NOTE

References to documents as being in the Irish Record Office, Dublin, must be taken as of the time when the manuscript of this volume was written. Almost all such documents have since perished in the destruction of the Four Courts, Dublin, and the Record Office on 1st July, 1922.

THE RT. HON. EDMUND BURKE, LL.D.

From the portrait by John Hoppner, R.A., in the theatre, Trinity College, Dublin, painted for T.C.D., 1795. (Reduced by kind permission of Messrs Bell & Sons, Ltd., from the full length photogravure in McKay and Roberts, John Hoppner, 1909.)

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CHAPTER I

PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD

EDMUND BURKE was the second son of Richard Burke, attorney

at-law, and Mary Nagle, daughter of Patrick Nagle of Ballyduff in the county of Cork. He was born in his father's house on Arran Quay, Dublin. No record of his birth or baptism has been discovered as yet. It is possible that he was privately baptised, as was not uncommon in Ireland at the period. He is described in the Matriculation Register of Trinity College, Dublin, as natus Dubliniï, and this may be taken as an authentic statement that Dublin was the city of his birth, supported as it is by his own letter of 25th February, 1767, to the Lord Mayor of Dublin acknowledging the honour done to him by his "native city" in conferring its freedom upon him. Notwithstanding careful investigation and long discussion, the precise house on Arran Quay in which he was born cannot be satisfactorily identified. Sir Joseph Napier, after comparing an old survey of Dublin, dated 1750, which is in Trinity College Library, with the Municipal Applotment books, was convinced the house was that which was numbered 12, Arran Quay in 1862, but other evidence seems to preponderate in favour of the house numbered 33 in 1897, which was recently demolished to clear a site for a branch of the National Bank1.

There can be no doubt that he was born on the 1st January, O.S. In a letter to Lord Rockingham, dated 12th January, 1775, he adds in a postscript, “My birthday—I need not say how long ago." The 12th January, after the change of the calendar, corresponded to 1st January, O.S. There has been, however, as great a controversy as to the exact year of his birth as exists in regard to the exact house in which he was born. Some fix 1st January, 1728, some 1st January, 1729, some 1st January, 1730, O.S. Prior states it was 1st January, 1730, O.S., adding, "Some have thought it to be 1728 from the entry in the Trinity College Matriculation Book; but as the former was stated by his family, and the age 68 is noted on the tablet to his memory, we perhaps have no right to disturb his own and their belief"." There is, however, no evidence to support this assumption of what Burke's

1 See Sir Joseph Napier's lecture on Edmund Burke, Appendix (Dublin, 1862), and The Irish Builder, vol. 39, pp. 239-40; vol. 40, pp. 7-8 and 29.

2 Prior's Life of Burke, 5th ed. (1854), p. 4.