The Most Reverend William MacNeely, the Bishop of Raphoe from 1923 until 1963, is born in County Donegal on December 28, 1889. He has the distinction of being Raphoe’s first completely Roman-educated bishop.
MacNeely is the son of a butcher in Donegal Town. He is educated at the High School in Letterkenny, and in Rome from 1906–12. He is ordained to the priesthood on February 4, 1912, and upon his return to Ireland is appointed to the staff of St. Eunan’s College.
On July 27, 1923, at the comparatively young age of 35, MacNeely is ordained as Bishop of Raphoe in succession to Bishop Patrick O’Donnell who had been appointed coadjutorArchbishop of Armagh the previous year. In this role he is responsible for the completion of the Cathedral of St. Eunan and St. Columba in Letterkenny and negotiating with Harry Clarke to finish the work of glazing the cathedral.
Keen to develop religious life in his diocese, MacNeely invites the Capuchin Franciscans to the Creeslough area in 1930 to a site that becomes known as Ards Priory.
In a diocese where farming is the main industry, MacNeely maintains a strong interest in farming, being himself a successful breeder of Shorthorn cattle.
In 2008, it is reported that MacNeely was one of the two Irish episcopal coordinators who worked alongside “an intelligence-gathering secret service” set up in 1948 to monitor any sign of a “Communist takeover” of Ireland.
In 1953, MacNeely is a member of the inaugural Episcopal Commission for Emigrants reflecting the high levels of migration that afflict his diocese and wider Donegal for much of the twentieth century.
MacNeely serves as Bishop for over forty years, attending the early sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Shortly before his death, he is appointed Assistant to the Papal Throne. He dies on December 11, 1963, and is interred beside the Cathedral of St. Eunan and St. Columba.
Together with his brother Norman, Leslie’s early education begins at home where a German governess, Clara Woelke, is their first teacher. As children the brothers have more contact with servants than they have with their parents. His own daughter, Anita, says, “In my parents’ view schools performed the same functions that kennels did for dogs. They were places where pets could be conveniently deposited while their owners travelled.”
Leslie is educated at Ludgrove School, then Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge University he becomes a Roman Catholic and a supporter of Irish Home Rule. He adopts an anglicised Irish variant of his name (“Shane”). Not overly impressed by Eton, as a lower boy he and his roommates occupy “an old, battered warren betwixt the chapel cemetery and Wise’s horse yard … [T]he food was wretched and tasteless … As for thrashings which tyrannised rather than disciplined our house, they were excessive. Bullying was endemic and Irish boys were ridiculed, especially on St Patrick’s Day.”
Leslie refuses to send his own sons to Eton. They are educated at Roman Catholic Benedictine schools: Jack at Downside School and Desmond at Ampleforth College.
During the war Leslie is in a British Ambulance Corps, until invalided out. He is then sent to Washington, D.C. to help the British Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, soften Irish American hostility toward England and obtain American intervention in the war in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and the execution of its leaders. But he also looks to Ireland for inspiration when writing and edits a literary magazine that contains much Irish verse. He becomes a supporter of the ideals of Irish nationalism, although not physical force republicanism.
In the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, the Irish Parliamentary Party loses massively to Sinn Féin, putting an end to Leslie’s political career, but as the first cousin of Winston Churchill he remains a primary witness to much that is said and done outside the official record during the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Disappointed, he feels unwanted in Ireland and abandoned by the British. Like many members of the landed gentry from the 1880s who were obliged to turn to other occupations, he can no longer rely on income from landholdings.
Leslie writes extensively, in a wide range of styles, in verse, prose, and polemic, over several decades. His writings include The End of a Chapter (1916), while hospitalised during World War I, The Oppidan (1922), a roman à clef about his life and contemporaries at Eton, an edition of the Letters of Herbert Cardinal Vaughan to Lady Herbert of Lea (1942), and a biography Mrs. Fitzherbert: a life chiefly from unpublished sources (1939), together with an edition of her letters (with Maria Anne Fitzherbert), The letters of Mrs. Fitzherbert and connected papers; being the second volume of the life of Mrs. Fitzherbert (1944). He also writes Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters (1923), a biography of the English traveler, Conservative Party politician and diplomatic advisor. He advises budding novelist Scott Fitzgerald on the title of his first novel, they share correspondence with the future Mnsg. William A. Hemmick, who is Fitzgerald’s teacher at the Newman School.
A passionate advocate of reforestation, Leslie finds the business of running an estate uncreative and boring, and transfers the estate entailed to him to his eldest son, John Norman Leslie, who succeeds as the 4th Baronet. He transfers St. Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, Eugene O’Callaghan.
The wealth of the Leslies wanes by the 1930s following the Wall Street crash of 1929 and a farm that is loss making. In his unpublished memoirs, Leslie writes “a gentleman’s standing in his world was signalled by his list of clubs and it was worth paying hundreds of pounds in subs.” They continue to maintain their lifestyle, involving attendance at the London season and the entertainment of distinguished visitors, including Anthony Eden at Glaslough. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939 he joins the Home Guard. He spends the remainder of his life between Glaslough and London.
Leslie’s first wife, Marjorie, dies on February 8, 1951. On May 30, 1958, at the Catholic Church of St. Peter & Edward, Westminster, he marries Iris Carola Frazer, who is the daughter of Charles Miskin Laing and Etheldreda Janet Laing.
Beresford employs Lewis Nockalls Cottingham, one of the most skilled architects of the time, to restore St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh. Cottingham removes the old, stunted spire and shores up the belfry stages while he rebuilds the piers and arches under it. The arcade walls which had fallen away as much as 21 inches from the perpendicular on the south side and 7 inches on the north side, are straightened by means of heated irons, and the clerestory windows which had long been concealed, are opened out and filled with tracery.
Beresford dies on July 18, 1862, at Woburn, Bedfordshire, England, the home of his niece, in the parish of Donaghadee and is buried in the cathedral. There is a memorial to him in the south aisle at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh.
Twysden is born in Kent, in the South East England region, on September 7, 1713, the third son of Sir William Twysden, 5th Baronet of Roydon Hall, East Peckham, Kent, by his wife (and distant cousin) Jane Twisden.
By his second wife, Twysden has two children: Mary, who dies in infancy, and a posthumous daughter named Frances (1753–1821). Frances, later Countess of Jersey, is one of the many mistresses of King George IV when he is Prince of Wales.
Twysden dies on November 2, 1752, at home in Jermyn Street, St. James’s, London. However, according to ecclesiastical historian and author Henry Cotton, he dies at Roydon Hall, East Peckham, his father’s country house. He is buried in the south chancel of St. Michael’s Church, East Peckham, under a plain stone with no inscription.
A story grows up that, having been made bankrupt, Twysden is shot while attempting to rob a stagecoach. The location of his alleged attempted career as a highwayman is either Hounslow Heath (west of London) or Wrotham Heath in Kent.
(Pictured: The Cathedral of St Eunan, Raphoe, the episcopal seat of the pre-Reformation and Church of Ireland bishops of Raphoe)
Leslie is born on July 27, 1650, in Dublin, the sixth son and one of eight surviving children of John Leslie (1571-1671) and Katherine Conyngham (or Cunningham), daughter of Dr. Alexander Cunningham, Dean of Raphoe. He is allegedly named after the executed Charles I and educated at Enniskillen school and Trinity College, Dublin. After his father dies in 1671, he studies law in London before changing career and being ordained as an Anglican priest in 1681. Shortly afterwards, he returns to the family estate at Glaslough in County Monaghan and marries Jane Griffith. They have a daughter, Vinigar Jane, who appears to have died young and two sons, Robert (1683-1744) and Henry who are also Jacobites and spend time in exile.
Leslie is appointed assistant curate for the Church of Ireland parish of Donagh but as most of his parish is Roman Catholic or Presbyterian, he has few duties. His father had been chaplain to Charles I and a key supporter of Caroline religious reforms, first in Scotland, then in Ireland as Bishop of Raphoe in 1633, while the estate at Glaslough was granted by Charles II in 1660 as a reward for his service. With this background, Leslie is a firm supporter of the Stuart dynasty, although deeply hostile to Catholicism and soon becomes involved in political and theological disputes.
Shortly afterwards, Leslie becomes Clarendon’s personal chaplain and like his patron refuses to take the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II. Like other non-jurors, he is deprived of his Church offices and becomes instead one of the most prominent Jacobite and Tory propagandists. This includes a long dispute with his Trinity College contemporary William King, who supports the Revolution. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, later names him ‘the violentest Jacobite’ active in England during these years.
Much of Leslie’s early writing focuses on Scotland, where the 1690 Settlement ends Episcopacy and restores a Presbyterian kirk. He uses this to inspire concern about William’s intentions towards the Church of England. Ironically, his modern fame now rests primarily on a pamphlet written in 1695, called Gallienus Redivivus, or Murther will out, &c. Being a true Account of the De Witting of Glencoe, Gaffney. The focus of this is William’s alleged complicity in the 1672 death of Dutch Republican leader Johan de Witt, with other crimes including Glencoe included as secondary charges. During the Jacobite rising of 1745, Charles Stuart orders Leslie’s pamphlet and the 1695 Parliamentary minutes of the investigation to be reprinted in the EdinburghCaledonian Mercury.
During the 1690s, Leslie serves as a messenger between James’ court in exile at Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Non-Juror community in England, including the non-juror bishops Jeremy Collier, Thomas Ken and George Hickes. He defends Collier and two other non-juror priests when they become involved in a furor over the execution of Sir John Friend and Sir William Parkyns for their role in the 1696 Jacobite plot to assassinate William. Immediately prior to the execution, the clergymen declare the two absolved of their sins, effectively declaring the correctness of their actions, while also performing a rite not recognised by the Church of England.
In 1702, the accession of Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, causes a resurgence in Jacobite activity and in 1704, Leslie begins a weekly periodical initially called The Observator, later The Rehearsal of Observator and finally The Rehearsal. Although his Tory readership shares his High Church principles, he is primarily a Jacobite and violently opposes the common practice of ‘occasional conformity.’ The Rehearsal is forced to close in 1709 and he falls out with his former allies, including Henry Sacheverell whose trial helped the Tories win a landslide victory in the 1710 British general election.
Despite his Tory allies now being in government, a warrant is issued for Leslie’s arrest for his tract The Good Old Cause, or, Lying in Truth. In 1711 he escapes to Paris, where James Francis Edward Stuart has succeeded his father as the Stuart heir in 1701. He continues to write polemics and act as a Jacobite agent. However, after the failed Jacobite rising of 1715, France withdraws support for the Stuarts who are forced to leave France, eventually being invited to settle in Rome by Pope Benedict XIV. The Spanish-sponsored 1719 Rising in Scotland is judged to have done more damage to the Jacobite cause than otherwise, one of its leaders concluding “it bid fair to ruin the King’s Interest and faithful subjects in these parts.”
Despite these failures, Leslie remains a dedicated Jacobite but his lifelong antipathy towards Catholicism makes living in Rome as a Papal pensionary difficult, while hopes of converting James to Anglicanism fades due to his devout personal Catholicism. He returns to Paris in 1717 and in 1719 publishes a two folio-volume edition of his Theological Works. It is later claimed these placed him ‘very high in the list of controversial authors, the ingenuity of the arguments being equalled only by the keenest and pertinacity with which they are pursued.’ He invites friends and supporters to subscribe to these and by 1721, over 500 members of the House of Lords and House of Commons have pledged a total of £750. Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland finally allows him to return home, with the stipulation he cease his political activities.
Beresford employs Lewis Nockalls Cottingham, one of the most skilled architects at that time, to restore St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh. Cottingham removes the old, stunted spire and shores up the belfry stages while he rebuilds the piers and arches under it. The arcade walls which had fallen away as much as 21 inches from the perpendicular on the south side and 7 inches on the north side, are straightened by means of heated irons, and the clerestory windows which had long been concealed, are opened out and filled with tracery.
Beresford dies on July 18, 1862, at Woburn, Bedfordshire, England, the home of his niece, in the parish of Donaghadee and is buried in the cathedral. There is a memorial to him in the south aisle at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh.
Logue is born in Kilmacrennan, County Donegal in the west of Ulster on October 1, 1840. He is the son of Michael Logue, a blacksmith, and Catherine Durning. From 1857 to 1866, he studies at Maynooth College, where his intelligence earns him the nickname the “Northern Star.” Before his ordination to the priesthood, he is assigned by the Irish bishops as the chair of both theology and belles-lettres at the Irish College in Paris in 1866. He is ordained priest in December of that year.
Logue remains on the faculty of the Irish College until 1874, when he returns to Donegal as administrator of a parish in Letterkenny. In 1876, he joins the staff of Maynooth College as professor of Dogmatic Theology and Irish language, as well as the post of dean.
On May 13, 1879, Logue is appointed Bishop of Raphoe by Pope Leo XIII. He receives his episcopal consecration on the following July 20 from Archbishop Daniel McGettigan, with Bishops James Donnelly and Francis Kelly serving as co-consecrators, at the pro-cathedral of Raphoe. He is involved in fundraising to help people during the 1879 Irish famine, which, due to major donations of food and government intervention never develops into a major famine. He takes advantage of the Intermediate Act of 1878 to enlarge the Catholic high school in Letterkenny. He is also heavily involved in the Irish temperance movement to discourage the consumption of alcohol.
Logue publicly supports the principle of Irish Home Rule throughout his long reign in both Raphoe and Armagh, though he is often wary of the motives of individual politicians articulating that political position. He maintains a loyal attitude to the British Crown during World War I, and on June 19, 1917, when numbers of the younger clergy are beginning to take part in the Sinn Féin agitation, he issues an “instruction” calling attention to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church as to the obedience due to legitimate authority, warning the clergy against belonging to “dangerous associations,” and reminding priests that it is strictly forbidden by the statutes of the National Synod to speak of political or kindred affairs in the church.
Logue opposes the campaign of murder against the police and military begun in 1919, and in his Lenten pastoral of 1921 he vigorously denounces murder by whomsoever committed. This is accompanied by an almost equally vigorous attack on the methods and policy of the government. He endorses the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.
In 1921, the death of Cardinal James Gibbons makes Logue archpriest (protoprete) of the College of Cardinals. He is more politically conservative than Archbishop of DublinWilliam Joseph Walsh, which creates tension between Armagh and Dublin. In earlier life he was a keen student of nature and an excellent yachtsman.
Cardinal Michael Logue dies in Ara Coeli, the residence of the archbishop, on November 19, 1924, and is buried in a cemetery in the grounds of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh.
Michael J. Moran, an Irish street rhymer popularly known as Zozimus, dies in Dublin on April 3, 1846. He is a resident of Dublin and also known as the “Blind Bard of the Liberties” and the “Last of the Gleemen.”
Moran is born around 1794 in Faddle Alley off the Blackpitts in Dublin’s Liberties and lives in Dublin all his life. At two weeks old he is blinded by illness. He develops an astounding memory for verse and makes his living reciting poems, many of which he has composed himself, in his own lively style. He is described by songwriter Patrick Joseph McCall as the last gleeman of the Pale.
Many of his rhymes have religious themes while others are political or recount current events. He is said to have worn “a long, coarse, dark, frieze coat with a cape, the lower parts of the skirts being scalloped, an old soft, greasy, brown beaver hat, corduroy trousers and Francis Street brogues, and he carried a long blackthorn stick secured to his wrist with a strap.”
In his last few years, Moran’s voice grows weak, costing him his means of livelihood. He ends up feeble and bedridden and he dies on April 3, 1846 at his lodgings in 15 Patrick Street. He is buried two days later on Palm Sunday in Glasnevin’s Prospect Cemetery, which is guarded day and night, as he had feared grave robbers, who are busy in Dublin at the time.
His grave remains unmarked until the late 1960s, when the band Dublin City Ramblers erect a tombstone in his memory. His grave is in the “Poor Ground” of the cemetery, not far from Daniel O’Connell‘s monument.
Moran’s nickname is derived from a poem written by Anthony Coyle, Bishop of Raphoe about Saint Mary of Egypt. According to legend, she had followed pilgrims to Jerusalem with the intent of seducing them, then, turning penitent on finding herself prevented from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by a supernatural force, she flees to the desert and spends the remainder of her life in solitary penance. When she is at the point of death, God sends Zosimas of Palestine to hear her confession and give her Holy Communion, and a lion to dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable cadence of the eighteenth century, but is so popular, and so often called for, that Moran is soon nicknamed “Zozimus,” and by that name is remembered.
O’Donnell, son of Daniel O’Donnell, a farmer, and his wife, Mary (née Breslin), is one of nine children in a family that claim descent from the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell. He is educated in the High School, Letterkenny, the Catholic University, Dublin, and St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth. He is ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 1880. In that same year he is appointed to the staff of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, holding the chairs of Dogmatic and Moral Theology. In 1884 he becomes dean of the revived post-graduate Dunboyne Institute and in 1885 is awarded his STD. From his desk in Maynooth he pours out a continuous stream of articles on moral theology and canon law.
O’Donnell becomes Bishop of Raphoe on February 26, 1888, and is consecrated by Cardinal Michael Logue on April 3 in Letterkenny. With superior qualities of mind and body, he is a benign figure who is yet gifted with sharp political acumen. He has the most distinguished episcopate, locally and nationally. He undertakes and completes prodigious building projects including a superbly sited neo-gothic cathedral, St. Eunan’s Diocesan College, and the Presentation Monastery and Loreto schools and an extension to Loreto Convent, all in Letterkenny.
He is appointed coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh on January 14, 1922, and succeeds Cardinal Logue on November 19, 1924. On December 14, 1925, Pope Pius XI makes O’Donnell a Cardinal.
O’Donnell takes an active part in the social, political, and economic life of Ireland. A staunch activist for social justice, as Bishop of Raphoe, he is a member of the first Committee of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, founded by Sir Horace Plunkett. In 1918, when representing the nationalist’s side at the Irish Convention, he opposes John Redmond‘s amendment intended to bring about unanimity on All-Ireland Home Rule.
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