Frederick Lucas

For other uses, see Frederick Lucas (disambiguation).

Frederick Lucas (30 March 1812 – 22 October 1855) was a British religious polemicist and founder of The Tablet. His brother Samuel Lucas was a newspaper editor and abolitionist.

Biography

He was born in Westminster, the second son of Samuel Hayhurst Lucas, a London corn-merchant, who was a member of the Society of Friends. He was educated at a Quaker school in Darlington, and then at University College, London. He studied law at Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1835. Lucas converted to Catholicism in 1839.^[1][2]

In 1840, Lucas founded The Tablet, published in London, a progressive international Catholic weekly newspaper, just 11 years before the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. It is the second oldest surviving weekly journal in Britain after The Spectator (which was founded in 1828). It has an international readership of over 55,000.

After establishing the Irish Tenant Right League with Charles Gavan Duffy in 1850, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Meath in 1852. After failing in a complaint-mission to Rome on behalf of the league,^[3] Lucas died in October 1855 at Staines, Middlesex, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.

Notes

1. Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Frederick Lucas" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
2. Cooper, Thompson; rev. Josef L. Altholz (2004). "Frederick Lucas". In Altholz, Josef L (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/17127. Retrieved 25 January 2011. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. Hickey, D.J. & Doherty , J.E., A new Dictionary of Irish History from 1800, Tenant League pp.466-7, Gill & MacMillan (2003) ISBN 0-7171-2520-3

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Frederick Lucas

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Henry Grattan Matthew Corbally	Member of Parliament for Meath 1852 – 1855 With: Matthew Corbally	Succeeded by Edward McEvoy Matthew Corbally