Sir Jonah Barrington (born at Knapton, Abbeyleix 1760; died at Versailles, France on 8 April 1834), was the fourth of six children of John Barrington, a landowner in County Laois. An Irish lawyer, judge and politician, he is most notable for his amusing and popular memoirs of life in late 18th-century Ireland, and for his opposition to the Act of Union in 1800.
Barrington was educated at Trinity College Dublin and was called to the Irish bar in 1788, taking silk in 1793. He was appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798.
He joined the Irish Volunteers and supported the Irish Patriots in the early 1780s. In the pre-1801 Irish parliament he was MP for Tuam by purchase of the seat in 1790-97, and then MP for Clogher in 1798. He received a sinecure post worth £1,000p.a. in 1793, generally supporting Henry Grattan. He re-entered parliament in 1798 and voted against the Act of Union in 1799-1800, rejecting Lord Clare’s offer of the solicitor-generalship in 1799. He later unsuccessfully contested a seat in the UK parliament for Dublin in 1802. His career as a judge led to a knighthood in 1807.
Barrington moved to France in 1815 to escape his creditors, while still retaining his judgeship and salary. In 1830 a parliamentary commission deprived him of office, finding misappropriations of court funds in 1805, 1806 and 1810. By then his first 1827 volume of memoirs had sold successfully, and they were republished and expanded (see below).
Barrington is most notable today for his memoirs that included scathing but humorous thumbnail portraits of contemporary Irish lawyers, judges and politicians during the last years of the Protestant Ascendancy. Personal sketches also includes vignettes on Irish people from every background. His works were reprinted with frequent additions and renamings as:
Historic Anecdotes and Secret Memoirs of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland (London: G. Robinson 1809);
repubished with a 2nd volume as: Historic Memoirs, Comprising Secret Records of the National Convention, the Rebellion, and the Union, with Delineations of the Principal Characters Connected with These Transactions, 2 vols. (London: R. Bentley & H. Colburn 1833 [1809-33])
:3rd edn: ..with memoir of the author, an essay on Irish wit and humour, and notes and corrections by Townsend Young; 2 vols. (London: G. Routledge & Sons 1869)
Barrington's comments on the Act of Union had a continuing resonance with the Young Ireland, Fenian and Irish Parliamentary Party movements, which hoped to re-establish "Grattan's parliament" in some way. In particular his Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (1833) provided the basis for this romantic idealisation of Grattan’s Parliament adopted by the Irish Parliamentary Party from the 1880s.
Since his death Barrington's work has been quoted by a wide selection of editors, primarily following two themes; the political drama surrounding the Act of Union and the colourful nature of life in 1700s Ireland.
Frank O’Connor, ed., Book of Ireland (London: Fontana 1959 & edns.), was impressed by: "Merry Christmas, 1778" uninterrupted match of hard-going till the weather should break up ... hogshead of superior claret’ ... ‘the pipers plied their chants ... I shall never forget the attraction this novelty had for my youthful mind (p. 139); Sir Boyle Roche ... the most celebrated and entertaining anti-grammarian in the Irish Parliament (p. 183); on duelling Ough, thunder! ... how many holes did the villain want drilled in to his carcass? (p. 262); Crow Street theatre: immediately ... on being struck, he reeled, staggered, and fell very naturally, considering that it was his first death (p. 278).
Roy Foster: the racy Personal Sketches...confirmed him as the chief historian of the "half-mounted gentlemen" of Ireland.
W. B. Yeats: Mrs French, in the first section of Yeats’s poem The Tower, is a character from Barrington’s Recollections, where it is used to illustrate mutual attachment between the Irish peasantry and their landlords.
James Joyce: Leopold Bloom makes reference to Barrrington's Reminiscences (recte Recollections) in Ulysses: Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington.
John Mitchel quoted Barrington in his History of Ireland, concerning the approach to the 1798 rebellion: Mr Pitt counted on the expertness of the Irish Government to effect a premature explosion. Free quarters were now ordered, to irritate the Irish population; slow tortures were inflicted, under the pretence of forcing confessions; the people were goaded and driven to madness (p. 264).
A Dictionary of Irish Writers (1985), ed. Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, lists his Historic Anecdotes and Secret Memoirs of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland (1809).
A book of selections was published for the American market in 1967.
