Thomas MacNevin

Life
1810-1848, b. nr. Galway, d. Bristol; nationalist historian; proposed motion that ‘they seek success in the present stuggle solely by moral and legal means and without the spilling of blood or the inflictino of injury on any man’, seconded by William Smith O’Brien, June 1845, ultimately leading to the and leading to the Young Irelanders’ withdrawal in July 1845; d. in an asylum, Bristol, 8 Jan. PI JMC RAF FDA.

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Works
  • Gerald; A National Dramatic Poem in 3 acts ... invasion of Ireland by Henry III [sic] (Dublin: J Blundell 1831), 24pp. [ded. to Daniel O’Connell].
  • The Leading State Trials of Ireland from the Year 1784 to 1803 ... (Dublin: Duffy 1844) 598pp.
  • The History of the Volunteers of 1782 (Duffy 1845 [4th edn.]), vi+250pp.; Do. [another edn.] (Duffy [c.1882]).
  • The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. Richard Lalor Sheil, with memoir by Thomas MacNevin (Duffy 1845).
  • Characters of Great Men and the Duties of Patriotism (Dublin; M’Glashan 1846), 34pp.
  • The Confiscation of Ulster in the Reign of James I, commonly called the Ulster Plantation (Dublin: Duffy; London: Simpkin Marshall & Co 1846), viii+260pp.
  • The Lives and Trials of H. Rowan, the Rev. W. Jackson, the Defenders, W. Orr, Finnerty [… &c.] (Dublin 1846), 598p.

All cited in Rafroidi, 1980, Vol. 2]. See also Irish Book Lover 4.

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References
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives extract from The Confiscation of Ulster. FDA3, 620, Oliver MacDonagh, States of Mind (1983), [B]y the middle of the 1820s, the 1798 rising began to appear in nationalist historiography in its own right, paraded as the latest chapter of an age-old but unvarying struggle against English oppression. Characteristic of the new mood, tone and subject matter was the observation, in 1825, of Tomas MacNeven [sic], one of the earliest historians of the Leinster rising, that “the present recollections of past events, if properly applied, would emancipate the catholics, or, better still, emancipiate the Irish” (MacNevin, Meeting of the Irishmen in New York [q.d.], pp.9-11, quoted in D. McCartney, ‘The Writing of History in Ireland, 1800-1830’, in Irish Historical Studies Vol. x 1957, p.358).

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol 1, cites Thomas MacNevin, History of the Volunteers of 1782, also his Leading State Trials of Ireland, and The Lives and Trials of Rowan ... Orri [ &c.] (1846).

Marianne Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and the French (Yale UP 1982), 410pp.; index lists significant refs. to McNevin at pp.24, 71, 88, 105, &c.

Belfast Central Public Library holdings incl. Confiscation of Ulster (1846), History of the Volunteers of 1782 (n.d.); Lives and Trials of Eminent Irishmen [A. Ham. Rowan and William Jackson, et al.] (1866). See also memoir of R. L. Sheil by Mac Nevin.

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Quotations
Englishmen & Protestants: ‘It has been the misfortune of this country scarcely ever to have known the English natives or settlers otherwise than enemies, and in his language the Irish peasant has but one name for Protestant and Englishman, and confounds them; he calls them both by the name of Sassenagh.’ (Quoted in Madden, The United Irishmen, Vol. III [n.d.], p.28; cited in D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, 1982, p.129.)

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Notes
Irish Book Lover [q. iss.]: MacNevin’s Dublin nationalist library is advantageously compared with that of Thomas Davis in contrast with that of Denis Florence Mac Carthy.

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