(c.1704–1776); born in Co. Clare, son of Daniel Clancy, soldier or possibly doctor and a man of letters; Memoirs ded. to Earl of Kildare; ed. Paris (1712–16); taught Greek by Dr Michael Moore; played truant to see his hero the Duke of Ormond then visiting Paris and feared to return home; travelled to Ireland aged 12 to seek his relations; helped by a friend of his father and attended Kilkenny College for three years; discovered relations in Co. Clare who placed him in Trinity College, Dublin, 1721–4; studied studied anatomy; sent a poem commemorating the death of Richard Helsham to Jonathan Swift; expelled from TCD for drunkenness - not cited in Memoirs [TCD Muniments]; returned to France (1724); guest of Montesquieu; poss. studied medicine at Bordeaux and practised medicine in Dublin; lost his sight following a cold, 1737; turned to drama; his play The sharper performed at Smock Alley (1738) and published with his Memoirs (1750); received appreciative letter on the play from Swift (dated Christmas 1737); playbill for his benefit performance, January 1737/8) considered the earliest surviving Dublin playbill; his Tamar, prince of Nubia (1740) remained unpublished; The fair penitent (1745) given as benefit performance by Thomas Sheridan, 1746; Hermon, prince of Choræa: or, the extravagant zealot (1746), a tragedy, also staged - all unsuccessfully and prob. out of sympathy; played Tiresias in a benefit performance of Oedipus, king of Thebes by Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, Theatre Royal, London, 1744; published poems in Gentleman’s Magazine and Finn’s Leinster Journal, two being included in Brookiana, ed C. H. Wilson (1804) collected by C. H. Wilson); he Templum veneris, sive amorum rhapsodiae (1745, 1774), printed with congratulatory letter by bishop of Cerati, chancellor-provost of the Academy of Pisa; trans. The wanderings of the heart and mind: or memoirs of Mr de Meilcour, by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1751); granted government pension by kindness of Lord Chesterfield, the Lord Lieutenant, 1745; opened grammar school in Church St., Dublin, 1752, and taught classics and modern languaages privately at his home in Bolton St.; became master of the Diocesan School, Kilkenny (1758–76); visited by John O’Keeffe in 1767 (‘polite and communicative; yet melancholy; a large, well-looking man, with a great wig’; d. 7 April 1776, Kilkenny.