Family and Education

b. c.1763, 1st s. of Richard Magenis, MP [I], of Waringstown, co. Down by 2nd w. Elizabeth, da. and coh. of Col. William Berkeley. educ. ?Westminster 1778. m. (1) 6 Sept. 1788, Lady Elizabeth Anne Cole (d. 26 Apr. 1807), da. of William, 1st Earl of Enniskillen [I], 5s. 4da. (2) 19 Apr. 1815, Elizabeth, da. of James Callender of Craigforth, Stirling (afterwards Sir James Campbell, Bt., of Ardkinglas), wid. of Col. George Dashwood, 1s. suc. fa. 1807.

Offices Held

MP [I] 1790-7.

Collector, Cavan 1797-1801; commr. of accts. [I] 1800-12.

Lt.-col. Fermanagh militia 1803.

Biography

The Magenis family, who claimed descent from the lords of Iveagh, became substantial landowners in counties Down and Antrim by purchase in the course of the 18th century. Magenis’s father sat for close boroughs in the Irish parliament and in 1789 became clerk of the ordnance. He supported the Union in exchange for a pension for his life to his eldest son Richard and church preferment for another.1

Magenis himself came in for Enniskillen on the interest of his father-in-law in 1790 and of his brother-in-law in 1812. Each time he gave a general support to government, who permitted his son and heir to succeed him as a commissioner of accounts, though they could not make him an efficient one.2 Magenis, who seldom had anything to say in debate except on such Irish questions as distillation, voted against Catholic relief, 2 Mar., 11 and 24 May 1813, 9 May 1817 and 3 May 1819, and appeared in the government divisions on such critical questions as the civil list, 8, 31 May 1815, the Duke of Cumberland’s establishment bill, 3 July 1815, the property tax, 18 Mar. 1816, the civil list, 6 May 1816, and Tierney’s censure motion, 18 May 1819. His only unusual gesture was to vote against Lord Cochrane’s expulsion from the House, 5 July 1814.3 In 1818 the Castle noted that he wished to be a trustee of the linen board, as his father had been, but objected that he was an absentee.4 He died 6 Mar. 1831.

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: P. J. Jupp

Notes

• 1. Belmore, Parl. Memoirs of Fermanagh, 73-74; G. C. Bolton, The Passing of the Irish Act of Union, 180-1; Sidmouth mss, memo on Irish Union engagements, 1801.
• 2. Add. 40290, f. 118.
• 3. Dundonald, Autobiog. (1860), ii. 371.
• 4. Add. 40298, f. 19.