George Noble Plunkett (3 December 1851 – 12 March 1948) was an Irish nationalist politician, museum director and biographer, who served as Minister for Fine Arts from 1921 to 1922, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1919 to 1921 and Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann in January 1919. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1927. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Roscommon North from 1917 to 1922.
He was the father of Joseph Plunkett, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916, as well as George Oliver Plunkett, Fiona Plunkett and John (Jack) Plunkett who also fought during the rising and subsequently during the Irish revolutionary period.
Early life and family
Plunkett was part of the prominent Irish Norman Plunkett family, which included Saint Oliver Plunkett (1629–1681). George's relatives included the Earls of Fingall—his great-grandfather George Plunkett (1750–1824) was "in the sixth degree removed in relationship" (fifth cousin) to the 8th Earl of Fingall—and the Barons of Dunsany, whose line had conformed to the Church of Ireland in the eighteenth century. One of that line, Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett, had served as Unionist MP for South Dublin (1892–1900) but became a convinced Home Rule supporter by 1912 as an alternative to the partition of Ireland, and served as a member of the first Irish Free State Senate (1922–1923).
Born in 1851 at 1 Aungier Street, Dublin, Plunkett was the son of Patrick Joseph Plunkett (1817–1918), a builder, and Elizabeth Noble (Plunkett). The family income allowed Plunkett to attend school in Nice in France, then at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College Dublin. In Dublin he studied Renaissance and medieval art, among other topics, ultimately graduating in 1884. Plunkett spent much time abroad, primarily in Italy.
Titles
In 1884, he was created a Papal Count by Pope Leo XIII for donating money and property to the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary, a Roman Catholic nursing order. He was a Knight Commander of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre.
Marriage and children
That year he married Josephine Cranny (1858–1944), and they had seven children: Philomena (Mimi, 1886), Joseph (1887), Moya (Maria, c. 1889), Geraldine (Gerry, c. 1891), George Oliver (1895), Fiona (c. 1896) and John (Jack, c. 1897). From 1907 to 1916, he was curator of the National Museum in Dublin.
Political career
1890s
Plunkett, a Home Rule supporter for many years, took the Parnellite side when that party split. On their behalf he contested the parliamentary constituencies of Mid Tyrone in 1892 and St. Stephen's Green, Dublin in 1895 and 1898 – missing election in the latter contest by just 138 votes.
1910s
Plunkett's interest in politics likely came mostly through his sons Joseph, George and John, and though it was following the execution of Joseph that he became radicalised, it is likely that Joseph swore him into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) some time before the Rising. His daughter Fiona, in an RTÉ interview in 1966, described how in the months before the Rising he went to Switzerland on behalf of the IRB leaders to try to make contacts with the Germans. Joseph, George and Jack were all sentenced to death following the Easter Rising, but George and Jack had their sentences commuted to 10 years' penal servitude, and both were released in 1917. At least two of his daughters, Philomena and Fiona, were involved in preparations for the Rising. He was expelled from the Royal Dublin Society for his sons' role in the Rising.
Three weeks before the Rising Plunkett was dispatched to the Vatican to seek a private audience with Pope Benedict XV in the hope of getting the Pope's blessings. Plunkett reports that the Pope was moved by the religious symbolism of staging the Rising on Easter Sunday and persuaded him to give his "Apostolic Benediction" upon the rebels. When Plunkett once again travelled to the Vatican in 1920 Benedict XV congratulated Plunkett on his cabinet position.
The new politics was indebted to its youth wing's vocal support: they gathered in numbers at Carrick railway station to cheer on Plunkett's campaign. Amongst the crowds were the women of Cumann na mBan, "a big percentage of youth...large numbers of young men...[and] more curious still for those days, young women."