Thomas Davis

Thomas Osborne Davis (14 October 1814 – 16 September 1845) was an Irish writer; with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, a founding editor of The Nation, the weekly organ of what came to be known as the Young Ireland movement. While embracing the common cause of a representative, national government for Ireland, Davis took issue with the nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell by arguing for the common ("mixed") education of Catholics and Protestants and by advocating for Irish as the national language. Early life Thomas Davis was born on 14 October 1814, in Mallow, County Cork, fourth and last child of James Davis, a Welsh surgeon in the Royal Artillery based for many years in Dublin, and an Irish mother. His father died in Exeter a month before his birth, en route to serve in the Peninsular War. His mother was Protestant, but also related to the Chiefs of Clan O'Sullivan of Beare, members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland. His mother had enough money to live on her own and moved back to Dublin in 1818, taking up residence at 67 Lower Baggot Street in 1830, where Davis lived until his death in 1845. He attended school in Lower Mount Street, then went to Trinity College, Dublin. He became auditor of the College Historical Society, and graduated in 1835 with a degree in Logic. From 1836 to 1838, he studied law in London and Europe; although he qualified as a lawyer in 1838, he never practiced. Cultural nationalist Davis has been seen as an early exponent in Ireland of what has since been understood as cultural nationalism. In contrast to the Painite republicanism of the 1790s, and to the mix of Benthamite utilitarianism and Catholic devotionalism that characterised O'Connell's leadership of the national movement, Davis sought inspiration in the study of Gaelic civilisation, Christian and pre-Christian.