life, painted on ivory by Samuel Drummond, hangs in Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon.
W. H. Ireland's chief publications in verse were ‘Ballads in Imitation of the Antient,’ chiefly on historical subjects, and ‘Mutius Scævola,’ an historical drama in blank verse (both in 1801); under the pseudonym of Paul Persius, ‘A Ballade wrotten on the Feastynge and Merrimentes of Easter Maunday laste paste’ (1802); ‘Rhapsodies,’ by the ‘author of the Shaksperian MSS.’ (1803); ‘The Angler, a didactic poem by Charles Clifford,’ 1804, 12mo; ‘All the Blocks, or an Antidote to All the Talents,’ by Flagellum, and ‘Stultifera Navis, or the Modern Ship of Fools,’ anon., both in 1807; ‘The Fisher Boy’ and ‘The Sailor Boy,’ narrative-poems, after the manner of Bloomfield, both issued under the pseudonym of ‘H. C., Esq.,’ 1809 (2nd edit. of the latter, 1822); ‘Neglected Genius, a poem illustrating the untimely and unfortunate fate of many British Poets,’ 1812, chiefly treating of Chatterton, with imitations of the Rowley MSS. and of Butler's ‘Hudibras;’ ‘Jack Junk, or the Sailor's Cruise on Shore,’ by the author of ‘Sailor Boy,’ 1814; ‘Chalcographiminia, or the Portrait-Collector and Printseller's Chronicle,’ by Satiricus Scriptor, 1814, in which he is said to have been assisted by Caulfield, and ‘Scribbleomania, or the Printer's Devil's Polichronicon,’ edited by ‘Anser Pen-drag-on, Esq.,’ 1815, 8vo.
His novels and romances included ‘The Abbess;’ ‘The Woman of Feeling,’ 1803, 4 vols. 12mo; ‘Gondez the Monk, a Romance of the Thirteenth Century,’ 4 vols. 1805; and ‘The Catholic, or Acts and Deeds of the Popish Church,’ 1826. ‘Les Brigands de l'Estramadure,’ published at Paris in 1823 (2 vols.), was described as translated from the English of W. H. Ireland. ‘Rizzio, or Scenes in Europe during the Sixteenth Century,’ was edited from Ireland's manuscript by G. P. R. James in 1849.
Other of his works were: ‘The Maid of Orleans,’ a translation of Voltaire's ‘Pucelle,’ 1822; ‘France for the last Seven Years,’ an attack on the Bourbons, 1822; ‘Henry Fielding's Proverbs,’ 1822 (?); ‘Memoir of a Young Greek Lady (Pauline Panam),’ an attack on the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, 1823 ‘Memoir of the Duke of Rovigo,’ 1823; ‘Memoirs of Henry the Great and of the Court of France,’ 1824; ‘The Universal Chronologist from the Creation to 1825,’ under the pseudonym of Henry Boyle, London, 1826; ‘Shaksperiana: Catalogue of all the Books, Pamphlets, &c., relating to Shakespeare’ (anon.), 1827; ‘History of Kent,’ 4 vols. 1828–34; ‘Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,’ 4 vols. 1828; ‘Louis Napoleon's Answer to Sir Walter Scott's “Life of Napoleon,”’ a translation, 1829; ‘Authentic Documents relating to the Duke of Reichstadt,’ 1832. In 1830 he produced a series of political squibs: ‘The Political Devil,’ ‘Reform,’ ‘Britannia's Cat o' Nine Tails,’ and ‘Constitutional Parodies.’
[Gent. Mag. 1800, pt. ii. pp. 901, 1000; Fraser's Mag. August 1860 (art. by T. J. Arnold); London Review, October 1860; Ingleby's Shakespeare, The Man and the Book, pt. ii. pp. 144 sq.; Prior's Life of Malone, pp. 222–7; W. H. Ireland's Authentic Account (1796), Confessions (1805), and Preface to Vortigern (1832); Genest's Account of the Stage, vii. 245 sq. For an account of contemporary pamphlets on the manuscripts controversy see R. W. Lowe's Bibliographical Account of Theatrical Literature. The story of the forgery is the subject of Mr. James Payn's novel, The Talk of the Town (1885). Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 30349–53 contain the elder Ireland's correspondence respecting the forgeries and a number of cuttings from contemporaneous newspapers. In the British Museum are also many specimens of the younger Ireland's forged documents and of his inscriptions on old books.]
IRELAND, alias Ironmonger, WILLIAM (1636–1679), Jesuit, born in 1636, was eldest son of William Ireland of Crofton Hall, Yorkshire, by Barbara, daughter of Ralph (afterwards Lord) Eure of Washingborough, Lincolnshire. He was sent at an early age to the English College at St. Omer, was admitted into the Society of Jesus 7 Sept. 1655, and made a professed father in 1673. After being for some years confessor to the Poor Clares at Gravelines, he was in 1677 sent to the English mission, and shortly afterwards became procurator of the province in London. On the night of 28 Sept. 1678 he was arrested by a body of constables, headed by Titus Oates in person, and carried before the privy council, together with Thomas Jenison, John Grove [q. v.], Thomas Pickering, and John Fenwick [q. v.] After examination by the privy council the prisoners were committed to Newgate, where Ireland appears to have undergone exceptionally severe treatment. He was tried at the Old Bailey sessions on 17 Dec. following, the charge against him being that, in addition to promoting the general plot, he had been present at a meeting held in William Harcourt's rooms on 19 Aug. 1678, when a plan for assassinating the king was discussed, and it was finally decided to 'snap him in his morning's walk at Newmarket.' Ireland attempted to prove an alibi, and in a journal written afterwards in Newgate he accounted for his absence from London on every day between 3 Aug. and 14 Sept. The trialoc-
