The Lucas Affair

Dr. Charles Lucas (1713-1771) was a leading Irish opposition politician during the middle years of the 18th century. He has been neglected due to the more dramatic events of the later eighteenth century but his misunderstood role as a precursor to those events (a Dublin Parliament, revolt and risings) needs to be understood and his politics reassessed. The present monograph deals with the reform of the Dublin Corporation after 1741, Lucas as a candidate for a parliamentary seat in the Dublin by-election of 1748-49, his enforced exile after 1749 as a result of his anti-English propaganda, his return to Ireland in 1760 and his final years as one of Dublin City’s MPs. This publication will be the first substantial biographical and political study Lucas in over a century. Hitherto historians have dealt with Lucas as an anti-Catholic bigot and active municipal deal maker and profiteer. This view is challenged by the author and a new look is taken at Lucas’s ideas and his critical attitude towards British rule. Also discussed is Lucas’s interest in the theatre, reform of the drugs trade and his later career as a physician.