[Rev.] Charles O’Conor (1764-1828)


Life
[Rev. Charles O’Conor, DD;] grandson of namesake [q.v.]; ed. Rome 1779-91, PP, Co. Roscommon; chaplain and librarian at Stowe to Richard Grenville, twice Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and later Duke of Buckingham and Chandos whose wife was a Catholic; he brought the papers of his grandfather to Stowe, incl. books, letters, and fifty-nine Gaelic manuscripts; proposed by Charles Vallancy for membership of Royal Irish Academy, 1788;
 
wrote a memoir of his grandfather, 1796; supported Royal Veto on Catholic episcopal appointments in Ireland in Columbanus ad Hibernos (1810-13); edited the Four Masters and other chronicles from the Stowe Library as Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres (1814-26), considered an inaccurate work - The Annals of Tighernach [ad.430-1088], from Bodleian Rawlinson B. 488, appearing in Tom. II (1824); became insane before his death;
 
the 1st. Vol. of his Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Charles O’Connor (1796) survives in copies at TCD and British Library, while the MS of the 2nd vol. was burnt by him; br. of Matthew O’Conor, author and attorney (1773-1844), wrote History of Irish Catholics from the Settlement in 1691 (1813), and held some of his grandfather’s papers at his estate at Mt. Druid. ODNB DIW DIB OCIL

 

Works
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Charles O’Connor (Dublin: J. Mehain 1796); also An Historical Address on the Calamities Occasioned by Foreign Influence in the Nominiation of Bishops to Irish Sees 1810-1812 [Bradshaw 6089 and 6095; cited in Hyland Cat., Oct. 1995; 219]; Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres VI est liber editus a Carolo O’Conor, 4 vols. (Buckinghamshire [Stowe]: MDCCCXIV [1814-26; see details]..

See also An Historical Letter To The Rev. Charles O’Conor, D.D.: ... Upon His Five Addresses Or Letters To His Countrymen From Francis Plowden

Bibliographical details
Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres VI est liber editus a Carolo O’conor anno MDCCCXIV. In hoc libro, auctor varias historias et scripta antiqua Hiberniae continet. Volumen I continet scriptores a seculo sexto usque ad seculum decimumquintum, inter quos sunt Beda Venerabilis, Gildas, Nennius, et alii. O’Conor, qui fuit Hibernicus antiquarius et historianus, edidit et interpretatus est textus in hoc volumine, ut legentes possint melius intellegere historiam Hiberniae et culturam eius. Liber est opus magnum et valde utile ad cognoscendum historiam Hiberniæ (1814) [Kessinger facs. rep. 302pp.]

[Vol. II:] Rerum Hibernicum Scriptores, Tom. II - complectans Annales Tignerachi, ex Codice Bodleiano, Rawlinson, No. 488; Annales Inisfalensis, ex duobus Codicibus, Dubliniense et Bodleiano; itemque Annales Buellianos, Ex Codice Titus A. xxv., Nunc primum edidit C. O’Connor, D.D. Epigraph: ‘Ordier audaci, tenebrosa per aquora, vele / Cimmerium tentare adytum: Submersaque lethis / Sistere de barathro luci. De Maxime rerum / Conditer, ut fugiens syrtes, scopulosque latentes, / Falici inveniam quæsitos littore portus.’ (Buckinghamiæ: excudit R. Seeley, Londini, apud T. Payne, in Vico Dicto Pall-Mall 1825.) Ded. Clarissimo Viro [...] Richardo Duci de Buckingham et Chandor Nobilissimi Ordinis Militaris [...] C. O’Conor - Ex Bibliotheca Stowense, Pridia Kal, April, Anno Salutis M.DCCCXXIV [1824]. Two letters from Samuel Johnson address to Charles O"Conor (1710-91; q.v.) prefixed. Pag.: Tigernachi Annales [ad.440-1088]: xxxii, 402, 2pp. [Tigernachi Annales & Hiatus in Tigernacho Suppletus; Annotationes ad Sæc. VII; Appendix Chronologicus [pp.399-405]; Annales Inisfalenses, xii, 83pp.; Annales Buelliani, 48pp. [5pp. ills. of 3 jewelled bindings and illuminations; errata after each part]. (Available at Internet Archive - online; accessed 21.05.2024.]

[ top ]

References
Henry Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988), cites The Present Mode of Appointing Catholic Bishops in Ireland (1813), seven letters supporting the Govt. veto, earning him suspension [from PP duties] by Archbishop Troy. He was briefly an inmate in Dr. Harty’s asylum, Finglas, with Dr. Lanigan [q.v.], and died at Ballinagare.

DNB entry on Charles O’Conor

’CONOR, CHARLES (1764-1828), Irish antiquary and librarian at Stowe, second son of Denis O’Conor (d. 1804), by Catherine, daughter of Martin Browne of Cloonfad, was born at Belanagare on 15 March 1764. Charles O’Conor [q. v.] of Belanagare was his grandfather. Charles the younger early developed studious instincts, and was sent by his father in 1779 to the Ludovisi College in Rome, where he remained until 1791, and obtained the degree of D.D. He was in 1792 appointed parish priest of Kilkeevin, co. Roscommon, and remained there until, in 1798, he was appointed chaplain to the Marchioness of Buckingham, with which office he combined that of librarian to Richard Grenville, afterwards Duke of Buckingham and Chandos [q. v.], at Stowe. O’Conor had previously attracted the attention of a select few by his “;Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the late Charles O’Conor of Belanagare, Esq., M.R.I.A., by the Rev. Charles O’Conor, D.D., Member of the Academy of Cortona; Dublin, printed by J. Mehain’ [1796], 8vo. This work is valuable for the information it affords of the first steps taken by the Roman catholics in Ireland for the repeal of the penal laws. It is now very rare. The first volume alone was printed, and afterwards suppressed, as it was feared that the circulation of so outspoken a work might be detrimental to the family. A copy was sold to Heber at Sir Mark Sykes’s sale for 14l. Other copies are at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the British Museum. The manuscript of the second volume was committed to the flames by the author’s express orders.

Between 1810 and 1813 O’Conor wrote “Columbanus ad Hibernos, or Seven Letters on the Present Mode of Appointing Catholic Bishops in Ireland; with an Historical Address on the Calamities occasioned by Foreign Influence in the Nomination of Bishops to Irish Sees,” Buckingham, 2 vols. 8vo. In this work, although a zealous catholic, he vigorously opposed the ultramontane party and supported the veto, in consequence of which he was declared unorthodox, and formally suspended by Archbishop Troy in 1812. The letters were answered by Francis Plowden [q. v.] O’Conor issued in 1812 a non-controversial work entitled “Narrative of the most Interesting Events in Irish History,’ 1812, 8vo. Two years later commenced the monumental work which connects his name with the study of Irish antiquities, “Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres’ (vol. i. 1814, vol. ii. 1825, vols. iii. and iv. 1826), Buckingham, 4to. Only two hundred copies were printed, the cost, some 3,000l., being defrayed by the Duke of Buckingham. Nearly the whole impression of the work was distributed as presents to public and private libraries. The originals - ;the “Annals of Tighearnach,” the “;Annals of Ulster,’ the “;Annals of the Four Masters,’ and other valuable chronicles - ;were almost all in the library at Stowe. Of these manuscript treasures an account was published by the librarian under the title “;Bibliotheca MS. Stowensis. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Stowe Library,” 2 vols., Buckingham, 1818, 4to. Two hundred copies were issued at the expense of the duke, to whom an elaborate preface was addressed. The manuscripts were purchased, in one lot, by the Earl of Ashburnham in 1849 for 8,000l. (see Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue, 1849). The majority of the documents were acquired by the British Museum in 1883, and a catalogue is in course of preparation; the Irish manuscripts, however, are now in the possession of the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin.
—Available online; accessed 24.01.2020.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, p.1289; a notice appeared in The Nation news ser. [n.d.], advertising Owen Connellan’s Annals of the Four Masters, printed by Geraghty, a portion of which had been given in Irish and Latin in Dr. O’Conor’s Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores [Veteres, 1814-1826], a work which sells for 18 guineas at the lowest.

Joep Leerssen (Remembrance and Imagination [... &c.] (Cork UP 1996) distinguishes the younger Charles O’Conor from the older as ‘O’Conor of Stowe’ and chiefly documents his erroneous support of the pre-Christian (i.e, Phoenician) theory of Irish archaeological monuments, and his real importance for his catalogue of Irish MSS in the Stowe library of the Duke of Buckingham (Rerum Jibernicarum scriptories veteres, 4 vols., Buckingham 1814-1826); refs at Leerssen, op. cit., pp.89,92, 108, 109, 126, 134, 177, 247n., 271n.; archival work, 83, 107, 129, 130-31.)

 

Notes
St. Pat’s fire: For O’Conor’s conjecture as to the location of the site of St. Patrick’s paschal fire, see under Patrick, [infra].

[ top ]