Edward King, Viscount Kinsborough

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from Wikipedia Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough (16 November 1795 – 27 February 1837) was an Irish antiquarian who sought to prove that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were a Lost Tribe of Israel. His principal contribution was in making available facsimiles of ancient documents and some of the earliest explorers' reports on Pre-Columbian ruins and Maya civilisation.

He was the eldest son of George King, 3rd Earl of Kingston, Lord Kingsborough, the latter a Tory. He represented Cork County in parliament between 1818 and 1826 as a Whig.[1]

In 1831, Lord Kingsborough published the first volume of Antiquities of Mexico, a collection of copies of various Mesoamerican codices, including the first complete publication of the Dresden Codex. The exorbitant cost of the reproductions, which were often hand-painted, landed him in debtors' prison. These lavish publications represented some of the earliest published documentation of the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica, inspiring further exploration and research by John Lloyd Stephens and Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg in the early 19th century. They were the product of early theories about non-indigenous origins for Native American civilisations that are also represented in the Book of Mormon (1830) and myths about mound builders of Old World ancestry in North America.

Lord Kingsborough was imprisoned for debts, which he had taken responsibility on behalf of his father, and died in the Sheriff's Prison at Dublin of typhus on 27 February 1837,[1] aged 41, two years before he would have succeeded to his father's title. The last two volumes of Antiquities of Mexico were published posthumously.

The Codex Kingsborough is named after him.

Publications[edit] Antiquities of Mexico: comprising fac-similes of ancient Mexican paintings and hieroglyphics, preserved in the royal libraries of Paris, Berlin and Dresden, in the Imperial library of Vienna, in the Vatican library; in the Borgian museum at Rome; in the library of the Institute at Bologna; and in the Bodleian library at Oxford. Together with the Monuments of New Spain, by M. Dupaix: with their respective scales of measurement and accompanying descriptions. The whole illustrated by many valuable inedited manuscripts, by Augustine Aglio (9 vols.). London: A. Aglio (Vols. 1–5), R. Havell (Vols. 6–7), H.G. Bohn (Vols. 8–9). 1830–1848. OCLC 5852094. References[edit] ^ Jump up to: a b The Complete Peerage, Volume VII. St Catherine's Press. 1929. p. 300. Coe, Michael D. (1992). Breaking the Maya Code. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05061-9. OCLC 26605966. Wason, Charles William (1831). "Art. VIII.— Antiquities of Mexico; comprising Fac-similes of Ancient Mexican Paintings and Hieroglyphics, preserved in the Royal Libraries of Paris, Berlin and Dresden; in the Imperial Library of Vienna; in the Vatican Library; in the Borgian Museum at Rome; in the Library of the Institute at Bologna; and in the Bodleian Library at Oxford: together with the Monuments of New Spain, by M. Dupaix, with their respective Scales of Measurement, and accompanying Descriptions. The whole illustrated by many valuable inedited Manuscripts. By Augustus Aglio". The Monthly Review. From January to April inclusive, vol. 1. New and improved series. London: G. Henderson. pp. 253–274. OCLC 64054239. Wauchope, Robert (1975) [1962]. Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents: Myth and Method in the Study of the American Indians (Fifth impression ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-87635-7. OCLC 50928664. Whitmore, Sylvia D. (Spring 2009). "Lord Kingsborough and his Contribution to Ancient Mesoamerican Scholarship: The Antiquities of Mexico" (PDF online facsimile). The PARI Journal (San Francisco, CA: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute) 9 (4): pp.8–16. ISSN 1531-5398. OCLC 44780248. External links[edit] Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Viscount Kingsborough Family and Education b. 10 Nov. 1795,1 1st s. of George, 3rd earl of Kingston [I] (d. 1839), and Lady Helena Moore, da. of Stephen, 1st Earl Mountcashell [I]; bro. of Hon. Robert Henry King*. educ. Eton;2 Exeter, Oxf. 1814. unm. styled Visct. Kingsborough 1799-d. d.v.p. 27 Feb. 1837. Offices Held

Biography

Kingsborough, a man ‘of a retiring and studious disposition’, had been returned unopposed for county Cork in 1818 on the combined interest of the 3rd Earl of Shannon, a recent convert to the Whigs, and his father ‘Big George’, 3rd Earl of Kingston, who subsequently rallied to the Liverpool ministry.3 At the 1820 general election their electoral pact held firm and he was again returned unopposed.4 A mostly silent Member, who was increasingly absorbed in the study of Mexican antiquities, when present he offered general support to government, by whom his father was listed as having obtained an inspectorate of fisheries and requested a revenue surveyorship.5 He voted in defence of minister’s conduct towards Queen Caroline, 6 Feb. 1821. He divided for Catholic claims, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. He voted against revenue cuts, 6 Mar., repeal of the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., reductions to the duke of Clarence’s grant, 18 June, an opposition call for economy and retrenchment, 27 June 1821, and more extensive tax reductions, 21 Feb. 1822. He was in the majority against providing information on the plot to murder the Irish viceroy Lord Wellesley, 24 Mar., but in the minorities for Newport’s amendment to the Irish tithes bill, 19 June, and to limit the duration of the Irish insurrection bill, 8 July 1822. In his only known spoken intervention, he presented and endorsed a petition from Cove for repeal of the window tax, 1 May 1822.6 He voted against repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr. 1823. He divided for the usury laws repeal bill, 27 Feb. 1824. He voted for the Irish insurrection bill, 14 June 1824, but against suppression of the Catholic Association, 15, 21, 25 Feb. 1825; Peel, the home secretary, remarked that Kingston, ‘having written letters to me some time back accusing the government for not preventing the collection of rent and other evils of the Association, actually compelled his son ... to vote against the bill’.7 Kingsborough was given a vote of thanks at an aggregate meeting of county Cork Catholics that June.8 He voted for the duke of Cumberland’s annuity bill, 6 June 1825. He declined to attend the Association dinner for the ‘friends of civil and religious liberty’, 2 Feb. 1826.9 He divided against the emergency admission of foreign corn, 11 May 1826.

At the 1826 dissolution Kingsborough retired in favour of his younger brother Robert, citing ‘ill health’; the local press surmised that he ‘prefers the calm pursuits of literature to the troublesome career of a legislator’.10 Thereafter he set about completing his Antiquities of Mexico (1831), for which he had been employing a Spanish artist to copy manuscripts, including those he had first seen in the Bodleian while up at Oxford, since 1824.11 He signed a memorial to Wellesley for a new road between Cork and Limerick in 1827, and a county Cork Protestant declaration in support of Catholic emancipation in 1828.12 By 1830 he was a recluse, ‘too busy’, as he informed his fellow bibliophile Sir Thomas Phillips, ‘to make any engagements’.13 Following his father’s mental breakdown that year he assumed responsibility for the running of the family estates, which were so encumbered that they were placed in chancery. His allowance from the Irish lord chancellor was reputedly £6,000 a year, which he unsuccessfully tried to increase, and in February 1837 he went to debtors’ gaol, apparently ‘in the hope that this extremity would induce the chancellor to relax the purse strings’. It has been said that he was ‘imprisoned for a debt of his father, for which he had become security’ and ‘not from his own extravagance’; but the expenses of his book, which was published privately at an estimated total cost of £30,000, and his valuable collection of manuscripts, some of which he donated to the British Museum and Trinity College, Dublin, ‘far exceeded his own resources’. A few days after being imprisoned he developed typhus fever and was released.14 He died shortly thereafter. His vast library, comprising ancient manuscripts from all over the world, was sold at auction by an order of chancery in 1842.15

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Philip Salmon

Notes 1. IGI (Ireland); R.D. King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, 84. Oxford DNB gives 16 Nov.

2. King-Harman, 84.

3. Ibid; Add. 38287, f. 287.

4.Dublin Evening Post, 9, 11, 16 Mar. 1820.

5.Black Bk. (1823), 168; Session of Parl. 1825, p. 471.

6.The Times, 2 May 1822.

7. Add. 37303, f. 196.

8.Dublin Evening Post, 18 June 1826.

9.O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1278.

10.Southern Reporter, 8, 17 June; Cork Constitution, 8 June 1826.

11. Add. 34569, ff. 61, 194, 210.

12. Add. 38103, f. 128; Southern Reporter, 13 Nov. 1828.

13. Bodl. mss Phillips Robinson b. 124, f. 245.

14. Ibid. b. 126, f. 152; King-Harman, 84-86; Gent. Mag. (1837), i. 537-8.

15.Bibliotheca ... Edvardi vicecomitis de Kingsborough; mss Phillips Robinson c. 478, f. 235; d. 143, ff. 1-8.