parish left him much leisure for literary work. In 1872 the university of Durham conferred on him the honorary degree of M.A., and on 29 May 1873 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1879 he was preferred to a prebendal stall at York. He died at Fishlake on 17 April 1886. By his marriage in 1843 to Anne (d. 1872), daughter of John Wilson, J.P. and D.L., of The Hill, Brigham, Cumberland, he had two sons and two daughters.
Ornsby was a model parish priest and an accurate, painstaking antiquary. He was the lifelong friend of James Raine [q. v.], the historian of North Durham. In 1846 he published an excellent little topographical work called ‘Sketches of Durham.’ For the Surtees Society he edited Dean Granville's ‘Remains,’ in two volumes, 1861 and 1865; Bishop Cosin's ‘Correspondence,’ 2 vols. 1869–1872; and ‘Selections from the Household Books of Lord William Howard of Naworth,’ 1878. He likewise undertook for the same society an edition of Dean Comber's ‘Correspondence,’ but never finished it. In 1877 he supplied the historical introduction to the volume of sermons preached at the reopening of Durham Cathedral, and in 1882 appeared his admirable ‘Diocesan History of York.’
[The Rev. J. T. Fowler in Durham University Journal, 29 May 1886; Mr. Fowler has kindly supplied additional information; Biograph for July 1881; Proc. of Soc. Antiq.; Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1885, p. 895.]
ORNSBY, ROBERT (1820–1889), classical scholar and biographer, born in 1820, was the third son of George Ornsby of Lanchester, Durham. George Ornsby [q. v.] was his eldest brother. He matriculated from Lincoln College, Oxford, on 8 Dec. 1836, and obtained one of Lord Crewe's exhibitions. He graduated B.A. on 3 Dec. 1840, after gaining a first class in literæ humaniores. In 1843 he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College, and graduated M.A. Subsequently he held the college office of lecturer in rhetoric and the university office of master of the schools, and for four or five years he was actively engaged in private tuition. For a time he was curate of St. Olave's, Chichester, but he seceded from the church of England, and was received into the Roman catholic communion in May 1847 (E. G. K. Browne, Tractarian Movement, 1861, pp. 145, 151).
For some years subsequently he assisted Frederick Lucas [q. v.] in conducting the ‘Tablet’ newspaper, while it was published in Dublin. When Newman undertook the task of founding a catholic university for Ireland in 1854, Ornsby accepted his invitation to become professor of Greek and Latin literature in the new institution. Later on he became private tutor to the present Duke of Norfolk and his brother, whom he accompanied on a short tour through southern and eastern Europe. He was subsequently for a short time librarian at Arundel Castle, but he returned to his old post at the catholic university in 1874, at the request of the Irish bishops. In 1882, when the senate of the Royal University of Ireland were forming their first staff of examiners, Ornsby was elected a fellow of the university and an examiner in Greek. He died in Dublin on 21 April 1889. His publications, which display erudition and scholarship, are: 1. ‘The Life of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and Prince of Geneva,’ London, 1856, 8vo. 2. ‘Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη. The Greek Testament, from Cardinal Mai's edition of the Vatican Bible, with Notes, chiefly philological and exegetical; a Harmony of the Gospels, Chronological Tables, &c.,’ Dublin, 1860, 8vo. 3. ‘Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Q.C., with Selections from his Correspondence,’ 2 vols., London, 1884, 8vo.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Goudon, Les récentes Conversions de l'Angleterre, 1851, p. 228; Tablet, 27 April 1889, p. 656; Times, 24 April 1889, p. 7, col. 6.]
ORONSAY, Baron. [See McNeill, Duncan, Baron Colonsay and Oronsay, 1793–1874.]
O'ROURKE, Sir BRIAN-NA-MURTHA (d. 1591), Irish chieftain, was a younger son of Brian Ballagh O'Rourke, by his wife Grainne (d. 28 April 1551), daughter of Manus O'Cahan or Manus O'Donnell [q. v.] (cf. Annals of Four Masters, s. a. 1551 and s. a. 1566). His grandfather, Owen O'Rourke, who was ‘chief of his name,’ was slain at Dromore in 1532, his son Brian Ballagh, ‘the speckled or freckled,’ being declared the O'Rourke in 1536. Brian Ballagh spent a life of constant fighting against his kinsmen and the English, and died in consequence of a fall in 1562; he ‘had the best collection of poems, and of all his tribe had bestowed the greatest number of presents for poetical eulogies;’ he was ‘senior of Sil-Feargna and of the race of Aedh-Finn’ (i.e. the O'Rourkes, O'Reillys, and their correlatives in the counties of Leitrim and Cavan), and his ‘supporters, fosterers, adherents and tributaries extended from Caladh [i.e. Callow, in the parish of Kilconnell, co. Galway], in the territory of the Hy-Many, to the fertile salmon-full Drowes, the boundary of the province of the far-famed province of Ulster; and from Granard in Teffia to the strand of
