Denis Taaffe

Denis Taaffe or Dennis Taafe (bapt. 1759, Clogher, County Louth; d. 1813, Dublin) was an Irish political writer, also known under the pseudonym Julius Vindex.

Educated in Franciscan colleges, Taaffe was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1782. He converted to the Church of Ireland by 1788, but returned to Catholicism shortly after. He was soon trying to scrape a living as a tutor and pamphleteer. A supporter of the French Revolution and the United Irishmen, Taaffe claimed to have fought in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. He edited a patriotic newspaper, The Shamroc, and his pamphlets against the 1800 Act of Union saw him arrested for seditious libel in 1799. He was a founder member and first secretary of the Gaelic Society of Dublin in 1806, established to research and revive traditions of Irish literature.[1]

Works
  • The probability, causes, and consequences of a union between Great Britain and Ireland, 1798
  • Vindication of the Irish nation, 1802
  • An impartial history of Ireland from the period of the English invasion to the present time, 4 vols., 1809–11. Available at Internet Archive

References
  1. John Thomas Gilbert, A history of the city of Dublin, 1854, p. 96


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