George Henry Moore

George Henry Moore (1 March 1810 – 19 April 1870) was an Irish politician, co-founder in the 1850s of the Tenant Right League, of the Catholic Defence Association and, as the Member for Mayo in the United Kingdom Parliament, of the Independent Irish Party. Although an advocate of tenant rights, and renowned for his relief efforts during the Great Famine, at the time of his death in 1870 Moore was defending his rights as a landowner against an oath-bound tenant society, the Ribbonmen. Family George Henry Moore was born 1 March 1810 in Moore Hall, Ballyglass, County Mayo, the eldest of three sons born to Louisa Moore (née Browne), granddaughter of John Browne, 1st Earl of Altamont and George Moore (1770–1840), landowner and historian, the son of a wealthy merchant. In the rebellion year of 1798, an uncle, John Moore, was named President of the Government of the Province of Connaught in Castlebar by General Humbert during its brief occupation by the French. The Moores were originally English Protestant gentry but became Catholic when John Moore married a Roman Catholic, Jane Lynch Athy of Galway, and when their son, George, married Katherine de Kilikelly (a.k.a. Kelly), an Irish-Spanish Catholic, in 1765. Horse racing gentry Moore was educated in England at St Mary's Catholic preparatory school in Oscott, near Birmingham, before entering Christ's College, Cambridge in 1827. Unable as a Catholic to take a degree, he spent most of his time gambling and playing billiards. Sent to London in 1830 to study law, he soon fell heavily into debt from gambling and so was recalled again to attend to the family estate of 12,000 acres.