Molesworth, Robert

Molesworth, Robert (1656–1725), Viscount Molesworth, Whig writer and politician. The son of an adventurer who had received 2,500 acres in Co. Meath, he was MP for Dublin 1695–9 and for Swords (where he had an estate at Brackenstown) 1703–14. He also sat for various English constituencies, initially as a country Whig but forced by financial necessity into compromise with government. An Account of Denmark as it Was in the Year 1692 (1694), written after a controversial diplomatic mission and describing the subversion of representative institutions by absolute monarchy and clerical power, established him as a leading commonwealthman. The preface to the second edition (1721) of his translation of François Hotman's Franco‐Gallia (1573) was reprinted in 1775 as The Principles of a Real Whig.

In the 1720s Molesworth was patron to a group of writers and intellectuals, mainly New Light Presbyterians (see old light and new light), such as James Arbuckle (d. 1742), editor of the Dublin Weekly Journal (1725–7), John Smith (d. 1771), Irish publisher of leading works in the Commonwealth tradition, and Francis Hutcheson. Some historians refer to a ‘Molesworth circle’, though the precise character of any such network remains unclear.