COOPER, Edward Henry (1827-1902), of Markree Castle, Collooney, co. Sligo and 5 Bryanston Square, London

Cooper was born at Lough Park, co. Westmeath, a descendant of Edward Cooper, a Cromwellian soldier who had settled in Ireland and ‘became possessed of a great estate in that kingdom’.1H.E.C. Stapylton, The Eton School Lists from 1791-1850 (2nd edn., 1854), 203; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1871), i. 277. Cooper’s paternal estate at Dunboden consisted of 3,500 acres, and was inherited by his brother, Colonel Joshua Cooper: J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 104. Cooper’s father, Richard Wordsworth Cooper (1801-50), was the second surviving son of Edward Synge Cooper (1792-1830), who had sat in the family interest for County Sligo, 1806-30.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 495-6; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 731-3. Cooper’s great-grandfather, Joshua Cooper (1732-1800), was the third generation of the family to sit in the Irish parliament, and the second to represent County Sligo. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Joshua Edward (1762-1837), who sat for the seat in Dublin, 1790-1800, and at Westminster, 1801-6: J. Quinn, ‘Cooper, Joshua’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, ii. 826-7; E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), iii. 489-92; HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 496-7. An active Conservative, Richard Cooper served as high sheriff of county Westmeath in 1834 but had settled in Dublin by 1839.3Belfast News-letter, 21 Feb. 1834; Morning Post, 14 Apr. 1837.

Cooper was a career officer who joined the army in May 1845, and served latterly with the Grenadier Guards, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel in November 1857. He married in 1858 and in April 1863 inherited an estate of more than 35,000 acres at Markree Castle, co. Sligo, from his uncle Edward Joshua Cooper (1798-1863), Conservative MP for County Sligo, 1830-41, 1857-9.4Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 14 Aug. 1858; Freeman’s Journal, 12 May 1863, quoting Sligo Champion; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 730-1; R. Bohan & L. Lunney, ‘Cooper, Edward Joshua’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, ii. 825-6.

As the largest landowner in the county, and one who annually drew more than £10,000 from his estate, Cooper’s influence in Sligo was thought to be considerable.5Freeman’s Journal, 6 Oct. 1876. He also owned nearly 1,200 acres of land in county Limerick: Bateman, Landowners of Great Britain, 104. The sitting members having retired at the 1865 general election, Cooper, whose politics were regarded as ‘eminently constitutional’, duly obeyed an ‘unanimous’ requisition to offer for the county as a Conservative.6Belfast News-letter, 4 July 1865, quoting Daily Express. He was returned unopposed, promising to support all measures that would ‘develop the resources of Ireland’.7Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 89.

In January 1866 Cooper joined a deputation to the Irish chief secretary to request that the costs borne by Irish poor law unions for medical and educational purposes be met from the consolidated fund.8Freeman’s Journal, 10 Jan. 1866. A fairly regular attender, who is not known to have spoken in debate, he voted 178 times in his three sessions in the Commons. Regarded as ‘a good party man’, he provided dependable support for the Conservative leadership, regularly voting against the abolition of church rates and of university tests.9Freeman’s Journal, 15 Oct. 1868. Alert to the agricultural interest, he divided in favour of the reduction of malt duty, 17 Apr. 1866, and voted in favour of Dunkellin’s amendment which brought down the Liberal reform bill, 18 June 1866. An opponent of the secret ballot, and of further Catholic relief, including allowing Catholics to serve in office of Irish viceroy, it was later noted that his vote was ‘invariably given against every liberal proposition that was submitted to the House of Commons’.10Freeman’s Journal, 3 Aug. 1868. In March 1867 he sat on the select committee on Irish grand jury presentments, attending ten of the committee’s 22 sittings, and in May served on the inquiry into Irish petit juries.11PP 1867-68 (392) (392-I) x. 47, 477; PP 1867-68 (0.107) lvi. 51; PP 1867-68 (390) x. 549. Cooper’s grandfather had devoted several years of his time in parliament to seeking to improve the Irish grand jury system: HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 496. He divided in favour of Ayrton’s amendment to the Conservative reform bill, to reduce the residency qualification from two years to one, 2 May 1867, but voted against Liberal attempts to redistribute seats from smaller to larger boroughs, and opposed amendments to the government’s Irish reform and election and corrupt practices bills in the summer of 1868.

Above all, Cooper was strongly opposed to the disestablishment of the Irish Church, bringing up petitions in its defence, 9 Apr. 1866, 30 Mar. 1868.12Freeman’s Journal, 11 Apr. 1866. In February 1868 he attended the inaugural meeting of the Protestant Defence Society in Dublin, and the following month saw the Irish chief secretary, Lord Mayo, to discuss the amendment of the Irish Land Improvement Act of 1864, with respect to the construction of railway lines.13Morning Post, 7 Feb. 1868; Freeman’s Journal, 2 Apr. 1868; Belfast News-letter, 24 Mar. 1868.

Although Cooper retained the confidence of Sligo’s Conservatives, he was not popular in his own neighbourhood, where he had made an unsuccessful attempt to impose a code of rules and regulations on his tenants. At the 1868 general election he was pelted with stones during his canvass and shouted down at the hustings.14Standard, 11 July 1868; Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 8 Nov. 1868; Freeman’s Journal, 28 Nov. 1868. Despite issuing an anodyne address and promising his tenants ‘a good Tenant-Right Bill’, his reliance upon the support of a faltering landed interest proved his downfall.15Freeman’s Journal, 15 Oct., 5, 25 Nov. 1868; Standard, 13 Nov. 1868. After a ‘fierce and desperate’ contest, during which he was accused of exercising an undue influence over the electors on his estate, he was pushed into third place in the poll by a Liberal.16Freeman’s Journal, 28 Nov., 1, 3, 4 Dec. 1868.

Cooper did not seek election again, but nominated his former colleague, Sir Robert Gore Booth, at Sligo in 1874.17Freeman’s Journal, 3 Feb. 1874. He remained active in local administration, being appointed lord lieutenant of the county in 1877, and was selected as the county’s delegate to the national conference of grand jurors, convened to discuss the Irish local government bill in 1898.18Freeman’s Journal, 15 Apr. 1898. He had inherited from his uncle one of the finest private observatories in the country at Markree, but was himself more interested in meteorology, in which he established a high reputation, being one of the few persons in Ireland to take regular measurements of rainfall.19Newcastle Courant, 4 May 1859; Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, lxiii (1903), 197-8; Belfast News-letter, 25 Aug. 1874.

Cooper’s wife, who sat on the Ladies’ Grand Council of the Primrose League from 1894, died in January 1902, four weeks before Cooper’s death at his London residence in Portman Square following a long illness.20Morning Post, 2 Aug. 1894; The Times, 27 Feb. 1902. His eldest son, Major Francis Cooper (1859-1900), an officer in the Royal Artillery, had died from enteric fever in South Africa in May 1900, and he was therefore succeeded by his grandson, Bryan Ricco Cooper (1884-1930), Unionist MP for Dublin County South, 1910, and an independent T.D. for County Dublin, 1923-30, who was once described as ‘the best-dressed man’ in the city. The bulk of Cooper’s land was sold by the trustees of the estate under the Wyndham Land Act of 1903 before his heir came of age.21Cheshire Observer, 2 June 1900; Stenton & Lees, Who’s Who of British MPs, ii. 76; P. Maume, ‘Cooper, Bryan Ricco’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, ii. 823-5.