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Tag Archives: Young Ireland


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Death of Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde

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Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde, Irish poet who writes under the pen name “Speranza” and supporter of the nationalist movement, dies at her home, 146 Oakley Street, Chelsea, London, of bronchitis on February 3, 1896.

Jane is the last of the four children of Charles Elgee, a Wexford solicitor, and his wife Sarah. Her great-grandfather is an Italian who had come to Wexford in the 18th century. She has a special interest in Irish folktales, which she helps to gather. She marries Sir William Wilde on November 12, 1851, and they have three children, William Charles Kingsbury Wilde (1852–1899), Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900), and Isola Francesca Emily Wilde (1857–1867).

Jane, who is the niece of Charles Maturin, writes for the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, publishing poems in The Nation under the pseudonym of “Speranza.” Her works include pro-Irish independence and anti-British writing. She is sometimes known as “Speranza of the Nation.” Charles Gavan Duffy is the editor when “Speranza” writes commentary calling for armed revolution in Ireland. The authorities at Dublin Castle shut down the paper and bring the editor to court. Duffy refuses to name who has written the offending article. “Speranza” reputedly stands up in court and claims responsibility for the article. The confession is ignored by the authorities. But in any event the newspaper is permanently shut down by the authorities.

She is an early advocate of women’s rights, and campaigns for better education for women. She invites the suffragist Millicent Fawcett to her home to speak on female liberty. She praises the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act of 1883, preventing women from having to enter marriage “as a bond slave, disenfranchised of all rights over her fortune.”

William Wilde is knighted in January 1864, but the family celebrations are short-lived, for in the same year Sir William and Lady Wilde are at the centre of a sensational Dublin court case regarding a young woman called Mary Travers, the daughter of a colleague of Sir William’s, who claims that he had seduced her and who then brings an action against Lady Wilde for libel. Mary Travers wins the case and costs of £2,000 are awarded against Lady Wilde. Then, in 1867, their daughter Isola dies of fever at the age of nine. In 1871 the two illegitimate daughters of Sir William are burned to death and in 1876 Sir William himself dies. The family discovers that he is virtually bankrupt.

Lady Wilde leaves Dublin for London in 1879, where she joins her two sons, Willie, a journalist, and Oscar, who is making a name for himself in literary circles. She lives with her older son in poverty, supplementing their meagre income by writing for fashionable magazines and producing books based on the researches of her late husband into Irish folklore.

Lady Wilde contracts bronchitis in January 1896 and, dying, asks for permission to see Oscar, who is in prison. Her request is refused. It is claimed that her “fetch” appears in Oscar’s prison cell as she dies at her home, 146 Oakley Street, Chelsea, on February 3, 1896. Willie Wilde, her older son, is penniless, so Oscar pays for her funeral, which is held on February 5, at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. A headstone proved too expensive and she is buried anonymously in common ground. A monument to her, in the form of a Celtic cross, is erected at Kensal Green Cemetery by the Oscar Wilde Society in 1999.


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Death of Daniel O’Connell in Genoa, Italy

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Daniel O’Connell, lawyer who becomes the first great 19th-century Irish nationalist leader and is known as “The Liberator,” dies in Genoa, Italy on May 15, 1847. Throughout his life, he campaigns for Catholic emancipation, including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament and the repeal of the Act of Union which combines Great Britain and Ireland.

Compelled to leave the Roman Catholic college at Douai, France, when the French Revolution breaks out, O’Connell goes to London to study law, and in 1798 he is called to the Irish bar. His forensic skill enables him to use the courts as nationalist forums. Although he has joined the Society of United Irishmen, a revolutionary society, as early as 1797, he refuses to participate in the Irish Rebellion of the following year. When the Act of Union takes effect on January 1, 1801, and abolishes the Irish Parliament, he insists that the British Parliament repeal the anti-Catholic laws in order to justify its claim to represent the people of Ireland. From 1813 he opposes various Catholic relief proposals because the government, with the acquiescence of the papacy, has the right to veto nominations to Catholic bishoprics in Great Britain and Ireland. Although permanent political organizations of Catholics are illegal, O’Connell sets up a nationwide series of mass meetings to petition for Catholic emancipation.

On May 12, 1823, O’Connell and Richard Lalor Sheil found the Catholic Association, which quickly attracts the support of the Irish priesthood and of lawyers and other educated Catholic laymen and which eventually comprises so many members that the government cannot suppress it. In 1826, when it is reorganized as the New Catholic Association, it causes the defeat of several parliamentary candidates sponsored by large landowners. In County Clare in July 1828, O’Connell himself, although as a Catholic ineligible to sit in the House of Commons, defeats a man who tries to support both the British government and Catholic emancipation. This result impresses on the British prime minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, the need for making a major concession to the Irish Catholics. Following the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, O’Connell, after going through the formality of an uncontested reelection, takes his seat at Westminster.

In April 1835, he helps to overthrow Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative ministry. In the same year, he enters into the “Lichfield House compact,” whereby he promises the Whig Party leaders a period of “perfect calm” in Ireland while the government enacts reform measures. O’Connell and his Irish adherents, known collectively as “O’Connell’s tail,” then aid in keeping the weak Whig administration of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, in office from 1835 to 1841. By 1839, however, O’Connell realizes that the Whigs will do little more than the Conservatives for Ireland, and in 1840 he founds the Repeal Association to dissolve the Anglo-Irish legislative union. A series of mass meetings in all parts of Ireland culminate in O’Connell’s arrest for seditious conspiracy, but he is released on appeal in September 1844 after three months’ imprisonment. Afterward his health fails rapidly, and the nationalist leadership falls to the radical Young Ireland group.

O’Connell dies at the age of 71 of cerebral softening in 1847 in Genoa, Italy, while on a pilgrimage to Rome. His time in prison has seriously weakened him, and the appallingly cold weather he has to endure on his journey is probably the final blow. According to his dying wish, his heart is buried at Sant’Agata dei Goti, then the chapel of the Irish College, in Rome and the remainder of his body in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, beneath a round tower.


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Birth of Charles Gavin Duffy in County Monaghan

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Charles Gavan Duffy, Irish nationalist, journalist, poet, and Australian politician, is born on April 12, 1816, in Dublin Street, Monaghan Town, County Monaghan. Duffy is the 8th Premier of Victoria and one of the most colourful figures in Victorian political history.

Both of his parents die while he is still a child and his uncle, Fr. James Duffy, who is the Catholic Parish Priest of Castleblayney, becomes his guardian for a number of years. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College in Belfast and is admitted to the Irish Bar in 1845. Duffy becomes a leading figure in Irish literary circles.

Duffy, along with Thomas Osborne Davis and John Blake Dillon, founds The Nation and becomes its first editor. Davis and Dillon later become Young Irelanders. All three are members of Daniel O’Connell‘s Repeal Association. This paper, under Duffy, transforms from a literary voice into a “rebellious organisation.”

In August 1850, Duffy forms the Tenant Right League to bring about reforms in the Irish land system and protect tenants’ rights, and in 1852 is elected to the House of Commons for New Ross. By 1855, the cause of Irish tenants seems more hopeless than ever. Broken in health and spirit, Duffy publishes a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he has resolved to retire from parliament, as it is no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he has solicited their votes.

In 1856, emigrates with his family to Australia, settling in the newly formed Colony of Victoria. A public appeal is held to enable him to buy the freehold property necessary to stand for the colonial Parliament. He is immediately elected to the Legislative Assembly for Villiers and Heytesbury in the Western District in 1856. He later represented Dalhousie and then North Gippsland. With the collapse of the Victorian Government‘s Haines Ministry during 1857, another Irish Catholic, John O’Shanassy, unexpectedly becomes Premier with Duffy his second-in-charge.

In 1871, Duffy leads the opposition to Premier Sir James McCulloch‘s plan to introduce a land tax, on the grounds that it unfairly penalised small farmers. When McCulloch’s government is defeated on this issue, Duffy becomes Premier and Chief Secretary.  The majority of the colony is Protestant, and Duffy is accused of favouring Catholics in government appointments. In June 1872, his government is defeated in the Assembly on a confidence motion allegedly motivated by sectarianism.

When Graham Berry becomes Premier in 1877, he makes Duffy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, a post he holds without much enthusiasm until 1880, when he quits politics and retires to the south of France. Duffy remains interested in both the politics of his adoptive country and of Ireland. He is knighted in 1873 and is made KCMG in 1877. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy dies in Nice, France, at the age of 86 in 1903.


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Birth of Sir Samuel Ferguson, Irish Poet & Barrister

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Sir Samuel Ferguson, Irish poet, barrister, antiquarian, artist, and public servant, is born at 23 High Street in Belfast on March 10, 1810. Ferguson is perhaps the most important Irish poet of the 19th century. Due to his interest in Irish mythology and early Irish history he is seen as a forerunner of William Butler Yeats and the other poets of the Irish Literary Revival.

Ferguson lives at a number of addresses, including Glenwhirry, where he acquires the love of nature that informs his later work. He is educated at the Belfast Academy and the Belfast Academical Institution and then moves to Dublin to study law at Trinity College, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 1826 and his master’s degree in 1832.

Because his father has exhausted the family property, Ferguson is forced to support himself through his student years. He turns to writing and is a regular contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine by the age of 22. He is called to the bar in 1838, but continues to write and publish, both in Blackwood’s and in the newly established Dublin University Magazine.

Ferguson settles in Dublin, where he practises law. In 1848, he marries Mary Guinness, a great-great-niece of Arthur Guinness and the eldest daughter of Robert Rundell Guinness, founder of Guinness Mahon bank. At the time he is defending the Young Irelander poet Richard Dalton Williams.

In addition to his poetry, Ferguson contributes a number of articles on topics of Irish interest to antiquarian journals. In 1863, he travels in Brittany, Ireland, Wales, England, and Scotland to study megaliths and other archaeological sites. These studies are important to his major antiquarian work, Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales and Scotland, which is edited after his death by his widow and published in 1887.

His collected poems, Lays of the Western Gael is published in 1865, resulting in the award of a degree LL.D. honoris causa from Trinity College. He writes many of his poems in both Irish and English translations. In 1867, Ferguson retires from the bar to take up the newly created post of Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in Ireland. As reward for his services, he receives a knighthood in 1878.

Ferguson’s major work, the long poem Congal is published in 1872 and a third volume, Poems, in 1880. In 1882, he is elected President of the Royal Irish Academy, an organisation dedicated to the advancement of science, literature, and antiquarian studies. His house in North Great George’s St., Dublin, is open to everyone interested in art, literature or music.

Ferguson dies on August 9, 1886, in Howth, just outside Dublin city, and is buried in Donegore near Templepatrick, County Antrim.


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First Public Unveiling of the Irish Tricolour

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At a meeting in his native Waterford on March 7, 1848, the Young Ireland leader Thomas Francis Meagher first publicly unveils the flag from a second-floor window of the Wolfe Tone Club.

Following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which pits the “green” United Irishmen against the Orange Order who are traditionally loyal to the British Crown, the ideal of making peace between both traditions in a self-governed Ireland is first mooted.

The oldest known reference to the use of green, white, and orange as a nationalist emblem date from September 1830 when the colours are used for rosettes and badges. Since that historical period the use of the tricolour becomes the preferred mark of a republic in national flags. However, widespread recognition is not accorded to the flag until 1848.

Presented to Meagher as a gift in 1848 by a small group of French women symathetic to the Irish cause, the flag flies proudly as Meagher addresses the Waterford crowd gathered on the street below who are celebrating news of the French Revolution. Speeches made at that time by Meagher suggest that it is regarded as an innovation and not as the revival of an older flag.

From March 1848 Irish tricolours appear side-by-side with French “tricolores” at meetings held all over the country. John Mitchel, referring to the provisional Irish banner which Meagher had presented at a meeting in Dublin on April 15, 1848, says, “I hope to see that flag one day waving as our national banner.”

Although the tricolour is not forgotten as a symbol of a free Ireland, it is rarely used between 1848 and 1916. Even up to the eve of the 1916 Easter Rising, the green flag featuring a harp holds undisputed sway. Neither the colours nor the arrangement of the early tricolours are standardised. All of the 1848 tricolours show green, white, and orange, but orange is sometimes put next to the staff, and, in at least one flag, the order is orange, green and white.

In 1850, a flag of green for the Roman Catholics, orange for the Protestants of the Established Church, and blue for the Presbyterians is proposed.

In 1883, a Parnellite tricolour of yellow, white, and green, arranged horizontally, is proposed. Down to modern times, yellow has occasionally been used instead of orange but such substitution tarnish’s the tricolour’s fundamental symbolism.

The flag is adopted by the rebels in the 1916 Easter Rising rebels and raised above the General Post Office in Dublin. This marks the first time that the tricolour is regarded as the national flag. It is subsequently adopted by the Irish Republic during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921). Its use is continued by the Irish Free State (1922–1937) and is later given constitutional status under the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. The tricolour is used by nationalists on both sides of the border as the national flag of the whole island of Ireland since 1916.


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Death of Terence Bellew MacManus in San Francisco

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Terence Bellew MacManus, an Irish rebel and Young Irelander, dies in San Francisco, California, on January 15, 1861.

MacManus is born in 1811 in Tempo, County Fermanagh, Ireland, and was educated in parochial schools. As a young man he moves to the major port of Liverpool, where he becomes a successful shipping agent. In 1848 he returns to Ireland, where he becomes active in the Repeal Association, which seeks to overturn the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. After joining the Irish Confederation, he is among those who take part with William Smith O’Brien and John Blake Dillon in the July 1848 Young Ireland Rebellion in Ballingarry, County Tipperary, where the only substantial armed action occurs. MacManus and the other leaders are charged and convicted of treason and sentenced to death for their actions.

Due to public outcry for clemency, the men’s sentences are commuted to deportation for life. MacManus, along with O’Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, and Patrick O’Donoghue, is transported to Van Diemen’s Land in Tasmania, Australia in 1849. They are assigned to different settlements to reduce their collaboration in the new land; however, the Irish men continue to meet secretly.

In 1852 MacManus and Meagher escape from Australia and make their way to San Francisco, California, where MacManus settles. Meagher goes on to New York City. Like other immigrants, the Irish revolutionaries carry their issues to the United States. A Captain Ellis, of a ship that is supposed to carry O’Brien to freedom, also emigrates to San Francisco. MacManus holds a lynch court of Ellis among Irish emigrants for his betrayal of O’Brien in his escape attempt from Van Diemen’s Land. The court-martial acquits Ellis for lack of evidence.

Failing to re-establish his career as a shipping agent, MacManus lives in San Francisco and dies in poverty in 1861. It is after his death, however, that he performs his most valuable service to the cause of Irish freedom. On learning of his death, American Fenian leaders decide to return his body to Ireland for burial. This foreshadows the treatment given to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa at his famous funeral in 1915. Crowds of Irish gather in New York as Archbishop John Hughes, like MacManus born in Ulster, blesses MacManus’ body. Thousands greet his body when it arrives in Cork and crowds gather at rail stations all the way to Dublin.

The church, in the person of Archbishop of Dublin Paul Cullen, refuses permission for his body to lie-in-state at any church in Dublin. Thus, for a week MacManus’ body lies in the Mechanics’ Institute, while thousands pass by paying their respects. But Father Patrick Lavelle, a Fenian supporter, defies Cullen and performs the funeral ceremony on November 10, 1861. A crowd estimated at 50,000 follow the casket to Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, and hundreds of thousands line the streets. The MacManus funeral is a seminal moment for the Fenian movement. It invigorates the nationalist movement in Ireland, just as Rossa’s funeral does 54 years later.

MacManus is notable for his statement in court in 1848 where he explains his actions by saying, “It was not because I loved England less, but because I loved Ireland more.”