John O'Leary (poet)
Encyclopedia
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
separatist and a leading Fenian
Fenian
The Fenians , both the Fenian Brotherhood and Irish Republican Brotherhood , were fraternal organisations dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic in the 19th and early 20th century. The name "Fenians" was first applied by John O'Mahony to the members of the Irish republican...
. He studied both law and medicine but did not take a degree and for his involvement in the Irish Republican Brotherhood
Irish Republican Brotherhood
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century...
he was imprisoned in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
during the nineteenth century.
Early life
Born in the town of TipperaryTipperary
Tipperary is a town and a civil parish in South Tipperary in Ireland. Its population was 4,415 at the 2006 census. It is also an ecclesiastical parish in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, and is in the historical barony of Clanwilliam....
, County Tipperary
County Tipperary
County Tipperary is a county of Ireland. It is located in the province of Munster and is named after the town of Tipperary. The area of the county does not have a single local authority; local government is split between two authorities. In North Tipperary, part of the Mid-West Region, local...
, the catholic O'Leary was educated at the local Protestant Grammar School
Grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...
, The Abbey School, and later the catholic Carlow College
Carlow College
Carlow College may mean:In Carlow, County Carlow, Ireland:*Institute of Technology, Carlow*St. Patrick's, Carlow CollegeIn Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States:*Carlow University...
. He identified with the views advocated by Thomas Davis
Thomas Osborne Davis (Irish politician)
Thomas Osborne Davis was a revolutionary Irish writer who was the chief organizer and poet of the Young Ireland movement.-Early life:...
and met James Stephens in 1846.
He began his studies in law at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1847, where, through the Grattan Club
Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan was an Irish politician and member of the Irish House of Commons and a campaigner for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century. He opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain.-Early life:Grattan was born at...
, he associated with Charles Gavan Duffy
Charles Gavan Duffy
Additional Reading*, Allen & Unwin, 1973.*John Mitchel, A Cause Too Many, Aidan Hegarty, Camlane Press.*Thomas Davis, The Thinker and Teacher, Arthur Griffith, M.H. Gill & Son 1922....
, James Fintan Lalor
James Fintan Lalor
James Fintan Lalor was an Irish revolutionary, journalist, and “one of the most powerful writers of his day.” A leading member of the Irish Confederation , he was to play an active part in both the Rebellion in July 1848 and the attempted Rising in September of that same year...
and Thomas Francis Meagher
Thomas Francis Meagher
-Young Ireland:Meagher returned to Ireland in 1843, with undecided plans for a career in the Austrian army, a tradition among a number of Irish families. In 1844 he traveled to Dublin with the intention of studying for the bar. He became involved in the Repeal Association, which worked for repeal...
.
1848 rising
After the failure of the 1848 Tipperary Revolt, O'Leary attempted to rescue the leaders from ClonmelClonmel
Clonmel is the county town of South Tipperary in Ireland. It is the largest town in the county. While the borough had a population of 15,482 in 2006, another 17,008 people were in the rural hinterland. The town is noted in Irish history for its resistance to the Cromwellian army which sacked both...
Gaol, and was himself imprisoned for a week from September 8, 1849. He took part in a further attempted uprising in Cashel
Cashel
Cashel is an Anglicised form of the Irish language word Caiseal, meaning "stone ringfort". Cashels were typically built on rocky outcrops.It has given its name to the following places:In Ireland:*Cashel, County Tipperary...
on September 16, 1849, but this proved abortive.
Irish Republican Brotherhood
O'Leary abandoned his study of law at Trinity College because he was unwilling to take the oath of allegiance which would be required of a barrister. He enrolled at Queen's College, CorkCork (city)
Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...
, in 1850 to study medicine, and later moved to Queen's College, Galway
Galway
Galway or City of Galway is a city in County Galway, Republic of Ireland. It is the sixth largest and the fastest-growing city in Ireland. It is also the third largest city within the Republic and the only city in the Province of Connacht. Located on the west coast of Ireland, it sits on the...
and on to further studies at the Meath Hospital, Dublin, and in Paris and London. In 1855, he visited Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he became acquainted with Kevin Izod O'Doherty
Kevin Izod O'Doherty
Kevin Izod O'Doherty was an Irish Australian politician.-Biography:O'Doherty was born in Dublin on 7 September 1823, although other sources indicate that he may have been born in June 1824 and Charles Gavan Duffy, in his My Life in Two Hemispheres, states that O'Doherty was still under age when he...
, John Martin
John Martin (Ireland)
John Martin was an Irish nationalist activist who progressed from early militant support for Young Ireland and Repeal, to non-violent alternatives such as support for tenant farmers' rights and eventually as the first Home Rule MP, for Meath 1871-1875...
and the American painter, John Whistler
John Whistler
John Whistler was a soldier, born in Ulster, Ireland. He ran away from home when a boy, enlisted in the British army, and served under General John Burgoyne during the American Revolutionary War. After the surrender at Saratoga, John returned to England and was honorably discharged...
. O'Leary subsequently became financial manager of the newly formed Irish Republican Brotherhood
Irish Republican Brotherhood
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century...
(IRB) and was joint editor of the IRB paper The Irish People
The Irish People
The Irish People has been a title of a number of mostly political newspapers in Ireland and America.**The Irish People was an Irish nationalist newspaper of the Fenian movement founded in 1863 by James Stephens. Nationalists Charles Kickham, Thomas Clarke Luby and John O’Leary were editors of this...
.
Arrest and trial
On 16 September 1865 O'Leary was arrested, and tried on charges of high treasonHigh treason
High treason is criminal disloyalty to one's government. Participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state are perhaps...
, reduced to 'treason felony'. He was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude, of which five years were spent in English prisons prior to his release and exile in January 1871. During his exile he lived mainly in Paris, also visiting the USA, and remained active in the IRB and its associated organizations and wrote many letters to newspapers and journals.
Later life in Dublin
On the expiry of his 20-year prison term and therefore of the conditions associated with his release, he returned to Ireland in 1885. He and his sister, the poet Ellen O'Leary, both became important figures within Dublin cultural and nationalist circles which included W. B. Yeats, Maud GonneMaud Gonne
Maud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars...
, Rose Kavanagh, Rosa Mulholland
Rosa Mulholland
Rosa Mulholland was an Irish novelist, poet and playwright.-Life:She was born in Belfast, the daughter of Dr. Joseph Stevenson Mulholland of Newry. She spent some years in a remote mountainous part of the West of Ireland after the death of her father. Her first novel was Dumana , under the...
, George Sigerson
George Sigerson
George Sigerson was an Irish physician, scientist, writer, politician and poet. He was a leading light in the Irish Literary Revival of the late 19th century in Ireland.-Doctor and Scientist:...
, and Katharine Tynan
Katharine Tynan
Katharine Tynan was an Irish-born writer, known mainly for her novels and poetry. After her marriage in 1898 to the writer and barrister Henry Albert Hinkson she usually wrote under the name Katharine Tynan Hinkson...
. He also functioned as an elder statesman of the separatist movement, being active in the Young Ireland Society and acting as president of the Irish Transvaal Committee which supported the Boer side in the Boer War
Boer War
The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....
.
Political outlook
O'Leary was a separatist, believing in complete Irish independence from Britain. However, he was not a republican but a constitutional monarchist. He believed in physical force, but was opposed to individual acts of violence such as those promoted by O'Donovan RossaJeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa , was an Irish Fenian leader and prominent member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. His life as an Irish Fenian is well documented but he is perhaps known best in death for the graveside oration given at his funeral by Pádraig Pearse.-Life in Ireland:He was born at...
with his Skirmishing Fund, believing that revolutionary action should be thoroughly prepared. He was strongly opposed to the land agitation promoted by Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt was an Irish republican and nationalist agrarian agitator, a social campaigner, labour leader, journalist, Home Rule constitutional politician and Member of Parliament , who founded the Irish National Land League.- Early years :Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo,...
and Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...
. For most of his life, he was opposed to any form of parliamentary action, being particularly hostile to the former Fenian M.P. John O'Connor Power
John O'Connor Power
John O'Connor Power was an Irish Fenian and a Home Rule League and Irish Parliamentary Party politician and as MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland represented Mayo from June 1874 to 1885...
. However, he supported Parnell during the early days of the Split of 1890-91. He was a secularist, believing that the Church should stay out of politics, and in an article published in the Dublin University Review in 1886 showed some awareness that Protestants would require guarantees of their liberties within an independent Ireland. Like most intellectuals of his generation, he was not interested in the Irish language, although sympathetic to organizations of the Gaelic revival of the 1880s onwards.
Personal life
O'Leary never married, although he had an early love affair with a young woman who is thought to have later entered a convent. He acted as best man for James StephensJames Stephens
James Stephens may refer to:*James Stephens , 17th century MP for Gloucester*James Stephen , English lawyer associated with the abolition of slavery* James B...
in 1864. He was brought up a Catholic but abandoned the religion for all of his life until close to his death, when he was reconciled to the church around Christmas 1906. He inherited property from his family in the town of Tipperary and for most of his life this provided a reasonably comfortable income, so that he did not have to earn money and was able to assist fellow separatists financially. However, he did become a victim of agitation during the Plan of Campaign
Plan of Campaign
The Plan of Campaign was a stratagem adopted in Ireland between 1886 and 1891, co-ordinated by Irish politicians for the benefit of tenant farmers, against mainly absentee and rack-rent landlords. It was launched to counter agricultural distress caused by the continual depression in prices of dairy...
in 1889-91, when rental payments to him largely ceased. He was remembered in the town of Tipperary as a 'hard landlord'.
Yeats' Tribute
In his poem, September 1913, the poet W.B.YeatsWilliam Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
laments the death of O'Leary with the line:
- "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone; it's with O'Leary in the grave"
,,,,
Works
- Young Ireland: The Old and the New (1885)
- Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism, 2 vols, London, 1896
Sources
- Bourke, Marcus, John O'Leary: A Study in Irish Separatism, Tralee, Anvil Books, 1967
- Dr. Mark F. Ryan,Fenian Memories, Edited by T.F. O'Sullivan, M. H. Gill & Son, LTD, Dublin, 1945
- John O'Leary, Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism, Downey & Co., Ltd, London, 1896 (Vol. I & II)
- Leon Ó Broin, Fenian Fever: An Anglo-American Delemma, Chatto & Windus, London, 1971, ISBN 0 7011 1749 4.
- Ryan, Desmond. The Fenian Chief: A Biography of James Stephens, Hely Thom LTD, Dublin, 1967
- Four Years of Irish History 1845-1849, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. 1888.
- Christy Campbell, Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria, HarperCollins, London, 2002, ISBN 0 00 710483 9
- Owen McGee, The IRB: The Irish Republican Brotherhood from The Land League to Sinn Féin, Four Courts Press, 2005, ISBN 1 85182 972 5
- Speeches From the Dock, or Protests of Irish Patriotism, by Seán Ua Cellaigh, Dublin, 1953