Sir Isaac Newton’s enlightened chronologyand inter-denominational discoursein eighteenth-century Ireland

Abstract

In the advertisement prefacing Charles O’Conor’sDissertations on the antient history of Ireland(1753), the editor challenged an unnamed gentleman who had, apparently, smeared the good name of the author. The editor, Michael Reily (who went under the cognomen ‘Civicus’) was intricately involved in this dispute from its early stages and did not spare any criticism for the individual he deemed responsible, Dr John Fergus, the erstwhile friend and associate of both Reily and O’Conor. ‘A Gentleman of great Reputation’ alleged Reily, had branded O’Conor with ‘the meanest Species of Immorality’. The dispute did not centre on some esoteric point of Irish mythology or any disagreement over issues of interpretation. It was not even, at least not in any direct way, a rift over political issues regarding the penal laws and the status of papists in the Irish polity, a tendency quite prevalent among the fissiparous Catholic organisations and pugilistic personalities of this period. Rather, it was wholly concerned with those most pertinent aspects of existence for an eighteenth century gentlemen – credit and honour. The disagreement was about Newton’sChronologyand its application to the Irish annalistic corpus as a means of validating the latter – not about the principle of its applicability, nor regarding the minutiae of dates or similar arcana, but to who should gain the credit for appropriating Newton’s prestige to such a particularly Irish topic.