Life
1757?-1839; son of vicar of Belfast; his grandfather a noted Huguenot
exile pastor; ed. TCD, m. widow of Sir Richard Cox; Lincoln’s Inn,
and Irish bar, 1780; opposed union, 1798; MP Blessington, 1799; Attorney
General, 1807-22 [var. Solicitor-Gen. DIH]; removed by Wellesley as promoting
an anti-Catholic agitation; refused peerage and returned to law practice;
promoter of Brunswick Club. DNB DIB DIH FDA
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography; that he did and could
use his position to promote anti-catholic agitation, he discovered in
his famous letter to Lord Norbury, urging him to influence grand juries
on circuit ... His appearance at the Rotunda was hailed with rapture by
the Orange party. There is an uncritically eulogistic biog. in James Wills’s
Irish Nation.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, reprints Daniel O’Connell’s speech in defence of William [recte John] Magee, against whom Attorney General Saurin brought a libel charge, 1812-13 [941].
Belfast Public Library holds Question of a Legislative Union with Great Britain (1800).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)