[Rev.] Mortimer O’Sullivan (?1791-1859)

Life

[also Sullivan]; b. Clonmel, Co. Tipperary; son of Cathooic schoolmaster; converted to Protestantism in boyhood; ed. TCD, MA, 1832; and ordained c.1816; ministered in Tipperary, Dungannon, Waterford, and Dublin; rector of Killyman, Co. Armagh, 1827; prependary to St Patrick’s, 1827-30; chaplain to Earl of Carlisle when viceroy; mbr. Orange Order; attacked landlord system; gave evidence before Select Committee on the State of Ireland, 1825; gave evidence before House of Commons committee, 1825 (Reports, 1825, Vol. 8); publ. his evidence with that of Dr William Phelan as Evidence on the State of Ireland (1826);
 
appt. Donnellan Lecturer, TCD 1851; appt. chaplain to Earl of Carlisle; br. of the evangelical Samuel O’Sullivan; contrib. Blackwood’s and Quarterly Review; wrote Captain Rock Detected, by a Munster Farmer (1824), in answer to Moore’s Memoirs of Captain Rock (1824); A Guide to an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion (1833), also against Moore [var. 1834]; The Case of the Protestants of Ireland Stated (1836), with notes Romanism as it Rules in Ireland (1840); Theory of Developments in Christian Doctrine Applied and Tested (1846), answering Newman; Donellan lecturer, 1851. ODNB DIW DIH RAF SUTH

 

Criticism
See Book Lover, vol. 1.

 

References
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow: Longmans 1988); interested in pol. problem of religious factionalism in Ireland; lived in and around Dublin; a number of books and some fiction, notably The Nevilles of Garretstown; A Tale of 1760 (1860).

Belfast Public Library holds Captain Rock Detected (1824); Case of the Protestants of Ireland (1836); College Recollections (1825); A Guide to an Irish Gentleman in his Search for Religion (1833).

[ top ]

Quotations
Class & religion: ‘The respectable class of the Roman Catholic laity are, generally speaking, quite untinged with that political feeling which their religion might infuse in them, and the very lowest classes would be led by the priest of the parish, perhaps with as much effect as they would be led by the Pope; but at present there is between the higher classes and those which are very low, a class of persons becoming influential in the Roman Cathoic body who did not at all apply themsleves to political concerns before; and the middle class is that to which I look with most apprehension, for what is to be the future fate of Ireland.’ (Reports from the Committees [House of Commons ]1825, Vol. 8, p.461; cited in W. J. McCormack, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, 1991 Edn., p.13.)

 

Notes
Kith & Kin: Samuel O’Sullivan, 1790-1851, br. of Mortimer, and chaplain to Royal Hib. Military School, Dublin, 1827.

Omission: There is no entry in D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912).

[ top ]