Life
?1737-1795; b. Dublin; United Irishman; went to London, became tutor,
and took holy orders; Curate of Mary-le-Strand; preacher at Tavistock
Chapel, Drury Lane, London; secretary to Duchess of Kingston, before 1775;
satirised by Foote as Dr. Viper in Capuchin [1776]; Jackson retaliated
with a ‘disgusting’ poem by ‘Humphrey Nettle’ (pseud.);
Whig ed. of Public Ledger [in which he replied to Johnson’s
Taxation no Tyranny, supporting Americans] and The Morning Post
[with Isaac Jackman, supra]; [may have been agent sent to Louis XVI by
William Pitt in 1792, as a pretended Quaker]; sought French aid for United
Irishman; sent to London and Dublin from France to test popular support,
March 1794; betrayed by Duch. of Kingston’s attorney, Cockayne, who
betrayed him in Dublin; tried for treason, Dublin 1794; wrote Observations
in Answer to Mr. T. Paine’s Age of Reason (Dublin 1795) in prison;
defended by Curran and Ponsonby; died in the dock, 30 April, supposedly
from poison supplied by his wife. DNB DIB OCIL
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Criticism
Cheryl Herr, For The Land They Loved (1991).
Alan Booth, ‘Irish Exiles, Revolution and Writing in England in the 1790s’, in Paul Hyland and Neil Sammells, eds., Irish Writing, Exile and Subversion (Macmillan 1991), pp.64-81.
Rosamund Jacob, The Rise of the United Irishmen 1791-94 (1927), contains a full account of the transmission of Theobald Wolfe Tone’s papers to Jackson via Rowan (p.224ff.)
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography; Judgement was fixed for
30 April, on which day his wife breakfasted with him, and probably brought
him poison. After whispering to M’Nally on his arrival in court ‘We
have deceived the senate’ (the dying words of the suicide Pierre
in Otway’s Venice Preserved), he dropped down dead in the
dock ... His suicide was attributed to the desire to save from forfeiture
a small competency for his wife. His funeral ... was attended by the leading
United Irishmen.’ Sources, Madden, etc., and John Taylor’s
Record of My Life.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, p.930, Jackson was the clergyman who carried the documents that compromised Wolfe Tone, q.v. Curran defended him; he committed suicide with poison in court when found guilty of sedition.
Belfast Public Library holds
The Trial of Rev. William Jackson for High Treason (1795).
Samuel Foote, The Capuchin (1776) was an adaptation of The Trip to Calais, which had been suppressed by influence of Duchess of Kingston, who had been libelled in it.
Duchess of Kingston [self-styled] was Elizabeth Chudleigh, weakminded, beautiful, and illiterate; involved in confused marital and non-marital affairs with James Duke of Hamilton, still a minor in 1744; secretly married Augustus John Hervey, 1744; concealed birth and death of a son, Nov. 1747; obtrained separation; flirtations with George II; took private means to establish fact of her marriage, 1759; open concubine of Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd duke of Kingston, 1760; visited Berlin and Dresden; denied marriage with Hervey on oath on being threatened with trial for divorce, 1768-69; legally declared spinster; m. Duke of Kinston, heiress to property, Sept. 1773; went to Rome; accused of bigamy by Duke’s nephew, 1774; quarrelled with Samuel Foote, Aug. 1775; found guilty of bigamy by peers, 1776; retired to Calis; marriage to Hervey, Earl since 1775 (d.1779), declared valid, 1777; visited Czarina Catherina, 1777; visited Rome &c., d. Paris.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)