sureties for Florence MacCarthy Reagh, who had been imprisoned since his surrender in 1600, and who dedicated to Thomond his work on the antiquity and history of Ireland. He died on 5 Sept. 1624, and was buried in Limerick Cathedral, where a fine monument, with an inscription, was erected to his memory.
Thomond was one of the most influential and vigorous of the Irish loyalists; and, though his devotion and motives were sometimes suspected, Carew wrote that 'his services hath proceeded out of a true nobleness of mind and from no great encouragement received' from the court. He married, first, Ellen, daughter of Maurice Roche, viscount Fermoy, who died in 1597; by her he had one daughter, married to Cormac, son and heir of Lord Muskerry. His second wife, who died on 12 Jan. 1617, was Elizabeth, fourth daughter of Gerald, eleventh earl of Kildare; by her he had Henry, fifth earl, and Barnabas, sixth earl of Thomond, who is separately noticed. Thomond's second brother, Teige, was long imprisoned in Limerick on account of his rebellion, but was released on protesting his loyalty; after another imprisonment he joined in O'Donnell's second invasion of Clare in 1599, and was killed during Thomond's pursuit of the rebels. Daniel, the third brother, is separately noticed.
[Cal. State Papers, Ireland, passim; Carew MSS. passim; Morrin's Cal. of Close and Patent Rolls; Annals of the Four Masters, vols. v. and vi.; Stafford's Pacata, Hibernia, throughout; Cox's Hibernia Anglicana; Chamberlain's Letters (Camden Soc.); Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, ii. 35, &c.; Brady's Records of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross; Gibson's Hist. of Cork; Lenihan's Limerick, passim; MacCarthy's Life and Letters of Florence MacCarthy Reagh; Camden's Annals; O'Donoghue's Memoirs of the O'Briens; Hardiman's Hist. of Galway, p. 91; Collins's Letters and Memorials; Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors, iii.; Gardiner's Hist. of England, i. 379; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. ix. 125, 328, xii. 307.]
O'BRIEN, EDWARD (1808–1840), author, third son of Sir Edward O'Brien, bart., of Dromoland, co. Clare, and younger brother of William Smith O'Brien [q. v.], was born in 1808. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, whence he graduated B.A. in 1829, and M.A. in 1832; and he was subsequently called to the Irish bar. He died at Whitkirk vicarage, Yorkshire, the residence of his brother-in-law, the Rev. A. Martineau, on 19 May 1840, his early death being due to a fever caught in consequence of exertions on behalf of various Dublin charities. His posthumous work, described by those who knew O'Brien as a portrait of himself, depicts a lawyer of ideal holiness. It was entitled ‘The Lawyer: his Character and Rule of Holy Life, after the manner of George Herbert's Country Parson’ (London, Pickering, 1842, 8vo; Philadelphia, 1843). The author writes without effort in the language of Herbert and of Hooker, and with a simplicity of purpose no less characteristic of a bygone age. Ignoring to a large extent any notion of a conflict between the worldly practice of a modern lawyer and the altruistic sentiments of the New Testament, the writer lingers over his conception of the lawyer frequenting the temple of God, meditating, ‘like Isaac of old, upon divine things, or communing with a friend as he walks, after the manner of the disciples journeying to Emmaus, seeking out the poor and assisting the minister in catechising the poor children of his parish.’ The treatise concludes with a beautifully written ‘Lawyer's Prayer.’ The text, no less than the notes, evidences wide reading and a pure taste. The book was highly eulogised by Sir Aubrey de Vere, and there is an able appreciation of it in the ‘Dublin University Magazine’ (xxi. 42–54).
[Gent. Mag. 1840, pt. ii. p. 222; Graduati Cantabr.; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature; introduction to The Lawyer.]
O'BRIEN, HENRY (1808–1835), antiquary, born in 1808, was a native of co. Kerry. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1831. In 1832 he wrote a dissertation on the ‘Round Towers of Ireland’ for the prize offered by the Royal Irish Academy. He did not gain the prize, but was awarded a small gratuity. In 1833 he published a translation of Villanueva's ‘Phœnician Ireland’ (8vo), with an introduction and notes, which were ridiculed as fanciful in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1833 (pt. ii. pp. 340 f.), In 1834 he published ‘The Round Towers of Ireland; or the Mysteries of Freemasonry, of Sabaism, and of Budhism [sic] for the first time Unveiled,’ London, 8vo. The object of this work (which was the prize essay enlarged) was to show that the round towers are Buddhistic remains. The book was condemned as wild and extravagant in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for March 1834 (p. 299; cf. ib. October, pp. 365 f.), and in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ for April 1834 (vol. lix. pp. 146 ff.). The Edinburgh reviewer was Tom Moore (Moore, Diary, vii. 31). O'Brien, in a correspondence, accused Moore of appropriating his discoveries in his ‘History of Ireland.’ Father Prout, a warm friend and
