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Irish bishops and clergy in exile in mid-seventeenth-century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

René d’Ambrières  and
Éamon Ó Ciosáin
René d’Ambrières
Affiliation:
Versailles
Éamon Ó Ciosáin
Affiliation:
Department of French, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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Extract

After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, hundreds of Catholic priests and religious were forced into exile on the Continent, with many seeking refuge in France, Spain and the Spanish Low Countries. For some, refuge was temporary while awaiting political developments and toleration in the home country; for others, it was permanent. The sheer numbers involved – in the hundreds (see below) – mark this as a new phenomenon in the migration of Irish Catholics to France. Although large numbers of Irish soldiers arrived there in the late 1630s and again from 1651 onwards, as Ireland was cleared of regiments connected with the Confederation of Kilkenny, the volume of priests and seminarians migrating to France had hitherto been on a much smaller scale than that of the military.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 141 , May 2008 , pp. 16 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2008

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References

1 René d’Ambrières has previously discussed the exile of the Irish Catholic hierarchy and of Lynch, John in ‘Les tribulations des ecclésiastiques irlandais exilés en Bretagne’ in Le Pays de Dinan, xxi (2001), pp 165-89Google Scholar. See also an article by the present authors, ‘John Lynch of Galway (c. 1599–1677): his career, exile and writing’ in Galway Arch. & Hist. Soc. Jn., lv (2003), pp 50–63, for further contextual material.

2 hAnnracháin, Tadhg Ó, Catholic Reformation in Ireland: the mission of Rinuccini, 1645–1649 (Oxford, 2002), pp 235-7, sketches the divisions among bishops and diocesan clergy in 1648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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6 Giblin, ‘Processus datariae’.

7 Archives of the diocese of Evreux, France, Correspondance de M. Boudon (three letters dated 1677).

8 Elogium Joannis Mollony, cited in Père Jacques Le Long, Bibliothèque historique de la France (2nd ed., 5 vols, Paris, 1768), iv, 90Google Scholar. This is clearly the printed ‘encomium’ of O’Mollony mentioned in Lynch, John, De praesulibus Hiberniae potissimis Catholicae religionis in Hibernia serendae, et propagandae, et conservandae authoribus, ed. O’Doherty, J. F. (2 vols, Dublin, 1944), ii, 184, 206Google Scholar. Searches in major libraries in France, Britain and Ireland have so far failed to locate an extant copy. The subject of the text is Bishop John O’Molony I, as he is styled, who died in 1651, and who supported Andrew Lynch generously during his studies in Paris: see Boyle, Patrick, ‘John O’Molony Bishop of Killaloe and of Limerick’ in I.E.R., xxxii (1912), pp 574-89Google Scholar; Hogan, James, ‘Two bishops of Killaloe and Irish freedom: John O’Molony I in Studies, ix (1920), pp 70–93.Google Scholar

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12 Hardiman, James, History of the town and county of the town of Galway (Dublin 1820), p. 134Google Scholar, indicates that some fifty clerics were detained on the islands and granted a derisory allowance of 2d. a day, which left them on the brink of starvation.

13 Details are known of at least three of these ships. In the case of the first, Bishops Magennis and Lynch sailed together for France, and during the voyage Magennis died on Palm Sunday (Lynch, De praesulibus, i, 231–2; ii, 208; Comment. Rinucc, v, 77). In the second instance, a note written for Mazarin c. July 1653 (Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (henceforth A.E.), Correspondance politique, Angleterre, vol. 61, f. 247) indicates that the ship carried thirteen clergy. The third is mentioned in August 1655 in a letter by St Vincent de Paul (Correspondance…, ed. Coste, v, 415) in which the vessel is said to have arrived carrying twenty-eight ecclesiastics, including Archbishop Burke and Bishop Kirwan.

14 Archives Départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine, C. 2778 (2 Dec. 1653), C. 2780 (8 Dec. 1657), in which Bishops Lynch, Barry, Plunkett, Kirwan and Burke are named.

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18 See Delumeau, Jean, Le mouvement du port du Saint-Malo, la fin du XVlIe siècle (1681-1700) (Rennes, 1966).Google Scholar

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21 He writes that in Nantes, he found a merchant who was prepared to write letters of exchange for transfer of moneys to Ireland, as well as ships that brought information and could be used to transfer moneys on the return journey (letter from Nantes, 24 Nov. 1654 (Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 4878, f. 540)). The authors are very grateful to Jason McHugh, author of a forthcoming study on Nicholas French, for a transcript of this document.

22 Rothe, David, Analecta sacra nova et mira de rebus Catholicorum in Hibernia (Cologne, 1617), p. 199Google Scholar; see also Hayes, Richard, Old Irish links with France (Dublin, 1940), p. 170.Google Scholar

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25 De Burgo is the Latin form of Burke, an old Anglo-Norman titled family. For sources on the Jesuit project, see Irish Jesuit Archives, Dublin, McErlean transcripts (c. 1920); Finegan, Francis, ‘The Irish college of Poitiers: 1674—1762’ in I.E.R., 5th ser., civ (July-Dec. 1965), pp 18–35Google Scholar, esp. p. 19; Chesnay, Charles Berthelot du, Les prêtres séculiers en Haute-Bretagne aux XVIIIe siècle (Rennes, 1974), pp 170, 176–7.Google Scholar

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27 Finegan, , ‘Irish college’; Pierre Delattre, Les établissements jésuites en France (5 vols, Enghien, 1949-57), iv, col. 57.Google Scholar

28 A memorandum of 1756 listing Irish Catholics at Nantes states that there were between fifty and fifty-five priests and students: Parfouru, Paul, ‘Les Irlandais en Bretagne aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’ in Bretagne, Annales de, ix (1893-94), p. 529Google Scholar. It further states that the community of Irish priests had been in existence for some seventy years. Other sources give 1689 as the date of foundation, but there is evidence in the records of the Hôtel-Dieu and parish registers that there was a surge in the Irish clerical presence towards 1676–77, followed perhaps by the foundation of the college. Ware, James, in his Antiquities of Ireland, ed. Harris, Walter (6 vols, Dublin, 1739-64), ii, 255Google Scholar, gives 1680 as the date of foundation. Berthelot du Chesnay cites 1678 as the year a community of Irish priests came together but quotes no sources to support this date (Les prêtres séculiers en Haute-Bretagne, p. 170). Léon Maître’s L’Instruction publique dans les villes et les campagnes du Comté Nantais avant 1789 (Nantes, 1882), p. 249, gives 1678 but also with no source. The Irish college was originally located in rue du Chapeau Rouge before moving to Manoir de la Touche; the earliest entry in St Nicolas’s parish records concerning an Irish priest at that first address dates from March 1678.

29 Comment. Rinucc, v, 143–4, letter by Bishop French describing the state of Irish seminaries in Europe.

30 Ibid., iv, 521.

31 Lynch, , De praesulibus, i, 268Google Scholar. For Rinuccini’s view of Darcy, see Brady, W. M., The episcopal succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, ad 1400–1875 (3 vols, Rome, 1876-77), ii, 345.Google Scholar

32 Internuncio in Brussels, to Fide, Propaganda, Mar. 1661 (Benignus Millett, ‘Calendar of volume 13 of the Fondo di Vienna, part 2’ in Collect. Mb., xxv (1983), p. 36).Google Scholar

33 For the consequences of most of the Irish troops’ change of allegiance from France to Spain in 1655–57, see Éamon Ó Ciosáin, ‘A hundred years of Irish migration to France, 1590–1688’ in O’Connor (ed.), Irish in Europe, p. 101. Darcy would not have been alone in his endeavours, as many Irish commanders and leaders did likewise, from Ormond down.

34 The letter to Mazarin in July 1653 (A.E., Correspondance politique, Angleterre, vol. 61, 247), which was certainly written in Paris, indicates that French is living ‘here’.

35 Comment. Rinucc, v, 145.

36 Lynch, , De praesulibus, i, 357Google Scholar; Walsh, A., ‘Irish exiles in Brittany. Ill’ in I.E.R., 4th ser., ii (July-Dec. 1897), p. 137Google Scholar. This article, published in four parts in I.E.R. in 1897–98, refers to a letter written by French to Burke from Nantes on 30 Jan. 1654. He was still in Nantes in 1655, as he was one of the signatories of the letter sent to Rome by four exiled bishops in 1655.

37 Camb. Univ. Lib., Add. MS 4878. f. 540.

38 Booties of Irish and Royalist privateers enriched the locality of Brest for some years in the 1650s (Comment. Rinucc, v, 242–3). A large number of parish-register entries for the years 1653–56 bear out the existence of a considerable Irish community in Brest during those years, to the extent that one author states that the local priest in the parish of Recouvrance struggled to note all the entries concerning them (Patricia Dagier, Les réfugiés irlandais au 17ème siècle en Finistère (Quimper, 1999), p. 10). This work lists entries by family name. The privateers are substantially the same group as that studied by Jane Ohlmeyer in ‘The Dunkirk of Ireland: Wexford privateers during the 1640s’ in Wexford Hist. Soc. Jn., xii (1988-99), pp 23–49; and ‘Irish privateers during the Civil War, 1642–50’ in Mariner’s Mirror, lxxvi (1990), pp 119–34.

39 hAnnracháin, Tadhg Ó, ‘Lost in Rinuccini’s shadow: the Irish clergy 1645–49’ in Siochrú, Mícheál Ó (ed.), Kingdoms in crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001), p. 178.Google Scholar

40 Cregan, ‘Counter-Reformation episcopate’, pp 95–103.

41 Lynch, Pii antistitis icon, p. 223.

42 Archives Départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine, C. 2778, C. 2779, C. 2780; see also Registres Comptables (accounts registers), C. 2983, C. 2984, C. 2985.

43 Lynch, Pii antistitis icon, p. 203.

44 Brockliss, L. W. B. and Ferté, Patrick, ‘Prosopography of Irish clerics in the Universities of Paris and Toulouse, 1573–1792’ in Archiv. Hib., lviii (2004), p. 135.Google Scholar

45 Factum, undated, in Bibliothèque de Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, E. 4o 1842, inv 1097, pièce 10. The content of this memorandum is authenticated in Lynch, , De praesulibus, ii, 209.Google Scholar

46 Duranthon, Antoine, Procès-verbaux des Assemblées Générales du clergé de France, 1770, tome iv, 409-11, 1051Google Scholar (the original minutes of the decisions are in the Archives Nationales, Paris (henceforth A.N.), under G. 8/653).

47 Ibid.

48 Hardiman, James (ed.), ‘The pedigree of Doctor Dominick Lynch, 1674’ in Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society, i (1846), pp 44–59.Google Scholar

49 Millett, ‘Calendar of volume 13 of the Fondo di Vienna’, p. 46.

50 Walsh, Hist., p. 747.

51 Brady, Episcopal succession, p. 350.

52 Lynch, Pii antistitis icon, pp 203–7.

53 Idem, De praesulibus, i, 145. The Nantes connection is noted in Walsh, ‘Irish exiles. III’ in I.E.R., 4th ser. (July-Dec. 1897), p. 153.

54 Brady, Episcopal succession. The published nomination papers mention this absence of resources. See also Finegan, Francis, ‘Irish pensioners of the French clergy 1686–1778’ in I.E.R., cv (1966), pp 73–92.Google Scholar

55 A.N., dossiers des pensions, G. 8/233, G. 8/247; Finegan, ‘Irish pensioners’, pp 75, 78.Google Scholar

56 Paul, St Vincent de, Correspondance, ed. Coste, v, 414; vi, 133,152. Not all Vincent de Paul’s letters survived, and further letters relating to Irish affairs and individuals no doubt existed.Google Scholar

57 Comment. Rinucc., v, 278, 280. There are letters from Kirwan dated at Nantes, Oct. 1657, and Rennes, May 1658.

58 Barthélemy Pocquet’s Histoire de la Bretagne (Rennes, 1913) mentions her among a group of women whose ‘virtue, active charity and intelligent devotion’ are deserving of attention. She further demonstrated her philanthropic nature in 1655 when she founded a Magdalen house in Rennes for reformed prostitutes. See Lynch, Pii antistitis icon, p. 207; Frédéric Saulnier, Le parlement de Bretagne (Rennes,1909), notice on Brandin de Bellestre.

59 Brady, , Episcopal succession, ii, 346.Google Scholar

60 Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland, p. 236.

61 ’virpertinax et durae cervicis’ (Comment. Rinucc, v, 263).

62 Ó hAnnracháin, ‘Lost in Rinuccini’s shadow’, p. 182.

63 Comment. Rinucc., v, 254-5.Google Scholar

64 Corish, P. J., ‘Two contemporary historians of the Confederation of Kilkenny: John Lynch and Richard O’Ferrall’ in I.H.S., viii, no. 31 (Mar. 1952), pp 217-36Google Scholar; letter from Bishop Kirwan, Oct. 1657, which indicates that he had received absolution from Barry (Comment. Rinucc, v, 278); for Bourke see attestation by Bishop Barry, Nantes, that he absolved Archbishop Bourke from the censures, Feb. 1656 (Millett, ‘Calendar of volume 13 of the Fondo di Vienna’, p. 41).

65 Eversus, Cambrensis, ed. Matthew Kelly (3 vols, Dublin, 1851-52), iii, 519.Google Scholar

66 Brady, , Episcopal succession, ii, 348.Google Scholar

67 Walsh, History, p. 749.

68 Ó hAnnracháín, Catholic Reformation in Ireland, p. 238.

69 Walsh, History, p. 747. For the 1677 journey, see letter from Bishop Lynch, 5 Oct. 1677 (Evreux Diocesan Archives, France). For his death, see Lyons, ‘The emergence of an Irish community’, p. 116; Flanagan, John, Kilfenora: a history (2nd ed., 1992), pp 46-7Google Scholar, quoting a 1979 study by Revd Martin Coen, who traces Lynch’s stay in his diocese from 1677 to his death in 1681.

70 Lynch, , De praesulibus, ii, 261.Google Scholar

71 See Ir. Arch. Soc. Misc., i (1846), pp 90–6, from the original manuscript, then in the possession of James Hardiman.

72 Letter to Plunkett, Luke, priest, in Brittany, 19 Apr. 1659Google Scholar (Stde Paul, Vincent, Correspondance, ed. Coste, , vii, 509Google Scholar (authors’ translation)). Plunkett was poorly integrated by all accounts: Vincent de Paul had previously discussed his lack of discipline, and according to the letters, Plunkett’s command of French was so limited that he was barely useful to the congregation (ibid., vii, 262). Boyle, Vincent de Paul and Vincentians, pp 246–50, includes English translations of two letters to Plunkett.

73 Ir. Arch. Soc. Misc., i, pp 90–6.

74 Ibid., p. 94: ‘acerbi/ rursus ego domini nolo subire jugum’.

75 The legal situation was often referred to in canon-law texts in ancien régime France; see for example Jean Pontas’s Dictionnaire des cas de conscience (Paris, 1715), under ‘bénéfice’. Roman documentation calendared by Benignus Millett, however, suggests that some of the Irish bishops did have Church incomes.

76 Croix, Alain, Moi, Jean Martin, recteur de Plouvellec: curés ‘journalistes’ de la Renaissance à la fin du 17e siècle (Rennes, 1993), pp 145-6.Google Scholar

77 Walsh, , ‘Irish exiles. III’ in I.E.R., 4th ser., ii (July-Dec. 1897), pp 130,134Google Scholar, quotes the epitaphs, which have since been destroyed. Barry’s epitaph is also quoted in Hurley, Patrick, ‘A bishop of Cork and the Irish at Nantes’ in Dublin Review, 3rd ser. (1892), pp 38–51.Google Scholar

78 Guillotin de Corson, Amédée et al., Pouillé historique de l’archevêché de Rennes (6 vols, Paris, 1880–86); he consecrated the chapel in the Capuchin house in Caudebec-en-Caux (near Rouen) on 3 June 1668, according to Abbé Miette, ‘Quelques antiquités civiles et ecclésiastiques de la ville de Caudebec’ (manuscript c. 1820), (Bibliothèque Municipale, Rouen, M. bt Y. 39). In keeping with the inconsistent spellings of the time, Lynch was said to be variously bishop of Finibor, Fimbor or Dimbar.

79 De Corson, Amédée et al., Pouillé historique …de Rennes, v, 769.

80 ’M. le suffragant de Séez, evesque de Darda en Hybernie, religieux de notre ordre’ (register transcribed in Frédéric Lemeunier, ‘Deux autres Irlandais - les évêques d’Ardagh et de Ferns au diocèse du Mans (XVIIe [siècle].)’ in Province du Maine, lxxxv (1983), pp 26–7.

81 Finegan, ‘Irish pensioners’, p. 76, claims that the suffragan sees were so highly prized that foreigners would not be admitted to them, and that the bishop in question, Richard Piers (in the early eighteenth century) was vicar-general rather than suffragan of Sens. Confusion on this matter is also evident among the writers in French.

82 St Lazare was the seat of Vincent de Paul’s Congregation of the Mission.

83 His death was registered in two different parishes, in two languages: Toussaints (in French) and St Helier, the parish in which he died, in Latin, which was rare at that time (registers in Archives Municipales de Rennes, Paroisse Saint-Hélier, 27 Aug. 1661, Toussaints, 29 Aug. 1661). See also Abbé Hamard, , ‘Un prélat oublié, François Kirwan’ in Bretagne, Revue de, d’Anjou, de Vendée et, iv (1891), pp 435-49.Google Scholar

84 ’Journal d’un bourgeois de Rennes’ in Paul de la Bigne, Mélanges d’histoire et d’archéologie, i (1857), p. 137.

85 It is difficult to give precise dates for the last duties in St Malo and the first duties in Rouen. There may have been periods where Lynch officiated in both. A declaration by the archbishop of Rouen, 27 Mar. 1663, indicates that Lynch ordained an Irish priest at Rouen (Fr Luke Wadding, commem, vol., p. 600). On the other hand, Lynch figures in the St Malo section of the 1666 list of Irish Catholics residing in Brittany (A.E., Mémoires et documents, France, MS 1508). There also exists a letter by Bishop Lynch of Mar. 1665 from St Malo requesting subsidies from the Holy See (Millett, ‘Calendar’, p. 46).

86 Lemeunier, ‘Deux autres Irlandais’, p. 26.

87 The famous Jansenist, Irish, Callaghan, John, was tutor to the young Muskerrys in France (see O’Connor, Thomas, Irish Jansenists, 1600–70: religion and politics in Flanders, France, Ireland and Rome (Dublin, 2008)).Google Scholar

88 Inchiquin’s conversion to Catholicism is a case in point (Comment. Rinucc, v, p. 408). See also the reference to the Muskerrys’ piety and the devotion of the Roches of Fermoy while in exile (ibid., pp 411–12).

89 Walsh, , ‘Irish exiles. I’ in I.E.R., 4th ser., i (Jan.-June 1897), p. 320Google Scholar, found the decision of the Irish nuns to live a cloistered life laudable and beyond what a rigid theology would require, whereas it would have been in harmony with the ideals of the order. Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland, pp 247–8, remarks on the cultural difference between the Catholic Church in Ireland and on the Continent.

90 ’quasi callidissima vulpes’ (Comment. Rinucc, v, 264).

91 Lynch, , De praesulibus, i, 355.Google Scholar

92 Ciosáin, Éamon Ó, ‘Voloumous deamboulare: the wandering Irish in French literature 1600–1789’ in Coulson, Anthony (ed.), Exiles and migrants: crossing thresholds in European culture and society (Brighton, 1997), pp 32–42Google Scholar; idem, ‘Attitudes towards Ireland and the Irish in Enlightenment France’ in Graham Gargett and Géraldine Sheridan (eds), Ireland and the French Enlightenment 1700–1800 (Basingstoke, 1999), pp 129–51.

93 Testimonial in favour of Patrick Plunkett by F. Rouxel de Médavy, bishop of Séez, 5 June 1662 (Millett, ‘Calendar of volume 13 of the Fondo di Vienna’, p. 45); testimonial in favour of John O’Molony by two French archbishops and two bishops, July 1664 (ibid., p. 32); also, petition of John Sweeney, c. 1664, supported by Fr François Annat (idem, ‘Calendar of volume 16 of the Fondo di Vienna’ in Collect. Mb., xliii (2001), p. 17).

94 See Pillorget, René and Pillorget, Suzanne, France baroque, France classique (2 vols, Paris, 1995), ii, 507-8.Google Scholar

95 Lynch, , De praesulibus, ii, 188-9Google Scholar. The Harlay connections were more extensive than discovered by Boyle and Hogan (see above, n. 8), who were mainly following De praesulibus.

96 Lemeunier, ‘Deux autres irlandais’.

97 Lynch, , De praesulibus, i, 173.Google Scholar

98 For examples, see Jennings, Brendan, ‘Ireland and Propaganda Fide’ in Archiv. Hib., xix (1956),pp 18, 31–5, 55.Google Scholar

99 Brennan, James, ‘A Gallican interlude in Ireland: the Irish remonstrance of 1661’ in Ir. Theol. Quart., xxiv (1957), pp 219-37, 283–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100 Drafts of this article have benefited from close reading and suggestions by Dr Mary Ann Lyons, Dr Thomas O’Connor, Dr Niall 6 Ciosain and Professor Nicholas Canny, to whom the authors are indebted.