The Roman Catholic Communities of Cloyne Diocese, Co. Cork, 1700 -1830. Martin Millerick B.A. Senior Supervisor: Prof. Mark Boyle Second Supervisor: Prof. Gerry Kearns Thesis Submitted for the Degree of M.Litt Department of Geography Faculty of Social Sciences Maynooth University April 2015 Abstract The aim of this thesis is to present an understanding of the complexity of some of the responses and reactions of different eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Roman Catholic parish congregations and their clergy from Cloyne Diocese, Co. Cork to their changing and often challenging circumstances. A rich repository of source materials such as the visitation books of Roman Catholic Bishops, clerical correspondence and other sources has been relied upon. A scalar analytical framework ranging from the personal, to the intergroup, to the international is utilised. Key factors in the re-emergence of this Church and its communities such as historical and cultural awareness, the interdependent efforts of different social groups and the fact that Cloyne was never a bounded entity in the sense that it was separated from the wider Catholic world and/or other external influences are identified. While some of Cloyne’s Catholics may have tended to view themselves as a “separate and injured community” (Dickson, 2005, p. 264) on account of the varied impacts of colonialism, that this may also have occurred as a consequence of social class changes cannot be ignored. That the successful social re-emergence of some Catholics and their associated communities may have come about at the marginalisation of others is factored into this analysis. Consequently, this study presents an exploration of the interplay between a spectrum of different personal, religious, cultural, geographical, socio-economic and other worlds, each of varying depths and complexities, with some overlapping, blending and intersecting, and others avoiding and/or in conflict with each other and/or with other worlds. Acknowledgements I am indebted to all who have assisted in the writing of this thesis, many of whom whose names do not appear on this list. Those who come to mind include Martin Kennedy and the Galway “Training for Transformation” group for gently opening my eyes to social realities. Special thanks to Prof. Mark Boyle, Prof. Gerry Kearns and to Prof. Kerby Miller for their consistent and unfailing kindness, generosity, guidance and criticism where needed! Thanks to Mike Murphy and to Dr. Ronan Foley for their cartographic assistance. Thanks also to Dr. Liam Chambers, Dr. Maura Cronin, Prof. James Kelly, Prof. Louis Cullen, Dr. Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, Dr. Chris Van Egerat, Dr. Thomas O’Connor, Dr. David Fleming, Prof. W.J. Smyth, Dr. Alastair McIntosh, Dr. Cornelius Buttimer, Dr. Diarmuid Scully and Dr. Mark MacCarthy for their help. Thanks to Bishop William Crean, Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue, Fr. Philip McShane, Fr. Danny Murphy, Abbot Christopher Dillon, Canon Ger Casey, Fr. David O’Riordan, Mgsr. James O’Brien, Fr. John J. Ó Ríordáin, Canon Bertie Troy (deceased) and to the staff of the Cloyne Diocesan Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork for their help also. Special thanks must go to my family (Philip, Kathleen, Mary, Sean and Edel Millerick and to Fr. Pat Beecher, Srs. Mary and Bena Beecher) and friends (Alan Elliott, Joe Seery, John Noonan and Dr. Mel Farrell) for their support and practical help in so many ways. Finally, to the postgraduates of the Geography Depts. of U.C.C. (especially Paul Grant, Brendan Curtin and Joaõ Sarmento) and of Maynooth University (especially Weihsuan Lin, Sandra Walsh, Stephen Lucas and Dr. Mavuto Tembo) thank you for lightening the load and for keeping me grounded, focused and light-hearted! This work would not have been completed without your help! i Abbreviations Archiv. Hib. Archivium Hibernicum: or Irish Historical Records C.D.A. Cloyne Diocesan Archives, Cobh, Co. Cork. J.C.H.A.S. Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society Ms(s.) Manuscript(s) s.d. sine datum: date of publishing not given N.L.I. National Library of Ireland N.U.I.M. National University of Ireland Maynooth s.l. sine loco: place of publishing not given s.n. sine nomine: name of publisher not given T.C.D. Trinity College Dublin U.C.C. University College Cork U.C.D. University College Dublin ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Abbreviations ii Table of Contents iii List of Maps iv List of Plates iv List of Tables iv Chapter One: Introduction. p. 1 1.1 The Place p. 12 1.2 The Time-Period p. 24 Chapter Two: Methodology and Sources. 2.1 Methodology p. 38 2.2 Sources p. 41 Chapter Three: Heritage, Interdependence & External Influences 3.1 Reclaiming/Recreating Places and Spaces, their Histories and Spiritualities . p. 52 3.2 Interdependence: Cloyne’s Catholic and crypto-Catholic Communities. p. 61 3.3 Emigrants and External Influences: Cloyne’s Catholics and the Wider World. p. 83 Chapter Four: Conclusion p. 100 Appendices p. 109 Bibliography p. 113 iii List of Maps Map 1.1 Modern Roman Catholic Parish Map of Cloyne Diocese p. 13 Map 3.1 Civil Parish Dedications of Cloyne, 1785 p. 57 Map 3.2 Distribution of Roman Catholic Priests, 1785-1790 p. 73 Map 3.3 Distribution of Male Teachers, 1785-1790 p. 77 Map 3.4 Distribution of Female Teachers, 1785-1790 p. 79 Map 3.5 Distribution of Roman Catholic Midwives, 1785-1790 p. 83 Map 3.6 Registered Roman Catholic Priests, 1704 p. 84 List of Plates Fig. 1.1 “The Rightboys Paying Their Tythes” 1785/6 p. 31 Fig. 2.1 Bishop Matthew MacKenna’s Visitation Book, 1785 p. 45 Fig. 2.2 Bishop William Coppinger (1787-1831) p. 46 Fig. 2.3 Bishop Michael Collins (1827-1832) p. 47 Fig. 3.1 Rev. Peter O’Neill, Parish Priest of Ballymacoda, 1786-1846 p. 98 List of Tables Table 3.1 1785 Parish “Unions” of Cloyne p. 53 Table 3.2 Civil Parish Dedications of Cloyne, 1785 p. 55 Table 3.3 Nagle Parish Priests of Cloyne, 1720-1850 p. 67 Table 3.4 Projects Funded by the Goold Trust, 1829-50 p. 91 iv Chapter One: Introduction How have different historical communities which may have experienced dispossession, marginalisation and/or prejudice overcome their limitations? How did they succeed in challenging and changing the socio-economic forces around them? Where did they go wrong? The following thesis attributes the re-emergence of a number of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Roman Catholic communities from Cloyne diocese, Co. Cork to factors such as spiritual, historic and cultural depth, to the interdependent efforts of different social groups plus the fact that their diocese was never a bounded entity. That the successful re-emergence of some communities may have come about at the cost of others, of course, cannot be discounted. In conducting any investigation into Cloyne’s eighteenth/early nineteenth century Catholics, therefore, to paraphrase Dickson (2004, p. 39), there are “no easy answers and fresh ways of looking at the issue are needed”. Following Maureen Wall’s refusal to accept uncritically that all of the actions of Ireland’s eighteenth-century Catholics were always naturally good, wholesome or above reproach, the possibility of new vistas became possible. Irish Catholics, it emerged, were not passive, “anonymous tragic heroes” (O’Brien, 1989, p. ii) but rather intelligent, socially-minded and “credible human beings” (O’Brien, 1989, p. ii) who struggled just as much within and amongst themselves as much as they did against the legal restrictions imposed upon them. Further revisions of Irish Catholics suffering en masse have been made by Cullen (1986) who demonstrated the resilience of a number of Catholic families, each embedded in their own unique social, cultural, economic and religious milieus. In the west of Ireland, in parts of Munster, south Leinster and around the Dublin Pale, for instance, the “flourishing” of a Catholic and convert-Catholic interest was identified (Cullen, 1986, p. 29). Such families, it emerged, evaded the restrictions of the penal laws through reliance upon trustees, through the friendly legal action with Protestants known as “collusive discovery” and through strategic conversions to the Church of Ireland. Consequently, the number of acres in Catholic hands under leasehold 1 agreements is demonstrated to have increased over the course of the eighteenth century (MacBride, 2009, p. 216). Further optimistic portraits of resilient Irish Catholics “not merely adapting to their situation, but displaying creativity and confidence in the face of varying degrees of opposition” are presented by Keogh (1993, p. 1). Connolly too, found the impact of the penal laws to have been “easily overestimated”, although the existence of “multiple petty tyrannies” on the part of Protestant magistrates and landlords was accepted (Chambers, 2009, p. 167). The denial of political rights for Irish Catholics may also have been, as Connolly (1996, p. 26-7) suggests, a purely hypothetical disability. Given that conditions in Ireland largely reflected a wider European polity which was hierarchical and biased in favour of propertied elites, there is little evidence, he suggests, that plebian Catholics saw the penal laws as a serious grievance until they were taught to do so two generations or so later by middle class-led agitation. A Jacobite victory at the Boyne or at Aughrim, Connolly suggests, would have made little or no difference to the socio-political position of Catholic traders and/or tenant farmers and none at all to the “common people” so beloved of Irish nationalist historiography (MacBride, 2009, p. 216). While most historians since the 1960s have rejected the “penal” paradigm with its subtext of a heroic but largely silenced Irish Catholic nation “smarting under unrelenting persecution” (Dickson, 2004, p. 38), to dismiss the suffering, silences and/or enmities on both sides of the religious divide, however, would be to impoverish our understanding. Nicholl’s (1985) observation that eighteenth-century anti-Catholic sentiment in Co. Cork was high but characterised “more by occasional outbreaks of petty harassment than by steady repression, let alone persecution”, for instance, fails to appreciate either the suffering involved or its long-term effects. Irish Catholics were certainly not the only eighteenth or early nineteenth century Europeans to suffer for their religious beliefs. They were, however, a religious majority in their own country, one located within a larger and officially Protestant kingdom. Hence, the norms of other European Catholic Ancien Régimes such as royal protection and/or the assistance of a local Catholic gentry could not be taken for granted. Officially at least, such intolerance was generally perceived to be positive as religions in competition 2 with the State Church were thought to create social fragmentation and instability. Catholic Hapsburg Empress Maria-Theresé of Austria expressed a prevailing outlook: “What could exist without a dominant religion? Toleration and indifference are exactly the surest ways of destroying the established order. What else is there to harness bad instincts?….Nothing is so necessary and beneficial as religion. If there were no state religion and submission to the Church, where would we be?” (Doyle, 1992, p. 156) In Cloyne, as in the rest of Ireland, the State Church was the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland, to which a small but powerful minority, mostly of external origin belonged. Well endowed with cathedrals, churches, lands and legally entitled to the payment of tithes, this Church remained the State Church until its disestablishment in 1869. By contrast, the Catholic and other Protestant Churches were subject to penal legislation, enacted by the Irish parliament following the defeat of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. For MacBride (2009, p. 217) these laws were motivated, at least in part, by a need among some Irish Protestants for resolve in the face of what was perceived as Catholic insolence. A conquered people needed to know that they had been defeated. For Connolly (1992, p. 313), however, these laws formed a part, but not the most important part of a much longer process whereby power and resources had gradually been transferring from Catholic to Protestant hands. Writing around 1700, Aogán Ó Rathaille, a tenant farmer from south Kerry, saw things more or less in the same light. For Ó Rathaille, the penal laws represented another dimension of a more extensive project, namely, the overthrow of an Irish Catholic Ancien Régime: “Gur díbreadh an rí ceart go claonmhar, easpaig, sagairt, abaidh, cléirigh, bráithre diaga is cliar na déirce, agus uaisle na tuaithe le chéile.” “So that the holy king was treacherously expelled, bishops, priests, abbots, clerics, holy friars and mendicant clergy, together with the nobles of the country” (Morley, 2011, p. 193) This transfer of power and resources from Catholics to Protestants had been significant. In 1600, more than 80% of Irish land was in the hands of 3 Catholics. By 1641 it had declined to 59%. In 1688 it was down to 22%. By 1704 only 14% of Irish land officially remained in the hands of Catholics (Smyth, 2006, p. 377). In 1688, roughly one-third of the agricultural land of Co. Cork was held by Catholics. By 1703, officially at least, only twenty Catholic landowners remained in the whole of Munster (Dickson, 2005, p. 62). On paper, harsh legislation accompanied these changes. The 1695 Disarming Act prohibited Catholics from bearing arms and, in the interests of State security, obliged them to sell any horse, however valuable, for £5. An accompanying Act prohibited Catholics from sending their children to be educated abroad while at the same time prohibited them from teaching and/or opening schools at home. The 1697 Banishment Act required Catholic bishops and regular clergy to leave Ireland. A 1703 Act prohibited them from returning. The following year, a further act required all remaining Catholic priests to register and provide sureties for their behaviour. Catholics were also barred from practising law, unless already qualified to do so, from attending university and from membership of borough and trading corporations. Far from being a systematic code, however, recent research has outlined the Irish penal laws to have been more of “a rag bag series of initiatives” rather than a well-thought out strategy (Bergin et. al., 2011, p. 11). Connolly (1992) and Bartlett (1992) believe the laws to have been more “a product of accident, rather than design”, hence they were “often contradictory and full of loopholes” (O’Halloran, 1992, p. 155) The laws were also subject to wider considerations such as changes in the mood of the Irish parliament and within European diplomacy (Chambers, 2009, p. 167). Furthermore, the application of the laws on the ground was dependent upon sufficient numbers of Protestants to enforce them and/or local initiative to do so. In 1713, for instance, proceedings were issued against the Protestant mayor of Youghal for taking bribes to allow priests to celebrate mass in the town (O’Brien, 1989, p. 21). In Co. Cork, a number of cases of the retention of lands in Catholic hands through its assignment to friendly Protestants have been documented by Dickson (2005, p. 526). The laws may also have been counterproductive in that they pushed enterprising Catholics out of agriculture and into more lucrative activities such as trade (O’Brien, 1989, p. 65). 4