Life
1731-1811 [1st baronet]; b. Knocktopher, Co. Kilkenny, ed. TCD, BA 1753p
poems included in Life of Grattan, by Grattan’s son, which
also includes a key to Baratariana, of which he was said to be
the chief author; also in Anthologia Hibernica (Juy 1793); MP Knocktopher
from 1761; friend of Burke; supported Catholic Emancipation and introduced
the third Catholic Relief Bill, 1792; published ‘History of Baratar[an]ia
Continued’, in Freeman’s Journal (April-May 1771), attacking
Government, esp. Lord Macartney; created baronet, 1777; introd. Catholic
Relief Bill in 1792, prompted by Burke’s Letter (1792); supported
Union and received money; d. St. Stephen’s Green. port. included
in engraving of House of Commons of 1790, now preserved in Bank of Ireland
(College Green) [as figure No.19 in key]; d. St Stephen’s Green,
aged 82. DNB PI DIB.
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Criticism
Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea
of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior To
The Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Pub. Co. 1986), pp.206-278.
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Notes
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis
1912), lists poems in Life of Grattan, also in Anthologia Hibernica
(July 1793); ‘Anacreon to Stella’ addressed to Duchess of Portland;
chief author of History of Baratarania [the squib on Hely Hutchinson].
Dictionary of National Biography notes that he was a Borough owner and opposed efforts to reform Parliament but supported the Catholic Relief Bill; also supported Union; some speeches published. SEE also Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, p.117.
Belfast Central Public Library holds Speech in the Irish House of Commons April 7th, 1791 (1791).
Maureen Wall, Catholic Ireland in the 18th c., ed. Gerard O’Brien
(1989), citing Sir Hercules Langrishe, in the the relief debate of 1778,
‘If you take away persecution, the Established Church will of necessity
swallow up the rest.’ [131] SEE 1st Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,
FDA1, c.p.834ff.
A story related in Molloy’s Romance of the Irish Stage (1897) according to which Langrishe is found at table with ten ‘dead men’ [empty bottles]. Did he get through them alone? No, he had the help of a bottle of Madeira.
Hubert Butler relates that ‘when in 1850 Sir richard Langrishe of Knocktopher heard taht a tenant of his was about to destroy the huge Ballyboodan ogham stone, he promptly stepped in.’ (See ‘Lament for Archaeology’, in Roy Foster, ed., Butler, The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue, London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press; Dublin: Lilliput 1990, p.172.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)