These are the words with which Patrick Little (editor) opens the volume of essays that is The Church of Ireland Under the Stuarts (2025). The essays, covering a wide range of subjects - from the role Trinity College Dublin to cathedral music, from the devotional life of the episcopalian second Earl of Cork during the Interregnum to the role of the bishops in the Irish House of Lords - might be considered as something of a revisionist response to the words of Queen Mary. The Church of Ireland which emerges from these essays has greater spiritual, intellectual, and cultural vibrancy than recognised in Old Hat accounts and enduring populist mythology.
The intellectual and cultural vibrancy owed much to Trinity College Dublin, driving the "distinctiveness" of the Church of Ireland. As Alan Ford shows, this created "a significant contrast" between the views of bishops and clergy educated in England and those who were products of Trinity College Dublin:
those educated at Trinity had imbibed Ussher's very different insistence that the Church of Ireland was a separate church, independent of the Church of England (p.40).
A strong case can be made that the Church of Ireland's robust understanding of itself, over centuries, as a "free, national Church" - an understanding set forth as foundational in the Declaration of 1870 - is derived from formative influence of Ussher and early-17th century Trinity.
Trinity drove a sense within the Church of Ireland of a different cultural identity, "captured in the poignant inscription" made by an otherwise-unknown early 17th century Trinity student: "Edward Dawson Hybernicus olim Anglicus" ('an Irishman, formerly an Englishman' - p.41). Such cultural complexities, by the way, make the occasional references in the essays to 'colonial identity' tiresome and shallow. Rather than merely repeating ideological assumptions about 'colonialism', a rather more sophisticated analysis of the relationships between and within the various cultural identities in 16th and 17th century Ireland is required.
The complexities of cultural identities is also evident in the fascinating essay by Mark Empey on how the early-17th century Church of Ireland approached ecclesiastical and secular manuscripts and records:
There is also evidence that indicates the Church of Ireland laity were keen to engage with Irish history, particularly second-generation New Englishmen who were born and raised in Ireland. Despite their familial and political loyalties, their Irish upbringing induced them to learn more about the country of their birth. Indeed, it is tempting to suggest that there was a gradual shift in the New English mentalite in the early Stuart period where they were comfortable with their Protestant and Irish identity (p.57).
Alongside this, the keeping of both ecclesiastical and secular registers and records by clerics gave expression to the "continuity between the medieval church and the Church of Ireland" (p.53). It also was respected by local communities, as it ensured the survival of such records (p.54). Without in any way denying the stark realities of competing religious and cultural identities in early-17th century Ireland, we can see something of a shared humanist culture both in terms of the keeping of manuscripts and records and in Ussher's personal library. Ussher "truly appreciated the value of his Irish manuscripts and richness of the language", in addition to having "an enormous network of scholars (both Catholic and Protestant) ... across Ireland and Europe" (p.53).
The hopeful signs of a shared humanist culture, however, were overshadowed - and certainly not only in Ireland - by the bitter realities of confessional and cultural conflicts. Joan Redmond's essay on the martyred ministers of the 1641 rebellion, while it has a fashionable theme of gender and masculinity, is a reminder of what is often forgotten within the Church of Ireland and Irish history more generally: "Protestant ministers were prominent among the victims of the rebellion" (p.59). At the beginning of her essay, Redmond states:
To die a Protestant martyr in Ireland was a political statement, one of loyalty to king and church ... (ibid.).
What makes this statement odd is that is equally true of how the experience of sequestered Episcopal clergy elsewhere in the Three Kingdoms was understood by those loyal to Church and King, as, for example, demonstrated in Fiona McCall's excellent Baal's Priests: The Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (2013). Despite the failure to recognise this wider context, it is clear from Redmond's account that, alongside cultural animosity, confessional hostility was also key to the death of ministers during the 1641 rebellion. They were, in other words, martyrs for the Church of Ireland.
The experience of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Interregnum is explored in two essays by Patrick Little, the first addressing Lord Inchiquin and the Munster clergy 1643-9, the second on the character of the piety of the second Earl of Cork under the Cromwellian regime. Despite the Parliamentarian dismantling of the Episcopalian order, under Inchiquin "the Church of Ireland continued to operate during this period" in Cork, as evidenced by parish registers for these years. Church of Ireland clergy ministered to both townspeople and the Parliamentarian garrison (p.82). At the garrison in Youghal, it seems as if "the Church of Ireland calendar, and possibly its basic form of worship" were continued. Crucially underpinning this was the continued presence and ministry of Episcopal clergy:
Perhaps the key to the survival of the Church of Ireland in Munster in the mid-1640s was it willingness to serve the Protestant community - whether civilian or military - without fuss (p.84).
The significance of the continued presence and ministry of clergy in parishes, even as the regime and the ecclesiastical order changed, was complemented by the role of elite laity, such as the second Earl of Cork, during the Cromwellian regime:
by retaining old Church of Ireland ministers as chaplains or presenting them to livings in his gift, the earl was playing his part in ensuring the survival of the church by allowing it to function underground, even when the church as an institution had been destroyed. There were others doing the same, as suggested by the efforts of the Conway family to recruit the former royal chaplain, Jeremy Taylor, as their Irish chaplain; [and] the willingness of their neighbour, Arthur Hill, to shelter the controversial divine, Henry Leslie of Down and Connor (p.105).
Evidence of the commitment of laity to Episcopal order is further seen in the second Earl of Cork maintained Episcopal chaplains who ministered the Holy Communion according the prohibited Book of Common Prayer (p.102). Here, Little rightly states, is a lively sacramental piety "that is usually associated with the Laudian or post-Restoration church, rather than its Calvinist, Ussherian predecessor" (p.106). Contrary to the suggestion in Jessica Cunningham's otherwise fine essay on Communion plate, it was not the case that the move from the Ussherian to the Restoration Church equated to a change in eucharistic practice and theology, a move away 'Calvinism' (p.172). Church of Ireland eucharistic practice and theology remained remarkably stable throughout the Stuart era. We see this in two examples provided by Cunningham. Firstly, the donation of a Communion cup during Cromwellian rule: "From Mrs Ursula Carpenter to St Davids Church at the Naas the 18th of Janeivari 1656". As Cunningham states:
[this] provides physical evidence of sustained relationship between the church and its laity during this fractious period (p.169).
What is more, it points to a lively sacramental piety fostered under Ussherian norms. Secondly, the Communion cup seen in Figure 9.4 (p.173) - a gift to Ennis Church in 1685 - evidences how in the post-Restoration Church of Ireland "the capacious Communion cup" of "the continental Calvinist churches" was still found in the Church of Ireland (p.172). As a series of recent studies of the post-1660 Church of England have shown the continued presence of a 'Reformed Conformist' - in other words, Ussherian - tradition, it is surely now necessary to dispense with the simplistic notion that 'Calvinism' ceased to be significant in the post-1660 Church of Ireland. (A study akin to Hampton's Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I is required for the Church of Ireland.)This is particularly so in terms of eucharistic theology. In relation to this, we might note F.R. Bolton's comment that, in 1714, some Dublin clergy "marked the accession of George I by preaching against" 'consubstantiation', a stance which Lutherans would have recognised as 'Calvinistic'.
The volume's two essays on the bishops of the Church of Ireland are both fascinating, particularly as they take seriously aspects of the episcopate often dismissed by those who dislike 18th century Anglicanism. Liam O'Rourke explores the culture of hospitality maintained by the bishops in 1660-1714, rooted in an apostolic duty (p.108) and inherited as "a legacy from medieval Ireland" (p.124). Not only did this duty have significant positive consequences for local economies (p.113), it was also hailed by Swift as "one of the most important functions of the episcopate" (p.110). Here was an apostolic duty vital to "the building of connections with local society" (p.124).
Coleman A. Dennehy's study of the bishops in the Irish of Lords 1613-89 provides a similarly welcome revisionism, emphasising not only that the presence of bishops in the Lords was rooted in medieval Irish precedent (p.148), but also that in the 17th century bishops proved to have a "crucial" parliamentary presence (p.145). Central to this were the very purposes of the Parliament as a representative and legislative body:
Parliament was not just a forum for political battles: it was also the site for the banal matters of state and of representation and access of the general population to parliamentary justice and grace. The 1,664 petitions put before either house between 1613 and 1663 far outnumber the number of bills, acts, impeachments, or heated political moments. Bishops and archbishops were useful in this environment because they brought skills, learning, administrative and clerical experience, as well as government know-how (p.153).
Rather than being dismissed a 'worldly privilege', a strong case can be made that the parliamentary presence of the bishops in the Stuart Kingdom of Ireland served the commonweal.
The final essay in the collection, by Kerry Houston, considers Irish cathedral music under the Stuarts. She points to "a very uneven pattern" (p.204), with the Dublin cathedrals having a flourishing choral tradition, "very attractive to English church musicians" (ibid.) and some outside Dublin having "good musical establishments" (p.194). The more normal experience of the cathedrals outside Dublin, however, did not suggest "encouraging signs for high standards of musical performance" (p.196). While it is not mentioned by Houston, her essay does suggest something of the Church of Ireland tradition of small, provincial cathedrals, not marked by the English choral tradition but having the attractive ethos of civic churches. Many rural Church of Ireland cathedrals continue to embody this noble and worthy tradition.
I have left one essay to the end - Toby Barnard's 'Accommodations with changed orders: the Church of Ireland, 1685-92'. To be somewhat provocative, we might read the essay as a reminder of why the Williamite victory in Ireland was crucial for the Church of Ireland. From early in the reign of James II, the threat to the Church of Ireland was obvious. Barnard provides the example of a Limerick parson attacked in 1685 when reading the burial office and dying from his injuries. Likewise, in 1687, a clergyman near Naas was hindered that the deceased should be buried in the churchyard as he "was an Englishman, and it was not fit that he should be buried among Irishmen" (p.127).
When the Dublin cathedrals were handed over by James II to the Roman Catholic church, open-air gatherings of the Church of Ireland congregations for public worship were prohibited (p.137). The governor of Dublin "forbade more than give Protestants to meet simultaneously" and local Jacobite authorities refused James' directions to hand back Waterford Cathedral to the Church of Ireland (p.140). Unfashionable as it is for the 21st century Church of Ireland, its presence on this Island required the Glorious Revolution and Williamite victory. To be clear, however, it certainly did not at all require the penal laws, in contravention of the 1691 Treaty of Limerick. A rather different and better path could have been taken in the 18th century, in which Georgian Ireland still had its Anglican establishment, but in which the rights and liberties of Irish Catholics were upheld as envisaged by the Treaty of Limerick.
Delivered by the Williamite victory, and secured from any ecclesiastical outcome similar to Scotland by the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the bishops and clergy of the Church of Ireland to the Glorious Revolution, the context was established for the Church of Ireland of the 18th century. As Little notes in his introduction to the volume, "the Church of Ireland did not just survive during the Stuart age, but flourished". The Stuart Church of Ireland, therefore, provided the foundation for the Hanoverian Church of Ireland:
in the early 18th century the church had a strong sense of belonging, and enjoyed the firm foundations, both financial and doctrinal, from which to address the challenges and opportunities of Georgian Ireland (p.22).
It is to be hoped that this volume encourages the Church of Ireland to have considerably less embarrassment about its history, an embarrassment derived from a fashionable (theological and secular) refusal to accept that all Christian traditions are inherently and inevitably bound up with politics and culture, with mixed consequences for every tradition. For those with a particular interest in the history of 18th century Anglicanism, the volume also has significance, not only in demonstrating how the characteristics of the Hanoverian Church had roots in the Stuart era, but, no less importantly, exemplifying how the history of past Anglicanism can be written without showing the 'enormous condescension of posterity'.
For those of us who cherish the Church of Ireland and are grateful to be shaped by its traditions and ethos, reading this volume presents us with a landscape which, despite the passage of the centuries, can seem familiar: the pastoral importance of parish clergy, the role of a wider Protestant identity, our sense of being separate from the Church of England, the significance of the commitment and piety of the laity, bishops embedded in communities and conscious of their social obligations, the contexts of changing political settlements, Communion plate inscribed with the names of the benefactors, our rural cathedrals (quite different to English cathedrals), the scholarly figures of Ussher and Taylor (with the European theological streams they represent). It is, I hope, not entirely contrary to the intentions of the contributors to this fine volume to say that they point to how these continued characteristics of Irish Anglicanism have their roots in the Stuart Church of Ireland.
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