WOULFE, Stephen (1787-1840), of 11 Ely Place, Dublin and 11 North Street, Westminster

Born at Chaud Fontaine, near Liege, Woulfe came from ‘an ancient Roman Catholic family’ which had settled in Limerick in the fifteenth century. Succeeding to ‘a good family estate’ at Tiermaclane, near Ennis, he became ‘a man of great private worth’ and was one of the first Catholics to be admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, where, in his own words, ‘he distinguished himself’ and thereafter took ‘a decided but temperate part in the distracted politics of Ireland’.3Dod MS, iii. 1155; T. Seccombe, rev. S. Agnew, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’, Oxford DNB, lx. 389-90; Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1840; The Times, 12 Nov. 1839; J.R. O’Flanagan, The Irish Bar; comprising anecdotes, bon-mots, and biographical sketches of the bench and bar of Ireland (1879), 252; J. Hutchinson, A Catalogue of Notable Middle Templars: With brief autobiographical notes (1902), 266. A contemporary of Richard Sheil, Thomas Wyse, and Nicholas Ball, whilst an undergraduate he was selected to attend the general committee of the Catholics of Ireland, 3 Aug. 1811, but having ‘little taste for the triumphs of the platform’, he participated in emancipationist meetings in county Clare, ‘more from a sense of duty, than from inclination’, although he willingly opposed Daniel O’Connell.4Caledonian Mercury, 4 Apr. 1811; Morning Chronicle, 4 Jan. 1815; R. Richey, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, ix. 1045; Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 18. Having been called to the bar, Woulfe travelled in Europe with Wyse and Ball during 1815. He subsequently became embroiled in a controversy over the latter’s efforts to induce the Pope to agree to a British veto on nominations for episcopal appointments, once again taking what was regarded in Whig circles as ‘a manly stand against the despotism of O’Connell’.5Morning Chronicle, 8 Mar. 1817; The Times, 8 Mar. 1817, 13 July 1840; Flanagan, Irish Bar, 257; MacDonagh, The Hereditary Bondsman, 114; Agnew, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’, 389. An eloquent and accomplished advocate of Catholic emancipation in 1819, he employed his ‘brilliant and captivating’ wit in a highly influential tract on the subject, which established his reputation.6For an analysis of this text, see Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 16-37. After speaking on economic distress in the south of Ireland at the Royal Exchange, Dublin, in December 1824, he was selected to accompany Sheil on a mission to confer with Catholic associations in England.7Freeman’s Journal, 10 July 1840; Morning Chronicle, 14, 30 Dec. 1824. See A Letter to a Protestant; or, the Balance of Evils: Being a comparison of the probable consequences of emancipating the Catholics of Ireland, with those which are likely to result from leaving them in their present condition, (2nd edn., 1825). Having supported the address to George IV on Catholic relief, 6 May 1826, he became chairman of the New Catholic Association in 1827, but was ‘by no means a constant attendant at its meetings’, and was accused two years later of being an ‘Orange Papist’ for backing Sheil’s efforts to suppress agitation in return for government concessions.8Richey, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’; Morning Chronicle, 27 Sept. 1827; K. O’Connell to D. O’Connell, 8 Feb. 1829, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iv. 9-10. He was, however, one of the organisers of the great reform meeting held at the Coburg Gardens, Dublin, in May 1832, and was admitted to the County Limerick Independent Club alongside O’Connell that November.9Freeman’s Journal, 16 May, 22 Nov. 1832.

Although Woulfe ‘had anything but a natural relish for the technicalities of the law’, he nevertheless pursued a successful legal career, composing an (unpublished) treatise on English property law in 1822.10Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 40, 41-7. A protégé of William Plunkett, whose position as petitioner for the Catholic Association he defended after O’Connell had deprived him of it in 1824, he acted as defence counsel to Sheil, when his friend was indicted for seditious libel in 1827.11Agnew, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’, 389; Ball, Judges in Ireland, 284; D.R. Plunket, The Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket (1867), ii. 176-7; The Times, 13 July 1840; Flanagan, Irish Bar, 259. By now one of the leaders of the Munster circuit, he made a favourable impression on William Lamb during his brief time as chief secretary for Ireland, and, in a bid to further distance Woulfe from O’Connell, Lamb’s successor, Lord Francis Leveson Gower, appointed him assistant-barrister for county Galway in 1829.12Richey, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’; Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 51. The following year, Plunkett, by now Irish lord chancellor, further rewarded him with the lucrative position of crown counsel for Munster.13The Times, 12 July 1830; Ball, Judges, 351; Madden, Ireland and its Rulers, iii (1844), 32-3. The post was worth at least £1,000 a year, and Woulfe gave up the Galway chairmanship through ill-health in 1832: Flanagan, Irish Bar, 260; Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 51-2. After duly signing the Irish Bar’s declaration against repeal in March 1831, he distinguished himself in the crown prosecution of tithe protesters, appearing opposite O’Connell at Tralee. He was appointed a king’s counsel in November 1832, when Edward Smith Stanley, the Irish chief secretary, claimed that Woulfe ‘was honoured by all parties’.14Freeman’s Journal, 23 Oct., 27 Nov. 1832; Caledonian Mercury, 19 Nov. 1832; Hansard, 5 Feb. 1833, vol. 19, c. 192; Hutchinson, Middle Templars, 266; Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 52-3. He became 3^rd serjeant-at-law in May 1835.15Agnew, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’, 390; Morning Chronicle, 25 May 1835. He was appointed only after the post had been refused by the Protestant lawyer, Robert Holmes.

After 1829 Woulfe was said to have ‘virtually seceded from politics altogether’, and he declined the offer of seats at Louth and Carlow in December 1834. However, after appearing as O’Connell’s counsel in his election petition for the city of Dublin, he complied with his client request to come forward as the ministerial candidate for Cashel at a by-election in September 1835.16D. O’Connell to M. O’Connell, 18 Dec. 1834, Thomas Cloney to D. O’Connell, 24 Dec. 1834, D. O’Connell to J.J. Murphy, 8 May 1835, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 234-5, 241-2, 303; The Times, 5 Dec. 1834, 12 Nov. 1839. By now, O’Connell regarded him as ‘a most excellent, honourable man of great talents and integrity’, who ‘would be a most formidable assistant in the fight we are carrying on through the House against the vile and sanguinary Orange faction’. However, in spite of being regarded as ‘an ultra Liberal’, in favour of the abolition of church rates and the reform of municipal corporations, he remained a ‘determined opponent’ of repeal. He was returned unopposed17The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 188; R.B. Mosse, The Parliamentary Guide (1836), 233; Morning Chronicle, 25 May 1835.

Woulfe was regarded as among ‘the very best of the [Irish reform] party’, being described by The Times as ‘an excessively shrewd and straightforward sort of person’.18The Times, 12 Nov. 1839. He played an active part in the revival of the Irish Liberal reform agitation in May 1836, and that year also co-sponsored a government bill to extend the jurisdiction of the Irish civil bill courts.19The Times, 21, 23, 27 May 1836; PP 1836 (82) ii. 7. He addressed legal abuses, first speaking on the prisoners’ counsel bill, during which he advocated that anyone tried by magistrates ought to have the right to counsel, and criticised the practice, then prevalent in Ireland, of taking depositions against prisoners in their absence. That year he also sat on the select committee on public bills.20Hansard, 2 Mar. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 1158, 1160-1; PP 1836 (606) xxi. 141.

Woulfe’s maiden speech, on the second reading of the Irish municipal reform bill, 7 Mar. 1836, established his reputation in Liberal circles as ‘an orator of the highest order, and a statesman of the most unquestionable sagacity’.21Caledonian Mercury, 12 Mar. 1836; Examiner, 23 Oct. 1836. He is wrongly thought to have served on the commission on Irish corporations in 1833, see Macintyre, Liberator, 231; Richey, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’, 1046. In what was widely cited as an outstanding example of ‘sound political philosophy’, Woulfe argued that the government’s bill did not merely ‘attempt to maintain the balance of power between sects’, but was designed to ‘break up the classification altogether’ by distributing power according to ‘civil qualifications without reference to creed’. The reformed bodies, he is reputed to have said, in a much reworked phrase, would ‘go far to create and to foster public opinion in Ireland, and make it racy of the soil’.22Hansard, 7 Mar. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 1357-64; Flanagan, Irish Bar, 260-1. This term was adopted as the motto of The Nation in 1842: C.G. Duffy, Young Ireland: A Fragment of Irish History, 1840-1850 (1880), 63. For a less enthusiastic response to this speech, see Metropolitan Magazine, iii (US edn., 1837), 305. Woulfe also championed Catholic causes, defending the national schools system against Protestant claims that it had established ‘priests’ schools’ that were subversive of their faith.23Hansard, 8 Aug. 1836, vol. 35, c. 1015. Some commentators, however, thought that although Woulfe was able to ‘arrange his ideas with clearness, and express them in appropriate phraseology’ his speeches were uneven in delivery and frequently lacked ‘animation and energy’. His ‘peculiar voice’ was said to have closely resembled that of the high-pitched Sheil, as did his rapid and fluent delivery in a correct, vigorous, but plain and ‘inharmonious’ style (he could not pronounce the letter ‘r’). Tall, slender, sallow and of ‘decrepit appearance’, Woulfe’s sharp features were distinguished by a ‘keen eye’ and a prominent nose ‘of unusual length’, his ‘elongated face’ being framed by abundant dark brown hair which exhibited ‘no traces of being ever brushed or combed’.24Flanagan, Irish Bar, 255-6, 261-2; Metropolitan Magazine, iii. 305; Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 13. Though sometimes given to much gesticulation, in calmer moods he simply stooped ‘upon the table, keeping his gaze fixed upon the Speaker or some other member who sat opposite’.25Flanagan, Irish Bar, 262. When attending debate, he was prone to eccentric behaviour and was once observed (during a speech by Lord John Russell) to lie full length on one of the benches, alternately appearing to sleep or tear at his hair ‘as if he had been trying how much … he could uproot at once’.26Metropolitan Magazine, iii. 305-6.

Woulfe was passed over for the positions of Irish law adviser and solicitor-general in 1835, being subject to ‘the turn-about system’ (according to which only one of the two Irish law officers could be a Catholic). The following year he was spoken of as a candidate for the bench, and was appointed Irish solicitor-general in November 1836, becoming attorney-general just three months later.27D. O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 21 Apr. 1835, D. O’Connell to Lord Duncannon, 19 Oct. 1836, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 293-5, 399-400; The Times, 24 Aug. 1835, 15 Aug. 1836; The Examiner, 13 Sept. 1835, 23 Oct. 1836. On his own admission, Woulfe was by this time incapacitated by an undiagnosed disease ‘from making those exertions … which might be useful to the party’. Finding his official duties to be ‘merely those of ordinary routine’, he made few parliamentary speeches, although those he did deliver were said to have been admired by Sir Robert Peel and Sir James Graham.28Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 58; Flanagan, Irish Bar, 261. He had suffered a respiratory illness in 1817, and contracted a secondary complaint in 1827 from which he never fully recovered. In February 1837 he made lengthy replies to an attack by Joseph Devonsher Jackson upon the government’s Irish municipal reforms, by criticising the restriction of the corporations’ power to ‘a small sectarian portion of Protestants … held together by local ties and family connexions’, and argued that extending civic power to Ireland’s Catholics would not endanger Protestant institutions, such as the Irish Church.29Hansard, 22 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 889-905; 10 Apr. 1837, vol. 37, cc. 973-81.

Woulfe served on select committees on the manor and the prerogative and ecclesiastical courts in Ireland in 1837, and, in February 1838 assisted with a bill to regulate the levying and expenditure of grand jury cess in the city and county of Dublin.30Richey, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’; PP 1837-38 (151) iv. 175; PP 1837-38 (445) iv. 187. Regarding the Irish poor law, he favoured vesting commissioners with the widest possible powers, and argued that the rates should fall equally on occupiers and proprietors.31Hansard, 11 May 1837, vol. 38, cc. 814-5; 9 Mar. 1838, vol. 41, cc. 732-40; 16 Mar. 1838, vol. 41, cc. 974-83; 19 Mar. 1838, vol. 41, cc. 989-1002; 23 Mar. 1838, vol. 41, cc. 1179-99. He is credited by some as having originated the resonant phrase, ‘property has its duties as well as its rights’, contained in Henry Drummond’s letter to Lord Donoughmore of 22 May 1838: Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 75-6; Flanagan, Irish Bar, 262-3. However, like other Catholic Whigs, Woulfe’s loyalty to the ministry led him to abstain rather than divide against the government over the bill in May 1838.32The Times, 21 May 1838.

While an assistant barrister, Woulfe had earned praise for his ‘minute scrutiny’ of the county Galway registry in 1830, and, in 1835 he helped to establish the Irish Liberal Registration Committee (revived as the Reform Registry Association in November 1839), making a ‘bold and eloquent’ statement of its intentions at the Royal Exchange, Dublin, 16 Jan. 1836.33Freeman’s Journal, 11 Nov. 1830; The Examiner, 29 Nov., 20 Dec. 1835; 24 Jan. 1836; Caledonian Mercury, 21 Jan. 1836; The Irish Monthly, xiv (1886), 166; D. O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 29 Nov. 1839, O’Connell Correspondence, v, 286-8. Woulfe later clashed with O’Connell over the latter’s attempt to appropriate the society’s funds: Hull Packet, 1 June 1838. The organisation was regarded as an attempt by Irish Whig reformers to wrest control of the popular movement from the repealers, and it was quickly eclipsed by O’Connell’s General Association.34Blackburn Standard, 27 Jan. 1836. In July 1837 Woulfe supported an amendment to the Irish Reform Act regarding polling arrangements and, after several delays, brought in an Irish registration bill, 9 May 1838.35Hansard, 1 July 1837, vol. 38, cc. 1733-4. The bill was announced, 14 Feb. 1838, but did not receive its first reading until May and was deferred on 4 July: The Times, 15 Feb., 14 Mar. 1838, 18 May 1840. He proposed a definitive arrangement of the question of ‘beneficial interest’, and sought to render the registration final and conclusive. The measure, however, was subjected to close scrutiny by Stanley and Sir William Follett, and proved unsuccessful.36PP 1837-38 (377) iii. 677; Hansard, 13 Mar. 1838, vol. 41, cc. 875-90; The Times, 14 Mar. 1838; Freeman’s Journal, 16, 19 Mar. 1838.

In June 1838, Woulfe assisted with a measure to define the boundaries of Ireland’s municipalities and divide them into wards, and prepared bills to reform the Dublin police and the Cork sessions, and to assimilate the powers of the Dublin grand jury with those of other Irish counties.37PP 1837-38 (540) ii. 841; PP 1837 (128) iii. 31; PP 1837 (172) iii. 45; PP 1837 (400) iii. 61; PP 1837-38 (26) i. 535; Hansard, 14 Feb. 1838, vol. 40, cc. 1109-13; M.R. Sausse to D. O’Connell, 27 Feb. 1838, O’Connell Correspondence, vi, 137-8; PP 1837-38 (151) iv. 175; PP 1837-38 (445) iv. 187. He also prepared Irish bills concerning county treasurers, the administration of medical charities, the Kingston and Dublin port and harbour, the improvement of sea fisheries, the custody of the insane, and the regulation of loan societies.38PP 1837 (447) ii. 635; Hansard, 3 July, vol. 38, c. 1762; PP 1837 (413) iii. 383; PP 1837-38 (301) (444) iv. 461, 471; PP 1837-38 (302) iv. 57; PP 1837-38 (228) iv. 583; PP 1837-38 (482) iv. 539.

Woulfe was returned unopposed at by-elections for Cashel consequent upon his legal promotions in December 1836 and February 1837, and was re-elected at the 1837 general election. Although he was deemed to have been ‘more successful in parliament than other Irish law officers of that time’, he ultimately ‘failed in the House of Commons because his health failed him’.39Ball, Judges, 284; The Times, 14 July 1840. He was the first Catholic to be appointed baron of the Irish exchequer in July 1838, having offered to waive his claim to the position in favour of O’Connell.40The Times, 22, 23 June 1838; The Examiner, 24 June 1838; P. Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Emnity 1789-2006 (2008), 149-50. In the event, O’Connell was offered but declined the position of Irish master of the rolls: D. O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 15 June 1838, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 169-70. He was, however, physically unfit for a judicial position described as ‘the most arduous’ in Ireland, and never went on circuit.41Freeman’s Journal, 11 Sept. 1838. It was believed that he only accepted the position (as opposed to the lesser appointment as a puisine judge) to please his party. He gave evidence before a Lords’ select committee on the appointment of sheriffs in September 1838, before leaving Ireland to convalesce in June 1839.42Freeman’s Journal, 12 June 1839; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i, 418-9; Ball, Judges in Ireland, 285, 351. He agreed that if his health did not improve after one year’s absence, he would retire from the bench: Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 55. Although there were constant rumours that he would retire, Woulfe this time resisted the idea of standing aside to allow O’Connell to become master of the rolls.43The Times, 2, 5, 12, 21 Dec. 1839, 9, 10 July 1840; Morning Chronicle, 13 Apr. 1840.

As a judge, Woulfe was said to have held the view that ‘the poor Man’s Cow … ought to be protected as well as any other property’.44PP 1839 (486) xi. 1, xii. 1 [676]. Moderate and consistent in his views, he was personally popular, though disputatious, and was known to ‘argue upon anything … with the utmost candour and frankness’. ‘Regarded as an amateurish lawyer of the old school’, being neither profound nor greatly distinguished as a jurist, he was, nevertheless, ‘a man of quick and shrewd observations’. Though not widely read, he was said to have the capacity to rapidly extract ‘sterling knowledge from comparatively scanty materials’, his early theological training being thought to have sharpened his intellect.45Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1840; The Times, 14 July 1840; Ball, Judges, 285; Curran, Sketches of the Irish Bar, 60; Seccombe, ‘Woulfe, Stephen’, 390; Flanagan, Irish Bar, 256.

In July 1840 Woulfe succumbed to the effects of an operation and died at Baden Baden. Never having been ‘a worshipper of the brazen image of O’Connell’, he was valued by those sceptical of the Irish reformers as ‘incomparably the best of the crew’, and ‘a man of capacity who, but for delicacy of constitution, would have risen to eminence in his profession’.46Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1840; Wills, Irish Nation, iv. 34; The Times, 21 Dec. 1839; 13 July 1840; Ball, Judges, 284. His death revived rumours that O’Connell would be offered the position of Irish master of the rolls. He was succeeded by his son, Stephen Roland (1822-99), who married a daughter of Lord Graves in 1853 and served as high sheriff for county Down (1874) and county Clare (1876). His daughter, Mary Leonora, married General Sir Justin Sheil (1803-71), younger brother of Richard Lalor Sheil.47Morning Chronicle, 13 June 1853; Freeman’s Journal, 21 Jan. 1874, 22 Jan. 1876, 7 Oct. 1899; Stenton & Lees, Who’s Who of British MPs, ii. 326. Their son, Edward Sheil (1851-1915), was Irish Nationalist MP for Athlone (1874-80), Meath (1882-5) and the southern division of Meath (1885-92).