William Conolly
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William Conolly (1662-1729), also known as William (Speaker) Conolly, was an Anglo-Irish politician and landowner.
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[edit] Career
William Conolly made his fortune from land dealings, following the confiscations by the Crown of lands belonging to the supporters of King James II, in the wake of the accession of William and Mary in 1689. He built the first winged Palladian house in Ireland, Castletown House, near Celbridge, County Kildare, starting in 1722.
Conolly was the most important of the 'Undertakers', i.e. managers of Government business in the Irish House of Commons in the early 17th century. He was associated with the Whigs and the Brodrick faction from Cork.
He was Speaker of the House of Commons and a Commissioner of the Revenue from 1715 to 1729. His name was spelt "Conolly", rather than the more familiar Connolly.[1][2][3]
A pub in Celbridge, "The 'Speaker' Bar", still bears his name.
[edit] Wealth
Conolly was reputed to be the wealthiest man in Ireland at the date of his death. He paid £32,000 and an annuity of £500 p.a., for his estate in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal in 1718, £62,000 for his estate in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, in 1723 and £12,000 for those in Leixlip, Co. Dublin and Kildare in 1728 together with other properties.
[edit] References
- ^ William Conolly - Dictionary of National Biography
- ^ Lewis's Topographical Directory of Ireland, 1837 - irish-architecture.com
- ^ The Conolly Papers - Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
- Malcomson A.P.W.; Nathaniel Clements, Government and the Governing Elite in Ireland, 1725 -1775, 4 Courts Press,2005, ISBN 1-85182-913-X
- Nelson D. Lankford, ed., An Irishman in Dixie: Thomas Conolly's Diary of the Fall of the Confederacy, University of South Carolina Press, 1988
