FITZPATRICK'S LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD CLONCIIRRY. * VALENTINE LAWLESS, second
Lord Cloneurry, was an honest, im- pulsive, Irish politician, of extreme " national " or Anti-Union views, but more sober in his language and a good deal more practi- cal in his projeots than the majority of the same class. In the bad times at the close of the last century, he had suffered (probably through his own imprudence) a long detention in the Tower. Life opened upon him when the United States were colonies of Great Britain, and his early youth began before the French Revolution ; but he maintained a political consistency to the last while all around had changed, with something of the " laudator temporis acti" towards the close. As a man, he was kindhearted and liberal ; as a politician, active, but if influential it was rather through his rank and wealth than from any great extent of cape- s The Life, Times, and Contemporaries of Lord Cloncurry. By William John Fitzpatrick, Member of the Royal Dublin Society. Published by Duffy, Dublin. city or force of character. After Lord Cloneurry's own Personal Recollections, formerly reviewed in this journal,t no other memoir of him was necessary, though• a corrective and explanatory supple- ment to that volume might be an advantage. Dr. Grattan, however, in a letter to the Nation newspaper, while his heart was yet warm with the loss of his friend, (in 1853,) expressed an opinion that " a memoir of the public life and times of Valentine Lord Cloneurry would be a valuable present to Ireland."
Mr. William John Fitzpatrick has acted upon this opinion, with the omission of Dr. Grattan's desideratum, that ' it should be well done." To the career of Lord Cloncurry as known already the biographer contributes little that is new and nothing that is important; while he volunteers his own interpretation of inci- dents in Lord Cloncurry's life, of which his Lordship himself must have known more than anybody. Mr. Fitzpatrick 's style is of the worst kind of Milesian inflation ; his Irish prejudices are strong and vulgar ; his attempt at blending the history of Ire- land for the greater part of a century with the life of his hero is a failure. Much of it has no more to do with Lord Clon- curry than with any other Irishman. Original writers and com- pilers much better qualified than Mr. Fitzpatrick have treated the subject over and over again. He is so careless in his facts, or his impulsive style of composition so hurries him into state- ment, that he makes the greatest mistakes in the commonest matters. He describes George the Fourth as interfering to prevent Earl Grey from raising certain Irish Peers to the Peer- age of Great Britain, though the least inquiry must have told him that the Grey Ministry did not come into office till after George the Fourth was dead. In his account of the famine, he blends 1845 with 1847, making Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell both in office at the same time. In an incidental avec- dote of no moment, he takes to Blackheath a party returning from Croydon to London ; which is as if a mariner wanting to sail West should steer North. A mistake in local topography is ex- cusable, and not worth mentioning, but as indicative of the man- ner in which the author jumbles facts and dates.
The best part of the book relates to the first Lord Cloncurry. The account of him, indeed, bears evident traces of exaggeration for effect, or from the nature of the author's mind. He as evi- dently sometimes misunderstands the anecdotes he records. Still Mr. Fitzpatrick has picked up a good many ;facts and tradi- tions respecting Nicholas Lawless and his friends, racy in them- selves, as well as throwing light upon Dublin, its citizens and manners, for a good part of the last century. Nicholas first Lord Cloncurry was himself a remarkable man ; active, keen, worldly, unscrupulous, with that entire disregard of even the appearance of principle which characterized -so many Irish politicians of the time. His career was a singular example of perseverance and worldly prudence successfully operating in a favourable field. The particulars of his life and fortune show to what a state of sordid and shameless corruption the "native" Parliament had brought the Emerald Isle.
In an opening passage, which for inflation and affectation is about the worst in the book, Mr. Fitzpatrick traces the origin of the house of Clonourry to the conquest of Ireland. If we look to fact and not to patronymics, it may readily be admitted that a good many of the tribe of "Lawless followed the banner of Strongbow. But that branch of the sept from which Nicholas Lord Cloncurry descended had sunk so low, that the father of the first Peer was a donkey-boy, who picked up his living by selling turf and firewood in the streets of Dublin. "His best customer was a respectable woollen-draper in High Street, who not only bought his turf but occasionally a hare or two, which the boy was in the habit of set- ting snares for, or otherwise catching in the hills." This draper was so struck by the intelligence of his protege that he offered to take him as errand-boy. The offer was gladly accepted by Robb'. Lawless. The exercise of the intelligence and quickness which had first excited the attention of his master was displayed in his new situation. The donkey-boy rose in the shop, till he became foreman, and eventually a partner. On the death of his patrols, in 1731, he married the young widow; who, says our author, "knew that Robin Lawless, though apparently of humble birth, had good blood in his veins "—bow Mr. Fitzpatrick gained this knowledge does not appear. In 1733 Nicholas first Lord Clon- curry was born.
A self-taught man himself, Robin determined that his son should have the advantage of a good education ; but at that time the higher branches of instruction were denied to Papists in Ire- land. Young Nicholas accordingly was sent to the Roman Ca- tholic College of Rouen ; where he remained till he was twenty- one, and then "returned, a finished scholar, to Ireland." What property his father had by this time accumulated does not appear : it must have been considerable, for young Lawless pur- chased an estate in the neighbourhood of Rouen ; but, for causes of which there are two or three versions, he did not agree with the resident gentry. In 1761, during a visit to Ireland, Nicholas con- trived to attach and carry off the daughter and heiress of Valen- tine Browne, a " capital merchant. The sensation in Dublin was prodigious ; the ire of the father great, for, Papist as he was; he had speculated on marrying his daughter to a Peer. Being, however, a goodnattired man, he relented, and became reconciled to his daughter if not to the match. In 1767, old Mr. Lawless retired from business ; and Nicholas having sold his French property, took his place in the firm. With his fortune, or rather his father's and father-in-law's, he had ob- + 'Spectator for 1849, page 971. jections talkie name appearing in the business; and accordingly en> tared into partnership with a relation of the name of John, who is described as a man of much shrewdness, tact, and practical ex- perience; and " john Lawless, woollen-draper, per, No.2, High Street," appears in the Dublin Directory from 1767 to 1787. Nicholas also became a partner in the bank of-Dawson Coates, a Quaker. With an income that enabled him to live in Merrion Square, two flourishing concerns, and prospects from both father and father-in-law, the son of the donkey-boy might have been satisfied ; but he was not. From " blanketing ' and banking he turned his eye to land. The estate and borough of Rathoormao was in the market, a bargain : a Papist, however, could not legally hold land • so Nicholas ab- jured the errors of Popery and became a Protestant. " The family of Lawless were outrageous at his apostasy? that of Valen- tine Browne equally so. Old Robin Lawless, formerly of High Street, was still living, and he felt the affliction—for as such it was regarded—acutely. Whether Mrs. Lawless conformed with her husband we have been unable decidedly to ascertain ; but when it is recollected how thoroughly and com- pletely they were identified both in thought and sentiment, the chances are that she did. From the year 1768 Lawless's prosperity was of railway speed. In 1799 it reached its terminus. Then it was that Nicholas Lawless de- parted to the other world."
A. few years afterwards, he sold Rathoormao, on advantageous terms, and bought two other properties. In 1776 he started as candidate for Lifford, and was triumphantly returned by the means usual in Irish elections of that time. Ten days afterwards the new Member was gazetted as Sir Nicholas Lawless, Baronet. Mr. Fitz- patrick appears surprised at the rapidity.; but the Lifford election was surely not the hero's first dabbling in polities. A man so no- torious as Nicholas Lawless, must have been for his marriage, his money, his timely conversion from the creed of his family, and moreover the possessor of a borough, must have had many commu- nications with the underatrappera of Government, if not with its leaders. As .a member of the House of Commons from 1776 to 1789, the votes of Sir. Nicholas were always on the right aide. He spoke seldom ; but when he did speak it was sensibly, aQd his practical suggestions offered a favourable contrast to Milesian oratory in general. The reward of his steadiness to the Bucking- ham Viceroyalty was, in 1789, the Peerage of Cloneurry : so Valentine Browne, after all, saw his daughter a Peeress. Nicholas was created, with many others, as a reward for thick and thin ad- hesion to"' the Castle" on the Regency question. His promotion excited a_ good deal of attention ; and though his votes deserved an Irish Peerage, he was said to have bought it. The Patriots' offered in Parliament to prove the fact, as well as several other sales. Many gibes were thrown at. him. He was introduced in a parody on Love in a Village, attributed. to. Miss Grattan, as second Lord in Waiting, taking part in a chorus :
"Nor place nor pension is my plan, Large sums I can afford, sr; But, as I'm not a gentleman, I fain would boa lord, sir."
The loyalty of Nicholas did not continue unabated to the close of his career-1799. He is said to have demanded advancement in the Peerage, from the successors of Lord Buckingham, who knew not Nicholas; and to have turned patriot and something more when he failed.. "In May 1797, the celebrated requisition to the High Sheriff of Kildare, calling on him at once to convene a meeting of his bailiwick for the purpose of praying the King to dismiss his present Ministers from his councils for ever ap- " The first signature was that of the " patriot" Duke of Elirensdier, the second " Cloneurry."
To fill up this outline of the life of Lord Nicholas, as he was called in Ireland, would require a good deal of knowledge of a par- ticular kind; perhaps the full knowledge has perished. Mr. Fitz- patrick has collected a number of facts from oral tradition or con- temporary record which are curious in their way. Although the hero, as we have seen, did not choose to have his Christian name appear on the shop-front, he was not above attending to his busi- 11013S.
"Everybody knew, however, that Nicholas Lawless was the principal proprietor of the establishment,although his private residence was in Merrion Square ; indeed, he made no attempt to disguise it himself, for long after Lord Harcourt created him a Baronet he personally attended the fairs and markets in the counties of Wicklow, Wexford, and Kildare, in the prosecu- tion of his mercantile speculations. It was no unusual sight to see him with his three-cocked hat and courtly attire standing in the middle of a knot of country clowns, while he endeavoured to conclude a hard-fought bargain with the principal for the purchase of half-a-dozen load of wool-packs."
The Lawlesses would seem to have been .a numerous race in Ire- land. At all events, as soon as Robert emerged into prosperity, he had no lack of relations; indeed their number is confusing in the book. The religious backsliding of Nicholas set the elan against him, though one Mr. Patrick would seem to have stood upon a point of honour rather than of belief. "Pat. Lawless lived in a large house on the Coombe, in Dublin, not far from Mr. Byrne's, of Byrne's Hill. Although he never read his recantation, but, on the contrary, to the day of his death, called and considered himself a Roman Catholic, he was only nominally a member of that persuasion. This observation will be illustrated by two facts. His children—for he had three, although only one attained maturity—he got christened by the Protestant Rector of St. Catherine's ; this was Margaret, who became the wife, in after years, of Lord Clonmel. The second proof of his lukewarmnees towards the Catholic faith was the indifference he manifested throughout his life to fre- quenting its sacraments. For some weeks previous to his death, in 1784, he Laboured under serious indisposition, and the anxiety of his Catholic relatives for his salvation increased day by day. The Reverend Mr. Dunne, the parish priest of St. Catherine's, Meath Street, entertained certain apprehensions, in common with them, concerning his fate; and as he knew Lawless intimately, did not hesitate to call personally upon him, and endeavour by means of ex- hortation and argument to arouse him to some sense of the danger of his position. Father Dunne had not much success on the first visit, or even on the second ; but odd numbers, they say, are remarkable for luck, and it ap- pears that the third was in some degree successful. He promised Father Donne that he would on the next morning make his confession, and as soon as permitted approach the communion. The zealous pastor returned home overjoyed. At an early hour next morning, he set out for the Coombe— reached Lawless's house, entered it, and found him—deadl"
Previous page
