self a real statesman during the rebellion of 1798. With the thorough approbation of Sir Ralph Abercromby [q. v.] he suspended the authority of military officers in his province to act as justices of the peace, and made the civil justices act, and by a famous circular letter to his six subordinate generals, dated 18 March 1798, he had the seventeen thousand yeomanry and volunteers of Munster organised into night patrols, thus saving the regulars much labour and improving the discipline of the volunteers (see his letter in the Royal Military Calendar, i. 310–12). On the outbreak of the rebellion of 1798 he was completely cut off from Dublin, but he did not lose his head, and not only sent Major-general Henry Johnson with three thousand six hundred men to the right bank of the Barrow to cover the province, who defeated the rebels at New Ross on 5 June, but also sent off Brigadier-general John Moore with eighteen hundred men to the east, who after a march of 130 miles from Bandon in seven days defeated the rebels at Foulks Mill on 18 June, and took Wexford, the headquarters of the insurrection, on 21 June. Still more is Sir James Denham's wise government of Munster to be commended for the fact that no Irish rebel was executed throughout his province by martial law, in spite of the excitement caused by the insurrection, except after trial by a full court-martial consisting of a president and twelve members. Sir James Denham was promoted lieutenant-general on 1 Jan. 1798, and resigned his command in 1799, and his seat in parliament in 1801. His seniority prevented him from ever again obtaining a command, though he had shown himself so fit for one, but he was promoted general in 1803, and made colonel of the 2nd dragoons or Scots greys in 1813. Towards the close of his life Sir James Denham resumed his original name of Steuart, and when he died at Cheltenham on 12 Aug. 1839 he was the senior general of the army. He was never married, and on his death the baronetcies of Coltness and Goodtrees became extinct.
[Royal Military Calendar, i. 203–17, which contains much valuable information on Denham's Irish command; Gent. Mag. November 1839.]
DENHAM, Sir JOHN (1559–1639), judge, was a native of London. He entered Lincoln's Inn on 19 Aug. 1577, where he was called to the bar on 29 June 1587, and elected reader in Lent 1607. He took the degree of serjeant-at-law in the spring of 1609. At this date he held the post of steward of Eton College, acting also as their counsel. On 5 June 1609 he was appointed lord chief-baron of the Irish exchequer and knighted. He was sworn of the privy council in 1611, and raised to the lord chief-justiceship of the king's bench in Ireland in the spring of 1612. In 1613 he visited England, to report to James the recent action of the catholic party in the Irish parliament, who had withdrawn from the house and elected a speaker of their own. He returned to Ireland in September 1614. Between the retirement of Chichester in November 1615, and the arrival of Oliver St. John in July 1616 the viceroyalty was in commission, Denham being one of the lords justices. In 1617 he was created a baron of the English exchequer, Bacon, in administering the oath to his successor, Sir William Jones, advising him to ‘take unto’ him ‘the care and affection to the commonwealth and the prudent and politic administration of Sir John Denham.’ He is credited by Borlace (Reduction of Ireland, p. 200) with having been the first to raise a substantial revenue for the crown in Ireland. In 1621 he was commissioned to convey to Bacon the intelligence that the confession and submission which he had lately made could not be accepted as adequate. In the following year he was sheriff of the united counties of Bedford and Buckingham. In 1633 he was placed on the high commission. He signed the extra-judicial opinion in favour of the legality of ship-money on the case submitted by the king to the judges in 1636–7. In the spring of the ensuing year, while on circuit at Winchester, he caught a severe ague, which was still upon him when the time for delivering judgment in Hampden's case arrived. He exerted himself sufficiently to write a brief opinion in Hampden's favour. He died on 6 Jan. 1638–9, and was buried at Egham, Surrey, where, as also in Buckinghamshire and Essex, he held landed property. He married, first, Cicely, daughter of Richard Kellefet; secondly, Eleanor, daughter of Sir Garret Moore, knt., first Baron Mellefont and Viscount Drogheda. His son John, the poet, was by the second wife.
