Thomas Babington Macaulay was a 19th century English historian, politician and writer. In the 1840s he was MP for Edinburgh. In 1847, after he had made a speech supporting an increase in the annual grant to Maynooth, the Tories whipped up Orangemen into a campaign of sectarian hatred against him and he lost his seat. The campaign degenerated into violence against Catholics fleeing the Famine to Scotland. The Tories washed their hands of it.