Abstract
A mural tablet in Killarney Cathedral eulogises Gerald Teahan, the Bishop of Kerry, who died in 1797. He was endowed with ‘the easy politeness of a gentleman’ and remembered for ‘his affable manners and instructive conversation’. In stressing these attributes, the memorialist at once revealed contemporary expectations about what was needed to prosper in polite society and the eagerness with which the leaders of the Irish Catholic Church were conforming themselves to these standards. Priests, by virtue of their lettered calling and their training on the continent, were perhaps uniquely well placed to acquire the necessary polish. This had long been the case.1 What was novel at the close of the eighteenth century was the pervasiveness of the ideals of sociability and politeness. Linked with this cultural shift was an argument about where these accomplishments were most clearly located: whether in bustling towns or somnolent countryside; among the hereditary aristocracy or among an alternative aristocracy constituted from virtue and service; in the ranks of civic activists or of indolent rentiers.2 Much of this debate, together with the altered social values which it reflected, echoed what was heard in Britain and continental Europe. Yet, in Ireland, politeness and sociability had further resonances.
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Notes
Links between the background and behaviour of the Irish Catholic episcopate can be traced through: D. Cregan, ‘The Social and Cultural Background of a Counter-Reformation Episcopate, 1618–60’, in A. Cosgrove and D. McCartney (eds), Studies in Irish History presented to R.D. Edwards (Dublin: University College, 1979), pp. 85–117;
D. Keogh, ‘Archbishop Troy, the Catholic Church and Irish Radicalism, 1791–3’, in D. Dickson, D. Keogh and K. Whelan (eds), The United Irishmen (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993), pp. 124–34;
D. Keogh, ‘The French Disease’: the Catholic Church and Radicalism in Ireland, 1790–1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1993).
The debate on politeness is illuminated by, among others, P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–83 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), ch. 3;
N. Phillipson, ‘Politics, Politeness and the Anglicization of Early Eighteenth-century Scottish Culture’, in R. A. Mason (ed.), Scotland and England, 1286–1815 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), pp. 226–42;
J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
A. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 225–84.
L.E. Klein, ‘Liberty, Manners and Politeness in Early Eighteenth-century Ireland’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), pp. 583–605;
Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1760 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989);
J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London: HarperCollins, 1997);
P. Clark, Sociability and Urbanity: Clubs and Societies in the Eighteenth-Century City (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986);
P. Corfield, The Impact of English Towns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982);
P. Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (London: Methuen, 1989); Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter.
D. Dickson, ‘”Centres of Motion”: Irish Cities and the Origins of Popular Politics’, in L. Bergeron and L. M. Cullen (eds), Culture et pratiques politiques en France et en Irlande: XVIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Centre de Recherches Historiques, 1991), pp. 101–22;
J.R. Hill, ‘Corporate Values in Hanoverian Edinburgh and Dublin’, in S.J. Conolly, R.A. Houston and R.J. Morris (eds), Conflict, Identity and Economic Development: Ireland and Scotland, 1600–1939 (Preston: Carnegie Publishing, 1995), pp. 114–24;
J. Hill, From Patriots to Unionists: Dublin Civic Politics and Irish Protestant Patriotism, 1660–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
T.C. Barnard, ‘The Gentrification of Eighteenth-century Ireland’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 12 (1997), pp. 141–8.
P.H. Kelly, ‘“Industry and Virtue versus Liberty and Corruption”: Berkeley, Walpole and the South Sea Bubble Crisis’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 7 (1992), pp. 57–74.
I. McBride, ‘The School of Virtue: Francis Hutcheson, Irish Presbyterians and the Scottish Enlightenment’, in D.G. Boyce, R. Eccleshall and V. Geoghegan (eds), Political Thought in Ireland Since the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 73–99;
F. McKee, ‘Francis Hutcheson and Bernard Mandeville’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 3 (1988), pp. 123–32;
M.A. Stewart, ‘John Smith and the Molesworth Circle’, ibid., 2 (1987), 89–102;
Stewart, ‘Rational Dissent in Early Eighteenth-century Ireland’, in K.A. Haakonssen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 43–59.
Kilkenny: J. Alcock to H. Aland, 12 May 1739 (ibid., B.5/2); autobiography of H. Thompson (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Eng. Hist. d. 155, f. 40v); W. Colles to B. Colles, 5 April 1766 (National Archives, Dublin, Prim Ms. 87); Mulligar: Edgeworth account books, 12 and 13 October 1732 (N[ational] L[ibrary of] I[reland, Dublin], Ms. 1510); Enniscorthy: S. Povey to W. Smythe, 18 December 1762 (ibid., PC 448); Cavan: account book of Bishop Joseph Story, 1 June 1756, 21 July 1756, November and December 1761; July, August and September 1762, February, March, October and December 1763, June 1766 (Story Mss, Bingfield, Co. Cavan). See also: J. McVeagh (ed.), Richard Pococke’s Tours (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995), p. 92.
G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination, ch. 3: J. Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: the Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
M.L. Legg (ed.), The Synge Letters: Bishop Edward Synge to his Daughter, Alicia, Roscommon to Dublin, 1746–1752 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1996), pp. 145, 149, 151, 173, 210, 402, 408, 432.
On the O’Callaghans’ strategies, T.C. Barnard, ‘Sir William Petty as Kerry Ironmaster’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 82, sec. C (1982), pp. 22–3;
A.C. Elias (ed.), Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington (Athens, GA and London: University of Georgia Press, 1997), ii, p. 486;
D.W. Hayton, ‘Dependence, Clientage and Affinity: The Political Following of the Second Duke of Ormonde’, in T.C. Barnard and J. Fenlon (eds), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000).
NLI, Ms. 13991, openings 3, 15, 19, 21. For Cumyng, see T. C. Barnard, ‘The Professionalization of the Ministry?’, in K. Herlihy (ed.), The Ministry and Irish Dissent (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999).
T.C. Barnard, ‘Learning, the Learned and Literacy in Ireland, c. 1660–1760’, in T. Barnard, D. Ó Croinín and K. Simms (eds), ‘A Miracle of Learning’: Studies in Manuscripts and Irish Learning (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 209–35.
T.C. Barnard, ‘The Hartlib Circle and the Cult and Culture of Improvement in Ireland’, in M. Greengrass, M. Leslie and T. Raylor (eds), Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 281–97;
K.T. Hoppen, The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).
J.C. Walton (ed.), ‘Two Descriptions of County Waterford in the 1680s: ii. Sir Richard Cox’s account’, Decies, 36 (1987), p. 30.
D.W. Hayton, ‘From Barbarian to Burlesque: English Images of the Irish, c. 1660–1750’, Irish Economic and Social History, 15 (1988), 5–31.
M. Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760–1800 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989);
I. Ousby, Englishmen’s England: Taste, Travel and the Rise of Tourism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
For altered notions (and conditions) in Scotland: R. Clyde, From Rebel to Hero: the Image of the Highlander, 1745–1830 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995);
A.I. McInnes, Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603–1788 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996).
T.C. Barnard, ‘Art, Architecture, Artefacts and Ascendancy’, Bullán, 1/2 (1994), pp. 25–6;
D. Herbert, Retrospections (new edn, Dublin: Town House, 1988), pp. 2–3, 149–56;
D. Fitzgerald, Knight of Glin and A. Crookshank, The Watercolours of Ireland (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1994), pp. 82–9;
E. MacLysaght (ed.), Kenmare Manuscripts (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1942), pp. 82–3;
McVeagh (ed.), Pococke’s Irish Tours, p. 184. Cf. T.C. Barnard, ‘Sir William Petty, Irish landowner’, in H. Lloyd-Jones, V. Pearl and A.B. Worden (eds), History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H.R. Trevor-Roper (London: Duckworth, 1981), pp. 201–17.
Generally, Peadar Livingstone, The Fermanagh Story (Enniskillen: Cumann Seanchais Chlochair, 1969).
The strategies of different members of the Maguire sept can be traced through B. Cunningham and R. Gillespie, ‘The Purposes of Patronage: Britan Maguire of Knockninny and his Manuscripts’, The Clogher Record, 13 (1988), 38–49; W.A. Maguire, ‘The Lands of the Maguires of Tempo’, ibid., 12 (1985–7), 305–19;
Maguire, ‘The Estate of Cu Chonnacht Maguire of Tempo: A Case History from the Williamite Land Settlement’, Irish Historical Studies, 27 (1990), pp. 130–44.
Ibid., p. 106. See too J.B. Cunningham, A History of Castle Caldwell and its Families (Monaghan: Watergate Press, n.d. [c. 1982]), pp. 26–41.
Some recent notions about privacy and private spheres are robustly challenged in Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter. In addition, for Ireland: T.C. Barnard, ‘Public and Private Use of Wealth in Ireland, c. 1660–1760’, in J.R. Hill and C. Lennon (eds), Luxury and Austerity: Historical Studies, XXI (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1999), pp. 78–9.
L. Proudfoot, ‘Landownership and Improvement, ca. 1700–1845’, in L.J. Proudfoot (ed.), Down: History and Society (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1997), pp. 203–38;
Proudfoot and B.J. Graham, Urban Improvement in Provincial Ireland (Athlone: Group for the Study of Historic Irish Settlement, 1994), pp. 22–38.
For English parallels: Borsay, English Urban Renaissance; R. Tittler, Architecture and Power: the Town Hall and the English Urban Community, c. 1500–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
D. Fitzgerald, Knight of Glin and E. Malins, Lost Demesnes: Irish Landscape Gardening, 1660–1745 (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976), pp. 43–4.
S.J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: the Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 95–6.
T.C. Barnard, ‘Integration or Separation? Hospitality and Display in Protestant Ireland, 1660–1800’, in L.W.B. Brockliss and D.S Eastwood (eds), A Union of Multiple Identities: the British Isles, c. 1750–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 125–46; Barnard, ‘Private and Public Uses of Wealth in Ireland’, pp. 66–83.
A. Carpenter (ed.), Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997), pp. 12–23. The ways of Connacht squires were, for example, ridiculed in The Down-Fall of the Counts: a New Ballad (Dublin, 1722).
T.C. Barnard, ‘Protestantism, Ethnicity and Irish identities, 1660–1760’, in T. Claydon and I. McBride (eds), Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland c. 1650–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 216–17.
Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination, pp. 546–50; T. Fawcett, ‘Dance and Teachers of Dance in Eighteenth-century Bath’, Bath History, 2 (1988), pp. 27–44;
Fawcett, ‘Provincial Dancing Masters’, Norfolk Archaeology, 35 (1970), pp. 135–41; Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter, pp. 241, 264. In the Irish context: F. Fleming, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures, the Perils and Critical Escapes of Timothy Ginnadrake (Bath, n.d.), i, pp. 16, 20; McVeagh (ed.), Pococke’s Tours, p. 118.
For preliminary remarks on the patronage of music: H. White, The Keeper’s Recital: Music and Cultural History in Ireland, 1770–1970 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998), pp. 13–35;
T.C. Barnard, The Abduction of a Limerick Heiress: Political and Social Relations in Mid-Eighteen-Century Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1998), p. 38; Barnard, ‘The Gentrification of Eighteenth-century Ireland’, pp. 141–2, 145–6.
G.L. Lee, The Huguenot Settlements in Ireland (London: Longmans and Co., 1936), pp. 65–6.
The fullest history of the Cork region in this period remains D. Dickson, ‘An Economic History of the Cork Region in the Eighteenth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 2 vols, Trinity College, Dublin, 1977).
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Barnard, T. (2001). The Languages of Politeness and Sociability in Eighteenth-century Ireland. In: Boyce, D.G., Eccleshall, R., Geoghegan, V. (eds) Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403932723_8
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