Hugh Reily

Life
?1630-95 [or Reilly]; b. Co. Cavan; barrister; Master in Chancery and clerk of council of Ireland under James II;accompanied James into exile, and issued Ireland’s Case Briefly Stated (1695), frequently reprinted under various titles, viz, Impartial History of Ireland (1720, 1754), and Genuine History of Ireland (1787, 1799, 1837, &c) - celebrated for his prefatory remark that the legislators who introduced the penal laws “took more pains to make the land turn protestant than the people’, it remained for 100 yrs the only printed defence of Irish Catholics, including the enslavement of many in the West Indies by Cromwell ‘to the number of 15 or 20 thousand souls’; Reily accompanied James II in exile; he was appointed Chancellor of Ireland while at St. Germain, though other accounts report that the Case offended James II and caused his dismissal from service. DIW ODNB

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Works
Hugh Reily, Ireland’s cause briefly stated ([Paris or Louvain] printed in the year 1695), 12o [Wing R767; Dix 272]; reiss. as The impartial history of Ireland (1754, 1787), and as The genuine history of Ireland.

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Commentary
Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam 1986), notes that Ireland's cause [... &c.] this is a work of Catholic history challenging Protestant interpretations of 1641; see also bibl., Ann de Valera, ‘Antiquarian and historical investigations in Ireland in the eighteenth century’ (MA thesis UCD 1978).

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References
British Library holds Hugh Reily [sic], The impartial history of Ireland, containing a summary account, of all the battles, sieges, rebellions and massacres … To which is annexed … the case of the Roman Catholicks of Ireland … by the Revd. Doctor Nary [1695]; another edn. as The Genuine History of Ireland ... [ &c.]; another edn., revised and brought down from 1676 to the present time by a Gentleman of this city; another edn. [with MS. notes]; another edn., as Genuine History of Ireland … The whole revised and brought down from 1676 to the present time (London 1768) 132pp.; 12o; Do., another edn. (Dublin 1787), pp. 142; Do., another edn. [Dublin ?1799]; Do., another edn. Dublin: Richard Grace 1837); Do., another edn. (Dublin: James Duffy [?1840?]); Do., another edn. (Dublin: C. M. Warren [c.1850.]), imperfect, with titlepage of London edition of 1754, reading ‘The impartial history of Ireland’ substituted, and slightly cropped.

Muriel McCarthy & Caroline Sherwood-Smith, Hibernia Resurgens (Dublin: Marsh’s Library 1994) [Exhibition Catalogue] lists Ireland’s Case gives details of abuse of Catholics from reight of Elizabeth to that of James II, attacking the ingratitude of Charles II, with comments on contemporaries including Sir William Petty (‘an ingenious inquisitive person’], and Sir John Temple. (p.47.)

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