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The Viscount Kilwarden | |
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![]() Portrait by Hugh Douglas Hamilton | |
Lord Chief Justice of Ireland | |
In office 3 July 1798 –23 July 1803 | |
Preceded by | Lord Clonmell |
Succeeded by | William Downes |
Member of Parliament for Dublin City | |
In office January 1798 –July 1798 Servingwith John Claudius Beresford | |
Preceded by | Lord Henry FitzGerald |
Succeeded by | George Ogle |
Personal details | |
Born | 19 January 1739 Forenaughts House,Naas,County Kildare,Kingdom of Ireland |
Died | 23 July 1803 (aged 64) Dublin,United Kingdom of Great Britain &Ireland |
Spouse | Anne Ruxton |
Residence(s) | 5 Leinster Street (City residence), Newlands House |
Alma mater | Trinity College Dublin |
Arthur Wolfe,1st Viscount Kilwarden KC (19 January 1739 –23 July 1803) was an Anglo-Irish politician and judge who served as the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1793 until 1803,when he was murdered during the Irish rebellion of 1803.
Arthur Wolfe was born at Forenaughts House,near Naas,being the eighth of nine sons born to John Wolfe (1700–1760) and his wife Mary (d. 1763),the only child and heiress of William Philpot,a successful merchant at Dublin. One of his brothers,Peter,was the High Sheriff of Kildare,and his first cousin Theobald was the father of the poet Charles Wolfe.
Wolfe was educated at Trinity College Dublin - where he was elected a Scholar - and at the Middle Temple in London. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1766. In 1769,he married Anne Ruxton (1745–1804),and after building up a successful practice took silk in 1778. He and Anne had four children,John,Arthur,Mariana and Elizabeth. [1]
In 1783,Wolfe was returned as Member of Parliament for Coleraine,which he represented until 1790. In 1787,he was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland,and was returned to Parliament for Jamestown in 1790.
Appointed Attorney-General for Ireland in 1789,he was known for his strict adherence to the forms of law,and his opposition to the arbitrary measures taken by the authorities,despite his own position in the Protestant Ascendancy. He unsuccessfully prosecuted William Drennan in 1792. In 1795,Lord Fitzwilliam,the new Lord Lieutenant,intended to remove him from his place as Attorney-General to make way for George Ponsonby. In compensation,Wolfe's wife was created Baroness Kilwarden on 30 September 1795;however,the recall of Fitzwilliam enabled Wolfe to retain his office.
In January 1798,he was simultaneously returned to Parliament for Dublin City and Ardfert. However,he left the House of Commons when he was appointed Chief Justice of the Kings Bench for Ireland and created Baron Kilwarden on 3 July 1798.
After the Irish Rebellion of 1798,Kilwarden became notable for twice issuing writs of habeas corpus on behalf of Wolfe Tone,then held in military custody,but these were ignored by the army and forestalled by Tone's suicide in prison. In 1795 he had also warned Tone and some of his associates to leave Ireland to avoid prosecution. Tone's godfather,Theobald Wolfe of Blackhall (the father of Charles Wolfe) was Kilwarden's first cousin,and Tone may have been Theobald's natural son. These attempts to help a political opponent were unique at the time.
After the passage of the Act of Union,which he supported,Kilwarden was created Viscount Kilwarden on 29 December 1800. In 1802,he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. [2]
Despite his actions on behalf of Wolfe Tone,Kilwarden was hated by the United Irishmen for his prosecution of William Orr in 1797,and he had entertained considerable fear for his safety after their failed rebellion. His murder in 1803 is often said to have been a delayed revenge for the death of Orr. Another theory is that it was a case of mistaken identity,the real target being his colleague Hugh Carleton,1st Viscount Carleton (although several witnesses said that Kilwarden identified himself to his killers,who replied "You're the one we want").
In 1802 he presided over the case against Major Sirr in which the habitual abuses of power used to suppress rebellion were exposed in court. [3] [4]
In the same year he ordered that the well-known Catholic priest Father William Gahan be imprisoned for contempt of court. In a case over the disputed will of Gahan's friend John Butler,12th Baron Dunboyne,the priest refused to answer certain questions on the ground that to do so would violate the seal of the confessional,despite a ruling [5] (which was overturned in the twentieth century) [6] that the common law did not recognize the seal of the confessional as a ground for refusing to give evidence. The judge may well have felt some sympathy for Gahan's predicament,as he was released from prison after only a few days.
During the 1803 rebellion,Kilwarden,who had never been forgiven by the United Irishmen for the execution of William Orr,was clearly in great danger. On the night of 23 July 1803,the approach of the Kildare rebels induced him to leave his residence,Newlands House,in the suburbs of Dublin,with his daughter Elizabeth [7] and his nephew,Rev. Richard Wolfe. [8] Thinking that he would be safer among the crowd,he ordered his driver to proceed by way of Thomas Street in the city centre;however,the street was occupied by Robert Emmet's rebels. Unwisely,when challenged,he gave his name and office,and he was rapidly dragged from his carriage and stabbed repeatedly with pikes. His nephew was murdered in a similar fashion,while Elizabeth was allowed to escape to Dublin Castle,where she raised the alarm. When the rebels were suppressed,Kilwarden was found to be still living,and was carried to a watch-house,where he died shortly thereafter. His last words,spoken in reply to a soldier who called for the death of his murderers,were "Murder must be punished;but let no man suffer for my death,but on a fair trial,and by the laws of his country."
He was succeeded by his eldest son John Wolfe,2nd Viscount Kilwarden. Neither John nor his younger brother Arthur,who died in 1805,had male issue,and on John's death in 1830 the title became extinct.
Robert Emmet was an Irish Republican,orator and rebel leader. Following the suppression of the United Irish uprising in 1798,he sought to organise a renewed attempt to overthrow the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland,and to establish a nationally representative government. Emmet entertained,but ultimately abandoned,hopes of immediate French assistance and of coordination with radical militants in Great Britain. In Ireland,many of the surviving veterans of '98 hesitated to lend their support,and his rising in Dublin in 1803 proved abortive.
Theobald Wolfe Tone,posthumously known as Wolfe Tone,was a revolutionary exponent of Irish independence and is an iconic figure in Irish republicanism. Convinced that so long as his fellow Protestants feared to make common cause with the Catholic majority,the British Crown would continue to govern Ireland in the interest of England and of its client aristocracy,in 1791 Tone helped form the Society of United Irishmen. Although received in the company of a Catholic delegation by the King and his ministers in London,Tone,with other United Irish leaders,despaired of constitutional reform. Fuelled by the popular grievances of rents,tithes and taxes,and driven by martial-law repression,the society developed as an insurrectionary movement. When,in the early summer of 1798,it broke into open rebellion,Tone was in exile soliciting assistance from the French Republic. In October 1798,on his second attempt to land in Ireland with French troops and supplies,he was taken prisoner. Sentenced to be hanged,he died from a reportedly self-inflicted wound.
Lord Edward FitzGerald 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 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 the eve of the intended uprising in May 1798,he was fatally wounded in the course of arrest.
The Society of United Irishmen was a sworn association,formed in the wake of the French Revolution,to secure representative government in Ireland. Despairing of constitutional reform,and in defiance both of British Crown forces and of Irish sectarian division,in 1798 the United Irishmen instigated a republican rebellion. Their suppression was a prelude to the abolition of the Irish Parliament in Dublin and to Ireland's incorporation in a United Kingdom with Great Britain.
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate,but subordinate,Kingdom of Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen. First formed in Belfast by Presbyterians opposed to the landed Anglican establishment,the Society,despairing of reform,sought to secure a republic through a revolutionary union with the country's Catholic majority. The grievances of a rack-rented tenantry drove recruitment.
John Philpot Curran was an Irish orator,politician,and lawyer known for his skills in defence of civil and political liberty. He first won popular acclaim in 1780,as the only lawyer in his circuit willing to represent a Catholic priest horsewhipped by an Anglo-Irish lord. In the 1790s he was celebrated as a champion in the Irish House of Commons of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform,and in court as defence counsel for United Irishmen facing charges of sedition and treason. Following the rebellion of 1798,he was vocal in his opposition to Britain's incorporation of Ireland in a United Kingdom.
Henry Joy McCracken was an Irish republican executed in Belfast for his part in leading United Irishmen in the Rebellion of 1798. Convinced that the cause of representative government in Ireland could not be advanced under the British Crown,McCracken had sought to forge a revolutionary union between his fellow Presbyterians in Ulster and the country's largely dispossessed Catholic majority. In June 1798,following reports of risings in Leinster,he seized the initiative from a leadership that hesitated to act without French assistance and led a rebel force against a British garrison in Antrim Town. Defeated,he was returned to Belfast where he was court-martialled and hanged.
Thomas Addis Emmet was an Irish and American lawyer and politician. In Ireland,in the 1790s,he was a senior member of the Society of United Irishmen as it planned for an insurrection against the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy. In American exile,he took up legal practice in New York,earned a reputation as a staunch abolitionist,and in 1812 to 1813 served as the state's Attorney General.
Thomas Paliser Russell was a founding member,and leading organiser,of the United Irishmen marked by his radical-democratic and millenarian convictions. A member of the movement's northern executive in Belfast,and a key figure in promoting a republican alliance with the agrarian Catholic Defenders,he was arrested in advance of the risings of 1798 and held until 1802. He was executed in 1803,following Robert Emmet's aborted rising in Dublin for which he had tried,but failed,to raise support among United and Defender veterans in the north.
John Keogh was an Irish merchant and Catholic political activist. He was a leading campaigner for Catholic Emancipation and reform of the Irish Parliament,active in Dublin on the Catholic Committee and,with some reservation,in the Society of United Irishmen. He was a leading organiser of the national Catholic Convention,the so-called "Back Lane Parliament",that gathered in Dublin in December 1792,and which,by direct appeal to the King and his ministers in London,secured passage the Catholic Relief Act of 1793.
Hugh Carleton MRIA,1st Viscount Carleton,PC (I),SL was an Irish politician and judge.
Viscount Kilwarden,of Kilwarden in the County of Kildare,was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created on 29 December 1800 for Arthur Wolfe,1st Baron Kilwarden,Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench for Ireland. He had already been created Baron Kilwarden,of Newlands in the County of Dublin,on 3 July 1798,also in the Peerage of Ireland. Furthermore,his wife Anne,daughter of William Ruxton of Ardee,County Louth,by Mary,daughter of Samuel Gibbons,had in 1795 been raised to the Peerage of Ireland in honour of her husband as Lady Kilwarden,Baroness of Kilteel in the County of Kildare. Lord Kilwarden was killed in 1803 during the Irish Rebellion of 1803 where he was dragged from his carriage and piked to death.
Events from the year 1798 in Ireland.
Events from the year 1803 in Ireland.
William Gahan was an Irish priest and author.
Henry Charles Sirr was an Anglo-Irish military officer,policeman,merchant and art collector. He played a prominent role in suppressing the Irish Rebellion of 1798,which included personally killing Society of United Irishmen leader Lord Edward FitzGerald,who Sirr alleged had been resisting arrest.
The Irish rebellion of 1803 was an attempt by Irish republicans to seize the seat of the British government in Ireland,Dublin Castle,and trigger a nationwide insurrection. Renewing the struggle of 1798,they were organised under a reconstituted United Irish directorate. Hopes of French aid,of a diversionary rising by radical militants in England,and of Presbyterians in the north-east rallying once more to the cause of a republic were disappointed. The rising in Dublin misfired,and after a series of street skirmishes,the rebels dispersed. Their principal leader,Robert Emmet,was executed;others went into exile.
Ireland was involved in the Coalition Wars,also known as the French Revolutionary (1792–1802) and Napoleonic (1804–1815) Wars. The island,then ruled by the United Kingdom,was the location of the Irish Rebellion of 1798,which was aided by the French. A minor,abortive uprising in 1803 resulted in the death of Ireland's chief justice,although this rising was not aided by the French.
Gilbert McIlveen was a Belfast linen draper and founding member of the Society of the United Irishmen,a revolutionary organisation in late 18th century Ireland. He took no part in the rebellion of 1798 and in 1803,in response to rumours of a further republican insurrection,he joined the loyalist yeomanry.
William Tennant (1759–1832),often spelt William Tennent,was an Ulster Presbyterian banker and a leading member in Belfast of the Society of the United Irishmen who,in 1798,sought by insurrection to secure a representative and independent government for Ireland. After a period of imprisonment,he returned to the commercial and civic of Belfast,in 1810 helping to found what is today the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.