John Keogh, D.D.


Life
?1650-1725 (also as John K’eogh); b. Clooncleagh, nr. Limerick; descended from the MacEochadhs who lost their estates in Cromwellian wars; matric. TCD, 1669; elected scholar, 1674; grad. MA, 1678; Holy Orders; received a living in diocese of Elphin from his kinsman Bishop John Hudson; prebendary of Termonbarry, 1678; wrote grammars of Hebrew, Greek and Latin;
 
said to have demonstrated the Trinity in a Latin text which impressed Sir Isaac Newton; fathered 21 children but refused tithes from poor parishioners; lost his books and writings in a fire in his residence nr. Strokestown, Co. Roscommon; his eldest son wrote Botanologia Hibernica (1735) and A Vindication of the Antiquities of Ireland (1748); there are biographical notices in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica (1821) and Alfred Webb, Compendium of Irish Biography (1878).

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