Frederick Lucas

Frederick Lucas (30 March 1812 - 22 October 1855) was a British religious polemicist and founder of The Tablet.

He was born in Westminster, the second son of Samuel Hayhurst Lucas, a London corn-merchant, who was a member of the Society of Friends. He was educated at a Quaker school in Darlington, and then at University College, London. He studied law at Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1835.

Lucas was a Quaker convert to Catholicism. [CathEncy|wstitle=Frederick Lucas]

In 1840, Lucas founded The Tablet, published in London, a progressive international Catholic weekly newspaper, just 11 years before the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. It is the second oldest surviving weekly journal in Britain after The Spectator (which was founded in 1828). It has an international readership of over 55,000.

After establishing the Irish Tenant Right League with Charles Gavan Duffy in 1850, he became MP. for Meath in 1852. After failing in a complaint-mission to Rome on behalf of the league [Hickey, D.J. & Doherty , J.E., "A new Dictionary of Irish History from 1800", Tenant League pp.466-7, Gill & MacMillan (2003) ISBN 0-7171-2520-3 ] , Lucas died in October 1885 at Staines, Middlesex, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.

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