Gary Ahern profiles the barrister who gained fame on the boisterous Dublin stage, rather than in the more sedate Four Courts.

 

Luke Plunkett was a man of many parts and some contradictions. Born in 1776, he inherited Portmarnock House, a mansion in north County Dublin, along with its lands and undeveloped brickworks.

The family had come to Portmarnock in the mid-1600s. When Luke was aged five, a relative, Oliver (later Archbishop) Plunkett, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn Tree in London. Oliver had been a regular visitor to Portmarnock House and celebrated Mass in the private chapel there.

The horrific execution of their kinsman did not deter the family from being loyal in politics, but they remained faithfully Catholic in religion.

Luke studied at Trinity College, Dublin, going on to Kings Inns, Dublin, and then to Grays Inns, London. He qualified as a barrister in 1805, swearing the necessary oath of allegiance. Years later, at a time when parental consent would still have been necessary, his two daughters were married within weeks of each other in the Church of Ireland’s St. Peter’s Church in Dublin, one to Rev. James Lawson of Waterford, the other to a Norfolk man, William England.

Luke’s legal career followed the family motto of ‘Festine Lente’, or ‘Hasten Slowly’, and his briefs were few. In 1810, when he was much better known through his stage and political activities, he published a pamphlet on Catholic/nationalist issues. Politics was robust then, and Luke was challenged to a duel but emerged unscathed..
In 1817, he was prominent in the campaign of Henry Grattan Junior. Luke’s dramatic fame (or notoriety) followed him about. Having addressed an election rally at great length, he was referred to by a tongue-in-cheek newspaper reporter as having ‘so successfully devoted his dramatic talents to the cause of suffering humanity’.

At another rally, he acceded to a clamour for this by proposing a resolution of thanks to ‘His Majesty for his gracious sentiments and declarations in favour of the Catholics of Ireland’. The King, however, was the ailing George III, then of unsound mind and not known for his tolerance of Catholic rights. Nevertheless, Luke was carried shoulder-high from the rally to Grattan’s meeting rooms.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own