A comparative study of the lives of Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic clergy in the south-eastern dioceses of Ireland from 1550 to 1650 by ÁINE HENSEY, BA Thesis for the degree of PhD Department of History National University of Ireland Maynooth Supervisor of Research: Professor Colm Lennon Head of Department: Professor Marian Lyons May 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements ii Abbreviations iv Introduction 1 Chapter One: ‘Tender youths:’ the role of education in the formation and 15 development of the clergy Chapter Two: 60 Material Resources: the critical importance of property and other sources of income in the empowerment of the clergy Chapter Three: 138 The clergy in the community Chapter Four: 211 Church of Ireland institutional support and organisation Chapter Five: 253 Roman Catholic institutional support and organisation Conclusion 318 Appendix 1: 334 A database of Roman Catholic priests believed to be working in the south-eastern dioceses between 1557 and 1650 Bibliography 386 i Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support and co-operation of staff in the following research facilities: the Manuscripts Room and Early Printed Books Department of Trinity College, Dublin; the Royal Irish Academy; the Representative Church Body Library; Lambeth Palace Library, London; the county libraries in Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford; the significant online resources of Waterford County Library; and the Russell and John Paul II libraries in NUI Maynooth. I would like to add a special word of thanks to an tAth Séamus de Bhál, archivist at St Peter’s College, Wexford, to Fr David Kelly, archivist of the Irish Augustinians, and to Dr Jason McHugh for generously sharing his research on the Catholic clergy of the Dublin archdiocese in the seventeenth century. Professor Vincent Comerford, then head of the history department, made me very welcome on my first visit to Maynooth in 2007 and I sincerely appreciated his encouragement and enjoyed his invigorating company in the intervening years. I also wish to thank his successor, Professor Marian Lyons, Professor Raymond Gillespie, Professor Jacqueline Hill, Ann Donoghue, Catherine Heslin and my fellow post-graduate students in the department. This research was part-funded by the HEA under the PRTLI4 Humanities, Technology and Innovation award to An Foras Feasa (NUI Maynooth) and I would like to express my ii appreciation to Professor Margaret Kelleher, Dr Jennifer Kelly and all the staff of an Foras Feasa. Professor Colm Lennon, my thesis supervisor, is not just a wonderful historian but his erudition and enthusiasm for all things early modern are a constant inspiration to all who work with him. I wish to thank him for so generously sharing with me his expertise, understanding and eye for detail during the research and writing of this thesis. Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le mo chairde uilig agus le mo chomhleacaithe in RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta as an tacaíocht a thug said dom le linn tréimhse na h-oibre seo. I also appreciate the support of my family, the Henseys and the McMahons, with a special word of thanks to my fellow historians, Cian McMahon and Deirdre Clemente, who were always ready with transatlantic words of advice and encouragement. I would like to pay tribute to my father, the late Brendan Hensey, who embarked on a somewhat similar voyage in the 1950s and whose professional and personal achievements have always been a source of inspiration to me. Finally, and most importantly, this work would not have been completed without the patience, encouragement and love of my husband, Dermot McMahon. Míle buíochas. iii Abbreviations Ana. Hib. Analecta Hibernica Archiv. Hib. Archivium Hibernicum Coll. Hib. Collectanea Hibernica CSPI Calendar of State papers relating to Ireland (24 vols, London, 1860-1911). CSP, Rome Rigg, J.M (ed.), Calendar of state papers relating to English affairs, preserved principally at Rome in the Vatican archives and library (2 vols, London, 1916), i. ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. RV 1615 ‘Royal Visitations 1615’ (T.C.D. MS 808) RV 1633 ‘Royal Visitations 1633’ (T.C.D. MS 2158) T.C.D. Trinity College, Dublin. Wadding papers Jennings, Brendan (ed.), Wadding papers, 1614-39 (IMC, Dublin, 1968). iv Introduction The Treaty of Augsburg, signed by European nations and states in 1555, established the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, whereby the inhabitants of a country or region were expected to adopt the religion of their ruler. The one notable exception to the long-term fulfillment of this principle was Ireland, where a large majority of the people chose to adhere to the Roman Catholic faith despite the fact that the country was officially ruled by the Protestant British monarchy. Karl Bottigheimer and Ute Lotz-Heumann have challenged this view that Ireland’s Reformation experience was unique, pointing to examples within the ‘Celtic fringe’ of British rule and in continental Europe that replicated many of the conditions found in Ireland that were postulated as causes for the failure of the Reformation here. They remark on the abject poverty of church livings and the continued widespread use of the native languages in Wales and Scotland; Norway is cited as an example of a country, like Ireland, in the process of being subjugated by a powerful neighbour and with no indigenous, independent Reformation movement; and the town of Lemgo, in the territory of Lippe, and Brandenberg are given as two German examples where the population refused to follow their leaders in the abandonment of Lutheranism and the adoption of Calvinism during the ‘second Reformation’. 1 The comparisons drawn with the Irish situation are persuasive and help to cast further light on the issues involved, though I believe there remains one basic distinction between these cases and that of Ireland. For a variety of reasons, the Welsh did conform to 1 K.S. Bottigheimer and Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘The Irish Reformation in European perspective’ in Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, lxxxix (1998), pp 268-309. 1 Protestantism, the Scots overwhelmingly adopted Calvinism, Norway became a fundamentally Lutheran country, the citizens of Lemgo succeeded in remaining Lutheran, and Brandenberg became a recognized bi-confessional state. Only in Ireland did the confessional position remain unresolved. The British rulers were unable to enforce their desire for conformity on the population, yet remained unwilling to reach any official compromise.2 While the causes behind this phenomenon are a complex fusion of faith, tradition, politics and power, which have long been debated by historians of the early modern period, there is no doubting the veracity of Brendan Bradshaw’s contention that it was ‘probably late sixteenth-century British history’s most problematic item, as well as the one most fraught with long-term significance’.3 In the years following the Reformation, as the differences between the beliefs and practice of the Protestant and Catholic religions became more sharply defined, it became clear that it would be of little value for the authorities in London and Dublin or Rome and Trent to lay down rules and directives for the propagation of the faith unless they could be implemented at parish level. Wolfgang Rheinhard has identified seven mechanisms for successful confessionalisation, only one of which could conceivably be introduced in isolation from the parochial level of church activity. While Rheinhard’s paradigm of confessionalisation has been disputed by historians and theologians since it was conceived in the late 1970s, his classification of 2 Ibid. 3 Brendan Bradshaw, ‘The English Reformation and identity formation in Ireland and Wales’, in Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts (eds), British consciousness and identity: the making of Britain, 1533-1707 (Cambridge, 1998), p.72. 2 these mechanisms does provide a useful starting point for an examination of the role of the parish clergy between 1550 and 1650.4 The ‘establishment of pure doctrine and its formulation in a confession of faith’ was undoubtedly the responsibility of the upper echelons of church and state authorities but the chain of command, stretching downwards from Westminster and Rome, through archbishops and ordinaries to the parish clergy, needed to be in place to ensure the success of all other aspects of Rheinhard’s thesis. These were: the ‘distribution and enforcement of these new norms; the use of the printing press for propaganda purposes; internalisation of the new norms through education, catechising, sermons and pilgrimages; disciplining the population through visitations and the expulsion of confessional minorities; the control of participation in rites, such as baptism and marriage; and the confessional regulation of language.’5 Historians generally agree that the role of the clergy was a critical, though not always a positive, one during this time of religious uncertainty. As the lay population moved slowly towards a defined confessional adherence, they continued to depend on the available clergy to fulfil their ritual devotional needs. But, if the allegiance of the laity was unsure in the early post-Reformation period, then the commitment of their clergy, many of them poorly educated, was similarly unstable. Alexander Devereux, Cistercian abbot of Dunbrody in Wexford, was a high-profile example, but certainly not an 4 Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘The concept of “confessionalization”: a historiographical paradigm in dispute’ in Memoria y Civilizacion, iv, (2001), pp 93-114; idem., ‘Confessionalisation