Sir William Shee, QS (24 June 1804 – 1868) was an Anglo-Irish politician, lawyer and judge, the first Roman Catholic judge to sit in England and Wales since the Reformation.
Sir William Shee, QS (24 June 1804 – 1868) was an Anglo-Irish politician, lawyer and judge, the first Roman Catholic judge to sit in England and Wales since the Reformation.
Shee was born in Finchley, Middlesex. His father, Joseph, was a merchant from Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland, his mother, Teresa née Darell. Nicholas Wiseman was a cousin. He was initially educated at the school for French refugees founded by the Abbé Carron in Somers Town and where Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais taught. In 1818 he joined Wiseman as a student at St. Cuthbert's College, Ushaw. He also attended Edinburgh University where he joined The Speculative Society. In 1823 he became a pupil of Thomas Chitty at Lincoln's Inn and was called to the bar in 1828. [1]
Shee enjoyed a successful career as a barrister, being made serjeant-at-law in 1840, receiving a patent of precedence in 1845, and being appointed queen's serjeant in 1857. In 1837, he married Mary Gordon (died 1861) and their children included George Darell Shee and Henry Gordon Shee QC who became Recorder of Burnley and a judge in Salford. [1]
Shee's famous cases as an advocate included the Roupell case and leading the unsuccessful defence of poisoner William Palmer in 1856. [1] In the latter case the defence case suffered adverse comment from the judge because Shee had, against all rules and conventions of professional conduct, told the jury that he personally believed Palmer to be innocent. [2] He edited a great number of legal publications. [1]
Shee was a champion of Catholic Emancipation and addressed a protestant rally held on Penenden Heath, Maidstone as early as 24 November 1828. He failed in his first attempt to enter parliament at the 1847 general election for Marylebone but succeeded for Kilkenny County in the 1852 general election. [1]
He gave his maiden speech on 12 November 1852 during the debate on the Queen's Speech. [3] Shee became active in Irish tenants' rights. William Sharman Crawford having failed to be re-elected in 1852, Shee took charge of, and reintroduced, his Tenant Right Bill on 25 November 1852. In December, he spoke in support of Sir Joseph Napier's Improvement Compensation Bill but both bills were rejected by a select committee. Shee submitted an amended bill in February 1854 but it fared poorly. [1]
In June 1854 he failed in a controversial motion for leave to introduce a bill to amend the laws on the political administration of the Church of Ireland, and to increase funds for Irish religious education and church building. In 1855, discouraged in his exertions as to reform, Shee consulted with Sharman Crawford and drafted a new Tenants' Improvement Compensation Bill, addressing some of the objections of the select committee. It fared no better than his earlier efforts. Shee's failure cost him the support of his voters and he lost his seat in the 1857 general election. [1]
Shee was defeated in Kilkenny again in 1859 general election and declined judicial office in Madras in 1860. He stood unsuccessfully in Stoke-on-Trent at a by-election in September 1862. [1]
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| Crest | A swan rising Sable. [4] |
| Blazon | Per bend indented Azure and Or two fleurs-de-lis counterchanged. |
On 19 December 1863, Shee was appointed judge of the Queen's Bench, and knighted the following year. [5] He was the first Roman Catholic judge in England since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Shee died from apoplexy at his home in London. [1]
The Independent Irish Party (IIP) was the designation chosen by the 48 Members of the United Kingdom Parliament returned from Ireland with the endorsement of the Tenant Right League in the general election of 1852. The League had secured their promise to offer an independent opposition to the dominant landlord interest, and to advance an agrarian reform programme popularly summarised as the "three F's": fair rent, fixed tenure and free sale.
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Sir Joseph Napier, 1st Baronet was an Irish Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom Parliament. He was also a barrister and judge, who served briefly as Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
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The Tenant Right League was a federation of local societies formed in Ireland in the wake of the Great Famine to check the power of landlords and advance the rights of tenant farmers. An initiative of northern unionists and southern nationalists, it articulated a common programme of agrarian reform. In the wake of the League's success in helping return 48 pledged MPs to the Westminster Parliament in 1852, the promised unity of "North and South" dissolved. An attempt was made to revive the all-Ireland effort in 1874, but struggle for rights to the land was to continue through to the end of the century on lines that reflected the regional and sectarian division over Ireland's continued place in the United Kingdom.
George Darell Shee was an English judge, and oldest son of the Anglo-Irish judge and politician Sir William Shee. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated Bachelor of Laws in 1866. He was admitted to the Middle Temple on 6 November 1862, and was called to the bar on 30 April 1867. He joined the south-eastern circuit, became district probate registrar for East Suffolk, and in July 1883 was appointed recorder of Hythe. He married, on 14 October 1873, Jane, eldest daughter of Harry Innes of Thomastown, and died at Landguard Lodge, Felixstowe, on 15 December 1894. He was the author of A Remonstrance, which was addressed to Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, in reply to his attack on Sir William Shee, in a book entitled The League of the North and South.
William Sharman Crawford (1780–1861) was an Irish landowner who, in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, championed a democratic franchise, a devolved legislature for Ireland, and the interests of the Irish tenant farmer. As a Radical representing first, with Daniel O'Connell's endorsement, Dundalk (1835-1837) and then, with the support of Chartists, the English constituency of Rochdale (1841–1852) he introduced bills to codify and extend in Ireland the Ulster tenant right. In his last electoral contest, standing on the platform of the all-Ireland Tenant Right League in 1852 he failed to unseat the Conservative and Orange party in Down, his native county.
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Samuel MacCurdy Greer (1810–1880), was an Irish politician who, in Ulster championed Presbyterian representation and tenant rights. He was a founder member of the Ulster Tenant Right Association and of the all-Ireland Tenant Right League. In the general election of 1857 he was returned to Westminster on a tenant-right platform for County Londonderry.
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James MacKnight (1801-1876) was an Irish journalist and agrarian reformer whose call for Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale briefly surmounted Ireland's political and sectarian division. In the United Kingdom general election of 1852 the all-Ireland Tenant Right League, which MacKnight formed in a joint initiative with Charles Gavan Duffy, helped return 48 pledged MPs. Pulled between Catholic and nationalist sentiment in the south and the strength of Protestant and unionist feeling in the north, the League and its Independent Irish Party did not survive the elections of 1857. In Ulster, MacKnight supported tenant-right candidates committed to the legislative union with Great Britain, while remaining sharply critical of British government efforts to address Ireland's continuing agrarian crisis.
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