Vallancey, Charles (1721–1812)

English-born general and Irish antiquarian. Born in Windsor, Vallancey was posted to Ireland with the British army in 1762. He started an antiquarian journal, Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, in 1770 and his 1773 Grammar of the Hiberno-Celtic or Irish Language characterized Gaelic as a complex, ‘masculine’ language capable of great subtlety, akin to Persian and Chinese. He was a forceful initiator of many scholarly projects such as the study of ogham, an Irish alphabet based on 25 characters.

In 1779 Vallancey set up the Hibernian Antiquarian Society, and he became a founder member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), Dublin, in 1782.