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Patrick Keyes O’Clery

Patrick Keyes O’Clery was born in 1845 at Darragh House, Kilfinnane, Co Limerick, the only son of John Walsh O’Clery(called the O’Clery) and Elisa O’Clery (née O’Donoghue-Keyes). He was educated at St Munchin’s College in Limerick City and at Trinity College Dublin.

He came to prominence while serving with the Papal Zouaves seeing action in the 1867 campaign that repulsed Garabaldi’s invasion of the Papal territories. For this and other services he was created a Papal Knight and later conferred as Chevalier. He returned to Ireland and was called to the English Bar in 1874. He entered politics by being selected as one of the two Home rule candidates to contest Wexford County in the General Election of 1874, being elected taking the second seat.

Patrick became a bit of a maverick amongst the Irish Home Rule Party, initially supporting the policy of obstruction championed by Francis Joseph Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell, he was accused of reneging on the policy in order to get his own parliamentary bill to establish a volunteer corps in Ireland similar to those in other parts of the Empire such as Canada and Australia. Although the bill reached a third reading in the House of Commons it was defeated in the Lords in 1879 and Keyes O’Clery found himself out of step with his colleagues, being deselected as a Home Rule candidate in the General Election of 1880. He stood with the backing of the Catholic clergy of Wexford but even with this clerical backing he was humiliated at the polls receiving only 457 votes.

He retired from politics and wrote two controversial books on the unification of Italy, The history of the Italian revolution: first period: the revolution of the barricades (1796–1849) (1875), and The making of Italy (1892) see:

The making of Italy : O’Clery : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive, dealing with the period from 1856 to 1870. Both are unabashedly reactionary, anti-republican treatments, condemning the establishment of the centralised, unified Italian state, and extolling the salutary role of the temporal power of the papacy in Italian and European history.

He resided at 1 Hare Ct., Temple, London, in rooms formerly occupied by Henry Grattan (qv). His clubs were the Devonshire, and the East Sussex, St Leonards. Though described as unmarried during his tenure in parliament, he was survived by a wife, Katherine (d. 1919). As they had no children, he was the last person to be recognised as “The O’Clery”. He died 23 May 1913 at the Alexian Brothers’ convalescent home, Twyford Abbey, Brent, London.

We have been unable to discover how he and his father were titled “The O’Clery” as this usually means that the person is a descendent of the clan chieftain – perhaps somebody can throw some light on this point of interest??