MOORE, Charles (1804-1869), of Mooresfort, Kilross, co. Tipperary of 19 Grafton St., Mayfair, London, Mdx.

Moore was born in Ireland in 1804. After establishing himself as a merchant in London, he became head of Charles Moore and Company of Water Street, Liverpool, a large firm of shipowners which pioneered the commissioning of iron vessels. He purchased an 800 acre estate at Kilross, co. Tipperary in 1852, and subsequently became one of the most extensive landed proprietors in the county, owning more than 10,000 acres.1F. Boase, Modern English Biography, ii. 1906; Journal of the Royal United Service Institute, v. 327; Freeman’s Journal, 19 May 1852, 16 May, 20 July 1865; Daily News, 18 Aug. 1869; J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 317.

Moore converted to Catholicism in the 1850s and was a generous benefactor to the Church, the marriage of his daughter to the nephew of the earl of Lisburn in 1862 being celebrated by the archbishop of Cashel.2W.J. Gordongorman, Converts to Rome Since the Tractarian Movement to May, 1899 (1899), 155; J. O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society in Post-famine Ireland. A study of County Tipperary 1850-1891 (1983), 64, 196; The Nation, 21 Aug. 1869; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1863), ii. 1034; Freeman’s Journal, 15 Aug. 1861, 7 Apr. 1869. Valued, perhaps, more for his wealth than his political skills (Cardinal Cullen considered him to be ‘worth nearly a million in ready money’), he was approached to stand for co. Tipperary as a candidate of the National Association when The (Daniel) O’Donoghue abandoned the constituency for Tralee in February 1865. He duly agreed to support the Association’s ‘three point’ platform of denominational education, disestablishment, and tenant-right, declaring that the Liberal government’s failure to address these issues made it ‘undeserving of the confidence of the country’. Nevertheless, as ‘an extremely wealthy landlord’ with a ‘princely income’, Moore’s commitment to land reform was tempered by a desire to see the question settled ‘on a principle of justice to both landlord and tenant’. He nevertheless won the contest against a Fenian sympathiser.3O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society, 196; Morning Post, 17 Feb. 1865; Freeman’s Journal, 13, 16 Feb., 30 Mar. 1865; The Times, 15 Feb., 6 Mar. 1865. Having secured ‘the first triumph of the National Association’, Moore was able, in Cullen’s words, to ‘afford to spend a few thousands’ in securing the election of both himself and his fellow Association candidate, John Blake Dillon, at the 1865 general election. Though he entered the Commons claiming to be an independent representative, ‘uninfluenced by any party’; Moore generally lent his support to the Liberals.4B. O’Cathaoir, John Blake Dillon: Young Irelander (1990), 160-1; O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society, 196; Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb., 27 July 1865. He voted for the bills abolishing tests for Oxford University, 14 June 1865, and church rates, 7 Mar. 1866, and supported the second reading of Gladstone’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866. Unsurprisingly, he divided for Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish Church, 3 Apr. 1868, and his subsequent disestablishment bill, 23 Mar. 1869. Moore does not appear to have served on any committees or introduced any bills during his time in parliament. He is only known to have spoken only once in the house, regarding the Irish habeas corpus suspension bill, 17 Feb. 1866, when he then defended John Dillon against the charge of harbouring Fenian sympathies after he had argued that the movement ‘derived from the general disaffection of the Irish people arising from the misgovernment of the country’. Moore attested to the hostility both he and Dillon had encountered from the Fenian party during the recent general election, and argued that only by resolving the land question (being the issue that most deeply affected ‘the industry of the country’) and disestablishing the Irish Church would order be restored to Ireland.5Hansard, 17 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 703, 706-7. Moore’s house was raided for arms by local Fenians during the rising of March 1867: Daily News, 9 Mar. 1867.

Possessed of ‘strong common sense’ and considerable ‘practical ability’, Moore was also credited with ‘admirable social qualities’ and was popularly regarded as a ‘trustworthy and faithful’ representative.6Freeman’s Journal, 16 Feb. 1865; The Nation, 21 Aug. 1869. Supporters remarked upon ‘his entire freedom from certain airs which the possession of vast capital is but too prone to create’: Freeman’s Journal, 18 Feb. 1865. He strengthened his hold over the electorate of county Tipperary when he averted a mass eviction of tenants by purchasing the troubled Ballycohey estate from William Scully in October 1868.7Freeman’s Journal, 12 Oct. 1868; The Examiner, 28 Nov. 1868; The Times, 17 Jan. 1903; A.M. Sullivan, New Ireland: Political Sketches and Personal Reminiscences of Thirty Years of Irish Public Life (7th edn., 1877), 373. Having been given the full confidence of the Liberal electors of the county, and having reiterated his support for land reform, disestablishment and the alleviation of Irish taxation, he was returned unopposed at that year’s general election. In March 1869, he presented the queen with a petition for the release of the Fenian prisoners on behalf of the people of Templemore, and subsequently lobbied for the reform of Irish railways.8Freeman’s Journal, 27 Oct. 1868, 6 Mar., 22 Apr. 1869.

A false report that Moore had been kicked to death by his horse briefly circulated in November 1868, but, having been ill for some months, he died of rheumatic fever at his London residence in August 1869. He was buried at Lattern Church, co. Tipperary, the construction of which he had largely sponsored.9Freeman’s Journal, 26 Nov. 1868, 21, 23 Aug. 1869; Glasgow Herald, 27 Nov. 1868; Daily News, 18 Aug. 1869; Irish Times, 19, 23 Aug. 1869. He was succeeded by his second and only surviving son, Arthur John (1849-1904), who sat as a Home Rule MP for Clonmel, 1874-85, and Londonderry city, 1899-1900, and was made a papal count in 1879.10Stenton and Lees, Who’s Who of British MPs, ii. 253; Who Was Who, i. 503; A. Barry, The Life of Count Moore (1905).