Life
1749-1802 [‘Black Jack’]; b. Donnybrook; son of barrister who
conformed; ed. TCD; bar 1772; 1st earl of Clare and Attorney-Gen., 1784-89;
Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1789-1802; opposed Patriot Parliament
of Henry Grattan, throwing cold water on the idea of Irish independence;
implacable opponent of concession to Catholics, warning ominously that
the relief of Catholics would spell the end of the legal entitlements
of Protestants to their property; conducted Attorney General’s visit
to TCD in search of United Irishmen, compelling students to appear before
him for questioning on their associations; brought Lady Conoly and Lord
Henry Fitzgerald to visit Lord Edward in his last hour; foremost architect
of the Union and its sponsor in the House of Lords, with Chief Secretary
Edward Cooke; offered strong objections to William Pitt’s proposals
and promises of Catholic Emancipation; his funeral cortege was showered
with dead cats by the populace. DNB DIB DIH RR
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Works
A compleat refutation of the statements of Lord Moira respecting
Ireland; being the entire speech of Lord Clare, lord chancellor of Irelnd,
in the House of Peers of that kingdom, Monday, February 19, 1798 (London
1798); The Speech of the Rt. Hon. John, Earl of Clare, in the House
of Lords of Ireland on a motion made by the Earl of Moira, 19 Feb. 1798
(Dublin 1798). See also ‘On the Regency Question’, in Edmund
Curtis & R. B. McDowell, eds., Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922
(London: Methuen 1943)
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Criticism
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol.
II, p.131-35.
Terence de Vere White, The Anglo-Irish (London 1972), pp.94-110.
Robert Tracy, ‘Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan: Legality versus Legitimacy’, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 40, No. 1 (June 1985), pp.1-22.
Ann C. Kavanaugh, ‘Lord Clare and his Historical Reputation’, History Ireland I, 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp.22-26 [alludes to Froude’s immoderate purification of Fitzgibbon].
Oliver Goldsmith, The Haunch of Venison, a poetical epistle to Lord Clare (London: G. Kearsly & J. Ridley 1776) [presum. earlier holder of the title].
Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001, p.184.)
W. E. H. Lecky, History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 5 vols (London, 1892).
C. L. Falkiner, Studies in Irish History and Biography (London: Longman & Co [1901]), p.105.
Maureen Wall, Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, Collected Essays of Maureen Wall, ed., Gerard O’Brien (Dublin: Geography Publns. 1989), pp.131, 137, 142.
Thomas Bartlett, ‘Ulster 1600-2000: Posing the Question?’, in Bullán, 4, 1 (Autumn 1998), p.12.
Joep Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fíor Ghael, 1986, p.412.
W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, Lilliput Edn. 1991, p.2.
Terence de Vere White, The Anglo-Irish (London 1972), pp.95-96.
Julian Moynahan, Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination of a Hyphenated Culture, 1995, p.9.
Edmund Curtis and R. B. McDowell, eds., Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922, London: Methuen 1943, p.225.
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing
(1991), Vol. 1 quotes, under John Wilson Croker, ‘I can well
conceive why Lord Clare would have strangled papist privilege at its birth;
why he feared to make the first plunge down the declivity of concession;
why he refused power to the numerous and dangerous’ [see RX Croker.]
Cathach Books (Cat. 12) lists The Speech of the Rt. Hon. John, Earl of Clare, in the House of Lords of Ireland on a motion made by the Earl of Moira, 19 Feb. 1798 (Dublin 1798), with map of Ireland.
John Fitzgibbon, Irish Chancellor, hostile to Burke, had done more than
anyone except Pitt to destroy Fitzwilliam’s viceroyalty; sent ‘two
popish letters’ of Burke’s, apparently acquired at Dublin Castle,
to Auckland in order to damage his posthumous reputation in 1798. SEE
Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody, 1992.]
Portrait of John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare by Gilbert Stuart; see Anne Crookshank (Ulster Mus. 1965).
According to the gives an account of the funeral of Lord Clare given by W. J. Fitzpatrick as seen through the eyes of Lord Cloncurry, the coffin was showered with cats in reference to an unpopular allusion that Lord Clare formerly made to Irish catholics as having no more importance that the cats in the streets. (See Fitzpatrick, The Life and Times and Contemporaries of Lord Cloncurry, Dublin 1855, p.264; cited in Claire Connolly, Claire Connolly, Writing the Union, in Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union, Four Courts Press 2001, p.183.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)