Van Homrigh, Bartholomew (d. 1703), merchant, lord mayor of Dublin, and land agent, was born in Danzig (Gdansk). His date of birth is unknown but it was before 1665. He came to Dublin from Amsterdam in Charles II's reign and established himself as a merchant. In 1685 he acquired the freedom of the city, and his name subsequently appeared as a member of Dublin corporation; in 1687 he was one of ten protestant aldermen. On the landing of William of Orange (qv) in England, Van Homrigh fled Dublin for Chester, which led Dublin corporation, in Jacobite hands, to remove his name from its roll for wilful neglect of corporation business. During the Williamite war he played an important part as commissary-general to William's army; with Sir William Robinson (qv) he was responsible for preparing the army for the war in Ireland. In the immediate aftermath of the war he had responsibility for providing transport for horses and Danish soldiers from Ireland to Flanders (January–April 1692).
He was appointed a revenue commissioner in July 1690; the warrant was renewed in 1692, 1696, and 1702. He was clearly intended to be a commissioner for forfeited estates, his name appearing on a draft warrant in December 1693, but the appointment was never formalised. Reinstated as an alderman of Dublin (1691), he was subsequently appointed sheriff of the city, and eventually became lord mayor (1697). It was during his mayoralty that King William conferred on the city its mayoral chain, the previous chain having been lost during the war. He served as MP for the city of Londonderry in both of William III's Irish parliaments (1692, 1695–9). Nominated to thirteen committees in the 1695–9 parliament, in the political divisions of the 1695 session he was among the supporters of the tory lord chancellor, Sir Charles Porter (qv), against the accusations of favouritism towards Roman catholics being made against Porter by the whig lord deputy, Henry Capel (qv).
When William III granted 26,619 acres out of the Irish forfeitures to Godert van Reede van Ginkel (qv), the Dutch general chose Van Homrigh as his agent to manage his newly acquired estates. As agent, Van Homrigh was assiduous in the attention he paid to legal and financial matters. He advised Ginkel to be naturalised, as foreigners were not allowed to possess property in either England or Ireland, and he worked hard and successfully to get Ginkel's grant passed under the great seal of Ireland in 1693. Two years later he succeeded in having the Irish parliament confirm Ginkel's grant. Despite the Irish economy being in a poor state after the war, Van Homrigh, in comparison with other agents, did well. At the end of 1694 he informed Ginkel that while Lord Galway (qv) had not yet received one penny from estates that amounted to 36,148 acres, the receipts from Ginkel's estates during the last two years exceeded what the commissioners of the forfeitures had collected from the 70,800 acres not yet granted by the king. The Ginkel–Van Homrigh correspondence between 1692 and 1700, amounting to fifty-six letters, survives. The fact that Van Homrigh called one of his sons ‘Ginkel’ suggests that there was more than a business relationship between the two men.
So far as Ginkel's interests were concerned, Van Homrigh's hard work came to nothing when, under the terms of the act of resumption (1700) passed at Westminster, William's grants to Ginkel were set aside. However, about one hundred ‘protestant purchasers’, amongst whom was Van Homrigh, were able to buy Ginkel's land and that of the other grantees at a very low price. The act of resumption allowed Van Homrigh to keep his new acquisitions, but he had to pay a new price for his land at thirteen times the yearly lease. Van Homrigh died 29 December 1703.
He married (December 1686) Hester Stone (d. 1714); they had two sons and a daughter, Esther Van Homrigh (qv), who would later become the ‘Vanessa’ of Jonathan Swift (qv).