United Irishmen. Of this society he was one of the leaders; he was several times its chairman in 1792 and 1793, and as an eloquent writer was chosen to draw up most of its early addresses and proclamations (for a list of these, see Madden, Lives of the United Irishmen, 2nd series, p. 267). He was tried for sedition and acquitted on 26 June 1794, after an eloquent defence by Curran, but after that date he seems to have withdrawn from the more active projects of his friends and from complicity in their plots, and he was not again molested by the authorities. But his beautiful lyrics, published first in the ‘Press’ and in the ‘Harp of Erin,’ show how deeply he sympathised with his old associates, and they were soon famous throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. In 1791 he published his poem, ‘To the Memory of William Orr,’ sometimes called the ‘Wake of William Orr,’ which was followed in 1795 by ‘When Erin first rose,’ and in 1798 by ‘The Wail of the Women after the Battle’ and ‘Glendalough.’ These are the most famous of Drennan's lyrics, and on them his fame chiefly rests. He is also claimed as the first Irish poet who ever called Ireland by the name of the Emerald Isle. The troubles of 1798 brought his political career to a close, and on 3 Feb. 1800 he married an English lady of some wealth, and in 1807 left Dublin altogether. He settled in Belfast, but gave up practice and devoted himself solely to literary pursuits. He founded the Belfast Academical Institution, and started the ‘Belfast Magazine,’ to which he largely contributed. In 1815 he published his famous lyrics in a volume as ‘Fugitive Pieces,’ and in 1817 a translation of the ‘Electra’ of Sophocles. After a quiet middle age, he died at Belfast on 5 Feb. 1820, and was buried in that city, being carried to the grave by six protestants and six catholics. Drennan was possessed of real poetical genius, but his fame was overshadowed by that of Moore, to whom many of Drennan's best poems have been frequently attributed.
[Madden's Lives of the United Irishmen, 2nd ser. 2nd ed. pp. 262–70; Madden's History of Irish Periodical Literature; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Glendalloch and other poems, with a life of the author by his sons, J. S. and W. Drennan.]
DREW, EDWARD (1542?–1598), recorder of London, eldest son of Thomas Drew (b. 1519), by his wife Eleanora, daughter of William Huckmore of the county of Devon, appears to have been born at the family seat of Sharpham, in the parish of Ashprington, near Totnes, and spent some time at the university. An entry in the register of Exeter College, Oxford, records the payment in 1557 by a Mr. Martyn of 2s. for the expenses of Drew, a scholar of the college (Register, ed. Boase, p. 201). He does not appear to have taken a degree, but proceeding to London devoted himself to the study of the law, and was admitted a student of the Inner Temple in November 1560, being then probably of the usual age of eighteen. He obtained a lucrative practice both in London and in his native county, and rapidly attained high legal distinctions. He became a master of the bench of the Inner Temple in 1581, and Lent reader in 1584; his shield of arms with this date still remains in Inner Temple Hall.
In Michaelmas term 1589 Drew, with seven other counsel, was appointed serjeant-at-law. Two of his associates in the honour of the coif (John Glanvil and Thomas Harris) were like him natives of Devon, and Fuller has preserved a popular saying about the three serjeants, current in their day, that ‘One gained, spent, gave as much as the other two’ (Worthies, 1811, i. 283). Drew seems to answer best to the first description, his success in pleading enabling him to purchase large estates in Combe Raleigh, Broadhembury, Broad Clist, and elsewhere. In 1586 he was co-trustee, with other eminent lawyers, of certain manors belonging to George Cary of Devonshire. He was elected member of parliament for Lyme Regis in October 1584, and for Exeter in 1586 and again in November 1588; in 1592 he was appointed recorder of Exeter. On 17 June in the same year he succeeded Chief-justice Coke as recorder of London, and became M.P. for the city. A speech of the usual fulsome kind is preserved in Nichols's ‘Progresses of Queen Elizabeth’ (iii. 228), made by Drew to the queen in 1593 when presenting the newly elected lord mayor, Sir Cuthbert Buckle, for her majesty's approval. On 27 March 1594 Drew resigned the recordership, having been appointed justice of assize and gaol delivery for Essex and Kent, and was presented by the city for his faithful service with ‘a basin and ewer of silver-gilt containing one hundred ounces.’
Drew became queen's serjeant in 1596, and was much employed about this time by the privy council in the examination of political prisoners and in various legal references (State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1591–4, 1595–7). Risdon, his countryman and contemporary, writing some fifteen years after his death, says that his ‘knowledge and counsel won him a general love’ (Surv. of Devon, 1811, p. 43). His death appears to have been sudden, and is ascribed by John Chamberlain, in a letter dated 4 May 1598, to gaol fever caught while
