2 May 1737: British Prime Minister William (Petty) FitzMaurice was born in Dublin on this day. 1st Marquess of Lansdowne aka The Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784. He spent his childhood "in the remotest parts of the south of Ireland," and, according to his own account, when he entered Oxford in 1755, he had "both everything to learn and everything to unlearn". He left Oxford in 1757 without taking a Degree. Served in British Army during Seven Years War. He fought in the expedition to Rochefort and saw action at the battles of Minden and Kloster Kamp. He was a senoir Whig who was the Home Secretary in 1782 and then Prime Minister from July 1782 to April 1783. It was Shelburne's ministry that concluded the peace treaty with the American states, after Rockingham's acknowledgement of the colonies' independence. Shelburne faced opposition from Charles James Fox and Lord North and in March 1783 tendered his resignation, which was accepted. He retired to his estates and never held office again. He continued to hold a seat in the House of Lords until his death in 1805.
2 May 1794: Archibald Hamilton Rowan, United Irishman, escaped from Prison in Dublin by bribing the gaoler. His abrupt departure was prompted by the arrest of the Rev Jackson who possessed seditious material written in Rowan’s hand.
2 May 1858: Birth of Edith Oenonne Somerville, novelist most famous for Some Experiences Of An Irish R.M written in collaboration with her cousin Violet Martin (Ross).
2 May 1882: Under the terms of the ‘The Kilmainham Treaty’ Charles Stewart Parnell was released from Kilmainham Jail. The British Prime Minister agreed that rent arrears due from some 130,000 tenants would be dropped and 150,000 leaseholders would be allowed the benefits of the 1881 Land Act. In return Parnell agreed to ‘co operate cordially for the future with the Liberal Party in forwarding Liberal principles and measures of general reform.’
2 May 1923 - Birth in Milltown Malbay, Co. Clare of Patrick Hillery, surgeon, politician. He was President of Ireland from 1976 to 1990. He helped to negotiate Ireland's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973 and was one of Jack Lynch’s most loyal lieutenants in the internal power struggle that racked FF in the aftermath of the Arms Trial of 1970.
2 May 1957 – The death of Fr. Aloysius Roche. During the 1916 Easter Rising, he helped bring spiritual aid to the Volunteers throughout Dublin. Following Padraig Pearse's surrender on 29 April, Fr. Aloysius spent the next day carrying the surrender order to the main garrisons on the south side of the city. In the early hours of the morning of 3 May, Fr. Aloysius administered the last sacraments to Pearse, MacDonagh and Thomas, the first three leaders of the Rising to be executed; on May 7, Fr Aloysius accompanied James Connolly by ambulance from Dublin Castle to Kilmainham Jail for execution and stood behind the firing squad as they fired the final volley.
2 May 1969: James Chichester Clarke became the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in succession to Terence O’Neill whose downfall he had helped bring about.
2 May 1984: The Report of the New Ireland Forum was published in Dublin. It outlined three possible alternative structures for a new Ireland: a Unitary State (i.e. a 32-county Ireland), a Federal/con Federal State comprising the two current states or joint authority meaning that the British and Irish governments would have equal responsibility for the administration the North of Ireland.
Portal