05 January 2019

Stories of division from
an old Cold War frontier

A double-page centre-spread of photographs from Gorizia in the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ this weekend

Patrick Comerford

My monthly features in two diocesan magazines, the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory) continue this month [January 2019] with a look at the twin border towns of Gorizia and Gorica, near Venice.

In my first column of the New Year in these magazines, I visit the former ‘Cold War’ frontier between Italy and Slovenia, that was drawn down through one town in 1947, It was a straight line that cut through squares, streets and gardens, ignoring the natural contours of streets and buildings.

The frontier remained in place until Slovenia became part of the Schengen Agreement in 2007.

The feature, with 16 photographs, is two-page spread the Church Review and a six-page spread in the Diocesan Magazine. In addition, the Diocesan Magazine gives a double-page centre-spread of four of my photographs from Gorizia.

The first edition of the Church Review and the Diocesan Magazine for this new year are available in churches tomorrow [6 January 2019]. And there’s more about Gorizia on this blog tomorrow afternoon.

The Elizabethan Dean of
Lichfield and the stories
of his strange life

The Deanery in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield … George Boleyn was Dean of Lichfield in 1576-1603 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Tudor dynastic disputes, secret romances in royal households, hidden heirs and the claims of alleged illegitimate children to family titles and estates are all ingredients for blockbuster romances and television series that become box sets.

These stories include tales of high treason, hurried executions and accusations of inappropriate liaisons. Add in the secret life of Anne Boleyn, plots to dethrone Elizabeth I, stories of young children secretly sent across the sea to secure their safety in Ireland, and we have the storyline for a Tudor drama that is likely to be + 90 per cent fiction and – 10 per cent history.

It becomes farcical when I hear about a barking dog who interrupts a dean’s sermons in Lichfield Cathedral – yet that episode, however comical, is one of the truest elements in a series that mixes farce, fiction and history.

But in some idle moments over Christmas and New Year, I came across an additional ingredient seldom found in popular paperback romances: George Boleyn, who was the Dean of Lichfield from 1576 until he died 1603.

Was this colourful character at the court of Queen Elizabeth really her first cousin? Was he the illegitimate son – or even the legitimate son – of Anne Boleyn’s brother, the tragic George Boleyn, who was executed on accusations of high treason and claims of incest with his sister?

However, another theory states that he could not have been the legitimate son of Henry VIII’s brother-in-law, although there was no record of children. Other sources say it is more likely that he was a distant cousin and relative of Queen Anne Boleyn.

The dean is sometimes said to have been the son of Jane Boleyn, née Parker, who died in 1542, and George Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire. This would introduce the first Irish connection through his supposed grandfather, Thomas Boleyn (1477-1539), and his wife, Lady Margaret Butler (1465-1540), a daughter of Thomas Butler (1426-1515), 7th Earl of Ormond.

Despite these persistent claims, we cannot be sure of the parentage of George Boleyn, who became Dean of Lichfield, and we know very little about his childhood and early life, not even his date or place of birth.

The Dean’s stall in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

George Boleyn was probably born in London around 1526, and he entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in November 1544, at a time when Stephen Gardiner was Master of Trinity Hall and Chancellor of Cambridge University and Henry Comberford, a future Precentor of Lichfield, was Senior Proctor of Cambridge University (1543-1544).

George entered Cambridge as a sizar, or a poor student who paid his way undertaking menial tasks. In other words, he did not come from a privileged family or comfortable circumstances.

Although Cambridge records suggest he was ‘perhaps’ a son of George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, this suggestion relies on secondary sources, including the Dictionary of National Biography, which says he ‘was not improbably the son of George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford …, who is usually reported to have left no male issue.’ But we have no primary sources for these claims.

At Cambridge, Boleyn was a pupil of John Whitgift, then Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity and later Archbishop of Canterbury (1583-1604). He graduated BA (1553) and proceeded MA (1559).

The Jerwood Library at Trinity Hall overlooking the Backs and the River Cam in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

He was ordained deacon by Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, on 21 March 1563, and priest on 11 December 1566. But by then he was holding church offices, and was Prebendary of Ulleskelf in York Minster from 3 August 1560, a post he held until he died.

On 21 December 1566, ten days after being ordained priest by Grindal, Boleyn was made a canon of Canterbury Cathedral, and in the following year he received the degree BD in Cambridge. He returned to Cambridge as the University Preacher 1572.

Serious charges were laid against Boleyn in Canterbury in September 1573, alleging he had threatened the dean, Thomas Godwin (later Bishop of Bath and Wells), that he would nail him to the wall, had struck one of the canons, William Eling, with a blow on the ear, had attempted to strike another canon, Dr Rush, had struck a third canon in the chapter house, and had thrashed a lawyer. Obviously, Boleyn had a fiery temper, and he admitted he habitually swore when he was provoked.

Although he remained a canon of Canterbury for the rest of his life, Boleyn was soon moved from the cathedral precinct. On the nomination of the dean and chapter of Canterbury, he became Rector of Saint Dionis, Backchurch, London, in 1575. At the same time, he became Rector of Kempston in Nottinghamshire for 12 months, from October 1575 to December 1576.

Lichfield Cathedral … George Boleyn was installed as Dean of Lichfield on 22 December 1576 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Boleyn received the degree DD through Trinity College Cambridge in 1576, and later that year he was installed as Dean of Lichfield on 22 December 1576.

As Dean of Lichfield, Boleyn was also the Prebendary of Dasset Parva from 16 November 1577, but he resigned that post on 18 February 1579, and he is not listed for this prebend in Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae. He was also the Prebendary of Brewood, a chapter position that was annexed to the deanery.

Boleyn became involved in a lengthy and serious dispute with John Aylmer, Bishop of London, in 1582. It is recorded that the bishop, ‘being necessitous on his coming into the diocese, laboured all he could to supply himself from his clergy.’ But Boleyn, a man ‘prudent and stout,’ strenuously resisted the bishop’s planned visit. When he appealed the privy council, the Archbishop of Canterbury was appointed to institute a visitation.

Dean Boleyn had a dog named Spring, and on one occasion, when he was in the pulpit, ‘hearing his dogg cry, he out with this text: whie how now hoe, can you not lett the dogg alone there? come Springe, come Spring.’ At another time, as he was delivering a sermon, ‘taking himself with a fault he said there I lyed, there I lyed.’

The stall of the Prebendary of Dassett Parva in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Boleyn resigned the rectory of Saint Dionis, Backchurch, in London, in August 1591, and in 1595, after much opposition, he was appointed Rector of Bangor-on-Dee, or Bangor Monachorum with Overton, near Wrexham in North Wales.

Willis’s Survey of Cathedrals’ says ‘Dean Boleyn was kinsman to Queen Elizabeth, who would have made him Bishop of Worcester, but he refused it.’ In his will he writes: ‘Her majestie gave me all that ever I have and subjectes gave me nothing.’

Boleyn died on 25 January 1603, and was buried in front of the choir in Lichfield Cathedral.

Queen Elizabeth, his supposed cousin (in some fictional accounts), died two months later, on 24 March 1603.

The choir in Lichfield Cathedral ... Dean George Boleyn was buried in front of the choir after his death in 1603 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

In his will, Boleyn says he is a kinsman of Lord Hunsdon, who was the grandson of Mary, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, father of the ill-fated Viscount Rochford.

There are continuing debates on online forums about the dean’s parentage, with many suggestions that he was a son of George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, and his wife and Jane, although there is no record that they ever had any children.

Many of these debates also discuss his father’s sexuality, with contradictory claims that he was gay, that he was ‘a womaniser,’ and that he was a wife-hater, as well as the old allegations at his trial that he had incestuous affair with his sister, Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Queen Elizabeth.

If there had been a legitimate son, he would have been a claimant to the title of Earl of Ormond and Earl of Wiltshire, which Henry VIII had forcibly removed from the Ormond Butlers and the Stafford family and bestowed on the Boleyn family. But there is no record that the Dean of Lichfield ever considered making a claim to these titles.

The debate has been fraught, with unsigned comments by people who claim they are reputable authors, biographers and historians; claims and counterclaims have been removed and restored on pages on Wikipedia.

Many of the suggestions have been speculative. Some contributors concede that George Boleyn of Lichfield may have been an illegitimate son of the executed George Boleyn, but there is no evidence from any primary sources for his parentage.

But the trail also links to Clonony Castle, a mediaeval tower house near Birr, Co Offaly, that briefly belonged once to the Boleyn family. The castle was granted by Henry VIII to Thomas Boleyn, father of the ill-fated Ann and George, and eventually was home of Elizabeth and Mary Boleyn, exiled there after her death.

Claire Ridgway and Clare Cherry, in George Boleyn: Tudor Poet, Courtier & Diplomat (2014) suggest that when the elder George Boleyn was executed, that another illegitimate son, Thomas Boleyn, was moved to Clonony Castle for his safety, and that Elizabeth and Mary Boleyn were descended from this illegitimate son.

It has also been suggested that Elizabeth and Mary Boleyn were the granddaughters of George Boleyn, Dean of Lichfield. However, the Dean of Lichfield never once claimed to be the illegitimate son of George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, nor did he have any children himself, and he left his savings to be distributed among his servants. His family tree needs more historical research and less fictional speculation and fantasy.

Clonony Castle, near Birr, Co Offaly … claimed as the hiding place and home of two exiled Boleyn sister (Source: Facebook)

A martyr nun and an
artist who spent their
childhood in Limerick

No 11 The Crescent, Limerick … for a few years the childhood home of the artist Sophia Angel St John Whitty and her sister the Anglican martyr and missionary nun Mother Mary Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Shortly before Christmas, while I was researching the story of the Revd Stopford Brooke, the Irish author of a much-forgotten translation of Silent Night and a controversial Anglican priest who later became a Unitarian, I came across the story of the extraordinary Whitty sisters who spent part of their childhood in Limerick.

Sophia Angel St John Whitty (1877-1924), who was born on 4 November 1877 at 69 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin, was an Irish artist and woodcarver. She was named after her maternal grandmother, a daughter of Bishop Edward Stopford of Meath.

Sophia’s sister, Clare Emma Whtity (1883-1950), was born on 30 May 1883, and later became an Anglican nun, Mother Mary Clare, who died a martyr’s death during the Korean War in 1950. She was born at her mother’s family home in Fenloe, near Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare, during one of the many family holidays spent in the Hickman family home in Co Clare.

Their father, Dr Richard Whitty (1844-1897), a medical doctor and a land agent, was born in Rathvilly, Co Carlow. His father, the Revd William Whitty (1801-1844), was the curate of Rathvilly. One source says this Whitty family was descended from Thomas Whitty, a grocer of Dublin and Exeter. Another source says they are descended from the Revd John Whitty who was the son of Sir Walter Whitty of Ballyteigue Castle, near Kilmore, Co Wexford.

This branch of the Whitty family lived for generation in Rathvilly, Co Carlow, and Dr Richard Whitty’s father, the Revd William Whitty, grandfather, the Revd John Whitty (1761-1843), and great-grandfather, Archdeacon Edward Whitty (1720-1804), were all Church of Ireland priests in the parish.

Archdeacon Edward Whitty was also Prebendary of Tomgraney in Killaloe, and three successive generations of his descendants in another line of descent were Rectors of Kilrush, Co Clare: the Revd Irvine Whitty (1754-1842), Archdeacon John Whitty (1779-1864) and Canon Henry Whitty.

It may have been these strong clerical links with Co Clare that introduced Dr Richard Whitty to his wife, Jane Alicia, who was born into the Hickman family of Fenloe, near Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare. Jane’s mother, Sophia Angel (Stopford) was a daughter of Bishop Edward Stopford of Meath and a sister of Archdeacon Edward Stopford. This branch of the Stopford family included a number of bishops and a number of clerical generations, and was distantly related to the Stopford family, Earls of Courtown.

The Hickman family was descended from Gregory Hickman, an English merchant who moved to Co Clare in the first half of the 17th century. His grandson, Hugh Hickman, was the ancestor of the Hickman family of Fenloe. Fenloe House, a redbrick, two-storey 18th century house was the home of the Hickman family from the 18th century until the 20th century. Hugh Poole Hickman lived there in 1837 and Hugh Palliser Hickman of Fenloe owned over 3,000 acres in Co Clare in the 1870s.

The Whitty sisters had no other sisters and had no brothers. Through their mother, they were second cousins of Catherine Amelia O’Brien or Kitty O’Brien (1881-1963), the stained glass artist of An Túr Gloine studios; the Irish nationalist and historian Alice Stopford-Green (1847-1929); and the controversial Irish Anglican priest and hymnwriter, Stopford Brooke (1832-1916), who translated Still the Night, a version of Silent Night that has lost popularity.

With Canon Horace McKinley at Whitechurch parish church, Rathfarnham … the Whitty sisters spent part of their early childhood in Whitechurch

As young girls, the two Whitty sisters spent much of their childhood at Hillcot in Whitechurch, Co Dublin, but family holidays were spent at their mother’s family home at Fenloe, where Clare was born.

While his two daughters were still children, their father Richard Whitty qualified as a medical doctor in August 1888 and they moved to Limerick, where the family lived at No 11 The Crescent, almost opposite the Jesuit church. Their grandmother, Sophia Angel St John Hickman, died at this house on the corner of Barrington Street in June 1889.

By the 1880s, the Whitty family had moved to The Crescent, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The Whitty family had moved to England by 1891 and were living at Loughton in Essex. Dr Whitty died in London at the age of 53 on 1 November 1897. The family were living with his brother-in-law, Major-General Hugh Palliser Hickman, who was stationed at Woolwich Barracks.

Clare Emma Whitty received training in art in Paris, where she became fluent in French. She was living as a boarder in Birmingham by 1911, when she described herself as an Elementary Teacher.

A year later, in 1912, she joined the Anglican Community of Saint Peter, then based in Kilburn, London, and took her vows as a sister in 1915, taking the name Mary Clare. Before the outbreak of World War I, the Revd Mark Trollope (1862-1930), who had been vicar of Saint Augustine’s in Kilburn, was appointed the third Anglican Bishop of Korea.

He asked Sister Mary Clare to help him in founding a society of Korean sisters in Seoul. But World War I disrupted those plans, and she eventually reached Korea in 1923, and began Korean language studies.

With the help of Bishop Trollope, she founded the Society of the Holy Cross in Seoul in 1925 and was appointed novice mistress. She was back in England for a time in 1928-1929, when she lived at the mother house of the Community of Saint Peter in Kilburn. She then returned to Seoul to take up her role as the first Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. During World War II, Mother Mary Clare was repatriated to England in 1941.

She left England in 1946, and returned through Kure in Japan to Korea, arriving back in January 1947. On the ship’s passenger list, she described herself as a teacher.

On the outbreak of the Korean War, she turned down an offer from the British embassy to evacuate from Seoul, deciding to stay with her congregation. When the North Korean army in Seoul in June 1950, she took refuge with other foreign civilians in the British Embassy. But they were interned by the North Korean forces as they consolidated their occupation of the Korean capital.

On the retreat of the North Korean forces from Seoul following the success of the United Nations forces landing at Inchon, she and other foreign civilian prisoners, including a number of Christian missionaries, were forcible moved to the northern part of North Korea.

The last part of their ‘Death March,’ began on 30 October and involved a forced march of over 100 miles in early winter with little food or warm clothing. Mother Mary Clare died on 6 November 1950 near Chunggangjinon. She was buried in a shallow grave near the Chosin Reservoir in the north-west part of North Korea by five French-speaking Roman Catholic sisters. They used an improvised bier to bring her to the top of a neighbouring hill, close to the camp, where they dug her grave.

Ten months after the end of the Korean War, the Church Times published a short obituary notice in April 1954 that described her as a ‘devoted and courageous English Sister.’

Apart from a recent one-page article in Newslink, the Diocesan magazine in Limerick and Killaloe, by the Very Revd Paul Mooney, Dean of Ferns, Mother Mary Clare is little known or remembered in her homeland or in the Church of Ireland in which she grew up.

The rere of the Whitty family home on the corner of The Crescent and Barrington Street in Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Mother Mary Clare’s sister, Sophia St John Whitty, was a woodcarver, teacher, and a leading figure in co-operative movement, and an influential member of the Irish Celtic cultural revival and the Irish Art and Crafts movement.

Sophia attended the South Kensington School of Art, where she studied woodcarving, and returned to Dublin to continue her studies at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art.

She opened a small studio at 43 Sackville Street (O’Connell Street), Dublin, around 1902. There she gave lessons in woodcarving and other crafts, and with Kathleen Scott she taught woodcarving at the parochial hall of Christ Church, Bray, Co Wicklow. She went to Bruges in Belgium to study figure carving, and then visited art schools in Austria and Italy in the summer of 1903.

When a new technical school (later Colaiste Raithin) opened in Bray in 1904, Sophia was appointed wood carving teacher, one of the first in Ireland. With Scott, their students executed the carved walnut figures for Christ Church designed by Sophia, including two angels, representing prayer and praise, on the prayer desk, and Saint Patrick on the lectern.

Sophia’s 1904 Gothic triptych with crucifix received acclaim in 1904. A year later, she set up the Bray Art Furniture Industry, which was attached to the technical school, and where she was the manager, designer and instructor.

Sophia closed her Dublin studio in 1906, and in 1909 she moved from 70 Pembroke Road to Old Bawn, Old Connaught, Bray, where she and her mother Jane lived for the rest of their lives and hosted children’s parties each Christmas.

With the outbreak of World War I, the Bray Art Furniture Industry closed in 1914. Sophia was involved in the United Irishwomen, serving as the organising secretary in 1914, 1915 and 1921. The organisation struggled during the political troubles of the Irish War of Independence, and she resigned in 1921.

In the years after, she wrote nature articles for The Irish Times and other Dublin newspapers, and toured Co Dublin and Co Wicklow searching for material, wither alone on her bicycle or with her mother in their little Peugeot car.

Sophia Angel St John Whitty died on 26 February 1924 at Drumcondra Hospital, Dublin, after a brief illness and surgery. She was then living at Old Bawn, Bray, Co Wicklow. She was buried in Enniskerry. Following her death, a collection of her nature essays in The Irish Times and the Freeman’s Journal in the early 1920s was collected and published in a book, The Flaming Wheel, which included a biographical foreword by Kathleen Scott.

Their mother Jane Whitty was living at Wayside, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, when she died on 17 June 1931.

No 69 Upper Leeson Street, where Sophia was born, is part of a terrace of six houses dating from the early Victorian period. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was also home to PL Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, which has returned to cinema screens this month.

No 69 Upper Leeson Street, where Sophia Whitty was born in 1877 (Source: Daft)