Life
1811-1870; b. Moore Hall; f. of George Moore and Col. Maurice Moore; ed.
Oscott, Birmingham and Christ Church, Cambridge; MP Co. May, 1847; co-fnd.
Catholic Defence Association; leader of ‘Irish Brigade’, a group
including 24 Liberal MPS, formed to opposed the Ecclesiastical Titles
Bill, 1851, which joined with Charles Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas’s
Tenant Right League to form the Independent Party; 42 out of 48 candidates
elected, 1852; unseated following charges of clerical interference in
election, 1857; re-elected 1868; shortly before his death he raised questions
in the House of Commons about the treatment of Jeremiah O’Donovan
Rossa; accredited with invention of obstructionism in Westminster. DNB
DIH
Criticism
J. H. Whyte, The Independent Party (Oxford: OUP 1958); see also
brief remarks in Malcolm Brown, Politics of Irish Literature: From
Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats (London: George Allen & Unwin 1972),
p.129.
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Notes
Malcolm Brown, Politics of Irish Literature: From Thomas Davis
to W. B. Yeats (London: George Allen & Unwin 1972): ‘Moore,
a member for Mayo, whose ample gifts of astuteness and generosity were
inherited only in fragments by his more famous son, the novelist. ...
one of the most distinguished Irishmen of the century, combining liberal
nationalism, great oratorical power, and acid wit, impressive land-holdings
in west Mayo, and, a not inconsequential item of Irish prestige, the famous
racing stable immortalised in his son’s novel, Esther Waters.
Moore gathered a nucleus of angry Irish embers and pledged them to vote
against whatever ministry was in power, under all circumstances, in the
hop of paralysing the work of the House of commons until Irish demands
were met. Twenty members were recruited to Moore’s caucus, barely
a fifth of the whole of the Irish delegation, but enough to be heard.
[... &c.] (p.129.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)