William de Burgh (MP)

William de Burgh (1741–1808) was a prominent Anglo-Irish politician, theological writer and active campaigner for the abolition of slavery. He was a Member of Parliament for Athy from 1769 to 1776, and supported the campaigns of William Wilberforce against slavery.

William Burgh, or de Burgh, was born in 1741 to Thomas Burgh of Bert (1696–1754), Member or Parliament for Lanesborough and landowner in County Kildare, Ireland, and his wife Anne (1709–1801), whom he married in 1731. Anne was the daughter of Dive Downes (1653–1709), Bishop of Cork and Ross and Catherine Fitzgerald, daughter of Robert FitzGerald and granddaughter of George FitzGerald, 16th Earl of Kildare. William's grandfather, William de Burgh of Bert MP (died 1744) was Comptroller and Accountant General for Ireland, and a brother of the prominent architect, Colonel Thomas de Burgh of Oldtown, MP (who built Trinity College Library, Dublin). He was a descendant of William de Burgh who first settled in Ireland in 1185.

De Burgh began his political career by representing the borough of Athy, Kildare, in the Irish parliament of 1769–76. A keen supporter of liberty of political expression, he was to become a leading figure in the York association for parliamentary reform. From the outset however, he displayed his opposition to the ideas of the French Revolution, and although this gained him favour with his friend Edmund Burke, it brought him little initial popularity. He was vindicated when the later bloodshed of the revolution brought public opinion around.

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