fell into disfavour with the government owing to his opposition to the Toleration Bill in 1719, which he thought calculated to promote the growth of popery (Report of his speech, Addit. MS. 6117, ff. 107–21), and, in consequence of having in the following spring alluded to the act as a reason for greater zeal in preaching against popery, he was charged with stirring up disaffection against the state. But from this charge he ‘acquitted himself so well that it dropped of itself,’ and in 1721 he was again included in the commission for administering the great seal. He died at Tuam on 24 July 1741, and was buried in the churchyard of his cathedral at the east end of the church. He desired that no monument should be erected to his memory; but the capital of the ancient cross of Tuam placed over his grave testifies to the universal respect in which he was held.
Synge was a man of considerable learning, but his writings, consisting of short tracts and sermons, of which there is a full if not complete list in Nichols’s ‘Literary Anecdotes’ (i. 378), were chiefly devoted to the promotion of practical piety. A number of them (some thirty-four) were after his death collected and published in 4 vols. 12mo, London, 1744. Of these, several, having passed through many editions during his lifetime, have since been adopted, and frequently reprinted for general distribution, by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. It has been said of Synge that his life was as exemplary as his writings were instructive; that what he wrote he believed, and what he believed he practised. As the son of one bishop, the nephew of another, himself an archbishop, and the father of two other bishops, his position in ecclesiastical biography is probably unique.
Synge’s two sons, Edward and Nicholas, were both graduates of Trinity College, Dublin; the former proceeding M.A. in 1712 and D.D. in 1728; the latter M.A. in 1715 and D.D. in 1734. Edward, from being chancellor of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, was on 28 May 1730 elevated to the bishopric of Clonfert, being consecrated by his father in St. Werburgh’s Church, Dublin, on 7 June. Subsequently he was translated to Cloyne on 21 March 1731, to Ferns on 8 Feb. 1733, and to Elphin on 15 May 1740. He died at Dublin on 27 Jan. 1762, and was buried in St. Patrick’s churchyard on 1 Feb. Nicholas, having been collated to the archdeaconry of Dublin in 1743, was on 26 Jan. 1746 consecrated bishop of Killaloe. He died in December 1770, the fifth and last prelate of the family, and was buried in St. Patrick’s churchyard on 1 Jan. 1771.
[Biographia Britannica based on a memoir contributed by the archbishop’s son Edward and practically reprinted in Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary; Wood’s Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 347, iv. 812; Ware’s Works, ed. Harris, i. 283, 619–21, ii. 297; Cotton’s Fasti Eccles. Hib. passim; Mant’s Hist. of the Church in Ireland, ii. 282, 286, 311–12, 355, 381, 506, 550; Monck Mason’s Hist. and Antiquities of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, App. pp. lxii, lxxii; Foster’s Alumni Oxon.; Cat. of Graduates in Trinity College, Dublin; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. viii. 423, xi. 240, 3rd ser. x. 203, 317; Addit. MSS. 6116 f. 299, 6117 ff. 1–186, with letters to Abp. Wake, 1703–26.]
SYNGE, WILLIAM WEBB FOLLETT (1826–1891), diplomatist and author, the son of the Rev. Robert Synge, M.A. (d. 1862), by his first wife, Anne (d. 1844), daughter of William Follett, was born on 25 Aug. 1826. After being educated almost entirely abroad, he on 26 June 1846 entered the foreign office; from 15 Sept. 1851 to 1 July 1853 he was attached to the British legation at Washington. On his return to England he devoted his leisure to literary work, beginning by writing in a journal called ‘The Press.’ His contributions to ‘Punch’ began during the Crimean war. On 26 July 1856 he was appointed secretary to Sir William Gore Ouseley’s special mission to Central America, and during his absence on that mission obtained the rank of assistant clerk at the foreign office on 7 Dec. 1857. While with Ouseley in Central America in 1859 he met Anthony Trollope, who disapproved of his politics (see West Indies and Spanish Main, pp.275, 292–4). He returned to work in London on 28 Feb. 1860. He was appointed commissioner and consul-general for the Sandwich Islands on 27 Dec. 1861, and in that capacity stood proxy for the Prince of Wales at the christening of the prince of Hawaii. In 1865 he escorted Queen Emma of Hawaii to England. On 30 Oct. 1865 he became consul-general and commissary judge in Cuba; but here his health, already impaired, gave way, and he retired from the service on 31 Oct 1868.
Settling first at Guildford, and then in 1883 at Eastbourne, Synge gave himself up to literature. He wrote regularly for the ‘Standard.’ In 1875 he published his first novel; in 1883 he began to contribute to the ‘Saturday Review.’ He died at Eastbourne on 29 May 1891.
Synge married, on 27 Jan. 1853, Henrietta Mary, youngest daughter of Robert Dewar Wainwright, colonel in the United States
