The Life and Times of Daniel Murray: Archbishop of Dublin 1823-1852

By Thomas J. Morrissey

Daniel Murray was undoubtedly the outstanding Irish Catholic archbishop of the nineteenth century. He was a man of elegance and charm, ready to listen to others and to find good in them. To the redoubtable Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, the archbishop was ‘an angel of a man’.His concern for the education of the poor led to the founding of the Irish Sisters of Charity and the invitation to Dublin of the Sisters of Mercy and the Irish Christian Brothers. His interest in the education of the middle class was manifested in the foundation of the Sisters of Loreto and in his support for the schools of the Jesuits and the Vincentians. A man of great pastoral energy, he built numerous churches and readily encouraged lay involvement in the work of the diocese. He was actively involved in assisting the Holy See in the appointment of priests and bishops around the world and his efforts to provide aid to the needy during the Great Famine, and the veneration and respect he inspired in his clergy, further contributed to the high esteem in which he was held.  And yet, he is a virtually forgotten figure in Irish history.This neglect is related to the stance he took on some issues of the day – his support for certain government initiatives, his opposition to his clergy’s involvement in politics, and his caution about openly supporting Repeal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Messenger Publications
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781788124379

Thomas J. Morrissey

Thomas J. Morrissey, SJ, is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, and a former headmaster of Crescent College Comprehensive in Limerick and president of the National College of Industrial Relations Dublin. He has written some thirteen books on Irish Labour, Ecclesiastical, Jesuit, and Educational History. These include Towards a National University: William Delany, SJ, 1835-1924 (Dublin 1983), As One Sent: Peter Kenney, SJ, 1779-1841 (Dublin 1996), William J. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, 1841-1921 (Dublin 2000), William O'Brien, 1881-1968. Socialist, Republican, and Trades Union Leader (Dublin 2007), Jesuits in Hong Kong, South China and Beyond, 1926-2006 (Hong Kong, 2008), Edward J. Byrne, 1872-1941: The Forgotten Archbishop of Dublin (Dublin 2010), and editor of Social Teaching of James Connolly (Dublin 1991).

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Introduction

Daniel Murray was undoubtedly the outstanding Irish Catholic archbishop of the nineteenth century. He was a man of elegance and charm, ready to listen to others and to find good in them. To the redoubtable Bishop Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, the Archbishop was ‘an angel of a man’. Murray’s concern for the education of the poor led to the founding of the Irish Sisters of Charity, and the invitation to Dublin of the Sisters of Mercy and the Irish Christian Brothers. His interest in the education of the middle class was manifested in his involvement with the founding of the Sisters of Loreto, and in his support for the schools of the Jesuits and the Vincentians.

He was also a man of great pastoral energy. He built numerous churches and actively continued the work of his predecessor in restructuring the Irish Church after penal times. He invited the Society of St Vincent de Paul to Dublin, and he readily encouraged lay involvement in the work of the diocese. The Vincentians and the Jesuits were encouraged to develop their parish missions, which became a contributory factor in the later ‘devotional revolution’. He was actively involved in assisting the Holy See in the appointment of priests and bishops across the English-speaking world. His efforts to provide aid to the needy during the Great Famine in the 1840s, and the veneration and respect he inspired in his clergy, further contributed to the high esteem in which he was held not only in Rome but throughout the English-speaking world. And yet, he is a virtually forgotten figure in Irish history.

This neglect is related to the stance he took on some issues of the day – his support for certain government initiatives, his opposition to his clergy’s involvement in politics and his caution about openly supporting Repeal. With regard to Repeal, his belief was that the government would not yield, and that O’Connell’s movement could lead to bloodshed, as had happened in 1798 when he barely escaped death himself. He believed that the best results could be obtained for the Church and for the Irish people, especially the poor, by working with the government rather than being constantly suspicious of, and hostile to, all its proposals. Although seldom mentioned in his lifetime, because of the reverence and affection with which he was held, zealous nationalists posthumously included him among those who supported government policies, and on that account he was deemed to be unpatriotic.

A life of Dr Murray is overdue. Nothing has been written about his overall career, apart from a valuable eulogy by his friend William Meagher, a few insightful articles and two or three pamphlets. Considerably more attention has been given to Murray’s role in three public controversies that surfaced during the last dozen years of his long life: the national system of education, the government’s Bequests Act to benefit Irish Catholics, and the issue of university education for Irish Catholics by means of the ‘Godless colleges’. Murray championed the national education system despite the opposition of the more anti-government members of the hierarchy, who had the support of the Roman curia; he defended the Bequests Act in the face of widespread anti-government feeling and personal attacks; and with similar courage and independence he argued in support of the Queen’s Colleges despite opposition from Rome, Daniel O’Connell and the public press. On these three areas valuable research has been done in recent times. Dr Donal A. Kerr, former professor at Maynooth, dealt with all three controversies in the course of books on wider topics. Dr Emmet Larkin, former professor of History at the University of Chicago, published an important article on the bishops and the national education system. Finally, Dr Ambrose Macaulay has also researched and written on the national education system. Sadly, both Drs Kerr and Larkin are no longer with us. This book has availed of the scholarly research of all three.

In the course of my research and reading I have been greatly assisted by librarian June Rooney, and by Ann O’Carroll and Áine Stack at Milltown Park Library; by Noelle Dowling and her staff at the Dublin Diocesan Archives; by Damien Bourke at the Irish Jesuit Archives; by Dr Mary Clarke and staff at Dublin City Library, Pearse Street; and by Dr Ciaran O’Carroll, president of the Irish College Rome, who was most generous in making manuscripts available to me. I also wish to thank Dermot Roantree for his time, expertise and guidance in dealing with computer material, and also Eileen Ellis and Tina Loughrey for their support and assistance. My thanks are due in a special way to the two very generous readers of my manuscript, Maria Mullen for her careful scrutiny of writing and textual failings, and Dr Fergus O’Donoghue SJ for a historian’s judgement of the material and how it might be improved. I am both delighted and honoured that Dr V. A. McClelland agreed to write the Foreword. A former Professor of Education at UCC and at the University of Hull, he has made distinguished contributions to Education and Ecclesial History in both Britain and Ireland and, in addition, he is an admirer of Archbishop Murray. In conclusion, it remains to acknowledge that my work has been made possible by the support and encouragement of successive Jesuit provincials and by the forbearance of my Jesuit community.

Thomas J. Morrissey SJ

CHAPTER 1

Years of Change and Development (1768–93)

Daniel Murray was born on 18 April 1768 to Thomas and Judith Murray at their farm in an area known as Sheepwalk, near the town of Arklow, Co. Wicklow. According to the family records, they had held land there for three hundred years. At the time of Murray’s birth, the penal laws were still applied to the Catholic population, and their impact, together with the wider historical situation, made a lasting impression on him in his earlier years.

THE PENAL LAWS

Land was the source of wealth and political power. Following King William’s victory over the Stuart king, James II, in 1690, the penal laws in Ireland were designed to guarantee the political settlement and to confirm Protestant ownership of landed property. These laws, as they were gradually applied in the early decades of the eighteenth century, fell into two categories: those concerning land and access to public office, and those related to the exercise of religion.

As regards the exercise of religion, in 1697 all Catholic bishops, vicars general, deans and all members of the regular clergy were ordered by parliament to leave the country within a year. Not all the clergy left, of course, but the ruling initiated a period of religious oppression which did not ease until 1746, when English forces at the Battle of Culloden, in Scotland, defeated the supporters of the House of Stuart and brought to an end the pretensions of the Stuarts. Twenty years later, in 1766, the death of the ‘Old Pretender’, James Francis Stuart, brought to an end Rome’s support for the Stuart cause. These developments brought relief to the Protestants in Ireland, who began to worry less about the likelihood of rebellion at home. Another factor in ending religious persecution was Britain’s need, on the international scene, of the support of Catholic Austria.

Where public office and parliament and ownership of land were concerned, the prohibitions were more entrenched. To enter public office one had to take an oath recognising royal supremacy. This included rejecting even the spiritual supremacy of the pope, the denial of transubstantiation and the repudiation of the Mass – all of which excluded any genuine Catholic from office. Regarding land, a Catholic might not buy land, or lease it for more than thirty-one years. If the eldest son of a Catholic landowner became a Protestant he could inherit the family estate, thereby making his father a tenant. A further provision, known as the ‘gavel act’, stipulated that on the death of a Catholic his estate would not pass to his eldest son but be divided among all his sons. The overall effect of these laws was that the majority of the Catholic population were left as tenants or landless labourers, political nonentities, hampered in their trades and forbidden to have their own schools. As a result they were frequently evasive, and distrustful of the law and of government. A ‘slow process of dismantling this penal code began in 1759 but was marked by no significant progress until the 1770s’.¹

THE EFFECT OF WIDER EVENTS

Daniel Murray grew up in a period of change at home and of major change overseas. The American War of Independence commenced in 1775, and was followed with intense interest in Ireland and throughout much of Europe. The widespread withdrawal of British troops from Ireland for the war against France and the American colonists provided the Irish Protestant Ascendancy with the opportunity to wrest a more independent parliament and free trade from a beleaguered British government.

During the next twenty years, native industries were promoted and the impact of the industrial and technological revolution was manifested in better roads, the development of canals and generally improved communications. Wide streets, impressive public buildings, numerous and varied horse-drawn carriages, an active interest in politics and rhetoric, and lavish hospitality were noted features of Ireland’s capital city. Yet, for Daniel Murray, who spent some of his early years in Dublin, reminders of the reverse side of this gilded, progressive world were easy to find. The contrast was unavoidable. The English traveller, the Revd John Milner, remarked on the disparity between the magnificence of the public buildings ‘and the circumstances of the people at whose expense they have been erected’.² These people lived in over-crowded tenements in filthy streets, and among them epidemics of fever and plague were frequent. Murray’s contact with this side of Dublin life left him with a life-long concern for the condition and the relief of the poor.

The success of the North American colonists, and the concurrence of their proclamation of ‘self-evident truths’ with the prevailing ethos of the Enlightenment among many in the Irish parliament, prompted two Catholic relief acts in 1782. These were far-reaching. In religious matters, legal recognition was granted to the secular clergy, provided they took the oath of allegiance to the king of England. The regular clergy – members of religious congregations – were allowed to minister without penalty so long as they registered with the state. Many Catholics disliked this provision, but they put up with it as an inconvenience rather than a hindrance. The same applied to the retention of sanctions against the conversion of Protestants, and bans on the addition of steeples or bells to Catholic churches and chapels, on Catholic priests officiating at funerals, on the public wearing of vestments and the assumption of ecclesiastical ranks and titles. The stipulation that Catholics could only establish schools under licence from the Protestant bishop was also unwelcome, but it was accepted as an improvement on the existing situation.³ In the event, one of the effects of the acts was Rome’s appointment of a Dominican, John Thomas Troy (1786–1823), as archbishop of Dublin in 1786. Prior to 1782, he had no legal right to be in the country.

Socially and economically, too, matters had improved for Catholics, who were allowed to own land, and to lease it for long periods. James Caulfeild, earl of Charlemont, commented in his memoirs on the extraordinary increase in tolerance in the Irish parliament. In 1772, the parliament had rejected his proposal to grant Catholics a short lease of land sufficient for a cabin and a plot of potatoes; yet six years later, without any opposition, the same parliament permitted Catholics to take out leases of lands of any extent for 999 years. ‘The spirit of tolerance’, Charlemont observed, ‘was lately gone abroad and had spread itself through all the polished nations of Europe … I should rather suppose that it took its rise from fashionable deism than from Christianity, which was now unfortunately much out of fashion…’⁴

During the second half of the eighteenth century, relatively prosperous Catholic merchants advanced materially by availing of loopholes in the penal legislation and the government’s connivance at its non-application. Resentment at the restrictions of the legislation, nevertheless, grew with increased freedom. Middle-class Catholics relished Edmund Burke’s reminder to the House of Commons, recently highlighted in Arthur Young’s Tour of Ireland (1780), that ‘connivance is the relaxation of slavery, not the definition of liberty’.⁵

During Murray’s youth, his family not only continued to survive as strong tenant farmers through these many changes, as they had through the darker days of the penal laws; they also managed to expand. As reliable, hard-working tenants, they may have been protected by their landlord and by their Protestant neighbours.⁶ How effectively the family had survived, and was now flourishing with the easing of the penal laws, is indicated by a surviving indenture, made in 1787, between Lord Wicklow and Thomas Murray of Sheepwalk.⁷ It ran:

Letting town and lands of Ballyvogue otherwise Sheepwalk and part of Raheen now in his possession, containing 102 acres plantation measure excepting all mines, minerals or timber to Thomas Murray his exors, admors and assigns from 25 March 1787 for and during the natural life of Peter Murray, 2nd son of the said Thomas Murray aged 24 years or thereabouts, Daniel Murray, 4th son of the said Thomas aged 19 years or thereabouts, Thomas Murray, 5th son of the said Thomas Murray aged 14 years or thereabouts.

The indenture also provides the only information available about the rest of Daniel Murray’s family. Meantime, eleven years prior to the agreement between Lord Wicklow and Thomas Murray, Daniel was sent to Dublin to advance his education.

EDUCATION IN DUBLIN

Daniel, from all accounts, was a bright and pleasant child. His early education was given by his parents or by the parish priest or, perhaps, a local schoolmaster. It must have been of a high standard because, in 1776, at the age of eight years, he was accepted in the remarkable school in Dublin sometimes known as Fr Betagh’s ‘classical academy’. Thomas Betagh was a former Jesuit, who became a member of the Dublin diocesan clergy in 1774 following the suppression of the Society of Jesus. During the morning hours, he worked in the parish chapel of St Michael and St John in Rosemary Lane. During the afternoon he ran a private school at Saul’s Court, situated at the top of Fishamble Street, under the shadow of Christ Church Cathedral. This school had started with an older former Jesuit, Fr John Austin, who, in time, together with Betagh, opened a boarding school adjoining the original foundation. It served, inter alia, as a seminary for the diocesan sees of Meath and Dublin.⁸ In addition, Betagh developed a variety of schools providing basic free education for poorer children⁹ and evening classes for young apprentices and labourers.¹⁰ On Sundays, Betagh preached to a large congregation who, it is said, held him ‘in extraordinary veneration’.¹¹ At his funeral, the preacher, Dr Michael Blake, a former pupil, told of Fr Betagh teaching children night after night in cold cellars when he was already past seventy years of age, and of his clothing forty of the most destitute each year at his own expense. In Blake’s estimation, he educated more than 3,000 boys.¹²

Thomas Betagh

In the afternoon school, Betagh provided a wide education but with particular emphasis on the classical languages of Latin and Greek. He was assisted from time to time by Fr Mulcaile, also a former Jesuit, who worked at St Michan’s Church across the river, ran a school for poor boys and was spiritual director to the Presentation Sisters at George’s Hill. A writer and translator of a number of works, Mulcaile’s skill as a Latin scholar was indicated by his translation of Gulliver’s Travels into Latin, under the title Peregrinatio Laputensis.¹³ Many of Betagh’s students went on to become well-known Catholic clergy, among them Fr Michael Blake, later bishop of Dromore, Monsignor William Yore, an influential parish priest in the Dublin archdiocese and founder of St Joseph’s school for deaf boys, and Fr Peter Kenney, pioneer in Ireland of the restored Society of Jesus (1814). The most celebrated of them all was to be Daniel Murray. As he was a considerable distance from home, Murray stayed initially at the Jesuit house in Cook Street – where former Jesuits lived – and subsequently with a Catholic business family at Merchants Quay.¹⁴ He soon made a deep impression on Betagh by his ability, gentle manner and general amiability. The older man became to him both a friend and spiritual guide.

Daniel Murray’s parents may well have viewed their son as a possible future priest. During his eight years in Dublin, he himself decided he had a vocation to the priesthood. Archbishop Carpenter of Dublin had learned about him. He interviewed Murray, and then his parents, before sending him to study philosophy and theology in Spain, at the historic Irish College in Salamanca. He arrived there, after an arduous journey, on All Saints Day, 1 November 1784.¹⁵ By this time, Murray had spent eight years studying in Dublin. He was now about to spend a further eight years in Salamanca. It was to prove a new and formative experience for him.

AT THE IRISH COLLEGE IN SALAMANCA

For Murray, although the journey to Salamanca proved taxing, there was the novelty and excitement of visiting the continent for the first time. Long before the city itself came in sight, the pinnacles of its cathedrals would have been visible. Thereafter would have come the golden gleam of the soft stone buildings, the city’s dull yellow walls and the tiers of red and brown roofs rising above the river Tormes. The jostling life of the narrow city streets would have contrasted with the seclusion to be glimpsed behind high walls. Finally arriving in the college itself there would have been, no doubt, a warm welcome awaiting him from his own countrymen and from other fellow students.

Before long, he would have absorbed something of the historical significance of the college: he would have learned of its foundation by Frs Thomas White and James Archer at the end of the sixteenth century, and of its proud record of sending priests to Ireland through the years of persecution. Inevitably he would have become aware of how much the Irish Church owed to the shelter and support of Spain over past centuries, and the benefit of attending the great University of Salamanca, in its heyday one of the chief universities of Europe.

As a student, Murray soon made a mark. In 1789, the rector, Dr Patrick Curtis, in his report to the King of Castile on the personnel of the college, was highly complimentary about Murray:¹⁶

Daniel Murray, student, native of the Archdiocese of Dublin, of Catholic and noble family, twenty-one years of age, distinguished himself at home for his knowledge of Latin, Greek and other branches of Humanities. He has been a student of the college for four years. This youth gave proof of a real ecclesiastical vocation, joined with extraordinary piety, talents and application to study. He made rapid progress in his studies and his conduct was most edifying. He surpassed by a great deal all his fellow students, and is of great promise.

This latter testimony takes on additional weight when one learns that Murray’s fellow students included future Irish prelates Kyran Marum, (bishop of Ossory, 1814–27), and Patrick Everard (coadjutor archbishop of Cashel, 1814–20, and archbishop of Cashel, 1820–21). Robert Laffan, the latter’s successor in Cashel (1823–33), was also a student at Salamanca. Historically, it is of interest to note that the rector of the college during Murray’s time, Dr Patrick Curtis, later became the archbishop of Armagh (1819–32), and that, as Daniel Murray left Salamanca, a new student named Oliver Kelly was added to the roll. Kelly later became the archbishop of Tuam (1814–35). Thus, the four archbishops who were to lead the Church during some of the most momentous years in Ireland, were past students of the Salamanca College.¹⁷ Significantly, the influence of that city on these men was not confined to their studies. They also embraced features of its Catholic culture, in which Catholicism was affirmed with solemn dignity and elegance in ornate churches. Unassuming elegance, dignity and ease of manner were features often commented on in the later Daniel Murray.

A NEW ARCHBISHOP FOR DUBLIN

During those years, news of Ireland came from visiting Irish clergy and from the infrequent postage service. In 1786, Daniel would have learned with interest of the appointment of John Thomas Troy OP to the see of Dublin; he could have had no inkling, however, of how that appointment was going to change his life.

Before his appointment to Dublin, Troy had been bishop of Ossory. Before that, he had been superior of the Dominican house of San Clemente in Rome, where he was also dean of studies, specially chosen as the most suitable person to train students not just academically but ‘in exemplary manners and conduct’.¹⁸ A fellow Dominican, to whom Troy had written, observed of his letter that it was ‘a pretty elegant piece like yourself’. ¹⁹ In Ossory, Troy had sought the improvement of clerical discipline and practice, and had established diocesan conferences with a view to renewing the clergy. In Dublin, his priority and practice remained the same. Faced with a diocese of forty-five parishes, he undertook a full visitation, and required the pastors to submit reports on their parishes to him. No doubt, while receiving reports of the new archbishop, Daniel Murray would also have learned of his political astuteness and his efforts to establish good relations with leading figures of the Protestant Ascendancy.

Murray, besides, could scarcely avoid hearing of the liturgies at the chapel of the archbishop in Francis Street, Dublin, where Dr Troy employed a Neapolitan musical director, Tomaso Giordani. He would have heard how the latter, in May 1789, under Dr Troy’s direction, composed a grand Te Deum, which was first performed in the chapel to mark a thanksgiving service for the King’s recovery to health. Troy presided at the altar, assisted by three of his suffragan bishops, before a congregation of three thousand. Included in that congregation were the Duke of Leinster, the Earls of Kildare, Portarlington, Belvedere, Bective and Tyrone, Lord and Lady Arran, Thomas Conolly, Henry Grattan, David Latouche (the attorney general), and the Lord Mayor and sheriffs of Dublin. Never before, and perhaps never again, would so many of the Protestant Ascendancy come to a Catholic service.²⁰ Murray would have been further heartened had he known of an earlier observation by Dr Troy, when bishop of Ossory, that unlike the French colleges, the ‘Roman, Spanish and Portuguese are commonly thought to be the most exemplary, just as they are certainly the most loyal to the Holy See.’²¹

THE IMPACT OF REVOLUTION

As well as the news he received from Ireland that would influence Murray’s future, there was, in the last years of his time in Salamanca, dramatic news from France that would affect his political outlook. The French Revolution in 1789, which must at first have appealed with its slogan ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, soon took on a more negative and frightening aspect with its blatant anti-clericalism. Church lands were nationalised, religious orders abolished and papal jurisdiction removed by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in July 1790. By that Constitution, clergy and bishops were to be elected by the laity in a similar way to district and department officials, and at the same time the clergy were obliged to take an oath of loyalty to the new constitution. With the Pope’s condemnation of the Constitution of the Clergy, a split occurred between clergy taking the oath and those not doing so.

Expressions of support for the French Revolution would have been subdued in Bourbon Spain, with its close royal links with France. Nevertheless, on 5 May 1791, Dr Troy wrote to Archbishop Butler of Cashel concerning disturbances in the Irish College in Salamanca as well as in the Paris houses. Older students were being called home, Troy explained, and the younger students were being sent to Louvain and Antwerp.²² Murray, however, appears to have stayed on at Salamanca for another year, since the academic lists of the Irish College indicate his presence there until, at least, May 1792.²³ The date of his ordination as a priest is not clear, but it would appear to have taken place in 1791 or 1792, because he was back in Ireland, as a priest, early in 1793.

Before Murray left Spain, the humiliation of the French monarch had evoked indignation and anger in Spanish society, and the King’s subsequent execution, in January 1793, shocked all of Europe. There followed the massacre, not only of priests and nuns, but of thousands of citizens. By then Daniel Murray had returned home. He retained, however, an abhorrence of the excesses of the Revolution, a view that resonated strongly with the Irish bishops, all of whom were trained on the continent and who identified with the sufferings of the Church in France and wherever the Revolution spread. In 1793, Fr Daniel Murray was appointed by Dr Troy as assistant priest in St Paul’s Church, Arran Quay.²⁴

NOTES

1P. J. Murray, ‘Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin 1823–1852’ in Journal of Arklow Historical Society , 1986, p.12.

2Constantia Maxwell, Dublin under the Georges, 1714–1830 (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co Ltd, 1946), pp.264–5, citing Milner, writing in 1807.

3James Kelly, ‘The Impact of the Penal Laws’ in J. Kelly & D. Keogh, A History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), pp.170–171. For further reading see: J. Kelly. Prelude to Union: Anglo-Irish Politics in 1780s (Cork: Cork University Press, 1992); T.Bartlet. The Fall and Rise of the Irish nation: the Catholic Question, 1690–1830 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1992).

4Hugh Fenning OP ‘A time of reform: from the penal laws to the birth of modern nationalism, 1691–1800’ in B. Bradshaw & D. Keogh, Christianity in Ireland (Dublin: Columba Press, 2002), pp.134 –5.

5Quoted by Young, in A. W. Hutton edition (London, 1892), vol. 1, p.114. The work first appeared in 1780.

6M. T. Kelly, ‘Most Rev. Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin (1768–1852)’, in A Roll of Honour. Irish prelates and priests of the last century (Dublin: CTS, 1905), p.60.

7Dublin Diocesan Archives (DDA). Copy of a document from the archives of P. J. Murray. In an article by P. J. Murray ‘Copy of a lease of a farm at Sheepwalk, Arklow, in 1787’ in Journal of Arklow Historical Society , 1984. In the article it is mentioned that Daniel Murray was the last survivor of the names mentioned.

8A. Cogan, The Diocese of Meath , 111, (Dublin, 1870), p.138; see W. J. Battersby, The Jesuits in Dublin , p.109, and under Austin and Betagh; also G. A. Little, Revd John Austin SJ . (Pamphlet: Dublin, 1910).

9W. J. Battersby, op. cit., p.109. G.A. Little, Revd John Austin SJ lists various centres of education associated with Austin and Betagh.

10 ‘A short history of the parishes of Ss. Michael and John’, in the Year Book (1957).

11 S.A. (Mrs Sarah Atkinson), Mary Aikenhead, Her Life, Her Work, and Her Times (Dublin, 1879), pp.117–18. See Myles Ronan, ‘Archbishop Murray (1768–1852)’ in Irish Ecclesiastical Record (IER) , (1952), vol. xxvi, p.241.

12 W. J. Battersby, op. cit., p.109. See Warburton, History of the City of Dublin (1818), vol. ii, p.811.

13 R. Burke Savage SJ, A Valiant Dublin Woman: The story of George’s Hill, 1766–1940 (Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son Ltd, 1940), p.156.

14 F. P. Carey, Archbishop Murray of Dublin (1768–1852) , (Pamphlet: Dublin, 1951), p.4.

15 P. J. Murray, art. cit., loc. cit., p.12.

16 F. P. Carey, loc. cit., p.6.

17 Idem, pp.6–7.

18 DDA. Troy Papers, green file, personal, no. 12 (1765); no.15 (1769).

19 Idem, small green file, 1770-1776: Dr. T. de Burgo, bishop of Ossory, to Troy, 14 April 1770.

20 Faulkner’s Dublin Journal , 7 May 1789, cit. D. Keogh ‘The pattern of the flock: John Thomas Troy, 1786–1823’ in J. Kelly & D. Keogh eds., History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), p.227.

21 Archiv. Hib . xlix (1995), Hugh Fenning OP, ‘Documents of Irish interest in the Fondo Missioni of the Vatican Archives’: John J. Troy OP, bishop of Ossory, to Cardinal (Leonardo) Antonelli, Prefect, from Kilkenny, 21 August 1780, no. 179.

22 Troy-Butler, 5 May 1791, no. 2. Troy Papers. DDA.

23 D. O’Doherty, ‘Academic Lists of the Irish College Salamanca’ in Archivium Hibernicum , Vols. 6 & 7, cit F. P. Carey, op. cit. p.7; P. J. Murray, art. cit., p.12.

24 Carey, op. cit. loc. cit.; P. J. Murray, idem.

CHAPTER 2

The Impact of Revolution (1793–1800)

On his return to Ireland, Murray worked for some eighteen months in Dublin. There he was surprised at the impact the French Revolution was having, something that was to change the circumstances in which he was to live and work.

MIXED VIEWS OF THE REVOLUTION

The cry of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ had stirred the blood of many middleand working-class Catholics and Presbyterians. Seven editions of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man appeared in Dublin between 1791 and 1792.¹ Some of the Dublin clergy were said to ‘canonise … with unqualified praise, the whole proceedings of the late National Assembly of France’.² Murray’s archbishop, Dr Troy, on the other hand, viewed the prospect of revolution in Ireland as destructive of all that had been achieved towards Catholic Emancipation. He was fearful that what had been obtained from the government could easily be withdrawn.

There were increased grounds for such fears following the further Catholic relief acts of 1792 and 1793. In the former year, university education was made available to Catholics, and the establishment of Catholic colleges was permitted as well as entry to the legal profession. This measure paved the way for the founding of Carlow College, in 1793, and for Daniel O’Connell’s emergence as a lawyer. The following year, the British government, facing war with France, obliged the Irish parliament to pass a concessionary act. This extended parliamentary franchise to Catholics, enabling them to hold civil and military offices – with specific exceptions – and removing the statutory bar to university degrees. In addition, because the Revolution had cut off the main supply of priests from the Irish seminaries in France, the bishops pressed for a seminary college at home. The government, wishing to ensure the support of the bishops and uneasy about students coming from the continent, agreed to the establishment of St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Co. Kildare, in 1795.

UNBRIDLED VIOLENCE

The extension of the franchise – by open ballot – to the Catholic majority population, followed by the concession of a Catholic seminary, was seen by many Protestants as a threat to the controlling position of the Protestant Ascendancy. From 1795, certain members, led by John FitzGibbon, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, determined to safeguard their ascendancy for all time by bringing about a parliamentary union with Britain. The expansion of the United Irishmen, said to have 200,000 members by 1798,³ together with that organisation’s negotiations with France, heightened fear of a French invasion and provided scope for a policy of terror, and for playing the sectarian card. Catholics were represented as likely to be disloyal to the crown, and the arrival of a French fleet at Bantry Bay, on 22 December 1796, engendered further fear, bordering on hysteria. Only very bad weather prevented an actual invasion taking place.

During 1797–98 government forces exhibited unbridled violence. An uprising took place in Meath and Wexford, and martial law was proclaimed. Sir Ralph Abercromby, commander-in-chief in Ireland, observed, on 26 February 1798, that the army in Ireland was ‘in a state of licentiousness which must render it formidable to everyone but the enemy’.⁴ Under martial law, ‘troops continually searched for arms. Those suspected … were tortured or flogged. Those convicted were hanged … Each day the bodies of rebels killed in the surrounding countryside were brought into Dublin city in carts, and heaped up in the Castle yard’.⁵ With the violations and torture, the uprisings and the reprisals, the year 1798 was probably the most concentrated period of violence in Irish history. By the end of the summer the death rate on both sides, from various causes, was estimated at 30,000.⁶ Atrocities and achievements became entrenched in folk memory.

A CONTROVERSIAL STANCE

Dr Troy, during the 1790s, preached respect for ‘the constituted authorities’ and appreciation of the benefits that had been conferred on the Catholic community. In 1791 he had sided with Lord Kenmare and the aristocratic faction in the Catholic Committee rather than the more democratic element led by Wolfe Tone. This, and his constant opposition to the spread of revolutionary principles, led to much criticism, with Wolfe Tone describing him as a ‘great scoundrel’.⁷ In December 1793 Troy made clear his priorities in a letter to Luke Concanen, a fellow Dominican who acted as his agent in Rome:⁸

John Thomas Troy

We are equally indifferent to their praise or censure. We are neither aristocrats or democrats … We have spoken as bishops, without taking notice of any party.

Troy, and Murray after him, was condemned by nationalists as being too friendly with Dublin Castle. The primary concerns of both men, however, were for the interests of the Irish Church and its people. Following the attempted French invasion at the end of 1796, Troy, the following February, offered a solemn Te Deum in thanksgiving, and subsequently his sermon was circulated as a pastoral letter in his diocese.⁹ It emphasised the excesses of the French Revolution. In opposing Jacobin revolution in Ireland, Troy was not being ‘unpatriotic’. In the context of what the revolutionaries were inflicting on the Catholic Church in those large parts of Europe controlled by France,