11 August 2021

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021:
74, Emmanuel College, Cambridge

The chapel and cloisters at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, founded in 1584 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Before the day gets busy, I am taking a little time this morning for prayer, reflection and reading. During this time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme this week is seven college chapels in Cambridge, and my photographs this morning (11 August 2021) are from Emmanuel College.

The chapel in Emmanuel College is an early work by Sir Christopher Wren (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Emmanuel College was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I, on the site of by the Dominican Friary dissolved 45 years earlier. Mildmay was a Puritan and intended Emmanuel to be a college to train Puritan preachers.

Under his instructions, the chapel of the original Dominican Friary was converted into the college dining hall, while the friars’ dining hall was turned into a Puritan chapel.

The original Puritan character of the college gave way to the liberal views of the Cambridge Platonists and the high churchmanship of William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was instrumental in bringing Christopher Wren to design the new college chapel in 1677. This is one of three buildings in Cambridge designed by Wren.

The former Puritan chapel then became the college library. During the 19th century, Emmanuel, like other Cambridge colleges, expanded in numbers and disciplines, becoming once again a notable centre of theology, and for the first time the home of serious teaching in the natural sciences.

Eventually, the old library outgrew its space and a purpose-built library was built in 1930.

The original glass in the windows were plain, but current windows were added as part of a programme of restoration to mark the tercentenary of Emmanuel College in 1884.

The present stained glass is the work of Heaton, Butler, and Bayne and was completed in 1884 as part of the commemoration of the College’s tercentenary. This partnership also designed stained glass windows in a number of parish churches in the Church of Ireland.

The windows in Emmanuel Chapel were probably designed by Clement John Heaton the younger (1861-1940) but the general scheme of subjects was suggested by the Revd FJA Hort, the Dublin-born New Testament scholar who was a Fellow of Emmanuel College (1872-1892).

Hort was inspired by the windows in the Chapel of Trinity College Cambridge, planned a decade or so earlier by his friends and colleagues there, BF Westcott and JB Lightfoot. The figures are chosen to illustrate the continuity of the history of the Church, and the special part played in it by members of Emmanuel College.

One window is shared as a pair by William Sancroft, Master of Emmanuel, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, and William Bedell (1571-1642), a former fellow of Emmanuel College and one of the Caroline Divines, who later became Provost of the University of Dublin and then Bishop of Kilmore.

Hort’s time at Emmanuel overlapped with Canon Forbes Robinson (1867-1904), who the Chaplain of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1891-1896), and was briefly the curate of All Saints’ Church while his brother, Joseph Armitage Robinson, was the vicar. Armitage Robinson is often seen as the heir to Hort’s mantle. The Robinsons’ father, the Revd George Robinson, was born in Co Monaghan, which brings another interesting Irish link to the life of Cambridge college chapels.

Archbishop William Sancroft of Canterbury (left) and Bishop William Bedell of Kilmore (right) in a window in the chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 18: 15-20 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 15 ‘If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector. 18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’

Evening lights at the chapel and cloisters of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (11 August 2021) invites us to pray:

We pray for the people of Zambia as they vote in their General Election this week.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Emmanuel College was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of by the Dominican Friary dissolved 45 years earlier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Emmanuel College at night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Frank D Comerford, Chicago
judge who was expelled
from the Illinois State Senate

Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929) … a judge in Chicago, a Democratic politician, a journalist and an author

Patrick Comerford

My ‘road trip’ this summer has brought me to a number of former Comerford family homes in Co Clare and Co Galway. One member of the Comerford family in Kinvara who achieved fame or a level of notoriety in American politics and law, Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929), was a judge in Illinois, a Democratic politician, a journalist and an author.

Frank D Comerford is best remembered for his expulsion from the Illinois State Senate in February 1905 for allegedly besmirching the name of the Senate at a lecture in Chicago in which he accused the Senate of corruption. In this episode, Comerford became the first elected official expelled from the Illinois legislature.

Frank D Comerford was born on 25 September 1879 in Chicago. He was the son of Isaac Comerford (1829-1900) of Kinvara, Co Galway, and his wife Mary ‘Jane’ Linnane (1841-1914).

Isaac Comerford of Kinvara was a younger brother of Henry Comerford (1827-1861), a prominent Galway merchant and magistrate who lived at Merchant’s Road, Galway, and Ballkeel House, Kilfenora, Co Clare. Henry bought up the Gregory estate in Kinvara in the 1850s and his post-Famine efforts to impose exorbitant rent increases in the town brought financial ruin to Kinvara and brought the Comerford family to the brink of social and economic disaster.

Isaac Comerford remained in Kinvara as a shopkeeper for about a decade, and Mary Jane Linnane. Their first seven children were born in Kinvara: Henry (1858), John Henry (1859), Mary (1860), Bridget (1861), Michael (1862), Alice ‘Ella’ (1863) and George Henry (1865).

But Isaac and Mary Jane Comerford emigrated to the US around 1866, and settled in Chicago, Illinois, where their five more children were born in Chicago: Elizabeth (1867), Jane (1871), Thomas Joseph (1877), Anne (1878) and Frank (1879).

Frank D Comerford studied at Northwestern University and the Illinois College of Law in Chicago. After graduation, he was admitted to the Illinois State Bar in 1904.

Later that year, at the age of 24, Comerford was elected to the Illinois State Senate in November 1904 from the 2nd District, representing part of Cook County, Illinois.

Comerford was a member of the Illinois Senate for only a few weeks when he made a public speech at the Illinois College of Law in which he claimed the state senate was merely ‘a great public auction, where special privileges are sold to the highest corporation bidders.’

He made specific accusations of wrongdoing, named names, and gave dates and financial details. He tried to protect himself by saying these stories were ‘in common circulation at the Capitol.’

The Illinois legislature reacted forcefully. It quickly passed a resolution that accused Comerford of spreading ‘assertions, slanders, insinuations and incriminations’ that called into question ‘the honour and integrity of the Illinois General Assembly.’ A special committee of the Illinois House of Representatives was hastily established and took extensive testimony before deciding Comerford’s allegations were unfounded.

The report of the special committee was placed before the House on 8 February 1905, and Comerford was called before the bar to show cause as to why he should not be expelled.

Comerford waived the right to a delay for preparing his defence. Instead, he delivered an impassioned speech lasting more than an hour, in which he defended the veracity of his charges and severely criticised the investigative committee for the limitations it placed upon his testimony. A vote on Comerford’s expulsion immediately followed and the newly elected Senator was expelled by a vote of 121 to 13.

After Comerford’s expulsion, a special election was held in the 2nd Senate District to replace him. Unbowed, Comerford ran for the seat again – this time as an independent – and was re-elected. He was unsuccessful in an effort to win re-election in the 1906 campaign, however, and later accepted a position as police attorney of Chicago under the Democratic mayor, Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne.

Comerford sought the Democratic Party nomination for the US Senate in 1914. However, the party rallied around the Cook County Democratic Party boss, Roger C Sullivan, and Comerford ultimately decided not to run in the primary.

When Dunne’s administration in Chicago came to an end in January 1917, Comerford set up his own private practice as an attorney. When the US entered World War I in 1917, he tried to enlist in the military, but was rejected on medical grounds. He spent the rest of the war as a public speaker selling bonds on behalf of the Liberty Loan programme.

After World War I, Comerford travelled to London and Paris for six months in 1919. He witnessed at first hand the rapidly changing social and political situation and contributed news reports to the Chicago Tribune.

When he returned to the US, Comerford published The New World. In his book, he paid particular attention to the Bolshevik Revolution in Soviet Russia, which he condemned as a new form of minority rule. He described Lenin as a ‘practical machine politician’ and an ‘oracle-dictator’ and observed that legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government had been concentrated in a single set of hands, with no right of appeal.

Comerford was a vocal advocate of the US joining the League of Nations, noting Bolshevik opposition to the concept and charging that ‘the failure to establish a League of Nations would be a world tragedy and in its wake may come revolution.’

Comerford’s political views and legal expertise led to him being chosen as the special prosecutor in the 1920 case of William Bross Lloyd and members of the Communist Labor Party of America. The trial ran from 10 May to 2 August. Despite the best efforts of the defence attorney Clarence Darrow, Comerford secured the convictions of all the defendants, including William Bross Lloyd, millionaire heir to the Chicago Tribune fortune.

Later in 1925, Darrow defended teacher John T Scopes in the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial, in which he opposed the statesman and orator William Jennings Bryan.

Comerford was elected to the bench as a Superior Court judge in Chicago in June 1926.

Frank D Comerford was twice married. On 19 March 1906, he married in Saint Joseph’s Church, Berrien, Michigan, Jean Cowgill (1875-1948). They later divorced, and on 10 November 1926 in Manhattan, he married Lyela Edelman Brandeis (1880-1946), widow of a merchant from Omaha, Nebraska.

Frank Comerford complained of chest pain while visiting his brother’s home in Chicago on the afternoon of 29 August 1929. Two of his nephews, Dr Francis Xavier O’Malley (1895-1974) and Dr John Gabriel O’Malley (1888-1935), were medical doctors, and were called to the house. Neither doctor found anything obviously wrong, however, and he was not taken to hospital. At 8.55 pm, however, Comerford suffered a massive heart attack while still being attended by one of his nephews. He died five minutes later. He was 49 years old.

His widow Lyela later lived in Paolo Alto, California. She died on 30 July 1946 in Los Angeles and was buried in Omaha, Nebraska.

Seven of Frank Comerford’s siblings were born in Kinvara, Co Galway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)