McCormick, Richard (d. 1827), Volunteer, secretary of the Catholic Committee, and United Irishman, first appears in Wilson's Dublin Directory for 1784 as being in the poplin trade at 9 Mark's Alley, Dublin, and may have been the Richard McCormick, ‘master manufacturer in the single and double worsted branches’, who in 1780 employed nearly 200 workers and gave evidence to the grand committee for trade of the Irish house of commons on 3 March. He became a member of the Catholic Committee as a representative of the parish of St Nicholas Without on 1 August 1784, attended meetings regularly, and on 2 April 1789 was elected to the office of secretary. He carried out his duties faithfully throughout the committee's crisis of 1791–2, which ended with the ascendancy of Dublin merchants led by Edward Byrne (qv) and John Keogh (qv). There was much mutual respect between McCormick and Theobald Wolfe Tone (qv), who was appointed assistant secretary in July 1792. In Tone's diaries McCormick is given the nickname ‘Magog’, perhaps after the 14 feet effigy of the Greek giant on the Guildhall, London, carved in 1708 by Richard Saunders.
Before the Catholic Convention in December 1792, at which he represented Co. Limerick, McCormick was already politically radical. An active Volunteer and supporter of the parliamentary reform campaign of 1782–4, he was described by a government informant on 25 February 1785 as ‘an intelligent man, a major (and the best field major) in the Volunteers of Dublin – he is violent and was among others determinedly American mad’ (O'Flaherty, 16). He was probably at the inaugural meeting on 9 November 1791 of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen, as he dined two days before with a group of liberals, including Tone, James Napper Tandy (qv), William Drennan (qv), William James MacNeven (qv), Thomas Russell (qv), and Samuel Neilson (qv), who planned that meeting. He was said by Thomas Collins (qv) to be ‘very hard mouthed’ and was described thus in correspondence with the Defenders on 20 February 1793 (McDowell, 67)). McCormick mistrusted Keogh as a compromiser, especially over the question of parliamentary reform. He remained close to Tone and was one of a small number of men whom Tone took into his confidence about his plan to go to France and persuade the French revolutionary government to invade Ireland in support of the United Irish (May 1795). He was also in the confidence of Lord Edward FitzGerald (qv), who, with Arthur O'Connor (qv), was also secretly in France from May to September 1796.
On the return of Fitzgerald and O'Connor, a United Irish national directory (or committee) was set up consisting at first of themselves, McCormick, and Robert Simms (qv). When Captain Bernard MacSheehy (qv) arrived in Dublin on a secret fact-finding mission on behalf of General Lazare Hoche (whose military expedition to Ireland was in preparation at Brest), he sought out McCormick (27–8 November 1796), as instructed by Tone, who was by then an officer in the French army. According to reports from Francis Higgins (qv), McCormick was deeply involved in seditious activities from the spring of 1795 until the beginning of 1798; he reported however on 1 February 1798 that McCormick and Keogh were jealous of FitzGerald and O'Connor for the powers they were assuming. McCormick's unease, and perhaps also a waning enthusiasm about the prospect of an armed uprising in Ireland, may have caused him to flee to France on 20 February 1798, shortly before the arrests of other Dublin United Irish leaders. ‘Dick is now past the age of adventure,’ commented Tone in a letter to Matilda Tone (5 August). McCormick was attainted under 38 Geo. III, c. 80, but allowed to return to Ireland. According to Madden, he was ‘cognizant of the projected revolt of 1803 but did not approve of it’. He moved to England in 1814, but returned shortly afterwards, accompanied by the daughter of John Tennent (qv), whose guardian he had become on Tennent's death at Löwenberg (19 August 1813). McCormick was said by Leonard MacNally (qv) to be ‘really a deist’ (26 September 1796; Rebellion papers). His premises at 9 Mark's Alley were in use after 1798 by Rose Pennell, a stuff manufacturer, who seems to have been his sister. Richard McCormick is said by Madden to have died 26 May 1827, leaving his property to an unmarried sister. Nothing else has been ascertained of his family.