Life
1688-c.1750 [DNB: fl.1722-1747]; b. Connaught; ed. TCD, BA 1706; preached
in favour of Old Pretender, Dublin c.1718; fled to Paris; became involved
in Law’s Mississippi Scheme, with profit, assuming the alias of James
Jameson in Jacobite intrigues; acted as Atterbury’s secretary in
correspondence with the Pretender; arrested in London, 1722; his defence
against the bill of pains and penalties in the House of Lords regarding
his deportation becomes contemporary best-seller; imprisoned in Tower
of London, 1723-36; escaped to France; befriended by James Butler, 2nd Duke
of Ormonde; entered the Young Pretender Prince Charles’s service
in 1744 and sailed to Scotland in 1745, and was one of the seven men of
Moidart to land at Eriska, June 1745; rejoined Charles in France after
Culloden; sole secretary, 1747; his influence considered politically detrimental
to the Jacobite cause; trans. Castlenau’s Memoirs of English Affairs
(1724); trans. Morabin’s The History of Cicero’s Banishment
(1725), reissued as An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Cicero
(1736), stressing the parallel between Cicero and Atterbury; planned to
trans. Cicero’s Letters to Atticus in 1729; History of
Cicero’s Banishment (1725). DNB DIB DIW
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)