Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/540

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

TAL

with provisions, clothing, arms, ammuni- tion; and about £8,000 in money. After the defeat at Aughrim he acted as Governor of Limerick ; but died of apo- plexy, 14th August 1 69 1, just as the advanced-guard of the English army came again within sight of the town. He was buried in St. Mary's Cathedral. No inscription marks the spot. Lady Morgan says : " Much ill has been written, and more believed ; but his history . . has only been written by the pen of party steeped in gall, and copied servilely from the pages of prejudice by the lame historians of modern times, more anxious for authority than for au- thenticity. Two qualities he possessed in an eminent degree— wit and valour ; and if to gifts so brilliant and so Irish be joined devotion to his country, and fidelity to the unfortunate and fated family with whose exile he began life, and with whose ruin he finished it, it cannot be denied that in his character the elements of evil were mixed with much great and striking good." His widow resided for some time in France. She subsequently returned to Ireland, and in Dublin, where she had once done the honours of a court, estab- lished a nunnery in which she spent the remainder of her days. On the morning of the 7th of March i730-'3i, in her 93 rd year, long after most of her contemporaries had passed away, and when her existence was almost forgotten, she was found dead on the floor of her cell. She was interred in St. Patrick's Cathedral. An inscription to her memory may be seen in the old Scots College, in the Eue des Fosses St. Victor, Paris. "(5) 52 54 i7o» 223 233

Talbot, Peter, Archbishop of Dublin, younger brother of preceding, was born at Malahide, County of Dublin, in 1620. He was educated principally in Portugal. In 1635 he was received into the Society of the e^esuits, and he was subsequently ordained a priest at Eome, and sent to Antwerp as a teacher of moral theology. His intimacy with Dominick a Eosario, Portuguese ambassador in Paris, enabled him to render many services to Prince Charles (afterwards Charles II.), and it is said to have been mainly through his influence that the Prince secretly joined the Catholic Church. Sent to England to promote the interests of Catholicism, it is stated that he wormed himself into the confidence of Cromwell, and that he was among those who attended his funeral as a mourner. On 9th May 1669, at Antwerp, he was consecrated Arch- bishop of Dublin, and immediately pro- ceeded to administer the affairs of his 516

TAN

diocese, which for twenty years had been almost entirely neglected. His supposed influence at the English court, and his uncompromising assertion of the claims of his Church exposed him to the bitter hostility of a large party ; and early in 1673 he was banished the kingdom. He returned from the Continent to England in 1675, and resided for a while in Cheshire, in poor health, until, through the influence of the Duke of York, he obtained permission to return home. In October 1678, the aged and infirm prelate was arrested at his father's house, near Carton, Maynooth, on the charge of par- ticipation in a " Popish plot," and " com- mitted close prisoner to the Castle, with a person to attend him in his miser- able and helpless condition, the violence of his distemper [calculus] being scarce supportable, and threatening his death." On examination, nothing appeared against him ; yet he was retained in confinement, and died in Dublin Castle in 1680, aged about 60. He was a man of singular ability and learning, and wrote numerous theological works, thirteen of which are named in Harris's Ware. ^* '^^* ^39

Tandy, James ITapper, a prominent actor in Irish affairs between 1780 and the Union, was born in Dublin in 1740. He was engaged in business, and from an early period took part in every popu- lar movement in the Irish capital. In 1780 he was expelled from the Dublin Volunteer Artillery for the expression of extreme opinions, and two years after- wards was imprisoned by an order of the House of Commons for breach of privilege, in sending a challenge to Mr. Toler, the Solicitor-General. Wolfe Tone remarks in his Journal: "It is but justice to an honest man, who has been persecuted for his firm adherence to his principles, to observe here that Tandy, in coming for- ward on this occasion, well knew that he was putting in the most extreme hazard his popularity among the corporations in the city of Dublin, with whom he had enjoyed the most unbounded influence for near twenty years ; and, in fact, in the event, this popularity was sacrificed. This did not prevent him taking his part de- cidedly." At times Tandy did not figure very creditably, as when he headed a mob that endeavoured to destroy the works connected with the|fnew Custom House in Dublin, because they feared its erection would injure the trade of those who lived in the vicinity of the old one. In the spring of 1793 proceedings were insti- tuted against him for distributing a pamphlet, entitled Common Sense, em-