Madam, - No listing of early priestly converts to Anglicanism would be complete without reference to one Meiler Magrath (c.1523-1622), a truly unique character in Irish history. This man predated both John Butler and Andrew Sall (mentioned in letters on March 28th and April 8th, respectively).
A Franciscan friar, he was appointed by Pope Pius IV to the see of Down and Connor in 1565. In 1570 Queen Elizabeth named him the first Protestant bishop of Clogher. Some months later he was promoted Archbishop of Cashel, but continued nominally to hold Clogher for many years.
In 1580 Pope Gregory XIII removed him from Down and Connor, which he had been holding concurrently with his Cashel position. The "crime of heresy and many other offences" were given as reasons for the pope's action.
His marriage to a Tipperary woman yielded nine children. The continued adherence of both wife and children to the old faith eventually caused suspicions to be aroused in the minds of the authorities as to the genuineness of Magrath's loyalty and commitment to Protestantism. These concerns were doubtless heightened by Sir John Davies's observation (1604) that he was "an example of pluralities, holding in his hands four bishoprics. . .and three score and ten spiritual livings". An ecclesiastical commission which visited Cashel in 1607 reported "such abuses and enormities as could not have been believed on the report of others". His cathedral congregation amounted to one!
Nevertheless, he continued in possession of his bishoprics until death. He left his surviving children a sizeable inheritance, amassed from widespread alienation of church lands over the years.
Athough Magrath's last resting place is supposed to be in his Cashel cathedral, there is a suggestion that, having become reconciled to Catholicism at the end of his long life, he was laid out after death in priestly vestments and interred elsewhere. - Yours, etc,
PETER SCOTT,
Dromore,
Co Tyrone.
