Sir William Edmond Logan

Home > People > Science and Technology > Geology and Oceanography: Biographies

Burke de Burgh.(de Burgh Burke) The founder of this family in Ireland was William de Burgh (d. 1205), a brother to Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent, who received lands in southern Tipperary from Prince John, perhaps as early as the prince's first visit to Ireland in 1185. About 1192–3 William allied with Donal O'Brien (Domnall Mór Ua Briain), king of Thomond, against the MacCarthys, and married O'Brien's daughter, by whom he had a son and heir, Richard de Burgh (d. 1243). Richard obtained confirmation of a speculative grant of the kingdom of Connacht originally made to his father and in 1235, after a prolonged war of conquest, became lord of 25 cantreds of the province of Connacht, the five remaining cantreds near Athlone being reserved to the English king, who immediately leased them for an annual rent to King Felim O'Connor ( Fedlimid Ó Conchobair) (d. 1265). Richard's eldest son Richard II having died in 1248, his second son Walter (d. 1271) became lord of Connacht and was further appointed earl of Ulster in 1263, while a third son, William Óg (d. 1270), was to become ancestor of the MacWilliam Burkes, lords of Mayo. Earl Walter's son Richard de Burgh III (d. 1326), known as the ‘Red Earl’ of Ulster, ruled almost half Ireland. He forced John fitz Thomas, successor to the FitzGerald lords of Sligo and later to become Ist earl of Kildare, to exchange his holdings in north‐east Connacht for lands else‐where in Ireland. He also repeatedly dethroned the defiant Donal O'Neill ( Domnall Ó Néill) and replaced him with his own candidates for kingship of Cenél nEógain, drawn from the Clandeboye O'Neills. He played a prominent part in Edward I's war against Scotland, although his sister was married to James Stewart and his daughter Elizabeth to Robert Bruce. In 1315 his earldom of Ulster was invaded by Robert's brother Edward Bruce, and the earl himself was defeated at the battle of Connor, where his cousin Sir William Liath (d. 1324), son of William Óg, was captured by the Scots. By 1317, however, the earl was imprisoned in Dublin, suspected of complicity with the invading Scots.

The defeat and death of Edward Bruce at Faughart (1318) did not lead to a complete reinstatement of the earl's former power as his lands had been badly ravaged, and he was now growing too old to mount an effective military reconquest against the rebel Donal O'Neill. The ‘Red Earl's’ eldest son John had predeceased him, leaving a minor, William de Burgh, ‘the Brown Earl’, to succeed on his grandfather's death in 1326. In 1328 Earl William entered Ireland to take over his inheritance and found that both Sir Walter de Burgh (d. 1332), son of William Liath and head of the Mayo Burkes, and Sir Henry de Mandeville (d. 1337), seneschal of Ulster, were accused of conspiring with his arch‐enemy, Maurice fitz Thomas FitzGerald, the rebellious Ist earl of Desmond. By driving de Mandeville out of Ulster and starving Walter Burke to death, Earl William set in train his own assassination (6 June 1333) which was followed by a rising of the de Mandevilles and their neighbours, the de Logans, in alliance with the Irish of Ulster. The earl left only a baby daughter Elizabeth as heiress. She later married Prince Lionel of Clarence, and through their daughter Philippa the legal ownership of the earldom of Ulster and lordship of Connacht was transmitted to the Mortimer family and ultimately to the English crown. However, while English officials retained a weak presence in the Ulster colony during a series of long minorities, the province of Connacht was beyond their control. At first it was torn by a feud between the Clanwilliam Burkes of Mayo, led by Edmond ‘the Scot’ (Éamonn Albanach, d. 1375), a younger brother of Walter MacWilliam, and their opponents, the Clanricard Burkes, the younger sons of Richard III, whose lands lay in the Galway area and who were led by the ‘Red Earl's’ second son Edmond the Bearded (Éamonn na Féasóige, d. 1338). Edmund the Scot won this war by drowning his opponent in 1338, and went on to dominate the whole province as MacWilliam ochtar, or ‘the northern MacWilliam’, while the defeated Clanricard Burkes of Galway were governed by his brother William, or Ulick ‘an Fhíona’ (‘of the Wine’, d. 1353), whose son Richard (Riocard Óg) founded an independent lordship over the Galway Burkes, using the title MacWilliam Uachtar, or ‘the southern MacWilliam’, otherwise ‘MacWilliam of Clanricard’. Under the policy of surrender and regrant, the Upper Macwilliams became earls of Clanricard from 1543. Meanwhile the descendants of Edmond the Bearded had become the Burkes of Clanwilliam, with a lordship on the boundaries of Cos. Limerick and Tipperary.

Katharine Simms

Sir William Edmond Logan 1798–1875, Canadian geologist. Educated in England, he managed (1831–38) coal mines and a copper smelter in Wales. In addition to making studies of clays underlying coal seams, he made extensive geological maps and sections. These were used for the first geological map of Britain by H. T. De la Beche. As head of the Canadian Geological Survey (1842–70), Logan became known as the father of Precambrian geology. He was the first to recognize altered Paleozoic rock in S Canada and first to discover reptile remains from the Carboniferous period . He wrote, with T. S. Hunt, The Geology of Canada (1863).

Bibliography: See biography by B. J. Harrington (1883).