Life
1806-1879; b. Gorey, Co. Wexford; purportedly a convert from Catholicism; became a Protestant and was ordained
in the Congregation Church, Armagh; became a journalist after writing prize
essay on Federalism in the context of Repeal called the Right of Ireland; fnd-ed.,
Derry Standard and Christian Patriot (1838-40), and ed. Daily Express;
secured pension from Victoria for his Illustrated History of England
from 1820 to the Death of the Prince Consort [q.d.]; joined the Tenant League, 1859; other books include
Ireland and Her Churches (1867), with outspoken remarks on the Famine, emigration, Land War, education, Catholicism and Presbyterianism in Ireland, incorporating views of Dr. Chalmers; also The Land-War in Ireland (1870),
and The Religious History of Ireland, Primitive, Papal, and Protestant
(1873). CAB DNB JMC DIH DUB
[ top ]
Works
Ireland and Her Churches (London: Chapman 1867); with John A. Walker,
The New Hand-Book of Ireland, an illustrated guide for tourists and travellers (Dublin: Steam Printing c.1869), 468pp.; [maps and cold litho ills. by
Foster of Dublin]; A Guide from the Church of Rome to the Church of Christ (q.d).
The Land War in Ireland: A History for the Times (Port Washington NY: Kennikat 1970), xiv., 439pp. [facs. edn.]
[ top ]
Gerald Hall (Centre for Research Libraries, Chicago) writes that the online New Dictionary of National Biography gives 1838-40 as publication dates of the Christian Patriot (Belfast), compared with those stated in the Shorter DNB and cited in References [supra]. Hall also cites a collection of Godkin’s newpaper writings published as The Touchstone of Orthodoxy (1838), and confirms that he wrote a prize-winning Repeal essay, adding that ‘his conditions for Repeal, such as a majority of Protestants acceding to it, certainly were not the party line.’
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)