signed Melanchthon. 2. ‘A Letter from an Irish Dignitary to an English Clergyman on the subject of Tithes in Ireland’ (anon.), 1807; reprinted 1822. 3. A letter to Canning on his proposed motion for catholic emancipation (anon.), 1812. 4. ‘A Letter to the Earl of Fingal, by the Author of the Letter to Mr. Canning’ (anon.), 1813.
[Gent. Mag. 1783 pt. ii. p. 978, 1822 pt. i. p. 471, 1823 pt. i. p. 276; Cotton's Fasti Eccl. Hib. ii. 288–9, iii. 123–4, v. 159; Cornwallis Correspondence, ii. 417–18; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. vii. 55; Cogan's Meath Diocese, iii. 355–7; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 129–30; Webb's Irish Biography; Beloe's Sexagenarian, ii. 170–4; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. ii. 242, iii. 130–1; Almon's Anecdotes, i. 95–100; Halkett and Laing's Anon. Literature, i. 484, 487, 1004, 1016, 1355, 1394, 2369; Georgian Era, i. 516–518.]
O'BRAEIN, TIGHEARNACH (d. 1088), Irish annalist, belonged to a Connaught family which produced before him an abbot of Clonmacnoise, Donnchadh, who died in 987, and after him Dermot, coarb of St. Comman (d. 1170); Gilla Isa, prior of Ui Maine (d. 1187); Stephen, erenach of Mayo (d. 1231); Tipraide, coarb of St. Comman (d. 1232); and Gillananaemh, erenach of Roscommon (d. 1234); but which does not seem to have been a literary clan. He became abbot of Clonmacnoise, and is therefore called comharba Chiarain, coarb or successor of St. Ciaran (516–549) [q. v.], and was also abbot of Roscommon or coarb of St. Comman. Clonmacnoise, of which considerable ruins remain, stands on flat ground close to the left bank of the Shannon, and had produced several learned men before his time. He there wrote annals in which Irish events are synchronised with those of Europe from the earliest times to his own day. These were afterwards continued by Augustin MacGradoigh [q. v.] There is a copy of these annals, written in the time of the contemporaries of the original author, in the Bodleian Library, which also contains an ancient fragment. Three copies exist in the Royal Irish Academy, and one in Trinity College, Dublin. The British Museum has two inferior copies. The annals are in Latin, and the critical discernment of the author has often been praised, because he dates accurate history in Ireland from the founding of Emhain Macha, co. Armagh, in B.C. 289. He quotes Bæda, as well as Josephus, Eusebius, and Orosius, and gives in Irish part of a poem by Maelmura [q. v.] He died in 1088, and was buried at Clonmacnoise. Dr. O'Conor printed a text of Tighearnach in his ‘Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores,’ but the inaccuracies are so numerous that in quoting Tighearnach a reference to one of the manuscripts is necessary.
[Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. O'Donovan, vol. ii. Dublin, 1851; O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores; Manuscripts in Bodleian Library, Rawlinson, Nos. 488, 502; O'Curry's Lectures on Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History, Dublin, 1873; Facsimiles of National MS. of Ireland, vol. i.]
O'BRIEN, BARNABAS, sixth Earl of Thomond (d. 1657), was the second son of Donough O'Brien, fourth earl of Thomond [q. v.], by his second wife, Elizabeth, fourth daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, eleventh earl of Kildare [q. v.] His elder brother, Henry, fifth earl of Thomond, who succeeded to the earldom on his father's death in 1624, was a strenuous adherent of the government in Ireland, was warmly commended by Strafford for his loyalty, and died without male issue in 1639. Barnabas entered the Irish parliament in 1613 as member for Coleraine. In 1634 he was returned for Clare as colleague of his uncle, Daniel O'Brien, afterwards first Viscount Clare [q. v.]; but, being compelled to go to England for a time, a writ was issued for a fresh election. In 1639 he succeeded his brother as sixth earl, and applied for the governorship of Clare, which Strafford refused him on the ground that his conduct differed entirely from that of his brother, and that he deserved nothing. Nevertheless he was lord-lieutenant of Clare in 1640-1. When the Irish rebellion broke out he attempted to maintain neutrality, in spite of the support given by his kinsmen to the confederation (Carte, Ormonde, ii. 146), and did not sign the oath of association in 1641. He lived quietly on his lands in Clare, and was in frequent communication with Ormonde. In 1644 the council of the confederation forbade Thomond's agents to collect his rents, and even formed a scheme for seizing his chief stronghold at Bunratty, which his uncle, Sir Daniel O'Brien, was appointed to carry out. Thereupon Thomond, finding that no troops were forthcoming wherewith to defend Bunratty Castle, entered into negotiations with the parliamentarians, in spite of Glamorgan's remonstrances. At the instigation of his kinsman, Morough O'Brien, first earl of Inchiquin [q. v.], he admitted a parliamentary garrison to the castle, and went to live in England (Bloody News from Ireland, 1646, pp. 4-5; Lodge, Desid. Cur. Hib. ii. 193-4, 322).
Thomond soon joined the king at Oxford, and received, on 3 May 1645, a patent creating him Marquis of Billing in Northamptonshire (Baker, Northamptonshire, i. 20-1). But the patent never passed under the great seal.
