People want their names remembered for the best of reasons but that of a man born 200 years ago on December 7th became a byword for betraying one’s political principles.
He was William Keogh and so bad was the damage to his reputation that more than 100 years later, when Eamon de Valera as taoiseach approached John A Costello, then leader of the opposition, about appointing him to the Supreme Court, Costello turned down the offer on the grounds that he “could not give the opportunity for charges of the Sadleir and Keogh type” to be made against him.
William Nicholas Keogh was born in St Mary’s Street, Galway. His father was a solicitor and acted as clerk for the crown in Co. Kilkenny. He was educated at Dr Huddard’s school in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, and attended Trinity College, where he studied science.
A frequent speaker in the debates of the college’s Historical Society, he won first prize for oratory at 19.
Subsequently studying law, he was called to the Bar in 1840 and became a queen’s counsel in 1849.
Of undoubted intellectual ability, he was an excellent speaker and published books on the law, politics and literature (including one on Milton’s prose writings).
He practised on the Connacht circuit, where his family connections lay, and built up a substantial practice.
"His natural gifts were those of an advocate rather than of a lawyer; a powerful voice, an impressive face and an impassioned delivery were combined with a ready flow of vigorous and ornate language," according to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB).
In 1841, he married Kate Roney, the daughter of a Galway surgeon, and they had a son and a daughter.
Keogh was elected MP for Athlone in 1847.
Four years later he took a prominent part in the parliamentary opposition to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act (this anti-Catholic act forbade anyone from using an episcopal title, other than bishops of the Church of England, named after any place in the United Kingdom). This greatly increased his popularity in Ireland. He was the principal speaker at a mass meeting in Dublin protesting against the measure and one of the founders of the Catholic Defence Association set up as a result of the meeting.
He also supported the tenant-right movement, led by Charles Gavan Duffy, which campaigned for the “Three Fs” (fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure).
Re-elected for Athlone in 1852, he was among a group of around 40 Irish MPs who formed the Independent Irish Party.
As well as opposing the Ecclesiastical Titles Act and supporting tenants’ rights, the members pledged to reject any offers of political office but instead to hold the balance of power at Westminster.
They experienced initial success and helped to vote out the Tory administration of Lord Derby, who was replaced by Lord Aberdeen and the Whigs.
However, within a few months, Keogh and his friend John Sadleir broke their solemn promise and accepted office in Lord Aberdeen’s administration, Keogh becoming solicitor general for Ireland.
"The two men's names were thenceforth linked in obloquy by nationalist propagandists who accused them of betraying, through personal ambition, a policy and a party to which they were solemnly pledged," according to the DNB, which also asserted that "their defection came to be depicted as the cause of a generation of Irish youth rejecting constitutional politics and embracing Fenianism."
In 1855, Keogh was appointed attorney general for Ireland and a judge of the Irish Court of Common Pleas the following year.
His conduct of the Fenian trials of 1865-66 added further to his unpopularity, and when the Home Rule winner of the 1872 Galway election was unseated on petition of his opponent (on the grounds of undue influence from the Catholic clergy), Keogh’s bitter condemnation of the Catholic hierarchy led to his effigy being burnt in several places.
His health deteriorated and in 1878 he travelled to Belgium and Germany to try to regain it but he died in Bingen-am-Rhein in September 1878 and was buried in Bonn.
In his case, there was no question of Irish newspapers not speaking ill of the dead, but the London Times declared that in any country but Ireland he would have been popular and respected for his talents.
"Genial and good natured, he was popular in private life, where his ready wit and conversational powers made him an agreeable companion," says the DNB entry, but the Cormack brothers' memorial in Loughmore, Tipperary, refers to him as "a man who considered personally, politically, religiously and officially, was one of the monsters of mankind".
The true measure of the man probably lies somewhere between these starkly contrasting assessments.