DAUNT, William Joseph O’Neill (1807-1894), of Kilcasan, Ballineen, Co. Cork

The ‘scion of a minor landed family in Mallow’, Daunt was a descendant of Thomas Daunt of Owlpen, Gloucestershire, whose son, Thomas, acquired Tracton Abbey, co. Cork in 1595. Daunt’s grandfather, William, acquired a 600 acre estate at Kilcasan in 1712.1I. D’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics in Cork 1812-1844 (1980), 172; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1862) i. 343. Daunt was born in 1807 at Tullamore, King’s County, where his father was serving as an officer of the Louth militia, and was brought up there and on the family estate in co. Cork, which he inherited in 1826, aged 19, after his father was killed in a duel.2He was shot by his cousin Daniel Conner of Manch in a duel at Rhincrew near Youghal, 1 May 1826: Boase, Modern English Biography, v. 24; A. Daunt (ed.), A Life Spent for Ireland. Selections from the Journals of W.J. O’Neill Daunt (1972), 10.

Having come under the influence of both his tutor and a neighbouring gentry family (and relatives of his mother), the Conners (or O’Connors) of Connerville, Daunt broke with family tradition and converted to Catholicism about 1827-8, being received into the church by Father Theobald Mathew.3C.J. Woods, ‘Daunt (Moriarty), William Joseph O’Neill (‘Denis Ignatius’), Dictionary of Irish Biography, iii. 62-3; Daunt, A Life Spent for Ireland, 8-9, 12. A protégé of Daniel O’Connell, Daunt became involved in the campaign to abolish tithes (though he was frequently to overestimate the degree of Protestant opposition to the claims of the established church). Inspired by his grandmother’s vivid accounts of Grattan’s Parliament, he came to consider that ‘the repeal of the Union is, and always has been, the measure in which my political feelings are most interested’.4D’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics, 78, 86; Daunt, Life Spent for Ireland, 6; Freeman’s Journal, 14 Jan. 1833. He denied that he was ‘a ferocious and untameable democrat’ but remained ‘aristocratic’ in his ‘views and principles’: Ibid., 25 Jan. 1833.

With the assistance of his kinsman, Feargus O’Connor, Daunt defeated the entrenched interest of the Jephson family and secured his return for Mallow at the 1832 general election ‘with infinite cleverness’. The overturn of the sitting Liberal member was regarded as ‘perhaps the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary instances of Daniel O’Connell’s influence’ at this election. Daunt reciprocated by speaking at the hustings during O’Connor’s triumph at the County Cork election, where he denounced the complacency of the Whig aristocracy and the self-declared ‘moderates’ of the county.5J. O’Connell, Recollections and experiences during a parliamentary career from 1833 to 1848, i (1849), 26-7; Freeman’s Journal, 27 Dec. 1832; A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 101. Later described as ‘tall and good-looking with the bearing of a courteous gentleman’, Daunt was regarded by O’Connell, who was delighted with his return, as ‘an extremely clever and honest fellow’ and thus ‘a great addition to the House’.6Young Ireland: A Fragment of Irish History, 1840-50 (1880), 175; Daniel O’Connell to Mary O’Connell, 20 Dec. 1832, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iv. 476-7. One English Liberal observer, however, thought Daunt appeared to have ‘more of the ruffian’ about him: A. Aspinall (ed.), Three Early Nineteenth-Century Diaries, 314.

After attending the first meeting of O’Connell’s National Council, 18 Jan. 1833, Daunt was admitted to the Society of Irish Volunteers when, denying that he sought ‘the subversion of the aristocratic order’ in Ireland, he nevertheless denounced absenteeism as the principal drain on the country’s capital.7The Times, 21 Jan. 1833; Freeman’s Journal, 19, 21, 25 Jan. 1833. He proved to be one of O’Connell’s staunchest allies in parliament. In opposing the Irish coercion bill, he singled out the executive’s power to prohibit meetings held for petitioning parliament for particular criticism, arguing that since Ireland could no longer look to Westminster for redress, it must by necessity turn to ‘a domestic legislature’.8The Times, 5 Apr. 1833; Hansard, 5 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 225-8; V. Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1996), 63, 212. He was, however, unsuited to parliamentary life and was, as he later admitted, ‘made ill by the late hours and the unwholesome atmosphere of the House of Commons’. When a petition against his return was lodged, 19 Feb. 1833, O’Connell undertook to arrange for Daunt to withdraw in favour of Jephson, to whom he had been reconciled. However, in what Daunt came to regard as a singular breach of promise, O’Connell neglected to take the necessary steps to save him from being legally liable for the expenses of the petition.9Daunt, A Life Spent for Ireland, 15, 209; Daniel O’Connell to Charles Jephson, 16 Apr. 1833, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 24. He was unseated with costs, 24 Apr. 1833, the repeal party thereby losing a representative who had quickly gained a reputation as ‘an efficient and zealous member’.10Freeman’s Journal, 26 Apr. 1833. Daunt was still receiving claims for election expenses thirty-six years after the event: Daunt, A Life Spent for Ireland, 243.

Returning to his role as country gentleman, Daunt married Ellen Hickey, who was said to be a daughter of one of his labourers, in July 1839.11Woods, ‘Daunt (Moriarty)’, Dictionary of Irish Biography. Although he was one of 15 members of the Repeal Association enrolled on the first day of its existence, 15 Apr. 1840, Daunt had always insisted ‘that he was no separatist’. Rather he believed that the Union represented a danger to the stability of the long-standing ‘imperial connexion’ between Great Britain and Ireland.12Boase, Modern English Biography, v. 24; Freeman’s Journal, 19 Aug. 1840. He subsequently attempted to dispel the idea that repeal would result in British tariffs on Irish agricultural produce, and publicly contested statements by William Sharman Crawford and Isaac Butt on the probable adverse economic effect of repeal upon Ireland.13Freeman’s Journal, 12 Sept. 1840, 19 Jan., 30 Oct., 5 Nov., 4 Dec. 1841, 8 Mar. 1843. He served as secretary to O’Connell when Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1841, and was appointed repeal director for Leinster and, in 1843, head repeal warden for Scotland. As a ‘Provincial Repeal Inspector’ from September 1842, he toured Leinster organising meetings and selecting officers.14O’Connell, Recollections, ii. 152, 155-6, 192; O’Connell to Thomas Lyons, 17 Sept. 1842, O’Connell Correspondence, vii. 174; O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist. Daniel O’Connell 1830-1847 (1989), 220, 256-7, 304, 350; Macintyre, Liberator, 267, 280. Yet, though Daunt was considered cheerful, honest and public-spirited, he was also regarded by some as ‘too cold to be popular, and too much of a Utilitarian to be acceptable to enthusiasts’.15C.G. Duffy, Young Ireland. A Fragment of Irish History, 1840-1845 (1880), 175. An opponent of federalism, he was a regular contributor to The Nation before becoming politically estranged from the newspaper’s Young Ireland contingent.16Daunt, Life Lived for Ireland, 43-4; Daniel O’Connell to W.J. O’Neill Daunt, c27, 29 Oct. 1844, O’Connell Correspondence, vii, 283-4, 285; Duffy, Young Ireland, 48. In 1848, he published Personal Memories of the late Daniel O’Connell, and produced several ‘propagandist’ historical works as well as a number of novels under the name Denis Ignatius Moriarty.17Also see A Catechism of the History of Ireland (1844), Eighty-Five Years of Irish History (1886), Ireland Since the Union (1888). His novels included Innisfoyle Abbey (1840) and Saints and Sinners (1846), see D. McCartney, Democracy and its nineteenth-century Irish critics (1979), 5-14; P. Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The romantic period, 1789-1850, ii (1980), 130-1.

Regarded as a man ‘of practical ability, exact method and considerable information’, Daunt carried the legacy of repeal into subsequent political movements.18Duffy, Young Ireland, 175. Duffy believed that Daunt ‘would have made an invaluable head of a public department’. He was a pioneer of the disestablishment campaign, which he is credited with having inaugurated at Clonakilty, 15 Aug. 1856, and helped found the National Association of Ireland in 1864.19Daunt, Life Lived for Ireland, 130-1; Boase, Modern English Biography, v. 25; Freeman’s Journal, 20 Aug. 1856. He became one of the earliest members of the Home Rule Association in 1870, and was subsequently an influential publicist for the Home Rule League, until the death of Isaac Butt in 1879. Though he disapproved of Parnell’s land agitation, and distrusted Gladstone, Daunt continued to take an interest in politics, particularly the Irish finance question, on which he was an acknowledged expert.20D.M. Cregier, ‘Daunt, William Joseph O’Neill’, Oxford DNB, xv. 246-7; Woods, ‘Daunt (Moriarty)’, Dictionary of Irish Biography; Freeman’s Journal, 11 Aug. 1880, 4 Aug. 1896.

Daunt died at his home, Kilcascan Castle, co. Cork in June 1894 and was succeeded by his son, Achilles Thomas (b. 1849), an author of boys’ literature. Extracts from his journal (covering the years 1842-3, 1845-88) were published as A Life Spent for Ireland by his daughter Alice in 1896.