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Birth of John Thomas Troy, Archbishop of Dublin

John Thomas Troy, an Irish Dominican friar who serves as Archbishop of Dublin from 1786 to 1823, is born at Annefield House, near Porterstown, County Dublin on May 10, 1739.

Troy receives his early education at Liffey Street, Dublin. At the age of sixteen he joins the Dominican Order and proceeds to their house of San Clemente at Rome. Historian Edward D’Alton notes that he is “amenable to discipline, diligent in his studies, and talented.” He makes rapid progress, and while still a student is appointed to give lectures in philosophy. Subsequently, he teaches theology and canon law, and finally becomes prior/rector of the convent in 1772.

When Thomas Burke, the Bishop of Ossory, dies in 1776, the priests of the diocese recommend one of their number, Father Molloy, to Rome for the vacant see, and the recommendation is endorsed by many of the Irish bishops. But Troy, who is held in high esteem at Rome, has already been appointed Bishop of Ossory. He is consecrated at Leuven in June 1777 by the nuncio to Flanders, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Ignazio Busca.

Troy arrives at Kilkenny in August 1777 and for the next nine years he Labour a hard for the spiritual interests of his diocese. Maddened by excessive rents and tithes, and harried by grinding tithe-proctors, farmers have banded themselves together in a secret society called the “Whiteboys,” so called from the white smocks the members wear in their nightly raids. They attack landlords, bailiffs, agents, and tithe-proctors, and often commit fearful outrages. Bishop Troy frequently and sternly denounces them, declaring any who join the secret society to be excommunicated. He has no sympathy with oppression, but he had lived long in Rome, and does not fully appreciate the extent of misery in which the poor Catholic masses live.

Troy is ready to condemn all violent efforts for reform, and has no hesitation in denouncing not only all secret societies in Ireland, but also “our American fellow-subjects, seduced by specious notions of liberty.” This makes him unpopular. He is zealous in correcting abuses in his diocese and in promoting education. So well is this recognized at Rome that in 1781, in consequence of some serious troubles which have arisen between the primate and his clergy, Troy is appointed Administrator of Armagh. He holds this office until 1782.

Upon the death of Archbishop John Carpenter of Dublin in 1786, Troy is appointed to succeed him. At Dublin, as at Ossory, he shows his zeal for religion, his sympathy with authority, and his distrust of popular movements, especially when violent means are employed. Though his circular, issued on March 15, 1792, disavowing the authority of any ecclesiastical power to absolve subjects from their allegiance, is believed to influence the concession in that year of the relaxations embodied in Langrishe’s Act, and the extension of the franchise to Roman Catholics in 1793, he declines to associate himself with John Keogh and other Catholic reformers in their demands for further relief.

In early 1798, the French Directory conquers Rome, and establishes the Roman Republic. Its ally in Ireland, the Society of United Irishmen, starts a rebellion in May 1798. Troy issues a sentence of excommunication against all those of his flock who decide to join the rebellion. In a pastoral read in all the churches, he speaks of the clerical organisers of the rebellion as “vile prevaricators and apostates from religion, loyalty, honour, and decorum, degrading their sacred character, and the most criminal and detestable of rebellious and seditious culprits.” Hus action at this time appears to endanger his life. But the influence he has acquired with the government enables him to moderate the repressive measures taken by the authorities. Believing that Catholic emancipation can never be conceded by the Irish parliament, he is one of the most determined supporters of the Union.

In 1799, Troy agrees to accept the veto of government on the appointment of bishops in Ireland, and even when the other bishops, feeling they have been tricked by Pitt and Castlereagh, repudiate the veto, he continues to favour it. However, in 1809, he recommends Daniel Murray be appointed his coadjutor. Murray is an uncompromising opponent of the veto, and while Troy’s coadjutor, makes trips in 1814 and 1815 to Rome concerning the controversy.

In April 1815, Archbishop Troy lays the foundation of St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Marlborough Street, Dublin, but does not live to see it completed. He dies in Dublin on May 11, 1823, at the age of eighty-four. He dies very poor, leaving scarce sufficient to pay for his burial, and is interred in the unfinished St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral.

In the administration of his diocese and in his private life, Troy is eminently zealous, pious, and charitable. Although his cordial relations with the government expose him to many suspicions and accusations, there is no ground for questioning the integrity of his motives and conduct, which are inspired by his views of the interest of his church. His distrust of revolutionary tendencies in civil affairs is fully aligned with the policy of the Vatican throughout his career. John D’Alton speaks of Troy as “a truly learned and zealous pastor, … a lover and promoter of the most pure Christian morality, vigilant in the discharge of his duty, and devotedly solicitous not only for the spiritual good of those consigned to his charge, but also for the public quiet of the state.”


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Birth of Charles O’Conor, Priest & Historical Author

Charles O’Conor, Irish priest and historical author, is born at Bellanagare, County Roscommon, on March 15, 1764. He is chaplain and librarian to the Marchioness of Buckingham and catalogues many manuscripts, including the famous Stowe Missal, now in the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in Dublin.

O’Conor is the second of six sons of Denis O’Conor and Catharine O’Conor (neé Browne), who also have six daughters. The O’Conors are Catholic, descendants of a princely family in the west of Ireland. His grandfather is the historian Charles O’Conor, his brother the historian Matthew O’Conor.

O’Conor is educated at the Pontifical Irish College, Rome, from 1779 to 1791 and is appointed parish priest of Kilkeevan, County Roscommon, in 1789. In 1796 he prepares for publication a memoir of his grandfather, the historian Charles O’Connor, which highlights the efforts made by him and other Irish Catholics of substance to obtain the constitutional repeal of the penal laws. The first volume is suppressed as dangerous to the family and the manuscript of the second is burned by O’Conor before reaching the printer. He destroys what he believes to be the whole run of the first volume and ten folios of the second, by casting them into a sewer, which communicates with the River Poddle. However, copies of the first volume survive in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Barrister at Law (BL).

In 1798 O’Conor is invited to become chaplain to Mary Nugent, the Marchioness of Buckingham, and to organize and translate a collection of Gaelic manuscripts at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. With him he brings papers of his grandfather to Stowe, including fifty-nine Gaelic manuscripts. There he writes Columbanus ad Hibernos (1810–13), a series of letters supporting the royal veto on Catholic episcopal appointments in Ireland. These are answered by Francis Plowden and see him suspended from duties of parish priest by John Troy, Archbishop of Dublin. In his duties as librarian, he edits the Annals of the Four Masters, and other chronicles from the Stowe Library as Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres (1814–26), an edition regarded as unreliable.

O’Conor experiences mental illness and by 1827 is suffering from the delusion that he is deliberately being starved by order of the Marquess of Buckingham. He leaves Stowe on July 4, 1827. The Nation (March 26, 1853) claims that he is thereafter a patient at Dr. Harty’s asylum in Finglas, Dublin, apparently along with John Lanigan, whom he knew in the Irish College. His family twice unavailingly demands that the paper’s editor issue a correction.

O’Conor dies on July 29, 1828, in his family’s house at Bellanagare. He is buried in Ballintober Cemetery, Castlerea, County Roscommon.


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Death of Daniel Murray, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin

Daniel Murray, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, dies in Dublin on February 26, 1852.

Murray is born on April 18, 1768, at Sheepwalk, near Arklow, County Wicklow, the son of Thomas and Judith Murray, who are farmers. At the age of eight he goes to Thomas Betagh‘s school at Saul’s Court, near Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. At sixteen, Archbishop John Carpenter sends him to the Irish College at Salamanca, completing his studies at the University of Salamanca. He is ordained priest in 1792 at the age of twenty-four.

After some years as curate at St. Paul’s Church, Dublin, Murray is transferred to Arklow and is there in 1798 when the rebellion breaks out. The yeomanry shoots the parish priest in bed and Murray, to escape a similar fate, flees to the city where for two years he serves as curate at St. Andrew’s Chapel on Hawkins Street. As a preacher, he is said to be particularly effective, especially in appeals for charitable causes, such as the schools. He is then assigned to the Chapel of St. Mary in Upper Liffey Street where Archbishop John Troy is the parish priest.

In 1809, at the request of Archbishop Troy, Murray is appointed coadjutor bishop and consecrated on November 30, 1809. In 1811 he is made Administrator of St. Andrew’s. That same year he helps Mary Aikenhead establish the Religious Sisters of Charity. While coadjutor he fills for one year the position of president of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

Murray is an uncompromising opponent of a proposal granting the British government a “veto” over Catholic ecclesiastical appointments in Ireland, and in 1814 and 1815, makes two separate trips to Rome concerning the controversy.

Murray becomes Archbishop of Dublin in 1825 and on November 14, 1825, celebrates the completion of St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral. He enjoys the confidence of successive popes and is held in high respect by the British government. His life is mainly devoted to ecclesiastical affairs, the establishment and organisation of religious associations for the education and relief of the poor. With the outbreak of cholera in the 1830s, in 1834 he and Mother Aikenhead found St. Vincent’s Hospital. He persuades Edmund Rice to send members of the Christian Brothers to Dublin to start a school for boys. The first is opened in a lumber yard on the city-quay. He assists Catherine McAuley in founding the Sisters of Mercy, and in 1831 professes the first three members.

Edward Bouverie Pusey has an interview with Murray in 1841, and bears testimony to his moderation, and John Henry Newman has some correspondence with him prior to Newman’s conversion from the Anglican Church to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. A seat in the privy council at Dublin, officially offered to him in 1846, is not accepted. He takes part in the synod of the Roman Catholic clergy at Thurles in 1850.

Towards the end of his life, Murray’s eyesight is impaired, and he reads and writes with difficulty. Among his last priestly functions is a funeral service for Richard Lalor Sheil who had died in Italy, and whose body had been brought back to Ireland for burial. Murray dies in Dublin on February 26, 1852, at the age of eighty-four. He is interred in the St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, where a marble statue of him has been erected in connection with a monument to his memory, executed by James Farrell, president of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Fine Arts.

(Pictured: Portrait of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, by unknown 19th century Irish portrait painter)


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Birth of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin

Daniel Murray, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, is born on April 18, 1768, at Sheepwalk, near Arklow, County Wicklow.

Murray is the son of Thomas and Judith Murray, who are farmers. At the age of eight he goes to Thomas Betagh‘s school at Saul’s Court, near Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. At sixteen, Archbishop John Carpenter sends him to the Irish College at Salamanca, completing his studies at the University of Salamanca. He is ordained priest in 1792 at the age of twenty-four.

After some years as curate at St. Paul’s Church in Dublin, Murray is transferred to Arklow and is there in 1798 when the rebellion breaks out. The yeomanry shoots the parish priest in bed and Murray, to escape a similar fate, flees to the city where for two years he serves as curate at St. Andrew’s Chapel on Hawkins Street. As a preacher, he is said to be particularly effective, especially in appeals for charitable causes, such as the schools. He is then assigned to the Chapel of St. Mary in Upper Liffey Street where Archbishop John Troy is the parish priest.

In 1809, at the request of Archbishop Troy, Murray is appointed coadjutor bishop and consecrated on November 30, 1809. In 1811 he is made Administrator of St. Andrew’s. That same year he helps Mary Aikenhead establish the Religious Sisters of Charity. While coadjutor he fills for one year the position of president of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

Murray is an uncompromising opponent of a proposal granting the British government a “veto” over Catholic ecclesiastical appointments in Ireland, and in 1814 and 1815, makes two separate trips to Rome concerning the controversy.

Murray becomes Archbishop of Dublin in 1825 and on November 14, 1825, celebrates the completion of St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral. He enjoys the confidence of successive popes and is held in high respect by the British government. His life is mainly devoted to ecclesiastical affairs, the establishment and organisation of religious associations for the education and relief of the poor. With the outbreak of cholera in the 1830s, in 1834 he and Mother Aikenhead found St. Vincent’s Hospital. He persuades Edmund Rice to send members of the Christian Brothers to Dublin to start a school for boys. The first is opened in a lumber yard on the city-quay. He assists Catherine McAuley in founding the Sisters of Mercy, and in 1831 professes the first three members.

Edward Bouverie Pusey has an interview with Murray in 1841, and bears testimony to his moderation, and John Henry Newman has some correspondence with him prior to Newman’s conversion from the Anglican Church to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. A seat in the privy council at Dublin, officially offered to him in 1846, is not accepted. He takes part in the synod of the Roman Catholic clergy at Thurles in 1850.

Towards the end of his life, Murray’s eyesight is impaired, and he reads and writes with difficulty. Among his last priestly functions is a funeral service for Richard Lalor Sheil who had died in Italy, and whose body had been brought back to Ireland for burial. Murray dies in Dublin on February 26, 1852, at the age of eighty-four. He is interred in the St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, where a marble statue of him has been erected in connection with a monument to his memory, executed by James Farrell, president of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Fine Arts.

(Pictured: Portrait of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, by unknown 19th century Irish portrait painter)