- William Conolly
William Conolly (1662-1729), also known as Speaker Conolly, was an Irish
politician and landowner.Career
William Conolly was born the son of an inn-keeper in
Ballyshannon ,County Donegal . He practised as alawyer inDublin for many years and married Katherine Conyngham from County Donegal; they had no children. He made his fortune from land transfers, following the confiscations by the Crown of lands belonging to the unsuccessful supporters of King James II, in the wake of theGlorious Revolution and the accession ofWilliam and Mary in 1688-91. He built the first winged Palladian house in Ireland,Castletown House , nearCelbridge ,County Kildare , starting in 1722, and specified that every part of it had to be made from Irish materials. His Dublin town house was on Capel Street, then the most fashionable part of the city.Conolly was the most important of the "Undertakers", the managers of Government business in the
Irish House of Commons , in the early 18th century. He was associated with the Whigs and the Brodrick faction from Cork.He was Speaker of the House of Commons and a Commissioner of the Revenue from 1715 to his death in 1729. His name was spelt "Conolly", rather than the more familiar
Connolly , deriving ultimately from the Gaelic surname "O Conghaile". [ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101006097/ William Conolly] -Dictionary of National Biography ] [ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101006097/ Lewis's Topographical Directory of Ireland, 1837] - irish-architecture.com] [ [http://www.proni.gov.uk/records/private/conolly.htm The Conolly Papers] - Public Record Office ofNorthern Ireland ]On his death his widow Katherine continued to live in style at Castletown until her death in 1752, building the Wonderful Barn and the Conolly Folly in the 1740s. Then their estates passed briefly to William's nephew and on to his great-nephew Tom Conolly, known as "Squire Tom", who was married to
Lady Louisa Conolly .A pub in Celbridge, "The Speaker's Bar", was named in his memory.
Wealth
Conolly was reputed to be the wealthiest man in Ireland at the date of his death. He paid £32,000 and an annuity of £500 p.a., for his estate in
Ballyshannon ,Co. Donegal in 1718, £62,000 for his estate inRathfarnham ,Co. Dublin , in 1723, and £12,000 for those inLeixlip ,County Kildare in 1734, together with other properties in Dublin.References
* Malcomson A.P.W.; "Nathaniel Clements, Government and the Governing Elite in Ireland", 1725 -1775, 4 Courts Press,2005, ISBN 1-85182-913-X
* Nelson D. Lankford, ed., "An Irishman in Dixie: Thomas Conolly's Diary of the Fall of the Confederacy, University of South Carolina Press, 1988External links
* [http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:QqoqlJ6mTcEJ:www.irish-architecture.com/igs/castletown.html+irish+house+of+commons&hl=en&gl=ie&ct=clnk&cd=42 Castletown House]
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