Lohort Castle (West/South) GEORGE BERKELEY was born in Thomastown Co. Kilkenny in 1685. His father was English, a recorder for Belfast. Berkeley was educated at the Protestant college in Kilkenny and in 1700 he went to Trinity College Dublin where he remained as professor. He lectured there in Philosophy, Greek, Hebrew, Divinity and Medicine. He was, by any standard, a genius and was casually known as the "Absentminded Professor", often walking around in a dream, colliding with people and furniture. He was the first person to believe in two levels of reality - reality in the mind and reality in fact. In 1708 he met Sir John Percival who introduced him to high society in England. From this time there are numerous references to Berkeley in the Egmont papers (the day-to-day account of Egmonts business affairs). He always regarded himself as English and considered the native Irish as foreigners. Berkeley left Trinity College Dublin in 1713 and went to England for further learning and was ordained a Protestant Vicar. He got a job as chaplain to Lord Peterborough while Peterborough was ambassador to Spain. Berkeley traveled widely on the Continent, including Rome,Turin and Milan, where he was enthralled with the art galleries. He remained there for four years and returned to London in 1720. His friend Egmont secured the position of Dean of Derry for him but his real ambition was to have a diocese in England. From 1700 onwards, many Irish priests and lay people were sold as slaves in the Caribbean. Once there, they began converting the local people to Catholicism. Berkeley felt strongly about this and sailed for New York in 1728. He bought a farm in Rhode Island and subsequently attempted to found a Protestant college in Bermuda. Although he had a grant of £20,000, his attempt failed. With this money, he left a large collection of books and money to Yale and Harvard universities. Berkeley University in California was also named for him. He sailed home from Boston in 1732 and he was of the opinion that many high places should be available to him in England. However, he was disappointed and only through the good office of his friend Egmont was he appointed Bishop of Cloyne in 1734. He remained Bishop of Cloyne for 18 years. His first act was to employ an Italian violinist to teach his children and entertain the Planters of East Cork. The only book he wrote while he was at Cloyne was "The Querist". Arthur Griffith, who went on to found the original Sinn Fein movement, used to carry it around with him and used to call it his "breviary". It was an economic text book for two centuries. The book illustrated his great interest in land reform and agricultural development in England. Arthur Young, a leading agriculturist at the time, came to Mitchelstown. Various others came to the landlords also to help them improve agricultural practices. They recommended deep ploughing and crop rotation. Recycling evolved from this time as do the origins of hay find themselves. Berkeley surrounded his house with exotic trees and flowers and his wife became a leading farmer. At this time, Berkeley forgot about philosophy and engaged himself locally. He had 100 men working on his farm. Another interest he had since he was at Trinity was "cures". When he was in the USA he got a cure from an Indian tribe which he believed to be a cure for all ills. It was called Taroil, the sap of the pine tree. He recommended it for humans and animals. On one occasion, he drank a gallon of it in a few hours. He said it should be sold in all shops and be fed to every child. Shortly after this, two of his children died and were buried in Cloyne. His own health failed as well. Two of his letters addressed to the Catholic clergy of Cloyne in 1749 illustrate certain aspects of his character. His attitude towards the Roman Catholic clergy was kind but blinkered. He saw the poverty and illiteracy but failed to recognise what caused this (the penal laws had been in force for 50 years). His letter to the Roman Catholic hierarchy encouraged them to be diligent, to advise the people to develop the land and to use advanced methods in animal and plant husbandry. He also encouraged the development of industry and roads. He wrote in this manner in the full knowledge that his Catholic counterpart Bishop John O'Brien was hiding in a small cabin near Rathcormac and that Tadgh McCarthy the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork was in similar circumstances. In 1747, when John Wesley came to East Cork, he was stoutly opposed by Berkeley. In 1752, Berkeley sold his estate in Cloyne to Longfield of Mallow. He then went to Oxford to join his son George. When leaving, he got great acknowledgement from the poor of Cloyne. A very large crowd accompanied him to Cork for his departure to Bristol. He was brought on a stretcher from Bristol to Oxford where he died 4 months later in 1753. Berkeley spent a considerable amount of time at Lohort Castle and wrote many letters there. He got a large fortune from a Dublin lady, Vanessa Van Hommery, a member of a very wealthy Dublin family. She was a mistress of Dean Swift who was also more than friendly with another woman called Ester Johnson. Swift referred to the first lady as Vanessa and the other lady as Stella. These mistresses were to be Swift's downfall. Vanessa found out about Stella and in her will of May 1723 left half of her estate to Berkeley. Thus, Berkeley inherited all of his wealth from a lady he never met. This gave him complete financial independence. WB Yeats said of Berkeley "God appointed Berkeley who proved all things a dream, that this pragmatic pig of a world, its farrower that so solemn seen must vanish in an instant if the mind but change its theme" Thomas Prior, founder of the RDS, was a personal friend of Berkeley. Berkeley's book, 'The Quierest' refuted Sir Isaac Newtons idea that the world, in space time and matter, exists only in the mind. It took 200 years to prove Berkeley correct by no less a person than Albert Einstein Berkeley was a deeply religious man who tried to reconcile the science of his day with the doctrine of Christianity. He thought that the chief conflict lay in the scientific conception of matter as a substance of which the physical world is composed. He believed that he could show that matter does not exist and yet the laws of physics are true. The arguments he used to prove this are the most influential part of his thinking. He held that to exist means to be perceived. He said that nothing exists unless it is perceived by some mind. For example, when a person looks at an object, he or she observes a particular colour and shape and may feel a particular weight but a person never sees or otherwise perceives any matter as such. Therefore, Berkeley believed that matter did not exist. He is called an idealist because he held that things are mind dependent but he did not believe that things are dependent for their existence on human minds. He believed that things exist even when nobody perceives them because they, as Berkeley argued, are being perceived by God.