SULLIVAN, Richard (c.1795-1855), of Castle Bamford, Castleinch, co. Kilkenny of 8 Manchester Buildings, London, Mdx.

Sullivan came from a family of wealthy Kilkenny merchants who engaged in malting and milling and owned a successful brewery in James Street, Kilkenny.1O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist. Daniel O’Connell 1830-1847 (1989), 362. The brewery is thought to have opened in the early eighteenth century, and closed around 1914: P. Smithwick, ‘The Sullivans: A notable 19th-century Kilkenny family’, Old Kilkenny Review, xvi (1964), 23-32. His father had been one of the first Catholic freemen of the city and Sullivan took a leading role in the local campaign for Catholic emancipation. He founded the Kilkenny savings bank and his businesses included tanneries, flour mills and warehousing. He owned an estate at Castle Bamford, county Kilkenny.2S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), ii. 16. His son Francis owned 1,200 acres there in 1876.

Elected as a freeman of the city in 1819, Sullivan attended an aggregate meeting of Catholics in Kilkenny for emancipation in January 1827, although he was later to be criticised for having ‘stood at a supercilious aristocratic distance from the popular cause’.3Kilkenny Independent, 3 Jan. 1827: www.irelandoldnews.com/Kilkenny/1827/JAN; D. O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 31 Oct. 1833, quoting Dublin Pilot, 28 Oct. 1833: O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, v. 83-4. He was elected to the corporation the following year and became foreman of the city grand jury. After Maurice O’Connell declined to stand for Kilkenny at the 1832 general election, Sullivan stepped into the breach. In spite of the objections of some Liberals to adopting a member of the corporation, he was regarded by electors as the candidate ‘best calculated to prevent disunion’, his local knowledge of the city being cited as his greatest strength. Accused at the hustings of having made speeches against the repeal of the Union, he pledged himself not only to repeal, but also the abolition of tithes (with a suitable provision for the Protestant clergy), an Irish jury bill, and a restoration of the chartered rights of the citizens of the city. Sullivan claimed not to have solicited the seat, and argued that his return would be ‘much to the detriment of his business’. Yet although Daniel O’Connell believed that he had ‘forced himself on the constituency’, he did intervene to save Sullivan the expense of a contest, thus securing his return as the first Catholic representative of Kilkenny since the reign of James II.4Freeman’s Journal, 4 Dec. 1832; Belfast News-letter, 18 Dec. 1832; Morning Post, 18 Jan. 1833; D. O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 23 Mar. 1835: O’Connell Correspondence, v. 284-5.

Sullivan was ‘most happy’ to attend O’Connell’s National Council in Dublin in January 1833, where he reported on the amount of property possessed by the corporation of Kilkenny.5Morning Chronicle, 14 Jan. 1833; Freeman’s Journal, 19 Jan. 1833. He diligently voted against the Irish coercion bill on seven occasions in February and March, taking advantage of the debate to vindicate his own city ‘from the aspersions which had been thrown upon it’, arguing that local jurors were capable of dealing effectively with ‘disturbers of the public peace’ without any need for additional powers.6Hansard, 8 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 404. In April, however, he conceded ‘that there was a necessity for some strong measure to preserve the peace’ in his native county, but insisted that this ‘did not extend to the city’, and he supported Lambert’s amendment to prevent the measure from being employed for the collection of tithes, 12 June.7Hansard, 17 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, c. 250. He voted for the abolition of naval and military sinecures, 14 Feb., and supported the official publication of divisions in the House, 21 Feb. He divided in favour of the repeal of malt tax, 26 Apr., but, although he favoured the ballot, was absent for the relevant divisions in 1833 and 1835.8Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 153. He is not known to have introduced any bills or sat on any committees.

In June 1833 Sullivan supported O’Connell’s proposal to postpone bringing the question of repeal before parliament, although Feargus O’Connor subsequently claimed that Sullivan had afterwards expressed a desire to change his vote.9The Times, 12 June 1833; Freeman’s Journal, 9 July 1833. He backed the right of parliament to deal with church property, and voted to retain the appropriation clause of the Irish Church temporalities bill, 21 June. He also voted for Sheil’s amendment to reduce the incomes of Irish bishops, 8 July, although he did not oppose the bill’s third reading. He backed Ruthven’s motion for the reduction of taxation and public expenditure, 16 July, and supported amendments to reduce the period of slave apprenticeships, 24, 25 July, and to withhold compensation from slave owners until they were ended, 31 July. He backed O’Connell’s efforts to have the proprietor of The Times called to the bar of the House, 29 July.

Having been accused, perhaps unfairly, of absenteeism in the previous session, Sullivan returned to Westminster in 1834 to support O’Connell’s motion for a select committee on the conduct of the Irish baron of exchequer, Sir William Cusack-Smith, 13 Feb. He voted in favour of a revision of the pension list, 18 Feb. (and again, 5 May), but divided against Hume’s motion for a fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar.10D. O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 31 Oct. 1833, quoting Dublin Pilot, 28 Oct. 1833: O’Connell Correspondence, v. 83-4. He was in favour of allowing Dissenters to graduate at universities, but was absent from the division on the issue, 17 Apr., and opposed Althorp’s proposal to replace church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr. He supported the postponement of the Irish tithes bill, 2 May, divided against its second reading, 6 May, and voted for Ward’s motion for the appropriation of Irish Church property, 2 June. He divided in favour of an inquiry into the civil pension list, 5 May, and triennial parliaments, 15 May, and backed the removal of Jewish disabilities, 21 May. Having voted for O’Connell’s repeal motion, 19 Apr., Sullivan divided in support of his opposition to the renewal of the Irish Suppression of Disturbances Act, 7, 23 July, and his successful motion to secure an abatement of 40% of Irish tithe arrears, 30 July.

Admitted to the Anti-Tory Association on 6 December 1834, Sullivan re-affirmed the promises he had previously made on repeal, the abolition of tithes, and parliamentary reform, and was re-elected after only a token challenge at the 1835 general election.11Freeman’s Journal, 12 Dec. 1834; Belfast News-letter, 16 Jan. 1835; Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 153. In the following session he supported Sir James Abercromby for the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and voted for the amendment to the address against Sir Robert Peel’s ministry, 26 Feb.12Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 166. He divided in favour of Lord Chandos’s motion to repeal malt tax, 10 Mar., but incurred the displeasure of O’Connell for leaving London on business on the eve of he ballot on the Dublin election petition, with the result that his company’s beer was said to have been boycotted in Kilkenny. He subsequently obeyed O’Connell’s command that he ‘atone for his treachery’ by returning to Westminster to support Lord John Russell’s motion on Irish Church temporalities, 2 Apr.13D. O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 23 Mar. 1835: O’Connell Correspondence, v. 284-5; Smithwick, ‘The Sullivans’, 28. These events were seized upon by Irish Conservatives who portrayed him as one of the ‘vulgar instruments’ through which O’Connell exerted his influence in parliament, and thus ‘lowered the tone’ of ‘political society’.14‘The Irish Representatives’, Dublin University Magazine, xxix (1847), 388. His lack of activity in the House led one historian to dismiss him as ‘a local nonentity’ who compared unfavourably with his predecessor, Nicholas Leader, a Liberal who had refused to pledge himself to repeal.15J.H. Whyte, ‘Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal Party’, Irish Historical Studies, 11:44 (1959), 297-316 at 302, 311. He was, however, on hand to oppose important Conservative amendments to the English municipal corporations bill, 23 June, and the Irish tithes bill, 23 July 1835.

O’Connell had raised the question of whether Sullivan might retire at the next general election, and he agreed to ‘resign his trust into the hands of his constituents’ whenever required, furnishing O’Connell with a letter of resignation ‘for use at his discretion’.16The Times, 2 Dec. 1834; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 166. He participated in few of the divisions of the 1836 session, pairing against Egerton’s motion that the Irish municipal corporations bill allow for the abolition of existing corporations, 8 Mar. 1836.17The Times, 11 Mar. 1836. He accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, 6 May 1836, and through his ‘skilful arrangement’ had O’Connell, whom he agreed to propose, returned for his seat just one day after he was unseated at Dublin.18MacDonagh, Emancipist, 144-5; D. O’Connell to R. Sullivan, 23 May 1836: O’Connell Correspondence, v. 370; Caledonian Mercury, 23 May 1836. Pleased that Sullivan had behaved ‘exceedingly handsomely’, O’Connell promised him that he would receive all parliamentary papers relevant to the constituency, and Sullivan in turn acted as O’Connell’s parliamentary agent in the city over the next two years.19D. O’Connell to E. Smithwick, 8 May 1839; O’Connell to R. Sullivan, 10 Mar., 14 May 1836, 24 Feb., 7, 14, 29 July 1837, 5 Feb. 1838, 8 May 1839: O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 239; v. 357, 373, vi. 18-9, 56-7, 65-6, 78, 131-20.

Sullivan was a substantial investor in the Dublin and Kilkenny railway from 1837 and joined the provisional committee of the Dublin, Kilkenny and Cashel railway in 1844. For many years he took ‘a leading part in the discharge of public business in Kilkenny’, serving as an alderman of the city before being elected mayor in June 1838. A borough magistrate from 1845, he served as high sheriff in 1847, the year in which his younger brother, Michael, was returned as MP for the city.20PP 1837 (95), xlviii. 1 [320]; Freeman’s Journal, 29 June 1838, 19 Aug. 1839, 21 Oct. 1844; Standard, 5 Mar. 1855. Having been chairman of the Kilkenny board of guardians since 1839, he set up a soup kitchen at his brewery during the famine.21Morning Post, 16 Oct. 1845; Freeman’s Journal, 3 Dec. 1846. In politics he was an active member of the Kilkenny Citizens’ Club and subscribed to the Repeal Association from 1840.22Freeman’s Journal, 29 Aug. 1840. He endorsed an appeal to the treasury to postpone repayment of government advances in 1851 and joined the protest against the nunneries inspection bill in 1854.23Freeman’s Journal, 29 Oct. 1851, 20 Apr. 1854.

Having been ‘in a somewhat feeble state of health for some time’, Sullivan died suddenly from ‘an apoplectic attack’ in March 1855.24Freeman’s Journal, 5 Mar. 1855, citing Kilkenny Journal. He was succeeded by the second son of his second marriage, Francis (d. 1880). Of his other sons, Richard James Sullivan (1826-89) settled in Auckland, New Zealand in 1857, becoming the publisher of the Southern Cross newspaper, and secretary to the central board of education, and another son, James Sullivan, married the daughter of John O’Connell MP in 1869.25P. Goddard, ‘O’Sullivan, Richard James’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2o13/1. The eldest son of his second marriage, John, became a Benedictine monk.