Life
1814-1892; son of John Burke, 1787-1848, genealogist; ed. Caen Coll., Normandy; Middle Temple, bar 1839; Ulster king-of-arms 1853; knighted, 1854; keeper of state papers in Ireland, 1855; hon. LLD, Dublin, 1862; CB, 1868; Gov. of National Gallery, 1874; annually re-edited Burke’s Peerage, 1847-92; published Vicissitudes of Families, 1859-63 and other genealogical works. ODNB
References
University of Ulster Central Library holds Sir John Bernard Burke, Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland, 2 vols. (1879, 6th ed.; but the Pref. of Burke’s Irish Family Records (1976) specifies that the first volume devoted to Irish landed families appeared in 1899, with eds. in 1904, and 1912; the 1958 ed. first adopted the new title Records; a Preface by A. C. Fox-Davies (1912), assessing the impact of the Wyndham Act, says, ‘one is confronted with the problem whether there still remains a landed gentry at all, so great has been the compulsory alienation of land in Ireland during the last decades,’ and the 1958 editor adds that ‘many [families] ended up without any land or an Irish base at all.’
Notes
Dictionary of National Biography lists Edmund Plunkett Burke (1802-1835), ed. Caen, and Cambridge; Inner Temple, bar; judge at St Lucia, West Indies, 1832; wrote on civil law.
[ top ]