BRYAN, George Leopold (1828-1880), of Jenkinstown Park, co. Kilkenny of 43 Dover Street, London

The ‘princely proprietor’ of Jenkinstown and the head of one of Ireland’s oldest Catholic families, Bryan’s return for his native county of Kilkenny had been eagerly anticipated. As ‘the first Catholic in Ireland’, it was hoped that he might ‘hurl the fire of his wrath’ against ‘the calumniators’ of the papacy in the House of Commons, and thus ‘inaugurate a new era in that hostile senate’.1Freeman’s Journal, 6 July 1865, quoting Kilkenny Journal. Although such absurdly high expectations were to be disappointed, Bryan’s first Parliament saw him lend consistent support to the Liberal party and back proposals for the disestablishment of the Irish Church.

Bryan was born at Ballyduff House, county Kilkenny, and owed his second name to his godfather, the future king of the Belgians.2F. Boase, Modern English Biography, i. 455; C. J. Woods, ‘Bryan, George’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, i. 962. His father was colonel of the Kilkenny militia and served as high sheriff of the county in 1846.3G.D. Burtchaell, Genealogical Memoirs of the Members of Parliament for the County and City of Kilkenny (1888), 216. He had married Margaret Talbot, a half-sister of the countess of Shrewsbury – (Margaret’s sister Maria having married John Talbot, 16^th earl, in 1814) – and the family had lived on the continent, where his mother’s fame as a beauty and wit had attracted the friendship of Leopold I of Belgium and Pope Pius IX.4Freeman’s Journal, 13 Oct. 1843; Gent. Mag. (1849), ii. 652; Woods, ‘Bryan, George’, i. 962; A. Kavanagh, Bryan of Jenkinstown, Butler of Mount Juliet (2013), 10-11. Their father, William Talbot, was an uncle of the earl, and they were nieces of John Hyacinth Talbot, MP for New Ross 1832-41, 1847-52. In 1835 another half-sister, Catherine, married Henry Lambert, MP for County Wexford, 1831-5: Burke’s Landed Gentry (1912), 682-3.

Bryan was one of only two of his parents’ nine children to come of age, and he succeeded to his father’s estate at Jenkinstown while still a minor in October 1848. In 1876 he owned 8,209 acres in Kilkenny, thus making him the ninth largest proprietor in the county, along with more than 4,500 acres in counties Meath and Kildare.5Freeman’s Journal, 9 Nov. 1848, 4 Oct. 1876; J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 63. He appears to have been a popular landlord, and his mother’s benevolence to the poor was said to have been ‘inexhaustible’.6Freeman’s Journal, 10 Dec. 1849.

Already prominent among Ireland’s Catholic gentry, the Bryans had grown wealthy ‘owing to prudent marriages’. In December 1849 Bryan married a daughter of the Protestant marquess of Conyngham at the chief secretary’s lodge in Dublin, the wedding being attended by the viceroy, Lord Clarendon.7Manchester Times, 12 Dec. 1849. His wife’s mother, Lady Elizabeth Conyngham, had once been a mistress of George IV: Kavanagh, Bryan of Jenkinstown, 13. A daughter, Mary Margaret Frances, was born in January 1852 and baptised a Catholic.8Woods, ‘Bryan, George’, i. 962. Although the family were thought to have had ‘little political ambition’, Bryan’s grandfather, George Bryan (1770-1843), had sat for County Kilkenny as a champion of ‘Catholic rights’ from 1837 until his death, and in 1851 Bryan himself campaigned against the ecclesiastical titles bill.9Ibid., i. 961-2; Freeman’s Journal, 3 May, 29 July 1851, 20 July 1865. Having established a reputation as a good landlord by granting substantial rent reductions in 1850,10Freeman’s Journal, 31 Oct. 1850, quoting Kilkenny Journal. he was spoken of as a Liberal candidate for County Kilkenny at the 1852 general election, before standing aside for William Shee, a key proponent of William Sharman Crawford’s tenant-right bill.11Freeman’s Journal, 25 Mar. 1852, 29 Apr. 1852.

By this time, however, Bryan was experiencing marital problems. He was known to have ‘a naturally hasty and ungovernable temperament’,12Morning Post, 5 July 1880. and in September 1852 his wife eloped with Captain James George Hay, whose regiment had been stationed at Carlow, with whom her husband had until then been on ‘very intimate terms’. The couple were reported to have left Liverpool bound for New York with Bryan in pursuit, but it appears that he and his wife were subsequently reconciled, at least to the extent of remaining married until Bryan’s death in 1880.13Freeman’s Journal, 22 Jan. 1852; Manchester Times, 8 Sept. 1852, quoting Leinster Express; Belfast News-letter, 10 Sept. 1852.

Bryan remained involved in politics but distanced himself from the ‘Young Ireland’ faction within the independent Irish representation. In January 1854 he refused to officiate at a dinner given for the Members for County Kilkenny on the ground that invitations had been extended to George Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas, the chief parliamentary proponents of the Tenant League.14Morning Chronicle, 11 Jan. 1854.

Meanwhile Bryan made his name as a sportsman. A ‘first-rate shot’, he kept a famous pack of staghounds at Jenkinstown, and became master of the Kilkenny hunt. He was also a steward of the Kilkenny races, and it was at the racecourse where his ‘elegant figure’ and ‘marvellously folded white cravat’ earned him the nickname of ‘The Squire’.15Morning Post, 5 July 1880. Bryan’s grandfather had built a racecourse at Jenkinstown in the 1830s: Woods, ‘Bryan, George’, i. 962. He enjoyed a comparatively brief but highly successful turf career until 1861, when his ‘ungovernable temper’ led him to order the jockey of his horse Waterwitch to deliberately lose a race on which his wager had been refused, resulting in his temporary suspension from the Jockey Club.16Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1861. The Jockey Club accepted that Bryan had acted under the influence of temper and not pecuniary gain, and banned him for just one year. However, he continued to demonstrate ‘rare judgment’ as a horse breeder, and is thought to have owned a winner of the Irish Derby.17Morning Post, 5 July 1880; Kavanagh, Bryan of Jenkinstown, 12-13.

In the 1860s Bryan returned to politics by coming out in ‘defence of the rights of the Papacy’, speaking on the issue at a public meeting in Kilkenny. With the support of the local Catholic clergy Bryan came forward for his native county at the 1865 general election as the ‘popular candidate’, being in sympathy with the programme of the National Association.18Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1865. Because his family was recognised at Rome as the leading Catholic family of Ireland, Bryan’s candidacy caused great excitement in local circles and he was received in Kilkenny as ‘a true Irish prince’.19Freeman’s Journal, 30 June 1865; Morning Post, 5 July 1880. On the hustings he was presented as ‘a practical tenant righter’ committed to ‘long leases and good homesteads’, and in favour of extending the franchise and reducing taxation.20Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1865. He promised ‘zealous efforts’ to replace the mixed system of Irish education with a purely denominational one, and called for a royal charter to be granted to the Catholic University of Ireland, and for Irish Church revenues to be redistributed to ‘the public service, or to the relief of the poor’.21Freeman’s Journal, 6, 20 July 1865. He was returned in first place after ‘a trial of strength’ with the independent oppositionist, Captain John Greene.22Examiner, 15 July 1865. Observations made by Bryan during his speech from the hustings briefly threatened to develop into an ‘affair of honour’ in an episode the Morning Post considered ‘truly absurd’.23Morning Post, 2 Sept. 1865.

In November 1865 Bryan, who approved of attempts to create a ‘united and independent’ party of Irish Liberals, was one of 22 MPs to attend a conference in Dublin, held at the request of the National Association, to adopt a programme for the forthcoming parliamentary session and among those tasked with framing an Irish land bill.24Freeman’s Journal, 20 Nov., 8 Dec. 1865, 3 Jan. 1867; E. Larkin, The Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1860-1870 (1987), 368. He had promised to enter the Commons ‘as a perfectly independent member’ and was in the small minority that divided in favour of The O’Donoghue’s amendment to the queen’s speech regarding Irish disaffection, 8 Feb. 1866.25Freeman’s Journal, 6 July 1865; Dublin Evening Mail, 8 Feb. 1866. He voted with the large majority which approved the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland, 17 Feb., and divided in favour of the abolition of church rates, 7 Mar. Having stated on the hustings that he regarded the parliamentary oath administered to Catholics as ‘most offensive’, he voted for the second reading of the oaths amendment bill, 8 Mar.26Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1865. In April he assisted Serjeant Robert Armstrong with a bill to amend the law relating to marriages conducted by Catholic clergymen in Ireland. After receiving its first reading, 10 Apr., the measure was subsequently re-submitted in amended form before being withdrawn, 6 Aug.27PP 1866 (99), iii. 505; PP 1866 (123), iii. 509; Hansard, 6 Aug. 1866, vol. 184, c. 2089. He backed the Liberal reform bill, 27 Apr., and voted in June against the Conservative amendments which defeated the measure.

Bryan was not a regular attender but made several contributions to debate. He began in May 1866 by asking the Irish attorney-general to confirm that in the previous year the lord chief justice of Ireland, Anthony Lefroy, had been unable to read out a sentence of death passed on a prisoner at Tullamore without assistance. He subsequently raised the matter with the chief secretary for Ireland in order to draw the House’s attention to the ‘waning intellect and bodily infirmity’ of certain members of the Irish bench.28Hansard, 3 May 1866, vol. 183, cc. 353, 358; 11 May 1866, vol. 183, cc. 778-82.

In January 1867 Bryan addressed a county meeting in Kilkenny, in which he stated his determination to address Ireland’s ‘three principal wants … the land, the Church, and education’. He took the National Association’s line on Fenianism, dismissing it as a ‘socialist movement’ which was largely confined to ‘the younger portion of the community’, which might easily be remedied by ‘a good land bill’.29Freeman’s Journal, 3 Jan. 1867. Convinced that more secure tenancies would increase capital investment in Irish agriculture, he proposed that, as a first step, Irish landlords should be compelled to provide all tenants with 31-year agricultural leases.30Pall Mall Gazette, 4 Jan. 1867. Back at Westminster he attended a meeting of the Liberal party at William Gladstone’s residence in Carlton House Terrace, and again voted for the abolition of church rates, 20 Mar. 1867.31The Times, 22 Mar. 1867. That month he pressed the government on the second reading of the Irish tenants’ improvements bill and in April seconded William Gregory’s amendment, which recommended the wider granting of leases as the only means of providing security for tenants. Expressing his surprise ‘at the meagreness of the measure’, Bryan nevertheless argued that the amendment would help to reduce conflict at parliamentary elections by restricting a landlord’s capacity to influence the votes of his tenants.32Hansard, 21 Mar. 1867, vol. 186, c. 290; 29 Apr. 1867, vol. 186, cc. 1724-6.

In the lobbies on the Conservative reform bill, he supported amendments to reduce the residency qualification to one year, 2 May, enfranchise lodgers, 13 May, and reduce the representation of small boroughs, 31 May, 17 June 1867. He voted for Henry Fawcett’s bill to amend the Uniformity Act, 29 May, and divided against the Lords’ amendments to the reform bill, 8 Aug. 1867. Convinced that the established church in Ireland was ‘a monstrous anomaly’, Bryan had voted for Sir John Gray’s motion to reconsider its status, 7 May 1867, and backed William Gladstone’s subsequent motions on the question in April and May 1868.33Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1865. With regard to the Irish reform bill, he voted to abolish the voting rights of freemen and amend the representation of the Irish universities. He also voted to reduce the franchise qualification for counties and divided in favour of the ballot, 18 June 1868.

Possessed of ‘genial manners and a kindly disposition’, Bryan remained popular with his constituents and was re-elected at Kilkenny in 1868 as an ‘advanced Liberal’.34Freeman’s Journal, 30 June 1880; Dod’s parliamentary companion (1880), 182-3. He headed the poll in 1874 ‘in the Home Rule interest’, before his enthusiasm for the policy waned and he retired at the dissolution in 1880.35The Times, 6 July 1874, 1 July 1880; Leeds Mercury, 2 July 1880; Woods, ‘Bryan, George’, i. 962. By this time Bryan was afflicted with ‘galloping consumption’, the death of his only daughter at the age of 20 in November 1872 being said to have given Bryan’s health ‘a blow from which it never recovered’.36Morning Post, 25 Nov. 1872; Freeman’s Journal, 30 June 1880. He died in June 1880 shortly after returning to London from a winter in Algiers, his once ‘stalwart frame’ now reduced ‘to a mere skeleton’.37Morning Post, 5 July 1880. His personal estate was sworn under £25,000,38Morning Post, 1 Oct. 1880. His personal estate in England was valued under £1,500: National Probate Calendar, 24 Aug. 1880. and he was succeeded in his estates by his nephew, the Hon. George Leopold Bellew (1857-1935), the third son of 2^nd Baron Bellew.39Bryan’s sister, Augusta, had married Lord Bellew in September 1852: Morning Post, 2 Oct. 1852. Her younger son, the Hon. Charles Bertram Bellew, was an unsuccessful Conservative candidate for North Kilkenny in 1885. A career army officer, Bellew took the name of Bryan by royal licence, 13 Oct. 1880, and succeeded as 4^th Baron Bellew in 1911.40Burke’s Peerage (1949), 173-4; National Library of Ireland, Genealogical Office: MS.153, 355-60. See C. Murphy, ‘The Bryan-Bellews of Jenkinstown and Bawnmore’, Old Kilkenny Review, xix (1967), 29-39. In February 1882 Bryan’s widow, Lady Elizabeth, married George Finch-Hatton (1815-87), 11^th earl of Winchilsea, who had sat as a Conservative MP for Northamptonshire, 1837-41.41Morning Post, 10 June 1887.