[Rev.] Denis Taaffe [or Taafe]

Life
?1743-1813 [vars. Taafe, Taffe; pseud. “Julius Vindex”]; entered noviate or actually ordained as Catholic priest; converted to Protestantism and subsequently reverted; joined United Irishmen and fought in Wexford; wrote An Impartial History of Ireland from the Time of the English Invasion to the Present Time, from Authentic Sources (1809-11), in which he represents Jonathan Swift as defender of liberty.

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Works
as Julius Vindex [pseud.], Vindication of the Irish Nation, and particularly its Catholic Inhabitants from the Calumnies of Libellers (Dublin: for James Fletcher 1802), Pt. I, viii, 58p.; Pt.IV, [x], cxxv-cxxxiv, 135-186pp. [presum. 5 pts.]; and Do. [another edn.] (1802)

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Quotations
Anglo-Irish relations: ‘I am well aware of the rooted prejudices, I had almost said hatred that lodges in the breast of some Englishmen towards Ireland’ (Taafe [sic], The Probability, Causes, and Consequences of an Union between Great Britain and Ireland Discussed, Dublin, 1798, p.29; quoted in Thomas Bartlett, ‘“An Union for Empire”: The Anglo-Irish Union as an Imperial project’, in Hearts & Minds: Irish Culture and Society under the Act of Union [PGIL Transactions], Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 2001.)

False historians: ‘We are beset with a chain of false witnesses, descendants from Gyraldus Cambrensis’ (quoted in Carole Fabricant, ‘Swift as Irish Historian’, in Walking Naboth’s Vineyard, ed. Christopher Fox and Brenda Tooley, Notre Dame UP 1995, pp.40-72, p.46; cited in Katie Trumpener, Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire, Princeton UP 1997, Introduction, n.58, .p.300.)

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References
British Library holds [Denis Taafe,] Vindication of the Irish nation, and particularly its Catholic Inhabitants from the Calumnies of Libellers, by Julius Vindex [pseud.] (Dublin: for James Fletcher 1802) [5 pts.], Pt. I, viii, 58p.; Pt.IV, [x], cxxv-cxxxiv, 135-186pp.; also another edn., apparently not that issued by Fletcher.

Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast, holds Dennis Taffe [cat. sic.], Impartial History of Ireland, Vols. 1-4 (Dublin 1809); he is also given as “Taffe” in Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift, The Irish Identity, 1995).

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