An Irishwoman's Diary

"I am Irish. Can I not be Irish - and a Protestant?" The Rev David Armstrong's plea fell on receptive ears a couple of weeks …

"I am Irish. Can I not be Irish - and a Protestant?" The Rev David Armstrong's plea fell on receptive ears a couple of weeks ago, given that everyone with him in the Munster Arms in Bandon had gathered under the auspices of the Bandon Reconciliation Group to hear the poet Tom Paulin reflect on the philosophical bequest of the Rev William Hazlitt, writes Mary Leland.

The notion that a tribute to the Unitarian minister Hazlitt, father of the critic and essayist, should be erected in Bandon came originally from Tom Paulin himself, whose researches for his authoritative book on the younger Hazlitt had reminded him that the writer had lived in Bandon as a child. Paulin mentioned this fact to the literary agent Jonathan Williams who discussed it with the artist Andrew Coleman, from whom the idea was taken up by Jeff Dickson of the Bandon Reconciliation Group.

The resultant bronze plaque was unveiled by Paulin, who spoke not only of the elder Hazlitt's philosophy, sermons and essays, but also of the fearless integrity of his belief in human rights. The relationship between the elder and the younger Hazlitts in terms of influence and training was also invoked with coherent references to other dissenters, theologians, philosophers and diarists woven into the framework of two vigorous and articulate lives.

Lessons for today

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Inevitably, it is the legacy - or the lessons - for today which formed the sub-text. Described in the memorial tablet on the courthouse in Bandon as "A friend to truth and liberty", the clerical Hazlitt, who ministered in the town from 1780 to 1783, is celebrated here "for his fearless defence of the rights of both prisoners and citizens of other creeds".

He was of Ulster Presbyterian stock, born in Shronell, Co Tipperary. A graduate of Glasgow University, he was ordained as a Unitarian but left his ministry in England because of his overt sympathy for the cause of American independence. His move to Bandon brought him close to Kinsale, where the jail was packed with American prisoners. In befriending these, especially through a series of letters to the local newspaper, and in his defence of Catholics intimidated by army officers, Hazlitt ran aground on the political tensions of the day. America seemed the most likely place of refuge and respect and the Hazlitt family left Cork in April, 1783.

Convinced of the virtues of rational dissent, Hazlitt was an early and inspired critic of political, racial and religious apartheid - a trait which didn't go down too well in America either. Having founded a Unitarian church in Boston, Hazlitt returned to England, where he died in Crediton in 1820.

"When we talked of this man I trembled a little, for I think I just might know what it was like to live in Bandon during those times," said Rev David Armstrong, formerly of Limavady and now of Carrigaline, Co Cork. He endured ferocious threats and intimidation in Co Derry for sharing church services with his neighbouring Roman Catholic colleagues. "I know what it is like to walk a lonely furrow, to see my child with spittle on his cheek, how the attempt to love thy neighbour can turn you into the 'papist-lover'," he said. And so Limavady in the 1980s and Bandon in the 1780s were joined by the evocation of that Unitarian minister who, as Armstrong said, "was a man proud to be Irish but who didn't think he had to hate English people as a result."

Agnes Clerke

This was a weekend of recognition, in fact, for the day before the gathering in Bandon, Rickard H. Deasy, nearest surviving kin to the Victorian astronomer and writer Agnes Clerke, had presented a family heirloom, in the shape of four engraved testimonial volumes, to Skibbereen town council. This was to mark the imminent publication of Agnes Clerke and the Rise of Astrophysics by Dr Maire Bruck. The Deasys and the Clerkes represent, in their family connections, another aspect of David Armstrong's query by being Irish, Catholic and Protestant more or less all at the same time.

Agnes Mary Clerke (1842-1907) was the daughter of John William Clerke, a liberal Protestant who married the wealthy Catherine Deasy of the Catholic Clonakilty brewing family. Her brother was Rickard Deasy, MP and judge who, when appointed to the Dublin circuit, brought his brother-in-law along as his registrar. Agnes and her elder sister Ellen Mary were taught singing and piano by the two Miss Flynns who are portrayed by James Joyce at the Christmas party in his story The Dead. They later moved to London, and it was there that Agnes began to collate, interpret and write about her amateur studies in astronomy.

The Clerke children had been brought up as Catholics and left hearty endowments to the Brompton Oratory. Both girls were remarkable linguists: Ellen Mary wrote a lot of popular poetry while Agnes astonished the scientific world with the publication of A Popular History of Astronomy During the 19th Century. The entire family were ardent unionists, believing that the British Empire was the best mechanism for proselytising Catholicism, but they also remained in close and affectionate contact with the children of Judge Rickard Deasy, who had settled in Carysfort House in Dublin.

Expeditions to Tibet

His younger son, H.H.P. Deasy sold Carysfort; joined the British Army; went off on expeditions to Tibet; established a car manufacturing plant in Coventry with his partner J.D.Siddeley which became Siddeley-Armstrong and later merged with Rolls Royce; advised the British government on the standardisation of road-signs; married Dolores Hickie, and returned with her to farm in her native county of Tipperary. Their three children included Rickard Deasy, later President of the IFA, and father of the present Rickard Deasy who now runs the family farm after a European Union-centred career in Brussels.

It was this Rickard who brought to Skibbereen (which had put up its own memorial plaque to the Clerkes in 1999) the engraved volumes presented in 1861 to John William Clerke, then manager of the Provincial Bank in the town, on the occasion of his departure for Dublin as "a memorial of regard and esteem from the inhabitants of Skibbereen and its neighbourhood."

"I thought", said Rickard last week, "that as it was the Deasys who took the Clerkes out of Skibbereen it was only appropriate that we should bring something back to the town." Agnes Clerke and the Rise of Astrophysics by Dr Maire Bruck will be published this month by Cambridge University Press.