Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/151

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Duigenan
144
Duke

in which year he was elected to a fellowship. He became an LL.B. in 1763, and an LL.D. in 1765, and was called to the Irish bar in 1767. He first made his mark in Dublin by leading the opposition against the election of John Hely Hutchinson as provost of Trinity College in 1771, and by writing numerous pamphlets on the subject, which he collected into a volume under the title of ‘Lachrymæ Academicæ, or the present deplorable state of the College.’ After this opposition he felt bound to resign his fellowship when Hutchinson was elected, and he then devoted himself to his practice at the bar, which increased rapidly. He became a king's counsel, and a bencher of the King's Inns in 1784, and king's advocate-general of the high court of admiralty of Dublin in 1790. His politics were of a most pronounced protestant type, and he was soon looked upon with great favour by the government because of his declared opposition to the schemes of Grattan and his friends. His protestantism brought him into notice with the Irish bishops, and he became in quick succession vicar-general of the dioceses of Armagh, Meath, and Elphin, judge of the consistorial court of Dublin, and judge of the admiralty court. He was brought into the Irish House of Commons in 1791 as M.P. for Old Leighlin, and gave evidence of his religious opinions by his speech on the Catholic Bill, which was published in 1795. He was also strongly in favour of the union, and was one of the leading speakers on the government side during the debates on that question, and when it was finally carried he was appointed one of the commissioners for distributing compensation under it. For this service he was sworn of the Irish privy council, and was soon after appointed professor of civil law in Trinity College, Dublin. He was elected M.P. for Armagh in 1798 and by the same constituency to the first united parliament of Great Britain and Ireland; he continued to sit for that place until his death. In the united parliament he displayed bitter opposition to all demands for catholic emancipation in Ireland; he spoke upon hardly any other subject, but upon this he was the most violent speaker in the House of Commons. Yet, in spite of his convictions, he married a Miss Cusac, a catholic lady, whom he permitted to keep a catholic chaplain, and at his death he left all his fortune to his wife's nephew, Sir William Cusac Smith [q. v.], son and heir of Sir Michael Smith, who was master of the rolls in Ireland. Duigenan was almost as famous in the House of Commons for his antiquated bob-wig and Connemara stockings, as he was for his anti-catholic proclivities. He died suddenly, after being present at the debate the night before, at his lodgings in Bridge Street, Westminster, on 11 April 1816.

[Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Phillips's Curran and his Contemporaries; Grattan's Life and Times of Henry Grattan; Gent. Mag. May 1816.]

H. M. S.

DUKE, EDWARD (1779–1852), antiquary, born in 1779, was the second son of Edward Duke of Lake House, Wiltshire, by Fanny, daughter of John Field of Islington. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. 1803, M.A. 1807. He was ordained in 1802, and engaged in clerical work at Turkdean, Gloucestershire, and Salisbury. In 1805 he came into the estates and the mansion at Lake, which had been in his family since 1578. Duke devoted his leisure to antiquities. In company with Sir R. C. Hoare he explored the tumuli on his estates, and the antiquities there discovered were described in Hoare's ‘Ancient Wilts,’ and were preserved in the museum at Lake House. Between 1823 and 1828 Duke contributed to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ chiefly on Wiltshire antiquities. In his ‘Druidical Temples of the County of Wilts,’ London, 1846, 12mo, he maintained that the early inhabitants of Wiltshire had ‘pourtrayed a vast planetarium or stationary orrery on the face of the Wiltshire downs,’ the earth being represented by Silbury Hill, and the sun and planets, revolving round it, by seven ‘temples,’ four of stone and three of earth, placed at their proper distances. He also published ‘Prolusiones Historicæ, or Essays illustrative of the Halle of John Halle, citizen … of Salisbury’ (temp. Henry VI and Edward IV), vol. i. (only), Salisbury, 1837, 8vo. Duke was an active Wiltshire magistrate, and was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Linnean Society. He died at Lake House on 28 Aug. 1852, aged 73. He married in 1813 Harriet, daughter of Henry Hinxman of Ivy Church, near Salisbury, by whom he had four sons and four daughters. The eldest son, Edward, entered the church and succeeded to the estates.

[Gent. Mag. 1852, new ser. xxxviii. 643–4; Burke's Visitation of Seats and Arms (1854), 2nd ser. i. 63, 64; Hoare's Modern Wiltshire; Cat. Oxf. Grad.]

W. W.

DUKE, RICHARD (1658–1711), poet and divine, was born at London, ‘the son of an eminent citizen,’ probably a short time before the Restoration, since he was admitted to Westminster School in 1670. He was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1675, and proceeded B.A. in 1678, M.A. in