George Kelly

Life
1688-c.1750 [ODNB: fl.1722-1747]; b. Connaught; ed. TCD, BA 1706; preached in favour of Old Pretender, Dublin c.1718; fled to Paris; became involved in Law’s Mississippi Scheme, with profit, assuming the alias of James Jameson in Jacobite intrigues; acted as Atterbury’s secretary in correspondence with the Pretender; arrested in London, 1722; his defence against the bill of pains and penalties in the House of Lords regarding his deportation becomes contemporary best-seller; imprisoned in Tower of London, 1723-36; escaped to France; befriend by James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde;

entered the Prince Charles’s service [Young Pretender] in 1744 and sailed to Scotland in 1745; he as one of the seven men of Moidart to land at Eriska, June 1745; rejoined Charles in France after Culloden; sole secretary, 1747; his influence considered politically detrimental to the Jacobite cause; trans. Castlenau’s Memoirs of English Affairs (1724); trans. Morabin’s The History of Cicero’s Banishment (1725), reissued as An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Cicero (1736), stressing the parallel between Cicero and Atterbury; planned to trans. Cicero’s Letters to Atticus in 1729; History of Cicero’s Banishment (1725). ODNB DIB DIW

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