{{Short description|British religious polemicist}} {{Other uses}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}} {{Use British English|date=September 2016}} '''Frederick Lucas''' (30 March 1812 – 22 October 1855) was a British religious polemicist and founder of ''The Tablet''. His brother Samuel Lucas was a newspaper editor and abolitionist.

==Biography== He was born in Westminster, the second son of Samuel Hayhurst Lucas, a London corn-merchant, who was a member of the Society of Friends. He was educated at a Quaker school in Darlington, and then at University College London. He studied law at Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1835. Lucas converted to Catholicism in 1839.<ref name="Cath Encyclopedia" /><ref name="ODNB" />

In 1840, Lucas founded ''The Tablet'', published in London, a progressive international Catholic weekly newspaper, just 11 years before the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. It is the second oldest surviving weekly journal in Britain after ''The Spectator'' (which was founded in 1828).{{cn|date=March 2026}}

After establishing the Irish Tenant Right League with Charles Gavan Duffy in 1850, he was elected as member of parliament (MP) for Meath in 1852. After failing in a complaint-mission to Rome on behalf of the league,<ref>Hickey, D.J. & Doherty, J.E., ''A new Dictionary of Irish History from 1800'', Tenant League pp. 466–7, Gill & MacMillan (2003) {{ISBN|0-7171-2520-3}}</ref> Lucas died in October 1855 at Staines, Middlesex, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.

==Notes== <references>

<ref name="Cath Encyclopedia" >{{CathEncy|wstitle=Frederick Lucas}}</ref>

<ref name="ODNB" >{{cite ODNB | url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17127 | title=Frederick Lucas | last=Cooper | first=Thompson |author2=''rev.'' Josef L. Altholz | editor1-first=Josef L | editor1-last=Altholz | year=2004 | accessdate=25 January 2011 | location=Oxford | doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/17127 }}</ref>

</references>

== External links == * {{Hansard-contribs | mr-frederick-lucas | Frederick Lucas }}

{{s-start}} {{s-par|uk}} {{succession box | title = Member of Parliament for Meath | years = 1852 – 1855 | with = Matthew Corbally | before = Henry Grattan<br />Matthew Corbally | after = Edward McEvoy<br />Matthew Corbally }} {{s-end}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lucas, Frederick}} Category:1812 births Category:1855 deaths Category:British publishers (people) Category:Burials at Brompton Cemetery Category:Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for County Meath constituencies (1801–1922) Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from Quakerism Category:English Roman Catholics Category:UK MPs 1852–1857 Category:19th-century British journalists Category:19th-century British businesspeople Category:19th-century British male journalists