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Cover of Warner's 1758 biography of philosopher and statesman Sir Thomas More, which includes a translation of his Utopia. Copy held by the University of Michigan Library.

Reverend Ferdinando Warner, LL.D. (1703–3 October 1768) was an English preacher, Church of England vicar and writer of history, theology and biography. His principal works were histories of Ireland and of its 17th-century rebellions, and an ecclesiastical history. His legacy is mixed: a skilled writer, his dismissal of the Irish people and character was criticised contemporaneously as today.

Life and priesthood[edit]

Warner was born in 1703 at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, where his father taught at a dissenting academy, including Thomas Secker, the future Archbishop of Canterbury (1758–68).[1] Warner became vicar of the church in Rowde in Wiltshire in 1730 and then lived for a time in Lewisham, then a part of Kent.[2] He was admitted to Clare College, Cambridge on 19 January 1742 [O.S. 8 January 1741][a] but apparently did not finish.[3][4]

On 13 February 1747 [O.S. 2 February 1746][a], he became rector of the now-demolished church of St Michael Queenhithe in the City of London and twice preached before the Lord Mayor, Sir William Calvert.[5] In 1754, he earned an LL.D. at Lambeth. He then served as rector of St Mary's Church, Barnes (then in Surrey, now a part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames) from 1758, where he died due to gout on 3 October 1768, aged 65.[3][b]

His son was John Warner (1736–1800), D. D., a classical scholar, preacher, writer and chaplain from 1790–95 to the British Embassy in France.[2]

Writing[edit]

Warner's writings covered many subjects and according to Irish history scholar Robert Dunlop "show him to have been a man of wide learning and more than ordinary ability."[5] His earliest works centred on Church of England liturgy and theology, including a 1755 simulated debate on the nature of Revelation between Lord Bolingbroke and Robert Boyle.[6] In 1758, he wrote a biography of Sir Thomas More and appended Gilbert Burnet's 1684 translation of Utopia from the Latin with "slight Alterations" for modernity.[7]

Warner's "most valuable" contribution may have been his two-volume Ecclesiastical History to the Eighteenth Century (1756–57), which church historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim praised for "that noble spirit of liberty, candour, and moderation that seemed to have guided the pen of the judicious author."[4][8] After its success, Warner went to Ireland in about 1761 to gather documents for a history of that island. He was given access to books and manuscripts in Marsh's Library and the Library of Trinity College Dublin and was supported by the historian Charles O'Conor in the hopes he may "write a justificatory history of the Irish" amidst prejudice against the Irish Catholics after the Rebellion of 1641.[9]

However, the resultant work (The History of Ireland, Volume the First, 1763), which covered up to the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1171, included unfavourable generalisations, such as citing the "very strong and remarkable antipathy to all labour" of many Irish and their cynical contentment "in dirt and beggary, to a degree beyond all other people in Christendom."[10] Furthermore, whereas O'Conor attributed the instability after the Viking invasion of Ireland to the failure of elective government, Warner cited the Irish "national disposition to quarrelling and contention".[11] Although Warner claimed it was impartial, historianJoep Leerssen called The History "at times a hybrid of, and at times a vacillation between, the Gaelic and English attitudes", whose contemporary references "read like an uncomfortable combination of a Patriot-style concern for the poor's living conditions, with an old-fashioned dislike for Irish sordidness".[10] Tobias Smollett wrote in The Critical Review after its publication that—[12]

Had this writer studied to [increase] the number of those who are but too apt to ridicule the Irish nation, he could not have done it more effectually than by telling us (as in fact he does) in his preface, that they employed the author of Warner's Ecclesiastical, to write their Civil History; that they invited him from London to Dublin for the purpose; and even paid him for the trouble ... the number of gentlemen in Ireland who, without detracting from [Warner's] merits, are, in every respect, greatly his superiors in every qualification of a good historian; particularly that necessary one of critical knowledge ...

A statue in Trim, County Meath of Irish King Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill (r. 980–1002 & 1014–22), who "wore the collar of gold" from a Dane he had defeated in combat, as depicted in Moore's "Let Erin remember the days of old."

Warner had intended to publish a second volume, which would have covered up to the reign of Charles I (1625–49), but did not because the Irish House of Commons refused to fund it.[5] Leerssen argued that this experience did not much affect Warner's next book, the History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland (1767), which spanned from the 1641 Rebellion to the 1660 Restoration. Therein, he wrote, Warner kept "an impartial stance" and crtiticised the anti-Catholic penal laws enacted during the Protestant Ascendancy: "Warner does not deny Catholic guilt in the rebellion, but reduces the quantity of the outrages."[10] Regardless of the critique, according to politician and biographer Alfred Webb, writing in 1872, The History of Ireland, along with the History of the Rebellion were still being "often referred to", while Dunlop in 1899 called the latter "impartial and singularly accurate".[5][13]

The History of Ireland was especially read by Ireland's 'national poet' Thomas Moore, whose sentimental Irish Melodies (1808–34) discussed the prejudice faced by Irish Catholics and how accord may be reached with England. In fact, Moore cited it as the inspiration for two of the Melodies, "Rich and rare were the jewels she wore" and "Let Erin remember the days of old".[9][11] Warner wrote one critique of poetry himself, commenting on James Macpherson's purported poems from the Gaelic bard Ossian in a published 1762 letter to Lord Lyttelton.[14]

Warner contracted gout sometime in middle age, and dedicated his final work to its relief (A Full and Plain Account of the Gout, 1768). Biographer Alexander Chalmers lamented: "This was the most unfortunate of all his publications, for soon after imparting his cure for the gout he died of the disorder, and destroyed the credit of his system"; nevertheless, his Account was twice reprinted through 1772.[4][15]

Reception[edit]

Warner was reasonably well-connected in his time, having dedicated numerous of his works to aristocracy, including The History of Ireland to King George II.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ a b Before 1752, the calendar year in Great Britain began on 25 March and followed the Julian Calendar.
  2. ^ Many sources mistakenly cite Warner's education to having been at Jesus College, not Clare; according to Alumni Cantabrigienses, this is attributable to 'Cole'. Additionally, there is speculation about the origins of his LL.D., with Chalmers speculating it was at "some northern university." Another mistake could be the misspelling of the town of Rowde as 'Ronde'.

References[edit]

  1. ^ The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, Vol. XXXVIII. London: St John's Gate. 1768. pp. 451, 495. ISBN 978-0243890705.
  2. ^ a b Venn, John Archibald (1954). Alumni Cantabrigienses, Pt. II, Vol. VI. Cambridge University Press. p. 355. ISBN 978-1345237290.
  3. ^ a b Venn, John (1927). Alumni Cantabrigienses Pt. I, Vol. IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 338. ISBN 978-9354041952.
  4. ^ a b c Chalmers, Alexander (1817). The General Biographical Dictionary Vol. 31. London: Nichols, Son & Bentley. pp. 155–58. ISBN 978-0548095645.
  5. ^ a b c d Dunlop, Robert (1899). Dictionary of National Biography Vol. 59. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 393. ISBN 978-0198653059.
  6. ^ Warner, Ferdinando (1755). Bolingbroke, or, a Dialogue on the Origin and Authority of Revelation. London: J. Payne. pp. v. ISBN 978-1385624807.
  7. ^ Warner, Ferdinando (1758). Memoirs of the Life of Sir Thomas More. London: L. Davis and C. Reymers. p. 159. ISBN 978-1273823503.
  8. ^ Allibone, Samuel Austin (1891). A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, Vol. III. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. p. 2584. ISBN 978-1397237965.
  9. ^ a b Deane, Seamus (1991). The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol. I. Derry/Londonderry: Field Day Publications. pp. 1054, 1060–61. ISBN 978-0393030464.
  10. ^ a b c Leerssen, Joep (1997). Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 334–36. ISBN 978-9027221988.
  11. ^ a b O'Halloran, Clare (2007). "The Triumph of 'Virtuous Liberty': Representations of the Vikings and Brian Boru in Eighteenth-Century Histories". Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr. 22: 151, 155–56 – via JSTOR.
  12. ^ Smollett, Tobias (1763). The Critical Review. London: A. Hamilton. p. 361. ISBN 978-1851967469.
  13. ^ Webb, Alfred (1878). A Compendium of Irish Biography. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. p. 549. ISBN 978-0331648348.
  14. ^ Warner, Ferdinando (1762). Remarks on the History of Fingal, and Other Poems of Ossian. London: H. Payne and W. Cropley. p. 4. ISBN 978-1170425237.
  15. ^ Stewart, Bruce. "Ferdinando Warner". Ricorso. Retrieved 8 May 2024.

https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/RevFerdinandoWarner.php https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Warner,_Ferdinando http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/w/Warner_F/life.htm#life https://archive.org/details/fielddayantholog01dean/page/1056/mode/2up?view=theater

https://archive.org/details/criticaldictiona03alliuoft/page/2584/mode/2up?q=ferdinandohttps://archive.org/details/mereirishfiorgha0000leer/page/336/mode/2up?view=theater&q=ferdinandohttps://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bFpMAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015020066547&seq=541&q1=ferdinando

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