BARRY, Charles Robert (1823-1897), of 3 Fitzwilliam Square East, Dublin, Co. Dublin

After studying classics and training as a barrister in Dublin, Barry, the son of a respected Catholic solicitor in Limerick, joined the Munster circuit. Having ‘proved himself a brilliant and skilful advocate in criminal as well as in civil cases’, he was rapidly advanced to the position of crown prosecutor. In July 1859 he was made a QC at the early age of 36 and appointed crown prosecutor for Dublin.1W. Osborough, ‘Barry, Charles Robert’, Oxford DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]; Pall Mall Gazette, 17 May 1897. In November 1864, Barry served as one of two commissioners appointed to investigate the recent sectarian riots at Belfast and recommend revisions to the town’s policing arrangements.2PP 1865 (3466) (3466-I) xxvii. 1, 27. On 1 February 1865 he was appointed as law adviser to Dublin Castle, then at the height of the investigation into the Fenian conspiracy, and that April he appeared as counsel to Sir Robert Kane to answer allegations of maladministration at Queen’s College, Cork.3Freeman’s Journal, 2 Feb. 1865; PP 1865 (3494) xviii.127.

Barry resigned the law advisership in July 1865, after it was ascertained that retaining the office would disqualify him from sitting in the Commons.4A. Hawkins & J. Powell, The Journal of John Wodehouse First Earl of Kimberley for 1862-1902 (1997), 170. Standing as a Liberal candidate for Dungarvan at the 1865 general election, Barry defeated the Conservative challenger, but denied charges of having used intemperate language during a strongly nationalistic electoral speech. (He was reported by the Freeman’s Journal to have said that he had ‘learned from his early youth to regard with undying hostility the arrogant and intolerant faction which so long had trampled upon and insulted his religion and his country’, and was later called to account by Thomas Bateson MP in the House.)5Hansard, 3 July 1865, vol. 180, c.1042; Freeman’s Journal, 20 June 1865; Belfast News-letter, 23 June, 5 July 1865.

An ‘earnest and outspoken Liberal of the old type’, Barry entered the Commons as ‘a firm supporter of Lord Palmerston’s government’.6Pall Mall Gazette, 17 May 1897; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i, 24. In moving the second reading of his unsuccessful Irish poor relief law amendment bill of June 1866, he provided a persuasive argument in favour of extending the union rating system, recently introduced to England, in order to remove the power of Irish proprietors to reduce poor rates by simply removing the poor.7Hansard, 10 May 1866, vol. 183, c.74; 13 June 1866, vol. 184, cc.343-9; PP 1866 (153) iv. 231; PP 1866 (377) lxii. 75. In February 1867 he called for an inquiry into the actions of the military at the recent County Waterford by-election which had resulted in two deaths. The following month, he prepared a successful bill to regulate insurance policies, and that July assisted in an unsuccessful attempt to amend the Irish game laws.8Hansard, 14 Feb. 1867, vol. 185, c.370; 18 Feb. 1867, vol. 185, c.462; HP Commons, 1832-68: County Waterford; PP 1867 (85) v. 1; PP 1867 (226) iii. 73. In February 1867 and April 1868 he introduced two abortive bills to extend to Ireland the law respecting the presence of military at parliamentary elections, and subsequently made unsuccessful attempts to amend the Irish Railways Act and the law respecting the probate of wills.9Hansard, 27 Apr. 1868, vol. 191, c.1424; 30 June 1868, vol. 193, cc.417-8; PP 1867 (23) iv. 315; PP 1867-68 (95) iii. 499; PP 1867-68 (123) iv. 371; PP 1867-68 (129) iv. 257. Speaking on the Irish reform bill in June 1868, Barry opposed a plan to give county voters a vote in the boroughs on the ground that it would give an undue influence to landlords in Irish towns.10Hansard, 22 June 1868, vol. 192, cc.1892-1908. However, he attracted unpopularity in Ireland because of his conduct of the legal inquiry that followed the arrest of the Fenian leadership in September 1865, and became ‘an object of unsparing popular obloquy’ after he was judged to have put ‘the most disturbing possible interpretation’ on the statement of an informer, to whom he imputed plans for the wholesale expropriation of land and ‘a thoroughgoing massacre of all the higher and middle ranks of society, not excluding the catholic clergy’.11‘Barry, Charles Robert’ [www.oxford.dnb]; Freeman’s Journal, 17 May 1897; R.V. Comerford, Charles J. Kickham. A study in Irish Nationalism and Literature (1979), 80. In 1865 he had been conducted into Dungarvan ‘in triumphal procession’ and hailed as a champion of civil and religious liberty, but at the 1868 general election he was defeated by Henry Matthews, an independent Liberal, who had harnessed the support of extreme nationalists by condemning the government’s treatment of Fenian prisoners.12Freeman’s Journal, 20 June 1865. Though without a seat, Barry held the posts of solicitor and Irish attorney general in Gladstone’s first administration and was instrumental in framing the peace preservation and land bills of 1870.13Hawkins & Powell, Journal of John Wodehouse, 246-7. See Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act, 1870, c.9, and Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, c.46.

In 1872 Barry was appointed a puisine judge of the Irish court of queen’s bench and served on the north-western circuit. Having performed to the satisfaction of ministers in prominent cases such as the Maamtrasna murder trial, he was promoted to the Irish court of appeal in 1883, his Catholicism counting in his favour.14Earl Spencer to W.E. Gladstone, 20 May 1883: BL, Althorp papers, Add MS. 76858. Though some criticised his tendency to indolence in the latter post, he was valued by all parties in Ireland as a ‘rigidly fair and impartial’ judge, never more so than when presiding at the state prosecution of Charles Stewart Parnell MP in 1880. Though a candidate for the Irish lord chancellorship in 1885, the lord lieutenant, Earl Spencer, advised the Prime Minister that Barry was ‘weak in character, inclined to pose for popularity, and (I say it in great confidence) not to my mind wholly reliable’.15Freeman’s Journal, 17 May 1897; Spencer to W.E. Gladstone, 18 Apr 1885: BL, Althorp papers, Add MS. 76862. Nevertheless, he remained an exceedingly popular figure in legal circles, valued for his generosity, geniality and charm. ‘Charlie’ Barry, as he was widely known, died suddenly at his home in Dublin on 15 May 1897 and was buried in St. Laurence’s cemetery, Limerick.16F.E. Ball, The Judges in Ireland, 1221-1921, ii (1926), 305, 321; Belfast News-letter, 17 May 1897; Freeman’s Journal, 17 May 1897; ‘Barry, Charles Robert’ [www.oxforddnb.com].