dying suddenly at his house in Dublin on 13 April 1885.
In the list of Irish chancellors of the nineteenth century Sullivan is one of the most eminent. But he was more distinguished as a statesman than as a judge. His thorough knowledge of Ireland, combined with the courage, firmness, and decision of his character, qualified him to be what during the period of his chancellorship he was—an active champion of law and order throughout the country. Sullivan was also a man of varied accomplishments and scholarly tastes. Through life he was an ardent book-collector, and at his death had amassed one of the most valuable private libraries in the kingdom. Part of this library, when sold by auction in 1890, realised 11,000l. Besides being a sound classical scholar, he was a skilled linguist, and familiar with German, French, Italian, and Spanish literature.
Sullivan married, on 24 Sept. 1850, Bessie Josephine, daughter of Robert Bailey of Cork, by whom he had issue four sons and one daughter.
[Burke's Baronetage; private information.]
SULLIVAN, FRANCIS STOUGHTON (1719–1776), jurist, the son of Francis Sullivan, was born at Galway in 1719. He was educated at Waterford and subsequently at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered in 1731 as a boy of twelve. His academic career was most successful, and he achieved the unprecedented distinction of gaining a fellowship at nineteen in 1738. In the year following his vote at a parliamentary election for his university was disallowed by a committee of the House of Commons on the ground of his being a minor. In 1750 Sullivan became regius professor of law in the university of Dublin, and in 1761 professor of feudal and English law. He enjoyed a very high reputation as a jurist, and his book, entitled ‘An Historical Treatise on the Feudal Law, and the Constitution and Laws of England, with a Commentary on Magna Charta’ (London, 1772, 4to; 2nd edit. 1776; Portland, U.S.A. 1805, 2 vols. 8vo), was long recognised as an authority. Sullivan died at Dublin in 1776.
His son, William Francis Sullivan (1756–1830), born in Dublin in 1756, was educated for the church at Trinity College, but entered the navy upon his father's death, and served through the American war. In 1783 he settled in England. He produced a farce called ‘The Rights of Man’ (printed in the ‘Thespian Magazine,’ 1792); ‘The Flights of Fancy,’ a miscellaneous collection of poems, epigrams, and trifles, Leeds, 1792, 8vo; ‘The Union and Loyalty, or the long-threatened French Invasion,’ a patriotic poem, London, 1803, several editions; and ‘Pleasant Stories,’ London, 1818, 12mo. He died in 1830.
[Stubbs's Hist. of the University of Dublin; Todd's List of Graduates of Dublin University; College Calendars.]
SULLIVAN, LUKE (d. 1771), engraver and miniature-painter, was born in co. Louth, his father being a groom in the service of the Duke of Beaufort. Showing artistic talent, he was enabled by the duke's patronage to obtain instruction, and Strutt states that he became a pupil of Thomas Major [q. v.]; but he was certainly Major's senior, and it is more probable that they were fellow-students under the French engraver Le Bas, whose style that of Sullivan much resembles. His earliest work was a view of the battle of Culloden (after A. Heckel, 1746), and soon afterwards he was engaged as an assistant by Hogarth, for whom he engraved the celebrated plate of the ‘March to Finchley,’ published in 1750; also his ‘Paul before Felix,’ 1752, and his frontispiece to Kirby's ‘Perspective,’ 1754. Subsequently Sullivan engraved a fine plate of the ‘Temptation of St. Antony’ (after D. Teniers), which he dedicated to the Duke of Beaufort. In 1759 he published a set of six views of noblemen's seats, viz. Oatlands, Wilton, Ditchley, Cliefden, Esher, and Woburn—all drawn and engraved by himself. Sullivan practised miniature-painting with considerable ability, and from 1764 to 1770 exhibited portraits with the Incorporated Society, of which he was a director. He led a disreputable life, and died at the White Bear tavern in Piccadilly early in 1771.
[Strutt's Dict. of Engravers; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers in Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 33405.]
SULLIVAN, OWEN (1700?–1784), Irish poet, called in Irish Eoghan Ruadh, or Red-haired Sullivan, was born about 1700 in Slieve Luachra, co. Kerry, and was one of the chief jacobite poets of the south of Ireland. Poetry proved inadequate to sustain him, and he earned a living as an itinerant potato-digger, always continuing the studies which he had begun in a hedge school. The potato-digger, resting in a farm-kitchen, interposed with success in a classical dispute between a parish priest and the farmer's son, who had returned from a French college. The farmer set him up in a school at Annagh, near Charleville, but after a time he fell in love with Mary Casey,
