Frederick Hervey [Bishop-Earl] (1730-1803)

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Criticism
William S. Childe-Pemberton, The Earl Bishop 2 vols. (London: Hurst & Blackett 1924) [epigraph from Goethe’s memoir of his encounter with the earl, whom he described as a man of a single idea]; Magdalen King-Hall The Edifying Bishop (1951); also John Richard Walsh, Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, Le ‘bienfaiteur des catholiques’ (Maynooth 1972) 59p.; Brian Fothergill, The Mitred Earl: An eighteenth-century Eccentric, The Life of Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry (London: Faber 1974), 254pp., ill.

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Commentary
C. L. Falkiner, in Studies in Irish History and Biography (1901), on Hervey, ‘the most singular representative of the class of bishops who had been chosen to preside over the spiritual destinies of the Irish people’ [English in Ireland, Cabinet ed. ii.413]; NOTE, Pope on Hervey, as Sporus, ‘Sporus! That white curd of asses’ milk, / His wit all seesay between that and this, / And he himself one vile antithesis. / Amphibious thing! that acting either part, / The trifling head or the corrupted heart. / Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, / Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.’ [Epistle to Arbuthnot?] Falkiner comments, But the jibes at Lord Hervey’s understanding were altogether inapplicaable to one of the most capabl politicians, shrewdest observers, and most caustic writers of his time; and the author of the Secret Memoirs of the Court of George II has had intellectually an abundant, though posthumous, revenge for the oblique slanders of the Epistle to Arbuthnot, the Imitations of Horace, and the direct insults of Letter to a Noble Lord. [61] Hervey is cited in the Beggar’s Opera, ‘Now, Hervey, fair of face, full well / With thee, youth’s youngest daughter, sweet Lepel.’ [62].

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Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Ways (1957), accredits the Bishop of Derry with the remark that Ireland possessed ‘nothing curious to engage admiration and nothing horrid enough to stare at.’ (p.5.)

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Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists 1800-1850 (Columbia UP 1959) - of Irish legislative independence in 1782: ‘[...] Grattan was caught upon a dilemma. He was intent not merely on reform but on the preservation of the constitution and the forms of ordered government, yet the only hope for reform lay with the more {21} swashbuckling elements in the Volunteers. These gentlemen, in confirmation of his apprehensions, descended upon Dublin in armed bodies. Nominally they were under the command of the wan and romantic Lord Charlemont. Their most congenial spirit, however, was the Bishop of Derry, a buoyant and unbalanced personality who had traveled to town ostentatiously protected by the cavalry troop of his nephew George Fitzgerald, later to be hanged after a long and alarming career as a ruffian.’ (p.21; cites Mary McCarhty, Fighting Fitzgerald and Other Papers, p.81-181 [sic].)

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Hubert Butler, in Escape from the Anthill (1985), remarks on use of Lucretius’s lines for temple of Mussenden, Suave mari magno ... [&], translated as, ‘It is sweet when on the great sea the winds are convulsing the waters to watch another’s struggles from dry land. Not because it delights one that another should be in travail, but because it is sweet to observe what evils you have not endured.’

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R. E. Ward & C. Ward, eds., Letters of Charles O’Conor of Belanagare (Cath. Univ. of America Press 1988), pp.306-09, reports that the Bishop of Derry was the recipient of a long letter from Charles O’Conor [5 March 1774], relative to the Catholic oath of allegiance to the Hanoverians, which Hervey had suggested they present, along with an abjuration of the temporal authority of the Pope. Note that in the succeeding letter to Daniel McNamara, O’Conor expresses the hope that ‘our formulary was the one brought in’ when the Oath was proposed in the Irish House of Commons (p.310), and soon after notes that the ‘Herveyan test is passed into law but the framers have never been suspected of ability, and had they any and were serious, they would not tack a controverted and controvertible proposition on the back of a true one.’ (p.312).

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Maureen Wall, Catholic Ireland in the 18th c., ed. Gerard O’Brien (1989), At the same juncture, Frederick Augustus Hervey, Lord Bristol, then in Rome, was bombarding politicians with warnings of a general exodus of Catholics. He claimed to have knowledge of a planned invasion, with Irish Brigade officers; and later claimed that his information transmitted to Lord North and Lord Hillsborough determined the British government’s policy on Catholic relief. [127]. Note also his hand in advancing the Catholic Relief measure of 1778 [see Viscount Taaffe, RX]. FURTHER, . The Bishop of Derry was furious [that the penal statues against the Catholic ecclesiastics remained unaltered by the Relief Act of 1788] because he considered that ‘the people of that persuasion ... hold everything cheap in comparison with their religion’ and that the masses and clergy would consider the catholics ‘gentlemen sacrificed liberty of religion to the security of property.’ [133]

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Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody (1992), Hervey, Lord Bristol, sought to have the Catholics of property enfranchised; Rogers (op. cit., p.120) shows that this measure was of limited importance as only 300 to 500 Catholics would thus be enfranchised. See Rev. Francis Rogers, The Irish Volunteers and Catholic Emancipation (London 1934); [247]

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References
Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast holds Frederick Hervey, The Earl-Bishop of Derry (n.a. / n.d.) [pamphlet]; Magdalen King-Hall, The Edifying Bishop, Frederick Hervey [n.d.]; William S. Childe-Pemberton, The Earl Bishop (2 vols. London 1924).

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Notes
Portraits: Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, pastel, seated, on Janiculum Hill; also a bust by Christopher Hewetson [see Ann Cruikshank and the Knight of Glin, Irish Portraits 1600-1860 [Catalogue] (1969), p.52, 85]; also port. included in engraving of House of Commons of 1790, now preserved in Bank of Ireland (College Green) [as figure No. 165 in key, entitled ‘Earl of Bristol and celebrated bishop of Derry’].

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