102-452: Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was an Irish poet, songwriter, singer, novelist, and historian. Thomas , Tom , Tomm , or Tommy Moore may also refer to: Thomas Moore Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852), was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies . His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore
204-586: A St Patrick's day dinner Moore had organised in Paris because of the presiding presence of Wellesley Pole Long, a nephew of the Duke of Wellington . Once Moore learned the Bermuda debt had been partly cleared with the help of Lord Lansdowne (whom Moore repaid almost immediately by a draft on Longman, his publisher), the family, after more than a year, returned to Sloperton Cottage. To support his family Moore entered
306-635: A "Protestant reformer" who wished for "a democratic House of Commons and the Emancipation of his Catholic countrymen", driven toward the republican separatism of the United Irishmen . He absolves Fitzgerald of recklessness: but for a contrary wind, decisive French assistance would have been delivered by General Hoche at Bantry in December 1796. In his own Memoirs , Moore acknowledges his Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1831) as
408-567: A "justification of the men of '98 – the ultimi Romanorum of our country". Moore's History of Ireland , published in four volumes between 1835 and 1846, reads as a further and extended indictment of English rule. It was an enormous work (consulted by Karl Marx in his extensive notes on Irish history), but not a critical success. Moore acknowledged scholarly failings, some of which stemmed from his inability to read documentary sources in Irish. In his journal, Moore confessed that he "agreed with
510-538: A Catholic Parliament in Dublin, "which they would be sure to have out and out", the British government would be continually at odds, first over the disposal of Church of Ireland and absentee property, and then over what would be perennial issues of trade, foreign treaties and war. So "hopeless appeared the fate of Ireland under English government, whether of Whigs or Tories", that Moore declared himself willing to "run
612-447: A Religion (1833) is again fictional. He is, as Moore had been, a Catholic student at Trinity College. On news of Emancipation (passage of the 1829 Catholic Relief Bill), he exclaims: "Thank God! I may now, if I like, turn Protestant". Oppressed by the charge that Catholics are "a race of obstinate and obsolete religionists […] unfit for freedom", and freed from "the point of honour" that would have prevented him from abandoning his church in
714-485: A career in law. Through the literary salon of the poet and satirist Henrietta Battier , and his friends at Trinity, Robert Emmett and Edward Hudson, Moore was connected to the popular politics of the capital agitated by the French Revolution and by the prospect of a French invasion. With their encouragement, in 1797, Moore wrote an appeal to his fellow students to resist the proposal, then being canvassed by
816-553: A charitable mixed repertory of professional players and high-society amateurs. He favoured comic roles in plays like Sheridan 's The Rivals and O'Keeffe 's The Castle of Andalusia . Among the professionals, on stage in Kilkenny with her sister, the tragedienne-to-be Mary Ann Duff , was Elizabeth "Bessy" Dyke. In 1811, Moore married Bessy in St Martin-in-the-Fields , London. Together with Bessy's lack of
918-457: A consequence of the union": "We sent thee Castlereagh – as heaps of dead Have slain their slayers by the pest they spread". The second is that at the time of the Acts of Union Castlereagh's support for Catholic emancipation had been disingenuous. Castlereagh had been master of "that faithless craft", which can "court the slave, can swear he shall be freed", but then "basely spurns him" when his "point
1020-558: A dedication to the Prince of Wales . His introduction to the future prince regent and King, George IV was a high point in Moore's ingratiation with aristocratic and literary circles in London, a success due in great degree to his talents as a singer and songwriter. In the same year he collaborated briefly as a librettist with Michael Kelly in the comic opera, The Gypsy Prince , staged at
1122-848: A dowry, the Protestant ceremony may have been the reason why Moore kept the match for some time secret from his parents. Bessy shrank from fashionable society to such an extent that many of her husband's friends never met her (some of them jokingly doubted her very existence). Those who did held her in high regard. The couple first set up house in London, then in the country at Kegworth , Leicestershire , and in Lord Moira's neighbourhood at Mayfield Cottage in Staffordshire , and finally in Sloperton Cottage in Wiltshire near
SECTION 10
#17327732220361224-586: A friend of Fox . Moore judged Sheridan an uncertain friend of reform. But he has Sheridan articulate in his own words a good part of what was to be the United Irish case for separation from England. Writing in 1784 to his brother, Sheridan explains that the "subordinate situation [of Ireland] prevents the formation of any party among us, like those you have in England, composed of person acting upon certain principles, and pledged to support each other". Without
1326-527: A large European audience. In the United States, "The Last Rose of Summer" alone sold more than a million copies. Lord Edward Fitzgerald Lord Edward FitzGerald (15 October 1763 – 4 June 1798) was an Irish aristocrat and nationalist. He abandoned his prospects as a distinguished veteran of British service in the American War of Independence , and as an Irish Parliamentarian , to embrace
1428-553: A large sum for which Moore was liable. To escape debtor's prison , in September 1819, Moore left for France, travelling with Lord John Russell (future Whig prime minister and editor of Moore's journals and letters). In Venice in October, Moore saw Byron for the last time. Byron entrusted him with a manuscript for his memoirs, which, as his literary executor, Moore promised to have published after Byron's death. In Paris, Moore
1530-506: A project for the massacre of the Irish peers while in procession to the House of Lords for the trial of Lord Kingston in May 1798. It was probably abhorrence of such measures that converted Thomas Reynolds from a conspirator to an informer; at all events, by him and several others, the authorities were kept posted on what was going on, though lack of evidence produced in court delayed the arrest of
1632-470: A propagandist for Castlereagh in Paris, the Fudges are accompanied by an accomplished tutor and classicist, Phelim Connor. An upright but disillusioned Irish Catholic, his letters to a friend reflect Moore's own views. Connor's regular epistolary denunciations of Castlereagh have two recurrent themes. The first is Castlereagh as "the embodiment of the sickness with which Ireland had infected British politics as
1734-477: A request by the publishers James and William Power, he wrote lyrics to a series of Irish tunes in the manner of Haydn 's settings of British folksongs, with Sir John Andrew Stevenson as arranger of the music. The principal source for the tunes was Edward Bunting 's A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (1797) to which Moore had been introduced at Trinity by Edward Hudson. The Melodies
1836-418: A sergeant's guard, but very zealous'. Reinhard, who considered Arthur O'Connor 'a far abler man', accurately read the character of Fitzgerald as that of a young man "incapable of falsehood or perfidy, frank, energetic, and likely to be a useful and devoted instrument; but with no experience or extraordinary talent, and entirely unfit to be chief of a great party or leader in a difficult enterprise. This opinion
1938-842: A shorter practicable route than that hitherto followed. The rhumb line crosses the extremely rugged and heavily forested northern part of the present state of Maine. In a subsequent expedition, he was formally adopted at Detroit by the Bear clan of the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) with the name "Eghnidal" by Karonghyontye (Captain David Hill) , and made his way down the Mississippi to New Orleans , whence he returned to England. Finding that his brother had procured his election for County Kildare (a seat he held from 1790 to 1798 ), and desiring to maintain political independence, Lord Edward refused
2040-548: A week of his return he was ordered into custody and required to apologise at the bar of the House of Commons for violently denouncing in the House a Government proclamation which Grattan had approved for the suppression of the United-Irish attempt to revive the Irish Volunteer movement with a "National Guard". However, it was not until 1796 that he joined the United Irishmen , who by now had given up as hopeless
2142-469: Is certain that, whatever may have been its limits, a warm mutual affection subsisted between the two. She conceived a child by him, a baby girl who was born on 30 March 1792 (died October 1793). His Whig connections, together with his transatlantic experiences, predisposed Fitzgerald to sympathize with the doctrines of the French Revolution , which he embraced enthusiastically when he visited Paris in October 1792. He lodged with Thomas Paine and listened to
SECTION 20
#17327732220362244-437: Is folkloric but the history is in earnest. When it catches up with the narrator in the late Penal Law era, his family has been reduced to the "class of wretched cottiers ". Exposed to the voracious demands of spendthrift Anglo-Irish landlords (pilloried by Maria Edgeworth ), both father and son assume captaincies among the "White-boys, Oak-boys, and Hearts-of Steel", the tenant conspiracies that attack tax collectors, terrorise
2346-642: Is gain'd". Through a mutual connection, Moore learned that Castlereagh had been particularly stung by the verses of the Tutor in the Fudge Family. For openly casting the same dispersions against the former Chief Secretary—that he bloodied his hands in 1798 and deliberately deceived Catholics at the time of the Union—in 1811 the London-based Irish publisher, and former United Irishman, Peter Finnerty
2448-518: Is not that held in Ireland, where Fitzgerald is remembered as brave and sweet-natured, a clever planner, and a tragic loss. His funeral is described: Keen to avoid any display of the enormous popular feeling towards Lord Edward, Castlereagh ensured that the funeral took place in secret at 2am and that the body was not allowed to return to Kildare. On its way to St Werburgh’s in the shadow of the Castle,
2550-561: Is said to have had a striking likeness to Elizabeth Sheridan. Procuring an introduction he discovered her to be a protégée of Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis (Madame de Sillery), Governess to the Children of France . The parentage of the girl, whose name was Pamela (1773–1831), is uncertain; but although there is some evidence to support the story of Madame de Genlis that Pamela was born in Newfoundland of parents called Sims,
2652-579: Is the interest of all parties [Catholic and Protestant, Irish and English] to forget". Such argument made little headway against the man Moore decried as a demagogue , but who, as a result of his uncompromising stand, was to emerge as the undisputed leader of the Catholic interest in Ireland, Daniel O’Connell . Even when, in 1814, the Curia itself (then still in silent alliance with Britain against Napoleon ) proposed that bishops be "personally acceptable to
2754-430: The 3rd Earl Bathurst ), he sailed for New Brunswick to join the 54th Regiment with the rank of Major. In April 1789, guided by a compass, he traversed the country with a brother officer, from Fredericton, New Brunswick to Quebec , falling in with Indians by the way, with whom he fraternized. He accomplished the journey, which is 225 miles by rhumb line (and today 365 miles by road) in twenty-six days, and established
2856-642: The Act of Union through the Irish Parliament . In what were the "verbal equivalents of the political cartoons of the day", Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress (1818) and Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823), Moore lampoons Castlereagh's deference to the reactionary interests of Britain's continental allies. Widely read, so that Moore eventually produced a sequel, was the verse novel The Fudge Family in Paris (1818). The family of an Irishman working as
2958-592: The Irish Parliament as a Member for Athy , a seat he held until 1790. In Parliament he acted with the small Opposition Irish Patriot Party group led by Henry Grattan , but took no prominent part in debate. In the spring of 1786, he took the then unusual step for a young nobleman of entering the Military College, Woolwich, after which he made a tour through Spain in 1787. Dejected by unrequited love for his cousin Georgina Lennox (who later married
3060-603: The Theatre Royal, Haymarket , In 1801, Moore hazarded a collection of his own verse: Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little Esq. . The pseudonym may have been advised by their juvenile eroticism. Moore's celebration of kisses and embraces skirted contemporary standards of propriety. When these tightened in the Victorian era , they were to put an end to what was a relative publishing success. In
3162-483: The republican rebellion of 1798 (Moore was at home, ill in bed), or in the uprising in Dublin for which Emmett was executed in 1803. Later, in a biography of the United Irish leader Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1831), he made clear his sympathies, not hiding his regret that the French expedition under General Hoche failed in December 1796 to effect a landing. To Emmett's sacrifice on the gallows Moore pays homage in
Thomas Moore (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
3264-634: The "Whigs as Whigs", Moore claimed not to have received "even the semblance of a favour" (Lord Moira, they "hardly acknowledge as one of themselves"). And with exceptions "easily counted", Moore was convinced that there was "just as much selfishness and as much low-party spirit among them generally as the Tories". But for Moore, the fact that the Prince Regent held fast against Catholic admission to parliament may have been reason sufficient to turn on his former friend and patron. Moore's Horatian mockery of
3366-410: The "treasonous truths" of his book on Fitzgerald. The difficulty, Moore suggested, was that these "truths" did not permit him to pretend with O'Connell that reversing the Acts of Union would amount to something less than real and lasting separation from Great Britain. Relations had been difficult enough after the old Irish Parliament had secured its legislative independence from London in 1782 . But with
3468-639: The British Army in Afghanistan , and then with French Foreign Legion in Algeria . He was dying of tuberculosis that riddled the family when, according to Foreign Legion records, he was killed in action on 6 February 1846. Despite these heavy personal losses, the marriage of Thomas Moore is generally regarded to have been a happy one. In 1818, it was discovered that the man Moore had appointed his deputy in Bermuda had embezzled 6,000 pounds sterling ,
3570-519: The British forces abandoned the city. Webb surmises that the success of the American colonists in fighting against regular troops led him in later years to the conviction that his countrymen in Ireland could cope with them with a similar result. In 1783 FitzGerald visited the West Indies before returning to Ireland, where his brother, the 2nd Duke of Leinster , had procured Edward's election to
3672-577: The Crown a "negative control", a veto, on the appointment of Catholic bishops. In an open Letter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin (1810), Moore noted that the Irish bishops (legally resident in Ireland only from 1782) had themselves been willing to comply with a practice otherwise universal in Europe. Conceding a temporal check of papal authority, he argued, was in Ireland's Gallican tradition. In
3774-676: The Directory through Reinhard, French minister to the Hanseatic towns. The Duke of York , meeting Pamela at Devonshire House on her way through London with her husband, had told her that "all was known" about his plans, and advised her to persuade him not to go abroad. Also, in Hamburg Lord Edward met with Johan Anders Jägerhorn (or baron de Spurila, as he called himself), a Finnish Swede who had advocated Finnish autonomy and now acted as an intermediary between Lord Edward and
3876-548: The English-appointed Dublin Castle administration , to secure Ireland by incorporating the kingdom in a union with Great Britain . In April 1798, Moore was interrogated at Trinity but acquitted on the charge of being a party, through the Society of United Irishmen , to sedition. Moore, though a friend of Emmett, had not taken the United Irish oath with Emmett and Hudson, and he played no part in
3978-531: The French. The proceedings of the conspirators at Hamburg were made known to the government in London by an informer, Samuel Turner . Pamela was entrusted with all her husband's secrets and took an active part in furthering his designs. She appears to have fully deserved the confidence placed in her, though there is reason to suppose that at times she counselled prudence. The result of the Hamburg negotiations
4080-750: The Prince in the pages of The Morning Chronicle were collected in Intercepted Letters, or the Two-Penny Post-Bag (1813). Another, and possibly more personal, target for Moore was the Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh . A reform-minded Ulster Presbyterian turned Anglican Tory , as Irish Secretary Castlereagh had been ruthless in the suppression of the United Irishmen and in pushing
4182-545: The Spanish exile and Protestant convert Joseph Blanco White . Brendan Clifford , editor of Moore's political writings, interprets Moore's philosophy as "cheerful paganism", or, at the very least, " à la carte Catholicism" favouring "what scriptural Protestantism hated: the music, the theatricality, the symbolism, the idolatry". Despite his mother being a devout Catholic, and like O'Connell acknowledging Catholicism as Ireland's "national faith", Moore appears to have abandoned
Thomas Moore (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
4284-436: The Tories in their opinion" as to the consequences of the first Parliamentary Reform Act (1832) . He believed it would give "an opening and impulse to the revolutionary feeling now abroad" [England, Moore suggested, had been "in the stream of a revolution for some years"] and that the "temporary satisfaction" it might produce would be but as the calm before a storm: "a downward reform (as Dryden says) rolls on fast". But this
4386-420: The age of 34 on 4 June 1798 as the rebellion raged outside. He was buried the next day in the cemetery of St Werburgh's Church, Dublin . An Act of Attainder confiscating his property was passed as 38 Geo. 3 c. 77, but was eventually repealed in 1819. The weapon used by Lord Edward to attack Captains Swan and Ryan while trying to escape arrest was later stolen from Major Swan's house by Emma Lucretia Dobbin,
4488-779: The appointment of the Rector of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, Paul Cullen, as Primate Archbishop of Armagh . In a call heeded by Protestants of all denominations, in 1822 the new Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, William Magee , declared the absolute necessity of winning an Irish majority for the Reformed faith — a "Second Reformation". Carrying "religious tracts expressly written for
4590-502: The arrests at Bond's, FitzGerald had been in hiding, but had twice visited his wife in disguise and was himself visited by his stepfather Ogilvie and his friend William Lawless ; he generally observed less caution than his situation required. Meanwhile, the date for the rising was finally fixed for 23 May and FitzGerald awaited the day hidden by Mary Moore above her family's inn in Thomas Street Dublin. Tipped off that
4692-478: The bible preachers. Moore's purpose, he was later to write, was to put "upon record" the "disgust" he felt at "the arrogance with which most Protestant parsons assume […] credit for being the only true Christians, and the insolence with which […] they denounce all Catholics as idolators and Antichrist ". Had his young man found "among the Orthodox of the first [Christian] ages" one "particle" of their rejection of
4794-536: The cause of an independent Irish republic. Unable to reconcile with Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy or with the Kingdom 's English-appointed administration , he sought inspiration in the American Revolution and revolutionary France where, in 1792, he met and befriended Thomas Paine . From 1796 he became a leading proponent within the Society of United Irishmen of a French-assisted insurrection. On
4896-529: The command of an expedition against Cadiz offered him by Pitt , and devoted himself for the next few years to the pleasures of society and to his parliamentary duties. He was on terms of intimacy with his first cousin Charles Fox , with Richard Sheridan and other leading Whigs . According to Thomas Moore , Lord Edward FitzGerald was the only one of the numerous suitors of Sheridan's first wife, Elizabeth , whose attentions were received with favour; and it
4998-456: The commanding issue of the day was not tenant rights or land reform. It was the final instalment of Catholic Emancipation : Castlereagh's unredeemed promise of Catholic admission to parliament. Since within a united kingdom, Irish Catholics would be reduced to a distinct minority, Castlereagh's promises of their parliamentary emancipation seemed credible at the time of the Union. But the provision
5100-454: The common belief that she was the daughter of Madame de Genlis herself by Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (to whose children she was then acting as a governess), was probably well founded. On 27 December 1792, FitzGerald and Pamela were married at Tournai , one of the witnesses being Louis Philippe , afterwards King of the French; and in January 1793 the couple reached Dublin. Ireland
5202-593: The commotion, FitzGerald jumped out of bed and, ignoring the pleas of the arresting officers Captain William Bellingham Swan (later assistant town Major of Dublin) and Captain Daniel Frederick Ryan to surrender peacefully, FitzGerald stabbed Swan and mortally wounded Ryan with a dagger in a desperate attempt to escape. He was secured only after Major Sirr shot him in the shoulder. FitzGerald was conveyed to New Prison, Dublin where he
SECTION 50
#17327732220365304-415: The country seat of another close friend and patron, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne . Their company included Sheridan and John Philpot Curran , both in their bitter final years. Thomas and Bessy had five children, none of whom survived them. Three girls died young, and both sons lost their lives as young men. One of them, Thomas Landsdowne Parr Moore, as a lowly officer fought first with
5406-709: The daughter of Rev. William Dobbin and Catherine Coote. The scabbard he reputedly had at his arrest is held at Limerick Museum . Shortly after his death, Fitzgerald's sister, Lady Lucy FitzGerald, authored the following statement regarding her brother's fidelity to Ireland: Irishmen, Countrymen, it is Edward FitzGerald's sister who addresses you: it is a woman but that woman is his sister: she would therefore die for you as he did. I don't mean to remind you of what he did for you. 'Twas no more than his duty. Without ambition he resigned every blessing this world could afford to be of use to you, to his Countrymen whom he loved better than himself, but in this he did no more than his duty; he
5508-460: The debates in the Convention. At a convivial gathering on 18 November, he supported a toast to "the speedy abolition of all hereditary titles and feudal distinctions", and gave proof of his zeal by expressly repudiating his own title, a performance for which he was dismissed from the army. While in Paris, FitzGerald became enamoured of a young girl who he chanced to see at the theatre, and who
5610-696: The edification of the Irish peasantry", the "editor" of Captain Rock's Memoirs is an English missionary in the ensuing "bible war". Catholics, who coalesced behind O'Connell in the Catholic Association , believed that proselytising advantage was being sought in hunger and distress (that tenancies and food were being used to secure converts), and that the usual political interests were at play. Moore's narrator in Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of
5712-544: The eve of the intended uprising in May 1798, he was fatally wounded in the course of arrest. FitzGerald, the fifth son of the 1st Duke of Leinster and the Lady Emily Lennox (daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond ), was born at Carton House , near Dublin , and was a member of the Fitzgerald dynasty . In 1773 his father died and his mother soon afterwards married William Ogilvie , who had been
5814-460: The evil." Despite their initially greater opposition to reform, Moore predicted that the Tories would prove themselves better equipped to ride out this "general routing". With the young Benjamin Disraeli (who was to be the author of the Second Reform Act in 1867) Moore agreed that since the Glorious Revolution first led them to court an alliance with the people against the aristocracy, the Tories had taken "a more democratic line". For Moore this
5916-411: The face of continuing sanctions, he sets out to explore the tenets of the "true" religion. Predictably, the resolve the young man draws from his theological studies is to remain true to the faith of his forefathers (not to exchange "the golden armour of the old Catholic Saints" for "heretical brass"). The argument, however, was not the truth of Catholic doctrine. It was the inconsistency and fallacy of
6018-422: The field of political squib writing on behalf of his Whig friends and patrons. The Whigs had been split by the divided response of Edmund Burke and Charles Fox to the French Revolution. But with the antics of the Prince Regent, and in particular, his highly public efforts to disgrace and divorce Princess Caroline , proving a lightning rod for popular discontent, they were finding new unity and purpose. From
6120-414: The formal practice of his religion as soon as he entered Trinity. In 1825, Moore's Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan was finally published after nine years of work on and off. It proved popular, went through a number of editions, and helped establish Moore's reputation among literary critics. The work had a political aspect: Sheridan was not only a playwright, he was a Whig politician and
6222-607: The funeral was frequently stopped and searched by parties of soldiers. Even after the lead coffin was laid in the vault at dead of night, the mourners were obliged to stay in the church until passes could be procured Apart from the daughter born to him by Elizabeth Sheridan in 1792, Lord Edward FitzGerald had the following children with his wife Pamela: There are Lord Edward Streets named in his honour in many places in Ireland, such as Dublin , Limerick , Sligo , Kilkenny , Ballina , Ballymote , and Ballycullenbeg in County Laois . The County Roscommon GAA club Tulsk Lord Edward's
SECTION 60
#17327732220366324-402: The hope of future advancement, Moore reluctantly sailed from London in 1776 to take up a government post secured through the favours of Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira. Lord Moira was a man distinct in his class for having, on the eve of the rebellion in Ireland, continued to protest against government and loyalist outrages, and to have urged a policy of conciliation. Moore was to be
6426-399: The house of Nicholas Murphy. Moore explained to Magan what had happened and, unbeknownst to her, Magan informed Dublin Castle. The Moores were raided that day. Mary, running to warn the Leinster Directory meeting nearby in James's Gate, received a bayonet cut across the shoulders. That same evening Sirr stormed Murphy's house where Lord Edward was in bed suffering from a fever. Alerted by
6528-411: The house was going to be raided, Moore turned to Francis Magan , a Catholic barrister and trusted sympathiser, who agreed to hide Fitzgerald. Making their way to Magan's on 18 May, Fitzgerald's party was challenged by Major Henry Sirr and a company of Dumbarton Fencibles. Moore escaped with Fitzgerald ( William Putnam McCabe and other of his bodyguard were arrested) and took him back to Thomas Street to
6630-454: The immediate abuses of the (Anglican and landed) "Irish establishment". As he had O'Connell's uncompromising stance on the Veto, Moore regarded O'Connell's campaign for Repeal as unhelpful or, at best, "premature". This perspective was shared by some of O'Connell's younger lieutenants, dissidents with the Repeal Association . Young Irelander Charles Gavan Duffy sought to build a " League of North and South " around what Michael Davitt (of
6732-450: The king", O'Connell was opposed. Better, he declared, that Irish Catholics "remain for ever without emancipation" rather than allow the king and his ministers "to interfere" with the Pope's appointment of Irish prelates. At stake was the unity of church and people. "Licensed" by the government, the bishops and their priests would be no more regarded than the ministers of the established Church of Ireland. When final emancipation came in 1829,
6834-430: The landlords' agents and violently resist evictions. This low-level agrarian warfare continued through, and beyond, the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s. It was only after this catastrophe, which as Prime Minister Moore's Whig friend, Lord Russell, failed in any practical measure to allay, that British governments began to assume responsibility for agrarian conditions. At the time of Captain Rock' s publication (1824),
6936-407: The later Land League ) described as "the programme of the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen reduced to moral and constitutional standards"—tenant rights and land reform. In the early years of his career, Moore's work was largely generic, and had he died at this point he would likely not have been considered an Irish poet. From 1806 to 1807, Moore dramatically changed his style of writing and focus. Following
7038-441: The military to act as they saw fit to crush the United Irishmen led to a campaign of vicious brutality in several parts of the country. This forced the United Irish executive to bring forward plans for the rising, with or without French aid. Lord Edward FitzGerald's social position made him the most important United Irish leader still at liberty. On 9 May a reward of £1,000 was offered by Dublin Castle for his apprehension. Since
7140-409: The normal fate meted out to traitors. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Clare , said to a member of his family, "For God's sake get this young man out of the country; the ports shall be thrown open, and no hindrance whatever offered". FitzGerald, however, refused to desert others who could not escape, and whom he had himself led into danger. On 30 March the government proclamation of martial law authorising
7242-416: The path of constitutional reform and whose aim, after the recall of Lord FitzWilliam in 1795, was nothing less than the establishment of an independent Irish republic. In May 1796 Theobald Wolfe Tone was in Paris endeavouring to obtain French assistance for an insurrection in Ireland. In the same month, FitzGerald and his friend Arthur O'Connor proceeded to Hamburg, where they opened negotiations with
7344-462: The price O'Connell paid was the disenfranchisement of the Forty-shilling freeholders – those who, in the decisive protest against Catholics exclusion, defied their landlords in voting O'Connell in the 1828 Clare by-election . The "purity" of the Irish church was sustained. Moore lived to see the exceptional papal discretion thus confirmed reshaping the Irish hierarchy culminating in 1850 with
7446-580: The prospect of obtaining power – which in Ireland is "lodged in a branch of the English government" (the Dublin Castle executive) – there is little point in the members of parliament, no matter how personally disinterested, collaborating for any public purpose. Without an accountable executive the interests of the nation are systematically neglected. It is against this, the truncated state of politics in Ireland, that Moore sees Lord Edward Fitzgerald ,
7548-552: The provincialism of the average American, Moore consorted with exiled European aristocrats, come to recover their fortunes, and with oligarchic Federalists from whom he received what he later conceded was a "twisted and tainted" view of the new republic. Following his return to England in 1804, Moore published Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806). In addition to complaints about America and Americans (including their defence of slavery), this catalogued Moore's real and imagined escapades with American women. Francis Jeffrey denounced
7650-594: The registrar of the Admiralty Prize Court in Bermuda . Although as late as 1925 still recalled as "the poet laureate" of the island, Moore found life on Bermuda sufficiently dull that after six months he appointed a deputy and left for an extended tour of North America. As in London, Moore secured high-society introductions in the United States including to the President, Thomas Jefferson . Repelled by
7752-569: The ringleaders. But on 12 March 1798 Reynolds' information led to the seizure of a number of conspirators at the house of Oliver Bond . Lord Edward FitzGerald, warned by Reynolds, was not among them. As a fellow member of the Ascendancy class, the Government were anxious to make an exception for FitzGerald, avoiding the embarrassing and dangerous consequences of his subversive activities. They communicated their willingness to spare him from
7854-514: The risk of Repeal, even with separation as its too certain consequence." But with Lord Fitzgerald, Moore believed independence possible only in union with the "Dissenters" (the Presbyterians) of the north (and possibly then, again only with a prospect of French intervention). To make "headway against England" the "feeling" of Catholics and Dissenters had first to be "nationalised". This is something Moore thought might be achieved by fixing upon
7956-808: The semi-insurrection of " Whiteboyism ". Today Moore is best remembered for his Irish Melodies (typically " The Minstrel Boy " and " The Last Rose of Summer "), his chivalric romance Lalla Rookh and, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron . Thomas Moore was born to Anastasia Codd from Wexford and John Moore from County Kerry over his parents' grocery shop in Aungier Street, Dublin , He had two younger sisters, Kate and Ellen. Moore showed an early interest in music and performance, staging musical plays with his friends and entertaining hope of being an actor. In Dublin he attended Samuel Whyte's co-educational English grammar school, where he
8058-418: The son of a Dublin grocer entertaining English audiences from Wiltshire was himself connected to the great mass of his countrymen – to those whose remitted rents helped sustain the great houses among which he was privileged to move. The Memoirs relate the history of Ireland as told by a contemporary, the scion of a Catholic family that lost land in successive English settlements. The character, Captain Rock ,
8160-585: The song "O, Breathe Not His Name" (1808). More veiled references to Emmett are found in the long oriental poem "Lalla Rookh" (1817). In 1799, Moore continued his law studies at Middle Temple in London . The impecunious student was assisted by friends in the expatriate Irish community in London, including Barbara, widow of Arthur Chichester, 1st Marquess of Donegall , the landlord and borough-owner of Belfast . Moore's translations of Anacreon , celebrating wine, women and song, were published in 1800 with
8262-425: The supply was insufficient, and the leaders were hoping for a French invasion to make good the deficiency and to give support to a popular uprising. But French help proving dilatory and uncertain, the rebel leaders in Ireland were divided in opinion as to the expediency of taking the field without waiting for foreign aid. Lord Edward was among the advocates of the bolder course and there is some evidence that he favoured
8364-492: The supposed "corruptions" of the Roman church – justification not by faith alone but also by good works , transubstantiation , and veneration of saints, relics and images — he would have been persuaded. Moore's work elicited an immediate riposte. The Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion (1833) was a vindication of the reformed faith by an author described as "not the editor of Captain Rock's Memoirs " —
8466-535: The time of "her native monarchy", the Pope had had no share in the election of Irish bishops. "Slavish notions of papal authority" developed only as a consequence of the English conquest. The native aristocracy had sought in Rome a "spiritual alliance" against the new "temporal tyranny" at home. In resisting royal assent and in placing "their whole hierarchy at the disposal of the Roman court", Irish Catholics would "unnecessarily" be acting in "remembrance of times, which it
8568-572: The tradition of the Church in Ireland against both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies. The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald depicts the United Irish leader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform. Complementing Maria Edgeworth 's Castle Rackrent , Memoirs of Captain Rock is a saga, not of Anglo-Irish landowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to
8670-623: The tutor for him and his siblings. He spent most of his childhood in Frescati House at Blackrock in Dublin where he was tutored by Ogilvie in a manner chiefly directed to the acquisition of knowledge that would fit him for a military career. FitzGerald joined the British Army in 1779 and then became aide-de-camp on the staff of Lord Rawdon in the southern theatre of the American Revolutionary War . He
8772-455: The two then became fast friends. Moore, nonetheless, was dogged by the report that the police had found that the pistol given to Jeffrey was unloaded. In his satirical English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Byron , who had himself been stung by one of Jeffrey's reviews, suggested Moore's weapon was also "leadless": "on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evaporated". To Moore, this
8874-491: The volume in the Edinburgh Review (July 1806), calling Moore "the most licentious of modern versifiers", a poet whose aim is "to impose corruption upon his readers, by concealing it under the mask of refinement." Moore challenged Jeffrey to a duel but their confrontation was interrupted by the police. In what seemed to be a "pattern" in Moore's life ("it was possible to condemn [Moore] only if you did not know him"),
8976-556: Was Hoche 's abortive expedition to Bantry Bay in December 1796. In September 1797 the Government learnt from the informer Leonard McNally that Lord Edward was among those directing the conspiracy of the United Irishmen , which was now quickly maturing. He was especially concerned with the military organisation, in which he held the post of colonel of the Kildare regiment and head of the military committee. He had papers showing that men were ready to rise. They possessed some arms, but
9078-622: Was a Paddy and no more; he desired no other title than this. Fitzgerald was of small stature and handsome features. In the opinion of the McNeill biography in the Encyclopædia Britannica eleventh edition (1911) Fitzgerald's character and career have been made the subject of eulogies much beyond their merits. The same writer claims: He had, indeed, a winning personality, and a warm, affectionate and generous nature, which made him greatly beloved by his family and friends; he
9180-474: Was a prospect he embraced. In conversation with the Whig grandee Lord Lansdowne , he argued that while the consequences might be "disagreeable" for many of their friends, "We have now come to that point which all highly civilised countries reach when wealth and all the advantages that attend it are so unequally distributed that the whole is in an unnatural position: and nothing short of a general routing up can remedy
9282-520: Was by then seething with dissent which was finding a focus in the increasingly popular and revolutionary Society of the United Irishmen , which had been forced underground by the outbreak of war between France and Britain in 1793. Lord Edward FitzGerald, fresh from the gallery of the Convention in Paris , returned to his seat in the Irish Parliament and immediately sprang to their defence. Within
9384-523: Was denied proper medical treatment. After a brief detention in Dublin Castle he was taken to Newgate Prison, Dublin where his wound, which had become infected, became mortally inflamed. His wife, whom the government probably had enough evidence to convict of treason, had fled the country, never to see her husband again, but Lord Edward's brother Henry and his aunt Lady Louisa Conolly were allowed to see him in his last moments. Lord Edward died at
9486-517: Was evidenced by the prime-ministerial careers of George Canning and Robert Peel : "mere commoners by birth could never have attained the same high station among the Whig party". In 1832, Moore declined a voter petition from Limerick to stand for the Westminster Parliament as a Repeal candidate. When Daniel O'Connell took this as evidence of Moore's "lukewarmness in the cause of Ireland", Moore recalled O'Connell's praise for
9588-435: Was humorous, light-hearted, sympathetic, adventurous. But he was entirely without the weightier qualities requisite for such a part as he undertook to play in public affairs. Hotheaded and impulsive, he lacked judgement. He was as conspicuously deficient in the statesmanship as he was in the oratorical genius of such men as Flood, Plunket or Grattan. One of his associates in conspiracy described him as 'weak and not fit to command
9690-484: Was joined by Bessy and the children. His social life was busy, often involving meetings with Irish and British and travellers such as Maria Edgeworth and William Wordsworth . However, his attempt to bridge the gulf in his connections between his exiled fellow countrymen and members of the British establishment was not always successful. In 1821, several emigres, prominent among them Myles Byrne (a veteran of Vinegar Hill and of Napoleon's Irish Legion ) refused to attend
9792-611: Was published in ten volumes, together with a supplement, over 26 years between 1808 and 1834. The musical arrangements of the last volumes, following Stevenson's death in 1833, were by Henry Bishop . The Melodies were an immediate success, " The Last Rose of Summer ", " The Minstrel Boy ", " Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms " and "Oft in the Stilly Night" becoming immensely popular. There were parodies in England, but translations into German, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, and French, and settings by Hector Berlioz guaranteed
9894-404: Was recognised in England as a press, or " squib ", writer for the aristocratic Whigs ; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot. Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as " Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation , Moore was seen to defend
9996-629: Was scarcely more satisfactory, and he wrote to Byron implying that unless the remarks were clarified, Byron, too, would be challenged. In the event, when Byron, who had been abroad, returned there was again reconciliation and a lasting friendship. In 1809, Moore was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia . Between 1808 and 1810, Moore appeared each year in Kilkenny , Ireland, with
10098-607: Was schooled in Latin and Greek and became fluent in French and Italian. By age fourteen he had had one of his poems published in a new literary magazine called the Anthologia Hibernica (“Irish Anthology”). Samuel Whyte had taught Richard Brinsley Sheridan , Irish playwright and English Whig politician , of whom Moore later was to write a biography. In 1795, Moore was among the first Catholics admitted to Trinity College Dublin , preparing, as his mother had hoped, for
10200-466: Was sentenced to eighteen months for libel. As a partisan squib writer, Moore played a role not dissimilar to that of Jonathan Swift a century earlier. Moore greatly admired Swift as a satirist, but charged him with caring no more for the "misery" of his Roman Catholic countrymen "than his own Gulliver for the sufferings of so many disenfranchised Yahoos ". The Memoirs of Captain Rock might have been Moore's response to those who questioned whether
10302-454: Was seriously wounded at the Battle of Eutaw Springs on 8 September 1781, his life being saved by an escaped slave named Tony Small (nicknamed "Faithful Tony", see Black Loyalist ). FitzGerald commissioned a portrait of Tony Small by John Roberts in 1786. Lord Edward freed Small and employed him to the end of his life. FitzGerald was evacuated from Charleston , South Carolina in 1782 when
10404-473: Was stripped out of the union bills when in England the admission of Catholics to the "Protestant Constitution" encountered the standard objection: that as subject to political direction from Rome, Catholics could not be entrusted with the defence of constitutional liberties. Moore rallied to the "liberal compromise" proposed by Henry Grattan , who had moved the enfranchisement of Catholics in the old Irish parliament. Fears of "Popery" were to be allayed by according
#35964