Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/319

 speech of three and three-quarter hours, is generally considered to have been O'Connell's finest forensic display. This and the other speeches at the trial were published with a preface in 1813 under the title ‘Trial of John Magee,’ &c. (see also Ann. Reg. 1813, pp. 269–274; Select Speeches of O'Connell. On 3 Feb. 1814, John Magee, junior, was again convicted of libel, he having published in his paper certain resolutions of the Roman catholics of Kilkenny. He was sentenced on 4 Aug. to a fine of 1,000l. and imprisonment for six months, to commence from the expiration of his former term (''Gent. Mag''. 1814, i. 189).

(d. 1866), a younger son, was brought up as a merchant, but (probably in 1815) began to conduct the ‘Dublin Evening Post.’ The line he took was so conciliatory to the government that he appears to have been refunded part of the money paid in fines by his brother. In December 1815 he obtained from Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman damages to the amount of 977l. 13s. 10d. with costs, the latter having induced him to publish an incorrect account of a trial—O'Dogherty v. O'Mullan and others—on account of which Magee had had to pay 500l. damages (Trial of an Action for Deceit, Dublin, 1816). James Magee, who became a Dublin police-magistrate, died in September 1866 (, Ireland before the Union, p. 148).



MAGEE, MARTHA MARIA (d. 1846), foundress of the Magee College, was born, of parents named Stewart, at Lurgan, co. Armagh, where her family had been long settled. She married William Magee, who on 12 Sept. 1780 had been ordained presbyterian minister of First Lurgan. By his death on 9 July 1800 she was left with her two sons in narrow circumstances. Both her sons entered the army, one as an ensign, the other as army surgeon; they died in early manhood, one from the result of an accident, the other, in India, of hydrophobia. Subsequently Mrs. Magee, who had been dependent on the presbyterian widows' fund and her own otherwise unaided exertions, was enriched by inheriting a fortune accumulated by her two brothers, both military men—one of them a colonel in the Indian army. She removed from Lurgan to Dublin, where she lived very quietly, but contributed to charitable and religious objects on a munificent scale. At first connected with a presbyterian church in Dublin, she attended for a time the services of the (then) established church, but ultimately became a member of Usher's Quay presbyterian congregation. She died in Dublin on 22 June 1846, leaving no near relative.

By her will Mrs. Magee left 25,000l. to the Irish presbyterian mission in India, 5,000l. to the foreign mission, 5,000l. to the home mission, the reversion of 5,000l. to the Usher's Quay female orphan school, 1,350l. to a new presbyterian church on Ormond Quay, to the erection of which she had largely contributed, and 20,000l. in trust for the erection and endowment of a college for the education of the Irish presbyterian ministry. This last bequest led to a protracted and stormy controversy, which was only settled by a chancery suit. The general assembly, led by, D.D. [q. v.], wished to apply the funds to an exclusively theological college in Belfast; the trustees favoured the establishment of a college in Londonderry, with full curriculum in arts and theology. In April 1851 Master Brooke gave a judgment upholding the position of the trustees. The Rev. Richard Dill, one of the three original trustees, who died on 8 Dec. 1858, left some 15,000l. for the endowment of two chairs and two bursaries; another trustee, John Brown, D.D., of Aghadowey (d. 27 March 1873), gave 2,000l.; and a benefaction was received from the Irish Society. In October 1865 the Magee College, Londonderry, was opened, having seven endowed chairs. In 1881 its three theological professors were incorporated by royal charter with the seven professors in the assembly's college, Belfast, as ‘The Presbyterian Theological Faculty, Ireland,’ with power to grant degrees in divinity.



MAGEE, WILLIAM (1766–1831), archbishop of Dublin, born at Enniskillen, co. Fermanagh, on 18 March 1766, was third child of John Magee (d. 1799), by his wife Jane Glasgow, a wealthy presbyterian, and was grandson of William Magee. The family was of Scottish origin. His father