ROE, James (c.1791-1844), of Roesborough, co. Tipperary of 21 Manchester Buildings, London, Mdx.

The only son of a small landholder, Roe came from a family of Catholic sheep farmers and horse dealers who owned land at Roesborough, near Clanwilliam in south Tipperary. He claimed to be lineally descended from Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador from Queen Elizabeth I to the Sublime Porte, and an ancestor, Margaret Roe, had married John Damer, uncle to the 1^st earl of Dorchester in 1724. After succeeding to his father’s estate in 1814 he pursued the life of a ‘private gentleman’.1Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1834), 158; Freeman’s Journal, 12 Apr. 1844; Roe Family Page [www.ancestry.com]; Irish Monthly Magazine, i (1832-33), 413-4. As former tenants on the Ormond estate, the family acquired its lands after the 2nd duke was attainted in 1715: T.P. Power, Land, Politics, and Society in Eighteenth-Century Tipperary (1993), 78-9.

Roe unsuccessfully contested County Tipperary in 1826 as a reformer and proponent of Catholic emancipation, coming fourth in the poll.2HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 875-6. Here Roe is described as a solicitor, though no evidence of a legal career has been forthcoming. After attending the grand dinner of the Province of Munster, presided over by Daniel O’Connell, 26 Aug. 1828, and a meeting of the Catholic Association at Clonmel, 29 Aug. 1828, he was appointed president of the newly-founded Tipperary Liberal Club, whereupon he expressed a desire to stand again for Tipperary at the next vacancy.3The Times, 1, 8 Sept. 1828; Morning Chronicle, 2 Sept. 1828; HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 876. The following year at a dinner given for Robert Otway Cave, 15 Sept. 1829, he expressed his support for more representative government and, with Cave, attempted to convene a meeting of Tipperary freeholders at Thurles to petition the government over the condition of the county. Solicited to stand for Tipperary at the 1830 general election, this time with O’Connell’s support, Roe declined, citing a lack of time to prepare for the contest. Nevertheless, he took a leading part in the subsequent campaign for repeal, being dubbed ‘the Repealer of Roesborough’. Having been spoken of as a ‘fourth candidate’ for Tipperary at the 1831 general election, he again raised the issue of repeal at the county reform meeting that November and was a member of a deputation that invited O’Connell to visit Cashel in March 1832.4Morning Chronicle, 23 Sept., 12 Oct. 1829; The Times, 29 Nov. 1831; Freeman’s Journal, 20 Mar. 1832; HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 877-80. He proposed Cave in absentia for Tipperary at his successful by-election that August, and was instrumental in securing the candidate’s public support for repeal and the abolition of tithes prior to the subsequent general election. He believed the repeal question to be ‘paramount to all others’ and was proposed for membership of the National Political Union by O’Connell, 20 Nov. 1832, who paid tribute to Roe for coming ‘out of his class’ to support the causes for which he had ‘suffered a continued and relentless persecution’.5Freeman’s Journal, 9, 16, 21 Nov. 1832. Having taking the repeal pledge, Roe was selected by the Liberal electors of Cashel as their candidate over the rival claims of the distinguished Liberal lawyer, Louis Perrin.6Freeman’s Journal, 2 June 1841. At the 1832 general election Roe supported the ballot, the total abolition of tithes and the appropriation of ecclesiastical revenues, whereby all Christian ministers would be paid by the state. He opposed the payment in gold of ‘debts contracted in a profligate paper issue’, and indicated that he would vote for abolition of the corn laws and the imposition of an income tax in lieu of several existing taxes.7Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1834), 158. He was returned unopposed for a constituency that, prior to the Reform Act, had been firmly controlled by the Pennefather family.8Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 331; HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 881-3.

Roe attended the meeting of O’Connell’s National Council, 18 Jan. 1833, and on entering the Commons supported O’Connell’s motion on the address for an inquiry into the state of Ireland.9Freeman’s Journal, 19 Jan. 1833, and see Irish Monthly Magazine, i (1832-33), 709-13. He vehemently opposed the Irish coercion bill, arguing that ministers had conspired to exaggerate the level of outrages in Ireland ‘for the purpose of gagging the expression of public sentiment, and depriving the people of their rights and privileges’.10Hansard, 27 Feb. 1833, vol. 15, cc. 1199-210. Roe reluctantly withdrew his motion calling for the production of all communications received by government relating to Irish disturbances during 25 Feb. 1830-25 Feb. 1833. He voted with O’Connell over the election of the speaker and the Irish church bills and divided in favour of the ballot.11Liverpool Mercury, 1 Feb. 1833; Freeman’s Journal, 13 Feb. 1833; Morning Chronicle, 27 Apr. 1833. Roe was one of only four members to support William Cobbett’s motion to have Sir Robert Peel removed from the privy council, 16 May 1833, and was one of the 38 members who voted for O’Connell’s repeal motion, 29 Apr. 1834.12Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 30 Nov. 1833; W.T. Haly, The Opinions of Sir Robert Peel, expressed in Parliament and in public (1843), 151-2; Hansard, 16 May 1833, vol. 17, cc. 1277-325. In November 1833, he became involved in a public controversy with Matthew Davenport Hill over his allegation in a speech to the electors of Hull, that one of the Irish members who voted against the coercion bill had secretly urged ministers not to relent on its severity.13Freeman’s Journal, 26 Nov. 1833. Despite being regarded by O’Connell as ‘one of the honestest men Ireland ever sent to Parliament’ and certain of being returned again for Cashel, he was said to be ‘weary of the House of Commons’ and at the 1835 election, according to his supporters, ‘resigned the useless honour of attending to have Irish rights and Irish wrongs treated with contemptuous indifference by the imperial legislators’. He retired into private life, being regarded by John O’Connell as ‘one of the best and truest of our band’.14Daniel O’Connell to John O’Brien, 12 Dec. 1834, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, v. 226-7; Belfast News-letter, 2 Dec. 1834; J. O’Connell, Recollections and experiences during a parliamentary career from 1833 to 1848 (1849), i, 39.

Roe did, however, remain active in local politics. He had formed a repeal club at Cashel in September 1834 and, at the 1835 general election, proposed his friend Robert Otway Cave as the reform candidate for Tipperary, being ‘doubly influential’ as a ‘consistent liberal’ and former repeal MP.15Caledonian Mercury, 20 Sept. 1834; The Times, 8 Sept. 1834; D.A. Murphy, The Two Tipperarys: The national and local politics of the unique 1838 division into two ridings (1994), 40. He chaired a meeting of the Tipperary Registration Club at Cashel, 30 Sept. 1841, and, having joined the Dublin Repeal Association in July 1840, became president of the Clonmel branch of the organisation, attending the public repeal meeting at Cashel, 25 Mar. 1841.16Freeman’s Journal, 23 July, 4 Sept. 1840, 30 Mar., 5 Oct. 1841.

Roe had been an ‘independent magistrate’ for Tipperary since 1815, and was a firm upholder of law and order (his brother-in-law, Richard Chadwick, had been murdered in a robbery at Holy Cross in June 1827).17The Times, 23 Aug. 1827. He was a committee member of the ‘Tipperary Society for the Suppression of Outrage and Maintenance of the Peace’, and was in the forefront of efforts to combat lawlessness during the agrarian disturbances of 1837-8.18The Times, 27 Nov. 1837; PP 1839 (486) xi.1, xii. 1 [1150-1]; PP 1837-38 (735) xlvi. 571. He was, however, dismissed as a magistrate by the Irish Lord Chancellor in 1843, after presiding over a dinner given to O’Connell following the great repeal meeting at Cashel, 23 May 1843.19Freeman’s Journal, 25, 26, 27 May, 2 June 1843; The Times, 29 May 1843; PP 1843 (384) li. 1; PP 1843 (403) li. 3 [16]. At the subsequent public dinner given in his honour that July, Roe remained unrepentant and lamented that following the parliamentary defeat of repeal in 1834, Ireland had become ‘a vast Whig borough’ in which ‘boobies that no English place would return, became Hirish M.P.s’. In his communication to the gathering, O’Connell paid tribute to Roe, calling him ‘the truest-hearted Irishman I ever met with’.20Freeman’s Journal, 25 July 1843.

After suffering a protracted period of ill-health Roe died of heart failure at his seat, Roesborough House, on 6 April 1844. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, George Lionel Roe (c.1825-85).21Unusually for the son of an Irish Catholic politician who was regarded as an ‘unflinching patriot’, Roe’s son attended Sherborne School, 1841-2: Freeman’s Journal, 5 Oct. 1841; The Sherbourne Register, 1550-1937 (1937), 50.