Lecky, W. E. H.

Lecky, W. E. H. (1838–1903), historian. The heir to a small landed property in Queen's County and Carlow, Lecky attended Trinity College, Dublin, 1856–60, and travelled in Europe before settling in London and Dublin. The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland (1861) lamented the decline of Irish public life after the Act of Union. Lecky's first major works, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865) and History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), were attempts at sociological history, concerned to discover the laws of human development, but he later turned to analytical political narrative. His History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1878–90) included his influential treatment, later separately published, of 18th‐century Ireland. Lecky's detailed refutation of Froude's negative portrayal of Irish character, his catalogue of Irish grievances, and his glorification of Grattan's parliament won the praise of nationalists. But Lecky himself, horrified at the rise of the Land League, abandoned his liberal patriotism to become a leading polemicist against home rule. He sat as Unionist MP for Trinity College 1895–1902. His last major work, Democracy and Liberty (1896), located the golden age of the British constitution in the years between the reform bills of 1832 and 1867.