Sir William Henry GregoryPC (Ire) KCMG (13 July 1816[1] – 6 March 1892) was an Anglo-Irish writer and politician, who is now less remembered than his wife Augusta, Lady Gregory, the playwright, co-founder and Director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, literary hostess and folklorist.
Earlier life and education
The only child of Robert Gregory (1790 – 20 April 1847) and Elizabeth Gregory (née O'Hara from Raheen, 1799 – 7 January 1877), William Gregory was born at the Under-Secretary's residence, Ashtown Lodge, in Phoenix Park, Dublin. He was the grandson of William Gregory. From 1830 to 1835 he attended Harrow, where he was an award-winning student. He entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1836, leaving three years later without getting a degree.
William' father, Robert, had been an improving landlord who died of a fever contracted while visiting his tenants during the Great Famine in 1847.
Political career
In 1842 Gregory was elected to the British House of Commons in a by-election as a Conservative member for Dublin. Among his close associates were Sir Robert Peel, Lord Lincoln and Lord George Bentinck, but he was also friendly with Daniel O'Connell and sympathetic to Catholic interests. He was responsible for the "Gregory Clause" which said that anyone applying for relief during the Great Famine would not be eligible if they were occupying more than 1⁄4 of an acre (0.1 ha).
In 1850 he fought a duel with a Captain Vaughan, but Robert Peel who was his second, persuaded him not to shoot to kill as had originally been his intention.[4]
Gregory travelled to Egypt in 1855 and wrote a two-volume work on his travels, Egypt in 1855 and 1856, and Tunis in 1857 and 1858, published privately in London in 1859.
In 1857 he was returned to Parliament for County Galway on a liberal-conservative platform.
Gregory retired from office in 1877 and returned to England via Australia. He spent most of the following years travelling. From October 1881 to April 1882 he toured Egypt and reported on the revolution there. He also visited Ceylon in 1884 and 1885.
Gregory was addicted to horse racing, which led to financial difficulties throughout his life. He remained fond of classical languages and literature, and always took an interest in artistic affairs.
Gregory married twice. On 11 January 1872 he married Elizabeth Temple Bowdoin, widow of James Temple Bowdoin and daughter of Sir William Clay. She died on 28 June 1873. On 4 March 1880 Gregory married Augusta Persse, later to become famous as Augusta, Lady Gregory. Their only child, William Robert Gregory, was born on 20 May 1881.
Gregory is buried in the Gregory family vault at Kiltartan, County Galway. Though originally part of Coole Demesne, the area overlooking the Gort river is now used as farmland. At the time of Lady Gregory's death in 1932, the land had already been sold to former tenants so she was buried with her sister at Bohermore Cemetery near Galway.
He lends his name to the inspector in Arthur Conan Doyle's Silver Blaze, 1892. The Sherlock Holmes story is centered on the disappearance of a race horse on the eve of a major race.
^Brian Jenkins, Sir William Gregory of Coole. The Biography of an Anglo-Irishman, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1986, p. 22.
^Walford, Edward (1919). The County Families of the United Kingdom. London: Robert Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd.
^Sir William Gregory, Joseph M. Hone, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 44, No. 175 (Autumn, 1955), pp. 337–341, Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, JSTOR
^Sir William’s autobiography, written in the 1880s, edited by Lady Gregory, published in 1894
^ abCooke, Colman M. (1980) [1979], "Lady Gregory's Journals, Volume One, Books One to Twenty Nine, 10 October 1916–24 February 1925 by Daniel J. Murphy (book review)", Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 37: 97–101, JSTOR25550117
^Thomas Hay Sweet Escott, Club Makers and Club Members (1913), pp. 329–333