Jonah Barrington (judge)

Sir Jonah Barrington
Member of Parliament for Clogher
In office 1798 – January 1800
Member of Parliament for Tuam
In office 1790–1798
Personal details
Born	Knapton, Abbeyleix, Ireland 1756/7
Died	8 April 1834 (aged abt 77) Versailles, France
Political party	Patriot Party
Alma mater	Trinity College, Dublin
Religion	Church of Ireland
Military service
Service/branch	Irish Volunteers

Sir Jonah Barrington (born at Knapton, Abbeyleix 1756/7; died at Versailles, France on 8 April 1834), was an Irish lawyer, judge and politician. Jonah Barrington is most notable for his amusing and popular memoirs of life in late 18th-century Ireland; for his opposition to the Act of Union in 1800; and for his removal from the judiciary by both Houses of the Parliament in 1830, still a unique event.

Barrington was the third son, one of thirteen or sixteen children; six at least, and probably seven, were sons; of John Barrington, an impoverished protestant gentry landowner in County Laois and his wife Sibella French of Peterswell, co. Galway. He was raised and schooled by his grandparents in Dublin and entered Trinity College Dublin in 1773, aged 16 but he left Trinity College without a degree.

He joined the Irish Volunteers and supported the Irish Patriots in the early 1780s. His father raised and commanded two Corps; the Cullenagh Rangers and the Ballyroan Light Infantry. Barrington's elder brother commanded both the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. Barrington's father, through his correspondence with General Hunt Walsh, then secured him a commission in Walsh's regiment. Upon learning that the regiment was to be sent to America to fight in the ongoing conflict, and fearful of dying on some foreign battlefield, Barrington wrote to Walsh asking him to instead present the commission to another candidate, claiming that he himself was too tender to be of any real use. Barrington's fears proved well founded when his replacement, the only child of one of Walsh's friends, was killed in his first engagement.

He was called to the Irish bar in 1788 and in 1789 he married Catherine, daughter of Dublin mercer, Edward Grogan. They were to have seven children. The following year he entered by purchase of the seat the pre-1801 Parliament of Ireland as MP for Tuam. He accepteded a sinecure post in 1793 at the Dublin customhouse worth £1,000 p.a. generally supporting Henry Grattan and he took silk the same year. Barrington was a member of the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798 he re-entered parliament the same year as member for Clogher and voted against the Act of Union in 1799–1800, rejecting Lord Clare's offer of the solicitor-generalship in 1799. In 1802 he unsuccessfully contested a seat for Dublin in the UK parliament.

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