urge that “it is certainly a matter of importance that the education of their priests should be as perfect as possible, and that if they have any prejudices they should be prejudices in favour of their own country. The Roman Catholics should receive the best education in the established university at the public expense; but by no means should Popish colleges be allowed, for by them we should again have the press groaning with themes of controversy, and subjects of religious disputation that have long slept in oblivion would again awake, and awaken with them all the worst passions of the human mind.”[1]
In 1777 Hely-Hutchinson became secretary of state. When Grattan in 1782 moved an address to the king containing a declaration of Irish legislative independence, Hely-Hutchinson supported the attorney-general’s motion postponing the question; but on the 16th of April, after the Easter recess, he read a message from the lord lieutenant, the duke of Portland, giving the king’s permission for the House to take the matter into consideration, and he expressed his personal sympathy with the popular cause which Grattan on the same day brought to a triumphant issue (see Grattan, Henry). Hely-Hutchinson supported the opposition on the regency question in 1788, and one of his last votes in the House was in favour of parliamentary reform. In 1790 he exchanged the constituency of Cork for that of Taghmon in County Wexford, for which borough he remained member till his death at Buxton on the 4th of September 1794.
In 1785 his wife had been created Baroness Donoughmore and on her death in 1788, his eldest son Richard (1756–1825) succeeded to the title. Lord Donoughmore was an ardent advocate of Catholic emancipation. In 1797 he was created Viscount Donoughmore,[2] and in 1800 (having voted for the Union, hoping to secure Catholic emancipation from the united parliament) he was further created earl of Donoughmore of Knocklofty, being succeeded first by his brother John Hely-Hutchinson (1757–1832) and then by his nephew John, 3rd earl (1787–1851), from whom the title descended.
See W. E. H. Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (5 vols., London, 1892); J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (3 vols., London, 1872–1874); H. Grattan, Memoirs of the Life and Times of Henry Grattan (8 vols., London, 1839–1846); Baratariana, by various writers (Dublin, 1773). (R. J. M.)
HELYOT, PIERRE (1660–1716), Franciscan friar and historian, was born at Paris in January 1660, of supposed English ancestry. After spending his youth in study, he entered in his twenty-fourth year the convent of the third order of St Francis, founded at Picpus, near Paris, by his uncle Jérôme Helyot, canon of St Sepulchre. There he took the name of Père Hippolyte. Two journeys to Rome on monastic business afforded him the opportunity of travelling over most of Italy; and after his final return he saw much of France, while acting as secretary to various provincials of his order there. Both in Italy and France he was engaged in collecting materials for his great work, which occupied him about twenty-five years, L’Histoire des ordres monastiques, religieux, et militaires, et des congrégations séculières, de l’un et de l’autre sexe, qui ont été établies jusqu’à présent, published in 8 volumes in 1714–1721. Helyot died on the 5th of January 1716, before the fifth volume appeared, but his friend Maximilien Bullot completed the edition. Helyot’s only other noteworthy work is Le Chrétien mourant (1695).
The Histoire is a work of first importance, being the great repertory of information for the general history of the religious orders up to the end of the 17th century. It is profusely illustrated by large plates exhibiting the dress of the various orders, and in the edition of 1792 the plates are coloured. It was translated into Italian (1737) and into German (1753). The material has been arranged in dictionary form in Migne’s Encyclopédie théologique, under the title “Dictionnaire des orders religieux” (4 vols., 1858).
HEMANS, FELICIA DOROTHEA (1793–1835), English poet, was born in Duke Street, Liverpool, on the 25th of September 1793. Her father, George Browne, of Irish extraction, was a merchant in Liverpool, and her mother, whose maiden name was Wagner, was the daughter of the Austrian and Tuscan consul at Liverpool. Felicia, the fifth of seven children, was scarcely seven years old when her father failed in business, and retired with his family to Gwrych, near Abergele, Denbighshire; and there the young poet and her brothers and sisters grew up in a romantic old house by the sea-shore, and in the very midst of the mountains and myths of Wales. Felicia’s education was desultory. Books of chronicle and romance, and every kind of poetry, she read with avidity; and she also studied Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German. She played both harp and piano, and cared especially for the simple national melodies of Wales and Spain. In 1808, when she was only fourteen, a quarto volume of her Juvenile Poems, was published by subscription, and was harshly criticized in the Monthly Review. Two of her brothers were fighting in Spain under Sir John Moore; and Felicia, fired with military enthusiasm, wrote England and Spain, or Valour and Patriotism, a poem afterwards translated into Spanish. Her second volume, The Domestic Affections and other Poems, appeared in 1812, on the eve of her marriage to Captain Alfred Hemans. She lived for some time at Daventry, where her husband was adjutant of the Northamptonshire militia. About this time her father went to Quebec on business and died there; and, after the birth of her first son, she and her husband went to live with her mother at Bronwylfa, a house near St Asaph. Here during the next six years four more children—all boys—were born; but in spite of domestic cares arid failing health she still read and wrote indefatigably. Her poem entitled The Restoration of Works of Art to Italy was published in 1816, her Modern Greece in 1817, and in 1818 Translations from Camoens and other Poets.
In 1818 Captain Hemans went to Rome, leaving his wife, shortly before the birth of their fifth child, with her mother at Bronwylfa. There seems to have been a tacit agreement, perhaps on account of their limited means, that they should separate. Letters were interchanged, and Captain Hemans was often consulted about his children; but the husband and wife never met again. Many friends—among them the bishop of St Asaph and Bishop Heber—gathered round Mrs Hemans and her children. In 1819 she published Tales and Historic Scenes in Verse, and gained a prize of £50 offered for the best poem on The Meeting of Wallace and Bruce on the Banks of the Carron. In 1820 appeared The Sceptic and Stanzas to the Memory of the late King. In June 1821 she won the prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature for the best poem on the subject of Dartmoor, and began her play, The Vespers of Palermo. She now applied herself to a course of German reading. Körner was her favourite German poet, and her lines on the grave of Körner were one of the first English tributes to the genius of the young soldier-poet. In the summer of 1823 a volume of her poems was published by Murray, containing “The Siege of Valencia,” “The Last Constantine” and “Belshazzar’s Feast.” The Vespers of Palermo was acted at Covent Garden, December 12, 1823, and Mrs Hemans received £200 for the copyright; but, though the leading parts were taken by Young and Charles Kemble, the play was a failure, and was withdrawn after the first performance. It was acted again in Edinburgh in the following April with greater success, when an epilogue, written for it by Sir Walter Scott at Joanna Baillie’s request, was spoken by Harriet Siddons. This was the beginning of a cordial friendship between Mrs Hemans and Scott. In the same year she wrote De Chatillon, or the Crusaders; but the manuscript was lost, and the poem was published after her death, from a rough copy. In 1824 she began “The Forest Sanctuary,”
- ↑ Irish Parl. Debates, i. 309, 310.
- ↑ It is generally supposed that the title conferred by this patent was that of Viscount Suirdale, and such is the courtesy title by which the heir apparent of the earls of Donoughmore is usually styled. This, however, appears to be an error. In all the three creations (barony 1783, viscountcy 1797, earldom 1800) the title is “Donoughmore of Knocklofty.” In 1821 the 1st earl was further created Viscount Hutchinson of Knocklofty in the peerage of the United Kingdom. The courtesy title of the earl’s eldest son should, therefore, apparently be either “Viscount Hutchinson” or “Viscount Knocklofty.” See G. E. C. Complete Peerage (London, 1890).
