Life
?-1812; Roman Catholic bishop of Ossory; biography, W. J. Fitzpatrick’s life of Lanigan is included in his Irish Wits and Worthies (1878). [ODNB]
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Commentary
Don Gifford, Joyce Annotated (p.182), cites an ‘amusing anecdote’ from Irish Wits and Worthies (1873) [sic], p.336, in which the bishop comes from Ossory with complimentary speech for LL Lord Cornwallis, who had a small eye and a tic, addressing him, ‘Tour Excellency has always kept a steady eye upon the interests of Ireland’, having prepared his speech far from sight of the person he was addressing. The period was the immediate sequel to the Union when promises of Emancipation had been given, to be ‘broken like the piecrust with which his excellency feasted the [clerical] deputations’.
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