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True Church, National Church, Minority Church: Episcopacy and Authority in the Restored Church of Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2016

Kathryn Rose Sawyer
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Abstract

The Church of Ireland in the later seventeenth century faced many challenges. After two decades of war and effective suppression, the church in 1660 had to reestablish itself as the national church of the kingdom of Ireland in the face of opposition from both Catholics and Dissenters, who together made up nearly ninety percent of the island's population. While recent scholarship has illuminated Irish protestantism as a social group during this period, the theology of the established church remains unexamined in its historical context. This article considers the theological arguments used by members of the church hierarchy in sermons and tracts written between 1660 and 1689 as they argued that the Church of Ireland was both a true apostolic church and best suited for the security and salvation of the people of Ireland. Attention to these concerns shows that the social and political realities of being a minority church compelled Irish churchmen to focus on basic arguments for an episcopal national establishment. It suggests that this focus on first principles allowed the church a certain amount of ecclesiological flexibility that helped it survive later turbulence such as the non-jurors controversy of 1689–1690 fairly intact.

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Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 219 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2016 

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References

1 William Sheridan (1636–1711), son of a Church of Ireland clergyman from an Irish Gaelic family and an English mother, a Trinity College Dublin graduate, and bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh from 1682. He left Ireland in 1689 and never returned, being deprived for non-juring by 1692, “the most prominent member” of the Church of Ireland to do so. John Bergin, “Sheridan, William,” ed. James McGuire and James Quinn, Dictionary of Irish Biography (New York: Cambridge University, 2009), http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a8049.

2 William Sheridan, S. Pauls Confession of Faith, Or, A Brief Account of His Religion in a Sermon Preach'd at St. Warbroughs Church in Dublin, March 22, 1684/5 (Dublin, 1685).

3 Ibid., 2.

4 Ibid., preface.

5 J. I. McGuire, “1641–90,” in A Church of Ireland Bibliography, ed. Kenneth Milne (Rathmines: Church of Ireland, 2005), 19.

6 F. R. Bolton, The Caroline Tradition of the Church of Ireland, with Particular Reference to Bishop Jeremy Taylor (London: SPCK, 1958); though Henry McAdoo's works on Jeremy Taylor, who served as the bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland from 1660 to 1667, cannot be overlooked. See, for example, Henry R. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism: A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965); H. R. McAdoo, The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1949); Alan Ford, James McGuire, and Kenneth Milne, eds., As By Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin: Lilliput, 1995).

7 Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, History, and Politics in Early-Modern Ireland and England. (New York: Oxford University, 2007); Richard Snoddy, The Soteriology of James Ussher: The Act and Object of Saving Faith (New York: Oxford University, 2014); John McCafferty, The Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian Reforms, 1633–1641 (New York: Cambridge University, 2007); Jack Cunningham, James Ussher and John Bramhall: The Theology and Politics of Two Irish Ecclesiastics of the Seventeenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Philip O'Regan, Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650–1729) and the Constitution in Church and State (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000).

8 See Bolton, Caroline Tradition; and Alan Ford, “The Church of Ireland, 1558–1634: A Puritan Church?,” in As By Law Established, 52–68.

9 James McGuire, “Policy and Patronage: The Appointment of Bishops, 1660–61,” in As By Law Established, 115–116.

10 See especially S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law, and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (New York: Oxford University, 1992); and T. C. Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649–1770 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University, 2003).

11 Richard L. Greaves, God's Other Children: Protestant Nonconformists and the Emergence of Denominational Churches in Ireland, 1660–1700 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University, 1997); Richard L. Greaves, “‘That's No Good Religion That Disturbs Government’: The Church of Ireland and the Nonconformist Challenge, 1660–88,” in As By Law Established, 120–135; Phil Kilroy, Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland, 1660–1714 (Cork: Cork University, 1994).

12 See Bolton, Caroline Tradition, 8–22; Ute Lotz-Heumann, “The Protestant Interpretation of the History of Ireland: The Case of James Ussher's Discourse,” in Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth Century Europe, II: The Later Reformation, ed. Bruce Gordon (Aldershot: Scolar, 1996), 107–120.

13 This argument is made in Ford, “Puritan Church.”

14 A discussion of the Irish Articles can be found in Ford, James Ussher, 85–103.

15 Ford, “Puritan Church,” 66–67.

16 Clare Jackson, “The Later Stuart Church as ‘National Church’ in Scotland and Ireland,” in The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714, ed. Grant Tapsell (Manchester: Manchester University, 2012), 129.

17 Bolton, Caroline Tradition, 22.

18 These are detailed in Crawford Gribben, God's Irishmen: Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland (New York: Oxford University, 2007).

19 This process is explored, though with different emphases, in Kilroy, Protestant Dissent; and Greaves, God's Other Children.

20 Connolly, Religion, Law, and Power, 6.

21 Stephen Hampton explores the continuing strength of a recognizably and self-consciously Reformed theology in the English Restoration church in Stephen Hampton, Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I (New York: Oxford University, 2008); for the Irish story, the best treatment remains in F. R. Bolton, Caroline Tradition.

22 James McGuire, “Policy and Patronage,” 112.

23 Ibid.

24 The ceremonies of that day are described in Dudley Loftus, The Proceedings Observed in Order To, and in the Consecration of the Twelve Bishops, at St. Patricks Church, Dublin, on Sunday the 27 of January 1660 (London, 1661).

25 Gerald Bray, ed., Records of Convocation, vol. XVI: Ireland, 1101–1690 (Woodbridge: Boydell, with the Church of England Record Society, 2006), 70; Greaves, “That's No Good Religion,” 120–121; Jeremy Taylor's declaring thirty-six vacancies in his diocese in 1661 is a notable exception, though it is unclear how effective his actions were: James McGuire, “Taylor, Jeremy,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a8475.

26 Greaves, “That's No Good Religion,” 120.

27 Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, 1625–1760 (New York: Oxford University, 1988), 64, 138.

28 Greaves, “That's No Good Religion,” 128.

29 Ibid.; Jackson, “Later Stuart Church,” 132.

30 See Toby Barnard, “Planters and Policies in Cromwellian Ireland,” in Irish Protestant Ascents and Descents, 1641–1770 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), 1–34. Competing land claims resulting from this seizure and regrant process would trouble Irish politics for years following the Restoration settlement in 1660.

31 This dynamic is explored in Toby Barnard, “The Uses of the 23rd October 1641 and Irish Protestant Celebrations,” in Irish Protestant Ascents and Descents, 1641–1770 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), 111–42; Barnard, T. C., “Crises of Identity among Irish Protestants 1641–1685,” Past & Present 127 (1990): 39–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Noonan, Kathleen M., “‘The Cruell Pressure of an Enraged, Barbarous People’: Irish and English Identity in Seventeenth-Century Policy and Propaganda,” The Historical Journal 41 (1998): 151–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Tony Claydon, “The Church of England and the Churches of Europe, 1660–1714,” in The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714, ed. Grant Tapsell (Manchester: Manchester University, 2012), 173.

33 As a matter of distinction, this essay will use the term “Catholick Church” in quotation marks when necessary to refer to the wider Christian body of which the Irish protestant bishops considered themselves a part, and Catholic Church (no quotations) to refer to the institution presided over by the pope in Rome.

34 William King (1650–1729), born in Ireland to Scots Presbyterian parents and educated at Trinity College Dublin, made bishop of Derry in 1691 and archbishop of Dublin in 1703. At the time of his dispute with Manby he was chancellor of St. Patrick's Cathedral and rector of St. Werburgh's parish, both in Dublin. Philip O'Regan, “King, William,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography,  http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a4573.

35 William King, An Answer to the Considerations Which Obliged Peter Manby, Late Dean of London-Derry in Ireland, as He Pretends, to Embrace What He Calls, the Catholick Religion (London, 1687), 4.

36 Bray, Records of Convocation, XVI: Ireland, 1101–1690, 529.

37 King, Answer to the Considerations, 5.

38 Ibid., 54–55.

39 Ibid., 55.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., 5.

42 Samuel Foley (1655–1695), Irish born of English parents, educated at Trinity College Dublin, and “an ambitious and able churchman,” becoming bishop of Down and Connor a few months before his early death. At the time of this sermon he was vicar of Finglas (Dublin). Linde Lunney, “Foley, Samuel,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a3315.

43 Samuel Foley, Two Sermons the First Preached in Christ-Church, Dublin, Feb. 19, 1681, at the Consecration of the Right Reverend Fathers in God, William Lord Bishop of Kildare, William Lord Bishop of Kilmore, and Richard Lord Bishop of Kilalla: The Other, Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, at the Primary Visitation of the Most Reverend Father in God, Francis Lord Arch-Bishop of Dublin, Apr. 24, 1682 (London, 1683), 5–6.

44 Henry Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration of the Right Reverend Father in God Ambrose Lord Bishop of Kildare in Christ-Church, Dublin, June 29, 1667 (Dublin, 1667), preface; Foley, Two Sermons, 13.

45 Henry Jones (1605–1682), son of a Church of Ireland bishop and nephew of James Ussher, educated at Trinity College Dublin. A Church of Ireland clergyman before the war in 1641, Jones cooperated with the Cromwellian administration acting as, among other things, scoutmaster-general and vice-chancellor of TCD. He was made bishop of Meath at the Restoration. Aidan Clarke, “Jones, Henry,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a4326.

46 Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, preface.

47 Ford, “Puritan Church.”

48 Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, 15.

49 Foley, Two Sermons, 5.

50 Though Andrew Sall (see note below) had a section trying to show the invalidity of certain popes and cardinals to prove that the Bishop of Rome, specifically, was illegitimate: Andrew Sall, True Catholic and Apostolic Faith Maintain'd in the Church of England (Oxford, 1676), 1:68–74.

51 Rather unsurprisingly, given his background, Sall stressed especially the tyranny of the Catholic clergy over the people, especially their keeping the Irish people in a state of near-total ignorance of the truth. See, for example: Andrew Sall, A Sermon Preached at Christ-Church in Dublin before the Lord Lieutenant and Council, the Fifth Day of July, 1674 (Dublin, 1674), preface, 47–48, 80–81, 102, 107, 110, 118. Interestingly, against the sentiments expressed by the other authors considered in this paper, Sall and Henry Jones both held the Pope to be the Antichrist—Sall stopping just short of explicitly saying so in a fiery paragraph in his 1676 tract, while Jones composed an entire sermon on the subject in the same year: Sall, True Catholic and Apostolic Faith Maintain'd, 2:95; and Henry Jones, A Sermon of Antichrist Preached at Christ-Church, Dublin, Novemb. 12, 1676 (Dublin, 1676). This suggests that while by this point in time the Irish Articles of 1615 may have fallen out of general use, the sentiments expressed in Articles 79 and 80, denouncing the pope as “that man of sin,” still had some resonance in the Irish church sixty years after they were first drawn up.

52 King, Answer to the Considerations, 19.

53 Ibid., 19.

54 Ibid., 18.

55 Andrew Fitzjohn Sall (1624–1682), of an Old English family, studied in Spain before joining the Jesuits and becoming professor of theological controversies at the Irish college in Pamplona in 1652. He returned to Ireland in the 1660s and through his friendship with Thomas Price, Archbishop of Cashel, he converted to the Church of Ireland. After five years in Oxford, where he published works of theology, he returned to Ireland to spend his days finishing the translation of the Old Testament into Irish that William Bedell has begun in the 1630s. It was published after his death with the financial support of the scientist Robert Boyle. Terence McCaughey, “Sall, Andrew Fitzjohn,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org.proxy.library.nd.edu/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a7901.

56 Sall, True Catholic and Apostolic Faith Maintain'd, 1:53.

57 Ibid., 1:55.

58 Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, 26.

59 Ibid., 27.

60 Ibid., 27–28.

61 Ibid., 29.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid., 30.

64 Ibid., 9.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid., 29.

67 Sall, True Catholic and Apostolic Faith Maintain'd, 2:92.

68 Ibid., 2:93.

69 King, Answer to the Considerations, 28.

70 Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), English born and educated at Caius College, Cambridge. Closely associated with the Laudian circle in the 1630s, he worked as a chaplain in the 1640s and 1650s, in which capacity he come to Ireland in 1658. Questions about his temperament and theology cost him a place on the restored English bench despite his learning and publications, and he was instead consecrated bishop of Down and Connor in 1661. James McGuire, “Taylor, Jeremy,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a8475.

71 Jeremy Taylor, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration of Two Archbishops and Ten Bishops, in the Cathedral Church of S. Patrick in Dublin, January 27, 1660 (Dublin, 1661), 33.

72 King, Answer to the Considerations, 17–18.

73 Ibid., 18.

74 Ibid., 23.

75 Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, 18–19.

76 Ibid., preface.

77 Ibid.

78 The practical consequences of this understanding can be seen in the contrast between the Irish bishops’ intolerance of Presbyterian gatherings versus their welcome and encouragement of Huguenot settlers in Ireland; see Jackson, “Later Stuart Church,” 139; Bolton, Caroline Tradition, 74–76; and James McGuire, “Government Attitudes to Religious Non-Conformity in Ireland 1660–1718,” in The Huguenots and Ireland: Anatomy of an Emigration, ed. C.E.J. Caldicott, H. Gough, and J-P Pittion (Dublin: Glendale, 1987), 255–284.

79 Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, preface.

80 Interestingly, Marilyn Westerkamp has concluded that the intense and emotionally expressive revivalist form of piety familiar to students of the Great Awakening in the American colonies “was actually part of the Scots-Irish religiosity,” a tradition she traces back to the Sixmilewater Revivals that began in Ulster in 1625: Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity, 14.

81 Sheridan, S. Pauls Confession of Faith, 16.

82 Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, 4.

83 Sheridan, S. Pauls Confession of Faith, 16.

84 Foley, Two Sermons, 7.

85 King, Answer to the Considerations, 29.

86 Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, 39.

87 Taylor, A Sermon Preached, 33.

88 Ibid., 33–34.

89 Ibid.

90 Loftus, The Proceedings Observed, 7.

91 Sheridan, S. Pauls Confession of Faith, 6.

92 Ibid., 6, referring to Acts 24:14–16.

93 King, Answer to the Considerations, 22–23.

94 Sall, True Catholic and Apostolic Faith Maintain'd, 2:105.

95 Sall, A Sermon Preached at Christ-Church, preface.

96 William King, A Vindication of the Answer to the Considerations That Obliged Peter Manby, &c. to Embrace, as He Pretended, What He Calls the Catholick Religion (Dublin, 1688), 11.

97 King, Answer to the Considerations, 33.

98 Sall, True Catholic and Apostolic Faith Maintain'd, 2:103–104.

99 Ibid.

100 King, Vindication of the Answer, 32.

101 Taylor, A Sermon Preached, 37.

102 Presumably such matters would have been covered in works such as Jeremy Taylor, Rules and Advices to the Clergy of the Diocesse of Down and Conner for Their Deportment in Their Personal and Publick Capacities (Dublin, 1661); and John Leslie, Articles to Be Inquired of by the Church Wardens and Questmen of Every Parish in the next Visitation to Be Made by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Clogher (Dublin, 1667).

103 Ford, “Puritan Church.”

104 Ibid., 65; and Alan Ford, “Knox, Andrew,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a4605.

105 Henry Jones made a similar argument, though for decidedly less comprehensive ends, when he charged the non-episcopal Reformed churches with “changing good Greek names, into bad latine names,” changing “Episcopi” and “Archiepiscopi” to read “Superintendents and general Superintendents.” He did not, however, specify to which churches he was referring: Jones, A Sermon Preached at the Consecration, preface.

106 James Ussher, The Reduction of Episcopacie unto the Form of Synodical Government Received in the Ancient Church Proposed in the Year 1641 as an Expedient for the Prevention of Those Troubles Which Afterwards Did Arise about the Matter of Church-Government (London, 1658), 155.

107 Ibid.

108 Abbott, William M., “James Ussher and the ‘Ussherian’ Episcopacy, 1640–1656: The Primate and His Reduction Manuscript,” Albion 22 (1990): 237CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Abbott argues that the manuscript was not circulated in 1641 when it was written due to Ussher's concerns that more radical groups could use it to limit the power of the king, a position which the adamantly royalist Ussher did not wish to promote.

109 Ussher, The Reduction of Episcopacie, 160.

110 Greaves, “That's No Good Religion,” 123.

111 Andrew Carpenter, “William King and the Threats to the Church of Ireland during the Reign of James II,” in Archbishop William King and the Anglican Irish Context, 1688–1729, ed. Christopher J. Fauske (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), 33.

112 Ibid., 34.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid.

115 Ibid., 34–35.

116 McGuire, “Policy and Patronage,” 113–114.

117 Clare Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690: Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas (Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2003), 104; and Jacqueline Rose, “By Law Established: The Church of England and the Royal Supremacy,” in The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714, ed. Grant Tapsell (Manchester: Manchester University, 2012), 31–33.