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Death of John Gregg, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh

John Allen Fitzgerald Gregg, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, dies at his home in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, on May 2, 1961.

Gregg is born on July 4, 1873, at North Cerney, Gloucestershire, England, into a distinguished family, youngest and only son among four children of the Rev. John Robert Gregg, vicar of Deptford, Kent, and Sarah Caroline Frances Gregg (née French), sister of Thomas Valpy French, Bishop of Lahore, India (in Pakistan since 1947). His grandfather, John Gregg, is Bishop of Cork. He is educated at Bedford School, enters Christ’s College, Cambridge, on a foundation scholarship in 1891, and graduates BA in 1894, distinguishing himself in sport and scholarship and winning the Hulsean prize in 1896 for his thesis Decian persecution (1897), taking his MA in 1897, BD in 1909, and DD in 1929. From the University of Dublin he graduates BD ad eundem in 1911 and DD in 1913.

His uncle Robert Gregg, Archbishop of Armagh, welcomes his decision to enter the church, but not his proposal to settle in Ireland, warning him that he will “find it very rough.” Ordained deacon at St. Luke’s Church, Belfast in 1896, he is successively appointed curate at Ballymena, County Antrim in 1896, curate and residentiary preacher at Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral in Cork, County Cork, in 1899, and rector of St Michael’s, Blackrock, Cork from 1906 to 1912. On his appointment as Archbishop King’s professor of divinity at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1911, he moves to Dublin and becomes canon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1912 to 1915, and examining chaplain to the Archbishop of Dublin from 1913 to 1915, before joining the episcopal bench as Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin from 1915 to 1920.

Though Gregg is instinctively conservative, his awareness of contemporary trends make him responsive to demands for change: he supports the resolution for women to hold parochial office and presents a petition to the General Synod in 1914, signed by 1,400 women. Though the motion is lost, he perseveres undaunted, and a bill for the ecclesiastical enfranchisement of women is finally carried in 1920. A unionist, he is also one of three Anglican and seventeen Catholic bishops to sign the declaration against partition in 1917, which is organised by the Catholic Bishop of Derry, Charles McHugh.

From the 1920s the Irish church is dominated by Gregg, first as Archbishop of Dublin (1920–39) and later as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (1939–59). He provides stability to the church during a turbulent period of political and social change and is outspoken in defence of its interests, pragmatically espousing policies that will lead to the greater integration of the Protestant community into the new Irish state, as in his acceptance of the teaching of compulsory Irish in national schools. Despite a declining Protestant community in the south of Ireland, he maintains the unity of the church, overcoming the political division of the country into two entities. He regrets constitutional change but pledges the loyalty of the church to the Irish Free State. While recognising that the Protestant ethos is different from that of the majority of Irishmen, he maintains that “whatever our religious or political outlook may be, here is our home, and we have a right to be here.” He is elected to the first Irish Free State senate, and is subsequently consulted by Éamon de Valera, who later describes him as “a most learned and kindly gentleman, and . . . a highly valued friend,” in framing the text of the 1937 constitution. In 1949, he adapts, albeit with sadness, the state prayers to fit the republican form of government, observing that “the republic is a fact” and that “in our prayers, above all, there must be reality.”

Gregg is an able administrator, and his courage and integrity in facing difficult situations and his scholarship and devotion to the church earn him respect in the councils of the wider Anglican communion. He is known as “the churchman’s bishop” for his emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy, ecclesiastical discipline, and loyalty to the clergy. Though conservative in his approach to church unity, he seeks closer relations between the Christian churches and frequently visits the reformed churches of the Iberian Peninsula, where a portrait plaque is unveiled in 1950 in St. John’s Church, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. A baptistry in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Lisbon, is dedicated to his memory. Well known in England as a writer and preacher, he is appointed select preacher at the University of Cambridge (1916, 1930, 1936) and the University of Oxford (1946, 1947) and supports the institution of annual theological lectures at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). His publications include Epistle of St. Clement of Rome (1899) and The Primitive Faith and Roman Catholic Developments (1909) – a minor classic which is used as a textbook for ordinands of the Church of England. He writes the introduction and notes to the revised version of the Wisdom of Solomon for the Cambridge Bible for Schools (1909) and publishes sermons and articles in religious journals. Elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA) in 1914, he is elected to honorary fellowship in 1934 by Christ’s College, Cambridge, is awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity (DD) in 1949 by QUB, and is created Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1957.

A commanding figure, tall, thin, with raven-black hair, piercing eyes, and fine features, Gregg has an air of sacerdotal austerity, lightened on occasion by his dry sense of humour. He maintains a well regulated daily timetable and keeps a diary, writing his most personal thoughts in Greek. He makes time for recreation, a daily walk of two miles, tennis, and (from 1929) sailing, and holidays in Ireland and on the Continent. He has a great love of English literature and church music. In 1959, he retires to the Woodhouse, Rostrevor, County Down. Though incapacitated by blindness, deafness, and lameness, he never complains, and according to his wife, his life of prayer is enriched. He dies on May 2, 1961, at his home and is buried in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, beside his first wife and son.

Gregg marries Anna Alicia Jennings on November 26, 1902. They have two sons and two daughters. Anna dies in 1945. On January 22, 1947, he marries secondly Leslie Alexandra, daughter of the Rev. T. J. McEndoo, dean of Armagh, who officiates at the marriage of his daughter and of his archbishop.

(From: “Gregg, John Allen Fitzgerald” by Helen Andrews, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Johnny Adair, Northern Irish Loyalist

Johnny Adair, leader of “C Company” of the Ulster Loyalist paramilitary organisation Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on October 27, 1963. He is known as Mad Dog. He is expelled from the organisation in 2002 following a violent power struggle. Since 2003, he, his family and a number of supporters have been forced to leave Northern Ireland by other loyalists.

Adair is born into a working class loyalist background and raised in Belfast. He grows up in the Lower Oldpark area, a site of many sectarian clashes during “The Troubles.” By all accounts, he has little parental supervision, and does not attend school regularly. He takes to the streets, forming a skinhead street gang with a group of young loyalist friends, who “got involved initially in petty, then increasingly violent crime.” Eventually, he starts a rock band called Offensive Weapon, which during performances espouses support for the British National Front.

While still in his teens, Adair joins the Ulster Young Militants (UYM), and later the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organisation which also calls itself the Ulster Freedom Fighters.

By the early 1990s, Adair has established himself as head of the UDA/UFF’s “C Company” based on the Shankill Road. When he is charged with terrorist offences in 1995, he admits that he had been a UDA commander for three years up to 1994. During this time, he and his colleagues are involved in multiple and random murders of Catholic civilians. At his trial in 1995, the prosecuting lawyer says he is dedicated to his cause against those whom he “regarded as militant republicans – among whom he had lumped almost the entire Roman Catholic population.” Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives believe his unit killed up to 40 people during this period.

Adair once remarks to a Catholic journalist from the Republic of Ireland upon the discovery of her being Catholic, that normally Catholics travel in the boot of his car. According to a press report in 2003, he is handed details of republican suspects by British Army intelligence, and is even invited for dinner in the early 1990s. In his autobiography, he claims he was frequently passed information by sympathetic British Army members, while his own whereabouts were passed to republican paramilitaries by the RUC Special Branch, who, he claims, hated him.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of a fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993 is an attempt to assassinate Adair and the rest of the UDA’s Belfast leadership in reprisal for attacks on Catholics. The IRA claims that the office above the shop is regularly used by the UDA for meetings and one is due to take place shortly after the bomb is set to explode. The bomb goes off early, killing one IRA man, Thomas Begley, and nine Protestant civilians. The UFF retaliates with a random attack on the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, County Londonderry, which kills eight civilians, two of whom are Protestants. Adair survives 13 assassination attempts, most of which are carried out by the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

During this time, undercover officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary record months of discussions with Adair, in which he boasts of his activities, producing enough evidence to charge him with directing terrorism. He is convicted and sentenced to 16 years in HM Prison Maze. In prison, according to some reports, he sells drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy tablets and amphetamines to other loyalist prisoners, earning him an income of £5000 a week.

In January 1998, Adair is one of five loyalist prisoners visited in the prison by British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam. She persuades them to drop their objection to their political representatives continuing the talks that leads to the Good Friday Agreement in April. In 1999, he is released early as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners after the Agreement.

Following his release, much of Adair’s activities are bound up with violent internecine feuds within the UDA and between the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groupings. The motivation for such violence is sometimes difficult to piece together. It involves a combination of political differences over the loyalist ceasefires, rivalry between loyalists over control of territory and competition over the proceeds of organised crime.

In 1999, shortly after his release from prison, Adair is shot at and grazed in the head by a bullet at a UB40 concert in Belfast. He blames the shooting on republicans, but it is thought that rival loyalists are to blame.

In August 2000, Adair is again mildly injured by a pipe bomb he is transporting in a car. He again attempts to blame the incident on an attack by republicans, but this claim is widely discounted. A feud breaks out at the time between the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leaving several loyalists dead. As a result of Adair’s involvement in the violence, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, revokes his early release and returns him to prison.

In May 2002, Adair is released from prison again. Once free, he is a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA/UFF and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a small breakaway faction of the UVF loyalist paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland. The most open declaration of this is a joint mural depicting Adair’s UDA “C company” and the LVF. Other elements in the UDA/UFF strongly resist these movements, which they see as an attempt by Adair to win external support in a bid to take over the leadership of the UDA. Some UDA members dislike his overt association with the drugs trade, with which the LVF are even more heavily involved. A loyalist feud begins, and ends with several men dead and scores evicted from their homes.

On September 25, 2002, Adair is expelled from the UDA/UFF along with close associate John White, and the organisation almost splits as Adair tries to woo influential leaders such as Andre Shoukri, who are initially sympathetic to him. There are attempts on Adair’s and White’s lives.

Adair returns to prison in January 2003, when his early release licence is revoked by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, on grounds of engaging in unlawful activity. On February 1, 2003, UDA divisional leader John Gregg is shot dead along with another UDA member, Rab Carson, on returning from a Rangers F.C. match in Glasgow. The killing is widely blamed on Adair’s C Company as Gregg is one of those who organised his expulsion from the UDA. Five days later, on February 6, about twenty Adair supporters, including White, flee their homes for Scotland, widely seen as a response to severe intimidation.

Adair is released from prison again on January 10, 2005. He immediately leaves Northern Ireland and joins his family in Bolton, Lancashire, where it is claimed he stays with supporters of Combat 18 and the Racial Volunteer Force.

The police in Bolton question Adair’s wife, Gina, about her involvement in the drugs trade, and his son, nicknamed both “Mad Pup” and “Daft Dog,” is charged with selling crack cocaine and heroin. Adair is arrested and fined for assault and threatening behaviour in September 2005. He had married Gina Crossan, his partner for many years and the mother of his four children, at HM Prison Maze on February 21, 1997. She is three years Adair’s junior and grew up in the same Lower Oldpark neighbourhood. 

After being released, Adair is almost immediately arrested again for violently assaulting Gina, who suffers from ovarian cancer. Since this episode he reportedly moves to Scotland, living in Troon in Ayrshire.

In May 2006, Adair reportedly receives £100,000 from John Blake publishers for a ghost-written autobiography.

In November 2006, the UK’s Five television channel transmits an observational documentary on Adair made by Dare Films.

Adair appears in a documentary made by Donal MacIntyre and screened in 2007. The focus of the film centers around Adair and another supposedly reformed character, a Neo-Nazi from Germany called Nick Greger, and their trip to Uganda to build an orphanage. Adair is seen to fire rifles, stating it is the first time he has done so without wearing gloves. He also admits to being “worried sick” and “pure sick with worry” after Greger disappears in Uganda for days on end. It turns out that he had gone off and married a Ugandan lady. Adair confesses via telephone that he “thought something might have happened to Nick.”

On July 20, 2015, three Irish republicans, Antoin Duffy, Martin Hughes and Paul Sands, are found guilty of planning to murder Adair and Sam McCrory. Charges against one of the accused in the trial are dropped on July 1.

On September 10, 2016, Adair’s son, Jonathan Jr., is found dead in Troon, aged 32. He dies from an accidental overdose while celebrating the day after his release from prison for motoring offences. He had been in and out of prison since the family fled Northern Ireland. He served a five-year sentence for dealing heroin and crack cocaine. The year before, he had been cleared of a gun raid at a party and in 2012 is the target of a failed bomb plot. He was also facing trial later that year on drugs charges.

In December 2023, while recording a podcast with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Adair surprisingly expresses a grudging respect for the IRA hunger strikers, describing the manner of their deaths as “dedication at the highest level” for a political cause and admitting that he would not have volunteered to do the same if asked.


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Birth of George Simms, Archbishop in the Church of Ireland

George Otto Simms, an archbishop in the Church of Ireland, and a scholar, is born in Dublin on July 4, 1910.

AboutSimms is born to John Francis A. Simms and Ottilie Sophie Stange, who are both, according to his birth certificate, from Lifford, County Donegal. He attends the Prior School in Lifford for a time and later Cheltenham College, a public school in England. He goes on to study at Trinity College Dublin, where in 1930 he is elected a Scholar and graduates with a BA in Classics in 1932 and a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1936. He completes a PhD in 1950.

Simms is ordained a deacon in 1934 and a priest in 1936, beginning his ministry as a curate at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Clyde Road, Dublin, under Canon W. C. Simpson. In 1937, he takes a position in Lincoln Theological College but returns to Dublin in 1939 to become Dean of Residence in Trinity College Dublin and Chaplain Secretary of the Church of Ireland College of Education. 

He is appointed Dean of Cork in 1952. Consecrated a bishop, he serves as Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, between 1952 and 1956. At forty-two, he is the youngest Church of Ireland clergyman appointed to a bishopric since John Gregg in 1915. He serves as Archbishop of Dublin from 1956 to 1969. During this time, he maintains a courteous relationship with John Charles McQuaid, his Roman Catholic counterpart as Archbishop of Dublin. From 1969 to 1980, he serves as Archbishop of Armagh. 

Alongside Cardinal William Conway, Simms chairs the first official ecumenical meeting between the leaders of Ireland’s Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church in Ballymascanlon Hotel, Dundalk, County Louth, on September 26, 1973, an important meeting amidst the increasing violence in Northern Ireland. The meeting is protested by Ian Paisley.

Simms is a scholar, and publishes research on topics including the history of the Church of Ireland, and theological reflections on key texts including the Book of Kells, Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, and the Sarum Primer. He is also a fluent speaker of the Irish language.

Simms is also an accomplished journalist, and the author of many newspaper obituaries. His weekly Thinking Aloud column in The Irish Times is a popular reflection, and runs continuously for thirty-eight years. He also works on the research, preparation, and even performs the presentation, of a number of television programmes.

In 1978, Simms is made an honorary fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

Simms is the uncle of mathematician David J. Simms. In 1941, he marries Mercy Felicia Gwynn. They have five children. He dies in Dublin on November 15, 1991. He is interred with his wife in the cemetery attached to St. Maelruain’s Church, Tallaght, County Dublin.


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Birth of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams

Gerard “Gerry” Adams, Irish republican politician who is the president of the Sinn Féin political party and a Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth since the 2011 general election, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on October 6, 1948.

Adams attends St. Finian’s Primary School on the Falls Road, where he is taught by La Salle brothers. Having passed the eleven-plus exam in 1960, he attends St. Mary’s Christian Brothers Grammar School. He leaves St. Mary’s with six O-levels and becomes a barman. He is increasingly involved in the Irish republican movement, joining Sinn Féin and Fianna Éireann in 1964, after being radicalised by the Divis Street riots during that year’s general election campaign.

In the late 1960s, a civil rights campaign develops in Northern Ireland. Adams is an active supporter and joins the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1967. However, the civil rights movement is met with violence from loyalist counterdemonstrations and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. In August 1969, Northern Ireland cities like Belfast and Derry erupt in major rioting.

During the 1981 hunger strike, which sees the emergence of Sinn Féin as a political force, Adams plays an important policy-making role. In 1983, he is elected president of Sinn Féin and becomes the first Sinn Féin MP elected to the British House of Commons since Philip Clarke and Tom Mitchell in the mid-1950s. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he is an abstentionist Member of Parliament (MP) of the British Parliament for the Belfast West constituency.

Adams has been the president of Sinn Féin since 1983. Since that time the party has become the third-largest party in the Republic of Ireland, the second-largest political party in Northern Ireland and the largest Irish nationalist party in that region. In 1984, Adams is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by several gunmen from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), including John Gregg. From the late 1980s onwards, Adams is an important figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, initially following contact by the then-Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and then subsequently with the Irish and British governments.

In 1986, Sinn Féin, under Adams, changes its traditional policy of abstentionism towards the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Republic of Ireland, and later takes seats in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. In 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) states that its armed campaign is over and that it is exclusively committed to democratic politics.

In 2014, Adams is held for four days by the Police Service of Northern Ireland for questioning in connection with the abduction and murder of Jean McConville in 1972. He is freed without charge and a file is sent to the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland, which later states there is insufficient evidence to charge him.

In September 2017, Adams says Sinn Féin will begin a “planned process of generational change” after its November ardfheis and will allow his name to go forward for a one-year term as Uachtaran Shinn Fein (President Sinn Fein).