Page 9 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 9

contexts; in the history of the Bank of Ireland founded in 1784, of
which he was the first Governor; through several fine portraits of
him and his family by Hugh Douglas-Hamilton, the exhibition of
whose works I launched in the National Gallery in 2008; and
because he was the principal resident of Rathfarnham in Marlay
House, where he lived not far away from papermills along the
Dodder, one of which owned by the Mansergh family made the
paper on which Journals of the Irish House of Commons in the
1780s were printed. David La Touche was an MP in that body
known as Grattan’s Parliament, and all the La Touches except
for him voted against the Act of Union, which was injurious to the
capital’s banking interest. Notwithstanding that, half a dozen
family members served as MPs for all or part of the first 30 years
of the Union Parliament.

Jacqueline O’ Brien, the wife of Vincent, in her magnificent book
on the capital’s Georgian architecture co-authored with
Desmond Guinness, Dublin: A Grand Tour, records a wonderful
verse that served as a bank cheque drawn in favour of his wife
by Richard Whaley, who was the then owner of 86, St. Stephen’s
Green, now Newman House, once the headquarters of the
Catholic University, the precursor of UCD. The versified cheque
reads:

‘Mr La Touche,
Open your pouch,
And give unto my darling
Five hundred pounds sterling:
For which this will be your bailey,
Signed, Richard Chapell Whaley’.

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