[Archbishop] Richard Whately (1787-1863)


Life
[var. Whateley [err.]; known pejoratively as “Shovel Hat Whateley”; renowned as a rhetorician]; b. London; ed. privately and Oriel College, Oxford, BA 1808; fellow of Oriel, 1811-22; MA 1812; DD, 1825; Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, 1831-63; issued Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte (1819), ridiculing Hume; an anti-Calvinist treatise on pre-destination, 1821; Party Feeling and the Matter of Religion [The Bampton lecture] (1822); appt. rector of Halesworth, Suffolk, 1822-25; appt. principal of St. Alban’s Hall, 1825-31; believed to be the author of anti-Erastian Letters on Church of England by an Episcopalian (1826); issued his Logic (1826), limiting it to deduction only; issued Rhetoric (1828); issued Errors of Romanism (1830);
 
appt. Drummond Professor of Political Economy, 1829-31; issued Introductory Lectures in Political Economics (1831); issued Easy Lessons on Money Matters (1831), which was translated into Irish and enlarged by Thaddeus Connellan; supported Catholic Emancipation, the Poor Law, and reform of National Education in Ireland, being chair of National Education Board which proposed a programme of ‘united national education’ in Protestant and Catholic schools, from 1831; supported national education with scriptural writings; maintained good relations with Daniel Murray, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin; fnd. Whately Chair of Political Economy, TCD 1832; removed Tresham Dames Gregg from office on account of the latter’s support for the extreme Protestant cause, 1832; ardent opponent of transportation, 1832-40;
 
appointed chairman of commission considering question of Irish poor relief, 1833-36; voted for repeal of religious tests, 1833-53; wrote primers for Irish schools, 1837-53; edited Thomas Whately [d.1772], Remarks on the Character of Shakespeare of Macbeth and Richard III [1785] (1839); opposed Tithe Commutation Act, 1838; condemned William George Ward’s Ideal of a Christian Church (1844); supported Maynooth Grant, 1845; contrib. generously to Famine fund, 1847; outspoken critic of evangelism (i.e., ‘soupers’) during Famine; opposed extended poor law terminating government responsibility for famine relief and sidelined during Russell administration, 1847-52; co-fnd. Statistical Society of Dublin, 1847;
 
Vice-President RIA, 1848; Society for Promoting Scientific Enquiries into Social Questions (1850); British Association of Belfast (1852), and British Association in Dublin (1857); fnd. Society for Protection of the rights of Conscience (1851); Introductory Lectures on the British Constitution (1854); ed. William Copleston, Remains (1854); ed. Bacon’s Essays (1856); also Paley’s Moral Philosophy (1859), reflection his own neo-Paleyite belief in divine governance; and View of Christian Evidences (1859); published lectures on Scriptural Parables (1857); said to have had an eccentric manner of arranging his legs; bur. Christ Church Cathedral; there is a recumbent monument in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, sculpted by Thomas Farrell; Nassau Senior, whose economic ideas he popularised, was a former student; published sermons, 1821-60. ODNB DIH

John Mitchel - Bishop Whately is the object or repeated criticism in John Mitchel’s Jail Journal (1854) respecting his school-books promulgating the British view of life in Irish schools - e.g.:

Boys have been growing up all these years; the national schools have not been idle. Within thousands of those “small curly heads “(celebrated by Reilly), thoughts have been kindled that Dr. Whately wots not of. Under many a thin poor little jacket, who can tell what a world of noble passion has been set aglow; what haughty aspirings for themselves and their ancient land; what infinite pity; what hot shame for their trampled country and the dishonoured name of their fathers; what honest, wistful rage? Ha! if the thoughtful fiery boy but live to be a man [...] (Mitchel, Jail Journal [1854], ed. Arthur Griffith (1913 Edn., p.76.)
and ..

I rely much also on the exertions of the national school teachers to inculcate sound Irish doctrine dehors the class-books furnished to them by Dr. Whately. Very many of those teachers, I know, were fully bent, a year ago, on counteracting the influence of that old shovel-hatted Carthaginian who has so long ridden the national school system, like shovel-hatted nightmare. (Ibid., p.77.)
and ..

‘I am not to learn from you first principles of political economy, taken out of Dr. Whately’s little primer. Perhaps you will next be urging that mill-owners are not, by nature, anthropophagous, and that landlords are not, by anatomical structure, hyaenas, but men. Let us suppose all those matters [84] you have mentioned, just proved, admitted, put out of the way: they are nothing to the purpose. But the case is this — those you call capitalists are, as a body, swindlers — that is to say, the “commercial world” is trading on what it knows to be fictitious capital, [...]’’ (Ibid., pp.83-84.)
 
Note that there is an allusion to “shovel hat” in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) - though the immediately point of reference is Bishop Berkeley, not Bishop Whately - viz., ‘The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field.’ (Ulysses [1922], Bodley Head Edn., 1966, pp.59-60 [“Proteus” Chap.].

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Works
Theology
  • On Confirmation (Halesworth: Tippell [1827]), 4pp., 8º, and Do. [another edn.], London: B. Fellowes 1832, 1833, 1834), 24pp., 12º.
  • Essays on Some of the Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul, and in other Parts of the New Testament (London: B. Fellowes 1828), xix, [1], 313, [3]pp.
  • Essays on Some Peculiarities of the Christian Religion (London: B. Fellowes 1831), xxiv, 368pp.; Easy Lessons on Christian Evidence (London: J. W. Parker 1838), 115pp.
  • Works by Richard Whately, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin (London: John W. Parker & Son [1849]) 7pp. [imprint from colophon].
  • Tractatus tres de locis quibusdam difficilioribus Scripturae Sacrae, scilicet: De arboribus scientiae ac vitae. Unde primitus mansuefacti et exculti homines? De Turri Babel. Editio secunda (1849).
  • Lessons on the Truth of Christianity: being an appendix to the Fourth Book of Lessons, &c. [Commissioners of National Education] (Dublin 1850), 141pp., 12º.
Miscellaneous
  • Remarks on Transportation, and on Recent Defence of the System: in a second letter to Earl Grey (London: B. Fellowes 1834), [4], 172pp.
  • ed., Thomas Whately, M.P., Remarks on Some of the Characters of Shakespere [3rd edn.] (London: J. W. Parker 1839), [128]pp. 8º.
  • Easy Lessons on Reasoning (London: J. W. Parker 1843), 164pp. [rep. from Saturday Magazine].
  • Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buoneparte [9th rev. & enl. edn.] (1849), 62pp.
  • ed., E. J. Whately, A Selection of English Synonyms [preface signed Richard Dublin, Monteagle, Radnor, Mountcashel] (London: John W. Parker & Son 1851), xvi, 142pp.
  • ed., Essays by Francis Bacon, with annotations by Richard Whately (London: John W. Parker 1856), xx, 536pp. [287]-331pp. [review of Essays, &c.287-331; prev. in Quarterly Review], and Do. [new edn.] (London & NY: Longmans, Green & Co. 1888), xxiv, 620pp.
  • J. R. Ballantyne, ed., Elements of Rhetoric, extracted from the work of Richard Whately [Reprints for the Pandits] (Mirzapore 1854).
  • Essay Lessons on Money Matters [16th Edn.] (London: Parker, Son & Bourn 1862), 106pp.,
Collected editions
  • Elizabeth Jane Whately, ed., Miscellaneous Remains from the Common-place Book of Richard Whately, being a collection of notes and essays made during the preparation of his various works (London 1864, 1865, 1868), and Do. [microfiche] ( Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey 1998).
  • Elizabeth Jane Whately, ed., Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately (London, 1866, 1968, new edn. 1875), 2 vols.
In translation
  • [Easy Lessons on Money Matters, Commerce, Trade, Wages, &c., trans. as], Reidh-leighin air ghnothuibh cearba, trachtail, tuarasdal, reic & ceannach ... Tairtheangtha anois maille re biseach le Tadhg O Coinniallain [trans. & further enlarged by Thaddæus Connellan (1835).

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Criticism
  • William John Fitzpatrick, Memoirs of Richard Whately, with a Glance at His Contemporaries & Times (London: R. Bentley 1864) [bibl. of ‘chief writings of Dr. Whately’, vol. 2, pp.309-12].
  • Charles Richard Truss, “The theology of Richard Whately” [Ph.D. Diss.] (King’s College, London [LU] 1979), 268pp. [lvs.].
  • Donald Harmon Akenson, [ed.,] A Protestant in Purgatory: Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin [Conference on British Studies at Indiana University at South Bend] (Connecticut: Archon Books 1981), xiii, 276pp.
  • Sharon Rogers Quiroz, Rhetoric and the conduct of public business: a critical reading of works on rhetoric and political economy by Adam Smith, Richard Whately, and Herbert Spencer [Phd. Diss.] (Wayne State Univ. 1988).
  • Erkki Patokorpi, Rhetoric, Argumentative and Divine: Richard Whately and His Discursive Project of the 1820s (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang [1996], 309pp.
  • Bryan MacMahon, Eccentric Archbishop: Richard Whately of Redesdale (?2007) [noticed in Dublin City Public Libraries/Heritage Week 2007].
  • Bryan Fanning, ‘Richard Whately and the end of ascendancy’, in Histories of the Irish Future (London: Bloomsbury 2015), pp.75-94 [Chap. 6; partially available at Google Books - online].
See also

Rev. William Brudenell Barter, The Divine Institution of the Christian Sabbath vindicated: in an answer to a pamphlet, entitled "Thoughts on the Sabbath by Richard Whately, D.D. archbishop of Dublin (1835); Thomas G. Conway, ‘The Approach to an Irish Poor Law, 1828-33’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 1 (Spring 1971), pp.65-81; Ray E. McKerrow, ‘Richard Whately on the nature of human knowledge in relation to ideas of his contemporaries, in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 42 (1981), pp.439-55; Tadhg Foley, ‘Pirates, Professors, and Political Economy’, in Irish Reporter (Third Quarter 1995), pp.6-7 [infra]
General commentaries

R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (London: Penguin 1988), pp.304, 329 [see extract]; Thomas A. Boylan & Timothy P. Foley, Political Economy and Colonial Ireland, the Propagation and Ideological Function of Economic Discourses in the 19th Century (London: Routledge 1991) [see extract]; Cormac O Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History 1780-1939 (London: Clarendon 1994) [see extract].

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Commentary
Douglas Hyde, ‘Irish as A Spoken Language’ [extract from A Literary History of Ireland], incls. a parenthesis (formerly a footnote) following a comment to the effect that Irish people are dropping their Irish Christian names, and are becoming ashamed of the patrons saints of their own people: ‘This is the direct result of the system pursued by the National Board, which refuses to teach the children anything about Patrick and Brigit, but which is never tired of putting second-hand English models before them. Archbishop Whately, that able and unconventional Englishman, who had so much to do with moulding the system, despite his undoubted sense of humour, saw nothing humorous in making the children learn to repeat such verses as - ‘I thank the goodness and the grace / Which on my birth have smiled, / And made me in these Christian days, / A happy English child!’ (In Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish literature, Washington: Catholic University of America 1904, Vol. 4, pp.1,609-10.)

Helena Kelly, ‘The Many Ways in Which We Are Wrong About Jane Austen: Lies, Damn Lies, and Literary Scholarship’, on The Literary Hub, 3 May 2017 - remarks on Richard Whateley [sic]: ‘[..] Critics of Jane’s own generation praised her for her unparalleled ability to accurately reproduce what she saw around her. “Her merit consists altogether in her remarkable talent for observation,” pronounced Richard Whateley, later archbishop of Dublin, in 1821, in a lengthy review of Northanger Abbey. For Whateley, what made Jane great was her “accurate and unexaggerated delineation of events and characters.” He was the first to suggest that she was as great as Shakespeare, repeatedly comparing the two.’
Available online; accessed 05.04.2017.

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R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (London: Penguin 1988), pp.304, 329, notes that there are anecdotes of Whately in W. R. Le Fanu, Seventy Years of Irish Life (1894), including one retold by Lever, in which the Archbishop invites his clergy to eat some doubtful-looking mushrooms; Lever refuses, saying, ‘ ‘tis true I have a brother in the Church but he is not in your diocese’.

Thomas A. Boylan & Timothy P. Foley, Political Economy and Colonial Ireland, the Propagation and Ideological Function of Economic Discourses in the 19th century (London: Routledge 1991) for remarks on Archbishop as economist, and especially his policy of eliminating office of Viceroy and reducing all distinction between British nations.

Cormac O Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History 1780-1939 (London: Clarendon 1994), remarks on Richard Whately, A Few Words of Remonstrance and Advice Addressed to the Farming and Labouring Classes of Ireland (1848), which accuses the poor of responsibility ‘for the circumstances in which [they were] placed’ (p.193.)

Tadhg Foley, ‘Pirates, Professors, and Political Economy’, Irish Reporter (Third Quarter 1995), pp.6-7, United Irishman [ed. Mitchel] and Irish Tribune ... mercilessly attacked political economy and the great crusader on its behalf, Archbishop Richard Whately of Dublin, according to his first biographer, ‘at the moment [1848] when all Ireland was drilling, and Dublin seemed like a slumbering volcano, the archbishop propounded a panacea against the threatened siege - political economy’. The Dublin Statistical Society was set up in 1847 at the very height of the famine, ostensibly in humanitarian response to Schull and Skibbereen, but with the very obvious project of defending “the laws of political economy”. At one of its meetings, Whately spoke of political economy as the “only means which existed of rescuing the country from convulsion” ... concepts of political economy promulgated by Whately professors (the chair had been founded and funded by Whately in 1832) ... The Society was popularising the subject in public lectures’. (Foley, p.7; note err. Whateley, passim.) [See also under Isaac Butt.]

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Quotations

Charles Darwin quoted Archbishop Whately in The Descent of Man (London: John Murray 1871) when he wrote under the heading “Language”: ‘This faculty has justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals. But man, as a highly competent judge, Archbishop Whately remarks, “is not the only animal that can make use of language to express what is passing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another.”’ (Whately, Anthropological Review, 1864, p.158; Descent, p.53; available online; accessed 16.03.2024.)

The Whately Commission (1835): ‘The relief of beggars falls especially on the humbler classes. The poorer give in larger proportions than the wealthier portions of the community: so that “dearka d’on dearka,” (i.e. alms from alms) has passed into a proverb, the practical meaning of which is every day attested by the fact, that it is by the poor the poor are supported.’ (First Report of his Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring Into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, Appendix A (1835), p.490; quoted in Fionntán de Brún, ‘Expressing the Nineteenth Century in Irish: The Poetry of Aodh Mac Domhnaill (1802–67)’, in New Hibernia Review/Iris Éireannach Nua, Spring 2011, p.101.)

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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland: A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of Irish Writers of English Verse (Dublin: Hodges & Figgis 1912), cites Richard Whately West, a son of Dean West and brother-in-law of [Edward] Dowden, with whom there may be a family connection.

“Shovel Hat Whately” is mentioned in United Irishman (28 Nov. 1903, p.3, col. a) - cited in Weldon Thorton in connection with allusions to Bishop Berkeley in the Proteus episode of the novel (Allusions in Ulysses, N. Carolina UP 1968, p.63.)

A. P. Graves, To Return to All That: An Autobiography (London: Cape 1930), gives anecdotes illustrating Whately’s taste for riddles (p.59).

Padraic Colum, ed., Poems of Samuel Ferguson (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1963), incls. Samuel Ferguson, “Epitaph on Archbishop Whately”, in Appendix.

COPAC [as in Works above, and in addition:] The use and abuse of party-feeling in matters of religion considered in eight sermons preached before the University of Oxford, in the year MDCCCXXII [1822], at the lecture founded by the late Rev. John Bampton (1822); The Right of the Church of England to her endowments vindicated: in a reply to the strictures on a work entitled Letters on the Church: by an Episcopalian [i.e., Richard Whately] in No. LXXXVIII (art. IX) of the Edinburgh Review, by a Churchman (1827); A View of the Scripture Revelations concerning a Future State: laid before his parishioners, by a Country Pastor [i.e. Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin (1830, 1837); Thoughts on Secondary Punishments: in a letter to Earl Grey [....] To which are appended, two articles on transportation to New South Wales, and on secondary punishments; and some observations on colonization (1832); Scriptural education in Ireland. Memorials of the dean & chapter of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, and of the clergy of the diocese of Derry, to His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin [Richard Whately], with His Grace’s replies, to which is added, a paper circulated by the commissioners of education (1832); Substance of a speech delivered in the House of Lords, on Friday, the 26th of March, 1847 on the motion for a Committee on Irish Poor Laws (1847); Lectures on the Characters of our Lord’s Apostles, and especially their conduct at the time of his apprehension and trial. By a Country Pastor [i.e., Richard Whately], &c. (1851); Intro., Remains of the late Edward Copleston [Bishop of Llandaff] ... containing some reminiscences of his life (1854); Lectures on the Scripture Revelations, respecting good & evil angels, by a Country Pastor (1855); Lectures on some of the Scripture Parables, by a Country Pastor (1859). Also [on Whately:] Address of the clergy of the Archdiocese of Dublin & Glendalough to His Grace the Archbishop [Richard Whately] on the subject of scriptural education [viz., plan for national education], with His Grace’s reply (1832); Joseph Blanco White, The law of anti-religious libel reconsidered: in a letter to the editor of The Christian Examiner, in answer to an article of that periodical against a pamphlet, entitled “Considerations, &c.” by John Search [i.e. Richard Whately] (1834); Robert Traill, Two discourses, preached in St. John’s Church, Dublin: in vindication of the right of the beneficed clergy of the Church of Ireland over their own pulpits. The first, delivered on occasion of the inhibition issued against the Rev. L.J. Nolan ... by His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin [i.e. Richard Whately]: the second, an inquiry into the truth of transubstantiation ... with an appendix; containing the correspondence which arose out of the inhibition [...] with the remonstrance of the clergy of the diocese (1837); G. Poulett Scrope, Reply to the speech of the Archbishop of Dublin [Richard Whately], delivered in the House of Lords on Friday, March 26th, 1847, and the protest against the Poor Relief (Ireland) Bill (1847); William Fitzgerald, The Connexion of Morality with Religion: a sermon, preached in the Cathedral of St. Patrick, at an ordination held by the Lord Archbishop of Dublin [Richard Whately], Sunday, September 21, 1851 (1851); Leone Levi, Esq., Address of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin [Richard Whately]: report of the Council and lecture on an international code of commerce at the annual meeting of the Society, 3rd November, 1851 (1851); Ed., Cautions for the Times, Addressed to the parishioners of a parish in England by their former Rector [ largely written by William Fitzgerald, successively Bishop of Cork, Cloyne, Ross, and Killaloe.] Bo. 1-7 (1851); William Crook the Younger, Paradise; or, The present Home of the Holy Dead: A Discourse Delivered in the Methodist Church, Drogheda, on Sunday evening, October 18, 1863, on occasion of the death of the most Rev. Richard Whately, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin (1863); George Douglas Campbell, Duke of Argyll, Primeval man: an Examination of Some Recent Speculations [on a paper by John Lubbock, Baron Avebury, entitled “The early condition of mankind”, read to the British Association in reply to a lecture by Richard Whately, archbishop of Dublin, on “The origin of civilization”] (1869, 1870).

Hyland Books (Cat. 224) lists Richard Whately, Essays [3rd series] on the Errors of Romanism (rev. ed.1856), xxi+230pp. [Hyland 214]. Essay on the Omission of Creeds ... (1831); thoughts on Christian Moral-Instruction (1854); E. Jane Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D., 2 vols. (1866), ports.

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Notes
Shakespearean rag: Whately reprinted the study of Shakespeare’s characters by his forebear Thomas Whately, which had drawn fire for John Philip Kemble in Macbeth, and King Richard the Third: an Essay, in answer to Remarks [by T. Whately] on some of the Characters of Shakspeare (1817).

George Boole: In his preface to An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on which are founded the mathematical theories of logic and probabilities (1853), Professor Boole - sometimes called the father computer science - refers the reader Archbishop Whately’s Elements of Logic for guidance on that subject, and elsewhere - in his The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) - quotes Whately on the nature of Logic: ‘Strictly a Science’; also ‘an Art.’

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