the Promissory Oaths Act 1871, with the exception of section 25, which is made redundant by the coming into force in 1871 of the Irish Church Act 1869 and is repealed by the Statute Law Revision (Ireland) Act 1878.


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Birth of Edmund Henry Pery, 1st Earl of Limerick

Edmund Henry Pery, 1st Earl of Limerick PC, Irish peer and politician styled Lord Glentworth between 1794 and 1800 and Viscount Limerick until 1803, is born in Limerick, County Limerick, on January 8, 1758.

Pery is the son of William Cecil Pery, 1st Baron Glentworth, and his first wife, Jane Walcott, daughter of John Minchin Walcott. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He marries Alice Mary Ormsby, the daughter of Henry Ormsby of County Mayo, by his wife Mary Hartstonge, in 1783, and they have at least eight children. Alice Mary is the heiress of her uncle, Sir Henry Hartstonge, 3rd Baronet, who leaves her substantial property in the south of Ireland.

Pery is elected to the Parliament of Ireland as the Member of Parliament for Limerick City in 1786 and holds the seat until 1794, when he inherits his father’s barony and takes his seat in the Irish House of Lords. As a politician, he is a vocal Unionist. He holds the office of Keeper of the Signet and Privy Seal of Ireland between 1795 and 1797. In 1797, he is invested as a Privy Counsellor. He subsequently holds the office of Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper of Ireland between 1797 and 1806. In 1800, he is created Viscount Limerick of the City of Limerick.

Following the Acts of Union 1800, Pery becomes an Irish representative peer, sitting in the House of Lords between 1801 and 1844. He is created Earl of Limerick in the Peerage of Ireland on January 1, 1803, in recognition of his vocal and persistent support for the Union. In addition, he is created Baron Foxford of Stackpole Court in the Peerage of the United Kingdom on August 11, 1815, giving him and his descendants a permanent seat in the House of Lords. During this part of his life, he lives at South Hill Park, Berkshire, England.

Pery dies on December 7, 1844, at Bracknell, Bracknell Forest Borough, Berkshire, England. He is buried at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. His wife, Alice Mary, dies on June 13, 1850, in Marylebone, City of Westminster, Greater London, England. She is buried alongside her husband in Limerick.

Pery’s eldest son and heir, Henry Hartstonge Pery, Viscount Glentworth, predeceases him on August 7, 1834, and thus Pery is succeeded in his titles by Henry’s eldest son, William Henry Tenison Pery. One of Pery’s daughters, Theodosia, marries the Whig politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon.


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Death of William Steel Dickson, Minister & United Irishman

William Steel Dickson, Irish Presbyterian minister and member of the Society of the United Irishmen, dies on December 27, 1824, in Belfast, in what is now Northern Ireland.

Dickson is born on December 25, 1744, the eldest son of John Dickson, a tenant farmer of Ballycraigy, in the parish of Carnmoney, County Antrim. His mother is Jane Steel and, on the death of his uncle, William Steel, on May 13, 1747, the family adds his mother’s maiden name to their own.

In his boyhood, Dickson is educated by Robert White, a Presbyterian minister from Templepatrick and enters University of Glasgow in November 1761. Following graduation, he is apparently employed for a time in teaching, and in 1771 he is ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Until the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, he occupies himself mainly with parochial and domestic duties. His political career begins in 1776, when he speaks and preaches against the “unnatural, impolitic and unprincipled” war with the American colonies, denouncing it as a “mad crusade.” On two government fast-days his sermons on “the advantages of national repentance” (December 13, 1776), and on “the ruinous effects of civil war” (February 27, 1778) create considerable excitement when published. Government loyalists denounce Dickson as a traitor.

Political differences are probably at the root of a secession from his congregation in 1777. The seceders form a new congregation at Kircubbin, County Down, in defiance of the authority of the general synod.

In 1771 Dickson marries Isabella Gamble, a woman of some means, who dies on July 15, 1819. They have at least eight children, but he outlives them all. One of his sons is in the Royal Navy and dies in 1798.

Dickson enters with zest into the volunteer movement of 1778, being warmly in favour of the admission of Roman Catholics to the ranks. This is resisted “through the greater part of Ulster, if not the whole.” In a sermon to the Echlinville volunteers on March 28, 1779, he advocates the enrolment of Catholics and though induced to modify his language in printing the discourse, he offends “all the Protestant and Presbyterian bigots in the country.” He is accused of being a papist at heart, “for the very substantial reason, among others, that the maiden name of the parish priest’s mother was Dickson.”

Though the contrary has been stated, Dickson is not a member of the Volunteer conventions at Dungannon in 1782 and 1783. He throws himself heart and soul into the famous election for County Down in August 1783, when the families of Hill and Stewart, compete for the county seat in Parliament. He, with his forty-shilling freeholders, fails to secure the election of Robert Stewart. But in 1790 he successfully campaigns for the election of Stewart’s son, better known as Lord Castlereagh. Castlereagh proves his gratitude by referring at a later date to Dickson’s popularity in 1790, as proof that he was “a very dangerous person to leave at liberty.”

In December 1791, Dickson joins Robert White’s son, John Campbell White, taking the “test” of the first Society of United Irishmen, organised in October in Belfast following a meeting held with Theobald Wolfe Tone, Protestant secretary of the Catholic Committee in Dublin. According to Dickson himself, he attends no further meetings of the Society but devotes himself to spreading its principles among the volunteer associations, in opposition to the “demi-patriotic” views of the Whig Club.

At a great volunteer meeting in Belfast on July 14, 1792, Dickson opposes a resolution for the gradual removal of Catholic disabilities and assists in obtaining a unanimous pledge in favour of total and immediate emancipation. Parish and county meetings are held throughout Ulster, culminating in a provincial convention at Dungannon on February 15, 1793. He is a leading spirit at many of the preliminary meetings, and, as a delegate from the Barony of Ards, he has a chief hand in the preparation of the Dungannon resolutions. Their avowed object is to strengthen the throne and give vitality to the constitution by “a complete and radical reform.” He is nominated on a committee of thirty to summon a national convention. The Irish parliament goes no further in the direction of emancipation than the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, which receives the royal assent on April 9, and remains unextended until 1829. While the passing of Lord Clare‘s Convention Act, still in force, makes illegal all future assemblies of delegates “purporting to represent the people, or any description of the people.”

In March and April 1798, Dickson is in Scotland arranging some family affairs. During his absence plans are made for an insurrection in Ulster, and soon after his return he agrees to take the place of Thomas Russell, who had been arrested, as adjutant-general of the United Irish forces for County Down. A few days before the county is to rise, he is himself arrested at Ballynahinch.

Dickson is conveyed to Belfast and lodged in the “black hole” and other prisons until August 12 when he is removed to a prison ship with William Tennant, Robert Hunter, Robert Simms, David Bailie Warden and Thomas Ledlie Birch, and detained there amid considerable discomfort. On March 25, 1799, Dickson, Tennant, Hunter, and Simms join the United Irish “State Prisoners” on a ship bound for Fort George, Highland prison in Scotland. This group, which includes Samuel Neilson, Arthur O’Connor, Thomas Russell, William James MacNeven, and Thomas Addis Emmet, arrives in Scotland on April 9, 1799. He spends two years there.

Unlike the more high-profile prisoners like O’Connor and MacNeven who are not released until June 1802, Tennant, Dickson, and Simms are permitted to return to Belfast in January 1802.

Dickson returns to liberty and misfortune. His wife has long been a helpless invalid, his eldest son is dead, his prospects are ruined. His congregation at Portaferry had been declared vacant on November 28, 1799. William Moreland, who had been ordained as his successor on June 16, 1800, at once offers to resign, but Dickson will not hear of this. He has thoughts of emigration but decides to stand his ground. At length, he is chosen by a seceding minority from the congregation of Keady, County Armagh, and installed minister on March 4, 1803.

Dickson’s political engagement ends with his attendance on September 9, 1811, of a Catholic meeting in Armagh, on returning from which he is cruelly beaten by Orangemen. In 1815 he resigns his charge in broken health and henceforth subsists on charity. Joseph Wright, an Episcopalian lawyer, gives him a cottage rent-free in the suburbs of Belfast, and some of his old friends make him a weekly allowance. His last appearance in the pulpit is early in 1824. He dies on December 27, 1824, having just passed his eightieth year, and is buried “in a pauper’s grave” at Clifton Street Cemetery, Belfast.