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State intervention in disputes between secular and regular clergy in early seventeenth-century Ireland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2018
Abstract
The success of the Counter-Reformation in Ireland following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy was a remarkable achievement. Between 1618 and 1630 Rome made a staggering nineteen episcopal appointments in a kingdom that was ruled by a Protestant king. Documenting the achievements of the initial period only paints half the picture, however. The implementation of the Tridentine reforms and the thorny issue of episcopal authority brought the religious orders into a head-on collision with the secular clergy. This protracted dispute lasted for a decade, most notably in the diocese of Dublin where an English secular priest, Paul Harris, led a hostile attack on the Franciscan archbishop, Thomas Fleming. The longevity of the feud, though, owed at least as much to the intervention of Lord Deputy Sir Thomas Wentworth as it did to the internal tensions of the Catholic Church. Despite Wentworth’s influential role, he has been largely written out of the conflict. This article addresses the lacunae in the current historiography and argues that the lord deputy’s interference was a decisive factor in exacerbating the hostilities between the secular and regular clergy in early seventeenth-century Ireland.
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- © Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
*
I would like to express my gratitude to the Irish Research Council and UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilisation for their financial assistance at the time of researching this article.
References
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62 Wentworth to Laud, 28 August 1633, SCL, Str. P., vol. 8, f. 13.
63 Ibid. Laud to Wentworth, 9 September 1633, SCL, Str. P., vol. 8, f. 32; O’Connor, ‘Wentworth and Dublin’s Catholic clergy’, 45-50.
64 Wentworth to Laud, 28 August 1633, SCL, Str. P., vol. 8, f. 13; Laud to Wentworth, 9 September 1633, SCL, Str. P., vol. 8, f. 33; Laud to Wentworth, 15 November 1633, SCL, Str. P., vol. 6, f. 1; Secretary Coke to Wentworth, 12 July 1634, SCL, Str. P., vol. 5, f. 246.
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80 Harris obviously failed in his initial suit against Doyle in the consistory court the previous year, Donnelly, Short Histories of Dublin Parishes, p. 172.
81 Harris, The Exile Exiled, 34-5.
82 Roche to the Secretary of Propaganda, 15 November 1634, Spicilegium Ossoriense, 1:197-9.
83 The exercise of jurisdiction derived from Rome was again declared illegal in April 1629 by royal proclamation. P. J. Corish, ‘Two Seventeenth-Century Proclamations against the Catholic Clergy’, Archiv. Hib., 39 (1984): 53-5.
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