       |
Life
[1st. Baron], b. Fishamble St., Dublin; son of a merchant adventurer receiving land by Cromwellian settlement; ed. TCD; his father a parliamentarian, he himself became an ardent supporter of William III, 1688-90; had seats at Brackenstown, Co. Dublin, and Edlington, Yorkshire confiscated and reinstated; ambassador extraordinary to Denmark 1689 and 1692; gave serious offence to the Danish court with his pamphlet publication An account of [the State of] Denmark as it was in the Year 1692 (1694], an attempt to point out the threat of absolutism though praised by Shaftesbury and well-received by the Whigs for its anti-clerical and anti-Tory tone and often compared with John Toland;
returned to Ireland in 1694; Dublin MP, 1695; Irish Privy Councillor, 1697; Swords MP, 1703-05; English held seats in parliament, 1705-08; discharged as privy councillor 1713; led a compaign during 1717-19 for the repeal of the English Occasional Conformity and Schism acts [versus dissenters] and opposed the English parliaments claim to legislate for Ireland; created Baron Molesworth of Phillipstown and Viscount of Swords, 1719; translated Francis Hotoman’s Franco-Gallia (1711), better known by its later title, The Principles of a Real Whig (1775), a reply to the toryism of Steele and Swift; issued Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor (1723), containing detailed recommendations for leasing and working of the land; privy councillor to George I;
among members of his ‘Circle’ were the the Irish Presbyterians James Arbuckle and Frances Hutcheson, associated with the ‘New Light’ movement, and figures such as Molyneux and John Toland; he was the dedicatee of Swift’s Fifth Drapier’s Letter; m. young to Letitia [née Coote], dg. of Richard Coote (Lord Coloony) and sis. of Richard Coote (Earl of Bellamont), becoming father of seven sons and four dgs. of whom Mary Monk [or Monck; q.v.], counted an early ‘blue stocking’, was one. RR CAB ODNB DIW OCEL FDA OCIL
[ top ]
Criticism
Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstances of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War of the Thirteen Colonies (London 1961); David Berman, ‘The Irish Counter-Enlightnement’, in Richard Kearney, ed., The Irish Mind (Wolfhound 1985); M. A. Stewart, ‘John Smith and the Molesworth Circle’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, II (1987). See also Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.429-32.
Commentary
Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior To The Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. 1986), cites Molesworth’s Considerations for the promoting of agriculture (1723), as a result of which Swift inscribed a Drapier’s letter to him (p.351).
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies, Vol.II [of 2] (London & Dublin 1821) |
|
VISCOUNT MOLESWORTH, of Swordes, in Ireland, an eminent statesman and political writer, was descended from a family anciently seated in the counties of Northampton and Bedford, in England; but his father having served in the civil wars in Ireland, settled afterwards in Dublin, where he became an eminent merchant, and died in 1656, leaving his wife pregnant with this only child, who raised his family to the honours they now enjoy. He was born in December, at Dublin, and bred in the college there, and engaged early in a marriage with the sister of Richard, Earl of Bellamont, who brought him a daughter in 1677. When the Prince of Orange entered England [429] in 1688, he distinguished himself by an early and zealous appearance for the Revolution, which rendered him so obnoxious to King James, that he was attainted and his estate sequestered by that King’s Parliament, May 2nd, 1689. But when King William was settled on the throne, he called this sufferer, for whom he had a particular esteem, into his privy council, and in 1692, sent him envoy extraordinary to the court of Denmark. There he resided above three years, till some particulars in his conduct disobliging his Danish majesty, he was forbidden the court: pretending business in Flanders, he retired thither without any audience of leave, and came from thence home, where he was no sooner arrived, than he drew up An Account of Denmark, in which he represented the government of that country as arbitrary and tyrannical. This piece was greatly resented by Prince George of Denmark, consort to the Princess, afterwards Queen Anne; and Scheel the Danish envoy, first presented a memorial to King William, complaining of it, and then furnished materials for an answer, which was executed by Dr. William King. From King’s account, it appears that Molesworth’s offence in Denmark was his boldly pretending to some privileges which, by the custom of the country, are denied to every body but the king, - as travelling the king’s road, and hunting the king’s game; the doing which, as is represented, in defiance of opposition, occasioned the rupture between the envoy and that court. If this allegation have any truth, the fault lay certainly altogether on the side of Molesworth, whose disregard of the customs of the country to which he was sent, it is impossible to defend. In the mean time, this book was well received by the public, reprinted thrice (once as lately as 1758), and translated into several languages. The spirit of it was particularly approved by the Earl of Shaftesbury, author of the “Characteristics,’ who from thence conceived a great esteem for him, which afterwards ripened into a close friendship. [430] Molesworth served his country in the House of Commons in both kingdoms, being chosen for the borough of Swordes; in Ireland, and for those of Bodmyn, St. Michael, and East Retford, in England; his conduct in the senate being always firm and steady to the principles he embraced. He was a member of the privy council to Queen Anne, till the latter end of her reign; when party running high, he was removed from the board in January 1713. This was fot a complaint against him from the lower House of Convocation, presented December 2nd, by the prolocutor to the Hoose of Peers, charging him with speaking these words in the hearing of many persons - “They that have turned the world upside down, are come hither also;’ and for affronting the clergy in convocation when they presented their address to Lord Chancellor Phipps. Steele’s “Crisis’ was written partly in vindication of Molesworth, and severely animadverted upon by Swift, in his “Public Spirit of the Whigs.’ But as Molesworth constantly asserted and strenuously maintained the right of succession in the house of Hanover, George I on the forming of his privy council in Ireland, made him a member of it, October 9, 1714, and the next month a commissioner of trade and plantations. His Majesty also advanced him to the peerage of Ireland, in 1714, by the title of Baron Pbilipstown and Viscount Molesworth of Swordes. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and continued to serve his country with indefatigable industry, till perceiving himself worn out with constant application to public affairs, he passed the two last years of his life, in a studious and learned retirement. He died, May 22,1725, at his seat at Brecdenstown, in the county of Dublin. By his will, he devised £50 towards building a church at Philipstown. He had by his wife seven sons and four daughters. Besides his “History of Denmark,’ he wrote an address to the House of Commons for the “Encouragement of Agriculture’, Dublin, 1723; and a “Letter relating to the Bill of Peerage,’ 1719. He translated “Franco-Gallia,’ a Latin treatise of the civilian Hottoman, giving an account of the free state of France and other parts of Europe before the loss of their liberties. The second edition of this work, with additions and a new preface by the translator, came out in 1721, 8vo. He is likewise reputed the author of several tracts, written with great force of reason and masculine eloquence, in defence of his ideas of the constitution of his country and the common rights of mankind; and it is certain that few men of his fortune and quality were more learned or more highly esteemed by men of learning. |
|
[ top ]
References
Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature (OUP 1985), cites literary storm around his Account of Denmark, which extols the liberty of post-revolutionary England in comparison with clerically tyrannised Sweden; the work brought him to the notice of Lokce and led to a lifelong friendship with Shaftesbury; it was answered by William King in Animadversions upon the Pretended Account of Denmark, and defended by Steele in The Crisis, while Swift responded to the Account in The Public Spirit of the Whigs.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, p.955 calls him the father of Mary Molesworth, Mrs. Monk, author of Marinda [which he published after her death, in 1716]; further, his politico-philosophical treatise Denmark was praised by Shaftesbury; appt. privy councillor for Ireland to George I [r. 1714], and MP of both kingdoms; a patron of Molyneux, King, and Toland. FDA1 selects An Account of Denmark, 870-71, & BIOG, 955. Note:
Seamus Deane, Short History of Irish Literature (1986) represents Hutcheson as a central figure in the Molesworth Circle.
[ top ]
Notes
Portrait: There is a portrait of the 2nd Viscount by Anthony Lee, 1744 [see Cruikshank and the Knight of Glin, Irish Portraits Mellon 1969].
[ top ]