John Hely later Hely-Hutchinson (1724 – 4 September 1794) was an Irish lawyer, statesman, and Provost of Trinity College Dublin. Early life He was born at Gortroe, Mallow, son of Francis Hely, a gentleman of County Cork, was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1744), and was called to the Irish bar in 1748. He took the additional name of Hutchinson on his marriage in 1751 to Christiana Nixon, heiress of her uncle, Richard Hutchinson. Career He was elected member of the Irish House of Commons for the borough of Lanesborough in 1759, but from 1761 to 1790 he represented Cork City. He at first attached himself to the patriotic party in opposition to the government, and although he afterwards joined the administration he never abandoned his advocacy of popular measures. It was around this time Hely-Hutchinson sold Frescati House in Blackrock, County Dublin, now the site of the Frescati shopping Centre. He was a man of brilliant and versatile ability, whom Lord Townshend, the Lord Lieutenant, described as by far the most powerful man in parliament. William Gerard Hamilton said of him that Ireland never bred a more able, nor any country a more honest man. Hely-Hutchinson was, however, an inveterate place-hunter, and there was point in Lord North's witticism that if you were to give him the whole of Great Britain and Ireland for an estate, he would ask the Isle of Man for a potato garden. After a session or two in parliament he was made a privy councillor and prime Serjeant-at-law; and from this time he gave a general, though by no means invariable support to the government. In 1767 the ministry contemplated an increase of the army establishment in Ireland from 12,000 to 15,000 men, but the Augmentation Bill met with strenuous opposition, not only from Flood, Ponsonby and the habitual opponents of the government, but from the Undertakers, or proprietors of boroughs, on whom the government had hitherto relied to secure them a majority in the House of Commons. It therefore became necessary for Lord Townshend to turn to other methods for procuring support. Early in 1768 an English Act was passed for the increase of the army, and a message from the king setting forth the necessity for the measure was laid before the House of Commons in Dublin. An address favourable to the government policy was, however, rejected; and Hely-Hutchinson, together with