SCULLY, Francis (1816-1864), of Athame, co. Tipperary and 24 Burton Street, Eaton Square, London, Mdx.

The son of a Tipperary banker, landowner and magistrate, Scully was the nephew of Denys Scully, a well-known author and Catholic activist. His cousins, Vincent Scully, Robert Keating, John Sadleir and James Sadleir, all sat as MPs. Having been educated in England, he was called to the bar in 1841 but did not practise.1Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 344. His mother’s nephew was Thomas Wyse MP: J. O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers: John Sadleir M.P., 1813-56 (1999), 11, 38. With the support of his family and influential members of the local Catholic clergy, Scully was returned as a repealer for County Tipperary at the 1847 general election. Though he made little reference to the famine in his address, he supported fixed tenures and publicly offered secure leases to the tenants on his small local estate.2B. Walker, ‘Politicians, Elections and Catastrophe: The General Election of 1847’, Irish Political Studies, 22:1 (2007), 1-34 [17]; O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 60-2; Freeman’s Journal, 12 July 1847. He subsequently attended meetings of the repeal Members to discuss the famine crisis, and joined deputations on the issue to the prime minister, Lord John Russell, and to Sir George Grey, the home secretary.3Freeman’s Journal, 6 Oct. 1847, 3 Nov. 1847, 18 Dec. 1847; Morning Post, 26 Nov. 1847.

One of the more assiduous attenders amongst Irish MPs (he claimed to have divided 436 times in his first four sessions), he first spoke in the House in December 1847 on the difficulties of law enforcement in Ireland, identifying ‘the ill-regulated relations between landlord and tenant, … and the absence of productive or profitable labour’, as the main cause of Irish crime. The following year he supported William Sharman Crawford’s efforts to amend landlord-tenant relations.4Freeman’s Journal, 24 Sept. 1851; Hansard, 10 Dec. 1847, vol. 95, cc. 951-3; 5 Apr. 1848, vol. 97, c. 1341. Scully sat on the Poor Law Amendment Committee in Dublin in January 1849, and subsequently drew the House’s attention to the distress then prevailing in Ireland, protesting at harsh evictions and the failure to keep fertile land in production.5Freeman’s Journal, 17 Oct. 1849, 24 Sept. 1851; Belfast News-letter, 30 Jan. 1849; Hansard, 7 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, c. 219; 1 June 1849, vol. 105, c. 1036; 8 June 1849, vol. 105, c. 1294; 15 May 1849, vol. 105, c. 532. He argued that Ireland ought to be supported with ‘imperial resources’, voicing support for Lord George Bentinck’s proposals to develop the Irish economy, and personally lobbying for government aid to Irish railways.6Hansard, 5 Mar. 1849, vol. 103, cc. 201-4; Freeman’s Journal, 29 Mar. 1849. However, supporters claimed that ‘a great deal of very useful argument’ made by Scully in that session ‘was entirely suppressed by the English press’: Freeman’s Journal, 15 Jan. 1850. He also advocated tax reform and ‘the abolition of that monster grievance, the Irish Church’, joining fellow Irish Liberals in a declaration on the question that August.7Hansard, 20 Apr. 1849, vol. 104, cc. 558-9; Freeman’s Journal, 20 Aug. 1849. The following year he criticised the House’s consideration of Irish bills, claiming they ‘had always been treated contemptuously, and were ever put off to the last moment’, and reiterated the need for land reform.8Hansard, 25 Feb. 1850, vol. 108, c. 1340. He was on the platform at the tenant-right meeting at Cashel in November 1847, and joined a deputation to the prime minister on the issue in May 1850. Though unable to attended the inaugural conference of the Tenant League that August, he chaired the League’s Tipperary meeting in October.9Daily News, 2 May 1850; Freeman’s Journal, 17 Oct. 1850. The following year he was engaged in negotiations between the League and sympathetic Irish MPs, and in March 1852 he spoke at length in support of Sharman Crawford’s Irish tenant-right bill.10Hansard, 31 Mar. 1852, vol. 120, cc. 457-64.

By this time Scully was in the vanguard of the Irish Brigade, which had formed around John Sadleir’s family group in the Commons to campaign against the ecclesiastical titles bill.11It was alleged by Dr. John Gray that Scully had been reluctant to vote against the government in February 1851, because his brother had been recently appointed a stipendiary magistrate, a charge he strenuously denied: Standard, 17 Mar. 1854; PP 1854 (314) viii. 1 [34-5, 216-7]; J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 108; O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 364. In opposing the measure, he warned the House that the Government ‘might, by their infatuated conduct, drop a spark in Ireland that might kindle a flame that they could never extinguish, and which might end in blood, anarchy, and confusion’, and opposed the Whig ministry in all the confidence votes of 1851-2.12Hansard, 14 Feb. 1851, vol. 114, cc. 694-6; Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 178-9. He was also an active member of the Catholic Defence Association, helping to draw up its inaugural address and serving on the general committee, holding special responsibility for land reform.13Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 29; O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 201, 209. He was, however, amongst a minority of MPs who opposed the appointment of an Englishman as secretary of the body: Freeman’s Journal, 19 Dec. 1851. He campaigned for what he regarded as a ‘fair and just’ valuation of Irish tenements, and was a trenchant critic of the various bills introduced for this purpose between 1850 and 1854.14Hansard, 9 July 1851, vol. 118, cc. 418-20; 27 May 1852, vol. 121, cc. 1214-20; 22 June 1852, vol.122 , cc. 1196-7; 6 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, c. 444. A critic of aspects of the Irish poor law, in 1851 he advocated the employment of the inmates of workhouses ‘in reproductive labour’, so as to make these establishments largely self-supporting.15Hansard, 20 Mar. 1851, vol. 115, cc. 231-3; 8 July 1851, vol. 118, cc. 375-8.

Scully, as might be expected, was dedicated to the defence of the Maynooth grant.16Hansard, 25 May 1852, vol. 121, cc. 1167-8; 8 June 1852, vol. 122, cc. 224-42; 14 June 1852, vol. 122, cc. 699-701. However, although he was an ostensible supporter of the Catholic clergy’s role in upholding the law, he condemned the conviction of the Irish revolutionary, John Mitchel, in 1848 as unfair and unjust, and attacked the crown’s use of ‘sectarian’ juries, arguing that ‘until a total change in the jury system was introduced into Ireland, discontent and social disorganisation must be expected to continue’.17Hansard, 22 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 742-3; 12 Feb. 1850, vol. 108, c. 721. He opposed the suspension of habeas corpus, arguing that it would tend to suppress political agitation and thus add ‘to the strength of the secret societies, which had ever been the bane of that country’, and opposed the transportation bill.18Hansard, 6 Feb. 1849, vol. 102, cc. 367-8; Freeman’s Journal, 12 Feb. 1849, 27 June 1849. He was disappointed that the continuance of the Irish Crime and Outrage Act in 1850 was not accompanied by remedial measures, and sat on the important select committee on outrages in Ireland in 1852, subsequently opposing the Irish crime bills proposed by successive ministries in 1852-3.19Hansard, 6 Aug. 1850, vol. 113, cc. 869-70; PP 1852 (438) xiv.1; Hansard, 15 June 1852, vol. 122, cc. 781-3; 18 June, vol. 122, cc. 981-2; 25 July 1853, vol. 129, cc. 793-4. He nevertheless resisted ‘the entire cessation of transportation’, arguing that Western Australia, ‘so far from rejecting convict labour, required it as a means of developing her resources’, but recommended that ‘the convict labour to be supplied to Western Australia should be of the best and not of the worst description’.20Hansard, 9 Aug. 1853, vol. 129, cc. 1553-5.

Having pointed to ‘the absolute necessity of passing a Registration Bill for Ireland’ in 1850, Scully supported the Irish franchise bill, but argued for a £5 franchise for borough voters, warning that the measure ‘would not give satisfaction to the people’. He voted for the ballot in 1853 and also supported customs reform.21Hansard, 11 Feb. 1850, vol. 108, cc. 702-3; 4 Mar. 1850, vol. 109, c. 348; 6 Aug. 1850, vol. 113, cc. 869-70; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 344; Morning Chronicle, 14 Mar. 1853. Having promised in September 1851 to ‘turn out of power the infamous Whigs’, he was re-elected for Tipperary in 1852 and returned to Westminster pledged ‘to hurl the Derby cabinet from office’. Around this time he was described as ‘tall, handsome, and pleasing looking’, and an ‘honest and sensible’, though not fluent, speaker.22Freeman’s Journal, 21 Sept. 1852; Freeman’s Journal, 24 Sept. 1851, 29 July 1852. After his cousin, John Sadleir accepted office from the Aberdeen ministry in January 1853, rumours circulated that Scully was to be appointed Irish under-secretary. He was not, however, considered to have repudiated the Irish Independent party until, having announced in 1849 that ‘Ireland could never support either a rate in aid or an income tax’, he voted for Gladstone’s budget in May 1853. Convinced that the extension of income tax to Ireland was ‘obnoxious’ yet unavoidable, his subsequent attempt to exempt all clergy supported by voluntary contributions was dismissed in Ireland as firing ‘a copper cap from a penny pistol to recover the fortress he and “his merrie men” had surrendered’.23Morning Chronicle , 24 Jan. 1853; Freeman’s Journal, 30 Mar. 1853, 28 May 1853; Hansard, 20 Apr. 1849, vol. 104, cc. 558; 6 May 1853, vol. 126, cc. 1260-5; 22 May 1853, vol. 127, cc. 528-30.

Scully further estranged himself from the independent Irish opposition when he voted with government against a motion for a committee to consider Irish taxation, and, having informed his constituents that he intended to give the coalition government ‘a fair chance’, he was interviewed by the prime minister, Lord Aberdeen, 2 Nov. 1853.24Freeman’s Journal, 5 Oct. 1853; J. O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society in Post-famine Ireland. A study of County Tipperary 1850-1891 (1983), 182; Morning Post, 3 Nov. 1853. He attended a meeting of government supporters in July 1854, and keenly supported the ministry’s prosecution of the Crimean War. Being convinced ‘that the Irish people were unanimous’ that the war should be prosecuted ‘with vigour and energy’, he denounced ‘the “peace at all price” doctrines of Mr. Cobden and his friends’, and generally defended the ministry’s ‘great prudence and propriety’.25Morning Chronicle, 18 July 1854; Hansard, 5 June 1855, vol. 138, cc. 1446-8; Morning Post, 26 July 1854; Hansard, 25 July 1854, vol. 135, cc. 745-6. That year he helped to prepare the Irish tithe rent-charge bill, and the following year sat on select committees on the Irish lunatic asylums bill and on postal arrangements in Waterford.26PP 1854 (103) vi. 387; PP 1854-55 (262) viii. 531; PP 1854-55 (445) xi. 297.

In January 1856, Scully married the daughter of a wealthy London businessman and patron of the Catholic church, the ceremony being performed by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Wiseman. He was, however, a director and shareholder of the ill-fated Tipperary Joint-Stock Bank (his father had been its chairman until his death in 1846) and was therefore implicated in the financial scandal which followed John Sadleir’s suicide that February.27Freeman’s Journal, 14 Jan. 1856. His cousin’s suicide occurred the day he returned from honeymoon: O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 401, 406. Although his ‘honour, integrity, and high character’ were not initially questioned, he faced substantial legal claims and paired for the session with Lord Francis Bernard.28Glasgow Herald, 1 Oct. 1856; Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1856. Although he was present to support Lord Palmerston in the confidence vote on the Canton question, he took little further part in the proceedings of the House, and, citing his liabilities to creditors, withdrew from the contest for Tipperary at the 1857 general election.29The Era, 8 Mar. 1857; Standard, 30 Mar. 1857; Daily News, 31 Mar. 1857. Having agreed to pay £2,000 to discharge his liabilities to the Tipperary Bank, he left Ireland for Paris in 1858 and sold his estate in Tipperary in January 1860.30Standard, 12 Jan. 1858; Newcastle Courant, 15 Jan. 1858. His wife bore a child in the city in December 1858, and a second surviving son, Francis Edward, was born there a year later: Morning Chronicle, 16 Dec. 1858; Morning Post, 10 Dec. 1859. His marriage subsequently broke down and, having been in inferior health, died in a Paris lunatic asylum in 1864.31Freeman’s Journal, 23 Aug. 1864; Morning Post, 23 Aug. 1864, quoting Dublin Evening Post; O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 460, 465. His wife remarried in 1870: Freeman’s Journal, 21 Oct. 1870. He was succeeded by his son, John (1856-1919), a barrister. In spite of his fall from grace, at his death it was recorded that during his time in parliament Scully never ‘gave one vote which could be reprehended as opposed to the broadest assertion of Irish interests’.32Liverpool Mercury, 22 Aug. 1864.