1916 Portraits and Lives by James Quinn

Author:James Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-908996-79-4
Publisher: Royal Irish Academy
Published: 2015-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

Eoin MacNeill

1867–1945

Eoin (John) MacNeill, Gaelic scholar and nationalist politician, was born 15 May 1867 in Glenarm, Co. Antrim, sixth of eight children of Archibald MacNeill, baker, sailor and merchant, and his wife Rosetta (née Macauley).

FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION

MacNeill was profoundly influenced by his upbringing in the Glens of Antrim, a Catholic enclave which still retained some Irish-language traditions and was to become a major focus for Ulster-based Gaelic revivalists (especially in the period before the Great War). The fact that local Protestants shared with Catholics a veneration for St Patrick based on his association with Slemish, the existence of a few Irish-speaking Presbyterians in the Glens, and the strength of the Presbyterian liberal tenant-right tradition in Co. Antrim, led MacNeill to see Ulster unionism as a superficial product of elite manipulation; this perception might have seemed less convincing in the embattled borderlands of south Ulster. His father had been prosecuted in 1872 for participating in a demonstration against the first Orange march in the Glens by a lodge recruited among the Protestant lumpenproletariat by the local rector and land agent.

The MacNeill family attached considerable importance to education. All five sons had distinguished educational records, and the youngest daughter became a hospital matron and inspector of industrial schools. (Her two elder sisters ran the family business.) MacNeill received his primary education in local schools, and his secondary education (1881– 5) at St Malachy’s College, Belfast, in whose collegiate division from 1885 he began his studies for the (examination-only) RUI after securing a modern languages scholarship. He secured a degree in constitutional history, jurisprudence and political economy in 1888 having attended law lectures at TCD and King’s Inns.

In 1887 MacNeill obtained a junior clerkship in the accountant-general’s office in Dublin law courts. He was the first clerk in the office to be appointed by competitive examination rather than patronage; he was also the first not to be a member of the Church of Ireland. (When he left in 1909, nine of the eleven clerks were Catholic; the others were Englishmen.) MacNeill’s position as a civil servant attracted some criticism from separatist opponents within the Gaelic League. When MacNeill assisted in disrupting a meeting organised by William Martin Murphy to gather public support for a proposed Dublin international exhibition (denounced by Irish Irelanders as a denationalising project), the Irish Independent sneered at ‘a civil servant masquerading as Robert Emmet’ and MacNeill narrowly escaped dismissal.

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