Author: Curran, John Philpot
Biography:
CURRAN, John Philpot (1750-1817: DIB)
The eldest of five children of James Curran, a land steward, and his wife Sarah Philpot, he was born in Newmarket, County Cork, on 24 July 1750. He was educated by the rector of Newmarket and at Midleton Free School before entering Trinity College Dublin on 16 June 1767 (BA 1771). He intended to become a clergyman but decided on the law instead and in 1773 he moved to London and entered the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar in 1774 and returned to Dublin where he married Sarah Creagh. Although the marriage ended unhappily in the 1790s when Curran brought a charge against the Rev. Michael Sandys for criminal conversation with Sarah, they had five sons and four daughters; Curran also had an illegitimate son, Henry Grattan Curran, named for his friend the Irish politician and patriot. He was called to the Irish bar in 1775 and became a successful advocate. A patriotic whig in his politics, he first entered the Irish parliament as MP for Kilbeggan, Westmeath, in 1783 and made his name as a highly effective orator. In the 1790s his views became increasingly reformist and he did not seek re-election in 1797. In 1798 he served as counsel for the leaders of the 1798 rising—including for Theobald Wolfe Tone—when they were brought to trial. Curran was not himself a member of the United Irishmen, but he may have been sympathetic to the cause. He returned to political life in 1799 and, with Grattan, argued unsuccessfully against the Act of Union of 1800. In 1803 he undertook to defend Robert Emmet against a charge of high treason but withdrew suddenly when he learned of Emmet’s relationship with Curran’s daughter, Sarah. In 1806 he was offered the mastership of the rolls (a senior judicial office in Dublin) and became an Irish privy counsellor; he resigned from the rolls in 1814 with an annual pension of £2700. Curran’s health was in decline and he died of a stroke at his London home in Brompton on 14 Oct. 1817. Although he was buried in the cemetery at Paddington, his body was transferred to Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin in 1837. His poems, reproduced in Memoirs edited by William O’Regan, belong to an early period in his life. (ODNB 2 Apr. 2024; DIB 2 Apr. 2024; W. O’Regan, Memoirs [1817]) SR