Molyneux, William

William Molyneux (1656–1698), pamphleteer and scientist, was born in Dublin on 17 April into a long-established Protestant family. Educated at Saint Patrick's Cathedral School and Trinity College, Dublin (1671–1674), he graduated with a B.A. in 1674 and was admitted to the Middle Temple (1675–1678). On his return to Dublin he threw himself into scholarly activity, which led to his prominent role in the foundation in 1683 of the Dublin Philosophical Society on the model of London's Royal Society. From 1684 to 1687 he served as chief engineer and surveyor-general in Ireland, but in 1688, like many other Dublin Protestants, he and his wife took refuge in Chester, England. After William III's victory at the Boyne they returned to Dublin, where Molyneux was reappointed as chief engineer and surveyor-general and given other official responsibilities. As MP for Dublin University in 1692 and again from 1695 to 1698, he played an active role in the House of Commons but was not associated with the vociferous opposition. In 1695 he was appointed a master in chancery.

It was in the last year of his life that Molyneux published The Case of Ireland's Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England Stated (1698). He wrote it at a time when the English House of Commons was considering a bill to prohibit the export of Irish woollens overseas and the English House of Lords was asserting an appellate jurisdiction for Ireland. In effect, Molyneux argued that Ireland was a kingdom, with a parliament of medieval origin, and that subjects of William III in Ireland possessed the same right to the principles of representation and consent as subjects in England. To make his case he drew heavily not only on history and legal precedent but also on arguments based on John Locke's natural-rights theory. He readily admitted that a parliamentary union would equally guarantee to Ireland the principles of representation and consent, but that was "an happiness we can hardly hope for." The Case might well have faded into obscurity, as with other similar tracts based on precedent, had not the English House of Commons roundly condemned it, gaining for tract and author an enduring place in the eighteenth-century patriot canon.

Molyneux and Locke had corresponded throughout the 1690s, and though Locke was deeply unhappy at being mentioned in the Case, he received Molyneux with great civility when he visited England in August 1698, and was greatly saddened when he learned that Molyneux had died on 11 October, within a month of his return to Ireland.

SEE ALSO Dublin Philosophical Society; Eighteenth-Century Politics: 1690 to 1714—Revolution Settlement

Bibliography

Hoppen, K. T. The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century. 1970.

Simms, J. G. William Molyneux of Dublin. 1982.

James McGuire