An Irishman’s Diary: Bishop Patrick Comerford and Saint Patrick’s Day

Patrick Comerford

This feature was first published 20 years ago as an ‘Irishman’s Diary’ in ‘The Irish Times’ on 19 March 1996:

An Irishman’s Diary:

The coat of arms used by Bishop Patrick Comerford, consecrated on March 18th, 1629

The past week has shown how once again it’s fashionable to be Irish in France. The Wild Geese are no longer poor refugees but affluent aristocrats. But as many an Irish family knows, it was not always so. In 1651, Patrick Comerford sailed for France as a refugee from Waterford. Twice, before the ship reached Brittany, it was plundered by pirates, and two of his nephews, Paul Carew and John Fitzgerald, died of plague. Within a year, Patrick had died too, and following his death on March 10th, 1652, he was interred in the episcopal vault in Nantes Cathedral. When the vault was opened again in 1659 for the burial of Robert Barry, Bishop of Cork, according to a contemporary account, “the body of Dr Comerford was found quite incorrupt”.

A Moor’s ransom

Comerford was born in Waterford in 1586 into a family that had supplied mayors and sheriffs of the city for generations. Three of his Comerford cousins, Richard, James and Thomas, were Jesuits, while a fourth, the Rev Thomas Comerford, was Rector of The Rower in south Co Kilkenny – a form of family ecumenism that was not uncommon at the time, but had little appeal to Patrick Comerford in later life.

After schooling in Kilkenny and Waterford, he left for France at the age of 17 and studied theology in Bordeaux, and later at Lisbon and Coimbra, before receiving his doctorate in Florence.

While he was a young priest in Spain, his brother was captured by pirates and taken to Morocco. Comerford collected the ransom among his friends, and headed off to purchase his brother's freedom. But by the time he reached Spain he heard good news and bad news: his brother had been released, but on landing in Spain had died of the plague. The young Augustinian used the ransom to procure the release of 100 slaves held by the Moors.

For a time, Patrick was a professor of theology in both Terceiro and Brussels, but he soon moved to Rome, where another cousin and former schoolmate, the Franciscan Luke Wadding, had founded St Isidore’s and held the grand title of Qualificator of the Holy Office.

Filling a gap

The Diocese of Waterford and Lismore had been without a Roman Catholic bishop since 1578, but following a petition from the clergy of the diocese in 1629, Patrick Comerford was appointed bishop, probably through the influence of Luke Wadding. He was consecrated by Cardinal Bentivoglio in the Church of St Sylvester on the Quirinal in Rome on March 18th, 1629, and sailed for Waterford soon after. Copies of an address of congratulations presented by the staff and of the infant Irish College, founded the previous year, still survive, in the National Library and in the Franciscan Archives in Dublin.

Back in Ireland, Comerford held strong ecclesiastical influence throughout the south east, controlling many church appointments in his own diocese and in the neighbouring counties of Kilkenny and Wexford. He was involved in the effort to re-establish monastic foundations abolished during the Reformation, and held the office of Prior of Kells, Co Kilkenny, although it was no longer an Augustinian foundation.

Patrick Everard, a Waterford Cistercian who had been appointed Abbot of Dunbrody by Pope Urban VIII, was given that appointment by Bishop Comerford. However, it is unlikely that Everard managed to take physical possession of Dunbrody – it remained in the hands of the Etchingham family, and Everard served out his days as parish priest of Ballyhack and died of the plague at Duncannon.

As bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Comerford took part in the episcopal conferences and synods called in Kilkenny in support of the Confederation and presided over by David Rot he, Bishop of Ossory.

When Waterford fell to Cromwell, Comerford set sail for France, never to return. His diocese remained vacant for 18 years after his death.

Missing vestments

Patrick Comerford appears to have been a well-dressed bishop. In 1637, an Order in Council required the Mayor of Waterford to restore to the Church of Ireland dean and chapter of Christ Church Cathedral “certain copes and vestments, which he had in his custody” – he appears to have been holding them for Comerford’s use. These included five copes and a set including a chasuble, dalmatic and tunicle with sides and maniples – enough to turn out any High Church bishop in style.

The copes and vestments were never returned, however, and Comerford’s successor John Brenan (1671-1693), complained unfairly that the ecclesiastical ornaments of the diocese had been taken away to France by Comerford in 1651. The church finery disappeared for generations, but were literally unearthed when Bishop Richard Chenevix ordered the demolition of Christ Church so the city could be graced with a new Church of Ireland cathedral. During demolition work between 1774 and 1779, the missing vestments were discovered in the crypt. The low church Chenevix was on such good terms with his Roman Catholic counterpart that he presented them to Bishop William Egan, and they can now be seen in the National Museum.

Over a century after Patrick Comerford’s death, a new spirit of ecumenism was in the air in Waterford. Egan was pleased with the vestments, and he also delighted in the new cathedral commissioned by Chenevix. In fact, he was so pleased, he also asked the same architect, John Roberts (1714-1796), to design him a new cathedral in Barron Strand Street, now the oldest Roman Catholic cathedral in Ireland.

A day to remember

All this ecumenical co-operation might have made Patrick Comerford’s “quite incorrupt body” turn in his episcopal vault. After all, he had been known in his lifetime as malleus haereticus, the “hammer of the heretics”.

But if he was less than ecumenical by today's standards, we might credit him with some part in ensuring a wider celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17th. He chose March 18th as the day for his consecration as a bishop, and it may have been through his influence that Luke Wadding had the feast of Saint Patrick inserted in the Roman Calendar for March 17th and made a feast of the Universal Church.

Patrick Comerford

A journey through Lent 2016 with Samuel Johnson (37)

Inside the chapel in Trinity College, Dublin … Samuel Johnson received an honorary doctorate in 1765 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day [17 March 2016], and it is worth recalling that Samuel Johnson is forever known as ‘Doctor Johnson’ because of the honorary doctorate he received from the University of Dublin (Trinity College Dublin) over 250 years ago in 1765.

Johnson was a close friend of the Irish-born politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who was educated at Trinity College Dublin, but they strongly disagreed with each other on their political views. According to his biographer James Boswell, Johnson once said of Burke:

In private life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not allow him to be so in publick life. People may be honest, though they are doing wrong; that is between their Maker and them. But we, who are suffering by their pernicious conduct, are to destroy them. We are sure that [Burke] acts from interest. We know what his genuine principles were. They who allow their passions to confound the distinctions between right and wrong, are criminal. They may be convinced; but they have not come honestly by their conviction.

Johnson’s other Irish friends in London included Oliver Goldsmith, Arthur Murphy, Charles O’Connor, Bishop Thomas Percy of Dromore and Bishop Thomas Barnard of Killaloe, and in a curious accident of history the papers of his biographer, James Boswell, were eventually found in Malahide Castle, Co Dublin.

In his Life of Johnson, Boswell, records Johnson as having famously said on one occasion:

The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, Sir; the Irish are a fair people; – they never speak well of one another.

Boswell also records the following conversation with Johnson:

He, I know not why, shewed upon all occasions an aversion to go to Ireland, where I proposed to him that we should make a tour.

Johnson: It is the last place where I should wish to travel.

Boswell: Should you not like to see Dublin, Sir?

Johnson: No, Sir; Dublin is only a worse capital.

Boswell: Is not the Giant’s-Causeway worth seeing?

Johnson: Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.

But what did Johnson truly think of Ireland? Boswell recalls Johnson once saying during a conversation with an Irishman on the state of Irish politics:

Do not make a union with us, Sir. We should unite with you, only to rob you. We should have robbed the Scotch, if they had had any thing of which we could have robbed them.

He also recalls Johnson saying:

The Irish are in a most unnatural state; for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no instance, even in the ten persecutions, of such severity as that which the protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholicks. Did we tell them we have conquered them, it would be above board: to punish them by confiscation and other penalties, as rebels, was monstrous injustice.

In a letter to the Irish writer and historian Charles O’Connor (1710-1791), Johnson wrote in 1755:

I have long wished that the Irish literature were cultivated. Ireland is known by tradition to have been once the seat of piety and learning; and surely it would be very acceptable to all those who are curious either in the original of nations, or the affinities of languages, to be further informed of the revolution of a people so ancient, and once so illustrious.

Continued tomorrow.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Brookvale House, hidden gem in a housing estate in Rathfarnham

Brookvale House, also known as Ashfield House, was home to generations of the Cusack-Smith, Tottenham and Brooks families (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

On my way to work each morning, I travel along Dodder View Road, between the banks of the River Dodder and the slopes below Rathfarnham village. At one point, Brookvale House, also known as Ashfield, seems to cling to a precipice or an outcrop above the road. This is an imposing, richly-detailed former country house that retains many of its original features, and although it now stands within a residential housing estate, its dominating presence is a reminder of former days at this end of Rathfarnham village.

A mill race that once flowed from the grounds of Rathfarnham Castle, where it supplied water to fish ponds, then flowed under Butterfield Lane to a paper mill and continued on below Ashfield to turn the wheel of the Ely Cloth Factory. It was later turned into the Owendoher River at Woodview Cottages until the mid-20th century the old mill race could be traced through the grounds of Ashfield where its dry bed was still spanned by several stone bridges.

On my way home from work one evening last week, I had walked along the banks of the River Dodder, and decided to take a closer look at Brookvale House, which now stands on Brookvale Road, Rathfarnham.

The house was built as Ashfield House ca1790-1810, and was refurbished ca 1860, when the porch was added. It is a detached, three-bay, two-storey over basement former country house, with a five-bay wing to south.

There are small pane timber sash windows, with some replacement casements, cut-stone quoins and dressings, replacement casement windows, architrave surrounds, and a balustraded parapet with urns, approached by flight of steps.

The projecting entrance porch has a timber panelled door, with a plain fanlight. There are hipped slate roofs behind the parapet with urns, and rendered chimney stacks. Later service annexes to the rear include an oriel window to the rear.

At the end of the 18th century, Ashfield served as a glebe house for the Church of Ireland clergy in Rathfarnham parish. But by the early 19th century, the house was the home of Sir William Cusack-Smith (1766-1836), an eccentric Irish politician and judge who was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.

Cusack-Smith was called to the Irish Bar in 1788. He was MP for Lanesborough from 1794 to 1798, and then for Donegal Borough until the Act of Union in 1801. He became Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1800, and was appointed a Baron of the Exchequer in 1801 at the early age of 35.

His mother was a Roman Catholic and he was a lifelong supporter of Catholic Emancipation. He became Master of the Rolls in Ireland, but as a judge he rarely began his court sittings until after noon, occasionally running them until late into the night.

Sir William Cusack-Smith is said to have built a Gothic summer house in the grounds of the house, but I could not see this when I was looking at the house a few days ago.

Cusack-Smith died in 1836, and by 1841 Ashfield was home of a branch of the Tottenham family who continued to live there until 1913.

This branch of the Tottenham family were closely related to the Loftus family of nearby Rathfarnham Castle. Both families were descendants of the Patriot Charles Tottenham (1694-1758) “Tottenham in his Boots” of Tottenham Green near Taghmon, Co Wexford. Charles Tottenham’s eldest son, Sir John Tottenham (d. 1786), was the father of Charles Loftus (1738-1806), who changed his name when he inherited Rathfarnham Castland became Marquess of Ely. Charles Tottenham’s second son, Charles Tottenham (1716-1795), also married into the Loftus family and was the ancestor of the Tottenham families of Ashfield in Rathfarnham, Woodville and New Ross in Co Wexford, and Ballycurry in Co Wicklow.

Edward William Tottenham (1779-1860) married Henrietta Alcock (1789-1861) in 1806, and they built Woodville as their country house near New Ross, Co Wexford. While they were living at both Woodville in Co Wexford, they bought Ashfield as their Dublin seat. When Henrietta died in 1861, her daughter Sarah Denis-Tottenham (1809-1882), was her only surviving child and heiress.

When Sarah married William Dennis (1799-1869) of Dunmore East, Co Waterford, in 1835, he assumed the additional name of Tottenham, becoming William Dennis-Tottenham. They continued to live at Ashfield and Woodville, and had two sons and three daughters; tragically, all but one of their children died in childhood or in their teens.

William died in 1869, and Woodville was sold in 1872 to the Roche family. Sarah died in 1882, and Ashfield was inherited by her only surviving son, John Dennis-Tottenham (1837-1913), JP, the last member of the Ashfield branch of the family. When he died on 25 May 1913, his estate passed to his second cousin, Colonel Charles George Tottenham (1835-1918) of New Ross, Co Wexford, and Ballycurry, Co Wicklow.

Colonel Tottenham, who was educated at Eton, was highly decorated for his part in in the Crimean War, when he was a colonel in the Scots Fusilier Guards. When he returned to Ireland, he became involved in politics. At a by-election in June 1863, he was elected MP for New Ross, following the resignation of his father.

He was the sixth Charles Tottenham in regular succession from father to son to sit as MP for New Ross. Most of the town of New Ross was owned by the Tottenhams, who let it on short leases. They had shared control of the borough with the Leigh family of Rosegarland, and alternated the nomination of MPs.

Tottenham was re-elected in 1865, but stood down at the 1868 election. He was returned for New Ross again at a by-election in December 1878, following the death of the Home Rule League MP John Dunbar. However, he was defeated at the 1880 general election by the Home Rule candidate Joseph Foley.

Charles Tottenham had no interest in Ashfield, and the Brooks family of Brooks Thomas Ltd lived there until the 1950s, when the estate was divided up and houses were built along the main road. A new road was later built along the side of the house and named Brookvale after the last occupants.

Meanwhile, when Charles George Tottenham died in 1918, a monument to his memory was placed on the north wall of Saint Edan’s Cathedral, Ferns, Co Wexford.

Brookvale House is almost hidden away in a small housing estate near Rathfarnham village (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

For other postings on the architectural heritage of South Dublin see:

Berwick Hall.
The Bottle Tower, Churchtown.
Brookvale House, Rathfarnham.
Camberley House, Churchtown.
Dartry House, Orwell Park, Rathfarnham.
Ely Arch, Rathfarnham.
Ely House, Nutgrove Avenue, Rathfarnham.
Fernhurst, 14 Orwell Road, Rathgar.
Fortfield House, Hyde Park, Terenure.
No 201 Harold’s Cross Road, the birthplace of Richard Allen.
Homestead, Sandyford Road, Dundrum.
Kilvare House, also known as Cheeverstown House, Templeogue Road.
Knocklyon Castle.
Laurelmere Lodge, Marlay Park.
Marlay Park.
Mountain View House, Beaumont Avenue, Churchtown.
Newbrook House, Taylor’s Lane, Rathfarnham.
Old Bawn House, Tallaght.
Rathfarnham Castle.
Sally Park, Fihouse.
Scholarstown House, Knocklyon.
Silveracre House, off Sarah Curran Avenue, Rathfarnham.
Synge House, Newtwon Villas, Churchtown, and No 4 Orwell Park, Rathgar.
Templeogue House.
Washington House, Butterfield Avenue, Rathfarnham.
Westbourne House, off Rathfarnham Road.