Peter Burrowes
Irish politician and barrister
Peter Burrowes (1753–8 November 1841) was an Irish barrister and politician.
Life
He was born in Portarlington, County Laois in 1753. At Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered in 1774, he distinguished himself in the debates of the College Historical Society. While still a student at the Middle Temple, in 1784, he published a pamphlet on Catholic Emancipation, which introduced him to the notice of Flood and the other leading Irish patriots. In the following year he was called to the bar, where he rapidly acquired a good practice. In 1790, along with Wolfe Tone and others, he founded a society in Dublin for the discussion of literary and political subjects. In a duel which he fought at Kilkenny in 1794 with Somerset Butler, his life was only saved by the ball striking against some coppers which he happened to have in his waistcoat pocket.
Though he did not share in the more extreme views of the United Irishmen, he was a zealous supporter of all the most important measures of reform. Along with thirteen other king's counsel, on 9 December 1798, he protested against the proposals for a union with Great Britain, and after being elected member for Enniscorthy in February 1800 he continued, as long as the Irish parliament existed, persistently to oppose the measure. In 1803 he acted as the counsel of Robert Emmet, and in 1811 he was employed to defend the Catholic delegates.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Peter Burrowes” as irish politician and barrister. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as irish politician and barrister. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7173079. VIAF identifies the subject as 315533330. The Library of Congress control number is n85351779. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1753, 1841, 1774 and 1784.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Burrowes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.