The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70: A Study of Protestant-Catholic Relations Between the Act of Union and Disestablishment 9780773592476

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THE PROTESTANT CRUSADE IN IRELAND, 1800-70

Desmond Bowen

THE PROTESTANT CRUSADE IN IRELAND, 1800-70 A Study of Protestant-Catholic Relations Between the Act of Union and Disestablishment

Gill and Macmillan McGill-Queen's University Press

First published 1978 by Gill and Macmillan Ltd 15 /17 Eden Quay Dublin 1 with associated companies in London and Basingstoke, New York, Melbourne, Delhi, Johannesburg Published in North America by McGill-Queen's University Press 1020 Pine Avenue West Montreal H3A lA2 © Desmond Bowen 1978 7171 0846 5 (Gill and Macmillan) 0 7735 0295 5 (McGill-Queen's) Legal deposit 1st quarter 1978 Biblioth6que Nationale du Quebec

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bristol Typesetting Co. Ltd, Barton Manor, St Philips, Bristol

To all Catholic and Protestant Irishmen who through the ages have sought to bring peace and concord among the people of the two nations in the land He who would throw oil on these troubled waters, blend the discordant elements, and direct the mingled mind of the WHOLE PEOPLE to one grand scheme of national improvement, would attempt the noblest task of the patriot, achieve the proudest triumph of philanthropy, and fulfil the highest duty of a Christian. M. B. BUCKLEY, Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary (1868)

Acknowledgement This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Research Council of Canada, using funds provided by the Canada Council.

Contents INTRODUCTION

ix

I. IRISH PROTESTANTS AND REVOLUTIONARY CATHOLICISM

1 Ireland and the Spirit of the French Revolution 2 The Castle Bishops 3 Maynooth and Archbishop John MacHale 4 Protestants and the Radical Priests II.

THE PROTESTANT MIND IN IRELAND

1 Dissent in Ireland 2 The State of the Unreformed Established Church 3 The Mind of the Church of Ireland 4 The Established Church Evangelicals III.

1 7 12 16 29 39 47 61

THE ERA OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

1 Archbishop William Magee 83 2 Richard Hayes, James Maher and the Early Clerical Combatants 96 3 Father Tom Maguire and the Rev. Tresham Gregg 106 4 Protestant Champions : R. J. McGhee and Mortimer O'Sullivan 113 IV. THE DIVISION OF THE PEOPLES 1 Religion and the Two Nations

in Pre-Famine

Ireland 2 The Problem of Conversion 3 The Tithe War 4 The Famine V.

127 143 156 177

EXETER HALL AND IRELAND

1 English Evangelicalism and Irish Popery 2 The Rev. Alexander Dallas 3 The Irish Church Missions 4 English Evangelicalism in Ireland

195 208 224 246

Contents, continued VI. THE LEGACY OF THE EVANGELICAL CRUSADE

1 Ultramontanism in Ireland 2 Protestants and the `Cullenisation' of Ireland 3 The Protestant Bishops and the Evangelical Crusaders 4 The End of the Protestant Establishment

259 265 273 297

EPILOGUE:

Protestants and the Legacy of Religious Warfare in Ireland

309

NOTE S

316

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

390

INDEX

403

Introduction When I published the book entitled Souperism: Myth or Reality?, which studied the charge that Protestant missionaries in Ireland used bribery to obtain converts during the era of the great famine, some reviewers indicated that the work could have been improved by a deeper study of the thought of the Evangelicals and the goals they were pursuing. Because of size and subject limitations, I had deliberately confined Souperism to the issue indicated by its title, but the reviewers' conviction that someone should provide a study of the thought of the leaders of the Irish Protestant proselytising bodies and of their influence on the course of Irish history was one that I shared. I hope that this present volume may be considered a partial answer to our need to understand not only the Evangelicals in Ireland and their missionary work, but also the mind of the Irish Protestants who supported or tolerated their religious militancy. Because the situation in Ulster calls for separate treatment in any stage of Irish history, the study deals mainly with events in the other three provinces of Ireland, where the religious and social struggle for ascendancy took place. The study is also limited inasmuch as it is largely confined to the period 1822-69, and is mostly concerned with the thought and action of the supporters of the militant Evangelical party within the Established Church. The starting date is chosen because it marks the year that the Rev. Alexander R. C. Dallas, an Englishman, who was to be founder of the Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, first turned his attention to Ireland by preaching a charity sermon on behalf of the Irish people and their suffering from the first `big hunger' of the century. It was also the year in which William Magee, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, declared religious war on the Catholic Church in Ireland. The terminal date, 1869, marks the year of Dallas's death, the Disestablishment of the Church of

x Introduction Ireland, and the end of the Evangelicals' hope of bringing the blessings of a `Second Reformation' to Irish Catholics. In our day, when scholars make such common use of a Mandan critique to explain historical development, some readers may find it surprising that little use is made of a class-struggle model of analysis in this study. The reason for this is that whereas the fact of class sometimes provides intelligible and useful explanations of behaviour in Irish society, it seldom explains clearly how differences and conflicts arise. It is notorious in our own day, for example, that Marxist historians have a difficult time explaining developments in Ulster according to their class-war theory. When two peoples are as ideologically and culturally divided as Irish Catholics and Protestants have been ever since the Act of Union, it would seem that a vaguer concept such as that of ethnic or cultural struggle would be a better tool for explaining social behaviour than the classdifference model of interpretation.1 When the term `ethnic' is used in this study it refers to the phenomenon that so many people have observed in Irish history in the period about to be studied. Ireland had two `nations' or groups of people who usually chose to breed apart from each other, to work in separate groups, and to maintain different religious outlooks. They usually lived in almost totally different `cultures', by which is meant the creation, by each `nation', `of a world of adjustment and meaning, in the context of which life can be significantly lived' .2 Both `nations' chose to reinforce their cultures by separate educational establishments in which their members, regardless of economic or social class, would be taught the history of their folk and the symbols of their culture, which helped them to establish an identity over and against those of the other `nation' s The radical divisions of the two peoples which marked Irish society after the 1820s had not been found in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. During that period, to a remarkable degree, the Catholic majority people and the minority Protestant ascendancy seemed to be able to tolerate each other. Revolutionary sentiments had been crushed by the savage reprisals following '98, the Emmet rising had been quickly smothered, and local famines had taken away what little spirit was left in the rapidly increasing rural population. Religious peace existed generally, for, although agrarian secret societies were active in some parts of the country, neither the Catholics nor the Protestants wanted to add to social unrest by raising sectarian issues.' The clergy helped to maintain the religious armistice by finding `accommodation' for irregularities like mixed marriages between the young of the two peoples. Although this usually meant that one of the partners had to enter

Introduction xi a different breeding-group, a separate labour force and a different culture, a folk custom was developed which tried to ease this trauma. It was generally agreed that when such a union had children 'the boys be brought up in the religion of their father, and the girls in that of their mother'.5 Daniel O'Connell's family, for example, took advantage of this folk arrangement `in accordance with the custom of the time' .6 What disturbed this period of accommodation is the phenomenon studied in this book—the `Protestant crusade'. Beginning abruptly in 1822 with a declaration of war by a Protestant prelate, it initiated a period of religious controversy which represented the passing of the age of `accommodation'. Yet much of the conflict was confined to intellectual sparring in the early days, and there was even talk of Catholic-Protestant union in 1824. If left to themselves the Irish might have worked out a modification of their `accommodation', but each `nation' was greatly influenced by ways of thought, or ideologies, which came into the country from the continent and from England. When the Catholics found their aggressive thoughts reinforced by continental concepts, and when the Protestants heeded English ideas of religious and cultural expansion, battle was joined once more. The concepts accepted by both peoples were really complexes of ideas. The ones that appealed to the Catholics were the notions of liberty and equality, such as those which had been sought in the American and French revolutions. Together with the belief that such radical human needs could be realised through the organised political action of a mass popular fraternity, this complex of ideas may be referred to as `radical democracy'. This ideology appealed mainly to the Catholics who followed Daniel O'Connell, and although his influence was always limited in certain areas and at certain periods,7 yet ideas of `radical democracy' were in the airs and were certainly recognised by Irish Protestants. The other ideology among the Catholics which the Protestants had to reckon with at this time was 'Ultramontanism'. This European romantic concept exalted the authority of the papacy, and it slowly but surely gained ground among Irish Catholics. It was the respect granted to this idea which allowed Paul Cullen to carry out his legatine authority when he came to Ireland in the middle of the century. It also allowed him to establish his control of much of the spirit of `radical democracy' in the land, and to direct it to serve Ultramontanist goals. By the time of the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, Protestants, at least, were convinced that Cardinal Cullen, the Catholic hierarchy and the priests were completely in control of the popular movement among the people.

xii Introduction The ideas that influenced the Protestants may be conveniently referred to as `imperialism' and `Evangelicalism'. The Act of Union left Ireland with an uncertain identity, `a half-way status between a nation and a province',9 and this confusion was reflected in the loyalties of the Irish Protestant people. Although their sturdy resistance to some Westminster policies, and their general `Irish' resentment of much that was English, showed that their eighteenthcentury radicalism had not completely disappeared, they tended to view Ireland as a province rather than a nation. Particularly was this so when Catholic nationalist agitation was at its height. Most of them were `imperialist' minded in the sense that they were arrogantly proud of their connection with England. This loyalty convinced them that it was their duty, through Dublin Castle, the imperial administration and the Established Church, to bring the blessings of British civilisation to the `lesser' people who formed the majority of the Irish population. If the Irish Protestants had been left alone, the Catholics might have tolerated this ascendancy complex as a tribal manifestation that was nothing new, and nothing to be taken too seriously. But this was not to be. During the period we are to study there was a slow development of imperialist ideas in England. Inevitably they came to Ireland and strongly reinforced the expansionist mentality of those members of the Protestant `garrison' who thought in terms of cultural imperialism. By the time the Protestant `crusade' was at its height, Lord Grey was stating his conviction that : The authority of the British crown is at this moment the most powerful instrument, under Providence, of maintaining peace and order in many extensive regions of the earth, and thereby assists in diffusing among millions of the human race the blessings of Christianity and civilisation19 Gladstone was also advancing the `imperialist' idea, telling his contemporaries : We shall avail ourselves in reason and moderation of those openings to reproduce the copy of those laws and institutions, those habits and characteristics, which had made England so famous as she is.11 One group of Irish Protestants who paid particular attention to these imperialist ideas coming from England were the Evangelicals. They were convinced that it was their religious duty to free Irish Catholics from `popish superstition' and the authority of the Antichrist in Rome. Although their first desire was the purely religious one of freeing Catholics from the bondage of their sin by bringing

Introduction xiii them the blessings of biblical Christianity, they soon found it advantageous to combine their religious crusading with English `cultural imperialism'. How could the Irish peasantry read the Bible unless they attended schools? And how could they attend Evangelical schools and not be culturally influenced by the alien but superior way of life they found there? By mid-century, as we shall see, a considerable number of Irish Evangelicals were combining ideas of `Evangelicalism' and `imperialism' and pursuing a proselytising policy among the Irish Catholics which sought to bring them the twofold blessing of a reformed faith and British civilisation.12 One of the values of these ideologies of `radical democracy' and `Ultramontanism' among the Catholics and `imperialism' and `Evangelicalism' among the Protestants was that they reinforced the identities of each of the two peoples. The cultural expression of each `nation' became more clearly defined because of the ideas coming into Ireland from the continent and from England, and the sense of ethnic difference between them deepened. What really mattered in the Catholic or the Protestant world was the commitment to a religious and cultural way of life, and loyalty to a common cause tended to overcome even the differences in class that usually divided people.'$ An example of the power of this religious and cultural, or ethnic, bond in Irish society is given by Charles Gavan Duffy. He tells in his autobiography how he tried to persuade members of the Protestant working class in Dublin, the `Protestant operatives' led by the Rev. Tresham Gregg, to support the Repeal movement. He actually received a sympathetic hearing from Gregg, who, like many Protestants of the day, had reservations about the government. Duffy encountered the religious-cultural, or ethnic, division in Irish society, however, when he approached other Protestant leaders : The most conspicuous of them (Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan) stated his objections in terms which implied his rooted suspicion of a generous people who are the most placable of mankind. `Duffy', he said, `is no bigot, but he must know well that he could not find ten men of his own creed in Ireland who would be as tolerant as himself. He may be enthusiastic enough to believe it possible that he and his handful of allies could protect religious liberty in a parliament of priest-selected members; but it is the dream of an enthusiast. He and his friends would be the first victims." It is because of the experience of people like Duffy, who recorded `rooted suspicion' existing between peoples, not classes, that in this study so much emphasis is put on religious and cultural rather than

xiv Introduction class divisions as a means of understanding the relations between Ireland's two `nations' in the nineteenth century. It is hoped that the approach taken may help to explain that passionate world of controversy, and in the light of its history assist us to understand Catholic sensitivity since that time about Protestant `aggressiveness' in any form. It is also hoped that Protestant anxiety about the uncompromising attitudes expressed by many Catholic leaders may be better appreciated. It is probably naive to hope that tout cornprendre, c'est tout pardonner, but to put the thought and actions of contentious men in their historical setting is probably the only contribution a historian can make towards that for which we all long so greatly—the coming of peace between Ireland's two peoples. This work has been completed with the aid of Carleton University; the Canada Council, which assisted me to engage in research in Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom; and the Social Science Research Council of Canada, which provided a publication subvention, as well as professional criticism of the manuscript by its anonymous readers. For this help I am grateful. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the directors of the Irish Church Missions in Dublin and London, who opened the records of their society to me; the archivists of the Roman Catholic archdiocesan archives in Dublin; the librarians at Friends' House, London; and the Cardinal Prefect and archivists of Propaganda Fide in Rome. Special thanks is extended to Monsignor Eamon Marron, Rector of the Irish College, Rome, for his hospitality, and to the archivist of the college, the Rev. John Silke. I am also appreciative of the wise counsel given to me by so many friends at Trinity College, Dublin; Queen's University, Belfast; and the several colleges of the National University of Ireland. All of them were willing to discuss religious matters with me, sometimes when it was inexpedient for them to do so. Finally my thanks is extended to my wife and co-worker, Jean, who has spent so many hours with me puzzling over vagaries of nineteenth-century thought and indecipherable Victorian handwriting, and to Mrs Dixie Wood of Ottawa, who helped with the typing and editing of the manuscript. Desmond Bowen, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. 1976

CHAPTER I

IRISH PROTESTANTS AND REVOLUTIONARY CATHOLICISM If a desire for information on the present state of Ireland exists, the past should be attentively studied; but the difficulty of placing ourselves in remote times, and of recalling contemporary opinions and manners, is very great, and this must be accomplished before we can draw inferences, or arrive at just conclusions. T. CROFTON CROKER,

Researches in the South of Ireland, Illustrative of the Scenery, Architectural Remains and the Manners and Superstitions of the Peasantry (1824)

CHAPTER I IRISH PROTESTANTS AND REVOLUTIONARY CATHOLICISM 1. Ireland and the Spirit of the French Revolution Alfred Cobban has argued in his study of The Fundamental Ideas of Robespierre' that `In the last resort, the historian who disregards the influence of general principles, or ideas, reduces history not to Machiavellianism but to meaningless intrigue or simple madness.'1 There is hardly need for a historian to argue about the influence of the ideas of the French Revolution in European history. The fact of the revolution and its abrupt and total renovation of human affairs in one nation filled every traditionalist with anxiety. If a revolutionary middle class could destroy an aristocratic society, could not the lower classes of Europe one day rise against a bourgeois social order? And, even if direct revolutionary activity was avoided, was there not an unredeemed promise in the French Revolution that social and economic equality could be obtained by any oppressed people, if first they were granted civil and legal equality? Without doubt Cobban is right when he says that out of the upheaval of the age of Robespierre came a system of ideas that was to be a great historic force. He says of Robespierre : `He was the first to attempt to give practical effect to one of those ideas that shape the course of a civilisation, and since his time, for good or for evil, the sovereignty of the people has remained on the agenda of history." At the time of the French Revolution the Protestants of Ireland, in particular, were fascinated by the upheaval in France, and `in no country did the ideas and enthusiasm it generated strike more responsive chords'.3 The downfall of the Bastille was celebrated annually in Dublin, Belfast and throughout Ulster.' When the rebellion of 1798, which `was essentially a Protestant affair',8 took place, the call for social and political revolution coming from France did much to encourage the rebels, until the sectarian rising in Wexford changed the whole nature of the insurrection. By the time the rebellion was suppressed a spirit of revolt was widely spread

2 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 among the Catholic rather than the Protestant people : `The enthusiasm for equality had a powerful effect upon men whose inferiority of legal status in their own country was an anomaly of the grossest sort'8 Alexander Knox, an enlightened Protestant layman, who was an intimate of John Wesley and Bishop Knox of Limerick and who had formerly served as secretary to Lord Castlereagh, recognised with some sympathy the new rebellious spirit that was appearing among the Catholics: It is no affront to the Irish Catholics to suppose that they are but men; but more than men they must be, if after having gained their point by intimidating the Ministry in England, they would have rested satisfied with anything short of absolute ascendancy in Ireland. Heaven knows I bear the sincerest good will towards the Irish Catholics, but I cannot give them credit for what is not in human nature. Like all other bodies of men that ever existed, they must be under the influence of that potent principle which has not unfitly been called the Esprit du Corps; they must ever in their mildest temper, and under the most conciliatory circumstances desire not merely equality but superiority for their own party, and would necessarily consider as rivals those who should seem to stand in their way to that attractive pre-eminence.' Most Protestants were not as understanding as Alexander Knox in their appreciation of the new spirit among the Catholics. Knox noted in his study of the rebellion : `Though propertied catholics had shown a natural attachment to law and order, the rebellion convinced many Irish protestants that popery still possessed the power to inflame class hatred with religious fanaticism.'8 After 1798 Wolfe Tone's cry for `union, Liberty, the Irish Republic's was to appeal to only a small minority of Irish Protestants. They chose to believe the new assertiveness of the Catholics to be part of an attempt to wrest ascendancy from them, `a war of the mob against property'1° Jacobinism in any form was to have little appeal for most Protestants in the nineteenth century, and fear of the common people governed the actions of many parsons, magistrates and landlords.11 They were realists who noted that disturbances `appear to prevail most where the peasantry are bold and robust, and one degree removed above the lowest poverty; and where the land is productive and consequently thickly peopled'.12 As the century progressed, and the land supported more and more `bold and robust' peasants who allied themselves with causes of agitation and reform, the anxiety of the Protestants increased. When it became clear that ideas of radical democracy were

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 3 spreading among the people and manifesting themselves in many kinds of agitation and demands for reform, Catholic leaders, both clerical and lay, showed that they were just as concerned as the Protestants about Jacobinism taking root in Ireland. Few Catholic leaders had a kindly remembrance of the revolutionary era in France, when seminaries and convents had been closed, anti-religious laws had been passed, and the growth of atheism had been encouraged. On the other hand, they had high expectations of young Mr Pitt winning further concessions for Catholics, in spite of the reluctance of the aged king to grant them, and they generally supported the Union with England in 1800 and expected a gradual improvement of their lot through constitutional means. At the time of Robert Emmet's abortive rising, Catholic leaders were nearly all on the side of law and order' 18 In the Irish Catholic Church the bishops, especially, realised their social responsibility when it came to curbing the revolutionary spirit among the people—and they had Protestant neighbours who were willing to remind them of their civic duties : The chord that has never failed to madden our populace into rebellion is now strung to its highest pitch.... You Sir, and your Brethren, and the Clergy over whom you preside, of every order and degree, must act a commanding part, either in repressing or encouraging this spirit.14 The bishops listened to such warnings for they, too, feared the unrest among the people. They knew that a substantial part of the agrarian agitation of the early years of the nineteenth century reflected widespread anti-Catholic Church sentiment. Although most of the complaints of the Ribbonmen were about local social injustices, persistent signs of anti-clericalism among the people alarmed the hierarchy. Oliver Kelly, Archbishop of Tuam, told members of the parliamentary committee investigating the state of Ireland in 1825 that what the people resented were `tithes, taxes, grand jury cesses, vestry cesses, the payment of the Catholic clergy, the high price of land, all those things together'." The people bitterly resented those priests who raised the chapel cess by `calling' from the altar those refractory in their payments, or who threatened to withhold the rites of the Church from defaulters.1° The Irish bishops of Oliver Kelly's generation had been trained in continental seminaries and knew well how dangerous revolution could be, and how ineffectual the Church usually was when it tried to control social agitation. They had as much at stake in maintaining peace in the community as had their Protestant clerical counterparts or the gentry of Ireland, whether Catholic or Protestant. They

4 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 also had the desire to serve their superiors in Rome, and they knew that the papacy, then engaged in its struggle with the Carbonari and other dissident groups in Italy, had little tolerance for revolution of any kind. Yet the Irish bishops had sympathy for the great needs of their people, and sometimes they spoke with uncertain voices when they were called upon to quiet their flocks. The vagueness of the Catholic bishops when it came to social leadership did not pass unnoticed by Irish Protestants, who were easily persuaded that there was a connection between the increasing interest of Rome in Irish affairs and the growth of revolutionary spirit among the people. Like most European conservatives, Irish Protestants wanted to believe that the papacy was in complete opposition to the new spirit of liberalism which had been brought in by the French Revolution. Yet they were aware of how little was said by Catholic bishops when some of the clergy trained at Maynooth organised and led their people in social and political agitation. The Catholic bishops and clergy continually protested their loyalty to the Crown, but most Protestants wondered what was the real attitude of the hierarchy and their superiors in Rome when it came to suppressing revolution in a country where most of the people were Catholic and their rulers were heretics. Was it possible that there was a strange mixing of revolutionary and Ultramontanist ideas behind the continual agitation in Ireland? If such an unholy alliance was taking place, Irish Protestant leaders doubted that it was encouraged by the Vatican. The manner in which Pius VII had resisted Napoleon had captured the imagination of a society which was increasingly romantic in its sentiments, and it seemed unlikely that this new popularity based on the conservative image of the papacy would be risked by a support of revolutionary activity in Ireland.17 The Ultramontanist ideology developed by the group of conservative churchmen known as the Zelanti had increasing acceptance among the cardinals, and papal policy consistently condemned Protestant Bible societies, resisted religious toleration, and anathematised revolutionary movements. No one doubted the conservatism of Leo XII, who became pope in 1823 and in his government of the papal states initiated many of those extremely illiberal policies which were to be characteristic of the temporal rule of the papacy in the nineteenth century. His successor, Pius VIII, who reigned for only twenty months, did nothing to lessen the conservative image of the papacy. Gregory XVI, who occupied the papal throne from 1831 to 1846, resolutely opposed the spirit of his age when `the ideology of Liberalism and the political disturbances resulting from Liberal philosophy kept the papacy in a continual state of crisis'.18

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 5 Gregory had long supported the Ultramontanist party, which accepted the pope as mankind's supreme arbiter in all matters of faith and morals, and his strong resistance to liberal ideas was revealed in his work Il Trionfo della Santa Sede (1799), which was reprinted many times in Italian and German. As Prefect of Propaganda he had showed his willingness to oppose any kind of liberalism in Ireland, and it was this performance which assured him the support of Metternich when he was elected pope. The pope's romantic longing for a conservative social order with a union of throne and altar to promote the supernatural goals of the Church had to be qualified, however, when he considered Poland, where the schismatic Tsar ruled the Catholic Polish people; Belgium, where Catholics had allied themselves with liberals to win freedom from a Dutch Protestant ruler; and Ireland, where the Catholic majority were ruled by a Protestant monarch. Whenever Catholic liberal agitation appeared in these three countries it brought `similar protests to the Holy See by the established governments of the time' 3° The reply of the papacy to these protests revealed a reluctance to condemn without reservation movements of radical democracy when the majority people were Catholic and were oppressed by the rule of non-Catholic monarchs.20 The British government, of course, would have liked Gregory to remind the Irish bishops, publicly and directly, of the counsel of St Paul to obey the civil power as ordained of God, and they noted the papal temporising when it came to curbing the advance of a Catholic people at the expense of a heretical monarch. The Irish Protestants would also have liked to see the Ultramontane power of Rome, mediated through the Irish hierarchy, used to control the political activities of the Irish clergy and laity. They saw no sign of this happening, and so they supported government designs to persuade the Irish hierarchy to accept a royal power of veto in episcopal elections and a scheme of state payment of the clergy to make them less dependent on the goodwill of the increasingly turbulent masses. The suggestion was not without precedent in France, Spain and Austria, and in 1799 Archbishop Troy of Dublin and Bishop Moylan of Cork conveyed to Lord Castlereagh a resolution of the four archbishops and six senior bishops of Ireland which approved in principle both a veto on episcopal appointments and an endowment of the clergy.21 The issue was allowed to lapse with the Union, but it arose again in 1805 and 1808, and continuing debate of the issue brought into prominence Daniel O'Connell, who passionately opposed any scheme for a direct connection between the state and the Catholic Church.

6 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 As O'Connell's influence grew the bishops began to change their mind about the value of either the veto or a government pension for the clergy. In spite of a rescript in 1814 from Monsignor Quarantotti, Vice-Prefect of Propaganda, which gave distinct and explicit judgments in favour of the proposed royal veto, the bishops bowed to the O'Connellite agitation and informed the Vatican that the Irish hierarchy alone had the knowledge to decide what was for the good of the Irish people in political affairs.22 However reluctantly some of them were to do so, the bishops had to accept the attitude that O'Connell expressed in an address to Catholics in 1815: I am sincerely a Catholic, but not a Papist. I totally deny that .. . Quarantotti, or even the pope himself, can claim submission to their mandates on this matter.... If the present clergy shall descend from their high stations to become the vile slaves of the clerks of the Castle, let them look to their masters for their support. The people would communicate with some holy priest who had never bowed to the Dagon of power; and the Castle clergy would preach to still thinner numbers than attend in Munster or Connaught the reverend gentlemen of the present Established Church.22 A general meeting of lay Catholics held in Dublin the following year congratulated the bishops on their stance. An amalgam of radical democracy, nationalism and a kind of Gallican spirit had begun to emerge as a Catholic expression, and this was disturbing to the government, the Protestant ascendancy, the Catholic aristocracy and gentry, and to the papacy.2' The bishops did not easily identify with this grassroots development. Their continental training in the Gallivan tradition encouraged respect for the union of altar and throne, but as the ideas represented by the O'Connellite movement took hold of more and more of the people the bishops became more and more ambiguous in their attitudes to both the Vatican and Dublin Castle. They were peculiarly sensitive to the immediate threat of being labelled `Castle bishops' by the followers of O'Connell. Patrick Curtis, Archbishop of Armagh, was one of those so labelled, because it was said that his appointment came from his early friendship with the Duke of Wellington, when Curtis was President of the Irish College at Salamanca. Six of his students, including Daniel Murray of Dublin and Oliver Kelly of Tuam, had been appointed to Irish bishoprics, and it is reasonable to assume that their attitudes to the dreaded ideas of radical democracy were such that the

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 7 government as well as the papacy had found them acceptable for their positions.28 Certainly their fellow-prelates who chose to identify themselves closely with the O'Connellite movement showed no hesitation in identifying men like Curtis, Murray or Kelly as `Castle bishops'.28 2. The Castle Bishops The prelate who first suffered the full force of this charge was John Thomas Troy, who died as Archbishop of Dublin in 1823. After twenty years serving the Dominican order in Rome he had come to Ireland as Bishop of Ossory, to reveal in his outraged pastorals against Whiteboy excesses that he was a strong champion of law and order. His excommunication of those who belonged to secret societies won him commendation from the Secretary of State and the Vatican, but did little to increase his popularity. It was noted that he was one of the bishops who in 1799 favoured the veto and endowment of the clergy, and little appreciation was shown of his conciliatory attitudes during the negotiations for the establishment of Maynooth College. Although he worked steadily to have the penal laws relaxed, he was held in some suspicion when he made his clergy sign a document which repudiated `in the most solemn language, the odious calumnies, or rather caricatures, of Catholic teaching which were then current both in Ireland and England'.27 These included the pope's claim to temporal jurisdiction in Ireland, the claim that sinful acts would be absolved if done for the good of the Catholic Church, that faith ought not to be kept with heretics, that subjects could be absolved from their oath of allegiance, and that excommunicated princes could be lawfully deposed and murdered. At the time of Emmet's insurrection he bluntly condemned revolutionary nationalism in a pastoral which he ordered to be read in all Dublin chapels.28 None of this endeared Troy to the Catholic nationalists, who grimly noted his `more than usual intimacy with the Castle'.28 Nor did it endear him to Protestant extremists. It was a common suspicion among them that regulars were even more dangerous than Catholic secular clergy, and the Dominican archbishop's conciliatory attitudes were held suspect. The ultra-Protestant Irish Lord Chancellor, Lord Redesdale, spoke scathingly of the `disgusting' conduct of Troy and his 'canting hypocrisy'. It was even reported that Troy had taken the oath of the United Irishmen.30 Oliver Kelly, who shared many of Troy's opinions, found that he too was labelled a `Castle bishop' when he admitted to the parliamentary commissioners of 1825 that most of the new slated churches built in his archdiocese had been built with substantial Protestant help."

8 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 The truth was that whatever the degree of accommodation found in pre-1822 Ireland, the cultural separation of the people was still great.S2 When Protestant proselytising was openly encouraged in parts of the country after 1822 and the movement for Emancipation gained momentum, the castigation of religious leaders who urged conciliation instead of confrontation increased. One of the gentlest and most pious of the Catholic prelates who were labelled as `Castle bishops' was Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin from 1823 to 1852. He had studied at Salamanca under Curtis and returned to Ireland in 1798 to serve in his native parish of Arklow. He arrived in time to witness the terrible suffering of the people, and to barely escape the fate of his parish priest who was shot by government troops. This experience filled him with a horror of revolution, and throughout his episcopate he tried to avoid controversy with the government and to seek conciliation between the two `nations'. He even tried to soften the distinction between Catholic and Protestant, and told the parliamentary commissioners of 1825 : `We at present use the word "heretic" very sparingly; we choose, rather, as it is an offensive word, to say "our dissenting brethren", or "our separated brethren", or something of that kind.'" At other times he spoke of `beloved fellow-Christians'." Yet such attempts at fostering religious peace were labelled as `indifferentism' by Catholic intransigents like Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam. The latter's indignation knew no bounds when Murray publicly prayed during the royal visit of 1849 that the Queen and Prince Albert would one day ascend to `a higher than any earthly throne, a throne of unfading glory in heaven'. Such a prayer, said MacHale, would only serve to `delude Protestants and scandalise Catholics regarding salvation, without an allusion to the only right path through which it is to be obtained'." It has often been assumed by nationalist writers that men like Murray represented that generation of priests who had been conditioned by the penal laws in Ireland, as well as by Gallican seminary training, to respect the civil administration at the expense of protecting their people's welfare, whether temporal or spiritual. Their conciliatory spirit was not reflected in the next generation of priests, represented by John MacHale, who had never known the penal laws, were influenced by the revolutionary spirit that was in the air, and easily rejected whatever Gallican influences they encountered at Maynooth. When these priests became bishops they were wholly different in their thinking from prelates like John Troy or Daniel Murray. Like most generalisations, there is some truth in this opinion, but it does not apply when consideration is given to

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 9 James Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, who belonged to the generation after Daniel Murray, studied at Coimbra, had strong Gallican sympathies, yet devoted himself totally to defending the temporal as well as the spiritual life of the Catholic people. Although Doyle, like MacHale, is remembered in nationalist hagiography as a great nationalist bishop, he was really much closer to Daniel Murray in much of his thought. Unlike MacHale, who saw little of the insurgents' violence in '98, Doyle as a boy actually witnessed the battle of New Ross, and the excesses of the time filled him with an abiding horror of revolution. He rejoiced in the British way of life and was thankful that the Catholic clergy knew `the doctrines of Locke and Paley more deeply than those of Bellarmine'.36 Among many Catholics he was considered to be `a strong Gallican'.87 During 1828 he suggested in a public letter to the Duke of Wellington that the ending of papal control in Ireland, particularly the appointment of bishops, would help to ease much of the social unrest in the country, and he denied that the priests in their ordination promised the pope any obedience.8ß He urged the Catholic clergy to devote themselves to the civilising and evangelising mission which the Church of Ireland was failing to provide for the Irish people, and seemed to suggest that what Ireland really needed was a Catholic religious establishment.8° He even had a good word to say for Irish landlords and recommended a `union of the good and the virtuous' in Ireland to battle against Ribbonmen and other terrorists : It appears to me that you should exhort and assist by every means in your power the owners of property and the well disposed of every class of your parishioners, to unite in their own defence; to form themselves in concert with the constituted authorities into armed associations for the protection of persons and property ... to detect and apprehend, or to terrify into better habits the evil-doers who could then safely be dismissed from employment, should they fail in the duties they owe to God and to their employers 40 Nationalist historians tend to dismiss Doyle's ideas about a `union of the good and the virtuous', including even Protestant landlords, as an aberration of his youth which he abandoned when he had a `more enlarged experience'.41 Such an apology, however, does not fit the evidence presented by Doyle's thought. He also told his people they were to love even the Orangemen. If Protestant zealots were foolish, they deserved Catholic compassion; if they were wicked, their conversion should be sought through

10 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 prayer and forbearance. `These men who are hateful in your eyes are our brethren in Christ; they are each of them as dear to Him as the apple of His eye; they have all been baptised in His blood:42 He knew the power of religion in Irish society : `It is the cause and the end of nearly all the political laws which affect Ireland.... Its influence upon the state of the country is witnessed and felt daily.'48 If Ireland was to prosper and occupy its rightful place among the civilised nations of the world, then the division of its people had to cease—even if this called for a union of the Roman Catholic Church with the Church of Ireland. The idea was not new, and it represented the spirit of at Ieast a substantial minority of thinking Catholics and Protestants in Ireland in the pre-1822 period. Alexander Knox in a letter to Hannah More in 1806 said that he had `little doubt that a time will come when the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland will, in a body, propose to conform to our Church'.44 Yet both the Catholic and Protestant world were shocked when the famous Bishop Doyle suggested `for patriotic as well as charitable motives' that such a union take place in 1824. Frederick Robinson, afterwards Lord Ripon, was Chancellor of the Exchequer in that year. When he declared in parliament that he was anxious for such an ecclesiastical union to take place, Doyle immediately addressed a public letter to him on the subject, saying that he saw such an accommodation `the best mode of pacifying Ireland and of consolidating the interests of the empire'.45 If the Church of Ireland had a nominal establishment status but no authority among the people, and the Roman Catholic Church had social authority but was restricted in its exercise of it, then a union of the two churches might give Irish society what it desperately needed—an effective Christian religious establishment. Doyle's concern was the well-being of the Irish people—not the ephemeral goals sought by some of the nationalists of the age. If nationalist historians were embarrassed by Doyle's toleration of the Protestant landlords, they were even more at a loss to explain away his suggestion of ecclesiastical union. Although Doyle had Protestant cousins, his biographer suggested that his intercourse with Protestants had always been `limited' and `derived from books'.48 The English Catholic bishop John Milner dismissed the idea as a youthful vagary, `a useless and inexpedient idea, wrong and capable of mischief ,47 but it is difficult to dismiss the seriousness and importance of Doyle's letter to Frederick Robinson. He argued that when Bossuet, Leibnitz and Archbishop Wake had talked of union in earlier times, `state policy' not religious differences kept the two churches apart. Now nothing stood in the way of a union which would be the greatest of blessings for the divided

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 11 Irish peoples. The government was powerful and at peace, while the papacy was powerless and anxious to conciliate. Doyle said that he was quite willing to give up his own office, if it was necessary to bring about union and the happiness of the country. With the advantage of historical hindsight, it may be said that the plan was hopelessly idealistic, when Protestant Evangelicals were beginning their `Second Reformation' and O'Connell was actively campaigning for Catholic Emancipation. Oliver Kelly commented : `Perhaps a union of the churches is the only remedy. But as a preliminary, it were much to be wished that there was union in the bonds of Christian charity, which seems to be totally forgotten.'48 This `union in the bonds of Christian charity' was rarely found even in Doyle's age, and although his letter to Robinson initiated communication between Sadleir, Provost of Trinity College, and Archbishop Murray to discuss some liberal advance by the churches,49 the letter was soon forgotten, apart from the use made of it by those Protestants who spread the rumour that Doyle had become a Protestant on his deathbed. (This story was still being refuted by outraged nationalists as late as the 1860s.)'0 What diverted Catholic attention from the idea of union in the letter was Doyle's passing comment that in Maynooth College `obedience to constituted authorities' was less than that found in continental seminaries.3' This led five Maynooth professors, including two emigr6 French priests to protest that they all taught allegiance to the sovereign and constituted authority. Protestants were not impressed with this statement, however, when they noted that John MacHale also signed it. But this `Maynooth Manifesto' succeeded in drawing public attention from talk of union of the churches to the more appealing debate over Catholic loyalty to the Crown. Doyle had also mentioned the suffering of the people in his letter, and had said that if their economic position did not improve, he feared their passions would take over, that they would be ruled by nature rather than by grace. This rhetorical aside also aroused public interest and started a debate which diverted attention away from his suggestion of ecclesiastical union. Doyle had always been a champion of the Irish peasantry, and in an honest and even naïve manner he repeatedly warned the government not to allow their sufferings to continue. It was his statements on this theme which earned him his `patriot bishop' image, and many Catholics and Protestants alike thought of him in this fashion, in spite of his Gallican sympathies which kept him in communication with the government. During the 1822 famine he had declared in a pamphlet : `If a rebellion were raging from Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, no sentence of excommunication

12 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 would ever be fulminated by a Catholic prelate.'a" In his writing on the state of Ireland in 1823 he warned that if injustice continued, the Irish Catholic people, throwing prudence aside, `will league with Beelzebub against you. Revenge is sweet, and the pride of a nation is like the vanity of woman, when wounded it is relentless.'" Such hyperbole was taken at face value by Protestants who wanted to think the worst of Catholic bishops and who accordingly speculated that perhaps his warning about the passions of the peasantry was both a threat and an indication of what the mass of Catholic clergy actually believed. In actual fact nationalist contemporaries had their own doubts about Doyle. From 1831 onwards the relationship between Doyle and O'Connell rapidly deteriorated. The bishop sanctioned the coercion bill of 1833 saying he preferred `the despotism of gentlemen' to `the brutal canaille of the Trades' Unions and Blackfeet conspiracies', and in return O'Connell dismissed him as a `Castle bishop' 64 But the Protestants generally chose to overlook Doyle's appreciation of the landlords, his talk of union, or his sympathy for an Irish Gallican church. Instead they remembered his threatening references to the passions of the peasants when they were roused : `ferocious ... cunning, astute, cruel, strangers to honesty and truth, except only as far as civilisation was reflected upon them, or as religion, which they never abandoned, at least in theory, could restrain them'.'s They also remembered his remarks about the Maynooth priests and wondered how reliable they would be in restraining the people. Few Protestants took seriously statements by bishops like Doyle or Kinsella of Ossory that political activity of the priests had come to an end with the achievement of Emancipation.58 How could they separate themselves from the passions of their flocks when, in the words of Doyle himself, `the very mention of the penal code caused every eye to glisten and every ear to stand erect; the very trumpet of the last judgment, if sounded, would not produce a more perfect stillness in any assemblage of Irish peasantry than a strong allusion to the wrongs we suffer'." 3. Maynooth and Archbishop John MacHale When there was a general `lowering of the theological temperature' in the late eighteenth century Catholics were received at Trinity College `by connivance', and the only real opposition to the founding of a `popish college' was that it might arouse `subjects of religious disputation that have long slept in oblivion'.68 It was felt, however, that if the professors of a Catholic college were to be the kind of latitudinarian continental-trained priests who were `welcome at the tables of the Protestant gentry'—men who were `mild,

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 13 amiable, cultivated, learned and polite'b8—they would condition their students to follow their way of life. The authorities knew that the great number of Catholic priests who formed the curate class were more apt to identify themselves with the peasantry rather than the gentry, and `neither their prejudices nor their interests inclined them to the side of the law'.00 These men had to be changed through education, or the country would never know peace. The idea of providing a Catholic college governed by Catholics who got along well with the ascendancy, and respected the law, became a reality with the coming of the French Revolution. The government realised that the curate class had to be protected from the revolutionary ideology they might now encounter if they attended continental seminaries. Although the first Catholic college for higher education in Ireland erected since the Reformation was in Carlow,ß1 Maynooth College, founded in 1795, was a direct answer to the problem of protecting the Catholic clergy from the `dissemination of French revolutionary principles' 82 The first generation of professors included emigre priests like Louis Delahogue, Francis Anglade, Andrew Darre and Peter Delort, and through their teaching `the strictest loyalty to the Crown of England [was] inculcated on the students at Maynooth, both as a matter of duty and of gratitude' 88 For a complex of reasons the government plan did not work. Ideas of radical democracy, combined with fervent nationalism, were in the air, and the students at Maynooth were soon infected by them. During the '98 rebellion the celebrated Dr Patrick Duigenan of Trinity College accused Maynooth men of joining the insurgents,84 ten students were expelled during the rebellion, one of those expelled was executed as a rebel, and an attempt was made to withdraw the Maynooth Grant in 1799. By the time of the Catholic Emancipation crisis Dr Bartholomew Crotty, then President of Maynooth College, admitted the political activity of his graduates but defended their altruism : It was not to promote the interests of their body that the clergy lent themselves to the constitutional struggles of the people. Their duty as clergymen bring them into immediate contact with the squalid wretchedness that haunts the hovels of the poor .. . they behold scenes every day, almost every hour, too appalling not to awaken their feelings as men, and enlist their sympathies as pastors in the cause of those committed to their care. They must, therefore, be more or less than men, were they not to seek by every means consistent with the laws of God and of their country the change of a system which destroys the charities of

14 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 social life, engenders hatred and distrust between man and man, and whilst it degrades the higher orders of their communion, entails misery and destitution on a suffering and loyal people.85 If the loyalist atmosphere nurtured by Delahogue and the other early professors failed to produce political quietism among the Maynooth graduates, it did succeed in encouraging a kind of Gallicanism when it came to the question of papal authority— particularly when that authority tried to curb the Maynooth man's political agitation. It was widely accepted that the slogan of the Maynooth graduates was `religion from Rome but politics from home' ß0 The government repeatedly tried to use its influence at Rome to have the political activities of the Maynooth-trained priests curbed by the papacy, but until the coming of Paul Cullen as papal delegate at mid-century little was accomplished.°7 By then Protestants generally knew the old days of religious accommodation were gone forever. Whenever a liberal priest of the older generation was appointed to a parish, `straightaway an assistant, red-hot from Maynooth is appointed to the parish, and, in fact, the old priest is virtually displaced'.88 Religion and politics had become hopelessly combined, and even John MacHale had cause to complain about the `arrogance and pride of some of the young men from this house' °9 As far as the government and the ultra-Protestants of Ireland were concerned, the Catholic prelate who represented most fully the militant anti-Protestant and anti-British spirit that was appearing in Ireland, with Maynooth its spawning-ground, was John MacHale. He first caught public attention by defending Maynooth against its Protestant critics when he was Professor of Dogmatic Theology in that institution, in succession to Delahogue. The skill with which MacHale dealt with the anti-Catholic pamphlets of the Rev. William Phelan, a convert Fellow of Trinity College, and others also brought him to the attention of Rome, then very conscious of its lack of authority in the west of Ireland. At the time that MacHale was publishing his Letters of Hierophilos Rome was trying to deal with the scandal of a priest called Filan in the Achonry diocese who not only attacked papal influence in Ireland but ignored suspension by his bishop, Patrick McNicholas, and with Protestant help made his views public in the Sligo Journal.'° When Peter Waldron, Bishop of Killala, asked Rome to appoint MacHale as his assistant because Waldron was in poor health, reports of MacHale's turbulent spirit were ignored,71 and in 1825 he became Coadjutor Bishop of Killala with right of succession to Waldron. MacHale's activities from the time he first became a bishop

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 15 showed that Rome's misgivings about his appointment were justified. A year after his election he was instrumental in bringing about the defeat of the Tory candidate, the Rt Hon. Denis Browne, in the Mayo election of 1826. He mollified Roman sensibilities somewhat by publishing a very conservative book, Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church, in 1828, but by the time the tithe war began he was busy writing public letters and making use of the Morning Chronicle in London to protest about famine in Connaught, vestry cesses, Grand Jury jobbery, tithes and Protestant proselytising. When he visited Rome in 1831 he persuaded Gregory XVI that he would be a sturdy champion of those Catholics who opposed the clergy accepting any pension from the British government, and he cogently argued against the new scheme of national education in Ireland.72 MacHale's favourable impression in 1831 assured him appointment as Archbishop of Tuam in succession to Oliver Kelly. The pope feared that the British were exercising a de facto veto on papal appointments to the Irish hierarchy when they vigorously urged the appointment of Bernard Burke, Parish Priest of Westport, rather than MacHale as Archbishop of Tuam. What the papacy wanted was a strong bishop in the west who would stand up to the government, not a moderate personality like Burke." The pope got more than he bargained for. MacHale was the first bishop since the Reformation wholly educated in Ireland, and throughout his episcopate he appeared in Roman eyes to be a stubborn, provincial, quarrelsome and authoritarian individualist. In his Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church he had argued that between extreme Ultramontanism and Gallicanism there was a `wide space, diversified with a variety of more or less moderate opinions'.74 MacHale seldom had a moderate opinion about any issue. Rome was soon convinced that if MacHale was an Ultramontanist, his version of what that implied was peculiarly Irish. At times he sounded as resentful of papal authority as any Gallivan prelate of the anden regime. In his new position as Archbishop of Tuam, MacHale particularly ignored curial cautions against taking an active part in O'Connell's Repeal movement. When Rome sent rescripts to Ireland in 1839 and 1844 expressing dismay over priests involved in political agitation, MacHale ignored these documents as `inane calumnies'.72 As MacHale continued to force any cleric he could coerce into the Repeal ranks, government outrage grew, as did Rome's embarrassment. It was widely assumed that MacHale's appointment as Archbishop of Tuam had, in fact, signified papal support for the Repeal movement. MacHale's supporters followed O'Connell in referring to the

16 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 archbishop as `the Lion of the Fold of Judah', but his critics preferred to consider him `the Lion of the Tribe of Dan'. Few of his open critics were Catholics because not many men, even among the Catholic bishops, had the courage to stand up to him directly. The one prelate who did so, the unworldly Dominican, Francis O'Finan, who succeeded MacHale as Bishop of Killala, ended up a broken man, retired to a Roman convent after defeat by MacHale and the `factitious, disaffected and ignorant body of priests' that O'Finan had inherited.70 When Crolly, the Archbishop of Armagh, and Murray, the Archbishop of Dublin, tried to reason with MacHale over the National System of education, the Poor Law, the Queen's Colleges, the Charitable Bequests Board, or any other issue that MacHale considered to be a threat to his version of the Catholic faith, they were fiercely assailed in Ireland and Rome as `Castle bishops'. Rome feared agitazione in any form, and would gladly have dealt firmly with this embarrassing archbishop, but he had friends like Paul Cullen, Rector of the Irish College, Rome, ready to intercede for him, and he also had wide support from the O'Connellites. When MacHale bluntly said that he and the Maynooth men who followed him served the poor and advanced the cause of the Catholic faith by their political activity, and that they freely confessed this `without any contrition',' Rome was uncertain how to respond to such a display of independence. This fact did not escape the notice of the Protestants. 4. Protestants and the Radical Priests When Bishop O'Finan was in the middle of his desperate struggle with MacHale he wrote bitterly to Cardinal Fransoni about the turbulent priests who served the archbishop : `It is no longer the zealous pastor of souls who receives popular applause, but rather the bold and intriguing priest who makes himself the leader of the people in political matters.'78 By the time of the Repeal agitation most of the political priests were Maynooth graduates. `Maynooth began to be felt',79 and in the mind of most Irish Protestants there was recognised to be some truth in extremist statements about `blood-stained Maynooth', `an infernal machine, plied by the Satanic sons of Loyola', whose graduates were `rank rebels', `casehardened, sneering Profligates', `immersed in a whirlpool of seditious politics' ß0 Sooner or later Protestants of the landlord class, in particular, had personal encounter with an agitating Catholic curate of the type who threatened the people from the altar and was reported to enter the polling booth with his flock to ensure they voted the right way.B1

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 17 Protestants knew that the whole success of the O'Connellite exercise in radical democracy rested on the alliance he had made with the Catholic clergy who became his `Repeal missionaries .82 Charles Gavan Duffy expressed Protestant opinion when he said of the agitating priests : Without their aid, O'Connell could have no more united the Irish people than Charles Edward could have raised the Highlanders without the aid of the chiefs.'88 The agitators, of course, cared nothing for the alarm of the Protestant ascendancy. Rather they rejoiced in their new power, which united them with their flocks and gave them a heady new importance. The great struggle during twenty years between the government and the people ... in which the Catholic clergy has fought and conquered with the people; in which the priest, having become a tribune, has mingled in all the popular movements, become the defender of every violated right, the partisan of every reform, has enjoyed complete success, and drained the intoxicating cup of popularity; these struggles, I say, have created for the Catholic clergy of Ireland the greatest political existence that any religious body ever possessed; and now that the Catholic clergy has tasted this mode of life, it can enjoy no other.84 One of the most prominent of the political priests, the uncle and godfather of Paul Cullen, as well as the most vocal representative of the Co. Carlow clerical aristocrats represented by the MaherCullen—Moran families, James Maher has left us his reasoned apologetic for the political activity of people like himself. Maher was dismissed by The Times as a `surpliced ruffian', but he was much more than that, a highly intelligent individual who argued that in spite of the dangers which would come from priestly involvement in the `management of temporal concerns', the Irish clergy had an obligation to support the people's struggle for freedom. The Catholics had no middle-class leadership, so the masses turned to the priests to protect them from the `Beresfords et hoc genus omne of the Church Establishment'. They also turned to the priests to protect them from temporal oppression : All eyes turned upon the priesthood. Eminent in intelligence, eminent in influence, filled with earnest affection for their native land, and ready to resist the authors of its misery, from whose harsh control they, almost alone among Irishmen, could claim exemption, they were thrust, by the overmastering necessity of circumstances, into the front of the battle, and obliged to form the advanced guard of the national force.... Thus it was that the priesthood first became agitators; and thus it is that they B

18 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 are still often driven to the arena of politics.... They stand in default of a native gentry in which that country might confide, in default of a middle class which might govern and sustain its suffering multitudes—the advisers and guardians of the comØunity, in seasons of public peril, when the landlord would overbear his tenants by tyrannous violence.B5 Maher, of course, could not have agitated in the manner he did without episcopal connivance, or even outright support. Bishops like Cantwell of Meath, Higgins of Ardagh and Maginn of Derry, not to mention the redoubtable Archbishop MacHale, built their episcopal policies about the conviction that the O'Connellite agitation was in some sense a `holy war', justified in the eyes of God and man. John Cantwell had a twelve-day retreat with 117 of his followers to discuss whether, as Catholic priests, they were wrong to engage in direct political activity. Cantwell reported that `not one single sentiment was uttered of remorse or sorrow at the part which they had taken in the agitation of the Repeal movement' 88 The sense of justification experienced by Cantwell and the others was reinforced by O'Connell's description of them : `Never has any nation been so blessed with prelacy as Ireland.'87 Such a blessing could not be resisted when it was supported by the almost universal approval of the masses which was bestowed on the O'Connellite bishops. Even divine approval was sought for the `holy war' when the monster meetings were held : The incense rose from a hundred rude altars, and the solemn music of the Mass floated upon the gale and seemed to impart a consecration to the cause.'88 Bishop Higgins of Ardagh, carried away by the excitement of the Mullingar monster meeting, pledged full-time devotion of his clergy to Repeal agitation alone.89 Bishop Magian of Derry committed himself to `grasp the cross and the green flag and rescue my country, or perish with its people'.90 Such rhetoric and the hysteria of the monster meetings disturbed most moderate Catholics, as well as Protestants. Archbishop Murray identified the spirit behind these gatherings as that of the French Revolution.81 Some, including O'Connell himself, expressed their concern that, instead of providing leadership and direction for the masses, some of the priests seemed to be wholly under the influence of the political passions of the time.92 Others wondered if even O'Connell was in command of what was happening : The peasant below on the ground thinks aloud—the liberator above him on the platform catches the thought from beneath, and flings it back with redoubled force, or tosses it high in the air, and plays with it as long as it suits his fancy to do so.93

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 19 Was it not possible that the Irish peasantry, united by the passions of the time and the radical demands made by their leaders, might not explode in some kind of rebellion? Thomas Wyse, who had been one of O'Connell's lieutenants in the Emancipation campaign said of the peasantry.: To excite has never been difficult, but to keep the steam up to its original pressure, without risking an explosion on the one side, and on the other avoiding that tendency to relapse into former coolness, incidental to natures so singularly excitable, has been indeed a problem, which in almost every instance of Irish politics has eluded the intellect and defied the exertion of the most zealous and sagacious patriots.B4 Even The Nation was uneasy in 1843, and its writers showed `occasional qualms whether the policy of agitate, agitate, agitate, was really going to work this time, without something else'.90 The Protestants were hardly paranoic in their anxiety about what the O'Connellite bishops and the agitating Maynooth men were about. Hatred of everything Protestant, and the Established Church in particular, was reiterated again and again as the people were whipped up to the point where they threatened to explode in fury. One English visitor described the monster meeting at Mullaghmast, Co. Kildare, on 1 October 1843: `The men yelled and clawed with rage; the women screamed and clapped their hands. The vast multitude—I believe there were really 100,000 present—moved and moaned like a wild beast in agony.'90 The Catholic defence was that used in the Emancipation campaign : the clergy were so in control of the situation that an explosion was impossible 97 In the words of Father P. O'Gara the Repealer Parish Priest of Drumcliffe, Co. Sligo : `The priests were a dragchain which restrained the people from violence, and ... without their influence even O'Connell could not hold them back.'H8 Other Catholics argued that the failure of the rising of 1848 reflected the will of the priests : as Thomas D'Arcy McGee said, the `non-commencement of the Irish revolution' could be directly attributed to them °° Such apologetic did not impress Irish Protestants. They believed, with most members of the government, that if MacHale and the other Repeal bishops, together with the Maynooth men, had their way with the people, `their ignorance and turbulence would be perpetual'.100 Their way of thinking had developed little from that of their fathers who had hearkened to the warning of Alexander Knox in the 1790s : `When the multitude have once tried the strength of their own brawny arms, can we think that tropes and

20 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 figures of speech would still keep them in subjection.'101 Nor did they think that Archbishops Crolly, Murray or the other much maligned `Castle bishops' would do much to help the situation. Protestants were amazed that so few Catholics realised how thin was the line which divided `constitutional agitation for the removal of a corrupt and inefficient government ... and the violent overthrow of the whole apparatus of the State'.102 Protestants could see from first-hand encounters how closely the interests of Irish Roman Catholicism were being identified with those of the O'Connellite movement. Bigoted, agitating and persecuting priests were not rare in the countryside, and the Protestants knew they were agents of the O'Connellite political movement, using the magnificent network of communication provided by the Catholic parish system as a means to keep in weekly contact with the multitudes. The Irish people were being organised in a more politically mature way and for a more protracted period than had ever been seen before. It was clear to Protestants that the whole O'Connellite programme rested much more on the support of the Catholic clergy than it did on nationalist newspapers, working-class movements or the Catholic middle classes. Granted that the priests and the O'Connellites were united in the same endeavour, Protestants wondered whether the initiative came from the clergy themselves or from the politicians who nurtured and then represented the demands of the people. At first they were inclined to agree with Thomas Newenham's opinion, as expressed early in the century : Though on the one hand the Roman Catholic laity of Ireland may always be found laudably submissive to their clergy in spiritual affairs; it is on the other hand very far from being probable that the former will ever yield to the dictation of the latter with respect to measures of a temporal nature.10' As the events of the first half of the century unfolded, however, Protestant observers began to wonder if the extremists in their own body had not been right when they had seen in the new political science of controlled agitation104 a sophisticated `popish plot'. At the beginnings of the tithe war individual bishops began to express their alarm at Rome over clergy who used their Emancipation agitation tactics to organise the Catholic people against Protestants. One of these was from William Kinsella, Bishop of Ossory, who wrote to Paul Cullen, Rector of the Irish College, Rome, and agent at the Vatican for most of the Irish hierarchy :

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 21 This country is in a very disturbed state. The people are beginning to assemble in crowds of five and ten thousand, armed with large sticks and threatening the Protestant Østers... . A Carmelite friar who lives about ten miles off has been seen encouraging the mob, and has actually accompanied them to the house of a minister. The Protestant bishop has complained of him los Kinsella went on to describe a Capuchin friar stigmatising from the altar every man who would not join in the Repeal movement. Unfortunately for Kinsella, and for many others who wrote to Paul Cullen in this vein, Cullen was always an O'Connellite sympathiser, a member of a well-off Catholic farming family whose members formed an anti-ascendancy kind of clerical aristocracy in the Carlow area. While he sent soothing replies to people like Kinsella, he welcomed other reports from men like Father John Keleher, Parish Priest of Bantry, who told Cullen: With all the energy I was master of I marshalled the clans, harangued tens of thousands on the evils of the plundering, murdering and otherwise immoral tithe system.... It became impossible to collect tithes'108 In the same period Archbishop John MacHale proudly reported to Cullen from Ballina : 'We are all agitators here this December.' Then MacHale praised the heightened political consciousness that the priests were raising among the people : `They are beginning to know and to value the blessings of their franchise."°T Cullen kept his own counsel, trying to keep open communication with all parties in the Irish Church at this time. He was told that someone like William Abraham, Bishop of Waterford, who tried to withstand O'Connellite pressure, had a hard time of it. One letter informed him: The bishop of Waterford was publicly insulted in the street and spat upon by O'Connell's mob. The clergy opposed his nominee in Carlow and successfully. He also endeavoured ... to oppose the man of the people's choice in this town, but in vain.108 Until he died in 1837 Abraham had to fight a running battle not only with the O'Connellites, but also with the regular clergy of his area, many of whom were now expert in political in-fighting. When Robert Laffan, Archbishop of Cashel, died, the moderate Bishop of Limerick, John Ryan, petitioned Cardinal Weld to have a stranger appointed to the see because of the vicious political faction-fighting among the clergy. Ryan said that to carry Catholic Emancipation clerical involvement in politics was `excusable, perhaps laudable because necessary'. Now, he said, it only served

22 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 to develop a `dangerous spirit' and to `inflame the public mind'.1o8 By the end of the 1830s, after the atrocities of the tithe war and the scandal of the MacHalo-O'Finan struggle in Connaught, Cullen's unease over clerical agitation was beginning to increase. Even MacHale was disturbed when he found that one of his agitating priests was in the habit of carrying a pistol 110 Archbishop Murray of Dublin reported to Cullen that MacHale's candidate for the parish of Crossmolina was usually accompanied by `a band of desperadoes'.111 No one felt happy when this same individual, a priest called Barrett, was caught on his own and murdered.112 As the tension over Repeal mounted James Maher felt constrained to write his nephew to urge Rome to do something to control the situation in the Carlow area where one priest had publicly thrashed another priest who opposed the Repeal movement.'13 During the `Repeal year' of 1843 Murray reported that agitation started by a priest who was a candidate for the vacant see of Clogher had resulted in the murder of one of his parishioners.114 A month later Murray complained to Cullen about Bishop Higgins's speech at the Mullingar monster meeting, at which the prelate had expressed his `unbounded contempt' for the ascendancy. Murray begged Rome to `restrain us somewhat more within the sphere of our own immediate duties.... The whole country is kept in a state of ferment for the purpose of obtaining an object which the government declares will be resisted even at the cost of Civil War.' Yet, said Murray, many of the clergy and several of the bishops devote their time to keeping this `dangerous excitement' going, ignoring the lessons of `the French Revolution and the Irish Insurrection'. The archbishop particularly deplored Bishop Higgins's statement that the bishops intended, if they were opposed by the government, to `suspend all other instruction, in order to devote all our time to teaching the people to be Repealers'.113 On the eve of the famine the former Vice-Rector of the Irish College, Rome, Edmund O'Reilly, wrote to Cullen from Maynooth begging him to move from the partisan position he was accused of holding, and to use his Roman curial influence to have the papacy totally condemn political agitation by the bishops and priests in Ireland: One great misery of the present state of things is the mixture of religion and politics, not merely a personal coincidence, the same men being priests and politicians, but the same cause being treated as political and religious. Witness O'Connell's speeches and letters to Dr Cantwell, and the Association speeches.'" Paul Cullen, however, was playing his own complex if not devious game in Rome and had no intention of disassociating

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 23 himself from MacHale, Cantwell, Higgins and their followers. Neither had he any intention of giving in to the pressures brought upon the Vatican by the `Castle bishops'. He was close enough to Cantwell that the latter could write to him to gloat over the Maynooth Grant and other concessions, `all the fruit of prudent agitation'.11 He was also enough of a co-conspirator to urge MacHale to ask his suffragans to write to Propaganda in order to balance the complaints made by Archbishop Crolly of Armagh : I have learned that Dr Crolly wrote to Propaganda stating that the charges made against the priests for exciting the people to commit murder were false; but that the other accusations referred to in the letter of the Propaganda were nimis verae; that the churches were profaned, political harangues delivered etc... . I suppose Dr Murray will write in the same strain.... But it would not be right to prevent the priests from advocating the rights of the poor and pointing out to the rich the duties of their station.118 When Cullen realised that the Irish agitazione had taken a turn with Young Ireland that neither he, the hierarchy, the priests nor the O'Connellites could control, he was greatly distressed. In the aftermath of the 1848 troubles Murray wrote to him : You further say that if the revolution measures which were contemplated had succeeded they would have rooted Religion out of the hearts of the people. Nothing can be more true. And yet some of the clergy had a large share in promoting among the people that excitement of which the calamity which lately impended over us should have been forseen as the natural growth.'" Irish Protestants had no access to such internal correspondence between Catholic bishops and clergy to substantiate their conviction that without the priests the agitation which radically disturbed Irish society would not be taking place. Yet, as the divisions between the two peoples increased and arrogant, bullying priests determined local issues wherever the Iives of the two folk touched, they needed no final proof to substantiate the evidence of their own experience year after year. In the Propaganda archives in Rome is a very comprehensive collection of reports from local newspapers during 1847, from all parts of the country. They record instances of that bullying and agitation which gave the Protestants cause for their great anxiety, such as the denouncing of individuals from the altar, and the intemperance of men like Archdeacon M. Laffan of Cashel archdiocese, who preached inflammatory sermons to his flock about `the Saxon scoundrel with his bellyful of Irish meat'.12° It

24 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 was local information such as this sent anonymously to Propaganda, or detailed complaints made by Lord Minto and other British agents in Rome, that persuaded the papacy to issue its papal rescripts condemning the agitation by the priests. When these rescripts failed to influence the behaviour of the `surpliced ruffians', and it seemed that MacHale and his followers, rather than the lay lieutenants of O'Connell, were to inherit the mission of the Liberator, Protestants began to assume that the priests were no Ionger following the populace—rather they had taken over direction of the O'Connellite movement, probably with the connivance of Rome. We now know, with the advantage of historical insight, that the Protestant instinct was largely correct. William Walsh, Bishop of Halifax and a confidant of Cullen's, told him of a conversation he had with O'Connell in March 1845 on the dangers associated with increasing religious excitement in the country. The Liberator told Walsh that `if left to himself he would have been as neutral on the Bequests bill as he was on the education question'. Then Walsh told Cullen why O'Connell supported clerical opposition to the measure : On dit that Drs MacHale and Cantwell threatened to withdraw from the Repeal movement if O'Connell did not agitate the Bequests Bill, whilst, on the other hand, Smith O'Brien ... and other Protestants were violently opposed to its being mixed up with the national question.121 In fact, as we will see later when discussing Paul Cullen, O'Connell had created the alliance of his party with the priests, but, through an internal metamorphosis and the growing power of Ultramontanism, the old radical democracy of the Emancipation campaign had taken on a new cultural-religious expression with imperialist ambitions—at least from the standpoint of mid-nineteenth-century Irish Protestants: He brought the priests into politics for a particular purpose but before he died ... he was to find he was being already outstripped in influence by them.... The sectarian tumult of the time, the new sense of cohesion he fostered and his own passionate rhetoric—all brought about a situation where the response of his audience was quite different from what he wished to convey. The overall result was an enormous strengthening of the sense of Catholic identity, not to say Catholic nationalism.122 With most Protestants, the idea that Rome was somehow directing the agitation of the first half of the century was an almost

Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism 25 certain suspicion they preferred not to have verified because of its implications for their position of ascendancy and the well-being of their church. They knew, however, that whatever the new spirit within the Irish Catholic Church, the papacy would have some control over it. They remarked on the new authority among the priests : The priest felt the citizen growing up within him, and cast off altogether the habitual stoop which had so long been the disgraceful distinctive of his order.... The time was thoroughly gone by when silence was loyalty, and courtesy public virtue.123 At the time when Bishop James Doyle made his suggestion about the union of the churches, Protestants were not surprised when correspondence among intellectuals of the day revealed that DoyIe's concept of union included a Protestant return to the `one true church'. Doyle naively hoped that this would not be an obstacle to union : I am sure, I am certain that the Pope is the head of the universal church, and that the rejection of his just authority is ruinous to religion; but I condemn no man and ... I hope to embrace many of my heretical friends.124 While the O'Connellite movement was at its height, though many Protestants were willing to admit that the priests had a difficult time not to ally themselves with the popular movement, at a deep level they feared that what was really sought by the MacHalites was not Repeal but Catholic ascendancy. Protestants tended to see the political issues of the first half of the nineteenth century in the broadest possible terms. They were witnessing more than a political or economic struggle. Rather it was a cultural struggle between two radically separated peoples who were primarily distinguished from each other ideologically by their religious adherence to the Catholic and Protestant communions. Protestants feared the Catholic clergy with their new assertiveness, and they were as decided in their opposition to being embraced by either the Catholic Bishop of Kildare or the Bishop of Rome as they were to being coerced by the exercise in radical democracy organised by Daniel O'Connell. One of the Protestant thinkers of the 1820s, the Rev. William Phelan, a convert from Catholicism and a protege of Primate Beresford, revealed Protestant anxiety over what the priests and O'Connell were really about when he said that what they were attacking was `the Protestant mind of the Empire'. The first bastion they were intent on taking was the Church of Ireland, the institution that Bishop Doyle had labelled

26 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 `monstrous'. Phelan asked his fellow-Protestants to consider what would happen if the Church of Ireland were to fall : Let us then suppose that this last stronghold is stormed—is carried—is given up to spoliation. ... Will the inundation of plebeian triumph subside miraculously and at once, when every sluice has been opened, and every mound overthrown?125 The almost universal answer of Protestants to Phelan's question was an emphatic `No'. They were convinced that Rome had never relaxed its `decided and uniform spirit of hostility to the Protestant religion and establishment'.126 From the early years of the 1820s until the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, when the garrison mind of Irish Protestantism was replaced by the ghetto mentality which has characterised it ever since—at least in the south of Ireland—the ramparts of every Protestant outpost were manned by watchmen who shrilly proclaimed the advance of a vengeful Catholic people's army led by bishops and priests who desired not only the extinction of a heretical faith, but the destruction of a culture which was anathema to the Antichrist who ruled in Rome. Protestant extremist papers with names like the Church Watchman, the Church Sentinel, the Protestant Watchman, or The Warder recalled stories like that of the poster which was alleged to have been placed in St Werburgh's Church in Dublin on the eve of the Emmet rising of 1803. It had spoken of Catholic determination to possess themselves and to transfer to their posterity, their ancient rights and properties, namely the estates, lands and church livings, which the abominable scum of England have from time to time plundered them of, and which are now applied to heretical uses in order to abolish the Catholic faith.127

CHAPTER II

THE PROTESTANT MIND IN IRELAND The Anglicans in Ireland seem to have had the mentality of Troy under siege, though in Catholic eyes they were not Troy so much as the Trojan horse. JOHN PINNINGTON,

`The Church of Ireland's Apologetic Position in the Years Before Disestablishment', IER CVII (1967)

CHAPTER II THE PROTESTANT MIND IN IRELAND 1. Dissent in Ireland Bishop James Doyle stated to Marquis Wellesley in the year 1823 that one of the chief weaknesses of the Established Church was that its clergy had too little to do. This inevitably led them into mischief : Many of them, destitute of employment and forbidden to exert their talents and industry in other pursuits if they be religiously inclined, become enthusiasts, employ their time in composing hymns or tracts, or in distributing Bibles to men who want only food and employment; or they implicate themselves in worldly concerns, contrary to the command of the Apostle; thus degrading their profession whilst they seek in vain to serve two masters.' The one area where this shrewd observation did not apply was Ulster. As in most periods of Irish history, the province of Ulster in the early nineteenth century proved to be a variation from the norm religiously, as well as in other ways. It was in Ulster that the Irish Protestants had their greatest strength, and there the clergy of the Established Church were usually busily employed. If a parson was not inclined to shepherd his flock closely, there were usually dissenting ministers nearby who were willing to offer those services which he was neglecting to provide.2 Sectarian strife between Protestant bodies in Ulster was common, and the clergy had little time or energy for other than religious and ecclesiastical affairs. The rivalry between the Established Church and the Presbyterian Church in Ulster was intense. While the former body attempted to serve the whole of Ireland,' the Presbyterians were primarily concerned with northern affairs.4 Whereas the parsons, at least in theory, were responsible for the spiritual state of every soul in their parishes, the Presbyterians confined their ministrations to members of their own communion. They scorned the episcopal church for religious and ecclesiastical reasons and prided themselves as the

30 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 true defenders of Protestant and British culture in the north of Ireland : Ever since the passing of the Act of Union, they have been the steadfast supporters of the British connection; and when demagogues have attempted to agitate the question of repeal, the North has protested against their declamation. It has been ascertained that Presbyterian ministers amply repay the state for their endowment, inasmuch as the districts under their pastoral care can be governed without the aid of the military 5 The one issue on which the Established Church and the Presbyterians closed ranks was the threat by Roman Catholicism to the Protestant hegemony in Ulster. However disloyal Ulster Protestants may have been before 1798, `when the northern rebels heard of the cruelties perpetrated on their Protestant brethren, in other parts of Ireland by the Roman Catholic insurgents, they threw down their arms in disgust and indignation' ° When parliamentary commissioners interviewed Protestant clergymen on the state of Ireland in 1825, they soon discovered that the tension between Protestants and Catholics in the north of Ireland was great. The Rev. Henry Cooke, the Moderator of the Synod of Ulster, told the commissioners of the House of Lords that he believed the priests of Down and Connor were behind many Ribbon conspiracies : `Individuals have winked at it, if not encouraged it" The priests, he said, were believed by most Presbyterians to be part of a Rome-directed conspiracy against Protestant culture everywhere: They argue thus : because the Roman Catholics act under a foreign head spiritually, this spiritual subjection must influence their political conduct. They cannot see the difference between a man who claims over any person spiritual power, and a man who exercises over him temporal power; especially, they conceive, that if a man tells another he has the power of pardoning his sins he can exercise a great influence over him; for what will not a man give or do to get his sins pardoned.8 Cooke said that when the northern Presbyterians heard Catholic leaders prophesying the destruction of the Protestant Church— which was then a not uncommon utterance—their apprehensions greatly increased, and it was fear that led them to oppose Catholic Emancipation : With us, unfortunately, whenever we hear of the destruction of the Protestant church the common people think of the year 1641; this excited their fears, and consequent disapproval of Catholic claims.'e Although most Orangemen at this time were members of the

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 31 Church of Ireland, many Ulster Presbyterians shared the antipapist mentality shown by the Rev. Holt Waring, Rector of Lurgan, in his evidence to the parliamentary commissioners of 1825. A member of the Orange Order since 1798, he told them that the continued Catholic unrest in Ireland came from giving in to demands made by a minority of radicals : `I think their discontent has entirely originated from the acts of a few people; and that if their hierarchy and demagogues were prevented from meddling with them, and had not ambition to gratify by exciting them, the people would have been very easily quieted."° The same commissioners were told by the Bishop of Derry, William Knox, that although the Orange Order appeared moribund at that time in his area,11 neither the members of his church nor the Presbyterians had much intercourse with their Catholic neighbours.12 They continued to look upon themselves, as they had since the seventeenth century, as defenders of a Protestant fortress which was besieged by the forces of Antichrist himself." They chose to ignore the enemy so long as he posed no immediate threat to the Protestant way of life—but both Episcopalians and Presbyterians were prepared to unite and put themselves on a war footing at the first sign of Roman Catholic militancy. One of the great weaknesses of Ulster Presbyterianism in the early years of the century was its several divisions. Its two major bodies were the Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod. New life first appeared in the former and larger body when a decided Evangelical, the Rev. Samuel Hanna of Belfast, was appointed to one of its major academic posts and interest began to be shown in missionary bodies like the Jews Society. The new spirit also led to the healing of old divisions and the beginning of co-operation between the two synods." The same spirit also encouraged the Rev. Henry Cooke, who, with his followers in the Synod of Ulster, waged a fierce struggle between 1818 and 1829 to rid the Presbyterian Church of its `Arian' or Unitarian theologians and to banish from the communion all those `who appeared to be destitute of vital godliness'.36 The result of these struggles to `cleanse the temple' of the church was that Presbyterian divines tended to expend their energies on matters like maintenance of the Westminster Confession of Faith, rather than on the political concerns associated with Catholic Emancipation, which were so important to members of the Church of Ireland in the decade before 1829. When the Presbyterians did turn to social concerns they focused on causes like that of the temperance crusade which began in 1829. This was very important to the Rev. John Edgar, Professor of Divinity of the Secession Synod. A man of eloquence, energy,

32 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 benevolence and common sense, he tried to carry out a moral reform within Presbyterianism as extensive as that proposed by James Doyle in the Roman Catholic synod that met at Maynooth on 19 July 1831.16 The new evangelical spirit Edgar represented continued to grow in both the major divisions, until in 1840 its influence was such that the old Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod agreed to unite in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. By this time the Presbyterians formed a strongly cohesive cultural unity, with the church the centre of its communal life. When Daniel O'Connell prepared to visit Ulster the redoubtable Henry Cooke challenged him to a public debate, which the Liberator declined in the face of a great Presbyterian display of anti-Catholic and anti-Repeal sentiment.11 When the National System of education was introduced Ulster Presbyterian intransigence was such that by January 1840 the communion had `obtained such modifications of the system as enabled it to accept assistance from the funds provided by the Iegislature'.1e The power which came from the union of the different Presbyterian bodies significantly influenced the lives of those who belonged to them. The Presbyterian community in the years immediately before the famine was one intent upon putting the stamp of its peculiar culture upon the whole of the province, to turn it into a patrimony of the Reformation. Its leaders boasted that `The Presbyterian population of Ulster exceeds the episcopalian population in the ratio of more than three to two."° They admitted that few aristocrats belonged to their communion, but neither did the poor. It was noted that half the paupers in Belfast, Londonderry and Monaghan workhouses in 1853 were members of the Established Church, while a quarter of them were Roman Catholics : `It has often been said that Presbyterianism is not a religion for a gentleman, but the statistics of the Ulster workhouses rather seem to indicate that it is not a religion for a beggarman.'20 Self-satisfaction increased when jail statistics revealed that in Ulster there was `one Episcopalian in jail for every 948 individuals of the Episcopal population, one Roman Catholic for every 1,188 of the Roman Catholic population, and one Presbyterian for every 3,774 individuals of the Presbyterian population'.21 Professor Reid boasted that Ulster Presbyterianism had `more general competence, as well as more diffused intelligence, than any other great religious community'22 and argued that everyone gained by the cultural revolution the Presbyterians were carrying out in the northern province : While their theology improves the heart, their ecclesiastical arrangements stimulate the intellect; and to be convinced even

The Protestant Mind in Ireland

33

of the temporal advantages of their peculiar polity, they require only to look abroad upon the face of their own province.23 Presbyterians did look upon the face of `their province' with a good deal of satisfaction, as we have noted, and this inward-turning mentality significantly influenced their attitude towards other communions and the establishment of missions. Within Ulster they sought diligently for `lapsed' Protestants capable of being filled with the `vital godliness' which evangelical Christianity in its Presbyterian form might give to the converted sinner. They steadfastly ignored the Catholics whenever they could, in order to continue the purifying of their communion—and of Ulster society. The Presbyterians had a tradition of preaching in Irish, however, and when the union of the synods was carried through in 1840, ideas of Home Mission were also revived.24 John Edgar was the moving spirit behind the Presbyterian missions when they appeared—a few of them being in the south of Ireland. These missions were primarily interested in reviving lapsed Protestants, but they also supported Irish schools which had been founded in Mayo, and they gave help to the small Synod of Munster as it strove to sustain itself. When the famine came John Edgar published a famous pamphlet, A Cry from Connaught (November 1846), urging Presbyterians in Ulster to provide for the physical and spiritual needs of their fellow-Irishmen who `fainteth by reason of a famine of bread and of hearing the word of the Lord'. The physical help given by organisations like the Belfast Ladies' Relief Association was substantial, partly because few Presbyterians suffered to any extent during the famine years 26 Edgar's later pamphlets, Connaught Spiritual and Temporal—The Cry Heard (1847) and The Connaught Harvest (1853), tell of this aid—much of which was given to Thomas Feeny, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Killala. These pamphlets also tell of the work of the Presbyterian clergyman at Killala, the Rev. David Rodgers, and a convert missionary, Michael Brannigan, who worked in the south and west of Ireland. Neither of these men was very successful. When John Edgar made his last tour of the Home Mission stations in 1865, he opened churches at Castlebar and Roscommon to supplement fourteen others at places like Clogher, Boyle and Castlerea. It seems clear from Home Mission reports, however, that Presbyterianism held little appeal to Irishmen outside Ulster. John Edgar himself was a strong Calvinist, severe and tyrannical, who was never loved by the Presbyterian public—though his devotion to the Protestant cause and the well-being of Ulster was never doubted. He lacked the kind of folk charisma that more

S4 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 successful missionaries like the Methodist Gideon Ouseley possessed. But the relative failure of the Presbyterian missions among the Roman Catholics in the south cannot be attributed to the personal failings of Edgar. The truth was that although the Presbyterians of Ulster were willing to help Roman Catholics during the famine years, they were not urgently concerned about converting their traditional foes. Wherever the Presbyterians founded churches they were more apt to compete with the local parson for the allegiance of the local Protestant population than they were to preach to the papists. Ulster Presbyterianism was primarily concerned for the survival of the reformed faith in a state of `vital godliness'26 and for the maintenance of Ulster's Protestant culture. The idea of a `home mission' had appeal only so long as those gathered in could reinforce the Protestant garrison in the north. An extension of the mission beyond Ulster's borders had comparatively little appeal to Presbyterians, and they showed no real interest in trying to rival the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of Ireland as those communions battled over questions of establishment and ascendancy in Ireland as a whole. Other Nonconformist churches were represented in Ireland, and, like the Presbyterians, their stronghold was the north—most of them having twice as many congregations in Ulster as were found in all the other provinces together.27 Generally their mission was conceived as the evangelical one of providing `for all who will avail themselves of the provision, means of public worship, according to a pure ritual, and the means of public instruction, according to a sound and Scriptural confession of faith' 28 The most important of these bodies was the Methodist denomination. George Whitfield had briefly visited Ireland in 1738 when his ship was almost wrecked in the Shannon estuary; later the Wesley brothers and other Methodists visited Dublin, Cork and other towns in the middle years of the eighteenth century. By the time John Wesley died in 1791 there were sixty-seven preachers, twenty-nine circuits and about 14,000 Methodists in Ireland.2° Primitive Methodists in Ireland were those who continued to receive the sacraments within the Established Church, and it was often difficult to distinguish a Methodist from an Evangelical of the Established Church. Close relations were maintained with England, and men like Gideon Ouseley helped to extend Methodism in Leeds during their visits to enlist help for the Irish circuits, where it was difficult to obtain ministers.S6 The Methodist mentality in Ireland is clearly revealed in the lives of the Rev. Charles Graham, the `apostle of Kerry', and the Rev. Gideon Ouseley, the most colourful of Irish evangelists. Both

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 35 of these men worked for long years among the Irish peasantry, with the help of other courageous men like John Hill, Fossey Tackaberry and Matthew Lanktree. Graham was the oldest of the group, beginning his labours in the late eighteenth century, an age when the Irish countryside was distinguished by `blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking and drunkenness ... party spirit, pitched battles, sanguinary conflicts, nocturnal devastations and private murders'.81 Graham's mission was to bring to the masses the gospel of personal revival and conversion, and his biographer records adventure after adventure where only direct divine intervention saved him from physical harm when the country people had been turned against him by the preaching of the Roman Catholic clergy.32 When stories of this nature were recorded and made use of by Methodist missionaries they had great fascination for many people, including the Irish peasants. A favourite story was that of a priest reading Latin prayers to a man about to be hanged after the '98 rebellion. Graham kept talking to the man in Irish, to the consternation of the priest, and the poor man was converted just before he mounted the scaffold—`a marvellous victory of Grace'.83 Gideon Ouseley worked with Graham during the Methodist Irish General Mission, which was launched in the year following the rebellion of 1798: `It was only acting the part of the good Samaritan to pour the balm of Gospel truth into hearts and minds torn with anguish on the one side, and subdued into sullen silence and black despair on the other.'S4 He was very effective among the country people, for his whole life had been spent among them, and `he had got into their bosoms before one differently trained could have seized the tips of their fingers'.S6 His family had lived in Galway since the seventeenth century, and his father had been a sturdy Deist without much sympathy for either parsons or priests : `The former were more honest, the latter more diligent, but neither bore any trace of spiritual life or moral elevation.'36 Ouseley's mother, on the other hand, was influenced by Evangelicalism, and read to him the gloomy works of the minor poet Edward Young87 and the sermons of Archbishop Tillotson. The third influence in the life of young Ouseley was his tutor, a Roman Catholic priest who had been trained as a latinist and mathematician in continental universities. Ouseley early fell in with the local rakes, a period when the evangelist said in later life he was the `companion of fools', dedicated to gambling, drink, horse-racing and other kinds of dissipation. In a drunken scuffle he lost the sight of his right eye when a fowling piece accidentally discharged into his face and neck, and this left him with a `comical leer'—which greatly attracted the

36 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 country people when he later began his preaching career. His conversion came during the long hours of darkness, when his young wife nursed him and read Young's works to him, and `the blasts of the last trumpet awoke the echo of many a sentence of selfcondemnation'.88 During his convalescence he was also greatly impressed by Methodists he met among the 4th Irish Dragoon Guards, then quartered in Duhmore, who sang hymns in the local shebeen instead of carousing with their fellows. Finally, in his year of grace, 1791, Ouseley was fully converted. He proclaimed his new state of grace by attending Roman Catholic funerals and translating the Latin service into Irish for the people as the priest read from his service book. He also caught public attention by admonishing the local Protestant curate `affectionately' for his lack of spiritual zeal. By 1797 Ouseley was fully employed as a circuit-riding Irish preacher in the Ballymote area of Co. Sligo, and in the years immediately following the rebellion he worked with Charles Graham, Bartley Campbell—who was known as the `Lough Derg Pilgrim' because of his conversion from Roman Catholicism while on pilgrimage at that shrine—and James McQuigg,39 a brilliant scholar. These men were convinced that the priests' opposition to the reading of the Irish Bible and to preaching in Irish actually encouraged the advance of English at the expense of the Irish language which they loved so much : The vitality of the Keltic languages among the small population of Wales, immediately joining the great population of England, as contrasted with the rapidity of its disappearance in the more numerous population of Ireland, separated by the sea from England, is one of the most striking illustrations of the effect of the Bible and preaching on the life of a language. In the Roman Catholic country, the want of the Bible in the house, and of the mother-tongue in worship, leaves a new language, if it has superior prestige, an open field for speedy victory.4O The priests who opposed Gideon Ouseley's preaching in Irish and his distribution of Irish bibles were not at all concerned about the result of their action in terms of maintaining the old tongue among the people. Their immediate problem was the power of Ouseley's Irish preaching among the people who called him Sioda na bhFear, the silk of men. The thrust of his wit had great appeal to them, as is shown by this example of his preaching about purgatory in Sligo :

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 37 You know Dr Doyle? Well, Dr Doyle says paradise is purgatory. Aren't you sure he's right? Then, we'll take for granted he is. You know the blessed apostle St Paul says paradise is in the third heavens. And sure the apostle must be right. Then we'll take for granted they are both right. If paradise is purgatory, and paradise is in the third heavens, ergo purgatory is in the third heavens! Now, ye fools, go and sell your yarn, your cattle and your pigs, and give your money to the priest, to bring your friends out of the third heavens.41 Ouseley had no intention of increasing Catholic-Protestant cultural conffict in Ireland, his one desire being the salvation of individual souls through biblical teaching. He soon found, however, that he could not destroy local priestly authority without causing dissension. His biographers make much of one of his moral victories in Binghamstown, Erris, where he preached to a great crowd in Irish, while the priest, in his cups, could only stand by and beat on an old kettle to try to drown Ouseley's voice.42 Unfortunately, neither Ouseley nor the other Irish Methodist missionaries reckoned with the long-range effect of the animosity created by such a confrontation.48 Because of their use of Irish preaching and the social background of many of their evangelists, the Irish Methodists were able to establish themselves to some degree in Ireland's religious scene, acting, at least, as evangelical gadflies to indolent Established Church clergymen. But the independent churches, which were so powerful in England, had little success in establishing themselves in Ireland. At mid-century, William Urwick reported that the Congregationalists had twenty-four churches, the Baptists sixteen, and the United Brethren twelve» Most of these churches were to be found in the Protestant north. James Godkin spoke of the independent churches `ploughing the sand' in Ireland, and said in 1867 that `with the exceptions of the Presbyterians and the Wesleyans, Protestant dissent in Dublin may be regarded as all but extinct'.46 Why did the independent churches fail so miserably in Ireland? Professor G. Kitson Clark has said of the Protestant dissenting bodies in England that `probably more than other religious bodies, they had drawn their strength from ways of thought and expression which were native to the nineteenth century'.46 He might also have added, `and to the middle classes of England'. Although English dissenters wasted much of their energy battling with churchmen, what they really wanted to build in England was the kind of religious and cultural imperium which the Presbyterians had managed to impose on Ulster. English dissent failed in this task because so

38 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 many of its attitudes were essentially negative, but where it flourished it did so because it answered the needs of part of the English population at that stage of its development. In Ireland, however, the prevailing Evangelical theology of the Church of Ireland, which we will discuss in the next section, gave those who might have been dissenters in England an acceptable spiritual home in the establishment. There they were part of a united garrison, on the frontiers of a Protestant empire, daily at grips with the forces of Antichrist intent upon displacing their ascendancy with that of the Scarlet Woman. There was no place in Ireland for the kind of English dissent which at times chose to attack the establishment even more fiercely than it did Roman Catholicism. The merit of this judgment can be weighed by contrasting the relative failure of the anti-establishment churches with the vibrant life of the one dissenting body in Ireland which devoted itself not to attacking the Church of Ireland, but to putting down roots and becoming an important part of the country's religious and social development—the Society of Friends. Most of its members had come to Ireland as refugees from religious persecution or as Cromwellian settlers, and their settlements in places like Ballitore were tolerated by Catholics and Protestants alike. Not only did they resolutely refuse to attack other religious bodies, but their example helped to remind the Irish people of both nations of their need for conciliation and toleration for each other.47 The respect granted them came from their small numbers, their keeping to themselves, their charitableness, and their general desire to contribute as much as possible to Ireland's development. James Richardson has said of the Quakers he knew as a boy in Ulster : My boyish recollections imbibed the impression that our Society was not so much a small corps ready to co-operate in the great Christian army, as a body whose raison d'être was to protest against a whole series of things—wars, judicial oaths, tithes .. . as well as against the severely punished misdemeanour of `marrying out' 48 In an Ireland where a desperate struggle for religious and cultural ascendancy was being waged by two `nations' of people, Quaker exclusiveness guaranteed a certain neutrality, and they were not resented as a body by either the Roman Catholics or the Protestants. At the same time their `protesting against a whole series of things' was an indirect contribution to the cultural development of both peoples. History was to show what a positive contribution the Quakers could make to Irish life, when the famine presented

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 39 them with the desperate need of their starving countrymen—and they did much to relieve the plight of the nation during that time of trial. The Presbyterians contributed much to Ulster, the Methodists helped the evangelical spirit in the Established Church, but among the dissenting bodies only the Quakers seemed to find both a way of sectarian survival and a way of contributing to Irish society as a whole. 2. The State of the Unreformed Established Church The enemies of the Established Church would have denied that its parsons set an example for anyone. The First Report of the Commissioners on Public Instruction in 1834 attributed to that body only 852,064 members. Critics pointed out that this number included the Wesleyans and that `even the Quakers seem to have been forced into the Establishment'.49 The Edinburgh Review noted that this Established Church population was less than that found in the diocese of Durham in England, yet it was governed by four archbishops and twenty-two bishops and its revenues were some £800,000, three-quarters of which came from tithes mostly paid by the more than 6,000,0000 Roman Catholics in Ireland b0 The hostility shown to the Established Church reflected not only the fact that it served a minority, but that the governing class in Ireland composed a large part of that minority. It has often been said that the value of having enemies is that they alone tell the truth about one, and certainly this adage applies when a study is made of the criticisms of the ascendancy church made by Nonconformists and Roman Catholics. That ecclesiastical gadfly, the Ulster independent minister, the Rev. James Godkin, took delight in pointing out the succession of bishops in the see of Tuam, among others, and their connection with the aristocracy. He began with the Hon. Joseph Deane Bourke (1782-94), who succeeded his brother as Earl of Mayo; William Beresford (1794-1819), brother of the Marquis of Waterford, who became Baron Decies in 1819; Power le Poer Trench (1819-39), brother of the Earl of Clancarty; Thomas Plunket (1839-67), son of the great Irish Chancellor, and his successor as Baron Plunket; and Charles Brodrick Bernard (1867-90), brother of the Earl of Bandon. Nor did he fail to note the incomes of these prelates, who seemed to consider the Church of Ireland as an appanage of the `Big Houses' : `Episcopal proprietors are a sort of Levitical tribe, far better endowed than any other priestly order ever was in the history of the world.'B1 The aristocratic connection of the bishops was reflected in the social composition of the parsons. Until 1815 rising tithe receipts enticed many members of `quality' families into the clergy of the

40 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Established Church, and their presence ensured the social acceptance of most of their brethren.62 As late as 1867 Godkin said of the Church of Ireland clergy : The social status of a gentleman is secured by being a minister of the Established Church, and the chances for curates intermarrying with the families of the gentry are numerous. This may account for the fact that some curates are willing to officiate gratuitously, and that the position is coveted by men of ability, who have risen from the ranks of the people by their own exertions, chiefly by means of tuition. In this way, and also through conversions to Protestantism occurring in Trinity College, we may account for an increasing mixture of Celtic blood in the Irish clerical body, as indicated by the very large number of Mac's and O's, and other native patronymics which we observe in the clerical lists.68 Godkin thought well of this type of parson who was of middle-class origins. At least, he said, they were willing to work, while `the younger sons of the aristocracy and landed gentry, who monopolise its good livings, have really done little or nothing to promote its welfare, either by their liberality or their labour'.' At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Irish bishops were not an admirable body of ecclesiastics. They obtained their preferment through social and political connections, and expected, as a matter of course, to pass from a small `rearing diocese' to a better appointment, unless they could be convicted of a gross neglect of duty. One of the better appointments that was made was that of William Stuart, son of the once-powerful Earl of Bute, who was translated from St David's to Armagh in 1800. In his new position Stuart was expected to counsel the government while it made a series of episcopal appointments as part of the political chicanery which attended Pitt's programme of persuading the Irish parliament to extinguish itself. Stuart urged Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Lieutenant, to be cautious in his appointments because he felt the Church to be in a depressed state. Bad appointments would encourage the Church's enemies to attack it if it was further weakened. But the government had to make good its promises to the various great Irish families that had voted their parliament out of existence, and, as pressure mounted, the tactic of Archbishop Stuart was to try to keep the poorest appointees in the southern part of Ireland where they would not be under the extremely critical judgment of the Ulster Presbyterians. When Robert Ponsonby Tottenham Loftus was suggested for the Down diocese, Archbishop Stuart said he had nothing against the man morally,

The Protestant Mind in Ireland

41

but he was `utterly unacquainted with his profession' and urged that he be given a southern diocese." The government was particularly indebted to the powerful Beresford family, whose leader, the Marquis of Waterford, ensured that Hardwicke was not allowed to forget this fact." When Hardwicke suggested the translation of George de la Poer Beresford from Clonfert to the important see of Kilmore, Archbishop Stuart exploded, declaring : `I firmly believe no measure can be more decidedly fatal to the Established Church ... Mr Beresford is reported to be one of the most profligate men in Europe!'" He went on to say that Beresford's language and general `meanness' had given universal offence, and his appointment to a northern diocese would be a catastrophe. He said of his situation in the province of Armagh : I have six bishops under me. Three are men of tolerable moral character but are inactive and useless, and two are of acknowledged bad character. Fix Mr Beresford at Kilmore, and we shall then have three very inactive bishops and, what I trust the world has not yet seen, three bishops in one district reported to be the most profligate men in Europe.... Profligate bishops never fail to produce a profligate clergy. They ordain the refuse of society and give the most important places to the most worthless individuals." Archbishop Stuart was so distressed over the Beresford translation that he seriously threatened resignation," but he was persuaded to continue in his post in the hope that he might yet do something to improve the situation. Government policy was such, however, that little could be done, and Stuart had to agree with the Bishop of Limerick's remark about what it was doing to the Church of Ireland : `It sets every jobber at work; and draws down ridicule on the church by exhibiting a set of clerical jockeys in the Castle yard whenever a government preferment becomes vaØt.'60 The situation improved, but slowly. In 1831 John Jebb, the exemplary Bishop of Limerick, wrote to the Rev. J. J. Hornby : Since the year 1822, while one or two creditable appointments have been made on other grounds, not a single appointment, high or low, has taken place in Ireland on that ground which ought to stand first, theological learning and attainments. For all the appointments made by the Crown since the period alluded to, the Government have not so much to show in justification of their choice as even a single published sermon of common respectability °'

42 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Jebb's immediate successor in 1834 was the Hon. Edmund Knox, a younger son of the first Viscount Northfield. Knox soon made it clear to everyone that he was `a contrast to his predecessor in learning and in usefulness'." His manner of concealing his ineptitude was to spend most of the years he was Bishop of Limerick, 1834-49, on the continent. In 1844 he was foolish enough to write to Sir Robert Peel asking that the deanery of Limerick might be given to his nephew and domestic chaplain, Robert Knox. When Peel received the letter he wrote to the Primate, Lord John George Beresford, who was trying to carry on the reforming measures of his predecessor William Stuart : The letter is dated from Milan and in order that his lordship might not be too late in his application was written before he could know that the late Dean of Limerick was dead. He addressed a letter to the same effect to the Lord Lieutenant dated from Wiesbaden and dated one day before the Dean of Limerick died.... The continued absence of the Bishop of Limerick is a great scandal to the Church of Ireland. I am assured that indisposition is not the real cause of that absence, that the true cause is extravagance and debt. If there is no remedy under the existing state of the law, I think it is highly probable that the necessity of providing one by a change of the law will be passed in parliament—and I confess I shall feel little disposed to resist it.08 Beresford's reply to Peel revealed that he had been consulting Archbishop Whately about the situation, and an ad hoc arrangement had been arrived at by which neighbouring bishops tried to control the situation in Limerick and `to remedy the disorders which prevail'. Knox had left the affairs of the diocese in the hands of his archdeacon, but the task had proved to be beyond that dignitary's powers. Whately told the Primate he was doubtful that the Church would gain anything by having Knox return : The Archbishop of Dublin thinks that it is for the interest of the Church that he should not reside in his diocese, and I regret to say that I feel compelled to agree with him in this opinion. Indeed the reports as to his character are such as to make every person who is aware of them deplore that he was placed by Lord Grey's government in the position which he occupies.84 Beresford went on to say that he knew nothing of the nephew, Robert Knox, except that he had neither the abilities nor qualifications to be Dean of Limerick. The nephew replied to Peel by saying his uncle was ill with an inflammation of the prostate gland —the same infection which had killed his brother, the Bishop of

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 43 Derry—and the physician of the Bishop of London had said he would die if he continued to live in a damp climate like that of Limerick." Peel then wrote to the nephew to warn the bishop that the law regarding episcopal absenteeism was to be changed if Bishop Knox's situation was not remedied 80 It was all very well for Peel to say the law was about to be changed, and for him to send the correspondence to the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Heytesbury, who proclaimed Knox `a disgrace to the lawn',07 but the truth was that no one knew what the legal redress could be. Reform of the Church of Ireland had to be carried out through parliament, and the process was complex and slow. Even the reforming bishops did not know what to do. Beresford had been forced to write the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to inquire how a Metropolitan was to deal with an absentee bishop : `It is so rare an occasion for a bishop to absent himself from his diocese that I have never considered how he should be dealt with if he should do so.'68 Knox duly returned to avoid further trouble— as did his neighbour, Thomas Plunket, Bishop of Tuam, who had heard of the new mood in the government and wrote to the Primate to explain his absence and to give assurance that he was returning to his duties immediately." The real reason bishops like George Beresford or Edmund Knox were allowed to live their indolent and scandalous lives was that their conduct was similar to that of many of their secular contemporaries among southern Ireland's aristocrats and gentry. If their misconduct had taken place in the Protestant north, the Presbyterians would have given them no peace, but so long as they avoided outright public immorality no one in the Church bothered much about them, except Primate Beresford or a bishop like John Jebb—or Sir Robert Peel, who was dedicated to reform of the Church of Ireland.70 Unfortunately for the Church of Ireland, in the very year that Lord John George Beresford became Primate, an open scandal occurred that very much caught public attention. Peel was so disgusted with the Irish bishops at this time that his inclination was to appoint Englishmen to Irish sees. When the primacy became vacant through the unfortunate accidental poisoning death of Stuart in 1822, Peel wanted to appoint an Englishman as Primate, but he accepted the advice of his old Oxford mentor, Charles Lloyd, the Regius Professor of Divinity, and translated from Dublin to Armagh Lord John George Beresford, whose only doubtful quality appeared to be his leadership of the powerful Beresford political faction.71 Beresford was the first Irishman for over a hundred years to act as Primate of All Ireland, and James Godkin

44 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 —who was no friend of the establishment—described Beresford as `one of the most exemplary, pious, and princely of all the prelates that ever adorned the Irish Church'.72 The moral leadership given by the new Primate was badly needed. In the same year that Beresford moved to Armagh the Church of Ireland was shocked by the scandal of the Bishop of Clogherwhich became a cause celebre. An unpopular man, the Hon. Percy Jocelyn, the third son of the first Earl of Roden and uncle of a peer, came from Co. Down.78 He served in the diocese of Ferns from 1809 until 1820, and was then translated from this `rearing diocese' to the northern diocese of Clogher. He was there only two years when he was caught in flagrante delicto with a guardsman, John Moverley, in the White Hart public house in Westminster. When he was identified by the mob there was a great public outcry, Greville reported the affair in detail, and the demand was made that the bishop be dealt with at least as severely as was the unfortunate soldier. To add to the public uproar, some journalists discovered that eleven years earlier a Dublin servant called Byrne had accused the bishop of making an improper proposal. For this `libel' the servant had been imprisoned for two years, after being flogged through the streets of Dublin by the military—an ordeal which had almost killed him.74 Jocelyn was never punished for his scandalous behaviour, however, for he decamped while awaiting trial and fled to Scotland where it was said he worked as a butler until his death in obscurity in 1843. Archbishop Stuart had believed that a profligate episcopate would produce a profligate clergy, and many critics of the Church of Ireland believed that the ecclesiastical laxity on the bench was widespread among the clergy of the establishment. Soon after the Union concern began to be shown for the state of the Irish clergy, and the government announced its `anxiety' for `the obvious necessity of adopting without delay any proper measure for its support, and for remedying those evils under which it at present unfortunately labours'.75 The government reform tactic was to require the Primate and the bishops to discover matters like how many clergy were resident in their parishes, how glebe houses could be provided where they were wanting, how many churches needed building, what were the salaries of curates, what were the extent of unions and other kinds of benefices. The information provided revealed a great deal of confusion. For example, the parish of Dingle, Co. Kerry, was in the care of a lay impropriator, Lord Ventry, with its church in ruins and without any glebe house or registered glebe. The curate in Dingle who lived in the parish, the Rev. John Goodman, also had the cure of souls in Marken and

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 45 Dunquin parishes, for which he received £30 salary. He also received £12 for his duties at Ventry on behalf of the incumbent, the Rev. Samuel Collins, who lived at Killiney. Goodman also earned another £20 for looking after Killquane and Dunurlin for the Rev. John Day, who acted as curate at Listowel `and has important duties to which he assiduously attends'.70 The clergyman at Rathcormack, in the diocese of Cloyne, the Hon. and Rev. John Blackwood, spent his winters in England and paid a curate £50 for carrying out his duties in the parish.77 Further reports on the state of the Church of Ireland show how slow was the reform movement in that church. According to the report of 1820 poor Mr Goodman was as busy as ever in the Dingle area, but the Hon. and Rev. Frederick Mullins, who was now the incumbent of Killiney, `has cure of souls; is not resident, but under monition to reside and to build a glebe house'.78 James Godkin studied parliamentary returns of this nature between 1807 and 1832, and his judgment about how effective was this kind of `monitory' pressure from the hierarchy and the state shows the weakness of the procedure : Non-residents were persuaded to return to their duty at the rate of one per annum, and the pluralists were reduced at the rate of two per annum. This was not much to boast of in the way of Church reform for a quarter of a century.78 A recent study of the diocese of Clogher during this period has concluded that : After 1805 successive bishops of Clogher began to reduce nonresidence by the painfully slow process of suits in court, direct pressure, and exhortation. Over a period of thirty years, residence was increased from fifty to eighty-five per cent, but the region of the greatest Catholic population and most frequent peasant agitation, the barony of Farney, remained without a single resident incumbent until after 1835.80 When one considers that two of the bishops during this time were the Hon. Percy Jocelyn and Lord Robert Ponsonby Tottenham Loftus, it seems a wonder that any pressure or exhortation was exerted at all. The truth was that the ecclesiastical law was so complex, and the machinery for administrative reform so inadequate, that little could have been accomplished—but for the appearance of a new evangelical spirit among the clergy and laity of the Church. It was this spirit, rather than establishment pressure, which was to inspire the kind of reformation that was needed. When a clergyman

46 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 resisted reform, unless he was exposed as an open and notorious profligate, the authorities of church and state could do little to remove him from his living. James Godkin indicates that the Rev. John Warburton, son of Charles Warburton (Bishop of Limerick, 1806-20, and Bishop of Cloyne, 1820-26), held the unions of Kill, Lyons and Whitechurch from 1814, was Precentor of Limerick from 1818, was Vicar-Choral of Cloyne from 1825, and also of Cork from 1826, and from 1829 had the sinecure rectory of Drumcliffe in Killaloe diocese. He notes that Mr Warburton's official responsibilities extended over five dioceses and brought him £1,415 per annum, exclusive of his income as Vicar-Choral in Cloyne and Cork. In his inimitable way Godkin says : `It was simply a physical impossibility that ever Mr Warburton could have earned this income. If he sang in Cloyne, he could not sing in Cork; if he sang in either place, he could not preach and visit at Drumcliffe, and if he did his duty in Limerick, he could not do it in Kildare.'81 Godkin also scorned the `utter waste of resources' of the Established Church in Dublin. He contrasted the inner core of the old city, around the two cathedrals, with `half a dozen religious establishments, each with its church, its schools, and, perhaps, its almshouses, its two or three clergymen, its churchwardens, sexton, organist, parish clerk, schoolmaster, etc., the whole of these ministering to some 3,000 to 4,000 souls ... within a territory of about one hundred English acres'. He contrasted this with the Dublin suburban sprawl which had a parish `forty times the extent of those six parishes, with four or five times the Church population, stretching across the city boundary and out in the country, south and east and west for miles—and all this vast territory and population committed to the pastoral care of a rector, who is also Archdeacon of Dublin, and Professor of Divinity in Dublin University'.82 One of the results of this kind of administrative and, consequently, pastoral neglect was a continuing loss to Roman Catholicism that was noted by many people.88 This gave an excuse for further neglect by parsons who had a declining population. According to the statute 28 Hen. VIII, c. 15, the Established Church clergy were supposed to support parochial schools out of their incomes, but by universal custom most schoolmasters had to supplement their income from other sources.64 James Godkin said the real malaise of the Established Church was not just the sloth of the parsons, but the general habit of relying on the state too much. When he described the `dirty, dingy, dismal church' which passed as the cathedral of Ferns, he deplored the `lack of public spirit among the people'.B8 Such an edifice was maintained by taxation of the people through vestry cess and tithes. The former, which was

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 47 resisted by Roman Catholics after 1826 and eventually abolished by law in 1834, had been especially unpopular. It had turned the parish church into a bear-garden every Easter Monday as the Catholic ratepayers `uproariously contended with the rector and his friends, protesting that they ought not to be compelled to pay for the sweeping of the church, the washing of the surplice, and even for the bread and wine used in the sacrament'88 The Church Temporalities Act of 1834 began reform by reducing the archbishoprics to two and the bishoprics to ten. It also vested ecclesiastical wealth from the suppressed sees in a Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners, established a tax on benefices and dignitaries worth more than £300 per annum, abolished parishes without any Protestants, and ended the vestry cess. These basic reforms were intended to strengthen the Church of Ireland and to obviate some of the criticisms of its enemies. As the number of unions continued to decline, and more and more churches were built where there were Protestant people, it seemed as if parliament and the best of the Irish bishops were serious at last about carrying out an ecclesiastical administrative revolution. Their efforts were reinforced in this by the growth of Evangelicalism among the clergy and laity, but the abuses in the institution were so many that reform was very slow.87 The state of the Church of Ireland between the Act of Union and Disestablishment continued to be such that its apologists found it difficult to convince anyone that the Established Church was—as it claimed to be—the true Catholic Church of the Irish people. 3. The Mind of the Church of Ireland The gulf between what the Church of Ireland professed to be and what it was, was so great that the whole communion existed in a state of institutional anxiety. James Godkin had much to say about how this anxiety manifested itself in the `tyranny of the bishops', their exercise of `diocesan terrorism' and their use of `ecclesiastical ostracism'. Anyone who questioned the Established Church in any fashion was immediately accused of being a dissenter, or even `a Jesuit in disguise' : The sentence of condemnation uttered behind his back by the bishop passes down through the ranks of the clergy, and the reformer is snubbed, repudiated, and virtually excommunicated.88 What the bishops wanted was to keep the unreformed Church out of the public eye for, as Archbishop Stuart said, to do otherwise was `egregious folly'88 Stuart barely managed to head off a royal

48 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 commission of investigation in 1805-06, but although Stuart and his successor, John George Beresford, bought time in which the Church could try internal reform with the help of the state, its enemies and critics gave it no peace. Godkin described it as 'encamped in an enemy's country' : The English Church, resting on a broad national foundation, can bear to have abuses pointed out, because it is conscious of its utility, is not afraid that it is going to be destroyed, and has not got into the habit of being alarmed at the cry of `the Church in danger'. But the Irish Establishment, resting on the narrow basis of a fraction of the population, and painfully conscious of its false position, is morbidly sensitive when anything is said about its defects, and it grows very angry with those who labour to bring about reforms ... when they are absolutely necessary for its preservation.90 This anxiety exhibited by the members of the Church of Ireland was a natural one on the part of people who realised that their institution was both a religious and a cultural body in a state of siege. It was for this reason that one Established Church dignitary described a Protestant of his communion as `a man who d—ns the papists and never goes to Church'91 Many nineteenth-century churchmen would have agreed with Richard Woodward, Bishop of Cloyne (1781-94), who had viewed the unrest in the country as `an ancient and deep-rooted design to undermine and overthrow the Protestant Church'.92 The power behind the design was the wrath of the other Irish `nation'—the majority people who were forced to support, and bitterly resented, a church which was alien to their social order. When the Roman Catholic people attacked the Established Church, the Protestants knew they were opposing not just an ecclesiastical edifice but a whole way of life—a culture which had been built by the victors of a civil war, who had defended their confiscations with an offensive penal code, and whose church `had always been and still continued to be the church of the few, not of the many; of the rich, not of the poor; for the few who adhered to it' 9s What was dreaded by the Church of Ireland Protestants throughout our period of study was the loss of `the temporalities of the Irish Church during a Civil War embittered by furious religious bigotry'94 The great majority of the parsons and Protestant laity had deep roots in Ireland and knew that they were the inheritors of political, social and cultural determinants which allowed them little room for manoeuvre—however compassionate they were about the injustices they saw around them. Long acquaintance with the

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 49 peasantry gave most of them an intense sympathy for the suffering of the people. They agreed with the Rev. John Burnett, independent minister in Cork; that `the poverty of the peasant makes them desperate, and their ignorance makes them the dupes of ill-disposed persons.95 They also agreed with Bishop Doyle's opinion that the oppression of the majority by a minority would `always in Ireland produce some Demosthenes or other, like O'Connell at present'." Most nineteenth-century Protestants who stayed in Ireland expected trouble with the Roman Catholic majority—and prepared themselves for it. Early in the century, before the O'Connellite agitation began, there were always a few Protestant bigots who were convinced that the priests were the primary cause of any social unrest—like William Saurin, a Huguenot who was raised on tales of the St Bartholomew's massacre and who dominated the council chamber of Dublin Castle until the coming of Lord Wellesley. It is likely however, that before 1822 most Protestants doubted whether the laity ever followed the priests in any `system of persecution' except for the `besotted rabble in a few districts where Protestant tyranny has been habitually exercised' 9? Rather it was believed that the priests followed the people when it came to temporal matters— especially the immediate one of hunger for food, land and freedom. As Thomas Newenham observed : Though on the one hand the Roman Catholic laity ... may always be found laudably submissive to their clergy in spiritual affairs; it is on the other hand very far from being probable that the former will ever yield to the dictation of the latter with respect to measures of a temporal nature." On the eve of Emancipation, Lord Clare was told by Lord Francis Gower : `It is clear the people neither mind the magistrates nor their priests when they act in opposition to their wishes.'" After the priests were lured into the Repeal agitation, however, Protestant attitudes began to change. They began to notice, as we have seen, that the contentious issues of the tithe war and national education were concerned with the advancement of Catholic causes generally, not the purely political issue of Repeal. Slowly Protestants came to the conclusion that the priests were not led by the passions of the people, but that as time went on they were curbing those passions and, with O'Connell's campaign as an excuse, disciplining the people for an attack on Protestant ascendancy. What had been a minority rallying-cry before 1829 became passionate affirmation by Protestants during the tithe war and Repeal years : the `Protestant constitution' which was `essentially free' should be c

50 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 kept uncontaminated by the `mental servitude of popery'.'°° They also paid attention to the `domino theory' expressed by the scholarly Englishman and Archbishop of Cashel, Richard Laurence, when he gave evidence to the House of Lord's committee on the state of Ireland when Catholic demands were increasing in 1825: If you grant one claim you must grant another; and by thus increasing their political importance, enable them to attempt with a greater prospect of success the subversion of the Protestant establishment.1°1 Protestant recognition that the true cause of agitation in Ireland was a wide-ranging struggle between two peoples, or nations, for ascendancy did not diminish their resentment that local leadership of the people lay with the priests. Protestants feared that the priests might somehow use the power of Rome to control the rebellious peasantry and establish a revolutionary imperium in imperio over which even the state would have no control.102 John Burnett said that he did not go along with their beliefs, but he understood his fellow-Protestants in Munster when they feared the priests because they taught exclusive salvation for Roman Catholics, said the people need not keep faith with heretics, believed themselves subject only to the see of Rome, and taught that any means could be used to advance the great cause of the Church of Rome.108 Thomas Newenham said that Protestants were not upset by the purely `religious rites, conceits or superstitions' of the Roman Catholics, but rather by their `uncharitable practical tenets' : `The Roman Catholics maintain that all but those who belong to their communion must be damned in the world to come; and therefore esteem it meritorious to punish them in this.'1Ø The idea that these `practical tenets' could be combined with the savagery of the Ribbonmen haunted the thinking of many Protestants. The theoretical apology for the Church of Ireland, as might be expected in an aristocratic age, was based first of all on its claim to legitimacy, over and against the `Catholic' pretensions of the `Roman schism'. Popish bishops like Doyle might dismiss the Established Church as merely `the handmaid of the Ascendancy',105 but in truth she was the `spouse of the Redeemer'. The ecclesiastical theology of the Church of Ireland was High Church and Evangelical. What was meant by High Church was not the kind of flirtation with things Roman, with the `Italian mission', such as occurred in the Tractarian movement in the Church of England. Rather it was the assertion of a sound religious and ecclesiastical pedigree, the proclamation that the Church of Ireland was `the only true representative of Apostolic Christianity', the church loved by divines

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 51 like Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor and James Ussher.108 This tradition gave the Established Church its worth over and against the dissenting sects and their conventicle way of life in which the Holy Spirit could not fully be known.107 Control of this apostolic foundation by the Crown, as experienced in the suppression of the ten Irish bishoprics in 1834, was a temporary expediency which the Church had to endure because of its vulnerable position, surrounded as it was by so many schismatic and heretical foes.108 In spite of its tie with the state, the Church of Ireland, not the Church of Rome, was `the lawful branch of the Catholic Church in Ireland with which all Christian men ought to hold communion'. It alone afforded the prospect of happiness beyond the grave; and it produced sobriety, tranquillity, and other moral virtues on earth, with the aid of the state.109 As the concern about `apostolicity' grew during the romantic revival of the churches in England and Ireland in the 1830s, the Church of Ireland began to refine its argument about `legitimacy of authority'. The Rev. Edward Nangle, who was about to begin his settlement on Achill, wrote a pamphlet in 1834 as a `minister of that portion of the Catholic Church called the Established Church of Ireland' in which he argued that `Roman novelties and superstitions' and the manifest errors of that communion reflected the schismatic state of the papal church.110 He claimed that only the Church of Ireland, with its apostolic foundation and scriptural theology, could be accepted as the true Catholic Church of Ireland. By the 1850s the historical argument of this apology was fully developed. According to men like William Pakenham Walsh, who became Bishop of Ossory in 1878, the ancient Celtic Church had been, in effect, a communion of `Protestant Catholics who would not submit to the papal see'.111 It was not until the submission brought about by King Henry II, Pope Adrian W and the Synod of Cashel in 1172 that the Roman authority was established upon a reluctant Irish church. This alien institution was shrugged off at the Reformation, when the majority of the Marian bishops conformed to the Established Church, assisting Archbishop Curwen in consecrating those bishops whom Queen Elizabeth consequently appointed. Having accepted the Book of Common Prayer in place of the Mass Book and taken the oath of allegiance to Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church, the Irish bishops remained the legitimate channels of the divine grace which streamed from the apostles through St Patrick and their medieval predecessors. This argument had been developed in a scholarly fashion by Bishop Richard Mant of Down in his two-volume History of the Church of Ireland (1840) and was used by James Henthorn Todd in his

52 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Life of St Patrick (1864). A popular version of the theory was presented by Robert King's three-volume Primer of the History of the Holy Catholic Church in Ireland (1845-51). On the eve of Disestablishment the claim of the Church of Ireland to be the `true Catholic Church' of Ireland was challenged by a `maverick' Protestant scholar, the Rev. W. Mazi6re Brady, Rector of Kilberry in the diocese of Meath. Brady was a serious scholar rather than an ecclesiastical apologist for his communion and had already published an impressive three-volume work on the Clerical and Parochial Records of the Dioceses of Cork, Cloyne and Ross (1864). He said that during his years of research he failed to find evidence for conversion of the Irish bishops to the establishment at the time of the Reformation. This led him to go to Rome, where he made the acquaintance of Dr Patrick Moran, then Rector of the Irish College. Brady, apparently, accepted the help of the passionately Ultramontanist Moran as that of a fellow-scholar who shared his objective approach to ecclesiastical history, and found in the Vatican records no evidence that the Irish Established Church could fairly claim a more unbroken succession than that of the Church of England. With iegard to the problem of how many prelates served the Elizabethan settlement, he found that `twenty-one bishops upon evidence more or less conclusive are proved not to have conformed'.112 Brady admitted that the loss of records of Irish bishops during this period was almost complete, but it did seem clear that the only proved consecrator of Elizabeth's bishops was the Englishman Hugh Curwen, who had been consecrated in London by Edmund Bonner. None of the Irish-born Catholic bishops `can be proved to have embraced the Reformation?" and honest research, said Brady, showed clearly that : John Leslie and John Maxwell, both Scotch bishops by consecration, and Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, are seen to be the episcopal progenitors of the present Anglo-Irish Church, instead of St Patrick and his successors as is by some believed.114 Brady said at the beginning of his work that he had no intention of undermining or demolishing what had long been considered to be a `bulwark' of the Established Church, but he was against any misrepresentation of historical truth for the purposes of party warfare. As he might have foreseen, however, his publication served mainly to increase that warfare during the crisis years before 1869. The first substantial reply to Brady's work came from the Archdeacon of Dublin, William Lee; then Brady's erstwhile scholarly colleague Patrick Moran entered the lists; the historian James

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 53 Anthony Froude, busy preparing his history of Ireland in the eighteenth century, had his say; and a host of lesser churchmen made their contribution to the great debate about the apostolic pedigree of the Church of Ireland.116 As late as 1888 the eminent theologian George Salmon had much to say about Protestant principles and the tenets of the Church of Rome.11° This kind of abstract justification of the Established Church mattered very little to most parsons, or to most Protestant laity. They faced the reality that they were spiritual leaders in a land where their church was a minority one—but one that was supported by the state. Their reasoning began from this position and the rationale they used was a utilitarian one, like that of William Warburton, the eighteenth-century Bishop of Gloucester: 'Whoever would secure civil government must support it by means of religion, and whoever would propagate religion must perpetuate it by means of civil government.'111 When most bishops, parsons or laity argued for the necessary existence of their church, they did so on these very grounds, maintaining that it was the Established Church's reformed version of Christianity alone which could bring the blessings of both the true faith and `civil government' to the people of Ireland. Power le Poer Trench, the last Archbishop of Tuam, considered the Church Temporalities Act of 1834 `shortsighted expediency' because it was intended to weaken the physical presence of the Established Church in Ireland. His biographer, D'Arcy Sirr, said that state action was folly because `The Church was established in the land not because the whole community did, but in order that the whole community might agree with her. She was introduced as a leaven into the lump that the whole might be leavened.'1" Although Archbishop Trench was a fervent Evangelical, he also believed in the social and cultural value of the parson acting as a resident gentleman in the parish and being responsible for every living soul within it—socially and culturally as well as religiously."° Whatever other defence might, be made of the parsons of the Church and the establishment that enabled them to live among the people, the argument that they formed a body of resident gentry, concerned for all the people in their parish, was one that had to be taken seriously in a land that desperately needed resident gentry but seldom found them."° No one who visited Ireland could deny the need for `civil government' and the help of resident gentlemen at this time. When a young Englishman, Captain T. L. Hodges, was serving in Ireland during the '98 rebellion he was aghast at the misery of the people :

54 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 If a person has never been in Ireland he can have no concept of the deplorable condition of the lowest orders—wretchedness and misery is only equalled by their extreme ignorance and brutal savageness—Good God! when I reflect on the situation of the meanest English cottager and then cast my eyes on the uncivilised inhabitant of an Irish cabin ... and view his abode, the comparison is too much in favour of my happy countryman not to exclaim—Can these two mortals own the same King, the same constitution, live under the influence of the same laws?121 The social system of Western Europe being what it was in the early part of the nineteenth century, any help brought to the people in their misery was likely to come only from people with superior resources who chose to live among them—resident gentry.122 And the superior resources needed would have to be of a civilising as well as a life-sustaining kind, for visitor after visitor spoke of the ignorance, savagery and spiritual destitution of the people, as well as of their physical misery.128 The kind of work that Father Mathew performed on a national scale had to be accomplished continuously on the parochial level; and the parsons, however arrogant their claim may now seem, believed that what civilising was carried out had to be done by themselves and their few followers. Who else was there to free the people from an evil like the gross superstition found among them? In 1824 William Pickels, the physician to the Cork dispensary, reported the strange case of a young woman, Mary Riordan, who had been persuaded by the old women in her community that if she ate earth from the graves of `two much-respected and popular clergymen of her persuasion' she would be `secured forever against both disease and sin'. This she did over a period of time, with disastrous results for her.124 A happier result from peasant superstition was provided by the man who during a cholera epidemic took `copious libations' from `Juggy's Well', a local holy place, and was one of the few survivors of the epidemic in his community.128 Most nineteenth-century social reformers considered that such superstition held the people back—and wanted to free them from it. Elizabeth Fry and Joseph Gurney noted during their visit to Ireland in 1827 that the people of the majority Irish nation were `gifted with an extraordinary vigor of both body and mind, and evidently designed for an elevated place in the scale of nations'. Yet this nation was `ignorant of its own wants'. What was called for was a `great work of national improvement ... a gradual progress of that civil and religious light, which can alone effectually raise any nation out of such a condition'. But to counteract the

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 55 physical and spiritual malaise which bound the Irish people, there was a need for `not only much wisdom, but a long-continued patience and perseverance'.12 o Most parsons would have given a hearty `Amen' to the faith these Quakers had in the potential of a people who had suffered so much in history and who had been kept in such a state of wretchedness. The problem was : where would men be found to free them from superstition and violence, to bring wisdom and its civilising blessings to them through `long and continued patience and perseverance'? With the wisdom of hindsight, we now know the answer was most often to be provided by the self-abnegating service of the Roman Catholic priesthood, as the Established Church slowly lost the battle for cultural ascendancy and the influence of the parsons diminished. In the early years of the nineteenth century, however, most Irish Protestants did not think that such a Roman Catholic victory was likely. If they had contemplated such an eventuality, they would have doubted whether clergy who tolerated `superstitions' like holy wells, scapulars, faction-fights, and cursing from the altar were likely to help poor souls like the unfortunate Mary Riordan.127 Protestants thought like Count Cavour, who questioned whether essential `civilising' guidance needed by the Irish people could be given by the Roman Catholic priests. Speaking of their attempts to take over the National System of education and to `civilise' the children of Ireland, Cavour said : No one is more disposed than I to render justice to the Catholic clergy. I honour their sincere faith, their zealous charity, their boundless self-devotion; but I do not recognise in them the qualities necessary to direct successful popular instruction. Their profound prejudices, their exaggerated political notions, render them unfit to fulfil the mission which the primacy teacher ought to propose to himself to develop the intelligence and to raise the moral dignity of childhood. If the national schools were entrusted to the clergy they would soon fall from the highest degree of perfection which they have attained, to the level of the Belgian schools. The instruction would cease to be intelligent and the lower classes would derive much less benefit from them.128 The Irish Protestants knew that in a countryside with a large, impoverished population, resident gentlemen were a civilising necessity. Resident Irish landlords were rare, so the parsons had to fill the gap. This was the real justification for the Church of Ireland—not academic arguments for its apostolic origins, or even its biblical ethos. The usual apologetic put forth by parsons for their anomalous position in Ireland was their value as resident

56 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 gentlemen. Their valuable religious and cultural role in Irish society was similar to that which Bishop Blomfield said was performed by his clergy in the slums of London : Surely it is not possible to estimate at too high a rate the moral influence which is exerted by a well-educated and pious man, stationed in the midst of a poor, unenlightened population, labouring solely for their good ... inquiring with tenderness and delicacy into their wants and woes, and devising methods for their relief, assisting, superintending, perhaps conducting the education of their children; contriving and facilitating methods of economy and humble independence." Because of the cultural division between the two `nations', many Roman Catholics could not accept the usual Irish Protestant apologetic for the resident parson as `well-educated gentlemen scattered over Ireland. ... With their refinement of mind, and hospitality of feeling, each may be viewed as an oasis in the desert.'180 They doubted the universality of this judgment, and would have disagreed with William Urwick's opinion that `Every person acquainted with the country knows that the measure of intelligence, industry, manliness, and general well-doing of the people, is in the exact ratio that Protestantism prevails in the population.'181 Most Catholics either knew personally or had been told about Protestant clergymen who did not represent the ideal of the parson as `the local centre and shrine of knowledge and charity and sympathy and order'.182 This particularly occurred when the parson acted as a magistrate—a role he was often obliged to assume because of the character of and the absenteeism of the gentry. In spite of such reservations, the resident gentleman-parsonmagistrate was more often than not welcomed in the unreformed Irish countryside of the nineteenth century. As the century went on, and more and more of the parsons were resident, they were accepted as a necessary part of the social order. The peasant was more likely to get a reduction in tithe from the parson than he ever was from a non-resident landlord to whom he had to pay tithe rent-charge after 1838. The peasant also knew that in times of need the parson was usually there to help according to his means.1S8 In a countryside racked with disturbance, like the endemic factionfights in Co. Cavan and elsewhere,1ß4 there was a crying need for an honest magistracy. When the parsons were pressed into service they were usually good magistrates, `assiduous in their work and not open to corruption ... fully literate ... able to assimilate the law required for the work, instead of relying too much on the guidance of their clerk'.133

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 57 Even that astute Roman Catholic critic of the Established Church, John O'Driscol, who did not offer praise easily, was willing to commend the Irish parson-magistrates of the 1820s : Though we think it generally wrong that the clergy should be in the commission of the peace, yet, situated as Ireland is, with a vast proportion of her proprietors living out of the country, with an established clergy, possessing large benefices and small cure of souls, and, from their extraordinary situation almost wholly secularised, we think it is gaining something, if, in such a case as this, we obtain a good magistracy; and we know there are many instances where it would be a serious evil if the country were deprived of the valuable services of these gentlemen as magistrates.Y88 Other critics of the Established Church were willing to acknowledge the social value of the resident parson. John Burnett of Cork said that his Nonconformist congregation respected the clergy of the establishment, though they did not consider them as zealous as the priests in their religious work. As for the priests in the Cork area, Burnett said they too believed the parsons to be improving in quality of late.181 James Doyle agreed with this assessment and said of the Church of Ireland clergy in 1825 : There are not a few of them totally superior to the prejudices and follies of their order, and who are really a blessing to the neighbourhood in which they reside; men estimable not only for their public and domestic virtues, but chiefly because they have fortitude to rise in these times above the prejudices of their profession, and to resist the force of both interest and example.188 One of these Protestant clergymen who tried to aid the people, yet refused to support the Brunswick Clubs and other Protestant organisations that disparaged Catholic culture, was the Rev. Theophilus Blakely, who gave evidence to the Select Committee of the House of Commons on tithes in 1831-32. Blakely was an unreformed pluralist, who lived in Donegal, although he was Dean of Achonry, but he knew the people intimately in both areas. He said of the people in his Desertegney parish in the Derry diocese : `There is nothing which I could not make them do.... They come to me in all difficulties, and I settle their disputes, sometimes with considerable abuse for their conduct, and they would not offer or let me receive an injury.' Part of his popularity came from the fact that he gave to the poor `more than one-half of the income of my parish'. He also believed that it came from long residence among them, and from a deep, instinctive understanding of the way of life

58 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 of the Irish countryman. A neighbour, an Englishman called Harvey, came to Derry with ideas of `improving' the condition of the peasantry, but his cold reserve soon turned the people against him. Blakely told the committee : `The people of Ireland are conciliated often more by kindness of manners than by an actual benefit, and, consequently, much more united by an insult than by an injury.' He never insulted their faith, and he even understood their refusal to pay tithes : `As they have to pay other priests, they think it a hard thing to pay the clergyman as a spiritual person.' He seemed to suggest that his popularity, and, indeed, what income he received from the people, was granted in return for the temporal advantages that he brought to a parish as a `good parson'.189 One of the best apologetics for the Church of Ireland as both a religious and a civilising agency was provided by the Rev. William Phelan. Phelan is important not only because he was an intellectual, but because he was very close to Primate Beresford—the most private of men—who revealed to as few people as possible what he was thinking about any issue. Beresford favoured the brilliant, impoverished and physically delicate Phelan, however, listened to his advice about many matters, and made use of the advice that was offered.140 It is reasonable to assume that the thought of Phelan concerning the Established Church was in large measure also the thought of Beresford and of many Protestant prelates of the pre-Emancipation period.141 According to John Jebb's memoir of Phelan, he came from Clonmel and was the son of a wool-comber who hoped he might go to Maynooth. As a boy Phelan had been told stories by his parish priest about how the people had been despoiled by the English invaders, but this education was balanced by his being sent to a school in Clonmel operated by a parson, the Rev. Richard Carey. There he met both Samuel and Mortimer O'Sullivan, two converts who were to become as well known as Phelan himself. Phelan changed his religious opinions while he was at this school, because Roman Catholic friends assured him there was no salvation in store for the Rev. Dr Carey whom Phelan greatly admired. When Phelan was offered a place at Maynooth, he chose instead to go to Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a Protestant. His eyes were weak, and he had other physical disabilities, but his brilliant mind soon caught the attention of his mentors, Charles Wall and William Magee, the future Archbishop of Dublin.142 With the encouragement of these men he published his first work, The Bible Not the Bible Society; Being an Attempt to Point Out That Mode of Disseminating the Scriptures Which Would Most Effectively Conduce to the Security of the Established Church and

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 59 the Peace of the United Kingdom (1817). In the same year he became a Fellow of Trinity College. PheIan's first publication was a very important work because of the effect it had upon men like Magee who initiated religious controversy with the Roman Catholics. Phelan was one of the first to indicate the phenomenon we noted in the first chapter of this study—the evidence that the Catholic Church in Ireland was greatly estranged from Rome and that papal direction of Irish affairs seemed to be wavering.148 Phelan pointed out that in 1817 the Romish clergy assembled in synods without the pope's permission, `and they reject his authority in determining the mode of ecclesiastical appointment'. He spoke of the hierarchy `wavering on the verge of schism' and observed that the papacy could not control the priests, whose vanity and ambition had been stimulated by agitators.144 Those country gentlemen who were Roman Catholics were `in general saturated with the absurdities of their religion, and disgusted with the ignorance of their priests'.145 As for the peasantry: The influence of the priests with those people is notoriously on the decline; and there occur frequently, and without remarks, instances of a sturdy opposition to their will, which, but a few years ago, would have been regarded by the whole parish as most awful indications of an abandoned castaway.146 Particularly did the people stand up to the priests over the issue of sending their children to Protestant schools. What loyalty the people still gave to the Catholic Church reflected a tradition that it was the object of their charity and was `peculiarly Irish'. Phelan summed up his case by saying : The clergy have virtually abjured the Pope's supremacy; the agitators are men of no religious peculiarities; the country gentlemen and the opulent inhabitants of towns are in general inclined to reformation, although in several instances lapse into philosophism; and, finally, the peasantry are every day regarding with more and more disrespect the only persons to whom they have hitherto looked for moral guidance and religious instruction.147 Phelan's next significant publications, written under the pseudonym `Declan', were his two letters to Lord Wellesley on the role of the Established Church. Both of these were instigated by writings of Bishop James Doyle. The first was a statement about the claim of the Church of Ireland to be the descendant of the ancient Church of Ireland founded by St Patrick, who was a `non Roman Catholic'.148 The second accused Doyle of preaching only `passive obedience', of encouraging an opposition to everything English in

60 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Ireland. Its main argument, however, was its affirmation of the cultural value of the Established Church. While the Church of Rome attempted to build its authority by `despotic dominion over benighted minds', the Church of Ireland sought to bring to the people blessings spiritual and temporal for their benefit alone. It offered through its ministry `spiritual consolations' for those who wished to have them, but for others `such a measure of instruction as may qualify them for the discharge of their social duties'. The main practical justification for the Church of Ireland, said Phelan, was that it `supports the political connection of the country with England . . . and instructs the people in moral and religious knowledge'. When this instruction was accepted, his argument continued, it would qualify the people `for the discharge of their social duties'.1'a When Phelan gave evidence on his views about the religious state of Ireland before the committees of both houses of parliament in 1825, he said that the social situation had changed greatly since he wrote his Bible Not the Bible Society in 1817. Now, he said, the priests had reasserted their authority over the gentry in particular, and once more `the laity are tools in the hands of the priesthood' "0 In some areas, such as Tyrone, there were no agitators from outside the county to stir up the people against the Protestants, and so there was peace. Elsewhere priests and people were stirred up by incidents like reading the prayers against heretics taken from the Catholic Directory which Archbishop Murray had ordered to be published. New editions of the Catholic Bible now had antiheretical `Rhemish notes' attached to them, and a new militancy was widespread throughout the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. Once more the triumphalism of the Council of Trent was being asserted. On 29 April 1825 Phelan drew the attention of the Commons' committee to the teachings of Professor Delahogue at Maynooth, quoting chapter and verse from his Tractatus de Theologia which had been published in Dublin in 1795 : The Church retains its power over all heretics, apostates and schismatics though they may no longer belong to its body, as a general may have a right to inflict punishment on a deserter, though his name is no longer on the muster roll of the army.151 Phelan's progression of thought from his sanguine assumption of division among Roman Catholics in 1817 to his defensive anxiety about the new militancy in the papal communion is a reflection of the development of most Protestant thought in Ireland during the years immediately preceding Catholic Emancipation. As John O'Driscol shrewdly reported in 1823:

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 61 Cromwell was at one time a saint in England; he is a saint in Ireland to this day—the patron saint and tutelary spirit of the loyal Protestant ascendancy. He is toasted under a pet name, more frequently than the `glorious memory'; and his portrait is to be found in many a chamber where William's never hung.152 By the time of the Catholic Emancipation unrest most Church of Ireland clergy had begun to consider themselves at war with the priests over which religious body was most able to `civilise' the people of Ireland. Their mentality was a defensive or `garrison' one because of Roman Catholic militancy, and it was not to disappear until Disestablishment, when it was replaced by a perhaps even less desirable `ghetto' outlook. The spirit of the Protestant ecclesiastical garrison, however, was not just blind reaction to the new authority displayed by Roman Catholicism. The Oliver Cromwell who was reverenced by some parsons was toasted not only as the harrier of the papists but also as a general under God who had propagated the Bible's `true gospel' of salvation in this world and the next. This was the fervent faith of reformed biblical Christianity but recently rediscovered by the Evangelicals in the Church of Ireland. 4. The Established Church Evangelicals Evangelicalism took root in the Established Church in Ireland because of the deep spiritual needs of its people. It was all very well for William Phelan and others to justify the temporal position of the parson in terms of altruistic service to the community as a resident gentleman—but what of his spiritual function? If they are to be merely country gentlemen, what is the Protestant population to do for pastors? The poor of the Protestant persuasion are almost without religion : in the country they speak with more derision and contempt of their own clergy, than the poor of the Catholic persuasion think it decent to do. In the towns they become Roman Catholics or Dissenters.163 Those who recognised this spiritual failure of the Church of Ireland were generally those who welcomed the `newly born seriousness in religion' which appeared in Ireland following the unrest of the French Revolution period.164 This spirit was present in Irish Methodism which found its converts among Iower-class Protestants. It was also found among a minority of pious missionary-minded members of the Established Church who were disturbed by the Methodist gains and wanted for their body a spiritual authority which would bring `back from the conventicle many a strayed

62 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 sheep'.1" They formed the membership of the Irish Evangelical party in the Church of Ireland. The authority which the Irish Evangelicals found was much like that of the English Evangelicals—a belief in the reality of sin and man's helplessness without divine aid in this world, the gracious mercy of God, the atonement wrought by Christ, and the altogether trustworthiness of the Bible which brought such revelation to man in his bondage.1a8 English Evangelicals by the 1830s had begun to reveal themselves as tenacious establishment men, but in this respect they were surpassed in their institutional loyalty by their Irish counterparts, who daily struggled with the forces of the papal Antichrist, the great Whore of Babylon herself, the Church of Rome, intent upon seducing and leading to perdition even those who had heard the true Gospel and reformed faith preached by converted ministers of the Church of Ireland.'" It is likely that the actual number of convinced Irish Evangelicals was always a minority, in spite of extravagant claims made on their behalf, but there is little doubt that the indirect influence of Evangelicalism in the Established Church was great. Evangelical thundering against Catholicism always found a sympathetic reception among Irish Protestants who feared the majority people among whom they lived and whose tribal faith they observed to be daily growing in authority and assertiveness and in the number of its zealous and turbulent priests. In Ireland, as we have seen, it was considered dangerous for Protestants to divide their strength, even for religious reasons, so that Nonconformity failed to flourish there, especially in the south. Most churchmen of the reformed faith huddled in the Established Church, which developed a very Evangelical ethos to satisfy those who, in England, might have become Nonconformists and to give heart to all who sought authority to resist the Roman advance. Lecky suggested that `the Irish Establishment became by far the most evangelical section of the Anglican church',138 largely because its forces were in the front line of Protestantism's battle with the forces of Antichrist and had no intention of displaying the misplaced toleration of popish power shown by some English Evangelicals.139 The religious ground upon which the Irish Evangelicals first met their opponents was chosen by the Roman Catholics. Bishop James Doyle and other Roman Catholic leaders knew well the depression that characterised their communion at the beginning of the second decade of the nineteenth century: A settled despondency filled the Catholics and their friends at this period. The Cabinet was occupied by men pledged to resist

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 63 emancipation to the death. At no previous time had the demeanour of the ascendant party been more intolerant, or the flow of calumny fuller.16° It was at this juncture that Doyle reported in his pastoral of 1823 miraculous physical healing cures wrought by the intercession of Prince Hohenlohe, Dean of Bamberg, who was renowned in the Roman Catholic world for his charismatic gifts. In particular, he referred to the case of Maria Lalor, who in June of that year miraculously recovered the use of her speech through the fervent prayers of the prince. Her family was a `respectable' one in his diocese, and the event was widely publicised, as was another miraculous cure of a Carmelite nun in Dublin, news of which was propagated by Daniel Murray. As Bishop Doyle's biographer said : The anti-Catholic press of the day was not slow in overwhelming with obloquy Prince Hohenlohe, Dr Doyle, and Dr Murray.'161 During the controversy over the reported healings one of the major issues discussed was the spiritual authority of the Roman Catholic over and against the pretensions of other so-called churches, especially those of the Church of Ireland. Doyle proclaimed the work of Prince Hohenlohe a sign of special favour by the Almighty `preparing in your sight a table against all who afflict you'.162 But on the popular level, another manifestation of the supernatural appeared of which Bishop Doyle did not approve because it represented a tribal view of a vengeful God about to redress Catholic grievances—apparently without hierarchical approval. This was the widely circulated `Prophecies of Pastorini'. a folk version of speculations about the Book of Revelation which had been published in 1776 by Charles Walmsley, a Roman Catholic bishop in the west of England. However scholarly and abstruse were the original prophecies of Pastorini, the Irish folk version looked forward to a total extermination of all Protestants in 1825 —the year of the papal jubilee, when special indulgences were offered to all those who made pilgrimage to Rome.163 The circulation of these `prophecies' also occurred at a time when there was widespread trouble from Ribbonmen in many parts of southern Ireland. Several of the Protestants who gave evidence before the committee of the House of Lords investigating the state of Ireland in 1825 spoke of Pastorini's prophecies reinforcing the Ribbonmen's determination `to establish the Roman Catholic Church and extirpate Protestantism, and to separate Ireland from Great Britain'.184 Such was the excitement among the peasants, said W. H. Newenham, that they propagated wild tales that God himself was about to intervene on their behalf : `Although they might be re-

64 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 pelled twice by the army, yet, when they had met a man who was to come from Heaven, and to sprinkle them with holy water, then the military would fall before them, even if they held up only straws as the arms with which they fought.'10a Bishop Doyle may have desired to rouse the faith of his people by drawing their attention to the supernatural resources of the universal church, but he was not happy with the popular religion invoked by the Ribbonmen, over which he had little or no control. His pastoral address of 1822 was particularly directed `against the illegal association of Ribbonmen', and in it he poured scorn on their so-called `love of Religion' and their faith in prophecy, in particular that of Pastorini. It was in this pastoral that he told the people they should rid themselves of their tribal hatred and have compassion even for Orangemen.108 Doyle developed this anti-folkreligion theme in his pastoral of 1825, when he told the people to read the books in their chapel libraries rather than those `profane, irreligious books and pretended prophecies which distract your minds and corrupt your hearts and disturb your peace'107 The indignant Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin could not tell the Protestants of Ireland what to read, however, and at the same time that the Roman Catholic people began to show interest in the idea of supernatural intervention on their behalf, some ecclesiastical leaders of the Church of Ireland began to speculate about similar action by the Holy Spirit as it was revealed in the Bible. They were particularly concerned with millenarianism—the belief in the Second Coming of Christ and his leadership against the powers of Antichrist, whom most of them were willing to identify with the pope in Rome.188 The traditional view was that the Second Coming was to be at the end of the world, but in the early nineteenth century new speculation revived a popular millenial view of the second and third centuries. This was the belief that Christ would return to reign for a thousand years before the end of the world, and that under his visible leadership the true church would win its victories against the powers of Antichrist.169 This concept that Christ was to return in history, rather than at the end of the present dispensation, divided biblical scholars who engaged in such speculations into historicists and futurists. The former were very excited because they believed, from their reading of mystical books like Daniel and Revelation, that there were definite signs that the coming of Christ was not far off. Just as the Roman Catholic folk theorists had viewed Pastorini's talk about the `pouring out of the fifth vial' as referring to the jubilee year 1825,Y70 so Protestant millenarians saw the humbling of the papacy by Bonaparte and the French Revolution as the `deadly wound' ■

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 65 which Antichrist was to receive, according to Revelation 13: `As the unbelievable events of the 1790s unfolded, students of this apocalyptic literature became convinced ... that they were witnessing the fulfilment of the prophecies of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13.'171 Because the nearest centre of papal power was Ireland, the millenarians tended to look there for the first signs of the great battle between the forces of righteousness and of the powers of evil: `Millenarians, without exception were stoutly anti-Catholic and viewed every agitation by English and Irish Catholics as confirmation of the increasing corruption of the world and, thus, of the increasing likelihood of the second advent.'172 The speculation of these divines greatly interested Church of Ireland clergymen, including some respectable theologians at Trinity College, Dublin, like James Henthorn Todd. Most of the historicist millenarians were churchmen, and they contended fiercely with the followers of J. N. Darby, the founder of the Plymouth Brethren sect, most of whom were futurists. Millenarian meetings modelled on those held in England at the Albury Park home of Henry Drummond were held at Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow, from 1831, on the invitation of the pious Theodosia, Lady Powerscourt. The Darbyites soon dominated these meetings and tried to lure Lady Powerscourt into their conventicle. In spite of the strenuous labours of the future Bishop of Cashel, Robert Daly, then Rector of Powerscourt, to keep her in the Established Church, the Darbyites succeeded in converting their hostess, and the dissension which followed put an end to the meetings. The excitement over prophecy was slow to pass. The millenarians were sure that in their age the `vials of wrath' of Revelation 16 were being poured out and the Second Coming of Christ to begin a thousand-year rule of his saints was imminent. To many Evangelicals in England and Ireland the thought that `the night was far spent and the day was at hand' proved an additional motive for earnest, prayerful work. Intelligent men like the Rev. Edward Newenham Hoare, then Rector of St Lawrence, Limerick, began a millenarian paper, the Christian Herald, in 1830. Important converts to millenarian thought such as the prominent Evangelical, the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, and the Rev. William Marsh of Colchester, who became known as `Millenial Marsh', gave religious and intellectual respectability to the movement.173 By 1842 there had come into existence the Prophecy Investigation Society, which during the 1840s held a yearly Lenten lecture series on millenarianism in St George's Church, Bloomsbury, or in Trinity Church, Marylebone. Prominent among the speakers in these lectures was

66 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 the Rev. Alexander Dallas, who was to play such an important part in Ireland's ecclesiastical and religious history. This society was still holding meetings in the 1860s. Many Evangelicals had reservation about such abstract theological speculation, which did not seem to them to be in the Anglican tradition of matter-of-factness in religious development. Just as Bishop Doyle had opposed discussion of Pastorini's speculations as being of little importance in terms of his communion's development, so many Evangelicals did not warm to text-slanging contests between historicist and futurist millenarians, which seemed only to weaken the resolve of churchmen to engage in the good works to which they were called174 Fortunately for these men, there was one philanthropic and missionary society whose raison d'etre was to a large extent based on prophecy. Most Evangelicals felt they could safely support its work without feeling they were putting off the call to labour immediately in the Lord's vineyard. This was the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews which had been founded as a non-denominational society in 1808. Gradually the Nonconformists withdrew from it, and as the Anglican churchmen took it over it became more and more attractive to leading Evangelicals. One of the chief supporters in its early days was an eccentric churchman, the Rev. Lewis Way, who helped establish missions to convert London Jews. He saw prophetic fulfilment in what was happening in Europe in the French Revolution, and he pondered the possibility of preparing for the Second Coming by restoring the Jews to their own land. Intent upon this project, he visited Tsar Alexander I to seek help for his mission and turned his estate at Stansted into a training college for missionaries to the Jews.175 The Evangelical patriarch Charles Simeon shared this excitement and believed the Jews Society was the `most blessed of all' among Evangelical institutions because the restoration and conversion of the Jews would herald `life from the dead' for the multitudes178 Together with William Marsh, Simeon visited missions to the Jews in the Low Countries, and on his deathbed said that his final concern was for the welfare of the Jews Society.177 It was this excitement over prophecy and the Jews Society which encouraged Lord Ashley to promote his idea of a Protestant bishopric in Jerusalem—which scheme drove so many English High Churchmen to convert to Roman Catholicism because of the theological and ecclesiastical presumptions upon which it was based?" If we are to understand the mind of the militant Evangelicals in the Church of Ireland, we must take seriously their intense preoccupation with such mystical concepts based on biblical prophecy.

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 67 The Roman Catholics had their mysticism in the miracles of Prince Hohenlohe and the prophecies of Pastorin. Roman Catholicism in Ireland also had a basis in folk religion, however, and vigilant bishops like James Doyle knew how to control prophetic extravagance. The leaders of the Church of Ireland were not so prepared. When leading Evangelicals like Simeon; Shaftesbury and Bickersteth showed a passionate concern about biblical prophecy, Irish Protestant bishops were persuaded to give the historicist school of millenarian speculation credence it might not otherwise have received. If such Evangelical giants would talk of the imminent Second Coming of Christ, and the need to be found at good works, such as freeing poor Irish Roman Catholic souls from bondage to Antichrist, who were the Irish bishops to ignore prophetic theology? What this millenarian speculation gave to the militant wing of the Irish Evangelical party was a new kind of folk religion—based upon Holy Scripture. The old forms of Calvinism had less and less appeal by the nineteenth century,17ø and this kind of biblical 'evolutionary' thought had appeal to many thoughtful churchmen of that time.180 The Irish Evangelicals also found that interest in this kind of prophetic religion brought them into close contact with English Evangelicals, one of whose great passions at Exeter Hall and other meeting places was the mission `to rescue the Irish from Roman Catholicism' 181 Many Evangelicals reminded one another that not only were the Irish peasants in as much physical misery as the slaves in the colonies, but their spiritual destitution was, perhaps, even greater because of the power of Rome in Ireland. As the Evangelical party in the Church of Ireland began to take shape, one of its leaders who emerged at Trinity College was the Regius Professor of Divinity, Joseph Singer. He had great prestige as a Fellow of the college and was `justly regarded as the most influential leader of the Evangelical party in the Church. Indeed, he may be said to have been the principal founder of that party'182 The divinity students who attended Evangelical meetings in his rooms were only a minority among the undergraduates, but through these gatherings Singer's influence was widely spread among young churchmen. Singer also worked with Robert Daly, B. W. Mathias, Hamilton Verschoyle and others to found the Established Church Home Mission in 1828 with the avowed intent of reviving the Church according to Evangelical values by proselytising among Roman Catholics. Although Joseph Singer is sometimes viewed as the Gamaliel at whose feet generations of Evangelical Trinity students sat, it would seem that his Evangelical viewpoint was usually qualified by those who accepted it. Particularly was this

68 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 so when Evangelical doctrines were brought into certain dioceses. Bishops like Richard Mant of Down and Thomas Elrington of Ferns directly opposed the practice of the Evangelicals who tried to introduce the Home Mission into the parishes of their dioceses as a means of extending Evangelical influence in the Established Church 183 Because of the prevailing High Church ethos in the Church of Ireland, the most the Evangelicals could do was to produce within the mainstream of religious practice what may be referred to as High Church Evangelicalism—and this became the dominant form of religious expression in the Church of Ireland before Disestablishment. When Joseph Singer became Bishop of Meath in 1852 great things were expected of him by the Evangelicals. He was well past his prime, however, and as a diocesan he was undistinguished apart from a tendency towards nepotism. He lived in Meath as a scholarly octogenarian recluse, without exercising the personal charm or preaching power which had once given him so much influence. The earlier indirect influence of Singer and his Evangelical contemporaries had been considerable, however, as may be seen from a perusal of the divinity curriculum in Trinity College during his regime at the university. The traditional High Church theology based on Paley's Evidences and Anglican doctrine was balanced by new Evangelical thought. Great interest was shown in millenarian theology, as well as in `denunciations of the pope, the papacy, and papistical creed and ceremony'.184 The Evangelicals at Trinity College were closely connected with the ministers of the `proprietory chapels', or free churches, which provided a kind of voluntary system within the establishment. The clergy of these chapels were not provided for by the state and were considered to have freedom to preach an evangelical form of Christianity which was not to be heard in many regular parishes. The most famous of these was the Bethesda Chapel, on Dorset Street in north Dublin, known as the `Cathedral of Methodism' because of the Evangelical preaching of its minister, the Rev. Benjamin W. Mathias. Born in Pembrokeshire, Mathias had been a curate in Co. Down before coming to Dublin and the Bethesda Chapel in 1805. From then until his death in 1841 he was considered to be the saint of Dublin Evangelicals, whose preaching was so powerful that the Provost of Trinity College forbade students to attend his services. Singer was considered to be a spiritual disciple of Mathias, and worked with him in the founding of the Hibernian Bible Society. The Rev. Caesar Otway, who founded the important Christian Examiner in 1825, was another Evangelical intellectual who was influenced by Mathias. In spite of the fact

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 69 that Mathias had a deep love of the Church, its formularies and discipline, it was not until 1828 that Archbishop Magee formally licensed the Bethesda Chapel. Other proprietory chapels also had persuasive Evangelical ministers. That at Harold's Cross was built through the energy and generosity of the Rev. Thomas Kingston of St James's Church, who came there in 1826. Its first minister was the abrasive R. J. McGhee, of whom we have much to say in the next chapter. In Upper Baggot Street was the Episcopal Chapel, with the Rev. Hamilton Verschoyle its chaplain from 1835 until he became Bishop of Kihnore in 1862. The chaplain of the Molyneux Asylum for twenty-five years was the Rev. Dr C. M. Fleury, a renowned preacher. An Evangelical, Matthew Pollock, was at the Magdalen Asylum, while John Gregg, who could preach with equal fluency in English and Irish, was at Trinity Church, built for him by his followers in 1839. For twenty-three years Gregg was considered to be the most popular preacher in Dublin, with prominent people like Lord Morpeth, the Chief Secretary, in the congregation. James Godkin noted that when Gregg became Bishop of Cork in 1862 he probably had a reduction in income, as the income of Trinity Church was about £1,500 a year.Y86 From the Evangelical standpoint, the advantage of these chapels was that they could provide a more intimate and intense Christian fellowship than was found in most rather matter-of-fact parishes of the Established Church. Evangelicals were also found in many regular Dublin parishes. Sandford Church, Ranelagh, had been erected and endowed by Lord Mount Sandford, for Archdeacon Henry Irwin, who was considered to be an Irish Evangelical patriarch. William Pakenham Walsh continued the Evangelical tradition there until he became Bishop of Ossory in 1878. The fact that several of these proprietory chapel clergy who became bishops were noted for both their High Church principles and evangelical zeal indicates the degree to which High Church Evangelicalism became the distinctive theological outlook of the Church of Ireland by the 1860s. It was certainly needed. Without the Evangelical leaven, the traditional Dublin parish was apt to be like the parish of St Mark's, whose vicar, the Rev. George McNeill lived at Kingstown, spent four to six months of the year in England, and left most of the parish work to two curates paid £50 a year. They ministered to a dull and listless congregation of working-class and trades people. It should be noted that the Bethesda Chapel was officially the chapel of ease of St Mary's parish, worth over £1,000 a year, whose pluralist rector was non-resident, leaving the parish work to three poorly paid curates.18°

70 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 The countryside also had its sprinkling of Evangelical zealots, like the Rev. Denis Browne, who was the pluralist rector of Santry until political and social connections brought him the living of Enniscorthy and the dignity of Dean of Emly. At St Mary's, Enniscorthy, he was a great improvement on his predecessor, the Rev. Richard Radcliffe, who had lived in splendid style, kept hunters in his stables, and tolerated a wife who gambled the family into so much debt that `the living was sequestrated for debt, and the incumbent confined to his house, except on Sundays'.187 Nearby, in the diocese of Ossory, was one of the best known of the country Evangelicals, the Rev. Peter Roe, Rector of St Mary's, Kilkenny. He received £150 a year and paid a curate £75 out of his income. An ardent Evangelical, he was greatly harried by the Bishop of Ossory, John Kearney, during his first years in the parish, because Kearney, a former Provost of Trinity College, feared that the Evangelical meetings which Roe held in his parish would cause dissension among the clergy. There was great excitement when the famous English Evangelical leader John Newton visited Kilkenny just before he died and sat beside Peter Roe while he preached. Like most Evangelicals, Roe opposed `popery', but he did not think that religious controversy was going to help the Protestant cause. He believed that the `best way to prevent one filling a vessel with chaff was to anticipate him by filling it with wheat'.188 He tried to address the priests in `a spirit of Christian love', and while he admonished them about keeping the Bible from the people, he told them that they were not the only ones who did so.188 Neither did he try to protest that his church alone preached a pure Christian gospel : I say, that there are in the Church of Rome in the present day, as there have been in the days that are past, many truly devoted servants of God, who will shine as stars in the Redeemer's crown forever; whilst, on the other hand, there are multitudes in the different Protestant churches whose pure creed has no salutary effect upon their practice; who are altogether ignorant of the truth; or grossly prejudiced against it; or living in a state of such negligence of their souls, perhaps open immorality, as to prove that they have neither part nor lot in the great salvation of Jesus Christ 190 Unfortunately, few of the Irish Evangelicals shared Peter Roe's tolerant attitude. Convinced as they were that Roman Catholics were at best the innocent pawns of the Antichrist in Rome, and that the time of his earthly rule was coming to an end, they chose to put themselves on an ecclesiastical war footing, ready to do battle with

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 71 the powers of darkness, both spiritual and temporal. It must be stressed again, however, that the parsons who wanted religious and ecclesiastical controversy were a minority, even among the Evangelicals, who could, however, usually count on support from their more peaceable fellows, worried as they were lest they might be found idle when the Lord returned. The militant Evangelicals tended to go to dioceses where the bishop shared their outlook, and one of the most popular in the 1820s and 1830s was the archdiocese of Tuam. There the archbishop was Power le Poer Trench, the third son of the Earl of Clancarty. He had attended Harrow and Trinity College, Dublin, had one brother an admiral, while another, the Hon. Charles le Poer Trench was Rector of Athenry and Archdeacon of Ardagh. Power le Poer Trench had served in the yeomanry in '98, taking part in the searching-out of rebels after the rising, but, according to his biographer, D'Arcy Sirr, he was credited with saving many a man from the gallows during this exercise. Sirr also tells us that Trench was much respected as a just magistrate, and when, in 1802, he was made Bishop of Waterford he was on good terms with the Roman Catholic bishop of that diocese, John Power, 'interchanging the courtesies of polished society'.191 Trench was forty years old when he was translated to the diocese of Elphin in 1810. He was still popular with his Roman Catholic neighbours. Apart from inviting the priests to attend meetings of the Hibernian Bible Society in his diocese, he otherwise led the life of the usual matter-of-fact Established Church prelate. Then, in 1816, he was converted as a result of the death of a favourite sister in childbirth. From that time he `experienced in his own bosom' the sense of `utter worthlessness of all worldly grandeur and all earthly enjoyments' : An anxiety, hitherto unknown and unfelt, concerning divine things took possession of his soul; and though there was no formal change of doctrinal sentiment we may from this period date that marked and elevated tone of deep and earnest piety, which afterwards distinguished him.182 Three years after his conversion Power le Poer Trench became Archbishop of Tuam, read the writings of Charles Simeon to his clergy at their first clerical meeting, and informed them that in matters of preferment only spiritual merit was to count in his diocese from this time forward. The virtue of common sense, rationalism, which had so long been respected in the Established Church was not in itself to be appreciated by the new diocesan of Tuam unless it was supplemented by a display of spiritual zeal.

72 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 When it came to ordaining a curate lacking in talent, Trench said : `If his spirit be good, and he is sound in doctrine, and hard working in his vocation, the Lord will give him talent enough. Few possess talent; and many valuable ministers of the Gospel of Christ are without it'1Øs This anti-intellectual note appears often in the thought of both Trench and Robert Daly, the Bishop of Cashel, and it is to be feared that the `talent' that Trench referred to was an unflagging, and, sometimes, an unfeeling and unthinking zeal in the cause of propagating Reformation principles.194 When other bishops followed the example of Primates Stuart and Beresford and withdrew their support of the Hibernian Bible Society because, among its members, `in becoming Bible distributors some have forgotten they were churchmen', Trench maintained his connection with the agency. His apology for doing so was that the Bible Society promoted not only the reformed faith, but `British influence and British benevolence',195 which needed to be passed on not only to the Empire but to the whole world. At the same time he recognised that some Bible agents tended to ignore the establishment. When he had to object to some members of the Established Church Home Missionary Society forcing their missionaries into Tuam parishes where they were unwelome, he established a diocesan branch of that society `exclusively under my control and a committee of my clergy'. The result was that from this time Tuam parsons who objected to Bible agents coming into their parishes to wage war with the Roman Catholics, had to explain to their Ordinary why they were resisting an episcopally approved organisation. In Connaught war with the Roman Catholics began in 1823 when Trench noticed some members of the other `nation' in the cathedral during the delivery of his charge : I ventured to lay before them the bondage in which they were kept, the ignorance to which they were consigned by the unholy withholding from them the joyful news of Gospel mercy, and the sealing from their eyes the volume of divine truth.199 In being so provocative Trench was declaring religious war in Connaught. By 1826 he was telling his clergy that they were to preach the Gospel fearlessly to all those who support `erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word'. He strenuously objected to a Galway schoolmaster who believed it was `necessary to compromise with the Roman Catholics and that they were not required to read the Scriptures in his school'. His command to every churchman in his diocese was without qualification :

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 73 You are bound in conscience to embrace every opportunity, from God's sacred word, to rescue the poor, dark, ignorant, deceived people from their vital errors, and when no opportunity shall occur, you must in prudence and in discretion and in wisdom make one.i97 It is interesting to note that Trench, who sometimes attributed little value to rational qualities among his clergy, nevertheless wished them to use discretion in proselytising. Unfortunately, little discretion marked the evangelising efforts of some of his parsons, who soon had the Roman Catholic clergy in an uproar as the Protestant mission continued. Some of the parsons preached in Irish, and at first Trench wished to ordain only men who were bilingual. When this proved impossible he fell back on ordaining only those who would work with the agents of the Hibernian Bible Society and other missionaries who had received diocesan approval. No clergyman was going to prosper in the Tuam archdiocese unless he shared the militant Evangelical ideology of his bishop : We are proselytisers. We plead guilty to this terrific and unpardonable charge. Nay, if we were not proselytisers we could lay no claim to the name of Christians.... Am I to be told that for fear of offending an unscriptural church I am to join in league with its priesthood to close the pure simple unnoted book of inspiration, to withold the Book of God from his condemned and perishing creatures?lob What Power le Poer Trench did not realise was that the struggle he promoted in Connaught was to be cultural as well as religious. When he stirred the wrath of John MacHale, or the Roman Catholic clergy of Connaught, or the peasantry, it was not because he offended only their religious sensitivities. Whether the charge was always true or not, the press of the majority nation said that when arrears of rent were forgiven the peasantry in Trench's archdiocese, `part of the condition is that the tenantry should send their children to the Bible schools; and this is the questio vexata between the tenantry and his grace'.19° The tragedy of Power le Poer Trench, and of many who supported his cause, was that they failed to realise that they were going to be criticised and resisted culturally as well as religiously. He was himself part and parcel of the Protestant ascendancy— the political and ecclesiastical system against which the national instincts of the people, whom he would enlighten, revolted. They suspected that even the efforts made ostensibly for the salvation of their souls were designed to exclude their race from the civil

74 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 rights and privileges which Protestants enjoyed, and they were easily taught that by conforming to Protestantism they would betray their country. They could not help associating the new Reformation with the secular aspects of the Establishment, with the wealth and grandeur of the bishops, the exactions of the rector, and the visits of the tithe-proctor; and they felt that it would be base in them for such a cause to desert the priest who had been their only friend, adviser, and guide for this world and the next.20° The other militant Evangelical bishop was Robert Daly, Bishop of Cashel from 1843 to 1872, who became the leader of the proselytising party after the death of Power le Poer Trench in 1839. He was the only son of the wealthy and influential Rt Hon. Denis Daly who had supported Grattan, Flood and Curran in their attempt to promote the Protestant version of Irish nationalism. His mother had been the only child and heiress of the first Earl of Farnham, and much of this wealth was inherited by Robert Daly. His brother, who became Baron Dunsandle in the same year that Robert became Bishop of Cashel, had been the Tory representative for Co. Galway for many years. Robert served in the yeomanry during the Emmet rising of 1803, then entered the Church and was ordained, unconverted, in the same year. His conversion came from Bible-reading, and meeting Evangelical luminaries like B. W. Mathias and Peter Roe, but his influence in the Evangelical world was felt only from the time he became Rector of Powerscourt in County Wicklow in 1814. Although Lord Powerscourt was not religious, his wife was exceedingly so, as was her brother, Lord Jocelyn, who later became the Earl of Roden. It was Lady Powerscourt who greatly helped Daly to advance in Evangelical circles. He was also helped by the Hon. and Rev. Edward Wingfield, Lord Powerscourt's brother, another passionate Evangelical, who developed into a renowned controversial preacher. Wingfield, Daly and another preacher, the Rev. Richard Pope, established their fame in the Evangelical world in November 1824 when they met and reportedly defeated in debate four prominent priests of the Carlow area at a meeting of the Carlow Auxiliary Bible Society in the Presbyterian meeting house.2O1 This encounter took place at the height of the excitement over controversy in 1824, which we will look at shortly. It had been rumoured that Bishop Doyle himself was to attend the discussion about `indiscriminate reading of the Sacred Scriptures', but although the famous `J.K.L.' was not there, a professor from Carlow College, several of his students, and the priests of the town

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 75 all attended. The meeting degenerated into a riot, with Wingfield, Daly and Pope being helped over an eight-foot wall to escape from an `infuriated rabble'.202 This adventure whetted Daly's appetite for controversy, and from this time Daly was acknowledged as an Irish Evangelical leader. When he tried to hold further controversial meetings in the Carlow area, Bishop Doyle forbade any further discussions, as he knew well it gave publicity to people like Daly. At a meeting in Carlow in the following year the Protestants discussed only with themselves such matters as the destruction of the Protestant church at Powerscourt and the burning of bibles there in 1641.208 With the help of the Wingfield family and Lord Farnham, Daly became not only primus inter pares among the Evangelical clergy, but ultimately assumed `the position and bearing of a Protestant Pope'.2o4 Daly's influence among militant Evangelicals continued to increase, although his relationship with the Wingfield family was lessened by the deaths of Viscountess Powerscourt in 1820 and Edward Wingfield in 1825 and by the departure of Theodosia, Lady Powerscourt to the ranks of the Darbyites.205 Daly made good use of his intelligence, wealth and great energy to build up a militant group with its centre at Powerscourt. Later, at Waterford, in his episcopal position he supported those clergy who were just as dedicated to the cause of proselytising as were Archbishop Trench's clergy in Tuam. He wrote for the Christian Examiner as `R.D.' or `Senex', helped the Rev. Edward Nangle to begin his mission at Achill, harried any churchmen who showed interest in Tractarianism, and supported the Established Church Home Mission. Physically he looked like Martin Luther in his later years, and James Godkin thought he was as irascible as Luther at his worst : `the most narrow-minded, bigoted and intolerant man in the Irish Church'. His opinions were those of `Irish Toryism, pure and simple, hatred of popery, which nothing could mollify, hostility to all sorts of liberalism which nothing could conciliate, invincible dislike of any man, especially any clergyman, who dissented from his opinions'.200 Roman Catholics early noted his genius at organising Irishspeaking missions, and they never ceased to respect his ability to involve the gentry in the cause of proselytising.20' To Daniel O'Connell he was the worst kind of Irishman, one of those who were ready `to sell their souls to perdition for a mess of the sugared pottage of the Establishment', and he warned Daly what would be the probable outcome of his habit of rushing into the `politicotheological arena' brandishing his shillelagh :

76 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 I cannot quit the subject of the persecution which the Catholics endure in your parish without declaring my firm conviction, that if there was in each county in Ireland, one parish where so much virulence and acrimony were exhibited to the Catholic poor, the result would within six months, be a bloody and horrible rebellion of so desperate a character that it may be difficult to calculate on the ultimate consequences; whilst the most immediate consequences would certainly be most melancholy and deplorable.208 After Daly became Bishop of Cashel in 1843 his Evangelical militancy in no way lessened, and until his death in 1872 he represented the uncompromising anti-Catholic party in the Established Church which considered itself at war with a religious and cultural world of superstition and ignorance, protected and nurtured by the Antichrist in Rome. In his own narrow way Robert Daly was highly intelligent, as those who engaged him in debate soon discovered. He showed much interest in assisting development of the Irish language, for example, in which he was proficient—but, like Archbishop Trench, he usually put religious zeal `of the heart' before intellectual achievement 'of the mind'. Such dualism was commendable in Evangelical eyes because it gave their leaders a uniform stern, unbending dedication to one cause only—Protestant missionary activity. From the standpoint of a possible peaceful cultural development for Ireland, it was dangerous, however, for it ensured the rapid development of the counter-reformation mentality which characterised Roman Catholicism in Ireland after the Synod of Thurles in 1850. Because Ultramontane aid for the Roman Catholics increased and the interest of English Evangelicals in Irish affairs flagged, the crusade of people like Robert Daly was ultimately to fail. But as long as the militant Evangelical minority dominated the leadership of the Established Church its influence was disastrous for that body. Robert Daly and men who thought like him were able to persuade Primate Beresford and the other Protestant bishops to follow unwise policies. It was militant Evangelical pressure which ensured that churchmen continued to support the Church Education Society rather than the National System of education. The result of this policy was that in most parts of Ireland National Schools were allowed to become de facto Roman Catholic preserves. The most intellectual and the most persuasive Evangelical mind on the Irish bench was that of James Thomas O'Brien, Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin from 1842 until 1874. His father was

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 77 a Co. Clare Roman Catholic who had converted to the Established Church. James O'Brien had a brilliant career at Trinity College. became a Fellow, married the daughter of Chief Justice Pennefather, and in 1842 was made Bishop of Ossory—reputedly to compensate his father-in-law for being passed over as Lord Chancellor.209 A strong Tory, he is probably the best representative of the High Church Evangelical mentality that characterised the leadership of the Established Church in the period between Emancipation and Disestablishment. Much of his intellectual reputation was based on his elaboration of Luther's theory of 'justification by faith', which was considered by some Irish Protestants to have been the most influential Trinity College publication since the time of James Ussher. The work was certainly immediately important as it formed the basis for the theological thinking of at least two generations of Trinity divinity students.210 It was also important because its publication date-1833—was the year generally considered to be the one that marked the beginning of the Tractarian movement in the Church of England. That movement never put down significant roots in the Church of Ireland largely because of O'Brien's dominant position on the bench of bishops. His first charge of 1842, his last of 1866, and many statements during his long episcopal rule were directed against the Tractarians, the later Ritualists, and any churchmen who showed the least spirit of conciliation on the Roman Catholic question.211 If the Evangelical side of O'Brien's nature led him to oppose fiercely the papal church, the High Church mentality he cultivated persuaded him that the Established Church should not support the National System of education.212 When Primate Beresford decided shortly before his death that the Church of Ireland clergy might in good conscience accept the assistance of the National Board to promote education among the poor of their parishes, O'Brien led in the denunciation of the venerable leader as a `Judas'. When Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, later suggested that the Church would have been wise to accept the assistance of the state in education in 1832, instead of allowing the National System to become de facto a Roman Catholic institution, the aged O'Brien accused him of `sin'. Personally he was a cold individual, dilatory and inhospitable as a bishop. His diocese was filled with Evangelical clergy, many of whom were severely criticised for causing unnecessary religious tension in the countryside.213 Until Richard Chenevix Trench succeeded Whately as Archbishop of Dublin in 1863 and began to modify this ultra-Protestant influence in the Church of Ireland, O'Brien's form of churchmanship was characteristic of most Established Church leaders. Not only the

78 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Primate, for most of his life, but sturdy individuals like Bishop Richard Mant, were encouraged to support the anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that determined the attitude of the Established Church to the problem of education. The system of so-called National Education, however plausible may be its professions, is, both in its essence and in its leading provisions, an anti-Church of England, an anti-Scriptural institution ... fitted for confirming and propagating the Romish errors, which are left untouched by such an education.214 The High Church Evangelical way of thought characteristic of O'Brien was shared by the Evangelical bishops who were appointed to the bench in the post-famine period. Joseph Singer of Meath, John Gregg of Cork, and Hamilton Verschoyle of Kilmore, each of them echoed much of O'Brien's thought. They were less enthusiastic in their support of militant missions going out among the Roman Catholics than had been Power le Poer Trench or Robert Daly earlier in the century, but they were adamant that `popishness' of any kind was to be kept out of the Protestant establishment. The elderly Singer was a disappointment to many Evangelicals, as we have noted, because the temptation to engage in nepotism overcame his Evangelical duty to fill his diocese with party appointees. Hamilton Verschoyle, who was preferred from the Episcopal Chapel, Baggot Street, Dublin, was also less enthusiastic in his support of Evangelical party causes than was expected. This was revealed when he stood by Primate Beresford in 1860, when the latter changed his mind about the value of the Church Education Society.215 Verschoyle's loyalty was reportedly what brought about his appointment to the see of Kilmore, but it also meant his estrangement from many Evangelicals. The bishop of the latter part of the century who seemed to follow most enthusiastically the way shown by Power le Poer Trench, Robert Daly and James O'Brien was John Gregg. After his conversion through the preaching of B. W. Mathias at the Bethesda Chapel, he began to labour among the old Huguenot families in the neighbourhood of Portarlington. When devout Evangelicals built Trinity Church for him in 1839 he tried to devote himself to spiritual concerns alone by avoiding involvement in ecclesiastical affairs such as the defence of the Church Education Society. Trinity Church was officially the chapel of ease to St Thomas's Church, whose rector was Archdeacon Thomas Magee, son of William Magee, the former Archbishop of Dublin. The archdeacon left Gregg alone to conduct services characterised by one-hour sermons, the absence of an organ, and, on most occasions,

The Protestant Mind in Ireland 79 a packed church. Lord Palmerston was one of those who heard him preach, and he was so impressed that he offered him the living of All Souls', Marylebone, which Gregg refused because of his total involvement in Irish affairs.216 He helped Archbishop Whately to found the Church of Ireland Young Men's Society and gave support to the charismatic revival in Ulster in 1859. He also steadfastly supported missions to the Roman Catholics.217 When both the dioceses of Killaloe and Cork were vacated in 1862 he was offered one of them by the government, and he chose the latter. As a bishop, his Evangelical enthusiasm slackened somewhat, but he never lost his love of preaching in Irish, nor did he lose his abhorrence of the Tractarian and Ritualist movements in the Church of England, with their love of `exploded Romish errors'.218 At the same time he avoided `temporal' appointments like the leadership of the Church Education Society. Later Evangelical bishops like John Gregg were somewhat different in outlook and influence from prelates like Power le Poer Trench and Robert Daly who had first led the militant Protestants to religious, ecclesiastical and cultural war with the Roman Catholics of Ireland. The new bishops witnessed the waning of proselytising enthusiasm in Protestant circles, particularly among those who supported militant bodies like the Irish Church Missions—as we will see in Chapter V of this study. Religiously, their concern was to maintain the Protestant purity of the Church of Ireland. Ecclesiastically, they showed less interest in maintaining a mission to the whole of Irish society. Culturally, they foresaw the implications of Disestablishment and began to foster the ghetto mentality which was to be so characteristic of the Church of Ireland after 1870. The genesis of this later Evangelical spirit which began the great retreat of the Church of Ireland from involvement in secular affairs and contact with the Roman Catholic people, can be found in Evangelical writings of the early years of the nineteenth century. Professor G. Kitson Clark has pointed out : `Of the various distinguishable schools of churchmanship, probably the evangelicals were inclined to be the most primitive in their approach to secular problems. Their morality was rigid and unaccommodating .. , and made the fewest concessions to the intellectual currents of the nineteenth century.'219 The problems of Ireland with which the state had to wrestle were very complex, and it very much needed the help of the Established Church. But because of the prevailing High Church Evangelical mentality among the leaders of the Church of Ireland, there was apt to be deep suspicion of the state, which in matters like education of the poor seemed to favour the Roman Catholic religion. The tragedy of the Irish Evangelicals, whether of

80 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 the generations of Power le Poer Trench and Robert Daly, or of James Thomas O'Brien, Hamilton Verschoyle and John Gregg, was that they tended to forget in the heat of religious conflict one of the wisest cautions of the great Charles Simeon : You must not be in bondage to the religious world any more than to the ungodly. True, you are not to keep back the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, but there are different ways of stating them; and you should adopt that which expresses kindness and love, and not that which indicates an unfeeling harshness. Only speak from love to man, and not from the fear of man, and God will both accept and prosper you.22°

CHAPTER III THE ERA OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY For a man to be happy in this world and the next he should live a Protestant and die a Catholic. `J.K.L.' [JAMES DOYLE], Letters on the State of Ireland (1825)

CHAPTER III THE ERA OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY 1. Archbishop William Magee One of the reasons why so many Evangelicals in the Established Church were never to display the toleration and compassion towards their religious opponents that Charles Simeon had urged was because their siege mentality never allowed them to do so. From the early 1820s, when Protestant zealots like Power le Poer Trench and Robert Daly led them into battle, they believed they were at war with the forces of Antichrist. Their battle was a desperate one in which no quarter could be given. Ireland's rapidly increasing population and unhappy economic situation and the identification of religion with nationalist interests by the Maynooth priests gave to Irish society an instability which seemed to threaten the Protestant ascendancy position in many different ways at once. When the Union proved to be unsatisfactory to many people in both `nations', and the question of Catholic Emancipation brought the religious issue into the public arena, the Evangelicals of Ireland believed themselves to be in a state of war with the Roman Catholics. What the Evangelicals wanted was the conversion of all the Irish people, including the peasantry of the majority nation who were defended by their priests. Evangelical tactics called for unrelenting proselytising, and those who followed leaders like Power le Poer Trench and Robert Daly were usually zealous to the point of rashness in their missionary work. The Evangelicals tended to operate `from the heart' rather than `from the mind', as we have seen, and it was not until William Magee entered the battle with Roman Catholicism that the Evangelical missions were given a strategy. Magee was Archbishop of Dublin from 1822 to 1831, and no personality was more important in the story of Protestant—Roman Catholic warfare, which was given a new dimension in the year he came to the see of Dublin. The way of controversy into which he led the Church of Ireland was long to be followed. In 1822 it regarded itself as the spiritual

84 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 arm of the imperial `garrison'; by 1870 it was obliged to settle for the ghetto identity it assumed after Disestablishment. In both situations, the Church of Ireland viewed itself as the only ecclesiastical body able to offer the Irish people an alternative religious policy to that of the Church of Rome. In the era of Grattan's parliament and in the early years after the Union, until the Catholic Emancipation crisis arose, there were many signs that Ireland might finally be ridding itself of what Pitt had called the `religious rancour which bigotry engenders and superstition rears and cherishes' .1 In 1789 the centenary of the Relief of Derry had been celebrated with a public procession in which the Roman Catholic Bishop MacDevitt and some of his priests had marched behind the dignitaries of the Established Church in order to associate themselves publicly with `the universal rejoicing for the triumph of civil and religious liberty'? John Law, who preceded Power le Poer Trench as Bishop of Elphin, said of the Roman Catholics in his diocese : 'I know I cannot make them good Protestants, I therefore wish to make good Catholics of them.'$ The majority people responded to Protestant overtures to religious peace, and there seemed to be 'a strong desire on the part of the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland, countenanced by the see of Rome, to conciliate the minds of their Protestant fellow-subjects and to remove objections against their own principles and conduct'.' Pitt's early optimism about Irish society after the Union was shared by many observers : If the Roman Catholics continue a few years longer in a progressively thriving condition; if they be not unfortunately hurried out of the right course, by the diversified artifices of insidious men ... they must, finally, without bloodshed, without disturbance, without loss, without danger, without apprehension, in the midst of opulence, and in amity with their Protestant fellow subjects, attain that equitable participation of political power to which they have an indisputable right to aspire? Even the national question seemed to have been put aside, and R. L. Shell commented on the 'total stagnation of public feeling... . I do not exaggerate when I say that the Catholic question was nearly forgotten.'ß Daniel O'Connell was still seeking a cause, acting as a member of the then acceptable Kildare Place Society,' and otherwise fitting in with the Protestant establishment, while Thomas Wyse said that 'the Catholics had attained that perfect state of "temperance and moderation" which had been so frequently recommended to them by friend and enemy'? No one took papal

The Era of Religious Controversy 85 power seriously any longer in Ireland, according to the liberal Catholic John O'Driscol: There is no longer any danger; the Pope is but a name in Europe. The clergy of this church, too, feel more as Irishmen than as priests.... We can imagine cases where they would be enemies of England, though the Pope were at her back : we say this to their credit 0 The Roman Catholic clergy seemed to accept amicably their subservient position which was reflected in a custom such as that of having parsons recommend them to certain state appointments.10 As for the Roman Catholic laity, Mortimer O'Sullivan, one of the few converts who never lost contact with his relatives, believed from his contacts with them that `popery' in Ireland was finished : There is no concealing the matter—popery in Ireland is tottering to its fall. Its gentry and wealthy traders are beginning to regard the system in which they are brought up, as rich men regard poor relations; they may be willing in a quiet way to extend to it a little countenance, but they are by no means proud of the connexion, or willing to be ostentatiously identified with it. If our Government could only be induced to withdraw its aid, it could scarcely survive another generation.11 Is it little wonder that with this mood of passivity prevalent in many parts of the Irish Roman Catholic Church that the strong-minded Bishop James Doyle chose to `fly a kite' in his 1824 suggestion that a union of the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland might be feasible? That the government was appreciative of this period of religious peace in Ireland can be seen from its reaction to the trouble caused by Richard Mant soon after he first came to Ireland in 1820. Mant, an Englishman, had caught the attention of Lord Liverpool by his preaching at Trinity House, and this led to his being offered the see of Killaloe. In his primary visitation charge of August 1820 he reminded his clergy `at considerable length' of their ordination vow to `banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word'. Obviously this meant that in their situation they must press upon the Roman Catholic majority population the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the various religious publications of organisations like the Association for Discountenancing Vice and Promoting Christian Religion.12 He commended his clergy for the courage with which they had worked in such an unreformed religious atmosphere, and he urged them to carry out bravely the task before them :

86 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-7D I know not a more delicate or arduous situation, generally speaking, in which a conscientious minister of the United Church of England and Ireland can be placed than that of the clergy of this portion of the empire.13 The local Roman Catholics resented the militant tone of his charge, and Bishop Mant soon realised the danger of raising the issue of religious controversy in Ireland. He began to discover a truth he was never to forget : to criticise the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland was to attack the cultural life of the majority nation and to risk the animosity of its people. By the winter of 1821 there was great unrest in his area, and he was given reports of a `formidable conspiracy' forming against him. Terrified by what he heard, Mant took his family to Dublin and then fled with them back to England. Ecclesiastical authorities there were not pleased with his action, and when he was urged to return to his see by both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, he did so reluctantly—leaving his family in Bath. When he appealed to Lord Liverpool for translation, he was reminded of his folly in causing such unrest `so soon after your settlement in the country and before you could have had sufficient local knowledge of the state of it to hazard anything of a doubtful nature'.14 He was also told that neither the English bishops nor the government were impressed by his flight from Killaloe. Chastened by these facts Mant returned to Killaloe to spend a miserable Christmas in 1822, with soldiers patrolling his palace grounds. To save continuing embarrassment the government moved him to the see of Down in 1823, but Mant never forgot the chastening his folly had brought about and the caution he was given by an Irish bishop : I should recommend extreme delicacy in regard to the Roman Catholics. It would really be wise, I conceive, to abstain from any mention of them, and to promote the interests of our own Church in the most effectual as well as the safest way.16 He carefully avoided the `Romich issue' in his charges of 1821 and 1822 and in his first charge in the diocese of Down. In 1834 his charge was directed against the Established Church Home Mission, whose agents threatened to resurrect for him the terror he had experienced in Killaloe 1ß It was not until 1836 that this prolific writer felt safe enough in the Protestant north to respond to militant Evangelical pressure and once more began to mention `Romich corruptions' and the `errors of Popery''? One of the reasons why Richard Mant withdrew from the

The Era of Religious Controversy 87 question of religious controversy for fifteen years, after he discovered the consequences of disturbing religious peace in Ireland, was that he was English, and unsure of himself in the Irish situation for a long time. William Magee, however, was an Irish man whose family had held land in Co. Fermanagh, near Enniskillen, since 1640. The Magees were recognised as `steady loyalists' and were neighbours and friends of the influential Plunket family. William Conyngham Plunket was destined to become the fiercest adversary of Pitt's plan for union, the foremost champion of Catholic Emancipation, and one of the best orators in the House of Commons. He was two years older than William Magee, and their boyhood friendship never ended, in spite of their different political viewpoints over matters like Catholic Emancipation. Magee's early years were not easy, however, and a series of deaths and financial embarrassments in his family gave him a spirit of ambition and an aggressiveness which were characteristic throughout his life. He had a remarkable career of some thirty-one years at Trinity College, which he entered in 1781. A brilliant scholar, he was elected a Fellow in 1788. Two years later he was ordained, although his first preference had been for a career in law. He married well, became a Senior Fellow in 1800, and dominated the intellectual and political life of Trinity College until he resigned his fellowship in 1811. He then had a year's experience in two college livings in Counties Tyrone and Down. At this time he was seriously considered for appointment as Bishop of Oxford. His reputation as a Protestant divine rested on his famous Discourses and Dissertations on the Atonement and Sacrifice, which were delivered in 1798 and 1799 and were dedicated to W. C. Plunket.18 The work brought him to the attention of influential patrons who were willing to consider scholarly appointments to the Irish bench now that the Act of Union had removed much of the necessity of packing it with political appointees. Magee was a difficult man to control, however, and his advancement was held up by his stubborn support of W. C. Plunket who ran for parliament as a member for the university. It was not until 1814 that he was appointed to the deanery of Cork, where he remained for the next four years. It was while he was in Cork that he first showed publicly that although Plunket might be his close friend, he differed radically with him when it came to the `Roman Catholic question'. Immediately, he was charged with `sacrificing friendship and integrity to the prospect of worldly advancement'.18 Whether it was because of his political views or his reputation for theological excellence, Magee was, finally, in 1819 preferred to the see of Raphoe. When George IV visited Dublin in 1821 Magee preached

88 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 before him on the text 'What must I do to be saved?' The impression which Magee made upon the king was such that when Primate Stuart died accidentally in 1822 the king wanted Magee to go to Armagh. When other considerations persuaded the government to move Lord John George Beresford to the primatial see, Magee became Archbishop of Dublin. When Magee arrived in Raphoe in 1819 he came with a reputation of being a strong church reformer. His predecessor there was John George Beresford, who at that time was still primarily interested in the political affairs of his family. Beresford had been at Raphoe since 1807, but he had done little to reform clerical habits in the diocese. The parsons of Raphoe expected trouble with their new Ordinary and anxiously awaited Magee's coming: `From the prevalence of habits of extreme laxity among the rural clergy, considerable apprehensions of the enforcement of discipline, which would, it was anticipated, be a consequence, did not fail to be manifested on the report of his appointment.'20 When Magee reported to Primate Stuart on what he found in Raphoe, he said bluntly : `Discipline has been unknown in this diocese for full forty years.'21 He particularly deplored the deficiency of curates, as well as other failings which he discovered when he made a visit to the parishes of the diocese : thereby acquainting myself, by personal inspection, not only with the condition of the churches, glebes, and glebe-houses throughout the whole, but also in great measure with the habits, and characters, and localities, as well of the general mass of the population, as of the clergy themselves.22 The clergy of Raphoe were not used to such a diligent diocesan, and many breathed a sigh of relief when his translation to Dublin Øe so soon. Magee found the archdiocese of Dublin in 1822 in a shocking condition. His predecessor but one, Euseby Cleaver, had been mentally ill for some years, and Cleaver's successor, Lord John George Beresford, had not had time in his two-year episcopate to do anything to clear up the administrative chaos he had inherited. Magee's programme of reform was so thorough that some observers compared him favourably with James Doyle, who was actively engaged at that time with the same cleansing of the Augean stables in his united dioceses. However, Magee had no intention of devoting his primary charge to purely domestic concerns. He was not only highly intelligent, but he had a quick wit and the ability to use trenchant language when he thought the occasion demanded it.22 Magee made good use of his oratorical gifts when he ascended the

The Era of Religious Controversy 89 pulpit of St Patrick's Cathedral on the 24 October 1822. He could well have delivered the kind of amiable discourse which Richard Laurence gave to the clergy of Cashel in the same year,24 but what he seemed to intend, and what he accomplished, was to declare religious war in Ireland : We, my reverend brethren, are placed in a station in which we are hemmed in by two opposite descriptions of professing Christians; the one, possessing a church, without what we can properly call a religion; and the other, possessing 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 judgment 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 made us free, we are to submit ourselves to the authority to which he has made us subject.25 The Nonconformists. were used to such assertions of Anglican arrogance, particularly on the part of William Magee,28 and their response was less explosive than that which came from those who were greatly offended by the Archbishop of Dublin's publicly expressed disdainful view of Roman Catholicism. Magee had also said in his charge that the parson was to consider himself the true parish priest, in continual contact with his flock ... in continual intercourse with them; their adviser; their friend; the moderator of their disputes; the composer of their differences; the careful instructor of their children; not content merely to afford spiritual aid where it may be demanded, but vigilant to discover where it may be applied, and prompt to bestow it where it will be received.27 To most Roman Catholic critics this part of the charge read like an open declaration of religious war—the beginning of a `Second Reformation'. Magee's charge launched a furious pamphlet warfare. Some critics were restrained and merely pointed out the elements of `vanity as well as of indiscretion' in the `dangerous' charge of the archbishop. 28 Others were virulent in the scorn they poured on the Established Church. Most important of all, however, were the replies written by important ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic

90 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Church. Patrick Curtis, Archbishop of Armagh, said that his church had not failed to note that the charge was delivered not only to Protestant clergy but to `an immense concourse of nobility and gentry, and immediately published in all the papers, to the whole nation and the world at large'.28 Curtis labelled the charge an extraordinary document, no less unprovoked and unseasonable than unexpected, instead of recommending that amiable conciliation ... so indispensable for uniting the hearts of Irishmen and promoting the welfare of the nation, the archbishop, despising and rejecting the precious opportunity then offered (and which can never more return for him) ... rashly insulted all those who presume to dissent from him in their religious tenets. Curtis also noted grimly that `This is not uttered as a mere rant or flourish so usual in a Fifth of November, or Powder Plot sermon'8° It was an exercise in terrible folly uttered at a time when Bishop Doyle and other Roman Catholic bishops were trying to `instruct, admonish, and entreat the people' to live in peace.81 Bishop James Doyle reminded Magee that the authority of the Established Church came from the king, and that even Magee could not `inherit spiritual jurisdiction as you would a title or an estate'. Such was the spiritual poverty of the Church of Ireland, he said, that if her connection with the state was severed, `her existence would not be prolonged a single year'. Finally Doyle asked Magee : 'What, my Lord, could have induced you to make, and repeat, your insulting and unprovoked attack upon the Roman Catholic Church?'82 John MacHale also jumped into the fray, saying it was ever with reluctance that he engaged in controversy, `but there are occasions on which forbearance would cease to be a virtue'. If the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was only a branch of the Catholic Church, he told Magee, `I should like to learn where is the trunk' 88 Perhaps the tone of Magee's charge was inevitable, in the sense that it represented the beginning of another new era in CatholicProtestant relations in Ireland. The years 1822-23 saw the death of Pius VII, Primate William Stuart and Archbishop Troy; the rejection of the Kildare Place Society by the Roman Catholics; and the coming to Ireland of Prince Hohenlohe—all signs that in the religious and ecclesiastical world of Ireland change was again about to take place. The question needs to be asked, however : when there was prevailing religious peace in Ireland, why did the influential Archbishop of Dublin choose to thrown down his gauntlet and deliberately resurrect ecclesiastical conflict? A possible answer is that Magee naïvely believed his charge to

The Era of Religious Controversy 91 be simply a succinct description of what he believed was the situation of the Church of Ireland. He told the commissioners on the state of Ireland in 1825 that he said nothing in the charge that he had not said many times before, and that what was remarkable was `the kind of change which had suddenly taken place in Ireland'. His earlier statements regarding his belief in the spiritual superiority of the Established Church had caused `no irritation whatsoever'. Magee and his fellow-bishops in the Church of Ireland were `alarmed' that such a clamour had now arisen, and they saw the uproar as a definite indication that Rome was once more about to extend its power in Ireland's religious life.84 His earlier writings do bear out this protestation that his 1822 charge was simply a concise presentation of his abiding thought about the role of the Established Church in Ireland. His ideas were put together in the years following 1822, and he presented a systematic form of them in his charge for the year 1827. In this address he particularly denied that the Church of Ireland could be viewed in the way that Bishop William Warburton had suggested that the Church of England might be viewed in his celebrated Alliance Between Church and State (1736). Magee stoutly denied Warburton's concept of the church and the state being two separate societies, the former being concerned with only the care of the soul, the latter with only the body and its concerns. Nor would he accept any diminution of the church's traditional authority. He especially rejected the belief that `the end for which religion is established by the civil power, has no connection with religious truth, but simply rests in civil utility'." At the same time he differed with those who argued `that the established church of England and Ireland differs but little, at the present day, from the church of Rome' : If that be the case, and if it be also true that the religion and principles of the church of Rome are immutable, then must our church have changed her character, then is she no longer the true guardian of religious freedom and scripture truth; she has violated the conditions upon which she was incorporated with the free constitution of this realm; and she is no longer entitled to hold the place which has been allotted to her in conjunction with the state." `Thanks be to the great Ruler of all,' said Magee, `there never was a time, and especially in this part of the empire, in which so degrading an imputation was less deserved.' The Church of Ireland was a reformed church. In Ireland the true spirit of Protestantism was `alive, progressive, and with the blessing of God will be triumphant'.

92 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Built as it was solely on the `scripture of God', the Established Church would overcome the present obstacle to its consummation— the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, built on the tradition of man and corrupted by the `rubbish and superstition of ages'. Soon `the clouds of ignorance and gross error will pass away, and the sun of righteousness and truth will spread his beams throughout the Iand'.$' Magee's assumption that only the Established Church clergy could bring the blessings of civilisation to the people of Ireland is not as arrogant as it at first seems. This was a time of rising expectations, both spiritual and temporal, and many thinkers, like the liberal Roman Catholic John O'Driscol, doubted the value of the religious observances encouraged by the priests : The error of the Roman Catholic priesthood is, that they despise the people too much; they think the high and deep questions of Deity and Providence above their comprehension; they require an implicit submission to dogmas, and an observance of certain ceremonials; but the rudest of human beings are not without ideas respecting Providence, and the government of the world; and they will assent to the dogma, and observe the ceremonial, without this assent or observance having any influence whatever upon the leading ideas which influence their character." Magee was sure that the new vitality he was witnessing among the parsons was going to encourage them to become the `true parish priests' who would give the majority people the spiritual and temporal leadership they so greatly needed. Magee's optimism about the advance then being made by Protestantism in Ireland may have been misguided, inasmuch as it seemed to be largely based on his observation of Dublin, which he knew extremely well. He told the Lords' committee on the state of Ireland in 1825 that there had lately occurred a rapid increase in Protestantism in Dublin, in terms of new churches crowded to excess, a great increase in alms-giving for the poor, and an improved attendance at the services of Holy Communion." He believed that the new zeal shown by the parsons led them to find `latent Protestants' everywhere, and he told the committee blandly : `In truth, with respect to Ireland, the Reformation may, strictly speaking, be truly said only now to have begun.'40 The Protestants were on the march : The state of affairs having changed lately in Ireland, so as to force upon the higher class of Protestants a recollection of the difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and

The Era of Religious Controversy 93 to compel many of them, from regard to their personal safety, to make some distinction in favour of the latter, a considerable change in the feeling of the lower Protestants has been wrought; and this added to an increased activity on the part of the parochial clergy which has more energetically applied itself, particularly to the poor of their own communion, has produced a powerful effect upon the mind of the poorer Protestants 41 The only reason that there were not more clerical converts to the Established Church in the Dublin area was that Magee discouraged them. He told about a professor of Scripture at Maynooth who had been received by the Bishop of Kildare, and two priests whom he had helped place in livings, but he said that the Established Church generally had deep reservations about priest converts.42 William Magee was personally a vain man, a brilliant academic whose thirty-one years at Trinity had done little to curb a tendency to arrogance. He was also an ambitious and combative individual who was prone to think in dialectic terms. As we have seen, in the light of his personality, the evidence he gave to the committees of both the Commons and the Lords on the state of Ireland in 1825, and his charge of 1827, it would seem that he did not believe he was declaring religious war in his primary charge. Rather Magee was describing and accepting a situation which to him as an Irish High Churchman was self-evident. The Church of Ireland, with its spiritual authority derived from the Scriptures, its apostolic descent from St Patrick, and its civilising mission authorised by the state, was already at war with the errors of Roman Catholicism and Nonconformity. The struggle with the latter was of less consequence, but that with Roman Catholicism was with a foe whose purpose was the `establishment of the Roman Catholic religion upon the ruins of the Protestant church'.." The Catholics even denied him the right to call himself Archbishop of Dublin.44 When Magee refused to allow a priest to say the De Profundis over a Catholic grave, and the Catholic Association called the prohibition scandalous, Magee had been shocked by being `held up to public contempt and execration by a set of popish priests' 45 Magee's famous charge marked the beginning of an era of radical social change. Religious controversy, dormant for so long in Irish society, burst out once more in the furious pamphlet war of 1822 and was never to wane until after the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. Magee never admitted the importance of his charge, and blamed the beginning of religious war once more on James Doyle's `debut as a public controversialist'. Magee said the armistice had ended in 1820 when the Catholic Bishop of Kildare

94 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 and Leighlin had `shown the first glitter of the sword emerging from its scabbard'" and alarmed the Protestant world. The Protestant Archbishop of Dublin was not the man to turn from a battle, and his charge of 1822 was not so much a declaration of war as a public proclamation that the Church of Ireland was ready to defend itself against those who had chosen to attack the establishment. Magee's `pre-emptive strike' was expressed in religious and ecclesiastical terms, but it represented Protestant recognition of a struggle between the two peoples of Ireland which was, in the widest sense of the word, cultural. The importance of this polemical statement by the Archbishop of Dublin—and the controversial warfare that followed—is that it was issued, and the controversies took place, against a background of intense cultural struggle. On many great landed estates Evangelical landlords were using `moral agents' to bring the blessings of the Gospel and their own version of `civilisation' to the Roman Catholic people who were employed there." The most notorious of these Evangelical proprietors was Lord Farnham, whose estates at Cavan became a refuge for Protestants converted during the new or `Second Reformation'. Lord Farnham was instrumental in beginning an `Association for Promoting the Second Reformation', and the statistics he gave about conversions in his area reveal how serious the cultural struggle was becoming. Farnham had voted against the Union, and was considered by men like O'Neill Daunt to be a `man in whom sectarian fanaticism spoiled a good patriot''8 But he was as reckless in action as Magee was in speech, and, at the time that Magee delivered his charge, tales were being told of events in Cavan. It appeared that weekly bulletins of the number of new converts from popery were being placarded on the walls or hung from the backs of persons who walked the streets of the town. Extravagant accounts were given of the numbers of converts," and tales were told of an enormous Protestant fund to buy up the religious belief of anyone willing to convert to the reformed faith. Soon there was talk among English Protestants of the need to support the Cavan mission work, which `by its local situation was calculated to serve as the conductor of a religious reformation to the Province of Connaught, the peculiar domain of the Roman Catholics in Ireland'.b0 There was general rejoicing as reports were spread of the devotions at Lough Derg `falling rapidly into contempt' and the Protestant Empire being freed of the gross superstition which had been forced on the Irish people to the detriment of their advance into civilisation.61 Thomas Ehington, the scholarly Protestant Bishop of Ferns, proclaimed :

The Era of Religious Controversy 95 The human mind throughout Ireland is awakening; private judgment is beginning to ferment; reason is reacting on authority; and emancipation, a blessed, holy, happy emancipation is dawning on a fine people, after fourteen hundred years' degrading thraldom to the slavery of priests.62 The real importance of Magee's famous 1822 charge lay in the fact that it was made by the Archbishop of Dublin, a prelate with great social and political influence, the friend of important men like Marquis Wellesley and W. C. Plunket. Roman Catholics were quite willing to make allowance for extreme statements by enthusiasts like Archbishop Trench or Lord Farnham whose extreme Evangelical expressions of faith were bound to lead them to folly and excess. But Archbishop Magee was not a fanatical Evangelical. He was the epitome of the rational, sober-minded High Church prelate, `a consecrated follower of Him who preached peace and good will to all men' who had now decided he `could vituperate the religion and character of six million of his countrymen'.63 Magee's charge was the sort of rash proclamation that the cautious Primate Beresford would never have made. But from 1822 until Magee's death in 1831 it seemed as if the true leadership of the Church of Ireland rested in Dublin rather than Armagh. From that city the struggle was directed under high auspices, and it was fought bitterly in matters of doctrine, church government and religious custom. As O'Neill Daunt recorded : The controversial excitement through the country was actually frightful. The Protestants were taught to look on the religion of the Catholics as a grand magazine of immorality, infidelity and rebellion; while the Catholics, in their turn, regarded their enthusiastic assailants as the victims of a spiritual insanity derived from an infernal source, and as disastrous in its social results as it was bizarre in its exhibition. The kindly charities of friendship were annihilated; ancient intimacies were broken up; hatred was mitigated only by a sentiment of scornful compassion.' The victims of the Catholic-Protestant struggle were the Irish people, as each of the two ecclesiastical authorities tried to `emancipate' them by offering them a superior form of religious and cultural life. Protestant leaders not normally considered to be Evangelical exhorted the parsons to set the people free from the despotism of Rome by bringing them the blessings of true scriptural religion. Catholic leaders, both clerical and lay, urged the majority people to support the O'Connellite movement because it alone would ensure them religious and cultural freedom. Unfortunately

96 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 for Ireland, the militant leaders of the two `nations' could not or would not choose to consider the long-range effect of such civil warfare. The Protestant enthusiasts may have meant well when they tried to free their Roman Catholic neighbours from enslavement by the priests. The agitating curates who supported the movement for Catholic Emancipation and Repeal also meant well when they recognised and chose to use `people power' to pressure the government. The tragedy was that few militants of either camp reckoned with the whirlwind they were sowing. 2. Richard Hayes, lames Maher and the Early Clerical Combatants As we have noted, between 1817 and 1822 the seeds of controversy were being planted beneath the surface of Irish society. One of the important areas where tension arose was elementary education. Ireland was benefited in these years by the organisation of the genuinely undenominational Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland, which was popularly known as the Kildare Place Society from the site of its Dublin headquarters. It received a state subsidy, many prominent Catholics served on its board of managers, Catholic gentry acted as patrons of individual schools, and many priests cautiously supported what came close to being the base for a national system of education.66 The Roman Catholics were unhappy about the Protestant majority on the managing committee, however, and they did not really like the policy of reading the Holy Scriptures without note or comment.08 One of its early supporters, Daniel O'Connell, led the Roman Catholic objection to the society and `used the education issue as a subject on which to bind the clergy to his larger aims'.67 John MacHale, writing as `Hierophilos', also attacked the society, as did James Doyle, writing as `J.K.L.' The latter, as might be expected, was not entirely happy about the opposition he felt he had to express to the work of the society, for as a liberal he saw the advantage of children of the two `nations' being educated together : I do not see how any man, wishing well to the public peace, and who looks to Ireland as his country, can think that peace can ever be permanently established, or the prosperity of the country ever well secured, if children are separated, at the commencement of life, on account of their religious opinions. I do not know any measures which would prepare the way for a better feeling in Ireland than uniting children at an early age, and bringing them up in the same school, leading them to commune with one another and to form those little intimacies and friendships which often subsist through life.68

The Era of Religious Controversy 97 In spite of this sentiment, Doyle opposed what he believed to be practices of proselytism in some of the schools, and by the time Magee delivered his charge in 1822 Roman Catholics were generally united in their opposition to the Kildare Place Society, which was then believed to have become an agency for propagating Protestant religion and British culture. At the same time that O'Connell and others were organising Roman Catholic opposition to the Kildare Place Society, the first public controversial preaching was begun in Ireland—by a clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church. The Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan always attributed the beginning of the religious struggle of the 1820s to the work of this man, Father Richard Hayes. He was a friar of the Franciscan convent at Wexford, a friend of James Doyle, and a gifted polemical preacher.b° The frontispiece of his collected sermons was distinguished by a lithograph of St Peter's, Rome, and the commission from Matthew 16:18. The dedication was to : The persecuted, calumniated, children of St Patrick—the people to whom God has done so much good, and Man so much evil— plundered by the worthless, despised by the ignorant and brutal; yet moral, religious, constant in the first, the only, the Catholic faith—to the Poor in Ireland6° The sermons were a passionate defence of the traditional doctrines of transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass and use of the Latin tongue in divine services. Those delivered after Magee's charge of 1822 were partly replies to the writings of various Protestant pamphleteers, particularly to those of the Rev. Sir Harcourt Lees of Dublin. Much mention was also made of Roman authority, and to most Protestants it seemed that Hayes was very much an Ultramontanist, attempting to take advantage of the prevailing relaxed attitudes in religious affairs : Many could not believe that the huge impostures which prevailed in the days of Huss, Jerome, Wycliffe and Luther, and against which they rose in protest could be held anywhere in the nineteenth century.... The notion that Popery had changed, had become civilised, had cast away its persecuting and intolerant spirit, was then beginning to spread as the fashionable belief of the educated61 In fact, however, Hayes was not an Ultramontanist. Rather he was one of the earliest of those clerical `tribunes of the people' who were soon to be found in so many parishes in the countryside. In

98 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 the eyes of Bishop Doyle's biographer he was an ideal priest : `His gifts and acquirements were most varied; as a patriot he was disinterested; as a priest, zealous; as a preacher, powerful.'82 He was not, in Roman eyes, the loyal servant of the Holy See that many Protestants believed him to be. In 1816 he had led an Irish delegation to Rome to oppose the veto on Irish episcopal appointments which the conciliatory Pius VII had wished to approve. Pius had no intention of offending the British government at that time, nor had he any inclination to accept the haranguing of the Irish friar who `urged every argument against this obnoxious innovation'. Hayes was treated coldly in Rome, `expelled from the Eternal City by order of the ecclesiastical authorities; and, in a published letter from the Pope, his officiousness was condemned in painfully severe terms'.ßS In Richard Hayes the curia met one of the first of those Irish nationalist ecclesiastics who were to come to maturity in later years with the encouragement of Archbishop John MacHale. It was widely believed that Hayes was supported by an influential Roman Catholic committee which had diverted to his missionary cause the energy it had once expended on combating the veto. Many Protestants were deeply suspicious of this group of ladies and gentlemen who met weekly in Church Street Chapel and at King Street Nunnery for the purpose of extending the circulation of Hayes's sermons." But in 1822 the controversial mania was just beginning. This fact, coupled with his poor health, was to ensure that Richard Hayes was not to emerge as the Roman Catholic champion that many had hoped he would be. That honour was left to the folk hero, Father Tom Maguire from the bogs of Leitrim, whose polemical labours we will look at presently. The first major controversial meetings took place in the month of October 1824. Because the Roman Catholic strategy in them was consistent, it seemed as if there was in existence the kind of organisation that the Protestants believed had once supported Richard Hayes. By 1824 the Protestants were also organised for religious warfare. Typical of the early encounters was what happened at a meeting of the local Bible society in the courthouse in Kilkenny on the evening of Thursday 14 October 1824. The Earl of Ormond was in the chair, and the Rev. Peter Roe read the annual report and gave a discourse on `one of the brightest jewels in our happy and glorious constitution—Liberty of Conscience .86 Attending the meeting were such Protestant worthies as the Rev. Joseph Singer and the Rev. Richard Pope, the celebrated controversial preacher. Also in attendance (uninvited) were some local Roman Catholic

The Era of Religious Controversy 99 priests. One of them, Father K. Dunphy, startled the meeting by suddenly denouncing it as part of a `crusade of proselytism' which made use of the treacherous and unmanly weapons of ridicule, misrepresentation, calumny, and bribery. These are the arms which are now used to seduce the Irish Catholic from the faith of his ancestors, when the rack and the gibbet have long since declared their despair of success, and their impotency to persevere longer in the unprofitable effusion of Irish Catholic blood 80 Dunphy said that he was especially disturbed about distribution of bibles `without note or comment'. The priests served the needs of the people, and they did not need the help of other mentors who would only confuse them. When Dunphy finished his speech, he was succeeded by another priest, Father Shearman, who compared the quality of converts to Roman Catholicism with that of the Irish peasants who left their church : Some wretched, starving creature, that basely sells the inheritance of the first-born of Christ for a mess of pottage, and poor idiots, without intellect enough to see the advantages of any faith, are the only spoils of our opponents. But observe the conversions to Catholicity ... the rich, above the temptation of bribery are joining us, and the enlightened, from persuasion are embracing our principles.07 The Kilkenny Protestants who listened to these outbursts were stunned. What they did not realise was that such loquacious audacity was soon to become common. It was a direct result of Magee's charge, which had had effect far beyond the boundaries of the Dublin archdiocese. As Thomas Wyse said : `The priests took the alarm, and a new crusade instantly commenced.... The whole intellect of the country was made the prize for contending hosts.'68 This direct confrontation at Kilkenny set the tone for the controversies which followed, though they varied in intensity and duration from place to place, depending on the personalities involved. One of the 1824 controversies was important because it first brought Robert Daly into public prominence." It was held at Carlow, which had a `very English character' at this time.70 The parsons of the town were confident of much local support when they challenged the local priests to intellectual combat. When they did this they hoped to `beard the lion in his den'—the lion being the local Roman Catholic bishop, the redoubtable James Doyle. The contest took place in the Presbyterian meeting house

100 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 in Carlow on Thursday and Friday 18-19 November 1824, at what had been intended as the annual meeting of the Carlow Auxiliary Bible Society. On the Catholic side were four priests, Fathers Nolan, O'Connell, McSweeny and Clowry; the Protestants were represented by the Hon. and Rev. Edward Wingfield, the Rev. Richard Pope, and the Rev. Robert Daly. The large audience was very disappointed when Bishop Doyle did not appear. The main argument was over the Protestant contention that Catholic divines of every age had recommended the faithful to read the Holy Scriptures, and that it was now inconsistent for James Doyle and his followers to oppose a Bible society devoted exclusively to circulation of the Word of God. The priests replied that `It was not to the use but to the abuse of the Sacred Scriptures they objected— private interpretation being a principle abusive of Holy Writ, subversive of Church authority, and, as Luther declared, productive of disastrous results.'71 It is interesting to note that W. J. Fitzpatrick in his Life of Bishop Doyle recorded something of the excitement that accompanied the close of the meeting, including the action of Bishop Doyle's curate, Father O'Connell, who ascended the pulpit of the meeting house to give thanks `for the triumph which had been achieved'. But Fitzpatrick failed to mention the Catholic demand to have the armed police at the meeting withdrawn—a suggestion which the Protestants rejected amidst boos and jeers. Nor did he mention the rioting in the hall and the dramatic escape of the Protestants from a mob that tried to break in and that threatened them with bodily harm.72 Because of this kind of religious and social feuding, by the time that the Rev. Warren Carlisle, the new minister of the Scots Church in Carlow, arrived in 1838, the people of the two `nations' in the community were almost completely separated one from the other : It is yet but a very short time since I was brought by a train of unforeseen circumstances, to reside in this place; and having been little accustomed to witness the effects of such strong religious animosity as seems to prevail here, I was not a little astonished to find the community so completely divided. In Scotland, differences of religious belief exist; but ... the members of different religious parties lived together in peace, and were ever ready to co-operate with each other in all Christian and philanthropic enterprises.73 One of the main reasons for the division between the peoples here was the passionate opposition to everything that could be labelled Protestant by James Maher, Parish Priest of Carlow-

The Era of Religious Controversy 101 Graigue, whose activities as a nationalist agitator we have already noted. He had the reputation of being the equal of anyone in the Roman Catholic Church in the preaching of controversial sermons —though they sometimes seemed more political than theological. He had served as a curate to James Doyle, and always claimed that he had been a `constant companion of the immortal J.K.L.'74 Be that as it may, he was a great champion of the Roman Catholic Church, and in terms of Irish Catholicism's clerical aristocracy Maher's credentials were impeccable. Paul Cullen was his nephew, and he had two sisters and eighteen nieces who were nuns. Cullen's nephew, Patrick Francis Moran, Bishop of Ossory, who was to become Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, published James Maher's letters and wrote a memoir of his life. In his letters Maher constantly referred to his own important political position in the Irish Church. Maher said he was not one of the Roman Catholic militants in 1824 when the Protestant controversialists first `tried to assert the supremacy of their church amongst our people'. When he was visiting Carlow jail, however, he had an embarrassing encounter with some Protestant ladies whom Joseph Singer had described as `gentle and unobtrusive missionaries'. They asked him seriously whether it was not true that the Catholics `would murder all the Protestants' if they were not restrained by the fear of hanging. He was also asked by the ladies to deny that he sold `licences and pardons for murder'. This confrontation persuaded James Maher that the `dear ladies' should cease trying to make hypocritical converts out of the prisoners and that they would be better employed in making `those poor people good subjects, useful citizens and virtuous members of the ancient religion of Ireland'.76 It also convinced him that he should devote himself to resisting Protestant proselytisers throughout the Carlow area. Bishop Elrington may have looked on such Protestant missions as an attempt to `emancipate' the peasantry from unscriptural religion and an uncivilised way of life, but Maher was cynical enough to suspect that the real motive of the Protestants was to create a diversion which would keep the Roman Catholics from giving their wholehearted support to the political movement for Catholic Emancipation.7° James Maher was at his best when he had an opponent who could fire him to angry retort, and his polemics were greatly helped by the coming to the Carlow area of the Rev. Robert Fishboume, who represented the British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the Reformation. When this society met for two days on 18 and 19 October 1827, Mr Benedict Hamilton, lord of the

102 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 manor of Carlow, was present, and the chair was occupied by the Earl of Aldborough. Fishboume described the aims of his society as a serious mission to establish within Ireland a true liberty of conscience, a liberty for every man, without injury to himself or his property, to profess whatever religion he pleased, provided he discharges the duties of a peaceable subject—and it would endeavour to reform that system which studies to keep the people in ignorance, and which by denunciation from the altar, by defaming the character of converts, by secret and sometimes open persecution, would terrify every individual who dares to judge for himself in that which concerns his everlasting interest.77 Maher might well have followed the advice of James Doyle and avoided controversy, but he could not resist rising to the occasion when Fishboume proclaimed that Bishop Doyle had rejected Roman Catholicism on his deathbed and had died a Protestant. It was Fishboume who first told the tale of the superstitious Mary Riordan who had become ill from eating earth from the graves of two pious priests.78 Fishbourne's genius for provocation stirred up the intemperance of Maher to keep the Carlow area in an almost continuous uproar in the pre-famine years. The Rev. Warren Carlisle, the minister of the Scots Church in Carlow, wrote to Maher in 1838 to express his sorrow over the `old sectarian sentiment' in the divided community, much of the blame for which he put upon Maher's militancy: You seem to instil into the mind of every Catholic child, from its earliest days, that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true Church of Christ on earth, and that all who are unconnected with it, and who bear the Christian name, are heretics and schismatics. You will not deny that this doctrine has a strong tendency to beget in Catholics feelings of dislike, of aversion and even of hatred towards all Protestants. If they view us as apostates abandoned by God ... it cannot be supposed that they will either relish our society or cherish towards us any degree of esteem.7° Monitions of this nature had little effect on James Maher, however, as he discovered the social and political rewards of anti-Protestant agitation during the Catholic Emancipation and Repeal years. Throughout his long and contentious life he devoted himself to proclaiming the virtue of the `one true church' and the knavery of Protestant proselytisers. At the same time he was a passionate

The Era of Religious Controversy 103 nationalist, though he makes little mention of his active political life in his writings. Because the early controversial meetings were local and spontaneous in their organisation, the nature of them depended on the personalities of the opposing champions. Few were as truculent as James Maher. Usually the contestants were gentlemanly, the Protestants speaking of the priests as being 'candid, honourable and kind', and both sides saying the members of the other were worthy of esteem and friendship.80 One of the most famous of these meetings was arranged at Carrick-on-Shannon after the annual meeting of the Leitrim Auxiliary Bible Society was visited by Father John McKeon, Roman Catholic Vicar-General of Ardagh and papal legate for Ireland, who asked the right for himself and some of his friends to defend his religion. This disruption caused an uproar. The ladies in the company left, and it took some time to arrange, to the satisfaction of all, that a public meeting should be held later to discuss `the propriety of circulating the Scriptures' and that only a limited number of tickets should be given to respectable people from each side. It was agreed that the Congregationalist preacher, William Urwick, who was an able debater, would not be allowed to take part, because he was `invalidly ordained'. John McKeon ably presented the Roman Catholic answer to why his church opposed the distribution of the Scriptures among the people : The Catholic Church has the strongest and greatest veneration for the Sacred Scriptures and ever wished that they should be circulated with proper restrictions—with the notes and comments of the Church and accompanied with the explanation of those who were appointed by the Church to be the scriptural teachers of the people. But considering that the Scriptures themselves, unless accompanied by such notes and explanations, lead to every species of fanaticism and infidelity, which is also the opinion of many eminent Protestants, the Catholic Church opposes their indiscriminate circulation. The Catholic Church never interdicted the use of the Scriptures to the Laity until the evil consequences of their indiscriminate perusal had been manifested.81 This was also the line of defence taken by the Roman Catholics at other meetings in late 1824 held at Loughrea, Ballina, Roscommon, Sligo, Castlebar and Boyle. As there seemed to be no abatement of interest on the part of the people during these lengthy discussions, the clergy of each camp began to search out old

104 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 controversial literature for use as `cribs'. The result of this was that many of the discussions had a peculiarly seventeenth century atmosphere. Another controversy that drew much public attention was that held in the Roman Catholic chapel at Easky, Co. Sligo. Not only was it unusual for such a discussion to be held in the chapel, with the Protestant ministers the guests of the parish priest, but it was also considered notable because of the people who took part in it. Leading the Roman Catholics was John Patrick Lyons, soon to identify himself as John MacHale's arch-enemy, and defending the Protestant cause was the `invalidly ordained' Congregationalist, William Urwick, supported by three Scripture Readers. The debate was concerned only with Scripture-reading, and the local Established Church leaders did not join in it. Although Lyons had announced that he and his two fellow-priests were there `until they or their opponents were silenced', the debate occupied only two days. It was characterised by extreme cordiality. Urwick told the six hundred people present : `Although I conscientiously differ from the Roman Catholic clergy and people, yet I wish them well from the bottom of my heart, and my prayers shall ascend to the Throne of Mercy, that every blessing both of Providence and Grace may come down upon them.'82 Lyons replied that in his own congregation the people heard the Scriptures every Sunday of the year and that the Roman Catholic Church told `every man who can read the Scriptures with propriety to read them (and why not?) and women also'. But the Church in its wisdom had decided not to allow `the weak or unstable ... to read the Scriptures, but to obey their Pastors until they are qualified to do so'.8S Unfortunately this cordial tone was not maintained later when Urwick and Lyons clashed in the pages of the Western Luminary and the Sligo Journal. The result of their literary duels was a refusal by Lyons to attend a further controversial meeting in Sligo. He said he felt he could not go there `without hazarding his personal safety'.84 It is interesting to note that most of these lengthy clerical debates were held in the southern provinces. One remarkable contest did take place at Ballymena in 1826 and was discussed in the pages of the Belfast News-Letter,86 but the few other northern discussions which occurred were generally ignored. A militant minority in the Established Church might choose acrimonious debate with the Roman Catholics in the south, but the Presbyterians of Ulster had no desire to rouse the antagonism of the minority people in the province. Peel had dissolved both the Orange lodges and O'Connell's Catholic Association in 1825, and the Presbyterian leaders

The Era of Religious Controversy 105 were pleased that most people in the north seemed to share the government's desire to ease sectarian tensions. The Roman Catholic hierarchy in the south shared the feelings of the Ulster Presbyterians, and its members did not welcome the controversial discussions. When Daniel Murray succeeded Archbishop Troy to the see of Dublin in 1823 he tried to transcend the furore, but was drawn into controversy by the accusation that the Roman Catholics did not teach the second commandment. He called the accusation a trick worthy only `to excite the passions of a village meeting', but, nevertheless, he felt that he had to explain patiently that what the Protestants called the first and second commandments the Roman Catholics called the first, and that his church had a `different manner of arranging the same divine ten precepts which all Christians equally admit'.88 James Doyle had forbidden his priests to engage in controversy, but William Magee drew him back into the lists in 1827 by the charge that the Roman Catholics served only the see of Rome and were disloyal to the constitution. Doyle was very upset over the `slanderous and malignant' charge which he labelled `the grossest insult which men were ever condemned to endure'.87 Having risen to Magee's challenge once more, Doyle had to suffer Charles Elrington, the learned son of the Bishop of Ferns, quoting Bossuet against his statement that the Church of Rome was ever loyal to the state and did not persecute. Men like Elrington, who was to become Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College in 1829, greatly stimulated theological research among the clergy when they entered the fray. It was difficult for Doyle to turn the other cheek when Elrington accused him of `bellowing polemics and breathing war' in his writings and challenged him to scholarly combat 88 It was even more difficult for Doyle when lesser figures like the Rev. George Hamilton, Rector of Killermogh in the diocese of Ossory, who took part in the Carrick-on-Shannon disputation, reported that his biblical census of his parish of 4,000 souls and three chapels revealed that there was `but one copy of the Roman Catholic scriptures' among the whole population.88 Nor did the priests encourage distribution of them to the people, learned or otherwise. Hamilton also claimed that there were several different versions of the Bible used among the Roman Catholic people, ranging from the Rheims Testament of 1582 to the Douai version of 1824. One of them was a version published by Coyne in 1825 with controversial notes approved by Troy and Daniel Murray, and one of these glosses linked together Mahomet and Luther in prophecy.90 However much the Roman Catholic bishops did not want to get

106 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 caught up in the controversial excitement of the time, it was impossible for them to control the passionate interest which the priests, the parsons, and their respective flocks had begun to take in polemical theology. In almost every part of southern Ireland excited clerical and lay fellowships sprang up to support the rhetorical champions of each denomination as they sought victory in debate. The battle was almost completely one between the militant debaters of the Roman Catholic Church and the Established Church, because the supporters of the latter body felt they had no need for Nonconformist allies. What was really being debated was which of the two chief ecclesiastical bodies in Ireland had the authority to proclaim itself as the `true' church which alone could bring the fullness of the faith to the people. This problem of national mission was the concern of the only two bodies which claimed `catholicity' in Ireland. To decide the issue, both communions began to seek clerical orators of theological substance who could publicly debate questions of religious and ecclesiastical authority and by their `point-scoring' assure their adherents that theirs was the true church of Christ in Ireland. Unfortunately for the religious peace of the nation, both sides managed to find redoubtable champions to carry on the great debate. 3. Father Tom Maguire and the Rev. Tresham Gregg While Protestants like George Hamilton were doing their best to rally the faithful to defence of the reformed faith by criticising the superstitions of Roman Catholicism, the priests were doing their best to encourage their flocks to defend their faith. The Roman Catholic clergy may have been hesitant to give the Bible to the people, but they showed great interest in drawing their attention to William Cobbett's History of the Reformation (182427) which referred to `Bloody Queen Bess' and `Good Queen Mary' and spoke of the Protestant faith being `established by gibbets, racks and ripping-knives' 871 They also sought to find among themselves an able debater, and had the good fortune to find one who was a natural orator in the idiom of the people—the eloquent Father Tom Maguire. O'Connell and Sheil and other political figures had helped the cause by defending the Roman Catholic faith when they attended `Second Reformation' meetings, and local personalities like John Patrick Lyons had also ably defended their faith. In Tom Maguire, however, the Roman Catholic militants found a national champion able to meet the best of the Protestant divines and to defend his beliefs by natural debating and rhetorical skills. Maguire first came to the attention of the controversialists when

The Era of Religious Controversy 107 he came to Dublin from Co. Leitrim to give a series of Lenten lectures at the Franciscan Church. A rather unattractive man physically, he was a natural orator whose `eloquence had a flavour of the Leitrim bogs', its `rustic simplicity' adding charm to a `fervid flow and skilful reasoning'.92 His formal theological education was less than might have been hoped for, however, and he would never have been as successful as he was without the help given to him by Richard Coyne, the publisher. Coyne, who had an extensive and minute knowledge of old controversial books, advised Maguire from the time he began to preach controversial sermons. With this aid, Maguire built up a reputation for eloquence, wit and learning that won him the support of the people who directed the Roman Catholic controversial campaign. A great debate was arranged between Maguire and the renowned Protestant preacher, the Rev. Richard T. P. Pope, which was held in the Dublin Institute in Sackville Street during six days from 19 to 25 April 1827. The hours of debate were from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. Daniel O'Connell acted as one of the Catholic chairmen, and Admiral Oliver and John Dillon served for the Protestants. Great excitement attended the meeting : `The interest created was intense; the arena was crowded; the entire of Sackville Street blocked.'93 Richard Pope's address levelled criticism at the Roman Catholic concepts of transubstantiation, purgatory and infallibility; Maguire attacked the Protestant beliefs about justification by faith, the right of private judgment, and the Reformed Church's lack of concern for church unity. The general impression given by those who attended and wrote about the debate is that the laurels went to Maguire. Richard Coyne had discovered that Pope was using as a `crib' a 1713 study by a non-juring divine, Charles Leslie, entitled The Case Stated Between the Church of Rome and the Church of England.°4 Coyne presented Maguire with Robert Manning's Answer to Leslie's Case Stated, where a reply could be found to each of the points which Richard Pope might be expected to make. Coyne's support enabled Maguire to make a splendid exposition. The Protestants tried to dismiss his arguments as `worn-out misquotations from the Fathers', but they were `hailed by the Romanists little versed in scriptural investigations as unquestionable evidences of a triumphal cause'.B9 It was public knowledge that in honour of his victory Daniel O'Connell gave Maguire silver plate worth £1,000, and soon it was rumoured that this was not the only gift offered to the Leitrim orator. On 3 November 1827 the Dublin Evening Post reported that Maguire had said that he had been offered £1,000 out of hand and a living worth £800 a year if he would become a parson. This story

108 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 was repeated in the Morning Herald of 8 November. Power le Poer Trench, Archbishop of Tuam, was named as the person who had offered the bribes to Maguire. Trench denied the charge and initiated a lawsuit against Maguire, who said that he had only an oral offer from a clergyman who claimed he was acting for the archbishop. Maguire also insisted that he had been misquoted by the newspaper reporters.°ß In the Court of Common Pleas £50 damages were awarded to Archbishop Trench. One of the cynics of the time said the story could not possibly be true if Maguire passed up so much money, and quipped that it was hard to believe there was a Protestant `bishop in Ireland who would part with so much hard cash to parsonify all the priests in Connaught'.97 The vicissitudes of `sporting Father Maguire', as he was called by Samuel O'Sullivan, did not end with Archbishop Trench's lawsuit. Late in 1827 he was again in court defending himself against a Protestant innkeeper from Drumkeerin, Co. Leitrim, who claimed that Maguire had seduced his daughter and that she had become pregnant by him. The child was reportedly born dead while Maguire was carrying on his polemical activities in Dublin. O'Connell defended Maguire in this suit, in which costs of 6d were awarded against the defendant °8 The net result of all this notoriety was that Maguire emerged as `the most popular priest in Ireland' and, in Protestant eyes, the leader of 'a fierce and turbulent democracy'°° During the Repeal agitation he often spoke on behalf of the Liberator, and at the Castlebar meeting in 1843 he warned the oppressors of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Irish people that `If a war you will force on us ... there were three million of men in Ireland as well able to fight as any in the world.'100 The Protestant champion who most resembled Father Tom Maguire in his folk appeal was the colourful Rev. Tresham Dames Gregg, whom Gideon OuseIey described as `a very pious, ardent, good creature'.10Y This he undoubtedly was—though his opponents within his own communion, and in Roman Catholicism, were apt to pay most attention to his ardour. His enemies asserted that his father had been the jailer during the '98 who had served Robert Emmet his last breakfast.102 In fact, however, his father had been a Dublin gentleman, and Gregg attended Trinity College. After Trinity, Gregg went to England to labour among the poor in a Yorkshire working-class industrial parish.103 When he returned to Ireland it was to work as a chaplain at Swift's Alley Church, where he soon built up a reputation as a controversial preacher with an enthusiastic, Protestant working-class following. He was the founder of the Protestant Operatives' Association, which opposed

The Era of Religious Controversy 109 O'Connell's Repeal agitation, and his fame as a preacher was at its height in 1838. It was in that year that Tresham Gregg and the Rev. Edward Nangle, the Achill missionary, engaged Father Tom Maguire and his associate, Father Justin McNamara, Parish Priest of Kinsale, in a memorable marathon debate.104 When the two priests gave up the struggle after five days, `Thrash 'em' or `Trashy' Gregg was accepted as a Protestant working-class folk hero. The strength of his influence may be measured by the ridicule and vituperation heaped upon him by his Roman Catholic opponents. Gregg's next colourful exploit earned him a sojourn in the Dublin Bridewell. This clash with the Iaw further endeared him to the Protestant operatives but brought upon him the wrath of Archbishop Whately. He had been told by the brother and uncle of a Protestant young lady that she had been kidnapped and put into a nunnery on George's Hill in Dublin. He immediately went there to demand her release from the abbess. Unfortunately the young woman was a convert, a would-be novice nun who did not take kindly to Gregg when he begged her to leave the Popish Church because it was `the church of the devil'. Soon a crowd gathered, and when the people began to pelt Gregg with stones the constabulary was called, and he was put into the Bridewell for disturbing the peace. After a week's stay as punishment for the crime of abusing the bench, rather than for his slanging match with the abbess, Gregg was released to be greeted by a cheering Protestant mob.105 One result of such notoriety was that Archbishop Whately inhibited him from preaching within the Dublin diocese in 1842. Gregg's reply to this action was to call Whately the `Whig Archbishop of Dublin', claiming that he had been brought from Oxford, `that notorious hotbed of heresy, popery and folly and sent over to us in judgment for our sins'.108 Gregg's loyal supporters found a way around the inhibition, which might have kept Gregg totally out of Dublin ecclesiastical affairs, by appointing him as chaplain to St Mary's Chapel in the ruined church of St Nicholas Within. This was an old endowment for a chantry priest, which had been established in the reign of Edward IV in 1479. The chantry chapel had survived the Reformation, and it was still clearly identified physically when the church was rebuilt in 1707. As far as the law was concerned, the chantry still existed in 1835 when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners unroofed the church, which was then in ruins. Because all the emoluments of St Nicholas were in existence, churchmen were paid to conduct services in rooms in a small house near the ruins. An organist, an organ-blower, a clerk, a sexton— and the chantry priest, or chaplain, of St Mary's—lived off the

110 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 proceeds of the ancient endowments. As a result of this nominal parish and its chaplaincy being kept alive, one or two parishioners were ministered to, a weekly service was held, and a few orphan girls given education. This anachronism of the unreformed Church of Ireland became of intense interest to Whately when the churchwardens and people made use of their ancient right to elect a chantry chaplain in the person of the Rev. Tresham Gregg. Opposition to Gregg's appointment came immediately from the Roman Catholics, who said that legal election by householders of the parish must mean that they had a say in election also, and that their choice was a priest, Father W. Shannon. When the issue came to court, however, it was decided that the chantry was not there `for superstitious uses', and the chaplaincy was awarded to Gregg. His legal defence was expensive—Isaac Butt advised him about his rights—and Gregg applied unsuccessfully to the Primate either to have his court costs paid or for some other preferment to be given him.107 When no assistance came his way, Gregg developed a sense of grievance against the Protestant hierarchy. He was particularly offended when Archbishop Whately tried to put the medieval chantry under `interdict',10B and expressed his sorrow that his diocesan did not appreciate him : I think it a very happy circumstance that there is one clergyman in his grace's neighbourhood furnished with the opportunity and the will to tell him plain truth ... I have had the honour of meeting him in his own Palace, where I called on him a few times, but always received the most contumelious treatment at his hands. He has never asked me to sit down; never addressed me as one gentleman should another, but, on the contrary, treated me precisely as a grandee might his footman.1°9 Whately was to find that his resident chantry priest never ceased to be a thorn in the archbishop's flesh. Gregg had the kind of Evangelical earnestness that compelled him to write John Henry Newman to warn him solemnly that he was falling into the hands of Antichrist. As the years passed, this kind of fanaticism became increasingly more difficult for the imperious Whately to handle, and neither the archbishop nor anyone else could do anything legally about the ecclesiastical refuge which Gregg had been given in the parish of St Nicholas Within. Gregg lived until 1881, and even after Disestablishment he was able to cling to his position, while the Protestant hierarchy had to suffer his increasing eccentricity. During Gregg's long ministry he continually goaded not only Whately but the whole of the Established Church ministry to

The Era of Religious Controversy 111 cast off the religious indifference which was typical of the Church of Ireland. To Gregg the Church of Ireland was doomed unless it became a missionary body which would deliver the masses from the despotism and error of Rome : If Protestant ministers would be quiet—if they would hold their tongues—if they would let Popery alone—if they would act thus, by degrees, the spirit of indifferentism would seize their flocks, and the majority of them would either abandon Ireland or be drawn over to Popery.11° He said that `If the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland be the true church, it were for the general good that it should be established amongst us.'111 But it was clear that it was not a scriptural church, and the lesson of history was that wherever you had popery, as in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, France, Belgium or South America, there you had subversion and revolution. On the other hand, wherever the British constitution had influenced the development of civilisation, there you found truth, peace and justice. The way was clear for the people of Ireland. They had to choose the blessed civilisation which a gospel church and the British constitution could bring, or take the lesser way : `Popery is the religion of human nature.... The temptation to Popery is as great as the temptation to sin' : 112 The Protestant Irishman who is not moved by the contemplation of his countrymen degraded by fell superstition, and who is not thoroughly convinced that there can be nothing but misery for Ireland, until that superstition is rooted out of it, ought at once to turn Papist, for he has surely derived but little benefit from his present principles.113 The measure of Gregg's influence and the strength of his following is indicated in the continuing loyalty shown to him by his working-class Protestant followers, in spite of signs of increasing mental aberration as he grew older. He was granted the honour of a Trinity College DD degree in 1853, and when he preached two sermons at the time of the award, they were concerned with eschatological speculation that was difficult to follow.114 Gregg had been, at the height of his powers, a considerable Hebrew scholar and mathematician, but in his later years his interest in mystical and eschatological writings increased. By 1859 he was attempting to `apply exact science to the solution of metaphysical and moral problems', a kind of `divine calculus',115 viewing the human eye as

112 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 the soul of man, and working out a relationship between optics and morality.'" It says something about the irrational thinking which was encouraged by those Evangelical militants who found justification for their anti-popery crusade in biblical prophecy, that the unfortunate Tresham Gregg was solemnly listened to as he preached and lectured during his years of senility. He preached to large congregations at places like St Peter's, Hammersmith, and after a divine disclosure made to him on New Year's Eve 1866 that he was immortal, he preached not only in Ireland and in England but in Canada and America. Gregg was saddened when his revelation was rejected by most members of the Established Church, but he rejoiced in the knowledge that his new dispensation would be welcomed by the members of the pure Evangelical church which would appear with the end of `the abomination of desolation under the Antichrist'.117 In 1872 Gregg wrote a play about how Antichrist had used Mary, Queen of Scots, to further his dominion in the world, and solemnly dedicated it to the Emperor of Germany."" Apparently Gregg's reputation was such that he had no difficulty in finding Evangelical publishers for his material. Shortly before he died Gregg wrote a public letter to Pope Pius IX pointing out that, according to the `numbers of his name' and the mystical rendering of scriptural prophecy, he was the last pope of the age who would serve Antichrist.119 By this time Gregg was confusing his own personal situation, the siege of the Church of Ireland, and the continuing religious war with Rome : It is my very firm conviction that among the purposes of the Roman Catholic Home Rulers there is that of ousting me from my Chapelry, and of seizing its estates for Roman Catholic uses. Now, I tell these plotting antagonists, that this is an impossibility. Let them remember that the Disendowment Act of Mr Gladstone did not disendow or disestablish me.... I shall hold my estates with God's help, during my life, and God hath made that life through the fullness of the times immortal as he would have done for all the clergy had they been strong for Him and for the truth.12° It is, probably, his passionate belief in the supernatural or irrational in religious life, according to mystical interpretations of Holy Scripture, that makes the writing of someone like Tresham Dames Gregg almost totally incomprehensible to people who live in a different time. Yet it is an element that appears, to some degree, in almost all militant Evangelical nineteenth-century Protestant thought—the conviction that personal vicissitudes were to be cheer-

The Era of Religious Controversy 113 fully borne because one's lonely battle against the Antichrist who ruled from Rome was of cosmic significance. Justification came from within and was the very gift of heaven. What the fallen and enslaved world might label fanaticism was an exhibition of one's faithfulness in the army of the Lord. Such irrational religious thought was not uncommon in nineteenth-century Ireland. A respectable publishing firm like Murray's would not have published the strange writings of Gregg in his last days unless there was a market for them. 4. Protestant Champions: R. I. McGhee and Mortimer O''ullivan Less bizarre than the thought of Gregg were the shrill polemics of the Rev. Robert James McGhee, who was appointed in 1838 to be chaplain to Harold's Cross Church, the new chapel of ease for the parish of St Catherine. Born in Carlow, the son of a clergyman, he literally grew up on polemics. A `voluminous pamphleteer'121 and passionate preacher, he was not as colourful as Tresham Gregg, but his bombastic and sometimes hysterical attacks on the Church of Rome had a much wider influence than Gregg's strange writings. Whereas Gregg's focus of interest was almost entirely Irish, McGhee drew the attention of the Evangelical militants to the international danger of Ultramontanism. This was the constant theme of his preaching at Harold's Cross until 1846, when he left Ireland for a living in Huntingdonshire. The Protestant public first noticed McGhee when William Phelan foolishly commented on some of his extreme statements in favour of biblical Christianity and chastised him for both religious error and ecclesiastical impertinence : `in his representations, malicious— in his quotations, false—in arguments, despicable—in assertion, undaunted'. This was a tactical error on Phelan's part, for McGhee welcomed the notoriety that now was his, in spite of his work being dismissed as `feeble truculency' which revealed his `shallowness and perplexity of the understanding'.122 McGhee rejoiced even more proudly when Daniel O'ConneIl referred to Phelan's judgment at a later date.123 In their attempt to control the militant Evangelicals, the Protestant leaders had to learn the lesson that James Doyle had quickly learned—the best way to contain an Evangelical like McGhee was to ignore him. It was a hard lesson to learn, and when McGhee launched an attack on the Church Temporalities Act of 1834, calling on the Protestant clergy to decide whether they wanted the Bible or an act of parliament to be the standard according to which their church was to be governed, Edward Stopford, Archdeacon of Armagh, wrote a public letter to warn the parsons that McGhee, B

114 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 who `knew nothing' of affairs of church and state, wished to lead them into dissent and schism 124 Such a caution encouraged McGhee to further polemics. Even when McGhee spoke out in favour of what the majority of Protestants wanted, many flinched at the way he expressed himself. In one sermon at Harold's Cross in support of the Church Education Society he said that he `would rather see children going down to Hell in their bleeding ignorance than see them entering a National School'.128 He regaled his people with stories of superstition, and in one sermon he told of a custom of one priest during the 1831-32 cholera epidemic. This man had blessed a piece of turf which was to act as a religious charm or protection against the contagion. It was broken into pieces and brought by runners to seven houses, where it was broken once more for distribution to seven other houses. McGhee admitted during this address that both Dr Murray and Dr Doyle tried to get the people into fever hospitals during the epidemic, but the general import of his address was that the superstitions taught by the priests kept the people from medical help even as it kept them from the Bible : `Be well assured that any other refuge to which you turn for your sin is as great a superstition as to turn to the turf for the cholera.'120 Such provocative statements during the brief lull between the Catholic Emancipation crisis and the beginning of the tithe war were, generally, not welcomed by the hierarchies of either church or by the priests and parsons. McGhee finally found what was to become his major field of contention when he began to criticise the biblical teachings that were approved by the Irish Catholic hierarchy. The president of the Mechlin Roman Catholic seminary near Antwerp from 1735 to 1755 had been one Pierre Dens, who had published a massive fourteen-volume Theologia ad Usum Seminariorum et Sacrae Theologiae Alumnorum. Based on the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas, it became a popular work which was still being re-edited in the early years of the twentieth century.12' It contained a good deal of militant counter-reformation theology, and, according to McGhee, the Irish hierarchy in 1808 and 1810 had approved it as the best theological book available for Ireland. When McGhee propagated his accusations among the Protestants of England and Ireland he brought instant notoriety to himself. He pointed out that the eight-volume edition of Dens's Theologia used in Ireland contained the statement that `heretics and apostates generally' could be `compelled by corporal punishment to return to the Catholic faith, and the unity of the Church'.128 McGhee first got hold of several copies of Dens's multi-volume work in 1835. Then he discovered an edition of the Bible brought

The Era of Religious Controversy 115 out in Cork in 1818 by a publisher called McNamara which contained a commentary based on Dens. Finally, he said that he had uncovered `secret statutes of the Provincial Synod of the Bishops of Leinster' of 1831 which had given episcopal authority for the spread of the anti-Protestant arguments of Dens. Following these disclosures, meetings were held in Exeter Hall, the first in June 1835, and McGhee reported that `a greater and more universal interest never was excited in England by a single public meeting'.129 In the midst of this excitement James Henthorn Todd, a Fellow of Trinity College, mischievously sent McGhee what was purported to be a bull from Pope Gregory XVI. This missive urged Irish Roman Catholics to support the appointment to the leadership of the Established Church of men `who are zealous advocates for unbounded licence of opinions and words.... In no other way will you more speedily and effectively compass the destruction of the Anglican sect.'180 Poor Todd soon regretted his scholarly joke, for McGhee immediately rushed off to Exeter Hall with the bull, which was, of course, exposed as a forgery to the intense embarrassment of Todd as well as McGhee. When McGhee launched this attack the tithe war was raging. In these circumstances it was not to be expected that the Irish Catholics would keep quiet while McGhee was claiming that Dens's Theologia, with its counter-reformation concepts, had been `adopted by the Roman Catholic prelates of Ireland as the standard guide for the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland for twenty-seven years past (since 1808)'.181 The Freeman's Weekly of 27 June 1835 referred to the `new menagerie at Exeter Hall' and said that the hierarchical authority mentioned in the foreword to the Irish edition of Dens's Theologia was merely a `publisher's puff to get off his wares'. The paper vigorously denied that the Irish bishops had recommended the work to their clergy. However, the issue was raised in the House of Lords by the Bishop of Exeter, and Daniel Murray felt obliged to write to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, about the issue : I did not direct the work of Dens to be published; it was undertaken by a respectable bookseller, as a speculation in trade, entirely at his own risk, as a work which comprises a large mass of very valuable matter, though containing, too, some obsolete opinions, wholly unconnected with any article of Catholic faith, and which opinions it was known that hardly anyone, at the present day, would think of defending.182 The publisher referred to was Richard Coyne, publisher for Maynooth. He was the controversialist and antiquarian who had provided Father Tom Maguire with the substance of his polemics,

116 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 and he knew very well what he was up to in this present venture. The Protestants believed Coyne to be a mischief-maker, and they accused Murray of casuistry in his letter to Lord Melbourne. Not only did Murray know what Coyne was doing, he was also well aware that, since he himself was not a bishop in 1808, he could safely say : `I did not direct the work of Dens to be published.' Likewise, when Murray said that he personally did not recommend Dens's Theologia to be a textbook for provincial conferences, he did not say anything about the bishops together having done so.183 Protestants considered it a victory that Murray showed no inclination to accept the invitation to come to Exeter Hall to prove that his directory for the last five years was not based on Dens's Theologia. The Protestant extremists considered this furore to be justified inasmuch as they had forced Murray, O'Connell and the other Roman Catholic `conspirators' to come out into the open. They believed the Roman Catholic Church now stood exposed for what it really was—an institution of `despotism, perfidy and pollution' : She has rehearsed and recited her canons of intolerance; she has revived her principles of perfidy; she has acknowledged her abominable practices ... her malevolence, her faithlessness, her impurity has become visible.184 When McGhee left Ireland in 1846 to become Rector of Holywell-cum-Needingworth, Huntingdonshire, many people, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, heaved a sigh of relief. He continued his writing after his departure, but he never again had the influence that had been his during the tithe war era. That had been a time when many Protestants had been particularly anxious about both their temporal and spiritual position in Ireland. McGhee wrote other works about the Established Church being the true Catholic Church in Ireland,183 and he jumped into the `papal aggression' excitement with writings about the need `to uphold the stability of the throne, and the liberties of this great empire'.13° But his move to England had lost him the sympathy of many of his followers; his later writings began to repeat themselves, and in the postfamine period McGhee had little influence in Ireland. When an attempt is made to comprehend what McGhee was trying to accomplish, the answer appears in his later writings. It was to encourage Protestants to active mission work `to separate the priest from the people'.187 The parsons had to abandon the prevailing notion `that we do not want to proselytise the people'.188 Christian charity and scriptural commandment demanded that Protestants help the people whom the papacy was dragging `into the secret cell

The Era of Religious Controversy 117 of its inquisitorial authority',138 there to keep them in a state of `fearful ignorance, idolatry and superstition'.140 The real importance of McGhee is that, unlike most of the Protestant controversialists in pre-famine Ireland, who were content merely to defend the religious, ecclesiastical and cultural life of their `nation' in the face of the growing unrest of the non-ascendancy Irish people, he saw that the struggle could not be solely a defensive one. As the power of Roman Catholicism grew indigenously in Ireland, and was reinforced by the increasing power of Ultramontanism, the only hope for the Protestants was to go on the offensive—in a way that was even more militant than Archbishop Magee had once considered. R. J. McGhee was a precursor of those fanatically militant Evangelicals who were to be the cause of so much unrest in Ireland in the years following the famine. The most important of the Protestant controversialists of the prefamine period, and the most intelligent and interesting of them, was the Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan. Like his brother Samuel and William Phelan, he had been converted to Protestantism while he was at the Clonmel school of Dr Richard Carey. He attended Trinity College, was ordained, and held curacies in Tipperary, Dungannon, Waterford and Dublin before his final move north in 1827, when he was made Rector of Killyman, Co. Armagh. He was a wellmeaning man who was respected even by those who opposed him. Charles Gavan Duffy had no use for the `furious bigotry' of Samuel O'Sullivan, but he admitted that Mortimer was `a man of notable ability ... who rarely fell into the monotony of hysterics which distinguished his junior'. Although a convert to Protestantism, Mortimer O'Sullivan never lost contact with his family, and Duffy said that 'He was the first Protestant since Tone who not only sympathised with the wrongs of the Celts, but accepted and embraced the whole volume of their hopes and sympathies.'141 This sympathy is clearly displayed in his important work Captain Rock Detected (1824), an indictment of the Irish landlords. It is also obvious in the evidence he gave before the parliamentary committees on the state of Ireland in 1825. He told the parliamentarians that they had to recognise, as he did, that ideas of radical democracy were fermenting everywhere in Ireland : I am perfectly convinced that from the time of the rebellion in 1798, persons who were outlawed then, and who were sheltered by the poor in the remoter parts of the country, had infused into the minds of the people their own disaffected notions; and I am also aware that at various times, persons professing to be, or

118 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 really having been concerned in the rebellion of 1798, passed through the county of Tipperary and the county of Waterford, and I think, that by their means, the minds of the people were prepared for communicating a political character to any disturbances which arose. In the next place I think ... that the strong part which the Roman Catholic clergy took in keeping the people separated from the Protestants, and the decided part which they also took in accommodating themselves to the feelings of irritation, which the people cherished against the landlords, and against the clergy of the Church of England had considerable influence in communicating a religious character to the disturbances.142 He viewed the identification of the priests with the people as a sociological phenomenon for which no one was to blame. During the early years of the century, when the Roman Catholic gentry looked down on the priests, especially the ungenteel Maynooth graduates, he said of them : I would say that the priests, neglected by the wealthier classes, devoted themselves altogether to the lower orders, and to keep up their influence, availed themselves of the prejudices of their flocks, and fanned their resentments into a flame. I would say too, that alarmed at the progress of proselytising missionaries, and not, in general, competent to oppose their exertions by fair argument, they adopted the readier method of making all change in doctrine seem odious and destructive.1.a The answer to the alliance between priest and people, which O'Sullivan believed to be a dangerous combination, was to give the people education and make them familiar with comfort. Other palliatives like new political arrangements or union of the churches would do little to help the people in their misery : I am very far from believing that a union, if it were effected, would tranquillise the country.... The union of the churches would not lower the rents, nor wipe off the arrears, nor accustom the people to habits of comfort. It is from their miseries the danger of the country proceeds; they are impoverished and of course discontented. The sense of the oppressions and miseries with which they are overwhelmed is strong in them, therefore they are continually assailing the foundations of the government, and whenever they shift their weary side the whole island trembles. Relieve the people from their misery, let in one cheering hope upon them, and, in six months I would defy the Romish

The Era of Religious Controversy 119 clergy and the Catholic Association; —leave the people in their distress, and every measure of imperfect belief will be only making them more formidable enemies.144 When the commissioners asked him whether the Roman Catholic gentry could any longer control the people, he replied that he did not think so : `The people have felt their strength too much.'148 Now the priests could intimidate the gentry, not only theologically, through Ultramontanist ideas of exclusive salvation, but through their alliance with and leadership of the masses. Any tradesman who stood up to the priests faced economic ruin, and members of their class generally had `a dread of the effects which may follow from it being known by the lower orders that they are set in opposition to the priests'.14° O'Sullivan saw the priests as victims of the dreadful Irish social order as well as the instigators of disorder. He maintained that the wretchedness of the peasantry was such that disorder was bound to prevail, and that `There is a sort of prejudice taken up against the Roman Catholic priest if he engages himself on the side of order, and endeavours to mitigate the violence of the people.'147 He quoted the example of Dr Everard, the late Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel: He was very conciliatory in his manners and deportment towards Protestants, and I believe maintained a very general intercourse with them, and he was, from the time that he became archbishop, continually opposed by almost all the Roman Catholic clergy, and even after his death they manifested a kind of disrespect of his memory.148 As O'Sullivan saw the situation, the priests had very little power in allaying disorder, but they could excite disturbances if they chose, and he would have agreed with the succinct observation made by John O'Driscol just two years earlier : The priest has influence, almost without limits, when he falls in with the political bias of the people; when he opposes that bias, his influence is greatly diminished; and when the passions of the populace are roused, and in arms, from the memory of ancient wrongs, or recent oppression, his control is reduced to nothing. If his character be a good one, and he has been respected, he may turn away the crowd from a meditated outrage, or save a destined victim; this will be the extent of his ability.148 Until his removal to Killyman, Co. Armagh, in 1827 O'Sullivan was considered a mild controversialist, in spite of the fact that he

120 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 was a literate convert, was the brother of an ultra-Protestant, and always had a good deal to say about Roman Catholicism. What he had to say was not much different from what was said by liberal Roman Catholics, however, and it was generally believed that in spite of his religious eccentricities, Mortimer O'Sullivan was a supporter of the oppressed people of the majority `nation'. After he moved to the north of Ireland the hitherto fair-minded O'Sullivan became the man who could collaborate with R. J. McGhee in the provocative two-volume work entitled Romanism As It Rules in Ireland (1840). From that time he became known as a passionate antagonist of Ultramontane power in Ireland. In his evidence to the parliamentary committees on the state of Ireland Mortimer O'Sullivan indicated that he was concerned about the ultimate fate of the Protestants in Ireland. He had none of the blithe confidence of Archbishop William Magee. His belief was that the Protestants were steadily declining in numbers because of emigration and conversion through intermarriage with Roman Catholics. Emigration was common among them because they felt that land proprietors and agents favoured their Roman Catholic neighbours as a result of local intimidation by secret societies.'°° Direct intimidation also encouraged both emigration and conversion. This pressure against poor, rural Protestants was intense, and O'Sullivan recognised that this folk feeling was more than merely political or religious. It was cultural, if not tribal in expression in local communities, and O'Sullivan reacted to this subtle and continuing harassment- which made the great mass of lower-class Protestants realise that they were very much a minority in IreIandand a relatively unprotected one at that. O'Sullivan knew how the thinking of many Roman Catholic people differed so radically from that of the leaders of the Protestant religious and civil establishments when the question of agrarian `outrage' arose. In the case of murder, he said, `they call it a war and the act is crime no longer', and he feared that with at least some of the priests, even the law of God would be set aside `when it militated against the interests of the Church'.161 When intimidation and violence was increasing in the period after the Church Temporalities Act, O'Sullivan urged the Protestants of Ireland to form a protective union. In one meeting at the Dublin Mansion House, with the Lord Mayor in the chair, O'Sullivan said : If you prefer this graduated process of destruction—give up all care for your safety or possessions, and wait until the assassin or the spoiler pronounces that he is ready, and that your time is come; but if you think it better to oppose danger than lie down

The Era of Religious Controversy 121 before it—better to possess power, though evil tongues may speak ill of it, than propitiate the slanderers' silence and purchase truce of the murderer by division and imbecility ... leave not this place; —let no man depart without recording in his heart a resolution, that, by all honest means ... he will promote Protestant union)" By 1836 O'Sullivan was convinced that there was `a party in Ireland comprising a very large portion of the population, desirous to extirpate Protestantism; and to effect a separation of this country from England'.165 The only authority that could discourage this conspiracy was that of Protestantism, especially in Ulster, but the policies of the British government seemed `calculated to weaken, and if not counteracted, ultimately to destroy this power to which, humanly speaking, Ulster is indebted for its tranquillity'.154 Mortimer O'Sullivan by 1834 had become a passionate Orangeman, convinced that only the exercise of open Protestant power could save Ireland's minority `nation' from massacre, from a Roman Catholic establishment, and from Repeal of the Union.155 O'Sullivan's attitude towards Roman Catholicism changed because he recognised a new Ultramontanist spirit at work in Ireland. At the time he gave evidence to the parliamentary committees in 1825 O'Sullivan had been convinced that the Roman Catholics were largely Gallican in their outlook. He said of the pope's supremacy in Ireland that it was no longer widely recognised, that bishops were allowed to `express their private sentiments', and that in some instances the people supported the parish priest against the bishop. He also said that although the papacy detested Jansenism, which was close to Protestantism in some of its doctrines, Rome was forced to tolerate this way of thought in many parts of the Irish Roman Catholic Church.16B In the tithe war era O'Sullivan's fear of Roman Catholicism was still a domestic one. After the famine, however, he was convinced that the anti-Protestant conspiracy had taken on a new malevolence, as was shown by the arrival of Paul Cullen and the calling of the Synod of Thurles. These events represented Roman reinforcement of the Catholic power in Ireland. The popish church was to be feared even more now because of its new discipline and because of the `concessions and favouritism' which the papal power would wring out of the British government.15, From the famine until his death in 1859 O'Sullivan was as eager as R. J. McGhee to warn the Protestants of both England and Ireland of the dangerous Roman Catholic conspiracy which the papacy was now directing. O'Sullivan's development from a perceptive and apparently

122 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 eirenic convert parson of 1824-25 to the almost paranoic Ulster Orangeman of the post-famine years brings into focus the ideological changes which took place in the thinking of so many Irish Protestants in the first half of the nineteenth century. When Father Thomas O'Brien Costello, Parish Priest of Murroe, Co. Limerick, and friend of Bishop John Jebb, gave his evidence to the House of Commons committee in 1825 he admitted that he got along very well with his own parson. But in the next parish : The Protestant clergyman is in the habit of going through the streets of the village decrying the Roman Catholic religion... . He says they are infidels; he tells the people they will be damned if they do not follow the Scriptures and go to church; he has hired and bribed them to go to church by supporting them and giving them money, and many have gone so, during the dear months of the year in the summer season, but have returned to chapel as soon as the crops came in.165 This type of fanatical parson was rare in 1825,16° in spite of the declaration of religious war by Archbishop Magee and the encouragement given to Evangelical missions by Archbishop Power le Poer Trench and other militants. Most parsons then would have agreed with Father Costello, who told the parliamentary committees that he believed this kind of clergyman would, ultimately, lose `authority as a spiritual director'. They would also have agreed with the advice which Archbishop Whately was to give to the parsons of Ireland later—that this kind of hectoring was hardly the `best course for bringing men's minds into a fit state for the reception of truth'.1B0 They would also have suspected that William Phelan was right when he said that militant controversy `gave the priesthood a greater degree of power, by exciting a greater degree of fanaticism among the lower classes of people'.1°1 Unfortunately for religious peace in Ireland, the thought and actions of these Evangelical militants arose at a time of rapid political, economic and social change. They reinforced circumstances which were bringing about a new division of the Irish people into two warring nations after years of toleration and comparative peace in the early nineteenth century. Archbishop Magee did not realise what he was unleashing when he read his famous charge of 1822 or when he warned anxious Protestants that it was `the bounden duty of those who act up to the principle of the system of Romish supremacy to overthrow the Protestant power in every state'.162 The polemical warfare launched by the militant Protestant societies against the Catholic Association, O'Connell, MacHale and the priests was to be of great importance in the development of

The Era of Religious Controversy 123 Irish history. It was to revive and sustain that dreadful division in all ranks of Irish society which appeared as the two `nations' of Irish people were steadily estranged from each other by events over which they had little control.16"

CHAPTER IV

THE DIVISION OF THE PEOPLES Ireland is the singular country of Europe where the Conqueror and the Conquered have not incorporated and where for these eight hundred years there has existed and still exists two almost distinct races of inhabitants. GENERAL DAVID DUNDAS,

`Report on Ireland, March, 1802' (Public Record Office MSS, Reports 240, WO 55/1549(1)) Whatever was Irish was more or less Catholic, more or less Protestant. SIR THOMAS WYSE,

Historical Sketch of the Late Catholic Association (1829) Everything in Ireland was either Catholic or Protestant—newspapers, colleges, hospitals, banks, shops, professional advisers. The distinction was not applied to horses; but to almost everything else. T. DE VERE WHITE,

`The Freemasons' in T. Desmond Williams, ed., Secret Societies in Ireland (1973)

CHAPTER IV

THE DIVISION OF THE PEOPLES 1. Religion and the Two Nations in Pre-Famine Ireland When Archbishop Magee began his `Second Reformation' in Ireland, and it was promoted through the medium of controversy during the time of Catholic Emancipation, the tithe war, the Repeal agitation and the famine era, it might have seemed a harmless enough folk exercise to those who did not understand the radical division which existed in Irish society. To read the subject-matter of the long polemical works of the disputants is to realise that those who were excited by the controversies could scarcely have been caught up merely in their intellectual content. Even when allowance is made for the religious interest of the age, including toleration of lengthy sermons endured by pious people, the writings of men like R. J. McGhee are extremely boring. Why should any attention be paid to them? Were they of any importance in the development of Irish society? Their importance lies in the fact that although these exercises in religious controversy may seem intellectually unexciting and even sterile to modern scholars, they could greatly excite contemporaries. Men like O'Connell or O'Neill Daunt, as we have seen, did not dismiss them out of hand, since they were capable of passionately arousing the populace. The reason they stirred the people was that just as much as the political agitation for Emancipation or Repeal, they were recognised as operations in `cultural aggression' in a nation where two radically divided peoples experienced peace only when there was a comparative balance of power between them. What Father Tom Maguire said was not as important to most Catholics who listened to him as was the fact that he was learned enough to take part in a marathon debate with someone like Richard Pope and more than hold his own with him with both eloquence and wit. Maguire assured the majority people of the intellectual respectability of the faith they lived by. From 1822, when Magee made his declaration of religious war, the division

128 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 between the two peoples of Ireland was made clear, not only by marathon controversies but by a whole series of events, including the tithe war and the famine. These crises reinforced what the controversial exercises were showing on the intellectual level: that Ireland had two culturally divided peoples, whose radical differences were passionately revealed whenever circumstances or design disturbed whatever temporary and uneasy peace the two peoples had obtained. It would be difficult for anyone to ignore in pre-famine Ireland the existence of two cultures, Protestant and Catholic, whose peoples usually bred separately, worked separately, and supported different theologies. Each community found life meaningful according to the traditional symbols approved and supported by their people: One culture differs from another according to the constellation of myths that shapes its attention, its attitudes, and its practices. No culture perceives human experience in a universal direct way; each culture selects from the overwhelming experience of being human certain salient particulars. One culture differs from another in the meaning it attaches to various kinds of experience, in its image of the accomplished man, in the stories by which it structures its perceptions.1 Generally it was accepted that the people of the two cultures in Ireland had differing psychologies. That of the Protestant reflected a long traditional alliance with English ways of life, however Irish, and often anti-Westminster, it was in expression; that of the Catholic was associated with the life of the Celtic people from time immemorial. Whether there was scientific evidence to support such a belief or not, there is no doubt that it was commonly held in nineteenth-century Ireland. It was certainly believed in England that the Irish Protestant for all his vagaries was at least a rational, civilised being. Such faith could not be extended to the Irish Catholic. The English young of the privileged classes were acquainted with writers who assured them that the Irish Celt was a savage whose way of life was antithetical to that of the English people : Schoolboys and undergraduates learned what little they knew about Irish Celtic character from Macaulay, Kingsley, Freeman, Froude and Goldwin Smith, while their fathers and mothers read distorted articles about Ireland in the Times and perused the satirical pages of Punch or Judy.2 Many English people accustomed to such exaggerated portrayals of the Irish would not have considered extreme a description of

The Division of the Peoples 129 them made in 1839 which spoke of them as `bigoted savages, hardly more civilised than the natives of New Zealand ... our enemies, aliens as they are in blood, language and religion' .3 Thomas Wyse, the highly intelligent Catholic MP for Waterford, reckoned that psychological differences between the Irish and the English contributed much to their failure to understand one another: In Ireland everything is partial, everything is momentary, everything is impulse; there is no standard, or the standard changes every day.... The most that can be expected is a strong but transient sentiment, ruffling for a moment the surface, but then leaving the depths as dead and sluggish as before. The Irish mind, like the waters of the Mediterranean is easily roused and easily calmed, the English, like those of the Atlantic, requires something more than a passing gust of agitation to rouse it from the abyss wherein it had reposed' This belief in the `ephemeral and ever-changing passions of the multitude' in Ireland,6 was a firmly held conviction in the minds of English administrators. An excellent example of how pervasive it was is found in the evidence given by the Hon. Peter Robinson to the committees of parliament inquiring into the state of Ireland in 1824. Robinson, a philanthropist, had assisted a group of 568 emigrants to leave Co. Cork and to settle near Perth in Upper Canada in 1823. The commissioners were incredulous when Robinson gave his first report and claimed that no constables were needed to keep order during this Irish migration.° Robinson had left his protégés in November 1823, however, and the commissioners seemed almost gratified when they received later accounts from magistrates in Perth in May 1824 which described the settlers engaging in `outrage' resulting in several deaths and the subsequent use of regular troops to keep order.7 As we have seen earlier, the English not only took for granted that the Irish Catholics of the Repeal era were a passionate, easily aroused people, but they also recognised that the chief authority that seemed able to make use of their passions and influence them for other than their own good was the priesthood : When six millions and a half of people, inspired by religious enthusiasm, and many of them goaded by want, are taught by violent newspapers, by the sight of impassioned myriads, by enthusiastic hurrahs, by speeches almost seditious, by still fiercer address from the altars, and by anti-Protestant ballads circulating among them, that complete independence is the great political good, essential to their welfare, which their own courage must

130 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 achieve, everyone must see that the empire may be convulsed from its centre to its circumference by the passions which these doctrines may enkindle.8 When George Cruikshank illustrated W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 (1845) with pictures of brutish peasant Catholic pikemen impaling innocent Protestant women, English readers took for granted that the mind behind this peasant ferocity was that of the Roman priests : `crafty leaders sworn to drive the "vile Sassenach" from the land by terrorist methods'.9 The popular English view that the Irish Catholic had a peculiarly turbulent spirit was based on direct observation of the Irish in both England and Ireland. This view point was shared by many Europeans, including the Catholic hierarchy in Rome, and most conservative contemporaries had considerable sympathy for the British who had the task of bringing law and civilisation to the ragged masses of Ireland. In spite of their poverty, many of the Irish peasantry were politically mature, recognising the value of controlled agitation. Visitors were usually amazed by the association of extreme poverty, high intelligence, love of combination, and passionate longing for religious, social and political equality which they encountered among the people. One such observer, J. G. Kohl, who visited Ireland at the height of O'Connell's power, described the people who attended an ordinary Repeal meeting in 1843 : I do not mean to say anything offensive in making this remark, but simply state it as a fact that most of O'Connell's Repeal friends were arrayed in rags. On the following morning, to be sure, I found it stated in the several Dublin papers, that the meeting in question had been very respectably attended. The whole assembly on the contrary, bore an appearance such as could have been presented in France and Germany only after the lowest strata of society had been thrown to the surface by the agitation of a political hurriØe.10 Kohl was especially fascinated to watch O'Connell burst into tears as he delivered his speech. He was also interested to note the role in the O'Connell movement of the priests, who were `making an impression through their superstition upon the purses of those present'.11 The Irish Protestants had a less neurotic view of their Catholic neighbours because of long association, but like the English they recognised the excitable spirit of the majority people. The Protestants of the south were slow to forget the stories they had been told of the `fanatical fury against Protestants in general'32 which

The Division of the Peoples 131 had accompanied '98 in Wexford and the social intimidation many Protestants had experienced for years afterwards. Whiteboys, Threshers or Ribbonmen, or any of the other titles by which agrarian secret societies were known, meant one thing to the Protestant, whether he was a landlord or a common labourer—sectarian aggression. Any illegal association was almost sure to have an anti-Protestant bias, and there was always the fear that local disturbances could become a general threat to the peace and well-being of the minority people in the land. In the years following the Union there was a surface peace between the two peoples, but the lesson of '98 in Wexford was never forgotten in the Irish Protestant's folk memory: For a quarter of a century he had been growing accustomed to view his Catholic neighbours in a mellowing light. It appeared that the Catholic gentleman was becoming more liberal and the Catholic peasant more civilised. The happenings of 1798 gave this attitude a nasty jolt.13 O'Connell could say with some sincerity : `I would rather die upon the scaffold, and I say it with all the solemnity of truth— than consent to a Catholic ascendancy in Ireland,'14 but from the very earliest days of the Union such an eventuality was feared by most Protestants. They knew the Catholic Church to be a great imperium in imperio led by a clerical body which seemed to become more intolerant and arrogant year by year. The Catholic gentry were also ambitious, and the Protestants could see that the grinding poverty, swelling numbers and bitter resentments of the masses made them susceptible tools for crafty leaders, both clerical and lay. Gideon Ouseley, the Irish Methodist, expressed the view of most Protestants about the intentions of the priests when he said in 1812 : As to the RC clergy ... they are semper idem, always the same, ever at enmity with and opposed to everything.... They are uniformly intolerant and could they but have their will would be as bad as those in the darkness of Spain and Portugal, etc. They can never bear competition in religion.... They want an entire monopoly.... I would be happy at their full emancipation (for I love to do them good) but we dread the consequences.16 The Rt Hon. Denis Browne told the parliamentary commissioners of 1824-25 that a priest near his estate urged the people to be quiet and to control their passions so that their `leaders and their guides' would be able to lead them `to the recovery of those lands that were taken from you formerly by soldiers and marauders'.18 At the same time Lord Redesdale, who had for seven years been Lord

132 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 chancellor of Ireland, wrote to Lord Eldon in 1824 to say that Irish Protestants were trembling over a possible explosion in the land, and to express his conviction : That the separation of Ireland from England is the object of the Irish Roman Catholics I have no doubt. Without that separation they can neither make the Catholic religion the established religion of Ireland, nor give to the mere Irish the forfeited lands in Ireland." In 1828 an apologist for the anti-Catholic Brunswick Clubs said that they were necessary when `priests intimidate a government even when it is backed by a Protestant constitution'.18 There is no need to labour this fact of Protestant fear of the priest-controlled masses. The evidence is overwhelming that most Protestants, most of the time—and particularly at certain times, like 1825, the year of Pastorini's prophecies—were not only anxious, but actually fearful of a sudden storm directed against them by the priests and people under their influence.19 The psychological result of this fear was the tendency of the Protestants to withdraw from contact with the Catholic masses. James Godkin marvelled that, in spite of Protestant claims to the contrary, the ascendancy people had had so little cultural impact even in Leinster where they had been so strong for so long : I find the peasantry of the counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow as completely Irish in their manners and habits, and as thoroughly devoted to the Church of Rome as the people of Tipperary or Cork. The gentry, for the most part are Protestants; but the great dead walls which surround their demesnes and shut out the public view, do not more significantly mark their exclusive spirit and the separation between them and the frieze-coated farmers around them than the social and religious wall of separation between them and the mass of the population. It seems wonderful that during so many ages the ruling and wealthy classes did not succeed better in imparting their religion and manners to the people even within the pale, and on the very borders of the metropolis.20 The separation of the two peoples was profound. At all times the culturally besieged Protestants feared assimilation through intermarriage and sometimes feared annihilation through some kind of jacquerie. Economics, of course, played its part in the separation of the peoples, when the Protestants held much of the wealth and most of the important social positions. As the Quaker James Richardson said of social stratification in mid-nineteenth-century

The Division of the Peoples 133 Ireland: `A county gentleman of good estate was regarded and approached by lesser men with sincere awe, and as for a nobleman—he was a sort of demi-god.'21 Yet the gulf between the people cannot simply be explained in terms of economics or social class conflict—a clash between a peasantry and a rural ruling class who controlled the law to keep the people in a serf-like condition, as was still found in many parts of Europe in the early nineteenth century. The divide between the peoples came from their histories. Each of the peoples was convinced that their folk had a `manifest destiny', which the other threatened by its very existence. That of the majority people was the traditional one of Columba and Malachy, to save heretic and heathen by the values of Irish Catholicism and Celtic culture. It was accepted among them that `an Irishman remained a Catholic in so far as he continued to feel the burden of his history' : Patriotic religiosity though compounded of bad rhetoric and dubious history was the salvation of the Irish ... for it gave the priest and the parishioners a pride of race, a sense of mission and a place in the eternal providence of God.22 On the other hand the Protestants, whether aristocracy, landlords or peasants—and the latter did exist—viewed the majority, people as an alien folk who would never rest until they had overcome the injustices wrought upon them and overthrown the Church of Ireland and every other symbol of ascendancy. Even those liberal Protestants who recognised ascendancy history as the cause of the `penury, ignorance, superstition and violence' of the Catholics feared the results of that history goading `a good natured people into unnatural ferocity' 23 The Protestants had no choice but to develop a garrison mentality as the Catholics, led by the priests and the O'Connellites, responded to their new sense of political, religious, economic and cultural power. The social badge of Protestant withdrawal was a certain arrogance, a natural enough reaction perhaps on the part of a minority which had been allied for so long to English culture,24 but one that was bound to infuriate the Catholics : In passing, it is worth noticing that almost all Protestants when discussing the Catholic question display a clear if sometimes unconscious conviction of their own superiority. Theirs it was to give and patronize, theirs to discuss how the Catholic ought to be educated, theirs to judge what the Catholic was fit to receive and when it should be granted.... The superiority, the Protestant was convinced was based not on mere legal or even economic and

134 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 social grounds, but was the moral superiority inherent in men who held the soundest possible theological and philosophical principles.25 This assumption of cultural superiority, one that reflected right principle both divine and natural, was greatly resented by the majority people, yet in a paradoxical way it was also accepted by them as one of the distinctions between the two nations. Father Michael Collins, the Parish Priest of Skibbereen, told the parliamentary commissioners of 1825 that nothing irritated the Catholic countryman more than the `insolence' of the Protestant peasant.28 Yet the Rt Hon. Denis Browne said to the same commissioners that in his area of Mayo and Galway the Protestants were addressed as `Mister' even if they were peasants `as a mark of distance, and a mark of difference'.27 In many areas it was not only expected but demanded that the Protestants be morally upright in a way that their Catholic neighbours were not.28 Whether they were or were not morally superior, the Protestants were resented for cultural distinctiveness. John O'Driscol said that although most Catholics of the lower orders had no idea what Catholic Emancipation was all about, they were willing to do anything to diminish what they perceived as a Protestant assumption of `ascendancy'.20 The result of tension over this issue of `ascendancy' was a continual strain between the peoples whenever they met. Gustave de Beaumont commented on this in 1839 : Nothing is more rare than to find with the Irish Catholic a just appreciation of his actual condition; in his intercourse with Protestants you will find him take his ground too high or too low; either, forgetting his emancipation he offers himself in an humble and obsequious attitude to his former master, or intoxicated by the victory over his oppressors he is not contented to be their equal, but wishes to prove himself free by oppressing them in his turn.80 Even the usually imperturbable James Doyle displayed a degree of hidden rancour when he said the Established Church was looked upon as `more a political than a religious establishment ... not as the spouse of the Redeemer, but as the handmaid of the Ascendancy'.31 Michael Collins, the Skibbereen priest, said that even if a Catholic gentleman was granted a Commission of the Peace, he was very unsure of himself socially : `He does not rely upon his tenure as confidently as a Protestant of the same rank does.'a2 The fact that according to law the graveyards belonged to the Established Church and the priest could attend a funeral only with the

The Division of the Peoples 135 express permission of the Protestant Minister irked many Catholic clergy.33 Because of these social tensions and the psychological complexes they produced, it was very rare for the clergy of the churches to work together even in the service of charitable institutions."4 The psychological divide between the two peoples gradually increased throughout the period between the Act of Union and Disestablishment because a series of events occurred which threatened to upset the uneasy cultural balance which existed in the land. One factor was the great increase in the Irish population among the Catholics. It has been argued that the density of population in Ireland in the 1820s was greater than in any other European country.$' Not only were the Catholics increasing in numbers, but because of the easing of the penal laws, the hoped-for advantages of Emancipation after 1829, and the introduction of a national system of education in 1831, there was a steady rise in Catholic social, political and economic expectations.S" As the Catholics prospered, particularly in trade, there came a renewed pride in Celtic culture, one of the signs of which was the reappearance of surnames with the prefixes `O' and `Mac'."' As the Celtic/Catholic people resurrected many of their `old traditions, habits, prejudices and tendencies',38 so did they separate themselves further from their Sassenach/Protestant neighbours. An indication of how complex was the religious and cultural separation of the people was given by Father Michael Collins, who said that the commonly used word Sassenach `has departed from its original meaning of English to Protestant.... There is no Irish term for Protestant.... Erinech (Irishman) is the term for Catholic.'8° For a complexity of motives—religious, psychological, social and political—the priests played a leading part in the separation of the peoples. They were part of a tradition which expected them to be allied with the lower classes and to be guardians of the native culturel° However, their identification with the people varied from time to time. During the Whiteboy outbreak of 1785-86, for example, the priests generally `suffered very much in the estimation of the people.... Their credit was shaken to its very foundation.'41 At other times, a too close social identification with the people also led to a loss of respect, and James Doyle forbade his diocesan priests from attending station dinners 42 But those who were trained at Maynooth and returned to their native parishes were almost always very close to the people, and during the Emancipation and Repeal eras this closeness gave them an aggressive self-confidence. When the people were at war with the Sassenach, then the priest became their natural local leader. He represented Catholicism, and

136 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 his life among them was part of the warp and woof of their imagination and their identity, as it had always been during the centuries the English invaders had been resisted.48 They have traditions and tales about the massacre and execution of priests, the priest-hunters, and the difficulty they had heretofore in hearing mass; they were obliged to resort to bogs and morasses for that purpose. They also have recollections of the liberty, and what they conceive the privileges they enjoyed formerly, compared with their present degraded state." As we have seen, the priests soon found that to maintain authority among the people they could never let natural leadership pass to others as it had threatened to do in the Whiteboy era, or had, to some degree, during the years of religious peace in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. For this reason they avoided going against the mainstream of national development. Their intention, at least during the Emancipation and Repeal periods, was to go with the people, giving them the leadership they needed. Protestants, of course, were not slow to recognise this stratagem : `A more wicked artifice was never resorted to to rivet the chains of ignorance; but it is one which has been practised effectually on a larger scale over the whole face of this unfortunate island.'46 Once the priests decided to go with the O'Connellite movements, their immediate tactic was to try to oust the minority of liberal Protestants who supported the Liberator. During the provincial meetings in Connaught in 1828 the priests persuaded Catholics not to invite Protestants as guests to their meetings. This action hastened the end of liberal Protestant support for O'Connell, which had been dwindling since 1825.'° By the end of 1828 Emancipation had become an almost completely Catholic movement, and Father Coffey of Ennis, who refused to campaign for a popular candidate, was dismissed by the public as a `Protestant priest':" When anti-Catholic Brunswick Clubs were formed many people of both nations welcomed such a clear-cut accommodation to the Catholic Emancipation crisis : The Catholic Association grew out of the passions, the wrongs, the wishes of the vast majority of the people; the Brunswick Club was a new mode of expression of old opinions : the last effort of an oligarchical knot, anxious to retain the hereditary exclusive system of privilege and monopoly, by giving to government and the English nation the false appearance of a determined armed resistance, in case it should presume to interfere with its enjoyment. They were besieged, and the Catholics the besiegers; they were the minority, the Catholics the majority 48

The Division of the Peoples 137 On the whole the priests kept out of the political arena during the period 1830-41 as they responded to the hierarchical instructions of 1830 and 1834 about the dangers of `the priest in politics'. When the Repeal movement began to gain strength the priests' excuse for joining it was that if the people sought their freedom without `moral direction', they might turn from legal and constitutional methods to those of revolution. Again it became unspoken policy to keep Protestants out of the Repeal movement, and this became a serious issue by the time of Young Ireland. The Protestant Repeal Association led by Samuel Ferguson failed to win support from either the Protestant people who distrusted the Catholic masses, or from those Catholics who wanted the Repeal movement to be sectarian in expression. The issue of Protestant support for Repeal came to a crisis when Thomas Davis and his friends accused O'Connell of trying to keep all Protestants from positions of influence in the movement. As far as Davis was concerned, if Repeal was a sectarian movement, its ultimate aim would be the establishment of a Catholic ascendancy. The idealists from Trinity College wanted to have Catholic and Protestant, Milesian and Cromwellian Irish unite in a kind of nationalism like that of the liberal radicalism of Wolfe Tone. Davis had little use for the `lying, ignorant and lazy clan who surrounded O'Connell', nor for MacHale and his political priests who clearly took for granted that the Repeal Association was in practice a Catholic organisation.4° Soon O'Connell's followers were suggesting that The Nation was teaching anti-Catholic doctrines and that the faith was threatened by those who talked of a nationalism indifferent to religious issues or ecclesiastical differences. The final split between O'Connell and Davis came over the issue of undenominational education of Catholics and Protestants in 1845. The Queen's Colleges were denounced as a huge scheme of `godless education', dangerous to Catholic faith and morals, and O'Connell's rhetoric indicated the religious and cultural division among the reformers : `Young Ireland may play what pranks they please. I do not envy them the name they rejoice in. I shall stand by Old Ireland; and I have some slight notion that Old Ireland will stand by me.'6° The weakness of Young Ireland's secular ideology, with its desire to transcend religious differences, was that it did not fit in with the traditional development of Catholic consciousness. The priests' version of Irish history tended to be based on works such as Cobbett's History of the Reformation, and they loved to point to Protestant dukes, earls and bishops who enjoyed princely revenues from the alienated estates of the Church. These were combined with tales of martyred bishops, hunted priests, and all the atrocities

138 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 inflicted upon Catholics during the penal times.61 Irish folk villains were generally Protestants. Father Michael Collins said that in the Skibbereen area they still frequently talked of Queen Elizabeth's armies in Ireland, of Mountjoy and the massacres of the time. They knew the background of every local Protestant, `even the individuals that are descended from the soldiers of Cromwell' 52 Tales of '98 encouraged by the priests recorded the burning of Catholic chapels, with little or no mention of Protestant sufferings53 Both Daniel O'Connell and Thomas Wyse were bad landlords by any standard; the land agents of the former were hated in Kerry, and the latter was so resented that evicted peasants burned his corn in revenge." Yet no record of oppression by these Catholics, who were on the side of the angels as far as the nationalists were concerned, was maintained in Catholic folk memory. The failings of Protestant landlords, on the other hand, were never forgotten. The agrarian secret societies, in particular, kept alive an oral tradition of Protestant oppression : `The marked element of sectarianism which appeared in many Ribbon oaths and documents gave the impression that it was primarily a religious movement of Catholics against Protestants.'b5 An example of Protestant villainy in the Catholic tradition was provided by the Hon. Archdeacon Charles le Poer Trench, brother of the kindly Archbishop of Tuam, Power le Poer Trench. Archdeacon Trench served the Church of Ireland in the AthenryBallinasloe area, where his social connections combined with his ecclesiastical station made him an important figure. He was well enough liked by the Parish Priest of Topmaconnell that he was once asked to address the people in the chapel on the Whiteboy dangers. He also used social connections in Rome to intervene in the election for Catholic Bishop of Clonfert by trying to help one of the nominees, Father Garrett Larkin, Parish Priest of Creagh5° On the other hand, he clearly opposed Catholicism in Connaught. He told the parliamentary commissioners of 1825 that in his area the priests were rapidly losing their authority among the people : `Wherever there is a good landlord, and a good Protestant clergyman, the influence of the Romish priest will diminish.'67 He spoke up against tactics such as the use of a priest's agent with a thonged whip to drive the people to vote.68 He also carried on a vendetta with a local priest who had cursed from the altar parents who allowed their children to attend the archdeacon's school.6° Among his other accomplishments he taught himself to preach in Irish. In Catholic tradition the archdeacon was labelled a `noble and venerable brute', and a scurrilous tale was told about him by

The Division of the Peoples 139 propagandists like Eneas McDonnell and Richard Lalor Sheil. Trench had served as an adjutant of the Galway Militia in his early years, before his ordination and before his Evangelical conversion. According to the story told by his Catholic enemies, a woman named Winifred Hynes, whose husband was a soldier, had stolen a brass candlestick. When apprehended, Adjutant Trench ordered her to be publicly flogged with fifty lashes, with her husband forced to look on. Trench was said to have personally ordered the clothes to be torn off her back. This brutal side to his personality was said never to have disappeared even after ordination, and the Archdeacon was accused of using a cat-o'-nine-tails on malefactors on the streets of Galway. A passing reference or two was also made to his amours.80 There may be some truth in the Catholic tale. D'Arcy Sirr tells us that Archbishop Trench refused to ordain his brother because he did not think the clerical profession was the one for which he was best suited, and he was finally ordained by the Bishop of Sodor and Man. On the other hand, it is very difficult to prove or disprove stories of this nature, which were usually based on half-truths at the best. During the Emancipation and Repeal eras few Catholics had anything good to say about the Trench, Beresford, Jocelyn or other great Protestant landed families. It was acceptable political practice of the time to propagate scandalous tales and to add to them wherever necessary. Probably the archdeacon had a short temper, but to turn him into an ordained psychopath is almost certainly an exaggeration. The parliamentary commissioners of 1825 evidently treated him with considerable respect, and Catholic bishops dined with him regularly; but in Catholic folk memory he is generally uncharitably remembered.6' Bigotry of this nature was not confined to Catholics. A fact that is often overlooked when discussing someone like Archdeacon Trench is that he came from a Huguenot family and had, like Irish Catholics, been raised on tales of the religious and political persecution of his people. The Trench family, originally de la Tranche, had fled to Northumberland after the St Bartholomew's Eve massacre, and then had made their way to Ireland. Many of the Protestant leaders of the nineteenth-century Church of Ireland were of Huguenot extraction, names like La Touche, Saurin, Lefroy, Fleury, Maturin and Perrin being easily identifiable. Others had their names anglicised or had their ancestry hidden through names assumed on marriage. These Irish Huguenots were raised on tales of oppression as recent and at least as violent as any remembered by the Catholics from the penal times :

140 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Down to the middle of the last century the persecution of the Protestants continued unabated. Thus, at Grenoble, in the years 1745 and 1746, more than three hundred persons were condemned to death, the galleys or perpetual imprisonment because of their religion.... Between the years 1750 and 1762 fifty-eight persons were condemned to the galleys, many of them for life. In the latter year more than six hundred fled across the frontier into Switzerland, passed down the Rhine, through Holland and England into Ireland where they settled.02 It is sometimes forgotten that in the Huguenot church in Portarlington the old French Protestant service was used as late as 1817°a and St Mary's Chapel in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, was set aside specially for Huguenot use. Irish Protestants did not need to be of Huguenot origin, however, when it came to the question of fearing persecution at the hands of the Catholics. Any act of agrarian outrage in the strife-torn countryside was apt to be interpreted as part of a great antiascendancy strategy to `overthrow the British government in Ireland, to subvert the Protestant religion, to recover the forfeited estates and, when strong enough, to establish an independent monarchy in Ireland under a Roman Catholic king'.84 The clergy especially were indoctrinated with fear of Catholics who were jealous of Protestant ascendancy : The Irish beneficed clergyman has almost always been educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and has there been indoctrinated with those high Protestant principles with which he has before been inoculated. He is, of course, the son of an Irish Protestant gentleman, and has therefore sucked them in with his mother's milk. He goes before his Protestant bishop and takes his orders with a corps of other young men exactly similarly circumstanced. And thus he has never had given to him an opportunity of rubbing his own ideas against those of men who have been educated with different proclivities. He has never lived at college either with Roman Catholics or with Presbyterians, or with Protestants of a sort different from his sort. In his cradle, at his father's table, at school, at the university, in all the lessons that he has learned, in all the games he has played, in his converse with his sisters, in his first soft, faint whisperings with his sister's friends, in his loud unreserved talkings with his closest companions, the same two ideas, cheek by jowl, have ever been present to him—the state ascendancy of his own church, and the numerical superiority of another church antagonistic to his own.86

The Division of the Peoples 141 If the sectarianism which characterised Trinity College Protestants was not a reasoned response, even Iess rationality lay behind the deep suspicion with which ordinary Catholics and Protestants viewed each other. As early as 1809, when the religious situation was as peaceful as could be hoped for, Thomas Newenham said of this division between the peoples : Probably not one in ten thousand of the Roman Catholics and Protestants has taken the trouble to examine maturely, and compare the different arguments which have been used in support of, and in opposition to their respective tenets : and that not one in twenty of them knows precisely what constitutes the difference of their religions. So that, in fact, enmity of a vast majority of each religion is not even the issue of dispute; but merely a traditionary emotion operating with inconsiderate people.88 John O'Driscol said in 1823 that there existed between Catholics and Protestants in the countryside `a community of necessity, and sometimes of courtesy'. But this surface agreement lacked real cordiality: `Seeming friends and neighbours could in a moment take their places in opposite hosts, and join in deadly combat.'" Thomas Wyse believed the enmity to be a `deadly and inextinguishable feud ... burning with mutual detestation—heated by remembrance of centuries of injury'.88 The suspicion and tensions between the two peoples were never far beneath the surface. When it came to professional appointments in Dublin, people took for granted that religious affiliation would be reckoned with when the position was filled : During the first half of the nineteenth century in a vast number of instances when an appointment or a promotion took 'place, if theological considerations were not decisive, at least the denominational affiliations of the appointee were known and were often the cause of angry comment.88 Among the people of Dublin a running war was fought over the famous equestrian statue of King William in College Green. It had been unveiled in 1701 and was honoured regularly by Protestants on 4 November, which commemorated William's birthday, and on 1 July and 12 July, which recalled the victories at the Boyne and Aughrim. Just as regularly the statue was defaced and daubed with filth by Jacobites and other Catholics, and sometimes by Trinity College undergraduates. In March 1836 alone there were three attempts to blow up the statue. When Daniel O'Connell was Lord Mayor in 1842 he had the brass statue given a coat of bronze paint as a `conciliatory gesture'. It continued to be the scene of various

142 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 kinds of outrage, however, until it was finally blown up in 1929.7° Some modern scholars are beginning to realise why the people fought on sectarian grounds. It was not because of the doctrinal differences which the religious controversialists loved to discuss. Thomas Newenham was right when he perceived that such issues mattered little to most people, and probably those who attended the protracted controversial exercises of Tresham Gregg or Tom Maguire cared little for the subtlety of theological argument put forth by their champion. Religion in Ireland was much more important than good theology to people—it had to do with identity. Your religion determined how you chose to breed, work and live, culturally separated from your fellow-Irishman. As a Catholic historian of the present day has said about the faith of the majority people in Ireland : It is a set of values, a culture, a historical tradition, a view on the world, a disposition of mind and heart, a loyalty, an emotion, a psychology—and a nationalism. 71 Most Irish Protestants would agree that this definition of `faith' could apply to their system of beliefs also. Some historians might protest that this radical psychological separation of the peoples, which amounted to a kind of `apartheid', only appeared after Disestablishment when the Protestants tended to withdraw from national affairs and engage in a kind of ghetto existence. Before that, it might be said, the major difference between the two peoples was one of class and economic opportunity. But the evidence of contemporaries scarcely bears this out. The class composition of the two peoples changed rapidly at certain times and places, as in Connaught after the famine, but the psychological separation tended to remain constant. J. G. Kohl noted in 1843: `Many towns in Ireland have separate inns for Catholics and Protestants; nay, I was even assured there were Protestant and Catholic cars and stage coaches.'72 In every part of the country those who lived in their own separate cultural world were intensely critical of every aspect of life as it was lived in the other. James Richardson in his reminiscences of Quaker life in the north of Ireland told the delightful story of one controversial meeting where priest and parson were considering the weighty theological problem of biblical exegesis. The parson held the floor for an inconsiderate period of time during which he many times referred to the authority of Paul. This eventually goaded his impatient clerical opponent to break his hitherto temperate control of his feelings with the exclamation : `Shure if ye can't bring yourself to say "Saint" say "Misther'. "7g

The Division of the Peoples 143 2. The Problem of Conversion On the level of the family and the parish, which was the area of concern of most immediate interest to everyone in Ireland, nothing represented a shift in the uneasy balance of power between the two peoples as much as did conversions from one faith to the other. When this occurred a community literally experienced psychological trauma—for the whole problem of cultural identity was brought into question. Usually conversions were rare and took place through marriage. As we have seen, a common accommodation in the nineteenth century, when neither partner of a mixed marriage converted, was for the male children to be raised in their father's faith and the girls in their mother's. This custom probably reflected an unconscious folk strategem to avoid any great social change. In the early years of the century such marriages were in theory illegal. When Father Michael Collins was asked in 1824 what punishment he was liable to if he married a Catholic to a Protestant he replied : `The law is rather strange; there are two punishments, first, we are liable to be hanged, and then to a fine of £500.'" Although the government was unlikely to enact old penal legislation to control mixed marriages, it generally frowned upon any kind of change of religious allegiance. During the last years of the eighteenth century, in the Whiteboy era, there had been a considerable increase in conversions to Protestantism," and this phenomenon resulted in the Catholic hierarchy and the government trying to control a practice which caused social unrest : Very few of the responsible leaders of government in England or Ireland regarded estrangement of the peasantry from their priests as a desirable circumstance, and after 1786 the relationship between some members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy and the Irish government became very close." Neither did the parsons show much enthusiasm for unexpected enlargements of their congregations : `They fully co-operated with magistrates and with missionary efforts by priests to return the people to their chapels.'77 In one case a priest in the Cork area sought refuge in the parsonage when the wrath of the people increased against his exaction of dues and more and more of them tried to convert to Protestantism in an `extraordinary marriage of the paddereen and the Common Prayer Book'.78 Some critics called this large-scale movement the `death warrant of bigotry and fanaticism in the kingdom'," but the authorities generally feared what its long-range results might be. The sectarian violence of '98 put an effective end to this conversion mania on the part of some Catholics, but until the late

144 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 1820s, and in some places even later, as we will see, a quarrel between priest and people or priest and bishop could lead to a mass conversion to the Established Church. When Archbishop Oliver Kelly of Tuam appointed an unpopular priest to Athenry in 1829 the chapel was barricaded against him and crowds went to the parish church. Peace was only restored to the Catholic community when the Protestant landlord forced the chapel to be opened to the unwanted cleric.80 Some conversions were so startling that they were of more than local concern. When John Butler, who had been Bishop of Cork for twenty-three years, inherited the title and estates of Lord Dunboyne in 1786 he applied to Rome for dispensation to resign his bishopric, his orders and to marry. When this proved impossible he left the Catholic Church, married a young relative, became Lord Dunboyne and conformed to the Established Church 81 Walter Blake Kirwan, a leading Catholic intellectual of the late eighteenth century, and nephew of the titular Archbishop of Armagh, converted to the Church of Ireland in 1787 and ended his days as Dean of Killala, revered as one of the greatest preachers in Irish ecclesiastical history.82 Thomas Lewis O'Beirne studied for the priesthood in France, met the Duke of Portland, went to Canada with him, then accompanied the duke when he came to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant in 1782. Along the way O'Beirne converted to the Church of Ireland, was ordained, and became successively Protestant Bishop of Ossory and of Meath. As a diocesan he was learned and able, with several publications to his credit.88 Almost any priest who conformed to the Church of Ireland caused a stir among both the Catholics and the Protestants who knew of his change of allegiance. One apostate priest who gave evidence to the parliamentary commissioners of 1825, the Rev. T. W. Dixon, had tried to serve as a parson in the area of North Mayo where he had once been a Catholic curate, but local resentment was such that he had to resign his position.84 In some areas Protestants were forced to organise Priests' Protection Societies to help convert clerics find a new way of life.86 Many of the converts went to elaborate lengths to justify their renunciation of Catholic orders, and usually they had a difficult time adjusting to their new life.88 Generally their presence in the Church of Ireland was not welcomed, especially if it caused any degree of social resentment among the Catholics. Occasionally a convert priest was sufficiently articulate for his apologia for conversion to catch public attention and significantly increase the tension between the two peoples in Ireland. One such man was David Croly, who took seriously Bishop James Doyle's

The Division of the Peoples 145 suggestion in 1824 that there should be union between the Catholic Church and the Established Church in Ireland. He thought over Doyle's advice while he was Parish Priest of Ringrone in Co. Cork during the period when the country was becoming increasingly agitated by Emancipation and then by the Repeal movement. Croly did not approve of a local `fiery patriot and anti-tithe agitator' wanting to make use of his chapel for political purposes, but when he refused permission to this man he was opposed by his curates and by many of his congregation. When he appealed to John Murphy, Catholic Bishop of Cork, he was told that he had brought all the trouble on himself by his `backwardness in the collection of the Catholic rent' and his reluctance to support O'Connell.87 After some years of such tension at Ringrone he was moved to the parish of Ovens. There his troubles began again when he was given a curate who was `a violent anti-tithe agitator and bigot and extremely ignorant withal'.88 When he again protested to his bishop, John Murphy took the part of the curate, allowing him to `exercise an independent jurisdiction' in the parish. Croly then resigned, but when some of the more `respectable parishioners' took his side, the bishop let him remain and appointed a new curate who agreed not to take part in the O'Connell agitation. Bishop Murphy still resented Croly, however, and soon he complained that Croly allowed poor children to attend the parish school of the parson, the Rev. William Harvey. Croly protested that no religion whatsoever was taught at the school and that he had Catholic children taken from it for catechising. The bishop would have been wise to leave Croly alone, for he was an able, intelligent man, who soon began to write about episcopal harassment. During the next three years Croly's pamphlets caused a great deal of embarrassment to Bishop Murphy because his revelations of life in a Munster diocese under an O'Connellite bishop caught public attention in both England and Ireland. His pamphlets were noted in The Times, the Evening Mail, The Standard, the Morning Chronicle, The Globe, the Scottish Guardian, the Liverpool Standard and the Londonderry Sentinel and caused an extraordinary sensation throughout the south of Ireland. Croly's first piece was entitled Address to the Lower Orders of the Roman Catholics of Ireland and was published in Cork in 1834. In it he praised the ecumenical opinions of Bishop Doyle, that `very learned man' who had argued that the differences between the two religions was `very trifling'. To this pamphlet he attached Doyle's 1824 letter on union of the churches, with its suggestion that this was possible because `the Pope is powerless and anxious to conciliate; the Irish Catholics wearied and fatigued are exceedingly F

146 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 desirous of repose'.8D In the same year Croly published his startling Essay ... on Ecclesiastical Finance as Regards the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. In it he assured his readers that many priests opposed O'Connell's movement : `All the priests are not of this description; ... a division exists among them on the subject... . The most forward in the extraordinary business have been the young and inexperienced. . . . It is altogether a novelty and directly opposed to the example of former times.'°° He fascinated many Protestants by revealing the means used to obtain the priest's income, especially the moral intimidation which attended the collection of dues : Persons part with their money through a terror of public exposure and the superstitious fear of sacerdotal hostility. Church dues are sanctioned by custom, and exacted by an authority as powerful— perhaps more powerful—than that of the law of the land. He also wrote about the social aspirations of the priesthood and pointed out that dues were then nearly double what they had been thirty years ago, so that `Strange as it may appear, amid the decay of trade and commerce, agriculture and manufacture, the revenues of the Irish Catholic Church are in a constant, steady, progressive state of improvement'91 Croly admitted that not all priests were avaricious and that the mode of collection depended largely on `the temper and disposition of the clergyman'. He believed it was the newly ordained who were the most likely to engage in `capricious and extraordinary exactions': The priest and his flock are continually coming into hostile collision on pecuniary matters—the former endeavours to enforce his demands by the dint of terror; the latter paying with the utmost reluctance and quite ripe for shaking off the expensive yoke of clerical authority.92 The people were resentful when their parish priest lived on the level of the country squire, `keeps sporting dogs, controls elections, presides at political clubs, and sits "cheek by jowl" at public dinners and public assemblies with Peers of the land and Members of Parliament'.°S Bishop Murphy was naturally furious over Croly's stories of `disagreeable and scandalous altercations' when the people were unable to pay dues at `stations of confession' and were threatened with `public abuse and exposure'. Equally disturbing to him were Croly's unfortunate stories of marriages broken off because the young couple could not afford the sacrament. This, said Croly, was the sin of simony, the sale of a sacrament for money. He also said

The Division of the Peoples 147 that the priests tried to avoid reading banns, because if they did so, the money for marriage went to the bishop. Because of this, many young people were married without their parents' consent, and the `laws of consanguinity' were ignored. There was also bitter bargaining between priests and people over baptisms and the anointing of the dying. In this mercenary business the parish priests and the curates fought each other for the spoils. At the same time the clergy generally sought public approval because they knew that in a day of mob law no priest would be upheld if he stood out against the `burning and maiming, murder and massacre' which was the `order of the day'. The result of all this, said Croly, was that the Catholic priesthood had lost its spiritual vocation in Ireland : The dread of poverty and of being cast off by those to whom they looked for subsistence, contributed powerfully to make the body at large become mere time-servers and overlook the obligations of their sacred ministry. It was a kind of general apostasy, arising from base considerations of self-interest." To recall the priests to a sense of spirtual mission once more Croly believed that they should be supported by the state. Then they would not be so dependent upon their superstitious and ignorant parishioners with their beliefs in ghosts, fairies, spells and charms, fortune-tellers and interpreters of dreams. The great tragedy of the present system of Catholic ecclesiastical finance, said Croly, was that the priests dared not speak up even when their flocks engaged in widespread murder as they had during the tithe war, when they killed even fellow-Catholics who wished to stand outside the agitation. Only when the clergy were financially independent could they begin the task of civilising the people : Divest them of their meekness and credulity; and strengthen their minds to withstand the baneful arts of superstition and imposture.... Banish from them lawlessness, savageness, cruelty and bloodthirstiness, and make them civil, orderly, peaceable and humane.85 Croly ended his essay with a plea for the Catholics of Ireland to help rescue their priests from their `eleemosynary, humiliating, scandalous, inadequate, mode of existence'. Only when they were free of their financial bondage to their flocks, which had led them into party politics, could they recover their `lost dignity and independence'fl8 Croly felt aggrieved when this pamphlet `brought at once about his ears, the bishop and the priests' who `denounced the author as

148 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 a base apostate, deserving fire and faggot though he merely echoed the sentiments of Dr Doyle'. In fact, Croly refused to go to Cork to face Bishop Murphy, as `the proceeding against him was savage and bloodthirsty'. He was suspended and deprived, and in November 1834 Father James Daly, 'a radical from the school of O'Connell', was appointed Parish Priest of Ovens. Croly says he was grateful at the time that he was `under the protection of the British law'.97 In Croly's next work, An Inquiry into the Principal Points of Di fference between the Two Churches (1835), he said he was following the example of Bishop Doyle and the great ecumenists of other ages, such as Bossuet, Erasmus, Hooker and Swift, when he tried to show how unimportant were many of the differences between the churches. Tradition, he said, was `a consecrated phantom', yet it could be put in perspective by the people if only they were allowed to read the whole Bible rather than just `permitted selections'. He thought little of the concept of papal infallibility, which no general council had ever approved, and Croly revealed himself as a thoroughgoing Gallican by saying that the pope could be viewed as a patriarch but `let not his jurisdiction interfere with the independence of national churches' 98 The real differences between the churches, said Croly, were not theological at all, but ecclesiastical. The Roman Catholic Church was ruled by despotic priests exercising prejudices which they had been taught at Maynooth : Reckless of consequences they interpose between the tenant and his landlord, and endeavour from the altar, at the time of mass, to persuade the poor man that if he does not place himself in hostility with the lord of the soil, to his own great detriment, and that of his poor family, he will violate the most sacred duties and run the imminent risk of eternal damnation." As might be expected, David Croly's next broadside was entitled Farewell Address to the Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Cork, to which is Appended Dr Murphy's Charge Against the Author, and His Replies to the Same. This was published in Dublin in 1836. He attributed his going into exile to his refusal to be part of O'Connell's `politico-religious society' and his reluctance to join with the `ignorant enthusiasts', `void of all religion', `cowards, connivers, time-servers, fanatics and infidels' who called themselves priests : The old Roman Catholic Bishops in this country were unanimous in their opposition to all these combinations and conspiracies; and if any priest was detected as an accomplice he was made to

The Division of the Peoples 149 feel the heavy weight of episcopal censure.... Here you have the present Irish Roman Catholic bishops opposed to their predecessors—Dr Murray opposed to Dr Troy, Dr Kinsella to Dr Lanigan, and Dr Murphy to the venerated Dr Moylan.100 Croly's final Irish epistle was entitled A Monitory and Warning Address to the Roman Catholics of Ireland. It was written in the `Kilmeague Protestant Refuge' on 25 October 1837. In it he attacked Archbishop Murray for favouring the counter-reformation theological idea that force could be used in the extirpation of heresy. He claimed that, because of the kind of partisan education Catholics in Ireland received from the priests, no Catholic jury would ever convict a terrorist. He ended this shorter than usual work by saying that the priests were often drunk when they offended their flocks : 'When they find it inconvenient to answer a sick call, say at dinner hour, or bed-time, they often tell the importunate messenger either to be off at once, or they will put him in a condition similar to that of his dying friend '101 By this time it was clear that there was no future for Croly in Ireland. Another literary effort of his, published in England in 1842, was an Index to the Tracts for the Times, with a lengthy and scholarly dissertation by the author on the significance of the Tractarian movement. This study suggests Croly to have been an unusually intelligent individual whose theological viewpoint remained that of a liberal Catholic.102 His legacy in Ireland was acute religious embarrassment and resentment in Munster, equal to that in Connaught when the details of Archbishop MacHale's feuding with the unfortunate Bishop O'Finan of Killala was brought to public attention.102 Croly's defection from Roman Catholicism is important on two accounts. First of all, it suggests that there was at least a strong minority movement which opposed identification of Catholicism with the struggle for freedom carried on by the followers of O'Connell—a minority which, however, chose to remain silent and go with the majority. Secondly, and more importantly, his fate shows clearly how much religion in Ireland was concerned with more than theological affairs. Once Croly was safely established in England he could afford himself the luxury of commenting on Tractarian Catholicism in a calm and reasonable fashion without anyone getting greatly excited at what he said. In Ireland, however, religion was the badge of a people, and when Croly dared to hang out some of Catholicism's `dirty linen' he effectively ostracised himself from his own people. Religion was an important part of the identity of the Catholic people of Ireland. In the desperate folk

150 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 struggle with the Sassenach there was to be no toleration of a priest who tried to discuss matters like the role of the priest in politics or the ethics of how the Catholic clergy should live in society. Not all priests who converted to Protestantism were as intellectually motivated in their actions as was David Croly. An interesting pair who defected from the Roman Catholic Church during the O'Connell period were two cousins, Michael and William Crotty. Their story is presented in a series of letters which they wrote to Archbishop Murray, as well as to the editors of the Freeman's Journal, the Limerick Chronicle and the Evening Packet, in 1835.10* Michael said that he was educated at Maynooth, and that while he was there he `denounced in terms of honest indignation the vicious, narrow and ruinous system of education pursued in that house which is the hot bed of bigotry, intolerance and superstition'. He believed that the `College of Maynooth has never yet produced a gentleman or a scholar'. Rather its `four hundred bigots' prepared themselves to become `the busy and active agents of Mr O'Connell'. It was expected that `from their altars' would come exhortations against England which would one day result in murder of the Protestant clergy of Ireland. But in spite of these insights and some reservations, he completed his seminary training.105 Michael Crotty then went to France for further education, returning from the continent in 1820 to be appointed curate of Birr (or Parsonstown) by Bishop O'Shaughnessy of Killaloe. There, according to his 1835 letters, he found himself in a very distressing situation : When I arrived in Bin ... I found the Roman Catholics of that large and extensive parish buried in the most profound ignorance of the Gospel, and of the truths of Christianity, the wretched votaries of the most revolting and debasing superstition, and the unhappy victims of that gross ignorance that panders to priestcraft. The people also intimidated any priests who were reluctant to pay the `O'Connell rent'.10ß However, Michael managed to work in this mensal parish of the bishop for four years. Then a quarrel arose in the town over embezzlement of chapel funds by a committee of management. Bishop O'Shaughnessy was ill at this time, but he sent his coadjutor, Dr McMahon, to Birr. When McMahon arrived he took the side of the committee, castigated the townspeople as a `ruffianly crew' and laid them all under interdict—except for the members of the committee. He then appointed as parish priest Father T. Kennedy, but the people were so enraged that Kennedy could only be installed with the help of the military. When the

The Division of the Peoples 151 people rejected the authority of the hierarchy, they elected Michael Crotty as their parish priest, and he sent for his cousin William to come and assist him as curate. At this point Michael Crotty looked upon himself as a spiritual `tribune of the people', defending Catholic rights as a righteous man, opposed to an `exercise of popish tyranny and despotism'.1°7 When this election took place Bishop O'Shaughnessy suspended Michael Crotty, but the row in the town continued when Crotty performed a marriage between a woman named Connell and a man named Rigney. This got him into considerable trouble when the lady was charged with bigamy, which Crotty said was `setting the inquisition to work'. By this time both Crottys considered themselves to be no longer under O'Shaughnessy's authority. Michael Crotty wrote to the editor of the Londonderry Sentinel to ask for help in raising money in England `to build a chapel and rescue 2,000 souls from the fangs of Antichrist, and the thraldom of a most debasing superstition'.108 He told readers in northern Ireland about members of his flock who were murdered by local terrorists, who included in their ranks the brother of the Coadjutor Bishop of Killaloe. Crotty protested loudly when his chapel was burnt down, but he and his followers took over the new chapel when it was built, only to be driven out by the military upholding Bishop O'Shaughnessy's authority. Michael Crotty bitterly assailed Archbishop Murray, who supported O'Shaughnessy, saying he was anything but `the mild, the bland, the conciliating' prelate of popular opinion : You had no sympathy for me when you and your fair penitent the Marchioness W— and all the myrmidons of the late Whig– Popish government conspired against me and sent down to Birr a stipendiary magistrate who persecuted me and my congregation beyond all example of ancient or modem tyranny and got up a government prosecution against me at the summer assizes of Philipstown in the year 1833, where all the crown lawyers to a man were arranged against me, and a jury was packed to convict me and my cousin for having committed a trespass upon the new Roman Catholic chapel of Birr, which was built by the private subscriptions of the Roman Catholic parishioners who are devoted to me and my cousin from conscientious convictions 10° It was not possible for the Crottys and their followers to maintain separate identity as `independent Roman Catholics' in Birr. Although in his letters of 1835 William referred to himself as `Catholic Priest of Birr' and to Michael as `Parish Priest of Birr', the cousins refused to submit themselves or their people in Birr to the `sole

152 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 guidance and direction' of the hierarchy, and finally they decided to leave the Roman Catholic Church. Michael became a parson in the Established Church, and William, with about a hundred townspeople, founded a Presbyterian congregation which soon became an important centre for Home Mission work by Ulster Presbyterians. In the famine era William worked in Roundstone, Co. Galway, as a Presbyterian minister, and Asenath Nicholson reported that the local people spoke well of him, though they all knew of his previous identity.11° Looking at the cases of David Croly and the Crottys, it seems clear that in Ireland of the 1830s the state of tension between the two peoples in the land was such that any abandonment of religious or ecclesiastical loyalty ultimately led to assimilation by the other group. In the case of these three priests, although they used theological language as justification for what they were about, their separation from Catholicism came from their reluctance to identify their faith with the O'Connellite folk movement. Both Croly and Michael Crotty had had continental seminary training, and their relatively sophisticated way of thinking made them hesitant to identify with the religious-political folk agitation of the period. In the temper of the age this meant that they had to separate themselves from their own people—to leave Ireland finally in the case of David Croly and Michael Crotty, or to seek refuge in a Presbyterian colony in the case of William Crotty.11l From the standpoint of the dialectic between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants in the south of Ireland, these defections and the publicity they received served to prove to anxious Protestants that their worst fears were justified. There was now no doubt that their church and their culture were directly threatened by a folk movement led by political priests and a calculating hierarchy. There was no chance of a rapprochement when the Catholic hierarchy feared that priests who had intercourse with Protestants would be tempted to follow the way of David Croly and the Crotty cousins. The alliance of the priest was to be solely with the majority people who were radically separated from the Protestants and their ascendancy culture. The identification of the Roman Catholic clergy with the secular mass of the people sanctified the separation of the two nations, and gave the militancy of the masses a blessing. It also meant that religious conversion was an act of both religious sin and cultural treason. There was no place for a priest like William Crotty in Irish Catholicism when he could write to the editor of the Evening Packet in terms which were religious but whose sly words symbolised his separation from the majority people :

The Division of the Peoples 153 The Church of Rome maintains that the Antichrist is not yet come; and that he is to be descended from the tribe of Dan, born in Babylon and to reign in Jerusalem; whereas the Reformation churches maintain that Antichrist is already come, and has long since made his appearance in the person and character of the Pope of Rome.'12 Most converts, of course, were laymen; and what was particularly galling to Catholics, in the period between the Act of Union and the famine, was that the majority of conversions were from Catholicism to Protestantism. In England the Catholic Church could list members of old Protestant families who had been caught up in the romantic fervour of the Tractarian movement and had submitted to the see of Rome. Such traffic in Ireland was much more rare in the early nineteenth century. In society the tendency of people was to move upward : to become Protestant before 1829, and for long afterwards, was to open social doors and to find cultural advantages that were otherwise denied to Catholics. When a Catholic layman of intellectual or social pretension conformed to the Established Church he immediately became the object of a good deal of Catholic vituperation—like that accorded to Patrick Duigenan of Trinity College, who not only converted in the late eighteenth century but wrote about an alliance between priests and Whiteboys. To Catholic contemporaries he was `a scribbler of low degree, utterly unprincipled, flippant and vindictive, who only rose to a respectable position by the sacrifice of honour and religion'.118 Trinity College, Dublin, was particularly resented by Catholic Ieaders. To James Maher the `apostates of Trinity College' formed a class of their own : `the O'Beirnes, the DeIacys, the O'Sullivans, the Sheehans, the Phelan, the Moriartys et hoc genus omne .114 Maher could compare them unfavourably to the `elite of Oxford, the most learned in the universities',116 who were joining the Roman communion in England, but he admitted there was no corresponding movement to Catholicism among Irish Protestants. Wherever possible the Catholic seeking new social status was savagely put down by his family and neighbours. One convert priest, L. J. Nolan, who had taught at the Meath diocesan seminary, was ridiculed by the name `Larry O'Gaff , and when he sought permission to represent Protestantism and challenge Tom Maguire to debate he was dismissed by the Catholics as an apostate who should not be taken seriously. It was finally suggested that the unfortunate Mr Nolan go to Canada, and he faded into obscurity.116 Sometimes it was difficult to humble the pretensions of the con-

154 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 vert by the usual accusation that his change of religious allegiance represented not an act of piety but rather a seeking of worldly preferment. One such convert was William Carleton, whose conversion was sometimes attributed to extreme poverty which persuaded him to sell his talent and write for Caesar Otway's Christian Examiner.11T W. B. Yeats supported this orthodox view of Carleton's conversion being shallow and temporary.118 Recent scholarship has indicated, however, that in his later years Carleton worshipped at Sandford Church, Dublin, where he discussed religious matters with his friend the rector, William Pakenham Walsh, who became Bishop of Ossory in 1878. He also walked in Miltown Park grounds with a Jesuit friend, Father Richard Carbery, and talked to him at length about religious matters. In spite of Yeats and the common belief that Carleton returned to Catholicism in his last days, Pakenham Walsh's version of Carleton's passing is that he decided to remain a Protestant, and Walsh and a Protestant curate were with him in his dying hours, when Carleton recited the Lord's Prayer with them.11° The fact that so much importance was attached to the deathbed commitment of dying converts shows how important the issue was to their contemporaries. It was a threat to the whole culture if someone like Lord Dunboyne, Bishop O'Beirne, William Carleton, or any other convert did not return to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed. It was widely believed by Catholics that although the converts had sold their souls for the sake of filthy lucre in this world, with the forgiveness of Christ and the sacraments of the Church available few of them would refuse to return to the `true faith' when the end came near. If the deathbed return did not take place, the only possible answer was that either force or intrigue had been used to keep the person from once more affirming the traditional faith of his people. Pious Protestants tended to ignore the economic and other factors in conversions when they could, and to attribute change of religious faith to divine intervention. They told stories of the power of the Bible or Evangelical preaching moving the hearts of Irish Catholics to embrace the reformed faith. The Rev. John Gregg, the minister of Trinity Church, Dublin, told of how he met a simple, pious countryman at Kilsallaghan on the Dublin—Meath border in 1829 who had found an old Bible without a cover in a trunk. Reading it the countryman was converted, and when the priest refused to supply him with a whole Bible, for parts of the original were missing, he came to the Protestant rector for help and was led to conform to the Church of Ireland 12° John Garrett, the Irish-speaking parson of Ballymote, Co. Sligo, attributed many of the con-

The Division of the Peoples 155 versions he witnessed to the power of the Word when it was preached in the people's ,tongue. He told D'Arcy Sirr, Archbishop Trench's biographer, what he had said to the latter when they discussed the value of preaching in Irish to the people : I told him that I invariably preach in Irish at funerals; and no mandate of the priests can keep the peasantry from crowding round me, and swallowing with mouths, ears and eyes every word I utter, which I impute to my preaching the Gospel without seeming to allude to their errors : and I have several converts who left the mass-house after frequently hearing my Irish sermons at funerals.121 Preaching to Catholics in Irish was usually considered by the priests to be a sign that the parson had become aggressive in religious affairs—that he was a proselytiser. If this conviction grew, there was bound to be trouble in the community. As we have seen, militant Evangelical bishops like Trench, Daly, O'Brien and Gregg, who directly encouraged proselytising, disturbed the cultural balance between the two `nations' and caused much Catholic resentment. But there was always a difference recognised between an individual parson's witness to the Gospel, either through preaching or living a godly life, which might win an occasional convert, and a deliberate proselytising campaign. The former, as in the case of Gideon Ouseley, might be tolerated; the latter inevitably initiated religious– cultural warfare, like that associated with the major attempts at proselytising in the Dingle peninsula and on Achill Island, which we will look at presently. In the case of someone like John Garrett there was considerable toleration of his preaching in Irish, even when he won the occasional convert. The people of Ballymote had a love-hate relationship with their old-fashioned parson-magistrate who spoke Irish, because his family had lived among the people for generations and he knew them intimately. He was certainly well enough liked that when the famine came to the area an orderly delegation of six hundred starving labourers called on him for help.122 In all these instances, whether the convert was bishop, priest or labourer, the conviction in Catholic minds generally was that nobody conformed to the Established Church except for financial gain. It was this belief that caused trouble when any attempt was deliberately made to encourage mass conversions, that is, to proselytise : The universal conviction on the minds of the lower orders of Catholics was that nobody `turned', as they called it, except for

156 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 lucre, and that an enormous fund existed under the control of the Protestant leaders, for buying up the religious beliefs of all Papists who were willing to conform.122 Nothing irritated nineteenth-century Irish parsons more than to have mendicants appear at the rectory door with the offer to `sell' their faith for the sake of a portion of this mythical fund. This particularly became an issue during the famine era, as we are about to see, when someone like Edward A. Stopford, the Archdeacon of Meath, could speak of this attempted traffic in conversions : `Since I came amongst you, I have had many applications from persons amongst yourselves, who offered to "turn" if I would pay them for doing so.' Stopford was also disgusted by the fights in convert cabins to produce last-minute deathbed reconversions to Catholicism.124 Nothing served to deepen the divide between the two peoples on the parish level so much as the question of where, ultimately, the religious loyalty of the individual lay. No act could have greater or more immediate local consequences, social and cultural as well as religious, than rejection of the traditional faith of the people. 3. The Tithe War Nothing increased the bitterness between Catholics and Protestants so much as did the struggle over payment of tithes. At the time of the Reformation the tithe paid at one time to the Catholic clergy had been assigned to those clergy who conformed to the Established Church. It was not until after the revolution of 1688, however, that the tithes were regularly and systematically collected from the masses. From that time they were bitterly resented as a system of `endowing heresy'. In 1735 the landlord class protected itself from the ecclesiastical levy by using its influence in the Irish parliament to have agistment (the tithe paid on pasture land) abolished. In the words of Edward Wakefield, no act was `more mischievous, more impolitic and unjust. The rich are in this manner exempted from bearing their share of a burden ... and the whole weight is suffered to fall upon the poor, who are the least able to support it.'125 Most of these poor were Catholics, who resented supporting an alien clergy through the tithe as much as they hated paying vestry cess for the upkeep of the Protestant church and for such things as laundry costs, the providing of bread and wine in the communion, and the salaries of clerk and sexton. The parsons generally hated the tithe system also, although the lower ranks of the clergy were largely dependent on tithes for their subsistence. It was often pointed out that in most cases the tithes

The Division of the Peoples 157 paid in Ireland were not as high as those paid in England,126 but because the people who paid the imposition were not of the same faith as the clergymen they were compelled to support, acrimony connected with collecting the tithe was great. Irish parsons, unlike their English counterparts, often used `tithe-proctors' to collect the produce of the people : `to get from the parishioners what the parson would be ashamed to demand, and to enable the parson to absent himself from his duty'.127 Whereas many good-natured parsons never demanded full payment of the tithe, especially in times of bad harvest, the worst type of absentee Protestant clergyman in the early years of the nineteenth century, when the Church of Ireland was still largely unreformed, made use of rapacious tithe-proctors who showed the people little mercy in their collecting. No one had a good word to say for the tithe-proctors, whom Grattan called `a subordination of vultures'126 and whom J. A. Froude described as `of all the carrion birds who were preying upon the carcase of the Irish peasantry the vilest and most accursed'.129 From the time of the Union the tithe issue became a popular pamphlet topic in Ireland. The peasant population was increasing rapidly, and the land in some areas could hardly support the large number of families upon it. As popular resentment grew, reforming Protestant prelates like William Stuart, Archbishop of Armagh, and Charles Brodrick, Archbishop of Cashel pressed the government to find a way to alter the tithe system. They knew well the lack of scruples among tithe-proctors and the avarice of some absentee clergymen who cared little what means served to augment their incomes.180 Traveller after traveller witnessed to the injustice of Irish tithes" and joined the growing clamour for a redress of the peasants' grievances : I have seen the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling after, through wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of this their only friend and benefactor at the pound gate. I have heard with emotions which I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village as the cavalcade proceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the domain walls of the opulent grazier, whose numerous herds were cropping the most luxuriant pastures, while he was secure from any demand for the tithe of their food, looking on with the most unfeeling indifference." As social resentment continued to grow, the pamphlet writers were supported by meetings of Protestant peers calling Ioudly for abolition of tithe. The Edinburgh Review, in typically trenchant

158 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 fashion, argued that tithe was no more the property of the clergy than taxes raised for the army were the property of the troops.188 The clamour for reform became even louder as agricultural prices began to fall. From 1813 until approximately 1836 the decline of income in the agricultural . community ensured a growing popular dislike of the Protestant clergy who depended on tithe for their existence. As usual, an exception to this situation was provided by Ulster, where a nominal money payment substituted for tithes .184 Tithe reform was not easy because the legislation governing it was ancient and complex. For example, distrained cattle had to be seized between sunrise and sunset : `Doors and bolts could not be forced, and it was doubtful if the law authorised the lifting of a latch.'186 According to the rules of action three bids were required for a sale, and if a huge and silent crowd gathered, the chance for intimidation was great. When a peasant people had the native intelligence of the Irish, clever ways of holding up if not getting around the law were soon devised. As time went on, the situation became more and more ridiculous, as well as tragic, and as respect for the law diminished, the cry for reform of a clearly archaic system grew. Demand for reform of the vestry cess also increased, and with it the end of the scandalous and rancorous Easter Monday meetings of Protestants and Catholics to set the tax for the next year. In an age of increasing liberalism, few observers could deny the affront to conscience infected on the Catholic people, who had to pay for matters like the cleaning of the Protestant church and the washing of the minister's surplice.186 In 1822, the year that Archbishop Magee arrogantly announced the launching of his `Second Reformation', when controversial meetings began, there was so much opposition to tithe payment that the Insurrection Act had to be renewed. This persuaded parliament to pass the Tithe Composition Act of 1824, by which the clergy were allowed, voluntarily, to substitute a fixed money payment for the tithe, thereby doing away with the kind of friction caused by tithe proctors who valued `potatoes by good years for the quantity, by bad years for the price .184 The hated vestry system was allowed to remain, and did not disappear until 1832 in most parts of the country, but a major change in the law, which was ultimately to have great consequences for the parsons, was that pasture-land or agistment tithes now had to be paid.188 This brought the gentry into the and-tithe party, and they added their considerable voice to the continuing uproar over the traditional manner of providing for the Protestant clergy. Many of the landlords now considered it a worthwhile tactic to encourage popular discontent to focus on tithes rather than on the rents which they were extorting.

The Division of the Peoples 159 When the whole country became so passionately concerned about the issue of clerical incomes, at a time of general agricultural depression, the parsons became increasingly unhappy that their professional income had to be discussed in the public forum. During the Emancipation era the tithe issue was allowed to remain of secondary concern in the country, but once Catholic victory was assured the full attention of agitators was directed towards the tithe issue again. In three out of four of Ireland's provinces there were well-organised political cells filled with Emancipation campaigners looking for another cause to promote in their mission to free the Catholic people from Sassenach oppression. The people generally were now politically articulate in a way they had not been before 1822, and, flushed with success, they soon indicated to the Emancipation campaigners, both clerical and lay, that the issue they now wanted to deal with was the tithe injustice. Their champions now included some of the large farmers whose grazing lands were tithed. Among their clerical leaders were many wellknown priest-agitators : `The people prominent on the anti-tithe platforms of 1832 were on the emancipation platforms of 1828."8° The tithe war waged during the seven years between 1831 and 1838 was a well-organised campaign, and many magistrates, including Sir John Harvey, Inspector-General of Police for Leinster, believed that the `tithe operation did not originate with the lower orders, but was caused by the publicly expressed opinions of influential persons'.1.o Harvey was `a man in no way prejudiced against the Catholic clergy', but he was convinced from his experience that the `real agitators' during the tithe war were the priests. It would seem that Harvey was probably right and that the Catholic clergy who, in response to hierarchical direction, kept out of direct politics during the 1830s used their new-found organisational ability in giving leadership to the people during the tithe war : Many ministers, magistrates and other supporters of the Established Church saw in the refusal to pay tithes the work of the priests, the agitators and O'Connell, and while this view may be somewhat prejudiced and an oversimplification it cannot be denied that the Catholic clergy played a very prominent part in the movement.l.1 The agitating priests of this period were largely Maynooth men, whose influence was now being felt. They were strongly antiProtestant, yet they might have had difficulty in influencing the people to the extent they did were it not for the public attention which had been given to Protestant clerical incomes since the pas-

160 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 sing of the Tithe Composition Act. The gross injustice of taking £555,000 in tithes from the Catholic people and using it in support of an institution that was heretical in their eyes could hardly be denied. Catholic critics of the Church of Ireland were supported by the Nonconformists, who seized the opportunity to point out the true state of the church that the tithes supported : 41 benefices with no Protestants in them, 20 that had less than five, 23 that had less than ten, and 425 with under a hundred.142 Such sinecures were a scandal that could not be defended. What helped the political priests greatly in organising their new campaign was the strong opposition to Catholic Emancipation which had been shown by some of the parsons. These men had become members, and even leaders, of Brunswick Clubs, and the people had not forgotten those who publicly opposed Emancipation and produced elaborate arguments to justify keeping Catholics as second-class citizens in Ireland. One tithe commissioner said of these ultra-Protestant clergymen : I am firmly convinced that their affected sneer of compassion for the body of the people in their idolatrous condition, as they stated them to be, operated most powerfully on that class of the people, and brought them to the conclusion of enquiring upon what principle of justice a claim should be made upon them for the maintenance and support in luxury and pomp of a class of men who in return bestowed abuse of the grossest nature upon their religion and upon their clergy, and affected pity for their idolatrous condition.143 Some of these parsons were also influenced by the `Second Reformation' ideas which Archbishops Magee and Trench promoted, but it is unlikely, at this time, that religious issues generally were as important in Catholic-Protestant relations as was the political opposition of the Brunswickers and other Protestants to Catholic Emancipation.144 When James Doyle gave evidence before the tithe commissioners in February 1832 he cited an example of early dissension over tithe payment. In the Church of Ireland Union of Clonemagh, the rector for forty years, Dean Scott, had been an absentee who had left management of the temporalities of the union to the Rev. Mr Harpur, the incumbent of Maryborough. Scott had been content to receive £500 a year as an absentee. He was succeeded by the Rev. John Latouche who, by the terms of the Tithe Commutation Act and some shrewd calculating, demanded three times as much from the people. From the time Latouche first arrived in 1829 agitation against tithe and church cess increased. greatly. The people offered

The Division of the Peoples 161 to pay £1,000 to Latouche, who indicated that he had no more intention than his predecessor of residing among them. At the same time he made extortionate demands upon them, as did his 'overbearing, intolerant and insulting' curates, the Rev. William Stephenson and the Rev. Alexander Nixon. Inevitably the Protestant clergy found themselves at war with most of the community, whose leader was the parish priest, Father M. P. Malone.146 The actual tithe war began in an area of Leinster which had been part of the Old English Pale : Kilkenny, King's County, Queen's County and Carlow. Here there was superior land, crop rotation, and probably a more than usually vigorous people who, through the centuries, had inhabited a frontier country where the two nations had met and challenged one another. During the 1820s times were grim economically as grain and cattle prices declined by almost twenty-five per cent. The 1829 harvest was particularly bad, and many parsons in the area were called upon by delegations of farmers asking for reduction in the tithes they had to pay. One parish where this occurred was Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny. There the people, organised by their parish priest, Father Martin Doyle, a cousin of `J.K.L.', made such a request to the rector, the Rev. George Alcock. Alcock was an old-school parson and was well liked in the community. He was infirm by 1830, however, and spent much of his time at Cheltenham in England. Affairs in the parish of Graigue were left to the care of a curate, the Rev. Luke McDonnell, a clerical magistrate, whose character was such that he had a difficult time to find anyone to share the bench with him.14° McDonnell displayed his unfortunate personality at this time by demanding that the parish priest, Martin Doyle, pay tithe on his forty acres. Parson Alcock had always exempted the parish priest from paying tithe, and when Doyle's horse was seized because of arrears there was trouble. The Catholic tithe-payers, assisted by their priest, began to tax themselves at the rate of a penny an acre to build up a fund to cover their legal expenses. Then they organised resistance to McDonnell and his exactions. On 13 December 1830 distrained cattle were put up for sale, but although a large crowd gathered, no one offered to buy the seized animals, for the word had gone out : `Let any man at his peril bid at them.'147 A prominent Dublin lawyer was brought into the community to give legal advice to the people, and intimidation of those who paid McDonnell began. Protestant shops were boycotted, as well as those of any Catholic who helped the curate's cause. One farmer's house was burnt, another man was stoned. The agitation spread quickly to other parishes in Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny and Queen's County. For

162 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 anyone to act as a driver or assistant to the tithe agent meant risking his life, for several such men were murdered. At this juncture Bishop James Doyle came into the fray in his famous public letter to Thomas Spring Rice, who later became Lord Mounteagle. Doyle argued that tithes were in effect robbery, since the nation as a whole had never assented to them, and he urged the people that `hatred of tithe' should be `as lasting as their love of justice' 148 He also argued that in the early Church a portion of the tithe had been set aside for relief of the poor. As this was not done in Ireland, the tithe law was without even a moral foundation. When the tithe agitation spread and became increasingly violent, Doyle was accused by Lord Farnham in the House of Lords of being the chief instigator of the troubles in Ireland.149 His indignant denial of this charge was printed in the Dublin Evening Post of 28 July 1831 and the Freeman's Journal of the following day. In the Catholic press editorial after editorial scathingly commented on the issue that Doyle and the tithe agitators had brought into the public forum : Can Ireland, the poorest nation in Europe support the most affluent and luxurious priesthood which inhabits the earth, a priesthood which does not profess the religion of the people, nor minister to the wants of the poor? ... Is it just that the Elringtons, the Magees, the Knoxes, the Jocelyns, the Tottenhams, should enjoy princely fortunes extracted from the industry of the people? 160 As was to be expected, Archbishop John MacHale also charged into the fray.161 Doyle's support of the anti-tithers was qualified by his strong opposition to the Blackfeet and Whitefeet and other Ribbon-type societies, but he wanted to encourage steadfast legal opposition to this `devouring impost'.162 O'Connell shared Doyle's anxiety about the agitation moving outside the law, and though he was too pragmatic a politician to keep completely clear of the tithe struggle, he was soon expressing his strong concern over the `tithe hurlers' of Kilkenny 168 These were the organisers who kept within the law by meeting for a hurling match, but who used the occasion to discuss the abstract injustice of tithing and the oppression of the Catholic people in other ages. The people who organised these meetings were usually the priests, who ensured that nothing was said that could be used by the magistrates to charge the people with `inciting to combination' 164 The course of moderate agitation urged by most priests, or the way of positive conciliation attempted by some magistrates, like

The Division of the Peoples 163 Sir John Harvey of Graiguenamanagh, was not always followed by the people. They were heady with excitement after the victory of 1829, and in Kilkenny it was commonly said : `Daniel O'Connell will get the tithes taken off us, as he got us emancipation.'155 The people had always been astute at getting around the law, and it was not long before the shrewdest of the `tithe hurlers' pointed out some of the absurd loopholes in the traditional law about tithe-collecting, particularly the clause that forbade the seizing of cattle placed under lock and key. This resulted in the Graigue tithe war becoming almost an exercise in comedy. At the height of the tension, Colonel Sir John Harvey, who was a popular figure, had a force of 600 men at his disposal, including 350 police, a troop of Dragoon Guards and some of the 21st Fusiliers. His tactic was to wait until the valleys were quiet, and then to move his troops quickly to round up the cattle. The peasants, however, had lookouts posted, and as soon as the troops moved there was a great ringing of chapel bells, the sounding of horns, the whistling and shouting of the men, and thousands of people including women and children rushed to block the roads. While the soldiers were being held up the men of the locality rounded up their herds and got them under lock and key, safe from distrainment. The peasants usually won in this amusing and exciting race, to the great embarrassment and loss of dignity on the part of the magistrate, the police and the soldiers. After two months, and a collection of only one-third of what was owed by the parish, Harvey and his men gave up their ludicrous venture and retired, leaving the peasants of Graiguenamanagh victorious. Not all the collection campaigns bore this comic-opera aspect. In Newtownbarry the police seized cattle, they were retaken by the people, and the local yeomanry were called into the struggle. The result was that twelve peasants were killed outright, and another twenty-two were fatally wounded, but the intended sale was not carried out.156 A similar battle took place at Thurles, where in the parish of Knocktopher the police were ambushed in a boreen at Carrickshock. When they refused to give the tithe process-server up to the mob there was a dreadful melee in which several peasants died, but the police force was completely routed and eleven of its members killed. For a time the whole country was shocked by these occurrences and there was a brief respite from violence. Then trouble broke out again, this time in the parish of Doon in Co. Limerick. The rector there, the Rev. J. Coote, had a quarrel with the parish priest, who had spoken out against tithes. When the priest's cow was distrained and sold the mob attacked the police, soldiers were called for, and many peasants were wounded by a combined force of

164 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Lancers, Artillerymen and Highlanders, some of whom had been brought all the way from Limerick.10' A new phase in the struggle began, and as coercion laws were continually renewed and more and more force was used in dozens of skirmishes the embarrassment of the government grew. In September 1832 a detachment of the 92nd Highlanders, the 14th Foot, and many police, under command of an admiral and two generals, together with three magistrates, were used to collect the tithes of Parson Gavin of Wallstown, Co. Cork, who was reported to have a congregation of one Protestant in a parish of 3,163 Catholics. In this nasty fray four peasants were killed and many seriously wounded.108 By 1834 the tithe war was at its height, with dozens of ludicrous and tragic skirmishes taking place, such as that at Newcastlewest, Co. Limerick, when ten pigs owed to the Rev. Thomas Lock were collected by a large detachment of the 85th Regiment at the cost of three peasants killed and twenty seriously wounded.'8° These tragic struggles brought about an ever-increasing and bitter division of the people. On the local level `exclusive dealing' was carried out, with Catholic labourers refusing to work for Protestant landlords and Catholic citizens refusing to patronise Protestant shops. In reaction the Protestants held great rallies like that at Hillsborough in November 1834, where diehards like Lord Roden and Dr Cooke, Moderator of the Synod of Ulster, reiterated the cry of `No Surrender' and paraded the might of the Protestant north, which, they said, `the papists would need to face if they pushed the Tithe War too far'1°0 Militant Protestants had no intention of letting the tithe war be interpreted as solely an economic struggle. Mortimer O'Sullivan said that if O'Connell and his clerical supporters were really concerned about the poverty of the peasantry, they should take up the issues of rent and the Poor Law, not tithes. The O'Connellites all knew that the ending of tithes would merely mean an increase in rent and thus would not really help the people. What O'Sullivan was saying, as most of those who listened to him knew, was that what lay behind the tithe war was the cultural struggle between the two peoples in the now radically divided nation. The tithe war was but one campaign in the long struggle to rid Ireland of the Sassenach and his ascendancy culture.181 One of the sorriest episodes in the tithe war, and one which became part of Irish nationalist folklore, was a battle in December 1834 in Co. Cork, where detachments of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoons, the 29th Foot and a large police force were used to collect the tithes of Archdeacon Ryder, a clerical magistrate of the parish of Gortroe. A running battle with the troops came to a dreadful climax in the farmyard of a widow named Ryan in the

The Division of the Peoples 165 hamlet of Rathcormac. The peasants had barricaded the yard and haggard, . and a ferocious pitchfork versus bayonet fight ended with the troops firing into the mob. Several peasants were killed, and many others wounded.Y82 While this was going on the archdeacon had gained entrance to the widow's house and obtained his fortyshilling tithe from her. The priests and the O'Connellites made sure that the Rathcormac tragedy would not be forgotten. The result of their sermons and speeches was a deep groundswell of hatred against the clergy of an alien church which could use such force to collect such a paltry sum. The skirmish at Rathcormac, with its unfortunate results, was, however, as everyone knew, only a single incident in the long struggle between the peoples. Yet such skirmishes were important because they helped O'Connell to maintain his political authority among the people during the period between Emancipation and the beginning of the Repeal movement, and to maintain himself as their champion. With each incident O'Connell called on the people to avoid all acts of violence and outrage because, he said, `over their tea and tracts the Orange faction would delight to shed your blood'. Such sectarian statements were reinforced by O'Connell's call for a renewal of the exclusive dealing campaign, by which Protestants could be subjected to economic pressure through boycotting. By such tactics it would seem that O'Connell was trying to ensure that the militancy of the Catholic people did not lessen, while, at the same time, he tried to keep them from violence. But O'Connell need not have feared that the Catholics of Ireland would lose their antiProtestant sentiments. The passing of the Tithe Rent-Charge Act of 1838 did little to ease the financial burden of the people. By this act the landlords, most of whom were Protestants, assumed the task of collecting the tithe in return for a quarter of what was obtained : `They obtained a rich round sum to act as trustee of the church?'" The passage of this act effectively wrote off the arrears of 1834-37, but in the long run the people gained little. In most cases they found the landlord much less likely than the parson to waive part of the payment during hard times. An interesting question is why the priests did not make even more of their opportunity to attack the Established Church during the tithe war. It presented a particularly good opportunity for this, because so little justification could be found for a situation where `those who lived upon potatoes and sour milk' were called upon to support `those who fare sumptuously and drink wine every day'.184 In 1823, a year when tithe agitation was great, the liberal Catholic John O'Driscol discussed the moral vulnerability of the Established Church when it came to the question of its maintenance :

166 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Under the law as it stands, the clergy have a legal right to their tithes; but have they an equitable right? A just man will hesitate to take the property of another, unless that other will consent to take value in return. The Protestant Dissenter, or the Roman Catholic may justly ask, why, in this age of the world, he is compelled to share his property with him from whom he cannot receive anything in return? The poor can understand why they pay rents, they can imagine a reason for paying taxes to the state; but tithe appears to them a naked and arbitrary oppression, for the profit and pleasure of a set of men, with whom they have no connexion. Arguments about the sacred right of property may have weight in parliament, but they will have none with the peasantry.165 O'DriscoI was merciless in his analysis of a situation where the parsons were looked upon as `state pensioners, turned over by the government to collect their pensions themselves from the people'.1ee He acknowledged that many of the Protestant clergy exacted considerably less than the law allowed them to, but he said there were other parsons who were attracted into the ministry because its archaic laws gave them opportunity for taking from the people more than they legally should.1fl7 He pointed out how the law was constructed to serve the tithe-owner, and the poor man who fell into arrears could not dispute the price set by the tithe-evaluators. Priest after priest publicly displayed the iniquity of situations where there were only a few Protestants in parishes whose ecclesiastical structure was maintained by money obtained from thousands of Catholics 188 Yet the priests during the tithe war never seemed to be in as full cry after the Sassenach oppressor as they were during the Emancipation or Repeal years. This is because so many of the priests, particularly in the rich eastern counties, came from wealthy Catholic farming families, and sometimes the struggle was not between wealthy parsons and Catholic peasants, but rather between Protestant clergymen and Catholic gentry who joined the agitation, especially after 1832 when agistment tithes had to be paid. James Maher's parents, for example, were wealthy Co. Carlow farmers, and his family was closely related to the Doyles, the Lalors, the Dillons and other well-to-do Catholic farming families. Members of this family complex were local leaders in the tithe war—such as Bishop Doyle's first cousin, Parish Priest of Graiguenmanagh, where the troubles first began. James Maher's brother, Parish Priest of Kilrush, served four jail terms for refusing to pay tithes and agitating. It is interesting to note that when Bishop Doyle gave

The Division of the Peoples 167 evidence before the Lords' committee on tithes in 1832 he was qualified in his condemnation and seemed embarrassed by the charge that he had initiated the first battle at Graiguenamangh.16° James Maher remarked only about parsons leading armed police detachments and one of the Beresfords boasting that he had loaded muskets used in one of the battles. He also asked : How many tithe recusants have been killed or wounded, how many hundreds driven on the eve of winter from the lands which their forefathers tilled—their only crime a conscientious adherence to the religion of their parents?"° This is mild stuff for James Maher, however, and there is not much of it. Apart from this class factor, the chief reason for the priests' reluctance to shout too loudly about tithes was the popular association of tithes and priests' dues in the mind of the peasantry. As we have observed, the last quarter of the eighteenth century was a time when the priests had in large measure lost their authority among the people, and the lessons of that time were still fresh in their minds. They remembered how the Whiteboys attempted to regulate payments for weddings, baptisms, funeral masses, Christmas and Easter offerings, aid in cutting and drawing turf, and other means by which the peasants supported the Roman Catholic Church in the land. One bishop who had spoken out against the Whiteboys had been obliged to kill a dissident peasant who attacked him,171 and people who offered hospitality to priests had been beaten up.172 The situation had been particularly bad in Munster, where Francis Moylan, the Bishop of Cork, asked the Protestant magistrates to protect the priests from the people. John Troy, then Bishop of Ossory, requested the use of British troops for the same purpose.178 This situation had been a long time passing in many parts of the country, and Bishop Plunket of Elphin wrote a long letter to Propaganda in 1826 on the threatened peace and security of the Catholic Church in his diocese in that year.174 The priests were often unsure of where they stood in the popular mind : Popular attempts to regulate or reduce dues occurred in 17851786, 1806, 1820-1822 and 1832. The question ceased to be a cause of major friction only with the re-casting of Irish society after the Famine though the virtual solution of the tithe problem in 1838 removed a detested impost unfortunately associated in the popular mind with dues.17°

168 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Payment of the priest's dues had no legal basis as did the parson's tithes, but `community pressure ensured that it had a very real sanction in fact'.178 As far as the peasant was concerned, he was preyed upon by two ecclesiastical establishments, and sometimes the priest was tougher in his exactions than the parson was. As Bishop Delaney of Kildare remarked, it seemed to be the `sturdy, the impudent, and the importunate beggar' among the priests who came off best in the Irish situation.'" At the same time, folk rivalry was such that some Catholics urged their priests to live in a style to rival that of the Protestant clergy, arguing `that the priest's living standards should be bettered was a necessary part of maintaining Catholic morale'.178 Wherever a tough-minded priest tried to increase his dues, however, he was apt to be opposed by his people. It was because of this uncertainty of authority among the people when it came to finances that the priests generally did not make more of events like the tragedy at Rathcormac. Little attempt was made, for example, to enlist overseas Catholic sympathies, a successful tactic during the Emancipation and Repeal campaigns.'" The immediate Protestant response to the tithe agitation was the expected and traditional one—of trying to soothe irritated Catholic opinion. When the troubles began it was believed that the long-suffering Irish peasant was concerned, as he always had been, with the amount of tithe and the method of its collection, rather than with the principle of tithe itself. When the Rev. John Garrett, Rector of Ballymote, pressed his feud with a rich grazier to the point that he demanded potato tithe, he greatly alarmed the Connaught people, for potatoes were traditionally free from tithe in that area. When a legal case ensued and it brought widespread notoriety to Garrett, Power le Poer Trench, who was then his Ordinary, told him : `Had I been consulted before you made your claim for potato tithe I should have given my opinion against your doing so.'18° In this rebuke Trench revealed the prevailing attitude of the Protestant bishops when the tithe troubles began. As much as the Catholics, though for different reasons, they disliked the archaic system of supporting their church which they had inherited. They wanted to do everything possible to make it work, however, for the livelihood of the Protestant clergy depended upon it, and the bishops were willing to make concessions to avoid trouble. Particularly they wanted to avoid questioning of the principle of tithe, for they knew that this would bring them into radical confrontation with the Catholics. Few Protestant leaders were unwilling to admit that the unfortunate tithe system was a grievance to the people. Archbishop

The Division of the Peoples 169 Whately expressed his appreciation of how the Catholic people felt about a matter like the payment of church cess : A payment which you may easily conceive is extremely minute in a whole parish, for the bread and wine for the communion service, is horrifying to the feelings of many of them and is as galling as if we were called upon to pay a few pence towards the decoration of an idol temple. I am acquainted with a very worthy and sensible clergyman, an Irishman of great experience, who makes a point of always purchasing the communion bread and wine out of his own purse, and has been censured for so doing as having given up some of the rights of the Church, but he declared to me that he could not bring himself to do otherwise after he had found what feelings the payment excited?" The only Protestants who regretted the ending of church cess were those who perceived it to be the loss of one of the Erastian privileges of the Church of Ireland, a diminishment of its establishment status. Theophilus Blakely, Dean of Achonry, said that his ecclesiastical lands were actually worth £1,300 a year, but he allowed them `on very moderate terms' to be compounded for only £946 a year, an example which was followed by many other parsons?" With regard to the people suffering economic hardship from tithe payment, Protestants pointed out to the parliamentary committees that the parson's income came from `an infinite number of very small payments'.YBØ This reflected the fact that there was little control over subdivision of property in the countryside. Almost all of them rejoiced that the commutation of tithes had resulted in the disappearance of the universally hated tithe-proctors, whose activities had been `highly unfavourable, not more to the progress of agricultural improvement than to the interests of religion, and morality, and to the cultivations of those friendly feelings between a clergyman and his parishioners which are essential to render their intercourse mutually beneficial'?" When the tithe war began some Protestants called on the militant Catholics to be prudent and to realise that no one gained by the bloody clashes that were leading the people into ways of savagery : You have sympathised with the widow Ryan and her children who fell victim to O'Connell's agitation, and to their own folly and madness in opposing the law of the land and the constituted authorities of the country; but you have not breathed a sigh nor shed a tear for the four policemen who under the command of Captain Gibbons were decoyed, surrounded and barbarously

170 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 butchered in the narrow defile of Carrickshock, while the chapel bells summoned a savage, ferocious and priest-ridden peasantry to imbrue their hands in the innocent blood of those unfortunate victims.'" While Protestants produced these predictable arguments to ease the social tensions that were developing, the leaders of the Church of Ireland tried to consider what measures they should support as the government considered ways to remedy the situation. They knew the Church was under direct assault following passage of the 1833 Church Temporalities Act, which had suppressed ten bishoprics and set up the powerful Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners to regulate some of the Church's financial affairs. The right for the legislature to meddle in church affairs had been established, and the Protestant bishops wondered what would happen next. The Whigs obviously wanted to consider the Church of Ireland as a separate entity from the Church of England, and Lord John Russell and others questioned how the former could be justified according to William Paley's criteria that it should communicate religious knowledge to the people and help to maintain good order.188 The time was certainly past for the Established Church in Ireland to be able to justify its great wealth by arguments about the sacred rights of property. The Catholic critics who led discussions at the meetings of `tithe hurlers' talked about first principles connected with church property, such as those that Bishop James Doyle had brought before the parliamentary committees investigating tithes in Ireland. Doyle said that payment could be justified only if there was a return to the original fourfold use of the tax, which at one time had been used for relieving the poor, providing education and repairing churches—as well as for the support of the clergy.187 Such arguments forced Protestant intellectuals like J. C. Erck, secretary to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and Edward Stopford, Archdeacon of Armagh, to defend the principle of tithes—an embarrassing task. They could deny that Doyle's four-part division of tithes ever applied to the Church in England or Ireland,188 but Protestants were made to realise that they had long accepted a form of church organisation which was difficult to justify and about whose workings they knew comparatively little.188 The Church of Ireland's unpreparedness to defend itself can be seen clearly in the correspondence of Primate Beresford at this time. Not only did Beresford need to be briefed by knowledgeable ecclesiastics about the origin and development of the tithe in Ireland in order for him to be able to defend the Church of Ireland

The Division of the Peoples 171 in parliament, but he also had to discover how it could be protected by the law at this time. This was a desperate matter, for it involved the question of how the Protestant clergy could be kept alive when their basic income had been cut off and their very lives were in peril. The Bishop of Killaloe passed on to the Primate a threatening letter received by the Rev. R. B. Greene, Rector of Killodiernan, Nenagh, a clergyman who had received no income for over a year in a living worth £230 : Honoured Sir : You did me a good turn once, no matter when or how, but for that I would not like to see harm come on you without giving you a warning so mind what I say and leave this country before the first of March or prepare to follow Ferguson and Whitty. Your days after that are numbered but no man will Iay a finger on you to then, you should not have affronted the people to only throw money out of your own pocket in the way you have for every man of them will cost you and be the longer about paying you— Now I hope your Honour will mind this warning and go to your own country.1°° What was the appropriate action to take in such a case? How far were the police constables bound by law to assist in distraining tithes? What kind of defence of the Church of Ireland could be made when no one seemed to know even a basic fact like the number of Protestants in the various parishes? The only matter the Protestant authorities were sure of, apparently, was the desperate financial plight of the parsons. Various letters from diocesan bishops thanked Archbishop Beresford for large sums from England and elsewhere that he passed on to them to help the Protestant clergy keep alive. The Rev. Elias Thackeray, Vicar of Dundalk, who assisted the Primate in distribution of these funds, gave an interesting insight into the social place of the parson in Irish society when he said it was `astonishing to see how the clergy, under their privations for so long a period, have been able to preserve the appearance of respectability'. Many of them kept schoolmasters at their own expense, and where they made economies was in their personal way of life.1°1 Some got by easily when they had money of their own, but when Power le Poer Trench, Archbishop of Tuam, asked Beresford for help in 1833 he cited the desperate need of two poor curates who ordinarily received £43 and £75 a year but who could receive nothing from their rector because he also had received no tithe money from the people. Trench ended his letter by saying : `Your Grace should never hear this story from me, were I not

172 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 myself sadly embarrassed and distressed by the total Ioss of some of my income and great delay in the payment of much of the rest'182 The Bishop of Derry sent an account of the destitute Rev. John Wilkinson, Rector of Mevagh, Co. Donegal, whose sons had been beaten up savagely, whose children were barefoot, whose curate was literally starving, and the rectory without food. In a living worth £325 he had received only £121 in tithes during the two years 1835 and 1836. In 1837 he had received only £30. He could not even pay the sheriff who had tried to help him collect some of what was owed to him.193 The Bishop of Kildare wrote to the Primate on behalf of the Rev. William Cox of Kildangan, Walterstown and Nurney. Nearly £300 was owed him, his rectory had been burnt, with his turf and potatoes lost, and his wife and ten children had almost been killed during the attack. No one was willing to help him approach the people to collect what was owed to him 194 While the Primate was busy passing on to diocesan bishops the relief he received from England205 or gave to them from his own resources, he encouraged the clergy to discuss in diocesan meetings how the Church should respond to the various bills for tithe reform that were being introduced into parliament. He also tried to reassure those who were frightened by the prevailing anarchy, especially those in the neighbourhood of Kilkenny. There the Whitefeet seemed to be taking complete control of the land, threatening any who talked of outrage, and giving Protestants a fixed time to emigrate to America or face the consequences.199 Beresford also tried to assess the truth of the common Protestant belief that the tithe war was an artificial creation of the priests, particularly those who came from James Doyle's diocese. One of his advisers, the Rev. T. S. Townsend, who told the Primate of such a conspiracy, said that the immediate task of the Church of Ireland was to refute the base slanders circulated against them in order to prove that the present conspiracy was not brought on by extortion or misconduct on their parts but solely by the hostility of popery to everything Protestant.1D4 Townsend was a strong liberal churchman and exemplary parson who from 1830 to 1836 was Rector of Timogue in the diocese of Leighlin. His investigations into the roots of the troubles in this part of James Doyle's diocese convinced him that the tithe war outrages came from a religious—political conspiracy of the priests rather than from the economic suffering of the people : I have traced the conspiracy in the Queen's County in the centre of which I have been living.... Out of 25 or 30 parishes I deny

The Division of the Peoples 173 one case of real grievance either in the valuing or manner of collecting the property of the clergy to be shewn.... I can shew that no clergyman even thought of demanding and of course never received anything like the tythe.... Local causes kept the conspiracy going and I do believe Dr Doyle and the priests have effectually carried it on.198 The Protestant Bishop of Cloyne, John Brinkley, wrote to Beresford to say that `The people here appear perfectly quiet and if left alone will make no opposition to paying the Protestant clergyman.' But he had received well-composed anonymous letters, an example of which he enclosed, signed with the pseudonym `Paddy Moloney', which were not the composition of a peasant For shame, My Lord, to practise such plunder in direct opposition to the command of your Redeemer.... The day is fast approaching when your impious demands will not be listened to by a starving people 199 Beresford also received a printed notice from Jamestown, Monastereven, which had first been sent to the Dean of Kildare and other Protestant notables. It was the statement of why one `Robert Cassidy', or `R.C.', refused to pay tithes. The writer said that paying the tithe would sanction a system of profligate immorality and tend to retard the legislative Reform so imperatively necessary to relieve the people of England and Ireland from their oppressive burdens. Mr `R.C.' under such a conviction does not consider himself justified to support by voluntary contributions a system of plunder and corruption at variance with the doctrines inculcated by the meek and charitable founder of the Christian religion. `R.C.' went on to say that he would only pay tithes when they were used for the purposes `for which such property was orir ally set apart by the pious founders of the Christian religion'. These included support of the sick, the aged and the poor; the erection of churches, hospitals and schools; and `decent maintenance of the clergy who minister to the spiritual wants of the parishioners committed to their care'.20° It was all very well for Beresford and the other leaders of the Church of Ireland to insist that they were the victims of a welldirected conspiracy, which the letters of the people like `R.C.', inspired by James Doyle's theories, seemed to suggest, but they still had the problem of coping with the widespread discontent

174 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 over the payment of tithes and the crisis it caused for so many clergy when they were deprived of their income. What were they to do? Well-wishers in England made naive suggestions, such as posting the names of tithe defaulters on Protestant church doors. Irish Protestants replied by pointing out, in exasperation, that if this was attempted it would lead to the injury of many, and probable destruction of some churches, besides exposing the ministers and congregations assembled for Divine Worship to insult, perhaps to loss of life, by drawing together large concourses of persons under the pretext of viewing the names so posted.2°1 The Protestant leaders received little official direction, however, and, as time passed, they had less and less faith that the British parliament was going to help them maintain their privileges. They were hardly surprised when, during the tithe war, the Church Temporalities Act was passed. Slowly they accepted the fact that the government had `no effectual plan for undoing the wide-spreading mischief their past policy has created'.202 From 1831 to 1838 the Church of Ireland felt it was in a state of siege, while the government waited to see if the storm would wear itself out. It was not likely that Beresford and the other Protestant leaders would choose to meet the Catholics on the question of principle— as Bishop Doyle and writers like `R.C.' chose to present it. The truth was that the history of tithes was so complex that there could be no consensus over how tithes should be used, but beyond that the Protestants did not want to discuss publicly the question of whether a majority of poverty-stricken people should be obliged to support a wealthy church which served only a minority of the Irish population. What they could do, however, was to argue that the tithe system was one that they had inherited, and though it was imperfect, it could still be of benefit to both the Church of Ireland and the Irish people. To do this, they had to press for urgent reform, to improve the quality of the parsons, to end the exactions of the absentees and, hopefully, to find themselves in the position to plead in parliament that the Church of Ireland was truly a blessing for all the people of the nation. When the Catholic leaders sensed the note of uncertainty and lack of moral conviction among the Protestant bishops over tithes, they continued their attack on the ideological front, as well as through rural agitation. They made it clear that from their standpoint Catholic Emancipation was a mockery as long as payment of tithes to support a heretical church remained an obligation for the majority people.203 The skill of this ideological attack, which

The Division of the Peoples 175 did much to support the rural agitation, persuaded many prominent Protestants that the true origin of tithe troubles lay not with the lower orders but with conspiratorial persons of authority in the Catholic world.204 The Church of Ireland found itself with fewer and fewer friends as the struggle went on. Although much money was raised in England to help the starving Irish parsons,205 there was much resentment and envy as the Church's wealth was publicised. It was clear to every liberal or radical of the age that the Irish Protestant establishment was an anomaly surviving from another age which had to be reformed. At the height of the tithe war, the Rev. Maurice James, Rector of Pembridge, Herefordshire, published a letter which said of the complaints made by the impoverished Irish parsons : Of the ill, the enormous ill, which they do they see nothing; and are alive only to the comparatively little and unimportant ill which they suffer. They are entirely taken up with themselves, they have no pity but for themselves.20° Archbishops Beresford and Whately knew that the institution could not stand for long the critical examination of its performance which was being carried out by friend and foe alike. Nor could it afford the growing hostility, which was deepening the already considerable division between the two nations in the land. Both archbishops agreed from 1836 that the solution finally arrived at two years later, the changing of tithe payment into a rent-charge collected by the landlords, was the best possible solution to the financial troubles of the Church of Ireland at that time. They foresaw, of course, that this would identify the Church with the gentry in an undesirable way, making it in fact almost an appanage of the landlords and less of an autonomous factor in local affairs.207 Whately would have liked the government to purchase the tithes for a sum of money, to be administered by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but the politicians doubted that this plan could have been carried out because it would raise the problem of how to dispose of the `surplus revenues of the Irish Church'.208 What was needed was an immediate pro tern. solution to allow the Church to find a period of peace and carry out its own reforms. At the height of the uproar over tithes the Rev. Charles Dickinson, Vicar of St Anne's, Dublin, and Whately's chaplain, wrote to the Bishop of Ferns about the need for a bill of some sort to give the Church at least temporary peace : The Radicals will be not only satisfied but exulting if no bill whatsoever should be proposed. They know that as long as the

176 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 church is left in a state of uncertainty it is less likely to emerge eventually even in a tolerable condition. The Tories again will probably not be anxious to stir the question.20° The Church of Ireland agreed to the Tithe Rent-Charge Act of 1838, which gave it twenty-five years of comparative peace with the state and with the landlords, who did comparatively well for themselves out of the arrangement. The act did little to heal the bitter divisive wounds between Catholics and Protestants which the tithe war had brought, however. As we have observed, the people found that landlords, for the most part Protestants, were more rigorous than parsons when it came to collecting the tithe. Psychologically the act had a negative effect on the Protestant clergy in that it increased their tendency to withdraw from the Catholic people and to abandon the role which the Established Church concept obliged them to accept—that of being religious ministers to all the people in the country. Withdrawal from the National System of education also began during the tithe war, and the Church Education Society was founded in 1839, just a year after the Church of Ireland accepted the new income given it by parliament. Only a few very enlightened Protestant leaders saw the danger in this psychological withdrawal from the idea of national mission. In spite of the hectic Easter Monday meetings to settle vestry cess, or the tensions which came from the parson collecting his income from the people, the old arrangements had had the merit of bringing the Protestant clergymen face to face with the Catholic people. Many times such encounters increased tension between the peoples, but more often it gave the parson the chance to show kindness and to offer those services which he as one of the few resident gentlemen, if not the only one, in the community was able to provide. Withdrawal by the parsons into the role of chaplains to a garrison community, where their only contacts were with the gentry, on whom they were now dependent financially, or with the government, to whom they were dependent for protection, subtly changed the nature of the Church of Ireland. The ultimate cause of Catholic resentment over paying tithes had been the people's objection to `any payment being made directly by the Catholic peasant to the Protestant clergyman, for which, according to the ordinary phrase, he receives no return'.210 It could have been argued up to the time of the tithe struggle and its solution in 1838 that the presence of the parson among the people as an agent of civilisation, if not of religion, was some return for the tithe paid. The argument was more difficult to make after 1838 when it seemed that the parson

The Division of the Peoples 177 lived in Ireland solely to serve the Protestant community, which was now even more radically divided from that of the Catholics. 4. The Famine Just as thoughtful Protestants were unhappy over a system of church support based on tithes, which only parliament could remedy, so they were distressed by the economic and social plight of the peasantry among whom they lived. Few people had a good word to say for the traditional landlord—peasant relationship in most parts of early nineteenth-century Ireland : The condition of the Irish peasantry, especially in Connaught, is in summer frequently one of great privation. Except in very rare cases of uncommon skill and industry, it would be miraculous were it otherwise. Instead of being agricultural servants, as in other lands would be the case, dependent for their support on the owners or substantial tenants of the soil, they are themselves in general, both the occupiers and tillers of the general surface of the country. Renting from a rood to two, three or five acres of land, which neither their capital, nor their acquaintance with agricultural science enables them to render productive, they are compelled to devote the principal crops to the payment of their rent; and the potatoes which they raise and on which they live, are seldom in sufficient quantity to last during the entire year. There is generally, therefore, a greater or less interval of suffering between the consumption of the old, and the ripening of the new crop. When the harvest of the preceding year has not been abundant, or when the spring has proved unfavourable to the early sowing of potatoes, the interval of privation is proportionately extended and famine is often the result.211 The only answer to this system of agriculture and the suffering it entailed was a revolution which would call for state intervention to change the social order in order to help the people. In the political and social conditions of the early nineteenth century this could not be expected : The crying grievance can only be removed by one or other of these ways, by the abolition of all small holdings of land, and the consequent conversion of a pauper tenantry into regular agricultural servants; by emigration, or by national employment during these seasons of distress.212 In the system of Irish landholding which prevailed in most parts of the country those who refused the option of emigrating and remained in the country found themselves caught by forces over G

178 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 which they had no control once famine came. This happened regardless of one's position in society. James Hack Tuke, the Quaker philanthropist, defended the landlords of Erris during the great famine by pointing out how quickly they went into bankruptcy when a crop shortage came. He knew of a landlord worth £500 a year dying in the Binghamstown temporary workhouse, and another owner of 300 acres applying for outdoor relief. Many estates which were deeply mortgaged were also entailed and could not be sold to pay the encumbrances, and Tuke said : `It would be utterly unjust to blame a great portion of the present landlords for not discharging the duties of ownership when their circumstances entirely disable them from doing so.'218 If the landlords of Ireland need to be treated circumspectly when the issue of their social altruism during times of famine is raised, even more so must care be taken in value judgments made about the social role of the Protestant clergy during such times of crisis. As we have frequently noted, the parsons were often the only resident gentlemen in the community. Traditionally they provided what social services were available, and it was generally taken for granted that when a food crisis came and help arrived from outside, the parson would administer the relief. Only too often this was a thankless job. By all accounts Power le Poer Trench, Archbishop of Tuam, laboured heroically to help the poor of Connaught during the local famines of 1817, 1822 and 1831. He paid for the soupkitchen in Tuam out of his own pocket and worked there daily himself among the sometimes fever-ridden people. His family assisted him, and to serve tender Catholic consciences over the issue of taking a meat soup on Fridays he provided milk on that day for the poor. Oliver Kelly, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, had `warm admiration' for what Trench did for the people in helping them when they were short of food.214 An unpopular task in distributing relief supplies was the vigilance needed to ensure that the aid was given to those most in need. Archbishop Trench loved the people, but, as we have seen, he was not an admirer of the priests generally, and he diligently watched for sharp practices on their part. He reported that the people usually pleaded for famine relief to remain in Protestant hands because once it was in the Catholic chapel those most in need might be denied : 215 Romish priests had endeavoured and with success in many cases, both to magnify the distress, and to draw on the public sources of benevolence for the purpose of enriching several families who stood in no need whatever of charity, public or private.216

The Division of the Peoples 179 Trench's attitude brought him into immediate conflict with some priests, and his unpopularity as a proselytiser allowed them quickly to raise a hue and cry about his relief activities. As tensions between himself and the priests increased during the 1831 crisis Trench was obliged to write to the Western Committee, which provided aid in Connaught, to defend his refusal to give help where he thought it was not needed : Starvation is now become a trade, and provisions are sent in abundance where no calamity occurred, and where there is no extraordinary need to warrant it. The cry is, as the provision is going, why should not this parish and that parish get its share? .. . Places that I know were never in less want than they are this year, have received large supplies of meal.... My means would not last a day if I had not most conscientiously and justly drawn the line I did.217 Trench's vigilance in safeguarding relief supplies brought upon him the particular censure of John MacHale, at that time titular Bishop of Maronia.218 The Quakers and others took for granted that this would happen because of the `rancorous feeling that subsists between those two dignitaries of conflicting churches' 21° There seemed to be no escaping negative criticism by the Catholic priests once a Protestant leader involved himself in relief work, as most of them believed it was their duty to do. John Jebb, who was a close friend of Father Thomas Costello, the long-serving Parish Priest of Murroe, was asked to address the Catholic people from the altar after morning mass to urge them to keep the peace during the time of privation and social unrest which came with the agricultural depression of 1820-22. Most liberal Catholics looked upon Jebb as the most altruistic of Establishment clergymen, but there were others who chose to look upon his famine labours as merely a publicity performance which would obtain him the see of Limerick.22° Consideration of relief work during the famine of 1831 shows that Catholic clerical resentment of the role of the clergy of the Established Church in social affairs had become an issue long before the great famine began in 1845. It should be remembered that when that catastrophe came to Ireland it was only seven years after the settlement of the tithe war. The natural tendency of the parsons after the suffering they endured between 1831 and 1838, and with their knowledge of how much they were hated by some Catholics, was to show a natural reluctance to offer any kind of social leadership in their communities. Most of them knew the resentment they could experience if they allowed themselves to

180 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 become involved in the political and economic operations of relief administration. Yet this was their job : Placed by the Lord of all on a superior eminence, and entrusted with a superior portion of his goods, to you belongs the enviable distinction, as well as the awful responsibility, of being stewards of the unrighteous mammon.221 What Professor Kitson Clark has said about English parsons was true also for their Irish counterparts : `If after 1832, or even after ' 1850, the clergy had given up their secular duties it would not have been at all clear how the gap could be filled.'222 The Irish parsons knew that, as the main body of resident gentlemen in the community, they would be expected to organise the administration of relief during the great famine, despite their knowledge that it would once again expose them to the kind of animosity they had experienced during the years of the tithe war. They knew this resentment stemmed mostly from the priests because, even after the tensions of 1831-38, the attitude of the Catholic people towards them remained in most cases the same as that reported by the Protestant Archbishop of Cashel in 1825 : They seem sensible that the residence of the Protestant clergyman is an advantage to them. In the last time of scarcity, the assistance received in various parishes from the Protestant clergy was essential to the existence of the people.223 When reference has been made in this study to the parson being so often the only `resident gentleman' in the parish, this statement has not been intended to disparage the social position of the priests. Except for a few of the older generation of Catholic clergy, who had been trained on the continent, most of the Irish priests came from Maynooth and made no pretensions to being `gentlemen' in the nineteenth-century sense. Their role in Irish society was a unique one transcending such a social identity. Gentleman status was important to the parsons, however, who tried to keep up social pretensions even when they were financially straightened, as they so often were. From the standpoint of the peasantry, there was an advantage in their resident parson's seeking to maintain gentleman status, because it usually gave them social contacts outside the parish, and sometimes outside Ireland. This meant that when a time of extreme food scarcity arose and aid had to be solicited from outside, the parson was one of the few people in an otherwise isolated rural community who had contact with persons who might help.224 Robert Daly, the militantly Evangelical Bishop of Cashel,

The Division of the Peoples 181 for example, had many contacts in the world of English Evangelicalism. When the great famine came in Ireland he encouraged the adoption of each of his parishes by an English parish. Carrickon-Suir was one of these parishes; it became the responsibility of Rev. Mr Fenn of Blackheath in London, whose parishioners raised £30.£40 weekly for the starving Irish people. Mr Fenn also supported the work of Robert Daly, who made himself a `judicious almoner' in personally directing relief operations in a district of Waterford.225 Robert Daly was a conservative in religion and in politics, and was understandably hated by many of his Catholic clerical counterparts. Yet he laboured heroically on behalf of the starving people during the famine, and his brother, Lord Dunsandle, died in 1846 of fever which he had contracted visiting people in the workhouse.22° The unfortunate truth was that, because of Ireland's political and social organisation between 1845 and 1849, if there was not the kind of self-help initiative promoted by people like Daly, the people would have suffered even more. When famine came to a community local leadership was of paramount importance : Within the parish area alone were found all the elements ... the Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy, the dispensary doctor, the magistrates, traders and Poor Law Guardians, daily face to face with the actual aspect of affairs; with interests, sufficiently divergent to create a wholesome check without lessening the common bond of a vital interest in the unhappy people; able to come together constantly without inconvenience; to act promptly, and to concentrate the relief within a moderate and compact area.227 There simply was no central authority for raising or distributing relief. If the natural leaders in the community did not work together, then it was the people in want who suffered.228 One of the great tragedies of the famine years 1845-48 was that Catholic— Protestant suspicions often led to the breakdown of this traditional self-governing aristocratic method of government. From the standpoint of Benthamite historians, this process could be seen as progress; for it did demand that the state step in and help, through outdoor relief, a situation which threatened to become even more catastrophic than it was. From the standpoint of a starving Irish peasant during the spring of 1847, however, jealousy and bickering between the Catholic and Protestant guardians that history had bequeathed to him could literally mean life or death. Nothing annoyed the Catholic clergy more than the important social authority which was assumed by the Protestant parson-

182 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 almoners during the famine years in some areas, and which turned some of the people from their traditional dependence on the priests. Samuel Gurney, one of the Quakers who laboured heroically on behalf of the people during the famine, and who was no religious partisan, saw this process at work in the Ballina area : `The famine in many places appears to have had the effect of shaking dependence on the priests.'229 Gurney said that the situation in Ballina was so bad that when he arrived there he found the workhouse bankrupt. He did not believe in direct charity which would have encouraged mendicity, so he bought the furniture from the Guardians, then gave it back to them as a gift to keep the workhouse operating.280 When people were literally starving their attentions often turned to the Protestant clergy who, if they could not provide help themselves, sometimes knew people like Gurney who could. At the height of the famine the priests were so busy performing sacerdotal functions for the dying that they had no time for relief administration, even if they were invited to help on local committees. In this sense, on the local level there was an ad hoc division of labour. Not only were the priests busy attending to the spiritual needs of the dying, but circumstances demanded that the parsons, who were most apt to solicit extra-parochial aid and had wives and daughters to assist them, should be the proper people to man the soup-kitchens. The Quakers recognised the resentment of the priests over the need for them to leave so much direct relief work to the Protestant clergy : The peculiar position of the Roman Catholic clergy in this respect rendered them less able to take an effective part in administering relief; but many of them also, as well as the ministers of other religious bodies, have not been wanting in the discharge of the great and perilous duties which devolved on them 281 There was, however, yet another reason for the priests not being called upon to administer relief. This was simply the resistance of their own people to their doing so. Richard D. Webb, a Quaker who was also a strong Irish nationalist, a friend of Daniel O'Connell, and father of one of the founders of the Irish Home Rule movement,282 has told of this phenomenon during his relief work in North Mayo in 1847 : On approaching Ballycastle a poor boy with whom I was walking pointed out a low house with a well stocked haggard full of stacks of corn. He told me this was the priest's—I afterwards was informed that this Reverend Gentleman has had upwards of £150 placed in his hands for relief purposes for which he has

The Division of the Peoples 183 never accounted. I was also told that the best way to turn the people against the priests would be to make them the almoners of all the bounty intended for the poor.238 This may have been a local phenomenon because the priests in Archbishop MacHale's archdiocese of Tuam had a peculiarly rascally reputation, according to Richard Webb,284 but the poor who could not afford to pay dues in normal times, and therefore avoided the chapel, generally believed that the priests would ignore them when it came to administering aid. Other Catholics who did attend the chapel believed that the priest would deduct his dues from any relief money he handled before he gave assistance to the people. In any case, the attachment of the people to the Protestant `hand that fed them' English food during the famine was especially galling to many priests.236 James Maher's response to the people's new attitude towards Protestants was to denounce English relief as the protection of a good investment by British imperialism. He believed the British kept the people alive solely because they were of value to Britain economically and militarily : From what source are we to man our fleet, or recruit our army, after we have supplied our factories and tilled the soil, if fever, famine and the landlord, bringing up the rear of Divine vengeance, desolate the home of the peasant? Who is to repel invasion if myriads of the peasant class fall by famine, if the strength of all be exhausted and worse if the affectations of all be alienated? 288 If the priests had been the principal administrators of famine relief rather than the parsons during the great famine of 1845-48, many of them would have found themselves charged with unworthy motives when they were obliged, by scarcity of relief supplies, to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor. In the spring of Black '47 such a distinction made between local poor on the parish relief lists and wandering starving people from outside a parish sometimes resulted in the death of those rejected. When such a tragedy occurred, or when there was simply not enough food for even those who were on parish Iists, public hostility was directed against the parsons who manned the soup-kitchens with the help of their families. The Protestant clergy bore this opprobrium nobly. They knew the workings of the peasant mind, and grimly reckoned with the uncomfortable lot that was going to be theirs if the famine was prolonged. Yet they had no choice but to assume the social duties which traditionally went with their office. There were, of course, religious as well as social reasons for the parsons to act as almoners of the people. Some clergymen, like the

184 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Evangelical Robert Daly, felt uneasy that men of religion should be engaged in other than purely religious work, and wished that they could be free to seek `higher objects' rather than to concern themselves with `itinerant mendiØCy'.237 On the other hand, like many Christians of their generation, whether Catholic or Protestant, Evangelical parsons, in particular, looked upon the famine as a form of divine intervention in human affairs. Archbishop Trench believed the famine of 1831 to be the result of `the Lord's righteous dealings with us' and could not see `the guardian angel of the Lord ... staying the plague'.238 During the great famine Daniel Murray, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, had printed a pastoral which was read from all diocesan pulpits on Quinquagesima Sunday, February 1847: Events are occurring around us, which it is right that we should contemplate with awe, and from which we should not omit to draw a lesson of wisdom. Perhaps the blessings which we owe to His bounty have not moved us to adore, and love, and serve the Gracious Author of them, and that He may wish, by a striking manifestation of His anger, exhibited to our very senses, to awaken our alarm and stimulate us to compunction.23° When such a visitation came among men, the answer of the Christian was to return to the Lord, said Archbishop Murray. This meant engaging in acts of religious penance of various forms, which would assuage the divine anger. Not least of these was to remember what was implied by Christ's `awful words' : `I was hungry and you gave me not to eat.'240 Those who were blessed at this time of visitation were those who were to be found at work in acts of weeping, fasting, mourning and supplication, as well as in acts of mercy towards their suffering fellow men. Although the religious responses of Catholics and Protestants to the famine were generally similar, for social and ecclesiastical reasons the famine increased the division of the two peoples by bringing their clergy sometimes into dreadful competition over the administration of relief. Except in most parts of Ulster, which was again a variation from the norm because diversity of crops and industrialisation lessened the impact there of the potato crop failure, the priests and parsons of Ireland tended to develop intense suspicion of each other's motives and actions during the famine. This happened in spite of the fact that in the early months the very shock of the disaster dampened ancient animosities, and the clergy worked well together on many relief committees. When substantial aid was raised by the Society of Friends, by the British Relief Association and by other agencies, problems of long-term distri-

The Diversion of the Peoples 185 bution of relief arose in great complexity and old hatreds were rekindled. The result was not edifying; nor was it helpful from the point of view of the poor : The Irish people began to consider themselves the victims of either a malevolent Deity, or pawns to be fought over by religious or political bodies.'241 The battling took the form of charge and counter-charge that, whichever ecclesiastical body had control of relief supplies, its priests or ministers would and did give help primarily to their own adherents. As relief was usually administered by the parson, it became a folk myth that for a Catholic peasant to keep alive in a time like Black '47 he was obliged to change his faith. To be charged by neighbours with `taking the soup' at the cost of surrendering one's faith was a dreadful slander in the Catholic community. The counter-charge of Catholic bribery was made by militant Evangelicals, especially those who supported colonies of converts from Roman Catholicism in the Dingle peninsula and on Achill Island During the very great distress which had prevailed in Connemara during the winter and spring, the Roman Catholic priests had made use of the relief with which they had been largely supplied by the Mansion House Committee in Dublin for the purpose of tempting converts to relapse and Roman Catholic parents to withdraw their children from the mission schools.242 The difficulty with judging the truth or otherwise of any particular case of `souperism' is that acceptance or rejection of the accusation so often depends upon the unconscious religious predispositions of the person called upon to judge. In a way, the converts of Trinity College, the O'Sullivans, the Phelans et al. could be accused of a kind of `souperism', of being bribed by educational and other cultural advantages when they renounced Catholicism and moved from a `Gaelic' to a `Sassenach' culture. A similar charge could be levelled against Catholics who converted and entered refuges established at places like Dingle, Achill or Doon. Here peasant converts were protected from the wrath of their neighbours while they were preparing to emigrate or move elsewhere in Ireland. In these colonies they would be clothed and fed, given education, and taught a trade or superior farming methods. Such wholesale exercises in cultural imperialism, however, are not generally what is referred to when the charge of `taking the soup' is laid. `Souperism' refers usually to the widely held belief that on the parish level it was a policy of the parson and his family to give relief aid only to those of the hungry people around them who were

186 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 willing to surrender their traditional faith for a bowl of soup, stirabout or other pottage which would keep them alive. The problem of how difficult it is to judge whether a parson used bribery to obtain conversions can be well illustrated by a study of the life of the Rev. William Allen Fisher, who was the Protestant clergyman in the parish of Kilmoe, Co. Cork. This parish was at the south-west extremity of Ireland and contained the tiny settlement of Crookhaven on the Mizen Head promontory. Fisher was born a Quaker and almost became a Tractarian when at college. But he had a deep love of the Irish people and was more interested in becoming a good pastor to them than becoming involved in abstract theological studies. So he balanced his theological interests by studying some medicine and by learning Irish. After a short time as curate of Clonakilty he became Rector of Kilmoe in 1842, and there he remained for the next forty years bearing `the loneliness and want of congenial minds in that desert parish'.243 Fisher had barely arrived in his parish when the blight appeared on the potato crop and it became clear that suffering would be great. There were 8,000 in the parish in 1845, but after the famine there were less than 3,000 left, the remainder having either died or left the country. There was no resident landlord in the community, so any organisation of relief for the people had to be carried out by Fisher. His immediate problem was how to get food from Cork, a hundred miles away, the only people close at hand available to assist him being the Rev. Robert Traill, Rector of Schull, and the Rev. Richard Townshend, Rector of Skibbereen, both of whom died of fever while trying to help the poor. The food Fisher got was bought with funds obtained through begging letters sent to friends in England. With this aid he set up soup-kitchens, and he also systematically tried to bring food to the fever-stricken in their cabins. As a result of this work he contracted famine-fever himself and almost died. During his illness the people were completely demoralised; they had quarrelled with their priest, who fled the community, leaving them without the paternalistic direction he had once given them. It was when Fisher was recuperating from his illness that religious trouble began in the parish. He read widely, and during his convalescence he discovered that by Canon XIX of the 1634 Canons, which still applied in the Church of Ireland until 1870, he was to ring the church bell on a Saturday evening to hear confessions of any who wanted to come to him. This appealed to Fisher's Tractarian sympathies, and when he recovered he began the process in the hope that people might come to him for spiritual counselling of one type or another

The Division of the Peoples 187 After his recovery he made it a practice to spend every Saturday night in his vestry room, to speak to all who wished to consult him. On one such day he was surprised by the entrance of a Roman Catholic man who, falling on his knees before him, began a confession. Mr Fisher vainly endeavoured to raise him, and to stop it, but he was unable to do so; so when the man had concluded he made use of the opportunity by speaking to him of the Great High Priest to whom alone we should come for pardon. This man was followed by others, and week after week they came to him in crowds, and his entire day was occupied with them; the formula was always the same, they rushed in, and before he had time to speak, they fell on their knees and commenced a confession. He often said that until then he never knew what sin was, or what lurked in men's minds. He never precisely traced the cause of all this, but the result was that his churches were filled with converts.244 As his congregation grew he sought outside help to build a chapel of ease at Toormore, or Altar, and contributed much of his own income to the project. This chapel was known as Teampall na mBocht, the Church of the Poor. He also built two large schoolhouses and a house for a curate who came to help him. To keep up the morale of the people, rather than giving aid gratuitously he gave financial help to those who worked on construction of these buildings and other public works. During the nineteenth century the great fear of most philanthropists was the creation of a `national mendicancy' which would destroy the self-respect of the people, and Fisher's action in organising relief projects reflected enlightened opinion of the age and lessened the `pauperising and demoralising' effect of alms without work : Instead of sinking under the temptations of organised and recognised beggary, the people would spring eagerly at the chance of feeding themselves and paying their way by honest labour.246 The people did not object to the work that Fisher provided for them, which included digging drains on his own lands, and Standish O'Grady, whose father was a nearby parson, said that the degree of faith the people had in Fisher could be measured by the fact that all remittances sent home by hundreds of emigrants passed through his hands.248 The respect, and perhaps love, which the people had for their Irish-speaking, pious and devoted parson was never lost in later years, even though the great majority of them returned to their traditional faith once the famine passed. In spite of his disappointment over the diminishment of his flock, Fisher

188

The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70

remained among the people of Kilmoe, raising a large family in the community and continuing his efforts `to do as much for the spiritual and temporal good of the Roman Catholics as of the Protestants as occasion might serve'.241 When there was another famine in the area in 1862 Fisher made good use of what he had learned during the 1840s. Once more he begged help from benevolent English friends and used it to encourage local industry and fishing. He was unsuccessful in both these ventures. The people were indolent and did not cultivate the flax he had encouraged them to plant for future weaving. Neither did they maintain their fishing-tackle, leaving the nets to rot and the fish to be caught by French and Manx trawlers. A grand plan of Fisher's for a Co-operative Fishing Association failed miserably. Fisher did not falter in his attempts to help the people, however, until in 1880, during another food crisis, he again contracted fever while attending a stricken family of five children. He was elderly, his powers of recuperation were low, and he died in August of that year, at the age of seventy-two. How does one judge William Allen Fisher in terms of `souperism', or bribing people to convert to Protestantism? To Evangelical Protestants like the missionary Daniel Foley, Fisher, though not of their school of churchmanship, was clearly a saint of the reformed faith, deliberately rusticating himself in a remote part of the Lord's vineyard and `labouring with self-denying and unostentatious zeal'. His failure to convert more of the Catholics was attributed by these Protestants to Rome's counter-reformation tactics of using financial bribes to bring the converts back into the papal Øp : `openly offered to the converts if they would return; while the people of the Romish religion are left to die of want'.248 Militant Roman Catholics, on the other hand, considered Fisher to be almost a paradigm `souper'. First of all he was interpreted as being a landlord as well as parson—which he was not until after the famine, when some land was given him to build a church at Goleen.240 It was alleged that Fisher saw the famine as a chance to eradicate Roman Catholicism in the area, so he told his `tenants' to `conform' to the Established Church or face the consequences. They were thus `obliged' to build to Teampall na mBocht `at no expense to himself or his Protestant congregation', the poor Catholics toiling at the task like `slaves'.250 This exploitation by the `heretics' would have continued, but to free the people the Catholic hierarchy sent into Goleen `a warrior angel Michael' in the person of Father John Murphy, whose tall and formidable appearance won from the peasants the title of `Black Eagle'. The story is told how :

The Division of the Peoples 189 On Sunday mornings he proceeded majestically to the Protestant church, mounted the wall surrounding it from which he could get a clear view of the people approaching, and from this improvised pulpit exhorted the people to return to their Father's house daring Fisher's anger.... No record of how long Father Murphy remained nor how many souls he brought back to the faith has been kept, but the penance he imposed is still remembered. . . . Father Murphy required that they make their act publicly at Fisher's gate.251 Father Murphy, son of a wealthy Cork merchant, had apparently been sent on a special anti-proselytising mission by the Catholic hierarchy, for he did not remain long in Kilmoe parish. Nowhere does the name of Murphy appear in the Catholic parish register,252 but his coming must have impressed the people and contributed to that return to Roman Catholicism which Fisher philosophically took in his stride while continuing his patient ministry which was to last another thirty years. Probably Fisher fits into neither the picture that Daniel Foley paints of him, nor that of Father Murphy's biographer, A. J. Reilly. He appears to have been a singularly devoted Anglican High Churchman who was a natural pastor, his primary concern being the welfare of the people he loved. His one extravagance seems to have been the purchasing of many books for his library, especially those dealing with patristic studies, perhaps a reflection of his Tractarian leanings. He never invited into the parish itinerant Protestant missionaries who would have been the counterpart of Father Murphy, though, presumably, in the post-famine era he could have done so. Whatever the truth of Fisher's position was, it would seem that his chief concern was the immediate welfare of the people. This was not always the chief interest of the religious militants of the time, however, whether they were Catholic or Protestant. This can be seen when it came to the issue of emigration—one of the sad concomitants of the famine. On the whole, the problem was of less concern to Protestants, because there were fewer of them. Emigration, however, proved to be of great importance in the Protestant refuge colonies, which acted almost as training and departure camps for converts from Catholicism who were leaving Ireland, because there was no room for such cait breac in the radically divided society. The issue of emigration was of great concern to the Catholics, since most of those who left Ireland in the famine era were of the majority faith. Catholic leaders were especially concerned when

190 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 emigration was organised by Protestant philanthropists, for `the primary consideration of the clergy was, of course, Catholicism'. There was always the suspicion that if Protestant altruism was associated with emigration, it might be a plot to reduce the number of Roman Catholics in Ireland. In 1847 John Robert Godley, an idealistic son of a Sligo landlord, suggested a large-scale emigration of the people, organised by their natural leaders, the priests. A great outcry immediately arose from militant Catholics, like Bishop Feeny of Killala, Archbishop MacHale and Bishop Edward Maginn of Derry. The latter bluntly told those who endorsed Godley's scheme that `The bulk of the Irish Catholics will stick to their native soil were it for nothing else but to haunt you in your dreams of pleasure.'258 This led the Dublin Evening Packet of 15 April 1847 to sneer that Bishop Maginn cared little for his starving people; his `truly diabolic bigotry' reflected a trembling for his livelihood when so many Catholics were leaving his diocese. To Feeny and MacHale the whole scheme was a devilish Protestant plot to weaken the Catholic population which was the very bone and sinew of the country.264 The uproar over emigration continued throughout 1847, when hundreds of thousands of people died of starvation and fever and few Catholic leaders could be persuaded that there was not a Protestant plot of some sort behind the schemes of emigration which were suggested by so many concerned people. Early in that year a delegation of priests called on Lord John Russell to deny indignantly that Ireland was overpopulated.255 The Catholic propagandist-preacher D. W. Cahill wrote a public letter to Lord Palmerston laying the blame for more than a million Irish deaths during emigration at the door of the British Foreign Office. James Maher, as might be expected, joined in the cry of genocide through emigration, saying Ireland was losing the flower of its youth.256 The hierarchy gave no direction to the clergy over the issue of emigration, but as the effects of the famine became clear the situation so obviously called for some depopulation in congested areas that `few priests would, by 1850, stand in the way of emigration'.257 Even James Maher joined what now seemed to be a popular cause and talked of forming a Leinster Emigration Society that would `make the landlords tremble' when its members left and drew others after them to found a `New Carlow' in the New World 268 Nothing came of this scheme, but the excitement over emigration shown by militants like Maginn, MacHale or Maher indicates that their first concern seemed to be the health of Catholicism rather than that of the people. It has been suggested that the famine helped the Catholic Church

The Division of the Peoples 191 in Ireland by reducing the population it had to serve by nearly two million through death and emigration. The loss of twenty per cent of the people it once had to provide for gave it a stronger position financially, and the wealth it gained increased rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century.259 Its new wealth also reflected the disappearance of much of the old Protestant landlord class, and the coming into positions of financial power of many Catholics, especially of Dublin lawyers, who were able to take advantage of bargains in the encumbered estates courts. In the long run, this new situation helped the priests to regain their authority among the people—but not before they had a great fright when a Protestant crusade against Catholic Ireland was launched in England and had amazing early success. To the accomplishments of this crusade, and its legacy in Irish religious society, we will now turn. Before discussing this English invasion which was to upset the traditional balance of power between the two peoples in Ireland, and to invite the coming to Ireland of Roman Ultramontanist reinforcements, it would be well to understand why the vicious postfamine religious warfare could ever begin. The reasons were that religious controversy had already started to divide the intellectual leaders of the two churches. Moreover, the tithe war had deeply divided the common people, and the famine fanned so many existing or latent suspicions, fears and hatreds. Above all, religious warfare between Catholics and Protestants between the famine and Disestablishment was possible, and perhaps inevitable, because psychological factors within each communion, as well as the accidents of history which we have discussed, had led to an everwidening gulf between them. Perhaps, however, in spite of all this, Irish Catholics and Protestants would have found a way of living together in relative peace in a religiously and culturally pluralist society, if they had been left alone. This was not to happen. The worst suspicions of a militant Catholic like James Maher about Protestant England were soon to be realised. In 1848 he bristled over a prophetic statement made by the General Reformation Society : If ever there was a time for England to make a great effort for the evangelising of Ireland it is the present—the poor are ready—the great distress has softened the heart of the poor. A famine shows the poor Romanist the incapacity and tyranny of their priest and the humanity and integrity of the Protestant clergy?" Maher knew the Irish parsons well enough to appreciate that few of them would ever thus attempt to take advantage of the famine

192 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 crisis, even when the identity of the Irish countryman with traditional Catholicism was shaken. However, he could not be sure what militant English Evangelicals might do about such a situation. He was anxious, and his anxiety was justified.

CHAPTER V

EXETER HALL AND IRELAND To endow Popery once more in a land that has been rescued from its yoke is madness little short of high treason against heaven. J. P. PLUMPTRE, MP,

Address to the Protestants of the United Kingdom (1845)

CHAPTER V EXETER HALL AND IRELAND 1. English Evangelicalism and Irish Popery The Gordon Riots of 1780, which followed agitation by the unstable Lord George Gordon and his Protestant Association followers, clearly revealed the power of latent anti-Roman Catholic prejudice in England. The resentment of the rioters was directed more against priests, wealthy papists and schoolmasters than it was against the Catholic poor, however, and there was relatively little concern for the Irish element among the papists.' The popery which the English bigots of this period feared was the Italianate political influence which was associated with the Prince of Wales's Mrs Fitzherbert and later with his Lady Conyngham.2 The agitation over the Catholic Emancipation issue did little to increase English Protestant anxiety about popery. Although the populace as a whole was still largely anti-Catholic in sentiment, many of the most influential members of the House of Commons seemed to be in favour of the measure, and Protestant feeling was only briefly aroused by its passage—however passionate were the feelings of the Irish over the bill. This did not mean that popular English anti-Catholicism was dead, merely that it was dormant, and most Protestants were willing to go along with the `rising talent and energy of the educated classes' who wanted Emancipation.3 Among the educated classes, however, there were many English Protestants who were aware of the threatening events which were occurring in Ireland and the power shown by the priests in the Liberator's campaign. Many Protestants thoughtfully digested the reports of men like Henry Goulburn about Catholic clerical control of the Irish masses : It is impossible to detail in a letter the various modes in which the Roman Catholic priesthood now interfere in every transaction of every description, how they rule the mob, the gentry and the magistracy; how they impede the administration of

196 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 justice.... In many parts of the country their sermons are purely political, and the altars in several chapels are the rostra from which they declaim on the subject of Roman Catholic grievances, exhort to the collection of rent, or denounce their Protestant neighbours in a mode perfectly intelligible and effective, but not within the grasp of the law. O'Connell is complete master of the Roman Catholic clergy; the clergy are complete masters of the people, and upon him and them it depends whether the country shall or shall not be quiet.' The Protestant leaders who quietly worried about what was taking place in Ireland were not hysterical men who feared that they were about to experience `a renewal of the scenes of 1641, in Ireland',° but sober and intelligent churchmen who were concerned not only about the situation in Ireland, but also about the largescale Irish immigration into England which seemed to be increasing every year.° The `popish threat' was, perhaps, even more of a bogy than had been imagined, and what was to be feared were not the long-dreaded Machiavellian intrigues of continental Catholics, but the descent upon England of an army of ragged papists, led by their priests and the Liberator, who were intent upon destroying both the British constitution and the English Protestant way of life. From Balzac to Sean O'Faolain, writers have noticed how O'Connell `incarnated a whole people', and after 1829 no one could ignore his presence in the House of Commons, nor the existence of the `Irish question' which was to topple so many ministries in nineteenth-century Britain.' The alarm of English Protestants, especially the ultra-Evangelicals, over this popish Irish spawn appearing in English society and exercising political power in parliament was great. Between 1835 and 1841, when the Whigs were in power under Melbourne, ultra-Protestant Tories reactivated the Protestant Association and raised again the cry of `No Popery'. These zealots also resurrected the traditional ideology of the Orange lodges, which had been declared illegal in 1836, and showed by their writings that they shared the same `garrison' mentality that had traditionally been found among the Protestants in Ireland. In England, however, this new Orange spirit combined a traditional fear of `popery' with a `xenophobic kind of nationalism',° and Roman Catholicism in its Irish form was viewed as a threat to everything British, whether at home or in the Empire. The new Protestant Association had no trouble finding organs of expression. Fraser's Magazine, Blackwood's Magazine and The Times added their anti-popery polemics to the immense number of book-reviews,

Exeter Hall and Ireland 197 tracts and pamphlets that warned of the Celtic and popish cancer growing in the nation. In his article in Fraser's Magazine entitled `Domestic Jesuitism' Edward Bickersteth, the prominent Evangelical and millenarian theologian, reminded readers of the fires of Smithfield, the exposures of Titus Oates, and the salvation of the nation brought by the Protestant faith. From Ignatius Loyola to John MacHale, popish forces led by the perfidious Jesuits had sought to undermine the fabric of British civilisation to `unroof the country of the Revolution of 1688, and demand battles more bloody than that of the Boyne' : Popery is another name for Jesuitism, and Jesuitism the process by which they anticipate the immolation of Protestantism as a holocaust, and the surrender of the liberties and freedom of England to the papal power.° Bickersteth also told the readers of Blackwood's Magazine that the threat to the Protestant religion and British civilisation was now as great as it had been at the time of the Reformation. Popery 'at home and abroad is in the possession of immense strength ... and is now marching forward with giant strides to its old ascendancy'.1° He listed the names of prominent members of the peerage, gentry, and of parliament who were to be closely watched because they were Roman Catholics, had married Catholics, or had `perverted'. He drew attention to popish advances in the colonies, the United States and Europe, and to the increasing wealth and power displayed by Catholics in Dublin, and urged the English people to pay attention to the traditional enemy which was once more `thundering at the gates'. The 'papophobia' in parliament was led by men like John Campbell Colquhoun, the radical MP for Kilmarnock, who had at one time strongly expressed anti-Orange and anti-Protestant sentiments. He had been converted, however, by Mortimer O'Sullivan at a meeting of the Glasgow Protestant Association, and from that time had become a leader of the anti-Catholic crusade. O'Sullivan's missionary endeavours in England and Scotland were assisted by those of R. J. McGhee and others, who hurried over from Dublin at the invitation of Evangelical clergymen such as the Rev. Hugh McNeile of Liverpool. The London branch of the Protestant Association set up its headquarters in Exeter Hall in the Strand, and it quickly became the Vatican of English Evangelicalism. From this headquarters orders went out on 4 October 1835, the tercentenary of the introduction of the Protestant Bible into England, for all sermons in Evangelical churches that week to be preached

198 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 against popery. In these sermons traditional anti-papal sentiments were merged with a new spirit of nationalism directed against the Irish in the country : The `Popish' stereotypes, legends and myths, imbedded in British culture, were brought up to date. Irish `Popery' replaced the dreaded `Popery' of the sixteenth century with its Papists, Jesuits, political plots, and intrigues. Englishmen in the nineteenth century had their traditional and historical prejudgments, predispositions, biases, and beliefs nurtured by new villains, characters, slogans and symbols—O'Connell, Popish priests and bishops, Maynooth, Peter Dens, and the Irish Plot.11 This was the age of the tithe war, and every Evangelical was made acutely aware of the suffering of the Irish parsons in their besieged homes and churches, as well as the intentions of O'Connell and the priests to seek the Repeal of the Union. The Irish Church Act had just been passed, and it was interpreted as a first step in a Catholic plot which would undermine the Protestant establishment in Ireland. Editorial after editorial in The Times warned of the dangerous power of O'Connell and his savage peasant followers, and this alarm was responded to by others than those who read The Times. Numerous Protestant Operatives' Associations sprang up whose members were just as sturdily anti-Catholic as were the working-class followers of the Rev. Tresham Gregg in Dublin. Wherever the immigrant Catholic Irish settled their social condition was such that they lived in deplorable conditions, and, generally, they were fiercely resented by the English working classes. They were accused of bringing cholera among the poor, of putting pressure on the poor rate, and of engaging in industrial strike-breaking.12 As one informant said to a parliamentary committee, the division between the Irish and English working classes seemed irreconcilable : `It is like oil and water.'13 By 1845 there was general dismay among English Evangelicals over the Repeal crisis, the question of the Maynooth Grant, and the Irish contribution to the Chartist movement. Charles Sumner, the able Evangelical Bishop of Winchester, summed up the thinking of many of his contemporaries when he reflected upon the support he had given to Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the troubles which had followed the passage of the act : It has not restored tranquillity to the country—it has not lightened the difficulty in the councils of the state—it has not contributed to the safety of the branch of our church in Ireland—it has not opened up the way to converts from Popery.... If I could have

Exeter Hall and Ireland 199 read that measure by the light of the fifteen years which have elapsed since its enactment, I could not have given, in 1845, the vote I gave in 1829.14 Evangelical wrath was particularly directed against the increased grant which was proposed for Maynooth College—an issue which became a popular cause after it led Gladstone to resign as President of the Board of Trade. Publications like The Record, The Patriot, and The Watchman were shrill in their call for Protestants to organise themselves once more and to resist this latest concession to popery. The result of this uproar was the calling of a public meeting of Protestants of all denominations at Exeter Hall on 18 March 1845. Out of this gathering emerged the Anti-Maynooth Committee led by militants like Edward Bickersteth and Sir Culling Eardley Smith—men who were pledged to resist, by all the power they could command, what was believed to be but the first step towards the endowment of the Catholic clergy and the Catholic Church in Ireland." Many Evangelicals may have been uncertain about the attitude they should take to Catholics in 1829, but after the tithe war and the Repeal agitation and the continuing immigration of the Irish into England, they had no doubt that in 1845 they had to take a firm stand against further concessions to Irish popery. Harriet Martineau called the Maynooth question the `subject on which society seemed to be going mad'. Since 1838 the annual grant to Maynooth had become an excuse for Protestants to display their anti-papal animus, and from then until 1844, when the government passed the Charitable Bequests Act to satisfy moderate Roman Catholics, the pages of Hansard are filled with Protestant rancour. After that `betrayal' the invectives of John Campbell Colquhoun, MP for Kilmarnock, Sir Robert Inglis, MP for Oxford, J. P. Plumptre, MP for East Kent, and others, brought forth Macaulay's famous words : `The Orangeman raises his howl, and Exeter Hall sets up its bray.'18 Then, in 1845, many churchmen were shocked to hear that John Henry Newman had been received into the Popish Church. In their unease the English Protestants shared the fear of William Urwick in Dublin that the very nature of the constitution was threatened—that `the Roman Catholic church will, shortly, in some way or another, be established'?' The question now asked was how an `essentially Protestant' nation could `educate a Romish priesthood'.18 Was this not a Jesuit plot, a direct attempt to change the nature of the English nation by weakening the `Protestant bulwarks of the British Crown and Constitution'?" Was toleration of such a measure not a

Ø The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 `national sin' which would bring down the `judgment of God upon this Protestant country'?20 Were there not parliamentary leaders like Lord John Russell who favoured a Catholic establishment in Ireland, and had not this case been argued by Charles Greville, the clerk of the Privy Council in his `anonymous' publication of 1845, The Past and Present Policy of England Towards Ireland?" Christopher Wordsworth, the future Bishop of Lincoln, was convinced that a pro-Catholic cabal existed within the nation, and the utterances of Russell and the writings of Greville were `a prophetic exposure of the future measures of Government with respect to Ireland'.22 What Protestants had to do at this time was to realise that they were `fighting anew the battle of the Reformation'.28 By 1 May 1845 a militant religious elite had gathered in Exeter Hall to resist this subversion of Protestant England. The five days of meetings were reported in detail in The Times,24 and the same newspaper could report on 23 June 1845 that the Earl of Winchelsea had founded a National Club in London to support the `Protestant principles of the Constitution'. Prominent among its members was Lord Roden, a leading Orangeman, and other representatives of the Irish Protestant landlord class. Such reactions did not quickly subside with the passage of the Maynooth Act. By the time of Young Ireland and the rebellion of 1848 `as Great Britain reacted to the growth of nationalism in Ireland, British religious sentiments were merged with racial, cultural, and national attitudes'.28 These Protestant, middle-class, anti-Irish, anti-Roman Catholic sentiments were shared by many industrial workers also. By 1841 there were over 400,000 Irish in England, Wales and Scotland, apart from Irish children born after arrival,28 and although they formed a small part of the total population, they were densely congregated in certain areas and made their presence felt. Few doubted the figure of 1,500,000 Catholics in Great Britain which was given by one MP in 1851, and it would have been believed by many that most of these papists were Irish in origin.27 Many Protestants did not fail to notice the significant number of Irish names among those tried with Feargus O'Connor, the Irish-born Chartist leader in Lancaster in 1843. Present-day scholarship has pointed out the relationship between the establishment of Ribbon lodges in England and the participation of Irish labourers in radical movements,28 but this phenomenon was easily observed by English working men. The leaders of the `physical-force' group among the Chartists, William Cuffey, Thomas Fay, Samuel Lacy and William Dowling, were all Irish. The Chartist `ideologues' James Bronterre O'Brien and Thomas Devyr thought in terms of Irish land war and wanted to assail the aristocracy rather than the bourgeoisie. Feargus

Exeter Hall and Ireland 201 O'Connor's answer to working-class misery was an idealistic and peculiarly Irish dream of a return to a small-farm society of peasant proprietors, and the Chartist Northern Star ensured that its readers were aware of Irish affairs. Although some English economic historians seem reluctant to admit that many leaders of the early labour movement in England were Irish radicals, it is clear that the Irish dominated working-class politics in places like London, Manchester and Barnsley. Generally the English Chartists disliked the Irish, who not only exercised among the workers an influence out of all proportion to their numbers, but who also formed the least compromising and most irreconcilable element in the movement as they tried to tie together the causes of Repeal and the Charter. The antagonism between the `two nations' in England seriously divided the working classes. It was difficult for English working men to work together in common cause with the Irish when the latter inhabited an almost totally separate world : `The strictest Particular Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, or Scottish Original Seceders were hardly more enclosed in their own religious and social worlds than the Irish Roman Catholics in England and Scotland.'2° Within their rookeries the London Irish led a self-contained existence, a semi-communal life, with a religious ethnocentricism compounded of `ignorance, tribal hate, perversion of orthodox Catholicity and an idolatrous trust in the Mother of God'30 which separated them from even English Catholics. Only Irish Oblates had any real success working among them, and intruders into their world were harshly treated. It was little wonder that the English working class left them alone and often hated them. They were resented for their political sophistication in Chartist activities, their blacklegging and wage-cutting tactics and their tendency to urge their Irish religiosity on others : `a sort of apostolate in itself .31 The English Evangelicals were indefatigable, however, and if the Established Church chose to ignore its duty to serve the Irish pastorally, some of the ultra-Protestants began to show interest in the London rookeries around St Giles's as part of their resolve `to rescue the Irish from Roman Catholicism, a project that became an Evangelical passion'.S2 In the period 1851-55, when Robert Bickersteth, the future Bishop of Ripon, was still Vicar of St Giles's, he persuaded Bishop Blomfield of London to grant short licences to a series of Irish-speaking Irish Protestant preachers to work among the Catholic immigrants in the area. Little was accomplished, however, as the Catholics recognised that with conversion one `became an obedient subject of Her Majesty, forsaking old religious and secular loyalties . . . Faith and Fatherland'.33 Ethnic loyalty was too strong for such a step, and soon Evangelical

202 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 interest focused solely on the needs of the Irish Catholics in their homeland, for whom, from the founding of the Irish Evangelical Society in 1814, new and important Evangelical agencies for conversion work had come into existence regularly every two or three years throughout the 1820s, 1830s and early 1840s.34 Sometimes Evangelical missions to the Irish were genuinely altruistic, like the mission to navvies," but often their ideology represented the new militant proselytising spirit that was growing in the Evangelical movement. Many Protestant Irish clergy had settled in England, and they were successful in introducing English Evangelicals to ways of thought and tactics used by those militant Protestants who had experience in combating Roman Catholicism in Ireland. Their strategy called for an all-out attempt to convert the `saints' among the Catholic Irish and to use every means possible to prevent the rest from disturbing either the Protestant religion or British civilisation. Clergymen like J. H. McGuire, H. W. McGrath and the converted priest P. J. O'Leary supported a militant Protestant army led by Hugh McNeile, the passionate Liverpool Ulsterman, and Hugh Stowell, Manchester's Evangelical Manxman. These men sought to have the English Evangelicals endorse the religious warfare policies of Irish Protestantism. Stowell showed what he was doing in Manchester in 1839 and 1840 when he asked : What has the Protestant society accomplished in Manchester? It has tended to foster and shelter the combination of, I believe, from 700 to 800 decided, honest-hearted, right-minded, Protestant working men, in an unbroken phalanx against the incursions of popery : it has had a powerful effect in settling and over-matching the spirit which popery was assuming in Manchester. We have to a great extent got up in Manchester again that wholesome horror and antipathy of popery that, I am sorry to say, was fast sinking in the public mind. I say wholesome horror of popery, because though in many minds it is little better than a prejudice, yet a prejudice founded on truth is the next best thing to a principle.86 This kind of religious paranoia was contagious and rapidly affected English Evangelicals who were uneasy over the Irish problem which became so urgent in the years following Catholic Emancipation. By the 1840s it was clear to many of them, whether middle or working class, that what had begun in both England and Ireland was a deadly internecine war. The struggle was not only a religious one, between the truths of Reformation theology and the evils of popish superstition, but between two peoples whose histories and

Exeter Hall and Ireland 203 destinies were sadly entangled. If this was so, the problem for the militant Evangelical Protestant who loved his biblical faith and his British way of life was how he should respond to the ethnic challenge of the Irish masses. The answer, he believed, was surely to be found in Ireland's history, where the battle against popery had been so long and so intense. There, it was observed, a change had begun to take place recently in the nature of Protestant—Catholic controversy, and what was taking place on the other side of the Irish Sea needed reinforcing not only for its own sake, but as a means of defending Protestant and British values in both islands of the United Kingdom. The age of controversy which Archbishop Magee had initiated in Ireland had moved by the 1840s out of the stage where clerical adversaries entertained their supporters by logic-chopping and textquoting dexterity in public encounter. Now there was considerable evidence that some Irish Evangelicals, at least, had initiated an all-out attempt to convert the great mass of the Irish Catholic people. As we have noted earlier, this new spirit connected with proselytising originated in the far west and the south-east of Ireland, the dioceses ruled by Archbishop Power le Poer Trench and Bishop Robert Daly.R7 The people there had long been neglected by the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authorities, as Archbishop Oliver Kelly admitted when he gave evidence on the state of Ireland in 1825. He said it was not unknown then for congregations of 1,500 or more Catholics to travel up to six miles to worship in one of the few chapels provided for them.3B Nor had the Established Church been any more concerned about the needs of the Connaught people. In Connemara the parish of Ballinakill, which measured about forty by twenty Irish miles, with a population of over 42,000 souls, had only one small Protestant church at Clifden, served by one clergyman with the help of two curates loaned to him by the Archbishop of Tuam.S° These representatives of the establishment alone reminded the traveller that `he was not actually passing through the dominions of the Pope of Rome' said one Irish Evangelical writer.40 Although Power le Poer Trench had indicated his interest in proselytising as early as 1823, it was not until 1830 that he began to support a movement among some of his clergy to remedy the spiritual desolation in Connemara by approving a Connaught Home Mission Society. Trench also arranged for Thomas de Vere Coneys, who later became the first Professor of Irish at Trinity College, Dublin, to work among the `poor benighted Irish' in St Giles's, London, with the help of another Irish-speaking missionary, H. H.

204 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Beamish. Trench also determined not to receive into the ministry of his province anyone `who shall not be capable of reading to, and addressing the people in their own native tongue'.41 This resolve proved impossible to maintain, but by 1836 Trench had regularised the Connaught Home Mission Society, after assuring his worried clergy that Tuam province pulpits would be open only to clergy of the Established Church. The militant archbishop was helped in his proselytising work by Thomas Martin, MP, of Ballynahinch, and earnest Evangelical curates like Mark Anthony Foster, Anthony Thomas and Brabazon Ellis, at Renvyle, Ballinakill and Roundstone. By 1838 Ellis had been allowed to go to England to beg Evangelical help for the Protestant Home Mission in Connemara.42 Ellis and other Tuam clergy who followed him were given a good hearing because of the new and intense interest shown by English Evangelicals in the Catholic question. News that an antiCatholic crusade had begun in the Tuam archdiocese was eagerly received because it corroborated other stories about an amazing experiment on Achill Island which was being carried out by the Rev. Edward Nangle. Nangle was an Irish-speaking Evangelical who had visited Achill with relief supplies during the famine of 1831 and had witnessed the desperate physical need of the people, their ignorance, and the failure of either the Protestant or Catholic churches to provide adequate spiritual resources for them. The Church of Ireland rector was elderly, infirm, lived in Newport, and had a small income which did not allow him to pay a curate.48 The Roman Catholic parish had two regular places of worship and some schools, but no regular chape1.44 Determined to take advantage of this situation by preaching to the people in their native tongue, Nangle, from 1834, built up a Protestant mission which had considerable initial success. The mission immediately caught the attention of Archbishop John MacHale, and he hastily visited the island in 1835 to begin to reinforce the work of the Catholic Church in the area. A fierce religious war was waged in the island from this time, and in the struggle Nangle proved to be as pugnacious as the `Lion of the Fold of Judah'.45 His fame soon spread in Protestant circles, and a visit to the colony became almost an obligatory pilgrimage for militant Evangelicals.46 As far as Father Martin Connolly, the Parish Priest of Achill, was concerned, Nangle and his Evangelical supporters in both Ireland and England were mere `emissaries of discord' among the people.47 The more the irate Connolly, or his fiery curate, James Henry, added to the local uproar, however, the more Nangle's mission obtained notoriety in the Evangelical world. From 1837 the colony was publishing its Achill Missionary Herald and Western Witness

Exeter Hall and Ireland 205 to bring to militant Protestants news of this example of heroic resistance to Romish power in distant Connaught and to relate tales of the `aggression' of priests like Connolly and Henry." The other Protestant colony that caught English Evangelical attention was in the Dingle peninsula in Co. Kerry. A mild kind of proselytising was begun there between 1831 and 1839 by two Church of Ireland clergymen, the Rev. Thomas Chute Goodman and the Rev. George Gough Gubbins, to rescue from Roman Catholicism people they considered to be lapsed Protestants. But the work was soon taken over by an Englishman, the Rev. Charles Gayer, the private chaplain of Lord Ventry, lay Rector of Ventry, who built up a substantial Protestant colony complete with church, glebe house and schools. Gayer was helped by local laymen and the Irish Society in his work, and soon had an Irish-speaking proselytising ministry directed by the three well-known convert brothers named Moriarty. The uproar in the area was great, and on the eve of the famine a famous lawsuit enabled Gayer to draw the attention of the English Evangelical public to what was happening in Dingle. So many of the Dingle converts were forced to emigrate because of local hostility that the colony began to disappear in the immediate post-famine years when the Catholic hierarchy rushed mission help to the area. During the 1840s, however, it was referred to as often as the Achill colony as an example of what could be done in popish Ireland if only English Evangelicals would lend their time and talents to resist the powers of darkness in Munster and Connaught4° Most Irish Protestant clergy deplored the animosity which arose from the open proselytising associated with the colonies at Achill, Dingle, and the lesser ones at Doon, Ballingarry, Ballybunion and Listowel.60 These men had deep roots in the Irish countryside, a realistic sense of history, and knew how much value was to be attached to a countryman's conversion, especially in a time of food shortage. The Irish bishops and the parsons knew the popular belief that soup, stirabout, clothing, and even money and emigration assistance were offered lavishly to any Catholic who showed interest in `conversion' to Protestantism. They also knew the social ostracism and harassment that faced any convert, even if he was sincere in his change of religious persuasion. To his neighbours he became a `pervert', and to save him and his family from actual bodily harm it was in some cases necessary to provide shelter for the new members of the reformed faith. When the converts were numerous enough, this led to the establishment of a Protestant colony set in the midst of an angry populace whose priests ensured there was no peace for the apostates. Unless the Established Church bishop was an Evangelical zealot, the last thing he wanted was his diocese

206 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 to be turned into a religious battlefield with all the trouble and expense compounded by outside interference in ecclesiastical affairs that such a struggle would bring. It was generally assumed that to a Protestant prelate belonged the civil duty of maintaining peace and good order in his diocese, and an encouragement of proselytising was not the way to achieve that blessing.01 The Protestant bishops knew from long experience that deep social discord and animosity arose in any district where there was any significant number of conversions to Protestantism. As James Maher, the pugnacious Parish Priest of Carlow—Graigue, observed, `no one could deny' that `Protestant converts, on renouncing the faith of their fathers, obtain better dress, better covering, better food than they had before.'02 Such social change inevitably brought jealousy and resentment in a community, and the charge that religious conversion had been used as a means to move from an impoverished Celtic peasant culture into the privileged one of Sassenach ascendancy. Apart from Power le Poer Trench and his rather ineffectual successor, Thomas Plunket, most Evangelical bishops of the Church of Ireland consistently tried to avoid being charged with open support of proselytising agencies. The notable exception to this policy was provided by Robert Daly, the bigoted Bishop of Cashel.63 We have already looked at his personal activities as a controversialist in the pre-Emancipation period. From the time he became bishop in 1843 until his death in 1872 Daly's passion was his support of anti-Roman Catholic missions of every sort, especially those engaged in proselytising. Although he never had the joy of superintending an Achill or Dingle-like colony in his united dioceses of Cashel, Emly, Waterford and Lismore, he had hopes of a major mission at Doon, and he did encourage the activities of proselytising Evangelicals like the curate of Killeshin (Graigue), Co. Carlow, the Rev. Dawson Massy.54 We know a great deal about Massy because he had enough success in his proselytising to throw into periodic apoplectic fits of anger his long-standing Roman Catholic counterpart, the irascible James Maher, Parish Priest of Carlow—Graigue, whom we have met as a controversialist in the pre-Emancipation period.65 Massy referred to the Church of Ireland as `that English Gibraltar'G6 and interpreted agrarian unrest and the Repeal agitation as cunning attempts by papists like James Maher to win back lost Catholic lands without taking into account the welfare of the poor, ignorant and suffering people. Maher, in turn, attempted to dismiss Massy's limited successes : Out of a population of between 3,000 and 4,000, some 30 or 40 now and then attend his church, composed, in part, of the Prot-

Exeter Hall and Ireland 207 estant shop-boys in Carlow, anxious, I suppose, to hear more denunciations of the Catholic priesthood, than they could expect from the more moderate and more respectable clergymen of Carlow.67 Probably Maher was not as seriously concerned as he sometimes seemed to be over this trouble-making Protestant missionary who received tacit support from his bishop, if not from his fellowparsons. But he worried about the long-range effect of Massy's `filthy mendacious tracts', which would reinforce other proselytising activities capable of `arousing the prejudices and fanaticism of England against our religion'.ß8 Maher was too political a creature not to realise that what Massy, Bishop Daly and the small minority of other ultra-Evangelical Irish Protestant churchmen wanted was massive aid from English Evangelicalism so that they could begin a major religious campaign in Ireland. By the 1840s astute individuals like Maher saw clearly that a major Protestant attack against Roman Catholicism in its Irish form was almost sure to arise. English Protestants who resented the political power which the priests had shown by their disciplining of the Catholic masses during the Repeal agitation would join ranks with other Protestants who feared the Irish masses pouring into England, bringing with them both a threat to the reformed faith and to the English way of life. Ultra-Protestant sentiment, when combined with xenophobic nationalism, would sooner or later bring about a major English Protestant missionary counter-offensive in Ireland. By bringing them spiritual enlightenment the missionaries could free the people from that priestly tyranny which had kept them so long in a barbaric state. Such spiritual emancipation would then give them a new love for the civilised way of life which was offered by the Protestant British Empire. Maher's worst fears were soon to be realised. Ireland's age of religious controversy, when the combatants had been Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, was to be succeeded in the immediate post-famine years by a new period when controversy would be not an end in itself but a means to further proselytising missions. Another change to come was that the leaders of the new missions would be Englishmen. A minority of militant Irish Evangelical Protestants, such as Robert Daly or Dawson Massy, would support the new missions, but they would be organised and directed by the Evangelical zealots who held their meetings in Exeter Hall. To defend the Catholic cause, equally zealous Ultramontanist forces would be rushed to Ireland to defend the faith and support champions like James Maher. In the ensuing fray, the long-neglected

208 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 people of areas like Connaught would be embarrassed by the religious riches that would be thrust upon them, and charges of bribery and intimidation would be made by both religious factions. Much suffering was to come to the poor people of Ireland as religious zealots fought for their souls, and the motives of the Catholic and Protestant leaders alike are a complex matter of historical judgment upon which few people can be persuaded to agree. But like it or not, the poor people of Ireland in the postfamine years were to find themselves fought over savagely by fanatical men—men who talked of concern for the soul but showed great interest in body-counts. 2. The Rev. Alexander Dallas The leader of the English Evangelical crusade, when it came, was a remarkable soldier-saint, a type of Protestant Loyola, or, as his Catholic critics might have complained, a latter-day Oliver Cromwell. This was Alexander Dallas, for many years Rector of Wonston, Hampshire, and the founding father of the Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics. A highly intelligent, remarkably energetic man and fanatical Evangelical churchman, he probably contributed as much as Cardinal Cullen to the shape of Catholic-Protestant relations in the south of Ireland during the century which followed his death in 1869. In terms of the importance of Dallas and his Irish Church Missions, Ulster, as usual, proved to be the exception to the rule in Ireland. Catholic-Protestant relations there were so critically balanced during the 1850s, the `golden age' of Irish Church Mission expansion, that Protestant Ulstermen gave little encouragement to those English Evangelicals who wished to push them into a state of open religious warfare. Belfast narrowly escaped a major disruption when street preaching was attempted by Protestants in 1857,69 but each of Ulster's `two nations' then possessed sufficient moderate opinion to ensure that the eager offers by outsiders to join Ulster's tribal warfare were quickly refused. Dallas had a messianic complex. His favourite text was `The very hairs of your head are all numbered,' and he believed his Irish mission to be the final object towards which every step in my life has been made providentially to tend.... The great work of the enlightenment of large bodies of Roman Catholics in Ireland, by the affectionate preaching of an outspoken Gospel in antagonism to Roman dogma, was the object intended in Divine Providence." If one questions Dallas's theory of election, it is interesting to

Exeter Hall and Ireland 209 speculate what psychological factors may have determined his antiCatholic sentiments. His domineering father, R. C. Dallas, had established some of his reputation as a minor literary figure by writing elaborate defences of the Jesuits at a time when they were least popular in English society.ß' Alexander received almost all his education through his father's tutoring, and although he defended his father in a notorious lawsuit after Dallas senior illegally published private letters of his nephew, Lord Byron, there was considerable tension between father and son.02 Through his father's social influence young Dallas served in the British army as an assistant commissary-general during the Peninsular War. The period he spent in uniform, between 1810 and 1815, shaped his character greatly, and, as he admits himself more than once in his autobiography, he never lost either the soldierly character or the sense of `accountability' which was necessary for a commissariat officer. Dallas also tells us that during his wartime service he was far enough gone on the road to damnation that if he had died in one of the cavalry charges or other adventures in which he took part, including the Battle of Waterloo, `the loss of my life would have been the loss of my soul'.°S When Dallas was discharged from the army he divided his time between London, Le Havre and Paris, and because of his popular writing and his knowledge of French and Spanish songs and dances, he was in constant demand as arbiter elegantiarum in the world of high fashion. Looking back at this period of his life, the Evangelical Dallas of later years said he was completely lost in the `pursuit of pleasure and the intoxication of vanity'. During this time he composed a French farce and almost agreed to accompany his cousin, Lord Byron, on the poet's last journey. He also made a marriage, which his autobiography delicately hints was filled with tension from the very beginning : `My marriage was the period at which the great schooling of my own character, to prepare it for its future purposes, may be said to have commenced.'°4 The marriage was resented by his father, and this estrangement distressed Dallas so much that he seriously contemplated suicide. When Dallas married his wife she was considered to be a woman of some means, but from the very beginning of their union, which was blessed quickly with several children, Dallas seems to have had severe financial problems. Nevertheless, he had sufficient income initially to try studying law. When that profession failed to attract him he abruptly decided to go to Oxford to study divinity. There the handsome young couple found themselves once more caught up in high society, and to escape this pressure, as well as an increasing number of debts, Dallas left the university without taking a degree, H

210 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 and in June 1821 he was ordained to the curacy of Radley. Still plagued by financial troubles, he soon moved to the curacy of Highclere, where he met his predecessor, and one of the most important people in his life, the Evangelical Charles Sumner, who was destined to become Bishop of Winchester in 1827. Dallas and Sumner quickly became intimate friends, but the conversion of the former did not take place until he moved to the curacy of Woobum and Burford. The vicar of that parish, the Rev. T. G. Tyndale, was an earnest Evangelical who proved to be of great comfort to Dallas when he went through a considerable emotional crisis at this time. In the year 1824 his father died, he found himself engaged in the lawsuit over Lord Byron's papers, and he was `brought under severe domestic trial in various ways'.86 Mr Tyndale's equally Evangelical daughter, who was destined to become Dallas's second wife, said that it was during this time at Burford that Dallas's last defences gave way to the `teaching of the Holy Spirit, who was so manifestly moulding the heart of His servant for a vessel unto honour prepared for His own use'.60 Dallas's welfare was also of concern to Charles Sumner, who used his power of patronage to give this newly converted Evangelical suitable preferment. He was appointed briefly to the living of Yardley and then, in the summer of 1829, to the rectory of Wonston, only seven miles away from Sumner's see house in Winchester. Dallas was to remain as Rector of Wonston from the year of Catholic Emancipation until the year of Disestablishment and the year of his death, 1869. One of the reasons why Dallas was able to move with ease into the Irish ecclesiastical scene in later years was his High Church Evangelicalism, a theological outlook which was shared by so many Church of Ireland clergy. From his very first days in Wonston, Dallas devoted himself with prodigious zeal to the task of setting an example of Evangelical churchmanship and ministry that would help his friend Charles Sumner to reform the diocese of Winchester. What is fascinating in Dallas's record of this ministry is to note how his early personal experiences, particularly those in the army, continued to shape both his character and his Evangelical interpretation of what he was about. From the time he was very young Dallas had had a great love of all things British. As a boy he had walked alongside both Pitt and Nelson as they moved through the London streets, and had been overcome with a sense of majesty and awe during the funeral of the latter—identifying the trumpeters' blast during the ceremony with the call of God at the Last Judgment. He always rejoiced that he had been actually part of the heroic British struggle to humble

Exeter Hall and Ireland 211 Bonaparte. He also venerated the hierarchical structures peculiar to his society, which, he believed, in some way represented the order desired by the deity. Dallas's God, at times, seemed very much like a heavenly field-marshal who summoned and directed an army of British churchmen, led by reformed and Evangelical bishops and priests, in a great battle against the principalities and powers of this world. As early as 1822, the year when he first preached about Ireland in a charity sermon at Highclere, he told his simple rural listeners that when they suffered it was because they deserved `that and more than that, from an offended and forgotten God'.67 He suggested that whenever misfortune came their way the possibility of divine anger must be at least considered.88 God was the great commander of them all, and disloyalty to him meant that his majesty was to be reckoned with." When he meditated in his churchyard he saw it as the field where the saints had fallen, as members of the `firm front of the square', in the great battle against sin, amidst the `havoc of the artillery', the `bursting of shell' and the `crossing of bayonets'.70 When Dallas moved to Wonston and, finally, had complete authority in his parish, he lived among his simple parishioners as a benevolent despot. Not, he said, because he enjoyed exercising authority for any temporal reason, but because he believed that one day he would stand before the throne of Christ with a redeemed flock, saying : `Behold I and the children that God hath given me.'77 At times he positively harried his unfortunate people, none of whom was safe from a visit by their devoted rector who would make `searching inquiry' about how much attention had been paid to the sermon of the previous Sunday.72 With his commissariat mind Dallas kept detailed statistics of the religious life of his people, dividing them into four spiritual classes, ranging from `true Christians' to those facing damnation because of religious neglect.7S They were continually warned of the spiritual dangers to be encountered at country race-meetings or rural fairs,74 and many of his parishioners dreaded his frequent visitations. Dallas's tendency throughout his life to bully anyone who disagreed with him led his wife to apologise for him by saying: `If the training of a soldier led Mr Dallas to strict requirements of obedience, and sometimes to administer reproof with severity, that reproof was always guided by principle and accompanied by prayer.'7° Dallas was not wanting in charity, particularly to those who belonged to his `little flock', and he was diligent in providing for the temporal needs of Wonston through the usual charitable agencies of his time, such as fuel funds, clothing funds and the relief given in the village schools. His main concern, however, was

212 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 the spiritual life of his people, and he was greatly distressed when, in 1839, he had to confess that after a full ten years of labour : `There are sixty-four persons living in this parish who have formerly been Communicants, but have given up attendance at the Lord's Table. Of these no less than twenty have declined during the last year.'" By this time he had discovered that in spite of his own total Evangelical dedication and his zealous desire to convert others, there was a limit to what he could accomplish. After Dallas's death one of his curates said of the parish : `I know of no parish where light and darkness are so apparent.... There were more godly people in Wonston than in any place I know : but alas I there were more who seemed to have hardened their hearts.'" It was Dallas's discouragement in Wonston, combined with a series of accidents, that persuaded him to turn his attention to Ireland. By 1841 his financial situation in Wonston had become so desperate that he was obliged to let the rectory and to live in a garden cottage. A crisis came in his married life, he was `visited by affliction of no common kind, and a heavy cloud of sorrow burst upon the domestic circle, which was henceforth broken up'.78 Dallas's health and strength began to fail, and by January of 1844 he was so seriously ill that one day he fell insensible from his horse. The family was never reunited, and Mrs Dallas died in Boulogne in 1847. In 1847 Dallas was fifty-six years old and, had he had less remarkable powers of endurance, might have been expected to see through his days as a rather unsuccessful erstwhile Evangelical enthusiast. Unfortunately or otherwise for Ireland's religious history, this was not to be. As early as 1842, in the midst of his depression, he wrote wistfully in his Pastor's Assistant : `Many of us are appointed to labour among few hearers. Not all are called to speak of the glad tidings of salvation in the great congregation.'" It is probable that with his tremendous latent energy he was even then, however unconsciously, seeking for a new and rewarding field of mission. A series of unforeseen events had recently called Ireland to his attention, and Dallas had begun to consider that land as the place where he would find his `great congregation'. The theological movement that first drew him into Irish affairs was the millenarian mania which was of great concern to people like his friend Edward Bickersteth. With the latter, Dallas visited Edward Irving's London church as early as 1831 to see whether the eschatological ideas and revivalist preaching of this charismatic and popular clergyman could stand the test of what the two Evangelicals believed to be apostolic authority. When Bickersteth organised a society of clergy `for the consideration of Prophetic Scriptures

Exeter Hall and Ireland 213 in connection with the passing events of the Church and of the world',80 Dallas was one of its earliest members. Twice a year this group, which included many leading Evangelical clergymen, met in Bloomsbury, and a course of Lenten lectures on millenarian topics was given by them each year. On nine different occasions Dallas contributed to these lectures, which did much to bring him to the attention of important members of the Evangelical party. A `little work on prophecy' of 1839 entitled Look to Jerusalem: A Scriptural View of the Position of the Jews in the Great Crises of the World's History was considered to be particularly important, and led to his being invited to preach for Evangelical societies on many occasions. As we have noted earlier,8' millenarian speculation about the conversion of the Jews and the freeing of the Irish from Roman tyranny before the return of Christ was of great interest to Irish Evangelicals. Those who met at Powerscourt and other places were always looking for English brethren who might come and enlighten their discussions.B2 It was because of his passionate interest in millenarianism and his support of the Jews Society that Dallas first came to Ireland to urge Protestant clergy to preach the Gospel to all the nations and `to take out of them a people for his name' 88 Dallas, as we have seen, was a complex personality, and he tells us that while his father praised the Jesuits, a family friend had regaled him in 1798 with tales of the `horrors of Vinegar Hill and Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge'.84 He had seen the good work of Catholic nuns during his time in France and Spain, and had not hesitated to urge churchmen to consider founding Protestant Sisters of Charity—a suggestion that Elizabeth Fry immediately used in her work in Whitechapel.86 At the same time he reacted in a typical Evangelical spirit to the tales of Irish priests rousing the people to acts of outrage during the tithe war and the Repeal agitation. He told his people at Wonston in 1835 : At the moment seven out of eight of our fellow subjects in Ireland are in the same grievous bondage and delusion, and this is the principal reason of the trouble that is in that country. How grateful we ought to be that, by the grace and providence of God, we are preserved from so great a curse as Popery or Romanism.88 He also reacted indignantly to the extravagances of the Tractarians,87 but he said that it was not until the Jews Society of Dublin persuaded him first to come to Ireland that his sense of mission to the Irish Roman Catholics began to develop. In the year 1839 he was invited to Bath as a deputation for the Jews Society, and there he met the Rev. Anthony Thomas, one of

214 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Power le Poer Trench's Evangelical zealots in the archdiocese of Tuam,88 who had served for thirteen years as incumbent of Ballinakill. Thomas was then secretary of the Irish branch of the Jews Society, which Archbishop Trench had long favoured, and he pressed Dallas to come to Dublin to attend the annual meeting of that body. At first Dallas refused, but when Thomas accidentally met him on a stagecoach a few days later with the exclamation `Surely this is providential' and renewed his plea, Dallas gave way to Thomas's requests, certain in his own mind `that it was not my own will, but God's will'8° that was calling him to Ireland. His speech in Dublin, when he addressed some two hundred Irish clergymen, was received with `great enthusiasm'. This welcome persuaded him that he should regularly attend the annual meetings of missionary societies in Dublin during the spring.°° At these meetings he met leading Irish Evangelicals, but `the state of the Romish population was not laid upon his heart till the year 1843'.91 Before 1843 Dallas's domestic trials and sense of professional frustration had greatly increased, however, and his `public ministry' preaching against the Tractarians and for the Church Missionary Society and the Jews Society began to divert him more and more from purely parish concerns : After twenty years of parochial work which none but a man of great physical strength could have sustained, a sense of weakness and exhaustion began to be felt. He was thus induced from time to time to accede to the earnest solicitations he received to take a change of work and of scene by acting as deputation for societies.02 The missions which refreshed him most were those he performed in Ireland, and by the spring of 1843 he wrote : `I am quite overwhelmed with a sense of God's mercy in the great work He is calling me to here." This renewed sense of vocation encouraged him to approach the Irish Society about an English mission in Ireland, but he found to his chagrin that `His suggestions were received with kindness and sympathy, but with a cautious suspicion of his enthusiastic notions.'D4 At this time the project that Dallas had in mind was to make use of the new penny post to deluge literate middle-class Roman Catholics in Ireland with Protestant propaganda. The leaders of the Irish Society had had years of intellectual controversy with their Catholic neighbours, however, and most of them were weary of the `thunderings' of R. J. McGhee, Mortimer O'Sullivan, Tresham Gregg and the rest. Now they showed little enthusiasm for the ideas of this new religious militant with his dream of enlisting English churchmen in an anti-Catholic

Exeter Hall and Ireland 215 crusade. Dallas says of his reception when he first advanced his ideas to a large gathering of Irish clergymen : I did not gain a single convert to my views or suggestions. They had two very decided reasons against my proposals. First, I was ignorant of Irish character, and being an Englishman could not judge of their position. Then, the fervour of the Irish, inflamed by a tyrannical priesthood, would be sure to excite bloodshed if there was any open effort to expose Romish errors.95 As this juncture Dallas believed that Divine Providence again came to his assistance and gave him the means `to gather souls from the apostate church, to act upon the solemn call (Rev. xviii, 4), "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." '°° A wealthy English gentleman, Mr Enosh Durant of High Canons, had been greatly moved by a millenarian sermon preached by the Rev. H. V. Elliott, the powerful Evangelical divine of Brighton. This led him to speak to Dallas about the need to bring God's elect out of the bondage of popery before the millenarian event, and in 1845 he sent Dallas a letter offering to help him in any plans he had for missions among the Irish. Dallas had already enlisted the support of two pious ladies named Mason and Bellingham, and with their help and the encouragement of the aged Mr Durant's gift of £3,000, Dallas was able to begin his `great work'. His spiritual and physical depression Ieft him, and he threw himself into the cause of bringing the Gospel to millions of Irish Catholics—offering the full power of Evangelical conviction which had once been lavished on the seven hundred people of Wonston. The first task of the conspirators was to implement Dallas's plan for using the post to send 90,000 tracts to `respectable traders and farmers' among the Roman Catholics. A Voice from Heaven to Ireland and the other tracts were to be posted in such a way that their arrival among the people at the same time would seem miraculous. The message of these publications attributed Ireland's weakness to her enslavement by `a band of Italian police' who lived among the people and posed as Irishmen, putting upon them a yoke of most merciless tyranny, and all the more reckless in its tyrant rule because it is thoroughly un-Irish, wholly foreign to the soil, to the blood and to the feeling of Irishmen.97 The whole enterprise proved to be an exacting one, but it was ably directed by Dallas: `The military manoeuver of the soldier was now brought into full exercise in the Lord's work.'98 By the time the tracts were mailed in January 1846 it was clear

216 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 to everyone that famine had once more visited Ireland. It was certainly evident to Dallas, for in August 1846 he visited many areas from Dingle to Belfast as he sought help from Evangelical Irish Protestants like the Duchess of Manchester at Tandragee and Lord Roden. He also visited many stations of the Irish Society and talked to the agents he found in them. One place he visited, Castlekerke on Lough Corrib, in the parish of Cong, particularly captivated him, both for its natural beauty and the warmth of the reception he received from the eighteen Protestants and thirty-four Catholics who gathered in the schoolroom to hear him preach. This visit to Castlekerke convinced Dallas that what Ireland needed was a number of similar Protestant missions or settlements, like those tried in other parts of Ireland. They could be supported by English funds which would bring the blessings of the reformed faith and of British civilisation to a people who were otherwise abandoned to the authority of the `Italian police'. Although Dallas speaks, at this time, of the `poor starving converts', he does not further allude to what must have been the terrible suffering of the people in Joyce's Country that year. Dallas's mind was not concerned with such `temporal' affairs. He was convinced that he was guided to Castlekerke as Calvin had been guided to Geneva : His need of relaxation—the various accidental circumstances that decided his course through the country—any one of these might have changed the route; in which case his eye would never have been struck with the beauty of the green hill in the midst of the brown mountains around Lough Corrib, nor his heart drawn into sympathy with the interesting inhabitants.°° From this time Dallas made frequent visits to Ireland to discover the weaknesses in the proselytising programme in the Tuam diocese. The few missions operating were not of primary concern to Thomas Plunket, who had become Bishop of Tuam in 1839 and who began his episcopate by trying to live on the continent like his neighbour, the Hon. Edmund Knox, Bishop of Limerick.'°° Dallas also continued to haunt meetings of the Irish Society and to press upon those who attended the Bloomsbury prophetical meetings the needs of the Irish for deliverance from the bondage of Rome through the power of Christ's Gospel. He urged his listeners to support the handful of Evangelical zealots in the archdiocese of Tuam who were carrying on their lonely struggle with the powers of darkness : These excellent confessors of Christ's truth are placed in the fore-front of the battle of His Church against the reviving apostasy of Rome. The struggle which they are maintaining at

Exeter Hall and Ireland 217 the outposts is for the preservation of the whole body. Not more surely did the British army fight the battle of all Europe on the plains of Waterloo, than do the spiritual clergy and laity of the Church of Ireland fight at this moment the battle of God's truth against the apostasy of Rome, for the Christians of England as well as for themselves.30' He also wrote letters to the Morning Herald on 24 October and 11 December 1846, describing for Evangelical readers the desperate desire of the people of Connemara to free themselves from `the trammels of Rome' through education which would free their minds for the `reception of those glorious truths which had been withheld from them'.102 In these letters he called for the setting up of a special fund for the `Spiritual Exigencies of Ireland' and suggested that each parish in the Church of England should be helping a missionary Church of Ireland parish. Many responded to Dallas's appeal, and between 1846 and 1848 there came into being a committee headed by the Duke of Manchester, with Dallas and Edward Bickersteth acting as honorary secretaries, to superintend the more than £10,000 donated for `Spiritual Exigencies' in Ireland. Enosh Durant was not active on the committee because of his advanced years, and he died in November 1848. On one of his visits to Connemara Dallas stayed with an Evangelical landlord named Hyacinth D'Arcy at Clifden Castle. His ancestors had held land in West Galway for many generations, and D'Arcy, a popular, conscientious landlord, had been converted to Evangelicalism some years before. He greatly heartened Dallas by agreeing to help proselytising missions among the local people, even if they were supported by English funds. Dallas's next tactic was to call on Bishop Thomas Plunket who, in normal circumstances, would have been `opposed to every movement which might raise antagonistic feelings among the Romanists'.103 But Dallas now had behind him powerful figures like the Duke of Manchester, solid support from the militant members of the English Evangelical party, and considerable funds. Furthermore, Thomas Plunket had made a bad start in his episcopate through absenteeism from his see, which had brought him reprimands from both Lord Eliot, the Chief Secretary, and Primate Beresford; he possibly believed that support of Dallas's scheme would make amends for his earlier lack of spiritual enthusiasm. In any case, in September of 1847 he heard Dallas out, consulted with the clergyman at Cong, the Rev. E. L. Moore, in whose parish was Castlekerke, and finally agreed to help Dallas by ordaining a resident Irish-speaking Scripture Reader, J. B. O'Callaghan, to act as a missionary in the Castlekerke area.

218 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 The bishop also approved Dallas's plan to send as a Scripture Reader to the village of Rooveagh the former Catholic clergyman of the area, the Rev. Roderick Ryder, a fluent Irish speaker, who had been converted and driven out of the community. Dallas said he did this to test Ryder's sincerity. Ryder justified Dallas's faith in him by staying in the community, which was filled with his relatives, and by defying violent opposition from local Catholic clergy. Dallas visited Ryder often during this period and encouraged him several times to face up to a hostile crowd : `Impress upon an Irishman that you are not afraid of him and you are safe with him'104 Dallas also arranged for Ryder to visit Wonston for professional instruction in the reformed faith. By this time Dallas was completely absorbed in Irish missionary work. His daughter, recording the death of her mother in 1847 and her father's reaction to it, barely notes his bereavement, but records in great detail how Dallas saved from conversion to Rome a young Cambridge Tractarian whom he met on the train going to Boulogne.105 The anti-Catholic crusade he had launched now completely absorbed him, but the people of Wonston were upset when the intense shepherding they were used to was suddenly removed. Soon they were reproving their once-devoted pastor for neglect of them, and Dallas had to employ a curate for duty when he was away from his parish. As he persevered in his Irish crusade, more and more missions were established in the Clifden area and along the shores of Lough Comb. Irish Evangelicals like Bishop Robert Daly and Joseph Singer of Trinity College began to organise local committees to help the work in Connemara made possible by the funds coming from England, and by 1849 services in Irish were being held at Errislanon, Ballyconree, Sellerna, Glan and Rooveagh. Finally, on 29 March 1849, the Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics was formally established, with headquarters at No. 14 Exeter Hall. It was agreed that the agents of the new society would work only through the Established Church in Ireland and only in those parishes whose incumbents agreed to make use of their services. Immediately afterwards Dallas and Edward Bickersteth went to Connemara to inform the seven ordained missionaries, sixteen Scripture Readers and twelve schoolmasters and mistresses of their new organisational authority. How was it possible to establish the Irish Church Missions so quickly and so effectively in the west of Ireland? When Robert Bickersteth, Rector of St Giles's-in-the-Fields, London, and the future Bishop of Ripon, succeeded his uncle as honorary secretary, he agreed with Dallas that the initial ICM success reflected neglect

Exeter Hall and Ireland 219 of the people by both the Church of Ireland and the Church of Rome. Robert Bickersteth and Dallas particularly criticised the Established Church for having only `minimal machinery' in an area which had been ignored by even the Irish Society, although the people were in the `darkest state of ignorance with the least amount of education'.10ß In Connaught the harvest-field was ripe, the people were hungry for spiritual aid because of their long neglect, and the Irish Church Missions were there to satisfy their spiritual needs. The ICM leaders were convinced that the Established Church neglect of the people in the west was nothing new. W. C. Plunket, the future Archbishop of Dublin, who for many years supported the Irish Church Missions, quoted the belief of James Daly, Warden of the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas in Galway, in 1860 that local records showed mid-eighteenth-century Connemara to have had half the population as members of the Established Church. Daly said that when he first made a visitation of the area in 1813 : I found to my surprise that almost the whole population spoke English, and nothing else; and on inquiring why it was so, the poor people themselves told me simply and unaffectedly their origin, their difficulties, their struggles and their fall. They lapsed for want of a minister of their own Church to baptise their children, to marry their daughters, and to bury their dead. A Christian necessity urged them to apply to the clergyman at hand, and having got into the habit of submitting to this, the rest followed as a matter of course.107 Few scholars would agree with Warden Daly's estimate of the numbers of Protestants in eighteenth-century Connemara, but there is evidence that attempts had been made at times to settle Protestants in Connaught, and that they had been absorbed by the Catholic population.108 But the English zealots in the ICM believed the story of the lost Protestants in Connemara which represented `three hundred years of Irish Protestant neglect'.10° In recent years Dallas believed this pastoral negligence had continued because the Established Church parsons had been greatly intimidated and had surrendered the population to Romanism during the tithe war.11° He rather arrogantly suggested that the militants of the ICM had to compensate for not only timidity, but a kind of social fastidiousness which had kept the Established Church from missionary work among the peasantry : I know what miserable, grovelling, ignorant, superstitious creatures they are. You must learn to love them in the midst of all their degradation. If their filth, and folly and superstition and

220 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 passion repel your love you are not fit to go amongst them. You must be able to see the jewel of God in the midst of that dun 'hill, and condescend to be the scavenger to get it. If you possess not that love, you have not the fitting qualification for a missionary." This attitude, in the long run, would not endear Alexander Dallas to the Irish people, whether they were Protestant or Catholic. A Protestant Irishman, W. R. Le Fanu, son of the Rector of Abington, Co. Limerick, could tell the story of the battle for burial precedence sometimes fought in local churchyards between superstitious burial parties which believed that the last one buried had to carry water for the others in the heat of purgatory.112 Yet he could tell the story without jeering at it as an example of popish superstition. This would never happen at Exeter Hall, where such stories were recounted with almost a note of triumph because they justified the work of the Irish Church Missions.113 Perhaps this was the chief failing of the ICM. It lacked understanding of the Irish people and true compassion for their needs. Dallas never Iost the mind of the soldier, and in his reckoning he was enlisted in the army of righteousness opposing the powers of darkness. He knew of the ignorance of the people, but if Archbishop MacHale kept the National School system out of his archdiocese for ecclesiastical reasons, at the expense of the poor people,114 Dallas's first concern was a tactical exploitation of their social poverty through giving them schools to further Protestant proselytising. Presenting candidates for confirmation to Bishop Thomas Plunket was of primary concern to Dallas—not providing education for people who desperately needed it. He loved the Bible, particularly its prophetic books, but was apt to forget the homely injunction that the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. He came to Ireland to satisfy only the `spiritual exigencies' of Ireland, and in his dualistic theology this meant freeing the people from the `anti-Christ of Rome'115 by opening their eyes to divine truth : `The Being which is presented to Roman Catholics and called by the sacred name of the Lord Jesus Christ is not in truth the Lord Jesus Christ of Scripture." Matters like the education of the people would never be of immediate concern to Dallas—except where it helped them to become better Protestants who dutifully read the Authorised Version of the Bible. The dualistic theology propounded by Dallas had considerable appeal to many English Evangelicals of his day. This is seen clearly in the attitude they took to the famine. As far as Dallas and those who thought like him were concerned, the famine was the judgment of God for national sins, such as tolerating Romanism by giving

Exeter Hall and Ireland 221 financial assistance to Maynooth : `a direct judgment from God on account of the toleration of idolatry'.117 Dallas was greatly critical of Irish clergymen like the Rev. Henry Woodward, Rector of Fethard in the Cashel diocese, who urged that religious differences be set aside while Catholic and Protestant alike sought to relieve the terrible physical want of the people : `Shall we invite them in their miseries to lie down for rest upon the thorny bed of controversy? When the vital spark is just going out, shall we demand of them to remodel the whole machinery of their minds?'118 Dallas's answer was to remind Woodward and Protestants who thought like him that `The Irish are the deluded and debased people under superstitious bondage to the system of Romish idolatry.' The vast majority of them were `wearied of Romanism and longing to be free', and it was the Protestant duty under God—before any other concern—to free them from spiritual error like their faith in the sacrifice of the Mass, `a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit'.11° To Dallas and his followers the historical significance of the famine, in the divine dispensation, was that it turned hardened Roman Catholic devotees from their love of superstition to a consideration of the true Gospel of Christ : While Englishmen in general felt the plain duty of relieving temporal distress there were a small number of earnest Christians who saw in this visitation of God a still louder call to care for perishing souls, and to raise them from the darkness of sin and superstition into the glorious liberty of the Gospel of Christ.12° Edward Bickersteth saw a blessing in the famine in that it `loosened the chains of priestly bondage'. This was a time when the charity of Irish Protestants `broke down a vast amount of religious prejudice, and thus conspired with heavy affliction to prepare the minds of thousands for the seed of divine truth'.121 When the people compared the `generosity of England' with the `cupidity of the priests', they were `freed from the strong bonds that riveted the people to Romanism'.122 With God showing the way, what was needed in this hour was a Protestant general who would persuade militants of the true faith to take advantage of the situation and to give the poor starving people of Ireland the greatest of blessings, emancipation from spiritual slavery to the Antichrist in Rome. In the minds of the English Evangelicals who supported the ICM in its war with popery, Alexander Dallas was that general raised by God to lead the forces of righteousness. Unlike the timid bishops and parsons of the Established Church, Dallas was not intimidated by the power of the priests and the war they were sure to wage : `The old soldier would scarcely have

222 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 thought it real action without a little skirmish, but he knew the power of the sword of the Spirit.'122 Alexander Dallas, Edward Bickersteth and the excited Evangelicals of Exeter Hall were sure that it would be sinful not to take advantage of the broken state of the Irish peasantry. They were summoned by God to bless the dying multitudes with salvation while there was yet time : It is a false charity for Protestants to be indifferent to the conversion of Roman Catholics. It is a selfish cruelty, and places them in a false and indefensible position. It is infidelity to Christ and his Gospel to remain silent with His truth in our possession, while so many millions are perishing for want of that truth.'" When the Protestant general was reconnoitring the Connemara battlefield which he had chosen for his strike against Roman apostasy in 1848, he set great store by the misery he found because it persuaded him that God was laying the ground for the great campaign of conversion : The state of Ireland during the whole of this year was most appalling : disease, in the shape of fever and cholera, had followed on starvation. Many hearts were thus being prepared to receive those consolations which the glorious Gospel of God can alone impart. The oil of this joy was to be poured in by His missionary servant, and his tours there were full of encouragement, speaking as he did beside the dying and the dead with the full realisation of eternal truths.125 In trying to understand Dallas's mentality, which many people, even among his contemporaries, found hard to comprehend, his passionate theological interest in biblical prophecy must be considered. One of the signs of the imminent return of Christ was to be great distress among the nations, and the blessed of the Lord were to be those found engaging in the mission work to which the Bible called them. According to Dallas's theology, the hungry, the thirsty and the prisoners in Christ's judgment (Matt. 25 : 35-40) were missionaries who were neglected by those who might have helped them. He has Christ say to those guilty of such indifference : You did not minister to the poor missionary who was killed by the barbarous amongst your countrymen—you therefore did not minister to me. I take his case as my own, depart into everlasting fire.128 Dallas's social policies were based on this theology. The man who interpreted Scripture in this allegorical fashion was prone to forget

Exeter Hall and Ireland 223 the physical plight of the poor famine victims as he abstractedly considered God's grand design and the important role the Evangelical missionary was called upon to play in it. He says of his first visit to Derrygimla, the chief village of Errismore in Connemara, in 1848 : We walked across to Mannin Bay, and on our way we saw about a dozen poor famished creatures attempting to work, but too weak to do anything. It was impossible to lose the opportunity of telling the Gospel to these apparently dying men, as they stood or sat around me like living skeletons. They listened with fixed attention, as if they were pausing on the brink of the grave to receive a message from heaven as to their journey beyond it. I never set forth the salvation of Christ under so strong a feeling that my hearers would be soon called to experience the truth of my statement. As I stepped into the boat I prayed for them as for those who had heard the call of the Gospel probably for the first, still more probably for the last time.127 The social application of the resolute dualism implicit in the theology of Dallas and his allies in Exeter Hall inevitably led to moral unease even among some of the most steadfast of his supporters. Although Dallas insisted that his missioners were to feed souls, not bodies, it was difficult to do so if the ICM agents had the means to prolong the lives of some of the starving people. Principle was often put aside, and the people were fed, for few Scripture Readers could be as resolute in their division of thought concerning priorities in human need as Dallas was at Derrygimla.128 When the missioners gave temporal help to the people, inevitably, the charge of `souperism' arose. This was the accusation that soup, stirabout or other food was given to those—and only to those— who were willing to accept the version of the Christian Gospel that Dallas and his supporters were bringing from England. When Daniel O'Connell and Lord Brougham raised the issue in parliament and it was widely believed the Irish peasantry were being bribed to renounce their faith, ICM leaders like Edward Bickersteth felt obliged to defend their policies : Surely the Apostle was not guilty of bribery when he says, `Do good to all men, and specially to them which are of the household of faith'; nor our Lord when He made the feeding of the five thousand the direct occasion for teaching them the great truths of the Gospe1.12° Apologetic of this nature did little to allay the suspicions of many have seen, that the contentious issues of the tithe war, and national

224 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 ICM and did much to weaken its public image—particularly among the clergy of the Established Church. Historians have sometimes argued that one of the reasons why the Tractarians were not able to win widespread support for their Catholic doctrines in England was that they failed to understand the long-term development of England's religious history.13° Whether this is true or not, it does seem clear that what doomed Dallas's dream of introducing militant Protestantism into Ireland was his almost total lack of understanding of Irish history and the nature of Irish society. Dallas never understood the deep tribal identification that the mass of the Irish people had with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church of Ireland clergy whose roots were deep in the countryside knew the strength of the bond between the people and the Roman Catholic Church—a bond that was social and cultural as well as religious. Most of them were aghast at the tactics Dallas proposed to use in Ireland. Paternalistic bullying supplemented with Evangelical zeal might have succeeded in winning the majority of Wonston people to Dallas's cause, but the Irish parsons knew instinctively that whatever initial success might be experienced by the ICM in the immediate post-famine years, the hope of largescale conversion was ephemeral. Cultural identities are not changed easily, and the Irish Protestants knew that when the charge of `souperism' was inevitably laid at the door of the ICM, it was symptomatic of a new phase beginning in the long-standing cultural struggle between the two peoples of Ireland—an era of open warfare. Few of them were happy about what Alexander Dallas and his zealous English Evangelical supporters wished to begin : Our Protestant communion watches ... and dreading the charge of proselytism as the synonym of intolerance, demurs to enter on labours that religion enjoins, and that it is within its power and within its means to effect.131 3. The Irish Church Missions When Dallas and his supporters drew up their plans to relieve `spiritual exigency' in Ireland in 1847 they said that `The only object is to be the channel of communicating to the societies already existing and in operation in Ireland the pecuniary assistance which English Christians are ready to give.'1ß2 One of the most important of these societies was the Irish Society, founded in 1818 `for Promoting the Scriptural Education and Religious Instruction of Roman Catholics Chiefly Through the Medium of Their Own Language'. Although it received much help from England and worked among the Irish in London, its headquarters was in Dublin.

Exeter Hall and Ireland

225

It is difficult to estimate how many Irish speakers there were in Ireland in the first half of the century, but it seems that between a quarter and a half of the population understood Irish. There was little reinforcing of the language by Roman Catholicism, since O'Connell and other secular leaders, as well as the priests, believed that knowledge of English would help the people better themselves socially and economically?" The Irish Society, on the other hand, raised close to £4,000 a year between 1836 and 1849, and this was spent on providing bibles in Irish for the people, and agents to instruct them in reading of the Scriptures in their own language?" The Dublin Irish Society, like almost all agencies allied with the Established Church, had no intention of causing trouble by engaging in open proselytising. In later years Alexander Dallas, recalling his first meeting with the Dublin members of the Irish Society, said : Though they had the great object at heart, they were strongly opposed to any open attack upon the errors of Romanism, fearing that it would only lead to increased opposition and close the little opening that appeared. They adhered entirely to the simple means of teaching the people to read the Irish Scriptures.136 Because the committee members of the society were members of the Established Church, the Book of Common Prayer as well as the Bible was produced in Irish, but the former was offered only `when it should in due time be sought for', and it was stressed that `the primary object was not proselytism from any particular sect'.136 The Irish Society was greatly favoured by the ultra-Protestants, however, and they did all they could to assist its work in areas like Dingle, Bandon, Abbeyfeale and the Glens of Antrim—though the Irish Society agents generally resisted suggestions that they should proselytise directly. When Dallas began organising in Ireland he immediately considered how he might make use of the Irish Society. He and Enosh Durant had become committee members of the Irish Society of London which, by the 1840s, had given up active work among the London Irish and acted solely as an English bank for the Dublin committee. Dallas noted how weak the London Irish Society organisation was, and how it tolerated a Ladies' Auxiliary, separate from the main branch, which raised its own money to pay for Irish teachers. It was not difficult for Dallas and Durant to persuade the London Irish Society that it should also tolerate a sub-committee which would organise Scripture Readers to engage in `direct mission work'. This idea, however, was not acceptable to either the Dublin Irish Society or the Ladies' Auxiliary.

226 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 When the Society for Irish Church Missions was formally organised Dallas mounted great pressure for the Dublin Irish Society to join with it in a crusade to convert Roman Catholics. In a meeting at the Rotunda on 20 April 1849, with Joseph Singer of Trinity College in the chair, and Evangelical worthies like John Gregg, Dawson Massy, the young Robert J. L. McGhee (son of R. J. McGhee) and Thomas Moriarty all present, Dallas praised the Providence of God who was calling his people to missionary work in Ireland by opening English hearts to the spiritual needs of the poor Romanists. He also thanked God for the existence of the Irish Society, which was already trained and ready for missionary work. He prayed that its members would rise to the task before them : That they will joyfully, in their several localities, render all the aid that God shall enable them to this blessed work of faithfulness and love, to which God is now calling them, and trust that the English Church will largely assist an effort so important to the national welfare of the Empire, the true honour of our Church and the advancement of the glorious Gospel of Christ directly at home, and indirectly in its effects through the whole earth.'" Such rhetoric and the social pressures it produced were difficult to resist. News of early ICM successes were trumpeted in Exeter Hall and in Dublin, and Dallas could point out that mission work was actually being impeded because three Irish societies, as well as the ICM, were all soliciting English aid for the work in Ireland. Soon Dallas had a petition of five hundred Evangelical clergymen pleading with the Irish Society to join in the great work.188 One persuasive argument the Evangelicals used was that the Irish Society was already, de facto, working with the ICM, `like the sappers and miners who broke up the ground before the great army under Mr Dallas advanced'.19° Inevitably, the badly organised Irish Society gave in to the mounting pressure and joined the crusade. By 1853 agreement was made with the Dublin Irish Society that there was to be a division of territory, with the traditional Irish teaching to be carried on in the dioceses of Cashel, Cork and Limerick. The rest of Ireland would be served by the ICM, and it alone would solicit funds in England. Dallas's society would compensate the Dublin Irish Society with £3,000 a year for its loss of English funds, and it would still be free to solicit in Ireland. Later in the same year the London Irish Society and the Ladies' Auxiliary also merged with the ICM for the sake of `unity, simplicity and effective discipline' for a trial period of three years.14° The union of the Irish Church Missions with the three branches

Exeter Hall and Ireland 227 of the Irish Society was to last barely the three-year trial period. Much of the failure of these agencies to work together can be attributed directly to the arrogant way in which Dallas took over direction of Irish Society affairs. As his second wife once admitted, Dallas's `very sanguine temperament', boundless energy and love of great schemes gave him a blindness towards obstacles he encountered—including the feelings of other people : `The project once imagined and planned was in his mind accomplished, and with an eye constantly fixed on the goal, the difficulties of the intervening course were overlooked.'i41 This determination of purpose gave Dallas great strength in some respects, but it also gave him the propensity to alienate people who did not share his framework of thought. In his encounter with the Irish Society Protestants he soon discovered that they were less tractable than his parishioners at Wonston. He told them in his 1853 letter that the ICM would `highly estimate the benefit to be derived from the prestige of a society which had been engaged more than thirty years before them in the service of the Lord' and that his organisation had no desire that `the Irish Society should lose its nationality, or cease to exist'. But this expression of co-operation was immediately qualified when Dallas mentioned actual areas of mission work. Dallas wanted the Irish Society to operate only in a few Gaeltacht areas, while the ICM was to be employed by God `to occupy that large portion of the field of labour'.142 The Irish Society leaders never felt happy over this confining of their work chiefly to parts of the south and west. Their misgivings multiplied when time showed that the ICM strategy was based on a wildly inaccurate reading of Irish history and, under Dallas's leadership, an almost total lack of understanding of Irish psychology. They saw how naive was Dallas's assumption that English middle-class morality and Evangelical religious practice would have universal appeal among the lower classes in rural Ireland. They also discovered how resolutely Dallas could ignore the advice that was given to him. During the three years' allliance of the Dublin Irish Society with the ICM its committee members realised that Dallas and his supporters were in no way interested in the traditional work of the older society. If the people could not be converted to Evangelical Protestantism, the ICM had no interest in providing education for them. Moreover, they would have felt it a betrayal of high principle to read the Scriptures to the people without seeking their conversion. One ICM supervisor reported to Dallas that to his horror he found that out of sixty-four Irish teachers in the old society only four had left the Roman Catholic Church. Because of this the sixty Catholic teachers had an understandable reluctance to

228 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 engage in `open controversy', which was `one reason for the smallness of apparent fruit from what is called the quiet introduction of the Scriptures'.343 The least that the ICM demanded of any Irish teacher was that he have an `inquiring mind', and one that 'progressed favourably', or he would be of no use to the Protestant mission. Men like Lieutenant-Colonel A. G. Lewis, who was chairman of the Irish Society in Dublin, or J. W. Haskett, the honorary secretary, knew from their knowledge of the Irish people, however, that `open aggression' would accomplish nothing.144 By 1856 they were pointing out how Irish Society work had been allowed to lapse in areas like Ballina, Crossmolina and Skibbereen, and that the change of tactics since the ICM took over showed that even in a place like Erris, where much effort had been made, proselytising `was not very likely to yield any large amount of fruit'.'46 When the alliance between the Irish Society of Dublin and the ICM officially expired on 31 March 1856, the London Irish Society and Ladies' Auxiliary were not reactivated. Now the Irish Society was reduced to the Dublin branch, which went its own way. The chief reason given for the break with the ICM was the insistence of the Dublin Irish Society that it be allowed to solicit funds in England again for support of its old mission—instruction of the people in the Irish language, without `open aggression'. The ICM income had been steadily decreasing, and the Irish Society was not being subsidised by the ICM in the way it wanted. The result of such stringency was that in eleven of seventeen Irish-speaking districts Irish Society teachers were in great need.14a The Irish Society of Dublin also found that the well-organised ICM Dublin office was raising money in Ireland, and had therefore to be regarded as a rival agency whose aims were not those of the Dublin Irish Society, which wanted no part in `an attack which it was incompetent to perform' 147 The Irish Society's task was a simple one—to bring the Bible in Irish to the people, in hope that with its help they would find their own way in the Christian faith. The supporters of the Irish Society were sure that once people could read the Bible in Irish its power was such that it would `steadfastly root out prejudice, bigotry and intolerance, substituting truth, love, mercy, tenderness, forbearance and long suffering'.148 There was no likelihood of the Irish Church Missions showing much enthusiasm for the gentle work of the Irish Society, however, as long as Dallas's organisation was a direct reflection of the antipapal hysteria which characterised mid-nineteenth-century Victorian England. By 1848 the ultra-Protestants, who had been so agitated by the scandal of the Maynooth Grant, were in a frenzy of anxiety over Protestantism and the British constitution as the newspapers

Exeter Hall and Ireland 229 were filled with accounts of insurrections in Europe, the threat of rebellion and subversion in Ireland, and renewed militant activity by the Chartists.14° So many Irish were pouring into England in the 1840s that the Holy See doubled the numbers of vicars apostolic from four to eight.160 As the numbers of Irish grew, earnest and dedicated Italian priests arrived to work among them, who wore Roman clerical dress and introduced new devotional observances among the faithful. Many of the Irish settled in areas where Catholics had never been before, and their `rags and laughing savagery',151 combined with their baroque expression of religion, nurtured suspicion and resentment of what Cardinal Manning later called the `Irish occupation in England'. This he believed to be part of the Roman Catholic expansion to create an `Empire greater than the British'.162 Protestant churchmen were especially distressed by the Irish Catholic migration and by the signs of new religious energy among those who shepherded the new arrivals taking advantage of cheap deck passage from Dublin.153 Few Catholic dignitaries passed through Liverpool without addressing local Catholics on controversial matters like the remarkable number of conversions to Roman Catholicism which followed the Hampden and Gorham crises in the Church of England. Such utterances led the Evangelical leaders to proclaim that there was a new `warlike activity in the Romish camp' and that the battle against Antichrist was now to be fought internationally : `The battle between Popery and Protestantism must be fought on the mission-field no less than at home.'154 When there was so much Protestant and nationalist anxiety in England it is little wonder that the `papal aggression' of 1850, just six months before the opening of the Great Exhibition, gave the nation its `last great outburst of No-Popery feeling'.155 The indirect instigator of the Protestant hysteria was Pope Pius IX, who had abandoned early liberal sympathies after the rising in the papal states and the assassination of Count Rossi, the Prime Minister he had appointed in 1848. In April 1850 Pius returned to Rome from exile in Gaeta, determined to extend the Ultramontane power of the Holy See and to resist every political, cultural or social development that seemed likely to oppose papal authority. Nothing in England represented opposition to papal power as much as the schismatic Church of England. It was then going through a crisis of identity because the Privy Council and the Archbishop of Canterbury had appointed the Rev. G. C. Gorham to the living of Brampford Speke in the diocese of Exeter against the wiFhes of his diocesan, who doubted his orthodoxy. Within the Church of England there were many who were disturbed by the Gorham

230 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 crisis, as they had also been by the appointment of the Rev. R. D. Hampden as Bishop of Hereford in 1847 despite violent High Church reaction to his liberal theology. A further embarrassment was provided by a series of lectures given in London by John Henry Newman entitled Lectures on Anglican Difficulties. Very disquieting also were three extremely effective articles on the ecclesiological contradictions in Anglicanism, which were published by the new Roman Catholic vicar apostolic of the London district, Dr Nicholas Wiseman, in the Dublin Review of March 1850. A new wave of secessions to Roman Catholicism began, including not only Tractarian notables, but also a number of able individuals whose churchmanship had hitherto not been held suspect. If Pius IX was the originator of the mid-nineteenth-century `papal aggression', the Roman Catholic ecclesiastic who directed the pontiff's campaign in England was Nicholas Wiseman. Born in Seville in 1802, he had been brought to Waterford by his mother in 1805 when his father died, and there he had been filled with tales of the penal laws and the loss of the family inheritance to the Protestants.166 He received his higher education in England and at the English College in Rome, and after serving as Rector of the latter institution he had gone to England in 1840 as vicar apostolic of one of the new districts organised for the swelling Roman Catholic population. In 1849 Wiseman was moved to the London district, and there he was destined to remain until his death in 1865, organising the Roman Catholics ecclesiastically and acting as agent of Pius IX, who was seeking British support during the struggle for Italian unification.161 Unlike his vicar apostolic predecessor, Thomas Griffiths, who never left England, Nicholas Wiseman was very much an international churchman whose first loyalty was to the Holy See. When he visited England in 1835-36 he was appalled at the timidity of the Roman Catholics, their lack of deference to the papacy, and the unwillingness of prelates like Griffiths to accept Italianate devotions and sentiment. The President of Ushaw College dismissed him as a `foreign' zealot, `his mind full of golden dreams', whose longing to instil loyalty to Rome had little chance in anti-Catholic England, which was not at all the kind of religiously passive nation that he thought it was.158 To change this kind of anti-Roman thinking among Catholics Wiseman helped in the launching of the Dublin Review. Wiseman was certainly both `foreign' and `zealous' in terms of his loyalty to the Holy See, and as early as 1847 he had joined in Vatican discussions about reviving the hierarchy in England."° He had also tried to promote a scheme for having Roman-directed

Exeter Hall and Ireland 231 mission priests tour England—an idea which his fellow-vicars apostolic had resisted. Pius IX had no more faithful or able prelate than Wiseman to carry out his `aggression', and in September 1850 he was made Archbishop of Westminster, Metropolitan of the Roman Catholic Church in England, and a cardinal. On 7 October Wiseman announced the re-establishment of a twelve-bishop hierarchy in England in his famous pastoral `From Out the Flaminian Gate'. By 14 October, the day The Times denounced the 'aggression' as a direct threat to the jurisdiction of the Crown and the national independence of England, the nation was in an uproar. The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, did nothing to allay the storm when he published a public letter to the Bishop of Durham denouncing the aggression as an attempt once more to put a foreign yoke upon England. Queen Victoria was reputed to have asked : `Am I the Queen of England, or am I not?'180 Wiseman's defence was to argue that if Emancipation was not a sham, Roman Catholics should be allowed the ecclesiastical organisation which they considered to be best for their mission. In Ireland James Maher opined about the new bishops : 'What harm if they reclaim from vice and unbelief some portion of the millions which the State Church has lost, and whom she seems anxious to ignore?'181 But most churchmen believed they were reacting not merely to an innocent administrative reorganisation of the papal church. They resented the `triumphal' note in the papal brief Universalis Ecclesiae which re-established the hierarchy—particularly its reference to the `Anglican schism'. They responded also to the Morning Chronicle story of 23 October 1850 which told how French Ultramontanist papers rejoiced that sees of the Church of England could now be seen in their true light—filled with schismatic clergy without any spiritual authority. Wiseman in his apology assured his readers that the action taken by the papacy was in no way a threat to Established Church titles or revenues, but few Protestant churchmen believed him. Anti-Catholic petitions appeared, and the bishops of the Church of Ireland reacted strongly when they were not consulted or invited to sign a protesting address sent to the queen by the English bishops.162 When Protestant hysteria persuaded parliament to pass the ineffectual Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1851, which sought to curb the authority of the new hierarchy by denying it use of diocesan titles, the Roman Catholics decided to avoid antagonising the Church of England any further. The unpopularity of the Established Church in Ireland, however, was such that Wiseman felt safe in attacking that body directly without incurring English wrath. He sought to unite English Catholic opinion by directing attention to

232 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 the oppression in Ireland—especially the injustice represented by establishment status and the wealth of the Church of Ireland : We believe that its existence, not merely tolerated, but protected and justified by liberal and clever men is as foul an anomaly, and as inexplicable an enigma to the minds of enlightened publicists and statesmen abroad, as is the defence of slavery in the United States.188 He called on Catholics to do all in their power to rid Catholic Ireland of this `abomination of desolation' which symbolised the oppression of the majority of the people by a religious and social minority. Once it was swept from the Irish scene : Away go proselytism and souperism, and the nests of pestilence which they have built amidst the neighbourhoods that they have infected, and the educational strife, and the stalking missionary, and the sneaking bible-reader, and the lying apostate, and perhaps at length the unbelieving prelate, who scorns revelation and patronises bigotry. And then too there will be funds abundant for every noble and social purpose; even though the Catholic Church may refuse to soil its fingers with wealth so long abused . . . the plunder of its fathers' charities and catholic endowments.l" Many Anglican churchmen noted Wiseman's reference to `fathers' charities and catholic endowments' and reckoned that should the Ultramontanists ever succeed in humbling the Church of Ireland, the Church of England itself would swiftly find itself under attack. When it became clear to the militant Protestants that both the popular uproar over the `papal aggression' and the passage of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act were going to amount to nothing—that in fact Cardinal Wiseman and his familiars had successfully re-established papal influence in a new and virulent form in Britain—they looked for a Protestant champion who would lead the forces of reformed religion in a great crusade against the aggressors. They had to look no further than Exeter Hall and the new offices of the Society for Irish Church Missions. There they found Alexander Dallas busy directing his proselytising forces which were already striking at Rome through Ireland. In this time of crisis, when the Tractarians were undermining the Protestant Church of England, when the Irish hordes were pouring into the country, and a new kind of priestcraft had appeared to organise the Irish and lead them to war with reformed religion, Dallas seemed to militant Protestants to be the man of the hour. All that was needed was for Dallas to declare himself as the general under God who would

Exeter Hall and Ireland 233 defend the British way of life against the forces of popish superstition and idolatry. Dallas had no hesitation in putting himself forward as the Protestant champion who would `take the enemy in his rear' by attacking popery in Ireland. He had long studied the controversial literature which had been produced by the Irish Protestants of the 1830s and 1840s.Y66 As an Englishman and a gentleman he was able to present the anti-papal case to the militant Evangelicals of Exeter Hall in a way that was difficult for Irishmen like R. J. McGhee or Mortimer O'Sullivan who did not speak the language of the English middle and upper classes. Dallas had already won the support of many leading Evangelical churchmen, and all that was needed was for his mission to establish a broader base—for it to be supported by the Established Churches in England and Ireland, and, preferably and hopefully, also by Nonconformity, as part of a great Protestant crusade. If the crusade was successful, not only would Rome lose its insurgent base in Ireland, but a great work of civilising the barbarous Irish would be carried out which would ultimately benefit English society and protect the British and Protestant constitution. Throughout the 1850s, whenever Dallas was not in Ireland organising his missions or in his parish of Wonston, he was busy preaching and lecturing throughout the country. His theme was apocalyptic. Rome and Britain, he maintained, were engaged in a great struggle that was both religious and political. The fate of men's souls hung upon the outcome of the struggle, as did the quality of British civilisation. The struggle was to be a long one and a hard one until Babylon/Rome fell from power, as the Scriptures had promised.166 At the centre of the struggle were the two churches, Rome and the Established Church of England and Ireland : There is but one single point upon which the Roman Catholics and the members of the Church of England can find a meeting and standing place ... that Christ has actually founded a Church upon earth into which men must come in order to be saved... . The Church of England appeals to the Scriptures; so does the Church of Rome. But from this point every other step is a divergence.167 When tried by the Word, it was clear that the Church of Rome had not that gift of truth which the Fathers of the Church believed was the distinguishing mark of the true church. Although the devotion of Roman Catholics seemed impressive when first it was witnessed, it was but `the introduction of external excitements, and the indul-

234 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 gence of natural feeling in the place of the true hidden spiritual life of the soul which is the act of the Holy Spirit within us'.168 The weakness of Roman Catholicism was that its ecclesiastical system was not scriptural. Most of its devotees were illiterate and ignorant people kept in a deprived state by priests who dreaded above all that their followers might begin to reason. If this happened and they judged Roman Catholicism by the Scriptures, then `Romanism is gone'.18° Between the Protestant missionary, with his gifts of the Gospel, education and reason, and the poor deluded Romanist stood the priests, who considered themselves to be defenders of their people. A few in Ireland were exemplary though deluded men like Father Mathew. Others were consciously wicked oppressors of their people, men who had denied extreme unction to the perishing poor during the famine, demanded bribes from people put on public works lists, and incited their people to rebellion in 1848. Unfortunately, in the Church of Ireland only about one-quarter of the Protestant clergy were `under the influence of spiritual religion' and willing to oppose these wicked priests who kept the people in bondage.17° The priests were clever in their control of the people. They knew the people were not accustomed to reasoning, so they made use of their emotional natures, inflaming the `hot blood of the Celt against the Saxon'. The machinations of the priests lay behind every outbreak of violence in Ireland, and the only way to free the people from serving their lower natures was to persuade them to abandon their dependence on the priests. The ICM had found that the people were hungry for religious education, and that they had less and less respect for the priests who had increased their exactions from the poor during the famine. Now was the time to bring Irish Catholics the blessings of biblical Christianity by `aggressively' showing them the contradictions and errors in their old faith. The people remembered with gratitude the help that had come to them from England during the famine, and the experience of the ICM had shown that in Connaught and elsewhere they were ready to receive the Gospel. When once the good news was heard, and he realised that the superstitions of Rome were a contradiction to the truths of Christianity, the Irish countryman would display a new character, wholly different from the unruly behaviour which had marked him in his unredeemed state : The converts become the best friends of social order, respecting and obeying the laws of our beloved Queen because they are taught to be obedient to the law of God.' ' Dallas told his Evangelical listeners that they really had no choice

Exeter Hall and Ireland 235 about going to war with Rome, as the `papal aggression' had shown. This attack by the Ultramontanists in Britain was only one visible indication that there was under way a great campaign to bring all of Europe once more under the Roman yoke. The pope wanted the new Archbishop of Westminster to be `bishop of all baptised people in the district'. To soften the English Protestants he had been giving all the help he could to the Tractarians, whose mission was to undermine the faith of the reformed people : `The Pope began by insinuating the delusions of Tractarianism in gentle quiet, but when he has the power he will exercise it by the Inquisition.'172 Dallas told an electrified audience at Exeter Hall on 13 December 1851 that the cunning Jesuits were everywhere in England—perhaps in that very audience : I am not sure—don't be hurt—but there is not a Jesuit in this room. You remember these important words under something of a similar charge—Is it I?—Is it I?—Is it I? I pray God to put it into your hearts to enquire `Is it I?' Look at the way in which Rome is making efforts to obtain a standing in Europe.... The people who manage the press, the people who manage the engines of your railways—wherever there is power to be had the subtle Jesuits are introduced.... Take care of the insiduous conversations of those who suggest doubts.... Take care how a Jesuit seemingly a Protestant may suggest things to shock your mind.l73 Dallas's cause was helped greatly by the wave of secessions which followed the Gorham crisis and the anxiety which led to the passing of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. English Protestants were filled with dismay at the defection of prominent men like Archdeacon Henry Manning, who was received into the Roman Catholic Church in April 1851,17 and at the conversion of two sons of the great Evangelical saint William Wilberforce. Dallas reproached the younger of these two men, Henry William Wilberforce, for his apostasy by reminding him that Dallas had been one of those who had laid hands on him at his ordination and had been requested to pray for him. Now he could only mourn that so fine a mind had been corrupted by the delusions of Romanism : The Protestant Christians of England cannot conceive of the practical effects of the poisoned principles of a Liguori, infused into a mind paralysed by the preparation of Tractarianism.176 The formation of a Catholic Defence Association, with Henry Wilberforce as its secretary, also helped Dallas. The aim of the association was to obtain redress of grievances, such as the Ecclesiastical Titles Act through parliamentary action, but it also

236 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 engaged in controversy with the Irish Church Missions—a tactical error in which Dallas rejoiced.178 Following the anti-Catholic rioting at Stockport and elsewhere, the Irish Roman Catholics in Britain had closed ranks by giving added political support to the leadership provided by their priests,177 and Dallas could give evidence to his listeners at Exeter Hall to show that the battle between the forces of light and darkness was growing more intense. The only answer to Roman militancy, symbolised by the Catholic Defence Association, was a Protestant crusade against popery in both England and Ireland. Wilberforce was not the best person to organise the Catholic Defence Association in Ireland. Neither Archbishop Murray nor Archbishop MacHale showed much enthusiasm for this Englishman who came to Ireland to suggest how the Protestant missionaries might be dealt with. Nor were they pleased with Wilberforce's open correspondence with Dallas, for they saw clearly the tactical advantage that Dallas would gain from any revelation of Catholic anxiety. Public letters by Wilberforce about missionary gains by bribery would only help Dallas in his fund-raising for the Protestant crusade: The local agents, in many instances Catholics who have been raised from poverty to abundance by the salaries which they receive as Protestant ministers, schoolmasters, inspectors, readers and the like, have to earn those salaries by reporting to their employers lists of converts, attendants at Protestant congregations, and scholars at Protestant schools; and not content with grossly exaggerating those whom they have, they have been utterly unscrupulous as to the means employed to obtain more.17s Wilberforce had much to complain about. It seemed clear to many Catholic observers by 1851 that a social revolution was taking place in the west of Ireland in particular, and that the Roman Catholic Church was suffering because of it. Emigration was so extensive that The Times of 5 November 1851 said that soon the priests would have no congregations and would find themselves `in the position for which they have constantly reviled the Established Church, a clergy without a laity'.17° Where the people were not emigrating they appeared to be converting to Protestantism in their hundreds and The Times of 7 October 1851 gleefully reported : It seems now pretty clear that something like a reformation is taking place in the province of Connaught.... In the missions of the Irish Protestant Church which had achieved such signal success, we recognise a just and fair reprisal for the arrogant aggressions of the Pope.

Exeter Hall and Ireland 237 The Catholic press abounded with alarmed comment on the Protestant advance. The Dublin Evening Post of 11 November 1851 said : We learn from unquestionable Catholic authority that their success is in almost every part of the country, and, we are told in the metropolis, is beyond all that the worst misgivings could have dreamt of. There is not only no use in denying these statements, but it would be an act of treachery to the best interests of the Church to conceal them. The Tablet of 8 November 1851 admitted in dismay that `It is not Tuam, nor Cashel, nor Armagh that are the chief seats of successful proselytism, but this very city of Dublin in which we live.' By 10 April 1852 the same paper was gloomily reporting accounts of the two to three million emigrants who had lost their faith in America. The Nation of 20 November 1852 sadly stated : There can no longer be any question that proselytism has met with an immense success in Connaught and Kerry. It is true that the altars of the Catholic Church have been deserted by thousands born and baptised in the ancient faith of Ireland. Rome soon heard of the Protestant advance, and Archbishop MacHale was chastised by Pius IX himself because his people were being `wretchedly deceived, misled into error, and rent asunder from the practice of the Catholic religion by the nefarious schemings and plottings of a group of crafty men'.180 But most important of all, from the standpoint of Dallas and his fund-raising, the Protestant zealots who haunted Exeter Hall were made aware by monthly bulletins how successful was the `great work' in Ireland.181 The confirmation tour by Bishop Thomas Plunket of Tuam in September 1851 was reported in great detail, with a parish-byparish breakdown of his 743 convert confirmations. Plunket's confirmation sermon dealt with the theme of deliverance : You have been hitherto kept in error and ignorance by those who, while they pretended to be your religious instructors, have opposed all attempts to educate you and resisted by every means in their power the introduction of the knowledge of true religion among you 182 The people were urged to rejoice that now there were sixteen mission stations among them to offer `abundant means of Grace and facilities of instruction'. In the same year the 1CM also began

238 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 to publish in London the Banner of Truth, which contained monthly information about the advance. When the third annual meeting of the ICM was held at Exeter Hall on 30 April 1852, the Duke of Manchester was president of the society, and the vice-presidents included the Marquis of Waterford, and the Earls of Shaftesbury, Clancarty, Roden, Cavan and Bandon. The committee included two admirals and five MPs, with J. C. Colquhoun, MP, as chairman of the executive, and Dallas and the Rev. Robert Bickersteth, Rector of St Giles's-in-the-Fields, acting as honorary secretaries. The stated purpose of the organisation was now clearly enunciated : the providing of evangelical ministerial aid to the clergy of the Established Church in Ireland when they requested it and if their bishops did not object. A highlight of the evening was the recital by the Rev. J. N. Griffin of Harold's Cross Church, Dublin, of the `bell, book and candle' cursing of all children attending a Protestant school near Loophead, Co. Clare, which had been pronounced by Father Michael Meehan, Parish Priest of Carrigaholt, near Kilrush : I pray God to pour down all vengeance on those who shall send their children to Kiltrellig school.... May they be struck blind and deaf so as never to see their children again; and may the children sent to this school go wild. May they never leave this world until they are such examples as that the marrow may come out through their shinbones.... I pray to God that every child who goes to the school that for every day he spends in it that his life may be curtailed a twelvemonth and that they may never enjoy the years of maturity. . . .183 Dallas was able to report that although Primate Beresford had characteristically hedged about his support of a society that might cause social unrest, he had `sanctioned' missions in Armagh and elsewhere. He also claimed that the society had the `full sanction' of the Bishops of Down, Kilmore, Killaloe, Limerick, Derry and Ossory.184 In 1852 Bishop Thomas Plunket, reporting on his latest visitation, triumphantly disclosed that seating for 8,860 persons had been provided for Protestant worship during the past three years, and that 1,294 persons had been confirmed, 837 of whom were converts. In Belmullet alone he had confirmed 147 persons, 127 of whom were converts.185 There was little questioning in the Catholic press of the claims made by the ICM, and at this time the zealots of Exeter Hall had cause to be jubilant over what was happening in Ireland. On the level of ideology, Robert Bickersteth told the same meeting of 1852 that he believed one of the reasons for the `declin-

Exeter Hall and Ireland 239 ing influence of the priesthood' among the people was the new `spirit of inquiry which has been kindled to an amazing extent'.188 He believed that this new spirit was nurtured by the ICM, but that it first came from the agitation promoted by O'Connell in earlier years : Little did the political agitators, in many instances the mere puppets of the priesthood, dream that in their flaming harangues with which they excited the people to rebellion they were nursing a freedom of thought which, if once exercised in the province of religion, would operate to the breaking asunder of the fetters of spiritual tyranny 187 J. C. Colquhoun said in the same meeting that one of the results of this freeing of the spirit of the Irish countrymen was that they were no longer dupes of the priests who, for reasons of their own, had exercised `power over the undisciplined minds and over the dark passions of men hurling them where they will, against law, against institutions, against the connexion between England and Ireland, against all that makes us safe' 188 But thanks to the Protestant crusade led by Mr Dallas, all that was changing, and England should rejoice at the victorious advance in Ireland : There is not a convert to Protestantism whose former hatred to England has not been supplanted by a feeling of the warmest gratitude and affection. The habit of industry has supplanted that of idleness—of integrity, that of dishonesty—of cleanliness, that of filth. Wherever you find a band of converts there you will find a band of well-ordered, industrious and peaceable subjects.... It is generally reckoned to be prima facie evidence that a man is a convert provided he is not longer addicted to intemperance or profane language.18° By 1853 a sober Established Church figure like Edward A. Stopforth was confronting pessimists who persisted in talking of the ultimate `annihilation' of the Church of Ireland with figures of Protestant gains and Roman Catholic losses since 183410° The period 1849-54 was a short but heady time of Protestant triumphalism—the `golden age' of the ICM expansion191—and Rome was seriously concerned over the Protestant advance. The first signs of the crusade weakening appeared in the autumn of 1854 when the London headquarters of the ICM had to admit a slowing down in its fund-raising activities. In March of that year British public attention had been diverted from the religious warfare

240 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 in Ireland to the more interesting hostilities that were promised by the beginning of the Crimean War. In October 1854, when the British public was excited by the story of the charge of the Light Brigade in the Battle of Balaclava, Dallas worriedly sent out a questionnaire to ICM agents asking, among other matters: `Are there any agents in your mission whose services could be dispensed with without material injury to the general operations?' He also asked questions about reducing salaries, combining schools and reducing school rents.102 In the 1855 report of the confirmation tour of Thomas Plunket the number of converts confirmed was still substantial, but the usual triumphal note referring to total convert figures was missing.193 What had caught and maintained British interest in the ICM crusade until this time, and had given great vividness to the fundraising meetings held in Exeter Hall and elsewhere, were the accounts of religious strife wherever the Scripture Readers or other missionaries went. An example of how bitter the struggle was between the ICM agents and the priests who opposed them is shown by events in the Carlow—Kilkenny area of the united dioceses of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin.1°4 The Established Church bishop there was the Evangelical James T. O'Brien, and the leading Roman Catholic defender of the faith was the redoubtable James Maher, Parish Priest of Carlow—Graigue, the long-standing clerical ally of Daniel O'Connell and uncle of Paul Cullen. There are indications that during the famine years the priests of the Carlow area lost some of their control of the people,190 and the Rector of Killeshin, the militant Evangelical Dawson Massy, tried to take advantage of this situation. He welcomed various missionaries to his parish, a `house of refuge' for converts was established in Carlow town, and a running warfare began between Massy and Maher. To Massy, Maher was `an intolerant, fiery, and crafty persecutor of his fellow-subjects and a rank rebel against his sovereign'. To Maher, Massy represented `stolid, impenetrable bigotry'. Moreover, the verdict of civilised society was opposed to the church he served, and its weakness was shown by its need for support from the itinerant preachers who had descended on the Carlow area after crossing the channel `with some new-fangled religion of English manufacture'.1°6 Maher boasted that the Roman Catholics in Ireland had never persecuted men for their religious opinions, but he claimed that Lord Shaftesbury had announced at a meeting of the Protestant `mischief-makers' that it was `their solemn duty to destroy the Roman Catholic religion'.297 Apart from their virulent anti-Catholicism, Maher said that the itinerant Protestant agitators who worked for low wages of a shilling or two a day

Exeter Hall and Ireland 241 among the poor in the outskirts and back-lanes of towns seemed to have no discernible creed : The Bible-readers are in all our towns and villages; they constitute a large body of ignorant, uneducated and characterless men. Who they are, or who sent them, or where they come from, what are their antecedents, what doctrines they hold, what creed they profess, nobody knows or cares.198 What was obvious to everyone was the ability of the itinerants to stir up social dissension which only too often degenerated into rioting. The Carlow Post on 13 January 1855 wrote about the two ICM agents in Carlow, James Warren and Edward Kenny, under the heading `PROTESTANT AGGRESSION VERSUS PAPAL ENDURANCE'. The paper decried their `uncalled for presence as members and emissaries of an unauthorised body' and their `revolting and offensive' attacks on the tenets of the Catholic Church, which encouraged `bursts of disapprobation' by the people : We question the right of that or any other society to collect immense sums of money for the purpose of insulting the religion, disturbing the peace of large bodies of the Christian community, and broaching doctrines contrary even to the Established Church. When the Scripture Readers were brought to court on the charge of disturbing the peace the Carlow Sentinel half-heartedly defended their cause on 7 April 1855 in a report entitled `OUTRAGEOUS ATTACKS ON SCRIPTURE READERS'. The missionaries denied the charges made by James Maher and others that they had excited the people to violent behaviour by saying that `the devil was in the chalice at the raising of the Host', or that they had said of local women : `The bloody rips, all they want is to go to confession and get into the box with the priest.' The situation became even more explosive in Kilkenny, where the Scripture Readers had been welcomed by the Vicar of St John's parish, the Rev. J. L. Drapes, and were referred to by the people as `Tresham Gregg's Devils'. The Catholic protagonist was Father Martin Doyle of Graigue, who was brought into the fray when serious rioting occurred in his parish. At the height of the rioting in March 1856 the pro-Catholic Kilkenny Journal ran a series of editorials on `The Souper Nuisance' which continued through the summer and early autumn under headings like `DUBLIN CASTLE FOR THE SOUPERS' (when extra police were sent to Kilkenny), `THE SOUPERS AT BAY' and `THE GREAT SOUPER CONSPIRACY'. The `cool disciplined audacity' of the `soupers' was such that they openly taunted the people with being I

242 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 idolaters. Their vulgarity was `illiterate, unprepossessing and offensive' when they told the people : `Don't pray to the Virgin Mary, she is no more than a common woman.'18° The Kilkenny Moderator represented Protestant opinion, and it was not happy about Martin Doyle's bragging that he had . once cleansed the town and would do so again after he was acquitted of the charge of exciting the people to violence. Nor was it pleased that the Scripture Readers insisted on putting up placards although they had been ordered not to do so. When this issue was brought to court the Resident Magistrate said the placards were `reprehensible but there was no agreement that they were offensive'.20° As rioting increased and more police were called in to the town a letter appeared in the paper signed `A City Cess Payer', asking who was to pay for the extra police. When a troop of the 16th Lancers was moved to Kilkenny to help to keep order the Moderator of 1 March 1857 noted that the merchant class—many of whom were Catholics—might benefit from the appearance of the troops, but not most of the taxpayers : The enlargement of the garrison brings an increased expenditure in the district, and a consequent profit to our traders; whilst the augmentation of the Constabulary must be met by increased taxation on the city. The cess-payers truly have reason to feel anything but thankful to the patrons of mob-rule and lynch law amongst us. Local Protestants finally showed their opinion of the ICM `crusade' by sending a memorial to the Bishop of Ossory which begged him to remove the missioners, who lacked `tact, judgment and forbearance' and excited only `unchristian feeling and ill-will'.2°1 Dublin, as we have seen, was the centre for much controversial excitement during the 1830s and 1840s. When Dallas established his missionary headquarters in Dublin in 1849 he first offered help to the Rector of St Michan's, who welcomed the idea of controversial preaching. He was the Rev. Charles Stuart Stanford,2°2 who for many years was the editor of the Christian Examiner. One of his curates, the Rev. Charles Fennell McCarthy, particularly caught Dallas's attention, and arrangements were made for him to carry on a permanent mission through controversial preaching and lecturing in Dublin. Two other Dublin Evangelical clergy, the Rev. Charles Fleury and the Rev. John Gregg, agreed to assist in some of the mission work.20S When Stanford became Rector of St Thomas's, Dublin, in 1854 it also became a centre for controversial preaching. These Irish Evangelicals took great delight in inviting to Dublin inflammatory speakers like the apostate Italian priest

Exeter Hall and Ireland 243 Father Gavazzi in 1852,204 yet they were diligent in other more routine aspects of their work, such as the building of a mission church and hall in Townsend Street and the `Birds' Nest' orphanage on the city outskirts.205 As we have noted, the first rapid expansion of the ICM levelled off in 1854, and from that point a slow decline began in the support given to it by the Evangelicals. This was in some ways an unexpected phenomenon, because when Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 he worked closely with his relative by marriage and friend, Lord Shaftesbury, in making a whole series of Evangelical appointments to the English bench of bishops. Some of these men, such as Robert Bickersteth, who became Bishop of Ripon in 1856, and J. C. Wigram, who ascended to the see of Rochester in 1860, joined the Archbishop of Canterbury, J. B. Sumner, and Charles Sumner of Winchester as open supporters of the ICM. Charles Sumner, Samuel Wilberforce of Oxford, and Bishops Wigram and Bickersteth all visited the Irish missions between 1859 and 1862,2Oß but most English prelates showed less and less interest in the ICM. There were several reasons for this loss of support. The Crimean War did much to take public attention from Ireland, but even more damaging from the ICM standpoint was the attention English Evangelicals gave to the Indian Mutiny. By 1858 Exeter Hall was filled with the excitement over the challenge to `Christianise' India, and the Irish religious war was pushed into the background. By 1859 Dallas was urging everyone in the society to cut down expenses and expressing his unhappiness that lack of financial support held up the ICM `advance'. He had just returned from Ireland, and reported that in Balla, Co. Mayo, the Catholic people had turned against the priest sent to them by MacHale against their wishes, because of his `manner of treating their wives and daughters in the confessional'. They were flirting with Protestantism to upset MacHale, and had requested a Scripture Reader to be sent to them, but finances were such that Dallas could not take advantage of this opportunity.207 In 1862 W. C. Plunket, then domestic chaplain to his uncle the Bishop of Tuam, and an important ecclesiastic who was destined to become Archbishop of Dublin, made a well-publicised visitation of the Connemara missions. He described how twenty-five years earlier almost the whole of Connemara was served by two clergymen in the ten nominal parishes that made up the huge Union of Ballinaldll. The union had only one Protestant church, with a congregation of twenty and an income of £200. Now, in 1862, there were twenty-five congregations, and in the new church at Clifden

Ø The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 alone there were over three hundred worshippers every Sunday. But there was a definite note of anxiety in his letter as he considered the financial future of the ICM: The Society for Irish Church Missions is now, thank God, in a most prosperous and healthy condition; but it is hard to say what might result from the advent of an unfriendly bishop, from the death of some of those officers of the Society whose zeal and wisdom gave such strength to its work, from a war, from a commercial panic, or a season of national distress affecting the precarious funds by which its operations are carried on.208 Another publication of 1863, Good News from Ireland, was addressed to the English bench by John Garrett, the English secretary to the West Connaught Church Endowment Society. He knew the west of Ireland well, as he was the son of a Sligo parson and had travelled throughout Connemara with Caesar Otway in the 1840s. Garrett gave a glowing station-by-station account of what the Evangelical parsons and 1CM agents were accomplishing in Connaught, but this kind of publication masked the truth of the financial plight of the ICM.209 By the 1860s letters were arriving from various agents which indicated how serious were the financial problems faced by those carrying on the work in Ireland.210 In spite of the propaganda stories which were published to help fundraising,211 Dallas and his supporters at ICM headquarters knew that the crusade was losing momentum. In 1867 Dallas himself seemed to speak of the ICM in a new way when he referred to the defensive value of agents who were sent to parishes `invaded by itinerant Roman Catholic missionaries'.212 In 1868 a tour of inspection of the missions was made by the Rev. E. Auriol and the Rev. E. H. Bickersteth, accompanied by the Rev. H. C. Cory (alias Eade) and the Rev. C. F. McCarthy, who directed Irish operations. They praised the continuing `aggressive' tactics which were still attempted by some missionaries, but they noted a `turning in' on the part of other agents. Many of them were secondgeneration converts who were inured to the violent opposition of the papists around them, but their lot was hard : `They have frequently quite as much to endure from their RC relatives and neighbours as those who are brought to the acknowledgement of the Christian faith in heathen lands.'213 Because of this social pressure most converts were `constrained to emigrate', so it was always difficult to calculate the number of converts. Andrew Tait, the ICM superintendent of the Lough Mask area, said that it was impossible for converts to hope to remain in the district, which was dominated by Father Patrick Lavelle, `the cleverest and most unscrupulous

Exeter Hall and Ireland 245 priest in Ireland'. Because of this pressure, which was most extreme in the countryside, the chief recommendation of the visitors was that work should in the future be carried out in towns and cities where the people were less conservative.214 This report so depressed Dallas that in 1869, the year of Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the year of his death, he made a final personal tour of the missions. During this journey his sanguinity did not desert him, and he came to the conclusion that Disestablishment would have the result of disposing the Catholics to listen to Protestant missionaries more readily now that they would all be equal in the eyes of the state. Where he encountered `bitterness and exulting triumph' he dismissed these reactions of the people as mere reflections of the temper of some local priest. Although Dallas had to admit that demands upon the means of the laity to support the Church of Ireland would now 'probably interfere with their contributions to other religious objects', yet a blessing of Disestablishment which should not be overlooked was the new freedom for the ICM `to do very much as it likes'. The Church of Ireland would now be so concerned for its own survival that it would gladly leave mission work to the ICM. In fact, said Dallas, the Irish Church Missions as a free agency might well be a `suitable instrumentality' to show the Church of Ireland how to function ideally when it was free of the burden of establishment status.215 Dallas admitted that the nature of the work had changed in twenty years. He acknowledged that new agents needed more training than in 1849 in order to encourage them to resist a temptation to act like the parsons of the Church of Ireland who sought to avoid the warfare which inevitably came with `aggressiveness'. The crusading spirit must not be abandoned, for now in this time of crisis, when the Church of Ireland was unsure of its role in the nation, the ICM was called upon to engage in mission work which would otherwise not be attempted : My own impression is very strong that the crisis in Ireland calls for more aggressive efforts by the Irish Church Missions, that though the difficulty is great yet that the time is suitable for such efforts.21° At the same time, administrative problems had to be solved. To help ICM agents to maintain the liberty needed for itinerancy and `aggressiveness' the committee had to find means to provide salaries and superannuation for its missioners who `have always the temptation to leave the Society whenever an advantageous opportunity presents itself 217 Superannuation was a particular problem for devoted servants like the ageing C. F. McCarthy in Dublin.

246 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 In spite of the optimism displayed by the old soldier-saint, it seemed clear to many militant Protestants that there was little hope for further advance by the Irish Church Missions. Like the youth of its most devoted missionaries, its vigour was past. The truth was that most members of the Church of Ireland looked upon the ICM as an embarrassment rather than a model to follow now that the Church had the problem of living without benefit of establishment in a suspicious if not antagonistic Catholic world. The real crisis of identity lay with the ICM rather than with the Church of Ireland. Within a decade of Disestablishment and the death of Dallas, the few churchmen who chose to pay attention to the Irish Church Missions knew that the crusade had failed. The zealous spirit of this missionary organisation belonged to a time that had passed. Now work had been given up in three of the four areas in which it had once operated : This institution is in a state of decadence; it is dying a natural, or rather a spiritual death, its funds are failing ... its friends and admirers are comparatively few. No single Bishop of the Irish Church now appears among its leading officials, while the name of but one Irish nobleman is there. A few of the English nobility still afford it their patronage, chief of whom is the Lord High Chancellor, Earl Cairns, who describes his society as `a valuable assistant to the work of the Church in Ireland, as also a valuable assistant to the State in the management of the government in Ireland'. This was his Lordship's testimony in 1877.218 Such a passive interpretation of the role of the ICM was far removed from the `aggressive' crusading spirit once breathed into it by Alexander Dallas. What had happened to the original spirit of the missionary body, its intense desire to convert the great mass of the Irish people? Why had the English Protestant crusade failed? 4. English Evangelicalism in Ireland If any simple answer can be given to the question of why the ICM crusade failed, it is that the movement was English, in origin, in design, and in the goals it sought to achieve. Dallas was an Englishman, his kind of Evangelicalism and his ideas of cultural imperialism were typically English, his mission was financed in England, and it largely depended upon Englishmen for recruitment of agents and for officers to direct strategy. When it became clear that the `ten years' war'218 was radically dividing the Irish society to which they belonged, the Protestants of southern Ireland, where the ICM principally operated, soon showed that they were not going to sup-

Exeter Hall and Ireland 247 port the English crusade. The ICM failed principally because it was not supported by most Irish Protestants. Dallas, the veteran of Waterloo, whose whole life was devoted to combating European `continentalism' in its political and religious forms, possessed a theological and psychological viewpoint that was bound to irritate the Irish, whether they were Protestant or Catholic. As self-appointed marshal of a great English missionary Protestant army he could conceive of a scheme of striking at Rome through Ireland—but only at the cost of overlooking the feelings of the Irish in the matter.22° As a passionate millenarian he could believe that God was calling him to his `great work' in Ireland, so that when the Lord returned, his people would be found busy combating the powers of darkness in popish Ireland 221 But most Irish Protestants had their own ways of coping with their Catholic neighbours, and they did not appreciate the religious `chivvying' of the ICM: Let us ask our clergy, have they done their duty—have they been witnesses for God's glorious truth in Ireland? What have our bishops been doing for the last 200 years.... Ought not our church authorities to Iie down in the dust, and acknowledge their guilt before God, to lay their hands on their hearts and confess freely they are guilty concerning their brethren. The consequence, the necessary result of such criminal neglect of duty has been that anything spoken against Popery is now considered political animosity, political bigotry.222 When Dallas first came to Ireland filled with his enthusiasm for controversy only a few Irish Protestants responded to his ideas. The controversial fervour of the era of Tresham Gregg, R. J. McGhee and Mortimer O'Sullivan had passed in Ireland, and, but for the fact that during the famine years, in religious terms, Ireland's difficulty was England's opportunity, Dallas and his followers might never have been able to launch their crusade. In 1849 Irish Protestants were demoralised, with so many landlords facing bankruptcy, the tensions of 1848 still fresh in their memories, and the social bitterness from the famine crisis still apparent all about them. But for the crisis atmosphere of the time, it is unlikely that many would have shown any interest at all in Dallas's evangelical enthusiasm.223 There was a natural theological reluctance on the part of most Church of Ireland people to give themselves to an excited international crusade against popery—quite apart from prudent considerations of the long-range result of such an adventure in Ireland. Few shared DaIlas's faith in millenarian prophecy :

248 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 That Italian affairs are hastening rapidly to a great crisis must be obvious to every reflecting mind. The state of the continent of Europe shows that still greater claims than those we have yet witnessed may soon be anticipated. Prophecy is rapidly fulfilling : the purposes of God are being speedily accomplished and we cannot doubt that the great event of all is near, and that the Lord is at hand.224 By the 1860s millenarian speculation was going out of fashion, and fewer and fewer churchmen were concerned with the imminency of the Second Coming and the preparations that should be made for that event. Rather they reckoned with the much more immediate and threatening presence of Cardinal Cullen and with the problem of how the establishment status of the Church of Ireland might be maintained. In one of the last ICM controversial discussions, the Rev. C. F. McCarthy debated in 1855 with Father Henry O'Loughlin, Parish Priest of Ballymoney. After a faithful 143-page report of the tedious dialogue, which was no advance on any of the marathon sessions of earlier years, the printed account ends with the laconic comment `Here the Reporter withdrew.'225 There is considerable evidence to show that the reporter's ennui over controversy was shared by an ever-increasing number of Church of Ireland people. Like the members of the Irish Society—who thought they had been led astray by the ICM with its non-productive passion for religious warfare—most Irish churchmen were wearied of such polemical exercises. There is an old and rather sharp Irish Protestant expression `Murphy by name, Murphy by nature' to indicate a rough-andtumble quality to be found in some of their Catholic neighbours. What it refers to every Irishman knows, and the great majority of Irish Protestants had no intention of irritating the 'Murphys' among their neighbours by insulting their traditional way of life, including their faith. There were, of course, exceptions to the rule to be found among some of the Irish clergy who supported Dallas—including W. C. Plunket, the future Archbishop of Dublin : I have more than once met and conversed with persons who have spoken as if they regarded the social or religious reformation of the Irish Celt as enthnologically and phrenologically absurd. `Look at the shape of his head,' they will say—'remember the race from which he comes, and you will see that the thing is impossible. The only thing to be done is to get rid of him. Encourage him to emigrate, and let the Anglo-Saxon take his place. Till then Ireland's regeneration is hopeless !' Now if Irish Missions have taught me nothing else, they have taught me this-

Exeter Hall and Ireland 249 that the character of the Irish Celt, however degraded by external influences, is not unalterable; and the more I see of the success of such efforts, the more I feel convinced that the shape of an Irishman's head is no greater obstacle in the way of his social and religious regeneration than the shape of his swallow-tailed coat 22B Generally, however, even the Irish Evangelicals kept such observations to themselves, regardless of their private belief that some of the `external influences' which held down their Catholic neighbour were those of popery. But Dallas and his agents gloried in insulting the faith of the people—after all that was what 'aggressiveness' meant—and often they failed to distinguish between the sinner and his sin.227 Irish Protestants knew from harsh experience in the past the whirlwind that the ICM would reap, so they paid little attention to Dallas's proclamation that no minister of the Irish Church was faithful unless he joined in this `aggressiveness'. Rather they waited for Dallas to run into trouble, in the hope that, having learned a hard lesson, they could then tell him where his tactics were wrong. A minority among the Irish Evangelicals were just as eager as Dallas to engage in controversy with the Catholics, as they had been doing in their own fashion since the time of Archbishops Magee and Trench. But in their disputations with their fellow-Irishmen, they reckoned with the sensibilities of their neighbours and the consequence of offending tender consciences. During the excitement of 1851 that old controversialist R. J. McGhee told an enthusiastic crowd at the Rotunda of an insight he had received from a convert and had never forgotten : `Mike, do you think it a good plan to use strong and startling denunciations of the errors of the Church of Rome when we are speaking to the Roman Catholics?' 'Plase, your riverence', says Mike, `may I be so bould as to ask you a question?' `Surely. Ask as many as you please.' `Well, then, if your riverence was going to catch birds, would you begin by throwin' stones at them?' Having shared this insight, McGhee in typical fashion disregarded it. He devoted the rest of his discourse to a thirty-page tirade against popery, but most of his Irish listeners heard and understood the truth in McGhee's little tale of caution.228 When the Irish Society broke with the ICM over the issue of `aggressiveness', a meeting of the Dublin University Irish Asso-

250 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 ciation was held at Trinity College in March 1856. The people who attended were moderate men like H. R. Poole, Samuel Butcher, and Sir Joseph Napier. They supported the idea of giving the people the Bible in the Irish language; but because they accepted the reality of a pluralist Irish social order, they set limits on their `aggressiveness'. At the meeting Professor Patrick Foley referred to a Donegal rector's letter, which asked for direction about how `aggressive' he should be in trying to witness to the reformed faith among his Catholic neighbours. Foley posed the question and gave the Irish Society's answer to the Donegal rector's quandary : Was the rector who had written to them from Donegal to post up a notice on the chapel door that on a certain day he would preach in some old ruin that the sacrifice of the mass was damnable and idolatrous? ... No, if he were to do that, instead of having two hundred Roman Catholics reading the bible he would not have one single family doing so—(hear, hear).229 In the ICM d6båcle in the 1880s Canon Macllwaine commented on the folly of distributing `aggressive' pamphlets among the Catholics in the Glens of Antrim : A more unlikely means to convert any person from the religion which he professed or one more likely to stir up prejudice and to provoke violence of action appears to me hard to be imagined. He then contrasted the English ICM agents with their Irish counterparts, passionately Evangelical clergymen like Bishops Robert Daly or John Gregg who, whatever their theological failings, were 'Irishmen all'. They were well acquainted with `the habits, the prejudices, and the good qualities too, of their fellow-countrymen' and wished ultimately to `benefit the land of their birth and of their affections' rather than to make war with Rome as an end in itself.23° It would seem that part of the failure of the ICM campaign was not only that it was organised in England but that it was directed by Alexander Dallas. The warrior-saint of Wonston was not peaceloving like Hyacinth D'Arcy, the Evangelical Rector of Clifden, or the patient convert priest Roderick Ryder, or the kindly Dr Adams, the physician of Achill. Not only were all those men Irish, but they wanted social concord. Their presence among the Catholic people was accepted with little sign of rancour.281 On the other hand, Dallas was always a source of irritation in Irish society. Experience in a wartime commissariat corps and paternalistic direction of an English Evangelical parish in an Evangelical diocese was not necessarily the best training for mission work in Ireland. Irish Catholic countrymen did not react like Hampshire rural labourers. The latter

Exeter Hall and Ireland 251 might passively or sullenly resent Dallas's spiritual bullying of them; but the Irish countryman, in his starving condition, would calculate how he might direct to his own benefit the abundant and misdirected energy and wealth which Dallas seemed to possess when he set out to convert the whole Catholic population of Ireland : Two points must be born in mind when considering the proselytising movement. First of all, it was organised and financed from England, and it was not part of the general Church of Ireland policy at the time; the English Bible Societies were its main instigators. And secondly, the so called `soupers' and `cait-breac' were the victims of circumstances : famine, poverty, ignorance. As soon as their material resources improved they returned to the Catholic allegiance.282 Dallas's strategy and tactics were faulty from the start. He was not a good general because he did not consult sufficiently with his staff, particularly his Irish auxiliaries. Moreover, he spent far too much time at headquarters in London, and although he often visited the battlefield, he tended to see there what he wanted to see. His wife was not the only one who commented on his remarkable `sanguinity' and his tendency not to listen to advice, however wise or based on experience it was. If he had listened more to his Irish advisers, he might have realised the unlikeliness of total Protestant victory when there had been such a long cultural struggle between the two peoples in Ireland. The most that could be gained culturally and religiously was an easing of tensions between the two `nations'— if some Catholic people could be introduced to the Bible or persuaded that there was some virtue in the Irish Protestant version of Christianity. Dallas's formal definition of the ICM was : a combination of British Christians who subscribe money which is entrusted to a Committee of Christian gentlemen in London for the purpose of endeavouring to acquit themselves at last of a duty so long lying upon the English as a nation.288 To Dallas this duty was the bringing of the English Evangelical version of the Christian faith to `a rude uncivilised race, totally uneducated, and without the means of acquiring instruction in ought save the semi-barbarous usages and customs of their forefathers .. . as fearful to behold as that prevalent on the banks of the Ganges'.284 The work of the ICM was to combat such religious primitiveness among the Irish people. On repeated occasions when they were accused of `souperism' the ICM leaders protested that the Evan-

252 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 gelical crusade they were engaged in was a spiritual one only. They strongly denied any intention to interfere in temporal affairs by giving physical relief to the people. Dallas and his followers soon discovered, however, that everything they did was put, by Irish Catholics and Protestants alike, into the context of the long cultural struggle between the two peoples. What the missioners brought from England was not only English Evangelicalism, but an extension of British culture and civilisation which neither the Irish Catholic nor indeed the Irish Protestant welcomed without qualification. It was difficult to disassociate the English Evangelical `spiritual' message from English cultural imperialism and the social blessings which the `mother country' wanted to export to this important part of the Empire. The fact is, as we have seen, the ICM had always to some extent to reckon with its cultural imperialistic role. At the first annual general meeting of the society the Rev. Thomas Nolan said that the answer to the wretchedness, misery and degradation of Ireland was : ... the extension to her of a share of the same blessings of light and truth, by which you have been raised yourselves to an eminence unrivalled in the annals of civilised glory (applause).235 When the Rev. William Welsh, an ICM deputation secretary, gave a series of lectures in 1856 he spoke of the `claims of one province of this vast Empire ... upon the characteristic Protestantism of this Protestant country'. What was to be brought to Ireland was not just a spiritual but a social gospel. This could be the means towards a cultural revolution with beneficial manifestations such as the substantial decrease in jail committals already seen in Mayo and Galway between 1851 and 1854.238 At the time when the ICM was trying to establish itself in Belfast its agents made much of not only its record in conversions but of the great diminishment in crime that had been brought about in Galway, Connemara and Dublin since its work began.237 W. C. Plunket saw the ICM as a cultural as well as a religious agency—one which would foster love of the mother country of the Empire : How cheering it is, at a time when an ultramontane priesthood and a seditious press are doing everything to inspire the poor pliable Irish peasant with feelings of hatred towards his English neighbours, to find in the missionary movement a platform whereon the two nations may meet and interchange reciprocal feelings of Christian love.238 What the ICM found in practice was its primary spiritual crusade devolving into a mission which would serve principally the second-

Exeter Hall and Ireland 253 ary cause of British cultural imperialism. This state of affairs was clearly revealed just before Dallas sent inspectors on their 1868 tour of the missions. He had received from each station replies to a series of questions which he had addressed to his missionaries. Their answers show a remarkable similarity of response and a concern for `temporal' rather than spiritual affairs. All the missionaries complained of the emigration of young converts from their mission areas, `to improve their circumstances' as well as to escape `ridicule of relatives'. This occurred in spite of the fact that society was `improving' as Protestant schools were introduced to longneglected regions and the priests were challenged to build schools of their own to compete with the missionaries. As a rule the children in the mission areas had all `risen far above the positions their parents oriy pally occupied'. When the converts were ready to leave their Irish Catholic culture they usually departed for Britain or America to better themselves.239 The people who had been converted had usually changed their old faith because of `personal intercourse' with the missionary, not because of controversial handbills or lectures. Such were the answers given by the Rev. Richard Rudd, the missionary at Inverin, where he had laboured from 1863 to 1868, and they were typical of all the replies. Typical also was Richard Rudd's summing up of what was the `positive influence' of his missionary operations : A good work for God is beyond questioning progressing in this district but I have no reason to expect that a larger body of converts can be obtained in Iar Connaught. In my mission it is not even desirable. We advocate and prepare them for better circumstances than they can ever reach to here. We must labour for the eye of God alone.240 In almost every report emphasis was put on the cultural benefits brought to the people—their increase in `civilisation' rather than `vital religion'. One particular accomplishment recorded by several missionaries was that there were no Fenians to be found in their areas. Instead the people were orderly and civil, and their peacefulness reflected their exposure to Protestant culture. The Rev. H. W. Young of Ardee said that among his young people `greed, selfishness, turbulence and dirt' had been replaced by `qualities of an opposite character'. None of them had a good word to say for `controversial' meetings, which Winston Berry of Portarlington said were always a `failure' in his experience. An interesting insight was given by many of the missioners in their answer to question 2: `What are the principle sources of discouragement at this time in your mission?' Many of them replied :

254 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 `The coldness of the Protestants'. Catholic newspapers like the Dublin Evening Post of 27 November 1851 often pointed out how few supporters the Church of Ireland had generally among the landlords because of the tithe rent-charge, but it would seem that the resistance of Irish Protestants to the ICM reported by the missionaries in 1868 had other than an economic cause. Regardless of how far Irish Protestants had absorbed the unionist and pro-English ideology, they were still Irish, and many things that came from England they rejected when they could. Generally Protestants did not welcome the ICM because its agents caused trouble among the majority people, sometimes plunging a community into a state of turmoil and then departing, leaving local Protestants to bear the brunt of Catholic wrath. Although some missionaries saw themselves as emissaries representing British civilisation, Irish Protestants saw them as trouble-makers of the worst kind. It is little wonder that the Rev. Charles Fleury, who had served in Galway for-ten years, reported : Our principal discouragement consists in the apathy and lack of interest of the Protestants here generally. This often develops into something worse than apathy, such as a positive dislike of our work.2'' Although Protestants may have derived their culture from English roots and were Evangelical in their religious outlook, they had made an accommodation with the Catholics in most of their communities. Most of them said about proselytising : `Why unsettle the minds of the people and turn them from the teachers who are doubtless suited to their capacities, and may give them some amount of truth, even though mixed with error7'242 Although many Irish Evangelical clergymen were caught up in the anti-Catholic hysteria of the early 1850s, when Dallas's movement seemed to herald a major Protestant success, and were willing to recognise their English ally as a `zealous and honoured Evangelist', they always hesitated to give unqualified support to the ICM crusade. They were willing to tolerate Dallas's work, as they did that of Nangle on Achill Island, as part of the Irish Evangelical mission, but as time went on they made it clear to Dallas that they did not by any means wholly approve of what he was doing. 248 The opposition of the non-Evangelical Irish clergy to the mission of Dallas and his followers, however, was unqualified. They looked with disfavour at the war fought in Connaught which offended their latitudinarian theological sensibilities and reinforced their belief that `revivalism does not bring with it morality'.244 They judged the ICM crusade by the fruits it produced, and found them wanting.

Exeter Hall and Ireland 255 The small missionary colonies that were produced at the cost of so much hatred and strife were hardly worth the embarrassment they brought to the Established Church or the great bitterness they encouraged. At the end of his life Dallas was a disappointed man. He had to recognise that, for all his zeal, his work was not welcomed in Ireland by most people. There was no likelihood that the spirit of 1850 could be resurrected, and his small missionary colonies seemed to have no place in Irish society in the way that it was developing. Just as Martin Luther in his latter days found himself obliged to act as a kind of Protestant pope in northern Germany, so Dallas in the last days of his life found himself acting as Ordinary or bishop to these tiny Evangelical refuges that were far outside the mainstream of religious and social development in Ireland. In 1864 there was a `slanderous' situation in the Louisburgh area where one of the missionaries, William Kennedy, had given shelter to the wife of a Scripture Reader named Fleming. In the correspondence which Kennedy had with Dallas, after a visitation by Cory and McCarthy, the ICM secretaries, Kennedy, `past the springtime of youth', reminded Dallas how long and faithful his service had been to the ICM over sixteen years in places like Achill, Clifden, Sellema, Rooveagh, Shrule, Castlekerke and Louisburgh. He had once turned down the offer of a living in the Church of Ireland and had chosen to spend his life faithfully `among people of low estate'. Because of this present unfortunate misunderstanding he was now obliged to leave Connaught, but Dallas had been able to raise for him only a small `gratuity', to Kennedy's chagrin.246 The Kennedy episode illustrates another failing of the ICM—its weakness as an institution and Dallas's reluctance to act as its Ordinary. It pained him to turn from `spiritual' affairs, but in the 1860s he had to consider how to keep his agents out of the workhouse in their declining years. One of his last letters to the committee urged that consideration be given to the `temporal problem' of superannuation.24° At the end of his life Dallas was faced with the uncomfortable fact that he had built up a small establishment which did not supplement but was in some ways a rival to the Church of Ireland. His problem in 1869 was an ecclesiastical rather than a religious one. What was to be the future of the ICM when it seemed to have no place in the structure of the Church of Ireland, let alone in Irish society? Who was to act as Ordinary, to help unfortunate missionaries like William Kennedy or faithful servants like the ageing C. F. McCarthy? And who was to revive the ideal of a `spiritual' crusade when it was clear that Irish Protestants did not like `religious aggression'? Even the usually sanguine Dallas sounded

256 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 an uncertain note when he told the committee in 1869 he realised that Irish Protestants tolerated the ICM only if it could be viewed as part of `an institution ... a standing testimony for God's truth in the midst of a population'. The Church of Ireland wanted nothing to do with ideas of crusade, nor with any policy which encouraged religious or social warfare in Irish society.247

CHAPTER VI

THE LEGACY OF THE EVANGELICAL CRUSADE We were told by the self-confident critics that the Act of 1869 would kill jealousy, and draw all Christian folk together. The very opposite has been the case. The prophecy of Archbishop Whately has been realised to the very letter, and Ireland has been divided into hostile camps, with clerical sentries pacing between. JOHN CROZIER, Bishop of Ossory, Authorised Report of the Church of Ireland Conference (1899)

CHAPTER VI

THE LEGACY OF THE EVANGELICAL CRUSADE 1. Ultramontanism in Ireland From the standpoint of English Evangelicalism, the results of the ICM crusade were disappointing. Few of the objectives sought by Dallas and his followers were achieved. Even a head-count of converts was difficult because converts usually emigrated and it was rare for missioners to be able to report on those who departed. But failure to live up to Evangelical expectations did not mean that the ICM campaign was not of significance in Irish history. It was impossible to have someone of the dynamic capabilities of Alexander Dallas, supported by a large English war-chest, appear in Ireland and give himself totally to the missionary cause he loved, without his efforts having influence among friends and foes alike.1 Perhaps the greatest effect of the ICM was its indirect one on the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. That body was challenged by the `crusaders' to serve with a new spirit some of its longneglected people—especially in John MacHale's archdiocese of Tuam and throughout the province of Connaught. When it became clear in the 1850s that the ICM had to be taken seriously because of its considerable success in the west of Ireland, and when MacHale persisted in his stubborn refusal to recognise the crisis in his territory, Rome was obliged to intervene. Not only were Vincentian and Redemptorist missionaries dispatched to Connaught, but funds were found to build churches and schools.2 Most importantly of all, because of the increasingly Gallican attitudes of MacHale and his episcopal supporters and their failure to discipline their clergy or to halt the extension of Protestant authority, the Vatican came to an important decision. The pope would send to Ireland an ecclesiastic totally committed to the Ultramontane cause, and he would restore order among the faithful. The ecclesiastic who came as papal delegate and Primate was Paul Cullen. There is little doubt that one of the reasons for his coming was the phenomenal report of Protestant advances which

260 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 had reached Rome.3 Nor is there much question that his policies during the 1850s were greatly influenced by ICM gains in Connaught and elsewhere. It was desperately necessary to halt the in-fighting among the bishops and to unite them in a common front against the English missionary bodies and the Irish Evangelicals who supported them. Because few scholars have had access to the uncatalogued Cullen papers in the Dublin archdiocesan archives, no full-scale study of Cullen has been made, and considerable time has been spent in proving that Cullen was not, as he was labelled by men like Duffy and Lucas, a `Castle Catholic'—a man ready to produce in Ireland `a generation of slaves to English authority'' If the same scholars had had access to the Cullen correspondence now made available for us by Peadar Mac Suibhne, or examined the letters sent to Cullen during the thirty years before 1850, when he was in Rome, it is hard to understand how they could ever have taken seriously the charge that he was in any substantial way even friendly towards the British rule or `Sassenach' culture in Ireland. Cullen's `patriot' credentials were impressive. He had been born into a family proud that its ancestors had served in the Jacobite army. His father had been imprisoned in '98, and an uncle and other relatives had been put to death. His family was intensely Catholic, with many of its members priests or nuns. They represented the Catholic gentry class who were greatly jealous of Protestant control of the land, and the Cullens and their kinsmen were continually adding to the thousands of acres they held in Ireland's fertile eastern counties. Cullen had been a student at Carlow College, where his abilities had been noticed by the future Bishop James Doyle, then a professor. Carlow College at that time was distinguished by a bitter memory of '98 which was shared by faculty and students alike. From Carlow College Cullen had followed his uncle, godfather and friend, James Maher, to Rome in 1820, there to remain until his mission to Ireland in 1850. As a brilliant student at the Propaganda College, and from 1832 as Rector of the Irish College, he shared in the Ultramontane excitement in Rome following the Napoleonic wars, a time when national colleges were being reopened and the city was filled with distinguished scholars. He was a close friend of the future Gregory XVI when the latter was Prefect of Propaganda, and when Cullen was appointed agent of the Irish bishops and used this position to perform many useful services for them, his authority grew in the Vatican and in Irish ecclesiastical circles. During the 1830s, when the tithe war was raging and the issue of the National System of education began to divide the bishops, important ecclesiastics turned to him from

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 261 all sides, hoping to use his influence in Rome for their own purposes. By the time of the Repeal agitation, the issue of the Queen's Colleges, and the Charitable Bequests Bill, Cullen's influence was enormous, both in Rome and in Ireland. At the time he came to Ireland as papal delegate and Primate he had an unrivalled knowledge of Irish affairs, and his influence with Pope Pius IX was unquestioned. Just as much as Dallas, Cullen was, as Duffy and the Young Irelanders liked to point out, an alien intruder—one who brought into Ireland Ultramontanist ideas that were to change the whole development of Irish history. There is much truth in this observation and, as Cardinal Newman observed, Cullen's vehemence was directed as much against the Young Irelanders and and the MacHalites as it was against the English.° Cullen never weakened in his resolve to propagate the spirit of religious triumphalism that characterised Roman Catholicism during the pontificates of Gregory XVI and Pius IX. His intention from the time he came to Ireland was to take over the alliance of priests and the popular unrest in Ireland, and to redirect this political and social power. From the time of the Synod of Thurles the Catholic people of Ireland were to serve counter-reformation religious and ecclesiastical goals rather than those of Irish nationalism.° This does not mean that Cullen had any love for the English administration in Ireland, or that he intended to come to terms with the Protestant governing class. Although he never wavered in his service to the papacy, Cullen's correspondence showed that he never escaped the anti-English and anti-Protestant prejudices that were so common among the Catholics of his class in nineteenthcentury Leinster. In the Emancipation crisis he heartily approved the clerical agitation of the time and hoped that his nephews would `be one day stout agitators also'.' He enjoyed hearing of the leadership role assumed by the Cullen, Maher, Verdon and Lalor families during the tithe war.° When religious controversy began and tales came to him of Protestants converting to Catholicism he was delighted° and excitedly told James Maher how the pope was reading an Italian translation of Cobbett's History of the Reformation.10 When one is dealing with a mind as complex (and probably devious) as Paul Cullen's, it is a dubious exercise to engage in speculations about the formation of that mind. Yet his correspondence reveals that he welcomed some people who wrote to him, and through a stiff formality did not welcome others. Some of those who wrote to him in an almost familiar way, especially in his early years, were usually old classmates from the Propaganda College, and presumably what they wrote about was what they

262 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 believed he was interested in hearing. During the Emancipation crisis John Jones of Navan wrote to him about local proselytisers, taking for granted that Cullen would share his disgust: The poorest and most abandoned characters detest their conduct and reject their allurements. Some have left us in Cavan and a few individuals throughout the island and remained in profession of the new creed, while the flesh pots of the false prophets boiled for their advantage but on their ceasing, their carniferous [sic] disciples returned to their ancient mother.11 When the Repeal agitation began he wrote home to complain that only English newspapers reached the college. Soon he was avidly reading the Freeman's Journal and other nationalist papers. In March 1831 he told his brother Thomas in Liverpool : I hope, therefore, O'Connell will not drive his agitation too far, though I am anxious he should obtain the repeal of the Union.12 During the tithe war, when his family wrote him long excited letters about the struggle they were leading against the rural Protestant ascendancy, his concerns remained those of an Ultramontane Catholic, in spite of his reading of O'Connellite papers. Being an Ultramontanist did not mean that he had to disguise his strong anti-Protestant sentiments, however. There was nothing contradictory in Cullen's mind in loving the pope and hating Protestants. He told his brother that the numbers of those opposing the papacy in Italy were `in about the same proportion to the entire population as the Orangemen in Ireland'.18 Edward Lucas claimed that Cullen was always in a state of war with someone and, if this is so, the one enemy that he never stopped loathing was Protestantism." When a young man from a respectable Catholic family was dying of consumption in the Irish College and threatened to shoot any priest who came near him to administer the last rites, Cullen attributed his apostasy to his education at Trinity College, Dublin.16 He was immensely satisfied when he was told of Doyle's message to the tithe commissioners in London— that what was really wanted in Ireland was `the total overthrow of the Protestant ascendancy and religion in the country'.1° Cullen was immensely intrigued by, and never forgot, Archbishop Whately's blunder in giving his `extraordinary' advice to Protestant clergy to avoid infection which they might contract if they brought pastoral care to dying victims of the cholera.17 In later years Cullen was to refer frequently to Whately's folly. During the Repeal struggle Cullen closely followed developments in Ireland and shared his insights about what was happening there

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 263 with the pope. Without doubt both Cullen and the pope were fascinated by O'Connell's exercise in `controlled agitation' and wondered whether the same tactic might not be used by a strong churchman who would lead the people in agitation for the cause of Catholic ascendancy in Ireland. When Cullen was on holiday with his brother in Liverpool in 1842 he wrote to Tobias Kirby in the Irish College in Rome to criticise the noticeable lack of religious or ecclesiastical zeal among English Catholics : `I wish they had here some brave agitator of a bishop to stir up the Catholics, otherwise little good will ever be done.'18 During the same holiday Cullen met O'Connell and assured him that Kirby had spoken with the pope on behalf of Cullen and that there was no danger of the pontiff interfering over the work of the clergy for Repeal: His whole discourse and manner was that of one who by no means disapproved of the legitimate and peaceful struggles of Mr O'Connell, the Irish bishops and clergy in the assertion of the rights of their oppressed country.18 Daniel O'Connell always denied publicly that what he was seeking was Catholic ascendancy, but when he communicated with Paul Cullen he shrewdly guessed the two concerns that really mattered to the Rector of the Irish College—the promotion of papal authority, and the war with Protestantism. In a lengthy private letter of May 1842 he stressed how concerned the Repeal movement was with `the progress and well-being of Catholicity within these islands'. Then he assured Cullen of his Ultramontane churchmanship : No man can be more attached to the centre of unity than I am. No man can be more entirely convinced that the stability of the faith depends on the submission to and union with the Holy See. As for the Protestants, O'Connell dismissed them as a political phenomenon, the religious expression of the ascendancy class. Destroy the political basis of minority power, as Repeal would surely do, and Cullen's goal would be achieved. The Protestant faith would disappear in Ireland : If the union were repealed and the exclusive system abolished, the great mass of the Protestant community would with little delay melt into the overwhelming majority of the nation. Protestantism would not survive Repeal ten years.20 O'Connell further assured Cullen that Repeal would result in a Catholic takeover of Trinity College, Dublin, or the endowment of a Catholic university entirely under `regulations of the Irish

264 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Episcopal Synod'. He also expected the appointment of an Irish cardinal to follow Repeal. Every opportunity to establish Catholic ascendancy in Ireland would then surely exist—if only Repeal of the Union could be obtained. It is probable that Cullen's toleration, if not encouragement, of clerical participation in political agitation was not a reflection of a patriot mentality, in the secular sense. Rather it revealed his pragmatic desire to take advantage of any situation where the Irish ascendancy seemed unsure of its authority. Cullen wanted to advance the Ultramontane cause in Ireland, preferably at the expense of the Protestant religion and Protestant culture. He thought as a .Roman prelate, looking at Europe as a whole and Ireland in particular. War was already joined between the papacy and European liberalism, and the battle was being fought on many fronts. Although Cullen loathed everything Young Ireland stood for, he was greatly alarmed when the British tried to take advantage of the 1848 crisis and pressure the Vatican about priests engaging in political agitation in Ireland. He was convinced that the Britsh government, with help from English Evangelicals, was encouraging anti-papal Italian radicals at the same time as it made its hypocritical protest. He told John MacHale that a counter-blow had to be made : `It would be well if John O'Connell or some of the big men would get up a good agitation ... to put a stop to all the scheming with which they are going on in Italy.'2' The O'Connellite forces, however, were in disarray by this time, and by the time that James Maher told Cullen of the beginning of a new and major Protestant proselytising endeavour22 Cullen was convinced that, if papal authority was to be extended at all in Ireland, a major counter-reformation campaign against both the Protestant state and the Protestant church had to be fought. An all-out attempt had to be made to establish Catholic ascendancy in Ireland. One definition of the Ultramontanists of nineteenth-century Europe is that they were churchmen `who tended to project onto the distant Holy Father the qualities they found lacking in their own bishops near at hand'.28 In this sense there were many Ultramontanists in Ireland in 1850. One of the chief reasons that Cullen's legatine authority and his new form of leadership were so easily accepted was that there was a serious lack of unity and authority among the Irish bishops. They were divided between those who followed the conciliatory policies of the pious and wise but now aged Daniel Murray, and those who served the militant and obstructionist purposes of the intransigent John MacHale. The clergy and laity were also divided, and no one seemed to have the power to unite the people to resist the English Evangelicals who had begun

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 265 their crusade. Cullen's great accomplishment is that, as the pope's personal representative, he brought to the Irish Catholic Church a vision of reality, as well as a constellation of counter-reformation symbols and myths around which they could begin to build a cultural expression which would resist the Protestant advance. From the beginning Cullen kept aloof from Dublin Castle, where, in view of his anti-English and anti-Protestant sensibilities, he would probably have felt uneasy. The first real notice that the ascendancy had of his presence among them came with reports of the triumphalist expression of ecclesiastical authority that was displayed at the Synod of Thurles. This was Cullen's first act as Primate and papal delegate in Ireland. From this time Irish Catholics were to be on a war footing, ready to serve with the rest of the papal forces in the great battle against liberalism, Protestantism and the other anti-Catholic causes of the age. 2. Protestants and the 'Cullenisation' of Ireland William Crolly, Archbishop of Armagh from 1835 to 1849, was considered to be the epitome of the 'Castle bishop'. Even before he became Primate he had been warned by Rome about 'fraternisation' with Protestants,24 and scandalous tales were told about his tolerance of Protestants and his attending their churches on occasion. He was so hated by Ultramontanist Catholics that no biography of him appeared in the Catholic Directory after his death. Paul Cullen, his successor, was his complete antithesis ecclesiastically and politically, totally without any sympathy for Protestantism in either its religious or its cultural expression. The Synod of Thurles presented Ireland in 1850 with the kind of display of ecclesiastical triumphalism that many churchmen thought had disappeared with the nunciate of Archbishop Rinuccini and the counter-reformation of the seventeenth century.25 Ostensibly the synod was called to discuss the issue of the Queen's Colleges, for the problem of Protestant advance through the medium of 'godless education' which had long divided the hierarchy had to be dealt with immediately. As we have noted, however, the assembly at Thurles represented the beginning of a new era for the Catholic Church in Ireland. From this time, under firm Roman direction, it was at war with every movement to propagate the 'Iiberalism' which the papacy anathematised. Cullen's pastoral of 1851, when Britain was still agitated by the 'papal aggression' and when Dallas seemed to be initiating a breakthrough, showed the Irish Protestants what was coming. Just as much as Alexander Dallas, Cullen was a crusader, an ecclesiastical general, who recognised that in Ireland a battle was in progress

266 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 between two rival religious and cultural imperia. There was to be no quarter given in this battle : Among the trials which require the exercise of untiring vigilance and zeal are the insidious machinations and open assault of a fanaticism which ... sending forth its apostles ... seeks its converts wherever famine has prostrated the moral and physical energies of its victim, or pestilence has robbed the orphan of its protection. Glorying in its shame, it boasts of this sacriligeous traffic as a proof of superior sanctity, and points to the array of those ghastly victims whom it has drawn by such allurements, not only from the lowest depths of destitution but almost from the charnel house or the grave—as a counterpoise to the moral weight and influence of those self-sacrificing and disinterested men, equally distinguished for their piety and learning, who have not only forfeited the wealth and honours of this world, but severed themselves from the most endearing ties of kindred and friendship in embracing the truth, where alone it is to be found in the bosom of the Catholic Church.26 Cullen's reference to `self-sacrificing and disinterested men' referred, of course, to Tractarian converts like Henry Wilberforce who worked for the Catholic Defence Association, and it may have seemed to some Protestants that this was a kind of `point-scoring' such as had distinguished the traditional form of Catholic-Protestant polemical exchange characteristic of the era of Tom Maguire and Tresham Gregg. Nothing could have been further from the truth. When Cullen attacked the Queen's Colleges it was because James Maher had convinced him that they represented a Protestant attempt to proselytise among the Catholic middle classes. Catholics were to be dissuaded from attending them so that they would not suffer the fate of the O'Beirnes, the O'Sullivans, the Phelans, the Moriartys and others who had abandoned the `one true faith' after attending Protestant colleges.27 The war that Cullen fought against the Protestants was a deadly one, one of the battles that the papacy was conducting throughout the world in this age of kulturkampf. Cullen had no time for abstract religious controversy. He was a papal general intent upon saving the souls of the Irish people by establishing in Ireland a Catholic cultural ascendancy which could protect them. He gladly sought and received aid from Ultramontane forces in Rome and elsewhere to wage this battle against heresy, whose forces were now led by Evangelical proselytisers : If many members of the Anglican church are content to enjoy in peace the ample revenues of their easy offices without doing

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 267 violence to the consciences of their poor Catholic neighbours, it is yet but too true that many others occupy themselves in launching from their pulpits torrents of abuse and invective against Catholicism and that they are ready to extend the hand to all sectaries or miscreants of whatever kind provided they unite with them in their bitter opposition to the ancient faith of Christianity.28 Even a cursory study of Cullen's utterances between 1850 and the early 1860s reveals an almost paranoic obsession with the Protestant Evangelicals, particularly the agents of the ICM in Connaught and in Dublin. In Dublin in 1853 he warned the faithful against any fraternisation with Protestants when `the pulpits of this city resound from day to day with invectives against our holy religion'.28 The following year his Lenten pastoral denounced the proselytisers and their wiles : ... the fangs of those insidious wolves in sheep's clothing who lay snares to destroy our religion ... the disgraceful and unchristian system of proselytism which is reprobated by all liberal and generous people of whatever denomination.SO After warning the faithful that the main Protestant attack in 1855 was directed against the workhouses and hospitals, he shifted their attention to the National Schools in 1856 and sneered : `The proselytisers have the guidance and sanction of a great Protestant dignitary.'31 This was his counterpart as Archbishop of Dublin, and three months later he made his charge even more directly : Bigotry and fanaticism have determined to traffic on their misery and with that view ragged schools have been opened in the city. The agents of these schools contact destitute families and offer to provide for them on condition that they be allowed to deprive the children of their faith. A special patron of the degrading system is the head of the Protestant establishment in Dublin, with his wife and daughter.92 The attack never ceased. His pastoral for Lent in 1857 forbade the faithful from taking part in controversial discussion of any sort, and when C. F. McCarthy and two other members of the ICM called on Cullen they were shown the door by his servant.33 In 1858 he warned the children of Irish soldiers of the kind of cultural rather than religious proselytising that was carried on in the Hibernian and other military schools : As all the staff are Protestants of rank the poor Catholic boys are led to think that the profession of Protestantism is necessary

268 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 in order to acquire respectability and that Catholicity is something to be despised.... During the past four years seventeen of the Catholic pupils have renounced their faith." Cullen's concern for Protestant militancy in Ireland was united with his desire to defend the temporal authority of Pio Nono in Italy. During 1859 he not only attacked proselytising in the schools but denounced the Protestant press for maligning Pius IX : `another illustration of hypocrisy and bigotry we have to face'. He went on to attack Garibaldi for giving land in conquered territory to Protestants for church construction, and denounced a plot by Lord Shaftesbury and other Evangelicals to provide `rebels in the Pope's states with arms and money' : It was great hypocrisy for men to call themselves evangelicals whilst they were fomenting treason and sedition and trampling on the Gospel which recommends obedience and submission to higher powers.86 The result of this spirit of religious militancy which was almost paranoic in its expression was that more energy than was warranted was devoted to Cullen's counter-crusade. When the census of 1861 showed clearly that the Protestant advance had been held Cullen still maintained his attack.S6 His letters to Propaganda in the census year reveal the thinking of a man who was obsessed with religious warfare, ready even to conduct a witch-hunt among Catholics whose orthodoxy was questionable because of their past association with Protestantism. Some of Newman's friends were singled out for their `religious indifference'.S7 Although Ireland was suffering from a disastrous harvest at the time, Cullen was busy in 1862 collecting 12,500 francs to support the papal war machine.38 When he sent the `Peter's Pence' to Rome he commented on the `monstrous grievance' that the wealth of the Established Church was still tolerated in Ireland.88 His one acknowledgement of the suffering of the people in this correspondence was a note which said that while the English were busy helping their own poor they were doing nothing at all for the Irish people—because they were Catholics10 This did not mean, however, that Cullen was unaware of the everyday lives and activities of the majority people. When he heard that Catholics attended a Freemasons' dance in Dublin he let Rome know immediately, with the suggestion that his letter be passed on to the pope.41 It took most people some time to realise that a new kind of relationship between the `two nations' had begun to appear. When the Protestants began to be fully aware of Cullen's intransigence,

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 269 Dallas and his followers rejoiced at the hope that open battle would now be waged and that they would gain from the controversy : In order to meet the difficulty and stay the defection from their ranks they are opening numerous schools to give religious instruction, relief and clothes to the children at a very considerable expense. Such facts need no comment; they speak for themselves.42 Other Protestants were alarmed at the open display of such organised Catholic hostility. At the very time that the papacy seemed to be losing its temporal power in Italy, Ultramontanism in a very militant form was appearing in Ireland's Alarmists spoke of the danger of' `Irish Sepoyism', a massive turning against the British way of life now that the `Jesuits were let loose on the whole empire' : The whole fraternity exults at every evil that befalls us, and they admit they only bide the hour when our weakness may afford the long wished for opportunity to crush at once and forever the accursed Saxon.44 It was obvious to Protestants that the `Roman dress' of the priests was more commonly seen on the streets of Dublin, and they were obviously increasing in number.46 Even more ominously, a new spirit of discipline had appeared in the Catholic world. Everywhere parish missions were being held, new Italianate religious exercises were appearing, and quarrels between priests and people in notorious areas like Mayo were becoming rarer. Many Irish Protestants began to wonder anxiously what lay behind the changes taking place.46 The Evangelical militants, of course, were not surprised over what was happening. They recognised Cullen as an able, dedicated, dogged papal functionary who was extending Ultramontane authority in Ireland by keeping the Catholic people in a state of tension, if not actual war, with the Protestants. This authority had been revealed on the parish level by stringent new rules governing mixed marriages, which Cullen resolutely refused ever to sanction 47 It was not only the Evangelicals who reacted to Cullen's preaching about the blessings which would accrue to those who answered his call to a holy war against the `wicked system of proselytism .4S By the 1860s most Protestants were aware of the goal sought by Cullen and his supporters—Catholic ascendancy in Ireland :

270 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 SACERDOTAL ABSOLUTISM, trampling down all national independence, all freedom of individual judgment, all episcopal rights—pronouncing without appeal upon all questions of religion, morals, science, politics and social life.49

Protestant dismay over Cullen's takeover of Irish Catholicism, and the direction in which he was leading it, was shared by many liberal Catholics. It was probably because of the `Protestant' or anti-Ultramontanist tradition, which was still maintained by liberal Catholics after the Protestants had withdrawn into their post-Disestablishment ghetto, that the minority people were left alone after 1870. Cullen was reluctant to abandon his battle with the heretic,60 but this new threatening force had begun to appear and had to be dealt with in the last decade of his life. The liberal Catholics of this school did not believe the argument that Cullen had come to Ireland simply because he was the best man available for a difficult appointment,62 or because he had to `save' the Catholics in Ireland at a time when `the Irish were being effectively Anglicised, or, perhaps more appropriately, West Britonised'.62 As far as these people were concerned, `Cullenisation' meant `Italianisation', an exercise in cultural imperialism not much preferable to 'Anglicisation'. They noticed, for example, that the religious symbolism that Cullen encouraged, his novenas, the quarantore, or forty hours' devotion, and others were not Celtic in origin. At least the old Irish Society had tried to promote the Scriptures in the Irish language, which in many ways was preferable to the importation of seventeenth-century Italian counter-reformation culture. As we have noticed several times in earlier chapters, this nativist school of `Gallican' thought had a long tradition in the Irish Catholic Church. When Catholic–Protestant tensions were appearing once more in the 1820s, Patrick Curtis assured parliament that the papacy had no `temporal' authority over the Irish hierarchy. James Doyle had admitted about Gallicanism that `the substance of the doctrine ... is held by a great number of our divines', and Oliver Kelly confirmed Doyle's statement when he said of the Irish bishops' reactions to Roman directives : If these bulls or rescripts, proceeding from the Pope, do contain doctrines or matters which are not compatible with the discipline of the particular churches to which they may be directed, they feel it their duty then to remonstrate respectfully and not to receive the regulations." This `Gallican' spirit within Irish Catholicism never disappeared, and both the Vatican and the British government had to reckon

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 271 with it in its MacHalite form whenever they tried to collaborate in their attempts to control unruly Irish ecclesiastics.64 The new spirit was never confined to the MacHalites, however. As early as 1838, when the whole of Connaught was disrupted by the MacHaleO'Finan feud, the Rev. Lewis Potter, Rector of Dromard, Co. Sligo, commented on the `new spirit of liberty' among the local people who were rejecting the authority claimed by their overbearing priests.65 Sturdy individuals were refusing to take passively insults from the altar, the threat of physical violence by the priest, or exclusion from the sacraments because of political offences.6° By 1852 the Nonconformist minister William Urwick noted that in Kerry people were standing up to the priest, showing less `dread of his ghostly frown'. Urwick wondered whether `Popery in many parts of Ireland is becoming less like that of Spain and more like that of France'.67 The Catholics who supported this liberal 'Gallican' or, in the eyes of Cullen, `Protestant' way of thinking were a minority in nineteenth-century Ireland, but they were increasing in number. The National System of education was having its effect, and literacy as well as a new intellectualism was spreading among the people. When the Protestant crusade was having its first successes in Connaught, liberal Catholics did not hesitate to put the blame for the proselytisers' gains upon the obscurantist educational policies of MacHale. It was his stupidity that drew the Protestant zealots to Connaught : Now the place which they considered peculiarly suitable was the diocese of Dr MacHale, Catholic Archbishop of Tuam. It was there, in the most Catholic population of Ireland, in many parts of which a Protestant was a perfect curiosity—that they planted first a colony—and in the next place that they invaded the entire diocese, North and West. They were right—they showed good generalship in their movements. They knew that education was put under ban and anathema in these parts.... We see the result.... The diocese has suffered more than any other, or perhaps than all the rest—from what are called the Protestant missionaries.68 When it became clear to this school of liberal Catholicism how extensive was the Italianisation' of the Irish Catholic Church under Cullen, they began to protest' over what was happening. They wanted a way of life that came from the people and their tradition, and they had less and less need for an aristocratic leadership, clerical or lay, Catholic or Protestant.09 During the last decade of his life Paul Cullen had to contend with these Catholic `cultural

272 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Protestants' more than with the members of the reformed churches. It was because of Cullen's concern with anti-Ultramontanist sentiments within Irish Catholicism that the Irish Protestants escaped the kind of post-Disestablishment harrying that they feared—and which Cullen's anti-Protestant phobia might have tempted him to pursue. Cullen could not ignore someone like the Fenian Charles Kickham when he said that the people `demand the right possessed by the people of other Catholic countries of acting according to the dictates of their own judgment in all worldly concerns' °0 Kickham and others who thought like him represented `a minority tradition of nationalist anti-clericalism', a kind of `cultural Protestantism' that had taken root within the Catholic world of Ireland and refused to go away.81 The supporters of this tradition thought like Charles Gavan Duffy and others who had to flee the kind of Ireland that Cullen had created, where `the power of the priest is the one unspeakable, unmentionable thing' 02 So long as their presence was felt in Irish Catholicism these people were to experience the full force of Cullen's inquisitorial instinct°8 Cullen was able to focus upon the anti-Ultramontanist dissidents within the Catholic Church because the Irish Protestants, in the south of Ireland at least, abandoned their `garrison' mentality after Disestablishment and withdrew into a kind of cultural ghetto. Increasingly from that time their old political consciousness was replaced by a concern for the survival of their church and their way of life. Resolutely they began to keep a `low profile', avoiding any communal action which might be interpreted as a reassertion of Protestant ascendancy. This withdrawal into the ghetto had actually begun before Disestablishment, during the period when Primate Beresford led the Protestants in the long retreat from ascendancy which began with Emancipation. Slowly a mode of thought had been developing among many Protestants that welcomed, at least in part, what Paul Cullen was about. If, in return for an abandonment of the old political ascendancy and the assumption of a retiring disposition in society, the Irish Protestants could be left alone in the world they wanted to make for themselves, then perhaps what Cullen was doing might even be commended. The Rev. Orlando Dobbin, Vicar-designate of Boyle, argued on the eve of Disestablishment that there was even value to the Protestants in the `inquisitorial' work of some of the Cullenite priests, the `moral policemen' of the country : They are, for the most part, a very unobtrusive class—neither politicians nor proselytisers, nor meddlers in any way with their neighbours of other creeds. They wish to hold their own—a very

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 273 natural and not blameworthy wish. They look after their flock, after their dress, and, if lucky enough to have one, after their farm, and give as little trouble, if not causelessly assailed, as any other class in the community. As a kind of spiritual police over the mauvais sujets of their own communion, I believe their services to be invaluable to the peace of society.84 3. The Protestant Bishops and the Evangelical Crusaders When it became clear during the 1850s that the Protestant crusade was failing and that Ultramontanist authority and the bogy of Catholic ascendancy were threatening to become realities in Irish society, Protestant ecclesiastical attitudes were influenced by two powerful prelates. They were Lord John George Beresford, Archbishop of Armagh from 1822 to 1862, and Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin from 1831 to 1863. None of their contemporaries on the Irish bench possessed the power of personality or positions of political and social influence of these two men. The two archbishops did not agree on many matters, but, in public at least, they presented a decorous accord, particularly when it came to dealing with the sectarian issues raised by the Protestant zealots proselytising in Connaught and Dublin. Neither of them, for a variety of complex reasons based on their thought and experience, wished to encourage warfare with the Roman Catholic Church. Beresford was an old-fashioned Irish High Churchman, and Whately belonged to the liberal school of Thomas Arnold, but despite differences in their religious viewpoints, both prelates wanted to encourage religious and ecclesiastical peace with the Roman Catholic Church. One of Archbishop John George Beresford's few public statements was his speech on 2 April 1829 in the House of Lords on the issue of Catholic Emancipation. He began by saying that he did not consider that his listeners will be so far influenced by any words of mine as to reject a bill which has already passed the other House of Parliament which has been introduced into this House at the recommendation of his majesty, under the auspices of the noble duke, and with the approbation of many noble lords who, until this session, have been hostile to its principle.85 Yet he felt as an Irish bishop that he should give his reasons for a `decided and uncompromising opposition to the measure'. Beresford was then fifty-six years old, the political leader of his family's interests, and a man of considerable insight when it came to Irish affairs. He said frankly that he could not see the passing of the K

274 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 Catholic Emancipation Bill satisfying `the claims of Roman Catholic ambition'. He prophesied agitation by the Catholics to have what to them was the `odious Act of Union' repealed and Ireland freed `from the state of a pitiful province to which she is reduced, restored to her just independence amongst kingdoms'. Religious changes would also be demanded `to embody the Roman Catholic religion with the state as the Presbyterian religion was embodied at the Scottish Union, abolishing tithes ... and making the clergy dependent on the charitable contributions of those who are to be benefited by their ministry'.88 In this campaign to come, Beresford said that people like O'Connell would be important, but that neither the aristocracy nor the gentry would possess much influence over the great body of the Catholic people because : The priesthood are in fact everything; and the people, and even the agitators themselves, are but instruments in their hands. It is, then, the absolute power of the Romish priesthood over a population like that of Ireland, and the projects of ambition founded on that power, which make the still existing barriers necessary to Protestant establishments under a free and mixed constitution like our own.ß7 Beresford pledged that from this time his whole efforts would be devoted to opposing `the confederacy of the Romish priesthood, actuated by a never-dying hostility to what is Protestant'.88 He could do no other because `ascendancy will be placed within their reach by this measure' : I do not ... mean to say that the subversion of the Irish Church establishment will be immediate on the passing of this bill, nor do I think that it will be far removed from it. It is probable that, at first, the approach will be cautious and concealed under various pretences until at length the assailants shall become emboldened by success, and favoured by political occurrences.°9 The Primate wondered if those who voted for Catholic Emancipation realised what they were doing with regard to the Established Church in Ireland : `to transfer from Protestants to Roman Catholics the ascendancy in Ireland—for to one or the other of these opposing parties it is admitted on all hands, ascendancy must be granted' : Does anyone believe that by these concessions the Church of Rome will be suddenly rendered tolerant, that the Romish priesthood will be content to hold an inferior rank to a clergy, the

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 275 validity of whose orders they deny, and leave in possession of its privileges a church which they revile as intrusive and heretical— that they will become indifferent to domination the nearer they approach to it, and the greater their means for obtaining it—that they will quit their hold upon the wills and affections, the passions and prejudices, of the people, at the very moment that their spiritual despotism may be turned to most account in forwarding their temporal aggrandisement?70 John George Beresford became a living symbol of the Protestant ascendancy during the years of withdrawal from affairs of national concern which characterised the Church of Ireland between 1829 and 1862, the year of his death. He was for many years the most important member of the Beresford family, which had come to Ireland from Staffordshire and Derbyshire in the reign of James I. Marriage into the wealthy de la Poer family, whose ancestors had come to Ireland with Strongbow, had brought the Beresfords into the peerage, and George, the father of the Primate, had become Marquis of Waterford in 1789.71 In the hurly-burly of eighteenthcentury politics members of the Beresford family did well for themselves. By 1812 Edward Wakefield expressed his belief that `one-fourth of all the places in the kingdom are filled with their dependants or connections'.72 The family also gained from the patronage awarded after the Act of Union, one of the plums coming their way being the appointment of Lord John George Beresford, then Dean of Clogher, to the see of Cork in 1805. At that time the archbishopric of Tuam and the bishopric of Kilmore were also occupied by Beresfords. Through family influence Lord John George progressed rapidly, becoming Bishop of Raphoe in 1807, Bishop of Clogher in 1819, Archbishop of Dublin in 1820, and Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland in 1822. As a young man, Lord John George Beresford was greatly caught up in secular political affairs, and it was not until 1832, when his nephew Henry, third Marquis of Waterford, came of age, that he was able to devote himself more fully to purely ecclesiastical affairs.73 From that time until his death he offered to the Church of Ireland the same spirit of firm but gracious paternalistic direction that he had once given to his family interests. He was greatly respected by secular as well as religious authorities, and praised for his `moderation', `good sense', `practical wisdom', and 'straightforward high-minded integrity'. He became the patriarch of the Church of Ireland, a venerable prelate with a `mild, dignified, gracious and commanding air'. Popularly referred to as `the beauty of holiness', he had `the rare power of setting the humblest and

276 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 most diffident at their ease, without losing for an instant his own place as their superior'." John George Beresford took his superiority for granted. When he wrote to Lord St Germains, the Lord Lieutenant, to recommend the Rev. Henry Griffin for the see of Limerick, he did so by saying that Griffin was `a person of high principles, independence of character, and is very respectful in his demeanour to me'.75 Anthony Trollope had no hesitation in referring to Lord John George Beresford as an ecclesiastical `prince' : Fifty years since the archbishops were indeed princes; but nowadays we have changed all that. The change, however, is only now completed. It was but the other day that there died an Archbishop of Armagh who was a prince to the backbone, princely in his wealth and princely in his use of it, princely in his mode of life, princely in his gait and outer looks and personal demeanour—princely also in the performance of his work. He made no speeches upon platforms. He wrote no books. He was never common among men. He was a fine old man; and we may say of him that he was the last of the prince-archbishops.70 Coming as he did out of the rough world of eighteenth-century political jobbery this princely prelate chose to live as a very reserved and astute individual who revealed little of himself to his contemporaries.77 A lifelong bachelor, he had few confidants and was careful in all his statements, both personal and private.78 This extreme caution in all matters, which may have reflected a lack of imagination, was at times an advantage, at other times a liability, as the Primate `conducted with dignity a long-drawn-out rearguard action in defence of the privileges of the Established Church'.70 Beresford's style of dignified reserve encouraged . Protestants to reverence, in the person of the venerable Archbishop of Armagh, many of the values of the old ascendancy which they were so rapidly losing. This, then, was the prelate, almost a paradigm of an eighteenthcentury Protestant prince-bishop, who commanded the Church of Ireland's slow retreat from privilege after Emancipation : Such a period ... was marked by the removal of barriers interposed by the wisdom of former generations against the encroachments of the Romish sect; by the injury done to the Church, in the suspension of ten bishoprics and the iniquitous taxation of the clergy; by the threatening of even grosser injury in the attempt to appropriate her property to secular uses; and by the public adoption of a principle of Education antagonistic to her

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 277 principle of the supremacy of the Word of God : when the attempts to cripple her energies caused them to be put forth in fresh movements for the spread of the Gospel; and an unsound system of Education was met by a constant maintenance, through years of trial, of the Scriptural principle : when danger to the faith had arisen within the bosom of the Church herself, and the development of Romish tendencies called forth a more earnest adherence to the principles of the Reformation.8° Like much else about the intensely reserved Primate, his churchmanship can only be inferred. He was a friend of Joshua Watson, one of the lay leaders of the High Church `Hackney Phalanx' in London, and appears to have been a member of that High Church party sometimes referred to as `High and Dry'.81 He was not an Evangelical. Presumably his ecclesiastical ideas were like those of the men that he worked with, Edward Stopford, who became Bishop of Meath in 1842, and Stopford's son, Edward Adderley Stopford, Archdeacon of Meath from 1844. They belonged to the Irish High Church school, which had some sympathy for Evangelicalism—when it was confined to personal piety and devotion.82 R. J. McGhee and Mortimer O'Sullivan dedicated their work Romanism As It Rules in Ireland (1840) to Beresford, but they also indicated their awareness that they could not claim primatial approval for their theological opinions : The editors are not so happy as to know that Your Grace will pronounce a favourable judgment on the publication. They feel that that most appropriate tribute to offer you would be one on which public favour was undivided. They cannot claim to such a recommendation but ... they allow themselves to hope that unmerited calumny has not disentitled them to the honour of thus publicly testifying their respect for the eminent station in which your Grace has been providentially placed and for the high qualities by which, as men of all parties confess, you have been enabled to uphold and adorn it."S The Primate resolutely and consistently refused to identify himself with any ecclesiastical party. For example, when Beresford gave financial help to Evangelical causes he cautiously ensured that his gift closely matched that of other senior churchmen and could not be interpreted as signifying particular approval.84 If Beresford was not an Evangelical, neither was he an Orangeman, though he was strongly Protestant in the sense that he heartily disliked Catholicism in any form, including Tractarianism.8a At the same time, he knew from his family's history and from his

278 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 own experience that nothing was to be gained by encouraging Protestant bigotry or sectarianism. He consulted closely with Richard Whately when the parishioners of St Peter's, Drogheda, tried to bargain with the incumbent over the housing they were to provide for him. It was to be forthcoming only when `his views and conduct' were `approved' by a committee of local ultra-Protestant laymen. Beresford strongly disapproved of such lay pressure, which reflected the mentality of the `Second Reformation' era : Party feeling ran very high in Drogheda not many years ago when a son of the late Archbishop Magee was Vicar, and a narrowminded clique was formed who if they were empowered to sit in judgment on their minister would place him in a painful state of bondage.88 The Primate also sympathised with clergymen who were reluctant to hold Fifth of November services although by a law of James I they were obliged to and many of their parishioners demanded that they be held.87 He persuaded his favourite niece's husband not to stand for the Conservative seat in Armagh because the town was filled with corrupt Orangemen.88 He instantly agreed to assist the government when it requested help to control the Orange curate of Killyman, who was a `wholesale purveyor of arms to his parishioners'.80 He could never be accused of being `soft' towards Roman Catholicism, but in his leadership of the Church he had no intention of allowing sectarian forces within the Church of Ireland to cause division among the faithful. Beresford's chief concern during his primacy was the promotion of reform within the Church of Ireland so that it would be less vulnerable to the attack of its enemies. This necessitated his unwavering resistance to favouritism or any kind of ecclesiastical jobbery, especially on the part of those who believed he might be persuaded to use his ecclesiastical authority to further the interests of the Beresford political faction. On this issue the Primate refused to compromise. He told the Duke of Wellington that he was the `servant of the Church and not of my family'. Yet it was difficult for him to give up his involvement in secular political affairs. The Marquis of Waterford and other members of the family constantly turned to him for advice, and his letters reveal the Primate to have been in political affairs shrewd and consistently conservative in his judgments and actions. This political acumen served him in good stead in his ecclesiastical administration when he was called upon to deal with delicate matters like relations with Presbyterians in Ulster.90 It also helped him when it came to managing job-hunters in the still largely unreformed Church of Ireland where, for example,

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 279 Deans of Armagh were still appointed by the Crown and usually chose to live in London, a scandal which the Primate could hardly overlook.0' John George Beresford's honesty in ecclesiastical affairs was clearly shown when he was called upon to rebuke the neglect of clerical duty by a member of his own family. The Rev. William Beresford was obliged to resign the living of Inniscarra, Co. Cork in February 1854, and when he turned to the Primate for help he was bluntly told that the Archbishop's only concern now was that William Beresford's successor might `by his influence and diligence ... in some degree repair the mischief done'.°z This included the grievous sin of having driven some Protestants into accepting the errors of Roman Catholicism. Like his friend Robert Peel, the Primate hoped in the early years of the century that, given enough time, the Church of Ireland could reform itself. Then through its spiritual authority it could persuade enough of the Irish population to conform so that its numbers as well as its sanctity would justify its establishment status. Reform could only be carried out by churchmen for, like most Tories, Beresford was suspicious of reforming zeal in parliament, as he showed in his guarded evidence to the commissioners on the state of Ireland in 1825." The Primate believed the immediate twofold task of the Church of Ireland was to withstand the ambitions of Roman Catholicism and to hasten reform through its bishops, who would work with men of goodwill in the government towards this end.D4 In his defence of the Church Beresford used all the political power he could command. In 1829 he did support his family interest when it sought to have a friendly Catholic appointed to the soon to be vacant see of Waterford." During the election of 1830 his correspondence continually referred to the need to withstand those priests who supported candidates critical of the Church of Ireland." When Henry Goulburn was elected as MP for Armagh the Primate told him that Beresford help had been given to him because I think you will continue to bestow upon the Irish Church those advantages which she may expect to derive from your talents, your knowledge of business and your official situation.97 When the tithe war began, the worst fears of the Primate were realised. Reports came to him of the `humbler class of Protestants' being driven out of the parishes" and of the priests using their authority to harry children out of Protestant-run schools." By January 1835 he was informed that `in Carlow the Romish Bishop had publicly put himself at the head of the political crusade there'.100 The Primate's tactic during this period was to try to keep himself

280 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 abreast of the various complicated schemes for tithe reform that were being introduced into parliament,10' to advise his suffragans whether they would serve better the cause of the Church by working in their dioceses or by lobbying in London at any one time,102 and to organise relief for his clergy.103 Samuel O'Sullivan praised his `graceful and apostolic' response to the challenge of the tithe war which led him to overcome that `retiringness of character that would lead him, if he indulged it, to decline the duties of public life'. O'Sullivan also published a letter written by Beresford in December 1836 to the London committee which was raising funds to help the distressed parsons, a letter that revealed clearly the compassionate character of the Primate in his role as defence advocate for his hard-pressed clergy of Ireland : The clergy bring forward no accusations; they do but lament that a combination should have been suffered to exist, in any part of the United Empire, powerful enough to resist the ordinary execution of the law, and to make an appeal in their behalf necessary, to the kindness and generosity of their Protestant brethren.... At the end of the year 1834, resistance to the payment of tithes, encouraged by fresh success, became more general and more determined than before; and the distress of the clergy, in proportion as it was protracted, more urgent. Many of the ordinary cases of suffering have been laid before the public; and some few, approaching to absolute destitution, in which all but the means of scanty subsistence were withdrawn—cases in which there remained no security for life at home, whilst the means of removal were wanting. The general character of the distress was, however, of another kind; it was that of an educated body of men, holding a respectable station in society, driven to seek relief where they had been accustomed to extend it liberally to others; suddenly plunged into pecuniary embarrassments. . . . In the midst of these personal and domestic afflictions, the Irish clergy heard themselves accused of being the authors of bloodshed and oppression, and were taunted with the existence of those outrages of which they were the innocent victims. Calumny and insult were thus added to violence and wrong.104 Such appreciation of their difficult role in Irish society gave inspiration to many clergy of the Church of Ireland during their time of trial. However dangerous might be this `well-organised attempt ... to subvert the Church Establishment in Ireland by the ruin and the proscription of its ministers',100 neither the Primate nor the parsons were about to panic. The Primate knew the tithe war was but one episode in the folk struggle to achieve Catholic

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 281 ascendancy which he had warned about in his 1829 speech. His task in this crisis was not only to raise means to keep the Protestant clergy alive, but to give them assurance in the rightness of their cause as ministers of a reformed faith and witnesses to a superior civilisation, placed by God among a people who would be spiritually impoverished without the presence of the Church of Ireland in their midst : `I will not suffer myself to despair of her stability, and of the ultimate defeat of the projects of her adversaries:106 Yet the Primate was never sanguine over the Church's position. He knew well that he was conducting a great retreat. The apprehensions over the changing nature of Irish society and over the loss of Protestant ascendancy, both recognised by many churchmen, are revealed clearly in a rather wistful and almost puzzled letter sent to the Primate by the Rev. John Charles Crosthwaite, one of his clerical protlgfs, at the time that Daniel O'Connell held power as Lord Mayor of Dublin : On Sunday we had the Lord Mayor with great and unusual state at Christ Church. It was a strange sight to see all the city officers after they had deposited the sword, mace, etc. on the cushion of his pew in the choir walk out of the church—and then as soon as the choir doors were opened after Sacrament, they all walked in again, took up the sword etc., formed a procession before the Lord Mayor, and so to his carriage—while he was at prayers they went in one of his carriages to mass at a neighbouring chapel. How little such a scene could have been anticipated fifty years ago.107 By the time the issue of the Maynooth Grant was exciting the Protestants of England, Beresford shared with the Evangelical Archbishop of Canterbury, J. B. Sumner, his conviction that Ireland was in the midst of a political, cultural and religious revolution which the Maynooth-trained priests were doing all in their power to promote. He told Sumner why he was distressed over the government's plan to assist Maynooth further : The priests who have been trained in that seminary have been the fomenters and instigators of all the violent political agitation and disturbance that has taken place in Ireland. To increase the influence of the Roman Catholic bishops by increasing their patronage in nominating students to this college, and to add to the number of pauper candidates for admission into the priesthood by increasing the fund that is to be appropriated to giving them a gratuitous education seems to me to be more likely to aggravate than to diminish the evils which would lead one to

282 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 conclude that there is something radically wrong in that system (I mean viewed politically and socially leaving out of sight its extreme religious bigotry) when those who receive the benefit of it prove to be so turbulent, disaffected and intolerant.1°8 He also told the English Primate that because of his loyalty to Peel he was not taking part in Protestant agitation against the administration which was introducing the bill for the Maynooth Grant : `I have thought that it was not becoming my station to lend any assistance to a movement that might have the effect of removing the present ministers of the crown from their seats.' Evidently he was leaving the clergy to use their own discretion about how they should act. In a later letter he tried to assure Archbishop Sumner that his opposition to Maynooth did not reflect bigotry or any expression of anti-Catholicism as such : If I could believe that the increase of the grant to Maynooth would produce a better race of priests I should hardly hesitate about supporting it. I should like to see it send out Bossuets and Bellarmines. The chance of internal reformation would be greater.... Men of equal ability would expose more effectually the weakness of their cause.1°9 Such natural caution, and lack of direct leadership when it came to the problem of resisting the Roman Catholic advance, was typical of the Primate. On repeated occasions the ultra-Evangelicals suggested that he sponsor their cause, and Beresford's response was always the same—what the Evangelical missionaries attempted was a matter between themselves and any diocesan bishop who was willing to tolerate them in his area. When the Rev. Thomas Moriarty, the Kerry convert, excitedly wrote to Beresford in October 1850 to report two hundred confirmations carried out by Bishop William Higgin,110 he was addressing himself to an ultra-conservative seventy-seven-year-old patriarchal figure who had watched the ephemeral passions that stirred the Irish ecclesiastical scene for too long for him to take seriously any local Protestant advance, let alone to lend it his support. As Protestant Primate of All Ireland his task was to conduct the long retreat from Protestant ascendancy which he knew was inevitable, and it is likely that he never considered the Protestant crusade in the I850s to be anything but a temporary rearguard counter-attack which would have little permanent effect. He had to reckon with the situation of the Church of Ireland as a whole, in Ulster as well as in the other three provinces, and he discerned the limitations of what was being attempted in Connaught and parts of Leinster and Munster. Moreover, his

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 283 concerns about the life of the Church were always more than merely religious in character. At the same time that the Protestant missionaries were telling him of their first successes Beresford was attempting to cope with Catholic demands in Trinity College, Dublin, and in other areas where the Church's monopoly in education and social privilege was under attack.111 The Primate abandoned his Fabian retreat tactics only rarely, but this he did when the matter of elementary education became an issue. From its inception in 1839 the Primate strongly supported the Church Education Society, a decision clearly reflecting his desire to have a church—state alliance on the Warburtonian model, rather than on that of William Paley, where the church would be justified in the eyes of the state solely through its social utility.112 Beresford was quite willing to work with the state in reform of Irish society through education, but such education had to be carried out according to what the Primate believed were the true principles of the Established Church. These principles would not be promoted in the National System. In one of his rare published addresses, given in London shortly before the founding of the Church Education Society, he denied that he was in any way the `enemy of the diffusion of knowledge', but he believed that secular knowledge `may become an instrument of evil as well as good, accordingly as it is wielded by irreligious or religious hands'.113 The Church of Ireland, as the Established Church, had the traditional task of providing Christian education for the people, and Beresford believed it should be supported by the state in this task. At the same time he had no objection to other religious bodies having their own schools, for he appreciated the wisdom of the National Education Commissioners of 1806-12 in Ireland, who had unanimously agreed: That no plan, however wisely and unexceptionally contrived in other respects, can be carried into effectual execution in this country, unless it be explicitly avowed and clearly understood as its leading principle, that no attempt shall be made to influence or disturb the peculiar religious tenets of any sect or description of Christians.114 From 1839 to 1860 the Primate steadfastly rejected the National System of education, which called for children of all denominations to receive teaching in secular subjects together. During this period there was never any doubt about the Primate's devotion to the Church Education Society, since he sought a state subsidy for it. Just as consistently the governments of the day refused to support the principle of denominational education in Ireland.116 But Beresford's support for the ideal of church-directed education never

284 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 wavered, and he tried to force it on others. When he was criticised for his support of the CES by J. H. Todd of Trinity College, Dublin, he told Todd that he would help him to keep alive the Ecclesiastical Journal he edited only if Todd would assure him that education would not be discussed in his publication.118 He strongly protested when the government gave preferment to a parson who supported the National Board." In fact, the Primate seemed to be more and more stubborn in his defence of the CES at the very time when it was becoming clear to many Protestants that their church was making a tactical error. The Church of Ireland's withdrawal from the National System ensured that such schools were becoming preserves of the Catholics in many parts of the country.1e One of Beresford's close associates, the scholarly George Miller, Vicar-General of Armagh, believed the refusal of the government to support the CES was part of a plot to undermine the Protestant ascendancy and to surrender Irish society to Catholic authority : There is in this country a very numerous and well organised body of the Romish clergy, whose favour and support the government vainly hopes to conciliate by sacrificing to them the Protestant Church.1° In 1847 Miller published a major study which sought to justify the CES against the criticisms of Charles Elrington, Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College. Miller believed that the National Board would soon be dominated by the Roman Catholics, and if Protestant schools joined it, the papists would use their authority to subject the Church of Ireland to their control in educational matters. Even if the Catholics failed to do this, the principle would have been granted that the Established Church had abdicated from its position as the Church of Ireland by law established."° Miller's thought was very close to that of the Primate. At the same time that Beresford shared George Miller's suspicions of the National System he had uneasy doubts about the feasibility of the CES in the long run. Beresford knew the economic hardships faced by the parsons, some of whom had to manage more than one school in their parish and could not do so efficiently with the funds provided by the CES." The Primate was also aware that as the quality of the National System improved and more and more schools joined it, it could become de facto the `established' system of education in the nation—a state-supported body that the Church of Ireland had separated itself from. Was this not in a very real sense a denial of the Church of Ireland's claim to be the Established Church in the Irish nation? On 21 February 1860 the Primate, who was then eighty-seven

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 285 years old, regretfully informed the Church Education Society, of which he was president, that it was now clear to him that no government aid would ever come its way. This he considered to be a great tragedy : The upholding of a class of schools independent of State support and unshackled by the restrictions it imposes, is, in my opinion, of great importance to the interests of education in the country, and is in some places essential to the interests of religion... . If I were merely to consult my own case, I should at my advanced time of life have allowed things to remain as they are, and have left this long-agitated question to settle itself after my removal from this world. But if I were to do so ... I feel that I should not be acting for the best interests of the Church over which I have been appointed to preside.122 His advice to those clergy who found themselves unable to maintain their schools with the help of the CES was that they join the National System : You should explain to your parishioners that it is from a regard for the interests of their children, and influenced solely by that consideration, you are constrained to avail yourselves of this, the only means by which you can provide a suitable education for them.123

When Beresford changed his mind and made his courageous announcement the outcry by the Evangelical wing of the Church, led by Bishop J. T. O'Brien of Ossory, was frightful. The hitherto reverenced Primate was compared to Judas Iscariot in a `tempest of clerical vituperation' 124 When he had been told of the Primate's change of mind O'Brien addressed himself directly to Beresford and provoked a typical primatial response : Your remarks about adherence to principle and consistency, and the dangers to which such a course as I propose taking reminds me forcibly of the Nonjurors.... Yet all England rejoiced and had reason to thank God that the clergy and bishops as a body took a larger view of their duty towards the Church. Nothing but the result can decide now, as it did then, which is the right view to take of the difficult question to be decided.126 Beresford went on to say that his decision had not been a hasty one, and that he could not be persuaded to change his mind. For the past four years he had personally employed an inspector at the cost of £200 a year to inspect and report on the CES schools in Armagh. He had very carefully examined the reports made to him,

286 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 and they had filled him with a growing feeling `not only of regret, but of shame'.126 They showed clearly that church schools were desperately in need of funds. The Primate had given the system £1,000 a year personally, but this had failed to inspire Protestant landlords to support the system to the same degree. It was simply unfair, for the sake of abstract principle, to deny Church of Ireland children a superior education which both Catholics and Presbyterians gladly accepted. Through his well-organised intelligence system the Primate also knew that the supporters of the CES had become a `political faction' within the Church. They did not hesitate to place the ban of personal reprobation upon whoever might act as his real conscience directed, in giving the children of the poor around him the blessings attending upon government aid in education.127 When he announced his volte-face Beresford realised fully the power of the ultra-Evangelicals in the Church of Ireland, who were led by men like the Bishops of Ossory, Cashel and Tuam. Their militancy was such that it took considerable courage for any clergyman to decide for the good of his parish to join the National System and to face the `persecution which the Examiner and its readers would entwine around him' 128 To read the pages of the Christian Examiner of the spring of 1860 is to realise the sheer hatred which was directed towards the aged Primate and his supporters. It was Beresford's political sagacity and his cautious reckoning with long-range ecclesiastical considerations that determined his attitude to Protestant causes—including the Evangelical crusade of the 1850s. No one doubted the Primate's astuteness when it came to dealing with the problem of ecclesiastical survival. He had guided his family's political fortunes during the period when the Beresfords lost much of their power,128 and the hard-earned wisdom which came to him in that exercise was of help to him when he sought to protect the beleaguered Church of Ireland. Beresford was a prelate for fifty-seven years, and because of his social and political associations he was conversant with almost every development in Irish society as it affected church interests. When some crisis arose and the clergyman involved wrote to the Primate, the advice he received reflected the archbishop's convictions about what was best for the overall benefit of the Established Church. For example, on 7 January 1844 Beresford wrote to the Rev. W. E. Attwell, the troublesome Rector of Clonloe, to inquire whether it was true that he had been fired at twice by unhappy glebe tenants, an issue which might be raised in parliament. Attwell reported that a shot fired from behind the priest's hedge at him was probably a blank, but

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 287 that a second shot had shattered a window in his rectory. He also said the glebe land in the parish was inhabited by idle paupers, some of whom paid him no rent at all, and this had led to some ejectments. He asked the Primate whether it would be possible for him to exchange his living for a more peaceful one. Attwell received no sympathy from the Primate, who told him that an exchange was very unlikely as nobody would `expose himself to hazzard in such a disturbed parish as yours has unhappily become since you have been the incumbent of it'180 Likewise, when a clergyman named R. W. Kyle appealed to the Primate after being deprived of a curacy by Archbishop Whately because he had joined the Evangelical Alliance movement, Beresford said he agreed completely with Archbishop Whately's action, in spite of his respect for Kyle's character. Such divisive movements within the Church could only lead to trouble, and Beresford refused to encourage them 181 When the Primate discussed with the ultra-Evangelical Lord Roden the problem of who should succeed the ageing Elias Thackeray as incumbent of Dundalk, an appointment which they were empowered to make alternately, Beresford tried to persuade Roden to accept one of his Armagh clergymen on the grounds that he was no Tractarian, and sound in Protestant doctrine. Beresford strongly objected to Roden's choice, a strong Evangelical who was secretary to the proselytising Jews Society.182 Such instances of compromise for the sake of peace within the Church and in Irish society abound in Beresford's forty years of primatial administration. His consistent policy was to seek long-range benefits for the Established Church, and he knew they could only be achieved in an atmosphere of religious, ecclesiastical and social peace. This was the primary concern of the Primate whenever he was confronted with instances of Catholic–Protestant confrontation—such as those brought about by the Protestant crusade of the 1850s. In February 1850 the Rev. J. C. Crosthwaite wrote to Beresford to tell him that the prelate whom the pope was sending to Armagh, Paul Cullen, was of a `mild temper' and that a period of ecclesiastical peace could be looked forward to." This news must have given the weary and ageing Primate a shortlived feeling of satisfaction, for he had yet much to do in his plan of church reform. Just the year before, one of his clergy, writing anonymously, had indicated just how much improvement needed to be carried out within the Church of Ireland. Focusing on the Achonry diocese, he had pointed out that the Rector of Kilconduff, with sixty-three souls in his cure, had twice the income of the parson at Ballysodare, who ministered to 1,580 people, and six times that of the Rector of Emlaghfad, who had 946 Protestant parishioners : `There is not

288 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-7D a diocese in Ireland that does not exhibit the same disproportion between emolument and duty.'134 Beresford's mission during the 1850s when the Irish Church Missions launched its `ten years' war' with Roman Catholicism was essentially the same as that he had conceived at the time of Catholic Emancipation. He wished to persuade the Protestants of Ireland to carry out such a reform of their ecclesiastical institution that its real value would be made clear to all. If the government and the ruling classes could be shown the spiritual worth of the Church of Ireland, then its life would be preserved and it would continue to serve in the midst of a people having great spiritual and temporal need : The true question is now reduced to this, whether the Established Church shall continue to enjoy the pre-eminence to which she has been raised by the purity of her doctrine, the moderation of her principles, and the hold she still retains over the affections of the enlightened part of the community; or whether she shall no longer exhibit a correct standard of religious faith under the fostering protections of the Government; amidst a population in the greatest need of her spiritual direction; and whether, as a consequence, her emoluments, given her for this very purpose, shall be taken away from her.'" When the Primate spoke in this fashion he did so because English Nonconformity had allied itself with Roman Catholicism to try to bring about Disestablishment in both England and Ireland, and he knew how desperate would be the struggle of the Church of Ireland to retain its traditional privileges. He said that should he die at that time—just before the great famine—he would leave the Established Church `in a state of spiritual health, and life and order and devotedness such as, I believe, never adorned it in any former period of its history'. He realised that many improvements had been carried out in recent years, but reforms to establish good order in the Church had to be continued so that Irish Protestants could look forward to an age when `the perils that surround the Irish Church shall have disappeared and the beams of temporal prosperity shine once more upon it' "° The time of peace for the Church of Ireland that he yearned for was never seen by the Primate. He was destined to serve the Church for another seventeen active years after 1845, and during these latter years he was obliged to lead an ecclesiastical body which was under constant attack. He was grateful, however, that most churchmen accepted his authority and supported his defensive strategy :

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The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 289

Amongst men of independent minds it is to be expected that a variety of views will at times be formed respecting the course that ought to be adopted in relation to important and difficult questions affecting the interests of the church; and while I honour the candour which led any of you to avow and act upon your sentiments where they differed from my own, it has been a source of happiness to me that these differences led to no ill-feeling, no unworthy suspicions, no `evil surmisings' on your part or mine.137 Among those who espoused sentiments different from his own were the ultra-Evangelicals. Their tactics often dismayed him, yet it was his customary non-directive policy to leave it to his diocesan bishops to deal with people like the ICM missionaries, even when they were given considerable licence by someone like Thomas Plunket of Tuam. When the latter spoke of God's blessing on `the very great work' in his diocese, the Primate carefully avoided any act that might suggest that he shared Bishop Plunket's enthusiasm. From the standpoint of the eager missioners in Connaught, the Primate represented the `coldness among Protestants' they complained about. If Catholic people chose to conform to the Established Church, the Primate indicated his willingness to ensure that they would be provided for spiritually. However, he always stopped short of direct support for the objectives sought by men like Thomas Plunket or Alexander Dallas. His understanding of Irish society convinced him that if many Catholics were persuaded to conform to the Established Church, the warfare that would accompany any major change in Ireland's system of religious allegiance would be of benefit to no one. Beresford formed his opinions about the Protestant crusaders without having had much direct contact with them. But Beresford had spent much time in the north, and he feared what could happen if religious zealots disturbed the traditional peace between the two peoples. What he dreaded might happen actually took place in Belfast in 1857, when ultra-Evangelicals who were not connected with the Irish Church Missions tried open-air preaching in support of the anti-Catholic agitation carried on by the Rev. Thomas Drew, Rector of Christ Church, a Dubliner who had settled in the north. By 1852 Drew had become a Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order, and in his preaching he played upon the anxieties of Ulster Protestants : `You possess your churches and your meeting-houses, and your churchyards only until popery has gained sufficient power to nail up the one and to rob you of the other.'1Ss The bloodshed and several days of rioting caused by Drew and his followers was the kind of major explosion calling for state intervention that Beresford

290 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 feared the ICM might bring about in Dublin or Connaught. The Primate was always convinced that the Established Church, in particular, would gain nothing from religious warfare which might bring about a breakdown of civil law and order. At worst, it might bring the still largely unreformed Church of Ireland once more under state scrutiny. Unlike Beresford, Richard Whately had direct and immediate contact with Protestant crusaders in Dublin, who presented him with many embarrassing problems which he was called upon to regulate as archbishop of the diocese. Whately, a power to be reckoned with, had very firm ideas about the undesirability of religious warfare. In the same year, 1822, that Archbishop William Magee delivered his famous charge initiating a new round of religious warfare in Ireland, Whately delivered his Bampton lectures entitled The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Matters of Religion. In this `Broad Church' utterance he displayed the rationalist theological position which he was to maintain consistently during his episcopal life; in the words of a biographer : `His was a sharp and almost violent reaction against prejudice, sophistry, bigotry, and all the shams that had substituted falsehood for truth and the part for the whole.'1SD Whately had no use for Evangelical or other ecclesiastical party spirit, and it was to resist Dublin's religious zealots that he surrounded himself with like-minded clergy, several of whom served as his secretaries and became bishops in later years.14° From the time he came to Dublin in 1831 Whately had trouble with many Irish churchmen, as well as with the Evangelicals. One of the reasons for this was his eccentricity and his occasional unpredictability in thought and behaviour. For example, he suggested to a committee of the House of Lords in 1832, when he had barely arrived in Ireland, that tithe property could profitably be alienated for secular usage. This upset many Irish churchmen.141 One of his disputes with the Primate was over the use of `prayers of humiliation' authorised at the height of the famine distress. Beresford knew that Whately objected to authorised prayers in general and did not send him a circular about the use of such an invocation at that time. Whately was very annoyed over this omission, and Beresford wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to explain what had happened: He had ever since he came to Ireland publicly declared that he considers the use of special forms of prayer issued by the Queen in Council to be illegal; he will not attend the meetings of the Privy Council in Dublin at which such prayer is ordered lest he

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 291 be supposed to sanction their being used, and he does not allow of their being introduced in the church of the parish in which he resides.142 This incident, which was unimportant in itself, illustrates something of Whately's `prickly' personality which added to the natural difficulty that this very English prelate had in communicating with Irish churchmen. Because he was considerably different in personality and in churchmanship from his Evangelical predecessor, William Magee, Whately was the instant object of criticism by the Irish Evangelicals. From the time he came to Dublin he cultivated friendly relations with Archbishop Murray,143 lived in a much less ostentatious fashion than Magee and made it very clear to the clergy of the archdiocese that he was serious about ecclesiastical discipline. In his theological writings it was obvious that he did not agree with Calvinistic ideas of election, and this became `one of the sins which his Evangelical flock in Dublin never forgot or forgave'.144 Rumours of all sorts identified this strange English radical theologian with the Sabellian heresy, Pelagianism and Socinianism, pro-Roman sympathies, and even with secret membership of the Society of Jesus.146 The Evangelicals always remembered that Whately had approved of Catholic Emancipation, and they were hardly surprised when he approved the Maynooth Grant in 1845, asking of the Evangelicals : `Would they turn out Popery as Ferdinand and Isabella turned the Moors out of Spain?'190 Their fury knew no bounds when he opposed Orange revelries around the statue of William III in College Green, and when he refused to join the Royal Dublin Society because Archbishop Murray had been `blackballed'. It was widely believed by the Dublin Evangelicals that Whately's appointment was contingent upon his supporting the government when it introduced the National System of education.147 We have seen how Whately responded to Evangelical extravagance in the case of Tresham Gregg—by resolutely trying to keep religious extremists out of places in the ecclesiastical structure where they could cause mischief. This issue of understanding and controlling them became of immediate and great importance to him, however, with the coining of the famine. Whately's approach to such natural catastrophes was a rationalist one, significantly different from that of either the Evangelicals or the Roman Catholics, and it was from well-thought-out theological premises that he criticised people like the ICM missionaries. During the famines of 1822 and 1831 Whately had expressed his repugnance for the religious idea that famine signified `special interposition of Pro-

292 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 vidence to punish the sins of the people or of their governors'. Famine was a terrible natural phenomenon to him. What was important religiously was man's response during such times of trial : `There is no temporal good or ill that may not become either a blessing or a curse according to the use made of it.'145 When the great famine came Whately again stressed the `uncharitableness' of those who `pronounce temporal afflictions to be tokens of divine displeasure against the sufferers'.149 Unlike Dallas and his followers, who saw the famine as a judgment of God on an apostate nation tolerant of popery, Whately saw the extreme poverty of the people as a reminder of the Christian's `awful responsibility to love not in word but in deed—to bring our benevolent principles into practice'. When relief was brought to the suffering people care had to be taken that ideological coercion was not confused with it : We have no right to do violence to anyone's conscience, however mistaken his persuasion may be.'160 When the effects of the famine were at their worst and imputations were `industriously cast on the Protestant clergy and on Protestantism generally',161 Whately's important charge to his clergy in 1848, On the Right Use of National Afflictions, reiterated his consistently held opinion. He said that the Protestant clergyman always had the duty to preach the truth as he saw it : It is our duty to take every suitable occasion of promulgating and advocating—mildly indeed, but boldly and firmly—what we deliberately believe to be revealed truth, and refuting error.152 At the same time, he again stated what he believed should be the parsons' response to the famine. One thing they must not say was that the famine was the result of sin, for that, said Whately, was an untruthl63 As in 1845, he advised the parsons not to lay themselves open to the charge of attempting to change the minds of others who were trying to live by what their consciences told them was right : He who bribes or frightens his neighbour into doing an act, which no good man would do for reward or from fear, is tempting his neighbour to sin.164 This charge added to Whately's popularity among some of the Catholic people, who had earlier responded favourably to similar sentiments expressed in his pamphlet On the Use and Abuse of the Present Occasion for Beneficence (1847). The Freeman's Journal of 10 February 1848 had called that work an `admirable document'. Whately's respect for Catholic consciences did not, in fact, mean that he was pro-Catholic in his thinldng, as many Evangelicals suspected. During the famine he bluntly commented on the re-

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 293 luctance of some of the Catholic people to help themselves, and, carried away by rhetoric, he called some of them `idle, lazy and liars'. This provoked James Maher and other Catholic militants to decry rich men like Whately who had `no bowels of compassion for the Poor' and dismissed the poor man as an idler, an inveterate beggar, unwilling himself to work or to suffer others to earn their bread by honest industry ... a dangerous fellow, the author of all his own misfortunes, nay, prepared in certain circumstances to murder.16' It was unfair to dismiss Whately as a man without compassion, when he died without leaving any personal savings, having given to charities some £40,000 during his time as Archbishop of Dublin 166 Yet Maher and other Catholic critics of Whately were right when they recognised his lack of appreciation of the priests during the famine, whose charitable efforts161 he compared unfavourably with those of the parsons : The Protestant clergy literally shared their bread, or rather their meal, with their parishioners without the least sectarian distinction; they devoted all their time, all their energy, all their health and all that the Poor Law left them of their small revenues to those who were starving around them. Their wives and daughters passed their days in soup-kitchens and meal rations 168 As for the Roman Catholic clergy, they were not sparing of their persons—they lived, and a great many of them died, among the sick; but the habit of that clergy is never to give.... A great part of them, indeed, during the famine had nothing to give, they starved with their flocks, when their flocks ceased to pay dues. But others had means of their own, and many of those who took part in the distribution of the government money or of the English subscriptions, helped themselves out of the funds which passed through their hands to what they considered to be the amount due to them from the people. But no part of their revenues, however obtained, found its way to the poor. Their incomes were spent during the famine as they were spent before it, and as they are now spent—on themselves, or hoarded until they could be employed in large subscriptions to chapels or convents. And this was not the worst. In many cases they refused to those who could not or would not pay for them the sacraments of the church."9 Although it was Whately's custom to curtail most Evangelical activities, he was sufficiently influenced by the hysteria of the early

294 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 1850s for him to relent in his opposition with regard to the question of the Irish Church Missions and the remarkable number of conversions that were taking place through its work in the west. For a while he seemed to be unsure how to react to the phenomenon, and he allowed some ICM work to begin in Evangelical parishes like St Michan's. When he made his triennial visitation in 1853, at the time the Protestant crusade was at its height, he remarked on the immense number of converts, `far exceeding anything that can be remembered by the present generation, or by the preceding' 18° Being English, and a former Oxford don, he compared the quality of Irish converts to Protestantism with that of the sentimental Tractarians who had joined the Roman Catholic Church in England. Although the latter were men of education and intelligence, they were romantics `led by a craving for the beautiful, the touching, the splendid and the picturesque'. In Ireland, on the other hand, converts were rational men inspired by biblical truth, simple yet earnest and honest countrymen who sought `what is true and who have carefully examined and reflected, accordingly, to the best of the powers God has given them' 161 At this stage he seemed to be almost bemused by the excitement around St Michan's and the other proselytising centres. He became more tolerant of the ICM, however, when persecution of converts began. Whately became one of the original members of the `Society for the Protection of the Rights of Conscience in Ireland', and in response to harassment of converts he licensed the ICM house in Townsend Street and helped in the organisation of `ragged schools' as well as the `Birds' Nest' orphanage for destitute children. In 1856 he gave a small contribution of £50 to the ICM and tolerated his daughter Jane assisting the society—which she continued to do long after her father disassociated himself from it. During the early 1850s Whately's view of the ultra-Evangelical missions seemed to be that he saw value in religious controversy if it was carried out by wise men who `in meekness' devoted themselves to instructing those who did not know the reformed faith.162 He was still insistent, as he had been earlier, that there should always be respect for the other person's right of conscience, and that no form of coercion should be used to convert people. In a rather pedantic way Whately could see some value in divines at a high level seeking the truth in theological debate although he had detested the popular contests in the 1830s, in the era of the Rev. Tresham Gregg and Father Tom Maguire. In the 1850s the kind of academic discussion that Whately favoured was impossible. From the time that Paul Cullen arrived in the Dublin archdiocese the communication with Whately that liberal Catholics had had in

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 295 Archbishop Murray's day ceased: Relations between the two prelates became very formal. Then, as popular tensions rose over the issue of Protestant proselytising, Whately began to regret his toleration of the ICM. It was becoming clear that there was little of academic or intellectual `meekness' in the ICM message. Whately also concluded that Alexander Dallas, C. F. McCarthy and the other ICM leaders were not `wise men'. When Whately reached this point in his opinion about the Protestant crusade he shared his concerns with people like his secretary, Archdeacon John West.188 The latter was well acquainted with what was happening in Irishtown and other sections of the city where the ICM was active. Whately was greatly upset by West's disclosure of events in the Irishtown mission during 1856 and 1857, the evidence for which was provided by West's curate in his Donnybrook parish, the Rev George Webster.164 As a result of such stories and of other investigations into what was happening in those parts of the city where the ICM was active, Whately turned against the English-based society. Evidence that bribery was used for conversions was sufficiently strong enough for Whately to censure Alexander Dallas for the tactics used by his agents.165 Neither did he object when West refused the cathedral pulpit to ICM missionaries when he became Dean of St Patrick's. By 1857 Whately agreed with West and Webster that the organisation was doing `irreparable mischief to the Church in Ireland' 186 Both Primate Beresford and Archbishop Whately knew that the course of Ireland's history being what it was, the real justification for the Church of Ireland would never be in its numbers, but rather in the spiritual quality of the life that its members contributed to Irish society. The parson belonged in Ireland and was welcomed when he was a Christian `resident gentleman' representing an alternative though minority culture. One immediate tactical failure of the Irish Church Missions was that so many of its agents were ill-trained and often bad-mannered itinerants who not only failed to represent acceptable Irish Protestant culture, but whose conduct at times hardly seemed to be Christian. They contributed little to the `image' of the Church of Ireland, and neither Beresford nor Whately were willing to tolerate agents who caused religious and civil strife wherever they went, and proved to be a social embarrassment rather than a blessing to the Established Church. There was something decidedly `ungentlemanly' in the conduct of the ICM agents who encouraged children from the `Birds' Nest' orphanage in Kingstown to call in chorus after any passing priest : `Is there a man in the Host?'181 Neither of the archbishops nor any but the most extreme ultra-Evangelical clergy of the Church of Ireland could show much

296 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 enthusiasm for a missionary society that tolerated tactics which resulted in the predictable behaviour of a Dublin slum parish as described by the much-respected Chancellor of Cork : I could tell you of a scene ... where, on a Sunday morning, large quantities of bread were given to Roman Catholics for learning a verse of Holy Scripture, and where these same persons, in my presence, went away cursing the Protestants, and cursing the very persons who gave them the bread and taught them the verse. I could tell you of agents who were known to be charged with drunkenness and other vices, who entered in their Reports that they were persecuted, when they merely got into broils in their drunkenness, and who were, in spite of the remonstrances of the Parish clergyman, retained in their offices.168 There could never be agreement between the Church of Ireland and the Irish Church Missions because the leaders of each body differed on what was the role of the Established Church in the Irish nation. J. C. Colquhoun, chairman of the general committee of the ICM, said in 1864: `If the Church of Ireland is to live and hold its own, it must do so as a Missionary Church.'10° This was looking forward to Disestablishment, which now seemed inevitable to many people, and, on one level of theory, church leaders would have agreed that the Church of Ireland was certainly `a missionary church'. But it was never, in the minds of most of its bishops, clergy or laity, the kind of `missionary' body that engaged in the `ten years' war' in Connaught or the unsavoury proselytising carried on in the slums of Dublin. Very few churchmen shared the `missionary' view of the Church advanced by W. C. Plunket during the time he was chaplain to his uncle, Thomas Plunket, Bishop of Tuam : If she sees poor souls gasping for truth, and yet trying to quench their thirst at the poisoned springs of Rome, she must not wait inactively for results—she must bestir herself—she must rise up and go to them—she must take with her a cup brimming over with the waters of life and she must earnestly—yea, importunately—yea, as some might say rudely,—press it upon them for their acceptance, telling them at the same time, in words of fearless truth, of the danger that lurks within the deadly draught of Romish error.170 Unlike W. C. Plunket, who was a not particularly intelligent activist, `wholly devoid of the historical sense' and with `little reverence for the past',171 Beresford, Whately and most leaders of the Established Church had an instinctive sense of how they could live

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 297 in comparative harmony with the Catholic Church in Ireland. Their knowledge, which reflected both feeling and reason, was based upon a profound understanding of Protestant history in Ireland. Although Whately was an Englishman, he was astute enough to `know' from experience, as did most of the Irish bishops, what would be tolerated by the Catholic hierarchy and the people. The Protestant leaders had no desire to transgress beyond a well-defined yet intangible religious and social boundary between the two folk. Few Catholics were going to be resentful if the Church of Ireland chose to present itself as a `gentle' witness to a way of spiritual and temporal life that brought blessings of religion and civilisation to the people by `presence' rather than by proselytising. It could even engage in controversy, like that of the 1830s, which at worst gave offence only as it displayed a poverty of intellectual resources within one church or the other. Only minor resentment would accompany the occasional conversion of some Catholic who was persuaded that it was in his best interests to consider what he might gain spiritually or otherwise if he allied himself with the reformed `ascendancy' faith. But few Catholics—or Protestants—thought much good would come from the ICM campaign of spiritual `aggression'. The Protestants particularly feared a Catholic `backlash', and they had grave doubts about even the positive values to be gained by a crusade. When all was said and done, the Church of Ireland's identity was so connected with the culture of the minority 'ascendancy' class that it really had no great desire to bring all the population within its sphere of influence. It was true that it existed, at least in theory, to serve all the population. But serving the Irish people through living lives of piety and creativity was quite a different matter from what the Protestant crusade had set about—to bring the whole population within the Church of Ireland. Should that ever happen, the traditional cultural `ascendancy' within the Church would be gone—and not many Protestants wanted that1T' 4. The End of the Protestant Establishment After Catholic Emancipation, the tithe war, the Repeal campaign, and the tensions of the immediate post-famine period, most Protestants accepted that Primate Beresford was indeed leading them in a long retreat from the era when few had questioned the privileged position of the powerful Church of Ireland. Unlikely allies, including some members of the Nonconformist churches or dissident Protestants, such as Sir John Gray, editor of the Freeman's Journal, had begun to band together to end the pretensions of the Established Church. From the time of Emancipation the enemies of the Church of

298 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 180D-70 Ireland resolutely gathered a body of critical evidence to make the case for Disestablishment. The Edinburgh Review of 1835 pointed out some of its `anomalies' : `There are 157 benefices in Ireland in which there is no resident clergyman, and no service is performed in a place of worship; and there are 41 in which there is also no member of the Established Church.'179 It drew attention to parishes like Kilrush, where there were only six Protestants, but where two clergymen were supported by £152 of tithe. It gleefully listed the Church's non-residents and pluralists, and finally stated : Few, we think, will now maintain, that it is essential for the religious welfare of Ireland that the Established Church of that country should exhibit in long array 2 archbishops, 10 bishops, 139 dignitaries, 187 prebendaries and canons; or that there should be 1,333 parochial incumbents of benefices and 752 curates.174 The critics refused to cease their attack. When T. B. Macaulay spoke about `that most anomalous institution' his rhetoric was made use of by not only the Edinburgh Review but by Catholics like James Maher who made sure the majority people knew how few friends the Established Church in Ireland really had : If there were in any part of the world a National Church, regarded as heretical by four-fifths of the nation committed to its care; a church established and maintained by the sword; a church producing twice as many riots as conversions; a church which though possessing great wealth and power, and though long backed by persecuting laws had in the course of many generations, been unable to propagate its doctrines, and barely able to maintain its ground; a church so odious, that fraud and violence when used against its clear rights of property were generally regarded as fair play; a church whose ministers were preaching to desolate walls, and with difficulty obtaining their lawful subsistence by the help of bayonets. Such a church on our principles, could not, we must own, be defended.'" The attack by Maher continued as he quoted the words of Burke on the Church of Ireland : `Don't talk to me of it being a church. It is a wholesale robbery,' and Brougham's famous judgment: `The foulest practical abuse that ever existed in any civilised country.'178 Where the secular critics and Catholics like Maher left off in their attack the Nonconformists took over. Any scandal like one that concerned Marcus Gervais Beresford, the future Primate, was given wide publicity.'" James Godkin, in another case, showed that the Rector of Callan Union, brother-in-law of his bishop and son of a former Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, had received

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 299

from his friend the Marquis of Ormond, who was patron of the parish, this living worth £1,700 a year, and that he paid the curates who did all the work for him a total of £255.1~8 Woe betide any parson whose absenteeism or other neglect of his parish came to the attention of someone like James Godkin. These gadflies had to be reckoned with because they analysed why the Church of Ireland was so ineffective, and focused on its internal contradictions as well as its scandals. Godkin listed carefully a total of 127 bishops who in recent times had made their fortunes through the Church of Ireland and had intermarried with the nobility in Ireland, England and Scotland. Such `family connections' successfully paralysed any government administration when the question of ecclesiastical reform arose : There is scarcely one of our Protestant representatives that has not the blood of bishops or dignitaries flowing in his veins, and who does not instinctively cling to the Establishment as the appanage of his order.179 Apart from the failure of the bishops to carry through reform measures, the chief weakness of the Established Church was its failure to win popular support, as the census of 1861 clearly showed. This was the report which gave Cullen, as we have noted, confirmation that his counter-reformation tactics were succeeding. In Erris, for example, because of proselytising the number of Protestants had increased from 99 in 1834 to 667 in 1851, then abruptly declined to 331 in 1861. Similar statistics appeared for other missionary areas like Doon, Tuagh and Pallasgreen in Limerick. Hostility from Catholic neighbours was such that massive emigration had taken place `so that the harvest of the good seed sown there may be reaped in far distant places'.180 In spite of all the work of Dallas and his supporters, apologists for the Established Church found themselves arguing that since 1834 the increase in numbers of churchmen was in the order of 2 per cent, not 1.2 per cent as the commissioners reported.181 This failure to increase numbers was important and may well have convinced many that Disestablishment was inevitable. A major defence of the Established Church had always been the argument that it was a bastion of the British garrison in the land. Now it was clear that the garrison was not being reinforced, and therefore the value of the Church of Ireland as a `fortress' was questioned : `As a political machine the Establishment is every day becoming less useful to the State.'182 Less support than in an earlier age was given to churchmen who advanced the `garrison' theory during the Fenian crisis :

300 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 The Protestant clergyman and his little flock are, I may say, the only leaven of loyalty in the remote parts of the country. In each little neighbourhood we are like little forts or blockhouses one reads of in Cooper's American stories. Sweep us away and Ireland will be a totally rebellious country, kept in subjection wholly by English troops. You may despise our little bands scattered in mountains and bogs, but dispossess us and you will feel our loss. In the end, you will have no other resource but to conquer Ireland, and plant it over again, just as in Cromwell's time. This Times letter brought forth from James Maher a harangue over `the pharasaical assumption of exclusive loyalty' by a 'narrowminded bigot' and `pretending patriot' : `It is not, reverend sir, the first time that the Irish establishment has been compared to a military garrison."88 Many Protestants were no happier than James Maher over the `garrison' argument for the Church of Ireland and the claim that its members were `the most loyal, the most civilised, the most industrious and the most peaceable portion of the community' 184 They knew well that the tendency of many churchmen to stress the imperial connection with England brought them `their share of hatred against everything English'.185 Rather than emphasising the `Englishness' of the Church of Ireland clergy and laity, they put emphasis on the parson's value in Irish society—his role as a `resident gentleman' : The best character an Irish Protestant clergyman can assume, that which Dean Swift gave him in the last century, and which the Bishop of Killaloe gives him in the present, is that of a resident gentleman in a black coat 188 During the Disestablishment debate the Bishop of Tuam, C. B. Bernard, reminded parliament that even Daniel O'Connell had appreciated this argument for the Church of Ireland, and said that the common people had no wish to topple the Established Church : `They only understand the Church through the clergyman, and they see him in their midst, a kind neighbour, a useful friend, a Christian example.'181 When Disestablishment came not only did the 'garrison' argument fade among churchmen, but so did the `resident gentleman' theory. No longer could they argue that they were, in the words of F. D. Maurice, members of `a Church which exists to purify and elevate the mind of a nation'.188 Generally in the community the old political consciousness began to fade, and churchmen began

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 301 to view the Church of Ireland as a cultural expression of their minority body. Although the roll call of early synods included the names of the majority of Irish representatives in parliament, the concern of most churchmen was to ensure the spiritual and physical continuance of the Church of Ireland. They looked inward, concerning themselves primarily with ecclesiastical affairs rather than those of the nation. In one sense this was not difficult. The lessons of the tithe war had never been forgotten, and, in spite of the missionary euphoria of the 1850s, many churchmen, conscious of their minority status and the ambiguous support of the imperial government, had been only too pleased to keep a `low profile' in the community. Most parsons, particularly after Cullen's reorganisation of the Catholic Church, had considerable fear of the Catholic masses they were called upon, in theory, to serve. When they could gracefully free themselves from this frightening obligation after Disestablishment, most parsons did so with a sigh of relief.189 Most Protestant laity willingly followed their clergy in the grand disengagement from concern for the whole society of the nation. Some, of course, were uneasy when the Church of Ireland began to look inward and to concern itself primarily with ecclesiastical affairs after Disestablishment. One of these churchmen was Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench of Dublin, who feared that the parsons might become representatives of and servants to only one class in the community. In its establishment days the Church of Ireland had been in large measure a class church, inasmuch as most of the landowning class were Protestants,1fl° and one of the arguments for the parson's gentlemanly way of life was that he was called upon to serve such people.19' Nevertheless, the clergyman's duty to serve the whole community had Iessened this class identification, and the church's political consciousness gave most churchmen wider interests than that of their own class. Now that a cultural rather than a political consciousness distinguished the Church of Ireland. Trench was worried about the `narrowing' of its outlook. Although Trench wanted to ordain only university graduates, he saw the danger in such a policy, which could add to the class identification of the Church of Ireland and change its very nature : `I am not indeed unreasonable enough to expect that the same breadth and toleration can exist in an unestablished church like ours as in an Establishment.'182 This concern never left Trench and many other churchmen who feared that the `in-turning' of Irish churchmen would also narrow their theological outlook, increasing their Protestantism193 and consequently their antipathy to the Catholics, with whom they would henceforth have almost no

302 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 communication. Trench often spoke of the danger that `the Church of Ireland turn out after all to be no Church but only a Protestant sect'.184 Perhaps for survival the narrowing of concern of the Church of Ireland to purely ecclesiastical affairs was inevitable. Until the death of Cardinal Cullen in 1878 it was also prudent. This change of focus on the part of churchmen soon became a tradition. Although outspoken clergymen still appeared, like Canon J. 0. Hannay of Westport, and special meetings of protest were held over the first and second Home Rule Bills at the General Synod meetings of 1886 and 1893, such debate on secular affairs was unusual. The `removal of the Irish Church from the political firingline' was accepted as a sound policy. Except in Ulster, few politicians or statesmen bothered after 1870 to pay much attention to the rarely expressed political opinions of the Church of Ireland. In return for such political quietism it was able `to escape with only slight damage from the activities of the Land League and Sinn Fein, and even to survive partition as one of the very few bodies which span the border'.195 After 1870 the Church of Ireland's chief concern was its role as a cultural expression of the minority people; its old political awareness was a thing of the past. This loss of political awareness can be seen by comparing the reaction of churchmen with that of Irish Quakers over Home Rule. Home Rule was of great concern to churchmen, of course, but their primary interest in institutional survival ensured that Church of Ireland writings on the subject lacked the intensity of expression found in Quaker discussions. In their 1893 meetings young Irish Quakers said that it was part of their tradition that From childhood we have been brought up to take an interest in and to sympathise with Catholic Emancipation, the Emancipation of the slaves, Irish Church disestablishment and the like.19° They had always supported causes of religious and social liberalism, and for this reason had rejoiced at the ending of the privileges of the old Protestant ascendancy church, believing that Disestablishment would be a spiritual blessing for the Church of Ireland. Now there was the threat of a new ascendancy appearing—that of the Catholics. Everywhere was heard the cry for Ireland to be a Catholic nation, and however much it seemed to go against the liberal principles of the Society of Friends, the young Quakers were about to oppose Home Rule. The majority of Irish Friends did not want the end of the `impartial rule' of the British in Ireland which protected minority bodies like their own from `hate, crime,

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 303 cruelty, falsehood and injustice'.1°7 The Quakers believed that while the post-Disestablishment period was bound to be an `age of reparation',19° the passage of the Home Rule Bill would not `redress the evil of 700 years of misgovernment'1°° Rather it would surrender Irish society to the `invisible and visible tyranny of the Romish clergy''00 These outspoken Quaker writings are remarkably similar to those of the Church of Ireland before Disestablishment, but quite different from the carefully subdued utterances about the Catholics and their priests made by churchmen after 1869. W. C. Plunket, whose anti-Catholic sentiments had by no means disappeared, took a leading part in the 1893 meeting on Home Rule, but in his role as Archbishop of Dublin he was very careful of his choice of language. He did refer to `possible fratricidal strife', but expressed considerable concern for Catholic sensibilities. Plunket had good reason to be cautious in what he said. The year before, the Irish Catholic had published a threatening article about `Lord Plunket's Attack on the Catholics of Ireland'201 after he had apparently referred in one of his speeches to non-Protestants as `wolves'. Intimidation of this order appeared whenever Protestant leaders chose to criticise developments in Irish society, and Protestants generally found it was worthwhile to maintain their low profile' 202 In the latter years of the century the Catholic clergy were very sensitive over any apparent reappearance of Protestant ascendancy. Their suspicions were shown clearly when the Quakers and other philanthropists of the Mansion House Relief Committee attempted to provide help for the people of the Aran Islands during the famine of 1879. There were a few Protestants in the area, and when relief was being administered a protest was made by the Protestant rector, the Rev. William Kilbride, and a local land agent, Thomas Thompson, that their people were being discriminated against by the local priests. When the complaint was received in the Dublin headquarters of the relief committee, one of its members, John A. Curran, was sent to investigate what was happening. On his arrival the Protestants told Curran that the priests had organised processions after Mass, harangued the people about the evils of Protestantism, and used their authority to keep the people from dealing with Protestant tradesmen or from working on Protestant lands. The Catholics, on the other hand, told Curran that Kilbride and Thompson were obnoxious individuals who assumed superior social airs, and that the former `unduly interferes in religious matters'. The most serious charge made by the Protestant leaders was that their people were excluded from relief. Kilbride and Thompson maintained that the priest had a `souper's list' and that

304 The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70 those who were friendly towards Protestants or worked for them were on this list. Anyone on the list was denied help by the local relief committee, which was dominated by the Catholics. While Curran was holding his inquiry one man came forward to say he was on the `souper's list', but his testimony was interrupted by his wife who physically dragged him from the room.203 Curran's vain attempt to discover who was telling the truth in this situation showed the difficulty of ever proving the charge of `souperism'. It also showed that the old antagonisms between Catholics and Protestants were slow to disappear. In most communities the priests were determined to resist any attempt to reassert Protestant ascendancy in any form. Affairs like the Aran controversy might have been more common after Disestablishment, but fortunately for the sake of peace in Irish society, few Protestants chose to emulate the militant Kilbride and Thompson by challenging the Catholic domination in matters like relief administration after 1870. In one sense Catholic attitudes to members of the Church of Ireland after Disestablishment did represent, as the Quakers said, the spirit of an `age of reparation', for the sudden acknowledgment of Catholic ascendancy by the Protestants brought with it the problem of how the minority religion should now be treated. As we have seen, there were two aspects of the Catholic Church in Ireland, one Irish and one Roman.204 The latter became the dominant aspect in Ireland from the time of Cullen, and it was not only unforgiving of Protestant misrule in the past, but it was ideologically unswerving in its refusal to grant any recognition to the heretical Church of Ireland. Acknowledgment of the Protestant body in any way would have begged acceptance of a pluralist society which could encourage a `medley of sectional value systems which rules out value concensus'.206 Ultramontanist control of the Catholic Church became so complete by the end of the century that it even established a canon of Irish history.208 This tradition distorted nationalist history, but even more tellingly it attempted either to expunge the Protestant role in the development of Irish society or to present it in deprecating terms in order to underline its alien quality. An example of a judgment made by the Catholic canon of Irish history is given in one late nineteenth-century writer's view of the patriot priest of the 1820s, Father John Murphy of Corofin : The only blot in all Murphy's life was his toleration of the Charter schools where the Protestant version of the Bible was given to Catholic children and chapters of the same were to be learned by them. For all this he can be excused, but cannot be justified 207

The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade 305 It might be argued that in the thinking of the Irish people the real `hidden Ireland' became the culture and society of the old Protestant ascendancy that it was unpopular even to talk about. As a legacy of the Ultramontanist victory the anti-Protestant interpretation of history became dominant, and such was the extent of the Catholic victory in the south of Ireland that Protestants generally accepted the role assigned to them by the new ascendancy people. They were to be a people without a history and hopefully, therefore, a people whose identity was essentially un-Irish and who were tolerated only as members of a disappearing pietistic sect. Southern Protestants were only too willing to deny their historical origins and to proclaim loudly the generosity of the majority people in allowing them the civil and religious liberty which was theirs in the new Republic. In their fulsome professions of gratitude they sounded remarkably like the Catholic Bishop of Derry and his clergy who had expressed similar sentiments when they marched in the Orange parade of 1797. This was an understandable development in Protestant thought. Southern Protestants knew from experience how dangerous it was ever to step out of the role assigned to them. In the wake of Vatican Council H the editors of the Sunday Independent of 6 February 1972 could express their wonder over `the most bizarre picket ever placed in Ireland'. They referred to a forty-year exercise by the Legion of Mary, whose members had on occasion used physical force as they maintained a picket outside the Dublin Christian Mission on Chancery Street. The charge against the mission was that relief was given to indigents there only if they first attended a Protestant religious service. The editors could say this was indeed `a strange sight in the Dublin of 1972', but in the context of this study it had meaning—at least in the understanding of the Protestant minority in the Republic who understood that their right to their own way of life was strictly circumscribed. Or would they have this understanding? Perhaps, as Karl Marx argued about the alienation of the working class in capitalist society, Catholic ascendancy in the Republic may be measured by the fact that since 1870 southern Protestants have so far submitted to the place in society assigned to them that until recent rumblings over Ne Temere208 they seemed unconscious of their oppression by the majority.

L

EPILOGUE

PROTESTANTS AND THE LEGACY OF RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN IRELAND One day someone said to him, `Fr O'Leary, have you heard the news?' `No, what news?' `Why,' said his friend, who was a Protestant, `the bottom has fallen out of purgatory, and all the Papists have been precipitated into hell.' `Lord save us!' cried O'Leary, `What a crushing the Protestants must have got.' M. B. BUCKLEY,

Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary (1868)

EPILOGUE PROTESTANTS AND THE LEGACY OF RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN IRELAND Few scholars concerned with cultural history would disagree with Professor Kitson Clark's opinion of the religious scene in England and Ireland in the nineteenth century : It might not be too extravagant to say of the nineteenth century that probably in no other century except the seventeenth and perhaps the twelfth, did the claims of religion occupy so large a part in the nation's life, or did men speaking in the name of religion contrive to exercise so much power.1 Nor would they do other than share his wonder that `The Christian religion in one form or other could present itself in such a way as to present an almost irresistible appeal to the heart. Why this should have been so raises some very difficult problems, but that it was so is clear.'2 As we have seen in this study of CatholicProtestant relations in Ireland between the Act of Union and Disestablishment, religion was of paramount importance in the lives of the two peoples or `nations' in Ireland. Their leaders `speaking in the name of religion' could exercise tremendous power because they spoke to the hearts of men in a way that no secular political movement could ever do. It was `religion' in a broad sense that divided the people, shaped their different cultures, and persuaded them to breed separately and to work separately in a rapidly changing society. When the two peoples of nineteenth-century Ireland were left alone to work out their religious and cultural relationships, they accepted the inevitability of living in a pluralist society. They knew that accommodation for each other's way of life could be made as it had been in the days of Father Arthur O'Leary. It was possible for everyone to benefit when there was recognition of the different contribution of each of the two peoples to the enrichment of society. The health of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury arrangement was shown by the ability of each of the

310 Epilogue peoples to joke about the existence and way of life of the other, without any hesitation in recognising each other as Irish Catholics or Irish Protestants. This tradition of tolerance was widely accepted in the early years of the nineteenth century, and almost everyone had a good word to say about a Catholic like Father Mathew or a Protestant like Bishop John Jebb.R They were representative of those Irish priests and parsons whose first concerns were pastoral, who put people before principles or movements, whether ecclesiastical or political. The truth was that during the time of accommodation, which prevailed until 1822, the two peoples lived together in comparative peace. The cultural accommodation of the first quarter of the nineteenth century did not last, however desirable was the state of religious and social peace it brought between the two peoples. In many ways Ireland's history has always been written by ancient scribes, and perhaps the traditions of the two peoples who had contended with each other for so long were alone responsible for a new round of struggles. But powerful ideas were in the air outside Ireland, and their influence in Irish society encouraged the renewal of conflict. The longing for nationalism and equality and the other ideas of liberalism which were spawned during the French Revolution were eagerly absorbed by the highly intelligent, politically astute and long-oppressed Catholic masses. Providence provided them with a charismatic symbol in the person of O'Connell the Liberator, and the internecine warfare between the two peoples began again. Ironically enough, the first shots in the religious side of the struggle were fired by Archbishop William Magee, whose charge to his clergy in 1822 reflected the arrogant and delusive belief of some pre-Emancipation Protestants that their ascendancy was not only inviolable but also had the blessing of the Almighty. The religious controversies of the pre-famine period were peculiarly an Irish affair. They represented an intellectual contest between Protestants who were convinced that only their reformed biblical faith could produce a reasoned exposition of the Christian faith and a truly Christian civilisation, and their Catholic opponents who wished to display the intellectual potential which could be produced by a seminary like Maynooth and who longed for the place in the sun which seemed to be promised to them with Catholic Emancipation. The Protestant churchmen who listened to the lengthy harangues of Richard Pope, R. J. McGhee or Tresham Gregg believed that what advantage they gained during the contests reflected not only the spiritual power of a reformed biblical faith but also the superior education and other blessings of British culture. The Catholics who eagerly listened to the rhetoric of their

Epilogue 311 champion from the bogs of Leitrim, Father Tom Maguire, in their turn rejoiced that his verbal dexterity reflected not only the sound learning of the universal church but also a linguistic gift that was peculiar to the culture of their people. At this stage of confrontation, although Irish Protestants and Catholics acknowledged their debt to British and Roman religious and cultural resources, neither side chose to turn to Britain or to the continent for reinforcements in their contest. They considered their religious and ecclesiastical differences to be strictly an Irish affair, and communication between the two peoples was maintained not only in spite of the controversies, but sometimes through them. This was still the age when, according to John Barrow, ideological loyalties were not yet finely drawn and it was still possible for ecumenical ventures to be initiated depending on `the individual character and temper of the Church of England clergyman, the Presbyterian Minister and the Roman Catholic priest'' Then came the supreme crisis that provided the history of nineteenth-century Ireland with its great divide—the famine. Such was the need of the people in temporal terms that appeals had to be made for help from outside Ireland. And like aid received in any place, at any time, by any people, it sometimes brought with it unwelcome ideological concepts. English Evangelical influences and those of the Roman Ultramontanists came into Ireland in the famine era and helped radically to divide the Irish people. With the famine disappeared the reasoned cordiality that Protestants had expected from the now-maligned Catholic `Castle bishops', or `Gallicans'—depending upon whether your criticism was secular or ecclesiastic. With the famine, also, there began to weaken, if not to disappear, the `latitudinarianism' of the old-fashioned parsons who had sought religious and social accommodation rather than friction with their Catholic neighbours, be they lay or clerical. When Catholic aid came to Ireland, the speed with which it arrived reflected the Ultramontanist reorganisation of the universal church which was then being carried out. With this aid came emissaries from Rome and elsewhere in the Catholic world who helped to change the nature of the religious and cultural struggle in Ireland. Much of the English help given to the Irish people in their need came from Protestant Evangelical sources. Inevitably this help was brought by religious enthusiasts with ideas of ecclesiastical and cultural warfare. They also contributed to the changed nature of the struggle between the two peoples, which can now be recognised as having a different character in the post-famine era. In order of precedence of arrival the English Evangelical reinforcement came first, just as the first attack in the struggle before

312 Epilogue the famine was delivered by the Protestants. But the involvement in Irish affairs symbolised by Alexander Dallas, or the usurpation of traditional Irish Catholic authority by Paul Cullen, were both representative of a lengthy build-up of militant religious forces by British Evangelicals and Ultramontanist Catholics. Ireland was the chief meeting ground of the two imperia, and it was in Ireland that the battle between Evangelicals and Ultramontanists was fought. The cost of this struggle was a radical changing of the relationship between the two peoples, as well as a changing of the very nature of Irish Protestantism and Irish Catholicism. It is an interesting reflection on the writing of Irish history, and its unspoken `canon' of orthodoxy, that so little attention has ever been paid to Alexander Dallas. Certainly, in terms of universal ecclesiastical or religious history, he is a minor figure, but he was an important man of his time, and it is important that some recognition be made of his influence in Irish history. Without his Protestant crusade, which diverted to Ireland so much of the passion engendered by the `papal aggression' in England, it might be wondered whether Paul Cullen could have carried through his reorganisation of the Irish Catholic Church along Ultramontanist lines. The presence of Dallas and the Irish Church Missions and the `ten years' war' in Connaught enabled Cullen to present his cause in urgent terms to the Catholic world. Like Peter Canisius in sixteenth-century Germany, Cullen had the immediate challenge of halting and rolling back the Protestant Reformation advance. By the time that Irish Catholicism had become the counter-reformation power that Cullen made it, its very nature had changed—and so had its relationship with Protestantism. By 1870 not only was the Church of Ireland disestablished, but the three great statements of nineteenth-century Ultramontanism, that of the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus of Errors, and Papal Infallibility, were beginning to give definitive shape to what was to become, without much qualification, `Roman' Catholicism in Ireland. In the less passionate atmosphere of early nineteenth-century Ireland Thomas Newenham had warned that : To subdue and exterminate one million Irish Protestants ... is as manifestly beyond the power of four millions of Irish Roman Catholics as it certainly is beyond the power of the former to subdue and exterminate the latter. And whatever might be the final issue of the contest, the few who survived it would probably not survive the extensive devastation which it would inevitably occasion.5 It is doubtful if even the most fanatical of Catholics or Protestants

Epilogue 313 in the post-famine period ever considered that an `extermination' programme in physical terms might be carried out, in spite of the anxiety expressed by the ICM over there being a return of the Inquisition. But in a relatively sophisticated age, when the object of `extermination' was an erroneous system of thought, there were other ways of `extermination'. If a religious institution was uncompromising in its mission and was able to ally itself with an `ascendancy' political authority, it could nurture its view of an ideal society. This was the fear of those Irish Catholics who were.alarmed by ideas of Evangelical bigotry—that mode of thought of some Protestant militants who considered that an ideal society could be built in Ireland through a reformed faith based on a Protestant reading of the Bible : Whenever the Bible is read and loved and obeyed by every Irishman, then will Ireland take her place among the nations. Then will Munster, Connaught and Leinster become wealthy and prosperous as Ulster is. Then will rebellion against Protestant England cease; and the consequences, unrest, misery and poverty, give place to rest, contentment and riches. Then the Peace of God, which the Bible teaches, will return, the peace which left the island when the cruel Danes began to devastate the country bringing with them the Romish priests and their Romish errors; and further when the Pope sold Ireland to King Henry.6 This kind of fanatical Evangelical hyperbole emerged during the post-famine period of religious war, and few Irish Protestants took its message very seriously. Yet most of them knew that this kind of thinking lay behind the Evangelical crusade that was taking place, particularly in Connaught and Dublin, and the thought must have crossed their minds that if the reports of mass conversion in the 1850-53 period were true, and if they were to continue, then a new kind of Irish society might appear—one in which Protestants would not be a minority in numbers. It might then be possible to extend not only Protestant religion but also British culture. If this expectation was not seriously considered by many Protestants, it was a source of anxiety among the clerical leaders of their Catholic neighbours. Inevitably they turned to Rome for help, with the expectation that the papacy would protect them and, perhaps, give them means for a counter-crusade to `exterminate', if not the Sassenach in physical terms, at least the power of his religion and his culture. These men believed that Ireland's destiny was not merely to be free but to be Roman Catholic. Their most extreme representatives may also have hoped to establish the kind of social order which the historian Froude had dreaded might one day

314 Epilogue appear in Ireland : `In some shape or other the Catholics would make the Protestants feel that their turn had come to tyrannise." When the Protestant crusade was halted and the Ultramontanist victory brought Disestablishment, Irish Protestants wondered what would be the social and cultural results of the new assumption of power by an ecclesiastical body claiming `exclusive salvation'. Would it indeed `tyrannise in its turn'? At times they became very uneasy. When shocked public opinion obliged Archbishop Walsh of Dublin to censure publicly boycotting carried on by the rabidly anti-Protestant Catholic Association in 1903, many people wondered how reluctant his action was. In the sermon he preached at the time, he chose as his text : `Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be added to you.' Some observers wondered if the `things' did not refer to the temporalities still in the hands of the Protestants.° What has been the legacy of the religious struggle between the two peoples in nineteenth century Ireland, particularly of the Protestant crusade of the 1850s? On the part of the Catholics who won the struggle, there exists an abiding resentment of the wrongs of the past, based upon a deep reluctance to abandon their canon of Irish history. Combined with this lingering resentment of what Protestants did in the past is a deep suspicion of what they might do in the future should they ever have the opportunity for resurgence. Many Catholics have unspoken doubts about how they would maintain their ascendancy should they once more be obliged to share a parliament with representatives from all parts of Ireland.° On the part of the Protestants there exists a quiet, unexpressed, but abiding fear of the majority people whose demand for ascendancy in matters religious, ecclesiastical, political and social shows little sign of weakening. In Ulster this has resulted in Protestant intransigence, and in the other provinces in the acceptance by Protestants of the need for them to live quietly and passively in their dying culture. The saga of religious warfare in Ireland, particularly in the postfamine period, has been a sad one. Perhaps it is fitting to leave the subject with the unintentionally prophetic words of Alexander Dallas, who did not always realise the import of what he was saying. In 1837, when Dallas was first considering work in Ireland, he spoke to a group of Protestant clergymen on the theme of `ministerial responsibility' : Of how much good, or of how much evil is every ordained minister of Christ the instrument! The workman who wrought the sword of the son of Kish, in the days of his humility, could

Epilogue 315 not have reckoned the number of the enemies of the Lord which it was destined to destroy. He could not have imagined that it should ever be unsheathed against David and his followers; and when he tempered its point and sharpened its edge, how little could he have predicted the suicidal use to which it one day would be put. In the context of nineteenth-century Irish religious history, especially as regards the `sword' that he unsheathed in his Protestant crusade, Dallas was indeed prophetic when he concluded his address with the warning : While preaching to others men may use the ministry to their own destruction."

Notes The following abbreviations are used in the notes and bibliography: British Museum (British Library) BM EHR English Historical Review ICM Irish Church Missions IER Irish Ecclesiastical Record IHS Irish Historical Studies ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly PP Parliamentary Papers RCB Representative Church Body TCD Trinity College, Dublin INTRODUCTION (pp. ix—xiv) 1. It may be that preference for an ethnic rather than a class model of interpretation reflects a New World historical bias in an age when historians realise that North America has not been a 'melting-pot' for the immigrant peoples who have come here. For comment on the Marxian critique see S. R. Mealing, 'Concept of Social Class and the Interpretation of Canadian History', Canadian Historical Review XLVI (1965), 201-18. 2. Thomas O'Dea, Sociology of Religion, Englewood Cliffs 1966, 3. 3. Rosemary Harris, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ulster, Manchester 1972, 218, discusses how 'perception as well as objective fact' plays an important part in dividing the Irish people. The beliefs of each community, how their members view reality, add to the conviction of each that 'they live in a dichotomised world'. 4. Galen Broeker, Rural Disorder and Police Reform in Ireland, 1812-36, London 1970, 237, notes Ribbonmen 'banditti' activity declining as sectarian conflict increased during the tithe war. 5. Garret FitzGerald, Towards a New Ireland, London 1971, 36, comments on this tradition in his own family. 6. Irish Times, 6 Aug. 1975, Suppl., 2. 7. Ibid., 3, where Professor John Murphy discusses Young Irelanders 'on the run' finding areas of Munster and Connaught where O'Connell was scarcely known, yet his 'enormous and lifelong' influence existed within the coitiantacht, the commonalty. 8. Robert Kee, The Green Flag, London 1972, 752, notes that one

Notes to pages xii-2 317 idea of 'radical democracy', republicanism, had little appeal in Ireland. 9. Ibid., 293, and 159: 'Extravagant mysticism continued to surround the Union for the 120 years of its existence.' 10. Earl Grey, Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration, London 1853, II, 13-14. 11. Paul Knaplund, Gladstone and Britain's Imperial Policy, London 1927, 203. 12. J. F. A. Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1841-91, London 1965, 65, notes this confusion of two ideologies, with the forcing on the Nigerian people the 'blessings' of both an evangelical faith and 'Victorian dress fashions'. 13. Geoffrey Best, 'Evangelicalism and the Victorians' in Victorian Crisis of Faith, London 1970, 52, notes how English Evangelicalism tended to 'ally rather than to antagonise the classes'. Cf. Desmond Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, Montreal 1968, 241 and passim. 14. C. G. Duffy, My Life in Two Hemispheres, London 1898, I, 264. Chapter I IRISH PROTESTANTS AND REVOLUTIONARY CATHOLICISM (pp. 1-26) 1. Alfred Cobban, Aspects of the French Revolution, New York 1971, 137. 2. Ibid., 158. 3. Richard Hayes, Ireland and Irishmen in the French Revolution, Dublin 1932, 7. 4. R. B. McDowell, Irish Public Opinion, 1750-1800, London 1944, 144. 5. J. C. Beckett, Making of Modern Ireland, London 1966, 265; Charles Butler, Memoirs of the English, Irish and Scottish Catholics Since the Reformation, London 1822, IV, 69, notes that the only Catholics in the United Irishmen were 'some of the lowest order in Dublin, and the counties of Westmeath and Kildare'. Only one Catholic was in the directory of the movement. 6. Hayes, op. cit., ix. See Cobban, op. cit., 104: the revolutionary idea that appealed to Irish Catholics was 'la carriere ouverte aux talents'. 7. 'A Gentleman of the North of Ireland', Essays on the Political Circumstances of Ireland Written During the Administration of Earl Camden, with an Appendix Containing Thoughts of the Will of the People, Dublin 1798, 18. 8. Ibid., 2nd ed., Dublin 1799, 242. 9. [Theobald Wolfe Tone], Address to the People of Ireland on the Present Important Crisis, Belfast 1796, 1. 10. Henry Cotton, Cui Bono? Letter to the Rt Hon. E. G. Stanley

318 Notes to pages 2-7 by the Archdeacon of Cashel, Dublin 1833, 89. Their fears had some justification in the view of Count Cavour who visited Ireland in early 1844: see C. B. Cavour, Thoughts on Ireland: Its Present and Its Future, London 1868. He saw the ascendancy after Repeal or revolution receiving `such treatment by the masses as was a few years ago, in Spain, experienced by the convents'. 11. `An Irish County Gentleman' [William Parnell], Inquiry into the Causes of Popular Discontents in Ireland, London 1804, 29. 12. G. C. Lewis, On Local Disturbances in Ireland and on the Irish Church Question, London 1806, 90. 13. W. E. H. Lecky, History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, London 1892, V, 466, points out that the Emmet rebellion had nothing to do with the `disappointment of the Catholics' over Emancipation. 14. `Melancthon', Letter to Dr Troy, Titular Archbishop of Dublin on the Coronation of Bonaparte by Pope Pius VII, Dublin 1805, 84. This admonition was friendly. The writer said he had assumed the name of the `mildest of the reformers, who laboured most strenuously to soothe the animosities between the Protestants and the Catholics'. 15. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 259-60. 16. Ibid., 426-7, evidence of Thomas Costello. Co. Limerick. Cf. Correspondence Between Rev. William Baker Stoney and Rev. Bernard Quin, Roman Catholic Curate of Castlerea, Boyle 1828, 4, where the `priest's curse' was used to keep Catholic parents from allowing their children to attend the `abominable freeschools'. 17. J. T. Ellis, Cardinal Consalvi and Anglo-Papal Relations, 181424, Washington 1942, passim. 18. J. F. Broderick, `The Holy See and the Irish Movement for the Repeal of the Union with England, 1829-47', Analecta Gregoriana, Rome, LV (1951), 164. 19. Denis Gwynn, `Rome and the British Veto, 1829-47', IER LXXVI (1951), 258. 20. J. A. Coulter, `The Political Theory of Dr Edward Maginn, Bishop of Derry, 1846-49', IER XCVIII (1962), 106. 21. Thomas Wyse, Historical Sketch of the Late Catholic Association of Ireland, London 1829, II, xvii, xx-xxi. 22. Butler, Memoirs, IV, 121-71, discusses the issue, and gives the Quarantotti letter in full, pp. 518-23. 23. Broderick, op. cit., 23 24. Dublin Evening Post, 28 May 1814 and 14 Oct. 1815. 25. Cf. Thomas Newenham, View of the Circumstances of Ireland, London 1809, appendix, 39-40. 26. Cf. Cullen Papers (Irish College, Rome) on the continuing scurrilous character-assassination practised by bishops like MacHale, Higgins and Cantwell, at the expense of men like Daniel Murray.

Notes to pages 7-10 319 27. John Healy, Maynooth College: Its Centenary History. 17951895, Dublin 1895, 116. 28. Myles V. Ronan, `Archbishop John Troy's Correspondence with Dublin Castle', Archivium Hibernicum XI (1944), 1-31. 29. Wyse, op. cit., I, 163. Cf. W. J. Fitzpatrick, Life, Times and Correspondence of the Rt Rev. Dr Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dublin 1880, I, 190, for the story of Wellington offering Curtis an English Protestant bishopric worth £6,000 a year. Lecky, op. cit., III, 365, quotes Edmund Burke: `I am sure that the constant meddling of the bishops and the clergy with the Castle, and the Castle with them will infallibly set them ill with their own body. All the weight which hitherto the clergy have had in keeping the people quiet will be wholly lost.' 30. Lecky, op. cit., V, 463, and IV, 77. 31. E. A. D'Alton, History of the Archdiocese of Tuam, Dublin 1928, I, 352. 32. See C. Forster, Life of John Jebb, 3rd ed., London 1851, I, 160 ff, on the Catholic suspicion of even a popular figure like Bishop Jebb. 33. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 228. 34. W. Meagher, Notices of the Life and Character of the Most Rev. Daniel Murray, Dublin 1853, 171-9. 35. Thomas MacHale, Correspondence Between the Most Rev. Dr MacHale and the Most Rev. Dr Murray Relative to an Address to be Presented to Her Majesty the Queen on the Occasion of Her Visit to Ireland in 1849, Dublin 1885, 22. 36. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 347. 37. Ibid., I, 405. 38. Ibid., II, 72 and 49 39. `J.K.L.' [James Doyle], Vindication of the Religious and Civil Principles of the Irish Catholics in a Letter Addressed to His Excellency the Marquis of Wellesley, Dublin 1823, 71. His 'establishment' religious outlook comes out clearly in these seventyone closely printed pages. 40. James Maher, Letters on Religious Subjects, with a Memoir, ed. Patrick Moran, Dublin 1877, xxxii. Cf. James Doyle, `Good Men in Bad Times', Pastoral Address of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare to the Deanery of Kilcock, Monaghan 1822. 41. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 148. 42. Ibid., I, 203. Cf. Ignatius Murphy, `Some Attitudes to Religious Freedom and Ecumenism in Pre-Emancipation Ireland', IER CV (1966), 98; Dublin Evening Post, Suppl. 17 Feb. 1825; PP, 1825, VIII (129), 668-9. 43. `J.K.L.' [Doyle] Vindication, 6. 44. Alexander Knox, Remains, ed. J. Hornby, London 1834-37, III, 188. 45. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 330. 46. Ibid., I, 337.

320 Notes to pages 10-14 47. F. C. Husenbeth, Life of the Rt Rev. John Milner, Bishop of Castabala, Dublin 1862, 495. Cf. Michael MacDonagh, Bishop Doyle, Dublin 1896, 105: `It was the outcome . . . of a too generous and over-sanguine impulse, to which with alterations of gloom and despair, Dr Doyle was subject during his career.' 48. Murphy, op. cit., 103, from the Eneas McDonnell Papers (Maynooth College). 49. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 337-44. 50. Maher, Letters, xi and 550. Maher attended the dying Doyle and reported one of his last acts was to pray for the Protestant controversialists of the time. 51. Healy, Maynooth, 360-2. 52. P. S. O'Hegarty, History of Ireland Under the Union, London 1952, 50. 53. `J.K.L.' [James Doyle], Letters on the State of Ireland Addressed to a Friend in England, Dublin 1825, 284. Cf. Morning Chronicle, 18 May 1824. 54. Broderick, op. cit., 59; Fitzpatrick, Doyle, II, 338, 458-9; A. D. Maclntyre, The Liberator, London 1964, 27. 55. `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Vindication, 7. 56. Broderick, op. cit., 46. Cf. Dublin Evening Post, 30 Oct. 1830. 57. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 5. 58. Lecky, op. cit., II, 280-1. 59. John O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, Moral, Political and Religious, London 1823, II, 112-15. For a contrast between this type of priest and the later Maynooth graduates see S. C. Hall, Retrospect of a Long Life, London 1883, I, 465 and S. M. Hussey, Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, London 1904, 114-26. 60. Lecky, op. cit., III, 356. Cf. Newenham, op. cit., 179-81 61. Peadar Mac Suibhne, `Early History of Carlow College', IER LXII (1943); Peadar Mac Suibhne, `Paul Cullen at Carlow College', Carloviana XII (1958), 23-30. 62. Maurice O'Connell, `Political Background to the Establishment of Maynooth College', 1ER LXXXV (1956), 331. 63. Healy, Maynooth, 194. 64. P. Duigenan, Fair Representation of the Present Political State of Ireland, Dublin 1798, 2. 65. B. Crotty, Letter to Lord Bexley in Reply to Charges Against the College of Maynooth, Dublin 1829, 40. Healy, Maynooth, 400, believes Crotty never answered Bexley's charges. 66. `Maynooth and the Irish University Question', Herder Correspondence (Jan. 1968), 15. Cf. Healy, Maynooth, for the establishment view of Maynooth's Gallicanism. 67. Herder Correspondence, op. cit., 14, says that by 1853 2 of the 4 archbishoprics, 21 of the 25 bishops, and 1,222 of the 2,291 diocesan priests had come from Maynooth. 68. H. D. Inglis, Journey Through Ireland During the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 1834, London 1834, II, 330Ø.

Notes to pages 14-19

321

69. John MacHale, Sermons and Discourses, ed. Thomas MacHale, Dublin 1883, 495. 70. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1821, XXIII, ff. 633-5, 667-8. 71. [John MacHale], Letters of Hierophilos to the English People on the Moral and Political State of Ireland, London 1822, 9, where he argued that the point where `obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure and not easily definable'. 72. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1832, XXV, ff. 609-13, letters of July 1832, apparently a record of a presentation made orally by MacHale to the pope. 73. Gwynn, 'Rome and the British Veto', op. cit., 258: 'The Pope intervened less from personal regard for MacHale than to prevent the British government from exercising what was becoming almost a right to veto candidates whom it disliked.' 74. John MacHale, Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church, new ed., Dublin 1842, 262. 75. Propaganda, Lettere, 1839, CCCXXI, ff. 155-6; cf. Broderick, op. cit., 195. For MacHale's popular following see H. Concannon, 'Canon Ulick Bourke, 1829-87', IER LXXIII (1950), 404-17. 76. D'Alton, History of the Archdiocese of Tuam, II, 5; cf. Desmond Bowen, Souperism: Myth or Reality?, Cork 1970, 54-66. 77. Nuala Costello, John MacHale, Dublin 1938, 41. 78. Broderick, op. cit., 65. 79. Quarterly Review LXVII (1841), 548. 80. Maher, Letters, 280. Cf. E. M. Dill, Maynooth, or The Plot Unravelled, Edinburgh n.d., and E. D. O'Beirne, Maynooth in 1834, Dublin 1835. 81. Broderick, op. cit., 81. Cf. R. L. Shell, Speeches, Dublin 1872, 50-4. 82. W. J. O'Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, 1800-85, London 1886, II, 33. 83. C. G. Duffy, League of North and South, London 1886, 32. 84. G. de Beaumont, Ireland, Social, Political and Religious, ed. W. C. Taylor, London 1839, II, 264. 85. Maher, Letters, lxii. 86. A. Cogan, Diocese of Meath, Dublin 1870, III, 510. 87. Ibid., III, 502. 88. W. E. H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, new ed., London 1903, I, 236. 89. Broderick, op. cit., 124. 90. Coulter, The Political Theory of Edward Maginn', op. cit., 107. 91. Broderick, op. cit., 124. 92. Hansard, xiii (1832), 573. Cf. The Pilot, 1 Aug. 1836. 93. J. Veneday, Ireland and the Irish During the Repeal Year, Dublin 1844, 49. Veneday was a German liberal Catholic. 94. Wyse, op. cit., I, 190. 95. O'Hegarty, op. cit., 158.

322

Notes to pages 19-25

96. J. B. Atkins, Life of Sir William Howard Russell, London 1911, I, 30. 97. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1828, XXV, f. 95a (30 Apr. 1828). 98. Broderick, op. cit., 142. 99. Londonderry Standard, 19 Jan. 1849. 100. E. Ashley, Life of Viscount Palmerston, London 1876, I, 46. 101. Alexander Knox, Essays, Dublin 1798, 62. 102. Coulter, `The Political Theory of Edward Maginn', op. cit., 107. 103. Newenham, View of Ireland, 332. 104. When the Irish emigrated in the years following Emancipation they brought their new `science' with them. Cf. Michael Cross, `Shiner War: Social Violence in the Ottawa Valley in the 1830s', Canadian Historical Review LIV (1973), 1-26, and its use in the cultural war with the French on the Ottawa river in the 1830s and 1840s. 105. Kinsella to Cullen, 31 Jan. 1831 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 35). 106. Keleher to Cullen, 25 Jan. 1833 (ibid., MS. 73). 107. MacHale to Cullen, 27 Dec. 1833 (ibid., MS. 126). 108. Thomas McCann, Waterford, to Cullen, 8 Jun. 1833 (ibid., MS. 88). 109. Ryan to Cullen, 19 Sep. 1833 (ibid., MS. 110). See also Ryan to Cullen, 11 Dec. 1833 (ibid., MS. 124) for Ryan's view of `infidelity and revolution' fostered by agitating clergy. 110. MacHale to Cullen, 15 Sep. 1838 (ibid., MS. 456). 111. Murray to Cullen, 4 Apr. 1839 (ibid., MS. 505). 112. MacHale to Cullen, 26 Apr. 1839 (ibid., MS. 502). 113. Maher to Cullen, 2 Jan. 1842 (ibid., MS. 702). 114. Murray to Cullen, 25 Apr. 1843 (ibid., MS. 794). 115. Murray to Cullen, 29 May 1843 (ibid., MS. 800). For Higgins's defence of his Mullingar speech see Murray to Cullen, 26 Jun. 1843 (ibid., MS. 802). 116. O'Reilly to Cullen, 21 Jan. 1845 (ibid., MS. 1011). 117. Cantwell to Cullen, 25 Feb. 1845 (ibid., MS. 1024). 118. Peadar Mac Suibhne, Paul Cullen and His Contemporaries, with Their Letters, Naas 1962-74, I, 312, 18 Feb. 1848. 119. Murray to Cullen, 10 Mar. 1849 (ibid., bound volume of Cullen Correspondence, p. 32). 120. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1847, XXIX, ff. 557-83. The account of Laffan's extravagance was from the Tipperary Vindicator, reprinted in the Dublin Evening Mail, 16 Aug. 1847. 121. Walsh to Cullen, 11 Mar. 1845 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 1032). 122. John A. Murphy, `O'Connell in His Time and Since', Irish Times, 6 Aug. 1975, Suppl., 2. 123. Wyse, op. cit., I, 239. 124. Letters on the Reunion of the Churches of England and Rome from and to Dr Doyle, Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare, John O'Driscol, Alexander Knox and Thomas Newenham, Dublin [1824], 25.

Notes to pages 26-31 323 125. 'Declan' [William Phelan], Case of the Church of Ireland Stated in a Letter to the Marquess Wellesley and a Reply to J.K.L., Dublin 1823, 84. Cf. Michael Hurst, Maria Edgeworth and the Public Scene, London 1969, 22, and the question of O'Connell continuing to accept the establishment `had he lived on into the fifties and sixties'. 126. William Phelan and Mortimer O'Sullivan, Digest of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committees of Parliament Appointed to Inquire into the State of Ireland, with Notes, London 1826, I, 108. 127. `A Protestant in Ireland', Series of Letters Showing the Insecurity and Danger of Granting What Is Termed Catholic Emancipation and Giving a Short View of the Tenets of the Popish Religion as A ffecting a Protestant State, London 1812, 162. Chapter II THE PROTESTANT MIND IN IRELAND (pp. 29-80) 1. `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Vindication of Irish Catholics, 40. Cf. James Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, London 1867, 166, on W. C. Plunket, Rector of Kilmoylan, Tuam, receiving £324 a year for his services to the four Protestants in the parish, and devoting his energies to militant Evangelicalism. 2. See `New Reformation', British Critic III (1828), 128, on Ulster parsons having no time for proselytising. 3. Cf. William Urwick, Brief Sketch of the Religious State of Ireland, Dublin 1852, 13-16, on the distribution of Protestant clergy. 550 Presbyterian General Assembly ministers were in Ulster, 20 in Leinster, 15 in Connaught, and 10 in Munster. The Established Church had 654 clergy in Ulster, 735 in Leinster, 199 in Connaught, and 673 in Munster. 4. Godkin, op. cit., 82, points out that many Presbyterians, including ministers, joined the United Irishmen, but `the majority of the leading conspirators were nominally connected with the Established Church'. 5. J. S. Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, London 1853, III, 522. 6. Ibid., 504. Cf. Hereward Senior, `The Early Orange Order, 17951870' in T. D. Williams, ed., Secret Societies in Ireland, Dublin 1973, 40, where Edward Hudson told Lord Charlemont in 1798 that volunteers who `six months ago were almost all United Irishmen are now complete Orangemen, which is more congenial with their feeling'. 7. PP, 1825, IX (181), 213. 8. Ibid., 221. 9. Ibid., 220. Presbyterians were then particularly upset by the 'speech of a Dr Drumgoole in Dublin'. 10. Ibid., 341, evidence of 22 Apr. 1825. 11. Ibid., 281.

324

Notes to pages 31-34

12. Cf. L. 6 Broin, Charles Gavan Duffy, Dublin 1967, on Dr McKnight, editor of the Banner of Ulster, one of the few Presbyterians to work with Catholics in the Irish Tenant League. 13. W. D. Killen, Reminiscences of a Long Life, London 1901, 20418: `The pope, indeed, as time advances, reveals increasing evidences that he is no other than the Chief Priest of Antichrist.' R. D. Edwards, Atlas of Irish History, London 1974, 99, notes that no Repeal monster meetings were held in the north, and only one in Ulster proper. 14. Reid, op. cit., III, 542. 15. Ibid., III, 551. 16. W. D. Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, London 1875, II, 442. Edgar worked with the Quaker, William Martin, who did much to inspire Fr Mathew in his work. Cf. W. D. Killen, Memoir of John Edgar, Belfast 1867, 27 and 77. It was the custom in many Ulster churches to give the minister whiskey when he descended from the pulpit and to press it upon him any time he visited in his parish. 17. The Repealer Repulsed! A Correct Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Repeal Invasion of Ulster: Dr Cooke's Challenge and Mr O'Connell's Declinature, Tactics and Flight ... with an Authentic Report of the Great Conservative Demonstrations in Belfast, on the 21st and 23rd of January 1841. Belfast 1841. 18. Reid, op. cit., III, 575. Presbyterian acceptance persuaded John MacHale to resist the National System in his archdiocese. 19. Reid, op. cit., III, 588. 20. Ibid., III, 590. 21. Ibid., III, 523. 22. Ibid., III, 589. 23. Ibid., III, 593. Godkin, op. cit., 83, said of Ulster: 'It is unquestionable that the superior social condition of that province is due in a great measure to Presbyterianism.' Urwick, op. cit., 16, noted that in Ulster there was one Protestant clergyman for every 1,405 inhabitants. There were only 615 Roman Catholic clergy in Ulster at that time. 24. T. Hamilton, History of the Irish Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh 1887, 168-9. In the 1826-29 period the Synod of Ulster had established an ineffectual Ulster Home Mission Society, and Irish preaching had been used in the Glens of Antrim. Cf. Clarke Irwin, History of Presbyterianism in Dublin and the South and West of Ireland, London 1890, 95-102, for later work in the south, and Henry McManus, Sketches of the Irish Highlands, London 1863. 25. Reid, op. cit., III, 579: 'As comparatively few of the Presbyterians are in circumstances of very great destitution, they have suffered less comparatively by the famine than either Episcopalians or Romanists.' 26. Cf. W. Gibson, Year of Grace, Edinburgh 1909, and I. Nelson,

Notes to pages 34-37 325 Year of Delusion, Belfast 1861, for conflicting views of the spiritual phenomenon known as the 'revival of 1859' which began among the Presbyterians of Antrim and was of intense concern to Ulster Protestants generally. 27. Urwick, op. cit., 16. 28. Anon., The Church in Ireland: Our Duty in Regard to Its Defence, London 1866, 7. 29. Godkin, op. cit., 105-6. Cf. William Reilly, Memorial of the Ministerial Life of the Rev. Gideon Ouseley, Irish Missionary, London 1847. 30. W. R. Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790-1850, London 1972, 116. 31. W. G. Campbell, Apostle of Kerry: The Life and Labours of the Rev. Charles Graham, and Those of Gideon Ouseley, Dublin 1868, 5. 32. Cf. ibid., 22 and 42, where a tough who struck him mysteriously died within a week, a priest who abused him fell downstairs, when drunk and died of a broken neck, and another priest who tried to cane Graham went mad. 33. Ibid., 72-3. 34. Ibid., 70-1. 35. William Arthur, Life of Gideon Ouseley, London and Toronto 1876, 9. 36. Ibid., 5. 37. See Edward Young, The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, to which is Added a Paraphrase on a Part of the Book of Job by the Late Dr Young, London 1795. Young's Centaur not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a Friend on the Life in Vogue, London 1783, is on the same theme, but in prose. Robespierre is reported to have kept a copy of Night Thoughts under his pillow. 38. Arthur, Ouseley, 18. 39. Reilly, Ouseley, 90, notes that McQuigg edited the Irish Bible under the direction of the British and Foreign Bible Society, using Bedell's original manuscript. He died in 1831, worn out by his preaching and editing. 40. Arthur, Ouseley, 159. Cf. M.D.S., Life of John Murphy, Priest and Patriot, Dublin 1880, 69, for Ouseley's preaching power. 41. Arthur, Ouseley, 195. Cf. Gideon Ouseley, Rare Discoveries: A Calm Reply to a Roman Catholic Prelate and his Confreres, Dublin 1823, 40-1, for his version of the `mild Gospel of Christ'. See Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790-1850, 118, for how Ouseley viewed the country people: 'The peasantry, who are by far the most numerous, are, tho' illiterate, a smart, keen, intelligent race and when not exasperated and inflamed by their clergy and by such as they deem to know what is fit to be done, they are generous, kind, good-natured people and rather inclined to be pious and to respect religion more than any of the other

326

Notes to pages 37-39

orders, if not perverted and corrupted, which, alas, is easily done. Many and many a time have I seen these poor sheep, at my first coming among them, before they were warned by their teachers, flock around me with countenances full of affection and goodwill, and stand sobbing and not infrequently falling down on their knees and weep aloud in the open street or field; but when it was found out by these woful men, they were cursed, put under penance, counselled, threatened or beaten, etc.—so the next time they would avoid me or come to persecute.' 42. Arthur, Ouseley, 205; Reilly, Ouseley, 208-9. 43. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1820-22, XXIII, f. 581, letter of Archbishop Curtis to his agent in Rome on the trouble caused by Methodists, and how in their struggle with the Church of Ireland they distorted those Catholic doctrines which they said the Established Church maintained. 44. Urwick, op. cit., 16. 45. Godkin, op. cit., 109. Cf. PP, 1825, IX (181), 195, where John Burnett, independent minister in Cork, speaks of declining congregations seeking converts from the Church of Ireland. Cf. William Urwick, jnr, Life and Letters `of William Urwick', London 1870, 54, and the resentment of the Established Church shown by the exceedingly able and evangelical Urwick. 46. G. Kitson Clark, Churchmen and the Condition of England, 1832-85, London 1973, 204. 47. Cf. Betsy Shackleton, Ballitore and Its Inhabitants Seventy Years Ago, ed. Richard Webb, Dublin 1862, on the Quaker role in the terror of '98, and Catholic and Protestant attitudes to the Friends. 48. James N. Richardson, Reminiscences of Friends in Ulster, Gloucester 1911, 8. Cf. E.C., 'Reminiscences of Belfast in the Olden Time, 1830-40', Belfast 1901 (Friends' Library, London, MS. 529/20), and Josiah Forster, 'Memorandum on the Journey to Ireland in 1832' (ibid., MS. Temp. 57/10). 49. Reid, op. cit., III, 577. For a statistical discussion of Church of Ireland population see William Phelan and Mortimer O'Sullivan, Digest of Evidence [on] the State of Ireland, London 1826, I, 32. 50. T. H. Lister, 'State of the Irish Church', Edinburgh Review LXI (1835), 502-9. Cf. James O'Connor, History of Ireland, 17981924, Dublin 1926, I, 224: 'In England twenty-six prelates ministered to 6,000,000 members of the Church of England; in Ireland there were eighteen prelates ministering to 500,000 out of a population of 7,000,000.' 51. Godkin, op. cit., 52 and 526. Cf. Duffy, Life in Two Hemispheres, I, 43, on his friend Godkin, an independent minister, one of the founders of the League of North and South, and `to his death was a writer on the Irish side of the National controversy'. For Catholic comment on the class composition of the Church of Ireland see Cogan, Diocese of Meath, III, 355-6.

Notes to pages 40-43 327 52. Edward Brynn, 'Church of Ireland Diocese in the Age of Catholic Emancipation', Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church (Jun. 1971), 192, notes that 'in Clogher by 1830 three-quarters of the beneficed clergy were members of the middle and upper gentry class, or related to the peerage'. Cf. Triennial Visitation Book of the Diocese of Clogher, 1829. (National Library of Ireland, MS. 3145). The Bishop of Clogher then was Lord Robert Ponsonby Tottenham Loftus, son of the Marquis of Ely. 53. Godkin, op. cit., 217. 54. Ibid. 55. Stuart to Hardwicke, 27 Sep. 1804 (BM Add. MS. 35752, f. 72). Loftus was given the see of Killaloe. 56. Waterford to Hardwicke, 26 Jan. 1804 (BM Add. MS. 35750, ff. 207 and 209). 57. Stuart to Hardwicke, 27 Nov. 1801 (BM Add. MS. 35771, f. 152). 58. Stuart to Hardwicke, 27 Nov. 1801 (BM Add. MS. 35771, f. 153). Beresford was duly translated to Kilmore to give the see indifferent guidance from 1802 to 1841. Cf. Thomas Lyons, Case of Clerical Oppression, Illustrative of the Present State of the Internal Government of the Church in Ireland, London 1834. 59. Stuart to Addington, 29 Dec. 1801 (BM Add. MS. 35771, f. 173): 'the most fatal blow the Church has ever received ... a bishop whose immoralities have made him infamous'; Stuart to Addington, 14 Jan. 1802 (ibid., f. 181): 'Let him stay ... in the Catholic part of Ireland where he could do little mischief.' See also Michael MacDonagh, Viceroy's Post-Bag, London 1904, 40 ff. 60. Charles Warburton to Stuart, 2 Apr. 1810 (National Library of Ireland, Richmond MS. 63/60). 61. N. D. Emerson, 'Church Life in the Nineteenth Century' in W. A. Phillips, ed., History of the Church of Ireland, Oxford 1933, III, 332. 62. J. B. Leslie, Ardfert and Aghadoe Clergy and Parishes, Dublin 1940, 11. 63. Peel to Beresford, 11 Nov. 1844 (BM Add. MS. 40553, f. 142). Peel enclosed a copy of the letter he sent to Knox. 64. Beresford to Peel, 14 Nov. 1844 (ibid., f. 144). 65. R. Knox to Peel, 14 Nov. 1844 (ibid., f. 146). 66. Peel to R. Knox, 16 Nov. 1844 (ibid., f. 148). 67. Heytesbury to Peel, n. d. (ibid., f. 150). 68. Beresford to Eliot, 13 Jun. 1843 (BM Add. MS. 40480, f. 227). 69. Beresford to Eliot, 12 May 1843 (BM Add. MS. 40528, f. 322322b.). Knox was succeeded in 1849 by an Englishman, William Higgin, who had been Dean of Limerick. 70. See Edward Brynn, 'Robert Peel and the Church of Ireland', Journal for Religious History VII (1973), 191-207. Cf. Robert Shipkey, 'Problems of Irish Patronage During the Chief Sec-

328 Notes to pages 43-46 retaryship of Robert Peel, 1812-18', Historical Journal X (1967), 41-56. 71. C. S. Parker, Sir Robert Peel from his Private Correspondence, London 1899, I, 324-5. In the same year Peel did appoint an Englishman, the scholarly Richard Laurence, as Archbishop of Cashel. Lord Liverpool had to resist the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington and Marquis Wellesley that their 'errant brother' Gerald be given an Irish bishopric; see Liverpool to Wellesley, 19 Aug. 1826 (BM Add. MS. 37304, ff. 177-8). 72. James Godkin, Religious History of Ireland, London 1873, 241. Thomas Pakenham in his Year of Liberty, London 1969, 403, n. 43, confuses John George with his uncle, the Bishop of Kilmore, and suggests that he had been a rake. 73. Edward Brynn, 'Robert Peel and the Church of Ireland,' Journal for Religious History VII (1973), 195, mistakes Jocelyn for an Englishman. 74. Correct Account of the Horrible Occurrence which Took Place at a Public House in St James Market, London 1822. In this pamphlet is a lithograph by J. L. Marks, entitled 'Confirmation, or the Bishop and the Soldier', and the theme is the use of 'every powerful engine ... to veil the vices of the privileged'. See also The Bishop!! Particulars of the Charge Against the Hon. Percy Jocelyn, Bishop of Clogher, London [1822], 10, with note of his ecclesiastical emoluments and social connections. When Castlereagh committed suicide it was reportedly because he feared being accused of 'the same crime as the Bishop of Clogher'; see H. M. Hyde, Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh, London 1967, 57, for this theory. 75. PP, 1807, V (78), 58 ff. Letters to and from the Lord Lieutenant to the archbishops. 76. Ibid., 312-13. 77. Ibid., 302. Mr Blackwood was continuing his bad habits in his 1820 return. 78. PP, 1820, IX (93), 310. 79. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 393. 80. Edward Brynn, 'Church of Ireland Diocese', op. cit., 188. For a review of the reforms carried out in the dioceses of Killala and Achonry see Bowen, Souperism, 44-51. 81. Godkin, op. cit., 227. Godkin's scandal reports can be checked in PP, 1837, XXI (500), 123 and 415. The corps of the Limerick precentorship were the benefices of Nantenan, Kilfenny, Morgans and Loughill, with cure, and the rectories of Shanagolden, Tomdeely and Knocknegaul, without cure. Warburton received a gross of £755 from the first union and paid a curate £50. 82. Godkin, op. cit., 175. 83. PP, 1825, VII (20), 387, evidence of John O'Driscol, 15 Jun. 1824. 84. Elrington to Peel, 27 Mar. 1813 (BM Add. MS. 40225, f. 292) and 21 Mar. 1814 (BM Add. MS. 40235, f. 250).

Notes to pages 46-51

329

85. Godkin, op. cit., 272-3. See also his description (p. 294) of St Canice's, Kilkenny, where there was a dean, precentor, dean's vicar, precentor's vicar, vicars choral, numerous prebendaries, and `the most puny and miserable attempt at choral service I have ever witnessed'. 86. Ibid., 274. 87. Mary Condon, 'Irish Church and the Reform Ministries', Journal of British Studies I, (1964), 120-42. 88. Godkin, op. cit., xii. Godkin says of his own work that he embarked upon it as an Irishman 'in the interests of Protestantism and the Church'. He spent two years investigating each diocese and talking to 'all classes and ranks of the community'. His work reflected thirty years of study. 89. Stuart to Brodrick, 24 Mar. 1808 (National Library of Ireland, Brodrick MS. 8869/5). 90. Godkin, op. cit., xi. Even Primate Beresford discovered this when he shifted his ground on the question of education; see Chapter VI below. 91. Newenham, View of Ireland, 177. 92. Ibid., 261. 93. J. T. Ball, Reformed Church of Ireland, 1537-1889, London 1890, 250; Cf. de Beaumont, Ireland, Social, Political and Religious, II, 252-9. 94. Peel to Whately, 2 Mar. 1829 (BM Add. MS. 40399, f. 13). 95. PP, 1825, IX (181), 189. 96. `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Vindication of Irish Catholics, 45. 97. Newenham, op. cit., 332. 98. Ibid. 99. Gower to Clare, 22 Sep. 1828 (BM Add. MS. 40326, ff. 65-6). 100. George Miller, Policy of the Roman Catholic Question Discussed in a Letter to the Rt Hon. W. C. Plunket, London 1826, 54. Cf. George Miller, Speech to the Protestants of Fermanagh, 5 May 1829 [Dublin 1829? ]. Miller, a Fellow of TCD, was a very popular lecturer. 101. PP, 1825, IX (521), 275. 102. Lloyd to Peel, 24 Feb. 1829 (BM Add. MS. 40343, f. 390). 103. PP, 1825, IX (181), 193. 104. Newenham, op. cit., 329-30. Cf. Sir Harcourt Lees, The Antidote: Letter to the Rt Hon. W. C. Plunket, and other Advocates for Unrestricted Civil and Religious Liberty, Dublin 1821: 'Reasons for Excluding Catholics from Power,' Anti-Catholic Magazine I (1829), 65, on the teaching of Anglade, professor at Maynooth, and MacHale, Bishop of Maronia. 105. `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Letters on the State of Ireland, 69. 106. Samuel O'Sullivan, Remains, ed. J. C. Martin and Mortimer O'Sullivan, Dublin 1853, I, x. 107. Anon., Evil of Separation from the Church of England Considered in a Series of Letters Addressed Chiefly to the Rev.

330 Notes to pages 51-53 Peter Roe, Minister of St Mary's, Kilkenny, Kilkenny 1815. 108. Thomas Elrington, Letter from the Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns on the Church Temporalities Act, Dublin 1833. Cf. Godkin, op. cit., 45-51, where he comments, in his own style, on the Crown and the Church of Ireland: `The Holy Spirit which bloweth where it listeth, cannot act, say the Anglicans, without royal licence.' 109. John Maguire, Letters in Vindication of the Church of Ireland, London 1850. The Vicar of Boyle was apt to include ideas of John Jewel, S. T. Coleridge, and William Paley in a rather eclectic `British tradition' assertion of High Church principles. 110. Edward Nangle, The Ancient Catholic Church Defended Against Romish Novelties, Dublin 1834, 3-98. Cf. R. Murray, Outlines of the History of the Catholic Church in Ireland, London 1840, x, where Charlotte Elizabeth [Phelan, afterwards Tonna}, in her preface to this volume by the Dean of Ardagh, compares R. J. McGhee to St Patrick, who also resisted the `Romish See'. See also Edward Norman, Supremacy of the Pope: Lecture at Kingscourt, Co. Cavan, 7 April 1841, Dublin 1841, 19 ff. 111. W. Pakenham Walsh, Saints and Saint Worship, Dublin 1851, 28. Cf. Murray, op. cit., 68-80. 112. W. M. Brady, Alleged Conversion of the Irish Bishops to the Reformed Religion at the Accession of Queen Elizabeth and the Assumed Descent of the Present Establishment Hierarchy in Ireland from the Ancient Irish Church Disproved, 4th ed., London 1866, 32-3. 113. Ibid., 36. 114. Ibid., 39. Brady converted to Roman Catholicism in 1873 and lived in Rome until his death in 1894, writing voluminously on Irish affairs. 115. William Lee, Some Strictures on Dr Brady's Pamphlet in which he Denies the Descent of the Hierarchy of the Present Church of Ireland from the Ancient Irish Church, Dublin 1866; Patrick F. Moran, Episcopal Succession in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, being Remarks on Some Recent Statements of Archdeacon Lee, London 1866; A. T. Lee, Irish Episcopal Succession: The Recent Statement of Mr Froude and Dr Brady Respecting the Irish Bishops in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Examined, Dublin 1867; T. W. Roe, The Church of Ireland Before the Reformation and the Present Established Church in Ireland Proved to be the Same Church as Founded by St Patrick, Belfast 1866. 116. George Salmon, Infallibility of the Church: Course of Lectures in the Divinity School of the University of Dublin, 5th ed., London 1853. 117. William Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses, 4th ed., London 1755, I, 76. 118. J. D'Arcy Sirr, Memoir of the Hon. and Most Rev. Power le Poer Trench, Last Archbishop of Tuam, Dublin 1845, 386.

Notes to pages 53-57 331 119. Ibid., 384. 120. Charles Boyton, Speech Delivered at a Meeting of the Protestant Conservative Society, 10 July 1832, Dublin 1832. 121. Diary of Captain T. L. Hodges, 1798 (BM Add. MS. 40066). 122. de Beaumont, op. cit., I, 268, said that even the `Indian in his forests, and the negro in his chains' was better off than the Irish peasant. 123. See Carlow Morning Post, 22 Aug. 1822, for a description of the scene as 20,000 gathered for a public execution, delayed for the arrival of the Dublin coach. 124. William Pickels, `Case of a Young Woman who Continues to Discharge from her Stomach Insects in Different Stages of Development', Transactions of the College of Physicians of Dublin IV (1823), 189-222. Protestant controversialists made propaganda use of this unfortunate case, neglecting to mention the anger of the parish priest when he discovered what the girl was doing. 125. R. S. Brooke, Recollections of the Irish Church, London 1877, I, 102. Survival probably reflected the man's compensation for cholera's dehydration. Brooke makes a teetotaler's point of the value of water over alcohol during sickness. 126. Elizabeth Fry and Joseph Gurney, Report Addressed to the Marquis Wellesley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Respecting Their Late Visit to that Country, London 1827, 55-6. The great need,

these visitors thought, was mastery by the people of their `evil passions'. 127. John Walsh, Sketches of Ireland Sixty Years Ago, Dublin 1847, 3, describes the ferocious faction-fights of Coombe tailors and Ormond Quay butchers, broken by a Sunday `truce of God'. 128. C. B. Cavour, Thoughts on Ireland, London 1868, 77. 129. C. J. Blomfield, Uses of a Standing Ministry and an Established Church, London 1834, 37. 130. R. M. Martin, Ireland Before and After the Union, London 1848, 367. 131. Urwick, Brief Sketch of the Religious State of Ireland, 10. 132. Blomfield, op. cit., 40. 133. PP, 1825, IX (521), 277, where Richard Laurence, the scholarly Archbishop of Cashel, said of the people: `They seem sensible that the residence of the Protestant clergyman is an advantage to them.' 134. Brooke, op. cit., I, 36-7. 135. Clark, Churchmen and the Condition of England, 1832-85, 35, speaks of the English situation, which was applicable also to Ireland at this time. 136. O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, 133. This was, he said, `considering the establishment as a mere secular machine'. 137. PP, 1825, IX (181), 195. 138. `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Letters on the State of Ireland, 79.

332 Notes to pages 58-62 139. PP, 1831-32, XXI (508), 351-4 and 360-2. See also Bowen, Souperism, 47-8. 140. `Calendar of Beresford Correspondence from Armagh Library held in Representative Church Body Library, Dublin (RCB MS. A/12). Items 102 to 122 contain lengthy correspondence between Phelan and Beresford on a number of important issues concerning the role of the Established Church in Irish society. Cf. Samuel O'Sullivan, Remains, III, 91-2, on the closeness of Phelan and Beresford. Beresford himself published very little. 141. Phelan's evidence to the House of Commons and House of Lords committees on the state of Ireland in 1825 were published separately by Tims of Dublin in 1825. His evidence before both committees was also published by Cade11 of London in 1826, in two volumes, together with that of Mortimer O'Sullivan, with notes by both clerics. 142. William Phelan, Remains, with a Biographical Memoir by John Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, London 1832, I, 11 and passim. 143. Cf. pp. 9-10 and 14-15 above. Cf. Urwick, Urwick, 52: `Popery seemed to have been crushed and disheartened.' 144. William Phelan, The Bible Not the Bible Society, Dublin 1817, 47. 145. Ibid., 48. 146. Ibid., 51. 147. Ibid., 55. 148. 'Declan' [William Phelan], Case of the Church of Ireland Stated in a Letter to the Marquess Wellesley and a Reply to the Charges of J.K.L., Dublin 1823, 38-60. 149. 'Declan' [William Phelan], The Case of the Church of Ireland Stated in a Second Letter to the Marquess of Wellesley, Dublin 1824, 70. 150. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 494. 151. L. Delahogue, `De Membris' in Tractatus de Theologia, Dublin 1795, 404. Cf. Thomas Elrington, Charge Delivered by the Lord Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns, 1 June 1827, Dublin 1827, 33, for a further criticism of Delahogue's theology. 152. O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, I, 250. Phelan knew O'Driscol to be no friend to the establishment, but respected his opinions. 153. Ibid., I, 135. 154. L. E. Elliott-Binns, Early Evangelicals, London and Greenwich, Conn. 1953, 457. Not all `serious churchmen' were Evangelicals. Cf. Knox, Remains, I, 281 and 306; II, 4 and 13, for the opposition of an Irish High Churchman to anti-Evangelical theology; or the early numbers of the Christian Examiner (1825-69), for interest in High Church divines like Ussher. Richard Mant's annotated Book of Common Prayer (1820) and his edition of The Bible with Notes by Anglican Divines (1814) provide good examples of Irish High Church thought. 155. `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Letters on the State of Ireland, 67. Doyle appre-

Notes to pages 62-65

333

ciated the Anglican bishop's opposition to `the wild and fantastical canting of some self-sanctified enthusiast'. 156. R. W. Jackson, `Some Early Irish Evangelicals', Churchman LXXI (1957), 58 ff. 157. John Pratt, Eclectic Notes, London 1865, 3-6. 158. W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, London 1878, II, 611. Brooke, Recollections, I, 137 suggests that three-quarters of the Irish parsons were Evangelicals. Cf. also Knox, Remains, IV, 501. 159. Ball, Reformed Church of Ireland, 210, notes that the Evangelical leaders in England—Wilberforce, Ashley, Bishop Ryde, the two Sumners, and others—voted for Catholic Emancipation `when the Protestant drum was beating wildly in 1829'. 160. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 252. 161. Ibid., I, 256, 300, where further cures were reported in 1824. The prince died as titular Bishop of Sardica in 1849. See Mrs Hamilton Madden, Memoir of the Rt Rev. Robert Daly, Lord Bishop of Cashel, London 1875, 104, for a Protestant view of his powers when he visited Ireland. 162. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 251. 163. 'A Graduate of Trinity College', Prophecies of Pastorini Analysed and Refuted, Dublin 1823, on the `extirpation of all who deny and renounce the unscriptural doctrines of popery'. Cf. `Pastor Fido', Pastorini Proved to Be a Bad Prophet and a Worse Divine: An Address to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, Dublin 1823. 164. PP, 1825, VII (20), 142-3, evidence of Major Warburton on Pastorini's prophecies, 26 May 1824. 165. Ibid., 349, evidence of 14 Jun. 1824. 166. James Doyle, Pastoral Address, 4th ed., Dublin 1822, 11. Cf. pp. 9-10 above. 167. James Doyle, Pastoral Instructions for the Lent of 1825, Carlow 1825, 19. 168. Millenial speculation was nothing new in the Anglican Church: it was a theme of Foxe's Book of Martyrs—the historic mission of Englishmen to crusade against Antichrist. See W. M. Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603-60, London 1969, 23 and 31, and W. M. Lamont, `Richard Baxter, the Apocalypse and the Mad Major', Past and Present LV (1972), 68-91. It had been of special interest to Archbishop Ussher in Ireland. 169. Cf. James Hatley Frere, Combined View of the Prophecies of Daniel, Esdras and S. John, London 1815, and `Basilicus' [Lewis Way], Thoughts on the Scriptural Expectations of the Christian Church, London 1823. 170. `A Graduate of Trinity College', Prophecies of Pastorini Analysed and Refuted, 19. 171. E. R. Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930, Chicago 1970, 6. Cf. Edward King, Remarks on the Signs of the Times, London 1798. The upheavals of 1848 also drew millenarian attention. See James Hatley Frere,

334

Notes to pages 65-68

Great Continental Revolution Marking the Expiration of the Times of the Gentiles, 1847-48, London 1848. 172. Sandeen, op. cit., 17. Cf. G. S. Faber, Fate of Papal Rome and the Pre-Millenial and Post-Millenial Theories Considered, Dublin

1850, 21, for the opinion that the 'Franco-Roman emperorship .. . is the predicted short-lived and sword-slain seventh head'. 173. T. R. Birks, Memoir of the Rev Edward Bickersteth, London 1852, 2 vols. See Catherine Marsh, Life of the Rev. William Marsh, London 1867. 174. Birks, Bickersteth, II, 43, on the danger that 'immediate work of the Lord is disregarded for the uncertain future'. Many studies became very abstract. Cf. C. M. Fleury, Prophecy as Relating to the Russian Empire, Dublin 1851, 9: 'Whether the man of sin be the Czar or the Pope of Rome, that there will be a termination of all iniquity, all apostasy ... we know Christ shall come to reign with His ancients gloriously.' This was a lecture by the chaplain of the Molyneux Asylum delivered at the YMCA at the Rotunda, Dublin. Cf. Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England, London 1975. 175. Sandeen, op. cit., 10-11. Cf. Lewis Way, Letter to the Bishop of St David's; Petition of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews, London 1818. 176. Birks, Bickersteth, II, 61. Cf. H. C. S. Moule, Charles Simeon, London 1948, 96, and G. R. Balleine, History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England, London 1933, 172. 177. Marsh, Marsh, 45. They were fascinated by biblical references

such as Isaiah 11: 12 and Romans 11:5. 178. See H. P. Liddon, Life of E. B. Pusey, London 1893, II, 248-60; E. Hodder, Life of Shaftesbury, London 1887, II, 310-11: 'dearer than all ... hoping and praying for the Second Coming of the Son of Man'. 179. Balleine, op. cit., 207. 180. See the voluminous writings of Charlotte Elizabeth [Phelan, afterwards Tonna], 1790-1846, and her Personal Recollections, London 1854. Her tale The Rockire: An Irish Story, London 1828, went through four editions by 1846. 181. F. K. Brown, Fathers of the Victorians, Cambridge 1961, 342. On pp. 329-40 he lists the various important Evangelical religious and philanthropic foundations, many of them concerned with Ireland. See Chapter V below. 182. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 249. For other Trinity Evangelicals see Brooke, Recollections, I, 16-17, on the influence of Dr Joseph Stopford, who had the largest class of students in the college, and Dr Henry Maturin and Dr John Ussher. 183. Richard Mant, Episcopal Jurisdiction Asserted as the Law of the Church, and the Rule of the Clergy's Ministrations, Dublin 1839, and R. J. McGhee, Episcopal and Clerical Duty Considered in a Letter to the Bishop of Down, Dublin 1835. For Elrington's

Notes to pages 68-73 335 opposition see Correspondence Between the Bishop of Ferns and the Earl of Mountcashel on the Church Establishment, Dublin 1830, and the Christian Examiner (1835), 608. 184. Brooke, op. cit., I, 32. 185. Godkin, op. cit., 209. 186. PP, 1837, XXI (500), 77. Charles Lindsay was the incumbent from 1829, but was also incumbent of Monkstown, Kill, Tullow and Dalkey, with cure, and was a canon and Archdeacon of Kildare. Cf. details for St Mark's, pp. 74-5. Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners on the Revenues and Condition of the Established Church in Ireland, Dublin 1868, 346, reveals there was no change at St Mark's, though St Mary's now had a new incumbent. 187. Godkin, op. cit., 301. According to the Fourth Report on Ecclesiastical Revenue and Patronage (PP, 1837, XXI (500), 2245), Mr Radcliff's net income was £1,371, plus the income of £548 from the rectory of Fennagh, Co. Carlow. One curate was employed at Enniscorthy and paid £92. 188. Samuel Madden, Memoir of the late Rev. Peter Roe, Dublin 1842, 411. 189. Peter Roe, Friendly Letter to the Roman Catholic Clergymen of Carlow, Dublin 1826, 12. Cf. Carlow Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1822, on Roe and other speakers at meetings of the Hibernian Bible Society: 'There was not a single expression made use of by any of the speakers, calculated to offend the most fastidious taste, or wound the most sensitive mind.' 190. Roe, op. cit., 4. For a High Church criticism of Roe see Anon., Evil of Separation from the Church of England Considered in a Series of Letters Addressed Chiefly to the Rev. Peter Roe, Minister of St Mary's, Kilkenny, Kilkenny 1815, where he is accused of being a Brownist, i.e. a follower of the sixteenth-century Puritan separatist Robert Browne. 191. Sirr, Trench, 12 and 37. 192. Ibid., 57-8. 193. Ibid., 415. 194. Godkin, op. cit., 331, said that Daly 'laid hands suddenly' on more 'literates', or non-university graduates, than all Irish bishops put together. Many of them were Protestant zealots from dissenting sects. 195. Sin, Trench, 495. 196. Ibid., 47. Sin notes that when Trench first came to Elphin he had in no way encouraged proselytism. 197. Ibid., 141 and 168. 198. Ibid., 487, as president of the Hibernian Bible Society, 1827. For a typical Tuam Evangelical see Charles Seymour, Twenty-Six Sermons, and a Brief Memoir of the Author's Life by Charlotte Elizabeth [Phelan, afterwards Tonna], Dublin 1835. 199. Freeman's Journal, 23 Nov. 1824.

336

Notes to pages 74-77

200. Godkin, op. cit., 392. Godkin recognised Trench's altruism: 'He might with such revenues have enjoyed life in London, or on the Continent, like some of his brethren.'

201. Report of the Discussion at the Carlow Bible Meeting on Thursday 18 and Friday 19 November 1824, Dublin 1824; Correspondence which Arose Out of the Discussion at Carlow Between a Protestant Clergyman, Rev. Robert Daly, and a Roman Catholic Clergyman, Rev. William Clowry, London 1825. Cf. pp. 99-100 below.

202. Report of the Carlow Bible Meeting, 1824, 105. 203. Report of the Speeches Delivered at a Meeting Called for the Purpose of Religious Discussion at Carlow, Dublin 1825. Daly's speech is on pp. 65-80. The key speaker was Joseph Singer. Cf. Robert Fishbourne, Advance and Retreat of the Roman Catholic Priests at Carlow, Dublin 1825. 204. Godkin, op. cit., 322. 205. Robert Daly, ed., Letters and Papers by the Late Theodosia, Viscountess Powerscourt, Dublin 1838; Sandeen, op. cit., 36; cf. Bowen, Souperism, 120, and Madden, Daly, 158-9. 206. Godkin, op. cit., 322. 207. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1823-27, XXIV, ff. 135-6, letter from James Young, curate in Bray parish, Co. Wicklow, 11 Sep. 1823, on the work of the Protestant 'padroni' in this area. See Robert Daly, ed., Focalöir Gaoidhilge Sags-Bhearla: or An Irish-English Dictionary, Dublin 1832. This was a second edition in Irish type of the 1768 dictionary of John O'Brien, Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne. Cf. E. Cahill, 'Irish Scholarship in the Penal Era', IER LVI (1940), 28.

208. Letters of the Rev. Robert Daly to Daniel O'Connell with the Reply of Mr O'Connell, Dublin 1826, 14. For Daly's failings as a diocesan see Godkin, op. cit., 330-2. 209. W. G. Carroll, The Rt Rev. James Thomas O'Brien, Late Lord Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin: A Memoir and a Summary of His Writings, Dublin 1875, 6-7. Unlike Sirr's memoir of Trench or Mrs Madden's recollections of Daly, this study of O'Brien is critical at times. Carroll was the incumbent of St Bridget's, Dublin. 210. Ibid., 11. Cf. Ball, Reformed Church of Ireland, 277, and J. T. O'Brien, Attempt to Explain and Establish the Doctrine of Justifi-

cation by Faith Alone in Ten Sermons on the Nature and Effect of Faith, 2nd ed., Cambridge [1862], xxii, for O'Brien's 'justification' of his eclectic theory. 211. Cf. also J. T. O'Brien, Tractarianism: Its Present State and the Only Safeguard Against It, Dublin 1850, and his charge of 1851 directed against the 'papal aggresion'. After the deaths of Alexander Knox in 1831 and Bishop John Jebb in 1833 little intellectual opposition was offered to the High Church Evangelical theology in the Church of Ireland.

Notes to pages 77-84 337 212. Carroll, O'Brien, 17. Cf. especially O'Brien's published speeches of 1849 and 1852, his Irish Education Question, Dublin 1854, his Letter to the Clergy, Dublin 1860, and John Garrett, Education in Ireland: Comparison of the Advice of the Lord Primate and the Bishop of Ossory, Dublin 1860. 213. Carroll, O'Brien, 8; Godkin, op. cit., 258. 214. W. B. Mant, Memoirs of the Rt Rev. Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor and of Dromore, Dublin 1857, 20-1. 215. Verschoyle was an honorary secretary of the Church Education Society. See his Church Educational System and the National System of Education, Dublin 1855. Godkin, op. cit., 215, says his change of heart 'brought upon him a storm of reproaches, for which he was consoled with the see of Kilmore, having first got the stepping-stone of the deanery of Ferns'. On Beresford, Verschoyle and the education question see James Godkin, Education in Ireland: Its History, Institutions, System, Statistics and Progress, London 1862, 103-4. D. H. Akenson, Irish Education Experiment, London 1970, 287, calculates that at midcentury the advocates of the CES were roughly 'three-quarters of the clergy and the larger proportion of the hierarchy'. 216. R. S. Gregg, 'Faithful unto Death': Memorials of the Life of John Gregg, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross, Dublin 1879, 180. 217. See John Gregg, Missionary Visit to Achill, Dublin 1850, and A Day in Doon, Dublin 1853. 218. Gregg, 'Faithful unto Death', 225. See John Gregg, Charge to the Clergy of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross, at the Ordinary Visitation, 1866, Dublin 1866, 28-9, on his love of the truth of the 'Reformed Episcopal Church in this country'. 219. Clark, Churchmen and the Condition of England, 1832-85, 71. Clark also remarks that the failure of intellectual accommodation was not always a bad thing—considering some of the social ideas of the political economists. 220. Moule, Simeon, 185, letter of 7 Dec. 1817, to 'one who has been urged to preach very strongly'. A good example of imbalance in the Evangelical approach was their blindness to the need for secular reforms in landed estate management, while they showed concern to have 'moral agents' at work among the tenantry. Cf. W. A. Maguire, Downshire Estates in Ireland, 1801-45, Oxford 1972, 207. Chapter III THE ERA OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY (pp. 83-123) 1. Michael MacDonagh, Bishop Doyle, Dublin 1896, 85. 2. J. A. Coulter, The Political Theory of Dr Edward Maginn, Bishop of Derry, 1846-49', IER XCVIII (1962), 104. Cf. Phelan and O'Sullivan, Digest of Evidence, 76, on Daniel O'Connell M

338 Notes to pages 84-86 referring to such observances: `For after all, the spirit of civil and religious liberty is as dear to us as to the Protestants.' See also, R. B. Walker, `Religious Changes in Liverpool in the Nineteenth Century,' Journal of Ecclesiastical History XIX (1968), 199, on the friendly relations in Liverpool, where many Roman Catholic chapels were built through Protestant contributions. 3. Edinburgh Review XVII (1810), 38. Jonathan Pim, Condition and Prospects of Ireland, Dublin 1848, 11, says of this time: `It may well be doubted whether any serious wish was generally felt for the conversion of the lower classes of the Irish to Protestantism.' 4. R. S. Tighe, Observations and Reflections on the State of Ireland, Dublin 1804, 8. Newenham, View of Ireland, 331, believed that `the age of wild fanaticism, sottish bigotry, and tyrannic intolerance has passed away'. 5. Newenham, op. cit., 322. 6. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 272, where Sheil refers to the year 1823, just before the Emancipation crisis began. 7. J. A. Reynolds, The Catholic Emancipation Crisis, in Ireland, New Haven 1954, 68. Cf. Wyse, Historical Sketch of the Late Catholic Association, I, 194-5, for O'Connell's greeting of King George IV when he visited Dublin in 1821. On Roman Catholic attitudes to the early Kildare Place Society see PP, 1825, VII (20), 392, evidence of John O'Driscol. See also T. Wyse, Speech on Irish Education, Dublin 1835, 13. 8. Wyse, Catholic Association, I, 194. 9. O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, I, 153. In his Thoughts and Suggestions on the Education of the Peasantry of Ireland, London, 1820, 18-19, he spoke of the Roman Catholics welcoming from the Protestants `the spirit of a gentle and holy administration'. 10. Petition to Peel by William Fitzpatrick, Roman Catholic curate of St Michan's Parish, Dublin, for the position of chaplain at the city jail (BM Add. MS. 40266), his application having been approved by John Rowley, Rector of St Michan's, 21 Apr. 1817. 11. Samuel O'Sullivan, Remains, III, 170-1. 12. Mant, Mant, 110. 13. Ibid., 124. Six pages of his fifty-two-page charge dealt with the challenge of Romish Error'. 14. Ibid., 143. 15. Ibid., 144. 16. Richard Mant, Episcopal Jurisdiction Asserted as the Law of the Church and the Rule of the Clergy's Ministrations, London 1834, 32-8. 17. Richard Mant, Letter to Lord Melbourne on Whether the Church of Rome Agrees with the Church of England in All the Fundamentals of Christianity, London 1836, in answer to Melbourne's argument that when the two churches were so

Notes to pages 87-90 339 similar, missionaries should not be sent among the Roman Catholics. See also his Romanism and Holy Scripture Compared, London 1836, and The Church the Guide of Her Minister's Conduct and Teaching; A Visitation Charge, London 1836. 18. William Magee, Works, with a Memoir of His Life by Rev. A. H. Kenney, London 1842, I, 1-497, and II, 1-107. Canon J. B. Leslie in his Derry Clergy and Parishes, Enniskillen 1937, 139, aptly remarks about the work that it was once `considered the most scholarly work on the subject, but is now practically waste paper'. See also T. Meltrop, Life of William Magee, Dublin n.d., 8-9. 19. Kenney, `Memoir' in Magee, Works, xl. For the government's difficulty in dealing with Magee see R. Shipkey `Problems of Irish Patronage', Historical Journal X (1967), 49-51; Edward Brynn, `Robert Peel and the Church of Ireland', Journal for Religious History, VII (1973), 192-3 (where he is incorrectly called Robert Magee); and BM Add. MS. 40291, f. 153. 20. James and Freeman Wills, The Irish Nation, Its History and its Biography, London 1875, IV, 401. 21. Ibid., 402. 22. William Magee, `Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Raphoe at the Primary Visitation, October 1821' in Works, II, 401. 23. Michael McCarthy, Priests and People in Ireland, Dublin 1903, 147, records Magee's quip when he heard that George Moore had given his wealth to the Roman Catholic Church: 'It was the largest premium on insurance against fire which he had ever heard of.' 24. Meltrop, Magee, 18-19. 25. William Magee, Charge Delivered at His Primary Visitation, 24 October 1822, Dublin 1822, 22. 26. Cf. Edward Hare, Refutation of the Charges Against the Methodists Advanced by the Rev. Dr Magee in the New Edition of his Discourses, London 1810. 27. Magee, Charge, 24 October 1822, 27. 28. 'Bibliophilos', Some Remarks on the Charge of Dr Magee, Dublin 1822, 4-9. The charge shared remarkably the viewpoint of Richard Woodward, Bishop of Cloyne, in his Present State of the Church of Ireland, Dublin 1808. 29. Patrick Curtis, Two Letters Respecting the Horrible Act of Placing a Calf's Head on the Altar of the Chapel of Ardee, and also His Answer to the Protestant Archbishop Magee's Charge Against the Roman Catholic Religion, Dublin 1822, 5. It was widely rumoured that W. C. Plunket had advised Magee to initiate the 'Second Reformation', taking advantage of the ignorant, awkward, timid, blundering priests. See Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 375. 30. Ibid., 7. Curtis remarked how different in tone the charge was

340 Notes to pages 90-94 from Beresford's `liberality and decorous moderation of utterance'. 31. Patrick Curtis, Third Letter, Positively Denying that the Person Who Was Guilty of Placing the Calf's Head Upon the Altar of the Chapel of Ardee has been Discovered, and Further Remarks on Dr Magee's Unfounded Charge Against the Roman Catholic Religion, Dublin 1822, 7. 32. Doyle's remarks are to be found in Charge of the Archbishop of Dublin to the Clergy of His Archdiocese, 24 October 1822, and a Letter to His Grace Written by a Dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church, 8th ed., Dublin 1822, 18-19. 33. 'Hierophilos' [John MacHale], Brief Reply to the Charge of Dr Magee in Two Letters, Dublin 1822, 33. 34. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 799, evidence to the Commons' committee, 7 Jun. 1825. Cf. Woodward, Present State of the Church of Ireland, Dublin 1808, where the Bishop of Cloyne sounds remarkably like Magee in his 1822 charge. 35. William Magee, 'Principle of the Union between Church and State: Charge to the Clergy in 1827' in Works, II, 469. 36. Ibid., II, 292. 37. Ibid., II, 293. Cf. his 'Sermon Preached before the Association for Discountenancing Vice and Promoting the Practice of Religion and Virtue in Dublin, 5 May 1796' in Works, II, 330, on the need to combat 'in the lowest class, idleness, debauchery, violence, disregard of law, impatience of control, insurrection, massacre'. 38. O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, I, 143. 39. PP, 1825, IX (521), 384-9, evidence of 29 Apr. 1825. Lecky, History of Ireland, III, 361, comments on his opposition to Maynooth because he wanted the attendance of Roman Catholics at Trinity, then very common, recognised and regularised. 40. William Phelan agreed with this opinion: see William Phelan, Evidence Before the Committee of the House of Lords on the State of Ireland, Dublin 1825, 13: 'I cannot speak to an actual gaining of ground; but I think that latterly a great number has appeared to belong to the church than did before.' Cf. also 'Declan' [William Phelan], Case of the Church of Ireland Stated in a Letter to the Marquess of Wellesley, Dublin 1823. 41. PP, 1825, IX (521), 384. 42. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 769-70. 43. Ibid., 796. 44. Ibid., 800. 45. Magee to Goulburn, 27 Sep. 1823 (BM Add. MS. 40329, f. 157). 46. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 119-20. Doyle had accused a parson called Caldwell of 'disturbing the repose of the nineteenth century' by accusing Irish Catholics of using the Rhemish Testament of 1633, 'written in bad times' of religious strife. 47. See Madden, Daly, 144, on the labours of Robert McGhee as the Powerscourt 'moral agent', and Maguire, Downshire Estates, 207.

Notes to pages 94-99 341 48. Daunt, Eighty Five Years of Irish History, 1800-85, II, 94 n. Cf. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, II, 1, for Doyle's judgment that Farnham, `although a violent religious enthusiast, was in the main a sincere and well-intentioned man'. See also Statement of the Management of the Farnham Estates, Dublin 1830, 8, and Public Record Office, Belfast, Annesley Estate MS. D 1854/6/1, ff. 82-5 and 96, for the requirements of a `moral agent'. 49. Daunt, op. cit., II, 93, says that a visit from William Magee established that the number of converts was only 83, not 1,483, as claimed by Protestant enthusiasts. 50. Anon., `New Reformation', British Critic III (1828), 30. 51. Ibid., 1-58. 52. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, II, 42. 53. Ibid., I, 443-4. 54. Daunt, op. cit., I, 93-4. Cf. R. L. Sheil, Sketches Legal and Political, London 1855, II, 376-7. 55. D. H. Akenson, Irish Education Experiment, London 1970, 87; cf. Isaac Butt, Liberty of Teaching Vindicated, Dublin 1865, 21-4. 56. Extracts from the First Report of the Committee on Irish Education Inquiry of 30 May 1825, So Far as it Relates to the Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland, Dublin 1825, 21. Archbishop Troy especially rejected use of the Authorised Version rather than the Douai Bible, and wished to include comment on disputed doctrines like the veneration of the Blessed Virgin and the supremacy of Peter. 57. Akenson, op. cit., 91. 58. PP, 1830, VII (654), 426-7, quoted in T. W. Moody, and J. C. Beckett, Queen's Belfast, 1845-1949, London 1959, I, lvi, and Akenson, op. cit., 92. 59. `A Munster Farmer' [Mortimer O'Sullivan], Captain Rock Detected, or The Origin and Character of the Recent Disturbances, London 1824, 407. 60. Richard Hayes, Sermons, Dublin 1823, I, i. 61. Urwick, Urwick, 70. 62. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 78. 63. Ibid., 163-4. Cf. pp. 16-18 above. 64. John Cousins, Reply to the First Sermon of Rev. Richard Hayes on the Possibility of Transubstantiation, Dublin 1822, 2: Cf. John Cousins, Reply to the Fifth and Other Controversial Sermons of the Rev. Richard Hayes, Dublin 1823, and Thomas Kelly, Letter to the Roman Catholics of Athy Occasioned by Mr Hayes Seven Sermons, Dublin 1823. 65. Report of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Anniversary of the Kilkenny Auxiliary Bible Society, Dublin 1824, 11. 66. Ibid., 96. 67. ibid., 159. 68. Wyse, Catholic Association, I, 234.

342 Notes to pages 99-104 69. See pp. 74-5 above. 70. P. J. Brophy, `Social Life in Carlow, 1800-40', Carloviana I (1948), 74-80. 71. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 374. 72. Report of the Discussion at the Carlow Bible Meetings, 18 and 19 November 1824, Dublin 1824, 105. Cf. p. 75 above. It was

because of such loose reporting that two versions of what occurred were sometimes printed after a disputation. 73. W. Carlisle, The True Church, or A Calm Inquiry into the Unity, Sanctity, Universality and Infallibility of the Church of Christ, contained in a Letter to the Rev. James Maher, Roman Catholic Priest, Carlow, Dublin 1838, 3. 74. James Maher, Letters, ix. Cf. pp. 17-18 above. For Maher's relationship with the Cullen family see Mac Suibhne, Cullen, I,

338-41. 75. Maher, Letters, xiv-xvi. 76. Ibid., xxv-xxvi. 77. Full and Authentic Report of the Reformation Society at Carlow and the Discussion which Took Place on the 18 and 19 October 1827, Carlow 1827, 7. 78. Robert Fishbourne, The Protestant Religion Is that which Was Taught by Christ and His Apostles; and the Religion of Roman Catholicism Is a Novelty: Sermon Preached in the Church of Carlow 4 March 1824 and Published at the Desire of the Congregation, 4th ed., Carlow 1827, 21, on this `melancholy instance

of the degrading effects of the veneration of relics'. 79. Carlisle, op. cit., 4. 80. Cf. Full and Impartial Report of the Meeting at New Ross Convened by the Roman Catholic Magistrates and Gentry of the Town to Oppose the Bible and Kildare Street Societies,

Dublin 1824, 43 ff. 81. Authentic Report of the Discussion which Took Place by Agreement at Carrick-on-Shannon, 9 November 1824, Between Three Roman Catholic Clergymen and Three Clergymen of the Established Church, Dublin 1824, 9. Another Impartial Report of the Speeches Delivered at the Bible Discussion, Boyle 1824, 56,

records that the `meeting separated in the most peaceable and orderly manner'. 82. Authentic Report of the Discussion which Took Place in the Roman Catholic Church at Easky on 23 and 24 November 1824, Between Three Roman Catholic Priests and Four Protestant Ministers on the Indiscriminate Reading of the Bible and the Right of Private Judgment in Its Interpretation and on Making It the Sole Rule of Faith, Dublin 1825, 65. 83. Ibid., 69. 84. Ibid., 90. Cf. Western Luminary, 8 Dec. 1824. For Lyons see Bowen, Souperism, 55-64, 97 and 190. Urwick was of general

help to the controversialists because of his knowledge of the

Notes to pages 104-107 343 seventeenth century; see William Urwick, Independency in Dublin of the Olden Time: Address to the Congregational Union of Ireland, 17 April 1862, Dublin 1862. He was also well acquainted with `Romish' history, as he showed in his Ecumenical Councils: Their Claims Considered, Manchester 1870. 85. Authenticated Report of the Controversial Discussion Upon the Supremacy of St Peter which Took Place Between Rev. Bernard McAuley, Parish Priest, and the Rev. Robert Stewart, 24, 25 and 26 July 1827, at Ballymena, Belfast 1827. 86. Daniel Murray, Letter in Refutation of a Statement Attributed to the Rt Hon. Robert Peel Charging Roman Catholics with Suppressing the Second Commandment, Dublin 1827. 87. `J.K.L.' [James Doyle] Reply to the Late Charge of the Most Rev. Dr Magee, Dublin 1827, 102-3. 88. Charles Elrington, Remarks Upon the Reply of J.K.L. to the Charge of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, Dublin 1827,

75. Among other scholarly labours, Elrington, a Fellow of Trinity College, edited the first fourteen volumes of the works of the distinguished seventeenth-century Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, a noted controversialist in his day. 89. George Hamilton, Observations on the Present State of the Roman Catholic English Bible, Dublin 1825, 15. 90. George Hamilton, Second Letter to the Most Rev. Dr Murray on the Present State of the Roman Catholic Bible, Dublin 1826, 9. For further criticisms of the Roman Catholic Bible see T. H. Home, Romanism Contradictory to the Bible, or The Peculiar Tenets of the Church of Rome Contrasted with Holy Scripture,

London 1827; Correspondence Between Rev. William Baker Stoney and Rev. Bernard Quin, Roman Catholic Curate of Castlerea, Boyle, 1828, and E. Hardman, The Church: An Address to the Roman Catholic Inhabitants of Westport, Dublin

1827. 91. William Cobbett, History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, Revised with Notes and Preface by Cardinal Gasquet, London 1934, iv. For his treatment of the

Irish penal laws see pp. 358-62. 92. William Ullathome, From Cabin Boy to Archbishop: The Autobiography of Archbishop Ullathorne, London 1941, 103. Cf. Duffy, Life in Two Hemispheres, 38: `Modem taste would probably pronounce him unclerical, but he stood above convention and was in spirit and endowments a genuine tribune of the people.' Cf. Sheil, Sketches Legal and Political, II, 111-12. Maguire was a nephew of the Bishop of Øore. 93. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, II, 33. 94. Authenticated Report of the Discussion which Took Place Between the Rev. Richard T. P. Pope and the Rev. Thomas Maguire in the Lecture Room of the Dublin Institution, Sackville Street, on 19, 20, 21, 23, 24 and 25 April 1827, Dublin 1827. Cf. C. Leslie,

344 Notes to pages 107-109 The Case Stated Between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, Dublin 1840, a new edition of the work of 1713, and R. Manning, Celebrated Answer to Leslie's 'Case Stated Between the Church of Rome and the Church of England', Printed Word for Word and Refuted Sentence after Sentence, Dublin 1842,

edited by Richard Coyne. Manning was a professor at Douai in the early eighteenth century. 95. Sirr, Trench, 506. Sirr was also upset by Maguire's 'flippant sophisms—the sauciness of his badinage often amounting to profaneness'. Cf. Brooke, Recollections, I, 23. For a claim of victory by Maguire see Anon., Bible Controversy in Ireland: Infallibility not Possible, Error not Culpable, in Reply to Messrs Pope and Maguire, London 1828, 173. 96. The charge was taken up by the Dublin Weekly Register, the

organ of the Catholic Association, and called a 'horrible and almost incredible depravity'. See Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 386. 97. Sirr, Trench, 519. 98. Report of the Trial in which Bartholomew McGarahan was the Plaintiff and the Rev. Thomas Maguire was the Defendant, Tried in the Exchequer Court in Ireland Before the Hon. Baron Smith, 13 and 14 December 1827, Dublin 1827; Decision of Four Judges in the Case of McGarahan vs Maguire on Application being Made for a New Trial, Dublin 1828; Full Report of the Celebrated Trial of Rev. Thomas Maguire, to which is Added the Celebrated Trial of Rev. Fr Brady of Cavan, Dublin 1867. 99. Samuel O'Sullivan, Remains, III, 182-4. Cf. Report of a Speech Delivered at a Meeting of the Friends of the Rev. Thomas Maguire in the Corn Exchange, Whitmonday 1838, by the Rev. Dr John Miley, DD, Hon. Gonville French in the Chair, Dublin

1838. 100. The Pilot, 2 Aug. 1843. 101. Arthur, Ouseley, 284-5.

102. J. B. Leslie, 'Succession List of Dublin Clergy' (RCB MS.) II, 444. 103. T. D. Gregg, Protestant Ascendancy Vindicated and National Regeneration Through the Instrumentality of National Religion Urged in a Series of Letters to the Corporation of Dublin, Dublin

1840, preface and pp. 58 and 196. 104. Authenticated Report of the Discussion Between the Rev. T. D. Gregg and the Rev. Thomas Maguire, 29 May to 2 June 1838, Dublin 1839. Gregg also published his own version, Controversial Discussion Between Rev. Thomas Maguire and Rev. Tresham Gregg from Tuesday, 29 May to Saturday, 2 June 1838, Dublin

1838. It is interesting to note that Gregg used visual aids in the debate, a chart of Roman 'apostate' development is illustrated on p. 55. He also displayed a monastic hair-shirt on p. 293. 105. An Authentic Report of the Extraordinary Case of the Rev.

Notes to pages 109-112 345 T. D. Gregg, and His Committal to the Bridewell for Refusing to Give His Recognizance: Letter to the Protestant Public in Vindication of Himself, Dublin 1841. 106. T. D. Gregg, Free Thoughts on Protestant Matters in One Volume, Dublin 1846, 370. 107. Gregg to Beresford, 14 Mar. 1843 (uncatalogued Beresford MSS, Carmody Collection, Nenagh), where Gregg argued that the case, for which he had travelled to England to collect money, involved `the honour of the Church at large'. For the question of the chaplaincy see Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 182; PP, 1820, IX (93), 159, and PP, 1837, XXI (500), 80-1. The sinecure chaplaincy was worth £142 net. 108. Gregg, Free Thoughts, 80. 109. Ibid., 23. 110. Gregg, Protestant Ascendancy Vindicated, 37. 111. Ibid., 69. 112. Ibid., 2. Cf. p. 201, on the Roman Mass `which makes mercy and injustice meet together, unrighteousness and peace kiss each other'. See Mac Suibhne, Cullen, II, 94, on Gregg's attempt to break up a Catholic Defence Association meeting in 1851. 113. Gregg, Protestant Ascendancy Vindicated, 9. 114. T. D. Gregg, Triumph of Christ and his Truth, the Perdition of Antichrist and his Idol; An Oracle for the Times on Daniel's Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, Dublin 1853. Cf. T. D. Gregg, Battle of the Warrior, and the Burnings of the Fuel of the Fire; The Celebrated Prophecy of Isaiah, Dublin 1852, a prophecy of the coming of Antichrist. 115. T. D. Gregg, Suggestions as to the Employment of a Novum Organum Moralium, or Thoughts on the Nature of the Differential Calculus and on the Application of Its Principles to Metaphysics, London 1859, xix. 116. T. D. Gregg, The Way, the Truth and the Life; A Series of Discourses, London 1861, 352, and Summary of Philosophy, An Essay on the Metaphysics of the Holy Scriptures, London 1861, 353: `We see the objects we look at because our spirit touches them.' 117. T. D. Gregg, The Crown of the Ascendancy of Truth Replaced by the Award of God Himself and Forever on the Brow of the Irish Church, Dublin 1869, 7. Gregg wrote the queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other dignitaries about his revelation. Only Canterbury sent him a `kind acknowledgement'. 118. T. D. Gregg, Queen Elizabeth, or The Origin of Shakespeare; A Drama in Five Acts, London 1872. 119. T. D. Gregg, Letter to His Holiness the Late Pope by T. D. Gregg, Chantry Priest and Chaplain of St Mary's, Dublin 1878. For a contemporary Catholic opinion of Gregg see Mac Suibhne, Cullen, II, 94. See also Duffy, Life in Two Hemispheres, II, 356-9, for Gregg's bizarre later views.

346

Notes to pages 112-115

120. T. D. Gregg, Is Death Now Inevitable? Involving the Nemesis on Rome and Her Recruits, Dublin 1879, xiv. 121. Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, 23 Aug. 1876, lists 54 publications to McGhee's credit, including his substantial Expository Lectures on the Epistle to the Ephesians, Dublin 1846-47, 2 vols. For a comment on his preaching see Brooke, Recollections, I, 22. 122. William Phelan, Brief Exposure of the Principles Advanced, the Intellect Displayed and the Spirit Manifested by the Rev. Robert McGhee in his Late Publication, Dublin 1817, 47. McGhee re-

produced the criticism in his joint work with Mortimer O'Sullivan, Romanism As It Rules in Ireland, London 1840, II, 219. See also McGhee's immediate rebuttal, The Bible, the Rights of Conscience, and the Established Church Vindicated, being an Answer to the Rev. William Phelan, Dublin 1817. 123. R. J. McGhee Last Stand for the Church: Letter to the Deans, Archdeacons and Clergy of the Church of Ireland, Dublin 1833, 9. 124. Edward Stopford, Letter Addressed to the Clergy of the Diocese of Raphoe Caused by Two Letters of the Rev. R. J. McGhee, Dublin 1833, 48. For McGhee's view of the Church see Bishop Doyle's Letter to Lord Farnham with an Answer and a Challenge by the Rev. Robert McGhee and Rev. Robert Daly, Dublin 1832,

31, where he refers to the Church as the body which 'teaches the sinner the way to salvation'. 125. Carroll, O'Brien, 18. 126. R. J. McGhee, The Blessed Turf and the Cholera: Sermon of 23 June 1832, Dublin 1832, 71. 127. New Catholic Encyclopaedia, London 1967, IV, 774. 128. R. J. McGhee, Letter to the Protestants of, the United Kingdom Exhibiting the Real Principles of the Roman Catholic Bishops and Priests in Ireland as Contained in Their Standard of Theology Adopted in 1808, London 1835, 24. 129. McGhee and O'Sullivan, Romanism As It Rules, I, xi; Cf. also R. J. McGhee, Authentic Report of the Great Protestant Meeting Held at Exeter Hall, London, 20 June 1835, Dublin 1835; R. J. McGhee, Correct Report of the Second Great Protestant Meeting Held at Exeter Hall, 11 July 1835, Dublin 1835; R. J. McGhee, Complete Notes of the Douay and Rhemish Testament Published Under the Patronage of the Roman Catholic Bishops and Priests with a Copious Index, Dublin 1837; R. J. McGhee, Diocesan Statutes of the Roman Catholic Bishops of the Province of Leinster Exactly Reprinted and Demonstrating Their Adoption of Dens's Theology as the Standard for Instruction of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, London 1837. 130. J. McHugh, Real Character of the Rev. Robert McGhee . . . with Remarks Upon the Todd-McGhee Forgery, Dublin 1836,

viii. This work contains a reprint of Phelan's 1817 indictment of McGhee; Cf. G. O. Simms, 'James Henthorn Todd', Hermathena CIX (1969), 9.

Notes to pages 115-119 347 131. McGhee and O'Sullivan, Romanism As It Rules, I, 8. 132. Ibid., I, 84. Murray said: 'Irish Catholics swear they do abjure, condemn and detest as unchristian and impious, the principle that it is lawful to murder, destroy, or in anywise injure any person whatsoever, for, or under the pretext of being a heretic.' 133. Ibid., I, 102. For O'Connell's contribution to the issue see Morning Chronicle, 2 Aug. 1836. 134. McGhee and O'Sullivan, Romanism As It Rules, II, 528. Cf. R. J. McGhee, Case Plainly Stated and Proved on the Papal Laws Established Over Ireland; A Speech Delivered to the Electors of the University of Dublin, Dublin 1840, 15-18. 135. R. J. McGhee, The Ancient Faith of the Holy Catholic Church Demonstrated in a Lecture Delivered in the Rotundo, Dublin

1846. 136. R. J. McGhee, No True Allegiance to a Protestant Sovereign Permitted by the Church of Rome, London 1848, and Justice for Ireland, or The Rejected Memorial, London 1850. 137. R. J. McGhee, The Real System of Instruction at Maynooth: Speech in the Rotundo, 31 March 1845, Dublin 1845, 33. 138. R. J. McGhee, Reflections on the Endowment of the College of Maynooth and on the Doctrine of Expediency, Addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin, Dublin 1845, 88. 139. R. J. McGhee, Pope and Popery Exposed in Their Present Power and Plots Against the Religious Laws and Liberties of the Empire,

London 1843, 34. 140. R. J. McGhee, Appeal to the Protestant Churchmen of Ireland on Behalf of Their Roman Catholic Countrymen, Dublin 1846, v. 141. C. G. Duffy, Short Life of Thomas Davis, London 1846, 43 and 56. Cf. `Autobiography of William Carleton' in David O'Donoghue, Life of William Carleton, London 1896, I, 231: 'I have heard many eloquent men, but a more eloquent man than Mortimer I never heard.' See also ibid., II, 2: 'As "Murty O'Mulligan" Mortimer is immortalised by Moore in his "Fudge" poems, and it was the same Murty whose conversion from Catholicism . . . gave Moore the idea of writing his famous "Travels of an Irish gentleman in search of a religion", to which Mortimer replied, over the signature of "A Munster Farmer" with a "Guide to an Irish gentleman in search of a religion".' 142. Mortimer O'Sullivan, Evidence Before the Select Committees of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the State of Ireland, Dublin 1825, 2. Cf. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 457-8, evidence

of 26 Apr. 1825. 143. 'A Munster Farmer' [O'Sullivan], Captain Rock Detected, 394. 144. Ibid., 419. Like Doyle, he saw in theory `no insurmountable difficulties to union' of the two churches. 145. O'Sullivan, Evidence, 8. 146. Ibid., 42. 147. Ibid., 43.

348

Notes to pages 119-129

148. Ibid., 44. 149. O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, I, 155. For O'Sullivan's Iess concise expression of the same thought see PP, 1825, IX (521), 569. Cf. also p. 20 above. 150. PP, 1825, IX (521), 836, evidence of 25 May 1825. Land agents favoured Roman Catholics 'whether from anxiety about their own personal safety, or with a more general view of conciliating the people'. 151. 'A Munster Farmer' [O'Sullivan], Captain Rock Detected, 380-3. 152. Mortimer O'Sullivan, Case of the Protestants of Ireland, London 1836, 3 ff. 153. Ibid., 20. 154. Ibid., 21. 155. Ibid., 27. 156. O'Sullivan, Evidence, 8, 11, 27. 157. Mortimer O'Sullivan, Plea for Inquiry into the Political Constitution of Romanism, Dublin 1851, 17. 158. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 425. 159. Some of them, like the Rev. Sir Harcourt Lees, failed to catch as much public attention as did Gregg, McGhee and Mortimer O'Sullivan. See Harcourt Lees, Compendium of Sir Harcourt Lees' Anti Popish Works, Dublin 1821. He faded from the controversial scene after a trial for barratry in 1823. Caesar Otway, who founded and edited the Christian Examiner, was personally too gentle to be considered a militant. See O'Donoghue, Life of Carleton, II, 1: 'a most estimable man, a very pleasant writer, an enthusiastical antiquarian, but a determined proselytiser'. Cf. Caesar Otway, Lecture on Miracles with Appendixes Wherein Are Detailed Some of the Manifold Absurdities and Impostures which the Romish Church has Given Birth To, Dublin 1823. 160. R. Whately, Letter to the Clergymen of the Diocese of Dublin on Religious Controversy, Dublin 1850, 4. 161. William Phelan, Evidence Before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the State of Ireland, Dublin 1825, 23. 162. PP, 1825, IX (521), 472. 163. Wyse, Catholic Association, I, 280, on religious events which 'prepared the mind of the people for any appeal which might be made to it by the friends of public liberty'. See also Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 379, on the 'regular crusade against the Church of Rome' in the late 1820s and 1830s. Chapter IV THE DIVISION OF THE PEOPLES (pp. 127-192) 1. Michael Novak, Experience of Nothingness, New York 1970, 16. 2. L. P. Curtis, Apes and Angels: Irishmen in Victorian Caricature, Newton Abbot 1971, 94. 3. J. J. Auchmuty, Sir Thomas Wyse, 1791-1862, London 1939, 189.

Notes to pages 129-133 349 Even English Catholics held such views of their co-religionists from Ireland who settled in England. See R. W. Linker, `English Roman Catholics and Emancipation', Journal of Ecclesiastical History XXVII (1976), 179-80. 4. Wyse, Catholic Association, I, 188-90. 5. R. M. Martin, Ireland Before and After the Union, London 1848, xxxii-xxxiii. 6. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 21. 7. PP, 1825, VII (200), 750-6. Only ten of the 568 were Protestants. 8. Baptist Noel, Catholic Claims: A Letter to the Lord Bishop of Cashel, London 1845, 6. 9. Curtis, op. cit., 21, 35. Several editions of Maxwell's book appeared in the nineteenth century. It is interesting to compare Maxwell's account with Charles Butler, Memoirs of the English, Irish and Scottish Catholics Since the Reformation, London 1822, IV, 69-70, and Butler's argument that '98 was not a Catholic phenomenon. 10. J. G. Kohl, Ireland, Scotland and England, London 1844, Pt I, 145-51. 11. Ibid., 108. Cf. Reynolds, Catholic Emancipation Crisis, 84-5, on the successful Catholic propaganda campaign in Europe, where the Irish struggle was compared to that of the Greeks. 12. 'Veridicus' [Sir Richard Musgrave], Concise Account of the Material Events and Atrocities which Occurred in the Present Rebellion . . . and an Answer to Veritas's Vindication of the Roman Catholic Clergy of the Town of Wexford, Dublin 1799, 33. Cf. Sirr, Trench, 28, on the Protestants in the south 'evaporating' after the rebellion. 13. R. B. McDowell, Irish Public Opinion, 1750-1800, London 1944, 240. 14. The Nation, 26 Apr. 1845. 15. W. R. Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790-1850, London 1972, 118. 16. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 28-30. 17. W. T. McCullagh, Memoirs of the Rt Hon. R. L. Shell, London 1855, I, 210. 18. John Martin, Report of Speech at the First General Meeting of the Brunswick Constitutional Club of Ireland Held in the Rotundo, 4 November 1828, Dublin 1828, 19. 19. Reynolds, op. cit., 141-4, outlines the hysteria of 1824, when on Christmas Day many Protestants were afraid to go to church and barricaded their homes, fearing a Catholic massacre on the eve of 1825, designated a 'holy year' by the pope. 20. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 224. 21. J. N. Richardson, Reminiscences of Friends in Ulster, Gloucester 1911, 4. 22. Sheridan Gilley, 'Roman Catholic Mission to the Irish in London', Recusant History X (1970), 141, refers to life in the slums of

350 Notes to pages 133-135 London, but the concept applies also to peasant society in Ireland. 23. Noel, Catholic Claims, 7. In the section on the tithe war, p. 159 below, note is made of the role of the Catholic rural gentry in the conflict. 24. Godkin, op. cit., 522, has much to say on the `intensely English' Church of Ireland and its connection with the English aristocracy. 25. Alexander Knox, Essays, Dublin 1798, 183. Cf. L. A. Pooler, Short History of the Church of Ireland, Belfast 1890, 103, and the argument that the so-called Catholic people of Ireland had actually been `heathen' at the time of the Reformation. 26. PP, 1825, VII (20), 338-41. 27. PP, 1825, VIII (129), 28-9. 28. See Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls, London 1965, 25, for the continuation of this tradition in the Irish countryside: 'We bought flour in the Protestant shop.... Mama said the Protestants were cleaner and more honest.' 29. PP, 1825, VII (200), 739. 30. de Beaumont, Ireland, Social, Political and Religious, I, 259. 31. `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Letters on the State of Ireland, 69. 32. PP, 1825, VII (20), 339. 33. Mark Tierney, Murroe and Boher: The History of an Irish Country Parish, Dublin 1966, 48-9. Cf. James Doyle's parliamentary evidence in PP, 1825, VIII (129), 181, that in his diocese such permission was not applied for and would never be denied. 34. Godkin, op. cit., 183. 35. W. F. Adams, Ireland and Irish Emigration to the New World from 1815 to the Famine, New Haven and London 1932, 4; Reynolds, op. cit., 69-70. 36. Maureen Wall, `Rise of a Catholic Middle Class in EighteenthCentury Ireland', IHS XI (1958), 97, records a Catholic claim that as early as the end of the eighteenth century all the trade in the Limerick area was in their hands. 37. Ibid., 110. In a town like Kenmare it is interesting to trace the names `Sullivan' or 'O'Sullivan' as used by the people at different times in Irish history. 38. Lecky, History of Ireland, I, 403. 39. PP, 1825, VII (20), 340. Collins commented on the separate jokes of the peoples, their surface amity, yet real state of 'perpetual bad feeling'. 40. John Murphy, 'Priests and People in Modern Irish History', Christus Rex XXIII (1969), 237. 41. Ibid., 246. Cf. T. McKenna, Thoughts on the Civil Condition and Relations of the Roman Catholic Clergy, Religious and People in Ireland, Dublin 1805, 219-20. 42. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 106; cf. William Carleton, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830-33), new ed., New York 1862, II, 139.

Notes to pages 136-139 351 43. S. O'Faolain, King of the Beggars, London 1938, 29. 44. PP, 1825, VII (20), 338, evidence of Fr Michael Collins. 45. Godkin, op. cit., 389. Wyse, op. cit., I, 283: `The priest after a little time was hurried along by the torrent and had only to decide whether he should ride on its surface or be buried altogether beneath the stream.' 46. Wyse, op. cit., II, 5. 47. Reynolds, op. cit., 56. Cf. Oliver MacDonagh, 'Politicisation of the Irish Catholic Bishops, 1800-50', Historical Journal XVIII (1975), 43, says the priests `preached a species of jihad successfully conflating the racial, the tribal and the religious appeals'. 48. Wyse, op. cit., I, 348. Most of these clubs were short-lived. The Dublin one was the creation of the Rev. Thomas Magee, son of the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Rev. Charles Boyton, FTCD. Cf. Hereward Senior, `The Early Orange Order' in T. D. Williams, ed., Secret Societies of Ireland, Dublin 1973, 36-45, for the weakness of the Orange Order, which was dissolved in 1825 and again in 1836. 49. Denis Gwynn, 'O'Connell, Davis and the Godless Colleges', IER LXIX (1947), 561-72. MacDonagh, 'Politicisation of the Irish Catholic Bishops', op. cit., 47, n. 28, lists the bishops who were 'open repealers'. 50. C. G. Duffy, Short Life of Thomas Davis, London 1896, 214. Cf. T. W. Moody, Thomas Davis, 1814-45, Dublin 1945, 9, on the connection of Young Ireland with TCD. Cf. 6 Broin, Duffy, 25-6, on Duffy's shock to discover after Davis's death that the latter doubted that Duffy could be a true nationalist because he was not a TCD Protestant. See MacDonagh, 'Politicisation of Irish Bishops', op. cit., 52, for Davis's 'neurotic suspicion of popery'. 51. Godkin, op. cit., 6. 52. PP, 1825, VII (20), 339. 53. Patrick Moran, Catholics of Ireland Under the Penal Laws in the Eighteenth Century, London 1900, 203. For the Catholic traditional interpretation of '98 see Peadar Mac Suibhne, '98 in Carlow, Carlow 1974. 54. Cf. T. C. Foster, Letters on the Condition of the People in Ireland, London 1846, 530; Reynolds, op. cit., 73. 55. Rachel O'Higgins, 'Irish Influence in the Chartist Movement', Past and Present XX (1961), 84. 56. Sirr, Trench, 38. 57. PP, 1825, IX (521), 440-2. He said that in his area many Catholic chapels were built by the Protestants. 58. Ibid., 449. 59. Sirr, Trench, 187-8. 60. W. J. Fitzpatrick, Memoirs of Richard Whately, London 1864, 313; Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 60-1. 61. Sirr, Trench, 188. Cf. Bowen, Souperism, 56, on the tendency

352 Notes to pages 140-144 for reforming parsons, priests or landlords to be cast as villains in Irish folklore. 62. Samuel Smiles, The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Church and Industries in England and Ireland, London 1876, 341. 63. Ibid., 343. 64. O'Higgins, op. cit., 85. This was the evidence of H. W. Rowan, a stipendary magistrate, given to a House of Lords committee in 1839. 65. Anthony Trollope, Clergymen of the Church of England, London 1866, 110. 66. Newenham, View of Ireland, 327. 67. O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, I, vi. 68. Wyse, op. cit., I, 405, referring particularly to the northern situation. 69. R. B. McDowell, Public Opinion and Government Policy, 180146, 35. 70. Maurice Craig, Dublin, 1660-1860, Dublin 1969, 76-7. 71. Patrick O'Farrell, Ireland's English Question, London 1972, 306; cf. Laurence McCaffrey, 'Irish Nationalism and Irish Catholicism: A Study in Cultural Identity', Church History XLII (1973), 524-34; 72. Kohl, op. cit., 109. This cultural separation showed also in the living habits of the people when they emigrated. See 'Reports on Mr Tuke's Fund for Assisting Emigration from Ireland 1882-84' (Friends' Library, London, MSS) and Michael Cross, 'Shiner War: Social Violence in the Ottawa Valley in the 1830s', Canadian Historical Review LIV (1973), 24. 73. Richardson, Reminiscences, 7. 74. PP, 1825 VII (20), 369. 75. F. Finnegan, 'Irish Catholic Convert Rolls', Studies XXXVIII (Mar. 1949), 73-82. 76. R. E. Burns, 'Parsons, Priests and the People: The Rise of Irish Anti-Clericalism 1785-89', Church History XXXI (1962), 161. 77. Ibid., 159. This phenomenon occurred especially in the dioceses of Cloyne and Ross. 78. Murphy, 'Priests and People', op. cit., 245-6. 79. Dublin Evening Post, 14 Sep. 1786. 80. Sirr, Trench, 223. The priest was resented for over-zealousness in collecting his dues. 81. M. B. Buckley, Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, Dublin 1868, 327. 82. W. B. Kirwan, Discourse on Religious Innovations and Letter to a Friend in Galway on Why He Quit the Roman Catholic Church, Dublin 1787. 83. For a Catholic appreciation of O'Beirne see A. Cogan, Diocese of Meath, Dublin 1870, III, 355-6. A Protestant evaluation is given by Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 246. 84. PP, 1825, IX (521), 492-6. Dixon had served as Catholic curate

Notes to pages 144-149

85. 86.

87. 88.

353

in IØore Erris, recanted at Crossmolina, and served as Protestant curate at Ballysakeery. Pådraig de Brün, `An tAthair Brasbie', Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society II (1969), 38-58. D. L. Brasbie of Dingle joined the Priests' Protection Society in 1848. M. Brennan, Brief Statement of the Reasons which Induced Renouncing of the Church of Rome, Written by Himself, Dublin 1825, and Papal Impositions and Monastic Intrigue Portrayed, Dublin 1825. David Croly, Inquiry into the Principal Points of Difference, Real or Imaginary, Between the Two Churches, 2nd ed., Dublin 1836, 14. Ibid., 15. M. B. O'Shea, Funeral Orations at the Obsequies of the Rt Rev. John Murphy, Catholic Bishop of Cork, 4 May 1847,

Cork 1847, 26, suggests that Murphy was of a mild disposition like Archbishops Murray and Crolly. See Murphy to Cullen on Croly, 28 Nov. 1835 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 236). 89. David Croly, Address to the Lower Orders of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, with an Appendix containing Two Letters on the Union of the Churches, One by Dr Doyle, the Other by the Author Himself, 2nd ed., Cork 1835, 31. 90. David Croly, Essay Religious and Political on Ecclesiastical Finance as Regards the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Cork

1834, 8. 91. Ibid., 26.

92. Ibid., 27. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid., 39. Cf. Murphy, `Support of the Catholic Clergy in Ireland, 1750-1850' in J. L. McCracken, ed., Historical Studies V: Papers Read Before the Sixth Conference of Irish Historians, London

1965, 107, for a caution about Croly's statements, which do not always agree with the evidence of Fr Michael Collins of Skibbereen in 1825. 95. Croly, Essay Religious and Political, 68. 96. Ibid., 79. Cf. Anon., A Stipendiary Romish Priesthood, being a Review of 'An Essay Religious and Political' by Rev. D. O. Croly.

Dublin 1835. 97. Croly, Inquiry, 21. 98. Ibid., 77. 99. Ibid., 217. 100. David Croly, Farewell Address to the Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Cork, Dublin 1836, 10. 101. David Croly, Monitory and Warning Address to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, Dublin 1837, 35. 102. David Croly, Index to the Tracts for the Times, with a Dissertation by the Author, Oxford 1842, vi. The purpose of this work is to Iet readers judge for themselves the dangers inherent in Tractarianism.

354

Notes to pages 149-155

103. Bowen, Souperism, 54-65. 104. Michael and William Crotty, The Catholic Not the Roman Catholic Church, Dublin 1836. 105. Ibid., 25-7. 106. Ibid., 34. 107. Ibid., 28-30. There were precedents for such an election. Until 1831 the head of the church in Galway and eight of the parish priests were regularly chosen by the laity. 108. Ibid., 22. Cf. Michael Crotty, Reformation in Ireland: Great Meeting at Belfast to Promote the Cause of the Reformation at Parsonstown, Dublin 1836, 6-7, where Michael Crotty discourses

on the `clay money' paid at funerals. 109. Crotty, The Catholic Not the Roman Catholic Church, 37. 110. Asenath Nicholson, Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger, or Excursions Through Ireland in 1844 and 1845 for the Purpose of Personally Investigating the Condition of the Poor, Dublin 1847,

400. 111. For the Crotty cousins see also Michael Crotty, Narrative of the Reformation at Birr in the King's County, London 1847; Fitzpatrick, Doyle, I, 492, on the `unbridled pride and pique' of the cousins; Murray to Cullen, 7 Nov. 1835 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 229) on the `disgraceful schism'. 112. Crotty, The Catholic Not the Roman Catholic Church, 49. 113. Buckley, O'Leary, 228. 114. Maher, Letters, 70. Brooke, Recollections, 55, gives a fuller list of Trinity converts. 115. Maher, Letters, 59. Cf. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, III, 88, on the difficulty of acceptance experienced by converts to Catholicism. When Bishop French of Øacduagh, a convert, began to show signs of senility Cullen wondered if this reflected an improper Protestant baptism. 116. Fitzpatrick, Whately, I, 297. Whately believed him to be biblically illiterate. See Dublin Record, 21 Nov. 1836. 117. David O'Donoghue, Life of William Carleton, London 1896, I, xliii, and II, 1-4. One copy of this book has written in pencil on p. xl: `Carleton, as disreputable a personality as ever dishonoured a great gift sold his religion for cash down.' 118. Benedict Kiely, Poor Scholar, London 1947, 95. 119. Terence Brown, `Death of William Carleton, 1869', Hermathena CX (1970), 84. 120. John Gregg, Recollections of Mick Healy, an Irish Peasant, Dublin 1849. 121. Sirr, Trench, 380. 122. Dublin Evening Mail, 5 May 1847; cf. J. C. MacDonagh, History of Ballymote and the Parish of Emlaghfad, Dublin 1836, for a critical view of Garrett; for a positive view see the account of boyhood in Ballymote given by his son, John Garrett, in Good News from Ireland, London 1863.

Notes to pages 156-158

355

123. W. J. O'Neill Daunt, Eighty-Five Years of Irish History, London 1886, I, 93 n. 124. E. A. Stopfdrd, Controversial Letters Between the Archdeacon of Meath and Rev. John Kelly, Roman Catholic Curate, Kells 1849, 4-5. 125. E. Wakefield, Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political, London 1812, II, 485-6. 126. Ibid., 504. Cf. W. R. Ward, `The Tithe Question in England in the Early Nineteenth Century', Journal of Ecclesiastical History XVI (1965), 67-81. 127. John Russell, Letter to the Rt Hon. Chichester Fortescue, MP, on the State of Ireland, London 1868, 14. 128. Ibid.

129. J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, London 1881, 493. 130. George Ensor, Observations on the Present State of Ireland, Dublin 1814, 38-9. 131. M. de la Tochnaye, Frenchman's Walk Through Ireland, London 1.797, I, 93-4. 132. Wakefield, op. cit., II, 436. Cf. also Anon., Enquiry into the History of Tithe, Dublin 1808, and Anon., State of Ireland Considered and a Plan for Providing Adequate Maintenance for the Catholic and Presbyterian Clergy, Dublin 1810. 133. Edinburgh Review XLI (1825), 381. For the agitation see Edward Brynn, `Irish Tithes in British Politics', Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church (Sep. 1970), 295-306. 134. Mary Condon, `Irish Church and the Reform Ministries', Journal of British Studies I (1964), 120. T. H. Lister, `State of the Irish Church', Edinburgh Review LXI (1835), 508-9, calculated that

about one-third of the Irish tithe of £600,000 was in lay hands. 135. Condon, op. cit., 122. 136. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 134. Cf. Cloyne Rural Deanery Return, Sep. 1794 (Cloyne Cathedral MSS), where particular attention is paid to the state of the surplice in the churches and the cover for the communion service. The linen at Aghada was reported to be fifty years old. The surplice issue seems to have been of considerable significance. The rural dean, the Rev. F. Orpen of Dungourney, begged to be relieved of his visitorial work, which was `attended by no small trouble and frequently invidious'. 137. Reynolds, Catholic Emancipation Crisis, 64-5. Collecting of potato tithe in some parts of the country, such as Munster, always caused trouble. This was unknown in other areas. For the legislation see O. J. Brose, Church and Parliament: The Reshaping of the Church of England, 1828-60, Stanford and London 1959, 106. 138. PP, 1831-32, XXI (508), iv, for the official justification of the Tithe Composition Act of 1824: `The equalisation of the burthen

356 Notes to pages 159-164 between the grazier and the cottier was in itself a great boon to the latter.' 139. Patrick O'Donoghue, `Causes of Opposition to Tithes, 1830-38', Studia Hibernica V (1965), 26. 140. Ibid., 24, from the Outrage Papers of Mar. 1832. 141. Ibid. 142. Godkin, op. cit., 141. He quotes here from a parliamentary return of 11 Feb. 1824 and from the appendix of the First Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction, 1834 (PP, 1835, XXXIII (45) (46)). 143. PP, 1831-32 XXI (508), 245, Q. 2793, minutes of evidence of John Dunn. 144. R. B. O'Brien, Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland, 1831-81, London [1883-85], I, 376-7, tends to confuse the aims of the Second Reformation and the Brunswick movements. 145. PP, 1831-32, XXI (508), 290-314. For details of this parish union see PP, 1837, XXI (500), 246, where Latouche's net income was reported as £1,421, two of his three curates being paid £90, the other £120. 146. O'Donoghue, `Causes of the Opposition to Tithes, 1830-38', op. cit., 11. 147. Patrick O'Donoghue, 'Opposition to Tithe Payment in 1830-31', Studia Hibernica VI (1966), 69. O'Brien, op. cit., gives figures of 4,779 Catholics and 63 Protestants for the parish population. 148. Fitzpatrick, Doyle, II, 284. 149. Hansard, iv (1831), 1176. 150. O'Donoghue, 'Opposition to Tithe Payment in 1830-31', op. cit., 78. Cf. Freeman's Journal, 5, 9 and 17 Sep. 1831, and Dublin Evening Post, 30 Jul., 25 Aug. and 6 Sep. 1831. 151. Freeman's Journal, 24 Aug. 1831, letter from MacHale to Earl Grey. 152. Ibid., 2 Dec. 1831. 153. O'Donoghue, 'Causes of Opposition to Tithes, 1830-38', op. cit., 86. 154. Ibid., 94. 155. O'Brien, op. cit., I, 380. 156. Fitzpatrick, Whately, I, 80-1, on atrocity stories like the death of Mrs Mulrooney at Newtonbarry from a rifle ball when she was pregnant. 157. Limerick Chronicle, 11, 14 and 21 Apr. 1832. Cf. Tierney, Murroe and Boher, 62-72, on the legacy of hatred that spilled over into the next parish of Abington, which led to the rector offering his resignation when his family, including the women, were stoned. 158. O'Brien, op. cit., I, 404-9. Cf. Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners on the Revenues and Condition of the Established Church in Ireland, Dublin 1868, 492, when Wallstown had 27 Protestants.

Notes to pages 164-169 357 159. O'Brien, op. cit., I, 459. 160. Kilkenny Moderator, 5 Nov. 1834. There were, about 60,000 Orange yeomen reported at this gathering. Cf. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 439, on the speech of Marcus Gervais Beresford, future Archbishop of Armagh, at a Mansion House meeting in Dublin on 14 August 1834, on the priests' influence over the people: `rearing them up rebels from their cradles'. See also Dublin Evening Post, 18 Aug. 1834. 161. O'Brien, op. cit., I, 477, speaks of O'Sullivan as `a man of real capacity'. 162. Hansard, xxvi (1834), 523, says that seven were mortally wounded, and thirty-five seriously hurt. Kilkenny Moderator, 24 Dec. 1834 gives higher figures. No soldiers were killed, though several were hurt. Details are given in Bowen, Souperism, 40. 163. Freeman's Journal, 7 Mar. 1854. 164. O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, I, 136. 165. Ibid., 122. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid., 130. 168. Reynolds, Catholic Emancipation Crisis, 71. 169. PP, 1831-32, XXII (271), 96, Doyle's statement of 29 Feb. 1832. 170. Maher, Letters, lxiii. Cf. Maher to Cullen, 29 Apr. 1834 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 147) on local resentment of the DoyleMaher-Cullen family alliance which kept Cullen from succeeding `J.K.L.' as bishop. 171. John Brady, `Catholics and Catholicism in the EighteenthCentury Press', Archivium Hibernicum XVII (1955), 179. 172. Burns, `Parsons, Priests and the People', op. cit., 157. 173. Ibid., 159-60. 174. Emmet Larkin, `Church and State in Ireland in the Nineteenth Century', Church History XXI (1962), 298-300. 175. Murphy, `Priests and People', op. cit., 245. 176. Ibid., 104. 177. Ibid., 105. From Viscount Castlereagh, Correspondence, London 1848-53, IV, 140-4 and 154-5. 178. Murphy, `Priests and People', op. cit., 114. Cf. Sirr, Trench, 387, on anti-dues combinations in Connaught. 179. Leeds Times, 9 Jan. 1836, on money raised by Barnsley radicals for Rathcormac victims. 180. Sirr, Trench, 107. 181. PP, 1831-32, XXII (271), 107. Cf. Thomas Elrington, Bishop of Ferns, to Rev. Samuel Roberts, 8 Mar. 1832 (RCB, Beresford MSS), saying that the parish cess on the average amounted to only a penny an acre, but that this exaction could only be removed by parliament. 182. PP, 1831-32, XXII (663), 56-7. 183. PP, 1831-32, XXI (508), viii. In Kilkenny parish, in Killaloe

358 Notes to pages 169-175 diocese, 120 persons contributed to pay £25 composition. In the wealthy living of Thurles, worth £1,000 per annum, two-thirds of the 650 persons paying tithe gave less than £1 each. 184. Ibid., iv. 185. Michael and William Crotty, The Catholic Not the Roman Catholic Church, 36. 186. Brose, Church and Parliament, 52. 187. PP, 1831-32, XXI (508), 291 and 310-11. 188. PP, 1831-32, XXII (271), 146 and 128. Stopford quoted authorities like Blackstone and Selden. Cf. letters of Thomas Elrington, Bishop of Ferns, to Rev. Samuel Roberts, 1832 (RCB, Beresford MSS) on Doyle's historical arguments, and their never having existed in England or Ireland. Cf. replies sent to the Primate as early as 1824 with information about how many parishes were commuting tithes (Coyne Cathedral MSS). 189. Dean J. Jackson to Beresford, 14 Jan. 1832 (RCB, Beresford MSS), and his dismissal of Doyle's counter-reformation mentality. 190. Ibid., n.d. 191. Thackeray to Beresford, 14 May 1833 (ibid.). 192. Trench to Beresford, 10 Jun. 1833 (ibid.). 193. Richard Ponsonby to Beresford, Mar. 1837 (ibid.). 194. Charles Lindsay to Beresford, 7 Aug. 1837 (ibid.). On the sufferings of the parsons see also PP, 1834, XLIII (382). Actual avoidance of tithe-paying was hard to determine, as in many parishes arrears always occurred. 195. C. J. Blomfield, Bishop of London, to Beresford, 16 Apr. 1837 (RCB, Beresford MSS). Blomfield passed £10,000 to the Primate, with the promise of £25,000 more. 196. Rev. Samuel Roberts to Beresford, 2 May 1832 (ibid.). 197. MS. `Extracts from Mr Townsend's Letter' (ibid.). Thomas Stewart Townsend became Bishop of Meath in 1850. Cf. his Facts and Circumstances Respecting the Irish Church, Dublin 1834. 198. Ibid. As we have noted (p. 166 above), the conspiracy was economic as well as religious, a reflection of the rising expectations of Catholic gentry in the Carlow area. 199. Brinkley to Beresford, 2 Feb. 1832 (RCB, Beresford MSS). 200. Brinkley to Beresford, 18 Nov. 1831 (ibid.). 201. From an undated MS. `Petition to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled' (ibid.). 202. Frederick Eyre Trench to Rev. Samuel Roberts, 15 Feb. 1832 (ibid.). 203. Freeman's Journal, 8 and 27 Nov. 1830 and 22 Jan. 1831. 204. PP, 1831-32, XXI (177), Q. 13. 205. Manchester Courier, 21 Nov. 1835. 206. Maher Letters, lxiv. Maher made good use of this letter of 27 March 1836.

Notes to pages 175-181 359 207. See Samuel O'Sullivan, Remains, III, showing how the 1838 act had the Catholic landlords paying only £2,337 tithe composition to £82,531 paid by Protestant landed proprietors. 208. Whately to Beresford 2 Jun. 1836 (RCB, Beresford MSS). Whately said that at the time people spoke of huge revenues the Church of Ireland needed immediately at least £200,000. 209. Dickinson to Elrington, n.d. (ibid.). Dickinson was the author of two important pamphlets, Observations on Ecclesiastical Church Reform, Dublin 1833, and Vindication of a Memorial Concerning Church Property in Ireland, Dublin 1836. 210. PP, 1831-32, XXI (508), vii. 211. Sirr, Trench, 429. The situation in Ulster was in this respect also a variation from the norm. 212. ibid., 430. 213. Transactions of the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends in 1846 and 1847, Dublin 1852, 206-7. 214. Sirr, Trench, 99-100. 215. Ibid., 436. 216. Ibid., 455. This was in the 1831 famine. 217. Ibid., 437. 218. Ibid., 435. Trench accepted criticism by John Patrick Lyons, Parish Priest of Kilmore Erris, and the Catholic lawyer, Eneas McDonnell, as they had both served on the relief committee, as MacHale had not. 219. Jonathan Binns, Miseries and Beauties of Ireland, London 1837, I, 402. 220. Tierney, Murroe and Boher, 53-9. The custom of Protestants speaking in Catholic chapels was not regulated until 1834 during the tensions of the tithe war. 221. William Higgin, Sermon Preached in St Peter's Church, Dublin ... in Aid of the Shelter for Females Discharged from Prison, Dublin 1825, 19. Higgin was later the Bishop of Limerick. Cf. William Higgin, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Dioceses of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe at the Primary Visitations, Dublin 1849, 6-13, for the same message. 222. G. Kitson Clark, Churchmen and the Condition of England, 1832-85, London 1973, 142. 223. PP, 1825, IX (521), 277. 224. Tierney, Murroe and Boher, 134-44. Catholic relief was organised by the hierarchy, with help coming from Rome, France and America principally. Tierney mentions that in Murroe the Rev. Thomas Le Fanu, the local parson, had a dispensary since 1828, but makes no mention of Established Church relief work during the famine. 225. Madden, Daly, 287. 226. Ibid., 288. Brooke, Recollections, II, 6, records that in 1847 alone forty parsons died of famine-fever contracted by their work among the poor.

360 Notes to pages 181-187 227. Irish Crisis of 1879-80: Proceedings of the Dublin Mansion House Relief Committee, 1880, Dublin 1881, 28. 228. Transactions of the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends in 1846 and 1847, 71. 229. Thomas Geldhart, Memorials of Samuel Gurney, 1786-1856, London 1857, 76. 230. Ibid., 75. Cf. S. G. Osborne, Gleanings in the West of Ireland, London 1850, 111. 231. Jonathan Pim, Condition and Prospect of Ireland, Dublin 1846, 86. 232. Weekly Freeman, 15 Aug. 1908, from the obituary of his patriot son Alfred Webb, friend of A. M. Sullivan and O'Neill Daunt. 233. R. D. Webb, 'Narrative of a Tour in Erris in the Second Month of 1848' (Friends' Library, London, MSS), 19. 234. Ibid., 12, says of the curate at Bangor: 'one of the worst men I ever heard of, malignant, licentious, quarrelsome and cruel'. He describes the priest of Ballycroy as 'a plundering avaricious wretch, who was abhorred by his people, and who ran away shortly after my former visit'. 235. R. J. Rowton, Light of the West, or A Historical Sketch of the Protestant Church in Ireland, London 1869, 424, on aid provided by English Protestants: 'Ireland's extremity was England's opportunity to return good for evil.' 236. Maher, Letters, 17, written 8 Feb. 1848. 237. Robert Daly, Letter to the Editor of the 'Christian Examiner' on the Subject of a Legal Provision for the Poor of Ireland, Dublin 1829, 18-19. Daly wanted the government to pressure the landlords to assume this social responsibility. 238. Sirr, Trench, 450, Trench to Rev. J. White, curate of Westport, 14 Aug. 1831. 239. Dublin [Roman Catholic] Archdiocesan Archives, MS. 1000, p. 1. 240. Ibid., p. 2. 241. Bowen, Souperism, 121-2. This book, as a whole, deals in detail with this problem in the province of Connaught. 242. W. C. Plunket, Short Visit to the Connemara Missions, London 1863. This charge was laid in this case in 1862, but it was one commonly made by Evangelicals. Cf. R. Bickersteth, Romanism in Ireland, London 1852, 27. For an ardent defence of the role of the priests in the administration of Catholic relief supplies see A. G. Stark, South of Ireland in 1850, being the Journal of a Tour in Leinster and Munster, Dublin 1850, 172. 243. [W. A. Fisher], Forty Years in the Church of Ireland; or The Pastor, the Parish, and its People, London [1882], 7. 244. Ibid., 28. 245. Irish Crisis of 1879-80, 10. This was the opinion of the Corporation of Dublin, with the concurrence of four Catholic prelates: 'The best means of discharging this primary duty of Government without pauperising and demoralising large numbers

Notes to pages 187-195 361 ... is by the prompt institution ... of reproductive works by which employment would be provided for the people.' 246. Cork Constitution, 3 Aug. 1911. 247. [Fisher], op. cit., 19. 248. Daniel Foley, Missionary Tour Through the South and West of Ireland Undertaken for the Irish Society, Dublin 1849, 21. 249. [Fisher], op. cit., 22. The land was given by Richard Nutter of Rock Island when he died in 1852. The Rev. Claude Chavasse, Rector of Altar, 1936-40, testifies that the Roman Catholic church there had until recently a stone recording that it was built with Protestant help. It has since been defaced, but photographs of it exist. 250. A. J. Reilly, Father John Murphy: Famine Priest, Dublin 1963, 73. 251. Ibid., 75. 252. Ibid., 76. 253. J. A. Coulter, 'The Political Theory of Dr Edward Maginn, Bishop of Derry, 1846-49', IER XCVIII (1962), 110. 254. Oliver MacDonagh, 'Irish Catholic Clergy and Emigration During the Great Famine', IHS V (1947), 292. 255. Morning Chronicle, 23 Feb. 1847. 256. The charge of genocide was often made. See O Broin, Dully, 72, on Duffy's view of the living skeletons on the streets of Galway: 'Poor, mutilated and debased scions of a tender, brave and pious stock, they were martyrs in the battle of centuries for the right to live in their own land.' The gist of Cahill's letter was repeated many times. See D. W. Cahill, Life, Letters and Lectures, Dublin [1886], 201: 'Seventy-two cabins in every 100 hovels of the poor labouring classes and of the struggling cottiers have been levelled by extermination and banishment, thereby reducing (from all causes) the population by the incredible amount of nearly two millions and a half.' 257. MacDonagh, op. cit., 302. 258. Freeman's Journal, 2 May 1849. 259. Emmet Larkin, 'Church and State in Ireland in the Nineteenth Century', Church History XXI (1962), 303. 260. Maher, Letters, 135. Chapter V EXETER HALL AND IRELAND (pp. 195-256) 1. For the role of the eighteenth-century Protestant Association see G. F. E. Rude, 'The Gordon Riots: A Study of the Rioters and Their Victims', Royal Historical Transactions VI (1956), 93-114; James MacCaffrey, History of the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, Dublin 1909, II, 3, notes the restraint of the Irish poor by their priests. 2. See W. D. George English Political Caricatures, London 1959, for the anti-papal overtones of artists like Rowlandson, Gillray and

362 Notes to pages 195-199 Cruikshank. Cf. M. B. Buckley, Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, Dublin 1868, 311, for popular rumour that Fr O'Leary performed the marriage between the Prince of Wales and Mrs Fitzherbert. 3. W. T. McCullagh, Memoirs of the Rt Hon. R. L. Sheil, London 1855, II, 49. Cf. Bernard Ward, Eve of Catholic Emancipation, London 1912, III, 264, and G. I. T. Machin, The Catholic Question in English Politics, 1820-30, Oxford 1964, 191. 4. W. E. H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, new ed., London 1903, II, 74-5. 5. McCullagh, op. cit., I, 211. 6. See PP, 1825, VIII (129), 412-30, evidence of Fr Thomas Costello, PP of Murroe, Co. Limerick, reporting on emigration from his parish; Tierney, Murroe and Boher, 109 reports that by 1831 the parish of 6,000-7,000 people produced 500 emigrants a year, most of whom went to England, with others leaving for America and Canada. 7. G. Ö Tuathaigh, Ireland Before the Famine, Dublin 1972, 65. 8. Gilbert Cahill, `The Protestant Association and the Anti-Maynooth Agitation of 1845', Catholic Historical Review XLIII (1957), 290. 9. E. Bickersteth, `Domestic Jesuitism', Fraser's Magazine XIX (1839), 673 and 667, in a review of Thomas Lathbury's State of Popery and Jesuitism in England (1838). 10. E. Bickersteth `Progress of Popery', Blackwood's Magazine XLIV (1838), 494. Cf. Edinburgh Review CXXVI (1836), 471-522, on local social irritation which came from the Irish minority settling in certain areas. See also Norman Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel, London 1953, xviii, on the importance of Protestant public opinion, and E. Bickersteth `Liberalism of Popery', Blackwood's Magazine XLIV (1838), 730-40. Sheridan Gilley, `Protestant London, No-Popery and the Irish Poor, 1830-60', Recusant History X (1970), 212, notes that only a minority of English even noticed the Irish. 11. Cahill, op. cit., 279-80. Cf. British Critic XVIII (1835), 474-7, and XIX (1836), 232-9. 12. John Werly, The Irish in Manchester, 1832-49', IHS XVIII (1973), 356-8. Cf. F. Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), London 1958, 71; J. P. Kay, Moral and Physical

Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, London 1832, 35; Joseph Kay, Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe (London 1850), New York 1864, 95 and 110; Report on the Condition of the Residences of the Labouring Classes in the Town of Leeds, London 1842, 18. 13. PP, 1836, XXXIV (40), 440, 522, 541 and 546. 14. G. H. Sumner, Life of C. R. Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, London 1876, 163.

Notes to pages 199-201 363 IS. A. S. Thelwall, Proceedings of the Anti-Maynooth Conference, London 1845, 8 ff. Cf. Cahill, op. cit., 285-308; E. R. Norman, 'The Maynooth Question of 1845', IHS XV (1967), 407-38; G. I. T. Machin, The Maynooth Grant, the Dissenters and Disestablishment, 1845-1847', English Historical Review LXXXII (1967), 61-85. 16. Norman, op. cit., 414. The Orange Order began to reorganise during the Protestant agitation of the 1840s. 17. Urwick, Urwick, 206. 18. John Blackburn, The Maynooth Grant, Facts and Observations Relating to the Popish College of St Patrick, London 1845, 14. It is interesting to note that Blackburn was a prominent Congregationalist and editor of the Congregational Magazine. 19. Thelwall, op. cit., xviii. 20. Ibid., xii, the words of the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel at the Exeter Hall meeting of 18 March 1845. 21. E. R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, London 1968, 35. On Russell's suggestion see Hansard, lxxix (1845), 94. 22. C. Wordsworth, Church Principles and Church Measures: A Letter to Lord John Manners with Remarks on a Work Entitled 'Past and Present Policy of England Towards Ireland', London 1845, 12. 23. Thelwall, op. cit., Lxxiii. 24. The Times, 1, 2 and 5 May 1845. 25. Cahill, 'The Protestant Association and the Anti-Maynooth Agitation of 1845', op. cit., 307. 26. J. A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain, London 1963, 7. 27. Hansard, cxiv (1851), 93, the estimate of a Catholic, T. C. Anstey. G. Kitson Clark, An Expanding Society: Britain, 1830-1900, Cambridge 1967, 8: 'In the census of 1851 there were living in Britain 733,866 persons who had been born in Ireland .. . and that neglects the numbers who escaped being counted, which, the Irish being what they are, were I think fairly substantial.' 28. Rachel O'Higgins, 'Irish Influence in the Chartist Movement', Past and Present (1961), 83-94; Rachel O'Higgins, 'Irish Trade Unions and Politics, 1830-50', Historical Journal IV (1961), 208-17. 29. Geoffrey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain, 1851-75, London 1971, 186. Cf. Feargus O'Connor in Northern Star, 5 Aug. 1848: 'Hatred, contempt and indifference towards the Irish people abound in English society'; and J. F. Maguire, Removal of Irish Poor from England and Scotland, London 1854. 30. Sheridan Gilley, 'Roman Catholic Mission to the Irish in London', Recusant History X (1970), 137. 31. Sheridan Gilley, 'Heretic London, Holy Poverty and the Irish Poor, 1830-70', Downside Review LXXXIX (1971), 80; J. T. Ward, Chartism, London 1973, 209-16.

364

Notes to pages 201-204

32. F. K. Brown, Fathers of the Victorians, Cambridge 1961, 343; Sirr, Trench, 570-9. 33. Sheridan Gilley, `Protestant London, Pt II', Recusant History XI (1971), 32. Cf. Charles Lowder, Twenty-One Years in St George's Mission, London 1887, 19-21, on how the Irish treated Protestant intruders. See also Sheridan Gilley, `Papists, Protestants and the Irish in London', Studies in Church History VIII (1971). 34. Brown, op. cit., 336-9. For a list of the agencies in Ireland see Bowen, Souperism, 110. 35. Kathleen Heasman, Evangelicals in Action, London 1962, 26873. On p. 94 it is noted that Dr Barnardo spent his youth in Dublin and was closely identified with the 'ragged schools' developed by Mrs Smyly in Townsend Street. 36. W. R. Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790-1850, London 1972, 212. 37. See p. 73 above. 38. G. C. Lewis, Disturbances in Ireland, London 1836, 411-13, where he details Catholic neglect revealed by the First Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction, the evidence of Archbishop Kelly, and speech of Dominick Browne, MP, in the House of Lords in 1825. Cf. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, III, 88-9. 39. PP, 1836, XXV (246), 512-13. 40. Anon, Irish Church Missions, A Sermon, Dublin n.d. (TCD Gall. 6.0.10, no. 26), 4. 41. Sirr, Trench, 565. Gilley, `Protestant London, Pt II', op. cit., 21-4, noted that men like Beamish, John Armstrong, Samuel Garrett and other Irish-speaking missionaries were a minority, disliked by Bishop Blomfield, whose `tacit surrender of ecclesiastical responsibility for the Irish ran counter to Anglican ecclesiastical theory'. 42. Sirr, Trench, 656-7. 43. PP, 1836, XXV (246), 508. 44. S. Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, London 1837, I, 6. Cf. Henry Seddall, Edward Nangle, Apostle of Achill, London 1884, 7; Sirr, Trench, 599, on `the extreme destitution and ignorance of the inhabitants'. 45. For details and criticism of Nangle's mission see Bowen, Souperism, 88-104. 46. Baptist Noel, Notes of a Short Tour Through the Midland Counties of Ireland in the Summer of 1836, London 1837, 212-4. Some High Church visitors were very critical of Nangle's `Presbyterian and Cromwellian novelties' in his worship; see letter of J. H. Todd, 11 Aug. 1844 (TCD, Todd Correspondence, no. 148). 47. PP, 1837, VIII, Pt 1 (543-I), 374-5. For Nangle's evidence see pp. 378-412. For Nangle's mentality see E. Nangle, Popish

Notes to pages 205-209 365 Charity in 1835: Extracts of a Letter to Rev. Mr Stanley, Rector of Alderley, London 1835. 48. Cf. Daily Express, 29 Nov. 1853, for the squabbling between Catholic and Protestant clergy over who should minister to the survivors of a Californian packet wrecked off Achill. 49. For the Dingle colony see Bowen, Souperism, 79-88, and Mrs D. P. Thompson, Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the Change in Religious Opinion Now Taking Place in Dingle and the West of the County of Kerry, Ireland, London 1846. For Catholic resentment of aid given by the colony see S. M. Hussey, Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, London 1904, 54. 50. George Scott, Irish Society's Mission at Doon, Dingle, Ventry and Dunurlin: Letter to the Ven. Archdeacon of Derry, Dublin 1854, 9 ff; Daniel Foley, Missionary Tour Through the South and West of Ireland Undertaken for the Irish Society, Dublin 1849, 29-35; Maher, Letters, 145. 51. For a discussion of Protestant attitudes to proselytising see Bowen, Souperism, 144 ff. James Maher, Letters, 287, admitted that the Primate and most of the Protestant episcopal bench opposed the Bible mission societies. 52. Maher, Letters, 145. 53. See p. 74 above. Bishops Singer or Meath, O'Brien of Ossory, and Gregg of Cork were severely criticised by Evangelicals for not giving support to proselytisers when they possessed episcopal power. 54. Killeshin was a wealthy living in the gift of the king and the bishop whose incumbent in 1837 was the absentee Archdeacon of Glendalough. Massy was appreciated in Evangelical circles for the life of his brother, Vicar of Bruff, Limerick, The Faithful Shepherd; or The Life and Times of Rev. Godfrey Massy, London 1855. 55. See p. 100 above. 56. Dawson Massy, Secret History of Romanism, 4th ed., London 1876, 547. 57. Maher, Letters, 373. 58. Ibid., 168. 59. PP, 1857-58, XXVI (2309). 60. Anne B. Dallas, Incidents in the Life and Ministry of the Rev. A. R. C. Dallas by his Widow, 3rd ed., London 1873, 18. The text is from Matthew 10: 30 and Luke 12: 7. 61. R. C. Dallas, New Conspiracy Against the Jesuits Detected and Briefly Exposed, London 1815, and Letter to Charles Butler Relative to the New Conspiracy Against the Jesuits, London 1817. 62. G. G. N., Lord Byron, Correspondence with a Friend Including His Letters to His Mother 1809-11, and a Recollection of the Poet by the late R. C. Dallas, and a Continuation by Rev. A. R. C. Dallas, 3 vols, Paris 1825. For a study of the relationship

366 Notes to pages 209-213 between father and son see Desmond Bowen, `Alexander R. C. Dallas, the Warrior-Saint of Wonston, Hampshire' in P. T. Phillips, ed., View from the Pulpit: Victorian Ministers and Society, Toronto and Cambridge 1977. 63. Dallas, Dallas, 110. 64. Ibid., 189. 65. Ibid., 233. 66. Ibid., 236. 67. [A. R. C. Dallas], Country Curate's Offering to His Parishioners, London, 1822, 39. 68. `Wonston Weekly Calendar', 13 Sep. 1835 (Wonston Parish MSS). 69. A. R. C. Dallas, The Lord's Prayer Considered as a Rule of Conduct, in a Course of Practical Sermons Preached to a Country Congregation, London 1823, 15. 70. A. R. C. Dallas, My Churchyard, Its Tokens and Its Remembrances (London 1828), repr. London 1848, 100. 71. A. R. C. Dallas, Ministerial Responsibility, London 1837, 104. 72. A. R. C. Dallas, Pastor's Assistant, Intended to Facilitate the Discharge of the Pastoral Office in the Church of England,

London 1842-44, III, 133-5. 73. A. R. C. Dallas, Pastoral Superintendence: Its Motive, Its Detail and Its Support, London 1841, 33. 74. [A. R. C. Dallas], The Races, Wonston 1844; also [A. R. C. Dallas], The Pleasure Fair, Wonston 1843. 75. A. R. C. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions to 1869, London 1873, 187. This is a second, abridged edition, with additional material, of Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, London 1867. 76. Dallas, Pastoral Superintendence, 360. 77. Dallas, Dallas, 578. 78. Ibid., 322-3. 79. Dallas, Pastor's Assistant, I, 360, and III, 43. 80. Dallas, Dallas, 316. Such speculation had a wide appeal. See Henry Manning, Present Crisis of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy: Four Lectures, London 1861. O Tuathaigh, Ireland Before the Famine, 164, notes the `millenarian mood' of even the Repeal movement. 81. See pp. 64-5 above. 82. Thomas Lefroy, Memoir of Chief Justice Lefroy, Dublin 1871, 87, on Charles Simeon speaking to the Dublin Jews Society in 1822. 83. A. R. C. Dallas, `Blessings Promised and the Judgments Denounced After the Restoration of Judah and Israel' in Destiny of the Jews by Several Clergymen of the Church of England, London 1871, 433. Cf. his `Judgment of the Living' in The Second Coming, the Judgment and the Kingdom of Christ: Lectures During Lent 1843 at St George's, Bloomsbury, by

Notes to pages 213-219 367 Twelve Clergymen of the Church of England, London 1843, 269312. 84. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, London [1867], 8. 85. 'A Country Clergyman' [A. R. C. Dallas], Protestant Sisters of Charity: Letter to the Lord Bishop of London Developing a Plan for Improving the Arrangements at Present Existing for Administering Medical Advice and Visiting the Poor, London 1826. 86. 'Wonston Weekly Calendar', 26 Jul. 1835 (Wonston Parish MSS). 87. Number Ninety One: A Tract for the Times by One Who Never Contributed to the Former Series, London 1842. 88. Sirr, Trench, 630-3. 89. Dallas Dallas, 319. 90. A. R. C. Dallas, Realising the Strength of an Effectual Ministry, London 1843, the substance of two addresses to the Irish clergy in April 1841 on the great battle coming between the Spirit of God and the Powers of Darkness. 91. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, 11. 92. Ibid., 326. Cf. A. R. C. Dallas, The Missionary Crisis in the Church of England. The Substance of Two Addresses at Liverpool and Leeds, May and June 1842, London 1842. 93. Dallas, Dallas, 340. 94. Ibid., 355. For the Irish Society see Section 3 of this chapter. 95. Dallas, Story of Irish Church Missions to 1869, 11. W. Marrable, Sketch of the Origins and Operations of the Irish Church Missions, London 1852, 2, says that McGhee alone welcomed Dallas's plans. 96. Dallas, Dallas, 356. 97. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, Appendix I, 197-8. See A. R. C. Dallas Point of Hope in Ireland's Present Crisis, London 1849, 115-17, for his later tract, The Food of Man. 98. Dallas, Dallas, 358. 99. [A. R. C. Dallas], Castlekerke: Six Tracts, Wonston 1848, Tract 2, 2, dated Nov. 1848. Cf. Dallas to Joseph Singer 3 Jan. 1850 (ICM MSS); where he discusses the rumour that E. L. Moore, Rector of Cong, was upset over Dallas ignoring him in an Exeter Hall address. 100. See pp. 42-3 above. 101. A. R. C. Dallas, What Shall We Do for Ireland? Wonston 1846, 2. 102. A. R. C. Dallas, Real State of Ireland, Wonston 1847, contains the two letters to the Morning Herald in pamphlet form. 103. Dallas, Dallas, 377. Cf. Bowen, Souperism, 130-1. 104. Dallas, Dallas, 382. 105. Ibid., 384. 106. 'Private Statement After Journey to Ireland by the Honorary Secretaries', 7 Jul. 1851 (ICM MSS). Cf. Tierney, Murroe and

368

Notes to pages 219-221

Boher, 44, on only one Sunday Mass being provided for each part of this Limerick parish of 7,000 people, as late as 1852. The people there were noted as 'indifferently instructed' in an episcopal visitation, although the parish had a devoted pastor. 107. W. C. Plunket, Short Visit to the Connemara Missions, London 1863, 44. 108. J. G. Simms, 'Connaught in the Eighteenth Century,' IHS XI (1958), 124. 109. A. R. C. Dallas, Queen Elizabeth's Legacy: Letter to the Rev. William Goode on His Pamphlet 'Is the Reformation a Blessing?' Wonston 1858, 7. 110. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, 28-9. 111. A. R. C. Dallas, 'Address to City Mission at Exeter Hall', 13 Dec. 1851 (ICM MSS). 112. W. R. Le Fanu,. Seventy Years of Irish Life, London 1896, 37-8. This tale of derrins battling is retold by Tierney, Murroe and Boher, 49. 113. British Reformation Society, Church of Rome Against the Bible (Flyer No. 9, Exeter Hall n.d.: 'Everybody has heard of Dr Doyle, a late Irish Roman Catholic bishop, commending the Irish peasant who buried a Protestant bible with a pair of tongs, lest he should be infected with heresy if he only touched it.' 114. Dublin Evening Post, 11 Nov. 1851, editorialised on the 'good generalship' of the proselytisers in choosing the Tuam archdiocese for their work where 'Education was put under ban and anathema in these parts,' and criticised MacHale for ignoring the social needs of his people. 115. [A. R. C. Dallas], Real Romanism; as Stated in the Creed of Pope Pius IV, London 1845. 116. A. R. C. Dallas, The Christ of Romanism Not the Christ of Scripture: Lecture to the Church of England Young Men's Society, 28 February 1851, London 1851, 4. 117. A. R. C. Dallas, Present Spiritual Efforts for Ireland: A Letter to a Friend in Dublin on Some Recent Remarks with Reference to the Special Fund for the Spiritual Exigencies of Ireland, London 1847, 4; Birks, Bickersteth, II, 367: 'His chastisements for our sins ... they issue from His mercy and love, to recall us to Himself, from whom we have grievously departed.' 118. Mayo Constitution, 9 Feb. 1847. Cf. Bowen, Souperism, 74. 119. Dallas, Present Spiritual Efforts for Ireland, 5-7. 120. Eugene Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, London 1899, I, 378. The CMS gave its 'warm co-operation' to the ICM undertaking. It was common Evangelical belief that humbling by an act of God could turn people to consideration of their 'spiritual destitution'. See Madden, Daly, 94, for the case of the Tory Islanders after the tempest of 1826. 121. Birks, Bickersteth, II, 365. 122. Dallas, Christ of Romanism, 47. Cf. Dallas, Story of the Irish

Notes to pages 222-226 369 Church Missions to 1869, 25: `The sympathy and succour which rolled over the channel from Protestant England at this time melted the hearts of the starving Romanists, and greatly tended to bridge the broad chasm which had so long separated Protestant Christians from their Romanist neighbours.' 123. Dallas, Dallas, 397. 124. Birks, Bickersteth, II, 421, his last public address on behalf of the ICM at Exeter Hall in November 1849. 125. Dallas, Dallas, 390. 126. A. R. C. Dallas, `Judgment of the Living' in The Second Coming, 309. Cf. also his interpretation of the parable of the wheat and the tares (Rome) in The Corruption of the Church and Its Issue' in Parables Prophetically Explained by Twelve Clergymen of the Church of England, London 1853, 51-75. 127. Dallas, Dallas, 391. 128. Dallas, Present Spiritual Efforts for Ireland, 9, indicated specifically that the special exigency fund was not to be used for temporal relief. 129. Birks, Bickersteth, 370. 130. Desmond Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, Montreal 1968, 48-51. 131. Digby Neave, Four Days in Connemara, London 1852, 45; cf. Bowen, Souperism, 145. 132. Dallas, Present Spiritual Efforts for Ireland, 10. 133. T. W. Freeman, Pre-Famine Ireland, Manchester 1957, 138, estimates that only 5 per cent of the people were monoglot Irish speakers in 1851, with only 25 per cent speaking the language. J. F. Kenney, Sources for the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, Pt I, New York 1929, 51-2, estimates that half the population in 1800 had Irish as their mother tongue. 134. Irish Society Occasional Paper No. 5, May 1856 (ICM MSS), p. 20. 135. A. R. C. Dallas, What Are the Irish Church Missions? London 1867, 9: Cf. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, 174. 136. H. J. Monck Mason, Reasons and Authorities and Facts Afforded by the History of the Irish Society Respecting the Duty of Employing the Irish Language as a More General Medium for Conveying Scriptural Instruction to the Native Peasantry of Ireland, Dublin 1838, 10. 137. `Early Relations with the Irish Society', 20 Apr. 1849 (ICM MSS). Thompson, Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the Change in Religious Opinion Now Taking Place in Dingle, 169, notes that Ladies' Auxiliary Scripture Readers did proselytise in Kerry in the 1840s. 138. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions to 1869, 121, dated April 1853. 139. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 400. Cf. Plunket, Short N

370 Notes to pages 226-230 Visit to the Connemara Missions, 66: 'The Irish Society may be chiefly employed in preparing the ground, the Society for Irish Church Missions may be better adapted for bringing the crop to perfection.' 140. 'Statement Made by the Committee of the ICM to the Committee of the Irish Society in Reply to their Honorary Secretary', 21 Jan. 1853 (ICM MSS). See 'Heads of Reports Laid Before the Committee of the Society for Irish Church Missions at the Close of 1850' (ibid.), 10, for Bishop Robert Daly's insistence that the ICM withdraw from Doon; and Madden, Daly, 294-304, for Daly's support of the Irish Society in his sphere of influence. 141. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, 187. 142. 'Statement to the Irish Society', 1853, op. cit. 143. A. R. C. Dallas, 'Letter to the Secretary of the ICM', Dec. 1856 (ICM MSS). 144. 'Documents Relating to the Termination of the Alliance Between the ICM and the Irish Society', 1856 (ICM MSS). 145. 'General Reformation Appeal', Dec. 1856 (ibid.), appendix, p. 7, noting that of 115 Irish schools, with 3,458 pupils, in Mayo in 1853, few were in existence by 1856. 146. Irish Society Occasional Paper No. 5, op. cit. This pamphlet said that in the seventeen districts given up by the Irish Society there had been 387 Irish schools and 17,688 scholars. 147. Saunders' News-Letter, 12 Mar. 1856. 148. Ibid. 149. G. A. Cahill, 'Irish Catholicism and English Toryism', Review of Politics XIX (1957), 62-76. 150. John Denvir, The Irish in Britain, London 1892, 250, quotes Cardinal Wiseman saying that the 434 priests and 410 churches in England and Wales in 1830 had increased to 1,242 priests and 872 churches by 1864. 151. Thomas Carlyle, 'Chartism' in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, London 1907, IV, 138. 152. E. S. Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning, London 1895, II, 677-8. 153. D. Gwynn, 'Irish Immigration' in G. A. Beck, English Catholicism, 1850-1950, London 1950, 22. In 1847 deck passage Dublin-Liverpool was 6d. 154. Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, I, 378, from the CMS Report of 1847. 155. Walter Rails, 'Papal Aggression of 1850', Church History XLIII (1974), 242. Cf. Popery Exposed by Protestant Churchmen at Exeter Hall, 5 November 1850, London 1850, 6, where the Protestants of England are compared favourably with the 'dolt peasantry' of Belgium who were deluded by their priests. 156. Nicholas Wiseman, Sermons, Lectures and Speeches During His Tour of Ireland in August and September 1858, Dublin 1859, 336-7.

Notes to pages 230-235 371 157. F. A. Gasquet, `Letters of Cardinal Wiseman', Dublin Review CXIV (1919), 22, Wiseman to G. Talbot, 3 Aug. 1851. 158. B. Ward, Sequel to Catholic Emancipation, London 1915, I, 53 and 306-7. 159. See Sheridan Gilley, `Garibaldi Riots of 1862', Historical Journal XVI (1973), 731, for Wiseman's consistently Ultramontanist viewpoint. 160. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, 56. For the political storm see G. I. T. Machin, `Lord John Russell and the Prelude to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 1846-51', Journal of Ecclesiastical History XXV (1974), 277-95. For popular rioting at Stockport and elsewhere see Edward Lucas, Life of Frederick Lucas, London 1886, I, 459-60. 161. Maher, Letters, 90. See Gordon Albion, `Restoration of the Hierarchy' in Beck, English Catholicism, 1850-1950, 99, for the angry newspaper correspondence. 162. Lucas, Lucas, I, 430. The Archbishop of Canterbury said this issue `only affected the Church of England'—so much for the concept of the United Church of England and Ireland! 163. Nicholas Wiseman, `State of Catholic Affairs', Dublin Review XLII (1857), 225-6. 164. Ibid. 165. See [A. R. C. Dallas, ed.], Popish Political Catechism: The Reprint of an Old Tract in Oriel College Library, London 1867, a reprint of his publication of 1838; [A. R. C. Dallas], Real Romanism; as Stated in the Creed of Pope Pius IV, London 1845; A. R. C. Dallas, Popery in Ireland: A Warning to Protestants in England, London 1847. 166. A. R. C. Dallas, Roman Teaching: What It Is and What It is Not. Four Lectures During Advent, 1857, at St John's Church, Notting Hill, London 1858, 102, where he records the phenomenal expansion of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales since 1829. 167. Ibid., 3. 168. A. R. C. Dallas, `The Corruption of the Church and Its Issue' in Parables Prophetically Explained by Twelve Clergymen of the Church of England, London 1853, 51. 169. A. R. C. Dallas, `Present Position of Popery and Protestantism in Ireland' in Six Lectures on Protestantism Delivered Before the North of London Auxiliary to the Church of England Young Men's Society in October, November and December 1851, London 1852, 157-96. 170. Ibid., 179. Cf. A. R. C. Dallas, Protestantism in Ireland: Lecture to the Church of England Young Men's Society, 10 February 1851, London 1851. 171. A. R. C. Dallas, `Remedy for Ribbonism', 1851 (ICM MSS). 172. A. R. C. Dallas, Lecture ... on the Sacramental Delusions of Romanism, Brighton [1851], 3. The other lecture of the evening

372 Notes to pages 235-239 on `The Pretended Sacrifice of the Romish Mass' was given by C. F. McCarthy, curate of St Michan's, Dublin, and an ICM agent. 173. A. R. C. Dallas, Address at Exeter Hall, 13 Dec. 1851 (ICM MSS), quoted in Bowen, Souperism, 133-4. 174. Purcell, Manning, I, 579. 175. A. R. C. Dallas, Proselytism in Ireland: The Catholic Defence Association versus the Irish Church Missions on the Charge of Bribery and Intimidation, London 1852, 9. The other son, Robert Isaac Wilberforce, Archdeacon of the East Riding and a friend of Manning, converted in 1854 and died while preparing for the Roman priesthood. For Dallas and the Wilberforce family see A. R. Ashwell, Life of Samuel Wilberforce, London 1880, I, 63, and II, 65. 176. Mac Suibhne, Cullen II, 92-3. Cf. `Report of the Hon. Secretary for Missions after a Journey to Ireland in February 1852' (ICM MSS) for Dallas's pleasure over the controversy with Wilberforce. 177. J. H. Whyte, `The Influence of Catholic Clergy on Elections in Nineteenth-Century Ireland', EHR LXXV (1960), 344, notes that the political influence of Irish priests was at its height in 1852, following the anti-Catholic agitation. Cf. also J. H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-59, Oxford 1958, 63-82. 178. Wilberforce to Dallas, Rugby, 5 Feb. 1852 (ICM MSS). Cf. H. W. Wilberforce, Discourse Delivered in the Presence of Very Rev. T. Kelly, VG, in the Catholic Church of Kilrush, 24 November 1851, Kilrush 1851. 179. Oliver MacDonagh, `Irish Catholic Clergy and Emigration During the Great Famine', IHS V (1947), 296. 180. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1852, XXXI, ff. 258-60. Cf. Bowen, Souperism, 142-4, for the Roman correspondence with Ireland about the proselytising successes. 181. See Anon., Early Fruits of the Irish Missions: A Letter from an Eye Witness after a Missionary Tour During June and July 1850, London 1851. 182. Thomas Plunket, Convert Confirmations: A Discourse Delivered to Converts from Romanism in West Galway in September 1851, together with a Report of the Tour for Missionary Confirmations Upon the Same Occasion, London 1851, 2. 183. Report of the Committee of the Society for Irish Church Missions Read at the Third Annual Meeting, 30 April 1852, 23-4. 184. Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, 105. 185. West Galway Church Building Fund: Statement and Account of the Lord Bishop of Tuam with a Report of His Lordship's Tour Through Parts of the United Dioceses of Tuam, Killala and Achonry in the Months of July and August 1852, Wonston 1852, 16. Plunket reported confirming a total of 2,411 converts in three years. 186. Report of the Committee at the Third Annual Meeting, 10.

Notes to pages 239-243 373 187. R. Bickersteth, Ireland: A Lecture to the YMCA on 6 January 1852, London 1852, 15. 188. Report of the Committee at the Third Annual Meeting, 11. 189. Ibid.

190. E. A. Stopford, Reply to Sergeant Shee on the Irish Church, Its History and Statistics, Dublin 1853, 74-5. 191. C. H. Seymour, Late Synod in Tuam: Questions for the Bishops, Priests and People of the Church of Rome, Dublin 1854, 7. 192. Replies to Circular Sent to Missionaries, 28 Oct. 1854 (ICM MSS). 193. Report of the Tour of the Lord Bishop of Tuam Through the Missionary Districts of his Diocese in the Months of July and August 1855, Dublin 1855. There were 104 converts confirmed

at Achill in this tour, and 134 at Clifden. 194. For a detailed account of the struggle in Connaught see Bowen, Souperism, 135-44. 195. T. P. O'Neill, 'Famine in Carlow', Carloviana I (1947), 17. 196. Maher, Letters, 230 and 197-201. 197. Ibid., 149. 198. Ibid., 210. 199. Kilkenny Journal, 6. Aug. 1856. Copies of these papers were sent to Wonston Rectory, where a file of them was kept; it is now in the ICM Library, London. Cf. A. R. C. Dallas, Letter to the Mayor of Kilkenny, 1 November 1855, London 1855, for details of the assaults in that year. 200. Kilkenny Moderator, 26 Apr. 1856. 201. ICM Occasional Paper No. 32, Jan. 1858 (ICM MSS). 202. C. S. Stanford, Handbook to the Romish Controversy, being a Refutation of the Creed of Pope Pius IV on the Grounds of Scripture and Reason, Dublin 1852.

203. A. R. C. Dallas, 'Private Report to the Committee after his Journey to Ireland, 17 September 1849' (ICM MSS). Cf. G. Scott, Irish Society's Missions at Doon, Dingle, Ventry and Dunurlin: Letter to the Venerable Archdeacon of Derry, Dublin 1854, 5,

for the controversial work of McCarthy with large crowds in the Weavers' Hall in Westland Row. 204. T. R. Dunckley, Father Gavazzi's Gift to the People of Ireland: A Course of Orations in the Rotunda, Dublin, in October and November 1852, Dublin 1852. Gavazzi was brought to Dublin by

the Priests' Protection Society. 205. Dallas, What Are the Irish Church Missions?, 3; A. R. C. Dallas and J. C. Ryle, The `Birds' Nest', Bath [1863]. From 1844 there was a 'Reformed Romanist Priests' Protection Society' at 23 Upper Sackville Street to help clerical converts. 206. Several Important Particulars and Testimonies Respecting the Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics,

Belfast 1862, 18-20. The ICM then boasted it had 429 agents in the field. 207. A. R. C. Dallas, 'Letter to the Honorary Secretaries in England

374 Notes to pages 244-247 and to All Association Secretaries, 27 Feb. 1859' (ICM MSS). 208. Plunket, Short Visit to the Connemara Missions, 19. 209. John Garrett, Good News from Ireland, London 1863, 10-147. Cf. also H. S. Cunningham, Is 'Good News from Ireland' True?, London 1865. 210. Rev. William Kennedy, Louisburgh, to Dallas, 20 Feb. and 24 Mar. 1864 (ICM MSS). Cf. 'A Few Facts Illustrative of Operations and Results in Connection with the Society for Irish Church Missions in 1867' (ibid.). The entire income from both countries for 1867 was £25,577. 211. R. J. Rowton, Light of the West, or A Historical Sketch of the Protestant Church in Ireland, London 1869, 425. 212. Dallas, What Are the Irish Church Missions?, 11. See Dallas, Story of the Irish Church Missions, Pt 1, 173, for his reaction to the Redemptorist and Vincentian missions raised by Cardinal Cullen. 213. Report Made to the ICM Committee by the Rev. Canon E. Auriol and the Rev. E. H. Bickersteth of their Third Visit of Inspection to a Portion of the Missions of the Society, London 1868, 5. The inspectors visited 25 stations 11-30 August 1868. 214. Ibid., 7. 215. A. R. C. Dallas, 'Confidential Report to the Committee of the Irish Church Missions After an Inspection of Missions in the Summer of 1869' (ICM MSS), 5-8. 216. Ibid., 28-9. 217. Ibid., 35. 218. Correspondence Between Rev. Canon W. Macllwaine and Rev. Canon H. C. Cory, Dublin 1880, 12. Cory (alias Eade) was an Englishman and one of Dallas's most faithful supporters. Curate of a neighbouring parish in Hampshire when the ICM began, he later became Rector of Clifden and a canon of Tuam. By 1880 he was the most prominent ICM leader. The work was then confined to parts of Connemara where the ICM could still stir up strife, St Luke's and St Michan's, Dublin, and the Sandy Row area of Belfast. Cf. J. H. Tuke, Achill and the West of Ireland, London 1886, where he makes no mention of Protestant mission work in the Achill area. 219. Plunket, Short Visit to the Connemara Missions, 58-9, the term used for the work of the ICM in Connaught in the 1850s. 220. Correspondence Between Macllwaine and Cory, 25, Macllwaine, a Belfast Protestant, asked about Dallas: 'An Englishman by birth, having no personal acquaintance with Ireland until his mission commenced ... utterly ignorant of the RC controversy at that time, and but little versed in it practically until the commencement of his Irish mission ... was he the man to whom the lead in such work as the conversion of the RCs in this land should have been committed?' 221, A. R. C. Dallas, 'Light Thrown by Prophecy on the Recent

Notes to pages 247-250 375 Development of Popery' in The Light of Prophecy: being Lectures Delivered During Lent 1856 at St George's, Bloomsbury. By Twelve Clergymen. With a Preface by Edward Hoare, London 1856, 90-120. Macllwaine, op. cit., 9, called his theology `the

most extreme and even revolting dogmas of the hyper-predestinarian Calvinistic school'. Cf. Dallas, Pastoral Superintendence, 130, for his conviction that lack of missionary zeal 'would rob my crown of its jewels'. 222. The Sentinel, 16 Aug. 1856, 100, reporting a meeting of the Dublin Protestant Association. 223. F. R. Wynne, Spent in the Service: A Memoir of the Very Rev. Achilles Daunt, DD, Dean of Cork, London 1879, 164, on the typical Church of Ireland reaction to the `swooning, the unconsciousness, the evidently hysteric conditions' of the Ulster revival of 1859. 224. The Roman Crisis: Extract from the `Banner of the Truth' in Ireland, August 1, 1861, London 1861, 2. 225. A Drawing Room Discussion Between a Protestant Clergyman and a Roman Catholic Priest Arising Out of a Challenge Given to the Latter, Dublin 1857, 143. 226. Plunket, Short Visit to the Connemara Missions, 25-6. This was the era of The Origin of Species, and Plunket's phrenological

insight was probably considered scientifically advanced. 227. Dallas, Dallas, 380 and passim, is filled with tales of his `cowing' the people: `Impress upon an Irishman that you are not afraid of him and you are safe with him.' Cf. ibid., 415, for the ICM definition of `aggressive love' as making `an impression on the heart of corrupt and superstitious men', and A. R. C. Dallas, Letter to the Roman Catholics of Kilkenny, 4 April 1856,

Wonston 1856, for his general tone of condescension. 228. Anon., Dr Cullen's Pastoral Answered, Dublin 1852, 18. 229. Saunders' News-Letter, 12 Mar. 1856. Foley believed the English Evangelicals were led astray by the idea that the whole of the Irish people might become Protestant. 230. Correspondence Between Macllwaine and Cory, 6. 231. Mr and Mrs S. C. Hall, Handbook for Ireland: The West and Connemara, London 1853, 100, comment on the love and respect given to D'Arcy, former landlord of Clifden Castle. The Halls were not admirers of Protestant missions generally. The Rev. Roderick Ryder in his 1868 report on the situation in Errismore, where he had been since 1852, said: `Converts and Romanists now walk together to their respective places of worship in friendly conversation.' (`Reports from Local Missions to the Committee in 1868' (ICM MSS).) For a comment on Dr Adams rather than Nangle as the 'mainstay' of the Achill colony see James Johnson, Tour in Ireland, London 1844, 239. Adams had given up a large practice in College Green, Dublin, to work on Achill among the Catholic people, who loved him.

376 Notes to pages 251-259 232. Tierney, Murroe and Boher, 156. 233. Dallas, What Are the Irish Church Missions?, 10. 234. Anon., Protestants in Ireland in 1853, London 1854, 195. The speaker, the Rev. John Hewson, was missioner to the Iniskea Islands off the Erris coast. 235. Report of the First Annual Meeting of the Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, 26 April 1850, London 1850, 6. 236. William Welsh, Ireland's Claim on English Protestantism: Lectures to North West London's Church of England YMA, London 1856, 6. 237. 'Several Important Particulars and Testimonies Respecting the ICM', Belfast 1862 (ICM MSS), 5. 238. Plunket, Short Visit to the Connemara Missions, 38. 239. B. H. Becker, Disturbed Ireland, London 1881, 315, indicates how many Irish Protestants competed for estate agent jobs because 'there seemed nothing else in Ireland for them to do'. Cf. J. Donnelly, Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, London 1975, 178. 240. 'Reports from Local Missions to the Committee in 1868' (ICM MSS). In Rudd's area 316 families received the Scripture Readers: '160 are civil and attentive, 100 are civil but careless, 56 are unwilling to hear, but don't turn them out.' 241. Dallas, 'Confidential Report, 1869' (ibid.). Dallas hoped the 'coldness of the Protestants' could yet be reduced as it was 'the greatest impediment in the way of the missions'. 242. E. J. Whately, 'Irish Church Missions', Reprinted from the 'Banner of Truth', October 1872, Dublin 1872, 2. 243. Few Evangelical memoirs pay other than a passing reference to the work of the ICM in the very early 1850s. Cf. R. C. Gregg, 'Faithful Unto Death': Memorials of the Life of John Gregg, Dublin 1879; F. R. Wynne, Spent in the Service: Memoir of the Very Rev. Achilles Daunt, London 1879; Deborah Alcock, Walking with God: A Memoir of the Ven. John Alcock, London 1887. 244. A. G. Dann, George Webster: A Memoir, Dublin 1897, 157. 245. Kennedy to Dallas, Jun. 1864-Mar. 1865 (ICM MSS). 246. Dallas to Committee, Nov. 1869 (ibid.). 247. Dallas, 'Confidential Report, 1869' (ibid.), 13. Chapter VI THE LEGACY OF THE EVANGELICAL CRUSADE (pp. 259-305) 1. In the British Museum Catalogue Dallas is credited with seventysix publications during his lifetime, some of them in more than one edition, and he was certainly an influence in the Evangelical world, if only through the founding of the still-extant ICM. 2. Emmet Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Creation of the Modern Irish State, 1878-86, Philadelphia and Dublin 1975,

Notes to pages 260-264

377

73, indicates the state of MacHale's diocese as late as the 1870s, understaffed, with only relatives of the archbishop getting preferment, filled with secret societies, and the Protestants still making converts. 3. D. Murphy, Kinsale, to Cullen, 20 Jan. 1847 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 1310), on `proselytism by Exeter Ha11'; Presentation Nuns, Dingle, to Cullen, 15 Feb. 1847 (ibid., MS. 1332) on same subject; Edward Maginn, Bishop of Derry, to Cullen, 1 Apr. 1847 (ibid., MS. 1363) on proselytism. MacHale avoided comment on this issue, but Rome knew what was happening in Connaught; see Bowen, Souperism, 140-4. 4. Lucas, Lucas, II, 381. 5. 6 Broin, Duffy, 83. 6. J. Lee, Modernisation of Irish Society, 1848-1918, Dublin 1973, 90, for Canon Ulick Bourke trying to introduce the temporal power of the papacy issue into Mayo Land League meetings. 7. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, I, 144. 8. Ibid., I, 362. 9. Ibid., I, 137. 10. Ibid., I, 127. 11. Jones to Cullen, 27 Jul. 1828 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 29). 12. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, I, 176. 13. Ibid., I, 174. 14. Lucas, Lucas, II, 371. 15. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, I, 210, letter to his sister Margaret. 16. Thomas McCann to Cullen, 27 Apr. 1832 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 49). 17. John McCann to Cullen, 23 May 1832 (ibid., MS. 52), on how it `greatly amused the Catholics and considerably amazed our dissenting brethren'. Cf. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, III, 375. 18. Cullen to Kirby, then Vice-Rector of the Irish College, 25 Jun. 1842 (ibid., Kirby Papers). 19. Kirby to Cullen, 16 Jun. 1842 (ibid., MS. 734): 'no ground for alarm on the subject of the Pope's interference with the Irish clergy on the Repeal question'. 20. O'Connell to Cullen, 9 May 1842 (ibid., MS. 727). Cf. p. 6 above for O'Connell's statements about the papacy in 1815. 21. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, I, 311, Cullen to MacHale, 28 Jan. 1848. 22. Maher to Cullen, 13 Jun. 1848 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 1605), reporting 600 converts in Cork city alone, with 22 proselytising societies at work; Maher to Cullen, 13 Oct. 1848, (ibid., MS. 1658), on the 'spirit and activity' of the proselytisers in Connaught. Cf. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, III, 90-1, for Cullen's detailed notes on proselytising in Oughterard. 23. R. Costigan, 'Ecclesiological Dialectic', Thought XLIX (1974), 141. Cf. John Ahern, 'Plenary Synod of Thurles', IER LXXV (1951), 401, on the Irish reception of the 'decrees and rescripts of the Holy See'.

378

Notes to pages 265-269

24. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1833, XXV, f. 676. Cf. G. A. Crolly, Life of Most Rev. Dr Crolly with Letters in Defence of his Character, Dublin 1851. 25. P. C. Barry, `National Synod of Thurles: Contemporary Accounts', IER LXXXV (1956), 73-8. 26. Anon., Dr Cullen's Pastoral Answered, Dublin 1852, 5. This was part of Cullen's pastoral of 8 November 1851. 27. Maher to Cullen, 13 Jun. 1848 (Irish College, Rome, MS. 1605), on the Queen's Colleges and proselytising. Cf. James Maher, Observations on the Address Delivered by the President of Queen's College, Galway, at the Close of the Session 1849-50, Dublin 1850, 37. 28. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, II, 109-11, Cullen to Louis Veuillot, 22 Dec. 1851. Veuillot, editor of the Ultramontanist L'Univers, had sent Cullen funds to combat the Protestants. 29. Paul Cullen, Pastoral Letters and Other Writings, ed. P. F. Moran, Dublin 1882, I, 221. 30. Ibid., I, 283. 31. Ibid., I, 407. 32. Ibid., I, 416. 33. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, H, 227, where they are called `agents of the CMS'. 34. Ibid., II, 248-9. 35. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, II, 320. See also Freeman's Journal, 21 Jan. 1861. 36. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1861-64, XXXIV, ff. 650-9, a copy of the parliamentary return of 24 Aug. 1863, showing the state of the Established Church, parish by parish, in 1861 as compared with 1834. 37. Ibid., 39-40b and 182b. Orestes Brownson of New York was held particularly suspect. 38. Ibid., ff. 510-11. 39. Ibid., ff. 181-2b. 40. Ibid., ff. 569-70, on English rejoicing over Catholic emigration. 41. Ibid., ff. 704-7. 42. Report of the Committee of the Society for Irish Church Missions at the Third Annual Meeting, 10. 43. William Urwick, Brief Sketch of the Religious State of Ireland, Dublin 1852, 35, on the `animus' of the Jesuits beginning to appear in the Roman Catholic Church. 44. `Hermes', Souperism and Romanism: A Reply to the Editor of the `Irish Quarterly Review', Dublin 1857, 66-7. 45. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 93, for the change in the Catholic ecclesiastical world of Dublin between 1821 and 1867. Cf. K. H. Connell, Irish Peasant Society, Oxford 1968, 160. Priests increased by some 25 per cent in number in the twenty years after Cullen's arrival. 46. Godkin, op. cit., 304.

Notes to pages 269-274

379

47. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, I, 55, evidence of his chaplain on Cullen's pride that he never once granted a dispensation for mixed marriage. 48. Correct Jubilee Book with Instructions and Prayers with the Pastoral of the Most Rev. Dr Cullen, Dublin 1858, 22. 49. Godkin, Religious History of Ireland, 282. 50. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, I, 47, on his address to Dublin Catholics, 17 Jan. 1872, where his attack on National School `proselytising' had shifted to the Presbyterians. 51. J. H. Whyte, `The Appointment of Catholic Bishops in Nineteenth-Century Ireland', Catholic Historical Review XLVIII (Apr. 1962), 32. 52. Emmet Larkin, `Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-75', American Historical Review LXXVII 1972, 649. 53. PP, 1825, IX (521), 314; PP, 1825, VIII (129), 240; `J.K.L.' [Doyle], Vindication of the Irish Catholics, 49. 54. F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, London 1971, 8. 55. Mason, History of the Irish Society, 99-100. 56. J. H. Whyte, `The Influence of the Catholic Clergy on Elections in Nineteenth-Century Ireland', EHR LXXV (1970), 239-59. 57. Urwick, op. cit., 36. 58. Dublin Evening Post, 11 Nov. 1851. 59. Whyte, `Influence of the Catholic Clergy', op. cit., 255-9, traces a decline of clerical political influence from the 1870s. Cf. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, II, 350-2, and IV, 51, on the anti-Cullenite priest journalist in London, Francis Mahony (`Father Prout'), who probably originated the term 'Cullenisation'. Mahony, a native of Cork, died in 1861. 60. Irish People, 9 Apr. 1864. 61. John A. Murphy, `Priests and People in Modern Irish History', Christus Rex XXIII (1969), 354. 62. M. J. F. McCarthy, Priests and People in Ireland, Dublin 1902, xiii. 63. Mac Suibhne, Cullen, II, 190, Cullen to Kirby, 18 Mar. 1867, on his desire to chasten Bishop Moriarty over his handling of the Fenians: `I wish he could be called to account for it.' Cf. Propaganda, Scritture (Irlanda), 1861-64, XXXIV, 8 Apr. 1864, on Cullen's `inquisitorial' interest in the Brotherhood of St Patrick, which he believed was filled with `Protestants'. 64. O. T. Dobbin, Plea for Tolerance Towards Our Fellow Subjects in Ireland Who Profess the Roman Catholic Religion, London 1866, 2. 65. Hansard, xxi (1829), 67. 66. Ibid., 68. 67. Ibid., 69. 68. Ibid., 73. 69. Ibid. John Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, the most liberal of Irish churchmen, believed that `infinitely more difficulties and dangers will attach to concessions than to uncompromising resistance'.

380

Notes to pages 275-277

See C. Forster, Life of John Jebb, 3rd ed., London 1851, I, 160, 181, 187, 199, 233, 241 and 242. 70. Hansard, xxi (1829), 69-70. 71. Desmond Bowen, `Lord John George Beresford', New Divinity III (1973), 15-25. 72. E. Wakefield, Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political, London 1812, II, 302. 73. Thomas Pakenham, Year of Liberty, London 1969, 403, n. 43 describes John George as a rake when a young man, but this is very unlikely. Archbishop Stuart objected fiercely to the appointment of a cousin, George Beresford, to the see of Kilmore (see p. 41 above), but had only praise for the character of John George. Pakenham has confused the two men. 74. Gentleman's Magazine, Dec. 1862, obituary notice. Cf. Addresses Presented to the Lord Primate on his Attaining the Fiftieth Year of his Episcopate 29 March 1855, Dublin 1855, 17: 'Chief among the princes of the Church he feels no sacerdotal contempt for the laity.' 75. Beresford to St Germains, 12 Nov. 1853 (Armagh Library, Beresford MSS, II, 141-8). 76. Trollope, Clergymen of the Church of England, 3-4. 77. J. Stuart, Historical Memoirs of the City of Armagh, Dublin 1900, 413-16; p. 415 lists his few publications. Only one charge, one sermon and two speeches were published. Some of his reserve reflected his philanthropy, for he gave most of his great wealth to charities and endowments. 78. See Bowen, `Lord John George Beresford', op. cit., 94, for the `bowdlerising' of his early correspondence by later churchmen. 79. R. B. McDowell, Alice Stopford Green: A Passionate Historian, Dublin 1967, 8. 80. Mant, Mant, vii and viii. 81. Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, f. 590, 3 Mar. 1855, on Beresford and Watson, whose funeral he attended. 82. McDowell, Alice Stopford Green, 14, says of E. A. Stopford's daughter that her 'strong sense of right and wrong, an anxiety to help others, and a firm persistence in good causes ... may be fairly attributed to her evangelical upbringing'. Stopford, however, was never an Evangelical in the sense of someone like Robert Daly. 83. McGhee and O'Sullivan, Romanism As It Rules, I, 1. 84. Cf. West Galway Church Building Fund: Statement and Account of the Lord Bishop of Tuam, Wonston 1852, 9, where Beresford's contribution exactly matched that of the Bishop of Tuam and the Archdeacon of Killala. When the popularity of the ICM missions increased and endowment funds were sought to establish parishes, this grant increased slightly, as did the recommendation for the work. See the 'flyer' of 1857, Church Endowment Fund for West Galway (ICM MSS).

Notes to pages 277-280 381 85. Beresford withdrew as patron and visitor of St Columba's College when it was suspected of 'Puseyism'; see St Columba's College, Beresford MSS, 1845, passim. 86. Beresford to Whately, Aug. 1859 (Armagh Library, Beresford MSS, II, 30-9). 87. Beresford to various clergymen, Oct. 1823-Nov. 1824 (Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, f. 3). 88. Beresford to Harriet Dunbar, 6 Oct. 1855 (ibid., f. 624). 89. Viceregal Lodge to Beresford, 3 Dec. 1855 (ibid., ff. 323-4). 90. Beresford to William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, Feb. 1842, on marriage law conflict (ibid., ff. 470-2). 91. J. B. Leslie, Armagh Clergy and Parishes, Dundalk 1911, 24-7. 92. Rev. William Beresford to Primate Beresford, 15 Feb. 1854 (Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, f. 563). See also correspondence between Primate Beresford and Rev. William Beresford, 20 Feb. 1854-2 Feb. 1861 (ibid., ff. 564, 565, 571 and 651). William Beresford was diligent in his pursuit of the Primate, who refused to help him. 93. PP, 1825, IX (521), 360-3, Beresford's evidence of 26 Apr. 1825. 94. Beresford to Henry Goulburn, 31 Jan. and 23 Mar. 1825 (Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, ff. 14 and 18), and to William Phelan, 11 Apr. 1825 (ibid., f. 20), on how to contain the Roman Catholic advance. 95. George Meara to Lord George Beresford, 7 Oct. 1829 (ibid., f. 102). 96. George Meara to Lord George Beresford, 23 May 1830 (ibid., f. 139), and to Primate Beresford, 20 Jul. 1830 (ibid., f. 155). 97. Beresford to Goulburn, 11 Aug. 1830 (ibid., f. 207). 98. Rev. Richard Ryan, Rector of Rathcore, Enfield, Co. Meath, to Beresford, 15 May 1831 (ibid., f. 229). 99. Rev. Elias Thackery, Vicar of Dundalk, Co. Louth, to Beresford, 4 Jun. 1831 (ibid., f. 245). 100. Lord George Beresford to Primate Beresford, 16 Jan. 1835 (ibid., f. 219). 101. Beresford to Lord John Russell, Mar. 1838, with bargaining to reduce the rent-charge from 30 per cent to 25 per cent (ibid., ff. 351-61). 102. Samuel Kyle, Bishop of Cork, to Beresford, 18 May 1831 (ibid., f. 230); Thomas Elrington, Bishop of Ferns, to Beresford, 21 May 1831 (ibid., f. 232). 103. King and Queen to Beresford, 16 Dec. 1835, commending his exertions on behalf of the suffering Protestant clergy (ibid., f. 325). For his efforts he was awarded the Order of St Patrick. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 262, comments in his usual fashion on Beresford's munificence by noting that what he gave was but a fraction of what the Beresfords had taken from the

382 Notes to pages 280-284 Church, and that his example was seldom followed by other bishops. 104. Samuel O'Sullivan, Remains, II, 187-8. 105. Ibid. 106. Ibid., 189. 107. Crosthwaite to Beresford, 27 Dec. 1842 (Armagh Library, Beresford MSS, XI, 34). 108. Beresford to Sumner, 12 Apr. 1845 (Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, f. 501). 109. Beresford to Sumner, 16 Apr. 1845 (ibid., f. 502). 110. Moriarty to Beresford, 7 Oct. 1850 (ibid., f. 546). 111. The Beresford Papers in TCD are filled with continual references to the problem of Roman Catholics being admitted to fellowships. See MS. 327, an 1845 memorial of D. C. Heron to the Primate as visitor of the college on this topic. 112. William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, published his Alliance Between Church and State in 1736; William Paley, Archdeacon of Carlisle, argued a utilitarian justification for an established church in his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, London 1788, II, 304-5. 113. J. G. Beresford, Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of St Paul, 19 June 1836, at the Yearly Meeting of the Children of the Charity Schools in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, London 1836, 3-4. 114. J. O'Donoghue, Letter to Rt Hon. Edward Cardwell, MP, on the Demand for a Denominational System of Education in Ireland, Dublin 1860, 12. 115. Beresford to William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, 12 Apr. 1845 (Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, f. 501), a long letter which records his lengthy negotiations with Peel on the educational system. 116. Todd to Beresford, 6 and 17 Nov. 1847 (TCD, Beresford MSS 824-5); Beresford to Todd, 20 Nov. 1847 (ibid., 826). 117. Beresford to Howley, 12 Apr. 1845 (Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, f. 501). 118. Brynn, `Church of Ireland Diocese', op. cit., 195, comments on the situation in the Clogher diocese: `By 1835 forty-one schools had been established in Clogher under the new programme; since the Church of Ireland boycotted them and Presbyterian participation was at first hesitant, the National Schools became strongly Catholic-oriented.' 119. George Miller, Present Crisis of the Church of Ireland Considered, Dublin 1844, 9. 120. George Miller, Case of the Church Education Society of Ireland Argued, London 1847, 443. 121. George Webster, Address to the Parishioners of St Nicholas, Cork, Cork 1869, 5, where the Chancellor of Cork commented on his schools, then under the National Board for ten years, and

Notes to pages 285-289 383 the help it had brought the children: `Much more indeed is done for them by associating them with the children of the National Schools.' 122. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 435. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid., 438. 125. Beresford to O'Brien, 9 Feb. 1860 (Armagh Library, Beresford MSS, X, 79). Cf. Carroll, O'Brien, 18, where Bishop Daly of Cashel said that Beresford's advice was 'as base as if he had recommended a woman in distress to part with her virtue'. 126. Ibid. 127. John Garrett, Education in Ireland: A Comparison of the Advice Given in Two Addresses Recently Issued by his Grace the Lord Primate of All Ireland and the Lord Bishop of Ossory, London 1860. Garrett was an Evangelical supporter of the ICM and had at one time been an inspector of the CES. 128. Ibid., 7. 129. Lord George Beresford to Primate Beresford, 19 Dec. 1834 (Belfast Public Record Office, MS. D 664A, f. 215): `The Beresfords it is true are on the decline.' 130. Correspondence between Beresford and Attwell, 7 Jan.-17 Feb. 1844 (Armagh Library, Beresford MSS, VIII, 29-33). 131. Kyle to Beresford, 6 Dec. 1846 (ibid., XI, 38); Beresford to Kyle, 9 Dec. 1846 (ibid., XI, 39). 132. Beresford to Roden, Jun. 1852 (ibid., I, 292-4), and Apr. 1854 (ibid., VIII, 186). Cf. Edward Nangle to Beresford, 9 Mar. 1844 (ibid., XIII, 225). Beresford had expressed his shocked disapproval of Nangle's use of a picture of a mouse devouring the Host as the frontispiece of the Achill Herald. 133. Crosthwaite to Beresford, 5 Feb. 1850 (TCD, Beresford MS. 393). 134. 'A Beneficed Clergyman', Proposals for Remedying the Abuses and Promoting the Efficiency of the Established Church in Ireland in Letters Addressed to the Earl of Clarendon, Dublin 1849, 24-5. 135. J. G. Beresford, Charge Delivered at Armagh During the Visitation of 1845, London 1846, 9. 136. Ibid., 39. Cf. letter from the clergy of Cork city to Beresford, 5 Apr. 1854 (Cloyne Cathedral MSS), begging his intercession with parliament on their behalf over a threatened reduction of their income at a time when their parishes were `overrun' with 'hundreds of the most destitute class of Protestants', and their `scanty incomes' did not allow them to support curates 'in localities where their aid is so very much required'. The Primate's reply ten days later indicated that he approved this particular imposition, the proceeds of which went to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. 137. Addresses to the Primate on the Fiftieth Year of his Episcopate, 9.

384 Notes to pages 289-292 138. Thomas Drew, Christians and the Churchmen-the Protestant, Belfast 1852, 7. Drew made an address to the Primate on his fiftieth anniversary of his episcopate, praising his leadership of the `Reformation faith' (op. cit., 18). Another prominent antiCatholic Belfast parson was the Rev. Thomas Mcllwaine, who joined Drew in talk of Romish intimidation which opposed preaching of the Gospel. See Belfast News-Letter, 5 Sep. 1857, and Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Origin and Character of the Riots in Belfast in July and September 1857, Dublin 1858, 1-297. Cf. also Andrew Boyd, Holy War in Belfast, Tralee 1972, 9-44. 139. Fitzpatrick, Whately, I, 19. 140. Ibid., I, 249. Samuel Hinds became Bishop of Norwich, William Fitzgerald of Killaloe, and Charles Dickinson of Meath. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 195, accused him of a kind of nepotism of 'having pets among the clergy'. 141. W. M. Brady, Facts or Fictions? Seven Letters on the Facts Concerning the Irish Church Published by the Church Institution, Dublin 1867, 10. Cf. E. J. Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, London 1866, I, 94-9 and 112. 142. Beresford to Howley, 22 Oct. 1846 (Armagh Library, Beresford MSS, I, 11). 143. Dublin [Roman Catholic] Archdiocesan Archives, MS. 1000 contains several letters exchanged between Whately's and Murray's offices when the two archbishops worked together on famine relief during the spring of 1847. 144. Fitzpatrick, Whately, I, 35. Special exception was taken to his study, Essays on Some of the Difficulties in the Writings of St Paul, London 1828. 'A Layman of the United Church', Reply to Archbishop Whately's Essay on Election, 4th ed., Dublin 1862. Cf. Carroll, O'Brien, 18, where Daly rebuked a clergyman who spoke of Whately after his death as a 'saved soul'. 145. Fitzpatrick, Whately, I, 105. 146. Ibid., II, 43. 147. Ibid., I, 168. 148. Richard Whately, National Blessings and Judgments Cbnsidered in a Discourse Delivered Before the University of Oxford, May 29, 1822, with an Appendix Containing Remarks on the Present Crisis, London 1831, 35. 149. Richard Whately, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Dublin at the Visitation of July and August 1849, Dublin 1849, 13. 150. Richard Whately, Christian Duty of Educating the Poor, Dublin 1845, 8 and 17. 151. Richard Whately, On the Right Use of National Afflictions, Dublin 1848, 4. 152. Ibid. 153. Ibid., 14.

Notes to pages 292-296 385 154. Ibid., 5. For Evangelical opinion of Whately at this time see The Warder, 13 Feb. 1847. 155. Maher, Letters, 1-13. Whately was prone to such ill-considered statements. See Fitzpatrick, Whately, 173-8, where he suggested the parson's job was teaching the Gospel, not visiting the sick, a blunder which, as we have noted, Cardinal Cullen never let him forget. 156. Whately, Whately, II, 114. He gave some £8,000 for famine relief alone, with another £500 for clergy unable to collect tithe rent-charge. 157. Richard Whately, On the Errors of Romanism Having Their Origin in Human Nature, London 1856, xx, 135-87, for his particular aversion to Roman Catholicism's `spirit of persecution'. 158. Whately, Whately, II, 241. 159. Ibid., II, 241-42. 160. Richard Whately, Conversions and Persecutions: Charge Delivered at the Triennial Visitation of the Diocese of Dublin, London 1853, 6. 161. Ibid. 162. Richard Whately, Letter to a Clergyman of the Diocese of Dublin on Religious Controversy, Dublin 1850, 4; cf. Whately, Whately, II, 229-31. 163. Fitzpatrick, Whately, II, 214. 164. Cf. Dann, Webster, 13-32, for Webster's admiration of Whately, anti-Calvinist theology, and work in Irishtown. 165. G. Webster, Only Complete Copy of Correspondence with H. C. Eade and A. R. C. Dallas Relating to Charges of Bribery Against the Society for Irish Church Missions, Edited by Four Rectors, Dublin 1864, was published in reply to a lengthy controversy between Webster and Eade in the Cork Constitution in January and February 1864. Cf. Whately to Dallas, 8 Sep. 1857 (ICM MSS), requesting defence of charges, including rioting in the Irishtown mission. H. C. Eade (alias Cory) of the ICM met with West at the archbishop's palace on 21 September 1857. On 22 October West thanked Dallas that the mission was being withdrawn. 166. Maher, Letters, 379; Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 354 and 403-7; D. W. Cahill, Important Lecture on the Argumentative Letter of Rev. George Webster in the New Church of St Andrew, New York 1864, all indicate the polemical use of this scandal made by both Catholics and Nonconformists. 167. J. O'Rourke, Battle of the Faith in Ireland, Dublin 1887, 550. This was Canon O'Rourke's personal experience. Cf. John Forbes, Memorandums Made in Ireland in the Autumn of 1852, London 1853, I, 254, on the rudeness of the ICM Scripture Readers, 'deficient in courtesy and good sense'. 168. O'Rourke, op. cit., 539. This is the evidence of Webster. 169. J. C. Colquhoun, Reply to Certain Charges Against the Society

386

Notes to pages 296-299

for Irish Church Missions Made by Rev. George Webster, London 1864, 5. 170. W. C. Plunket, Missionary Character and Responsibility of Our Church in This Land, Dublin 1865, 9. 171. F. D. How, William Conyngham Plunket, London 1900, 34-5. For the mentality see ibid., 64, `rather that of a layman than an ecclesiastic', a 'born Whig'. He had no parochial experience when he was made Bishop of Meath in 1876, but his family connections and marriage to a member of the Guinness family helped him greatly. 172. Terence de Vere White, The Anglo Irish, London 1972, 183: 'The feeling of the average Protestant towards Irish Roman Catholics was a repugnance, instinctive rather than reasoned, based on racial and social as well as on religious antipathies.' Cf. ibid., 181, on Fr George Tyrrell's mother's remark when he converted to Catholicism: 'That a son of mine should go to Mass with the cook.' 173. 'State of the Irish Church', Edinburgh Review LXI (Jul. 1835), 509. The statistics came from parliamentary reports on revenue, patronage and public instruction, 1833-35. 174. Ibid., 512 and 523. Cf. J. A. O'Neill, Ireland's Case, Disease and Remedy, Dublin 1844, 50, asking what London Protestants, whose numbers were about the same as Irish Protestants, would have said if they had to pay for such an establishment? 175. Maher, Letters, 143-4. See Edinburgh Review C (1854), 523-6. 176. Maher, Letters, 375, where he commented in March 1865 on the size of estates of deceased Protestant bishops. See also pp. 316 and 318, and The Times, 27 Jun. 1863. 177. Thomas Lyons, Case of Clerical Oppression illustrative of the Present State of the Internal Government of the Church in Ireland, London 1834. 178. Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 284, also 196 and 443. 179. Ibid., 526-33. On p. 508 he notes parishes without a single member of the Established Church in the 1860s. 180. Madden, Daly, 290-5. See also H. S. Cunningham, Is 'Good. News from Ireland' True?, London 1864; Dublin 1865, for a discussion of the Poulathomas mission; T. P. O'Neill, 'Sidelights on Souperism', IER LXXXI (1949), 62. 181. Census of Ireland for the Year 1861, Report and Tables Relating to Religious Professions etc. of the People, Dublin 1863, Pt IV, 34. Methodists were not included as churchmen in 1861 as they had been in 1834. See A. T. Lee in Essays on the Irish Church by Clergymen of the Established Church in Ireland, Dublin 1868, 238-40; W. C. Plunket, The Church and the Census, Dublin 1861; A. Hume, Results of the Irish Census of 1861, London 1864. 182. W. M. Brady, Essays on the English State Church in Ireland, London 1869, 86-7.

Notes to pages 300-303 387 183. Rev. Charles Crosthwaite, Vicar-General of Kildare, as recorded in Maher, Letters, 317. 184. C. H. Todd, The Irish Church, Its Disestablishment and Disendowment, London 1869, 41. Todd was Chancellor and VicarGeneral of Derry and Raphoe. 185. William Fitzgerald, Case of the Church Establishment in Ireland, Considered, London 1867, 3. Fitzgerald was Bishop of Killaloe. 186. John Russell, Letter to Chichester Fortescue on the State of Ireland, London 1868, 68. 187. C. B. Bernard, Speech in the House of Lords, 17 June 1869, on the Motion for Second Reading of the Irish Church Bill, Dublin 1869, 3-4. Cf. `An Irish Peer', The Irish Difficulty, London 1867, 83, on the parson as `the only resident gentleman, and the best friend of the poor when in want or sickness'. 188. P. M. Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales, London 1969, 8; cf. A. T. Lee, The Irish Church Question: Letter to Lord Dufjerin, London 1867, 4, on the church `consecrating the state'. 189. Plunket, Missionary Character and Responsibility of Our Chu)-ch in This Land, 14, had urged preaching to the Catholics, a pastoral duty which might `draw upon you a little censure .. . a little turmoil on the part of a few'. 190. A. T. Lee, Irish Church Establishment: Statement of Sir John Gray in the House of Commons, 10 April 1866, Dublin 1866, 65, on Protestant ownership of `eight-ninths of the soil of Ireland'. 191. James Byrne in Essays on the Irish Church by Clergymen of the Established Church in Ireland, Dublin 1868, 44. Byrne was Dean of Clonfert. 192. R. C. Trench, Charge to the Clergy of the Dioceses of Dublin, Glendalough and Kildare in the Visitation of September 1871,

Dublin 1871, 38-61. 193. Trollope, Clergymen of the Church of England, 115. 194. R. C. Trench, Letters and Memorials, London 1888, II, 130. Cf. Church of Ireland Gazette 25 Aug. 1911, 723-5, on the results of Disestablishment. 195. Bell, op. cit., 211. 196. Anne Richardson, `Two Irish Members of the Society of Friends on the Irish Question' (Friends' Library, London, MSS, Box 229), 6, report of conference of 21 Apr. 1893. 197. Ibid., 12, quoting from the Catholic Progress (Jun. 1882), and Freeman's Journal, 18 Feb. 1886. 198. The Friend, 12 Oct. 1906, 680-6, discusses a Quaker view of the priests in Irish society. 199. Joseph Pim, `Conference of Friends upon the Home Rule Question, 21 April 1893' (Friends' Library, London, MSS, Box 382 (23)), 66. 200. Ibid., 49, John Pim of Belfast. 201. How, Plunket, 199. Plunket carried on Alexander Dallas's scheme to hit at Rome through Protestant missions in Spain. Cf.

388 Notes to pages 303-310 A. R. C. Dallas, The Spanish Reformed Church, London 1868; A. R. C. Dallas, Controversy with the Cardinal Archbishop of Santiago, London 1870; How, Plunket, 205-82. 202. Cf. P. G. Lane, `Attempt at Commercial Farming in Ireland After the Famine,' Studies LXI (1972), 54-7, for an example of how local clerical tyranny could be exercised. 203. Irish Crisis of 1879-80, 87-104. Kilbride had once served the ICM. Cf. Irish Times, 6 Nov. 1971, on the many strange forms that Catholic `souperism' can take. Austin Clarke commented on the Ne Temere decree with its usual demand that the nonProtestant partner undergo instruction in Catholicism by saying: 'In the past parsons used the bait of soup to convert us, but our clergy are wilier, they dangle sex before the Protestant fiancé.' 204. See Emmet Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Creation of the Modern Irish State, 1878-86, Philadelphia and Dublin 1975, 394, argues that the political authority of the Church became Irish rather than Roman after Cullen's death. As far as Irish Protestants were concerned, however, the 'politics of consensus' in the late nineteenth century was as Ultramontanist in its anti-Protestant bias as it ever had been in the Cullen era. 205. Rosemary Harris, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ulster, Manchester 1972, 205. 206. F. Shaw, `Canon of Irish History—A Challenge', Studies LXI (1972), 113-53. 207. M.D.S., Life of John Murphy, Priest and Patriot, Dublin 1880, 65. 208. C. A. Webster, 'The Church Since Disestablishment' in W. A. Phillips, ed., History of the Church of Ireland, Oxford 1933, III, 400, on slight Protestant anxiety in. 1903 when this decree made the marriage laws of the Council of Trent 'with some slight changes' operative in Ireland. Major protest was not made until the 1970s. See Church Times, 31 Nov. 1975, on the new 'hard line' of the Bishops of Cork and Connor. Epilogue PROTESTANTS AND THE LEGACY OF RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN IRELAND (pp. 309-315) 1. G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England, London 1962, 20. 2. Ibid., 284. 3. J. F. Maguire, Father Mathew (London 1863), new ed., New York 1898, 362, on Asenath Nicholson's opinion of Fr Mathew. Cf. Thirty Years' Correspondence Between John Jebb and Alexander Knox, ed. C. Forster, II, 314: 'The immediate feeling even amongst the lowest order of Roman Catholics was anything but hostile.'

Notes to pages 311-315 389 4. John Barrow, Tour Around Ireland, in the Autumn of 1835, London 1836, 258. One should consider here the Erris ministry of someone like John Patrick Lyons, Archbishop John MacHale's vigorous opponent. 5. Newenham, View of Ireland, 332. 6. Anon., Ireland: What She Once Was and What Might Yet Be. Written Especially for the Irish Peasantry, London [1887], 40. 7. J. A. Froude, `Ireland Since the Union' in Short Studies on Great Subjects, London 1900, II, 557, from a lecture of 1872. 8. M. J. F. McCarthy, Rome in Ireland, London 1904, 319. 9. Froude, op. cit., II, 557, observed to an American audience in 1872: `If I know anything of the high-spirited determined men in the north of Ireland, they would no more submit to be governed by a Catholic majority in a Dublin parliament than New England would have submitted to a convention of slave-owners sitting at Richmond.' 10. A. R. C. Dallas, Ministerial Responsibility, London 1837, 12.

Select Bibliography This study originally included a fifty-page bibliography which listed, almost in toto, all the sources referred to in the text. Because of the size of the study, and contemporary printing costs, it was decided that the bibliography should be reduced to an introduction to the most important sources used for each chapter. This cost-saving device should not prove vexatious to scholars, since the note references found in the book introduce almost all the available evidences regarding Catholic—Protestant relations in Ireland which refer to the period under investigation. 1. MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL REFERRED TO THROUGHOUT THE STUDY

The main sources for the manuscript material used in this exploration of Irish Protestantism are the archives of the Representative Church Body, Dublin; the Irish Church Missions in London and Dublin; Trinity College Library, Dublin; the National Library, Dublin; the Society of Friends Libraries in Dublin and London; the British Museum; and the Public Record Offices in Dublin and Belfast. Use has also been made of the archives of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin; the Irish College, Rome; and Propaganda Fide, Rome. Extensive use has been made of the uncatalogued and widely dispersed letters of Lord John George Beresford, which are to be found in many places in Ireland. Armagh Cathedral Library : Beresford Papers Diocesan Registry : Beresford Papers Belfast Public Record Office : Beresford Papers

Select Bibliography 391 Annesley Estate Papers Beresford Papers (Derry and Raphoe) Queen's University Library : Beresford Papers Clogher Cathedral Library : Beresford Papers Cloyne Cathedral and Deanery : Beresford Papers Visitation Papers Cork Cathedral Library : Assorted ecclesiastical papers Dublin Archdiocesan Archives : Murray Papers Friends' Library : Clonmel Relief Book Famine papers Hodgkins Correspondence Irish Folklore Commission Library : Famine era papers National Library : Ballina Poor Law Minute Book Beresford Papers Brodrick Papers Clogher Diocese, Triennial Visitation Book, 1829 Robert Emmet, `Poetry and Song' (Newspaper Clippings, 2 vols) John Hamilton, `My Transactions in the Famine, 1846-47' Killala and Achonry dioceses, Reports, 1809-29 Larcom Papers Richmond Papers Tithe Composition Books, Kilmore Erris, 1837; Kilmore and Kilcummin, 1834-37 Westport Union Minute Book, 1846-47 Pearse Street Library : Gilbert Papers Hoare Papers

392 Select Bibliography Public Record Office : Famine papers, 1845-48 Kilfian Parish, tithe collector's account, 1836 Thomas Plunket, Visitation Return to the Primate, 1852 Society of Friends, Applications for Famine Relief, 1845-48 Representative Church Body : Beresford Papers J. B. Leslie, Succession Lists (22 dioceses in all) Royal Irish Academy : Diary of Rev. James Little, Lacken, Co. Mayo St Columba's College : Foundation Papers Beresford Papers Trinity College, Dublin : Beresford Papers Jon Holt, `Quakers in the Great Irish Famine' (unpublished M.A. thesis, 1967) Francis Kinkead, Journal, 1839-47 Joseph Stock, Episcopal Papers, 1798-1810 Joseph Stock, Private Notes on Visitation of Lismore Diocese, 1811 Whately Papers Kilkenny St Canice's Library : Beresford Papers Killala Deanery Papers : Chapter Book Famine and other papers Vestry Minute Book London British Museum Add. MSS : Aberdeen Papers Gladstone Papers Goulburn Papers Liverpool Papers Peel Papers Wellesley Papers

Select Bibliography 393 Friends' House Library : Ball Papers Burritt Papers Forster Papers Pim Papers Tuke Papers Webb Papers Distress in Ireland papers Irish newspaper file Irish Church Missions Library : Dallas Papers Irish Society Papers and Mission Papers, 1849-69 Kilkenny Mission Papers, 1854-59 Lambeth Palace Library : Beresford Papers Meath Registry Beresford Papers Other papers of the tithe war era Nenagh Private collection of Dr Maureen Carmody (including Beresford Papers and other ecclesiastical papers) Oxford Bodleian Library : Clarendon Papers Rome Archives of the Society for the Propaganda of the Faith : Scritture ri f erite nei congressi Jrlanda, Vols XVIII-XXXVI, 1804-73 Lettere e decreti della sacra congregazione, Vols CCCXVIICCCXXI, 1836-39 Irish College Archives : Cullen Papers Kirby Papers Skreen, Co. Sligo Parish records Tuam Relief Papers, 1822 Diocesan Roll, 1836

394 Select Bibliography Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo James Neligan, `Statistical Account of the Parish of Kilmacteigue', 1816 Wherwell, Berkshire J. H. Tuke Papers Wonston, Berkshire Dallas Papers Parish records, 1829-69 2. BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS This is a list of the principal parliamentary reports and papers on Ireland which include insights about Catholic-Protestant relations and are referred to in the text. It does not pretend to be exhaustive, as almost any parliamentary report on Irish internal affairs contains some reference to the relationship between the religiously divided peoples of Ireland. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series Papers Relating to the Established Church in Ireland, 1807, V (78) Papers Relating to the State of the Established Church in Ireland, 1820, IX (93) Papers Presented by His Majesty's Command Relative to the Disturbed State of Ireland, 1822, XIV (2) First Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Examine into the Nature and Extent of the Disturbances which have Prevailed in those Districts of Ireland which Are Now Subject to the Provisions of the Insurrection Act, 1824, VIII (372) Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Foregoing Committee Appointed in 1824, 1825, VII (20) Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1824 on Disturbances in Ireland in those Districts Now Subject to the Insurrection Act, 1825, VII (200) State of Ireland : Reports and Minutes of Evidence from the Select Committee Inquiring into Circumstances which have Led to Disturbances in that Part of the United Kingdom, 1825, VIII (129) State of Ireland : Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Lords' Select Committee Inquiring into the Circumstances which had Led to Disturbances in that Part of the United Kingdom, 1825, IX (181) (521) Report by the Foregoing Lords' Committee, 1826, V (40) First Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into Education in Ireland, 1825, XII (400)

Select Bibliography 395 Second Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into Education in Ireland, 1826-27, XII (12) Report from the Select Committee to Take into Consideration the Laws Relating to the Passage of Irish Vagrants to Their Own Country, 1828, IV (513) Reports from the Select Committee on the State of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, 1830, VII (589) (654) (655) (667) Report from the Select Committee on the Immediate Causes of Disturbance in Ireland and on the Efficiency of the Laws for the Suppression of Outrages Against the Public Peace, 1831-32, XVI (677) First Report of the Select Committee on Tithes, with Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, 1831-32, XXI (177) Second Report of Select Committee on Tithes, with Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index, 1831-32, XXI (508) Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Inquire into the Collection and Payment of Tithes in Ireland, 1831-32, XXII (271) Second Report and Minutes of Evidence of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Collection and Payment of Tithes in Ireland, 1831-32, XXII (663) Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Take into Consideration Amendment of the Laws Relating to the Passing of Poor Persons Born in Ireland to Their Own Country, 1833, XVI (394) Return of all Applications for Relief on the Part of the Owners of Tithe in Ireland, 1831-33,1834, XLIII (382) Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Nature, Character, Extent and Tendency of the Orange Lodges, Associations or Societies in Ireland, 1835, XV (377) First Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, with Appendix and Supplement, 1835,300M, Pt 1 (369) Names of Parishes Constituting Parochial Benefices which have Less than Fifty Members of the Church Established in Ireland, 1835, XLVII (388) First Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction, Ireland, with Appendix, 1835, XXXIII (45) (46) Second Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction in Ireland, 1835, XXXIV (47) Poor Inquiry (Ireland), Pt I: Report on the State of the Poor in Some of the Larger Towns, with Answers to Queries; Pt II: Report on the City of Dublin, with Answers to Queries, Communications, and Addenda to Appendix, 1836, XXX (35)

396 Select Bibliography Poor Law Inquiry (Ireland) : Baronial Examinations Relative to Earnings, 1836, XXXI (36) Poor Law Inquiry (Ireland) : Baronial Examinations Relative to Food, Lodgings, Clothing and Social Habits, 1836, XXXII (37) Poor Law Inquiry (Ireland) : Baronial Examinations Relative to Land-holding, Emigration, Roads, Taxation and State of Agriculture, with Supplement, 1836, XXXIII (38) Poor Law Inquiry (Ireland) : Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, 1836, XXXIV (40) Reports of Commissioners on Ecclesiastical Revenue and Patronage, Ireland : First Report, 1833, XXI (762) Second Report, 1834, XXIII (589) Third Report, 1836, XXV (246) Fourth Report, 1837, XXI (500) Report by the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Plan of Education in Ireland, with Minutes of Evidence, 1837, VIII, Pt 1 (543-I) Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Plan of Education in Ireland, 1837, VIII, Pt 2 (543-Il) Report by the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the State of Ireland Since 1835, 1839, XI-XII (486-I) (486-II) (486-III) (486-IV) Evidence Taken Before Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Law and Practice in Respect to the Occupation of Land in Ireland, together with Appendix and Plans, Pt 1, 1845, XIX (606); Pt 2, 1845, XX (616); Pt 3, 1845, XXI (657) Distress, Ireland : First Report of the Relief Commissioners, 1847, XVII (799) Reports from Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Inquire into the Operation of the Irish Poor Law, 1849, XVI (192) (228) (309) (365) (507) (507-II) Report from the Select Committee on the Kilrush Union, 1850, XI (613) Report from the Select Committee on Outrages (Ireland), 1852, XIV (438) Report of Select Committee on Maynooth College, 1854-55, XXII (1896) (1896-I) (2 Parts, with Minutes of Evidence) Memorial of the Dublin Protestant Association to the Lord Lieutenant Relative to the Conduct of Edmund Smithurst and Thomas Harte, J.P.s for Kilkenny, in a Case of Alleged Assault in which Two Persons in the Employ of the Society for Irish Church

Select Bibliography 397 Missions were Plaintiffs at Kilkenny Petty Sessions, 19 January 1857, 1857, VIII (46) Correspondence in April 1857 between the Dublin Protestant Association and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1857, XVII (41) Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Origin and Character of the Riots in Belfast in July and September 1857, 1857-58, XXVI (2309) Return of the Number of Children who Regularly Attend the National Schools In Ireland Classifying Them According to Their Religious Denomination, 1861, XLVIII (488) Census for Ireland for the Year 1861, Pt IV : Reports and Tables Relating to the Religious Professions, Education and Occupations of the People, 1863, LIX (3204-III) (Vol. I); LX (3204-III) (Vol. II) Report of the Commissioners on Primary Education in Ireland (Powis Commission) 1870, XXVIII (C6-II) (C6-III) (Vols III and IV, with Minutes of Evidence) 3. SECONDARY SOURCES REFERRED TO IN EACH CHAPTER The pamphlets, treatises, reports and studies referred to, sometimes with a comment on their value, include material from the period 1800-70 and later. Unless otherwise indicated the place of publication is London. The works listed are those most readily available to scholars, but it should be noted that the material used in the study has come largely from manuscript sources. I. Irish Protestants and Revolutionary Catholicism An extremely important study for this period is J. F. Broderick, `The Holy See and the Irish Movement for the Repeal of the Union with England, 1829-47', Analecta Gregoriana, Rome, LV (1951). Background information is provided by G. de Beaumont, Ireland, Social, Political 'and Religious, ed. W. C. Taylor, 2 vols, 1839; W. E. H. Lecky, History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, Vols IV and V, 1892; Thomas Newenham, View of the Circumstances of Ireland, 1809; John O'Driscol, Views on Ireland, Moral, Political and Religious, 2 vols, 1823. Catholic motives are examined in Denis Gwynn, `Rome and the British Veto, 1829-47', IER LXXVI (1951), and John Healy, Maynooth College: Its Centenary History, 1795-1895, Dublin 1895. The mind of James Doyle is revealed in his Letters on the State of Ireland Addressed by J.K.L. to a Friend in England, Dublin 1825; Vindication of the Religious and Civil Principles of the Irish Catholics in a Letter Addressed to the Marquis Wellesley by J.K.L.,

398 Select Bibliography Dublin 1823, and in W. J. Fitzpatrick, Life, Times and Correspondence of the Rt Rev. Dr Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 2 vols, Dublin 1880. Doyle's idea of reunion is discussed in Letters on the Reunion of the Churches of England and Rome from and to Dr Doyle, John O'Driscol, Alexander Knox and Thomas Newenham, Dublin [1824]. For some Catholic clerical attitudes to revolution read J. A. Coulter, `The Political Theory of Dr Edward Maginn, Bishop of Derry, 1846-49', I E R XCVIII (1962); [J. MacHale], Letters of Hierophilos to the English People on the Moral and Political State of Ireland, London 1822; P. Mac Suibhne, Paul Cullen and his Contemporaries, with their Letters, 4 vols, Naas 1962-74; and James Maher, Letters of the Late Parish Priest of Carlow-Graigue on Religious Subjects, with a Memoir by Patrick Francis Moran, Dublin 1877. Early Protestant sensibilities of the pre-1822 period are revealed in Alexander Knox, Remains, ed. J. Hornby, 4 vols, 1834-37; William Phelan, Remains, with a Biographical Memoir by John Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, 2 vols, 1832; and `Declan' [William Phelan], The Case of the Church of Ireland Stated in a Letter to the Marquess Wellesley and a Reply to J.K.L., Dublin 1823. II. The Protestant Mind in Ireland Interesting surveys of Irish Protestantism are provided by J. T. Ball, The Reformed Church of Ireland, 1537-1889, 1890, and two studies by James Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches, 1867, and Religious History of Ireland, 1873; William Urwick, Brief Sketch of the Religious State of Ireland, Dublin 1852; and two chapters by N. D. Emerson, in W. A. Phillips, ed., History of the Church of Ireland, Vol. III, Oxford 1933. Presbyterian thought is revealed in J. S. Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 3 vols, 1853, and two works of W. D. Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, 2 vols, 1875, and Memoir of John Edgar, Belfast 1867. The role of the Methodists is discussed in William Arthur, Life of Gideon Ouseley, London and Toronto 1876; W. G. Campbell, Apostle of Kerry: The Life and Labours of the Rev. Charles Graham and Those of Gideon Ouseley, Dublin 1868; and William Reilly, Memorial of the Ministerial Life of the Rev. Gideon Ouseley, Irish Missionary, 1847. Although the standard biographies of Anglican bishops make for dull reading, two commendable works of this kind are J. D'Arcy Sirr, Memoir of the Hon. and Most Rev. Power le Poer Trench, Last Archbishop of Tuam, Dublin 1845, and W. G. Carroll, The

Select Bibliography 399 Rt Rev. James Thomas O'Brien, Late Lord Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin: A Memoir and a Summary of his Writings, Dublin 1875. Also of value because of their insight into Established Church Evangelical thought are T. R. Birks, Memoir of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, 2 vols, 1852; R. S. Brooke, Recollections of the Irish Church, 2 vols, 1877, a collection of ecclesiastical gossip; Charles Seymour, Twenty-Six. Sermons, and a Brief Memoir of the Author's Life by Charlotte Elizabeth [Phelan, afterwards Tonna], Dublin 1835; R. S. Gregg, `Faithful Unto Death': Memorials of the Life of John Gregg, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross, Dublin 1879; Mrs Hamilton Madden, Memoir of the Rt Rev. Robert Daly, Lord Bishop of Cashel, 1875; S. Madden, Memoir of the late Rev. Peter Roe, Minister of St Mary's, Kilkenny, Dublin 1842; Dawson Massy, The Faithful Shepherd; or The Life and Times of Rev. Godfrey Massy, Dublin 1855; and Samuel O'Sullivan, Remains, ed. by J. C. Martin and Mortimer O'Sullivan, 3 vols, Dublin 1853. III. The Era of Religious Controversy Two appreciations of the establishment mentality of the age are provided by W. B. Mant, Memoirs of the Rt Rev. Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor and of Dromore, Dublin 1857 and William Magee, Works, with a Memoir of his Life by Rev. A. H. Kenney, 2 vols, 1842. The article entitled `New Reformation' in British Critic III (1828) indicates something of the religious passion of the time. The legion of pamphlet accounts of religious controversies have little appeal to modern readers, but good representatives of this genre of theological exercise are provided by Report of the Discussion at the Carlow Bible Meetings on Thur. and Fri. 18 and 19 November 1824, Dublin 1824; Authenticated Report of the Discussion which Took Place Between the Rev. Richard T. P. Pope and the Rev. Thomas Maguire in the Lecture Room of the Dublin Institution, Sackville Street, on 19, 20, 21, 23, 24 and 25 April 1827, Dublin 1827; and Authenticated Report of the Discussion Between the Rev. T. D. Gregg and the Rev. Thomas Maguire, 29 May to 2 June 1838, Dublin 1839. The militancy of Irish Evangelicalism is revealed by R. J. McGhee and Mortimer O'Sullivan, Romanism As It Rules in Ireland, 2 vols, 1840; `A Munster Farmer' [Mortimer O'Sullivan], Captain Rock Detected, or The Origin and Character of the Recent Disturbances, 1824; and R. J. McGhee, Authentic Report of the Great Protestant Meeting Held at Exeter Hall, London, 20 June 1835, to Prove to Protestants of All Denominations the Real Tenets

400 Select Bibliography of the Church of Rome Now Held by the Roman Catholic Bishops and Priests of Ireland, Dublin 1835. Edward Bickersteth, `Progress of Popery', Blackwood's Magazine XLIV (1838), and `Domestic Jesuitism', Fraser's Magazine XIX (1839), give us something of the passion of the time. N. The Division of the Peoples Useful information about Catholic-Protestant relations during the Emancipation crisis is given by J. A. Reynolds, The Catholic Emancipation Crisis in Ireland, 1823-29, New Haven 1954, and by Thomas Wyse, Historical Sketch of the Late Catholic Association of Ireland, 2 vols, 1829. The problem of Catholic anti-clericalism is ably introduced by John A. Murphy, `Support of the Catholic Clergy in Ireland, 17501850' in J. L. McCracken, ed., Historical Studies V: Papers Read Before the Sixth Conference of Irish Historians, 1965, and `Priests and People in Modern Irish History', Christus Rex XXIII (1969). Oliver MacDonagh, `Politicisation of the Irish Catholic Bishops, 1800-50', Historical Journal XVIII (1975), is important, as is R. E. Burns, `Parsons, Priests and the People : The Rise of Irish AntiClericalism, 1785-89', Church History XXXI (1962). Although difficult to obtain, David Croly, An Essay Religious and Political on Ecclesiastical Finances as Regards the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Cork 1834, and Michael Crotty, Narrative of the Reformation at Birr in the King's County, 1847, are both important. Edward Bryan, `Irish Tithes in British Politics', Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church (Sep. 1970); Mary Condon, `The Irish Church and the Reform Ministries', Journal of British Studies I (1964); and the two articles of P. O'Donoghue, `Causes of the Opposition to Tithes, 1830-38', Studia Hibernica V (1965), and `Opposition to Tithe Payment in 1830-31', Studia Hibernica VI (1966), are all very valuable. R. D. Edwards and T. Desmond Williams, ed., The Great Famine, 1962, is essential for an understanding of religious attitudes during the famine, as is Transactions of the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends in 1846 and 1847, Dublin 1852. Also of value are Desmond Bowen, Souperism: Myth or Reality?, Cork 1970, and three articles by T. P. O'Neill, `The Famine in Carlow', Carloviana I (1947); `Sidelights on Souperism', lER LXXXI (1949); and `The Society of Friends and the Great Famine', Studies XXXIX (1950). An important article is Oliver MacDonagh, `Irish Catholic Clergy and Emigration During the Great Famine', IHS V (1947). Mark Tierney, Murroe and Boher: The History of an Irish Country Parish, Dublin 1966, has provided us with an

Select Bibliography 401 example of what is greatly needed—authoritative studies in Irish local history. V. Exeter Hall and Ireland The series of articles published by Sheridan Gilley dealing with Catholic-Protestant relations in England are of value, especially `Protestant London, No-Popery and the Irish Poor, 1830-60', Recusant History X (1970), and XI (1971), and `Papists, Protestants and the Irish in London, 1835-70', Studies in Church History VIII (1971). E. R. Norman, `The Maynooth Question of 1845', IHS XV (1967), and his Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, 1968, are both important studies. S. A. Thelwall, Proceedings of the AntiMaynooth Conference, 1846, and Gilbert Cahill, `The Protestant Association and the Anti-Maynooth Agitation of 1845', Catholic Historical Review XLIII (1957), should be consulted. Though difficult to obtain, four important books of the period are : Daniel Foley, Missionary Tour Through the South and the West of Ireland Undertaken for the Irish Society, Dublin 1849; George Scott, Irish Society's Mission at Doon, Dingle, Ventry and Dunurlin• Letter to the Ven. Archdeacon of Derry, Dublin 1854; Henry Seddall, Edward Nangle, Apostle of Achill, 1884; Mrs D. P. Thompson, Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the Change in Religious Opinion Now Taking Place in Dingle and the West of the County of Kerry, Ireland, 1846. Indispensable books are Anne B. Dallas, Incidents in the Life and Ministry of the Rev. Alexander R. C. Dallas by his Widow, 1871; 3rd ed., 1873; and the two editions of A. R. C. Dallas, The Story of the Irish Church Missions. The first edition, labelled `Part I', appeared in 1867. The second edition `Continued to the Year 1869' is an abridgement of the 1867 publication with additional matter. Eugene Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 4 vols, 1899-1916, has much to say on ICM-Exeter Hall relations. A. G. Dann, George Webster: A Memoir, Dublin 1892 relates something of ICM fortunes, as does John Garrett, Good News from Ireland, London 1863; W. C. Plunket, Short Visit to the Connemara Missions, 1863; and C. S. Stanford, Handbook to the Romish Controversy, being a Refutation of the Creed of Pope Pius IV on the Grounds of Scripture and Reason, Dublin 1852. G. Webster, Only Complete Copy of Correspondence with H. C. Eade and A. R. C. Dallas Relating to Charges of Bribery Against the Society for Irish Church Missions, Edited by Four Rectors, Dublin 1864 is rare, but the essence of it is reproduced by John O'Rourke, Battle of the Faith in Ireland, Dublin 1887. 0

402 Select Bibliography The evolution of Alexander Dallas's Evangelical faith is studied in Desmond Bowen, `Alexander R. C. Dallas, Warrior-Saint of Wonston, Hampshire' in P. T. Phillips, ed., View from the Pulpit: Victorian Ministers and Society, Toronto and Cambridge 1977. VI. The Legacy of the Evangelical Crusade Emmet Larkin's articles which comment on the development of Irish Ultramontanism are of value: `Church and State in Ireland in the Nineteenth Century', Church History XXI (1962); `Economic Growth, Capital Investment and the Roman Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Ireland', American Historical Review LXXII (1967); `The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-75', American Historical Review LXXVII (1972); `Church, State and Nation in Modern Ireland', American Historical Review LXXX (1975). Emmet Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Creation of the Modern Irish State, 1878-86, Philadelphia and Dublin 1975, and J. Lee, Modernisation of Irish Society, 1848-1918, Dublin 1973, also refer to this phenomenon, as do the articles of J. H. Whyte, `The Influence of the Catholic Clergy on Elections in NineteenthCentury Ireland', EHR LXXV (1960), and `The Appointment of Catholic Bishops in Nineteenth-Century Ireland', Catholic Historical Review (1962). Little has been written on Paul Cullen and his relations with Protestants, but Peadar Mac Suibhne, Paul Cullen and his Contemporaries, with Their Letters, 4 vols, Naas 1962-74, provides much source material. Desmond Bowen, `Lord John George Beresford', New Divinity Ø (1973), gives an outline of the Anglican Primate's career. Archbishop Whately is better provided for with E. J. Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, 2 vols, 1866, and W. J. Fitzpatrick, Memoirs of Richard Whately, 2 vols, 1864. A good analysis is provided by T. H. Lister, `The State of the Irish Church', Edinburgh Review LXI (1835), and for the later temporal situation by W. C. Plunket, The Church and the Census of Ireland, Dublin 1865, and Alfred Lee, Facts Respecting the Present State of the Church in Ireland, 1868. F. D. How, William Conyngham Plunket, 1900, gives us an insight into the post-Disestablishment Evangelical mind. The comments on the Church of Ireland made by James Byrne, Dean of Clonfert, in Essays on the Irish Church by Clergymen of the Established Church in Ireland, Dublin 1868, is of value, as is Francis Shaw, `The Canon of Irish History—A Challenge', Studies LXI (1972).

Index

Note. The abbreviations CI (Church of Ireland) and R C (Roman Catholic) are used throughout the index. All clergymen of non-episcopal status are designated either 'Rev.' (Protestant) or 'Fr' (Roman Catholic). Abraham, William, Bp Waterford (RC), 21 Achill Island (colony), 75, 155, 185, 204-5, 250, 254-5 Achill Missionary Herald, 204-5 Alcock, Rev. George, 161 Anti-Maynooth Committee, 199 Aran Islands, 303-4 Attwell, Rev. W. E., 286-7 Auriol, Rev. E., 244 Baptist Church, 37, 201 Barrett, Fr John, 22 Beamish, Rev. IL IL, 203-4 Belfast Ladies' Relief Association, 33 Beresford, George de la Poer, Bp Clonfert (CI), 41, 43 Beresford, Lord John George, Abp Armagh (CI), career and attitude to Evangelical missions, 273-90; appointed to Armagh, 43-4, 88; and Phelan,' 25, 58; church government of, 42-4, 48, 88, 217, 272; his caution and dislike of Evangelicalism, 95, 238, 295; Evangelical pressure on, 76, 238; views on education, 77-8, 283-6; and tithe war, 170-5 Beresford, Rev. William, 279 Bernard, Charles Brodrick, Bp Tuam (CI), 39, 300 Berry, Rev. Winston, 253 Bethesda Chapel, Dublin, 68-9, 78 Bible, Evangelical view of its value,

37, 61-2, 64, 100, 148, 220, 313; and prophecy, 65, 67, 112-13; importance in proselytising, xiii, 72-3, 85, 96, 99, 250; distribution of Irish Bible, 36, 225, 228, 250, 270; RC attitude to, 70, 75, 96, 100, 103, 304; RC editions of, 60, 105, 114-15; effect on conversions, 154; English tercentenary, 197; Bible societies, 4, 251, see also Carlow, Hibernian Bible Society, Irish Society, Kilkenny, Leitrim Bickersteth, Rev. Edward H., 65, 67, 197, 199, 212-13, 217-18, 2213, 244 Bickersteth, Robert, Bp Ripon, 201, 218-19, 238-9, 243 'Birds' Nest' (orphanage), 243, 294-5 Blackwood, Hon. & Rev. John, 45 Blakely, Rev. Theophilus, 57-8, 169 Blomfreld, C. J., Bp London, 56, 201 Book of Common Prayer, 51, 85, 143, 225 Brady, Rev. William Mazicre, 52 Brannigan, Michael, 33 Brinkley, John, Bp Cloyne (CI), 173 British Relief Association, 184 British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the Reformation, 101-2 Brodrick, Charles, Abp Cashel (CI), 157 Browne, Rev. Denis, 70 Browne, Rt Hon. Denis, 15, 131, 134

404 Index Brunswick Clubs, 57, 132, 136, 160 Burke, Fr Bernard, 15 Burnett, Rev. John, 49-50, 57 Butler, John, Bp Cork (RC) (Lord Dunboyne), 144, 154 Butt, Isaac, 110 Cahill, Fr D. W., 190 Campbell, Bartley, 36 Cantwell, John, Bp Meath (RC), 18, 22-4 Carbonari, 4 Carey, Rev. Richard, 58, 117 Carleton, William, 154 Carlisle, Rev. Warren, 100, 102 Carlow Auxiliary Bible Society, 74, 99-100 Carlow College, 13, 74, 260 Carrickshock, 163, 169-70 'Cassidy, Robert', 173-4 'Castle bishops', 6-16, 20, 23, 265, 311 Castlereagh, Lord, 2, 5 Catholic Association, 93, 104, 122 Catholic Defence Association, 236, 266 Catholic Directory, 60 Catholic Emancipation, see Emancipation Cavour, Count C. B., 55 Charitable Bequests Act, 24, 199, 261; Board, 16 Chartism, 198, 200-1, 229 Chenevix Trench, see Trench Christian Examiner, 68, 75, 154, 242, 286 Christian Herald, 65 Church Education Society, 78, 114, 176, 283-6 Church Missionary Society, 214 Church of England, 91, 229-33 Church of Ireland, ideology, ix-xiii, 47-61 passim, 116; proposed union with RC Church, 10-11, 85, 145; opposition to, 19, 133-4; relations with other Protestant churches, 29-32, 34, state of unreformed CI, 29, 39-47 passim; Evangelicalism in, 38, 61-80 passim; millenarian thought in, 64-5; conflict with RC Church, 51-3, 83-4, 86, 89, 91-3, 95-6, 106, 108, 148, 165,

233; tithes, 159-60, 169-76; and start of Evangelical missions, 8996; missionary role, 111, 204, 225; conversions to, 117, 144, 153-6, 239; Evangelical dissatisfaction with, 201, 219; attitudes towards Evangelical missions, 224, 234, 247-8, 255, 273-97 passim; Disestablishment and after, 25-6, 79, 245-6, 279-305, see also Disestablishment Church of Ireland Young Men's Society, 79 Church Temporalities Act, 47, 53, 113, 120, 170, 174 Cleaver, Euseby, Abp Dublin (CI), 88 Cobbett, William, 106, 137, 261 Collins, Fr Michael, 134-5, 138, 143 Collins, Rev. Samuel, 45 Colquhoun, John Campbell, 197, 199, 238-9, 296 Coneys, Rev. Thomas de Vere, 203 Congregationalist Church, 37 Connaught Home Mission Society, 203-4 Connemara (missions), 216-19, 2223, 243-4, 255 Connolly, Fr Michael, 204-5 Cooke, Rev. Henry, 30-2, 164 Coote, Rev. J., 163-4 Cory (alias Eade), Rev. H. C., 244 Costello, Fr Thomas O'Brien, 122, 179 Cox, Rev. William, 172 Coyne, Richard, 107, 115-16 Crolly, William, Abp Armagh (RC), 16, 20, 23, 265 Croly, Rev. David, 144-50, 152 Crosthwaite, Rev. John Charles, 281, 287 Crotty, Fr Bartholemew, 13 Crotty, Rev. Michael, 150-2 Crotty, Rev. William, 150-2 Cruikshank, George, 130 Cullen, Paul, Cardinal, Abp Dublin (RC), family background, 17, 240; influence in Rome, 16, 20-4; legatine mission to Ireland, xi, 14, 121; Protestant attitudes to, xi, 287, 294-5; career in Ireland: counter-reformation and church reorganisation, 259-73 passim,

Index 405 294-5, 301; long-term significance, 208, 302, 312 Curran, John Adyo, 303-4 Curtis, Patrick, Abp Armagh (RC), 6-7, 90, 270

12, 25; proposal for union of churches, 10-11, 85, 144-5; views on RC Church, 32, 62-4, 66-7, 81, 88, 135, 270; views on CI, 29, 50, 57, 59, 81; views on O'Connellite movement, 49; and religious controversy, 74-5, 99-100, 105; answers Magee's charge, 90, 93-4; opposes Kildare Place Society, 96-7; and Evangelicalism, 113; and tithes, 160-2, 166-7, 170, 172-4; death, 102; 101, 260 Doyle, Fr Martin, 161, 166, 241-2 Drapes, Rev. J. L, 241 Drew, Rev. Thomas, 289 Dublin Castle (Irish government), xii, 6-7, 41, 49, 265 Dublin Review, 230 dues, 167-8 Duffy, Charles Gavan, xiii, 117, 260-1, 272 Duigenan, Patrick, 13, 153 Dunboyne, Lord, see Butler Dunphy, Fr K., 99 Durant, Enosh, 215, 217, 225

Dallas, Rev. Alexander R. C., Evangelical thought of, 220-4; early career in England, .208-12; prepares for Irish mission, 212-15, 314-15; early visits to Connemara, 215-18; founds ICM, early campaign, ix, 218-20; conduct of ICM mission, 224-46 passim, 269, 312; failure of ICM mission, 246-56 passim, 299; compared with Cullen, 261, 265; Beresford's policy towards, 289; Whately's opposition to, 292, 295; long-term significance,'66, 259 Dallas, Anne B., 210-11, 227 Dallas, R. C., 208-9, 213 Daly, Fr James (Ovens), 148 Daly, Rev. James (Galway), 219 Daly, Robert, Bp Cashel (CI), career and thought, 65, 74-6; Evangelicism of, 67, 72, 79-80, 83, 250; supports Evangelical mis- Eade, Rev. H. C., see Cory Commission, see sions, 155, 203, 206-7, 218; and Ecclesiastical religious controversy, 99-100; conChurch Temporalities Act tact with English Evangelicals, Ecclesiastical Journal, 284 180-1; on role of CI clergy, 184 Ecclesiastical Titles Act, 231-2, 235 Darby, J. N., 65 Edgar, Rev. John, 31-4 D'Arcy, Rev. Hyacinth, 217, 250 education, primary, see Church Daunt, W. J. O'Neill, 94-5, 127 Education Society, National SysDavis, Thomas, 137 tem; university, see Maynooth College, Queen's Colleges, Trinity Day, Rev. John, 45 Delahogue, Louis, 13-14, 60 College Delaney, Daniel, Bp Kildare (RC), Elliott, Rev. H. V., 215 168 Ellis, Rev. Brabazon, 204 Dens, Pierre, 114-16, 198 Elrington, Rev. Charles, 105, 284 Dickinson, Rev. Charles, 175-6 Elrington, Thomas, Bp Ferns (CI), Dingle (colony), 155, 185, 205, 216 68, 94-5, 101, 175-6 Disestablishment, movement for, Emancipation, movement for, 8, 19, 288, 296, 298; effects of, ix-xi, 83, 101, 134, 145; priests active in, 26, 61, 79, 84, 142, 300-4; Dallas's 12-13, 60-1, 135-6, 261; overseas view of, 245 support for, 168, 198; Protestant Dixon, Rev. T. W., 144 attitudes to, 87, 160; Beresford's Dobbin, Rev. Orlando, 272-3 attitude to, 273-5; effect on tithe Doon (colony), 163-4, 185, 205-6, agitation, 159, 174; effect on CI, 299 272, 276, 288, 297 Doyle, James Warren, Bp Kildare emigration, 189-91 & Leighlin (RC), thought of, 9- Emmet, Robert, 7, 26, 74

406 Index Established Church, see Church of Ireland Evangelicism, influence of English movement, 66-7, 181, 192, 195208 passim, 259, 264, 311-12; in CI, 47, 61-80 passim, 83, 110-13; Irish missions ('Second Reformation'), ix-xiv, 11, 94-5, 122, 154-5, 185, 195-208 passim, 259, 264; role of Dallas and ICM in 'Second Reformation', 212-28 passim, 233-56 passim, 259, 312, 314-15; RC counter-reformation, 266-9; CI bishops' attitude to, 273-97 passim; effects of 'Second Reformation', 259-305 passim, 311-15 Everard, Patrick, Abp Cahel (RC), 119 Exeter Hall, 115-16, 195-2.56 passim famine (1845-49), 127-8, 177-92 passim, 247, 292-3 Farnham, Lord, 94-5, 162 Feeny, Thomas, Bp Killala (RC), 33, 190 Ferguson, Samuel, 137 Filan, Fr, 14 Fishbourne, Rev. Robert, 101-2 Fisher, Rev. William Allen, 186-9 Fleury, Rev. Charles M., 69, 242, 254 Foley, Rev. Daniel, 188-9 Foley, Patrick, 250 Foster, Rev. Mark Anthony, 204 Freemasons, 268 French Revolution, xi, 1, 4, 13, 18, 61, 310 Froude, James Anthony, 52-3, 128, 157, 313-14 Gallicanism, 6, 8-9, 11-12, 14-15, 121, 148, 259, 270-1, 311 Garrett, Rev. John, 154-5, 168, 244 Gavazzi, Fr. 243 Gayer, Rev. Charles, 205 General Assembly (Presbyterian), 32 General Reformation Society, 191 George IV, 87-8, 195 Gladstone, William Ewart, xii, 112, 199 Godkin, Rev. James, 37, 39-40, 43, 45-7, 75, 132, 298-9

Godley, John Robert, 190 Goodman, Rev. John, 44-5 Goodman, Rev. Thomas Chute, 205 Gordon Riots, 195 Gorham, Rev. G. C., 229, 235 Goulburn, Henry, 195-6, 279 Graham, Rev. Charles, 34-6 Gray, Sir John, 297 Greene, Rev. R. B., 171 Gregg, John, Bp Cork (CI), 69, 78-80, 154-5, 226, 250 Gregg, Rev. Tresham Dames, career and thought, 108-13, 291; and Protestant working class, xiii, 198; and religious controversy, 142, 214, 241, 247, 266, 294, 310 Gregory XVI, 4-5, 15, 115, 260-1 Greville, Charles, 200 Grey, Lord, xii Gubbins, Rev. George Gough, 205 Gurney, Samuel, 182 'Hackney Phalanx', 277 Hamilton, Benedict, 101-2 Hamilton, Rev. George, 105-6 Hampden, R. D., Bp Hereford, 229-30 Hanna, Rev. Samuel, 31 Hardwicke, Lord, 40-1 Harvey, Sir John, 159, 163 Harvey, Rev. William, 145 Haskett, J. W., 228 Hayes, Fr Richard, 97-8 Henry, Fr James, 204-5 Heytesbury, Lord, 43 Hibernian Bible Society, 68, 71-3 Higgin, William, Bp Limerick (CI), 282 Higgins, William Bp Ardagh (RC), 18, 22-3 Hill, John, 35 Hoare, Rev. Edward Newenham, 65 Hohenlohe, Prince, 63, 67, 90 Holy See, 4-7, 15-16, 24, 26, 98, 121, 130, 229-31, 237, 259-60, 268, 270-1; see also Roman Catholic Church Home Mission, CI, 67-8, 72, 75, 86; Presbyterian, 33-4, 152 Howley, William, Abp Canterbury, 290-1 Huguenots, 139-40

Index 407 Inglis, Sir Robert, 199 Irish Church Missions, ix, 208, 21856 passim, 259-60, 267, 288-91, 295-7,313 Irish Evangelical Society, 202 Irish Society, 205, 214, 216, 2I9, 224-8, 248-50, 270 Irwin, Rev. Henry, 69 `J.K.L.', see Doyle, James Warren James, Rev. Maurice, 175 Jebb, John, Bp Limerick (CI), 41-3, 58, 122, 179, 310 Jews Society, 31, 66, 213-14, 287 Jocelyn, Hon. Percy, Bp Clogher (CI), 44-5 Jones, John, 262 Kearney, John, Bp Ossory (CI), 70 Keleher, Fr John, 21 Kelly, Oliver, Abp Tuam (RC), 3, 6-7, 11, 15, 144, 178, 203, 270 Kennedy, Rev. William, 255 Kickham, Charles J., 272 Kiibride, Rev. William, 303-4 Kildare Place Society, 84, 90, 96-7 Kilkenny Auxiliary Bible Society, 98-9 King, Robert, 52 Kingston, Rev. Thomas, 69 Kinsella, William, Bp Ossory (RC), 12, 20-1 Kirby, Fr Tobias, 263 Kirwan, Rev. Walter Blake, 144 Knox, Alexander, 2, 10, 19 Knox, Hon. Edmund, Bp Limerick (CI), 42-3, 216 Knox, Rev. Robert, 42-3 Knox, William, Bp Derry (CI), 31 Kohl, J. G., 130, 142 Kyle, Rev. R. W., 287 Ladies' Auxiliary (Irish Society), 225-6, 228 Laffan, Fr M., 23 Laffan, Robert, Abp Cashel (RC), 21 Lalor, Maria, 63 Lanktree, Matthew, 35 Latouche, Rev. John, 160-1 Laurence, Richard, Abp Cashel (CI), 50, 89 Lavelle, Fr Patrick, 244-5

Law, John, Bp Elphin (CI), 84 Lecky, W. E. H., 62 Lee, Rev. William, 52 Lees, Rev. Sir Harcourt, 97 Leitrim Auxiliary Bible Society, 103 Leo XII, 4 le Poer Trench, see Trench Lewis, A. G., 228 Lindsay, Charles, Bp Kildare (CI), 172 Lock, Rev. Thomas, 164 Loftus, Lord Robert Ponsonby Tottenham, Bp Clogher (CI), 40-1, 45 Lough Derg, 36, 94 Lucas, Edward, 262 Lucas, Frederick, 260 Lyons, Fr John Patrick, 104, 106 Macaulay, Lord, 128, 199, 298 McCarthy, Rev. Charles Fennell, 242, 244-5, 248, 255, 267, 295 MacDevitt, Philip, Bp Derry (RC), 84, 305 McDonnell, Eneas, 139 McDonnell, Rev. Luke, 161 McGee, Thomas D'Arcy, 19 McGhee, Rev. Robert James, career and thought, 69, 113-17, 197; writings, 120-1, 127, 277; and religious controversy, 214, 247, 249, 310; and Exeter Hall, 233 McGhee, Rev. Robert J. L., 226 McGrath, Rev. H. W., 202 McGuire, Rev. J. H., 202 MacHale, John, Abp Tuam (RC), political activity, 8-9, 11, 14-16, 22-5, 98, 122, 137, 197, 264, 271; appointed to Tuam, 15; feud with O'Finan, 16, 22, 149; answers Magee's charge, 90; attacks Kildare Place Society, 96; opposes National System, 220, 271; opposes Evangelical missions, 73, 204, 236-7, 243, 259; attacks tithes, 162; denounces famine relief, 179, 183; opposes emigration, 190; admonished by Pope, 237; RC opposition to, 243; Cullen's disapproval of, 261 Macllwaine, Rev. W., 250 McKeon, Fr John, 103 McNamara, Fr Justin, 109

408 Index McNeile, Rev. Hugh, 197, 202 McNeil, Rev. George, 69 McNicholas, Patrick, Bp Achonry (RC), 14 McQuigg, James, 36 Magee, Rev. Thomas, 78 Magee, William, Abp Dublin (CI), career and thought, 83-4, 87-8; charge (1822), ix, 88-95, 97, 99, 122, 127, 158, 203, 290, 310; later attacks on RC Church, 105, 160, 249; and Phelan, 58-9; compared with Whately, 291; 78, 117, 120 Maginn, Edward, Bp Derry (RC), 18, 190 Maguire, Fr Tom, 98, 106-9, 115, 127, 142, 266, 294, 311 Maher, Fr James, political activity, 17-18, 22; and religious controversy, 100-3; criticises Trinity College, 153; attacks tithes, 166-7; denounces famine relief, 183; opposes emigration, 190; opposes Evangelical missions, 191-2, 2067, 240; attacks Queen's Colleges, 266; influences Cullen, 260-1, 264, 266; criticises Whately, 293; attacks CI, 289, 300 Malone, Fr M. P., 161 Manchester, Duke of, 217, 238 Manning, Henry, Cardinal, 229, 235 Mansion House Relief Committee, 185, 303 Mant, Richard, Bp Down (CI), 51, 68, 78, 85-7 Marsh, Rev. William, 65-6 Martin, Thomas, 204 Martineau, Harriet, 199 Massy, Rev. Dawson, 206-7, 226, 240 Mathew, Fr Theobald, 54, 234, 310 Mathias, Rev. Benjamin W., 67-9, 74 Maynooth Act, 200 Maynooth College, establishment of, 7, 13; graduates: political opinions, 4, 8, 12-14, 16, 19, 83, 148, 159, 281-2; graduates: social origins, 118, 135, 180; liberal RC opposition to, 58, 150; 93; see also Anti-Maynooth Committee Maynooth Grant, 13, 23, 198-9, 221, 228, 281-2, 291

`Maynooth Manifesto', 11 Melbourne, Lord, 115-16, 196 Methodist Church, 34-7, 39, 61 millenarianism, 64-7, 247-8 Miller, Rev. George, 284 Miner, John, Bp (RC), 10 `Moloney, Paddy', 173 Moore, Rev. E. L., 217 Moran, Patrick F., Cardinal, Bp Ossory (RC), 52, 101 Moriarty, Rev. Thomas, 205, 226, 282 Morpeth, Lord, 69 Moylan, Francis, Bp Cork (RC), 167 Mullins, Hon. & Rev. Frederick, 45 Murphy, John, Bp Cork (RC), 145-8 Murphy, Fr John (Corofin), 304 Murphy, Fr John (Goleen), 188-9 Murray, Daniel, Abp Dublin (RC), career and thought, 6-9; relations with CI, 11, 291, 295; attitude to popular agitation, 18, 20, 22; opposes MacHale, 16; and religious controversy, 105, 114-15; controversy with the Crottys, 150-1; attitude to famine, 184; and counter-reformation, 236, 264 Nangle, Rev. Edward, 51, 75, 109, 204, 254 Nation, The, 19, 137, 236 National System (education), RC debate on, 16, 260; Presbyterian opposition to, 32; opposition within CI to, 77-8, 114, 176, 283-4, 291; support within CI for, 77, 285-6, 291; MacHale's opposition to, 16, 220; Beresford's changing views on, 77, 283-6; RC takeover of, 55, 76; Cullen's defence of, 267; effect on RC population, 135, 271 Newenham, Thomas, 20, 49-50, 142, 312 Newman, John Henry, Cardinal, 110, 199, 230, 261 Newton, Rev. John, 70 Nicholson, Asenath, 152 Nixon, Rev. Alexander, 161 Nolan, Rev. L. J., 153 Nolan, Rev. Thomas, 252

Index 409 O'Beirne, Thomas Lewis, Bp Meath (CI), 144, 154 O'Brien, James Thomas, Bp Ossory, Ferns & Leighlin (CI), 76-8, 155, 240, 284 O'Callaghan, Rev. J. B., 217 O'Connell, Daniel, rise of, 5-6; leadership of, xi, 310; opposes Bp Doyle, 12; supports MacHale, 15-16; and RC clergy, 18-19, 24; Presbyterian opposition to, 32; castigates Bp Daly, 75-6; and Kildare Place Society, 84, 96-7; and religious controversy, 106-7, 113, 127; Protestant opposition to, 116, 122; speeches, 130; denies `Catholic ascendancy', 131; appreciation of CI, 300; Lord Mayor of Dublin, 141, 281; and tithe sions, 223; 138, 182 war, 162-5; and Evangelical misO'Connellite movement, RC bishops' attitude to, 6-7, 22-3, 145; RC clergy's support for, 20-5, 49, 130, 148, 150, 195-6; popular support for, 95; opposition of some RC clergy to, 145-50, 152; Protestant fears of and opposition to, 25, 49-50, 131-3, 159, 198, 239; Protestant support for, 136-7; Cullen's attitude to, 262-4; 'O'Connell rent', 150; see also Catholic Association, Emancipation, Repeal, tithe war O'Driscol, John, 57, 60, 85, 92, 119, 134, 141, 165-6 O'Finan, Francis, Bp Killala (RC), 16, 22, 149, 271 O'Gara, Fr P., 19 O'Leary, Fr Arthur, v, 307, 309 O'Leary, Rev. P. J., 202 O'Loughlin, Fr Henry, 248 Orangeism, 9, 30-1, 64, 121-2, 196, 262, 278, 289, 291, 305 O'Reilly, Fr Edmund, 22 O'Shaughnessy, James, Bp Killaloe (RC), 150-1 O'Sullivan, Rev. Mortimer, career and thought, 58, 117-22, 197; views on Catholicism, xiii, 85; and religious controversy, 97, 214, 247; and tithe war, 164; and Exeter Hall, 233; writings, 277

O'Sullivan, Rev. Samuel, 58, 108, 117, 280 Otway, Rev. Caesar, 68, 154, 244 Ouseley, Rev. Gideon, 34-7, 108, 131 Oxford Movement, see Tractarianism Pakenham Walsh, see Walsh Palmerston, Lord, 79, 190, 243 `papal aggression', 231-2, 235, 254, 265 parliamentary select committees, (1824-25, state of Ireland), 7-8, 30-1, 50, 60, 63, 92-3, 117, 119, 121-2, 129, 131, 134, 138, 143-4, 203, 279; (1831-32, tithes) 57, 160, 167, 290 Pastorini's Prophecies, 63-4, 66-7, 132 Peel, Sir Robert, 42-3, 104, 279 Phelan, Rev. William, 14, 25-6, 58-61, 113, 117, 122 Pitt, William, 3, 84, 210 Pius VH, 4, 90, 98 Pius, VIII, 4 Pius IX, 112, 229-31, 237, 261 Plumptre, J. P., 193, 199 Plunket, George, Bp Elphin (RC), 167 Plunket, Thomas, Bp Tuam (CI), 31, 43, 206, 216-17, 237-8, 240, 289 Plunket, William Conyngham, MP, 87, 95 Plunket, William Conyngham, Abp Dublin (CI), 219, 243-4, 248-9, 2.52, 296, 303 Plymouth Brethren, 65, 201 Pollock, Rev. Matthew, 69 Ponsonby, Richard, Bp Deny (CI), 172 Pope, Rev. Richard T. P., 74-5, 98, 100, 107, 127, 310 Potter, Rev. Lewis, 271 Power, John, Bp Waterford (RC), 71 Powerscourt, Theodosia Wingfield, Lady, 65, 74-5 Presbyterian Church, 29-34, 39, 104-5 Priests' Protection Societies, 144

410 Index Propaganda Fide, 6, 23-4, 167, 260-1, 268 Prophecy Investigation Society, 65-6 Protestant Association, 196-7 Protestant Operatives' Association, 108-9, 198 Protestant Repeal Association, 137 Quakers, see Society of Friends Quarantotti, Giovanni Baptista, Mgr, 6 Queen's Colleges, 16, 137, 261, 265-6 'R.C.', 173-4 Radcliffe, Rev. Richard, 70 Rathcormac, 164-5 Redesdale, Lord, 7, 131-2 Repeal, priests active in, 15-17, 19, 22, 25, 49, 96, 108, 135-7, 207, 213, 263-4; popular support for, 130; overseas support for, 168; Protestant opposition to, 32, 49, 109; Protestant support for, 137; liberal RC opposition to, 145; Evangelical opposition to, 198200; Cullen's support for, 262-4; effect on CI, 297 Repeal Association, 137 Ribbonmen, 3, 9, 30, 50, 63-4, 131, 162, 200 Rinuccini, Giovanni Battista, Abp, 265 Riordan, Mary, 54-5, 102 Robespierre, Maximilien, 1 Robinson, Frederick, 10-11 Robinson, Hon. Peter, 129 Roden, Lord, 74, 164, 200, 216, 238, 287 Rodgers, Rev. David, 33 Roe, Rev. Peter, 70, 74, 98 Roman Catholic Church, ideology, x-xiv; anti-revolutionary conservatism of, 3-9; proposed union with CI, 10-11, 85, 145; authority of and loyalty to, 59-60, 131, 224; the Croly affair, 146-50; conflict with CI, 51-3, 83-4, 86, 89, 91-3, 95-6, 103-6, 108, 148, 165, 233; Protestant fear of, 121, 132, 274; English fear of 'papal aggression', 230-3, 236; Evangelical tolerance of, 70; Evangelical

attack on, 199-200; effect of famine on, 190-1; counter-reformation and Cullenite reorganisation, 76, 259-73 passim, 311-12; CI desire for conciliation with, 273, 297; relations with Protestant churches, 304-5, 311; see also Holy See Rudd, Rev. Richard, 253 Russell, Lord John, 170, 190, 200, 231 Ryan, John, Bp Limerick (RC), 21-2 Ryder, Rev. Roderick, 218, 250 Ryder, Rev. W., 164-5 St Germains, Lord, 276 St Mary's Chapel, Dublin, 109-10 Salmon, Rev. George, 53 Saurin, William, 49 Secession Synod (Presbyterian), 31-2 'Second Reformation', see Evangelicalism Shaftesbury, Lord, 67, 238, 240, 243 Shearman, Fr, 99 Shell, Richard Lalor, 84, 106, 139 Simeon, Charles, 66-7, 71, 80, 83 Singer, Joseph, Bp Meath (CI), 67-8, 78, 98, 101, 218, 226 Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, see Irish Church Missions Society of Friends, 38-9, 54-5, 142, 179, 182, 184, 302-4 `souperism', ix, 156, 185-9, 223-4, 232, 241-2, 251-2, 292 Spring Rice, Thomas (Lord Mounteagle), 162 Stanford, Rev. Charles Stuart, 242 Stephenson, Rev. William, 161 Stopford, Edward, Bp Meath (CI), 113-14, 170, 277 Stopford, Rev. Edward Adderley, 156, 239, 277 Stowell, Rev. Hugh, 202 Stuart, William. Abp Armagh (CI), 40-4, 47-8, 88, 90, 157 Sumner, Charles, Bp Winchester, 198-9, 210, 243 Sumner, J. B., Abp Canterbury, 243, 281-2 Synod of Ulster (Presbyterian), 30-2 Tackaberry, Fossey, 35

Index Tait, Andrew, 244-5 Thackeray, Rev. Elias, 171, 287 Thomas, Rev. Anthony, 204, 213-14 Thompson, Thomas, 303-4 Thurles, Synod of, 76, 121, 265 tithes, 3, 21, 57-8, 156-77 passim, 290 tithe war, 20, 121, 127-8, 156-77 passim, 198, 213, 297 Tithe Composition Act, 158, 160 Tithe Commutation Act, 160 Tithe Rent-Charge Act, 165, 176 Todd, Rev. James Henthorn, 51-2, 65, 115, 284 Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 2, 137 Townsend, Rev. T. S., 172-3 Townshend, Rev. Richard, 186 Tractarianism, nature of, 50; responsible for conversions to RC Church in England, 153, 230, 266, 294; lack of effect in Ireland, 77, 153; Bp Gregg's opposition to, 79; Dallas's opposition to, 214, 218, 232, 235; Beresford's opposition to, 277, 287; Croly's interest in, 149; Fisher's sympathies with, 186, 189; 224 Traill, Rev. Robert, 186 Trench, Hon. & Rev. Charles le Poer, 71, 138-9 Trench, Power le Poer, Abp Tuam (CI), career and thought, 39, 53, 71-4; encourages Evangelical missions, 75-6, 78-80, 83, 122, 155, 203-4, 206, 214; dispute with Fr Tom Maguire, 108; and tithe war, 168, 171-2; and famine, 178-9, 184; 138-9, 249 Trench, Richard Chenevix, Abp Dublin (CI), 77, 301-2 Trinity College, Dublin, RCs and converts at, 12, 40, 58-9, 185, 262, 283; millenarianism at, 65; Evangelicalism at, 67-8; CI clergy at, 77, 87, 140-1; Young Ireland influence at, 137; RC dislike of, 153; fears of RC takeover of, 263 Trollope, Anthony, 276 Troy, John Thomas, Abp Dublin (RC), 5, 7-8, 90, 105, 167 Tuke, James Hack, 178 Tyndale, Rev. T. G., 210

411

Ultramontanism, nature and significance of, xi, xiii, 15; in Rome, 4-5; Protestant dislike of, 113, 117, 120-1; in opposition to Church of England, 231-2, 235; in opposition to Evangelical missions, 76, 191, 207, 259-73 passim; effects of victory of, 305, 311-12, 314 Union (1801-1921), x, xii, 3, 5, 30, 83-4, 87, 131, 157, 272-3, 275; see also Repeal Unitarianism, 31 United Brethren, 37 United Irishmen, 7 universities, see Maynooth College, Queen's Colleges, Trinity College Urwick, Rev. William, 37, 56, 103-4, 199, 271 Ventry, Lord, 44, 205 Verschoyle, Hamilton, Bp Kilmore (CI), 67, 69, 78, 80 Victoria, Queen, 8, 231 Waldron, Peter, Bp Killala (RC), 14 Wall, Charles, 58 Walmsley, Charles, Bp (RC), 63 Walsh, William, Bp Halifax (RC), 24 Walsh, William Pakenham, Bp Ossory (CI), 51, 69 Warburton, Rev. John, 46 Waring, Rev. Holt, 31 Watson, Joshua, 277 Way, Rev. Lewis, 66 Webb, Richard D., 182-3 Webster, Rev. George, 295 Wellesley, Lord, 29, 49, 59, 95 Wellington, Duke of, 6, 9, 278 Welsh, Rev. William, 252 West, Rev. John, 295 West Connaught Church Endowment Society, 244 Westminster Confession of Faith, 31 Whately, Richard, Abp Dublin (CI), career and thought on Evangelical missions, 273, 290-7; and church government, 42, 109-10, 175, 278; opposes extreme Evangelicism, 109-10, 122, 287; views on church cess, 169; views on tithes, 175; views on Disestablishment, 257;

412 Index Cullen's attack on, 262, 267; 79 Whiteboys, 7, 131, 135, 138, 143, 167 Wigram, J. C., Bp Rochester, 243 Wilberforce, Henry William, 235-6, 266 Wilberforce, Samuel, Bp Oxford, 243 Wilkinson, Rev. John, 172 Wingfield, Hon. & Rev. Edward, 74-5, 100 Wiseman, Nicholas, Cardinal, 230-2

Woodward, Rev. Henry, 221 Woodward, Richard, Bp Cloyne (CI), 48 Wordsworth, Christopher, Bp Lincoln, 200 Wyse, Sir Thomas, 19, 84, 99, 125, 129, 138, 141 Young, Rev. H. W., 253 Young Ireland, 137, 200, 261, 264 Zelanti, 4