Richard Graves (reverend)
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The Very Rev. Richard Graves (1763-1829) D.D., M.R.I.A., S.F.T.C.D. was Dean of Ardagh, County Cork, Ireland.
[edit] Biography
Richard Graves was born at Kilfannan, County Limerick on 1 October, 1763. He was the youngest son of The Rev. James Graves (1710-1783), "an accurate and well read scholar with a taste for poetry", by his wife Jane (1719-1810), daughter of The Rev. Thomas Ryder, Rector of Mitchelstown, Co. Cork.
Graves was educated at Trinity College, Dublin from 1780 to 1784, and elected a scholar in 1782. He obtained a Fellowship at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1786, later becoming a Senior Fellow.
Graves is best remembered as the author of Graves on the Pentateuch, an important scholarly book looking at the origins of the Jews, published in 1807, when he was serving as Chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond.
He was a Member of the Royal Irish Academy; Donellan Lecturer in 1797 and 1801; Archbishop King's lecturer in 1799 and 1805; Professor of Laws (1809); Regius Professor of Greek (1810); Rector of St. Michael's Church, Dublin (1815); Regius Professor of Divinity (1819); Professor of Divinity at the University of Dublin (1813) and was consecrated Dean of Ardagh in Co. Cork (1813), in which position he died. In Dublin he had kept a residence on Harcourt Street, and when in Co. Cork he lived at Raheny.
On 1 August, 1787 he married Elizabeth Mary (1767-1827), the eldest daughter of The Rev. James Drought (1738-1820) D.D., S.F.T.C.D., of Ballyboy (known as Ridgemount House), King's County, by his wife Elizabeth Maria (died 1797), daughter of The Rev. John Campbell (1724-1772) D.D., of Liston Hall and Fairfield, Vicar-General of Tuam (Co. Galway), and a first cousin of the 5th Duke of Argyll. Richard and Eliza were the parents of nine children.
Their marriage took place privately for peculiar reasons. At that time Fellows of Trinity College were liable to be deprived of their fellowships if the fact of their marriage were officially brought before the heads of the university. Hence, when after many years in 1813, Richard Graves resigned his fellowship for a professorship (of Divinity) and the Deanery of Ardagh, James Drought wrote to his daughter (20th February, 1813),
"My apprehensions are now over. If you had known your perilous situation, my dear Eliza’s life would have been shortened by constant anxiety. My apprehension of the interference of the visitors made me refuse to be present at your marriage, because, though the visitors could not legally force Graves to accuse himself, they could force me to betray the secret."
The Rev. Richard Sinclair Brooke wrote that Richard Graves "was a learned but rather ponderous preacher". "A man of considerable learning and earnest piety", was how Charles J. Abbey described Graves. After the death of his wife on 22nd March, 1827, Graves was much shaken, dying two years later on 29th March, 1829. He left a generous will, and was interred in the family plot at Donnybrook.
In 1866 a memorial window of stained glass was placed in memory of him in the Chapel of Trinity College, and the subjects selected were illustrations of the Pentateuch, in allusion to his work.
