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The Religious Condition Of Ireland 1770–1850

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The Religious Condition of Ireland 1770–1850 N I G E L YAT E S

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Nigel Yates 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 0-19-924238-0 978-0-19-924238-2 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Helena and Patrick Who never got to Killaloe


Acknowledgements I am grateful, in the Wrst instance, to Oxford University Press for Wrst suggesting that I venture into what were for me the largely uncharted waters of Irish religious history. I have found the whole project a hugely enjoyable and rewarding one, particularly the three research visits to Ireland in 2001–3. In the second instance I must record my gratitude to the University of Wales, Lampeter, for inviting me to join the staV of its Department of Theology and Religious Studies and providing such an amenable base from which to conduct my research. I am particularly grateful to the staVs of the Main University and the Founders’ Libraries for providing access to many of the books I needed and to Kathy Miles for obtaining most of those not available to me either in Lampeter or at the National Library of Wales on inter-library loan. Only occasionally was I forced to consult rare printed sources in other libraries. I owe an enormous debt to the various libraries and archive repositories in Ireland in which I found the bulk of the primary sources used in this study. Especial thanks go to Dr Raymond Refausse´ and his staV at the Representative Church Body Library; to Dr David Sheehy at Archbishop’s House, Dublin; to Fr Kieran O’Shea and Margaret de Bruń at Bishop’s House, Killarney; to Carol Conlin at the Robinson Library, Armagh; to the Very Revd Dr Patrick Knowles at the GPA-Bolton Library, Cashel; to Ian McIlhenny at Church House, Belfast; and to the staVs of the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Library, the Public Record OYce of Northern Ireland, the Linenhall Library in Belfast, and the Cardinal To´mas O’Fiaich Memorial Library and Archive in Armagh. I am also grateful to Fr Christy O’Dwyer for authorizing the National Library of Ireland to provide me with microWlm copies of the papers of Archbishop Michael Slattery held at St Patrick’s College, Thurles. The present Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd John Neill, kindly supplied me, when bishop in his two previous dioceses, with useful information about churches in those dioceses, and the dean of Killala, the Very Revd Edward Ardis, generously provided me with copies of documents relating to the re-ordering of his cathedral in the 1840s. I also acknowledge the kindness and hospitality of many clergy and laity, of all denominations, in Ireland who made arrangements for me to inspect church interiors preserving wholly or substantially unaltered late eighteenth or early nineteenth century furnishings. Some of these were identiWed as a result of the access provided to their Wles by Beatrice Kelly and her staV at the Heritage Council in Kilkenny. I am also grateful to the staVs of the Ulster Folk and

viii

Acknowledgements

Transport Museum and the Ulster American Folk Park for answering detailed queries about the churches re-erected in their museums. Outside Ireland I am grateful to the staVs of the Bedfordshire and Hampshire Record OYces, the British Library, Hull University Library (which holds the only known complete set of Bishop O’Brien’s episcopal charges), the Manx National Heritage Library, and the National Library of Wales: my use of these last two repositories has been largely in connection with work which I have been doing on the history of Manx and Welsh religion to which I have referred for the purpose of making comparisons with religious developments in Ireland. I also owe a debt of gratitude to those who have permitted me to reproduce illustrative material in this volume: Waterford Treasures for the cover illustration of the vestments given by Bishop Chenevix of Waterford and Lismore to the Roman Catholic parish priest of Waterford in 1774; the Rt Hon the Earl of Normanton for the portrait of Archbishop Charles Agar; Dublin Diocesan Archives for that of Archbishop Daniel Murray and the designs of the Roman Catholic pro-cathedral in Dublin; the Union Theological College in Belfast for the portrait of Henry Cooke; the Founders’ Library at the University of Wales, Lampeter, for the illustration of the choir of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1819; the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum for the photographs of the interiors of Christ Church, Kilmore, St John’s, Drumcree and Omagh Old Meeting House; and Larry Conlon for permission to reproduce the plan and interior photograph of St Michael’s, Collon, from his Heritage of Collon, privately published in 1984. I must also thank my son, Benedict, and Abi Gardner for help with illustrations. Benedict drew the maps of Irish dioceses, which are composites of the map of Ireland published in the Irish Catholic Directory and the boundaries of dioceses shown for the Church of Ireland in F. R. Bolton’s Caroline Tradition of the Church of Ireland and for the Roman Catholic church in Sean Connolly’s Priests and People in PreFamine Ireland. The necessary technology for captioning the maps was kindly provided by the Media Centre at the University of Wales, Lampeter. Abi redrew the plans of churches from original plans of the buildings: that of Rosemary Street Presbyterian church from the original plan reproduced in J. S. Curl’s Classical Churches in Ulster; those of Ballymakenny and Cahir churches and of Tuam cathedral from the original plans reproduced in D. S. Richardson’s Gothic Revival Architecture in Ireland; that of Omagh Old Meeting House from a plan supplied by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum; and that of Killala cathedral from a photocopy of the original plan in the cathedral vestry. It is still my old-fashioned practice to write books by hand and to rely on the expertise of others to convert them into a typescript acceptable for

Acknowledgements

ix

publication. In the case of this book I am very grateful to my son, David, and Christine Foley, who each typed about two-Wfths of the manuscript, and to my wife, Paula, who typed the remaining Wfth. Paula has also collated the Wnal typescript presented to Oxford University Press, has driven me around the churches, libraries, and archive repositories of Ireland, and has been a constant support to me over the four years during which this book was being written. As always I am more grateful to her than words can express. I am also, once again, grateful to the staV of Oxford University Press, and especially to Lucy Qureshi, for their advice and support at every stage of the commissioning, writing, and publication process. My Wnal debt of gratitude must be to those colleagues and friends who have read and commented on various sections of this book in draft: Professors Laurence Kirkpatrick and Keith Robbins, Drs Frances Knight and Thomas O’Loughlin, and the Ven. Dr William Jacob. In addition Professor Kirkpatrick has oVered me advice on a number of topics relating to the history of Irish Presbyterianism, for which I am most grateful. Neither he nor any of the others must, however, be held responsible for any errors of fact or dubious expressions of opinion that remain for which only the author can be held to account. Nigel Yates University of Wales, Lampeter May 2004


Contents List of Tables and Figures List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Introduction

xiv xvii xviii xix

1. The Religious Development of Ireland 1560–1770

1

The Failure of the Reformation 1560–1660 The Consolidation of Religious Division 1660–1715 The Religious Geography of Ireland Minority Establishment and Majority Dissent 1715–70

1 13 18 21

2. The Non-Religious Background to Religious Reform in Ireland 1770–1850 The Catholic Relief Legislation of 1774–93 Parliamentary Grants to the Board of First Fruits and Maynooth College Rebellion and the Act of Union 1793–1801 The Long Road to Catholic Emancipation 1801–29 The Post-Emancipation Reform Programme 1829–45 The Impact of the Great Famine of 1845–9

3. The Religious Leadership of Ireland 1770–1850 The Church of Ireland Leadership The Roman Catholic Leadership The Presbyterian Leadership

4. Pastoral Care and Public Worship in Ireland 1770–1850 The Clergy The Laity Churches and Public Worship The Progress of Ecclesiastical Reform

5. Ecclesiastical Reform in Action: Some Diocesan and Presbytery Case Studies The Church of Ireland The Roman Catholic Church The Presbyterian Churches

32 32 34 37 43 48 60

63 63 99 125

134 134 152 161 166

180 180 197 205

xii

Contents

6. Church Building and Restoration in Ireland 1770–1850

214

The Condition of Church Buildings The Board of First Fruits The Church Extension Programme of the Non-Established Churches The Design and Liturgical Arrangement of Church Buildings Cathedrals Old and New The Conservation of the Built Heritage

214 220 225 229 238 248

7. Theological Developments and Ecumenical Relations 1770–1850

250

Ecumenical Relations in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries The Evangelical Revival The Second Reformation The Oxford Movement The Emergence of a Protestant Alliance

251 260 270 279 289

8. Irish Religious Developments in a British and European Context

297

Appendix 1. Succession of Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Archbishops and Bishops in Ireland 1560–1850

322

Appendix 2. Church of Ireland Bishops and Archbishops Translated to or from English, Scottish, or Welsh Sees 1560–1850

326

Appendix 3. Religious Statistics for the Dioceses of the Church of Ireland in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

327

Appendix 4. Religious Statistics for the Dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in the Mid-1840s

329

Appendix 5. Religious Statistics of Church of Ireland, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian Allegiance and Church Attendance in the Diocese of Raphoe in 1834

332

Appendix 6. Comparison of Visitation Evidence for Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Parishes in the Diocese of Meath in the Late Eighteenth Century

336

Appendix 7. Comparison of Visitation Evidence for Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Parishes in the Diocese of Ossory in the Late Eighteenth Century

340

Appendix 8. Liturgical Arrangement of Church of Ireland Churches in the Dioceses of Cashel and Emly, and Waterford and Lismore in the Mid-1830s

347

Contents Appendix 9.

Restoration and Rebuilding of Church of Ireland Cathedrals, and Building of New Roman Catholic Cathedrals, in Ireland between 1770 and 1850

xiii

353

Appendix 10. Surviving Examples of Substantially Unaltered Church Interiors of the Period 1770–1850 in Ireland.

358

Bibliography Index

371 387

List of Tables and Figures Table 1.1. Members of the Church of Ireland, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics in the parishes of the diocese of Dromore 1834 Table 2.1. Union of Church of Ireland dioceses under the provisions of the Church Temporalities Act 1833

21 49

Table 2.2. Reduction in net income of united Church of Ireland bishoprics resulting from the Church Temporalities Act 1833

49

Table 2.3. Dates of operation of charter schools in Ireland

52

Table 3.1. Comparative values of English, Irish, and Welsh bishoprics in the late eighteenth century

64

Table 3.2. Statistics for the diocese of Meath 1807 and 1820

94

Table 3.3. State of clerical residence, glebe houses, and churches in the diocese of Meath 1799 and 1818

95

Table 3.4. Methods of Wlling vacant Roman Catholic dioceses in Ireland 1770–1850

100

Table 3.5. Former Maynooth staV who became Irish Roman Catholic bishops between 1814 and 1847

107

Table 4.1. Roman Catholic laity per church and priest; clergy per church in the mid-1840s

135

Table 4.2. Church of Ireland laity per beneWce and church sitting; sittings per beneWce in the mid-nineteenth century

136

Table 4.3. Relationship in the number of Roman Catholic clergy to laity in Ireland 1731–1871

136

Table 4.4. Number of clergy in and estimated incomes of parishes in six Irish Roman Catholic dioceses 1801

144

Table 4.5. Gross and net incomes of Church of Ireland beneWced clergy 1832

144

Table 4.6. Percentage of Church of Ireland incumbents resident in or near their beneWces 1806–32

148

Table 4.7. Percentage of Church of Ireland beneWces with glebe houses 1787 and 1832

149

Table 4.8. Comparison between increases in numbers of glebe houses and resident incumbents in Ireland in the early nineteenth century

150

Table 4.9. Patronage of Church of Ireland beneWces in selected dioceses in the late eighteenth century

154

List of Tables and Figures

xv

Table 4.10. Proportions of the Church of Ireland, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian population attending Sunday services of their denomination in selected parishes within the diocese of Raphoe 1834

156

Table 4.11. Comparison of numbers of festival and monthly communicants in Wve parishes in the Roman Catholic diocese of Kildare and Leighlin 1829

158

Table 4.12. Frequency of Holy Communion in Church of Ireland churches by province 1833

162

Table 5.1.

Itinerary of Bishop Joseph Stock of Waterford and Lismore as recorded in his Visitation Diary 1811

184

Table 5.2.

Diocesan statistics for Down and Connor 1813, Ardagh and Elphin 1825, and Lismore 1836

189

Table 5.3.

Pastoral provision in the Church of Ireland dioceses of Armagh and Clogher 1825–45

190

Table 5.4.

Comparison of attendance and communicant Wgures, and size of catechism classes and Sunday schools, in selected parishes in the dioceses of Armagh 1839 and Clogher 1845

195

Table 5.5.

Comparison of the stated salaries of parish clerks and schoolmasters in the diocese of Clogher in 1831 and 1845

196

Table 5.6.

Pastoral provision in the Roman Catholic dioceses of Dublin 1830–4 and Cashel and Emly 1846–8

200

Table 5.7.

The state of congregations in the presbytery of Antrim 1838

208

Table 5.8.

The state of congregations in the presbytery of Connaught 1825–31

210

Table 5.9.

The state of selected congregations in the presbytery of Tyrone 1836–8 Total number of surviving church buildings in selected Irish counties dating from the period 1770–1850

215

Table 6.2.

Summary of rural dean’s comments on the condition of churches in the rural deanery of Cloyne 1791–9

217

Table 6.3.

Statistics of church building in six Roman Catholic dioceses in Ireland 1770–1850

226

Comparison of the liturgical arrangements of Church of Ireland churches in the dioceses of Cashel and Emly, and Waterford and Lismore in the 1830s, and of Church of England churches in the archdeaconry of Durham 1825 Cathedral building and restoration in Ireland 1770–1850 Numbers of Sunday schools in Ireland 1816–46

230 239 268

Numbers of Roman Catholic converts to Protestantism by county in Ireland 1826–7

278

Table 6.1.

Table 6.4.

Table 6.5. Table 7.1. Table 7.2.

212

xvi

List of Tables and Figures

Table 8.1. Comparison between the social origins of ordinands in the diocese of Vannes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 302 Table 8.2. Comparison of population and communicant Wgures in selected parishes in the diocese of Nantes 1824–44

303

Table 8.3. New churches built and existing churches rebuilt or refurnished in the Isle of Man between 1757 and 1846

312

Table 8.4. Church attendances in the northern highland and island counties of Scotland 1851

318

Table 8.5. Church attendances in the western highland and island counties of Scotland 1851

319

Figure 4.1. Map showing the boundaries of Church of Ireland Dioceses in Ireland 1832

132

Figure 4.2. Map showing the boundaries of Roman Catholic Dioceses in Ireland 1832

133

Figure 6.1. Plan of ground Xoor and galleries of Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church, Belfast, 1793 228 Figure 6.2. Plan of Ballymakenny Church, Co. Louth, 1785–93

231

Figure 6.3. Plan of Cahir Church, Co. Tipperary, 1816–18

234

Figure 6.4. Plan of Omagh Old Meeting House, Co. Tyrone, 1830

235

Figure 6.5. Plan of Tuam Cathedral in the early nineteenth century

240

Figure 6.6. Plan of Killala Cathedral as re-ordered in 1817

244

List of Illustrations 1. Charles Agar, Church of Ireland archbishop of Cashel and Emly 1778–1801 and Dublin 1801–9.

74

2. Daniel Murray, Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin 1823–52.

111

3. Henry Cooke (1788–1868), minister of the May Street Presbyterian church in Belfast from 1829.

128

4. Interior of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle from the Illustrated London News 1849.

233

5. The choir of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, 1819.

242

6. Design for the exterior of the Roman Catholic pro-cathedral, Dublin, 1815.

245

7. Design for the interior of the Roman Catholic pro-cathedral, Dublin, 1815.

245

8. St John Baptist’s Roman Catholic church, Drumcree, reWtted in 1831.

358

9. Christ Church, Kilmore, reWtted in c.1840.

359

10. Omagh Old Meeting House as re-erected at Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in 2004.

360

11. Plan of St Michael’s church, Collon, as originally designed and built in 1811–16.

365

12. St Michael’s church, Collon, following modiWcation of the interior in 1893–4.

366

List of Abbreviations ADA

Armagh Diocesan Archives

BLC

GPA-Bolton Library, Cashel

BRO

Bedfordshire Record OYce

CDA

Cashel Diocesan Archives

CHB

Church House, Belfast

DDA

Dublin Diocesan Archives

DNB

Dictionary of National Biography

HRO

Hampshire Record OYce

KCV

Killala Cathedral Vestry

KDA

Kerry Diocesan Archives

LPL

Lambeth Palace Library

MNHL

Manx National Heritage Library

NLI

National Library of Ireland

NLW

National Library of Wales

PRONI

Public Record OYce of Northern Ireland

RCBL

Representative Church Body Library

RLA

Robinson Library, Armagh

TCDL

Trinity College Dublin Library

UAL

University Archives, Lampeter

Introduction Between the dates of his nomination to the Church of Ireland archbishopric of Dublin, and his consecration to that see in 1831, Richard Whately wrote to his old friend and former Oxford colleague Bishop Copleston of Llandaff: The offer of the archbishopric was gratifying to my organ of approbation; the acceptance of the office is martyrdom. The more I learn from the most authentic sources of the State of Ireland, especially of the church there, the more appalling does the danger appear. It is too late I fear to think of unexceptionable expedients to meet the emergency . . . Some decisive steps must be taken if the Irish Church or indeed Ireland is to be saved . . . In large districts of Ireland the established Church is such as by the help of a map you might establish in Turkey or in China: viz, no place of worship, no congregation, no payment.1

Whately saw Ireland as being populated entirely by political and religious extremists, either Roman Catholics or militant Evangelicals, against which his own brand of moderate Anglicanism could make no headway. The events of the last century and a half have confirmed that impression of Ireland in the minds of many not familiar with the country, and indeed led to an impression that political and religious sectarianism have been a way of life in Ireland for longer than anyone can care to remember. In fact it is the argument of this book that the religious history of Ireland is more complicated than that, and that the sectarianism with which we are all familiar has only really been a dominant feature of the Irish political and religious landscape since the middle years of the nineteenth century. I would suggest that there have been, between the late sixteenth and the late twentieth centuries, three main phases of Irish religious history. The first phase lasted for about two hundred years until about 1770. It was marked by the failure, unique within the British Isles, to create a Protestant established church which could command the loyalty of a majority, or even a significant minority, of the population and the recognition by the political establishment that it had no choice but to accept this state of affairs and abandon the various measures that had been taken to discriminate against the majority Roman Catholic population of Ireland and groups of dissident Protestants, which almost equalled in number those who supported the established Protestant Church of Ireland. The Protestant ascendancy, the phrase often used to describe the state of Ireland in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, was 1 NLW, Ms 21743C, letter dated 28 September 1831 transcribed on 20 December 1853.

xx

Introduction

essentially a compromise ascendancy. The second phase, which lasted from about 1770 to about 1850, is the subject of this book. It is my argument that during the last three decades of the eighteenth, and the first two decades of the nineteenth, centuries there was a decision on the part of the leadership of the three main religious groups in Ireland, the Church of Ireland, the Roman Catholics, and the Presbyterians to develop a strategy of mutual toleration and cooperation, and that this strategy was successfully maintained for much of this period. There were, of course, political issues, especially in the 1790s, which threatened to destabilize this fragile framework of relative ecumenism but there was sufficient commitment to it on all sides to enable it to continue. From about 1820 the situation began to change. Various political and religious developments, dealt with in some detail in the pages that follow, began to create a climate that completely destabilized the previous consensus. Tensions developed between the leadership of the church, much of which wished to preserve the status quo, and radical voices within those churches that felt that the caution exercised by their leadership no longer met the requirements of a changed political and religious landscape. By 1850 the conservatives had been marginalized, and the radicals had taken over the agenda, in all three of the main churches of Ireland. The third phase of Irish political and religious history since the Reformation had begun. It was a phase marked by a determined sectarianism, vestiges of which still remain in parts of Ireland, especially within the six counties which since partition in 1922 have remained part of the United Kingdom. Since about 1970 a much more ecumenical climate has begun to develop between the three churches in Ireland though it still lags some way behind that in most parts of Western Europe. There also remain powerful, if by now minority, voices in Ireland determined to maintain the political and religious struggle. The political and religious climate of the last century and a half has had a major impact on the religious historiography of Ireland. The religious history of Ireland has, almost invariably, been set in a political context and written from a denominational perspective. In other parts of Western Europe this approach has largely been abandoned in favour of treating religious history as a branch of social history and looking at the impact that religion has had on popular culture. In recent years a number of Irish scholars, particularly those working on aspects of Roman Catholic history, have begun to adopt a similar approach, but very little comparable work has been done on the history of the Protestant churches. A typical illustration of this is the most recent collection of essays on Irish religious history, eventually published as a memorial volume for the late Donal Kerr.2 Of the seventeen post-Reformation contributions 2 Christianity in Ireland: Revisiting the Story, ed. B. Bradshaw and D. Keogh, Blackrock 2002.

Introduction

xxi

two are brief overviews of Presbyterian and Methodist history and two are relatively narrow studies of aspects of Irish Anglicanism. The remaining thirteen chapters deal largely with aspects of Ireland’s Roman Catholic history. Whilst three of these cover the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there is no comparable treatment of what was then the established church during the same period. This book aims to take both a socio-historical approach to Irish religious history and to do so from an inter-denominational, to some extent even a non-denominational, perspective. In particular I have endeavoured, whilst not disregarding the political dimensions of Irish religious history, to adopt for Ireland a similar revisionist approach to the study of its religious institutions and their effectiveness to that which has been successfully adopted for the study of religion in England, France, and Scotland over the last thirty years. The aim of this approach is to downplay the role of religion as a manifestation of cultural, political, and social division and to look in much more detail at the way in which the churches conducted their business, and the areas of common ground between them, and at the impact that all this had on clergy and laity in the localities. This book aims to do four things. In the first place it aims to examine in some detail this interesting period of Irish religious history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when there appeared to be an opportunity to create a religiously pluralistic society in which necessarily good relations could exist between the main religious bodies. In order to understand the background to this situation, and the factors that helped to destabilize it, I have included two overview chapters, one surveying the main developments in the religious history of Ireland between the Reformation and about 1770, and another drawing attention to the main non-religious developments in Ireland between 1770 and 1850 which had an impact on religious ones in this period. I have then examined in some detail the factors that were to lead to the breakdown of good relations between the main religious denominations in Ireland after about 1820 and the origins of the sectarianism that was to dominate Irish politics and religion after 1850. The second theme of this book is the religious reform programme which had an impact on all the main religious groups in Ireland between 1770 and 1850. In this respect the balance between the treatment of one religious group as opposed to another has not been entirely even. As indicated earlier, a good deal of important work has been undertaken on the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the last thirty years. I have used this extensively as a foundation for my own work and supplemented it through use of a slightly different range of sources. Whereas previous Roman Catholic historians have made excellent and extensive use of the Vatican archives and the records of the Irish College in Rome, I

xxii

Introduction

have concentrated on the much less frequently used records of the dioceses themselves, especially those of Armagh, Cashel, Dublin, and Kerry. I have used very similar material in Church of Ireland diocesan records, and the private papers of individual bishops and archbishops, to show that the reforms that took place within the Irish Roman Catholic dioceses, long before their official codification at the Synod of Thurles in 1850, were replicated in a very similar manner within the dioceses of the Church of Ireland. I have also been able to show that a comparable reform agenda was even being pursued by the Presbyterian churches in Ireland. As far as the Protestant reform programme is concerned, this is an area which has not, to date, been explored to any great extent by historians of religion in Ireland. This book seeks therefore to break new ground in both opening up the Protestant churches to the same sort of internal scrutiny which has taken place within Irish Roman Catholicism, and, perhaps more importantly, to set out the enormous degree of common ground that existed between those of different theological outlook, both in the problems they faced and the means they found of resolving them. It offers, in particular, a rather different, and on the whole more positive, picture of the Church of Ireland before 1830 to that which has been painted by even its most recent historians. The third aspect of this book, in which even more new ground has been broken, is provided by the chapter in which the church building and restoration programmes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, across all the major denominations in Ireland, are explored in detail for the first time. So little work has been done on this topic, and so many important buildings have been lost through alteration, closure, or demolition as a result, that it has not been possible to do much more than scratch the surface. However, I hope enough has been done to suggest that the scope for further investigation is considerable, and that there is potential for several doctoral theses in the more detailed study of the topic at a regional level. It is important to draw the attention of the reader to the major effort to record church buildings in the Republic of Ireland launched by the Heritage Council in 1997. Two years earlier the Council had set up an Ecclesiastical Working Group ‘to facilitate an exchange of views on different matters that affect ecclesiastical heritage in general as well as being pro-active in starting initiatives to promote this heritage’. This group commissioned Mona O’Rourke to design a form for the recording of church buildings and their furnishings by volunteers, and these forms were distributed through the four participating religious denominations, all of whom were represented on the working group: the Church of Ireland, the Methodist, the Presbyterian and the Roman Catholic churches.3 Unfortunately the response to the survey has 3 Information on Survey of Churches in Ireland, Kilkenny 1997.

Introduction

xxiii

been very mixed. The Methodist one has been comprehensive but the number of buildings was relatively small. Across the Republic of Ireland about half the Church of Ireland incumbents have responded though no diocese has as yet produced a report for all its extant churches. As far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, the response has depended on the attitude of each diocesan bishop. Four dioceses—Cloyne, Dublin, Galway, and Ossory— have strongly supported the survey and the returns from churches have been virtually complete. In other dioceses there have been few or no returns, with only a fifth of Roman Catholic churches across Ireland as a whole making a return. Those forms that have been returned show a wide variation in both their accuracy and their usefulness; many have been only partially completed. As a result the survey has been far less valuable than had been hoped. The returned forms have been analysed and proposals made for both the completion and the improvement of the survey.4 I have included an appendix which lists twenty-five examples of surviving church interiors of the period 1770–1850 in Ireland. Some of these are still in ecclesiastical use and others have been re-erected at either the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum or the Ulster-American Folk Park. This list is far from extensive but it is doubtful if more than double the number of substantially unaltered buildings that I have identified do still survive. If many of these, including possibly some that I have visited, are not to be lost the need to make a more positive identification of important buildings, and to take measures to secure their preservation, with perhaps the most minor modifications in the case of those still in ecclesiastical use, is pressing. Finally I have attempted to set this revisionist study of the religious history of Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in context, by noting comparable developments, problems and solutions in other parts of Europe, particularly those areas most closely analogous in cultural and social terms to Ireland: Brittany, the Isle of Man, the western highlands and islands of Scotland, and much of Wales. In the case of the Isle of Man and Wales, where revisionist studies of religious history are even thinner on the ground than they are for Ireland, I have been greatly assisted by the fact that I was working on studies of both these areas at the same time that I was working on this study of Ireland, though the full results are unlikely to appear in print before this study is published.5 Writing this book, especially for one whose 4 P. Pigott, B. B. Sjo¨berg, and J. Carty, The Heritage Council’s Ecclesiastical Survey: Strategic Review, Dublin 1999. Copies of this report, supporting papers, and the returned forms can be consulted in the offices of the Heritage Council at Rothes House, Parliament Street, Kilkenny. 5 See W. N. Yates, ‘Religion and Education in the Isle of Man 1542–1838’, in A New History of the Isle of Man: Vol 4 the Derby and Atholl Periods, to be published by Liverpool University Press, and the section covering the period 1780–1850 in G. Williams, W. M. Jacob, W. N. Yates, and F. Knight, The Welsh Church from Reformation to Disestablishment 1603–1920, to be published by University of Wales Press.

xxiv

Introduction

knowledge of Irish history has to date not been extensive, has been a real challenge, but it has been an immensely enjoyable and rewarding one. I have tried to throw a rather different, but I hope helpful, light on what seems to me to be a crucial period of Irish religious history. Whether or not I have achieved this ambitious objective is for the reader to decide.

1 The Religious Development of Ireland 1560–1770 The religious condition of Ireland in 1770 was one that was unique in Europe. The established and Protestant Church of Ireland could count on the religious allegiance of between one-tenth and one-eighth of the population of Ireland. The Roman Catholic Church, against which measures, admittedly somewhat half-hearted, had been taken to secure its extinction, still commanded the religious allegiance of four-Wfths of the population, and almost as many Protestants worshipped in Presbyterian meeting houses as in the places of worship of the established church. This chapter will seek to explore the reasons for this unusual state of aVairs, the origins of which lie in the failure to impose the Protestant Reformation on Ireland in the way that it had, eventually, been imposed on other parts of the British Isles.

T H E FAI LUR E O F THE R EFO R MATI O N 1560–1660 In principle there was no reason why the Reformation should have failed in Ireland. Exactly the same political measures, abjuring papal authority and recognizing the crown as the head of the national church, had been taken in Ireland as they had been in England and Wales. The main diVerence as far as Ireland was concerned was not in the nature of the legislation but in the method of its implementation, allied to the fact that until the early seventeenth century much of Ireland was outside eVective English control. In England and Wales the Reformation had been implemented eVectively in even the most isolated and religiously conservative areas by the last quarter of the sixteenth century.1 In Scotland, which had a separate monarchy until 1603 1 See especially the discussions of the later stages of the English Reformation in E. DuVy, The Stripping of the Altars, New Haven and London 1992, and R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation, Cambridge 1989. For developments in Wales see Glanmor Williams, Wales and the Reformation, CardiV 1997.

2

Religious Development 1560–1770

and a separate parliament until 1707, the progress of the Reformation was diVerent and its implementation much slower, but even in Scotland, Roman Catholicism had been eradicated from all but parts of the western highlands and islands by the Wrst quarter of the seventeenth century.2 In Ireland the Reformation was implemented very half-heartedly before about 1590. Though more strenuous measures for implementation were taken thereafter it was by then too late. The deep religious conservatism of both clergy and laity had been tolerated for so long that by the time a fuller Protestantism was on oVer in Ireland it was in competition with Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism imported by priests trained at seminaries in Europe. This is perhaps an over-simpliWcation of the events of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but it is one on which all historians of Ireland in this period basically agree. The area on which there has been much more discussion and disagreement is whether the Reformation could ever have been implemented in Ireland,3 some following the lead of Brendan Bradshaw in arguing that there was never much likelihood of the Reformation being successful in a country of such deeply-rooted Catholic loyalties, with the Protestant cause even being considered doomed in Dublin by the early seventeenth century and others supporting the line taken by Nicholas Canny in his seminal article on the topic.4 Canny argues that both Catholicism and Protestantism were fragile blooms in Ireland and that this remained the case throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with opportunities for either side to strengthen its hold on the population of Ireland. For Canny the decisive step towards conWrming that Ireland would always be a predominantly Roman Catholic country, in which Protestantism could make no further headway, was not achieved until the nineteenth century with the failure of the ‘Protestant Crusade’ of proselytization within the Roman Catholic community, and the consolidation and transformation of Irish Roman Catholicism associated with Cardinal Cullen. There is a good deal of strength in Canny’s arguments, as will become clear from some of the later sections of this book, but it is important that it should not be allowed to 2 For developments in Scotland see I. B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation, London 1982. However, C. G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707, Edinburgh 1997, 85–8, notes that Church of Scotland ministers, particularly those of lowland origins, were still meeting considerable opposition in parts of the western highlands as late as the early eighteenth century. 3 For a good summary of this debate see the contributions by James Murray and Alan Ford to ‘The Church of Ireland: A Critical Bibliography’, Irish Historical Studies, xxviii (1992–3), 345–58, and K. Bottigheimer and B. Bradshaw, ‘Revisionism and the Irish Reformation’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, li (2000), 581–91. 4 N. P. Canny, ‘Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: Une Question Mal Poseé’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xxx (1979), 423–50. For a direct response see K. Bottigheimer, ‘The Failure of the Reformation in Ireland: Une Question Bien Poseé’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xxxvi (1985), 196–207.


3

obscure some of the core reasons as to why the Church of Ireland found itself in the position of being a minority establishment under considerable religious pressure in 1770. The fundamental diVerence between Reformation policy in Ireland and that in England and Wales was one of implementation. This can be seen in the most essential aspect of attempting to reform any church, namely in the structure of its senior management. Although in both England and Wales the structure of the pre-Reformation church was not altered, its personnel was. Many clergy certainly remained at their posts in the parishes throughout the religious upheavals between the 1530s and the 1560s but that was not true at a senior level. Of the bishops inherited by Elizabeth I in 1558 only one was prepared to accept the Wnal implementation of a Protestant religious establishment. This was Kitchin of LlandaV who survived in his post until his death in 1566. Another religious conservative, John Salisbury, suVragan bishop of Thetford from 1536, was brieXy bishop of Sodor and Man between 1570 and 1573.5 Apart from these two exceptions, all the other dioceses in the provinces of Canterbury and York were, from 1559, Wlled by committed Protestants replacing bishops who had either died or been deprived. In Ireland the situation was wholly diVerent. Far more bishops were prepared to accept the royal supremacy but at the same time to ensure that no steps were made to Protestantize the church in their dioceses. The Dublinbased government was prepared to accept this situation, recognizing that it simply did not have the resources to exercise political control over many parts of Ireland, let alone impose reformed doctrine and religious practice on a deeply conservative church. Provided the bishops were prepared to manifest their loyalty to the English Crown by taking the necessary oaths, no further questions were to be asked and the bishops were allowed to remain in post. The papacy was also prepared to take a similarly pragmatic view with the result that for a substantial period, in the case of the diocese of Achonry until as late as 1603, many Irish dioceses retained bishops recognized by both the crown and the papacy.6 The exceptions were Kildare and Meath, where bishops who refused to accept the royal supremacy were deprived, and the diocese of Armagh where a vacancy permitted the appointment of a Protestant archbishop, Adam Loftus, in 1562–3. The survival of ‘church papist’ bishops and archbishops in Ireland throughout much of the sixteenth, and even into the early seventeenth, centuries seriously impeded the implementation of the Reformation in 5 For the post-Reformation situation in the Isle of Man, see W. N. Yates, ‘The Church in the Isle of Man 1542–1838’, in New History of the Isle of Man: IV The Derby and Atholl Periods 1405– 1830 (forthcoming). 6 For details see Appendix 1.

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many parts of the country. The shortage of committed Protestant clergy meant that even when vacant dioceses had to be Wlled appointments might go to conservative churchmen such as Miler Magrath. Magrath had been provided by the papacy to the see of Down and Connor in 1565, accepted the royal supremacy in 1567, but was not formally deprived until 1580. In the meantime he had acquired royal nomination to the bishopric of Clogher in 1570 and translation to the archbishopric of Cashel in 1571 where he remained until his death in 1622, holding at various periods also the bishoprics of Achonry, Killala, Lismore, and Waterford. ‘Church papist’ bishops made no attempt to proceed any further than the church of Henry VIII’s reign, which rejected papal supremacy but otherwise retained the doctrines and practices of the pre-Reformation church. They were greatly aided by the failure to produce an Irish version of the Book of Common Prayer until the Wrst decade of the seventeenth century. In the absence of an Irish text Irish clergy were authorized to use the Latin rather than the English text in those parts of Ireland in which few people spoke English. The retention of a familiar liturgical language facilitated the retention of familiar ceremonial with the result that many ‘conforming beneWced ministers provided a liturgy as papist as they dared’;7 the fact that Marian Catholicism had been replaced by Elizabethan Protestantism was deliberately obscured by ‘the illicit continuance of previous practices at parish level or the unauthorised adaptation of the new services’.8 Archbishop Bodkin of Tuam ‘retained the old liturgy, and used it even in the presence of the Lord Deputy’,9 the Protestant Henry Sidney. According to a contemporary, in Bodkin’s cathedral at Tuam ‘mass is sung and said, and he himself is daily in the choir’.10 There are two possible interpretations of this state of aVairs. On the one hand it has been argued that it was more than just political inertia, that ‘the more conservative form of Anglicanism introduced to Ireland initially may actually have been more in line with the Queen’s personal preference’,11 and that the Ornaments Rubric had been included in the Elizabethan prayer book speciWcally to enable the Irish clergy to retain the use of the traditional eucharistic vestments.12 Whether or not this was the case, it was certainly 7 P. J. Corish, The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Dublin 1981, 24. 8 S. G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the ConXict of Cultures 1470–1603, London 1985, 213. 9 A. Clarke, ‘Varieties of Uniformity: The First Century of the Church of Ireland’, Studies in Church History, xxv (1989), 110. 10 Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 214. 11 H. A. JeVeries, ‘The Irish Parliament of 1560: The Anglican Reforms Authorised’, Irish Historical Studies, xxvi (1988–9), 140. 12 Ibid., 134.


5

true that the permission given for the widespread use of the Latin version of the prayer book ensured that most Irish bishops were prepared to support the legislative measures by which the Elizabethan religious settlement was conWrmed in Ireland in 1560.13 A more likely explanation of the failure by the government to ensure a less conservative Reformation in many parts of Ireland was its recognition that, at a time when it did not have secure political control outside the Pale, the area adjacent to Dublin, any attempt to impose a more rigorous reform programme would have been either ignored or resisted. Within the Pale the situation was diVerent and it is notable that in several of the Pale dioceses a concerted attempt was made to impose the Reformation through the appointment of committed Protestants to vacant dioceses: Hugh Brady to Meath in 1563, Robert Daly to Kildare in 1564, Christopher GaVney to Ossory, and Daniel Kavanagh to Leighlin in 1567. In the last of these years another committed Protestant, Adam Loftus, archbishop of Armagh since 1563, was translated to Dublin to succeed the conservative Hugh Curwin, who had been translated to Oxford; Loftus was then succeeded at Armagh by another Protestant, Thomas Lancaster, who had been deprived as bishop of Kildare in Mary’s reign.14 At Meath, Hugh Brady (1563–84) made strenuous eVorts to enforce the Reformation within his diocese but with relatively little success, hampered by the fact that in 1576 only eighteen of his clergy could speak English, the rest having, according to one contemporary ‘very little Latin, less learning and civility . . . In many places the very walls of the churches [were] down, very few chancels covered, windows and doors ruined and spoiled.’15 In fact Wfty-two of the churches in the diocese were in repair in 1576, but thereafter the situation seems to have got worse rather than better, with the majority of the churches in the diocese described as ‘utterly ruined’ by the end of the century.16 Very slow progress was made in producing texts in Irish; a catechism was published in 1571, but a New Testament, completed in 1587, was not published until 1603.17 An Irish translation of the Book of Common Prayer followed in 1608. Surveying the situation in Ireland in the last decade of the sixteenth century, Alan Ford concludes that ‘the Church of Ireland was still staVed by native clergy . . . only a few could preach, and even fewer had university degrees’. The services of the Book of Common Prayer were ‘used and misused in careless fashion . . . sometimes . . . read in Latin, often . . . freely adapted to accommodate the time-honoured methods of 13 Ibid., 133, 137–9. 14 Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 215. 15 Ibid., 217. 16 H. C. Walshe, ‘Enforcing the Elizabethan Settlement: The Vicissitudes of Hugh Brady, Bishop of Meath, 1563–84’, Irish Historical Studies, xxvi (1988–9), 374–6. 17 Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 218.

6


pre-Reformation worship with which people were familiar’.18 Ford ascribes the decision of the Dublin government to attempt to rectify this situation, after a delay of thirty years, to the recognition that it was not simply dealing with ‘Catholic Survivalism’ in Ireland but that, as a result of the vacuum, an opportunity was being oVered to a new generation of committed Irish Roman Catholics, trained as priests in continental seminaries, to move the Irish people from ‘Catholic Survivalism’ to the mainstream Roman Catholicism of the European Counter-Reformation. These seminary-educated priests had begun to appear in Ireland by 1580 and what they had to oVer appeared much more attractive to most ‘Conservative Conformists’ than either a watereddown or even a more advanced type of Protestantism.19 Both clergy and laity began to withdraw from the Church of Ireland leaving beneWces vacant and with no candidates to Wll them. In c.1592 Bishop Lyon of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross noted that the 226 parishes of his three dioceses were served by only 68 clergy, with 76 vacant beneWces and the revenues of a further 22 alienated by laymen.20 One solution to the religious problems of Ireland might have been to bring about a greater integration between the ecclesiastical establishments of England, Ireland, Wales, and (after the union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603) Scotland. In practice this was never really attempted. The number of episcopal translations between Irish sees and those in England, Scotland, and Wales remained negligible,21 though both English and Scottish clergy were appointed to both bishoprics and some of the wealthier ecclesiastical beneWces in Ireland, and in the early years of the seventeenth century this was seen as the best method of securing the implementation of the ‘second phase’ of the Irish Reformation. There were three main strands in the new religious policy of the Dublin government in the last decade of the sixteenth and the Wrst quarter of the seventeenth centuries. The Wrst was to secure a better, and more unequivocally Protestant, education for native Irish clergy. There had been attempts to establish a university in Ireland since the episcopate of George Browne, a moderate Protestant, as archbishop of Dublin (1536–54), but that had failed. However, as a result of an initiative by the corporation of Dublin, Trinity College was founded as a university for Ireland in 1591–2 though its initial impact was severely limited by its size. It began with a total establishment of three fellows and three scholars, though this gradually increased and the total number of scholars was Wxed at seventy by the charter of 1637. Not all the early fellows were in holy orders and not all the early students entered the 18 A. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641, Frankfurt 1985, 19. 19 Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 221–3. 20 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 24. 21 For details see Appendix 2.


7

ordained ministry of the Church of Ireland. The statutes of 1637 laid down that all the fellows except two (one to study law and the other to study medicine) were to be in holy orders. The dominant Wgure in the early years of the college was James Ussher, Professor of Divinity 1607–21 and ViceChancellor 1615–46.22 Ussher became bishop of Meath in 1621 and was translated to the primatial see of Armagh in 1625. The limited initial impact of the college on the Irish Church can be seen in the fact that, more than twenty years after its foundation, in 1615 only twenty-three college graduates were serving the Church of Ireland. This number increased thereafter but the majority of graduates served parishes in the province of Dublin, leading to the description of the college as ‘not a national university, but as a Pale-based institution’.23 The second strand of the new religious policy was the use of English and Scottish clergy to provide ecclesiastical leadership in Ireland, a policy which was closely linked to that of plantation, whereby English and Scottish settlement was encouraged in those parts of Ireland in which the Dublin-based government had least inXuence. As part of this policy Irish dioceses which had been vacant for several years were at last Wlled by Protestant bishops: Kilmore in 1604; Clogher, Derry, and Raphoe in 1605; Kilfenora in 1606; Dromore in 1607; Waterford and Lismore in 1608. The majority of episcopal appointments in Ireland after 1600 went to English or Scottish clergymen. Whereas in 1603 ten out of the then sixteen bishops in oYce were Irish, by 1625 only three out of twenty-three bishops were Irish. It was also possible to attract English and Scottish clergy to serve in Ireland because there was a shortage of livings in England in the early seventeenth century.24 In the united diocese of Killala and Achonry, where two Scottish bishops succeeded one another after the death of Miler Magrath in 1622, ‘the diocesan clergy were transformed from a wholly native body in 1615 to a largely Scottish ministry in 1634’.25 Andrew Knox, translated from the Scottish diocese of the Isles to the Irish diocese of Raphoe in 1611 (though he retained the former see until 1618), used his experience ‘of reforming a wholly Gaelic diocese in the remote Scottish highlands’ as a model for the reform of his Irish diocese. Having inherited ‘no Conformist native ministers’ at Raphoe he appointed Scottish clergy to serve the vacant beneWces. By 1622 the diocese had twenty settler and seven native clergy, two of the latter being ‘identiWed as converted [Roman Catholic] priests’. In several dioceses native clergy were discriminated against 22 R. B. McDowell and D. A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin 1592–1952: An Academic History, Cambridge 1982, 2–3, 10–13. 23 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 77–9. 24 Ibid., 33, 41, 73. 25 Ibid., 137.

8


with the richer beneWces going to English or Scottish clergy.26 This compares with the situation in the united diocese of Meath and Clonmacnois in 1604 in which ten of the thirty richest beneWces were still held by Irish clergy.27 The one Irish bishop who took a diVerent view was William Bedell. Bedell had moved from England to become provost of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1627. In 1629 he was consecrated as bishop of the united dioceses of Kilmore and Ardagh. He learned Irish and instituted an Irish lecture at the college and Irish prayers in the college chapel on holy days. As bishop he declined to replace native clergy by settlers and to follow the example of many of his fellow bishops in providing for the spiritual welfare of settler communities at the expense of indigenous ones. In many Irish dioceses it was noticeable that many of the churches out of repair were overwhelmingly in the Irish-speaking areas and that when churches had fallen into ruin they were frequently rebuilt nearer to the plantation settlements. Thus when Conwall parish church in County Donegal became ruinous Bishop Knox of Raphoe recommended that it should be rebuilt at Letterkenny, where there were eighty settler families.28 There is no doubt that, however unsatisfactory the policies of the new breed of bishops may have been from the point of view of native Irish clergy and laity, they certainly resulted in an overall improvement in the standards of pastoral provision within the Church of Ireland, and particularly in addressing one of the main concerns of Protestant bishops since the 1560s, the lack of preaching ministers. By 1615 out of 525 clergy in the Church of Ireland 161 were preaching ministers, though they remained comparatively few in some dioceses, Tuam only having 11. This Wgure had grown by 1622 from 161 to 244. Technically there were then 2,492 parishes in Ireland but in practice many parishes, some of which had neither churches nor parishioners willing to attend Protestant services, were formed into consolidated beneWces, with the result that clerical incomes could be set at a level suYcient to attract the bettereducated clergy. The surviving evidence, however, suggests that by the 1620s the improvement in the standards of pastoral provision had reached a level beyond which they could not improve much further. In the province of Armagh between 1622 and 1634 the total number of clergy increased from 167 to 227, but the number of those resident on their beneWces decreased from 158 to 146, and the number of licensed preachers from 112 to 109. Figures for 16 Irish dioceses in 1615 and 1634 show that 36.8% of clergy were preaching ministers in the latter year compared with 28% in the former. The main improvement seems to have taken place in the second decade of the seventeenth century. In the diocese of Killaloe 7 clergy in 1611 had increased to 31, 26 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 166–9. 27 Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 223. 28 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 140–1, 171–2.


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of which 26 were resident but only 9 Irish, by 1615.29 In addition to the improvement in the number of clergy and licensed preachers there was a similar improvement in the condition of church fabrics. Out of 1,512 churches in the provinces of Cashel, Dublin, and Tuam in 1615, 634 (42.8%) were then in good repair, though considerably fewer in Cashel (30.4%) than in Dublin (54.8%) or Tuam (56.3%). The diocese with the largest number of churches in good repair was Ferns (78%); at the other end of the scale Wfteen out of eighteen churches were out of repair in the small west-coast diocese of Kilfenora and there was no information on the remaining three. However, as in the case of clergy and preacher numbers, these Wgures seem to have marked something of a peak. In 1622 the three dioceses of Kildare, Meath, and Ossory returned fewer churches as being in good repair than they had seven years earlier.30 The third strand of the new religious policy was the theological one. The deliberate attempt to make the Church of Ireland more Protestant was occurring at the same time that the Church of England was moving in the opposite direction.31 Ireland therefore proved to be increasingly attractive to English and Scottish Calvinists who disliked the religious policies of James VI and I, and Calvinists became the dominant theological party in the Church of Ireland during the Wrst three decades of the seventeenth century. Advanced Calvinism had inWltrated Trinity College, Dublin, even earlier with the appointment of Walter Travers as its Wrst full-time provost in 1594. The college authorities were criticized by Archbishop Abbot of Canterbury for Puritan practices such as the encouragement of ‘lay preaching and failure to require the wearing of the surplice’.32 The use of Scottish clergy within the Church of Ireland created further theological and liturgical complications. Scottish clergy were reluctant to use the Book of Common Prayer and, though they acted with episcopal authority, in eVect they ‘created a Presbyterian church within the established one, retaining in Ireland the traditional Scottish approach to ordination, where the presbytery would join with the bishop in the laying on of hands’. Several Irish bishops, including both Knox of Raphoe and Archbishop Ussher, were sympathetic to these Presbyterian tendencies within the ministry of the Church of Ireland, and the Irish Articles of 1615 were considerably more Calvinist in tone than the Thirty-Nine Articles of the 29 Ibid., 65–6, 71, 84, 87, 131–3; Clarke, ‘Varieties of Uniformity’, 118. 30 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 113–14. 31 See especially the pioneering study by N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640, Oxford 1987, and J. Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, Cambridge 1998. 32 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 199, and ‘The Church of Ireland, 1558–1634: A Puritan Church?’, in As By Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation, ed. A. Ford, J. McGuire, and K. Milne, Dublin 1995, 59.

10


Church of England.33 However, the prevailing Calvinism of the Church of Ireland was checked following the appointment of Thomas Wentworth, one of Charles I’s most trusted ministers, as Lord Deputy, in 1633, and the consecration of the Laudian high churchmen, John Bramhall, as bishop of Derry in 1634. Together they ‘set out to bring the divergent Irish Church into conformity by securing the adoption of the Thirty-Nine Articles and the English Canons of 1604, and, having done so, to make that conformity uniform’.34 By that time, however, much damage had been done. The government and its Protestant lobby in Ireland had faced an acute dilemma thirty years earlier: ‘in order to convert the native Irish, it needed native ministers; but the supply of native ministers was meagre because the native Irish were unconverted’.35 The alternative strategy of importing Protestant clergy from England and Scotland turned out to be, in some respects, counter-productive. The attempt to Protestantize dioceses, in which bishops had previously pursued either a deeply conservative or, if more Protestant in outlook, a gradualist policy towards ecclesiastical reform, alienated the bulk of ‘church papist’ clergy and laity. Whereas previously they had been able to ‘conform to the established church whilst at the same time continuing to worship . . . in the traditional, pre-Reformation manner’, they were now forced to choose between the new Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism of seminary-educated missionary priests or full-blown Protestantism of an ultra-Calvinist variety. When Bishop Downham of Derry (1617–34) told a Roman Catholic in his diocese that ‘your religion of popery is superstitious and idolatrous, your faith erroneous and heretical, your church in respect of both apostatical, your deiWed Pope the head of that Catholic apostasy, and consequently Antichrist’36 it was clear that the days of ‘church papism’ were well and truly over. Although there were a few ‘conservative conformists’ who became ‘enthusiastic Protestants’, especially in Dublin and, perhaps more surprisingly, Galway, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the majority opted for ‘recusancy’. In Ireland as a whole, ‘the battle for religious allegiance was already lost at a very early stage of the new Catholic mission’. Even in Dublin by 1630 there were ‘sizeable Protestant congregations only in a few city parishes in the neighbourhood of the castle. Elsewhere there is the same monotonous story—even where a service can be maintained the congregation is at best a handful, and in many parishes all the people are recusants and 33 Ford, ‘A Puritan Church’, 64–6; P. Kilroy, Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland 1660–1714, Cork 1994, 3–7. 34 Clarke, ‘Varieties of Uniformity’, 120. 35 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 107. 36 Ibid., 226.


11

there is no service.’ The numbers of secessions from the Church of Ireland were so considerable that in many dioceses ‘substantial progress had been made in setting up a [Roman Catholic] parish system by the end of the 1630s’.37 In the diocese of Tuam the number of Roman Catholic parish clergy increased from thirty-four to Wfty-seven between 1630 and 1637, and in that of Elphin the increase was from thirteen to forty-two between 1625 and 1637.38 This happened despite a deliberate policy of persecution of Roman Catholics during the Wrst quarter of the seventeenth century. The strength of Irish Roman Catholicism by the 1630s was also shown in the extent to which it was possible to increase the number of bishops and to introduce a reformist Counter-Reformation agenda into diocesan administration. By 1643 no fewer than nineteen of the thirty dioceses had been provided with bishops. The decrees of the Tuam provincial synod, approved by Rome in 1634, insisted on the enforcement of strict post-Tridentine discipline, including regulations in respect of clerical dress, the keeping of registers, admissions to holy orders, the solemnization of marriages, the hearing of confessions and the reception of Holy Communion.39 After the Irish rebellion of 1641 large parts of Ireland came under the control of the Confederation of Catholics of Ireland, established at a meeting at Kilkenny in 1642. Two years later the papacy appointed a nuncio to the Confederation, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, Archbishop of the Italian diocese of Fermo. Although his mission was to end eventually in disaster, he secured the appointment of bishops to all but four of the remaining vacant Irish dioceses and endeavoured, despite resistance from the more conservative Irish bishops, to introduce the full splendour of Roman Catholic ceremonial into some Irish services, personally washing the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday at Kilkenny in 1646 and Wexford in 1647.40 This Roman Catholic revival was, temporarily at least, cut short by Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland in 1649, and a programme of ruthless repression by his lieutenants, but in the longer term its signiWcance should not be under-estimated. By allowing an extreme form of Calvinism to take root in the Church of Ireland in the Wrst quarter of the seventeenth century, the government and the more Protestant bishops had not just ensured the success of the CounterReformation missionaries and the building up of a Roman Catholic diocesan and parochial system in Ireland. They had also contributed to the further division of Protestantism in Ireland. As the anti-Calvinist measures of 37 Ibid., 25, 27; Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 222; Corish, Catholic Community, 28–9. ´ hAnnrachaín, Catholic Reformation in Ireland: The Mission of Rinuccini 1645–1649, 38 T. O Oxford 2002, 58. 39 Ibid., 59. 40 Ibid., 249.

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Wentworth and Bramhall began to be eVective, Scottish Presbyterian ministers left Ireland and by 1637, the majority had departed. The anti-Calvinist victory was, however, short-lived. With the collapse of Charles I’s personal rule in 1640, and the descent into civil war, most of Bramhall’s work was undone. Although bishops continued to be appointed to Irish sees somewhat later than in England, the last consecration being that of Edward Parry to Killaloe in 1647, Bramhall himself and several other high churchmen in Ireland, including Archbishop Hamilton of Cashel (a Scottish high churchman), Bishop Leslie of Down and Connor, and Dean King of Tuam, went into exile on the European mainland during the 1650s. Presbyterian ministers returned to Ireland, reappearing with the Scottish Army in 1642 when a formal presbytery was established at Carrickfergus. By 1653 there were twenty-four Presbyterian ministers in Ireland and further presbyteries were established in North Antrim in 1654, Laggan (Donegal) in 1657, and Tyrone in 1659. Each presbytery was divided into parishes as they were in Scotland.41 As well as the reintroduction of Presbyterianism into Ireland, the upheavals of the 1640s also saw the introduction of Independency with the Cromwellian Army. Two Independent congregations had been established in Dublin parish churches in 1651, and in 1652 the minister of one of these congregations, Samuel Winter, was appointed provost of Trinity College. Whereas Presbyterianism remained a powerful force in parts of Ireland after the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the Irish episcopate in 1661, other types of nonepiscopal Protestantism made little long-term impact. Winter was ejected from his provostship in 1660, and his incumbency of St Nicholas-within-the Walls in 1661, but he continued to minister to an Independent congregation in Dublin. By 1695 there were also Independent congregations in Carlow, Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, and Wexford, but their numbers remained so small that the Irish bishops, who were much more concerned about the serious challenge from Presbyterianism, made no attempt to suppress them. There was also some Quaker activity in Ireland from the 1650s, and Quakers disrupted both Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic services in the 1660s and 1670s. There were thirty Quaker meetings in Ireland by 1660 and Wfty-three by 1701. In 1680 there were 798 Quaker families in Ireland which has been taken to indicate a total Quaker population of between 5,500 and 6,500.42 Commenting on the religious situation in Ireland, one historian of religion in that country has concluded that ‘the consequence of the failure 41 Kilroy, Protestant Dissent, 16; J. McCaVerty, ‘John Bramhall and the Church of Ireland in the 1630s’, in As By Law Established, 110; R. S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement: The InXuence of the Laudians 1649–1662, London 1951, 284–94; R. Gillespie, ‘The Presbyterian Revolution in Ulster, 1660–1690’, Studies in Church History, xxv (1989), 159. 42 Kilroy, Protestant Dissent, 60, 63, 68, 75, 82, 86–7, 90.


13

to take over Catholicism was the failure to contain Protestantism. By the standards of those who instituted it, the Church of Ireland failed, not once, but twice.’43 It is a harsh judgement but one with which it is diYcult to disagree.

T H E C ON S O L I DAT I O N O F R E L I G I O U S DI V I S I ON 1660–1715 The restoration of Charles II in 1660 led to a new religious settlement. In theory this settlement could have been diVerent in the constituent parts of the British Isles, but it would have caused practical diYculties. What was achieved was a restoration of episcopacy throughout the British Isles, but with the concession in Scotland that episcopacy would work in tandem with presbyteries and kirk sessions, and that no attempt would be made to impose an Anglican liturgy on the Scottish Church. The religious settlement in Ireland followed the pattern in England and Wales rather than that in Scotland, with the result that Irish Presbyterians had to make a conscious choice as to whether they would accept the settlement or become dissenters. Of the seventy-Wve to eighty Presbyterian ministers in Ireland in 1662 only about a tenth conformed to the establishment, the rest being ejected from the beneWces to which they had been appointed during the interregnum, but in most cases remaining in the parishes to which they had formerly ministered and holding meetings for worship in private houses. In many cases the majority of parishioners, especially in Ulster parishes, chose to worship with their former minister rather than accept the ministrations of the Church of Ireland incumbent appointed to succeed him.44 The Wrst action that had to be taken to re-establish the Church of Ireland was the Wlling of those dioceses which had fallen vacant through the deaths of bishops during the interregnum. Whereas in the other parts of the British Isles there was a concerted attempt to maintain a balance in the appointment of bishops so as to make the post-restoration establishment as comprehensive as possible, the majority of bishops appointed to Irish sees in 1661 were strong high churchmen. They included three existing bishops translated to more senior sees: John Bramhall of Derry to the archbishopric of Armagh, Thomas Fulwar of Ardfert to the archbishopric of Cashel, and Henry Leslie of Down and Connor to the bishopric of Meath. Eleven of the Wfteen new bishops had been ‘suVerers’ during the interregnum, including the distinguished high 43 Clarke, ‘Varieties of Uniformity’, 122. 44 R. F. G. Holmes, The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Blackrock 2000, 40–1.

14


church theologian, Jeremy Taylor, appointed to the dioceses of Down, Connor, and Dromore. The only bishops who could be described as ‘moderates’ were Edward Worth, newly appointed to Killaloe, and Henry Jones, translated from Clogher to Meath after the premature death of Henry Leslie in 1661. That the Irish appointments should have been so partisan is in a way surprising since the move to re-establish episcopacy in Ireland had been supported by two of the leading Irish Puritans, Sir Charles Coote and Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, and bearing in mind that the Presbyterian lobby in Ireland was a good deal stronger than it was in England or Wales.45 The high church leadership of the Church of Ireland from 1661 was a major factor aVecting its development over the succeeding century.46 The strong sacramental tradition within the Church of Ireland, apparent in the late seventeenth century,47 survived into the early nineteenth century.48 The Church of Ireland was not seriously aVected by the non-juring schism that temporarily divided high churchmen in England and Wales in the 1690s, and led to the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland, with only one Irish bishop, William Sheridan of Kilmore, being deprived in 1691 for refusing to take the oath to William III and Mary II. Measures were also taken by the post-restoration Church of Ireland for the better education of the clergy and to encourage them to learn Irish. There was a major expansion of Trinity College, Dublin, where the annual number of matriculations increased from thirty-Wve in 1665 to Wfty by 1674 and to sixty-Wve by 1683. The character of the post-restoration episcopate also Wnally ended the college’s former puritan tradition. Several new buildings, including a new chapel, were erected in the late seventeenth century. Both Archbishops Marsh (1694–1703) and King (1703–29) of Dublin encouraged the students to study Irish and the latter endowed a lectureship in divinity in 1718, the stipend of which was further augmented by a bequest in his will.49 By the 1740s, in some parts of Ireland such as the dioceses of Ossory and Raphoe, 90% of the Church of Ireland clergy were graduates of Trinity College, Dublin.50 45 I. M. Green, The Re-Establishment of the Church of England 1660–1663, Oxford 1978, 18, 32; J. McGuire, ‘Policy and Patronage: The Appointment of Bishops 1660–61’, in As By Law Established, 112–13, 116–17. 46 See especially F. R. Bolton, The Caroline Tradition of the Church of Ireland, London 1958. 47 R. Gillespie, ‘The Religion of Irish Protestants: A View from the Laity, 1580–1700’, in As By Law Established, 93. 48 Bolton, Caroline Tradition, 171–82. 49 McDowell and Webb, Trinity College, 22–4, 44; E. M. Johnston, ‘Problems Common to both Protestant and Catholic Churches in Eighteenth Century Ireland’, in Irish Culture and Nationalism, 1750–1950, ed. O. MacDonagh, W. F. Mandle, and P. Travers, London 1983, 20–1. 50 T. Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649–1770, New Haven and London 2003, 82.


15

Presbyterianism in Ireland was not signiWcantly weakened by the religious settlement of 1660–1. Indeed in Ulster the weakness of the Church of Ireland and continued immigration from Scotland greatly strengthened the Presbyterian community. The existence of established congregations was grudgingly accepted by the Church of Ireland bishops, who concentrated their eVorts on trying to prevent the establishment of new congregations or the building of meeting houses. There was, however, a serious shortage of available ministers and, as a result, some kirk sessions collapsed since they were obliged to have a minister for the session to meet and for the sacrament of Holy Communion to be administered. The Irish presbyteries established a General Committee to agree important matters of doctrine and practice and this developed into the Synod of Ulster in 1690.51 The Presbyterian increase in Ulster was most spectacular in the growing urban community of Belfast where it grew from 30 to 70% of the population between 1660 and 1705. Outside Ulster, where Presbyterianism was almost wholly the result of Scottish immigration, the survival of Presbyterianism was rather diVerent and consisted of English Presbyterian clergy and laity who refused to accept the restoration of episcopacy. There were three such congregations in Dublin and a total of seventeen in Ireland altogether organized into the Wve presbyteries of Dublin, Athlone, Drogheda, Galway, and Munster. Unlike the Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster they did not increase in number.52 The religious settlement of 1660–1 was essentially a settlement involving the claims of rival groups of Protestants. The majority religion of Ireland, Roman Catholicism, was simply ignored. After the severe religious persecution of the interregnum, the Roman Catholic ‘parish system was in great disarray and diocesan structure scarcely existed’. Only two Roman Catholic bishops were resident in Ireland. Bishops were appointed for some dioceses, and vicars-general for others, from 1669, but it was not until 1730 that ‘almost every diocese had its bishop, in some cases after a very long vacancy’.53 The accession of the Roman Catholic Duke of York as James II in 1685 oVered the Irish Roman Catholic community the hope that their conditions would be improved, though even during the reign of Charles II Roman Catholics had been ‘able to function more freely than . . . for over a century’,54 and the building of mass houses had been widely tolerated by Church of Ireland bishops and clergy ‘tacitly abandoning a missionary role’.55 In 1686 the 51 R. L. Greaves, ‘The Church of Ireland and the Nonconformist Challenge, 1660–88’, in As By Law Established, 126, 132; Gillespie, ‘Presbyterian Revolution’, 166–8. 52 Kilroy, Protestant Dissent, 26, 40–2, 52. 53 Corish, Catholic Community, 49, 56–7, 78. 54 J. G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland 1685–91, London 1969, 8–9. 55 Corish, Catholic Community, 58.

16


Roman Catholic bishops received permission to wear episcopal dress, but not their pectoral crosses, in public, and twelve of them received modest payments of between £150 and £300. In return they agreed to rebuke their parishioners who refused to pay tithes to the Church of Ireland clergy. The chapels at Dublin Castle and Kilmainham Hospital were adapted for Roman Catholic worship. Although James II, even after his enforced exile from England in 1688, made no attempt to dismantle the Anglican establishment in Ireland, some churches in Dublin, including the two cathedrals, were forcibly occupied by Roman Catholics for short periods in 1689–90, and at Wexford the altar and pews in the parish church were broken by Roman Catholics who had seized the building from its Church of Ireland congregation.56 Although there was support from the Roman Catholic community, and even some high church Anglicans, for James II in Ireland, his attempt to retain his kingship there Wnally became impossible after the defeat of the Jacobite forces at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, and James’s own return to the safety of exile in France. Irish Presbyterians were hopeful that, after the decision to abolish episcopacy in Scotland, the new regime of William III and Mary II might take similar steps in Ireland. This hope was eVectively dashed by the decision of all but one of the Irish bishops to accept political reality and acknowledge the new regime, which was therefore deprived of the justiWcation it might otherwise have had, as it had in Scotland, to abolish episcopacy in Ireland as well. The government’s inclination was to be as tolerant as it could be of Presbyterianism in Ireland but the attitude of the Church of Ireland bishops was quite the opposite, so much so that they gave the impression that they were more sympathetic to Roman Catholicism than they were to Presbyterianism. What the Presbyterians did achieve was freedom of worship, but with political restrictions, since they were obliged to receive the sacrament in the Church of Ireland, and produce a certiWcate conWrming this, if they wished to take up public oYce. Their ministers also received an increase in the regium donum, a small sum of money which had been paid irregularly since 1672 towards the support of Presbyterian ministers in Ireland in return for their political loyalty. The opposition to Presbyterianism in Ireland was led by William King, bishop of Derry from 1691 and archbishop of Dublin from 1703. In 1686 King, then chancellor of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, had been involved in a pamphlet war with the English Presbyterian minister in Dublin, Joseph Boyse, following the conversion of Peter Manby, dean of Derry, to Roman Catholicism in that year. King accused the Presbyterians of creating divisions 56 Simms, Jacobite Ireland, 27, 42, 86, 88.


17

among Protestants in Ireland that played into the hands of the Roman Catholics. Boyse accused the Church of Ireland of crypto-papism for bowing to the altar, using the sign of the cross, kneeling for communion, claiming to absolve sins, wearing surplices, and allowing organs in their churches. King continued his anti-Presbyterian stance as bishop of Derry but indicated his willingness to incorporate Presbyterians into the Protestant establishment if they would accept a measure of liturgical reform, such as kneeling, more frequent communion, and the use of the Lord’s Prayer and more scripture readings in their services. In Ulster most Presbyterians celebrated communion only once or twice a year, on the Scottish pattern, though in Dublin Boyse had monthly communion. Boyse agreed that union was possible but only if the Church of Ireland was prepared to retain presbyteries and kirk sessions, as the post-restoration Scottish Church had done, to provide better training for its clergy and to abolish pluralism and non-residence. There was clearly no meeting of minds. Relations between the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterians were to remain bad for the whole of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1712 the members of the Irish Convocation requested that payment of the regium donum be discontinued as they suspected it was being used to Wnance new Presbyterian congregations in Ireland. It was in fact suspended in 1714 but renewed in 1715 when it was increased to £2,000 per annum. What the Church of Ireland would have liked to have obtained from the British government was a ‘policy of religious exclusiveness’ in its favour, but it was a policy with which the government was in genuine agreement for only a very short period in the reign of Queen Anne when it was dominated by Tory high churchmen.57 The Church of Ireland did not, however, just see its relationship to Presbyterianism as being the agent of religious repression. King, particularly as bishop of Derry, launched a diocesan reform programme, including the extensive repair of existing, and building of new, churches, in an eVort to persuade Presbyterians to conform to the Church of Ireland, as he himself, the son of an immigrant Scottish miller, had done in 1670.58 At the beginning of the eighteenth century the position of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was, despite its strength among the population in terms of religious allegiance, still very weak. In 1703 there were only three 57 Kilroy, Protestant Dissent, 172–3, 175–8, 180–93, 233, 252, 258; E. M. Johnston, Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, Dublin 1974, 19, 32. See also J. C. Beckett, Protestant Dissent in Ireland 1687–1780, London 1948, 20–70; P. O’Regan, Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650–1729) and The Constitution in Church and State, Dublin 2000, 68–9, 73–8, 179–80, 248–61; and R. Gillespie, ‘Irish Print and Protestant Identity: William King’s Pamphlet Wars, 1687–1697’, in Taking Sides? Colonial and Confessional Mentalities in Early Modern Ireland: Essays in Honour of Karl S. Bottigheimer, ed. V. P. Carey and U. Lotz Heumann, Dublin 2003, 231–50. 58 Gillespie, ‘Irish Print and Protestant Identity’, 60–3, 72–3, 126–31.

18


bishops resident in Ireland, though a number of new episcopal appointments were made from 1707. The church was suspected of continued Jacobitism, not assisted by the fact that Roman Catholic bishops were provided to Irish sees by the papacy on the nomination of James II’s de jure heir, James III, the ‘Old Pretender’. This arrangement ceased only shortly before the pretender’s death in 1766 when the papacy declined to accept the claims of his son, Charles III, the ‘Young Pretender’, to the British throne. An attempt to restrict Roman Catholic activity in Ireland was made by an act of 1704 which obliged Roman Catholic priests to register if they wished to continue their ministry in Ireland. A total of 1,089 priests registered: 352 in Leinster, 289 in Munster, 259 in Connaught, and 189 in Ulster. The Wgures show how Roman Catholic support was spread fairly evenly throughout Ireland, though weakest in Ulster, whereas Protestants were concentrated in relatively small areas of the country, especially Ulster and the area around Dublin. Bishops resident in Ireland registered as parish priests. Once a priest had registered he ‘was free to carry out his normal duties . . . So long as the priest was registered, Catholic churches could be, and were, openly resorted to by their congregations.’ The registration measure, however, made no provision for future clergy to register and it was devised in the hope that ‘within a limited number of years the Catholic Church in Ireland, deprived of its clergy, would gradually fade away’.59

THE RELIGIOUS GEOGRAPHY OF IRELAND By the Wrst quarter of the eighteenth century the religious geography of Ireland had been established by the developments of the previous century, and it has not been signiWcantly altered between then and the present day, despite the enormous economic, political, and social developments of the intervening three centuries. Both Roman Catholics and Presbyterians were politically restricted, the latter by the imposition of the sacramental test, the former by speciWc legislation. Roman Catholics could not sit in Parliament, nor could they vote in parliamentary elections between 1728 and 1793: they were also excluded from municipal corporations, the magistracy, the legal profession, parish vestries, and from acting as sheriVs or constables. Their ability to hold land was also severely restricted. The desire to retain their estates and not to be excluded from political life encouraged a substantial 59 A New History of Ireland IV: Eighteenth Century Ireland 1691–1800, ed. T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan, Oxford 1986, 91, 93; Johnston, Ireland, 40.


19

number of Roman Catholic landowners, and others aspiring to social advancement, to conform to the Church of Ireland.60 In 1728 Archbishop Boulter of Armagh noted that in Ireland ‘the practice of the law from top to bottom is at present mostly in the hands of the new converts’.61 Even the Presbyterian community in Ireland contained very few landowners, though it included signiWcant numbers of tenant farmers and merchants.62 The hearth tax returns for 1732–3 suggested that at that date 73% of the population of Ireland was Roman Catholic, though Sean Connolly thinks that this is probably an under-estimate and that possibly up to 79% of the population was Roman Catholic. Protestants were most numerous in the towns and weakest in the countryside. Connolly estimates that the provincial totals for Roman Catholics ranged from 38% in Ulster to 79% in Leinster, 89% in Munster and 91% in Connaught. In the last two provinces Roman Catholics formed more than four-Wfths of the population in every county, though reduced to 68% in the largest urban centre, the city of Cork. In Leinster the Roman Catholic population was below four-Wfths of the population in only two counties, Dublin and Wicklow, and was down to 32% in the city of Dublin. On the other hand, in the nine counties of Ulster, Roman Catholics only outnumbered Protestants in Cavan (76%), Monaghan (64%), and Tyrone (52%). In three other counties they were less than a third of the population: Down (27%), Londonderry (24%), and Antrim (19%). At the same date the Protestant minority was almost evenly divided between the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian churches, with the former representing just over, and the latter just under, one-tenth of the total population of Ireland as a whole.63 These rough and ready calculations are not signiWcantly diVerent from the more scientiWc calculations of the mid-nineteenth century,64 or those of the oYcial census of 1861 in which Roman Catholics formed 78% of the population, members of the Church of Ireland 12% and Presbyterians 9%. Other religious bodies formed less than 1% of the population at that date.65 The most striking evidence from any analysis of the religious statistics for Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is the weakness of the Church of Ireland. It was not the largest single denomination in any of the Irish dioceses and only attracted the support of more than a quarter of the population in the diocese of Clogher, more than a Wfth in three other 60 Moody and Vaughan, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 37–8. 61 Johnston, Ireland, 26. 62 Moody and Vaughan, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 40. 63 S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660–1760, Oxford 1992, 144–6. 64 For details see Appendix 3. 65 P. M. H. Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales, London 1969, 40–1.

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dioceses—Armagh, Dromore, and Dublin—and more than a tenth in a further six: Derry, Down and Connor, Ferns and Leighlin, Kildare, Kilmore, and Raphoe. In the last of these dioceses the number of adherents of the three main religious groups in Ireland, membership of any others being so small by the mid-eighteenth century as to be irrelevant in political or social terms, more or less replicated the proportions across Ireland as a whole, the only Irish diocese where this was the case. In more than half the dioceses of the Church of Ireland the level of support for the established church was derisory, and by the early nineteenth century there were stated to be forty-one parishes in Ireland in which the established church had no adherents at all.66 The strength of the Church of Ireland, if such a word can be used about such a weak religious body, lay entirely in Ulster and the Pale. Roman Catholics were the largest religious group in every Irish diocese except Down and Connor, and even there they numbered more than a quarter of the population. Although they were the largest group in the diocese of Dromore, they were outnumbered there by the combined forces of the Church of Ireland and Presbyterians, and they formed only a bare majority of the population in the diocese of Derry. Everywhere else in Ireland Roman Catholics formed at least 60% of the population, and the Wgure was over 90% in all the west coast dioceses except Raphoe. Presbyterian strength in Ireland was heavily concentrated in Wve of the Ulster dioceses: Presbyterians formed an outright majority in Down and Connor, a third of the population in Derry and Dromore, and more than a tenth of the population in Armagh and Raphoe. However, the total for dioceses can be misleading. Those for Dromore, as Table 1.1 shows, disguised signiWcant variations of Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic strengths and weaknesses in the thirty-one parishes of this small diocese. There were also signiWcant numbers of Presbyterians in the Ulster dioceses of Clogher and Kilmore but everywhere else in Ireland their numbers were exceptionally small, less than one-thousandth of the population in the dioceses of Cashel and Emly, Clonfert and Kilmacduagh, Cloyne, Kildare, Killaloe and Kilfenora, Limerick and Ardfert, and Ossory. The Church of Ireland had to defend itself on two religious fronts at the same time: throughout Ireland against Roman Catholicism, which outnumbered it in every diocese, in many cases by a massive amount, and in Ulster against Presbyterianism, which was also stronger than the Church of Ireland in the dioceses of Derry, Down and Connor, and Dromore. There was no weaker established church, Catholic or Protestant, in the whole of Europe.

66 W. Shee, The Irish Church, London and Dublin 1852, 210.


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Table 1.1. Members of the Church of Ireland, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics in the parishes of the diocese of Dromore 1834 Parish Aghaderg Aghalee Annaclone Annahilt Clonallon ClonduV Donaghcloney Donaghmore Dromara Dromore Drumballyroney Drumgath Drumgooland Garvaghy Kilbroney Kilcoo Kilkeel Kilmegan Maghera Magheradrool Magherahamlet Magheralin Magherally Moira Moyntaghs Newry Seagoe Seapatrick Shankhill Tullylish Warrenpoint

Church of Ireland (%)

Presbyterian (%)

Roman Catholic (%)

14.8 54.7 5.6 21.4 5.3 5.8 49.6 7.8 10.8 25.4 7.6 7.4 10.6 20.1 14.8 15.1 11.9 23.0 32.1 19.5 10.8 52.8 15.4 54.3 33.2 12.5 62.6 18.7 43.2 36.4 35.2

42.4 2.0 45.8 73.4 6.4 23.5 31.9 44.0 53.1 60.1 69.5 39.3 30.9 41.4 4.4 10.8 28.3 18.1 11.3 51.9 49.6 20.8 75.1 17.9 63.3 28.8 7.2 62.6 22.5 33.5 19.3

42.8 43.3 48.6 5.2 88.3 70.7 18.5 48.2 36.1 14.5 22.9 53.3 58.5 38.5 80.8 74.1 59.8 58.9 56.6 28.6 39.6 26.4 9.5 27.8 3.5 58.7 30.2 18.7 34.3 30.1 45.5

Source: E. D. Atkinson, Dromore: An Ulster Diocese, Dundalk 1925, 159–311.

MINORITY ESTABLISHMENT AND MAJORITY DISSENT 1715–70 The weakness of the Church of Ireland did not, however, mean that it was particularly ineVective within its own community. Many of the disparaging remarks about the Church of Ireland were made by English visitors who did not take into account that the role of the established church in Ireland, and in particular the level of support it enjoyed among the population as a whole, was very diVerent from what it was like in England, or even in Wales, where

22


the established church still enjoyed the support of the bulk of the population. English visitors saw the ruined churches and were depressed by them. What they failed to appreciate was that these churches were a relic of a previous religious dispensation which was no longer relevant. The 800 clergy of the Church of Ireland may have been too few for a population of 2.5 million, but they were entirely suYcient for the 0.25 million who actually attended the services of the established church, and the number of churches in repair suYcient for those who wanted to worship in them. Pluralism was the inevitable result of poor endowments and small populations. Clergy holding eight or ten parishes in a united beneWce might still only have an income of less than forty pounds, and the rationalization of parochial units does not seem to have deprived the Church of Ireland population of either religious services or satisfactory levels of pastoral care. The reform programme undertaken by Archbishop King of Dublin, and many of his episcopal colleagues, in the early eighteenth century was maintained in succeeding years and, in general terms, the Church of Ireland seems to have been as spiritually healthy in the 1750s and 1760s as the Church of England.67 During the period between 1715 and 1770 the balance of appointments to Irish bishoprics tended to favour English over Irish appointees, but it is doubtful whether this had any negative impact on the eYciency of diocesan administration even if it did create tensions within the native Irish clergy who saw the opportunities for promotion becoming more limited. The number of non-Irish episcopal appointees must, however, never be exaggerated. In 1760, for example, the twenty-two archbishops and bishops then in oYce were ‘divided equally between locals and strangers’.68 Several archbishops and bishops of the early and mid-eighteenth century Church of Ireland were competent diocesans and some were distinguished scholars. Edward Synge of Tuam (1716–41) relinquished the episcopal share of the parish tithes in his diocese to beneWt the parochial clergy. John Stearne of Clogher (1717–45) Wnanced the completion of a new cathedral and was noted for his vigorous examination of candidates for holy orders. The distinguished philosopher, George Berkeley of Cloyne (1735–53), resided constantly in his diocese and provided leadership to his clergy in dealing with the eVects of famine and disease in 1740–1.69 The one area in which there was a signiWcant problem in Ireland was in the provision of episcopal residences and glebe houses for the parish clergy. Some bishops had no oYcial residence and had to purchase one, and many clergy were obliged to buy or rent their own living accommodation, either because their parishes had no glebe houses or because they were not Wt to live in. Some 67 Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, 178–83, 189–90. 68 Barnard, Anatomy, 98. 69 A. R. Acheson, A History of the Church of Ireland 1691–1996, Blackrock 1997, 81–2.


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bishops were put oV extended residence in the more remote Irish dioceses by the lack of basic facilities, such as the availability of physicians, apothecaries, or even glaziers. Bishops generally resided in their diocese during the summer months, spending the winter in Dublin, London, or Bath.70 The main development in Irish Presbyterianism in the eighteenth century was the situation which led to the separation of some ministers and congregations within the Synod of Ulster to set up the presbytery of Antrim in 1726. A high proportion of Irish Presbyterian ministers were educated in Scotland, with 36% of them between 1730 and 1760 holding degrees from one of the Scottish universities, and as a result the theological divisions among Presbyterians in Scotland were exported to Ireland. There were approximately 130 ministers in the Synod of Ulster in 1709. Those who broke away from the Synod of Ulster to form the presbytery of Antrim in 1726 did so because they had been inXuenced by liberals and rationalists in the Church of Scotland into believing ‘that every man should be guided by the light of his own conscience’, and therefore did not wish to subscribe to a rigid interpretation of the Westminster Confession. Later schisms were produced by a desire for an even stricter interpretation of Presbyterian doctrine and led to the setting up of the Wrst reformed presbytery in Ireland in 1763. By the end of the eighteenth century Irish Presbyterians were split into four main groups. The liberal or ‘new light’ group in the presbytery of Antrim; the ‘middle of the way’ group in the Synod of Ulster; and two groups of strict Calvinists, split as in Scotland into Burghers and Anti-Burghers. In 1799 there were 183 congregations in the Synod of Ulster and presbytery of Antrim, 58 Burgher and 25 Anti-Burgher congregations. In addition, there were some independent congregations of English origin in the south of Ireland and some independent ‘reformed’ congregations in Ulster. In North Donegal, for example, a secessionist congregation was formed in Ray in 1747 when its minister was forcibly removed to Belfast and the congregation refused to permit any minister or licentiate of the Synod of Ulster to preach there. The congregation was supplied by ministers and licentiates of the Anti-Burgher Presbytery of Glasgow. The secessionists retained possession of the meeting house for several years and, when they were Wnally evicted, built a new one almost adjacent. By 1846 the secessionist congregation retained the loyalty of 400 families compared with the 165 who worshipped in the original meeting house. Subsequent secessionist congregations were formed at Carnone in 1755 and Crossroads in 1781.71 70 T. Barnard, ‘Improving Clergymen, 1660–1760’, As By Law Established, 142–3. 71 A. G. Lecky, The Laggan Presbytery Books, ed. W. Hanna, St Johnston 1978, 44–7. Note that the Synod of Ulster, subsequently General Assembly, congregation at Ray was served by three generations of the same family between 1791 and 1881, James Rentoul, his son Alexander, and

24


It was estimated that all the Presbyterian congregations in Ireland had a total of some 280 ministers at the end of the eighteenth century.72 Relations between the diVerent groups of Presbyterians in Ireland were frequently unfriendly. Of 107 publications by Presbyterian ministers in Ireland between 1731 and 1775 no fewer than 49 were related to internal disputes within the Presbyterian churches. Attempts were made by the British government to abolish the sacramental tests much resented by Presbyterians in 1731 and 1733 but they were unsuccessful. The argument that they would promote better harmony between the diVerent sections of the Protestant minority carried little weight with leading parliamentarians in Ireland and they were not abolished until 1780. It was, however, thought that relations between the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian churches, though still strained, were better in the 1760s than they had been in the 1720s.73 Persecution in the early eighteenth century had encouraged some Presbyterian congregations in Ulster to emigrate to America, though this was sometimes, as at Aghadowey in 1718, a convenient public excuse for a much more complicated series of economic considerations that had led to the decision to emigrate.74 Recent research into the conditions of Roman Catholicism in Ireland between 1715 and 1770 has suggested that, despite their economic and political restrictions, some of the older and more partisan descriptions of Roman Catholic deprivations in the middle years of the eighteenth century have been greatly exaggerated. By the third decade of the eighteenth century any serious attempt to implement the penal legislation, or to enforce the provisions of registration against Roman Catholic clergy, had, to all intents and purposes, been abandoned. In the view of one distinguished historian of Irish Roman Catholicism: The basic concern of the penal code was to preserve property and power in Protestant hands. As regards the practice of the Catholic religion there were two logical choices, either to mount a serious campaign to convert the Catholics to Protestantism, or to allow them freedom of religious practice under strict controls. What eventually happened was the prohibition of Catholic religious practice by a series of laws which soon proved ineVective. The established church lacked the means to mount a serious campaign of evangelisation.75

Alexander’s son James, such arrangements being not uncommon among Presbyterian congregations. 72 Moody and Vaughan, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 99, 103–4; Johnston, ‘Problems Common to both Protestant and Catholic Churches’, 16, 29. 73 Beckett, Protestant Dissent, 91–5, 98–9, 103. 74 Holmes, Presbyterian Church, 67–8. 75 P. J. Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey, Dublin 1985, 124.


25

Even Archbishop King of Dublin, who earlier in his career had favoured an active campaign of evangelization among the Irish Roman Catholic community, had by 1724 accepted ‘that there never was or is any design that all should be Protestants’.76 Indeed it has been suggested that, by the middle of the eighteenth century, there was a strongly-held view among both the clergy and laity of the Church of Ireland that they had no wish to convert their Roman Catholic neighbours since they had a vested self-interest in maintaining the privileges of a political and social elite.77 An unsuccessful attempt in the Irish Parliament in 1756–7 to reintroduce provisions for the registration of the Roman Catholic clergy was opposed by the bishops of the Church of Ireland on the grounds that it would involve a ‘legal recognition of popery’. They preferred the ‘old system of legal proscription . . . while making no real eVort to eliminate’ and the maintenance of a comfortable status quo.78 Even so there were still occasions during the middle years of the eighteenth century in which the Roman Catholic community was uncomfortably reminded that the penal legislation was still in force and that passive toleration could not be guaranteed. Such incidents included the respective arrests of Bishop Sweetman of Ferns, accused of enlisting men for foreign armies in 1751, and Archbishop O’Reilly of Armagh, together with eighteen of his clergy, accused of collecting money for the Stuart cause in 1756. In 1766 Nicholas Sheehy, a priest at Clogheen in County Tipperary, was executed on a fabricated charge of murder, though his real crime was his incitement of his parishioners to refuse the payment of rents and tithes to Church of Ireland landowners and clergy. As late as 1776 Archbishop Carpenter of Dublin advised the papal nuncio to address letters to him without any use of his ecclesiastical title.79 The most signiWcant impact of the penal laws was on the surviving groups of Roman Catholics who were landowners or who sought a career in the professions. Roman Catholics were automatically barred from acquiring land, except on short leases, and from parliamentary, administrative, legal, or military careers, by the prescription of ‘qualifying oaths, which no Catholic could take’. As a result the majority of the surviving Roman Catholic landed families, as well as those in the legal profession, ‘went over to the established church’.80 The total number of known Roman Catholic converts to the 76 Ibid., 125. 77 M. Wall, ‘The Age of the Penal Laws’, in The Course of Irish History, ed. R. W. Moody and F. X. Martin, Cork 1967, 226. 78 Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century: Collected Essays of Maureen Wall, ed. G. O’Brien and T. Dunne, Dublin 1989, 98, 100. 79 Ibid., 48–9; S. J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, Dublin 1982, 8–9. 80 Moody and Martin, Course of Irish History, 218–19.

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Church of Ireland between 1703 and 1800 was 5,797; the average number of such conversions was only 38 a year before 1751, but this increased to a yearly average of 110 in the next 20 years, before falling to a yearly average of 79 in the 1770s and 1780s, and the even lower Wgure of 28 a year by the 1790s. It is noticeable that the number of conversions dropped with the beginnings of the relief legislation, to remove some of the economic and political restrictions on Roman Catholics, after 1770, and it seems reasonable to conclude that the much larger number of conversions in the preceding years ‘were largely induced by legal requirements and hence were nominal in nature’.81 The one sector of the professions within which it was possible for Roman Catholics to practice was medicine, but even here the numbers so doing remained comparatively small. Whereas it has been estimated that the Roman Catholic proportion of the population of Dublin, a rapidly-growing city in the eighteenth century, doubled (from 35 to 70%) between 1716 and 1798, the majority of surgeons in the city were Protestants and there was no proportionate increase in the number of Roman Catholic physicians: 12 as compared with 38 protestant physicians in 1762; 14 as compared with 46 in 1799.82 There is some debate over the extent to which Roman Catholic merchants and tradesmen improved their economic position during the eighteenth century. Maureen Wall has argued that the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the political and social elites of the municipalities actually increased their wealth, since their opportunities for large-scale expenditure were so limited, and that by the 1760s the principal trade of Cork, Galway, Limerick, and Waterford was in the hands of Roman Catholic merchants.83 Patrick Fagan has suggested that some of the evidence that has been adduced to support claims of increasing Roman Catholic merchant wealth in the eighteenth century needs to be treated with caution, since it is based on ‘a great deal of exaggeration through the century, by persons with a particular point to make’. Fagan calculates that by about 1780 only 30% of Dublin merchants were Roman Catholics and that the proportion of trade in their hands was even lower. Although there were high proportions of Roman Catholic tradesmen in distilling (70%), brewing (60%), and grocery (50%), the Wgures were much lower in haberdashery (11%) and staymaking (8%), or among jewellers (10%) and goldsmiths (8%). Roman Catholic merchants were, however, active within both the Committee of Merchants and, after 1783, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. One of their number, Anthony Dermott, ‘sometimes 81 T. P. Power, ‘Converts’, in Endurance and Emergence: Catholics in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. T. P. Power and K. Whelan, Blackrock 1990, 101–27. 82 P. Fagan, Catholics in A Protestant Country: The Papist Constituency in Eighteenth Century Dublin, Dublin 1998, 45, 97–9. 83 Moody and Martin, Course of Irish History, 78, 87.


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chaired meetings of the Committee of Merchants and was elected one of the two vice-presidents of the Chamber of Commerce’.84 What cannot be denied is that the failure to enforce the penal legislation permitted the Roman Catholic church in Ireland to stabilize and improve its diocesan and parochial structure. By the 1730s most parishes had mass houses though some, especially in Ulster, still had mass-rocks and open-air services. Primitive arrangements of this kind had entirely disappeared from some of the better-administered Roman Catholic dioceses, such as Cashel and Ferns, by the 1750s. In the latter diocese the surviving records of a visitation by Bishop Sweetman in 1753 show that a parish system had been Wrmly established, and that every parish had at least one mass house, even if a second mass might have to be said at a ‘station’, usually a private house, in a far-Xung part of the parish.85 As early as 1727 Archbishop King of Dublin had noted that the Roman Catholics ‘have more bishops in Ireland than the Protestants here, and twice (at least) as many priests. Their friaries and nunneries are public.’86 This was conWrmed by the ‘report on popery’ compiled by the clergy of the Church of Ireland, and the returns made for each diocese by its bishop, in 1731. The 1,089 priests who had registered under the Act of 1704 had increased to 1,445 and there were a total of 892 mass houses, ‘besides numerous huts, sheds, and movable altars’, though there was a good deal of variation between dioceses in the ratio of priests and mass houses to the number of Roman Catholic laity. In addition there were 254 regular clergy.87 Archbishop Boulter of Armagh reported seventy-six Roman Catholic priests, twenty-Wve mass houses, and Wve friaries, though this was a much higher Wgure than that for most other Ulster dioceses. There were only nine mass houses in the diocese of Derry, Wve in that of Down and Connor, and two in that of Raphoe. Archbishop Hoadly of Dublin reported that in the rural parts of his diocese there were 61 Roman Catholic priests and 58 mass houses, with a further 102 priests and 16 mass houses in the city of Dublin. In Dublin some of these chapels, especially the four erected since 1714, were ‘solid and in good repair, with pews and galleries and a reasonable level of altar furnishings, paintings and other decorations’. Archbishop Bolton of Cashel reported 61 Roman Catholic priests and 40 mass houses, ‘several of these very lately built, some new building, particularly one at Tipperary in the form of a cross 92 feet 84 Fagan, Catholics in a Protestant Country, 183–4. 85 Corish, Irish Catholic Experience, 130, and Catholic Community, 101. 86 Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, 288. 87 O’Brien and Dunne, Catholic Ireland, 49–51; Moody and Vaughan, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 94; R. B. McDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution 1760–1801, Oxford 1979, 174–6, notes that by the 1730s there were as many Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland as there were at the end of the eighteenth century.

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by 72’. However, many other churches in the diocese, even in the 1750s, were ‘simple rectangular structures, one third with walls of mud, all thatched and with almost no internal decoration’. This was also the situation in the diocese of Cloyne, where most mass houses were ‘thatched cabins . . . open at one end’. Bolton, however, was keen to establish that the number of Roman Catholic clergy and places of worship in his diocese was considerably in excess of his own thirty-one clergy and twenty-seven churches in repair.88 Although most Irish Roman Catholic dioceses had been provided with bishops by the 1730s, the overall quality of the episcopate was somewhat lower than that of the later eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. In 1740 six bishops were non-resident in their dioceses: Patrick French (Elphin), Ambrose O’Callaghan (Ferns), James O’Daly (Kilfenora), Michael MacDonagh (Kilmore), Stephen MacEgan (Meath), and Sylvester Lloyd (Waterford and Lismore). O’Daly resided on his canonry at Tournai.89 Lloyd was a particularly colourful Wgure, with ‘an insatiable itch for foreign travel’, who undertook ‘intelligence work’ for the Pretender James III; his father had been a clergyman in the Church of Ireland but the son, having fought in the British army, became a Roman Catholic at the age of 17 in 1697, was ordained in Portugal in 1711 and became a Franciscan friar the following year, joining the Irish Franciscan mission in 1713.90 Having failed to secure the archbishopric of Dublin in 1724, he later sought and was successful in obtaining, despite strong opposition within both diocese and province, the bishopric of Killaloe, from which he was translated to Waterford and Lismore in 1739. He ceased to reside in the diocese of Killaloe in 1733 and did not reside in that of Waterford and Lismore until 1742.91 Although bishops like Lloyd were far from perfect they provided the Irish Roman Catholic Church with a leadership, largely if not wholly resident, which it had lacked for much of the seventeenth century. The bishops recognized that one of the strengths of the church, compared with the Church of Ireland, was its willingness to recognize ‘that the Irish language constituted a bulwark against the encroachments of Protestant teaching, especially in rural Ireland’. The Church of Ireland, by contrast, was generally reluctant to countenance the wider use of Irish as a missionary tool at a time when the Dublin government did not wish, for political reasons, to encourage the native

88 O’Brien and Dunne, Catholic Ireland, 36, 39, 41; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, 151. 89 P. Fagan, An Irish Bishop in Penal Times: The Chequered Career of Sylvester Lloyd OFM, 1680–1747, Blackrock 1993, 173. 90 Ibid., 13–19, 36, 196, 198. His frequent absences in Europe can be compared with those later in the eighteenth century of the Church of Ireland Bishop Hervey of Derry. 91 Ibid., 52–5, 119–23, 133, 169, 174.


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language. The Roman Catholic bishops authorized the publication of works in Irish, and a volume of Irish sermons by Bishop O’Gallagher of Raphoe went through several editions after it was Wrst published in 1735. At several of the European seminaries, in which clergy of the Irish church were educated, ‘the speaking of Irish for part of each day was compulsory’ for all Irish students.92 As the diocesan and parochial structure developed in Ireland so it gradually became possible to improve the standards of Roman Catholic worship. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Roman Catholic chapel at Wexford had ‘six public masses on Sundays and three on weekdays. On Sundays there was sung vespers.’ Vespers and benediction was also the norm in the town churches of the diocese of Cloyne by 1775. At the Dominican chapel in Dublin in 1761 there was a 7 a.m. mass with sermon in Irish, 10 a.m. mass with sermon in English, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at 11 a.m. followed by benediction at noon, and vespers, rosary, and sermon in the afternoon.93 In 1746 one of three mass houses in Waterford was described as: a Wne modern building, the aisles supported by stone pillars, the panels of the wainscots carved and gilded and the galleries Wnely adorned with paintings. Besides the great altar there are two lesser, one on either hand, over each of which there are curious paintings.94

By 1793 even this chapel was not considered suYciently opulent for its purpose and was replaced by the present cathedral. Another aspect of Roman Catholic piety that was strong in the early eighteenth century, but which was to cause diYculties in later years, was the pilgrimages to traditional sites, which had survived more than a century of religious disruption. Bishop MacMahon of Clogher noted in 1714 that the pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg, in his diocese, was attracting about 5,000 pilgrims a year. It had been allowed to survive because the toll income from the pilgrims beneWted the Protestant family that had leased the island from the Church of Ireland bishop of Clogher.95 Generally speaking the relations between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland greatly improved during the Wrst half of the eighteenth century, despite the occasional outburst of polemic. This situation was much assisted by the conciliatory attitude of the Roman Catholic bishops, who were anxious to prove that they were loyal subjects of the British Crown. In 1757 Bishop O’Keefe of Kildare speciWcally rejected any notion that the papacy could depose sovereigns, dispense from oaths, or 92 O’Brien and Dunne, Catholic Ireland, 4; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, 300. 93 Corish, Catholic Community, 85, 89. 94 Fagan, Irish Bishop in Penal Times, 178. 95 O’Brien and Dunne, Catholic Ireland, 52–3.

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exercise temporal jurisdiction outside the papal states. With James III now dead, prayers for George III began to be oVered in Irish Roman Catholic churches from 1768.96 There are many instances of Roman Catholics and Protestants attending one another’s funerals or of Protestants contributing to the building costs of Roman Catholic chapels. On the other hand there were still three parishes in the diocese of Killala in 1771 where Protestant landlords would not allow a mass house to be built, and in 1781 Lord Doneraile closed all the Roman Catholic chapels on his estates, and assaulted the priest involved, after one of his Roman Catholic tenants had been excommunicated. Despite the ‘degree of ease in the relations between Catholics and Protestants . . . the whole system made for tensions . . . Protestants never lost the fear of an overthrow of the settlement . . . and Catholics never lost the fear that active persecution might come again’.97 The religious situation in Ireland in 1770 was one of comparative stability in which all the religious groups in the country had achieved what they felt was a satisfactory modus vivendi. The Church of Ireland had, after a very diYcult beginning in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the comfort of being an established church, even if it only commanded the loyalty of a small minority of the population of Ireland, though its weaknesses were all too apparent: a heavy dependency on the landed classes since the majority of those in other classes were either Roman Catholics or Presbyterians; a relatively even but thin distribution over the whole of Ireland, not concentrated in a few areas as the Presbyterians were; an inequitable distribution of clerical incomes with a much greater gap between those of the higher and lower clergy than in England; an insuYciency of clergy in relation to the overall population, though not so if related solely to its actual support in the country. Whereas the population of Ireland more than doubled, from 2.5 to 5.5 million, during the eighteenth century, the clergy of the Church of Ireland only increased in number from 700 to 1,100.98 The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland had survived its greatest period of challenge and active persecution during the seventeenth century. It had used the comparative stability of the period 1720–70 to consolidate its support among the population and to create an eVective diocesan and parochial structure. The Presbyterians still suVered from political restrictions but they enjoyed freedom of worship and the ability to develop their own structures and to engage in the luxury of internal theological debate. In 1770 the churches of Ireland were about to embark on a new phase in their existence. It was one in which both the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church were to undergo an 96 Johnston, Ireland, 41–2. 98 Johnston, Ireland, 48–50.

97 Corish, Catholic Community, 92, 98, 106.


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intensive period of internal reform, but in which the former was to feel the beginnings of the end of establishment. It was also a period in which religious developments in Ireland took place against a background of profound administrative, economic, political, and social change, and the Wrst stirrings of a very diVerent phase in the long struggle for Irish independence.

2 The Non-Religious Background to Religious Reform in Ireland 1770–1850 It is not the purpose of this chapter to discuss or to make any contribution to the non-religious history of Ireland between 1770 and 1850. Its sole purpose is to provide a brief summary of those non-religious events in Ireland that had an impact on its religious developments in this period, together with those initiatives undertaken by the British government aimed at improving or reforming various aspects of its religious institutions. The account that follows relies very heavily on the important work done in recent years on the administrative, economic, political, and social aspects of Irish history in the last quarter of the eighteenth and Wrst quarter of the nineteenth century. It is included so that the religious developments in the same period, which will be the subject of exhaustive analysis and reinterpretation, can be placed in the context of those nonreligious developments that inXuenced them and helped to shape them.

TH E CAT H OL I C RE LI EF L EGI S LATI ON O F 1774–93 The importance of the Catholic relief legislation of the last quarter of the eighteenth century cannot be overestimated: The legal position of Catholics in Irish society was so transformed as to merit the use of the word ‘revolution’. From being grudgingly permitted to swear an oath to the protestant state . . . qualiWed Catholics could vote on the same terms as protestants, worship freely, fund educational establishments, and buy, sell and bequeath land on the same terms as Irish protestants.1

There were six separate pieces of legislation. The Wrst was the brainchild of Frederick Hervey, bishop of Derry and from 1779 third earl of Bristol, one of the most liberal of the Church of Ireland bishops who described Roman 1 T. Bartlett, ‘The Origins and Progress of the Catholic Question in Ireland, 1690–1800’ in Endurance and Emergence: Catholics in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. T. P. Power and K. Whelan, Blackrock 1990, 8.

Non-Religious Background to Religious Reform

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Catholicism as ‘a mild and harmless superstition’.2 In 1756 Archbishop O’Reilly of Armagh and six other bishops had asked their clergy to pray for the king and royal family after mass on Sunday and holy days, ‘and on the Wrst Sunday of every quarter to read a declaration denying the pope’s deposing power and certain other ‘‘odious’’ tenets imputed to Catholics’, though not all the clergy obeyed the directive. In 1760, after the accession of George III, the Pope omitted any reference to James III ‘in the briefs nominating bishops to Irish Sees’, though he continued to recognize his claims to the British Crown until his death in 1766. The claims of his sons, Charles III and Henry IX, did not however, receive papal recognition.3 Bishop Hervey proposed that an oath of allegiance to the British Crown should be devised which would be acceptable to Roman Catholics. One of the aims of this oath was to make clear the division of Irish Roman Catholicism into ‘gallican’ and ‘papist’ factions and in this it achieved its objective. When Hervey Wrst made his proposal, in 1772, objections to it were raised by Bishop Burke of Ossory but it was supported by Archbishop Butler of Cashel and most of his suVragans. This oath was, however, introduced by an act of the Irish parliament in 1774 and was an essential precursor to the subsequent relief legislation. An act of 1778 permitted Roman Catholics who had taken the oath to lease land on much more generous terms than previously and was seen to have been a vindication of Butler’s position. Although most bishops refused to sign a loyal address, organized by the leading Roman Catholic landowners with Butler’s full support, they reluctantly agreed to take the oath. The anti-Butler bishops staged their own victory when they succeeded in preventing one of his allies, Bishop Plunkett of Meath, from being nominated as coadjuster to Archbishop Blake of Armagh in 1782. Plunkett was not just an ally of Butler; he also had close links with Bishop Hervey of Derry. The anti-Butler bishops also managed to sabotage a proposal made by the Church of Ireland Archbishops of Armagh (Robinson) and Cashel (Agar) in the same year for Roman Catholic bishops to be nominated by the British Crown from a list of three candidates, all of which must have taken the oath of allegiance, submitted by the clergy of the vacant diocese. The proposal was alleged to have been supported by Butler, Plunkett, and Bishop Egan of Waterford and Lismore, but it was strongly opposed by Bishops Troy of Ossory, Conway of Limerick, and McMahon of Killaloe and never acted on.4 2 P. Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey, Dublin 1985, 138. 3 Id., The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Dublin 1981, 119–20. See also Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century: Collected Essays of Maureen Wall, ed. G. O’Brien and T. Dunne, Dublin, 1989, 107–14. 4 E. O’Flaherty, ‘Ecclesiastical Politics and the Dismantling of the Penal Laws in Ireland, 1774–82’, Irish Historical Studies, xxvi (1988–9), 35–40, 44–5, 48–9. See also the discussion of

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In 1782 two further pieces of relief legislation were passed. One permitted Roman Catholics to own land outright rather than just being able to lease it. The other repealed the legislation under which parish priests had had to register in 1704 and also permitted Roman Catholics to become school teachers provided they only taught Roman Catholic children.5 Concern on the part of the British government that Roman Catholics might make common cause with radical Presbyterians in Ulster was the main reason for the two further relief measures of 1792–3; they were the ‘product of fear rather than philanthropy’.6 The legislation of 1792, which had to be forced through an extremely hostile Irish parliament, allowed Roman Catholics to practise law and to marry Protestants. The measures of 1793, also granted after the application of government pressure, extended the franchise to Roman Catholics and gave them further rights in respect of education.7

PA RL IA MENTARY GRA NTS TO T HE B OA RD O F F IRST FRUITS AND MAY NOOTH COLLEGE Two measures taken by the British government were to prove of great beneWt to both the established Church of Ireland and to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The Wrst of these was the grant to the Irish Board of First Fruits. This body had been established in 1711, following the example of Queen Anne’s Bounty in England and Wales, and had, during the Wrst seventy years of its existence, purchased glebe land for beneWces at a total cost of £3,543 and assisted the building of forty-Wve glebe houses with gifts of £4,080. In 1777–8 the Irish parliament agreed a grant of £6,000 and this was followed by grants of £1,500 in 1779–80, £6,000 in 1781–2, £3,000 in 1783–4 and £5,000 each year from 1785 until 1800. Between 1791 and 1803 the increased resources of the Board of First Fruits resulted in grants totalling £55,600 towards the building of 88 new churches and 116 glebe houses. The grants were maintained by the British parliament after the Act of Union and in 1808–9 the annual grant was doubled to £10,000 and massively increased to £60,000 each these issues in C. D. A. Leighton, Catholicism in a Protestant Kingdom: A Study of the Irish Ancien Re´gime, London 1994, 145–9 and D. Keogh, The French Disease: The Catholic Church and Irish Radicalism, 1790–1800, Dublin 1993, 15–23. 5 E. M. Johnston, Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, Dublin 1974, 44–5. 6 Bartlett, ‘Catholic Question’, 14. 7 Johnston, Ireland, 47. There is much useful material on the background to the relief legislation of 1774–93 in the essays by Maureen Wall, published in O’Brien and Dunne, Catholic Ireland, 115–62.


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year between 1810 and 1816. Thereafter the grant was halved between 1817 and 1821 and Wnally reduced to £10,000 each year in 1822–3. In the 20 years following the Act of Union a total of £807,648 was paid out in grants towards the purchase of glebe land in 193 beneWces, the building of a further 550 glebe houses, and the building, rebuilding, and enlargement of 697 churches.8 The material beneWts varied from one diocese to another but in percentage terms were greatest, representing at least a Wve-fold increase in the number of glebe houses, in the dioceses of Killaloe and Kilfenora, Ferns and Leighlin, and Clonfert and Kilmacduagh. The shortage of glebe houses was the main reason for the failure of many Church of Ireland incumbents to reside on their beneWces. As a result of the additional provision the number of resident incumbents in Ireland increased from 46.4% in 1806, to 65.2% in 1819, to 74.8% in 1832. Here the highest increases were in the dioceses of Elphin and Kilmore, where the number of resident incumbents more than trebled, but they more than doubled in four other dioceses as well.9 Though the grant towards the establishment of a Roman Catholic seminary at Maynooth in 1795 was to a large extent intended, as was the relief legislation of 1792–3, as a means of stiXing Roman Catholic support for political radicalism in the aftermath of the French Revolution, it proved to be an enormous beneWt to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. Before the 1770s the principal sources of training available to Irish Roman Catholic ordinands were the seminaries in France and Spain. Some Irish priests remained in Europe after their ordination and a few had successful ecclesiastical careers there. Arthur Richard Dillon became Bishop of Evreux in 1753, Archbishop of Toulouse in 1758, and Archbishop of Narbonne in 1763. Forced into exile at the Revolution he died in 1806.10 Some European seminaries were closed when the Jesuits were expelled from several European countries, including France and Spain, during the second half of the eighteenth century, and the provision of seminaries in Ireland began with the establishment of one at Kilkenny by Bishop Troy of Ossory in 1782. The French seminaries were Wnally closed after the Revolution and further seminaries were established in Ireland at Carlow in 1793 and Maynooth in 1795. The latter was established as a deliberate act of cooperation between the British government and the Irish bishops, the government making an initial grant of £8,000. The college was governed by twenty-one trustees of which four were the senior judges in Ireland, and therefore all Protestants, six were representatives of the Roman Catholic nobility and gentry, and the remaining 8 D. H. Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution, 1800–1885, New Haven and London 1971, 115–19. See also Appendix 3. 9 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 122 (table 31), 128–9 (table 32). 10 Johnston, Ireland, 22–3.

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eleven were Roman Catholic clergy: four archbishops, six bishops, and the president of the college. Prior to 1789 the continental colleges had provided places for nearly 500 Irish ordinands and ordained clergy completing their ministerial training. Initially Maynooth could only provide 140 places but this had risen to 392 by 1826 and 516 by 1853. By the middle years of the nineteenth century half the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland had been educated at Maynooth.11 In the period 1844–6 no fewer than eleven of the twenty-seven Irish Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops had either trained or taught, and in many cases both, at the college.12 Between its foundation and 1813, the British government grant to Maynooth was increased from the original £8,000 to £8,928 per annum, but it was not increased thereafter apart from occasional grants for building purposes. Opposition to the grant was inaugurated by English Evangelicals in the 1830s, one of their number, Edward Bickersteth, stating that the grant was undermining the British monarchy and the established church ‘as much as if it had been spent in buying the barrels of gunpowder which were used by Guy Fawkes’.13 The failure of the grant to keep pace with inXation had resulted in Maynooth falling heavily into debt. Action taken by the trustees to reduce the debt in 1839–41 was not eVective. Both the college authorities and the Irish Roman Catholic bishops agreed that the only satisfactory solution was an increase in the grant and, after intense lobbying, the British government, after much discussion and heart-searching, agreed to propose legislation which nearly trebled the annual grant to £26,360 and also provided £30,000 towards capital expenditure. Though the proposal was vigorously opposed by many Protestant pressure groups in both England and Ireland, as well as attracting a great deal of opposition in parliament, it was enacted in 1845; one of its strongest supporters was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately.14

11 Corish, Irish Catholic Experience, 161–2; D. A. Kerr, Peel, Priests and Politics: Sir Robert Peel’s Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1841–1846, Oxford 1982, 227– 30. For a detailed account of the development of Maynooth College see the Wrst four chapters of P. J. Corish, Maynooth College 1795–1995, Dublin 1995, and the reviews by Thomas O’Loughlin in History Ireland, vol. 5, no 1 (Spring 1997), 52–4 and L. M. Cullen in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, li (2000), 811–13. 12 The eleven were Archbishops Crolly of Armagh, MacHale of Tuam, and Slattery of Cashel, and Bishops Browne of Kilmore, Cantwell of Meath, Coen of Clonfert, Crotty of Cloyne and Ross, Denvir of Down and Connor, Higgins of Ardagh, McNally of Clogher, and McNicholas of Anchonry. 13 Kerr, Peel, 233, 249. 14 Ibid., 250–87; Corish, Maynooth, 99–105; for opposition to the legislation see E. R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, London 1968, 23–51, 144–58, and J. WolVe, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain 1829–1860, Oxford 1991, 198–210.


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R E B E L L IO N AN D TH E AC T OF U N I O N 1793–1801 Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century the Roman Catholic hierarchy had, in general terms, supported a policy of cooperation with the British government in order to secure political and religious concessions to the Roman Catholic population. They made clear their opposition to instances of rebellion and civil disobedience. They authorized prayers for the royal family on various occasions and instructed the laity to observe public fasts declared by the government. Much of the unrest in Ireland after 1750 was primarily economic in motivation, generated largely by opposition to both tithes paid to the Church of Ireland clergy and the fees that the Roman Catholic laity had to pay towards the maintenance of their own clergy. The Roman Catholic hierarchy was at one with both the government and the leadership of the established church in its opposition to the secret societies formed to foment these disturbances. The bishops of Munster issued pastoral letters denouncing the Whiteboys in the 1750s. Members of this organization were excommunicated by the bishops of Ferns, Kildare and Leighlin, and Ossory during the disturbances of 1775. Bishop Troy of Ossory took similar action against the Whiteboys again in 1779 and 1784. It was, therefore, clear that when political tensions began to develop further in the late 1780s, the Roman Catholic hierarchy would side with the political and religious establishment against the rebels. They were further encouraged in this outlook by the attack on the Roman Catholic Church in France which resulted from the Revolution of 1789.15 Nevertheless the radical elements in Ireland who emerged to form the Society of United Irishmen in 1791 were able to count on the support of a small but active minority of both Roman Catholic priests and Presbyterian ministers. The Presbyterian leadership was, however, as desirous as the Roman Catholic hierarchy to distance itself from the political radicals among their clerical and lay membership and to express their loyalty to the British Crown and constitution, and radical opinions and actions were formally condemned by the Synod of Ulster in 1790.16 Nevertheless Presbyterians were strongly represented on the Committee of the Society of United Irishmen and in advocating the cause of political reform 15 S. J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, Dublin 1982, 220; Corish, Irish Catholic Experience, 139–44; Keogh, French Disease, 24–5, 27. For the most recent study of the impact of the French Revolution on the established church in France see N. Aston, Religion and Revolution in France 1780–1804, Basingstoke 2000. 16 D. Hempton and M. Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740–1890, London 1992, 25; D. Hempton, Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland: From the Glorious Revolution to the Decline of Empire, Cambridge 1996, 97.

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in the pages of the Northern Star, the newspaper established by the society in 1792. The Society of United Irishmen had aimed, under the leadership of Wolfe Tone, to unite all radicals in Ireland, irrespective of religious aYliation, but this situation was undermined from 1795 by a descent into sectarian violence. There was a feeling among some Protestants who wanted political change that this would give greater power to the Roman Catholics and this they were determined to resist, resulting in the establishment of the Orange Order. Roman Catholics responded to attacks on their homes from groups of Protestants by joining the Secret Society of Defenders; an alliance between the Defenders and the Society of United Irishmen further inXamed sectarian passions.17 It was in this rapidly deteriorating political situation that a French expeditionary force—Britain was at war with France from 1793—accompanied by some Irish radical exiles including Wolfe Tone attempted, unsuccessfully, to land in Bantry Bay in December 1796. The government responded with a policy of ruthless coercion, aimed at the elimination of the radical elements in Ireland, which was supported, almost without exception, by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Defenderism was attacked by Archbishop Troy of Dublin in a pastoral letter and by Bishop Plunkett of Meath in a series of sermons. A solemn High Mass and Te Deum of thanksgiving for the defeat of the attempted invasion was celebrated at the Francis Street Chapel in Dublin by Bishop Moylan of Cork, attended by six other members of the hierarchy, including Archbishop Troy, who preached a sermon attacking the political situation in France to a congregation of three thousand. The exception was Bishop Hussey of Waterford and Lismore. Hussey was something of an ecclesiastical maverick. Born in County Meath in 1746, he studied at Seville and, after ordination in 1769, became assistant chaplain at the Spanish embassy in London. He was promoted to principal chaplain in 1784 and retained this post until his death in 1803. He was a strong supporter of the establishment of Maynooth College and became its Wrst president. In 1797 he was provided to the bishopric of Waterford and Lismore, retaining his presidency of Maynooth, but refusing, because of his private means, to accept either his episcopal stipend or his presidential salary. He was condemned by his fellow bishops for a pastoral letter in which he described the Church of Ireland as ‘a small sect’ and attacked the penal laws. His stance was seen as giving tacit support to political radicalism in Ireland, though Hussey denied this. Pressure was put on him to resign his presidency 17 R. F. G. Holmes, The Presbyterian Church in Ireland: A Popular History, Blackrock 2000, 72–7; J. Fulton, The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics and Religion in Ireland, Oxford 1991, 43–50.


39

of Maynooth and when he refused he was dismissed for non-residence.18 He has been described as ‘a proto-ultramontanist willing to stand up to the Protestant ascendancy in church and society’.19 Although Hussey’s alleged radicalism was greatly exaggerated there was certainly support from some of the lower clergy for political reform. A survey of the clergy attached to the Wfteen Roman Catholic chapels in Dublin in 1796 suggested that thirty-six were politically radical, twenty-two conservative and Wfty-Wve moderate.20 The government’s policy of coercion failed to prevent, or possibly even fuelled, rebellion which broke out in the summer of 1798 in a series of local, and not very well organized, risings, some of which also involved a high degree of sectarian violence. This included attacks on church buildings and clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, which were to continue sporadically throughout the decade that followed. There was also growing opposition to, and a refusal to pay, tithes to the Church of Ireland clergy by both Catholic and Protestant dissenters who objected to paying for an established church they did not attend whilst also having to Wnd the funds to pay their own clergy and maintain their own churches. Of the religious groups in Ireland the one most heavily implicated in the rebellion was the Presbyterians. Only fourteen Roman Catholic priests were indicted and six executed compared with thirteen indictments and three executions among the much smaller number of Presbyterian ministers.21 Involvement was, of course, much more widespread than this, on both sides. Recent research has identiWed sixty-three Presbyterian ministers and licentiates suspected of involvement in the 1798 rebellion, most of whom belonged to the Synod of Ulster, though the Synod itself condemned all those who had got themselves involved.22 On the Roman Catholic side Wfty-seven priests were implicated. In most dioceses the number was quite small and there were the dioceses in which none of the clergy were implicated. The highest numbers of implicated priests were in the dioceses of Armagh (six), Killala (seven), Dublin (ten) and Ferns (eleven). In the diocese of Ferns, where there was considerable sectarian violence, with massacres of Protestants at Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge, the involvement of Roman Catholic priests in the rebellion was used as an excuse for attacks on Roman 18 Keogh, French Disease, 41–2, 89–94, 102–17: Corish, Maynooth College, 27. 19 D. Bowen, History and the Shaping of Irish Protestantism, New York 1995, 186–7. 20 Keogh, French Disease, 129–31. 21 E. M. Johnston, ‘Problems Common to both Protestant and Catholic Churches in Eighteenth Century Ireland’, in Irish Culture and Nationalism, 1750–1950, ed. O. MacDonagh, W. F. Mandle, and P. Travers, London 1983, 33. 22 Holmes, Presbyterian Church, 79–83. For a detailed list of these ministers, see I. R. McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in the late Eighteenth Century, Oxford 1998, 232–6.

40


Catholic chapels and clergy, and the parish priests of both Arklow and Wicklow were murdered. The Roman Catholic hierarchy condemned the rebellion unreservedly. Ten archbishops and bishops issued individual pastoral letters denouncing it and there were joint pastorals from the Munster and Ulster bishops and from the whole hierarchy. Bishop Hussey of Waterford and Lismore did not sign the Munster pastoral, issued after the consecration of Bishop Sugrue of Kerry on 11 June, as he was absent in Rome, but he issued his own pastoral letter against the rebellion on 3 July. Bishop CaulWeld of Ferns was ‘acutely embarrassed by the scale of clerical involvement in the rebellion in his diocese’ and made clear his opposition to it. Only one bishop, Dominic Bellew of Killala, was seen as being sympathetic to the rebels, though his political opinions seem to have been as ambiguous as Hussey’s and were largely the product of his personal antagonism to Archbishop Troy.23 The 1798 rebellion was the Wnal straw that determined the British government to push through, against the wishes of the Irish parliament, the full political union of Ireland with the rest of the British Isles, though some political opinion at Westminster had favoured union since the 1780s.24 There had even been some support for it in Ireland. A crucial Wgure in the negotiations was Archbishop Agar of Cashel. In the 1770s he had supported Anglo-Irish Union but on the basis of ‘a complete and entire union or incorporation of the two islands, with the single exception of Ireland’s retaining a local subordinate legislative, similar in authority to that of the Isle of Man’.25 Archbishop Robinson of Armagh was also thought to be sympathetic to a union of this sort and it was supported by Bishop Barnard of Killaloe and Kilfenora in the 1780s.26 By the time that union was under serious consideration Agar had changed his mind, but he was persuaded to change it back again:27 he was wooed and won ‘on account of his debating skill and mastery of detail, in return for which he obtained important securities for the Church of Ireland . . . to say nothing of important advantages to himself ’,28 the archbishopric of Dublin in 1801, a viscountcy in 1800, and an earldom in 1806. Agar’s concerns about union had been partly motivated by his opposition to possible Catholic emancipation which he thought would make it impos23 Keogh, French Disease, 137, 150–3, 177, 189, 202–3. 24 P. M. Geoghegan, The Irish Act of Union: A Study in High Politics, Dublin 1999, 2–3. 25 J. Kelly, ‘The Origins of the Act of Union: An Examination of Unionist Opinion in Britain and Ireland, 1650–1800’, Irish Historical Studies, xxv (1986–7), 251–2. 26 Ibid., 258. 27 G. C. Bolton, The Passing of the Irish Act of Union: A Study in Parliamentary Politics, Oxford 1966, 76, 206. 28 A. P. W. Malcolmson, ‘The Irish Peerage and the Act of Union, 1800–1971’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series, x (2000), 308.


41

sible to maintain a Protestant established church in Ireland; his Wnal reconversion to the pro-union lobby was similarly motivated largely by ecclesiastical considerations, namely his belief that tithe reform which he was keen to promote, would be better handled by a British than an Irish parliament.29 It may well have been Agar that Lord Cornwallis, who succeeded Lord Camden as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland during the 1798 rebellion, had in mind when he recommended that an Irishman rather than an Englishman, as had been the custom, should be appointed to the vacant archbishopric of Armagh in 1800, though the advice was ignored and William Stuart was transferred from the Welsh See of St David’s.30 Although the passage of the Act of Union required the support of Ireland’s politicians in both houses of the Irish parliament, the attitudes of both the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic hierarchies were crucial. The votes of the former might turn out to be decisive in the Irish House of Lords, and the support of the latter would be an important factor in securing more general Roman Catholic support for the measure. The Church of Ireland hierarchy was divided in its attitude to union. One of its strongest supporters was the noted antiquarian, Bishop Percy of Dromore, who persuaded all but Wve of his clergy to sign a pro-union petition. Percy supported union on the grounds that it might reduce the Wnancial cost of governing Ireland; he thought that the Dublin government had ‘long drained the public treasury in jobs and schemes for its separate emolument, of no adequate use to the nation in general’.31 The opponents were led by Bishops Dickson of Down and Connor and Marlay of Waterford and Lismore. The latter was, however, undermined by his own dean at Waterford, Christopher Butson, who organized a pro-union petition with 350 signatories and colluded with the Roman Catholic bishop, Thomas Hussey, to secure a separate Roman Catholic petition in favour of union with 209 signatories.32 There was no serious opposition to union within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which was encouraged to believe that it would quickly be followed by full political emancipation for Roman Catholics, a policy genuinely favoured by most members of the British government as well as Cornwallis. The strongest supporters of union within the Roman Catholic hierarchy were Archbishops O’Reilly of Armagh and Troy of Dublin. Troy went so far as to encourage the parish priest of Newry to mobilize the Roman Catholic vote for the pro-union and pro-emancipation candidate at a by-election in 1799. Other bishops, including Archbishop Bray of Cashel and Bishop Plunket of 29 Id., Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760–1820, Dublin 2002, 518, 554–5. 30 Bolton, Act of Union, 210. 31 Ibid., 126. 32 Ibid., 138, 150–1.

42


Meath, were initially more neutral. Plunket declined to put pressure on his clergy or laity to support union in the belief that such action might be counter-productive. Bishop Moylan of Cork, however, expressed the view that most clergy and laity supported union and used this as evidence to convince his wavering colleagues that they should come down Wnally in favour of union.33 The Act of Union was eventually passed through both houses of the Irish parliament in 1800 and became operative on 1 January 1801. Its passing had been achieved by the clear understanding given to the Roman Catholic hierarchy that emancipation would follow, and by oVering inducements, thereafter referred to as ‘engagements’, either Wnancial or promises of peerages, secular oYces, or ecclesiastical preferment, to the Protestant members of both houses of the Irish parliament.34 Under the arrangements for Irish representation in the British parliament, one Church of Ireland archbishop and three bishops were to sit by rotation in the House of Lords.35 This arrangement was criticized by Archbishop Agar who thought that the four archbishops ought to be the permanent representatives of the Irish bishops in parliament. Bishop O’Beirne of Meath wanted to strengthen the union between the English and Irish churches by suppressing all the Irish archbishoprics and making them suVragans of Canterbury.36 On the whole though the Irish bishops thought that the union would bring beneWts to the established church. Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel wrote to Bishop Bennet of Cloyne on 9 September 1802: The unfortunate circumstances of the country in former days imposed a necessity on the legislative of uniting many livings . . . The times are now changed . . . This then seems to be the critical period . . . to restore the church to its originally intended strength in point of numbers.37

Roman Catholic bishops were equally positive about the potential beneWts of union. Bishop Moylan of Cork was conWdent that it would ‘put an eVectual stop to those civil and religious disorders, which have so shamefully disgraced this nation’.38 33 Ibid., 132, 136, 143; P. M. Geoghegan, ‘The Catholics and the British–Irish Union of 1801’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series, x (2000), 252–4; Bolton and Geoghegan disagree about the position of Archbishop Dillon of Tuam, the former describing him as a supporter of union and the latter regarding him as one of the neutrals. 34 See the full discussion of these issues in Geoghegan, ‘Catholics’, 255–8 and Irish Act of Union, 118–29. 35 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 72. 36 Bolton, Act of Union, 88; Malcolmson, Agar, 565; History of the Church of Ireland, ed. W. A. Phillips, 3 vols, Oxford 1933, iii, 288. 37 NLI, Ms 8892, quoted in Akenson, Church of Ireland, 71. 38 Geoghegan, Irish Act of Union, 129.


43

British ministers had been genuine about the clear hints they had given to the Roman Catholic hierarchy that political emancipation would follow political union. They had, however, underestimated the opposition to emancipation within parts of the British political establishment as well as that of King George III. Once the king had made it clear that he would not accede to emancipation the prime minister, William Pitt, and those ministers who supported it, tendered their resignations. Cornwallis, who had considered emancipation a matter of honour in view of the thinly veiled promises he had given to the Roman Catholic hierarchy, also resigned as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. With his departure there was some doubt as to whether all the ‘engagements’ that had been made to secure the union would be honoured but in the end they were.39

TH E LO NG ROA D TO C ATHO LI C EM A NC I PATI O N 1801–29 The Roman Catholic hierarchy had supported the Act of Union in the belief, strongly encouraged by the British government, that its compliance would be rewarded by the Wnal removal of all political restrictions on Roman Catholics throughout the United Kingdom. The diYculty was that, whilst George III remained king, there was little likelihood that the British government could deliver on its hinted promises, though the age and health of the king, and at that date his presumed insanity,40 made it diYcult to estimate how long this delay might be. The result was that the immediate beneWts of the Union seemed to favour Protestants, who had been much more grudging in their eventual support for it to the extent that some of their leaders had had to be bribed to ensure their compliance, rather than Roman Catholics. In addition to the honouring of the ‘engagements’ made to secure Protestant support, the British parliament substantially increased the annual grants to the Board of First Fruits to fund the programme of building Church of Ireland churches and glebe houses. The fact that no comparable beneWts, in the form of political emancipation, were to be oVered to Roman Catholics for almost thirty years, and that even then political action was required to achieve them, severely soured the relationship between the British government and the Roman Catholic community in Ireland, and was a major contributor to the more radical political stance adopted by some of the younger members 39 Ibid., 156–207. 40 It is likely that George III suVered from porphyria, a rare blood disease which produced symptoms easily mistaken for insanity, see I. Macalpine and R. Hunter, George III and the MadBusiness, London 1969.

44


of the Roman Catholic hierarchy after 1820, leading to considerable divisions over the government’s educational reforms in the 1830s and 1840s. The situation is well summed up by one Irish historian: The failure to deliver Emancipation as part of the set of deals facilitating the Act of Union in 1800 merely heaped frustration on top of expectation. This had a profound alienating eVect on the Catholic middle class, so that by the beginning of the nineteenth century the Catholic question had in eVect become the Irish question.41

Even after emancipation had eventually been achieved it was seen as a disappointment: ‘many had entertained unrealistic, almost millenarian, expectations and soon found that Catholic Emancipation had not wrought the miracles for which they had hoped’.42 In addition to the hostility of George III, who viewed agreement to emancipation as a breach of his coronation oath, the British government had to overcome two other hurdles that stood in the way of parliamentary acceptance of such a proposal: the almost unanimous view of the bishops of the United Church of England and Ireland that emancipation would destroy the whole theological basis of the link between church and state which had been an essential doctrinal plank of orthodox Anglicanism since the seventeenth century; and the strength of anti-papist feeling in England which became only too apparent in the period leading up to the eventual enactment of emancipation in 1829.43 In order to placate both these lobbies, the British government indicated to the Roman Catholic hierarchy that it would need a further conciliatory gesture in the form of an agreement that the government should be able to exercise some measure of control over the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland and that there should also be some provision for at least a proportion of the salaries of the Roman Catholic clergy to be paid by the state. These were concessions which the hierarchy was quite prepared to make but the clergy were much more hostile. The bishops saw it as an opportunity to regularize the very unsatisfactory arrangements for the maintenance of the clergy, which depended on a system of ‘voluntary’ oVerings that caused much friction between clergy and laity. The clergy saw the reform of this system as a further attempt by the bishops to exercise control over the clergy and to make them less dependent on the laity.44 The 41 Hempton, Religion and Political Culture, 78. 42 Ibid., 82. 43 See the discussion of all these issues in J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832, Cambridge 1985, 349–420; L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, New Haven and London 1992, 324–34; WolVe, Protestant Crusade, 21–8; U. Henriques, Religion Toleration in England 1787– 1833, London 1961, 136–74; and G. I. T. Machin, The Catholic Question in English Politics 1820 to 1830, Oxford 1964. ´ Tuathaigh, Ireland before the Famine 1798–1848, Dublin 1972, 50–1. 44 G. O


45

division of opinion between the bishops and their clergy on this point has to be seen as part of the underlying tension between the two in respect of the whole programme of ecclesiastical reform to be considered in detail in the chapters that follow. By the death of George III in 1820 there was still a complete stalemate over the issue of emancipation and little sign of any progress being made. This situation was changed in 1823 as a result of a by-election in County Dublin where the pro-reform candidate, Colonel Henry White, narrowly defeated the anti-papist Sir Compton Domville. One of White’s supporters was Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), a member of a Roman Catholic landowning family from Kerry, who had been an opponent of the Act of Union and a long-standing campaigner for Catholic Emancipation. O’Connell and his supporters established the Catholic Association, which despite its title admitted Protestants as members, to campaign for Catholic Emancipation. The success of the association was secured by establishing what was known as the Catholic Rent: The Association was empowered to open accounts with all the parishes, to appoint collectors, to receive monthly reports of progress in each parish, to publish the names of subscribers to the Rent, to appoint a Finance Committee and Treasurers. It was to audit and publish the accounts annually.45

Despite some initial reservations, the majority of the Roman Catholic bishops agreed to support the association, provided its campaign was conducted according to peaceful means. Its rapid growth however, alarmed the British government which in 1825 introduced an Unlawful Societies in Ireland Bill, the main provision of which was to restrict the length of time that any political organization could remain in being to fourteen days.46 Despite these restrictions pro-emancipation meetings continued to be organized and at the general election of 1826 pro-emancipation candidates were elected in the counties of Armagh, Dublin, Louth, Monaghan, Waterford, and Westmeath; at Waterford the defeated candidate was none other than Lord George Thomas Beresford, son of the Marquis of Waterford and brother to Archbishop Beresford of Armagh.47 The pro-emancipation gains in Ireland were, however, more than reversed by anti-emancipation gains in other parts of the British Isles,48 so that the political impasse of the previous quarter of a century was in no way resolved. 45 F. O’Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation: Daniel O’Connell and the Birth of Irish Democracy 1820–30, Dublin 1985, 56. 46 Ibid., 86. 47 Ibid., 120–45. 48 Machin, Catholic Question, 69–87, 195.

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The main outcome of the 1826 general election was an increase of sectarian tension in Ireland, at a time when the growing numbers of Evangelicals in both the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster were supporting aggressive campaigns of proselytism within the Roman Catholic community.49 At a by-election in Cork City in December 1826 the pro-emancipation candidate managed to defeat an anti-emancipation candidate by only 1,019 votes to 970 in an area in which support for O’Connell and his revived Catholic Rent was strong.50 It was recognized by O’Connell and his political allies that, if they were to make a major political breakthrough they needed to establish local political organizations to secure the return of pro-emancipation members to parliament. Liberal clubs were established in Clare and Waterford in 1827 and eVorts were made to establish similar organizations in other parts of Ireland.51 In 1828 the leaders of the United Catholic Association agreed that, in view of the failure of the British government led by the Duke of Wellington to commit itself unreservedly to the cause of Catholic Emancipation, they should oppose the return to parliament in any Irish constituency of a candidate committed to supporting the government. When the government repealed the Test and Corporation Acts, O’Connell endeavoured to persuade the association to reverse its earlier decision, ‘as a gesture to the administration which had taken this important step towards Emancipation’, but failed. The appointment by Wellington of W. V. Fitzgerald, one of the members for Clare, as President of the Board of Trade, meant that he had to vacate his seat and oVer himself for re-election. Fitzgerald was a supporter of emancipation but the association was obliged to nominate a candidate in opposition to him. Initially it was assumed that another Protestant would be found to oppose Fitzgerald but the opinion was expressed that the victory of a Roman Catholic over Fitzgerald would be more likely to force the government to concede emancipation. On 24 June 1828 O’Connell announced that he would stand against Fitzgerald and, after a bitter contest, he defeated his rival by 2,057 votes to 982. As had been anticipated, the result of the by-election was enough to persuade Wellington that emancipation had to be conceded since, without it, O’Connell was unable to take his seat in the House of Commons. Wellington was, however, anxious to do so in a manner which would minimize opposition to the measure. He also had to secure the royal assent to the measure which was far from guaranteed, George IV having adopted a similar position to that of his father. In the end it was only the king’s realization that the government would resign if it was thwarted that persuaded him that he 49 O’Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation, 165–9. 50 Ibid., 171. 51 Ibid., 188–200; Machin, Catholic Question, 121–30.


47

had no alternative but to assent to legislation that he found personally repugnant.52 When the proposals for admitting Roman Catholics to parliament and to most public oYces were Wnally introduced in the House of Commons in March 1829, they commanded signiWcant majorities at every stage in the process. Opposition was much stronger in the House of Lords, fuelled by the knowledge that George IV ‘was being forced against his will to accept emancipation’. The majority of the bishops, including Archbishops Beresford of Armagh and Howley of Canterbury, were hostile but a signiWcant minority voted for emancipation. The majority at the second reading was 105, and only one fewer at the third reading. The opponents petitioned the crown but the royal assent was given on 13 April. However, when O’Connell prepared himself for admission to the House of Commons he was not allowed to take his seat without taking the Oath of Supremacy on the grounds that he had been elected prior to the passing of the legislation permitting him to do so. At a subsequent by-election, for which the nominations closed on 30 July, he was returned for Clare unopposed.53 As O’Ferrall has pointed out, the legislation of 1829 was, in practice, the concluding act of a series of measures taken in the eighteenth century, which ‘relieved Roman Catholics of their most pressing disabilities under the penal laws’. The legislation did not repeal the penal statutes but permitted ‘exceptions for Roman Catholics, subject to certain conditions . . . When Roman Catholics fulWlled the speciWed conditions, such as taking a special oath, relief became operative. Those who refused to abide by such terms were still, legally, subject to all disabilities as in the past.’ The oath prescribed by the legislation of 1829 required Roman Catholics to ‘abjure any intention to subvert the present church establishment as settled by law . . . or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government in the United Kingdom’. The purpose of this oath was to fulWl the government’s intention, when introducing the legislation, ‘to maintain intact and inviolate the integrity of the Protestant Established Church, its discipline and government, and also to maintain the essential Protestant character of the Constitution’. Whilst the oath was, in a sense, ‘oVensive to Catholic susceptibilities’ it was ‘acceptable to Catholics in order to qualify for the franchise or for oYce’ in a way that the previous Oath of Supremacy was not.54 Whilst the delay in achieving emancipation had been 52 Machin, Catholic Question, 169–72; O’Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation, 238–47. 53 O’Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation, 253–7; Machin, Catholic Question, 157–78. The other leading episcopal opponents of emancipation were Bishops BlomWeld of London, Burgess of Salisbury, and Van Mildert of Durham. The supporters of emancipation included, perhaps surprisingly, the Hackney Phalanx Lloyd of Oxford and, less so, the Evangelical Sumner of Winchester. 54 O’Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation, 318–19.

48


extremely frustrating for the Roman Catholic majority in Ireland, the legislation of 1829 was passed without the Roman Catholic hierarchy having to make any of the concessions that it would have had to make to secure the passing of similar legislation at an earlier date.

T HE PO S T- EMA N CI PATI O N REF O RM P RO GR AM ME 1829–45 The granting of full Catholic Emancipation in 1829 was the precursor to a period of intensive reform in Ireland which resulted in two major pieces of legislation, the Church Temporalities Act of 1833 and the Tithe Rentcharge Act of 1838, and also the setting up of a Board of Commissioners for National Education in 1831. The Church Temporalities Act was viewed at the time by the pre-Tractarian high churchmen who dominated the ecclesiastical establishment in both England and Ireland as an attack on that establishment. Much emphasis was placed on the amalgamation of dioceses and the overall reduction of the Irish episcopate from four archbishops and eighteen bishops to two archbishops and ten bishops. But this was, in the longer term, one of the least important aspects of the legislation, which in other respects was seen as a test run for similar legislation later introduced for the reform of the established Church in England and Wales: the setting up of an Ecclesiastical Commission to manage ecclesiastical revenues and the redistribution of clerical endowments carried out in the late 1830s, and the abolition of church cess or rates not implemented in England and Wales until 1868.55 The union of dioceses and the redistribution of clerical endowments was a relatively slow process, since the interests of existing postholders had to be protected and changes delayed until their deaths or resignations. Table 2.1 shows this in respect of the union of dioceses. In addition to these changes, the diocese of Ardagh was separated from that of Tuam and united with that of Kilmore after the death of Archbishop Trench in 1839. With one exception, the separation of Clogher from Armagh in 1886, there was no further alteration in the number and composition of the united dioceses of the Church of Ireland until the middle of the twentieth century. The impact of the Church Temporalities Act on episcopal revenues was enormous, as shown in Table 2.2. The incomes of the sees of Armagh and Derry, the richest in Ireland, were deliberately reduced. These reductions, the income from the suppressed sees, the residual income of the abolished Board of First Fruits, and a new 55 O. J. Brose, Church and Parliament: The Reforming of the Church of England 1828–1860, Stanford 1959, 101–19.


49

Table 2.1. Union of Church of Ireland dioceses under the provisions of the Church Temporalities Act 1833 Diocese suppressed

Diocese united with

EVective date

Clogher Clonfert and Kilmacduagh Cloyne Dromore Elphin Ferns and Leighlin Kildare Killala and Achonry Raphoe Waterford and Lismore

Armagh Killaloe and Kilfenora Cork and Ross Down and Connor Kilmore and Ardagh Ossory Dublin Tuam Derry Cashel and Emly

26 April 1850 29 January 1834 14 September 1835 9 April 1842 15 October 1841 12 July 1835 8 August 1846 13 April 1834 5 September 1834 14 August 1833

Source: Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn, London 1986, 378–408.

Table 2.2. Reduction in net income of united Church of Ireland bishoprics resulting from the Church Temporalities Act 1833 Bishoprics

Net income 1831 (£)

Net income 1867 (£)

14,494 8,668 6,308 3,933 3,901 4,091 12,159 5,052 4,204 4,216 7,786 6,061 3,966 2,970 6,225 6,263 4,973 4,068 3,322 5,730 6,996 3,410

8,882

128,808

54,319

Armagh Clogher Cashel and Emly Waterford and Lismore Cork and Ross Cloyne Derry Raphoe Down and Connor Dromore Dublin Kildare Killaloe and Kilfenora Clonfert and Kilmacduagh Kilmore (and Ardagh after 1839) Elphin Limerick and Ardfert Meath and Clonmacnois Ossory Ferns and Leighlin Tuam (and Ardagh before 1839) Killala and Achonry total Source: Akenson, Church of Ireland, 84, 223.

3,923 2,106 5,680 3,724 7,261 2,910 4,781 3,812 3,502 3,424 4,311

50


graduated tax on clerical incomes, were used to provide the funding for the new Ecclesiastical Commission. The Commission took on all the previous responsibilities of the former Board of First Fruits: the building of new churches and glebe houses, the repair of existing churches, the purchase of glebe lands and the augmentation of poor livings. The Commission also took on responsibility for matters, such as the payment of parish clerks, which had previously been met through the church cess, and was given powers, subject to the consent of the patron, the Lord Lieutenant, and the Irish Privy Council, to divide parishes or united beneWces, and to provide the funding for new buildings that might be required by such divisions.56 The importance of the Act was that in future a minority establishment was to be Wnanced ‘not from parliamentary grants, but from the church’s own resources as redistributed by the state. It was the acceptable face of erastianism’,57 though that was not how it was viewed by most of the bishops.58 Tithes had been a source of conXict in Ireland since the middle of the eighteenth century, as much resented by Presbyterians as they were by Roman Catholics,59 and ‘possibly the greatest single element of disruption in Irish social life’.60 Outbreaks of agrarian violence and refusals to pay tithes, on which many clergy of the Church of Ireland were heavily dependent to provide them with a reasonable income, led to legislation in 1787, both to give the clergy compensation for tithes which they had been unable to collect and to increase penalties for those found guilty of refusing to pay tithes or indulging in acts of violence against the clergy or ecclesiastical property. Agitation against the payment of tithes continued. The case for reform was even stronger in Ireland than in England since far more people were obliged to pay tithes, including many poor people in the countryside who farmed small plots in order to provide their own food. Eventually in 1823–4 measures were passed which enabled the setting up of special vestries in any parish, where either the incumbent, the lay impropriator, or Wve landowners occupying land worth at least twenty pounds a year requested them, so that a composition of the tithes could be made, with the provision that this had, as a minimum, to be equal to the average value of an incumbent’s tithe income over the previous seven years. If either the incumbent or the special vestry refused to accept the principle of composition, powers were given to the Lord 56 For a full discussion of the Act and its consequences, see Akenson, Church of Ireland, 167–79. 57 A. R. Acheson, A History of the Church of Ireland 1691–1996, Blackrock 1997, 146. 58 W. B. Mant, Memories of the Right Reverend Richard Mant, Dublin 1857, 293, notes that only Archbishop Whately of Dublin and Bishops Knox of Killaloe and Ponsonby of Derry, ‘were understood to have been not unfavourable to the measure’. 59 Corish, Catholic Community, 134–5. 60 E. M. Johnston, ‘Problems’, 17.


51

Lieutenant to ensure that it took place. By 1832 a total of 1,539 compositions had taken place, representing 62.8% of Irish parishes at that date. The highest composition rates, 188 out of 191 parishes, were in the two poor mid-western dioceses of Killaloe and Kilfenora, and Clonfert and Kilmacduagh. The composition rates were much lower in the eastern parts of Ireland, though the diocese with the lowest rate (28.8%) was, rather surprisingly, the poor north-western one of Killala and Achonry.61 The measures of 1823–4 were, however, only a short-term palliative. By the early 1830s there was further agitation supported by Daniel O’Connell and the Roman Catholic bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, James Doyle. Once more there was violence and refusals to pay, the chief victims being the Church of Ireland clergy. Archbishop Beresford of Armagh spent £1,952 of his own income in 1832 on the relief of distressed clergy owed arrears of unpaid tithes. As an immediate measure there was a parliamentary grant of £60,000 to provide loans to clergy deprived of tithe payments. What was more diYcult to achieve was a Wnal solution of the tithe problem in Ireland by means acceptable to all parties, not just in Ireland but in parliament as well. After much discussion, and several failed proposals in parliament, the solution that was agreed in 1838 was the abolition of both tithes and tithe compositions and their replacement by a tithe rent charge equal to 75% of the nominal value of the tithes. Responsibility for the payment of the rent charge was placed on the landlord and not the tenant, and all arrears of tithe and loans to the clergy were written oV. The main objections to the previous system of tithe payments, that they bore hardest on those least able to pay, was therefore removed. Although most bishops and clergy of the Church of Ireland still objected to the nominal 25% reduction in that portion of their income, in actual practice most of the clergy were better oV since, even when they had been able to collect them, they had nearly always had to settle for payments somewhat less than the nominal value of their tithe. The Tithe Rentcharge Act of 1838 provided what was eventually seen by most people in Ireland as an equitable solution to a problem that had bedevilled Irish rural society for the best part of a century.62 A problem that was as intractable as tithes in Ireland was that of education. One of the reasons for this was that virtually all of the educational initiatives that had taken place before the early nineteenth century had had as their principal objective means whereby members of the Roman Catholic community could be encouraged to become protestants. The most blatant examples of this were the charter schools established by the Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland under a charter 61 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 95–111.

62 Ibid., 148–59, 182–94.

52


of George II dated 6 February 1734.63 The majority of these schools were founded before 1770 and many, as Table 2.3 shows, had relatively brief periods of operation. The purpose of the schools was clear from the start. They were to provide a mixture of formal education and practical training in ‘husbandry, housewifery, trades, manufacturing, etc.’ for children from poor families. The two priorities of the formal education process were to make Irish-speaking children proWcient in English and to inculcate a knowledge of religion based on the formularies of the Church of Ireland. Although the children of Protestant parents were admitted, this was only when it was found impossible to Wll the schools with the children of Roman Catholic ones. Many of them were initially attracted by the fact that their children were maintained in the schools, including food and clothing, free of charge but on the understanding that they should be employed for part of the day either on the land or in the school factories. However, the policy of deliberately transplanting Roman Catholic children to schools as far away as possible from the inXuence of their parents and relations was counter-productive and resulted in schools having many vacant places. The initial funding for the Incorporated Society came from private benefactors and some municipal corporations, but from 1745 it was the recipient of the proceeds of a tax levied on hawkers and pedlars by the Irish parliament. The rules of the Incorporated Society stated that children under six years of age could not be admitted to its schools. However, in 1757 it persuaded the Irish parliament to make it a grant of £12,000, partly to fund its existing schools, and partly to build a nursery in each of the provinces of Ireland. These would admit children under six and act as feeders for the charter Table 2.3. Dates of operation of charter schools in Ireland Dates

Establishment

Termination

Before 1770 1770–1800 1800–1825 1825–1850 After 1850

54 1 2 — —

2 13 21 20 1

total

57

57

Source: Milne, Irish Charter Schools, 347–8.

63 The section that follows is based on the excellent new study by K. Milne, The Irish Charter Schools, 1730–1830, Dublin 1997.


53

schools. Three nurseries were built, the exception being in Ulster, where the site to build one, at Armagh, was eventually disposed of. The Incorporated Society had a two-tier management structure, the Committee of Fifteen, which met in Dublin, and local committees. In practice, however, the management of each school was the responsibility of its master or mistress, who was expected to balance the need to manage his or her school according to the Society’s rules with that to maintain strict economy. The results were inevitable. The emphasis in schools was to make as much money as possible out of the industrial work undertaken by the children, whilst at the same time spending as little as possible on their maintenance. At the end of their period in the schools children were apprenticed to protestant tradespeople or placed in domestic service, under terms agreed between the schools and their future masters or mistresses. As early as the late eighteenth century there were reports that conditions in some charter schools were far from ideal. By 1805 even Archbishop Stuart of Armagh was expressing to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel his view ‘that the protestant charter schools were illmanaged . . . not productive of the good intended’.64 In the following year it was decided to appoint commissioners to enquire ‘into the state and condition of all schools in Ireland’. It was not only the charter schools that were a cause for concern. In 1820 Bishop O’Beirne of Meath wrote to Archbishop Stuart to complain about the state of Wilson’s Hospital, Co. Westmeath, which included a school for Protestant boys, founded in 1759.65 According to O’Beirne the previous master had been negligent, the boys were dirty, covered with sores, and looking generally dispirited; the potatoes at dinner were almost raw so that the boys could not eat them.66 The third report of the commissioners, compiled in 1809, dealt with the charter schools and, though it drew attention to various shortcomings, was very far from being entirely negative. There is also clear evidence that the Incorporated Society took on board the criticisms made and attempted to rectify those matters that had been drawn to its attention. Several unsatisfactory or uneconomic schools were closed and parliament provided £10,000 in 1810–11 so that the society could carry out repairs on its remaining schools. In 1817 the Committee of Fifteen commissioned Elias Thackeray, vicar of Dundalk, to carry out an inspection of all the surviving charter schools and this likewise found a mix of good and poor conditions and produced a series of recommendations which the society agreed to implement. 64 Ibid., 227. 65 C. Casey and A. Rowan, Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster, London 1993, 532–5, pl. 69 and 77; E. McParland, Public Architecture in Ireland 1680–1760, New Haven and London 2001, 169–70, 172. 66 BRO, WY 995/17.

54


Although it was the Wndings of the Irish education enquiry in 1825 which was to mark the end of the charter schools, searching questions were being asked well before its publication. By the second decade of the nineteenth century the British government had come to the conclusion that the whole rationale of the charter schools was outdated in the contemporary religious climate and that they were, in any case, expensive to maintain compared with other schools in Ireland. In 1818 the government forbade the establishment of any new schools, or expenditure on building works which had not already been contracted for, and urged the society to close even more schools. By that year admissions to the charter schools had fallen dramatically to only 108 children, of which 53 were of Protestant, 32 of Roman Catholic, and 23 of mixed parentage. The 1825 report was damning; it found evidence of very low educational standards, deliberate exploitation of children in the school factories, inadequate clothing and food, and severe injuries caused by frequent beatings. It provided the government with a justiWcation of its policy of phasing out the charter schools, which it was estimated had cost it £1,600,000 in parliamentary grants over ninety years. A grant of £12,000 was made in 1828 and one of £6,000 in 1829. From that date no further grants were made and the surviving schools were gradually closed. The charter schools were by no means the only sources of education in prenineteenth century Ireland. An act of 1570 had provided for the establishment of a school in the principal town of each Irish diocese. By 1791 there were 18 diocesan schools, educating 324 students. The total number had declined to 12 schools by 1831, but they were then educating 419 students. There were also the royal schools founded in the reigns of James I and Charles I, which were educating 211 students in 1791 and 343 in 1831, and a few charity schools.67 During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there had been a signiWcant expansion in the number of Church of Ireland parish schools and Roman Catholic ‘hedge’ schools. The latter had originated during the penal era when they were ‘literally that: a collection of students and a teacher holding class in a ditch or a hedgerow, with one of the pupils serving as look-out’.68 The relief legislation of the late eighteenth century had enabled Roman Catholics to operate their own schools openly. Many of these were originally held in the Roman Catholic chapels but gradually moved into separate accommodation. Bishop MacMahon of Killaloe opened a school at Ennis in 1792 and Bishop Hussey of Waterford and Lismore claimed in 1797 to have 67 D. H. Akenson, The Irish Education Experiment: The National System of Education in the Nineteenth Century, London 1970, 26–30. 68 Ibid., 45.


55

founded a school in each of the principal towns of his diocese. In a letter to the Church of Ireland Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel, the future Bishop Jebb of Limerick compared the statistics for parish schools in 1788 and 1808. In the former year returns from 838 beneWces revealed 361 parish schools, 201 school houses, and about 11,000 pupils; in the latter year returns from 736 beneWces showed a signiWcant increase on a smaller sample, with 548 parish schools, 233 school houses, and about 23,000 pupils. The 1808 Wgure had to be compared with Jebb’s estimate that the Roman Catholics had, in 17 dioceses, 3,736 schools educating 162,567 children. By 1824 there were 10,387 Protestant day schools in Ireland with 498,641 pupils, and 10,453 Roman Catholic ones with 522,016 pupils. The latter included 24 schools with 5,541 pupils run by the Christian Brothers, founded in 1802, and 46 convent schools for girls with 7,575 pupils. It should be noted that only 76.1% of the pupils attending Roman Catholic schools were Roman Catholics, whereas as many as 71.6% of those attending Protestant schools were also Roman Catholics.69 It was possible that it was statistics such as these that encouraged the British government to consider an inter-denominational approach to education in Ireland. This had been pioneered by the Kildare Place Society, founded in 1816. The society opened eight schools in its Wrst year of operation and by 1831 had established 1,621 schools educating 137,639 pupils. From its inception the society had been the recipient of annual parliamentary grants which by 1831 had totalled £223,489. The society had a number of prominent Roman Catholic supporters, including Daniel O’Connell, but they withdrew in 1820 over a row about the reading of the scriptures and set up a rival Irish National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor. Even the liberal Roman Catholic bishops, such as Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, who supported non-denominational education in principle, were persuaded that the Kildare Place Society was another organization determined on proselytization.70 The setting up of the Irish education enquiry provided an opportunity for debate about the future of educational provision in Ireland, the end result of which was the setting up of the Board of Commissioners for National Education in 1831. Of the seven original commissioners three (the Duke of Leinster, Archbishop Whately of Dublin, and Provost Sadleir of Trinity College, Dublin) belonged to the Church of Ireland, two (Archbishop Murray of Dublin and Anthony Blake) were Roman Catholics, and two (Revd James Carlile and Robert Holmes) were Presbyterians. The board was funded by an 69 Ibid., 57; Corish, Irish Catholic Experience, 164; Connolly, Priests and People, 80–4; C. Forster, The Life of John Jebb, 2 vols, London 1836, ii, 195–6. 70 Akenson, Irish Education Experiment, 86–94.

56


annual parliamentary grant of variable size totalling £1,119,653 over the period 1831–49. The numbers of schools funded by the board increased from 789 to 4,321 between 1833 and 1849 and the number of pupils educated in them from 107,042 to 480,623. The board operated systems for school inspections and teacher training, but the management of schools remained entirely local. The schools supported by the board were intended to be nondenominational but with the provision that children were to receive religious instruction from a clergyman of their own denomination either on the school premises or another place of his choosing.71 The plan for non-denominational education in Ireland was undermined from the Wrst by a majority of both Presbyterians and members of the Church of Ireland. Initially most Roman Catholics supported the plan, or at least were neutral about it, but gradually became more hostile. Presbyterian attitudes were determined largely by the vociferous opposition of the Revd Henry Cooke who had gained eVective control over the Synod of Ulster by 1830. Cooke’s objections were on three grounds: the fact that Roman Catholics served on the board of commissioners, the insistence that the use of the Bible in the national schools had to be restricted to periods of denominational religious instruction, and the equal rights of access to schools for the purpose of such instruction of both protestant and Roman Catholic clergy. An intermediary role between the Synod of Ulster and the board of commissioners was played by one of the Presbyterians on the latter, the Revd James Carlile, who was also a member of the Synod’s education committee, but it was of little eVect. The Synod voted to set up its own schools and by 1839 there were 127 of these educating 6,590 children. The schools were, however, run on shoestring budgets and their viability was always in doubt. There were acts of violence against national schools incited by the intemperate language of Cooke and some of his supporters. This situation changed in 1838 when the board of commissioners adopted a relaxation of the rules governing religious instruction in national schools; in future religious instruction could be given at any time of the school day, and not just at its beginning or end, provided notice was given so that children could be withdrawn from classes which their parents did not wish them to attend. The Ulster Synod seized on this, apparently minor, concession in order to secure funding for its own schools.72 The diYculty was that this concession to what some saw as Presbyterian intransigence in due course led to increased doubts on the part of Roman Catholics as to whether they should participate in the system. 71 Akenson, Irish Education Experinest, 117, 136, 143–8, 151–2, 157–60. 72 Ibid., 161–87. See also R. F. G. Holmes, Henry Cooke, Belfast 1981, 93–104, 107–12, 135–9.


57

The unwillingness of the Church of Ireland to support the national schools was based on slightly diVerent considerations to the Presbyterians. Some Evangelicals within the established church undoubtedly shared the antiRoman Catholic feelings of the Presbyterians, but the real opposition of the church’s leadership was on the grounds that a Whig government had deprived the established church of its dominant role in the provision of education. This anti-government feeling was then strengthened by the church’s opposition to the other legislative reforms of the 1830s in relation to the reorganization of bishoprics, the redistribution of endowments, and the reform of tithes. In 1832 seventeen Church of Ireland archbishops and bishops signed a parliamentary petition stating ‘that they do not aVect to conceal their grief at beholding the clergy of the established church deprived of the trust committed to their hands by the legislation of superintending national education’. The only archbishops and bishops who refused to sign were Whately of Dublin who was one of the commissioners, Laurence of Cashel, Ponsonby of Derry, Knox of Killaloe, and Jebb of Limerick. In 1839 Archbishop Beresford of Armagh, with the support of eleven bishops, twenty-one deans, twenty-eight archdeacons, and ‘a collection of lay nobility and gentry’ set up the Church Education Society to provide schools under the control of the established church. The number of society schools increased from 825 in 1839 to 1,868 in 1849. In the latter year these schools were educating 111,877 children, under a quarter of the number of those being educated in national schools. Of these children only 52.3% belonged to the Church of Ireland, 33.8% were Roman Catholics, and 13.9% non-Anglican Protestants. Total spending on society schools was then running at between £50,000 and £60,000 each year, but it was heavily dependent on subscriptions from Church of Ireland landowners, which declined as a result of the economic diYculties of the late 1840s. As a result the Church of Ireland was forced to reconsider its attitude to the national schools. By 1848 the continued opposition to the national schools was still led by Archbishop Beresford, the Evangelical bishops Daly of Cashel and O’Brien of Ossory, and the Hackney Phalanx Bishop Mant of Down and Connor. Archbishop Whately was, however, beginning to attract the support of a growing number of clergy, including the deans of Achonry and Ferns, and the archdeacon of Meath, for his position in favour of the national schools. From 1851 the numbers of society schools and children educated in them began to decline. By 1860 even Archbishop Beresford was forced to admit, in a circular to the Clogher Diocesan Church Education Society, that ‘many of the schools are in a condition far from satisfactory . . . owing to the want of adequate funds’, and to suggest that where this was the case ‘it would be advisable to seek for aid from the commissioners of national education’. Only the Evangelicals in the Church of Ireland, though by now a growing

58


force even within the episcopate, continued to maintain total opposition to the national schools. By 1870 the severe reduction in the resources of the Church Education Society had resulted in the numbers of society schools being reduced by more than a third and the number of pupils within them by more than half, over a twenty year period, to 1,202 schools and 52,166 pupils.73 Whereas Irish Protestants had been forced, largely by economic considerations, to moderate this initial opposition to the national schools, Roman Catholics went through an exactly reverse process. Archbishop Murray of Dublin was very much the leading Wgure in the Roman Catholic episcopate in the 1830s, and his support for the new system, and his good working relationship with his fellow commissioner Archbishop Whately, persuaded most of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to either support the national schools or at least to remain neutral. In addition to Murray, the strongest episcopal support for the national schools came from William Crolly, translated from Down and Connor to Armagh in 1835, and, until his death in 1834, James Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin. Under pressure from Murray even the Christian Brothers agreed to allow six of their schools to become national ones, though Wve of these were withdrawn from the system in 1836. In 1838 Archbishop MacHale of Tuam added his voice to that of the opponents, largely over a decision by the commissioners, on Murray’s recommendation, that certain ‘inXammatory’ books should not be read by Roman Catholic children during periods of religious instruction. MacHale and Bishop O’Higgins of Ardagh referred the matter to the papal curia, and there was an acrimonious correspondence between MacHale and Murray in the pages of the Dublin Evening Post. Although originally minded to condemn the national schools, the papacy eventually agreed to leave the matter to individual bishops. In 1838 sixteen of the bishops supported the national schools and ten opposed them. During the 1840s the question of national education was further complicated by the government’s proposal to set up three provincial university colleges, which like the schools, were to be non-denominational. The division among the bishops over the national schools had been largely a generational one, the older bishops tending to side with Murray and the younger ones with MacHale. As the older bishops died and were replaced the balance in the episcopate changed. By 1845 MacHale had persuaded a majority of his colleagues to oppose the proposed university colleges and to lobby for changes in the system of national education. The division among the bishops over education can be seen in microcosm in Ulster. Initially all the Ulster bishops except Blake of Dromore had sup73 Akenson, Irish Education Experiment, 187–202, 285–94 and Church of Ireland, 201–5.


59

ported the national schools. By 1845 only Crolly of Armagh, Denvir of Down and Connor, and Browne of Kilmore were prepared to support non-denominational university colleges. MacHale was even prepared to accept the proposed college at Belfast being controlled by Presbyterians providing the other two colleges were controlled by Roman Catholics. The majority view among the bishops led to the proposed colleges being condemned by the papacy. The Wnal nail in the coYn of the non-denominational education experiment in Ireland, which led to its substantial modiWcation in practice, was the deaths of Crolly in 1849 and Murray in 1852, and their replacement, Wrst at Armagh and then at Dublin, by the future Cardinal Paul Cullen, who as adviser to the papacy in the 1830s and 1840s had never hesitated to voice his objections to the experiment. His belief ‘that denominational education was preferable to the national system’ was enshrined in the decrees of the Synod of Thurles in August 1850.74 The national schools survived the attacks that had been made on them by Presbyterians, the Church of Ireland, and, belatedly, the Roman Catholic hierarchy. They did so, however, only by the board of commissioners agreeing to accept amendments to the original scheme which gradually watered down the intended inter-denominational character of these schools, with Protestant and Roman Catholic children being educated together except for the periods of religious instruction. This was a principle that some of the more liberal Anglicans, such as Archbishop Whately, genuinely supported. It was also one that the older Roman Catholic bishops, brought up in a tradition of compromise with a Protestant state in order to acquire beneWts for Roman Catholics, were also prepared to accept. Presbyterian objections to the national schools were based almost entirely on the crudest feelings of militant anti-popery. For the objectors within the Church of Ireland anti-popery was probably a less signiWcant factor than the desire to maintain the privileges of ecclesiastical establishment and an unwillingness to see these diluted by a government of which they did not approve. Roman Catholic pragmatism eventually fell victim to a new militancy among the younger Roman Catholic clergy and laity, frustrated by the long delay in achieving full political emancipation, irritated by the minor educational concessions to Protestant sensitivities, and emboldened by the economic and political crises of the 1840s to demand that the majority position of Roman Catholicism among the population of Ireland be more satisfactorily reXected in the institutions supported by government. In the end, a system of non-denominational education became in practice one of denominational education, funded by the state, which did nothing to discourage the growth of sectarianism in Ireland. 74 O. P. RaVerty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983: An Interpretative History, London 1994, 121–4; Akenson, Irish Education Experiment, 202–14, 252–68 and Church of Ireland, 212–13; Kerr, Peel, 59–64, 290–351.

60

Non-Religious Background to Religious Reform T H E I M PAC T O F TH E G REAT FAM I N E O F 1845–9

The famine caused in Ireland by the failure, in three seasons out of four (1845–8), of the potato crop, and the resultant decline of the population of Ireland by a Wfth, from either death or emigration, has received extensive treatment from historians.75 In this section we will, therefore, only be concerned with the impact that the famine had on the religious aspects of Irish society. There is no doubt that, although all denominations in Ireland were aVected by the famine, the principal casualty was the Roman Catholic population. This declined by 30% between 1834 and 1861 whereas the Protestant population only declined by 19%.76 The depopulation caused by the famine meant that Roman Catholic dioceses had a surplus of clergy serving as curates, bishops were obliged to refuse ordination to seminarians, and parish priests petitioned bishops for the removal of curates that could no longer be supported.77 The famine undoubtedly contributed to the exacerbation of existing divisions among the bishops that have already been noted in respect of education. Archbishops Crolly of Armagh and Murray of Dublin were anxious not to appear over-critical of what many of the clergy regarded as the British government’s inadequate response to the impact of the famine. Archbishops MacHale of Tuam and Slattery of Cashel had far fewer reservations about making such criticisms, and their lead was followed by most of the bishops. At a meeting in Dublin on 18 October 1847 the bishops issued a memorial criticizing the government’s policies, especially the measures for relief, rejecting the widely held view in the English press that the famine had been caused by Irish ‘indolence’, and blaming it instead on an unjust land settlement, which made it impossible for the rural peasantry, reliant on a single crop, the potato, to cope with its failure.78 Generally speaking the suVering caused by the famine resulted in considerable cooperation between Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy in dealing with its victims. The Roman Catholic clergy in particular saw their role as one 75 See especially C. Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, London 1962; C. Kinealy, This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52, Dublin 1994, A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland, London 1997, and The Great Irish Famine, Basingstoke 2001; D. A. Kerr, A Nation of ´ Gra´da, Beggars? Priests, People and Politics in Famine Ireland 1846–52, Oxford 1994; and C. O Black ’47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy and Memory, Princeton 1999. See also three signiWcant collections of essays on the famine, The Great Irish Famine, ed. C. Poírteír, Cork 1995; ‘Fearful Realities’: New Perspectives on the Famine, ed. C. Morash and R. Hayes, Blackrock 1996; and The Meaning of the Famine, ed. P. O’Sullivan, London 1997. 76 S. J. Connolly, Priests and People, Dublin 1982, 24–5. 77 D. A. Kerr, The Catholic Church and the Famine, Blackrock 1996, 23. 78 Ibid., 54.


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of mediators between government agencies and their starving parishioners. Priests saw it as their job to secure as much employment on public works schemes as possible for those aVected by the famine, but they also used the inXuence they had to persuade those same people to cooperate with measures for famine relief. In Dublin a parochial association was established by the clergy of the Church of Ireland to organize poor relief, though it was criticized on the grounds that less than a third of the recipients of its charity were Roman Catholics in a city where four-Wfths of the population were Roman Catholic, and where the poor were more likely to be Roman Catholic than Protestant.79 Some Evangelicals within the Church of Ireland undoubtedly saw the famine, which they portrayed as an act of God against a godless and superstitious people, as an opportunity for proselytism, and were prepared to oVer food, clothing, or other material beneWts as a means of winning converts.80 Similar accusations of what was termed ‘souperism’ were made against some Roman Catholic clergy. The diYculties of judging the validity of these charges is well illustrated in the case of W. A. Fisher, rector of Kilmoe (Co. Cork) from 1842, whose relief work during the famine resulted in several grateful Roman Catholic parishioners worshipping in the Church of Ireland parish church, though they later returned to their original allegiance.81 However, the fact that such charges were made contributed to the growing tensions between the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches which were developing across several fronts during the 1830s and 1840s. There is no doubt that the relative standing of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in Ireland was very diVerent after 1850 from what they had been before 1770, or even before 1820. During the last three decades of the eighteenth century the Roman Catholic bishops had recognized that political and religious restrictions on the Roman Catholic community would only be lifted through a programme of active cooperation between the British government and the hierarchy, and they also recognized, correctly, that the Act of Union would beneWt them since they could count on greater sympathy and understanding from a British Protestant parliament than an Irish Protestant one. Although there were few, if any, Church of Ireland bishops who wanted to retain the full rigour of the penal legislation there was an increasing nervousness from the 1790s that political change posed a potential threat to the ecclesiastical establishment. The real failure of the British government was its inability, for reasons that were perfectly understandable at the time, to deliver full political emancipation for Roman Catholics within a few years of ´ Gra´da, Black ’47, 56–8, 185–6. 79 Ibid., 28; O 80 Kerr, Catholic Church and Famine, 83–5. 81 D. Bowen, The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, Dublin 1978, 185–9; Acheson, Church of Ireland, 191–2.

62


the Act of Union. This failure permitted the growth of a Roman Catholic political leadership in Ireland, and in due course a religious leadership as well, that was much less willing to cooperate with successive British governments. It is interesting to speculate on whether an earlier delivery of Catholic Emancipation would have led to a very diVerent political climate after 1820. As it was the disputes over tithes and education, and the tensions created by the great famine, encouraged a growth of sectarianism that it proved impossible to reverse. These tensions were further fuelled by the growth of Evangelical extremism within both the Church of Ireland and Irish Presbyterianism. The mixture of these political and religious developments, the reactionary backlash that they created within the Church of Ireland, the new assertiveness of the Synod of Ulster under Henry Cooke’s leadership, and the fundamental changes in the attitudes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy as its more conciliatory leadership was replaced after 1830, were all critical factors in the creation of a much more highly charged political and religious climate after 1850.82 It is the legacy of that new climate which has tended to disguise the much more positive religious developments in Ireland in the years between 1770 and 1850 which will be considered in the succeeding chapters. ´ Tuathaigh, Ireland before the Famine, 82 Good discussion of these issues can be found in O 57–9.

3 The Religious Leadership of Ireland 1770–1850 The events of the seventeenth century had established the religious geography of Ireland in a manner which has survived, with minor modiWcations, to the present day. The early to middle years of the eighteenth century had been a period within which each of the major religious groups—the established church, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians—in Ireland had been able to consolidate and to plan their future organization. We have looked in the last chapter at the administrative, economic, political, and social developments in Ireland which had an impact on religion between 1770 and 1850. In this and the following three chapters we shall look at speciWcally religious developments in Ireland in this period and at the reform movement that made such an important and parallel impact on the two churches with a diocesan and episcopal organization. Reform in this context was, as we shall see in most cases, very much a top-down rather than a bottom-up movement and it is therefore appropriate that we should begin with a consideration of the religious leadership of Ireland in this period.

THE CHURCH OF IRELAND LEADERSHIP From the middle years of the eighteenth century until 1833, the diocesan structure of the Church of Ireland was organized to comprise four archbishoprics and eighteen bishoprics. As a result of the Church Temporalities Act this number was gradually reduced, as dioceses became vacant between 1832 and 1850, to two archbishoprics and ten bishoprics. In terms of their value, as Table 3.1 shows, Irish bishoprics were, on average, worth more in Wnancial terms than their English or Welsh equivalents, though the numerical weakness of the established church in Ireland, and the political instability of the country, made them less desirable to non-Irish candidates than sees in England or Wales. The more valuable sees tended to be Wlled by translation,

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Religious Leadership

Table 3.1. Comparative values of English, Irish, and Welsh bishoprics in the late eighteenth century Value of bishoprics (pa)

Ireland

England and Wales

Over £5,000

Armagh Derry Dublin

Canterbury Durham Winchester

£2,500–5,000

Cashel and Emly Tuam and Ardagh Clogher Elphin Limerick and Ardfert Meath Killala and Achonry Cork and Ross Kilmore Raphoe Kildare

York London Ely Salisbury Worcester

Under £2,500

Waterford and Lismore Cloyne Clonfert and Kilmacduagh Down and Connor Killaloe and Kilfenora Ferns and Leighlin Ossory Dromore

Bath and Wells Norwich Exeter Lincoln Bangor Chichester LichWeld St Asaph Carlisle Hereford Peterborough Chester Gloucester St David’s Rochester LlandaV Oxford Bristol

Note: In both cases bishoprics have been placed in roughly descending order of value within their particular categories. Source: Akenson, Church of Ireland, 36–7; Gibson, Achievement of the Anglican Church, 199–201, omitting the values of other beneWces held in commendam.

the less valuable ones by consecration.1 The wealth of the Irish sees meant that eleven dioceses were able to build new episcopal residences during the eighteenth century.2 Most dioceses had a cathedral and a cathedral chapter. In the case of united dioceses there were sometimes more than one cathedral; 1 See the discussion of these issues in D. H. Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution, 1800–1885, New Haven and London 1971, 14–16, 17–24. 2 History of the Church of Ireland, ed. W. A. Phillips, 3 vols, Oxford 1933, iii, 276.


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this was the case at Down (Downpatrick) and Connor (Lisburn), at Ferns and Leighlin, at Cashel and Emly, at Cork and Ross (Rosscarberry), at Killaloe and Kilfenora, at Waterford and Lismore, and at Killala and Achonry; the diocese of Dublin also had two cathedrals, St Patrick’s and Christ Church. The exceptions were the dioceses of Kilmore and Meath, which had neither cathedrals nor chapters. Most cathedrals were also parish churches with the dean acting as incumbent of the parish. A majority of cathedral dignities and prebends had their endowment provided by a parochial living which the holder either had to serve personally or appoint and pay a curate to act for him. The size of chapters varied considerably, from Wve dignitaries and prebendaries at Derry and Kilfenora to Wve times that number at St Patrick’s, Dublin. Eleven cathedrals had corporations of vicars choral. The value of the deaneries varied considerably, from £20 per annum at Clonfert and Ross, to over £1,500 at Derry, Down, and Raphoe. Six cathedral chapters also appointed to a total of nineteen parochial cures.3 The patronage of the diocesan bishops was, generally, more extensive that in England and Wales. The deans of cathedrals were normally appointed by the crown, except at Kildare and St Patrick’s, Dublin, where they were elected by the chapter. The deanery of Christ Church, Dublin, was attached to the bishopric of Kildare. The crown also appointed to all the dignities at Christ Church, Dublin, and one of the three prebends at Cork. The precentor of Clogher was appointed by Trinity College, Dublin, and eleven prebendaries at Wve other cathedrals were appointed by lay patrons. However, this still meant that diocesan bishops appointed to 252 out of 268 dignities and prebends at 28 Irish cathedrals, and their parochial patronage was also considerable. Overall Irish bishops presented to 55% of the parishes in their dioceses. This Wgure was above 90% in the dioceses of Elphin and Killala and Achonry, and more than two-thirds of the parishes in ten other dioceses; only in the dioceses of Kildare and Meath, where there were a large number of wealthy beneWces in the hands of the crown or lay patrons, did episcopal patronage sink to, respectively, 37% and 30.8% of the total number of parishes in each diocese. Even this was much higher than the diocesan average of 11.7% in England and Wales.4 During the period 1770–1850 a very signiWcant change took place in the composition of the Irish episcopate. Of the bishops appointed between 1750 and 1800, thirty-nine were English, thirty-four Irish, and two Scottish by birth. The wealthier bishoprics at Armagh, Derry, Dublin, and Kildare were 3 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 41, 44, 48–50. It should be noted that in England only the deaneries of Durham and London were worth more than £1,000 in the late eighteenth century, see W. Gibson, The Achievement of the Anglican Church 1689–1800, Lewiston 1995, 199–201. 4 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 50–2, 64–5.

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normally held by English clergy, as were those in the eastern parts of both Leinster and Ulster. Irish clergy tended to be oVered bishoprics in the western parts of Ireland including the archbishoprics of Cashel and Tuam.5 From the end of the eighteenth century this policy began to change and a much larger number of Irishmen were appointed to Irish bishoprics, including the wealthier or more important ones that had previously gone to Englishmen. In 1822 Lord John George de la Poer Beresford became the Wrst Irishman since the seventeenth century to be appointed to the primatial see of Armagh. This change of policy was not welcomed by some of the English bishops in Ireland. William Stuart, translated from St David’s to Armagh in 1800, the last translation between an Irish see and one in England or Wales, continued to maintain a low opinion of his episcopal colleagues in Ireland until his death in 1822. Stuart’s views may have been inXuenced by the fact that he had never wanted to go to Armagh and had been pressured to accept the primacy by King George III who was opposed to the translation of any of the existing Irish bishops. Responding to a letter from Stuart, dated 17 October 1800, the Duke of Portland wrote that ‘His Majesty certainly cannot accept your declining what His Majesty thinks to the advantage of Religion and Good Morals’.6 It was the morals of the Irish bishops and higher clergy that worried Stuart. The matter was brought to a head following the death of the archbishop of Dublin in 1801. In the series of translations that followed Charles Agar moved from Cashel to Dublin, Charles Brodrick from Kilmore to Cashel, both with the approval of Stuart, and it was proposed to translate George Beresford from Clonfert to Kilmore. Stuart exploded: Mr Beresford is reported to be one of the most proXigate men in Europe. His language and manners have given universal oVence. Indeed such is his character that were his majesty’s Ministers to give him a living in my diocese to hold in commendam, I should be wanting in my duty if I did not refuse him institution.7

Stuart would have been prepared to tolerate Beresford’s translation to a bishopric with a smaller Church of Ireland population but: The removal of Dr Beresford to the North of Ireland is the most fatal blow the church has ever received. To place among the Protestants a man of indiVerent character would at that time be a public misfortune; but to place among them a Bishop whose immoralities have rendered him infamous cannot fail to produce the most serious eVects.

What annoyed Stuart was that he had a preferred candidate for Kilmore in the precentor of Armagh, Nathaniel Alexander. He also had a low opinion of at least half the bishops in his province: 5 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 12–13, 25. 6 BRO, WY 995/11. 7 Quoted in Akenson, Church of Ireland, 75.


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I have six suVragan Bishops under me. Three are men of indiVerent character and are inactive and useless—two are of acknowledged bad character. Place Mr Beresford at Kilmore and we shall have three very inactive Bishops, and what I trust the world has not yet seen, three Bishops reputed to be the most proXigate men in Europe.8

Stuart’s strictures included bishops Hervey of Derry and Porter of Clogher but excluded O’Beirne of Meath.9 He was so angered by the Beresford incident, and his subsequent translation to Kilmore despite his protestations, that he oVered his resignation, reXecting that if this were refused, as it was: I shall conWne my attentions solely to the business of this diocese. With the province I can have little concern. It would be absurd to inspect the conduct of such a man as Beresford, for the small interest which places him at Kilmore will most assuredly be extended to protect him.10

Stuart continued thereafter to make clear his opinion of Irish bishops that he regarded as inadequate. He described Bishop Knox of Derry, Hervey’s successor, as ‘the mere echo of the Castle’ and Bishop Lindsay of Kildare as ‘that troublesome gentleman’.11 Towards the end of his life Stuart conWded to Archbishop Brodrick that: I have indeed had occasion to observe, during my Triennial Visitations, what little reliance can be placed upon the assertions of Bishops respecting the state of their Dioceses. Some are extremely indolent, and endeavour to conceal the eVects of that indolence, by very bold assertions. Others from vanity exaggerate most extremely the beneWts of their exertions and therefore give a false account of the buildings under their care.12

In fact, as we shall see, many of Stuart’s comments on his colleagues were either inaccurate or exaggerations, and there is certainly no evidence that the increasing preferment of Irishmen over Englishmen to Irish bishoprics had any detrimental eVect on the eYciency of diocesan administration. One historian has noted that, in their assessment of bishops, many contemporary commentators seem to have been unduly inXuenced by the widely-reported view of King George III ‘that the bishops of the Church of Ireland were inferior in point of ‘‘qualiWcation and character’’ to their Church of England counterparts’, and were quite content to overlook faults in English appointees that they would tend to broadcast around in the case of Irish ones. A good 8 BRO, WY 994/8–20; the quotations are from WY 994/12 and WY 994/13. 9 E. Brynn, The Church of Ireland in the Age of Catholic Emancipation, New York and London 1982, 338–40. 10 Quoted in Akenson, Church of Ireland, 76. 11 K. Milne, ‘Principle or Pragmatism: Archbishop Brodrick and Church Education Policy’, in As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland Since the Reformation, ed. A. Ford, J. McGuire, and K. Milne, Dublin 1995, 188. 12 NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 5 July 1819.

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example was John Hotham, an English baronet who was Bishop of Ossory 1779–82 and Clogher 1782–95. Hotham was reputed to be having an aVair with a married woman. His contemporary, Luke Godfrey, was not made a bishop for the same reason, despite his political connections, as he was Irish. Neither of the Englishmen appointed to the archbishopric of Armagh between 1765 and 1800 were as able or scholarly as many of the Irishmen who served under them. Richard Robinson was a great benefactor to the city of Armagh and, initially at least, a reformer, but he was inactive for the last Wfteen years of his primacy and did not even reside in Ireland for the last nine years. Though he pleaded age and illness as an excuse for this he was in fact a notorious hypochondriac. William Newcome had been a distinguished Hebrew scholar but an undistinguished bishop, and the fact that he canvassed for translation to Clogher a year before his translation to Armagh suggested that he shared the view of his contemporaries that he was not primatial material. He owed his promotion solely to the fact that he was an Englishman at a time when George III was not prepared to countenance the appointment of a better-qualiWed Irish candidate to the archbishopric of Armagh.13 Whereas in the late eighteenth century a high proportion of bishops were still English by birth, the majority of whom owed their Irish preferment to the fact that they had been chaplains to successive Lords Lieutenant of Ireland, by the early part of the nineteenth century this was no longer the case. What does become more pronounced is the fact that a very high proportion of the Irish appointees were members of landed families, a situation which persisted right up to the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and beyond. Many of these were related to one another. Between 1805 and 1819 three members of the Beresford family were bishops at the same time: William Beresford, Baron Decies, son of the Wrst Earl of Tyrone and brother of the Wrst Marquess of Waterford, bishop of Dromore 1780–2 and Ossory 1792–4, archbishop of Tuam 1794–1819; and two of his nephews, George de la Poer Beresford, the subject of Archbishop Stuart’s disapproval, bishop of Clonfert 1801–2 and Kilmore 1802–41, and Lord John Beresford, son of the Wrst Marquess of Waterford, bishop of Cork and Ross 1805–7, Raphoe 1807–19 and Clogher 1819–20, archbishop of Dublin 1820–2 and Armagh 1822–62. Between 1794 and 1893 there was always a member of the Knox family on the episcopal bench: William Knox, son of the Wrst Viscount Northland and brother of the Wrst Earl of Ranfurly, bishop of Killaloe 1794–1803 and Derry 1803–31; his younger brother Edmund Knox, bishop of Killaloe 1831–4 and Limerick 1834–49; and their nephew Robert Bent Knox, bishop of Down, 13 A. P. W. Malcolmson, Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760–1810, Dublin 2002, 443, 447, 484, 487.


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Connor, and Dromore 1849–86 and archbishop of Armagh 1886–93. There were other family relationships between the bishops: Charles Brodrick, archbishop of Cashel 1801–22, was the son-in-law of Richard Woodward, bishop of Cloyne 1781–94; Archbishop Bourke of Tuam’s son became bishop of Waterford and Lismore and married the daughter of Archbishop Fowler of Dublin, whose own son and namesake was the younger Bourke’s contemporary as bishop of Ossory.14 The Irish bishoprics between 1770 and 1850 attracted their fair share of scholars. Chief among them were John Jebb, Richard Laurence, Richard Mant, Thomas Percy, and Richard Whately. Jebb (1775–1833) was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was a pre-Tractarian high church supporter of daily services and more frequent communion. He was Archbishop Brodrick’s principal agent for the promotion of church schools throughout his province, becoming rector of Abington in the diocese of Limerick in 1810 and archdeacon of Emly in 1821. In 1823 his scholarship was recognized by his elevation to the bishopric of Limerick, but his short episcopate, during which he raised the standard of examination for ordination candidates, was dogged by ill-health following two strokes in 1827 and 1829, and he resided in England so that he could pay frequent visits to take the waters at Leamington Spa.15 Laurence, Mant, and Whately had all been Bampton Lecturers at Oxford. Laurence (1760–1838) had defended the Thirty-Nine Articles against the allegations of Calvinism made against them and in 1814 became Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford. His published works, which included high church condemnations of both Calvinism and Unitarianism, were regarded as ‘models of exactness and judicious moderation’. After holding several parochial livings in Berkshire, Kent, and Wiltshire he was nominated to the archbishopric of Cashel in 1822, taking on also the administration of the suppressed diocese of Waterford and Lismore in 1833; he ‘governed his dioceses with ability and tact’.16 Mant (1776–1848) was a prote´ge´ of Archbishop Manners-Sutton of Canterbury, one of the clerical leaders of the Hackney Phalanx; despite his English background he made a very considerable impression on the Church of Ireland, publishing what remained the standard history of that church for the best part of a century. His biography was written by his son, W. B. Mant (1807–69), whom he made archdeacon of Connor in 1831, and archdeacon of Down and rector of Hillsborough in 14 See J. B. Leslie, Ferns Clergy and Parishes, Dublin 1936, 16–17. 15 Ibid., 347–8; DNB; C. Forster, The Life of John Jebb, 2 vols, London 1836; see also Thirty Years Correspondence between John Jebb and Alexander Knox, ed. C. Forster, 2 vols, London 1834. 16 DNB; see R. Laurence, An Attempt to Illustrate those Articles of the Church of England which the Calvinists Improperly Consider Calvinistical, Oxford 1805, and Critical ReXections upon some Important Misrepresentations Contained in the Unitarian Version of the New Testament, Oxford 1811.

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1834.17 Percy (1729–1811), dean of Carlisle 1778–82 and bishop of Dromore from 1782, was one of the leading antiquarians of his day, publishing his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in 1765, ‘vastly inXuential both in England and abroad where it stimulated continental collections of early verse and helped develop an interest in folk culture’. One of those strongly inXuenced by Percy was Sir Walter Scott.18 Whately (1787–1863), a liberal in both politics and theology, was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, principal of St Alban’s Hall from 1825 and Drummond Professor of Political Economy from 1829. In 1831, following its refusal by the 87-year old Bishop Bathurst of Norwich, Whately was oVered and accepted the archbishopric of Dublin. His appointment was controversial and much criticized by high churchmen in both England and Ireland. He had bad relations with Archbishop Beresford of Armagh, with Trinity College, Dublin, with the Evangelicals in his diocese, and with his own archdeacon, T. P. Magee, the son of his episcopal predecessor. His strong antipathy to both high churchmen and Evangelicals was a logical development of the views he had expressed in his Bampton lectures.19 Whately was also very contemptuous of some of his colleagues among the Irish bishops. He described Sandes of Cashel as ‘remarkably illiterate . . . does not even pretend not to have the sight of a book’,20 and the frustration he experienced in his failure to obtain an Irish bishopric for his chaplain Samuel Hinds, who eventually became bishop of Norwich in 1849, was likewise expressed in his correspondence to friends in England in 1848: There were several persons each writing for the Bishoprick of Cork, for himself or his friend: they could Wnd no objection to H[inds] except his not being a native of Ireland . . . I cannot guess whom they will take for Down, and probably not long hence, Limerick. Of all candidates who are in the Weld there is not one that I know of who would be even tolerable.21

The growing signiWcance of Trinity College, Dublin, in both the cultural and educational spheres in Ireland, was also recognized by the elevation of four of its provosts in a row to the Irish episcopate in the early nineteenth century: 17 DNB; C. Dewey, The Passing of Barchester, London 1991, 159–60; see R. Mant, A History of the Church of Ireland, 2 vols, London 1840, and W. B. Mant, Memoirs of the Right Reverend Richard Mant, Dublin 1857. 18 DNB; A. Chandler, A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth Century English Literature, London 1971, 16–17, 26–7. 19 DNB; Brynn, Church of Ireland, 344–5; Akenson, Church of Ireland, 166, and A Protestant in Purgatory: Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, Hamden 1981, esp. 104–10, 134–6; R. L. Clarke, Richard Whately: The Unharmonious Blacksmith, Newtownabbey 2002; see also R. Whately, The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Matters of Religion, Oxford 1822. 20 NLW, Whately Correspondence in Nassau-Senior Papers, C610. 21 Ibid., C688. The eventual nominees for Cork, Down, and Limerick in 1848–9 were James Wilson, R. B. Knox, and William Higgin, all relatively undistinguished, though Knox was eventually translated to the see of Armagh, at the age of 78, in 1886, see entry in DNB.


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John Kearney (1799–1806) at Ossory; George Hall (1806–11) who brieXy succeeded Percy at Dromore; Thomas Elrington (1811–20) Wrst at Limerick, then at Ferns and Leighlin; and Samuel Kyle (1820–31) at Cork and Ross, taking on also the administration of Cloyne in 1835.22 In addition to the two archbishops and two bishops discussed in detail later on in this chapter, a signiWcant number of the Irish bishops of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had a reputation as ecclesiastical reformers. The Wrst was Richard Robinson, who became archbishop of Armagh in 1765, was created Baron Rokeby in 1777, and was active during the Wrst Wfteen years of his primacy. He sponsored the building of chapels-ofease with perpetual curates in large parishes and encouraged clerical residence. At Armagh ‘he repaired and beautiWed’ the cathedral, ‘presented it with a new organ, and built houses for the vicars choral’. He also built and endowed a public library there in 1771 and a new classical school in 1773, and was instrumental in securing the erection of a barracks, county gaol, and public inWrmary. He founded the Armagh observatory in 1793, and built a new archiepiscopal palace and chapel. It was estimated that during his lifetime he spent £35,000 on public works. In his will he bequeathed £5,000 to establish a new university in Ulster, but the bequest lapsed as it was not carried out within Wve years of his death as he had speciWed.23 His contemporary, Bishop Chenevix of Waterford and Lismore bequeathed £2,600 for charitable purposes, £1,600 to the former and £1,000 to the latter diocese, to be administered by his successors in the see.24 Another generous benefactor was Lord John Beresford, who held a total of Wve Irish bishoprics between 1805 and his death in 1862, including forty years in the primatial see of Armagh. He provided endowments for the library and a professorship of ecclesiastical history at Trinity College, Dublin; gave £6,000 towards the foundation of St Columba’s College at Stackallen in 1844; as well as large sums to the Church Education Society, to the Armagh Diocesan Church Education Society, and (the estimate was £30,000) to the restoration of Armagh Cathedral. One recent historian, however, has pointed out that such generosity has to be set against the estimated £887,900 that he received in income during his long episcopal career. Nevertheless his funeral was attended by both the Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh and the moderator of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and his passing was widely recognized to have marked the end of an era in the history of the established church in Ireland.25 22 R. B. McDowell and D. A. Webb, Trinity College, Dublin 1592–1952: An Academic History, Cambridge 1982, 78–9; DNB entries also for Kearney and Elrington. 23 DNB; Mant, History of Church of Ireland, ii, 631–4, 728. 24 Ibid., ii, 664–5. 25 DNB; Brynn, Church of Ireland, 342.

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Even bishops who achieved notoriety in other respects could be eYcient and eVective diocesan administrators. Bishop Hervey of Derry, who succeeded to the earldom of Bristol in 1779, had an unenviable reputation for good living, house building, foreign travel, and womanizing, though there is no evidence that the latter proceeded beyond innocent Xirtation. Bishop Mant thought ‘his absence from Ireland less mischievous than his presence’ and there is no doubt that his political and religious opinions contributed to a widely-held view that his ‘general eccentricity is notorious’. Hervey, however, visited his diocese immediately after his translation from Cloyne in 1768, paying particular attention to the proper housing of his clergy and resolving ‘never to appoint an Englishman to an Irish beneWce’. His sympathy with and interest in Roman Catholicism extended to his attendance at the washing of the feet by the Pope in the Sistine Chapel on Maundy Thursday dressed in ‘his full canonicals of rochet and chimere’ and lobbying on behalf of speciWc candidates for Roman Catholic episcopal vacancies in Ireland. His ecumenism allowed him to donate money towards the building of both Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches in his diocese, but he also contributed to the building of several Church of Ireland churches. He paid during his life annual subscriptions of thirty and sixty pounds respectively to the Poor of Derry and the Clergy Widows’ Fund of the Diocese of Derry.26 Archbishop Stuart of Armagh thought Lord Robert Loftus, son of the Marquess of Ely, an unsuitable candidate for either the disputed nomination to the diocese of Clonfert, or for the vacancy at Down and Connor, in 1804, on the grounds that he ‘had never performed any clerical duties’, but Loftus eventually turned out to be an exemplary bishop in the three dioceses he served between 1804 and his death in 1850.27 There was in the period 1770–1850 one Church of Ireland bishop, as there were two Roman Catholic ones, who was a cause of serious scandal. This was Percy Jocelyn, son of the Earl of Roden, who became bishop of Ferns and Leighlin in 1809 and was translated to Clogher in 1820. In 1811 he had taken out a prosecution for libel against a former coachman, James Byrne, who had accused him of sodomy. This prosecution was successful and Byrne was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and three Xoggings, the last two of which were remitted when he withdrew the allegations. However, in July 1822 Jocelyn was caught in a compromising position with a soldier in the back room of a public house in London. Whilst waiting on bail for his trial to take 26 DNB; Mant, History, ii, 695–6; B. Fothergill, The Mitred Earl: An Eighteenth Century Eccentric, London 1974, 26, 67–8; J. R. Walsh, Frederick Augustus Hervey 1730–1803, Fourth Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, Maynooth 1972, 29, 31; P. Rankin, Irish Building Ventures of the Earl Bishop of Derry, Belfast 1972, 37–44, 45–6, 48. 27 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 78–9; Brynn, Church of Ireland, 341; see Chapter 5 below.


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place Jocelyn Xed to the Continent. Byrne was formally rehabilitated at a public dinner in his honour and a subscription set up for him raised £300. Details of the aVair and previous accusations against Jocelyn were circulated in a series of scurrilous pamphlets. In October 1822 the metropolitan court of Armagh formally deprived Jocelyn of the bishopric. He eventually moved to Scotland, under an assumed name, assisted by his aristocratic family, and died there in 1843.28 The bishop’s nephew, since 1820 the third Earl of Roden and one of the leaders of the Evangelical party in the Church of Ireland, had organized his uncle’s translation to Clogher and used his inXuence to protect him after his disgrace.29 In the period 1770–1850 two archbishops and two bishops stand out as the leading Wgures in the reform movement within the Church of Ireland: Charles Agar, Charles Brodrick, Thomas Lewis O’Beirne, and Richard Mant. All are well documented though only one has been the subject of a modern biography. Their careers will be considered in detail in the four subsections below.

Archbishop Charles Agar Charles Agar was, in some ways, a rather unlikely candidate for the role of ecclesiastical reformer. He has been identiWed in recent years as ‘a strikingly avaricious member of the [episcopal] bench who made a considerable fortune in church lands’,30 as someone who ‘had pursued his interests in statecraft with a distinctively secular enthusiasm’,31 and as ‘a leading light of Irish erastianism’.32 His most recent biographer, however, has attributed Agar’s previously poor press to a highly prejudiced and unXattering obituary by Watty Cox, a former United Irishman with an axe to grind. Cox described Agar as ‘a disgusting picture of avarice, ambition and abject servility to the measures and politics of the English cabinet’.33 His biographer takes the view that:

28 Brynn, Church of Ireland, 340–1. For an unscholarly but uninhibited account of Jocelyn’s downfall see M. Parris, The Great Unfrocked: 2000 Years of Church Scandal, London 1998, 144–57. 29 P. Comerford, ‘An Innovative People: the Church of Ireland Laity, 1780–1830’, in The Laity and the Church of Ireland, 1000–2000: All Sorts and Conditions, ed. R. Gillespie and W. G. Neely, Dublin 2002, 184–5. 30 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 74. 31 Brynn, Church of Ireland, 342. 32 Id., ‘Some Repercussions of the Act of Union in the Church of Ireland, 1801–1820’, Church History, xl (1971), 286. 33 Malcolmson, Agar, 342.

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1. Charles Agar, Church of Ireland archbishop of Cashel and Emly 1778–1801 and Dublin 1801–9.

Agar was the outstanding Wgure in the Church of Ireland episcopate during the period c.1760–c.1810 because of his intellect, his energy, his administrative ability, his parliamentary street-wisdom and his political courage and leadership.34

Agar was born in 1735, the son of Henry Agar, MP for Gowran and the owner of 20,000 acres in Co. Kilkenny, who had married the daughter of Welborne Ellis, bishop of Kildare 1705–32 and Meath 1732–4. Though Irish, Agar was politically and socially well connected. His eldest brother, James Agar, was MP 34 Ibid., 615; cf. the statement in F. C. Mather, High Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733–1806) and the Caroline Tradition in the Later Georgian Church, Oxford 1992, 211, that Agar was ‘one of the most energetic and agile leaders of the Protestant Church in Ireland in the last two decades of the eighteenth century’.


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for County Kilkenny and created Baron Clifden in 1776, and Viscount Clifden in 1781. Shortly after his ordination Charles Agar was, in 1763, appointed chaplain to the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and presented to the parishes of Ballymagarvey and Skreen in the diocese of Meath. He became dean of Kilmore in 1765 and was consecrated bishop of Cloyne in 1768, being thereafter translated to Cashel and Emly in 1779 and Dublin in 1801. He was an obvious candidate for the vacant primatial see of Armagh in both 1794–5 and 1800, and the fact that he lost out on both occasions has been attributed to the fact that he was Irish and not English by birth. As a consolation he was created Baron Somerton in 1795 and Viscount Somerton in 1800, being Wnally raised to the earldom of Normanton in 1806.35 On his appointment to Cloyne in 1768, Agar was impressed by the fact that the oYce of rural dean, revived by Bishop Berkeley (1734–53), provided the diocese with an element of middle management lacking elsewhere in Ireland, where the archdeacons did not exercise the role of ‘supervisory jurisdiction’ which they did in England. There had been a similar survival of the oYce of rural dean in most parts of Wales, where the archdeacons had also lost their management role.36 Agar immediately revived the oYce in the dioceses of Cashel and Emly, after his translation there in 1779, and by 1781 it had been revived in most of the other dioceses of the province of Cashel as well.37 In advocating its introduction into the dioceses of Killaloe and Kilfenora, Agar wrote on 13 September 1783: The complexion of the present Times and the general disposition of men in this Country are such that the Ecclesiastical Establishment stands in need of every support it can derive from good and wholesome Regulations. We are always to expect some degree of opposition. But at present we seem to be threatened (if I overstate not) with an unusual share of it . . . to eVect this they would endeavour to shew the world that the subordinate clergy had too generally neglected their respective duties, and that their Superiors had been perhaps much too remiss in the Use of that authority with which they are vested for the regulation of Ecclesiastical Discipline . . . Having experienced the good EVects of this Regulation for near twelve years in the Diocese of Cloyne, your Lordship will I hope think me justiWed in recommending it again to you in the most earnest manner. It has been adopted by the Bishop of Cork. And I am assured that its good EVects in his two Dioceses have been already sensibly perceived . . . Without the assistance of Rural Deans I know not how ever a Bishop is to be acquainted with the true State of every Parish in his own Diocese; for it is impossible for him to visit Each of them annually. And without that aid sure I am that a Triennial Visitation must be extremely defective, and totally unproductive of many good eVects which might otherwise be reasonably expected from it. 35 Malcolmson, Agar, 1, 10. 36 A. Burns, The Diocesan Revival in the Church of England c.1800–1870, Oxford 1999, 58. 37 HRO, 21M57 B6/1.

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Agar concluded his letter by urging Bishop Barnard ‘to give this Regulation an immediate and full Trial’.38 In 1791 Bishop Percy of Dromore wrote to Agar to say that he wished to follow his example in restoring the oYce of rural dean and seeking his advice on how this might best be implemented. Agar replied that it was his practice to change his rural deans every three years and hoped that other bishops outside the province of Cashel would follow Percy’s example by restoring rural deans. In 1795 he supplied the newly consecrated bishop of Ossory, Thomas O’Beirne, with a copy of his commission to rural deans at the latter’s request.39 The oYce was also restored by Archbishop Newcome of Armagh (1795–1800) and by 1820 it had been revived in sixteen out of the twenty-two dioceses of the Church of Ireland.40 One of the last to do so was Limerick, where rural deans seem not to have been introduced until after 1840, Bishop Knox thanking them in his charge ‘for the promptness with which they entered on their duties, and the zeal they evinced in preparing their reports on so short a notice’.41 In this respect the revival of rural deans in England was somewhat slower. The oYce had survived in the Welsh dioceses of Bangor, St Asaph, and St David’s, and it had been revived at Exeter by Bishop Jonathan Trelawney (1688–1707) and at Ely by Bishop James Yorke (1781– 1808). Restoration was much later in other dioceses: Salisbury 1811, Chichester 1812, LlandaV 1819, Bristol 1824, Lincoln 1829, Oxford 1831, Canterbury and London 1833, Worcester 1834, LichWeld 1837, Hereford 1838, Chester 1840, York 1843, Carlisle and Durham 1858, and Sodor and Man not until 1880.42 Agar was also a moving force in trying to secure the better preparation of candidates for ordination in the Church of Ireland. In 1790 he organized a meeting of bishops, attended by Archbishop Bourke of Tuam and twelve of the eighteen suVragan bishops in Ireland, at which it was agreed that no member of Trinity College, Dublin, would be ordained unless he could ‘produce a testimonium under the College seal certifying that he had attended at least one complete course of each of such lectures in Divinity’ delivered by one of the three professors or lecturers in divinity. A further meeting, also organized by Agar, speciWed which books would be prescribed for the examination of candidates for orders.43 Both these meetings were rare examples of 38 HRO, 21M57 B24/4. 39 HRO, 21M57 B6/1. 40 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 131–2. 41 E. Knox, Charge Delivered at the Annual Visitation Held in Limerick and Killarney, Limerick 1842, 20. 42 Burns, Diocesan Revival, 76–80. 43 HRO, 21M57 B6/1.


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the Church of Ireland bishops endeavouring to take a corporate line on a speciWc issue and to emulate, if only subconsciously, the more regular practice of their Roman Catholic counterparts. It was a notable example of the leadership role which Agar assumed in Irish church aVairs during the second half of Archbishop Robinson’s primacy. As a diocesan Agar was a conscientious and energetic reformer. He took a Wrm line on clerical residence, only agreeing to requests from his political patrons to appoint their prote´ge´s to livings within his gift on condition that they undertook to reside in them. Agar’s insistence on this point was not just a question of setting an example. He Wrmly believed that if the bishops did not undertake the reform of the Church of Ireland then the British governors or Irish parliament would ‘intervene and legislate for the internal aVairs of the Church’.44 Agar’s other prominent role as a diocesan bishop was in the building of new churches. Apart from the three cathedrals at Cloyne, Cashel, and Emly, which will be considered in detail below, he was active in both dioceses in securing funds for church extension. At Cloyne he organized the building of new churches at Ballyhooly, Blarney, Clonrohid, Curryglass, Dungourney, and Whitechurch.45 At Cashel and Emly eleven new churches were built during Agar’s tenure of the see, including those in two of the diocese’s major towns, Templemore and Thurles. Substantial repairs were also made to the archiepiscopal palace at Cashel, now a luxury hotel, and the number of glebe houses in the diocese increased from three to twenty-four. In eleven cases this had involved purchasing land for the glebe itself. A further three glebes had been purchased, before his translation to Dublin in 1801, but as yet no house had been erected on them.46 As a cathedral builder and restorer Agar was not just interested in the fabrics and furnishings, but in the worship for which they provided the setting. At Cloyne Agar organized the complete re-rooWng of the whole cathedral and the consolidation of the interior so that only the choir was Wtted out for worship, an arrangement which, despite a complete refurnishing in 1894, remains intact. It seems likely that the damaged pulpit, now occupying the west end of the north aisle, was the moveable one installed by Agar in 1770, and his elaborate choir screen has certainly been re-used as an inner porch for the west door.47 In 1772 the dean and chapter of Cloyne authorized expenditure of up to Wfty pounds ‘in erecting a new altar piece in the cathedral in stuccoe, on such a plan as shall be thought most eligible by the Lord Bishop’. They also authorized the purchase of ‘a portable font for the 44 45 46 47

Malcolmson, Agar, 211–13. Ibid., 198. HRO, 21M57 B6/2. Malcolmson, Agar, 301–2; P. Galloway, The Cathedrals of Ireland, Belfast 1992, 52–3.

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administration of baptism in the choir’, and that a sum not exceeding Wfty pounds should be spent ‘in erecting galleries over the stalls of the prebendaries’.48 It has been suggested that Agar introduced a daily choral service in the refurnished cathedral, and he certainly improved the cathedral organ and purchased new books of anthems for the cathedral choir at his own expense.49 When Agar was translated to Cashel and Emly he inherited a diocese in which there was no cathedral at Cashel and the one at Emly was in such a poor state that it had to be reduced ‘nearly to its bare walls’ and to be furnished ‘with every requisite of every kind plate excepted’. In 1790 it was stated that: Emly cathedral for many years past has been merely secured against the eVects of the weather. The inside never seems to have been furnished but on one side with pews, and the other side was neither paved nor Xagged. This Church is now receiving a Complete Repair, and the inside is to be Wtted up on a Plan of the Abp’s, in a style he hopes suited to the Place.50

The former cathedral on the Rock of Cashel, large parts of which had been rooXess since the mid-seventeenth century, had Wnally been abandoned in 1749, but its replacement in the town, the foundation stone of which had been laid in 1763, remained incomplete.51 On 19 August 1779 Agar was enthroned within the unWnished walls of the new cathedral at Cashel: . . . a circumstance which suggested to his Mind the Propriety or rather the Necessity of Rebuilding the cathedral where it now stands, or reWtting the Old Cathedral upon the Rock. For upon enquiry the Abp found that there had not been a Church of any Kind in the City of Cashel . . . in which Divine service had been performed for above twenty Wve years; so that no Person in the City under the age of 32 or 33 years could possibly have any recollection of having worship’d God in a Place set apart for that purpose. The Congregation having during the last twenty Wve years assembled every Sunday in one end of a wretched Room immediately above the Common Gaol.52

It was decided not to rebuild the former cathedral on the Rock because of its poor structural condition but to complete the cathedral in the town through an appeal to the leading families in the diocese. The corporation of Cashel gave £40. A legacy of £500 from Agar’s predecessor, Archbishop Cox (1754–79), was also used to complete the cathedral, and the Board of First Fruits contributed a further £500. The cathedral was completed in 1788. It was arranged like a college chapel, with stalls along the north and south walls, and the archbishop’s throne in the middle of the south side; similar arrangements already 48 49 50 51 52

RCBL, C12/2/1, pp. 133, 136. F. R. Bolton, The Caroline Tradition of the Church of Ireland, London 1958, 189. HRO, 21M57 B6/1. Galloway, Cathedrals, 37–8; Malcolmson, Agar, 304–6. HRO, 21M57 B6/1.


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existed in the cathedrals at Clonfert, Cork, and Waterford, and were thereafter commonly employed in the reWtting of cathedrals up to that of Derry in 1855. The arrangements at Cashel were largely destroyed when the cathedral was restored in 1867, though the stalls for the dignitaries and prebendaries against the west wall were retained. In 1791 work began on furnishing the new cathedral with a tower and spire though this addition was not completed, and in a modiWed version of the original plans, until 1807, six years after Agar’s translation to Dublin.53 In addition to completing the new cathedral at Cashel, Agar spent his own money on providing it with an organ and establishing a strong choral tradition there. In an address of 6 November 1786 the inhabitants of Cashel stated that this gift ‘must long remain a monument of your Grace’s taste and liberality’.54 The constitution of the former cathedral had stated that it had attached to it ‘Wve vicars choral’ but Agar did not Wnd any evidence that they ‘did ever chant or sing the service there’. Agar’s new arrangements were to comprise ‘an organist, six Singing Men and six choristers’, the organist to be paid an annual salary of £40 and the vicar choral responsible for ‘lodging, boarding, clothing and teaching six boys to sing’ to receive annually the sum of £84 calculated at the rate of £14 for each boy. Contemporaries noted with a mixture of amazement and pleasure the impact of the new arrangements, the extreme elaboration of the services and the quality of the singing. The organ itself cost in the region of £600 and, though Agar managed to reorganize some existing endowments to meet the expenses of the organist and choir, it has been estimated that he had to Wnd at least £250 from his own pocket to set the arrangements on a Wrm footing.55 The fact that the sole surviving copy of Robert Shenton’s contemporary setting for the full communion service was discovered among the manuscript music of the late eighteenth century still in the possession of the dean and chapter of Cashel suggests that, at least on some Sunday mornings, the complete service of Mattins, Litany, and Holy Communion was sung in the new cathedral.56 It was a far cry from a cathedral such as that at Killala (Co. Mayo) described by a late eighteenth century commentator as ‘not a vulgar one with organ and choir—a good parish 53 HRO, 21M57 B6/2; see also Malcolmson, Agar, 307–10. 54 HRO, 21M57 B8/56. 55 Malcolmson, Agar, 317–23. 56 Bolton, Caroline Tradition, 159, 189, 213; G. W. O. Addleshaw and F. Etchells, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship, London 1948, 197–8. Robert Shenton, who died in 1798, was treasurer of Kildare Cathedral and dean’s vicar at both Christ Church and St Patrick’s Cathedrals in Dublin. His Communion OYce provides music for the Sanctus, sung both as an introit and before the Consecration, Kyrie, Creed, responses before the Preface and Gloria in Excelsis, all of considerable elaboration.

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minister and bawling of psalms is our method. The church is neat but you would not dream it was a cathedral.’57 There is, however, little doubt that Agar’s enthusiasm for elaborate services was to become a serious drain on the cathedral’s Wnances in later years. On 27 June 1788 the chapter had agreed that Agar, who as archbishop was ex oYcio prebendary of Glankeen, ‘be hereby empowered to appropriate the Fund belonging to the Oeconomy of Cashel towards supporting the organist and choir lately established in such manner as His Grace shall deem necessary for that purpose’.58 Six years later, on 26 June 1794, it agreed ‘that an addition be built to the House of the Master of the Choir Boys’ at a cost not to exceed £100.59 DiYculties were, however, experienced in persuading the vicars choral to carry out the duties of their oYce; one was dismissed for persistent nonattendance in 1797 and others were admonished on later occasions.60 On 6 July 1804 the chapter agreed to increase the annual allowance for ‘clothing, maintaining and instructing the six choir boys’ from £14 to £16, but the number of choir boys must have fallen to Wve by 1810 since in that year the total allowance was reduced to £80.61 By 1828 the number of choir boys had fallen to two. The chapter agreed to appoint another two and it was noted that the vicars choral had resolved: that it is our earnest wish to cooperate with the Dean and Chapter in placing the Choir upon the most respectable and eYcient footing; and for this purpose we agree that the sum of six hundred pounds and eight shillings Government 3½ per cent stock, now invested in our joint names be placed at the disposal of the Revd Archdeacon Cotton [as Oeconomist] for the purpose of restoring the Choir to a respectable and eYcient state.62

The following year the chapter agreed to appoint another two choir boys to return the establishment to the total of six envisaged by Agar.63 However, within four years the Wnancial state of the chapter meant that the choir had been reduced to three boys and it was felt that it might be necessary to dispense with their services as well if the Wnances did not improve. This Wnancial crisis had resulted from ‘the total suspension of all payment of tithe’.64 In 1841 the chapter thought that they could reduce expenditure on the maintenance of a choir by lodging the boys with the parochial school57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

Quoted in Phillips, History, iii, 277. BLC, Chapter Minute Book 1759–1886, f. 4. Ibid., f. 5v. Ibid., V. 6v, 7, 8v, entries between 1796 and 1802. Ibid., V. 9v, 13v. Ibid., 27 June 1828. Ibid., 14 April 1829. Ibid., 21 June 1832.


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master, who had been rehoused in the chapter house, and by converting the lower part of this building to serve as a schoolroom.65 Even this did not resolve the chapter’s Wnancial diYculties, and within ten years it was agreed that only two choir boys could be maintained, that the chapter would pay their fees as day boys at the parochial school, and that they be instructed in singing by the cathedral organist.66 In the long term the failure of Agar to be translated from Cashel to the vacant primacy at Armagh in 1800, even though he was the obvious candidate for the post despite having been passed over in 1794–5, was to change the attitude of the British government to the appointment of bishops in Ireland. Although William Stuart proved to be an able and eYcient primate the fact that he had never held any preferment in Ireland was seen as objectionable. An Englishman who currently held an Irish bishopric would have been considered preferable. Thus when it became clear that Agar was not acceptable to the British government, or perhaps more accurately to the highly prejudiced George III, Euseby Cleaver, the English-born bishop of Ferns and Leighlin was suggested. Thereafter the nomination of English-born clergy who had never received preferment in Ireland to Irish bishoprics became the exception rather than the norm that it had been Wfty years earlier. One career move that was quickly put a stop to was the customary arrangement whereby the chaplains to the Lord Lieutenancy, many of whom were English, were almost automatically promoted to Irish bishoprics. The last Englishman to follow this route was Charles Lindsay, appointed to the diocese of Killaloe and Kilfenora in 1803, and subsequently bishop of Kildare. The promises that had been made to various Irish aristocratic families, in relation to the promotion of their clerical oVspring, in order to secure the passage of the Act of Union assisted the promotion of Irish nominees to the episcopate in the Wrst decade of the nineteenth century, despite the objections raised to some of them by Archbishop Stuart.67 In the short term, however, Agar’s failure to secure the primacy led to his eventual exclusion from the eVective ‘leadership’ of the Church of Ireland that he had enjoyed in the 1780s and 1790s. In old age he became both less eVective as a diocesan and more diYcult in dealing with his episcopal colleagues. He was not assisted by periodic bouts of ill-health in 1801–2 and 1805, a serious fall in January 1807, and a Wnal illness that lasted from October 1808 until his death in July 1809.68 Bishop Lindsay of Kildare, in a 65 Ibid., 1 September 1841. 66 Ibid., 29 April 1851. 67 Very full discussion in Malcolmson, Agar, 587–614, though it contains an unduly negative assessment of Stuart which is not borne out by the evidence of his correspondence with Archbishop Brodrick. 68 Malcolmson, Agar, 242, 251–2, 258.

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letter to Archbishop Brodrick, complained about the way Agar had conducted his last provincial visitation: The late Archbishop of Dublin (God rest him) held a visitation so violent and illegal of us in his last triennial, that I was obliged to resist . . . His exactions consisted in demanding that I should be visited in Dublin and that I should communicate to him as a matter of right my observations collected indeed in the course of personal inspection, and this information granted as courtesy, he used for the purpose of disgracing some of the worthiest men in our possession.69

Archbishop Stuart, however, thought that Lindsay and Agar were as bad as each other, describing the former’s attacks on the latter as ‘intemperate and unproved’, though admitting that Agar had a bad temper and that Lindsay’s attitude had ‘excited his passions and produced a warm and indecent altercation’. In a letter to Archbishop Brodrick, Stuart referred to the need that, during a particularly diYcult piece of negotiation with the British government, Agar ‘should be kept in good humour’.70 Though clearly Agar was no longer at the height of his powers, his eightyear administration of the diocese of Dublin was still an energetic one. His predecessor, Robert Fowler (1779–1801), had begun well, tightening up the visitation process and endeavouring to enforce clerical residence, but he had been an absentee during the latter part of his archiepiscopate, to the extent that Bishop O’Beirne of Meath described his diocese as ‘neglected’.71 Agar’s primary charge to the province of Dublin was considered a model of reforming zeal by an anonymous contemporary whose reXections on it have been preserved among the archbishop’s surviving papers.72 The charge was delivered at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, on 16 and 17 June 1802, at Kildare on 22 June, Carlow on 24 June, Kilkenny on 26 June, and Enniscorthy on 29 June. He gave a warning against proselytism by Roman Catholics: ‘in this Country the emissaries of Popery are uncommonly active in propagating their doctrines and inveighling [sic] the members of our Church into their own’;73 but he was more concerned with the eVects of apathy or hostility towards religion in general and the need for the clergy to preach and lead blameless lives as the best way of counteracting such tendencies in the population: Remember that . . . an habitual omission of the duties of your oYce will prove more injurious to the cause of religion, as well as of morality, than all the writings of the advocates of inWdelity . . . the life of the minister is his best eloquence.74 69 70 71 72 73 74

NLI, Ms 8863, Lindsay to Brodrick, 9 September 1811. NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 31 March and 4 August 1806. Malcolmson, Agar, 462–4. HRO, 21M57 B24/6; see also Malcolmson, Agar, 219–20. HRO, 21M57 B24/5; pp. 8–9. Ibid., pp. 14, 18.


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Clergy were urged to visit their parishioners, especially the sick, as the best way of understanding their needs, and to be resident ‘either within your parishes when such can be had, or certainly so near to them as to enable you, fully and faithfully, to execute all parts of your duties towards your respective Xocks. Non-residence is a breach of trust of the worst kind.’75 Agar was concerned that not enough was being done to keep churches in repair, ‘a matter which reXects no small discredit upon the minister, churchwardens and parishioners, wherever this happens to be the case’.76 It was not enough simply to allow the initiative for the rebuilding of churches to be taken by the bishops, using funds provided by the government through the Board of First Fruits. If clergy resided in their parishes, even where the church was in ruins, the parishioners would be Wlled with a desire to rebuild the church. This was perhaps an unrealistic assumption since some of these parishes, forty-one by the middle of the nineteenth century,77 had no parishioners who were not Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, and many others had very few who were adherents of the Church of Ireland. Towards the end of his charge, Agar returned to the issue that had most occupied him over the previous two decades, the restoration of rural deans, whom he saw as the principal agents for securing the better care of church buildings. They were to be appointed for three years from among the resident clergy in each diocese.78 When Agar made his return to the government of the state of the united diocese of Dublin and Glendalough in 1807 it showed that the advice given in his charge was being heeded in most parts of the diocese. There were two cathedrals in Dublin, Christ Church and St Patrick’s, both of which were stated to be in good repair, and a total of eighty-seven parishes or parochial unions sharing a single church. In seventy-two of these parishes or unions the churches were stated to be in good repair and in sixty-six the incumbent resided in the parish or so closely adjacent to it as to be able to provide it with a high level of pastoral care. In less than a Wfth of the parishes or parochial unions were there problems concerning the church building and in less than a quarter diYculties in relation to residence. In nine parishes or unions the concerns were on both scores. At Baldungan, Ballintemple, Balscadden, Kilberry, Kinneagh, and Taghadoe there were no resident clergy and there was either no church or it was in ruins. At Ballymore, where the incumbent was non-resident, the church had been destroyed by rebels in 1798. At the not insigniWcant town of Howth the incumbent did not reside but his curate did; the church was in ruins but £500 had been granted towards building a new 75 76 77 78

Ibid., pp. 26–7. Ibid., p. 29. W. Shea, The Irish Church, London and Dublin 1852, 210. HRO, 21M57 B24/5, pp. 35–6.

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one. The incumbent of St Michael’s, Dublin, was a fellow of Trinity College, but he shared the duty with a curate, the services being held in the Lady Chapel of Christ Church Cathedral as the church was in ruins. The incumbents of Burgage, Castlemacadam, Clonmellon, Donaghmore, Ennisbokeen, Garristown, Wicklow, and St Michan’s, Dublin, were nonresident, mostly because they held another beneWce or were in poor health, but they all employed curates. At St Brigid’s, Dublin, the incumbent was also dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, but both resided for part of the year and employed a curate. The living of Balrothery was vacant but the parish had a resident curate. The non-resident incumbent of Dunlavin had been ordered to reside, though he also employed a curate. Only at Donabate was there a non-resident incumbent who declined, despite episcopal pressure, to nominate a curate. Two parishes in Dublin either had no church or it was in ruins; these were St Nicholas Without and Grangegorman, the latter’s services being held at St Paul’s, Dublin. The new parishes of St Andrew’s and St George’s, Dublin, had resident incumbents but their churches were still being built; a new church was also in the process of being built at Arklow. The church at Kildrought was in ruins, but subscriptions were being collected to build a new one.79 Archbishop Agar had every reason to feel very satisWed with the overall state of his own diocese, the only serious defect being, in common with all other Irish dioceses, a shortage of glebe houses which necessitated clergy making the best arrangements they could to reside within, or near to, their parishes.

Archbishop Charles Brodrick Agar’s successor at Cashel and Emly was another committed ecclesiastical reformer. Charles Brodrick was the son of the third Viscount Midleton and son-in-law of Bishop Woodward of Cloyne (1781–94). He became bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh at the age of 34 in 1795, and was translated to Kilmore in 1796, and Cashel and Emly in 1801, remaining there until his premature death, on the same day as Archbishop Stuart, in 1822. Had he lived longer he, rather than John George de la Poer Beresford, might well have succeeded Stuart in the primacy. His qualities were recognized in a contemporary obituary in which he was described as ‘a prelate of distinguished piety, and of the most exemplary attention to the duties of his high station, as evinced by his increasing vigilance in enforcing the residence of the clergy, and by his disinterested appointments to the vacant livings’ in his diocese. On his 79 HRO, 21M57 B21b.


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consecration to Clonfert and Kilmacduagh he commented that he was ‘sorry to say that People, considering this place only as a Wrst step on the ladder have not thought it necessary to pay any kind of attention to this duty even while they remained there’. Brodrick resolved not to follow their example and resided in his remote western diocese, urging his clergy to do likewise. As Archbishop of Cashel he stated in 1818 that ‘a resident clergy of the established Church are the best, I may say, the only security not only for the progress but for the very existence of civilization in Ireland’.80 By that time Brodrick’s ecclesiastical responsibilities covered not just his own province but that of Dublin as well, as he had taken on the administration of both the diocese and the province in 1811 during the mental ‘incapacity’ of Archbishop Euseby Cleaver. This was a not entirely satisfactory arrangement, as Cleaver retained the whole income of the archbishopric and Brodrick had to negotiate with Mrs Cleaver for the reimbursement of his expenses as coadjutor. Although Mrs Cleaver welcomed the appointment and oVered her ‘expressions of conWdence’ in his role as coadjutor she exercised a degree of ‘improper’ interference in patronage matters, endeavouring to persuade Brodrick to prefer those candidates for beneWces that she thought her husband might have promoted had he been of suYciently sound mind to exercise this role.81 Brodrick’s appointment was even welcomed by the irascible Bishop Lindsay of Kildare who wrote to tell him that ‘Your Grace’s late visitation of this Diocese gave the highest satisfaction to all the Clergy and I am now proWting by it in my own progress’.82 Brodrick was seen as an important ally by Archbishop Stuart, whose low opinion of some of the other Irish bishops has already been noted, and was one of the reasons why Stuart was so keen to see Brodrick acting as Archbishop Cleaver’s coadjutor in Dublin. Cleaver’s vicar-general, Dr Patrick Duigenan, wanted Bishop Jocelyn of Ferns and Leighlin to be appointed coadjutor but, though Stuart described him as competent he clearly felt he was inexperienced and, prophetically in view of his subsequent deprivation, somehow not suitable. He was also doubtful of Duigenan’s motives: ‘I am of opinion, that the B of F acting as coadjutor under the controll and guidance of Duigenan, would be an unfortunate arrangement for the Church’.83 Brodrick had commended himself to Stuart by the strong action he had 80 D. Jenkins, ‘The Correspondence of Charles Brodrick (1761–1822), Archbishop of Cashel’, Irish Archives Bulletin, ix–x (1979–80), 44. 81 NLI, Ms 8861, Brodrick to Mrs Cleaver, 15 February 1812. This collection contains several letters between the two parties in which Mrs Cleaver lobbies for various clergy in the diocese. See also Malcolmson, Agar, 503. 82 NLI, Ms 8863, Lindsay to Brodrick, 23 August 1814. 83 NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 3 March 1811.

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taken, as the recently appointed archbishop of Cashel, over the situation in the diocese of Cork and Ross. In 1802 Brodrick had commended Bishop Stopford on ‘the general good state of his dioceses’,84 but within a year the bishop’s health had declined to such an extent that he was generally judged to be incapable of administering the united diocese, and Brodrick appointed the vicar-general to act on his behalf. Stuart supported Brodrick, commenting that ‘no person can blame your Grace for appointing a Coadjutor to the Bishop of Cork, whose total incapacity to attend to the duties of his diocese has long been apparent’.85 Brodrick in his turn relied very heavily on John Jebb, the future bishop of Limerick. As early as 1803 Jebb was advising Brodrick on the better education of candidates for conWrmation: So far as I can at present judge, there is no tract on ConWrmation in all respects unexceptionable now published for extensive circulation. Yet as it would require some time to prepare one more eligible perhaps on the approaching occasion, Adams’s Tract86 might be put into the hands of young people with advantage. It has occurred to me that a valuable little compilation might be made from Archbishop Secker87 and Dr Clarke.88 The treatise by the latter I lately procured: it is highly practical and in many parts admirably calculated to make an impression on the minds of young people and to interest their aVections.89

A year later Jebb was supplying the archbishop with lists of books to be purchased for schools in the province, including large quantities of prayer books and catechisms, and a list of ‘Tracts on the Popish Controversy’ to be bought by the archbishop for his own use.90 In 1814 Jebb carried out a survey of the condition of the parishes in the dioceses of Cloyne and Cork and Ross and reported his Wndings back to the archbishop. At Cork and Ross, administered by Bishop St Lawrence, he found the conditions to be generally satisfactory. Sunday evening services at 6 p.m. had been ‘established and well attended these last 2 years in the towns of Bandon, Bantry and Clonakilty. Sermons at each.’ He noted ‘catechising, not as a form, but as a serious business, greatly extending throughout the diocese’ and an increase in the number of schools and in the demand for bibles and prayer books. The number of clergy in 84 NLI, Ms 8888, Brodrick to Stopford, 5 November 1802. 85 NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 30 June 1804. 86 T. Adam, Practical Lectures on the Church Catechism to Which is Now Added an Exercise by way of Question and Answer Preparatory to ConWrmation, London 1767. 87 T. Secker, Lectures on the Catechism of the Church of England with a Discourse on ConWrmation, London 1769. 88 S. Clarke, either An Exposition of the Church Catechism, London 1729, or Three Practical Essays, on Baptism, ConWrmation and Repentance, London 1721. 89 NLI, Ms 8866, Jebb to Brodrick, 23 November 1803. 90 Ibid., Jebb to Brodrick, 7 May 1804.


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the diocese had increased by ten over the previous six years. Brodrick’s requirement for Holy Communion to be celebrated monthly had led to an increase in the number of communicants, and the ‘new Bishop, tho’ at Wrst adverse to the plan, is now convinced of its utility’. Second churches were needed at Clonakilty and Skull, especially the latter where two hundred had wished to communicate at Christmas but many were unable to do so as they lived eight or more miles from the church and had to get home before nightfall. The only case of serious neglect was at Inchigeelagh where the curate was sometimes absent for Wve weeks at a time, ‘sick persons neglected’ and a Protestant child taken to be baptized by the Roman Catholic priest.91 Jebb was less impressed by the state of the diocese of Cloyne. In 1802 Brodrick had sent Bishop Bennet his orders covering the whole province which drew attention to the problems, not just in Cloyne, but in other dioceses as well. He lamented: the general neglect of keeping [parish registers] as the law prescribes. I have for the most part found where any Register was kept, that the Vestry Book was the only book used for the purpose, in other cases I have found that Births, Marriages and Burials were recorded only on loose sheets of paper, and in too many instances that no record whatsoever has been kept.

He urged the bishops to encourage their clergy to catechize and wanted to see the larger parochial unions broken up: The unfortunate circumstances of the Country in former days imposed a necessity on the Legislature of uniting many livings and consolidating large tracts of Country into one BeneWce without which no respectability of maintenance could have been had for the parochial clergy. The times are now changed.92

Bennet, however, was not very responsive to Brodrick’s urgings. Jebb found in 1814 that the curate of Whitechurch ‘resides in Cork; lives at Club Houses’. The rector of Ballinamona and vicar of Rahan lived in Mallow and employed no curates. There had been no conWrmations in Mallow and Youghal for the last twelve years, and he was concerned that if they were so infrequent in such important towns they must have been even more infrequent in the smaller towns of the diocese.93 Brodrick was again pressing Bennet about the state of his diocese in 1819, but received a very defensive response: With respect to the residence of Curates at a distance from their Parish it is undoubtedly very indecent and improper, but where there is no glebe house, it is often impossible to contradict the assertions of the Gentlemen concerned that no 91 Ibid., Jebb to Brodrick, 8 March 1814. 92 NLI, Ms 8892, Brodrick to Bennet, 9 September 1802. 93 NLI, Ms 8866, Jebb to Brodrick, 8 March 1814.

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residence can be obtained . . . I repeat that your Grace has only to mention to me what regulations you wish to introduce into my Diocese . . . and I am conWdent you will have no reason to complain of any inattention being paid to your orders; at the same time you will be so good as to recollect that I have no longer the activity with which I was once able to encounter all the diYculties of the Episcopal Charge, that I am the oldest Bishop on the Bench, distressed more than any by those severe domestic misfortunes of which we all have a share, and I mention it to your Grace in the strictest conWdence, oppressed by a distemper which by incapacitating me from taking exercise must very soon break up my constitution.94

Brodrick was, like Agar, a reforming archbishop with a very clear view about his provincial responsibilities as well as his diocesan ones, and in taking on the role of coadjutor to Archbishop Cleaver in 1811 he extended these responsibilities to cover not just the province of Cashel but that of Dublin as well. Indeed from 1811 until Cleaver’s death in 1820, Brodrick and Stuart were undoubtedly the most powerful ecclesiastical Wgures in the Church of Ireland and, as we shall examine in a later chapter, worked together as members of the Board of First Fruits to inXuence the spending of government grants on the major programme of building new churches and glebe houses in this period. The debts that both the diocese and province of Cashel owed to Brodrick were acknowledged both in the visitation charge of his successor, Richard Laurence, and in the visitation sermon preached by John Jebb. The latter stated that: during the one-and-twenty years, Archbishop Brodrick was among us . . . he meditated well and wisely on the excellencies of the Christian character; he gave himself wholly to the cares and duties of the Christian ministry; and in all these things, his proWciency was manifest to all men. Go then, my brethren, and do ye likewise.95

Archbishop Laurence prefaced his diocesan charge with the statement that, though he had not known his predecessor personally, ‘wherever I turn, I perceive aVecting proofs of his private work, and public estimation; of an integrity of heart, and a liberality of principle, seldom, if ever, exceeded’.96 In his provincial charge the following year he stated that his predecessor’s ‘strong feelings of personal attachment were regulated and controlled by an imperious sense of public duty’.97 Bishop O’Beirne of Meath described Brodrick as ‘an ornament and a blessing’ to the Church of Ireland: 94 NLI, Ms 8892, Bennet to Brodrick, 2 October 1819. 95 J. Jebb, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of Cashel at the Primary Visitation of the Most Reverend Richard, Archbishop of Cashel, Dublin 1822, 27. 96 R. Laurence, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Cashel and Emly, Dublin 1822. 97 Id., Charge Delivered at the Primary Triennial Visitation of the Province of Munster, Dublin 1823, 1.


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In no prelate of modern days were the distinguishing characters of a primitive apostolic bishop more conspicuously shewn forth. Every faculty of his soul was bent to the conscientious discharge of the sacred trust he had undertaken, and to the care of attending to the discipline and good order of his province and of his diocese.98

This was high praise indeed from a bishop who, as we shall see, was himself one of the leaders of the diocesan reform programme in the Church of Ireland.

Bishop Thomas Lewis O’Beirne Thomas Lewis O’Beirne, the son of a Roman Catholic farmer in County Longford, was born in 1747, and studied for the priesthood at St Omer. The fact that he became a Protestant led to many rumours about this crucial period of his life, including allegations that he became a clergyman of the Church of England following ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, or that he was never ordained at all but was simply a ‘mitred layman’,99 allegations that have all been disproved.100 He certainly did not leave St Omer because he was refused ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, but because of his poor health, a fact recorded by Patrick Joseph Plunkett, then professor at St Omer and subsequently (1779–1827) Roman Catholic bishop of Meath, in a letter dated 6 June 1768: Mr O’Beirne, is a young gentleman of this house who returns to Ireland to recover his health by breathing the native air for some time. His promising parts and amiable qualities have made him dear to all the members of the society in which he lived, and particularly to me. I love and esteem him exceedingly.101

Plunkett, in fact, maintained good relations with O’Beirne, especially during the period that the two served, respectively, as Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland bishop of Meath.102 Instead of returning to St Omer, O’Beirne, having decided to conform to the established church, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where his tutor was Richard Watson, the future bishop of LlandaV. He was ordained deacon in 1772, and priest the following year, by the bishop of Peterborough, and presented to the college living of Grendon (Northants). In 1776 he was appointed one of the Chaplains of the Fleet and in 1779 to the rectory of 98 T. L. O’Beirne, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Cashel and Emly, Dublin 1822, 2. 99 A. Cogan, The Ecclesiastical History of the Diocese of Meath, 3 vols, Dublin 1867–74, ii, 185–7. 100 J. Healy, History of the Diocese of Meath, 2 vols, Dublin 1908, ii, 110–23. 101 Ibid., ii, 112. 102 Cogan, History, iii, 355–7.

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West Deeping (Lincs). He returned to Ireland brieXy as vice-regal chaplain and secretary in 1782–3 and completely in 1791, when he was appointed to the incumbency of Templemichael (Co. Longford), which by a strange quirk of fate was the parish in which his brother, Denis O’Beirne, was the Roman Catholic parish priest. Denis, who died in 1827, was an unsuccessful candidate for the Roman Catholic bishopric of Kilmore in 1800, the fact that his brother was an apostate being allegedly held against him.103 In 1795 Thomas Lewis O’Beirne was consecrated Bishop of Ossory. Here he made strenuous eVorts to enforce clerical residence and established a clerical society, for the purpose of studying the New Testament in Greek and ‘the principal events, and the principal agents of the several ages of the Church’. These meetings were held in the cathedral library after which the clergy dined with the bishop.104 In a circular address to his clergy O’Beirne emphasized the desirability of residence: to produce the beneWts, which your parishioners, and the country at large have a right to expect from a conscientious, prudent and well directed discharge of your holy function . . . , you must begin by repairing to, and remaining in your respective cures . . . Let me, therefore, most earnestly entreat . . . that those amongst you who are not actually residing and exercising cure of souls in other dioceses, may not lose a day in joining your respective Xocks. Let me not have the mortiWcation to hear it said, that you are of the number of those Clergymen, who avail themselves of every frivolous and triXing pretext, either of business, of convenience, or indulgence, to Xy from their duty, and abandon their posts. Let me not be told that you are seen idling in the capital, exhibiting vacant and listless Wgures in its streets, and running the round of dissipation and levity, which . . . it is melancholy to see even the most thoughtless of the votaries of pleasure, pursue with such scandalous perseverance.105

Much of the rest of this address was concerned with the unstable political situation in France, and the destruction that this had wrought on the French church. O’Beirne saw the principal duty of a resident clergy as helping to prevent outbreaks of political radicalism among their own parishioners. Although a convert himself, O’Beirne was not in favour of proselytism: As it is generally managed, it is a bustle of silly vanity or self-interest, to increase, by every artiWce, and by every method however unlawful, or misbecoming, the number of disciples, without any endeavours to better their morals . . . This belongs not to the temper of our church. 103 J. J. MacNamee, History of the Diocese of Ardagh, Dublin 1954, 793–5. 104 Healy, History, ii, 131, 162. 105 T. L. O’Beirne, A Circular Address to the Clergy of the Diocese of Ossory, Dublin 1797, 11–12.


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In O’Beirne’s view conversion should only be achieved through ‘an exemplariness of life, worthy of our character’.106 In 1798 O’Beirne was translated to the diocese of Meath, where he inherited a diYcult situation created by the political disturbances of that year. Within the Wrst few months of his translation he had carried out a detailed visitation of his new diocese, the surviving returns for which indicate the impact of the political upheavals.107 At Kilmessan the incumbent noted that the church is ‘something out of order by falling of the ceiling, the repair of which has been retarded for these twelve months by the disturbances’. The incumbent of Dunboyne and Kilbride lived in the schoolhouse, ‘now in the most ruinous condition occasioned by the Vengeance the late Rebels exercis’d on it . . . and I am sure no other clergyman will ever reside in so poor a Cabbin’. Although the glebe house at Kinnegad was ‘in proper order and repair’ the incumbent was afraid to live there and had moved into the town ‘to avail myself of the protection of the Military Quartered there’. At Clonfad the incumbent had established a Sunday school ‘which was droped by the Political disorder of the Country’. What, however, the visitation primarily revealed was a shortage of glebe houses, a signiWcant number of parishes in which there were no or inadequate churches, and relatively poor provision for both catechizing and education. Exactly half the incumbents resided in their parishes, and a few others lived outside their parishes but served them personally; the remainder, chieXy pluralists, many holding beneWces or preferments in other dioceses, employed curates. One of the chief reasons for non-residence was the lack or inadequacy of a glebe house. The incumbent of Tara described his as ‘a Cabbin, in which it is impossible for the clergyman to reside’. At Mullingar it was described as a ‘thatched Cabbin . . . in good repair’ in which the pluralist incumbent allowed his curate to live. Some clergy endeavoured to solve this problem by purchasing a house and hoping that it would become the oYcial glebe house. The incumbent of Killallon had improved a house near his church at Clonmellon at a cost of £300 ‘in expectation of converting it into a glebe house’. Many churches were in poor condition. In that at Loughcrew ‘the seats in general are in a ruinous state’; that at Taghmon ‘admits the rain in most parts’; that at Clonmacnois only had ‘a pulpit, reading desk and one pew . . . the Chancel is railed in but has no Communion Table’. At Trim ‘the Roof is in a very decaying and I think dangerous state’ but the parishioners were ‘unwilling at once to encounter so great an expence . . . The Earl of Mornington presented to the parish all the purple Velvet Furniture and Cushions Nicely Laced with 106 Id., The Charge . . . to the Clergy of his Diocese, Dublin 1796, 59, 61. 107 These returns are preserved at Trinity College, Dublin, Ms 1183, which also contains a partial survey of churches in the diocese, compiled by O’Beirne in 1802.

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Gold which had belonged to his Chapel . . . and which I have accommodated to our Communion Table, pulpit, reading desk, &c.’ Most churches in the diocese (nearly 70%) had communion services four times a year. At Enniskeen there were two celebrations on these occasions ‘in order to accommodate the diVerent members of each family’. A Wfth, mostly in the towns, had communion services once a month and at the major festivals. Of the remainder, three had communion at only the major festivals and three had it six times a year. Just under half the churches had regular catechizing but more than a third had no catechizing at all. Sometimes this was because there were no children in the parish, and sometimes because parents were unwilling to send children to be catechized. The incumbent of Drumcree had endeavoured successfully to overcome this reluctance by adopting a practice whereby ‘the questions are put to them in a familiar easy manner tho’ not in the exact words of the catechism’. At Clonfad the incumbent noted that ‘the children in my parish are instructed in the principles of their religion by their parents being chieXy Methodists. I have but lately examined them in the Church Catechism and found them instructed.’ Although more than half the parishes had a schoolmaster, some had to rely on either the curate or the parish clerk to fulWl this role. At Agher the school was kept by the widow of the former schoolmaster, the incumbent describing her as ‘suYciently well-qualiWed to instruct children’. The diYculty of obtaining qualiWed schoolmasters was frequently compounded by an inability to pay their salaries. At Kilkenny West ‘a Protestant Master was appointed but there was not a suYcient number of Protestants attended to enable him to support himself ’. At St Mary’s, Athlone, there was an endowed school but the schoolmaster was in poor health. The parish also had three charities for the relief of the poor but very few parishes had anything similar. At Enniskeen sixteen hundreds of oatmeal were distributed to families according to their size, and at Trim the interest on a thousand pounds was used to give twenty shillings each year, a 4d loaf each Sunday, and clothing to ‘Wve decayed freemen of this Borough’, and to apprentice the sons of freemen by paying an annual fee of three pounds for each apprentice. A partial survey of the diocese in 1802 shows that O’Beirne’s programme of reform was speedily implemented. At Kells the glebe house had recently been repaired and the church improved so that it was now ‘among the best in the diocese’. There were new glebe houses at Kilskyre and Moynalty, and further ones planned at Clongill, Donaghpatrick, Slane and Stackallen; at Donaghpatrick and Slane new churches were also in the process of being built. At Kilskyre the church was described as ‘well roofed and the walls good. The pews are bad but they are to be made new and uniform in the course of this year; a velvet cushion, and velvet trimmings for Pulpit, Reading Desk and Communion


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Table are also bespoke, and a new surplice.’ At Rathkenny the church ‘has this year been newly painted and undergone complete repair, from having been almost in ruins’. There were, however, several parishes in which there were matters to be rectiWed. At Clongill the parish cess produced only nine pounds a year, ‘which does little more than pay the Clerk’s salary, so that the neat and perfect order of the Church is entirely owing to the liberality of the incumbent.’ At Drumcondra the church was ‘a very handsome ediWce, but the present incumbent has let the Chancel go into complete disrepair and on a late visit I found pidgeons nesting in the cornice of it and the windows almost destroyed’. At Duleek ‘the church is in staunch good order except that some slight repairs are wanting to the seats . . . The Communion cloth and pulpit cushion are old and bad’ and a new cushion ‘of crimson Manchester velvet’ had been ordered. At Nobber the glebe house was ‘in such bad repair, through the neglect of the Curate, that it is intended to . . . put the Curacy into sequestration for the repairs’. The church was ‘as much neglected as the house’. The incumbent of Slane was ordered to speed up work on the new glebe house, to Wnish work on the rebuilt church and to hold services in church on Wednesdays and Fridays. This was part of O’Beirne’s programme to ensure that all town churches in the diocese of Meath had regular weekday services. He also insisted that all parishes should build a school and appoint a schoolmaster, even if there were no Church of Ireland children in the parish.108 He complained to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel that the governors of Wilson’s Hospital, as impropriators of the rectory of Mullingar, were ‘bound to keep [the chancel] in repair, and . . . have left it to fall into a most scandalous state of ruin’.109 In a series of charges to his clergy, O’Beirne laid out his priorities for his programme of diocesan reform. He was keen to promote preaching and other opportunities, including pastoral visiting, for the instruction of the laity, but in order for it to be eVective: everything must depend on the character of the minister. He, whose conversation is the small talk of the drawing room; the gossiping of mornings of idleness, and evenings of triXing amusement; whose reading, if he claims any, is conWned to productions for the stage or the toilet, or to gleanings from the periodical works that compose the libraries of those who shrink from the dullness and fatigue of serious application and study; he who aVects praise for being so much the gentleman in society, as cautiously to keep out of sight the clergyman and the minister of the gospel; he whose weekly occupation is conWned to his farm and his stock, or whose talk on all occasions is of horses and dogs, and the sports of the Weld, in which he excels . . . would only raise a smile of disdainful pity, or a frown of disgust.110 108 Healy, History, ii, 142–3. 109 NLI, Ms 8873, undated letter from O’Beirne to Brodrick. 110 T. L. O’Beirne, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Meath, Dublin 1810, 12–13.

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Religious Leadership Table 3.2. Statistics for the diocese of Meath 1807 and 1820

Number of beneWces BeneWces which are unions of parishes Resident incumbents Non-resident incumbents Non-resident incumbents serving their cures Number of churches Number of glebe houses Number of glebes BeneWces without glebes BeneWces without churches BeneWces without glebe houses

1807

1820

92 46 45 47 10 90 37 75 17 12 54

101 42 79 22 2 94 83 95 6 11 18

Some beneWces had more than one church. Source: Healy, History, ii, 151–2.

At the same time he was highly critical of what he described as the ‘false and tinsel pulpit eloquence’111 of the evangelicals. He returned in a later charge to the criticism of those clergy ‘who are known for standing Wxtures in every place of idle resort; or who are not to be distinguished from those of the Laity, who are most engrossed by worldly occupations, or social amusements’.112 One of O’Beirne’s reforms in the diocese of Meath was the reintroduction of rural deans as a means of ‘promoting and preserving the discipline of the Diocese, and consulting the credit of the establishment in the condition of its churches, and of the houses of residence of its Clergy’.113 In a circular letter to his rural deans, O’Beirne expressed his desire that the clergy of his diocese ‘should manifest the zeal of those sectaries and seceders [from the established church] without the fanaticism and excluding spirit, that serve only to render their zeal dangerous, and destructive of all Christian morality and true Religion’.114 There is no doubt that O’Beirne’s impact on the diocese of Meath was considerable. In 1818 he calculated that in the twenty years of his episcopate twenty-Wve new glebes had been purchased, sixty-seven new glebe houses had been built or acquired, twenty-Wve new churches built, and thirty-two existing churches rebuilt.115 His memorial tablet records the building of an additional 111 O’ Beirne, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Meath, 19. 112 Id., Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Meath, [?Dublin] 1817, 4. 113 Id., Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Meath, [?Dublin] 1820, 6. 114 Id., Circular Letter . . . to the Rural Deans of his Diocese, Dublin 1821, 2; this letter was primarily a defence of O’Beirne’s decision to withdraw his support from the ‘sectaries and seceders’ in the Hibernian Bible Society. 115 RCBL, Ms 157, pp. 105–9. Healy, History, ii, 152–4 records slightly diVerent Wgures: glebes purchased thirty, glebe houses built sixty-two, and churches rebuilt twenty-nine.


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Table 3.3. State of clerical residence, glebe houses, and churches in the diocese of Meath 1799 and 1818 1799 (%)

1818 (%)

Incumbents:

Known pluralists Non-resident Resident

39.2 50.0 50.0

10.6 29.7 70.3

Glebe houses:

Newly built/building In good repair In tolerable repair In poor repair Inadequate None

4.0 13.7 11.0 11.0 5.5 54.8

61.1 13.3 — 7.8 — 17.8

Churches:

Newly built/building In good repair In tolerable repair In poor repair None

6.8 47.5 16.9 10.2 18.6

43.8 32.3 6.2 10.4 7.3

Source: TCDL, Ms 1183; RCBL, Ms 157.

Wve glebe houses.116 Tables 3.2 and 3.3 illustrate, from diVerent sources, the considerable progress that had been made in the diocese of Meath during O’Beirne’s episcopate. In both cases the general trends are clear even if there are some minor discrepancies in the Wgures. The survey of the diocese conducted in 1818117 was less informative in some respects than the visitation evidence for 1799. It did, however, note those churches where O’Beirne’s directions about weekday services were being observed; these were held on Wednesdays, Fridays, and holy days at Kells, Navan, Oldcastle, and Trim. At Castlerickard an endowment had been given for a daily service in church, but it had not been performed so the endowment had been withheld and would only be restored when ‘the condition be strictly complied with’. Many of the entries record the building of new churches and glebe houses, or the rebuilding of existing churches, frequently with grants or loans from the Board of First Fruits. Nevertheless some churches remained in poor repair: at Rathcore this was ‘owing to the unwillingness of the Parishioners to consent to any additional cess’; at Taghmon the church was ‘in such wretched repair’ that it was to be abandoned and replaced, but for the ‘parishioners insisting on their right to have their Parish Church preserved’; at Tara the church was ‘old and ruinous . . . a disgrace to the Establishment’. The majority of the churches in the diocese were, however, in good repair and many had been completely rebuilt. At Clonard: 116 Healy, History, ii, 163. 117 RCBL, Ms 157.

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the church was very old and nearly a Ruin but the Parishioners obtained a loan for rebuilding it from the Trustees of the First Fruits, and there is now a handsome Church with everything necessary for the decent celebration of divine service.

At Kilbeggan ‘the Church had fallen into a state nearly of ruins but it had been rebuilt by the Parishioners, and is now in the best order’. At Kilbixy: a church of Gothick architecture has been erected on a plan of Wyatt’s and Wnished both outside and inside in the handsomest manner, with an organ, and everything necessary for the most decent celebration of divine service.

The landowner had raised £3,000 towards the cost and the rest had been provided by a grant from the Board of First Fruits.118 At Navan the church was described as ‘an ornament to the diocese’. The rebuilding had been funded by a gift of £600 and a loan of £1,100 from the Board of First Fruits and ‘cesses on the union’. The gallery had been erected at the expense of Lords Ludlow and Tara, ‘the throne by the Bishop, and the seats by the Parishioners to whom they were allocated’. Although the interior of this church was substantially altered in a late-nineteenth-century re-ordering, the original plaster-vaulted ceiling survives, together with the Ludlow and Tara gallery, which retains some of its original seating, and the carved wooden mitre which formed part of the canopy of the bishop’s throne.119 It is a Wtting memorial to the energies of Bishop Thomas Lewis O’Beirne and one of his more distinguished parochial incumbents, Daniel Augustus Beaufort, an amateur architect whose other building project, the church at Collon in the diocese of Armagh, survives in a much more complete state.

Bishop Richard Mant Unlike Archbishops Agar and Brodrick, and Bishop O’Beirne, whose Irish credentials could not be questioned, Richard Mant was English by birth and education and had spent his whole career in England before his appointment 118 This church is described in Addleshaw and Etchells, Architectural Setting, 192, where the building date is given as 1798. C. Casey and A. Rowan, Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster, London 1993, 347, suggest that the church was built in c.1810 but do not mention the architect. Since Addleshaw and Etchells wrote, the church had become derelict. Its original furnishings had been lost and the church reduced in size, being ‘now entered as a rooXess shell, with only two bays at the east end consolidated to give a tiny church’. The most likely architect, bearing in mind the two possible alternative dates for the church, are either James Wyatt (1746–1813), who designed Castle Coole (Co. Fermanagh) for the Wrst Earl Belmore in 1790–7, or his nephew Lewis William Wyatt (1777–1853) who added the portico to Mount Shannon (County Limerick) for the second Earl of Clare in 1809; see H. M. Colvin, Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, London 1978, 949, 954. 119 Casey and Rowan, North Leinster, 428; personal visit by the author on 8 April 2003.


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as Bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora in 1820. He was born in 1776, the son of the master of Southampton Grammar School and rector of the town parish of All Saints, and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. In 1798 he was elected a fellow of Oriel College and was Bampton Lecturer at Oxford in 1811. He served curacies in the Hampshire parishes of Buriton (1804–8) and Crawley (1808–9) before serving for a year as curate to his own father at All Saints, Southampton. In 1810 he was presented to the Essex vicarage of Coggeshall, where he declined to attend at Evangelical prayer meetings ‘because I am not a friend to extempore prayer . . . because such meetings are not recognised by our Church, but at variance with her principles’.120 It was such views that made Mant particularly attractive to extreme high churchmen in the Hackney Phalanx, that small but inXuential group which beneWted from the patronage of Archbishop Charles Manners-Sutton of Canterbury, and in 1813 he was chosen by the archbishop to be his chaplain. Although he resigned Coggeshall to take up that post, Manners-Sutton was instrumental in securing him the London rectory of St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, in 1815, and three years later that of East Horsley (Surrey) which he held in plurality with his other preferment. It was almost certainly Manners-Sutton who recommended Mant to the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, another member of the Hackney Phalanx, for the episcopal vacancy at Killaloe and Kilfenora, and his subsequent translation to Down and Connor in 1823.121 Although Mant exercised considerable inXuence in the Church of Ireland in the late 1820s and 1830s, he had begun his career rather unpromisingly by what were considered injudicious remarks about Roman Catholicism and rather extreme views on the liturgical arrangement of church buildings, and he ended it in controversy on account of his perceived support of Tractarianism in the 1840s.122 Early on in his episcopate at Down and Connor, Mant set up a Diocesan Committee of the Association for Discountenancing Vice and Promoting the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion with depositories of books at Belfast, Downpatrick, Ballymena, and Coleraine. He also put pressure on the dean and chapter of the cathedral at Downpatrick to hold more regular services. After its reopening in 1818 services had only been held in the summer months, though services were held throughout the year in the parish church, of which the dean was the rector. From 1825 the chapter resolved to hold services in the cathedral throughout the year and that the members of the chapter should either take their turn to preach or be Wned.123 Mant used his visitation charges to give advice to the clergy on 120 121 122 123

W. B. Mant, Memoir of the Right Reverend Richard Mant, Dublin 1857, 72. Ibid., 64–117; DNB entry. See Chapter 7 below. Mant, Memoir, 191–2, 200.

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improving the standard of pastoral care in the parishes. The clergyman was told: not only to be careful about the manner of performing divine service . . . but . . . be punctual also in the time of commencing it: for if he is not punctual himself, he cannot expect punctuality in his people.

He was also provided with a list of books described ‘as useful acquisitions to a clerical library’.124 In a guide published for the beneWt of all the clergy of the United Church of England and Ireland, Mant advocated the desirability of holding at least two Sunday services in every church and considered communion too infrequent. He thought that no parish should have fewer than six celebrations a year and that they really ought to be eight times a year in rural parishes and monthly in urban ones. Clergy were advised not to depart from the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, even if asked to do so by their parishioners, since, ‘our own private judgement is not a suYcient reason for departing from the directions of the Church’. The clergy must also train the laity to behave decently and reverently in church and should, for example, stand rather than sit during the singing of psalms and canticles.125 One of the major problems facing Mant when he was translated to Down and Connor was a serious shortage of churches, especially in the expanding town of Belfast. In 1806 the diocese’s 73 beneWces and 103 parishes only had a total of 77 churches in repair. Six beneWces had no church in any of their parishes and there was only one church in Belfast. The fact that only twenty beneWces had glebe houses appears not to have had a seriously detrimental eVect on clerical residence, as the united diocese was served by forty-six resident incumbents and thirty-six resident curates. When Mant became bishop in 1823, the number of churches in repair had only increased by two: the recently reopened cathedral in Downpatrick and a second church in Belfast, built in 1811. The number of glebe houses had, however, more than doubled, from twenty to forty-Wve. Mant made church extension his priority. By 1827 he had consecrated Wve new churches, and by 1829 he had secured grants or loans from the Board of First Fruits to rebuild two existing churches and build four new ones, including a third church in Belfast, consecrated in 1833. More drastic action was, however, still needed and in 1837 a meeting of the diocesan clergy agreed that twelve existing churches needed to be enlarged and a further eight completely rebuilt. In the following year a Diocesan Church Accommodation Society was established, and in 1838–9 grants were made to those twenty churches which had been identiWed for extension or rebuilding. 124 R. Mant, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Down and Connor, Dublin 1824, 25–6, 72–3. 125 Id., The Clergyman’s Obligations Considered, Oxford 1830, 3, 41–4, 95, 107–10.


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At the same time strenuous eVorts were made to Wnd the money, mostly from individual benefactions, to build new churches. In 1842–3 Mant was able to consecrate seven new churches, including a fourth in Belfast. As a way of dealing with those parts of the diocese for which suYcient funding could not be found to build new churches, Mant agreed in 1838 to give authority for the holding of services in appropriate buildings licensed for divine worship, especially in ‘remote country districts’, far from existing churches.126 The example shown by archbishops and bishops like Agar and Brodrick, O’Beirne and Mant, in promoting church building, clerical residence, and the highest standards of pastoral care in their dioceses, was not lost on their episcopal colleagues. The study of all Church of Ireland dioceses for which the documentation survives shows that successive diocesans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, though perhaps not so high proWle or proactive as those whose activities have been more extensively recorded, were nevertheless following similar programmes of reform, some examples of which will be noted in the succeeding chapters.

T H E RO M A N C AT H O L I C L E A D E R S H I P The episcopal leadership of the Church of Ireland was not a corporate one; each bishop had complete freedom of action within his own diocese and there were no formal mechanisms for achieving any degree of uniformity throughout the established church, though initiatives in one diocese were copied, informally, in others. By contrast the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland established, during the course of the period 1770–1850, a remarkable degree of corporateness in the way in which bishops managed their dioceses, and set up structures to enable this to happen. This is not to say that there were not, from time to time, disagreements between individual bishops, on both political and religious issues, but a small number of outstanding bishops laid down standards for their dioceses which were quickly adopted as standards for every other diocese within that province, and eventually throughout all four provinces in Ireland. For almost the whole of the eighty years under consideration the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy was dominated by two successful archbishops of Dublin, John Thomas Troy (1739–1823) and Daniel Murray (1768–1852); the only other Wgures within the episcopate who exercised anything approaching their inXuence were Francis Moylan (1735–1815), William Crolly (1780–1849), James Warren Doyle (1786–1834), and John 126 Mant, Memoir, 57, 215, 229–30, 293, 354, 358, 380–90, 419.

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Table 3.4. Methods of Wlling vacant Roman Catholic dioceses in Ireland 1770–1850 Diocese

New consecration

Coadjutor succession

Translation

Achonry Ardagh and Clonmacnois Armagh (Abp) Cashel and Emly (Abp) Clogher Clonfert Cloyne and Ross Cork Derry Down and Connor Dromore Dublin (Abp) Elphin Ferns Galway (1831) Kerry Kildare and Leighlin Killala Killaloe Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora Kilmore Limerick Meath Ossory Raphoe Tuam (Abp) Waterford and Lismore

5 3 2 3 — 1 3 1 — 3 3 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 — 3 1 2 2 6 2 1 6

— — 1 2 4 3 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 3 — 1 1 1 3 1 2 2 1 — 1 — 1

1 — 2 — — — — 1 1 — — 1 1 — — — — — — — 2 — — — — 4 —

total

69

35

13

Source: Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn, London 1986, 409–45.

MacHale (1791–1881). The reorganization of the episcopate during the eighteenth century had produced a total of twenty-six dioceses, increased to twenty-seven with the creation of the diocese of Galway in 1831, organized into the four provinces of Armagh, Cashel, Dublin, and Tuam. Before 1829 the arrangements for the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland were as secretive as those for the appointment of bishops in the established church, and a similar process of inXuence, lobbying, and patronage applied. On the other hand the frequent translations between dioceses, which took place within the Church of Ireland, were virtually unknown within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, even in the appointments to the four archbishoprics. Elderly bishops were usually provided with coadjutors and a high proportion of newly-appointed diocesans had, as Table 3.4 shows, been coadjutors to their predecessors. The responsibility


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for appointing bishops eVectively lay with the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, normally abbreviated to Propaganda, which was the agency of the Holy See that dealt with Roman Catholic churches in non-Roman Catholic countries: The twenty-seven Irish bishops, however, although obliged to furnish regular reports on their dioceses to the Congregation, were independent in the daily running of their dioceses; Propaganda interfered only in major policy matters or to settle disputes, correct abuses and grant authorisations.127

These diocesan reports, known as the relatio status, were frequently couched in such general terms as to be almost meaningless. Bishop Sugrue of Kerry described his clergy in 1822 as ‘very pious, very hard-working and full of zeal: very many give satisfaction by their diligence and preaching’. Very similar comments were made, in 1835 and 1845 respectively, by Archbishops Murray of Dublin and Slattery of Cashel about their clergy: Murray’s were ‘deeply imbued with zeal for religion, of good morals, and . . . diligently engaged in preaching’; according to Slattery his clergy ‘are pastors fervent in zeal and they diligently cultivate the vineyard of the Lord. No scandal requiring serious remedy exists among them.’128 The diYculty for Propaganda was that, in selecting bishops for recommendation to the Pope, who provided them to their bishoprics, they rarely had intimate knowledge of any of the candidates and relied heavily on information from those with local knowledge and, all too frequently, very deWnite prejudices. Indeed ‘when a vacancy occurred, Propaganda seems to have been prepared to receive suggestions from anyone who chose to write in’. Those lobbying for their own candidates in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries included the English vicars-apostolic, the papal nuncios in Lisbon and Vienna, the superiors of the religious orders, ministers in European Roman Catholic states and the British government, as well as both Irish Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland bishops, local diocesan chapters, and meetings of local clergy in the vacant diocese. The exception was in the appointment of coadjutors where the recommendation of the diocesan bishop was almost always accepted. Where there was no clear candidate for a vacancy, the views of the other bishops in the relevant province tended to carry the most weight.129 Bishops were sometimes imposed by Propaganda against the wishes of the diocesan clergy, as in the case of John Troy’s 127 D. A. Kerr, Peel, Priests and Politics: Sir Robert Peel’s Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1841–1846, Oxford 1982, 3. 128 Ibid., 29, 359. 129 J. H. Whyte, ‘The Appointment of Catholic Bishops in Nineteenth Century Ireland’, Catholic Historical Review, xlviii (1962), 13–14.

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appointment to Ossory in 1776. Troy’s appointment however turned out to be such a success that by 1786 he was virtually the unanimous choice for the vacant archbishopric of Dublin, only Archbishop Butler of Cashel and Bishop Bellew of Killala expressing their dissent.130 Thereafter Propaganda took particular notice of Troy’s views of candidates for episcopal vacancies throughout Ireland. An analysis of episcopal appointments in the period 1801–29 shows that, of the forty-four appointments made in this period, thirteen involved a decision being made by Propaganda as a result of there being several candidates with no clear recommendation being made of one over the others. In the other thirtyone cases either only one name was put forward or, if more than one name was submitted, a clear preference was expressed. Propaganda disliked having no Xexibility whatever to choose bishops and in 1824 refused to recommend an appointment to the Pope for the vacant diocese of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora until more than one name had been submitted. On the other hand it disliked having to make appointments in circumstances in which it received such conXicting advice that the resulting appointment created tension within the diocese concerned. This happened at Waterford and Lismore in 1817, where the appointment of Robert Walsh ‘had by 1821 provoked so many quarrels with his clergy that probably only his early death saved him from being deposed’.131 A similar situation occurred at Achonry in 1818 when Patrick MacNicholas was appointed; his disappointed rival, James Filan, ran a campaign of opposition to him among the diocesan clergy which lasted until 1823, when Filan agreed to issue a formal statement of repentance for his actions.132 Dissatisfaction with the method of appointing Irish bishops led to new regulations being adopted in 1829. The new process was a two-stage one. The Wrst stage consisted of a meeting of the diocesan chapter, where one existed, and the parish priests to put forward names, secretly in writing. Where the diocese was vacant the meeting was called by the vicar-general; when a coadjutor was to be appointed the diocesan bishop called the meeting. Those present then voted on the names submitted and the names of the three candidates who received the most votes were publicly announced, frequently, though not always, with the voting Wgures. These three names constituted the terna submitted to Propaganda. The second stage of the process involved the bishops of the province meeting to consider the terna and to comment on the candidates. These comments were then forwarded to 130 V. J. McNally, Reform, Revolution and Reaction: Archbishop John Thomas Troy and the Catholic Church in Ireland 1787–1817, Lanham 1995, 11, 19–20. 131 Whyte, ‘Bishops’, 14–16, 19. 132 L. Swords, A Hidden Church: The Diocese of Achonry 1689–1818, Blackrock 1997, 356–74.


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Propaganda, but the bishops were not permitted to remove or add names to the terna. Of the twenty-seven appointments made between 1829 and 1849 Propaganda recommended the appointment of the Wrst name on the terna in nineteen cases; in Wve of the remaining eight cases they selected the second or third name on the terna. In 1829 Nicholas Foran was the Wrst name on the terna for the vacant diocese of Waterford and Lismore. The British Government lobbied against his appointment and recommended Thomas Weld, a member of an English landed family. Propaganda rejected both Foran and Weld and selected William Abraham, the second name of the terna. When Abraham died in 1837, Foran succeeded him. At the Meath vacancy in 1830 the local clergy voted for James Murray, a priest of the diocese who was also a substantial farmer, a common practice which both Propaganda and the reformers amongst the Irish Roman Catholic bishops were endeavouring to suppress. Propaganda again selected the second name on the terna, John Cantwell, as it was clear that Murray’s votes had come overwhelmingly from clergy who were also farmers and expected him to protect the practice.133 At the Armagh vacancy in 1835, Bishop Crolly of Down and Connor received twenty-nine of the forty-nine votes cast, and Bishop Browne of Kilmore received eleven. The other six bishops in the province divided equally between Browne and Crolly, but Crolly was translated.134 In 1843, Charles MacNally, the popular choice of the diocesan clergy, was still appointed coadjutor bishop of Clogher with right of succession, despite the opposition of Archbishop Crolly.135 The pre-1829 appointment system had tended to favour the appointment of clergy from within the diocese to episcopal vacancies; the post-1829 system, especially when voting Wgures were published, made this almost impossible to resist. Between 1829 and 1849 twenty-one of the twenty-seven bishops appointed were secular clergy from the diocese where the appointment was being made, compared with twenty-nine out of forty-four appointments between 1801 and 1829. The new system also favoured slightly older clergy, the average age of appointment after 1829 rising from 46 to 48; whereas eleven bishops under 40 had been appointed between 1801 and 1829, only four were appointed between 1829 and 1849.136 A list of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops in 1844 shows that the majority of the twenty-seven diocesans were aged between 51 and 69; Wve were 70 or over and only two 50 or under. Of the two youngest bishops, one (MacLaughlin of 133 134 135 136

Whyte, ‘Bishops’, 17–18, 20. A. Macaulay, William Crolly, Archbishop of Armagh, 1835–49, Blackrock 1994, 138–9. Kerr, Peel, 8–9. Whyte, ‘Bishops’, 18–19.

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Derry) was already showing the Wrst signs of insanity, and the other (Kinsella of Ossory) was dead within a year.137 A signiWcant change took place in the social and educational background of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops during the period 1770–1850. In the eighteenth century a small number of bishops were still being chosen from among the few remaining landed families who had not chosen to become members of the Church of Ireland, or who still retained Roman Catholic branches. They included three members of the Butler family in succession at Cashel between 1712 and 1791, John Butler of Cork (1763–86), Anthony Blake of Ardagh and Clonmacnois (1756–8) and Armagh (1758–87), and Dominic Bellew of Killala (1780–1812).138 Considerable scandal was caused in 1786 when Bishop Butler of Cork succeeded to the lordship of Dunboyne on the death of his nephew. Almost immediately Butler began signing himself by his newly acquired title and on 12 December 1786 he wrote to Pope Pius VI asking permission to resign his diocese on the grounds of poor health and his need to marry in order to produce an heir. Prior to this he had already made an oVer of marriage to a distant cousin, Maria Butler, who was of childbearing age but also a member of the Church of Ireland. Butler’s request was immediately undermined by another cousin, Archbishop Butler of Cashel, who told the Pope that the bishop of Cork was in perfectly good health and that his request should be refused. In a move calculated to achieve a papal response Butler married his cousin in a Church of Ireland ceremony in April 1787. At this stage it was perfectly clear that Butler wanted to remain a Roman Catholic and merely be granted a dispensation to marry. The Vatican responded by stating that no dispensation would be granted and that Butler must repudiate his marriage. On 19 August 1787 Butler formally read his recantation of his popish errors at St Mary’s, Clonmel, and both received the sacrament in the Church of Ireland and assisted at its distribution. Though he was denounced by all his fellow bishops, a sympathetic account of his actions was published in the Cork newspaper, the Hibernian Chronicle, on 25 August 1787. It is clear from Butler’s later history that he felt that he had had his hand forced by the unhelpful attitude of his episcopal colleagues. Five days before his death in May 1800 he wrote letters to the Pope and to Archbishop Troy of Dublin asking to be received back into the Roman Catholic Church: Because of my unrealised hopes of an heir, I postponed from year to year the moment of my return to the Catholic Church. Except for the day in which I was received into the assembly of heretics, I have not entered any other place of worship, either to assist 137 Kerr, Peel, 7. 138 S. J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, Dublin 1982, 42; K. J. Harvey, ‘The Family Experience: the Bellews of Mount Bellew’, in Endurance and Emergence: Catholics in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. T. P. Power and K. Whelan, Blackrock 1990, 183.


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or administer the sacred rites. I received neither Sacrament nor Catholic Rite. With my wife I have had no cohabitation—except at table—for more than Wve years; nor am I able to state absolutely that she is other than a virgin, even granting that we have always lived in mutual benevolence and love.139

Troy immediately acted on his own initiative to receive Butler back into the church and to administer the last rites. Subsequent historians of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland have been much harsher on Butler, and have used his apostacy to imply that he was an ineVective bishop. However, as the most recent historian of the diocese has shown, Butler was an extremely eVective bishop, laying the foundations of a diocesan reform programme that his successors, Francis Moylan (1787–1815) and John Murphy (1815–47), were able to build on. The diocesan statutes published by Moylan in 1810 were those originally published by Butler in 1768 ‘virtually unchanged’.140 Butler was also unlucky to have received such a negative response to his predicament. In 1807 Cardinal Marinus Carafa di Belvedere was granted a dispensation to marry after his succession to a family princedom; his petition to the Holy See was, apart from the plea of ill-health, couched in almost exactly the same terms as Butler’s had been: ‘I am the sole surviving member of my family, and I believe the obligation rests on me to provide for and ensure its succession’.141 In his will Butler bequeathed estates to Maynooth College. The bequest was disputed by his surviving sister but a compromise was reached in 1809 whereby Maynooth agreed to receive only half the value of the bequest. It was used to enable outstanding Maynooth seminarians to remain for an additional period of further studies beyond the normal course.142 The scandal of 1786–7 may have been a factor in terminating the appointment of bishops from landed families, but the majority of bishops still came from comparatively prosperous backgrounds in either farming or trade. Bishops from farming families included James Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin (1819–34), Patrick MacGettigan of Raphoe (1820–61), Daniel Murray of Dublin (1823–52), William Crolly of Down and Connor (1825–35) and Armagh (1835–49), and Michael Slattery of Cashel (1834–57). Slattery had graduated in law at Trinity College, Dublin, before training for the priesthood at Carlow. Murray’s predecessor John Troy’s father had been a prosperous Dublin merchant who retired ‘to a modest estate of well over a hundred acres on the outskirts of Dublin’. John Murphy of Cork (1815–47) was a member of 139 127. 140 141 142

E. Bolster, A History of the Diocese of Cork from the Penal Era to the Famine, Cork 1989, Ibid., 87, 96, 116–28. Ibid., 129. P. J. Corish, Maynooth College 1795–1995, Dublin 1995, 54–5.

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the local brewing family and owned an extensive library of some hundred thousand volumes. A German visitor noted in 1842: The Roman Catholic bishop of Cork has one of the most interesting collections I have anywhere seen. This learned and industrious man has turned his whole house into a library. Not only his sitting rooms and dining rooms, but even in his bedroom every spare place is Wlled with books. His attendants and even his menial servants sleep in little libraries. The walls of his staircases and the corridors of his rooms are Wlled with books, up to the very garrets. This house contains the largest private collection of books to be found in Ireland and is rich in costly and interesting books.143

Another scholar was John Ryan of Limerick (1828–64), who was deeply read in contemporary philosophy and theology, including works by Anglican writers. Bartholomew Crotty of Cloyne and Ross (1833–46) was something of an exception in being the son of a weaver.144 One of the most distinctive features of the Roman Catholic episcopate by the second quarter of the nineteenth century was the growing number of appointees who had been educated at or on the staV of Maynooth College. By 1844 no fewer than nineteen of the twenty-seven bishops then in oYce had been educated at Maynooth. Of the remainder, Slattery of Cashel and Kinsella of Ossory had been educated at Carlow College. Only one of the six oldest bishops, Coen of Clonfert, had been in the Wrst batch of students at Maynooth, and the remainder had been educated abroad, at Lisbon, Paris, Rome, or Salamanca. Only one other bishop, O’Higgins of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, had been educated abroad.145 Several of the bishops had taught at Maynooth, as shown in Table 3.5. It was Maynooth’s alleged reputation for Gallicanism that deeply concerned the rector of the Irish College in Rome and future archbishop of Armagh and Dublin, Paul Cullen. In fact that reputation was greatly exaggerated, and was largely based on the undoubted Gallican sympathies of some of the e´migre´ French clergy who had been used to staV the college in its early years. Of these Pierre-Justin Delort, professor of natural philosophy, had returned to France in 1801, and his successor, Andre´ Darre´, did so in 1813. Louis-Gilles Delahogue (1739–1827) retired from the professorship of Dogmatic Theology in 1820, and François Anglade (1758–1834) retired from that of moral theology in 1828. John MacHale, who became Delahogue’s assistant in 1814 and later succeeded him, took the view that the college was never fully Gallican in attitude though it veered in that direction. Archbishop Curtis of Armagh (1819–32) defended the college against allegations of 143 Bolster, History, 237. 144 K. T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland 1832–1885, Oxford 1984, 176, 184–5; Kerr, Peel, 11–12, 16; Macaulay, Crolly, 2; McNally, Troy, 9. 145 Kerr, Peel, 7.


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Table 3.5. Former Maynooth staV who became Irish Roman Catholic bishops between 1814 and 1847 Bishop

Diocese (dates)

Position(s) held

James Browne

Kilmore (1827–65)

Junior Dean 1814, Professor of Scripture 1817 and Hebrew 1818

John Cantwell Thomas Coen William Crolly

Meath (1830–66) Clonfert (1815–47) Down and Connor (1825–35) and Armagh (1835–49)

Dean 1816–20 Dean 1801–10 Lecturer in Philosophy 1806 and Professor 1810

Bartholomew Crotty Cornelius Denvir

Cloyne and Ross (1833–46) Down and Connor (1835–65)

President 1813–33 Lecturer in Natural Philosophy 1814 and Professor 1815–25

John Derry Patrick Everard Thomas Kelly

Clonfert (1847–70) Cashel and Emly (1814–21) Dromore (1826–32) and Armagh (1832–5)

Junior Dean 1833–6 President 1810–12 Dean 1820, Professor of Theology 1825

John MacHale

Killala (1825–34) and Tuam (1834–81)

Assistant 1814, Professor of Dogmatic Theology 1820

Charles MacNally

Clogher (1843–64)

Professor of Philosophy 1815, Prefect of Dunboyne 1829

Patrick MacNicholas

Achonry (1818–52)

Lecturer in Classics 1806, Librarian and Professor of Philosophy 1812, President of Lay College 1815, Professor of Humanity 1817

William O’Higgins

Ardagh and Clonmacnois (1829–53)

Professor of Theology 1826

Michael Slattery

Cashel and Emly (1834–57)

President 1833–4

Source: Corish, Maynooth, 443–83.

Gallicanism and dismissed with amazement suggestions that it was ‘hostile to the Holy See’.146 It is important to emphasize that, although there was a signiWcant programme of diocesan reform in Ireland from the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there were still lapses from best practice in many dioceses until well into the nineteenth century. Diocesan chapters, where they existed, had no powers except to elect a vicar capitular to administer the diocese in a vacancy, so could not be used to provide assistance to the bishop, and in many 146 Corish, Maynooth, 81–2, 441, 451.

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dioceses virtually all executive authority was exercised by the bishop personally. When Bishop MacLaughlin of Derry had a complete mental breakdown in 1845 it was discovered that the diocese had no oYcials apart from the bishop.147 Bad relations between bishops and their clergy were not unknown, for example under Archbishop Blake at Armagh (1758–87) and Bishop Murphy at Clogher (1801–24). The complaints against Blake were that he charged ‘exorbitant Wnancial dues’ for visitations, ordinations, and clerical appointments and that he refused to reside in his diocese, preferring his family home at Carrowbrowne in County Mayo. He was brieXy suspended by the Holy See in 1776 but restored in the following year on condition that a coadjutor was appointed. Blake was not the only non-resident bishop. Bishop Kirwan of Achonry (1758–76) resided at Oranmore, in the wardenship of Galway, where he was the parish priest; his successor, Philip Phillips (1776–85), lived in the diocese but had also done so as bishop of Killala between 1760 and 1776. Phillips’ successor at Killala, Alexander Irwin (1776–9), was a parish priest in the diocese of Elphin, and his successor at Achonry, Boetius Egan (1785–7), lived in the diocese of Tuam, to which he was translated in 1787, despite holding mensal parishes at Achonry and Ballaghaderreen in his own diocese. Bishop Sweetman of Ferns (1745–86) had a reputation for nepotism, appointing many of his relatives to key positions in his diocese; Bishop Delany of Kildare and Leighlin (1787–1814) frequently failed to carry out long-advertised visitations; and Bishop O’Connor of Achonry (1788–1803) was rebuked by Propaganda in 1792 for submitting a relatio status so brief that it comprised a single page signed by the fourteen canons of the diocese.148 The potential eVectiveness of the bishop was to some extent compromised by the smallness of episcopal incomes, which were not greatly in excess of those of many parish priests. The bishops derived their incomes from holding one or more mensal parishes, for which they had to Wnd and pay a curate, from an annual levy on the clergy and from fees for marriage licences. In 1801 the average annual episcopal income was about £300, but they ranged from Cork (£550) and Cashel and Emly (£450) at the top end of the scale to Clonfert (£116) and Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora (£100) at the bottom. Some bishops like Bellew of Killala (1780–1812) and MacMahon of Killaloe (1765–1807) relied heavily on their private incomes. By 1825 no diocese in the 147 Connolly, Priests and People, 31–2; D. J. Keenan, The Catholic Church in Nineteenth Century Ireland: A Sociological Study, Dublin 1983, 53–4. 148 Connolly, Priests and People, 68–9; O. P. RaVerty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983: An Interpretative History, London 1994, 83–4; Swords, Hidden Church, 305, 310–11, 313–14, 316, 320–1; K. Whelan, ‘The Catholic Community in Eighteenth-Century County Wexford’, in Endurance and Emergence, 161.


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province of Armagh was worth less than £500 a year and Meath was worth £700, and by the 1840s the annual income of the bishop of Kerry was £1,300.149 Even after the reforms of 1833 no Church of Ireland bishop had an annual income of less than £2,000 (see Table 2.2 above). Reforming bishops endeavoured to move their mensal parishes to more central locations in their dioceses and to live near them. As bishop of Down and Connor, William Crolly had transferred his mensal parish from Downpatrick to Belfast, though as archbishop of Armagh he continued the practice of his predecessors in holding the widely separated parishes of Armagh and Drogheda, residing for part of each year in each parish.150 The most serious problems to occur in any diocese during the whole period 1770–1850 were at Killala following the translation of John MacHale to Tuam in 1834. MacHale had eVectively bullied the clergy of his former diocese to place the name of Francis Joseph O’Finan, a Dominican friar, at the head of the terna. O’Finan was consecrated but almost immediately upset his clergy by appointing one of the most unpopular priests in the diocese as vicargeneral, and removing a priest appointed by MacHale from the parish of Crossmolina in favour of another whom MacHale regarded as mentally unstable. MacHale considered it his right as provincial to support the clergy of his former diocese against O’Finan. Propaganda appointed Archbishop Crolly of Armagh to act as mediator, but he came down in favour of MacHale and against O’Finan. O’Finan was then told by Propaganda that he must replace his vicar-general, but he refused. At the same time he took legal action against the editor of the Mayo Telegraph for publishing criticisms of him and won, even though evidence was given against him by both Crolly and MacHale. Propaganda was told that O’Finan was bringing the church into disrepute and that a coadjutor must be appointed from outside the diocese of Killala. In 1838 Propaganda instructed O’Finan not to visit his diocese and authorized Archbishop Murray of Dublin to appoint an administrator. When O’Finan died in Rome in 1847 the administrator, Thomas Feeny, succeeded him as bishop.151 Crolly was also involved in resolving one of the other intractable problems of the Irish Roman Catholic Church, the wardenship of Galway. This comprised a small group of parishes in and adjacent to Galway which had the status of a prelacy nullius, governed by a priest with episcopal authority but without episcopal consecration. ConWrmations and ordinations were normally carried out by the archbishop of Tuam but he had very limited rights of visitation and 149 Connolly, Priests and People, 51–2; Kerr, Peel, 15; Hoppen, Elections, 226. 150 Macaulay, Crolly, 93, 229. 151 Whyte, ‘Bishops’, 19; Macaulay, Crolly, 246–60.

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was unable eVectively to discipline clergy within the wardenship. The position of warden was elective, the electors comprising the priests of the wardenship and certain lay families, known as ‘the tribes’. Since 1782 there had been disputes over the election of wardens, mostly caused by arguments over which families had the right to participate in the election. Bishops Crolly of Down and Connor and Kelly of Dromore were appointed to investigate the status of the wardenship and recommended its erection into a new diocese of Galway provided the Wrst bishop was not local.152 George Joseph Plunkett Browne was consecrated as the Wrst bishop of Galway on 23 October 1831. The most important step taken by the Irish Roman Catholic bishops was the holding of regular meetings of the hierarchy. These had begun as provincial synods in Tuam in 1752, and were copied in the provinces of Armagh from 1757 and Cashel from 1775. The Wrst meeting of all four archbishops took place in Dublin in 1788 and thereafter at regular intervals, the initiative coming from the new archbishop of Dublin, John Thomas Troy. The archbishops used their Wrst meeting to lobby Propaganda for relaxation of the Lenten discipline, the revocation of the major excommunication of freemasons and permission for the recitation of the oYce of the Most Holy Rosary on the Wrst Sunday of October, none of which Propaganda was minded to grant. In 1793 Wve of the suVragan bishops were invited to attend these meetings for the Wrst time and the Wrst meeting of all the bishops took place in 1795.153 Propaganda viewed these meetings with some alarm, fearing: that they might become a focus for Gallican ideas . . . although decisions were not binding on the bishops, a coordinated policy emerged which increased their authority with their clergy and faithful . . . These meetings were an outward sign of the reorganisation taking place within the church as the bishops strove to instil greater unity of practice and to bring the Irish church into line with the international church.154

From 1823 these meetings became annual events, usually held in Dublin but occasionally at Maynooth; there were two meetings in 1841 and 1844, and three in 1845; they were normally chaired by Archbishop Murray of Dublin, but occasionally by the archbishop of Armagh. From 1827 the meetings received regular reports, either by letter or in person, from the rector of the Irish College in Rome.155 In 1829, on the proposal of Bishop Doyle of Kildare 152 Keenan, Catholic Church, 48–9; Macaulay, Crolly, 126–8; see also M. Coen, The Wardenship of Galway, Galway 1984. 153 S. Cannon, Irish Episcopal Meetings, 1788–1882, Rome 1979, 41–3, 46–50, 58, 113–15. 154 Kerr, Peel, 3 155 Cannon, Episcopal Meetings, 60, 62, 113–15.


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2. Daniel Murray, Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin 1823–52.

and Leighlin, the bishops requested the Pope to reduce the number of holy days on which servile work was not permitted. The Pope consented to abolish the holy days on Easter and Whit Mondays, to permit servile work but to retain compulsory attendance at mass on the feast of St John the Baptist, but not suppress the feast of the Annunciation as a full holy day. In this last case the bishops had voted very narrowly, ten to nine, in favour of suppression. The bishops were extremely unhappy over the John the Baptist compromise, fearing that it would bring the feast into disrepute, with the laity going to work but not attending mass. Doyle, Murray, and Archbishop Curtis of Armagh refused to implement the arrangement and in 1831 the Pope agreed to abolish this holy day. Doyle continued to press for the abolition of further holy days—the Annunciation, Ascension, Circumcision, and St Peter and St

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Paul—but the hierarchy remained divided over these and no further requests were made for their abolition.156 By about 1840 the meetings of the bishops started to become much more divisive. This was largely the result of the lack of consensus on the government’s educational reforms and the disruptive presence of Archbishop MacHale of Tuam.157 MacHale was a maverick who ‘cannot resign himself to thinking like his colleagues, and . . . even changes his own opinions when they come to be adopted by others, so as to remain always in opposition’.158 The British government had tried to block his translation to Tuam in 1834, but MacHale had made a good impression in Rome and even Murray, who became the principal object of MacHale’s anger in the 1840s, had supported it.159 Propaganda’s desire to end the feuding between the Irish bishops was Wnally granted by the lack of agreement over the appointment to the archbishopric of Armagh following the death of William Crolly in 1849. There were three candidates on the terna. Joseph Dixon, professor of scripture at Maynooth had received twenty-six votes; Michael Kiernan, parish priest of Dundalk, and John O’Hanlon, prefect of Dunboyne at Maynooth, twelve votes each. The situation was further complicated by the fact that most of Dixon’s votes had come from priests in Co. Armagh, whereas those for Kiernan and O’Hanlon had come from priests in Co. Louth. Of the seven bishops in the province able to vote, MacLaughlin of Derry being by now completely insane, four voted for O’Hanlon and three for Dixon; however, one of O’Hanlon’s supporters, Bishop Blake of Dromore, had taken some time to make up his mind. Archbishop Murray of Dublin supported Dixon; Archbishops MacHale of Tuam and Slattery of Cashel supported O’Hanlon. Slattery, however, suggested the rector of the Irish College in Rome, Paul Cullen, with whom he had, as his surviving correspondence shows, formed a close friendship over the years, as a possible alternative and both MacHale and Murray indicated that they would be happy with his appointment. Had they been fully aware of Cullen’s attitude to church government they would, almost certainly, not have done so. Propaganda, who were fully aware, seized the opportunity to appoint an archbishop that they could rely on to impose his will on the other Irish bishops and put an end to the much more democratic approach to church government that had been adopted by successive archbishops of Armagh and Dublin. But, as Donal Kerr has pointed out, ‘had the 156 T. G. McGrath, ‘Religion, Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of James Doyle, OSA, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1819–1834’, National University of Ireland (University College, Dublin), PhD 1987, 334–6. 157 Cannon, Episcopal Meetings, 64–5. 158 Kerr, Peel, 23. 159 Ibid., 24–5.


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Armagh bishops made a clear choice of any one candidate, the question of appointing Cullen would not have arisen’.160 Cullen has, in the past, been credited with much of the transformation of the character of the Irish Roman Catholic Church in the nineteenth century, and it is important to make clear what should be credited to him and what should not. Recent research by historians of Irish Roman Catholicism has shown that the devotional and pastoral revolution in Ireland, which Emmet Larkin attributed largely to Cullen’s inXuence,161 was well under way many years before his appointment. Nevertheless Cullen was still immensely critical of many Irish bishops in oYce in 1849. Writing to Propaganda in 1851 Cullen expressed the opinion that, within his own province of Armagh, only Bishops MacNally of Clogher, Blake of Dromore and Cantwell of Meath, together with the new coadjutor bishop at Derry, Francis Kelly, ‘fulWl their duties admirably’. He expressed no opinion on Browne of Kilmore, but he was not impressed by O’Higgins of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, Denvir of Down and Connor or Patrick MacGettigan of Raphoe. O’Higgins: shuts himself up for months at a time in his house, and receives no one, either priest or layman. I believe he is letting himself be conquered by drink, and his diocese is greatly neglected.

Denvir was criticized for not having carried out a visitation of his diocese for seven years and for maintaining only four priests in Belfast for a Roman Catholic population of at least 50,000. MacGettigan was ‘aged . . . has been through this town [Armagh] in a state of intoxication, and is also given to talking rather injudiciously’. In the province of Tuam ‘there are three bishops who do nothing at all’. MacNicholas of Achonry was about 80 (he was in fact 70) and had been ill for three or four years and was ‘even a little feeble-minded at intervals’. O’Donnell of Galway was ‘an old man utterly without activity. In that diocese there have been many apostates.’ The important parish of Oughterard, where four hundred had apostatized, had been without a parish priest for two years, and the two curates were ‘not at all Wtted to stand up to the protestant missionaries who are perverting the poor people’. French of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, was also old and inWrm, and ‘has scruples about his baptism. He was of Protestant family, and after his conversion he was ordained priest and then bishop without receiving conditional baptism in the Catholic church.’ He had not carried out a diocesan visitation for Wfteen years, though 160 D. A. Kerr, ‘A Nation of Beggars?’ Priests People and Politics in Famine Ireland 1846–1852, Oxford 1994, 219–21; Whyte, ‘Bishops’, 22–3. 161 E. Larkin, ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875’, American Historical Review, lxxvii (1972), 625–52.

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Bishop Derry of Clonfert had recently undertaken one on his behalf. Cullen wanted to translate Derry ‘to some more important see, and to make him administrator of the diocese of Galway’.162 Cullen was also very critical of Archbishop Murray, ‘whose demise he awaited with impatience’.163 Yet Cullen’s background had, in some respects, been remarkably similar to many of his episcopal contemporaries. He had been born in 1803 into a wellto-do Irish farming family and educated under Bishop Doyle at Carlow College before moving to Rome, where he was ordained in 1829. He was then appointed professor of Greek and oriental languages at the College of Propaganda, and became rector of the Irish College in 1832. What made Cullen diVerent from the other Irish bishops was his long absence from Ireland and his undiluted admiration for the most radical forms of Ultramontanism within the Roman Catholic Church, with their desire to increase the power of the papacy and to reduce divergences between the national churches. This movement, as well as increasing the power of the papacy, also increased the power of the Pope’s national representatives over the other bishops, and this is certainly what Cullen achieved in Ireland. He used the opportunity of episcopal vacancies to inXuence the appointment of clergy who supported his views. The Wrst of these was William Keene, appointed to Ross after its separation from Cloyne in 1850, and translated to Cloyne in 1857. He applied the same principles at the Ardagh and Clonmacnois vacancy in 1853. This was a diocese where, according to Cullen, there were no religious orders, no secondary schools, no spiritual exercises for the clergy for the past eighteen years, and no theological conferences for the past four. Many clergy drank too much and there was regular preaching in only twelve out of forty parishes. Thereafter Cullen’s inXuence in the appointment of bishops was normal.164 By 1860 fourteen diocesan bishops had been replaced and by 1870 a further seven. Only Delany of Cork and the redoubtable MacHale outlived Cullen. Cullen also used the opportunity of the Synod of Thurles in 1850 to abolish the regular meetings of the bishops, with the full support of Propaganda. Although Cullen is normally given the credit for summoning that synod it had in fact been planned, some time before his appointment, at the bishops’ meeting of 1848. It is also important to recognize that Cullen’s principal determination at the synod was to resolve the issue of the ‘godless colleges’, over which the bishops had agonized since they were Wrst proposed by the British government in 1845. These colleges, to be established at Belfast, Cork, and Galway, were designed to provide an extension of university education in 162 Whyte, ‘Bishops’, 24–5. 163 Kerr, Nation of Beggars, 314. 164 Ibid., 315; Whyte, ‘Bishops’, 25–7.


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Ireland beyond the narrow Church of Ireland conWnes of Trinity College, Dublin. They were to be free from religious tests and without theological faculties, though there was provision for the establishment of religious halls of residence and the teaching of theology to be Wnanced from private endowments. Papal rescripts were issued, denouncing these colleges, in 1847 and 1848, though some of the more traditionally minded bishops, such as Crolly and Murray, had supported them.165 The Synod of Thurles was attended by all four archbishops and twenty bishops. Egan of Kerry, MacNicholas of Achonry, and French of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora did not attend and were represented by proxies. The superiors of all the religious orders in Ireland were also present but of these only Bruno Fitzpatrick, the mitred abbot of Mount Melleray, was allowed a vote. Cullen was appointed apostolic delegate so that he, rather than Murray, could chair the synod. The vote to support the papal rescripts on the colleges, forbidding the clergy from holding oYce in them and discouraging the Roman Catholic laity from attending them, was passed by the narrowest of margins. The bishops and archbishops present divided twelve–twelve, but two of the proxies and the abbot of Mount Melleray voted to condemn the colleges. Later Cullen persuaded Egan’s proxy, who had voted to recognize the colleges, to change his mind.166 The other measures agreed at Thurles were, as far as Cullen was concerned, of secondary importance and consisted largely of implementing throughout all the Irish dioceses the disciplinary regulations that reforming bishops had been implementing within their own dioceses since the early years of the nineteenth century: the reduction of stations for confession and mass in private houses, the transfer of baptisms and marriages from private houses to churches, Lenten observance, clerical dress, and so on. Later on Cullen and his allies among the Irish bishops were able to gain eVective control of the theological training at Maynooth, though their eVorts to set up a Catholic University in opposition to the ‘godless colleges’ were a spectacular failure. It was also pressure from Cullen and his supporters which Wnally persuaded Gladstone’s government to introduce a bill for the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869.167 MacHale, who had been the champion of a more militant Roman Catholicism under Murray, now became a defender of outdated attitudes to diocesan management under Cullen: accounts of the condition of Tuam in the late 1870s recall the problems encountered elsewhere forty years before: priests engaged in factional squabbles; preaching, 165 Useful note in The Oxford Companion to Irish History, ed. S. J. Connolly, Oxford 1998, 469–70. 166 Kerr, Nation of Beggars, 223–7. 167 P. J. Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey, Dublin 1985, 194–201.

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supervision of local schools and other pastoral functions widely neglected; the best parishes monopolised by relatives of the archbishop.168

This, like Cullen’s criticisms of his episcopal colleagues in 1851, may have been an exaggeration comparable with Archbishop Stuart’s comments on some of his Church of Ireland colleagues in the Wrst decade of the nineteenth century, but it is certainly true that MacHale endeavoured to keep, not just his diocese but, as far as he could, his province as well, a Cullen-free zone. Cullen’s triumph was, however, only too clearly conWrmed when he was translated to succeed Murray at Dublin in 1852 and, at the same time, appointed perpetual apostolic legate, thus making him senior to the new primate in Armagh.169 The Cullen revolution, though, was more a revolution of tone than of substance, but its impact both on the Irish Roman Catholic Church and on ecumenical relations in Ireland was such that it continued to set the agenda for his successors for the best part of a century after his death in 1878. Although many of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland in the eight decades prior to the Synod of Thurles could be classed as reformers, some are better documented than others. Three well-known reformers who have been the subject of signiWcant study in recent years have been Frances Moylan of Kerry and Cork, James Warren Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, and William Crolly of Down and Connor and Armagh. Their contribution to the Irish diocesan reform programme is considered in three of the subsections below. The fourth deals with James Murphy of Clogher, not one of the most well-known of diocesan reformers but one whose reform programme was to lead to massive disruption within his own diocese which spilled over more generally to create an atmosphere of concern amongst the bishops of the province of Armagh.

Bishop Francis Moylan One of the earliest of the Roman Catholic diocesan reformers was Francis Moylan, who was consecrated bishop of Kerry in 1775 and translated to Cork, in the diYcult circumstances following John Butler’s resignation, in 1787. In his relatio status of 1785 Moylan reported that, as bishop of Kerry, he had built new churches at Tralee and Killarney, the largest towns in his diocese, ‘bigger than those of the Protestants . . . and had installed confessionals in them’. The diocese had eighty-four churches, forty-one parish priests, and twenty-three curates; ‘some of these churches are recently built, spacious and not without 168 Connolly, Priests and People, 73. 169 Kerr, Nation of Beggars, 310.


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some beauty: in the remaining churches . . . there is to be seen that amount of order and cleanliness which the impoverished circumstances of this area make possible’. Moylan noted that he preached in every parish he visited, and that he had conducted three full visitations of his diocese, aiming to visit each parish every second year, annual visitation being impossible ‘on account of the mountains and bogs’. He had called two diocesan synods and proposed to call a third; there was also an annual meeting of the clergy at Tralee. All the clergy resided in their parishes and kept registers. Mass was celebrated in each parish on every Sunday and holy day. The clergy were generally men of ‘upright morals and good example’, though a few fell short. There were conferences in moral theology every month from April to October. The diocese had two Franciscans and two Dominicans, but no nuns, no seminary, and no endowed schools. There was a general problem in the diocese in relation to drunkenness, factionalism, and the violation of Sundays, feasts and fasts, but he had endeavoured to tighten discipline in these areas. Moylan had moved the episcopal residence and his mensal parish from Tralee to Killarney, partly because it was more central for the diocese and partly to please Viscount Kenmare, the town’s Roman Catholic landlord and the patron of the church there. He stated that he thought ‘the exercise of religion will be sustained by greater liberty here, and with the assistance of the above mentioned man I have the shining hope that it will be possible for me to establish in that town certain institutions, which will be of proWt to clergy and people’.170 As bishop of Cork, Moylan urged his clergy to catechize regularly and to have public recitation of the rosary on weekday evenings in Lent. In his relatio status for 1802, Moylan stated that the diocese had thirty parishes including the cathedral in Cork, which was his mensal parish. There were six priests attached to the cathedral and ten other parishes had curates. All the clergy except two were of good behaviour. He had built one new church in Cork and seventeen in the rest of the diocese including those in the Wve principal towns: Bandon, Bantry, Kinsale, Dunmanway, and Passage West. Catechetical assistants had been appointed in the rural parishes, under the supervision of the parish priests, to catechize in both English and Irish. A Confraternity of Christian Doctrine had been established and this now had branches in many parishes. The cathedral and the two parish churches in Cork had sermons on all Sundays and holy days with Solemn Vespers and Benediction at 6 p.m. There were four communities of friars in Cork and one in Kinsale, and three convents of nuns in Cork. Several parochial schools had been 170 J. P. O’Farrell, ‘Francis Moylan, 1735–1835: A Bishop of the Resurgence’, National University of Ireland (University College, Cork), MA 1973, 50–3; K. O’Shea, ‘Bishop Moylan’s Relatio Status, 1785’, Journal of Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, vii (1974), 21–36.

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founded, for some 800 poor boys and orphans, and a new parochial house built for the cathedral clergy. A Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception had also been established at the cathedral. There had been two full visitations of the diocese since Moylan’s translation, and some parishes had been visited four or Wve times. Moylan had begun the building of the cathedral in 1799 and spared no expense in Wtting it out in an appropriate manner. The high altar and its elaborate tabernacle, cruciWx, candlesticks, altar cards, and missal stand, made in Lisbon by Italian craftsmen, cost £600: Two kneeling angels graced the columns on either side of the tabernacle door. Each supported in one hand a chandelier . . . and in the other hand each carried a palm branch intertwined with ears of corn, vine leaves and grapes. The palm branches united to form a canopy for Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.171

Behind the altar was a Madonna and Child ‘painted by an eminent Roman master’. The completed cathedral was dedicated by Moylan on 22 August 1808 in the presence of Archbishop Troy of Dublin, himself a leading reformer who had established diocesan conferences as bishop of Ossory in 1780, and produced a diocesan scale of fees and oVerings to be used by the clergy which regulated payments on a sliding scale related to the ability of people to pay, and the bishops of Cloyne and Ross, Ferns, Kildare and Leighlin, Killala, Limerick, and Waterford and Lismore. Moylan used the new cathedral as a venue for several lecture series designed to provide a better understanding of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice. In 1813 he established a diocesan college for the education of candidates for holy orders, but this was not very successful. By 1819 there were only twenty-two students and no professors of philosophy, theology, or humanities. Bishop Murphy decided that the college should be closed when the last student had completed his studies there, and this took place in 1821.172

Bishop James Murphy Bishop James Murphy of Clogher, who died at the age of 80 in 1824, is commemorated by the following inscription on his memorial tablet at St Mary’s, Scotstown: He was a prelate of unshaken Wrmness, of inXexible integrity, of laborious zeal, the vigilant and faithful guardian of the rights and disciplines of his church. What by a discreet economy he could spare of his income was by him devoted to charitable 171 Galloway, Cathedrals, 63. 172 O’Farrell, ‘Frances Moylan’, 117–19, 139, 215; Bolster, History, 166–7, 171–6, 186–92, 256; D. Keogh, The French Disease: The Catholic Church and Irish Radicalism, 1790–1800, Dublin 1993, 9–10.


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purposes, to the building of chapels and to the founding of burses for the support and education of students for the mission of the diocess [sic] of Clogher.

Murphy had been consecrated as coadjutor to his predecessor, Hugh O’Reilly, in 1798, succeeding him in 1801. Whilst Moylan had succeeded in imposing his reform agenda on the dioceses of Kerry and Cork, Murphy was to face implacable opposition to his reforms from a section of his own diocesan clergy. In 1812, Murphy, dismayed by the low educational standards of some of his clergy, arranged for nine priests to be formally examined in Newtownbutler.173 In the following year there were protests, including one to the Prefect of Propaganda, about Murphy’s attempts to impose a total ban on the consumption of alcohol under the pain of mortal sin. It was alleged that this was preventing the laity from going to confession, and it was questioned whether Murphy had the power to have acted as he did, or whether this was a matter on which the laity should be able to follow the dictates of their consciences.174 One of those leading these protests was Michael Maginn, the parish priest of Clontibret (Co. Monaghan), and Murphy responded by suspending him from duty on a charge of alleged parochial maladministration, refusing to reinstate him when the charge could not be proved.175 Maginn appealed to Pope Pius VII. The Wnal draft of this appeal document contains a whole series of allegations against Murphy by Maginn. It was alleged that Murphy had appointed his nephew, Patrick Bellew, as professor of theology and philosophy at the diocesan seminary, even though he was below the age to receive priest’s orders, and that when the seminary had broken up, Maginn had received Bellew into his own parish where, having now been ordained priest, he proceeded to act as if he, rather than Maginn, was the parish priest, stirring up the parishioners against him. One woman in the parish was persuaded to accuse Maginn of having had a child by her ten years previously. Maginn alleged that the judicial process was improperly carried out and that Murphy had refused to listen to evidence that disproved the allegations or accept a petition from the vast majority of Maginn’s parishioners attesting to his innocence. He also alleged that Bellew had caused trouble in other parishes, in one case physically attacking another priest and causing him serious injuries.176 Maginn suggested in his appeal that, though Archbishop O’Reilly of Armagh had not intervened to overturn his suspension, he had expressed his sympathy with Maginn and urged Murphy to exercise leniency. However, O’Reilly’s correspondence indicates that, whilst he did not fully support 173 174 175 176

PRONI, DIO (RC) 1/4A/2. PRONI, DIO (RC) 1/4B/5–6. PRONI, DIO (RC) 1/4B/7. PRONI, DIO (RC) 1/4B/13.

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Murphy’s brand of clerical discipline, he disapproved of the attacks that had been made on him by some of his clergy. On 15 March 1814, two months before Maginn submitted his formal appeal to Rome, O’Reilly wrote to his own vicar-general, Henry Conwell: I lament sincerely the situation of things in Clogher, where religion is likely to receive a deep wound from the scandalous contentions which prevail between a faction of the clergy and their bishop. The refractory members of the clergy talk of Dr Murphy’s severity, despotism, &c, but I fear much they have done a great deal to provoke him and try his patience. Why should Revd. Mr Campbell withhold his dues from him. Why should Mr Goodwin publickly charge Friar [Mc]Mahon with a breach of the seal of c[onfession]. Dr Murphy gave me a copy of the depositions of the trial of the former in which the penitent solemnly and on oath declared [Mc]Mahon’s innocence of that charge. Surely a priest that would falsely and maliciously accuse a brother of so heinous a crime deserves to be most severely dealt with. Dr Murphy sentenced G[oodwin] to a year’s suspension. The latter appealed to me, and the Doctor writes to me that a priest of that faction lately said that if I would not receive the appeal one of my vicars would. In my answer I assured him that all my vicars know their duty better than to interfere in my metropolitan jurisdiction without being specially commissioned by me. Where these contentions will end God only knows.177

A year later he expressed his continued concern about the conXict in the diocese of Clogher and the unlikelihood of its speedy resolution and in May 1816 he received a deputation of priests from the diocese complaining about their bishop and his nominee for appointment as his coadjutor.178 The nominee, Edward Kernan, was provided by the Pope in August 1816 but not consecrated, presumably because of the continued dispute in the diocese, until April 1818. Complaints against Kernan, parish priest of Enniskillen (Co. Fermanagh), and other clergy who supported the bishop, were contained in a draft statement dated May 1814.179 In August 1814 another priest, Philip Connolly, also appealed to Rome against Bishop Murphy. Connolly had been a student under Bellew in the temporary diocesan seminary at Monaghan and had complained that Patrick Bellew was not capable of carrying out the duties of professor, conWrming one of the statements by witnesses in the Maginn case that Bellew was ignorant of both Greek and Latin and only studied theology for eight months. As a result of his complaint Connolly had been refused ordination by Murphy but was later ordained by Bishop Derry of Dromore for the American Mission. He had, however, never gone there and was currently living in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. John Goodwin, parish priest of Clones, also appealed to 177 ADA, O’Reilly Correspondence, Item 204. 178 Ibid., Items 224 and 242. 179 PRONI, DIO (RC) 1/4B/17.


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Rome against Friar McMahon.180 In June 1816 a series of resolutions, signed by twenty-four priests in the diocese of Clogher, were presented in an eVort to heal the dispute in the diocese, though they clearly emanated from the antiepiscopal party, and were designed to prevent Murphy from nominating his own coadjutor, requesting rather that Archbishop O’Reilly should nominate somebody from outside the diocese to take on this role. However, there was some indication that the papacy was losing patience with Murphy; on 6 July 1816 a rescript was sent to him recommending that he should resolve the disputes in his diocese ‘with fatherly advice and leniency rather than with severity and censures’, and in February 1817 Bishop O’Reilly of Kilmore was given a commission to investigate the complaints against Murphy. In May 1818 a further rescript from Rome urged harmony between the bishop and his clergy, and a year later it was recorded that ‘the clergy of the diocese have got their long quarrel Wnished. They all submitted to Dr Murphy and Mr Kernan is chosen coadjutor . . . John McMahon, the Franciscan, has gone to Rome.’181

Bishop James Warren Doyle Whereas the clergy of Clogher had not accepted the Wrm discipline that Bishop Murphy had endeavoured to impose, Bishop Doyle was much more successful, to such an extent that the reforms he introduced in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin were incorporated in the Dublin provincial statutes of 1831 and formed the basis of much of the legislation approved at the Synod of Thurles in 1850. Doyle was born in 1786 and entered the Augustinian order in 1806, being sent to study at the order’s college at Coimbra in Portugal. He returned to the friary at New Ross in 1808 and was ordained priest in 1809. In 1813 he was appointed professor of rhetoric at St Patrick’s College, Carlow, and professor of theology there in the following year, becoming acting president in 1818. In 1819, at the exceptionally early age of 32, he was consecrated bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, having received strong support for his appointment from both the clergy of the diocese and the bishops of the province of Dublin.182 Doyle divided some of the larger parishes in his diocese to create new ones, established diocesan synods and instituted a system of visitation whereby Kildare parishes were visited in one year and Leighlin ones in the other. Two days were spent in visiting each parish, the Wrst being the inspection proper, for which a printed form had 180 PRONI, DIO (RC) 1/4B/15, 23, 35. 181 PRONI, DIO (RC) 1/4B/43–4, 46, 51–2. 182 McGrath, ‘James Doyle’, 8–47.

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been circulated beforehand, and the second being used for catechizing and conWrming. His conWrmation at Portarlington in 1820 was the Wrst since 1803 and over 900 candidates were presented. Doyle’s regulations for the observance of Lent speciWed only one meal and one collation each day and no Xesh meats. Eggs were permitted except on Fridays and the three days following Ash Wednesday and Wednesday in Holy Week. Only tradesmen, those employed in hard labour, ‘the poor whose ordinary diet was not good’, the aged and inWrm, pregnant and nursing women, and those under 21 were exempt from these stringent regulations. Doyle instituted theological conferences for his clergy, which met once a month between June and October; he endeavoured to attend as many of these as he could; attendance for the clergy was compulsory and absentees without a good excuse, such as illness, were Wned. Doyle also instituted six-day retreats for the clergy at Carlow College with parish priests and curates attending in alternate years. The diocesan statutes of 1820 laid down that all clergy were to dress in ‘black or blackish cloth’. It was Doyle’s practice at his visitations to burn unsuitable vestments and altar linen, and on one occasion he tore a ‘dirty chasuble . . . in two’ and informed the parishioners ‘that their priest would be unable to celebrate mass’ until a new chasuble had been obtained. In 1829 it was agreed that the clergy of Doyle’s diocese ‘should never appear at theatres, races, public hunts or balls’. He also insisted that all friars in his diocese ‘apart from the few on the mission should live monastic lifestyles. He was totally opposed to the strolling friar.’183 Doyle was particularly active in his encouragement of confraternities, Sunday schools, and chapel libraries. In 1824 it was noted that twenty-one parishes in the diocese had a total of 17,966 children attending Sunday schools, and Doyle himself claimed in 1825 that ‘I am sure there is no part of Ireland in which Sunday schools are more diligently attended to than in my diocese’. Chapel libraries were to be established as ‘an integral . . . aspect of his catechetical mission’. Doyle laid down in his 1821 pastoral letter rules for the management of these libraries, recommending books that should be acquired, and banning all works on politics, history, or science ‘unmixed with religion’ and books on ‘religious controversy’. Those at Portarlington (Co. Laois) were ‘purchased by voluntary subscription of the parishioners who had the use of them at one penny a month for each book’. Doyle’s pastoral instructions for Lent in 1821 recommended frequent confession and communion, advising that the ‘optimum age for Wrst confession was between seven and ten years’. 183 McGrath, ‘James Doyle’, 61, 66–7, 82, 87–9, 103, 138, 141–2, 149, 152–3, 197; see also J. W. Doyle, Pastoral Instructions for the Lent of 1825 Addressed to the Catholic Clergy and Laity of the Dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin, Carlow n.d.


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The diocesan statutes of the same year laid down that those omitting ‘their Easter duty through wilful neglect could not be admitted to any sacrament’ until they had completed an appropriate penance and not normally for at least six months after they had applied to confess their omission. Parishes were encouraged to hold weekday as well as Sunday masses and some thirteen were doing so, at least occasionally, by the 1830s; the new cathedral at Carlow had two masses every day. Parishes were also encouraged to introduce the service of vespers and a majority appear to have done so though it was usually said rather than sung. In his 1829 relatio status Doyle expressed his view that ‘the morals of the people are excellent and are each year more and more exemplary. There is no abuse prevailing which the ordinary authority cannot correct.’184 In the organization of his diocese Doyle was largely inXuenced by the contemporary Church of Ireland practice of reviving rural deaneries. He divided it into six rural deaneries, though this number was reduced to Wve in 1827 with the merger of the Ballon and Carlow deaneries, and he ‘normally communicated with his clergy through the rural deans. The rural dean was usually though not invariably appointed master of the theological conference in his deanery.’185 The one area in which Doyle, like other episcopal reformers in both the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church, experienced great diYculty, was in encouraging the laity to communicate more frequently. In 1821 only three parishes in the diocese had more than 400 monthly communicants. This number was, however, increased as a result of the establishment of confraternities, since the rules of such confraternities normally required their members to communicate monthly. The most popular confraternity was that of Christian Doctrine, established in the majority of the twenty-nine parishes visited by the bishop in 1821; several parishes also had a Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament and Wve one of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1829, thirty-seven parishes had a total of 7,795 fraternity members, though a few parishes, such as Naas (Co. Kildare) had yet to establish any. Even so the number of monthly communicants was rarely more than 15%, and frequently less than 10%, of the number of annual communicants performing their Easter duties.186 Doyle had greater success in the building of new churches, the establishment of Sunday schools and chapel libraries, and the keeping of parish registers. By 1829, ten years after his succession to the see, twenty-seven new churches had been built in the diocese 184 McGrath, ‘James Doyle’, 246–8, 261–3, 265–6, 273–4, 282, 290–1, 394. 185 Id., Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of Bishop James Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, 1786–1834, Dublin 1999, 37. 186 Ibid., 132, 231; McGrath, PhD Thesis, 294–5.

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of Kildare and Leighlin, twenty-two ‘rebuilt from their foundations and enlarged’, forty-two ‘greatly improved and enlarged’, and two new churches were being planned. A start had also been made on the new cathedral at Carlow which was to cost between £8,000 and £9,000. Only twelve churches in the diocese had had no major work done on them. Of the forty-Wve parishes in the diocese only four had no Sunday schools and eight no confraternities. All but six parishes had at least one chapel library and there were eighty-two such libraries altogether. Of these twenty-one had no more than 50 books, thirty between 51 and 100, and twenty-Wve between 101 and 200. However, six libraries had more than 200 books: Kildare 231, Monasterevan 298, Borris 309, Rathangan 336, Naas 350, and Carlow 360. Of the extant Roman Catholic parish registers in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin four do not begin until after Doyle’s death and twenty-one commence during his episcopate; of the twenty-three that were begun before Doyle was appointed no fewer than ten have signiWcant gaps for the years before 1819 and appear to have been restarted at various points between 1819 and 1825.187

Archbishop William Crolly Crolly belonged to that group of pre-Cullen bishops in Ireland who were deeply inXuenced by Doyle and his diocesan reform programme. Though slightly older than Doyle he did not become a bishop until 1825, having served since 1812 as the parish priest of Belfast, where he completed the building of St Patrick’s church, opened in 1815. By the time he was translated to Armagh in 1835 Crolly could claim to have, in a ten-year period, consecrated twenty-three new, rebuilt, or enlarged churches in his former diocese of Down and Connor, and report that a further ten churches were in the process of being built or improved. Crolly was keen that these new churches should be settings for a more elaborate celebration of the liturgy. A report in the Belfast Newsletter on 18 May 1830 noted that: To Protestants the most singular part of the service was the ceremony of high Mass, in which Dr Crolly, R. C. Bishop of Down, and two other clergymen, oYciated in the gorgeous canonicals of their order, with crosier [sic], incense, etc., etc. Some Wve passages were admirably executed by a select choir, the whole having a splendid and imposing eVect.

Crolly, however, unlike MacHale or Cullen, was no triumphalist and his ecumenical gestures were appreciated by the Protestants who, almost 187 McGrath, Religious Renewal, 57, 64, 219–30.


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uniquely in Ireland, formed a majority of the population of the diocese. He participated in inter-denominational charitable initiatives and he attended Protestant services on special occasions, such as the installation of the new minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Belfast in 1832. The day schools which he established in Belfast for both boys and girls were attended by Protestant as well as Roman Catholic children.188 As archbishop of Armagh Crolly repaired the church of one of his mensal parishes, St Peter’s at Drogheda, in 1838, and laid the foundation stone of the proposed new cathedral in his other mensal parish, Armagh, in 1840. In 1846 he stated that over the previous eleven years he had opened seventeen new churches in the diocese and a further Wve were nearing completion. The largest of the new churches was that at Dundalk, opened in 1842, which cost £20,000.189 By the late 1830s all the archbishoprics, and many of the bishoprics, in Ireland were in the hands of committed reformers: Daniel Murray at Dublin, Michael Slattery at Cashel, John MacHale at Tuam, and William Crolly, the last three all appointed within a few months of each other in 1834–5. Whilst they were divided in their political attitudes—Murray and Crolly were conservatives, Slattery and MacHale were radicals—their pastoral agendas were very similar and they comprised the adoption of the reform programmes that Doyle had pioneered at Kildare and Leighlin, following in the footsteps of even earlier reformers such as Francis Moylan. They were to be implemented throughout Ireland as a result of the measures agreed at the Synod of Thurles in 1850. In that sense this synod should be seen as the end of an era, the culmination of a reform programme of long standing, rather than the Wrst blast of a new era dominated by the future Cardinal Cullen even if, in another sense, it was that as well.

THE PRESBYTERIAN LEADERSHIP The nature of Presbyterian church government meant that there was no real equivalent of the supervisory role exercised over individual clergy and laity by the bishops of the Church of Ireland or the Roman Catholic Church. Presbyterian church government was essentially more democratic, with power being exercised by congregations over their ministers, and with the governing bodies of the Presbyterian churches determining doctrine rather than religious practice. Nevertheless, it was the case that for the best part of forty years, 188 Macaulay, Crolly, 9, 14, 94, 99, 132. The quotation is on p. 99. 189 Ibid., 230–2, 235.

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from about 1830 until his death in 1868, the dominant voice of Irish Presbyterianism, or certainly that within Ulster where most Irish Presbyterians lived, was that of Henry Cooke, minister of the May Street Congregation in Belfast. Cooke’s rise to prominence, however, can only really be understood in the light of developments within Irish Presbyterianism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Presbyterianism operated: a system in which congregations chose their own ministers, and in which ultimate authority was with a Synod representing all clergy equally and also a section of the laity, [and] did more to ensure that individuals did their duty, and that neglect and abuse of oYce was eVectively dealt with, than the rigidly hierarchical structures of the Church of Ireland and the [Roman] Catholic Church.190

Religious revival and reform among Presbyterians was therefore not seen primarily as relating to matters of ecclesiastical discipline ‘but rather in matters of doctrinal orthodoxy’. Those Presbyterians who regarded the Synod of Ulster as insuYciently orthodox had broken away to form the Secession Synod in the 1720s, though relations remained good and ministers of the two synods continued to exchange pulpits. There was also a small body of even stricter Reformed Presbyterians, known sometimes as Covenanters or Cameronians.191 A major problem within Irish Presbyterianism was the fact that its ministers, who were prevented by religious tests from attending Trinity College, Dublin, were almost all educated at one of the Scottish universities, usually Edinburgh or Glasgow. In the middle decades of the eighteenth century candidates for the Irish Presbyterian ministry formed almost a third of the student body at Glasgow. The cost of educating the clergy was a cause of resentment on the part of those, families or congregations, who had to meet the cost. Irish students were heavily inXuenced by the doctrinal debates within Scottish Presbyterianism with the result that these doctrinal divisions were exported to Ireland,192 ‘even when the point of division in Scotland had no equivalent cause in Ireland’. However, the number of secessionist congregations was never that large with only about forty in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.193 Presbyterianism, like all branches of European Protestantism, was as strongly inXuenced by rationalism as it was by pietism or Evangelicalism in 190 S. J. Connolly, Religion and Society in Nineteenth Century Ireland, Dundalk 1985, 15. 191 Ibid., 16. 192 G. Walker, Intimate Strangers: Political and Cultural Reaction between Scotland and Ulster in Modern Times, Edinburgh 1995; for a major study of Scottish ministerial training at this time, see J. C. Whytock, ‘The History and Development of Scottish Theological Education and Training, Kirk and Secession (c.1560–c.1850)’, Lampeter, Wales, PhD 2001. 193 D. N. Hempton and M. Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740–1890, London 1992, 16–17.


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the middle and later years of the eighteenth century. By the 1770s only four presbyteries in the Synod of Ulster required their ministers to subscribe to the Westminster Confession and there were a growing number of both clergy and laity with suspected Arian (also labelled Socinian or Unitarian) views. Such views were most likely to be found among the wealthiest Presbyterian congregations: of the eleven congregations which paid their ministers a stipend of more than a hundred pounds, only two were theologically orthodox; of the twenty congregations that paid their ministers between seventy and a hundred pounds, about half were orthodox; of the remaining 150 congregations the vast bulk were orthodox.194 It was this background of growing theological liberalism, aligned in some cases with the political radicalism noted in the previous chapter, that resulted in the Evangelical backlash of the early nineteenth century. In the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion the synod’s leaders were as anxious to demonstrate their political loyalty as the British government were to secure it by integrating Presbyterianism more Wrmly within the Protestant establishment. The result was a negotiation whereby the government proposed a reorganization of the regium donum paid to the Presbyterian clergy. Previously a lump sum had been paid to the Synod of Ulster which had distributed it evenly among the clergy. The new arrangement involved the direct payment of Presbyterian ministers according to the size and wealth of their congregations, provided they took an oath of loyalty. Although the Synod agreed to the arrangement, many individual ministers were outraged by a scheme which failed to preserve parity between ministers and smacked so strongly of erastianism. The fact that its major supporters were theological liberals was, also, not without signiWcance.195 It was during the negotiations over the revised regium donum that Henry Cooke, the son of a small farmer in County Derry, entered Glasgow University in 1802. He left without a degree in 1806 and two years later was ordained as coadjutor minister of Duneane (Co. Antrim). In 1811 he was called to the charge of Donegore (Co. Antrim), but spent further periods of study at Glasgow in 1815–17 and Dublin in 1817–18. It was whilst he was in Dublin that he was strongly inXuenced by the Evangelicalism of the two ministers of the Mary’s Abbey congregation. In 1818 he moved from Donegore to the charge of Killyleagh (Co. Down).196 The event that made Cooke a national Wgure was the dispute over the appointment of a divinity professor to the Belfast Academical Institution in 1821. The institution had been established in 194 I. R. McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century, Oxford 1998, 57–8. 195 P. Brooke, ‘Controversies in Ulster Presbyterianism, 1790–1836’, Cambridge, PhD 1980, 128, 132; see also McBride, Scripture Politics, 211–13. 196 R. F. G. Holmes, Henry Cooke, Belfast 1981, 1–12.

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3. Henry Cooke (1788–1868), minister of the May Street Presbyterian church in Belfast from 1829.

1814 and concluded an agreement with the Synod of Ulster whereby the synod appointed the divinity professors. The advantage to the synod was that it would now be possible for Irish Presbyterian clergy to be trained in Ireland rather than Scotland. In all other respects the Belfast Academical Institution was interdenominational and ‘its curriculum was primarily secular, accommodating both the latitudinarian and orthodox wings of Presbyterianism, but, in its secularity, naturally favouring the former’.197 In 1821, a reported Arian, William Bruce, was appointed to the chair of Hebrew and Greek. Cooke strongly opposed the appointment but initially found little support for his stand in the synod; in 1823 he was even rejected for the vacant charge of Armagh.198 It was not until 1827 that this position changed, as a result of the publication of evidence to a government commission of enquiry into the Belfast Academical Institution, in which a number of those associated with it, and other Presbyterian clergy, admitted on oath that they were Arians. Cooke persuaded the 197 Brooke, ‘Controversies’, 128, 132; see also McBride, Scripture Politics, 211–13. 198 Holmes, Henry Cooke, 32–3.


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synod that it must reaYrm the Trinitarian faith of its members or give the impression that it was Arian. The small Arian minority in the synod published a Remonstrance against its proceedings and in 1830 withdrew from the Synod of Ulster to form the Remonstrant Synod.199 The leading remonstrant, Henry Montgomery, argued that the synod had exceeded its powers: It was not clear where doctrinal authority lay: in the Synod, in the presbytery or in the congregation, but in practice it lay in the congregation, it being rare for the Synod or presbytery to overrule a congregation’s choice of minister.200

Cooke had managed to persuade the synod that this delicate balance had to be altered to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy. But was orthodoxy threatened? Most Presbyterian historians take the view that theological liberalism, which had had a renaissance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was in decline by the 1820s. It was not Arianism that Cooke opposed but rather the political outlook that led towards Arianism. Cooke was an Evangelical but he was also a Tory. His ‘basis for Church union was not biblical and theological, but a political antiCatholicism’. He wanted to move the Presbyterian clergy from the Whig to the Tory camp not just on ideological grounds, but also as a means of forming an anti-Catholic alliance between the Church of Ireland, Presbyterians and other Protestant dissenters. In a speech against Irish disestablishment in 1867, the year before his death, Cooke declared: It is now more than thirty years since I stood on a platform . . . and proclaimed the banns of holy marriage, intellectual and spiritual, between the Presbyterian Church and the Established Church.201

A total of thirty-two presbyterian ministers and their congregations seceded from the Synod of Ulster or other bodies to form the Remonstrant Synod. They came overwhelmingly from ‘the prosperous bourgeois and substantial farmers of East Ulster—William Porter of Limavady was the only Arian with a congregation west of the Bann—while Cooke derived support from the smaller tenant farmers’. The Remonstrant congregations also included two each in Belfast and Dublin and one in Cork.202 Cooke, in his triumph, moved 199 Holmes, Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 92. 200 Brooke, ‘Controversies’, 154; for a detailed discussion of the synod debates on Arianism see 134–49. 201 J. M. Barkley, ‘The Arian Schism in Ireland, 1830’, Studies in Church History, ix (1972), 338. 202 R. F. G. Holmes, ‘Controversy and Schism in the Synod of Ulster in the 1820s’, in Challenge and ConXict: Essays in Irish Presbyterian History and Doctrine, ed. J. L. M. Haire, Antrim 1981, 129. For a list of Remonstrant congregations see R. B. Knox, A History of Congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1610–1982: A Supplement of Additions, Emendations and Corrections, Belfast 1996, 52–62.

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from Killyleagh in 1829 to a new chapel built for him in May Street, Belfast, the Wrst of fourteen new presbyterian places of worship built in Belfast over the next twenty years. The May Street chapel was the Wrst one in Belfast to have a school but all the Belfast chapels had schools by 1849. Cooke’s supporters tried to inWltrate and destabilize the Remonstrant Synod but they were unsuccessful and, despite Cooke’s opposition, the British government agreed that Remonstrant ministers could receive the regium donum.203 The secession of the Remonstrants and the capture of the Synod of Ulster by Cooke’s supporters enabled a new union to take place. The Secession Synod, whose ministers had been in receipt of the regium donum since 1784, had in the past been more evangelical than the Synod of Ulster. After overtures from Cook the Secession Synod agreed to enforce unqualiWed subscription to the Westminster Confession in 1835–6, and a union of the Secession Synod, with its 141 congregations, and the Synod of Ulster, with its 292 congregations, took place on 10 July 1840. The merged body was to be governed by a General Assembly of which Cooke was elected moderator in 1841. Another, and very diVerent, union also took place. The Remonstrants united with the Presbytery of Antrim, which had separated from the Synod of Ulster in 1726 following its refusal to enforce subscription to the Westminster Confession, and the Synod of Munster to form the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Association.204 For Cooke’s supporters the events of the 1820s and 1830s, which resulted in eighty-three new congregations being formed in the latter decade, were a triumph: The attention of the people all over the land was drawn to the great discussion and a marked improvement was everywhere visible. Family prayers revived, Sabbath schools increased in number and eYciency, new congregations were gathered, churches were rebuilt and repaired and missionary movements were undertaken on a scale never before attempted.205

Not all contemporaries were that impressed. The Revd Isaac Nelson was merciless in his criticism: ‘I look upon Dr Cooke as having done more to injure presbyterianism by dragging it through the mud of party spirit than the next Wfty years will see remedied’. The Revd John MacNaughton saw ‘no hope of the presbyterian church doing any good in Ireland until it should please providence to remove Henry Cooke who rests like an incubus on its shoul203 Holmes, Henry Cooke, 81, 83–7, 89, 171–2. 204 Ibid., 139, 150; J. Thompson, ‘Church Union (1840): the Formation of the General Assembly’ in Haire, Challenge and ConXict, 134, 139, 146; Connolly, Religion and Society, 17. 205 W. D. Killen, Reminiscences of a Long Life, London 1901, 46, quoted in Holmes, Henry Cooke, 201–2. Killen had been ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1829.


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ders’.206 Whilst Cooke may have received, and indeed still receives, much of the blame for creating a much more aggressive form of Presbyterianism in Ireland, it would seem that he was simply in the right place at the right time. As we shall see in Chapter 7, the Evangelical movement was so powerful in all the Protestant churches in Ireland by the second quarter of the nineteenth century that if Cooke had not come forward as the leader of its Presbyterian faction it is almost certain that someone else would have done so, and it is almost equally certain that the schism of 1829–30 would have taken place. Whilst Cooke’s campaign to shift the theological consensus within the Synod of Ulster was successful in repositioning Irish Presbyterianism theologically in the long term, his eVorts to persuade Presbyterians to support his political vision were never very eVective and by the 1850s and 1860s he had become, in some respects, an increasingly isolated Wgure even within his own Presbyterian church.207 206 Quoted in Holmes, Henry Cooke, 202–3. 207 Holmes, Presbyterian Church, 94–7, provides a fair and balanced assessment of Cooke’s achievements and failures.

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Pastoral Care and Public Worship

DERRY

RAPHOE

DOWN AND CONNOR ARMAGH DROMORE CLOGHER KILMORE KILLALA AND ACHONRY

ELPHIN

TUAM AND ARDAGH MEATH AND CLONMACNOIS

TUAM AND ARDAGH

CLONFERT AND KILMACHDUAGH

KILDARE DUBLIN

KILLALOE AND KILFENORA

CASHEL AND EMLY

LIMERICK ARDFERT AND AGHADOE

CLOYNE

OSSORY

FERNS AND LEIGHLIN

WATERFORD AND LISMORE

CORK AND ROSS

Fig. 4.1. Map showing the boundaries of Church of Ireland Dioceses in Ireland 1832


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DERRY

RAPHOE

DOWN AND CONNOR ARMAGH DROMORE CLOGHER

KILMORE

KILLALA ACHONRY

ELPHIN

ARDAGH AND CLONMACNOIS MEATH

TUAM

GALWAY GALWAY

CLONFERT

KILDARE AND LEIGHLIN

KILMACHDUAGH AND KILFENORA

DUBLIN

KILLALOE KILLALOE

CASHEL AND EMLY

OSSORY

LIMERICK

FERNS

WATERFORD AND LISMORE KERRY

CLOYNE AND ROSS

CORK

Fig. 4.2. Map showing the boundaries of Roman Catholic Dioceses in Ireland 1832

4 Pastoral Care and Public Worship in Ireland 1770–1850 Between 1770 and 1850 more than 90% of the population of Ireland belonged to either the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of Ireland, both of which had a diocesan structure covering the whole country (see Figs 4.1 and 4.2 on pages 132–3). The relative strengths of the two churches at the end of this period are shown in Tables 4.1 and 4.2,1 and they provide a useful framework for the issues to be considered in this chapter. Whereas in the last chapter we were concerned with the leadership of the churches, in this we will be looking at the impact of religion on the ground, at the respective roles of the clergy and the laity, and at some of the changes in religious practice that took place between 1770 and 1850.

THE CLERGY The one feature that is most noticeable in any comparison of the Wgures in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 is the much higher proportion of clergy to laity in the Church of Ireland than that in the Roman Catholic Church. Although most Roman Catholic dioceses had slightly more clergy than churches, the numbers of laity that both had to serve were considerable, with an average of nearly 3,000 laity to each church and more than 2,500 laity to each priest. Only one diocese, Ardagh and Clonmacnois, had lower than average numbers of laity to both churches and clergy as well as an excess of the latter over the former, whereas four dioceses—Cork, Kerry, Killala, and Killaloe—had higher than average numbers of laity to both churches and clergy and an excess of the former over the latter. Although the number of priests in Ireland had grown over the period 1770–1850 it did not keep pace with the growth of the Roman Catholic population, as Table 4.3 shows. An exception was the diocese 1 See Appendices 3 and 4 for the detailed information on which the Wgures in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 are based.


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Table 4.1. Roman Catholic laity per church and priest; clergy per church in the mid1840s RC laity per church

RC laity per priest

Achonry Ardagh and Clonmacnois Armagh Cashel and Emly Clogher Clonfert Cloyne and Ross Cork Derry Down and Connor Dromore Dublin Elphin Ferns Galway Kerry Kildare and Leighlin Killala Killaloe Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora Kilmore Limerick Meath Ossory Raphoe Tuam Waterford and Lismore

2,474 2,868 2,457 3,296 3,336 2,706 3,864 3,619 2,234 1,878 1,956 3,205 3,824 1,728 3,531 3,195 2,590 3,410 2,997 2,268 2,673 2,932 2,659 2,232 3,029 3,641 3,330

2,419 2,167 2,623 2,722 2,711 2,904 3,164 3,848 2,092 2,299 2,119 2,209 3,367 1,800 2,260 3,376 2,458 3,497 3,022 2,401 2,765 2,415 3,120 2,232 2,643 3,117 2,388

1.02 1.32 0.94 1.21 1.23 0.93 1.22 0.94 1.07 0.82 0.92 1.45 1.14 0.96 1.56 0.95 1.05 0.98 0.99 0.94 0.97 1.21 0.85 1.00 1.15 1.17 1.39

National average

2,895

2,666

1.09

Diocese

RC clergy per church

Source: As for Appendix 4.

of Kilmore where the average number of laity to each priest declined from 3,427 in 1821, to 3,146 in 1831, and 3,015 in 1841, despite an increase in population. By 1851, after the famine, the ratio was one priest to every 2,125 members of the Roman Catholic population of the diocese.2 Elsewhere it was not until the enormous reduction in the population that resulted from the famine that the proportion of priests to laity began to return to the levels of the mid-eighteenth century. However, as Table 4.1 shows, there were wide variations between one diocese and another; in 1834–5 there was one priest to every 1,941 Roman Catholics in the diocese of Ferns, but one to every 4,199 2 D. Gallogly, The Diocese of Kilmore 1800–1950, Cavan 1998, 397.

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Table 4.2. Church of Ireland laity per beneWce and church sitting; sittings per beneWce in the mid-nineteenth century Diocese Armagh Cashel and Emly Clogher Clonfert and Kilmacduagh Cloyne Cork and Ross Derry Down and Connor Dromore Dublin Elphin Ferns and Leighlin Kildare Killala and Achonry Killaloe and Kilfenora Kilmore Limerick and Ardfert Meath and Clonmacnois Ossory Raphoe Tuam and Ardagh Waterford and Lismore National average

CI laity per beneWce

CI laity per sitting

Sittings per beneWce

1,157 122 2,323 319 152 474 868 936 1,727 1,015 421 369 309 548 258 1,116 164 249 184 986 402 173

3.33 0.89 4.33 1.30 0.97 1.86 2.72 3.16 3.57 2.35 1.75 1.60 1.54 1.93 1.34 3.15 1.19 1.23 1.32 3.12 1.65 1.12

344 137 536 244 157 255 320 296 484 432 241 230 201 284 193 354 137 203 140 316 243 154

552

2.17

255

Source: As for Appendix 3 (total beneWces 1,479; total Church of Ireland congregations 817,130; total sittings 376,875).

in the diocese of Tuam. Even if they had been able to ordain more clergy it would not have been possible to support them Wnancially, since the population already experienced diYculties in supporting the existing number of clergy.3 There was also a clear shortage of church accommodation for the Table 4.3. Relationship in the number of Roman Catholic clergy to laity in Ireland 1731–1871 Date

RC clergy

RC population

Number of laity to each priest

1731 1800 1840 1871

1445 1614 2183 2655

2,293,000 4,320,000 6,540,000 4,141,000

1,587 2,676 2,996 1,560

Source: J. Fulton, The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics and Religion in Ireland, Oxford 1991, 71.

3 S. J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, Dublin 1982, 35.


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Roman Catholic population whereas, as Table 4.2 shows, the Church of Ireland was much better catered for with, in the case of the dioceses of Cashel and Emly and of Cloyne, more seating available in the churches of the Church of Ireland than there were people to Wll them. Statistics for the Roman Catholic diocese of Killaloe in 1835 show that the diocese then had 49 parishes; these were served by a total of 122 clergy and contained 112 places of worship. Only three parishes had no curate and only four had only one place of worship.4

Background and Training In terms of their social origin the clergy of all three main churches in Ireland came from the middle to the upper end of the spectrum. An analysis of the Church of Ireland clergy in the dioceses of Cloyne, Cork, and Ross in 1837 shows that the majority had been born within the county of Cork and that around three-quarters were Irish. Although there was some movement between parishes within the same diocese, very few clergy moved into any of them from another diocese in Ireland, England, or Wales. About a third of the senior clergy were the sons of clergy, a quarter sons of the landed gentry, and just under a Wfth the sons of merchants and professional people. About two-Wfths of the clergy married either the daughters or sisters of other clergy or members of landed families.5 A high proportion of Roman Catholic clergy came from farming backgrounds. Out of 205 students at Maynooth in 1808, 148 were the sons of farmers, the majority of the others having fathers in trade or in the professions; in 1826 the proportions were almost identical with 75.1% of the students being the sons of farmers. Most clergy were appointed to parishes adjacent to those in which they had grown up, and some to their native parishes. There was hardly any movement between dioceses and even moves between parishes in the same diocese were infrequent. Many parish priests and their curates were related to one another and it was normal practice for a parish priest to be succeeded by a younger brother or nephew. In County Wexford, Bernard Downes succeeded his uncle as parish priest, of Taghmon in 1740, moving later to Tintern, where he was succeeded by his own nephew in 1801.6 4 I. Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe 1800–1850, Blackrock 1992, 399–403. 5 I. d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics in Cork 1812–1844, Cork 1980, 61–6. 6 Connolly, Priests and People, 37, 39; K. Whelan, ‘The Catholic Community in EighteenthCentury County Wexford’, in Endurance and Emergence: Catholics in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. T. P. Power and K. Whelan, Blackrock 1990, 162–3; P. J. Corish, Maynooth College 1795–1995, Dublin 1995, 39; Murphy, Killaloe, 255–6; Whelan, however, does note in ‘The Catholic Church in County Tipperary, 1700–1900’, in Tipperary: History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County, ed. W. Nolan and T. G. McGrath, Dublin 1985, 244, that some nuns and Christian Brothers were recruited from the lower social classes.

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The expectation that a parish priest would, if not succeeded by a relative, be succeeded by one of his curates was so high that attempts to overrule the claims of curates could be disastrous. There were three such instances in the diocese of Killaloe in the early nineteenth century. In 1808 the parishioners of Ennis, supported by a local Protestant landowner, objected to their curate not succeeding to the vacant parish, though this dispute seems to have been quickly resolved. In 1826–7 Bishop O’Shaughnessy refused to appoint Thomas McInerny, curate of Kilfearagh and Killard, to succeed his deceased brother as parish priest on the grounds that ‘he had a chronic drink problem’. The parishioners prevented the new parish priest from gaining access to the parish’s two chapels, but gave up when McInerny was suspended. In 1849 Bishop Kennedy was determined to prevent the curate of Nenagh from succeeding the existing parish priest; the parishioners were determined otherwise and, although the curate, Nicholas Power, made strenuous eVorts to encourage them to accept the bishop’s decision and accepted a transfer to another parish, the new parish priest and his curate were obliged to use force, and to seek the protection of the local constabulary, to gain access to the chapel.7 The social origins of the Presbyterian ministers were generally similar to those of the Roman Catholic priests, many being the sons of farmers. Of the 585 ministers ordained or received into the Synod of Ulster between 1770 and 1840, 199 were the sons of farmers, 56 the sons of ministers, and 30 the sons of merchants; among the Seceders the proportion was not dissimilar; of 235 ministers ordained or received, 58 were the sons of farmers, 33 the sons of ministers, and 9 the sons of merchants. Many ministers also married the daughters of other ministers.8 The family background of many Presbyterian ministers and Roman Catholic priests accounted for it being quite common for both to supplement their incomes by farming. Some ministers were provided with a farm, or land to farm, by their congregation. In the midnineteenth century forty out of sixty-four parish priests in County Tipperary were also farmers, though reforming bishops like Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, were keen to control the practice. Doyle, who himself farmed Wfteen acres of land at Old Derrig (Co. Laois) in 1822–6, was prepared to allow priests to cultivate some land for their own support, but objected to their acting as commercial farmers. Normally priests were not expected to farm

7 Murphy, Killaloe, 257–70. 8 K. P. Conway, ‘The Presbyterian Ministry of Ulster in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Prosopographical Study’, Queen’s University, Belfast, PhD 1996, 29, 55, 277.


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more than Wfteen acres, and those who refused to relinquish larger farms were threatened with removal from oYce.9 All denominations in Ireland placed an increasing emphasis on education and training for the ministry between 1770 and 1850. The Church of Ireland relied, almost exclusively, on the resources of Trinity College, Dublin. By 1790 the college admitted some 200 students each year, but this Wgure increased to some 300 in 1817, and to 466 in 1824. Thereafter, however, admissions were not maintained at this level. The total number of resident staV and students in 1830 was estimated at 1750. It was ‘a society whose senior members were mostly clergymen, and in which a large proportion of the students were future clergymen’. There were compulsory services in chapel every day at 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. and ‘compulsory catechetical lectures on the Bible and the creeds . . . once a week’.10 It was not possible for Presbyterians and Roman Catholics to be admitted to Trinity College until 1793–4, and even then only communicant members of the Church of Ireland, or a church in communion with it, were allowed to study theology there. Most Presbyterian ministers were educated at Glasgow University, though relatively few actually graduated. A few studied at Edinburgh, Leiden, or St Andrews. Prior to attending university, candidates for the ministry were approved by their presbyteries following an examination and the taking up of references. They had to support their university studies by part-time work or rely on their families to support them; a few were occasionally supported by church collections. As a result of the growing inXuence of Evangelicals from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, presbyteries became increasingly keen to ensure that all ministerial candidates could provide evidence of ‘conversion’. An eVort to provide a more formal pre-university education was made in the setting up of two new academies, at Belfast and Strabane, in 1785. An even greater step forward was the establishment of the Belfast Academical Institution in 1810. This had been assisted with an annual government grant of £1,500 and was accredited by the Synod of Ulster, who appointed divinity professors there from 1817, as being equivalent to a university and those completing the divinity course there were recognized as graduates. As a result there was a dramatic fall in the number of non-graduate ministers within both the Synod of Ulster and among the Seceders. In the period 1800–9 about two-thirds of all new Presbyterian ministers were non-graduates. This had declined to less 9 Ibid., 201; T. G. McGrath, ‘Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of James Doyle, OSA, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1819–34’, University College, Dublin, PhD 1987, 153–4, 156–7; and, Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of James Doyle, OSA, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1786–1834, Dublin 1999, 79–81. 10 R. B. McDowell and D. A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin 1592–1952: An Academic History, Cambridge 1982, 86, 113, 129, 149.

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than a Wfth in the Synod of Ulster in the period 1810–19, and to less than a tenth after 1820. Among the Seceders the fall was less dramatic, more than a third of their new ministers still being non-graduates in the period 1820–9, although less than a Wfth were after 1830. Despite the rows in the Synod of Ulster over the alleged ‘Arianism’ of the Institution in the 1820s, the link between the two bodies was never formally broken, and Wve professors were members of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland set up in 1840.11 Before the 1790s most Roman Catholic clergy were ordained before they had completed their training, usually on the recommendation of the parish priest they had lived with and helped. Bishops tried to ensure that inadequate candidates were not ordained. The Cashel and Emly diocesan statutes of 1782 laid down that clergy must have received some training before ordination and been examined. Bishop MacDevitt of Derry reported in 1791 that he only ordained those he had personally examined.12 Whilst this practice may have been understandable when the only opportunities for formal education for the clergy were the seminaries in Europe, it was continued by some bishops when the college at Maynooth was founded in 1795. The college authorities disliked the practice of teaching ordinands and priests together, regarding it as detrimental to discipline, and it was abandoned in 1799, despite the protestation of the bishops who claimed that they did not have enough ordinands with suYcient competence in Latin, required by the college authorities, to Wll their full diocesan quota of priests at Maynooth. The cost of attending Maynooth was equivalent to that of attending one of the continental seminaries, since the fees were higher though the travel costs were lower. In 1826 it cost a student about Wfty pounds a year to study at either Maynooth or the Irish College in Rome. It was also alleged that education at Maynooth was narrower than that at the continental seminaries. The result was that when the continental seminaries reopened after 1815 they once again began attracting Irish students. In 1826, 391 Irish ordinands were being trained at Maynooth, compared with 140 at the continental seminaries and 120 at diocesan seminaries in Ireland.13 The Maynooth course comprised three years of theology after a more general course, usually lasting four years, which might include two years of classics and two of philosophy; the preparatory years also included studies in English grammar, geography, arithmetic, ancient history, algebra, English and 11 Conway, ‘Presbyterian Ministry’, 87–90, 92, 101, 104, 122, 317–18. 12 D. Keogh, The French Disease: The Catholic Church and Irish Radicalism, 1790–1800, Dublin 1993, 7–8. 13 Connolly, Priests and People, 34, 38, 40, 43; Corish, Maynooth, 35.


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Irish history, French, and Irish.14 The inclusion of Irish was important. There was enormous hostility within the established church, at least until the growth of Evangelicalism in the early nineteenth century, to the notion that any of its clergy should be proWcient in Irish. Bishop Woodward of Cloyne argued that the use of Irish ‘obstructs religion; it embarrasses civil intercourse; it prevents cordial union’; it should be ‘the object of the Government . . . to take measures to bring it into eVective disuse’.15 However, at a later date, Bishop Lindsay of Kildare thanked Archbishop Beresford of Armagh for the copies of The Irish Scriptures designed to be used in the teaching of English, but pointed out that that language was not in common use in his diocese.16 The Roman Catholic bishops had generally supported the Irish language and as late as 1850 it was considered essential for all priests in the deanery of Kilrush (Co. Clare) to be proWcient in Irish.17 There is, however, no doubt that Irish was in decline by the early years of the nineteenth century and was increasingly seen as the language of the poor and illiterate. The growing economic and political status of the Roman Catholic population tended to hasten its decline and even at Maynooth less and less emphasis was placed on it. By the middle of the century Archbishop MacHale of Tuam, who had himself published an Irish translation of part of Homer, was ‘almost alone among the bishops’ in advocating ‘the use of Irish by the Catholic clergy’.18 The horarium at Maynooth in 1804 obliged the students to rise at 5 a.m. in summer and 6 a.m. in winter and to retire at 9.30 p.m. There was mass and two periods of prayer each day; on Sundays in addition there was a High Mass at 10 a.m. and Vespers at 3 p.m. Each day comprised four hours of formal classes, Wve hours of private study, and a conference lasting an hour. This horarium remained in force until 1853, as did the content of the courses, which by then were regarded as being distinctly old-fashioned. There was generally felt to be too much emphasis on a general education and too little on theology. Training in preaching technique was considered ‘lackadaisical’. Although it would be unfair to regard Maynooth, as Cardinal Cullen did, as ‘Gallican’ in its attitudes, ‘the French inXuence of the early days prevailed in the theology textbooks, though it was recognised that these needed ampliWcation and even correction by the professor’. Four e´migre´ French clergy had occupied important positions at Maynooth: Pierre-Justin Delort, professor of natural philosophy 1795–1801; Andre´ Darre´, professor of philosophy 1797– 1801 and natural philosophy 1801–13; Louis-Gilles Delahogue, professor of 14 15 16 17 18

Ibid., 73–4. R. Woodward, The Present State of the Church of Ireland, Dublin 1787, 53, 90. PRONI, DD664/A/220, Lindsay to Beresford, 23 December 1830. Murphy, Killaloe, 256. ´ Cuı´r, Dublin 1969, 82–5, 94. A View of the Irish Language, ed. B. O

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moral theology 1798–1801 and dogma 1801–20; and François Anglade, professor of logic 1802–10 and moral theology 1810–28. The theological conservatism of the Maynooth staV was shown in the opposition of several of them in 1849 to the suggestion that belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary should be proclaimed the oYcial doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless Maynooth built up an enviable theological library, much enriched by the legacies of Bishops Murphy of Cork and Crotty of Cloyne, who died in 1846 and 1847 respectively.19 It was also a major contributor to the growing professionalization of the Roman Catholic priesthood in Ireland, though it was not until the 1840s that the clergy started wearing distinctive dress, and this was insisted on by the Synod of Thurles in 1850. Roman Catholic priests were called ‘Mr’, unless they had a doctorate or were members of a religious order, and even nuns were called ‘Mrs’!20 Both Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic clergy got caught up in the antiquarian movement that made such an impact throughout the British Isles in the Wrst half of the nineteenth century. On the Roman Catholic side, Maynooth was very much at the forefront of this movement, employing the noted Gaelic scholar Paul O’Brien and awarding a professorship to John Lanigan, who published his Ecclesiastical History of Ireland in 1822. Two of the leading Church of Ireland clergy involved in antiquarian scholarship were D. A. Beaufort, who published his Memoir of a Map of Ireland in 1792, and Edward Ledwich, whose Antiquities of Ireland was reprinted in 1804. Beaufort and Ledwich both contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, though they were later dismissed by Eugene O’Curry, appointed Wrst professor of Irish history and archaeology at the new Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, as ‘ignorant, unscrupulous fabricators of facts’.21

Clerical Incomes Although it is diYcult to make exact comparisons between the incomes of the clergy of the three main denominations in Ireland, it would appear that in general terms the diVerence was not enormous, though within each denomination there was a wide variation in what individual clergy were paid. In 1787 Bishop Woodward of Cloyne estimated that the average beneWce income in the Church of Ireland was £148 per annum. There were, however, signiWcant 19 Corish, Maynooth, 37, 107, 113–16, 121–3, 441, 451. 20 O. P. RaVerty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983: An Interpretative History, London 1994, 111. 21 J. Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representation of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, Cork 1996, 70–1, 74–5, 111, 127, 145.


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diVerences between the averages from one diocese to another. In Raphoe it was £250, in Clogher £187, in Cloyne £180, in Cork and Ross £150, in Waterford and Lismore £120, in Clonfert and Kilmacduagh £116, in Dublin £115, and in Killala and Achonry £90.22 Our main knowledge of Roman Catholic incomes comes from the diocesan returns made to the British government in 1801. On average they were somewhat lower than those of the Church of Ireland clergy, the majority of parishes producing annual incomes within the range of £50 to £150. However, Roman Catholic priests did not have to provide for wives and families, though they normally had to give a proportion of the parishes’ income to their curates. As Table 4.4 shows, there were, as in the Church of Ireland, wide variations between incomes in diVerent dioceses. The incomes of Presbyterian ministers, allowing for their need in most cases to maintain a wife and family, were certainly smaller than those of most Church of Ireland clergy, and possibly lower, in comparable terms, to those of most Roman Catholic parish priests; within the Synod of Ulster the average ministerial income from all sources ranged between £90 and £170 per annum, though a fortunate few had incomes of between £250 and £300, wholly comparable with most of the richer Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic clergy.23 The one noticeable diVerence between the Presbyterian clergy and their Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic counterparts was that, whereas there was ‘during the course of the Wrst half of the nineteenth century . . . no sharp increase in the ministerial stipend’,24 that of the non-presbyterian clergy increased considerably. By 1832, as Table 4.5 shows, only a third of Church of Ireland beneWced clergy had annual incomes below £200 and at least a quarter had ones of over £500. There were similar variations in the incomes of the Roman Catholic clergy. In the diocese of Cloyne and Ross the average parochial income divided between a parish priest and his curate was between £220 and £250 per annum, compared with between £100 and £120 at the beginning of the century.25 There was an even steeper increase, from an annual parochial average of £162 in 1800, to one of £220 in 1820, in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin, though this disguised considerable variations between parishes; three were worth more than £500 and sixteen more than £200, compared with twenty-three worth less than £200. Bishop Doyle abolished the former contracts between parish priests and their curates over the division of the parochial income by insisting that it should be divided into three parts, the parish priest receiving two-thirds and the curates one-third. This provision was incorporated in the Dublin provincial statutes agreed in 22 Woodward, Present State, 42. 23 Connolly, Priests and People, 48, 52. 24 Conway, ‘Presbyterian Ministry’, 219. 25 Connolly, Priests and People, 50.

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Table 4.4. Number of clergy in and estimated incomes of parishes in six Irish Roman Catholic dioceses 1801

Value (£)

Diocese of: Ardagh and Waterford and Clonmacnois Ferns Meath Ossory Tuam Lismore

Parishes with three or more priests 150þ 101–150 51–100 50

— 1 — —

1 — 2 —

2 1 2 1

2 2 1 —

— 4 4 —

2 — — —

Parishes with two priests 150þ 101–150 51–100 50

— — 11 —

— 1 6 4

1 5 19 1

— 12 6 1

— — 23 5

8 11 6 —

Parishes with one priest 150þ 101–150 51–100 50

— — 20 7

— 1 2 14

1 4 23 6

— — 3 2

— — 5 16

— 3 6 1

All parishes 150þ 101–150 51–100 50

— 1 31 7

1 2 10 18

4 10 44 8

2 14 10 3

— 4 32 21

10 14 12 1

Sources: J. J. MacNamee, History of the Diocese of Ardagh, Dublin 1954, 407–8; W. H. G. Flood, History of the Diocese of Ferns, Waterford 1916, passim; A. Cogan, The Ecclesiastical History of the Diocese of Meath, Dublin 1867–74, iii, 238–40; W. Carrigan, The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, Dublin 1905, iv, 408–9; O. J. Burke, The History of the Catholic Archbishops of Tuam, Dublin 1882, 226; E. A. D’Alton, History of the Archdiocese of Tuam, Dublin 1928, i, 337–8; P. Power, Waterford and Lismore: A Compendium History of the United Dioceses, Cork 1937, 384.

Table 4.5. Gross and net incomes of Church of Ireland beneWced clergy 1832 Income (£)

Net (%)

Gross (%)

Under 100 100–200 200–300 300–400 400–500 500–700 700–1000 Over 1000

11.3 18.8 13.6 11.3 11.0 17.1 9.5 7.4

17.0 18.0 15.5 12.5 11.0 14.7 7.1 4.2

Source: D. H. Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution, 1800–1885, New Haven and London 1971, 87.


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1831.26 At an earlier date it was noted that some ‘curates who lived with the parish priest subsisted on erratic hand-outs amounting to perhaps ten pounds a year’. The incomes of parish priests, which were largely made up of statutory oVerings, could vary considerably from year to year. That of the parish priest of Kenmare (Co. Kerry) was £250 in 1839, £270 in 1840, and £340 in 1841, but only £280 in 1842.27 The notional value of priests’ incomes was also increased by ‘customary entitlements’ in kind and by hospitality at ‘stations’, the hearing of confessions and celebrations of mass, at which the laity would make their communion, held in private houses and usually followed by a dinner. In populous parishes the number of stations might exceed 100 each year.28 A letter from the parish priest of Claregalway, one of the poorer parishes in the wardenship of Galway with an annual income of £66 at the beginning of the nineteenth century, throws interesting light on both the sources of this income and the costs it had to meet: I must support a horse for the public service, which in these bad years costs about £20 a year, and a coadjutor, who, for his hard and great labour, is entitled to a third part of the whole, being £22:0:0, which truly is a scanty allowance, the remainder, being about £24:0:0 sterling, is all that I have to live upon for several years.

He estimated that his income was made up in the following manner: £36 15s in a good year for Christmas and Easter oVerings at stations; £11 10s from baptism dues; £11 15s from marriage dues; and £6 from mortuaries.29 The composition of the incomes of the Presbyterian clergy was even more complicated. Some were paid at least partly in kind until well into the nineteenth century. The remainder of their salary came from their annual stipend and a share of the regium donum, the government grant towards their remuneration. The stipend was agreed between ministers and their congregations at the time of their appointment. In 1799, 124 ministers received annual stipends of less than £50, 49 ones of between £50 and £100, 6 ones of between £100 and £200, and 3 of over £200. These, however, were often notional as there was a tendency for congregations to be frequently in arrears in paying stipends. At the same date ministers in the Synod of Ulster each received £33 per annum from the regium donum, and secession ministers £27. In 1803 this arrangement was altered so that in future ministers were paid according to the size of their congregation. Within the Synod of Ulster the three bands of payment were £100, £75, and £50; secession ministers received 26 McGrath, Religious Renewal, 173–6, 183–5. 27 K. T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland 1832–1885, Oxford 1984, 225. 28 Connolly, Priests and People, 49–50. 29 ‘Report on Documents relating to the Wardenship of Galway’, ed. E. MacLysaght, Analecta Hibernia, xiv (1994), 79–80.

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£75, £50, or £40. The arrangement was extremely unpopular as it was deemed to have introduced ‘a hierarchical system into Presbyterianism . . . interfering in the spiritual independence of the church’. In 1838 the number of bands was reduced to two, all ministers in charge of congregations receiving either £92 6s 2d or £69 4s 8d per annum. Assistant ministers received nothing from the regium donum and this produced a gulf between senior and junior ministers similar to that between Roman Catholic parish priests and their curates. Many ministers supplemented their incomes by teaching, sometimes holding schools in the session house.30 A signiWcant disparity in ministerial stipends, as much related to the poverty as the size of the congregation, survived well into the nineteenth century. In 1847 stipends in the Laggan presbytery of East Donegal varied between £19 and £82 3s, with some large congregations paying their ministers less than the smaller ones.31

Residence and Discipline A major problem for the clergy of the established churches in England and Wales was that of non-residence and its relationship to pluralism, or the holding of more than one beneWce with cure of souls, though recent research has shown that this problem has in the past been greatly exaggerated.32 Similar problems existed within the Church of Ireland, though here they were complicated by a process in which small parishes, especially those with few or no Protestant parishioners, had been formally united into a single beneWce to provide a more substantial income for an incumbent. By 1830 2,450 Irish parishes had been united to form 1,396 beneWces; only 879 beneWces covered a single parish whereas 517 were unions of parishes. The majority of these (352) only contained two or three parishes. However, 138 unions comprised between four and six, and 27 between seven and eleven, parishes.33 Most beneWces had at least one church, but this was not always the 30 Conway, ‘Presbyterian Ministry’, 199–223. 31 A. G. Lecky, The Laggan Presbytery Books, ed. W. Hanna, St Johnston 1998, 89. 32 See the discussion in W. Gibson, Church, State and Society, 1760–1850, Basingstoke 1994, 19–25; J. Gregory, Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660–1828: Archbishops of Canterbury and their Diocese, Oxford 2000, 171–3; F. Knight, The Nineteenth Century Church and English Society, Cambridge 1995, 3–4, 17–22, 179–80; F. C. Mather, High Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733–1806) and the Caroline Tradition in the Georgian Church, Oxford 1992, 149–55, 168–9, 171–4, 194–6; P. Virgin, The Church in an Age of Negligence: Ecclesiastical Structures and the Problems of Church Reform 1700–1840, Cambridge 1989, 151–2, 191–214; The Church of England c.1689–c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism, ed. J. Walsh, C. Haydon, and S. Taylor, Cambridge 1993, 7–9, 91–4, 105–7, 118–23. 33 J. C. Erck, An Account of the Ecclesiastical Establishment Subsisting in Ireland, Dublin 1830, xliv–xlviii.


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case: in 1787 there were fewer churches than beneWces in every diocese within the provinces of Cashel and Dublin; in two dioceses (Elphin and Clonfert and Kilmacduagh) in the province of Tuam and in one (Meath) in that of Armagh.34 Partly this was explained by the paucity of Protestants in many southern dioceses. In that of Cloyne in 1835, twelve beneWces had no protestant residents, nine had fewer than ten, Wfteen fewer than twenty, fourteen fewer than thirty, eight fewer than forty, and four fewer than Wfty. This meant that only thirty-nine out of eighty-nine beneWces in the diocese had a Protestant population in excess of Wfty.35 There is no doubt that levels of clerical residence in the Church of Ireland improved substantially during the Wrst three decades of the nineteenth century, as the Wgures in Table 4.6 show, though there were some interesting Xuctuations in some dioceses. Only one diocese, Dromore, had fewer resident incumbents in 1832 than it had had in 1806. In the diocese of Cork and Ross in 1837, Wfty-nine incumbents were ‘resident within or very near beneWces’ and twenty-Wve were non-resident. In the same year in the diocese of Cloyne the comparable Wgures were fortyseven and forty-two, and only nineteen of the non-resident incumbents employed resident curates. However, all those parishes with non-resident clergy had very few Protestants—the largest number, at Corkbeg, was 143— and several had none at all.36 There were three reasons for the increase of residence. One was pressure from bishops, who tended to devote sections of their charges to the problem. Archbishop Newcome of Armagh stated in his primary provincial charge that ‘nothing can be more clear or strong than the sense of our church on the duty of residence’.37 The second reason was the passing in 1808 of an act enabling the bishop to deal more eVectively with non-residence, and this was strengthened by further legislation in 1824.38 In 1845 Archbishop Beresford explained the policy he had adopted to reduce non-residence: The power of granting a dispensation for holding a plurality of beneWces is vested in me as Primate, and, having gradually reduced the number of applications, by arrangements which I made, I, sixteen years ago, with the full concurrence of my Episcopal brethren, and the government of the day, put a complete stop to the issuing of any dispensations for that purpose.39 34 D. H. Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution 1800–1885, New Haven and London 1971, 56. 35 d’Alton, Protestant Society, 57. 36 Ibid., 60. 37 W. Newcome, A Charge Delivered at the Primary Visitation of the Province of Ulster, Dublin 1796, 12. 38 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 125–6. 39 J. G. Beresford, A Charge Delivered at his Annual Visitation 1845, London 1846, 23–4.

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Table 4.6. Percentage of Church of Ireland incumbents resident in or near their beneWces 1806–32 Diocese

1806

1819

1832

Armagh Cashel and Emly Clogher Clonfert and Kilmacduagh Cloyne Cork and Ross Derry Down and Connor Dromore Dublin Elphin Ferns and Leighlin Kildare Killala and Achonry Killaloe and Kilfenora Kilmore Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe Meath Ossory Raphoe Tuam and Ardagh Waterford and Lismore

78.4 47.2 62.8 50.0 44.6 58.1 83.7 73.4 87.0 66.7 41.2 64.4 43.9 60.0 47.9 56.3 36.7 59.8 40.3 76.9 41.3 37.0

93.6 75.4 63.6 78.6 59.7 55.8 75.9 77.2 69.6 65.5 56.8 80.4 48.8 70.0 80.4 72.7 53.3 80.2 61.0 87.1 71.4 69.2

81.8 61.7 71.1 80.0 60.7 74.1 94.7 84.3 76.0 82.4 81.2 74.6 66.0 72.7 71.2 84.6 59.4 86.4 64.4 91.2 74.6 64.8

Diocesan average

56.6

70.1

74.8

Source: Akenson, Church of Ireland, 128–9.

However, the third, and in the long term the most eVective, means of securing clerical residence was the building of more glebe houses. This was not a problem which was conWned to the Church of Ireland. Very few Presbyterian ministers were provided with manses before 1840. Some received lodgings in the home of a member of the congregation but the majority had to Wnd their own accommodation.40 The building of glebe houses was one of the great achievements of the Church of Ireland in the period between 1770 and 1850. The increase in individual dioceses, and across Ireland as a whole, is shown in Table 4.7. It is even more impressive when one takes into account that the number of beneWces had also increased in the same period from 1,120 to 1,395, and this explains the slight percentage reduction in the diocese of Derry. As Table 4.8 shows, though there is not an absolute correlation between the Wgures for the 40 Conway, ‘Presbyterian Ministry’, 202.


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Table 4.7. Percentage of Church of Ireland beneWces with glebe houses 1787 and 1832 Diocese

1787

1832


73.9 34.0 65.0 13.3 7.2 21.9 76.7 35.4 58.3 40.7 17.2 7.6 25.8 40.0 8.0 30.0 15.9 29.3 26.8 68.0 25.5 18.2

83.0 60.0 77.8 86.7 28.1 44.7 75.4 63.9 84.0 44.1 71.9 45.8 40.4 81.9 58.9 76.9 44.3 84.4 64.4 79.4 72.9 33.3

Diocesan average

31.6

59.4

Source: Akenson, Church of Ireland, 122.

building of glebe houses and those for the improvement of clerical residence, seven out of nine of those dioceses with the highest Wgures for the increase in the number of glebe houses were also among the nine highest for the increase in the number of resident incumbents. Between 1800 and 1830 a total of 480 new glebe houses were built in Ireland at a total cost of £336,881 of which about a third was contributed by the Board of First Fruits in the form of grants and the remainder advanced on loan.41 The building of glebe houses could, however, be a slow process. Henry Newman, vicar of Aney (Co. Limerick), who was reluctant to build one, eventually agreed to do so in 1791; it was still being built in 1799 and was not roofed until 1806.42 One problem that, from time to time, contributed to clerical non-residence in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was political unrest. Bishop Woodward noted that during the Whiteboy outrages: 41 Erck, Ecclesiastical Establishment, xxxv–xxxvii. 42 St. J. D. Seymour, The Diocese of Emly, Dublin 1913, 252.

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Table 4.8. Comparison between increases in numbers of glebe houses and resident incumbents in Ireland in the early nineteenth century Increase in percentage of glebe houses (Table 4.7)

Increase in percentage of resident incumbents (Table 4.6)


þ9.1 þ26.0 þ12.8 þ73.4 þ20.9 þ22.8 1.3 þ28.5 þ25.7 þ3.4 þ54.7 þ38.2 þ14.6 þ41.9 þ50.9 þ46.9 þ28.4 þ55.1 þ37.6 þ11.4 þ47.4 þ15.1

þ3.4 þ14.3 þ8.3 þ30.0 þ16.1 þ16.0 þ11.0 þ10.9 11.0 þ15.7 þ40.0 þ10.2 þ22.0 þ12.7 þ23.3 þ28.3 þ22.7 þ26.6 þ24.1 þ14.3 þ33.3 þ27.8

Diocesan average

þ27.8

þ18.2

Diocese

in the diocese of Cloyne, seven Rectors of parishes, hitherto constantly resident, have applied to the Ordinary, for leave to absent themselves, for well-grounded apprehension of personal danger . . . and of course Divine Service is discontinued.43

Even Bishop Mant of Killaloe and Kilfenora, a most assiduous diocesan, temporarily vacated the diocese, and moved his wife and family to Bath, in 1821, having received an anonymous letter, ‘warning him against walking in those parts of the garden and demesne which he was used to frequent, as some persons were bound to destroy him, under an obligation they dare not disobey, including the writer, who professed himself a friend’.44 Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin expressed the view that the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland were ‘energetic, active, laborious, shrewd and intelligent . . . Wlled with zeal, in the discharge of their duties . . . They possess 43 Woodward, Present State, 14. 44 W. B. Mant, Memoirs of the Right Reverend Richard Mant, Dublin 1857, 135–6.


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the full and active conWdence of their Xocks.’45 That did not, however, mean that cases of indiscipline were unknown or even infrequent. The main problem was drunkenness. Even Patrick MacGettigen, bishop of Raphoe from 1820 until his death in 1861, ‘could be seen drunk in public in his declining years’.46 Doyle removed the parish priest of Clonbullogue (Co. OValy) for ‘habitual drunkenness’ in 1823, and the parish priest of Rathvilly (Co. Carlow) in 1825 after he had discovered that less than a third of his Roman Catholic parishioners had communicated at Easter.47 Clerical indiscipline could be the result of episcopal weakness, as in the diocese of Kilmore during the episcopate of Farrell O’Reilly (1807–29). The bishop’s relations occupied most of the richer parishes in the diocese, leading to protests from both clergy and laity. At a public meeting in Cavan in 1817 it was alleged ‘that notorious and Xagrant abuses have been growing up in the diocese for a considerable time’, and that clergy were guilty of both drunkenness and sexual misconduct.48 Complaints against Presbyterian ministers were even more frequent. Between 1770 and 1850 no fewer than forty-two were deposed and sixty-two suspended. Of the depositions and suspensions eighteen were for conducting clandestine and irregular marriages, thirteen for insobriety or intemperance, Wve for immorality, and three each for debt or Wnancial irregularity and for preaching unsound doctrine. There was a particularly celebrated case at Moneymore (Co. Derry) where the minister of the Second Congregation was the subject of a complaint by the minister of the First Congregation. At a presbytery visitation Wve members of his own congregation requested his removal on the grounds that ‘his preaching was ambiguous, formal and such as to lead them to suspect his soundness in the faith’. They also complained that he did not visit or catechize and that he failed to keep registers. The presbytery resolved to ask the Synod of Ulster ‘to appoint a number of members to aid the presbytery of Tyrone in investigating the state of the Moneymore congregation’. This Wrst investigation revealed that the main objection to the minister’s preaching was the lack of variety in his sermons: ‘he frequently preaches the same sermon from the same text’, but there was also a question in relation to his orthodoxy. The minister, G. R. Thompson, denied that he was an Arminian and said that ‘he had preached on justiWcation by faith and the perseverance of the saints’. Nevertheless, the outcome of the investigation was that Thompson ‘be now recommended to resign his charge’. Subsequently a joint meeting of the presbytery and the Synod 45 46 47 48

J. W. Doyle, Letters on the State of Ireland, Dublin 1825, 65. RaVerty, Catholicism in Ulster, 110. McGrath, Religious Renewal, 162–3. Gallogly, Kilmore, 5–12.

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committee agreed that the allegations made against Thompson could be substantiated, whereas those made by Thompson against ‘a member of his session’ could not, and he was suspended, the congregation being placed under a presbytery committee. Though later restored he was again suspended in 1842–3, and in 1844 he was Wnally removed from oYce.49 An illustration of the impact of the diocesan reform programme on the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland is provided in the manuscript regulations for the parish of Thurles in 1843 surviving in the papers of Archbishop Slattery of Cashel and Emly. Clergy were to be available to hear confessions on Saturdays and on the eves of festivals between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., and between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., and also on Sundays and festivals between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. except when there was a High Mass. The priest not on confession duty was to prepare the altar for mass and also to bless the holy water for the use of the congregation. The junior curate was to be responsible for washing the corporals and puriWcators. A sermon was to be preached at the last mass on all Sundays and festivals. One of the curates was to be present during catechising on Sundays and holy days. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was to follow vespers on the third Sunday of each month and on all the major festivals, ‘the clergy always to appear at Vespers with Cap, Soutane and Surplice and also to wear Cap and Soutane . . . in the confessional’. The clergy were to observe all meal times – breakfast at 9 a.m., dinner at 5 p.m., evening tea at 8 p.m.—and then to be indoors by 10 p.m. every night.50 This was not a typical parish, since Archbishop Slattery himself was the parish priest, but these regulations do give a Xavour of the changes being imposed on the Irish Roman Catholic clergy as a result of the diocesan reform programme.

TH E LA I TY In the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church power was concentrated largely in the hands of the clergy and, to an even greater extent, the bishops. Within the Presbyterian churches the laity exercised a signiWcant role at every level of church government. The main inXuence that could be exercised by a restricted group of laity within the Church of Ireland was 49 A History of Congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1610–1982, ed. W. D. Baillie, Belfast 1982, 651–2; the total number of suspensions and depositions recorded have been taken from the individual congregational histories in this volume. The relevant documentation for the Moneymore case will be found in CHB, Minute Book of the Presbytery of Tyrone 1833–8, minutes of 4 and 8 August 1834 and 7 July 1835. 50 CDA, Clergy Regulations at Thurles 1843.


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that of patronage, the right to nominate to a vacant beneWce. Even here the right was strictly limited since, as Table 4.9 shows, diocesan bishops had vastly more patronage in Ireland than they had in most English and Welsh dioceses. Lay patronage was not oYcially sanctioned in the Roman Catholic Church but it existed in practice. Lady Frances Maguire, a Protestant, asserted her right to appoint the parish priests of both Enniskillen and Tempo (Co. Fermanagh) in 1796. The Roman Catholic landowner, Lord Kenmare, appointed both the Church of Ireland incumbent and the Roman Catholic parish priest at Hospital (Co. Limerick). Many bishops gave way to vociferous parishioners when appointing clergy, those of Devenish (Co. Fermanagh) conWdently asserting that they had the power of presentation in 1816. There were also feuds between diocesan bishops over rights of presentation, such as that between the bishops of Derry and of Down and Connor over Coleraine. When Bishop Crolly of Down and Connor appointed a parish priest in 1834, Bishop MacLaughlin of Derry placed the town under an interdict. Crolly appealed to Propaganda which set up a tribunal under Archbishop Kelly of Armagh. This found in favour of Crolly and the judgment was conWrmed by Pope Gregory XVI in 1835.51 The political and religious diYculties of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in which both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland had found it diYcult to impose any form of ‘oYcial’ religion on the laity of Ireland, had greatly strengthened the role of ‘folk’ religion among the population. Although there were comparable survivals throughout all the countries of both Catholic and Protestant Europe the strength of folk religion in Ireland was very much greater and was still creating severe problems for all the churches in Ireland well into the nineteenth century.52 As a result both the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church suVered from diYculties in securing spiritual commitment from their laity. As far as the Church of Ireland was concerned this was reXected in the low number of communicants. At Cloyne there were between 15 and 25 regular communicants in a parish of 348 Protestants. However, at Aghern and Britway (Co. Cork) there were between 29 and 56 communicants out of a Protestant population of 98 in 1834.53 In the case of the Roman Catholic Church it has been alleged that this problem was extended to include not just communicant numbers but those of mass attendance as well. A good deal of work has been done on this topic including a detailed survey of the situation in 1834. At that date, of the 1,530 51 Connolly, Priests and People, 62–3; RaVerty, Catholicism in Ulster, 107–8. 52 For an excellent discussion of the role of folk religion in Ireland in the seventeenth century, see especially R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland, Manchester 1997. 53 d’Alton, Protestant Society, 70.

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Table 4.9. Patronage of Church of Ireland beneWces in selected dioceses in the late eighteenth century Diocese

Bishop (%) Other clerical (%) Crown (%) Other lay (%)

Armagh Clonfert and Kilmacduagh Derry Dromore Dublin Elphin Kildare Kilmore Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe Ossory Raphoe Tuam and Ardagh

58.3 71.7 68.8 88.5 68.9 96.0 37.0 84.6 47.7 55.9 48.4 86.5

7.7 — 6.2 3.8 15.3 — — 2.6 7.4 2.9 22.6 —

12.6 5.0 6.2 — 7.2 2.7 33.3 7.7 15.3 19.1 19.4 0.8

21.4 23.3 18.8 7.7 8.6 1.3 29.7 5.1 29.6 22.1 9.6 12.7

Source: Akenson, Church of Ireland, 64.

Roman Catholic places of worship in Ireland, the majority (1,027) had only one mass each Sunday; however, whereas only 29% of the country chapels had more than a single mass each Sunday, 81% of the town chapels did so, and 20 of them had six or more masses. Calculations of mass attendance show ‘that in most areas north and west of a line from Dundalk to Killarney mass attendance was less than 40 per cent of the Catholic population while in areas south and east of such a line it is generally greater than 40 per cent’. It was generally highest in towns with Roman Catholic populations in excess of 5,000, and there were zones of high mass attendance in certain areas, such as South Leinster, attributed to the reform programmes of Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin and of Archbishops Troy and Murray of Dublin.54 Even with urban parishes there could be signiWcant variations from the less than 50% at Newry to the 74% at Derry. Various reasons have been produced for the generally low level of mass attendance. They include a shortage of both priests and church accommodation, such as the two churches and four priests for 25,000 Roman Catholics in Belfast; class segregation in churches with the wealthier parishioners sitting in special seats near the altar or in galleries and the rest made to feel inferior; the strength of more popular forms of folk religion over formal worship;55 and the humiliation caused by a lack of 54 D. W. Miller, ‘Mass Attendance in 1834’, in Piety and Power in Ireland 1760–1960: Essays in Honour of Emmet Larkin, ed. S. J. Brown and D. W. Miller, Belfast and Notre Dame 2000, 165, 174. There is an important analysis of the 1834 statistics and the diYculties of interpreting them in Murphy, Killaloe, 342–6. 55 RaVerty, Catholicism in Ulster, 103–4; V. J. McNally, Reform, Revolution and Reaction: Archbishop John Thomas Troy and the Catholic Church in Ireland 1787–1817, London 1995, 26.


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appropriate clothing: ‘It is quite possible that cottiers and the very poor did not go to mass at all, or in rota, according to whose turn it was to wear the only pair of shoes or decent set of clothes in the house.’56 Attendance at services in the chapels also has to be balanced against the practice, widespread until the middle years of the nineteenth century, of making one’s confession and receiving communion at ‘stations’ in private houses. The surviving diary of the parish priest of Kilmore in the diocese of Armagh shows that in 1827–9 he heard confessions and celebrated mass at some sixty stations each year, usually in private houses, but also in the churches at Mullavilly and Stonebridge.57 These were events that were not recorded in the oYcial statistics and suggest that Wgures for mass attendance in individual parishes need to be treated with a degree of caution, though without challenging the overall picture that has been established. However, there are reasons to suggest that much of the work that has been done on the levels of Roman Catholic mass attendance, and in particular the interpretation of the Wgures, has been extremely misleading. The source on which it has been based, the First Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction, Ireland, give not just statistics for Roman Catholics but for all religious groups in Ireland. A detailed analysis for one diocese, that of Raphoe, shows (Table 4.10, Appendix 5) that the attendance of Roman Catholics at services in the diocese was no worse, and may have been much better, than the comparable attendance by Presbyterians and members of the Church of Ireland. That should perhaps not surprise us. Figures for church attendance in the religious census of 1851 for England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man show that a signiWcant proportion absented themselves from public worship. Similarly, as we shall note in Table 8.2, church attendance among Roman Catholics in the deeply religious Breton dioceses could be very disappointing. Non-attendance did not, of course, imply non-belief, but merely that people did not consider church attendance to be such a high priority as both contemporary religious leaders, and apparently some more recent religious and social historians, thought it should be. The diocese of Raphoe was chosen for this comparative analysis because it was the diocese in which the proportion of Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and members of the Church of Ireland within the population most closely replicated the national religious divide. The detailed returns for each parish, reproduced in Appendix 5, also show that Roman Catholic attendance, in this diocese at least, may have been artiWcially depressed by 56 J. Fulton, The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics and Religion in Ireland, Oxford 1991, 73. 57 D. A. Kerr, Priests, Peel and Politics: Sir Robert Peel’s Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1841–1846, Oxford 1982, 48; A. Macaulay, William Crolly, Archbishop of Armagh, 1835–49, Blackrock 1994, 238.

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Table 4.10. Proportions of the Church of Ireland, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian population attending Sunday services of their denomination in selected parishes within the diocese of Raphoe 1834 Parish

Church of Ireland (%)

Roman Catholic (%)

Presbyterian (%)

Clondahorky Convoy Conwal Drumhome Killygarvan Killymard Kilmacrenan Raymoghy Stranolar Taughboyne (incl. All Saints) Tillyaugnish

25.5 27.8 13.2 (21.7) 12.4 (13.4) 32.7 (39.0) 10.7 (13.2) 12.9 17.0 26.8 (28.7) 19.7 29.0 (38.2)

19.6 41.9 30.0 22.9 24.2 42.5 30.6 77.7 27.6 53.6 20.8

7.9 34.1 23.6 40.3 15.4 65.5 17.4 28.7 48.4 31.8 36.7

Average attendance

20.8 (23.4)

35.7

32.0

Source: First Report of the Commissioners for Public Instruction, Ireland, House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers 1835, xxxiii, 269–85. Figures in full in Appendix 5. In parishes where there were Methodist places of worship, frequently described as being ‘in connexion with the Established Church’, two Wgures are given for Church of Ireland attendances, those in brackets including the numbers attending Methodist services.

the lack of places of worship. Only one parish in the diocese, Tullaghobegly, did not have a parish church in use, and that was only a temporary situation caused by the collapse of its roof a few months earlier. Although several parishes had no Presbyterian place of worship this was in most cases because there were no, or very few, Presbyterians living there. Only in the parishes of Augnishunshon, Clondavaddog, Donegal, Killea, and Leck were signiWcant numbers of Presbyterians returned as having no place of worship, and in only one of these did they number more than a thousand. In contrast with this, Roman Catholic populations of more than 1,000 had no churches at Kilcar, Leck, Raphoe, and Raymunterdoney and, even in some populous parishes with a church, shortage of clergy meant that there was not a service every Sunday. It is worth noting in passing that the levels of church attendance for the Church of Ireland population in the diocese of Raphoe were slightly lower than those noted by W. G. Neely for parishes in the city of Dublin and its suburbs in 1834. These were as high as 47.2% in the south central area of the city, though they dropped to 11.2% in the north west parishes.58 58 W. G. Neely, ‘The Laity in a Changing Society, 1830–1900’, in The Laity and the Church of Ireland, 1000–2000: All Sorts and Conditions, ed. R. Gillespie and W. G. Neely, Dublin 2002, 221.


157

Mass attendance, however, was not the only problem for Roman Catholics. As in the Church of Ireland there was a reluctance on the part of many of the laity to make the full spiritual commitment signiWed by the receiving of Holy Communion. There were very few Roman Catholics who communicated more than twice a year, even if they went to confession more frequently. These discrepancies have been explored in detail for the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin under Bishop Doyle. If the numbers of those who communicated at Christmas and Easter are compared with those who communicated monthly in the same parishes the discrepancies are extremely noticeable, as shown in Table 4.11. Bishops endeavoured to improve monthly communicant Wgures by establishing confraternities in parishes, one of the rules of membership being the reception of Holy Communion at least once a month. Partly the problem was the poor religious knowledge of the laity. In the 1830s the parish priest of Kilmore Erris (Co. Mayo) found only seven of his parishioners ‘capable of repeating the Lord’s Prayer correctly’. This was despite the actions of reforming bishops to lay down clear standards for conWrmation. Archbishop James Butler II of Cashel and Emly stated that he would only conWrm those ‘well instructed in the principal mysteries, the commandments, the seven sacraments . . . the dispositions for a good confession, and . . . the acts of contrition, faith, hope and charity’.59 Unfortunately for the bishops, the attractions of folk religion were deep-rooted among the Roman Catholic laity.60 In the early eighteenth century several dioceses had produced ‘regulations against witchcraft, spells and other forms of superstition’, but they had not been very eVective. Even some of the clergy were involved in such practices and had to be reproved by their bishops. As late as 1813 the diocese of Cashel and Emly produced regulations condemning popular superstition and at the same time decreeing that the practice of public penance should be an exceptional one. Public penance, including standing in a white sheet in church to make a public confession of one’s sins, was common throughout the eighteenth century but was gradually abandoned thereafter. It survived in the diocese of Elphin until after 1850. Clerical denunciation, exclusion from the sacraments, and even formal excommunication remained in use, and laity who received such penalties were normally shunned by their fellow parishioners. Two practices which the bishops and clergy found it very diYcult to discourage were wakes and patterns and the drunkenness and sexual licence that went with them. Before 1800 the clergy tended to side with the laity against episcopal interference, though after 1800 the clergy began to support the bishops. Wakes were not exclusively Roman Catholic aVairs. Protestants 59 McGrath, Religious Renewal, 294–5; Connolly, Priests and People, 84–5. 60 The section that follows is based on the excellent discussion of this topic in Connolly, Priests and People, 100–74.

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Table 4.11. Comparison of numbers of festival and monthly communicants in Wve parishes in the Roman Catholic diocese of Kildare and Leighlin 1829 Parish Borris Craiguenamanagh Myshall Rathvilly St Mullin’s

Festival communicants

Monthly communicants

5,400 4,400 2,369 4,100 3,050

313 450 350 600 130

Source: McGrath, ‘Religious Renewal and Reform’, 294–5.

had them as well and their own clergy were as keen as the Roman Catholic bishops to discourage them. They involved the drinking of large amounts of whiskey and the playing of traditional games, many of which were of a sexual nature. Regulations against wakes were published in the dioceses of Armagh in 1761, Cashel and Emly in 1782, and Cloyne in 1789; they were reissued in the diocese of Dublin as late as 1831. The practice of ‘keening’ at wakes was found particularly objectionable. In 1811 Archbishop Bray of Cashel and Emly condemned ‘all unnatural shrieks and screams, Wctitious and tuneful cries at wakes, together with the savage custom of howling and bawling at funerals’. The laity, however, were distressed that he was trying to ban ‘an integral part of the Gaelic procedure for dealing with death’.61 In some Presbyterian churches the communion seasons once or twice a year were sometimes extremely secular occasions not unlike Roman Catholic patterns. The Evangelical minister of Donaghmore (Co. Donegal), Samuel Dill: on his Wrst Communion Sabbath . . . found a long array of stalls laden with cakes and fruit, along the roadside at the church, and . . . he put an end to this unseemly traYc by, as he passed along, overturning these stalls with his own hand and ordering the owners of them to take these things hence.

At nearby St Johnston, ‘a woman with a basket of cakes and apples’ stood ‘at the elbow of the minister who was addressing the Table’, and at Ray: it was customary on the Thursday before the Communion for two of the village publicans to bring their signboards, and putting them up, the one on a barn and the other on a kiln close to the church, to ply their trade there from the following Monday evening.

Even on ordinary Sundays it was common practice for members of the congregation to retire to a neighbouring ale-house for refreshment in the short interval between the morning and afternoon services.62 61 Whelan, ‘Catholic Church in County Tipperary’, 243. 62 Lecky, Laggan Presbytery Books, 80.


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Patterns were extremely diYcult to suppress, even though they involved as much secularity as they did spirituality, and it was not until the laity began to lose their interest in them in the 1830s and 1840s that they could Wnally be suppressed. In 1817 Bishop Murphy of Cork suppressed the pattern at Gougane Barra, which he had described as ‘a scene of drunkenness, debauchery and rioting’, and in 1828 the parish priest of Kilrush (Co. Clare) was able to abolish the pattern on Scattery Island which had been supported, and indeed encouraged, by his predecessor: the annual exhibition at the Shrine of St Sinon . . . is entirely abolished. On last Easter Monday, the day on which hundreds of people were accustomed to assemble to perform what are called rounds, not one person was to be seen.63

However, only a few years previously the parish priest of Killeshandra had been given permission to replicate the St Patrick’s Purgatory stations on Lough Derg in his chapel at Coronea (Co. Cavan). A plan of the church in 1826 shows replicas of the penitential stone beds created by circles on the chapel Xoor. The plan was published in an Evangelical polemical pamphlet entitled Hindooism in Ireland. The text stated that the pilgrims did the devotions in bare feet, ‘prostrating themselves on the chapel Xoor; kissing the ground; venerating the cruciWx’. There was a fast of twenty-four hours which ended with mass, a procession, and benediction.64 The Lough Derg pilgrimages, which had been deliberately revived in the late eighteenth century, and which did not attract the drunken and lewd behaviour associated with other patterns, survived the general prohibition and still attract pilgrims from all over Ireland. Although the role of the laity, and its relationship to the ministry, was quite diVerent in Presbyterian churches to that in episcopal ones, one should beware of giving the former too democratic a proWle. The key lay role was that of the elder, but the elders were appointed by the Kirk Session with approval by the congregation being little more than a formality. Indeed an attempt within one congregation in 1776 to bypass the process of formal election by the Kirk Session was speedily halted.65 Since the session consisted of the minister and the elders, the eldership was in fact a self-perpetuating oligarchy. The Kirk Session ‘controlled the whole life of the congregation’. Children were baptized, catechumens admitted to communion, and marriages conducted only by resolution of the session. The session ‘reviewed the character and conduct of all members prior to each communion’ and 63 E. Bolster, A History of the Diocese of Cork from the Penal Era to the Famine, Cork 1989, 238; Murphy, Killaloe, 358. 64 Gallogly, Kilmore, 70–2. 65 J. M. Barkley, The Eldership in Irish Presbyterianism, Belfast 1963, 22–3.

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determined who would receive tokens entitling them to participate in the communion service. The session was also responsible for the administration of poor relief within the congregation and deciding who should and who should not be helped.66 There were formal procedures for the admission of elders, some of which involved the laying on of hands, and it was general practice for candidates for the eldership to be questioned by the minister to establish their orthodoxy in matters of doctrine. It was also the general practice of each Kirk Session to appoint one of their members to act as session clerk, and for each elder to be given oversight over a section of the congregation and to report on their moral and spiritual welfare. The elders in turn were subject themselves to examination twice a year.67 In most congregations the elders assisted the minister to distribute the elements at the communion service, and the Kirk Session determined the frequency of communion and the detailed arrangements for the various services, which began with a fast day and concluded with a service of thanksgiving.68 The Kirk Session also appointed the precentor, who led the singing in church, regulated the seating arrangements, organized missionary societies and Sunday schools, provided bibles to members of the congregation who could not aVord them, set up libraries, and, whenever possible, established a school and appointed the teachers. It was also responsible for maintaining the church and its furnishings and, in some congregations, organized ‘the tilling and harvesting of the Minister’s farm’.69 The function for which the Kirk Session was frequently most notorious was the maintenance of discipline. This might result in members of the congregation found guilty of crimes such as adultery, fornication, assault, drunkenness, theft, fraud, gaming, perjury, or witchcraft, being obliged to make a public confession before the whole congregation or, in extreme cases, being excommunicated.70 Despite the strength of Presbyterian discipline, fornication remained a common problem in many congregations.71 The other widespread problem was drunkenness. Isaac Patton suspended the communion services at Lylehill in the 1790s as they ‘had become a by-word for frivolity and drunkenness’.72 Concern to prevent drunkenness led to several Presbyterian ministers joining the Ulster Temperance Society when it was founded in 1829,73 and in 1843 no ordination dinner was held at Bovevagh ‘as 66 J. M. Barkley, ‘The Presbyterian Minister in Eighteenth Century Ireland’, in Challenge and ConXict: Essays in Irish Presbyterian History and Doctrine, ed. J. L. M. Haire, Antrim 1981, 52–4. 67 Barkley, Eldership, 24–31; M. Hill, ‘Evangelicalism and the Churches in Ulster Society, 1770–1850’, Queen’s University, Belfast, PhD 1987, 51. 68 Barkley, Eldership, 33–9. 69 Ibid., 46, 52–4. 70 Ibid., 57–9. 71 Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 52. 72 Baillie, Congregations, 615. 73 Conway, ‘Presbyterian Ministry’, 280.


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the conviction was growing that it was unseemly to follow the solemn service with an evening spent drinking toasts’.74

C H U RC H E S A N D P U B L I C WO R S H I P The economic disparity between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in the years before 1850 resulted in a situation in which the theology of the latter could be so inadequately reXected in its liturgy, that the restrained ceremonial of the former was likely to make a greater impact on the discerning visitor. The worship of the Church of Ireland was that of the Book of Common Prayer as revised in 1662.75 This provided for the daily recitation of Morning and Evening Prayer, followed by the Litany on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and by the Wrst part of the communion service, including a sermon, on Sundays and the major festivals. The full communion service was celebrated, at a minimum, on Christmas Day, Easter, and Whit Sundays. This tended to be the practice in some rural parishes but in the towns the Holy Communion was normally celebrated at least once a month, and, as Table 4.12 shows, this practice was also adopted in many rural parishes, in a way that it was not in most parts of England and Wales. In 1833 there were ten churches in Dublin and Wve in Cork at which Holy Communion was celebrated fortnightly. This was also the case at Bandon and Kinsale (Co. Cork), at Clonmel (Co. Tipperary), at Waterford Cathedral, and St Iberius’, Wexford. Some churches in both Dublin and Cork had early and late celebrations of Holy Communion on Sunday mornings, and their services took place on diVerent Sundays, so that someone familiar with the details would have been able to communicate every Sunday in both cities should he or she so have wished. The surviving oVertory book beginning in 1782 for the Dublin parish of St Nicholas Without suggests that the monthly communion services were best attended in the autumn and early winter, and there were even larger numbers of communicants at Christmas and Easter.76 However, the prayer book provision for daily services was rarely observed, 74 R. B. Knox, A History of the Congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1610–1982: A Supplement of Additions, Emendations and Corrections, Belfast 1996, 7. 75 This section is based on the detailed account in F. R. Bolton, The Caroline Tradition of the Church of Ireland, London 1958, 139–203, though I would want to modify some of the stances he takes in the interpretation of the evidence he has so assiduously assembled. 76 R. Gillespie, ‘Religion and Urban Society: The Case of Early Modern Dublin’, in London and Dublin 1500–1840, ed. P. Clark and R. Gillespie, Proceedings of the British Academy, cvii (Oxford 2001), 237.

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Table 4.12. Frequency of Holy Communion in Church of Ireland churches by province 1833 Frequency of celebration At least monthly More than quarterly but less than monthly Quarterly or less

Armagh

Cashel

Dublin

Tuam

Total

174 263 100

218 87 47

189 73 24

37 23 45

615 446 216

Source: Bolton, Caroline Tradition, 174.

even in cathedrals, few of which, unlike those in England and Wales, had choral foundations. Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin had choral services at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. daily in 1815, and an early said service at 6 a.m. in summer and 8 a.m. in winter, and eighteen of the city churches had a daily service in 1821. St Olaf ’s, Waterford, had Morning and Evening Prayer daily in 1824, and St Iberius’, Wexford, service on four weekdays out of six in 1833. But these instances seem to have been exceptions to the general rule, so that when daily Morning Prayer was introduced at Hillsborough (Co. Down) in 1846 it was seen as a Tractarian novelty. Where choral services did take place they were often of high quality. It was claimed in 1820 that ‘there is not . . . a cathedral in Great Britain where the choral service is better performed than in those of St Patrick’s and Christ Church’, and that ‘the Dublin cathedrals could attract the Wnest Irish and English singers’.77 In 1778 Christ Church Cathedral was presented with an elaborate new set of altar plate comprising two chalices and patens, two large plates, an oval almsdish, and a pair of candlesticks.78 The cathedrals at Dublin, however, were an exception. Archbishop Beresford of Armagh commented in 1845 on the diVerences between cathedrals in Ireland and those in other parts of the British Isles: Instead of a stretching and venerable pile, in which the full choral service of the church is performed with due solemnity from day to day, by a choir schooled in elaborate music; in this Country, the buildings denominated cathedrals are, in more than twothirds of the dioceses, mere parish churches, and those of the humblest and simplest kind, in which the means do not exist that would enable an attempt to perform the choral service.79

Interesting light is cast on the liturgical arrangements of one of these ‘parish church’ cathedrals in the surviving act books of the dean and chapter of Cloyne. It is clear that in the late eighteenth century the services were being 77 Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin: A History, ed. K. Milne, Dublin 2000, 339–40. 78 W. Butler, The Cathedral of Holy Trinity Dublin (Christ Church), London 1901, 40. 79 Beresford, Charge, 18.


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conducted by a curate, who in 1768 was paid Wfteen shillings for ‘each Dignitary’s and Prebendary’s turn preached for’, a sum increased to twenty shillings in 1771. However, the cathedral clearly had both an organ and a choir. In 1768 the organist was required to play at all services in the cathedral and to instruct ‘the Blue Boys in the Cathedral Service’. In 1771 the chapter authorized the purchase of a choir organ at a cost not to exceed £130, and to lay out £20 in ‘the maintenance, clothing and instructing in vocal and instrumental musick, six boys belonging to the choir of this Cathedral’. In 1780 it was: resolved that the boys and singing men of the choir be (at the request of the Bishop of Cloyne) permitted to put on their surplices in the Chapter House with the Curate, and follow him into the Choir in a decent regular manner.

In 1786 the organist was permitted ‘to employ a deputy on all days, Sundays and Holydays excepted’,80 thus implying that at that date at least there were some weekday services. Thereafter there seems to have been some deterioration in the cathedral services. In 1817: It having been reported that the organ in the cathedral is frequently not played upon during the Sunday Evening’s Service and sometimes not even on Sunday Mornings the Chapter have determined to withhold the usual donation of twenty pounds. They do require the organist in future to perform every Sunday morning and evening during the year and that he shall allways play a Voluntary previous to the commencement of Divine Service.81

Fourteen years later, however, the chapter was still expressing its concern at the deteriorating state of the choir, by now blaming this on ‘the non-residence of the Vicars Choral whose income was exclusively appropriated for the maintenance of the Choral Service of the Cathedral’.82 In 1844 a tenor singer, ‘incapacitated by ill health from fulWlling his duties’, was ordered to be replaced.83 In other respects the chapter was clearly making strenuous steps to ensure that the cathedral was properly Wtted up for worship. In 1796 it agreed to purchase ‘a new Covering of Crimson Velvet laced with Gold for the Communion Table and also a Curtain and Fall of the same material for the Bishop’s Throne and new Curtains of Crimson Damask for the same and a Cushion of Crimson Velvet for the seat thereof’.84 Such luxury was not to be found in many Roman Catholic churches at this time: 80 RCBL, C12/2/1, pp. 129, 134, 148, 160. 81 RCBL, C12/2/2, 24 September 1817. 82 Ibid., 8 March 1838. 83 Ibid., 8 August 1844. 84 Ibid., 23 June 1796.

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Most chapels had no other formal religious services apart from mass on Sundays and holy days. The Blessed Sacrament was reserved in the priest’s house . . . Ceremonial and its accompanying trappings were reduced to a minimum . . . a stole worn by the priest was the only indication that a sacred rite was taking place . . . Altars were made of mud, boards or stone, or a combination of these materials, and at times were raised on timber or stone landings . . . Some chapels had a cruciWx while others had only a painted image of a cruciWx . . . Unsuitable and worn out vestments were often ordered . . . to be destroyed . . . [and] parish priests to ensure that the altar coverings were not torn and that in particular the corporals and puriWcators, used on the altar during mass, were in good condition.85

Whilst this description was probably a fair one of many rural churches before 1800, and indeed is attested to in visitation evidence, there were signs that things were beginning to improve, especially in the towns. Bishop Moylan of Kerry claimed in 1785 that the ceremonial in the churches at Killarney and Tralee was ‘better than any Protestant church in the diocese’.86 At Wexford in the 1820s there were: two Wne choirs in the two chapels . . . On Corpus Christi we have a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, on Palm Sunday a procession of palms, on 15th August, our patron day, a grand Solemn mass and procession of candles. Every Sunday in Lent we say the Stations, and on other festivals we have a benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.87

In Dublin such developments had taken place even earlier. A contemporary report of the LiVey Street chapel in 1749 noted that: On the altar is a gilt tabernacle, with six large gilt candlesticks, and as many nosegays of artiWcial Xowers. The altar piece carved and embellished with four pillars, cornices and decorations gilt and painted. The picture of the Conception of B.V.M., to whom the chapel is dedicated, Wlls the altar piece; and on each side are paintings of the apostles Peter and Paul.88

From 1779 the Francis Street chapel employed a Neapolitan musical director, Tommaso Giordani. There was a special service for the recovery of George III from his illness in 1789, for which Giordani had composed a special Te Deum, conducted by Archbishop Troy, assisted by three other bishops, the congregation numbering 3,000.89 By 1820 the Dublin churches had Benediction at

85 I. Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, Blackrock 1991, 148–9, 176–7. 86 P. J. Corish, The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Dublin 1981, 106. 87 Hoppen, Elections, 203. 88 History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin, ed. J. Kelly and D. Keogh, Dublin 2000, 226. 89 Ibid., 227.


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least once a month, and some had both Stations of the Cross and public recitation of the rosary.90 Even in a deeply rural western diocese like Killaloe things were beginning to change by the second quarter of the nineteenth century. There was ‘a Solemn High Mass, accompanied by an excellent Choir’ at the opening of the Callaghan’s Mills chapel in 1840, pontiWcal high mass and Benediction at Kilrush in 1841, and the full Holy Week services, including Tenebrae, at Nenagh by 1850.91 Services in the Presbyterian churches in Ireland followed the pattern of those in Scotland. By the eighteenth century, and with the Wnal expulsion of its episcopalian minority, the Church of Scotland had become, in respect of both its doctrine and externals, the most aggressively Protestant religious establishment in Europe. The debates of the seventeenth century had resulted in a victory for those who rejected any notion of set forms of worship, any hint of ceremonial or anything which, by even the vaguest association, could be regarded as ‘popish’. The services were long, the main components being a lecture ‘occupying the large part of an hour, in which Scripture was explained verse by verse’ and a sermon ‘delivered extemporary or by heart and about an hour in length’. No form of musical accompaniment to singing was generally permitted, though a few churches had introduced organs by the early years of the nineteenth century. The metrical psalms were lined, the precentor singing out the verse and the congregation repeating it, a practice adopted in some Church of Ireland churches when there were no singers. Communion was celebrated no more than once or twice a year, the congregation sitting around tables in relays, after services of preparation, fasting, and a detailed examination of the intending communicants. Although attempts were made from the latter part of the eighteenth century to reform public worship in Scotland they were largely unsuccessful.92 It was this style of worship that was replicated by Presbyterians in Ireland and it did not begin to change until after 1850. The only churches with organs were a few of those that had withdrawn from the Synod of Ulster in 1829 and when an organ was introduced at Enniskillen (County Fermanagh) in 1861, the innovation was highly controversial, being formally condemned by the General Assembly. In 1844 the minister of Sandholes (Co. Tyrone) was forced to resign his charge as ‘he was ahead of his time in asking his people to stand for singing’.93

90 D. J. Keenan, The Catholic Church in Nineteenth Century Ireland: A Sociological Study, Dublin 1983, 102. 91 Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe 1800–1850, 369–71. 92 See W. D. Maxwell, A History of Worship in the Church of Scotland, London 1955, 124–45, 156–61, 164–7. 93 Baillie, Congregations, 472, 747.

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Pastoral Care and Public Worship THE PROGRESS OF ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM

In the following chapter we shall look in some detail at the way in which programmes of ecclesiastical reform were implemented within diVerent churches and in diVerent parts of Ireland, and consider the evidence revealed by visitation returns and other primary sources. It is, however, appropriate to conclude this chapter with an overview of the general objectives and progress of this reform programme, particularly as it related to the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church, both of which had a hierarchical structure and where reform tended to be a top-down rather than a bottom-up process. The Church of Ireland reform programme was clearly, as we have noted, already underway by the 1770s. Archbishop Cradock of Dublin, in his 1772 charge, recommended his clergy to visit the charity schools in their parishes on a regular basis to ensure that they were being properly conducted, to reside ‘upon, or as near as possible to your Cures’, and to visit their ‘parishioners, (especially the poorer sort) at their houses, as opportunity oVers, and occasions require’. He pointed out that the Roman Catholic clergy were ‘assiduous, active, and full of address in this particular’ and that the clergy of the establishment should not be found wanting by comparison.94 He also had a lot to say about liturgical matters: In regard to the Liturgy of our Church; Do it all the justice in your power, when oYciating: Endeavour to give it all the weight, the dignity, the grace, it is capable of receiving from a grave, clear and distinct pronunciation . . . I recommend to you, not to leave the choice of Singing Psalms to parish clerks, but that you point them out yourselves: For though praise and thanksgiving be the great object of psalmody, and is the noblest employment of the human mind; yet at certain seasons, and upon days of humility and fasting, penitential psalms ought to take place.95

Cradock recommended that from time to time use should be made of the Benedicite instead of the Te Deum at Morning Prayer, but urges that the Jubilate should never be used on a fast day. He thought it was important for the clergy to instruct the people when they should, and when they should not, join in: for some are found so very uninformed therein, as from an improper zeal, to join in the Absolution to be pronounced by the priest alone; and even in the very form of consecration of the elements in the Lord’s Supper.96

94 J. Cradock, A Charge Delivered . . . to the Clergy of the Dioceses of Dublin and Glandelagh at his Primary Visitation . . . June 17, 1772, Dublin 1773, 7, 15–16. 95 Ibid., 10, 14–15. 96 Ibid., 12–14.


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Some earlier charges were reissued, including one by Archbishop Hort of Tuam, which urged clerical residence, catechizing, and visiting, and provided detailed guidance on preaching and reading the service, but at the same time pointed out that ‘a virtuous and holy life’ led by the clergyman ‘will have more eVect upon his people than a reasoned discourse from the pulpit, be they never so excellent’.97 Archbishop Agar of Cashel and Emly seems to have been successful in persuading the clergy to catechize, as weekly catechizing appears to have been the norm in the diocese of Emly in 1805–6.98 An early nineteenth century apologist argued that ‘the Reformation has progressed more in Ireland since the Union, than in any period of her former history: but that this improvement originated with the Church itself ’.99 He noted the increase in the number of beneWces, churches, and glebe houses, the dissolution of some of the larger parish unions, and the 717 churches built, or in the process of being built, since 1801.100 Much of this growth had resulted from the initiatives of individual reforming bishops of which Thomas Percy and Richard Mant were good examples. As bishop of Dromore from 1782 until his death in 1811, Percy repaired and enlarged his cathedral and enforced a rota whereby each of the six dignities and prebendaries had to preach twice each year or incur a Wne to be paid to the bishop, who appointed a substitute. As the diocese was small he was able to carry out a visitation every year and he used his knowledge of his clergy and parishes to enforce discipline.101 On 6 December 1791 he wrote to the curate of Waringstown: I understand that you are expected to set out for Bath from Waringstown on the 18th December. That day being Sunday, I am sure you are too good a clergyman to violate. I also submit to you whether you had not better defer your journey till after the 25th, when I presume you will celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in your church. The laity are too apt to be remiss in this solemn act of religion. I know you will excuse these hints, which as a young clergyman you will take in good part from an old one.102

Percy maintained good relations with both the Roman Catholics and Presbyterians in his diocese and gave a site for a Roman Catholic chapel at Dromore. Mant’s brief tenure of the diocese of Killaloe and Kilfenora between 1820 and 1823 was one of considerable activity in which he delivered three charges. In the Wrst of these he advocated two sermons rather than one on a Sunday wherever possible, regular catechizing, the administration of baptism in 97 J. Hort, Instructions to the Clergy of the Diocese of Tuam . . . at his Primary Visitation held there on Wednesday, July 8, 1742, London 1773, 33. 98 Seymour, Emly, 262. 99 H. Newland, An Apology for the Established Church in Ireland, Dublin 1829, 82. 100 Ibid., 118–19, 134–6, 155. 101 E. D. Atkinson, Dromore, An Ulster Diocese, Dundalk 1925, 74, 89, 94. 102 Ibid., 75.

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churches rather than private houses, more frequent communion, and constant residence as a means of commending the Church of Ireland to the Roman Catholic population.103 In the following year he advocated the desirability of breaking up large parochial unions and the acquisition of more glebe houses. He pointed out that ‘these houses are not to be considered our own, but are the property of the Church’, and must therefore be properly maintained. He stated that it was his intention to tighten up the qualiWcations for ordination and licensing, and to insist on having testimonials from serving clergy, which was the practice in England. He was also, like Cradock half a century earlier, concerned about lay participation in the services.104 In his experience there were many churches in the diocese in which: no-one appeared to take any part in the Service, except the minister and the clerk: and in one instance, more especially, the clerk being absent by reason of indisposition the whole of the Service, including the responses, was read by the minister alone.105

Mant was keen to promote psalmody but disliked ‘that variety of modern compositions under the name of hymns’ which he regarded as ‘deviations from the uniformity of our public worship’. He thought that singing was more eVective when led by a choir but thought that choirs should not be allowed to dominate the singing to such an extent that the service became a sacred concert. Clergy were also warned that they should not preach in other churches, or invite other clergy to preach in their churches, without the bishop’s speciWc permission, to be asked for by the incumbent in each case.106 In his Wnal charge Mant urged strict observance of the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer,107 a line he was to pursue with even greater vigour following his translation to Down and Connor in 1823. In 1822 the new archbishop of Dublin, William Magee, outlined his priorities as clerical residence, maintaining churches in good repair, building new churches in areas of need, and the promotion of ‘the Education of the young’.108 His successor, Richard Whately, believed, however, that the question of residence was not as simple as some of the church’s critics alleged: 103 R. Mant, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Killaloe, Dublin 1820, especially 7–22. 104 Id., A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Killaloe, Dublin 1821, 3–11, 16–18, 20–34. 105 Ibid., 35. 106 Ibid., 37–53. 107 Id., The Rule of Ministerial Duty Informed and Illustrated in a Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Killaloe, Dublin 1822. 108 W. Magee, A Charge Delivered at his Primary Visitation in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, 2nd edn, London 1822, 40.


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Non-residence is a topic of most fallacious clamour. E.g. I know a clergyman who has worn out his health in the labours of his parish, and has lately been made the victim of factious misrepresentation, as a non-resident, living in a house a stone’s throw out of the parish, but nearer to the church by a mile than many houses within the parish. I always endeavour to enforce residence, but not with the vain expectation . . . that the advantage accruing from a voluntary residence of one who resides, because he is conscientiously zealous, can be obtained from compulsory residence of the body where there is no mind to reside. I rather hope to deter by a penalty such men from occupying livings in which they do not like to reside.109

Whately, however, was committed to catechizing, at a time when it was becoming increasingly unpopular among the clergy, and argued strongly that the duty should not be delegated to schoolmasters.110 Bishop Elrington of Ferns and Leighlin took a similar line: The Sunday schools, happily so general, are of great utility, but they ought not to be deemed a substitute for regular catechetical instruction. To that the ministers of each parish should pay the most particular attention.111

Bishop Knox of Limerick urged that there should be two services rather than one every Sunday in all places ‘where there is a possibility of procuring a congregation’, and that catechizing should be reintroduced wherever it had been allowed to lapse.112 Knox’s successor, William Higgin, also advocated regular catechizing ‘according to the good old custom of our forefathers, after the Second Lesson, or meeting them before or after Divine Service, as the exigency of the case may require’.113 He also instituted the keeping of proper records of services: I trust your Preachers’ Books will be kept with scrupulous accuracy, as my instructions to the Rural Deans will require an annual return of duty, performed as well by other clergymen as by yourselves; and I have further to request that if, from illness or any other cause, you are obliged to absent yourselves from your parishes, I may be acquainted with such absence, and also with the arrangements you have entered into for due performance of duty.

Higgin was one of the Wrst bishops to set aside days on which he was available to see his clergy, these being the Wrst and third Wednesdays of each month.114 109 E. J. Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, DD, Late Archbishop of Dublin, 2 vols, London 1866, i, 296. 110 R. Whately, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Dioceses of Dublin and Glandalagh and Kildare, Dublin 1849, 17–26. 111 T. Elrington, A Charge Delivered at the Visitation of . . . Leighlin and Ferns, Dublin 128, 32. 112 E. Knox, Charge Delivered at the Annual Visitation held in Limerick . . . and in Killarney, Limerick 1842, 21–2. 113 W. Higgin, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Dioceses of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe, Dublin 1849, 10. 114 Ibid., 24–5.

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The generally poor levels of pastoral provision for the Roman Catholic laity in Ireland before the last quarter of the eighteenth century have been blamed on the long episcopal vacancies in many dioceses before the earlier part of that century.115 Things were beginning to improve by 1770, as is revealed in the relatio status, the report given by bishops at regular intervals to Propaganda, several of which are now easily accessible in print. The early ones tend to begin with a history and topography of the respective diocese before going on to provide an analysis of current conditions, usually couched in rather general terms.116 In 1771 Bishop Phillips of Killala noted in his relatio status that the clergy were obliged to preach on the gospel in Irish on all Sundays and holy days, and that he managed to visit most of his twenty-four parishes every year, though some of the more remote ones were only visited every third year. However, Phillips had no house and lived at his family home in the neighbouring diocese of Achonry. The two main problems in the diocese were the number of mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants and the failure of the laity to abstain from servile work and attend mass on holy days.117 An interesting comparison of the state of the diocese of Cork in 1778 and 1845 can be made by reading the relatio status of Bishop Butler in the former, and that of Bishop Murphy in the latter, years. Butler reported that the diocese’s twenty-eight parishes had been arranged into Wve deaneries, each with a vicar forane who reported to the bishop on the clergy under him ‘three or four times a year, so that no scandals—if such there be—may remain hidden from me’. By 1845 the diocese had thirty-three parishes, arranged in four deaneries, and forty churches had been newly built or rebuilt since 1815. The three churches in Cork had daily evening sermons during Lent and catechizing on Sundays between the last mass and Vespers. Attendance at clergy conferences was compulsory. Twelve full visitations had been carried out in thirty years. There were still problems with mixed marriages but they sometimes led to the conversion of the non-Catholic party. There were seven convents of nuns in the diocese, a Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and three confraternities, of the Immaculate Conception, of Christian Doctrine, and for the ‘beneWt of sick persons in need of temporal and spiritual assistance’.118 Another good source for the progress of the diocesan reform movement is the series of diocesan regulations or statutes enacted from 1770. Those for the diocese of Ferns in 1771 laid down that the sacraments must not be administered to any apostates or those who have broken the rules of abstinence from 115 Connolly, Priests and People, 60–1. 116 See, e.g., ‘Diocesan Report for Ossory 1769’, Archivium Hibernicum, v (1916), 135–42; ‘Bishop CaulWeld’s Relatio Status, 1796’, ed. P. J. Corish, Ibid., xxviii (1966), 103–13. 117 E. A. D’Alton, History of the Archdiocese of Tuam, 2 vols, Dublin 1928, i, 309–10. 118 Bolster, Cork, 107–8, 306–10.


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meat on fast days, and that no priest ‘must presume to Dine at any wicked Rom. Catholick’s Table (or sup) who sacrilegiously presumes to eat Meat on fasting or forbidden Daies in deWance of the wholesome and soul-saving laws of the Cath. Church’. Regulations in respect of hearing confessions, the saying of mass and dispensations for abstinence were tightened, and priests or friars were not allowed to beg, or to celebrate in chapels belonging to others without the bishop’s permission. As far as patterns were concerned, Bishop Sweetman recommended the clergy ‘to put back and discourage . . . Meetings of pretended Devotion, or rather of real Dissipation and Dissoluteness; wh. Bring nothing but reXection and ridicule on our Holy Religion, from those that are without’. Finally the clergy were commanded to denounce ‘the infamous and incorrigible couple-beggar James Doyle’ and that he be ‘declared excommunicate, and accursed by God and the Holy Cath. Church, at all the Stations, thro’ the whole diocese, for three Sundays consecutively, from . . . Low Sunday’.119 The Tuam diocesan statutes of 1817 required the clergy to attend theological conferences, to preach, to reside in their parishes, and to keep parochial records; priests were not to celebrate mass twice on Sundays or hear confessions without a licence; they were not to go to public houses, dances, theatres, race meetings, or sporting events; priests accused of fornication, or of drunkenness, after their third admonition were to be suspended; and lay patronage was declared unlawful.120 The Raphoe statutes of 1782 forbade arranged marriages, especially those in which ‘the intending bride had no voice in the matter, and a part of the fortune was sometimes paid in advance’. They also ordered the recitation of public prayers at mass for the royal family and lord lieutenant.121 The impact of the requirement for the clergy to keep satisfactory records of baptisms and marriages has been noted for the diocese of Killaloe. Here, of the Wfty-nine parishes in the diocese, only one (Nenagh) has a register beginning before 1800, in fact in 1792, but with signiWcant gaps before 1830; a further seven parishes have registers which commence between 1801 and 1825; but the majority of registers do not begin until later, thirty-six parishes commencing in the period 1826–50.122 An attempt to provide a corporate response to the problems that individual bishops had been tackling over the previous half-century was made by setting up a special committee of the bishops to examine the discipline of the Irish Catholic Church. This committee reported to a full meeting of the bishops held on 11 February 1829. It identiWed as the main problem facing most 119 ‘The Diocesan Manuscripts of Ferns during the Rule of Bishop Sweetman (1745–1786)’, ed. W. H. G. Flood, Archivium Hibernicum, iii (1914), 116–19. 120 Keenan, Catholic Church, 216–17. 121 E. Macguire, A History of the Diocese of Raphoe, 2 vols, Dublin 1920, ii, 324–5. 122 Murphy, Killaloe 1800–1850, 403–9.

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bishops the administration of baptism in private houses, the administration of communion at stations without a proper celebration of mass, the celebration of mass in private houses, the tendency of many priests to celebrate two masses (one private and one public) on Sundays and holy days, the use of ‘vestments and altar cloths not becoming the sacred ministry’, the hearing of confessions in private houses (particularly when followed by a dinner), and the unwillingness of some priests to visit the sick or administer extreme unction without prior payment. The committee was also concerned that inadequate thought had, in many cases, been given to the selection of candidates for holy orders, that banns of marriage were frequently not published and that many marriages took place without the contracting parties having been to confession beforehand. A whole series of recommendations were made to the bishops. Adults were not to be presented for conWrmation unless they had been instructed in the catechism and been to confession; mass was to be celebrated at all stations and priests were not to dine in the house at which the station was taking place; examiners were to be appointed in each diocese to assist the bishop in the selection of future clergy and all candidates were ‘to be most distinguished for talents, literary attainments, good moral character’; all persons being married were to go to confession ‘within three days before their marriage’. It was also agreed that priests should ensure that ‘pixes be folded in a clean corporal and puriWcatory and carried in a pocket inside the waistcoat whenever he goes from home, and that on his return, it be deposited in a suitable place under lock and key’. Other recommendations were that ‘public instructions be given by each P. Priest and Curate on Sundays . . . pilgrimages to wells be totally abolished . . . none but married women be puriWed after childbirth’ and that ‘clergymen never appear at theatres, races, public houses or balls’.123 The impact of a reforming bishop can be seen in the diocese of Kilmore, after the appointment of James Browne in 1829. In his Wrst relatio status Browne noted the widespread divisions, drunkenness, and even immorality among the clergy. Three parish priests and one curate were suspended for drunkenness in 1828–31. Another was removed from his parish in 1829 for making sexual advances to female penitents in the confessional. The statutes approved at a diocesan synod in 1834 required the clergy to dress in black or dark-coloured clothes and to refrain from attending theatres, hunts or races, or drinking in public houses. Housekeepers were to be ‘virtuous and of mature years’. The parochial income was to be divided fairly between the parish priest and his curates. No priest was to be absent from his parish for more than Wve days without the permission of the bishop. Priests were not to 123 DDA, Minute Book of Meetings of Irish Roman Catholic Bishops, 1826–49.


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build churches without authority and had to set up lay committees to supervise the building process. Young boys and girls were forbidden to attend wakes between sunset and sunrise unless accompanied by relatives or to consume alcohol at these events. The clergy were encouraged to install proper confessionals in their churches so as to avoid potential scandals resulting from the hearing of confessions in open churches or in private houses. Between 1829 and 1835 thirteen new churches had been built in the diocese, and by the latter date Browne was able to report, in his relatio status of that year, that the numbers of clergy had risen, that they resided in their parishes and preached regularly, and that they attended clerical conferences to keep abreast of new developments in theology and pastoral practice. The morals of the laity were also much improved. An annual retreat for priests in the newly established seminary at Cavan began in the 1840s.124 Two of the major emphases of the reforming bishops were on preaching and marriage discipline. Part of the problem with preaching was that, especially in the west of Ireland, many parishioners either spoke only Irish, or, if they were bilingual, were more at home with Irish, and there was a shortage of clergy able to preach in Irish. The Clogher diocesan statutes, in force between 1789 and 1824, stated that priests who failed to preach on three consecutive Sundays were to be suspended. Preaching in the Dublin diocese was still regarded as unsatisfactory by Archbishop Murray in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and correspondents to the Clare Journal were making similar complaints about the standard of preaching in the diocese of Killaloe. Some clergy appeared to use preaching methods very similar to those of Evangelical missionaries, concentrating on ‘the vices and weaknesses of the people’ and ‘the most fearful truths of our holy religion’.125 The bishops were particularly keen to prevent mixed marriages. Bishop Troy of Ossory described them as ‘unlawful, wicked and dangerous’ in 1780. They were also anxious to prevent clandestine marriages, which were very frequent, usually because the parties concerned were within the forbidden degrees or parents had refused their consent.126 There seemed to be considerable variation between dioceses in respect of one aspect of ecclesiastical reform, the establishment of parochial libraries. They were common in the dioceses of Kilmore in 1837, Ardagh and Clogher in 1840, and Kerry in 1843, but very few were reported in 1840 in the dioceses of Raphoe and of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora.127 124 Gallogly, Kilmore, 81–6, 88. 125 Connolly, Priests and People, 78–80; RaVerty, Catholics in Ulster, 102; Murphy, Killaloe 1800–1850, 351–3. 126 See the important discussion of both marriage discipline and sexual behaviour outside marriage in Connolly, Priests and People, 175–218. 127 Keenan, Catholic Church, 140.

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Other matters of concern to reforming bishops were the regulation of patterns and stations, the promotion of Sunday schools, and the observance of fast and abstinence days. Some, urged on by Propaganda, would have abolished patterns and stations altogether, but Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, whose inXuence upon the other bishops was considerable, took the view that regulation was the better option. His biographer notes that: There is no evidence . . . that Doyle sought to eradicate pattern days . . . Rather Doyle sought to contain what was too exuberant in the Irish religious tradition but to retain what had stood the test of time. What was best in the domestic religious tradition was blended into the Tridentine model. Restraint rather than condemnation or elimination marked his general approach to patterns.128

Similarly, Doyle saw the station dinner rather than the station itself as the main abuse; the former was therefore abolished and the latter permitted to continue.129 His example was followed in the province of Armagh, where the statutes promulgated in 1834 permitted stations in private houses for the celebration of mass and the hearing of confessions, but forbade the station dinner and only permitted the clergy to have a snack after they had completed their religious duties.130 Sunday schools were labour-intensive and depended on the willingness of both clergy and some laity to participate in the teaching. Bishop Murphy of Clogher reported in his relatio status of 1804: Our illiterate laity, for nine tenths of our people owing to their poverty are such, have made an astonishing progress in acquiring a competent knowledge of Christian Doctrine within these few years back. This change has been eVected by the zeal and exertions of the parish priests, many of who have, besides the public catechism established on Sunday mornings and evenings in their chapels or places of worship, prevailed with a number of the well-disposed laity to teach in the more remote parts of their parishes on Sunday evenings.131

Whilst the Irish Roman Catholic bishops were keen to see that the appointed days of fasting and abstinence, particularly those of Lent, were properly observed by the laity, they also recognized that this was not always possible. On 22 February 1814 Archbishop O’Reilly of Armagh informed his vicargeneral that in view of the high price of ‘herrings and fresh Wsh now at the approach of Lent . . . I think it is necessary to grant leave to the R. Catholicks of the Diocese of Armagh to eat Xesh meat at the one meal on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from Sunday next to Palm Sunday inclusively.’132 128 130 131 132

McGrath, Religious Renewal, 176–7. 129 Ibid., 153–4. Macaulay, Crolly, 109–10. Clogher Record Album: A Diocesan History, ed. J. DuVy, Monaghan 1975, 11–12. ADA, O’Reilly Correspondence, Item 201.


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Particular problems were to emerge for the maintenance of penitential discipline among the laity during the famine years of the late 1840s. Archbishop Murray of Dublin issued Lenten regulations in 1847 which dispensed those reliant on soup kitchens or charitable institutions from abstinence throughout Lent, and those who had some income but were still poor were granted such relaxations as their circumstances required: For all the rest of the faithful, as an encouragement to the more opulent to be more abundant in their supply of food to the poor, permission is granted for the use of Xesh meat, at dinner only, on every day during Lent, except the Wednesdays and Fridays, and permission is given for eggs every day except the Wrst and last Wednesdays and all the Fridays.

A note from Archbishop Slattery of Cashel and Emly recorded that it was his intention to follow Murray’s example, so that the destitute and poor could eat any food they could obtain during Lent, but that the relaxation for those who did not fall into those categories must be on ‘the condition of relieving the Poor, either by food or money’.133 The bishops were themselves heavily involved in the relief programme. The parish priest of Fethard (Co. Tipperary) acknowledged receipt of £12 10s from Archbishop Slattery ‘for the beneWt of the poor’, and in March 1847 Archbishop Crolly of Armagh received the substantial sum of £3,116 11s 8d from Bishop Fitzpatrick of Boston, Massachusetts, ‘being the amount of contributions from his Lordship’s Diocese for the relief of the destitute poor of Ireland’.134 The distribution of these and other funds was to cause some dispute among the bishops. On 11 February 1847 Murray notiWed Slattery that ‘I have this day received from Rome a bill for £730 for the Poor of Ireland’ and sought guidance from him, Crolly and Archbishop MacHale of Tuam about how the money should be used, but suggesting that a central committee ought to organize the distribution. On 20 February 1847 he wrote again to Slattery: I am still much embarrassed about the distribution of the Roman charity. Dr MacHale prefers that the distribution should be made thro’ the Bishops. Others think that this would seem to the Public as too exclusive, and as having but little of the spirit of the good Samaritan in it; and perhaps even cramp the benevolence of Protestants to us.

Murray noted that Crolly agreed with him and suggested that, if Slattery was of a like mind, three quarters of the money could be distributed through a central committee and the remaining quarter sent to MacHale for him to distribute. Murray expressed himself as being ‘grieved at this dissension’ and the delays that it was causing in getting relief to those in need.135 133 CDA, Murray to Slattery, 22 January 1847. 134 CDA, Crolly to Slattery, 18 March 1847. 135 CDA, Murray to Slattery, 11 and 20 February 1847.

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Three important constituent parts of the reform programme in many dioceses and parishes were the increasing numbers of religious orders, the temperance campaign, and the growth of new Ultramontane devotions to replace the discredited folk religion associated with patterns and wakes. The numbers of both male and female religious in Ireland increased substantially during the Wrst half of the nineteenth century. By 1825 there were 200 friars in Ireland and a small group of Jesuits at Clongowes. The Wrst Cistercian monastery was established at Mount Melleray in 1831, after the expulsion of the monks from Melleray in France. The Christian Brothers were founded, as a teaching order, in 1801, and the Patrician Brothers founded by Bishop Delany of Kildare and Leighlin in 1808. The Ursuline Sisters were established in Cork from 1771. The Wrst convent of Presentation Sisters, a native Irish order, was founded in 1775 and there were eighteen convents by 1818. The Irish Sisters of Charity were formed by the future Archbishop Murray of Dublin in 1812, the Wrst superior, Mother Mary Aikenhead being sent to the Bar Convent in York for her noviciate. There were 100 Irish Sisters of Mercy by 1841, and a total of 1,160 nuns, of diVerent religious orders, in Ireland by 1851. The role of the nuns in the pastoral life of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was enormous. They provided poor relief, ran orphanages and asylums, established a hospital in Dublin in 1834, provided education for girls and younger boys (there were forty-six convent schools in 1825), and helped to promote popular piety. One of their creations was the Solidarity of the Children of Mary, in existence by 1842; ‘this society . . . was promoted as the ‘‘highest privilege’’ to which Irish Catholic girls could aspire’.136 However, against this praise for the religious orders must be set the view of at least one anonymous pamphleteer who alleged that ‘the condition of the regular clergy in many parts of Ireland is most anomalous and unhappy’. Many religious houses were too small and ought to be merged; all ought to have schools and parochial institutions attached to them; the pope ought, in particular, to be petitioned for a reform of the Augustinian, Carmelite, Dominican, and Franciscan friars in Ireland.137 In 1838 Father Theobald Matthew launched his temperance movement in the south-west of Ireland but it quickly spread over the whole country. In 1840 some 20,000 people were reported to have taken the pledge in Nenagh (Co. Tipperary). Although the movement was in decline by the late 1840s, Matthew, by then worn out by his preaching tours, and having suVered a 136 Keenan, Catholic Church, 142–8; M. P. Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750–1900, New York and Oxford, 1998, 77– 81, 90–5, 101. 137 CDA, Letter to Archbishop Slattery enclosing a copy of Reformation of the Religious Orders in Ireland, Loughrea 1839.


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stroke, still administered the pledge to 4,000 people at Ennis (Co. Clare) in 1849, and it was still supported by many of the parochial clergy, keen to see an end to the drunkenness for which Ireland had been famed. The bishops were, however, less enthusiastic, seeing Matthew as a Roman Catholic version of the Evangelical pulpit orators that they so much despised. Fifteen of the bishops, led by Archbishops Crolly of Armagh, Slattery of Cashel and Emly, and MacHale of Tuam, were hostile.138 Matthew himself nearly became a bishop, being placed on the terna for the vacant see of Cork in 1847 as a result of support from ‘the Catholic laity of the County and City of Cork’. Those who had lobbied against the appointment were relieved to learn, in June of that year, that William Delany had been conWrmed as the new bishop, and that ‘there is now no danger of any change taking place. The appointment was announced even to the Revd. Mr McLeod the Capuchin who came from Cork to look after the election.’139 Even though Slattery had not fully supported Matthew’s campaign, there was a total abstinence society in his mensal parish of Thurles ‘established under the Patronage and by the Authority’ of the Archbishop on 10 November 1839. Its objectives included ‘suppression of unseemly behaviour at wakes’, which Slattery would have supported, and members were expected to visit the sick. However, any member breaching their vow of total abstinence by ‘drinking of any kind of intoxicating liquors, no matter how small the quantity’, was to be dismissed from membership.140 Even before Matthew’s total abstinence campaign had been launched, individual parishes were endeavouring to lay down standards of behaviour. The rules and regulations for the parish of Tydavnet (Co. Monaghan), entered into the parish register in 1832, laid down that: No person in either choir, under pain of expulsion, shall go to wakes out of their own town, under pretence of singing or any other purpose . . . that no young person go to any wakes, out of their own town, except to a near relative . . . All night dances come under the same punishment of being excluded from the sacraments until they Wrst give public satisfaction in chapel on Sunday.

Smoking was only to be permitted at funerals and ‘all such persons as give shelter to cardplayers or other gamblers, together with their families [were] to be excluded from sacraments until they give satisfaction on 3 Sundays, all who were present at such games until they give satisfaction 1 Sunday’.141 Many of 138 Keenan, Catholic Church, 154; Murphy, Killaloe 1800–1850, 361–6; Hoppen, Elections, 199. 139 CDA, Draft address to Matthew, 13 May 1847, and letter from Paul Cullen, Rector of the Irish College in Rome, to Slattery, 18 June 1847. 140 CDA, Printed Rules and Regulations of St Paul’s Total Abstinence Society, Thurles 1845. ´ Maolagain, ‘Clogher Diocesan Statutes, 1789’, Archivium Hibernicum, xii (1946), 69. 141 P. O

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the reforming bishops were, however, vigorous supporters of some of the new Roman Catholic devotions that were being imported from Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Early episcopal supporters of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus were Bishops Moylan of Cork and Delany of Kildare and Leighlin. The Wrst Irish branch of the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart was set up in Dublin in 1809, and branches quickly followed, normally attached to convents of nuns, in Cork, Thurles, and Waterford. By 1822 even an institution as conservative as St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, had established a branch of the confraternity. The Wrst Irish Convent of Sacred Heart nuns was established at Roscrea (Co. Tipperary) in 1842. By 1873 the devotion had spread so widely that, ‘by direction of the Irish hierarchy, the whole nation was solemnly consecrated to the Heart of Jesus’.142 There is a clear body of evidence which attests to the considerable eVorts of many members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland to promote wholesale pastoral reform in the period 1770–1850. It is perhaps therefore surprising that much of this was rejected as inadequate by the incoming Archbishop of Armagh, the future Cardinal Paul Cullen, in 1850, and has led to some historians of Irish Catholicism in the past attributing the pastoral reform programme and devotional revolution to Cullen and his appointees, most notably in the writings of Emmet Larkin. Whilst Larkin accepts that progress had been made over the Wrst half of the nineteenth century, he sees most of this as having been achieved in the second quarter, and regards the pre-Cullen bishops as still largely antipathetic towards full-scale reform, whereas ‘by 1875 . . . there was hardly a bishop in Ireland, except MacHale, who did not zealously promote pastoral reform in his diocese’. It is certainly the case that Cullen had a low opinion of his episcopal colleagues. Archbishop Slattery of Cashel and Emly, he alleged in 1853 ‘has not made a single change as yet. Marriages, baptisms, confessions still, as formerly, in private houses. The same in several dioceses.’ On his Wrst visit to the cathedral in Armagh he noted that ‘the priests use only one tallow candle on the altar at mass . . . Imagine what it must be like elsewhere.’143 Larkin’s views have been largely rejected by other scholars. Cullen’s views have been seen as emanating from prejudice, the uncomplimentary comments about Armagh Cathedral being apparently a reference to St Malachy’s, Armagh, a modest church of 1752, ‘never regarded as a cathedral’.144 Keenan, in rejecting the Larkin thesis writes:

142 R. Burke-Savage, ‘The Growth of Devotion to the Sacred Heart in Ireland’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, cx (1968), 185–208. 143 E. Larkin, ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875’, American Historical Review, lxxvii (1972), 625–52. 144 Macaulay, Crolly, 233–4


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It must be emphasised that the great revival was of native origin. It accompanied the Catholic political resurgence of the early nineteenth century . . . It should also be noted that I have traced the origins of all the changes and developments to the Wrst half of the century. Readers may notice that I diVer from Professor Emmet Larkin on this as on other points . . . I diVer from him in evaluating the achievements of Cardinal Cullen. In my estimation Cullen’s predecessor, Archbishop Daniel Murray, was the greatest bishop in Ireland in the last century.145

That may be pushing the anti-Larkin view a bit far, but in a more restrained way Keenan receives support from Donal Kerr. As well as crediting bishops like Troy, Doyle, and Murray with having been responsible for much of the pastoral reform programme for which Cullen has taken the credit, Kerr also makes it clear that many of the ‘Ultramontane’ devotions promoted by Cullen, such as those of the Sacred Heart and the Rosary, were deep-rooted in Ireland well before 1850, and were part of the widespread change that was sweeping throughout all the national Roman Catholic churches in Europe, especially in France, at the same time.146 Much of this chapter has been devoted to the way in which the religious leadership and their appointees in Ireland promoted ecclesiastical reform. However, delivering charges, publishing pastoral letters, and issuing diocesan statutes or regulations was only one side of the reform programme. The real question is how much support was there for these changes at the level of the individual parish or congregation? This is a question which we will attempt to answer in the next chapter, through a detailed consideration of a sample of the surviving diocesan and presbytery records.

145 Keenan, Catholic Church, 243.

146 Kerr, Peel, 316–24.

5 Ecclesiastical Reform in Action: Some Diocesan and Presbytery Case Studies The case studies in this chapter are based on four main categories of documentation. The first is the visitation diaries and notebooks that survive for three Church of Ireland bishops and one Roman Catholic one. The second is the synopses of information gleaned at visitations that survive for the Church of Ireland dioceses of Down and Connor, Ardagh, Elphin, and Lismore. The third is the sets of answers to visitation queries that survive for the Church of Ireland dioceses of Armagh and Clogher and for the Roman Catholic dioceses of Cashel and Dublin; in the case of Clogher these are supplemented by visitation notebooks compiled by rural deans, which cover much of the same ground but, from time to time, include more information than that included in the answers to visitation queries. The fourth and final category of documentation is the surviving minute books of presbyteries in Ireland which include the records of visitations carried out by the presbytery of the congregations within that presbytery; three presbyteries with good surviving runs of minute books are those of Antrim, Connaught, and Tyrone, and these are the ones that have been selected for study in this chapter.

THE CHURCH OF IRELAND The visitation process that existed in the Church of Ireland in the early nineteenth century was one that dated back to the pre-Reformation church. It had, however, been considerably sharpened as a result of initiatives undertaken by reforming bishops during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. These bishops used the visitation process as a means of gathering information about the parishes in the diocese and then used this information as a means of setting out the reforms they wished to implement, these being outlined in their visitation charges. Charges were delivered at one or more venues in each diocese and were, frequently but not invariably, subsequently published. The

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visitation process generated a number of different types of record, some official and some non-official. Before the visitation bishops normally issued, usually in a printed format, the questions to which they required answers. These replies might be made directly by the incumbent, or the information gathered by the rural deans who then completed a separate return for each parish in their deanery. Some bishops then compiled a summary of these returns in a document frequently described as ‘The State of the Diocese’, so that even if the original replies to the queries do not survive this summary document might. Some bishops also supplemented both these documents with their own diaries or notebooks recording details of parishes and clergy and noting points that they wished to take up with the incumbents once the visitation was over. These records provide a very detailed picture of what was happening in individual dioceses, though the haphazard survival of such records in Ireland means that there are very few dioceses for which visitation records can be consulted over a long chronological period, and none for which all the different classes of visitation records still survive.

The Visitation Diaries of Bishops Lindsay, Stock, and Loftus The Honourable Charles Dalrymple Lindsay became bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora in 1803 and was translated to the diocese of Kildare in 1804, holding that see until his death in 1846, when it was merged with the diocese of Dublin and Glendalough under the provisions of the Church Temporalities Act of 1833. Until the demise of the diocese the bishop was also dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin and Lindsay divided his time between his episcopal and decanal duties. He had a reputation for being both difficult and a strong disciplinarian. Within weeks of his installation as dean of Christ Church rules for the procedure at chapter meetings were being recorded ‘and a detailed valuation of the property initiated’. He claimed that when he had first been appointed ‘he had gone to divine service only to find none of the chapter present, no inferior ministers either, and had been compelled to conduct the entire service himself ’.1 By 1810 Lindsay was in serious dispute with the other members of the cathedral chapter and appealed to the archbishop of Dublin to intervene. He alleged that the other members of the chapter were flouting his authority and therefore in breach of their oath of canonical obedience. In his view the dispute was bringing both himself and the whole chapter into disrepute.2 Five years later the situation had clearly not 1 Christ Church Cathedral: A History, ed. K. Milne, Dublin 2000, 287–8. 2 NLI, Ms 8863, appeal by Lindsay to Archbishop Cleaver, dated 30 April 1810, copies of which were lodged with the archbishop’s registrar and with the registrar of the dean and chapter.

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improved. Lindsay told Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel and Emly, by then acting as coadjutor to the insane Archbishop Cleaver of Dublin, that: I consider myself at present as degraded by the members of the Chapter and illegally deprived of rights which the records testify have always been exercised by my predecessors as Deans of that Church.3

Lindsay was, however, also in dispute with the dean of the cathedral at Kildare. He refused to ordain his son and complained to Brodrick that the dean ‘intends to apply to some bishop who looks less carefully . . . to the Canons’.4 Lindsay’s visitation notebook covers the first four years of his episcopate at Kildare and records his impression of the state of parishes in the diocese in this period. As might be expected he finds a mix of good and bad. The cathedral itself was ‘clean but far from being in repair. The Revd Mr Williamson is curate to the whole chapter and has officiated there for nine years without any assistance except for a few sermons from the Dean. Much must be done and said here.’ There were only services on Sundays and on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent.5 At Kilrush (Co. Kildare) the Sunday congregation was normally between 10 and 12, ‘some times it may exceed 20’. There was no glebe, charities or school. The bishop thought ‘a union could be formed advantageously with the parish of Ballysax’.6 The numbers of churches in good or poor repair was about equal. That at Ballycommon (Co. Offaly) was described as ‘wretched and out of order . . . chalice pewter; no paten; no cloth or cushions for communion table or pulpit . . . The clerk is schoolmaster teaching from the communion table in the church.’7 The incumbent of Edenderry (Co. Offaly) was ‘very lukewarm . . . his appearance by no means that of his profession’.8 On 13 June 1805 Lindsay was obliged to write to the curate of Donadea (Co. Kildare) criticizing him for having absented himself from his parish for nine Sundays, including Easter Day, with the result that no services had taken place.9 At Mountmellick (Co. Laois) he refused to confirm four persons ‘ignorant even of the number of the Commandments of the Decalogue’.10 Several parishes lacked glebe or school houses. At Naas (Co. Kildare) the diocesan school had been repaired at a cost of £400 but although it could lodge and board twenty boys it only had sixteen.11 There were some indications that things had improved in some parishes between Lindsay’s first and 3 NLI, Ms 8863, Lindsay to Brodrick, 7 March 1815. 4 Ibid., Lindsay to Brodrick, 17 June 1815. 5 R. Refausse´, ‘The Visitation Notebook of Charles Lindsay, Bishop of Kildare, 1804–1808’, Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society, xvii (1987–91), 124, 134–5. 6 Ibid., 125–6. 7 Ibid., 129–30. 8 Ibid., 132. 9 Ibid., 138–9. 10 Ibid., 144. 11 Ibid., 147.


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subsequent visitations. At Coolbanagher (Co. Laois) there was ‘no schoolmaster yet: many attempts have been made’, but a school house was to be built when sufficient funds could be raised by subscription. The church, glebe house, and glebe lands were in good order and ‘much improved since my last visit’.12 However, at Great Connell (Co. Kildare) there was no parish clerk and no cess had been raised since 1806, as a result of which the ‘church has remained two years unfinished’.13 Joseph Stock was one of the more colourful of Ireland’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth century bishops. Stock was born in 1741, the son of a wealthy Dublin hosier, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was later elected to a fellowship. He was regarded as a sound classical and Hebrew scholar and produced a much-used edition of Demosthenes. In 1779 he was presented to the college living of Conwal (Co. Donegal), which included the town of Letterkenny, later holding also the vicarage of Lusk (Co. Dublin) and a prebend in Lismore cathedral. In 1795 he was appointed to the headmastership of Portora Royal School. He was consecrated bishop of Killala and Achonry in 1798 and published an anonymous account of the events of that year of rebellion when French troops occupied Killala and he took the pragmatic view that a measure of friendly cooperation was preferable to serious loss of life. Though he failed to secure translation to Dromore in 1808, he was translated to Waterford and Lismore in 1810. This was, however, to be a short tenure as he died in 1813.14 He carried out his primary visitation of this diocese in 1811 and kept a diary of his travels and observations of the churches and clergymen he visited. Whilst it is less informative than Lindsay’s visitation diary as far as information on individual parishes is concerned, it gives a better picture of the actual process of visitation, as shown in Table 5.1. Stock was clearly visiting groups of parishes over a period of four days and spending a few days at his diocesan base between these visits. He was originally spending a good deal of time in each parish and not, as most English and Welsh bishops were doing at this time, relying on the information collected through rural deans or questionnaires, and bringing the clergy together at fixed points to meet them and hear their visitation charges.15 12 Ibid., 143–4. 13 Ibid., 147. 14 R. B. MacCarthy, ‘A Regency Prelate in Ireland’, Church Quarterly Review, clv (1964), 449–60. 15 e.g. Bishop Majendie of Bangor (1809–30) who in 1811 managed to visit the whole of his mountainous diocese in fifteen days and relied very heavily on the preparatory work done by his rural deans, and the replies of incumbents to his visitation queries, to compile his own directory of the state of his diocese. The original drafts of Majendie’s visitation schedules for both 1811 and 1814, and his own notes on matters which concerned him in individual parishes in 1811, are in NLW, B/MISC/266–7 and B/QA/21. For a reproduction and transcription of these documents, see P. G. Yates, ‘Neglect or Reform? Bishop Henry William Majendie and the Diocese of Bangor, 1809–17’, (Lampeter, Wales), MTh 2003, 16, 73–86.

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Table 5.1. Itinerary of Bishop Joseph Stock of Waterford and Lismore as recorded in his Visitation Diary 1811* May 18 May 19 May 20 May 21 May 22 May 27 May 28 May 29 May 30

Left Waterford at 12; visited Killoteran and Stradbally At Stradbally Visited Cappoquin Visited Lismore and Tallow Visited Assane and Whitechurch; returned to Waterford Visited Clonmel Visited Cahir Visited Ardfinnan and Shanrahan Visited Carrick; returned to Waterford

*The total estimated distance of each of these four-day visitations was approximately 95 miles. Source: TCDL, Ms 948.

Stock’s ability, and that of other Irish bishops, to take a more detailed approach to visitation was greatly assisted by the small size of most dioceses. Stock found the parishes he visited to be, on the whole, in a fairly acceptable state. The incumbent of Stradbally was often absent and needed a curate, but the children were catechized and a good church had been built in 1806. There was no church yet at Cappoquin, described by Stock as ‘a large town’, but his predecessor, Bishop Trench of Elphin, had obtained a promise of £600 from the Board of First Fruits to build one. At Lismore he noted: Cathedral almost rebuilding at a great expence . . . chancel furnished with elegance but not large enough to hold the congregation. Disposition of the altar, desk and pulpit . . . utterly unsuitable to the dignity requisite for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, especially in a cathedral church . . . Divine Service performed in the Town House, on Sundays only, till the Cathedral shall be fit for use.

The rector of Tallow was in England and his curate was ‘too negligent of dress and decorous appearance, but well spoken of ’. There was no glebe house but the church was in good repair. There was clearly a debate going on at Cahir on the location of the church; Stock thought the existing building was ‘easily repairable’ and was critical of the ‘desire of some principal parishioners to have the site altered’. At Ardfinnan the church was in good order, but the school and charity sermon endowed by the previous incumbent was ‘deserted’. The former had been damaged by storms and there was ‘no fund existing for its repair’. Stock offered to finance this himself. There was no glebe house at either Ardfinnan or Carrick, but good sites were available if they could be purchased.16 What is most remarkable about Stock’s visitation is the energy and enthusiasm it revealed about a man who was then 70 years old. 16 TCDL, Ms 948.


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Lord Robert Ponsonby Tottenham Loftus was one of the many Irish bishops who owed his advancement to his aristocratic connections and have been poorly regarded by historians of the Church of Ireland. However, apart from Lord John George de la Poer Beresford, he holds the record for the longest episcopate in that church in the early nineteenth century, being consecrated to Killaloe and Kilfenora in 1804, and thereafter translated to Ferns and Leighlin in 1820, and Clogher in 1822, where he remained until his death in 1850. At both Ferns and Leighlin and at Clogher he succeeded the unfortunate Percy Jocelyn. The notebook he kept as bishop of the former see confirms that rumours about Jocelyn’s homosexuality, which Jocelyn had strenuously denied before he was finally exposed, were widespread in this diocese at least. He notes of one of his clergy, Richard Gordon, the incumbent of Kilmuckridge (Co. Wexford), that: I have heard an infamous report of this man’s character, that he conspired against the late Bishop, (suspecting his horrible propensity), for the purpose of putting him in his power by means of a person whom he employed to prove it; and in consequence he wrote to threaten the Bishop that he could prove it, if he did not provide for him. It is said that by this detestable plot he obtained this living, and was to have been further promoted.17

Loftus, in fact, though never in the forefront of episcopal reformers in Ireland, was clearly a diligent pastoral bishop in all three of his dioceses, as is clearly attested in the surviving documentation. This comprises two notebooks for his period at Killaloe and Kilfenora, recording his visitation of churches in the diocese between 1811 and 1814, sometimes incorporating notes on developments since his visitation; a notebook as bishop of Ferns and Leighlin which reveals information on both his clergy and their parishes; and a whole series of returns from incumbents and rural deans recording the state of parishes in the diocese of Clogher between 1825 and 1845, which have been sampled for the purpose of this study, and used later in this chapter in conjunction with similar evidence for Beresford’s tenure of the see of Armagh. The visitation notebook compiled by Loftus as bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora follows the format of Bishop Lindsay’s at Kildare, noting his impression of churches and parishes, especially matters that he needed to follow up at a later date. Many relate to the poor condition of church fabrics and furnishings, and the fact that churches reported as being out of repair in 1811–12 had still not been repaired in 1813–14 shows the difficulties that bishops had in enforcing their directives. At Finnoe (Co. Tipperary) in 1811–12 the church was described as ‘discreditable to the parish’. Loftus wanted to know why 17 NLI, Ms 4328.

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services had not been performed there on two consecutive Sundays. He notes that unless the church is repaired he will proceed against the churchwardens, and the rural dean was to ‘make a further report . . . on the progress of the repairs to this church’. In 1813–14 Loftus notes that ‘I direct the churchwardens to attend to the wants and repairs’ of Finnoe church. At Dunkerrin (Co. Offaly) in 1811–12 he records that ‘the porch and ceiling of this church require some repairs’ but in 1813–14 ‘the roof of this church [still] requires to be repaired’. At Borrisokane (Co. Tipperary) Loftus noted in 1811–12 that the churchwardens ought to be excommunicated if the rural dean is not able to present a satisfactory report on the state of the building, but in 1813–14 he still needed to ‘direct churchwardens to attend further to the repairs and wants of this church’. The 1811–12 visitation of the cathedral at Kilfenora raised a whole series of questions in the mind of the bishop. What progress had been made in building a deanery? ‘Is divine service celebrated thro’out the winter’? Are there any schools in the parish? By 1813–14 he had clearly received satisfactory replies on some of these matters but notes that the ‘Rural Dean has not made a report on the state of the glebe house. Let him do so.’ In the neighbouring parish of Kiltoraght (Co. Clare) there were similar queries in 1811–12: ‘is the incumbent resident. In what state of forwardness is the Glebe House. Let a map of the new glebe be sent to the Registry forthwith. A new church must be built or incumbent not entitled to augmentation.’ In 1813–14 Loftus asked ‘in what state of forwardness is the church’ but also noted ‘let a schoolmaster be appointed’.18 These visitation diaries record a meticulous approach to the visitation process, and an eye for detail, on the part of the bishop, but also the reliance he placed on his rural deans in implementing his reform programme and the difficulties of enforcement in parishes where the incumbent or the churchwardens refused to cooperate. The major value of the notebook kept by Loftus as bishop of Ferns and Leighlin was his comments on his clergy. The majority tended to be described as ‘proper’, ‘correct’, ‘respectable’, or ‘worthy’, but there were some exceptions. Of Thomas Davis of Tullow he noted, ‘I gave him permission to travel for his health, he being much afflicted with gout. The late Bishop gave him the same permission. He requires to be kept to his duty.’ W. B. Ford of Killanne ‘has a good glebe house. Why does he not reside?’ It is clear from his notebook that Loftus was highly prejudiced against Evangelicals. He commented on Walter Grogan of Baltinglass: A sharp Calvinist. He laid before me an affidavit stating that his Curate wanted to seduce a lady in his house, but it seems the affidavit was taken by himself as magistrate and 2 months after the transaction. The lady was also stated to have been sitting up in 18 NLI, Mss 4326–7.


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his room at night, as if expecting the curate Mr Taylor. Also G wanted to displace this curate to nominate a Mr Caldwell who married (it is said) his natural daughter, and who is a Calvinist. Mr Taylor was prevailed upon to send in his resignation but that is not valid without my acceptance of it.

Loftus refused Caldwell’s application for a licence ‘in consequence of a letter from the bishop of Cork informing me that he was a Calvinist’. He described D. E. Blake of Kiltegan as ‘a very active Calvinist: he leaves his parish for the purpose of travelling about to make converts to his doctrines. He and [another] examine curates as to their doctrines before they will appoint them.’ Later on Loftus changed his mind about Caldwell: Mr Caldwell called on me and explained his Doctrines which did not appear to me to be Calvinistic. Tho’ he was rather undecided as to the Doctrine of particular election, but acknowledging the freedom of human actions, and that faith without works was dead. I therefore allowed him to act as a Curate . . . and to keep a school at Carlow, but refused to licence him until I was fully assured of the orthodoxy of his opinions.

In addition to his opinions on his clergy, Loftus used the notebook to remind himself of matters of concern in the parishes. He recorded that the incumbent of Aghold (Co. Wicklow) was absent in the Isle of Man, that the glebe house ‘must be repaired’ and that he had ordered the churchwardens to carry out these repairs at a cost of £59 8s 6d. The incumbent of Ballyroan (Co. Laois) told Loftus that ‘his health will not permit him to reside. If so he must send me a Medical Certificate to that effect from a Physician of character. He must provide a resident curate.’ The churchwardens of St Mullin’s ‘must be compelled to act’ as the parishioners had refused to raise a cess and the parishioners of Wexford were to be informed that their petition for an additional church ‘must be postponed till a provision shall be made for supporting a curate’. Loftus was, however, extremely energetic in supporting the building of new churches and glebe houses. In his episcopate of less than three years at Ferns and Leighlin he had secured grants totalling £4,400, and loans totalling £8,180, towards the erection of new churches and glebe houses in sixteen parishes.19

Four Visitation Snapshots: Down and Connor, Ardagh, Elphin, and Lismore Several Church of Ireland bishops used, as did their English and Welsh counterparts, the evidence that they collected during the visitation process 19 NLI, Ms 4328.

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to compile, or to have compiled on their behalf, summaries of useful information. There is nothing equivalent for Ireland to the splendid ‘State of the Diocese of St Asaph’ compiled for Bishop William Cleaver, the brother of Bishop Euseby Cleaver of Ferns and Leighlin, and later Archbishop of Dublin, in 1807. This gave a list of all the parishes in the diocese, the value of each benefice, the names of incumbents and curates, together with details of services, schools, charities, and other information of use to the bishop. This document was so significant that it was updated by Cleaver and his successor as bishop of St Asaph over a period of twenty years.20 However, more modest documents survive for four Irish dioceses: Down and Connor in 1813, Ardagh and Elphin in 1825, and Lismore in 1836, of which the last is the most informative. The information they provide is summarized in Table 5.2. They show that by the early years of the nineteenth century the episcopal campaign to improve clerical residence, to build glebe houses, and to repair churches was beginning to have an impact and that larger numbers of parishes satisfied these requirements than did not. There were, however, still areas for concern. Significant numbers of parishes had no clerk or schoolmaster, and in the diocese of Elphin almost a fifth of the parishes had no church, the incumbency being a sinecure. In the diocese of Lismore by 1836 almost half the churches in the diocese, and probably more since not all entries included the relevant information, were providing more than the traditional quarterly communion service that reforming bishops regarded as insufficient. Very few parishes, however, had weekday services. In the diocese of Lismore in 1836 the only weekday services recorded were those in the cathedral on Wednesdays, Fridays, and holy days.21

Answers to Visitation Queries in the Dioceses of Armagh and Clogher Although the visitation summaries were almost certainly compiled from evidence acquired through the sending out of questionnaires to the clergy or rural deans, the completed questionnaires, where they survive, generally provide more information than the summaries. In relatively few Church of Ireland dioceses have these answers to visitation queries survived and only rarely do they survive as a series covering a reasonable period of time within which it is possible to compare one year with another. One of the few dioceses where this is possible is Clogher for which such a series survives in the papers of Bishop Loftus. Indeed there are two parallel sets of returns for this diocese, one compiled solely by the rural deans and another compiled by the rural 20 NLW, SA/MB/20.

21 RCBL, D9/2/3.


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Table 5.2. Diocesan statistics for Down and Connor 1813, Ardagh and Elphin 1825, and Lismore 1836 Down and Connor (%) Resident incumbents Resident curates No resident clergy No cure of souls No parish clerk No schoolmaster Glebe house No glebe house House building Church in good repair Church in poor repair No church Church building or under repair Only one Sunday service Catechizing/Sunday school Monthly communion Communion 8 times pa Communion 6 times pa Communion 4 times pa Communion 3 times pa

25.4 25.4 35.6 27.1

Ardagh (%)

Elphin (%)

Lismore (%)

68.0 28.0 4.0

58.3 16.7 5.6 19.4 27.8 36.1 55.6 36.1 8.3

45.2 25.8

16.0 48.0 76 24

35.6 6.8 3.4 6.8

2.8 19.4 5.6

38.7 16.1 74.2 25.8

16.1 41.9 29.0 3.2 16.1 25.8 12.9

Source: RCBL, GS2/7/3/25; D4/10; D4/2/2; D9/2/3.

deans in consultation with each incumbent. For the purposes of this chapter I have analysed the first and last set of surviving returns in each category, thus being able to assess the state of the diocese towards the beginning and the end of Loftus’s episcopate (1822–50). I have also compared the information they provide for the diocese of Clogher with that provided by the equivalent replies to queries for the neighbouring diocese of Armagh in 1839. This visitation was clearly carried out in a similar manner to those in Clogher, since a printed note survives among the returns22 instructing the rural dean ‘to send this paper to the Incumbent, as soon as you receive it, and give him a competent time for preparing his answers. Let your report be made on this paper immediately opposite the different queries.’ There are ninety-two completed returns for this visitation and six blank ones. As the information from both Armagh and Clogher returns, summarized in Table 5.3, make clear, the overall levels of pastoral provision were generally adequate, though there were some disturbing examples of inadequacy or, on occasion, outright neglect. Where it 22 PRONI, DIO/4/29/1/14.

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Table 5.3. Pastoral provision in the Church of Ireland dioceses of Armagh and Clogher 1825–45 Armagh 1839 (%)

Clogher 1825–31 (%)

Clogher 1845 (%)

Condition of churches: In good repair In poor repair No Church

57 (62.0) 35 (38.0) —

19 (32.8) 38 (65.5) 1 (1.7)

33 (49.3) 33 (49.3) 1 (1.4)

Condition of glebe houses: In good repair In poor repair No house

62 (67.4) 10 (10.9) 20 (21.7)

26 (44.8) 11 (19.0) 21 (36.2)

26 (38.8) 13 (19.4) 28 (41.8)

Resident clergy: Resident incumbents Resident curates Non-resident doing duty

59 (64.1) 29 (31.5) 4 (4.4)

29 (50.0) 23 (39.7) 6 (10.3)

35 (52.2) 27 (40.3) 5 (7.5)

16 (17.3) 34 (37.0)

3 (5.2) 43 (74.1)

8 (11.9) 22 (32.9)

42 (45.7) 5 (5.4) —

11 (19.0) 2 (3.4) 1 (1.7)

36 (53.8) 5 (7.5) 1 (1.4)

Holy Communion: At least monthly 8–10 times pa 5–7 times pa Quarterly Less than quarterly

58 (63.0) 9 (9.8) 17 (18.5) 7 (7.6) 1 (1.1)

30 (51.7) 7 (12.1) 12 (20.7) 7 (12.1) 2 (3.4)

53 (79.2) 11 (16.4) 2 (2.9) — 1 (1.4)

Religious education: Sunday schools Catechizing in church No catechizing

14 (15.2) 60 (65.2) 18 (19.6)

5 (8.6) 49 (84.5) 4 (6.9)

11 (16.4) 51 (76.1) 5 (7.5)

Parochial school houses Parochial school masters Parish clerks Schoolmaster and clerk posts combined

64 (69.6) 72 (78.3) 92 (100.0) 40 (43.5)

N/A 52 (89.7) 57 (98.3) 13 (22.4)

N/A 51 (76.1) 65 (97.0) 21 (31.3)

Parochial cess levied Loan repayments to Board of First Fruits

12 (13.0) N/A

N/A 9 (15.5)

N/A N/A

92

58

Services: One Sunday service One Sunday service in winter, two in summer Two Sunday services Weekday services Less than weekly service

Total number of returns

67

Source: PRONI, DIO/4/29/1/14; NLI, Mss 4338, 4348–9, and 4356.

is possible, in the case of Clogher, to note developments during one long episcopate, the progress in some areas, such as an increase in the number of Sunday services and celebrations of Holy Communion, has to be set against a


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decline in the number of parochial schoolmasters and the building of only two new glebe houses despite the creation of nine new ecclesiastical districts. The one area in which these two Irish dioceses, and indeed Ireland as a whole, compared well with many parts of England and Wales, was in the high number of resident clergy, more than half of whom were incumbents, with relatively few examples of those clergy performing the duty living at some distance from their churches. At Kilsaran (Co. Louth) the incumbent did not yet reside in the new glebe house, which was only partly furnished, ‘but appears to be making preparation for doing so’, and services were being taken by a clergyman from the diocese of Aghadoe, who was not licensed and was not recorded as receiving any stipend. In 1825 the curate of Drummully, a parish on the borders of Counties Fermanagh and Monaghan, lived four miles away in the town of Clones, ‘being the nearest place he can procure suitable lodgings for his family’. In the diocese of Armagh twenty-nine parishes, almost a third of the total, had both resident incumbents and assistant curates living in the parish. The stipends of these curates, whether acting for a non-resident incumbent or as assistants, were mostly set at a reasonable level: the norm (thirty-nine out of sixty-five recorded stipends) was £75, but twenty received more than this, the highest being £128, and only six less. Three curates’ salaries, in each case £100, were paid personally by Archbishop Beresford. Glebe houses, where they had been built, were mostly in good repair, but there were exceptions. That at Killyman (Co. Tyrone) was described in 1839 as ‘condemned, unfurnished and unoccupied’. In the same year the rural dean commented as follows on the glebe house at Lissan, a parish on the borders of Counties Derry and Tyrone: On my last inspection of the Glebe House and offices of Lissane Parish I reported that they were greatly out of repair. Since then some work appears to have been done to the roof of the House which however the storm in January has rendered fruitless . . . I consider it only necessary to say that unless means be taken the dilapidation must go on increasing . . . the windows ought to be glazed, the sashes repaired and painted . . . I saw the large parlour made use of as a granary.23

In some cases opportunities to build new glebe houses were not taken. Bishop Loftus of Clogher noted in 1825 that he had obtained £450 from the Board of First Fruits to purchase a glebe on which to build a house for the curate of Tempo (Co. Fermanagh) but that ‘if the purchase is not soon effected the grant will be withdrawn’. 23 This house had been built in 1807 to a design by John Nash for the Revd John Staple at a cost of £1,313 14s 5d and is described by A. Rowan, The Buildings of Ireland: North-West Ulster, Harmondsworth 1979, 362, ‘as a picturesque Italianate villa’. The visitation returns record that several other glebe houses and churches in the diocese had been badly damaged by the storm in January 1839.

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Although more churches than glebe houses were noted as having building or furnishing defects in the dioceses of both Armagh and Clogher, the majority of these were fairly minor, often only internal redecoration or the mending of some roof slates being recommended. Several churches lacked fonts and in a good many some of the hangings, linen, or communion plate needed replacing. However, at Ballinderry, another parish on the borders of Derry and Tyrone, the church was described thus by the rural dean in 1839: a more dilapidated ruinous building kept open for public worship is not to be found anywhere . . . the flooring and pews are decayed. The walls covered with green mould, the effects of damp. The sky may be seen through a part of the roof. The ceiling has fallen in several places and the rest of it seems ready to tumble. One of the pews is nearly full of rubbish which has already come down . . . Indeed it seems surprising that in the winter season any should attend public worship in such a place.

There had been a recommendation ‘some years ago’ for ‘a new church to be built, yet no step has been taken towards it. In the large parish of Inishmacsaint, which straddled the borders of Counties Donegal and Fermanagh and contained the developing seaside resort of Bundoran, all three churches were in a wretched state in 1825. The parish church was described as being ‘in [the] same state as last year (damp, flags, pews and reading desk require repair). Agreed at last Easter Vestry to borrow money from F[irst] F[ruits] to build a new church.’ At Finner Chapel, which served Bundoran, the ‘flooring of pews and step to pulpit require repairs, wants painting, sash frames and lintels in bad order . . . Parishioners objected to borrow money, but agreed to put the old church in repair . . . for which they laid on £100’. Twenty years later Finner chapel was described as ‘condemned and a new one about to be erected at Bundoran’.24 A major reason for rebuilding some churches was that they were considered inadequate for the number of Church of Ireland parishioners. At Monaghan in 1825 it was noted that: the church tho’ in good repair does not afford sufficient accommodation for the Parishioners; they are therefore desirous to erect a new church on a new scite. The Dowager Lady Rossmore having promised a donation of £1000 for that purpose. A special Vestry was held on 22 March last when the Parishioners assessed themselves in £2500 being at the rate of £100 per annum to repay the Board of F[irst] Fruits should they advance that sum.

Bishop Loftus recorded that ‘I shall endeavour to obtain the loan for this church at the next Board, but am by no means sure of success’. At Templecarne, on the borders of Donegal and Fermanagh, he noted that: 24 This return from the 1845 Clogher visitation suggests that the date of the new church at Bundoran given in Rowan, North-West Ulster, 156, pl. 105, as 1839–40 is incorrect and probably refers to the date of the designs by William Hagerty. The cost is given by Rowan as £2,150. The interior had open benches with poppy heads and a pulpit and reading desk placed on opposite sides of the entrance to the shallow chancel.


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the Church is very old and not large enough, it was agreed at last Easter vestry to assess the Parish for the interest of £1000 and to memorial[ize] the Board of First Fruits for that sum and also for a gift of £500, the parish being very poor.

Loftus added that although the parish would obtain the loan, even if not immediately, ‘they cannot expect a gift’, and the new church at Pettigoe was not built until the late 1830s.25 Although the sums spent on new churches or repairing old ones was often quite moderate they nevertheless placed a considerable burden on small parishes with comparatively few wealthy inhabitants,26 and frequently parishes were dependent on the generosity of the local landowner, as at Mucknoe (Co. Monaghan) where in 1825 it was recorded that ‘Lord Blayney has expended . . . upward of £250’ on the church which served the town of Castleblayney. Difficulties were particularly acute in those parishes in which it proved impossible to raise any cess; the Armagh visitation returns of 1839 show that a cess was raised in less than a fifth of the parishes. It was therefore perhaps not surprising that only nine parishes in the diocese of Clogher reported in 1825 that they were still repaying debts to the Board of First Fruits, though some of these involved substantial annual payments.27 There is no doubt that the aspect of their reform programme of which the bishops seemed most proud was the increase in the number of churches in which there were two Sunday services, monthly celebrations of Holy Communion, and regular catechizing or Sunday schools. Archbishop Beresford of Armagh noted in his 1845 visitation charge that most of the churches in his diocese now had two Sunday services, at least in the summer months, and a majority also had a monthly communion service. About a fifth of those who attended Church of Ireland services were also monthly communicants. In the then 104 churches in the diocese there were 940 Sunday school teachers and 12,000 children attached to these schools. There were also 279 Church of Ireland day schools educating 10,000 children and families belonging to the Church of Ireland, as well as 7,000 children of Roman Catholic parents and 5,000 from Protestant dissenting families.28 Twenty years earlier, however, Bishop Loftus of Clogher had noted some reluctance on the part of Roman Catholic parents to send their children to Church of Ireland parochial 25 Rowan, North-West Ulster, 453. 26 The Armagh 1839 visitation returns recorded recent expenditure of £500 at Donaghmore (Co. Tyrone), £267 at Arboe (Co. Tyrone), £175 at Magherafelt (Co. Derry), £323 at Carlingford (Co. Louth), and £600 at Omagh (Co. Louth). 27 £33 3s on the church and glebe house at Agharea (Co. Fermanagh), £18 9s 3d on the church at Ballybay (Co. Monaghan), on which Bishop Loftus commented ‘I was much gratified in observing the state of this church’, and an enormous £69 8s 4d on the church at Galloon (Co. Fermanagh). 28 J. G. Beresford, A Charge Delivered at his Annual Visitation 1845, London 1846, 36–7.

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schools; in the County Monaghan parishes of Currin and Tullycorbet ‘there is a great falling off of scholars in consequence of the interference of the Priests’. The general trends in respect of Sunday services and more frequent communion are certainly confirmed by both the Armagh and Clogher visitation returns. Compared with many parts of England and Wales there were very few churches in which there was only one Sunday service or a quarterly communion service. Nevertheless, as Table 5.4 shows, only a relatively small proportion, very much in line with Archbishop Beresford’s ‘fifth’, of those attending Church of Ireland services were regular communicants. Many did not even appear to communicate at the major festivals as required by the Book of Common Prayer. When the figures are available, services were always better attended in summer than winter, and in the morning than in the evening. What is most surprising about the returns is that so few churches recorded the holding of any services on weekdays apart from Christmas and Good Friday. Some observed such major fasts and festivals as Ash Wednesday, Ascension, and New Year’s Day, but that was normally the limit. In 1831 there were services on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent, and daily in Passion Week, at Enniskillen (Co. Fermanagh), and on all Tuesday and Thursday evenings, possibly an indication of Evangelical activity, at Tedavnet (Co. Monaghan). In 1839 there were services every Wednesday and Friday at Drumglass (Co. Tyrone) and Ardee (Co. Louth), on Wednesdays at St Peter’s in Drogheda, on Friday evenings, another possible sign of Evangelical activity, at Omagh (Co. Louth), and on Wednesdays in Lent at Charlemont (Co. Armagh). By 1845 the weekday services at Enniskillen had increased to every Wednesday and Friday morning throughout the year, with an additional evening service on Wednesdays in Lent. There was also a Friday evening service at Maguiresbridge (Co. Fermanagh) but no evening services were recorded at Tedavnet. During the season of Lent the Wednesdays were observed at Lisbellow (Co. Fermanagh) and the Fridays at Clones (Co. Monaghan) and Lowtherstown (Co. Fermanagh). Town churches, which in most parts of England and Wales usually had some weekday services, in Ireland appeared to have them very much less frequently. However, one must beware of assuming that an omission from a return meant that something did not necessarily happen. The questions in relation to catechizing in both the Armagh and Clogher visitations appear to have produced responses that failed to record the presence of Sunday schools in many parishes and implied that most clergy were retaining traditional methods of catechizing in church after Evening Prayer when other evidence, notably that from Archbishop Beresford’s 1845 charge, suggests that there were far more Sunday schools than had been recorded in the visitation returns six years previously. It is reasonable to assume that a similar level of


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Table 5.4. Comparison of attendance and communicant figures, and size of catechism classes and Sunday schools, in selected parishes in the dioceses of Armagh 1839 and Clogher 1845 Church Co. Armagh Armagh

Sunday attendances*

Keady

MP 500 EP 250 300

Newtown Hamilton

250–300

Tynan

400

Co. Fermanagh Derryvullen

150

Drummully Lisbellaw Magheraculmoney Co. Monaghan Aghabog Clontibret Monaghan Co. Tyrone Termonmaguirk

200 MP 199 EP 90 500þ S 250 W 150 MP 112–281 EP 50–172 S 720 W 500 MP 124 EP 30

Communicantsy

Children catechized or in Sunday schools

M 90 C 243 E 132 W 110 M 57 C 173 E 176 W 87 C 155 E 139 W 61 M 53 C 194 E 159 W 57

C 270

M 35 F 115 50 30

C 55 SS 65 C 80 C 34

M 40–50 F 200

C 150–200

79

C 64

M 51 F 109

C 50–76 SS 70–130 SS 287

M 65 F 150

C 84 E 75 W 46

C 80 C 154 C 150

C 105

*MP-Morning Prayer, EP-Evening Prayer, S-Summer, W-Winter. y C-Christmas, E-Easter, F-Festivals, M-Monthly, W-Whitsun Source: PRONI, DIO/4/29/1/14; NLI, Mss 4348 and 4356.

under-recording occurred in the diocese of Clogher, certainly by 1845. Archbishop Beresford’s total for day schools in the diocese of Armagh in 1845 must have included not just the parochial schools but a large number of private ones run according to the principles of the Church Education Society. However, the statistics for parochial schools were still impressive. What was potentially more disturbing was the arrangements for paying parochial schoolmasters. Their salaries could be extremely low and frequently comprised a mix of payments by the incumbent, what were frequently termed ‘gratuities’ from one of the societies established to promote Protestant education, and fees from the parents of those pupils who could afford to pay

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them. Some schoolmasters were paid less than most parish clerks, whose stipends had been fixed by statute (23 Geo II c. xii) in 1749, and it is not therefore surprising that in the diocese of Armagh nearly half the parishes, and in Clogher between a fifth and a third of the parishes, employed the same person to carry out both tasks. The salaries shown in Table 5.5 were in some parishes supplemented by the provision of a school house containing accommodation for the master. Salaries could be supplemented in other ways. At Ballybay (Co. Monaghan) in 1831 and at Dundalk (Co. Louth) in 1839 the parish clerk was also the organist. In 1831, at Enniskillen, the parish clerk was also the organist and the schoolmaster supplemented his income by acting as vestry clerk. Generally speaking the majority of school houses seem to have been maintained in good repair but the cost of doing this, in the absence of any parish cess, tended to fall personally on either the incumbent or a wealthy parishioner. At Desertlyn (Co. Derry) the former parish church was used as a school, at Dunany (Co. Louth) it was ‘a barn fitted up for the purpose’, and at Beaulieu (Co. Louth) the school was held in the church porch. At Carrickmacross (Co. Monaghan) it was noted in 1825 that the endowed school had: long fallen into disuse, and from having been once a flourishing institution, and a highly useful one, is now wholly ineffectual, for the purposes for which it was originally endowed. The building itself is in great ruin, and shows symptoms of real neglect, and the school itself reduced to twenty scholars and those day scholars.

At Dromore (Co. Tyrone), in 1835, the parish schoolmaster was ‘unwell and not able to attend, his son attends’. Some parish clerks were also inadequate, and three fell into this category in the diocese of Clogher in 1831: at Clones he was ‘advanced in years and not competent to sing’; at Monea, in the parish of Devenish, he was ‘a decrepid old man, unfit for the duty. His son now Table 5.5. Comparison of the stated salaries of parish clerks and schoolmasters in the diocese of Clogher 1831 and 1845 £/pa

Parish clerk 1831 1845

Schoolmasters 1831 1845

Combined posts 1831 1845

5 5–10 10–15 15–20 20–25 25–30 30–35 35–40

1 39 2 — 2 — — —

1 39 1 — — — — —

16 4 6 4 — 1 — 1

11 8 5 1 — — 1 1

— 1 3 5 2 — 1 —

— 3 5 2 2 4 — 2

total

44

41

32

27

12

18

Source: NLI, Mss 4348–9 and 4356.


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performs the duty for him’; and at Tullycorbet he was ‘non-resident, living 10 miles off, to the inconvenience of the rector and parishioners’. Although the salaries of parish clerks seem not to have increased at all between 1831 and 1845, there had been some slight increase in those of schoolmasters, though they were still well below that of the lowest curates’ stipends and the posts were therefore unlikely to attract candidates with a high level of education. In practice, however, schools, apart from a small number of endowed schools in which the masters were in holy orders, were designed to provide no more than the most basic elementary education combined with an acceptable level of religious instruction.

THE ROMAN CATHOL IC CHURCH Although Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland carried out visitations of the parishes in their dioceses in a similar manner to that of their Church of Ireland counterparts, and frequently in an even more intensive manner, the records of the visitation process have survived less well, with detailed answers to visitation queries surviving for only the dioceses of Dublin and of Cashel and Emly for the period between 1770 and 1850. There are earlier surviving visitation records, now available in print,29 for the latter diocese for the archiepiscopate of James Butler I covering the period 1752–64, which are one of the main sources for the state of Roman Catholic church buildings and services at the end of the penal era, but these are outside the timeframe of this study. However, some similar material for the diocese of Kerry, parts of which post-date 1850 but nevertheless refer to the pre-1850 period, has been used to examine the pastoral state of this south-western diocese in the early nineteenth century.

Visitation Evidence for the Dioceses of Dublin and of Cashel and Emly The two dioceses for which visitation returns survive for the 1830s and 1840s sent out largely identical forms to the clergy for them to complete, suggesting that by this date there was a standard visitation form used by all Roman Catholic dioceses in Ireland with only minor modifications. The form was divided into vertical columns with the questions to which answers were 29 C. O’Dwyer, ‘Archbishop Butler’s Visitation Book’, Archivium Hibernicum, xxxiii (1975), 1–90 and xxxiv (1977), 1–49.

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required being placed at the top of each column. These included information about chapel leases and parochial houses, vestments and plate, parochial libraries, confraternities, monthly communicants, absentees from Easter duty, Protestant converts, the size of the adult Roman Catholic population, schools, the number of public masses on Sundays and holydays, whether catechizing took place, and whether the service of vespers was held. At the bottom of the Dublin form: the P[arish] Priest is also required to deliver in writing, at the same time, the names of the most obstinate Absentees—of Public Sinners in the Parish, with some account of their crimes respectively, and of Public Abuses; such as illegal Combinations, drunkenness, quarrelling, violation of the Lord’s Day, Night-Wakes, or Public Dances (if any exist) as they deserve to be noticed by the Archbishop,

but the majority of clergy declined to name names, and either replied in general terms or left this section blank. At Ballymore Eustace (Co. Kildare) the parish priest reported that ‘a very great number did not approach the Sacraments this Easter, not for years’, whereas at Castledermot (Co. Kildare) he commented that: it is consoling to state . . . that those who could have been denominated ‘obstinate absentees’ have lately presented themselves as willing to comply with their duty and have promised obedience to the laws of the Church, the threat of returning their names to their reverend Archbishop proved salutary and there is great hope of their persevering in their good resolutions. It is to be lamented that many who attend to their duty at the usual times of Easter and Xmas, fall into the sin of drunkenness which is a vice very prevalent in the parish.30

The parish priest of Lattin and Cullen (Co. Tipperary) noted that there were two cases of public scandal in his parish, ‘a man living with a widow woman with whom he intrigued during the lifetime of her husband, the second a farmer who has children by his wife’s niece and his wife living’. The parish priest of Clerihan (Co. Tipperary) stated that his ‘only complaint is against the parents for their criminal neglect about the education of their children’. At Upperchurch (Co. Tipperary) the parish priest thought ‘the public abuses of the parish are litigation and consequent perjury, happily confined to a few, who unfortunately seem obdurate.’ At Emly (Co. Tipperary) ‘the Temperance pledge is violated and there are some who have the wicked habit of swearing and cursing’. At Pallasgreen (Co. Limerick) the parish priest reported one case of seduction and two cases of cohabitation, one of them following the seduction, but noted that both couples had been denounced.31 30 DDA, AB3/31/2 (136). 31 CDA, Visitation Returns 1846–8.


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It is clear from the comparison of the visitation evidence for the Dublin diocese in 1830–4 and that for Cashel and Emly in 1846–8 as shown in Table 5.6 that the progress of ecclesiastical reform within the Roman Catholic dioceses of Ireland was far from uniform. For example in the diocese of Cashel and Emly almost a quarter of the parishes were returning defects in plate and vestments. In most cases these were fairly minor, the lack of a ciborium or a cope, but a few were more serious. What is even more noticeable was that only two churches had thuribles and only at Tipperary did the vestments include dalmatics and tunicles. At Doon, a parish on the borders of Counties Limerick and Tipperary, it was noted that four of the eight sets of vestments, and two of the four missals, were not the property of the parish but the personal property of the parish priest. Even more parishes had no parochial house and at Kilteely (Co. Limerick) the parish priest was forced to live in ‘a house for which an exorbitant rent is paid’. Only a third of parishes reported the reception of any Protestant converts, the largest numbers, eight in each case, being at Fethard and Tipperary. Although the majority of parishes had established confraternities, and the number of churches in which catechizing took place was almost as many as those in the diocese of Dublin, the latter diocese reported more churches in which Vespers or public recitation of the Rosary took place and a significant variation in the number of parishes with three or more masses each Sunday. Several parishes in the diocese of Cashel and Emly only had catechizing in summer; at Kilmoylan (Co. Limerick) catechizing had been abandoned and even at Cashel the parish priest reported that ‘the neglect of parents in educating their children or sending them to catechism is to be deplored’, a sentiment similar to that expressed by many of his counterparts in the Church of Ireland. Where the diocese of Cashel and Emly did score well was in the relatively small number of parishioners absenting themselves from confession and communion at Easter; they were generally lower than the number of monthly communicants in the majority of parishes that made complete returns, whereas in the diocese of Dublin as many parishes reported more absentees from Easter duty than monthly communicants as returned the opposite figures. In the diocese of Dublin just over a third of the parishes had established a parochial library and most of these were of reasonable size, ranging from 80 to 268 volumes. At Roundwood (Co. Wicklow) it was reported that the parochial library ‘contains at present but few volumes but we hope to enlarge it’, and at Garristown (Co. Dublin) it had been impossible to establish one because of other financial commitments.32

32 DDA, AB3/31/4 (91).

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Table 5.6. Pastoral provision in the Roman Catholic dioceses of Dublin 1830–4 and Cashel and Emly 1846–8 Dublin 1830–4 (%)

Cashel and Emly 1846–8 (%)

Lack of parochial house Defects in vestments/plate Parochial libraries Confraternities Protestants received Catechizing Vespers Public recital of Rosary

N/A N/A 13 (34.2) N/A N/A 35 (92.1) 7 (18.4) 3 (7.9)

17 (37.8) 11 (24.4) N/A 27 (60.0) 15 (33.3) 41 (91.1) — 1 (2.2)

Sunday Masses: 1 2 3 4 5 6

— 10 (26.3) 12 (31.6) 7 (18.4) 4 (10.5) 1 (2.6)

11 (24.4) 25 (55.6) 5 (11.1) 3 (6.7) 1 (2.2) —

9 (23.7)

7 (15.6)

9 (23.7)

16 (35.6)

38

45

Absentees from Easter Duty in excess of monthly communicants Monthly communicants in excess of absentees from Easter Duty Total number of returns

Source: DDA, AB3/31/2 (136), AB3/31/3 (53), AB3/31/4 (35), and AB3/31/4 (91); CDA, Visitation Returns 1846–8.

Part of the reason for the more advanced state of the diocese of Dublin in the 1830s, compared with that of Cashel and Emly in the 1840s, despite the fact that only the rural parts of the former diocese were making returns, was the long programme of ecclesiastical reform which had been started by Archbishop Carpenter in 1770. By contrast Paul Cullen’s comment that ‘every sincere Christian indeed must exalt when persons of so much learning, zeal and piety’ as Michael Slattery ‘receive the reward of their merits, and at the same time are placed in a situation, where they have ample room for exercising their talents, and can do so much for the cause of God and religion’,33 implied some criticism of the pastoral effectiveness of Slattery’s predecessors in the diocese of Cashel and Emly. At Dublin Carpenter had undertaken visitations of part of the diocese each year and produced ‘Instructions and Admonitions’ to be read from the altars of the diocese’s churches by the clergy. By the time of his 1780 relatio status all the churches in the city itself had staffs of between seven and nine priests ‘who celebrated Mass daily, 33 CDA, Cullen to Slattery, 15 January 1834.


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heard confessions and took it in turn to preach’. He was, however, concerned that the various groups of friars in Dublin were less well disciplined than the secular clergy.34 Carpenter was, however, in poor health and died in 1786 at the age of 58, to be succeeded by John Thomas Troy, translated from Ossory. Troy issued a set of pastoral instructions to his clergy in 1787 in which they were obliged to catechize, to encourage their laity to observe the Easter duty and take advantage of indulgences, to refrain from attending hunts, races, or public concerts, and to attend clerical conferences. The clergy of the city parishes had to attend these conferences every month and Troy devised programmes for them that covered the full range of Roman Catholic doctrine; those for 1790 covered various topics relating to the eucharist and confession. He also made strenuous efforts to raise the incomes of the clergy with the result that by 1800 the average income of a parish priest in the diocese of Dublin, from which he had to make payments to his curates, was £121, almost twice the national average of £65.35 In 1809 he recommended the consecration of Daniel Murray as his coadjutor, and Murray succeeded Troy at his death in 1823, his own archiepiscopate lasting until 1852. Murray continued Troy’s pastoral programme and expanded it to include the establishment of 28 convents and 220 ‘clean, convenient, comfortable and healthy schools’ in the diocese, and the building of 97 new churches at a total cost of nearly £700,000.36

The Reform Programme in the Diocese of Kerry Another diocese in which the reform programme had been implemented early, under Bishop Francis Moylan (1775–87), was Kerry, though his initiative appears to have been inadequately sustained by his successors. The bishop from 1798 until his death, after several years in poor health, in 1824 was Charles Sugrue, for whose episcopate there are three surviving diocesan reports. The relatio status of 1804 revealed that all was not well in the diocese. There was only one convent of nuns, in Killarney. The Blessed Sacrament was only reserved in three parishes. There was a serious shortage of Roman 34 H. Fenning, ‘The Archbishops of Dublin, 1693–1786’, in History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin, ed. J. Kelly and D. Keogh, Dublin 2000, 209–13; M. J. Curran, ‘Archbishop Carpenter’s Relatio Status of 1780’, Reportorium Novum, i (1956), 392–8. 35 D. Keogh, ‘The Pattern of the Flock: John Thomas Troy 1786–1823’, in Kelly and Keogh, History, 222–4. 36 D. A. Kerr, ‘Dublin’s Forgotten Archbishop: Daniel Murray 1768–1852’, in Kelly and Keogh, History, 248; W. Meagher, Notices of the Life and Character of His Grace Most Rev Daniel Murray, Dublin 1853, 146.

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Catholic schools. The non-observance of days of fasting and abstinence was widespread and many of the laity neglected their Easter duty. However, all forty-three parishes had at least one priest and thirty-six had at least two. By 1815 the relatio status of that year noted that there were now two convents of nuns in the diocese but their inmates only numbered ten altogether. However, in an undated relatio status near the end of his episcopate, Sugrue wrote more positively about pastoral conditions in the diocese whilst at the same time expressing great concern about the growing strength of Evangelical Protestantism: The Catholic religion (God be praised) makes progress and grows in strength from day to day. New churches are being built and old ones are being repaired, schools for the instruction of the poor have been opened in many places . . . Bible Societies and Methodist preachers labour most industriously to spread the poisonous seed of their teaching among the people but almost without any success since our pastors throw in all the energies of their mind lest the good wheat be smothered by the cockle to such an extent that practically nobody in this diocese is affected by the poisons of their wicked doctrines.37

The statutes adopted for the whole province of Cashel, of which the diocese of Kerry was part, at a meeting of the bishops of the province held on 6–8 May 1828, laid down clear standards of behaviour and practice for both clergy and laity which was in line with those being promoted by the leading reformist bishops, such as Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin. The clergy were strictly forbidden to dine in any house on station days ‘unless they be in the habit of dining with the family on other occasions during the course of the year’. If a mixed marriage had taken place in a Protestant church it was to be followed by a Roman Catholic ceremony and if this had not occurred ‘the Catholic party is to be excluded from the Sacraments until it shall have been made to appear . . . that he or she had used every means to procure the celebration of this marriage in the Catholic Church’, the Protestant party having refused to comply. Clergy were not to demand the full marriage fee from those too poor to pay but were to accept what could be afforded, nor were they to marry persons from other dioceses without a certificate stating that the banns of marriage had been published in that diocese or a dispensation from the publication of banns had been granted. The most stringent regulations were applied to the conduct of services, to preaching and to catechizing: The Word of God is to be preached on every Sunday and principal Festival in the year in accordance with the decree of the Council of Trent. 37 K. O’Shea, ‘Three Early Nineteenth Century Diocesan Reports’, Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, x (1977), 55–76. The quotation is on p. 74.


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The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass must be offered for the parishioners on every Sunday and Holiday of the year; and a commemoration of them is to be made on the abrogated holidays. The Acts of Contrition, Faith, Hope and Charity are to be said every Sunday and Holiday either in English or Irish at the foot of the Altar before every Parochial Mass. The Catechism is to be explained to the people on every Sunday from the octave of St Peter and St Paul to the 1st Sunday of October.

It was also laid down that ‘it is not permissible, without leave from the bishop, to keep school in a chapel’ and that under no circumstances were cattle to be found in any place of worship, ‘nor is it to be profaned [with] threshing or any other servile work’.38 These statements clearly reflect the existence of some undesirable practices at the time and evidence from other sources suggests that enforcing discipline proved difficult in some parishes. It would appear from the surviving evidence of Dean O’Sullivan’s Praxis Parochi and Bishop Moriarty’s visitation diary that a degree of laxity had been tolerated in the diocese of Kerry during the episcopate of Moriarty’s predecessor, Cornelius Egan (1824–56). Dean O’Sullivan, parish priest of Kenmare and vicar-general of the diocese, compiled his Praxis Parochi in two manuscript volumes in 1849. It was probably intended for publication but was in fact never published and proposals to publish it with an editorial commentary have not yet borne fruit. It is, however, an extremely important document for the study of Roman Catholicism in Ireland on the eve of the Synod of Thurles. The two volumes run to a total of 854 pages and are divided into nine chapters covering contemporary practice in relation to the stations (pp. 20–302), the sacraments generally (pp. 304–33), confirmation (pp. 334–437), the eucharist (pp. 439–551), preaching (pp. 551–609), extreme unction (pp. 611–72), holy orders (pp. 673–81), matrimony (pp. 682–783), and the respective duties of parish priests and curates (pp. 782–99). The notes to the chapters on pages 802– 54 included O’Sullivan’s commentary on the Synod of Thurles and must therefore post-date 1849. O’Sullivan uses the Praxis Parochi to give an account of the training at Maynooth and his work as a parish priest, to record his observations on the shortcomings of many of the clergy and to offer advice on how to implement a reform programme in the parishes of the diocese. He recommended reserving Saturdays as the day for hearing confessions in church ‘by the Priest who wishes to further the spiritual welfare of his parish’.39 He also warns his brother clergy against complacency towards the Church of Ireland and a failure to recognize the changes that were taking place in that institution: We must bear in mind too, that we have a very different class of people to contend with in the Protestant clergy of the present day. The old cursing, swearing, foxhunting, 38 KDA, Cashel Provincial Statutes 1828.

39 KDA, Praxis Parochi, 282.

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drinking, gambling, whoreing, pheasant shooting Parsons have disappeared . . . the gentlemen are at length beginning to be as it were full of feeling and compassion for their wandering brethren, and the most strenuous efforts are being made by them to decoy our poor people from the religion of their fathers.40

Whether there were any more than a few of the sort of clergyman described by O’Sullivan in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century Church of Ireland is extremely unlikely but there was no doubt that he was correct in his observation that the ‘beautiful specimens of evangelical modesty and humility’41 were indulging in a programme of proselytism that their predecessors, and indeed some of their contemporaries, would have found profoundly distasteful. It was, however, not just the complacency of many of his fellow Roman Catholic clergy that concerned O’Sullivan. In many cases he felt that the clergy were not just complacent but negligent as well. He was particularly critical of the state of many of the church buildings in the diocese of Kerry, and, though he may have exaggerated, his comments cannot be dismissed or ignored: Our chapels . . . are in truth a disgrace to the majority of our clergy. A clean, orderly, well-kept church is in truth the exception, and rarely to be met with in this Diocese . . . the chapels . . . are in a most deplorable state of ruin, filth and dilapidation. In many instances breaches in the roof will be unrepaired for years, admitting the winds and the rains of heaven to such an extent, as to render it dangerous even to robust constitutions to remain for a moment beneath them. An earthern floor, full of holes, with all manner of undulations and acclivities, heaps of wide stones piled on each other here and there, for the people to sit or to kneel on, the walls unplastered . . . Where such an improvement as an altar railing is in existence, it is generally in that crazy precarious state that one is almost nervous as laying as much as a hand on it. Filthy altar steps, that are never washed, save when the bishop is expected on his visitation, a couple of old timber candlesticks made by the village turner, and loaded with the accumulated candlegrease of perhaps half a century . . . Cobwebs on all the windows, cobwebs on all the beams and rafters, cobwebs on the altar, cobwebs on the crucifix standing thereon, cobwebs on the candlesticks . . . They are in truth a disgrace to those who undertake, and whose business it is, to look after them.42

These are, of course, descriptions of buildings that would have been found at this time not just among the Roman Catholic churches of Ireland. Very similar descriptions, for example, of Anglican churches in Wales were recorded in the church notes of Sir Stephen Glynne in the 1840s, 1850s, and even 1860s,43 though in cases where it is possible to set this evidence in a 40 KDA, Praxis Parochi, 390–2. 41 Ibid., 399. 42 Ibid., 441–4. 43 W. N. Yates, ‘The Progress of Ecclesiology and Ritualism in Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, cxlix (2000), 61–4.


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broader context examples of negligence usually turn out to be a small minority, and this may well have been the case in the diocese of Kerry. Nevertheless, some of O’Sullivan’s allegations seem to be confirmed by the visitations of Bishop David Moriarty in the 1850s. Moriarty had been consecrated as coadjutor to Bishop Egan in 1854 and succeeded him as bishop of Kerry two years later. He carried out visitations on Egan’s behalf from the date of his consecration and noted several cases of pastoral neglect in the parishes he visited between 1854 and 1856. Those churches in a poor or neglected state included Dingle, Glencar, Killorglin, and Listowel. In the parish of Causeway all three churches were condemned: Ballyheige, built in 1827 for £500 was in poor condition; Killiney, built in 1845 for £550, was ‘the most disgraceful and the most disorderly [chapel] in the diocese’; Rattoo, built in 1837 for £450, was ‘miserably unfurnished and in bad repair’ and even lacked an altar. The result was a large number of absentees from Easter duty, 372 altogether compared with 120 monthly and 50 weekly communicants. The other main problems in the diocese, recorded by Moriarty, were an absence of parochial houses and several instances of ornaments, plate, and vestments being the private property of the clergy. At Newtownsandes the chalice had to be borrowed. Other parishes were better equipped. Dingle had ‘a handsome chalice, ciborium, monstrance and six suits of vestments’, including white and black dalmatics. Confessions were held in church every morning between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., and all day on Saturday, and there were 500 monthly communicants out of a total population of 5,627. Moriarty noted that at Killorglin the confirmation candidates had been badly prepared and at Tralee ‘children so badly instructed [that I] confirmed only 2 privately’. Several parishes had also recorded a significant number of ‘perversions’ to the Church of Ireland, as a result of Evangelical proselytizing campaigns; the highest number were at Dingle (280 in 1854, 249 in 1856) and Ventry (180 in 1854, 182 in 1856).44 It was clear that, at least in some parishes in the south-west of Ireland, the progress of the ecclesiastical reform programme had been both slow and patchy.

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES Although the structure of the Presbyterian churches in Ireland was very different from those of the two episcopal ones, it did include provision for pastoral supervision and direction, with presbyteries exercising a degree of oversight of the individual congregations. This oversight included a formal 44 KDA, Record of Visitations 1854–6 in diary of Bishop David Moriarty.

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process of visitation which, though not as regular as episcopal visitations, was in some respects more detailed and is recorded in surviving presbytery minute books. For the purposes of this chapter the records of three presbyteries have been surveyed; those of the ‘new light’ presbytery of Antrim and those of two presbyteries within the Synod of Ulster, Connaught and Tyrone.

The Presbytery of Antrim There are two surviving presbytery minute books covering the period 1783– 1839. Although neither includes material relating to the formal process of visitation there is a detailed account of a major dispute at Clough (Co. Down) in 1829–30 and its aftermath and also a report on the state of the congregations in the presbytery in 1838. The Clough dispute had arisen following the death of the minister in 1829 when the congregation had formed part of the Synod of Ulster: A poll was taken in that year to ascertain the minds of the people respecting the choice of a successor when they were found to be divided in opinion upon the point. The majority of the people dissatisfied with the conduct of the Synod of Ulster soon after determined on leaving that Body and placing themselves under the care of the Presbytery of Antrim which was accordingly done after the observance of all the requisite forms . . . The minority adhered to the Synod of Ulster. Each of the two bodies of persons elected a minister, the Reverend David Watson was chosen by the congregation under the charge of the Presbytery of Antrim and the Reverend Francis Dill by the members of the minority adhering to the Synod of Ulster.45

Both congregations claimed the meeting house and there was a major disturbance on 13 June 1830 ‘when Dill’s party went down and entered the meeting house where public worship immediately commenced’. Watson then arrived and: made up to the pulpit where Dill was, the singing of Psalms now going on; on his attempt to enter the pulpit Dill pushed him back and he was dragged and driven by the crowd till he found himself in the middle of the aisle. He then went into a seat in the Centre of the house and gave out a Psalm during the reading of which a man took him by the neck and tore the book; his Clerk commenced a tune different from the one then singing . . . Dill got up to pray and Watson did the same. His Voice completely overpowered Dill who soon stopped; but the uproars frightful.46

45 PRONI, T/1053/2, pp. 22–3.

46 PRONI, T/1053/1, pp. 259–60.


207

The dispute was not, however, just about possession of the meeting house but also the right to the regium donum. A letter from Dublin Castle dated 20 October 1834 stated that: notwithstanding the division amongst the Presbyterians of Clough . . . there has continued to be a minister and congregation of the Synod of Ulster there and . . . such minister has been and is entitled to receive from time to time the Regium Donum enjoyed by his predecessors as connected with the same body.47

Although Watson and his congregation appealed against this decision, it was not reversed, and by 1836 they had recognized the inevitable and built themselves a new meeting house.48 The cost, however, was considerable. The legal proceedings and the new meeting house set the congregation back £1,553. In 1838 Watson’s congregation numbered 150 families and there were 115 seatholders, who could only afford an average ministerial stipend of £26 1s 5½d per annum, though they hoped to be able to raise this to £50 in the future. The children were instructed on the first Saturday of each quarter with an attendance of 39 at the last meeting. Instruction in sacred music is given by the precentor every Sunday morning to all the members of the congregation to attend an hour before the commencement of Divine Service and he has also an occasional Evening School at which Psalmody is taught to all who are desirous of learning at the rate of 2/6 per quarter and by these means it is hoped that a taste for sacred music will be diffused and maintained in the congregation.49

The state of the other congregations in the presbytery for which a return was made is summarized in Table 5.7 below. The First Belfast Congregation had also established a Sunday evening lecture in 1829. Although the congregation at Holywood (Co. Down) was a small one it was ‘in the summer season considerably increased by persons coming to Holywood as a watering place of whom eight are at present seatholders’; nine of the stipend payers ‘reside in Belfast and are all with us during the summer months’. Many congregations were proud of their libraries. That of the First Belfast congregation had ‘been procured by donation and purchase’ and the Second Belfast congregation hoped that its relatively small collection of books would be ‘the nucleus of a library which no doubt will be speedily and largely increased’. At Downpatrick the library comprised volumes ‘of Ecclesiastical History and Biography and many standard works of popular Theology besides Histories, Travels, &c illustrative of Scripture and several tracts carefully and we trust judiciously chosen’. At Newtownards (Co. Down) it was noted that ‘Psalmody has now 47 PRONI, T/1053/2, pp. 25–6.

48 Ibid., 31–9, 121.

49 Ibid., 157–9.

208

Table 5.7. The state of congregations in the presbytery of Antrim 1838 Congregation

Membership

Communicants

Minister’s stipend

Library

Sunday school

Antrim

1,143

202–235

None

Belfast (First)

100 families

195

£60 Stipend payers 165 Arrears £66 15s 7d Stipend payers 119

Belfast (Second)

1,000 (200 families) 1,780 (418 families) 87 families

290

Downpatrick Holywood

300 83

Larne

c.1555 (311 families) Seatholders 211

250–260

Newtownards

951 (215 families)

200

Source: PRONI, T/1053/2, pp. 133–48.

£416 Stipend payers 125 £97 Stipend payers 1,300 (266 families) £20 Stipend payers 86 £70 Clerk £15 Stipend payers 261 (nominal) 193 (actual)

120 vols

37 on list Attendance 24 4 teachers Held 9 to 10.30 and 2.30 to 4 Attendance 104 25 teachers None

200 vols

None

208 vols

46 pupils

183 vols 88 subscribers 1s pa

£30 Stipend payers 154

188 vols

184 on list Attendance 120 in summer and 100 in winter 2 superintendents and 26 teachers 214 scholars and 17 teachers (Average attendance 116 scholars and 12 teachers) Lending library of 118 vols

170 vols Subscription 2s 6d pa


209

for a long time been conducted by the young men of the congregation and that too in a most efficient and satisfactory manner’. The children in the congregation were catechized and examined by the minister ‘weekly in summer and monthly in winter’.50

The Presbytery of Connaught This presbytery covered a substantial area of north-west Ireland in which there were few Presbyterians. The surviving minute book for the period 1825– 37 shows that, in addition to carrying out visitations of its widely separated congregations, the presbytery was keen to promote high pastoral standards for both clergy and laity. In 1826 the presbytery agreed: That each Minister be enjoined to have double service for at least the three summer months each year. That each member of Presbytery be enjoined to report the name of any individual absenting himself from public ordinances for four Lord’s days, unless such individual state to the Minister or Session a satisfactory cause for such absence. That the ministers who celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in their congregation only once a year should be enjoined to do so twice a year.51

The visitation reports show small congregations struggling in a somewhat hostile environment, as shown in Table 5.8 below. The visitation process itself was very thorough. At Ballymote (Co. Sligo) in 1831, twenty-four questions were put to the elders, fourteen to the minister, nineteen to both minister and elders conjointly, and fifteen to a committee of the congregation. They reported that both meeting and session house were ‘undergoing a thorough repair’ and that, though spirits were still drunk at funerals, ‘we wish to do away with the practice’.52 At Killala (Co. Mayo) in 1826 there was only one Sunday service but the minister also preached ‘frequently in the houses of the congregation’. Each family was visited four times a year when the minister ‘reads a portion of Scripture, exhorts and prays’. The meeting house was described as being ‘in a state of forwardness, but unfinished for want of a lease’.53 The most flourishing congregation in the presbytery was that at Sligo, described as ‘in a highly prosperous condition’ in 1826, when the weekly collection averaged 4s 6d.54

50 PRONI, T/1053/2, 133–48. 51 CHB, Minute Book of the Presbytery of Connaught 1825–37, 12–15. Notice of the resolutions were given on 28 February and they were approved on 17 October 1826. 52 Ibid., 17 August 1831 (no pagination). 53 Ibid., 9–12. 54 Ibid., 18–20.

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Table 5.8. The state of congregations in the presbytery of Connaught 1825–31 Congregation

Membership


Sunday services

Communicants

Psalmody

Catechizing

Ballymote (Co. Sligo)

24 families Attendance 24 in winter 40–50 in summer 60 families

£20

N/A

25

‘Endeavouring to improve’

N/A

‘but little and not well paid’ None

One

79

‘Very good’

Regular

One

N/A

By minister

£50 paid half-yearly N/A

One and occasionally two One

70

‘Tolerably good’ ‘Very good’

40

‘Extremely good’

Killala (Co. Mayo) Turlough (Co. Mayo) Sligo Westport (Co. Mayo)

30 families 60 families 30 families

Source: CHB, Minute Book of the Presbytery of Connaught 1825–37.

Every Thursday in summer Every Sunday


211

The Presbytery of Tyrone This was a much more flourishing presbytery than Connaught, located in a strongly, but by no means overwhelmingly, Presbyterian part of Ulster. There are five surviving minute books, overlapping with one another and between them covering the period 1809–41. The quality of the visitation evidence varies, with those of a few congregations providing a detailed account of the state of the congregation, as summarized in Table 5.9 below, and others focusing more directly on disciplinary matters. The maintenance of discipline was a strong feature of Presbyterianism, but it tended to lead to frequent allegations being made against both ministers and laity for breaches of discipline, not all of which could be substantiated, and with the concomitant danger that they could lead to long-term divisions, and even schisms, within the congregation. The charge made against a probationary minister, John Duff Gibson, that he ‘had acted improperly and injuriously to some young famel [sic] by Courting and afterwards jilting her’ was found to be ‘false and unfounded’.55 However, when the minister of Pomeroy (Co. Tyrone) was accused of intemperance, ‘and the violation of solemn promises against the use of intoxicating liquors’, he resigned. This was a matter on which the presbytery, which had earlier resolved that ‘in future no Wine shall be drunk at any presbyterial dinner’, was not inclined to be forgiving.56 There was a desire not to allow the smallest action to desecrate the Sabbath, and in 1836 the presbytery agreed that ‘the practice of collecting the stipend on the Lord’s Day in any of the congregations under our care be discontinued’.57 The records of presbytery visitations throw useful light on both liturgical and pastoral practice in the early nineteenth century. An attempt to increase the number of communion services has already been noted in the presbytery of Connaught, and at Coagh (Co. Tyrone) in 1836, where they already took place twice a year, the norm in the presbytery of Tyrone, ‘it has been under consideration of the session to have it more frequently’, possibly once a quarter. Strenuous efforts were being made to ensure that young people were admitted to communion but only after diligent preparation ‘for 6 months previous to communion’ and after they had been ‘finally examined before the Session’. At Dungannon (Co. Tyrone) the minister was ‘very punctual in excluding from the table of the Lord the ignorant and immoral’.58 55 CHB, Minute Book of the Presbytery of Tyrone 1809–28, minutes of meeting held on 20 July 1819. 56 Ibid., 4 February 1812; Minute Book of the Presbytery of Tyrone 1833–8, 2 May 1837. 57 CHB, Minute Book of the Presbytery of Tyrone 1836–41, 2. 58 Ibid., 13–23, 52–63.

212

Table 5.9. The state of selected congregations in the presbytery of Tyrone 1836–8 Congregation

Membership


Sunday services

Communicants

Psalmody

Sunday school

Carland

Attendance 250 in summer and 100 in winter

One

Not stated Communion twice a year at Spring and Harvest

N/A

N/A

Coagh

200 seatholders Attendance 400 in summer and 300 in winter 139 families Pew rents total £48 6s 31⁄2 d

£40 Collected at communion seasons Arrears currently £49 £60 Arrears £10

Two

306 (24 recently admitted) Communion twice a year

‘Very bad’

Sabbath class for young communicants

Two in summer and one in winter

80–90 Communion twice a year

Minister has ‘made several attempts to improve’

Catechizing every Sunday

Two in summer and one in winter

186 Communion twice a year

‘Tolerably good’

N/A

Dungannon

Orritor

118 families Attendance 120 in summer and 90 in winter

£50 collected quarterly on Sundays Arrears £117 7s 31⁄2 d £30 Arrears £100

Source: CHB, Minute Book of the Presbytery of Tyrone 1836–41.


213

There is an interesting description of worship at Carland (Co. Tyrone) in 1837, ‘Our stated public services are in summer an exposition of Psalm. A Chapter is read and a Lecture given on part of it and then a sermon. In winter the summer course is followed but with more brevity.’ Discipline was strict. At Carland those charged with fornication ‘are brought before the Session and rebuked’ and the earlier practice when it had been ‘Customary to distribute spirits or tobacco at wakes or funerals’ had been discontinued.59 The method by which discipline was maintained is explained in the presbytery report on Orritor (Co. Tyrone) in 1838 where it is stated that ‘each elder has a particular district assigned him for his special superintendence’ with the result that no member of the congregation sold anything or visited public houses on Sundays. There was, however, room for improvement. Not all the elders were ‘considered by some of the congregation as men of piety. Some elders do not pray with the sick, though all of them may visit them.’ The arrears in the minister’s stipend had been ‘accumulated by the withdrawment of many who were original subscribers and the neglect of the committee to prosecute defaulters’. As a result the presbytery of Tyrone appointed a committee ‘to meet the session and committee of the congregation of Orritor to concert a plan for the liquidation of the debt’.60 The surviving records of the presbyteries of Antrim, Connaught, and Tyrone show that the reform agenda being adopted by the bishops of the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was also being adopted by the Presbyterian churches. In many respects the programmes were remarkably similar: an increase in the number of Sunday services and of opportunities for the laity to receive communion; an emphasis on the proper instruction of the laity, especially young people, through sermons, catechizing, Sunday schools and libraries; and a general tightening up of personal discipline, especially in relation to drunkenness and sexual behaviour. Although the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic bishops could issue charges or pastoral letters designed to encourage both clergy and laity to adopt the reform programme, they were not always effective and enforcement could prove difficult. Despite their more democratic structure there is no doubt that the arrangements different groups of presbyteries had put in place for the oversight of members of the session by the elders, and of the ministers and sessions by the presbytery, seemed to have been extremely effective in dealing with what was regarded as unacceptable behaviour, at least in the removal of those found guilty and unrepentant, though at the end of the day they could not prevent such lapses occurring nor could they ensure that congregations were not divided as a result of the disciplinary process. 59 CHB, Minute Book of the Presbytery of Tyrone 1836–41, 73–81.

60 Ibid., 108–14.

6 Church Building and Restoration in Ireland 1770–1850 One of the features of the Irish landscape, quickly noticed by the observant traveller, is the large number of churches which appear to date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. That this is not merely an impression but a fact is conWrmed by the recorded dates of surviving church buildings, summarized in Table 6.1, in those Irish counties for which detailed accounts of buildings are now available. Since these only cover a quarter of the country it is safe to estimate that there are something in the region of 2,000 church buildings in Ireland dating from between 1770 and 1850 though relatively few of them, as will be seen, still preserve their original furnishings and liturgical arrangements intact. The aim of this chapter is to examine this phenomenal programme of church building and restoration, almost certainly, in terms of the proportion of surviving buildings dating from this period, unsurpassed by any other country in Europe. Churches with substantially unaltered interiors, listed in Appendix 10, are noted in the main text with an appropriate reference to this appendix and their numerical location within it.

T H E C O N D I T I O N O F C H U RC H B U I L D I N G S Before the last quarter of the eighteenth century Irish church buildings suVered from two fundamental and related problems. Lack of resources on the part of most congregations, and a paucity of wealthy families, meant that most buildings, especially those of the non-established churches, were exceptionally modest, and in many cases cheaply and poorly built. Consequently, buildings deteriorated quickly and were unable to withstand the long periods of wet and windy weather which were all too frequent in Ireland. Churches were patched up after storm damage but in a very minimalist manner and were thus further damaged in the next period of bad weather. Growing religious

Church Building and Restoration

215

Table 6.1. Total number of surviving church buildings in selected Irish counties dating from the period 1770–1850 County

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Presbyterian

total

Derry Donegal Fermanagh Longford Louth Meath Tyrone Westmeath

35 40 31 15 23 28 32 27

16 17 12 8 18 40 30 23

35 15 — 1 3 — 17 1

86 72 43 24 44 68 79 51

total

231

164

72

467

Source: A. Rowan, Buildings of Ireland: North-West Ulster, Harmondsworth 1979, and Casey and Rowan, North Leinster.

stability and increasing economic prosperity during the late eighteenth century, together with Wnancial support for the Church of Ireland through parliamentary grants, meant that for the Wrst time in Irish post-Reformation history it was possible to contemplate, and also to Wnance, an extensive programme of church building and restoration which, as Table 6.1 shows, had an impact on all three of the main religious groups in Ireland. Before, however, we look at this programme we need to consider the evidence for the overall condition of church buildings in Ireland before their restoration or replacement. Some church building had taken place for the Church of Ireland in the years before 1770 but it was largely conWned to the major towns, with twelve new churches in Dublin and four new churches in Cork. A good example of a handsome mid-eighteenth century church was St Peter’s, Drogheda, rebuilt in 1748–52 and enriched with elaborate plasterwork. New cathedrals were also built at Clogher and Cork and a major restoration carried out at Limerick cathedral and the two town churches of St John and St Munchin. Nevertheless there was still much work to be done. At the beginning of the nineteenth century nearly a Wfth of Irish parishes still had no Church of Ireland parish church, though some of these were parishes with no Church of Ireland inhabitants.1 In 1780 all the Church of Ireland churches in the diocese of Emly were in good repair except for that at Toem (Co. Tipperary) and especial praise was lavished on the parish church of Tipperary, which was: 1 R. B. McDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution 1760–1801, Oxford 1979, 159–61; C. Casey and A. Rowan, Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster, London 1993, 237–8, pl. 71–2, 75.

216


in most perfect repair . . . the reading desk, Communion-table, pulpit desk and cushion, are covered in green velvet. The aisle is spacious and elegantly Xagged, the pews very neat and commodious, and there is a long gallery at the west end, the whole forming a very pleasing appearance.2

However, by 1793 the pews at Cullen (Co. Tipperary) were in bad repair and in 1804 the church was described as being ‘in a state of Wlth, scandalous and indecent in the extreme’.3 Occasionally bishops only discovered the true state of the churches in their dioceses when they visited them. Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel and Emly commented on the church at Cahercorney (Co. Limerick) that ‘the appearance of this church is very diVerent from the report made by the Rural Dean. The windows are broken, the inside seemingly very bad, the surplice and general appearance disgraceful.’4 The rural deans were the main agents of the bishop in ensuring that churches were kept in good repair, and it was clearly a matter for concern when they were not carrying out their responsibilities, and even more so when they were disguising the fact by misleading their diocesans. A fortunate survival for the diocese of Cloyne is a series of four small volumes of rural dean’s reports for the rural deanery of Cloyne in 1791, 1794, 1796, and 1799. An analysis of the returns summarized in Table 6.2 shows that only one church, that at Midleton, remained in good condition throughout the 1790s. In 1791 the rural dean noted in each case whether the parish had a glebe house, Wnding them only at Clonmel and Midleton. At Aghada in 1794 the resident curate was forced to lodge with one of the parishioners, which the rural dean clearly regarded as unsatisfactory. The lack of communion plate at Dungourney in both 1794 and 1796 was because it was hoped that a wealthy parishioner would donate it. In 1799 it was noted that the parish church of Clonmel was too small and poorly situated as most of the parishioners lived in the town of Cobh. At Clonpriest in the same year it was stated that the ‘pulpit, reading desk and communion table were in the chancel and railed in’ a somewhat unusual arrangement which must have been inconvenient for the congregation unless the chancel arch was exceptionally wide.5 Although the Roman Catholics had begun to build substantial churches in the main towns from the early part of the eighteenth century, there were few such in the country areas: Almost without exception the Catholic chapels were poorly constructed and practically devoid of furniture . . . Scarcity of money, the uncertainty created by short leases, 2 3 4 5

St. J. D. Seymour, The Diocese of Emly, Dublin 1913, 250. Ibid., 254, 262. Ibid., 261. RCBL, D16/10/1–4.


217

Table 6.2. Summary of rural dean’s comments on the condition of churches in the rural deanery of Cloyne 1791–9 Church

1791

1794

1796

Aghada

Seats need painting, part needs Xooring, pulpit cushion and altar linen bad

Under repair

‘neat and clean’, seats Good, but pulpit painted, pulpit canopy not Wrm cushion of green velvet with silk fringe

Ardagh

Needs painting

Not visited

Repainted but further ‘defective in repairs needed, very almost every damp, seating poor, particular’ no font or altar linen

Castlemartyr Roof bad, altar carpet stolen

Good

Signs of damp

Clonmel

Needs painting

Some windows Damp broken

Clonpriest

‘extremely neat and handsome’ but needs painting

Good

Damp, neglected, no Woodwork not font painted, signs of damp, some windows broken

Cloyne

No entry

No entry

Good, but evidence of leaks

Dungourney No entry

Good, no communion plate

Poorly built, plaster No entry decaying, some windows broken, no books, plate or linen, only three good seats, otherwise forms or benches

Kilcredan

Floor bad, pulpit, reading desk and communion table in poor repair

Poor

Some windows broken, damp, only one pew, pulpit and reading desk bad

Killeagh

Communion plate bad, Pewter chalice Roof leaks no linen ‘unseemly and disgusting’, still no linen

Damp and cold

Kilmahon

No entry

Good

Good, but evidence of leaks

No entry

Lisgoold

No entry

Good

Spire leaks, seats not No entry painted

Midleton Youghal

‘in excellent order’ Altar rails loose, books and surplice in poor condition

Good Not visited

Good Good

Source: RCBL, D16/10/1–4.

1799

Good Communion table poor

No entry

No entry

Good No entry

218


and the need to remain discreetly in the shadows all contributed to the poor facilities of the buildings.6

In some parts of Ireland the ‘mass rock’, locations at which mass had been celebrated in the open air for generations, survived well into the nineteenth century. There were very few ‘mass houses’ in the diocese of Clogher in 1789, and several places in the diocese of Tuam in 1825, and in that of Killala in 1832, in which mass was still celebrated in the open air, or where chapels provided so little accommodation that part of the congregation was obliged to ‘kneel in the open air’, some having ‘come a distance of six miles’ to hear mass. Although most parishes did have chapels at that date they tended to be simple, thatched, barn-like structures, and in 1825 only 16 out of 106 chapels in the diocese of Tuam had slate roofs. Chapels were frequently used for secular as well as religious purposes. Schools were often held in them and the chapel at Monasterevan (Co. Kildare) was used as a threshing Xoor by local farmers. It was not normal practice to reserve the Blessed Sacrament in rural chapels until well into the nineteenth century.7 A good example of such a church is the former Tullyallan mass house (Appendix 10/5), built in 1768 and enlarged in 1830, and now re-erected with a reconstructed interior at the Ulster-American Folk Park. The projection behind the altar was used as living accommodation by the parish priest, and the fact that there was a hearth at one end of the church shows that it was almost certainly used as a school. This situation continued until 1840 when a schoolhouse was constructed in the chapel yard.8 Evidence from visitation returns and other sources gives a fairly consistent picture of the state of Roman Catholic places of worship in Ireland before the major church building programme of the early nineteenth century. Those in the diocese of Cashel and Emly described by Archbishop James Butler I (1757–74) were almost invariably rectangular buildings, similar to the Tullyallan mass house, with a door at one end and two small windows on either side of a simple altar platform. The walls were of either stone or mud and whitewashed. The roofs were thatched and usually in poor condition. Most buildings were about 50 to 60 feet long and about 25 to 30 feet wide with external walls reaching to a height of 6 or 7 feet. The altars were made of either boards or stone; a few were raised on three steps and some had a canopy over them. The only internal decoration was a cruciWx behind the altar. There were 6 I. Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe, 1800–1850, Blackrock 1992, 280. 7 P. Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey, Dublin 1985, 186; S. J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, Dublin 1982, 94, 97; B. O’Reilly, John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, His Life, Times and Correspondence, New York and Cincinnati 1890, i, 113. 8 Information kindly supplied by Pat O’Donnell at the Ulster-American Folk Park.


219

no galleries and no seating or other furnishings apart from the altar and, occasionally, a font. Most chapels were built at the cost of the leading Roman Catholic family in the area, but sometimes by subscription. As churches were enlarged or replaced from the late eighteenth century they tended to be provided with a timber reredos incorporating a tabernacle, as at Ardkeen (Appendix 10/6), and frequently with galleries, though the ground Xoor was often left unseated so that more people could be accommodated. Others, such as Ardkeen, were Wtted with either box pews or simple benches. In the diocese of Kilmore a total of eighteen new churches were built between 1769 and 1797. Many had galleries, often separate ones for men and women, approached by external staircases.9 Where seating was provided in Roman Catholic churches, usually in galleries, it tended to be as socially divisive as that in Protestant churches, since it was normally ‘reserved for the more respectable members of the congregation’. Some was erected as part of the building process and then rented out, and some seating was erected by families at their own expense and for their exclusive use. Bishop Blake of Dromore tried to abolish private seating in the new church at Lurgan (Co. Armagh) in 1833 but was forced to back down by a vociferous local laity who wanted to preserve such arrangements. At Carlow the seats with the highest rents were in the west gallery, with cheaper ones in the north and south galleries. In 1814 occupants of the seats in the west gallery each subscribed six guineas towards the purchase of an organ. Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin reluctantly tolerated the continuation of private seating but introduced regulations to prevent the selling or transfer of pews to others.10 Similar provisions were included by Archbishop Slattery of Cashel and Emly ‘in the Rules to establish and preserve good order in the New Thurles Gallery’ in 1839. No children were to be allowed in the gallery ‘to avoid noise and confusion’, seatholders were not allowed to allocate seats to their relatives or to sell their seats to others, and nobody apart from the seatholders ‘are to enter the gallery to hear Mass therein’.11 Some galleries seem to have been relatively cheaply built. At Templemichael parish church in the town of Longford ‘on Christmas morning 1823 . . . the gallery gave way and came down on the

9 K. Whelan, ‘The Catholic Church in County Tipperary, 1700–1900’, in Tipperary: History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County, ed. W. Nolan and T. G. McGrath, Dublin 1985, 225–9; D. Gallogly, The Diocese of Kilmore 1800–1950, Cavan 1998, 369– 70. 10 Connolly, Priests and People, 30–1; T. G. McGrath, Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of Bishop James Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, 1786–1834, Dublin 1999, 58–61. 11 CDA, Rules for New Thurles Gallery 1839.

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crowded assembly beneath. Many were hurt, but, fortunately, there were no fatal injuries.’12 Many Presbyterian meeting houses built before the middle years of the nineteenth century were also very modest buildings. The well-known Presbyterian minister, W. D. Killen, describing the meeting house at Ballyshannon (Co. Donegal) before it was rebuilt in c.1840, stated that: the old meeting-house was so dilapidated that when I Wrst saw it I did not recognize it as an occupied building. I supposed it to be a ruined oYce-house. It was not until I looked through an aperture in the door, and saw some miserable pews, that I discovered it to be a Presbyterian place of worship.13

A good surviving example of a modest Presbyterian meeting house of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, though far from the state of neglect alleged at Ballyshannon, is the church at Rathneeny (Appendix 10/24), some ten miles to the north. It is furnished with a simple pulpit and precentor’s desk and two blocks of box pews.14

THE B OARD OF FIRST FRUITS In 1808 it was estimated that 200 Church of Ireland beneWces still had no church.15 As late as 1831 there were still only eleven Church of Ireland churches in the diocese of Achonry, of which four pre-dated 1770.16 Concern about the shortage and quality of ecclesiastical accommodation had prompted the initial grants to the Board of First Fruits in 1777–8 and the substantial increases in the annual grant which took place in 1785, 1808, and 1810. In the late 1780s Archbishop Agar of Cashel and Emly was appointed treasurer of the Board of First Fruits and applied his customary energies to ensuring that it carried out its functions even more eYciently. Under his initiative, and despite the opposition of Archbishop Robinson of Armagh, Agar persuaded the Board to extend its policy of only funding the building of new or replacement churches, and to use its accumulated surplus to Wnance the purchase of glebes and the building of glebe houses. As a result of Agar’s 12 J. J. MacNamee, History of the Diocese of Ardagh, Dublin 1954, 795. 13 A. G. Lecky, The Laggan Presbytery Books, ed. W. Hanna, St Johnston 1978, 78–80. 14 A. Rowan, Buildings of Ireland: North-West Ulster, Harmondsworth 1979, 340; for a description of the post-1840 Presbyterian church at Ballyshannon see pp. 127–8. 15 A New History of Ireland IV: Eighteenth Century Ireland 1691–1800, ed. T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan, Oxford 1986, 531. 16 L. Swords, A Hidden Church: The Diocese of Achonry 1689–1818, Blackrock 1997, 143–4.


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initiative no fewer than 116 new glebe houses were built in Ireland, with Wnancial support from the Board of First Fruits, between 1791 and 1803.17 By then Agar had been marginalized by his successor at Cashel and Emly, Charles Brodrick, and the new Archbishop of Armagh, William Stuart, who between them controlled the Board for the next twenty years and made it ‘a comparatively eVective mechanism for the allocation of parliamentary grants to the areas of greatest need’.18 Both continued Agar’s policy of supporting the building of more glebe houses, which they saw as the key to enforcing clerical residence. They also recognized that though the provision of a house would encourage a clergyman’s successors to reside, the cost of building one was of less beneWt to the clergyman required to build it. Grants and loans for the building of glebe houses, therefore, needed to be supported by legislation enforcing clerical residence, since the clergyman bound to reside was more likely to undertake the building of a glebe house.19 When this legislation was eventually passed, in 1808, and was followed by a Board of First Fruits Act, incorporating a sliding scale for grant-aiding the building of glebe houses in beneWces worth less than £400 per annum,20 Stuart was in no doubt that the increased funds available to the Board would be used primarily for the building of glebe houses: ‘if it shall appear, as I think it will appear, that the whole sum cannot immediately be so applied, then and not until then we should turn our attention to churches’.21 Brodrick, the ageing Agar, and Bishop O’Beirne agreed. Indeed some contemporaries argued that for the Board to grant-aid the building of new churches in parishes with so few adherents to the Church of Ireland that they would be diYcult to maintain, would make the church a laughing stock.22 There was also concern that the Board did not exercise suYcient control over some of the schemes it supported. One of the worst cases was at Collon (Appendix 10/17) where the incumbent, Daniel Beaufort, originally obtained a grant of £800 and a loan of £1,700 for rebuilding the church from the Board of First Fruits. Rising costs led to Stuart and O’Beirne, Beaufort’s diocesans at Collon and Navan, his other church, respectively, persuading the Board to make a further loan of £2,000. The Wnal cost was, however, £6,500 and Beaufort, unable to repay the

17 A. P. W. Malcolmson, Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760–1810, Dublin 2002, 221, 227–8. 18 E. Brynn, ‘Some Repercussions of the Act of Union on the Church of Ireland, 1801–1820’, Church History, xl (1971), 294. 19 Malcolmson, Agar, 274; NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 24 March 1808. 20 Malcolmson, Agar, 279. 21 NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 22 August 1808. 22 Thus the Revd Samuel Riall to Archbishop Agar quoted in Malcolmson, Agar, 281.

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loans, was under threat of sequestration and imprisonment for debt at the time of his death in 1821.23 There is, however, clear evidence from Stuart’s correspondence with Brodrick that both were aware that if they did not, following the death of Agar in 1809, keep a Wrm grip over the way in which the funds at the disposal of the Board of First Fruits were managed, the parliamentary grants that supported the work of the Church of Ireland might be reduced or stopped altogether. Stuart questioned whether it was a good use of the Board’s money to assist with repairs to existing churches: The more I consider the matter, the more averse I feel to granting money for the repairs of Parish Churches. I think the diYculty of procuring money from the vestries will be much increased if this plan be adopted even under any limitation.24

Stuart’s opposition to the use of the Board’s funds for this purpose was not new. When it had been actively promoted by Bishop Knox of Derry in 1804 Stuart had opposed it,25 and he had also been hostile towards oVering loans up to the full amount of the estimated costs for the building of glebe houses. Stuart thought that the maximum loan should be no more than two-thirds of the estimated costs, and that no money should be advanced until the incumbent had committed himself to his proportion of the costs by starting work on the new glebe house, and that a time limit should be placed on loan oVers to ensure that houses were built.26 There was certainly some evidence that money paid out by the Board for the repair of churches had been used improperly. Bishop Butson of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh notiWed Archbishop Brodrick in 1806 that: the £500 granted to repair the Cathedral of Clonfert had been paid to the Builder who undertook the work before he had completed his Contract—the work is left in a shameful state—and I have made some eVorts to compel a full completion of it but in vain.27

Stuart maintained his businesslike approach towards the management of the Board’s Wnances to the end of his life. Accurately forecasting the reduction in the parliamentary grant that took place in 1817, he urged his fellow bishops to take action that would ensure that the Board did not Wnd itself in the position that it had over-committed its resources to such an extent that it was forced to refuse all further applications for assistance, whatever their merits: 23 24 25 26 27

Revd Samuel Riall to Archbishop Agar quoted in Malcolmson, Agar, 282. NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 23 June 1810. Ibid., Stuart to Brodrick, 29 January, 18 and 27 February, and 12 March 1804. Ibid., Stuart to Brodrick, 8 May 1804. NLI, Ms 8872, Butson to Brodrick, March 1806.


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We must certainly adopt a very strict oeconomy, and I think that the Board should immediately determine, Wrst not to enlarge churches—secondly not to increase their Wrst grant upon any pretence. It must now be manifest to every Bishop, that great circumspection and oeconomy is absolutely necessary, and that nothing can enforce that oeconomy but very peremptory regulations.28

Stuart feared that unless the Board’s funds were seen to be well managed, which they had clearly not always been in the past, parliamentary grants would not just be reduced but would cease altogether. By 1821 Stuart’s fears were being realized. There was pressure from members of Parliament to discontinue the grants to the Board of First Fruits and schemes by Sir John Newport, a long-term critic of the Church of Ireland,29 for more root and branch reform. Stuart told Brodrick that: I have had a long conversation with the ministers on the state of the Established Church in Ireland, and hope I have convinced them of our danger unless they support us . . . I trust the conversation which lately took place at the Archbishop of Dublin’s respecting Episcopal unions will not be misinterpreted as to lead them to suppose that the Irish bishops concur with Sir John on that point. I wish however that no such conversation had taken place.30

Stuart had always disliked the Beresford family and its episcopal members, clearly had a low opinion of Archbishop Beresford of Dublin, and would have been appalled if he had known that it was Beresford who was to succeed him as archbishop of Armagh. Stuart wanted to persuade the government not to be pressured by Parliament into withdrawing the grant to the Board of First Fruits altogether but to oVer some concessions by reducing it still further. ‘This the Archbishop of Dublin violently opposed’ and Stuart was concerned that Brodrick took a similar view. He urged Brodrick to support him at the next Board meeting by agreeing that no further grants be made until the future of the Board’s funding had been clariWed.31 A month later Stuart expressed his delight that the government had agreed that a grant should still be made but it was to be reduced from £30,000 to £10,000 per annum. The need for the exercise of caution in the making of grants and loans therefore remained critical, and some bishops simply could not be trusted to ensure that those grants and loans made to parishes in their dioceses would be properly applied. One of the worst oVenders was Archbishop Trench of

28 NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 20 February 1816. 29 See D. H. Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution, 1800–1885, New Haven and London 1971, 123–5, 160, 163. 30 NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 2 March 1821. 31 Ibid., Stuart to Brodrick, 7 January 1822.

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Tuam: ‘his conduct to the Board, when he was Bishop of Elphin was such, that it will be wise to use great caution in granting him money’.32 There is no doubt that the programme of building new churches and glebe houses in Ireland owed an immense amount to Archbishops Stuart and Brodrick. The former had lobbied tirelessly, and successfully,33 for increases in the parliamentary grant, and for it to be maintained, at least at a reduced level, when its future was in doubt, and both archbishops had put in place mechanisms to ensure that the Board of First Fruits was, in modern public Wnance jargon, giving ‘value for money’ in the way it exercised its Wnancial responsibilities. It was to be a major factor in persuading the British government to set up and provide resources for the Church Building Commission in England and Wales in 1818,34 to provide funding for the building of new churches in the Scottish highlands and islands in the 1820s, and it also provided a model for the grant aid programme of the Incorporated Church Building Society in England and Wales. The impact of the funding of new or replacement churches, and other work on church buildings, through the Board of First Fruits can be seen both nationally and within individual dioceses in Ireland. In that of Dromore a total of twenty-one churches were newly built, rebuilt, enlarged, and repaired between 1770 and 1850, the vast majority during the Wrst three decades of the nineteenth century when the Board of First Fruits was at its most active.35 In Ireland as a whole it was estimated that in those three decades 474 new churches had been erected, out of a total of 1,100, at a cost of £445,180 to the Board of First Fruits, of which £165,700 was in the form of grants and £279,480 in the form of loans. This compared, if the statistics were accurate, with only 134 churches erected during the whole of the eighteenth century and 492 churches the dates of which were unknown.36 A good example of a new church Wnanced by the Board of First Fruits was the chapel-of-ease of St Mark in Drogheda (Co. Louth). In this case Archbishop Beresford of Armagh had made it clear, in a letter dated 1 January 1825, that he would sanction an application for a grant to the Board of First Fruits provided the Corporation of Drogheda gave, as it had promised, a site for the new church and provided a salary for the minister.37 Beresford was active in promoting the repair of churches throughout the diocese. A schedule 32 NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 7 February 1822. 33 Ibid., Stuart to Brodrick, 15 August 1811. 34 See M. H. Port, Six Hundred New Churches, London 1961. 35 E. D. Atkinson, Dromore, An Ulster Diocese, Dundalk 1925, 159–311. 36 J. C. Erck, An Account of the Ecclesiastical Establishment Subsisting in Ireland, Dublin 1830, xxxiii. 37 RLA, Beresford Papers, vol. 8, f. 60.


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of 1839 shows that in that year no fewer than twenty-nine churches had recently been repaired at a total cost of £1,178 2s 8d. In four cases the cost of the repairs had exceeded £100.38 One of the signiWcant diVerences between Ireland and England was that, whereas both the Church Building Commission and the Incorporated Church Building Society insisted that they would not grant-aid church buildings unless a signiWcant proportion of the seating was free, the Board of First Fruits placed no such restrictions on their grants and loans. It was normal for Church of Ireland churches to have a high proportion of appropriated or rented sittings. At Castletownshend (Co. Cork) only two of the twenty-seven pews in the church were free; at Dunmanway the proportion was twelve out of Wfty, but the average cost of a rented pew was only £2 10s. At St Luke’s, Douglas, the seat rents varied between £11 and £17, depending on the location of the pew in the church. Some Irish bishops were hostile to the provision of free sittings, especially where they were being promoted by Evangelicals. Bishop Kyle of Cork, Cloyne and Ross strongly opposed the opening of St John’s Free Church in Cork, where all the sittings were free, in 1840.39

THE CHURCH EXTENSION PROGRAMME OF THE NON-ESTABLISHED CHURCHES Despite the lack of government grants both Roman Catholics and Presbyterians in Ireland were able to compete with the church building programme of the Church of Ireland. In the case of the Roman Catholics they had simply to keep pace with the growth in the Roman Catholic population in the prefamine years.40 This church building programme began in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Bishop McKenna of Cloyne built eleven new churches in the period 1775–85. Archbishop James Butler II of Cashel and Emly spent a thousand guineas on the new church at Thurles (Co. Tipperary).41 Thirty ‘good chapels’ were erected in the diocese of Clogher between 1786 and 1814. The diocese of Elphin had seventy-two churches in 1841, forty-four of which had slated roofs and twenty-six of which had been built since 1825. Eighty churches were built or substantially renovated in County Cork between 1805 38 Ibid., vol. 11, V. 137–8. 39 I. d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics in Cork 1812–1844, Cork 1980, 71. 40 S. J. Connolly, Religion and Society in Nineteenth Century Ireland, Dundalk 1985, 56–7. 41 D. Keogh, The French Disease: The Catholic Church and Irish Radicalism, 1790–1800, Dublin 1993, 12–13.

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Table 6.3. Statistics of church building in six Roman Catholic dioceses in Ireland 1770–1850 Diocese Ardagh and Clonmacnois Cashel and Emly Killaloe Kilmacduagh Kilmore Waterford and Lismore

1770–90

1791–1810

1811–30

1831–50

N/A N/A N/A N/A 15 N/A

2 13 14 1 12 7

7 25 36 3 22 20

10 24 58 6 44 13

Sources: MacNamee, Ardagh, 539–799; Whelan, ‘Catholic Church in County Tipperary’, 253; Murphy, Killaloe, 383–97; J. Fahey, The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh, Dublin 1893, 389– 438; Gallogly, Kilmore, 369–72, 406–18; P. Power, Waterford and Lismore: A Compendious History of the United Dioceses, Cork 1937, 54–366.

and 1848. Some churches cost considerable sums of money: £4,000 in the case of the new church of 1810 at Callan (Co. Kilkenny); between £12,000 and £20,000 in the case of six new churches in Dublin. However, the average rural church cost no more than £400 before 1845.42 At Castlebar (Co. Mayo) Bishop Egan’s nephew ‘adorned his chapel . . . with an Italian-style campanile, borrowed from his student days in Rome’.43 An analysis of the building dates of Roman Catholic churches in six dioceses, listed in Table 6.3, shows that, with the exception of the diocese of Waterford and Lismore, the pace of church building increased through the decades leading up to the famine, though some of these new buildings were replacements for earlier ones, with several late eighteenth or early nineteenth century churches being rebuilt in the 1830s or 1840s. Even more were replacements for the simple ‘mass houses’ built in the early and middle years of the eighteenth century. The last thatched ‘mass house’ in County Wexford, at Barntown, was replaced in 1844.44 Many churches beneWted from almost continuous programmes of improvement and refurbishment. The church at Carrickmacross (Co. Monaghan) was completed in 1786; a new high altar was installed in 1796 and painted in 1802; candlesticks and an altar frontal were presented in 1815; new paintings were added in 1817; a new chalice and paten were donated and the church Xagged in 1821.45 The 42 K. T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland 1832–1885, Oxford 1984, 206–7; D. J. Keenan, The Catholic Church in Nineteenth Century Ireland: A Sociological Study, Dublin 1983, 121. 43 Swords, Hidden Church, 225. 44 K. Whelan, ‘The Catholic Community in Eighteenth Century County Wexford’, in Endurance and Emergence: Catholics in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. T. P. Power and K. Whelan, Blackrock 1990, 153. 45 Keenan, Catholic Church, 122.


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church at Ballyshannon (Co. Donegal) was enlarged by the erection of galleries at the west end of the nave in 1803 and across the transepts in 1804.46 There is some division among historians of Irish Roman Catholicism as to how far the new churches of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries continued the earlier practice of being devoid of seating except in the galleries, or occasionally special seats for important families near the altar. McGrath states that even in the 1820s and 1830s ‘the main aisles of these churches were usually unfurnished and except perhaps for some benches, the poor simply stood or knelt on the paved Xoor’. However, as early as 1766, at the new South Chapel in Cork, the L-shaped interior was Wtted with pews inscribed with the names of those who had contributed to the building.47 The Roman Catholic chapel at Cashel (Co. Tipperary) was opened in 1795. It was a handsome classical building with a columned interior and galleries running the full length of the north and south aisles. A photograph of the interior taken before the replacement of the classical high altar in 1890 shows that even then the ground Xoor of the church ‘was almost totally devoid of seating’ apart from a few benches in front of the altar rails and under the galleries.48 Where they exist the surviving records relating to the building of individual churches show very clearly that the popular belief that these buildings were Wnanced ‘by the pennies of the poor’ was an ‘assiduously promoted myth’. At Carrick-on-Suir (Co. Tipperary) a meeting of twenty-nine ‘prominent’ residents decided on 1 July 1804 to demolish the old church and open a subscription list for a new one. The new church was roofed and the Wrst mass celebrated on 11 November 1804. The subscription lists reveal that the new building was largely Wnanced by local tradespeople together with a few professionals and landowners.49 In addition to Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic church building, there were active church extension programmes amongst Presbyterians and Methodists. In Belfast, for example, where the Roman Catholic proportion of the population of this growing town doubled from 8% in 1785 to 16% in 1808, and doubled again to 32% by 1834, there were only two Roman Catholic churches, built in 1784 and 1815 respectively. There was only one Church of Ireland church until a chapel-of-ease was opened in 1817. By 46 E. Maguire, A History of the Diocese of Raphoe, Dublin 1920, i, 185. 47 T. G. McGrath, ‘Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of James Doyle, OSA, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1819–1834’, National University of Ireland (University College, Dublin), PhD 1987, 111–12; E. Bolster, A History of the Diocese of Cork from the Penal Era to the Famine, Cork 1989, 99–100. 48 B. Moloney, Church of St John the Baptist, Cashel 1995, 2–3. 49 Whelan, ‘Catholic Church in County Tipperary’, 231–2.

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Church Building and Restoration P

Organ

Vestibule

Vestry

Fig. 6.1. Plan of ground floor and galleries of Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church, Belfast, 1793 (P = pulpit)

contrast there were six Presbyterian churches in Belfast, two each connected with the Synod of Ulster, the Secession Synod and the Presbytery of Antrim. The Wrst Methodist chapel was opened in 1806. Although a third Church of Ireland church, with a thousand free sittings, was opened in 1833, there were nine Methodist chapels in Belfast and its suburbs by 1840. Four new Presbyterian churches were built between 1833 and 1839, and by 1842 there were a total of Wfteen Presbyterian churches in Belfast accepting the authority of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland which had resulted from the merger, two years earlier, of the Secession Synod with the Synod of Ulster.50 Although many early Presbyterian chapels were relatively modest buildings there were exceptions. The Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church in Belfast (Fig. 6.1), built in 1793, was an oval building with a gallery around much of its interior and its pulpit placed directly under a Venetian window. In the gallery, immediately opposite the pulpit was an organ.51 In 1827 50 D. Hempton and M. Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740–1890, London 1992, 106–11. 51 J. S. Curl, Classical Churches in Ulster, Belfast 1980, 5, 13.


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the Corporation of Drogheda (Co. Louth) gave £300 to the Presbyterian congregation there so that they could add an ornamental front to their meeting house.52 In many respects the building programme of the Presbyterian churches followed a similar pattern to that of the Roman Catholics, with many of the nineteenth century churches being replacements for cheaply-built meeting houses. This was the case at Bushmills (Co. Antrim). There had been a Presbyterian congregation here since the middle years of the seventeenth century but the original meeting house was ‘in a ruinous condition’ when it was replaced by another in 1753. This simple building was, however, so small that during the communion seasons a tent had to be erected in the adjacent Weld and the service held there. By 1827 the second meeting house was also ‘in such a state that it must be rebuilt, or that a very large sum must be expended to repair and make it comfortable as a place of worship’. It was agreed to rebuild and a subscription list opened for the purpose and ‘an application for funds . . . made to the persons worshipping at Bushmills’. The foundation stone of this third meeting house was laid on 22 May 1828 and it was opened for public worship on 27 June 1829. The total cost of rebuilding was £560.53

THE DESIGN AND LITURGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF CHURCH BUILDING S The design of all churches and chapels throughout Europe and North America before the impact of the ecclesiological movement after 1840 fell into six broad liturgical types.54 Three of these types could be found among Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics in Ireland: these were the rectangular buildings with the liturgical focus on one of the long walls (Type 2), the rectangular buildings with the liturgical focus on one of the short walls (Type 3), and the L- or T-plan buildings (Type 4). A further three liturgical types were conWned to use by the Church of Ireland: these were churches with their pulpits and reading desks located in the north-east or south-east corners of the nave (Type 1), 52 A History of Congregations in the Presbyterian Churches in Ireland 1610–1982, ed. W. D. Baillie, Belfast 1982, 400. 53 H. B. Wallace, Bushmills Presbyterian Church 1646–1996: A Short History, Bushmills 1996, 13–14. 54 For a detailed discussion of the liturgical arrangement of both Anglican and non-Anglican churches see W. N. Yates, Buildings, Faith and Worship: The Liturgical Arrangement of Anglican Churches, 1600–1900, 2nd edn, Oxford 2000.

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Table 6.4. Comparison of the liturgical arrangements of Church of Ireland churches in the dioceses of Cashel and Emly, and Waterford and Lismore in the 1830s, and of Church of England churches in the archdeaconry of Durham 1825 Liturgical Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4 Type 5 Type 6

Cashel and Emly (%)

Waterford and Lismore (%)

Durham (%)

29.3 24.4 2.4 7.3 — 36.6

15.8 26.3 18.4 5.3 — 34.2

50.0 23.0 9.5 1.3 — 16.2

Source: RCBL, Ms 138/1 and 6; DCL, Seating plans of churches in the Archdeaconry of Durham 1825.

churches arranged like cathedral choirs or college chapels (Type 5), and churches in which the pulpit and reading desk were separated and placed on opposite sides of the altar or the entrance to the chancel (Type 6). Churches of the last type became popular in Ireland, as they did in England and Wales, from the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and to some extent, particularly in the increased focus on the altar, anticipated some of the ideas traditionally associated with the ecclesiologists and the Gothic revival. Before 1840 all religious groups built churches that could be either classical or Gothic in style, or might combine a mixture of the two. After 1840 both the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church adopted Gothic for their buildings and a Gothic of a type considered more ‘correct’ than that traditionally associated with church buildings before 1840. The Presbyterians, however, continued to build classical churches and became, within the later years of the nineteenth century, increasingly hostile to the Gothic style which they associated with either the Roman Catholic or the high church Anglican varieties of ‘popery’.55 Before this date, however, it could be very diYcult to tell, from their external appearance alone, to which religious group a church in Ireland belonged. In County Donegal there were examples of Presbyterian churches built before 1850 in both the classical and Gothic styles, and even T-plan buildings which on the outside were impossible to diVerentiate from Roman Catholic churches of a similar date.56 The variety of Church of Ireland liturgical arrangements is shown in the Wne series of plans made by James Pain of the churches in the six united dioceses within the province of Cashel in the 1830s,57 and a useful comparison can be made as shown in Table 6.4 between these and those of churches in 55 Curl, Classical Churches, 19. 56 See the relevant photographs in Lecky, Laggan Prebytery Book. They include (p. 67) one of a classical church of 1875 at Donaghmore. 57 For details see Appendix 8. There is a brief description of these plans in A. Rowan, ‘Irish Victorian Churches: Denominational Distinctions’, in Ireland: Art into History, ed. R. Gillespie and B. P. Kennedy, Dublin 1994, 211–12.


231

A C R F

P

Fig. 6.2. Plan of Ballymakenny Church, Co. Louth, 1785–93 (A = altar, C = clerk’s desk, F = font, P = pulpit, R = reading desk)

the English archdeaconry of Durham, for which a complete set of plans were made in 1825. They conWrm yet again the impact that the church building and restoration programme had on the Church of Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The traditional Anglican arrangement of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, with pulpit and reading desk placed at the east end of the nave, which had survived well in England and Wales, where fewer churches had been subject to rebuilding or refurbishment at a later period, was far less well represented in Ireland. A good and surviving example, however, is the church of 1785–93 at Ballymakenny (Fig. 6.2 and Appendix 10/16), probably designed by Thomas Cooley but erected under the supervision of Francis Johnston.58 Another liturgical arrangement, not represented by any of the churches in Table 6.4, and with even fewer surviving examples in Ireland than in England and Wales, was the collegiate one. It is, however, to be found at the former archbishop’s chapel in Armagh (Appendix 10/7), Collon (Appendix 10/17), and Glenealy (Appendix 10/19). Most Church of Ireland churches, both in the surviving plans surveyed in Table 6.4, and in the small number of surviving examples, fell into one of the other categories listed above, as did Presbyterian and Roman Catholic church buildings. The rectangular building with the liturgical centre on one of the long walls was, on the whole, more popular with the non-established churches than with the Church of Ireland, and there appear to be no surviving Church of Ireland examples of this liturgical type. There were, however, formerly 58 D. S. Richardson, Gothic Revival Architecture in Ireland, New York and London 1983, i, 183–6.

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excellent examples in Dublin, in the churches of St Andrew and St George.59 There are, however, good surviving Presbyterian or Roman Catholic examples at Dunmurry (Appendix 10/12) and Drumcree (Appendix 10/1) in which the pre-1850 furnishings are wholly or largely intact. This very traditional type of pre-1850 Roman Catholic liturgical arrangement can, however, still be seen in churches which have been substantially refurnished: St Malachy’s, Belfast, of 1841–4; Navan (Co. Meath) of 1836–46; and Rosslea (Co. Fermanagh) of 1834. All have galleries around three sides of the interior and at Rosslea the original altar reredos survives intact. Rectangular buildings with the liturgical centre on one of the short walls survive, with their pre-1850 furnishings largely intact, for all religious groups in Ireland. That at Timogue, a small Church of Ireland church in County Laois, has the pulpit, reading and clerk’s desk placed behind the altar (Appendix 10/25). The best preserved Roman Catholic example is Ardkeen (Appendix 10/6) but there are important surviving buildings at Cashel (Co. Tipperary) of 1792–1804, Cockhill (Co. Donegal) of 1848, and Youghal (Co. Cork) of 1796, which, though substantially refurnished, still give a good impression of how such churches were arranged originally. Good surviving Presbyterian examples of this type of liturgical arrangement are the churches at Banbridge (Appendix 10/8) and Crumlin (Appendix 10/9), the latter being octagonal in shape. A very interesting variant of this arrangement in a Church of Ireland church is shown in the surviving plan of the church at Kilcornan (Co. Limerick) in which the pulpit and desk are placed against one of the short walls with the altar in the middle of one of the long walls.60 At both the Chapel Royal and at Trinity College Chapel in Dublin the pulpit and reading desk were originally placed directly in front of the altar.61 This was also the case at Christ Church (1833) and Holy Trinity (1843) in Belfast.62 The L- or T-plan liturgical arrangement can also be found in all the religious groups in Ireland, and, in the case of the Church of Ireland, in a number of diVerent variations. At Leckpatrick (Appendix 10/14) the church comprises a nave, chancel, and north transept, with the seating in the nave and transept focused on the pulpit and reading desk on the south wall of 59 St Andrew’s, which was elliptical, was built in 1793–1807, and St George’s in 1802–13, both to designs by Francis Johnston; for plans of these churches see G. W. O. Addleshaw and F. Etchells, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship, London 1948, 184, 187. 60 Richardson, Gothic Revival, i, 206, Wg. 106. 61 Illustrated London News (1849) reproduced as illustration 4 on p.33; M. Craig, Dublin 1660–1860, London 1992, pl. LXVIII. 62 P. Larmour and S. McBride, ‘Building and Faith: Church Building from Medieval to Modern’, in The Laity and the Church of Ireland, 1000–2000: All Sorts and Conditions, ed. R. Gillespie and W. G. Neely, Dublin 2002, 337, 342.


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4. Interior of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle from the Illustrated London News 1849.

the nave. At Dromard (Appendix 10/18) the church comprises a single-cell nave and chancel with transepts at the west end. Pulpit and altar face one another at opposite ends of the nave-chancel, but the seating faces the pulpit and reading desk from three diVerent directions. At both Longford and Tomregan (Co. Cavan) formerly rectangular buildings were made Tplan by the addition of a transept. At Longford the altar is placed in a shallow recess opposite the transept so that the seating in the former chancel faces west, that in the nave east, and that in the north transept

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R C A

P

Fig. 6.3. Plan of Cahir Church, Co. Tipperary, 1816–18 (A = altar, C = clerk’s desk, P = pulpit, R = reading desk)

south, towards a single liturgical space incorporating altar, pulpit, and reading desk. At Tomregan the altar remains in the chancel but the pulpit and reading desk have been placed in the middle of the south wall opposite the seating in the north transept. At St Iberius, Wexford, a T-plan has been created by a projection for the sanctuary in one of the long walls but otherwise this is a classical Type 2 rectangular church with a gallery around three sides of the interior. The other type of T-plan found in Ireland is the cruciform one in which the fourth projection is the chancel. At Hillsborough (Appendix 10/13) the chancel houses only the altar and the pulpit and reading desk are placed on opposite sides of the entrance to the chancel. At Clonguish parish church in Newtownforbes (Appendix 10/23) the pulpit and desk are, as at Timogue, placed behind the altar. At Cahir (Fig. 6.3) where only the original box pews, galleries, and plaster vaults, designed by John Nash in 1816–18, still survive, there was a central liturgical space, incorporating pulpit, desks, and altar under the crossing.63 The T-plan arrangement was relatively common in Presbyterian churches and there are good surviving examples at Downpatrick (Appendix 10/11) and Rademon (Appendix 10/15), and reconstructed ones at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (Omagh, Fig. 6.4 and Appendix 10/3) and the Ulster-American Folk Park (Mountjoy, Appendix 10/4). The L- or T-plan arrangement was particularly popular among Roman Catholics; according to one contemporary commentator the intention was ‘to divide the church equally among the poor and rich, giving the one class no advantage over the other, except that of a separate entrance’.64 Although none of these buildings appear to survive in their original condition there are 63 Richardson, Gothic Revival, 200–2. 64 Moody and Vaughan, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 532–3.


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P

Fig. 6.4. Plan of Omagh Old Meeting House, Co. Tyrone, 1830 (P = pulpit)

enough containing substantial furnishings of the period for it to be possible to construct their original appearance without too much diYculty. At Keash (Co. Sligo) the church is an L-plan with two projections of equal length and a central sanctuary placed at the point where the two projections meet. In the more common T-plan arrangement the altar is placed so that the seating faced it from three projections and, as in Presbyterian T-plan churches, there were, almost invariably, galleries or lofts in each of the three projections. In almost all cases original altarpieces have been replaced, and even if they have not, sanctuaries have been re-ordered; however many of the surviving galleries retain all or some of their original seating, mostly tiered benches, less frequently box pews with the doors removed; this is the case at CoroWn (Co. Clare) of 1822–3, Fethard (Co. Tipperary) of 1829, and in the early nineteenth century church at Rosscarbery (Co. Cork). At Dunmanway (Co. Cork) of 1834 both the original gallery seating and the original altarpieces, for both high and side altars, survive. St Columba’s, or Long Tower, Church in Derry has a sanctuary of 1784–6 and a long nave of 1810; the transept was doubled in size in 1908. The sanctuary with its elaborate high and side altars, dates from a re-ordering of 1820–9, but incorporates a baldacchino supported by four marble pillars, brought from Naples by the Church of Ireland Bishop

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Hervey of Derry and given to the church, in one of Hervey’s typical ecumenical gestures, in 1784.65 The pre-ecclesiological movement within Anglicanism, which has been noted in respect of England and Wales,66 was also taking place in Ireland from the last quarter of the eighteenth century. One of its major supporters was Richard Mant, successively bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora (1820–3), Down and Connor (1823–48), and Dromore (1842–8). In one of his charges to the clergy of the Wrst of these dioceses he expressed his concern that many of their churches were not adequately Wtted up for worship. Some had no font and others no facilities for kneeling. Mant stated that in future he would not approve the building of any new churches which did not include provision for both and other liturgical arrangements which he considered essential: the reading desk and the pulpit should be situated towards the eastern extremity of the building, but not within the rails of the communion table, so that the minister may in either position see, and be seen by, the whole congregation, and so that at the same time the view of the communion table may not be obstructed, nor the place appropriated to it suVer encroachment; and that the pews, if pews there must be, should be regulated in their dimensions and arrangement upon the principle of containing only single parallel benches behind, and accommodation for kneeling in front; so that in every posture, whether sitting, standing or kneeling, the people may naturally be turned towards the oYciating minister, whether he be in the reading desk, or at the communion table or in the pulpit.67

There are excellent surviving examples of churches reXecting the principles enunciated by Mant at Littleton (Appendix 10/22) and re-erected at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (Kilmore, Appendix 10/2). In a later publication Mant further deWned his position in relation to the design of church buildings and he provided an illustration of what he had in mind: uniform seating, with open benches preferred to closed pews, all facing east; a chancel three steps higher than the nave and with the altar placed against the east wall; the pulpit on the south side of the entrance to the chancel and a lower reading desk on the north side; the font placed in the middle of the nave towards its western end.68 Altars were to be railed in and have decent coverings; reading desks should have two ledges, one facing west and the other, depending on its position in the church, north or south; pulpit and desks were not to be placed 65 Rowan, North-West Ulster, 385–6. 66 Yates, Buildings, 108–23. 67 R. Mant, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Killaloe, Dublin 1821, 12–15. 68 Id., Church Architecture Considered in its Relation to the Mind of the Church, Belfast 1843, plan opp. p. 5.


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directly in front of the altar; credence tables were not essential but were to be commended.69 These were all views that coincided with much that the new ecclesiological movement was also advocating from the late 1830s,70 yet the ecclesiologists themselves were wholly dismissive of some of these earlier attempts to reorder church buildings, considering them inadequate and, in cases where buildings were replaced, philistine. Thus the antiquarian lawyer, Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810–86), condemned the work of the Ecclesiastical Commission, and by implication its predecessor the Board of First Fruits, in 1847: not content with erecting its tasteless buildings on independent sites this corporation employs our money and compromises our character in pulling down our most valuable historic monuments, to make room for its spurious and insigniWcant creations.71

However, whereas in England, Wales, and Scotland, Anglicans and Roman Catholics were both early supporters of the principles of ecclesiology, in Ireland the growing estrangement between Protestants and Roman Catholics, to be considered in more detail in the next chapter, meant that the Church of Ireland did not begin to adopt ecclesiological principles in the design of church buildings until some years after 1850. The one church designed by one of the leading Church of Ireland architects, Joseph Welland, before 1850 in which ‘its generously proportioned chancel and octagonal stone font raised on three steps could have received some praise from the ecclesiologists’, did not have a stalled chancel, and the organ and choir were still placed at the west end of the nave. This church, St James, Ramoan, Ballycastle (Co. Antrim) was built in 1849–50.72 The now secularized church of St John, Guilcagh, Portlaw (Co. Waterford), built in 1849–51, had a stone font in the north-west corner of the nave and a pulpit in its south-east corner ‘entered from the vestry’. In 1861–3 G. E. Street designed the nearby church at Fiddown (Co. Kilkenny) with a stalled chancel, but both pulpit and reading desk were placed together, in the traditional pre-ecclesiological manner, with the former being entered from the latter.73 However, by the 1860s there were beginning to be some fully ecclesiological Church of Ireland churches, including the new cathedrals at Cork and Kilmore.74 69 Ibid., 18–19, 21, 28, 31, 55. 70 Yates, Buildings, 133–40. 71 J. Sheehy, The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past: The Celtic Revival 1830–1930, London 1980, 58. 72 S. R. McBride, ‘Bishop Mant and the Down and Connor and Dromore Church Architecture Society: The InXuence of the Oxford and Evangelical Movements, the Cambridge Camden Society and the Gothic Revival on the Church of Ireland and its Architecture in Ulster 1838– 1878’, Queen’s University, Belfast, PhD 1996, 187. 73 Richardson, Gothic Revival, ii, 510a, pl. 367. 74 P. Galloway, Cathedrals of Ireland, Belfast 1992, 58–62, 148–50; Richardson, Gothic Revival, ii, pl. 402, 411.

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By contrast the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was more ready to jump on the ecclesiological bandwagon, much encouraged by A. W. N. Pugin, who received several Irish commissions from the late 1830s.75 In a letter to the Tractarian, J. R. Bloxam, in 1843, Pugin outlined these commissions: there will be 2 cathedral churches, 3 parochial ones, 3 conventual and 1 collegiate all carried out with fonts, altars, vestments, surplices, stained windows . . . really there is wonderful faith and devotion in this country after all.76

These churches were, with the exception of the new cathedral at Killarney (Co. Kerry), all in the south-east of Ireland where his patron, John Talbot, sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury and premier Earl of Ireland (1791–1852), had inXuence through his marriage to the daughter of William Talbot of Castle Talbot (Co. Wexford). They included the parish churches at Bree (1837–9), Gorey (1839–42), Tagoat (1841–6), and Barntown (1844–8), and the chapel of St Peter’s College, Wexford. Pugin’s example encouraged the adoption of the ecclesiological interpretation of Gothic by Roman Catholics in Ireland, led by a distinguished group of Irish architects, the most notable of which was J. J. McCarthy, whose work was to be found throughout Ireland.77 However, some Roman Catholic clergy and laity still preferred the traditional classical buildings with which they were most familiar and such buildings continued to be erected after 1850. A good example is the church of the Three Patrons at Rathgar in the southern suburbs of Dublin, built in 1862 and retaining many of its original Wttings. There were also some neo-Byzantine buildings such as the church of the new Catholic University in Dublin, designed by J. H. Pollen for J. H. Newman in 1855.

CAT H ED R A LS O LD A ND N EW The church building and restoration programmes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries included both the repair, or some cases rebuilding, of Church of Ireland cathedrals and the building of the Wrst cathedrals for the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, as summarized in Table 6.5.78 Whereas work on Church of Ireland cathedrals took place throughout the whole period 1770–1850, and peaked in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, that on the new Roman Catholic cathedrals was heavily concentrated 75 76 77 78

P. Stanton, Pugin, London 1971, 56–8, 66–75. Richardson, Gothic Revival, i, 253–4. Ibid., 255–72. See also Rowan, ‘Irish Victorian Churches’, 219–21. For details see Appendix 9.


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Table 6.5. Cathedral building and restoration in Ireland 1770–1850 Decade 1770–80 1781–90 1791–1800 1801–10 1811–20 1821–30 1831–40 1841–50 Whole period

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholics

3 4 4 4 9 7 3 2 20

1 2 1 8 6 7 16

Source: As for Appendix 9.

into the three decades after 1820. A majority of the twenty-eight79 surviving cathedrals in Ireland were rebuilt or had work done on them, and work was at least begun, and in many cases completed, on cathedrals for half the Roman Catholic dioceses. It was a formidable programme and certainly the most extensive in any European country. By contrast there were no Roman Catholic cathedrals in England, Wales, Scotland, or the Netherlands, or Anglican cathedrals in Scotland, until after 1850. However, although much new building, rebuilding and restoration took place, a great deal of it has been obscured by subsequent work. Nevertheless Ireland is fortunate in retaining three Church of Ireland cathedrals—Downpatrick (Appendix 10/10), Kilfenora (Appendix 10/20), and Killala (Appendix 10/21)—which retain much of their early nineteenth-century furnishings and liturgical arrangement. By English or French standards the surviving medieval cathedrals in Ireland were very modest buildings, much more comparable to those in Scotland, Wales, or Scandinavia. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries they tended to be arranged so that the clergy, choir, and congregation occupied the same part of the building, as shown in the plan of Tuam Cathedral before its rebuilding in 1861–78 (Fig. 6.5), and a similar arrangement survives at Downpatrick. The cathedral there had been destroyed in 1538 and had remained in ruins for three and a half centuries before a decision was taken to rebuild it. The suggestion to do so came from the Wrst Marquess of Downshire, who a decade earlier had rebuilt the church at Hillsborough (Appendix 10/13) at his own expense. In 1792 the Marquess wrote to Archbishop Fowler of Dublin:

79 There were no cathedrals for the dioceses of Ardagh, Ardfert and Aghadoe, Kilmacduagh, Kilmore, and Meath and Clonmacnois; the cathedral at Connor was in ruins but the parish church of Lisburn had been constituted a replacement cathedral.

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S

R C

P

S

A

T

Fig. 6.5. Plan of Tuam Cathedral in the early nineteenth century (A = altar, C = clerk’s desk, P = pulpit, R = reading desk, S = chapter stalls, T = bishop’s throne) to inform your Grace that the cathedral has for many years past been in almost a total state of ruin and that the Diocese, County and Neighbourhood of its situation feel mortiWed and ashamed at its appearance and this has induced the Bps and Clergy, the Nobility and the Gentry to oVer themselves as subscribers to raise such a sum as may enable them to repair this Cathedral in such a manner as may do honour to them and to the established Church of Ireland.80

The total cost of rebuilding the cathedral appears to have been in the region of £13,000, the majority of it raised through the exertions of the Wrst three Marquesses of Downshire. Although the cathedral was reopened for worship in 1818, the tower was not completed until 1829 at a further cost of some £1,800. The stalls for the prebendaries were placed at the west end of the choircum-nave against the organ screen, and the bishop’s throne in the middle of the southern block of seating.81 The care which Archbishop Agar had lavished on his new cathedral at Cashel was maintained by his successor, Charles Brodrick. In 1806 the dean and chapter authorized Brodrick, who held the prebend of Glankeen, to spend a hundred guineas ‘in Decorations for the Cathedral’; in 1807 £300 was made available to complete the spire; and in 1810 it was agreed that ‘new hangings of crimson velvet and stuV be provided for the Cathedral’.82 80 J. F. Rankin, Down Cathedral: The Church of St Patrick of Down, Belfast 1997, 107. 81 Ibid., 108–23; Malcolmson, Agar, 312–13; Richardson, Gothic Revival, 188–91, pl. 93; Addleshaw and Etchells, Architectural Setting, 197–200; Galloway, Cathedrals, 72–6; W. B. Mant, Memoirs of the Right Reverend Richard Mant, Dublin 1857, 55–6, 203–7. 82 BLC, Chapter Act Book 1759–1886, f. 10r and v, 13v.


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The surviving chapter act book of Cloyne also records work being done on that cathedral. In 1783 it was ‘resolved that the gallery on the S side of the organ be appropriated to the use of the present Bishop of Cloyne’s family, and the families of his successors. And that the gallery on the N side be Wtted up in the same manner.’83 In 1829 there was a major reallocation of the seats in the cathedral recorded in detail in the chapter act book.84 The Church of Ireland cathedral at Armagh underwent three major restorations between 1770 and 1850. The Wrst was commissioned by Archbishop Robinson (1765–94) and included the rebuilding of the central tower and the gift of an organ. Under Archbishop Stuart (1800–22) the altar was repositioned at the west end of the nave, the choir placed in a gallery, a new canopied pulpit installed, the chancel Wtted up as a chapel for weekday services, and the crossing used as a vestry. All this work was, however, undone during the archiepiscopate of Lord John George de la Poer Beresford (1822– 62), during which the cathedral was virtually rebuilt at a total cost of £34,000 to which Beresford himself contributed £24,000.85 Beresford’s original intention had been to build a completely new cathedral. In a letter to Archdeacon Stopford of Armagh, dated 17 May 1830, he refers to this and his proposal to borrow £50,000 for the purpose, the repayment to be made by an annual charge of 10% on the incomes of the archbishop and all the clergy of the diocese. Stopford had reckoned that this would only have produced £5,300 per annum, £1,500 from the archbishop and £3,800 from the clergy. Several clergy had protested at this proposed reduction of their incomes to Wnance what they clearly regarded as Beresford’s extravagance. Stopford had agreed and had suggested that a perfectly serviceable cathedral could be built for £12,000. Beresford was unhappy with this suggestion and proposed a rebuilding on the existing site, re-using fabric from the earlier building.86 The work was entrusted to Lewis Cottingham and carried out between 1834 and 1837. Although most of these furnishings were swept away in 1887–90, Cottingham’s choir screen was re-erected in the south transept and his stone high altar and reredos remain in situ, though as part of a small Lady Chapel created behind the reredos of the later high altar.87 Although the major restorations of the two Church of Ireland cathedrals in Dublin, Christ Church and St Patrick’s, did not take place until after 1850, lesser ones did so in the early years of the nineteenth century. A restoration of Christ Church in 1830–3 produced a choir Wtted with box pews, the pulpit 83 84 85 86 87

RCBL, C12/2/1, p. 155. RCBL, C12/2/2, 24 July 1829. Galloway, Cathedrals, 15–17; Malcolmson, Agar, 316–17. RLA, Beresford Papers, vol. 5, V. 20–3. Galloway, Cathedrals, 16.

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5. The choir of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, 1819.


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placed in the middle of the seating on the north side, the altar at the east end railed on three sides, and the organ placed on top of the choir screen. The nave and north aisle and both transepts were unfurnished; the south aisle was divided up to form a choir vestry, chapter room, and library.88 In 1805 a report on the condition of St Patrick’s Cathedral suggested that a complete restoration would cost £16,319 15s 9d, but this would be a patching up job at best and it would be more cost-eVective in the long term to rebuild the cathedral completely at an estimated cost of £81,600. The recommendation was, not surprisingly, never implemented and in 1812–14 £1,509 6s 0d was spent on repairing the roofs and the organ. In 1822–6 the north transept, ruinous since 1784, was rebuilt and continued to be used, as it had been since the fourteenth century, as the parish church of St Nicholas Without. Until 1816 a congregation of Huguenots worshipped in the Lady Chapel, using the French edition of the Book of Common Prayer. As at Christ Church the nave was not used for worship, which took place in the choir; this was Wtted with box pews and there were also galleries across both choir aisles designed to increase the available accommodation; there was a moveable pulpit on the south side which could be ‘wheeled into the centre of the choir when a sermon was to be preached’. A major restoration programme was begun in 1844 when Dean Henry Pakenham set up a committee to oversee the work and an architect approved by the ecclesiologists, R. C. Carpenter, was appointed. Between 1844 and 1852 a total of £8,149 14s 6d was spent on the cathedral, mostly on repairs to the choir and Lady Chapel, but the complete restoration proposed by Carpenter, for which he drew up plans and which he provisionally costed in the region of £100,000, was not implemented.89 One of the most interesting series of re-orderings of a Church of Ireland cathedral in the early nineteenth century, and where the furnishings are still intact, took place at Killala (Appendix 10/21). In 1817 the interior was reordered by James Pain with the chapter stalls on the north and south sides of the altar, the bishop’s throne at the east end of the nave on the south side and a three-decker pulpit on the north side (Fig. 6.6). In 1845 these arrangements were altered. The chapter resolved ‘that the stalls shall be restored to their original and proper plan at the west end of the cathedral’. It was also agreed to dismantle the three-decker pulpit and re-erect the pulpit and a separate reading desk on, respectively, the south and north sides of the nave directly in front of the altar rails. The font was also placed towards the east end of the 88 Christ Church Cathedral: A History, ed. K. Milne, pl. 5 and 22. 89 J. H. Bernard, The Cathedral Church of St Patrick (Dublin), London 1903, 15, 19, 55, 60; M. O’Neill, ‘Marks of Unheeded Dilapidation’: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Restorations, St Patrick’s Cathedral 800 Series 3, Dublin 1991, 1.

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T A

G C R P

Vestry

Fig. 6.6. Plan of Killala Cathedral as re-ordered in 1817 (A = altar, C = clerk’s desk, G = gallery, P = pulpit, R = reading desk, T = bishop’s throne)

nave in the middle of the central passageway. The bishop’s throne was moved one pew to the west and the gallery extended so that it covered a larger area at the west end of the nave.90 It is ironic that at a time when the ecclesiologists were advocating a return to more medieval-style buildings the cathedral at Killala should have been re-ordered in a manner which was a throwback to more traditional ideas about the way in which Anglican cathedrals should be arranged. Two other Irish cathedrals which still retain their chapter stalls at the west end of the nave, despite subsequent refurnishing, are Achonry and Cashel. The Wrst Roman Catholic cathedral to be built in Ireland was that at Waterford in 1793–6. The impetus for it came from the rebuilding of the Church of Ireland cathedral in Waterford in 1774–9 and the same local architect, John Roberts, a Protestant, was chosen to design both cathedrals. Whereas the Church of Ireland cathedral had cost less than £6,000, the Roman Catholic one cost £20,000.91 The cathedral at Waterford was followed a decade later by a new cathedral in Cork, though this was severely damaged by Wre in 1820 and had to be substantially rebuilt.92 The third cathedral to be built was that in Dublin, though it has never been given that title, being known to this day as a pro-cathedral in the hope that the Roman Catholic 90 KVC, Minutes of the Dean and Chapter of Killala, 29 May 1845, Minutes 9 and 11; plan of 1845 re-ordering in Addleshaw and Etchells, Architectural Setting, 199; I am grateful to the Dean of Killala, the Very Revd E. G. Ardis, for providing me with the information from the chapter records. 91 Galloway, Cathedrals, 216–22; M. Olden, History and Guide of the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, Waterford n.d., 6–13. 92 Bolster, Cork, 258–9.


245

6. Design for the exterior of the Roman Catholic pro-cathedral, Dublin, 1815.

7. Design for the interior of the Roman Catholic pro-cathedral, Dublin, 1815.

246


community might one day be able to acquire the use of one of Dublin’s two Church of Ireland cathedrals. The site for the pro-cathedral was purchased in 1814 and the foundation stone laid the following year. Most of the building had been furnished by 1823 but the portico was added in 1834.93 At the end of the 1820s work was begun on a further six cathedrals: Ballina (for the diocese of Killala), Carlow (for that of Kildare and Leighlin), Ennis (for that of Killaloe), Newry (for that of Dromore), Skibbereen (for that of Ross), and Tuam. The foundation stone of the cathedral at Ballina was laid by Archbishop O’Kelly of Tuam in 1827, after £1,800 had been raised towards the cost of the building.94 The cathedral at Carlow, built between 1828 and 1833, cost £18,000. The money was raised through appeals to the clergy, collections throughout the diocese, and gifts from Roman Catholics in England.95 A site for the new cathedral in Ennis was acquired in 1828. Dean O’Shaughnessy invited architects to submit plans for a church ‘120 feet in length, and 50 feet wide, with two wings, the T to be 100 feet by 60’, but the diYculties in raising money meant that the Wrst mass was not said in the new building until 1842. Further delays were also caused by a dispute between Dean O’Shaughnessy, supported by Bishop MacMahon of Killaloe, and the Franciscans over the opening of a Franciscan chapel in Ennis in 1830.96 The cathedral at Newry was built in 1825–8 and that at Tuam begun in 1827 and completed within ten years.97 Three of these cathedrals—Ballina, Ennis, and Tuam—were designed by the same architect, Dominic Madden, but all except Skibbereen (which was classical) were in a pre-ecclesiological Gothic style.98 A decade later work began on three cathedrals all of which were to make a signiWcant contribution to the ecclesiastical architecture of Ireland. In 1840 Bishop O’Higgins of Ardagh and Clonmacnois laid the foundation stone of the new cathedral at Longford, which like those at Waterford and Dublin, was to be classical in style. O’Higgins himself stated that: the Ardagh Cathedral which is already in a great state of forwardness, will be of the . . . purest Grecian architecture and entirely built of the Wnest cut stone, joined throughout with sheets of lead. Its front will exhibit six magniWcent Ionic columns, enclosing a spacious portico. The tower (nearly 200 feet high) will be partly composed of alternate tiers of Corinthian pillars. The interior will be divided into three aisles, 93 M. McCarthy, ‘Dublin’s Greek Pro-Cathedral’, in History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin, ed. J. Kelly and D. Keogh, Dublin 2000, 237–46, Wgs. 7–18. 94 O’Reilly, John MacHale, i, 115. 95 Richardson, Gothic Revival, 222–4; McGrath, ‘Religious Renewal’, 116–20. 96 Murphy, Killaloe, 308–12. 97 Richardson, Gothic Revival, 217–22; E. A. D’Alton, History of the Archdiocese of Tuam, Dublin 1928, i, 357–60. 98 Galloway, Cathedrals, 22–5, 33–5, 100–3, 184–7, 196–9, 213–16.


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which will contain seven marble altars and the roof will be supported by twenty-six lofty Ionic columns of polished variegated marble . . . For the last three hundred years a Catholic Church of this splendour would not have been tolerated in Ireland, nor indeed, had the Catholics, up to the present, adequate means, nor were there suYcient numbers in Ardagh, to accomplish so glorious an undertaking. When Wnished it will be the chastest, most extensive and most elegant church of modern times, in any part of the United Kingdom.99

In 1841 Bishop O’Higgins undertook a personal tour of all the parishes in the diocese ‘to appeal in person on behalf of the cathedral fund’. The external walls and pillars had been completed by 1846 when work was disrupted by the outbreak of famine. The cathedral was eventually opened in 1856.100 None of the cathedrals that have already been mentioned would have been considered acceptable in design terms by the ecclesiologists, especially A. W. N. Pugin, who received commissions to design the new Roman Catholic cathedrals for the diocese of Ferns, at Enniscorthy, and Kerry, at Killarney. Enniscorthy Cathedral, begun in 1842, was modelled on Tintern Abbey. Nave and aisles were roofed by 1848, when work was suspended because of the famine. The tower was built in 1850 but the spire not added until 1871–3. Although Pugin had designed the building he wanted he clearly had a low opinion of the clergy who had commissioned it: I regret to say that there seems little or no appreciation of ecclesiastical architecture among the clergy. The cathedral I built . . . has been completely ruined. The new bishop [Myles Murphy, consecrated 1850] has blocked up the choir, stuck the altars under the tower!! And the whole building is in the most painful state of Wlth: the sacrarium is full of rubbish, and it could hardly have been worse treated if it had fallen into the hands of the Hottentots. I see no progress of ecclesiastical ideas in Ireland. I think if possible they get worse. It is quite useless to build true churches, for the clergy have not the least idea of using them properly.101

There had been an intention to build a cathedral at Killarney since the late 1820s, the surviving account book recording the Wrst subscriptions being oVered in 1828, including £200 from Bishop Egan of Kerry. Pugin had clearly been approached to design the new cathedral by 1840, as there is a surviving letter from him to Dean O’Sullivan in which he states that: I feel you have not the least idea of the labour and responsibility of erecting such a building as you required or you would not have applied to me to present you the requisite drawings . . . I must candidly tell you that I would not think of undertaking 99 MacNamee, Ardagh, 435–6. 100 Ibid., 505–7; see also Galloway, Cathedrals, 169–71. 101 Richardson, Gothic Revival, 273–8, quotation on p. 278; see also Stanton, Pugin, 117–18, and Galloway, Cathedrals, 103–4.

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such a building unless I received a reasonable remuneration. I annually expend a deal of money to obtain drawings and models of the Wnest specimens of Catholic architecture. I spare neither pain nor expense to produce a good result . . . I am continually pursuing for the revival of Catholic art and ecclesiastical dignity.102

Pugin then oVered to prepare the necessary drawings, estimated at 100, for a fee of £150, but clearly some negotiation must have taken place as the building accounts only record a payment of £50. By 1842 a site for the new cathedral had been oVered by the local Roman Catholic landlord and a total of £2,188 4s 1½d had been raised, including £300 from Lord Kenmare. The building was completed by 1850 at a total cost of over £15,000, though by that date only £12,637 10s 8½d of this had been raised. Bishop Egan and the Earl of Kenmare had both made supplementary donations raising their total gifts to £600 and £1,100 respectively. A total of £847 had been raised from an appeal in the American dioceses of Boston, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and New York, and there had been a loan of £1,000 from the Board of Public Works, though this had had to be repaid plus interest of £220. Further collections had to be made throughout the 1850s to repay the debt on the building.103

THE CONSERVATION OF THE BUILT H ERITAGE The programme of church building and restoration in Ireland between 1770 and 1850 was remarkable by any standards. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that, with the exception of the basic fabrics, so little of it has survived. Most of these churches have been reWtted or re-ordered, some have been secularized and others have been demolished. Much late eighteenth and early nineteenth century work was obliterated during the second half of the nineteenth century when ecclesiastical fashions changed. Church of Ireland churches tended to lengthen their chancels and at the same time re-order and refurnish interiors. Presbyterian and other non-Anglican protestant churches abandoned either the small communion enclosures or seasonal communion arrangements with temporary tables of an earlier period and constructed the large pulpit platforms familiar in Presbyterian Scotland or among non-conformists in England and Wales. Roman Catholic churches introduced seating and more elaborate sanctuary arrangements after 1850 and the restrained work of earlier years was deemed inadequate as the setting 102 KDA, A. W. N. Pugin to Dean O’Sullivan, 29 June 1840. 103 KDA, Account Book for Building Killarney Cathedral 1828–53; see also Richardson, Gothic Revival, 278–83; Stanton, Pugin, 116–20; Galloway, Cathedrals, 142–5.


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for a much richer liturgy. Very few churches survived this second major period of church building and restoration in Ireland. Some of those that did have fallen victim in the last Wfty years to closures brought about by declining congregations, or by reorderings resulting from the liturgical directives of the Second Vatican Council. The small number of buildings that do survive with their pre-1850 interiors intact thus provide a particularly valuable insight into an architectural and liturgical world that has largely disappeared and it is to be hoped that every eVort will be made to ensure that they are carefully preserved for future generations.

7 Theological Developments and Ecumenical Relations 1770–1850 In his primary charge as archbishop of Dublin, William Magee endeavoured to defend the distinctive theology of the Church of Ireland by contrasting it with the defective theologies of both the Presbyterian and the Roman Catholic Churches: We, my Reverend Brethren, are placed in a situation in which we are hemmed in by two opposite descriptions of professing Christians: the one, possibly a Church, without what we can properly call a Religion; and the other possibly a Religion, without what we can properly call a Church; the one so blindly enslaved to a supposed infallible Ecclesiastical authority, as not to seek in the Word of God a reason for the faith they profess; the other, so confident in the infallibility of their individual judgement as to the reasons of their faith, that they deem it their duty to resist all authority in matters of religion. We, my brethren, are to keep clear of both extremes; and holding the Scriptures as our great Charter, whilst we maintain the liberty, with which Christ has set us free, we are to submit ourselves to the authority, to which he has made us subject.1

The uncompromising nature of Magee’s language has led some historians, especially those of Irish Roman Catholicism, to assume the archbishop was a committed Evangelical, though others have correctly pointed out that his theological views were very firmly those of a traditional Anglican high churchman, that he was in fact primarily desirous to ‘preserve the purity of the ancient and true Catholic church against the novelties and corruption forced on it by Popery’.2 They were, however, delivered and published at a time when the delicate relationship between the religious groups in Ireland was beginning to be destabilized by both the Evangelical revival and what became known as ‘the Second Reformation’. These developments, and divisions created within the Church of Ireland by the 1840s as a result of the Oxford or Tractarian 1 W. Magee, A Charge Delivered at his Primary Visitation in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, 2nd edn, London 1822, 25–6. 2 J. Liechty, ‘Irish Evangelicalism; Trinity College Dublin, and the Mission of the Church of Ireland at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, PhD 1987, 258.

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Movement within the Church of England, were major contributors to a significant shift in relations between the three main religious groups, and the eventual emergence of an anti-Catholic Protestant alliance between many members of the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian churches by the middle years of the nineteenth century. It also witnessed on the Roman Catholic side a collapse of the older standpoint of cooperation with the Protestant establishment, and the emergence of a much more aggressive form of Roman Catholicism initiated by Archbishop MacHale of Tuam and taken up, after 1850, by Cardinal Cullen. This chapter will seek to analyse and to explain the theological developments of this period, their relationship to political events in Ireland, and their impact on ecumenical relations.

ECUMENICAL RELATIONS IN THE LATE E IG HTEENTH AND EARLY N INETEENTH CENTURIES From the origins of the high church movement within Anglicanism in the first half of the seventeenth century, there had been a division of emphasis between high churchmen in their attitudes towards Roman Catholicism. What might be termed the moderate view received its classic statement in the writings of Archdeacon Charles Daubeny in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Daubeny took the view that: the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome was grounded, not upon the idea that she had a right to form a church for herself upon any new plan of her own; but upon the idea that it was no longer compatible with the spiritual welfare of her members to hold communion with a corrupt church.

Daubeny dated this corruption to the late medieval period and the growth of what he described as ‘the usurped supremacy of the Bishop of Rome’.3 Other high churchmen, however, took a more aggressive stance, seeing the corruption of the Western Catholic Church taking place at a much earlier date and postulating a theory of the ancient British Church which had been both substantially independent of Rome and pure in its doctrine. This standpoint had a long pedigree in the Church of Ireland, where it had been argued by Archbishop Ussher in the early seventeenth century in his Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish and British,4 and it was reiterated in the early nineteenth

3 C. Daubeny, Guide to the Church, 3rd edn, London 1830, 120–1. 4 R. B. Knox, James Ussher Archbishop of Armagh, Cardiff 1967, 159–60.

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century by Daubeny’s contemporary, the learned Bishop Burgess of St David’s. Burgess claimed that: the Gospel [was] preached in Britain in the earliest times . . . before the death of Boadicea . . . by St Paul . . . the Church of Britain was established before the Bishop of Rome had any authority beyond his own diocese; and therefore was independent of Rome . . . the Bishop of Rome attempted to establish a spiritual jurisdiction over the Church of Britain in the Seventh Century, which the British bishops indignantly rejected.5

Both the moderate and the less moderate views of Roman Catholicism were to be found among Irish high churchmen in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, though the latter became the predominant viewpoint after 1820. Even those bishops who were keen to promote good relations with Roman Catholics could not always restrain themselves from making pungent criticisms of Roman Catholic doctrines and practices. Bishop O’Beirne of Meath, himself a convert from Roman Catholicism, stated that ‘their superstitious observances are so gross and palpable to all who have not resigned their reason and common sense to their priests’.6 Archbishop Agar of Cashel described Roman Catholicism as ‘a religion held only by knaves and fools’ though he later endeavoured to explain how his comments had been taken out of context. In practice Agar maintained good relations with Roman Catholics in his diocese. He supported the building of the new Roman Catholic chapel near the cathedral in Cashel and contributed to its building costs. In 1796 he received a petition from the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Cloyne, referring to his ‘paternal kindness’ when he was bishop of Cloyne and requesting a donation, which he gave. Agar also enjoyed good relations with the Roman Catholic archbishop of Cashel, James Butler II, and the two archbishops visited one another in their respective residences at Cashel and Thurles. He had less good relations with Butler’s successor, Thomas Bray, which his biographer has attributed to the fact that whilst Butler was an aristocrat, Bray was not, being the son of a wine merchant from Fethard (Co. Tipperary).7 It was in Butler’s company that Agar appeared at a funeral service in his diocese ‘dressed in his full pontificals, with his mitre on his head, accompanied by a long train of his diocesan clergy’ in 1781,8 the only recorded instance of an Anglican bishop 5 T. Burgess, Tracts on the Origin and Independence of the Ancient British Church, London 1815, 190–1. 6 T. L. O’Beirne, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Meath, Dublin 1810, 28. 7 A. P. W. Malcolmson, Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760–1810, Dublin 2002, 325–8, 515. 8 Gentleman’s Magazine, li (1781), 342, quoted in F. C. Mather, High Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733–1806) and the Caroline Tradition in the Late Georgian Church, Oxford 1992, 211.


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wearing a mitre, as opposed to having it carried before him on a cushion, before the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In his primary charge as Archbishop of Dublin in 1772, John Cradock, had told his clergy that: I am not fond of controversial preaching, as being, in general less edifying than discourses of a moral tendency, or explanatory of the great articles of our Common Faith; yet am still of opinion, for the peculiar circumstances of this country, that the main points in dispute between Protestants, and Papists, may be occasionally discussed from the pulpit, to the advantage of your several congregations.9

The line followed by Cradock was that followed by the majority of his episcopal contemporaries. Bishop Hervey of Derry described Roman Catholicism in 1778 as ‘that silly but harmless religion’ and gave £100 towards the building of the Long Tower Church in Derry.10 Hervey was one of a group of people in Ireland strongly influenced in their support for toleration by the ideas of the French enlightenment.11 Bishop Chenevix of Waterford and Lismore presented a set of fifteenth-century vestments found during the rebuilding of Waterford Cathedral in the 1770s to his Roman Catholic counterpart.12 In 1785 Boetius Egan was consecrated Roman Catholic bishop of Achonry in the Church of Ireland cathedral at Tuam.13 John Jebb wrote to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel in 1803 describing a recent visit to Bishop Percy of Dromore: You may judge of the harmony subsisting between Catholics and Protestants when I tell your Grace that we yesterday sat down to dinner, a Protestant and a Titular Bishop, three priests and three clergyman of the establishment.

He also noted that: about 17 years since the Bishop of Dromore established Sunday schools in his neighbourhood which have since continued in a flourishing condition. The numbers are at present above 200, who, without distinction of religious tenets, are all taught the Church Catechism and all attend the Church Service. Opposition was at one time experienced, both from Popish bigotry and presbyterian pride, but all opposition was rendered fruitless by the simple measure of giving each child a halfpenny for every Sunday’s diligent attendance.14 9 J. Cradock, A Charge . . . to the Clergy of the Dioceses of Dublin and Glendelagh . . . June 17, 1772, Dublin 1773, 6. 10 B. Bonner, Derry: An Outline History of the Diocese, 2nd edn, Pallaskenry 1995, 234, 244–5. 11 See G. Gargett, ‘Toleration in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Voltaire and the Dublin and Hibernian Magazines, 1762–84’, in Toleration and Religious Identity: The Edict of Nantes and its Implications in France, Britain and Ireland, ed. R. Whelan and C. Baxter, Dublin 2003, 210– 30. 12 P. Galloway, The Cathedrals of Ireland, Belfast 1992, 218. 13 L. Swords, A Hidden Church: The Diocese of Achonry 1689–1818, Blackrock 1997, 154. 14 NLI, Ms 8866, Jebb to Brodrick, 23 November 1803.

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However, good relations could be maintained without recourse to petty bribery. Leading Protestants, including the mayor and corporation of Clonmel, attended the funeral of William Egan, the Roman Catholic bishop of Waterford and Lismore, in 1796.15 They also attended the consecrations of both William Crolly and Cornelius Denvir as bishops of Down and Connor in 1825 and 1835, and on the former occasion 170 Protestants in Belfast entertained Crolly to a banquet.16 There are many examples of cooperation between Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy and laity at a local level. The parish priest of Mitchelstown (Co. Cork) in the 1820s was able to: flatter myself that the parish clergyman and I stood upon very friendly terms . . . I am sure he has paid me every compliment that I would expect . . . in fact during the eleven years that I have been parish priest at Mitchelstown, no such thing as party business of any kind has occurred . . . we looked upon party business as men on land see storms at sea.17

In 1804 ecumenical considerations were clearly a factor in the proposal to establish a school in the parish of Kilrossanty in the diocese of Waterford: If a better stile of man was got as Clerk with sufficient abilities to keep a good school, allowing him an adequate Salary, and appointing under him a Catholic usher to instruct the children of that persuasion . . . in their Religion . . . I think this would have the best effect in uniting the people and doing away with the prejudice against us.18

Even in the 1830s, when relations between Protestants and Roman Catholics were becoming more strained, local Protestants contributed to the building of a bell-tower for the Roman Catholic church at Rosslea (Co. Tyrone); a Protestant layman bequeathed £25 ‘for the relief of the Catholic poor’ at Errigal Kieran; Sir Arthur Brooke, the Protestant landowner, donated a site for a Roman Catholic church at Brookeborough; and another Protestant, Lord Cremorne, offered sites for the proposed Roman Catholic cathedral at Armagh and a seminary at Monaghan.19 This desire for cooperation was on the whole reciprocated by the Roman Catholic bishops and their clergy. Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin noted of the Presbyterians that ‘from the inquiries I have made, I am inclined to think favourably of them’,20 a view not shared by some members of the Church of Ireland. The rector of Magherahamlet (Co. Down) endeavoured to secure the 15 16 17 18 19 20

S. J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, Dublin 1982, 10. O. P. Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983: An Interpretive History, London 1994, 118. I. d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics in Cork 1812–1844, Cork 1980, 73. NLI, Ms 8861, John Palliser to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel, 18 January 1804. Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster, 112. J. W. Doyle, Letters on the State of Ireland, Dublin 1825, 66.


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eviction of the Presbyterians in his parish from their meeting-house, and they only succeeded in maintaining their right to the building by establishing a burial ground between the meeting-house and the Presbyterian school.21 Doyle’s ecumenical attitudes were complicated. In a sense he was an authoritarian and a polemicist, always ready to defend the Roman Catholic Church and to respond to attacks made on it from whatever quarter.22 Yet Doyle was also the author of a published letter on the reunion of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in Ireland. In this letter Doyle referred to previous discussions on this topic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the fact that in these ‘the points of agreement between the Churches were numerous, those on which the parties hesitated few, and apparently not the most important’. Doyle identified the main points of potential disagreement as ‘the canon of the sacred Scriptures, faith, justification, the mass, the sacraments, the authority of tradition, of councils, of the Pope, the celibacy of the clergy, language of the liturgy, invocation of saints, respect for images, prayers for the dead’, but took the view that ‘it is pride and points of honour which keep us divided on many subjects, not a love of Christian humility, charity and truth’. He concluded that ‘the Catholic clergy would make every possible sacrifice to effect a union. I myself would most cheerfully . . . resign the office which I hold, if by doing so I could in any way contribute to the union of my brethren.’23 Doyle’s views elicited a mixed response from Anglicans in both England and Ireland but in reality there was little, if any, prospect of union and it is difficult to dissent from McGrath’s view that Doyle’s letter should ‘be seen as a kiteflying exercise’.24 What it does illustrate is the conciliatory religious outlook of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland before the 1830s. In the same year that Doyle published his letter, Bishop Tuohy of Limerick described a pastoral letter of his Church of Ireland counterpart, Bishop John Jebb, as one which ‘revealed the true spirit of Christian charity, brotherly love and conciliation . . . I also set a high value on it for the good and friendly attention with which his lordship has often honoured me, and of which I shall ever retain a grateful and lasting sense.’25 These tolerant attitudes towards Protestants were shared by Archbishops Crolly of Armagh and Murray of Dublin, but they had become increasingly a minority view among the Roman Catholic bishops by the 21 A History of the Congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1610–1982, ed. W. D. Baillie, Belfast 1982, 627. 22 T. G. McGrath, Politics, Interdenominational Relations and Education in the Public Ministry of Bishop James Doyle, Dublin 1999, 105–56. 23 Quoted in W. J. Fitzpatrick, The Life, Times and Correspondence of the Right Rev. Dr Doyle, Dublin 1880, i, 330–2. 24 McGrath, Politics, 124. 25 I. Murphy, ‘Some Attitudes to Religious Freedom and Ecumenism in Pre-Emancipation Ireland’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, cv (1966), 97.

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1840s. The last of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops to manifest them openly was Bishop Blake of Dromore, who died in 1860 and whose funeral was attended by ‘dignitaries and other clergymen of the Protestant religion . . . joining the flock of the deceased bishop to pay every respect to him in death’.26 Although much of the responsibility for the long period in Irish ecclesiastical history in which signs of ecumenism could rarely be detected has been placed on the Evangelical lobby within the Anglican and Presbyterian churches this is perhaps an over-simplification. The attacks on Roman Catholicism that most provoked the Roman Catholic bishops, including Doyle, in the 1820s came from Anglican high churchmen such as William Magee, whose primary charge as Archbishop of Dublin was cited at the beginning of this chapter, and Richard Mant. Mant was one of the most advanced high churchmen of his day,27 an implacable opponent of Evangelicalism and a future sympathizer with the Tractarians, but he held a view of Roman Catholicism similar to those of Archbishop Ussher and Bishop Burgess. In his primary charge as bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora Mant described Roman Catholicism as ‘that corrupt Church, whose errors we are anxious to correct’. The clergy were urged to show people the errors of Roman Catholicism through visiting, private instruction and the establishment of schools as ‘another mode of correcting error and diffusing a knowledge of true religion’.28 John Jebb thought Mant ‘a very amiable man; and I am sure his intentions are excellent’,29 but told Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel that he should have made himself aware of conditions in Ireland—his whole previous career having been spent in England—before making such injudicious claims: Your Grace has doubtless seen the Bps Charge, breathing theological warfare against the papists. To the National School system he is clearly looking as an instrument of proselytism: and I fear he may involve the South of Ireland in flames, and at the same time, stop any quiet progress that has been making towards an unsuspected influence in the minds of our Roman Catholic population.30

Magee’s charge provoked a similar note of despair from more traditional Irish high churchmen, though a decade earlier Archbishop Stuart had expressed the view that Magee ought to be made a bishop if only to remove him from Trinity College, Dublin, where he was creating difficulties for the provost: ‘he is a first rate scholar and has very powerful abilities. In the college he does 26 I. Murphy, ‘Attitudes to Religious Freedom’, 103. 27 For Mant’s position in the Hackney Phalanx group of high churchmen see C. Dewey, The Passing of Barchester, London 1991, 159–60. 28 R. Mant, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Killaloe, Dublin 1820, 34–7. 29 NLI, Ms 8866, undated letter [?October 1820] from Jebb to Brodrick. 30 Ibid., Jebb to Brodrick, 16 October 1820.


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much harm, but as a bishop he could do little. Dr Elrington is by no means equal to cope with him.’31 Bishop Doyle saw it as his duty to defend his church against the attacks on it by Mant and Magee. He criticized Magee specifically for being disingenuous in suggesting that, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland did not claim a degree of exclusivity in relation to salvation. According to Doyle ‘there is no church of Christians deserving that name from the Indus to the Pole, from Tonquin to Washington, which does not maintain the doctrine of exclusive Salvation in one shape or another’.32 In a much more substantial critique of the statements being made by some Church of Ireland bishops, and taking account of his own letter on the possibility of reunion, Doyle undertook a detailed analysis of the points of difference between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. He denied the claim that Roman Catholics believed that the Pope had the power to intervene in the affairs of national governments. He stated that the Irish bishops were not hostile to the Anglican establishment in Ireland though they did think it was in need of reform, especially in relation to tithes. He also attempted to show that at least one of the practices for which Roman Catholics were being condemned, that of private confession to a priest, was specifically sanctioned in the Book of Common Prayer, and that the absolution formulae of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches were almost identical: ‘it is useless to observe upon the identity of doctrine, and similarity of language . . . they are such as no casuistry can distort from their true sense and obvious meaning’.33 In an appendix to the volume Doyle published an official declaration signed by the thirty Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops in Ireland on 25 January 1826. This stated that the church did not seek to interfere in the affairs of governments, that Roman Catholics were permitted to read the bible in approved translations, that they ‘revered’ but did not ‘worship’ the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints, that they accepted the same Ten Commandments as Protestants (differing only in their numbering), that sins were never forgiven without true repentance, that they ‘detest as unchristian and impious’ the belief that it is acceptable to murder heretics, and that they did not seek to recover forfeited property now belonging to the Church of Ireland or to undermine the established church.34 Doyle’s arguments were, however, to little avail. In a later charge, Magee repeated his criticisms of both Roman Catholicism and Presbyterianism and declared that: 31 32 33 34

NLI, Ms 8869, Stuart to Brodrick, 29 March 1812. J. W. Doyle, Letter . . . to His Grace Dr Magee, Carlow 1822, 8. Id., An Essay on the Catholic Claims, Dublin 1826, 266–7. Ibid., 295–304.

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the Church of England and Ireland preserves herself . . . as Scriptural, as Catholic, as Tolerant, as Social, as Loyal and as Protestant. She presents, in her Articles, her Creeds and her Liturgy, a settled and defined scheme of doctrine and worship . . . And for her discipline, she refers to her Canons, which are few and plain . . . But what are the respects, in which our Church agrees with the Church of Rome? In truth they have scarcely a single point of agreement in anything that can be justly deemed essential to Religion.35

Mant, after the criticism of his primary charge, which included the advice from his patron, the Hackney Phalanx Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, that if he wished to receive translation to a more senior bishopric he would be well advised to exercise ‘extreme delicacy in regard to the Roman Catholics’,36 was more circumspect in his later pronouncements. However, some other advanced high churchmen, were much less so. The future bishop of Exeter, Henry Phillpotts, dismissed Doyle’s arguments as ‘utterly fallacious’ and described Roman Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘this disgusting, this polluting trash’.37 By the third decade of the nineteenth century Anglican high churchmen in Ireland had largely ceased to manifest in their public pronouncements a spirit of tolerance to the Roman Catholic majority of the sort that had been advocated by Archbishop Cradock and manifested by bishops such as Hervey and Jebb, and the voice of Anglican tolerance now came from a very different quarter, in the person of the broad church Richard Whately, another English export to Ireland, who was archbishop of Dublin from 1831 until his death in 1863. Whately had devoted his Bampton Lectures at Oxford to denouncing divisions both within the Church of England and between different groups of Christians: Our first care should be, to avoid all extremes. Extremes in doctrine, extremes in practice, extremes even in manner, besides being in themselves faulty, have also a strong tendency not only to combine into a party those who approve of them, and who are of a disposition to go all lengths in that which suits their inclinations, but likewise (by a reaction which seldom fails to take place) to encourage opposite extremes, and generate opposite parties . . . It is a difficult, but a most important duty, to steer the middle course between lukewarmness, and repulsive severity; to oppose Dissenters as such, without being wanting in charity towards them as men, 35 W. Magee, A Charge Delivered at his Triennial and Metropolitan Visitation . . . on Tuesday the 10th October 1826, Dublin 1827, 37–8, 49. 36 W. B. Mant, Memoirs of the Right Reverend Richard Mant, Dublin 1857, 142–3. 37 H. Phillpotts, A Supplemental Letter to Charles Butler, Esq., on Some Parts of the Evidence given by the Irish Roman-Catholic Bishops, particularly Dr Doyle, before the Committees of the Two Houses of Parliament in the Session of 1825; and also in Certain Passages in Dr Doyle’s ‘Essay on the Catholic Claims’, London 1826, 6, 17.


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and as Christians; to be steady in maintaining the sinfulness of schism, yet without censuring as unpardonable those who fall into it.38

On his removal to Ireland Whately adapted these views to take on board relations between the established Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic majority. He supported the endowment of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland though he wanted to establish that if this was to be achieved through a reorganization of the endowments of the established church, ‘do not proceed on the principle that these are ecclesiastical endowments originally given to the R. Church . . . But put it merely on the ground that this revenue is the most easily and with least public inconvenience made available.’39 He later lamented that ‘the payment of the Priests will come, with other boons to Ireland, too late’, criticized those in England ‘who are furious at the idea of endowing the Priests’, and expressed the fear that failure to take action at an earlier date would result in a situation in which Roman Catholics ‘will never be satisfied till Catholic ascendancy is fully established as a most grinding and vindictive system of tyranny’.40 In defending the increase in the grant to Maynooth, Whately expressed the view that ‘we cannot by legislative acts convert six or seven million of Roman Catholics into Protestants; but we may possibly find means of making them better and happier as Roman Catholics’.41 Whately put into practice what he preached. He was hostile, as we shall see, to both Evangelicals and Tractarians and to the Second Reformation Movement within the Church of Ireland, he supported both the Irish Church Temporalities Act of 1833, at least in terms of principle if not always of detail, and he cooperated with his Roman Catholic counterpart, Archbishop Murray of Dublin, in the management of the national school system in Ireland, to which most of his episcopal colleagues in the Church of Ireland were opposed. One of the few who followed the Whately line was Thomas Stewart Townsend, briefly bishop of Meath from 1850 until his early death in 1852. Whately’s chaplain, Samuel Hinds, shortly to become bishop of Norwich, agreed with Townsend in 1848 that ‘it is confessedly desirable for us that there should be a friendly intercourse between our clergy and the Priests’, but thought that opposition to this was grounded as much in social as religious differences, as the Roman Catholic clergy generally ‘belong to a different grade and

38 R. Whately, The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Matters of Religion, Oxford 1822, 232, 247. 39 NLW, Nassau-Senior Papers, C499, Whately to Senior, 22 August 1831. 40 Ibid., C527, Whately to Senior, 26 December 1835, and C669, Whately to Senior, 4 September 1847. 41 R. Whately, A Charge Delivered at the Visitation of the Dioceses of Dublin and Glandelough, London 1845, 14.

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condition of Society . . . to be friends they must be equal’.42 This was, of course, a further argument for the endowment of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. Whately took a moderate stance in his response to the ‘papal aggression’ crisis caused by the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850, whereas his clergy had ‘addressed the Queen in a tone not likely to keep quietness in this country, as their example is likely to be contagious in other Dioceses’. There was also a deep division between Whately and Archbishop Beresford of Armagh, over this as over many other issues. Beresford ‘is also moving for an Address to the Queen in which there is a probability some of the bishops could not concur’. Whately and Townsend certainly could not. It was felt by some that ‘the ill-appearance of a disagreement would be only one degree less to be regretted than would be the concurrence of all the Irish bishops in such an Address as the Primate proposes as it . . . uses expressions calculated to irritate’.43 Townsend was congratulated on his primary charge as bishop of Meath in which, though ‘holding firm language both on the errors of Rome and the tendencies of Tractarianism’, he had ‘done so with moderation and the true spirit of Charity’.44 It was to be a line that became progressively more infrequent among churchmen of both high church and Evangelical opinion within the Church of Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century.

T HE EVAN GEL I CAL REV I VAL The origins of the Evangelical revival, which was to have its impact on all the Protestant churches of Britain and Ireland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, were to be found in the European pietist movement in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.45 Whereas Evangelicalism had begun to have an impact in parts of England and Wales from the 1730s it did not really have a major impact in either Scotland or Ireland until a good deal later, but its impact when it came was decisive, both for the theological development of the Protestant churches and for Protestant–Roman Catholic relations in Ireland. This is a topic that has attracted much attention in recent

42 LPL, Ms 1727, ff. 23–6, Hinds to Townsend, 10 August 1848. 43 Ibid., ff. 41–2, Lord Clarendon to Townsend, 20 December 1850. 44 Ibid., ff. 36–9, Clarendon to Townsend, 11 September 1851. 45 See W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening, Cambridge 1992, for the best introduction to this topic. See also D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, London 1989.


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years, both in doctoral theses46 and published work,47 and one to which it would be impossible to do full justice within the confines of this book. I have therefore confined myself to drawing attention to the findings of scholars who have worked in this field and using them to reflect on the relationship between the Evangelical revival and the reform programme of the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches in Ireland that is the main focus of this book. Although there were a number of Moravian settlements in Ireland by the mid-eighteenth century, the major catalyst for the Evangelical revival was undoubtedly the visits of John Wesley and his establishment of Methodist societies. Wesley first visited Ireland in 1747 and had made a further twenty visits before his death in 1791. The first conference of Irish preachers was held in 1752. From 280 Methodists, all in Dublin, in 1747 the membership of the societies had grown to 19,292 by 1800, to 36,529 in 1820, and 42,133 in 1840. The number of Methodists in Ireland peaked in 1844 at 44,314 and declined sharply thereafter. Partly as a result of the famine, membership was down to 31,527 by 1850 and 26,790 by 1855.48 Membership was concentrated in Ulster; by 1770 47% of Methodists in Ireland lived north of a line drawn between Dundalk and Sligo, and by 1815 this figure had increased to 68%. Wesley never conceived that his societies should become a separate denomination, though they began to move in this direction shortly after his death; in Ireland, however, they remained fully within the established Church of Ireland until 1816 when, as a result of divisions within Irish Methodism over whether the societies should ordain their own ministers and celebrate their own communion services, a number of Methodists seceded. Others, however, remained

46 See A. R. Acheson, ‘Evangelicals in the Church of Ireland 1784–1859’, Queen’s University, Belfast, PhD 1967; M. Hill, ‘Evangelicalism and the Churches in Ulster Society, 1770–1850’, Queen’s University, Belfast, PhD 1987; J. Liechty, ‘Irish Evangelicalism, Trinity College Dublin, and the Mission of the Church of Ireland at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, PhD 1987; I. M. Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion and the Polarization of Protestant–Catholic Relations in Ireland’, Wisconsin-Madison, PhD 1994. Liechty, ‘Irish Evangelicalism’, 13, has, not unfairly, criticized Acheson’s thesis on the grounds that ‘his explicitly evangelical approach burdened his work with a persistent aura of well-researched hagiography’. 47 See A. R. Acheson, ‘A True and Lively Faith’: Evangelical Revival in the Church of Ireland, Belfast 1992, and A History of the Church of Ireland 1691–1996, Dublin 1997, 124–37; D. Bowen, The Protestant Crusade in Ireland 1800–1870, Montreal 1978; S. J. Brown, The National Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland 1801–46, Oxford 2001, 93–167; G. Carter, Anglican Evangelicals: Protestant Secessions from the Via Media, c.1800–1850, Oxford 2001, 58–104, 195–248; D. Hempton and M. Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740–1890, London 1992; T. C. F. Stunt, From Awakening to Secession: Radical Evangelicals in Switzerland and Britain 1815– 35, Edinburgh 2000, 147–81. 48 R. D. E. Gallagher, ‘Methodism in Ireland’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. R. Davies, A. R. George, and E. G. Rupp, vol. 3, London 1983, 233–9; see also D. L. Cooney, The Methodists in Ireland: A Short History, Dublin 2001, 26–73.

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within the Church of Ireland for several more years.49 Even the seceders agreed that communion services should only be held in specified churches, in which the Book of Common Prayer had to be used, and never on the same day as celebrations in the parish church. The significance of Methodism in Ireland was its militant anti-Catholicism and its deliberate proselytism which pre-dated the much more widespread Anglican and Presbyterian support for the Second Reformation in the 1820s.50 There was a major ‘revival’ inspired by Methodists in the Enniskillen area, where membership more than doubled between 1799 and 1802. On the whole the Methodists recruited their members from the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian churches, but there were a few, well publicized, conversions of Roman Catholics to Methodism. This was partly because several Methodist missionaries were able to preach in Irish. Eighteen out of thirty ministers of the Mayo circuit in 1806 were former Roman Catholics. In the same year the missionary committee of the English Methodists stated that its main area of activity was Ireland and the conversion of ‘three million people . . . plunged in the deepest ignorance and superstition’. As a result the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy were extremely hostile to Methodism. The bishops and clergy of the Church of Ireland were also generally hostile to Methodism, largely on the grounds of its practice of extempore prayer and the giving of personal testimonies at its meetings. Presbyterians were generally less hostile and their chapels were sometimes made available to Methodist preachers.51 Methodism encouraged the growth of Evangelicalism within both the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian churches, though the situation in the latter was complicated by the establishment of a number of secession or reformed Presbyterian churches from the middle years of the eighteenth century.52 Evangelicalism within the Church of Ireland, separate from Methodism, dates from the last quarter of the eighteenth century. By the end of the century there was a small nucleus of Evangelical clergy, including Peter Roe, rector of Odagh and minister of St Mary’s Kilkenny; Thomas Tighe, rector of Drumgooland (Co. Down) from 1778; John Quarry at Shandon (Co. Cork), Robert Shaw at Fiddown (Co. Kilkenny), and Joseph Stopford at Letterkenny

49 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism, 9, 76–8. 50 D. N. Hempton, ‘The Methodist Crusade in Ireland, 1795–1845’, Irish Historical Studies, xxii (1981–2), 33–48; Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 238–41. 51 D. N. Hempton, ‘Methodism in Irish Society, 1770–1830’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, xxxvi (1986), 117–42; Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 232–3, 237–9. 52 Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 46–50.


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(Co. Donegal).53 In the early days it was not easy to draw a clear ‘line of demarcation’ between Evangelical and orthodox churchmen and ‘there was more interaction between them than one might have expected’. John Jebb clearly had a high opinion of Peter Roe though he expressed some concern that his ‘piety and zeal were insufficiently conformed to the discipline of the establishment’.54 Jebb could even see a value in Methodism, noting that the ‘Methodists have attached themselves jealously to the church, and brought over numbers of the Presbyterians to our Communion’.55 In 1786 a number of wealthy Evangelicals in Dublin established the Bethesda proprietary chapel. Initially the ministry of the chapel was shared between clergy of both Arminian and Calvinist sympathies, but it had become fully Calvinist by 1794 when two of the fellows of Trinity College, John Walker and Henry Maturin, took over the chaplaincy. When John Wesley visited Dublin in 1787 he noted that the chapel attracted between 700 and 800 communicants on Easter Sunday.56 A similar movement was occurring at about the same time within Irish Presbyterianism. Partly this took the form of increased support for reformed Presbyterian congregations. The twelve reformed congregations of 1792 had increased to twenty-seven by 1800, and by 1811 these congregations had been formed into a synod with four dependent presbyteries.57 However, a number of presbyteries within the Synod of Ulster had also acquired Evangelical ministers, including Benjamin McDowell at Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, from 1778, and Samuel Hanna at Rosemary Street, Belfast, from 1799.58 Another early Presbyterian Evangelical was Samuel Dill, minister of Donaghmore (Co. Donegal) from 1798. He was a strong opponent of both drinking and gambling, and refused communion to a hotel-keeper at Castlefinn, who brought an action against him for defamation of character. This action cost Dill £300 in legal costs, and led to his denunciation by the presbytery of Letterkenny.59 Evangelicals, whether within the Church of Ireland, the Synod of Ulster, the secessionist Presbyterian churches or the Methodist societies, cooperated in the establishment of inter-denominational religious organizations: the 53 History of the Church of Ireland, ed. W. A. Phillips, 3 vols, Oxford 1933, iii, 333–4; D. H. Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution, 1800–1885, New Haven and London 1971, 132–3; Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 55. 54 T. C. F. Stunt, ‘Evangelical Cross-Currents in the Church of Ireland’, Studies in Church History, xxv (1989), 216–17. 55 NLI, Ms 8866, Undated letter from Jebb to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel and Emly. 56 Liechty, ‘Irish Evangelicalism’, 56; Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 49–53. 57 Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 123. 58 P. Brooke, ‘Controversies in Ulster Presbyterianism, 1790–1836’, Cambridge, PhD 1980, 51. 59 A. G. Lecky, The Laggan Presbytery Books, ed. W. Hanna, St Johnston 1978, 66–7.

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General Evangelical Society in Dublin (1787), the Ulster Evangelical Society (1798), the Hibernian Bible Society (1806), and the Hibernian Church Missionary Society (1814).60 Two specifically Church of Ireland Evangelical initiatives, originally supported by non-Evangelicals, were the establishment of the Association for the Discountenancing of Vice and Practice of Virtue and Religion, generally abbreviated to ADV, in 1792 and the Ossory Clerical Association in 1800. The former had attracted 300 members by 1794, and 500 by 1796, including 14 bishops. Although only three fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, were Evangelicals (John Walker, Henry Maturin, and Joseph Stopford), 12 out of 21 fellows were members of the ADV in 1794, rising to 15 out of 20 in 1796. In the diocese of Ossory 17 out of 83 clergy became members of the Ossory Clerical Association, which was dominated by two of its Evangelical members, Peter Roe of Kilkenny and Hans Hamilton of Fiddown and Knocktopher. By 1800 there were eight Evangelical congregations in Dublin, all of which maintained good relations with each other: the Church of Ireland one at Bethesda Chapel, the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion in Plunket Street, the Presbyterians at Mary’s Abbey, the Moravians, the Methodist New Connexion, and three congregations of Wesleyan Methodists.61 Evangelical cooperation across the denominational divide was one of the principal reasons for the leadership of the Church of Ireland distancing itself from the Evangelicals. In 1821 all the archbishops and bishops except Trench of Tuam withdrew from membership of the Hibernian Bible Society, and even Trench ceased to attend meetings after 1830. The high-church bishops agreed with the Roman Catholic hierarchy that the distribution of bibles without note or comment, or unaccompanied by other publications such as the Book of Common Prayer, was theologically dangerous and that bible distribution accompanied by Evangelical preaching could ‘empty the churches and fill the conventicles’. Many disliked the unashamedly sectarian approach of the Evangelical societies which they thought was designed to deliberately provoke Roman Catholics.62 One of the most vociferous episcopal opponents of Evangelicalism was Archbishop Laurence of Cashel and Emly who attacked those: who make religion principally to consist in certain internal persuasions and emotions, of power to convince them, that they are the elect of God, and predestined to life eternal; in exhibiting, upon Calvinistic principles, the full assurance of conversion and regeneration, and in thus demonstrating, what has been termed, the formation of Christ in the sinner’s heart.63 60 Carter, Anglican Evangelicals, 65–6. 61 Liechty, ‘Irish Evangelicalism’, 92, 96, 124, 127, 169. 62 Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 164–6; Hempton and Hill, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 66. 63 R. Laurence, A Charge Delivered at the Triennial Visitation of the Province of Munster, Dublin 1826, 20–1.


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Some bishops took steps to prevent Evangelicals from securing appointments in their dioceses. In 1805 Walter Stephens was dismissed from his post as assistant chaplain of the Magdalen Asylum in Dublin for holding Evangelical views.64 However, nine years later a noted Evangelical and future bishop, Robert Daly, became prebendary of Stagonil at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.65 Hostility to Evangelicalism was also widespread among Presbyterians in the Synod of Ulster. In 1798 John Lowry was censured for his membership of the Ulster Evangelical Society, and in 1802 he was condemned for publishing a pamphlet advocating the use of hymns in worship, though on both occasions he managed to avoid suspension. George Hay, minister of Donaghcloney (Co. Down) from 1791 to 1829, was strongly opposed to Evangelical innovations such as ‘Sabbath Schools and Foreign Missions’.66 Two Church of Ireland archbishops stood out against the general episcopal condemnation of Evangelicalism: Power le Poer Trench of Tuam and William Magee of Dublin. Trench was a member of a powerful landed family in the west of Ireland, many of whom had become Evangelicals. In 1802 he became bishop of Waterford and Lismore and in 1810 he was translated to Elphin. The influence of an Evangelical archdeacon, William Digby, and the death of a much-loved sister in childbirth—he was ‘greatly affected’ by her ‘evident peace’ prior to death—secured his conversion to Evangelicalism in 1816.67 Three years later his long-established aristocratic connections overcame possible objections to his newly-acquired Evangelical zeal to secure his translation to the archbishopric of Tuam, which he held until his death in 1839. Magee was, despite occasional assertions to the contrary, never an Evangelical, but his strong anti-Catholicism led him to value Evangelicals in a way that most of his high-church colleagues could not. It is not without significance that, whereas his predecessors had constantly refused to licence the chaplains of Bethesda, Magee did so in 1825.68 The early 1820s mark a watershed in the history of the Irish Evangelicals. Their increase in numbers meant that they were growing in influence in both the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian churches. Their acquisition of support from several aristocratic families helped to balance the opposition from orthodox churchmen and made it more difficult to discriminate against them. The growing power of Henry Cooke in the Synod of Ulster attracted the 64 Liechty, ‘Irish Evangelicalism’, 71. 65 W. M. Mason, The History and Antiquities of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of St Patrick, Dublin 1819, lxxxiii. 66 A History of the Congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1610–1982, ed. W. D. Baillie, Belfast 1982, 304, 380. 67 Acheson, ‘A True and Lively Faith’, 13–14. 68 Carter, Anglican Evangelicals, 68–9.

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support of more and more clergy and laity, unwilling to be classified by Cooke as ‘Arians’, to throw in their lot with the Evangelicals. Cooke himself was a convert, taking this step because of the perceived ‘Arianism’ of his nonEvangelical colleagues. Within a period of thirty years, between the late 1790s and the late 1820s, Evangelicalism within the Synod of Ulster moved from the position of ‘a powerless minority’ to one of dominance. Its success was bolstered by the fact that it provided ‘an ideology for Protestant conservative opinion, justifying the defence of a social and political status quo’. It is no accident that Cooke had formed strong associations in the mid-1820s with the Evangelical peers, the Earls of Roden and Mountcashel, ‘prime-movers in the Evangelical campaign in both its religious and socio-political aspects’. Cooke’s domination of the Synod of Ulster from 1829 led to the adoption of an Evangelical programme within its congregations. In 1831 those congregations with only one Sunday service were ordered to have two for at least six months of the year, and in 1832 ministers and elders were instructed ‘to make stricter enquiries in the course of their pastoral visitations’.69 The growth of Evangelical influence and confidence within the Church of Ireland encouraged its leaders to attack elements of the establishment which they disliked. On 17 September 1829 the Earl of Mountcashel delivered a speech at Cork in which he stated that, while he could find no fault with the doctrine of the Church of Ireland, there was much wrong with its management. He condemned pluralism, non-residence, and the fact that ‘many of the clergy were slothful, performing their duties slovenly, negligently, and carelessly’. There followed an acrimonious correspondence between Mountcashel and Bishop Elrington of Ferns, who denied that ‘in many instances the clergy lead improper, immoral, dissolute lives’.70 Elrington took the view that Mountcashel’s position was analogous to, and as unacceptable as, that of the early-seventeenth century Puritans, and Mountcashel bracketed Elrington with the bishops of Charles I’s reign, ‘when the king was believed by the whole nation to be a Papist, when the queen was an avowed one, and when the conduct of several of the Bishops, especially the most famous at Court, was opposed to the doctrine as contained in our Thirty-Nine Articles’.71 In a letter dated 6 November 1829 Elrington vehemently denied ‘the charge against me, of regarding only the temporal interest of the clergy, and of disregarding the spiritual wants of their congregations’.72 It was the beginning of trench warfare 69 Hempton and Hill, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 71–5; Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 196–7, 213–14, 220. 70 T. Elrington, A Review of the Correspondence between the Earl of Mountcashel and the Bishop of Ferns, Dublin 1830, 39–56. The quotations are on pp. 45 and 55. 71 Ibid., 115. 72 Ibid., 109.


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between Evangelicals and high churchmen in the Church of Ireland which was not finally resolved, largely in favour of the former, until after disestablishment. One possible benefit of the Evangelical revival was the establishment of both Sunday schools and more day schools. By the 1820s there were a total of 194 day schools established by Evangelical agencies, with a total of 16,373 scholars, in the counties of Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Monaghan, and Tyrone, compared with 198 day schools and 16,143 scholars in the whole of Connaught, Leinster, and Munster. In County Cavan the number of day schools increased further, from 41 in 1824 to 214 by 1828, largely as a result of the activities of the Revd Robert Winning of Kingscourt.73 The growth of Sunday schools throughout Ireland is shown in Table 7.1. The link between Evangelicalism and the establishment of Sunday schools seems fairly clear. Their early flourishing in Ulster reflects the strength of Presbyterianism and the Evangelicalism of the secessionist churches in that province. The substantial growth in the period 1826–31 in all provinces coincides exactly with the beginnings of the ‘Second Reformation’ phase in Irish Evangelicalism. In Connaught in particular the ‘Second Reformation’ had peaked by about 1830 and Sunday schools began to decline as the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy took countermeasures against proselytism. These countermeasures were not really effective in Munster until the 1840s. However, by then the number of Sunday schools had largely stabilized, though with a slight downward trend, across the whole of Ireland. When the Sunday School Society for Ireland was first established in 1809, it was supported by a number of the Roman Catholic clergy. Roman Catholic children either attended Sunday schools established by Protestant churches or some priests applied for funds to establish their own Sunday schools. It was only from the 1820s, and as a result of Evangelical proselytism, that Sunday schools became wholly Protestant institutions.74 Evangelicalism within the Protestant churches was a major concern for the Roman Catholic hierarchy, who had good working relations with the bishops and clergy of the Church of Ireland and with moderate Presbyterians. Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin expressed his concerns in print: On the whole it appears to me that religion at present, in the Established Church, is rather excited by the spirit of party, than the spirit of the Gospel . . . greater numbers of Methodists and fanatics have crept into the Church; these propagate their own enthusiasm.75 73 Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 176–7. 74 Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 277–8. 75 J. W. Doyle, Letters on the State of Ireland, Dublin 1825, 71, 79.

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Table 7.1. Numbers of Sunday schools in Ireland 1816–46 Year

Connaught

Leinster

Munster

Ulster

Total

1816 1821 1826 1831 1836 1841 1846

11 89 104 222 165 169 149

57 281 297 387 432 455 432

11 77 103 131 259 394 406

256 1,113 1,300 1,841 2,007 2,010 1,975

335 1,640 1,804 2,581 2,863 3,028 2,962

Source: M. Hill, ‘Evangelicalism and the Churches in Ulster Society, 1770–1850’, Queen’s University, Belfast, PhD 1987, 185.

Doyle thought that the Methodists had had a wholly negative impact on the Church of Ireland which had resulted in a situation in which many of its clergy no longer accepted the official doctrines of that church. He was wholly dismissive of the Evangelical societies which he accused of ‘the subversion, by indirect means, of the ancient faith, and the establishment in its ruin of a wild and ungovernable fanaticism’.76 A similar stance was taken by the future Archbishop MacHale in his Hierophilus Letters of 1820–3.77 It was largely as a result of the proselytizing activities and polemical literature of the Evangelical societies that Doyle and the other Roman Catholic bishops launched the Irish Catholic Society for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge in 1827. Within its first year of operation the new society was able to distribute 29,704 Catechisms, 10,200 copies of The Grounds of Catholic Doctrine, and 2,300 copies of Gulitzer’s Defences of Catholic Principles. By 1836 the society claimed to have published and distributed five million publications including prayer books, vernacular bibles, and popular tracts. Polemical articles were published in the Irish Catholic Magazine and the Catholic Penny Magazine, launched in 1829 and 1834 respectively.78 One of the reasons that the bishops of the Church of Ireland were so concerned about the growth of Evangelicalism was that they believed that it was likely to produce schisms within the established church or lead to individual secessions, since Evangelicals placed a far greater emphasis upon personal interpretation of the scriptures and concepts of doctrinal purity than they did on the stability and unity of religious organizations. In that sense 76 Doyle, Letters on the State of Ireland, 67–8, 153. 77 Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 331. 78 Ibid., 528–34; Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 174; T. G. McGrath, ‘Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of James Doyle, OSA, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin’, University College, Dublin, PhD 1987, 267, 269–70, 273.


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they held a ‘low’ rather than a ‘high’ view of the institutional church and episcopal authority. In fact though schisms and secessions did take place none of them were numerically very great or, in the long term, particularly damaging to the Church of Ireland. Only one produced a new sect which has survived, with further subdivisions, into the present day and that was the group which, after its establishment of communities in England, became known as the Plymouth Brethren. Irish Evangelicalism contained an influential millenarianist wing, which saw the conflict between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism as a portent of the Second Coming following the final battle with the forces of Anti-Christ. A group of Evangelical millenarianists in County Wicklow, including the Church of Ireland clergyman, John Nelson Darby, gradually withdrew from the established church in the 1820s to set up their own radical protestant sect which rejected all forms of church structure and ministry and instituted a rigorous personal discipline leading eventually to religious exclusivity.79 An earlier secession had taken place in 1803 when Thomas Kelly, an unbeneficed Church of Ireland clergyman, set up his own missions outside the established church. The majority of these were in southeast Ireland, though there were also chapels of the cause in Cork and Limerick. Kelly was a very effective preacher and the Evangelical Archbishop Trench of Tuam made strenuous but unsuccessful attempts to lure him and his followers back into the established church. Kelly died in 1855 and there is no evidence that his missions survived for long thereafter.80 By far the most serious schism was that which took place within the congregation of the Bethesda Chapel, Dublin, in 1804, when its chaplain, John Walker, decided to secede from the Church of Ireland. At that date the chapel had about a hundred members, though its congregations were much larger. About half remained loyal to his successor, Benjamin Matthias. Walker eventually opened a new chapel in York Street, Dublin, in 1808. This was stated to be ‘rigorously interdenominational’ and the trustees had the power to invite any minister of ‘the reformed Churches’ to conduct services and to preach. Although services were to be based on the Book of Common Prayer there was provision for extempore intercession and Holy Communion was celebrated only once a year for those considered sufficiently worthy to receive it. Walker denounced not just the Church of Ireland, but all the other Protestant churches in Ireland, as essentially unscriptural. His own ‘Church of God’ had by 1818 about a hundred members in Dublin and a similar number attached to missions in other parts of Ireland. The ‘Walkerites’ also

79 See Carter, Anglican Evangelicals, 195–248; and Stunt, From Awakening to Secession, 147–81. 80 Carter, Anglican Evangelicals, 69–77.

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established missions in Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth. Walker himself moved to London, though he continued to exercise enormous influence over his Dublin congregation until his death in 1833. This and the congregation in Birmingham survived until at least 1885. In 1813 the ‘Walkerites’ attempted to invade Kilkenny in an attempt to convert one of Walker’s former Evangelical colleagues in the Church of Ireland, Peter Roe, and the members of his congregation, but Roe resisted the attempt and persuaded most of his congregation to remain with him in the established church.81 Walker’s secession helped to blacken the reputation of the Bethesda Chapel in the eyes of orthodox churchmen. The provost of Trinity College, John Kearney, forbade the students from attending the services there and in 1814 the vicar-general of the diocese of Dublin, Patrick Duigenan, protested to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel and Emly, then administering the diocese during the insanity of Archbishop Cleaver, about an incident which had occurred one Sunday morning in Dublin: As I was coming out of St Peter’s Church this day, the enclosed advertisement was thrown into my Coach, and I understand similar ones were thrown into all the Coaches attending there, and universally dispersed. Has your Grace given the Rector of St Andrew’s Parish leave to accommodate a man, who is a notorious Preacher at an unlicensed conventicle (Bethesda Chapel) in this City, with his pulpit? All the Ministers of Churches in this City and Diocese of Dublin were inhibited to permit any Clergyman to officiate in their churches, in the time of the late Doctor Fowler, unless they were beneficed Clergymen in some other Diocese, Fellows of Trinity College, or specially permitted by his Grace to preach.82

It was attitudes such as these that prevented the Bethesda Chapel from being formally incorporated into the diocese of Dublin until the late 1820s.

THE SECOND REFORMATION The proselytizing tendencies of the Irish Evangelicals had been in evidence from the late eighteenth century, as illustrated in the vehement anti-Catholicism of the Methodist societies. Proselytism, however, entered a new phase in the 1820s with the launching of what eventually became known as the Second Reformation. This was a deliberate attempt by Evangelicals to make up for 81 Carter Anglican Evangelicals, 93–8; Liechty, ‘Irish Evangelicalism’, 313–15, 329–33, 368–9. 82 NLI, Ms 8861, Duigenan to Brodrick, 30 March 1814. Robert Fowler, archbishop of Dublin 1779–1801, had inhibited Walker and three other Evangelicals, Thomas Kelly, Henry Maturin, and Walter Shirley from preaching in his diocese in 1794, see Carter, Anglican Evangelicals, 70.


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the deficiencies of the Irish Reformation of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and to secure Ireland for the Protestant cause. It was a disaster in more ways than one. In the first place, despite some well-publicized conversions, it failed in its primary objective and helped to strengthen Roman Catholicism in Ireland. In the second it helped to destroy the generally good, but inevitably fragile, relationship which both the Protestant and Roman Catholic leadership in Ireland had been endeavouring to construct, not always successfully, since the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The Second Reformation was, following the tensions over Catholic Emancipation, the tithe war, and the national system of education, the final nail in the coffin of ecumenism and provided encouragement for the sectarianism that dominated Irish politics and religion for the next century and more. One of the keys to the expansion of Evangelicalism in the Church of Ireland was the conversion of several leading families to the cause. The bishops, with the exception of Trench, and to a lesser extent Magee, remained aloof and hostile, and it was not until 1842–3 that two of the church’s leading Evangelicals, James O’Brien and Robert Daly, were elevated to the episcopate.83 Daly, however, had been instrumental in converting several of the landed families of County Wicklow to Evangelicalism.84 Aristocratic support for Evangelicalism in Ireland was somewhat stronger than it was in England and Wales, where by the 1830s landed families were as likely to identify with Tractarianism. The impact in both cases was, however, the same. Movements which had only limited support within the church in general were able to punch above their numerical weight. The first indications of proselytism among the Roman Catholic population becoming a priority for Irish Evangelicals was the support they gave to encouraging the use of Irish. Unlike the Roman Catholics, who had included making their clergy proficient in Irish as part of their programmes of ministerial training and theological education, the Church of Ireland, after the early years of the eighteenth century in which a few clergy, such as Archdeacon Hamilton of Armagh, had encouraged the use of the language in the services of the church,85 had made no efforts to produce clergy proficient in Irish, since most of their own laity were not Irish-speaking and missionary activity 83 James O’Brien (1792–1874), fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, 1820; vicar of Clondahorky (Co. Donegal) 1836–7 and Arboe (Co. Tyrone) 1837–41; dean of Cork 1841–2; bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin 1842–74. Robert Daly (1783–1872) prebendary of Cork 1809–43 and St Patrick’s, Dublin, 1814–43; rector of Powerscourt (Co. Wicklow) 1814–43; dean of St Patrick’s 1842–3; bishop of Cashel, Emly, and Waterford and Lismore 1843–72. 84 Acheson, History of Church of Ireland, 129–30. 85 T. Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649–1770, New Haven and London 2003, 94.

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among Irish-speaking Roman Catholics was not on the agenda. Indeed all Protestants in Ireland had seen the decline of Irish and the growth of English as part of the civilizing process of the Irish peasantry and had no wish to reverse this process. There had therefore, initially, been hostility to the distribution of bibles in Irish as well as in English, but this initial hostility was abandoned in the recognition that making the scriptures available to people in a language they understood was more likely to secure conversions.86 In 1818 Robert Daly and others established the Irish Society for the Education of the Natives through the Medium of their own Language. As a result of its influence both the Kildare Place Society and the Sunday School Society for Ireland began to produce materials for teaching in Irish. The Irish Society, as it was more generally known, was dominated by Evangelicals, with Archbishop Trench of Tuam serving as its first president.87 Trench had wanted to establish a theological college where ordinands would be taught in Irish but had to settle for leaving a bequest for the establishment of a professorial chair in Irish at Trinity College, Dublin, to which the first appointment was made in 1840.88 Although the Second Reformation movement manifested itself in all those parts of Ireland in which Evangelical Protestantism was strong, its impact was felt in greatest force in a limited number of communities of which the most significant were those at Achill Island (Co. Mayo), at Askeaton (Co. Limerick) and Dingle (Co. Kerry), and on the Farnham estates in County Cavan. The Askeaton and Cavan campaigns took place in the 1820s, those at Achill Island and at Dingle in the 1830s. Whereas the two earlier campaigns were generated by, respectively, a local Church of Ireland clergyman and the local landowner, the two later ones resulted from the efforts of missionaries imported into these areas. At Askeaton a new Evangelical vicar, Richard Murray, began a programme of regular house-to-house visiting in his parish during which he distributed bibles and religious tracts. He started a parish school which emphasized biblical teaching and his wife ran a Sunday school; they also began bible classes for adults at the vicarage. He refused to cultivate good relations with his Roman Catholic parishioners and insisted that he should read the Anglican burial service over all those buried in Askeaton churchyard, even if they were Roman Catholics. His uncompromising stance attracted conversions to the Church of Ireland, and he was even supported by the normally very ecumenically-minded Bishop Jebb of Limerick, on the grounds that the conversions had been genuine and that Murray had only received former Roman 86 Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, iii, 344. 87 Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 283–5, 289. 88 Phillips, History of Church of Ireland, iii, 344.


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Catholics into the Church of Ireland after a lengthy period of instruction, and having weeded out any he considered unsuitable. Within a year of his appointment there had been 40 conversions, within three between 160 and 170.89 The conversions in County Cavan were, unlike those at Askeaton, not confined to a single parish, but took place in several parishes on the estates of the Evangelical landowner, Lord Farnham. Farnham stated in 1830 that his objective for the management of his estates had been to secure ‘the moral and religious character and improvement of the tenantry’. Children, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, were expected to attend the schools he had established which ‘were remorselessly scriptural’.90 Farnham appointed a ‘moral agent’ whose duty it was to promote sabbatarianism on the estates. These aggressive conversion methods, assisted by regular missions from representatives of the various Evangelical societies in Ireland, resulted in 511 conversions in County Cavan between October 1826 and February 1827 of which the largest number were in the parishes of Ballymachugh, Cavan, and Killinkere. On 26 January 1827 Farnham organized a public meeting to establish a Cavan Association for Promoting the Reformation. Many of the conversions were short-lived, and some of the converts claimed that they had been bribed to become Protestants by offers of money, food, clothing, bedding, work, or even land. The Roman Catholic authorities were so concerned that they appointed a commission of four bishops to investigate the alleged conversions. Archbishop Curtis of Armagh, Bishops Crolly of Down and Connor, Magauran of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, and John MacHale, the coadjutor bishop of Killala, travelled to Cavan on 14 December 1826 to meet the local parish priests. The meeting was besieged by Evangelicals who challenged the bishops to a public debate, which they refused to accede to. The bishops concluded that many of the alleged converts had never been committed Roman Catholics and dismissed them ‘as miserable creatures, worthless vagrants, strolling beggars, prostitutes with their illegitimate children, idle schoolmasters, unemployed labourers, some notorious characters, disguised Protestants pretending they were Catholics, ignorant and starving creatures’.91 Although Farnham denied that conversions had been achieved through bribery, but had been inspired as a result of legitimate missionary

89 Brown, National Churches, 118, and ‘The New Reformation Movement in the Church of Ireland, 1801–29’, in Piety and Power in Ireland 1760–1960: Essays in Honour of Emmet Larkin, ed. S. J. Brown and D. W. Miller, Belfast and Notre Dame 2000, 197; Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 439–42, 449. 90 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism, 86–8. 91 D. Gallogly, The Diocese of Kilmore 1800–1850, Cavan 1999, 31–9, 43–4 (quotation), 46– 50.

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activities, the fact was that the visit of the Roman Catholic bishops succeeded in stemming the flow of conversions, at least in this part of Ireland.92 At both Dingle and at Achill Island conversions were secured through the deliberate importation of Evangelical missionaries. The missionaries at Dingle were two Irish Anglican clergymen, T. C. Goodman and G. G. Gubbins, and one English one, Charles Gayer, the private chaplain of the local landowner, Lord Ventry. The mission began in 1831 and by 1845 there was a Church of Ireland community of some 800 people including a former Roman Catholic priest. However, sustained counter-activity by Irish priests of the Vincentian order succeeded in recruiting many of those who had been converted.93 On Achill Island, another Church of Ireland missionary clergyman, Edward Nangle, began the establishment of a Protestant colony at Dugart in 1834, financed largely by subscriptions from wealthy Dublin Evangelicals. The Roman Catholic archbishop of Tuam, John MacHale, and the local parish priest, Martin Connolly, responded with a counter-mission. The Protestant mission had established four schools within the first year of its operation; the numbers in them had halved by 1837. The colony also had a printing press and a dispensary, the former being used to publish polemical tracts and a monthly newspaper, The Achill Missionary Herald and Western Witness. In 1842 the population of the colony was 365 comprising 56 families, of which 45 were those of converts, though only 19 of those came from Achill Island. Thus opponents claimed that, despite the active support of Archbishop Trench of Tuam, Nangle had only succeeded in converting 92 people. More converts were made during the years of the potato famine but only, so Nangle’s opponents alleged, by bribing the starving Roman Catholics to convert in return for relief.94 The venture on Achill Island was the last of a number of Evangelical initiatives sponsored by Archbishop Trench. His genuine support for relief efforts to mitigate the effects of an earlier famine in his diocese in 1821–2 was largely negated in the eyes of Roman Catholics by his promotion of fellow Evangelicals to benefices in the diocese and his support for active proselytism. An aggressive Evangelical campaign to minister to the Roman Catholic population in Newport (Co. Mayo) led to major disputes with the Roman 92 Brown, National Churches, 121–6, and ‘New Reformation Movement’, 199–201; Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 415–39. 93 Bowen, Protestant Crusade, 205; J. Fulton, The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics and Religion in Ireland, Oxford 1991, 73–5. 94 Bowen, Protestant Crusade, 204–5; E. A. D’Alton, History of the Archdiocese of Tuam, 2 vols, Dublin 1928, i, 362, and ii, 10–13; I. M. Whelan, ‘Edward Nangle and the Achill Mission 1834– 1852’, in ‘A Various Country’: Essays in Mayo History 1500–1900, ed. R. Gillespie and G. Moran, Westport 1987, 113–34.


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Catholic clergy. In 1820 Trench secured the appointment of a committed Evangelical, Charles Seymour, to the Ballinakill Union which covered most of western Connemara, including the town of Clifden. There was strong Roman Catholic opposition to Seymour’s establishment of Protestant schools throughout his union. In 1822 he moved to Louisburgh (Co. Mayo) and was replaced at Ballinakill by another Evangelical, his nephew Antony Thomas. In 1830–1 Evangelicals were appointed to the parishes of Moyrus and Tully in County Galway, and a Connemara Christian Committee was established in 1836. The Protestant settlements at Dingle and Dugart were copied, usually on a somewhat smaller scale, in other parts of Ireland. A settlement at Aughkeely (Co. Donegal) had only twelve households in 1832 but one at Kilmeague (Co. Kildare) had about a hundred families in the late 1830s. In the south-east of Ireland there were cases of sectarian intimidation. The parish priest of Bray (Co. Wicklow) complained to Archbishop Murray of Dublin in 1827 that some thirty to forty families on the estates of the Earl of Rathdrum had been threatened with eviction for refusing to send their children to Protestant schools, and there were examples of Roman Catholic servants being dismissed from their posts in Protestant households for the same reason.95 The Second Reformation was not just confined to these areas of high-profile activity. The Hibernian Bible Society established branches throughout Ireland and organized public meetings to promote the cause, though many of these were disrupted or broken up by Roman Catholic demonstrations, including one in Loughrea (Co. Galway) at which Archbishop Trench of Tuam had presided.96 In order to prevent these demonstrations, it was agreed that a number of public debates between Protestant and Roman Catholic participants should be organized to which admission should be by ticket only. A debate between three Church of Ireland clergymen and three Roman Catholic priests was arranged at Carlow, and a much reported debate was staged in Dublin between the Roman Catholic Thomas Maguire and the Evangelical Richard Pope; this took place over six days in the lecture room of the Dublin Institute between 19 and 25 April 1827. Each of the protagonists chose three topics for discussion. Maguire chose whether private judgement should be the sole rule for interpreting the Scriptures, whether the Reformation had been justified, and the argument that ‘the Protestant Churches do not posses that unity which forms the distinctive mark of the true Church of Christ’. Pope

95 Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 410–11, 566–99, 603–35. 96 See A Reply to a Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Tuam from ‘A Senior of the Church of England’ by a Lay Member of the Church of England, London 1825.

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chose the topics of infallibility, purgatory, and transubstantiation.97 A similar disputation at Derry lasted twelve days, and had to be transferred from the court house to the Church of Ireland cathedral to accommodate the large numbers wishing to attend. There were some significant conversions resulting from the Second Reformation campaign, including those of several Roman Catholic clergy: the parish priest of Killala (Co. Mayo) joined the Church of Ireland in 1845, and there were secessions by David Crolly in Cork in 1834 and by Denis Brasbie in Dingle in 1848; two vicars of Finglas (Co. Dublin), James Phelan (1832–9) and John O’Regan (1852–8), were both former Roman Catholics; among the Presbyterians, Joseph O’Reilly, minister of Lisbellaw (Co. Fermanagh) from 1831 to 1836, and Michael Brannigan, appointed first minister of Ballinglen (Co. Mayo) in 1848, had been converted from Roman Catholicism; Brannigan claimed he had been convinced of Roman Catholic error by reading the Bible in Irish and was ordained as an itinerant missionary in Mayo and Sligo in 1845.98 An event exactly contemporary with the Second Reformation campaign was the schism in Birr (Co. Offaly) which had resulted from the activities of the disruptive but popular Roman Catholic curate, Michael Crotty. Crotty was the nephew of the well-respected parish priest of Castleconnell and, after he had been expelled from Maynooth, his uncle persuaded Bishop O’Shaughnessy of Killaloe to reinstate him as a candidate for the priesthood and to permit him to study at St Sulpice in Paris. In 1820 Crotty was ordained and appointed curate of Toomevara, being transferred to Birr in the following year. In 1825, after having been charged with assault, Crotty was, despite his protestations, moved back to Toomevara. He retained a popular following in Birr and decided to move back there. By July 1826 Crotty’s supporters had gained control of the chapel and he was invited to celebrate mass there. The bishop formally suspended him from celebrating mass or carrying out any other pastoral functions throughout the diocese but Crotty ignored the suspension. In August he was declared excommunicate and in September he was forced to abandon the chapel by the supporters of the parish priest. Crotty then purchased a large malt store in Birr which he fitted up as a chapel. The local newspaper, the Clare Journal, estimated that Crotty was attracting the vast majority of the Roman Catholic population of Birr to his masses. 97 Brown, ‘New Reformation Movement’, 194–5; Authenticated Report of the Discussion . . . between the Reverend Richard T. P. Pope and the Reverend Thomas Maguire, Dublin 1827; Bonner, Derry, 269–70; Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 492–6, 535–6, 542–3, 562–3; see also Brown, National Churches, 133–4, and Bowen, Protestant Crusade, 106–8. 98 K. T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland 1832–1885, Oxford 1984, 196; T. Robinson, The Pure Stream: The Story of St Canice’s Parish Church, Finglas, Naas 1993, 58; Baillie, Congregations, 50, 592.


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Most of these were working-class, many of the middle-class parishioners remaining loyal to the parish priest. Further attempts, usually resulting in violence, were made by Crotty’s supporters to regain control of the parish chapel, but gradually their numbers began to decline. In 1834 the attendance at the parish chapel was 3,750 and at Crotty’s chapel it was 1,550. By this time Crotty’s schism, which was supported from 1832 by his cousin and fellow priest, William Crotty, was beginning to move in a more permanent, and Protestant, direction. Recognizing that they would never regain possession of the parish chapel, the Crottys collected enough money to build a new chapel in Birr, in which mass was celebrated in English and with certain significant variations, such as the omission of the elevation. This demonstration of antiCatholicism was rewarded by financial support from Protestants in other parts of Ireland, convinced that the Crottys were the agents of the Second Reformation in Birr. In 1839 Michael Crotty renounced priestly celibacy and married the daughter of a Birmingham umbrella and furniture maker. During his absence from Birr his cousin further reformed the liturgy in the chapel and, with the support of 108 male chapel members, formally applied for admission to the presbytery of Dublin, an application which was duly accepted. The ministers and congregations of two Presbyterian churches in Dublin, Mary’s Abbey and Usher’s Quay, formed a joint committee to assist the development of the new Presbyterian cause in Birr. Michael Crotty himself remained in England where he was received into the established church and appointed to a curacy by the bishop of Chester.99 Although the Second Reformation campaign was the subject of much hype among Protestant polemicists, it is important to emphasize that the numbers of conversions, though sometimes significant from a local perspective, were very small in national terms, as shown in Table 7.2, when, during the initial phases of the campaign, there were only 1,903 converts in the whole of Ireland. It was also the case that many of these conversions were short lived. Some of the new orders of Roman Catholic nuns were significant agents of reconversion among former converts, as were the Redemptorist missions in the 1850s.100 Most modern historians are agreed that the long-term negative results of the Second Reformation campaign, in terms of increased religious tension and sectarianism, far outweighed the short-term benefits of the campaign to the Evangelical groups that promoted it. As Marianne Elliott has noted: 99 I. Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe 1800–1850, Blackrock 1992, 100–33; Baillie, Congregations, 235. 100 M. P. Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750–1900, New York and Oxford 1998, 96; Connolly, Priests and People, 76.

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Table 7.2. Numbers of Roman Catholic converts to Protestantism by county in Ireland 1826–7 Cavan Limerick Galway Sligo Dublin Mayo Wicklow Meath Wexford Tipperary Monaghan Roscommon Louth Longford Tyrone Westmeath

783 164 121 120 113 101 51 50 48 42 30 30 30 25 22 20

Leitrim Carlow Kilkenny Derry Cork Kildare Down Fermanagh Armagh Waterford Donegal Laois Offaly Clare Kerry Antrim

20 17 15 15 14 13 13 12 12 11 7 3 1 0 0 0

Source: Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 302.

the activities of the Evangelicals was based on the fundamentalist Protestant perception of Catholicism as a backward, superstitious, even unchristian religion, and of its adherents as in thrall to a crafty priesthood . . . the so-called ‘Second Reformation’ not only added a new tier to persistent anti-popery, but forced the Catholic Church to rethink its pastoral role.101

It was therefore wholly counter-productive as it increased, rather than decreased, the effectiveness of the Roman Catholic Church. Even so, supporters of the Second Reformation were very slow to see this or respond to it. In 1846 a Church of Ireland clergyman who had been recently appointed to the Huntingdonshire rectory of Holywell-cum-Needingworth argued for the continuation of the campaign: Why is not Ireland reformed? I answer, because the Church of Ireland has not been, and is not, faithful to her trust. The Bishops, the Clergy, the Landlords, the Laity of the Protestant Church have all been asleep upon their posts. Some of them are beginning to awaken, but they are not yet half awakened to a sense of their duty to God, to their Church, or to their fellow-men . . . I do not hesitate to say, that a Home Mission to the Roman Catholics, with faithful and efficient preachers, and tracts, is a plain and palpable duty of the Bishops and Clergy of Ireland.102

101 M. Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster: A History, London 2000, 272–3. 102 R. J. McGhee, An Appeal to the Protestant Church of Ireland in Behalf of their Roman Catholic Countrymen, Dublin 1846, 17, 24.


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The author had, before his preferment in England, been one of the most active polemicists of the Second Reformation movement, both as a pamphleteer and missionary preacher, and had so infuriated the leadership of the Church of Ireland that Edward Stopford, archdeacon of Armagh, had warned his clergy that he was likely ‘to lead them into dissent and schism’.103

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT The involvement of substantial sections of the Church of Ireland in the Second Reformation campaign, and the dominance of its General Convention in the years following disestablishment by Evangelicals, tended to minimize the impact of the Oxford Movement on the Church of Ireland. Certainly, by the 1870s Ireland was the least ritualist part of the British Isles. There were— compared with some churches in Wales, Scotland, and every region of England—no churches in which either eucharistic vestments or lighted candles were in use, and only two churches—All Saints, Grangegorman and St Bartholomew’s, Dublin—in which there was a weekly early celebration of Holy Communion. St Bartholomew’s also had daily services and used Gregorian chant. Of the cathedrals of the Church of Ireland, only two, at Derry and Limerick, had a weekly communion service.104 However, in the period before 1850 the lack of impact that the Oxford Movement, and the ritualism associated with it, was to have on the Church of Ireland was not quite so obvious and many of the conflicts over the modest ceremonial innovations of the 1840s which took place in England, Scotland, and Wales were replicated in Ireland. The assertion that ‘the Caroline tradition of the Church of Ireland’, established by John Bramhall and Jeremy Taylor in the seventeenth century, was still active and well in the early years of the nineteenth century is far from wishful thinking.105 It was manifested in the opposition of the bishops to Evangelical innovations and in their insistence that the Book of Common Prayer provided both a theological and a liturgical standard that was not to be departed from. Even Archbishop Magee of Dublin, who later softened his stance towards Evangelicals, noted in a Charge delivered shortly before his translation to that see, that: 103 Bowen, Protestant Crusade, 113–17. 104 J. C. Waram, The Tourist’s Church Guide, London 1874, 84–5; other churches with a weekly, but not always early, celebration of Holy Communion, were those at Bray, Rathmines and a further two in Dublin. 105 F. R. Bolton, The Caroline Tradition of the Church of Ireland, London 1958, 52–3.

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in the course of my circuit, I discovered some irregularities in the mode of administering divine service. In some instances I observed parts of the liturgy disturbed from their due order; in some certain prayers were omitted; in some they were altered; and upon the whole, liberties were taken not infrequently with the directions of the Rubric.106

Magee insisted that such innovations could not be tolerated as otherwise ‘all will then depend upon the judgement, or the humour, of the individual’.107 In a letter to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel, earlier in the same year, the incumbent of Johnstown (Co. Kilkenny) expressed some surprise: that two Measures which I have adopted in my Parish have not been pleasing to Your Grace. The one is, opening the Morning Service with a Hymn, the other giving a lecture on the Scriptures from the Reading Desk on Sunday Evenings.108

The incumbent argued ‘that Kenn’s Morning Hymn is sung very much in the English Churches and it is approved of . . . by the strictest clergymen of what is termed the high church party’. He stated that he knew of two churches in the diocese of Cashel ‘to which your Grace has been’ at which they began the morning service with a hymn and that he believed Brodrick did not object. He had preached from the reading desk as his address was meant to be informal and he did not wish to be accused of ‘extempore preaching’ from the pulpit. He had called it a lecture for the same reason. One of the strongest protagonists of loyalty to the Book of Common Prayer was Richard Mant, successively bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora, and of Down and Connor. He told the clergy of his former diocese that if they were unclear as to how to interpret the rubrics they must seek his advice on the matter.109 He was equally firm about the contents of sermons: Controversy in the pulpit the clergyman will not seek, but will rather be studious to avoid it: still it may be sometimes incumbent on him to defend the tenets of the Church against such as are forward in impugning them . . . Extempore preaching is not congenial to the staid character of the Anglican Church: it has not been often practised by the more eminent of her ministers; and it may be judged more suitable to the eccentric and extravagant propensities of the conventicle.110

He had similar reservations about hymns which he thought ought not to be introduced until there was an authorized official hymnal. As a possible 106 W. Magee, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Raphoe . . . on Wednesday, 17th of October, 1821, Dublin 1822, 8. 107 Ibid., 9. 108 NLI, Ms 8861, letter dated 27 August 1821. 109 R. Mant, The Rule of Ministerial Duty Inforced and Illustrated in a Charge, Dublin 1822, 26. 110 Id., The Clergyman’s Obligations Considered, Oxford 1830, 197, 233.


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contribution to such a compilation he published a collection of 120 hymns in 1837, half ‘translated or adapted from the Latin hymns’ and half ‘original compositions’. His final piece of liturgical advice to his clergy, given a few days before he died in 1848, was that if 5 November fell on a Sunday the service for Gunpowder Plot should be read rather than that for the relevant Sunday after Trinity.111 It was perhaps not surprising that such a rigid high churchman should be accused of Tractarian sympathies. But Mant was not alone among the Irish bishops, most of whom before the 1840s shared, to a greater or lesser extent, his high-church outlook. John Jebb of Limerick published a collection of essays by three seventeenth century high churchmen—Ralph Cudworth, Charles How, and Henry Scougal—which included uncompromising views on the centrality of the eucharist: The celebration of this Sacrament is most fitly and solemnly performed in the Church of England, and in a manner perfectly agreeable to its first institution. The elements are set apart and consecrated for that holy purpose, and prayer is made for the fulfilling of that promise which was virtually made by the words of our Blessed Saviour; who is petitioned, that his body which was given for us, may preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life, and that we should ever thankfully remember his infinite mercy towards us.112

These were, however, the sort of views that quickly came to be condemned as ‘popish’ in the very different religious climate of the years following the launch of The Tracts for the Times in 1833. The relationship between Tractarianism, ecclesiology, and ritualism has been the subject of considerable research in recent years.113 Whilst clearly many clergy were influenced by Tractarian worship in the 1830s, the impact of Tract XC, in which Newman attempted to demonstrate that the Thirty-Nine Articles were not a rejection of Roman Catholic doctrine but merely their more extravagant manifestations, led to divisions between traditional high churchmen over their future support for the direction in which Tractarianism seemed to be going. At parochial level the impact of Tractarianism, and 111 W. B. Mant, Memoirs, 313–19, 372–4, 463–4. 112 J. Jebb, Piety Without Asceticism or the Protestant Kempis: A Manual of Christian Faith and Practice, London 1830, 403. 113 See M. Chandler, An Introduction to the Oxford Movement, London 2003; G. W. Herring, What Was the Oxford Movement?, London 2002; P. B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760–1857, Cambridge 1994; J. S. Reed, Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism, Nashville and London 1996; G. Rowell, The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism, Oxford 1983; P. Toon, Evangelical Theology 1833–1856: A Response to Tractarianism, London 1979; From Oxford to the People: Reconsidering Newman and the Oxford Movement, ed. P. Vaiss, Leominster 1996; W. N. Yates, The Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, London 1983, and Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain 1830–1910, Oxford 1999.

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especially early ritualism, was very limited throughout England and Wales before the 1850s and its limited impact in Ireland was on a par with this and not, as has frequently been argued,114 significantly less. St Columba’s College at Rathfarnham, founded in 1840, had as its first warden William Sewell, a high churchman sympathetic to Tractarianism. Several of the high-church bishops, including Archbishop Beresford of Armagh, Bishops Elrington of Ferns and Leighlin, Kyle of Cork and Ross, and especially Mant of Down and Connor, whilst critical of the more extreme manifestations, welcomed some of the liturgical innovations resulting from the Oxford Movement. William Maturin introduced weekday services at All Saints, Grangegorman in 1844 and an early celebration of Holy Communion took place for the first time on Christmas Day 1843. At about the same time Henry Wynne restored his church at Ardcolm (Co. Wexford) and began both daily services and weekly communion there. More choral services were also begun at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, despite the opposition of some Evangelical prebendaries. The cause of Tractarianism was also aided by the sympathetic attitude of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, which began publication in 1840.115 Whilst the majority of the Irish bishops took a moderately sympathetic view of at least some of the aspects of Tractarianism, their outlook was not shared by three of their number, the liberal Archbishop Whately of Dublin, and the two recently appointed Evangelicals, Daly of Cashel and O’Brien of Ossory. Whately saw both the Evangelical and Tractarian movements as a justification of the warnings he had given twenty years earlier in his Bampton lectures on the negative impact of church parties on the established church, and he saw the former as being largely responsible for the latter, so ‘that both the direction of the movement, and the degree of its violence, are in a great degree to be attributed to extremes of an opposite character’.116 In a later publication, condemning those who were supporting inter-denominational Evangelical activities, he again took the opportunity to attack the Tractarians as well: Their extreme reverence for the Rubrics and ordinances of our Church ended in their introducing innovations totally at variance, both in letter and spirit, with what our 114 See for example the statement in Acheson, History of Church of Ireland, 178, that ‘a theological consensus inhospitable to its principles thwarted the progress of Tractarianism among Irish Churchmen’. 115 P. B. Nockles, ‘Church or Protestant Sect? The Church of Ireland, High Churchmanship and the Oxford Movement 1822–1869’, Historical Journal, xli (1998), 457–93; S. P. Kerr, ‘Tolerant Bishops in an Intolerant Church: The Puseyite Threat in Ulster’, Studies in Church History, xxi (1984), 343–56; E. H. F. Campbell, A Hundred Years of Life at Grangegorman, Dublin 1928, 7–8; A. Cooper, ‘Ireland and the Oxford Movement’, Journal of Religious History, xix (1995), 62–74. 116 R. Whately, A Charge to the Clergy of Dublin and Glendelagh, London 1843, 17–18.


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Reformers enjoined. Their devoted veneration for episcopal authority was found to be compatible with the most insolent disregard for every individual bishop who did not acquiesce in their proceedings.117

Whately’s attacks on Tractarianism, however, were mild in comparison with those of Bishop O’Brien. O’Brien’s charges were extremely lengthy and extensively annotated. They were as much a defence of his own Calvinism as an attack on other views in the Church of Ireland, but he expressed his antiRomanism in the crudest terms.118 What he objected to particularly in the writings of the Tractarians were their attacks on the Reformation, and their own teachings on the eucharist and sacramental confession.119 ‘Various details were insisted upon, which have no proper place in our Churches, as being connected with forms of worship which were deliberately rejected at the Reformation.’120 O’Brien’s desire was to restore to a centrality within Anglicanism ‘the great doctrines of the Reformation . . . Justification by Faith only, and . . . the supremacy of Holy Scripture as the Rule of Faith.’121 He reminded his readers that ‘the Articles and Homilies restrain the Church from giving any aid or support to the Church of Rome’,122 which is what he believed the Tractarians were doing. There is no doubt that the opinion of Whately and Evangelicals like O’Brien put pressure on the high-church bishops to take a tougher stand against Tractarianism. In 1842 Bishop Knox of Limerick had expressed a fairly moderate view: I freely admit, when the zeal of pious, but perhaps, enthusiastic men first set forth those writings, entitled Tracts for the Times, much good resulted, as it opened the eyes of many to their notions of church discipline and church power, but, alas, . . . carried away by too hasty and indiscriminate zeal, the barriers of truth and error, if not broken down, were at least so far obliterated and merged together, that there appeared little distinction.123

117 Id., Thoughts on the Proposed Evangelical Alliance, Dublin 1846, 11; these arguments are repeated in Whately’s Charge Delivered at the Visitation in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin 1846. 118 O’Brien’s surviving papers, including his charges for 1842, 1845, and 1848, are deposited in Hull University Library. 119 J. T. O’Brien, Charge Delivered by . . . Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin 1842, 2nd edn, London 1843, 112–44, 186–215; Charge Delivered by . . . Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin 1845, London 1846, 109–245. 120 Ibid., 105. 121 Ibid., 239. 122 O’Brien, Charge Delivered by . . . Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin 1848, London 1850, 120. 123 E. Knox, Charge Delivered at the Annual Visitation held in Limerick . . . and in Killarney, Limerick 1842, 17.

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Eight years later his nephew, Bishop Knox of Down, Connor and Dromore, was taking a much firmer line: I cannot but look with pain and deep distress at the conduct of many of our brethren in the ministry . . . who, on the specious plea of restoring ancient practices and returning to the customs of bygone days, have introduced unseemly ceremonies and unmeaning forms into the services of our Church.124

Knox’s outlook had no doubt been influenced, not just by the charges of his less high-church colleagues, but by the deep divisions in his own diocese which had taken place during the last few years of the episcopate of his predecessor, Richard Mant. Mant was both the most high-church and, with the exception of Archbishop Whately, the most learned of the Church of Ireland bishops in the 1840s. He had, as noted in the previous chapter, taken a particular view of what was proper in the design and liturgical arrangement of church buildings long before such views were taken up and expanded by the ecclesiologists. It was not therefore surprising that he should have taken a positive attitude to some Tractarian teaching and practice, or that he should have tolerated, and even encouraged, liturgical innovations in his diocese. In his 1842 Charge Mant condemned the excesses of Tractarianism and the inclination to ape Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, but strongly defended what he described as the traditional practices of Anglicanism, such as ‘liturgical forms of prayer’, the observance of holy days and the season of Lent, clerical dress, daily services, and more frequent celebrations of Holy Communion. He took a similar line in his 1845 Charge, defending orthodox Anglican practices which others had condemned as ‘popish’, as well as the doctrines of apostolic succession, baptismal regeneration, and the real presence of Christ in the eucharist.125 In the following year he published a strong defence of daily services in church as required by the rubric. He reviewed the practice over the history of the Church, including its use by Anglican clergy and ‘devout lay people’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and advocated its restoration in the contemporary Church of Ireland. He noted that Archbishop Beresford had secured the reintroduction of daily services in Armagh Cathedral and printed a letter from J. S. B. Monsell, minister of the Magdalen Asylum Episcopal Chapel in Belfast, where daily services had been introduced from 1 January 1845, together with two celebrations of Holy Communion 124 R. B. Knox, A Charge Delivered at the Primary Visitation of the Dioceses of Down and Connor, and Dromore, Dublin 1850, 5. 125 R. Mant, Horae Ecclesiasticae: The Position of the Church with Regard to Romish Error Considered in a Charge Delivered to the Clergy of his Diocese, London 1845; W. B. Mant, Memoir, 409–16, 437–9.


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every month, one of which was an early one at 8 a.m. He added that plans were in hand to introduce daily services ‘in accordance with the directions of the Book of Common Prayer’ at Hillsborough, where his son Archdeacon Mant, was the incumbent.126 In 1842 Mant had urged the proper observance of all days in the prayer book Kalendar, though he had deprecated the introduction of new days of observance, which lacked authority, or prayers for the dead: In times succeeding the Reformation, some of our divines have spoken with tenderness of the practice, but it has received no countenance or encouragement from our national Church. Nor has any attempt been made for reviving it in the use of her members, till of late years, first by the non-juring clergy early in the eighteenth century, and now in the nineteenth by some of our brethren.127

In 1847 Mant upheld Lucius Arthur, curate of Donaghcloney, when his parishioners complained about his ‘overscrupulous and unedifying regard to the observance of Fasts, Festivals and Saints’ Days’.128 Mant’s advanced views were almost bound to bring him into conflict with the growing number of Evangelicals in his diocese and this occurred in 1842 when he accepted the presidency of the newly-formed Church Architecture Society for the United Diocese of Down, Connor, and Dromore, having previously agreed to be one of the patrons of the Cambridge Camden Society. The latter was already under attack for espousing ‘popish’ opinions and Mant did himself no favours when, at the inaugural meeting of the new diocesan society he expressed the view that ‘whatever tends to give a more appropriate appearance to the house of God has, in my judgement, a tendency also to promote God’s honour and glory’.129 He also condemned the common practice of making the pulpit and reading desk, rather than the altar, the primary liturgical focus of church buildings: if the communion table is shut out from the view of the congregation by some needless impediment, by the intervention, for instance, of the reading desk and the pulpit, the minister and clerk thus being made to turn their backs on the altar, or by a conglomeration of pews . . . a knowledge and consideration of the fact will probably induce an effort to correct such deviations from propriety.130

126 W. B. Mant, Memoir, 443–3; R. Mant, Religio Quotidiana: Daily Prayer the Law of God’s Church and heretofore the Practice of Churchmen, London 1846. 127 R. Mant, The Laws of the Church . . . in Two Charges Addressed to his Clergy, Dublin 1842, 7, 10. 128 E. D. Atkinson, Dromore: An Ulster Diocese, Dundalk 1925, 152–6. 129 W. B. Mant, Memoir, 421; see also S. P. Kerr, ‘Tolerant Bishops’, 343–55. 130 Ulster Times, 8 October 1842, quoted in S. R. McBride, ‘Bishop Mant and the Down and Connor and Dromore Church Architecture Society: The Influence of the Oxford and

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The opposition to Mant and the alleged ‘popery’ of the Church Architecture Society was led by William MacIlwaine, the Evangelical rector of St George’s, Belfast, who waged a campaign in the press under the nom de plume of ‘Clericus Connorensis’. At a subsequent meeting of the society, on 7 March 1843, Mant attempted to placate his critics by criticizing some ecclesiological attitudes such as the need to install credence tables and piscinae in new or restored churches. It was not enough. A month earlier Mant had received a memorial with over 1,300 signatures stating that the Church Architecture Society was promoting ‘Puseyite’ features in new church buildings and insisting that Mant should withdraw his support for the society. Although Mant refused to do this, he did eventually accept a recommendation from his supporters to resign as one of the patrons of the Cambridge Camden Society, ‘in the hope that it would re-establish good will and harmony in his diocese’. The Church Architecture Society, after a change of name in 1845, did not meet after 1849. Its involvement in the new church at Tyrella (Co. Down) in 1842, and its suggestion that the reading desk should be modified and a lectern introduced, was to Protestant eyes sufficient proof of its ‘popery’.131 Mant’s next battleground was over the use of the surplice for preaching and that of the prayer for the Church Militant on non-sacramental Sundays.132 He had stated in 1842 his belief that the surplice should be worn for preaching as well as for the service since there was no rubric in the Book of Common Prayer to sanction the universal custom of the minister changing his surplice for a black gown before entering the pulpit. Mant also thought the practice was in itself undesirable as it meant the preacher had to retire ‘to a perhaps distant vestry room’ for several minutes to change his dress, both before and after the sermon, and thus ‘deprive [the congregation] of his superintendence during that exercise, and of his example in setting before them the becoming posture and a solemn deportment in celebrating God’s praises’.133 Mant’s arguments were similar to those of other high-church bishops, such as Blomfield of London and Phillpotts of Exeter, who were trying to enforce the use of the surplice for preaching at about the same time, and they received a similar response.134 At Ballyculter the congregation walked out, the parish clerk resigned, and Lady Bangor stopped attending church. At Kilmore there was Evangelical Movements, the Cambridge Camden Society and the Gothic Revival on the Church of Ireland and its Architecture in Ulster 1838–1878’, Queen’s University, Belfast, PhD 1996, 56. 131 Ibid., 66–157; see also P. Larmour and S. R. McBride, ‘Buildings and Faith: Church Building from Medieval to Modern’, in The Laity and the Church of Ireland, 1000–2000, ed. R. Gillespie and W. G. Neely, Dublin 2002, 341–5. 132 W. B. Mant, Memoir, 428–9, 432–3. 133 R. Mant, Laws of the Church, 26–7. 134 Yates, Anglican Ritualism, 179–83.


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a major schism. As well as preaching in a surplice, the incumbent was accused of bowing to the altar, turning east for the creed and: not allowing the poor’s money to be collected at the Communion Table, or entries made in the book, and the removal of books, pen, and ink from the drawer where they had always been kept, and changing the table into an altar, which would be desecrated by such uses.

Mant refused to support the parishioners on the grounds that none of these ‘innovations’ were contrary to the Book of Common Prayer. Most of the parishioners started attending neighbouring churches and in 1846 they ‘advertised for a clergyman to look after their spiritual interests for a stipend of one hundred pounds a year’. Mant stated that he would refuse to licence their nominee since he would then be party to the schism which had taken place. Among those supporting the bishop were his two sons, F. W. Mant, who as incumbent of Inch faced east for the creed, preached in a surplice, and moved the font, boring a hole in it to let out the ‘holy’ water after baptism, and Archdeacon Mant, incumbent of Hillsborough.135 It was at Hillsborough that the most serious conflict took place, as the opposition was led by the diocese’s leading landowner, the Marquess of Downshire, who decided to appeal, over Bishop Mant’s head, to Archbishop Beresford of Armagh. In a letter to the archbishop, Archdeacon Mant told him that the points at issue were: preaching in a surplice, and the Prayer and Offertory after the Sermon: the first I have always offered to give up, as indifferent; the other I am prepared to also give up, if I could find myself justified by the interpretation of the Laws of the Church.136

Beresford replied that Lord Downshire: manifests so strongly his feelings on the subject which has lately agitated your parish that . . . any partial concessions will not be successful in restoring peace . . . it is perfectly in vain to expect to carry any number of your parishioners with you in opposition to his wishes. The attempt to do so would only leave your flock a prey to Dissenting Teachers of every kind, and place them out of the reach of your Ministrations in future. I trust therefore that you will not in the endeavour to make them better churchmen, which must be a very gradual operation, lead them to break off all connection with the Church.137

135 McBride, ‘Bishop Mant’, 166–74. The Kilmore quotations are on pp. 171 and 174. Kilmore was the church which has now been re-erected at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. 136 RCBL, Ms 528, Archdeacon Mant to Beresford, 24 March 1845. 137 Ibid., Beresford to Archdeacon Mant, 27 March 1845.

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It appears that Beresford’s instincts were correct. Downshire, using the fact that he contributed £15 per annum to the school, had dismissed the parish schoolmaster, ‘the poor man’s offence’ according to Mant ‘being neutrality, or perhaps a leaning towards me’. The churchwardens, one of them a clerk in Downshire’s employment, had posted a notice stating that no further collections would be taken by them for the support of ‘old widows and infirm persons, who were relieved weekly’.138 It was at this point that Bishop Mant endeavoured to force Beresford’s hand by stating that he would accept the resignation of both his sons, his younger son being ‘almost similarly circumstanced in the parish of Inch’, rather than insisting that they should make concessions to remain in office.139 In a subsequent letter he stated that he would also refuse to ordain any more clergy if he could not ensure that they obeyed the rubrics, especially those who ‘make alterations and omissions in the baptismal service in order to evade a profession of the Church’s doctrine of baptismal regeneration’.140 Beresford replied that he still took the view that: in those churches where alterations have been introduced with general acquiescence let things remain as they are . . . whereas a timely and quiet surrender of the obnoxious changes in the places where objections have been raised would put out the flame.141

At the same time he consulted Archbishop Howley of Canterbury, making it clear that the ‘dissension in the Diocese of Down but only in that diocese’ was almost entirely caused by the intransigence shown by both the bishop and his opponents. If Bishop Mant insisted on the surplice being worn in the pulpit, he would have to enforce the whole of the Ornaments Rubric, ‘and no congregation in his three dioceses would bear this’. He suggested that the issue might be diffused by setting up a Royal Commission to make recommendations,142 but Howley was very unwilling to act on this suggestion. He thought it ‘would lead to the opening of the whole question of the revision of the liturgy in respect to which we could expect no general concurrence among ourselves much less among the several parties which now disturb the Church’.143 In the event the impasse was resolved by the death of the Marquess of Downshire, since this allowed all the parties to back down with grace. The new Lord Downshire assured Archbishop Beresford ‘that we shall be able to go to church . . . and see all the old ways restored and what is quite as important unanimity restored in the parish’ now Archdeacon Mant ‘has 138 139 140 141 142 143

RCBL, Ms 528, Archdeacon Mant to Beresford, 31 March 1845. Ibid., Bishop Mant to Beresford, 5 April 1845. Ibid., Bishop Mant to Beresford, 9 April 1845. Ibid., Beresford to Bishop Mant, 11 April 1845. PRONI, DD664/A/501, Beresford to Howley, 12 April 1845. PRONI, DD664/A/502, Howley to Beresford, 16 April 1845.


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given up the use of the Prayer for the Church Militant till something can be done at Head Quarters, to define what is to be continued and what left out . . . I intend to call a meeting to return the archdeacon thanks for complying with the wishes of the Parish.’144 Beresford was able to assure Archbishop Howley that ‘Archdeacon Mant has accommodated matters in his church to the wishes of the present Lord Downshire and the parishioners’, and that Bishop Mant would not go ahead with his threat not to ordain.145 Had Beresford suggested to the bishop and his archdeacon that a Royal Commission might be set up even though he knew Howley had no intention of doing so? The attitude taken by Beresford in the face of lay opposition to liturgical innovation was more typical of Irish high-church bishops than that of Mant. It is perhaps no coincidence that Mant was English and Beresford Irish. Perceptions of ‘Romanizing’ were difficult to defend in a country where hostility to Roman Catholicism, particularly on the part of Protestant laity, was as much political as it was religious. Beresford probably understood this in a way that Mant probably did not. The death of Mant in 1848 removed the only senior Irish churchman prepared to defend Anglican high churchmanship from what some might describe as the unflinching prejudices of the Protestant laity. A similar attempt was made later in the nineteenth century by Archbishop Trench of Dublin but this was as unsuccessful as Mant’s had been. No analysis has been made of how many Irish clergy after 1840 could be fairly described as Evangelicals, yet it is certainly the case that many Irish clergy with Tractarian, or especially ritualist, sympathies, left Ireland to serve in other parts of the British Isles, where lay opposition to liturgical innovation was not so great, and where bishops were more prepared to defend their clergy rather than bow to lay pressure. Disestablishment in 1869–71 increased the power of the laity in the Church of Ireland by giving them a voice and a vote in its government, and this ensured that no form of ‘Romanizing’ ritual innovation could be attempted before the closing years of the twentieth century.146

T H E EM E RGE N C E O F A PROTE STAN T A L L I A NC E There is a widely held view that the parallel Evangelical movements within the Church of Ireland and among Irish Presbyterians, together with the 144 RCBL, Ms 528, Downshire to Beresford, 26 and 27 April 1845. 145 PRONI, DD664/A/504, Beresford to Howley, 24 April 1845. 146 See Yates, Anglican Ritualism, 139–43.

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decisive rejection of Tractarianism by the former, had by the middle years of the nineteenth century begun to promote a common Protestant outlook and support for cooperation between different groups of Protestants which would have horrified high-church bishops before 1850, and which was still deprecated by their successors, such as William Fitzgerald of Cork and Killaloe, who wanted to defend the ‘distinctive character’ of the Church of Ireland.147 The traditional Church of Ireland position had been exemplified par excellence by Bishop Mant of Down and Connor. Whilst he condemned one of his incumbents who had cancelled a service in his own church to enable his congregation, and probably himself, to attend a charity sermon in a Presbyterian meeting house, he also issued a pastoral letter on 3 February 1840 advising the clergy and laity in his diocese not to attend a concert for unveiling the new organ at St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Belfast.148 Other Church of Ireland bishops had been noticeably more hostile to the Presbyterians than the Roman Catholics.149 Archbishop Laurence of Cashel stated that in his opinion there existed between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church ‘a perfect concord in all the great doctrines of Christianity’ and that any differences that existed were the result of ‘the superstitious addition of after ages to the Creed of the primitive Church’.150 He argued strongly against any form of proselytism: ‘in this age of unrestricted toleration, would not the Clergy of the Church of Rome have the same right, both in reason and in law, to tamper with the faith of Protestants, as you have to tamper with the faith of Roman Catholics?’151 Those who wanted to proselytize were those ‘who make religion principally to consist in certain internal persuasions and emotions, of power to convince them, that they are the elect of God, and predestined to life eternal’.152 His Roman Catholic counterpart, Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, was inclined to agree, and pointed at both the differences between various groups of Protestants and the areas on which Protestants and Roman Catholics agreed: It is not every one who differs from you in religion who should be branded with the odious name of ‘Heretic’. Errors in religion do not constitute heresy; but a wilful and obstinate adherence to them . . . the Lutherans, for instance, celebrate a kind of Mass, resembling ours. They go to confession; they believe in the Real Presence of Christ in 147 P. M. H. Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales, London 1969, 34–5. 148 W. B. Mant, Memoir, 181–2, 395. 149 J. Kelly, ‘Relations between the Protestant Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church in Late Eighteenth Century Ireland’, Eire-Ireland, xxiii (1988), 38–56. 150 R. Laurence, A Charge Delivered at the Triennial Visitation of the Province of Munster, Dublin 1826, 11–12. 151 Ibid., 13. 152 Ibid., 20.


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the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist; but they have no bishops. The members of the Established Church, on the other hand, have bishops; but they have no Mass in any shape or form; and they believe that the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, though real, is only spiritual.153

Deliberate proselytism on the other hand, as practised by the Bible Societies, was described by Doyle as ‘vile’ and ‘hypocritical’.154 Sean Connolly attributes the breakdown in relations between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church after 1830 to three main factors: the growth of Evangelicalism within the Church of Ireland and its support for the ‘Second Reformation’; the new type of popular politics typified by Daniel O’Connell and its negative impact on the Protestant population; and the growing Ultramontanist tendencies among the younger Irish Roman Catholic clergy and bishops.155 This was an Ultramontanism popularly associated with the future Cardinal Cullen, who ‘not only boasted that he himself had never dined with a Protestant, but also identified Catholics who did mix socially with Protestants as persons uniformly hostile to the changes he was attempting to bring about in the Irish Church’,156 though in fact its origins were largely independent of Cullen and more attributable in many ways to Cullen’s future opponent, Archbishop MacHale of Tuam. Anti-Catholic prejudice and Protestant solidarity were also inflamed by the periodic outbreaks of sectarian violence and the growth of Orange Lodges. Three Protestants stole vestments from the Roman Catholic chapel at Enniskillen (Co. Fermanagh) in 1809 but were acquitted by the local magistrates despite the strong evidence against them.157 There were outbreaks of violence in Belfast following the Orange celebrations on 12 July 1813, the Tory victory in Belfast’s first parliamentary election in 1832, and again after the Orange celebrations for 12 July in 1835 and 1843.158 By the 1830s there were thirty-two Orange Lodges in the town.159 Protestant clergy who were seen to be friendly with their Roman Catholic counterparts could be disowned by their congregations, as Archbishop Stuart of Armagh noted in 1812: The minister of a dissenting meeting house in this vicinity very imprudently signed the R.C. petition. This has so enraged his congregation, which is very numerous, that, 153 J. W. Doyle, Pastoral Letter Addressed to the Roman Catholic Clergy of the Deanery of Kilcock, Dublin 1825, 26, 36. 154 Id., Pastoral Address . . . to the Catholic Clergy and Laity of the Dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin, Dublin 1826, 23. 155 S. J. Connolly, Religion and Society in Nineteenth Century Ireland, Dundalk 1985, 25–9. 156 Id., Priests and People, 15. 157 Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster, 116. 158 Connolly, Religion and Society, 22. 159 Hampton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism, 127.

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tho’ he bears a good character, they applied to the Synod to remove him. Upon the Synod stating that the offence did not come within their cognizance, and therefore that to remove him was beyond their power, the congregation unanimously declared that they would add nothing to the King’s gift, and not only withdrew their subscriptions but nailed the doors and windows of the meeting house in such a manner, as to make it impossible to open them without destroying them.160

Disputes over tithes and the advice of some leading Roman Catholic bishops, such as Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, that their laity should use all legal means to subvert the system, further soured relations between Protestants and Roman Catholics, so that ‘even in areas where good . . . relations had been relatively unaffected by the party feelings of the emancipation campaign, the anti-tithe cause gained ground and embittered both denominations’.161 The increasing tetchiness was illustrated by disputes over burials in Dublin and Derry. Archbishop Magee of Dublin refused to allow a Roman Catholic priest to officiate at a funeral in St Kevin’s churchyard despite the fact that this had been tolerated in the past provided the officiating clergy used no untoward ceremonies.162 In 1838 the dean of Derry, T. B. Gough, objected to a burial according to Roman Catholic rites taking place in the churchyard of the Church of Ireland cathedral and forwarded his complaint to the Lord Lieutenant who sought and received assurances from Bishop MacLaughlin of Derry, who had officiated at the burial, that no future breach of the law would be permitted to take place.163 Although no bishops, apart from Trench of Tuam and, to a lesser extent, Magee of Dublin, encouraged such ventures, there is no doubt that a greater feeling of Protestant community was beginning to develop between some Church of Ireland clergy and laity and dissenting Protestants from the early years of the nineteenth century. It was encouraged by the Presbyterian leader, Henry Cooke, who was ‘active in trying to promote a ‘‘Protestant Union’’ of Anglicans and Presbyterians against the steadily increasing social power of the Catholic leadership’ in Ireland.164 Collaboration between Anglican and nonAnglican Evangelicals in the inter-denominational bible and missionary societies led to a willingness to forge even stronger alliances at the local level. When 160 NLI, Ms 1869, Stuart to Archbishop Brodrick of Cashel, 29 March 1812. 161 T. G. McGrath, ‘Interdenominational Relations in Pre-Famine Tipperary’, in Tipperary: History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of the Irish County, ed. W. Nolan and T. G. McGrath, Dublin 1985, 269. 162 Whelan, ‘Evangelical Religion’, 478–9. 163 Bonner, Derry, 277–82; note also the complaint in 1829 by Archdeacon Stopford of Armagh to Archbishop Beresford about the frequency with which Roman Catholic priests were conducting burial services at churchyards in the diocese; RLA, Beresford Papers, vol. 11, f. 120. 164 Brooke, ‘Controversies’, 165.


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Raphoe Cathedral was damaged by fire the local Presbyterian minister, W. D. Killen, allowed its congregation to hold services in his church whilst the cathedral was being repaired. When a second Presbyterian church was erected at Rathfriland (Co. Down) in 1834–6 the ‘special collectors’ included the Earl of Roden and the incumbents of Drumballyroney, in which the town of Rathfriland was situated, and Magherally. When a new Presbyterian congregation was established at Westport (Co. Mayo) in 1823 ‘an oath of allegiance was administered at the time of ordination by the Marquess of Sligo’, who gave the site for a permanent church and manse in 1830.165 There remained, however, deep divisions among the Church of Ireland hierarchy about whether it was really appropriate to use Presbyterian or Methodist buildings for Anglican worship where there was no Anglican church. A few argued that such ventures might attract non-Anglicans to the Church of Ireland by offering them a formal style of Protestant worship in familiar surroundings.166 This certainly happened at Ballygawley (Co. Tyrone), where Archbishop Beresford of Armagh was informed that the Presbyterians had offered the use of their meeting house for Church of Ireland services, as they had been disgusted with the schisms within Presbyterianism and preferred ‘the form and regularity they see with us’.167 In 1842 the Presbyterian minister of Ervey (Co. Cavan), Robert Winning, resigned his charge to conform to the Church of Ireland and was appointed incumbent of the neighbouring parish of Kingscourt.168 However, Evangelical Anglicans were as likely to find their doctrinal stance leading them away from the episcopal method of government; J. P. Bond, Presbyterian minister at Wexford between 1846 and 1849, had formerly been a member of the Church of Ireland, and argued the reasons for his conversion in A Convert’s Plea against Prelacy, published in 1844.169 There was also some evidence that the general economic prosperity and social status of many Church of Ireland congregations had a negative impact on those not so well-off; Archbishop Beresford was told that the experimental Church of Ireland services in the Methodist meeting house at Derrylee (Co. Armagh) had been very successful since the poorer members of the parish were ‘reluctant to go to the parish church owing to their inability to buy suitable clothes’.170 165 Baillie, Congregations, 723, 729, 802. 166 Hill, ‘Evangelicalism’, 228. 167 RLA, Beresford Papers, vol. 9, f. 162, letter dated 30 September 1828; later on, on 12 October 1841, the parishioners of Ballygawley, possibly under pressure from Presbyterian converts, accused their incumbent, H. L. Baker, of preaching unsound doctrine ‘in conformity with Puseyism’ and claiming the power himself to forgive sins; Ibid., vol. 4, ff. 30–1. 168 R. B. Knox, A History of Congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1610–1982: A Supplement of Additions, Emendations and Corrections, Belfast 1996, 13. 169 Baillie, Congregations, 804. 170 RLA, Beresford Papers, vol. 9, f. 163, letter dated 28 December 1830.

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This evidence of increasing cooperation between different groups of Protestants in Ireland in the second quarter of the nineteenth century is in marked contrast to their growing unwillingness to cooperate with Roman Catholics, and indeed the greater frequency of sectarian demonstrations, often leading to violence. Even Protestant clergy who were suspected of Catholic leanings could find themselves the victims of similar opposition: In Belfast, about thirty years ago, a handsome little Protestant church, in the Gothic style of architecture, had been erected at the end of York Street, opposite the railway terminus. A cross surmounted the spire of the belfry-tower, which gave great offence, as savouring rather much of Popery or Puseyism. It had to be removed, and in its place stands ‘securely’ today a mongrel weathercock that serves all purposes and gives general satisfaction.171

Some Protestants continued to stand out against the growing prejudice towards Roman Catholics. Dean Jackson of Armagh told Archbishop Beresford that he objected to orange flags being placed on the tower of his cathedral on 12 July as it ‘manifests the intemperate and ungovernable spirit of the Protestant Party’.172 As late as 1849 the Roman Catholic chapel at Arra (Co. Cavan) was built with the help of local Protestants,173 and this was in a county which had felt the full force of the ‘Second Reformation’. Such acts of cooperation across the Catholic–Protestant divide in Ireland were becoming increasingly rare. As early as 1816 Archbishop O’Reilly of Armagh supported the Roman Catholic clergy of Magherafelt (Co. Derry), who had ‘withdrawn the Catholic children from the Sunday school on account of their being obliged to join in the Protestant or Methodistical prayers and hymns that are said or sung there’, on the grounds that ‘the church forbids us to join our refractory brethren, who are out of her bosom, in religious worship’.174 Roman Catholic attitudes to the Church of Ireland had been influenced by the delays in granting Catholic Emancipation and the belief, correct in fact, that even those Church of Ireland bishops, like Jebb of Limerick, who went out of their way to promote good relations with Roman Catholics, were hostile to emancipation and were, behind the scenes, using their influence with the British government to delay it for as long as possible. They were inflamed even further by the deliberate proselytism of the ‘Second Reformation’ movement. This same movement, and shared doctrinal beliefs, had brought different denominations of Protestants into greater harmony with one another and helped to create a community of interest between them. 171 172 173 174

J. Gallogly, The History of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, Dublin 1880, 143. RLA, Beresford Papers, vol. 2, ff. 245–7, letter dated 21 July 1838. D. Gallogly, Kilmore, 376. ADA, O’Reilly Correspondence, Item 233.


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Part of this agenda was the desire, not just to convert Roman Catholics, but to prevent their increasing political influence, especially after the granting of emancipation. Not all members of the Church of Ireland, or indeed all Presbyterians, shared this outlook, but those that did not were becoming increasingly marginalized after 1850. The group that held out longest was the bishops of the Church of Ireland. In 1840, following the death of Archbishop Trench of Tuam in the previous year, no Evangelical was bishop of a diocese in Ireland. But as the Evangelical voice among the clergy and laity grew stronger, it became politically impossible for the British government, who had promoted Evangelicals to episcopal office in England and Wales,175 to refuse to do so in Ireland. Between 1840 and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland thirty years later, no fewer than six of the seventeen new bishops appointed to Irish bishoprics were Evangelicals.176 On the eve of disestablishment five of the twelve archbishops and bishops then in office were Evangelicals. Not only did they seek to promote Evangelicalism in their dioceses but they used their public pronouncements to credit their Evangelical colleagues with having led the reform movement in the Church of Ireland and to ignore the pastoral achievements of those who held different opinions: A revival has taken place in our Irish Church . . . I am old enough to remember the state of things in the early part of this century—to know the famine of the Word of God—the fearful scarcity of ministers that preached Christ Jesus the Lord . . . I consider it a great blessing from the Lord, that he has allowed me to see a great, a mighty change.177

There was certainly evidence from the parishes that Evangelicalism within the Church of Ireland was increasing the size of some congregations. A report to Archbishop Beresford from the parish of Loughgilly (Co. Armagh) showed that between the appointment of a new Evangelical incumbent, W. H. Foster, in 1841 and the end of 1843, attendance at the Sunday services had almost doubled, and there were now never fewer than eighty at the evening service on Wednesdays. In the previous year alone sixty-one former Presbyterians, one Jew, one Independent, and one Roman Catholic had joined the Church of 175 Henry Ryder to Gloucester in 1815 and Lichfield in 1824, Charles Richard Sumner to Llandaff in 1826 and Winchester in 1827, and John Bird Sumner to Chester in 1828 and Canterbury in 1848. 176 James O’Brien to Ossory in 1842, Robert Daly to Cashel and Waterford in 1843, Joseph Singer to Meath in 1852, John Gregg to Cork and Hamilton Verschoyle to Kilmore in 1862, and Charles Bernard to Tuam in 1867. However, as Acheson, History of Church of Ireland, 181, points out, some traditional high-church appointments were still being made after 1860, e.g. Trench to Dublin in 1864, Butcher to Meath in 1866, and Alexander to Derry in 1867. 177 R. Daly, A Charge Delivered . . . at the Visitation of the Dioceses of Waterford and Lismore, Cashel and Emly, Dublin 1846, 11–12.

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Ireland. These converts had been led by ‘our Scriptural church . . . to the reception of the truth as it is in Jesus’.178 It was Evangelicalism and the sectarian attitudes that went with it that were to dominate the Protestant churches in Ireland for more than a century after 1850, and it was replicated by a deep distrust of Protestantism by a Roman Catholic community which retreated more and more into the Ultramontanist attitudes promoted, in their different ways, by John MacHale and Paul Cullen. It was a very different sort of relationship from that which most Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic leaders had endeavoured to instil in their clergy and laity, not always successfully it has to be admitted, in the early years of the nineteenth century. 178 RLA, Beresford Papers, vol. 9, f. 77.

8 Irish Religious Developments in a British and European Context During the episcopal vacancy at Armagh, following the death of Archbishop Crolly, Archbishop Murray of Dublin wrote to Archbishop Slattery of Cashel who had refused to sign an address from the Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops of Ireland to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to Ireland: I regret that we are not to have the addition of Your Grace’s name to our address. The want of it will of course lessen much the value of the document. After the general address of all the Prelates to George the 4th on the occasion of His Majesty’s visit, it was thought quite impossible that our Body should remain entirely silent on receiving a similar visit for the first time from the Queen. It was thought too that a mere complimentary address, destitute of politics, and conveying only those sentiments of loyalty which we all profess to feel, could create no difference of opinion among us. God help us.1

This letter sums up the dramatic changes that had occurred in the religious condition of Ireland during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, changes that had divided the Roman Catholic hierarchy, created a schism within the Synod of Ulster, and begun to marginalize high churchmen within the Church of Ireland. The churches within Ireland had moved in that period from a position of cautious tolerance to one of committed sectarianism. Those who opposed this trend were destined to be disregarded and despised for the whole of the century that followed. This was the negative aspect of religious developments in Ireland between 1770 and 1850. There was, however, a positive aspect which these developments have tended to overshadow, but which should not be forgotten. Ireland, like much of the rest of the British Isles and mainland Europe, was the scene of ecclesiastical consolidation and reform between 1770 and 1850. In some areas, especially those in mainland Europe that suffered the bursts of anti-clericalism associated with the French Revolution and its aftermath, these developments were interrupted and had to be restarted. In Ireland the 1 CDA, Murray to Slattery, 27 July 1849.

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Religious Developments in Context

political upheavals of the 1790s did not appear to have any severe consequences for the ecclesiastical reforms begun by Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic bishops in the 1770s. The significance of these reforms should not be underestimated. They took place against a background of religious customs and traditions that found their counterparts in other parts of the British Isles and mainland Europe. One of these was the issue of minority languages, or languages different from that of the governmental elite. The gradual decline of the native language in Ireland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the failure of the Protestant churches to provide an effective ministry in Irish, was to a large extent replicated through the Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland, though not in the Welsh-speaking ones of Wales. The reason for this difference was to some extent political. Both the Irish and Scottish forms of Gaelic were seen as the languages of potentially disloyal and religiously different sections of society. In Ireland the strength of the native language lay in those areas in which Roman Catholicism was strongest. The population of the Scottish highlands and islands had, generally, been late converts to Presbyterianism and there were significant surviving Roman Catholic and Episcopalian communities, though both of these had dwindled in size by the second half of the eighteenth century.2 The post-1690 established Church of Scotland, which relied heavily on ministers and missionaries from the lowlands to provide pastoral leadership in the western highlands and islands, was hostile to the encouragement of Gaelic and keen to promote the superiority of English. David Kerr, schoolmaster at Glenurqhart in c.1800, ‘zealously whipped all pupils found talking Gaelic’. The establishment of a Gaelic School Society in 1811, following allegations that highland schools were turning out children ‘who read English as accurately as Highlanders can read, and yet who do not understand one word of what they read’,3 was, as in Ireland, a late conversion to the idea that a less bigoted approach to the language of the heathen might have some educational and religious advantages. The result was that by 1842 only 228 churches still had some services in Gaelic, the normal pattern being to have one of the Sunday services in that language and one in English. The Gaelicspeaking parishes were confined to the counties of Argyll, Bute, Inverness, 2 See I. B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation, London 1982, 159–81; C. G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707, Edinburgh 1997, 85–6; C. Johnson, Developments in the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland 1789–1929, Edinburgh 1983, 1–2, 41, 153; M. A. Mullett, Catholics in Britain and Ireland, Basingstoke 1998, 170–6; R. Strong, Episcopalianism in NineteenthCentury Scotland: Religious Responses to a Modernizing Society, Oxford 2002, 71–2, 76–7, 81–2, 84–7. 3 J. MacInnes, The Evangelical Movement in the Highlands of Scotland 1688 to 1800, Aberdeen 1951, 247–8.


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Ross and Cromarty, and Sutherland. There were also a few parishes with Gaelic speakers in the western parts of Aberdeenshire, Caithness, Kincardine, and Perthshire. Elsewhere services in Gaelic had been abandoned, as they were finally in the Dunbartonshire parishes of Luss and Rhu in the 1830s.4 The Scottish episcopalians were equally hostile to the maintenance of Gaelic despite their earlier strength in highland parishes: the last Gaelic-speaking bishop was Andrew Macfarlane of Moray and Ross who died in 1819, and thereafter there were only two Gaelic-speaking clergy in the highland area, Paul McColl at Appin and Lismore and Duncan Mackenzie at Strathnairn.5 By contrast the established Anglican church in Wales, unlike its counterpart in Ireland and despite having a wholly English episcopate from the early eighteenth century, maintained its long-held commitment to providing for the spiritual needs of the inhabitants through services and preaching in Welsh, and, from the late eighteenth century, strongly supported, and indeed led, the movement for the promotion of Welsh culture and literature in the Welsh language. In the Welsh-speaking archdeaconry of Anglesey in 1801 all the Sunday services in the island’s parish churches and chapelries were in Welsh except in the town churches at Amlwch and Beaumaris, where there were both English and Welsh services every Sunday, and at Holyhead where the services were in English rather than Welsh on the third Sunday of the month.6 Similar patterns of service provision were the norm in all the Welshspeaking parts of Wales. It was only in those counties with large numbers of English-speaking communities that parishes tended to have some or all services in English.7 Even in the diocese of St Asaph, with many parishes near the English border, a survey of 1807 showed that, in those parishes in which the language of the service was noted, fifty-nine had services in Welsh only, eleven in English only, and twelve in both English and Welsh.8 The early leaders of the eisteddfod movement for the encouragement of Welsh culture, and the establishment not just of eisteddfodau but also local societies devoted to antiquarian pursuits, included several of the clergy: Archdeacons Beynon of Cardigan and Payne of Carmarthen in the diocese of St David’s; David Ellis of Criccieth and P. B. Williams of Llanberis and Llanruˆg in the diocese of Bangor; and Walter Davies of Manafon in the diocese of St Asaph. In 1818 Bishop Burgess of St David’s presided at the meeting which launched the Cambrian Society of Dyfed, and in 1819 he was the principal patron of 4 C. W. J. Withers, Gaelic in Scotland 1698–1981, Edinburgh 1984, 177–9. 5 Strong, Episcopalianism, 89, 93, 137. 6 NLW, B/QA/14. 7 E. M. White, ‘The Established Church, Dissent and the Welsh Language, c.1660–1811’, in The Welsh Language before the Industrial Revolution, ed. G. H. Jenkins, Cardiff 1997, 270–9. 8 NLW, SA/MB/20.

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the Carmarthen eisteddfod. Two years later the patrons of the Caernarfon eisteddfod included Bishop Majendie and Dean Warren of Bangor.9 This encouragement of Welsh culture by Anglican clergy in Wales was in strong contrast to the lack of interest in Irish culture and the Irish language shown by most of their counterparts in Ireland. As a result, from the middle years of the nineteenth century, it was the Roman Catholic and not the Protestant churches in Ireland that became closely identified with the nationalist cause and this helped to consolidate the divisions between the churches which had been brought about for other reasons. The role of the clergy in society tended to be strongly influenced by their social background. In Ireland the Anglican clergy, particularly at the upper levels, tended to come from the upper or upper middle classes, whereas Presbyterian and Roman Catholic clergy came predominantly from the families of moderately prosperous farmers or merchants. They were also more likely to serve in areas in which they had been born or their families still resided. These strong local bonds, the absence of which tended to work to the disadvantage of the Anglican clergy in Ireland, did however exist in some other parts of the British Isles where Anglicanism was established, notably in the Isle of Man and south-west Wales. In both cases the poverty of the local benefices failed to attract clergy from outside the respective areas and the majority of those ordained were the sons of local farmers. Whereas in Ireland, England, and North Wales the vast majority of benefices were valued at more than £200 in the 1830s, those in the diocese of St David’s, which covered the whole of south-west Wales together with the border counties of Brecknockshire and Radnorshire, had an average benefice income of only £137. In the Isle of Man the figure was even lower despite a significant increase over the 60year period since the 1770s. Two lists of benefice incomes from 1763 and 1773 give values ranging from £17 10s 0d to £53 11s 2d for the island’s 14 vicarages, compared with an average benefice income of £148 in Ireland in the 1780s.10 As a result the island’s benefices were held, almost without exception, by members of local families. There were many cases of sons succeeding their fathers in the same benefice and several clerical dynasties which were closely related to each other. In 1775, for example, James Wilks, was rector of Ballaugh; his son-in-law, Thomas Woods, was vicar of Braddan; Woods’ son-in-law, David Harrison, was chaplain of St Mark’s.11 In the Welsh diocese of St David’s the low value of benefices, and the even lower level of curate’s 9 A. H. Dodd, A History of Caernarvonshire, Denbigh 1968, 348–9; H. T. Edwards, The Eisteddfod, Cardiff 1990, 14–15. 10 MNHL, MD436, folder 17/20. 11 Details from J. D. Gelling, A History of the Manx Church 1698–1911, Douglas 1998, 221–54.


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stipends, the average stipend being £55, compared with stipends nearly double that level in Ireland, had also resulted in the existence of a largely local clergy, mostly the sons of farmers, and, as in the Isle of Man, mostly nongraduates. Out of 762 new ordinands in the diocese in the late eighteenth century only 45 were graduates; 37 had matriculated at a university without taking a degree; 680 had never attended a university.12 Whilst that undoubtedly caused problems to bishops keen to promote higher standards of clerical education,13 it did have the benefit of providing the laity with a clergy from a social and educational background not that dissimilar from theirs. This the Church of Ireland often did not provide, except for landed families in their parishes, whereas the Presbyterians and Roman Catholics did. The social background of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland was to a large extent replicated in those parts of Europe in which the Roman Catholic church was either the established or the majority religion. Even in those countries, such as France before the revolution of 1789, in which the episcopate was chosen almost exclusively from the ranks of the aristocracy, the parish clergy ‘were predominantly commoners’, sometimes even the sons of ‘the better-off peasantry . . . But nowhere did the very poor enter the clergy.’14 In the French diocese of Gap about a quarter of the parochial clergy came from peasant stock, over a third from the merchant classes, and a similar number from the professional or landed classes.15 The Breton diocese of Tre´guier was unusual in that 18% of its parochial benefices were held by members of noble families compared with only 2% in the neighbouring diocese of Vannes, where more than 50% came from the better-off peasant families, 25% from the bourgeoisie and just under 20% from the families of artisans or shopkeepers.16 Before the revolution of 1789 the social origins of the Breton clergy were perhaps a little more modest than those in Ireland but the land redistribution that resulted from the revolution led to an increase in the social standing of many of the families from which the clergy had traditionally been drawn. This shift is shown in Table 8.1 in the social 12 D. T. W. Price, A History of St David’s University College, Lampeter: Vol I to 1898, Cardiff 1977, 5. 13 W. N. Yates, ‘An Opportunity Missed? The Provision of Education and Training for a NonGraduate Clergy: Comparative Case Studies of the Dioceses of St David’s and Sodor and Man in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiendenis, lxxxiii (2004), 319–29. 14 Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century, ed. W. D. Callaghan and D. Higgs, Cambridge 1979, 2–3. 15 T. Tackett, Parish and Priest in Eighteenth-Century France, Princeton 1977, 56–7. 16 J. McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, 2 vols, Oxford 1998, i, 323–4; T. J. A. Le Goff, Vannes and its Region: A Study of Town and Country in EighteenthCentury France, Oxford 1981, 250–1.

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Table 8.1. Comparison between the social origins of ordinands in the diocese of Vannes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Sons of:

Late 18c.

Farm labourers Artisans Sailors Merchants Professionals Farmers

53 5 5 22 17 —

total sample

102

(%)

Early 19c.

(%)

(52.0) (4.9) (4.9) (21.6) (16.6)

— 64 15 27 21 291

(15.3) (3.6) (6.5) (5.0) (69.6)

418

Source: C. Langlois, Le Dioce`se de Vannes au XIXe Sie`cle, 1800–1830, Rennes 1974, 317–18.

backgrounds of ordinands in the diocese of Vannes, the farm labourer parentage of the pre-revolution era being replaced by that of small farmers or urban artisans, now very analogous with the situation in Ireland, though with a somewhat lower proportion of sons from the merchant and professional classes. Another respect in which the Roman Catholic clergy of Brittany compared with their counterparts in Ireland was in their local origins. In the diocese of Vannes in 1781–9 only 4% of the ordinands at the diocesan seminary came from outside the diocese. In 1770 81% of rectors in the diocese were local men and this figure had risen to 89% by 1789. In the neighbouring dioceses of Dol, Rennes, and St Malo the figure for outsiders among the clergy was slightly higher at 25%, but the majority of these came from other parts of Brittany. In the diocese of Vannes, as in many parts of Ireland, the majority of clergy were recruited from the rural parts of the diocese, the number of rectors from such backgrounds rising from 63% of the total in 1770 to 71% by 1789.17 The difficulties which a reforming Roman Catholic episcopate in Ireland encountered in relation to aspects of popular piety and superstition, and in respect of attendance at mass and the sacraments, were also replicated in other parts of Catholic Europe. Detailed analysis of communicant statistics for the Breton diocese of Nantes shows that the neglect of the sacraments by the laity was as much a matter for concern in parts of France as it was in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century. Worse still, as the figures in Table 8.2 show, the efforts of reforming bishops had, in some parishes, resulted in no increase, but in fact a decline, in the numbers of communicants expressed as a proportion of the population. As in Ireland, there was frequently a significant variation in the numbers of communicants between one parish and 17 J. McManners, Church and Society, i, 321, ii, 115; Le Goff, Vannes, 252, 254.


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Table 8.2. Comparison of population and communicant figures in selected parishes in the diocese of Nantes 1824–44 Parish

Year

Les Touches

1824 1844 1836 1841–4 1824 1842–4 1824 1841–4 1824 1841–4 1844 1824 1842–4

Lusanger Moisdon-la-Rivie`re Nort Nozay Petit Mars St Julien-de-Vouvantes

Inhabitants 1,802 1,808 750 1,051 2,137 2,305 4,409 5,561 2,216 3,002 1,355 1,563 1,701

Communicants

(%)

1,200 1,100–1,200 500 800 1,200 1,900 4,000 2,500 1,400 1,500 700–800 1,300 1,300

(66.6) (63.6) (66.7) (76.1) (56.2) (82.4) (90.7) (45.0) (63.2) (50.0) (55.4) (83.2) (76.4)

Source: M. Faugeras, Le Dioce`se de Nantes sous La Monarchie Censitaire (1813–1822–1849), 2 vols, Fontenayle-Comte 1964, ii, 244–5.

another in a fairly small geographical area. Within the diocese of Nantes, communicant rates in the arrondissement of Ancenis varied from 76.6% to 30.9% with 8 out of 26 parishes recording communicant rates of higher than 70%. In the arrondissements of Chateaubriant and Paimboeuf the variation was still considerable though there was a lower margin of difference between parishes with the highest and those with the lowest proportion of communicants: from 81.3% to 47.7% with 12 out of 26 parishes recording communicant rates of more than 70% at Chateaubriant; from 92.2% to 54.3% with 4 out of 17 parishes recording communicant rates of more than 70% at Paimboeuf.18 Superstition and dubious forms of popular piety were as widespread across Catholic Europe as they were in Ireland. In the French diocese of Gap the parochial clergy struggled to suppress ‘profane celebrations’ that took place on the feast day of the parish’s patron saint or pilgrimages to local springs to revive children who had died before baptism.19 In the Breton parish of St Aubin-d’Aubigne two-thirds of children were baptized on the same day that they were born. Women who had given birth were not received back into society until they had attended a special mass to give thanks for their safe delivery. In the Montfort area of the diocese of Rennes it was the custom for

18 M. Faugeras, Le Dioce`se de Nantes sous La Monarchie Censitaire (1813–1822–1849), 2 vols, Fontenay-Le-Comte 1964, ii, 437–52. 19 Tackett, Parish and Priest, 210–15.

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the foetus of women who had died during childbirth to be removed by hysterectomy and baptized, with the full cooperation, in this case, of the local clergy. The cults associated with statues and holy wells remained as strong as ever, especially during periods of crisis, such as the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834. Unusual local customs, such as the presence of animals at mass on the patronal feast at St Nicode`me-du-Bran, were continued despite the disapproval of reform-minded clergy.20 The survival of popular superstitions were not, however, confined to Catholic Europe and Ireland. In those parts of Celtic Britain in which, unlike Ireland, the Reformation had triumphed, popular superstition had survived. In both Wales and the Isle of Man Anglican bishops complained of the survival of ‘reliques of popish superstition’ such as prayers for the departed at the graveside, the ringing of bells before corpses, prayer stations during funeral processions, the cults associated with holy wells, and strong beliefs in charms and fairy doctors, which survived well into the nineteenth century.21 Even in the most strongly Presbyterian parts of Scotland popular superstitions proved extremely difficult to suppress. In his statistical account of the Orkney parishes of South Ronaldsay and Burray in 1799, the minister, James Watson, drew attention to the fact that: within these last seven years, the minister has been twice interrupted in administering baptism to a female child, before the male child, who was baptized immediately after. When the service was over, he was gravely told, that he had done very wrong, for as the female child was first baptized, she would, on her coming to the years of discretion, most certainly have a strong beard, and the boy would have none. No couple chuses to marry except with a growing moon, and some even wait for a strong tide. The existence of fairies and witches is seriously believed by some, who, in order to protect themselves from their attacks, draw imaginary circles, and place knives in the walls of houses. The worst consequence of this superstitious belief is, when a person loses a horse or cow, it sometimes happens that a poor woman in the neighbourhood is blamed, and knocked in some part of the head, above the breath, until the blood appears.22

The survival of superstition was clearly linked in many areas to the difficulties of providing for the education of the people. It is not therefore without significance that the united charge of South Ronaldsay and Burray, with a total population of 1,954 had no parochial school and the minister recommended

20 Histoire des Dioce`ses de France: Rennes, ed. J. Delumeau, Paris 1979, 200–4. 21 A. W. Moore, Diocesan Histories: Sodor and Man, London 1893, 97–8, 174; D. Craine, Manannan’s Isle, Douglas 1955, 28; Religion and Society in England and Wales, 1689–1800, ed. W. Gibson, Leicester 1998, 141–2; F. Jones, The Holy Wells of Wales, Cardiff 1954, 63–87. 22 Quoted in S. D. B. Picken, The Soul of an Orkney Parish, Kirkwall 1972, 57.


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‘that there be two schools erected in South Ronaldsay, and one in Burray’, to complement the three churches in the charge.23 Attention has been drawn in Chapters 3 to 5 to the remarkably similar aims and objectives of the leaders of all the churches in Ireland to implement programmes of ecclesiastical reform during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and indeed to the many areas of common ground between them such as the encouragement of more services, preaching, catechizing, and frequent communion, the strengthening of personal discipline and the provision of education as a means of improving religious knowledge. These reform programmes were paralleled throughout the rest of the British Isles and much of Europe in this period. Archdeacon Philpot’s visitation of the archdeaconry of Man in 1833 revealed an established church in good shape after more than a century of ecclesiastical reform that had begun in the long episcopate of Bishop Thomas Wilson (1698–1755). All but two of the island’s parishes and chapelries had parsonage houses. That at Andreas was undergoing repair, those at Lezayre, Malew, and Maughold had recently been rebuilt or improved, and a house for the chaplain had been ‘lately erected’ at St Mark’s. Whilst the unimproved vicarage at Marown was ‘built of stone and mud mortar eight yards long and fourteen feet wide, one storey high and covered with straw thatch’, the new house at Malew comprised a drawing room, sitting room, two kitchens and pantries, five bedrooms, and three attic rooms; there was also a combined stable and cowhouse, with a loft over, sufficient to provide accommodation for two horses and three cows, since most Manx clergy farmed their own glebes and some farmed additional land as well.24 Most of the town churches in the island had some weekday services; there were sermons on Thursday mornings at St George’s, Douglas, on Wednesday evenings at Castletown, on Thursday evenings at Ramsey, and on Friday evenings at St Barnabas’, Douglas. Even some of the rural churches had services on days other than Sundays and Christmas Day, the norm in many parts of the Church of Ireland: on Wednesday evenings at Andreas and Ballaugh; on holy days and on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent at Arbory; and ‘on Fast and a few Festival Days’ at Michael. There was a monthly communion service at all three chapels in Douglas, and also in the town churches at Castletown, German (Peel), and Ramsey. The rural churches had between four and eight celebrations a year; at Andreas the eight celebrations comprised four in English and four in Manx.25 Although Bishop Wilson had strongly encouraged his clergy to catechize regularly, since ‘without a great 23 Ibid., 54–5, 58. 24 MNHL, Ms 794C; Craine, Manannan’s Isle, 119–21. 25 MNHL, Ms 794C.

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deal of pains in Catechising, your sermons will be of little use’,26 his advice had not been heeded and relatively few churches had maintained weekly catechizing throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Sunday schools had, however, been established everywhere in the island by 1833. The first had been established by Hugh Stowell, vicar of Lonan in 1808, and some of the more scattered rural parishes had set up Sunday schools in each hamlet. At Lezayre the vicar reported that ‘we had lately a Sunday School but in consequence of a few good teachers having left the parish who regularly attended the same it is discontinued but I hope in April next it will be open again.’27 The established church in Wales was fortunate, during the period between 1780 and 1830, to have a series of reforming bishops who had a considerable impact on their respective dioceses: Samuel Horsley at St David’s (1788–93) and St Asaph (1802–6); William Cleaver at Bangor (1800–6) and St Asaph (1806–15); Henry William Majendie (1809–30) at Bangor; Richard Watson (1782–1816) at Llandaff, and Thomas Burgess (1803–25) at St David’s. Horsley at St David’s personally examined all candidates for ordination, maintained strict discipline over clerical appointments, issued instructions for the proper observance of holy days and encouraged the holding of monthly celebrations of Holy Communion.28 Cleaver at St Asaph commissioned the drawing up of a detailed survey of the diocese in 1807 and used this as a means of implementing his reform programme. He insisted that curates to non-resident incumbents should receive adequate stipends. In some areas, even in 1807, the diocese was clearly meeting the aspirations of a reforming bishop. Of the 119 parishes wholly within Wales (the diocese included some parishes in Cheshire and Shropshire), 39 had schools, 63 had charitable benefactions, and 4 had parochial libraries.29 In 1812 Cleaver issued a circular letter encouraging his clergy to use the formation of the National Society for Education in the previous year as a means of increasing the number of schools in the diocese, though the surviving replies from the incumbents of Machynlleth and Mold suggested that his clergy may have been less enthusiastic than their bishop.30 Bishop Warren of Bangor advised his clergy to preach and catechize regularly, to visit the sick and to be of ‘sober and unblemished life . . . It is not sufficient for a Preacher of Righteousness to avoid open and scandalous sins; but he ought to be an example to others in all those excellent 26 MNHL, MD 436, folder 2/4. 27 MNHL, 794C; Gelling, Manx Church, 49, 240. 28 F. C. Mather, High Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733–1806) and the Caroline Tradition in the Late Georgian Church, Oxford 1992, 163–77. 29 NLW, SA/MB/20. 30 NLW, SA/Let/312 and 315.


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virtues.’ He also enforced clerical residence, pointing out to his clergy that licences for non-residence were ‘not granted, as a favour to any person, but . . . can . . . only be justified, when the Service, of the church, or of the state, makes it reasonable’.31 His successor, Henry William Majendie, has been shown in a recent study to have been a model reforming bishop of the period.32 Bishop Watson of Llandaff was another promoter of clerical residence and advocated the redistribution of cathedral endowments, a generation before such reforms were eventually implemented, to provide better incomes for the parochial clergy and reduce the need for holding benefices in plurality. Though himself non-resident in his diocese, which had no episcopal palace, he carried out nine full visitations and more frequent confirmation tours during his long episcopate.33 The bishop of this period who arguably had the most long-lasting impact in Wales was Thomas Burgess of St David’s. In his primary charge he stated that his priorities for the diocese were to be the distribution of bibles and prayer books in English and Welsh to the poor, the establishment of libraries for use by the clergy, better education for ordinands, the building of schools, and the encouragement of Sunday schools.34 In the same year he announced his intention of founding a college for the training of ordinands and by the end of 1804 over £1,000 had been raised for this foundation. Although a speedy start had been made on raising funds for the new college, further progress was slow. By 1820 only £13,000 had been raised but the offer of a site in Lampeter made construction possible. The foundation stone was laid in 1822 and the first students admitted in 1827. The total cost was £22,500.35 In due course Lampeter was to make an impact on clerical education for the established church in Wales similar to that which Maynooth had made on clerical education for the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland a generation earlier. Reform programmes analogous to those of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland were being undertaken by the bishops of the post-revolutionary Roman Catholic Church in France. The reorganized diocese of Rennes, which incorporated the pre-revolutionary dioceses of Dol and St Malo, witnessed, after the disruptions of the 1790s, a period of ecclesiastical 31 J. Warren, The Duties of the Parochial Clergy of the Church of England Considered, in a Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Bangor, London 1785, 5–15. 32 P. G. Yates, ‘Neglect or Reform? The Diocese of Bangor under Bishop Henry William Majendie 1809–17’, Lampeter, Wales, MTh 2003. 33 T. J. Brain, ‘Some Aspects of the Life and Works of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, 1737 to 1816’, Aberystwyth, Wales, PhD 1982, 152–92. 34 T. Burgess, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of St David’s in the Year 1804, Durham 1805, 26. 35 D. T. W. Price, Bishop Burgess and Lampeter College, Cardiff 1987, 24–57, 64–71.

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consolidation and reform. Between 1803 and 1848 a total of 62 new parishes were formed in the united diocese compared with only two during the whole of the eighteenth century. Between 1807 and 1848 the number of assistant clergy increased from 162 to 421, thus ensuring that every parish had at least two priests and that there were therefore at least two masses every Sunday. Former retreat houses were reopened at Bećherd in 1814, Vitre´ in 1819 and Rennes in 1825, and new ones established at St Servan in 1823, Fouge`res in 1825, and Redon in 1828. The main agents of ecclesiastical reform were the younger clergy who took an almost evangelical attitude to ‘improper’ secular entertainment such as dancing, and enjoined the solemn observance of Sundays, warning parishioners travelling some distance to church that they should not adjourn to a local hostelry between mass and vespers.36 In the diocese of Nantes there was a sustained campaign for building new presbyteries during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Statistics for one group of 208 parishes in 1816 showed that 67 had presbyteries which had been retained during the revolutionary period, 51 had presbyteries that had been acquired or recovered since the revolution, and 90 still lacked houses for the clergy. A survey of a different group of 141 parishes in 1819 showed 89 with presbyteries, of which 20 were new buildings, 32 with presbyteries planned, and only 20 in which a presbytery was not yet being planned.37 A major aspect of the ecclesiastical reform programme in Ireland, noted in Chapter 6, had been the building of new churches and the refurbishment of existing ones, with all the main religious groups acquiring new or refurbished buildings in this period. Comparable developments can be detected in other parts of Britain and Europe. In the diocese of Nantes the campaign for the building or acquisition of presbyteries was matched by one for the rebuilding or restoration of churches, many of which had been damaged as a result of the French Revolution and its aftermath. Before 1850 work was completed on seventy churches in the diocese of which forty-two were complete rebuildings and twenty-eight more modest restorations. The total cost of building a new church for the 1,800 inhabitants of St Nicolas-de-Redon in 1847–50 was 70,500 francs. The state contributed 14,000 francs, the parish priest 1,250; a further 15,600 francs was raised by subscriptions and collections and the rest came from the sale of church property and of annuities.38 In the western highlands and islands of Scotland there was a severe shortage of churches and many parishes were vast in extent, some including islands with no separate ecclesiastical provision for their inhabitants. When Samuel 36 Delumeau, Rennes, 182–3, 191, 193–4, 197. 37 Faugeras, Nantes, i, 71. 38 Ibid., ii, 318–19.


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Johnson and James Boswell visited this area in 1773 they noted that Iona had neither church nor school and knew ‘not if they were visited by any Minister’. At Coll there was a resident minister but no church and services were held in a room of his single-storey house. The island of Raasay had no church but was served by the minister of Portree on Skye ‘every third Sunday . . . and even this parsimonious distribution is at the mercy of the weather; and in those Islands where the Minister does not reside, it is impossible to tell how many weeks or months may pass without any publick exercise of religion’.39 The parish of Barvas in Lewis was so large, and there were so few roads, that the minister noted that ‘it was extremely difficult and dangerous for the more remote parishioners to attempt to travel to the parish church’. There were recorded cases of parishioners being drowned attempting to cross swollen rivers. The minister of the Small Isles parish officiated, weather permitting, once a month on Muck, once a quarter on Canna and on the remaining Sundays on Eigg, where the parish church was located.40 In the north of Sweden, where there were comparable difficulties in respect of large parishes and few roads, provision was made for parishioners travelling a considerable distance to church to stay overnight in wooden houses surrounding the church and known as Kyrkstaden.41 In Scotland the eventual solution was the building of new churches and the creation of new quoad sacra parishes. Following the establishment of the Church Building Commission in England and Wales in 1818, the British government indicated its willingness to consider funding church extension in Scotland and in 1824 an Act for Building Additional Places of Worship in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland received the royal assent and a fund of £50,000 made available to fund the new churches. Some forty-three sites were identified on which a total of forty-one manses and thirty-two new churches were built. Seven of these churches were in Argyll and Bute, three in Caithness, eight in Inverness-shire, five in Ross and Cromarty, one in Shetland, and four in the Western Isles. They were designed to a more or less standard plan by William Thomson, under the overall direction of Thomas Telford, and were capable of providing between 250 and 312 sittings at a cost of £600, but with the possibility of providing three lofts containing an additional 180 sittings at an additional cost of £348. Originally these new churches were all chapels-of-ease in existing parishes, lacking either separate kirk sessions or the right of their ministers and elders to be members of the presbytery in which they were situated. To 39 S. Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, London 1775, 246. 40 D. Ansdell, The People of the Great Faith: The Highland Church 1690–1900, Stornoway 1998, 22–3. ¨ vre Norrland’, Bebyggelsehistorisk 41 E. Vikstro¨m, ‘Sockenkyrkor och Ta¨tortsbildning i O Tidskrift, xxii (1991), 21–5.

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rectify this anomaly the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland decided that each of the new chapels-of-ease should be assigned a quoad sacra parish and the necessary legislation was passed through Parliament. However, poor drafting led to it being challenged in the courts by heritors objecting to the division of existing parishes and the Scottish Court of Session ruled that the new parishes had no validity. This debacle, and the failure of the General Assembly to secure parliamentary funding for further church-building in Scotland, were major factors in the disruption of 1843 when a significant number of ministers and lay people left the Church of Scotland to set up the Free Church.42 In Wales, where the main problem for bishops was not a shortage of churches but lack of resources to maintain them properly, bishops used their rural deans, as they did in Ireland, to report to them regularly on matters of concern. The rural dean of Dewisland explained his practice in relation to the inspection of churches to Bishop Murray of St David’s in 1802: the method which, after some experience in the practice of my duty as Rural Dean, I have adopted, is, after making out the Report prior to the Lord Bishop’s Visitation, to take down all the deficiencies and to send them to the churchwardens respectively, requiring them to put all things in order before the Visitation; and, in the subsequent years, to set down such deficiencies only as appear to me to be most prominent, so that by doing a little every year . . . the expence may not be so heavily felt as if it was done at once. And indeed were they to do a little every year, in the course of a few years a great change for the better would take place.43

Such attention to detail was clearly effective. In the rural deanery of Llandeilo in 1811 the rural dean reported that the church at Llanllwni ‘is now undergoing a thorough repair’ and that at Llanegwad ‘the floor . . . has been flagged’. All the other churches in the deanery were in good condition except Llanfynydd, where ‘the Parishioners are repairing the roof and new seating’ the nave, ‘but the chancel’, which was the responsibility of the vicar, ‘is in as bad a state as it possibly can be, and no preparation making for its repair’.44 A similar report on the rural deanery of Gower in 1821 showed that out of twenty-four churches all except that at Ilston, where the chancel was in need of repair, were in good condition. The church at Llansamlet had been ‘lately rebuilt and the chancel receiving complete repair’, that at Port Eynon was ‘to be 42 See A. Maclean, Telford’s Highland Churches, Inverness 1989; I. F. McIver, ‘Unfinished Business? The Highland Churches Scheme and the Government of Scotland 1818–35’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, xxv (1995), 376–99; S. J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland, Oxford 1982, 212–13, 234, 242–71, 276–7; The National Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland 1801–46, Oxford 2001, 73, 191–7, 217–27. 43 NLW, SD/Let/1211. 44 UWL, H/1/1(7).


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painted immediately’ and that at Llanmadog was ‘receiving improvements by enlarging the windows’.45 A similar campaign for the improvement of church buildings had been begun in the Isle of Man by Bishop Thomas Wilson at the end of the seventeenth century and it concluded during the episcopate of William Ward (1828–38) with a massive programme of church extension, clearly influenced by both the work of the Board of First Fruits in Ireland and that of the Church Building Commission in England and Wales. During his primary visitation of 1757 Bishop Mark Hildesley carried out a meticulous inspection of the island’s churches and issued instructions for the carrying out of necessary repairs. This included, sixty years before Bishop Mant was issuing similar directives as bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora, a requirement that the seats in the island’s churches be fitted with kneeling boards.46 Between Hildesley’s visitation in 1757 and the translation of Bishop Short to St Asaph in 1846, no fewer than thirteen of the island’s seventeen parish churches and four chapelries were either rebuilt or extensively refurbished and a total of nine new churches built, as shown in Table 8.3, of which the churches and chapels at Braddan, Dalby, Malew, St Jude’s, and Santan retain substantially unaltered interiors. Work must also have been carried out at Marown in the early part of the nineteenth century, though it has not been recorded, as the old parish church, replaced by a new building in 1849–53, retains furnishings which appear to date from then. It was a programme comparable to that being undertaken in the Church of Ireland at the same time. The programme of ecclesiastical reform in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was thus replicated in other parts of the British Isles and mainland Europe. In drawing on these comparative examples I have concentrated on those areas—Brittany, the Isle of Man, the western highlands and islands of Scotland, and Wales—which share a number of common characteristics, culturally and linguistically, with Ireland, but there is no doubt that similar comparisons could be drawn over a much wider area of Europe, and work is currently in hand to reveal precisely many of the innovational cross-currents within the European national churches in this period.47 However, the knowledge that developments in Ireland were not unique does not alter the fact that they were profound or that they undermine 45 NLW, SD/Misc/297. 46 MNHL, Ms 791C. 47 See the essays in Bishop Burgess and His World: Culture, Religion and Society in Britain, Europe and North America in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. W. N. Yates, to be published by the University of Wales Press, and the ongoing work of the ‘Church, State and

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Table 8.3. New churches built and existing churches rebuilt or refurbished in the Isle of Man between 1757 and 1846 Parish/chapelry

Building details

Andreas Arbory Baldwin Ballaugh Braddan Castletown Dalby Douglas, St Barnabas Douglas, St George Jurby Lezayre Lonan Malew Michael

Church rebuilt and consecrated 1821 Church rebuilt and consecrated 1759 New chapel consecrated 1836 Replacement church consecrated 1832 Church rebuilt 1773–4 Chapel rebuilt 1824–6 New chapel consecrated 1839 New chapel consecrated 1832 New chapel consecrated 1781 Church rebuilt and consecrated 1813 Church rebuilt and consecrated 1835 Church rebuilt and consecrated 1835 Church enlarged and refurbished 1780–2 Chancel rebuilt 1776; whole church rebuilt and consecrated 1833 Replacement church for Ballure chapel consecrated 1822; enlarged 1844–8 Church enlarged 1775 Chapel rebuilt 1792–8 New chapel consecrated 1841 New chapel consecrated 1772 Church rebuilt 1774; reseated c.1796–7 New chapel consecrated 1839

Ramsey Rushen St John’s St Jude’s St Mark’s Santan Sulby

Source: MNHL, MD 492, Typescript by L. D. Butler entitled ‘Architectural History of the Churches of the Isle of Man, 1970’.

some of the widely-held conceptions about the nature of Irish Christianity in the early nineteenth century. The view that the Church of Ireland had to be forcibly reformed by parliamentary action in the 1830s cannot be sustained. The evidence from diocesan records and episcopal correspondence shows very clearly that an episcopally-led reform programme was underway in the Irish dioceses by the last quarter of the eighteenth century and that, in some respects, it was a programme that set the benchmarks for reform in the United Church of England and Ireland after 1801. Episcopal opposition to the government-led reforms of the Irish church in the 1830s was not based on ecclesiastical conservatism but on political issues, and a belief that the reforms proposed concessions to Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters

Ecclesiastical Reform 1780–1920’ project, directed from the University of Wales, Lampeter, but involving collaborators from several British and European Universities.


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designed to undermine the established church.48 Similarly the view that the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was largely the work of Cardinal Cullen after 1850 can also no longer be sustained. The work of Sean Connolly, Donal Kerr, and others, and the additional evidence cited in this book, shows only too clearly that the process of reform within the Irish Roman Catholic Church was also well underway by the last quarter of the eighteenth century and that much that Cullen was credited with by scholars such as Emmet Larkin was no more than a consolidation of the initiatives of his predecessors. Even the ‘ultramontanization’ of the church attributed to Cullen had begun in the 1830s and 1840s, led by bishops like MacHale and Slattery, and was tied up, like the Church of Ireland response to government reforms, with largely political issues emanating from the Catholic emancipation campaign of the 1820s, and the government-led educational initiatives of the following decades. The interplay between the Catholic and Protestant reform programmes, and the fact that in many respects they complemented one another, is a theme which has been to a large extent overlooked by historians of religion in Ireland, and it is one which I have tried to emphasize at various points in this study. There is no doubt that a major factor in the religious development of Ireland in the second quarter of the nineteenth century was the impact of the Evangelical revival on its Protestant churches, and the implications of this for relations between Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church. Irish Evangelicalism was the local manifestation of a movement that had swept through the whole of Protestant Europe from the late seventeenth century, but which had taken the best part of a century to have much impact in Ireland, despite the activities of Moravians and Methodists in the middle years of the eighteenth century. The success of Evangelicalism within the Protestant churches of Ireland by the 1820s has to be set in the context of similar Evangelical successes elsewhere along the western fringes of the British Isles, in Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the western highlands and islands of Scotland. In the first three of these areas the catalyst was, as it was in Ireland, Methodism. In Cornwall and Wales this had resulted in massive secessions from the established church, though the formal divisions between the Anglican establishment and Methodism as a separate denomination are more complicated than this, by the early years of the nineteenth century. In Cornwall the principal beneficiaries were the Wesleyan Methodists, which had 41.4% of 48 For a survey of the tensions between church and state over ecclesiastical reform in this period see W. N. Yates, ‘The Administrative Reform of Established Churches in Britain and Ireland during the Nineteenth Century: The Respective Roles of Church and State’, Jahrbuch fu¨r Europaı¨sche Verwaltungsgeschichte, xiv (2002), 171–97.

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the attendances at religious worship returned in the census of 1851, but there were also significant numbers of Bible Christians (13.7%) and the Methodist splinter groups (10.2%). Of those attending services in Cornish places of worship in 1851, only 28.2% were doing so in those of the established Church of England.49 A similar collapse in Anglican attendances had taken place in Wales, but here the principal beneficiary was the Presbyterian Church of Wales, formed when the Calvinistic Methodists decided to ordain their own ministers in 1811. In those parts of Wales where the Calvinistic Methodists had been most successful, the Welsh-speaking districts along the western coastline, Anglican attendances dropped to below 10% of the churchgoing population in some registration districts.50 The Evangelical revival in south and west Wales, which had led to these massive secessions from the established church, had begun in the 1730s under the leadership of Howell Harris, Daniel Rowland, and the hymn-writer William Williams Pantycelyn, the last two being in Anglican orders and the first having been refused Anglican orders by a bishop suspicious of his orthodoxy. The leader of the North Wales Calvinistic Methodists, Thomas Charles, another clergyman of the established church, was converted by Rowland in the 1770s.51 There was much heart-searching among the leaders before they took the decision to ordain their own ministers but the determining factors were the hostility of some of the bishops and many of the non-Evangelical clergy to meetings in separate chapels and the use of lay preachers, and the declining number of Anglican clergy willing to celebrate communion services in these chapels. The attitude of substantial sections of the established church in Wales to Calvinistic Methodism was well summed up in the charges of Bishop Horsley, ‘The crime and folly of the Methodists consists, not so much in heterodoxy, as in fanaticism; not in perverse doctrine, but rather in a disorderly zeal for the propagation of the Truth’.52 Whilst they were, on the whole, ‘pious, well-meaning people’, they manifested a ‘schismatical spirit’ and were ‘unremitting in their attempts to 49 B. Coleman, ‘The Nineteenth Century: Nonconformity’, in Unity and Variety: A History of the Church in Devon and Cornwall, ed. N. I. Orme, Exeter 1991, 129–55. The statistics are calculated from the raw figures published on p. 138. 50 The full returns are published in The Religious Census of 1851: A Calendar of the Returns Relating to Wales, ed. I. G. Jones and D. Williams, 2 vols, Cardiff 1976–81. 51 The Welsh Evangelical revival has generated a substantial literature, much of it in Welsh and most of it rather hagiographical in character. For a general overview see D. L. Morgan, The Great Awakening in Wales, London 1988. There are also modern biographies of Harris and Rowland: G. Tudur, Howell Harris: From Conversion to Separation, 1735–1750, Cardiff 2000, and E. Evans, Daniel Rowland and the Great Evangelical Awakening in Wales, Edinburgh 1985. 52 S. Horsley, The Charge . . . to the Clergy of His Diocese . . . Delivered in the Year 1790, London 1792, 30.


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alienate the minds of the Laity from their proper pastors, the regular clergy’.53 Some were even less charitable. The curate of the Anglesey parish of Amlwch, an area where Calvinistic Methodism was exceptionally strong, stated that ‘I am thoroughly convinced it is used as a cloak to hide every vice which can disgrace the Christian character’. The rector of another Anglesey parish, Llanddeusant, opined that the chapel in his parish was attended by ‘people of low rank and mean capacities . . . the Preachers as I am informed are of the Lowest order of the People such as Shoemakers, Smiths &c, &c; it is said that clergymen regularly ordained come there sometimes . . . to preach’.54 On the Isle of Man Methodist activity had begun in the 1770s when Bishop Richmond made strenuous efforts to stamp out what he described as ‘unordained, unauthorised and unqualified’ preaching. Although Methodism survived this attempt at its suppression, and drew support from both clergy and laity in the island, it remained a movement within the established church for much of the first half of the nineteenth century. Some clergy were clearly concerned about the impact of Methodism on their congregations and noted them in their replies to Archdeacon Philpot’s visitation queries in 1833. At Andreas it was noted that parents were ‘very remiss’ in sending their children to Sunday school in the parish church ‘preferring in general the Methodist meeting houses, where reading and writing are taught’. At Patrick the parish church was so far from the main hamlets of Dalby and Foxdale that ‘the population attend the Methodist chapels . . . The people are very demoralized, and the Wardens seldom attend their parish church, those who are religious go to a preaching.’ Other clergy continued to support the Methodists and in the 1840s Bishop Short was obliged to remonstrate with one of his clergy ‘who rented a seat in the chapel in his own parish, and was in the habit of attending evening service there’. It was, however, also clear from the 1833 visitation returns that some of the Manx clergy were committed Evangelicals. Robert Brown at Braddan described the majority of his communicants as ‘truly converted persons’, declined to present any of his parishioners guilty of moral lapses to the ecclesiastical court on the grounds that ‘no other than spiritual weapons . . . will ever be found mighty . . . to the pulling down of . . . the strongholds of Satan’, and had accepted a gift of 104 books of decidedly Evangelical character to augment his parochial library: The parishioners have access to the Library and discover much fondness for reading and the Books bestowed by Miss Harrison these being not only newer to the People but of a much more spiritual and edifying character than the works of which the Library consisted previously. 53 Id., A Charge to the Clergy . . . of St Asaph, London 1806, 21, 24. 54 NLW, B/QA/14.

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These were mostly high-church devotional works given by Bishop Wilson as part of his initiative in establishing parochial libraries throughout the island. The same Evangelical benefactor who had given books to Braddan also augmented the libraries at Castletown and Lonan.55 In the western highlands and islands of Scotland, where the presbyterian post-1690 Church of Scotland had struggled to establish itself in the early eighteenth century, the impact of Evangelicalism during the second half of that century was considerable and in marked contrast to the much more limited impact of Evangelicalism on the lowland parishes in which the bulk of the Scottish population lived. It was these tensions that were to lead to the disruption of 1843 and the success of the Free Church of Scotland throughout much of the highlands and islands thereafter. The first of many Evangelical revivals in this area took place at Croy, on the borders of Inverness and Nairn, in 1766–71. It was followed by revivals at Tongue (Sutherland) in 1773, Ardclach (Nairn) in 1776, Kilbrandon and Kilchattan (Argyll) in 1786, Skye in 1806–12, and Lewis in 1824. One of the results of the revival was to put pressure on the heritors to establish schools and by 1803 only two parishes in the western highlands and islands, Barra and Lochs, both in the Western Isles, were still without schools. Some of these were similar to the charter schools in Ireland, in that children were taught to sew or spin, but a stricter system of central control prevented the sort of exploitation that occurred in some of the Irish charter schools. By 1794–6 there were 94 of these schools, educating some 2,360 children, in which ‘literary, religious and technical training’ were combined. Evangelical initiatives also led to the establishment of Sunday schools, at Inverness and Tain (Easter Ross) by 1790, and at Kiltearn (Easter Ross) in 1798, with the result that by 1834 the five highland synods had a total of 334 Sunday schools. In the same year a meeting held at Fort William established a society ‘formed for the purpose of disseminating Christian Knowledge by means of Sabbath schools, Circulating Libraries and the dispersal of tracts’.56 The Evangelical revival encouraged both much stricter conditions being placed on admission to Holy Communion and the maintenance of traditional discipline by the kirk sessions. At Uig in Lewis, Alexander MacLeod reduced the communion roll from over 800 to 6, and at Bracadale in Skye, Roderick MacLeod reduced it from 150 in 1823 to 20 by 1840.57 Lachlan Mackenzie, minister of Lochcarron 55 Moore, Sodor and Man, 246–51, 271–3; MNHL, Ms 794C; J. P. Ferguson, The Parochial Libraries of Bishop Wilson, Douglas 1975. 56 MacInnes, Evangelical Movement, 161–6, 234–5, 251–2, 257–8. 57 Ansdell, Highland Church, 114–16. Comparison can be made with the similar impact on communicant numbers made by the second wave of pietism in Norway, see E. Molland, Church Life in Norway, Westport 1978, 45–6.


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(Wester Ross), deposed his schoolmaster for fornication in 1821, and in 1792 had been instrumental in revealing that the major landowner in Gairloch, Sir Hector Mackenzie ‘had lived in adultery with his maid Jean Urquhart for four years and had fathered three bastard children’. The minister of Gairloch, who had been bribed by ‘the donation of a mortcloth and cash in return for baptising the children and keeping quiet about the laird’s domestic arrangements’, was ordered by the presbytery to fine him £60. Lesser transgressors could be ordered by the kirk session to stand before the congregation for up to three Sundays, sometimes wearing sackcloth, and publicly acknowledge their sins before ‘being subjected to a ‘‘rant’’ from the minister’.58 An example of one of these penitents’ platforms survives, placed next to the pulpit, in the parish church of Duirinish in Skye, which was rebuilt in 1832.59 Ministers and lay people in Scotland who were not Evangelicals were termed ‘moderates’ and they were much criticized by Evangelicals for ‘neglecting their spiritual functions and pastoral duties’; they were, if Evangelical condemnations are to be accepted, ‘frequently regarded as being more worldly-minded than spiritually-minded and showed little concern for the eternal welfare of their parishioners’.60 Evangelical ministers had little regard for parochial boundaries and were not averse to preaching in parishes in which they thought the gospel was not being adequately proclaimed. John Macdonald, minister of Urquhart 1813–49, undertook preaching tours throughout the highlands and islands, including four visits to the remote island of St Kilda, and he also preached in Ireland.61 The cause of Evangelicalism in the highlands and islands of Scotland was not just promoted by Presbyterians. There were also Evangelical missions by Baptist and Congregationalist missionaries. They were responsible for the revival in Arran and Bute and in Breadalbane (Perthshire) from 1800, in Skye from 1805, and in Lewis in the 1820s. By 1850 there were also Baptist congregations on the islands of Colonsay, Islay, Mull, and Tiree, and Congregationalist ones on Islay and Tiree.62 In Orkney the failure of the Church of Scotland ministers to respond to the Evangelical revival led to the setting up of secessionist Presbyterian as well as Baptist, Congregationalist, and Wesleyan Methodist Congregations. A secessionist prayer society was established in Kirkwall by 1790 and a church opened in 1796. The first celebration of Holy Communion on 16 July attracted ‘hundreds of people from all over Orkney’, and led to the 58 C. G. Brown, Religion and Society, 72, 87. 59 D. Budge, The Parish Church of Duirinish, Dunvegan n.d., 5–6. 60 Ansdell, Highland Church, 47–8. 61 Ibid., 49–50. 62 D. E. Meek, ‘Evangelical Missionaries in the Early Nineteenth Century Highlands’, Scottish Studies, xxviii (1987), 1–34.

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Table 8.4. Church attendances in the northern highland and island counties of Scotland 1851 Caithness (%)

Orkney and Shetland (%)

Sutherland (%)

Presbyterians: Church of Scotland Reformed Presbyterians Original Secession Church United Presbyterians Free Church of Scotland

3.9 0.2 7.0 3.0 77.4

28.8 — 1.2 28.5 23.0

3.5 — — — 96.5

total

91.5

81.5

100.0

Non-Presbyterians: Independents Baptists Wesleyan Methodists

8.2 0.3 —

8.0 3.9 6.6

— — —

8.5

18.5

—

total

Source: British Parliamentary Papers: Population 11, Shannon 1970, pp. 517, 524, 528.

setting up of secessionist congregations in many Orkney parishes, including South Ronaldsay where a church was built and a congregation constituted in 1825–7.63 The strength of Evangelicalism in the western highlands and islands of Scotland meant that when the disruption took place in 1843, and most Evangelical-minded ministers and laity joined the Free Church of Scotland, the secessions in most highland and island parishes were enormous. In the Synod of Ross 75% of its ministers and the bulk of their congregations joined the Free Church; in the Synod of Sutherland and Caithness the figure was 65.5%.64 The statistics of the religious census of 1851 for the highland and island counties of Scotland, shown in Tables 8.4 and 8.5, reveal how much damage the schism had done to the established church which, before 1843, had attracted the support of at least three-quarters of the population in every area apart from Orkney and Shetland. A further boost was given to the Free Church by its response to famine, created by the failure of the potato crop in 1845 and 1846, which had as severe an impact on the western parts of Scotland as it had on Ireland. The Free Church was more successful than the Church of Scotland in organizing famine relief, and collected more than £15,000 for this purpose. The Free Church leader, Thomas Chalmers, contributed articles to the Witness and North British Review in 1847 in which he criticized what he considered to be the government’s laissez-faire response to 63 Brown, Religion and Society, 88–9; Picken, Orkney Parish, 88–90. 64 S. J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers, 335.


319

Table 8.5. Church attendances in the western highland and island counties of Scotland 1851 Argyll (%)

Inverness (%)

Ross and Cromarty (%)

Presbyterians: Church of Scotland Reformed Presbyterians United Presbyterians Free Church of Scotland

29.3 1.1 14.9 45.0

20.4 — 4.6 60.4

8.2 — 2.5 85.4

total

90.3

85.4

96.1

Non-Presbyterians: Independents Baptists Wesleyan Methodists Episcopalians Roman Catholics

5.2 1.4 — 1.5 1.6

1.1 2.8 0.4 2.2 8.1

3.1 0.2 — 0.6 —

9.7

14.6

3.9

total

Source: British Parliamentary Papers: Population 11, Shannon 1970, pp. 515, 522, 526.

the crisis.65 The impact of the disruption on the Scottish highlands and islands cannot be exaggerated: In many parts . . . the Church of Scotland was left with very small congregations confined largely to the large landowners, selected professional groups—especially parish schoolmasters—and employees of the landowners such as coachmen, grooms, keepers and ploughmen.

Its profile, in fact, in these parts of Scotland began to resemble that of the Church of Ireland in the south and west of Ireland. At Durness (Sutherland) there were 134 baptisms at the Free Church between 1843 and 1848 compared with hardly any at the parish church. Even some ministers who had earlier supported the clearance programme of the landowners despite the opposition of their congregations joined the Free Church.66 In Lewis only between 450 and 500 out of a population of 17,000 remained in the Church of Scotland and the majority of them lived in the town of Stornoway; in the rural parish of Lochs only one person remained in the Church of Scotland. There were, however, some variations in the secession rate. On Skye four-fifths of the parishioners of Snizort joined the Free Church but the parishes of Sleat and Strath retained Church of Scotland majorities. In the Synod of Argyll seventeen ministers joined the Free Church and thirty-five remained in the Church of Scotland; in the Synod of Glenelg the comparable figures were fourteen and 65 Ibid., 367–70. 66 P. L. M. Hills, ‘The Sociology of the Disruption’, in Scotland in the Age of the Disruption, ed. S. J. Brown and M. Fry, Edinburgh 1993, 45, 47–8.

320


twenty-six, but in the Synod of Ross twenty-two ministers joined the Free Church and only seven stayed in the Church of Scotland, and in the Synod of Sutherland and Caithness the comparable figures were nineteen and ten. Some of the Free Church congregations initially had difficulties in finding sites for new churches but only thirty-five had failed to do so by 1847. Some seceding ministers, forced to move out of their manses, were obliged to find their own, sometimes very poor quality, accommodation. The former minister of Kilmallie ‘kept his family in a hut that was only twelve feet square. An attempt was made to keep out the wind and rain by blankets.’67 The Evangelical revival was therefore as significant in much of the western part of the British Isles, and indeed in some other parts of England as well, as it was in Ireland and is another example of the need to set events in Ireland in a broader context. That having been said, it remains necessary to conclude with an assessment of what had occurred in terms of the religious condition of Ireland between 1770 and 1850. How much can be counted a success and how much a disappointment? For both contemporaries and subsequent historians the answer to this question will depend on the perspective from which the answer is given. There is little doubt that, from a pastoral perspective, all the main churches in Ireland were in better shape in 1850 than they had been in 1770, and there is also little doubt that much of this improvement had been achieved by their own efforts, through their own reform programmes. Some help was received from the state: by the Church of Ireland through the parliamentary grants to the Board of First Fruits; by the Roman Catholic Church through governmental support for the establishment and maintenance of the seminary at Maynooth; by the Presbyterian churches through increases and adjustments in the regium donum. But much of the credit for the pastoral reforms and for the extensive programme of church extension and renovation has to go to the leadership of these churches, especially to the bishops of the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church, who pursued remarkably consistent, and largely complementary, agendas in this period. The reform programme of the churches in Ireland was certainly comparable to those in other parts of Britain and Europe and, even from an objective viewpoint, could be regarded as a success. The impact of the Evangelical revival in Ireland was more mixed, as indeed it was in other areas of Evangelical success. From the point of view of the Evangelicals, their capture of the Synod of Ulster, and their increasing influence in the Church of Ireland, which reached its climax in the years following disestablishment after 1870, was a success. However, even Evangelicals would have had to acknowledge that the Second Reformation movement was not, in the long run, a 67 Ansdell, Highland Church, 63, 65, 76–7.


321

success. Conversions were short lived and made no long-term difference to the size of the Protestant minority in Ireland. They were also counter-productive in that, far from weakening the Roman Catholic Church, they helped to strengthen it. Many Roman Catholics would have undoubtedly felt that the events of 1820–50, and the triumphalism of the Cullen and post-Cullen eras, were great achievements for the Roman Catholic majority, capped by the final triumph of independence for most of Ireland after 1922. They regarded the political conservatism of bishops such as Doyle, Murray, and Troy as, in effect, a betrayal of the Roman Catholic cause in Ireland. There is, however, another side to this victory, for both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. It involved the loss of a more ecumenical phase in the religious history of Ireland, admittedly always fragile and likely to be blown off-course by events both political and religious, but nevertheless one which the moderates on both the Catholic and Protestant sides of the religious divide had welcomed. Was the growing marginalization of such figures and increasing sectarianism, in all the religious traditions within Ireland from the 1820s, really such a success? Or did the pre-Evangelical and pre-Ultramontanist strands of Protestantism and Catholicism have something positive to offer which was lost after 1850 for a century and more? Set in the wider context of religious developments in the modern world, events in Ireland between 1770 and 1850, and in particular the political and religious initiatives in the years after 1820, the inability to compromise and the retreat into the sectarian ghettos, may seem to fall into the category of disappointments and missed opportunities, and put a very different gloss on the successes claimed by some of the participants.

APPENDIX 1

Succession of Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Archbishops and Bishops in Ireland 1560–1850 Diocese

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Achonry

Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1603. No bishops 1603–22. Diocese united with Killala 1622. Bishops 1541–72 (not recognized by papacy), 1583–1601, and 1633–54, otherwise united with Kilmore until 1742 when united with Tuam. Reunited with Kilmore 1839. Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1583. No bishops 1583–8 and 1638–41. Diocese united with Limerick 1661. Protestant succession from 1563.

No bishops 1603–1707. Succession from 1707.

Ardagh

Ardfert (CI)/ Kerry (RC)

Armagh

Cashel

Clogher

Bishops 1541–72 (not recognized by crown) and 1576–87. No bishops 1587–1648 and 1669–1718. Succession from 1718. No bishops 1583–91, 1600–43, and 1650–1720. Succession from 1720.

Roman Catholic succession apart from short vacancies (1593–1601, 1652–8, and 1707–15) from 1560. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1561–7, papacy died in 1561. Protestant 1578–81, 1584–1603, and succession from 1567. Miler Magrath, 1654–69. RC bishop of Down and Connor Succession from 1669. 1565–80, accepted royal supremacy 1567 and appointed bishop of Clogher 1570 and archbishop of Cashel 1571–1622; also bishop of Waterford and Lismore 1582–9 and 1592–1607 and bishop of Killala and Achonry 1607–22. Bishops (not recognized by papacy) Bishops (not recognized by 1542–71. No bishops 1571–1605. crown) 1546–92. No George Montgomery, bishop 1605–21, bishops 1592–1609, also bishop of Derry and Raphoe 1611–43, 1650–71, 1605–10 and Meath 1612–21. 1689–1707, and 1715–27. Diocese united with Armagh 1850. Succession from 1727.

Archbishops and Bishops in Ireland 1560–1850

323

Diocese

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Clonfert

Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1580. Protestant succession from 1582. Diocese united with Killaloe 1834. Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1568. Diocese united with Meath 1569.

No bishops 1580–7, 1602–42, 1663–71, 1687–95, 1706–14, and 1715–18. Succession from 1718. Bishops 1648–57 and 1725–56 but Stephen McEgan also bishop of Meath 1729–56. Diocese united with Ardagh 1688–1725 and from 1756. Diocese united with Cork until 1747 and then with Ross. No bishops 1557–68, 1603–23, and 1662–76. Succession from 1676. No bishops 1601–1727. Succession from 1727.

Clonmacnois

Cloyne

Cork

Derry

Down and Connor

Dromore

Dublin

Elphin

Emly

Diocese united with Cork until 1638, 1661–78 and from 1835. Separate bishops 1638–52 and 1679–1835. Protestant succession from 1562.

Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1569. No bishops 1569–1605. United with Clogher 1605–10. Succession from 1611. Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1563. Protestant succession from 1569. Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1575. No bishops 1575–1607. United with Down and Connor 1607–12 and 1661–7. Bishops 1613–52 and 1667–1842 when reunited with Down and Connor. Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy translated to Oxford by former in 1567. Protestant succession from 1567. United with Clonfert until 1580. Protestant succession from 1582.

Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1562. Diocese united with Cashel 1569.

No bishops 1612–26, 1643–8, 1653–71, 1673–1717, and 1724–7. Succession from 1727. No bishops 1589–1648, 1662–97, and 1716–47. Succession from 1747.

No bishops 1567–1600 and 1651–69. Succession from 1669. Bishops (not recognized by crown) 1539–94. No bishops 1594–1626, 1650–71, and 1701–7. Succession from 1707. No bishops 1562–7, 1586–1623, and 1651–69 when diocese placed under administration of archbishop of Cashel. Two dioceses formally united 1718.

324


Diocese

Church of Ireland

Ferns

Last bishop recognized by crown and papacy died in 1566. Protestant succession from 1566.

Kildare

Kilfenora

Killala

Killaloe

Kilmacduagh

Kilmore

Leighlin

Limerick

Roman Catholic

No bishops 1566–82, 1587–1624, 1636–45, 1678– 83, and 1692–7. Succession from 1697. Protestant succession from 1560. Papacy recognized bishop deprived by crown in 1560 until his death in 1577. No bishops 1577–1629, 1644– 76, and 1707–15. Succession from 1715. Last bishops recognized by crown and No bishops 1572–1647 and papacy died in 1572. No bishops 1673–1726. Succession from 1572–1606. United with Limerick 1726. Diocese united with 1606–17. Bishops 1617–43. United Kilmacduagh 1750. with Tuam 1661–1741, Clonfert 1741–52, and Killaloe from 1752. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1583–1707. papacy translated to Derry by latter in Succession from 1707. 1569. Bishops 1592–1607. United with Cashel 1613–22. Bishops 1623– 45 and 1661–1834 when united with Tuam. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1616–30, 1651– papacy died in 1569. Protestant 72, and 1689–1713. succession from 1576. Succession from 1713. United with Tuam until 1572. Bishops No bishops 1572–6, 1610– 1573–82 and 1587–1625. Roland 47, 1656–1723, and 1732– Lynch, bishop 1587–1625 also bishop 44. Succession from 1744. of Clonfert 1602–25. Diocese united with Clonfert 1625. No bishops 1559–85 and 1589–1603. No bishops 1607–25 and Succession from 1604. Bishop 1669–1728. Succession from Sheridan deprived as non-juror in 1728. 1691. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1567–87, 1604– papacy died in 1567. Protestant 42, and 1661–78. Diocese succession from 1567. Diocese united administered by bishops of with Ferns 1597. Kildare from 1678 and two dioceses formally united 1694. Last bishop recognized by crown and Last bishop recognized by papacy deprived by former in 1571. crown and papacy died in Protestant succession from 1571. 1580. No bishops 1591– 1623, 1654–77, 1685–9, and 1702–20. Succession from 1720.


325

Diocese

Church of Ireland

Meath

Protestant succession from 1563 apart Papacy recognized bishop from union with Clogher in 1612–21. deprived by crown in 1560 until his death in 1577. No bishops 1577–1622, 1652–7, 1661–9, and 1692–1714. Succession from 1714. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1565–82, 1602– papacy died in 1565. Protestant 20, and 1650–69. Succession succession from 1567. from 1669. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1611–25 and papacy died in 1561. No bishops 1661–1725. Succession from 1561–1605. United with Clogher 1715. 1605–10. Succession from 1611. Diocese united with Derry 1834. No bishops 1559–82. William Lyon, No bishops 1587–1648 and bishop 1582–1617, also bishop of 1650–93. Diocese Cork 1583–1617. Diocese united with administered by bishop of Cork 1693–1747. Succession Cork 1617. from 1747 when diocese united with that of Cloyne. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1572–80, 1583– papacy died in 1572. Protestant 6, and 1595–1609. succession from 1572. Succession from 1609. Last bishop recognized by crown and No bishops 1578–1629, papacy died in 1578. No bishops 1652–71, and 1677–96. 1582–9 and 1592–1608. Succession Succession from 1696. from 1608. Diocese united with Cashel 1833.

Ossory

Raphoe

Ross

Tuam

Waterford and Lismore

Roman Catholic

Note: The new Roman Catholic diocese of Galway was established in 1831 and the Roman Catholic dioceses of Cloyne and Ross separated in 1850. Source: Handbook of British Chronology, ed. E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy, 3rd edn, London 1986, pp. 377–455.

APPENDIX 2

Church of Ireland Bishops and Archbishops Translated to or from English, Scottish, or Welsh Sees 1560–1850

Diocese

Diocesan

Translation and Date

Armagh

Hugh Boulter William Stuart Edward Jones William Nicolson Hugh Curwin William Murray John Maxwell

Trans. from Bristol 1724 Trans. from St David’s 1800 Trans. to St Asaph 1692 Trans. from Carlisle 1718 Trans. to Oxford 1567 Trans. to LlandaV 1627 Trans. from Ross (Scotland) 1641 Trans. to Bristol 1603 Trans. to Lincoln 1667 Trans. from Bangor 1716 Trans. from the Isles 1611 Trans. from the Isles 1633 Trans. to St David’s 1582

Cloyne Derry Dublin Kilfenora Killala Limerick Meath Raphoe Waterford and Lismore

John Thornburgh William Fuller John Evans Andrew Knox John Leslie Marmaduke Middleton

Note: James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, also held see of Carlisle in commendam 1642–56 and Alexander Cairncross, former archbishop of Glasgow, deprived in 1687, appointed to see of Raphoe in 1693. Source: Handbook of British Chronology, ed. E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy, 3rd edn, London 1986, pp. 377–455.

APPENDIX 3

Religious Statistics for the Dioceses of the Church of Ireland in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Diocese (pre-1833) and beneWces

Religious aYliation (%)

Armagh (89 beneWces)

Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Church of Ireland

62.2 20.7 17.1 97.5 2.5

Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Clonfert and Kilmacduagh Roman Catholics (17 beneWces) Church of Ireland

65.2 26.2 8.6 96.8 3.2

Cloyne (91 beneWces)

Roman Catholics Church of Ireland

95.9 4.1

Cork and Ross (87 beneWces)

Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Presbyterians Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Roman Catholics Presbyterians Church of Ireland Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians

90.7 9.2 0.1 53.8 32.4 13.8 54.0 28.5 17.5 43.9 35.5 20.6 78.2 21.3 0.5 94.9 5.0 0.1

Cashel and Emly (61 beneWces) Clogher (495 beneWces)

Derry (58 beneWces)

Down and Connor (101 beneWces) Dromore (27 beneWces)

Dublin (105 beneWces)

Elphin (39 beneWces)

Expenditure on buildings (£ ’000s) Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses

80.0 84.1 32.0 27.0 38.9 4.7 42.7 40.5 11.3 13.3 13.4 1.9 43.7 40.0 3.4 40.5 36.2

Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses

21.4 41.2 8.7 99.8 61.1 13.0 50.7 19.5

Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house

156.7 37.8 10.4 32.4 17.3 5.3

328

Religious Statistics for the Church of Ireland

Diocese (pre-1833) and beneWces

Religious aYliation (%)

Ferns and Leighlin (122 beneWces)

Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Church of Ireland

88.3 11.6 0.1 89.6 10.4 94.8 5.1 0.1 95.3 4.7


81.2 15.8 3.0 96.7 3.3


93.4 6.3 0.3 94.4 5.6

Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians

70.0 16.1 13.9 95.9 4.0 0.1 95.6 4.3 0.1

Roman Catholics Church of Ireland Presbyterians

81.9 10.5 7.6

Kildare (45 beneWces) Killala and Achonry (24 beneWces) Killaloe and Kilfenora (75 beneWces) Kilmore (42 beneWces)

Limerick and Ardfert (114 beneWces) Meath and Clonmacnois (103 beneWces) Ossory (67 beneWces)

Raphoe (34 beneWces)

Tuam and Ardagh (68 beneWces) Waterford and Lismore (65 beneWces)

ireland total (1,479 beneWces)

Expenditure on buildings (£ ’000s) Churches Glebe houses

76.2 56.8

Churches Glebe houses Churches Glebe houses

21.3 16.9 20.8 16.7

Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses

48.7 33.5 9.0 42.7 40.7

Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses

53.1 41.8 3.9 84.9 81.0 10.4 29.8 42.1 3.3 23.4 37.5

Churches Glebe houses See house Churches Glebe houses See house

46.7 45.7 10.2 24.1 15.3 5.2

Churches Glebe houses See houses

1,078.9 858.0 132.7

Note: The Wgures given in the Wrst column of this appendix should be compared with the tables of Irish religious distributions in 1834 and the comparison of these distributions in 1834 and 1861 published in D. H. Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution 1800–1885, New Haven and London 1971, 165, 210. These give totals by 32 individual dioceses rather than by the 22 pre-1833 unions of dioceses and show signiWcant variations between the component parts of some united dioceses. Source: W. Shee, The Irish Church, London and Dublin 1852.

APPENDIX 4

Religious Statistics for the Dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in the Mid-1840s

Diocese (RC population)

Churches and clergy

Achonry (108,835)

Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates

Ardagh and Clonmacnois (195,056) Armagh (309,564)

Cashel and Emly (296,667)

Clogher (260,241)

Clonfert (119,082)

Cloyne and Ross (436,627)

Cork (303,984)

Derry (196,614)

Down and Connor (154,029)

Convents of nuns and regular clergy 44 22 23 68 39 51 126 51 67 90 45 64 78 36 60 44 20 21 113 54 84 84 33 46 88 37 57 82 38 25

Regular clergy

4

Convents Regular clergy

2 10


2 10


1 14

Regular clergy

2


7 22

330

Religious Statistics for the Roman Catholic Church

Diocese (RC population)

Churches and clergy

Dromore (76,275)

Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates

Dublin (391,006)

Elphin (309,761)

Ferns (172,789)

Galway (56,503)

Kerry (297,131)

Kildare and Leighlin (290,038)

Killala (136,383)

Killaloe (359,585)

Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora (81,642) Kilmore (240,593)

Limerick (246,302)

Meath (377,562)

Convents of nuns and regular clergy 39 16 20 122 47 130 81 41 51 100 37 59 16 14 11 93 44 44 112 45 73 40 21 18 120 51 68 36 18 16 90 40 47 84 42 60 142 67 74

Convents

1


26 83

Regular clergy

4


6 15


5 14


8 2


11 10


2 3

Convents

1


4 12


4 16

Religious Statistics for the Roman Catholic Church Diocese (RC population)

Churches and clergy

Ossory (377,562)

Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates Churches Parish priests Curates

94 84 60 48 25 30 113 60 72 76 36 70

Churches Parish priests Curates

2,223 1,013 1,401

Raphoe (145,385)

Tuam (411,467)

Waterford and Lismore (253,091)

total (6,436,060)

331

Convents of nuns and regular clergy Convents Regular clergy

4 15


3 6


10 14


97 256

Note: Kerr’s Wgures are based on the Complete Catholic Directories for 1846 and 1848; where there is a discrepancy between the Wgures published in the two directories the higher Wgure has been taken in every case. Source: D. A. Kerr, Priests, Peel and Politics: Sir Robert Peel’s Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland 1841–1846, Oxford 1982, 33, and ‘A Nation of Beggars?’ Priests, People and Politics in Famine Ireland 1846–1852, Oxford 1994, xii–xiii.

APPENDIX 5

Religious Statistics of Church of Ireland, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian Allegiance and Church Attendance in the Diocese of Raphoe in 1834

Parish or Denomination Population No of perpetual curacy churches

No of Sunday services

All Saints (Taughboyne Parish)

CI

RC Presb.

762

1

2 in summer 1 in winter

90

1,596 1,784

1 2

Fortnightly 4 in summer 2 in winter 1 1 Fortnightly

1,040

Ardara

CI RC Meth.

1,205 5,180 —

Augnishunshon

CI RC Presb. CI

288 898 771 1,370

1 1 Meet in school 1 — — 1

RC Presb. CI RC Presb. CI RC Presb. CI

5,102 318 1,214 8,157 596 522 3,353 1,759 1,519

1 1 1 1 — 1 1 2 1

RC Presb. Meth.

8,498 3,395 —

2 3 2

Clondahorky

Clondavaddog

Convoy

Conwal

Attendance

1 — — 1

580 300 1,000 40 40

summer 350 winter 150 1 1,000 1 25 1 125 1 1,000 — — 2 145 1 1,404 2 600 2 in summer 200 1 in winter 3 2,550 See Note 1 800 See Note 2 130

Statistics in the Diocese of Raphoe 1834 Parish or Denomination Population No of perpetual curacy churches


Donegal

2 3 — 2 3 2 in summer 1 in winter 1 Fortnightly 1 Fortnightly 1 2 Sundays in 3 1 2 Monthly 2 1 Every 6 weeks 3 See Note 3 2 1

333 Attendance

CI RC Presb. Ind. CI RC

1,830 4,329 448 — 3,331 5,069

1 2 — 1 2 1

Presb. Meth. Gartan CI RC Glencolumbkille CI RC

248 — 473 1,537 288 3,651

1 1 1 1 1 1

Inishkeel

CI RC Meth. CI RC Meth.

576 8,039 — 2,586 9,199 —

CI RC Meth. CI RC

3,063 8,237 — 200 4,298

Killaghtee

CI

1,971

Killea

RC Meth. CI

2,884 — 243

Killybegs

RC Presb. CI

258 472 672

1 125 2 2,400 1 10 2 330 1 1,400 Meet in 40 school 2 600 2 3,500 2 350 1 55 ‘chapel in progress of erection’ 1 2 in summer 370 1 in winter 1 1 900 1 Fortnightly 80 1 2 in summer 53 1 in winter — — — — — — 1 2 in summer summer 111 1 in winter winter 68 1 2 in summer 1 in winter 1,500 1 2 130 1 1 700 1 2 82 1 Fortnightly 25

Drumhome

Inver

Kilbarron

Kilcar

Killygarvan

RC

3,790

CI RC Presb. Meth.

387 2,887 534 —

200 870 — 40 412 1,160 100 35 120 350 50 900

334

Statistics in the Diocese of Raphoe 1834

Parish or Denomination Population No of perpetual curacy churches


Killymard

CI RC Presb. Meth.

1,594 3,059 145 —

1 1 1 1

Kilmacrenan

CI RC Presb.

776 6,701 2,015

1 2 1

Kilteevoge

CI RC Presb. CI RC Presb. CI RC CI RC Presb. CI RC Presb. CI RC

933 3,587 56 384 2,441 1,420 131 2,016 673 4,070 51 1,149 2,730 2,552 530 2,575

1 1 — 1 — — 1 1 1 1 — 1 — 1 1 1

Presb. Raymunterdoney CI RC Rossnowlagh CI

2,962 263 2,020 556

2 1 — 1

RC CI RC Presb.

433 1,603 4,354 796

— 1 1 2

Meth. CI

— 790

1 170 1 1,300 2 95 Every 6 40 weeks 1 100 2 2,050 2 in summer 1 in winter 350 1 175 1 1,200 — — 1 123 — — — — 1 17 Fortnightly 550 1 150 1 2,000 — — 2 300 — — 2 375 2 90 3 Sundays 2,000 each month 4 850 1 65 — — 2 in summer summer 250 1 in winter winter 150 — 2 430 1 1,200 4 in summer 2 in winter 385 2 30 2 215

Leck

Lettermacaward Mevagh

Raphoe

Raymoghy

Stranolar

Taughboyne

1 1

Attendance

Statistics in the Diocese of Raphoe 1834 Parish or Denomination Population No of perpetual curacy churches

Templecrone Tullaghobegly Tullyaugnish

RC

2,207

Presb.

3,318

CI RC CI RC CI RC Presb.

554 8,137 241 8,569 820 5,524 5,225

Meth.

—

1


3 Sundays each month 4 8 in summer 4 in winter 1 1 3 See Note 4 See Note 5 1 2 2 1 2 2 2 4 7 in summer 6 in winter 1 1

335 Attendance

1,000

1,040 60 2,100 25 3,200 238 1,150 1,915 75

Notes: 1. The Synod of Ulster and Seceding congregations each had two services in summer and one in winter; the Covenanting congregation had a monthly service. 2. The Wesleyan Methodists had fortnightly services and the Primitive Methodists monthly ones. 3. The Roman Catholic church in Ballyshannon had three services every Sunday; the one in Castleard had a fortnightly service. 4. The Roman Catholic church in Burton Port had services on two out of every three Sundays; services were fortnightly at Dungloe and monthly at Arranmore. 5. The Church of Ireland church was not in use as the roof had fallen in that February; a Sunday service was held in the glebe house and some parishioners attended Church of Ireland services at Raymunterdoney. Source: First Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction, Ireland, House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers 1835, xxxiii, 269–85.

APPENDIX 6

Comparison of Visitation Evidence for Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Parishes in the Diocese of Meath in the Late Eighteenth Century

Parish

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Athboy

Incumbent is vicar choral of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, but serves cure in person. Church and glebe house both in excellent repair. Holy Communion on Wrst Sunday of month and greater festivals with 40–50 communicants. Incumbent intends to catechise during summer. School kept by parish clerk.

Castlecor and Oldcastle

Incumbent non-resident on account of age and inWrmity. Leases glebe house to neighbouring clergyman and pays curate from rent received, an arrangement authorised by previous bishop. Church in good repair. Holy Communion four times a year with maximum of 80 communicants. Catechising between Easter and Whitsuntide. Schoolmaster.

New missal needed. No burse. Linen in poor state. Nobody prepared for conWrmation. Few go to confession. Catechising and preaching disregarded. Several very irregular. Bishop recommends ‘daily Mass at a Wxed hour, vespers or singing of hymns’. Decency could be improved by ‘two boys serving Mass in surplices on Sundays and holidays’. Parochial income of £80 supports parish priest and curate. Catechising and preaching inadequate. No register. Few prepared for conWrmation. Congregation behaves irreverently in chapel. Altar indecent. Only one set of linen and vestments. Chalice very poor. Chapel needs repair. Parochial income of £100 supports parish priest and curate.

Diocese of Meath Visitation Evidence Comparison

337

Parish

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Castletown and Ardmulchan alias Kilbride and Horseleap

Incumbent serves church at Horseleap and has curate to serve church at Clare. No glebe house but both clergy live in or near beneWce. Both churches in good repair. Holy Communion four times a year at both churches with 15–50 communicants at Horseleap and 20–60 at Clare. No catechising or schoolmaster. Incumbent serves cure in person. Three small houses on glebe. Church in good repair. Holy Communion four times a year with about 40 communicants. Catechising in May. Has not been able to Wnd a Protestant schoolmaster ‘but hope very shortly to Wnd one’. Incumbent of Churchtown serves curacy in diocese of Dublin. No glebe house and church in ruins. Incumbent of Rathconrath holds beneWce in diocese of Kildare. No other details.

More linen needed. No burse. New missal stand required. Chasuble not good. Chapel too small. No register. Children not well instructed and need for more preaching. Worship to be more decent. ‘The bishop wishes Revd Mr Travers were lodged more decently. The public sometimes judge of us by the place of our abode.’ New missal needed. No burse. Chasuble needs repair. Linen not very clean. Congregation lacking in decency. Need for more catechising and preaching. Parochial income of £110. No curate. Five Roman Catholic schools in parish.

Castletown Delvin

Churchtown and Rathconrath

Dysart

Incumbent is precentor of Elphin Cathedral and vicar of DrumcliVe in diocese of Elphin. No glebe house or church. Incumbent notes that ‘there is a school kept in the parish by a Papist Master to which I have annually contributed thinking that any religious instruction is better than none’.

Need for better altar. Filthy chalice. Altar linen dirty. No burse. New missal needed. ConWrmation preparation very poor. No altar cards. Need for more preaching and catechising. No register or missal stand. Parochial income of £70. No curate. Roof needs repair. Vestments in poor condition. No missal stand. Congregation very small. Need for greater emphasis to be placed on preaching and catechising. Parochial income of £80. No curate.

338

Diocese of Meath Visitation Evidence Comparison

Parish

Church of Ireland

Fore

Kill and Tubber

Killallon

Killeagh

Kilskyre

Incumbent holds no other beneWce. No glebe house but has improved a property near the church at a cost of £300 ‘in expectation that the late Bishop would have been able to eVect his intention of converting it into a glebe house’. Church ‘neat and becoming’. Holy Communion four times a year with over 60 communicants. Catechising in summer. Schoolmaster. Incumbent holds no other beneWce but no glebe house and church has been in ruins since 1733. Incumbent holds no other beneWce and serves cure himself. Glebe house being built. Church in good repair. Holy Communion four times a year with 40 communicants. Children catechised by schoolmaster.

Roman Catholic No vestments. Missal to be replaced as present one omits several new feasts. Congregation insuYciently devout, ‘women . . . shouting and groaning at every word the priest says with emphasis’. Children well instructed but some ‘seemed to answer like parrots’. Parochial income of £120. No curate. New linen and missal needed. No burse. Small congregation. No altar cards. Services hurried and indecent. Need for more preaching and catechising. No missal stand or holy water stoups. Altar too high. New missal needed. Some sets of vestments incomplete or need repair. Linen not very clean. Preaching needs to be improved. Too much talking in chapel.

Altar steps to be repaired. No missal stand. Linen and cruciWx not good. Poor congregation. Parochial income of £120. No curate. Altar steps not clean or orderly. No cruet for wine. CruciWx bad. One chalice out of repair and other needs cleaning. No register or missal. Inadequate catechising, preaching, and conWrmation preparation. Parochial income of £160. No curate.

Diocese of Meath Visitation Evidence Comparison Parish

Church of Ireland

Mayne

Multyfarnham

No glebe house but perpetual curate lives in parish. Church in ‘tolerable good repair’. Holy Communion four times a year with 80 communicants. Children catechised by schoolmaster.

Rathgarve alias Castlepollard

Incumbent holds no other beneWce but does not serve cure on account of inWrmity. Describes his curate as ‘a moral and well-conducted young man’. Glebe house and church in good repair. Monthly communion with 10–30 communicants and 70– 120 at festivals. Catechising in summer. Schoolmaster.

Turin

339

Roman Catholic Altar linen to be renewed. One chasuble badly torn. Altar-stone unWt for use. Missal needs replacing and stand required. Chalice black with dirt. Catechising and preaching inadequate. No register. Parochial income of £110. No curate. New missal required. No burse. Congregation very small. Lack of preparation for conWrmation and confession. More catechising and preaching required. Parochial income of £60 supports parish priest and two curates. Chapel needs repair. Catechising poor. Require more preaching and hymnsinging. Parochial income of £160 supports parish priest and curate.

‘Universal appearance of pastoral neglect.’ Altar linen ‘scandalously dirty’, vestments torn, chalice ‘suVered to grow black’. Laity not properly instructed.

Sources: TCDL, Ms 1183, Meath Visitation Returns 1799; Meath Visitation Returns 1780 published in A. Cogan, The Ecclesiastical History of the Diocese of Meath, 3 vols, Dublin 1867–74, iii, 27–44; Meath Diocesan Returns 1801 in Ibid., iii, 238–40.

APPENDIX 7

Comparison of Visitation Evidence for Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Parishes in the Diocese of Ossory in the Late Eighteenth Century

Parish

Church of Ireland

Aghaboe

Aghaviller

Ballycallan

Ballyragget

Church built c.1760 and in good repair; no cess raised and church maintained by Alderman John Evans.

Roman Catholic Parish priest promises to leave his vestments and chalice to parish which does not have either; parochial income of £130 pa supports parish priest and curate. Four sets of vestments, alb, ‘indiVerent’ altar cloths, two towels, two cruciWxes, two ‘old defaced images’, pair of brass candlesticks at Ballyhale chapel. Green chasuble, stole, maniple and chalice veil, ‘one vestment of striped satin’, one black vestment, and wooden candlesticks at Newmarket chapel. Parochial income of £95 pa supports parish priest and curate. Silver monstrance and chalice, ciborium, a white and gold Xowered silk vestment, one white vestment, one blue vestment, one red and gold vestment, two black vestments, two albs, two altar cloths, two missals and a white antependium. Bishop’s mensal parish served by three curates with annual income of £160.

Diocese of Ossory Visitation Evidence Comparison Parish

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Callan

Only chancel in repair, nave and aisles rooXess. No cess for church repairs for eighteen years. Rector has personally paid for repair of belfry at cost of £35 but subscription raised towards £50 cost of bell. Curate states that ‘the Isles being put in order would be both beautiful and convenient’. ‘in the most perfect condition and repair’. Cess of £101 7s 7d raised towards repair of church in period 1770–5.

Parochial income of £120 pa supports parish priest and curate.

Castlecomer

Castleinch

One set of vestments in bad repair. Silver chalice. Parochial income £80 pa. No curate ‘on account of the scarcity of priests in this diocese’. White vestment at Durrow chapel and yellow one at Cullihill chapel. Both chapels have albs and chalices. Parochial income of £90 pa supports parish priest and curate.

Durrow

Freshford

Galmoy

Three sets of vestments and two chalices at Clough chapel. One old vestment, alb and altar cloth at Castlecomer chapel. Parochial income of £140 pa supports parish priest and curate.

Parishioners raise about £5 annually for repairs and church in good condition.

Danesfort

Fiddown

341

Parish church repaired within last twenty years at cost of Lord Bessborough. Cess raised for repair of church and payment of parish clerk. Chapel-of-ease at Whitechurch rebuilt in 1769. Church rebuilt 1730–6. Incumbent currently maintains it at his own expense, no cess having been raised since 1756.

White, green and red vestments, chalice, three albs and altar cloths. Parochial income of £110 pa supports parish priest and curate. Two vestments, altar linen and chalice. Parochial income of £100 pa supports parish priest and curate.

342 Parish

Diocese of Ossory Visitation Evidence Comparison Church of Ireland

Gowran

Grange Inistioge

Church in poor repair and walls damp.

Kells

Church in perfect repair. Chalice, paten, and tablecloth. Surplice described as ‘shameful’. Cess raised for parish clerk’s salary, church repairs, bread and wine for Holy Communion and washing linen. Pulpit, reading desk, communion table, tablecloth and napkin, silver chalice and paten. Walls and roof good. No vestries held and no cess raised. Church maintained at expense of vicar who has provided bread and wine for Holy Communion for last twenty-four years. Church has large congregation and is kept in good repair. Has lately been enlarged by erection of small gallery, partly at expense of Waterford Corporation. Chalice too small, having

Kilcolumb

Kilculliheen

Roman Catholic ‘an entire suit of ornaments . . . altar linen, fringed amict, alb, chalice and missal’. Parochial income of £140 pa supports parish priest and curate. Vestments of Xowered silk. ‘IndiVerent’ alb and altarcloths. Two chalices, pyx, one purple and two red vestments, two altar cloths, corporal, alb, amice, two missals and one set of old altar cards at Inistioge chapel. Chalice, white and green vestments, two altar cloths, two corporals, two towels, and missal at Rower chapel. Parochial income of £100 pa supports parish priest and curate.


Kilkenny

Church of Ireland been given by Bishop Tenison for use at sick communions. Carpet of communion table stolen about six months previously. Surplice ‘very old and so worn as to be rather indecent’. Parishioners think minister should purchase a new one at his own expense. Cess raised for church repairs but minister supplies wine for Holy Communion. St Mary’s church rebuilt at cost of parishioners in 1755. Cess raised for repairs and costs of divine worship; ‘there has been divine service every Day from time immemorial’.

Kilmacow

Kilmaganny

Church rebuilt 1759. Repaired by voluntary subscription and in good order. No cess raised.

343

Roman Catholic

St Patrick’s church had one green and white silk vestment, two yellow vestments, one red and white vestment, three black vestments, one vestment with white and green Xowers, one Xowered silk vestment with yellow silk lace, one white vestment, one green vestment, a red silk antependium, four albs, chalice, ciborium, two missals, and curtains and gauze for the tabernacle. Parochial income of £80 pa supports parish priest and curate. Three other parishes in Kilkenny: St Mary’s, bishop’s mensal parish, with annual income of £160 and three curates; St Canice’s, with annual income of £150 supporting parish priest and three curates; and St John’s, with annual income of £100 supporting parish priest and two curates. Vestment and chalice. No missal. Parochial income of £130 pa supports parish priest and curate. Blue vestment at Dangenmore chapel and green vestment at Windgap chapel. Chalice, linen, and missal at both chapels. Parochial income of £120 pa supports parish priest and curate.

344

Diocese of Ossory Visitation Evidence Comparison

Parish

Church of Ireland

Kilmanagh

Church rebuilt 1730–1 and reroofed 1757. Kept in good repair and cess raised for this purpose. Church rebuilt 1721 and in good repair. Cess raised.

Knocktopher

Lisdowney

Mooncoin

Muckalee

OVerlane

Rathdowney

Rossbercon

Church in good condition. Cess raised and has recently paid for new gallery. Church in good condition. Cess raised for repairs and to pay parish clerk.

Church in good repair. Surplice, bible, three Common Prayer books, pulpit cushion and carpet for communion table, all in good order. Cess usually, though not always, raised for repairs and payment of parish clerk, as sometimes not possible to convene a vestry meeting for this purpose.

Roman Catholic

Parochial income of £110 pa supports parish priest and curate. Red and yellow vestments and chalice. Parochial income of £80 pa. No curate ‘on account of scarcity of priests in this diocese’. Three vestments and altar linen. Parochial income of £120 pa supports parish priest and curate. Parish priest owns two sets of vestments and chalice which he intends to give to parish. Parochial income of £110 pa supports parish priest and curate.

Parish owns chalice and parish priest has given ‘a green Xowered silk chasuble with alb and altar cloths necessary’. Parochial income £100 pa. No curate ‘on account of scarcity of priests in this diocese’. One green and black vestment, one white vestment, four altar cloths, two corporals, chalice, missal, altar cards, two amices, two albs, four towels and puriWcator at Rossbercon chapel. One green and black vestment, one yellow and white vestment, four altar cloths, two corporals, two amices, two albs, chalice, missal, puriWcator and two towels at Tullaha chapel. Parochial income of £90 pa supports parish priest and curate.


Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Seirkieran

Church in very poor repair and parish has large presbyterian population with meeting house. Church cess deliberately kept low. Church has insuYcient seats for those who want to attend. Pulpit cushion, altar carpet, and surplice stolen three years ago and only surplice replaced. Parishioners have refused to raise cess to build a churchyard wall. Roof of church is unceiled.

Parochial income of £40 pa supports only parish priest.

Slieverue

Thomastown

Only that part of church used for divine service in repair. Two prayer books and pulpit cushion in bad condition. Altar carpet ‘is old, but moderately decent’. Surplice is ‘30 years old, mildewed and rotten’. Cess raised. Chapelof-ease at Rower rebuilt about twenty years ago but ‘in a very bad manner’, walls damp, Xoors unlevelled and only ‘two ruinous pews’. Attempts to persuade parishioners to put it in good repair have been unsuccessful. No altar carpet and pulpit cushion bad. Cess raised only with great diYculty.

345

Chalice, paten, spoon, pall, missal, three altar cloths, corporal, towel, six candlesticks of brass and six of wood, amice, alb, girdle, chasuble, stole, maniple and chalice veil at Slieverue chapel. Chalice, paten, spoon, pall, missal, three altar cloths, corporal, towel, six wooden candlesticks, amice, alb, girdle, chasuble, stole, maniple and chalice veil at Glenmore chapel. Parochial income of £40 pa supports parish priest and curate. Two chalices, missal, Xowered silk and black vestments, two old albs and amices and two old altar cloths. Parochial income of £150 pa supports parish priest and two curates.

346 Parish Urlingford

Diocese of Ossory Visitation Evidence Comparison Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic Chalice, ‘good altar linen, very bad chasuble, stole, and maniple’ at Grean chapel. One ‘very good suit of vestments’ but no chalice or missal at Urlingford chapel. Parochial income of £50 pa supports only parish priest.

Sources: RCBL, D11/1/7/8, Ossory Visitation Returns 1777; Ossory Visitation Returns 1788–9 published in W. Carrigan, History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, 4 vols, Dublin 1905, i, 204–8; Ossory Diocesan Returns 1801 in Ibid., iv, 408–9.

APPENDIX 8

Liturgical Arrangement of Church of Ireland Churches in the Dioceses of Cashel and Emly, and Waterford and Lismore in the Mid-1830s

Diocese of Cashel and Emly Abington Ardmayle Athassel

Type 1 Type 1 Type 2

Ballingarry

Type 6

Ballintemple

Type 2

Ballybrood Caherconlish Cahercorney


Cashel Cathedral

Type 2

Clonbeg Clonoulty

Type 6 Type 6

Cullen

Type 1

Doon Dromkeen

Type 6 Type 4

Box pews with tiered benches at W end of nave. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and W gallery. Box pews. W gallery divided into large box pews on N, and 3 benches on S, sides. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and W gallery. Box pews. Box pews and W gallery. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with empty space at W end of nave. Altar railed on three sides. Pulpit and reading desk in middle of N side of broad nave with stalls along N, S, and W walls of W part of nave and bishop’s throne placed in middle of S side. Remainder of nave Wlled with box pews. W gallery has organ with blocks of seating at each side. Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews. Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews curved at E end in front of altar. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews in E part of nave and benches in W part. Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews. Cruciform church with pulpit and reading desk placed at SE angle of crossing. Five-sided altar rails. Box pews in nave and both transepts with large square ones in angle of crossing not occupied by pulpit and reading desk.

348

Liturgical Arrangement of Church of Ireland Churches

Diocese of Cashel and Emly Emly Cathedral

Fennor Fethard

Glenkeen

Holycross

Kilcooly

KilWthmone Killenaule

Killoscully Kilvemnon

Knockainy

KnockgraVon Lismalin

Type 4/6 Altar railed on three sides incorporating pulpit and reading desk on opposite sides of sanctuary. Cruciform interior with stalls lining E walls and E part of N or S walls of both transepts. Box pews in W part of both transepts with bishop’s throne in S transept pew block. Box pews in nave curved at crossing. Type 6 Altar railed on three sides. Box pews. Type 2 Box pews in nave and N and S aisles with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and both N and W galleries. Font placed in pew backing on to pulpit in S aisle. Type 1 One pew on N and S side of nave to E of pulpit and reading desk, both of triangular shape on either side of semi-circular altar rails. Type 2 Semi-circular altar table with semi-circular rails. Box pews, curved at E end in front of altar, with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and open space, leading to vestry, with font on N side. W gallery. Type 2 Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and W gallery. Seating on S side of nave to E of pulpit and reading desk faces W. N extension opposite pulpit and reading desk contains raised family pew with Wreplace. Empty space at W end of nave with benches against N, S and W sides. Type 6 Box pews. Type 2 Five-sided altar rails. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and tiered benches at W end of nave. Type 6 Box pews. Type 6 Box pews. Pulpit and reading desk have curved staircases against E wall and matching enclosures, the one on the N side containing the clerk’s seat. Type 2 Altar railed on three sides and benches for communicants placed against E, N, and S walls. Box pews, curved or angled at E end in front of altar, with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and W gallery. Font placed at E end of nave in middle of central passageway. Type 1 Apsidal sanctuary with semi-circular altar rails. Box pews. Type 2 Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on N side of nave and W gallery.


349

Diocese of Cashel and Emly Littleton Magorban MoyaliV Moyne Newchapel Pallas Green Shronell

Templemore

Templeneiry Templetuohy Thurles

Tipperary

Type 6 Type 2

See Appendix 10/22. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on N side of nave. Type 6 Box pews. Type 1 Altar railed on three sides. Box pews. Type 1 Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews. Type 1 Box pews, curved at E end to match semi-circular altar rails. Type 1 Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews and W gallery. Space opposite pulpit and reading desk, at E end of S side of nave, has benches on N and W sides. Type 6 Altar railed on three sides but with bow-fronted secondary rail across chancel to W of tall pulpit and reading desk, both accessed by stairs at E end and with passageway between them giving access to vestry behind altar. Box pews in nave, N aisle, and W part of chancel; those at W end of nave are stalled. Type 6 Box pews. Type 6 Box pews. Type 2 Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and large pew on N side opposite. Both this pew and pulpit enclosure are curved inwards with font placed between them in middle of central passageway. Open space at E end of nave has seating for communicants on N, S, and W sides. Apart from one pew to E of pulpit and reading desk all other seating in E part of nave faces W. Type 3/4 Cruciform interior with vestry in S transept. Box pews in nave and N transept face pulpit and reading desk placed in front of altar. Galleries around three sides of interior with tiered seating, the tiers extending higher in the transepts.

Diocese of Waterford and Lismore Annestown

Type 2

ArdWnnan

Type 1

Ballynakill

Type 1

Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and open space at E end with seats for communicants along all four sides, adjacent to the altar. Semi-circular altar rails. Three large box pews, adjacent to pulpit and reading desk on N and two on S sides at E end of nave, otherwise benches. Altar railed on three sides in horseshoe shape and with box pews at E end of nave curved to match rails. Six benches, labelled children’s seating, at W end of nave. Benches for communicants on N and S sides of sanctuary.

350


Diocese of Waterford and Lismore Bunmahon Cahir Cappoquin

Carrick-on-Suir Clashmore

Clogheen Clonmel

Derrygrath

Drumcannon

Dungarvan

Dunmore

Dysert

Innislounaght

Killaloan


Box pews. See Fig. 6.3. Box pews, curved at E end to match bow-fronted altar rails running from staircase of pulpit to that of reading desk on either side of altar table. Type 6 Box pews. Type 6 Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews, curved at E end to match altar rails, with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave. Open space at E end of nave has benches for communicants against E, N, and S walls. Type 6 Five-sided altar rails. Box pews. Type 3 Aisled nave and separate chancel with two-storey NE extension to chancel containing vestry below and sexton’s room above. Box pews in nave and both aisles, with pulpit and reading desk in central position at E end of nave, and triangular box pews set into W corners of chancel. Gallery around three sides of interior, over both aisles and across W end of nave. Type 6 Semi-circular altar table and rails, the latter incorporating the curved fronts of the pulpit and reading desk enclosures. Box pews. Type 3 Pulpit and reading desk against E wall behind altar table which is circular. Large box pews on each side of the sanctuary with semi-circular altar rails placed between them. Open space between sanctuary and box pews in nave which has seating for communicants along its N, S, and W sides. W gallery with tiered benches. Type 4 Box pews in nave and N transept focus on pulpit and reading desk, in middle of S wall of nave; pews extend to E wall but are curved to allow space for sanctuary. Galleries at W end of nave and across N end of N transept. Type 1 Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews with open space at E end of nave with benches for communicants along N, S, and W sides. Type 3 Pulpit, approached by double staircase, and reading desk on E wall with altar table below, railed on three sides. Box pews curved at E end adjacent to sanctuary. ? Type 3 Altar railed on three sides. Box pews curved at E end adjacent to sanctuary. No pulpit or reading desk marked so service probably conducted from shallow W gallery. Type 2 Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave. Open space at E end of nave with benches for communicants on N and W sides.


351

Diocese of Waterford and Lismore Killoteran Kilmeadan

Type 6 Type 2

Kilrossanty Kilwatermoy Kinsalebeg Lisronagh Mocollop Mothell Passage

Type 6 Type 6 Type 6 Type 6 Type 1 Type 1 Type 3

Ringagonah

Type 2

Rossmire

Type 2

Stradbally

Type 3

Tallow

Type 6

Templemichael

Type 6

Templetenny Tubbrid

Type 6 Type 2

Tullaghmelan

Type 1

Waterford Cathedral

Type 3

Box pews with a few benches at W end of nave. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave and open space at W end. Box pews. Box pews. Box pews. Box pews. Semi-circular altar rails. Box pews. Box pews at E end of nave and benches at W end. Pulpit and reading desk against E wall with altar table, railed on three sides (side rails Xush with seating), in front. Box pews including to sides of sanctuary. W gallery with large box pews in N and S projections (cf. Killala Cathedral). Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave. Open space at E end with benches for communicants on all four sides. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave. Open space at E end with benches for communicants on N, S, and W sides. Pulpit, approached by double staircase, and reading desk on E wall, with altar table below having Wve-sided rails. Box pews. Semi-circular altar rails with monument in front in middle of central passageway. Box pews. Box pews, including two large ones with Wreplaces at E ends of N and S blocks of seating. Box pews. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave. Box pews, including large one with Wreplace opposite pulpit and reading desk. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews, facing inwards against outer walls of N and S aisles. Bishop’s throne on N side of nave, corporation pew on S side, and chapter stalls against W screen. Central pulpit and reading desk in front of altar. W part of nave and aisles beyond screen form narthex with chapter room on N, and Consistory Court on S, sides of W tower. Gallery around three sides of interior with stairs on N and S sides of narthex, and with organ and seating for choir in W gallery.

352


Diocese of Waterford and Lismore Waterford, St Olave’s

Type 2

Waterford, St Patrick’s

Type 2

Whitechurch

Type 2

Source: RCBL, Ms 138/1 and 6.

Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave. Gallery across W end of nave extended along W parts of N and S walls. Altar railed on three sides. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on S side of nave. Plan shows intention of replacing this arrangement with new pulpit and reading desk behind altar. Box pews with pulpit and reading desk on N side of nave.

APPENDIX 9

Restoration and Rebuilding of Church of Ireland Cathedrals, and Building of New Roman Catholic Cathedrals, in Ireland between 1770 and 1850

Diocese

Church of Ireland

Achonry

Rebuilt 1823 at cost of £1,500 with loan of £1,066 from Board of First Fruits. Retains some original furnishings but partly reWtted in 1915–16.

Ardagh and Clonmacnois

Armagh

Various restorations (see pp. 241 above).

Cashel

New cathedral completed 1788 and spire added 1812. Only chapter stalls and W gallery with its tiered seating survived internal reordering in c.1870. ReWtted 1816–18, but reordered in 1865. Restored 1793 and again in 1813 with grant of £500 from Board of First Fruits. Reordered in 1856 and 1884. Chancel reWtted with new screen, stalls, galleries, and bishop’s throne in 1774. Reordered in 1894.

Clogher Clonfert

Cloyne

Roman Catholic

Cathedral at Longford begun 1840 but work suspended because of famine and not resumed until 1853. Begun 1840 but work suspended because of famine and not resumed until 1854. Church at Thurles, rebuilt in 1809, recognized as cathedral by 1850, but replaced by present cathedral, built between 1865 and 1879.

354

Cathedrals in Ireland 1770–1850

Diocese

Church of Ireland

Connor

Spire added to cathedral at Lisburn in 1804 and galleries in 1824. Interior reWtted in 1889.

Cork

Derry

Down

Dromore

Dublin

Elphin

Emly

Roman Catholic

Begun 1799 and completed 1808 (see pp. 118, 244 above). Building partly destroyed in sectarian arson attack in 1820 and rebuilding began in 1828; much altered in late nineteenth century and interior completely reordered in 1963–4. Spire added 1776–8, taken down 1802 and rebuilt 1820–3. Cathedral extended and reWtted between 1861 and 1889. Rebuilt between 1790 and 1818 and grant of £1,000 made by crown. Retains substantially unaltered interior. Extended by addition of north transept in 1808. Cathedral extended and interior reWtted between 1870 and 1899. Various restorations at St Patrick’s Cathedral between 1812 and 1852; work largely obliterated in major restoration of 1860– 5, (see p. 243 above). Rebuilt 1823. Badly damaged by storm in 1957 and demolished in 1964. Repaired 1790–1 and completely rebuilt in 1824–7 at cost of £2,521

Cathedral at Newry built between 1825 and 1851 to design by T. DuV, but much altered in 1888–90 and 1904–9. Built between 1815 and 1825, (see pp. 244–6 above). Part of original high altar and pulpit survive, though not in original positions.

Cathedrals in Ireland 1770–1850 Diocese

Ferns

Church of Ireland 11s 9d with loan from Board of First Fruits. T-plan interior with vestry behind altar and threedecker pulpit in front. Demolished in 1877. Repaired 1816–17 with grant of £500 from Board of First Fruits. Reordered in 1901–3.

Kerry

Kildare and Leighlin

Kilfenora

Killala

Killaloe

Nave Wtted up for worship in 1837 with grant of £421 from Ecclesiastical Commission. Retains entirely unaltered interior. ReWtted in 1817 and partly reordered in 1845, (see pp. 243–4 above). Retains substantially unaltered interior.

355

Roman Catholic

Cathedral at Enniscorthy begun in 1843 to design by A. W. N. Pugin and completed by J. J. McCarthy in 1860. Cathedral at Killarney begun in 1840 to design by A. W. N. Pugin and completed in 1853. Interior completely reordered in 1972–3. Cathedral at Carlow built between 1827 and 1833. Retains original plaster vault and some original furnishings but largely reWtted between 1873 and 1906.

Cathedral at Ballina begun in 1827 but work abandoned in 1834 and not fully restarted until 1853–4. Cathedral at Ennis begun in 1836 to design by D. Madden and opened in 1843. Galleries and gallery seating in surviving T-plan interior remain intact, but much other interior alteration carried out by J. J. McCarthy in 1861, and tower and spire added in 1871–4.

356


Diocese

Church of Ireland

Lismore

Repaired between 1811 and 1827, and new tower and spire added at cost of £3,500. Retains early nineteenth century plaster vaults but otherwise reordered in 1877–8.

Meath

Cathedral at Mullingar built in 1831–6, but replaced by new building in 1933–9. Cathedral at Kilkenny begun in 1843 and completed in 1857. Largely refurnished between 1862 and 1899. Spire removed in 1785 and Church at Skibbereen replaced in 1806 at a cost built in 1824–6 and of £964. North gallery made cathedral in 1831. added to south and west Galleries and gallery ones, and organ installed seating remain intact but in west gallery, in 1812. otherwise interior Galleries demolished and refurnished. cathedral reordered between 1876 and 1892. Repaired in 1787 but work Cathedral begun in 1827, obliterated when cathedral initially to design by largely rebuilt between D. Madden who was 1861 and 1878. replaced as architect by M. Murray in 1829. Loan taken out for £2,000 in 1830 and building completed in 1837 at total cost of £14,204 0s 5d. Major alterations in 1929–33 and subsequently have destroyed all original furnishings.

Ossory

Ross

Tuam

Roman Catholic


357

Diocese

Church of Ireland

Roman Catholic

Waterford

Rebuilt 1774–9 to design by J. Roberts at cost of £5,397. Tower and spire completed in 1792. Original interior had galleries on three sides and a central pulpit with tester. Cathedral damaged by Wre in 1815, but repaired and reopened in 1818. Galleries, central pulpit and box pews removed during major restoration in 1885–91.

Cathedral built to design by J. Roberts, in 1793–6 at total cost of £20,000. Sanctuary extended in 1829–37 and apse added, with new high altar, in 1854. Major reordering of interior 1881 and 1893. Nave and transept galleries have been retained.

Source: P. Galloway, The Cathedrals of Ireland, Belfast 1992.

APPENDIX 10

Surviving Examples of Substantially Unaltered Church Interiors of the Period 1770–1850 in Ireland ( 1 ) C H U RC H E S R E - E R E C T E D AT T H E U L S T E R F O L K A N D T R A N S P O RT M U S E U M , C U LT R A , C O. D OW N 1. DRUMCREE, St John Baptist (Roman Catholic), Co. Armagh (Type 2) The church was built in 1783 and reWtted in 1831. There are two wooden altars in the middle of one of the long walls, surrounded by a single rail incorporating poles for gas lamps. On each side of the high altar are doors to the sacristy with canopied statue niches above them. Simple benches are

8. St John Baptist’s Roman Catholic church, Drumcree, reWtted in 1831.

Surviving Examples of Substantially Unaltered Church Interiors

359

9. Christ Church, Kilmore, reWtted in c.1840.

arranged around three sides of the two altars and there is a gallery around three sides of the interior with tiered benches in a similar formation. The organ is placed in the gallery over the entrance and there is a confessional built in under the gallery on the opposite short wall; the passageway between the entrance and the confessional across the front of the two altars is tiled. A small baluster font is placed near the gallery staircase. The whole interior is covered by a plaster ceiling with elaborate ceiling roses. The painted Stations of the Cross are late nineteenth century. This is a remarkably well-preserved midnineteenth century Roman Catholic interior. The adjacent parochial house reerected at the museum dates from the late nineteenth century. 2. KILMORE, Christ Church (Church of Ireland), Co. Down (Type 6) The church was built in 1790 but the present furnishings appear to date from about 1840 and comprise a mix of long and square box pews, placed either side of a wide central passageway in the middle of which is a large stove with a pipe to the chimney in the roof. The stone-Xagged semi-circular sanctuary has wooden rails and steps leading from it to the pulpit on the N side and the

360


10. Omagh Old Meeting House as re-erected at Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in 2004.

reading desk on the S side of the altar table. Both pulpit and reading desk are Wtted with gas lamps and there is also a candelabrum suspended from the plaster ceiling and candle-holders attached to the walls. The porch under the W tower has a stone baluster font and hat-pegs. This is a good example of the plainer type of church being erected with funds from the Board of First Fruits in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The adjacent rectory, also re-erected at the museum, is earlier than the church and replicates a typical late eighteenth-century glebe house prior to the improvements funded by the Board of First Fruits. 3. OMAGH, Old Meeting House (Presbyterian), Co. Tyrone (Type 4) The church has been reconstructed to represent a traditional T-plan church of the nineteenth century with a pulpit and precentor’s desk in the middle of the long wall, a gallery in each of the three projections, and seating focused on the pulpit and desk. The seating near the pulpit represents that used for the holding of meetings of the kirk session and the Sunday school. The church has neither an organ nor a Wxed communion table, both late developments in Irish Presbyterianism, but temporary tables are sometimes set out to illustrate the traditional arrangements for the celebration of Holy Communion. See Fig. 6.4 on p. 235.


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( 2 ) C H U RC H E S R E C O N S T RU C T E D AT T H E U L S T E R- A M E R I C A N F O L K PA R K , M O U N T J OY, CO. T YRONE 4. MOUNTJOY, Old Meeting (Presbyterian), Co. Tyrone (Type 4) A thatched T-plan building of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century with a canopied pulpit in the middle of the long wall and box pews in all three projections, with two large square pews in front of the pulpit, probably for use by singers or children. The pews at the back of each projection are raised and were probably those of the wealthier families in the congregation. There are no galleries. The wide passageways leading to the three entrance doors would have been used to house the long tables on sacrament Sundays. Four copper collecting shoes with long handles and a pewter communion Xagon are displayed near the pulpit. At the corner of the churchyard is a small session house of similar date to the meeting house, part of which has been Wtted out, somewhat incongruously, as a ministerial study and vestry. 5. TULLYALLAN, Mass House (Roman Catholic), Co. Tyrone (Type 2) The church was built in 1768 and extended in 1830, though retaining its thatched roof. The entrance is in one of the short walls with a Wreplace, to warm the building, in the opposite short wall. The interior is a reconstruction of one shown in photographs of the interior of the Rock’s Chapel, near Downpatrick, with the altar placed in the middle of one of the long walls and the seating provided by backless benches on solid platforms. The enclosure opposite the altar is Wtted with similar benches, presumably designed for the seating of the more prominent families who worshipped in the mass house. There are no galleries. A small confessional is placed near the entrance. The projection behind the altar is Wtted out as a sacristy and dwelling accommodation for the parish priest.

( 3 ) C H U RC H E S I N U S E I N N O RT H E R N I R E L A N D 6. ARDKEEN, St Patrick (Roman Catholic), Co. Down (Type 3) The church was built by the Revd Daniel Doran in 1777 and, though the furnishings are probably early nineteenth century, it is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a church largely untouched by later modiWcations. The windows retain their plain glass and the box pews survive, though their doors have been removed. The wooden altar has a simple arcaded reredos and tabernacle. There is a confessional on one side of the altar and a plaster statue

362


of St Patrick on a wooden base on the other. The altar rail incorporates a pole, possibly for a gas lamp. A simple iron candelabrum hangs from the unplastered roof. The Stations of the Cross are in the form of paper prints in black wooden frames. The church also contains a stone tub font and a wooden trestle bier. 7. ARMAGH, Archbishop’s Palace Chapel (Church of Ireland), Co. Armagh (Types 2 and 5) The chapel was built for Archbishop Robinson in 1781 and takes the form of a classical garden temple, a short distance from the palace. It is entered through a handsome portico and there are reading desks on either side of the entrance and a gallery over them for singers and musicians. The archbishop’s throne is placed in the middle of one of the long walls and there is a Wreplace, to heat the chapel, in the opposite long wall. Benches are placed against the long walls, facing inwards, on each side of the throne and Wreplace. The altar rails are contemporary but the late nineteenth century altar table is out of keeping with the building. The plasterwork is of high quality. The palace is now the property of Armagh District Council which uses it for council oYces and has developed a heritage centre in the adjacent stable block. The chapel has been deconsecrated and is now used for concerts as well as being accessible to visitors. 8. BANBRIDGE, Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Co. Down (Type 3) This is a late example of the traditional type of Presbyterian interior and dates from 1844–6. It is entered through a handsome classical portico. The high pulpit, approached by a double staircase, with a desk for the precentor in front and an elaborate arcaded entablature, dominates the interior. On the ground Xoor of the building there are two central blocks of box pews and those along the side walls are angled to face the pulpit. At the back, adjacent to the entrance wall, the more elaborate pews for the richer families have high backs to keep out the draughts. There is a U-shaped gallery around three sides of the interior with a contemporary organ over the entrance and tiered box pews in the side galleries. The whole interior is covered by a handsome plaster ceiling with an elaborate central rose. Long communion tables, one of which is kept behind the pulpit, are still placed in the passageways in front of and between the pews, on sacrament Sundays. 9. CRUMLIN, Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Co. Antrim (Type 3) The church was built in 1835–7 in the form of an elongated octagon with a projection at one end for the entrance porch and gallery staircases. The pulpit


363

is placed at the far end of the interior opposite the entrance, with a curved block of box pews adjacent to each of the side walls, and an elliptical pew block in the centre of the building. The gallery is horseshoe-shaped, curving around against the walls near the pulpit. In terms of its plan it was clearly inXuenced by the earlier Presbyterian church, now altered, in Rosemary Street, Belfast. The pulpit is of the wine-glass type, on a wooden base painted to look like marble, and is approached by a double staircase. The gallery is supported on iron columns, also painted to look like marble, with Ionic capitals in plaster. In the gallery is a double row of tiered box pews with loose benches against the wall and a space over the entrance formerly occupied by a barrel organ, now dismantled. Oil lamps are attached to the gallery columns and are also placed on poles in the central elliptical block of box pews. The plastered ceiling has an elaborate central rose. There is a small communion table in front of the pulpit. 10. DOWNPATRICK, Holy Trinity Cathedral (Church of Ireland), Co. Down, (Types 5 and 6) The cathedral was rebuilt between 1790 and 1818, and comprises a W tower and narthex with an aisled choir entered through a screen supporting the organ. Tiered box pews are arranged along the N and S sides of the choir with an open space in the middle. The chapter stalls are placed, in a manner common in Ireland, against the E side of the organ screen, with a canopied throne for the bishop in the middle of N side of the choir, with a seat for the assize judge in the middle of the S side, and bow-fronted pews Xanking them. The pulpit and reading desk were originally placed in the middle of the choir at the E end, but in 1844 a new pulpit and reading desk (the latter subsequently replaced) were placed, respectively, on the S and N sides of the shallow sanctuary. The empty space in the choir aisles has also been Wlled with a late nineteenth century row of seating. The font is placed in the narthex. 11. DOWNPATRICK, Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Co. Down (Type 4) This modest T-plan church was begun in 1711 and completed in 1729. The present arrangement and furnishings, however, probably date from 1787 when an extension was built behind the pulpit to house a family pew in a gallery adjacent to the pulpit, with a retiring room behind and a vestry below. The canopied pulpit is now entered through a door in its backboard at gallery level. There are box pews and lofts in all three original projections and all the seating on both levels is raked. The large pew adjacent to the

364


pulpit provides accommodation for a modern organ and the choir, and there is also a modern platform for the communion table in front of the pulpit. The church has a Wne group of six collecting shoes dating from between 1754 and 1767. 12. DUNMURRY, Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Co. Antrim (Type 2) The church was built in 1719 but reordered in the early nineteenth century when the organ was installed. The galleries originally ran around three sides of the interior, but that opposite the pulpit has been removed to permit the creation of entrance porches. The box pews, of unequal sizes, and tiered in the two side galleries, are original and have been painted dove grey. The ‘Gothick’ organ case in a gallery behind the pulpit is reached from the minister’s vestry. The pulpit was also originally entered at this level but has been lowered and is now approached by a double staircase. It still incorporates a seat, but no desk, for the precentor and is surrounded by a pulpit enclosure. Long trestle tables are still placed in the passageways on sacrament Sundays. 13. HILLSBOROUGH, St Malachy (Church of Ireland), Co. Down (Types 4 and 6) The church was handsomely rebuilt between 1760 and 1773 at a cost of some £20,000 provided by the Wrst Marquess of Downshire. It is a cruciform building with terminal towers to the N and S transepts and a W tower and spire over the entrance. There are plaster vaults throughout. The organ is placed in a W gallery and there are uniform box pews, facing E, in the nave, at the E end of which is, on the S side, a tall canopied pulpit and, on the N, a much lower reading desk. The box pews in the shallow chancel have been adapted to serve as choir stalls. The E end of the chancel is panelled and retains the original painted glass in the E window and ‘Gothick’ sanctuary chairs. The transepts are raised six steps above the level of the nave and are Wtted with two large family pews at the nave end of each with seats for servants behind; the pew on the W side of the S transept contains a canopied throne for the bishop of Down and Connor. The coloured glass in the nave and transept windows is also original as is the marble baluster font in the narthex under the W gallery. 14. LECKPATRICK, St Patrick (Church of Ireland), Co. Tyrone (Type 4) The church was built in 1816 and is a good example of the smaller type of church Wnanced by the Board of First Fruits. It comprised a single-cell nave and chancel with a bell-cote and W porch. In 1834 the church was enlarged, and given a T-plan interior, by the addition of a transept on the N side of the


365

nave. The pulpit and reading desk are placed in the middle of the S side of the nave and all the box pews in the original part of the building, and in the N transept, are arranged to face them. At the E end of the nave the pew fronts are curved to replicate the curve of the semi-circular altar rails and the pew on the S side contains a small baluster font. The church was carefully restored in 2002, when a small organ was introduced, but otherwise the interior is unaltered. 15. RADEMON, Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Co. Down (Type 4) This extremely large T-plan church of 1787–9 retains its original furnishings virtually intact. The main entrance is placed, rather unusually, adjacent to the pulpit in the middle of the long wall; this is a particularly handsome structure, with a tester, double staircase, and rich hangings. There are box pews and a loft in each of the three projections. The two back pews in each projection are raised, respectively, one and two steps above the pews in front. The lofts are Wtted with simple benches, untiered, and are approached by external staircases. The loft opposite the pulpit has had some seating removed and has been partitioned to create a storage area. On the front of this loft is a contemporary clock made by R. Johnson of Comber.

( 4 ) C H U RC H E S I N U S E I N T H E R E P U B L I C O F I R E L A N D 16. BALLYMAKENNY, St Nicholas (Church of Ireland), Co. Louth (Type 1) The church was built between 1785 and 1793 for Archbishop Robinson of Armagh whose family seat was at nearby Rokeby Hall. It was designed by

11. Plan of St Michael’s church, Collon, as originally designed and built in 1811–16.

366


12. St Michael’s church, Collon, following modiWcation of the interior in 1893–4.

Thomas Cooley and completed after his death by Francis Johnston. It is a single-cell building with a tall W tower and spire over the porch. The high seating is unusual in that the pews have never been Wtted with doors and the three-decker pulpit is placed in the seventeenth-century Anglican position towards the E end of the nave on the S side. There are also seats for communicants on the N and S sides of the altar which is railed on three sides. The ‘Gothick’ reredos is of Wve panels inscribed with the Ten Commandments, Creed and Lord’s Prayer and, centrally, the text ‘Do this in Remembrance of Me’. The rails across the baptism pew in the SW corner of the nave match those around the altar. There is also an attractive cornice to


367

the plaster ceiling which is replicated in the dado to the wall panelling. There is no gallery. See Fig. 6.2 on p. 231. 17. COLLON, St Michael (Church of Ireland), Co. Louth (Type 5) The church, despite some modest alterations, is the most spectacular of the surviving late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century collegiate interiors in Ireland. It was built between 1811 and 1816 and designed by the Revd D. A. Beaufort, the antiquarian rector of Collon and Navan. Beaufort was strongly inXuenced by the interior of King’s College Chapel at Cambridge and the plaster fan vault is a direct copy of the stone vault there. The church comprises a broad nave and shallow chancel. The nave is Wtted with Wve rows of tiered collegiate seating on each side with large family pews at the W end. The sanctuary, with its original rails, is raised four steps above the level of the nave. The loose benches, which may originally have been placed across the middle of the space between the stalls, are now placed against their fronts. The contemporary painted glass in the E window and the Wve windows in the S wall of the nave was designed by Beaufort’s daughter, Louisa, and made by Edward Lowe of Dublin. The pulpit and reading desk were originally placed in front of the altar but in 1893–4 they were dismantled and replaced by a new pulpit, clergy desks, and organ, but this alteration has had only a marginal impact on the interior. 18. DROMARD, Christ Church (Church of Ireland), Co. Sligo (Types 3 and 4) The church was built in 1764. In 1817 transepts were added at the W end of the nave and the church was, at the same time, reordered and refurnished. It is an interesting variant of the T-plan, with the pulpit and reading desk, both with velvet hangings, placed at the W end of the nave, the former being entered by a staircase from the vestry under the W tower. The box pews in the nave and both transepts are focused on the pulpit and reading desk. The stone baluster font, originally in the middle of the nave, has now been placed in the NE corner near the altar, which is at the opposite end of the interior from the pulpit and reading desk. The present altar table and rails, and the standard oil lamps Wtted into the box pews, date from the late nineteenth century. The church retains its early nineteenth century plaster ceilings. 19. GLENEALY, St Gregory (Church of Ireland), Co. Wicklow (Types 5 and 6) The church was built in 1791–2 and consist of a W tower over the entrance, broad nave, and shallow chancel. There are two rows of contemporary stalls along the N and S walls of the nave, the back ones having simple canopies, and W gallery Wtted with contemporary benches. The tiled Xooring, altar table, reading desks on the N and S sides of the sanctuary, font and eagle lectern, in

368


the middle of the central passageway are additions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 20. KILFENORA, St Fachan’s Cathedral (Church of Ireland), Co. Clare (Type 6) The medieval cathedral had fallen into ruin by the early nineteenth century, but in 1837 its nave was repaired and given a simple bell-turret. The internal furnishings are complete but in poor condition and in urgent need of a careful and sensitive restoration. The W part of the nave is empty of furniture except for the late medieval font. The E part of the nave is Wtted up with simple open benches and one large square box pew, shaped so as to create an open space in front of the sanctuary, on its N and S sides. The altar table is railed in under the E window, with a tall pulpit and clerk’s desk on the S, and a reading desk on the N, sides. The only modest intrusion is the simple bishop’s chair installed for the enthronement of Bishop Walton Empey in 1981. 21. KILLALA, St Patrick’s Cathedral (Church of Ireland), Co. Mayo (Type 6) The cathedral was rebuilt in 1670 as a broad single-cell building with a W tower over the entrance. The interior was reWtted in 1817 and further reordered in 1845. The sanctuary is railed oV at the E end with the pulpit entered directly from it on the S side. The reading desk is placed on the N wall of the nave outside the sanctuary and faces S. The rest of the nave is Wtted up with box pews, the second one to the W of the pulpit on the S side incorporating a modern episcopal throne. The chapter stalls are incorporated in the box pews against the W wall of the nave, four on each side of the entrance. A stone baluster font with a domed wooden cover is placed in front of the chapter stalls on the S side of the nave. The deep W gallery projects eastwards against the N and S walls of the nave; these projections are Wtted with box pews; in the W part of the gallery there is an organ the case of which is inscribed ‘erected by subscription 1838’; there are tiered box pews on the N side of the organ and late nineteenth century open benches on the S side. The eagle lectern next to the reading desk is dated 1904. See Fig. 6.6 on p. 244. 22. LITTLETON, St Mary (Church of Ireland), Co. Tipperary (Type 6) This is the parish church of Borris and was built in 1786, with later additions at both E and W ends, the latter comprising a tower and spire over a porch with Xanking vestries. There is a coved plaster ceiling to the nave and an elaborate plaster vault over the sanctuary. The W gallery retains its original panelled front but has been partitioned oV above this to form a meeting room. The box pews in the nave have been reordered and had their doors removed, and the baluster font, originally in the middle of the nave has been relocated among the


369

seating on the S side. The arrangement of the sanctuary, which appears to date from c.1850, is of exceptional interest. There is a semi-circular altar table railed in with semi-circular rails with gates at their E ends. There are also ‘Gothick’ sanctuary chairs on the N and S sides of the altar table. The pulpit and reading desk are of equal height and are placed on the N and S sides of the sanctuary, approached by curved staircases against the E wall, and with canopied niches behind them on the N and S walls. The pedestals of both incorporate carved representations of closed and open bibles. Boards inscribed with the Ten Commandments are placed on the N and S sides of the E window, which has stained glass of 1908. Pulpit, reading desk, altar rails, and gallery front are attractively painted in blue and white. 23. NEWTOWNFORBES, St Paul (Church of Ireland), Co. Longford (Types 3 and 4) This is the parish church of Clonguish and was built in 1829 to a design by John Hargrave. The T-plan interior has box pews in the nave and both transepts, those on the E side of the crossing being curved in front of the sanctuary to replicate the curve of the wrought-iron altar rails. The tall pulpit is placed behind the altar table, over which its front forms a vault and canopy, and it is approached by a curved staircase against the E wall of the shallow chancel. There are matching reading and clerk’s desks on the N and S sides of the pulpit. The organ and seats for the choir are in a W gallery approached through the tower. The N transept has a gallery which contains a family pew complete with chairs and Wreplace. There are seats for servants and another Wreplace in the gallery of the S transept. The baptism pew is in the SW corner of the S transept and contains a stone baluster font inscribed ‘the gift of Rev R. G. Ryder to the Parish 1763’. The ‘Gothick’ plaster ceilings are attractively painted in pink and white. The only later additions to the interior are the late nineteenth century altar table, lectern and clergy desk, the last two of which have been placed, respectively, to the N and S of the altar rails. 24. RATHNEENY, Presbyterian Church, Co. Donegal (Type 3) This modest country church built for the Wrst Donegal congregation was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century and has retained its contemporary Wttings largely intact. It is entered through a porch attached to one of the short walls Wtted with a Wreplace and hat-pegs. Uniform box pews face the pulpit and precentor’s desk placed on the opposite short wall. There is no gallery. There is an empty space on both sides of the pulpit and desk but these were probably Wlled with large square pews, the wide central passageway almost certainly being used on sacrament Sundays for long communion

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tables. There is a hole at the pulpit end in the plaster ceiling and some evidence of damp on the entrance wall, both of which need attention. The stable at the corner of the churchyard was used by the minister’s and visitors’ horses. 25. TIMOGUE, St Mochua (Church of Ireland), Co. Laois (Type 3) The church was built in 1736 but was largely refurnished in the early nineteenth century. Carefully restored in 1964, it is one of the most complete pre-1850 interiors in Ireland and is a more modest version of the arrangement at Newtownforbes. The pulpit is placed against the E wall of the single-cell building with matching reading and clerk’s desks on the N and S sides. The sanctuary is enclosed by a bow-fronted altar rail placed between the pews on each side of the altar, which is placed directly in front of the pulpit. The remainder of the church is Wtted with box pews with the font being placed in the NW corner.

Bibliography 1. Manuscript Sources Archbishop’s House, Dublin (Dublin Diocesan Archives). Papers of Archbishop Daniel Murray (DDA/AB3). Minute Book of the Meetings of Irish Bishops 1826–49. Bedfordshire Record OYce, Bedford. Papers of Archbishop William Stuart (WY994–5). Bishop’s House, Killarney (Kerry Diocesan Archives). Cashel Provincial Statutes 1828. Account Book for building Killarney Cathedral 1828–53. Letter from A. W. N. Pugin to Dean O’Sullivan 1840. Dean O’Sullivan’s Praxis Parochi, 2 vols, 1849. Bishop David Moriarty’s Visitation Diary 1854–6. ´ Fiaich Memorial Library and Archive, Armagh (Armagh Diocesan Cardinal To´mas O Archives). Bound volume of correspondence between Archbishop Richard O’Reilly (1787– 1818) and his vicar-general, the Revd Dr Henry Conwell. Cathedral Library, Durham. Seating plans of churches in the Archdeaconry of Durham 1825. Cathedral Vestry, Killala. Seating plan of Killala Cathedral by James Pain 1817. Minutes of meetings of the Dean and Chapter of Killala 1845. GPA-Bolton Library, Cashel. Act Book of the Dean and Chapter of Cashel 1759–1886. Hampshire Record OYce, Winchester. Papers of Archbishop Charles Agar (21M57). Lambeth Palace Library, London. Papers of Bishop Thomas Townsend (Ms 1727). Manx National Heritage Library, Douglas. Visitation Records of the Diocese of Sodor and Man in 1757 (Ms 791C). Visitation Records of the Archdeaconry of Man in 1833 (Ms 794C). Miscellaneous Diocesan Records (MD 436). Typescript ‘Architectural History of the Churches of the Isle of Man’ by L. D. Butler 1970 (MD 492). National Library of Ireland, Dublin. Papers of Archbishop Charles Broderick. Ms 8861 Correspondence re diocesan aVairs. Ms 8863 Correspondence with Bishop Charles Lindsay. Ms 8866 Correspondence with the Revd John Jebb.

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Index Abbott, Archbishop George 9 Abington (Co. Limerick) 69, 347 Abraham, Bishop William 103 Achill Island 272, 274–5 Achonry (Co. Sligo) 108, 244, 353 Agar, Archbishop Charles 33, 40–2, 73–84, 88, 96, 99, 167, 220–2, 240, 252 Agar, Henry 74 Agar, James 74–5 Aghabog (Co. Monaghan) 195 Aghada (Co. Cork) 216–17 Aghadowey (Co. Derry) 24 Aghern (Co. Cork) 153 Aghold (Co. Wicklow) 187 Aikenhead, Mary 176 Alexander, Bishop Nathaniel 66 Amlwch (Anglesey) 299, 315 Andreas (Isle of Man) 305, 312, 315 Aney (Co. Limerick) 149 Anglade, François 106, 142 Anne, Queen 17 Antrim 208 Antrim, presbytery of 23, 130, 206–9, 213, 228 Appin (Argyll and Bute) 299 Arbory (Isle of Man) 305, 312 Ardagh (Co. Cork) 217 Ardagh, diocese of 144, 189, 226 Ardclach (Highland) 316 Ardcolm (Co. Wexford) 282 Ardfinnan (Co. Tipperary) 184, 349 Ardkeen (Co. Down) 219, 232, 361–2 Arklow (Co. Wicklow) 40, 84 Armagh 53, 68, 71, 109, 113, 125, 128, 178, 195, 231, 241, 254, 353, 362 Armagh, diocese of 190, 195 Arra (Co. Cavan) 294 Arthur, Lucius 285

Askeaton (Co. Limerick) 272–3 Association for the Discountenancing of Vice and Practice of Virtue and Religion 264 Athlone (Co. Westmeath) 92 Aughkealy (Co. Donegal) 275 Aughnishunson (Co. Donegal) 156, 332 Baldungan (Co. Dublin) 83 Baldwin (Isle of Man) 312 Ballaghaderreen (Co. Roscommon) 108 Ballaugh (Isle of Man) 300, 305, 312 Ballina (Co. Mayo) 246, 355 Ballinakill (Co. Laois) 275 Ballinamona (Co. Cork) 87 Ballinderry (Co. Tyrone) 192 Ballinglen (Co. Mayo) 276 Ballintemple (Co. Wicklow) 83 Ballybay (Co. Monaghan) 196 Ballycastle (Co. Antrim) 237 Ballycommon (Co. Offaly) 182 Ballyculter (Co. Down) 286 Ballygawley (Co. Tyrone) 293 Ballyheige (Co. Kerry) 205 Ballyhooly (Co. Cork) 77 Ballymachugh (Co. Cavan) 273 Ballymackenny (Co. Louth) 231, 365–7 Ballymagarvey (Co. Meath) 75 Ballymena (Co. Antrim) 97 Ballymore Eustace (Co. Kildare) 198 Ballymote (Co. Sligo) 209–10 Ballyroan (Co. Laois) 187 Ballysax (Co. Kildare) 182 Ballyshannon (Co. Donegal) 220, 227 Balrothery (Co. Dublin) 84 Balscadden (Co. Dublin) 83 Baltinglass (Co. Wicklow) 186 Banbridge (Co. Down) 232, 362 Bandon (Co. Cork) 86, 117, 161

388

Index

Bangor (Gwynedd) 300 Bangor, Lady 286 Bantry (Co. Cork) 86, 107 Barnard, Bishop Thomas 40, 76 Barntown (Co. Wexford) 226, 238 Barra (Western Isles) 316 Barvas (Western Isles) 309 Bath (Somerset) 23, 167 Bathurst, Bishop Henry 70 Beaufort, D. A. 96, 142, 221 Beaulieu (Co. Louth) 196 Beaumaris (Anglesey) 299 Bedell, Bishop William 8 Belfast 15, 23, 59, 97–9, 109, 113–14, 124–6, 129–30, 139, 154, 207–8, 227–8, 232, 254, 263, 284, 286, 290–1, 294 Belfast Academical Institution 127–8, 139 Belfast Newsletter 124 Bellew, Bishop Dominic 40, 102, 104, 108 Bellew, Patrick 119–20 Belvedere, Cardinal M. C. di 105 Bennet, Bishop William 42, 87 Beresford, Archbishop Lord J. G. 45, 47, 51, 57, 66, 68, 70–1, 84, 185, 191, 193, 195, 223–4, 241, 260, 282, 284, 287–9, 293–5 Beresford, Archbishop William 68, 141, 147, 162 Beresford, Bishop George 66–8 Beresford, Lord G. T. 45 Berkeley, Bishop George 22, 75 Beynon, Archdeacon Thomas 299 Bickersteth, Edward 36 Birmingham 270, 277 Birr (Co. Offaly) 276–7 Blake, Anthony 55 Blake, Archbishop Anthony 33, 104, 108 Blake, Bishop Michael 58, 112–13, 219, 256 Blake, D. E. 187 Blarney (Co. Cork) 77 Blayney, Lord 193

Blomfield, Bishop C. J. 286 Bloxam, J. R. 238 Bodkin, Archbishop Christopher 4 Bolton, Archbishop Theophilus 27–8 Bond, J. P. 293 Borris (Co. Laois) 124, 158 Borrisokane (Co. Tipperary) 186 Boswell, James 309 Boulter, Archbishop Hugh 19, 27, 326 Bourke, Archbishop J. D. 69, 76 Boveragh (Co. Derry) 160 Boyle, Roger 14 Boyse, Joseph 16–17 Bracadale (Highland) 316 Braddan (Isle of Man) 300, 311–12, 315–16 Bradshaw, Brendan 2 Brady, Bishop Hugh 5 Bramhall, Archbishop John 10, 12–13 Brannigan, Michael 276 Brasbie, Denis 276 Bray (Co. Wicklow) 275 Bray, Archbishop Thomas 41, 158, 252 Breadalbane (Perth and Kinross) 317 Bree (Co. Wexford) 238 Britway (Co. Cork) 153 Bristol 270 Brodrick, Archbishop Charles 42, 53, 55, 67, 69, 73, 82, 84–9, 96, 99, 182, 216, 221–4, 240, 253, 256, 270, 280 Brooke, Sir Arthur 254 Brookeborough (Co. Fermanagh) 254 Brown, Robert 315 Browne, Archbishop George 6 Browne, Bishop J. G. P. 110 Browne, Bishop James 59, 103, 107, 113, 172–3 Bruce, William 128 Bundoran (Co. Donegal) 192 Burgage (Co. Wicklow) 84 Burgess, Bishop Thomas 252, 256, 299, 306–7 Buriton (Hampshire) 97 Burke, Bishop Thomas 33

Index Burray (Orkney) 304–5 Bushmills (Co. Antrim) 229 Butler, Archbishop James I 197, 218 Butler, Archbishop James II 33, 102, 104, 157, 225, 252 Butler, Bishop John 104–5, 116, 170 Butler, Maria 104 Butson, Bishop Christopher 41, 222 Byrne, James 72–3 Caernarfon (Gwynedd) 300 Cahercorney (Co. Limerick) 216, 347 Cahir (Co. Tipperary) 234, 350 Callan (Co. Kilkenny) 226, 341 Cambrian Society of Dyfed 299 Cambridge 89 Cambridge Camden Society 285–6 Camden, Lord 41 Canna (Highland) 309 Canny, Nicholas 2 Cantwell, Bishop John 103, 107, 113 Cappoquin (Co. Waterford) 184, 350 Carland (Co. Tyrone) 212–13 Carlile, James 55–6 Carlow 12, 35, 82, 105–6, 114, 121–4, 187, 219, 246, 275, 355 Carmarthen 300 Carnone (Co. Donegal) 23 Carpenter, Archbishop John 25, 200 Carpenter, R. C. 243 Carrickfergus (Co. Antrim) 12 Carrickmacross (Co. Monaghan) 196, 226 Carrick-on-Suir (Co. Tipperary) 184, 227, 350 Carrowbrowne (Co. Mayo) 108 Cashel (Co. Tipperary) 77–80, 199, 227, 232, 240, 244, 252, 347, 353 Cashel and Emly, diocese of 200, 226, 230, 347–9 Castlebar (Co. Mayo) 226 Castleblayney (Co. Monaghan) 193 Castleconnell (Co. Limerick) 276

389

Castledermot (Co. Kildare) 198 Castlefinn (Co. Donegal) 263 Castlemacadam (Co. Wicklow) 84 Castlemartyr (Co. Cork) 217 Castlerickard (Co. Meath) 95 Castle Talbot (Co. Wexford) 238 Castletown (Isle of Man) 305, 312, 316 Castletownshend (Co. Cork) 225 Catholic Association 45–6 Catholic Emancipation 40–8, 62, 271, 294 Catholic Penny Magazine 268 Catholic Rent 45–6 Caulfield, Bishop James 40 Causeway (Co. Kerry) 205 Cavan 151, 173, 273 Chalmers, Thomas 318 Charles I, King 10, 12, 54, 266 Charles II, King 12, 13, 15 Charles III, ‘Young Pretender’ 18, 33 Charles, Thomas 314 Charter schools 51–4 Chenevix, Bishop Richard 71, 253 Christian Brothers 55, 58, 176 Church Building Commission 225, 309, 311 Church Education Society 57–8, 71, 195 Church Temporalities Act 48–9, 63, 181, 259 Claregalway (Co. Galway) 145 Clare Journal 173, 276 Cleaver, Archbishop Euseby 81, 85, 88, 182, 188, 270 Cleaver, Bishop William 188, 306 Clerihan (Co. Tipperary) 198 Clifden (Co. Galway) 275 Clogheen (Co. Tipperary) 25, 350 Clogher (Co. Tyrone) 215, 353 Clogher, diocese of 190, 195–6 Clonakilty (Co. Cork) 86–7 Clonard (Co. Meath) 95 Clonbullogue (Co. Offaly) 151 Clondahorkey (Co. Donegal) 156, 332 Clondavaddog (Co. Donegal) 156, 332

390

Index

Clones (Co. Monaghan) 120, 191, 196 Clonfad (Co. Westmeath) 91, 92 Clonfert (Co. Galway) 79, 222, 353 Clongill (Co. Meath) 92–3 Clongowes (Co. Kildare) 176 Clonguish, see Newtownforbes Clonmacnois (Co. Offaly) 91 Clonmacnois, diocese of 144, 226 Clonmel (Co. Cork) 216–17 Clonmel (Co. Tipperary) 104, 161, 254, 350 Clonmellon (Co. Meath) 91 Clonpriest (Co. Cork) 216–17 Clonrohid (Co. Cork) 77 Clontibret (Co. Monaghan) 119, 195 Clough (Co. Down) 206–7 Cloyne (Co. Cork) 77–8, 153, 163, 217, 241, 252, 353 Cloyne, diocese of 217 Coagh (Co. Tyrone) 211–12 Cobh (Co. Cork) 216 Cockhill (Co. Donegal) 232 Coen, Bishop Thomas 106–7 Coggeshall (Essex) 97 Coimbra (Portugal) 121 Coleraine (Co. Derry) 97, 153 Coll (Argyll and Bute) 309 Collon (Co. Louth) 96, 221–2, 231, 365–7 Colonsay (Argyll and Bute) 317 Connaught, presbytery of 206, 209–11, 213 Connolly, Martin 274 Connolly, Philip 120 Connolly, Sean 19, 291, 313 Convoy (Co. Donegal) 156, 332 Conwal, see Letterkenny Conway, Bishop Dennis 33 Conwell, Henry 120 Cooke, Henry 56, 62, 126–31, 265–6, 292 Coolbanagher (Co. Laois) 183 Cooley, Thomas 231 Coote, Sir Charles 14

Cork 12, 19, 26, 46, 79, 87, 114, 117–18, 129, 161, 170, 176–8, 215, 225, 227, 237, 244, 266, 269, 276, 354 Corkbeg (Co. Cork) 147 Cornwallis, Lord 41, 43 Corofin (Co. Clare) 235 Coronea (Co. Cavan) 159 Cottingham, Lewis 241 Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion 264 Cox, Archbishop Michael 78 Cox, Watty 73 Cradock, Archbishop John 166, 168, 253, 258 Crawley (Sussex) 97 Cremorne, Lord 254 Criccieth (Gwynedd) 299 Crolly, David 276 Crolly, Archbishop William 58–60, 99, 103, 105, 107, 109–10, 112, 115–16, 124–5, 153, 175, 177, 254–5, 273, 297 Crossmolina (Co. Mayo) 109 Crossroads (Co. Donegal) 23 Crotty, Bishop Bartholomew 106–7, 142 Crotty, Michael 276–7 Crotty, William 277 Croy (Highland) 316 Crumlin (Co. Antrim) 232, 362–3 Cullen, Cardinal Paul 2, 59, 106, 112–16, 124–5, 141, 178, 200, 251, 291, 296, 313 Cullen (Co. Tipperary) 198, 216, 347 Curryglass (Co. Cork) 77 Curtis, Archbishop Patrick 106–7, 111, 273 Curwin, Archbishop Hugh 5, 326 Dalby (Isle of Man) 311–12, 315 Daly, Bishop Robert (Cashel) 57, 265, 271–2, 282 Daly, Bishop Robert (Kildare) 5 Darby, J. N. 269 Darre´, Andre´ 106, 141 Daubeny, Archdeacon Charles 251

Index Davies, Walter 299 Davis, Thomas 186 Defenders, Society of 38 Delahogue, Louis-Gilles 106, 141 Delany, Bishop Daniel 108, 176, 178 Delany, Bishop William 114, 177 Delort, Pierre-Justin 106, 141 Denvir, Bishop Cornelius 59, 107, 113, 254 Dermott, Anthony 26 Derry 79, 154, 235, 256, 276, 279, 292, 354 Derry, Bishop Edward 120 Derry, Bishop John 107, 114 Derrylee (Co. Armagh) 293 Derryvullen (Co. Fermanagh) 195 Desertlyn (Co. Derry) 196 Devenish (Co. Fermanagh) 153, 196 Dickson, Bishop William 41 Digby, William 265 Dill, Francis 206 Dill, Samuel 158, 263 Dillon, Archbishop A. R. 35 Dingle (Co. Kerry) 205, 272, 274–6 Dixon, Joseph 112 Dol, diocese of 302, 307 Domville, Sir Compton 45 Donabate (Co. Dublin) 84 Donadea (Co. Kildare) 182 Donaghcloney (Co. Down) 265, 285 Donaghmore (Co. Donegal) 158, 263 Donaghmore (Co. Wicklow) 84 Donaghpatrick (Co. Meath) 92 Donegal 156, 333 Donegore (Co. Antrim) 127 Doneraile, Lord 30 Doon (Co. Tipperary) 199, 347 Douglas (Co. Cork) 225 Douglas (Isle of Man) 305, 312 Down and Connor, diocese of 189 Downes, Bernard 137 Downham, Bishop George 10 Downpatrick (Co. Down) 97–8, 109, 207–8, 234, 239, 354, 363–4

391

Downshire, Marquess of 239, 287–9 Doyle, Bishop J. W. 51, 55, 58, 99, 105, 110–11, 114, 116, 121–4, 138, 143, 150–1, 154, 157, 171, 179, 202, 219, 254–7, 267–8, 290–2, 321 Drogheda (Co. Louth) 109, 125, 215, 224, 229 Dromard (Co. Sligo) 233, 367 Dromore (Co. Down) 167, 354 Dromore (Co. Tyrone) 196 Dromore, diocese of 21 Drumballyroney (Co. Down) 293 Drumcondra (Co. Meath) 93 Drumcree (Co. Armagh) 232, 358–9 Drumgooland (Co. Down) 262 Drumhorne (Co. Donegal) 156, 333 Drummally (Co. Fermanagh) 191, 195 Dublin 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23, 26–7, 29, 38–9, 61, 82–4, 105, 110, 127, 129, 156, 161–2, 164, 176, 181, 201, 215, 226, 232, 238, 241–6, 261, 263–5, 269–70, 274–5, 277, 279, 282, 292, 354 Dublin, diocese of 200 Dublin Evening Post 58 Dublin, presbytery of 277 Dublin, Trinity College 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 55, 65, 69–71, 76, 84, 105, 115, 126, 139, 183, 232, 256, 263–4, 270, 272 Duigenan, Patrick 85, 270 Duirinish (Highland) 317 Duleek (Co. Meath) 93 Dunany (Co. Louth) 196 Dunboyne (Co. Meath) 91 Dundalk (Co. Louth) 112, 125, 196 Duneane (Co. Antrim) 127 Dungannon (Co. Tyrone) 211–12 Dungourney (Co. Cork) 77, 216–17 Dunkerrin (Co. Offaly) 186 Dunlavin (Co. Wicklow) 84 Dunmanway (Co. Cork) 117, 225, 235 Dunmurry (Co. Antrim) 232, 364 Durham, archdeaconry of 230–1 Durness (Highland) 319

392

Index

East Horsley (Surrey) 97 Ecclesiastical Commission 50, 237 Edenderry (Co. Offaly) 182 Edinburgh 126, 139 Egan, Bishop Boetius 108, 226, 253 Egan, Bishop Cornelius 115, 203, 205, 247–8 Egan, Bishop William 33, 254 Eigg (Highland) 309 Elizabeth I, Queen 3 Elliott, Marianne 277 Ellis, Bishop Welborne 74 Ellis, David 299 Elphin, diocese of 189 Elrington, Bishop Thomas 71, 169, 257, 266, 282 Ely, Marquess of 72 Emly (Co. Tipperary) 77–8, 198, 348, 354 Ennis (Co. Clare) 54, 138, 177, 246, 355 Enniscorthy (Co. Wexford) 82, 247, 355 Enniskeen (Co. Cavan) 92 Enniskillen (Co. Fermanagh) 120, 153, 165, 196, 262, 291 Errigal Kieran (Co. Tyrone) 254 Ervey (Co. Cavan) 293 Eton (Buckinghamshire) 97 Everard, Archbishop Patrick 107 Exeter (Devon) 270 Fagan, Patrick 26 Famine, Great 60–2, 247, 261, 274, 318 Farnham, Lord 273 Feeny, Bishop Thomas 109 Ferguson, Sir Samuel 237 Ferns, diocese of 144 Fethard (Co. Tipperary) 175, 199, 235, 252, 348 Fiddown (Co. Kilkenny) 237, 262, 264, 341 Filan, James 102 Finglas (Co. Dublin) 276 Finner, see Bundoran Finnoe (Co. Tipperary) 185–6

First Fruits, Board of 34, 43, 48, 50, 78, 83, 88, 95–6, 98, 149, 184, 191–3, 220–5, 237, 311, 320 Fitzgerald, Bishop William 290 Fitzgerald, W. V. 46 Fitzpatrick, Abbot Bruno 115 Foran, Bishop Nicholas 103 Ford, Alan 5, 6 Ford, W. B. 186 Fort William (Highland) 316 Foster, W. H. 295 Fowler, Archbishop Robert 69, 82, 239, 270 Foxdale (Isle of Man) 315 French, Bishop Edmund 113–15 French, Bishop Patrick 28 French Revolution 35, 37, 297, 308 Fulwar, Archbishop Thomas 13 Gaelic School Society 298 Gaffney, Bishop Christopher 5 Gairloch (Highland) 317 Galway 10, 26, 114 Galway, wardenship of 109–10 Gap, diocese of 301, 303 Garristown (Co. Dublin) 84, 199 Gayer, Charles 274 General Evangelical Society 264 George II, King 52 George III, King 30, 33, 43–5, 66–8, 81, 164 George IV, King 46–7, 297 Gibson, J. D. 211 Giordani, Tommaso 164 Glasgow 126–7, 139 Glencar (Co. Kerry) 205 Glenealy (Co. Wicklow) 231, 367–8 Glenurquart (Highland) 298 Glynne, Sir Stephen 204 Godfrey, Luke 68 Goodman, T. C. 274 Goodwin, John 120 Gordon, Richard 185 Gorey (Co. Wexford) 238

Index Gougane Barra (Co. Cork) 159 Gough, T. B. 292 Grangegorman (Co. Dublin) 84, 279, 282 Great Connell (Co. Kildare) 183 Gregory XVI, Pope 153 Grendon (Northamptonshire) 89 Grogan, Walter 186–7 Gubbins, G. G. 274 Hamilton, Archbishop Archibald 12 Hamilton, Archdeacon 271 Hamilton, Hans 264 Hanna, Samuel 263 Harris, Howell 314 Harrison, David 300 Hay, George 265 Henry IX, Cardinal 33 Hervey, Bishop Frederick 32–3, 67, 72, 235–6, 253, 258 Hibernian Bible Society 264, 275 Hibernian Chronicle 104 Hibernian Church Missionary Society 264 Higgin, Bishop William 169 Hildesley, Bishop Mark 311 Hillsborough (Co. Down) 69, 162, 234, 239, 285, 287, 364 Hinds, Bishop Samuel 70, 259 Hoadly, Archbishop John 27 Holmes, Robert 55 Holyhead (Anglesey) 299 Holywell-cum-Needingworth (Cambridgeshire) 278 Holywood (Co. Down) 207–8 Horsley, Bishop Samuel 306, 314 Hort, Archbishop Josiah 167 Hospital (Co. Limerick) 153 Hotham, Bishop John 68 Howley, Archbishop William 47, 288–9 Howth (Co. Dublin) 83 Huguenots 243 Hussey, Bishop Thomas 38–41, 54

393

Ilston (Swansea) 310 Inch (Co. Down) 287–8 Inchigeelagh (Co. Cork) 87 Incorporated Church Building Society 224–5 Inishmacsaint (Co. Donegal) 192 Inverness (Highland) 316 Iona (Argyll and Bute) 309 Irish Catholic Magazine 268 Irish Catholic Society 268 Irish Ecclesiastical Record 282 Irish Society 272 Irwin, Bishop Alexander 108 Jackson, Dean 294 James I, King 9, 54 James II, King 15, 16, 18 James III, ‘Old Pretender’ 18, 28, 30, 33 Jebb, Bishop John 55, 57, 69, 86–8, 253, 255–6, 258, 263, 272, 281, 294 Jocelyn, Bishop Percy 72–3, 85, 185 Johnson, Samuel 308–9 Johnston, Francis 231 Johnstown (Co. Kilkenny) 280 Jones, Bishop Henry 14 Jurby (Isle of Man) 312 Kavanagh, Bishop Daniel 5 Keady (Co. Armagh) 195 Kearney, Bishop John 71, 270 Keash (Co. Sligo) 235 Keenan, D. J. 178 Keene, Bishop William 114 Kells (Co. Meath) 92, 95 Kelly, Archbishop Thomas 107, 110, 153, 269 Kelly, Bishop Francis 113 Kenmare (Co. Kerry) 145, 203 Kenmare, Viscount 117, 153, 248 Kennedy, Bishop Patrick 138 Kernan, Edward 120–1 Kerr, David 298 Kerr, Donal 112–13, 179, 313 Kiernan, Michael 112

394

Index

Kilbeggan (Co. Westmeath) 96 Kilberry (Co. Kildare) 83 Kilbixy (Co. Westmeath) 96 Kilbrandon (Argyll and Bute) 316 Kilbride (Co. Meath) 91 Kilcar (Co. Donegal) 156, 333 Kilchattan (Argyll and Bute) 316 Kilcornan (Co. Limerick) 232 Kilcredan (Co. Cork) 217 Kildare 82, 124, 182 Kildare and Leighlin, diocese of 158 Kildare Place Society 55, 272 Kildrought (Co. Kildare) 84 Kilfearagh (Co. Clare) 138 Kilfenora (Co. Clare) 186, 239, 255, 368 Kilkenny 11, 35, 82, 262, 264, 270, 343, 356 Kilkenny West (Co. Westmeath) 92 Killala (Co. Mayo) 79, 183, 209–10, 239, 243–4, 276, 355, 368 Killaloe, diocese of 226 Killallon (Co. Meath) 91, 338 Killanne (Co. Wexford) 186 Killard (Co. Clare) 138 Killarney (Co. Kerry) 116–17, 201, 238, 247–8, 355 Killea (Co. Donegal) 156, 333 Killeagh (Co. Cork) 217 Killen, W. D. 220, 293 Killeshandra (Co. Cavan) 159 Killiney (Co. Kerry) 205 Killorglin (Co. Kerry) 205 Killygarvan (Co. Donegal) 156, 334 Killyleagh (Co. Down) 127, 130 Killyman (Co. Tyrone) 191 Killymard (Co. Donegal) 156, 334 Kilmacduagh, diocese of 226 Kilmacrenan (Co. Donegal) 156, 334 Kilmahon (Co. Cork) 217 Kilmallie (Highland) 320 Kilmeague (Co. Kildare) 275 Kilmessan (Co. Meath) 91 Kilmore (Co. Armagh) 155 Kilmore (Co. Cavan) 237

Kilmore (Co. Down) 236, 286, 359–60 Kilmore, diocese of 226 Kilmore Erris (Co. Mayo) 157 Kilmoylan (Co. Limerick) 199 Kilmuckridge (Co. Wexford) 185 Kilrossanty (Co. Waterford) 254, 351 Kilrush (Co. Clare) 159, 165 Kilrush (Co. Kildare) 182 Kilsaran (Co. Louth) 191 Kilskyre (Co. Meath) 92, 338 Kiltearn (Highland) 316 Kilteely (Co. Limerick) 199 Kiltegan (Co. Wicklow) 187 Kiltoraght (Co. Clare) 186 King, Archbishop William 14, 16, 17, 22, 25, 27 Kingscourt (Co. Cavan) 267, 293 Kinneagh (Co. Carlow) 83 Kinnegad (Co. Westmeath) 91 Kinsale (Co. Cork) 117, 161 Kinsella, Bishop William 104, 106 Kirkwall (Orkney) 317–18 Kirwan, Bishop P. R. 108 Kitchin, Bishop Anthony 3 Knocktopher (Co. Kilkenny) 264, 344 Knox, Bishop Andrew 7–9, 326 Knox, Bishop Edmund 57, 68, 76, 169 Knox, Bishop R. B. 68, 284 Knox, Bishop William 67–8, 222, 283 Kyle, Bishop Samuel 71, 225, 282 Laggan, presbytery of 146 Lampeter (Ceredigion) 307 Lancaster, Archbishop Thomas 5 Lanigan, John 142 Larkin, Emmet 113, 178, 313 Larne (Co. Antrim) 208 Lattin (Co. Tipperary) 198 Laurence, Archbishop Richard 57, 69, 88, 264, 290 Leck (Co. Donegal) 156, 334 Leckpatrick (Co. Tyrone) 232, 364–5 Ledwich, Edward 142 Leiden (Netherlands) 139

Index Leinster, Duke of 55 Leslie, Bishop Henry 12–14 Letterkenny (Co. Donegal) 8, 156, 183, 262, 332 Letterkenny, presbytery of 263 Lezayre (Isle of Man) 305–6, 312 Limavady (Co. Derry) 129 Limerick 12, 26, 215, 269, 279 Lindsay, Bishop Charles 67, 81–2, 85, 181–3, 185 Lisbellaw (Co. Fermanagh) 195, 276 Lisbon (Portugal) 101, 106, 118 Lisgoold (Co. Cork) 217 Lismore (Argyll and Bute) 299 Lismore (Co. Waterford) 183–4, 356 Lismore, diocese of 144, 189, 226, 230, 349–52 Lissan (Co. Derry) 191 Listowel (Co. Kerry) 205 Littleton (Co. Tipperary) 236, 349, 368–9 Liverpool, Lord 97, 258 Llanberis (Gwynedd) 299 Llanddeusant (Anglesey) 315 Llanegwad (Carmarthenshire) 310 Llanfynydd (Carmarthenshire) 310 Llanllwni (Carmarthenshire) 310 Llanmadog (Swansea) 311 Llanruˆg (Gwynedd) 299 Llansamlet (Swansea) 310 Lloyd, Bishop Sylvester 28 Lochcarron (Highland) 316–17 Lochs (Western Isles) 316, 319 Loftus, Archbishop Adam 3, 5 Loftus, Bishop Lord Robert 72, 185–93 Lonan (Isle of Man) 306, 312, 316 London 23, 38, 97, 270 Londonderry, see Derry Longford 90, 219, 233–4, 246–7, 353 Loughcrew (Co. Meath) 91 Loughgilly (Co. Armagh) 295 Loughrea (Co. Galway) 275 Louisburgh (Co. Mayo) 275 Lowry, John 265

395

Ludlow, Lord 96 Lurgan (Co. Armagh) 219 Lusk (Co. Dublin) 183 Luss (Argyll and Bute) 299 Lyon, Bishop William 6 McCarthy, J. J. 238 McColl, Paul 299 MacDevitt, Bishop Philip 140 MacDonagh, Bishop Michael 28 Macdonald, John 317 McDowell, Benjamin 263 MacEgan, Bishop Stephen 28 MacFarlane, Bishop Andrew 299 MacGettigan, Bishop Patrick 105, 113, 151 McGrath, T. G. 255 MacHale, Archbishop John 58–60, 99–100, 106–7, 109, 112, 114–16, 124–5, 141, 175, 177–8, 251, 268, 273–4, 291, 296 Machynlleth (Powys) 306 McIlwaine, William 286 McInery, Thomas 138 Mackenzie, Duncan 299 Mackenzie, Lachlan 316–17 Mackenzie, Sir Hector 317 MacLaughlin, Bishop John 103–4, 108, 112, 153, 292 MacLeod, Alexander 316 MacLeod, Roderick 316 MacMahon, Bishop Hugh 29 MacMahon, Bishop M. P. 33, 54, 108, 246 MacMahon, Friar John 120–1 MacNally, Bishop Charles 103, 107, 113 MacNaughton, John 130–1 MacNicholas, Bishop Patrick 102, 107, 113, 115 Madden, Dominic 246 Magauran, Bishop James 273 Magee, Archdeacon T. P. 70 Magee, Archbishop William 168, 250, 256–7, 265, 271, 279–80, 292

396

Index

Magheraculmoney (Co. Fermanagh) 195 Magherafelt (Co. Derry) 294 Magherahamlet (Co. Down) 254 Magherally (Co. Down) 293 Maginn, Michael 119–20 Magrath, Archbishop Miler 4, 7 Maguire, Lady Frances 153 Maguire, Thomas 275 Majendie, Bishop H. W. 300, 306–7 Malew (Isle of Man) 305, 311–12 Mallow (Co. Cork) 87 Manafon (Powys) 299 Manby, Peter 16 Manners-Sutton, Archbishop Charles 69, 97 Mant, Archdeacon W. B. 69, 285, 287–9 Mant, Bishop Richard 57, 69, 72–3, 96–9, 150, 167–8, 236, 256–8, 280–2, 284–90, 311 Mant, F. W. 287 Marlay, Bishop Richard 41 Marown (Isle of Man) 305, 311 Marsh, Archbishop Narcissus 14 Mary II, Queen 14, 16 Matthew, Theobald 176–7 Matthias, Benjamin 269 Maturin, Henry 263–4 Maturin, William 282 Maughold (Isle of Man) 305 Maynooth (Co. Kildare) 35–6, 38–9, 105–7, 110, 112, 115, 137, 140–2, 178, 203, 259, 276, 307, 320 Mayo Telegraph 109 Meath, diocese of 94–5, 144, 336–9 Methodists 92, 227–8, 261–3, 267–8, 270, 293, 313–15 Michael (Isle of Man) 305, 312 Midleton (Co. Cork) 216–17 Midleton, Viscount 84 Mitchelstown (Co. Cork) 254 Mold (Flintshire) 306 Monaghan 120, 192, 195, 254 Monasterevan (Co. Kildare) 124, 218 Monea (Co. Fermanagh) 196

Moneymore (Co. Derry) 151 Monsell, J. S. B. 284 Montgomery, Henry 129 Moravians 261, 313 Moriarty, Bishop David 203, 205 Mornington, Earl of 91 Mountcashel, Earl of 266 Mountjoy (Co. Tyrone) 234, 361 Mount Melleray (Co. Waterford) 115, 176 Mountmellick (Co. Laois) 182 Moylan, Bishop Francis 38, 42, 99, 105, 116–18, 164, 178, 201 Moynalty (Co. Meath) 92 Moyrus (Co. Galway) 275 Muck (Highland) 309 Mucknoe (Co. Monaghan) 193 Mullavilly (Co. Armagh) 155 Mullingar (Co. Westmeath) 91, 93, 356 Munster, Synod of 130 Murphy, Bishop James 108, 116, 118–21, 174 Murphy, Bishop John 105–6, 118, 142, 159, 170 Murphy, Bishop Myles 247 Murray, Archbishop Daniel 55, 58–60, 99, 101, 105, 109–12, 114–16, 125, 154, 173, 175–6, 179, 201, 255, 259, 275, 297, 321 Murray, Bishop Lord George 310 Murray, James 103 Murray, Richard 272 Myshall (Co. Carlow) 158 Naas (Co. Kildare) 123–4, 182 Nangle, Edward 274 Nantes, diocese of 302–3, 308 Naples (Italy) 235 Nash, John 234 national schools 56–9 National Society for Education 306 Navan (Co. Meath) 95–6, 221, 232 Neely, W. G. 156 Nelson, Isaac 130

Index Nenagh (Co. Tipperary) 138, 165, 171, 176 Newcome, Archbishop William 68, 76, 147 Newman, Henry 149 Newman, J. H. 238, 281 Newport (Co. Mayo) 274 Newport, Sir John 223 New Ross (Co. Wexford) 121 Newry (Co. Down) 41, 154, 246, 354 Newtownards (Co. Down) 207–8 Newtownbutler (Co Fermanagh) 119 Newtownforbes (Co. Longford) 234, 369 Newtownsandes (Co. Kerry) 205 Newtown Hamilton (Co. Armagh) 195 Nobber (Co. Meath) 93 Northern Star 38 Northland, Viscount 68 Northumberland, Earl of 75 O’Beirne, Bishop T. L. 42, 53, 67, 73, 76, 82, 88–96, 99, 221, 252 O’Beirne, Denis 90 O’Brien, Bishop James 57, 271, 282–3 O’Brien, Paul 142 O’Callaghan, Bishop Ambrose 28 O’Connell, Daniel 45–7, 51, 55, 291 O’Connor, Bishop Thomas 108 O’Curry, Eugene 142 Odagh (Co. Kilkenny) 262 O’Daly, Bishop James 28 O’Donnell, Bishop Laurence 113 O’Ferrall, Fergus 47 O’Finan, Bishop F. J. 109 O’Gallagher, Bishop James 29 O’Hanlon, John 112 O’Higgins, Bishop William 58, 106–7, 113, 246–7 O’Keefe, Bishop James 29 O’Kelly, Archbishop Oliver 246 Old Derrig (Co. Laois) 138 Oldcastle (Co. Meath) 95, 336 Omagh (Co. Tyrone) 234–5, 360

397

Orange Order 38, 291 Oranmore (Co. Galway) 108 O’Regan, John 276 O’Reilly, Archbishop Richard 25, 33, 41, 119–21, 174, 294 O’Reilly, Bishop Farrell 121, 151 O’Reilly, Bishop Hugh 119 O’Reilly, Joseph 276 Orritor (Co. Tyrone) 212–13 O’Shaughnessy, Bishop James 138, 276 O’Shaughnessy, Dean 246 Ossory Clerical Association 264 Ossory, diocese of 144, 340–6 O’Sullivan, Dean 203–4, 247 Oughterard (Co. Galway) 113 Oxford 69, 70, 97 Pain, James 243 Pakenham, Henry 243 Pallasgreen (Co. Limerick) 198, 349 Paris (France) 106, 276 Parry, Bishop Edward 12 Passage West (Co. Cork) 117 Patrician Brothers 176 Patrick (Isle of Man) 315 Patton, Isaac 160 Payne, Archdeacon Henry 299 Peel (Isle of Man) 305 Percy, Bishop Thomas 41, 69, 70, 76, 167, 273 Pettigoe (Co. Donegal) 193 Phelan, James 276 Phillips, Bishop Philip 108, 170 Philpot, Archdeacon Benjamin 305, 315 Phillpotts, Bishop Henry 258, 286 Pitt, William the Younger 43 Pius VII, Pope 119 Plunkett, Bishop P. J. 33, 38, 41–2, 89 Plymouth Brethren 269 Plymouth (Devon) 270 Pollen, J. H. 238 Pomeroy (Co. Tyrone) 211 Ponsonby, Bishop Richard 57 Pope, Richard 275

398

Index

Portarlington (Co. Laois) 122 Porter, Bishop John 67 Porter, William 129 Port Eynon (Swansea) 309–10 Portland, Duke of 66 Portlaw (Co. Waterford) 237 Portora Royal School 183 Portree (Highland) 309 Power, Nicholas 138 Public Works, Board of 248 Pugin, A. W. N. 238, 247–8 Quarry, John 262 Queen Anne’s Bounty 34 Raasay (Highland) 309 Rademon (Co. Down) 234, 365 Rahan (Co. Cork) 87 Ramsey (Isle of Man) 305, 312 Ranfurly, Earl of 68 Raphoe (Co. Donegal) 293, 334 Raphoe, diocese of 156, 332–5 Rathangan (Co. Kildare) 124 Rathcore (Co. Meath) 95 Rathdrum, Earl of 275 Rathfarnham (Co. Dublin) 282 Rathfriland (Co. Down) 293 Rathgar (Co. Dublin) 238 Rathkenny (Co. Meath) 93 Rathneeny (Co. Donegal) 220, 369–70 Rathvilly (Co. Carlow) 158 Rattoo (Co. Kerry) 205 Ray (Co. Donegal) 23, 158 Raymoghy (Co. Donegal) 156, 334 Raymunterdoney (Co. Donegal) 156, 334 Reformed Presbyterians 126 regium donum 16, 17, 127, 130, 145–6, 207, 320 Remonstrant Synod 129–30 Rennes, diocese of 302–4, 307–8 Rhu (Argyll and Bute) 299 Rinuccini, Archbishop G. B. 11 Roberts, John 244

Robinson, Archbishop Richard 33, 40, 68, 71, 77, 220, 241 Roden, Earl of 72–3, 266, 293 Roe, Peter 262–4, 270 Rome (Italy) 106, 114, 140 Roscrea (Co. Tipperary) 178 Rosscarberry (Co. Cork) 235, 356 Rosslea (Co. Fermanagh) 232, 254 Rossmore, Lady 192 Roundwood (Co. Wicklow) 199 Rowland, Daniel 314 Rushen (Isle of Man) 312 Ryan, Bishop John 106 Sadleir, Provost 55 St Andrews (Fife) 139 St Columba’s College 71 St John’s (Isle of Man) 312 St Johnston (Co. Donegal) 158 St Jude’s (Isle of Man) 311–12 St Kilda (Western Isles) 317 St Lawrence, Bishop Thomas 86 St Malo, diocese of 302, 307 St Mark’s (Isle of Man) 300, 305, 312 St Mullins (Co. Carlow) 158, 187 St Omer (France) 89 St Patrick’s Purgatory 29, 159 Salamanca (Spain) 106 Salisbury, Bishop John 3 Sandes, Bishop Stephen 70 Sandholes (Co. Tyrone) 165 Santan (Isle of Man) 311–12 Scattery Island 159 Scotland, Church of 298, 310, 316, 318–20 Scotland, Free Church of 316, 318–20 Scotstown (Co. Monaghan) 118 Scott, Sir Walter 70 Secession Synod 126, 130, 228 Sewell, William 282 Seymour, Charles 275 Shandon (Co. Cork) 262 Shaw, Robert 262

Index Sheehy, Nicholas 25 Shenton, Robert 79 Sheridan, Bishop William 14 Short, Bishop T. V. 311 Shrewsbury, Earl of 238 Sidney, Henry 4 Skibbereen (Co. Cork) 246, 356 Skreen (Co. Meath) 75 Skull (Co. Cork) 87 Slane (Co. Meath) 92–3 Slattery, Archbishop Michael 60, 101, 105–7, 112, 125, 152, 175, 177–8, 200, 219, 297, 313 Sleat (Highland) 319 Sligo 209–10 Sligo, Marquess of 293 Small Isles (Highland) 309 Snizort (Highland) 319 souperism 61 Southampton (Hampshire) 97 South Ronaldsay (Orkney) 304–5, 318 Stackallen (Co. Meath) 92 Stearne, Bishop John 22 Stevens, Walter 265 Stock, Bishop Joseph 183–4 Stonebridge (Co. Monaghan) 155 Stopford, Archdeacon Edward 241, 279 Stopford, Bishop Thomas 86 Stopford, Joseph 262, 264 Stornaway (Western Isles) 319 Stowell, Hugh 306 Strabane (Co. Tyrone) 139 Stradbally (Co. Waterford) 184, 351 Stranolar (Co. Donegal) 156, 334 Strath (Highland) 319 Strathnairn (Highland) 299 Street, G. E. 237 Stuart, Archbishop William 41, 53, 66–8, 72, 81–2, 84–6, 88, 116, 221–4, 241, 256, 291, 326 Sugrue, Bishop Charles 40, 101, 201–2 Sulby (Isle of Man) 312 Sunday School Society 267, 272

399

Sweetman, Bishop Nicholas 25, 27, 108, 171 Synge, Archbishop Edward 22 Taghadoe (Co. Kildare) 83 Taghmon (Co. Westmeath) 91, 95 Taghmon (Co. Wexford) 137 Tagoat (Co. Wexford) 238 Tain (Highland) 316 Talbot, William 238 Tallow (Co. Waterford) 184, 351 Tara (Co. Meath) 91, 95 Tara, Lord 96 Taughboyne (Co. Donegal) 156, 332, 334 Taylor, Bishop Jeremy 14 Telford, Thomas 309 Templecarne (Co. Fermanagh) 192 Templemichael, see Longford Templemore (Co. Tipperary) 77, 349 Tempo (Co. Fermanagh) 153, 191 Termonmaguirk (Co. Tyrone) 195 Thackeray, Elias 53 Thomas, Anthony 275 Thompson, G. R. 151–2 Thomson, William 309 Thurles (Co. Tipperary) 77, 152, 177–8, 219, 225, 252, 349, 353 Thurles, Synod of 59, 114–16, 121, 125, 142, 203 Tighe, Thomas 262 Tillyaugnish (Co. Donegal) 156 Timogue (Co. Laois) 232, 234, 370 Tintern Abbey 247 Tintern (Co. Wexford) 137 Tipperary 12, 27–8, 199, 215–16, 349 Tiree (Argyll and Bute) 317 Tithe Rentcharge Act 48, 51 Tithes 16, 25, 37, 39, 50–1, 57, 62, 80, 257, 271, 292 Toem (Co. Tipperary) 215 Tomregan (Co. Cavan) 233–4 Tone, Wolfe 38 Tongue (Highland) 316 Toomevara (Co. Tipperary) 276

400

Index

Tournai (Belgium) 28 Townsend, Bishop Thomas 259–60 The Tracts for the Times 281, 283 Tralee (Co. Kerry) 116–17, 164, 205 Travers, Walter 9 Tre´guier, diocese of 301 Trelawney, Bishop Jonathan 76 Trench, Archbishop P. le P. 48, 184, 223, 264–5, 269, 271–2, 274–5, 289, 292, 295 Trim (Co. Meath) 91–2, 95 Troy, Archbishop J. T. 33, 35, 37–8, 40–1, 99, 101–2, 104–5, 110, 118, 154, 164, 173, 179, 201, 321 Tuam (Co. Galway) 4, 8, 239–40, 246, 253, 356 Tuam, diocese of 144 Tullaghobegly (Co. Donegal) 156, 335 Tullow (Co. Carlow) 186 Tully (Co. Galway) 275 Tullyallan (Co. Tyrone) 218, 361 Tullycorbet (Co. Monaghan) 197 Tuohy, Bishop Charles 255 Turlough (Co. Mayo) 210 Tydavnet (Co. Monaghan) 177 Tynan (Co. Armagh) 195 Tyrella (Co. Down) 286 Tyrone, presbytery of 151, 206, 211–13 Uig (Western Isles) 316 Ulster Evangelical Society 264–5 Ulster, Synod of 15, 23, 37, 39, 46, 56, 62, 126–31, 138–40, 143, 145, 151, 165, 206–7, 228, 263, 265–6, 297, 320 Ulster Temperance Society 160 Union, Act of 34–5, 40–5, 61–2, 81 United Irishmen, Society of 37–8 Upperchurch (Co. Tipperary) 198 Urquhart (Highland) 317 Urquhart, Jean 317 Ursuline Sisters 176 Ussher, Archbishop James 7, 9, 251, 256 Vannes, diocese of 301–2 Ventry (Co. Kerry) 205

Ventry, Lord 274 Victoria, Queen 297 Vienna (Austria) 101 Walker, John 263–4, 269–70 Wall, Maureen 26 Walsh, Bishop Robert 102 Ward, Bishop William 311 Waringstown (Co. Down) 167 Warren, Bishop John 306–7 Warren, Dean 300 Waterford 26, 29, 79, 161–2, 178, 244, 246, 253, 351–2, 357 Waterford, diocese of 144, 226, 230, 349–52 Waterford, Marquess of 68 Watson, Bishop Richard 89, 306–7 Watson, David 206–7 Watson, James 304 Weld, Thomas 103 Wellington, Duke of 46 Wentworth, Thomas 10, 12 Wesley, John 261, 263 West Deeping (Lincolnshire) 90 Westminster Confession 127, 130 Westport (Co. Mayo) 210, 293 Wexford 11, 12, 16, 29, 161–2, 164, 187, 234, 238, 293 Whateley, Archbishop Richard 36, 55, 57–9, 69, 70, 168–9, 258–60, 282–4 White, Henry 45 Whiteboys 37, 149 Whitechurch (Co. Cork) 77, 87 Wicklow 40, 84 Wilks, James 300 William III, King 14, 16 Williams, P. B. 299 Williams, William 314 Wilson, Bishop Thomas 305, 311, 316 Wilson’s Hospital 53, 93 Winning, Robert 267, 293 Winter, Samuel 12

Index Woods, Thomas 300 Woodward, Bishop Richard 69, 84, 141–2, 149 Worth, Bishop Edward 14 Wynne, Henry 282

York 176 Yorke, Bishop James 76 Youghal (Co. Cork) 87, 217, 232

401

The Religious Condition of Ireland 1770-1850

Ireland: Social, Political, and Religious

The Condition of Education

The Condition

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The Condition

The Anthropology of Ireland

The Rebels of Ireland

The Anthropology of Ireland

The Story Of Ireland

The story of Ireland

the Rebels of Ireland

Condition of Employment

Condition Of Employment

Condition of Marriage

Condition of Employment

Condition of Marriage

Condition of Employment

Condition Of Employment

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Condition of Marriage

The Inhuman Condition

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The Inhuman Condition

The Techno-Human Condition

The Inhuman Condition

The Inhuman Condition

Autumn: The Human Condition

Ireland

Ireland

The Religious Condition of Ireland 1770-1850

Ireland: Social, Political, and Religious

The Condition of Education

The Condition

The Condition

The Condition

The Anthropology of Ireland

The Rebels of Ireland

The Anthropology of Ireland

The Story Of Ireland

The story of Ireland

the Rebels of Ireland

Condition of Employment

Condition Of Employment

Condition of Marriage

Condition of Employment

Condition of Marriage

Condition of Employment

Condition Of Employment

Condition of Employment

Condition of Marriage

The Inhuman Condition

The Inhuman Condition

The Inhuman Condition

The Techno-Human Condition

The Inhuman Condition

The Inhuman Condition

Autumn: The Human Condition

Ireland

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