Edward Joshua Cooper (May 1798 – 23 April 1863) was an Irish landowner, politician and astronomer from Markree Castle in County Sligo. He sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1841 and from 1857 to 1859, but is best known for his astronomy, and as the creator of Markree Observatory.
His observatory was home to the largest refracting (telescope with a lens) of the 1830s (an almost 14 inch astronomical grade Cauchoix of Paris lens, the largest in the World), and the asteroid 9 Metis was discovered there in the 1840s by his assistant. Several astronomical catalogs were also produced in the 19th century there.
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Early life and family
Cooper was the oldest son of Edward Synge Cooper MP (1762–1830), and his wife Anne Verelst, daughter of Bengal Governor Harry Verelst.
He was educated at The Royal School in Armagh, at Eton, and then at Christ Church, Oxford.
His first marriage was to Sophia L'Estrange, daughter of Colonel Henry Peisley L'Estrange of Moystown, Cloghan, County Offaly. They had no children, but he had five daughters with his second wife Sarah Frances Wynne, daughter of Owen Wynne MP of Hazelwood House, Sligo.
Astronomy
Cooper left Oxford after two years without taking a degree. He spent most of the next decade travelling abroad, pursuing an interest in astronomy which is believed to have been nurtured by his mother, and was developed as a schoolboy in Armagh on visits to the Armagh Observatory.
He travelled with portable instruments, which he used to calculate the latitudes and longitudes of the places visited and assess their potential for astronomical observation. He accumulated a mass of geographical data, which he never published.
His early travels took him to the Mediterranean and Egypt, then eastward to Turkey and Persia. In 1824–5 he crossed Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, as far as the North Cape. He concluded that Munich and Nice were the best adapted spots in Europe for astronomical observation.
When his father died in 1830, he succeeded him as manager of Markree Castle and estate on behalf of his father's deranged older brother Joshua Edward Cooper. When Joshua Edward died childless in 1837,
he inherited Markree.
Once established as manager, he began creating facilities for astronomy, which became Markree Observatory. In 1831 he bought for £1200
the largest object-glass which existed at the time.
Made by the French optician Cauchoix, it had an aperture of 13+1⁄3 inches (34 cm) across and a focal length of 25 feet (7.6 m).
The telescope initially mounted on a wooden stand, but the arrival of the great lens had caught the attention of Dr Thomas Romney Robinson, who had become director of the Armagh Observatory in 1823, and become a friend of Cooper's
At Robinson's suggestion, the telescope was removed its temporary alt-azimuth stand, and mounted equatorially by Thomas Grubb of Dublin,
Politics
At the 1830 general election, Cooper was returned as one of the two members of parliament (MPs) for County Sligo. His family had held one of the two Sligo seats for most of the previous century; his father, who had held the seat until the dissolution, died during the 3 days of polling.
The county's politics were dominated by the interests of its large Protestant landowners. The Wynne family of Hazelwood controlled Sligo, while the county representation reflected the strength of the Coopers, the O'Haras of Annaghmore, and the Percevals of Temple House in County Sligo. At the dissolution, the second Sligo seat was held by Henry King, brother of Viscount Lorton. However, these two Protestant Tories were challenged by an independent interest which sought the return of "liberal and enlightened representatives".
The candidate of the independents was Fitzstephen French of Frenchpark in Roscommon, brother of Arthur French MP. Unlike the sitting MPs, French supported Catholic emancipation, and proclaimed his adherence "not to the principles of Whig or Tory, but to the principles of Irishmen". As part of the compromise which had secured the enactment of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, the Forty Shilling Freeholders had been disenfranchised. However, with the property qualification for voting quintupled to £10, the number of voters in County Sligo fell from over 5,000 to just over 600. French's challenge was defeated; King was re-elected with 390 votes, and Cooper topped the poll with 465 votes to French's 116.
In Parliament, Cooper opposed Earl Grey's reform bill in at its second reading in March 1831, but a few days later he presented a petition from Sligo which supported reform. In April he presented an anti-reform petition from County Sligo, and voted for the wrecking amendment which sank the bill and brought down the government. A few days before the crucial vote he had told the Commons that the bill would cause "the total annihilation of Protestantism, by the increased influence in elections which it gives to the Catholics".
At the resulting general election in May 1831, Cooper condemned the failed reform bill as rushed, and again topped the poll,
When the revised Reform Bill came before the Commons, he voted against it at both the second and third readings.
Religion
Cooper played a significant part in the editorial work of the third edition of the pseudohistorical anti-Catholic pamphlet The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop. The tract alleges that the Catholic Church is a veiled continuation of the pagan religion of Babylon, a product of a millennia-old conspiracy. All of the book's major claims have been thoroughly refuted by modern scholarship.
The book's preface extensively praises an anonymous collaborator. Cooper wanted to remain anonymous when the book went to press, but by the seventh edition a footnote identified him as mystery editor. Hislop praises Cooper's meticulous attention to detail, his extensive library and his views on Christianity, and thanks him for "the incalculable value of the service which the extraordinary labours of my kind and disinterested friend have rendered to the cause of universal Protestantism."
Death
Cooper died aged 64 on 28 April 1863. He was buried in a vault at the Church of Ireland church in Ballisodare,
alongside his second wife, Sarah, who had died shortly before him.
According to William Doberck, who began work at the observatory a decade later, he had been a kind and improving landlord.
The Cork Examiner described him as "celebrated for his scientific attainments, moral worth and estimable character".
The Obituary Notice in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1864 said he "was a kind and good landlord, making great exertions to educate and improve his numerous tenantry. His personal qualities were of a high order. Blameless and fascinating in private life, he was a sincere Christian, no mean poet, an accomplished linguist, an exquisite musician, and possessed a wide and varied range of general information."
His estates were inherited by his nephew Edward Henry Cooper, who initially neglected the observatory, before appointing a series of directors.
The observatory was restored under Doberck's supervision from 1874, but was used mainly for meteorological investigation. When Edward Henry Cooper died in 1902, the observatory was closed and its great lens sent to the Hong Kong Observatory. The observatory's library was converted into a garage, and its books dumped into a hole in the floor of a neighbouring room, which was exposed to rain through an uncovered slit in the roof.