From the Dublin University Magazine 1849, supplemented by the Weekly Chronicle, 28 July 1850 and the Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner, 7 June 1916, this account of the life of Peter Burrowes KC (1750-1841), one of the most successful and popular members of the Irish Bar in the early years of the new Four Courts:

“Peter Burrowes! —a name not to be omitted in the calendar of Ireland’s worthies. If a kind heart, a generous mind, an ardent spirit and incorruptible integrity, may confer a title to present renown or convey a passport to posthumous reputation, this distinguished barrister could not have wanted a full meed of respect and admiration while he lived, nor died without bequeathing an honored name to an admiring posterity. And yet, already the recollection of him is fast passing away; and, in a few years more, will be entombed in a profound oblivion.

Burrowes was born in the year 1750, in the town of Portarlington. His family were of a respectable grade in the Queen’s County. As a boy, he exhibited but little promise, being regarded as dull and heavy; but soon became conscious of his own deficiencies, and by redoubled industry, made such advances as afforded good grounds of hope to those who felt a natural solicitude for his improvement. In 1774, he entered college: and in 1777, he more than realised the expectations of his friends, by obtaining the first scholarship. and he soon became a distinguished member of the College Historical Society, which had the honour of including among its debaters most of those who subsequently raised the reputation of Irish eloquence to such a height of unparalleled splendour.

Very soon he betrayed that singular broadness of mind that characterised him all through life. In 1784, he wrote a pamphlet in which the right of the Catholics of Ireland to Parliamentary suffrage was ably maintained. He was called to the Bar in 1785, and speedily became eminent in his profession, being early marked out as a conscientious lawyer—a phenomenon more so then than now.

The period about which Burrowes appeared on the stage, was no less momentous than strange. The pistol was the universal leveller which smoothed down the little differences of society. A firm finger on the trigger was indispensable to success in life, and, indeed, to the retention of life at all. It was the successful politician’s first qualification, and a knowledge of the laws which regulate leaden projectiles at twelve paces was of more importance to the rising barrister than an acquaintance with Bracton or Littleton. One judge, at least, fought his way to the bench, and the acquisition of a crack shot to a political party was as great an aid as the possession of acquirements and oratorical powers.

It happened that a perpetual lawsuit was carried on with great vigour between one Lord Mountgarrett, afterwards earl of Kilkenny, and his tenants, who were aided and abetted in their praiseworthy legal warfare on their landlord by ‘an eminent attorney’ Mr Ball, and several barristers of the circuit ‘for the love of the thing,’ while his lordship had given a perpetual retainer to two ‘eminent counsel’ to be always in attendance when his never ending causes came on. 

 The eminent attorney and the amateur counsel, backed, we suppose, by some justice in the case, were always too strong for his lordship, who adopted a course, under the painful circumstances, highly creditable to his sagacity and to his “pluck.” He posted a notice in the bar messroom, offering the gentlemen of the circuit the alternative of refusing to hold briefs against him, or meeting him in mortal combat. Mr. Ball lodged a bullet in his lordship, who, nothing daunted, challenged Mr. Byrne next circuit, and burned his coat and wounded him in the chest. Mr. Burrowes next came in for his lordship’s family attentions, and in consequence of an insulting letter received from the Hon. Somerset Butler, his lordship’s son, felt “obliged to go out,” and was only saved from the effects of a well-directed aim, which sent a bullet straight for his heart, by a penny which happened to be in his waistcoat pocket. In later years, the two antagonists became very fast friends, and the Hon. Somerset Butler carried about with him some of the lucky coins that had saved Burrowes’s precious life.

In 1790, Burrowes, along with Tone, Russell, and others, formed a club for the discussion of all questions of the day, particularly political matters of importance. The majority of the members afterwards joined the United Irishmen, and though Burrowes did not go so far, he always retained and reciprocated the respect and friendship of the more advanced patriots, and his well-known regard for them excited the ire of the “garrison” faction. His brother held unpatriotic views and lost his life during the insurrection of 1798. Nevertheless, Peter Burrowes became one of the most pronounced and outspoken opponents of the Union scheme, and was one of the 14 King’s Counsel who attended the Bar meeting in Dublin in December 1798, to protest against it.

In 1799, Burrowes was elected member for Enniscorthy, and during the few remaining months of the existence of the Irish Parliament he employed every effort to prevent its impending destruction. He was one of the little band of noble incorruptibles. When Castlereagh’s bribery project was mooted, Burrowes joined with others in raising a fund of over £100,000 to counteract the Minister’s infamous scheme. But English gold, unlimited, flowed through Castlereagh’s hands, and a mere £100,000, or, for the matter of that, half a million sterling, were so many little drops in a mighty sea of bribery.

A warm friend of the Emmet family, he became the hero-martyr’s counsel when “the darling of Erin” faced the notorious Judge Norbury. When, at the close of the Government’s case, Burrowes arose to reply, Emmet said to him: “Don’t attempt to defend me; it’s all in vain,” and the advocate reluctantly desisted, though, of course, under the circumstances, nothing that he could have done or said would have saved his young friend from the fate intended for him.

As a speaker, Burrowes was characterized by a powerful and persuasive eloquence—a simplicity and earnestness of manner, and a heart-felt sincerity, which never failed to find its way to the hearts and understandings of his hearers. Speaking on another occasion of the system of English penal laws, he said:

“It was a code calculated to degrade the Catholics not merely to the state of the beasts of the field, but far beneath them, to deprive them not only of every national and civil right, but everything that could improve or embellish the nature of man. No Catholic could be taught even the rudiments of learning but upon the terms of abdicating his principles and surrendering his conscience by renouncing his creed. Not a ray of light could approach them except such pilfered literature as persecuted pedagogues could convey, or such learning as could be obtained at foreign universities in spite of the severest prohibitions, as if the light of science would extinguish the light of the Gospel.”

In 1811, upon the trial of Doctor Sheridan, he was greatly and justly distinguished. That gentleman had been elected a Roman Catholic delegate, to represent that body in an assembly to be held in Dublin, in defiance, it was maintained, of the provisions of the convention act. For this he was prosecuted by the crown, the law-officers being Mr. Saurin and Mr. Bushe. Mr. Burrowes was retained for the defence, and his speech was regarded as a masterpiece of constitutional argument. Two of the jurors were sworn Orangemen; and after an ineffectual attempt to set them aside, he proceeded to expound the law, as he understood it, in so clear and forcible a manner, that he brought conviction to the minds of the most prejudiced, and obtained for his client a triumphant verdict.

His convivial powers were rich and various. Although not overloaded with book learning, it was manifest to all competent observers that his mind had departed upon classic ground, and was redolent of the freshness of the verdure, over which, in youth, he had ranged delighted. But, over and above all merely intellectual or adventitious qualifications, was he valued by the friends who loved him, for the goodness of his heart, and the honesty of his nature.

He was a singularly absent man. It is recorded of him, we believe with perfect truth, that a gentleman calling upon him in the morning, in one of the circuit towns, found him, as he thought, boiling an egg; for he was standing with something in his hand, and watching a saucepan upon the fire. But what was his astonishment when he found that it was the egg which he held in his hand, while his watch was boiling in the saucepan.

A friend called upon him one morning in his dressing-room and found him shaving with his face to the wall. ‘Where is your glass?’ ‘There is no glass there!’ ‘Bless me!’ Burrowes observed, ‘I did not notice that before.’ Ringing the bell, he called his servant and asked him what became of his looking glass. ‘Oh! sir,’ said the servant, ‘the mistress had it removed six weeks ago.’

On another occasion, as he was pleading in court, oppressed by a heavy cold, he occasionally sought to soften his cough, and lubricate the organs of utterance, by some lozenges which he carried in his pocket. The client whom he was defending was indicted for murder; and it was deemed important, in his defence, to produce the bullet with which, it was alleged, the murdered man had been killed. This he was about to do, and held the bullet in one hand, and a lozenge in the other, when in the ardour of advocacy, he forgot which was which, and instead of the lozenge swallowed the bullet.

And here we must not omit one peculiarity, by which his friends were often greatly amused. He had a habit of thrusting all his papers, of whatever kind, into either his coat or waistcoat pockets; so that these receptacles were often filled to repletion with the various fugitive pieces which, in the course of his daily business, came to hand. To anyone else all would be confusion; but he was always enabled, by a sort of unaccountable instinct, to lay his hand instantly upon the precise paper he wanted, at the proper time.

Mrs. Burrowes, who was a great lover of order, and possessed by an instinctive antipathy to ‘Things deformed, or disarranged, or gross in species,’ resolved to effect a reform in this department, and took the trouble of emptying the pockets of their heterogeneous contents, and disposing the multifarious papers, properly ticketed and labelled, in a manner which, to any other human being, would be far more convenient. But it was not so to him; they were not to be found, as he wanted them, in the only way in which he had ever been accustomed to look for or to find them; and he complained so loudly of the ‘confusion worse confounded’ which the new reform produced, that the good lady gave up the attempt as hopeless, and resolved herself, and gave strict orders to her servants, always to replace the contents of his pockets, whenever he changed his clothes, in the corresponding pockets, and in the exact order in which they were found, of those which he put on.

Mr. Burrowes was made judge of the Insolvent Debtors’ Court in 1821 and died twenty years later in London. His remains repose in Kensal Green Cemetery.”

A longer account of Burrowes’ life, and some of his speeches, may be found here.

Image Credit: National Portrait Gallery